this is the kind of game that makes me wish i was more well-read, it hits so many tantalizing historic details. pc simulation turned multiplayer board game, japanese investment simulator released right after the bubble burst, a geopolitical gazette of the late 20th Century self-assured that history had reached it end (save few unfortunate cities getting very wet). one could imagine the self-assured middle manager of the 1990s cooling off from a long day of siphoning the industrial and agricultural capital of their country with a tall, cool glass of aerobiz.

as a game, it does have that pleasant, breezy boardgamey quality, and the game touts itself as a multiplayer experience from the jump. it would make for a decent wine and cheese night, it hits the right notes of monopoly style competition but is not such a demand on the attention that one could be driven to anger over it. languid turns pass quickly, a kind of paradox that is perfect for the most limimal situations you might encounter. its honestly the perfect phone game. you could pass it to your friends across the dinner table, manchego fingers smear the protective film on your screen. but like also, this game is solo phone material as well. like, your plane is only operating at 60 percent capacity. lower ticket prices. turns pass. the man next to you on the train coughs in your face. you think about what to make for dinner. your plane is operating at 70 percent capacity. repeat until you get to your station.

there are plenty of options to keep you mildly entertained, and i found it decently engrossing envisioning my chain of travel hotels and budget flights pushing commerce from city to city like a rudimentary EU4. breaking from reality, the winner of the game must not only lead profits for a year, but be have the most passengers in four of the games eight reasons. this is a board gamey contrivance, one to put other regions on a more level playing field with north america, but its a good idea. it dovetails nicely with the games golden-eyed optimism about travel. the world of aerobiz is enriched by your presence, you are Apollo pulling mortals across the sky, and to win you must embrace the magnanimity of your position (even if making the most money puts you in the catbird seat to build the network required for this)

this alternate objective, outside of profit, could be seen as a break from reality. interestingly, this is not the only way this ostensibly grounded simulation either breaks from, or dispenses with reality entirely. the game is intent on telling its history in entirely abstract terms. the yom kippur war and the iran iraq war are renamed "The Middle East War 2 amd 3". these historical are needed, ostensibly to give context of the 70s oil shock. the background was important enough to include, but none of the background of the background. in the future, the melting polar ice caps will flood vancouver. in this limited way, the game does strike me as "progressive" in some sense, eating civiliation 6's proverbial lunch 26 years in advance. relatedly, perhaps it is to the games credit it does not make it a priority to divest airlines from fossil fuels, that may have been unbelievable even in the 90s. but there are no "climate wars" over dwindiling water and food sources, no refugee crises, no Travel Bans. the future is bright, things continue to get better, plane travel continues unabated, russia and belarus join the eu. russias a fun one in particular. if you toss money to the United $tates when they ask, the soviets can buy boeings as early as the 60s. would more reliable planes fix aeroflots horrible accident record? buying more boeings makes you more competitive for spots at NA airports. does this reflect a special relationship between boeing and the kremlin? would boeings hit squad have made the mistake of leaving uneaten taco bell in the recently murdered john barnett's car if they were trained by the kgb? (googling this informed me boeing has Georgi Markov'd another guy at a parts supplier since i last checked)

im not an economist (my fake degree is in music) so i have to leave determining the salience of the historical minutae both In The Game and not to the Genuises. what i can say is that phones need more luxurious timewasters. if you can stand grappling with dealing with a snes port of a pc98 game with touch screen buttons, you could do far worse. at its best, this is velour-upholstered luxury boredom, the kind a 19th century viscount or baron would devote his whole life and fortune to.

maybe a little too sweet for me...

the art is fantastic, and hanging out in the coffee shop is nice for sure. my issue is that despite talking about big issues like Racism and Capitalism and What Am I Doing With My Life, the weight of the characters' problems is tempered in order for the game to be cozy and wholesome. I also kind of feel like this game chooses to be set in America without really engaging with what it means to be set in America? for example having a Chill Cop character is dumb as hell.

