Chromentur
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Barely even 45 minutes of gameplay, not sure you can count this as a legitimate DLC with how little there actually is to it - obviously weaker than the base game but provides the same brand of competent-but-empty entertainment. It's just ludicrous they couldn't do more than a few tedious textboxes for this character on the franchise's 25th anniversary. How have we still not learned about the consequences of rushing game devs on major projects?
2017
Top 50 Favorites: #40
Games I Like That Everybody Else Dislikes
Never understood why this is a hot take, but imo this is absolutely as good as any Banjo Kazooie game. It has its quirks but let's be honest, so do the originals. If there's any complaint, it's that your characters oddly feel too small in comparison to the levels - which makes some of the traversing feel a bit barren. It also does the "power ups that are only used in one or two specific circumstances ever" thing, but other than that I thought this totally passed the class. Unique character designs, nostalgic music, definable levels (unlike its sequel), a worthwhile challenge, fun collectables (except that one bullshit quill in the first level), and that classic sardonic humor commonly associated with the Rare platformer. Enemies are a little mid though. But by and large this is without a doubt a worthy successor to the 90s N64 collectathon genre. No clue where the hate is coming from; I get that a lot of people just absorbed their favorite YouTuber's opinion of this back in the day as their own without even giving it a fair shake, as is the case with a lot of these - but this is pretty much exactly what could have been hoped for out of this project. I found this to be a colorful, inspired, and overall lovely experience. Sorely underrated even by its supporters.
Games I Like That Everybody Else Dislikes
Never understood why this is a hot take, but imo this is absolutely as good as any Banjo Kazooie game. It has its quirks but let's be honest, so do the originals. If there's any complaint, it's that your characters oddly feel too small in comparison to the levels - which makes some of the traversing feel a bit barren. It also does the "power ups that are only used in one or two specific circumstances ever" thing, but other than that I thought this totally passed the class. Unique character designs, nostalgic music, definable levels (unlike its sequel), a worthwhile challenge, fun collectables (except that one bullshit quill in the first level), and that classic sardonic humor commonly associated with the Rare platformer. Enemies are a little mid though. But by and large this is without a doubt a worthy successor to the 90s N64 collectathon genre. No clue where the hate is coming from; I get that a lot of people just absorbed their favorite YouTuber's opinion of this back in the day as their own without even giving it a fair shake, as is the case with a lot of these - but this is pretty much exactly what could have been hoped for out of this project. I found this to be a colorful, inspired, and overall lovely experience. Sorely underrated even by its supporters.
Remember when these games used to have subtlety? I'll give this one thing and one thing only over Resident Evil 6, and it's that this honest to God really does feel like it's trying to adapt to the CoD-hooked seventh gaming generation while also trying to stay somewhat true to its original roots as a survival horror game. Does the combat suck? Oh God yes. Is the level design dumbed down? Absolutely. Do all the endings flop? Of course, hard. Do the (almost 100%) in-game-rendered cutscenes look like shit? You bet your ass they do. But there's still some sort of an eerie thrust in here - there are some solid scares and tons of pretty-yet-freakish art design that don't feel totally out of place. But resorting the Otherworld to busted, shitty chase sequences (with a truly incompetent MLG filter applied over all of them) was a ruinous move, and the thing barely fucking runs even after a supposed performance patch. On the plus side plenty of smaller details and sections like the Centennial Building feel productively morbid, and Silent Hill as an open world actually feels pretty good here as well - not too Ubisoft-ified but also not Borderlands-levels of cramped. But the story and every single enemy (except for the dolls) are uninspired. As with a lot of games from this time, I think it both succeeds and fails because of how weird and experimental this is.
