Feverish rejection of imperialism. To become jaded to the higher powers. Ulysses is a man taken his breaking point and left unchecked for so long that he reaches past the answer he was looking for and becomes convinced that tearing down a nation also means killing people who were merely born under it.

The flag Ulysses carries isn't a show of allegiance to the Old World, in the end. He clings onto it because to him, it symbolizes a nation created out of common interest, something that isn't the product of strong-arming, steamrolling, or massacring everyone in the way of how far you want to expand your borders. To Ulysses, the Old World symbol isn't an allegiance to the Old World, it's an allegiance what The Divide could have become. A place in the wasteland that was surrounded by the Old World banner, but unlike the Legion or the NCR, didn't model itself after an already failed set of values from the Old World.

The Divide is fucked, and it's the best set piece you'll get in this game. It's haunting, and beautiful.

Played on Linux through Proton 6.16-GE-1. Mods in Use: NVSE, NVAC, NV Stutter Remover, 4GB Patch, MTUI.

Fun, silly, cute. It's a delight, running around Mafia Town as Hat Kid is relaxing. There's a lot of love put into this game, it shows in stuff like the Mafia guy you can play patty-cake with, the chapter intro screens, Hat Kid's minor voice work, the silly INTRUDER sections, Hat Kid's little animations for jumping on bouncy surfaces or the funny overly-exaggerated slow walk she does. It plays well, looks lovely, and it's not very difficult at all.

Other notes:
It has an aggressively uncooperative camera (in tight spaces mostly. It's annoying, but not the end of the world)
Long load times relative to size of levels & general object count/game size.


Play it if you want a reason to smile :)

Played with Proton 6.15-GE-2 on Linux, with E_SYNC disabled (seemed to stop stuttering).

It's very anti-war, it wants to make sure you know it's anti-war, but not in the same way that Ace Combat 5 hits you over the head with it like a blunt instrument. It has more interest in showing the (unfortunately mostly faceless) individual personal conclusions to being faced with fascism and war atrocity. PJ's naive belief that the government cares about the average person, alongside desperate right-wing fascism turned into manipulation of trauma-addled war veterans. It's trying to say a lot, it REALLY comes close to fucking this up, but I think you can read it in a way that isn't too misguided.

This game really gets into the hypocrisy and morality of war, the idea that there is a such thing as a "gentleman's war", the validity of buying into war for "noble reasons", the inherent bloodthirst and dehumanization caused by borders - your side is all evil, even the civilians, so get fucked, etc. It doesn't matter anyway, to participate willingly in a war is buying into it, regardless of whether you're a supposed "knight" or an indiscriminate slaughterer.

Mission 11: The Inferno -> Mission 12: The Stage of Apocalypse is eternal.

Emulated via PCSX2 on Linux.

Ambitious, missed potential, confused, anti-nationalist. Yeah. Emotionally aware, dramatic, pays attention to its individual characters while tripping over itself for what it actually stands for.

They had a great opportunity with the anti-war stuff, not that it's terrible, but it's like... well, it eventually resolves itself into nationalism being bad, which is true, but to get there it also felt like it had to give up another thing it got close to: something along the lines of "war is manufactured by the ones who don't have to experience it." but that gets dashed aside for couple of twists that I won't detail because I don't want to give this a full spoiler tag.

Lovely cast of characters, albeit somewhat scatter-brained usage of them. The method of feeding you cutscenes that are mostly from a non-military non-player perspective is always something I liked, and the aesthetic of shooting it through a camera for journalism that also exists in some places is nice... There's a lot going on in this, it gets very direct with shit like the military silencing journalists (temporarily, in this case) so they don't report on things that should be known, the citizens of your originating country don't fucking care about the war and think it's pointless... It has ambition, like I said before.

It plays nice. It has horrid team-AI, with a caveat: they are decent at damaging enemy planes, they are godawful at finishing them off. It's very scripted, which okay, fine, it's way more focused on making you engage with the narrative and the spectacle (stuff like the ICBM lighting up the entire sky), I don't think it's a huge issue. It's not very difficult outside of a couple of obtuse occasions. It has lots of hectic radio chatter, for me it helps prop up some of the border-line snoozefest levels, but if you think it isn't convincing enough, yeah, there's nothing helping some of these missions. Lots of infinitely respawning pairs of jets and whatnot to keep you occupied. It's whatever.

It's not bad, but it's very... fantastical. It doesn't have the balls to commit to the grand vision that it felt like it was capable of, it hit some really weird twists and story beats in the later bits, and is generally kind of strange.

Emulated via PCSX2 on Linux.

I owned this and the sequel on PS2, it's..... something.

