Behold… a Euphoric Bros. game…. that’s actually kinda okay?

At least in comparison. A lot of the Garten of Banban hallmarks are still present. The game is dead-set on unsuccessfully trying to run over the two-hour refund threshold: in this case, padding the experience through looooong tram rides and sections where the player is forced to backtrack, each point of interest being a lengthy ways away from whatever other point of interest you’re currently at. When it’s not doing that, it’s not really doing anything interesting, either: the game never really takes advantage of its setting to do anything unique, instead just making you do clunky drone puzzles and then whatever fuck-you roadblock will make the game even longer as you figure out what you’re even meant to do. The game is utterly incapable, writing-wise, of a lot of what it’s actively trying to do: its scares don’t scare, its attempts at delivering its Deep Lore come off as both incomprehensible and not particularly interesting. Aesthetic-wise, the game puts its effort in all the wrong places. There’s so much needless detail on what are otherwise very simplistic models (which plays… weirdly with the lighting. everybody is so shiny), yet the way they move is so rigid and basic. There’s a moment where the… antagonist? of the chapter gives what’s ostensibly a Joker Rant on why he is the way he is, from which he… stands entirely still the whole time, just kinda staring at you through the window. Rids the moment of whatever impact it was meant to have. Just a little bit.

But even amongst all that there were moments which… if not necessarily showing promise, were still honestly enjoyable to go through. The game continues the upward trend Garten of Banban 3 did in having somewhat capable gameplay segments. No section stands out as egregiously bad, or anything that seems like it’s built to kill you as many times as possible to help get past the refund threshold. And even if what’s there… doesn’t really enhance the mood, or fit in with the general setting, some segments were honestly pretty fun. They finally have a puzzle utilizing the drone that I actually enjoyed going through, even if it’s still rather annoying to control. There’s this one segment where you have to memorize all the items in the rooms around you before then trying to figure out which of the rooms had something inside change and it was honestly super fun. Like, to the point where I wanted to try and do it again after I was done. There are some rough sections, and as a whole I’d say a lot of this feels… like going through the motions, trudging down the infinitely long hallways. Is it all that great? No, but for this series, it’s certainly an improvement.

Honestly, I also had a fun time watching things unfold, as well. Gone are most of the attempts to try and be funny — having a robot say the same three fandom in-jokes over and over again because apparently repetition is the best form of comedy — in favour of what mostly seems like a sincere attempt at being a serious Deep Lore horror game. And it’s like a soap opera. You never really know what’s going to happen next, be it something wild happening in the plot, some stupid gameplay concept you’re going to have to be stuck with for the next five minutes, some silly thing the game does to try and make its runtime as long as possible… it’s a wild ride, and something deeply, deeply entertaining, whether that’s despite itself or because of that. There’s also some stuff here I do like on its own merits. The new voice actors brought in by and large do a pretty decent job (and contrast rather amusingly with the DIY voice-acting of the older characters). There’s a couple jokes that stick the landing, and make me a bit more confident in the idea that there’s a little gift for… if maybe not anti-humour, being able to catch the player off guard in such a way as to bolster what’s happening. It’s clear, comparing this to its immediate predecessor (and also their other game Introvert: A Teenager Simulator actually) that they need to lean maybe a bit against their natural instincts to make their humour work, but I’m not being backhanded here: when it works, it does work.

So, like, given all that, I’d say I had fun with this in the end. I was thinking about maybe giving a bit more of a positive score, but ultimately the persistent feeling I had going through this was still a bit closer to antipathy than anything else. The game still wants to reach past the two-hour refund threshold without actually having enough content to get there, the core gameplay is kinda clunky and uninspiring, and on all fronts it kinda fails to be as effective as a horror experience as it wants to be. But on the other hand, after the genuinely kind of awful experience that was Garten of Banban 2... I definitely feel this series is on a bit of an upward tick. The gameplay is tolerable, and at points has some genuinely fun moments, and at the very least I think on the writing end the creators are leaning into the most entertaining parts of what they have here. Is it good? No. Passable? Maybe still not there, yet, but either way I had a good time. And I don’t necessarily think that’s the Stockholm Syndrome talking. 4/10.