2019
Top 50 Favorites: #41 (Ultimate Edition)
Strong contender for most fluid, straight-up best combat in all of gaming. There are a lot of things to love about this one: Remedy's dependably batshit narrative, its sleek environmental mix of corporate and supernatural, the tremendous graphical prowess on display, etc. But I've always found it pleasantly productive that a game literally named Control has some of the most snappy and responsive controls in any game - and the fighting in particular is just leagues ahead of the rest, not only is the moveset/upgrading therein concise and effective but it just feels right, man. Like all of the history of video gaming - its evolutions, ideas, and all that - has led up to this particular combat system, as if I've been unknowingly waiting for it this entire time. The speed in which you can swap directly from beaming a telekinetic array of office supplies at an enemy's face to blasting a paranormal shotgun that auto-reloads ammo to just downright rocking some dude's shit with some ground-shattering melee attack is just... goddamn, it's bliss. Like, actual perfection. I see it as only a bonus that the rest of the game surrounding it is pretty cool, too. Severely underrated even by its endorsers imo.
Strong contender for most fluid, straight-up best combat in all of gaming. There are a lot of things to love about this one: Remedy's dependably batshit narrative, its sleek environmental mix of corporate and supernatural, the tremendous graphical prowess on display, etc. But I've always found it pleasantly productive that a game literally named Control has some of the most snappy and responsive controls in any game - and the fighting in particular is just leagues ahead of the rest, not only is the moveset/upgrading therein concise and effective but it just feels right, man. Like all of the history of video gaming - its evolutions, ideas, and all that - has led up to this particular combat system, as if I've been unknowingly waiting for it this entire time. The speed in which you can swap directly from beaming a telekinetic array of office supplies at an enemy's face to blasting a paranormal shotgun that auto-reloads ammo to just downright rocking some dude's shit with some ground-shattering melee attack is just... goddamn, it's bliss. Like, actual perfection. I see it as only a bonus that the rest of the game surrounding it is pretty cool, too. Severely underrated even by its endorsers imo.
Games I Dislike That Everybody Else Likes
I'm sorry everyone, I tried - I really tried with this one, but this was maybe the single most miserable gaming experience I've ever had. The only positive I can say is that there's no shortage of content; between the base game and its 4 DLCs it will keep you occupied for a good while. Not that it's good content, but hey it's something I guess. Otherwise I think this is one of the worst things ever put out by a Triple A studio. It's got that godawful early-seventh-generation level design where it's just these gross, turd-colored environments that are claustrophobic, vacant, and not at all fun to explore - there are a ton of 'worlds' here but they all look and feel mostly the exact same. The characters are all insufferable as they spout the same embarrassing 'le epic lulz bacon gamerbro' humor which is actually so deeply unfunny that it fucking hurts (speaking as someone who loves juvenile/immature humor). But mostly I think the issue is that the general gameplay is totally braindead and one-note, it's what I would call 'fake difficult' - by that I mean that it doesn't actually challenge you as a combatant in a game that sells itself on its supposed challenging combat. Not that it's unfair or too easy per se, but the way in which it approaches a battle is super dated and childish - just piling enemy on top of enemy with zero strategy whatsoever so each fight feels identical, just move around and mash the trigger for every. Single. Goddamn. Fight. It's beyond vapid. Not to mention its looting/rarity system is pretty bad and doesn't really at all fit with the rest of the game. To say I hated it would be an understatement - the shitty, repetitive music has been burned painfully into my brain even over a year after 100%-ing it and all its DLC (which, sidenote, I actually vastly prefer to the main game even though I still think they all suck). So bad that it unironically felt like I died and was watching my own corpse play it out-of-body.
