Genuinely the most exhausted I've felt after beating a fantasy adventure game, taking the crown from Dark Souls III.

If I were meaner I'd drop 1 star but I'd be remiss not to acknowledge the technical and presentation aspects of this. As fun as it is to compare it to Gmod, it far exceeds it in many practical ways, though of course not being nearly as deep.

I don't have the energy to list out everything detail by detail but I think what killed a lot of my enthusiasm which peaked in the 10-20 hour mark (thus, spent close to 40-60 with a sense of "is it over yet?") was just the sheer lack of ambition in shrines and general quest design. For a game so heavily built around its lego pieces it sure is scared to make the player put more than 2 pieces together (and if it does, it leaves out a preassembled example 9/10 times.). There's little way to tell whether or not the shrine you're entering is worth your time, an easy "avoid" is if it's right alongside the main roads of the map, but even near the edge of the map or more far away regions I found the game reminding me for the 3rd time post-tutorial how to throw an item or how to stack objects. Late into the game I just started skipping shrines wholesale, unless they were convenient for fast travel i.e. in the sky islands or mazes or I just had a REALLY good feeling they'd be at least decent.

In many ways the Zonai stuff was the most consistently disappointing to me, with much of the slog of the game wrapping around to it. I scraped by with only 5 notches of battery(!!!) for 90% of my playthrough and felt like I had more than enough breathing room for any puzzles, bordering on bypassing many outright due to headroom. I said this shortly after leaving the great sky island, that they should have doubled charge capacity as a baseline; and I think they agree because any zonai task that looks like it'd ask for more also has batteries lying around to offset anyone who has an unupgraded charge.

By the time I wanted the game to be over it just kept sending me on absurdly long fetch quests. It might sound silly but do you know how often I completed a temple or major questline and thought "man I could've replayed Ico"? A lot more than just once lol. That's a new feeling for me really, in regards to singleplayer games; I may joke about it but I'm almost never serious if it's anything legitimate, but I really felt that here. In many ways I just don't think the game respects the players time, and I don't mean in an endearing / engaging way like you'd see in Demon's Souls or Faster Than Light. It doesn't help by this point it repeats the shit out of bosses in a way that would make Elden Ring blush, and unlike Elden Ring there's no easy way to tell if what you're doing is underpowered vs you based on map location; it feels arbitrary,

Really where this game shines is.. where most 3D Zeldas shine, which is the world and characters. and to that end it's very good imo. The music is also mostly lovely. I'm now too tired to write more, kind of like the average shrine quality walking from the outer tenth of the map inwards.

Music highlight. Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes.

Video games aren't fun anymore.

Minecraft was at its best in whichever version came after the first one I played, because that was my First Update and was new and exciting to me.

I will talk about the game peaking in its beta while also expressing pure insipidity as soon as the ender dragon is found and/or killed, despite the fact that this did not exist during the supposed Golden Age of Minecraft.

Microsoft ruined Minecraft by making it accessible across 8 distinct platforms and keeping the simpler combat that I insist is better than

Mojang, who ruined Minecraft with the Beta 1.3 with the Beta 1.4 with the Beta 1.8 with the Release 1.0 with the Release 1.3 with the Release 1.5 with the Release 1.6 with the Release 1.9 update. Oh, the train stopped? Just kidding, with the Release 1.13 with the Release 1.14 with the Release 1.16 with the Release 1.17 with the Release 1.18 with the Release 1.19 with the Release 1.20 update. Yes, every single one of these updates spread across the last literal decade individually ruined Minecraft. Oh sorry, I forgot to start the timeline at Infdev

Yes, I can list at least one reason for every update charted out above. I will use however much or however little knowledge I have of Minecraft to relentlessly batter these algorithm-oriented talking points inside my head as I play, so I can reinforce the growing status quo to garner clicks and views all built around a narrative of disinterest, creative bankruptcy and an inability to keep the intrinsic flame alight.

A sandbox, that contains things I am not forced to engage with, but will make it my problem despite the game letting me choose my version to play on. They made the game too easy, they made the game too hard. They made the game too directed, they made the game too wide. They changed too much, they changed too little. Vanilla is boring, modders can do better. Mods are too different, I prefer Vanilla.

Minecraft 45 Bugs Compilation is ruining minecraft, how haven't Mojang fixed this yet? Minecraft 45 Bugs Compilation (2012) is funny, can't wait to try this on my creative world. Minecraft was better when it was simpler and we'd make 8-bit calculators out of only redstone and torches.

Minecraft grew up, I did not. I grew up, Minecraft did not.

...

How do I live like this? I don't. Imagine being this miserable. I love Minecraft just as much today as I did over a decade ago. Dipped my feet into mods, played dozens of adventure maps, was there at the twin-birth of Battle Royale (Survival Games in MC + the mod for Arma II) and here to see the entirety of Shrek at 720p encoded as block placements in-game.

"Video games aren't fun anymore." get real. Love the gang that plays Minecraft with me who still have a sense of humor, imagination and intrinsic motivation to simply build together.

Good night.

