I'm not a fan of Dark Souls III. While admitedly course correcting much of DS2's lackluster kinesthetics, dubious design choices and overall uglyness, its lustrous presentation of a dying world filled with grotesteque ghouls and tragic beasts to be put out of their misery once again failed to compel me to be absorbed by its story and challenge as I once was with DS1 and it left me questioning the path the series had decided to taken upon itself for the future.

My early disappointment started to set in when I realized that the promise of a converging world filled with different realities and structures stacked on top of each other in a sea of chaos, ash and rot established in its intro cutscene and promotional art wasn't going to be delivered. Instead, that narrative thread served as an excuse to place incompatible and unrelated levels one after another in a straight line to the credits, without much consideration for thematic or aesthetic consistency and purpose. Much of that disregard was evidently a direct result of the decision to give fast travel to the player from the start.

It's no secret that much of the success of DS1 was achieved on the shoulders of its beautifully crafted world design that revealed itself with every twist and turn the player conquered one step at a time and whose immersive oppression was built up throughout the long treks it forced you to make between bonfires. Reaching Ash Lake after hours spent trudging through Blighttown only to realize I would have to go back up again was one of the most defeated feelings I had ever experienced in a videogame, and also the exact moment I fell in love with the series. There is truth to the criticism that DS1's peak is Anor Londo and the game kinda deflates from then on out, but it's telling that that's also when you happen to gain the ability to fast travel.

DS3 methodically perfects the level design formula of its predecessors, to such a degree that robs its world of much of the allure, mystery and sense of adventure one came to expect of the series, regardless of how genuinely picturesque and challenging its settings can be. Reaching a new area only to see gate with an obvious shortcut elevator behind it never ceased to immediately halt my excitement for what lied ahead, a reminder that the next set of hardships would be a tightly controlled environment saved by the proper placement of a bonfire only to be discarded once conquered.

And for the DS3 fan reading this and wanting more reason to hate me, consider that my favorite area of the whole game was Farron's Keep. Yeah, the fuckin slow moving swamp, the one moment of DS3 where you are allowed to push into the unknown, surrounded by unseen threats and lacking any specific direction while witnessing monstrosities far off in the distance, and whose small stories of discovery, action and terror that occur within it further expand your understanding of this universe's history and interconnectivity. And then, a bonfire is found in the middle of it, and all that beautiful tension immediately evaporates.

While technically harder than anything that came before it, DS3 never feels as punishing and harsh as DeS or DS1 could be. None of DS3's misfortunes manage to match the dread of getting cursed or losing the Firelink bonfire in DS1 nor do its unseen tricks every feel as crippling and nasty as DeS's persistent world. Instead, it's a repeat of most of those games unique ideas refurbished in a way as to not upset its new fandom, focusing on b-lines to a franchise rapidly being about fighting highly challenging and fast paced bosses. In a sense, the new Firelink Shrine is a fitting representation of DS3, a safe hub set in a controlled void without conflict and struggle, where the player can indulge himself with all the commodation and comfort the game is able to provide.

Such reasons kept me away from its DLC for this long, and while it didn't absolutely dazzle me I was pleasantly surprised to find it to be an improvement over the main game. One of my biggest gripes with DS3 was its eagerness to display an abundance of iterations on the themes and concepts of DS1 without giving them breathing room to develop and imprint their significance into the whole of the series. Coming hot of Bloodborne's tightly cohesive world and lore, detours into the Cathedral of the Deep or the Profaned Capital felt like half baked underwhelming experiences that could have gladly filled an entire game and ended up just overcomplicating the mythology of the franchise. Both Ashes of Ariandel and Ringed City manage to fix that sore spot.

Decaying, rotting and decrepit vistas of ash, cold and death, whose denizens comprise of locusts, flies and crows waiting for the end of the world. The thematic ensemble of the DLC finally does justice to the DS3 promise and presents an intimate conversation with the player on the inevitable finality of all things in a visual language much stronger than anything present in the rest of DS3, overtly revealing the last remaining secrets of its lore and converging all of its ideas into one final epilogue. While too little too late, Dreg Heap is the game I wanted out of DS3, at last placing you at the center of the infamous "time is convoluted in Lordran" meme with crumbling buildings and toppled civilizations merging into one another. The Amnesiac Lapp questline is a brilliant understated encapsulation of Dark Souls that perfectly endcaps the dark/light motif of the series, and both Sister Friede and Gael provide the best DS3 boss experience that manages to be challenging while remaining doable and fair, unlike much of Elden Ring's unbalanced roster.

