little game--big thoughts, though! i really like witcheye, this reworking of kirby's skeleton to create something more challenging and addictive (in short bursts). instead of both copying abilities and floating around, you're the latter except weaponized, and obstacles lie in navigating stage hazards detrimental to floaters like you and enemies who vary in ways to defeat. all of this is wrapped up in a package of absolutely gorgeous pixel art and a heaping of sickeningly sweet 16 bit groove (so much midi bass).

it's pretty fun to figure out how to defeat new enemies as they appear, soon mastering the ability to just wipe 'em out the moment they appear on screen, your forward momentum undeterred. sometimes it can feel very sloppy and you'll somehow effortlessly glide through a level despite not really knowing what's happening, but you learn. a particular highlight is the kirby styled locked miniboss fights, many really inventive. there's also this whole deal about collecting gems, but it's honestly horseshit: many, many times a gem will clip through the ground and disappear, and i'm having fun, sure, but i'm really not that interested to replay a level just to grab more bing bing jewels.

you know, probably the worst and weirdest thing about this game is the design of the main character and her alter eye ego. exceptionally bland: why? all of the enemies are charming even if many are reskinned waddle dees and gordos. the bosses are pretty cool, too... so why does the main character look so nothing? her name's mabel syrup but how could you even know that when all she sports is a dumb purple frock and matching hairbun? and the eye is just... an eye. i'd really like to draw some fanart for witcheye, but good lord it won't be the main character.
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over a decade later and portal still endures as the single best example of a perfect game--not flawless, but perfect. a short length complements a novel concept, and rich ambience and dialogue elevates an arcadey game concept into artistry. not flawless in that bugs happen, in that the beginning is filled with a lot of waiting around, in that valve has attempted to murder their own mood by placing radios in every room, but portal regardless is larger than its weaknesses.

it's been so long that i can't really gush about the actual portal gameplay or the thick, sterile atmosphere because i gushed about 'em ten years ago, but there's other details i really enjoy this time around. i like that there's several puzzles with multiple solutions. i like that waiting around in certain rooms begets more interesting glados lines. i like the mechanical whirr all the cameras make as they reorient themselves and the dark ambient music creeping out of the background. what i like most is the game handing you a very normal cube with only a decal's difference and putting you in situations where it protects or aids you to get you attached to a box.

it's a shame the whole cake bit really went through the wash. chalk it up to an easily accessible and captivatingly memorable experience, i guess.

there definitely exists an ambient difference between portal and its sequel: while the first game demonstrated pitch black humor set against a haunting, sterile environment, portal 2 feels considerably lighter hearted and goofy--even feel good, for some reason? this approach no doubt helped jettison the game into absurd popularity and success, and i don't blame valve either for not wishing to retread the same ground twice but, regardless, it's just not quite as enjoyable to physically be in aperture science this time around.

of course the writing is hilarious, sure, and absolutely memorable, but it's also kind of... well, let's just call it the best written marvel movie.

gameplay's also running on the whole "let's not retread the same ground twice" design philosophy as well, with less emphasis on physically going in and out portals and more on using said portals to manipulate other things to go in and out, and around and throughout and etc etc. i don't think it was a bad idea to do this, but it's funny that the levels are designed to such a point that their testers literally forgot they could even just walk through the damn portals, as one developer commentary node recalls. so in a sense, there's a bit less... magic to the whole ingenious simplicity of portal's concept overall. but hey, it's also really, really cool to play around with the varying gels and light bridges and cubes with turret limbs sticking out.

i think my favorite aspect of portal 2 is the sound and music design, where seemingly every object and "tool" emits some wavelength of noise, and many manipulate their sounds in response to player actions and proximity. the gentle humming of the lasers, the bouncy synths of the bouncy gel, the underwater obfuscation of the... uh... blue wind tunnel things--it's all really mesmerizing. the technical side is cool, too, their approach to rooms next to rooms that don't actually exist next to each other (another node explains further), and the gel physics are cool as hell. yeah, a lot of the game is cool as hell.

oh, there's also that whole cooperative aspect. i've played through it a dozen times with a dozen different people at this point and, yet, it's still just REALLY fun to experience with others, especially when you're playing with newcomers to the whole experience. hell, i'll probably be playing this game for another decade just to tag along with those who have somehow lived under a moonrock all this time.

