Gran turismo, if you ask me, is the definition of someone who dedicates their lives to cars. That’s probably why you like the games, unless you genuinely like them just to have fun. Ridge racer type 4 however, is the only game I know that when I play it, I can feel that it has a sex life. The music, the controls, the visuals, like the lead singer of prince once said: ‘I’m gonna party like it’s 1999’ and that’s exactly what I did.

In the Grand Prix mode you have the option to select which racing team you want to be a part of and which manufacturer you want for your car. The racing teams also double up as your difficulty options but that’s not all, they also have story. What I like about type 4 is that it doesn’t try to go for a really immersive story, all it really is is you driving for someone as your hear about their life and almost get closer to them. It almost makes you want to win and support them with everything possible. They’ll either applaud you for doing well in a race or criticise you for not performing up to standards. The different leads all feel full of life and are one of the best aspects of this mode. You also get the choice between drift cars or grip cars which changes the handling of how you drive. The tracks are also very similar throughout with different routes that appear as you return to them later. The Grand Prix mode is the best mode of the entire game and it really shows.

The music is just the chefs kiss of the entire game. Never have I gone into a game and been absolutely blown away by an absolutely stellar techno soundtrack. It was the 90’s so it does make some sense but oh man is it amazing. From the groovy saxophone of ‘Pearl blue soul’ to the more chilled and relaxed ‘move me’ there really is something for everyone in this soundtrack and it all works really well as you’re driving. It almost compliments each other excellently. And even the menu themes are an absolute bop.

There are a few other modes like time attack where you can use cars you’ve unlocked in the gran prix mode and even extra trial where you test your speed against a super fast opponent with any car you unlocked throughout the Grand Prix mode. You can even edit what your car looks like in the garage mode where you can check out the cars you’ve unlocked and play around with the customisation options.

So yes, ridge racer type 4 is my first proper racing game and…I feel it’s gonna be hard to top. There’s a reason I’ve given this game 5 stars and it’s because it was an absolute joy to play and it’s gonna really set my standards for other racing games. I am hoping to try the gran turismo games and maybe give the wipeout games a go if I can, as they are supposed to have a stellar soundtrack. But for now, ridge racer type 4 will probably hold the crown as my favourite racing game of all time.

Bopping soundtrack, excellent gameplay, great Grand Prix modes, stories were wonderful, and the pac-man car

The FitnessGram™ Pacer Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues. The 20 meter pacer test will begin in 30 seconds. Line up at the start. The running speed starts slowly, but gets faster each minute after you hear this signal. [beep] A single lap should be completed each time you hear this sound. [ding] Remember to run in a straight line, and run as long as possible. The second time you fail to complete a lap before the sound, your test is over. The test will begin on the word start. On your mark, get ready, start.

This game is so chill it literally put me to sleep three separate times. Not a joke.

If you've played the board game Carcassonne, great! You've played Dorfromantik. Dorfromantik is literally just solitaire Carcassonne with hexagonal tiles and no meeples. You draw tiles and place them trying to match cities, forests, water, farms, and railways to earn points. When you run out of tiles, you get a score, and you can hit the "Try Again" button to try to beat your previous score. That is the entire game.
And if it sounds like that isn't enough of a game, I would agree! There's no campaign, no progression, and nothing else to the game beyond "beat your high score", which is sadly not enough of a motivator for me.

It's a shame there's not really a ton of meat on the bone, because the core gameplay loop of Dorfromantik is quite solid, and the presentation of the game is outstanding. The visuals are excellent and the music is lovely. Placing a tile down and seeing how the landscape would adapt and come alive is immensely satisfying.

The game has a variety of modes but they're all just basically the same thing. Quick play is just the same game but shorter, Hard Mode is the game but harder, and Weekly Challenge is a predefined set of tiles. It's all the same - place tiles, try to complete varying placement quests, get points. I never really found the building part of the game as satisfying as I wanted because the part of me that wants to make pretty landscapes was constantly battling against the game's scoring system which just incentivizes making the biggest cities or rivers possible. Creative mode fixes that.

Despite my issues with the lack of overall structure to the game, I ironically found the chill, no-stakes Creative mode to be the most enjoyable part. While messing around with it, I entered a sort of zen state and ended up spending 2 hours crafting the loveliest little landscape. After that, going back to the normal mode, I was just frustrated with the tile draw and how the game didn't want me to make pretty landscapes; it wants me to get points points points!

Dorfromantik is a charming tile placement game that succeeds in being chill, but fails at gamifying its mechanics in a meaningful way that encourages me to keep playing.

