2/3rds of Omori is a boring played out rpg. The sickly sweet pastel art style is certainly unique but also creates a bland tone throughout. Each individual dream section goes on for way too long with the characters just being uninteresting and the jokes never landing. I see people compare this to Earthbound but Earthbound was never this in your face or cutesy. Earthbound was always more weird then cute with the world being right hostile to the player. The monster designs, tone, and character driven comedy are more like Undertale then anything. Compare this to Undertale though and Omori just seems hollow in its dream worlds with how little story there really is. The RPG mechanics are simple and easily broken turning the game into a simple waiting game in every battle. The "dark" imagery is so overdone and shown so early that it rarely makes the impact it wants too. Especially when the imagery is ripped straight from Yume Nikki (there is even a section at the end which is just a simple Yume Nikki clones without the diversity of aesthetics that gave Yume Nikki its texture).

The rest of the game takes place in the real world and is okay. The writing hits the pathos it is supposed too and is generally understated (minus some annoying creepypasta tier bits). As these segments went on I actually became invested in the characters and thought the way the game handled grief and suicide was quite mature until it wasn't, and the game throws in easily one of the worst twists in a game. Its contrived, ruins many of the previous character moments, and does nothing but subtract to the story. As an exploration of mental health the story is weak covering well worn ground, adding very little, relies too much on shock value, and contains some bafflingly stupid commentary on suicide. Even in the small dirty puddle of gaming storytelling Omori does little to set it apart from countless other games which tackle similar subjects and seems to treat mental illness more as a spooky aesthetic then anything close to pathos by the end.

This is not a good game to serve as a meditation and swan song on the series as this game positioned itself to be. The game obviously takes itself more seriously than the previous games, and takes the hint at a broader thematic message that was touched on in the third game, and tries to expand on it. The only problem is that the thematic content is ultimately pretty shallow. Perhaps the biggest issue with the first 3 games is the Orientalism that defines them. From using locations in the global south as playgrounds for violence, to the tired trope of the 'East' being a mystical and impenetrable place right down to long lost cities, and supernatural creatures, ideas that captivated much of the European Colonial mindset. All this happens with very little appearances from people indigenous to the regions of each of the games. You would expect the 4th game, positioning itself as a more serious entry, to actually address this sort of stuff in any meaningful way, especially since the core theme of the game is how the thrill of adventure is an often destructive one. However, this theme is exclusively reserved for Nathan's interpersonal relationships, most importantly, the relationship with his wife. This part is all done very well, with each of the characters feeling more real and there being a genuine emotional heart to this game that is conveyed in incredibly subtle ways. However, none of that is reserved for the inherently Orientalist nature of these stories. Sure Nathan can have an emotional car ride with his wife as reflective music plays, but he still drives through Kings Bay Madagascar, quipping with 2 other white guys about how many global south cities they've gunned their ways through.


This is essentially where the problem lies, there is a huge amount of nuance when it comes to the self-destructive nature of 'adventure' but none for when it comes to the actual physical destructive nature of 'adventure.' Really, all this blowing stuff up and fighting is just used as a vehicle for the characters to emotionally understand one another better.


A microcosm of this is how the Pirate Henry Every is used in the story. He is the trademark old figure that Nathan follows in this story, as he tries to find his hidden treasure. This treasure, in real life, was acquired in the Ganj-i-Sawai heist, an event known for its brutality. However, of course none of this is touched on, the only point made about the treasure is that it drove Every to self destruction as it is pointed out that his skeleton still remains amongst the riches. It is also not pointed out that Every was heavily involved with the transatlantic slave trade, as was Nathan Drakes hero, Francis Drake, someone who it is revealed in this game the Drake brothers actually named themselves after. It seems almost too on the nose that the guys that Nathan keeps relating to and following in the footsteps of, were slave trading bastards. You'd think an writer trying to make a more introspective story with this in mind, might think that this says something about the person who uncritically worships a slave trader, and how that might reveal his attitudes to the global south as simply a playground for destruction no? No, of course not, how would we have any time from that when Nathan has to stop his wife leaving him for the fourth time.


Keeping this in mind, it’s funny that the right wing gamers see Naughtydog, (and Druckmann) as ultra ‘woke’ blah blah blah, because the Uncharted series has an obviously conservative outlook, but hey they gave a woman big muscles or something.

