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 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).

kind of boring. like, maybe aggressively boring. i'm not explicitly saying give me a gun and an enemy (actually, that'd be great) but having a majority of the obstacles appear to be 1) get good at flying (which i more or less mastered by the end of my four hours), 2) wait around for things to happen or unhappen (wow!), 3) walk around in mazes (exciting), or 4) dodge cacti (challenging) all sort of wears down on me and makes me want to do something else.

i guess to enjoy this game you have to have your eyes explode out of your head at the concept of spaceflight or be really uncomfortable about aiming virtual guns. outer wilds feels barely a step above walking simulators, something i don't outright dislike but would rather experience with the novelty of VR versus through a flat experience.

writing's fine but nothing really sucks me into the world like that one black hole sporadically eating other orbs. it's a reflection on myself, i'd say--i'm so tired of audio diary video games. i just don't fucking care.

honestly, the best way to put this is that i had more fun watching my friends play it than i did playing the game myself.

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.

there's a lot of different things i want to touch on for this and feel it very important to hit them all in the face of what is otherwise a frigid cold response from my friends in contrast of the critically warm reception mario odyssey has received otherwise. let's just jump right into it one piece at a time and bounce around like a plumber's boot off a hat phantom.

first off, i really loved the game. i loved the experience, and i had a tremendous time sifting through each world's nooks and crannies all the way up to the climactic end. each world feels so creative and bustling with energy and soul that mario games have lacked for, frankly, a decade, his previous entries in 3d on handheld and wii u feeling sucked dry of anything interesting. i loved the various enemy times and playing as them, i loved solving all of the double puzzles locked behind pipes and doors.

when it comes to moon collecting, the most important thing to keep in mind is how odyssey is neither aligned with 64/sunshine nor galaxy/everything else. each world is nonlinear but, rather than individual missions, the worlds are sandboxes outfitted with buried gems for mario to hunt. i like this. i like challenging the boundaries of level design and movement mechanics to reach interesting spots, and i like being rewarded for that. in odyssey, it's a moon or coins, but in duke nukem 3d, it was a message from the level master telling me i "shouldn't be here". and that was enough. i guess it explains why i loved botw, too and, like botw, you are not required to find every single moon on earth to beat the game. (i did anyway, because it was fun!) the only real offenders to this are the consistently boring moons--oh great, time to follow the dog around aimlessly. oh great, time to chase a bird around aimlessly. oh great, time to roll a rock around--you get what i'm saying? i did love tracking down captain toad, though...

i really enjoy physically playing as mario, too. no game from nintendo will ever feel as tight as 64 again, but it's a good compromise over the dreadfulness of his recent 3d games--even galaxy. the dive in particular is a lot of great fun. the worst aspects come crawling out occasionally, though--mario is SO damn slow, especially if you've mastered how to fly through games like sunshine. nintendo's insistence on motion controls is just ass, too. it's assy.

anyway, that's enough praise. this isn't a five star review.

outright, the soundtrack is garbage. absolute, pure fucking garbage, consistently letting me down over and over so many times i can't help but wonder of koji kondo's begging to be released. the best hit to come out of this mess of production is the surfer rock steam gardens theme, oddly complementing an atmosphere unlike surfer rock whatsoever with an incredibly catchy bassline and other organ wobbling. the rest is terrible. cascade kingdom is actually outright offensive, this generic galaxy ost leftover that's SO DUDE EPIC WOAH nonstop over and fucking over for however long you spent in that kingdom. this isn't terrible in galaxy itself when you're in and out of a level pretty quick, but when a game is designed around keeping the player busy in one locale for an extended period, god fucking damn does it start getting grating. another absolute shitter is a theme used much later in a lava area. it sounds, shit you not, like someone just searched "epic mario theme metal cover" on youtube. it's laughably cheesy buttrock. i'm not done, one more--there's a theme at the end that's apeing anime EDs in such a bizarrely american way that the whole thing falls apart and feels ridiculous. why wasn't jump up super--nevermind, it's all stupid.

other niggling things. like i mentioned, repeat objectives are ass. i don't want to break a rock on every world. i don't want to walk your dog aimlessly. this is boring. the bosses are also all really, really easy, and it's unfortunate that the "true" versions of them is locked away for post-game. i think the most frustrating aspect of it all is this treatment of the player like they're braindead--there are CONSTANTLY signs teaching game mechanics thrown around everywhere from the beginning (understandable) to the very end (what the fuck?) and when you read them, their "tip" is stapled onto your screen until you play out your monkey role for peanuts. it gets better. every time you transition to a new world, you have to mash through your partner explaining, for the tenth time, a game mechanic that's very, very difficult, such as "jumping" or "running" or even "jumping and running". it's such a joke.

all of that criticism to say--mario odyssey is far from perfect. all the more to say--it's still ridiculously, ridiculously fun, constantly inventive and creative with itself, and an overall joy to play through and experience. it helped me through my encounter with covid, and then some.


