2023
♡ January ♡
Dyna Brothers
Technically Rosy played this but I think this game is so cool and since neither of us really speak Japanese it was a group learning experience! This game is so cool and I wish I had an English patch of it so bad. Dyna Brothers is a RTS game where you play as dinosaurs fighting off an alien invasion. There are various types of dinosaurs you can hatch: Triceratops who helps grow patches of grass for your dinosaurs to walk on, Stegosaurus who eats grass and gives you points to spend on other items (such as spawning rain to grow grass in an area, hatching more dinosaurs, or causing a natural disaster!), T-rex who is the main fighter and can only walk on grass and, if left without food for too long, will resort to eating other dinosaurs, and two more dinosaur types, one which guards your main egg at your base (and will also eat other dinosaurs if no enemies come along) and another who scouts out ahead (they're ridiculously fast!) and eats opponent eggs.
Project Diva (PSP)
This game only uses the right side buttons..... and expects you to near perfect songs to clear them. But, I still enjoy this game.... I just wish I could clear the songs since it seems to be the way to unlock more!! Seeing this and Megpoid the Music and Pop'n'Music for PSP all at once made me want a PSP for just rhythm games... and wonder why all these rhythm games got released to this console!! It is not one of the more solid Project DIVA games I would say but then again it is one of the earliest, so that's not really expected. I wish the timing on this was a little more accurate emulated :c
Mansion of Hidden Souls
In my brain this game and the Sega CD just go well together, but I can't tell if that's unfair. The kind of crunchy quality mixed with the rich graphics make it settle perfectly into uncanny territory for me, which feels like what the game is trying to accomplish. The sounds they play and when, the slowness of walking and interaction with things, having to stop when someone's talking -- they all feel like they fit together well. It feels like a perfect mix of a video game and a novel.
I can't stop thinking about how cool the Sega CD seems. It seems so intentional to me and I don't know if that's true or not. Most all the Sega CD games I've seen have such a distinctive style to them and I think it's so interesting. And I find them to be more enjoyable than like.... other similar types of games? Thinking of The Quarry of the Dark Pictures series... I've been thinking a lot about how I personally feel about QTEs, about actions that become button presses (thinking of the fight in FFXV where you like.... basically press A to slink vs. for example in FFVII Remake where there's a tile you step on to activate a different method of walking)... but I feel like in these games they feel good, where in newer games they feel sort of lifeless to me... And I can't tell what that difference is. Do I just have lower expectations of the capabilities of older machines? Is it just my distaste for "realistic" graphics in favor of more obvious stylization? Do I think that games with more complex systems should either make it another system or make it part of the normal way the player navigates space? Because I don't feel this way about visual novels, or point-and-click games.
I really liked this game. It largely is a puzzle game that offers help if you need it and is not to hard to walk around and figure out what to do next. There are two main expections to these, and I guess, they certainly feel accurate to playing games of that time. From the perspective of... being a normal person playing a video game, these bits are frustrating, and take away from the enjoyment of the game. When a puzzle doesn't feel solvable OR like it makes sense afterwards, it loses what the challenge could bring. But from the perspective of Sega CD games being sort of movies -- who's to say I as a real person hypothetically in that situation should expect to survive or figure it out. And why should the expectation of a video game be that you overcome all, or that you are supposed to be set up to win? (Is this adjacent to the urge to 100% a game? What is different about games where you should survive at the end or where it shouldn't be unbareably hard? Which is not at all to say that I wouldn't bitch about it if it was.)
Bucky O'Hare (Arcade)
A game who's style signifies that there were meant to be toys of the characters. Why are all arcade games just like, you're the good guy who does good and you fight the bad guy who is bad. There's nothing more to them at all. Were there games not like this? I can understand not inventing a complex story for a game you pay to play (who's going to get all of it when they keep dying and don't intend to spend $20 on a single game at an arcade full of different games) -- but then again, would it not draw you back to that game above others, if it did (am I an adult expecting things of a market geared towards children who like bright lights, being cool, and winning? And conversely, is expecting children to not be interested in complex media or art just refusing to take them seriously as autonomous people with the ability to think and hold complexity?)
