A few screens into this you come across a hole in the floor. You drop through it by pressing down on the d-pad, and then the right shoulder button very slightly afterwards, not at the same time, slightly afterwards. It was only by overexposure to the AVGN's video on Batman games did I already know how to do this, otherwise I would fumble about with the controller until I would eventually get Brian Smyj to drop down, whom is playing the part of Val Kilmer, who plays the part of Batman who daylights as "Bruce Wayne". If you had played this back in 1995, you would probably have to consult the instruction manual that came with your copy of Batman Forever on Super Nintendo, assuming your parent didn't carelessly throw it out along with the box. The manual actually does detail your moves and how to pull them off adequately, it doesn't make it any less clunky or unintuitive, but it exists. However, this hidden move where you get Brian Smyj to drop through this conspicuous orifice is actually completely unmentioned in the manual, and I even made sure that it wasn't hidden in the warranty or in some character's profile. So in a pre-James Rolfe/GameFAQs era, you're pretty much guaranteed to be lumbering around trying to find out how you're supposed to get down in order to make progress.

That was the SNES game, I would like to talk about the Genesis/MD version now.

The AVGN did not do this version of the game, and there is only one guide on GameFAQs that specifically talks about this version, and it also fails to mention how to do this secret move that is needed very early to make progress. When I got to this part, I attempted to do a combination similar to the SNES version with pretty much every button on my six button controller, including the shoulders on my Retrobit pad despite them essentially just acting like extra C and Z buttons when plugged into an actual Genesis console. For the first time in what seemed like years, I felt obligated to bust out my phone and look up something that didn't have to do with cheat codes or passwords. Keep in mind once again that the manual fails to mention how to do this move, because it's easily the biggest riddle you'll need to solve in Batman Forever for the Sega Genesis/MD. It turns out that you have to HOLD C, and then press down on the d-pad. A very different input from the SNES version, and one that I find hard for anyone to figure out on their own back in 1995 without wasting an hour of boredom on it. Was this incompetence or nefarious design to get kids to waste money calling Acclaim's help hotline? Who knows, maybe Jim Carrey was running the company.

I went two paragraphs talking about the world's greatest detective getting utterly bamboozled by a hole in the floor, but that's honestly the biggest thing I can talk about other than this possibly being the most 1995 game that could ever exist, because you're not gonna find another time in human history where a Batman movie license tie-in is bone grafted with Mortal Kombat moves and inputs. It might be the biggest sellout game to ever exist, combining two of the most overpushed things at the time, all while not being able to have blood, because McDonalds would possibly withdraw on their agreement to sell Batman Forever licensed glassware mugs.

I briefly booted this up for a Geoff Follin tribute stream with some friends of mine for shits and giggles, before I closed it and went to Wolverine on NES. My weekend was full of morbid curiosity of a potential funny-bad game, only to be met with mindlessly boring gameplay where you smack wet noodles with enemies, carelessly shoot your bat dick out at the ceiling to try to find hidden rooms, and jump around trying to see if you can hit any background objects to make explode and drop health items. A hard game that is only hard, because it's an endurance round of buffoonery with no continues or passwords. The NyQuil-laced bank stage ending with a fight against waves of henchmen on top of a small platform where they could easily throw you off to your doom was the final nail in the bat coffin for me, despite me actually clearing that stage and stepping foot into a circus that had the gonads to force a time limit on me. The most fun you would get out of this is dragging a friend along in co-op, and gaslighting them on how easy the controls are and never explaining them, which is something you can already do in Cyborg Justice, an infinitely superior experience. Fuck Goof Troop man, it's all about ruining friendships with Batman Forever.

I would end this with the Nerd's closing line on his review of the game, but I've been beaten to that at least twice on this page, so I'm gonna use a little bit of one from another review he did of a game I actually kinda like.

It sucking fucks, it fucking sucks, it fucking blows, it's a piece of shit....and I don't like it.

0/10 I actually had a good time

In all seriousness and ignoring the cataclysmic impact this fucking skeleton had in general internet culture that still persists as a meme in the year of our lord 2024 ,—Undertale will be year 10 years old next year, holy fuck...— the fact this exists is pretty cool.

I kinda forgot this was a thing for the better part of 3 years and had nothing better to do today so I thought ''yeah, why not'', and whoopie fucking doo turns out the battle I liked back in 2021 is still pretty damn good, and I even beat it on my third try, and considering the sheer pain I felt in the real fight, I'd call that a big improvement regarding my skill and my sanity!

