2000
The original TimeSplitters is entirely skippable. You're not really missing anything- aside from a few maps I still see when I close my eyes. The docks, the mansion, the castle, the graveyard, the seaside village.
It's Free Radical working out all the kinks to their little Goldeneye 64 successor. A senseless and wild shooter that has you staggering through a myriad of missions through time. The great big bloody leap from this to its sequel is really kind of shocking and that's probably the one big reason you'd want to play it. Just to see how far they've come in such short time.
It's Free Radical working out all the kinks to their little Goldeneye 64 successor. A senseless and wild shooter that has you staggering through a myriad of missions through time. The great big bloody leap from this to its sequel is really kind of shocking and that's probably the one big reason you'd want to play it. Just to see how far they've come in such short time.
2007
Always thought Crysis kind of peaked right at the start and should have kept pushing with its military sandbox/almost simulation super-soldier route. Playing Predator in the jungle and using people's bodies to destroy shanty houses never quite gets old.
2020
I like OMORI a lot. I think that’s a well-intentioned, polite way to start things off. It might hit you in just the right way if you’re a schizo loser (as I am) but the further away I get from it, the more irked I am by its many blunders and missed potentials. Despite that, it’s one of my more defining games of 2020. Notice how I didn’t say ‘best’ or ‘favourite.’ Defining.
It’s the Earthbound-inspired indie darling that was announced to considerable fanfare all the way back in 2014. I have no idea what kind of troubles its development went through, but it seemingly dropped off the face of the earth as another quirky Earthbound-inspired indie darling took the stage the next year. You know the one I’m talking about; I see their merch hiding in the back of your closet there. I won’t tell anyone, promise.
But OMORI is less ‘Earthbound with depression’ as it’s frequently dismissed as and more like ‘Yume Nikki with context.’ Which- I think to anyone with a cursory knowledge of Yume Nikki probably sees that as a bit of an odd concept. It is, in an almost self-defeating kind of way. By the end of it, you don’t really want to know the secrets behind it all.
And by that I mean, the crux of this story sucks. It’s bizarre, it’s melodramatic, it raises more questions than it does answers and it hangs over (you have no idea how funny this is) the rest of the plot, dragging what is an otherwise serviceable concept down to sea level. This is further escalated by OMORI languishing so much in its pacing as the Headspace sections leave you with next to nothing to chew on between the real world segments: where the real meat of the story takes place.
The central mystery may be compelling enough to drive you to the finish line, but everything around it is putting holes in the tires. And it’s a long road ahead, man. Omocat has done so much more in previous incarnations with so much less, sometimes without saying a single word at all. Yet everyone in OMORI just talks, I mean, just waffles. Totally pointless, superfluous, obnoxiously verbose dialogue all around. What is the purpose of Sweetheart as a character? Just think it over, really. Why is she there?
Headspace is a distraction, that’s by design in-universe, but that’s a stupid thing to have to go through yourself. Very few places- such as the Last Resort- hint to something actually interesting: Sunny’s afraid to grow up, to have all his friends drift apart and forget about all their time together. What a great jumping off-point! Encapsulated in an Earthbound-like- a game that personifies that kind of childhood wonder and friendship. You can call it a bit meta, or postmodern, but, fuck man. It’s something.
Why then, OMORI takes this maddening direction is beyond me, as who can reasonably relate to this? We’re not talking metaphorically here- I guess you can place a certain someone as the perfect representative of that lost childhood you can never reclaim. What I’m asking is, why in this story of escapism, of trapping yourself in the past, losing your grip on the present, do you shoehorn this major plot twist in such a way that raises more questions than it does answers? That gets in the way of everything aforementioned?