How to host a java server: PaperMC + server flags
How to manage Minecraft Java installs: Prism Launcher (recommended) or MultiMC
How to install mods: Modrinth
Wiki/further reading: Minecraft Wiki (not fandom)

I want everyone to actually sit down and find it in themselves to meet this game on its own terms, which should be pretty easy to do with its stellar soundtrack holding you aloft better than any balloon or weed gummy ever could (the latter might help tho)

Kaze no Notam is beautiful, even if the "game" part of it is nonsensical; in a way I'm glad it gives zero heed to the players needs or wants at any moment. More and more I find games having complete indifference towards the player to be more and more attractive, and I don't just mean that they're brutally unfair execution tests but rather that they just continue to operate. I think Rain World embodies this the best, but this is way up there too in that field alone. I feel that my rating is a bit high but I don't really care, most I may do retroactively is make it an 8/10.

It's with this game that I must finally admit, the og PlayStation was absolutely the star of the 5th gen consoles. I don't know how I can argue otherwise anymore even with the handful of party games the Nintendo 64 had under its belt. Where Nintendo raised an Ocarina of Time to combat the Final Fantasy, they bring nothing when the likes of Kaze no Notam and Moon show up.

Shoutouts to Detchibe for bringing up this game thrice in the Backloggd Discord's Game Of The Week events to finally get it in the spotlight.

In a word: Luxuriate.

Indie GOTY 2024 Nominee

"Insanely addictive." -GameSpot
"Finally, my two favorite pastimes, roguelites and poker, reunited in one revolutionary hybrid." -IGN
"Thank god this doesn't cost me any real money, my wife said she'd leave me over what happened in Vegas. Oh shoot, it's 3AM..." -GiantBomb
"As a Zynga Poker fan, this is what I wished they would've done 10 years ago; excellent timewaster." -RockPaperShotgun
"Update: My wife left me, but I just got this sick tarot card." -GiantBomb

Music highlight: Tarot, Spell of Iron, "Things That Crawl At Night", 1986. (unrelated)

Music highlight. Estimated read time: 3~ minutes for OpenRCT2, 3~ minutes for venting. lol.

"Do I put my review on RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 or RollerCoaster Tycoon 2? And which version..." I don't know why I fretted over this when I played the entirety of both base games via OpenRCT2. It's also with this that I break my oldest "running gag" (implying it's funny) with this account, which is that I'm always playing RollerCoaster Tycoon 2; by unmarking it as "playing" and replacing that status with this. More on this later.

I could gush endlessly about RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 & 2; they're in my mind the best jumping-off point for getting into management games, which in turn would make the entry into things like RTS easier for many. They're not without their flaws, though; I'll knock those out immediately. The most obvious one is that many things aren't explained to the player, but 95% of the time they are shown; the remaining 5% can ruin your scenario play, though, such as guest weight or ride requirements to avoid stat penalties... wait, hold on, don't go anywhere, I know that sounded like nerd shit... okay, it kind of is, but it's not that involved, I swear. "Learning" these games is incredibly easy if you observe interactions; though one plugin/mod I see people use is automatic price manager, and I personally think it takes a lot out of the game; you can find out how much you can sell something for by simply raising the price until people stop buying, or the inverse by lowering until people start buying. I mention this interaction specifically because this is how most things go with the game; if you're not sure, just do something and observe; it's not a particularly obtuse game except in some edge cases. That said, I'll recommend some very basic plugins for OpenRCT2 that help immensely with onboarding; they do not make the game easier, they just integrate relevant information that you would be wiki diving for in the first place.

Where these games shine is in the sheer player expression they allow for completing the scenarios, or in ride recreation, or scenery/decor, just general theming. The scenario difficulty scales fairly linearly in RCT1 with enough wiggle room to allow most players to not only learn but also express themselves (reasonably; don't spam too much or you'll go broke!). RCT2 had the problem of inexplicably ordering scenarios within each difficulty category alphabetically, meaning for many, they had an arduous first scenario in the form of Crazy Castle, which more experienced players almost unanimously agree should’ve been placed in Intermediate rather than Beginner anyways. OpenRCT2 now defaults to a difficulty sorting for RCT2's scenarios I believe, which essentially everyone recommends. Of course, this is mostly irrelevant if you played one or the other to completion and then started on the others' scenarios, as you'd already be accustomed to it, but it's yet another tweak OpenRCT2 makes that improves the experience for everyone.

...

