Everything about this game is peak Tekken. The Story Mode is the best ever for a fighting game, there's a lot of single-player stuff to do. The visuals, character models, and stages are top-notch.

32 characters at launch is a huge deal since most fighting games not named King of Fighters or Smash Bros come out with roster sizes under 20 or so characters. Every character has some pretty sick stuff about them, so it's always rewarding to master a character and understand them inside and out before moving on to a new one. I have had so much fun labbing Lee, Hwoarang, and Law. And I can't wait to add more characters to my arsenal.

The fighting itself is the most aggressive and kinetic it has ever been and even though I think the Heat system is definitely overly oppressive at the moment, it leads to a lot of natural excitement. One of my main concerns when Heat was first shown off was that it would create artificial hype. But in motion, it is a very exciting twist on the Tekken Formula and each character using Heat in different ways makes every match you play a super stressful one.

The online in my experience has been great. It's so nice to have a Tekken game with adequate netplay since every Tekken before this one has had really poor online. I think it needs some tweaks for how it handles packet loss, but aside from that, it's been very smooth and I love how little downtime there is in between matches.

The music is pretty good too. Nowhere near the levels of Tekken 3, 4, 5, Tag 2, or 7, but a handful of memorable tracks. Thankfully, they have a fully functioning Jukebox system this time around and being able to select tracks from different games and map them to stages and menus is a blessing. I hope more fighting games take cues on how Tekken, KOF, and Smash utilize the jukebox.

My only nitpicks are the VFX and SFX during matches. They are good, but coming off of T7, 8's effects are a downgrade IMO. A lot of the hit effects have the same boom effect that sounds like it has been overly compressed, so a lot of characters don't have much of a sonic identity anymore. Some of the voice direction for characters is kind of off too, like Steve being a cartoony British mascot and Zafina not shrieking when using her Azazel powers. And I personally loved the concussive, pyrotechnic VFX from T7 and the ones in T8 are cool enough, but don't feel nearly as impactful.

This is the full package when it comes to fighting games. It's extremely polished, very fun, lots to do, functioning online, very little load times, and I cannot wait to see how this game evolves over the next several years. Out of the big 3(SF, MK, Tekken) of FG's that have been released recently, this one is my favorite of the bunch. What a time to be a fighting game fan.

Wow kind of loved this. One of those plinky ploinky IcoXJourney type games that actually manages to completely seal the deal with some genuinely astounding world design that compliments the character movement. This laser focus on the goal of verticality and the notches inbetween - tactile, weighty, arduous toil as you use your climbing gear to best the challenges the geometry imposes. Gushing with a sense of true scale, milestoned by countless opportunities to pan the camera back at the places you’ve come from and the mountaineering feats you’ve cleared. Dense and well-considered little pockets of civilisation in between crumbling pathways and inclines, full of the kind of coastal town fishery imagery I am a cow for. Beautiful and breathless game imo. Shame it undoes itself with all of these collectables and wordy diary entries that explain away the superlunary mystery of da world, although I’m fickle enough to kind of think I’d have given them a pass if the font choice was more diegetic lol.

Jusant is 1 for da perverts who blush at the Google Image Search: “Abandoned Crab Traps stacked rly high”.

The original Tetris Effect is one of the best games ever made, to the point that it was all I played for a few months straight when it originally released; I forewent a heap of other big 2018 releases just so I could keep playing it again, again and again again. That’s the mark of a good fuckin’ game right there! Maybe a perfect game, even…

If the original Tetris Effect had a flaw, though, it was that the experience could be quite isolating. It had a certain aura of loneliness that stood in stark contrast to its uplifting core message that humanity is a single-stacked mass of glowing, breathing blocks that deserve to be together in instrumentality, not held alone and apart. Singing “it’s all connected” is all well and good, but the sound of that voice can ring hollow when it’s bouncing off the walls of your empty living room.

I think Tetsuya Mizuguchi and his team may have been aware of this, too - because Connected is all about making the original Effect’s promises into a reality. It’s hard to know when this update was actually conceived of, but announcing it a few months into the original lockdown and delivering it during that harsh 2020 winter feels like a heartfelt gift from Monstars and Resonair to the planet. A puzzle game’s plea for love and mercy at a time when it was most needed.

I feel kinda guilty about ignoring the gift, though. This DLC/v1.5/whatever-it-is primarily focused on multiplayer, and not since Tetris Battle Gaiden have I seen a game actively innovate on what communal Tetris could be. I doubted this would be any different than other Tetris games that had tried and failed to unite players in the past. I checked it out for a bit at launch last year, but kinda left the Connected content by the wayside for a long time. I thought it wouldn’t be my kind of thing; only after watching three Tetris Pros absolutely demolish the Co-Op Journey did I begin to understand what I was missing out on.

