it's just much more tasteless then dark souls or even dark souls 3. there are so many areas that feel like they expect you to go in and do a suicide run to trip some persistent switch or otherwise engage with the level in a way that makes it actually manageable your second or third time around. that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world but it is unbelievable that they built soul memory alongside these levels that demand you sacrifice yourself for the sake of progression. areas that you can just walk through like a normal level still love to have encounters that are purely one or two ranged guys pelting you with the worlds most damaging arrows while three knights sprint towards you. the world is so decompressed but all that means is you'll find a key in the iron keep that you need to bring back to the forest of fallen giants and that's what passes for Exploration and Progression Puzzles. the plot is just "damn would it be crazy if everyone you know had alzheimer's???" so many of the weird shortcomings feel unintentional in an extremely naive and innocent way. a bunch of developers who played dark souls 1 and got told "now YOU get to make one" and this is what they came up with. i got to the throne of want im still on the fucking brume tower but i beat the game whatever it's over it's done i really cannot take another second of this.

i liked going back to this game having played every other fromsoft souls type beat. each modern fromsoft game has systems and areas that are built from lessons learned in previous titles, but it's accessing the matrix code seeing how much of what they do is this weird endless spiral of repeated game design. you'll come across the tower knight in bloodborne or the capra demon in elden ring almost entirely unchanged from their original incarnations outside of the reskins and it never feels like it's ""recycled content"" in any way. riffs on bosses and levels and very specific ideas that they think are cool and want to do again with a slightly different flavor and very little tweaking because, somehow, they usually got it right the first time anyways. boletaria palace a place so nice they did it thrice for dark souls 3 and elden ring.
this one is the cleanest of all the ""SoulsLikes"" excluding bloodborne. the humanity system is simple and unobtrusive and letting you level from any bonfire rather then a nexus (or a majula or a dream or another firelink shrine) works perfectly for the kind of compact level design they were going for. intensely satisfying to move through even though it had no real secrets or surprises for me thanks to the endless and inescapable lore and pvp videos that were sprayed at me like a firehose back in the 360 days.

i've never beaten vanilla demon's souls before and that's made it really hard to work out my feelings on this remake. my most concrete thought is that demon's souls (2020) is existentially terrifying. demon's souls (2020) and shadow of the colossus (2018) feel like they've taken a major step beyond something like the twin snakes, the total separation between bluepoint and the original developers is extreme in a way that i'm just not comfortable with. superseding a studio's original vision with your own is aggressive even if the intention isn't actively malicious. it's not even a question of "does bluepoint 'understand' the original purpose of a specific texture or line of dialogue." even if there was a perfect, 1:1 understanding of the source material, demon's souls (2020) would still look radically different from its original incarnation as the new developer would express these understandings differently, in ways that make the most sense to them. so we have a refraction of demon's souls (2009) through the lens of an american company who's first and only original creative output was a game called Blast Factor. (most of) the levels are great, the visuals are weird and sometimes out of place and occasionally beautiful. the bloom has been filtered out. some bosses now look like diablo 3. some of them look like league of legends. some of them look like mortal shell. some of them look the same. the box art is terrible now. the game runs at 60 fps (unless you check the box to make it run worse for no reason) and that feels very good. spells have punchy sound effects that are mixed with really accentuated lows so they sound like a marvel movie. the character creation theme has been done so dirty that bluepoint should be dissolved just for changing it. i think i like demon's souls (2009), but i won't know for sure until i play and beat that game. i think i like demon's souls (2020) too, but i can't help getting sad whenever i think about how it was made.

hard to find anything about this game sincere considering sony gutted japan studio shortly after the ps5 launched and its ""classics catalogue"" is laughably barebones months out from release. attempting to cash in some cheap goodwill off your legacy titles this way feels extremely slimy. on top of it all the game is just total ass. bone dry platforming where the controller is constantly screaming at you and shaking so violently that sometimes i was worried the triggers would break. the rumble often doesn't even correspond to what's happening on screen, there's just a constant low-level vibration that occasionally gets more intense. it's like there's really a sandstorm happening in my controller!! it's as though my hands are trapped in a cold blizzard with the wind gusting against them while the rest of my body is normal and sitting in my chair!! you can't even invert the camera.

