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.

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

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.

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.

let's lay it all flat: paper mario: the thousand year door has much less interesting level design and enemy variation than its predecessor on the n64. while paper mario 64 goes all in on a diorama aesthetic, ttyd's stylistic choice is the stage, the drama, the theater, and the long rectangular hallway design that reflects such, as if it's all continuously moving before a curious audience. i appreciate this, but much less so do i when backtracking is so prevalent--it's like the worst aspects of shy guy's toybox and flower fields back for round 2. and let's be clear--i'm not complaining about the backtracking in, say, chapter 4, because your circumstances differ (almost) every journey. but it's that last backtracking, and it's the backtracking in chapter 2, and it's the monumental one all done for a piss-take towards the end, and it's everything else--it's cruel and stupid, a transparent attempt at lengthening out the game. and with the enemy designs, it's disappointing to face so many recolors when even paper mario 64 was able to pull out some unique final creatures to spar with in its finale.

and on one more negative comparative point: ttyd is so fucking easy. like, leaps and bounds easier on the player than paper mario 64 is, although i hesitate to describe whether or not this is a legitimate problem. why? well, a lot of the ease of access to ttyd comes in the form of skillbased timing--press well and defend against attacks, but press perfectly and you'll completely negate damage. that much is all on the player and an interesting way of forgoing standard jrpg grinding. but then there's just general cheese, like power punches and charges and multibonks. and then there's fucking danger mario, although that's hilarious so whatever.

... lots of negatives, right? and yet, 5 stars. paper mario: the thousand year door is one of the few examples i can point to where a game's writing and aesthetic can more than make up for its faults, where the story progresses with a great flow and rhythm, complemented by well spoken characters not content to stay in the background like mario's 64 bit partners. the game's easily my biggest writing inspiration: when characters speak, i pay attention because it's always funny or interesting. when the plot develops, it does so with simple, tangible consequences and causes and effects. when new chapters start, there's such an indescribable amount of excitement that wells up within wanting to know just what could be in store next... and how can it disappoint when locations vary from wrestling goons at an arena in a bid to win the champion belt or leading a revolution within a massive tree against its invading occupants or solving agatha christie novels aboard a train in a doubling down of shiver city from paper mario 64?

that last bit is important, because something i've noticed between replays of these two initial paper stories is a series of parallels: thousand year door does so much of what 64 does, but grander. both games see mario sailing to an island, but one has it off the back of a whale you briefly meet before while the other has you paired up with a crew you've assembled, then besieged by ancient spirits and shipwrecked onto what is ostensibly deserted. both games see peach baking an item, but while 64's is a cake, ttyd's is an invisibility potion to help her infiltrate the head office of the head goon of the head terrorists, dude. they both have trains and trainrides, murder mysteries and penguins, a goomba who'll prattle off about every npc and location in the game... but ttyd does it better.

aesthetic's incredibly unique, too, and also a big inspiration on myself. while 64 could best be described as a binary tool heaven a la mspaint, ttyd is the now defunct macromedia flash 8, every character a saturated in color motion tweened black outlined standout. combat felt stiff in 64, but ttyd contrasts such with the smoothest you could ever anticipate. and the designs! 64 has a goomba with... a hat. and a koopa with... a scarf. and a bobbomb that's... pink with angel wings. exciting. thousand year door has a goombella decked out in archeological gear, a koopa covered in bandaids and casual wear, and a sea-salty bombomb donning an admiral cap. pretty fucking stark.

also the music fucks an insane amount.

no need to worry about spoilers, but goodness, ttyd concludes so satisfyingly. it's a story you can tell was thought out right from the start, and the way it reflects all your journey up to its ending... yeah, that's ttyd for you. a game with something to prove, a sequel that wanted to not only build off the foundation of its predecessor but carve out an entire world for itself. that's ttyd for you. oh, but also, some villains should never be forgiven, you know. not everyone changes. anyway...

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.

it's bursting with charm, it's deceptively simple, and it doesn't really overstay its welcome. i really enjoyed figuring out the different boss fights and all the varied places the game sends you. it's impossible for this game to be worth five stars, however, and it is because of its complete and utter lack of explanation concerning a crucial mechanic. indeed, the game has no tutorial, and it doesn't need one for the most part, but if you don't know how to exorcise enemies (which, by the way, costs points on every use and doesn't even always stick...), you can't finish the game, and there is absolutely nothing in your playthrough that'll warn you of this.

that's just crazy.

welcome, agent. you are america's most clandestine weapon, a secret kept even from the president because obama can't know all the crazy earth shattering work you're doing like bugging terrorist organizations or punching brown people. your mission is simple: shoot off a bunch of marvel movie one liners and spend hours crawling around in the same middle eastern environments every crouch high wall shooter was just obsessed with at the time. what, you thought a game about being a secret agent would be all tuxedos and dangling from the ceiling? well, if it is, none of that certainly happens in the game's first four hours (and believe me, there's a lot more sand world to go on my end). don't fret, though, because you want that james bond smooth talking, yeah? well there's definitely conversations--you get vague dialogue options set on a quick timer that make people like or dislike you based on your schizoid responses (if you play anything like me). you should have a good grasp of this by the way because you sit through, like, a twenty minute long lecture given by your boss who's concerned you haven't yet been briefed on what "talking" is.