The non-competitive multiplayer in this is a total delight, so much so that I beat the whole thing in one sitting with two random online dudes from Brazil and Japan in the middle of a random Sunday morning/Saturday night/Sunday night. We worked together to battle the stars and keep the galaxy’s light alive, all from our respective corners of our world. It was awesome to see three people span continents to co-operate and communicate via the medium of Tetris Ghost Pieces. “Put your S block here!” “Rotate the line!” “Put down your T piece here, and then I’ll put my square on top!” - I heard these people saying these things without ever registering a word. That’s crazy. That’s cool. That’s connected. And arguably it’s all the more powerful when played online with players across the globe.

Tetris Effect: Connected is the change it wants to see in the world. If you liked the original game - or are just a fan of Tetris in general - I highly recommend checking the online content out. Who knows? We might see each other out there, beyond the time.

There are two wolves inside you

One goes absolutely nuts as the audiovisual downpour waters your soul, lifting you off your feet as transcendental music guides you through the rhythm, rewarding your play with only more heavy sensations to feel. The expertly crafted experience moves through your heart in beats that feel second nature.

The other wolf is hyperfocusing on each block as the difficulty ramps up to where you're trying really REALLY hard to keep up because they may or may not suck at tetris god the last level took me more than an hour on normal I'm REALLY bad.

Oh and both wolves are gay and really deeply love each other and intermix a lot :3

I've had my eye on the Metal Gear Solid series for a while now and eventually I got the incentive to try the first game in the series after @wheatie assigned it to me. Had a decent time with it!

Metal Gear Solid is a classic stealth game - you sneak your way past enemies, and usually don't face them head on. (Else you have to deal with really frustrating aiming controls!) Your tools consist of several weapons like a silenced pistol, a sniper or even a rocket launcher, but also handy gadgets like EMP grenades and... a cardboard box?

The overarching narrative was engaging and consisted of many, fully voice-acted cutscenes. Some of them longer than others, ranging from quick Codec calls to villains monologuing for minutes on the brink of death. I have to admit that there were times where the exposition and monologues went on for a bit too long for my taste and apparently the cutscenes are only getting longer in the later games. A shame, since I believe those moments drag down the pacing quite a bit.

As I mentioned before, my other main complaint are the controls. Sure, this game is 25 year old at the time of writing this, but other games released in that period had more understandable controls too (an example being Ocarina of Time). The worst offender was definitely the aiming, but then again I didn't find out until after the beating the game that there was auto-aiming. Oh well, too late now.

That aside, Metal Gear Solid was enjoyable enough to make me want to check out the rest of the series as well, considering MGS2 and MGS3 are praised highly. It's a fairly short game and was just the right experience to play after Red Dead Redemption 2, which took me about a month to beat. But let me tell you, going from the graphics of RDR2 to PS1 models was certainly something! Have a good day.

(7-year-old's review, typed by her dad)

[Dad: What score are you thinking]

[CatTheCutest: A five!]

[Dad: A five?? Are you sure?]

[CatTheCutest: Well, a four. A four-point-five!!]

Okay. So first up, you start off as Gollum, and if you look at him, he's kind of creepy and horrifying. Then you see some... beautiful image. But then Gollum shows up! GRRR! And also it's very dark, so it's kinda hard to find things, especially those VINES. It was just so dark. There was only like teensy bits of fire and that was your only light. And be careful, or else you'll accidentally fall off a cliff! Cuz I did.

When it came to Nintendo’s earlier consoles, there were many different weird, yet sometime completely pointless peripherals that were made to “enhance” the gaming experiences. Some of these terrible peripherals include the Power Glove, a motion-based glove that barely worked whatsoever, the Power Pad, an exercise mat that also barely worked at all, R.O.B. the Robot, a robotic buddy that would help you out when playing certain Nintendo games (and by that, I mean only two games), and the Speedboard, which is literally just a piece of plastic that is supposed to “put the speed at your fingertips”, when in reality, you would just throw it in the trash. One of their best peripherals though, even if they can’t be used properly nowadays, would be with the NES Zapper and the Super Scope, which were both gun-based controllers you would use to play games like Duck Hunt and Battle Clash, and they worked pretty well for the most part. Alongside these gun-based peripherals would also be gun-based games that took full advantage of them, such as with today’s game, Yoshi’s Safari.

