It's fitting that FPSs would be saved from the triple A machine that bogged down the genre for more than a decade by the same type of people who invented and cemented it, the indie scene. There's been in recent years a massive ressurgence of FPS games that pay homage to the 90s fast paced and movement focused titles like Doom and Quake, showing once more to people how fun the genre can actually be besides the standard fare of sluggish militaristic and realism focused FPSs. At the top of this renaissance of "boomer shooters", stands Dusk.

Dusk impresses immediately with it's pixelated inspired visual look and how much commitment it puts into recreating the experience of 90s computer gaming. The amount of speed you are given, after years of being conditioned to expecting regular human speed in the genre, feels like having the training wheels removed from a bike, letting you strafe at break neck speed and giving you a slide move that increases your maneuverability even further.

Having the benefit of hindsight, Dusk take into account the number of years that videogames have had since then to improve the genre in every conceivable way. Every single mission creates unique situations and challenges to be overcomed in some of the best level design ever produced in the genre, while also providing the player levels open enough to be tackled your own way and with numerous nooks and crannies to find out. All weapons have their own unique use and advantage, some even adding movement options to the player, like rocket jumping or mid air control, or defensive options, like sending projectiles back at the enemy with a melee weapon, and you are even allowed to dual wield pistols and shotguns for maximum cool points. It is filled with nudges and winks at FPS classics, while still being it's own beast, and in some sort of playful joke, it gives the player a dedicated "reload" button that just twirls your weapon, as if obliging the impulses of the player to reload every 5 secs.

Beyond it's incredibly fun and engaging gameplay, Dusk boasts a badass horror aesthetic that has you starting in a rural farm ran by a bunch of KKK like cultists, entering a forbidden industrial city governed by crazed military armies and ending in a lovecraftian hellish city filled with demons. It manages to captivate the player and keep him on his toes as new threats are slowly presented and escalated, creating some genuinely scary and tense moments. The pacing, setup and payoff elevates what would otherwise be a simple and cliche story, and makes Dusk distinguish itself from the classic games it "rips off" from. The sound design and OST is fantastic and blood pumping, the enemies are all unique and varied, and the game is beautiful to look at in all it's retro pixelized glory.

First Person Shooters are gonna be ok, you guys. We are all gonna make it.

A Plague Tale: Innocence feels like it has the making of a triple A game in a lot of respects, a trait that works both to its detriment and benefit. The animations and voice acting are pretty great throughout, though I'd say the greatest accomplishment was the world crafted here. This game's art direction does an excellent job capturing this beautiful 14th century rural landscape becoming more and more twisted by rat infestations and piles of bodies as the game goes on. Taking a believable setting and corrupting it with horrific imagery proves to create some fascinating settings and this game revels in its bizarre twist of otherwise nostalgic pastures.

Unfortunately, the story never felt like it hit as hard as it could have. There are definitely some interesting concepts thrown around here and I enjoyed the characters' presence and personalities enough to actually want them to succeed in the end, but I never felt like I connected with them on a deeper level to where the stakes truly weighed down on me. Part of this is because character development is fairly limited here and most just boil down to their defining characteristics with some friendly banter thrown in. Even if it never sucked me in as much as it could have, I found it to be a enjoyable enough romp through a pretty unique story.

Despite the fact that its robotic puzzle game mechanics fundamentally work at odds with the Lifelike world design and organic pacing (not to mention the ludicrous final act), A Plague Tale is so refreshingly humanistic I can't help but laud it as an overall effort. Amicia and the misfits she picks up along her journey to revive her sickened brother, are underdeveloped to a fault; writer, Sebastien Renard too often confuses building empathy for his characters with building sympathy. Also, it can be difficult to determine if the game is supposed to be a proponent of violence or critical towards it (Amicia's religious ethics are clouded by a developmental numbing to cruelty, confusing the game's principles).

But the moments that truly shine arrive whenever these children are faced with immediate danger, and are prompted to consider the chaos of the world outside the walls of their home, as they stare death in the face again and again. "Do we have to walk over them?" the boy, Hugo asks when the siblings are forced to venture across a battlefield littered with countless dead soldiers, a thick sheet of white obscuring the landscape like an ambiguous moral fog of war. "Does it hurt them?"

Few titles are as considerate of death as Asobo Studio's game, proposing existential rumination as an intrinsic process of growing up. The children's illustrious home and family are stripped away, sending them into mid-14th century wild France, where they meet a couple of penniless thieves constantly on the run, a young alchemist whose father is stricken by plague, and the burly, vengeful son of a blacksmith.

These characters are simple archetypes; however, by deconstructing typical fantasy RPG tropes, A Plague Tale examines the imaginative significance of the genre and the medium as a whole. Amicia acts like an heroic adventurer when the gang discover a ruined castle, flushing out the black, carnivorous, diseased rats to make a home out of the looming structure.

In many ways, the plot presents a progressive portrayal of rebirth, often linking alchemy to the role of a phoenix rising from ash. "Be brave, you can do this," each sibling will often say to their self when separated.

