Shadow of the Colossus is justifiably praised for its atmosphere and art, but I really struggled to finish it. So much of the game is tedious and frankly, boring at times. When I finally got to a Colossus, I got a rush of excitement, clinging on while a Colossus shook you was pretty fun at first, but it's certainly not enough to entertain me 16 times in a row. But what really bothered me the most were the utterly atrocious controls. The horse was just a pain to ride.

I can appreciate the spectacle. It's beautiful, ambient and sadly a chore to play.

This has been 5 years and 4 months in the making and I don’t even know what to say about that lmao I’m so bad at starting things and taking eight lifetimes to finish them. In my defense, I get obsessed with stuff and focus only on that for a while but then I move on for a while (in this case 5 years pft.)

I thank the Bingo, Kaleidoscope and Casual A-Z challenges for giving me the motivation needed to FINALLY finish this game.

Bully is one of those classic games that can easily withstand the test of time. It’s such a good game with a damn good story and pretty cool characters. The main character has that little brother feel to me and I had that feeling throughout my playthrough.

I wanted him to succeed so I tried my best. And by “tried my best” I mean I failed a shit ton of times. Which brings me to my first complaint. When you fail a mission, there’s no option to retry, it just kicks you out and you have to run ALL the way back to the NPC that gave you that quest.

This is super annoying, especially if you’re like me and fail a lot. I ended up giving up a few times because I got tired of having to run back and do everything over lol This is pretty understandable given the game’s age, though.

Another really weird thing for me is the button layout. Like, instead of O being the back button, it’s triangle. The amount of times I sat there pressing the O button repeatedly wondering why the feck nothing was happening lol And to pause the game, you press the touch pad instead of options.

L2 and R2 cycle through your weapons/items, while you aim with L1 and shoot with R1. That kept messing me up on Mass Effect because I was pressing the wrong button (but I did learn the Mako has boost so it’s not all bad.)

I didn’t learn this until I was literally on the LAST chapter of the game, but you have to press the left side of the touch pad to get the map up. As someone who gets lost easily, this would have been really helpful lol

The trophies are all pretty simple, at least for the PS4 version. I didn’t really have any trouble with any except for “Sharp Dressed Man.” I’m not really one to buy clothes in games unless it’s my own character, like GTA, so I only have a couple pieces bought.

Between running around trying to make enough money and trying to FIND all the clothes, I think this is the trophy I spent the most time on. I was so confused because I bought out all the clothing stores, the school shop and the fair but still hadn’t reached 250. I read that the barber shop sells clothes, but I went to two and they had none so I didn’t bother checking the third. Turns out, 3rd time really is the charm lol

One thing I really love about this game is the fact that, when the game ends, it doesn’t actually end. It lets you run around and continue whatever you missed so you don’t have to play through the game again to collect trophies. The fact that this game, old as it is, had the thought to do this while new games don’t is honestly incredible. They do make you sit through the credits first, though. No amount of button pushing can skip ’em.

I suggest getting the flower trophy out of the way before finishing art class. You CAN flirt with guys, but there’s only like 2 or 3 that you can flirt with while you can flirt with ANY girl. I wish they had put a bit more into the NPC students… there’s only a couple unique students in each clique before they just copy and pasted them a bunch of times. It was kind of off putting… and creepy.

Maybe it’s just me, but the kiss trophy was painful. It’s so cringey watching them makeout and I had to look away, it’s just uncomfortable lol And the thing with Zoe… it was so weird because he had literally met her TWO TIMES and then they were talking about love. Is that normal for fifteen year olds? Am I just old?

Speaking of romance, here’s a hot take: Johnny Vincent deserves better! The whole game, I kept wishing he would just break up with that cheating [redacted]. Why did he keep taking her back? She claimed to love him but as soon as he turned around, she was making out with another guy. Not just one, either, she was with basically the whole ass school okay.

My man deserves better. Period.

Speaking of characters, whats-his-face nerd leader was creepy and annoying as hell. I thought he was cute at first but after seeing how he behaves, he became uglier every time he was on screen lol Derby is cute but I want to punch him sometimes. He reminds me of Atobe from Prince of Tennis in a way. Russel is the man and he is a precious idiot, okay.