Going through Dark Souls III again and finally experiencing its DLC after coming off of Elden Ring, I've gained a bit more appreciation for it and what it set out to do. It will never be one of my favs from the franchise, as it branched into a path that further removed a lot of the design sensibilities that made me a fan of its predecessors, but considering what it eventually evolves into, I find it to be a very good videogame.

Funny story about the first time I played this game: I was in the fourth grade and my mom decided to reward me for good grades with a trip to the local arcade. She gave me a bunch of quarters, told me to go have fun, and followed me around (I appreciate) at enough of a distance to not cramp my ten-year-old style. I was planning to make a full recon sweep of the arcade but stopped halfway through, in front of the shiny new Simpsons Arcade Game machine, and with an "ooh, the Simpsons!" that I imagine sounded something like this I dropped some quarters in and started playing.

A few other kids walked past and joined in, and before long the arcade cabinet had worked its magic, bringing four kids together; total strangers united in the noblest pursuit of trying to best a quarter-muncher. Looking back, we were all awful; we didn't understand the concept of attack priority or boss i-frames, so we blew so much money standing right in front of bosses and spamming attack even through animations where they were invincible. We had a blast though - I still remember the collective "ooooh" when we first discovered we could do co-op attacks. Several times I ran out of money and I felt a tap on my shoulder; it was my mom, staring at the screen and holding out a fistful of fresh quarters in her hand.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to a comically tragic end: deep into a pitched battle with the final boss, I got roasted by a nuke, put in another quarter, pressed start, and... a split second later the Homer player landed the final blow on the boss and the game was over. I knew what was coming; my mom had generously spent the downpayment of a small car on this game, but like any Asian parent her generosity had its limits, and in this case the limit was wasting the final quarter when the game was already over. She was obviously more angry with the situation than with me, but I got an earful anyway, and as we walked back home I can only imagine the alarm we caused to passersby as they all caught out-of-context aural snippets of "Why did you pay more money?! The man was already dead!!"

Anyway, how's the game? Very competent as it turns out. The graphics are vibrant and capture the aesthetic of the show well, and the animations are great - some of the slapstick effects are quite subtle, such as Lisa briefly getting entangled in her jump rope if she whiffs too many attacks. Even the dated cutscenes are charming in a "well-done MSPaint art" kind of way. With only one attack button, no grappling, and the game's main mechanical innovation (co-op attacks) being gimmicky and situational, the game obviously lacks depth, but is still fun enough to sustain your interest especially given its short runtime.

If you're looking for a mechanically deep game or something that's rewarding to try to 1cc you should probably look elsewhere, but this is a great distracting romp that virtually anyone can get into. Everyone should have a funny Simpsons Arcade Game story.

not morally egregious per se but rather a depressing culmination of a decade's worth of design trickery and (d)evolving cultural/social tastes and otherwise exists as insipid twitchcore autoplaying bullshit that should come with a contractual agreement binding its devotees to never speak prejudicially about mobile games or musou ever again lest they face legally enforced financial restitution. just play nex machina man. or watch NFL. been a fun season for that. fuck the review man let's talk sports in the comments

I played a Gregorian Day's worth of Vampire Survivors looking for any substance and came up empty. This game is the ludological equivalent of doodling endlessly on a pad while you're on hold with the bank. Finding out the developer worked on digital slot machines before making this game made all the pieces fall into place: you pull the arm, the images flash, the numbers go up, you die. It's sickeningly mesmeric, it reeks, it is completely frictionless. It is the exact spiritual midpoint between Cookie Clicker and a pachinko machine. I am worse for having played it and so are you, may god have mercy on us all.

