THIS GAME IS A HUGE FAILURE AND IT'S THE PUBLISHER'S FAULT ADVERTISING IT WRONG. IT IS NOT MARVEL XCOM. IT IS NOT THAT CRINGE. OK IT KIND OF IS BUT LIKE GROW A PAIR YOU BIG BABY YOU'RE MISSING OUT ON GREAT CARD BATTLER / STRATEGY MOVEMENT GAME. MARVEL IS TIRED BUT THIS GAME WIRED.

This game is fucking awesome when it gets down to the battles. It's balanced perfectly. I grinded out for the harder difficulties because I was ready to sweat after the first couple levels. Firaxis knows how to make pulse pounding turn based action. They really are at their best here making compelling, fun systems and dynamic enough difficulty settings that are easy enough for every kind of person jump into -- but you can get your ass kicked, too if you really really want to.

You can make custom comic book photos of your squad after ever mission. There's a mini overworld with some minor distractions in there. It's aight, you gotta participate in it to get all the extra challenges and stuff.

I love this game. I think it was probably a great idea when it was pitched, but when it released people were DONE with Marvel shit. So a game that goes with that Kevin Feige approved dialogue will just remind you of that stagnation with the movies. To be real, this game does Captain Marvel the best. The Runaways get a fair amount of love. Every character is fun to play. It is just a shame that Disney penis'd Marvel and made everyone sick of Marvel. Midnight Suns was one of the biggest victims of the penising. Aw well, you can buy this bad boy for like 20 bucks and it's super worth it.

Penis.

I love this game, conceptually. It plays like shit, actually.

Fun fact: This game had original licensed music from kind of popular artists from its time. I don't know why most of the budget went into the soundtrack but it's kind of nuts.

I love you, Stubbs. That "Remaster" port did you dirty, Stubbs. This world is a sack of dogshit for snuffing out the light you could have shone, Stubbs.

Now that I have played Sonic Dream Team, I have no doubt in my mind that Sonic Team needs to be deprioritized as the people making Sonic games. Yeah ok people like Frontiers. So happy for you, queen. Play this shit and tell me what you think. Yeah, you see what these devs are cooking? You wish to see more of exactly this? Yeah yeah yeah.

It's got big ass problems from me de facto declaring this the best 3D Sonic game. It's short. It's padded out. I experienced performance hiccups every so often, but maybe that's just the RAM limits of the Apple TV I was playing on. You can also play this on newer Iphones and iPad but you better have a controller.

It's kind of fucked up that one of best playing Sonic games ever made is trapped on Apple Arcade, a service so few people use that only exists for sheer marketshare value of Apple. It's better than most subscription services for games. But, subscriptions for games still sucks. LET ME BUY THIS ELSEWHERE.

Am I Sonic fan? I claim not to be. I'm 31, an age where I shouldn't be really interacting with this kind of stuff lest I get sus looks. That said, Sonic as a franchise is 35 years old and I've been around every marketing push. Sega doesn't make new franchises with a lot of marketing push. They have only really pumped all their money in making this blue fuck relevant -- with feature films, TV shows, memes, half-baked games, etc. I don't even conceive of most of the characters in the sonic franchise beyond their memes. Chili dogs, gotta go fast, all the really shitty games, Ken Penders comics, Ugandan Knuckles, this song that has been stuck in my head for a year.

I can't avoid him even if I wanted to, because I can see the 3D gaming potential of Sonic. It is sad that Sonic Dream Team is a release I didn't even know existed until I was browsing my sister's Apple TV! It ended up being the best official 3D Sonic thing I've played in actual decades! Usually, unless it's a fan game, his games are probably deeply flawed! It's kind not getting that way anymore maybe!?

There are people who are now grandparents out there who were prime demographic youths when OG Sonic dropped. He is like Scooby Doo for Gen X. Sonic went 3D 6 years into his conception and we're just now seeing what potential there is that can be seen and felt; what a truly good 3D game can do beyond having busted or overly linear level design! It's kind of pathetic that we just got here but we are here. Sonic Team wasn't even responsible for making me feel that way. Sonic Team! YOU'RE TOO SLOW.