This is a wonderful tool to practice the fight, revisit it or just play it if you don't want to go through the entire No-Mercy route, which, fair enough! It has a couple of side modes clearly intended as endurance tests or more practice, but c'mon, we all know what we are coming for.

It's a shame that it's seems to be abandoned and a bit broken now-a-days, the color blue is non-existent so seeing the blue attacks is basically a no-no, which it isn't that bad if you already played the original, but if not.... yeah.... The funny skeleton man has a bit of funny extra dialogue because of it tho!

If anything, playing this made me realize how much I enjoy this fight and how much I fucking hate those bones that deal damage in the menu, who the fuck turned stage hazards on?!

Anyway yeah cool thing is cool, now if you excuse me, I'm gonna take a break and play something with less funny bones in it, like Smash Ultimat-OH FUCK ME I FORGOT-

I’ve been thinking a lot about storytelling in video games lately. Well, storytelling as a whole actually. What exactly makes a fictional world feel compelling to me? How should you best spin a yarn as to make the characters breathe, their struggles resonate, and their victories triumphant? Most importantly, if a writer did have the vision and the wherewithal to execute said vision, then how could they best convince their audience that their vision was worth their time?

This week, I might have come a step closer to realizing those answers by revisiting an old favorite of mine.

428: Shibuya Scramble is not just your ordinary traditional visual novel. It’s a crime thriller, a romantic comedy, and an investigative journalism drama all rolled into one. That description alone could sell the game, but the crazy part is that the narrative is just the icing on top of this deceptively layered and charismatic tale. The game's greatest strength is not just what it has to say, but rather how it says it.

As I've discussed previously, many story-heavy games have difficulty marrying their storytelling and their gameplay, often choosing to stratify their game into separate sections of explicit narrative and explicit gameplay. 428 Shibuya Scramble does not struggle with this whatsoever, for the interaction with the narrative is the gameplay and it presents its story in such a way where every detail matters. You see, 428: Shibuya Scramble operates in hourly time slots with several protagonists at once. The goal is to guide each protagonist on their separate storyline and ensure that every protagonist makes it to the end of each hour by making the correct decisions and avoiding untimely demise through bad ends. However, there’s a catch. Protagonists can reach bad ends on their own paths even if every decision they make within their contained storyline is “correct.” This is because these different storylines intersect one another in various ways, and decisions made with one character will ultimately echo throughout the hour, affecting the other protagonists in unforeseen ways.

As such, the player isn’t doing anything mechanically complex aside from reading text and picking the right options most of the time, which means that like the best detective games, 428 is really about the game outside of the game. The player has to figure out how the butterfly effect ripples across each hour, even as characters often impact one another without ever coming face to face. For example, one of the characters can become incapacitated by consuming a potent energy drink on the job; you can avoid this bad end by making sure an earlier character fails to provide his detective partner with the lethal sample. While the nature of these intersections is often unclear, 428 revels in this uncertainty. It’s not content with simply using its bad ends as punishments; rather, it grasps these bad ends as opportunities to inject additional lore and guide the player towards the truth. These bad ends are often light-hearted and comedic just as they are valuable learning opportunities, and somehow the game walks the tightrope between solemnity and levity without ever losing sincerity. Simply put, most story-heavy games are constantly asking the five Ws, but 428 Shibuya Scramble is one of the rare whimsical games that dares ask “What if?”

On a similar note, a lot of players tend to get frustrated by 428’s habit of barricading individual protagonist paths with “KEEP OUT” banners, but I find this mechanic to be a stroke of genius. In order to clear these barricades, players are forced to traverse other protagonists’ stories in the meanwhile and search for a “JUMP” point linking them back to the original blocked protagonist. By doing so, they’re often hopping around the hour and viewing events from multiple parallel perspectives, gathering more information to better grasp how the timelines intertwine. Moreover, the game fully commits to this idea of rounding out its narrative by even hiding JUMP points behind certain decisions that would otherwise have no bearing upon story events (i.e. “flavor text questions/decisions”) and certain TIPs (blue colored text that when selected, provides additional background). This keeps the player vigilant, as they’re constantly on the prowl for connections while soaking in every detail and considering every possibility to push the plot forward.

