aboutstairs
2019
2018
2014
2020
feels like a missed opportunity in a lot of ways -- thoughtful and interesting writing buried in obscure side quests, sub-GTA hollow open world, the actual biotech stuff being very lame all things considered. nonetheless the "deus ex, but much stupider" gameplay is fun and the story is decent popcorn movie stuff.
2012
2011
I played this with save backups so I didn't get the tense, fragile experience I think you're supposed to have. Playing it like that, it's still hard as fuck, has arguably the most insane and meticulous crafting system of any video game, ever -- seriously, you need to have multiple MSDN-ass wikis with conflicting data open to navigate it -- and just generally conveys how dreary and repetitive and hopeless it would be to smoke meth, constantly maneuver unmanageable and unpredictable threats, and loot abandoned houses for eyeglass lens and scrap metal and powdered milk. This game started to weigh on me in an almost physically palpable way after a good no. of hours and I stopped playing it completely in an instant.
2019
the first pokemon game i've played all the way through since i wasn't a DS/gameboy kid. played the story alongside an old friend who had some experience with semi-real-deal competitive pokemon, with all the grinding for the good mons and stats and all that shit. wanted to give it a whack myself. i remember spending at least a few hours running around in a circle in the same place on the map to get the good ditto. i started doing battles online and, within 15-30 minutes, was crushed so badly that i immediately quit, uninstalled the game from my console, never even considered picking it up again, haven't been at all tempted to try another older pokemon game now that i'm into retro gamin', and look back on all this semi-wistfully a few times a year. 130 hours total invested. this game hurt me.
2013
nintendo says i put 725 hours in this game and i am not one of those people who builds wacky minecraft shit on their island. it's repetitive and stupid, the crafting thing is a bad idea, the characters all say the same shit over and over, but giving hats that look like poop to the funny dogs may have kept my psyche from crumbling during quarantine. also you can skin the computer furniture item to look like you have ableton open, which alone counts for at least half a star for sure.
1994
The JRPG part is pretty boring and shit but could definitely be much, much worse. The writing and art directional are absolutely phenomenal. The Ben Croshaw review of this was spot on, it's a kind of mixture of twee naivete and existential-surreal horror that feels like it reaches into some locked-off part of my unconscious.
1997