Multiplayer-only review.

I always like progression systems that encourage you to use a variety of tools, and I certainly don't mind making the sweatiest knife-and-riot shield dorks on the planet use other guns so they can unlock attachments. That being said, it turns this game into a massive time-sink, and there's no way for you to be more efficient in getting these unlocks. Sorry kid, you just gotta play the game. While I enjoy this kinda thing personally, I think there's no denying that it's a slimy tactic obviously created to keep people hooked on COD for as long as possible until the next one comes out. The playstyle customization it results in is really fun, but at player level 40 (out of 55 max) I still have the tiniest fraction of options available to me and would have to play five times the amount to both unlock a good number of weapons and also upgrade those weapons.

Worth mentioning too that all the upgrade systems and camos and unlocks are explained, but those explanations are pretty front-loaded in this experience and you'll be clicking through 5 minutes of them as you try to play with friends for the first time, so if you're like me and haven't purchased a COD game in literally ten years you'll still be sitting there ten or fifteen hours in, going "ohhhhh that's how that works". It's not really helped by the menus being laid out so poorly - it's never really clear what actions are possible because you're not sure where you'd even find them, assuming they even exist. I think this is just the result of putting too much strain on the loadout customization feature - clarity would improve greatly by moving challenges of every kind to a single, separate tab in the menu. I can't speak to how confusing this is for loyal Call of Duty fans, but the onboarding experience for new players is not going to win awards.

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Other Notes:

- I don't think I've heard this many slurs since playing Overwatch
- Seeing a lot of gameplay elements/gadgets/etc. that have been shamelessly lifted from other games. The people I play with complain a lot about drill charges (for Siege players: think "throwable Fuze charges") so perhaps I'm a fool, but these seem to be categorically good for game health/balance.
- As someone who is fascinated by guns as pieces of engineering, there's something satisfying using the gunsmith and watching a gun transform into other guns from the same family - watching a boring old 7.62 AK assault rifle transform into an RPK, a Bizon, a Vityaz, etc. It's cool! It's half the reason I keep playing this, honestly.
- Can't really see any of these maps becoming "classics", as each of them is downright miserable in at least one of the core modes. None of them are awful all the time, but playing Domination on Embassy could be used as an alternative to community service for well-behaved criminals.
- Still can't get over the awful menus. A $300 million budget with no UX designer.

Surprised by the number of people who think of this game as predatory or morally bankrupt in some way. It's simple - a game where you just WASD around, where every weapon is a passive effect, and the game never really attempts to disguise the fact that unlocking more things just changes the components of the light show.

You don't have to enjoy the game (or even respect it, really), but there's definitely room for stuff like this to exist in the landscape without it degrading the medium or whatever the concern might be. There's still a game here, there's still concern for how systems interact with each other and you can still come up with unique strategies using the handful of tools you're given. It's not artistically ambitious, but I don't think it has to be. The existence of fine dining does not render fast food obsolete.

My friends and I used to browse the free-to-play section on Steam for the weirdest multiplayer abandonware we could find. It's a lot of fun, actually, blazing through five or ten games a night that are partially translated, have invincible enemies, have no enemies at all, etc. We were particularly enamored with fishing in any form, and stumbling across "World of Fishing" did briefly feel like we'd hit the jackpot. It was about the same level of quality we were expecting.

This game is long dead now, which isn't much of a surprise - it was an MMO dedicated entirely to fishing whose fishing mechanics were less interesting or complex than most other MMOs I've played (where fishing is barely even a footnote). It didn't look appealing, and the controls when you actually got a chance to catch a fish were not particularly intuitive or engaging, often being frustrating and finicky. I genuinely have no idea who this game was for. Usually, when you ask this question, you can at least assume that the developer is making this for themselves, but if anyone on the dev team liked fishing at all, they weren't given enough time for that to shine through in the final product. It is neither relaxing nor engaging, lacking as both a social activity and a solitary one. There were plenty of opportunities to spend money if you were inclined to do so, but whatever "progression" you were paying for was unclear.

Having also taken a peek at some of this developer's other offerings, I truly feel bad for anyone who is still expecting them to do anything interesting with the GunZ IP after buying the rights several years ago. I don't like writing off creators as a whole, but I would not be optimistic about them doing justice to a beloved product based on their previous output.

Everything about this feels stiff - the writing (sometimes), the on-foot traversal, the driving, the combat, all of it. The combat lacks the impact and fluidity of the Arkham system, which was sitting right there in the same IP, ripe for the taking. The Batcycle travels at a light jog, which is somehow too much for the game to handle. There's room for progression to make a game like this interesting, given that you have 4 different characters to upgrade in parallel, but they managed to kill off any interesting decisions by using a live service-style progression model... without it being a live service?

