HotPicklePizza
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2024
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.
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.
Beautiful railroading.
Hellblade II reminds me of Evolve. It really shouldn't. The games are nothing alike. Nearly a decade removed from one another, they don't share any gameplay similarities. They aren't made to appeal to similar audiences. Their only visual similarity is... "dark." But the comparison between the two is far more pervasive than any of those traits though. Simply put, I heard about both games way too much before they finally came out.
Part of Hellblade's appeal was surprise. Not to belittle the accomplishments of that game, but the package was really complete because each moment was an unexpected treat--a testament to big things in small packages. It was a new IP doing unique and exciting things. Hellblade II is almost the opposite: a 6-hour movie stuffed with more of the same. Gorgeous simplicity polished to a safe, market-researched, and replicable sheen.
To be fair, there's a notable amount to love here that's done extremely well. Hellblade II features a full cast joining Senua brought to life by killer performances across the board. The audio design is second to none and the visuals throughout made me feel like I was less playing a video game and more watching some kind of 4K tech demo for high-end TVs. All good stuff. But man, that is not why I play video games. None of that will stick with me. The game is shockingly simple. Most of my playtime was spent slowly walking forward (there's a toggle sprint option in settings; retweet to save a life). There are a handful of combat instances that look insane but are extremely rudimentary. I figured out in the second combat sequence that there are very few reasons to ever use the heavy attack. Spam light attack, dodge/block, activate #SenuaMode, and move on.
I would be remiss to not mention the valid critique of both Hellblade titles falling prey to the "magical disabled person" trope but dude. It is it in full force in Hellblade II. Whereas the first title felt earnest if a bit flawed in its attempt to emulate and respectfully consider psychosis, Hellblade II swings wildly between presenting Senua's struggle as either not affecting her at all and it serving as a superhuman ability making her the only one who can heal the world of its darkness. It's messy and ultimately pointless this time around.
Hellblade II was initially announced and marketed as a launch title for the Xbox Series consoles which came out about 3.5 years ago at the time of this writing. I know art is never as simple as "more time = better thing" but as someone trying to figure out what good is coming of Microsoft gobbling up all these developers, I'm still left wondering. We're waiting longer for fewer, less interesting games.
Hellblade II reminds me of Evolve. It really shouldn't. The games are nothing alike. Nearly a decade removed from one another, they don't share any gameplay similarities. They aren't made to appeal to similar audiences. Their only visual similarity is... "dark." But the comparison between the two is far more pervasive than any of those traits though. Simply put, I heard about both games way too much before they finally came out.
Part of Hellblade's appeal was surprise. Not to belittle the accomplishments of that game, but the package was really complete because each moment was an unexpected treat--a testament to big things in small packages. It was a new IP doing unique and exciting things. Hellblade II is almost the opposite: a 6-hour movie stuffed with more of the same. Gorgeous simplicity polished to a safe, market-researched, and replicable sheen.
To be fair, there's a notable amount to love here that's done extremely well. Hellblade II features a full cast joining Senua brought to life by killer performances across the board. The audio design is second to none and the visuals throughout made me feel like I was less playing a video game and more watching some kind of 4K tech demo for high-end TVs. All good stuff. But man, that is not why I play video games. None of that will stick with me. The game is shockingly simple. Most of my playtime was spent slowly walking forward (there's a toggle sprint option in settings; retweet to save a life). There are a handful of combat instances that look insane but are extremely rudimentary. I figured out in the second combat sequence that there are very few reasons to ever use the heavy attack. Spam light attack, dodge/block, activate #SenuaMode, and move on.
I would be remiss to not mention the valid critique of both Hellblade titles falling prey to the "magical disabled person" trope but dude. It is it in full force in Hellblade II. Whereas the first title felt earnest if a bit flawed in its attempt to emulate and respectfully consider psychosis, Hellblade II swings wildly between presenting Senua's struggle as either not affecting her at all and it serving as a superhuman ability making her the only one who can heal the world of its darkness. It's messy and ultimately pointless this time around.
Hellblade II was initially announced and marketed as a launch title for the Xbox Series consoles which came out about 3.5 years ago at the time of this writing. I know art is never as simple as "more time = better thing" but as someone trying to figure out what good is coming of Microsoft gobbling up all these developers, I'm still left wondering. We're waiting longer for fewer, less interesting games.
This review contains spoilers
Content warning for death of a parent and for a rambling mess of a review that's not really a review.
---
On May 15th of 2016 my dad died.