Ever since I had heard about this game, I had been interested in trying it out for the longest time for several reasons. One, it was a game where Mario wielded a GUN, which is something you don’t see every day, and two, because it did look like a genuinely fun game, even if it was all based around this light-gun gimmick. But like with everything else I was interested in, I put it off for a long time, until I ultimately decided to check it out, and yeah, it is a pretty good game. It wasn’t exactly amazing, and what you see is what you get, with no other extra bells or whistles, but it is definitely the best Super Scope game that I have ever played… which is mostly because it is the ONLY Super Scope game that I have ever played, but eh, semantics.

The story is one that is mostly what you would expect from a Yoshi/Mario game, where Bowser and his Koopalings DON’T kidnap Peach, but instead two other royal figures named King Fret and Prince Pine, steal the 12 gems, and take over Jewelry Land, and it is up to Mario and Yoshi to go shoot them all in the face to save the day, which is an incredibly silly and basic premise, and I love it, the graphics are pretty good, looking pretty similar to other Mario titles on the system, but is still very appealing to look at and experience, especially with some of the sprites of enemies, the music is… alright, being what you would expect out of a Mario/Yoshi soundtrack, but none of the tracks really stood out as being great or all that memorable, the control is extremely simple, especially if you are playing single-player, and you should get used to it very quickly (at least, if you are playing it on an emulator like I did, because I am not buying a bunch of stuff in order to play just one game), and the gameplay is also simple and straightforward, but it still provides for a decent amount of fun, despite how brief it is.

The game is a first-person shooter, where you take control of Mario while on the back of Yoshi, go through a set of twelve different levels all across Jewelry Land, shoot the fuck out of everything and anything that moves in front of you using the gun that Mario just has for some reason, gather plenty of coins, items, and powerups along the way to not only give you a helping hand, but to also help increase certain stats to make the journey easier, and take on plenty of bosses, with most of them being typical for a Mario game, except now they all have giant mechs for some reason, which is absolutely hilarious and weird as hell. It is extremely basic for an FPS, but for what it is, it can still be very fun to play, and it does make great use of the Super Scope.

The game primarily has you using the Super Scope to take out enemies, where in single player mode, Yoshi will automatically move forward, and all you need to worry about is just mowing down all the enemies in front of you. There is a two-player mode, where one of you controls Mario and just keeps shooting enemies, while the other person controls Yoshi, and is responsible for moving through the stage, which is most likely the best way to play through the game. I myself just stuck to the single-player mode, because I have no friends, and I still had a great time regardless, but I would definitely imagine that you and a friend could have a more enjoyable time with what we have here. And speaking of which, one of the biggest qualities that this game has going for it is the fact that it exists at all, at least for me. Seriously, it is a Mario FPS, which has never been done before and since, and while it is all as family-friendly as you would expect, the fact that it just has Mario carrying around this bazooka with nobody questioning it is hilarious. Although, I will have to dock some points for the fact that Mario does try to shoot at Yoshi at the end of every level. It is clear that his violent tendencies from Donkey Kong Jr. are still around, and I will not tolerate any harm to the good dino!

In terms of actual problems that the game has, one of the biggest that it has is that it is too short and too easy. While there are quite a few stages to tackle, you can beat all of them pretty easily in around an hour, which isn’t all that bad considering when it came out, but what also doesn’t help is how overpowered you are. The game gives you more then enough ammo to take on anything that comes your way, which recharges really quickly, and on top of that, all of the powerups that you can get will make it so that it is impossible to lose. I didn’t die once throughout my entire playthrough, and yeah, maybe if I were actually using the real hardware, it could potentially be harder, but I highly doubt that. But hey, to the game’s credit, it does give you a code for a Hard Mode once you beat it, and there are multiple pathways you can take in levels, so if you are looking for a more difficult and somewhat varied experience with a second playthrough, there ya go.

Overall, despite its short length and easy-as-hell difficulty, I still ended up having a lot of fun with Yoshi’s Safari, with it definitely being the best Nintendo light-gun game I have ever played, and I do wanna eventually give it a shot on the harder difficulty to see how much it could ramp up after what I had experienced. I would definitely recommend it for those who are Mario fans, as well as those who are fans of the Super Scope, because it is definitely the best game to make use of this peripheral out of all of them. Now, if you excuse me, I need to go hunt down Mario myself. Again, I will not tolerate any harm being brought to Yoshi, and that plumber has gone too far.

Game #436

I love a nice, relaxing game to curl up in bed with, and in that respect The Spirit and the Mouse was delightful. It's a low-stakes adventure about kindness and exploration with plenty of collectibles to find and some lovely environments to explore. I did find that the game tended towards over-wordiness and that it suffered from overly explanatory NPCs, with its unskippable scenes that would play each time I'd finished a "quest," but it didn't get too much in the way of the relaxed nature of this game.

