This is the best survivors-like I've played.

I've mentioned in a few other reviews that every single "survivors-like" is better than the original for one primary reason: the art direction. The art direction of Vampire Survivors is dogwater. The music sucks, the spritework sucks, the visual effects are obnoxious. Then you've got games like 20 Minutes 'Til Dawn kicking its ass just by sticking with a simple color palette.

The overall presentation of this thing is outstanding. Not only does the art direction of Picayune Dreams actually fucking rule (thanks ANDY LAND and co.), but the game itself doesn't make me want to fall asleep, thanks to both the ability to play the game at double-speed by pressing a button to skip the brain-off-no-thoughts-to-be-found level grinding, and the bosses.

I love the bosses.

People flip-flop between calling games of this genre "survivors-like" and "bullet-heaven", and while I think both names blow tremendous amounts of ass, there's something to note about the latter. Avoiding large swaths of slow-moving pathetic, easily-dispensable hordes of enemies feels very close to a shmup game, albeit with way less required skill. Picayune Dreams goes ahead and says "here's an actual bullet-hell boss. Have fun!" And then I do.

Plus, by having an actual plot and story beatable in under 10 hours (it took me 11), there's a tangible feeling of "okay, the game is over so you can take a shower and go outside now" missing from every other survivors-like I've played up to this point.

Here's to hoping this game signals a sharp increase in quality of Vampire Survivors bullet-fart games of its ilk, because Picayune Dreams clears.

If you like these kinds of games, play this one. And then stop. This genre sucks. This one's good though.

When I was five years old I was at a pizza place with my family and I asked my dad what "pool" was and if I could play. He told me that he didn't want me to play, and something to the affect of "it's for grownups." I held onto this kind of mystique about billiards and the overall atmosphere of the game itself for years after, and I only ended up playing my actual first game of pool at a summer camp when I was in high school. After that, some friends and I would very casually play billiards in my friend's basement every so often. I was never any good, but there's something very special about the iconic sound of the billiards hitting each other and sinking into the pockets.

Side Pocket nails atmosphere and brings me right back to that pizza place when I was five, complete with a small animation of a woman wearing a pearl necklace smiling at you after every level and a pair of floating lips next to the words "Side Pocket" making me think that maybe my dad was right about pool being a game for adults. However, it's stinky to actually play, and there are better billiards video games out there nowadays.

Anyway I'm pretty sure the reason my dad didn't want me playing pool was either because my arms and legs were too short and I wouldn't have the hand-eye coordination to successfully play, or because he didn't want me goofing off and whacking anyone with the pool cue, which is absolutely in my character to do.

AAAAAAAH!!!

...sorry about that. I saw a spider.

"AAAAAAAAUGH!!!"
"What happened?"
"Teddy bear fell over. :("
"Awww. :)"

-me and my partner while I was playing Part Time UFO

In 2019, my younger brother Paul tells me, "Hey brother, you should play Bloodborne. It's great, and I think you'd like it a lot." I don't play Bloodborne, for I am hopelessly addicted to Splatoon 2.

In 2020, Paul tells me, "Hey brother, you should get Bloodborne. It's $15." I don't get Bloodborne, for I am still hopelessly addicted to Splatoon 2.

In the summer of 2021, Paul tells me, "Hey brother, since you're here and you don't have anything else going on right now, you need to play Bloodborne right now. And then you should get it because it's $15. Also, I'm in a blood feud with Martyr Logarius." I try out Bloodborne, but have difficulty getting used to the controls due to Monster Hunter Rise-induced muscle memory and I keep healing myself instead of attacking. I do not get Bloodborne, despite it being $15, for I am still hopelessly addicted to Splatoon 2.

On Christmas day of 2021, after going to a local video game store, Paul gives me a neatly-wrapped video game-sized gift. I open it and see this box. Paul tells me, "Hey brother, you don't have an excuse anymore."

In 2022, Paul asks me, "Hey brother, you should play Bloodborne." I hadn't.

On Christmas day of 2022, Paul gifts me Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. He tells me, "Hey brother, people are saying that this game is genuinely enjoyable because the combat is good, and the dialogue is so over-the-top bad that it goes full circle into hilarious. Enjoy! Also, play Bloodborne."

