I think Ghostwire is neat. Its a game that falls flat in many ways but its world is so gorgeously detailed and well rendered that I hardly need an excuse to spend time in it. I love running through the streets and over the rooftops of a haunted Tokyo forever locked in a moody rainstorm. Im glad the Spiders Thread update/dlc exists because it gives me an excuse to come back and soak in the atmosphere a little longer.

The new content that makes up this update is interesting as it serves simultaneously as more of the same, an evolution of the original games potential, and an magnifying glass to highlight all of the games existing flaws. There is a small new area with a questline that serves as the most in depth sidequest the game has to offer. Its fun and decently spooky even if theres. nothing here that ghostwires horror contemporaries havent already done better. There are 3 new enemy types which range from cool to annoying. I love the mermaids who swim through the pavement and keep you constantly checking all your angles. I dont love the hovery guys who are hard to hit and love to fly around in places out of your reach. The new combat abilities are mildly interesting but struggle to find a home in combat encounters that were designed before they existed. The exception here is the dodge which is such a no brainer inclusion i cant imagine how they skipped it the first time.

The meat of the update is the new Spiders Thread mode. This is a run based rougelike inspired mode where you will tackle increasingly difficult levels of a sort of dungeon set in the ethereal otherworldy spaces that played heavily into the games launch trailers but ultimately dont show up too often in the main game. The problems with this mode are esentially all the problems that existed in the base game. Ghostwire is a game in which all of your abilities feel terrible until you max your skill tree, at which point you will finally feel base level competent and wonder why the game didnt just start you at this power level. Spiders Thread exacerbates this by resetting all your abilities to 0 and making you unlock them again. There was an opportunity here to throw lots of wild game breaking modifiers on top of the end game powers to make things new and exciting, but the opportunity is passed over. On the positive side the new abilities like a stealth zipline takedown and ground pound have alot more room to shine in combat arenas designed with them in mind. The spiders thread arenas also get to lean more into the otherworldly architecture and spacial design that I desperately wanted more of in the original game. It doesnt go as hard as i would like but ive only seen about half the floors, so things may get wilder as you progress. Oh you also get to hang out with a big magical cat and rescue strays.

Ultimately, its a decent enough mode and its cool to see how the developers restructured the game in a new way. The entire update is meaty, with lots of new elements to dig into. Its very generous to release this all for no cost. Theres lots here that i wont be experiencing (two new sets of collectibles are just not worth my time) but i think someone playing the game for the first time will have a much more accessible and fully realized experience. This is definitely the “definitive Ghostwire experience”.

Despite being a huge Metroidvania fan this was my first Castlevania. It was cool! I really enjoyed all the different monster sprites, especially the bosses. Top notch GBA art direction. My only main gripe is that by the time i finished the game i had guessed there was a secret ending but decided not to get it because i had become bored with navigating the castle. Movement is not particularly fun or interesting so it got tedious running back and forth. A late game item to warp to a warp room from anywhere would have helped a ton with map cleanup though in fairness this is a common problem in the genre. Otherwise p cool game might check out some more castlevania soon.

This game has an unfortunate tension in its design. Every world is a set of levels that must be completed to face a boss and clear the world. once the boss is defeated you unlock a new set of remix levels to clear in that same world. The remix levels are the best the game has to offer and the platforming really shines, but unfortunately the standard levels to get to those remix levels are much less engaging and ultimately lost my interest.

Game Highlight: The Soundtrack is excellent. Also the jumps feel pretty good.

Spotted this while browsing [VERY LEGAL OFFLINE GAME STORE] and was immediately taken by the visuals. The backgrounds have a hyper compressed pre rendered look that i find extremely engaging. The character sprites meanwhile have a similar look to old mortal kombats roto/fmv style. Over detailed in a way that could only come from a non hand drawn process. The same studio was responsible for the home console version of the game and the two versions have remarkably similar combat mechanics and movement abilities. This leads me to suspect the GBA sprites are super low res renders of the home console 3d models either rotoscoped or just touched up by a pixel artist. Its an extremely cool look that i would love to try emulating someday.