One ingenious sequence catalogues the villains' sinister operations as the player sneaks through an extensive gauntlet as wee Hugo, on a quest to free his captured mother. When he enters the chapel, it feels enormous and oppressive, but the game maligns not Christianity as a whole, but the corrupt men manipulating its moralistic practices. Faith is the foundation upon which civilization is erected. A plague has no motive, only heinous men do. The plague has taken lives and turned men into desperate monsters, but the meek shall inherit this ill earth.

being a xenoblade fan is the jrpg equivalent of cult indoctrination, which is saying a lot because being a jrpg fan is like joining a cult in and of itself, so really it's like separating into an extremist faction of a larger cult that simultaneously infights at every given opportunity while taunting non-members for not finding Dunban "being over there" ticklingly hysterical even after the 167th time it's referenced in deeply brainrotted twitter circles.

I am allowed to say this and mean it endearingly because I am myself an unfathomably deranged xenoblade fan far beyond the brink of salvation. this game has irreparably changed me. I have been ruined. my brain is broken. I'm not sure it ever worked right, but my xenoblade fandom experience has ensured that it will always work wrong. otherwise innocuous terms such as "44 seconds" or "bestest" have pavloved me into laughing forever. when I see shulk take a bite of a sandwich and that bite does not animate on said sandwich, I emphatically applaud. the mere sight of Juju, a child whose only crime is loving his people, makes me black out with vitriolic rage. anytime I slice a hot knife through butter, I cry. anytime I walk on ice, I scream. when I check the time, all I see is Reyn's face on the clock - it is always Reyn time in my world now.

the other day around Reyn time (lunch) I was slicing open a bagel with a freshly sharpened serrated knife in order to make myself a toasted chicken salad sandwich. delicious. yum. bestest. unfortunately, the bagel slipped out from underneath my hand and I ended up slicing my own thumb instead. despite the alarmingly large amount of blood and even more abundant visceral pain, I luckily did not end up needing stitches. was I relieved? no. grateful? no. all that could cross my mind in that moment was that "your blade... it did not cut deep enough."

I mained Shulk competitively in super smash bros. for wii u because of my love and loyalty for this damned game. for those of you unfamiliar with Smash 4 - Shulk is booty buttcheeks doodoo dogass tier in Smash 4. he is fundamentally fucked. hopelessly hoed. maining Smash 4 Shulk is like marathon training for months only to tie a boulder to your ankle at the starting line, or maining Sharla in xenoblade 1. for four whole memorable-but-not-wonderful years I would mosey to local tournaments having extensively practiced my Arts Landing Lag Cancels and Monado B-Reversals and Purge 50-50s and Airslash Ledge Snaps (in AND out of Jump Art!) only to get utterly dicked and shitted and pissed and vomited on by some iron-deficient 14-year-old Kirby player who sucked the monado into his disgusting mouth hole and used Jump and Speed arts to Run The Fuck Away for 6 minutes. all that suffering to appease the cultish urge to remain steadfast in my xenoblade chronicles brainrot. peak fiction. I hate myself. I live for this game, and therefore want to die.

I am a shattered man. I come to you as a cautionary tale. I love xenoblade 1. it is a good game. some might call it a great one. I could even wager that it's a classic. but it is not worth a total fundamental collapse of the self. this game has significant faults that time has further illuminated. sidequests are trash. the game's third act is a disaster. characters have chemistry but very few have arcs. women don't exist in this game. why doesn't unfinished battle loop in that one fight. juju. I have heard it all. it is no longer cool or trendy or tasteful to praise xenoblade 1 as the jrpg bastion it once was.

I do not care. It is far too late for me to view this game objectively, yet I find I am more grateful to have loved a game to an extreme degree beyond objectivity even if it has cost me an entire lifetime of mental fortitude. I wish Dunban was my real dad and was "over there" instead of "forgetting me because of dementia." Riki eats your favorite jrpg mascot character for breakfast and still has time to canonically fuck his probably-smokin-hot-by-nopon-standards wife before lunch. expert worldbuilding dares to ask "what if we were all on A Guy and we climbed up his ass" and thats raw as fuck. expert OST dares to ask "what would it feel like if ears could cum" and then made my ears uncontrollably bust jumbo nut wads for over a decade running. I am one of the deranged freaks who mained Melia and therefore thinks the combat is Pretty Sick Actually. stop maining Shulk, losers. stop cradling that milquetoast monado like a security blanket and get in Melia's pain train, we're starlight kicking god in his Klaussy.

I don't care if this game is "overrated," or if i'm "scaring the hoes." I don't care if xenoblade 1 is "too anime" or "predictable" or "nonsensical" or "boring" or "not a replacement for proper nourishment." I love this game. I eat it up. I consume it in its totality - characters, world, combat, music, fandom, memes, merch, a decade of irreparably damaged culture and identity. like Shulk, it changed my future. Xenoblade Chronicles ruined my life, and I am forever thankful.