well okay, so it's the desert. but is it fun to play? well, if you play stealth you get to face a threat that back and forth wavers between intellectually disabled and eagle eye replacement surgery, and any time you die (or get caught and don't want to spoil the ghost run), you have to load an arbitrary checkpoint (which happens before new dialogue, so you'll hear it every. single. time). and you'll get caught for an amazing amount of reasons--you'll use the cover system to hide behind a wall only for the wall to not actually fully shield you so you get spotted away. you'll walk on sand outside and a bad guy on the other side of an iron door will panic that the base is under attack. and sometimes the game will just decide they get to spawn in full alert, those bird eyes scanning right through walls with infrared.

well, what if you just roll with getting caught? yeah, ethan hunt's definitely killed a few, so you can too. and i say go for it and time how long before you realize you're just now playing a straightforward third person military shooter, 100% completely unchallenging. and let's run back to stealth for the topic of unchallenging because, again, that ai is just insanely stupid most of the time when they're not on alert. this is no doubt an accommodation for the game using a checkpoint system, given that really REALLY tough stealth would just be a nightmare with that. but this is a horrible trade off, what the hell? why not the opposite--smart ai and a manual save system? not like we don't have games like deus ex or thief out a decade earlier helping lay that sort of framework.

i like that the game's an rpg and has different areas to allot skill points and upgrade, even though most of the upgrades feel really, really useless to a morally acting agent. i like that the game has conversations, even though the commitment to having conversations realistically flow comes at the cost of saying really stupid, shitty things you never would've intended had you known what you're psycho of a character was actually going to say. i like... two of the hacking minigames, i guess. lockpicking one is total ass, but the other two are alright. i know--i'm scraping the bottom here trying to find anything positive to say, because it's clear that there are some interesting aspects to the game otherwise i wouldn't have bothered playing past the agonizingly boring first twenty minutes, but here we are.

if there is a better game hidden further in, i am very sorry they don't lead with it, and i am very sorry they hedge their bets on another fucking afghan sand-em-up aesthetic. apparently this game isn't even offered for sale on steam anymore, and you know what? consider sega doing you a favor.

Saying Half Life: Alyx was made for virtual reality is a factual statement. Declaring that virtual reality was made for Half Life: Alyx is ambitious, yet it's exactly what I stand by.

What am I to really write when penning words alone feels hollow? I don't want to tell you how fun it is or how immersive it feels or the genuine tension you'll experience, the sweat that'll mount on your brow. Words don't work! I want to take you, you who are on the fence of whether Alyx is worth playing, you who believe VR to be a gimmick, you who couldn't possibly care less about a shooting game, and I want to slap a headset on you and push you forward and have you PLAY it! Because it is only when Combine forces are firing upon you and you scramble to find cover, shoving boxes aside and pulling out drawers in a desperate bid for ammunition that you can understand why Alyx exists. It is only as you step through the streets of City 17 just as well as you pass under and into the innerworkings beneath the city do you understand how impressive the scale of Alyx is. It is only as you inch forward, slowly--ever so slowly--through a building of shatterable glasses and corked wine bottles, accidentally bumping into a drawer and failing to catch the now smashed vodka--an alert to all who dwell there--that you understand how immersive Alyx is.

But I will defer to some concrete notions and let you put the rest of the pieces together. First and foremost, Alyx does wonderfully by the Half Life series--City 17 is more than a return to home. It is built upon, elaborated, expanded in ways that make sense and ways you never could've anticipated. It is lovely to see the Combine once again, and it is lovelier to put a bullet in them. The level design is superb, as all Valve games are, and there are several memorable locales that I fail to shake days, weeks after.

The biggest compliment I can give is how Valve solves the "VR problem" when it comes to grabbing objects that are simply too far away. In some games, you have no choice but to go up to it and pick it up yourself. In games like Boneworks or Blade & Sorcery, you instead can use a Star Wars-like "force pull" where you hold out your hand, press a button, and the object slowly comes into your hands. The issue with these solutions (and lack thereof) is that it never feels elegant nor natural--it feels, instead, like a growing pain of not being really in your world. Personally speaking, I'd always find myself purposefully avoiding using the aforementioned force pull because it just felt like cheating VR.

But what does Valve do?

They make that cheating a part of the gameplay. The gravity gloves become a real world item, a real world tool utilized by the player. When you see an object from a distance that you want, you may outstretch your arm until the object is in your sights, and then yank the item towards you. Flying in an arc, it hurtles in your direction to which you then must catch it. It's amazingly interactive, and it's a simple gameplay motion that never gets old. I applaud that.