Sonic Dream Team is good even if you hate this chili-glizzy-guzzling anthro hedgehog. It is my hope for you that a Sonic game will natively run past 30fps without performance issues in your lifetime.

A game making fun of capitalism in the most based ways being crushed by the capitalistic contracting of the maw of profitability is not lost upon me or the entire development team that is out on their ass.

Rollerdrome is cool.

The game demands mechanical mastery out of you really early on, so you'll be probably practicing in the first couple sets of levels just trying to get your footing so you can advance. This game was a little janky in the responsiveness of the mechanics. I never felt like I could snap onto the rails or dodge roll as quickly as I wanted.

Still, doing a slo-mo backflip in the air, shotgun blasting a perched sniper into pieces, landing onto a rail and dual pistoling rockets and enemies while dodging the 30 other snipers on the map while looking at the remaining time while thinking out your next three moves while being mindful of doing new things to keep your combo up -- is all crazy stressful and fun. You really have to be on your shit in Rollerdrome.

I was enamored by the 1970's retro sci-fi aesthetic. What I really fucking loved was the world building between missions. The environmental storytelling would resonate with people who liked Helldivers ironic adoration for the oppressive super democratic systems the world operated in. It was like George Miller directed a Tony Hawk game. It was great.

Given the moderate success of the game, I was really hoping for a more mechanically rich and snappy sequel would come out and really cook, but a game within the studio came out (Kerbal Space Program 2) and was such a massive flop they closed the whole damn studio. Big shout to Take Two Interactive for being one of the most profitable game publishers on the planet - love you so much for this. By the way, great job closing in on that deal to buy Gearbox for like half a billion dollars. We all grieve different in times of great financial hardship.


Cool. Cool cool cool. Yessir. Definitely feeling normal and not violent. I'm good...I'm chillin. I.am.good.

Financial recessions and shareholders overpopulating an overbought stock market, drawing blood from the stone of profit revenue in many industries, and generally causing chaos for everyone. Gaming definitely feels like one of industries. It seems like gaming as we know it that isn't Candy Crush or Fortnite or CoD has reached it's market cap. The indies will soon be the only place to experience a game like Rollerdrome. It goes to show, you can't trust big publishers for shit. That's fine. Seems like a divorce between overly financial, gambling-adjacent, short-term dopamine boosts and... literally everything else -- was a long time coming for the medium. Let's wait and see who gets custody of the kids.

Animal Well really is a thing you need to experience with a controller in your hands and full focus because it is a living, breathing art piece that sucked me in. I bought this game 5 hours ago and I haven't put it down since. The way everything animated is like drinking cool water on a hot night. Refreshing.

Seeing the previews of this game, I thought "ok big youtuber videogamedunkey is firmly in his 30's and wants to expand beyond making shitposts and make money by becoming an indie publisher". I wasn't moved at all by any of the promotion for Animal Well. I am bored to DEATH of 2D platformers and this game only teased a pleasant art style which is not enough to make me care. Most 2D games all mostly play the same. I'm sleep.

Thing is I got 24.68 on my Steam Wallet, so why not give it a try.

It is a Metroidvania logic puzzler. There are no tutorials in Animal Well. You are left as to guess how you progress forward. It's not Baba is You go FUCK yourself hard. It is quite simple and natural gameplay that leads to bigger and bigger "ah-HA!" moments. The kind where you feel dumb and smart. Smumb. Darmbt. I felt like I was one of those things.

The gameplay mixed with the environments and ambient music just clicked with me hard. I was 45 minutes into the game after being cynical about the whole thing and my brain just snapped after a certain puzzle solution and I realized this game has a hidden power level of cleverness. It is so meticulously well thought out. It's not trying to reinvent the wheel. It just was catered for you to have a good time.