I'm sorry everyone, I tried - I really tried with this one, but this was maybe the single most miserable gaming experience I've ever had. The only positive I can say is that there's no shortage of content; between the base game and its 4 DLCs it will keep you occupied for a good while. Not that it's good content, but hey it's something I guess. Otherwise I think this is one of the worst things ever put out by a Triple A studio. It's got that godawful early-seventh-generation level design where it's just these gross, turd-colored environments that are claustrophobic, vacant, and not at all fun to explore - there are a ton of 'worlds' here but they all look and feel mostly the exact same. The characters are all insufferable as they spout the same embarrassing 'le epic lulz bacon gamerbro' humor which is actually so deeply unfunny that it fucking hurts (speaking as someone who loves juvenile/immature humor). But mostly I think the issue is that the general gameplay is totally braindead and one-note, it's what I would call 'fake difficult' - by that I mean that it doesn't actually challenge you as a combatant in a game that sells itself on its supposed challenging combat. Not that it's unfair or too easy per se, but the way in which it approaches a battle is super dated and childish - just piling enemy on top of enemy with zero strategy whatsoever so each fight feels identical, just move around and mash the trigger for every. Single. Goddamn. Fight. It's beyond vapid. Not to mention its looting/rarity system is pretty bad and doesn't really at all fit with the rest of the game. To say I hated it would be an understatement - the shitty, repetitive music has been burned painfully into my brain even over a year after 100%-ing it and all its DLC (which, sidenote, I actually vastly prefer to the main game even though I still think they all suck). So bad that it unironically felt like I died and was watching my own corpse play it out-of-body.
2006
Edgelord incel bullshit. I'm all for controversial/provocative media, but beyond the fact that this is made for and ONLY for sexist 4chan dwellers it just plays like total shit - and the progression system makes no sense either. At least something like JFK Reloaded had funny ragdoll physics to still make it semi-amusing past its shock value.
2013
"What is my fate? Will I become one of them?"
Quintessential seventh-gen action adventure: random overblown bouts of Micheal Bay action, color palette that consists seemingly strictly of grey + brown + green, tons of slow & simple automated sequences, bullet hell, impossibly hot lady, 100% bullshit multiplayer mode shoehorned in for the kiddos who would refuse to even touch a game if you couldn't mow down your friends with bullets and/or knives and/or 'nades every half second... But fuckin' A does it do it all so damn WELL (okay except the stupid multiplayer), a total platonic ideal. So effortlessly nostalgic. I was hesitant towards this at the time, but looking back even in the face of its sequels this is fantastic stuff. Really puts this new Lara to the test right out of the gate - with a game that has mysterious narrative intrigue mixed with poignancy, personalized systems, expensive graphical prowess, and gnarly jolts of violence. In the words of Todd Howard, it all just works. Never wanted it to end - a more than ample apology for the misdeeds of Tomb Raider: Underworld.
Quintessential seventh-gen action adventure: random overblown bouts of Micheal Bay action, color palette that consists seemingly strictly of grey + brown + green, tons of slow & simple automated sequences, bullet hell, impossibly hot lady, 100% bullshit multiplayer mode shoehorned in for the kiddos who would refuse to even touch a game if you couldn't mow down your friends with bullets and/or knives and/or 'nades every half second... But fuckin' A does it do it all so damn WELL (okay except the stupid multiplayer), a total platonic ideal. So effortlessly nostalgic. I was hesitant towards this at the time, but looking back even in the face of its sequels this is fantastic stuff. Really puts this new Lara to the test right out of the gate - with a game that has mysterious narrative intrigue mixed with poignancy, personalized systems, expensive graphical prowess, and gnarly jolts of violence. In the words of Todd Howard, it all just works. Never wanted it to end - a more than ample apology for the misdeeds of Tomb Raider: Underworld.
2019
Technically qualifies as a video game. Irredeemable gacha garbage that contorts some of the all-time greatest racing levels of any franchise into a barrage of stomach-churning "Baby's First Pay-to-Win Scam"-looking junk. Even if you removed yourself from the idea that this is the epitome of Nintendo's insultingly greedy bullshit, the vehicles would still control like a dump truck with duct-taped windows in reverse. Plus, I mean... it still looks like this. Too watered-down to even fully hate.