The History Channel's idea of presenting the Civil War is to shove you into a milquetoast FPS, but with muskets, sabers, and gatling guns in place of assault rifles, pistols, etc, you know the standard FPS arsenal. I believe this also has stealth sections, something the sequel makes its whole shtick out of. It's not interesting in saying anything, it's barely interested in being historically accurate with regard to exact people involved in the specific campaigns. Absurd concept, horrific execution, but not for the reason you'd initially expect.

PR2 was the place to be in 2008, 2009, 2010. Seriously, this game at its height was frequently peaking 2000 or more players, it wasn't uncommon that you would have to sit at the login screen spamming the shit out of it, hoping someone logged off one of the servers at the same time you were hoping to log in.

All other Platform Racing games failed. Why? Platform Racing 1: bad netcode, too primitive. Platform Racing 3: website exclusivity (on a flash game, lol), bad netcode. This leaves Platform Racing 2 in a sweet spot. People would play this shit endlessly, you could not escape the existence of this game on Kongregate. It deserved it, really. The crown jewel, though? Including a level editor. It was a well of endless content. People would make competitive maps, troll maps, casual silly maps, narrative maps (with VERY good art), it was an expressive tool way beyond what I imagine Jiggmin thought people use it for. And it was awesome. And I miss it.

Kongregate shut down most of its forums last year, and almost every chatroom was killed at the same time. Its golden era is long over, and it is fading from relevancy, only existing as a corporate shell of itself. One day it will be gone, just like one day the guy maintaining the remaining server(s) for PR2 will be gone, and all that we'll have left is our memories. It's sad, but they were good times. I miss you.

Unlike anything else I've experienced in a Fallout game. Exercise in oppressive and haunting atmosphere. Elijah's voice in the hologram, the ambient audio of door-knocking/footsteps in specific areas, the Sierra Madre towering over you with that red sky. The Cloud, the way it looks.

Dog. Dean Domino. Father Elijah. Christine. Vera. Sinclair. Aside from the atmosphere, it works best when you're dealing with the characters, or being given bits of information about characters who now only exist through memories. Or holograms of themselves. He'll sing on that stage until the end of time, just like she wanders the halls.

Played on Linux through Proton 6.16-GE-1. Mods in Use: NVSE, NVAC, NV Stutter Remover, 4GB Patch, MTUI.

They made a real mistake in giving you (random outsider) so much agency in the setting, the RPG nature of You Must Make The Choice that is expected, I suppose.

Joshua Graham is the carrier. That's all that really needs to be said about him.

The tribal politics and situation... It's weird and murky, the post-apocalyptic tribal concept is something Fallout tries to handle that interests me greatly, but it's really weird here, because of what I said before about the RPG Choice thing. You have all the agency, and the tribes themselves don't really get any kind of say, you're talking to the other two outsiders (to the individual tribes, not outsiders to the whole tribe culture like you) the entire time about decisions they're making for the tribes. It doesn't feel that great. It's not intentionally bad, knowing Obsidian, just... another thing that goes in the pile of shortcomings through circumstances surrounding the development of New Vegas.

Other notes:
They double down on highlighting that the Legion (and its influence) are nothing but evil.
It's pretty, and that's not a joke. It looks relatively pretty, at least in comparison to the Mojave (which is also good looking honestly, just not pretty).
Cazadors unnecessary.

Played on Linux through Proton 6.16-GE-1. Mods in Use: NVSE, NVAC, NV Stutter Remover, 4GB Patch, MTUI.

To love Musou games is to love the mythological and silly nature it injects into its subject matter. It's lovely.

I don't think there's anyone in the world who loves these games for the way they feel or the gameplay systems or anything like that. It's about The Romance of Three Kingdoms being taken to an absurd and camp-y conclusion. It's in the retelling of a massive historical event in such a fun and loving way. It sparked my interest in ROT3K and I've loved this game for all of my life. It's got tens of characters with their own individual sets of "campaigns", with later levels wildly varying from other characters, because they delve into hypothetical rather than following the actual historical outcome. It has a (relatively) extensive section dedicated to a timeline of the era and reasonably descriptive biographies for every character in the game, even secondary general/lieutenants/etc. It just wants you to laugh and have fun with it, and maybe learn something if you find anything in it interesting.
<3

Much more relevant if you don't have a way to play Damacy and/or We <3 Katamari. It's fine, good, Katamari is just good at a base level, but it's hard to get excited when it's (mostly) an HD compilation of We <3 Katamari levels with some Damacy and Beautiful thrown in. Would very much suggest playing them individually if you can.

Emulated this on RPCS3. The pre-rendered videos play at a weird stutter-y frame rate and walking around the menu areas is a bit stutter-y too, but the levels are perfect.