Scorn is an uneven balance of Riven-like alien techno-puzzling and atmospheric existential horror akin to SOMA. The art is a perfect amalgamation of Giger & Beksiński, fleshy organic architecture amassed across the surface of a dying world. The first two-thirds present particularly engaging core puzzles, as you slowly unpick the purpose of the machines you are revving up, often leading to some sort of sacrifice of an innocent(?) being (ranging from tiny weird guys to enormous weird guys) in this abject world. The wordless communication of the narrative through exploration, the environment & your ritualistic puzzling is refreshing (in a time where many games won't. shut. up).

The alien life wandering the flesh-corridors are alluring at first, with some interesting behaviours ambivalent to, & decentering, the player. But their placement and the very awkward feeling combat generates annoyance rather than tension, a very clumsy implementation of what was probably envisioned as a ‘living’ world but grew smaller in scope as they struggled to bring this to release. This is most evident in the very dull final chapter where a (puzzle) boss and most puzzles are solved with blunt-force explosives. Despite my final impressions, Ebb has a really strong foundation here and I look forward to seeing how they grow.

12 years on from the strange, incomplete original, DD2 is more of the same, uneasily sitting between the uncompromising Souls series & more conventional narrative ARPGs. At times evoking a desolate offline MMO, DD2 is at its best when out in the wilds, the sun setting at your back & two or more beasts landing on the path ahead, all Arising out of dynamic systems.

The main questline unfortunately does not play to these strengths, with much of Act I confined to the capital & some really dull writing. Fortunately, writing does not maketh a game, and side-quests that take you out into the unreasonably huge map are much more interesting, and really need to be sought out in the crowds and corners of the world. Keeping track of these with the bizarre quest tracker is uneven and obtuse: you’re either reading the landscape and tracing clues or just beating your head against a wall figuring out what the game requires of you.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is singular, not quite fully realised, a beautifully rendered physics-heavy oddity. The art direction is profoundly generic, but so deceptively understated it at times resembles a Ray Harryhausen film, full of weight, movement and character. DD2 makes you feel like you have friends, albeit stupid friends, who'd throw themselves off a cliff for a view of yonder.

While they’re all talking dinosaurs, Goodbye Volcano High’s characters felt more like genuine teenagers just trying to figure themselves out as high school comes to a close, before tragically having to come to terms with their futures being cut short. In the face of their inevitable end (in this case a looming asteroid), what matters to them is making the most of their lives in the moment and appreciating their loved ones and passions. It’s a bleak premise from the outset but largely a sweet and heartfelt game, enjoyed it a lot

And though it’s mainly narrative focused with dialogue choices, the rhythm game sections where your band play on stage were nice and connected me more with Fang and their dream to be a successful musician. The soundtrack in general is nice too

Surprisingly fun, if way too brutal Souls/Zelda-like.
You only get 2 heart upgrades in the ENTIRE game, and the upgrades are so minimal that you might kill first-level enemies with 2 slashes instead of 3 by the time you're maxed out.
Nevertheless, I had a really good time with it. The combat is fluid and fun. The world is heaps of fun to explore, with shortcut porn galore for anyone who loves that aspect of the Soul's games. And, the story is decent, with some funny characters and a tongue-in-cheek charm.

O jogo é based, kinazzo. É uma cápsula do tempo com cheirinho de falsa nostalgia, gostoso demais. Queria muito ter curtido o original na época, o pvp e etc pra hoje em dia não depender de emulador.

Já o "remake" é uma das coisas mais covardes que já vi, ao invés de corrigir certos probleminhas ou adicionar QOL relevante, só destruíram a direção de arte e praticamente apagaram a existência do jogo original. Um desrespeito sem igual.

A Sony é um câncer. A nota alta é unicamente pelo jogo original.

Kind of tragic to me how often AA projects get no respect. Both from the average gaming public and seemingly the company that put it out. Small scale games that stand out are thrown out in favor of AAA focus tested experiences. Then we're stuck waiting 6+ years for any major releases, the only thing to tide us over in the meantime is an ocean of remakes from the days where boatloads of games of all types came out at a constant rate. Just as every kart racer is a "mario kart ripoff" or platform fighters will always be "bootleg smash bros" ... Games that aren't so generic that comparing them to other games is pointless - are scrutinized even harder than those who didn't even try based on surface level observations. Thousands of overproduced derivative experiences with little to no unique ideas of its own? Game of the year material. Something that only tangentially shares a similar root concept as something unique? It better be the best game ever and overthrow Fortnite in popularity or else it has no worth in the eyes of most. Heck, Palworld's "Pokemon with guns" thing isn't even an apt phrase as the gameplay barely resembles pokemon whatsoever and you don't even get guns til' like 15-20 hours in. So lucky for that game the internet is making fun of pokemon these days. But I digress.

