Hi, thanks for reading. This is just a list for me to write little thoughts about the games I've played this year. This time I'm choosing to include games that I have watched my boyfriend play. That's about it for changes. Bye!
Previous years: 2011 • 2012 • 2013 • 2014 • 2015 • 2016 • 2017 • 2018 • 2019 • 2020
Played by Jace 🐶
• (early) January 7th • PlayStation 2 (via PCSX 2 Emulator) •
✓ Completed main story
I like Yakuza. Much like revisiting Grand Theft Auto III, the first Yakuza is retroactively adorable. You can see the seeds being planted for more elaborate stuff later in the series, like substories, minigames, stores and endlessly complex narratives. Most of that stuff has yet to bear fruit the first time around, but it instead provides this deep appreciation for how coherent the series' progression has been. This is pretty by-the-numbers by series standards at this point, but it's still hard to not be impressed by Yakuza's ambition. It addresses mature subjects with (mostly) mature perspectives, and it takes its time slowly building multi-faceted, well-written and sympathetic characters. Plus, its open world is so jaw-droppingly detailed for a game released in 2005, and is supposedly realistic as hell to boot.
I remember thinking Yakuza was kind of cool when I played it over a decade ago, but seeing it through Jace's perspective made me appreciate it so much more the second time through. He had never played it before, so it was really fucking exciting to see how he'd react to the ridiculous plot twists, silly English translation and absolutely chaotic third act. He was so genuinely excited to explore where Yakuza's origins laid - it was to the point where it felt like I was experiencing the game again, but in a completely new way. His thoughts and enthusiasm for the story, alongside his deep eagerness to beat the total shit out of everyone, made this repeat play memorable in ways I didn't think I'd experience.
With those things in mind, seeing Yakuza again was humbling. To see such a massive franchise start from ambitious beginnings, and from such a fresh, genuine perspective made me appreciate just how rare and rewarding it is to experience things you love in such a special way. To kick off a franchise-long playthrough of what is perhaps my favorite game series ever - and with the person I love dearly at that, I feel left beside myself.
Some stray thoughts:
- I love Haruka. So much. She is, without exaggeration or hesitation, probably one of my favorite characters ever.
- The English dub is still pretty hilarious, but Jace's appreciation for Kiryu's English voice kind of made me come around on it? After all, the bizarre dialogue isn't really his fault at all.
- Nishikiyama is so fucking good in this game. I appreciated that Kiwami tried to add more story stuff to explain his motives, but I sincerely think that Kiryu being left in the dark about his best friend's heel turn is so much better. It makes me feel like he is a villain beyond my reach.
- Kiryu shot so many dudes, man
• (early) January 17th • PC • Complete Edition •
✓ Completed base game (with 🐶)
There was a point during our playthrough of Postal 2 where I referred to it as a game made by someone with paranoid schizophrenia. This isn't a slight to people suffering from schizophrenia by any means, but it is more a theory on the game's distance from reality. Yes, it claims to be some sort of witty, offensive satire on American society and the games industry, but I find that is selling it too short. It certainly attempts to be funny, but instead what it ends up being is a bizarre, creepy, hollow video game. I sincerely don't have the words for it, but I found that describing Postal 2 like that was as close to a profound thought as I've ever had about it.
• January 20th • PC •
✓ Completed expansion pack (with 🐶)
Bad
• (early) January 28th • PC •
✓ Completed story on normal (with 🐶)
After so long, Devil May Cry is still genuinely one of the coolest, most thoroughly-realized games that I have ever played.
• January 31st • PC •
✓ Completed campaign on easy
The original Call of Duty might be adorable and feeble compared to what it has become, but make no mistake - this is a Call of Duty game, through and through. You're switching from different perspectives all around the war on the nazis, shooting an overwhelming amount of dudes and there's lots of scripted explosions and sequences. I'm not even gonna lie, it's still pretty fucking impressive to play today, especially given how shit games from 2003 and beyond have aged. Some of these missions are fucking nuts - like the first Stalingrad mission, or clearing the apartments or fuckin' infiltrating a nazi ship and planting bombs on it. It is a lot more dry than later Call of Duty games are, but there's a lot to enjoy here once you get past its age.