The gym teacher was also a creep and I hate him. Like I said before, Jimmy is great and I view him as a baby brother. Must protect. Finally, I felt bad for Pete. He’s such a good kid but everyone treats him like dirt, even Jimmy – I would smack him for this if I could. Honestly, I think he’s the only sane person in this whole damn town.

I almost forgot to mention Dual Nebula. This trophy requires you to beat the high score in three different arcade games. The sumo one is the easiest, in my opinion, it only took me two or three tries. The one with the squirrel flinging nuts is second.

I died a bunch of times but most of that was because I was trying to glitch it, having ZERO faith that I could do it on my own. The glitch didn’t work and I made it! Finally, the hardest one is the monkey one. It took me sooo many tries to get this one because you can’t jump over the spiders, you just gotta wedge yourself in the corner and hope for the best.

It was fun, but it’s time to say goodbye, Bullworth.

I think I’ve covered everything I wanted to about this game. It’s a really great game and I highly recommend checking it out. I didn’t do a playthrough of this game, but I do have some clips posted and a bunch more waiting to be posted. You can check out my playlist here.

Honestly, I wish I hadn’t done the clothes one last. Just look at the damn platinum screenshot, it’s terrible ò_ó) I should’ve waited on the last quest for Kleptomaniac… oh well. Nothing I can do now.

in 2011 (12 years ago today) someone broke into my parents' car and stole all my video games while we were on vacation (my fault for leaving them in there). i lost everything - six different pokemon games i had dedicated a quarter of my life to, my 3DS which i had only just gotten a month prior, my copy of ocarina of time 3D that was my first real introduction to the series, all gone.

my parents didn't really give a fuck. on the way to our destination, after we had filed an insurance report and hastily patched the window, we stopped at a target so i would stop crying about losing all my damn pokemon - they told me they'd buy me another 3DS, along with one game. my stupid ass chose lego pirates of the carribean.

i don't know why. i should have chosen anything else. replaced my copy of pokemon black, or OOT3D (which i was playing mere hours before it was stolen). what drew me to this game? what allure did it have on my little brain? i had played the DS lego star wars and indiana jones in the past, and i didn't think they were great (the wii versions were way better). there was no reason for me to squander my one chance at entertainment on this god forsaken game.

for an entire month, that whole vacation, all i had was lego pirates. i'd spend days at a time holed up in the rental house just mindlessly playing through levels. listening to the main theme on loop in the hub world, and suffering through the click, click, click of studs slowly being collected. even today, lego pirates is still listed as having one of the highest average playtimes on my 3DS.
on that vacation, i learned how to ride a bike for the first time. that's when i first saw the rockies. but no matter how much fun i had, i'd always come back to lego pirates. that's all i associate with that vacation.

recently, i booted the game up again, in hopes of dropping that average playtime down a bit so i could stop looking at that bronze #3 in my console's activity log - a horrible testament to my own stupidity. there were two levels i had not 100%ed - just two things i needed to conquer this game. so i said fuck it and went for it.

it only took me an hour, on and off. but that hour had this really weird sadness to it. just playing the game again, hearing the bumbling, drunken sounds of the Pirates soundtrack blasting through my speakers as i rolled around in the big bone cages from the second movie. it's like i was back in that shitty house with the hard-ass mattress and the wooden floor. with the rusty metal airplane model that was the only thing decorating the room where i stayed. eleven years old, not really feeling anything anymore. just killing time.

i had to look up a guide. after a lot of searching, i realized that the 3DS version was just a lazy port of the DS version. this somehow made me even more sad.

but, i did it. all that pain from twelve years ago, culminating in just another little check on the backlog. i felt physically ill. omega ruby now proudly wore the #3 average playtime badge in my 3ds' activity log, and i'd never have any reason to play this game ever again.