It will worm its way into your heart anyway, if the kind of insular retreat into one’s own fantasies is something you can connect with, but it’s just that! It’s all surface level and light implications. And I see the challenge, I do. Look at the original tumblr comic, where Omoriboy is a loser, masturbating his days away and indulging in that veneer of early 2010’s angry teenage boy, that kind of protagonist would have struggled to work in the place of this story. Making a character of this kind is a delicate balancing act between overly sympathetic woobie and vindictively pathetic self-loathing. But when presented with this challenge, Omocat opts to not make an attempt at all. You can see that Omoriboy at least HAS a foundation in something, whereas our current protagonist does not.
Sunny- despite being on-screen the whole time in some form or another, despite the near entirety of the game being IN HIS HEAD, doesn’t actually let you infer practically anything about his character. He has no characterization, in fact. No dynamic within his own friend group apart from some off-handed comments that are never followed up on. If you fail to project onto him, you’re left with an utterly bland player character weighed down by a goofy plot point that’s so intrinsic to everything circulating around him, he suffers along with it.
His partner in crime: Basil, fares no better as an incredibly underwritten character- despite being the tritagonist(?) of the game and Sunny’s closest friend. If you’re invested in him- even on the most superficial level, both the game and the player character himself will actively fight against you. Again, narrative purpose to this. Again again, the purpose sucks. He’s so anaemic to the point that many people misunderstand his motivations as some kind of deep-rooted psychopathy. He’s the s-stuttery pretty boy with one defining character trait- which is more or less ‘deeply sentimental,’ due to having little to nothing else going on in his life. Even the Dorian Gray reference was cut from the final game, so the obsessive gay thing went out the door- but I imagine that’s more because being a fujoshi shotacon isn’t nearly as approachable as it was a decade ago, as Omocat has found out the hard way.
The worst part is that there really is no going back. The game’s done, and after the nightmare that was creating it, Omocat will probably never come back to gamedev again. The best we can hope for is that the manga series dares to venture where the game simply didn’t, wouldn’t go. Past the withering pastel smiles and into the scars OMORI is so vehemently hiding. Take one look into where being accessible got you and realise that was the one risk you shouldn’t have taken.
It’s the Earthbound-inspired indie darling that was announced to considerable fanfare all the way back in 2014. I have no idea what kind of troubles its development went through, but it seemingly dropped off the face of the earth as another quirky Earthbound-inspired indie darling took the stage the next year. You know the one I’m talking about; I see their merch hiding in the back of your closet there. I won’t tell anyone, promise.
But OMORI is less ‘Earthbound with depression’ as it’s frequently dismissed as and more like ‘Yume Nikki with context.’ Which- I think to anyone with a cursory knowledge of Yume Nikki probably sees that as a bit of an odd concept. It is, in an almost self-defeating kind of way. By the end of it, you don’t really want to know the secrets behind it all.
And by that I mean, the crux of this story sucks. It’s bizarre, it’s melodramatic, it raises more questions than it does answers and it hangs over (you have no idea how funny this is) the rest of the plot, dragging what is an otherwise serviceable concept down to sea level. This is further escalated by OMORI languishing so much in its pacing as the Headspace sections leave you with next to nothing to chew on between the real world segments: where the real meat of the story takes place.
The central mystery may be compelling enough to drive you to the finish line, but everything around it is putting holes in the tires. And it’s a long road ahead, man. Omocat has done so much more in previous incarnations with so much less, sometimes without saying a single word at all. Yet everyone in OMORI just talks, I mean, just waffles. Totally pointless, superfluous, obnoxiously verbose dialogue all around. What is the purpose of Sweetheart as a character? Just think it over, really. Why is she there?
Headspace is a distraction, that’s by design in-universe, but that’s a stupid thing to have to go through yourself. Very few places- such as the Last Resort- hint to something actually interesting: Sunny’s afraid to grow up, to have all his friends drift apart and forget about all their time together. What a great jumping off-point! Encapsulated in an Earthbound-like- a game that personifies that kind of childhood wonder and friendship. You can call it a bit meta, or postmodern, but, fuck man. It’s something.
