We love a game where the genre of background music changes depending on the ethnicity of your enemies.

The Punisher is an honest character. In a world of goody-goody, boy-scout superheroes who seem keen on saving the world through no-kill rules and putting their enemies in jails with revolving doors instead of cells, The Punisher gets shit done. He picks up a gun and goes out in the street and shoots the bad guys to death. It isn’t complicated by anything else. They’ve done bad, he kills them, they can’t do bad anymore. There’s no risk of recidivism, of reoffending, of getting away; they’re dead, and it’s done. He's cleaning out the bowels of New York City, one pull of the trigger at a time.

The Punisher is a dishonest character. He, and his fans, and his writers all hold the belief that treating a symptom is treating a cause. Drug addicts and purse snatchers and rapists and jaywalkers and protesters all meet the same end of the same barrel of the same gun, mowed down for “being criminals” and nothing more. Non-violent offenders, first-timers, gang members fresh out of getting jumped in — every criminal gets shot to death. There are no second chances, no degrees of justice, no punishment too severe. If you’re one of the lucky ones, maybe you won’t get tortured before your head gets blown off as retribution for being addicted to heroin.

The matter to ultimately keep in mind is the fact that The Punisher is a comic book character for children. Teenagers with behavioral problems, at the oldest. These mass-market superhero comics have exceptionally rarely been intended for actual adults; there’s a reason that Frank Castle debuted in a twenty-cent Spider-Man comic, and not in the middle pages of Arcade between shit by Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman. Much as the most diehard Punisher fans would like to pretend as though The Punisher has ever been telling a mature story for mature adults, this can only hold true when in direct comparison to other superhero comics from the same parent company. Certainly, The Punisher is as dark as Marvel is willing to get, but what you ought to take away from that sentiment is that these stories are the darkest that Marvel is willing to get. Take The Punisher seriously, and you’ve already lost long before you began.

The 2004 movie tie-in game mostly seems to understand this. Despite coming out shortly after the movie and bringing back Thomas Jane to play Frank, there’s little that the game actually has in common with the film; aside from a set piece or two where The Punisher has to take on a legally-distinct version of Kevin Nash’s character in his apartment, the game is far more faithful to the comics than Jonathan Hensleigh’s version was. Fuck, the movie took place in Tampa instead of New York. There's an unwavering adherence to the comics present here that reveals The Punisher as the absurd little aberration in this world that he is; throughout the runtime of the game, the grizzled angel of death that is Frank Castle has to share screen time with goofy characters like Nick Fury and Iron Man, all kitted out in their magic power armor that they use to fight human waves of color-coded Russians and Italians. The Punisher will grab some Yakuza guy in a bright-pink Steve Harvey suit and shove a gun in his mouth until the Yakuza screams “it’s my birthday!”, giving Frank a burst of health. You then blow his head off, and Frank quips “last one”. The game is well-aware of how stupid this all is, and assumes that you’re as in on the joke as it is. Don’t think too hard about it; everyone knows this is silly.

A core mechanic of the game lets you take human shields, which can absorb an inordinate amount of bullets and then be interrogated to recover any lost health. You can also press the L1 button to throw them about fifteen feet ahead of you, at which point I immediately clocked that this was a Volition game. The Punisher seems like it wants to be Max Payne at first glance, but it’s actually Saint’s Row. The controls are remarkably similar, as is the tone; The Punisher himself is taking all of this very seriously, but it’s all so ridiculous that you as the player clearly aren’t expected to. The gameplay loop is simple to start, but gradually demands more of you; starting enemies will die in a shot or two to the chest, but foes later on will be kitted out in Arsenal Gear Tengu armor that essentially requires you to land perfect headshots if you want to deal any meaningful damage.

This all comes together to create an inverse enjoyment curve. You start the game mowing down whoever crosses your path in a very wish-fulfillment-styled rampage, but spend the latter half slowly walking around the battlefield with a human shield and taking potshots at enemy heads with the most accurate weapon that you have. Shotguns are basically invalidated as a weapon type the second that enemies put on bulletproof vests, and you’re limited from that point on to little more than your choice of the AK-47 or the M16, and whatever handgun you can get ammo for. Regular enemies die to headshots just as easily as the guys who showed up dressed as the Combine, so there’s a massive compression in what you’re able to do as a player the further into the game you get. The optimal strategy is to take a shield and fish for headshots, and that’s about all you’ll be doing for the final three hours of playtime. Two of the bosses can only be damaged with explosives that get dropped by the adds they summon, which is about as fun as it sounds.