It wasn't surprising in the larger scheme of things but the moment was really jarring. That's obvious in a stupid sort of way, but I don't know how to talk about it without big obvious statements. He had grappled with diabetes and heart problems for the better part of three decades. Issues like that aren't "if" diagnoses, they're "when." If I really had to pinpoint a turn in his health, things declined when he started dialysis. Apparently sucking all your blood out, pumping it through a machine, and shoving it back in is kind of rough on your body. Wild, right?
In spite of it all, he always had such a great attitude. The guy wasn't even 60 but he looked and felt at least a decade older. And yet he was always quick with a joke, support for someone else--anything he could do to connect with someone and make their load lighter.
I saw him that day. My wife and I passed by my parents' house on the way back home from a trip. I hugged him, told him I loved him. Couldn't ask for much more than that. He died of a heart attack a couple hours after we left.
I was lucky to have some sort of closure with him but anyone who's experienced loss like that can tell you grief sticks around. Sure, it changes from being mad at the world and everyone in it to having a few special voicemails you'll never delete--a fragile time capsule of a file named dadvm.mp4 backed up in a few different spots. Tearing up at a few old songs that aren't sad in the slightest.
Southern funerals are the best and the worst. You get to (have to) see and talk to everyone who has ever even been in the same ZIP code as the deceased and each of them has a different take on the whole affair.
"He doesn't look like himself." Right he died, yeah.
"Somebody's gotta take care of your mom now!" Noted, I'll get right on that after I figure out how I'm going to do this at all.
But I heard so many stories. Dad traveled the US working construction for years before I was born. I met people who told me such cool things about him. One of those tragic pieces of the parent-child relationship is that you don't always get a clear picture of who your parent was--at least not a full one. On that day, my dad was further from me than I had ever experienced and yet I had a fuller picture of who he was than I ever had before.
I spoke on the phone for most of an hour with the organ donor phone rep the night before the service, I delivered the photo slideshow that played during the service, I picked out the songs that played and were sung, I was at the visitation for hours and shook more hands than I can count, I spoke about my dad before the eulogy, I helped carry the casket, I put a flower on the casket as they lowered it. Then I went home and it was quiet. And I was tired.
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End is about ending things. On its surface, it’s very much the pulp globetrotting action-adventure the series is known for, and it does that exceptionally well. Series-first semi-open world spaces are gorgeously brought to life. Fully operable vehicles make their debut and are executed wonderfully. This will sound silly but this game has the most impressive rope physics of any I’ve ever played. How is one of the highlights of PlayStation Indiana Jones the tow cable? I know that sounds like a dig but I promise it’s not.
The game is excellent. Certainly not above reproach, but excellent at most everything it attempts.
But it’s really about grappling with obligation. It’s about determining where your personal desires begin and end, where they overlap with your responsibilities, and how your life is influenced by those around you. It’s about examining your life and figuring out when it’s best, and healthiest to let something end. It’s about being better at Crash Bandicoot than your partner.
The night of May 17th, 2016 I didn’t want all that. I wanted the pulp and the fun of that world. I love that series. So around midnight I downloaded the game, cracked open a bag of cold leftover chicken tenders, and started playing. I beat the game on Hard mode on the 21st. Later that year I bought the strategy guide/art book and started a Crushing mode playthrough. It actually wasn’t as bad as I expected but it certainly wasn’t easy. I was digging through something that required effort.
And then life moved on. I bottled stuff up, Mom struggled with a very different life, people expected new things from me, and I had to do some growing up pretty quickly. Mind you, I was 23. I’m not about to play some “smol bean 23-year-old” sympathy schtick but I was a year into being married, living in a new place, taking care of myself for the first time, and a big part of my support system went away. Changes had to happen, and so they did.
Mom and I got good at talking on the phone. We visited a lot. She started taking care of one of our dogs (and still does; shout out to Midas). We went to a couple different grief seminars. I eventually started therapy. We talked about the things he would have liked; the people he should have met. With each new job or stage in life Mom said, “your dad would be proud.” I found an old voicemail where he wasn’t saying anything important. Just “Call me back when you can, buddy.” He’d call me goofy for keeping it but he’d secretly be happy I do.
Every year around mid-May I boot back up Uncharted 4. For the last 6 or so I’ve been stuck at a very specific checkpoint in the aptly named Chapter 13 – Marooned. Why the difficulty peak of the game is at chapter 13 of 22, I’ll never know. But every year, I try that checkpoint for a couple hours, get frustrated, and move on. I’d like to tell you this year’s attempt was some miraculous breakthrough. That the voice of my father harkened through that thin veil and told me the right way to murder 1,000 paramilitants. Hell, how cool would it have been if this breakthrough was in 2026? A clean decade after he passed. Beating this dumb little project and putting a clean bow on that chapter of life? But that’s not how doing difficult things works. It’s slow and requires repetition, refinement, consistency, and dumb luck.
