#56kposts

bloodborne (2015) (ps5) most of the difficulty in this game comes from navigating the map and trying to distinguish interactable objects from the noninteractable environment. otherwise nyoom saw cleaver go chop chop rating: 6.8/10 Completed?: realistically this will probably never happen

astro's playroom (2020) (ps5) possibly the greatest Mario game that Nintendo never published. the in-game render of the ps vita makes me want to chew on it(?) rating: 8.5 Completed?: well technically dylan did but yes

borderlands 3 (20something) (ps5 version) man it's crazy how a game can be offensive-irreverent but do it in a cloyingly insincere Woke(tm) way. every character who fits the label of "white guy" is either retconned to be gay or gets consistently humiliated by the plot in service of furthering the juche ideals of Lillith's Female Empowerment Grrlboss Space Squad. so far I haven't seen claptrap put a fart joke into a land acknowledgement but it doesn't mean it's not in the game somewhere. gameplay-wise, it's a… borderlands game? i don't like the overemphasis on skill/ability usage and there's no character whose talent tree is just "guy who shoots guns" but this is minor. everything else about the basic structure is exactly what you expect and there's otherwise absolutely no formula deviation from the first two. also do not play this on a tv you will injure your eyes no im not joking rating:7/10 Completed?: maybe

Final Fantasy Fourteen: A Realm Reborn: Dawntrain: Patch 7.2 (2025) it's very funny how obvious it is that they locked the good writers away to finish FFXVI and once that was done they let them back out to write a versions of Wuk Lamat and Sphene that you can actually get emotionally invested in. gameplay continues to be stale in a very "uh oh" way. yoshi-p u are in danger girl rating: 7/10 Completed?: yes

Mario Kart World (2025) it's fine. it's mario kart. the open world is whatever. there is no reality in which it's worth $80 rating: 6/10 Completed?: yes

Zeldo Tears of the Whatever (2023) Switch 2 Edition on the list AGAIN!!! 60fps is great i love the qr code autobuild fuckery u can see mineru in 4k if this game has 0 fans then i am dead. im normal. rating: bnuuy/10 Completed?: Lol

Jak 3 (2003) psplus yeah I know it's not OpenGOAL but the recompile is taking a while and im impatience. you can tell this is the first Naughtydog game Neil "Israel" Drunkman is on for because it somehow got stupider from 2. you get 12 guns over the course of the game and the literal second gun the story mission gives you is so broken that there's no reason to use anything else. the best Main Girl from the first two games gets exactly three (3) lines of dialogue and appears on screen twice (in the background) and no, after 20 years no one has ever broken nda to explain why. the mysterious ancient magitek race they spent 3 games hyping up is clumsy idiot comic relief characters. also furries. the villains are ontologically evil space alien monsters with no real elaboration. or dialogue. the car segments are awful. but you know what the platforming is still Smooth AF though so we give them a pass. rating: 8.2/10 Best New Music Completed?: over and over

Zelda Windy Wakey (2000-something) nso WWHD changes made the game a lot better but visually a lot worse so it's nice seeing it look as intended. earth temple+wind temple are not enjoyable and that's not even getting to the triforce hunt. that said i blasted through the first two thirds of the game and the game, besides fumbling the last third, is still the most solid experience you can have in zelda. rating: goat/10 completed: wouldn't it be funny if i said no here

Borderlands 4 (2025) ps5 it's… fine, I think. it's way better than 3 writing-wise but that's a low bar to clear. gameplay-wise i don't know if there's any improvement on the formula and the attempted ubi game open world elements may potentially make it all slightly, marginally worse. but only just. it's actually more woke than 3 but less overt about it. claptrap is here for 5 minutes and then fucks all the way off. unbelievable?! rating: 7/10 completed: technically yes

Final Fantasy Fourteen: A Realm Reborn: Dawntrain: Patch 7.3 (2025) confirmed that the good writers (and level designers) were contained in a box labeled "Break Glass In Case Of Poor Steam Reviews", which does make you wonder why they did that in the first place instead of letting them cook on the base xpac. instead what they cooked was their golden goose rating:8/10 completed: yes

Pokemon HGSS (2010?) ayn odin 2 mini/melonDS generally gamers vastly overestimate how long ago pokemon games were Hard(tm), but memories are short. even with the QOL changes you still have to grind and even then there is still some bullshit that will wipe your team anyway. it's 'balanced' despite - or because of - this, which for a pokemon game means you can't overlevel and cheese fights. rating: no rating!! completed: yes

Animal Crossing (2001) ayn odin 2 mini/dolphin some people may not like him or his channel, but Dan Olson's video on Classic WoW is probably my favorite piece of analysis of games as a medium. specifically the part about self-directed play, or, "if there's nothing to do, you can just do whatever". original animal crossing is very much like this. rating: Yes completed: frfr

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2007) ayn odin 2 mini/dolphin everyone who loves this game will readily tell you they love it in spite of itself, and that is the truest thing you can say about it rating: :| /10 completed: yes

Astro Bot (2024) ps5 I didn't play this, but Dylan played it and I watched. I totally agree that it deserved every award it won. rating: good game! completed: 100%

Pokemon: Legends: Z: A (2025) nintendo switch 2 where you fall in the spectrum between "I never really got the appeal of Pokemon games" and "new Pokemon games are SHIT unless they perfectly replicate the experience-memory I have of the Pokemon game I played when I was 10, which is purely a coincidence that it is the best one", and if you're exactly in the middle you will find it fun. it is simultaneously deeply conservative to the established Pokemon IP yet introduces enough formula changes to make both ends of the spectrum have petulant Gamer Rage(tm) over it. it's no GOTY contender by a long shot but it accomplishes what it sets out to do, which is to be a silly romp with da creachurs. rating: 7/10 completed: yes

Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom (2002) PC picked this back up because I ran out of Zeus/Caesar levels I haven't memorized. this being the last game in the impressions historical city builder series, they've iterated a lot on the formula: many formula additions that would have made this game fantastic are hampered by formula additions that make it worse. for example (and frankly this is the only example, but it's major and you'll see why), the agriculture changes are very fun. farms are modular, housing now requires several types of food to evolve, and there's a water table mechanic similar to Pharaoh where you have to build close to irrigation. this is hampered by the ancestor worship mechanic, where if you fail to make offerings of goods, an angry ancestor will flood the river you were required to build your farms next to, taking out 100% of your food production capacity and often part of your industry. and especially if the reason you weren't making regular goods offerings is that you were struggling to produce enough exports to keep above water (heh) financially, at this point your best option is just to restart the city rather than rebuild. unfortunately the rest of the game is great which is what makes this flood bullshit so vexing. rating: 6.5 or 7.5 depending on my mood completed: yes

Kirby Air Riders (2025) nintendo switch 2 I don't know if I understand this game rating: Rick completed: (unintelligible)

Final Fantasy Fourteen: A Realm Reborn: Dawntrain: Patch 7.4: "Somehow, Tom Morello Has Returned" Edition (2025) she can feel however about the team as she wants but if I was Wuk Lamat's voice actor I would be mad that I was given the most dogshit character writing of all time and then find out later that the writing team could, actually, write my character way better and they just didn't and left me to deal with the hate mob. anyway, krile and her magical girlboss squad (+ token catboy) continues to be a hit. krile's family reunion is probably one of the top 10 best arcs in the entire game thus far. evil irish gothic lolita might be the first female ascian with screentime since igeyorhm and first one with meaningful screentime (sorry igeyorhm) (gaia and cylva don't count) and i'm interested to see what they do with her. rating: honestly? 8.5/10 completed: I never finished raid tier because idgaf about wrasslin

Horizon: Forbidden West (2023?) second playthrough, this time on pc. played it with dylan and had a bit more fun the second time around. the story is still a trainwreck, the gameplay is still solid. mark my words the third horizon game is going to be over the top campy Rating: 8/10 Completed?: Yes

shin megami tensei: persona 3: reload: fes: remake (2024) it's a really faithful remake up to and including adapting the vision to current hardware capabilities, but where it loses me is how much stylistic flourish was included. and it's hard to tell whether that was part of the original design that was limited by what the playstation 2 was capable of, or is a direct reaction to persona 5. and given atlus's decisions, it may be closer to the latter. persona 5's UI design was given such effluent praise at launch but with hindsight it's a little much, and going overboard with Cool Swag visuals in a game that cannot go five minutes without reminding you the whole thing is an allegory for death is a tonal mismatch. good design =/= flashy design. anyway Elizabeth is the best girl and it's not even close Rating: 7.5/10 Completed?: mm imma keep it real w/ u i have a job

Zeus (2001) due to a a curse placed upon me by an ancient mesopotamian demon i am compelled by forces outside my control to play through all scenarios every 1.5 years. which is pretty messed up considering there are only like 15 of them total between the base game and the expansion so i've basically memorized all the maps. eventually i will be free to play other games Rating: 666/10 Completed?: guess

Taiko no Tatsujin: Pop Tap Beat singlehandedly justifies an apple arcade subscription imo. they got miku songs on there n everything Rating: 8/10 Completed?: ???

Pokemon Diamond: Remake (2023) Yep. That's a Pokemon game. Rating: 7/10 Completed?: probably

Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail (2024) the reason there have been 50,000 threads and counting discussing why the story is bad is because it being bad while Shadowbringers is still in recent memory makes you feel like you're hallucinating. square-enix put one of the best final fantasy narratives in an mmo expansion, then five years later the new expansion introduces zero likeable characters, ensures existing likeable characters have little to no screentime, a plot that reads like a Tencent/Mihoyo ripoff of a FFXIV story, and someone's mary sue fursona gets more lines of dialogue than (almost) every other character combined. even the music is just, like, fine. so pretty concerning that square-enix's most profitable product is being mismanaged like this. on the bright side the battle encounter design is great so if you just skip all the cutscenes it's probably a fun time. Rating: 6/10 Completed?: yes

World of Warcraft: The War Within (2024) it's good-ish! i had fun! it's not going to save WoW but i'm glad blizzard is locking in. but - as long as they keep the level scaling and don't re-hire all the QA they laid off and keep pushing unfinished buggy game-breaking patches, it won't be any better than just good. i think they hired too many Overly Genre Aware designers because terms like "class fantasy" is a dogwhistle for people who have meticulously taxonomized the game playing experience and are no longer able to have unanalyzed fun without first perceiving it through the lens of a postgrad paper. this is either microsoft's or activision's fault, not sure Rating: a very slight 7/10 Completed?: ran out of steam at the final campaign chapter oops

Donut County (2018) the hype was real on this one and i was foolish to wait 6 years Rating: 9/10 Completed?: yes

Jak II: OpenGOAL Recompile (2023) played this game for a few hours each night after work and it took me about three nights to finish. imagine my surprise when i see it's considered "one of the hardest ps2 games ever made". i think on average Gamers are much worse at video games then they'd like to admit. one of the top PS2 platformers, character/scenario design is so dated it's funny. Rating: 8/10 Completed?: yes