Of course, this is not to take away from the game’s multitude of other strengths. For instance, consider the game’s sound design. From hurried footsteps and screeching cars in high-speed chases to distant explosions and sirens spelling imminent doom, Chunsoft knew just how to punctuate every moment with appropriate sound effects. Another obvious selling point is 428’s reliance upon live action stills and full motion video, which aside from standing out from other sketched and animated visual novels, provides the game a sense of immersion and realism that interestingly often contrasts with the game’s over-the-top sense of humor. Finally, the actors do a great job emoting and infusing their lines with personality despite the lack of voice acting. Alongside the phenomenal character design, written in such a way where every character has obvious flaws yet remain every bit relatable, there’s a certain charm to 428 Shibuya Scramble that many of its peers fail to imitate. As a complete and tightly-knit package, its artistic decisions and gameplay mechanics do not simply capture Shibuya; they perpetuate the energy of the city, enthralling and surprising the player at every turn.

I’m often reluctant to revisit beloved titles. More often than not, giving old favorites another spin with a more critical eye or even thinking about them for too long causes them to deteriorate somewhat in my mind, forcing me to confront my prior nostalgia. It’s never a great feeling to question yourself if something you once loved was really all that great to begin with. 428 is the exact opposite of this. Don’t get me wrong; the game does have some rough points. The inability to adjust text speed and skip previously read text can be a huge ask for players with limited time (though if you’re playing on PC, the unofficial text speed patch alleviates this somewhat), and I find myself agreeing with others in that the true ending leaves something to be desired. I won’t deny that I had some apprehensions upon replaying yet another memorable classic.

Yet somehow, this game has lived rent-free in my head for over half a decade. I had intended to replay it for just an hour or two to refresh my palette, as I had already 100%ed it and wanted to move onto newer and grander adventures. In spite of that, I found myself with the exact opposite problem. I simply could not put the game down. 428 Shibuya Scramble is the rare example of a game that to me, never stops getting better. Playing through it again immediately reminded me of why I fell in love with video games to begin with, and it didn’t matter that I had seen the destination already; the thrill of the journey was enough to make me return. I’m sure that I could ponder more areas of improvement and potential fixes, though honestly, I can’t bring myself to care. There aren’t many games that I unabashedly adore and wish for more, but there are even fewer games that manage to spark my Imagination and leave me content with what I have. At the end of the day, 428: Shibuya Scramble is not just a triumph of the medium; it's a triumph of human inevitability, gathering momentum until coincidence and fate become reality. I may have become more cynical over time, but it's moments like these that prove that sometimes, it really does pay to believe.

I should probably go through Bandersnatch at some point, huh? Seems like that's the template for all these other Netflix interactive episodes.

Like Carmen Sandiego's interactive episode, this is perfectly fine as its own thing, but mostly just a cute diversion from the main series. There isn't anything as cool as the reward you get for seeing through the Carmen Sandiego episode, but it also doesn't have any glaring omissions the way Carmen Sandiego decides NOT incorporate its edutainment aspect. I do sort of think Last Kids on Earth works best as a serial narrative, but these characters are fun enough to spend time with that I'm cool with a quick one-off adventure like this. Sorta wish this wasn't the last thing to come out of the Netflix series, but what can you do?

I didn't get it in my playthrough, but I like that one route has the kids get distracted on a side project for an entire month, then just agree to pretend that it's still June's birthday. Pretty emblematic of the Netflix show's writing overall.

...yeah, I don't have a ton to say on this one. So, while I'm here, let me just say that I would've been all over the books this is based on, if they'd come out when I was in elementary/middle school. This is a really cool premise with a bunch of fun characters! I really appreciate how much stuff like Diary of a Wimpy Kid (which, to demonstrate my age, I know best as a webcomic) changed the landscape of children's literature and proved there was a market for these types of graphic novels, and how many authors have stepped in with their own types of genre narratives experimenting with this literary style. And a big, post-apocalyptic adventure narrative like this! It's gonna be a while before I have kids of my own, but it's honestly tempting to pick up some of the books anyway, just to see what those are like. Surface-level impressions tell me that the Netflix series sanitizes it up a little (and the interactive episode sanitizes that up a little more), so it'd be cool to see where it all came from.