"More on this later.": There is a weird fetishism from the more.. "niche" side of game review/criticism/analysis, a patriotic sense of obligation and pride in always playing, reviewing, and talking about The Original Version of something, often knowing full well that better versions of the game exist, and to not just make it a matter of preference but to actively disregard or dissuade playing games or such projects. To a degree, I felt this rub off on me from about 2015-2018 when I started collecting retro consoles like the PlayStation 3 and my dozens-long list of CRTs (essay on this some other time)
This isn't wholly unjustified, however, as for years and still going, many gamers will wholesale write off anything older than them as being outdated and not worth playing. In the case of OpenRCT2 all it really does is make the game playable on modern operating systems with the utmost basic quality-of-life changes (such as raising and lowering single tile placements without having to adjust the terrain first; things people far more into the game back in the day would enable tile editor for anyways, or one more significant, immensely helpful thing; but I'll let you see if you can figure out what that is in my playthrough of Micro Park. (timestamped to nudge you closer to it)

Somewhere along the way, I feel like the relatively young medium of video games skipped from being underbaked to overcooked in their analyses; a lack of brevity and/or concision, often over-analyzing every minute gameplay interaction for seemingly no reason other than to point out that they notice these things exist. It really shouldn't be warranted as a baseline component to a review unless you're clarifying something in active debate; most of it comes off as petulant bickering for little reason other than wilful disengagement.
To make matters worse, it's often coated with almost twice as much wordage trying to justify its position in the first place, as if the opinion piece of a cold, pessimistic burnout─the alphabet soup concocted in a flurry with more passion than any second given to the actual piece being discussed─ever needed one to begin with. It's just an opinion, after all. But maybe that's what's most upsetting from that perspective? That it is just that, and even if influential to a degree most can only dream of, still ultimately means little towards swaying the perception of the object of discussion.

O hypocrite that I am, for herein lies borderline word salad lamenting such an angle in the first place; oh well. It all wraps around to being fetishistic about things deemed historically significant, assigning them prestige and sacrality to be both immune from criticism and ammunition against that which deviates even a little.
Perhaps a more concentrated example is the inconsistency in perception around Minecraft (2009), specifically ""old"" Minecraft, where a very loud minority decry the game as having fallen off, being altered too much, etc.; the inconsistency of when it fell off would be hilarious if it weren't so depressing and laden with real-time demonstrations of parroting and a density of nostalgia bias so immense it makes Ocarina of Time look like a contrarian's pick. A defense of the old does not need to be propped up with slander of the new; that's just conservatism for video game art hoes.

Video games died in 1999, they'll say, which is news to me, but if that's true, then I'm pretty happy playing whatever this software is called from 2002, 2012, and 2022 as well.


Where to buy RollerCoaster Tycoon 1: GOG or Steam
Where to buy RollerCoaster Tycoon 2: GOG or Steam
OpenRCT2 project, for playing the games on modern operating systems: OpenRCT2
Launcher/updater for OpenRCT2/OpenLoco: OpenLauncher
Recommended OpenRCT2 plugins: Stat Requirement Checklist, Live Ride Measurements, Park Rating Inspector.

Played on default settings with Survivor.

Rain World's.. well, world, is utterly beautiful and captivating, there's something about it that strikes me as endlessly interesting with just how diverse each region is despite what could broadly be described as "post-apocalyptic industrial"; it effortlessly outclasses many in this aesthetic genre, with a sprinkling of Buddhist theming that elevates it to masterclass status in my book. It feels like a mashup of Girls Last Tour and Made in Abyss visually. I feel like this is where the intrigue for many comes in, especially in the last couple of years or so with the cutesy Slugcat fanart and gifs people love sharing around (I did so for ages before even playing), but I feel something is miscommunicated about the game from this angle by the fandom.

When people talk about a game having disregard for a player in a good way, the vast majority of the time they're talking about Demon's Souls or sometimes Dark Souls 1, or cheap shots in mostly old PC games; but these games always give the player the tools to overcome, especially the lauded Souls franchise and adjacent. Rain World does not, or at least not really; you might be given a spear, but the amount of hostile enemies you can actually kill with it? Like, two, at least somewhat reasonably. The world does not care if you wish to walk across that bridge, there is an eldrich horror larger than you could have imagined casually feasting on one of the beasts that previously demolished you. Wait... There's your chance to get past, RUN! Jump over that rock, hurry! Scurry along you silly little Slugcat and pray the monster is still engorging itself. Finally you reach the pipe, and on the other side, another beast, instantly snaps you up.

Press [start] to continue.

So you've learned something at least, about how this ecosystem interacts; but you died, despite how hard it may have been to get where you were. You can't go back though, you know it's a dead end, the worm nudges in that same direction still. You have to push on, Survivor. So you push forward again, with that depleting Karma meter you haven't payed much attention to only a couple hours in or so. You claw and climb your way through a (to you) arduous section with some beasts and perilous jumps, until you finally reach the door and shimmy through, to be met with a Karma Gate at tier 3, but alas you are only tier 1, and hungry. Time's almost up, the screen begins shaking and the sound becomes thunder, soon you're washed away into oblivion. How utterly frustrating, I thought, how could they make the player go through all of that knowing they'd likely die and be unable to get through? There's a lot of moments like this, and an area in particular that drove me insane, I constantly asked "how would I change this?", and each time I'd conclude, simply, that I wouldn't. To fix that or place that on a cycle or something rigid would defeat the purpose or at least severely crack the game's vision. To approach these challenges from the perspective of "how would I change this for the player experience" is to directly detract from the experience of the Slugcats.