The final stretch of Dark Souls II is so effective from the perspective of storytelling, that I regret not documenting my earlier frustrations in better detail. True, even doing so I would have very little to contribute beyond the laundry list of complaints already shared by anyone who remembers the game: enemy and level designs are squat and very Maximo: Ghosts to Glory, the combat is as loose and weightless as an N64 Zelda title (but it expects a Bloodborne-like performance from you), the success of Demon's and Dark Souls gives it free license for scattershot cruelty, the total openness combined with fragmented levels (and uneven difficulties within) and steep punishment for failure has it even more bewildering than the first time you started up Demon's Souls; a problem ironed out by its follow up. But then, and here's the thing, acknowledging that last point is the first step in appreciating a future where these things continued to push for total emotional/physical/ludic bewilderment over what became across Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, and Sekiro, progressively fine-tuned to tight, reactive play and linear progression. My preference is still with the proprioceptive rhythms of the other games, but the other games have never highlighted such an agonising disconnect between body and mind as Dark Souls II. Quite the opposite: for all they speak of corrupted flesh and the curse of undeath, they give way to the catharsis of the agile, the dynamic, the mastery of limbs and speed. The cosmic fatalism of their narratives is known but never known, in the posture, in the madness, in the burden of having to try for thankless and indeterminate progress, which is certainly not a criticism, but it's also not the only way to do things. Dark Souls II is less preoccupied with suggesting a shadowy cosmology than with the way it might register in dreams and memories — death is not tied to any greater philosophical purpose than going back to sleep, so you don't have to hurt any more. And this is where the final stretch of the game is so effective: what was so bewilderingly open finds itself inexorably within in the pull of thanatos, what was frustrating finds itself a sense of purpose in the game's guide, appearing intermittently to say only I'm sorry, I'm sorry you're here.

Okay so maybe we all got a little scared by what we had going on in Castlevania II, this is fair. That is an adventurous game, even a Simon’s Quest sicko like me will admit it’s not for everybody. It’s certainly not a bad idea to go back and iterate upon Castlevania 1, and that’s what this is, for the first time in the series: an iteration. I don’t think there’s really very much to actually say here.

The colors pop in wild and spectacular ways; it’s not at all uncommon to see reds and blues and greens and yellows and purples all coexisting on the screen, bright popping ones that feel like that should clash but really only add to the feverish sense of phantasmagoria that permeates this game. If Castlevania 1 is iconic by necessity and ingenuity, Dracula’s Curse feels iconic by statement, aesthetically maximalist in every way. Colors pop, enemy designs leak and groan and emote, the music is more tailor made to locations but when it rips it rips harder than anything in the series so far. This does feel like a culmination, and although this game was considered a sales disappointment that began the long death knell of Hitoshi Akamatsu’s career, there’s a palpable sense of excitement, of a team at the top of their game at the height of control over what their console could do.

While the many many levels and their branching paths and three main routes through the game are very cool and have a lot of good setpieces (in the famicom version at least, the American version sucks shit lol I will never play it ever again and happily never look back), the real stars of the show are the three new playable characters, a real bunch of fuckin freaks if I’ve ever met any. There’s Sypha the wickedly OP vampire killing church Sorceress who according to the ending scroll is in the midst of some sort of gender crisis and frankly I support you sister me too. There’s GRANT DA NASTY the biggest homie of all time who has fuckin sicko wall climbing abilities and animations along with a throwing dagger attack that makes him also absurdly useful (IF YOU PLAY THE FAMICOM VERSION WHERE HIS ATTACK WASN’T TAKEN AWAY FROM HIM FOR NO REASON HEY IDIOTS ENJOY THOSE TRUNCATED SALES IN AMERICA BECAUSE EVERYONE THINKS THE GAME IS TOO HARD), forgotten by history, turned into a Voldo in Castlevania Judgement, omitted from the cartoon based on this game, funniest name of all time, love this guy. The best one though is Alucard, you can’t dethrone him he’s such a fuckin doofus in this game, not yet a sexy Ayami Kojima painting, here he is a full on Hammer Horror ass Christopher Lee ass fake Dracula ass widow’s peak ass loser with awful attacks and a mostly useless power compared to his peers, mostly just kind of a bad version of stuff the other each do better, but he can do both at once. His ending is two bros dudes rocking on the corpse of his dad but he’s a little sad about it because you did kill his dad after all, he’s great. I love each and every one of them and most of all I love the very cute little handshake animation that plays when you accept them into your party.

Dracula’s Curse doesn’t do much that is genuinely fantastically new but it doesn’t really need to; what it offers instead is a hyper stylish, more polished, version of a game I already liked with more stages to choose from and the best Dracula sprite they’re probably ever going to have, calling it now (it’s his second phase where he is a clump of blood-vomiting heads that rot into dead skulls as you whittle his health down, sick as fuck bro). It’s a game that could be skating by on aesthetic charm, it has plenty, and maybe it's not as cohesive a package as either of its console predecessors, but it nails the fundamentals too and SOMETIMES that’s all I need y’know.

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