Many would instantly assume this game is dogshit on the basis that it's gacha, I'm calling this game dogshit because it's dogshit, plain and simple.

Look, Genshin and HSR are guilty pleasure games, so while I enjoy them, I also loathe them at the same time. Gacha is a disease that taints anything it touches, but I enjoy those games despite the model.

Hearing Wuthering Waves was a Genshin competitor, but with good combat, my interest was piqued. Genshin's combat, while interesting in its own right, hardly leaves any room for skill expression. Having now played a decent amount, it's clear that Wuthering Waves exists only as a decent combat system, the rest of the game attached is so abysmal, there is no realm in which anyone could even remotely compare it to Genshin. That's not to say it's not a Genshin clone, that much is certain, Wuthering Waves apes Genshin at literally every conceivable design decision. When you actually compare them as games though, it's the coughing baby vs. hydrogen bomb meme incarnate. Every single aspect of Genshin bar combat is superior and it's not even remotely close.

Looks-wise, Genshin is miles ahead of Wuthering Waves, more so from an art direction standpoint. Genshin is downright beautiful, especially in the newer areas of the game. Wuthering Waves' world is lifeless and dull, there has yet to be a single locale that has stood out or garnered even an ounce of recognition for its appearance. While a lot more subjective, character design is also much better in Genshin, I have yet to see a single character in Wuthering Waves that is not incredibly generic manhua slop with very little variety.

With the writing, Genshin is definitely not known for its storytelling prowess, but frankly, anything is better than the total shitshow that is Wuthering Waves. For starters, there's no beginning, you're just dropped into this dull world and suddenly a gang of generic waifus start salivating at your very existence, literally zero reason given whatsoever. You're summoned to the capital to meet the leader of the city, again, no reason whatsoever given, but when you get there, she's inexplicably on a fucking trip and will be gone for 3 days even though she just summoned you not 10 minutes prior?!? But wait! She's got a puzzle for you to solve in her absence which is just fuc-... I wrote more, but deleted because the point was dragging, the story is complete dogshit, we'll just leave it at that.

The open-world, oh boy the open-world, where to start... the problem is too systemic with Wuthering Waves to completely isolate and fully explain, but the process of exploration and navigating the world is just So. Fucking. Boring. The root cause is still likely the look of the game, the world is so dull, the enemies, while unique, aren't visually interesting. The puzzles are ripped straight out of early Genshin (when the game was a lot less interesting) and feel very unpolished. There are thousands of intangible details that just feel off, like a very cheap imitation. The reason I still play Genshin is because I enjoy exploring the beautiful locales that each come with new gimmicks, puzzles and enemies. Nothing is too mechanically difficult, so it's a meandering and meditative experience to explore the map. Since every aspect of the game is so well-crafted, it's effortless to explore every little nook and cranny even if it's not that experientially rich.

Even the combat isn't so clear-cut that it completely leaves Genshin in the dust. Yes, Wuthering Waves is much more frenetic, relying on twitch reactions during combat; it's deeply satisfying to parry and dodge bosses, stringing through characters using the intro/outro skills and animation cancels. The combat system allows for a lot more skill expression and as such, it's definitely the highlight of the game. That said, Genshin isn't necessarily horrid when it comes to combat, the reaction-based nature of combat is certainly less high-octane, but interesting, nonetheless. The problem lies in overworld enemy difficulty, nothing in Genshin is strong enough that a moderately built team can't absolutely eviscerate. I have yet to reach endgame, so I can't say for certain, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Wuthering Waves will run into this same issue. Outside of endgame bosses and game modes, you'll steamroll everything, resulting in the same problem Genshin has arrived at. Boss fights will likely always be superior in Wuthering Waves, hooray, it's got that going for it!

I could go down the line and list every little aspect, the worldbuilding, the character writing, the fucking music... it's all so much better in Genshin. Maybe it's unfair to compare Genshin and Wuthering Waves, Genshin is making billions and is closing in on its 4-year anniversary. That's what I would say, if Wuthering Waves didn't blatantly copy Genshin so egregiously at every single turn. If you're going to directly steal even pointless minute design decisions like arbitrarily discounting monthly pulls, you're opening yourself up for the comparisons, sorry, I don't make the rules.

At the end of the day, Wuthering Waves is a gacha which inherently stacks the deck against it; Genshin is able to overcome that blight with the competency it exudes at every turn, Wuthering Waves not so much. In constantly grasping and awkwardly trying to mimic the success of Genshin, Wuthering Waves has doomed itself to always live in its shadow, forever the "Genshin clone with slightly better combat" - a pathetic existence.

Unicorn Overlord is the mirror dimension 13 Sentinels. 13 Sentinels had an engaging and compelling story and solid cast but lacked any gameplay intrigue; Unicorn Overlord has a satisfying gameplay loop, but it's paired with a bland story and horridly trite characters. The whole cast feels like ChatGPT excrement, there're so many characters and they're just mindlessly shat out at every turn. Some positives? The gameplay is great, slowly conquering the world, expanding your roster with new units to experiment with, it was all very engaging... for a while. The first 20 hours of this game are engrossing, it's quite easy to ignore the game's shortcomings during this period. Then we run into another big problem, this game is 50 hours long... once you've played 20 hours, you've seen it all. The game will still throw new unit types and level gimmicks at you, but they're not nearly enough to keep the loop satisfying in the mid to late game. Unfortunately, once the gameplay grows tired, there's absolutely nothing of value left here.

