Billy Basso, you beautiful bastard, you did it. How did one guy make this?

I've always been a victim of hyperbole. The internet told me that Animal Well was making people feel things. I listened to YouTube reviewers describe it as a game that reminds you of what gaming is all about. I read tweets calling it an obvious front-runner for GOTY and one of the best, most unique games in a very long time. I'm not about to say those people were speaking disingenuously--I truly believe the 5/5 reviews--but I do think that Animal Well is at its best when its understated and allowed to silently speak for itself.

Not unlike your biological mother, Animal Well is a short, tight, and gorgeous experience that manages to rapidly shift between quaint charm and instinctive terror at the drop of a hat. How Basso managed to jump scare me with a kangaroo that many times is beyond me. A friend described the artstyle as "Neon Wet" and that's probably the best short hand I can give for the game's look without really taking away some of its magic. Just go play the game if the visuals even remotely interest you.

Like all the best horror-adjacent games, your combat options here are extremely limited. Unlike those same horror games, Animal Well takes that lack of offensive capability and uses it to empower you. You are challenged to pause, and contemplate, and plan, and observe--to ask yourself "wait can I do that?" And you usually can. It takes a special game to offer you that sort of reward to meet your effort.

I'm not done with Animal Well. I rolled credits but there's so much game still here (think Fez or Tunic), but I do think I'm at a point where its socially-created hooks aren't as deeply in me. I can sit with it now and enjoy it. That may be how I should have approached the game from the start.

If you plan to play the game, I recommend that you don't go too quickly. Poke around. Mess with things that look out of place and let yourself consider Billy Basso's first game as its own world rather than a "GOTY contender" or "reason to game again." Be a little pensive dude and let yourself get swept up in it all. It's worth that.

Some flash, a lot of filler.

The most excited I was for Starfield leading up to its launch last year was when a Phil Spencer quote started floating around correcting the common guess that Starfield would be "Skyrim in space." Spencer told IGN that the game is "more Oblivion than Skyrim" and that he already had over 200 hours played prior to release across multiple playthroughs.

The idea of a modern Bethesda taking a run at Oblivion's vibe with Skyrim's quality of life sensibilities all in a new, unique universe sounds so thrilling! You can be a cowboy! An explorer! A corporate spy! No sanded off edges, baby. The galaxy is your playground!

The reality? You can uhh... be in a menu mostly I guess.

On paper, the universe of Starfield is technically the most expansive that Bethesa has even presented (just hang with me for a second, Morrowind truthers). In execution, it's the dev's emptiest, most disconnected series of rooms yet. Most of my time was spent tinkering away in clunky menus to find the best, most direct fast travel paths to mission objectives. The result is that I know the names of maybe 3 locations from my playtime and they have no meaningful relative positioning to or from one another.

I hear you. "Don't use fast travel if you don't want everything to feel so trivial and disjointed." Sure, great idea for the majority of relatively open world games. But Starfield is the furthest thing from an open world game. Here's a quick example: relatively early on you're presented with a gameplay loop of leaving your team's headquarters, going to an orbital watch station, taking on a research mission, and collecting the item found by that orbital beacon's search. With no fast traveling to optimize your path, the process I just described takes you through eight (8) loading screens.

What's worse than the inordinate amount of screens you have to wait through is that the game just isn't fun to play. The recent patch that brought target 60 FPS to consoles is huge but nowhere near what the game needs to feel polished. Combat is loose and inaccurate. Imagine Fallout 3 without a VATS system and it's only a tiny bit better than that. Traversal largely consists of you running out of oxygen and getting any number of debuffing ailments depending on if the current planet is too hot, cold, or irradiated.

Starfield is not especially fun. But it is often beautiful.

Stand completely still somewhere in the game--in Neon, aboard your ship, near some ancient alien monoliths--and you'll see what I mean. Admittedly the game is often bland but when the right moments come together, things are downright beautiful. The game smartly focuses on these visual design choices in the very late game offering a moment or two that I could see making someone downright emotional.

