81 reviews liked by esoteric_nebula


"go to hell" is basic. "i hope the developers of some of your favourite games get bought by epic and have to make subpar versions of other games so fortnite can try to compete with roblox" is smart. it's possible. it's terrifying.

Unique and interesting way to dissect a short murder mystery. I can agree with other reviewers that the plot is not the most distinctive, and the acting can be a little awkward at times, but the gameplay aspect is really neat, and pretty immersive. That is what got me most invested. I recommend trying this visual novel out when it goes on sale for around $1 on Steam, as in full it is only around 1-2 hours long. Get that with a Costco hot dog meal, and you got yourself an entertaining $5 evening for the night (b ᵔ▽ᵔ)b

3/5

Allow me to present you with a question you might groan at the mere sight of witnessing it, fellow reader, that being: are videogames art?





To that I say a resound:... they are even better than that

I really don’t know where to even start with Katamari Damacy, much like with the weird kind-of-not-spherical bringers of chaos and destruction that give the game’s name, there isn’t really a beginning or end, it just keeps on rollin’...

I wouldn’t be the first to gush about its uniqueness, both in its completely bonkers yet adorably silly presentation and its rather peculiar control scheme, one that definitively takes some time to adjust to, but one you do it’s like riding on a bike. Managing both joysticks, knowing when to turn and when to stop, where to go and what to evade, it’s a waltz performed by a mystical otter that plays the accordion, and you may be thinking ‘’Deemon, that doesn’t make sense at all’’ and to that I say EXACTLY! It’s a hectic loop, there were times I was sweating wondering if I’d even come close to the required size to beat the game, only to steam roll while some of the most varied and oddly beautiful bangers play in the background, some even compliment you! And that’s when the stress starts to mix with an zen sensation, a melding process that culminates once you do it, you manage to reach the required size, and from your mind an profound and sound ‘’WOOOOOOOOO!’’ sensation appears as you begin to try to go even higher, reaching uncontemplated horizons by your small prince mind and achieve a perfect star shine... only for the King of the Universe to go ‘’You call this a star? Oh me oh my.’’ ...

It feels too chaotic, and yet, it’s perfectly calculated. There are so many maps that it feels like new surprises are neverending, yet there are so little that learning their routing becomes essential as well as pretty rewarding; there’s so much stuff that it may be hard to know where to start or on what you can even roll over, yet it’s placement is so finely tuned, so perfectly put together that it begins to be like a puzzle that gets easier as you go along, and even throws some extra challenges like finding the scattered gifts across the globe or trying out the constellation stages. Even when the King of the Universe throws you to repair his ‘’naughtiness’’ or time seems of the essence, there's always a moment of respite, a small victory whether it’s in pure calmness or pure ectasis, or something as simple as triying to find out a new crazy set up or what do they ask of you next. Going from having to just achieve 1 meter to the three-digit numbers was a feeling of progression that seems simple, but I wasn’t expecting to see so well-crafted in so little time, to make me keep coming back time and time again may to grab a scarf or shirt on the way, or get the biggest cow possible and make one hell of a Taurus.

The little intermissions, the songs, the movement... it’s such a silly experience, and I use that word with the best intent imaginable. Katamari Damacy is comfy and hilarious, stressful and maddening, a cocktail of emotions I don’t think a game has made me feel in such a way. There’s not a ton of games that say goodbye when closing them, and even among them, Katamari does it with an irreplicable sweetness, the same with which i does everything else.

You gotta defeat mouses if you want to go up against a Kraken, you need to see small worlds before going through the globe, and of course, if you want to make the sky shine, you gotta keep rollin’

And before I wrap this up, huge thanks to @Drax for recommending me this one, it was the reason I came back to it after giving it a go in 2022 and dropping it near the beggning and I’m so glad I returned, it was beyond worth it...

Thinking about this game, the discourse around it, the developers, the streamers, the players, the supporters, gives me spiritual depression

There seems to be a prevalent expectation that as games evolved, they also became exponentially more approachable. Higher budgets resulted in smoother graphics and fewer bugs. More complex controls (adding left/right triggers, then adding one/two joysticks, then dabbling with motion inputs, etc) gave players a firmer grasp over their characters. AI became more predictable as their algorithms became more intricate to capture a wider range of responses. In a sense, as the technology expanded, the resulting products seemingly became more streamlined to better suit the player’s needs while more thoroughly capturing a developer’s vision.

