#gamer review

[munchymunchkin]

[phoenixmaiden-gaming]

The Room Game Review

I have to say I was very surprised on how much I liked this game. I knew when I put it in my wish list that I wanted a thinking puzzle game and that was exactly what I got. It had been sitting in my game list for a while and I always wanted to play but never got around to it until now. It was worth the wait. It took me only two days to complete since I only play a few hours at a time. And it made me really think on how to solve a puzzle, moving things this way and that. I just wish it was longer and there really wasn’t a plot, there was one if you squinted though. I wasn’t that put off about it though, I was mostly into the puzzle box and getting inside. I know that there are sequels to this game, but I won’t be getting it anytime soon since I want to get through my game list first. But it was totally worth however much I spent on this game.

Stars: ★★★★ 1/2

[transquad]

Still thinking about how bad The Devil in Me was. Like, Man of Medan was extremely mediocre. Little Hope was good until the moronic twist ending ruined it. House of Ashes was actually genuinely good. But The Devil in Me just sucked so much ass it's unreal.

All Supermassive games are cliche, but The Devil in Me's villain is an entirely new level of cliche, in a boring and frustrating instead of fun and endearing way. It literally feels like an edgy 14 year old wrote this guy. He sucks on so many levels. Nothing about him is scary.

You can see where the writers wanted to go with the themes, but the execution falls so flat. It's so out of touch with reality. They chose to do a normal human villain, but then portrayed him as almost superhuman in an extremely unconvincing way. They really thought making him only walk and never run would make him seem cool and confident and in control, but it just makes every chase sequence laughably unthreatening.

I kept waiting for the cast to overpower him and unmask him and show the audience his disgusting toothless mouth and, I don't know, maybe have the narrative acknowledge that in real life serial killers aren't supergenius criminal masterminds who are so very committed to their elaborate art projects or whatever. I mean, maybe they see themselves that way. But in reality they are, almost universally, just angry pathetic incels who get off on violence. The Devil In Me is too busy jerking its villain off for its entire agonizing runtime to care about giving him actual human motivations, though.

The devs really watched American Horror Story: Hotel and thought it was a fucking masterpiece...

I think Supermassive needs to stick to superhuman baddies. Honestly, the vampires in House of Ashes weren't even scary compared to the wendigos or werewolves of their bigger productions, or to Little Hope's imaginary creatures for that matter, but the story more than made up for it, and they were still far more interesting than it all being a hallucination or just some poorly written guy.

When the hell is Directive 8020 coming out. It's gonna be aliens, right? Maybe that one will be good...

[setaflow]

People in the comments of the Assassin's Creed: Shadows trailer becoming armchair historians trying to explain why Yasuke shouldn't be a protagonist actually are hilarious. Like besties this is a franchise where people can control eagles with their minds and a good 5% of the population are descended from evil psychic aliens. I THINK we can expand on a story of Japan's only-recorded African koshō without it jumping the shark.

[todayontumblr]

Saturday, December 9.

The Game Awards.

'Twas the week of The Game Awards 2023, and a lot was going on. 

Baldur's Gate 3 won big with six wins, The Great Gonzo himself was there in a dashing black suit, Hideo Kojima materialized (of course), lots was announced, Alan Wake 2 picked up some prizes, yet more was announced, and the ~actual~ ModdedController360 (sometimes known as Timothée Chalamet) dropped by the close the ceremony. 

You came for the awards, you stayed for the trailers. We hope you liked what you saw. In the meantime, let's put this little weekend aside to look back on the week that was: #the game awards, to be precise. 

[foreskinniest]

youtube is currently filled with approximately thirty thousand videos on how awful that new dragon age game is and I've been watching them out of morbid curiosity because the game does seem to be truly atrocious, but they're also kind of alarming to me cause it always inevitably turns into some dude ranting about "wokeness" which inevitably leads to "i don't have a problem with gay people, i just prefer not to see them or be reminded of them ever." One million views, one million likes, and every comment saying the same thing.

And idk, man. I think we may have lost control of the plot here when zoomers are now more homophobic than previous generations and the ipad babies are presumably learning how to goose step from paw patrol. I don't think we're winning these "culture wars" as much as we think

[minas-linkverse]

In the ask then

Majora's mask!

So the thing with Majora's Mask is that I think its an incredibly unique piece of media that was spawned from facinating circumstances and nothing will ever replicate it. It's a massive rabbit hole of a game that even after all these years continues to facinate and bewilder its fans.

That being said. I tried playing it after a few lets plays and had a godawful time ajdkdkfkg. I'm a modern gal, I grew up with games that had a lot more quality of life features... Like giving me an objective. Majora's Mask's gameplay is an anxiety inducing struggle against time and it works AMAZING for the atmosphere and story... Insert Pathologic reference here. But unfortunately I like my games fun to play.