The day after Christmas 2016, I got my PS4. A couple months prior, I finally got back into Playstation gaming after strictly being a Nintendo Fanboy for years. With my PS4, I got the Uncharted Collection, Uncharted 4, Skyrim, Little Big Planet 3 and Final Fantasy XV. I couldn't wait to dive into all these games I wouldn't have even given a chance years before. Fast forward to early April, I decided on a whim to pick up Persona 5 only a day after it came out. I knew almost nothing about Persona besides my one friend always recommending the series so I took a chance, and ended up loving it. Fast forward to May 2017, I pick up NieR Automata. That one friend who recommended the Persona series, would also show me gameplay of the original NieR. At this time I was still in the middle of playing Persona 5, but knowing I took a chance on that and was loving it, I took a chance on Automata as well. I didn't start it until June and didn't beat it until August of that year, but from my memories of 6 years ago I remember absolutely loving it. Fast forward to today and I decided I wanted to replay this game finally. I was wondering all this time if I'd love this game as much as I did back then, because 2017 was my absolute favorite year ever...at least that timespan of like April-August and it could have clouded my judgement. Well my thoughts are complicated but as you can see by my score, I do indeed still love this game overall.

When I first started this, I decided to replay it on hard. It had been 6 years since I played it but I figured I could do it. After dying 10 times in the super long intro, I decided to bump it down to normal. It might be a skill issue but I didn't find it fun to die in 2 or sometimes even 1 hit. I played the entire game on normal and I don't feel bad, I just wanted to have fun. Though tbh, on my first playthrough through Route A...halfway into it I kinda wasn't having much fun. My main issue was, I kept comparing every little thing to Gestalt which is the consequence of playing this immediately after that. I kept missing the main cast of that game and just wasn't digging Automata's cast much. By the end of route A, I was disappointed in the game...and disappointed in myself for feeling this way. I absolutely adored this back in 2017...did I change? Was I too cynical now or something?

My main reason for being disappointed was because my favorite aspect of Gestalt, the cast, was not even comparable in this game I felt. My favorite character was 9S and his best scenes don't even happen until the later routes. The cast of this game is solid I'd say but doesn't come close at all to Gestalt's main cast, at least for me. That was my main hangup during route A, and is still even now the biggest downgrade this game has compared to Gestalt.

During route A, even though I was disappointed by the end of it, there were still plenty of things I liked about the game and several improvements compared to Gestalt. The combat for one is definitely improved overall. Yes the combat is not on par with something like Bayonetta or DMC, but it's still flashy enough so that it feels good. You have two weapons at once and it feels good to switch between both. You also have these Pods that act as the Weiss of this game. You can switch abilities with them, and some of the abilities are straight up ones from Gestalt which was cool. Same with the weapons, some of them were ones from Gestalt so you know I had to use my beloved Beastbain. I also really loved the movement in this game compared to Gestalt, dashing around this post-apocalyptic world...especially in mid-air on top of buildings, god it feels good.

Speaking of the post-apocalyptic world..this a bit of a running gag in my discord server that I have a major hard on for it. And that's correct, I still absolutely adore the world in Automata. The world is not as fleshed out as actual open worlds, but that's partly why I love it. I think the world is the absolutely perfect size for a gaming world. It's small enough where I don't find getting around to be a chore, even if you can fast travel...and big enough where it's fun to actually explore and take in the amazing locales. Goddamn I love the aesthetic this world provides. The starting area is a ruined city overgrown with plant life and that aesthetic is like my #1 aesthetic now thanks to this game. You also have a massive desert with a whole city half buried in the sand at the end of it. You have an abandoned amusement park full of celebrating machines. There's more ruined buildings on the coastline. There's a forest area that leads to a grassy castle. Right before that area, you go through a little shopping center that's full of overgrowth. There is no area I dislike going to because every single one has such a cool aesthetic which really does it for me. The world/setting of the game was my absolute favorite aspect when I first played (besides the OST) and even now it's still probably my favorite aspect. If there's any single one thing that this game destroys Gestalt on, it's definitely its world.