so yeah. portal 1's short, sweet, and perfect. portal 2's much longer and has some sacrifices made with an overall different design philosophy, but it's pretty damn sweet too.

it's got a wonderful art style and aesthetic, the music and sound design is superb, the voice acting is great, and the writing/dialogue/story are all pretty damn good (good, but not quite great). by all means, it's an evolution of what metal gear on the msx was.

it's just a shame that the gameplay is horrific. frustrating level design, annoying forced combat sections, boss fights that range from "hey, pretty cool!" to "jesus fuck this is nails in my hands" all culminate in an experience that's just not very fun to play through at all. there are moments of brilliance in its gameplay--there is a cat-and-mouse bossfight that utilizes enemy pathing, the radar, and the player's own explosive tools and it is easily the highlight of the game. there are certain parts where it feels quite slick to slide by enemies and dip in and out of cover. but this is overshadowed by ridiculousness in difficulty and repetition that plagues the whole experience.

it's not very long, and it is worth playing. but it'll be for its storytelling versus its gameplay.

i understand concessions and how they have to be made, how scopes expand and deflate on a game by game, year by year basis. the beginning of the saints row franchise found itself hoisted up by a modest budget that snowballed in price through saints row two and three, evidence being graphical overhauls, gameplay overhauls, quality of life fixes, and a shiny cg trailer. saints row four, made under the demise of their publisher, is that snowball now deflated, the budget back to shoestrings... and it shows.

originally slotted to be no more than the final dlc to saints row 3, the idea of it then becoming its own full fledged sequel (unfortunately) sprang to life at volition, and that is now what can be played: this sloppy recoating of paint across saints row 3, some fragments left over to save time, others left over thoughtlessly. that is to say: the sandbox is near identical, and so are mechanics dummied out by virtue of the superhero re-branding of the series. but before diving in--again, i understand concessions. it's a sequel no doubt made to the best effort of volition with what they could scrounge together and it is definitely an example of a concept i SHOULD like--taking the previous game and spinning it out into something new and exciting a la ocarina of time (snoozer) to majoras mask (winner). but a critical problem of the series is the inability to let go of its own oot.

saints row 1 and 2 are gang focused sandboxes, the first deathly (dryly) serious and the second an impeccable mixture of serious and goofy, its winning formula being every character playing things straight. saints row 3 is a tipping of that balance in favor of too much goofy, the seriousness now buried under the weight of awful marvel movie inspirations. i'm talking about dialogue, by the way--saints row 4 is the whole superhero aspect of that marvel deal, but its the dialogue of these two later games that is just wholly insufferable, an awful, awful compounding of the very worst forced "comedy" of these sorts of snarky action based movies churned out by wojak muses. everything, absolutely everything, is bait for "humor", but it's the sort of humor that even the third thor movie would hear and frown, embarrassed for saints row's sake. there's particular lines that bug me, but let's talk about the superhero deal for a second.

"POWER FANTASY" were probably two big bolded words smeared on dry erase at volition when beginning this project--not to imply they haven't thought this way with previous games, but saints row 4 in particular is the logical conclusion of such design. imbued with super powers, you can jump and clear entire city blocks in single bounds, glide gracefully across the sky and land right where you plan to, run and dash both down populated streets and up copy and pasted high rises. it is, unapologetically, very, VERY fun. it's a sort of simple pleasure zipping throughout the city gathering up the dozens of power up orbs or whatever-the-fuck-they-call-them scattered around. with regards to combat, you slowly gain the ability to freeze enemies in their place and shatter their (then) remains, crisp 'em up, hoist them into the air and slam them into telephone poles, crash down from earth leveling all vehicles in your path.... quite a lot. and again, it's really fun! there's a very specific sort of joy only saints row 4 can give you with being able to leap off the ground towards an enemy ufo followed by freezing it and leaping off its earthbound frame off to your next destination while an explosion ripples out from behind.

