I had completely glazed over the Vertiginous Golf mention. That game is incredibly cool and bizarre. Maybe my favorite golf game I’ve played? So aesthetically mangled and mechanically bespoke…
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Tangent, but; “some real dogshit can give you perspective” is why I suggest almost everyone should give a proper, lights-off, no distraction watch of the movie After Last Season at least once. In terms of technical film-making, I don’t know of any film that fails so much, so consistently, at so many aspects (writing, set design, camerawork, effects, direction, acting, editing…).
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I actually think After Last Season is really interesting as an abstract avant garde piece. I’m planning on rewatching it with my girlfriend one of these days. It’s great stuff, love the set design and the dreamlike amateurishness of it.
There’s something about After Last Season that I find charming because I, too, was once in art school and often late with projects and the thought of making an MRI machine out of cardboard makes sense to me in a demented way.
Hate is a strong word, but one of my friends gifted me Freedom Planet on Steam recently and I had to put it down not far in. I liked the artstyle, characters, and level design, but all the bosses feel like they were designed for people who have already beat the game 5 times. Maybe that was the point considering it started out as a Sonic fangame, but it was enough to offset any enjoyment I could have had otherwise. I might try the demo for FP2 to see if it’s any better
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That makes sense… I haven’t thought about weird outsider art, to be honest. Hmm.
I rolled credits on Borderlands 3, and what a wet fart of a plot that game has.
I have a really weird relationship with the series. I was excited to play the original with friends on my PS3, but got hit with a rare but known and never-fixed bug that pulled an old version of my friend’s list so it remained a single-player experience. I played 2 and Pre-Sequel on various platforms (including the Vita port of 2), and despite rolling credits on them too, I still think the plots and the writing of the games are just bad.
I think the shooting in the series is great. It’s why I keep coming back to the games, despite basically hating everything else around it. The “billions of guns” selling point of the series is more like a detriment, because why the fuck do I want to spend 50% of my time in a shooter comparing minor differences in weapon stats and managing my ballooning inventory of guns I’m collecting just to sell for upgrade cash?
The plot of 3 contains Major Character Deaths and Surprise Twist Relationships but each beat falls so fucking flat. Just something about the way they’re communicated makes it feel like the game wants you to care about these moments without ever giving you any reason to do so.
I have no fucking clue what Borderlands 4 would be about in the wake of 3, but I won’t give a shit until years from now when it hits a deep enough discount to be a casual purchase.
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Borderlands feels like such a weird time and place game for me. I was so enamored with that first game at the time, probably just off the novelty of “wow, it’s a FPS, but also an RPG… with co-op!” My brother and I both went out and bought copies on day one to play, and played it a ton.
…and that was enough I guess, because I’ve never played another one since. Something about the writing/tone/humor has just always been a huge turn-off, in what is otherwise I’m sure a perfectly capable video game.
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I’ve played Arc Raiders with friends a few times and I think I understand why people like it, but I don’t like it. The AI voice acting did automatically sour my initial perception, but even looking past that it never gripped me, even though I feel like I can understand how it could.
I’m not anti-extraction per say, but I’m not really interested in the shared world PVP/PVE version of it that a lot of games do. I know that’s one of the things that is really compelling to a lot of players, but I’m not interested in those interactions or moments. I generally am pretty picky about interacting with strangers in online games and Arc doesn’t really give you a lot of flexibility there (intentionally).
But most of all, I just was not into the game loop of bringing back tons of junk. I can get behind accuring resources and managing inventories (Monster Hunter games, esp. the older ones, come to mind - full pockets of stuff at the end of every hunt), but I don’t really care about all the trinkets I bring back in Arc.
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I haven’t heard much about Arc Raiders but I feel like everything I do hear about it makes it sound like Corporate Product: The Video Game. Like, oh wow, it’s a shooter where you go out into Generic Open World to collect Things so you can make Better Gear in order to go out and get more Things??? ? Sounds so fun!!!
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It does have that kind of feel to me too. There’s definitely care put into it, and it’s much more polished than your typical AAA release (though the gen AI content really tarnishes the whole experience for me). I think that’s owed to its relatively long dev cycle? It’s very fully-featured, very refined. But the menus and outer loop systems feel like they were cooked up in a lab to maximize engagement/retention. When I feel like a live game is trying to become THE thing I spend all my time playing, I generally start to get cold feet (admittedly a fine line - I like it when a game I’m enjoying can become the thing I spend all my time playing, but I want it to feel like it was completely my decision).
