Tell me… Do you ever feel a strange sadness as dusk falls?

i struggle to compose my exact feelings in a review format as they remain scattered and formless even to myself, but i'm going to try my best. a Zelda title plagued with frustrating movement, trampling its own rules, and somewhat awkward pacing, yet has established itself as a poetic tapestry, a metaphor of sacrifice and responsibility along with linearity full of intent, and has made it my personal favourite entry thus far. there were moments where my misunderstandings of a puzzle or dungeon navigation lead to my repeating entire gauntlets of rooms that had me teetering into "gripping my controller in rage" territory, yet the artistic elements of the world (atmosphere, design, score, writing) always kept my attention; most problems i discovered were my own misreadings of given contexts and poor applications of practical thinking, though directional movement when clinging to a wall was designed in a lab to be excruciating and incorrect 99% of the time.

within twiprincess we see emergent gameplay and narrative themes which set expectations for future entries, as well as easily the most inventive selection of tools available to Link across its playtime, with the spinner and its application in and outside the Arbiter's Grounds (especially during its boss encounter) absolutely captivating. to praise the tools is not to draw attention away from the focus on incredible sword techniques utilised in battle, skills which must be earnt by training below one of the coolest characters to ever appear in the franchise, each and every one seeing regular use in my encounters. Link lives and breathes his swordplay in twiprincess and in his rising to Ordon's — and by extension Hyrule's — challenges, he surfaces from the other side as a seasoned veteran of myriad dark horrors, a far cry from the kind-eyed farmboy.

Zelda entries have always seen themes of maturity, coming of age, and extinguished innocence, though twiprincess' use of an evil which directly acts to steal away children's lives, the very future itself, sets the tone for the coming events. Link is very unsubtly being teed up to become town swordsman Rusl's apprentice and eventual replacement in the village hierarchy, a fresh-faced youngster who is content to pay his dues within the bounds of the forest. it's when the idyllic reality of his farm life is shattered upon the jarring kidnapping of the children that the game truly begins in full upon the assumption of Link's wolf/twilight form. i have heard a common criticism that this prologue segment is boring or carries on too long, but i argue the simplistic normalcy and mundanity (not dissimilar to how the SoL segments of Higurashi make me feel) that twiprincess chooses to immerse the player into Link's perspective compliments his characterisation, which is some of his strongest across the franchise.

touching further on the forceful alien transformation and all the gameplay quirks which come with it, i feel the body horror aspects of both Link's and Midna's malformations goes understated or brushed aside within discussion regarding the game (as far as i can see). it's Link's direct personal interaction with the darkness which threatens Hyrule, a symbolic chain affixed to his paw which resounds with each step, which fortifies his submission to Midna's assistance with a fatalistic seed planted. Midna herself must witness the downfall of her tribe firsthand, rendered into meandering savage beasts as she is powerless to halt the advance of some power-drunk servant. our hero, tainted. a princess, defiled and robbed. yet both tread onward, so that this power must not be misused again.

thank you twiprincess for my new favourite Hyrule Castle rendition, my distaste into utter infatuation with the Oocca, and the most incredible set pieces and artistic vision to me across the entire franchise. it casts aside the past that came before it and steps into the light of the future, risking everything to become something truly unique and special. the once cultivated Kakariko has become a ravaged place, the Zora have lost their monarch, the Sheikah are all but blotted from history's weave. yet there is always time to atone, to mend. a sword wields no strength unless the hand that holds it has courage.

logging this as playthrough 2, but it's really, like, playthrough 8 or something. it's actually been a long time since i played through xenogears, but for several years past its release, into the early '00s, i was replaying it at least once a year. it was easily my favorite game for that period. and then i moved to california and i didn't play games as much for a couple of years.

i'll briefly touch on how the material referenced in this game's writing—all the christianity, gnosticism, jewish mysticism, jungian and freudian psychology, evangelion, star wars, arthur c. clarke, gundam and macross etc—opened up new worlds to my still pretty young suburban teen mind. this is stuff pretty much everybody knows about xenogears. what remains interesting to me about this stuff is not just what's referenced, but how it's so intricately woven into an emotional worldbuilding fabric. soraya saga (let's give her some credit since tetsuya takahashi gets most of it—not to mention masato kato—even though she deserves just as much) really aimed for the stars here and it's evident in both the game's reputation for disastrous failure and in what was actually achieved.

another thing that still amazes me even revisiting it once more all these years later is the... well, i hesitate to call it 'cinematography', but the deliberate movement and placement of the camera during cutscenes. one moment early in the game that stands out in my mind is when fei and citan are preparing to leave blackmoon forest for the desert after camping overnight... suddenly there is a loud hum, and the camera pans up to reveal the blue sky through the trees where a mysterious giant craft flies over. almost like a large ufo passing over the woods (which always reminds me of the eerie water tower scene in the movie the flight of the navigator). keep in mind this is a game coming not long after the 16-bit era had ended, and even other 32-bit games were either opting to continue with those traditional overhead tile graphics or to utilize prerendered cgi backdrops. this was imo a huge moment in jrpgs' ability to create a sense of scope with camera movements. beyond scope, it is constantly mindful of framing, always seeking to express something. this push into 3d graphics and exploring what can be done was one of takahashi's primary motives for leaving hironobu sakaguchi's final fantasy team, and whatever one might say about the xenogears team's overall success at making a video game, i think this is one area where their triumph was undeniable. there was nothing else like it. well... except for grandia (which was out for the saturn several months before xenogears' jpn release). but i would argue that xenogears was actually more subtly expressive than grandia, while grandia also excelled at making very striking use of its camera. anyway. i didn't get to play any version of grandia until about a year after i first played xenogears, when we got the ps1 version in english.

one other thing i feel most people skim over when talking about xenogears is its sheer abundance of cute, funny, fascinating little bespoke interactions. i won't provide any examples here, but if you happen to play xenogears for your first time be sure to talk to every npc. explore everything. this game is teeming with life and that might be what i love about it more than anything else.

one thing to consider when going into this game, whether it's your first time or your 8th, is that the localization present here is very frequently VERY weird, to the point that it adds confusion to an already complex world and plot. take the intro fmv and the voiced line, "omega-one, they are attacking." this should have been "omega-one is attacking." this is an extreme example and it's not consistently so misleading throughout the whole game, but there are certainly times when, especially in hindsight, it's clear that sole translator richard honeywood was saddled with a completely overwhelming task. it's never so bad that things don't make sense with time and reflection, but there are absolutely going to be moments that leave you scratching your head.

so... 4.5 stars? it's pretty clear that this is a profoundly flawed game. i still think it deserves adulation. i even feel that some of its flaws and failures are fascinating in the way they highlight and vibe with some of the game's overarching themes. do i believe this was all fully and artistically intended? nope. of course not. but it is what it is nonetheless and what it is, to me, is one of the most beautiful games ever made.

so, ummm obviously this is by no means intended to be a complete and thorough review of xenogears...! there's plenty of that out there and i just wanted to jot down some thoughts as i play. i may log it again down the road. thanks for reading. 8)

Understanding context is a virtue when it comes to learning why any form of media is the way it is. It can help someone enjoy something even more, but it could also wrap around and bring even more questions to how people could bear with it.

In the second stage, you are immediately met with bats who linger on the ceiling waiting for you to trigger their response of leisurely meandering somewhere towards your vicinity. Their pathing still baffles me after about five playthroughs, and I have yet to get past this part without taking damage, but sometimes these bats like to shatter reality and start hanging from within the blocks that make up the real estate of the stage. On the original tiny Game Boy screen that is of watermelon coloration due to it's dot matrix lcd screen, when the bats decide to do this little parlor trick they may as well become completely invisible to the player. It's a nice convenience for new players of the modern era who don't need to deal with this visual impairment, unless they decide to seek out playing on the original hardware.