Very thankful I didn't pay money for this game specifically. Gamepass came in clutch. I think I'm done with this one for a long time unless something big happens.

"I've seen enough. I'm calling this one."

What's there to say? They added horde mode, re-released a suite of series-favorite weapons, introduced the first "shiny" weapons to the franchise, gave lore-heads some solid content, added a sort of "boss rush" mode for endgame content, opened all but one old expansion to anyone, and made one of the fan-favorite characters the face of the whole affair. Oh yeah and all of that was free.

Bungie swung for the fences here because they had to. With the final announced annual expansion just weeks away, they needed good word of mouth. So they're fixing and offering things that should have been done a long time ago. I won't act like it isn't great having the current in-game quality of life but to know it's all a last-ditch effort to pass the vibe check for The Final Shape's victory lap leaves a weird taste in my mouth.

I'm a Destiny mark so I'll play the new expansion, but I don't know anyone who is excited for what's next for Destiny after TFS. Myself included.

Beat the campaign so I feel comfortable writing a review at this point.

MWIII was supposedly intended to be a large DLC for MWII and man does it reek of that original intent. That's mostly a bad-to-midling thing but it does provide for a solid multiplayer experience. If we share the same brain rot and you bought skins or other goodies from the CoD store for CP (God why?) those are still around. No hard resets here. MWII had a solid gameplay experience and that has been maintained and even improved in some ways like faster, tighter controls and a whole new suite of gadgets and weapons on top of the existing MWII set. The wheel wasn't reinvented here--it was polished. Multiplayer is good but definitely not worth dusting off your GameBattles account and dumping in dozens of hours.

The campaign is where that DLC accusation is in full presentation. To my knowledge this is the first year-to-year story continuation in franchise history. MWIII picks up almost immediately after the MWII campaign left off. We have a series-best cast of characters and a new main villain is introduced in a meaningful sense. The problem is that it doesn't really go anywhere. This is exacerbated by the fact that MWIII wants to be the 2009 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 so badly. The atmosphere of the campaign is less a reboot of one of the most beloved blockbuster FPS campaigns of all time and more like if someone made a shooter campaign out of the CoD battle royale game peppered with some Glup Shitto seasoning to disguise things a bit (remember when they stormed that airport in MW2? What if it was a soccer field and you were there?!).

And that battle royale thing isn't just a vague jab. Of the 14 campaign missions, 6 of them are "Open Combat" missions--a sort of PvE round of CoD Warzone where you have various objectives that boil down to "move across the map." At their best, CoD campaigns are cinematic and these missions trade that for... replay value I guess? I can't imagine anyone wanting to do that, though. The remaining 8 missions are each shorter than any other CoD campaign missions I can remember. Not bad. Just short and simple.

The game also tries to have its "big cool evil guy does terrible thing" moment at the end to setup for more in the future. No spoilers but it ends up feeling rushed, hollow, and a bit like a fuck you to anyone who cares about the central cast of characters. I don't especially care about them but this story beat made sure I kind of can't in the future.

If you like CoD, sure. Check this out on deep discount. No one should pay $70 for this reheated pass at MWII.

I always got this idea as a kid that the greatest thing a single-player game could aspire to was to be multi-player. Crash Bandicoot? Get Coco in the mix too. Mario 64? Get Yoshi off that dang roof and let's chill together. Modding and the internet have made my terrible little kid ideas possible and the results are that it's... fine? Any number of mods that let you have Mario and Luigi on screen at one time are a cool novelty but something is almost certainly lost in that leap from curated, individual experience to virtual cat-herding wish fulfillment session. Enter: The Outlast Trials

So yes, worse video game in some ways. But to some extent, I'm just happy Red Barrels is still making things. Outlast is one of my favorite horror games of all time but Outlast 2 really missed the mark for me. Anytime a sequel fumbles, I get nervous that we may never see the IP (or even the studio) again. Instead of dying out, Red Barrels said "alright let's do a weird one" and I love that (even if it isn't a 5/5).

