Pulling a 100k combo with Superman by the Goldfingers: Overplayed🤢, boring 🤢, guaranteed to bail the combo. 🤢
Pulling a 100k combo with Shutdown by Skepta: Transcendental🔥, goated🔥, you will hit x5 900s without bailing🔥, the way the original game should be experienced.🔥

Nintendo really be cooking with Splatoon its scrumptious and delicious, thankyou I would like more. Nintendo adding another way to invest 100 hours of playtime next to turf/anarchy/salmon run is always a treat. And while I do love me some new exciting ways to playink, slurping up these little story droplets in Side Order made me really yearn for more single player and more ways to see the kinetic cast more. Gotta play Octo Expansion man, gotta play Octo Expansion real soon 🏃🏃

I'll put more coherent thoughts after I have seen the credits once, but I'll say that this is probably the most I have enjoyed the gameplay of a Supergiant game (make that of what you will). Never hits the narrative/vibe-highs of Pyre, but Hades scratches a perfect itch of mind-numbing oodles of particle-bombs on your screen, contrasted with the back-and-forth talky-talks of hot as fuck, beautiful renditions of the Greek Pantheon. Not to sure how I feel about the clear line drawn between these sections, but the latter sure is a good enough carrot to push through for me so yeah.
Thanatos and Achilles are so hot its insane.

UPDATE
Okay after credits roll + 5-7 more hours of playtime - I enjoyed it! Glad to see how much of the dynamics and scenery transformed as the story progressed and they always throw more stuff that you never feel like you are just treating the same stuff over and over again. However, the game made me recognize a good discussion point: Exit points and playing when satisfied. I reckon there are like 5 hard exit points of the game?
A: Upon escaping the first time
B: Upon seeing the credits roll
C?: Maxing out specific relationships
D: Maxing out all relationships
E: Maxing out everything
Which is cool and awesome, glad to see developers encouraging this. After the credits rolled, I still had some vigor and vague goals in my head so I kept playin', but what was once blistering fast and adaptable pacing and story-writing suddenly turned into this drip-feeding cycle of unnecessary padding as the scaffolding of the game unveiled itself under me. My hunch was right: Separating the house and the actual run into two distinct things can lead for a quite frustrating gameplay-loop in which I have to keep churning out runs in order to pray and hope that the character is even there and even wants nectar to progress that story line, a story line that is what 3 lines of dialogue that barely feel like enough? Until before it was fine - you weren't shackled by arbitrary rules of when and in what order something appeared and the better you played, the faster you were rewarded with more character dialogue. Having to kms in runs to accelerate a house refresh is just a chore and wish the game gave me a choice to ultra focus on just the relationships, especially if I have already gathered all the resources for it! It's a frustration that I cannot really blame the game for - it gave me a jumping off point and yet I kept going, knowing fully well that this would most likely entail patience and needless grinding as most post-game shenanigans feel like.
Genuinely thrilled for Hades 2 now :)

Frankly adore it wow, didn't think I would stick with it through the end. Once past the wonderful opening act of the Great Plateau, I remember seeing the vastness of the open-world, the vagueness of the tasks at hand and the game's beckoning of "just explore where you wanna 'splore" and being overwhelmed and staggered by it. I felt hoodwinked, betrayed: What do you mean I should explore with just 3 hearts and barely enough stamina? At it's worst, it felt like aimlessly running in quicksand. Every time I was given to chance to pick the game up and continue on, I dreaded it. It wasn't until I finally completed the first Divine Beast that I was freed from the shackles of my brainworms and could accept and breathe-in the Wilds.

BOTW relishes in it's fantasy, in the thought-bubble players have when not playing the game, of the stories arisen from emergent gameplay moments and handcrafted side-quests, of the introduction of striking and distinct key-characters and of it's many quiet moments of climbing, gliding and running around glades and cliff-sides, thinking about the game, filling holes and expanding it to create your own personal, much grander headcanon than it actually is. To isolate anything of that experience & criticize would be a disservice to the whole of Breath of the Wild. To hell with a little bit of undercooked character writing and some weapon durability, I just got a cool new shiny weapon and I just saw a dragon off the distance while free-soloing!
And after 6 months of starting my journey (4 years if you want to account when I actually first played it lol), I am finally happy to have played a Zelda game that I genuinely adore.

