swthompson

I buy Wind Waker as the game of the system. Odd, Nintendo design through-and-through, impressive and a testament to good game design.

PN03 was an interesting game. I think of it as an exercise in game design minimalism, especially when every third person game in the PS2/Xbox era was so maximalist and over the top. PN03 was slim, simple, and streamlined. Good music. I can see why it didn't hit very well (or even why it may not hit today) but I do think it's a solid curiosity. It doesn't really embody the Gamecube though.

I also have to flag up Resident Evil 4. It manages to marry solid gameplay-first focus ethos with more mature action elements of the era, but with a goofball story. Don't forget those incredible graphics - arguably the best looking of the generation? Sure, it's been ported everywhere else, but I still have that Gamecube association with it.

Grubbsnax has been moved out of the Premium show feed and into its own RSS feed.

You may want to investigate Breakdown on the Xbox, which is primarily a first person food eating and soda drinking simulator. After-effects may arise within the game, which is inevitable when dealing with an amateur stomach.

The game's been aggressively advertised pretty much nonstop. I don't think you need to read into that when it showed up at literally every major game event for the last, what, two years?

Makes more sense to me that Bethesda just wants to get the word out about it, hence heavy ad placements. They clearly stand by the game but they may be worried that it slides under the radar.

A lot of the games seemed like the last game in the series but prettier, which has been a recurring thing so far for Sony's exclusives. Maybe because of the cross-gen period, it's hard to tell. I was interested in a lot of these sequels but I'm not seeing anything that indicates elevation for me. I don't just want God of War 2018 Season 2, I want some proper one-upsmanship in terms of cleverness and twisting the game mechanics just like the first one did. Same problem with Horizon 2, GT7, and Ratchet PS5.

Marvel does nothing for me and I think we're entering the period where games are as saturated with superhero stuff as movies have been. Marvel isn't bad but it does suck a lot of air out of the room for everyone else.

We'll see. I know I'm judging things with an overtly critical eye since I'm growing less and less interested in buying big new plastic boxes every 5 years.

None of Giant Bomb's new content makes me think they're chasing trends. I don't even know how anyone comes to that conclusion.

Still a great blog series. Keep it up

The problem with reviews is that they're often used just as fodder for the worst kinds of people in gaming, where they're taking review scores out of context and loading them into cannons to fire at their enemies. That sort of fanboy shit is exhausting, and forces reviews to be something they're not (aka objective meters of quality that can be directly compared across genre and publication). I think this can make reviews seem superfluous, since the conversation about them is so cluttered and toxic, and entirely based around numbers and percentages.

But in the context of intellectual thought and informed buying decisions, I think reviews are a useful barometer. Between casual conversation about games on podcasts and a review that reflects across the entire game, I think polished and collected thoughts on the experience are very useful. Even when assessing "is this game worth my time" when it comes to downloading from Game Pass is still valuable to me, since my greatest limitation is more time than money.

Beyond just the buying decision, it's also nice to gauge different perspectives. I'm interested in not just whether or not people like games, but why. That articulation is a skill and it's one that takes time and effort to think about. Oftentimes a game may not immediately stand out to be as worth playing, but a review might give me insight into aspects of that game (and video games as a medium) that help me understand the enjoyment of it. While it may not always sway me too strongly, it helps me think more coherently about what I enjoy and play.

And I should say I think generally reviews across the internet have been pretty decent in the past few years. Minus the toxicity from the audience, the actual writing of the reviews and the content within have been pretty solid, once people got away from the default structure of game reviews where you have to talk about the graphics, followed by the gameplay, followed by the story, followed by the value, then summary. There's more room to talk about deeply subjective reflection, focus on what stands out, and make a broader point. I do think there's a silent majority of people out there who see this same value in game assessment and critique and appreciate this as much as I do.

I love reading these. Just wanted to put in a good word. Always wondered about Chrono Cross after the rave reviews back in the day, it's wild seeing what it really is.

I agree with the conclusion of the article here. Why is this dude still writing a game about women when he's clearly a shitbag about women?

I think Annapurna and Fullbright leadership have to convince me that they're actually doing something here. Step 1: take him off the goddamn game. Much in the same way that I'm deeply uninterested in games from Gamergators, I don't want to play another Gaynor game. Sorry not sorry.