★★★★★
what i can only describe as “vent art” in the biggest, most affectionate, most tender way possible. the meta narrative regarding kodaka’s feelings about danganronpa feel desperate. and honest: it’s not subtle, it’s overly written, it’s way too proud of itself. it’s perfect.
goty

★★★★★
deeply, personally important to me. comfort entertainment shared only between me and the most important person in my life. our little pet project we could always come back to, always met with consistently spectacular presentation and a very playable video game. and jiggle boobs.

★★★★★
every game since the first has tried to be phoenix wright: ace attorney: 2!!!, but none have been able to recapture the magic or push the series forward. t&t manages to do both and put a wonderful bookend on this world’s story. a real accomplishment.

★★★★★
explosive sexual camp dialed so far i can’t tell if it’s exploitative or empowering. both, maybe. idk, it’s pretty awesome. what starts as an encouragement to get fancy with it quickly becomes a mandate. it demands you become bayonetta to survive: confident, deliberate, flashy

★★★★★
a paragon of the best type of multiplayer game: competitive see-what-happens. yeah there are numbers and rules and limits and even mario party-esque postgame bonus points, but who cares. you’re a basket. launch your frog by those elephants. see what happens.

★★★★★
a window into the anomaly, brimming with glorious vacancy. devoid of direction, purpose, music, design, reason, osaka is tasked with the thing she's the most capable of: being

★★★★½
i yuv rolling ball and awesome music!!!!

★★★★½
the best-looking pokemon featuring some of the best-looking pokemon-- crunch, munch, and bite-- befit with ambition driven to strawman for good the notion that pokemon could ask interesting questions. you're right, maybe revolution is evil or something

★★★★
conflicted! a collection of fun distractions and not much else. much seems to be cribbed from undertale while failing to consider how they fed into the game’s themes and ideas. devoid of that, the game’s thesis feels like “isnt it cool how canon this is?”
but i mean, it IS cool

★★★★
the right-handed-dodgeball-double-spin-hurl velocity of the combat careens headlong into the pacing of literally everything else. the story, fusing demons, the mandatory “side”quests in the route i stumbled into— this game is too long to have combat this clean!!!

★★★★
the other side of the coin: cooperative see-what-happens— a great vehicle for the complicated adrenaline rush that comes from an aggressive, nervous laugh in the face of sudden danger. every fold of the game, intended or otherwise, manages a successful punchline. salmon run?

★★★★
kiryu literally actually curbstomping the heads of yakuza in the streets juxtaposed against his moral compass pointing north in 100% of the substory interactions juxtaposed further against kiryu's perpetual resting badass face... golden. i love all of it. gimme more

★★★★
really good, basically

★★★★
like, WOW. i have a rich history of relentlessly internally mocking kirby -robobot withstanding- on principle, but epic yarn is a breezy, delicate, wonderful experience. big anti-stress squishy mesh ball, intersecting relaxing and engaging to a degree i’ve literally never felt

★★★½
the whole game feels alive. any time luigi gets to look through a hole in the wall or interact with a greenie is electric, luigi himself is expressive and adorable, and the mansions are brimming with trinkets and details and surprises— it all ***almost eclipses the mission system

★★★½
CAT!!!!!!! any chance you get to morsel cat-ish-ness into the adventure shines, but tends to further how sloppily the game occasionally pretends to pay lip to its premise. sometimes i think “why cat?” when i should be saying “hi cat.” outstanding music, though

★★★½
it’s a lot easier, though not without its edge. i enjoyed the game letting me inherit the confidence of bayonetta almost as much as the first forcing me to develop that confidence. it’s not a full force power trip, but bayonetta is hotter in this one. so y’know. tough call really

★★★½
as i’ve come to know myself and my limits more and more, the idea of modern animal crossing— demanding daily attention, demanding my valuable time, personifying and amplifying my compulsion— really disgusts me. this game stresses me out and that makes me sad.