life sucks. horrible things happen every day. windows get smashed for someone to make a quick buck, an eleven year old boy fills the void in what little life he's lived with youtube and pokemon, only to have it all get ripped away. for the longest time, august 3rd was the worst thing to have ever happened to me.
but horrible things still happen every day - things that youtube and pokemon can't fix anymore. twelve years to the day, and here i am doing the exact same thing. filling the void, just in a different way. checks on the backlog. little blue estrogen pills. learning a new fighting game. frozen yogurt (praying every time i go they'll have the flavor i had that one perfect summer, so long ago). always chasing the unattainable - that perfect feeling that i can't even describe. joy? satisfaction? confidence? i'll know it when i get there.

anyway. if you robbed a blue volvo in amarillo, texas on august 3rd 2011 just know that i hate you for making me play this game

have yall ever seen Synecdoche New York? it's a movie about phillip seymour hoffman getting unlimited money so he makes a miniature New York and hires a bunch of actors to just bumble around and do random shit in it. i haven't seen it and im probably grossly misinterpriting it, but death stranding is basically that but they gave kojima all the money instead and he just did whatever the hell he wanted.

this game feels impossible to review. what can i even say? this game is such a weird mishmash of ideas and mediums and THINGS that you'll constantly wonder why the hell you're even playing it.

they use the likenesses of famous directors, actors, authors, and comedians for no reason, they advertise AMC shows while you watch norman reedus wash his ass, whenever you get to the end of an important delivery they show the song title and artist of whatever song starts playing on-screen like you're listening to spotify... people will email you talking about random patriotic mumbo jumbo and asexuality, sometimes the fetus strapped to your stomach will give you facebook likes... what the FUCK dude this is a game about delivering pizzas to junji ito, why do we need all this shit?

past the weirdness factor of it, it's a pretty unique gaming experience that intersperses fairly relaxing deliveries with occasional cool moments or tense BT sections. people will bitch about vehicle and weapon controls being ass and yeah i agree, but at its core the gameplay is so laid back that its kinda hypnotic tbh. being able to use structures or vehicles created by other people is a cool touch too and fits in with whatever bullshit themes regarding ISOLATION and CONNECTION this game tries to follow. it's not constant high-octane intensity (and the intense moments are never that intense tbh), but it's something i'd recommend you check out.

the two hour long credits cutscene sucks though. so get your popcorn ready

somebody got really upset at my previous review, so let me be a bit more thorough this time.

the main issue with elden ring is that it presents itself as "open world dark souls" (i know it's not in the same series as souls, but you know what i mean), and then completely fucking fails at being both of these things.

for a game that everyone claims is the most derivative, unique game ever, it sure does nosedive directly into every single fault that open world games have. a massive, diluted map filled with copy/paste bosses and dungeons (but this time you have to fight two minibosses instead of one!), completely worthless crafting items that nobody will use outside of extremely niche circumstances, and rewards for finishing quests/optional areas that i'm unable to benefit from because it doesn't fit in with whatever build i'm using. pushing my way through stone imps for 20 minutes and being rewarded with some spell i can't use and 1/3rd as many runes as i need to level up isn't really going to incentivize me to explore more. sure, i'm not expecting every hidden item/secret to cater to my playstyle, it just feels disappointing.

as for the dark souls part (by which i mean how it handles boss/enemy behaviors and damage), everything is tuned way the fuck up to the point of absurdity. in my opinion, this is in response to other design choices that negate some of the previous difficulties of souls games, if that makes sense. ie, DS1 lacked warping for most of the game, meaning if you were stuck against certain required bosses it was a big decision to either push forward or spend time backtracking to grind/use facilities (note - i did steal this from another review but it's definitely a valid point). 2 and 3 allowed you to warp freely between bonfires, so that aspect of difficulty was gone - 3 offset this by having bosses with more complex attack patterns, and 2 did it with the worst fucking boss runbacks known to man.

since you can warp freely in elden ring and most bosses can be reached with few runbacks (from what i remember at least), they decided to crank the fuck out of both damage and boss attack patterns for the sake of difficulty. now you have moves that can easily kill you in one hit with no warning, massive combos that leave you no room to retaliate, and attacks that are delayed an obscene amount cause gotcha :). i understand that all of these were present in previous fromsoft games, but never to this extent. it's such a lazy way to do difficulty - i don't give a fuck if you call me bad, compared to every other soulsborne game it's just nowhere near as fun or satisfying to interact with, even if it looks flashier. elden ring is like that annoying kid in 2nd grade who kept making up bullshit rules in whatever playground game they were playing to benefit themselves.

look, there's things that are good about this game. i honestly wish i could love it - whenever that dumb ass voice in my head tells me to give it another try, it's the worldbuilding, music, and aesthetic that brings me back. but then i remember that everything past leyndell exists and it immediately goes back into the backlog.

