my Harsh-But-Factually-Correct take is that sonic fan games are basically unplayable by proxy of sonic fans being youtube theorycrafter maniacs with no grasp on actual game design - let alone how to make a good platformer level. and that's fine, cause the real thing is this meticulously-crafted wonderdrug that functions entirely on millions of little gameplay details being laser-sharp and tangentially optimized - and also not giving a fuck in spots where it didn't need to. It's a testament to the classics that even the most dedicated, autism-powered creatives on the internet can't box with the O.G..

But Triple Trouble 16-bit? It comes pretty damn close. For one, the level design is generally solid! Still worse than 2 and 3, and generally too boxy and horizontal for my tastes, but it has that genesis blend of platforming, autopilot and gimmick sections that spring back and forth into each other. It understands and respects that Sonic is both a speed game AND a platform game, and that you should orchestrate a relationship between your character physics and stage design that reflects that. Besides that, it's like, got every fan favorite trimming you'd think of - cutscenes, all the elemental shields and moves, new setpiece moments, CD's [a e s t h e t i c] menus and unlockables - the package speaks for itself, it's very Mania-core.

Music is hit or miss, mostly by way of missing layering on some lead instruments or other midi-flipper shenanigans. Y'know how you can tell when a Genesis song sounds 'flat'? You know it when you hear it - it's missing a fade into vibrato or an echo, and so you hear the same tone for too long and it sounds like bad midi. There's some of that here. The composers all GET how to make good Genesis music, but not like, GREAT music, and you don't get there without sitting your ass down in a real Genny tracker and learning its limitations and deeper features. John Tay's remixes shit on everyone else's contributions because of this, to be brutally honest.

If you're like me and dodged most sonic fan games for not feeling like the originals, this is like, 85% of the way there. Definitely worth your time.

Mario Bros Wonder is unfortunately an extremely lethargic game that feels like no one working on it was having any fun. It does the bare minimum and then leaves it at that, which for a series that has been bereft of creativity and fun for years does certainly seem like a breath of fresh air, but it needed to be so much more than that. I was genuinely shocked at how unfun this game is.

It sort of says a lot about your series when you feel the need to make up an excuse for you to be creative. Genuinely, a ton of my problems with how this game feels would be alleviated if the dumb flowers didn't exist. The entire point of the game is to be wacky and creative and fun but a lot of that is diminished when you section all of it off. How much more fun would it have been if for one level you're just suddenly controlling a goomba or turned into a ball instead of having to play through the same cookie-cutter levels this series has been churning out for decades before getting to have fun. A lot of spontaneity is lost through only letting the unique stuff happen as a consequence of touching the wonder flowers, and that sort of saps the fun out of it all. I want to be shocked and surprised by the strange ideas in this game but every time it's about to happen I get a big colorful warning.

And the wackiness itself is very underwhelming. The level designs are so often just more Mario Bros junk that it'll feel indistinguishable from playing any other game in this series like 70% of the time. It doesn't help that the abilities given to the player are insanely underwhelming. Your four power-ups are very poorly designed. I don't get what the point of the bubble flower is. There's like 15 badges that let you jump higher and farther more consistently and easily than the bubbles and their other function is killing enemies, which the fire flower already does. Speaking of, that thing has no right being in this game. it feels very vestigial, and doesn't serve much of a function in any level. It doesn't help how similar the bubble flower is to it, but also like, why have it at all? This game is meant to give us something fresh, but its afraid to buck the least consequential tradition? I guarantee you that if they left the fire flower out no one would have cared. The drill mushroom was fun and levels were actually designed around it, although not every level is, and some of them can be cheesed with it pretty easily. But yet again it doesn't really get much to do, you never have to use it in inventive ways and it isn't tactilely fun to use. The Elephant Form is ok I guess. It would be a very middling to forgettable power-up in a better game, but the fact it makes you large it unique enough to make it stand out in this game. But none of these power-ups are ever developed. They don't have a skill set you need to learn or are used creatively in puzzles, there's next to no point in them.

The same could easily be said about the badges. My god. There isn't a single badge that changes up your playstyle enough for it to matter. They're supposed to be picking up the slack of the power-ups but they themselves are so wholly uninteresting that nearly all of them are just straight copied from older Mario games. And worst of all, none of them are fun. I messed around with all of them and never found one that elevated my enjoyment of the levels. Partially because this game's levels are just so boring and aren't really built to accommodate them, but also because none of the badges are that fun to begin with. The rope one was promising but only being able to aim in front of you, especially when the right stick is right there, completely unused, was a real let down. You can play through every level with every badge equipped and your experience every time will be the exact same. Why even have them, honestly? They don't add anything to the experience. They aren't fun, and by god that final badge is so lame and not worth getting. There's just not enough to the badges.

