tim willits is a fuckin loser bro. man made some good doom maps (with theresa chasar, his often uncredited sister) and did great work on quake pre-champions, but he never should've been elevated into the position he was by the end of his tenure at id

american mcgee calls him a "serial credit thief" and sandy petersen attributes the collapse of id to his meddling and refers to him only as "snake"; this guy's slime. man was making claims so erroneous that he managed to get both johns to team up on his ass which is saying something. saying he invented DM-only maps for quake when anyone can go check when idmap01 or cross.wad came out for doom, or better yet just think about how goofy it is for five seconds

so what happens when this rat fraud bitch teams up with soulless automaton john carmack? awooga. the most dead eyed fps ever made. together these two men really brought the heat and redefined what it means to be vacant and empty inside. one driven only by a love of machines, the other by cynical careerism. the result would be a tech demo that has virtually no redeeming qualities; even john goodman sounds like he'd rather be anywhere else, and how can you blame him

forget passion or heart or whatever fever drives the average person to create. forget anything that resembles human input. this is referential slop; echoes of better media, better games, better products — cos that's all this thing is at the end of the day — as interpreted and executed by pulseless weirdos. subpar linear shooter, even worse pseudo open world shooter; artless aesthetic sensibilities; internally and externally ugly borderlands gopher bullshit; fallout 3 brown and bloom mad max mcnugget slime created to advance tim willits' career

if I ever write another review this mean it means tim willits just put out another game

Man, nothing more me-core than "I should play some gizmondo while waiting for fedex to deliver my CD-i" today. I gotta play all like 12 of the games on that thing before it melts, yanno? Honestly this game has no right being this solid when it's stuck as an exclusive for a console more known for being linked to a mafia than being an actual system for playing games.

It's a physics based puzzle game where you knock balls around billiards-style in order to stick em together. If all of a color is stuck together, it clears out and you get points. Clearing all of the balls on a board takes ya to the next level, it's very arcadey. The depth comes from the fact that you have a limited number of shots, though connecting one loose ball to another of its color gets you your shot back. It's all about observing the board and knowing what the best course of action is for getting clear shots in the right order, and honestly given the solid physics there's a lot of player agency on board. Probably a decent skill ceiling, though I can't imagine many other people have played it enough to really wring out any potential depth here, considering the whole "gizmondo exclusive" thing this game has going on. It makes sense that this game is also so solid too, considering the fact it was made by the Pickford Brothers, of Plok and Wetrix fame. Apparently it was going to be a PSP game but somehow got relegated to the ol mafia. As it happens. I guess it got an iOS port though, so hey! that's something. If you are one of the statistically improbable that has a gizmondo, this is probably in the killer app territory. Which really isn't saying much. The game has a really funny name, too!

Far and away the most egregiously misguided attempt at myth-making in games history. This isn't the worst game ever. It's not the weirdest game ever. It is not the 'first American produced visual novel.' Limited Run Games seems content to simply upend truth and provenance to push a valueless narrative. The 'so bad it's good' shtick serves only to lessen the importance of early multimedia CD-ROM software, and drenching it in WordArt and clip art imparts the notion that this digital heritage was low class, low brow, low effort, and altogether primitive.

This repackaging of an overlong workplace sexual harassment/rape joke is altogether uncomfortable at best. Further problematising this, accompanying merch is resplendent with Edward J. Fasulo's bare chest despite him seemingly wanting nothing to do with the project. We've got industry veterans and games historians talking up the importance of digital detritus alongside YouTubers and LRG employees, the latter making the former less credible. We've got a novelisation by Twitter 'comedian' Mike Drucker. We've got skate decks and body pillows and more heaps of plastic garbage for video game 'collectors' to shove on a dusty shelf next to their four colour variants of Jay and Silent Bob Mall Brawl on NES, cum-encrusted Shantae statue, and countless other bits of mass-produced waste that belongs in a landfill. Utterly shameful how we engage with the past.

Bonus Definitive Edition content:
Limited Run Games is genuinely one of the most poorly managed companies on earth and I will never forgive them for giving me a PS5 copy of Cthulhu Saves Christmas instead of what I had actually ordered, a System Shock boxart poster. They also keep sending me extra copies of Jeremy Parish's books. Please, I do not need three copies of Virtual Boy Works.