Team Ico has never been about following tradition, however. If anything, the evolution of their titles embodies the regression of player control, choosing to instead utilize technological advancements not just to refine its premise via "design by subtraction" as chump has pointed out, but to deliver an entirely new experience altogether. Ico was a classic tale of boy meets girl; the girl had to be freed from her cage and pulled around the castle, as the boy protected her against everything in her way to prevent her demise. Shadow of the Colossus, however, was a story concerned with the struggle over control. The lone wanderer, in his quest to revive Mono, hunts down various several-story colossi capable of swatting him about like a fly. In the resulting desperate dance of death, he at first struggles to climb their hulking figures, hanging on for dear life until he discovers their weak points and stabs the colossi while they helplessly flail about. In other words, it's a game about trying to regain any semblance of control until you realize after the fact that the only shadow left was the literal shadow cast by Wander over their fallen corpse.

The Last Guardian then, can be thought of as the natural evolution of Team Ico titles, in that it melds previous design sensibilities and thrives off of disempowering the player throughout its entirety. Trico, the player’s companion and a cross between cat and bird, is essentially the analog to Wander’s horse in Shadow of the Colossus, Agro. Fumito Ueda designed Agro as a companion rather than just a vehicle, and had his team develop specific movement algorithms that would allow Agro to steer herself without the player’s explicit control, forcing players to put their trust in their steed during certain fights emphasizing bow aiming. Ueda and his new team at GenDesign iterated upon this idea, explicitly creating environments where the player was forced to rely upon Trico’s actions to progress and thus develop dependency between the boy and his companion.

While the game can be thought of as an inversion of Ico in this sense, its design influence upon The Last Guardian should not go overlooked, particularly in how the game captures Ico’s physicality. Ico’s key strength was establishing a sense of presence through minimalist puzzles that lacked overly gamey elements, namely in how Ico interacted with his surroundings. Players are subtly guided into climbing chains, pulling levers, sitting on stone sofas to save, and most importantly, holding down R1 to hold Yorda by the hand around the castle and pull her out of danger whenever captured. The Last Guardian innovates upon this by combining several of the traversable elements and the companion into one. To better navigate the vast ruins, the boy must guide Trico and utilize their tall body of climbable feathers in order to scale heights, while occasionally dragging around their large tail and dangling it over ledges to safely climb down. Most importantly, you get to pet Trico whenever you feel like it to comfort your friend in both their happiest and most emotionally taxing moments. In both Ico and The Last Guardian, the player’s constant contact with both the environment and their companion keeps them firmly rooted within its constructed sense of reality by regularly reminding them of their companion’s physical presence.

This physicality would not be as significant without the lessons learned from Shadow of the Colossus however, not just regarding AI behavior but also specifically in how it adapts the game’s sense of scale. Trico is large, and the boy is small. As mentioned previously, Trico can utilize their size to lean against walls and give the boy a step up, but they can also utilize their weight to hold down large chains and swipe away at imposing bodies of armor. Meanwhile, the boy is much more agile and can fit into otherwise inaccessible small spaces by Trico, squeezing through narrow tunnels and gaps in metal gates to pull switches and let his partner through. This obvious difference in size creates consistent room for contrast, not just in how the two characters differ in terms of functionality but also in terms of their scale when measured against the traversed liminal spaces of the ruins, constantly transforming from immense empty rooms to constrained and suffocating tunnels and corridors.

What is particularly interesting is not just The Last Guardian’s disempowerment or sense of scale, but rather what it manages to achieve with said elements and the resulting contrast to establish interdependency between the two characters and solidify their relationship. The combat, an almost complete inverse of Ico’s combat, is the most obvious example. Rather than defending Yorda by whacking shadow enemies with a stick, the roles have been reversed, in that the player must rely upon Trico to guard against scores of possessed armor as to avoid getting kidnapped himself. Even so, the game plays around with this idea of vulnerability, shifting the onus of responsibility about as the boy often finds himself in positions where he must actively support or protect Trico, such as disposing of glass eyes that scare his friend or scrambling to pull a nearby switch to lower a bridge and give Trico room to climb up to safety. The game is even willing to occasionally break its own rules to demonstrate how this sense of caring evolves past its defined guidelines. In almost any other game, this mechanical inconsistency would be regarded as a flaw, but it is this sense of doubt that creates room for the relationship to build from in the first place, and is perhaps the game’s most understated strength.