Earning tha streetcred by rocketskating through clusters of architectual behemoths feels gewd! Scratches that Surf-Itch without being one. Esoteric control scheme that feel surprisingly intuitive once you realize what it's going for and thanks in part to it's really smooth difficulty curve, you really get to play and learn the cool nuances of the controls and mechanics. Kinda wish it went more unhinged with the later lines, but it's such a sweet little package of a game that I cannot recommend it enuff!

This is so for me 🥹🥹
A three-skelebros roadtrip through trials and tribulation - parodying/paying homage to trope-y set-pieces and gameplay-genres with every chapter. The WarioWare minigames turning into a universal "action-verb" allows for absurd levels of silly "Can we make this a Minigame?"-question that always get answered with a gleeful "yes :D". Adam Pype going to TOWN with tha visuals: A blend of silly doodles, fake-photogrammed lowpoly environments and multimedia-esque cutouts underlines the core feelings the game is going for: unpredictability, energy and variety.
Also what the FUCK do you mean the game ain't done??? I ain't even seeing no sign of life. I hope they finish it one day... ._.

Hellishly mesmerizing, like peering through a microscope into a pulsating, "glow-in-the-dark" party for bugs. Psychedelic, kinetic and exhilarating through and through. Akin to Thumper and Post Void with it's antagonizing vibes and visually obstruction used as difficulty. Gotta be honest, Barely know what the hell is going on 80% of the time. A layer of esoteric rules and game design that leave me confuse; like, when do I actually die? Does my health regenerate? What exactly do the the power-ups do?
Highly recommend to not listen to the lies and deceipts (recommended to play with gamepad) and just play with keyboard and mouse. Felt like my brain split into two playing the game with tha gamepad and I genuinely started to get headaches after 20 minutes. Worth it doe, these shapes and colors be POPPIN!!!

Time races by, yet the desolate, by-gone metropolis is stagnant in time. Capture it, present it and share it, but only once! Make it count. Sprinkled throughout, thoughts and phrases by past snapshot-takers: add to it, make it funny or make it thoughtful. And as nightfall takes over the city, leave your mark and visual message for the rest to think about in the uncertain future.

Game so good I wrote a small piece about it

Stand tall you speedy soul... you are goated. A bite-sized amusement ride, exhilarating and charmingly weird, gleefully crude and proud of itself! I hope one day, tha big W can follow his passions (fuck bitches and get money) in another mainline one day...

My, what a beaut. Oozes in charm and visual delight to an extensive degree that I cannot help but grin throughout the entire experience. Layton-esque puzzles, Ace Attorney-esque investigation, Whodunnit Murder Mystery thinking, Colorful Cast of Character talkings and a sprinkle of Lovecraftian whispers: All ingredients informing and nurturing this decadent meal. Tangle Tower is a jaunt of a game, yet one where every step was infused with so much whams and love and care that I can bat away at some odd shortcoming here and there. Thrilled for the sequel, give me more of Grimoire and Sally!

It got:
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Katamari Damacy
Toy Story (for some reason)
Hatsune Miku
Need I say more?
It's simple, pick up and play with a wide collection of good tuuns. Won't stop me from sucking ass in it doe.

We all know 🗣️ 𝙅𝙀𝙏 𝙎𝙀𝙏 𝙍𝘼𝘿𝙄𝙊𝙊𝙊🗣️ : It's aesthetics and audiovisual persona transcending it's own game into planes beyond our comprehension. It is vibes, it is culture, it fucks. A game that has the largest disparity between enjoying Jet Set Radio (the idea) and enjoying Jet Set Radio (the game). This stigma made the game seem like the most unapproachable clunk and thunk known to man. And it ain't!**. Jet Set Radio is a challenge of persistence, a bit of mental fortitude and embracing the inline skates. Go with the flow or get filtered. Earn the vibes, live in the zeitgeist. The once heavy and sluggish controls will feel rhythmic and methodical by the later half of the game. Persist through the friction and you will get to enjoy one of the raddest game's I have ever played.