Anyways. This game is not particularly fun, I didn't get to figure out what the difference in abilities was for all the characters. But I liked the color and the character designs, for at least being creative.
Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom
I'm mad that this game is more fun than Bucky O'Hare because I hate like, fantasy where it's just the most stereotypical story and characters and setting imaginable. But the progression does make it more fun and doesn't seem to get lost while playing, you get experience points but I'm not sure if they're really what level you at all, and you gain HP each level regardless of experience. The item prices scale to a ridiculous amount, especially considering that healing potions heal basically nothing at all and thrown items are single use. You also have to be very inline most of the time with enemies to hit them, which can be frustrating with enemies that move up and down slightly most of the fight. Sometimes the characters scream and it's funny, because they don't sound cool, they sound like screams, but it's when they're using a special powerful move. Also, fuck DnD in general. This game was a normal amount of fun and I would play it again if the situation called for it but I have no real care for this game.
Final Fantasy X
This game made me change my stance on FF games, genuinely. Playing this game and it making around half of the games I've played in the series be... actually decent? Made me realize that the series is not entirely just bad, but rather that people have bad fucking taste. It's always wild to me the amount of love FFXV and FFIX get, and that FFX and FFVII get that FXIII doesn't... it's wild to me that people fucking complain about linear games and narratives... or about the games being too cheesy/ anime-y (which frankly I didn't see the latter in this game at all... maybe that's my being used to anime points but, when I'm watching something or reading something, or even playing other games, I feel like I can generally sense the degree of anime bullshit involved, and... this just didn't feel like it... so maybe, I'm a bit suspicious of people who say that)... Because in my head, what connects FFX & FVII is similar to what connects FXIII, which is that the stories are actually good, or at least doing something interesting.... whereas FFXV could not have possibly made a more boring, unoriginal, and conservative plot, and for the most part of what I remember, neither could FFIX.
My entire time playing this game, and I truly mean entire, I was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, for them to tell me that actually the church was good and, idk, someone was just leading it astray (pulling a FFIX, you could say), maybe that the Al Bhed were behind everything, and that actually the racism towards them was justified, because that's the kind of writing I expect from FF games, or at least that I'm wary of now but that felt inescapable previously. And it just... never did. Yuna defies the church, Wakka slowly realizes he's been in the wrong and even apologizes for his racism, the climax of Tidus' relationship with his father doesn't end in him neatly forgiving him while still showing the understanding he has for his father's situation and what he went through and the love he does have for him, and it doesn't say that the way they show their love for each other is wrong nor does it make it cleanly fit into what that love is supposed to look like. Most everyone, and everyone that's been in a position of community or power above them (with the exception of the Ronso), stands in their path to tell them they've personally, individually, ruined the whole world, subjected them to eternal suffering and death by killing off the single source of hope everyone genuinely seems to believe exists to abate Sin's destruction. Yet they maintain faith that they can truly kill Sin, regardless of not having a lot of solid evidence that this will be the case, but hearing that it's possible and riding on their hope to actually save their world and end the church's reign.
This game also had one of the least contrived or garbage straight romances I've seen, and for that, I accept it. Sure there's some nonsense, particularly in the beginning, but Tidus and Yuna's storylines and problems mirror each other's so well, and they help each other get through it, and it's not just accepted easily? It's something that they have to work towards, where they support each other and give each other hope and something to wish for, a reason to fight against despair. I'm thinking of the scene in the lake (what is with the fucking water cavern kiss scenes, they did this in IX too) where they're just dreaming of what they could have, where Yuna gets to think of what she'd want if she wasn't chained to her path as summoner... it obviously brings her such joy to think of something for herself... but she still breaks down because she feels like she can't have it, like it's not possible and like she's still chained to her fate as a summoner to bring forth the final aeon and then die... It doesn't resolve immediately! She's been in this system her whole life, and every single person she interacts with seems to place all of their hope for even some brief and mild pause on their constant suffering and anguish on her shoulders, since her childhood (and she's still a fucking child!! she's 17 for god's sake!!) she's not seen as her own person but as her potential to be a martyr, and as a shadow of her father who was one... There's the expectation that she do as he did, and be able to make that incredible sacrifice... she clearly feels strong not positive emotions that she has to hide or push away, we see her talk about her methods for doing just that when Tidus learns that his father is the current iteration of Sin... and that's not just something that can be immediately pushed away, even when there's moments of joy that are able to escape the cloister of expectation and everything it holds inside, and she doesn't, but she does have a moment to feel what that could be like, that will bury itself deep and whose prescence will always be there, an option to come back to, something stuck in her mind. And over time, Yuna is able to break from the overwhelming force of not only the church but the society that almost entirely follows the church (even those the church hates), and choose to try something new, with the hope that it works.
