There's something about this particular era of games where the developers would make a giant castle/courtyard you can fly around that is completely empty of content. Like maybe 5% of it is interactable. It rules.

There's this balance between player convenience and realism in scale. Like you don't want the player to have to travel a long distance to get from one "fun" to the next "fun" so you abstract the scale and distance between the "funs". In the FF7 overworld, Cloud becomes a big cartoon boy and hypothetically is traveling very large distances with his thundering abstracted steps. The trade-off here being that you lose a little immersion, a little realism not in graphics but in scale. Games as an interactive medium promise worlds you can live in and can get a lot out of that scale if your willing to inconvenience the player a little. You've got to find the right balance.

The castle/courtyard in this game doesn't have much in it but the sheer act of existing on the Hogwarts campus at full scale is fun.

This game is really pleasant. I think the gameplay is weirdly satisfying. Like throwing a water bottle with 20% of the water in it. It has the arc you'd expect from throwing any projectile but there is a chaos you have to adapt to on the fly and can never truly master. You have some control over what is going on but it is designed to not feel fully controlled. When you successfully string together the movements to ascend it feels quite good.

I don't have any real goal of beating the game so losing progress doesn't bother me too much. If it does bother me I normally just quit and jump back in on another day. It's what Bennett Foddy told me to do and I think he has good intentions. He wants it to be frustrating not to make me angry but to make me ponder frustration, ponder perseverance, grief, loss, love, what is success, what is failure. And it does just that.

I like chewing on the quotes, I like swinging the big meaty hammer, I like shooting my guy into the air, I like the little meditative pause after losing huge amounts of progress that just unconsciously happens. When you get away from the meme aspects of the game it's a truly unique experience that makes you think about yourself and the medium in a new and interesting way.

NOTE: as of 1/20/2023 I have gotten to the bucket and slid down the snake. I think in a video where Bennett Foddy plays this game with Tim Rogers he says that riding down the snake is the real way to win. I'll eventually get back to the bucket and maybe even climb it but for now I'm satisfied considering this game completed. It was pretty fun to slide down the snake.

Oh no. They made pokemon good.

From a mechanical perspective I was very pleased with a lot of the decisions made. Mints and bottle caps are easily accessible which solves a lot of the tedium with catching pokemon. A lot of the 'A' mashing brain dead combat with random pokemon and trainers on the road has been streamlined or made completely avoidable. Tera whatevering is a really interesting new mechanic that isn't over powered and helps ALL pokemon instead of just a few. The three storylines have different forms of combat in each one that provide gameplay variety to break apart the general fun of exploring. It was just FUN. The normal dread that hits at around the 3rd gym in a pokemon game never came while I was playing this. From day one to day done I was actively having a good time just playing the game, exploring the cool world, catching some cool dudes, and accomplishing goals.

Just mechanically this game gets a big gold star for solving a lot of my gripes and making pokemon fun again but then it went and did something unbelievable. It made me care about the story.

I was invested in all three of the main storylines and when they converged into a single finale I was kind of floored by just how much I cared about everything. I nearly cried like 3 separate times. It's not the deepest story and they pluck some pretty low hanging emotional fruits but that's what pokemon SHOULD be doing. The IP is suited to simple stories like this and not these grand narratives of Gods and terrorist groups. Good lord I was reading the dialogue and there were parts I thought were genuinely funny. In the last chapter the characters are riffing off each other and I was absolutely consumed by the warm feelings of friendship. WHAT IS HAPPENING. How can they just suddenly know what makes a pokemon game good after YEARS of coming off completely oblivious. Is this game an accident? I'm losing my mind.

Other notes:

-They absolutely nailed the legendary pokemon in this game. I'm glad they had so much confidence in the world they made and the player's ability to explore and enjoy exploring.

-The technical stuff is bad but I don't care. Suck it nerds.

This is pretty funny being on backloggd. I seriously don't see any difference between it and a visual novel, if anything it has MORE interactivity so it feels more justified in being called a video game.

Homestuck is one of my favorite pieces of art ever. I am rereading it currently and all of the magic is still there. I love the world, I love the story, I love the music, the presentation, the art style. It's all very cash money.