The good:

The combat is the best thing about the game. It's fast, stylish and super polished. You have your basics like the light and heavy attacks, parry, dodge roll and tons of spells, but also plenty of special anime styled attacks called 'gifts' which you can chain together and do combos with. Also the Blood Code system is very nice and being able to switch codes on a whim and make different builds for each code instead of being stuck with one build the entire game is a cool gimmick, not gonna lie

The character creator is also INCREDIBLE, legit one of the best I've seen in any game and I've played hundreds of games in my lifetime. Infinite options for creating your own edgy anime power fantasy or dream waifu/husbando, also if you're creative enough you can make a lot of characters from other games and series, I've seen some super impressive stuff.

The OST doesn't seem like anything special at first, but it grew on me, especially the boss themes which were very epic and reminded me of Castlevania with all the harpsichords, organs and other baroque instrumentation, very fitting of the Victorian Gothic style of the game.

Some characters are pretty interesting and have cool backstories.

The bad:

THE LEVEL DESIGN IS GOD AWFUL. Not even exaggerating when I say it's some of the worst I've seen in any game ever. What could be more worse than one abstract labyrinthine level? TWO ABSTRACT LABYRINTHINE LEVELS! Not to mention even the levels that aren't overly complex just look bland and uninspired as fuck, where everything looks the fucking same. It's all so bad and made me almost drop the game because it makes it such a slog and chore to even playthrough the game despite the combat being so much fun

The enemy design isn't much better than level design, there's a couple bosses that look really cool and a few basic enemies that do too, but it's undermined by the fact there is very little enemy variety and most of the more challenging late game enemies are just color reskins of earlier enemies

The game despite being very fun and polished is insultingly easy. I don't know if it's just because I'm so adept at Souls styled games now or what, but most bosses I killed in 1-3 attempts and hardly any mobs beat me either. Just waves of enemies before reaching a mistle (This game's bonfire) my shitty platforming skills ad being knocked off of cliffs is what caused most of my deaths

The story, not that it's bad per se, but it's pretty generic, predictable and filled with many anime tropes and takes itself WAY too serious, there were some scenes that were supposed to be emotional and I honestly laughed because of how overly dramatic and serious it tried to be

Overall verdict:

All in all the game is a very mixed bag, but the level design almost completely killed it for me and the uninteresting story and enemies didn't exactly make me more driven to keep playing. I'd only recommend it to the most die-hard Souls fans who have to play anything remotely similar to Souls or big fans of story driven anime games, who knows, you might enjoy it more than me.

you've turned to page 56 in our lovely gamedev cookbook--wanting to create a smash indie hit yourself? not to worry, i have you covered. first, you'll want some hyper friendly, super inoffensive art. really smooth those edges. "wait, i want a dark twist to it!" of course you do, because your indie darling isn't taking off without one. now what you're gonna do is contrast the inoffensiveness with, i don't know, edgy scribblings found on an eighth grade desk or somewhere in the 2008 archives of deviantart? obviously we can't have anything ACTUALLY visually disturbing or raw, because then you're going down the hylics path, and noooo one cares about hylics. no, it needs to be scary in the same way a hatsune miku vocaloid music video about a "serious" subject is scary--draw a circle a bunch over itself until it's got a tone of lines and looks super disoriented. creepy, right? yeah just do that for everything.

well, that's pretty much it! with the cutesy sparkle artstyle contrasting just the right tint of edge to unnerve slendermen veterans, you just need some basic, serviceable writing and to hire a musician better at music than you are at game dev, and you've got a real shot at things (but make sure it's real easy, too, or your players are gonezo)! what, don't believe me? just take a look at undertale, OFF, super paper mario, doki doki literature club: cute presentations, horror twists, easy to beat. except... you know... every single of these games (okay, maybe not doki) does omori's job better in just about every single way. see, these games have biting writing and make bold, aesthetic decisions, and they all do it in brevity. off, hylics, space funeral, and undertale may all be inspired by earthbound, but their developers each understood that aping its absurd, overly stretched out game length is a BAD idea. hoh, but not omocat!

no, in fact, omori is actually longer than earthbound.