more influential and ahead of its time then most people realize. this game was released 12 years ago and it was already doing so many of the presentational flourishes that people are still playing with in things like the backrooms or those old slenderman videos, and those projects are often doing it worse then kane and lynch 2. i wonder how much the uncountable multitudes of angry joe-esque big rant videos on this helped lead to its unintentional cultural proliferation. the ways in which io was able to use shaders and post processing magic to turn decidedly xbox 360 era models and animations into something that feels entirely unique and often contemporary is the coolest part of this game. what really jumped out while playing was the dedication to the acoustics of early cell phone videos. the subtle ways in which the audio will crush itself depending on the size of the room you're in or how loud the explosion you're next to is is remarkable. this is a game made by io and published by square enix but it feels more experimental then a good many indie games i've played recently. outside it's presentation the game is brutally difficult and often not that engaging, but i kinda don't care. i'm sure a ton of people have called this game "style over substance," but so much work and care was put into the style that it can't just be written off over other aspects of the game.

i feel like a weird contrarian for even holding this opinion but i really don't think this entry is as good as sport. sport was incredibly confident in it's presentation and gameplay and knew exactly how it wanted to be played. it was less freeform then other entries in the series and more demanding in terms of raw player skill but the tighter focus really let it find a unique identity. the ways in which it broke off from the traditional GT/Forza experience felt really fresh (if not somewhat dry and pretentious). mostly i just can't help feeling that sport's music selection was just better and the menus were cleaner and more stylish. it does feel like somewhat of a regression moving back to the traditional GT formula when they don't do anything as unique or interesting. the game seems to figure that because it's been two console generations since gt6 you won't realize that there isn't really anything new here.

for some insane reason I've seen an uptick in people saying that driveclub was Good Actually. out of all the games this usually happens with this one is the most baffling. even back when the servers were up and the game was firing on all cylinders with all its social stuff driveclub sucked. the main draw for this was the Club aspect of Driving and it just meant sometimes in a match you'd see your friends pfp and have a drift challenge or something pop up. and also there was a facebook style timeline on the main menu to show you your friends Achievements. despite all the social elements being so heavily emphasized in the marketing (and in the name of the game) none of it is any more meaningful or complex then what you see in forza horizon or even autolog when nfs was doing that. the game outside the social aspect is just junk too. the tracks are boring, the driving model feels broken, the graphics honestly aren't even that good. they're technically impressive but usually just really flat. I don't know what it is about evolution studios in particular but people do this with every one of their games. actually the motorstorm games were pretty sick. man driveclub was ssooo underrated. why didn't people give onrush a chance!!!

long. mostly fun and has some really interesting and unique gameplay twists but the story is honestly a total flatline. yoko taro is the kind of guy who writes about how in ed edd and eddy the whole cul de sac is in purgatory. you see exactly where the game is going from the first hour and it doesn't deviate from your expectations. i'm not exactly a super stickler for internal consistency in a game mostly about characters and broader themes over a concrete plot but a lot of the twists in this game just don't even make that much sense. quite a few revelations that are there for the characters and player to get weepy over before moving on to the next boss. i'm not even too hot on the music!! it's good but have you listened to a masashi hamauzu soundtrack.
not a bad game at all and when it's willing to experiment it's fantastic. the ui in particular is stylish in the way you rarely see in modern games, you have to go back to games like dirt 3 or ridge racer type 4 to get the same kinda vibes. the combat is flashy and smooth but if you know what the words "dodge offset" mean then it'll come across rather dry and barebones. if you really want to make yourself cry check out devotion

neon white posited itself as a game By Freaks For Freaks in much of its marketing. not to take away from how excellent that game is but it's published by annapurna for gods sake. flywrench is actually the ultimate freak flag game. you really have to be of a certain mind to get the most out of how this game works. the soundtrack is so killer it's unbelievable how many artists they got to contribute bangers to this thing. both nidhogg and flywrench are the only games I can think of that go for this really distinct simplistic style and absolutely nail it.
flywrench is an unlockable character in super meat boy and messhof also made nidhogg but still no one's ever even heard of this game. what the fuck!!

it's so fucking good lol. this is the only game to earn the title of Western Excellence. a game of setups with no payoffs but that only serves to strengthen the experience. every choice feels appropriately weighty and distinct without knowing that only like 3 decisions actually matter in me3. the whole game feels so meticulously put together. a beautiful structure for a title that is essentially one long training arc. i'm honestly even fine with the reaper baby because it's just funny. dead space does the same thing and it's so bland and uninspired but with me2 all i can think is "so true bestie 💋" while fighting him. killer soundtrack too. there's like 5 nightclubs across the entire universe and they're all sick