This is not to say that The Last Guardian was bereft of limitations regarding the execution of its ambitious scope. The most pressing challenge that Ueda and his team faced was how to balance its constructed sense of reality with regards to player expectations; that is, it had to find meaningful ways to commit to its vision of establishing the relationship between the boy and Trico while also acknowledging and appeasing players that would otherwise get lost or frustrated. Perhaps the most obvious downgrade from Ico is the presence of constant button prompts appearing on-screen to alert the players on how to better control the boy and instruct Trico; while the frequency of the prompts lessens over time, it is a slight disappointment that the game doesn’t simply force the players to experiment with inputs and commands as a more subtle and trusting substitute. This downfall however, is an anomaly amongst The Last Guardian’s other shortcomings, as it manages to successfully disguise many of its other concessions and limitations. There’s a classic “escape from the collapsing structure” sequence where all you do is hold forward and jump, but the game gets away with it because the player is used to being framed as a helpless participant. There’s occasional voice-over dialogue hints whenever the player has been stuck for a while in the same area, but it feels far less intrusive than Dormin’s repeated and booming hints in Shadow of the Colossus because the game has already established itself as a retrospective re-telling from the now grown boy’s point of view. Trico doesn’t respond immediately to the boy’s commands when being told where to go, but it makes sense that they wouldn’t function like clockwork and would need time to spot and process the situation from their own point of view, so the lag in response feels justified. It doesn’t matter that certain isolated elements of the game would crumble under scrutiny. What matters is that the situational context to allow players to suspend their disbelief is almost always present; in other words, the illusion holds up.

I’m still learning more about the game to this day. There are so many little details that I wouldn’t have spotted upon a first playthrough, and it’s an absolute joy finally getting to gush upon spotting them in replays. Of course it makes sense that you can’t just issue specific commands to Trico at the very start as a sequence-break despite not being taught by the game; after all, Trico hasn’t had time to observe you and mimic your actions to carry out such commands. Of course the hostile creatures that look exactly like your friend behave similarly; how can you then use your preconceived knowledge of their physiology to aid your friend in a fight against their copycat? I also can’t help but appreciate how GenDesign condensed so much learning within its introduction; in the first ten minutes alone, you’re hinted on how to later deal with the bodies of armor (the magical runes that appear before waking up are the exact same as the runes that appear when grabbed, and are dispelled in the same manner of furiously mashing buttons), you get to figure out how Trico’s eyes change colors depending upon whether they’re mesmerized or hostile, and it quickly establishes the premise of building up trust with a very wary creature that’s more than likely to misunderstand or ignore you at first. Combine all of these nuances with the game’s ability to destabilize and diversify playthroughs via Trico’s innate curiosity and semi-unpredictable instincts, and you get a game that becomes easier to appreciate the more the player familiarizes themselves with its inner workings.

I think a lot of criticism for The Last Guardian ultimately comes down to less of what we perceive the game is and more of what we perceive the game isn’t. It’s not a fully player-controlled puzzle-platforming game like Ico, it’s not a puzzle-combat game with spectacle like Shadow of the Colossus, and it’s certainly not a classic companion escort-quest game where you can just order Trico around like a robot and expect automatic results every time. Instead of focusing on the progression of more complex controls and puzzles, The Last Guardian is focused on the progression of a seemingly more complex relationship. I’m not going to pretend that everyone will get something out of this game, as it definitely requires a good deal of patience and player investment to meet the game halfway. It’s certainly more difficult to appreciate given its lack of influence unlike Ico or its lack of exhilarating boss encounters unlike Shadow of the Colossus. That said, it’s this element of danger in its ability to commit to its vision while alienating impatient players that makes it such a compelling title once it finally clicks. Many before me have pointed out how powerful the bond between the player and Trico felt upon learning from others that improperly caring for Trico results in your companion stubbornly ignoring the player’s commands; after all, volume swells cannot exist without contrast to provide room for growth. Perhaps this is why at the end of the day, I find myself transfixed by every word that Fumito Ueda has to offer. In an era where developers feel overly concerned with the best and brightest, he doesn’t seem concerned about what video games mean so much as what video games are. I can only hope that someday, he and GenDesign will return to bring us a new title that captures our imagination as thoroughly as many of his works already have for me.

Cyberpunk 2077 (ver. 2.0 onwards) is a technological, narrative, gameplay, and visual masterpiece. CD Projekt Red clearly poured their heart and soul into fixing this game up, and in doing so, they made the new gold standard for western RPGs. With all the noticeable bugs out of the way, I can finally appreciate everything this game has to offer. The story is heart warming and heart wrenching, Night City feels so alive and lived in, combat is experimental in the best way possible, and the things they managed to pull off were mind blowing. Everyone should forget what they’ve heard and play this ASAP. The game is fixed.

There's a certain joy in not knowing. In avoiding trailers and hype, screenshots and terminally online discussion. You find certain sources - people, publishers, developers - that you trust, and then you simply experience their output and recommendations. No teaser needed, no hook to draw you in. They've earned the blind leap.