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 a horrible piece of shit. you can apply all the resolution tweaks and game altering mods all you want--you're still bandaging a rough corpse of a video game, a shallow followup to some of stealth's finest. basic movement is fucked, every single action is clunky and awkward, guard AI interaction is ridiculous, and the simplified level design leaves an ugly taste in my mouth. a game not even worth finishing its first level.

let's be straight forward. pistol whip is incredibly fun. reaching for a common vr cliche, you do feel like a genuine badass as you frantically point in all directions to clear your screen of well dressed adversaries. the obvious analogue is john wick, something pistol whip's achievements are more than happy to endorse, but it definitely feels the same. gameplay's solid and frantic and sweaty and exciting, some levels genuinely leaving me on my back. i always keep coming back for more gunning--more than i can say for beat saber.

let's hit the critiques. the music sucks--absolutely. pistol whip prides itself on hard hitting electro, but its selection seems to stem but from the worst of generic american EDM producers in a way that makes me frown at the idea of replaying most of these horrid levels. and believe me, i love electronic music--i cut my teeth on justice and sebastian and soulwax and jackson and--very few songs are emblematic of these, instead quite generic and obnoxiously drop heavy. there are a couple of really solid songs... that's it. a couple. an additional critique, and quite minor, is that a lot of the level design blends together. i swear to god, i've seen the same default_town_square setting in four different songs, and it gets old. i'd appreciate some variety.

bottom line--it's definitely fun to play. i just wish the music were better.

if it wasn't a shallow gacha, it's still a shallow botw-but-worse

why on earth the devs put such a huge amount of effort into art and animation and sound design and music all for a fucking call-and-response keyboard DDR game is baffling. it doesn't matter how good the game looks and sounds when it plays this boringly. a complete waste

This review contains spoilers

surprisingly ambitious, what with its fully animated scenes that render the whole thing less a visual novel and more an interactive season of anime, school days is a surprising product. while the idea of a vn looking completely like an anime theoretically sounds cool, the end result is the player has to sit through hundreds of scenes all using the same 3 or 4 faces/poses each character has (much like an actual vn, but far less appealing here). it gets old real quick and, because the game is presented like an anime, you can't just mash through dialogue as you read it, either, so you're just stuck with these boring 2d cutouts you've seen a million times. in this sense, you become desperate for the actual bite sized scenes where there is a modicum of animated effort on display, where a character does more than stare awkwardly while flapping their gums to "uhhh" and "umm"s.

the writing is pretty bad. the main character is a spineless, gutless scumbag, but i hesitate to call him a lovable one because there's virtually no personality to him. the player receives the tiniest snippets of what COULD be personality defining--in one specific route, he reveals his pot making hobby, and in another, he's able to cook. other than that, he's a self insert puppet... which isn't usually that bad of a thing in visual novels, given the medium, but it's made so much more offensive by all the decisions he makes that the player is NOT able to control or direct. on top of that, he acts depressed, dejected, and moody over literally every event, acting ridiculously soft spoken to a fault and spending most of his dialogue fumbling through ellipses. it's not really in a cute way, either. just aggravating, and it makes it harder to believe that he's unintentionally built up such a harem, too!

every girl loves the player, and unconditionally, too. i played through as many routes as i could, and only one of them really gave the main character, makoto, an actual punishment for his scumbaggery and inability to control which warm hole his penis finds itself in. even on routes where i specifically aimed to be a piece of shit, makoto still got away with all sorts of crap that love interests merely brushed off and continued loving him despite of. in this sense, school days appears to exist in some sort of bizarro world where you can just sort of fuck whoever you want, wherever you want, and still maintain the admiration and infatuation of girls everywhere. their personalities suck, by the way, and are easily defined by "this one is shy, but loves makoto" and "this one is timid, but loves makoto" or "this one is feisty and sarcastic and playful... at first, and then she becomes overly dramatic and loves makoto." in almost all girl-to-girl conversations, nearly none of them are able to pass the bechdel test save for ONE who manages to stir up a conversation about burgers and milkshakes.

i said i went on as many paths as i could and, truthfully, that was kind of a fun experience. don't get me wrong, the initial main routes of the two main girls are completely boring and melodramatic, but deviating from them purposefully (using the huge green love meter at the top) meant that i had to play a sort of balancing act while navigating choices to nudge the characters along in ways i wanted them to go. often times, things spiraled out in ways i really didn't expect. two endings even culminated in flat out disturbing (but appreciable) scenes where one girl, quite pregnant, got a little handsy with a knife, and another where a girl's head exploded like a plump tomato dropped from the sky. those were cool. one ending that really surprised me was it resulting from me making zero choices through the whole game (which is, in and of itself, another choice). it netted me a unique scene! how about that. after this review, i'll probably hit up a route guide out of curiosity to see what i missed, but i felt using that before a review would harm the experience somewhat.

anyway, the writing sucks, it's all very melodramatic, the main character is, frankly, a bitch, and no one in school days has any real personality or merit to them. but hey, it's kind of an interesting experiment, and you do bang some women.

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.

a definitive vr experience and one of the best games out there for it, but that doesnt absolve it of some of its issues (which is understandable--it is an early access title after all). combat ranges from either feeling excellent and extremely responsive to weird, floaty, and weak, and it all depends on what weapon you use. daggers, short swords, shields, hatchets--anything that's not too big works well. you stab, you swing, you slice, and it all has impact and visceral. in contrast, long swords, warhammers, claymores--these feel like garbage. they don't really SWING like you expect them to, and it ends up feeling floaty and weird. if you pretend the heavier side of weapons have a heavy feeling to them, they definitely work better, but not great. the warhammer in general just ends up doing things you don't expect it to, and not doing things you do expect. the spear sucks at stabbing particularly, but it's actually really fun to use as a two handed staff instead. archery is neat, but the limited arrows is kind of garbage and collecting more off the battlefield sucks, too. you can mod that out, but you really shouldn't have to.

anyway, your experience will vary, but it's a great feeling game at its core--it needs to be, considering there's no story or progression or anything else. you get gameplay, and it's gameplay for the pure sake of it, and it feels damn cool. my favorite and personal recommendation is to use dual hatchets and just rip and tear.

for reference, this was on the oculus rift s. i wonder how some of these weapons feel on the index.