and to what purpose? because after over eight hours, i'm completely checked out of this endurance tester designed to absolutely waste your time. and i'm not saying that in like a "every second of this game sucks" way, but a "no seriously, there is so much garbage and fluff in this game designed to waste your time". backtracking plagues omori like a virus as you juggle tasks and side quests that amount to a lot of holding one direction forward while running for five, six, twenty screens. worse, the game lacks the grace to let you run up and down ladders, so those to-and-fro journeys are best aided with a phone in your free hand. there's this minecart section where you slowly drift down a lane for two screens until coming to a missing piece that then... slowly sends you back another two screens. but perhaps the absolute most grating time and effort waste comes from trying to navigate absurdly inefficient menus.

no, seriously. here's how many actions i have to get through just to heal a party member with another member's heart spell.

1) b button for menu
2) 3 analog clicks to the right
3) a button to select "skills"
4) 3 analog clicks to the right
5) a button to bring up health character
6) a button to select healing spell
7) a button to select "use"
8) 1-3 analog clicks to the right to select character to heal
9) a button to heal
10) 4 b buttons to get out of all the menus and back into the game

holy fuck.

i'm being really hard on the game's pacing because it really, truly is miserable. it's annoying that nearly every object has a useless description attached--does pressing A on, what, a fire hydrant need to give me a text box that says "fire hydrant"? no shit. tell a joke or don't have the box at all. enemies respawn every new screen catching you in a battle with whatever variation of rabbit you're definitely sick of fighting by a certain point. the dialogue's the worst, though, and i'm not even yet discussing its actual quality: it's just so much. there's so much of it (like this review). there is so many words used and a fourth of them are to any actual merit. so much dialogue is wasteful, unfunny, flat, basic, and bloated, and you just sit through it hoping someone will say something interesting.

they never will. omori's a game that decides earthbound wasn't insufferably quirky enough and proceeds to ham it up to infinity but with little purpose, and it results in writing and a world that feels disingenuous. not always, of course--there's a very specific interesting contrast that occurs in the dialogue when you first go from real world back to dream world, and it feels poignant and interesting. this feeling also lasts a very limited amount of time as you realize, yes, you really HAVE been ripped from the curious part of the game and sent back to a creative wasteland, the game proceeding to hammer in a point you already got two hours ago.

let's talk more about that real world dream world contrast more but, first, the combat. it's actually pretty clever and i enjoy the synergy between your characters and how to manipulate that to take on even the biggest of challenges. but then, the game presents a different problem where MOST battle encounters will not actually involve using the system in any meaningful way, the simplest and most straightforward (and successful) way of fighting through your enemies being a mash A fest a la OFF. why? because nothing in this game has any fucking health. and you know what's really crazy about that? the people who play this game do NOT fucking care about the combat. oh, what, you think that's presumptious of me? at the time of writing this, only 29% of players bothered fighting and beating two optional minibosses early in the game. meanwhile, 60% of players finished the first dream world day (taking place post-minibosses)... which means another 40% didn't even bother to get that far.

what this tells me is that half of omori's actual playerbase don't understand the combat system and don't care enough to learn it, and they're just here for the very syrupy soft pastel story. oh, and i'm saying that with confidence because i'm among the only 10% that did not return a character's high five. it's telling.

additionally to combat, i really enjoy the effort put in to give several enemies different "mood" states that may reflect new animations and designs, and that's really cool. the battle ui is sharp, even, and its a great use of colors all around--easily beating out the utterly generic world design otherwise. but getting back to the real world/dream world contrast, what really bothers me about omori is that the game rips this system out of your hands and gives you something immeasurably boring to work with in the real world. but the thing about said real world is that it has the more "interesting" narrative going on and so, when you're sent back to the dream world, you've got the fun(er) combat back but are trapped with a half of the story that you don't care about or don't really need to hear. additionally, the real world shows just as much creative prowess as the dream world in its design--all a series of hallways. it's really flat.

there's moments of charm, like the sound effects similar to animal crossing on the gamecube, pushing over a cardboard dumptruck, and a character that holds a trophy for "most horse second place". and there are moments of complete reverse charm where the intention is inept, like a list of "whatchamacallit"s to collect, a character named smol, and that entire cheese rat segment that just goes on and on and on... like the game. like the game does. the game goes on and on.