When I was considering writing a review of this game for Backloggd, I wanted to think through what were the aspects I don't like about this game -- because before I start talking my shit I'd like to have it in solid order first. I still don't like that they made the Ronso just... speak broken Enligsh as their foreigner thing. I'm trying to determine how I feel about them as a group... where their whole beat is to protect this mountain and be brave warriors... I'm not quite sure if it's suspicious or not, and I'm still trying to figure it out. I think the scene where Wakka learns that Rikku's Al Bhed is one where a lot of racist shit gets said and it has very little affect on anything... which feels a bit weird, and like, I guess I'm not too mad about it since the game is clearly actually aware that this is fucked up (unlike SOME games) and Wakka actually apologizes later on, but it is a weird touch. And of course, it's shitty that they chose a white actor to voice both Wakka and Kimahri (both of them!! the same guy!! the same guy who voices Jake the Dog and Bender, btw!!), when Wakka is clearly supposed to be Polynesian and Kimahri is... the fucking broken English character.
I was wondering about one of the beginning scenes, where Tidus is found by the group of Al Bhed -- he's desperate and confused after being taken into a new world, hungry and fighting for his life, and when he sees them he's excited then fearful when they almost kill him, before taking him aboard the ship and making him work, generally keeping him outside and away, raising their voices at him when he makes a sudden move, push him around somewhat, or otherwise not treat him with particular care -- and I was thinking originally, that it's a bit weird that they have a kind of foreign pirate type bit, when they're actually not evil, and I was wondering how I felt about that in conjunction with the rest of the game more or less proving them to be "right" (sort of) and notably not evil... and Rosy opened a video of that scene but with the Al Bhed dictionary complete. And in the scene, you can see they think he's a fiend, and that's why they think to kill him, before Rikku stops them and they bring him aboard. The whole time when they're speaking, it's about something incredibly normal... and she brought up that it's interesting that, given that you can only see this on a second playthrough (since you'd only have the full dicitonary if you'd already completed the game, and therefore already knew that they weren't evil and why they're doing what they're doing), it's interesting that it gives this experience of only being able to rely on the racist tropes that already exist in viewing their actions, whereas they really are just... being relatively normal.
But, besides these things, FFX manages to have a storyline that isn't the same fucking faux-medieval setting, knows what it's trying to say and manages to say it/ follows through on its beats, develops its characters, and that has unique and interesting character classes in Rikku and Wakka, that I feel is a peak game for FF creature design (they're all so good!!!), with great music. I loved this game, I loved the stupid little sports mini-game.
While playing this game, I was thinking about what pulled me into this game vs. FVII.... And I'm glad I got to see a FF game where the interesting plot was actually followed through on. I still have more thoughts about this game... but for now I'm stuck in the shock and awe of it actually following through. And I'm still thinking about
Luigi's Mansion
Sometimes the controls in this feel like shit.... I'm trying so hard to move wherever the fucking camera stick should be, both because of how fast the ghosts swing around, and because the angles are kinda specific it feels like? And my hands keep slipping off the buttons to suck them up... But besides that, I love this game!! It has so much personality and I just, love that it's a game about ghosts!! Learning about the ghosts to catch the portrait ones is so fun (some diversity in the gameplay!) and I love the character it gives to the ghosts... And I think the way you deal with them is so creative! Pushing a curtain to let in the draft or sucking up the ball and throwing it, so there's ways you interact with the world with your vacuum and also not just the one method of capturing ghosts. Plus the gameboy horror is such a cool and fun idea! I do not care about mario games, but this game specifically I actually love.
