Pinyaps
2013
I played Don't Starve Together first but bought this after.
Don't Starve is honestly one of the most important games to me, artistically speaking anyway, because if affected how I draw things and how my art style looks.
It's also probably one of the best survival crafting games imo despite the genre bloating the indie game space and this mainly has to do with its presentation with how it's played, its aesthetic, its animations and the soundtrack. It's also full of loveable and charming characters (that sadly get flanderized in DST, mainly Wilson). DST might have more features and content but what this game has are about... 3 full expansions that feature new worlds to survive on and explore and being able to travel between the different DLC worlds through a machine you find in the world you spawn in.
Despite the game seemingly being abandoned by Klei Entertainment in favour for DST they recently came out with HUGE QoL updates to the game and its expansions that fixes a lot of the issues I had with it.
I think if you want a GOOD survival game, play this because it's great.
Don't Starve is honestly one of the most important games to me, artistically speaking anyway, because if affected how I draw things and how my art style looks.
It's also probably one of the best survival crafting games imo despite the genre bloating the indie game space and this mainly has to do with its presentation with how it's played, its aesthetic, its animations and the soundtrack. It's also full of loveable and charming characters (that sadly get flanderized in DST, mainly Wilson). DST might have more features and content but what this game has are about... 3 full expansions that feature new worlds to survive on and explore and being able to travel between the different DLC worlds through a machine you find in the world you spawn in.
Despite the game seemingly being abandoned by Klei Entertainment in favour for DST they recently came out with HUGE QoL updates to the game and its expansions that fixes a lot of the issues I had with it.
I think if you want a GOOD survival game, play this because it's great.
2020
I got a PS5 for my birthday this year and so I bought the Demon's Souls remake right off the bat because I wanted to experience the first game in the Soulsborne franchise.
Uhhh what can I say? I think the game is pretty good and I liked seeing a lot of the origin points of the series, what carried over and what was left behind (thank god they dropped World Tendency), it's like playing the skeleton of Dark Souls, seeing where all the trends in the series comes from but that doesn't come without faults.
A lot of people have described this game has archaic and I can definitely understand where they're coming from, a lot of the mechanics are so vague and don't tell you exactly how they work that playing it for the first time can actually just be frustrating.
The world isn't like Dark Souls, it's more like worlds in a Mario game where you have a hub that goes to other worlds. Each of these worlds have a World Tendency which can Black, Neutral or White. World Tendency affects how things in each world work and what spawns in it.
Soul Tendency is also a thing but I don't know what that does, I think it locks some quests and affects your max HP in spirit form?? I don't know, this is an eldritch mechanic. Help.
There's also the Body system where you have a Human and Spirit form, when in Human form, you have full HP and if you die, your World Tendency is reduced, after dying you get turned into your Spirit form which halves your max HP and death doesn't affect your World Tendency. Sounds simple right? Except the game doesn't really do a good job of telling you that and a lot of important/good content is locked behind achieving a Pure White World Tendency which you can only achieve by beating every boss in the area without dying :) So if you want to get everything in the game you need to do every area with your HP halved which can be a pain in the ass depending on your Soul Tendency.
This game also just doesn't tell you when something irreversible is going to happen. I remember finding Yurt in the Tower of Latria and after playing the game and killing a bunch of bosses I come back to the The Nexus (the hub) and find out that he killed EVERY NPC THERE AND LOCKED ME OUT OF REATTUNING MY SPELLS AND GETTING NEW ONES (I picked a Wizard as my starting class). So this game is something you'll probably want the wiki open for a lot of the time.
The smithing system is also archaic as fuck because it requires so many different types of Demon Souls and smithing stones to upgrade your weapons with and you can only get so much during one playthrough, so if you want to use a weapon in a playthrough you'll have to commit to it because you're not getting a lot of upgrade materials for weapons. One of the upgrade materials, a Colourless Demon Soul you can only find a couple of these in each given playthrough unless you fuck yourself by plunging a world into Pitch Black World Tendency so a Primeval Demon spawns and you can harvest the drop from it. Some weapons need multiple of these to even fully upgrade.