Something that I found really cool is the trademark mission design of Infinity Ward being super prominent in this game. Stuff like using time countdown to emphasize tension, or audio design that's so overbearing and cacophonous that your ears are still ringing from intense machine gun fire once you're done. Plus, the same sound effects, animations - I'm telling you, this is a Call of Duty game in its blood.
Some stray thoughts:
- Jason Statham is in like, one mission and it's so weird??? He says like six lines. OK.
- Everyone walks like they got doodoo in their pants, man.
• February 3rd (and again on (early) February 5th) • Xbox 360 (via Xenia emulator) • Leaked XBLA Remaster •
✓ Completed campaign on Agent
You can blow up the boxes in Train and find the secret RC-P90. There's a computer monitor hidden inside of several tiny boxes in Caverns. You can shoot through the door windows in Bunker and can still remain unseen. The same enemy waves, the same weird tics, the same level design - this is Goldeneye, all right. But, like - the KF7 soviet doesn't look like a pencil anymore. In fact, most of the weapons look like actual weapons instead of weird, abstract objects. It's Goldeneye, yeah, but with a new pretty textures here and there.
As far as retexturing and remasters go, Goldeneye 007 for XBLA is probably as faithful as it gets. A lot of the work on this probably informed the Perfect Dark XBLA re-release, given it had the same great controls + frame rate, but without the retexturing. It's a fuckin' strange product - or, lack thereof given this 2007 beta build was leaked just this week. I love playing unfinished video games, because you always get to see a fraction of what the development process is like. The placeholders, the glitches, the unfinished parts - it's bizarre how this version doesn't even have proper lighting in some levels, or how Statue is rendered even less legible because there's no skybox. It's so fucking cool, aside from being a pretty and more playable version of Goldeneye. Like, imagine what could've been if this miraculously ended up coming out? Do you think we would've been spared that fucking pitiful reimagining from Activision? Who knows, but more importantly, I bet it would've helped people understand why they liked Goldeneye in the first place.
Like, I love Goldeneye so much, but I don't have any affinity for the James Bond name whatsoever. I like fast, fun first person shooters and Goldeneye was one with a super sharp eye for details, single player innovation and a no-frills, fun-as-shit split screen mode. Goldeneye wasn't good because it was a James Bond game, though I'm sure the big name lent some sort of credibility to it. The fact that its success tainted James Bond games forever by forcing them to chase after some sort of lightning-in-a-bottle FPS rush is, in retrospect, fucking bizarre. James Bond, from my understanding was never about gunning millions of dudes down. You can fuckin', like, dual wield SMGs in this game and how has that ever been a James Bond thing???
I feel like no matter what kind of game Goldeneye was - racing game, puzzle game, action adventure, fuckin' anything - as long as it was this detailed, innovative and popular with multiplayer, it would've still set the standard for what Bond games would be like in the future. Alas, everyone thinks that Bond games need to be this, while completely missing the point on what *this* even is.
I don't know. Rare, Microsoft, and everyone in between have said it more times than I have, but Goldeneye is one big, fuckin' headache when you take it out of the extremely specific context that birthed its success. Whether this game being shelved was for the best or not, will probably forever be up to the gods. Being able to play the beta version of it was one hell of a thrilling curiosity, but beyond that, I genuinely don't give a shit.
Some stray thoughts:
- I fell to my death in Cradle, but still managed to complete the mission? I've never seen that happen before.
- Statue is one of the most fucked up and unrecognizable levels in any video game. Playing it unfinished somehow made it even less legible.
- The placeholder faces for all the models are so fucking funny, dude.
• February 24th • PC (via Hitman 2) •
✓ Completed all Hitman (2016) levels (with 🐶)
There is an exhaustingly thin line that most things in life abide by. Stuff like life and death, or light and dark, hot and cold and other shit. It is a balance that many people try to walk, but very few can do it with elegance - if at all. Such a proficiency in balance is remarkable, to the point where we don't realize it's possible until we witness it for ourselves.