There isn't much to this game as a whole, honestly. Which was pretty surprising for me when I realized it. It's pretty short and all its levels are short as well, which isn't a bad thing, and in fact I hope the Mario series going forward learns from Wonder and doesn't unnecessarily bloat itself with too many levels or collectables, which has been a problem for the series in the past. But, like, it's ending was weird, right? Like it's "final world" is only five mediocre levels without even another Bowser Jr. rematch. More importantly, by the halfway mark I began telling myself "I will still like this game if after I'm done collecting all the Royal Seeds Bowser still gets to make his giant wonder happen". It's threatened constantly and it was the only justifier I could thing of for why all the levels thus far have been pretty mundane and uninteresting. They were saving everything for the final world, or would do something even cooler with the idea of giving Bowser power over all of reality, like having to go through the worlds again but with everything crazy and insane, or having to go through wacky messed up levels to find wonder flowers that would make them normal again. My mind was going rampant, which mostly just goes to show how uninterested I was with the game at that point. What it amounted to, by the way, was a boring final level that used a bunch of the previously done wonder gimmicks and a boss fight that would be a fun world 3-8 boss but is very anticlimactic for a final boss. It just feels unfinished, like there's a bunch missing from the game and ESPECIALLY its ending.

Continuing from the lack of any big moment or gimmick for its climax, this game's roaster sucks. This series has eighty billion characters and you're telling me that the best they could do for playable characters is yellow toad? The prevalence of recolors when there's more than enough Mario characters to fill its roaster is just another sign to me that this game is either unfinished or nobody cared at all while making it. Poor Birdo doesn't get raised out of the Mario Kart void that Daisy's been suck in for decades, but red yoshi gets to be playable? You went to all the trouble to make like 20 badges that suck and nobody will ever use, but you didn't feel like making even someone like Toadsworth or Captain Toad playable? Like if they really were strapped for resources and time then they could have at least made each yoshi its own distinct character. Add a tuft of hair on one of them and call it the Yoshi from ttyd, it really wouldn't take that much effort. Also I refuse to let Nintendo pretend that yellow toad is a real character that people actually care about on the same level as Luigi or Daisy. Stop putting him in things.

I thought this game was going to be the shot in the arm Mario needed to be fun again, but all it really is is New Super Mario Bros but it looks pretty. And, make no mistake, this game's really nice to look at, although I must say that its soundtrack is really bad. Not a single song from this game is going on my phone's folder of mp3s that I use a 3rd party app to listen to. It's all super simple and boring. Like very uncomplex songs with not a lot going on, which for a series that spent the last decade solidifying grandpa jazz as its musically identity is pretty odd. Especially since I'd think they'd want to go really grand for this game since its supposed to be the next era of Mario. Although the hollow music does pair nicely with the empty game design.

Ultimately, Mario Wonder is lucky it exists in a franchise so lacking in creativity and fun that even the imitation of it is worth celebrating.

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You sit before the computer again; a bone-numbing chill blankets the air between you and the screen, as if the monitor itself bordered on some other, colder space. This is the portal to your Fortress of Regrets... now all you need do is inscribe your feelings upon the website.

> 𝐓𝐚𝐩 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐭𝐲𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 𝐚 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐉𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐄𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐲 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮.
- 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐉𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐄𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐲 𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐞... 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐧𝐨𝐰.


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This thought of yours has been peeled from the back of your mind. Its rough gray surface reminds you of a zombie's hide; it looks more like another piece of worn-out novelty writing than a legitimate video game review.
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> 𝐄𝐱𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐭.
- 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐞.


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You clench your teeth and dig your mind into your soul; with a dry, tearing sound, you peel off a strip of yourself. The chill between yourself and the monitor becomes stronger, almost hungering, as if the screen has opened a crack in your mind...
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> 𝐊𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐭𝐲𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠; 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝.
- 𝐏𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲...


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You finish the review. Before your thoughts can escape, you press 'Create Log' and let forth several paragraphs of bullshit. As you prepare to save your work, a series of images float across your mind...
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> 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐭: "𝐈 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐭 𝐦𝐲 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬..."
- 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐭: "𝐈 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐭 𝐦𝐲 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐭..."
- 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐭: "𝐈 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐭 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭..."
- 𝐋𝐞𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲.