The game is needlessly punishing especially whenever you want to do the online stuff, PvP is actively discouraged because it can affect your Tendency level and I hate that! because one of my favorite things to do in these games is partake in invasions. One of the bosses is literally made for that!
Either way, playing this game blind was probably the most authentic way I could get to experiencing the way people played Demon's Souls back in the day. It's an interesting little game.
Also I didn't mention it at all but I hate how much Bluepoint tarnished this game's artstyle and aesthetic with their version.
Uhhh what can I say? I think the game is pretty good and I liked seeing a lot of the origin points of the series, what carried over and what was left behind (thank god they dropped World Tendency), it's like playing the skeleton of Dark Souls, seeing where all the trends in the series comes from but that doesn't come without faults.
A lot of people have described this game has archaic and I can definitely understand where they're coming from, a lot of the mechanics are so vague and don't tell you exactly how they work that playing it for the first time can actually just be frustrating.
The world isn't like Dark Souls, it's more like worlds in a Mario game where you have a hub that goes to other worlds. Each of these worlds have a World Tendency which can Black, Neutral or White. World Tendency affects how things in each world work and what spawns in it.
Soul Tendency is also a thing but I don't know what that does, I think it locks some quests and affects your max HP in spirit form?? I don't know, this is an eldritch mechanic. Help.
There's also the Body system where you have a Human and Spirit form, when in Human form, you have full HP and if you die, your World Tendency is reduced, after dying you get turned into your Spirit form which halves your max HP and death doesn't affect your World Tendency. Sounds simple right? Except the game doesn't really do a good job of telling you that and a lot of important/good content is locked behind achieving a Pure White World Tendency which you can only achieve by beating every boss in the area without dying :) So if you want to get everything in the game you need to do every area with your HP halved which can be a pain in the ass depending on your Soul Tendency.
This game also just doesn't tell you when something irreversible is going to happen. I remember finding Yurt in the Tower of Latria and after playing the game and killing a bunch of bosses I come back to the The Nexus (the hub) and find out that he killed EVERY NPC THERE AND LOCKED ME OUT OF REATTUNING MY SPELLS AND GETTING NEW ONES (I picked a Wizard as my starting class). So this game is something you'll probably want the wiki open for a lot of the time.
The smithing system is also archaic as fuck because it requires so many different types of Demon Souls and smithing stones to upgrade your weapons with and you can only get so much during one playthrough, so if you want to use a weapon in a playthrough you'll have to commit to it because you're not getting a lot of upgrade materials for weapons. One of the upgrade materials, a Colourless Demon Soul you can only find a couple of these in each given playthrough unless you fuck yourself by plunging a world into Pitch Black World Tendency so a Primeval Demon spawns and you can harvest the drop from it. Some weapons need multiple of these to even fully upgrade.
The game is needlessly punishing especially whenever you want to do the online stuff, PvP is actively discouraged because it can affect your Tendency level and I hate that! because one of my favorite things to do in these games is partake in invasions. One of the bosses is literally made for that!
Either way, playing this game blind was probably the most authentic way I could get to experiencing the way people played Demon's Souls back in the day. It's an interesting little game.
Also I didn't mention it at all but I hate how much Bluepoint tarnished this game's artstyle and aesthetic with their version.
2023
I think this is one of the weaker WarioWares in the series simply because of the severe lack of content there is. Now this being pretty much a direct sequel to Smooth Moves is cool and it's actually really fun when you get into it but there's hardly any singleplayer content in it. No treasures, no trinkets and not even unlockable art like the previous game.
The most you get to unlock is a dumb Pyoro minigame that actually hurts your hands after a while of playing because of the way you need to hold the Joycons.
I think WarioWare: Move It is a really fun game but being a game in a series that relies a lot on replayability, it requires a lot of phyiscal movements which can quickly lead to exhaustion and feeling like not playing anymore.
I assume a lot of the fun comes from playing the game with other people physically present because a good number of content seems to be locked behind the two-player modes so if you wanna play this, get a friend irl or something.
The most you get to unlock is a dumb Pyoro minigame that actually hurts your hands after a while of playing because of the way you need to hold the Joycons.