Final Fantasy X-2
The opener to this is so fucking strong to me. I love the fucking vibes, both on their own and as a follow-up to FFX. I love the unique feeling combat system and its little quirks. It reminds me of FFXIII (whose combat system was good and cool!! Fuck off!!). The fact it's more open and less linear make it so, so much harder for me to want to play or feel able to play, and playing it so soon after FFX I fear I'm not able to appreciate it in the way I really, really want to because I'm still processing the emotional landscape of FFX and its ending. I love the beginning direction of this game and I hope so much to play through more and to be able to really enjoy it.
Galaga 88
Ok this version is kind of more fun than the original. The music for the game over screen kinda rules even though I don't like "cozy/ chill" music most of the time. Also, the more Rosy (and occasionally I) play arcade games the more fucking annoying the sounds become lmao
Fire Emblem: Engage
FFXIV: A Realm Reborn
I would understand if no one enjoyed playing this game. This game right off the bat hits you with the most conservative liberal shit you could possibly dream up, and it doesn't even do it in a way that's any fun or dramatic, just boardroom (or the fantasy equivalent) after boardroom of everyone talking like the most smug undergraduate you know writing a paper, all fancy terms and structure obscuring the meaning behind the words to the degree you have to search to find it. It all blurs into nothingness and you sit after each sentence repeating and repeating trying desperetely to connect it to the last and in the process forgetting what the first one even was in the first place, and why you're even here. And in the midst of all of that, someone will make sure to add in something about how those refugees can't just be helped, by god, they'll become dependent and never work again! What about our own citizens we refuse to help! Or about how capitalism or the free market is the best thing you could have. For god's sake, the basic structure of the game is that since the humanoid races colonized land of the "beast tribes," and have been keeping them out for years, they've become desperete that the only way to get their home back is to summon their gods, and because that miiiight cause a calamity, you have to go and kill their gods. Whenever anything to the point of "what if we allied with them" is brought up, there is no question of atonement, apology, reparation, return of land rights -- only how "sad" it is that you just can't work together, for one reason or another.
There's a section where some refugees band together to revolt, and you are tasked with stopping them -- it turns out that one guy who's working with the story's main villain is manipulating them to do this. Everyone else they know laments how they've been tricked by that outsider into trying to do something, how it's not the way to do things. At one point you encounter a child whose parents are part of the manipulated party, who becomes visibly upset remembering how scary the one guy was as they wonder what will happen to mommy and daddy, and you feel how obvious of a ploy children are to the writers. You can consciously feel how an entire class of people who are already so disrespected in society just become a symbol for innocence and purity of heart and nothing more. The other refugees, they're all proud of how they just shut up and take it, of how they don't ask for better and don't think they could possibly ever have it, save probably from some generous benefactor deciding they're worthy of saving, individually. And when you talk to the main characters in the story (to "good" ones anyways), they always make sure to mention how good those ones are. In every second of this game you can see the writers going yeah, these are "the good ones," with every prejudiced idea that entails. There's a million other scenes just like this one and they span the entire length of the fucking game, but this one in particular stays in my head.
The base classes you play are pretty simple early on, and your rotations are nothing serious. Walking everywhere is a massive pain, but decently early on (not suuper early, mind, but in the longer term of this section of the game, it's in the beginning bits) you get a mount, and you can turn off the special mount music so you can actually hear everything else. This is a game where I press my buttons, my numbers go up, I get to dress up in little outfits (I mained black mage, so I always got good ones), and I get to hang out with my friends. That is the appeal of this game. And as one other thing to note, they don't skimp out on giving characters clothing regardless of gendered associaiton. The amount of thigh high boots, heels, skirts and dresses and decorations and colors and patterns and everything that I got playing a magic class surprised me, honestly. For a game so fucking conservative it really doesn't feel that way at all in regards to the clothes. Robes for a mage I would've understood, I suppose, but heels? Men can be sluts in this game, at least.