Why then, OMORI takes this maddening direction is beyond me, as who can reasonably relate to this? We’re not talking metaphorically here- I guess you can place a certain someone as the perfect representative of that lost childhood you can never reclaim. What I’m asking is, why in this story of escapism, of trapping yourself in the past, losing your grip on the present, do you shoehorn this major plot twist in such a way that raises more questions than it does answers? That gets in the way of everything aforementioned?
It will worm its way into your heart anyway, if the kind of insular retreat into one’s own fantasies is something you can connect with, but it’s just that! It’s all surface level and light implications. And I see the challenge, I do. Look at the original tumblr comic, where Omoriboy is a loser, masturbating his days away and indulging in that veneer of early 2010’s angry teenage boy, that kind of protagonist would have struggled to work in the place of this story. Making a character of this kind is a delicate balancing act between overly sympathetic woobie and vindictively pathetic self-loathing. But when presented with this challenge, Omocat opts to not make an attempt at all. You can see that Omoriboy at least HAS a foundation in something, whereas our current protagonist does not.
Sunny- despite being on-screen the whole time in some form or another, despite the near entirety of the game being IN HIS HEAD, doesn’t actually let you infer practically anything about his character. He has no characterization, in fact. No dynamic within his own friend group apart from some off-handed comments that are never followed up on. If you fail to project onto him, you’re left with an utterly bland player character weighed down by a goofy plot point that’s so intrinsic to everything circulating around him, he suffers along with it.
His partner in crime: Basil, fares no better as an incredibly underwritten character- despite being the tritagonist(?) of the game and Sunny’s closest friend. If you’re invested in him- even on the most superficial level, both the game and the player character himself will actively fight against you. Again, narrative purpose to this. Again again, the purpose sucks. He’s so anaemic to the point that many people misunderstand his motivations as some kind of deep-rooted psychopathy. He’s the s-stuttery pretty boy with one defining character trait- which is more or less ‘deeply sentimental,’ due to having little to nothing else going on in his life. Even the Dorian Gray reference was cut from the final game, so the obsessive gay thing went out the door- but I imagine that’s more because being a fujoshi shotacon isn’t nearly as approachable as it was a decade ago, as Omocat has found out the hard way.
The worst part is that there really is no going back. The game’s done, and after the nightmare that was creating it, Omocat will probably never come back to gamedev again. The best we can hope for is that the manga series dares to venture where the game simply didn’t, wouldn’t go. Past the withering pastel smiles and into the scars OMORI is so vehemently hiding. Take one look into where being accessible got you and realise that was the one risk you shouldn’t have taken.
2022
The Saints are politically conscious college kids committing crimes to pay off their student debt and it’s the funniest opening to a video game ever right up until the point you realise they’re not kidding. Somehow, the game keeps going after that.
Was Spyro running out of steam by the year of the dragon? Maybe. Do I care? Please interpret the image of Spyro wearing sunglasses as my official answer. I thank you.
2001
Half-Life without the structure, Halo without the spectacle. It’s got a bit of camp on its side, some impressive tech with the destructible environments, and not much else.
Honestly didn’t even feel like there was any purpose to said impressive tech. It was the definitive answer to a few situations, yet wasn’t applicable in others. Some of the bunkers blow up, and some don’t! Lost on me.
The story is fairly uninspired, carried by faint glimmers of funny character moments. Parker (the player character) shoots the main villain during his introduction sequence, but he’s protected by an invincible nanotech shield, so it’s pointless. Said villain then carefully explains how he’s protected by an invincible nanotech shield, only for Parker to just dump another mag into him anyway- because he’s just such an angry, die hard revolutionary, he doesn’t care.
Other things, like guards accidentally firing into crowds of unarmed workers they’re here to protect is an amusing bit of commentary. Your hacker companion, Hendrix, guiding you into a room during a stealth segment, only for him to say “This is where I work, hi :)” was the most endearing moment in an otherwise bland array of characters.
