I'm a very loud Dark Souls 3 hater. No matter how dogshit the second half of Dark Souls is, the former half manages to overcompensate fueled purely by its ambition for an interconnected world filled with secrets where world building trumped over gameplay without leaving the latter as an afterthought. Dark Souls 3 trying to come back to its predecessor thru various callbacks while sticking to such a microcosmic design via the teleport mechanic replacing organic links between areas signaled to me that it was most preoccupied with rekindling the original's flame. Sometimes, this works; Soul of Cinder is a great final boss and a perfect send-off for what I assume is gonna be the last Dark Souls (unless that Dark Souls IIII leak is real); other times we get bleached Anor Londo and Aldritch doing cosplay.

When Elden Ring trailer leaks came around and the first thing we saw was someone casting Homing Soulmass, I stared in disbelief knowing Miyazaki was washed. I don't particularly care for Sekiro but at least it was something different. The more info we got the more dissapointed I felt: I don't really have a desire for DS3 with horses and dungeons.

So now that I finished it, I can say I was really surprised. It's, ironically for me, much more akin to DS1 than DS3. They both have great starts and while DS1 immediately nosedives around the Lordvessel, Elden Ring features a more steady decline that shared its reason with Dark Souls: Elden Ring is too ambitious. Everything about Elden Ring is way over itself: lore, gameplay, design. Everything. Elden Ring's wings melt, and while I don't think it compensates wholistically enough to compensate like Dark Souls does, I do want more.

Do I find Elden Ring's story to be insufficient? Kind of. I'd love to learn more about the Outer Gods, about Miquella, about Marika. This is the first soulsborne game where I've been engaged enough in the worldbuilding to actually try to piece things for myself instead of letting Zullie the Witch do it for me. And still I had to rely on her because this game is both cryptic (series staple really) and vague. There's a lot more to say about this world that I'm dissapointed that it seems like its either gonna be relegated to DLC or just not be given more. I hate that the endings are mostly copy-pasted from eachother aside two exceptions. But I still can't deny that the dissapointment stems from actually caring enough to want a resolution, and considering it's never done that for me in like 4 games I consider that a huge achievement. God the Godwyn shit is so cool.

Is Elden Ring bloated? Yes. No point in most exploration around the last third as your build is probably already set in stone and your equipment is maxed out. Materials are worthless and crafting is the most useless mechanic in the whole game. Catacombs offer no reward after a certain point and will just shove an overworld enemy as a """boss""" or just reuse an earlier one actively bringing down the significance of the previous encounter (Astel, "Godefroy"???, Magma Wyrm). Everything after Leyndell is a linear eyesore that feels shoved into the back half due to creative drought.
...but man, those first thirds of the game are really something. Elden Ring is HUGE. This is both a good quality and a detriment; it is for sure bloated but man I find the souls gameplay so fun I'll eat this slop up and look back at you with a grin. Limgrave, Liurnia, and Caelid are great areas that are filled with little secrets to find and challenges to overcome no matter the order you go through them with. Elden Ring entrusts the player with a lot of freedom of progression and that is a huge strength. After finishing the game I rushed to a second playthrough to make a new build because I knew I'd had a different experience. The early scarceness really gives Elden Ring an organic heterogeneity where unless you're a min-maxing loser you'll have to make do with what you got and I love that.
But Elden Ring might be too big. Repetition is the name of the game with Elden Ring, be it repeated enemies that only change a move or color scheme, or just outright putting them as bosses. And I kinda get it, there's a decision to not have your game be 200 GBs but the scale of Elden Ring also necessitates diversity. There's an amount of guy with shield I can tolerate until I just start getting bored and omitting exploration when I've fought these guys before and I already have 15 smithing stones in my inventory.

I'm very mixed on bosses. Soulsborne is no stranger to frustration, I'd argue its part of the appeal, but Elden Ring feels like its taking it up to 11. Enemies in the late game easily two or three shot you even at moderate levels of vigor and this becomes specially apparent with late game bosses. There's bosses I really liked like Malenia who I think really tests you on learning the fight and then you have shit like Elden Beast which is probably the worst final boss they've ever made.
Elden Ring tries to have its cake and eat it too with its many ways to dwindle difficulty through summons, but that solutions winds up feeling very anticlimactic. Soulsborne bosses just aren't designed to be fought in ganks, so using any summoning method just makes the fight a complete cakewalk. If this is Elden Ring's response to an easy mode, it's bad.

There's a lot I like about Elden Ring, yet I always have to accompany it with a "but". It is too big for its own good, it cannot support itself under the weight of its own scale, yet I can't deny how happy I am that this is the closest to DS1 they've ever been so far.