On June 1 of 2024, I quietly beat Uncharted 4 on Crushing. I was the only one awake in the house and there were no leftover chicken tenders available at the time. My dad wasn’t a video game guy but I think he would have liking watching a playthrough of Uncharted 4—though probably not one that took 8 years. I’m a very different person than who I was 8 years ago but I hope I’m someone he would like.
---
On May 15th of 2016 my dad died.
It wasn't surprising in the larger scheme of things but the moment was really jarring. That's obvious in a stupid sort of way, but I don't know how to talk about it without big obvious statements. He had grappled with diabetes and heart problems for the better part of three decades. Issues like that aren't "if" diagnoses, they're "when." If I really had to pinpoint a turn in his health, things declined when he started dialysis. Apparently sucking all your blood out, pumping it through a machine, and shoving it back in is kind of rough on your body. Wild, right?
In spite of it all, he always had such a great attitude. The guy wasn't even 60 but he looked and felt at least a decade older. And yet he was always quick with a joke, support for someone else--anything he could do to connect with someone and make their load lighter.
I saw him that day. My wife and I passed by my parents' house on the way back home from a trip. I hugged him, told him I loved him. Couldn't ask for much more than that. He died of a heart attack a couple hours after we left.
I was lucky to have some sort of closure with him but anyone who's experienced loss like that can tell you grief sticks around. Sure, it changes from being mad at the world and everyone in it to having a few special voicemails you'll never delete--a fragile time capsule of a file named dadvm.mp4 backed up in a few different spots. Tearing up at a few old songs that aren't sad in the slightest.
Southern funerals are the best and the worst. You get to (have to) see and talk to everyone who has ever even been in the same ZIP code as the deceased and each of them has a different take on the whole affair.
"He doesn't look like himself." Right he died, yeah.
"Somebody's gotta take care of your mom now!" Noted, I'll get right on that after I figure out how I'm going to do this at all.
But I heard so many stories. Dad traveled the US working construction for years before I was born. I met people who told me such cool things about him. One of those tragic pieces of the parent-child relationship is that you don't always get a clear picture of who your parent was--at least not a full one. On that day, my dad was further from me than I had ever experienced and yet I had a fuller picture of who he was than I ever had before.
I spoke on the phone for most of an hour with the organ donor phone rep the night before the service, I delivered the photo slideshow that played during the service, I picked out the songs that played and were sung, I was at the visitation for hours and shook more hands than I can count, I spoke about my dad before the eulogy, I helped carry the casket, I put a flower on the casket as they lowered it. Then I went home and it was quiet. And I was tired.
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End is about ending things. On its surface, it’s very much the pulp globetrotting action-adventure the series is known for, and it does that exceptionally well. Series-first semi-open world spaces are gorgeously brought to life. Fully operable vehicles make their debut and are executed wonderfully. This will sound silly but this game has the most impressive rope physics of any I’ve ever played. How is one of the highlights of PlayStation Indiana Jones the tow cable? I know that sounds like a dig but I promise it’s not.
The game is excellent. Certainly not above reproach, but excellent at most everything it attempts.
But it’s really about grappling with obligation. It’s about determining where your personal desires begin and end, where they overlap with your responsibilities, and how your life is influenced by those around you. It’s about examining your life and figuring out when it’s best, and healthiest to let something end. It’s about being better at Crash Bandicoot than your partner.
The night of May 17th, 2016 I didn’t want all that. I wanted the pulp and the fun of that world. I love that series. So around midnight I downloaded the game, cracked open a bag of cold leftover chicken tenders, and started playing. I beat the game on Hard mode on the 21st. Later that year I bought the strategy guide/art book and started a Crushing mode playthrough. It actually wasn’t as bad as I expected but it certainly wasn’t easy. I was digging through something that required effort.
And then life moved on. I bottled stuff up, Mom struggled with a very different life, people expected new things from me, and I had to do some growing up pretty quickly. Mind you, I was 23. I’m not about to play some “smol bean 23-year-old” sympathy schtick but I was a year into being married, living in a new place, taking care of myself for the first time, and a big part of my support system went away. Changes had to happen, and so they did.
Mom and I got good at talking on the phone. We visited a lot. She started taking care of one of our dogs (and still does; shout out to Midas). We went to a couple different grief seminars. I eventually started therapy. We talked about the things he would have liked; the people he should have met. With each new job or stage in life Mom said, “your dad would be proud.” I found an old voicemail where he wasn’t saying anything important. Just “Call me back when you can, buddy.” He’d call me goofy for keeping it but he’d secretly be happy I do.