Hitman walks the line that most video games do - one between absurdity and sincerity. It's easy to be too serious, and it sure as shit is too easy to be cynical. Games, like most types of creative media, often times lack this sort of awareness in the final result. This isn't to dunk on game developers or anything - quite the contrary, because it's fucking hard to get things right. By contrast, Hitman makes it seem like the most sugary and sweet of cake walks.
Like, Hitman is profoundly stupid. You hide in plain sight from excessively armed patrols, decimate world-renown criminals with rubber duck explosives, and wear any sleeve with the pure-blooded confidence of a bald white dude. It almost comes across as a parody of human behavior, but even kicking it so low would be severely under-handing IO's craft. Hitman works because it never explicitly winks and nods at own its silliness. The tone and character blend in as well as any of 47's disguises, to the degree that it may as well wear its heart on its sleeve. It is a frightening balance to walk, but it remains so effective that you don't even realize it.
Yet, Hitman knows exactly how fundamentally hilarious it is. It sprinkles in with subtle easter eggs, outlandish costumes, and completely fucking nonsensical situations to find yourself in. At some point in the Hokkaido mission, Jace remarked at how convenient it was that a troubled admirer of Helmut Kruger (who suspiciously carries a striking resemblance to Agent 47) was getting surgery to look just like his idol. It would be so contrived and eye-rolling in any other hands, but it feels right at home. These are the sort of opportunities that are brainstormed, but never brought to fruition because of how precisely they hit the nose.
I think Hitman hits (so to speak) its target because it beams with confidence. It believes so much in its slapstick humor that it doesn't need to tell you what to laugh at. It carries its premise with such brevity and purpose that it can still immediately pull you back in to its decidedly vague, yet alluring tale of corporate warfare and intrigue.
Hitman's good. It's the kind of good that stands out in your head. It's the kind of good that can organically create stories, memories, laughs and above all else - a deep, deep sense of satisfaction. They make it look so easy.
Some stray thoughts:
- Jace had never seen Hitman before so running through it with him as the brains (and me as the brawn, I guess) was a savory treat. His creativity, quick thinking and eagerness to stir the pot make this one of the best games in the world.
- The voice acting is SO GOOD. It sells the story so hard, and the motion capture kicks ass, too. This is IO at the top of their game.
- The episodic format worked so well for this game as it was coming out. It's a bummer that they didn't continue it going forward - I think a game with as much replayaility as this benefits a lot from the wait between levels.
- I love shooting dudes so much, man.
• March 10th • PlayStation 4 • Remastered edition •
✓ Completed story on casual
Still extremely fucking good.
• March 14th • PC •
✓ Completed story on casual with good ending
Saints Row IV is fucking crazy, beyond any other game that dares to be this referential and committed to its own canon. There were several instances where the game just came from such a niche and horrendously specific angle, to the point where I kept wondering who these jokes were for. Why did they make so many extremely specific throwbacks to the first Saints Row - from one-off characters, to exact locations, to the CAMERA ANGLE??? Why did they bring back Neil Patrick Harris to voice Veteran Child for like six new lines??? Who decided that you should be shooting t-posing bad guys and default character models from the previous games???
It blows my fucking mind that Saints Row IV had such a big budget, was four games into its multi-million dollar selling video game franchise and they capped it off with making something so unapologetically weird. Playing it again in 2021, it feels like Saints Row IV was ahead of its time - grown out of the same soil as all the fucked up Gen-Z memes of t-posing Jimmy Neutron and Spongebob eating Patrick's ass and shit. It's incredible just how well this game aged, and how much more impressive its chaotic garbage seems now.
I love it. I love it so much. It slips with its characterizations on occasion, but it otherwise overwhelmingly treats its characters with love, care and the sort of respect that weirdos like me would give to the Saints Row story. It treats the journey up until now as something tangible and coherent, as weird as it might sound for a game that deals in retcons, simulations, aliens and time travel. The boss and her crew of lovable psychopaths make sense in this world, against all odds and it comes across as a Fast and Furious-esque level of narrative craft where you can tell the people behind the game love it as much as you do.