It may be a stretch to suggest, but I fully believe Wolfenstein: The New Order is at least partially responsible for the "boomer shooter" revival that kicked into gear especially during the late 2010s. At the point of The New Order's release, first-person-shooters began steering away from the design principles of their predecessors. Large mazes, key hunting, arena-styled combat, and the ability to carry more than two weapons was on the way out in favor for more "realistic" directions. Shooters began to slow down in pace after the release of Halo, which popularized many of the FPS trends we began seeing in the 2000 for better and worse. Especially during the 7th console generation, FPS games began to bleed into each other with the same brown/gray aesthetic and mechanics, say for a few outlier like Singularity that would bring something new to the table. For the most part, every shooter during this period of time either felt like a worse Halo or Call of Duty.

Wolfenstein: The New Order succeeds at presenting a blend of modern and classic design philosophies that made it a truly unique shooter for its time, and still a bit of an anomaly to this day considering its scale and budget. Protagonist B.j. Blazkowicz presents this humorous blend of "down to Earth straight-man" and a Looney Tune: sensitive and quiet in many cutscenes only to transition into gameplay where you feel like a lightning-fast gorilla with a gun fetish. Melding the more modern, "cinematic (for lack of a better term)" direction of shooters of its current era with the bombast and fun of shooters of yore was exactly the direction the series needed, unlocking a hunger for more games like this in the future. The tonal differences between the story and gameplay almost feel comedic, but playing everything completely straight was the direction to go (an issue I have with The New Colossus a few years later).

Now passing the ten-year mark of The New Order's release, it's easier to notice and understand some of its faults while recognizing how impactful the game still is. While the general gameplay of TNO is a blast, there are a few segments of platforming, treasure hunting, and even just getting around are a hassle. Pacing is everything for a game with such high highs like this, so it makes sense to pump the breaks where needed. Sadly, most of these slower segments feel like a bit of a chore and artificial to extend the length just a bit more; it's hard to have fun when you're running around a sewer looking for a blowtorch when you just finished raiding a Nazi camp and blew everyone into little giblets. TNO additionally has a checkpoint issue when it's trying to push players to search as many nooks and crannies as they can for resources and collectables. The bridge level in particular has an awful checkpoint where I was attempting to grab what looked like a collectable, but died trying to jump to it over and over again, leading me to have to restart the level and loose five-plus minutes of progress about five separate times before I gave up from frustration. This issue is compounded by loading times, which seem to be fast enough on the SSD I have the game installed on, but having every little fall resulting in a loading screen gets old fast. I have fully-completed this game several times in the past (both the Xbox 360 and One versions), but I no longer have the patience to be as meticulous, especially for dorky Steam achievements.

Those small issues are only a fraction of the total experience of Wolfenstein: The New Order. Classic gameplay sensibilities mixed with modern design into a ten-hour adrenaline-fest. two-weapon limits? Get that shit out of here; we have seven different weapons, nearly all of which can be dual-wielded and/or have alternate firing modes. Skill trees? upgrades are dispensed by you playing well and tactfully, not spending artificial "upgrade points" you acquire through bullshit XP. This is the template the AAA FPS genre should have went but didn't. Thankfully, in the wake of this franchise seemingly being on ice in favor of Todd Howard's dream Indiana Jones game, the indie shooter scene has exploded (argually too much) and I firmly believe we have The New Order to thank for that.

drags cigarette "Man, they don't make 'em like this, anymore."

Bioshock Infinite is a weird game to look back on almost ten years later. I guess a bit of forewarning: I gave this game three stars because I had fun playing it, and not because I think it's this intelligent masterpiece like everyone did in 2013. I had fun with it, and I'm not ashamed to admit that.