Every year around mid-May I boot back up Uncharted 4. For the last 6 or so I’ve been stuck at a very specific checkpoint in the aptly named Chapter 13 – Marooned. Why the difficulty peak of the game is at chapter 13 of 22, I’ll never know. But every year, I try that checkpoint for a couple hours, get frustrated, and move on. I’d like to tell you this year’s attempt was some miraculous breakthrough. That the voice of my father harkened through that thin veil and told me the right way to murder 1,000 paramilitants. Hell, how cool would it have been if this breakthrough was in 2026? A clean decade after he passed. Beating this dumb little project and putting a clean bow on that chapter of life? But that’s not how doing difficult things works. It’s slow and requires repetition, refinement, consistency, and dumb luck.
On June 1 of 2024, I quietly beat Uncharted 4 on Crushing. I was the only one awake in the house and there were no leftover chicken tenders available at the time. My dad wasn’t a video game guy but I think he would have liking watching a playthrough of Uncharted 4—though probably not one that took 8 years. I’m a very different person than who I was 8 years ago but I hope I’m someone he would like.
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 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.
The cherry on top of an exceptional remake.
This could have just been a short asset flip and I would have been satisfied. Instead, we got a tonally varied reintroduction to a beloved character that further fleshed out a world that already feels largely realized. Yes, it's short, but it plays as a sort of beta for what we can expect out of Rebirth. With the rebuilt Fort Condor mini-game, synchronization attacks, and the revealed kit of one of the newly added characters, Intermission serves as a perfect way to gear up for the full release of Rebirth.
Final thoughts: the ending had no right to go that hard or that sad and Scarlet is a certified babe.
This could have just been a short asset flip and I would have been satisfied. Instead, we got a tonally varied reintroduction to a beloved character that further fleshed out a world that already feels largely realized. Yes, it's short, but it plays as a sort of beta for what we can expect out of Rebirth. With the rebuilt Fort Condor mini-game, synchronization attacks, and the revealed kit of one of the newly added characters, Intermission serves as a perfect way to gear up for the full release of Rebirth.
Final thoughts: the ending had no right to go that hard or that sad and Scarlet is a certified babe.
2024
Man this felt absolutely terrible. Like if a dev learned every single wrong lesson from the Pokémon games. I want to say I’ll try this game again if they fix everything but that would require them to rebuild it from the ground up. Terrible, bland, buggy, uninspired experience.
2023
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 gorgeous. 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.
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 gorgeous. 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.
2021
I enjoyed so many pieces of Solar Ash.
The movement feels great, it has an interesting premise, and everything about it looks beautiful. Hell, I spent almost half the game not realizing there was a boost button (no idea how I missed that in the tutorial) and it was still really fun just idly skating around, finding caches, and playing "Connect-the-Dots of the Colossus" every hour or so. But beyond that admittedly impressive surface lies a game that's disappointingly hollow.
There are brief excellent moments when you arrive at new locations or when you reach scenic overlooks and the camera pulls back to let you savor a gorgeous unworldly vista. Apart from those moments, however, Solar Ash does little to stand out of the crowd. It's never bad but it rarely excels either. My save file is just short of 6 hours playtime and that feels about how long I would want this game to be, given how shallow your interactions with the world are. The game does very little to iterate on its initial traversal or combat, so I'm sure the last couples hours of this game could feel like a slog for some.
Solar Ash is good not great which is a bummer coming from Heart Machine. Announcing your studio with an exceptional, challenging, and down-right eerie isometric action-adventure only to make a pretty good 3D platformer is a letdown, and it leaves me hoping that Hyper Light Breaker is a return to form rather than a continuation of the trend.
The movement feels great, it has an interesting premise, and everything about it looks beautiful. Hell, I spent almost half the game not realizing there was a boost button (no idea how I missed that in the tutorial) and it was still really fun just idly skating around, finding caches, and playing "Connect-the-Dots of the Colossus" every hour or so. But beyond that admittedly impressive surface lies a game that's disappointingly hollow.
There are brief excellent moments when you arrive at new locations or when you reach scenic overlooks and the camera pulls back to let you savor a gorgeous unworldly vista. Apart from those moments, however, Solar Ash does little to stand out of the crowd. It's never bad but it rarely excels either. My save file is just short of 6 hours playtime and that feels about how long I would want this game to be, given how shallow your interactions with the world are. The game does very little to iterate on its initial traversal or combat, so I'm sure the last couples hours of this game could feel like a slog for some.
Solar Ash is good not great which is a bummer coming from Heart Machine. Announcing your studio with an exceptional, challenging, and down-right eerie isometric action-adventure only to make a pretty good 3D platformer is a letdown, and it leaves me hoping that Hyper Light Breaker is a return to form rather than a continuation of the trend.