**Minus the following:
- Race Vs Yo-Yo
- Any Tag Crew Fight
- The Final Level
- Playing Tab
- Not telegraphed connected levels
- EXITS in maps???
(Joyous 5 hours, these 6 points doe - fuck them)

Cosmo D's surreal games are a delight - surreal exploration of pattern-ridden interiors, exaggerated architecture and eavesdropping on melodic oddfolk talkings, while the music and spatial audio's in and out from set to set is a delight that keeps on giving. Contains the same stride and flavor as Tales from Off-Peak and while I do think Tales From Off-Peak hooked me alot more, this game offers all the nuggets I enjoy so yippie me :)

Relatable, I too have delulu dreams where everything sorts itself out nicely and I fixed all my relationships and I go fly into the sunset :).
(Jokes aside, I really enjoyed this suburbian Bri'i't'ön turn-based handball game! Got a breath of authenticity through it's coat of "ustwo's polish and elgancy"-paint and voicework. Gets the award for: The most pointless implementation of Rougelike mechanics in a game.)

What a fun romp! Quaint, charmingly odd, with humor to fall in love with! Looking closely into it's twinkeling, paint-bomb'd diorama, Magic Wand is interesting: It's not a conventional "working" JRPG, but rather a framework of an JRPG, with it's colorful innards peeking through from time to time. A lack of leveling, purpose-appeasing combat, an arbitrary health system and non-existing death all point to what it's scaffolding aim to be: Set-dressing. To provide a stage of context and culture for it's jests and laughs. And it sure is damn funny! Like an imaginary headcanon you make up over the course of a bored school day, loosely connected, joyfully nonsensical and fleeting. An energetic gust of wind that, despite everything I just said, sadly did not whisk me away. Having not played a lot of JRPGs, I feel it's nuances and structure bouncing off of me harder than I thought it would. The later half becoming a sea of visual clutter and harsh noise, bordering frustrating to play and annoying to parse where I even am depth-wise. I am certain after having played any other game of thecatamites this game will flourish in my head, but until then I venture on in my pocket-less coat to... somewhere.

Tha punchiest juiciest game-feel ever, Vlambeer's in shambles. Watch in glee, as chaos ensues while your beautiful ball squahes, streches and flings itself onto enemies while a barrage of colorful particles, effects and camera-shake hit you with so much serotonin, it almost becomes fatiguing. Got early onset of Rougelite-Syndrome, but isn't quite trapping the game (yet).

Oida, wos bin i denn für 47 Joa olt? Bist du deppert?

As a longtime fan of AGrumpyFox/Deke64/HerrDekay/Dennis (mans has lots of aliases), I am happy to say that this platformer is great! Feels like a very efficient game all throughout: The tight and varied selection of 5-minute-ish long levels, the lowpoly smartly reusable assets, a predictable format and tha game ✨JUICE✨ keeps it fun! Unfortunately, not enough to keep me fully engaged and really lovin' it. The foundation is solid, its just missing that secret ingredient to really make me want to dance with tha game. And a scaffolding of a game's narrative outline sprinkled throughout vague logs isn't quite the added taste note that I was looking for.

By the heads of tha polarizing group Arcane Kids (idk, you all can make an opinion on them) comes a Fetus of a would-be game: An alpha, locked inside the internet archives while Arcane Kids fizzled out of existence to make big commerical games like... Donut County... and Neon White... :(.
Stumbled upon it after watching the postmortem/making-of of Ballistic Zen, Perfect Stride is a love-letter to the "weird shmooving" sub-genre, offsprung by the lovely engine quirks from Quake, CS and tha classics, blessing us with cool stuff like bunny-hopping and surfing. In Perfect Stride, you surf (literally on a board) around, horizontally ungulate the mouse to gain more speed to be more, well, rad. Cruising through the kaleidoscopic-esque landscape, smokin a cig, just vibe. For what the game is (unfinished), it's remarkable, it's admirable. Yet, it always feels like it's about to burst from it seams. It's an alpha so i guess it's expected for the game to feel fragile. Just dont stare at it for too long, or else it'll evaporate :).