What I'm saying is that I adore Majora's Mask as a piece of history, as art, as a total mess and a truly special piece of gaming... But I do not wanna play it. I'm scared scoob.

10/10 what the hell am I looking at

[retrocgads]

UK 1998

[waywardsou2]

Modern Warfare

Just finished the campaign in Modern Warfare 1. It was a good game and considering I played on the PS3 it was still really good.

Though I couldn't get past the fact that every time Price opened the door his hand wasn't holding the knob lol

But yeah it's was great. Good ending, good soundtrack, and pretty standard but good story

I really enjoyed getting to play Soap and even thought there wasn't much down time to delve into the relationships between the other plays I could tell there was something there and it was nice.

I really like Griggs, Gaz and Price a lot.

Anyways I'll do another update when I finish Modern Warfare 2.

I have 1, 2 and 3 so I'll have to get four at some point. Hopefully on the PS3 with the rest of them but if not oh well.

Also just a quick question. Does anyone know if MW PS3 is the same as MW PS4 because I have both and the internet isn't helping with answering this question.

[thepeculiarauthor]

Call of Duty: Ghosts didn't get enough love so I wrote an entire review!

The Rundown

First, a quick rundown from Wikipedia, if you’re new to the game. Call of Duty: Ghosts is a 2013 first-person shooter video game developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision. It is the tenth major installment in the Call of Duty series and the sixth developed by Infinity Ward… The game acts as a standalone installment… Ghosts inherits much of the core gameplay and structure of previous titles, with a mission-based campaign and an open-ended multiplayer, but introduces a near-future setting to the series as well as an increased focus on tactical gameplay…

Post-apocalyptic sci-fi meets recon missions and a lot of crazy situations. This is one of the reasons I love post-apoc, and write it myself, because you can ask, “What if this happened?” even if it’s outlandish or crazy or just plain sadistic fun. I sort of chime in with the other players that said this is an innovative game.

Ghosts has a pretty cool plot, but it’s also a really good balance of plot and characters. Especially with post-apoc and all, you can either have too much of a focus on the plot, or too much of a focus on the characters, to where it’s heavy-handed and bogged down. Ghosts had great pacing, great action, and the characters pushed the plot along, so everything was smoothly intertwined. The gameplay was pretty cool in campaign. There were a few little janky parts and moments, but nothing major. I also enjoyed the different settings a lot.

Now that the semi-professional overview of the game is completed, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of what I really enjoyed, and maybe, some stuff I didn’t enjoy. Be warned, this review has a lot of spoilers, but I’m also 11 years late to the game, so you probably don’t care.

Also, as a slight disclaimer: a lot of the game’s “hate” was directed toward the game’s multiplayer option. I haven’t played multiplayer on Ghosts, so I have no thoughts about it, and this review won’t have any feedback on that. I will note people are still playing multiplayer, though. I booted up one game before jumping into the campaign, so it’s funny that for a “hated” multiplayer game, people are still running it over a decade later, but, yeah.

A Unique Relationship Dynamic

Ghosts is the only CoD game I’ve played where the MCs are bloodkin, which was such a cool detail. I grew up with four siblings, and there is so much to explore in sibling relationships, but you rarely see it in fiction — not genuine, deep relationships, anyway. Sure, the premise of most war/military stories are camaraderie, which is brotherhood, but there is still a difference in that vs. being siblings. Siblings share the same parents, upbringing, and have known each other since one of them was born; so there’s so much to unpack. I think Ghosts did a pretty good job at exploring that dynamic. It was sort of interesting to see Hesh be the “leader,” but Logan still takes so closely after their dad, too. It was so obvious that the game had so much in store with this dynamic, and the build up to a second game was really well done… But more on the forsaken “game two” later.

I really enjoyed Hesh and Logan. I liked the subtly implied thing throughout that Logan was maybe in Hesh’s shadow… But we didn’t see bad blood, so to speak. Logan/we still followed Hesh anywhere, covered him, saved him. I think it’s a realistic reminder that siblings and parents can have all sorts of little hiccups, but still be family. Again, maybe a small thing to note, but you don’t see it much? It’s usually, “Dad, you always loved/treated this sibling better than me! I’ll kill you!” which isn’t realistic.

The Traitor Trope

Anyway, speaking of the Walker dad… I like the trope they used with Elias Walker and Gabriel Rorke. I like the trope of brother bonds going bad, for whatever reason, and the group left behind having to figure out how to stop the “bad brother” from destroying things. It was interesting to have the “bad guys” break Rorke down and make him into a new person, and it was fun to see him hunt the Ghosts and want to eliminate them all… except Logan. (Which, on that note, very few stories end with the “bad guy winning,” which was fun!)