still it's nice to hear these people's stories and to think about nice drinks. the audiovisual design rules and most of the characters are likeable. also, what the fuck happened at the end there????

lastly, it's a shame about Mohammad Fahmi's passing -- from what I've read it seems like he was a positive guy, and I can imagine him being an inspiration to people from Indonesia and elsewhere. I'll probably play his game What Comes After, too.

this game is 'free' on ps plus right now so i downloaded it to play through a recent bout of ennui. the manager mode is fine, basically unchanged in 10 years but the bones are still solid. only new feature to speak of is that it gives you a little review of how good you did on transfers. its a fun lil nod to the implied world of blog posts and tweets amd group chats that exist in the imagination of the player. "oh cant believe Chunderly let McJohnson walk for nothing" you hear in your head as the game chides you for not finding a better way to offload a middling youth squad player. its barely good tho, given that im still prone to accidentally overpaying my new players in factors of ten given the way the wage input field jumps around. the game still gave me an A rating after paying some serie d loser 10000 dollars a week because i didnt pay any transfer fee

honestly losing the fifa license or whatever did really fuck this game, no jleague hurts me. no ligamx! i was reduced to playing as the fucking chicago fire!! also, super sick to include the nswl and other intl womens soccer leagues, but i cant play a manager of a womens team?

anyway this year is finally the year that i found out its more fun to set the matches to live sim amd yell at the tv rather than play them at all. i almost cut my finger off making dinner as late penalties in the mls cup semifinals unfolded. they should just like preinstall this game on tvs, its better without a controller.

my last thought is that it an unreal debacle to play multiplayer games locally in a lot of cases these days. like i made like 20 fake xbox accounts last year for a halo mcc lan party so i could tell who was shootimg me. fifa lets you just assign like a 'kick off' name that doesnt require account level access. this should be enforced by law on any game with local multiplayer

oh also its too easy to beat goalies in this game

Doom Eternal is the greatest FPS games I’ve ever played. It takes everything that was great about Doom 2016 and cranks it up immensely. Weapons are a lot more balanced, and each one feels extremely meaningful when used in combat. The new dashing ability keeps you constantly moving. You have an overwhelming amount of options at any given time, which gives lots of opportunities for player expression through combat. Environments are a lot more varied than 2016 as well. There's a lot of variety in their overall design and color scheme.

My criticisms are that levels can be very long, some should really be broken up into more parts. Also, the final boss sucks. It's just awful and really ends the game on a sour note.

Regardless, this is a must play experience that I can't recommend enough. One of my favorite games of all time.

I need to preface this by saying I wasn’t fully aware of the public discourse surrounding this game before starting it. I don’t disagree with the critics, but going in blind was definitely the right choice and I would recommend experiencing it with an open mind.

It's been a while since a game had such a grip on me, but Starfield managed to do just that. While I hesitate to crown it my ultimate favorite, it's undeniably one of the standout experiences I've had this year.

I'm a sucker for stories that delve deep into the human psyche and existential questions, and Starfield hit the mark on that front. Going into the game, I wasn’t expecting a space simulator but an RPG that serves as a canvas for exploring the intricacies of human curiosity against the backdrop of the cosmos, and I got just that. Take, for instance, the choice between power and humanity. As I navigated the game's narrative, I found myself wrestling with this dilemma in a way that felt deeply personal.

The game's environmental design is a testament to the craftsmanship Bethesda has mastered with Fallout and Skyrim series. From the meticulously designed cities to the hauntingly beautiful landscapes, each location tells its own story. One particular moment stands out: landing on a desolate planet and stumbling upon an abandoned mine infested with Coralbug Scavengers for the first time. It wasn't just about the adrenaline rush; it was the palpable tension that made me question every step I took.

And then there's the soundtrack. Oh, the soundtrack. I can't count the number of times I've paused just to listen to the orchestral masterpiece playing in the background as I floated through the vast emptiness of space. It's a symphony that perfectly captures the beauty and occasional loneliness of interstellar exploration.

