Look, I'm going to be fully honest and inform you that this game gets a needlessly bad rap. Is it absurd? Absolutely. Is it needlessly edgy? Oh you bet. But that's what's so goddamn fun about it.

There's so much fun about this. There's so so much fun in this game but people can't seem to understand that past "Ooooh it's such a terrible game" when it really isn't. The absolute worst the game gets is 2 stages you can freely skip, the bosses, and the controls sometimes. You're kidding yourself out of a really fun time if you even try to give it a moment's breath. Just play into the dumb bullshit, I promise you a good time if you're willing.

While playing the ever so slightly disappointing Splatoon 3 Side Order, my boyfriend got me this. I've heard great things but I didn't think it'd catch me quite this hard, and I've had some pretty serious medical conditions that didn't grip my immune system quite like Balatro.

I mean this in the best way possible, Balatro is pure unbridled flair given form. When you get down to brass tacks, it's gameplay revolving around a very very simple concept cranked up to an absurd degree and it's exactly what you want to see in something so effective. Everything revolves around the core mechanic of the game, nothing seems out of place, and god does this game evoke such a sick sense of style while doing so.

I beat my first run in 30 minutes of owning the game, but unlike Side Order where I was left with a sense of empty "Is this really it?", this still has more to give. Unlockables, difficulties, new decks, more cards, it's exactly what a roguelike should be. Easy when you want it to be, hard when you want it to be, but entirely up to you and your skill when it comes to choking a perfectly good run away like a goddamn champ.

It's an arcade racer that's just really really solid. It's a fair amount of fun to pick up and do a few runs every now and again before putting it down and doing something else. If you're a huge fan of joystick fiddling when you've got nothing to do, this game is crack cocaine with the amount that you're required to do. I love the game, it's a lot of fun, it's really pretty, but there's a lot to leave desired. More tracks to listen to, different engine sounds, that sort of thing.

Just a good thing to pick up and have fun with should you want to. Pretty cheap too for what you're getting out of it, should that be a swaying reason to pick this one up.

Damn they made 23 of these things? crazy.
Bold move to make the cover blank, but hey it's their game.
And yeah, it's alright. Online hasn't been shut down yet, you can still buy the game unlike older releases, but my god I wish they brought back MyCareer as a freeform do what you wish fuckaround mode. The storylines the game gives you in this one sucks, and the mode that sorta gives you that doesn't do it in nearly the same fleshed out way that 16 had it.

Oh yeah and the entrance/victory creator is beyond bad in comparison. So slow, so buggy, so irritating, and so much of it forces you to use preexisting superstar templates for everything. Is it really so much to ask for just general pyro for stage, ring and ramp instead of "HERE IS THIS SUPERSTAR'S PYRO WOOOO-"

In a world where the only major and breathing wrestling game series is WWE 2K, Wrestling Empire is a steroid shot to the gut. It uses it's simplified engine to it's advantage, it's Superstar Mode is a far deeper dive into the mechanics than 2K has ever given us, and it's generally just a hilarious time dicking around and doing whatever and making fun characters who will implode with rapid intent.

It's great, if you want a Wrestling game and are fucking tired of WWE 2K releasing the same shit and saying it's new and unique and interesting like the Fifa Series then pick up Wrestling Empire and just have a blast. M Dickey will thank you.

I love Undertale. I think it's a fantastic game, and if you play it while knowing fuck all about it, it's truly a wonderful experience. And it's that reason why I can't put it down as amazing because EVERYONE nowadays knows about Undertale, or has heard Undertale memes, or just generally knows the plot of Undertale, truly it's kinda ruined now a little bit.

That aside though, it's a fantastic experience and even if you know some of the major beats, you should still play it. Much like FF7 and it's major character death, everyone knows some of the major plot points of Undertale, but it's the path that you take to get there that can really make you love the game for what it is.

From the people who made stuff like Journey, you'd think that Journey but Multiplayer could only do so much. But I can say for sure that the limits you might think this game has have been repeatedly broken again and again and again. It's really hard for a game to get me super emotional, only a handful of games have that level of staying power in my mind. But a multiplayer game where a majority of the interactions you can have with other players are limited to funny little emotes and honking like an otomatone genuinely did it.