Homestuck comes with a lot of baggage for past, present, and future readers. Whenever Homestuck gets brought up now I can't help but see that the discussion of it is never actually about Homestuck. It's about the fans, it's about the kickstarter, it's about Andrew Hussie's financial woes. I really don't spend a lot of time thinking about any of that. I also don't feel embarrassed about liking Homestuck, which I think is a feeling a lot of would be readers and past readers have a hard time coping with.

But Homestuck at it's core is just a rootin tootin good read.

My favorite aspect is the character to character interactions and the exponential nature of the narrative. At the start you really just have John. Then in Act 2 you throw in Rose. Keep reading and now there is Dave and Jade. And all of these characters are wholly unique and lovable, but then there's also the relationships between each set of characters. A Jade + Rose conversation is vastly different to a Dave + John conversation. They are very nuanced and enjoyable characters in themselves, the combination of two individual kids. Their conversations are so believable, they have their own inside jokes, it rules.

Then you hit Act 5 and 12 more characters are introduced and it's absolutely bananas. The characters are also introduced with a meticulous set of cultural differences. The way the narrative expertly juggles all of this is just such a joy.

I'd be writing forever if I tried to go into every little piece of Homestuck that I think makes it special. It rips ass.

I'm not the biggest fan of the slower paced soulslike combat that a lot of games have so I immediately turned on the infinite stamina and that was definitely the way to go. The combat is a passable attribute of the game but if you want to play Tunic for the combat then you should play something else.

Tunic's appeal is in it's world and the discovery. It is constantly playing tricks like hiding paths to later stages of an area right in front of the player but obscured by the visuals or the camera angle. Later areas begin testing you on your environmental awareness to find these tricks to progress and the last part of the game throws the combat straight into the dumpster and is solely about puzzles doable through environmental observation. I was drawn to the game from it's beautiful visuals and actively wanted to explore and this shift in gameplay seemed to have that mindset as the main design philosophy. Which ruled for me but I can see it being a turn off for others. Not that I care about other people, please definitely keep making games for me.

The other aspect of the game that was delightful is the lack of communication. I was figuring out very basic functions of the game much later than intended. Things like leveling up stats and running. It was awesome. The fake language in Tunic provides a confusion to playing the game that was nostalgic and humbling. Games have gotten so main stream now that they make a lot of assumptions out of the player to know how to accomplish basic functions. Things like operating a 3rd person camera, picking up on a characters weight and gravity, common button layouts for attacking and interacting. It was not too long ago that players were playing genres like "3D platformers" for the very first time and coming to grips with operating in a 3D environment. The average gameboy has played enough games now to have a fundamental head start in any new game they pick up but Tunic does a really great job putting new players on a similar playing field when it comes to mechanically operating the game.

Also

Also

You play as a cute fox. yessssssss

Everything I could want out of a rhythm game.

The visuals are so intense and disorientating at times. The game actively tries to get you to really get lost in the flow and the rhythm. The adlib system deserves a special shoutout for actively rewarding the player for hitting notes that do not appear visually. It's like the game is giving me points for tapping my toes.

All the music is great but the vocaloid tracks in particular are perfect for the rhythm game genre. While other games have you normally playing a single part of a larger song, like just the guitar or just the vocals. Groove Coaster pretty seamlessly transitions from vocals to instruments and makes you feel like you're playing the entire song, not just a part of it. I think it works so well because vocaloid is such an interesting crossroad between vocals and instrument.

It's just a fun fun time. I've got an arcade machine just an hour drive away and I can't wait to get my grimey little mits on one of those big groove coaster nipples.

This game was pretty cool. I thought the ways Beastia and Jacopo in their respected storylines struggled to accept unconditional love were effective, empathetical, and sad. The 4th wall breaking with the chat history was neat, the music was good, art was great, and the narratives twists and turns were mostly unexpected and were entertaining enough.

This is my first time with the medium of visual novels and I think I'll give a few more games a try but these are definitely more novel than video game and I'm pretty picky about my prose narratives.

This is like my fifth Atlus game and it's the first one where I think I actually cared about all the demons. They all look incredible, I love reading their backstories, the way they are integrated in the world is fun. Just having a good time with all these wicked dudes. I made an effort to reach the end game with 3 very special dudes on my team and the game lets you take very early game demons all the way to the end and have them be mechanically viable. Much appreciated.