but notice i'm not talking about guns or vehicles. you'd think, with how i'm describing the ridiculously fun superhero themed gameplay, you'd be under the impression that THOSE tools are your bread and butter, right? wrong. not only are guns and vehicles still in this game for whatever fucking reason, they are actively forced upon you in many, many story segments, and it gets real old, real fast. nevermind the fact that the player character can very quickly upgrade themselves into something that makes the flash blush all but rendering cars completely useless, but your superhuman strength begs the question: why shoot anything at all? in the time it takes to select a gun, carefully aim, and shoot, you could instead just dash right up and slam your knuckles down their alien throats. and so, the game artificially forces you into specifically superhuman disabling story segments (S.S.D.S.S for short). these S.S.D.S.S. portions make up legitimately, i'm not joking, more than half of the goddamn campaign. and you know what the worst part of it all is? i mentioned annoying dialogue, and here it is:

"why does everyone keep taking away my superpowers? fuck!"

oh blow me volition. it's impressive that many writers are under the impression that you can have something really awful and annoying as long as you write in so funny dialogue making fun of the situation--a recent example being that ass of a trailer for the outer worlds 2--but here's the rub: if you still DO the annoying bit, then it's not any less annoying. in fact, it's actually much worse because you're actively expressing to the player "yeah, we designed a piece of shit. funny, right?'

not really. and here's another piece of questionable design philosophy: why is this game so smitten with nostalgia for its previous entries? the bulk of the story is spent navigating through pieces of saints row history in callbacks that feel... pointless and insulting. pointless because, okay, did i really gain anything from this diary entry of a gang boss i killed eight years ago? insulting because i'm playing a fucking ridiculous, unfunny, aggravating, bloated designed, copy and pasted, always set at night, shallow, full of itself, piece of shit sequel to an already "just okay" sequel to the single best open world sandbox shooter ever made. so yes, i would consider this insulting, and i would consider a game all about superpowers that constantly limit said superpowers to be bad game design.

but i'm not actively against recommending this game. in fact, here's what i think you should do. play the first handful of story missions until you can ground pound--that caps off the end of your interesting abilities. and then... just run around the city collecting orbs and blowing up enemy camps with your powers. and do it until you've finished or you're bored, and then uninstall the game. that's the prime saints row 4 experience.

... on one last note, there's something really interesting about the way this game's set in a simulation. in games like grand theft auto, mafia, or even previous saints rows, i'll feel a little bad about mowing down rows of grandmas off the street. but because saints row 4 takes place within a fake digital world full of fake digital people, i don't feel even a little bit bad killing npcs. but then, that's kind of ridiculous, right? all of these games are "simulations". maybe if the story had a shred of intrigue to it, it would explore... forget it. this series has already gone to hell (no, really, the expansion for this is in hell).

i'm not really sure if the writers involved with this project--of which there are five of--even like or understand video games. and i say this in the sense that life is strange: true colors doesn't seem interested in the player nor their agency, nor their decision making, nor their interest or interpretations of characters. and i say all this because never before has there been a life is strange where your choices are a game of "well, what's the LEAST embarrassing of the two?", where your choices are "alex says something vapid and stupid" and "alex says something vapid and stupid but with a smile".

and alex, good lord, is the wet blanket protagonist of all wet blanket protagonists, a player stand-in that doesn't really even work considering how you may want her to act or speak doesn't matter because it doesn't align with how the five writers want her to speak. am i making sense, here? if the first life is strange player, for instance, did not like a character, that player was given the tools to express it. everyone is soft and spongy in true colors, speaking in mounds of references and absolutely terrible, bog standard romcom slurry. and what a cast this is--you know, there's nothing wrong with the slow paced slice of life approach that i keep seeing nowadays from western companies and studios, but it seems they all forget that these SOL attempts require a main ingredient: lovable, interesting casts. and who the hell am i supposed to latch onto when everyone spouts out that same aforementioned slurry, where every line is right on the edge of irony poisoning and extreme self awareness? how am i supposed to connect with generic indie rock loving hipster girl alex whose offered observations could not be any less boring, any more forgettable? i can't remember a single line she's offered about her environments save for the very, very dry references to REAL BAND here and REAL BAND there and REAL MOVIE here and... so forth, and so forth like a marvel convention equivalent of a mixer.