It ends up as little more than a game that’s mostly okay, which used to be something that was celebrated when a licensed title pulled it off — even more so if it was a movie tie-in game. Aside from a few good laughs and some initially interesting gunplay, there’s not much to this. It can’t manage to be more than a version of Blood on the Sand with about the same gameplay quality and a less interesting final product. Even as ridiculous as Frank grumbling “I’m gonna kill every inmate on Riker’s Island” is, he still can’t reach the heights of Fiddy going after his fucking skull. I’d suggest that anyone who’s thinking about this ought to go try Blood on the Sand instead, but the average Punisher fan probably draws the line at being asked to play as a black guy.

I was originally going to format this review as a comic storyboard, but I wrote too many words for that to be viable. For your consideration, here is an album of Punisher doodles that I left on the cutting room floor.

MGS2 is a hard title to write about because there are already like, several 800 page essays about the game and its themes on this site alone, I’m not even factoring in video essays and other sites and articles. So why am I writing this regardless? Well, the answer is quite simple, I can’t get this game off my mind even a week after playing it, and as possibly redundant this review could be, I need to get it out there.
Playing MGS2 for the first time, after seeing a playthrough in my earlier teens and wanting to try it myself for nearly half a decade, was cathartic. I could not be more glad that I finally got to try this. While I was pretty terrible at the stealth gameplay even on the lowest difficulty, just the satisfaction of making progress and exploring every little nook and cranny of the Big Shell made it for me. While it doesn’t have the heavy winter night atmosphere of Shadow Moses that defined the previous game, Big Shell is beautiful in its quaintness. It’s simple but has effective coloring and theming, and honestly how could anyone hate the almost tranquill outside areas with the bright skies, blue oceans, and crying seagulls?
I mentioned that I watched a full playthrough of this game several years ago, and I actually revisited it recently to see if it held up. While I still enjoyed it, it felt surreal seeing that even in 2018 many people didn’t like or respect the direction that MGS2 took with its heavier reliance on themes than sensibility. “Overshot” was the description that hit me the most. While, sure, there are things about this game that are fucking ridiculous (honestly despite my high praise for this game I do have choice words about the Liquid hand thing), I think the absurdity was intentional and defines MGS2. It’s not for everyone, which I understand, but it seems that even just a couple years ago 2 was given a lot of shit for its direction, whereas now I feel that it’s almost universally praised as a masterpiece.
Lastly what I wanted to touch up on was how much I despise the nihilistic circlejerk that surrounds this game’s final codec call. While in the moment it can be crushing and feel like something to make the player feel used, it’s like people completely ignored everything that happened after the final boss. Or even in the codec call itself, where Raiden pretty much says “nah, I’m good” despite everything he’s been told trying to devalue him and dispose of him after his “purpose” has been fulfilled. Both of Snake’s speeches afterwards are the icing on the cake. Honestly during the rewatch of them I did shed a few tears, it hits a lot harder when I’ve given more thought into it and it's an uplifting message that leaves the story on a high note after the brutality of the final codec. Snake essentially goes “hey, there’s a lot going on and misinformation will spread, but don’t freak out yet, you’re your own person and you get to decide what you do or don’t believe in,” how you could see all that and then only hyperfixate on “kojima predicted the internet and AI lol!” is not only ignorant, but blatantly disrespectful to everything else going on. There’s more meaning to MGS2 and its main gimmick was not just “predicting the future.” It’s about individuality and finding what we believe in. Becoming nihilistic and focusing on all the bad in the world is exactly what the GW wants you to think. Why can't some recognize that?
It was nice finally going through this amazing, amazing game firsthand. I’m taking a bit of a break before I tackle 3 because I wanted to dedicate more time to thinking about this game. It’s something that I don’t think will ever leave my mind anytime soon. There’s a lot I didn’t cover here, and it’s simply because many people have already said it or I don’t even know where to begin in wording it, but I am totally up for discussion if you’d like to ask.
Thank you for reading, and a happy new year.
Choose your own legacy.
It’s for you to decide.
it's up to you.

