Rocket League 😪

The game has been out since January, and I’ve been playing it quite a lot since. And with Combo Breaker just happening, I think it’s time I talk about it.

Tekken 8

Played on PlayStation 5

With Street Fighter 6’s stagnation and Mortal Kombat 1’s countless issues, there was a lot of high expectations for Tekken’s next release. I was never huge into Tekken like SF or MK, but I was very excited to see what the next generation could bring. I loved 5, hated 6, and was very lukewarm about Tag 2. Everything before those games I haven’t really played since I was a kid, and I wound up skipping the majority of 7. I did watch it quite a bit in its heyday, but I didn’t own the game myself until like 2 years ago. But with 7’s success for the franchise, and the FGC as a whole, I really wanted to come back around for 8.
The game is gorgeous, returning to the status quo that it had of having cutting edge visuals. These characters look the best they ever had. The presentation is top notch, and for how much you are able to customize your Tekken experience is great too. Allowing players to even select their favorite songs from across all the games, even Tekken Revolution lmao.

The story mode is a love letter to the whole series, and there’s plenty of fan service and awesome moments. Sure, it’s not the most thought provoking story ever, but it’s dumb fun and just a blast all the way through. I’d compare it a lot to Mortal Kombat (2011), because it’s a story mode where it knows it’s dumb, and it has a good time with it. Tekken 7’s tried too hard to take it serious (up until the end). Tekken Ball is back and it’s still fun. Arcade Quest serves as a mini tutorial for new players that’s does what it needs to.

Heat is the brand new mechanic that incentivizes “aggressive” play. If you seen people talk about much of a “mashfest” 8 can be, it’s more so because of this new gameplay feature. I didn’t play a lot of 7, but one of the main issues of 7 and many other fighters of the generation was the focus/overtuning on defense. Like SF6’s Drive system, Heat was created to keep matches going and to get people to interact. But I ain’t gonna lie to y’all, as much as I do like this game, Heat needs to be addressed. Some characters become boss fights in a blink of an eye. The overall design in this aggressiveness is just over-tuned and it prevents casual players learning the game and just relying on constant pressure and nothing else. This kind of unfortunately doesn’t just make defensive strategies one note, but just overall gameplan for characters one note. This may sound like a scrubquote but people more or less have the same issue with SF6 right now. It is something that can be fixed/redesigned in an update, so I’m not really mad at it.

Tekken 8 is stupid fun, and I haven’t fell in love with a fighting game like this in a good long while. I definitely want to stick with it and see where it goes. Sure the Heat system is kind of a pain in the ass sometimes, customization isn’t as good as it used to be, ranked isn’t necessarily perfect, and the Tekken pass isn’t really worth it right now…but…it’s a damn good fighting game.

8.5/10

Other than Tekken 8, I have been taking my time with FF7 Rebirth. The game is just huge, and it just dropped at the most busiest time of my life lol. I’ve been getting a lot of time lately too, so I will be able to play more. Reached Chapter 9 today

Something like this would solve most of the main issues I have with this game

i dangerously feel my next minecraft grind

yea nevermind

Been playing rdr 1 on ps5 with the 60 fps personally have one over two

Show sucked

Lobotomy Corporation

I finished the game after around 200 hours, your playtime in this will fluctuate heavily depending on which abnormality you randomly pick and if you use the fundamental mechanic that is Memory Repository. Unfortunately, I didn’t on my first run, and I also somehow picked the worst abnormalities possible which meant in my first run (to day 46) some days could take hours and one f*** up meant that you lose hours of progress too. I learnt my lesson on the second run and now knew which abnormalities I shouldn’t take (since I took them all in the first run lol) so that run went a lot smoother and I was able to deal with all the Core Supressions and also complete the encyclopedia. The third run was my final run and I spent the majority of it just min/maxing agents and avoiding any bullshit abnormalities so I can deal with Day 46-50.

