This game is an enigma. By all accounts of "good game design" this game is complete fucking dogshit and yet it seems like tons of people who play it end up falling in love with it, myself included.

Maybe its specifically for that kind of nonsense design it loves to indulge itself in, maybe its just the visual and audio atmosphere paired with the relative lack of challenge creating a really pleasant vibe, or maybe its just that Sonic's pinball physics make him fun to move around in such strange environments. Either way, Sonic CD is a must-play piece of art in my opinion if only just for how strange it is.

Outlandishly difficult, horrifically intense in the best possible way, and beautifully alive. It sets an ominous chord from the moment you slide out of a drainage pipe into the industrial wastes that hangs over your trek through the desolate, overgrown cityscape of its world. The sewers sloughing into orange dust, the mountains of garbage home to a dying ecosystem, the crypts that survive a land no longer for them. It's gorgeous and intriguing and as brutal and daunting as it can often be, it gently prods you to try again, and again, and again. I will play this game forever.

It's kinda incredible just how uncompromising this is with what it wants to be, everything is contextualized and nothing is particularly convenient for the player. It all comes together perfectly to immerse the player into the mindset of the slugcat. It's stressful, beautiful and almost infinitely replayable to me. It may be flawed in a few aspects but i can't say it really has any strong detriments with how much it excels at most things and just how much it appeals to me personally. Also hunter mode has got to be one of the best hard modes in any game.

If you had a dream for an entirely original game concept, how much would you be willing to compromise your vision for more sales? If it was possible to quantify such a thing, imagine that making it more appealing to the mainstream by 5% would also increase reception and sales by 5%. Would you stick to your guns and create a completely uncompromised game, even if it meant a Metacritic score of 50? Maybe making it just a little easier or a little more direct would be enough, just so you get to the 70 range and a trickle of word-of-mouth sales. It wouldn’t be a best-seller, but if someone was interested enough to buy it, they would be likely to finish the game with a positive experience.

Rain World decided not to compromise even 1%. This game wants to make a statement about nature, and saw the tiniest bit of compromise to make it fair or predictable as antithetical to the message. For starters, you play as a lonely Slugcat, a defenseless rodent trying to locate the rest of its kind in a journey across an industrial zone overtaken by nature. While predators can snap you up in one bite and machines can crush you effortlessly, all you’re able to do is pick up stuff, throw items, climb, and eat. Your journey is a progression from water lock to water lock, hiding each night from a torrential flood of rain which also kills you instantly. To not starve in the middle of the night, you need to have at least four stocks of food, and surviving a night increases your progression meter by one. Filling this meter to a certain level is required to open the doors between the major areas, but dying means the loss of two levels. This means that to progress to a new area, you have to scour for food sources on a time limit while avoiding unpredictable instant-kill predators and any mistake means you have to repeat the process at least two more times. Once you get to a new area, there isn’t always an immediate water lock, so you have to quickly explore and avoid the new predators after spending most of your time just entering the area in the first place. While those are just the basics, it gives a taste of just how brutal the survival in this game is. I quit the game three times before pushing myself to finish it, and even then I wasn’t exactly having fun.

The reason I'm belaboring the point of just how little fun I had in this uncompromising murderscape is twofold: firstly, to let you know what you’re getting into if you do decide to buy it, which you just might when you hear that secondly, all the pain was worth it. It all paid off. The slow reveal of the game’s themes was absolutely magical. The ending was a perfect mesh of story and gameplay satisfaction, where I felt like I accomplished something and really learned something. It’s the most satisfied I’ve ever felt when completing a game in my entire life. It’s probably going to end up in my top ten games of all time. If all this sounds intriguing to you, and you think you can handle the pain, I’ll be cheering for you every step of the way. Stay dry, Slugcat.

is this really a win for klonoa? namco puppeteering his corpse with the prospect of future games that may not deliver or even get made? i'd rather this series die if this is the quality we can expect from it.

nevermind the obnoxious practice of holding series' hostage like this, it's deeply upsetting that the only compromise we get is a butchered representation of what came before. because god forbid people play old playstation games that "look dated" next to other games releasing today despite there not being a good way to experience how the original games were presented to begin with. you'd think more people would push back against this; especially considering the cries for more klonoa content from those who grew up with this series, but to my surprise basically everyone seems to be eating this up no questions asked. every few years this happens, an old series gets a spark of life in miserable fashion and sometimes it leads to something greater, but even with the best outcome i think its a bad precedent to set. sure crash bandicoot 4 crushed all expectations and is in the running for best game in the entire series, but it rubs me the wrong way that it came as a result of scrubbing away the hard work done by the original developers back in the late 90's.