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You whisper the words to yourself, but the regret echoes through your mind:
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> 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐞

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'I regret...'
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> 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐞

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"I regret that I played this game."
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Genre: Platformer Collect-a-Thon

Released: November 22nd, 1999

Platform: Nintendo 64 (original), Wii U

Developer: Rare

Publisher: Nintendo

Language: English, but available in French, German, Spanish and Japanese with first party translations.

Length: 20-30 hours, but 35+ for the 101% completion (don’t do that, I beg you). I rolled credits a little after 21 hours. I will never go back.

Difficulty: Easy-Medium, but extraordinarily frustrating. You will finish it, it’s just a question of how much you are willing to take.

Do I Need To Play Anything First: No, this is a stand alone game. There are nods to the Super Nintendo and Arcade games, but no previous games are needed.

Accessibility Options: None. There are subtitles built into the game, but the player is extremely limited in what they can change. Fast responses are required, two handed play is required, full sight is required. Some collectibles and enemy attacks are primarily based on audio cues. If played via an emulator on a PC game speed can be controlled, but you may need a co-player to finish this game.

How Did You Play It: On original N64 hardware via a flashcart with a modified copy of the game that allowed me to change characters whenever I wanted to. The Mod is called DK64 - Tag Anywhere.

Is It Good: No. It’s terrible. Which is why it’s great. But bad. It’s really bad.

Just finished Donkey Kong 64 because I hate myself.

Why Donkey Kong 64 was actually the worst Nintendo Game of the 90’s

How and Why DK64 is so awful.

Bad Game Design – Donkey Kong 64

These are just the top headlines, message boards, or other modern internet musings when discussing Donkey Kong 64, the famous (or infamous) Rare developed yellow cartridge ‘collect-a-thon’ released in 1999. Stating that DK64 in not that great a game is not a particularly scalding opinion. It’s a bloated, poorly optimized, often boring, tedious, and obtusely designed game so bizarre in some of its design choices it boggled my mind. Given its notorious reputation on the internet, one could be forgiven for assuming the game was equally reviled upon its release.

“Donkey Kong 64 deserves the fanfare of being the most eagerly-awaited game since Zelda.”

“This is Rare's War and Peace, it's that simple.”

“I can ill refute the fact that the game is still remarkable. Had this title come from any other game developer in the world I'd be doing back flips raving about how great it is.”

“It's one of those Rare games that makes you remember why you liked video games so much in the first place.”

These quotes are not from some alternate mirror universe, but reviews when DK64 was originally released (although calling DK64 the ‘War and Peace’ of the gaming world is very funny to me). DK64 was critically acclaimed upon its release, praised for its graphics, art, gameplay and length.

I can certainly confirm this positive sentiment since I was a child when the game came out, and I thought DK64 was the coolest thing ever. I remember playing the demo display at McDonalds with a limp sticked, sticky N64 controller and feeling like the game was filled with endless sights and adventures. I remember going to a friend’s house who showed me a later level in the and my being astonished by just how. Much. Stuff. There was to do, to see, to collect, to play.

The game was also gorgeous, with lush jungles and creepy castles, advanced lighting effects (I remember lights moving around Donkey Kong being particularly impressive), all in a seamless world that without any obvious loading screens. But beyond its technical prowess DK64 has an strong artistic identity that is so cohesive and well executed you can still feel it’s influences today.

You can find DK64 sound effects in tiktok videos, people are STILL parodying the DK Rap, the music is loving layered in the background of youtube game discussion videos, and for such a ‘hated’ game Donkey Kong 64 has such a pernicious relevance decades later it is obviously clearly so much more than just an awful Nintendo 64 game from the 90’s.

Donkey Kong 64 is more then a game to be judged on its mechanical gameplay. Because the gameplay is bad. Just… So bad.

But DK64 is not about the gameplay, in fact: the gameplay does not matter at all.

The gameplay was not the focus of this games development, it was not the focus of the critics praise of the game, and is not why people are still playing it today.

Let’s get the gameplay discussion out of the way. In Donkey Kong 64, your goal is simple: collect enough bananas so you can feed Scoff the blue hippopotamus so he gets fat and jumps on a lever to bounce up Troff the pink pig high enough to turn a key to unlock a door so you can fight a boss to get a bigger golden key which then you can use to unlock the cage trapping K. Lumsy the giant green lizard who is locked behind 8 locks so you need to collect enough bigger golden bananas so you can show them to B. Locker to get more bananas to feed Scoff the blue hippopotamus.