I believe the biggest issue people have with this nowadays is that it uses very real, touchy subject matter in a way that's less than ideal. And listen: I get that. But at the same time, I don't think it's as bad as it's been made out to be. (im dum) To me, it's more a case of two benefactors than the one maligned force of malevolence. One, Ken Levine is absolutely an "idea guy," and the games industry worships him because it wants to legitimize itself. I refuse to call him an auteur because, while that theory has SOME credibility, it's an increasingly archaic theory in an ever-changing world--and that's when it comes to film. When it comes to games, you can't "fix it in post" because "post" doesn't exist. You can tell your team of level designers what changes you might want to see in a certain area, but generally speaking, making games is a very iterative process that requires a lot of creative talent. At any moment in time, the supposed auteur can be proven wrong. If nobody is there to tell him "no," he'll probably spend several years developing an ambitious, open-ended game with complex moral choices that doesn't run on the current hardware it's targeting--which my gut tells me is exactly what happened in Infinite's case. If there's the feeling that something's missing here, it's because there is. Factions were supposed to be more fleshed out, and the world was going to be more active. The two-to-three moral choices that show up were supposed to be twelve to twenty, and their impact was slated to be massive. In the finished game, it doesn't matter what pin you make Elizabeth wear or who you decide to throw the baseball at. Either way, you'll need to pick up a gun and shoot at people. The second factor is that, while it took someone a long time to tell Levine to be more realistic with his ideas, you bet your ass somebody was probably on board to keep things from getting too controversial. The mantra of the AAA market isn't just to make the biggest games possible but also to appeal to the broadest demographic they can. Occasionally, there's a game that breaks this mold. But those games are the exception to a long-standing rule, which Bioshock Infinite proves. Bioshock Infinite clearly wants to say something about America but pulls so many of its punches it's almost like watching a boxing match played in reverse. Much of what it has to say is gestured at but never explored because saying any more than it does would offend someone. If there's the chance that portraying a character a certain way will turn a demographic away, they put a centrist spin on the matter and say, "well, but the other side's not too good, either." It's not offensive to me, nor is it disgusting: it's bland and willfully ignorant instead. The political takes in Bioshock Infinite are probably the same ones you heard all the time in 2016 and during the Trump presidency, which might explain why many have found this to have gotten more grating over time. In my personal opinion, it's annoying and absolutely takes away from the overall product. But it's never so much that you can't have mindless fun with this if that's what you're seeking. If the idea of a game that tackles real-world subject matter in that way is indefensible to you, I can see why you'd hate something like this.

As for that mindless fun, I found it to be pretty engaging. The combat in Bioshock Infinite isn't groundbreaking, and it won't change the way you look at games. But it's solid, has a few pretty cool ideas, and is enjoyable to play with from beginning to end. The highlight of the show here is the verticality some of the levels have. It's pretty limited, but using a skyline to jump onto a ship so you can blow up its turrets before hopping off to a hook somewhere else rarely gets old. It's a feature that could make for a more exciting game if embraced for more than combat and minor traversal. As it stands, though, its inclusion still leaves a lasting impression and gives levels that would otherwise feel pretty empty some much-needed weight. The mechanic of using tears in the fabric of time to spawn in support items is also neat, although it's hardly as groundbreaking as the game wants it to be. There's nothing forcing you to switch between tears, and the two-weapon limit means that you might never need to use some of what's offered because the rocket launcher Elizabeth is trying to give you doesn't have enough ammo for the current fight or because you already have a much better weapon in store. There are also obligatory weapon upgrades which feel more tacked on than necessary. I don't mind weapon upgrades when they're done well, but Infinite's roster of upgrades only offers stat increases. That's bad enough, but paired with the two-weapon limit, spending money to upgrade a weapon is useless because you'll probably be stuck in a section without that weapon or ammo for it further down the line. But all of these pale when compared to what REALLY kills this game's pace: there's just too much combat. I know that feels like a weird complaint about a first-person shooter, but bear with me: an essential aspect of pacing a good shooter is called "quiet time." Quiet time, as its name spells out, is giving the player enough time to process each individual combat section so they don't all blur together. Bioshock Infinite does have this, but it's very inconsistent with how its use is handled. Sometimes you're given ample time to process things, while other times, it feels like a rush from one set-piece to the next. While I certainly had fun with this game, very few of its levels stick out to me for this reason.

All-in-all, Bioshock Infinite is an okay time if you're not willing to think about anything that happens in it and just go along with the ride. Looking back on it in this way, it's still a transparently flawed title with what could charitably be described as a hellish development cycle (if the differences between pre-release footage and the final game are to be believed), and if you're not willing to forgive the game for that, I don't blame you.

Quick edit: Apparently, there's a MASSIVE Wikipedia page dedicated this game's development, and uhhh...

" 2K later hired Don Roy in March 2012, a former game producer from Sony and Microsoft. Roy found that there [was] no effective playable build of Infinite, and Irrational had outsourced so much of the content of the game but failed to have any process to bring that back into their internal production line that the content was effectively lost, leading to a lot of wasted costs and time. Roy stepped in to streamline the production processes and try to bring the game back on track."

Yeah, sometimes it's good to trust your gut.