I recommend this game for everyone. I've been in a gaming slump where no new game releases has really excited me, but Animal Well is the game that pulled my brain out of that fog. Not saying it will do the same for you, but if you give it a shot, it just might.

It ain't as good as Hollow Knight, but this is right under that (so far) as a jaw dropping 2D game with content that keeps upping the ante in amazement.

Jamal Dunkey picked a banger to kick off his publishing venture.

Friends, loved ones, we gather here today to remember our good friend Hi-Fi Rush

The cliche saying "life comes at you fast" is apt to describe Hi-Fi Rush. It simultaneously announced and released at the end of what I would generously describe as a very mid Xbox game presentation in January 2023 to the delight of half-asleep gamers watching everywhere.

Hi-Fi Rush is rhythm-based character action game that had unique gameplay. It was forgiving to casual audiences so as to acclimate them to rhythm aspects of the game, but had aspects about it that made it the most hardcore character action game out there if you wanted it to be. If you wanted the highest ranking. If you wanted Chai to be holding a real guitar, you had to earn that shit in blood.

The game embraced a fun cast of characters. Embraced a saturday morning cartoon setting and story. It made Xenogears references when half-jokingly describing running out of budget for the last act of the game. It had licensed music from bands like Nine Inch Nails. Hi-Fi Rush was truly a hi-fi rush that made thousands of people think the game was tailor-made for them. Simply by being more in line with what people actually like. It was nice to see as such cases of personality and life being that it was rare to see such on a major publisher level.

Hi-Fi Rush was pushed out into the world to be loved, and to help boost a rapidly dying gaming platform, but actually mostly that first thing...

But mostly that second thing, actually.

The cancer of corporate consolidation and power, a time when optimal financialization is the only language those unrightfully holding the reigns of the industry speak. That is what killed a moderately successful game studio. Lack of passion or enthusiasm didn't kill Hi-Fi Rush. A financial officer running numbers and determining a sequel would make X amount of dollars less than a Call of Duty skin killed Hi-Fi Rush.

So as we lay them down to rest, we celebrate Hi-Fi Rush as it reminded gamers of a time when all games both big and small were released to be enjoyed unconditionally; with the upfront price tag of exceptional games were the beginning, middle and end of what was asked to own it.

Sadly, those days are snuffed out. You must now rent and subscribe to begin to be pumped with complicit, tedious gameplay trends that feel more diluted with every repackaging. Will we die with capitalism? Probably. Shit crazy out here, b.

Whether or not you cherished the life of Tango, or it's products like Evil Within or Hi-Fi Rush, you must understand that gaming on consoles is dead. Dead until the console platform holders release their own Steam Deck and it's probably going to be lame as fuck compared to a Steam Deck if your name is not Nintendo, but whatever.

Rest in peace, Hi-Fi Rush.

Endless Ocean: Luminous is fucking slop. I pirated it to see if was worth paying $50 for and it is not. Thank you, and good night.

Luminous does a good job making you feel a sense of wonder sometimes, but the Switch is so old that the graphics do not compel, and the gameplay does not compel. The game is at it's best when you're in a fugue state with no neural activity in your brain and your eyes are blurred out of focus and your brain tells you a sweet little lie that you're immersed in something. The reality is nothing is happening, and you will not remember the unremarkable visual stimuli happening across your screen the moment it passes. I am not angry, just disappointed.

Here are better games (* marking especially banger titles) if casual underwater exploration interests you:

Abzu *
Aquanaut's Holiday
Aquanaut's Holiday 2
Aquanaut's Holiday: Hidden Memories *
Endless Ocean
Endless Ocean: Blue World *
Everblue
Everblue 2

DISCLAIMER: This is a re-edited review of Stellar Blade. Just telling you now, I'm going to be talking about more about the dark sides of gooner culture than the game itself because Stellar Blade is a lynch pin for things I find fascinating about the internet as it stands in the month of May, 2024.