A rather awkward, yet endearing transition to 3D, encapsulating the fact that I have yet to go beyond the main game's content. Gotta get to that one day.

The world needs more "just cute and sillys" for an hour or two of playtime. That phone-hangup joke at the beginning was very funy

[Some epic music starts playing]
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▬▬ι══ 𝘽𝙄𝙂 𝘼𝙎𝙎 𝙈𝙊𝙉𝙎𝙏𝙀𝙍 ═════ﺤ

At it's best, Granblue Fantasy Relink is a highly-concentrated, epic action RPG that keeps on one-upping itself in it's grand vistas and even grander bosses with one-off mechanics, over-the-top encounters and oodles of giant creatures to fight and besiege. At it's worse, Grandblue Fantasy Relink is this👇

³⁰⁰ 💥₄₅₀ 🔥 ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁
🗡️₂₅₀💥.... ݁⊹ . ݁˖ . 5600 𝘿𝙖𝙢𝙖𝙜𝙚

████████████████ 99%

For my first-venture in the Grandblue-verse, I was taken aback by how honest and by-the-book the narrative and it's depicted cast are: A ragtag group of happy-go-lucky friends that all bond over their love of helping and venturing forth, with a villain who seeks to destroy the (rather standard depiction of a fantasy world) world over selfish gains. I admit, 'twas refreshing at first, but after Vyrn's 10th dumbass quip I lost all the spark the game's setting hold one me in an instant.

₄₅₀ 🔥³⁰⁰ 💥⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁
³⁰⁰ 💥⁴⁵⁰💥.... ݁. ݁˖ . 5750 𝘿𝙖𝙢𝙖𝙜𝙚
████████████████ 98%

Granblue hooks people with promises and comparisons of "Monster Hunter"-akin combat ('least, that's what I keep hearing people comparing it to!) And I mean, it has big bosses! Big bosses of epic proportions that stomp, slash and shoot about, creating a mini-circle-hellscape to push through. Beautifully telegraphed with the occasional exciting scripted sequence and some really engaging attack patterns that get better as the story progresses. "Get better", as unfortunately the beginning til middle point devolves into your eyes fixating on the upper half of the screen, rhythmically pressing Light or Heavy Attack and a well-timed dodge or two, watching in dread as the bosses health bar is shrinking at a snail's pace no matter what you do.
And I want to circle back to the "Monster Hunter" comparison that keeps popping up: I don't see it. Sure, it has late-Game quest-grinding, co-op hopping big monster slayin, but is that really the Monster Hunter experience? There aren't any nuances or prep-work going into a battle, just punching and slashing til it's healthpoints reach 0%, which takes a... while...

³⁰⁰ 💥₆₀₀🩸⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁
₄₅₀ 🔥₄₅₀ 🔥... ˖ . ݁5370 𝘿𝙖𝙢𝙖𝙜𝙚
████████████████ 97%

Gorgeous visuals and set-pieces that are often just a sad backdrop for the corridors and circle-arenas of the mission. Variety in characters and trees, yet limited on what one can actually do, while the trees, resources and level-ups beckon you to the horror that lie beyond the final boss (Repeated Grinding and optimization). A beautifully rendered cast of Skydwellers that play it surprisingly straight and "honest-core" (?), yet remain too one-dimensional for any sort of depth or attachment to be made. From the glimpse I have taken into the endgame, it is a purely self-indulgent grind, as every quest is just stripped down skinner-box version of it's story-quest counterpart and, yeah, no thanks.

There is a lot of qualm's I have with the game, but the biggest is probably the fact that a game very much focused on it's combat and big encounters, said encounters are so- OH WAIT LESGO I CAN DO FULL BURST LESGO

݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁ 🔥¹³⁰⁰ 💥₄₅₀ 🔥₁₄₅₀ ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁
݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁ 💥₁₂₅₀💥₁₂₅₀ 🩸₁₆₀₀ ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁
݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . 𝙁𝙐𝙇𝙇 𝘽𝙐𝙍𝙎𝙏 ݁ ₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ .
݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁ ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ݁ ₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ .
.⊹ 55600 𝘿𝙖𝙢𝙖𝙜𝙚
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..
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▬▬ι══ 𝘽𝙄𝙂 𝘼𝙎𝙎 𝙈𝙊𝙉𝙎𝙏𝙀𝙍 ═════ﺤ



...fuck this imma go to sleep 🛌

Bleepblooper-toy, need more games that are just expressive tools for quirky playful thing.