tldr; fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you AND not even in an interesting way this game is free for a reason
FFXIV: Heavensward
After playing the death of enjoyment that is ARR, Heavensward was a breath of hope, if only a breath.
tldr; giving me fucking anything
Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line
FFXIV: Stormblood
tldr; fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you worst expansion of all time they should keep it free forever no one should have to pay to play this frankly I'm mad I did (also because they made it free like, a few weeks to a month after I finished it, fuck you)
♡ April ♡
Shadowbringers
tldr; ilu shadowbringers mwah mwah shadowbringers ilu
Beton Brutal
I thought I would not like this game. I was kinda right. It seems easy to play over and over, or to watch someone play. I got mad and just stared down, becauseI was playing with Rosy & Mei and they asked what would happen if your vertigo meter goes up, and I wasn't doing anything, so..... anyways, what happens is that your vision dims and gets dark and a fucking shadow man appears. I saw him and they didn't fucking believe me, then it happened like 2 more times so I streamed my game and it happened another like fucking 2 times and they didn't see it either time. I had to show fucking images to make them believe me. Uhh, this game seems decently well constructed and fun and interesting to replay, but it may not be for me, or I may have just been in a mood.
♡ May ♡
Cassette Beasts
Didn't even know this existed until a friend (sort of?) in a server shared about it, which is shameful, and now I feel like I should know more about the genre of like, pokemon-like creature games. A bit hard to play for me, because it's fucking open world, scourge upon the earth game style. I feel like I should write this after I've played a bit more.... but so far, I'm enjoying it, and I hope I finish it...
Bishoujo Battle Hanafuda Koi Koi
Rosy got this for me after wondering if there were any koi koi games on steam, after I had been trying to play it online through browser apps and the best one I found didn't count viewing sets. Honestly, it's a decent game, there's different difficulty levels, the card slapping sound (this is very important) is good, the music is fine, viewing counts. It's koi koi and it works. It doesn't have the 'collect every card in a month' set, but whatever. I will probably play this when I want to play koi koi on my computer, or when I need to do something at all. I will just have to live with the idea that people can see me play the game called "bishoujo battle hanafuda koi koi" with anime cutesy gun girls.
The Backroom: Lost and Found
So technically I watched Mei play this BUT, I've been getting like... not into, but into backrooms content lately, by which I mean, I'm really interested in what people have made of this, and trying to like separate the idea of backrooms content from liminal space content because if I don't, then backrooms content becomes a bunch of garbage ruining the liminal space, and it feels like something else instead, that I dislike a bit because I associate it as something that fails to understand what liminal space content tried to evoke, but is fine, and I kind of dislike complaining about how kids don't make good content or ruin things or are into things that are bad or whatever, it obviously feels dominated by kids creating and I feel like it's a bit evil to talk about how terrible their art is. This game is free, and the creators seem like they're just trying to create, and I've really been thinking lately about how important it is to have mediocre and bad art exist, and this feels like the epitomy of that. I don't like it. It's fine.
Girl's Garden
Girl games are always something I have kind of a hard time with because I like certain aspects of them (and the desire to question what different players and playstyles might look like and find some value in those), but then they always end up maintaining some sexist logic within them (and somewhat understandably). Pitching a "girl game" is also pitching what a girl is and what (all) girls therefore like, and it's just always going to fail because girls + women are unique people and not a unified homogenous category. So a lot of "girl games" end up focusing on things stereotyped to girls, and treating girls as some hypothetical image encased in glass and you get a game such as this one where you're pink and your goal is to pick flowers and when you pick enough of them you get (straight) married, and you cry when you get hit. On it's own it's a premise I don't find uninteresting but you know why it's like that, because girls are feminine and they like pink and they want to do dainty activities like pick flowers and their ultimate goal is to get married, and they're emotional and easily hurt. We don't get anything about a character like this because the character is what a girl (supposedly) is. We don't question what a character focused on marriage as a goal could value or why and if that's as valuable as other goals, or if being emotional can be a neutral or positive thing for any type of person, or the value of "dainty" activities (or those associated with girls & women) and why someone might persue them or be interested in them, because the whole value is that This is What a Girl Is. And you just can't make anything not sexist (forget about feminist, lmao) with this setup.