...I don't recommend it.

This game is slow, we know this. The horse named "slow" has been beaten to such a near-death state that it resuscitated the horse, only for it to be beaten once again within an inch of it's life once more, in some kind of fucked up cycle. Castlevania never usually came installed with blast processing, and it surely doesn't exist here, but I'm going to be real. I just got used to it. Believe me, I feel bad for Christopher Bee's crippling boneitis, but it was something I just started looking past, because the rest of the game is very much built around this even steadier pace, as enemies aren't exactly breaking the sound barrier either in their method of attack. The punishment of your whip getting demoted after any hit is excruciating, especially for new players, and the lack of sub-weapons to properly strategize for areas aren't exactly helping as the "strategy" is quite simply "don't get hit" or "get good".

These are all things I can get past by simply "getting good", and I could even potentially say I enjoy these aspects the more I master the game, much like any other Castlevania experience, especially with such a simpler approach. As you could imagine, there is exactly one thing that is crippling in this game's ability to have a lasting heartfelt impact upon me, and it's something that would hinder any game, whether it was Aria of Sorrow or Elmo's Letter Adventure. That is of course, the copious amounts of button inputs getting dropped by the slowdown that can be triggered by things as minor as two enemies appearing on screen. It becomes a fun gamble wondering if Christopher Bee will jump straight up instead of where he's supposed to go in a hair-raising climb in everyone's favorite autoscrolling section with instant death spikes. This isn't something done by a bad emulator or a bad controller, this is an experience I've had playing this in the AV Collection on both my Switch and PC, as well as Lame Boy on my DS years ago. I would get this same problem playing with my Hayabusa fight stick with six frames of runahead on a MiSTer. That's just how badly unoptimized and poorly programmed the game is, if it wasn't already obvious by the random code you'll sometimes see on the screen just from casual play.

The Adventure was an obvious rushjob from both the aspect of it's gamefeel, as well as in many sections of the game that felt like they were barely playtested. The bridge in stage 2 will sometimes spawn the giant eyeballs that roll across the screen in such a way that you will have no choice but to take a hit, because hitting two of them rolling from the right will create a pit that's too wide to jump across, thus oops. The infamous autoscrolling third stage has a vertical climb that will train you to constantly be on the move and stay at the top of the screen, but there is a part where you must jump across platforms that will fall as you land on them. Attempting to jump across these platforms too early will make you faceplant into an invisible wall, as the autoscrolling screen had not yet made your destination accessible yet, oops. In the final stage, there are two very suspect rope climb screen transitions. One will lead you to a guaranteed hit from a bouncing ball projectile fired by one of the phallic looking monsters that are attached to the floor if it decides to fire upwards, thus necessitating a climb back down and then back up in order to reset the screen, and hoping our buddy fires downwards instead so we actually have a chance to avoid the incoming projectile. There is another rope climb later that demands crackshot reaction to quickly go up and get into position in order to avoid a scythe thrown by a hooded miscreant.

It's all very shoddy and obviously made on a tight schedule, and these are all things I wouldn't point out if I hadn't decided to try and beat this on the third loop, where Christopher Bee takes triple damage. I probably would've eventually beaten the final stage, if a new Picross game hadn't have come out for me to suddenly snap my focus away from this odd "kuso-great" entry. Yes, I'm going to admit. I enjoyed myself trying to learn and adapt to this mysterious game. It's not an entry I would ever say is "good", but I do believe it's punched down on a little too hard these days. As of this post, The Adventure holds an average user rating of "1.64" here at Boys Love, putting it below the likes of nefarious entities such as Diablo Immortal, Farmville, and Spyro: Enter The Dragonfly. Damn.

It's a shame that Konami didn't let The Adventure stay in the oven a bit longer, because with fixes to the terrible slowdown, ironing out some poorly balanced sections, and perhaps not having you be able to be demoted all the way to the weakest whip would probably allow it to maintain a healthier long term relationship with the modern audience. Instead of becoming a cherished "cute" game with a small amount of stages like Super Mario Land, it's harshly spat on and considered one of the worst games in the entire franchise.

For myself, the most disappointing aspect about The Adventure is actually the final boss music that plays when you fight Dracula's infamous "flying meatball" form. It begins intimidating enough with a bellowing intro growl, descends into a furious barrage as if a struggle against ultimate evil has begun, then it goes into a heroic melody as if the final blow is about to be struck....but this heroic melody suddenly loops and the track restarts back to the struggle. It perfectly captures The Adventure itself, something that could've potentially had been viewed as an underrated classic and be viewed favorably for years to come, only to have it's legs suddenly chopped from underneath it as the composer was on a tight schedule and had a dentist appointment to get to, apparently just like everyone else on staff at the time.

My advice is play it and give it a respectable amount of time, maybe you'll still hate it, or maybe you'll see the intent it had and give it a bit more slack. Regardless, your opinion is yours to keep, much like my own and you're free to throw bricks at me.

I could also just be masochistic too, who's to say? That fifth loop with one-hit deaths sounds pretty appealing to me, ngl.

Going from playing this game on the PS3 to the Series X is, well...forgive me for using the most obvious joke, but

The difference is night and day.

It took over a decade to get technology that caught up to Sonic Unleashed, which is silly to think about, but I'm not going to complain. I'm going to play this game at peak performance, nothing in the way of my judgement. Almost no load times. A perfect 60 FPS. Will this embellish my opinion on the game? Almost definitely.

The daytime stages are considered "Peak Boost Sonic" by many for a justified reason: They are actually that good. The camera work is top-notch, and the gameplay, while fairly linear, is reactionary in the most satisfying way possible. The levels are stylized after real world locations, but they don't hesitate to stretch the laws of reality to make entertaining 3D Sonic setpieces. There's an inherent charm to running down (not) The Great Wall of China or blasting through the local farmers market, but then you're swirling through corkscrew walkways or jumping across ruins with constantly moving platforms. How do normal humans commute on these paths? Who cares, it looks cool as hell! Don't take my word for it though, Sonic loves these stages so much, he can't stop running his mouth! Phrases like "WOO! Feelin' good!" are ingrained into my memory, but his enthusiasm is infectious. It's one of those little things that bring the experience together, I would sorely miss it if it were absent.

Approaching the Werehog on its own merits has brought the cataclysmic side effect of me actually enjoying it. He's a big fluffy boy with funny stretchy arms, a trait that assists him in both combat and platforming. In fact, I'd argue it leans a bit more on the latter. There's a lot of funny moves and combos to unlock, including mechanics such as guard-canceling, and you can get surprisingly creative if you don't just settle on mindlessly mashing out your basic combos. The Werehog is at its best when it's giving you jungle gym-esque obstacle courses to monkey around on. You can find some pretty nifty shortcuts if you're paying attention, too. There's a LOT of stuff to collect if you go looking for it, and you should! Exploring these stages gives you a chance to listen to the phenomenal night stage music, and soak in the moody atmosphere. The night stages are inherently longer and slower-paced, and they serve as a good supplement to the breakneck daytime stages.

Even if the locations in Unleashed are fictional, they're based off of very real locations and cultures. It honestly makes me want to travel abroad. Big Sonic Unleashed fan excited to learn that Apotos is very real. This is the one time in the series where I actually like the presence of humans. They contribute to giving each area their own little slice of culture, and their Pixar-adjacent designs mesh well with Sonic and company. Also, hats off the the entirety of Sega Sound Team. I couldn't possibly name any one person as a figurehead for a soundtrack this diverse in genres, instrumentation, and composition. "Endless Possibility" is definitely a top 3 vocal track on my personal list. Probably even top 1, if I'm being honest!