2011
Expected to find an overhated blast here, but no... I get it. I totally get it. In actual disbelief that this took 12 years to make, and not 12 minutes. Jon St. John's voice acting as Duke is once again sublime, but otherwise this is an overly-simplistic dud. The Disaster Movie/Epic Movie of video gaming, wants so hard to be a parody of the seventh-generation shooter (which - especially at this time - is a perfectly acceptable target) but mistakes lazy references with actual satire. I can get down with immature stupidity but you gotta have some actual gameplay here too, I mean this has to be in contention for worst level design of all time - with zero exploration to be had as you make a straight-line, laggy trek to the exit each and every time in uninteresting environments. Still far from one of the worst games ever, it's definitely a superior Gearbox outing than Borderlands - which this is still (somehow) clunkier than, though this is also shockingly less obnoxious and the combat here is at least diverting unlike that other one. Plus I applaud any game with this amount of interactive side shit to do, including chill levels where you kind of just fuck around and kick back. But overall it's not even memorable trainwreck levels of bad, just boring bad - especially when its loading times must take around one hundred thousand years. And FUCK that pinball machine, man.
2017
The fact that this is still very reasonably fun with friends or even by yourself despite its near unprecedented bloat of new mechanics/modes is a real testament to both its core gameplay and infectiously joyous art style. Granted, I was over the whole battle royale/arena shooter craze barely even two years after it started - but this one has always been one of the more approachable ones. Playing created maps is still way more limited than it needs to be, not to mention the actual maps being churned out have well past stagnated - you can only play the exact same deathrun variation so many times before it gets stale. And obviously the store is predatory, but what live service store isn't these days? I don't think this really got any better or worse, people are just nostalgic for the times before we all got old, tired, and burned out - same attitude towards the CoD games. Resoundingly okay.
2001
As much as its blemishes seem to show more and more with each passing year, so too do its assets. This nostalgically blocky open world still feels more alive, styled, and memorable than offerings from tons of massive-budget Triple A games of the current era. Words cannot express just how revolutionary this was at the time, and in large part it's impressive how much it really still holds up over twenty years later. Scrap the gunplay entirely, it's borderline unplayable - but most everything else here is enjoyable, save for the ruinous lack of a map system and a handful of not-so-fun missions which thankfully can be remedied with a YouTube guide or two. Still feels great to knock around these clayfaced NPCs with a baseball bat (accompanied by that iconic squish sound effect), blow up cars with RPGs, and see the origins of Rockstar's effortlessly satisfying mission structure - going from slimy character to slimy character carrying out a barrage of depraved tasks that range from vandalism to murder to all-out mayhem. Later installments improved on the formula but they'd be nothing without the template.
2004
Games I Like That Everybody Else Dislikes
So unabashedly, ludicrously (and arguably accidentally) over-the-top in its offensiveness that it's impossible not to find it at least a little remarkable. I mean come on, the thing was created on the same engine as Carmageddon and released on the 41st anniversary of the actual assassination after several months of extensive research to make this as accurate as possible - by a team who had no idea the general public would find it "sickening", "despicable", and "[in] bad taste" (even after adding in enhanced blood splatter and ragdoll options). Games like that don't come around often, even if the end result is little more than a meager physics simulator in actuality. I admire not only the gall but the seemingly impossible ignorance it must have taken to make and then release this the way it did. Plus okay it's kind of hilarious making the car hook into a building at high speed and seeing everybody just launch tf out like something right out of Goat Simulator.
So unabashedly, ludicrously (and arguably accidentally) over-the-top in its offensiveness that it's impossible not to find it at least a little remarkable. I mean come on, the thing was created on the same engine as Carmageddon and released on the 41st anniversary of the actual assassination after several months of extensive research to make this as accurate as possible - by a team who had no idea the general public would find it "sickening", "despicable", and "[in] bad taste" (even after adding in enhanced blood splatter and ragdoll options). Games like that don't come around often, even if the end result is little more than a meager physics simulator in actuality. I admire not only the gall but the seemingly impossible ignorance it must have taken to make and then release this the way it did. Plus okay it's kind of hilarious making the car hook into a building at high speed and seeing everybody just launch tf out like something right out of Goat Simulator.