Game Highlight: seeing an enemy shoot an ice ball at me, experiencing intense deja vu about that specific ice ball sprite, then realizing that the same studio later made the Bionicle GBA game my brother had in which im pretty sure they re-used the ice ball sprite.

I was going to be snarky and say this isnt as good as Holocure but having put a solid few hours in now i do actually prefer Holocure. Its very likely this comes down to play context, i mostly play holocure on my couch where i only play VS on my phone while commuting. Mainly i just think 30 minutes is too long. Its rare that i make it to 20 and then fail to make it to 30 and those last 10 minutes feel like the game is holding me hostage. It was a great commute game when i regularly died earlier in my runs but now im further in that rarely happens. I get why this blew up though. The loop is definitely satisfying. I just prefer the version with an anime coat of paint and a fishing minigame.

I was bored with Tales of Arise, then i was having a ton of fun, then i was bored again. There are only like five enemy types in this game and the combat gets stale once you stop gaining new party members to change things up. I generally liked the characters, but the story was pretty much nothing so it failed to keep my attention. Not sure if i dont have the patience for these long character RPGs or if i just keep playing the wrong ones.

Game highlight: gorgeous environment art, i was always excited to see a new area.

I love fallout theoretically. Fallout 3 was extremely formative and for that reason it remains one of my favorite games of all time. Since then i have enjoyed every subsequent fallout less than the prior. Is this because of nostalgia or have the games actually been getting worse? I suspect its both.

Wha surprised me about revisiting 76 after years of updates (i played at launch but tech issues and an empty lifeless world put me off very quickly) is that 76 might be the first since 3 that i enjoy more than its predecessor. Many of my annoyances with 4 are also present here. Crafting is tedious and over emphasized, the guns still feel largely terrible to shoot, and there are very few if any memorable questlines. I spend way too much of my time collecting, sorting, and hauling my junk back and forth to my campsite. Yet somehow im finding myself feeling much more forgiving of these flaws.

It could be that while fallout 4 came with a shock of “wait no this isnt what i wanted” 76 is now establishing this is the new status quo and im becoming resigned. It could also be that watching the game bomb so spectacularly at launch and then spend years carefully improving makes it feel like a scrappy underdog. Truthfully its both. Fallout 76 is both fascinating and frustrating in equal measure because the scars of its troubled lifecycle are deeply obvious to even the most casual observer. It’s obvious when you find a quest from the base game versus a newer addition. The former almost always comes from a robot you find in a strange location and generally involve gathering items and reading notes from dead people. You will also frequently find locations that are fascinating and well realized while also being completely devoid of human life, reminding you that oh right there used to be no characters in this rpg. Its odd and messy but its clear that the people behind the game know this, and are playing with these contrasts as they continue to expand its world.

In 76 you leave the vault with the express goal of rebuilding the wasteland using your scrappy know how and the base building interface that i expect we will see in every bethesda game for the rest of time. Many updates post launch, and this narrative theming actually meshes mechanically with the games mechanics and world design in a way bethesda games hardly ever do. The wasteland was empty when you emerged to rebuild. Now its not, because npcs returned and began to rebuild alongside you. There is a tangible sense that what happened in the games narrative mirrors both what happened in the narrative of the games development and my personal experience of the game as a player who has dipped in and out over the years.

This is getting very long, and im hungry, so tldr game is kinda good now. It is probably better than 4 in my estimate if only because the narrative if 4 was so terrible. Its not revolutionary, but its fun enough. And yes, i Bandwaggoned because the show was good fight me about it.

Ill probably keep playing this off an on for a bit, but it hasnt really gripped me the way i wanted it to. Its a fun enough golf game but im finding it hard to find an understanding of its ball physics and how your shot distance relates to the power meter. Also where in mario golf mistiming the bottom of your swing means the ball slices right or left here it seems a mistiming means your ball arbitrarily magnetizes towards the nearest hazard. Is this intentional or is this just part of how golf courses are designed? No idea. Minus one star because apparently the japanese version of the game has Kiryu in it but i have the US version and its rude that i cant have him.

Game highlight: i like how animals roam around the courses. They dont seem to interfere theyre just hanging out.