★★★½
it’s wall-to-wall insanity, it’s delightfully stressful, it’s anxiety manifest, it’s a never-ending gag, it’s occasionally mean-spirited, occasionally mean, it’s an intricately sloppy deep dish thin crust pizza pie of a video game’s video game. it will send you to the Hospital

★★★½
the perfect paradox—timeless, dated, forward-facing relic of the near-year 2000’s crowded lousy with moody cyberpunkpocalypse playgrounds supportive of the most detached, unserious players to the most devoted unacto defector

qanon uncle video game

★★★½
it delivers. for better or worse. it pulls apart dgs1, digs through its dirty laundry, nothing unaccounted for. its answers are decent, but it sure does take its time. 25 hours into what is essentially 55 hours of this overarching story, the pacing is at a CRAWL

★★★½
theatrics have always been core to ace attorney, but dgs/gaa:a revels in its flair. [best character] sholmes and ryonusuke's 7/4 tangos of dual deduction represent a microcosm of the entire game: though mechanically thin, a synchronistically well-crafted spectacle. british

★★★½
cool

★★★½
i’ve always wanted to make a board game that is almost exactly this, and i gotta say it doesn’t disappoint. clever, unfair, personalized. the smile on my face grew to full-on, out-loud laughter by my defeat at rule 24. smug little game

★★★½
genuinely fun in its own right, but the real draw is how isolated it feels. alleged secrets left dormant for a decade. near-zero documentation. impossible to obtain and play legally. it feel really. intimate. it’s just me and this tiny little puzzle game versus the world

★★★
gimmick as gimmick initially read to me as insecurity and admission that 2d mario just couldn’t be interesting or good, but i’ll say i was only mostly right about that. “it’s-a FUN this time ***wink” as, like, the premise could only receive acclaim betwixt mario’s iconic lip-brow

★★★
superstar saga’s gummier, chewier, older-younger brother. a proving grounds for ideas that would be explored more thoroughly, more successfully, and eventually worn thin in alphadream’s subsequent spiritual sequels. it’s cute! my save got corrupted!

★★★
much like the tension between vincent’s definitive suck-ness and the happy ending i earned him, the game’s beliefs about women, trans women, and relationships are at odds with, like, everything. the music, presentation, puzzle mechanics, and premise are WAY TOO GOOD for this game

★★★
i was lit ablaze by the prospect of charting my very own strange journey through smt’s vast library following iv — i came in very hungry. and i left very drained. smt really knows how to drag on and on and on and on and generally ruin a good time

★★★
yharnam is cool. meticulously gnawing through this world, watching it fold in on itself, experiencing something and not having that experience copy-pasted thirty times across the map!!!(!!!) good stuff. shame about those bosses, though

★★★
“yeah,” i say to myself, drawing dungeon maps on paper completely unaware of the in-game map.
“persona 1 is pretty cool”
i reach the final boss, get one-shot, say “i would rather not waste a real life week fumbling with the game’s botched exp system,” and close the game forever

★★★
hour-long weird little bad mario with freak tiny moai hordes waddling headlong into you faster than the literal speeding bullets that get shot from the actual cannons present in the game. it’s not very good, but it’s all over before the charm of its eccentricities begins to fade

★★★
an ok game with a perfect vertical slice in the waterway. the “new” soundtrack’s version of the track is reflective with enough forward momentum, which captures both quote’s and the player’s motivation in that moment nicely, as well as mirroring the level’s rushing waterways

★★★
i find off most interesting in its role as part genesis to its offspring dubbed “quirky indie rpgs about depression,” which is not to discredit the game at all. i vibe with thinking about off, but i don’t vibe with off. somethings off. but maybe that’s good? i can’t tell. miaow

★★★
there’s something wonderful about choosing to engage with the fantasy of a time where the most reliable way to play (pretty much) endless kakuro puzzles on public transport was NOT an iphone.

they also got a game where a butterfly appears in a bubble for you to tap which is cool

★★½
vile and disgusting in ways that aren’t interesting or fun, yet satisfying to the part of me that loves these characters, their voices, takada’s nightmare soundscapes—it’s fangirl serotonin. an acquired taste in self loathing, stockholm syndrome, and bad video games. DO NOT PLAY

★★½
not manic enough! much of it is good: mechanics are simple but malleable, powerups are helpful but not overbearing, the girls are cute. it’s just missing that third act— the final stretch into madness that would elevate a bullet hell roguelike like this into canon

★★½
light puzzleboxes that condense the tropey-est of jrpg tropes— treasure, sidequests, grinding, evil lords— into bun-to-bun 30 second chicken slider sandwich missions. it’s cool, but fails to commit to the premise in little ways that snowballs into an avalanche of inconsistencies

★★½
uh...