i made the claim that these writers don't like or understand video games, and it's based on all i've written thus far and just three more points. ONE: nearly everything feels set in stone, as if the game is a compromise to the writers to tell their otherwise straightforward forgettable young adult novel i had to suffer through many of in college. TWO: you're given a power to read the thoughts of others, but this is heavily limited to very, very, very few characters, the majority of NPCs seemingly unable to give you anything, as if they aren't there, as if the writers did not want to push themselves just a little bit more to add some flavor to this lifeless mess. and THREE: why the fuck can't you land in the minecart in that arcade game? come on, now.

i just can't find a single positive trait in this. the graphics are fine, the soundtrack may or may not even exist because i don't remember any of it. the voice acting is a medley of first takes. the actual "gameplay" sections impose without merit. the choices have never been more meaningless. the consequences have never been more toothless. the observation mechanic has no real development for what it is. the flavor text is lifeless. the characters are lifeless. the story is lifeless. the developers' ambitions are lifeless, and this game may as well not exist at all for all it isn't: no teeth, all gums.

considering toree 3d is the product of a gamejam grind.. it shows, for better or for worse. the visuals are charming, the sound design is funny (i swear, that's the animal crossing cursor noise every time toree hops), and gameplay's serviceable. not really interesting, and you have to fight it occasionally, but serviceable. the gamejam's theme revolved around having the disc be haunted, and that shows, too, for better or for worse. i offer the former because it's genuinely interesting and even unnerving at times, leading to a few surprising moments, but i offer the latter as well because it doesn't really amount to any sort of payoff nor is it completely thought out--the unlockable bonus character sort of displays that last bit. and that's kind of a shame

still a cute experience. you could spend your dollar worse.

kirby's adorable and so is much, much, much of the game's art and design. it's jaw dropping, even, how much this company squeezed out of the nes to produce many of the intricate texture tricks on screen. it also explains why it runs like shit, kirby lagging behind and getting his little pink ass beaten over and over by circumstances well out of your control. but it's also a very simple, easy game, so it's really no spilled milk to take a few cuts. you'll finish the game before you know it, and it'll have been a pleasant little journey.

a long time ago, i tried playing grand theft auto 3. this attempt didn't last very long considering the brutality of failing a mission: no checkpoints, no saves and, hell, no restarting--the game's decided you are an idiot (a stupid one) and you have to drag your dumb idiot ass all the way back over to the mission giver, skip their very intelligent cutscene, and try again.

suffice to say, i was that dumb idiot dipshit that rockstar thought me as, and i did not attempt to prove otherwise. or, in other words, i gave the fuck up. who has the time or patience?

years later, i played saints row. this one. it's kind of like... well, if inspiration could be seen on volition's sleeve, it'd just be a series of gta logos from shoulder to wrist. and of the many similarities saints row shared with grand theft auto, one was more brutal than the others: that exact same fucking lack of checkpoints and the basic ability to restart the damn mission. the game simply thinks your moron ass either better drag it all back to whoever gave you a cutscene or fuck off.

but unlike gta3, i didn't fuck off. why not?

because i played saints row 2 first, and saints row 2 is awesome. i'd go so far as to call it a near perfect game, and i, then, wanted to know the backstory of such a near perfect game, and said backstory could only be obtained by playing a game that's anything but. so i persevered, and it's now been years and years since then, and so i've persevered a second time through a medley of mission starts, mission failures, and mission driving-all-the-goddamn-way-to-the-starts.

in other words: i've played and beaten saints row twice. in more words: it's not really worth playing and beating twice--BUT! these two experiences have allowed me ample time to fully digest what volition presented to xbox 360 owners in 2006, and now i will relay to you, reader in 2022 or beyond, what i have learned, experienced, hated, and enjoyed.