To briefly explain this game, Lobotomy Corp is a management game with roguelike elements where you manage SCP monstrosities, you have to make it to the end of the day by extracting the required amount of energy from these entities which are dubbed as Abnormalities without them breaking out and obliterating all your employees. That's it, that's the only thing you will be doing for 100+ hours.

This is an extremely harsh and unforgiving game but the way all of this suffering adds to the ludonarrative of the game is an excellent and beautiful use of video games as a medium, even a lot of the in-game mechanics which I won’t get into are cannon and tie perfectly into the narrative.

I do find it hard to recommend this game though because of how unforgiving, stressful and repetitive it is, it's a game that will do everything it can to ruin your day, there is even an abnormality that's only function is that if you accidentally click it will immediately “Game Over” you and then intentionally crash your game.

You will have to press the “Retry” button thousands of times - especially near the end of the game. It requires maintaining a high attention span as you will eventually manage 30+ abnormalities simultaneously and a level of tenacity that borders insanity. I do want to make clear that I don’t think this game is as difficult as people make it out to be but you will need to persevere to beat it; this game is not afraid of making the player suffer.

Honestly, there aren’t many nice things I have to say about the gameplay - there are so many questionable and frustrating design decisions that were made, the game is also highly unoptimised and there is a lot of clunkiness to it as well that requires mods to fix, the only positive thing I can say is that I guess the amount of attention this game demanded was a breath of fresh air and somewhat enjoyable; I do realise that having put 200+ hours there's a bit of Stockholm syndrome but I really did enjoy the game.

The best thing about this game and what keeps most people playing is the narrative, the writing is extremely strong and I think it might be one of my favourite stories in a video game. Despite my complaints and flaws about the gameplay, the way this misery ties into the narrative and elevates it is a truly unique experience, I feel like the theme of hope and perseverance were beautifully encapsulated in this video game. The final day of the game after enduring harsh and unforgiving trials was the most cathartic experience I have ever had in a video game.

The game's ending also sets up Library of Ruina (the sequel) extremely well, I doubt a person exists that sees the ending to this game and doesn't immediately buy Library of Ruina to see what the f*** happens next, at this point I am already really invested in the lore of this universe Project Moon is creating.

If anyone ever ends up playing this game I recommend that you avoid picking the abnormality (T-09-86) by any means necessary unless you want your playtime extended by 50 hours

playing Lisa the Painful since it was free on epic, 2 hours in and its so good. some of the early jokes were spoiled since I loved dunkeys video on it but I cant wait for the rest

lost both my arms and now this game is starting to piss me off but the writing is so good

got to the end of Undertale and then quit cuz I don’t have any healing items

I’ll look the ending up someday

About to finish an emerald nuzlocke

Also trying to grind the pride event for pokerogue, I do got a swampert on my team rn

incredible game, gonna dive into the dlc soon

finally playing earthbound for real this time this might be my 4th attempt in the last few years but its really sticking this time

Sonic the Hedgehog (1991)

Played on Nintendo Switch (Replay, Sonic Origins Plus)

Sonic 1 is an all around classic game, and after revisiting this after so many years, it’s still so easy to see why this took off so well in the 90’s. The visually appealing sprite work, the addictive fast paced platforming, and the instantly iconic soundtrack.

Yea, it’s not perfect. And each of the 2D mainline entries that would follow would do things much better, but I don’t think that takes away for what this game managed to accomplish what no other platformer was doing at the time. Green Hill, Sping Yard, & Star Light are all great zones that showcase Sonic 1’s strengths the best. Marble, Labyrinth, & Scrap Brain, show this game’s weaknesses the worst though. Slowing down the pace is one thing, but also making levels with annoying mechanics and shoddy design is where I draw the line. Green Hill is just iconic for being the first level, it’s also still the best zone in the game.