There isn't really much else I can offer. If you do not have VR, bide your time. Alyx is not a game to be played with the sticks and stones you're used to. It's the future.

there have been so many bad games ive played. halo 4. nu thief. so forth. but i cant really bring myself to hate any of them--just a great distaste or disliking, i guess

but this shit right here. this is easily the worst video game i've ever played in my life, firing on all cylinders as a completely miserable experience to both established paper mario fans of old and approachers of new. an ugly art style plastered with generic, boring designs mixed with a soulless soundtrack and obnoxious dialogue all make for an ugly exterior, but all of this could be good and it still wouldnt save the baffling gameplay. who in fuck thought it would be a good idea to make a combat system where the only winning move is to not play? i think i treated sticker star like a stealth game with all the running past enemies i did, considering the combat consists of wasting your resources and giving you nothing but coins for your effort, a complete waste of currency. when you're not surviving these encounters, you're either solving puzzles that range from brain dead easy to "this is legitimately not possible without a strategy guide on hand unless i want to spend three hours wandering around aimlessly." this game will never fail to not make me angry in some way, and i feel even angrier knowing that, slowly but surely, a new wave of defenders is building for this shitty revival of paper mario.

i was pissed off back then, i'm pissed off now writing this, and i'll be pissed off forever. fuck this game to hell.

in a way, i feel very spoiled by having played paper mario the thousand year door first in the same way i felt spoiled playing saints row 1 after having ventured through its sequel in which every single concept was built upon to soaring heights, because that's exactly what's going on here. paper mario 64 lays out strong concepts: a battle system that, despite being turn based, feels very involved and greatly rewards strategy just as much as it does reaction time and timing. an aesthetic that celebrates simple, cel shaded art displayed on various dioramas atop dioramas. writing that isn't afraid to get cheekier than mario ever has before.

but all of these named concepts are half baked, its sequel completely forcing paper mario 64 into its shadow given its sequel's focus on mastering that combat, mastering those dioramas, mastering that cheek factor. let's examine each point closely.

paper mario's gameplay is simple but effective. you've got your health, a pool of special action points, some items masquerading as stars, and then the combat itself which exemplifies small numbers... 0's, 1's, 2's, and so forth, thank god. time your actions and you'll deal more damage, time your blocks and you'll lower the consequences. but it isn't the most rewarding: badges are gimped at the paltry 30 point cap, limiting your toolset, and that toolset itself is a little ridiculous when some badges are retired by "improved" versions of themselves (compare charges and power smashes/jumps) and others being just point hogs (why in fuck is a 20% chance to dodge a whopping 10 points total? that's a THIRD of your entire badges!). and of course, there's no way to fully negate damage with perfect, precise timing--a very, very satisfying improvement made in ttyd.

paper mario's locations and locales are... just alright. they follow the "mario format" so to speak: grasslands, desert, forest, jungle, ice world--but not completely. the grasslands and desert are ho hum, but that named forest is actually a pitch black one with twists and turns that leads to a haunted mansion which leads to a dried up gulch which leads to a stealth mission within a large manor.... and that's pretty incredible. there's also a miniature world mario visits, which conceptually is cool, but in action turns out to be a backtracking hell (something ttyd did not learn from, unfortunately). but beyond these two, the locales mario visits end up being about as bog-standard as they come (minus a murder mystery...). they're by no means boring, but they're foundation laying, and what is built upon them in ttyd is....

anyway, the writing. i don't really know what's going on here. there are moments where it's hard to hold back laughter at just the absurdity of a moment, such as a flower pointing out her assaulting miscreants and choosing to randomly include a passer-byer with comical timing, but then there's also a diary kept by your brother where most of the entries lack any sort of punch at all, and you wonder why they even bothered. who's at fault here? the japanese devs? the american localizers? it's strange how half of paper mario 64 can make you smile and the other half can leave you with a straight face. your partners also get it the worst, here--they have nearly zero personality aside from their introductions. you can sort of tell as you play through that the writers get more into the groove and start handing out unique lines, but it's a little late on the delivery. of course, not to worry... ttyd doubles down on it and spit-shines the writing into absurd heights.

while i've spent the entire review denigrating the experience and offering its sequel as a worthier play, by no means would i ever suggest anyone skip such an interesting first entry in the paper mario series. it's definitely good! it's very good! but the shadow it lives in is massive, and perhaps paper mario 64's worth playing if only to see what improvement from game to sequel can truly be.

... oh, but that shouldn't be the last note to leave on, actually. i know what you want to read: what did paper mario 64 do BETTER than ttyd? and actually, a few things. there isn't a single chapter in the sequel better paced than pm64's island chapter. the reoccurring rival of an egg shelled turtle is enormously endearing and his absence in ttyd is missed. the binary art is also very endearing, although the flash 8 presentation of ttyd is by no means bad, either--just different. the soundtrack, helmed by koji kondo, is phenomenal of course, although ttyd's is no slouch, either. and i absolutely adore those fanmail letters mario can receive, complete with original art and everything--such a concept is sorely missed in paper's sequel.

but, ah... yeah. that's it. it's a great game, and then you play ttyd, and suddenly it becomes demoted to "pretty good". this is by no means a bad thing--i thought about this earlier with artists who create landmark albums despite having previous, great entries. said landmarks do not delete the existence of what came before and, in fact, it's worth checking out to every fan of the artist to explore the discography beforehand... because it preps the appetite for a feast not too soon after.