2008
For the first time in a Bethesda game, the main quest is actually the most interesting one! Always preferred the simple mystery of this to Fallout 4's trite, restrictive, and crushingly boring parental angle. But the latter just smokes this in the gameplay department - playing this on PS3 feels like a constant ticking-clock battle to finish it before it corrupts beyond repair. Like others I was totally absorbed with this in high school but had to force myself to complete it this time around. Doesn't help that the number of worthwhile characters in this entire game you can count on one hand and its karma system - while intuitive for its day - is rather naive and feels like it limits this more than it aids it. Still sporadically fun in that Bethesda way akin to letting a kid into the PlayLand and telling them "Go nuts" but holy fuck is a lot of this map just abysmal to navigate - very 7th gen in that a lot of its ugly greens + greys completely blend into each other leading to samey areas alongside already generally terrible layout. Excels when it focuses on how pre-war preventative measures lead way to post-war malaise - and the different ways in which people's minds choose to preserve themselves in the face of it. One of those games where you start out wanting to do everything but check out quicker than you'd expect.
This shit being packed into every Resident Evil game I buy now is how I imagine Apple users felt in 2014 when that U2 album came forced onto all their phones.
Games I Dislike That Everybody Else Likes
Sure, let's just take one of the greatest 3D Platformer Collectathons ever created and make it play objectively worse than it did nearly 20 years and two console generations ago with one of the clunkiest, spazziest, glitchiest, least intuitive game engines in recent memory. And hey, let's also make the art style look like Halloween candy barf and promise a ton of cut content we didn't deliver on (save for a thoroughly shitty, puny multiplayer mode that barely qualifies as anything)! Gotta love how Nickelodeon rushed this game to come out alongside The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run and then when the movie got delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic this still had to come out at the previous date well over HALF A YEAR before the movie was even released (with a quiet whimper, by the way) so the rush was somehow, against all odds even more pointless than it would have been before. This is all not to mention them making the difficulty for - what I can only assume to be - actual babies. Fundamentally shit, but the only reason it isn't rated any lower is because the bones of that original experience are still here somewhere - under bugs and terrible mechanics and stupid meme callbacks it's at least able to be recognized a little. The God-tier music of its predecessor is present mostly untouched, the humorous writing and voice acting still stands (including the hilariously scuffed Krabs that I've grown to love), and the classic mission design is kept intact. It fails at everything it set out to achieve, granted - but hey there are worse things to be than a reminder to go out and play the original instead.
Sure, let's just take one of the greatest 3D Platformer Collectathons ever created and make it play objectively worse than it did nearly 20 years and two console generations ago with one of the clunkiest, spazziest, glitchiest, least intuitive game engines in recent memory. And hey, let's also make the art style look like Halloween candy barf and promise a ton of cut content we didn't deliver on (save for a thoroughly shitty, puny multiplayer mode that barely qualifies as anything)! Gotta love how Nickelodeon rushed this game to come out alongside The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run and then when the movie got delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic this still had to come out at the previous date well over HALF A YEAR before the movie was even released (with a quiet whimper, by the way) so the rush was somehow, against all odds even more pointless than it would have been before. This is all not to mention them making the difficulty for - what I can only assume to be - actual babies. Fundamentally shit, but the only reason it isn't rated any lower is because the bones of that original experience are still here somewhere - under bugs and terrible mechanics and stupid meme callbacks it's at least able to be recognized a little. The God-tier music of its predecessor is present mostly untouched, the humorous writing and voice acting still stands (including the hilariously scuffed Krabs that I've grown to love), and the classic mission design is kept intact. It fails at everything it set out to achieve, granted - but hey there are worse things to be than a reminder to go out and play the original instead.