So 2000's, like a PS2 game with 100x the polish and budget. Some people are amiss to the game's shift away from low-stakes comedy to something more 'therapy-core', but the cast felt very and endearing. Psychonauts' visual metaphors and plastercraft dioramas mean even the most perceivably corny moments were given great care and attention. You all see fuckers praise games for things like 'the designers really cared!' but no like, Double Fine packed way too much shit in here, a single level will have as many fully-fleshed ideas as an entire game. There's one world populated by pagesketch people, and they're all voiced by dozens of different actors and all have unique dialogue when you attack them. It's fucking insane. We need more insane AAA budget games like this.

This is also an offhand but, after Hogwarts Legacy and Sirona Ryan being the most embarrassing damage control in games this year (so far), I couldn't stop beaming with joy at Helmut Fullbear, the gay hippie rockstar voiced by motherfucking JACK BLACK. And it's like, excellent rep, 'cause (1) he's a prominent character who gets his own world and musical number, and (2) they spend equal amounts of time with his husband, Bob, another banger character (not my favorite world to play, but the one whose story and environmental imagery was most resonant to me). This hit my soul so warm man.

Weakest part for me was the larger Maligula plot, which went over my head or mostly bored me, plus some odd ethnic baggage thrown in. This chunk of the plot feels like it was a written immediately after 1, right on the heels of Middle Eastern xenophobia and terror rhetoric, and instead of starting from scratch, they tried their damnedest to chop into something more reflective of the times. You know exactly what direction it's gonna go, it not-so-subtly tiptoes around the larger moral implications, and it never feels much better than being 'hollow'. When Oleander is forgiven in 1 after kidnappings and building war machines, it just feels like the universe's silly rules and a big joke in a larger comedy. These 'forgiving hitler' riffs feel out of place and in the tender, repressed story they're trying to tell here. You can't play shit like this straight.

sick as hell, and you know i sat my zoomer ass down and listened when this 20 year old game insisted that it was the future. but the whole time i was thinking about how i spent my 2020 seeing this game's composer tweet about funky femboys, and this dj professor k rp account that was warning people not to get vaccinated, in character. i think hes still going. people were @ing him going JET SET RATIOOO.

this is to say that the actual future just confuses me. but the game itself makes it clear it's not about the future future anyway. just what we choose to do to shape it. im taking that as another reminder to be less online.

i spent all my teen years listening to cibo matto (still lives in my heart) thanks to jsrf, even though i wasnt able to actually play it back then. it simply looked like the coolest shit, and id enjoyed the first game too. having finally played it in 2023, as an adult, was a bit anticlimactic for no particular reason? - it's everything i expected. it's the sequel to jsr, it's bigger, badder, but still a fun little thing about skating around tagging shit to funky music. all those songs id heard thousands of times, finally sounding off with full context. neat mini dj mixes for each chapter. it really did end up being the coolest shit.

fuck exclusives lol. theres some irony in no one being able to play a game all about the undying rebellious spirit because they dont happen to own a 2 decade old slab of plastic with a particular brand stamped on it. my uncle had an xbox but he wasnt cool enough to carry this game. unfortunate. and this shit still carries itself more like the dreamcast than it does xbox anyway. wheres the french guy on twitter begging #BreakFreeJSRF.

it's cool that video games can affect us even when we've yet to play them. jsrf ended up being as important to me as a lot of games i actually played growing up. always the game i was going to play one day, always that game in the future. and when the future finally came, there was that satisfaction of seeing all these disparate things id absorbed by osmosis, allowed to move and flow together for the first time. theres that song i spent so many years listening to. those character designs id adored from afar. that refinement upon the first game everyone would go on about. i still lost my mind a bit in the sewer level, as you do, but it was all in good fun.

ultimately id have liked to vibe to it all as the 14 year old spacing off to Skate 2, and not the 24 year old with nothing going on. but this works too.

This is, without a doubt, a once in an era type of game.

A visual novel/soft adventure game that's a DS game in the best way.

This is a game that has an incredible, twisting story, with plenty of dashes of 70s/80s flair and flavor, from the funky buddy cop jazz music to of-the-era fashion and character designs. The location, though I haven't been to Sumida City, truly feels like a window into that era, as bigger businesses are growing and family businesses are slowly closing. Factories are popping up more and more and a city is turning more and more modern and even bigger than it used to be.

