"give 'em a gobful!"

whoo boy, how to even begin with this one? team fortress 2 is my favorite game of all time, let me just get that out of the way quick. I've been playing this game since I was 11, and I'm 20 now. it has fun gunplay, weapons, lore, characters, maps, and cosmetics. the years have been very kind to tf2 in most regards, it still holds up amazingly well, and is free to boot. every aspect of this game is so well made, you can spend thousands of hours, like i have, and not even come close to mastering everything in it. only issue i have is the bot issue you're probably aware of in this game. casual is a lot less fun, and valve better step to the fucking plate with it, for real. i have some faith in valve, though i can't say i like the company too much. they'll probably do something eventually. either way, tf2 is an undying titan. so many games have come and gone, but not my baby. she's still here, and she won't leave. the trailer says it all 'the most fun you can have online'

"playing it, that's not the hard part. it's letting go"

fallout new Vegas is by far, in my opinion, the best fallout will ever be. the 'fun' gunplay of 3, but with the amazing writing of the older fallout games, whose gameplay is, to me, not fun whatsoever. this game has a wonderfully political conflict that is just so fun to get sucked into, I still see hour long video commentaries on YouTube over this game and the politics in it. almost every quest has two or more options with substantially different outcomes. the main quest especially gets across the feeling of change. you can still find people arguing what the best option for the Mojave is, and I think that's a sign of a well written game. this is the kind of game I will always come back to. I love it dearly, and I can only hope fallout can somehow reclaim even half the glory this masterpiece has.

"is this the one with the British robot people want to fuck?"

portal is a solid, well written puzzle game, but is totally outclassed by it's kid: portal 2 I would say there isn't even much of a point to picking this up before portal 2. it's very short, a lot less diverse than 2, and also handles the visual aspect of portal travel nauseatingly. it's a solid puzzle game, but if you play portal 2 and play this you will feel this games age. with all of that being said, it's a good game! just totally outclassed for years now. it's worth a buy during summer/winter sales you can get it for like, less than 50 cents. i wouldn't pay full price for this one, as much as i like it

"Isaac and his Isaac lived alone in a small Isaac on a Isaac."

I feel terrible for being this mean to a game that is essentially the momma to one of my top 5, but I need to be honest about my experience with this game. this game runs at like 20 fps at best, glitches like nothing else, has like 20% of the content repentance era Isaac has, and no controller support which is honestly the biggest death sentence for this game, Isaac on keyboard is awful imo. obviously it came first so the content issue isn't this game's fault, but it's another reason you shouldn't even be fucked to pick this one up. it doesn't help that I have no nostalgia for this game, I was only like 13 when afterbirth came out? so that's the one I grew up with. I'm sure this game was great when you didn't have other options, but now you do. this game got outclassed, and there ain't much point to it now. play repentance

"wanna defeat capitalism? throw a bunch of stuff in an abandoned building!"

stardew valley is the kind of game where there's no good way, at least for me, to put into words why it is so amazing. there's a lot I could praise. the characters, plot, gameplay design, music, how cute the game is, or that it was made by a single talented young man. but none of any of that really matters for me in regards of this review. the most important thing to note about stardew valley, is the emotion it makes you feel. from the second you step off that bus, you are now in a world separate from your own. stardew has this amazing power to just calm you down, it's something another video game has never been able to do for me. the town of stardew valley, it's citizens, and just about everything else you can see or hear, makes it so easy to forgot about your real world problems. you are no longer someone who needs to constantly worry about making rent on time, you're a farmer who gets to pet 20+ every single day. you're not so tired from work you just lay in bed, you live every day of your life in stardew to its absolute fullest. more than anything, stardew is an escape. it's an escape from most, if not all, worries of modern society. nothing matters in stardew, but you feeling good, and helping others. this game is truly magic, and i would never be able to articulate this to you accurately enough to do justice to this game. please, play this game immediately.

"don't say it don't think it don't say it don't think it don't say it don't think it don't say it don't think it"

memes aside, this game was actually really fun during a time. though, i only think it's fun if you have friends. public lobbies are just blatantly unfun to play in. no one really touches it anymore, but it would still probably be a good time. i also feel a need to be a bit nicer since my favorite streamer, jerma 985, is an unofficial face of this game. a simple party game. can't go wrong. make the memes stop.

“You know, the world could always use more heroes”

Before I start this review off properly, there are a few things I will tell you from the get go.
1: this will have little to do with the actual gameplay of overwatch. Go to ign if you really wanna know how the gameplay in a 5 year old game is
2: this review will be focusing very heavily on my personal experience with overwatch. If that isn’t something you want to read, bye.
3: This will probably be my longest review ever.

With that out of the way, it’s time for me to tell you how Overwatch has become the lowest rated game i will ever have on this website.

My story with overwatch started out not too different from a lot of others i’d imagine. I was a 15 year old kid with no money. From one source or another, I heard about a free first person shooter demo people were going crazy over: some game I knew nothing about, from a studio I knew nothing about: overwatch. Overwatch didn’t have to wait very long to draw me in. I believe I installed it within hours of the open beta going live. I was hooked then and there. I loved the world of this game, the characters, the art style, the gun play, just about anything you could really think of. I played that beta all day, if i wasn’t at school, i was trying my best to learn how to use high noon (and failing at it).