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 played both prior Dragon Age games in a binge that has stopped dead in its tracks due to this game.

smug 2009 atheists should be punched in the face before they're allowed to write narratives that centrally explore themes of faith, because they cannot fucking approach the topic with any empathy and it massively defangs their critique. DAI being from the perspective of a literal inquisition but having no coherent ideology behind it and not actually being founded in any religion is so craven, they deny themselves the ability to meaningfully critique these structures by never stepping inside them and this profound inability to even try to understand the religious mindset and its decisionmaking while simultaneously making it a large narrative component is continually the worst part of dragon age as a series. truly baffling that they play into it harder and harder with each successive game

if this first act was you being like an anti-rift militia and trying to manage the complexity of operating on both sides of a border that was hotly contested within most people's lifetimes, and as you pick up steam you eventually discover records of the ancient inquisition and take up its mantle that could be, like, a story! but no, instead the cool-down section after the obligatory stupid action setpiece tutorial has you immediately fucking start the inquisition, which is insane, that feels like an end of act 1 thing where the world opens up. as a result there's no weight to it, it doesn't make sense and doesn't fit any coherent expectation of what an inquisition is, and it muddles the shit out of everything from the start.

this is an agnostic-atheistic politics-free inquisition with no authorization by any political or religious athority performed in the style of a syncretized cult from a millennium ago, which makes about as much sense as disgruntled knights during the hundred years' war converting to zoroastrarianism because their lords aren't doing shit to help their countrymen. except zoroastrarianism still has a coherent ideology and set of strictures behind it.

there's no sense of place to Haven by the time you leave it behind for the hinterlands, the only way you'd know where it's at is by implication of the world map and if you recall loghain's descriptions of war with orlais back in origins. the town has no history, has no culture, has no attachment to the player past a bunch of MMO questgivers and menus. awakening does so much more with so much less of import within minutes of its opening action sequence and its aftermath.

cullen leads your troops and queen anora handpicked the quartermaster to help with the inquisition, despite the inquisition having been founded approx. 30 seconds before you visit, how the hell do the orlesian politicians not see the massive amount of fereldans who were teleported into the inquisition's ranks as they operate directly on the state border and perform extrajudicial killings of templars and not see that as an insanely partisan threat to their security? how are they STILL doing the "both sides bad" thing for their stupid fucking templar/mage conflict? how do they manage to have you fight both groups in the same encounter but not actually design encounters around these multiple enemy types, they just spawn in a wave of templars then a wave of mages? why did the time to decompress not give me any fucking time at all to meet the cast and get to know how they tick? i still have no reason to give a shit about solas other than his deeply unnerving design

bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, and it makes me wish i'd never given these games a shot. no game in this series ever approaches its potential and they are all fundamentally compromised products. dragon age origins has constant bleeding chunks of its world be stitched back, gangrenous, via abhorrent 2009 DLC practices. dragon age 2 is completely unfinished, a vastly superior game when you skip all combat with the press of a button. and inquisition reeks of the same shit i see in every other frostbite-era bioware game: two years of prototyping and engine dev that led nowhere, followed by 18 months of crunch where nothing comes out in any sort of way that people are proud of. i fucking hate this company dude

After watching the last T7 Tekken World Tour yesterday, as the world gets ready to welcome Tekken 8 (not me, I'm poor), I felt like writing some words of appreciation to this game. It wasn't the game that properly got me into fighting games, that'd be, strangely, og Dead or Alive 2 and Persona 4 Arena, but this is probably the first fighting game where I played ranked a lot and genuinely tried hard to improve despite never being able to rise above 3rd Dan in my +70 hours.
I'm still fairly new to fighting games, so I'm far from qualified to gauge the quality of T7 as a fighting game. This gameplay feels very good, though Rage mechanics sort of limit the interactions at low health, I do think 3D fighters are cooler without these super moves. DLC characters are a bit busted and I'd rather they hadn't gone so hard on guest characters. Everything else surrounding this game is pretty flawed though, the graphics are really ugly and a huge downgrade from Tag 2, there are no tutorials at all despite being maybe the most complex fighter out there with tons of micro-mechanics, arcade mode and character episodes stink, and especially so, the endings, there are no fun side modes outside of the braindead bowling DLC, customization is worse (still played dress-up more than I'd like to admit) and most mindboggling of all, lobbies don't even allow you to have more than one fight at the same time, making them almost useless.

Where I think Tekken 7 is really special, believe it or not, is in its Story MODE. Now, the STORY in this can get pretty contrived, especially when it comes to fucking Akuma being here, and it involves very few playable characters. Unpopular opinion, but I enjoy the journalist narrator. That said, the MODE itself is very fun and one of the best attempts in the genre.
They've managed to make pretty much every fight memorable, using cool cinematic tricks like having all of them start with the opponents attacking in the cutscene and immediately doing so in gameplay, DMC1 style, QTEs (these are fun if they don't interrupt the flow, fuck you), fighting a ton of weaker guys one after the other, allowing for a playable version of the Tekken 5 intro fight against Jack-5s, flashbacks right as a character hits another, artificially making your character take less damage so they look stronger, or vice-versa, making the opponent look so much stronger than you, taking less damage or having infinite rage, and the most surprising of them all, the fucking third person shooting segment with Lars which doesn't even use new mechanics or controls! It's just the gun item from customization but with an over-the-shoulder perspective!
One moment that blows my mind is in the Kazuya VS Akuma fight, the camera pans out WHILE you're still controlling Kazuya and fighting near the end of the final round and seamlessly transitions to a cutscene where Heihachi is watching them and blows up the whole building with an orbital laser, leaving the fight inconclusive.