What the fuck is going on with this game? Enemy levels, gear rarity, stats, upgrade materials, skins, it feels like a game where they added all this and either forgot to monetize it or decided not to in late development. I'm not really sure that even DC superfans would like this one, unless you're chomping at the bit to put Robin in a suit with more greebles on it, or play something that has literally any Red Hood in it.

For as much as I love this game, I can't help but wish they had gone even harder on making a game that completely throws action-packed missions to the wayside in favor of making a cowboy slice-of-life. If I had spent 33% less time mowing down dudes and 33% more time with Mary Linton, 33% more time breaking into a slave catcher's foreclosed house, 33% more time learning about the cholera outbreak affecting one of the game's towns, I'd be even more in love with it. The guns are fun, I like them, but I think their presence could be significantly reduced without feeling like the violence has lost its thematic weight.

Not every game should be like this, of course, but Rockstar proved that they can make something interesting with all the money they pumped into this product, so I can only wonder what would've happened if they tried a little harder to break with convention.

Weirdly, I think this is better than Vampire Survivors? This is mostly the result of scores of little changes, the kind of balance changes that would be too tedious to list in a review, but they add up to a product that is far less frustrating to play than normal Vampire Survivors. Most notably, evolving weapons isn't tedious, items have far more interesting effects, and characters are unique in ways that are interesting for longer than the first 15 seconds of a run (upgradable passive abilities). Thank god I'm not spending one passive slot every single run on spinach!

Really, the biggest downside to this game as a casual Hololive fan is that I am fiending for more characters, but given how big a head start Vampire Survivors had in producing content for the game, it's impressive that this game can hold a candle to the original at all.

I think this'll be my third and final attempt to review League in a way that I find satisfactory.

It always strikes me as a little silly to rate esports-first games poorly because they have the capacity to make you or others mad - getting people invested in competition will always have this result at some point or another, and asserting that the toxicity present in League is exceptional in some way is strange when you can see similar behaviors playing with anonymous strangers in Mario Party or online Monopoly or what-have-you.

On the other hand, League is tailor-made for misunderstandings. Its tutorial teaches you how to cast abilities, but nothing about macro or micro goals other than last-hitting minions to earn gold, and there are SO many systems and strategies here you can use to develop/mitigate advantages that each player can develop their own playstyle that is completely incompatible with their teammates. As frustrating as it is, it's still League's biggest draw for me.

With 160+ champions, a similar number of items, and freely changeable runes to further customize your playstyle, there is likely some way for League to cater to any gameplay fantasy you like as long as it involves small-scale combat. I have seen players completely defy conventional wisdom, instead using their champion's unique strengths to invent an entirely new way to play the game. It takes a lot of time and learning to get to this point, but if you're wondering why someone would put thousands of hours into the game, acknowledge how mad it can make them, and keep coming back, this is the answer - it can be deeply rewarding to find your way to play this game, to find that champion that fits you like an old baseball glove, to find a new broken strategy that nobody is using, to find the worst/least popular champions in the game and make them viable by completely changing how the game is played. If it's stupid and it works, it ain't stupid. League does an excellent job of demonstrating the extreme strengths and extreme weaknesses afforded by PvP - you can abuse their aggression, their boredom, their lack of matchup knowledge, their inattention to the minimap, etc. Even toxicity can be turned to your advantage - it is entirely possible to win games by goading your opponent into making bad plays that they can't escape from.

Can I recommend it? No - I've got my fair share of complaints about the way Riot handles this game and their company, but even ignoring that, I shouldn't really encourage anyone to play this. It strikes me as near irresponsible to recommend something that requires this kind of time investment, knowing that those who have stopped playing it talk about it more like a drug addiction than a dropped hobby. So I'm writing this review less as an endorsement and more as an explanation of League's allure at its highest points, what keeps people coming back beyond simply "sunk costs" - to explain what piques my interest as someone who doesn't pay attention to esports or "the meta" or what-have-you.

What a gang of characters, huh? Really feel like this cast includes some of RGG's best characters standing alongside some really… curious inclusions.