I guess I both do and don't expect something more from "girl games"? On the one hand, trying to make money off of girls who hypothetically wouldn't be interested in "violent" games will obviously never create anything with any teeth, or anything outside of the conservative mainstream, but on the other hand, if you're going to posit girl games as something more then you have a responsibility to not create sexist art. It's a Sega game from 1984, what do I expect. I should look up how "girl games" became a thing instead of creating hypotheticals.
Yakuza 0
I can understand why this game is so popular, actually. Can't be a hater about this one. Immediately gives you a karaoke rhythm minigame, a crane minigame, a darts minigame, and a dance rhythm minigame.
Project DIVA: F
This game fixes the worst fucking aspect of Project DIVA and lets you use both fucking sets of buttons, thank god. You still have to unlock songs individually, but it is bearable now. Not my favorite, but I love being able to play rhythm games and especially Project DIVA games on the go, and I can play this on my Vita. I should play more of these games so I can figure out how each in the series is different from each other.
Project Sekai
I think I might've been a hater before I played this just a little bit, but fuck that, this game is fun. I wish it wasn't a fucking gatcha game with in-game purchases, and I would say this might be one of the things that makes mobile games feel write-off-able, but fucking AAA games are doing that bullshit too. They have newer songs, and that's fun to me. The stories are fine but I am not invested, and it feels a bit like a time sink. I can keep watching the fucking side story to get more music passes so I can get more songs, and I will sometimes, but also, I feel like I'm being given a bunch of shit in a way designed to both suck me into the game further and make me want to spend real fucking money to avoid spending all my time doing this shit. I can't tell if that's fully the case or not, it feels like it wants me to feel both a bit frustrated with the lack of songs I have free access too and also like I'm invested enough in the story and enjoying the gameplay enough to want to pay money and to feel good about it and not scammed from paying money in my free game to access content faster than a snail's pace. The gameplay feels great though, the charts feel great to play and even when you fail it doesn't penalize you really, which makes it easier to try songs at difficulties that you know you won't be able to clear immediately, which I appreciate.
Disney's Goof Troop
One of the least bad Disney games I can remember playing.
Aqua World: Umi Monogatari
God this game rules. More games should just be viewing a fucking aquarium. They compose really interesting and different music for all the fish and I just think that's so cool. The songs characterize the fish and their swim so so much, they really give the fish personality. And it's not just calm music, which I was expecting, but you get some different instruments and beats and sounds that create a much bigger range than I would have ever expected of a fish viewing game. There's different modes, so you can see each fish and it's name, you can swim in a tank with them and watch them swim around, or you can get a slideshow of each one, accompanied by it's own theme! I love this game so, so much, and I wish I could better express what makes this game really stand out to me.
Radio Hammer Station
This game absolutely fucks. Sure it's not as hard as it could be (I can single clear most all songs first try, complete all three stars for most tracks on the first run until about halfway through, and only had to start using both sets of buttons about halfway through the 4th artist), but the songs are creative and fun, as are the designs for all the characters, enemies, and bosses -- the vibes are off the charts and I had a blast playing it. I still want to complete all the 5th character's songs, and hope to go back and play through sometimes when I'm feeling bad to get some stars I missed, complete a bit more of the single tracks section (it implies it gives me something but I haven't seen it!!), and whatever else is in that game!
Angel Paradise Vol.1: Sakaki Yuko - Koi no Yokan in Hollywood
Mediocre puzzle game in the genre of "what if you did a basic game task and then we show you a girl?" style of (semi) porn game. To be fair, this one provides a little story, which is a bit different from other games in this genre that I have seen, not that I understood it, as it was in Japanese.
Bishoujo Hanafuda Kikou Michinoku Hitou Koi Monogatari Special
God I wish I had a translation of this game so bad, I wish for it with all my heart, I want to know why koi koi is in it and what significance it has, but I can barely make out shit because my Japanese is bad despite taking it for like 7 years.