In my defense, I've been pretty busy during the majority of last week doing touristy things in the great state of Chicago, so I've only had a few moments here and there to play games on my 3DS. Even so, I clearly need to stop doing this to myself.

I don't know what keeps drawing me to portable pinball games on the GBA/DS, but I guess my craving for a good game of pinball from arcades every now and then has stayed with me, and transformed into this morbid curiosity to play every spinoff pinball game of major franchises that I can get my hands on, regardless of how shovelware it looks. Unfortunately, in comparison to Mario Pinball Land and Pokemon Pinball: Ruby and Sapphire, Pac-Man Pinball Advance just straight up sucks. There are two boards that basically have the same scoring and objectives from what I can tell, though the board on the right (the boardwalk) has an additional flipper on the left hand side a bit further up so you might just want to stick with that board so you have more excuses to press buttons. You can switch between a classic pinball table view with rails and a more "Pac-Man World" adventure table view, but as far as I can tell, they're functionally the same as well. And to be fair, maybe I'm just misinterpreting this mostly forgotten spinoff title that you can pick up for 10 bucks on Ebay, and it's just a classic case of rack up as many points as you can to break high scores, but I found the experience extremely limited and quite bland, with some very baffling design decisions:

- Hitting any of three targets on the left hand side will cause a cannon to shoot out a super pellet, which you can collect to start up ghost chase mode (that is, the ghosts turn blue and you can shoot the ball into them to get points). However, if you activate this mode while your ball saver is still active (for the first 30 seconds of each ball), then the ball saver's time is superseded by however much ball saver time you get while ghost saver mode is active, and since it's noticeably less than 30 seconds, it's a real bummer losing this important boon from a supposed advantage state.

- The flippers are notoriously underpowered at very certain angles; namely, they do not produce powerful trick shots at the very thin tip of the flippers, which is very odd to me because that should be the most powerful section of the flippers (due to producing the most acceleration at those sections), so good luck shooting anything outside and including the 45 degree angle of an outer cone trajectory. It's also extremely frame tight near the center of the flipper for some reason, so if you're playing on the Pac Village board, there's this certain pellet behind the well that is extremely difficult to collect.

- Multiball (the Ms Pac-Man item in the shop) is just a bad time; the camera does not attempt to scroll up or lengthen the vertical perspective to include both balls, so chances are if you shoot one of your pinballs during multiball up, you won't be able to see it interact with bumpers or other obstacles at the top of the board until it comes crashing down whenever and you have to react on the fly to make sure it doesn't fall through.

- The win condition of the entire game is pretty unclear; it tells you to collect pellets, and you can do so both on the main board and infinitely in "minigames" where you enter the circular cellar or a linear infinite up and down autoscroller (where you must dodge ghosts while collecting power pellets and pellets to rack up score). But as far as I can tell, you can't actually progress the board by collecting pellets alone, because the only significant change besides score when collecting pellets is regenerating pellets when all on a board are collected, forever and ever. I think instead you have to light up all the letters in PAC-MAN by (slowly) collecting fruits or lighting up all three adjustable lights above the upper bumpers, but I never got this far because...

- It is so easy to lose your ball in this game. Once the ball saver is gone, the ball can very easily roll into the side chutes and into the abyss from simply falling out of the corridors at the top of the board due to lack of momentum from underpowered flippers (or be shot into these side chutes from the flippers themselves). In addition, the bumpers at the bottom of the board are very good at launching the pinball into the side chutes, and there's very little you can do about that as well. You may have four balls to play with, but significant "progression" isn't really a thing when they just melt away from interaction with the board's inherent elements.

It is rare for me to play a portable pinball game that makes me go "Mario Pinball Land was less frustrating and more fair than this," so congratulations Pac-Man Pinball Advance, I guess you've accomplished what I once deemed impossible. At the very least, I can tell the game empathized with me on a deeper level, as this Pooka bumper's expression was basically me IRL. Oh well, you can't win them all I suppose; the Pac might be back, but not because of this.