This game has awed me, this game has wowed me, this game has made me laugh, and this game has forced me into silence because of it's beauty. It's a really really simple game, and if you have friends to play it with, it's probably one of the best multiplayer games I've ever played. Bar none.

Just please if you can, play it on PC in my opinion. It's the one thing it's on that can both take complete control of it's hardware to show Sky at the graphical fidelity it's art style deserves, but also gives it multiple control schemes that fit it better than touch controls. Even if you think it's easily playable on a phone, you'll really see the beauty when it's not on a screen that could be used as a movie theater by ants.

The fact that you have to download and use EA's proprietary game launcher in order to even run the damn game is asinine and should be taken out back and shot in the face.

Game is fantastic once you get past that trash though, it's a solid 7/10 while only suffering from the typical NFS problems of a strikingly limited soundtrack leading to repetition that makes you want anything else and a single player campaign that's both way too long and way too easy leading to the end game being a struggle to siphon any remaining joy from the 10-15 races you've spent the last 40 hours completing to the point where your cars outrun all the other cars on the track and the routes for each individual circuit is ingrained into your skull.

As the first game released by an indie studio, it had to earn it's place in gaming history, and considering that indie studio is Supergiant, the studio that brought recurrent greats such as Pyre, Transistor, and most recently Hades? I'd say it fucking fulfilled that pedigree and then some. Art style is really really nice to look at, it's so so pretty. The gameplay is really solid, although it's definitely aged compared to Hades which does it's style of fast, evasive, chaotic combat a little bit better (The basics are the same but Bastion's feels so fucking stiff in comparison. Still fantastic, but if you're coming from playing Hades it's weird to get used to). Music is done by Darren Korb, so it deserves to be put in every single playlist you have available to you + buying any version of the soundtrack you can get your grubby little hands on. And finally the writing and story are so beautiful and gritty at the same time, while not forgetting that you can have contextually funny and descriptive lines based on what the player does vs what the story says they do.

I cannot say anything less about Bastion. It's honestly only got one weak point, and that's the content really is lacking. There's only so much fun you can have hitting people with a ranged and melee weapon, I really wish there was other things to do but the only things you get to do gameplay wise is hit stuff with melee weapon or hit stuff from a distance with gun. But you don't get tired of that gameplay structure thanks to the game constantly throwing new weapons/specials/upgrades on a first playthrough which doesn't make it a hyper blatant issue until new game plus.

Luigi's Mansion is one of those required gems that you have to play if you're a fan of Nintendo's work. It's a very good example of what they like to do: Do something different with a franchise or character people already know of.

I think it holds up pretty damn well, although the late game gets really repetitive and spammy with the ghosts, especially with the blackout/Van Ghoul fight. All in all though, it's early Gamecube and it sure does hold up decently well in Current Year IF you can get used to the sometimes rough around the edges controls.

You know, RE4 was a really impactful game for me growing up. It was the first action shooter I played, it was my introduction to the Resident Evil series, and it was probably one of the sources of why I became so goddamn snarky and sarcastic when talking with people.

RE4 was the turning point for Resident Evil going absolutely hog wild, changing genre's from Survival/Horror to Action/Horror, and I hope I don't have to explain the huge gap between those two types of games. The B/C-movie grade dialogue is still here, the tank controls are still here, and the resource management is still here. But if you've played RE1/2/3 (The Originals, Not The REmakes), you can definitely tell that there's a huge gap between what those games had and sold people on, and what this game provides. There's a psudo skill gap, where the game makes itself harder the better you are at it. There's QTEs, one of the first games to throw them into cutscenes forcing you to pay attention or face an instant kill. And there's the fact that the game lets you buy a rocket launcher at every single merchant. It's all that which makes the whole game feel...very very different from the last 3 Resident Evil games...but that doesn't mean it's bad.

And it isn't bad. I mean, if it's gotten me to buy 3 different versions of this game and beat all of them repeatedly, so it can't be bad.