bizarre. it feels like you're playing airsoft when shooting the ineffectual guns world war z aftermath, and i mean this as horribly as i can stress: these guns feel like nothing. no impact. no feeling. the sound is off--most guns dump their loads like they're afraid of someone walking in. the handling is off--there's virtually no kickback. the animation is off--there's virtually no motion. you pick up a shotgun and it shoots like a pistol. you pick up an assault rifle and it shoots like a shotgun. you pick up a heavy shotgun and it shoots like a shotgun shoots like an assault rifle shoots like a pistol shoots like every fucking worthlessly designed weapon placed into the hands of one of fourteen or twenty or however many of these strange soulless player designs. except the worn out asian mom with the sweater. she's cool looking. the rest look like they came out of a chuck e cheese arcade booth. you'd have a lot more fun with those arcade booths than you would with world war z, too--promise. in fact, i bought this game on sale for $19.99. do you know how many tickets that would get you at the house of mouse? all i'm saying is i know what i'm doing with MY steam refund.

i was talking with a friend the other day about progression systems in games--we reached a similar conclusion in that a game having a poor progression system is, well, worse than having none at all. i don't think i'm too zoomerpilled to always need some digital goodies to chase after, and i'm not against having something to work toward. but on that note... what in god's name are halo infinite's unlocks? color schemes? emblems? are you serious? we're locking being a purple and white spartan behind a paywall now? worse, the emblem customization has somehow regressed since the days of reach, players limited to only handfuls of combinations. why?

but okay, okay, fine, let's lock off colors and cartoon insignias. so i can work towards the specific stuff i want, right? if i want to be purple and white, i just save up enough exp to earn it? nope, lol, it's a linear progression system. you earn unlocks one ugly piece of armor at a time, the things you actually want stretched so far off into the horizon you could point straight up and see it on the other side of the halo ring. in halo reach, the grind felt rough, but you could at least outright save up for what you wanted and eventually deck out your spartan exactly how you wanted them to look. instead, this sort of backwards-ass system means players are just wearing whatever they've recently unlocked because they want you to know that they're level 69 every time they enter the spectator camera for t-bagging.

well, whatever. i can grind out some exp. i just need to play well, bag some kills, claim some flags, maybe take a double and triple kill here or there, yeah? nope. 343i certainly did take inspiration from reach in the case of its daily and weekly challenges, except they took it a step further and decided those would be the only way to actually progress. spend a game sitting pretty at the top of the leaderboards because you successfully kept yourself alive for most of the match, fending off enemies and working towards objectives, and you're rewarded with 0 exp because you didn't get 3 kills with the covenant nerf rifle or you didn't do 5 push ups or whatever horseshit 343i has in rotation. and i want to ask why this system exists, but why bother: it's designed so that player skill isn't rewarded and random happenstance is. you don't want your players feeling bad for not being good, after all, so let's punish absolutely everyone and keep the rewards nice and braindead.

let's go back to the original point. why is a bad progression system worse than no system at all? because with no system, you've got the game and nothing else. you dress up your guy the way you want, hop in with your friends, and play some damn halo. when you've got a bad system, you have a constant ugly reminder in your face that you're 100000 points away from unlocking a carpal tunnel wrist brace or hello kitty bandaids and all you gotta do is trim your nuts with the energy sword 7 times!!! horrible. i want to make my character look how i like, not sit here with the default goon set punished because i want to use more than two colors for my guy.

there's other annoying aspects to halo infinite's multiplayer, like how i can group up with friends and join a big team game only for the match to stick me in a squad with three stooges i don't even know. what the hell is up with that? why would you ever design a squad system like that? and the fucking ai voice, oh my god. it doesn't matter which shrill one you pick, they all sound like the sloppiest marvel movie seconds possible written by actual honest to god dunces. want to mute it? sure, but you have to mute the game announcer too in the same breath, and HE actually has useful information to tell you that isn't "OWWWWOE YOU GOTTTT THE LASER PISTOL SPARTAN! CAREFUL YOU DON'T SMOKE YOUR NUTS WITH THESE HHOHOHOHOWAAHAHHWA!"