I think WarioWare: Move It is a really fun game but being a game in a series that relies a lot on replayability, it requires a lot of phyiscal movements which can quickly lead to exhaustion and feeling like not playing anymore.
I assume a lot of the fun comes from playing the game with other people physically present because a good number of content seems to be locked behind the two-player modes so if you wanna play this, get a friend irl or something.
Call of Duty is one of those games that are kind of polarizing when you're around people who don't like mainstream games like it but Black Ops 1 might genuinely have one of the best stories I've seen in a FPS. I could go on about the story ad-nauseum but I don't really feel like it and it's probably best experienced yourself. You wouldn't know this game is a sequel to Call of Duty: World At War unless you've either played or or been told and I love that so much.
Gameplay wise? I don't think it's all that great... in the campaign at least. In the campaign it's a reoccurring issue to be shot from a million different directions and have trouble distinguishing who's friend or foe and the gunplay doesn't feel great in the slightest because you don't get a lot of feed back for when you've hit or killed something other than a silent "oooo I've been shot" animation from the enemy.
I feel like mainstream shooter games are being bogged down by the need to feel and look realistic because a lot of mechanics can seriously be crap because of it. You're better off playing other FPS games other than CoD if you want to play multiplayer matches.
You don't get the above issue with the Zombies mode though, and ohh god the zombies mode. The Zombies mode in Treyarch's CoD games are genuinely so fucking fun and there's a lot of passion you can just see OOZING from the developers themselves. You know they loved making this mode with a lot of lore and fanservice. Treyarch goes above and beyond for the Zombies mode, for instance you get all these great characters with a lot of quips, Perk-A-Cola machines that have these lyrical jingles when you stand next to them or buy a drink and a bunch of lyrical metal tracks in each zombies map as an Easter Egg. I could gush about this game mode forever.
Overall, I'd say that this is a great CoD game and stands as one of the greats in my opinion (World at War, Black Ops and Black Ops II).
Gameplay wise? I don't think it's all that great... in the campaign at least. In the campaign it's a reoccurring issue to be shot from a million different directions and have trouble distinguishing who's friend or foe and the gunplay doesn't feel great in the slightest because you don't get a lot of feed back for when you've hit or killed something other than a silent "oooo I've been shot" animation from the enemy.
I feel like mainstream shooter games are being bogged down by the need to feel and look realistic because a lot of mechanics can seriously be crap because of it. You're better off playing other FPS games other than CoD if you want to play multiplayer matches.
You don't get the above issue with the Zombies mode though, and ohh god the zombies mode. The Zombies mode in Treyarch's CoD games are genuinely so fucking fun and there's a lot of passion you can just see OOZING from the developers themselves. You know they loved making this mode with a lot of lore and fanservice. Treyarch goes above and beyond for the Zombies mode, for instance you get all these great characters with a lot of quips, Perk-A-Cola machines that have these lyrical jingles when you stand next to them or buy a drink and a bunch of lyrical metal tracks in each zombies map as an Easter Egg. I could gush about this game mode forever.
Overall, I'd say that this is a great CoD game and stands as one of the greats in my opinion (World at War, Black Ops and Black Ops II).
2023
Mechanically and purely gameplay-wise this is an excellent Pikmin game that combines everything from the past 3 games into one nice package. It's genuinely a great evolution of the Pikmin franchise.
A lot of my problems come from the fact that this was a soft reboot of the franchise meaning that everything Olimar went through in the last 3 games doesn't mean anything anymore. This Olimar isn't the Olimar we've known for 3 games and I feel like that lessens a lot about the story of this game.
If you've listened to "Ai No Uta" or "Namida ga Afureta" promotional tracks from Pikmin 1 and 2 then you'll know how weirdly emotional those tracks are and because of that, they mean a lot to me. These songs are written from the perspective of the Pikmin and Olimar himself and they're born from the trials and tribulations Olimar and the Pikmin had to go through but because Pikmin 4 is a soft reboot, it has rendered these songs kind of moot to me. Made especially worse by the fact that the Pikmin themselves were retconned to be creatures about "Dandori", creatures that prioritize organization skills above all else instead of creatures that learned to survive against the dangerous world of PNF-404.