Also, stealth sections! There are a couple of them that break up the shooting sections as things start heating up, and I thought they were interesting- if a bit clunky. They’re not used to their fullest potential- giving you a more in-depth look at the atrocities committed by Ultor Corp, or even showing you another side to the conflict, and they are entirely optional, so nothing is stopping you from just shooting everyone up anyway. Given how frustratingly binary the stealth can be, you’ll probably want to.
Shooting’s alright, it’s there. Loads of guns, you’ll probably pick one or three favourites and won’t use anything else. Surprisingly very few play into the environmental destruction aspect, with two rocket launchers (yes, two) and some blast charges filling that role. I don’t know whose idea it was to make a one-shot-kill railgun that doesn’t just shoot through walls, it comes with a scope that allows you to see through them, I also don’t know whose idea it was to put that into the hands of mercenaries that strafe like Unreal Tournament bots and are crack shots to boot. I don’t know, but they should probably never have ideas ever again.
I think there’s a tightrope in game design between making a level a believable place that exists within its own world, and making it actually fun to go through. Black Mesa looks like a facility that could reasonably exist in our world, and so does the Ultor complex. But Black Mesa is also a series of levels in a video game, and functions perfectly as such, where Ultor complex has a load of oversized rooms and repetitive, looping hallways. Actually a lot like some of the stuff in the original Halo, but without the much more engaging art design.
There are seemingly huge swaths of totally missable, completely pointless areas- especially as the final levels pan out- as it usually costs you just as many resources exploring said areas as you might (read: MIGHT) stand to gain. The mercenaries do so much damage, it isn’t worth the risk. And then it can be just plain confusing. You can, many times, go into a side-route, only to realise you’re going backwards through a side-route whose entrance you missed earlier. It’s dizzying and keeps you from straying from the stated path after a while.
And then there’s the pacing, it’s absolutely frantic. Half-Life (and I know it is a little bit unfair to compare this game so unfavourably to Half-Life, sorry) has chapters, many of which have clear cut goals that can encompass the entire section. Red Faction just starts and stops the tension almost instantly. Imagine if you could beat the Gargantua in Power Up in thirty seconds, that pretty much happens in Red Faction- complete with having to kill it with an environmental trap. Red Faction skips set up and pay off, things just happen.
Oh, that invincible nanotech shield I mentioned earlier? Parker had it right. You do just shoot the thing and it eventually ceases to function. The main antagonist dies in one assault rifle mag, halfway through the game. It’s bonkers.
I checked out about halfway through it, and that isn’t particularly long. The game is (mercifully) quite short, that’s one of the best things about it. From what I understand, Red Faction only goes up from here, but I have no idea who would stick around for the ride.
Honestly didn’t even feel like there was any purpose to said impressive tech. It was the definitive answer to a few situations, yet wasn’t applicable in others. Some of the bunkers blow up, and some don’t! Lost on me.
The story is fairly uninspired, carried by faint glimmers of funny character moments. Parker (the player character) shoots the main villain during his introduction sequence, but he’s protected by an invincible nanotech shield, so it’s pointless. Said villain then carefully explains how he’s protected by an invincible nanotech shield, only for Parker to just dump another mag into him anyway- because he’s just such an angry, die hard revolutionary, he doesn’t care.
Other things, like guards accidentally firing into crowds of unarmed workers they’re here to protect is an amusing bit of commentary. Your hacker companion, Hendrix, guiding you into a room during a stealth segment, only for him to say “This is where I work, hi :)” was the most endearing moment in an otherwise bland array of characters.
Also, stealth sections! There are a couple of them that break up the shooting sections as things start heating up, and I thought they were interesting- if a bit clunky. They’re not used to their fullest potential- giving you a more in-depth look at the atrocities committed by Ultor Corp, or even showing you another side to the conflict, and they are entirely optional, so nothing is stopping you from just shooting everyone up anyway. Given how frustratingly binary the stealth can be, you’ll probably want to.