This isn't about you, this is about a Slugcat which in this game no matter how good the player may be might as well be regarded as only a couple rungs above insects. The act of killing something that could also kill you is rare, and reliant on often single-use tools you happen across. You WILL be fumbling with Slugcat's movement to the very end and it's all the better for it. Why should things be easy? The decision as well to make the game fixed-screen was also massively beneficial to selling the uneasiness in a 2D space, it places extra emphasis on immersing yourself in the soundscape, listening to every little audio cue you can to clue yourself in on what's just around the corner. It also makes the game feel even larger than it already is, while still retaining measurable distance over "samey" screens such as certain waterways or long tunnels. The sound design is also masterful, and it synergizes perfectly with the visual presentation and how it impacts progression through the game.

With the Downpour DLC came a free update that optionally adds visual cues to things such as indicators for off-screen enemies and accessibility options such as an engine slowdown similar to Celeste's; I always appreciate these sorts of updates and tweaks on principle, but I would still strongly urge trying to Survive and to only tweak downwards if you're genuinely going to drop the game over these gripes. They are in my mind what makes Rain World, Rain World, but I get it.

Ultimately Rain World represents what I believe to be the most realized vision in a video game, period. Unfaltering in its indifference to the player and their usual power-trip-seeking behavior and drip feed dopamine addictions, it has a story to tell about the cutest thing in the world simply trying to reunite in an apocalyptic world, and it refuses every step of the way to fall victim to dissonance between its gameplay and its narrative.


In one word: Primordial.

"Only humans practice deception so intensely for reasons that are so... unnecessary."

In my previous review I made a rather kneejerk response to merely seeing Lies of P on the store page, I see the word "Soulslike" as an adjective and I instinctively want to frumple up and cringe like I just had a warhead candy. But hey, it's on GamePass, and Iron Pineapple gave a glowing review for it but with a caviat that though not as bluntly put, is very succinctly written by u/psychebomb in their review about two paragraphs down, which I quote, "If you like Dark Souls, you'll probably like this game. If you've made liking Dark Souls into a defining personality trait of yours, you're going to fucking hate this game."; truer words have never been spoken on this site.

So, I decided to play it, it's practically free to me anyways and I'm just off the credits of the equal parts tranquil and exciting journey of The Last Guardian (review soon maybe) so I'm craving something a little more intense. Intense might be an understatement, right away I can tell I'm less equipped than most Souls games at the beginning, enemies are surprisingly tanky; what gives? Oh, it has the thing like Bloodborne where the enemy goes into a special state after receiving enough damage, then with the finishing blow of a charged heavy attack (or sometimes Fable Arts™, this game's "weapon arts" essentially) they get put into a position to deliver a Fatal Blow™. ...Alright I won't pretend the terminology in this game is a little goofy, but it's not difficult to understand either.
Anyways, the combat is already a lot more close and personal than Souls typically allows, likely due to the near complete rejection of ranged builds (there's only a limited use "gun", consumable throwables, and one weapon with a ranged Fable Art only); to offset this, the game has a parrying system similar to Sekiro where you block on reaction to Perfect Guard™, "but why would I need to do that when I can just circle strafe and block" says the DS1 fan, or "why bother playing the game when I can roll?" says the DS3 fan; the real spice here is this happy marriage of all of the similar mechanics wrapping around to something we saw in Sekrio: Unblockable, unrollable attacks; that can only be avoided by outright outspacing them or Perfect Guarding™ (or in special instances mostly only available to you in the late game). Immediately my Souls poisoned brain clenched, "NO ROLLING?", but the little bit of Sekiro I played clicked in instead, TWANG, I did it! TWANG, TWANG, TWANG, .... grabbed, SLAM SLAM SLAM CRUNCH!!! Oh, and not everything can be blocked either... lol... So I had to get these parts of my brain to agree on something: This isn't Block Souls 1 / 2, or Roll Souls 3, or Rhythmiro, or BloodBoR1ne, but will ask me to juggle all of these things in nearly equal amounts. That is to say, it all amounts to me using all of the knowledge I've accumulated from DeS, DS1, DS2, DS3, ER and Sekiro. To point to any one of these things as the thing it's aping is just plainly incorrect, because playing it like any of those (besides debatably Sekiro) will leave you in for a bad time.

That was a lot of words to basically say "some attacks ignore i-frames" but I cannot stress enough how much they use this to force you to be proficient in a variety of different combat situations. It's not just the bosses too, most enemies in general have an attack like this. You need to decide to space around it or go for the perfect guard. Now how about those enemies and bosses yeah? Overall pretty fantastic, I think the game has a notorious difficulty spike by the 3rd boss, because it immediately asks you to be able to perfect guard and identify when they're going to grab you (it's a subtle cue but you can definitely see it, I ate it like 10 times before finally never being hit by it on reaction). There's one explicit gimmick boss and of course it's probably the worst one in the game, though not nearly as bad as From's worst output (I'd list them but I want to keep those games spoiler free for those who haven't played them yet)
The enemy placement is often difficult in a variety of ways, either in group management, lack of space, or just a strong hitting "elite enemy" as I call em relative to the area you're in; they also love to hide them around corners and behind walls, crates etc. akin to all of the cheekiest moments from Souls and ER, which I absolutely love as it kept me on my toes, and despite that I fell for some obvious traps when I became impatient. The "lack of space" bit was very relevant at a lot of points where I'd switch weapons to a spear or something with a vertical arc to fight in hallways, reminding me of DeS in this regard (good), which leads me to the general level design: Significantly better than DS3, but that's a low bar; probably better than DS2 on average and a hair below DS1 (please stop pretending the game ends at Sen's Fortress, DS1 fans). The constant wrapping around to previous Stargazers (this game's checkpoints) and verticality is very impressive and shows the levels are a lot more deliberately thought out than the likes of DS3 just peppering its straight line with constant bonfires. The one thing the game is significantly weaker on is overall environmental diversity, well, at least compared to DS2 and Elden Ring; it's about on par with Demon's Souls, DS3 and a bit below DS1.