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I have not played Yakuza Kiwami 3 but I’m mentioning it here for many, many valid reasons - the two big ones being recasting a character with an admitted sex pest creep and the other big one being the horrifyingly bad new ending for it that has made the entire fanbase deeply concerned for future plans RGG has for the series. A truly peak everybody disliked that moment that actually poisons future stories in the process.
The fact this retcon is only possible because of Yakuza 6, the worst game in the series, is just the sprinkles on the shit sundae.
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recently I tried out the picayune dreams demo and was pretty disappointed by it. I heard that it had yume nikki influences, that even if I hated roguelikes I should check it out because it’s “one of the good ones”. I think it’s conceptually interesting but some heavy handed story segments and decent art direction don’t save vampire survivors gameplay with bullet hell bosses tacked on. feels like a game for people who might have more fun playing a shmup but have a hard time retaining their attention on reattempts. idk, I’d personally rather just play tohou or dodonpachi or something. I will never forgive vampire survivors.
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I’ve been trying Hytale, but plain and simple, the game released way too early. I feel like every couple seconds I’m running into an issue that basically every other block game already had figured out. You can’t get saplings from trees or seeds from plants, so you have to use this weird convoluted life essence thing with the farmer’s workbench, which doesn’t even cover all the tree types like azure trees. Every mob encounter feels like it takes 40 years. There’s a fairly interesting concept for a food system where instead of a hunger bar eating gives you buffs, but currently nothing’s really done with that because all the food is just some variation of “gives you passive health regen and maybe boosts stamina regen.” I wanna come back when more of this game is actually ready, but right now I just wanna play a game that actually lets me do the things Hytale keeps edging me on.
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I finished Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 and sadly have to admit that I am kind of disappointed by the game.
Now listen, I knew and accepted that it would be Bloodlines in name only and was aware of the mixed reviews. For me it’s just that I’d like to see it for myself, especially if I am interested in and the last few trailers before release got me really excited. Also in the past there were many games with low(er) scores which I still liked (like Castlevania Lords of Shadows 2 where I never got the hate).
But this game was not like that. While there are some striking visuals and a few interesting characters, the gameplay and the story did not win me over. The stealth sequences were ok at best, but the fighting itself was clunky and a chore. It simply didn’t feel good and I dreaded every encounter. The story went on for too long without going anywhere really, some absolute baffling decisions and at no point did it feel like I was investigating anything, because most characters seemed to love to share everything about them and their past. It’s also incredibly linear to the point where I question the decision to make it an open world game. Of course, one playthrough as a Tremere is not enough to judge the whole, but at the same time I don’t feel like I am missing out on any special things or story beats. Seattle seems empty and the side quests are basic fetch quests. You can unlock all clan abilities eventually so surely there must be some differences in the dialogue, but I wouldn’t expect much more there either as the Tremere characters seemed to have no special knowledge for me only and all replies (with a few exceptions) could’ve been to anyone.
I feel like I could go on and on. Would I recommend it to anyone? With much hesitation only and a lot of disclaimers. I’d rather recommend VtM Swansong, which is also no Bloodlines 2, but has a more engaging story and the playable characters feel extremely different.
Now on to other things. 
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I also played Bloodlines 2 and it’s definitely a mixed bag. The combat could be very frustrating and I’m still not sure what you’re ‘meant’ to do.
Any Bloodlines fan can handle bad combat though, I’d have given it a pass if we got the other things that made the original so great. Unfortunately every playthrough is the same, there’s a couple of options that make no real difference but overall zero replayability.
Where’s the vibes! Could have got Lacuna Coil back in there!
Music was good though, and I will say the freerunning thing was a lot of fun.
Edit: And another thing! The other endings are weirdly specific and almost impossible to get!
Anyway instead of double posting I’m just going to add this here:
I was almost finished playing FF7 Rebirth, when a technical gremlin ate my save file. Very demotivated to start all over again, but that’s not my problem with the game.
I can’t say I hate it but it…feels like a fan project? Characters constantly acting in weird ways for the amusement of the player, a lot of contrived setups don’t make any sense at all, and they decided to make Red XIII dance like Michael Jackson for some reason. Just a lot of very odd decisions. (Also the performance is abysmal)
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