The Outlast Trials has no right to work as well as it does. I mean, this franchise is known for constant quiet tension shattered by explosive moments of disgusting horror. And yet here I am with my dumbass friends taking turns throwing bricks at a horny cop with a cattle prod. I could see that being a real problem for some fans of the series but in execution it's a blast. For what it's worth, the game is fundamentally built on an almost arcade-ified version of the Outlast formula that can be played entirely solo. In that way, it probably is objectively worse than its predecessors. But get a few friends in the mix and suddenly you're running around a carnival haunted house together just howling and yelling the whole way.

At the end of the day, the game's solid and even better with friends. The true achievement is managing to take such an intimate experience and turning it into an amusement park ride while keeping some level of quality. Do I want this to be the future of the franchise? Absolutely not. But I hope it effectively funds a true Outlast 3.

Another Crab's Treasure feels like it was made as a psyop to get me specifically to buy and play a video game.

A mechanically competent souls-like with a vivid, super-cute art style featuring a ton of great jokes and some genre-best platforming? I've been following this game since its announcement and I'm so pleased that Aggro Crab pulled this off. To be all these things while managing to tell an interesting story is massively impressive for the small studio's sophomore title.

As much as I love the game, I can't dismiss the significant bugs and other performance issues. ACT is magnitudes more technically ambitious than the studio's first game and it comes close to buckling under that pressure at times--particularly on console. What should be seamless transitions into new areas had me wishing for a AAA-style "squeezing through a crack in the cave wall hidden loading screen." There are other moments and monsters that can completely wreck the game as well. At the time of this writing, there's a blue pufferfish in the late game that the dev is requesting no one kill because it can crash the game (I killed it twice and it made things super crunchy until I reset the game but don't tell anybody). I played on Series X and experienced these issues. Apparently the Switch version of the game is notably worse with some folks feeling scammed by the markedly poor experience.

So if you're on the fence, give this one more time to cook. The dev is actively putting out patches and hot fixes for the big things and I'm hopeful bigger fixes will come with the game's success. In spite of all that, I was enamored for my entire playtime.

Aggro Crab has become one of my day one purchase developers.

A ton of unique and interesting things here.

At first glance, Rising is Bayonetta with some Metal Gear branding. In execution, it shares some DNA but handles parrying, dodging, QTEs, and movement differently enough to really stand out as its own thing.

Most cutscenes are some very quotable nonsense but man is it all so rad. With a soundtrack ripped straight from Sonic Adventure 2 and ridiculous anime fight presentation throughout, Rising is always a fun ride.

If I didn’t have 10 years of Platinum games to look back on since its release, I would wish for a direct sequel to really polish execution and make the combat feel tighter. But it seems like this is the best PlatinumGames has to offer—give or take Nier: Automata.

I think this is what dudes mean when they say a game has “soul.”

Bog-standard Fortnite.

A couple cool new skins, more very okay skins. Two new, pretty POIs. Medallions got fleshed out or ruined depending on who you ask. And that's... about it.

Oh, they also removed cosmetic item rarities to obfuscate the pricing scale and locked Aang behind a terrible mini-pass to make him more expensive. I guess the machine printing their unlimited money wasn't printing fast enough.

Good and special game. I've seen what I need to make a judgment.

The sum is definitely greater than the parts here. Basic 3rd person shooter mechanics, simple maps, and generic enemies add up to a multiplayer experience that will be hard to beat this year. But what really makes this game something special is its take on the "games as a service" model.

With an overarching free progression track supplemented by monthly premium paths on top of an already paid game, I can totally understand why someone would be put out by the sell of Helldivers 2. In practice however, premium currency is quickly and freely given and the items you can purchase with it are largely cosmetic only contributing to additional gameplay variety at times. Nothing here is pay-to-win. I paid for the game itself and nothing more and never once did I feel like I was missing out on something or that anything was attainable only with my credit card. The truly commendable part of the game's model, though, is how alive it is as a warzone. Arrowhead have made something that feels more akin to a tabletop game master controlling a board than a developer providing a content drip feed.

The game has a great aesthetic and the dev leaned in hard to social media and community engagement to push that aesthetic. Sure a brand awareness win is great but this game created brand advocates. That's big. The question is whether that advocacy lasts throughout the year or if it's already winding down as other games fill backlogs.