Gone is the habit of the classic Souls "you basically have 3 weapons because if you change you need to completely respec and grind materials", now you can usually buy the ones you need outright without seeking out some random mcguffin in someone's poop shack on the other side of the map to do so; and the weapons are in two parts: you only upgrade the blade, so if you have a good blade already but want to try a different moveset, you can just swap the blade to a new handle. The only downside with this is a lot of weapons are only proficient in either slash or pierce, a good number are fine at both though and if you want to spend the least resources I'd upgrade those. I ended up using probably 8-10 different weapons through my playthrough before settling on this heavy, oversized cleaver looking thing on a "dancer's blade" handle lol. I remember people saying "heavy builds are unviable in this" but I think the opposite, I think they're favored if anything at least for a casual playthrough; lightweight, fast weapons require a lot of Fable Art usage and timing to close the gap which while an extremely active and rewarding playstyle is incredibly demanding in a game that already demands a lot from the player execution-wise.
One thing that can be a little confusing, and again taking the wrong notes from Souls here, is that some upgrades and such can be kind of unclear about how good they are. All you gotta know is that in the skill tree, Dodge Link is a must.

Aesthetically I think the game has a really nice look for the most part, though I'm not as hot on the swamp and castle. People like to go "it's just BloodBorne" but it really isn't, there's been discussion about how both are rarely the architecture described (bcus people genuinely can't identify architecture 99% of the time and just repeat verbatim an architectural word they heard in front of an image they now associate with it with no further study) The weapons in particular are awesome and the ability to have a costume separate from defense items makes it a lot easier to create a look while optimizing stats and not looking like a clown. Tangentially related but the game runs like a dream for me on my 3700x and RTX 3080 at 4k "Best" settings (using DLSS Quality I maintain in the range of like 90-120FPS), all while stuttering less than DS3 ever did on the same system. Also, kind of unreal playing a game like this above 60FPS... It feels so good.
The music is serviceable, some boss themes are better, I just wish the game leaned into the clockpunk styling more and had a more industrial, mechanical, percussion-heavy soundtrack; seeing clockpunk boss with roaring choir orchestral music is serviceable but would've benefited atmospherically from this.

The character writing in this is okay, it's definitely weak at the beginning but a lot of them expand towards the back half as you get to know each other better. I think the story conceptually is pretty neat too, I've been a fan of the whole "what makes a human person?" philosophical conundrum for as long as I could read, and I think the way Lies of P handles it does a serviceable job in this regard, but I won't be reminiscing on it the same way I would DS2 (y'all sleep on that game's narrative too much). This isn't exactly glowing praise, but make no mistake that in this subgenre Lies of P has one of my favorite NPCs and a couple honorable mentions on top of that. One of them kept me engrossed in conversation for almost 10 minutes straight, which I can't say any other has really done. (personal favs are Stockpile Thomas, Ed, Andre, Seigmeyer, Saulden, Vendrick, Seigward, Hewg, Alexander, Rya, Blaidd, Ranni)
I'd decided on a score of 8 a third through or so, but it kind of only got better especially as the rather flexible weapon system kept things interesting for me.

I was quick to judge, and was happily wrong. Lies of P is the big surprise of 2023 imo that easily punches alongside FromSoft's greats, weaker in some areas but stronger in others. I'd place this firmly just above DS2 in my list of "Them wacky soulsemup things", all while having a team that gets completely dwarfed in comparison. Your enjoyment will highly depend on whether or not you're the kind of person who goes "Pac Land did it first" whenever people talk about 2D platformers.

In a word: Riddles.

Half the score for half the effort. Actually unreal people are defending the Tour maps when they either have horrid signage or none at all (Paris???).

Most of the tracks fail to do anything that makes them feel like MK8 content, these would be right at home in MK7 and- oh wait some of these already had community-made versions in CTGP-7. These would be bottom tier even in MK7 and low-tier in CTGP-7.

I also remember now that I'm playing it that it has my 2nd least favorite item meta only behind 64 which is unfair since 64's literally is broken, as in nonfunctioning, on half its courses as well as AI softlocking themselves.

But hey at least it costs less than an actual new Mario Kart would for almost the same amount of content, who cares if it's microwave slop some 16 year old outdid a decade ago with janky level editors made for a game nobody has access to the source code for.