Incredibly fun sprite work and great music, up there with Championship Edition in terms of the best versions of Pac-Man to play. My only complaint is that by world 3 or 4 things get hectic in a way that I find a lot more difficult to handle than normal Pac-Man. The mechanic of ghosts transforming into more complex, harder enemies is neat, but eventually, there's so much going on on-screen that you can't find time to stop any of them from transforming. Once I was regularly dealing with 4 powered-up ghosts and no power pellets left, I just spammed the credits button to get through the game, and death becoming trivial to me like that isn't very fun, but maybe I just need to get better. Out of all the games on Pac-Man Arcade+, this and Championship Edition are probably the biggest highlights.

Taken on its own, the idea of the beautiful, quiet, mysterious MYST island eventually falling into disrepair and becoming overwhelmed by littering and graffiti as millions of visitors (gamers) trample through and fiddle with the puzzles over and over for years like it's a Disneyland attraction IS actually kind of intriguing and COULD POSSIBLY support a well-made parody game. Unfortunately, this game 1) isn't funny, and 2) isn't actually a game at all, really - just a mildly interactive slideshow. (And yes, smartass, technically, so is MYST. Shutup.)

So, you don't actually wander around and explore or anything. You're presented with a series of postcards from the island (just screenshots from the original game with crap drawn over the top of them) and you click around on them and hear a couple little skits and see a couple dumb animations on each. Eventually you tab through them all and that's it. The humor is mostly goofy voices/sound effects and dumb '90s schtick so ... yeah, nothing beyond incredibly dated dad jokes, basically. Topless John Goodman in a crown is probably the most noteworthy thing here, so uh, yeah. There you go.

It kinda strikes me as endearing how completely off-script of a parody this is when juxtaposed with the actual Myst. Like, yeah, it's a parody of the game and uses its assets to poke fun at the fantastical whimsy of a techno-fantasy island, but it seems like the creators of this game saw fit to jam in the firey angst present in any amount of 90's alternative mindset or media aimed directly at mass media and out-of-touch establishments. The initially pristine island turned into a kaleidoscope of trash and marketing, almost entirely wrung into utilitarian capitalist mayhem, voices from the filthy mass of posters and derelict trailers. It's absolutely poor-taste in points though, a level of deep-seated misanthropy cast to all sides- I particularly didn't like the king character, played by John Goodman, and his one bit for the game's ending. Beyond it and many a poop joke, it's 15 minutes of gameplay where most of it is reading out posters and listening to audio.

It feels as though, by nature of its manufacturing as a CD-ROM and thus its contribution to the wider megapile of computer game diaspora, its existence almost necessarily plays out in such a way that feels more warranted and tasteful than the stuff that Newgrounds and such would call parody in its wake. Whether it's enough is another story, but I can tell its creation was not in total, unequivocable hatred for the game despite the literal trash made out of it. There is something else to be said beyond that Myst as a concept is silly, and for that I think it's somewhat of a league more respectable than the stuff born purely out of cynicism and nothing else.

Alright, I cleared 5 out of 10 endings, I think I'm ready to complain now. I'm usually a pretty big fan of shlocky and dumb storytelling. But I cannot bring myself to play along with it here, when it goes against every single intent that this Sound Novel was supposed to promise. The wiki page for this game states that the developer wanted to create a game that's so atmospheric and scary, the hurdles would stem not from challenge, but from your very own fear of advancing the story forward. Furthermore, it was made with the developer's girlfriend in mind, so, I thought it was being catered for a more adult audience, or in the very least, an audience of all ages that could use this as an entry point into video games. And in all these senses, Otogirisou completely fails. It's not just that its scares are weak. Sometimes, it seems to forget that it's supposed to be a horror visual novel for adults at all.

What you actually have here is a 20 dollar budget haunted house attraction where depending on your luck, you're either gonna run into an ensemble of Scooby-Doo cliches (i know other reviews used this comparison too, but there really is no better way to describe it), or multiple fakeouts in a row. The pacing of it all frantically jumps between too much random shit happening at once, or literally fucking nothing happening ever. The characters themselves seem unable to decide whether they're actively in fear for their safety, blowing off everything they see as an illusion, or feeling so completely safe that an entire half hour scene will be dedicated to them figuring out how to get the shower working so they can wash themselves off. Right in the middle of a place trying to kill them.