But perhaps what resonated with me the most were the relationships forged in the game. Characters like Sam became more than just companions; they became confidants, sounding boards for the moral quandaries I faced. I found myself emotionally invested in their stories, making the decisions I had to make all the more gut-wrenching.

And then there's the ending. Without giving too much away, I think it’s one of the most profound and poetic RPG endings that fit the theme of the game perfectly. It leaves you with questions, forcing you to confront the consequences of your actions in a way that feels hauntingly real.

As I reflect on my time with Starfield, I'm reminded of the countless hours I've spent pondering its intricacies. It's more than just a game; it's an experience that's left an indelible mark on me, one that I'll continue to unpack long after I've put down the controller.

the intro made it feel like a very lofty game which did not make the best first impression. it did win me back a little bit with the voice lines and NPCs but eventually it lost me again with the ways it approached its political ideologies. it's too meta for me to take it seriously but not silly enough for just passive consumption. at times the dialogues were in im14andthisisdeep territories which really gave me the ick. i reaaaallly wanted to get into this game but it just wasn't for me in the end and that's okay.

Had a great time with this one. Combat was superb, played a bit like God of War 2018 cranked up to Doom Eternal levels of intensity and variety. You're teleporting around the arena doing launchers and air juggles with an electric gauntlet, whipping out flamethrowers and gattling guns, throwing sticks of dynamite, tons of fun stuff.

The levels were structured like an Xbox 360 game, following a mostly linear path through combat arenas and light puzzle solving with secrets tucked away in the map's corners.

Story was really disjointed, to the point that it got kinda distracting. I wasn't expecting much, but I did find myself asking questions like "wait, what are they talking about? who? how did they get there?" more often than I figured.

Towards the end of the game, they start throwing you in to these really cramped arenas that are just PACKED with enemies, to the point that the execution animations can't play properly for all the enemies crowding around you. Lots of repeated deaths, but I never got so frustrated that I needed to stop playing to cool off. I imagine this might change on higher difficulties, seeing as I played on Normal.

I have my nitpicks, but Evil West was a hoot and I'm glad I got the chance to play with Game Pass. For people who love intense action games, this is a must. If they ever make Evil West 2, I'll be there for it.

My journey across The Planes has taken me to places that most men believe exist only in the realm of thought. These places I travelled to, the people I met, and the conversations I had fundamentally changed me as a person. I don’t fully know how, but regardless, I know some sort of change occurred. Perhaps writing about my experience with Planescape will help me better understand these changes and the person I am today.

When I was 14, I discovered Planescape: Torment, and while I thought the game was awesome, I could never really engage with the questions the game posed to me. I mean, how could I? What would the question “What can change the nature of a man?” mean to a 14-year-old who was only beginning to grapple with the concept of its own being? Looking back, it meant nothing to me. Now that I am an adult, however, the question means much more to me. Part of me is ashamed to admit I haven’t always been a ‘good’ person. Learning to be kind, understanding, mature, and responsible took me many years of struggling and hardship to achieve. Even today, I still struggle with this, but through that struggle, I came to learn more about myself and my nature. I can’t fully codify into words what my “nature” or “self” are because they are concepts that exist beyond language. Language can at times be limiting, so I look to art to help me look inward and better conceptualise these thoughts and feelings. I feel as though Planescape stirred the part of my soul that sought these answers, and despite it not giving me concrete answers, I feel satisfied with the new questions it posed to me. To me, good art never seeks to speak for the reader but instead provides them with the tools necessary to create subjective meaning from the experience they have with it. I believe Planescape does this quite well; I’d even go so far as to argue that it fully agrees with me here. When The Nameless One is posed the question, “What can change the nature of a man?” the game does not have him provide a concrete answer to the player. Instead, we are left with the game giving us the tools necessary to begin constructing our own answer to that question as the credits roll. Currently, I don't have an answer to that question, and I'm not sure if I will even have one a decade from now, but I'm okay with that. Part of growing up meant that I had to learn to be content with not always having an answer for everything; perhaps not every question needed an answer.