Aside from the weird design decisions with half the zones and the special stages, Sonic 1 is still great. Lowkey I think you could chalk up some of Sonic 1’s flaws to “skill issues”, but it’s nowhere near a terrible game. A great start for an iconic franchise.

6.5/10

I kind of just played it on a whim too, it’s been forever since I played these old ones, should revisit all them

Blasphemous 2!

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (2024)

Played on PlayStation 5

Like many others, I love FFVII. It’s a legendary JRPG that wrote itself into history as being one of the most influential and iconic video games of all time. Even after all the changes FF has gone through since then, it’s still recognized as the “best one” by most. When Square announced they were remaking it with a new vision utilizing the power of modern technology and design, I was very excited (and yet cautious) about revisiting the world of FFVII. Remake came out in 2020 with mostly positive feedback, but with how its narrative raised some questions, many were even more nervous about its sequel. And that’s where we are at now.

Midgar in the original FF7 is a very straightforward, linear experience. Remake captured that excellently, but there still remained the challenge of recapturing the open world aspect of post-Midgar for Rebirth. And to be honest, I think they do a good job in redesigning the scope. Each region is MASSIVE, and to see the map fully realized and implemented in comparison to the original is breathtaking. Whether you are riding a chocobo, driving a buggy, flying in the air, or sailing coast to coast, you get to experience it all in one gigantic map with a plethora of side content.

As far as the side content goes though, it’s full of the most uninteresting busywork I’ve seen in a while (The hike you gotta do to get Gilgamesh, or the slap in the face you get for completing Johnny’s collection are good examples). Annoying fetch quests and tedious mission structure that’s over saturated with dumb mini-games sums up more than half of all side content in the game. And if you want to get a certain date to the Gold Saucer, the side content is an integral part to build the likeness meter with your party members. I was completing every region up until Chapter 12 where the game goes “Yes, you’ve completed every region so far, but now we are giving you more side content to complete whee you have to go back to areas you finished already with more repetitive tasks. I checked out, and just focused on story from that point on.

Unfortunately, much of the tediousness of the side content bleeds into the main story as well. There were sections of the game that get stretched out for far way too long. Usually these areas would introduce a new mini-game with some of new gimmick that’s only used for that story bit. Drawn out sequences plagued this game, way more than Remake did.

As far as the actual plot of the game though, it’s pretty spot on to the original FF7. More than Remake actually. Which is very decisive considering Remake was so against playing each story beat 1:1, and leaning towards a new adventure. Rebirth does have some new story elements, but they really don’t amount to much in the grand scheme of things. Maybe some of these questions will be answered in Part 3, but I don’t even know if the writing team knows where to take this story. If it’s going to really deviate from the OG, or just fall in line like this game did. I won’t talk about the ending too much, but let’s just say it goes on way longer than needed, seriously.

All the negatives aside, there’s so much that’s great here. The character interactions, the combat, Queens Blood, the general scope of the world, Gold Saucer, story beats that are masterfully recreated and so much more. It’s gigantic and grand with so much to love. There’s bombastic boss fights, beautiful looking set pieces, and the personalities remain true to the characters. This is Final Fantasy at its core.

If you love the lore and characters of FF7, this was definitely worth the wait as there’s mountains of content to digest. As a piece of media that you interact and play though, it can feel like a slog to get through even if you are just playing the story. I want to love Rebirth, but there’s so much fat that could have been trimmed for a much better overall experience. I just love Remake more.

6/10

Short experiences for a while lol

Two long ass JRPGs back to back was killing me lmao

I was playing the first bioshock but in just an hour I had several crashes and a freeze

I was thinking of getting the collection's version on console but reading the reviews, the first game is still buggy and s***ty

I got a rg28xx so ive been on radical red and another emerald nuzlocke

But it can play psp games, although it barely came with any. Anyone have any recommendations? I had a psp but only remember playing god of war, the kingdom hearts game, and the ff7 side game.

I'm about to try some MegaMan game that was preloaded but what should I try?

twisted metal head on