15 hrs in as of writing this

It's hard to write about Lethal Company because its still in its infancy but I think the groundwork here is very impressive compared to the wave of co-op horror games that have plagued early access these last few years. Zeekerss is a hugely skilled developer with an incredible 5 games under the belt and their (?) knowledge of game design is reflected on Lethal Company. The gameplay loop is simple but the quota makes every expedition a constant weighing of risk when you can't guarantee that you'll make it out either alive or with enough scrap to meet the deadline, and the monster AI strays from the typical -straight line to you until you can hide- that a lot of other games in the genre use when the monster gimmicks wear off-- think of games like Phasmophobia or Forewarned where the enemy AI just goes straight for you even if they do have gimmicks in their enemy design-. The best example is the huge spider which instead of just making a beeline towards the player it'll stay put if it has no webs set up and rather clings to walls which makes the experience much more scary than just having every enemy have the same copy-pasted AI. Obviously anyone who has played the game also knows the voice chat is the strongest selling point of the game due to how well designed it is and is part of what has made the game an overwhelming succes with its indirect marketing proving its worth with every site being filled with funny clips where someone screams viscerally after failing to do parkour jumps or meeting the neckbreaker for the first time.

There's still a lot to polish though. I don't think the loop is completely airtight design wise which can lead to repetition when thriving or frustration on failure when youre on the last day and fail to meet the deadline-- what's the point of the 0 days remaining instance when you can do nothing but land and instantly take off to just reset the run?-.
The outdoor segments also need a lot of work still. Weather can make runs very unfun (looking at you Stormy and Flooded) due to how debilitating they can be without any extra reward therefore making evading the planets the optimal decision which defeats the risk management thats crystallized in a lot of the game's design and the outdoor enemies are just complete balls, specially the Forest Giant who employs the design I complained about earlier. Nothing about the outdoor obstacles feel like they make you switch it up in a satisfying way and just lead to a lot of frustration, especially since a lot of the enemies just like to camp the ship after nightfall.

Lethal Company is, in any case, one of the most fun multiplayer experiences you can have nowadays without emptying your wallet to do so. I hope the game continues to iron out what faults it has right now and just gets even better, and the game as it stands is still really impressive considering its an early access game with a single update

This review has a lot of references to another game of the same genre: Phasmophobia. It is written in a way that it's understandable to anybody, but the comparisons are easier to understand if you've played it before. As a form of TL:DR, this game doesn't replace Phasmophobia, but is rather a very good alternative for it which I recommend even if it's immature form due to the potential I believe it holds.

Ever since Phasmophobia (a game I love very dearly ftr) hit the scene and made 1 trillion ghost dollars, dozens of asset flip cashgrab copies have flooded into Steam just to try to get a slice of the co-op horror cake. I thought Forewarned would be no exception to this trend.

What we (me and my buddies) found, however, was a spin on the foundations that Phasmophobia built. Phasmophobia is very much still the king of Zak Bagans spooky detective gameplay, but Forewarned manages to both replicate it decently (not perfectly as I'll elaborate below) while also giving it its own identity that makes it stand out amongst the trillion of shitty videogames trying to capture the same lightning that Kinetic Games did.

It's no secret that Forewarned borrows heavily from Phasmophobia. The first phase of gameplay is based around figuring out the identity of the Mejai (basically the equivalent of Phasmophobia's ghosts) thru interactions with the ghost—be it by its own volition or through the use of equipment-. What sets Forewarned apart from Phasmophobia is that this is only the first phase , where as in Phasmophobia aside from side objective the game is basically over after identifying the ghosts' identity. In Forewarned, what follows is an escape sequence where the spirit is allowed to manifest and roam the halls while the tomb is sealed, making you have to look for an exit lever. Afterwards, you can choose to escape with the relic or go back and banish the spirit.
The spirits in the game behave very differently from eachother, fixing the ghost bloat that I felt has plagued Phasmophobia for quite a number of updates where most ghosts feel basically the same aside a very minor gimmick that doesn't feel relevant. There is also much more meat to the maps in Forewarned, whereas Phasmophobia has the issue where in larger maps you're basically unreachable to the ghost, Forewarned has treasure to find that you can use to upgrade your equipment and many traps where a single false step can make you die quickly. Thankfully, death is also something that Forewarned has over Phasmophobia. While in Phasmophobia you just become a glorified deathcam, Forewarned gives you a single time revive and/or becoming either a good mummy or a bad mummy. It's really stupid but brings a lot of fun to the experience since you can still become an active member of the match while not just dragging your friends to the van because you got bored of spectating.

While it does have some things over Phasmophobia, it still has a lot of way to go. The Mejai is very harmless during the first phase and the second phase is over so quickly it doesn't feel much more than a minor nuisance (this might be because we have only played small maps so YMMV). The clue hunting feels a bit bloated with all the "press button get result" equipment you have and interaction with the spirit feels much more RNG than anything intentional. The game has a general pacing issue where the second phase is over very quickly and the banishment route is a complete mess, making the spirit feel completely irrelevant to the match and making you do an overly long, mind numbingly simple boss fight (ftr this is something that the devs acknowledge and want to remake ASAP).