Shooting’s alright, it’s there. Loads of guns, you’ll probably pick one or three favourites and won’t use anything else. Surprisingly very few play into the environmental destruction aspect, with two rocket launchers (yes, two) and some blast charges filling that role. I don’t know whose idea it was to make a one-shot-kill railgun that doesn’t just shoot through walls, it comes with a scope that allows you to see through them, I also don’t know whose idea it was to put that into the hands of mercenaries that strafe like Unreal Tournament bots and are crack shots to boot. I don’t know, but they should probably never have ideas ever again.
I think there’s a tightrope in game design between making a level a believable place that exists within its own world, and making it actually fun to go through. Black Mesa looks like a facility that could reasonably exist in our world, and so does the Ultor complex. But Black Mesa is also a series of levels in a video game, and functions perfectly as such, where Ultor complex has a load of oversized rooms and repetitive, looping hallways. Actually a lot like some of the stuff in the original Halo, but without the much more engaging art design.
There are seemingly huge swaths of totally missable, completely pointless areas- especially as the final levels pan out- as it usually costs you just as many resources exploring said areas as you might (read: MIGHT) stand to gain. The mercenaries do so much damage, it isn’t worth the risk. And then it can be just plain confusing. You can, many times, go into a side-route, only to realise you’re going backwards through a side-route whose entrance you missed earlier. It’s dizzying and keeps you from straying from the stated path after a while.
And then there’s the pacing, it’s absolutely frantic. Half-Life (and I know it is a little bit unfair to compare this game so unfavourably to Half-Life, sorry) has chapters, many of which have clear cut goals that can encompass the entire section. Red Faction just starts and stops the tension almost instantly. Imagine if you could beat the Gargantua in Power Up in thirty seconds, that pretty much happens in Red Faction- complete with having to kill it with an environmental trap. Red Faction skips set up and pay off, things just happen.
Oh, that invincible nanotech shield I mentioned earlier? Parker had it right. You do just shoot the thing and it eventually ceases to function. The main antagonist dies in one assault rifle mag, halfway through the game. It’s bonkers.
I checked out about halfway through it, and that isn’t particularly long. The game is (mercifully) quite short, that’s one of the best things about it. From what I understand, Red Faction only goes up from here, but I have no idea who would stick around for the ride.
2020
Did generous monetization kill Legends of Runeterra? Not entirely, but there is precedent for it being a factor. Just as Riot Games made DoTA more accessible in the form of League of Legends, they tried this same hand at turning the digital trading card game genre into something that wouldn’t corrupt your mind and empty your wallet.
All of this packaged into something for the then drowning ‘League of Legends loreheads.’ The ever-punished whipping boys for the game that got hollowed out to be little more than a slot machine, where major players in their own lore events are phased out by the never-ending horde of pretty same-face models, where their biggest influencers are bribed to gleefully clap like seals when they twinkify Thresh for China. They didn’t remember Yorick Mori for the Ruination, because Vayne needs another skin, baby! $$$
So now the setting of the League of Legends universe- and yes, it does have a setting, as Arcane reminded all of us- is properly respected and fleshed out. Beyond champions, we have a steady rate of characters, landmarks and all sorts of other fluff padding out major places and events.
Or at least, that’s how it started.
OC characters in favour of getting people’s favourite champions in, the ‘lore’ being sidestepped for bizarre champion matchups, (Marrying Veigar to Senna, seriously?) making Lux, again, because you have absolutely nothing left to give- and Nilah is going up against Mordekaiser- because nobody, and I mean NOBODY, cares about Rell. Nilah is going up against everyone, actually. Sure hope you're a fan of Nilah! Legends of Runeterra ran out of steam by the end of year one, was on life support by the end of year two, and the plug was all but pulled by year four. That is unthinkable for the studio that made League of Legends, an absolutely colossal blunder.
But ultimately, there’s just nothing for the paypigs, that’s the fuck of it. It’s the absolutely worst thing you can say about a game, possibly ever, “there wasn’t ENOUGH microtransactions, actually.” The cards themselves were acquired so easily that it barely mattered. Within the first year I had everything I wanted- and enough currency that I would be able to buy whole sets that would come in the future, and that’s not even extensive play, mind you. That’s just idly completing dailies and practically nothing else.