Out of all the areas though, I feel like the real showstopper is Eggmanland, and I think that's because it's not loosely based on any real world location. It's just the artists flaunting their raw talent. After hours of running through locales filled with nature and society, you're greeted by the one stage that's cold and manufactured. Aside from a menacing piano, the music primarily opts for frantic artificial synths. The stage itself is constantly straddling the line between "comically hard" and "reasonably difficult", a marathon that serves as a test of all your skills. It all culminates in what I think is one of my favorite final levels in any game, ever.

My complicated stance on Sonic Unleashed can be concisely summed up with the antithesis of Sonic: Taking it slow. I like combing the Werehog stages for all their secrets. Hell, I like doing that in the Hedgehog stages too, to an exent. I love chilling in the hub areas, chatting up the locals and watching many of them go on their own little World Adventures over the course of the story. I also never have any real issues meeting the sun/moon medal requirements. I'm thorough in the Werehog stages, and I play the extra acts that show up and nab the medals from those too. Granted, I've played through this game multiple times, so I know to collect medals in anticipation of the thresholds, and I don't hit that roadblock. With the interest of being fair about mentioning the games flaws, here's a wall of general gripes:

-Sonic's drift flat-out doesn't fucking work. Not a fun mechanic.
-Spending time doing requests for the locals is only fun if you're a freak like me and don't expect meaningful rewards. The least they could've done was give you 100-500 EXP for finishing each one.
-The Were:Hedge ratio is (naturally) leaning pretty damn far to the Werehog's side. I get that most people probably aren't going into a Sonic game expecting a 3D beat-em-up, which is where most of the ire comes from. Just because I like it doesn't mean everyone will.
-Yeah, the Werehog battle theme is absurdly overused. The most irritating part about it is the first few seconds of the theme, something you'll hear A LOT as you start and end encounters. What else can I say, aside from "I got used to it."
-The constant quick time events can be a bit much. The doorbell sound effect for succeeding at one probably drove an entire generation of canines up the wall.
-The level order is just bizarre. I think it's like that so you naturally revisit villages as the game's story progresses (and you get a chance to see how the locals react), but it's more confusing to constantly hop around areas like this.
-Hot Dog Missions are terrible. Just unashamed, unoriginal padding. God forbid you want all the cheevos in this game.

I feel like one of the rules of being a Sonic fan is that you have one game in the whole series that you can't get enough of. Well, at long last, I can say without a doubt that Sonic Unleashed is that game for me. This is the last game in the entire Sonic franchise where it feels like they actually had the time and resources to make something with scope. This series never seems to stick to one idea, but every game seems to have its fans all the same. So I'll keep dreaming of a PC port so more people will give this game a second look. After all, the possibilities are never-ending.

I’ve been thinking a lot about storytelling in video games lately. Well, storytelling as a whole actually. What exactly makes a fictional world feel compelling to me? How should you best spin a yarn as to make the characters breathe, their struggles resonate, and their victories triumphant? Most importantly, if a writer did have the vision and the wherewithal to execute said vision, then how could they best convince their audience that their vision was worth their time?

This week, I might have come a step closer to realizing those answers by revisiting an old favorite of mine.

428: Shibuya Scramble is not just your ordinary traditional visual novel. It’s a crime thriller, a romantic comedy, and an investigative journalism drama all rolled into one. That description alone could sell the game, but the crazy part is that the narrative is just the icing on top of this deceptively layered and charismatic tale. The game's greatest strength is not just what it has to say, but rather how it says it.

As I've discussed previously, many story-heavy games have difficulty marrying their storytelling and their gameplay, often choosing to stratify their game into separate sections of explicit narrative and explicit gameplay. 428 Shibuya Scramble does not struggle with this whatsoever, for the interaction with the narrative is the gameplay and it presents its story in such a way where every detail matters. You see, 428: Shibuya Scramble operates in hourly time slots with several protagonists at once. The goal is to guide each protagonist on their separate storyline and ensure that every protagonist makes it to the end of each hour by making the correct decisions and avoiding untimely demise through bad ends. However, there’s a catch. Protagonists can reach bad ends on their own paths even if every decision they make within their contained storyline is “correct.” This is because these different storylines intersect one another in various ways, and decisions made with one character will ultimately echo throughout the hour, affecting the other protagonists in unforeseen ways.

As such, the player isn’t doing anything mechanically complex aside from reading text and picking the right options most of the time, which means that like the best detective games, 428 is really about the game outside of the game. The player has to figure out how the butterfly effect ripples across each hour, even as characters often impact one another without ever coming face to face. For example, one of the characters can become incapacitated by consuming a potent energy drink on the job; you can avoid this bad end by making sure an earlier character fails to provide his detective partner with the lethal sample. While the nature of these intersections is often unclear, 428 revels in this uncertainty. It’s not content with simply using its bad ends as punishments; rather, it grasps these bad ends as opportunities to inject additional lore and guide the player towards the truth. These bad ends are often light-hearted and comedic just as they are valuable learning opportunities, and somehow the game walks the tightrope between solemnity and levity without ever losing sincerity. Simply put, most story-heavy games are constantly asking the five Ws, but 428 Shibuya Scramble is one of the rare whimsical games that dares ask “What if?”

On a similar note, a lot of players tend to get frustrated by 428’s habit of barricading individual protagonist paths with “KEEP OUT” banners, but I find this mechanic to be a stroke of genius. In order to clear these barricades, players are forced to traverse other protagonists’ stories in the meanwhile and search for a “JUMP” point linking them back to the original blocked protagonist. By doing so, they’re often hopping around the hour and viewing events from multiple parallel perspectives, gathering more information to better grasp how the timelines intertwine. Moreover, the game fully commits to this idea of rounding out its narrative by even hiding JUMP points behind certain decisions that would otherwise have no bearing upon story events (i.e. “flavor text questions/decisions”) and certain TIPs (blue colored text that when selected, provides additional background). This keeps the player vigilant, as they’re constantly on the prowl for connections while soaking in every detail and considering every possibility to push the plot forward.

Of course, this is not to take away from the game’s multitude of other strengths. For instance, consider the game’s sound design. From hurried footsteps and screeching cars in high-speed chases to distant explosions and sirens spelling imminent doom, Chunsoft knew just how to punctuate every moment with appropriate sound effects. Another obvious selling point is 428’s reliance upon live action stills and full motion video, which aside from standing out from other sketched and animated visual novels, provides the game a sense of immersion and realism that interestingly often contrasts with the game’s over-the-top sense of humor. Finally, the actors do a great job emoting and infusing their lines with personality despite the lack of voice acting. Alongside the phenomenal character design, written in such a way where every character has obvious flaws yet remain every bit relatable, there’s a certain charm to 428 Shibuya Scramble that many of its peers fail to imitate. As a complete and tightly-knit package, its artistic decisions and gameplay mechanics do not simply capture Shibuya; they perpetuate the energy of the city, enthralling and surprising the player at every turn.

I’m often reluctant to revisit beloved titles. More often than not, giving old favorites another spin with a more critical eye or even thinking about them for too long causes them to deteriorate somewhat in my mind, forcing me to confront my prior nostalgia. It’s never a great feeling to question yourself if something you once loved was really all that great to begin with. 428 is the exact opposite of this. Don’t get me wrong; the game does have some rough points. The inability to adjust text speed and skip previously read text can be a huge ask for players with limited time (though if you’re playing on PC, the unofficial text speed patch alleviates this somewhat), and I find myself agreeing with others in that the true ending leaves something to be desired. I won’t deny that I had some apprehensions upon replaying yet another memorable classic.

