i feel like when god descended from heaven to create Portal and time came for the sequel, he made a game truly worthy of bearing the torch. so worthy, that he deemed us unfit for only one, and so split it into two. he took the charm, the wit, the humor and the presentation, and gave it to Portal 2. then, he took the extremely intelligent puzzle design and gave it all to The Talos Principle.

like i said in so many words, this game doesnt have a whole lot in the way of a soul, and yet the strange themes and presentation maintain interesting enough to keep my attention alongside the true appeal: the puzzles.

this is a very standard puzzle game with the laser puzzles and block puzzles and fucking clone puzzles, but theyre used in a way that makes it very satisfying to complete regardless. i kept coming back to this game not to see what the story had to offer or to keep getting good boy points from God, but just to get more tetris pieces.

despite the complete lack of replayability or charm, The Talos Principle is a very smart game that knows exactly what it is and offers exactly what you want, and im very very happy i played it.

and i only had to look up THREE solutions because im a smart boy

i'll always be a huge advocate for Telltale. their style of game might not be traditional, or really even always work, but it's still a valuable interpretation of what this medium is capable of. telltale in their heyday gave us some of the most well written and charming narratives this industry has gotten.

and when people mention telltale's heyday, this is the second one they mention after Walking Dead. and considering the pure excellence of that story, that's high praise. The Wolf Among Us holds such a reputation for a good reason, too: the writing and style of it's strange noir fantasy world.

it may not have any character as three dimensional as Lee Everett but the characters that are here all have tons of characterization and nuance in what they say and how they act; the world of TWAU feels incredibly lived in.

as far as writing goes, i really only have one problem. when people criticize Telltale they usually say that "they should just make movies," and while that's an incredibly short-sighted argument there are some aspects of it that hold true. the player (at times) can feel like a bit of an afterthought. in The Walking Dead (season one) every choice the player made affected everything: from small things to who does and doesnt like Lee to even who is alive by the end, and they all changed the story drastically. there are still some heavy choices in this game, but some of them feel more inconsequential than others, which is a shame.

aside from that small complaint, this is still Telltale at their best. which is saying something, because their engine still sucks ass. like, the mouse cursor is a physical object that's moved around by the camera. what the fuck telltale

KINDAWARM

i heard a lot about this game going into it and how the gimmick is super cool, and yeah it is, but the finished product feels near identical to the demo they released all those years ago.

my biggest gripe is that despite being about doing cool shit with the freedom of time youre allowed, the game strongly incentivizes waiting in a corner and shooting people as they come through in a single-file line. once you get halfway through this game's 2 hour campaign, the story (which is very bad) starts taking control and the gameplay (which is very samey) continues it's path of throwing more guys at you and essentially saying "hey, stop having fun. you cant win that way"

its good, and certainly worth a try, but im very disappointed by it

this game makes me feel like the dumbest motherfucker alive.

and i love it. never has a strategy game so beautifully crafted a CONSTANTLY tense experience without making situations feel completely hopeless. every single turn in this game feels like the odds are completely against you, but never is there a situation that you cannot get out of. every randomly generated playthrough is refined to where you can perfectly beat it through your own cunning. this game makes me feel like the smartest motherfucker alive.

every situation, every element, every aspect of this game is equal parts smart and fuckin' cool. you can technically beat this game in 5 hours but due to the amount of things in it and the sheer joy playing it gives me, i can (and certainly will) put way more in. this game makes me the happiest motherfucker alive.

this game is ridiculous. these kinds of infinite, randomly generated indie games have been hugely important to me for a long time and this is one that i just missed, for some reason or another. thanks to unreal, i got it for free, and oh my god im so happy i did.

this game scratched an itch ive had for a very long time. binding of isaac will always be one of my favorites, but with Rebirth and especially Afterbirth, rounds just kept getting longer and longer and items got less inventive and rooms got significantly worse (especially with those shitty spawners) but nuclear throne takes it right back to basics.

snappy, ten minute rounds full of pulse-pounding action with extremely satisfying visuals and sound design makes this feel like bliss. after playing ruiner, i feel like i just died and went to a heaven where shit actually responds to my inputs. everything about this game is quick, and snappy, and precise.

and i love it. it brings me back to a simpler time, when indie games were starting to get really big and spelunky and BoI are takin' the world by storm. playing nuclear throne feels like wrapping up in a warm blanket i forgot about. its probably a bad sign that my comfort zone is hyper-violent indie games about dying repeatedly.