i don't know, i've written SO much about this game i clearly don't enjoy, and a majority of where this is coming from really is in response to critical reception i can't understand whatsoever. and i didn't understand the reception undertale got six years ago and felt annoyed by its heavy presence on the internet, but then, well, i started playing it and the experience was instantly lovely, and there was no "oh dude just play thirty hours to get to the cuhrazey part!". it was fun from the start, like a video game should be, and half the length of omori, too. as is OFF, and hylics, and barkley, space funeral, ib, yume nikki--all of these brief indie rpgs i would recommend to anyone over playing ape inc's sloppy seconds.

when i look at omori, i certainly do see omocat in its design: bland, easily digestible, inoffensive, and round edged--just like those t-shirts. and then i realize what this game really is.

The driving is pretty on point, there are really cool set pieces, and the game as a whole can be at times a really good place to hang out and just enjoy the vistas and the flow of the road, but the characters and the general mood of this franchise annoys me so much. The characters can't stop talking about things I don't care, the dialogue itself is too nice and welcoming to the player that it comes out forced, which is something that relates directly to the progression system. The amount of visual stimuli this game thinks is needed to hook players is just insulting, the map is full of icons, the ending of every career is so full of colours, and ticks, even spins to a wheel of fortune, is like a casino for kindergarten kids. And it's a shame because the core is really nice and the game is beautiful to see, but I feel everything is so clearly put there to satisfy me with the lowest input necessary, like what the worse kind of a game pass game can be, trying to appeal every single human being who is just not enough interested in the game just for the sake of progression and achieving things that frankly are useless when all of your starting cars do the job. This is a very good game that fails spectacularly not to make me feel stupid while playing it, sorry.

at several points in the duration of the new colossus, i have to admit i enjoyed it more than the new order. that's not a reflection of the quality of the new colossus - everything is worse here - but it's a reflection of the fact that i can play this kind of game on PC now. no doubt in my mind if i had played this on console i would have thoroughly hated it. mastery of doom '16 and even eternal on console is achievable, because despite being pc games at their core the tenets of their mechanics (forward momentum at all costs, easily defined hurtboxes and hitboxes, hit and run strategy, weapon chaining, enemy prioritization) are within the realm of gamepad execution. ultraviolence, demanding though it is on a pad, remains an exhilarating affair. wolfenstein, with its emphasis on overwhelming the player, is far too reactive to have struck such a balance. your reliance on headshots and general precision is too great, your movement too improvisational and prone to jerking around, your fight against enemies who can rip you apart is breathless and unabated, all while no resources exist to readily replenish you. these games are simply more at home in this environment. so i did end up having fun, with the difficulty tuned up to my liking, at times greatly so, but there's a paucity of virtues here actively enabling that enjoyment. everything here feels like a first draft, so there's not actually a lot of refinement to the formula, but rather a feeling that things have been pared down, particularly with regards to stealth - not only are your approaches generally more restrictive due to less intricate level design, but your objectives are placed too 'conveniently' (ie the commander, who may call in reinforcements if alerted, is almost always just before the next segment of the level) for their consequences to matter. this also ends up greatly frustrating in the case of the titles optional ubercommandos, equipped wIth kampfpistoles that can easily knock you down and slug you while you're getting up, forcing you to restart several of those segments from the point of origin.

some of the loudest umbrage concerns the issues people have levied with the titles level design, actually. and its true that exploring this cluttered, often inadvertently abstruse geometry often yields little purpose or reward, and sparks no imagination. there's a moment halfway through when you gain access to one of three movement options, for instance, and as soon as you think levels will open up as a result, what ends up happening is the next barrier to progress will simply have three methods of progression all literally right next to each other (in this case a gate, a vent, and a window) to accommodate you and make sure you didn't have to look too hard. even beyond several frustrating incidents like this, in general i think this games problem has less to do with its errant level design and far more to do with its lack of meaningful escalation. the worst offender of this would have to be the final level reusing one of the opening levels environments to do much of the same, culminating in a shrewd arena fight that's only a little bit more taxing than its predecessors, and before you know it the games abruptly over in ten minutes. but there are several instances of this kind of deflation, partially a result of the games lack of evolution and scale. a dream sequence played out for subversion hardly feels like a climax because anyone paying attention can recognize it's a dream; a trip to venus that invokes the aesthetics of doom hardly feels as playful, missing the spark of adventure often found in the new order; a title depicting revolution spends so little time with any perspective that isn't BJ's.