We been spendin' most our lives living in a gooners paradise.

I am fascinated by Stellar Blade and what this game might mean for the future for video games. It's going to sound like I hate this game, but I don't. I think it's Fine™.

If it wasn't obvious, this game wants to be Nier Automata Souls Asura's Wrath Bayonetta. The intro of the game is VERY similar how Asura's Wrath started just swapped with Korean mobile game models usually reserved for Gacha-pull auto-battlers -- doing orbital drops onto the Earth doing Bayonetta moves before getting torn to pieces like Gears of War characters by Infernal Demons. There are other games you could pull into the conversation that Stellar Blade reminds you of and you'd be on the money. The game is a homunculus of other game ideas. Stellar Blade is just the title that dared to glue every game it worships together like this. It feels like an astounding ripoff with enough effort put in it's distinctions for me to not feel mad about it.

My only two real criticisms that I care about is that the parrying is BAD. DELAYED FRAME WINDOWS FOR PARRYING IS BAD. If you are going to have parrying in your game, and the parry timing is not finely tuned to the animation of an attack, then the game is going to suffer because of it. Lies of P did this shit, too. We are half a decade removed from the release of Sekiro. Make the parry windows make sense.

Secondly, the plot and characters are just so bad that I find it cannot be enjoyed even in an ironic way. This game is so earnest in it's stupidity, turning on my brain to pay attention to the game's narrative actually felt like it was my fault. You play as android woman named EVE and you meet a guy named ADAM and you two are basically the last people on EARTH.
It's not deep. It is in fact stupid as fuck. But, at the end of the day, I like the fact that Stellar Blade THINKS it is deep. But who cares what I think. Thinking is for people who are not edging to Stellar Blade in between unemployment checks. Just shut the fuck up, me. You cuck-pilled kink-shame-maxxing soyboy. I'll kill you.

After the intro, the game settles into being Nier Automata with Souls gameplay. You know what? That mix sounds pretty damn nice. It IS pretty nice sometimes. It needs a lot of fucking work in the plot department. I only care because the game wants you to care about the whole lot of nothing happening 90% of the time. Only one character has an arc worth bring a first-monitor amount of attention to, but that goes nowhere too after faking out the audience that it WILL go somewhere and it's just like what the fuck are we doing, people. What the fuck is this. What and why do you want me to care. I demand someone answer me. And why is everything sticky?

I love the checkpoint system, I really like the PS2/PS3 platformer style exploration of the environments. The hair physics are too much and it actually affects the performance of gameplay, but IT IS fun to have Eve walk under a waterfall and her becoming wet and her hair wrapping itself her body so you look like a bog witch. Very funny. I struggle to talk about the gameplay itself. It's a goddamn Souls game with platforming. You can autofill what to expect from there.

Stellar Blade should be something more aligned with how it paints itself. I waited for something beneath the veneer of this game to make itself known, only to let myself down when it didn't really happen. This shit REALLY ain't that deep. Which is ok, but why go through the effort of pretending? You know? Hello? Are you listening? It still feels like I'm not being heard right now. You know what? Fuck it, whatever. Let's move on.

My real fascination with Stellar Blade is the cultural impact. Sometimes I wonder how detrimental it is being a perpetually online, horny weirdo in the long-term. I genuinely wonder how much have mobile games that inspired the character design of Stellar Blade conditioned porn-addled individuals to latch onto this game like a big-titted, zero personality octopus dragging a victim into the ocean? How much was the sexiness of Eve was factored into the marketing equation as a distraction from Stellar Blade's unpolished elements? It's straight up nefarious how mentally ill Twitter people who want to jerk their dicks off their body and continue to jerk off the flesh mass on the ground until it is giblet paste -- will tie their sexual freedoms to a corporate product. That's just the state of the world I guess.

