probably the most consistently fun multiplayer game in years, and im glad internet society at large has stopped pretending fortnite isnt fun as fuck. granted im saying this as someone who has played... uhh... 548 hours on and off since release? (probably a bad thing)

in a world where every multiplayer game is trying to be HyperCompetitive Metagaming Play 18 Hours A Day to Keep Up With Being Good Enough To Queue For A Game, fortnite sections off its playstyles well enough that a guy like me who just wants to have fun can actually just do that. nobuild continues to be The Way To Play this game, in case you were unaware and queued into the normal mode which is pretty much overrun by sweats lol

this season particularly is great, augments are among the best additions in quite some time, and it finally gives me something good to use gold for lmao. hammers were great too, for the time they were in at least. only iffy additions i think are the Anime Items which were insanely overpowered at one point but i think complaining about that is like complaining about items in mario kart, like come on! its stupid but its fun!

also balancing seemed like much more of an issue for them this time than the last time i remember really playing this game, but i dont know if thats just because i was playing enough to be aware when they vaulted the hammer for like the third time lol. it was still pretty fun though, even when you lose to something stupid its not that hard to laugh it off due to how unserious the whole atmosphere around this game is.

but yeah? tldr? fortnite is fun? and good? excited for the next season

I’m not good at writing long form reviews, but this game really spoke to me in a way where I feel like I have to write something. So, I guess let me start with a bold statement: Boku no Natsuyasumi is a masterpiece. I’m not exaggerating or sugar coating that, I think this game is perfect. I hope this review will express why I think this.

A major elephant in the room when discussing this game is the fact that it has never been localized in any capacity, whether official or a fan translation (although one is supposedly in the works). Therefore, I had to play this in a sort of archaic way. I wouldn’t really recommend that, I’d say wait for the fan translation. But regardless, I’m so glad I managed to play this.

Boku no Natsuyasumi is about the titular Boku, a boy from Tokyo who is going to stay with his Aunt, Uncle, and cousins in rural Japan while his mother is preparing to give birth during summer vacation. While in this unnamed part of rural Japan, you can explore the area around you, catch bugs, talk to locals, catch fish, fly kites, wrestle beetles. Y’know, the Summer Stuff. In the simplest terms, I’d describe this game as a “summer simulator” of sorts, but just that surface level description doesn’t go into the major depth this game has.

I think mood is a major part of this game's appeal. Of course, Boku no Natsuyasumi is a game about reliving your childhood, so you get some of that major childlike wonder at certain moments of the game. However, as this game is told from the perspective of an adult Boku, I think “bittersweet nostalgia” is the perfect way to describe this game’s mood. While this game is pure vibes and a joy to play, there is a hint of melancholy here. Post-war reconstruction, dealing with the loss of a family member, and teenage angst and depression are some of the topics that are dealt with here, and I think it handles this beautifully.

The characters are also delightful! The main family is lovely, with Moe’s heartbroken arc being the one that resonated with me the most. But I also love the other people you can run into, such as the vice principal, the delinquent boys, and the wolf girl.

By the time I finished this game, I was near tears. I didn’t want to leave, I didn’t want it to end. I truly felt like I stumbled into something magical. I wish I could put into words the depth and beauty of this game, but if you want a great (but long) explanation of why this game is so amazing, I’d highly recommend Tim Roger’s 6 hour review of the game. (although, if you’re interested in this game, I imagine you’ve already seen it)

I can’t wait until Boku no Natsuyasumi gets a fan translation. This game needs to be experienced by more people. I won’t make a sweeping statement and say it’ll appeal to everyone, but if this game sounds like it will appeal to you, I almost guarantee you it will. Absolute timeless, classic masterpiece.

i originally wrote a review of this that was basically just a stream of consciousness thought dump i had when i finished it (i'll put a pastebin in the comments) but it kind of goes over some themes and stuff that show up in the game that i think are cooler to discover yourself as you play, so i'm rewriting it (also because this game has been on my mind nonstop since i finished it and so i've had time to think about why i enjoyed it so much)

Echo is an extremely well written horror/character drama story--it's a little funny that this game filled with furries contains some of the most realistic and human writing i've seen in a story in quite some time. this is a very confrontational piece of art for something that vaguely looks like a dating sim; all of these characters have very real and lasting problems that you're not going to fix in the span of a week and the dynamics between all of them are all very very interesting, both to watch unfold and to pick apart after the fact.

and that's saying nothing about the horror in this game--it's extremely harrowing and it's constantly tense. echo likes to deliver both tense character moments and tense horror moments with a certain method of description, where each line of text is a successive gut punch after the last. it's a style of writing that fits the game really really well and makes the moments with lots of description or internal monologue really pop out. it's the sort of narrative where a simple plot summary misses a huge amount of what makes it good, and yet the rest of the story never feels like it's overburdened by level of detail.

i could gush about every aspect of this story for hours; how tightly-woven everything is, how it takes advantage of player expectations while making an effort to remain within its universe, how good the player choices are, but i think i should probably just stop for now and tell you to play this game. it's free. heed the content/age warnings, they're not a joke, this game can get pretty heavy at times. good luck.

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1.01 edit: the short stories are cool, definitely play if you're wanting more from echo after you finish, but maybe wait a couple days/weeks as most of them are retellings of stories you hear about over the course of the main game. they're definitely not "necessary", but they capture the feel of the main game pretty well, certainly better than route 65

There’s a lot of grief in this episode. That’s not to say it’s all bad, or even that the episode is a downer. It’s more that Cardboard Computer largely has players surrender the wheel for this part of the story. The characters just need time. So the assembled cast moves through the episode onboard a tugboat that heads down the underground river that runs between their destination and the Zero. That means there’s no driving or small side destinations. But there is still plenty of player choice, here in terms of decisions to follow characters who disembark the boat at different points or who stays on board.

Grief in this episode is quiet, and mostly unspoken. Some of it is certainly up to the player and how they feel after the events of Act III. New characters are introduced, new constellations of relationships can sprout between characters, and there’s a feeling that everyone has to move on. Nobody is exactly sure how to do that, or what comes next, but the river is going to carry them somewhere, regardless.

what i expected: 2022 post-gamergate pyst. extremely trite "erm isnt this pretentious guys?? i hate all video games that are about anything besides Shooting and Kicking ass!! puzzle games are too hard for me!" tier "commentary"

what i got: not bad riff on the witness. not remarkable in almost any aspect aside from a couple of the gags it pulls, but they're gags that work better if you know and like the witness already. also definitely made by someone who has definitely played all of the witness and most likely enjoyed it, very unlike pyst lol. still very unremarkable in the end though