Alright, let’s get this over with so I don’t have to spend any more time on this than I already have. This game sucks, but let's take a look at why:

First, let’s take a look at that long list of positives -

• UI is genuinely cute and looks very nice on the PS Vita

• Touko and Komaru are two female protagonists that have some fun banter and cute moments

• The final boss is fun in that you have to use all the moves you’ve learned and put yourself to the test in a satisfying way

Now let’s have a gander at those negatives:

• The camera sucked and made some bosses incredibly difficult

• The game is not so much action-adventure as it is my absolute least favorite formula of just run from point A to point B to see more cutscenes

• Touko is way too overpowered, making the game mind-numbingly boring, but as a game made for fans of the series’ visual novels and not so much action, I guess I can understand the lack of difficulty

• I was excited for the music as I loved it in the original Danganronpa, only for it to feel like they reused the same 3 songs over and over again here

• Bosses loudly repeat the same 2 lines over and over again, to the point I had to mute my Vita giving me a disadvantage on hearing non-verbal noise cues

• Has this kids vs adults theme, but oddly continuously calls Komaru and Toko adults even though they’re both underage and wear school uniforms to boot! It could have been a cool dilemma of adults vs kids and the teenage protagonists have this dilemma of figuring out in the chaos where they fit when they can socially fit both (and have a cool ‘growing up is scary, but it’s something we all go through’ lesson like in Persona 2), but no, they just straight assume they’re both adults with no further explanation, I’m guessing so the panty shots are more accepted. (Blah, turns out my memory is worse than I thought. Thank you to HaloBlues for the correction!)

• There’s just an open pedophile in the game that leads the adult group with no repercussions, in fact our protagonists even compliment him on it, when one of the little girl’s reasoning for killing adults was being sexually assaulted by them creating the most fucked-up messaging in a game I’ve ever played

• The girl who was sexually assaulted in turn tries to assault the protagonist with a… groping machine. Whole thing is played off for laughs, with additional panty shots of the literal elementary school aged girl during it. Touko then makes mentions of the little girl “taking your virginity” throughout the rest of the game

• The whole game is just shocking to be shocking with little thought put into what makes something funny or interesting, such as having to save on a children’s training potty, listening to a kid ramble on about ripping out and eating adult guts, and having to watch the children french-kiss each other

• Touko continuously brings up to Komaru that she thinks she has a sexual relationship with her own brother, which Komaru just giggles and waves off

• You get to watch the same scene of Togami getting whipped like 7 times, which wasn't even funny the first time they showed it, but my God, they’re gonna keep showing you it until you think it’s funny!!

• The ending sequence on whether or not you should break the controller was complete ass as the characters repeat the same lines of dialogue over and over to you. I immediately broke the controller and saw that was the wrong answer, so the constant moral dilemma of if I should break it or not was instantly gone, and actually very annoying as the next 15 minutes had me continuously choose on breaking the controller or not (it was 8 times, I counted) when I already knew the “right answer” was to not break it

There’s so much more I could go into, but I’ve wasted enough energy on this game. Similar to past Danganronpa games, Ultra Despair Girls tries to handle morals and messages way too advanced for its own good, instead creating something incredibly offensive and downright awful to watch. After finishing the game, I plan on selling it, as I have no reason to ever want to play it again, and the person who gifted it to me is no longer in my life.

I recommend Persona 2: Eternal Punishment if you want a story about the difficulties of growing up, and I recommend the Resident Evil series if you like the idea of hiding from and shooting enemies that are chasing after you.