holy shit this game is bad.

i knew nothing about this going into it outside of the aesthetics and the Devolver Digital stamp on it. and because im an indie shill, i was very interested. thanks to unreal, i got it for free!

and thank god! this game is a piece of shit! which is a shame, because the prologue had me genuinely interested. the whole "KILL YOU" stuff was definitely edgy, but i didn't mind at first. paired with the visuals and music, i thought the whole aesthetic was great at first.

which i guess i should start with the positives, since there are very few. the visuals - on occasion - can look great. other times, they can look kinda bad, but we're being positive right now. the music, also, bangs throughout the entire game. some genuinely great shit in there and i feel pity for the artists involved.

thats it. thats everything good about ruiner. back on topic here, the visuals sometimes look like total garbage. mostly in gameplay, since everything blends in with everything else. everything important is so small and the same shade of neon as everything else that its near impossible to interpret enemies from cubes.

not that it fucking matters, since fighting enemies is a gamble. sometimes you hit them. sometimes they die. sometimes they just dont. sometimes they use one of their thirty-nine "i dont want to get hit anymore" moves. sometimes they hit you back. sometimes you die in one hit. sometimes you dont. its an inconsistent mess that never feels cool, or challenging, it just feels like rolling dice. the most effective way to tackle encounters is just run up to people with a sword and mash the attack button until everything falls down. until the end, when suddenly guns actually do damage again. until the VERY end, when nothing works. im genuinely curious what i was supposed to do in some of those combat encounters because sometimes everything would take a thousand hits and sometimes i'd kill one guy and get an S rank.

granted, i didnt use the special abilities much, because theyre all useless. all of them. combat is such a clusterfuck as it is, so adding on my own clusterfuck seems counter-intuitive. i mainly focused on the ability to heal myself using energy, which also doesnt work. you regain health at roughly the same speed i stopped liking this game and sometimes it feels like you lose health faster when you activate the ability. again, health is just a coin toss. either you have it or you dont, or you kind of have it, or you dont again, or you cant lose it. i felt like a fuckup on the last mini-boss but according to the game i didnt lose a drop.

and back on the topic of being edgy: holy fuck. this is one of the worst written games ive ever played. the plot is so embarrassing i genuinely thought it was a joke, but no. its the most standard, predictable, boring story ever told in the most generic cyberpunk setting yet created. every character talks like what an angsty teenager thinks is cool, using constant vulgarity and spouting the most cringe-inducing lines about how "usually, im the last thing you ever see... you must not be such a piece of shit after all if im the blade that takes your soul..." fucking abominable.

this game was made by what claims to be professional game developers in their bio, but ends up feeling like a game made by a bunch of amateurs with an overinflated budget. its an embarrassment, and a damn shame that it had to taint Devolver's name.

theres very little thats redeemable about this game. the asian girl takes her pants off if you get an S rank so i guess the game is alright, actually. yeah that was a pretty good game now that i think abou

it cant be overstated how important kojima is to the game industry. like him or not, he's revolutionized the way we see game design more than once. with his newest game he may not change the way we look at games, but he still proves he knows how to make a new idea work perfectly well.

i went into this game expecting it to suck hard. i thought it would just be walking from point a to b with some face-level story on top. i was severely wrong.

the amount of nuance from just getting package x to point a is insane, with everything down to the terrain keeping your attention. hell will rise from the ground to keep you from delivering some packages. but deliver them you will god damn it, because youre Sam Porter Bridges.

there's so many things that keep gameplay from getting stale, down to the end of the game youre constantly unlocking new weapons and gadgets and modes of transport. on top of that youve got MULE camps which never stop being satisfying and the BT sections which never stop being tense. everything feeds into everything else and its impossible to look away from the screen once it starts, and i have never played anything like it.

but what truly elevates this game is the balls to the wall story. the horrifying symbolism of strands and hands and uterine glands makes for a visual experience unlike anything before it. it's a weird thing to say, but this might be the most well-shot game i've ever played. not to mention that every character is extremely well written and even more interesting than the last, the obvious highlight being Mads Mikkelsen.

death stranding's america is a world i wont forget and the tense package delivery along with it. theres truly nothing like this game and i applaud everyone involved for making such an interesting, dare i say bold game work so god damn well. just one more feather in kojima's cap.