i understand that much of this stems from publishers more than developers (it's not like they've been very forward thinking when it comes to the preservation of old games to begin with) but when companies demand stringent deadlines with no regard to quality control of course the product will come out half baked, no matter how much love was behind the wheel of it. i don't have a bird's eye view on the development of this project, but i can't imagine it was enjoyable or flexible to work under. even if their hearts were in the right place, theres no chance they had the tools needed to really do this series the justice it deserves.

no matter the circumstances though, this is what we're left with. a botched collection of beloved titles that, for the foreseeable future, is the only way to comfortably play these for most people. i'm not upset that it's overpriced or not stuffed with extraneous crap to justify the cost, i'm upset that this is the standard for preservation the industry is setting for itself. who cares about the game's legacy and how it impacted people, just slap a name on it to excite fans looking for to rekindle memories of better days gone by.

best case scenario we get a new sequel out of this collection and it really delivers on fan expectations, but is that really the lesson to be learned here? treat the past as a frivolous step to success so we can move onto the next new shiny thing? i can't help but feel deeply cynical over the industry if this is how we think we should celebrate the past. klonoa deserved better

Uncomfortably cold, linear, surreal, droning. Forced to walk in a march that always moves, never stops. Altogether difficult for me to say if it has much of, if any, point, but also difficult for me to say if it really needs one. The whole experience bleeds into you and even walking away from it to just think and rationalize the hell happens here leaves a powerful after effect. It's directed in such a gorgeous way to grab you, even if at many points I wondered where the rails were all going to and found my awful attention span drifting. My movie catalog experience is shit but I kept thinking of 2001 A Space Odyssey especially in terms of this movie's ending, in a positive manner I should say. The sort of thing where I left to go for a walk whispering "wow that was extremely cool actually."

You couldn't ask me to analyze this though because I keep coming up with threads and it leaves nothing to satisfy you with. There's musings on having your thoughts dictated and being led on, a biblical "escape the flood" smokescreen, so much populism, and of course a loose ubiquitous sense of time where images of what will happen and what probably did happen burning into the same afterimage. So cool tho

“Unlike for films and albums, a 5/5 game for me isn't necessarily perfect or near-perfect. Games are too long, complex, and interactive to sustain brilliance for their entire runtime. My ratings reflect an overall impression, so while Death Stranding has sloppy writing, and New Vegas runs in a poor engine, those games still achieve more than a vast majority of others.”

I wrote that when I set up this account, and I found myself thinking about this many times throughout my 105 hours with Elden Ring. Much of the game is stunning, and its scale is a major contributor. So many times I found myself taken aback, be it up in the mountains or descending giant roots in an enormous underground cave, at how small I felt. The geography is interestingly designed and yet surprisingly compact, full of things to do and see. It truly is an open-world masterpiece in league with Breath of the Wild. However, much like that game, mo’ scale mo’ problems. Issues compound upon each other over the course of a game this large, leading to repeated content, poor scaling, a lack of polish in boss design, and a general sense of fatigue. There are times when the game was total shite and I found myself thinking “is this really a 5/5 though?”. Then I remembered the Pain, Lost Izalith, Dark Beast Ganon, and much more. Then I remembered the other 95% of the game. Yeah, it''s a masterpiece. Few games have pulled me in like this, and fewer yet have floored me as frequently. Even when it’s dropping the ball in some major way, it’s often nailing something at the same time, be that a thematic, visual, musical or gameplay element.

Here's the thing though. I think the problem is us, to an extent, or at least myself. What are the odds that a player actually finds all 4 Deathbirds by themselves? Pretty low, I would think. But with Souls games, I’m an all-bosses-er, and so when I approached the endgame I made liberal use of guides to defeat them all, along with another 161 encounters which produced a healthbar at the bottom of my screen. By then our weird winged friends had lost their lustre, but is that the game’s fault? Sure, some repeats are poorly considered, but perhaps this isn’t a game where you’re supposed to see it all. Most players might just find one or two deathbirds, and that will feel more special given both the lower frequency and the surprise.

As much as I loved this game, I’m not sure I want another like it from From. A sequel, sure, but one as large as this? I don’t think that’s necessary at all. A tighter experience would be appreciated. The best caves in Elden Ring are the ones that emerge elsewhere – maybe I don’t need a boss at the end of all of these, but rather something that makes the cave feel meaningfully connected to the geography of the world. A smaller world, with more consistently considered content, connected in ways that are more interesting… Elden Ring is already well above its contemporaries, yet I feel like we’re only scratching the surface of what’s possible.