first thing's first: this is one of the worst sandbox cities ever made. ever. history of ever, guaranteed. i've played just about every grand theft auto, certainly every saints row, and all sorts of gta/sr likes like the simpsons hit and run and mafia 2, and THIS is easily the worst designed of them all. it's bad enough that just about every neighborhood bolsters the same ugly shades of brown, red, and grey which makes quickly identifying areas around you based on appearance alone quite difficult, but the real problem lies in navigation. over and over and over, you'll find yourself hitting dead ends, pulling into parking lots with only one entrance and exit, speeding down alleys and into walls, and maddeningly smashing into obstacles your car should have been able to clear... but volition's city designers thought otherwise. but that's just a ground level problem. look to the air for the next: saints row's psychotic highway system. it makes NO fucking sense. none whatsoever. you'll look it over on the gps and be baffled on where exactly entrances and exits even are, and you'll be even further pressed to actually find that there are barely any exits/entrances at all! that's great for a fucking means of fast transportation that can't actually be accessed for a great majority of the map. god, words alone cannot quite describe just how miserable these highways are designed, and you'd be foolish to think saints row 2's kept things the same. no, in fact, saints row's highway and city layout are so indescribably terrible that volition came up with 'flooding' as a lore friendly excuse to gut the absolute miserable shit out of this absolutely miserable excuse for a sandbox layout in its sequel. fuck me, i'll never take well designed highways for granted again.

second thing's second: the mini game named activities suck. i mean, absolutely all of them do. want to protect a drug dealer? then you'll do it with the shitty guns your dealer wants you to use, and with a paltry amount of ammo to boot. want to ho? good luck getting the car bound whores without trouble--damaging a car without damaging your own car is HARD--and on that note, you best be careful when your vehicle's even remotely close to exploding. if a fire starts, you have genuine seconds to get out of the damn thing before it mission failures your ass back to square one. oh, the best activity actually is insurance fraud, surprisingly, because you can just steal a police car and rack up insane point combos by virtue of your vehicle being of the state. hell, you don't even have to hit anyone: slamming your car over and over into a wall is enough to pass each level of activity with flying colors. eight levels, by the way, and that goes for every single activity. and the rewards? well, sometimes, it's a homie. other times, it's a necklace. you have zero way of knowing this beforehand. oh, and don't rack up too many activity-rewarded respect points. in saints row 2, the meter would change to infinity upon reaching a theoretical 'max'. here in saints row 1? your game flips a coin every time you boot in, and every time it's heads, the console shuts off. dead fucking serious.

now, given these first and second major points, you might think saints row not worth playing and, in the age of youtube where anyone can just watch a stitched together cutscene compilation... yeah, yeah maybe it isn't worth the hassle. but then, it's not as if the whole experience is rotten. the general gameplay of pulling up on gangsters or police and icing them's fun. getting into highway warfare with three of your homies comprised of a soccer mom, zombie, and a baseball wielding chicken suited teenager... is pretty fun, too. the problem is it's just better in saints row 2. the writing's pretty solid, too, and i never offer such praise lightly--the dialogue plays with some silliness while still steering straight, though it's often not enough or not fleshed out as much as it should be. so, that's better in saints row 2, too. the activities i described are better in saints row 2, actually, and the city design is better in saints row 2, and, well...

you know, there's just SO much of this game that looks even shittier in comparison to its better fated sequel, and i guess that's not totally fair, but we don't exist in a vacuum and i can't help playing the game and thinking every thirty seconds "man, this detail sucks and is so much better in saints row 2". mission checkpoints? saints row 2. city free of dead ends? saints row 2. memorable locations based on visual identity alone? saints row 2. anything that saints row 1 does, 2 does better, and that leaves the experience pretty sour admittedly. but hey, there's at least one thing saints row has that its sequel doesn't: a bizarre loan shark that'll lend you, what, $1000, and failing to pay back such will sick a helicopter on you at all times of the day. so that's nice.

one last thing that's pretty cool: i selected 'xbox 360' as my platform, but the truth is i actually emulated the entire experience in 'xenia' right in the comfort of my pc. yeah, and saints row 2 runs well, too. how about that?

the soundtrack is just awful, and i say that as a big fan of electronica. it's all not even skrillex's sloppy seconds--sloppy thirds? even if the music were good, gameplay's not really anything very interesting and i don't feel hooked even though i love a good rhythm game. you can download custom maps, and sometimes those are really fun, but most aren't for music i actually like unless you really enjoy meme landfill, and when they are, they're designed by someone who's insanely good at the game and doesn't feel the need to make a difficulty any lower than expert.

pistol whip runs circles around this game is how i'm going to leave this.

stride is incredibly promising, and i think it can shape up to be a VR essential. it is, however, not quite there--and the distance across that gap is much further than a simple in-game leap.