While it is still at a very immature point in development, I am willing to bet my emotional wellbeing again on an early access game again like I did with Phasmophobia years ago. I do feel like this game both has potential and delivers at this point in time a very fun, scary experience that manages to both be better than Phasmophobia in some aspects and not succumb to feeling like a lesser version of it, but rather a different angle on the same genre. The dumb example would be that its not going to the boys and saying "you guys want phasmo or foreskin tonight" but rather "you guys want phasmo OR foreskin tonight", yknow?

for all intents and purposes this game should be complete dog shit ass but shoving a multiplayer mode while altering very little of the single player is a stroke of genius that results in a multiple dads polycule looking for their son while cheesing all the horrible combat by overpowering the enemy thru sheer numbers, jumping off cliffs to certain death, clearing the last cave backwards by sliding off the giant hole in the middle of the map, continuously destroying the base (which you'll spend 5 seconds in) building by naively chopping trees without looking where they'll fall, and afterwards looking at your son's picture in unison. It's an experience that's become a staple in my friends groups

Life is Strange 1 entered the stage at a time where decision based videogames were dominated by Telltale, whose games aren't really faithful to the appeal of the genre. If you've never played a Telltale game, all you have to know is that the decisions you make in them are not relevant long-term. The Walking Dead series, their most well known work, is filled with characters who you can save only for them to die or be taken out of the story regardless and more choices that only shape the story superficially. Life is Strange 1, regardless of its actual quality, broke the mold bygiving you a tool to interact with the decisions as a whole: time travel. The ability to not only be able to take back decisions you make but also be able to gage if the consequent action matched its description (which was a problem in the genre).

Inversely, True Colors feels much more caged in the conventions of the decision-based genre. Sporting the power of super empathy, you control Alex Chen in her new life in a small town while dredging through the inhabitants interpersonal drama and solving a mystery. Considering that very superficial synopsis I just gave, it really blows hard how much the game focuses on the mystery rather than the drama, specially in later chapters. As much as the town is presented as a community, the townspeople's problems are very disconnected from eachother and are given very little time and space to properly have any sort of impact on the main plot (aside one, albeit significant, part of the final chapter) or the town as a whole unless you really love to read their faux facebook.
The main plot, which is given much more attention, also is a huge letdown. It's very rushed, there is barely any motivation to learn the true story behind the accident aside from the need to have an overarching plot, and it's also a bad fit for the gimmick of empathy. It's an uninteresting, hack script that in its conclusion trips itself up by only being able to humanize a murder by personal association (it's a game about empathy!! hello??).

Empathy really gets the short end of the stick here, man. It only functions as a pseudo telepathy more than anything and the rules around it are wildly inconsistent. It's need of a character focused plot gets sidelined by the main plot in ways that leave it unimpactful and a wasted gimmick. Like they really had no clue what to do with this shit than having you read minds, c'mon dog.

Where I really feel its trapped by the genre are the really forced moral dilemmas. The foundation for a lot of them is so bad that I took the decisions almost instantly, there's barely any reason for them to exist in the first place. I lost my shit when the game went "you can stay here and live a wonderful life" (that's me summarizing a long ass monologue) OR "you can use soundcloud". It really feels like the game HAD to have choices to justify itself but they couldn't come up with anything so they just had to come up with the most stupid shit.
Speaking of choices, God I hated when the game REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAALLY wanted me to get it on with the love interests. They both sucked. I still got in a relationship with one of them for some reason, which I have no idea why.

The game as a whole lacks a lot of thought behind it. I really wish the game just focused more on Alex. I do like her as a protagonist, but her spotlight is relegated to the last chapter and I'm not sure where I seat on its execution. I do like her journey of finding a home and her experience with mental institutions but the game doesn't really focus much on it. She's stuck in a game that scattershots its premises while barely bothering to connect them in a way that makes the experience feel cohesive or fulfilling

I-if there's a game that's ashamed of its identity, it's this one. W-w-what's the point of being in an alien world when all the jokes revolve around Earth stuff, right? REMEMBER, uh, APPLEBEES? I LAUGHED B-B-BECAUSE FUCKING I KNOW WHAT THAT IS!!! S-S-S-SPACE APPLEBEES IS JUST SO F-FLIPPIN' CRAZY!!!