This tonal inconsistency is likely owed to the way choices are handled here. Y'know, there IS something cool about the idea that you're not just deciding your outcome in a predetermined story, but rather, the choices you make are actively rewriting the story to fit what you want to see happen. But this system is so loose, that you can swap from one route to an entirely different one, and it'll start talking about things that have never happened, or forget the things that did. It's like playing around in AI Dungeon, you're generating a story that's only consistent when you don't try too hard to experiment in it. But there's nothing to account for the fact that you are capable of ruining the story, leaving gaping plot holes and unresolved Chehkov's Guns that leave the experience as a terribly unsatisfying one.

This already deflates the tension hard enough, but the final nail in the coffin is when you're hit with the realization that you are never in any actual danger of dying. The danger is an illusion, that the characters always escape from unscathed, no matter how hard you try to lean the choices into bad ideas. I couldn't even so much as get the girlfriend character to kick the bucket and get a bad ending where the protagonist grieves her! I mean, I sound like a psycho when I say that, but- you get the point! This especially drives the "haunted house attraction" comparison home, when it feels like the haunted house is going fucking easy on you. It's like this game isn't interested in utilizing the fear of your girlfriend winding up dead because of you, but rather, this is a chance to grow closer to her, to show her how brave, and cool you are, and-

Wait, that's why the developer created the game, didn't he...? Oh. Well, I guess it all makes sense now.

And oh my god, I only described one half of the game! The other half is just a soap opera combined with family melodrama. The kind where I'm leaning my head against my hand, rolling my eyes as I'm scrolling through walls of "I felt my mother's love, in my heart, telling me to stop my fish monster brother and have him remember his true self..." What game am I playing? This was supposed to be horror, right? What is this? What IS this??? WHAT IS THIS. NAMI, STOP BRINGING UP YOU MEASURING HEIGHTS WITH YOUR SISTER IT'S NOT THAT AMAZING OF A MEMORY

Ohh, fuck me. And I've still got like 5 endings to go too. I hear there's some pretty funny dialogue options that get unlocked when you clear out all the endings (Edit: I reached them. Wasn't worth it). The fan translation's pretty cool by the way, I could never shit on people who bring these region-exclusive games for other audiences to experience. They deserve a ton of respect, and the way they translated this one got a few laughs out of me.

But like, fuuuck, the main ingredient is dry spaghetti, and it's got no sauce. No self-awareness. No tension. No focus. All its got is a pretty cool title screen theme, and a historical novelty. But the moment I started diving deeper into it, I realized that Otogirisou had one important promise that made up its entire existence, and that promise was swiftly broken. This review is my Otogirisou. You know the meaning of the flower, right?

Utterly baffling how much the ball was fumbled with this. Most of the pass is a mixed bag that are nearly all massive downgrades from their survey concept art outside of Cerberus, and frankly that's me being biased. The quote-unquote story is nothing, more than it's ever been before and it's been made clear thanks to outside sources that it's because Epic and eternally head-up-ass Tim Sweeney care more about their "metaverse" than creating something truly cohesive, leading to a studio that's clearly stretched too thin and with priorities all over the place. The crossovers taking precedence over the actual Greek god theming of the season to the point of removing core weapons and items for most of the season because of their inclusion continue to appall me, alongside the increasing hikes in prices of everything. I cannot believe the Star Wars pass costed as much as it did for useless Lego crap that few care about and a Chewbacca skin.

The map wasn't even really made that much better like I was expecting and hoping for. There still aren't enough points of interest spread across the map, and I really don't think taking out the majority of the snow biome to replace it with another grassy field (but this time it's yellow) was a good idea. The Underworld and Mount Olympus are cool areas, but there's also the whole other issue of retroactively making Season 1 POIs worse by removing the bosses and NPCs that used to wander them. Walking to locations like Oscar's mansion or Fencing Fields and just discovering that their vaults are always open with essentially nothing in them is such a joke. You can't tell me this multi-million dollar studio couldn't have figured out a way to balance out the old bosses and their medallions with the new ones, or even just giving a different reward entirely. Chapter 5's map doesn't feel like an evolving breathing world like previous maps nailed.