I don't want to see cultural zeitgeists eventually revert back to prudishness when it comes to sex, but what I see online from those defending Stellar Blade from being seen as anything other than the best game of forever -- is cumming from a place of defense for unapologetic gooner-maxxing instead of objective reverence for the game itself. Eve isn't real (yet). Her pussy isn't going to vacuum your internal organs out of your genitalia (yet). Gooners, please. Divest 10% of the blood of your penises back into your brain. I need you with me, buddy.

On the flip side, seeing a character like Eve on the cover and the game not being a complete waste of time is an unironic step forward for the gaming industry. The cover looks like fucking Onechanbara spin-off. I do believe we are close to a real gooner game with undeniable quality. Stellar Blade is in many aspects SO close to classic status.

Still, the game is good, not incredible. Bayonetta 1 is incredible. Nier Automata is incredible. Those two games are gooner games with brain cells in them. Though the guy who directed Nier Automata is saying that Stellar Blade is better than fucking NIER AUTOMATA.. I don't know if this is a work so Mr. Taro can direct the next game from this studio, which would be hilarious, or if he is at heart just a gooner. Guess we'll see.

Stellar Blade has led me to be fascinated with the "pussy over everything" mindset and how much fetishization will override any objective discussion. Loneliness and desire to quell that loneliness with sex has defined the present and most certainly will define the future. Defending women who are not real in a time where real women don't even secure reproductive rights is fucking hilarious. I know none of you care, I do. I enjoy laughing about the state of affairs because it keeps me from going insane.

So yeah whatever I just know half of you reading are saying "shut the fuck up loser smelly bad gay slur-coded cuck and let me teach my semen a lesson that it should be in a jar and not my body." or even better, the other half going "what are you even talking about" crowd. Because the latter are so pure and don't read up on what goes on in the day-to-day discussions on gaming. You innocent sons of bitches. I really, truly wish I was you. I am a man witnessing madness and devolving affairs and speaking on it and you can just tell me I'm crazy and allow my review to pass over you. The innocence of ignorance. You don't know the gooners will be at your doorstep, soon. They'll come for you and your mom's retirement checks that you use to buy Jujustsu Kaisen figures. Truly, willful centrism is your zion.

My real message here: Jerk your dick to your heart's content, just don't let your jerk bait define you.

Stellar Blade, everyone.

Hey it's astoundingly obscure and good go play it.

Not many people in the world have even heard of Giftpia. It's a the first game from the Chibi-Robo devs and it makes me regret ever describing something as a fever dream, because this is as about as fever-dream-y as it can get. Not the kind of fever dream where reality is completely broken down, but the more subtle kind where things are off, and the unconscious mind is unable to parse what that is exactly.

Everyone is animated like wet noodles. They talk like broken wind-up toys. They make odd noises and their psychobabble language is filtered with a variety of effects like someone just discovered audio software for the first time. It's fucking cool, actually.

This game is a barely sensical, earnest slapstick comedy where your character does one goofy thing after the next just to keep the roller coaster ride going. You will almost at all times ask yourself "why am I doing any of this". Just go with it. The surreal nonsense is the ride.

Giftpia is a gift in of itself. It's a palette-cleansing good time. A reminder that Nintendo of Japan just let whatever on the Gamecube so long as it never came out in English ever, ever.
I genuinely do think this game and Captain Rainbow should be remembered more, but accessing English translations is a little rough for the normies and the translation job is not 100% done (it's 95% done they just gave up at the end)

Listen, I love this game. I don't like obscure video games hardly anyone has played being some of my favorite things ever. I'm the second review of this game on this website for fuck's sake. I need others to play this game. Maybe it'll hit you like it has hit for so precious few. Giftpia's got soul. Even if I want to beat the shit out of the robot every time I see him.

A lot of gamers leading up to SMT5's release had a lot of questions along the line of "How is this going to top SMT3? SMT4? Apocalypse???"

It doesn't.

I'd explain myself, but you're going to have to wait three more years for this review to be rereleased with more content.