Let’s Talk About Silksong
At some point in the late 2000s I made playing hard games part of my identity. Reading articles about the reboot of Ninja Gaiden on the original Xbox and how so many people couldn’t even get past the first boss just grabbed my imagination with the thought of “but what if I could?” And so I did, and I kept doing it through multiple Ninja Gaidens, Devil May Crys, Bayonettas, and all sorts of flavors of Dark Souls. As such I’m not really the most unbiased when it comes to talking about hard games, and on top of that everyone has talked TO DEATH about Silksong already and how unfairly hard it is. But I just finished it, got the true ending, and beat all but three bosses (still counted as 100% completion, don’t ask me why) so I want to talk about it too! Hollow Knight wasn’t a game that I…
Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound Review
It’s been eleven years since we got a new Ninja Gaiden, thirteen since we had one worth mentioning in polite company, and seventeen since there was a new one anyone would call any good. Now we’re getting two in the same year and Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is first, featuring Ninja Gaiden‘s return to its 2D roots; though not by Tecmo or Team Ninja but instead by The Game Kitchen of Blasphemous fame. With an indie developer and a format the franchise hasn’t been in since 1992, it’s a formula to be a colossal failure or a massive success, with little room in between. If you’ve played or seen the old NES-era Ninja Gaiden games you’ll have a pretty good idea what to expect from Ragebound: a 2D mix of one-hit kill combat (enemies mostly die in one hit, you have a health bar) and platforming that usually ends in a boss fight. However, unlike the NES Ninja Gaiden, Ragebound isn’t what I…
Frostpunk 2 Review
Thirty years have passed since the end of the first Frostpunk and the Captain is dead. In his waning years the city of New London has slowly slipped from a stalwart bastion of humanity to an overpopulated frozen tomb on the brink of collapse, and it’s up to our new player character, the Steward, to fix it. Welcome to Frostpunk 2, the city must not fall. If someone had to describe the difference between Frostpunk and Frostpunk 2 in one word, that word would be “scale.” Gone are the days in the world of Frostpunk where you meticulously place every individual building, build every road, and worry about whether homes or hospitals should be closer to the generator to reduce their chances of freezing to death. Instead expanding the city means building whole districts that come with their own steam hubs, meaning you are building dozens of buildings at once with…
Warhammer 40k Space Marine II Review
This review is going to have spoilers, and I’m sorry about that. Sorry because I have a lot I want to say about Space Marine II that can’t be said without spoiling things from about 40% of the way into the game. Sorry that the definition of a spoiler is so subjective that I don’t know if “things shown in a few trailers” count as spoilers any more. And sorry that a spoiler warning is the introduction to this review that I went with because I couldn’t think of anything better. But trust me, this was the best one. Space Marine II‘s campaign is the least interesting part about it, so we’ll talk about the story first. You play as Titus again, the returning main character from the first Space Marine back from his long penance of being accused of heresy and ready to field all new accusations about why…
Tactical Breach Wizards Review
What ever happened to games that told you exactly what the game was about in the title? What even is a “Mass Effect” or an “Elden Ring”? I open Halo and it’s not about angels but about some dude in green armor fighting aliens. If you’re the sort of person that needs your games spelled out you’re in luck with Suspicious Development’s latest game: Tactical Breach Wizards. Like it says on the tin, Tactical Breach Wizards is about magical characters engaging in special forces/SWAT style breach and clear scenarios with a military backdrop, and is certainly a lot more on the nose than whatever their game Gunpoint was about. If the concept alone hasn’t sold you I don’t know if I can help you, but I can certainly try. Tactical Breach Wizards is a turn-based affair that might remind you of Into the Breach, if I wasn’t the only person I…
Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree Review
My Elden Ring review was a strange affair where I was bullied into admitting that all of my complaints about the game weren’t genuine problems, so I played devils advocate against myself to the amusement of all. But no more, I say! Elden Ring‘s recent DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, has actual problems and I’m going to talk about those actual problems and I won’t feel bad about it. Probably. Shadow of the Erdtree is relatively unique among From Software’s “Souls” content in that it actually has a pretty straightforward story that’s not only relatively concise from beginning to end but also fills in a lot of lore that was missing from the original game. Miquella, everyone’s favorite missing hostage and noted long-arm-in-an-egg from Mohg’s boss arena, has traveled to the “Land of Shadow” to accomplish something vague (at first) that involves sacrificing parts of himself along the way. Following…
V Rising Review
I had a really hard time knowing if I’d like V Rising from the very beginning. It’s been in early access forever and every time I looked at it the game would be doubling or tripling down on its castle building mechanics. “New carpets,” it would say. “Torches for your pillars,” it would boast. “Support us with this DLC pack that’s nothing but colors of stone for your walls,” the new update would declare. As someone without a creative bone in their body the idea of a game that leaned so heavily on making a castle (or even worse: a castle you can’t even do anything in) seemed like something that would never really gel with me. So I kept it on my wish list for all this time, checking in every so often and not seeing anything to convince me it would be a game that I would end…
Persona 3 Reload Review
Persona games are the hardest for me to review for several reasons. The primary one is that I usually like the games and never enjoy writing reviews for games that I like, but even worse is that most of the people that I’m writing these reviews for ALSO like Persona games. So I’m not going to be influencing anyone’s decisions, not adding anything to the conversation, and not having a great time doing it. But it feels like something I want to do, so we’re going to dive in and talk about another excellent Persona game. For the uninitiated, Persona 3 was the first Persona game that locked in the formula that every other Persona game has followed since: juggling the social circle of a teenager while fighting monsters with your friends during your time off. It’s proven to be a fantastic framework for a game, but since Persona 3…
Game of the Year 2023
If you’ve been around me at all this past year it should be pretty obvious what my game of the year is for 2023. So much so that I almost don’t feel like writing a GOTY piece, much like I’ve skipped out on it over the past two years. However, there were so many great games that came out this year that it feels like a disservice to not write out something acknowledging some of them before I go ahead and write another few paragraphs gushing about you-know-who. This will be a “top five” list, which is in actuality a “top four” list but I thought five sounded better. #5: Something I Didn’t Play There are a few games I wanted to put in this section since every year there’s games that I think look cool but I miss due to console access or just a lack of time. I…
Ghostrunner II Review
The first Ghostrunner pulled me in with its cyborg ninja aesthetic and surprised me with its fast, exacting gameplay that felt very rewarding if you had the reflexes for it. Ghostrunner II is very much the same in that it’s a still a mash-up of Hotline Miami and Mirror’s Edge by combining brutal one-hit-kill combat with intense parkour challenges, but the slight tweaks made to the experience due to its nature as a sequel can sometimes leave a little to be desired. I’ve opened many reviews with a paragraph about video game sequels, but it hasn’t felt quite as meaningful before as it has with Ghostrunner II so here it is again: there are three ways to make a game sequel. The first, and least done due to the risks involved, is to do something radically different from what came before, trusting that your audience will come along for the ride. The…