1/5

Ethics are hard... is it reasonable to praise a product with a legitimately evil monetization model? It's not as simple as separating art and artist as the gacha is intrinsically linked to the game itself - I, personally, have the self-control necessary for admission, but I'm not so ignorant as to disregard those who do not. Still, this game scratches a little crevice in my brain like no other; collecting and building characters, exploring beautiful locales, and the legitimately stunning music all keep me hooked 3+ years later. Have I spent money? Yes, an amount I feel perfectly content with given my invested time - herein lies the core issue presented once again: are there individuals who are content now that will look back in shame at the money invested? All this to say, I enjoy the game, a lot... I really wish I didn't.

nostalgia's a weird thing, man.

especially when it's something like KH2 where everyone except you played this shit when they were like ten and it changed their life forever, and you're just sitting here trying to find out why a game with a Worse Dark Souls 2 Roll has a rating this high. like, at best i think this game is ok. it's one of those games with stuff that i really like that's buried under a mile of shit, and usually i'm even less fond of those than games that are outright bad.

for starters, i think this game is absolutely carried by its mid 2000s edgy emo badass aesthetic. like this is the quintisential hot topic kid game - sora and roxas are dripped out of their minds and you get to fight a ton of emo dudes in black coats, hell yeah man. i have this really deep appreciation for the twilight town segment at the start of the game; that feeling of melancholy and something not being quite right is something that hasn't really been replicated in any game since. it sets the stage for this game so well - the backdrop of the end of summer, roxas knowing that something's terribly wrong, getting a behind the scenes look of him getting helplessly messed with... it's such a great intro, and the few moments where that same melancholy shows up throughout the game are really something special.

but then you get to play the actual game and its like. lol. lmao.

to be fair, it's a LOT better than kh1. the worlds feel more fleshed out (even if revisits are annoying), there are some badass moments, whenever there's not a mickey mouse character on screen this shit rules. but there's just enough dumbo shit to bother me, whether it be cutting to stitch for half a second just to remind you that yes, we have the rights to disney characters, or whatever is going on with the girls from FFX-2.

combat feels a lot better too - you're not just mashing X and cure, spells work differently and non-cure magic is actually useful. drive forms are sick as hell and make you feel like a total badass, donald and goofy are actually useful...

so why did fuckin squenix, in their despicable me evil lab where they make this game, decide to pile on so much objectively terrible shit? did they not want the game to be too good??
why do you spend all of the mulan world gathering Morale Orbs? why are there so many weirdo gimmick fights/objectives that are just "fight every enemy before X happens and you lose"? why is there a chance your drive form literally becomes a suicide button if you get unlucky and get anti sora?? and what's the deal with the wack-ass difficulty spikes in the last few hours of the game? whoever playtested the xigbar fight needs to go to see a doctor or some shit

it's a shame that there's so much stupid dumbo shit piled on to this game that overshadow the genuinely great improvements. i get that i'm just scratching the surface here - there are data battles and a billion superbosses that i could do, but i don't care! i barely survived the main story without smashing my controller hearing LET'S SEE HOW YOU DANCE, i dont wanna do any more.

i'm not as upset with this one as i was with kh1, just really sad. i get that this is regarded as the best game in the series, and i see why. i guess it's just not for me.

"I'm Alone in the Dark!"
"I'm Alone in the Dark, Too!"
Best quote ever?!

Memes aside, Alone in the Dark was always a series I knew nothing about despite my huge love for the survival horror genre (at least, the old tank control style) and this year I thought it would be nice to fix that. With how much I've heard about it being unplayable """""aged""""" dogshit I figured I wouldn't really get much out of it, but I kinda appreciated it a lot tbh? lol

My favourite aspect was definitely the atmosphere. The fact this shit came out in 1992 is actually uncanny to me. Every single document in the game is voice by various different narrators who are implied to be the writers and it's just one hell of a neat touch. The voice actors simultaneously sound as if they've had a million roles before, and like they're total amateurs. I don't know how else to describe it, the overacting is just godlike.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1156847687476457492/1161553663240716368/AITD.mp4
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1156847687476457492/1163702809548570725/damned_yankees.mp4