Yet somehow, this game has lived rent-free in my head for over half a decade. I had intended to replay it for just an hour or two to refresh my palette, as I had already 100%ed it and wanted to move onto newer and grander adventures. In spite of that, I found myself with the exact opposite problem. I simply could not put the game down. 428 Shibuya Scramble is the rare example of a game that to me, never stops getting better. Playing through it again immediately reminded me of why I fell in love with video games to begin with, and it didn’t matter that I had seen the destination already; the thrill of the journey was enough to make me return. I’m sure that I could ponder more areas of improvement and potential fixes, though honestly, I can’t bring myself to care. There aren’t many games that I unabashedly adore and wish for more, but there are even fewer games that manage to spark my Imagination and leave me content with what I have. At the end of the day, 428: Shibuya Scramble is not just a triumph of the medium; it's a triumph of human inevitability, gathering momentum until coincidence and fate become reality. I may have become more cynical over time, but it's moments like these that prove that sometimes, it really does pay to believe.

No other Sonic game, 2D or 3D, has kept me coming back to play it more often than Sonic Adventure 2. It exists in that rare Goldilocks zone for video games since it has both a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling. This means the game is accessible to anyone willing to learn it while still rewarding those seeking a challenge. More impressively, it achieves this balance across multiple different gameplay styles, and there's even an adorable virtual pet game thrown into the mix.

Despite this breadth of content, SA2 never feels like it's spreading itself thin. The speed, mech shooting, and treasure hunting stages all expand on the mechanics of the most successful gameplay styles from SA1 (trading the shared character-level layouts of its predecessor for more focused courses suiting the movement options of each playstyle). This is one of those games that feels satisfying just to move around in, so the fact that the levels are so tightly structured on top of that creates an a real sense of flow. Trying to achieve the A-rank point requirements for each stage gives me an adrenaline rush comparable to mastering a track in a racing sim. These stages are stylish too, thanks to a very unique art direction; even the cheesy anime OVA-style cutscenes have a cinematic flair to them, especially noticeable in the final act. The soundtrack impresses me the most with how ambitious it is: each playable character gets a different genre for their level themes tying into their overall vibe — just about every track is a banger. It’s easy to spend hours raising Chao too, the cutest virtual pets I’ve seen in a game, and they're actively supported by PC mods to this day, so you can pretend the Dreamcast is still dropping DLC for the little guys.

This game takes many risks, so it’ll always be more polarising than a by-the-books platformer, but that's also why it earns my respect.

Dead on arrival.

Dear god, this game had a budget of $125 million. Immortals of Aveum is one of countless misfires in the gaming industry that makes me wonder if anyone with access to as much money as this has any idea what they're doing with all of it. You can see the underlying mentality of use-it-or-lose-it with regards to the budget — celebrity cast lists, particle effects so dense that you can't see through them, Unreal Engine 5 tech demo scenery — and how little it actually goes towards making a game that's fun to play or a world that's interesting to engage with. I was certain that this was a small-scale AA game that EA was publishing simply to make a little cash on the side; finding out that this is one of the most expensive games ever made just confuses me. It's a complete and utter squandering of basically everything that it had going for it. We're witnessing a gaming failson being created in real time. It's like Victor Frankenstein made a monster that emptied the family bank account on a timeshare scheme.

This might be the most poorly written piece of media I’ve ever sat through. I’m extending this beyond only video games. Immortals of Aveum is written the way that people who don’t like Marvel movies think Marvel movies are written. There is no moment that cannot go un-quipped, no revelation nor death so important as to prevent every nearby character from rolling their eyes and cracking a joke about it. This refusal to hold anything as sacred can work — most comedies pull this off just fine — but this game exists in that 2000s-era Adam Sandler dramedy hellsphere where, despite the fact that none of the characters are taking this seriously, it’s clear that the viewer is expected to. Immortals of Aveum wants to be a story about wildly differing people coming together in the face of adversity, a story about betrayal, a story about racism, about ancient world-ending prophecies and secret orders desperate to keep the balance. It also has a character say, verbatim, “he’s right behind me, isn’t he?”. He is, in fact, right behind them. Holy fuck. Michael Kirkbride is the lead writer.

Speaking of, every character is such a potty mouth. I know that’s the most Melvin thing imaginable to complain about, but it really does clash with everything that’s set up here. This feels like a PG-13 movie. The best comparison is that it’s an adaptation of a young adult novel that doesn’t actually exist, but it’s not a good adaptation, and the YA novel in question was written like Divergent instead of Hunger Games. This is some bootleg bootleg garbage. This is stepped-on Noughts and Crosses. Characters in this universe ought to be saying “crap” or some made-up fantasy curse like “stars and bolts!” instead of shouting “fuck” every other sentence. Everything and everyone is so flat that you can only reasonably conclude that it was written to appeal to children, but the constant swearing reminds you that they actually intended this for adults. The ESRB gave this an M rating, and I think it’s almost exclusively because of the strong language. There’s barely any blood — hell, barely any actual violence beyond shooting little flashes of magic at people. Harry Potter is more hardcore even in its earliest parts, when the cast is made up of fourth graders fighting ogres in the school bathroom. Michael Kirkbride is the lead writer.

I want to take a moment to complain about Devyn, who might be the most annoying character I’ve ever seen. I cannot fucking stand Devyn. He even spells his name like an asshole. They very clearly want you to be annoyed by Devyn — he’s a Claptrap figure of sorts, placed here by a cruel and uncaring god solely to torment you with his quips — and this is probably the greatest triumph that the writing can manage. In a world where nobody is the straight man and everybody seems desperate to be the one who gets to say something “funny” next, Devyn stands out for his ability to fuck up every single conversation by inserting himself directly into the middle of all of them. Some character will start complaining about the Immortals being isolationists who only care about themselves, and Devyn will cut them off to go on a John Oliver-esque rant for a straight minute to mock them. The player character sets up an uneasy alliance with a member of a discriminated race, and Devyn hops on the holo-orb to joke about how much he hates the entire filthy lot of them. The player character starts telling a story and Devyn fucking burps like a cartoon character to cut him off. God, fuck him. I’d say that I hope he dies, but the game actually pulls through and obliges me. The lead villain blows a hole through his chest like Piccolo and we’re expected not to instantly start rooting for him. People mourn Devyn. He’s the first name that our heroes drop when they give the villain the “and this is revenge for...” speech once he’s defeated. Michael Kirkbride is the lead writer.

Devyn is really only as annoying as he is because his actor is as annoying as he is. This is a common thread throughout the entire cast; all of the actors here are performing like this is their first time in front of a camera. Hell, I thought it was. Turns out that the entire cast is comprised of actual fucking screen actors who do this shit for a living, and none of them seem to have a clue what they’re doing. This is doubtless a directing problem — Gina Torres is delivering a career-low performance, far beneath even the worst projects she’s done elsewhere — and it seems like Ascendant believed they could just hire professional actors and tell them to "start acting" as their only point of reference for what they ought to be doing. Charles Halford as Rook crushes it, though, and I have to wonder if it’s solely because his character doesn’t look like a human being. They were apparently doing some weird hybrid face-scan/mocap setup where the actors would have their faces scanned while they were doing voiceover in a booth, and then their heads would get pasted onto the bodies of whoever was doing the mocap. There are scenes clearly intended for big emotions, or that expect the actors to at least raise their voices a little — when they see their friends die, when they give speeches on the battlefield — and they just can't seem to muster them for this. Everyone just talks. Nobody in Aveum has ever heard of an outside voice.

