I’m not a climber. I’m not even a hiker, really, which makes living in Utah less appealing for me than it is for others. But in college, in an effort to step outside my comfort zone, I joined a group of my roommates and their friends on a “hike” of Angel’s Landing in Zion national park (aka Honest Hearts).

For some reason my little sister also tagged along, and neither of us knew what we were getting into: it starts like a hike but at the end you have to climb chains on cliff faces! You could easily fall off and die, and people have. But I think I was wearing jeans, so that might clue you into my level of preparation.

You don’t hit the stretch with chains unless you decide to go to the very tip top, and there’s a large flat area where many people quit. Several of our group, even some of the athletic ones (they apparently did outdoor things for fun. Outside where it’s sweaty and dangerous. Let’s just say I doubt they’ll be playing Jusant any time soon) got scared and didn’t go to the top. I figured if I had to be there anyway I’d give it a go.

It was extremely scary for me. I’m sure some would say it’s not that bad, and that it’s a baby’s first hike situation, but to me it was one of the most dangerous things I’d ever done. This may sound silly but I legitimately thought “What if I let my little (adult) sister come on this hike with me and she fell to her death?” Well, my sister and I got a picture at the top, so I basically never need to do that again.

So Conman, what’s with the long anecdote replete with filler words your 7th grade English teacher said were off-limits?

This game reminded me of that memory, and it’s a happy one. It made me reminisce, bringing back feelings of climbing something so tall for so long that it felt like the top was running away from me. A time I felt a little braver. Forget the text log story, forget the textureless indie art style, forget the mid cave chapter… this game made me feel good. Criticism? What’s that? All I know is gut-level emotional reaction.

Oh, I also adore the gameplay.

I’ve loved the ‘triggers as hands’ climbing mechanic since I first played Grow Up, but there it’s just one of many disparate mechanics. In Jusant that mechanic is the game; this is a focused and effortlessly intuitive climbing experience with none of the drawbacks of actually going climbing, such as having to talk to people who rock climb.

Wait, also the rope - my beloved. Oh they also took the vine-growing mechanic from Grow Home/Grow Up which totally worked. And in Star Trek V, Captain Kirk free solos El Capitán. Well, he falls off and Spock catches him with his rocket boots. Ok ok alright

Spyro’s remaster was another breezy library rental for me, and a nice trip down memory lane. As an adult it didn’t offer me as much as, say, the Crash Bandicoot N-Sane Trilogy due to the simplicity of the levels and general ease (alongside the dragons/objectives who sometimes give you hints). It all gave me the impression that this game was for smaller kids than I thought, and that’s fine, I suppose.

But even for the now-crusty Condad the Spyro controls and gameplay loop are money and make up for a lot of the shortcomings.

Unfortunately, this carries the distinct third-party Nintendo Switch smell of playing a PC game on the lowest settings. Blurry, choppy, not easy on the eyes. The original was a stunner on the PlayStation, this was simply playable. I assume you’d be better off with any of the other consoles’ versions.

Spooktober 2023
4. Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2

Calling Curse of the Moon 2 the spiritual successor to Castlevania 3 is like saying wigs are the spiritual successor to hair. Looks like it, passes as it, but it’s just not the same.

I liked the first game, and as a spooky Halloween season diversion this is solid. Looks great, sounds great, the mechanics are pretty pitch-perfect. If you’ve ever thought “why don’t they make games like Castlevania anymore?” Well, they do. Here you go. My main issue here is that it outstays its welcome by substituting additional content with repetition.

I actually rented this from the library, and by the time I got to the second episode I just wanted to blast through it and get to the end. Unfortunately my lack of exploration in episode 2 meant instead of going straight to the end I had to complete a THIRD playthrough of the exact same levels, this time with different characters. I think maybe they could’ve at least remixed the actual level layouts even if they didn’t want to create new assets.
—————————
This has been a rough month for my mental health, and ‘spooktober’ hasn’t gone as planned, but I’m tentatively taking some baby steps back into normalcy. Not to get too personal but starting new medications and beginning extracurricular projects don’t always mix well with work and taking care of a new child. I’ve been recharging my emotional batteries by mindlessly playing Lego Star Wars and Call of Duty. You gotta do what you gotta do, even if for me that meant going all-in on mid. Ok Lego Star Wars is pretty fire but whatever. These games (Bloodstained: CotM 2 included), helped me out of a bit of a rut, so while things aren’t ‘better’, I’m on the road to getting there. Anyway gang I’ll be back to chugging irony poison in no time!