I'll be back for sure. Can't wait to see what new factions and locations will mean for the game. This one is in the rotation.

There's a story told of a man visiting the Louvre, looking at the Mona Lisa, and saying, "What's the big deal? it's just some lady."

A security guard overhearing him says, "Sir, you don't judge the Mona Lisa--the Mona Lisa judges you."

It's not you, Tekken 8; it's me.

I can't tell if this is the worst game in the remake trilogy or if I've just forgotten how basic the prior two were.

If memory serves, Tomb Raider (2013) as a "gritty reboot" for the series humanizing Lara Croft and giving context to her development as the titular grave robber/action badass mostly works! Rise of the Tomb Raider was Uncharted 2 with some minor open world stuff which mostly works! Which leaves Shadow of the Tomb Raider as... Uncharted 1 but with... less charm? It feels like a strange step backwards for the series that seemingly had some renewed momentum in the 2010s.

The game is gorgeous. The 15ish-hour adventure features some staggering environmental scale and especially impressive use of lighting to highlight beautiful overlooks of the Amazon. The production value of this game is the main sell. Unfortunately that admittedly impressive veneer is thin and frail. The beautiful world feels far from realized.

There are effectively four characters: Lara, her extremely patient sidekick Jonah, a proxy for the indigenous people that I wished was more interesting, and a very generic villain who kind of makes Lara look like a villain by comparison. None of the characters develop in a meaningful sense. Lara and Jonah are the only two who have anything close to a personality in the first place. It's a bummer because the game's opening section presents this tension of Lara getting in too deep--losing herself to her mission of hunting insert evil group. She's pushing so hard that she's hurting herself and those fighting to love and care for her. Neat! Make your invincible protagonist painfully aware of the toll of being an action-adventure murder machine. There's opportunity for growth here.

That doesn't go anywhere. lol There's a moment in the late game that seemingly implies that Lara was right all along, she's the only one capable of enacting meaningful change in this world, and the civilians around her need to deal with that fact or get out of the way.

I don't hate this game but it's really disappointing because it comes from a fun franchise, has a ton of polish, and stands as one of the latest steps in this style of blockbuster adventure game. It manages to feel like the most dull take on the genre at this scale in some time.

I'm open to critique here. If you liked this game, tell me what I'm missing!

A well-deserved booster shot for this IP but probably not enough to make it a household name again.

They made a new Ori game in 2024 and I'm totally here for it. The Lost Crown is a welcome return to Prince of Persia by way of a return to its sidescrolling platformer roots that manages to learn most of the right lessons from other more recent games in the genre. The mechanical comparison to Ori and the Will of the Wisps is immediate and constant and there's some definite Metroid Dread DNA here by way of its relatively clean transitions between 2D and 3D. The game sounds great, sports a strong art style, and strikes a great balance between being short and direct on its critical path yet surprisingly challenging once you dig a bit deeper.

Movement is the highlight of the game. Genre mainstays like a double jump and grappling hook are coupled with more unique fair like a positional rewind mechanic and a dimensional shift that all seamlessly combine for some truly satisfying platforming and puzzlesolving. Banging my head against tough platforming challenges was the highlight of the game for me.

Big props for the depth of accessibility/difficulty options for the game. While I didn't tweak them too much in my playthrough, The Lost Crown allows you to choose from 4 different default difficulty settings along with a custom option to edit individual aspects of the difficulty. Being able to edit specific pieces of the difficulty here is huge. No one should have to tap A to break out of ice. It should be illegal.

My main complaint here is the combat. It's far from bad but it never totally clicked for me. Specifically, parrying never quite felt right and basic attacks felt weak for most of my playtime. I felt underpowered for most of the game until the... second to last sword upgrade? At which point the swords were extremely strong. Some strange scaling there.

Overall, a good game that released at the right time in what will be a busy year for games. I wish I liked the game more but as it stands this may be a one-off for the franchise rather than a blueprint to be used in the future.