The actual original tracks or any that saw more than a finger lifted to refit them are unsurprisingly the best in the pack so far. Others like Coconut Mall are strict downgrades over their originals.

I dunno. I fell off of 8 and especially 8D at points in my life where I should have sunk my teeth into them until I was splitting bone, for a variety of reasons too long to fit here but I may elaborate in the main game page for MK8/MK8D.

But hey it's a party game, I should just shut up and enjoy the slop because Nintendo put in Birdo so my queer ass can go "so true bestie" every time she honks.

Even playing this at 60FPS with the dogwater DOF removed, and all the little QOL touches, I can't help but feel I should have played DX instead. I like the renditions of the music in this for the most part, like I'm glad Nintendo acknowledged that bass wind instruments exist again, but I feel it was a horribly missed opportunity to flesh out the overworld with more than 4 themes, because unfortunately the game's soundtrack sounds a lot better in an album than in the game where half your time will be accompanied by 30-60 seconds of Overworld Theme a hundred times over. I'm also just really not a fan of how it looks, I've seen people beg Nintendo to give the Oracle of Ages/Seasons games and even A Link to the Past the same treatment and I think saying it looks "toy-like" is being extremely generous, as I would describe it as very sterile, albeit colorful in the most basic sense. It's not bad looking, but it feels very inconsistent in the look it's going for, too; I rarely looked at the dungeons and thought "toy-like", they just looked like a watered down version of A Link Between Worlds. I also just strongly detest the implication that retro graphics such as the NES, GB, or even SNES = "toys" or "childish", it's needlessly closed-minded about entire swaths of artistic direction. The more detailed look we get glimpes at by the photographer in DX looks so much better stylistically, it's sad to me they didn't go with that. Look how expressive they all are!! It's also ridiculous that the performance on actual hardware is weirdly terrible with constant frame dips despite being locked to 30FPS. The remake also weirdly draws out a lot of interactions and cutscenes, nearly every interaction with the owl takes 2X longer than it used to, as with every NPC interaction. I think this remake is "competent" at best, and I would generally encourage anyone to play DX instead.

inhale
ANYWAYS, enough about this remake specifically.

This easily has my favorite handling of "side"quests in any Zelda game and I deeply appreciate that this isn't yet another "FIND THA COOL RANCH DORITO OF MAKE GO AWAY". Another thing too is that everyone in this world seems genuinely so loving, in a very sincere way that doesn't reek of that usual quirky one-note Zelda stuff.

The dungeons themselves are probably the most complex and interwoven I've experienced in any Zelda game, though perhaps almost to a fault as I'd begun asking myself "alright, which of these 4 pairs of stairs are actually connected...". The game also expects you to use literally everything at one point or another, so even though the solutions at a couple points are a bit nonsensical I still also greatly appreciate they demanded that at all. It's something Tears of the Kingdom did horribly and I don't get why people aren't more bothered by it over there, to have the climax of the game be devoid of any meaningful statement about your progress because uhhh being able to say "erm you can finish it any time 🤓" somehow justifies how padded that game is with its unevolving, barely passable "temples" which don't build off of each other in any capacity.

Link's Awakening doesn't beg you to stop and smell the roses, it makes you, because goddammit they're romantic. It has my tied 2nd favorite ending in any Zelda game that touches on a thematic subject matter in a way I favor immensely, which I'll likely never forget, "or [her]"

Thank you /u/Nowhere for suggesting the game to me and referencing the photographer in DX.

The presentation of Tunic is unassuming, initially looking like yet another flat-stylized medium-sized indie game (see: VR games), but slowly I realized that it's not "just another", but is extremely intricately designed where every little detail that does exist does matter. It's masterful in art direction and sound design, quickly rolling its way into my favorite soundtracks as well.

I'll split gameplay up into two distinct sections here as many do, but I want to clarify now that this is as deliberate from me as it is from the game.

Combat-wise it's somewhere between any Zelda or Souls, feeling more like the former with some mechanics of the latter (stamina management etc.); actual encounter design is pretty firmly in the middle, at first feeling very much akin to something like Link's Awakening but evolving into something a bit meaner and a lot more thoughtful like Dark Souls or Elden Ring. (further elaboration in log notes, those will contain outright spoilers for mechanics just forewarning) This is one thing I've seen begroaned fairly often and I just don't get why? It's honestly pretty solid and opens up a lot as the game keeps going, though by the back half it then becomes kind of irrelevant; which, not to sound all "just trust me" but it becoming basically irrelevant is not at all a bad thing, it's just not the focus anymore, and I'd be willing to bet it was a deliberate metanarrative decision to reinforce this next segment. Before that though, worth noting that somewhat recently(?) they added better accessibility options in regards to difficulty; before it was basically default or god mode, but I think 2D Zelda fans refusing to level with Tunic will be happy they got their wish with the infinite stamina option. (In all seriousness, settings like these are great)

If you look at my log dates, you'll see I started Tunic over a year prior to what I'd consider my actual playthrough from Nov. 12th-16th, because frankly I find most puzzle games to be daunting. Not because I think I'm incapable of solving them, I eventually will for most things aimed at general audiences, but because I can never really escape feeling anxious around them. Tunic was different though, its navigational puzzles were always welcoming to get into and felt like natural evolutions. But I knew there was more, the entire language (which is no mere alphabet swap), the drip feeding of some key word info. Truthfully, I had hints at about 4 points, but like 3 of those were me somehow missing a manual page in plain sight like 10 hours ago and a friend chiming in where it was. I felt very out of my depth at the beginning, but once things started to click, it kept rolling and was exciting; frustrating at times, but nothing some deep breaths and short breaks didn't bring me back around to fixing.