Spooktober 2023
3. Amnesia: The Bunker

“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

And also there was a big monster
and I had to use the physics engine to throw bricks at wooden doors or blow them up with grenades. It’s sort of an immersive sim but also has somewhat linear Resident Evil style progression.
They should make the next game go even harder with that.
There were also some big annoying rodents of unusual size whose AI were unpredictable, making every interaction with them annoying.
It started extremely strong but petered off a tad at the end.
Like I said about Condemned, I am diegetic elements’ strongest soldier. Loading bullets one by one and counting them, pouring gasoline, picking up bricks, hand-cranking. My jam.
Anyway World War I was not a good time.
Dulce de Leche”

-Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est (no additions by me at all, RIP Wilf you would have hated Amnesia: the Bunker)

Edit: sorry everybody. going on indefinite hiatus, need a mental health break.

Spooktober 2023
2. Condemned: Criminal Origins

Within seconds I was on-board with basically everything about this game: The dimly-lit, grimy environments, the minimal hud, necessity of the flashlight, heaps of diegesis, and a focus on melee combat with low-ammo single-time-use firearms…

Condemned is a stew of other Conmancore certified favorites, such as Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie, various Resident Evils but especially 7 (mc’s name is Ethan?!), Metro: Exodus, Kane & Lynch 2 (I wanted to mention it but please just move past that one) and Far Cry 2.

Diegesis is, I think, of particular note as a staple of many Conmancore games. I turned the aiming reticle off, which was one of the game’s few options, and even Condemned’s relatively weaker aspects like the narrative and the Arkham-style detective stuff try to keep you entrenched in the experience by mostly keeping everything on-screen and in-gameplay. That isn’t to say that gamified design is bad at all, just that videogames can provide more than one type of experience and this is one type I tend to like.

I’ve had Condemned Backloggd™ for forever, so it was satisfying to finally cross it off the list. Also, I don’t even need to look at the scores of people I’m following to know what they’d give this game, and I have a sneaking suspicion y’all could have seen my positive reaction coming from a mile away. But I didn’t know much about this game and was surprised to find it was an instant favorite. I’m totally trying out the sequel as soon as I can.

Spooktober 2023
1. Return to Castle Monkey Ball
Recommended by Detchibe

Wolfenstein 3D haters been real quiet since this dropped. But for real, if you like monkeyball (and I know I do) I can’t think of a better way to experience the aesthetics and flair of Wolf 3D without having to play a game outside your comfort zone. This would have provided me at least one school year’s worth of entertainment as a kid, playing it instead of doing whatever I was supposed to be working on.

I love ‘bad’ media. I love watching crappy movies, playing janky games, and embarrassing YouTube videos. I think there’s a bunch of people out there who feel the same way, I mean… my reviews usually get a few likes. Got me!

Usually when people say they love ‘bad’ media, the media tends to live in the popular ‘so bad it’s good’ realm, and by that I mean ‘so bad it’s funny and entertaining to experience’ not ‘so bad it’s aspirational’. I think art is subjective, and there’s an experiential aspect as well as those theoretical and critical, which all get thrown into the big soup of my reviews, star ratings, and opinions. My perception of a game’s quality and entertainment value both go into my star ratings and reviews.

This is probably why I don’t have a rating scale in my bio, because I figure you know what 1-5 rating scale is AND you can read. I don’t always write succinctly, but I’d hope that people don’t read my reviews, look at the star rating, and go “I wonder what he meant by that.”

So let’s get this out of the way: this game sucks. I actually had a great time playing it in the early hours (hence the non half-star), laughing at the performance issues, convoluted story, and bafflingly bland game design. It wore off. This game truly becomes a massive slog during Silver’s campaign, and the overall repetition of content makes the playthrough pretty arduous.

But! And I think this is important if you want a peek into my sick and twisted Shadow-esque world- I do not regret playing this. I have rarely regretted spending time with a bad piece of media. Experiencing any art, no matter how boring, bland, and mediocre that may be, is not something I see as a default negative. On a low level it serves as a way to appreciate the things I love by contrast, but it’s also an education, another thing to store in my mind, another thing to know. I’m not without some discretion, as I try to actively pick things I think will give me something to take away, but I’ve got a bit of a masochistic streak which has inadvertently led me to a greater appreciation of all art and of life in general.

So my big takeaways from Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) are that A. I stand by my reviews of the Sonic Adventure games, and B. This is even worse than I remember it being. I’ve always had a weird soft spot for Sonic 06, and I still have one, it’s just smaller now.