…Also please remember to pick up enough weapon blueprints so you have enough time in the final level, banana coins (so you can unlock guns, abilities, musical instruments, and inventory space), a Nintendo coin, a Rare coin, and at least 4 battle crowns. Or you won’t be able to do the last level.

It’s a convoluted mess, and this design philosophy permeates nearly every aspect of the game. Levels are massive, sprawling confusing mazes. There is a car racing minigame, a mine cart minigame, a hide and seek mini game, a beaver herding mini game (which I HATED), a fly swatting mini game, and dozens more. There are two fully emulated OTHER GAMES in Donkey Kong 64 which are mandatory to play. There is an optional photography mechanic. And 3,821 collectibles to acquire.

It's staggering in its scope and suffers deeply for it. Because nearly every mechanic feels like a first draft, and incomplete idea thrown in just to make the game longer and bigger. The minigames are repeated, the bosses are repeated, the platforming is floaty and unresponsive, the levels are filled with almost identical hallways, and there are huge areas of open space with nothing to do. Most damningly a great deal of the actual collecting (arguably the point of the game) is boring and as insulting simple as walk to one place, hit a switch, walk to another, get banana.

And the crown jewel is the fact that essentially every collectable item in the game is tied to a unique Kong. There are five playable characters in the game, and each can only collect their own specific item colour.

See a red banana but are playing as Donkey Kong? You need to walk back to a barrel, swap to Diddy Kong, and walk back. This character switching becomes so extreme I though the designers were playing a joke on me. I would often have to change Kong’s more than three times just to walk down a hallway, a process that required walking all the way back to a barrel each time.

Donkey Kong 64 does so many things, but none of them well. Platforming? Acceptable at best, but a nauseating, stuttering, inaccurate mess at worst. Shooting? Barely fleshed out and clunky. Mini games? Simple, repetitive, and often infuriating (RE: herding beaver). Level Design? Occasionally brilliant, but mostly empty, boring and meandering.

Collecting, the main point the game? Dull, confusing and repetitive.

Even the developers wished they had done differently. In a Games Rader interview from 2019 the games creative director George Andrea states “There's a lot I would do differently. We would scale things down, make things look sharper, and focus on fewer things. I would have unified the banana system. That would have made it much easier for players to play through. I'd also promote more swapping between characters at regular intervals, but just having a consistent banana count, rather than multiple colours, would have improved things.”

So if even the directors lament DK64’s obtuse and unfocused design, and the gameplay lacks any real strong mechanics, why are people still playing this game? Why are there still discussion boards, YouTube videos, memes, and articles still written. Simply bad games are forgotten, and despite some grievous faults DK64 is not unplayable.

I think it’s because DK64 thrives on everything other than being, well, an interactive game. And it is exclusively because of those very flaws that DK64 remains part of the cultural zeitgeist today.

DK64 oozes charm and personality, and carries itself with such a confident artistic vision it easily differentiates itself from the games of its time and those of today. The moment the clear deep “OK!” Donkey Kong exclaims on first powering the game on, the game begins tunneling a space for itself in your brain.

Monkey chirps, cries, and hoots fill the soundscape both as digenetic environmental sounds and becoming musical instruments themselves, which blend seamlessly with the soundtrack. Then the game starts to rap at you, with lyrics such as “his coconut gun can fire in spurts, if he shoots ya it’s gonna hurt!”. It’s so joyful, fully embracing its bizarre and ridiculous nature without a hint of sarcasm.

DK64 powerfully establishes in its first 15 seconds its here to have a great time. Each tune the game throws at you bounces between is an intoxicating mix of jazz, animal sounds, tribal drums, and silly ear worms you can’t help but smile whenever you hear it. The soundtrack deserves all the praise it has received over the years, both on its competent musical composition but also how it affirms the identity of Donkey Kong 64.

Every piece of art, animation, and music feed each other into forming the wacky, colourful and strange ambiance that is uniquely its own. While having five different Kongs mechanically hurts the game, the Kongs themselves are incredibly well designed and presented. The majority of the cast made both their first and last appearance in DK64, yet are still fondly remembered and easily identifiable decades later.

The Kongs strong and clear personalities, no frame of animation or sound effect is wasted as an opportunity to demonstrate character. Just looking at Tiny Kong’s care free walk cycle is enough for one to understand who she is as a character. Or how Chunky Kong bashfully tries to point you to anyone else but him if you try to select him in the menu. Or just hearing Lanky’s hoots and hollers let you know the he has no style, and no grace.