jesus.

thank fuck i didnt pay money for this. figured fallout 76 could be fun with friends given that for all the things fallout 4 got wrong, shooting wasn't one of them. but you and your pals pop out of a vault ready for an adventure and just end up punching low level bugs and wall-e's scurrying around that die in less than two hits for an hour or so until you both get bored of wandering around what doesn't look like a post apocalypse and get off to do something else. oh, we saw a couple of players too but couldn't do anything about it because of the game's babyproofing pacifist mode forced onto low level players. i gave the intro cutscene a shot and some npc dialogue but then i was reminded no one at bethesda knows how to write anything that doesn't sound like if every black isle studio employee collectively suffered brain eating diseases. my favorite part of the game was having a point shop and currency shoved in my face before i even found the new game button, and if not that then the fact that there's like 5 different types of bullshit to buy on the steam page

yeah this isn't doing anything for me. it's tedious, repetitive, frustrating--similar reasons why i'm not remotely interested in speedrunning. at first, i thought i was just really rusty at prey so i went back and played through the base game again, loved it to death, came back to this, and i hate it. it's not as if i have too much trouble staying alive, either--my runs usually end with around 30,000 arkane fun bucks, but good lord do i not want to keep repeating these same objectives in these same areas with these same enemies. actually scratch what i said about staying alive, because dealing with moonsharks is a ball busting experience, running around with a brain hemorrhage is aggravating considering i'm not keen on listening to an audio loop of porn moans, and the time limit is just completely antithetical to what immersive sims are all about: slow, methodical exploration.

props to arkane for a ballsy ass move in that this dlc isn't even the same fucking genre as the base game, but all mooncrash does is affirm how much i hate rougeanythings and how much i probably won't buy deathloop

there is no game that better encapsulates the feeling of being physically held together by duct tape, glue, ambition, and cheese than sonic adventure 1. and here's the interesting thing about it: it's actually pretty good, despite. the ambition is there--it shows in the gorgeous graphics on display (usually), the insane attention to detail in window refractions and reflective surfaces, the mixing of various characters' stories as they intersect and collide with one another... and it all really does truly feel like an adventure, this handful of interesting locales to explore all interconnected to one another that creates a world felt lived in (more on this further down). the cheese is there--the story and dialogue is near absolutely miserable, standing in two different puddles: the left foot resides in so-bad-it's-good (and occasionally, occasionally, absolutely occasionally: so-good-it's-good) while the right foot rests in holy-shit-everyone's-talking-so-slow-i've-seen-this-cutscene-from-five-different-angles-please-move-it-along. and the duct tape and glue is there--sonic adventure feels like it's falling apart at the seams, a myriad of bugs working tirelessly to destroy (or enhance) your experience via collision errors, graphical glitches, camera angles sucked through vortexes and spit out through the fabric of reality...

but i said it's good, right? yeah, surprisingly, i'd say so.

while you start the game with sonic (it's his adventure, right?), you eventually go on to unlock several more, and they all have their own adventures, too (though shipping the game as E-102 Gamma Adventure probably would've resulted in fewer sales...). sonic, surprisingly, plays the dullest. his levels are an endless series of set pieces and gimmicks that essentially play themselves, almost to the point where you can just set your controller down and take a super sonic speed piss and come back to find the level successfully completed. it's the other characters who shine harder: tails gives the player a broken but hilarious recontextualization of sonic's campaign, amy pits you against genuine platforming, gamma is a (surprisingly fun) race against the clock (with guns), and knuckles is exploration dialed up. oh, there's also this rat named big who is coupled with horrific, teeth grating gameplay in which you play a worse version of sega bass pro fishing.