Everything to do with Silver is terrible. The reliance on physics objects in his moveset, the story, and even the boss fights against him are low-points for the game and the franchise. It has nothing I want from a Sonic game, and here’s I guess another thing (a point C if you’re somehow following this) I got out of Sonic the Hedgehog: I mostly just want to play as Sonic or a Sonic-like character in these games. I’m okay with the occasional gimmick to spice things up, like cars or planes, but I want to move fast and I want to zip around collecting rings or spinning into enemies.

Sonic: what I want, still not that great though because this is the game it’s in.
Shadow: like Sonic but with a twist, refreshing to do as the final campaign.
Knuckles/Rouge: harmless but trivial.
Blaze: like Sonic/Shadow but slightly worse.
Tails: Not all that fun, but flying can be novel for a second.
Amy: sucks but the section is mercifully short
Omega: Almost forgot about it, needed a UI element for locking-on
Silver: Tedium incarnate. Borders on being torturous.

Also this review is getting long in the tooth, but I have to mention Soleanna as it’s one of the emptiest and worst hub areas ever (I love hub areas so hey, this having a hub at all is a little bit of a positive), but it’s ALSO even worse when you’re playing as Silver. Soleanna is huge and he’s slow. It doesn’t even have a Chao garden! The nerve.

A human woman kisses Sonic in one of the game’s final fantasy cutscenes and it’s a highlight for sure. Worth playing just for that. Wait, I could’ve just watched a let’s play or rewatched the cutscenes online? You’re telling me this now? Just kidding I was always going to replay this.

Stranglehold’s second level has got to be of the biggest second level fumbles in gaming history.

Level 1 is a brisk and impactful introduction to the game’s systems; you slip across tables, slide down handrails, and dive through the air in a slow-motion bullet-ballet. As expected. In Level 2, “Destroy 16 drug stations” is preceded by “Destroy 10 drug stations” and followed by “Plant x amount of C4 charges” (I can’t remember exactly but it’s too many). I’ll experientially translate it for you: “Stop giving us your time”. This game takes maybe 6 hours to complete, yet it feels like 5 1/2 are spent in the second mission. Historians have long been baffled by the inclusion of a helicopter turret section, and as to why it isn’t the end of the level.

Stranglehold gets back on the rails in the subsequent mega restaurant area, and the rest of the game (mostly) flies by, but I’m astounded I had the patience to push through the docks level as a kid or now.

Since jumping into Starfield on its Gamepass release date, I’ve become even more of a disgusting gremlin than I already was. No longer cognizant of the passage of time, I have let my already unhealthy sleep schedule become positively obliterated. My baby son’s life passed by in the blink of an eye. I spend my days bathed in the sickly light of my television, creeping to the kitchen periodically to get a tasty treat. The only evidence of my wife’s survival is a missing Diet Coke or two from the fridge.

Starfield is not ’No Man’s Skyrim’. It’s actually more like a better version of The Outer Worlds. I have gripes with it that keep it from a top score, like a pretty weak opening, the lack of interior ship customization, repetition of outposts, and the fact that you can’t have a fleet of ships captained by your ai companions… okay, they didn’t necessarily promise that last one but having only one ship out at a time seems like a missed opportunity. While you can’t circumnavigate every planet on foot, many have multiple biomes and topographical features, with plenty of secrets and activities to discover. I ran into a crazy amount of weird side quests just because I took the time to explore and root around on land and in space.

I can only speak to my expectations and experience with the game, but I think this is the most actual roleplaying a Bethesda game has allowed since Morrowind through its skills, quests, and traits. Many of the quests allow multiple routes for completion, with different avenues of play and endings. The central followers all being goodie-two-shoes is another qualm I have, but I usually play the good guy anyway. The main quest isn’t excruciatingly annoying this time around (Have you seen Shaun, my baby… Shaun he’s just a baby, a brand new baby little baby child!), with an ending and New Game+ that serves and a direct answer to me restarting Skyrim 1,000 times over the years.

But I love exploring strange new worlds, constructing spaceships, getting into dogfights, and expanding my crew. In many ways this is a dream come true game for me, far surpassing No Man’s Sky with its inclusion of compelling side quests and narratives, even if I can’t seamlessly fly from a planet to space. Another gripe. But for my worries going into this game and relative displeasure with Bethesda over the past couple years, I was pleasantly surprised to find they had loosened up on me as a player. I’m stoked for The Elder Scrolls VI, because I think they’ll almost certainly resolve some of my complaints just by toning down the physical scale a bit. Not saying it won’t be big, but I don’t think it’ll have 1,000 planets and therefore will probably have less repeated content; I’m glad they tried it here even if I don’t feel it’s right for Elder Scrolls or Fallout.