Every pixel and sound bite are squeezed into creating a masterclass in presentation. It is an excellent example of how videos are so much more than their mechanical parts. Donkey Kong 64 is an incredible experience and holds a shared mind space so unique because there is nothing like it. It is charming, funny, strange, and utterly memorable.

Much is said about the graphics, sound, and score (which are exceptional) but I was most impressed with the animation. Not from a gameplay perspective (which again… sucks), but how flowing and expressive every piece is. Characters squash and stretch, scurry, skitter and scramble with such strong performances its impressive even compared to modern games.

The second part is the shared cultural story and experience playing Donkey Kong 64 occupies. Complaining about Donkey Kong 64 is fun. It’s fun to tell our friends how infuriating finding that last banana was, or how we almost gave up when the game asked us to complete the arcade game for a SECOND TIME!

My friends tell me about they time they tried to collect every banana in every level, despite there being no reason or in game reward to do such a terrible thing. Or how people proudly post they got the infamous 101% completion rating. Was it fun? No, they say, but I did it.

People climb Everest because it’s there.

A few house cleaning notes before closing. I played a modified Donkey Kong 64 on a Nintendo 64 via a flash cart. This mod is called ‘Donkey Kong 64 – Tag Anywhere’ and allows you to change to any Kong at any point in the game without needing to backtrack to a barrel. I HIGHLY recommend this modification, and I do not feel it distracts from the ‘vanilla’ experience in any meaningful way. Some will argue that the games backtracking and obtuseness is part of the games charm, to which I would reply ‘don’t worry, the game is still incredibly annoying with the mod’. I would even go further and suggest for first time players to play with the mod on an emulator so you can use save states, but that may be too far for some.

I do not recommend Donkey Kong 64. I did not like playing this game, and had to force myself to continue.

But I loved complaining about it with my friends who had finished it. I loved sharing screenshots and asking for hints. I loved the atmosphere, the characters, and the music.

And I am so very glad I finally finished this game, so many years later.

Please, save yourself some pain and don’t play Donkey Kong 64.

But when you do play it, make sure to write about how terrible it is on the internet.

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Genre: Lonely Dragon Riding RPG | Released: 1998 | Platform: Sega Saturn (sigh) | Developer: Team Andromeda | Publisher: Sega | Language: English | Length: 18 hours | Difficulty: Moderate | Do I Need To Play Anything First: No, I this is the first Panzer Dragoon Game I have played | Accessibility Options: Zilch | Monetization: Single Purchase | Microtransaction: None | Gambling Elements: None | Content Warning: Very mild violence and mild substance references | Parenting Guide: 13 and up for sure | How Did You Play It: On a Sega Saturn. And I totally bought a legit copy and not a knock off, for sure yes yes | Did you need a guide: Yes, I could not for the love of god find a hallway hidden behind a building | Mods: None

Is It Good: Yes, it’s excellent.

Back of the Box: Hey, it’s that game on eBay for $900.

Legend has it that only 10,000 copies of Panzer Dragoon Saga were made for the English world. Plus it’s exclusive to the Sega Saturn which, well, did not sell very well. Given its frankly insane current market value most people have not played this game, nor have they heard of it (unless you are a filthy pirate, which I know none of you are).

This is a shame as Panzer Dragoon Saga a landmark RPG that deserves a spot along in the pantheon of fantastic Japanese Role-Playing games. This is lean, exciting, no fluff RPG with a fantastic battle system, fun plot (Which is fully voiced), great cinematics, and outstanding art design. I loved that battle system, a fascinating combination of a rail shooter and turn-based combat.

This is no hidden gem, it’s a full-on JRPG crown. Wear it if you can.

A game that manages to capture the feel and flow of 2D sonic shockingly well but struggles in a lot of other aspects. It's over reliance on past ideas and gimmicks without any real innovation or surprise to them drag down the experience. Obvious budget and time constraints are also apparent throughout leading to an unpolished and sometimes buggy playthrough. Along with mediocre music, art design, special stages and downright awful bosses it is impossible to call this game the triumph it should have been.

The one thing I never expected an Obsidian game to be was terminally uninteresting but that's exactly what The Outer Worlds is. A collection of shallow systems, characters, and quests that sort of affect the illusion of a proper RPG with depth and consequence but in reality offers nothing of the sort.