There was an instance where I fought one demon and another demon in my stock came out and they had a huge conversation about their similar backstories and that rocked.

The world is successful at riding this line between linear and open. Good visuals. Good music.

Special shoutout to the sound design. It's a pretty wild task to give all these precious boys their own noise and they did a really wonderful job there. I would actively run by demons on the world map just to hear them make noises at me.

Uhhh yeah, just a solid little romp.

At first the game was just a neat little thought experiment, but by the end of it I can look back positively on Balan Wonderworld. It's very obviously flawed in some major ways but through the cracks you can see some really interesting ideas.

The simple/accessible control scheme and multiple costumes is a really great idea. A problem I've had with Kirby games is that the powerups are mostly combat focused. They don't effect Kirby's movement options in any meaningful way because Kirby's baseline movement range is so wide. The suits in Balan Wonderworld provide a lot of different movement options and the levels compliment this. The levels have a lot of verticality to them and multiple ways to advance through them, some intentional and some not. It feels very satisfying to get a trophy you were not supposed to get with early game suits and clever platforming. It feels really good to maneuver around the intended path with a suit from another level opposed to the suit provided for the obstacle. There is an expression in the platforming that the game and level design gives you.

But it comes with a catch, this shit is terribly inconsistent. There is a lot of bloat in the suits. While I enjoy some of the silly one off challenge suits, like the now infamous box fox, I don’t really care for multiple suits that do literally the same thing. You get two swimming suits in chapter 2 one after the other and the second one is just better, it makes the former weirdly redundant almost as soon as you get it. The levels themselves can also be a roller coaster ride. Chapter 5 made me want to quit the game but Chapter 10 was one of the best levels I’ve ever played in any 3D platformer. Most of the little CGI stories are heartwarming but the cat one I found genuinely offensive.

With all that in mind there is a real turning point to the game. When you unlock the Frost Fairy suit this shit really gets going. That suit is so hilariously over powered in both vertical and horizontal movement options that it makes lot of the levels super trivial, but trivial in a fun cathartic way. Chapter 10 was seriously a triumph in game design. There’s an intended path to get through the level but the Frost Fairy suit gives you the freedom to wholly create your own path.

I honestly believe if this game got the time to cut a lot of the fat and polish out what it did well it could have been a really great game.

Some other thoughts:
This game is the opposite of ahead of it’s time and I say that as a compliment. I don’t think the Fortnite pilled super children of the next generation would be into this at all but I shutter to think how this game would have warped my baby brain if I somehow had access to it as a child. I would have eaten it up.

The quick time event and sports mini games I just completely avoided. That shit just seems unfinished.

The Isle of Tims is a fun little hangout spot. All games should have hangout spots.

The gameplay for bosses was pretty neat. They are all really simple to beat but the challenge is to beat them in 3 different ways with different suits. Just a neat little idea that works well with the suits.

I played just the soccer game where you gotta knock down the 7 goombas. It was on master difficulty and my friend and I were getting absolutely sauced for like 45 minutes straight. Then we played our 6th "last try" and for a few precious moments we became one. Our minds and bodies were connected not just with one another but with the trees and the animals. We saw the universe and the universe smirked back.

As far as I'm concerned I played this game and it was the greatest moment of my life.

Main game Mario Party really do be some bullshit sometimes though.

The game gives you enough gems to build exactly TWO of any deck you want. After that you will never get enough UR crafting material to build another deck ever again. HOPE I LIKE TRAINS.

When the cards smash onto the board and make the loud noise, I like that, that's a good thing. The menu navigation is slow though, and that's bad considering it's half the game.

The solo mode is useless. Give me gems for doing solo mode you clowns. I have become a gremlin for gems and will settle for nothing less.

The online matchmaking is good but it FEELS bad...like morally. There's returning players in the lower ranks trying to run vanilla beat down. Bro I pulled an AccessCode Talker in my second pack you can't be normal summoning Vorse Raider and passing in 2022.

That's about it. The game is terrible. 4 stars.

Update: You can get gems from solo mode. Not too many but enough to build a few more guys. I wish this game was worse, I feel a hopeless addiction growing on me.