despite how aggravating it is to be locked into watching similar cutscenes repeatedly set to a story barely above acceptable for a children's animated tv show, it is admittedly really cool to see how the various characters play off of each others' actions, consequences, and choices as you yourself slowly put the pieces together in time for the finale. again, it makes sonic adventure feel like a very living, breathing place, and that goes double for the hub world and its npcs. bizarre, by the way. absolutely, ridiculously bizarre writing litters sonic's city that's localized in such a warped way i can't actually tell if it's good or bad. let me try my best to explain: npcs will sometimes have the flattest ass waste-of-seven-sentences to give you, or they'll drop a mind numbingly funny observation of their absurd diet, implying that all anyone can eat is burgers because... there's a burger shop and that's it. one thing certainly intentional is that each npc grows along the story's path, each realizing little arcs of their own. again--it makes it all feel so real and comfortable.

boss fights are probably the worst aspect of the game. they're either really uninteresting, or really uninteresting AND long. cutscenes are rough, as mentioned--they go on, and on, and on, and everyone but eggman sounds like they're acting with the very first take from the studio--tails in particular sounds like sega team kidnapped a genuine child. facial animations are destroyed beyond repair given they lip sync relatively well with japanese--english outta sonic makes him look like a psychopath. something bugs me for sure. and speaking of sonic, again, his levels aren't interesting gameplay wise. sure, the spectacles are interesting, but it's probably a bad sign when the most fun you can have with that blue rat is attempting to break the game with his bugged mechanics.

all that said, it is intoxicatingly charming, and i certainly wouldn't have bothered to finish the game if i didn't like it. it's not the absolute great game it could've been but, for what sonic adventure is, i appreciate a lot.

i'm still not over my copy of ghost trick being stolen by my ex. you seen how much these bad boys go for now on ebay? i bet she didn't even play it.

... anyway, ghost trick is one of those games that can best be described as "near perfect", or even outright "perfect" if you're a backloggd mutual of mine, apparently. and the game makes a solid argument for both: crisp animations, sharp art style, charming portraits, catchy bgm, captivating story, and a simple to understand gameplay system all combine to form one good ass goddamn video game. but there are little issues.

the prison segment trips up a lot of players. and, fair, it can be a leap to just assume you can do a certain maneuver (though a character beforehand lampshades the mechanic--sorry, i'm trying to tiptoe as carefully as i can to avoid spoiling). the fault in this part is a time wasting punishment for "losing", and that gets old. there's also a bit of the game where you obtain additional "powers" to use, but... they kind of freak me out, mentally. like, i'm barely holding myself together here working with the physics and know-how of just sissel himself, now i have to--oh man.

the story is just sublime, and character interactions are chock-full of soul and humor in just about every segment--except the main antagonist. he's so cartoonishly over-the-top, it's honestly grating given how interesting everyone is around him. there are better ways to establish an evil presence than maniacal saturday morning villainy. also, there are a few minor story beats that happen throughout that are.... very convenient, or sometimes completely unexplained (seriously, what is up with being called out? what was going on there? again, spoilers...)

but this isn't a 2 star review. it's 4.5, and that's because the complaints i've offered are minor. ghost trick grabs hold of you from the start with its intoxicating atmosphere and unique gameplay loop, and it just won't let go--not until you've discovered the phantom truth. of the detective. of the phantom detective. using ghost tricks. on the DS. unless you're my ex.

this game is awesome if your fetishes include unreal stock assets, enemies with sight ranges of two inches from their head, middle fingers to z-targeting, unresponsive health bars, or incomprehensible dialogue and story telling. i think i'm the only player who has ever beaten the first part and i say that with confidence because who else on god's earth has the patience to get through the first chapter. also, there's a mode where you can drive a car with all of its parts missing save for the driver seat around a foggy racetrack. the first best thing about clockwork pussy is its title, and the second best thing is that the writer tried very, very hard.

aggressively boring visuals meets aggressively generic rtx lighting meets aggressively generic soundtrack meets aggressively simple wait-and-see gameplay meets gorgeous, charming in-game instruction manual that outshines legitimately every other soulless aspect of this adventure meets aggressively tedious backtracking meets aggressively cowardly lack of writing, dialogue, and environmental storytelling whatsoever meets aggressively cute gator enemy meets aggressively one-note enemy designs otherwise meets thirty fucking dollars.