2024
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.
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.
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.
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.
2024
Sometime in 2023 a development team played Lethal Company and said, “I like this but I wish we could kind of just fuck around.” Such was the conception of Content Warning.
Very silly and fun with a group of friends. Not much deeper than that as far as I can tell.
Very silly and fun with a group of friends. Not much deeper than that as far as I can tell.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
2021
Possibly the most intuitive MOBA. Possibly the worst game menus I’ve ever navigated.
Excellent game that left me wanting more.
A real breath of fresh air following the decade and a half of NSMB art style. It feels like the theme of Wonder is how wonderful it is to be weird. Strange little critters and moments wait around every corner but this conceit becomes the reason why the game stalls out in the final act/post game.
Late game levels and Special worlds in Mario games are moments to throw out the playbook and make something crazy. Remember the seemingly simple yet truly masterful design of the earlier levels that taught you systems and mechanics? Enough learning; it's time to perform. You could make a passable case for Wonder following that same structure but in action... it never feels like it gets there. When you make a game about the unexpected being everywhere, the unexpected becomes commonplace unless you continue to ramp up how you iterate on that theme. Wonder bites off more than it can chew in this regard.
All that said, I want games to do that. Swing for the fences. I'd rather a game flounder in the attempt at greatness than give me the exact same tired "winning" formula. The actual problem with Wonder is its multiplayer.
Wonder largely copies prior 2D Mario titles for its multiplayer "rules" but it makes a few simple tweaks. Not all of them are terrible: the addition of 3 characters (give or take palette swaps) that offer varying levels of interactivity and difficulty is neat! Not revolutionary but a welcome change.
Wonder really fumbles when it comes to the seemingly minor pieces of what makes a multiplayer game function. Namely, there's no persistent player 1. I'm sure there's some veiled reason as to who the "leader" is but it seems to jump between which player has lived the longest, finished the most recent level the fastest, or even just hit A first to select the newest stage. Now, this wouldn't matter except that a too-tight camera solely follows this arbitrarily chosen player 1. Fall out of that Miyamoto-ordained player's field of play and you're a ghost. Which would be fine except that starts a measly 5-second timer to reach either the living player(s) or an online multiplayer standee to return to life or drain a life. It feels designed to facilitate super tight synchronous play or to pit players against each other--not to encourage varied skill levels or playstyles. I played this game with adults who all like games and it was like herding cats. Imagine being a parent playing with your kids. Not ideal.
A good Mario game which makes it a great video game but it could have been an all-timer.
A real breath of fresh air following the decade and a half of NSMB art style. It feels like the theme of Wonder is how wonderful it is to be weird. Strange little critters and moments wait around every corner but this conceit becomes the reason why the game stalls out in the final act/post game.
Late game levels and Special worlds in Mario games are moments to throw out the playbook and make something crazy. Remember the seemingly simple yet truly masterful design of the earlier levels that taught you systems and mechanics? Enough learning; it's time to perform. You could make a passable case for Wonder following that same structure but in action... it never feels like it gets there. When you make a game about the unexpected being everywhere, the unexpected becomes commonplace unless you continue to ramp up how you iterate on that theme. Wonder bites off more than it can chew in this regard.
All that said, I want games to do that. Swing for the fences. I'd rather a game flounder in the attempt at greatness than give me the exact same tired "winning" formula. The actual problem with Wonder is its multiplayer.
Wonder largely copies prior 2D Mario titles for its multiplayer "rules" but it makes a few simple tweaks. Not all of them are terrible: the addition of 3 characters (give or take palette swaps) that offer varying levels of interactivity and difficulty is neat! Not revolutionary but a welcome change.
Wonder really fumbles when it comes to the seemingly minor pieces of what makes a multiplayer game function. Namely, there's no persistent player 1. I'm sure there's some veiled reason as to who the "leader" is but it seems to jump between which player has lived the longest, finished the most recent level the fastest, or even just hit A first to select the newest stage. Now, this wouldn't matter except that a too-tight camera solely follows this arbitrarily chosen player 1. Fall out of that Miyamoto-ordained player's field of play and you're a ghost. Which would be fine except that starts a measly 5-second timer to reach either the living player(s) or an online multiplayer standee to return to life or drain a life. It feels designed to facilitate super tight synchronous play or to pit players against each other--not to encourage varied skill levels or playstyles. I played this game with adults who all like games and it was like herding cats. Imagine being a parent playing with your kids. Not ideal.
A good Mario game which makes it a great video game but it could have been an all-timer.