One of the most astonishingly realized and atmospheric titles; washed in an over saturated and ethereal hue of blinding light and a sparing soundtrack that is no less heavenly and unsettling in equal measure. The game's antiquated and old fashioned structure, its occasional repetition in enemy encounters and frustratingly shoddy platforming, left me a bit cold for slim stretches at a time but there's no denying just how effective and integral and timeless the player's relationship with Yorda is. Despite it all, that finale leaves me speechless and moved. Ico realizes the universal vision of emancipation from powers beyond your understanding and control. The developers craft this twisting labyrinth of a castle to navigate this newfound maturity and responsibility that befalls Ico. There are few games that openly test the patience of its player by simply testing their capacity to be an empathetic human being; guiding someone helpless to shared freedom through an uncommon unity. Exquisite yet maddening in its approach, but are those not the qualities that encompass the trenches of childhood? Ico is modest fantasy as dreamlike nostalgia.

2017 game that would have been revolutionary in 2007.

The entire art team deserves some awards for their achievement on this, the game is still beautiful and a lot of effort went into tiny flourishing details.

The rest of the teams who worked on this just made a by the book gamey game for gamers.

You climb on yellow stuff, you talk in worthless dialogue trees, you unlock basic gameplay through skill trees, you craft shit, you buy gear with colorful rarity, you slowly farm nonsense off of the ground, you go on dumb side quests. You do it all in a giant open world filled with icons. It's a game and all those things are there because that's what you do in games like these, and I'm so tired of it.

I think I would've appreciated a straight forward, linear, 10-20 hours experience a lot more, maybe I just want to play Enslaved again.

one respectable trait of sucker punch's manifests through the primacy of play. in contrast to several other analogous high-profile western studios, SP constructs their worlds with an eye for tactile engagement, with the simple joys of robust maneuverability and responsive action superseding any lofty ambitions or claims to prestige. as the studio found themselves ensnared by the demands of seventh generation AAA gaming, it's this innate sense of play that carried them through two largely middling superhero titles - fully formed open worlds, dozens of collectibles leading to upgrades, binary morality designed to feign depth and enhance replayability, and so on are all cornerstones of the infamous franchise, but where other titles may snuff out their sense of play (ironically in service of the age-old game design adage of 'finding the fun') infamous, especially the first title, encouraged it. responsive platforming, scaling intricate vistas, grinding on rails to speed around town instead of relying on vehicles, a litany of 'stunts' that encouraged anarchic combat experimentation, a steady sense of progression against a perfunctory rogues gallery, and even the craven and utterly gamified triteness of its morality system all amounted to a title that, impossibly, added to more than the sum of its parts. any title with a morality system as exploitable as the first games does not demand interrogation but instead derision followed by acceptance - goodness measured by the act of repeatedly maiming and then healing empire citys impoverished denizens. when the narrative amounts to a simple twist, that you're working against yourself, the experience is neatly dovetailed in the most undeserving and undignified way, but one that lends to its charm quite nicely.

these aforementioned elements are what make second son not just disappointing, but staggeringly bad as it suffers not only from franchise fatigue (crushed under the weight of its bullet point list of Systems(tm) and Features(tm)) but from a complete and total lack of care or ambition. combat is a downgrade, progression takes a hit, all powers are not only comparable in their kits but also in the sense that they're designed for visual fidelity rather than in service of play...even leaving aside the utterly abysmal representation of indigenous communities in its writing this is one of the worst narratives of the eighth gen, one that seems to be constantly at odds with its mechanics and presentation. infamous was for better or worse focused entirely on the minutiae of the individual and extrapolating its base of mechanics wholesale to relay a narrative of systemic upheaval is arrogant, naive, and consistently contradictory, which are traits that inform the titles uniformly bad attempts at characterization which hardly seem worth getting into at length. delsin should serve as our lens into this world and he's never once afforded a nuanced or complicated perspective, slotting everything into extremist binaries that seem totally at odds with the concept of his character. the most frustrating element at play here is these same systems could find worth by interpolating SMT's hallmark law/chaos binary if the title had to operate in much the same way which could not only inject new life into the franchise but is in almost every way imaginable more sensible for the narrative on offer here. instead second son is the worst kind of game - creature comforts made to push hardware sales, not daring enough to imagine but instead preferring to con its playerbase into believing its paltry attempts at evolution, perfectly encapsulated by the title being set in sucker punchs hometown of seattle yet making no attempt whatsoever to represent indigenous communities sensibly