My favorite part of the game though, enough to make stingy ol' me want to break a habit or beg for a bday present, is the in-game manual. The manual is an absolute masterstroke of game design and I refuse to elaborate further. I cannot stress how utterly incredible it is, made with such care by itself that most games blush at the task of detailing something so much while also giving it so much purpose. I wish I had a physical copy of the manual.

And now we reach the point where I feel talking about things much further would be too spoilery, and I had to keep things vague in other areas I normally wouldn't like doing in so as not to ruin the mystique entirely. Maybe just an excuse, I don't know; I feel Tunic deserves more words, though. It has this absolutely unparalleled sense of exploration and discovery, which will likely take even the most experienced puzzle game enjoyers by surprise. Barring only a couple puzzles that lack even a clue to their solution aside from "that one thing you forgot you could try 10 hours ago", the rest of them hit it out of the park and the game punched surprisingly well thematically for me.

One last thing, HLTB clocking in "12 hours" makes me mad and people who've completed the game will know why... They will never experience transcendence...

In one word: Knowledge.

Favorite tracks (3 hour long album btw, awesome.)
Redwood Colonnade
This Is The Wrong Way
Crouch Walker
Snowmelt
<spoilery 1>
<spoilery 2>
<spoilery 3>
<major spoiler>

A free to play mobile game disguised as a fun little $5 indie project someone just accidentally did, but in reality is meticulously designed to be as addicting as possible despite there being literally 0 point or goal, not even in a meta sense. I saw a review or comment that sums it up the best, "I only died because I stopped moving for 20 minutes."

Cookie Clicker without the chocolate chip flavored lore.
Wallpaper Engine but it only has one wallpaper.

To call it shallow would be to praise even the thinnest puddle.

Pure, unadulterated dreck. This slot machine designer's glittered up swirling turd being lined up alongside the likes of Tunic in running for Best Indie 2022 is a fucking travesty. Video games are better than this, I promise.

UPDATE: I've been informed I missed the point of the game, it's not that you just waggle WASD pointlessly, you can also tick some boxes between runs before pressing continue to go back to mindlessly waggling WASD.

"it looks different" this, "my childhood" that; my brother in christ this shit runs like dogshit on both PC and Switch, constant suttering every second or two even on minimum settings at 720p. Fourty fucking dollars for this? And immediately greeted with a "please accept this EULA to allow us to actively enable telemetry and grab your IP etc." on boot. Distracting ass giant "SKIP SCENE" prompt on ALL cutscenes, locking the cute costumes to a giant DLC bundle that's another twenty fucking dollars. Nevermind the horrendous regional pricing. Fuck off.
EDIT: LOL the DLC doesn't even include files for you to play back locally i.e. MP3/FLAC or the "digital artbook", you can only view them in-game. They literally are selling the sound test menu you could unlock in og Klonoa. Holy fuck.

I'm usually firmly "eh whatever" on remakes changing visuals etc., and while I think this is serviceable in that regard, the ogs are just better in these departments. You may prefer the new look, I don't, but it also doesn't bother me that much.
EDIT: Nevermind Klonoa 2 looks like ass. Holy shit.

I also just want to add, please for the love of god play Klonoa PS1. It's an immensely special and important game to me and emulates perfectly or otherwise you can swaptrick it on PS1. Treat yourself to something good instead.

EDIT 2: Latest PCSX2 nightly appears to run Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil just about perfectly as well LMFAO fuck this remake duology. Ryzen 7 3700x peak at about 35-40% usage and GTX 1050 Ti peaks at 60-70% at 1080p, occasional slowdown at 1440p.

The epitome of "This goes hard (actually good)"

Surprisingly more non-QTE game here than people let on, don't listen to people telling you to "just watch it."; that takes out like 90% of the impact.

Strongly considered giving this one a 9 but proly gonna stick with the 8.