I've gone this long without mentioning the gameplay because it's about as much of an afterthought as this paragraph. You get three types of magic, creatively named Red, Blue, and Green, and Blue magic is so ridiculously good that you only use the other colors when the game forces you to. Blue magic is a semi-automatic rifle that gets a stacking percent damage bonus on critical hits, which are guaranteed on headshots and weak spots. It has virtually zero recoil, infinite range, hitscan, and does obscene damage obscenely quickly. Red magic is a slow shotgun that deals a solid chunk of damage but has low DPS, and Green magic is a projectile-based submachine gun with some homing capabilities that serves mostly as a shitty shotgun that misses more often than it hits. Since all of your basic magic has infinite ammo, there's little reason to do anything other than keep your Blue magic in your hand and spam bolts at enemies so far away that they're using their low LOD models. Consider binding your fire button to the scroll wheel to spare your index finger from a repetitive stress injury.

What I do like, however, is that there's actually some emphasis on platforming and exploration. While this isn't an especially interesting world to poke through, there are all sorts of goodies scattered throughout, and they're all more or less worth collecting. Grabbing lore notes will always reward you with XP even if you don't read them, and actually getting to them can be fun. You've got a double jump to start out with, which is already a plus, and you'll eventually graduate to a hookshot and a glide that you can use to get basically anywhere you want to be. Chaining air dashes and hookshots with your glides to get across a massive pit with a treasure chest at the end of it might be one of those gameplay systems that's inherently rewarding. Even though most of what you'll get for doing these mini challenges amounts to little more than a lump sum of XP or a buff to some of your damage numbers, it's the act of platforming around where the tiny kernel of fun is hidden.

There's really not much to say about Immortals of Aveum besides the fact that, were it not for being the worst-written thing I've ever seen in my fucking life, I would have completely forgotten about it in the two weeks it's taken me to type this out. I'd almost say that it's worth playing if only to see how ridiculously bad the characters are, but you're better off watching someone else play it on YouTube at that point, and you'd be watching it for way too long to get a laugh out of it. At least bad movies usually have the courtesy of ending in two hours, not eight. Part of the problem with "so bad it's good" games are the amount of time that they demand you invest in them, and then you've gotta reckon with the fact that you're putting in work for something that isn't going to be worth it. I don't regret playing Immortals of Aveum. That's faint praise, but it's all the praise I can give it. The studio isn't going to exist by this time next year. It's hardly worth thinking about beyond the thoughts I've already had. People probably won't even remember that this existed, and what a sad thought that is. Try not to think about what they could have done with that money instead.

What are we, some kind of Immortals of Aveum?

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH I FUCKING LOVE PIKMIN, I LOVE BEING EMOTIONALLY ATTACHED TO SILLY LIL’ GUYS JUST TO BE DEVASTATED WHEN I LOSE ONE TO A FUCKING FROG, I LOVE DESTROYING AN ENTRIE ECOSYSTEM AS A SILLY CAPTAIN AND MAKING MY ADORABLE ALIEN CHILDREN CARRY HIGHLY DANGEROUS EXPLOSIVES, LET’S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

It's been a long-ass time since a game has made me feel this irrationally happy, just a barrage of every positive emotion imaginable compressed into a collection of 3D models and funny sounds. There’s something about commanding and caring about an army of colored plant-aliens and exploring these forgotten forests and lakes that made me a happy motherfucker, it’s glee in its purest state.

It's a response I really can’t explain, ‘cause in reality, Pikmin is kinda the opposite of loud and bombastic; it’s a quiet, borderline meditative game, mixed with an overwhelming sense of stress and time constraint that present every single second that passes in PNF-404. 30 days to reclaim 30 spaceship parts, 25 if we ignore the extra ones, an objective which, on its own, rises stakes to the stars, and that thought will dictate every single action, and yet, it still finds room for joy.

Progression in Pikmin is entirely dictated by what you decided to do in those 30 days, which also means that it goes by pretty fast. Once you arrive at The Forest Navel, the second out of the three main areas (there’s also other 2, but one serves more as a tutorial and another as a final challenge after getting the 29 ship parts) you will have unlocked every single Pikmin type there is, and considering how you unlock that area pretty quickly and you need Blues to 100% percent The Forest of Hope, you’ll have them all basically throughout the entire game, and the purpose and use of each is clear: Reds are the strongest and can resist fire, Yellows can be thrown the highest and can carry Rock Bombs, and Blues are the only ones that can go through water without kicking the bucket. It’s with that knowledge and army of friends that you are left to your own devices, and it flows; the openness of these three main areas makes the daunting objective and the time limit feel much more manageable, especially when you get the radar, which can be pretty early on. You chose which parts to go to first, which routes to take, which roadblocks to take down and how to manage your squad and shortcuts.

You can go to get a propeller without a care and trying to ignore all hostile fauna and barricades, and you know what, that may work and you mar arrive at the part in one piece!... But things may not go as well when your Pikmin have to bring the stuff all the way back… I learned that the hard way…

Your messes and fuck ups feel humongous, and unless you decide to reset your current day, those mistakes are gonna be felt through the rest of the days… except, it’s actually pretty hard to mess things up beyond repair. Even if you feel as you could have done better or lost a ton of Pikmin to some random bird sprouting from the earth or a giant bouncy spider, you still probably got at least one part, opened up a pathway or two, made a source of bombs accessible, build a bridge that allows for non Blue Pikming to reach different items or that create faster routes; the little worlds of Pikmin may feel big, but they are still… well, small, even if you screw a day or two, you probably also made something that will help you greatly in the days that’ll follow. Pikmin is a game full of losing conditions: extinctions, giant enemies, blocked paths… and yet is also full of little victories, constant reminders that your strategizing, both fly and between days, pays off immensely.

Despair won’t do much here, and there are reasons to be hopeful, and Olimar himself does a pretty good job of reminding that.

The Captain is a damn good protagonist in a way I wasn’t expecting, yet in the way he needed to be. This isn’t a game about saving the planet or even he Pikmin, those are doing pretty good despite the post-apocalyptic, this is a game about saving Olimar. He got his ass stranded and now gotta fix the damn mess, and that in it on itself is a pretty compelling idea, but it’s made even better by how fleshed out he really is. I really expected him to be just som random silly guy, and instead what I got is a man with a life back home, and learning about his life, the gifts of his children, the advice of his wife that helps him when he first crash-landed, or just knowing his deeper thoughts at the end of the day, his findings about the wildlife and ship-par description (or just complaining about his boss and company and him talking about a massage machine which is funny as FUCK), it all amounts to a character which I really ended up caring about. I want Olimar to see his family again, and that makes me act faster and more carefully, it makes an already fun part collecting and time managing even more meaningful, another piece of the borader Pikmin puzzle that falls into place alongside everything else.

The Pikmin blindly following Olimar, reaching new horizons and discovering the secrets that this planet holds as well as how the Pikmin themselves work, or reading the night log after a whole day of hectic strategizing; Pikmin almost seems like a tale about the fun in adventuring in the direst of situations. The Captain names everything he encounter after things from back home or his own thoughts, the Pikmin just relax and lay down when left alone and celebrate after bringing a piece back to base, the fauna can be incredibly dangerous, but that only makes it even better when you swarm enemies properly. The only thing that matches beating a Cannon Beetle deathless or stopping a Fly Snatcher from stealing your little friends is getting multiple hard to get parts in a single day; there are so many different victories across a sea of hardships that is hard not to smile, 9is hard not to feel accomplished when managing Pikmin perfectly or successfully cleaning areas and encountering its wildlife, hell, the hardest, most deadly enemies in the game and completely optional, some not even awarding any parts, and it feels warranted! Not every single action is your final objective, but everything you do builds to it, and a game that should be riddled with stress and tension (and at times it still is) becomes kind of… zen, to put it bluntly.