here i am trusting nintendo again, and here i am disappointed

Luigi's Mansion The First was an extremely unique experience on the gamecube that continued nintendo's current streak of fresh ideas produced with a level of polish that was unrivaled, making for a game drenched in atmosphere and full of fun puzzle bosses that to this day ceases to get old.

then they made a second one, so fuck everything i just said. pushing the focus towards environmental puzzles and being as uncreative as possible, LM3 continues the legacy of being completely inoffensive and pushing the focus more on gameplay and as far away from world building or - god forbid - atmospehre as possible.

lets get somethin' straight here. the gameplay of luigi's mansion on its own (or as some might say, in a vacuum) isnt that much to write home about. it was good, and extremely satisfying having to push and pull with the ghouls, but its not what keeps the game going. the atmosphere and the characters, on TOP of the gameplay, are what make it special. every portrait ghost had a quirk to them, but it wasnt completely over the top. every ghost feels like a real person with a goal in mind. hell, the first boss is just an old man that wants to read a book.

Luigi's Mansion 3 starts promising, the first two bosses being a luggage handler and a maid keeping in theme with the hotel. then you fight a fat police officer that likes donuts. then an irritable artist. then a knight. then a t-rex. then cleopatra, etc.

every level is a cliche, and the gameplay has little to no variety. go in a room, solve a puzzle, maybe suck up the same three ghosts and repeat. the real meat and potatoes of gameplay is in the boss fights, which while unoriginal are always fun to fight. and even then, it mostly revolves around waiting for them to attack and then flashing.

other than that its the usual nintendo fare: looks great, sounds great, smells great, everything on the presentation is excellent, outside of most of the ghosts looking really gross and generic (e.x. the angry ghost is a big red rectangular prism, this game has worse enemy design than the fucking jimmy neutron game)

on its own its just an ok puzzle game, but its not on its own because nintendo wont let it be. its Luigi's Mansion fucking 3 now, soiling any and all creative vision that went into creating the first game. congratulations nintendo, you found a new fucking cow to milk. im sure it was worth it

i dont know why i played this. ive just had it forever and decided i ought to give it a go. ive only heard bad things about this but if modern warfare was so good, SURELY they couldnt screw this one up. but they did.

guess i should elaborate on that, because Modern Warfare is my favorite FPS, ever. the excellent story paired with the - at the time - unique take on the military shooter genre made for an enthralling experience, so what does ghosts do to follow up that act?

god only knows, dude, this whole thing felt pointless. the story is absolute nonsense. characters talk all the fuckin time but nobody ever says anything. things happen just because. every single mission in this game can be summed up as "because it would piss off rorke." why are we destroying this oil rig? because it would piss off rorke. why are we in space? because it would piss off rorke. (ALL FOR FUCKING NAUGHT, BY THE WAY, BECAUSE AS IM WRITING THIS THE GAME THREW A SEQUEL HOOK AT ME. SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING DROPPING A STAR)

so the story is your typical american circlejerk running the usual laps of how much greater we are than every other country blah de blah de blah, and theres nothing to gain from it. no interesting characters to latch on to, or really hate since rorke doesnt get nearly enough screentime despite having a half-decent motivation and completely owning every scene hes in.

but thats not why youre here, you silly sausage, youre here to shoot people, and im happy to report that part of the game is... ok? at times? mostly its a bog standard boring mess but some shootouts were actually engaging enough to keep this whole thing from being a 1-star affair. dont get me wrong, theres some trash (the helicopter sequence comes to mind) but there are some levels that are actually interesting, and dare i say even fun (the tank sequence comes to mind.) i definitely dont regret having played those moments, but the rest was boring and stupid enough for me to still have a go at criticizing it.

its ugly as piss, too, good god how have i not mentioned this. everything is gray. my guys, the enemy, the environments, everything. there were so many god damn times where i see someone run on screen and shoot them only to have my brother yell "WHAT THE HELL, LOGAN," and i assure you now, it never stopped being funny. that was the only upside, however, since the rest was either not knowing if an enemy was dead or not knowing if an enemy was actually a plant or not. if this game didnt have aim assist, logan wouldve become a ghost much sooner ill tell you right now

so yeah pretty shit game, but some moments were pretty fun. also, you only get the dog for one mission, so its actually a very shit game. i only played it to see if the fish scatter when you get close anyway. (which they do!!! the marketing didnt lie!!!!!)