I have spent too much time away from the game now… the Starfield is speaking to me. I give myself to it. Goodbye.

I hope the eventual expansion is called Mortal Kombat 1 2.

I feel the narrative story mode is roughly as strong as that in Mortal Kombat 11, although I prefer MK1’s martial arts focus to the past two games’ obsessions with the boring special forces characters. In fact, the re-contextualization of the characters and backstories is one of the more interesting aspects of the story; nobody wanted to see Raiden fumble the realms a fourth time. The dialogue can be grating and Marvelesque, especially with Johnny Cage, and unfortunately the last two chapters dissolve into a predictable mash of multiverse shenanigans and in-jokes.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the references were pointed at me, basically saying “Conman, this one’s for you.” I mean, Havik’s presence in this game alone feels like a direct Conman appeal. Not to get ahead of myself, but SHUJINKO is a Kameo fighter in this game and his fatality is the five point palm exploding heart technique from Kill Bill. Anyway, the majority of the campaign was quite enjoyable and the new spin on things felt refreshing. Playing the Earthrealm characters without their powers for the opening portion of the game was particularly cool to me. The end is a mess, but there was a novelty to it which I didn’t mind. Also a fun tip, I didn’t turn it off but the Test Your Might stuff can be disabled in the options menu.

While I’m happy NRS decided to pander specifically to my nostalgia for the 3D era MK games, I wish they’d actually just bring back Konquest mode. The new Invasions mode is basically Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s World of Light, which is better the last game’s multiverse gear-grinding towers, but I would've hoped to see them expand on MK11’s Krypt mode instead.

Where this game shines above Mortal Kombat 11 most is in its gameplay. The Kameo assist system/gimmick is the shot in the arm this needed to become more dynamic and interesting than its predecessor, combining different characters with different Kameos leads to different match-ups and unique matches in a way 11 simply never achieved.

I think Street Fighter 6 being so incredible takes the wind out of MK1’s sails a bit (it even basically has Konquest mode), but just because another game is better doesn’t mean this game isn’t good. I like it. I’m gonna stop rambling and go back to playing it.

As soon as people throw around 'greatest of all time' I start to get suspicious, but I can't deny that 3rd Strike is the fighting game I've been playing before, between, and after the many fighting games I've reviewed recently.

The most satisfying parry this side of Sekiro, the most interesting gameplay this side of Garou, and the most fluid animations this side of... also Garou. As an apparent Guile main I immediately tried Remy and went "nope", so I had to pick someone else, and after trying everyone I landed on Dudley, who might be my pick for the most fun-to-play character in the genre.

A good fighting game is one you can suck at and still enjoy, and this is that game. I suck at 3rd Strike, but I want to keep playing it. I also want Dudley to come to Street Fighter 6.

Edit: ED?????????

Conman's Last Hunt
Entry 7

An unfortunate step in the wrong direction.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is unpleasant to control and often muddy-looking, which is compounded by conceptually novel yet ultimately ill-fitting open level design. For all the previous game’s flaws, it was a more focused experience which took advantage of limited technology, and was never unintentionally obtuse or confusing to navigate. This is the more ambitious game, and I respect that, yet sadly none of its elements work in tandem.

I’d recommend trying the Gameboy Advance games to see this semi-exploratory Spider-Man action-platformer idea done competently.

I find the gameplay of Fighter on Alpha Street: Dream Warriors to be responsive and visually legible, especially compared to predecessors not named Super II Turbo. It simply feels good to play.

The art style is clean and refined, and it stands as one of the most aesthetically cohesive games in the series. Alpha is just a straightforward, outwardly appealing, stripped-back experience. Well, stripped-back aside from the slightly bigger focus on character and story (Pre-match dialogue bubbles? What is this an NRS campaign?)

Unfortunately:

A. I’ve dipped into Alpha 2 and Alpha 3, and immediately found both more robust and just generally better than this. For some reason I’m more drawn to Alpha 2 but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

and

B. I recently discovered Third Strike. While I was playing this I was like… mm kinda wanna go back to Third Strike.

But I don’t think another game being better makes this game bad. Warriors Dreams Don’t Die is one of the most accessible entry-points to the series, and I’d recommend it to new fighting game fans curious about the nuts & bolts Street Fighter.