The other main problem I had with this game mainly has to do with Oatchi. I don't like Oatchi because of how much focus he takes away from the Pikmin and trivializes the game especially with the upgrades later. Oatchi can swim, go through fire, charge into and stun enemies then have all your Pikmin jump onto the enemy all at once instantly killing it (even the big enemies) AND prevent Pikmin from being squashed because they're all densely packed on his back when you're riding him.
With Oatchi, a lot of the challenges don't exist anymore because of a great addition he is. He's too busted. Sure you can just not use Oatchi but I don't feel like crippling myself just to have some challenge.
In spite of all that, I still think you should play this game if you want to play Pikmin, it's a great game.
A lot of my problems come from the fact that this was a soft reboot of the franchise meaning that everything Olimar went through in the last 3 games doesn't mean anything anymore. This Olimar isn't the Olimar we've known for 3 games and I feel like that lessens a lot about the story of this game.
If you've listened to "Ai No Uta" or "Namida ga Afureta" promotional tracks from Pikmin 1 and 2 then you'll know how weirdly emotional those tracks are and because of that, they mean a lot to me. These songs are written from the perspective of the Pikmin and Olimar himself and they're born from the trials and tribulations Olimar and the Pikmin had to go through but because Pikmin 4 is a soft reboot, it has rendered these songs kind of moot to me. Made especially worse by the fact that the Pikmin themselves were retconned to be creatures about "Dandori", creatures that prioritize organization skills above all else instead of creatures that learned to survive against the dangerous world of PNF-404.
The other main problem I had with this game mainly has to do with Oatchi. I don't like Oatchi because of how much focus he takes away from the Pikmin and trivializes the game especially with the upgrades later. Oatchi can swim, go through fire, charge into and stun enemies then have all your Pikmin jump onto the enemy all at once instantly killing it (even the big enemies) AND prevent Pikmin from being squashed because they're all densely packed on his back when you're riding him.
With Oatchi, a lot of the challenges don't exist anymore because of a great addition he is. He's too busted. Sure you can just not use Oatchi but I don't feel like crippling myself just to have some challenge.
In spite of all that, I still think you should play this game if you want to play Pikmin, it's a great game.
Get It Together as a WarioWare game is pretty good but the whole gimmick of playing as the actual characters can get old quick and made me wish we had a mode where we had traditional WarioWare gameplay instead.
The series has always been charming and incredibly fun so I can't really get too upset with this game, I liked my time playing this game a lot. I just wish we had more unlockable trinkets and stuff like the older games but the most we get are unlockable art pieces which you obtain by "feeding" the characters presents you can buy from the shop or get from gumball-type machine.
Overall, I think this game is alright and if you like WarioWare a lot, give it a try.
The series has always been charming and incredibly fun so I can't really get too upset with this game, I liked my time playing this game a lot. I just wish we had more unlockable trinkets and stuff like the older games but the most we get are unlockable art pieces which you obtain by "feeding" the characters presents you can buy from the shop or get from gumball-type machine.
Overall, I think this game is alright and if you like WarioWare a lot, give it a try.
Animal Crossing New Horizons is an alright Animal Crossing game but to me, it really lacks the feeling of being part of a community the previous games had. At this point in the series it pretty much just feels like you own said community (You can literally terraform your island to your liking, Villagers have no agency, rearrange where buildings are, etc).
Villagers are now more like dolls, just something you collect rather than people you befriend like the older games and it doesn't help that they completely shelf and get rid of certain characters that made the world feel a bit more alive (Pete, Pelly, Phyllis, Resetti and much more). It took them two years worth of updates just to add content & features that were already in the previous games.
ACNH prioritizes customizability over being a "life sim" which led to it feeling a bit lifeless in my eyes.
Villagers are now more like dolls, just something you collect rather than people you befriend like the older games and it doesn't help that they completely shelf and get rid of certain characters that made the world feel a bit more alive (Pete, Pelly, Phyllis, Resetti and much more). It took them two years worth of updates just to add content & features that were already in the previous games.
ACNH prioritizes customizability over being a "life sim" which led to it feeling a bit lifeless in my eyes.