Aquazone Desktop Life
This game also rules, it's not got all that Aqua World has (understandably), and you get individual extra fish separately. But it hold a lot of the same charm as Aqua World, in that I get to see a bunch of fish on my screen. You can choose which fish to have in the tank, they all have ages and genders and can die, but only of old age supposedly. Despite this, you can feed them different kinds of fish food, you can get them medicine, and you can change the chemical levels in the tank??? You can also of course change the scenery in the tank (both the background and items), but like, what???? Why is it showing me all these?? Why can I adjust them?? I don't actually know about fish?? Lovely game.
Battle Monsters
Baku Baku Animal
Magical Beat
Taiko no Tatsujin: V Version
Playing taiko on a Vita is a fucking experience and it hurts my fingers extremely quickly, but again, I like to think of my vita as my portable rhythm game console. So I don't care.
Senran Kagura Bon Appétit!
Damn. This game sucks lmao.
Like I wanted to play this game because I want to play all types of rhythm games so I can get a better understanding of them, what makes them work, what features they each have, whatever. But god. The music sucks, it looks kinda bad. The girls are cooking in their underwear because you're just cooking too well. I'm glad at least each girl gets a different full nude theme and not just, the same fucking thing over and over -- it's so easy to just put in no effort and like, it's not... the most effort there could be but it's not nothing, they get to be at least a little different and not just hot girl #15 we nuded for you. It feels deeply unsatisfying the way the charts are mapped and displayed and played, but each button is dedicated to that actual button, so there's no alternating sides, and it can get a bit fast for that, which I find interesting. But this is like, a nothing ass game to me. This is like, half assed songs with half assed feel and play within a half ass nude woman projector. And I guess I wasn't coming in expecting anything more than that, but damn.
Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors
THIS GAME FUCKS I've been considering getting into Guilty Gear Strive as my like fighting game I've decided to get into but seeing this made me question whether I should attempt to learn this instead. Character designs I thought would bore me or that I wouldn't like were actually sick as fuck, and all the moves the characters have and the animations for them feel and look great, and there's a lot of creativity in them. I hope this game still has a big following for competitive play, not because I'd ever subject myself to that, but because it deserves it.
Criticom
Jesus fucking christ. Gorm is there.
Rabbit
I wish I liked this game because hypothetically I like all the colors it has going and the designs and the idea of using the zodiac animals as special moves but it feels hard to follow and a little uninteresting play-wise. Maybe I just don't get it. I hope so. I'd like to like this game more!!
Astra Superstars
Letter Quest Remastered: Grimm's Journey
Zen Pinball
I think the board looks good, and I can appreciate that, and it feels like they're made well in the sense that they feel like real boards I would see physically. But why are they all like, [big Marvel movie] [Star Wars] [big franchise I hate] for all of the boards. This is just copying the nightmare of playing physical pinball at my fucking arcade where I look and all the boards are like, Deadpool Guardians of the Galaxy or whatever. I guess it's realistic in that way too.
Midnight Magic
Mediocre pinball game. I'm not mad about it but it's not a game I feel a pull to return to. If I had some sense of the development of pinball video games maybe it'd be more interesting to me, but I don't.
1st Person Pinball
I think it's cool as hell conceptually to make a 1st person view pinball game, but this game is fucking unplayable. I value this game for having a really neat and cool and different idea, but I am not fucking playing it to have fun.
Rollerball
Gal's Pinball
It's interesting the scale of porn game where sometimes the porn aspect is included in the game part and to what degree. Gal's Pinball has the girls kind of on the boards, but not fully, and more clothed than in the images (which I hesitate to call reward images as, with many of these games, you do not need to win or do well to see them, you need only to play at all, and gal's pinball advertises this clearly). The boards have like, random shit on there that makes it feel like the creators just went, throw dude shit one there, that'll bring 'em in. There's like, soccer balls and basketballs and what the fuck ever. It's not like, a game where the pinball aspect looks good or plays well, or has it's own interesting mechanics, because that's not the fucking point.
Hot Pinball
Made by the developpers of Gal's Pinball, and it's the fucking same, except that the boards feature less random dudes rock nonsense and more just straight up semi naked women. I think the way the bits of the board were displayed was a bit different, too?