The almost cartoonish lack of depth in the gameplay is mirrored in the story, which is a smarmy and infuriatingly smug monument to Enlightened Centrism that wraps itself in a veneer of anti-capitalist rhetoric so thin that it would struggle to appear meaningfully leftist even to someone who gets all their political opinions from Breadtube. Faux-empathetic South Park politics for the Rick and Morty generation, where picking an actual side is always fucking stupid and you should always strive for a meaningless compromise in order to preserve the status quo.

Genuinely astonishing that this came from the same studio that released Pillars 2 just prior, a game that, for all it's issues, actually had the guts to grab you by the neck and tell you to pick a fucking side, to get some god damn ideology, and actually let you meaningfully change the broken world it presented. That game was the real New Vegas 2 you've all been clamouring for, but no one bought it, so I guess we're stuck with this.

Nothing else to really say because there's basically nothing else in here. An utterly empty and vacuous game that doesn't even manage to surpass Fallout 4. A snake oil salesman promising you a miracle solution to bring back the Fallout you remember, but get past the fancy logo and uncork that bottle, and you'll find nothing in there but dust and echoes.

Far and away the most egregiously misguided attempt at myth-making in games history. This isn't the worst game ever. It's not the weirdest game ever. It is not the 'first American produced visual novel.' Limited Run Games seems content to simply upend truth and provenance to push a valueless narrative. The 'so bad it's good' shtick serves only to lessen the importance of early multimedia CD-ROM software, and drenching it in WordArt and clip art imparts the notion that this digital heritage was low class, low brow, low effort, and altogether primitive.

This repackaging of an overlong workplace sexual harassment/rape joke is altogether uncomfortable at best. Further problematising this, accompanying merch is resplendent with Edward J. Fasulo's bare chest despite him seemingly wanting nothing to do with the project. We've got industry veterans and games historians talking up the importance of digital detritus alongside YouTubers and LRG employees, the latter making the former less credible. We've got a novelisation by Twitter 'comedian' Mike Drucker. We've got skate decks and body pillows and more heaps of plastic garbage for video game 'collectors' to shove on a dusty shelf next to their four colour variants of Jay and Silent Bob Mall Brawl on NES, cum-encrusted Shantae statue, and countless other bits of mass-produced waste that belongs in a landfill. Utterly shameful how we engage with the past.

Replayed this after dropping it close to the end of the game several years ago. I'm rly surprised with how quickly I got really damn addicted to and marathoned it to completion in 2ish days.

This game is really not very mechanically sound and is kind of shallow through and through. Despite that, I seriously enjoyed just grinding and leveling my abilites and watching how they absolutely bust apart the game... Its very junkfood in that sense.

Something I did appreciate immensely is that while this is kind of a diablo clone, theres way more stuff happening beyond killing hordes of enemies all the time. Theres lots of silly quests where you talk to people, do miscellaneous shit and theres tons of areas to just explore and appreciate. The various towns and villages I found so so magical to explore and poke around, especially verdistis. Its realllyyyy nice to have the monotony of killing hordes of enemies broken up by these things so frequently.

The writing isn't particularly deep or anything like that either even though writing depth is what people really love out of old crpgs like baldur's gate, fallout, arcanum, etc, but its so so so full of personality and soul. The game gets (intentionally) really fucking silly a lot of the time and never takes itself terribly seriously. The title itself is a dumb gag in the game. Theres a surprising amount of NPCs that are just normal ass people who'll tell you a little about their lives. Lots of life breathed into the world.

Did I mention life? Something I don't see people talk about is how BREATHTAKINGLY lively the world is in a literal sense. The amount of fauna and flora around the place on top of the birds chirping, the ambience of the music, etc is SO BEAUTIFUL. There are so many fucking plant and tree props or just other props in general. So many different textured looks for the grass, dirt, water, puddles and all that shit. Butterflies and birds flying around, rabbits cats and mice running around, all that. It probably doesnt sound impressive describing it but I'm absolutely FLOORED by how lively the world and nature feel in this way especially for the time. So much fucking love and care put into that, I truly applaud it.

Kind of an aside but I feel like fantasy games are so obsessed with drawing inspiration from tolkien (fucking everything has elves, dwarves, orcs, etc) but they always forget how important the beauty and majesty of nature and the earth were to tolkien type fantasy. Idk how intentional that was with this game but its there. Love to death.

Also the final dungeon is fucking terrible.

Man I don't think this game is all that well made in a lot of ways but its just so magical feeling. Kind of special experience to me.