Characters:
+ Higashi rocks, man. Love his grumpy ass. Truly One Of The Boys.
+ The other core characters related to the bullying plots are all quite good - Sawa-sensei is the standout, but Ehara also does a good job of playing his role. Sawa-sensei is massively important for multiple reasons but beyond that, she does so much of the early work in making Seiryo High feel like a believable setting.
+ It's very much in line with the cheesy, wholesome nonsense that RGG loves (especially in side stories!) but Class 2-2 gets some GTO-ass plot points and it's extremely my shit.
= Tsukumo and Sugiura are… fine. It makes me smile seeing that they've teamed up, but Sugiura feels like he's basically just there to fill a seat for most of this game's runtime - Yokohama 99 feels more like Tsukumo's thing than Tsukumo and Sugiura's joint venture.
- I love the character archetype Kuwana represents, but he lacks any real magnetism for me. Once his role in the main plot is revealed, there's no real mystery to this character anymore - when you know about his MO, he's a pretty easy character to read.
- Hoshino really pulls his own weight in the first game, but in Lost Judgment he mostly regresses into a bumbling dope who is there to gawk at Saori, and it makes him a grating presence when he does show up.

Detective Features:
+ Being able to use Observation Mode whenever you want makes a lot more sense than having it restricted to scripted segments, although it's mostly used just for spotting squirrel graffiti. Still, I appreciate the change.
+ Tailing is better given that you can take cover wherever you feel like you should take cover, and the persistent suspicion level makes things more challenging. "Blending in" will always be funny as hell for how conspicuous it is, but that's video games for you.
+ I don't think the main story requires you to use the drone at all? Good riddance!
= I don't mind parkour, but it's not used very much at the moment and when it is, it mostly feels like a gimmick feature. I wish it were used more in the world, and despite there being plenty of hand- and foot-holds everywhere, it's annoying having to find the one specific pipe structure Yagami likes to climb on to begin these segments.
- Stealth is BAD. Thankfully it's never too challenging since it's extremely on-rails (it even shows you where to stand and where to throw the distraction coins!) but I'm not sure why this exists at all as a gameplay system. Hell, most of the times you're using it there's not much of a point to it plot-wise, since Yagami never had much of a concern for being outnumbered before.
- I miss making friends! Kamurocho feels so much emptier when I come back, see the same faces, and have no interactions with the Smile Burger lady, or the café employee that was learning English, or homeboy teaching me about different kinds of coffee.

Combat:
+ Snake style fucks so hard. It's almost immediately satisfying to use, but by the time you've unlocked all its skills you'll be ping-ponging idiots around the room, putting them in the dirt while never taking a scratch from a weapon. Some aikido, some wing chun. We even got some shoulder strikes thrown in for good measure. Very fun!
+ Crane style really got a glow-up in Lost Judgment - using it no longer feels like you're tying a hand behind your back. Admittedly, I still barely touched it with how fun snake style is, but when you do it's even more over-the-top than it was before, and still effective at blending large mobs into pureed street goon.
+ Scrapping mortal wounds and adding mortal counters makes the game a lot easier, but also makes it less frustrating too. Where before, the easiest way to deal with Deadly Attacks was "run to the other side of the room and dick around until he's done glowing," you're now incentivized to actually interact with these attacks, or at least stay within striking distance of them.

Can you believe RGG made two entire games without someone being shot dead from off-screen?

- Good core concept! I'm a sucker for these (somewhat) inventive takes on sports, and while this is fundamentally still just air hockey, the MOBA character gimmick pulls enough of its weight that I almost immediately found myself spam queueing for games, trying to hone a strategy based on what went wrong in the last match.

- A lot of basic functionality missing at the moment. I didn't know that you could view champion abilities before entering a game, because the button to look at that information is one of the smallest on the main menu. Attempting to report a player opens a browser window - if you want players to actually report toxic behavior, you should do everything in your power to make it as easy as possible. The lack of communication makes it hard to grief your teammates, but it also means that you can't ping where you're sending the ball, you can't ask for a position swap, and attempting to strategize mostly looks like an attempt to induce Pavlovian conditioning in your teammates. The main menu has several dropdowns that don't look anything like dropdowns, meaning it's unclear how to change your character's passive abilities, what position you want to play, how to change the "default" character (the one selected automatically when starting a match), until you've clicked around enough to stumble across it. No dealbreakers here, the game is playable, but this is absolutely the time to make a good impression - once the streamer attention dries up, I'm wondering if this game's charm is strong enough to overcome the lack of QOL features.

An 8/10 game brought down significantly by frustrating encounter design. There are 40 levels in this game, each of which is a huge coin flip where one possible outcome is a treat, the player using their unlocks and abilities to make a mob of enemies look like fools. The other possible outcome is playing one of the most frustrating levels in recent memory - shotgun enemies showing up 5 at a time, any one of whom can one-shot you. Multiple un-stagger-able enemies whose only attack is a ground pound with an enormous hitbox that instantly ragdolls you. Multiple gun enemies pouring into an arena as a motorcycle tries to run you over, exploding if it hits a wall.