A beautiful nature game, trapped by it's own game mechanics. Love plobbing and prepping the land and watch how the barren wasteland is engulfed by the beautiful colors of a nurtured and fulfilled ecosystem. Balancing XYZ biomes and removing all tools from the land afterwards however turns the calming experience into a rather artificially forced puzzler that ultimately is rather boring and annoying. A game doesn't really need a proper game-y structure and can just live through it's vibes, but oh well.

Barely play any turn-based, base-defending/building games, yet a cool coworker recommended this to me so I kindly followed up on it.

It's good! Got caught off-guard right off the bat with how polished everything felt, "swooshin" and "wooin" about while every interaction has a sense of weight to it. A good pastime to enjoy while listening to a podcast or show. Also I really love the font used in the game, isso good.
A good example of UI != UX however: A window poppin', low-cohesion nightmare, where every mechanic is hidden behind an odd button, window or a particular key-binding. Felt like I always needed to do way more presses to do any action than I needed :/.
Probably would have gotten used to it after a while, but frankly the game didn't grab me enough to pull through the beginning hours. The introduction of new mechanics (and therefore more windows and more complexion) after a while made me coil back to my Steam library window.

Not the game's fault, but I simply want to spend my time doing something that I enjoy or that invokes a visceral/strong reaction for me. What gives? To play games just for the sake of them, adding a +1 on your logging site while you contemplate about giving it a 2.5 or a 3.5? Made me realize that I simply do not want to just play games that are a compilation of mechanics staked together and tied with an XYZ artstyle and that's ok! That's not to belittle the game - it's just me having a moment I suppose.

Competent, yet sauceless. 😔
ArcSys proving themselves that fresh visuals alone can't carry a soulless body. Every character design feelin like a approximated average of it's name, where each gameplay feeling like one straight road. Sure simplify motion inputs, but dont put that ressource/cooldown-binded specials bull. >:(
Always feeling like I could be playing some other fighting game, hell even another ArcSys game.

I'm sorry but narrative guilt-tripping ain't working if you force a designed decision and blame the player directly for acting on it and smugly say that "you can just put the controller down" is a coward's way of defending your narrative and invalidating any criticism on it. A game criticizing war-game's and it's fetishization of violence and war, yet it got multiplayer 😭. Yes I know 2K forced their hand on it, but it is still the crux of the situation of not fully committing to the message in every facet of the game. A game that tells the horror of war through it's cutscenes while a progress achievement hovers over the corner of your screen for getting 100 kill with an assault rifle. ...Game looks pwetty doe and got some good vistas and setpieces to keep the corrdior/hallway fights atleast visually interesting and varied. The squad's barks and demeanor becoming more strained and unhinged was a nice attention to detail that I enjoyed.

Wish the ooze of charm could give me enough determination to commit to the journey, but man is it quite grueling to play :(. Finicky to get that specific type of goo as the swarm weaves in-out on the web, trying to actually build your scaffolding is a constant fight/chore with god and gravity. Watch in horror as your 5 minute structure collapses nigh a meter away from the exit. One truly must imagine the Goo hivemind happy, building its clusters forever.

Super convoluted to buy the game - if you get it on Steam, the base game just includes Episode 3 and following a June 2023 update from the developer, it is "the preferred way to experience" the game, as they think Episode 1 and 2 aren't up to standard. You can get Episode 1 + 2 as DLCs for 8 bucks combined and I really recommend everyone to start with the first episode as it's the only one with a tutorial and like eases you in narrative wise. (and like both are better than Episode 3)

I'll sum up my thoughts briefly of every episode:

Episode 1:
A crude, bashful, scaffolding interpretation of Jet Set Radio, fueled by the ambitions and jank of a student project (positive!). Plopping you in a Tony Hawk Undeground-esque map with little quests spotted throughout makes it very open-ended and gratifying to jump, grind and skate through! I am sick of constantly hearing zapping sounds and the hooligans just saying "RUDIE" "GET BACK HERE YOU LITTLE" non stop - doesn't help that the volume slider just modulates the music and not the SFX :(.
3/5