+ So chill it put me to sleep
+ Fantastic visuals with a lovely soundtrack
+ Creative mode is surprisingly fun

- So chill it put me to sleep
- No campaign or progression systems
- Limited modes
- Lacking in content

I'm somewhat torn on this work in the sense that I think it wants to be culturally specific but also broadly relatable to diasporic audiences in a grander sense (and of course, non-diasporic audiences with their pre-conceived notions of what the diasporic experience is) and in turn ends up sacrificing some specificity in order to do so. I love that every chapter opens with a quote from the Tirukkural, but it's contextualised as being displayed on a tacky calendar that's publicity merch from some random company in India. I love that you wouldn't know it's from the Tirukkural if you don't know what the Tirukkural is or that the picture on the calendar is of Valluvar and who Valluvar is. It took me halfway through the game before I put two and two together because I'm not Tamil, my parents are from Kerala, so I'm one step removed from Tamil culture but still broadly knowledgeable in it. I wish that was more of the game. I wish the game was written with less North American idiomatic expressions even knowing that much of the game is in Tamil that's abstracted and "translated" into English for the player's benefit. This English abstraction could have been closer to Indian English I think. For all the alienation the game wants you to feel through language, it wants the alienation to remain between the characters and not between text and audience. It's smoothed over for palatability, which is ultimately where I land overall, and is ultimately a problem I have with diasporic fiction at large. But, this is a good first step in games, and I hope to see more in the future.

Regardless of my criticisms, if you have no/limited knowledge of Tamil and/or broadly South Indian culture and have Game Pass and two hours to spare, you should play this. It's a good introduction to us from that perspective. I will be recommending this game to my brother and my parents as a little transient, relatable experience for what its worth.

"a bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory." - albert einstein

everything i would (theoretically) like about foodservice work neatly packed in a 7.5 hour game about just getting by and living on the sidelines of life. in my 3-4 years of working in line cook and customer service jobs i don’t think there’s any job more soul-sucking and bitter than that. it’s all too easy to fall into the pit of fearing the very real possibility that your life could be like this forever (which is the case for a lot of line cooks!), working a dead-end job with no real purpose to pursuing any real meaningful goal in life. in that sense, jill’s a well-written protagonist in that she’s a girl who’s long made peace with the fact her life isn’t going to go to any particularly extraordinary places. it kind of feels like seeing a what-if of sorts in my own life; if my current pursuit of higher education doesn’t pan out, i’d probably be in a place not too dissimilar to where jill is right now. but despite throwing away higher aspirations and goals, life goes on, and so does she.

in the life that jill and her fellow glitch city denizens live, it’s a weird kind of comforting to imagine that in the future, years and years from now when our generation is gone, people will still argue about video games and anime and media like we always have, and all the jill stingrays of the world will still be working dead-end jobs to make ends meet, likely carrying the burdens of life regrets with them. though i will say that whenever i get a little too comfortable basking in that thought, the game hits me in the kneecaps with how much it hyped up YIIK and other writing choices that carbon-date it to the post-ironic tumblr/4chan humor era when VA-11 HALL-A was made. sometimes it gives small chuckles, and other times it’s just mildly unfunny. it’s not exactly a dealbreaker, but i think the game could have benefitted from more tact and a more conscious attempt at timeless writing.

VA-11 HALL-A is an unambitious game with a lot of it in service of being unambitious, which i think is the right thing for a game about just some girl who works a bartending job trying to pay rent. it’s about caring enough to help others and accept help, it’s about reconciling with your regrets, and it’s about going out of your way to find the little things that make life worth living. it’s undeniably something of a romanticized look at this line of work, but i’d be lying if i said i missed absolutely nothing about it, despite how miserable it gets a lot of the time. for me and all the other jill stingrays of the world, i hope we all find some semblance of the peace and mundanity jill gets at the end of her story.

The ultimate time waster. Breath of the wild was about discovery, new frontiers both in terms of game design and actual exploration. I had no idea what to expect when I was playing breath of the wild, and it felt joyous just learning basic things like cooking and climbing. It felt like learning to walk for the first time. Playing Tears of the Kingdom is like already knowing how to walk and then going on a much longer walk, with more stuff to do. And while some of this stuff was cool, especially the caves... I feel like people won't look back at this game with the same wonder. The game really is just about finding more ways to fill the design space of Breath of the Wild, but it failed to understand that what made that game so special were those first few moments when you didn't know what to do. Wandering around in hyrule field, interrogating a game space you didn't fully understand.

i liked but not loved this and i am not sure why.

the mechanics are simple but compulsive. do the loop while juggling some meters balancing staying alive and forwarding various stories.

the stories are cool, queer, anti capitalist, various shades of literary influence coming through like le guin and delany. i should be right on target but i didnt 'feel' anything. even food is a focus in a big way and compounds nicely with what bodies are, what it means to be human. each theme should read like a greatest hits for me. There are nice flourishes of writing but I was never cheering for one character, feeling that strongly for lem and mina, or anyone else beaten down by these systems. and that is partially more of a me thing too.

i do still think it is a puzzly narrative delight that allows you to set the pace of your own stories in an impressive way.

art and music do a lot to make this setting really work. i liked admiring the eye and you can picture life there.