Not everything is fine tuned as the world itself makes it out to be; some stuff like the flowers that change your Pikmin to other types or bugs that eat bridges thing feel vastly underused, with the former being only really useful in two puzzles for two parts and the latter barely plays a part into things since most bridges that are affected by that will probably be used only once. And that’s not even getting into probably the only thing that made me feel frustrated at the game, and something that isn’t even related to anything to the world or the way you control… and that is the brains of the Pikmin. Look, I love these fellas and I love how dumb they can be, but when I say the blindly follow Olimar, I MEAN IT. These guys will disregard any change on level or body of water and will just keep on going, and once that happens, good luck finding them again or getting them out before they die! Out of the 200 or so Pikmin that died in my run, I’d say about half of those did because of reasons that completely escaped my or my enemies’ control; things like tripping, getting distracted or one Pikmin hogging the nectar form themselves I can kinda get behind, because they give them much more personality and they are, to be honest, funny as all hell moments. But losing members my squad just because the game decided they are acting dumb or even to some random weird glitch, that not only feels horrible, is probably the only thing that feels out of place in this otherwise wonderful, rewarding experience.

I didn’t expect to get all 30 parts, let alone in less than 30 days, I didn’t expect to learn to manage my little soldiers so well and for it to be so fun, I could have never see coming in a million years feeling so attached to every single member of the cast of this game, even the enemies that made my life so difficult, I didn’t expect this to make me feel so… happy. Pikmin is a small game about some small guy in his small predicament, and the small aliens that helped him and the small victories they accomplished along the way. It’s a small game, and yet it feels grander than many world-saving adventures, everything about it does, even placing a pellet in the right place.

It’s a small game, and it makes me smile.

Basically, what I’m trying to say isWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PIKMIN IS DA BEST BAYBEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE LET’S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-

Also, take a shot for every time I wrote ‘’Pikmin’’ in this review… way actually don’t you may perish wait waitWAIT.

Man I see what they were going for but this ain't it. Ambitious to try and get a portable castlevania on the original Gameboy but the execution is just terrible.

The game suffers from immense slowdown like it feels like I'm playing this game in a tub of molasses. Everything is so sluggish it just doesn't feel good.

Levels and enemy placement are cheaply designed, just putting shit was either not tested properly or just made on purpose to feel unfair. The final boss being the worst offender. I don't know if it's even possible to kill Dracula's bat form without needing full health.

This is the most sauce less Castlevania and I wish I could get my hour of playing this back.

DOOM 2016 Review

A phrase I often use in my reviews is “textbook sequel”. I define this phrase as a sequel to a highly successful and beloved title in an established series that takes almost everything that made the previous game work and refines it. Some examples that immediately come to mind include Portal 2, Metal Gear Solid 2, Silent Hill 2, and Batman: Arkham City. DOOM Eternal is very much a textbook sequel in that regard as well. It took almost everything that DOOM 2016 did right and expanded upon it to quite frankly, an overwhelming extent. The result is one of the most exciting and thrilling games that I’ve ever experienced, a game that I’ve replayed countless times at this point. From the bottom of my heart and soul, I LOVE DOOM Eternal. Every time I come back to this game, its gameplay provides a level of thrill and sheer joy that few games have ever come close to matching. It’s a game that rewards your mastery of its mechanics with an unmatched level of catharsis and satisfaction that truly makes me feel like an unstoppable, unshakeable torrent of carnage and mayhem.

After the events of DOOM 2016, the demonic forces of Hell have begun an all encompassing invasion of Earth. In order to save his home, the DOOM Slayer goes on a journey across many different worlds in order to track down and kill the Hell Priests, a trio of wizards that are responsible for opening and maintaining the gateways that allow Hell’s forces to invade Earth. The DOOM Slayer’s mission to save his world quickly evokes the wrath of the mysterious Khan Makyr, an ancient alien being that seems to be in league with the forces of Hell. Naturally, the Khan Makyr’s anger pales in comparison to the DOOM Slayer’s righteous rage. In his eyes, the Khan Makyr is just another demonic scumbag he needs to kill.

Like I said, DOOM Eternal takes everything in DOOM 2016 and greatly expands upon it. Everything is bigger: the number of levels, the scale of the story, the amount of upgrades you can purchase for Doomguy, the roster of demons you encounter… everything in this game feels HUGE. It’s truly a lot to take in, and despite it’s best efforts, I’ll admit that Eternal doesn’t always make it easy to do so. Coming to this game with experience from 2016 might not necessarily prepare you for how much of a step up Eternal is from its predecessor. I’ll admit: I didn’t like the game nearly as much as I currently do after my first playthrough. I wasn’t prepared at all for how expansive everything is, and trying to play the game like it’s 2016 will only get you so far. It wasn’t until after I had listened to other people’s thoughts and reviews of the game, and gave it a second runthrough, that I started to really understand what the game was going for, and how to approach it in a way that’s comfortable and paced to my liking.

While the game is still structured more or less the same as 2016, the ways in which certain aspects of the game have been expanded upon makes Eternal feel a tad different. Levels still follow that classic DOOM gameplay loop: you kill demons and you find keys in order to progress through levels, and you always have the opportunity to search for hidden secrets as well. I can’t say for sure whether or not all of the levels in the game are actually longer than the ones in 2016, but they absolutely feel like they are. It might be because of how many combat arenas a level has, as well as how extensive combat can be. Either way, levels in this game definitely feel too long, and I honestly think some of them could be split up into multiple levels for the sake of better pacing. If you have yet to play DOOM Eternal, heed my advice: take breaks whenever you need to. Don’t feel compelled to finish a level if you’re feeling tired. Each level is extremely generous with its checkpoints, to the point where you can pretty much exit the game at any time and pick up right where you left off. Forcing yourself through levels when you’re tired is only going to exhaust you and cause you to resent the game, which happened to me during my first playthrough.

Platforming sections in-between combat arenas return. I’ve seen people frequently complain about the platforming, and while your initial experience with how to progress in certain areas can certainly be confusing since you don’t always know where to go, I personally never found the platforming sections to be a big issue. As I’m about to explain, Eternal’s combat can be tiring, especially when played at higher difficulties. Quite frankly, it needs the downtime the platforming sections provides. Platforming is also better here than in 2016, since failing to make a jump doesn’t result in an immediate death anymore, instead you’ll just respawn while losing a chunk of health.

Combat has been extensively reworked, to the point where it feels so much more intense and chaotic even when compared to 2016 on its hardest difficulty. The demons in Eternal feel a lot more aggressive than they did in 2016. In that game, the demons generally preferred to spread themselves apart and harass you from a distance (with some exceptions like the Hell Knight or the Pinkies). The demons in Eternal all feel like they’re bum rushing the hell outta you. Now more than ever, standing still during combat means death. You need to be constantly moving and using the environment to your advantage in order to stay alive, and Doomguy has a couple of new tools to accomplish this.

