devoid of the romance. the facade of pokemon is brought to life by the strongest context ever put in video games stretched to its absolute limit — 1,000 monsters!! without the world to texture the interactions… you got numbers. limp, evil, admittedly kinda addicting numbers

one-ups, doubles-down, rescinds, apologizes, and repents for apollo justice, evolving wright’s not-so-covert upstaging into a confusing compromise: the story of phoenix wright’s story of simon blackquill’s story of athena cykes. and apollo was there too. for some reason.

simultaneously the first, second, and seventh entry, settling in its groove yet spinning its wheels. pulled in every direction and nearly snapping under pressure of the straw that threatened “MAJIMA EVERYWHERE.” everywhere! majima…

yakuza 0 is pretty good, huh?

sybil is a. dream! to control, y’know? and her playground. was also there. raw feet-in-the-air-kickin’-off-walls action. there are lots of rooms for sybil to jump. around in. so many rooms! who knows what she might find? something interesting, eventually, probably. in a bit

another indie genre-spoonful. steam-tag SEO stew. affectionately, though. cloying roguelike-ish elements, rpg maker horror-esque intermissions, and breakcore-adjacent soundscapes melt into a natural, hypnotic flow as you become one with the shambling corpse of picayune.

it has the sauce. GOD it has the sauce

‪splatoon franchise experience canonized. the spire asks the lapsed player how much infinity they can withstand. succumbing and assimilating to order’s greyscaled monotony - mindless enemy spam across the same handful of levels - is not an option. reach acceptance. let go. move on

…maybe one more run…

game: the only ever edition

overindulgent and overstuffed with straight-faced generic-isms strewn across an equally vapid, noisy world primed to prey on those with “thing to do” syndrome

breaking the script and freestyling amidst the plethora of bottomless pits and instant death traps lends sonic a fragile, touchy edge. despite this, embracing the call-to-action, precisely nailing the rhythmic ebb and flow of the boosts and stunts is exhilarating.

its endearing sincerity - unpolished, unabashed wonder - read as bizarre to some. and i get it. cynicism’s ideal platform is a world presented with such childlike simplicity, asking of the player what it asks its characters: chin up, put on a smile, and enjoy the show. it’s fun!!

time folds and unfurls, worlds condense and expand. the dawn of the demon apocalypse, the collapse of tokyo - feels a bit like an excel sheet! interesting choices are weightless in both the story and demon selection when half of the playtime is spent buried in menus. homeworkcore

explosive sexual camp dialed so far i can’t tell if it’s exploitative or empowering. both, maybe. idk, it’s pretty awesome. what starts as an encouragement to get fancy with it quickly becomes a mandate. it demands you become bayonetta to survive: confident, deliberate, flashy

the fallaciousness of the open ocean, the clean slate, speaks to the shortcomings of this type of narrative. this is still zelda: delightful, bossy, and dense with busywork. it treats its conventions like baggage but is happy to indulge them with little resistance. hyrule is buried and the path to the future is paved with more hyrule

reverse horror, the promise, is only delivered insofar as you are monster. and do kill people. there’s hardly any friction, no tension- it’s too frenetic to let you revel in the catharsis of slinking through shadows, slowly picking off each person one by one, reclaiming your own