Five years ago a little hidden indie gem you probably never heard of called Slay the Spire came out, masterfully combining roguelike mechanics and deck building, creating the first true videogame drug, however, unlike real crack cocaine, there is a finite amount of Slay the Spire, and eventually, the game ends. I've been dealing with withdrawals ever since, for five years I've searched far and wide for anything that could remotely recreate that feeling, that rush, but to no avail, it all felt like a cheap copy of the real thing, nothing came even close, that is until now.

Balatro is a roguelike deck builder based on Poker, that sentence alone should tell you everything you need to know about why this is so stimulating, for our own health and safety this game should be illegal, but it's here, it cannot be stopped now, so we might as well enjoy it, and damn am I enjoying it, but I'd be lying if I said that I'm not terrified to see what games this thing ends up inspiring, Pandora's box is now open and I am letting every demon in, I want roguelike Blackjack, roguelike Koi-Koi, fuck it, give me roguelike Mahjong, this game is so addicting I'm experiencing a pre-emptive detoxification, I already want more and I'm not even done with it, send help.

The holy grail of time wasters, this game can't be rated or reviewed because it's not a game, Infinite Craft is real life, and this is proven by the fact that no matter what I fuse together, it all goes back to Monkey.

On a more serious note, this is a pretty distracting and entertaining experiment, but it gets a little too ridiculous once you start merging words together that shouldn't merge at all, like fusing sperm and sushi, creating spermushi.

I would be vehemently against what is essentially an AI generated game but in this particular case the AI struggles so openly to function it makes my point on it's own, so instead of laughing at it, I'll laugh with it, it's fun, I recommend it.

Tekken 8 is simply an improvement upon the previous entry on all accounts, including the online! Being able to get multiple consecutive fights where the ping isn't absolutely horrible is a dream come true, you still get the occasional stinker but not nearly as often as in 7.

The gameplay is as excellent as it's ever been if not more, Tekken to me is and will probably always be the most fun fighting game franchise purely because no matter what you press, even if you have no idea what you're doing, you will end up doing something cool, experimenting in Tekken is a joy that cannot be replicated by any other game because no other game has the patience, the resources, and the balls to give every character in the roster 100 different moves.

Visually the game is stunning, to the point I honestly felt like the actual game looked better than the cutscenes, the music and sound design is standard Tekken quality, meaning it's also excellent, and the story mode was blessed with a big upgrade as well, instead of giving each character a few fights with a cutscene at the end, the story mode is... well, an actual story mode! I really enjoyed it although it was quite short, left me wanting more for sure, and aside from the story mode the single-player content isn't incredible, but I'm okay with that because I like playing online anyway.

If you have no experience with this franchise I highly recommend giving this game a chance, and don't be afraid to go online, Tekken isn't your typical fighting game franchise, if you run into a a Tekken Overlord with 5000 hours of playtime, you can still beat their ass, and if you rematch them enough times, you probably will, believe in yourself, and have fun!