There’s the new dash ability, which allows Doomguy to quickly zoom forward in whatever direction you’re currently moving in. You have two total dashes you can use before the ability requires a cooldown. Proper use of the dash ability is extremely necessary, and an absolute must during combat, as Doomguy’s default run speed isn’t enough to outpace the demons chasing after him. There’s also the Meat Hook, an attachment for the Super Shotgun that functions as a grappling hook that pulls Doomguy towards enemies, which is a great way to not only transport yourself across the map, but also bring yourself within Glory Kill distance. The Meat Hook is extremely fun and satisfying to use. Using it to get yourself out of a jam or bring yourself closer to an enemy so that you can kill it with the Chainsaw and replenish health and ammo you desperately need makes you feel incredibly smart, but also provides a strong feeling of relief as well.

With the exception of the pistol (which, let’s be honest, has never really been all that useful in the history of DOOM unless you were desperate to conserve ammo), all of the weapons from DOOM 2016 return. One of the biggest problems that 2016 had was that Doomguy’s arsenal of weapons just wasn’t balanced especially well. The strength of the more powerful weapons in the game (the Super Shotgun in particular) made early game weapons feel redundant as it went on. There was definitely a massive attempt to fix this problem in DOOM Eternal through various means, some of which weren’t initially met with positive reception. However, I believe these changes to Doomguy’s arsenal makes it feel a lot more coherent and purposeful, and even late into the game, all weapons serve a purpose to some extent.

Weapon modifiers return, which plays a part in making those early game weapons remain useful. A lot of weapon mods from the previous game have been replaced with actually useful ones. Certain enemies have weak points on them, such as the laser cannon on an Arachnotron or the rocket launchers on a Revenant, and weapon mods can be used to exploit those weak points, such as the precision scope on the Heavy Cannon or the sticky bomb from the Combat Shotgun. This will stagger enemies while also depriving them of their weapon of choice, which plays a big role in making early weapons still feel relevant all throughout the game.

The most controversial change to combat is that the amount of ammo each weapon can hold has been reduced rather heavily from 2016. It’s a change that really takes a lot of getting used to. You can’t just rely on one weapon to get you through combat arenas anymore. You’re going to have to constantly be switching between weapons, not just depending on the demon you’re currently trying to kill, but also depending on how much ammo per weapon you currently have. I understand a lot of people really don’t like this change, but I honestly am a huge fan of it, especially since DOOM Eternal gives you all of your weapons at a much faster rate than before. By the fourth level, the game itself will tell you that “You have everything you need to beat DOOM Eternal” including the Super Shotgun and a majority of your heavy weapons. What makes the combat of DOOM Eternal so much fun for me are the constant decisions you have to make at a fast pace in order to massacre your enemies while staying alive, and the reduced ammo capacity plays a huge role in encouraging that fast-paced decision making.

There’s a technique in the game called quickswapping which you can use to do immensely fast bursts of damage on enemies. I’m not sure how the technique works on controller, but on keyboard and mouse, you can swap between weapons quickly by binding them to certain keys or additional mouse buttons if you have them. This allows you to quickly swap between weapons while skipping their cooldown animations. I have mixed feelings on quickswapping. There are moments where it feels like it’s overpowered, but at the same time, it’s absolutely necessary in overwhelming situations and against certain demons, the new Marauder demon in particular.

The Marauder was a huge point of contention and controversy when Eternal first came out. It can be a difficult enemy to deal with, as he is generally invincible and has multiple attacks that can shred your health if you’re not careful. To make him vulnerable, you have to stay at a specific distance from him in order to goad him into attacking you with his axe. When he goes for this attack, his eyes will flash green and you can shoot him, which stuns him for a very short period of time, and during that short period, you have to do as much damage as you possibly can. This is where quickswapping comes into play, as quickswapping between the Super Shotgun and the Ballista really shreds his health while he’s stunned. This technique was not explained in the game when it first came out, and without it, the Marauder is a much bigger pain to deal with. The game was eventually updated with a tutorial on how to perform the technique shortly before your first encounter with him. This technique is useful against all demons, not just the Marauder though, and it comes in clutch late in the game, especially on higher difficulties. I have no clue how people who play this game on a controller pull this technique off, and I wonder if that hinders their experience with the Marauder and more difficult enemy encounters.

Aside from your weapons, there’s a number of other upgrades you need to purchase throughout the game, all with their own different types of currency. One point of criticism I have against this game is that the amount of purchasable upgrades is too damn high. Some of these upgrades are very important, but there’s also a lot that you really don’t need, and it can be confusing picking out the good from the bad. This problem is especially prevalent when it comes to Suit upgrades. For Suit upgrades, you primarily need to focus on purchasing the ones in the Fundamentals category for things like decreasing your dash cooldown and refilling your dash after you use a Glory Kill on a demon. In fact, these should be purchased as soon as you are able to. The other Suit upgrades just aren’t really worth it for the most part. You don’t really need to purchase any of the exploration upgrades unless you’re hunting for secrets, and I’ve never really used grenades in this game, so I never purchase upgrades for those either, I only purchase a couple for the Ice Grenade to freeze enemies longer. Upgrades regarding resistances to environmental hazards in particular is a complete waste of currency. There aren’t enough of them in the game, nor do they do damage threatening enough to warrant purchasing them.

In addition to the Suit upgrades, there’s also other upgrades you can get whenever you find a separate currency called Sentinel Crystals, which not only will increase your health, armor, and ammo capacity, but also grant you random buffs like reducing the cooldown of the Flame Thrower or letting you pull in resource drops from dead enemies while you’re farther away. Then there are Runes, which also grant you random buffs as well, such as letting you perform a Glory Kill from farther away or increasing your ability to control Doomguy while he’s in the air. If this all sounds confusing or too much take in, well, it kind of is in-game as well. You do eventually get a grasp on it all, but to be completely honest, all of these different currencies and customizable buffs really need to be consolidated in the future. Get rid of the more superfluous upgrades and try to keep almost everything to one menu. These upgrades are genuinely great and unlocking them over the course of the game does feel rewarding, but they’re also a huge pain to keep track of for how vital they are, and figuring out the good from the bad is not very newcomer friendly at all.

I think the biggest area where DOOM Eternal is lacking, and the only thing that’s a downgrade from the previous game, is its narrative and its approach to storytelling. 2016’s narrative was a simple one that was very easy to follow and digest. Eternal’s story is not. The worldbuilding for DOOM is expanded immensely in Eternal, which goes as far as to introduce completely new worlds and races to its universe. The problem is that the story itself barely provides any context whatsoever for these aspects of the story. Even the very beginning of the game is confusing if you come to it after having played 2016. Minor spoiler warning for the end of 2016 to follow: that game ends with a cliffhanger, but when Eternal begins, it doesn’t continue from that cliffhanger. It’s clear a lot of time has passed since then but what exactly happened in between both games is never explained in the main story itself.

Instead, this context for all of these new story elements can be found in this game’s collectable codex entries. I’ve briefly talked about this in other reviews, but I really don’t like it when a game has key elements to understanding the narrative hidden away in collectables like this, unless that’s the main point of the game. I think that codex/journal entries in games are fine as supplemental material to the main narrative (even if I’m not especially interested in hunting them down), but not if they contain context and history that’s necessary to understand the plot. I think this was done in an attempt to try and appease people who don’t care about the story in DOOM or in other video games, and they weren’t confident enough they could present their story with all of these expansive new details in a way that captures their interest, so they just brushed it off to the side. Thing is, the people who don’t care about story in DOOM are just going to skip the cutscenes anyway, all this storytelling approach does is cause confusion for anyone who might actually be interested in the narrative. They might’ve thought this would motivate people to search for the hidden codex entries and read them, but personally, I’m more likely to just look that up on a Wiki or watch a YouTube video explaining it or something. The narrative itself ends in a rather sudden and lukewarm manner, though there is the Ancient Gods DLC campaign which expands on it and acts as a proper conclusion to the story.