E-every joke in this is just so fucking unfunny, which is subjective I'll admit but as someone w-who enjoyed Rick and Morty S1&2 I'm just, uh, begging for them to try harder. Yes, some v-videogame shit is tedious, uh, you weren't funny the first time you told the joke about it, y'know? and it's not f-f-funny the fifth. Babbling on and on while overexplaining the joke isn't a punchline, r-right?. Y-y-y-you can't even run thru the horrible dialogue because the game sticks you in place so you just look at the, uhm, Simpsons a-aliens like a dumbass while they g-go on and on about how videogames are just so q-q-quacking crazy.
A-a-and if you thought the jokes were reiterative, the levels are worse! Barely t-t-two levels in and they start recycling the planets!!! And, uh, you know what they came up with for alien planet designs, huh? A-a desert and a jungle (but the folliage is purple!), and it doesn't stop there, the, uh, character designs are awful too. All of them are just, uh, "a-ant" or, uhm, "humanoid body with freaky head" and it's just so d-dull, y'know?. I'd say the game runs out of ideas quick but, uhm, that's implying it had any ideas in the first place. Only t-thing... only thing it has g-going for it is the premise of the living guns which is cool in theory but nothing in practice, specially with the main gun talking in the Justin, uh, Justin Roiland stammering dialect.

I can only give credit for, uhm, the gunplay which was f-f-fine but a lot of the ideas it are, y'know, half baked are best. Most of the special abilities don't even gel with the gun themselves! Shit!

The jokes; the ending; the repetition, it's all a mess. The game isn't even embarassingly bad, it's just bad. And if you thought this was annoying to read, just imagine having to hear it for ~10 hours.

I'm not particularly much of a Netflix user so I cannot really construct a model for your usual netflix show to make a proper comparison with it but I imagine your run of the mill canceled season one Netflix show can do much better than this. If you've never played this game (or even heard of it), We Are OFK's presentation is a sort of streaming UI pastiche (does that make sense..??). It attempts to emulate (and I believe nails) the interfaces of streaming services--particularly Netflix-- so for example the main menu looks like a desktop and you start the game by pressing on the episode you want to play, said episodes have a bar on the bottom that shows how long you have until the episode ends and they were released weekly in a span of 4 weeks, saves are like the little user icons on Netflix, etc.. It's screaming to get on Netflix's game tab but had to settle for Steam where the only movie you can get is the Indie Game movie (also available on Netflix).

We Are OFK follows the life of four friends as they try to live it up in L.A. while forming an emo a pop band. The main girl we follow in episode 1 is facing an unsurmountable difficulty: having to move into a new apartment and 😱having an ex! To help her, the player has to make some arbitrary decisions that probably don't change anything but they had to shove interactivity in there to make it a videogame.
The other character we follow, who is leagues more entertaining, is a not-Overwatch writer twink who is not allowed creative liberty on the newest character and instead has to write some lame shit. This causes him to leave it all behind and chase his pipedream: writing the Steven Universe musical. With the help of some woman, he begins to sing the first song of the game: Follow/Unfollow. Meanwhile, the main girl I mentioned before gets shitfaced drunk and you have to maneuver her through what I assume was an attempt at making some playable music video but it just sucks soooo much. Also idk what the lyrics have to do with the space opera the guy wanted to write but he's permitted to cook and then gets fired from not-Overwatch team. Then the episode ends. Actually it doesn't there's one more scene but he's not in it so whooooo cares

This is where I would love to have some knowledge in Netflix sludge because I have no frame of reference to understand if all Netflix shows are this lame. The main girl has NO shit going for her character and the game does a really bad job at making you care for her struggles which are so baseline insignificant. You're moving into L.A.. Boo-hoo. Wait 'til you see the digits on the rent. At least your friend has got something a REAL issue: working for the videogames industry.

And it's a shame because aside from the color palette I think the game looks real pretty but god the writing is so dull. I would've played more but my totally legal copy only came with 4 episodes and while I could totally just watch the last one on YouTube as the devs probably intended, I'm not gonna give them the satisfaction

i've been playing a Pokémon Sun nuzlocke lately to spice up my first playthru of it and one thing Emerald Rogue has been able to replicate perfectly is the creeping dread that occurs when you're surround by tall grass in the middle of a new route with a banged up team where the smallest misstep can make you lose one of your precious party members. Emerald Rogue bundles up a lot of what I like from pokémon gameplay wise and ties it with roguelike elements that only become frustrating due to the genre's need to be difficult, (I was planning to review this when I finished a run but hours in I still can't get past badge 8) which can become a taxing ordeal considering how much of an RNG mess pokémon becomes and battles having insta weather+terrain can sometimes feel like ass. Still I gotta say this is my new favorite way to experience pokémon lately and even if the word "rogue" has become something of a red flag in videogames lately I encourage those who like playing on Showdown to give this a spin. A great fresh way to experience pokémon in a timeframe where a lot of pokémon mods are aiming to be more than your classic romhack