“But, since we're all gonna die, there's one more secret I feel I have to share with you: I did not care for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.”

“What?”

“Did not care for Wind Waker.”

“How can you even say that, Dad?”

“Didn't like... didn't like it.”

“Peter, it's so good. It's like the perfect adventure game.”

“This is what everyone always says whenever...”

“Eiji Aonuma, Takashi Tezuka... I mean, you never see... Koji Kondo!”

“I know. Great, great composer. Did not like the game.”

“Why not?”

“Couldn't get into it.”

“Explain yourself. What didn't you like about it?”

“It insists upon itself, Lois.”

“What?”

“It insists upon itself.”

“What does that even mean?”

“'Cause it has a valid point to make, it's insistent!”

“It takes forever getting in, and then you go through this really terrible stealth section, and then, I can't even get through it. I can't even finish the game. I've never even seen the ending.”

“You've never seen the ending?!”

“How can you say you don't like it if you haven't even given it a chance?”

“I agree with Stewie. It's not really fair.”

“I have tried, on three separate occasions, to get through it, and I... I get to the part where you have to power up the Master Sword…”

“Yeah. That's a great part. I love that scene.”

“It's noted in every annal.”

“And you’re just going from place to place through the dungeons. Like, it’s really repetitive and the stuff you’re doing isn’t that interesting. That's why I lose interest and I go away.”

“It’s giving you freedom of exploration!”

“It’s offering you a wonderous adventure through a magical world, something you don't understand.”

“I love Link’s Awakening. That is my answer to that statement.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, there you go.”

“Whatever.”

“I like that game, too.”

One last turf war before the plug is pulled on my favourite era of videogames since the PS1.

Well, a few games, and several games which disconnected due to server instability. An all time classic. Memories of hot summer evenings in 2015 playing Squid Jump while waiting in the lobby. The lobby music sending me right back to the time.

My friend actually bought me this. I got home from work to find a parcel with my name changed to an ink related pun. I couldn't believe my luck. Iffy servers be damned, I spent hours upon hours on this game, and for a while it was never bettered. It took a lot of updates for the sequel to rival this one.

It may have been superseded and eventually bettered, but this will always be my favourite.

Stay fresh 🥲

I felt like Federation Force was one of those games I had to play online before the 3DS shut down, because its reputation among Metroid fans intrigued me. It was tough since everyone I asked to play it with wasn't interested, couldn't do it, didn't have the time, or straight up flaked out. It's mostly understandable, but it still hurts my feelings. Fortunately for me, rito and some strangers online were crazy enough to join me so that I could experience the game as it was intended.

Yeah, you can definitely tell Nintendo dropped this to shut up the Metroid fans. I wanted to like this game because the concept of a 4 player Metroid is interesting, but instead it feels half-assed. If you want to be put to sleep, play this game's missions and you'll be knocked out. Nothing cool ever happens. You just get dropped into a planet, do some lame puzzles, shoot some shit and watch boring cutscenes. The shooting doesn't fare much better. The stiff controls and weird aiming (which is something you shouldn't have in a first-person shooter) just makes the experience more dull than it needs to be, and I probably would have been more lenient to Federation Force if the shooting aspect was fun and moving didn't feel like your suit was filled with fuckin' cement. The game isn't worth playing for $40, let alone zero.

Nidhogg gets the tension behind a good swordfight and places that into the greater context of navigating large spaces. When played next to another person, the mind games can generate hearty chuckles. The Singleplayer offerings are practically non-existent, however. I'll put Nidhogg into the same camp of games like Duck Game where, on your own, the foundation is still present, but the magic just isn't there. If you have to play it by yourself, the A.I. is pretty solid, so it does edge out the likes of Duck Game in terms of its sustainability. But, yeah, I still don't think it's particularly optimal, and it does take away from my overall opinion of the game.

Played on Android

First person shooters are kind of hard to get right in the mobile scene. Virtual analog sticks aren’t exactly the most intuitive, but if your mechanics work right so can the controls. The better option is to allow hardware controllers and that’s exactly what Flats allows. This is also the best option for multiplayer.

Flats is a FPS with a non-existent story (that’s okay) in which you shoot down colorful bad guys with generic real world weapons. Honestly, the campaign only consists of challenges in which you must shoot a certain amount of baddies, and this number increases with each level. Very simple, and it does get old quick to be honest. While the graphics are unique and simple, they still leave something to be desired. The same level plays out over and over again, despite this type of art style having a lot of potential. All textures in the game are flat colors, but you can make out what they are by their shapes.

The virtual controls are not too bad, the guns handle well, and the sniping is quite satisfying. Make a headshot or “mortal shot” and you get a neat slow motion kill cam. Bullet trails are shown as colors of the bad guys that they are coming from, but the game can still get chaotic as there’s no cover mechanic or even a jump button. Hardware controls are the best option here but don’t go investing in a $60 controller for this game.

I have to say that I couldn’t test multiplayer as no one is playing online. I sat in a lobby for 20 minutes with all of two people connected and they eventually left. The game allows for several modes like Team Deathmatch, Deathmatch, Capture the Flag etc. This could be a lot of fun, but there need to be more players; hopefully, with popularity, they will start flocking in.

As it stands, Flats is a mediocre shooter idea with no one playing online. The art style is nice, but the lack of a story, solid campaign, and overall objectives just makes Flats a quick 20 minute experience and then you delete it.

STOP DOING HYPER REALISM
VIDEO GAMES WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE REAL LIFE
YEARS OF SO CALLED TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT YET NO REAL WORLD USE FOUND IN MAKING A GAME HAVE MORE REALISTIC VISUAL AESTHETICS THAN METAL GEAR SOLID 4

Wanted to look better anyway for a laugh? We had a tool for that, it was called "ART DIRECTION"

"Yes give me SLIGHTLY more smudges on that brown stained floor, give me slightly more lighting that completely destroys the art style at the cost of taking HALF A YEAR from my graphics card's life expectancy." - statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged.

Look at what NVidia and it's mafia of bitcoin miners have been demanding your money all this time, with all the decades worth of beautiful low spec games in your backlog.
???????????
"Hello I would like my games to run and look worse please"
They have played us for absolute fools.

So I don't own a PS5, but I'm very much a fan of Silent Hill. Lucky for me, a good friend of mine does own a PS5, and we decided to get a few beers, sitting down for this short little horror game. I wasn't expecting much after what I heard about it. Wow, this was so bad it kinda became hilarious. It's one of the worst walking simulators I have ever played, and the writing was beyond trash. And I know this will not mean anything to English speakers, but as someone who's second language is German, the attempt to set this in Germany was hilariously incompetent. Not only does it not look anything like Germany at all, but every piece of writing in the game was littered with spelling mistakes I would have bullied people in pre school for. PS1 games from the 90s would be ashamed of how bad they fucked up, not even joking. I love drawing in my Skizzezzen Buch and being part of the Neuzugäng.

We probably took way longer than most people to reach the end because we had to pause every 5 minutes to just riff on what we were seeing. When it finally hit me that they called one of the central characters Maya Hindenburg, I actually got up and left the room. My brain couldn't handle it. That's like setting your game in the US and naming someone John Guantánamo, or calling a Japanese character Miyamoto Nagasaki. This must have been created by AI, no way this was approved by a real person in the year 2024. Anyway, if you're not convinced Silent Hill is dead, here's more evidence of its beaten and bloody corpse with Konami squeezing every last penny out with a fucking vice. Man, Silent Hill 2 Remake is going to be hilarious.