DOOM Eternal got a major visual overhaul from 2016 that was very much for the better. As I mentioned in my review for 2016, the visual design of environments in that game would often blend together, since the game primarily took place either in Mars or Hell, and while there were some elements to both settings that made them look a bit more distinct from one another, it didn’t help all that much. In comparison, Eternal is an explosion of color. You travel to far more distinct locations with extremely vibrant and varied visual designs. The scale of the environments is also massive. Every single time I come back to this game, I am in sheer awe at how detailed the backgrounds of each location in this game is. Words seriously don’t do them justice. The enemies have also been overhauled visually as well. Most of them have been given redesigns that make them more closely resemble those of their original appearance. It’s especially noticeable with the zombie troopers, as well as the introduction of “The Tyrant”, which is literally just the Cyberdemon from classic DOOM, and I will continue to refer to it as such because that’s a helluva better name.

Talking about the game’s soundtrack is difficult because of the infuriating and unfortunate controversy regarding it (man, this game had a lot of controversies looking back at it…). Since this review is as long as it is, I’m going to hold off giving my extended thoughts about it for now, and I’ll save them for when I review The Ancient Gods Part 1. All I’ll say is that Marty Stratton is a piece of shit, and for now, I’m just going to give my thoughts on the in-game music. Given the positive fan feedback towards the guitar heavy tracks from 2016’s OST, Mick Gordon’s approach this time around involved a lot more usage of guitar, and it’s an extremely welcome approach. As a result, Eternal’s soundtrack has songs that I feel stand out a lot more in comparison to the bass heavy electronic music that made up much of 2016’s OST. These tracks amplify my adrenaline and aggression TENFOLD when I hear them, and they compliment the intensity of the combat so perfectly that I feel separating the two would honestly make the combat slightly worse as a result. That might not make much sense on paper, but that’s just how intrinsically tied the music is to the combat. The music plays such a key role in fully immersing myself in the gameplay, making it some of the most effective video game music I’ve ever heard in my life. Just like BFG Division from the previous game, Mick Gordon put out a couple of tracks that I believe to be anthems for the series: The Only Thing They Fear Is You and Meathook. I hear these tracks and I immediately lock the fuck in like someone just uttered my sleeper agent codeword. I can’t think of too many other video game songs that have this effect on me. I personally believe Eternal without a doubt has the best tracks Mick has recorded over the course of his entire career, and Marty Stratton deserves the absolute worst for the way he treated Mick.

Despite controversy after controversy popping up after it’s release, in my eyes, DOOM Eternal remains the greatest first person shooter I have ever played, and one of my top 5 personal favorite games of all time based purely off of its fun factor alone. For new players, it may be a bit difficult to digest all of the different upgrades and get used to how intense the combat can be as well as how long the levels are. If by any chance I’ve convinced you to give the game a try someday, I hope that over the course of my review I’ve provided you with tips that improve the experience. I really, truly love DOOM Eternal. Getting good at this game feels euphoric. Killing hordes after hordes of demons makes me feel like a god, and I say that without any sense of exaggeration or a tinge of regret. It’s an experience that always manages to get me pumped even after several playthroughs, and even if there’s another DOOM game or FPS out there that manages to be even bigger and better than Eternal, there’s a part of me that feels like I’m always going to end up coming back to it eventually, and in that regard, the game truly does live up to its namesake.

What a dissapointment. Easily the weakest of the Yakuza games I've played thus far, with a bloated yet flatline of a plot and way too much side content, Yakuza 8 is a complete slog. I'm 25 hours into the game and the main storyline hasn't inched a budge. Ridiculous, fortunately I wasn't scammed by buying it for full price, but this is just so rough.

Kasuga Ichiban is a character who feels completely lost here, devoid of purpose after his native storyline finished in 7, now consigned to wander aimlessly looking for a mother nobody cares about because Yakuza doesn't care about women. Kiryu is here, he has cancer now. The rest of the cast is fine, but they all feel like retreads of prior cast members.

I'm genuinely so sad, 7 was the game that made me love Yakuza, and it's immediate sequel is a boring nothingburger of a game way longer than it has any right to be. I was hoping so hard it would be great, and I was just bored instead.

Man, what the hell happened here?

I know the full release of this game just started today, but I've played a decent amount of the beta, and I think after playing the new update I can confidently talk about this because I've got some stuff to whine about. Get ready for another Shem review that I write on an impulse where I just tear into something with no structure

I'm going to say now that I'm not interested in playing fighting games competitively by any means; I usually only play fighters just to screw around. Unlike a lot of other people, I thought Multiversus had the potential to be really good from the beta, so someone please explain to me why they took down the game for a full year only to re-release the exact same thing, but it feels way worse to play?

Every character’s movement and attacks have been slowed way the hell down, so every fight just goes at a snail’s pace now. Even characters who are supposed to be faster, like Finn and Shaggy, just don’t feel satisfying at all. I don’t understand why this change was even made, because one of the big criticisms of the beta nearly two years ago was that the game was too slow and floaty, so why double down on that? Fucking Brawl Ganondorf could DANCE on these characters! That’s not good! It got so slow for me that it almost single-handedly killed the experience.

The only other really big addition to the game is Rift mode, the PvE mode, which basically just boils down to playing a bunch of matches against bots with a few minigames thrown in there. Those minigames are lame as hell, by the way. You could find them in a bootleg Wii Sports-like shovelware game back in 2009. Who played the beta for this and thought, “You know what was missing? A minigame where you control a tank and shoot slow-moving drones to protect a magic crystal, and the character does not change direction at the same time as the tank when you move, so it looks jank AF”. At least they don't really last that long at all, but it all feels so stupid. How they got away with shutting the servers down to focus on "new modes" when this was all they did baffles me.

Outside of a few new characters and stages, everything else is basically the same. The same microtransactions, the same perk system, the same battle pass—the same stuff that I already don’t like about “Live Service” games. What I’m left with is a game that is somehow even more confused than it was in the beta. It just makes me wonder what the hell the point of shutting the game down even was, if they were just going to keep everything the same but make it less interesting to play.

It’s a shame, really. I don’t want to just shit all over Multiversus in another overly drawn out rant, because there are still things to appreciate about it. The actual movesets for each character are really creative and unique. They all behave exactly as I would expect those characters to play in a platform fighter, and I really enjoy the unique character dialogue that happens in certain matchups. They nail the fanservice aspect of this game. Most of what I complained about could still be fixed, but my main point here is that I just don’t care anymore after THIS long of a wait. You can tell these developers really do care about the characters and franchises they’re representing. But considering the time we live in, where crossovers are essentially just being done to shill for dying movie series, Multiversus is just more of that.

Buddhist philosophy intersecting Mesoamerican/African mythology (sort of shares a property with the Star Wars prequels in which some of these fictional cultures definitely feel racially undertoned but trying to place a finger on what specific race makes YOU the racist one. Current working theory is that the Zora are either Swedish or Korean.) in a game that's so good it doesn't make sense it exists. Escapes the humongous shadow OOT casts over the franchise by unashamedly bogarting every single asset that game had and becoming an unimpeachably weird, sombre but never maudlin, beautiful freak of a sequel. One sidequest of love and tragedy that spans 3 days and 3 nights ends a minute and a half before the moon crashes into the earth, forces you to rewind the clock, and 10 seconds later, it's like it never happened at all. Memento mori - remember you will die. You loop through Samsara, you do it all again.

Link becomes the de facto sin-eater of Termina, coming and going without a trace. You can't be everywhere. You can't save everyone. You loop through Samsara, you do it all again.