Rocket Racing is a little better thanks to more visual variety in the maps but the core game is still aggressively flat and uninteresting. LEGO Fortnite still hasn't changed any of the core world generation issues I have that sour the experience, even if I do think the actual Star Wars event stuff was actually kind of cool! Credit where it's due! But Festival truly shocked me with how awful the Riffmaster and Pro mode launch was handled. Embarrassing to the highest extent.

sorry for jinxing it by having any hopes on a live service game guys lol

 VRChat's reputation as a kind of chaotic nightmare chatroom isn't entirely undeserved, but the worst of it is largely confined to public worlds—understandably, these very first (and sometimes only) experiences people will have with the game color public perception. Sure, the public side of the game is chock-full of snot-nosed racist children being raised by Meta Quest headsets instead of their parents, but those public worlds aren't where the magic happens. You can't enter any other game's lobby with the worst of its players and expect a good time—this isn't an exception. VRChat starts to shine when getting together with a group of close friends or joining a private group of more mature users. There are a lot of worthwhile worlds with unique experiences to explore, and while solo searching can be fun, it's great to find a group of people who are willing to engage in a bit of world-hopping.

 The worlds themselves range from silly games to cozy hangout spots to artful and atmospheric creations—my personal favorite being the last group. Before delving deeply into VRChat, I really wanted more abstract worlds to explore in VR, but very few seem to really exist on Steam. However, they thrive in VRChat, where they've established themselves as a kind of niche. You have brutalist concrete mazes, working recreations of worlds from Yume Nikki and .flow, ports of levels from LSD Dream Emulator, and unique hand-crafted environments—not to mention the working Jet Set Radio Future fan world, laser light shows synced to music, amusement parks with working rides of varying quality, horror-themed worlds, puzzle-based worlds, art museums, heartfelt memorials, virtual markets, music festivals, and nightclubs that only open once a week. Then, of course, the seemingly endless feed of limited-time promotional worlds that corporations pour actual money into—often to promote their brand or even sell tickets to their digital, in-VRC events... which appeals to me less than the other stuff, but it can be interesting to explore those worlds for the strange sensation that you're existing in an ephemeral space that will cease to exist soon. Point being, for those open-minded digital explorers who are willing to dig, there are a lot of great little gems in VRChat.

 And then there's the avatars, of course. VRChat is the best, most accessible vehicle for seeing myself as, and being perceived as, my fursona. In VRChat, this happens in a very physical-feeling way, like a layer of separation has been removed between my real self and the skull-headed bat monster I depict myself as online. Being able to have that experience with others who are doing the same is uniquely affirming. At the same time, that ability to position yourself in a physical space, to gesture at directions and objects and others, feels like a step in-between an online group call and meeting in real life. It's more "real" than a regular chat over Discord, even if you've found yourself at an interstellar aquarium or an architecturally impossible maze.

 I'd urge those who tapped out early due to bad experiences in the poorly moderated public worlds—particularly people with headsets—to give VRChat another shot, to go solo or get a friend group together, and to let its more unique and interactive worlds have their chance to win them over. Some of the most creative visual and exploratory things in VR are happening in VRChat, and they're well-worth exploring.

it is not that often that i see a game that makes me feel dread.

getting to the last few seconds of the video while Badlands unpredictably burps like crazy is so tense knowing you lose all your progress when you die. like, the way this game remixes both I Wanna Be the Guy and a YouTube video in mod format is pretty ingenious... diegetic burp interactivity + basically perfect giant boss fight + a mixture of a cutscene with skill-based play. where else do you see such a story-focused game (Badlands never stops speaking or chugging bottles of coke zero) be so seamlessly merged with high-stakes gameplay??

there's this hypnotic quality to this game. you memorize the whole video in the first hour of attempts and then you turn into a zombie trying to get good burp RNG and then you burst out laughing when Badlands does that wiggly burp. i lost so many runs to that...,