"Hmm? Ah, hello there. Come down to explore these beautiful old ruins? Don't mind me.
I've a fondness for exploring myself. Getting lost and finding your way again is a pleasure like no other. We're exquisitely lucky, you and I." ❤️

Throughout my journey in Hallownest it felt as though a timetraveler went back to write the game to specifically mock me at several points, to terrify and sadden me at others; something I can't say I expected to feel from Hollow Knight, but the game has multiple moments instilling every type of emotion in me within a world so full of death with life that persists in decay. There's a nearly overwhelming sense of melancholy to nearly everyone and how they conduct themselves, but they all handle it differently. Some seem blissfully unaware, but even the seemingly arrogant and naive Zote has a deeper motivation buried in his being beyond fame and glory.
I simply adore the writing and attention to detail, Elderbug at the beginning of the game for example has 3 different greetings depending on if: 1) you greet him immediately, 2) you walk past him and come back, or 3) you walk past him, enter the well, then come back. He's far from the only example of this, the game is utterly chock full of flavor text and worldbuilding in such an unobtrusive way that I'd wager the casual gamer who isn't an autist like me who tries to exhaust every dialogue exchange will end up missing 2/3 of it. I find that absolutely incredible, and as far as any game goes I've only seen this level of care put into every minute detail rivaled by Supergiant's Hades.

Mechanically speaking this is perhaps the simplest part to talk about, but let me get it out of the way: The start is SLOW. Like, REALLY slow. It's not the slowest I've ever played but it's almost zen-like in its pacing for the first few hours until you find the dash ability and not too long after the walljump. Everything else is anything but slow though, for what I can only describe as MegaMan X/NES platformer kind of movement where your momentum is (practically) fixed pace and jump height is dictated extremely granularly by how long you hold the jump button. The act of exploration, uncovering more of the map, finding new or recurring characters is always exciting; it's a little bewildering just how massive the map is yet it's navigable with a fairly sparse quick travel system.
One system I'd like to highlight in particular though because it seems to be a weird point of contention is the Shade. Upon death, you leave a "Shade", which contains all of the Geo (the game's currency) you had on your person similar to bloodstains in the Souls games; difference here is you must attack it to absorb it. Again, similarly, if you die before doing so that money is just gone. I've seen a number of people complain about this but despite losing nearly 2k(!!) at one point it never really bothered me, because secretly this game keeps handing out items you can sell for 200, 400, 800, even 1000 geo to a vendor you meet at the halfway point (when geo starts to become relevant at all). I personally do not understand the frustration with this system, it's far less important than in something like Dark Souls which I know y'all love and the game periodically hands out a way to bypass having to manually collect it anyways (once per use, but by the end of the game I had 15~ of these lol). It incentivizes me to think about how I'm picking my wallet back up once in a while which is more than I can say about mashing X (Sony) while sprinting over a funny puddle. Even Zote knows better.
The combat is snappy and tight, very clearly designed around the instantaneous or otherwise fixed-distance movements; in a similar vein of dismissiveness I see nobody mentioning how you can adjust your playstyle dramatically through the use of Charms, if you want to be a spell-spamming glass cannon there's nothing stopping you and it's perfectly viable. Bosses are almost all excellent, with the finale being one of my favorite in any video game. (spoilers) "GIT GUD!"

Artistically probably one of my all-time favorites, in every department. I will say though, I became progressively upset in the latter half with each new area I found--BECAUSE Y'ALL KEPT TELLING ME THEY LOOKED THE SAME?? THEY LITERALLY DON'T?! THEY'RE DIVERSE AND BEAUTIFUL IN BOTH TRADITIONAL AND HAUNTING WAYS??? Seriously what the fuck!!! Game has a callout for this seemingly LOL
Real talk though it's incredble how cohesive the art direction is while still maintaining clear identities of each region. I have no problem distinguishing, without opening the full map, (minor spoilers start) that I'm at for example Greenpath, Fungal Waste, or Fog Canyon (minor spoilers end) despite these looking vaguely similar and all in approximately the same area. I also have no problem distinguishing the "edges" (no way to be more specific without giving away one of the coolest parts of the entire game imo). On a far more personal level I adore the character designs for the sole reason that they are simple yet extremely identifiable, which makes them encouraging to want to draw myself!

I want to put in so many different quotes from the residents of Hallownest, but if I put in the ones I "liked" I could fill out three more of these reviews. I opened with the one I did because I think it most accurately reflects my main joy in the game, or tied at least; I also just think that the game brilliantly shows all the different outlooks on the same circumstances people can have. My depression is not the same as yours, we have different struggles even if we potentially have the same trauma. It's as confounding as it is beautiful, right? Maybe... I don't know how to eloquently close that. The music and art and writing all come together to aid in that perfectly. I could have ended my playthrough 15~ hours earlier than I did, but I chose to delve deeper into the game and that only made it better as I learned more about each characters, their plights, their relationships and bringing the gay couple together.

In a world a world where every AAA studio is racing to see who can fit the most absurd amount of filler sidequests per dollar, even going so far as to start pondering the use of rancid A.I. tools to inflate this even more, (archive link), it's hard to see Hollow Knight as anything less than incredible.

One more.

“In every heart, there is nobility. Proof of this lies before us, dormant within you, when you’re blinded… but only by its grace may you ascend to that plain where truth and essence lie.”

...One more.

“Are we not all just wandering souls in search of purpose? To find meaning in this vast existence… It is the greatest quest of all.”

...Just one more.

“To protect the weak, that is this kingdom’s last and only wish. Where life might have ended, hope has remained.”

...

“Maybe dreams aren’t such a bad thing after all.”

In one word: Remain.

Favorite track from the OST