There’s more I could write, but perhaps it’s best that some things remain unwritten. I would love to endlessly navel-gaze, but that wouldn’t do me or you, the reader, any good. I apologise to anyone here who expected a formal review and was met instead by my self-indulgent introspection. There's really not much I can say about Planescape that hasn't already been said; it's an awesome ass game, and it deserves the reputation it has made for itself, enough said.

Anyways, I’d like to end this short write-up by saying that if you haven’t already played Planescape: Torment, you owe it to yourself to take that journey across The Planes. Sigil is known as the ‘City of Doors’, after all, so why don’t you look inside and see where one of them takes you?

Aight, so this is definitely a horny game, and obviously your enjoyment is going to vary depending on how much you can enjoy that kind of thing. If you are the type of person that thinks this kinda thing is degenerate/objectifying then yea nothing this game does is gonna change that opinion. But like, idk man playing this 20 years after the fact it's kinda a vibe? hear me out

In todays day and age, I feel like a lot of horny shit has fallen to the blatant and trashy side of things. Should you feel so inclined, you could use the very web browser you are reading this review on right now to delve into all sorts of dubiously degenerate shit from probably millions of sources. Hell, even strictly staying to the console game sphere there's all sorts of "Sakura Succubus 4"s and "Hentai Girls 8"s clogging up digital storefronts on stuff like the switch and Playstation, degen shit is out there. There's also comparatively higher budget shit like the Senran Kagura and Hyperdimension Neptunia series that hit that degen sphere, hell even the later sequels to this game crank up the trash dial with all the different ports and versions of DOAX3 out there. And that's not even considering all the actual eroge/nukige that are on PC. What I mean to say by all of this is that compared to how things are now, DOAX1 is really honestly quite tame, to the point where I feel like I could hardly even call it a trashy guilty pleasure game anymore.

Maybe it's the games self-awareness and goofiness in its plot, as it's just Zack inviting all the DOA girls over to play volleyball on a vacation island he happened to win before it explodes into a million pieces at the end. Maybe it's the aesthetic design being solid, with clear, crisp sunny beaches with sparkling water and bright blue skies accompanied by the most 2000s ass ska/reggae summery music you ever could find. The areas have the same high attention to detail and level of polish that the stages in the main DOA games contain. There are a lot of moments where the game basically gives you a free-cam to zoom in and look at whatever is on the screen, and while it's definitely designed to peep on some polygonal xbox goochie, I honestly found myself using it to look at the environments more than the girls.

The actual gameplay is kinda eh though. Half the time you are playing volleyball with the girls, the other half you are blowing away your life savings at the casino. There's also this lite-social sim aspect to it in that you can talk to other characters and give them presents in order for them to play volleyball with you, but it's all quite shallow. The point of the game really isn't so much in the gameplay, so honestly its whatever.

So like yeah. It's horny, but not aggressively so. I'm honestly rather impressed. They cared equally as much towards making a game that captures a summer vacation vibe as they did towards making an early coomercore console game. It may still basically be softcore porn at the end of the day, but damn is it some vibin softcore porn. I earnestly can't hate it. Sasuga itagaki.

really this games opening says more about it than I ever could, so just watch that.

made it about to mission 13, doing an ironman and got my shit scuffed

i think that everything that made rekka no ken great is here but this is three failed playthroughs now, two out of apathy and now this one. the maps are too big, i feel like the enemy power ramp is too quick, i dunno. i remember running into this even when i was reloading fights, it just required too many reloads of long fights. and i refuse to get better or smarter!

to be real tho i really do like the idea of doing ironman playthroughs in these games, but without the freedom to train back benchers (they get mulched by a random wyvern knight) its pretty precarious. i might try rekka no ken this way, we'll see if that works out better.

stray thoughts:
1. its cool that roy can marry his social studies teacher
2. echidna is the baddie of all time