If my backloggd daily journals that I keep are accurate, I played Bloodborne exactly one time in 2022, in August, and then didn't try it again until May of 2023, where I also only played one day, online, with Paul.

On December 9th 2023, I boot up Bloodborne. I create a new character, and make a deliberate point of making it my "main game I am playing at the moment" until I beat it.

It is January 14th 2024, Bloodborne was an outstanding video game, and Paul is correct about Martyr Logarius.

Also, I am no longer addicted to Splatoon 2.

The last time I played Pokémon Trading Card Game for the GameBoy was probably a few years after it came out in America. The original cartridge came with a promotional card that I no longer have. Pretty sure it was a Meowth. It was my first card game beyond Go Fish or Crazy Eights (UNO) via playing cards, and my 7-year-old brain could barely wrap its head around the concept of "strategy" or "games with Pokémon in them that played differently from the mainline games".

I didn't have any understanding of "deck synergy," and spent most of my time playing decks consisting of grass-types with "flip a coin, if heads, add a status ailment" effects, praying that the coin landed on heads 100% of the time, and becoming convinced that the coin-flip was either rigged or required specific timing that I was somehow messing up.

It's not rigged. At least not in the way I thought it was.

The furthest I ever got back in the day was (somehow) to the "Elite Four" of the game, where I would proceed to get stomped by the second Grand Master over and over.

Now that I'm an adult with experience and understanding of trading card game fundamentals, and that Pokémon Trading Card Game was added to the Switch's "Nintendo Switch Online" games lineup, I decided to give it another go and see if I could actually finish the game.

I overheard my partner and their friend talking about starting their own files of the game, mentioning that Water types are generally the best, and that Fire types are the worst, so obviously I went with a Fire deck. I can only assume that this applies to the other "and Friends" decks, but the Charmander and Friends deck sucks. I don't even mean in which it can't win, but in that it can barely even play the game. I probably found myself getting so frustrated as a child and hitting roadblocks of "I don't get it" because not only does the starter deck have way too few energy cards, but the only real fast way to get energy cards consistently is by dueling Aaron, a lab assistant in Dr. Mason's lab who gives you a booster pack of energy cards when you beat him. He's no slouch when all you have is the starter deck.

After getting enough energy cards from Aaron and grinding quick duels with the easier club member NPCs (and pulling a Charizard in one of the booster packs), I thought it would be funny if my deck pooled all of its resources into just getting Charizard onto the field to sweep teams. While very funny, this eventually proved to be inefficient and borderline unusable due to both Charizard's Fire Spin move requiring the discard of two fire energy cards, and that I only had a single Charizard card at the time.

So I looked through my cards and realized that a bunch of the Fire Pokemon have the move Flamethrower, which functions similar to Charizard's Fire Spin, except it does 50 damage instead of 100 (still very good), and only requires a discard of one fire energy card. Monkey brain activated, I pooled my resources together with the sole focus of using Flamethrower over and over again, and I eventually settled on the Funny Flamethrower Deck.

Visual representation of how the Funny Flamethrower deck works.

Visual representation of the Funny Flamethrower deck's biggest fear.

The Funny Flamethrower Deck was some of the most jank fun I've had in a card game. By the time it was ready, I don't think I had a single Medal (Badge equivalent), and with two exceptions (Joshua of the Water club and Grand Master Jack) I cleared the whole game with this deck alone.

After getting killed on turn one to the final boss thanks to an equally funny lost coin flip, poor hand including a single Charmander with 50 health, and the combination of this bullshit Zapdos card that does 30 damage do your opponent once it is played and Scoop Up, the satisfaction of completing the game after my younger self couldn't is extremely palpable.

Pokémon Trading Card Game is jank, bullshit fun, and a great way to learn the basics of the actual TCG itself, if you have actual interest in playing it in real life. However, modern Pokémon TCG has a bunch of new mechanics that I am not interested in even a little, so I'm at least glad I got to experience the old school edition of the game in all its unbalanced glory.

Also, I'm profoundly happy to confirm that Imakuni? was in fact real and not a fever dream I had.