Episode 2:
Almost identical in every facet to Episode 1, yet it feels a lot more solidified, refined and less Student-project-y. Probably had the most fun with this episode: The addition of new characters were very derivative, but the mission design was lovely and engaging! It still has exactly all the same issues as before, but I guess I have grown accustomed to it.
3/5

Episode 3:
Wow... what tha hell happened here? It's like they took in all the feedback and tried to fix them in the worse way possible!
Let's talk about the good things: The visuals have seen a significant "upgrade" - stronger contrasting shadows and better texture work makes it all pop better on the screen - just wished they put more love into the characters, as their outline shader is seemingly eating them alive. They have minimized the appearance of/improved the enemies and turrets and just made them a lot less annoying and grating which I am all for it.
Aside from that, they really butchered the game in every conceivable way. Heavily altered the movement in a way that feels sluggish and incompatible with the god awful level design of either open empty rooms or hyper-cluttered hallways. Never has it felt more painful to build up momentum and move - in a game that is specifically about that!! One common criticism I had with the first two episodes was with the "opinionated movement system" - you can only point to a general direction and the game decides when you can grind or wallrun. For the most part it worked fine, but executing specific combo missions were either pretty annoying or grating to do. Their solution? GET RID OF ALL THE COOL QUESTS AND JUST HAVE 90% OF THEM BE "TAG 6 WALLS". Oh yeah whoops, forgot to mention, there is a tag mechanic which is a pisspoor rhythm segment that brings the momentum-based gameplay to a halting stop. Yep, that's what they focused on in this episode, just that. Felt myself get physically ill after doing 5 of em in a row. That is not how to go about fixing the issue! The game seemed to be obsessed of highlighting just every bad aspect of itself - the broken halfpipe mechanic where it feels like you are stuck in halfpipe-prison? Yeah there is a quest just for that! The bad optional tagging minigame? Yeah it's mandatory. And speaking of mandatory - In the past episodes, as long as you raked in enuff points throughout, you could unlock the final mission and finish the game. Not only is every mission now mandatory to do, but the finale mission is a timed "get to the hardest area with the worse character" mission that, upon restarting it, breaks! So i cannot finish the game now.

If that's the entry the developers are confident and proud of instead of it's rather gruff, but passionate first two entries, then they can't seem to see the wood for the trees of what they want the game to be.

I REALLY didn't want to be so rough and negative about this passion project (especially since it already has a mixed rating on Steam), but I cannot recommend the game now after seeing what direction they are taking the game with after Episode 3.

EDIT: Having now finished Jet Set Radio for the first time, I am surprised by just how bad it's ripping off from it "inspiration". Why do devs do this - you know you can have more than one inspiration? The stats, the mechanics, the tricks, a place called Tokyo but like different, hyper aggresive AI, you are called "rudies" and everything else, it's just from Jet Set Radio. It's egregious.

Lobotomy-core.
A frankenstein's parody has been birthed from excessive market research. Pure and utter slob, the gunk is thrown wayside to the masses and the public seem to love it! Sure, I can see shimmers of gusto and vibes past it's mechanically stapled together body, but is it really worth to sit next to the soulless stank just to breathe in those few and far-between moments of joy?

I feel for the paranoid hostility players have shown of the maybe or maybe-not generative AI, but it just seems like the devs just ripped them off by hand and lol.

7 million copies sold in just 5 days... and in the end, the general masses really do only care about a feature-checklist stapled on a clipboard that reads the following: It shall have combat, survival mechanics, resources, base-building mechanics, crafting mechanics, catching mechanics, climbing mechanics, stamina, an open world, co-op multiplayer, skill trees, leveling and progression. Does it work well together? Absolutely not. In the end, it feels like you are just playing 5 ripped-off games melted together into one hotpot of mechanics and rules and nothing more. No identity, no message, nothing. A silent shell that just spits out the steam chart trends back at you.
How is anyone supposed to feel but indifferent to a game that says nothing and dares nothing?