here's the good: stride is a great concept. run, climb, and dash around like crazy in a concrete jungle theme park while occasionally drawing a gun to clumsily shoot at (and miss) enemies with tighter aim than you. climbing feels cool, sliding under things feels cool, wall running feels cool--these elements of stride's parkour are fantastic. its biggest issue, however, is momentum and, further, how the game philosophy fights itself. when you come up to an obstacle, you hoist yourself up over it with your two grips, and it feels natural. climbing from one structure to another feels natural. ducking your head feels natural. however, jumping is done with not just a waving of your hands upwards, but an A press. this is [b]unnatural[/b], and it really sucks. it's something you have to constantly remind yourself to do in one particular, repeating scenario: when you hoist yourself up onto something, you rise with such speed that you naturally "push" yourself off of it to then grab the next obstacle. this feels NATURAL. but momentum doesn't work like that and, instead, you're just going to clumsily fall to your death. you have to press that stupid A button--the most unnatural deal there.

one thing i haven't mentioned yet about the gameplay loop is the grappling hook. honestly, it's the best part of the game and the single most fun game mechanic here, and it kind of makes you wish you were just playing something based around specifically [i]that.[/i] maybe one day.

the other major issue i have with stride is its arcade style three-lives-and-you're-out. oh, it sucks. all this does is kill any momentum and fun you're having. can't express enough how many times i've been gleefully traveling all over the city snatching briefcases and zipping across grapples and--oh, i took two stray shots and missed a jump that looked absolutely do-able. now the game's over. wow, fun!

i'm harsh with my words here because i do genuinely think stride could end up becoming something amazing, and i'm certainly down to revisit it again in the future--but it needs a lot more work, and i wouldn't recommend buying it just yet.

i feel myself in a weird slump when it comes to this game. on one hand, the character writing is incredibly sharp and personal. on the other hand, i got bored of this on two separate occasions, meaning the game took me nearly a year to finish. on another hand, the gameplay feels pretty loose and tight at the same time, meaning taking out nazis is a bit of a smooth experience. on yet another hand, the stealth gameplay, unpolished as it is, demands to be at attention lest you feel like a dipshit fighting hordes of neverending enemies because you dared fire a gun in an FPS.

i don't know. what a weird game. it's not particularly long, either, but it feels like forever. playing it gives me the impression that no one on the team really wanted to make an FPS and just did their best, the story's certainly good, and i did admittedly look at it through the lens of someone annoyed with the ad campaign surrounding. it's definitely a good game. it's not really a great game, but it IS a good game, certainly. sure, play it.

what's more unbelievable: the fact that a thrice delayed darktide launches at full price in a near unplayable state where fps tanks, matches stutter, bottom halves of bodies disappear, and games continuously crash... or the fact that they have the nerve to jam a microtransaction store right into this mess?

trick question, neither is unbelievable because both seem to be the industry standard in what decays with every launch just like this one. but the worst bit is in how much fun darktide can be past all these issues. i went with an ogre named 'CHUSTY' and believe me, cutting through hordes of goons with clean shovel sweeps rarely fails to entertain. there's a great loop to swingan and shootan and stompan and killan to the point where you almost forget about the technical issues until youWE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE! OUR GOAL IS TO PREVENT CRASHES LIKE THIS FROM OCCURRING. PLEASE HELP US DIAGNOSE AND FIX THIS PROBLEM BY PROVIDING INFORMATION ABOUT WHAT WAS HAPPENING AT THE TIME OF THE CRASH.

the worst part about having the game crash on you is, should you bear a difficulty altering 'grimoire', that item is incredibly forfeit. for instance, just lastTHE GAME HAS CRASHED. A BUG REPORT HAS BEEN SENT TO THE DEVELOPER. IF THE PROBLEM PERSISTS SEND A BUG REPORT TO THE DEV TEAM.

but hey, if you want to spend forty dollars to bug test a game, be my SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE. TO IDENTIFY THE CRASH WHEN COMMUNICATING WITH THE DEVELOPER PLEASE USE THE BUTTON 'COPY TO CLIPBOARD' AND PASTE IT INTO YOUR MESSAGE. ASSHOLE.