Here's the link to that page if you're curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_BioShock_Infinite

This is like, the only one that's conceptually interesting, and yet, Scott manages to fuck everything up the most right in this one. Kind of frustrating given that it does manage to build a pretty decent atmosphere while also having the single best character that came from this franchise (the minigame sequences are also pretty soulful, even though you can certainly tell that its gimmicks are so unintentionally straightfoward that you just can't help but imagine scott writing them up and thinking to himself "goddamn ain't I clever?". Subtlety is certainly something this franchise is uncapable of providing anyway, but I digress).

Well, if I had to give some props, this one emphasizes the fundamentals of the first game to an extent that makes them actually more worth of paying attention; in Fnaf 2, checking the cameras was a mechanic that was pretty much reduced to just staring at a single room to prevent the puppet from attacking (and very occasionally checking the vents because otherwise, most animatronics you could deal without having to look for the cameras). On this one however you can actually feel the structure of the stablishment that you're in, so springtrap movement's are a lot more logical, and the audioplay mechanic demands you to understand this, you can't just press this anywhere on the map (and given how gloomy and grungy the setting on fnaf3 is, you actually have to put effort on spotting springtrap's location, so despite this game being technically the easiest of the franchise, at the very least it's never obvious).
The presentation is also perhaps the best of all games exactly because it reaches the maximum of it's design theory without just going straight up hokey like everything else that came after (I give fnaf4 a pass considering the fact the nightmare animatronics are just fragments of a dream, so their exageration makes sense, but the rest of the franchise...yeah, you just can't convince me that those things were once meant for a kids restaurant - some of them just look like torture machines no matter in which way you look at it). Plot wise, despite being a tad heavy handed on this department (although sister location would be a lot more in the future), I can't say it doesn't depict the most peculiar aspects of this franchise's lore because it's quite the opposite, this and fnaf 4 have the least convoluted narrative and that on itself gives a lot more credibility.

This is where my compliments end though. Aside from everything, it's still a fnaf game, which means...yeah, it's terrible and boring...but at least a lot more immersive than the rest.

my ps5 decided to delete my save file because echoes of the fallen didn't download properly somehow. so i had to replay the game bit by bit. honestly, i think i hated the worst parts of the game less this time around, in terms of the experience of actually engaging with the "content". but then the spectacle did not wow me at all like the first time, so overall a surprisingly worse experience. hate the story still, has no idea what it wants to be and fumbles due to mixed metaphors all over the place and cowardice in approaching conversations about race and prejudice. it is what it is. easily my least favourite game in the series, as enjoyable as the combat is (which, despite impeccable gamefeel is still substandard in mechanics on a casual engagement level - i understand there is "tech" but basic engagement with combat in this game is just MMO rotations) i come to this series for compelling melodrama, interesting characters and thoughtful and new approaches to sci-fi and fantasy fiction which this game just does not give me. "we have a god to kill" 🙄. even at its most "attack and dethrone god" moments in the series there's usually something texturally there beyond this sort of "indomitable spirit of humanity" trite shounen anime approach. there's just so much more to the fal'Cie or the Occuria or Yu Yevon in comparison to Ultima as far as their animation of the thematic material within their respective games. i shan't get started on the "politics". it has none (in the sense of in-fiction political mechanics, of course there's so much "politics" in creating art, even a work as empty as this one) it's just a weird aesthetic layer of terminology and maps that ultimately don't really matter. i don't expect the dlc to impress me very much, but i will be keeping an open mind.


ughhhh i didn't know DLC is region locked, i have a japanese disc copy of the game, but i bought the expansions on the european store. this is the second time mr yoshida naoki has cheated me out of my money after giving away FF14 starter edition a month before the expanded free trial

It's even funnier the second time!... sometimes...

The Ratchelor may have been a simple web-browser dating sim parody but godDAMMIT was it fun; I enjoyed it quite a lot and found every single of the interactions with the rat-weirdos both adorable and charming. Looking back, the fact it was, and it still is, the first and only parody-dating-sim game I played probably was a big factor in me loving it, but that would also be taking a lot of the credit from it. This is the game where one of the rats is three lizards in a trench-coat like disguise and the best character by a long shot is a mole. AND IT STILL IS PEAK RAT GAMING HOURS.

Following that line, Season 2 is basically the exact same thing but with a completely new roster of rats, which is basically all I was expecting in a game called The Ratchelor Season 2, so in that sense I cannot complain at all… but I’m an annoying bastard and I’m gonna find something to rant about anyway!

