Calling Balatro a gambling game has become one of my pet peeves, because in essentiallity it's a series of math challenges. You try building poker hands, and the game does card counting for you so puzzle-to-puzzle probabilities are all laid bare. You get to influence statistics of the game in-between rounds, which is where the most random element of the equation comes from. I quite enjoy playing the long game, thinning out and refiguring the deck for my playstyle. Where the game loses me is in HOW you are supposed to win the run. Rather than interesting cardomancy, the way to progress through is to stack payouts, mutipliers and multipliers on top of multipliers until the actual card game requires nothing but non-commital hands. The middle is the most interesting of any run where you form a game plan and look to implement it with tools thrown in your way. But the end result you seek? To make the line go up until your input doesn't matter. And that's just hella dull.

Tekken is a game about decades long family feud so here’s my story of Tekken-related patricide.

When I turned 6 my dad decided to gift me a Playstation 1. We weren’t rich so we bought it second hand. He found some guy willing to sell his console and we visited him together to make sure it works. I remember his room being cluttered and messy. I also remember the game he showed us first. It was Tekken 3. It blew our minds. Never have we seen 3D graphics that looked so detailed, so animated, so lively. Coming straight from shitty famicom clones it looked unbelievable. My excitement about graphics peaked right there and I’m still trying to catch that high. That dude sold us his stack of discs as well (I also remember a shitty Mission Impossible game), but really we only cared about the “game with brawls”. When we got back we played Tekken 3 all night long. That was maybe the most memorable day of my childhood.

Years passed and I “grew out” of PS1. I didn’t have a PS2 or PS3, I got into PC gaming instead, so the rest of the Tekken series passed near me. I played some T5 on friends’ PSPs (I even showed them how to do cool Law kickflips that still worked exactly how I remembered) but otherwise it wasn’t something I was particularly interested in anymore. I’m into “smart” games now, not those meathead fightings.

But my dad, it turns out, never stopped caring. Now living a pretty prosperous life he bought his new son a PS3 (we stopped living together by then) with, you guessed it, Tekken 6. And this time it was a deliberate ploy for him to REALLY get invested in fighting. He started maining Hwoarang, actually learning his moves, trying out online. I remember my lil bro’s excitement when T7 got announced for PS4 because he knew dad would WANT to play that one, so yet another birthday Playstation was imminent. In T7 he got addicted to ranked play so he got really good. The meme about 40yo old dudes playing Kazuyas perfectly wavedashing and putting you in nasty mixup is real, except it’s my dad, he’s 50 now and he’s Hwoarang.

And of course whenever I’d visit Dad's side of the family he’d invite me to play Tekken for old time’s sake. And since he got so good it’s gotten pretty miserable. I played a bit of T7 as well since it was on PC, but never on the level that invited understanding, just mashing here and there with friends. Of course it wasn’t enough against Dad’s Hwo. And whenever he’d perfect K.O my ass he’d laugh straight in my face. Look at the gamer son who can’t play fighting games! I very much gave up on reaching his level, I just accepted my beatings at occasional family gatherings.

That is until Tekken 8.

Something clicked with me in this game. Maybe it’s fantastic learning tools, maybe it’s yet again great graphics, maybe it’s Jun Kazama being an amazingly fun character, but it got its hooks deep in me. Now I know how to apply pressure, how to put an enemy in a mixup state. I understand the concept of taking turns, the difference between crush and evade, when to use my 13i and 10i punishes. I know my character’s moves and available tools. I’m actually learning.

My Dad of course also hopped on T8. He bought an entire new laptop for the game, justifying it as a working expense! And yesterday we finally got to play some sets.

These were my most nailbiting T8 matches so far. Turns out Dad doesn’t like it when I’m ducking his highs. He also can’t do much when it’s me who’s putting the pressure and forces the mixups. I put everything into this… and finally got him. We went 4-3. I defeated my Dad. I truly am the son of the Mishima family.

Truly a Ubisoft Original © in a sense that it's been the buggiest release in recent memory. I had sound bugs, cutscene bugs, gameplay bugs. I found a way to glitch the game to run entirely in slow motion. One time all sound effects disappeared until I completely rebooted the app. During one of the boss fights the camera stuck to a place so I had to rely on muscle memory and sound cues when the boss was out of frame (I still defeated them which might actually speak highly of the design). Whatever this is. It was a shockingly unpolished ride which makes me believe that the last group in Ubisoft subsoils which is still allowed to make games was rushed to get Prince of Persia out the oven. And I'm sorry to lead with this, because the game itself is seriously awesome.

It's just a stupidly good game of its type. With Prince of Persia the craft of making "good ass metroidvania" seems to be perfected to a sheen. These folks in Montpelier aren't afraid to leave you alone with the whole map and vague directions to explore. They will create a wildly intricate 2D combat and not teach you any of its peripeteia unless you check with an NPC tucked at the corner of one of the rooms. They will drop you into shockingly precise platforming section required to progress. They also designed maybe the best set of powers in a metroidvania, nearly all of which used to equal success in exploration, combat and puzzles! Nothing here is breaking new grounds, but every core facet of new Prince of Persia is designed to create just right amount of friction to be engaging. Fantastic fucking time when you're not dealing with bugs.