The hitboxes on enemy attacks in this game are truly massive, and it's incredibly frustrating when so many of them are one-shots, nearly one-shots, or have the ability to chain-stun you. The game is clearly designed purely as a power fantasy, but the ability of enemies to lock the player down ruins much of this fantasy as there's no satisfying way to counter the most annoying enemy habits. Perhaps more annoying than any attack is the enemies' tendency to constantly pick up things in the environment and throw them at you, resulting in near-constant slo-mo as you dodge roll around the map to avoid chairs, environmental hazards, bullets, one-shot command grabs, and ground pounds, none of which can be blocked or parried.

When this game works, it's fantastic - you feel like you're playing through a John Wick movie where they forgot to give him a gun, but if you try any of these fun cinematic takedowns at the wrong time, you'll likely die, since you take full damage and can be staggered out of any of these animations. It's bad enough that I actually went to go post on the Steam forums for the first time in a decade, and apparently I'm not the only one. The fact that you can go to the "playground" and customize your own encounters - and the fact that this instantly makes the game 40% better! - indicates that it's got decent production value but desperately needs an experienced level designer, someone who can figure out how to challenge the player without resorting to "dodge a lethal map effect every 2 seconds".

Developer is so unhinged that the infamously hands-off Valve banned them from posting in their own game's forums, so they've taken to posting their 1. transphobic, 2. anti-masker, and 3. conspiracy theory-laden ramblings in the patch notes, one of which has been marked as a "MAJOR UPDATE" (lol) on Steam, simply titled "DONE"

Some links for those of you who would prefer to see the evidence:
- Imgur album of their Steam ""updates"" - fair warning, these are genuinely hateful
- Their now-banned Twitter account
- from the dev's steam profile lmao

RIP BOZO. fuckin loser

A very nice open world with an incredible amount of stuff to do, but this game's raison d'etre is milking you for money via a waifu slot machine, so they're deathly allergic to doing anything interesting with the game they've built on this chassis. People have already taken this game to task for the predatory nature of gacha mechanics, for openly aping Breath of the Wild's style (and doing it worse), etc., so I want to take this in a different direction and focus on what keeps the best parts of this game from being better:

Dungeons required for progression are locked behind a time-gated resource, with rewards that rotate based on the day of the week. The combat is serviceable and I could easily see myself grinding these dungeons if it let me (a la Diablo 3, spamming Nephalem/Greater Rifts). Many rewards are locked behind a story with countless unskippable, intrigue-less conversations - no human character that you actually see on-screen will do anything meaningfully villainous outside of the opening cutscene. It's a shame, too, because their writers have shown that they can actually create worthwhile stories in this universe - there's a fairly compelling storyline in Liyue about a lesser god whose kingdom collapsed around her, and it demonstrates the kind of stories that can fit in this world if you're not afraid of a character getting dirt on their clothes.

Every playable character is palatable, inoffensive, marketable anime slop. Male characters exist in three flavors: Twink, Tall Serious Guy, and Itto. Female characters represent a few more archetypes, but you're still not going to be blown away by the creativity on display here. Give me more varied characters, Mihoyo! You underestimate how horny people are - you can get way more adventurous than this and still have people dropping stupid amounts of money out of sheer thirst. Give me a silver fox character, give me a character with even 5% more body mass, give me an actual-ass evil character (not just assertive! I want evil!).

Why am I actually rolling for these characters, anyway? Optimal gameplay demands that I use one character 80% of the time, with the other 20% split between the remaining characters in my party - you swap them onto the field, trigger their abilities, and swap them out. Unless you're releasing a new character for the Main DPS role, there's no reason to give them interesting mechanics - not that this really happens anyway. Implementing new game mechanics is hard, and I acknowledge that, but Mihoyo has the money and the time to justify it. Currently, the most adventurous set of mechanics in the game belongs to Childe, whose abilities act as a stance system, swapping between ranged and melee - second place goes to Beidou who - wait for it - has a counter-attack on her basic ability. I'm hoping that with the eventual release of Lyney and Lynette we'll see a tandem character, but this would be radical compared to what's in the game now.

Genshin Impact has given me the worst gift possible by being a game that gives you valuable rewards for your time investment, but not interesting rewards. There's so much potential being left on the table here due to a complete dearth of ambition, but rough edges don't sell.