★★½
a short collection of plagiarized puzzles and deliciously snappy bursts of dialogue with cute demon girls. the girls are immediately endearing and continue to hall-of-mirrors reverberate their charm off of each other and through your skull as the harem grows. cool stuff

★★½
i’m scared of stardew valley, honestly. I played it with bri and was immediately intimidated and overwhelmed by the breadth of… expectations? options? it was a little stressful. though once i decided i needed to take it at my own pace, take things slow, i enjoyed myself

★★½
momentum-based-grapplehook-bullethell-metroidvania-platformer; a shameless but well-meaning amalgamation of ‘indie speed game’ tropes, mechanics, and ideas that’s sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating, but clearly brimming with love.
helped me finally realize i hate metroidvanias

★★½
not as obsessed with detail as i’d hoped. it’s, like, a really economically poor story! characters, locations, evidence, case after case… it’s just too much stretched too thin. 25 hours of setup and no room left for anything to just be alive; no room to care about the details

★★½
as a proof of concept it’s, unsurprisingly, short. it ends just as the plot begins, and all the mysteries set up are met with an unceremonious shrug and a wave goodbye. however, the art is great. it’s worth the half hour just to see the pretty colors and wonderful pixel art

★★
its immediate strong pull into speculation both about its larger story and mechanics is pissed all over when you get to the first labyrinth and realize it’s just danganronpa again, with none of what made danganronpa good, and a cacophony of uniquely terrible issues. enemy of V3

★★
they shoulda called it “s’more‘dius”

★★
i’m not ready to sell my soul yet. i played it, i beat it, but i did not get the true touhou experience. actually, really, seriously getting “into” touhou means devotion practice and commitment to something that, honestly, i feel no pull towards. plus the girls weren’t even cute

★★
iconic 7 grand dad-esque colors with a trailer that promised as little content as possible while still qualifying as a “game.” sure. an alright 20-minute time killer at 4AM.

★★
“yeah like resident evil,” i say, having never played and barely seen resident evil.

“oh so true. like bayonetta,” i say, having played and obsessed over bayonetta earlier in the year.

“i wish i was playing bayonetta,” i think, playing the first devil may cry

★★
i like the potential of the combat, but the game’s stages are just so bad and unfun and the screen’s way too small for the telefrag bosses and it’s just. poop. anything cool zero can do is suffocated by the limitations of the gba that were already present in the first game

★★
it’s really impressive for a solo dev, but i did not have a good time. exploring became a chore compounded by the aggressive respawning enemies, sluggish movement, slow fast travel, and lackluster secrets bloated with useless weapons. it has nice moments, but they don’t last

★½
it operates on multiple layers of detachment: watching someone watch someone watch a game unfold around them. story happens at you. fights occur with little input. stats upgrade on a whim. contact’s thesis becomes that whatever window we’re given, it can never be enough

★½
stiff, lifeless, paint-by-numbers. from the numerous named one-note general-commander-leader-guy characters that all blend together trickling down to the extremely clunky, repetitive, albeit flashy, combat. even the music manages “stock music in google chrome ad” acclaim

★½
this series has proven to me the limitations of forcing myself to communicate my thoughts on all the games i’ve played this year. i feel nothing playing these games, and i don’t know how to get that across with this format. these games are not for me.

★½
intentionally sloppy, sticky, ugly combination of unpleasantries with all of isaac’s dudebro freakin’ video freakin’ games energy and none of the vulnerability. it’s relentless late 2000’s newgrounds vibes and zero interesting game to support it.

★½
richter belmont strikes me as the kind of guy who would be critical of someone who chose to play as maria instead and, in the same breath for some reason, decry accessibility options in dark souls. so i played as maria. she’s a cute girl who kills dracula with birds and cats

★
boring and bad

★
controlling nathan drake feels like piloting a cruise liner through wet sand. like swimming upriver with your left arm brain signal firing to your right leg. like last guardian’s trico if trico was a straight white man who went “lol” everytime he shot someone in the head. bad

★
eight hours of awful clunky platforming, nonstop nonfunctional cover shooting sludge, square-peg-square-hole puzzles, dialogue so rote and predictable it feels like public conscious plagiarism, and bad guns
nothing i’ve ever loved about any thing lives inside the first uncharted

★
got like three levels in. felt nothing but contempt and boredom for every weird bad very not good level gimmick. good riddance, megaman zero

★
now that all 67,226 credited backers have moved on and it's been left to rust. what're we to make of the remains? this decrepit little ugly little thing. beck's octodad feel, the $0.99 app store aesthetic and sound, call's atrocious level - the game's a mess, and not a fun one.

N/A
shelved

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shelved

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shelved

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shelved