Pacific Drive is essentially Jalopy with more sauce. Starting out with this little shitcan strapped together with nothing but duct tape and a few prayers, you head out on a road trip into a beautiful depiction of the Olympic Peninsula.

I've personally driven those winding highways in a shitcan of my own - cruising through the pouring rain, the dreary morning barely lit by my shitty, clouded headlights; there's a very specific eeriness winding through those trees. Pacific Drive takes that innate emotion of the region and adds in legitimate paranormal threats and intrigue, the result is an incredibly compelling locale to base the core loop of the game.

Ducking into little shacks, scrounging for little bits of scrap, dodging the anomalies, racing towards the extraction, then heading back to the garage to upgrade the shitcan, my shitcan. Admittedly, Pacific Drive is often not exhilarating in its moment-to-moment gameplay, it's much more interested in building atmosphere as you crawl across the terrain. I doubt everyone will enjoy the gameplay here, and maybe I'm just too biased regarding the setting, but I'm overjoyed that a game like Pacific Drive exists. If you're a fan of titles like Jalopy, The Long Drive, or My Summer Car, do yourself a favor a give this one a try, I'm sure you'll fall in love.

In a world where infinite free time exists, I might enjoy this game. As it stands, I don't enjoy the constant running around, spending insane amounts of time in menus/loading screens, more running around, tedious RNG-based quests, and, oh yeah, more running... This is all for insanely quick engagements (that is, if you don't get domed from 1km away) that are often just gear checks. So yeah, I fundamentally hate the basic gameplay loop, but the problem is further exasperated by the fact that time invested is heavily rewarded, which skews balance towards non-stop grinders; casual players are heavily outgeared by the "chads" (the unemployed) with 400+ hours (just this wipe). No thanks man, I've got work on Monday.

Elden Ring is difficult, not in gameplay, but in how I wrestle with it in my memories. The first week was pure magic, I completely let go and gave myself up to the primal (teenage) gamer urges of yesteryear - I fucking devoured this game. As pathetic as it sounds, it was time well spent, very few games these days afford me the opportunity to wholeheartedly consume. If you were to ask me then, what I thought as I rolled credits, I would've enthusiastically proclaimed Elden Ring as a masterpiece without a shred of doubt. Ask me now, I'm not so certain - I've replayed the game a couple of times since release, it has never struck me the same way that it did upon release. The awe of discovery is tarnished (ha), I've come to accept that I'll never get to experience the Lands Between for the first time ever again, and that's fine, that's just how life goes. So here we are, in the end, I'm choosing to remember this game more fondly, I desperately want to view this game with rose-tinted glasses, take me back to the time where I felt like a kid for the first time in a long time.

Finally, the distillate of pure gamer slop. It's fine, whatever... a perfectly serviceable open-world survival game aping Ark, devoid of any creativity besides "le epic pokemon with gunzzz". The creatures are all Walmart-brand Pokémon, no effort was put in to hide that they are blatant rip-offs; sounds, menu layouts, fonts, all incredibly insignificant details which would be incredibly easy to create, are copied wholesale from other games - it's disgusting that this game will go down as one of 2024's biggest successes.

For many years, I heard everyone gush about this game, and on paper, Dragon's Dogma sounded like it'd be perfectly suited to my tastes - I tried a half-dozen times to play it over multiple years, each time bouncing off after a few hours. I always felt like I mustn't've been in the mood, "it'll click next time and I'll finally get it." Unfortunately, now that I've completed the game, that never happened. I would love to love this game, but it genuinely felt like a proof of concept rather than a fully realized title. I still loved aspects of it, I just wanted more; the combat sandbox is excellent, some of the best, tinkering with the various classes and the pawn system were very compelling. Sadly, it just wasn't enough to prop up a barren and dull open world with a very weak story. I know it sounds bratty, but I just wanted more to this game: more diverse locales, more creatures to fight, more compelling quests (especially monster hunts), more dungeons... you get my point. Ultimately, Dragon's Dogma's biggest crime was giving me just a tiny little taste, just enough to whet my appetite, but not nearly enough to leave me even remotely satisfied.

God, I wish I loved this game - I was immediately hooked after playing the demo, I was so confident this game was going to be a classic. Unfortunately, this game turned into an incredible slog with brief sparks of genuine excellence. If this game could focus for any extended period of time, it would've been fine, it really is an incredible spectacle at times. Ultimately, FFXVI couldn't help from gorging itself on pointless filler and morphing into a hideous, bloated corpse of what could've been.

Much was promised with Cyberpunk 2077, did they deliver? Absolutely and unequivocally, no - but there were hints of brilliance, very small flashes. So, the question is, does Phantom Liberty remedy the situation and provide the type of experience marketed for Cyberpunk? No... not really, but it still delivered a meaningful and enjoyable experience, nonetheless. Phantom Liberty is the result of taking the sparse ingredients of greatness from the base game, refining them, and extracting the precipitate to make an incredibly competent action title.