The skins were garbage, highly selective as to who got special treatment (you’ll never guess). Animations, card effects, alternate card skins, all of which were applied randomly to some skins, with the others worthless buys with nothing to enjoy but different splash art. Wowie.
Never mind the glacial pace in which they responded to the meta, balancing being 'so twicky :(' that Riot just gave up and slowly turned LoR into a PvE game instead. They pulled their punches, the momentum was never capitalised on, and it killed the whole game slowly but surely. Should have just released Fiddlesticks, man.
All of this packaged into something for the then drowning ‘League of Legends loreheads.’ The ever-punished whipping boys for the game that got hollowed out to be little more than a slot machine, where major players in their own lore events are phased out by the never-ending horde of pretty same-face models, where their biggest influencers are bribed to gleefully clap like seals when they twinkify Thresh for China. They didn’t remember Yorick Mori for the Ruination, because Vayne needs another skin, baby! $$$
So now the setting of the League of Legends universe- and yes, it does have a setting, as Arcane reminded all of us- is properly respected and fleshed out. Beyond champions, we have a steady rate of characters, landmarks and all sorts of other fluff padding out major places and events.
Or at least, that’s how it started.
OC characters in favour of getting people’s favourite champions in, the ‘lore’ being sidestepped for bizarre champion matchups, (Marrying Veigar to Senna, seriously?) making Lux, again, because you have absolutely nothing left to give- and Nilah is going up against Mordekaiser- because nobody, and I mean NOBODY, cares about Rell. Nilah is going up against everyone, actually. Sure hope you're a fan of Nilah! Legends of Runeterra ran out of steam by the end of year one, was on life support by the end of year two, and the plug was all but pulled by year four. That is unthinkable for the studio that made League of Legends, an absolutely colossal blunder.
But ultimately, there’s just nothing for the paypigs, that’s the fuck of it. It’s the absolutely worst thing you can say about a game, possibly ever, “there wasn’t ENOUGH microtransactions, actually.” The cards themselves were acquired so easily that it barely mattered. Within the first year I had everything I wanted- and enough currency that I would be able to buy whole sets that would come in the future, and that’s not even extensive play, mind you. That’s just idly completing dailies and practically nothing else.
The skins were garbage, highly selective as to who got special treatment (you’ll never guess). Animations, card effects, alternate card skins, all of which were applied randomly to some skins, with the others worthless buys with nothing to enjoy but different splash art. Wowie.
Never mind the glacial pace in which they responded to the meta, balancing being 'so twicky :(' that Riot just gave up and slowly turned LoR into a PvE game instead. They pulled their punches, the momentum was never capitalised on, and it killed the whole game slowly but surely. Should have just released Fiddlesticks, man.
2021
Sold out hard.
2008
It’s pretty safe to say at this juncture that Bethesda doesn’t ‘get’ Fallout, or rather- that they don’t care to get it. They bought the rights so they’ll just keep moulding it into the same dungeon delver that the Elder Scrolls series embodies, another crown jewel of shining Bethesdaland: World of broken, hollow toys.
I’m sorry to those No Mutants Allowed forumposters that I dismissed as embittered nerds all those years ago. You were right, and if Fallout 3 is the first volley of nukes that destroyed this series, then the never-ending barrage of missiles that has repeatedly scorched not just this franchise, but all of the IPs we’ve held so dearly for the past 20+ years is our fault, and it started in places just like this game. Still, I do like Fallout 3. Part of it being my first Fallout venture, I suppose.
The green-tinted aesthetic of the Capital Wasteland may have looked bog standard when surrounded by the brown and grey games of the previous next gen, but I can’t help but find it strangely charming now. DC may not have the depth of storytelling that New Vegas so proudly carries, (before it was all retconned out, obviously) but their toybox is a fun place to explore, every nook and cranny has a little something to ogle at, in true Bethesdaland fashion. It does, ultimately, just work. We’re getting increasingly diminishing returns in this day and age, but it does work.