The visuals are so antiquated but I honestly think it only adds to the vibe of the game taking place in a Lovecraftian mansion. It's not the scariest game ever but I genuinely got frightened at multiple moments in the game, including the glass shattering at the very beginning. Like Emily and Edward's models are so pixelated and jaggy (especially in their faces) they look like a living blowup doll with lipstick smeared on and a man made out of triangles, respectively. It's just hilarious seeing them slash equally awkwardly animated pirates to death. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1156847687476457492/1161554573090107412/image.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1156847687476457492/1161554441854525531/image.png

The music is honestly stuck in my head at this point. The game is about 2-3 hours long and only has like 4 tracks, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't immediately google a 30 minute extended cut of the ending theme the instant I finished the game. But it's the way the music is utilized in the game that truly makes it stand out like jumpscare chords in a B-horror movie; case in point https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1156847687476457492/1161569731229274153/DOSBox_0.74-2.1_Cpu_speed__8000_cycles_Frameskip_0_Program__INDARK_2023-10-11_03-41-54.mp4

The story of course is nothing deep, but I really love how the documents all serve to create a cohesive sense of setting, that the player truly is Alone in the Dark mansion as they piece together puzzle solutions from the aforementioned overacted documents. There are also some books that will kill the player upon reading them which is still something unique to do in the survival horror genre even today.

Also, a misconception to address. Motherfuckers online said there are no differences between the male and female main characters, and I'm here to say that's a load of horseshit. Even without finishing the game as Edward, I noticed that Emily's campaign differed in multiple ways including her intro being different and her monologuing about her deceased uncle upon finding his pictures. Though, frankly, I 99% just played her on account of her running animation not looking like she had a candle stuck all the way up her arse https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1156847687476457492/1161554246462877786/run_animation.mp4

Right, the running and document reading....

The gameplay loop is funny as fuck ngl. Cheap deaths are so frequent in the game that I would dare to call it fake difficulty, save for the the player can quick save and quick load multiple files, with my favourite out of left field death being this one: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1052492536125607966/1162324435752202300/AITDeez_nuts.mp4

Hell, I'd go as far as to say that the game WOULD be unplayable dogshit were it not for the quick saving and quick loading. No judgement to anyone who uses them, but I personally never use save states in emulators since I feel like it removes all the fun from challenges to overcome for me and also prevents me from fairly judging a game as it's more akin to repeatedly bashing my head on a wall than improving my fundamentals. Alone in the Dead feels like a game that simply could not exist in a playable state without these save states, and I feel no guilt using them since the game was clearly balanced around them.

An example of this can be found in the gunplay. On top of having BS deaths to worry about, the characters cannot aim for shit with the rifle especially. Readying a gun or sword takes a trillion years and there is no snappy auto-aiming, so smol monsters can and will just stunlock the player until all 50 HP are depleted. It's so egregious!

Thankfully, the player can just as easily stunlock enemies with their melee attacks (which shockingly were much better to the point I actually had fun meleeing the zombies to death) provided their positioning is on point.

Hell, I even kinda liked the gameplay on the whole. Exploring the mansion was pretty fun, it was more compact than I expected and the running was quite fluid despite the lack of a quick turn. I've seen people online post about how the running was super finnicky and unreliable, but a pro tip to all reading who are interested in playing this....

The default GOG config is borked. There, I said it. In DOSbox, increasing CPU cycles makes inputs delayed and less reliable. By using CTRL+F11 and CTRL+F12, one can manually adjust the virtual CPU cycles. Setting them somewhere in the 8000-10000 range should just about serve to make the running animation consistent, definitely something to experiment with.

I'm not sure if the CPU cycles affected the jumping either (I doubt it tho) but with the complaints I heard about the platforming in the final area, I was surprised I managed to perfectly platform across everything first try. It was kinda rad actually.

Fuck it, this is a pretty strong 7.5/10 to me. If the game was better balanced, there was more music, the main characters were fleshed out a bit better, the experience was slightly scarier, and especially if the weapons didn't suck ass to use, this could be a strong 8+/10 game.

However, the fact it was the first true attempt at a 3D survival horror game, yet still managed to have unique ideas for the genre even today, memorable voice acting even if not necessarily for the right reasons, 2 campaigns with minimal bugginess to them, and an otherworldly atmosphere? I just can't help but love it. Truly one of the most important video games of all time, I definitely respect the vision. Happy October!