The splatoon DNA lies in this being a third person shooter in a small arena, your team's foam (ink) being a means of map control. That's genuinely about it, you have more mobility on your own foam, and the more overwhelmed you are by the enemy's foam the harder it is to not almost literally get buried in it. Ironically I find this game is succeeding the Splatoon style better than Sploon 2 and 3 did. A big part of the appeal of Splatoon from the beginning was that it was truly fresh. Sick of the decade of samey online shooters? Here's nintendo's crazy take that completely flips the genre on its head. Less about kills and more about playing the maps effectively. There was such variety in maps and weapons, you could look down to your gamepad to send a nuke strike in a satisfying and immersive way. The amount of ways you could approach a situation being so vast just by the nature of your own ink changing the landscape of the battlefield, even without physically changing the shape of the map or anything. But then splatoon 2 came along and it was more of the same but with smaller maps that turned the focus more on face to face close range skirmishes. Then on the same console Splatoon 3 hit and really didn't fix or change much of anything. So many maps not featuring much verticality or well defined ideas to play around...Point being, close range claustrophobic combat in Splatoon kinda sucks. It was never the root of the design philosophy of the original game. It was part of it but it wasn't the ENTIRETY of it. And three games with almost no significant shake-up in formula or style kind of puts a damper on it being a "Fresh" break from the tired online shooter genre.

Foamstars feels like it's onto something. Your foam literally changing the shape of the landscape brings back the verticality and ergo the seemingly endless ways to approach situations. And even better, this game has no mode where the team with the most ground covered with ink wins, it's all focused on direct combat. The kind of combat sploon 2 forced because its dev cycle was too rushed to have bigger maps despite it not being designed around it. Being designed around combat centric modes from the beginning does a lot of favors to Foamstars feeling cohesive. At bare minimum, it's got very similar quality to something like the push a tower mode in ranked splatoon. I just find your movesets for combat are a bit more elegant here, leaning just a tad more into normal shooter territory while at the same time going all in on insane cartoon angle. I think this stands on its own very well as far as gameplay goes.

Still, I can't HONESTLY say I see myself playing this game a year from now. I don't know why games now refuse to offer any way to grind for costumes. Like bruh even if I have to play for 30 hours to get a single skin that's SOMETHING don't straight up charge 45$ for an outfit and give literally nothing for actually playing the game. You gotta have some kind of hook to get people wanting to come back and for that matter, spend money. And as an achievement dork, 12 achievements and no platinum is p'lame. Almost have all of 'em in a single sitting. It's also got a frustratingly mundane presentation, feeling like it kind of wastes its great art style and music. Feels like Square Enix just didn't have full confidence going into this game's release. But I can't honestly blame them too hard considering making anything remotely similar to a Nintendo style game is an uphill battle. Would have liked to see them try to come out swinging with a less heavily monetized system, that definitely would have helped their chances. I'll definitely be at least loosely following the game but I won't be shocked to find Squeenix was ready to pretend they never made this game before it even came out. Hecc you can't even see a hint of this game on the official Square Enix store.

Sad thing is despite liking this game and wanting to love it, it's kinda hard to feel any hope for it moving forward. And while I think it's a bit lame that this game was written off by most months before it even came out, that heavy monetization and lack of customization otherwise was absolutely the wrong way to launch this game despite it coming out day 1 on PSPlus. It's a fun game but that's ultimately not enough. It's exhausting how common it is now for a game to come out and have the conversation immediately be nothing but dead game? Even for games that actually manage to drum up initial hype. Like idk man we've all been playing Mario Kart 8, Splatoon, GTAV, Skyrim, CSGO, League of legends, and minecraft for over a decade bare minimum. I'm ready to move ooooon bro 2010 was 14 years ago can we play foamstars or nickelodeon all stars brawl or crash team rumble or something. Forgive me for projecting a bit I'm just a bit exhausted at all the DOA games that end up as wasted potential. The whole games as a service space is just getting depressing. I really wish a game growing a small group of fans was enough, but it's either a cultural phenomenon we can milk for an indefinite amount of time or it's a flop that will be used as an excuse for why games that don't take ten years to make just don't get made anymore. A game of this scope just doesn't stand a chance against the expectations of the industry, doesn't even matter if it's good or not and that's honestly kind of a bummer. I'm probably looking too deep into this but I think it's rad to see Square Enix try and branch out and consistently put out so much stuff every year. I kind of suspect once they stop due to constant failure hurting their wallets and reputation, we'll suddenly start seeing youtube videos about how Squeenix during this era was one of the few devs consistently putting out cool experimental stuff that wasn't appreciated during its time. I'd certainly take stuff like this over what's happened to so many other major players in the industry. With ten year outputs looking like: The Last of us 1, The Last of us 1, The Last of us 2, The Last of us 1, The last of us 2 online (cancelled), The Last of us 2

Also good heavens why do so many online games love to waste as much time between matches as possible there's gotta be a faster way to do this.

Would love to see this grow into something special but it's looking pretty dire Foambros. If you're at all remotely interested I'd get on ASAP 'cuz Squeenix themselves are probably looking to bury it with their 9th FF7 release.

Eu adoro história super elaboradas, bem escritas, cheias de surpresa.

Mas eu acho incrível como Tacoma pega uma história que sozinha seria a coisa mais sem graça do mundo e torna ela super interessante apenas pela forma que é contada.

Nada tira da minha cabeça que videogame é a melhor forma de narrativa e esse jogo só contribui pra isso.