I'm also very much enthused by artistic goals of The Lost Crown. The old Prince of Persia were good, but Persia itself always felt like an middle eastern fantasyland with corresponding iconography of evil vizier scheming behind the back of good sultan, and only you, the prince of an abstract ancient Arabic country is destinied to save the night. The Lost Crown actually strives to be a game that's unmistakably Persian, paying a lot of respect to the culture, drawing from Iranian literature, ancient Zoroastrianism and hiring Iranian voice actors to do an awesome Farsi dub. I'm not lettered enough to confirm the ingenuity of the work, but it feels authentic and reverent. And the story is quite neat too, playing on expectations that come with the name. I came for a solid metroidvania and stayed for great vibes.

I'm just kinda upset that with all these positive I wasn't having exactly the best time with all the technical issues I encountered. Ubisoft should've let it cook for a few more months. Maybe I'll do a full map sweep after patches some months later and my impression will only improve.

Unchecked maximalism leading to a game that's very much less than the sum of its parts. With insane boss design, fantastic combat, pretty fun exploration bits it should've been a slam dunk. But for me it ended up ringing hollow due to game's unwillingness to restrain itself — be it from sending you on yet another McGuffin hunt, introducing unnecessary traversal mechanic, or throwing a new location with subpar gimmicks. Many parts of the game are great, and the marriage of extrinsically and intrinsically motivated gameplay to a point worked so well I was ready to proclaim that GemaYue invented digital crack. But somebody should have stopped him before stepping on rakes.

The other side of the coin is the story that's so earnest, sensational and... bad in ways that's consonant with Tevi as a whole, putting you through the wringer of non-established conflicts, unearned drama and neverpresent characters. It's easy to feel writer's excitement and how invested they are in their world, but with so many story bits flopping once the initial charm of adventure evaporates, you've yet again left to reflect on the virtue of moderation.

I wanted to write a review on why I think this is one of the poorest commercial rhythm games I played but Cold nailed literally every point I wanted to hit so I'd rather just remind people of GHWT Definitive Edition if you're really looking to gangnam style in backrooms with Doomguy on vocals and Peter Griffin on drums.

I think I'm more positive on this one than most because I actually quite enjoy the core mechanics and track design here. Collision handling is terrible though and makes the middle of the pack racing feel like casino, and I wonder if it's Fortnite's fault cause Rocket League doesn't have this problem whatsoever. If epic has balls they'll turn the collisions off entirely and turn Rocket Racing into their version of Trackmania, crank out wilder and trickier courses, but they won't. Still fun, and kids don't know how to drift for shit so you'll be always second or first until at least the gold rank.

This is the only game I beat in one sitting this year and my general impression went from "did we discover the first enjoyable cinematic platformer?" to "dang this is way spicier than it initially lets on". Slaps the player over the head with Themes without a modicum of trust, and might be better off with this approach, as it allows for an incredibly brisk pace without waffling parts. A jolly fun time whenever there's a multitasking sequence, and the general perspective switching is quite well done too. For real though, I expected good and I'm still surprised how much I ended up digging this. A must play if you have strong feelings about certain Danganronpa V3 twist.

Having just beaten it last night, I'm still chewing on Talos Principle 2 and what it brings, but I think I'm coming off more underwhelmed than I hoped.

Did Nintendo bite these devs? Which virulent strain hit the puzzle design? TP 2 brings great assortment of toys to play with, yet only a few of the new mechanics are given space to be incorporated in the core set of puzzle building blocks. On the other hand, it isn't even able to sustain the variety throughout the whole thing as the gimmick of one of the islands is "uhh moving walls I guess", while the last island is just a gallery of slightly obscure mechanical gotchas without a binding theme. What's there is enjoyable, but TP2 left me CRAVING for some sort of mechanical escalation, and I don't usually look for hardass cosmic brain puzzles from these games. A Gehenna-style DLC might actually fix this, will be looking forward to that.

There's a lot to like about writing of the game too, but I've got my misgivings. TP2 takes anthropological approach and puts you in the entire society of cool philosophizing robots. You get to travel with a neat crew of explorers, who could easily just end up as mouthpieces for their specific themes and perspectives, but the power of good dialogue and voice acting fashions them as quite lovable bunch. The posture and worldview you establish through conversations comes back shaping the world in a few surprising ways, which was a really nice touch. Unfortunately, I'm overall not so high on this aspect either as the game just feels too courteous, I guess? I've clearly chosen the path that aligns with the views of the author so I've not really felt like my position was disputed enough, the challenge was never postulated in anything but brief qualms. The mood ended up almost toxically positive, which I didn't vibe with too much. Maybe I'm just the part of the problem, as the game's writing would put it. But overall it's a lot like the puzzles – slick, with some edges sanded off.

A few more points to mention:
1. Serious Sam: The Second Encounter is one of the first games I bought for my first computer and likely the first PC game I finished. Despite all my misgivings with TP2, it was fucking nice to play another game from Croteam so many years later whose massive environments are still so full of Croteam's charm. Hope these people continue to make games for 20 more years.
2. I love tetris bridges! There are a lot of tetris bridges in this game yet it still wasn't enough. I'd play an entire game that's just tetris bridges.
3. The cat sanctuary is so sweet I got a little teary eyed.