Literally every single time I use a mechanical blender for making cookie dough or cake batter I'm transported right back to being four years old, wearing a child-sized apron, baking sweets with my mom.

I've been getting more into cooking since I moved out of my parents' house a few years ago, and it cannot be understated how good it feels to make food for others. People talk about love languages, but I think a very strong one for me these days is making soups for other people. I was lucky to grow up with a mom who loved making a wide variety of foods for the family. I've told her this multiple times.

I really ought to make her some soup.

Man, c'mon.

Pokémon is the most profitable video game series of all time, and if I had to count the number of times they cut corners with this game I would run out of fingers and toes.

There are plenty of great ideas floating around in this one in comparison to other Pokémon games, and I truly am looking forward to the possibility of an actually good and fun Pokémon game in the future. Catching Pokémon in real-time is an absolute joy, but as I played this the less it felt like a big freeing adventure and the more it felt like a checklist of chores.

The payoff was finally telling my friends that I finished the game so that I can play something else.

Best part of the game was throwing bean bags at boss Pokémon. The icing on the cake was waiting for the game to tell me to send out a Pokémon, ignoring it completely, and pelting the boss with more bean bags. If I'm being truly honest with myself, it was the only part of the game that I wasn't dozing off for.

If Game Freak releases Bean Bag Blitzer 5000 I'll buy ten copies.

Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration does a great job at demonstrating the importance and impact of the earliest video games, including context for the video game crash in the 80's, interesting perspectives of developers of the company, and like five or six different versions of Missile Command.

I've gained a tremendous respect for the Atari 2600 as a system, and while a bit jank by today's standards, there are some actually excellent games on there. Adventure is cool. Haunted House is cool. The 2600 version of Missile Command is a stellar port.

I've also gained a hilarious level of understanding into how bad the Lynx and Jaguar systems were at the time, especially when compared with the SNES and Genesis. Technically very cool systems, but their original games weren't very good or fun. Tempest 2000 for the Jaguar barely counts in my eyes because it's a remake of the original arcade game, but I can't stress enough how genuinely fun that game is, even in the current year.

I wouldn't pay $150 in the 90's just for Tempest 2000.

Tremendous respect to Atari for showcasing some of the worst video games I've ever played. This is a genuine compliment. I'm being as real as I can be. Nintendo would never.

Anyway, thanks for inventing video games for us, Atari. Very cool. :)

I was about eight or nine years old when I played The Legend of Zelda on the NES for the first time at my neighbor's house. I remember feeling incredibly confident in my Zelda knowledge and gaming abilities, since I had then recently beaten The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the N64 for the first time.

Because they are the same game.

I discovered that The Legend of Zelda on the NES is hard, clunky, and doesn't really offer much in the way of story (given that I skipped the intro at the beginning and didn't have any sort of instruction booklet on-hand), much to my dismay. Several years later, I noticed a recurring sentiment regarding the first Zelda about how it offers very little in terms of "explanation," and instead opts to let the player's sense of curiosity and adventure take them everywhere, instead of being told what to do and where to go by a little glowing fairy-creature. This same style of free-form exploration is reflected again in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a game I appreciate very much.

From the time I first played it to now, I have come to appreciate The Legend of Zelda for the NES very much.

Today is the first time I have played Atari's Adventure. I appreciate it tremendously.

My earliest cognizant childhood memories were formed during the time of the GameBoy Pocket and N64, so older arcade games and the Atari 2600 often feel like some kind of relic to me. I've been chipping away at Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration as a means of acquiring much-needed insight into video game history. I played my fair share of Asteroids on a family friend's computer, along with different versions of Breakout, but never had any concrete understanding of how important Atari games were for the context of video gaming as a whole. I'm getting there though, and Adventure was an enormous step for me.

Pong was important.

Breakout was important.

Adventure?

Fuckin' important.

It's got all the sense of wonder and exploration, simple rules, simple colors (out of necessity), and dragons that definitely look like ducks. It's all squares, and leaves much to the imagination. Not much in the way of story, no grandiose plot about being a chosen one, no advanced mechanics. Simply an Adventure.

And if I'm being honest with myself, I like actually playing it more than The Legend of Zelda on NES.

Not more than The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds though.

That one's my favorite. :)