This game's horror lies heavily with Japanese culture and old legends, which make for a fascinating setup: the Rite of Resurrection is able to be enacted, you just need to use your curse stone, kill people for soul dregs, and you can bring back a person of your choosing. Enter the core cast, who all have their reasons to be involved in the Rite of Resurrection, whether to enact it themselves or stop it. The cast is incredibly varied and fascinating, and every major character feels so full and complete as a person, all with incredibly believable motivations. The cast is colorful and will remain in my mind for a long time.

There are some interesting and tricky puzzles in this game, and while some feel a bit roundabout and tricky to figure out unless you know just WHAT to look for, it's still incredibly enjoyable. The way the various characters' actions lead to various intersections between the cast or certain things playing out is always interesting. I'd love to talk more about the story, but it really is one of those things you need to experience on your own. The places it go are surprising and bewildering and fascinating, and I'm so glad I avoided looking up stuff to experience it all for myself.

The writing is some of the best I've seen in a long time. It can go from heavy to irreverent to witty, with plenty of "oh shit" moments that really make your jaw drop and everything click in your mind after the past few hours from the last one.

The art is beautiful, from incredibly expressive characters to fantastic backgrounds that look beautiful each and every time because of the colors and the lush detail.

In a year where so many big and anticipated games for me are coming out, this is still going to be one of my top games of the year, I have no doubt about it. Everything about this game is immaculate, everyone who worked on this truly hit it out of the park, and I implore everyone that if you'll play a game this year you might not be sure about, or might be different than your usual fare, to let it be Paranormasight. You truly can't go wrong and you really won't regret it.

its more splatoon, but the single player is actually good now and they finally (after 7 years) figured out that its fun when youre able to play with your friends. holy shit. just ignore the communication errors. paid online service btw.

maybe i was just really burnt out when splatoon 2 dropped, as it hadnt been that long since the first game which id poured hundreds of hours into. but that game simply didnt grab me the way the first one did, and the way this has been doing. i cant stop playing, its summer 2015 all over again. i love how fucking stupid everything about this game is, the cheesy dialogue, the music going BEN BEN w/ the among us theme, getting spawn camped on mahi mahi because some genius decided it should have like 10cm^2 area now, getting tenta missiled by 3 flyfishes while waiting 10 years to do a roller flick because some genius decided the current salmon run rotation should have dynamo roller, trying to get the shades to sit on the moai head in your locker just right, keeping lil judd in your peripheral vision at all times after beating him in a childrens card game, etc etc

i dont want to be out here talking about how splatoon's core game design is genius or whatever because i dont actually play other shooters these days. likewise i dont want to be talking about how innovative this is because splatoon has gotten pretty comfortable now. 1 was the trailblazer 7 years ago, this is the third rodeo. ive already started seeing people unhappy that the word "splatoon" has gone from meaning "creative new weird wii u ip" to "hugely successful series that has started putting out entries that all look and play the same" which is fair really. maybe ill be more cynical when we get around to like splatoon 6 with idols called like Carol and Reefe ready to announce the single worst map rotation youve ever seen. as of right now its simply too fun and charming. now if youll excuse me i have to grind to level 98 so i can unlock the dab

So, imagine if Scott Cawthon released the first 2 nights of the first fnaf game (let’s imagine that the concept of a “children’s horror franchise” already existed as it does today), and then promised to release the rest as standalone pieces, but before that: released merch, had insane amount of YouTube videos, started work on a movie and announced a line of whatever the 2014 equivalent of NFTs were. Poppy Playtime is less of a game and more of an experiment to see how much money a guy can make off an incredibly safe (and apparently stolen) “videogame”. This is everything that indie games shouldn’t be.

Good game overall and a step in the right direction, but needs major improvements art direction wise and with the shot composition of cutscenes. The gameplay is different enough to be fun while still keeping the usual Pokemon system intact. Animations for moves look amazing here and catching Pokemon is addicting. It's taken a lot of inspiration from Monster Hunter games with how the areas work.

Music is the best part though, it's kinda insane how good it is after so many years of mediocre soundtracks. When I could hear pieces of D/P/P music throughout the game, I felt like a giddy 8-year-old. Knowing modern Game Freak though, I doubt they'll make a game that improves on this.

I played the switch version



Honestly didn’t see many problems that I see people complaining about, load times were pretty quick, didn’t notice any textures missing, framerate dropped sometimes but nothing I couldn’t handle



Also holy fuck the final boss didn’t need to go that hard



And that intro, godly