Where the story mode becomes LEGENDARY is with Kazuya and Heihachi's final battle, one I come back to watch time and time again and am convinced is the only one that can match the greatness of MGS4's final fight. The music, the story, focused almost entirely on these two's relationship, the cinematic tricks listed above, what you've learned playing as Heihachi, all of it comes together in this epic clash as one of gaming's greatest and longest rivalries finally comes to a bitter end. I think that the only thing that could've made it truly perfect was having a button prompt to throw Heihachi off the cliff, just like how at the beginning of the game, you get a button prompt as Heihachi to throw Kazuya off the cliff.

As the cherry on the pie, you get an extra episode where you get to play as Kazuya in his story-mode exclusive super devil form against an actually really tough Akuma to settle the score. A Kingdom Hearts Sephiroth fight for Tekken, if you will, which also doubles as sidestep/Kazuya training for players that feel the need to improve on that.

If Tekken 8 manages to have a story mode as cool as this, but involving more characters and with a less contrived story, without filler fanservice scenes of previous games, I don't think people will continue to praise Netherrealm's story modes because this is everything that those games try to do but so much better.

Asuka main plot relevance copium, PLEASE, tell me she'll do more than just fight Jacks in Tekken 8, Harada you fucking HACK.

"Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in garten exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.

He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest naughty one can jumpscare us. Any smallest thing beneath yon palyground out of men's knowing. Only banban can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the garten." -Banban Meridian, or The Evening Badness in the Indie Horror Community by Cormack Banbarty


I really recommend everyone that travels abroad and has multiple life changing events happen to them to play some dogshit stuff the second they arrive back to their country. It's really humbling, and reminds you of the eventuality of life. I will forever be grateful for my friends for making me scrape the bottom of the barrel for some seconds of dopamine release on stream.

i was talking with people today about my profound lack of interest in the upcoming "Dark Souls is now OPEN WORLD" game Elden Ring and it led me to think about Burnout: Paradise. this game was made before it became a trend, an expectation, to move your previously linear, level-based series into the open-world and it shows, because in stark contrast to games like Halo: Infinite or Grand Theft Auto V, Paradise's open world is actually purposeful in a sense that suggests that the open world was part of a wider design goal, rather than an existing series trying to cram itself into an open-world format because that is The Done Thing.

because Paradise doesn't really play like other burnout games. sure, the core tenets of driving dangerously to build up boost to hit ludicrous speeds is still there, but the game is utterly transformed by how races are built. there aren't circuits in this game, not in the sense we traditionally think of it, anyway: instead, each race begins at a specific intersection and ends at one of eight end points, and you can take whatever route you want across the vast complex supercircuit that is Paradise City to reach it. burnout paradise is essentially an enormous tesseract of a racing game, one gigantic race that you are constantly learning and improving on, where each event has you creating your own paths and routes to victory, filling out an ever more complete understanding of Paradise City until you know it's streets better than you know your hometown's. paradise embraces openness in every part of it's design, and you'd think that wouldn't be notable in the open-world space, but it is.

in Red Dead Redemption 2, the open-world essentially ceases to exist the moment you talk to someone and enter one of the game's interminable missions. in Halo: Infinite and Far Cry, the vast map of the game essentially acts as a glorified level select for a set of activities, large and small, that comprise the existing gameplay loop of those franchises. the open-world is an illusion, a marketing point, a buzzword. it exists so someone on an E3 presentation can press a button and phwoar! wow! look how far we can zoom out on this map! but you're doing all the same things in the same ways as you did in all the other games, usually less interestingly because the designs of these linear systems and the concept of a vast, freely explorable worlds cannot collide and leave both intact.

to be an open-world game, Burnout Paradise had to change. it had to be fundamentally different from prior Burnouts to such an extent that there exist many fans of the earlier Burnout games who do not like Paradise at all, and vice versa. i happen to think paradise is great, but it is great in a way largely divorced from why Burnout 3: Takedown was great. and I think that's a good thing. it demonstrates that the team at criterion used the open-world to create a genuinely transformative experience. if Elden Ring or Sonic Frontiers or however many upcoming games in which your favorite franchises decide haphazardly graft themselves onto a Breath of the Wild map end up great, they will be great because they allow themselves to transform, and race out into a brand new world, rather than trying to inflict the old one onto it.