that last point is crucial, because the new colossus is endlessly hokey. any intriguing subtext raised in the first half is promptly dropped in the second, where the game quickly becomes more embarrassing by the stage (either be a machismo-laden power fantasy or don't, stop interrogating this thread half-heartedly especially if you're going to contradict all of your imagery). configuring its assault on nazi ideology through a lukewarm 'the old shall perish at the hands of the progressive young' lens or, worse yet, a game about abusive parenting, ends up really cartoonishly flattening a great deal of the games narrative threads and stakes. BJ, the only mover and shaker in the story, is the only perspective afforded any material representation, so despite being a story about revolution enlisting all walks of life one never gets the sense they're truly liberating anyone, changing anyone's ways of lives, or making any sort of impact. by the time the game resolves what little conflict against its antagonist it had, and it closes on a truly awful cover of a song i won't be spoiling, it becomes apparent it couldn't have ended any other way.

don't be surprised if this eventually turns to 1/5, is all im saying (it did, i can't stand this kind of superficial treatise that people regard highly that nevertheless remains every bit as regressive and annoying as other works before it). discussing whether or not a game has 'aged' mechanically often gives me pause, in part for me because it's difficult to definitively say that they can, but wolfenstein II is an instance of an all-too common type of game: one that has aged narratively. and it's only going to get worse and worse from here on out

I feel like I would like this game more if I replayed it now knowing the level design better. Mirror's Edge is at its best when you get into its groove and get into the flow of moving quick and making fast decisions on the fly. It's at its worst when it forces you into combat arenas that you're supposed to run through, but technically can fight through too, or when you end up in rooms that don't have clear distinctions of where you're actually supposed to be going. The moment you stop moving, the game falls apart. The last chapter's a mixed bag because of this especially; fuck the server room.

A shame because the game looks gorgeous even to this day thanks to brilliant use of color and lighting. It's some of the best art direction I've seen in a video game, enough that considering this game is now close to being 14 years old, could probably be called timeless. The soundtrack's also fantastic, and I still listen to it on a regular basis.

Halo Infinite's credits are 26 minutes long. Obviously, they have to be to accommodate the thousands who contributed to getting the game made and released. This game stands as a testament that in spite of, just by virtue of the law of large numbers, a team full of people with fresh ideas and creative interests, AAA development simply cannot make anything new, and struggles to make anything good. Details about crunch throughout this games production are out there, and all that suffering was for what? One more disposable open world, one more repetitive and dull halo story (featuring 100% more quips this time) and one more manipulative treadmill of a multiplayer mode. Whilst this game is clearly unfinished and has been rushed out the door, its hard to see what all the known missing features could do to save this. Maybe this game will get better in a year, or 5, but for now, this game being on gamepass is basically the only reason a non Halo fan should even give this game the light of day.

P.S. fuckin put The Arbiter in the game what are we doing here

Repetitive gameplay, anticlimactic ending, bad vehicle controls, horrendous UI, no early fast travel, arbitrary level requirements for missions... And to top it all off, that stupid BioShock death mechanic in which every time you die money is automatically spent to respawn you. Except it's worse here, because it also refills enemy health bars, so the cycle in which you die, lose money, lose ammo and slowly become unable to continue is easier to produce.

Claptrap funny tho, so 1.5 stars instead of 1.

Absolutely underwhelming game, Forza Horizon 5 offers the exact same experience as its predecessor, just with prettier graphics. Same tedious progression system, dumb AI that drives in a perfect selected line and dialogues that must be written by a person who just found out what twitter is, at least it’s definitely the most cringe I’ve experienced in a game since Need for Speed Heat.

It’s not like the Forza Horizon games are bad arcade racing titles in general, it’s just that this new entry is absolutely lazy trying to improve itself in any way. Don’t change a working formular, I guess.

I think my breaking point with the whole experience was when I unlocked the street racing events, only to find they were the same as the existing road races, just at night. What few interesting set-piece races there are all felt like the training wheels were firmly bolted on, making sure you would win by a hair regardless of your actual performance. If I had an expectation for any given race to have an interesting theme or unique challenge I might have had a better time waiting through the interminably long loading screens.