Season 2 hits some of the same charming highs as the first one and in some cases it even surpasses the original’s funny factor, especially in the epilogues which some of them are now a riot, but at the same time, I kinda feel it has also lost most of the general impact the first one had; in the original Ratchelor, every single of the possible options for rat soul-mates is memorable and has at the very least one line that I found remarkably funny. Here, I’m struggling to think about characters that stuck out aside from the ghost, the funny ‘’EMPATH’’ guy and the epic unit that is Le Pix. Other than those, they are all… fine? Not bad, not particularly unfunny, but they also didn’t click or were as interestingly silly as the previous game’s faces, they were still silly, but not the special kind of silly, y’know?

Now I’m feeling like I’m speaking gibberish and like a downer, but I’m just trying to find the best way to say that this one just wasn’t as fun and entertaining as the previous one, and I’m also left with much less to say about it because of that.

It’s still a good time— I feel like the day a Ratchelor game feels like a waste of time will be the day hopes and dreams will die—, and I’m sure that most people that liked the original will find equal entertainment with this one, I just… I wasn’t expecting more, just maybe something a bit more creative and funnier with its interactions and dialogue.

Le Pix is still very much the GOAT of this game tho, I adore that fucking gremlin and no other rodent matches them in pure coolness… maybe Eggsalad…

É difícil para mim NÃO gostar de um jogo mas com o Alan Wake estive muito perto disso, a história realmente é tudo o que dizem e mais, eu aprecio a exploração do síndrome de impostor do Alan, das metáforas pouco subtis e o que eu assumo que seja uma recontextualização de como foi ter que escrever o Max Payne.

É uma história muito pessoal e isso é raro em videojogos, adiciona algo muito único à narrativa, mesmo não sendo o primeiro nem o último a fazê-lo continua a ser uma lufada de ar fresco.

O meu problema é com tudo exceto a história, a gameplay passa de aceitável a irritante, o jogo é geralmente janky e em momentos incontáveis atira-te tudo à cara, existe pouco horror no jogo, é só um shooter genérico a esconder-se por trás de uma obra narrativa muito gira. As DLC's oferecem uma exploração um pouco mais aprofundada de mecânicas introduzidas mesmo no final do jogo, contudo a primeira é genuinamente atroz e a segunda é o que o jogo devia ter sido: uma exploração mais calma e dependente da história em vez de 40 minutos a mandar tiros a vultos, 5 minutos de cutscene e mais 40 minutos a disparar para o ar. É quase uma pena que tenhas de passar por cerca de 12 horas para chegar ao ponto alto do jogo, que nem está inserido na experiência base. O terceiro episódio é puro aborrecimento e o último episódio devia ser mais curto, parece que eles puxaram os episódios ao máximo para poderem caber em time-slots de uma hora.

Let’s create the scene: you’ve come in after a shit day, you really need something to cheer you up. You just sit around looking at your phone to see the latest game news. You then choose to see whether or not there’s any new switch games that have released (simply out of boredom) and then you see chapter 2 of deltarune has been ported over to switch at last. You quickly boot up the game and hop into the chapter and wow. Everything about this chapter was improved from the first chapter and I love it.

The story is improved heavily with new characters and expansions from characters who didn’t do much in the previous chapter (Noelle, berdly, etc). The story takes them to the cyber world where they have to close another fountain created by the ‘queen’. The writing for the chapter is just as good as the previous chapter and the characters feel like a major improvement.

As for gameplay, it’s also improved. Now, not killing enemies actually does something! You can now ‘recruit’ them and they’ll come over to your town near ralsei’s castle. There is also the secret possible ending which I won’t spoil but is very eerie and interesting.

Overall, this chapter was an excellent improvement on the foundations the first chapter lay and I can’t wait for the next few chapters to come out.

Don’t rush it Toby. You deserve to take a break when you want to and not to over work yourself. You’ll probably never read this but we’ll enjoy the game you finish at the end of the day.

Major improvement, wonderful soundtrack, berdly has zero rizz, the ferris wheel :>

You know how sometimes that there are things that just make you happy? Like, make you forget the wrong in the world and just put a smile in your face? This. This is it right here.

Toby Fox's work has always struck a cord with me but my god, Deltarune Chapter 2 is just... everything. It has a certain energy, a certain love, a charisma that few other games have, and it can be both a fun travel as much as a scary one, but it's always entertaining and lovely. The only reason this is not a 5 star is because it's not the full package yet, and I want to wait for the full game before giving it the perfect score, but the fact that this is totally free still bugs my mind, just...... just play it man, it's a fun one.