♡ other month atm ♡
Tiny Tina's Wonderlands
don't care for this game. it exists. the way it handles drops makes it playable as a numbers go up type game. but i'm not interested in it
Mouchya
This game is cool even though it's pretty much just a normal puzzle game, but with different cats for each level of difficulty. The characters are fun.
Monster Slider
This game fucks severely, cool way to make a puzzle game, the bottom slants and you can shake it back and forth, it's sick low-poly models of monsters and adjacent characters, and they each have different powers that affect the play that can make things ridiculous fast. I pray this is beloved and revered by the puzzle game community because it deserves it so, so much.
Pokemon Stadium
Just played the minigames, but they're each so fun and full of personality and silly ideas.
Pokemon Puzzle League
It's fun, it's pokemon puzzle game! There's a 3D cylinder mode! Puzzle game that is targetted to me and that works, it's good, I love it!
Mario Party 2
Hatris
The way the hats stack can be confusing at times. It's just Tetris with hats.
Persona 3 Portable
I truly tried to play this game because I love the music in it (I played it because Way of Life got stuck in my head after watching a hazel video), but it activates my planning brain, and that's way too much to invest in a game I am just not especially interested in. This wasn't a conscious choice I made, but rather I wanted to play and just couldn't because the planning overwhelmed me.
Phogs!
Sometimes idk where the fuck I'm supposed to be, but this game accomplishes all it needs to, which is to make physics puzzles that take advantage of the cute and silly aspect of the phog being able to stretch and have a cute puppy face. This game is made to have an aesthetic, and for the self identified cozy gaming subset to enjoy that aesthetic with a mildly challenging puzzle progression. Which isn't to say I didn't enjoy that, I think it's valuable in being fun and cute and silly.
Pikmin 4
While the lack of time limit makes it easier for me to play, I have every other issue in the world with it. I'm high right now and I know if given the opportunity I'll ramble confusingly about this and I am being so brave about it. Why is the start screen like that. Like it's whole purpose is as an aesthetic, that is calm and quiet, peaceful, soft. In someone's garden, with a cartoon dog, and some cute small creatures. When you're just Olimar, lost on some planet, you could be any size, probably squished down as pixel art consoles required -- why wouldn't you assume Olimar was a normal human size? What if a bublorb was massive, and terrifying, on this planet, where space travel is normal but you're still stuck out here? Pikmin 4 tells a different story, fundamentally -- the pikmin no longer creatures you don't understand, that do what they want but they still listen, and help you, when they so choose -- you're in an Earth garden, a familiar space (perhaps not to Olimar, but to you) -- you're a part of a team, no longer alone, you're in an established world, you have lore and reason and prestige to be here, you're part of the Rescue Corps, not in your shitty, sketchy job anymore, some nobody in the far reaches of space who's day just couldn't get more troublesome. You have a goddamn dog, and he carries the pikmin on him, don't even worry about that water.
I just. I'm tired of cozy games. I'm tired of AAA games. I don't want my living creatures to be streamlined soldiers for my use. I want them to be creatures that, for some reason, are working with me, but they're independent, autonomous beings, they stop when they're tired, or they want to sit down, or play, they trip and get confused, or don't want to go back. I don't want to come home to my lush, vibrant garden where my little creatures run around for my pleasure, and a soft tune plays to enforce the charm of it all. I want to wake up a fucking nobody in my shit bucket work rocket crash landed on some planet in god knows where, with no contact and creatures and plants I've never seen both small and massive, seemingly helpful and neutral and aggressive (or maybe I'm bothering then, not acting by their standards, how the hell could I, what is this?). And that's not cozy it's fucking scary! TLDR can't you people just get into tarantulas when they don't have bows
Pikmin
well. I'm sure you know what I think about this game now.
it has its issues, but its one of my favorite games ever, by far
The Museum of Anything Goes
Ephemera of Evelynn Cott
Joy Mech Fight
Jung Rhythm
Lost Memories Dot Net
A Mall Near You
Rainbow Island
Ninja Jajamaru-kun
Hyper 3D Pinball
Last Gladiators: Digital Pinball