The most terrifying, oppressive, claustrophobic experience I've had in the medium is no surprise a stalking disturbing message of an encroaching patriarchal faith. Heather wants nothing to do with it, and neither will I. Monsters of repressed memories and physical/sexual trauma stalk the corridors, but catharsis is found in making them all Burn. Aborting god is probably the rawest turn on killing god tbh. I personally got lost in the woods of the threads near the end but I think on just initial reflection that there's a large point in there about an incomprehensibly massive societal issue that makes it difficult to form into something tangible (e.g. male gaze and abuse). It's also like a crystalized end to everything the series culminated in before, tying everything back together. Genuinely super well crafted, and a crazy good final message. That cycle of disparaging hatred is still overturned by the real spark of sympathy, we just want love.

The rare and truly, truly special occasion where each and every element works perfectly in tandem to fully realize a game's potential. The gratifyingly punishing mechanics, the terrific sound design, art direction, and camera angles, the grounded yet still interesting puzzles, the ingenious map design leading to a healthy amount of very purposeful backtracking, the slow drip of story clues, and yes, even the control scheme all come together to create not only the pinnacle of survival horror, but perhaps the pinnacle of video games altogether. Every second spent playing Resident Evil (2002) is a second of decision-making, a second of rapidly building anticipation and curiosity, and a second of experiencing an unmatched atmosphere. It's a game that everyone who's at all interested in the medium needs to play, for real.

Not a mad world, THE mad world. A nonsensical cumulus of places, still clinging after so many iterations of preserving a feeling, an element, an ember.

Replaying it after almost 8 years has been amazing. I remembered even the enemy placement, but almost forgot the sensations of the places themselves. There's been a lot of complaints about Blight Town, but i love how horrific it looks, how sick the enemies look, the platforms and the wood don't make any physical sense, you are able to pass through out of pure luck! It was one of the instances where I stopped and felt a sinking feeling in my stomach, thinking how many ages you would need to backtrack in time for any of this to make sense, any logical sense based on our world.

Also, I don't understand people saying this is TOO SLOW of a game. "I've played Dark Souls 3 and now I can't get back to 1". Like bitch, just go for endurance and dexterity, you can dodge anything and move gracefully, you can even get strong armour and tank many bosses while still moving a lot; that's how I killed the DLC bosses and Gwyn on first try.

More thoughts in my Elden Ring review.

wanderer above the sea of fog above the 45th boss arena above the medieval fort archipelago adjacent to the nodal sprinkling of challenge tower/upgrade caves in conversation with the impenetrable questline diaspora above the ancient pagan city above the ancienter pagan plague swamp above ash lake above the fromsoftware slurpee dispenser of mass effect 3 endings

Frightfully fun, often peerlessly gorgeous devourer of my finite life! Truly engrossing and addictive for its often well masked vacuity and kind of horrifying that this and FFXIV will likely end up being the longest single campaigns of any story I've ever experienced. I like it I love it I want some more or it and dear god I hate myself

One of the more notable changes that Bluepoint made with this remake was adding a suite of new contextual animations. When you trigger a riposte or backstab, your character will initiate a lengthy, bespoke animation based on the weapon class, remaining invincible throughout, so the additional length has ostensibly little effect on the flow of gameplay. However, damage is applied at the start of the attack, and additional follow up attacks in the animations lack the satisfying display of numbers and health bar drain, making it obvious how superfluous the new animations are. It's a small problem but it's indicative of a creative direction of Bluepoint that misunderstands why From Software games work and emphasizes the 'could' over the 'should.'

Before the release of the game, I watched a video from the developers where they repeatedly emphasized how much they wanted to show off the power of the PS5 and I think that video may have broken my brain. Demon's Souls is such a weird, idiosyncratic game even today, after it has birthed a subgenre which has transformed the gaming landscape in ways big and small. I am immensely glad that such a magnificent title could be shared with a wider audience but I think there's something almost perverse about desecrating such an unique creative vision for the sake of selling a console. While the original's visual aesthetic was pretty definitively born from technological limitations, it still conveyed mood, tone, and meaning in a way that Bluepoint simply couldn't give less of a fuck about, at least judging from the final product. Fire is now accompanied with a flurry of particles. Magic bears a heavy audio thwomp with spell cast. Armor shines brightly and shimmers. Architecture once spartan and stark is now ornate and regal. Green light filters through the center of the Nexus. Monsters are rendered with grotesque hyper-realism, robbing them of the quiet dignity that Miyazaki and his team envision in the decaying worlds they create. Despite besting even Elden Ring in some important areas like character creation and facial animations, the sum of these changes comes across as just so trite and unnecessary. I'll give Demon's Souls Remake at least one thing; it's made me believe that as a community and an audience, we need to put more effort and enthusiasm into appreciating games in their original historical context.