There's a certain kind of gamebro desire for thee modern open world crime game. One so realstic you can get audited for not doing your taxes, and date in-game e-girls and live the life you feel you're not quite equipped for in the real world. The macho nerd's escapist fantasy.

Playing GTA V for the first time in nine years, I'm more impressed with its recreation of modern Los Angeles than I was at the time of release. It "holds up" remarkably well, still maybe the king of the castle as far as open world games go. The depth of detail is still really impressive. I get lost just walking around looking at the cracks in the footpath, the trash littering the streets, the pedestrian and traffic AI and the way they'll give me the finger if I rev my engine at a stop light. It's in a word, 'impressive'. It's closest gaming has gotten to creating that escapist fantasy. I could feel myself wanting to just live inside the game; drive around a picturesque Los Angeles in a nice car, buy some sick suits, some flashy guns and live the American dream of looking cool and owning destructive property.

And that's ultimately what GTA V is: a game with a pretty setting you're there to destroy (not actually admire or live in); itself a pretty piece of technology made through backbacking labour practices.

It's all kind of a vapid nothing. This is fully emphasised whenever anybody - a main character, side character, or NPC - speaks in this game. Not simply because there's no charming or quietly interesting dialogue (if anything, it is an actively terribly written game - a shame for a game full of long driving-and-talking scenes), or that the voice acting is bad, but because characters are such functioning non-entity cliches. A game written by an AI with the brain of a 14-year-old British boy with only the cultural knowledge of America via Michael Mann movies, The Sopranos and Superbad. It's a pity because I feel like there's a lot of potential with the various intertwining protagonist story structure and the allure of cool action setpieces with all the hesists in the game (most of which are just the same Heat scene told from different angles over and over).

I played this - and only this - for the entire month of August, in a state of depression, while doing a lot of E, listening to Frank Ocean and rewatching Breaking Bad. All in all I found it rather soothing. I'm not going to look back on my time fondly with it but I am kind of sad and at a loss now that it's over. I wish it were a better game. I wish I lived in LA for real.

Finally a good Mario Party game on the Switch! The last Mario Party game was passable at best with boring boards and frustrating minigames designed around annoying motion controls. This time around Nintendo has redeemed themselves. The mixture of boards/minigames from earlier titles brings a lot of the best from the entire franchise, while at the same time eliminating motion controls. It's a really nice balance of fun and nostalgia that will make you hate your friends. Which is all you want in a Mario Party game, isn't it?

When I first played this just after it launched, I was blown away by how gracefully it interwove narrative and mechanical interests to inspire a feeling of wonder and infinite possibility. In the eight years since then, I've often compared it to other "modular narrative" games that also try use mechanics to allow players to guide themselves through story, and almost every time found 80 Days to come out on top.

Eight years is a long time, though, and I began to wonder if I might be remembering this game as more magnificent than it actually was—and thereby holding other games to not just a high standard, but an impossible one. So I decided to boot it up again on its 8th anniversary and see how well it held up.

Dear readers, it held up well. It really is true that almost nothing I've played since builds a self-guided narrative so effectively (with Sunless Skies being one notable exception). The formula itself isn't very complex: have many places that the player can traverse non-linearly; give each place (and each route between) them its own little micronarrative; create occasional connections between these narratives; and tie all of these into a simple resource system. But this simple formula gives rise to an incredible sense that every run is its own unique story told in tandem by the player and the game.