Speaking of the OST, it is still fantastic 6 years later. While personally, I do prefer Gestalt's OST by a fair margin...Automata's is still awesome. Back then my favorite themes were all the area themes and while they're still great, I really like a lot of the battle themes now. Grandma Destruction and Emil Despair, obviously because they're remixes of Gestalt songs but A Beautiful Song may be my favorite totally originally Automata song now, it's fantastic. The OST is indeed objectively amazing but I think the reason why I don't like it as much as Gestalt's now is because the songs have way more going on in them while Gestalt's are more simple. Automata's songs are also generally more epic and fast paced vs Gestalt's more elegant sounding songs. I still do love Automata's OST tho and it's definitely one of my favorites ever. Honestly tho I think Gestalt might have my favorite OST ever in any game, at least as of now so ofc that would be hard to top but Automata certainly isn't that far off.

Something I definitely loved this time around was the Gestalt connections I wouldn't have ever gotten when I first played. Like certain lines reminiscent of Gestalt, or really obvious things nowadays like how the desert machines all wear Facade-like clothing. There's a quest in the desert that even has you finding hidden items that were all connected to Facade which was amazing to discover. Speaking of quests, I honestly think they were a lot better in this game compared to Gestalt. Sure, you don't have the amazing banter between NieR and Weiss. However as a whole, I found there to be less fetch quests and more memorable quests that felt somewhat impactful towards the worldbuilding. Obviously, the single best quests are the Emil ones for me just cuz they connect to Gestalt so heavily but that was gonna be a given. Oh yeah, Emil is back...his side quests were awesome as stated before but besides that he's only really here as a shopkeeper which is okay I guess. If he didn't have either of the side quests, he would have been a big disappointment but those salvage his appearance I'd say. Also up to the end of Route A, I'd say the bosses were solid overall but none of them really wowed me besides Simone who was amazing. That's partly because A Beautiful Song plays during it but still. Also Also, I forgot to mention I did do every side quest and of course upgraded all weapons to max. For what you get from doing that, which is some of the best content in the game imo, I think it's worth it.

Anyways, a lot of things have been improved from Gestalt but the big downgrade being the cast hampered my enjoyment of the 2nd half of Route A cuz I kept comparing the two games the entire time. I established this before, so you'd think Route B would be even worse because it's pretty much a retread of Route A except with small changes here and there, kinda like Route B in Gestalt except not nearly as good. Well here's the weird thing, I honestly enjoyed myself more with Route B than A. That's weird because usually people hate Route B from what I've seen but idk I digged it. Maybe it's because I was playing as 9S who I enjoyed a lot more than 2B. Or maybe it was the addition of hacking which I honestly quite enjoy even tho I know many others don't. Idk but once I beat route B, I was definitely enjoying myself more than I did at the end of route A. So I don't get when people say Route B is bad, it's different enough that it's fun to play through again. Then Route C is next and that's where the story has it's peaks...and where the game definitely won me over again.

Route C is totally different from A and B and that's a huge change from route C in Gestalt. There it was the exact same as Route B except with two new endings so Route C in Automata is definitely a big improvement. There's tons of twists, reveals and heartbreak and it's 100% the best route no question. I still don't think the story elements or character interactions come close to gestalt in its ending, but they're definitely very good. I think story-wise, I like it less overall then Gestalt's just because of the inferior cast but it has some really emotional singular moments and so I like to think I love the moments in this game more than the entirety of its story which is opposite of Gestalt. Going into those moments though, and they both happened in Route C, they were the final super boss that you access by getting every weapon to max...and ending E.

The final super boss I knew would get me because of its connection to Gestalt, and they are huge connections, but I didn't think the waterworks would flow as hard as they did. Even more surprising was ending E. I still remembered what happened but idk man it really got me. When that certain part happens and you hear the choir, I broke down. This is THE moment I'm giving this game a 10 for now. I was contemplating whether to actually drop it to a 9, and I still might eventually who knows, but the fact I cried to something that had no connection to Gestalt really...that made me realize I do still love this game even without the Gestalt shit.

I may not be in love with the game's story or cast, and I think the OST is somewhat of a downgrade..however. The combat being improved, the still wonderful OST, my favorite world in any game and the worldbuilding and connections to Gestalt I do love. And so as of now I'm going to keep this at a 10, again I might drop it down eventually but Ending E won me over for now. I do definitely love Gestalt more now as you already know, which is so weird because I once had this at a 10 and Gestalt at an 8 lol. Funny how things change.

Resident Evil 4 remake is absolutely fantastic and takes a lot of what worked about the two former Resident Evil remakes and prior games generally and incorporates them into a much more action focused gameplay that I preferred overall. The game does such a great job of balancing the horror elements that the series mainly focuses on now with the cheese action set pieces people seem to like from the original. The game just hits that pure form of fun for me of killing bastard enemies with fun weapons and roundhouse kicks and weirdly powerful knives.