Quite possibly the most content rich video game I have ever played, the amount of quality put into almost every aspect of FF7 Rebirth is pretty insane especially considering that most of this game is just fluff. I genuinely enjoyed almost all of it, the minigames, queens blood, gold saucer, these goofy ass sidequests and a very considered open world, this game kind of has it all and it sacrifices very little quality for it. That's not to say that I don't have problems with the game, but it feels negligible in face of it all. Cant believe I'm saying this already but I cant wait for Part 3, Good game.

This is just so slickly presented, so focused and perfectly lean. The handling is like coasting through a dream, every drift and turn feeling like you're entering a zen state when you perfect a track and hit those perfect slides. The music, the endless summertime vibes this hits on oh so wonderfully. That opening FMV that had me spellbound within its vibes.

Each track with the perfect kind of coastal dreamlike hypnotic sense of wonder, each car feeling distinct to drive and fun to master. The type of game that you throw on when all you wanna do is fuckin vibe and lose yourself in pure 1999 circuit racing bliss.

The stories while light keep your attention through each GP and provide a nice bit of sentimentality between each race. Everything about this game appeals to me in such a hyper specific way. None of the other Ridge Racer games that I've tried or played have hit for me quite like this game does. It hits everything it does in a way that no other arcade racer ever has. I realize now that I've been looking for this game my entire life and I'm so happy that I've finally played it. Namco really couldn't lose in the 90's. Making 2 of my favorite games ever (Ace Combat 3 Electrosphere my beloved....) absolute fuckin peak.

This game kinda means the world to me.

3 by extension does too but there's something in that cold mysterious almost endless seeming hell walk that Aqua is on that really sits in my spirit, especially more around the holidays where I feel like my depression and anxiety can end up spiking quite a bit.

Cause I would frankly say that this whole short journey is about depression. This is a story about feeling like a complete and total failure. It's about feeling like you have no one, constantly grasping for some kind of grand connection but not being able to tangibly hold onto anything really around you, constantly doubting the reality you once could trust. Your foundation is shaky, you're rocky, you're falling apart at the seams but you still keep walking because what else are you supposed to do?

Your world has been stripped from you, everyone you once knew is gone or lost, all you can do is keep moving and keep pushing on, hoping to find some way out of the hole in your soul.

Creeping doubt, self destruction, pain, it's all constantly there. The way Aqua's self doubt and own self destruction is physically manifested especially clicks with me. Constant situation after situation, exhausted but unable to truly rest, looking for any rescue, any break.

It's rough out there.

huge bmx xxx fan excited to play it for the first time. no but fr this game has lived inside my brain since i was like 13 bc some youtubers i was into at the time played it. that video introduced me to taking back sunday bc cute without the e is in this games soundtrack and i think that's ruined my brain permanently bc 70 percent of everything i listen to is some flavor of shitty emo music.

anyhow this is like rlly good and rlly fun but also so incredibly cruel and nasty in a way that i understand anyone turned off by this. but idk i grew up on like jackass and stuff like that and i think what captured my eye even as a child watching shows like that is seeing smth similar to the town i grew up in on the television screen in a pre youtube getting rlly big type of world. and bc i grew up on stuff like that i'm naturally very into the aesthetics and vibe this game is going for. but it's like genuinely such a mean fucking game, like the soundtrack is rlly rlly good and i'm big into most of the songs on it but they're such small minded and petty AND misogynistic ass songs. even the stuff that's a little bit more fun and not emo/alt metal are like rude songs, that sublime song is actually so gross. there's a weird system at play here that i haven't seen in similar games, this completely ditches the time limit type restrictions in favor of a real health system, when ur health goes all the way down by failing a trick u get kicked out of the level. reminds me of like the fascination america had on young people getting hurt, this was present in news at the time of course but it's also how mtv and similar channels managed to stay afloat for the better part of a decade.

this rlly wants to be a satire of corporate greed in a post 9/11 world and tbh often i was charmed by how heightened everything felt, like a less biting gta but still way more than like the underground tony hawk games. occasionally there's rlly smart stuff here, the ramps made out of rockets w american flags painted on them is a nice little touch. the world the game inhabits is very often cold and hostile and i think that makes a lot of sense for where the culture was at the moment and where it would end up going. npcs are like fucking mean in this, everyone hates u and maybe they should lol. often though the game is kind of just racist and sexist and filled w gross out humor which yeah it is a shame.

levels feel rlly wide and expansive and every ramp and rail connects in a way that's kind of rhythmic? but mostly i'm just rlly impressed by the locales they picked. usually in stuff like this you get major metropolitan cities or fake ones loosely based on one that don't rlly have any thematic tissue, but this goes for either smaller cities like syracuse or tourist trap cities like vegas. and they all have their own visual identity even the skate parks or vague ideas of places like a dam. when i was a teenager and i watched the video of this game i always thought the layout of the bronx level looked similar to my hometown, i didn't live anywhere close to ny but the feeling of it rang true. it looked like my city and that resonated w me and i do think stuff like that is rlly important.