I can’t redeem its stupidly cinematic narrative or its bizarre rewrites of returning factions. Fallout 2’s critique of big government through the Enclave, only for them to become The Empire in 3 being especially egregious, but Fallout 3 has a way with all the little stories littering the wasteland, complete with all the environmental storytelling skeletons and ruined vistas. It fails utterly even at telling its own larger stories, like whatever they thought Big Town was, but there’s a little glimmer of hope where there isn’t now.
The writing in the wall was there (and it spelled out ‘FUCK YOU’) and I never truly saw it until it was too late. Now it's TV shows for redditors and slot machine games for addicts, and I helped make it happen. It’s all over but the crying, and nobody’s crying but me.
I’m sorry to those No Mutants Allowed forumposters that I dismissed as embittered nerds all those years ago. You were right, and if Fallout 3 is the first volley of nukes that destroyed this series, then the never-ending barrage of missiles that has repeatedly scorched not just this franchise, but all of the IPs we’ve held so dearly for the past 20+ years is our fault, and it started in places just like this game. Still, I do like Fallout 3. Part of it being my first Fallout venture, I suppose.
The green-tinted aesthetic of the Capital Wasteland may have looked bog standard when surrounded by the brown and grey games of the previous next gen, but I can’t help but find it strangely charming now. DC may not have the depth of storytelling that New Vegas so proudly carries, (before it was all retconned out, obviously) but their toybox is a fun place to explore, every nook and cranny has a little something to ogle at, in true Bethesdaland fashion. It does, ultimately, just work. We’re getting increasingly diminishing returns in this day and age, but it does work.
I can’t redeem its stupidly cinematic narrative or its bizarre rewrites of returning factions. Fallout 2’s critique of big government through the Enclave, only for them to become The Empire in 3 being especially egregious, but Fallout 3 has a way with all the little stories littering the wasteland, complete with all the environmental storytelling skeletons and ruined vistas. It fails utterly even at telling its own larger stories, like whatever they thought Big Town was, but there’s a little glimmer of hope where there isn’t now.
The writing in the wall was there (and it spelled out ‘FUCK YOU’) and I never truly saw it until it was too late. Now it's TV shows for redditors and slot machine games for addicts, and I helped make it happen. It’s all over but the crying, and nobody’s crying but me.
2013
DOTA 2 may just be one of the greatest games I couldn't play, still can't play, and probably never will be able to play now. Watching sub 500 mmr games from nearly a decade ago to now is staggering, the bar is up there and it feels utterly alienating even just to touch, but just to peer into the windows, that you might get a glimpse of watching someone else have a go at it is enough.
2015
Maybe not the best 'game' of Frictional's fare- it's more guided than something like The Dark Descent- but it's the peak of their horror experiences. Nothing but dread- existential and otherwise- in a hopeless, lightless pit at the bottom of the ocean. Save me, naked man.
It’s probably what your kid brother would have put together and acted out as his fever dream of a Destroy All Humans fan-game- in that I find it endearing, if a little pathetic. Might make you want to throw the wii-mote out of a window- also like your kid brother- depending on how far along he is in the Big Willy script. One joke.
Epic Games thought Gears of War looked SO good, they'd just make it their whole thing for a couple of years! Not nearly as good as previous entries and drained of all its charm, but there's some cool ideas in here- like really outlandish vehicle designs- that I suppose die in the dirt along with the series now. Jump off the top of a Facing Worlds tower and hit the feign death button for funnies.
2019
Honestly loved everything about this asides from the fact it was a roguelike, that just ended up killing it for me.
Somewhere between Ubisoft degenerating into making nothing but total pigswill and serious counter-terrorist/military shooters being abandoned in favour of zany cosmetics and sci-fi nonsense coalesces into one of the most mildly amusing titles of the post-plague era of video games. This happened two years ago. Absolutely mad.