Metroid Fusion is odd because I think its linear nature makes it the perfect starting point for newcomers, but also its love of having progress blocked by random nondescript tiles hiding a pillar or bomb block can lead people to think all Metroids are this annoyingly obtuse. I also hate everything surrounding Adam Malkovitch and it's no wonder Other M turned out the way it did when they were precooking this stupid shit in Fusion.

Hater energy aside, Fusion is still a really good 2D platformer. Samus feels the best to control yet in Fusion and Fusion's boss fights are at their best in design and gameplay of the pre-Dread 2D Metroids. They tried some different stuff with Fusion and while I don't like all of it, it's still another great entry in an all timer series.

mom I want ryukishi07 silent hill

we have ryukishi07 silent hill at home

ryukishi silent hill at home:

(could have been something neat but settles for extreme mediocrity and hacky writing. the chase sequences are all boring and terrible. akira yamaoka and masahiro ito you guys are cool and still got it, glad you're still getting work. at least its not silent hill ascension?)

Art will destroy the artist.

A solo release of DUSK Dev and new CEO of OceanGate David Syzmanski's Dread X Collection 2 game, Squirrel Stapler. Compartmentalizes everything you should expect from the man - bizarre horror, morbid humor, and guns. Can be completed in about an hour, and there's plenty enough from short stories about an artist's woes, to kamikaze bears, and of course stapling squirrels onto your beloved wife to keep you engrossed until God's arrival.

And the stapler will become the stapled.

As this game was wrapping up, I found myself to become quite invested in the story and themes surrounding it. The only other Chinese Room game I've played prior to this one was Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, and much like that game A Machine for Pigs has a great story to tell packaged into a real bore of a game. In some ways this is better than The Dark Descent, but Frictional Games set out to make a thrilling horror game while The Chinese Room settled for a real slow burner about the bourgeoisie, the darkness within mankind, and how much a player can tolerate wandering around empty buildings opening doors and drawers to absolutely no benefit because there's nothing beyond notes to collect and no puzzles to solve beyond "put object A into slot B". Still much better than Bloober Team's Layers of Fear though.

Also calling the black sludge Compound X just made me think I was playing a much more deranged Professor Utonium, setting out to create the perfect little (pig) girls.

I went into this expecting Amnesia The Dark Descent but it's A Machine for Pigs, actually. And it's not particularly good because of it. There's enough mystery to the plot and abstraction to the setting as the main character's mental state dissolves that it kept me going to the end (and also it's not very long. according to my PS5 i beat the game in 28 minutes which I know is very wrong but its funny it got listed like that). But you really gotta push for the good stuff in this game. Admittedly I do want to try the remake/sequel/collection??? thing that came out this year just to see if the whole package manages to deliver better. As is for the original 2016 release, though, this is probably better skipped for anyone interested.

Bloober Team will never, ever live that baby running into a wall bit down.

Wholesale improvement from 2018. While I still have my gripes with the gameplay, mainly the camera, everything feels much more fleshed out and faster paced. It's a lot better to play overall even when trying to handle the camera. Plenty of enemy variety and new tools keep the gameplay from getting stale as well. And the story was thoroughly engaging, a long tale, but well told. If God of War stopped here, I would feel satisfied with that.

(half a star gone for having the cape blow away 5 seconds into the intro. talk about false advertising!)