Which is how I came to Cocoon. Didn't know the genre, hadn't seen a single screen. Downloaded it, booted it up. Little beetle man, running around. Fairly standard lug and tug puzzles and then: the leap. Upwards and outwards into the understanding that the little world you were in is just that: a little world, subject to the same lug and tug rules. Instantly smitten, excited, thinking about all the ways things could unfold.

It certainly doesn't hurt that the game is wonderfully tactile, enigmatic and alive and alien. The soundscape resonates perfectly. Little musical swells let you know when you're walking into the solution of a puzzle, insectile feet clink and clank pleasantly. Lovely stuff.

The puzzles? Sadly, still those standard lug and tugs, with the occasional nod to the in-and-out world hopping. You collect more orbs - worlds - with different abilities. You apply them in safe, softlock-proof puzzles, each discrete enough that you run no risk of them ever overlapping. A little poking and prodding is all you ever need to get through, even in the eleventh hour when the game starts to twist its core mechanic inward on itself.

And that's the problem, really. Cocoon is clever but safe, polished to a mirror sheen. You gloss and glide over it, meeting little resistance until you find the end. It's fun, it's gorgeous to look at and listen to, but it's playtested and designed into pursued perfection, afraid to challenge the player in any meaningful way. Which is fine. It is what it wants to be, and time spent with it is hardly wasted. Nonetheless, it could have been more. As it stands, it promises the stars but delivers the moon.

How dare they force me to un-learn all my Dark Souls muscle memory? It took a minute to get used to, but the combat in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is one of the best and most satisfying loops in any game I have ever played.


Aside from a couple of duds (the first couple) Sekiro also has some of the most engaging bosses and enemies in any From Software title. I legitimately thought the final boss was going to take me a full week to beat. Four phases?!?! It took many more tries than I’d like to admit, but in the end, defeating him felt like a true test of my abilities rather than a cheese-fest.

Unfortunately the game doesn’t get off on the best foot. After a cool intro you’re sent to the Ashina Outskirts, which I found to be a major slog (the game really picks up once you beat Gyoubu Oniwa and stays near-perfect right to the end). I’m also still not sold on the spirit emblems system and a few other things like resurrection. They felt like they kinda encouraged grinding and I’m not about that life.

Once it hits its stride, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a sublime work of art, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a more cathartic combat experience this side of Doom Eternal.

A lot of action games like to make most spectacle fights QTE fests or just painfully easy, most of the time that’s not a bad thing, because it’s at the end of the fight and the player has earned it. Armored Core VI, however, makes sure every boss fight is a spectacle throughout the whole thing, while still giving as much control to the player as possible. And it pulls this off beautifully.

some of the fellas here are in DIRE need of reeducation

total blast from start to finish - even after the third playthrough. narratively it's just the right amount of explanation vs interpretation with a compelling cast whose voices are so well spoken that you'll remember the mains (especially walter and rusty) in full color even without putting a single name to face

they lend an incredible amount of authenticity to the story, which is pretty subtle overall and relies on foreshadowing and tension more so than big twists. i'll keep it vague and just say that when it comes to solidifying the routes, megaten ain't got shit

as far as combat goes, it feels great and build variety is top notch. there's something to be said about how some playstyles can outshine others in terms of efficiency/simplicity, but the biggest strength of the AC customization is that you're ultimately able to use whatever you enjoy (within the compromises of weight/energy restrictions, anyway). 100% buy/sell rates ensure you can always experiment and try new things too

some would claim this stops being the case with the "big bosses", which the same people tend to compare towards sekiro and dark souls, but i'd argue that's a case of what we in the biz refer to as a "skill issue" and nothing less. simply put - you can beat balteus with whatever the hell you want - i used two shitty assault rifles because i didn't want to restart the mission and it worked just fine (sure it took four hours of trial and error, but still - i got really good after that!)

also: this game's fucking gorgeous. and it only ramps up progressively more on that front as it goes on. i swear each chapter has at least 3 wallpaper worthy shots in cutscenes alone. music's killer too - more subdued than what you'd probably expect from hoshino (most of the time) but i dig the reznor vibes just as much as the autotuned dog barks, y'know?

at first i didn't really want to write a long review here, but it felt wrong just submitting a vague joke that only certain people would understand. so instead i decided to write that exact same joke anyway, but sandwich this review between it so i'd feel like i still did justice on one of my favorite games in the past ten years. now i'm the freelancer who has it all

main system: activating combat mode