And I think the brother dynamic and traitor trope go hand-in-hand in this game! It felt that the game wanted you to notice that Hesh was the leader, and Logan followed, so maybe that was why Rorke saw different potential in Logan? (I mean, realistically, he probably saw the skills and “fire” in Logan, but maybe figured he would also be easier to break down?)

I mean, from a gameplay perspective, sure, it would have been cool to have options for Logan to make his own decisions throughout the game — but this game is also over a decade old, and I can imagine the logistics of offering that much leeway in a game model is hard, so I’m not too bothered by it.

(Update after writing this: so, as it turns out, the developers did intend for a multiple-options factor for the game’s ending, like BO2, I think. But they tossed the idea right before launch so the game had one ending, instead. Again, probably for a smooth build up into a second game, but… We didn't get the second game.)

Overall, while I loved the story and cast, the plot twist at the ending was a bit annoying. I knew it was coming — it’s the lil’ trope CoD can’t get enough of. “We killed the bad guy! Sure, we didn’t see the corpse or anything, but he’s as good as dead!” (I don’t know if I’m a sadistic little freak, but if a guy killed my dad / almost killed my brother and my group, I would find a way to decapitate him for good measure, but alas. What would you do? Let me know below, haha.) I think it would have been more believable to have the brothers fail, maybe narrowly so, but still fail, because seeing a guy escape a crash in the water, explosions, and yeah, a .45 round to the chest… Kind of a stretch. I think it could have been a bit more realistic, and dramatic, if Hesh had gone for a different angle to cause the domino effect, but whatever.

Loose Ends

There are a few other minor things I wanted to note that I enjoyed…

I know people that hate Elias — saying he was a bad father and all — but I didn’t think that was really the gig. I think when you’re part of a secret recon group, that until your kids prove they can be trusted/somewhat safe with that intel, you can’t just yap about it, and that if they want to prove themselves capable, they do have to be tested.

The intro mission to save Ajax was well done. One of the more impactful scenes in the franchise. The narration toward that scene later was a sucker punch, too, when Hesh acknowledged how the Ghosts treated their dead.

The cast. Man, what a group of characters. The Ghosts were amazing, and I genuinely don’t think the franchise/fandom gives any of them enough recognition. I think if they did a second game, it’d hit harder this round, for sure, and I think the cast deserves it.

Keegan running missions with Logan was one of my favorite parts. Again, I kinda liked the correlation of Keegan taking Logan under his wing / maybe seeing his potential, maybe even more so than Elias, and then Rorke seeing the same, but in his twisted version. At least, that’s my take on that.

Riley was such a fun addition, and a cool shoutout to K9s, which is another thing we rarely see in media, but should.

The voice acting was on point. Across the board, super well done. Hesh yelling for Logan at the very end? One of the few times I’ve actually gotten chills while playing a game.

The soundtrack was pretty good, too. Really nice tone for Ghosts. (Also, going from the “what just happened” at the ending and then getting hit with “Survival” by Eminem was absolutely hilarious.)

Overall, I have to admit, besides some minor plot things (like, you know, why not just kill Rorke instead of using a missile that, somehow, didn’t work; or maybe, elaborate on why the Ghosts weren’t actually readying a mission to get the brothers out, which could’ve added even more urgency to the ending, but my writer-brain digresses), I didn’t have much I disliked about the game. I liked it. It was a lot of fun to play. I really hope, even still, that a second game is released.

The Overarching Theme

This was a part of a decade where writing was heartfelt.

Modern Warfare 2, launched in 2009, was, and to this day, still is, one of the most heartfelt pieces of fiction created, but I notice a theme during that time period where most things had that gritty heart, and Ghosts is no different. Stories back then could have grit and hellfire and chaos and themes that reminded you of why you fight, why you get up every day, why loving people really matters.

I think Ghosts reminded its audiences that family is still pretty much all you have. (And, maybe another lesson would be, “Make sure they’re actually dead.”) Because nowadays, a lot of stories, in any shape or form, are just cheap money grabs, mindless jabs at nihilism or emptiness or shallowness, and stories that cater to lust. So stories like “OG” Call of Duty are insanely refreshing and sobering, as both a person/gamer, and even as a story creator.

Anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts, too. Let me know if you’ve played Ghosts, and what you thought of it. I’ll have reviews posted for Black Ops 6, the original Modern Warfare 2 / the remake MWII, coming shortly, so sub for more content. And if you love the OG CoD, and like to read / want to try to read more, give my books a shot. The Infidel Books are like CoD meets Red Dawn, of sorts. You can find them here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08L656RT5

Angela

[phoenixmaiden-gaming]

Untitled Goose Game Review

I really loved this game. It was just so simple and I didn’t have to put much effort into it. I just had to play as a Goose and just wreck havoc on each area until I get the bell. That was it. No back story needed, no action or fighting, just pure Goose chaos. It had simple tasks that didn’t take too long and it took me just 3 days to complete, I spread it out over playing a few hours at a time. It was not long at all. The character’s reactions were hilarious to my taking things and making a mess. The honking too! Loved it, and I was constantly hitting the honk button just because. There was also a good amount of stuff to do post-game. The art style was also very simple no real details to the people, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. It you want to play a simple, mindless game that will make you smile, this is the game to play.

Stars: ★★★★★

[sydmarch]

[daily-video-game-girls]

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ Holly’s Favorites °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ Character #5 °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･ Yuna °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

[catartac]

When i was younger and my brother still lived with us i would sometimes go to him asking for piano improvisations based on different themes i would give him. Often times this would be based on my OCs or scenes from my "story i will someday totally write but for now daydream about and monologue to my siblings". It was nice to sit back, eyes closed, imagining the action with my own background original soundtrack. He was pretty good at it too.

He was the first one to leave home as he went to uni, and he was the only one to never really come back to live with my parents at any point. He was never really the easiest to communicate with and being away didn't make things much smoother.

However, every year, on our birthdays, we will compose songs for us. He knows what we like, so he always crafts them based on our preferences. He knows I'm a sucker for a repeating melody, for violin and piano sounding sounds, he knows I dream of vocals and man he's come close. My sister is all about rhythm and a bit more electronic. One year we collaborated and I made a moving backdrop to his song for her (which also included audio from Kermit the frog in the background... it kinda worked ngl).

He's been working on a game for some time (you know, if being a talented mathemagician and musician wasn't enough) and even though we are definitely not the target audience (it's a rythm game and man i suck at anything that requires reflexes) he kept asking us for feedback every step of the way. He made it very clear that even though the game has a very high skill ceiling he wants to make sure "even mum can play it".

For context, my mum is first adorable and also she's an og gamer. As in, she got carpal tunnel from playing too much tetris when she was younger. Now she loves playing overcooked and animal crossing with us but she get a bit overwhelmed with more complex games (she's just like me frfr).

It came out today! I bought it (he did offer me a key but I kinda couldn't be bothered and also he was one of the first people to but from my Redbubble so i gotta do what i gotta do). I started playing it. Immediately changed my settings to four keys maximum because i was honest with myself. Actually, that's a lie, the first thing i did was change the colours because that's the kind of person i am. Started playing, really loved the first song, quickly realised another one was waaaay out my league, liked another one. Tell my bro, he says "oh you should also check out Bi Katuak, I think it's your birthday song" I check it out, love it but doesn't ring that much of a bell but now that I am on the second page i see it

La Danza del Fenix

Immediately i am transported back, i imagine Amanda, the character, riddled by anxiety and regret, that i then thought i related to the least but have since then came to realise portrayed very accurate parts of me, dancing surrounded by fire in a joyous way for the first time, the freedom, how her daughter will dance at a ball carefree and excited on what will be the real proof that war and tragedy is over

My brother only gives side hugs and half smiles

It's an easy song. With a lovely repeating melody that makes me want to dance around as I play it even if that makes me make mistakes. You're not penalised for mistakes, you can only see your records get higher. The songs never end unless you want them to, and yet they don't loop in any obvious way (something to do with the algorhythm he kept trying to explain but I kind of gave up understanding at some point.

This game may be for you if you like music, rhythm games, or just videogames in general. Though in a way I am sure it will never be for you in the way it was made for me.

It's called EnternAlgoRythm Give it a shot! There is pretty much nothing you can't customise in terms of gameplay and cosmetics and if there's anything you notice you can tell him and he'll do his very best to fix it or improve it. There are plenty of songs for any skill level (some i dare not even touch) and the songs are named in different languages based on the countries we have lived in/had influence from. My favourites are the aforementioned Danza del Fenix, Bi Katuak (defs also made for me, it's an easy cat themed song), Violet Voyage, and Ingranaggi Striscianti.

TLDR: im very emotional pls go play my brother's game

[garygoldenbignaturals]

i find it funny that out of all the new vegas dlcs dead money is the most reviewed one with 4k reviews (second most is honest hearts with 1,940, notice the gap between those numbers) and is the only one with mixed reception whilst the others are all very positive. who's doing it like her. dead money you will always be famous