I could not get enough overwatch, i would say ages 15-17 were for me were essentially dedicated to overwatch. Making friends in overwatch, watching official overwatch media, speculating about overwatch, and most importantly, playing overwatch. For those first two years, it really was just me, a ps4, and 20 something heroes that held my attention better than most other games did. I made some good friends at that time, but by the end I held onto none, with the exception of a single one of them (who is now my best friend, go figure).

Around the age of 17, the faults of the gameplay of overwatch seeped in like a vile, red wave and broke the rose colored glasses right off my face. Losing started to annoy me immensely, and victories felt hollow. steam rolls happened every match regardless if i won or not. Trolls got to me more than ever, and I hated blizzard’s approach to balance at the time. This all ended up culminating in me not seriously touching overwatch for years of my life. I let it go for a very long time, and I can honestly say I was happier for that choice. I needed to do that, and should have done it sooner.

But that didn’t last forever. Eventually, Overwatch sinked its talons (ha ha, get it? talon?) right back into me and drug me right back to that hellscape i walked out of ,who knows how long ago now. You wanna know what I found out? I liked it a lot more then. Games felt more balanced. Heroes didn’t piss me off anymore. It actually felt good to play it occasionally, in small doses. Usually only during events, but that isn’t really the point. For 2 or so years, I continued on like this with one of my favorite franchises. Dropping by to say hello, and walking out before either of us grew tired of the other’s presence. It worked for me. I brought friends sometimes, had a fun time working towards certain skins, it could be a very fun time at points. But, as of a few months ago, things changed drastically, and this is the main point of this entire review.

Sometime in the last summer of the year I typed this review, the state of california found years worth of evidence pointing against the activision blizzard corporation. Blatant abuse of women and poc in the workplace, truly disgusting things i will not say here. I am sure if you’re on a site like this, and are somehow reading this part, you already know all about it anyway. Before I go any further onto my thoughts on this, the one thing I need to make abundantly clear is that a video game is not my main concern with this situation. I care much more about the human lives being abused than a stupid bundle of pixels. In no way does overwatch overshadow the innocent women harmed by the degenerates at activision blizzard. The reason I will be focusing on Overwatch is because this place is specifically for that.

It took a while to sink in, and even longer to understand why this news hit so hard in regard of being an overwatch fan. The most obvious thing is I simply had to leave it behind for the last time. A final goodbye that was simply not on my own terms. An unsatisfying slap in the face and a boot out the door. Or, you might think that it was because I could no longer be a fan in any context, and that stung as well. But no, neither of those things is what brought me here today. The reason why I hate overwatch with every fiber of my soul is that it gave me hope.

There was a time I genuinely believed in overwatch, Wholeheartedly. That quote at the top of this review? That meant something to me. With almost every short film, I could feel a lump in my throat. I genuinely believed in what the world of overwatch stood for. One person could make all the difference, one person could be a hero, one person could make the world a better place. It meant so much to me. For five years, it meant a lot to me. Even when I hated the game of overwatch the most, there was a piece of my heart that couldn’t help but love that world. But that piece is dead and gone now, and bitterness quickly filled its place. Don’t get me wrong, overwatch didn’t, like, destroy my mental health or something dramatic like that. I’m still a positive guy, I'd like to think, but there was a certain positivity that the world gave to me, and it is simply gone and can not come back. The people telling me to make a difference, and to be a hero, were sexually assaulting their co-workers the same day they fully thought these themes out. It makes you feel disgusted. To put faith into something, and have to realize how stupid you were to put any faith into it.

This is why I hate overwatch. Not some hero I don't like, not a map, but that hopeful part of me. The hope a 15 year old felt, being snuffed out in a slightly more bitter 21 year old’s heart. A hope that can never be given back. I miss the days where my biggest issues with overwatch were petty squabbles that meant next to nothing for anyone but me. Those days are simply gone. I can never go back to overwatch, and what it meant to me has been pissed on and defiled to the point it just pisses me off to think about. A promise from monsters, hiding in the cloth of good folk. There is nothing in Overwatch for me anymore, which disappoints me greatly to say. I was very excited for overwatch 2 before all this. I still loved that world, but it’s all ash now. Ash and regret. And I'm left here asking myself why I ever bothered. Overwatch can not and will not redeem itself. It is gone, and it will stay forever gone. Fuck blizzard for giving me hope for a time. “The world could always use more heroes” says the sex offender. Heroes my ass. What a waste of my teen years. I have sworn off blizzard activision products. And that’s where my overwatch story ends. I will not watch new cinematics, i will not buy overwatch 2, and i will never smile when i think about all that time i wasted. This would be a 0 if i could put it that low.

"where are those last 3 fucking purple coins?!"

Mario odyssey is the closest I have ever gotten to wanting to break my "5 stars is reserved for tf2 only rule". this game feels absolutely perfect to me, from start to finish. every moment of this game is just packed with new ideas and worlds they just can not stop throwing at you, and it all just works. the controls feel fantastic, this has to be THE most satisfying platformer I have ever played. this game is just cute and fun. can't describe it much better. perfection, worth every penny. get it asap!