It's great. It's so great. I'm so happy that Saints Row IV is miles, upon miles better than I remember. We don't often get that sort of treat when coming back to old shit, but Saints Row IV was seemingly future-proofed from the start.
Some stray thoughts:
- The tribute to the late Michael Clarke Duncan is a real fuckin tearjerker. So much respect for how they honored him.
- Zinyak is a pretty typical alien overlord villain, but I really do love him and his stomach-churning pretentiousness.
- The Jane Austen element to the story is so weird??? And it makes so much sense by the end???
- I don't want another Saints Row. Supposedly as of this writing, Volition is working on a new game. I'll play it, but I wish that they could move on considering just how perfectly this quad...rology...? wraps up.
• April 20th • PC •
✓ Completed all base game race events
Over the years, I've noticed that a lot of my favorite games provide some form of escapism. I loved Yakuza 0 because it allowed me to get lost in the flashy, seedy nightlife from another time. I also loved Yakuza: Like A Dragon because it was so infectiously optimistic at a time where the world was anything but. Forza Horizon 4 was one hell of an escape when I played it the first time, but more than ever, it now feels like the perfect getaway trip. The world, and the circumstances in my life right now are harrowing in spite of how lucky I am (hi, jace ❤) and it's refreshing to see that FH4 doesn't reflect a single bit of that. Instead of being some sort of deep commentary on the world at large, it is perfect at being an extremely well-rounded driving game. There are a billion things to do, and I can do them all at my own pace and difficulty. I can drive any car I want, go anywhere I want and do whatever I want, for as long as I want to. It's precisely the thing I need right now, and that alone has gone a long way with me.
• (early) May 1st• PC •
✓ Completed campaign on normal (with 🐶)
It's Diablo. Fun.
• May 11th • PlayStation 2 (via PS4 BC) •
✓ Completed story with cheats
I saw Lil B streaming Grand Theft Auto III, and it made me want to play Grand Theft Auto III... again. At this point, I have beaten it so many times that I just skip cutscenes because I know what every mission is. It's so easy to just breeze through this game (with cheats) in a single sitting. I just think that GTA 3 is a deeply soothing comfort game - it's so familiar and timeless that I can boot it up and have fun at literally any time. I don't think this will be even close to the last time that I'll finish this game.
• May 19th • PC •
✓ Completed story on normal
I like Resident Evil Village. It's kind of hard not to, honestly. This is such an endearing horror game. It's in-your-face, extremely gruesome and has the writing and acting chops to back up its self-awareness. The pace is much, much better than RE7, while keeping up some of the slow-paced horror elements that made that game such a return-to-form in the first place. The enemy design is much better, the art is absolutely beautiful and the emphasis on action makes for some really fucked up enemy encounters. It's not quite as snappy and fast as Resident Evil 4, but at some point I realized that it's not really trying to be RE4 in spite of all the borrowed elements. It's not its own version of Resident Evil 4, either - this is more or less an iteration on 7 as opposed to a full-on reinvention. A lot of the story beats are a bit too similar, but I do love just how much this game is willing to do weird shit. I was constantly screaming "WHAT THE FUCK?" at the screen, or shaking my head at just how fuckin' off-the-wall some parts were.
Something I don't really like is that Resident Evil VIII has no guts, so to speak. It implies a lot of heavy stuff in its plot points, but it never really commits. There are moments where I was ecstatic, or shocked or fuckin' impressed at a direction that the story would go in - only for it to land on very, very soft padding. I wasn't fooled either - this is the eighth main entry in an exceedingly massive, convoluted, profitable media franchise. I appreciate the things it's trying to do, but Resident Evil is simply too big for it to be able to pull off such brave narrative choices. I like Resident Evil VIII for what it is, but its feints are all-too-sweet of a glimpse at what it could be if story risks made any money.
This already feels like too much rambling that I'd ever thought I would do for a game called Resident Evil VIII, but here we are. There's still a lot of life in this series yet, and for that I think this game is impressive on its own. I can't wait to see what they do next - as long as it's not a remake of Code Veronica. Please.
Some stray thoughts:
- Since RE7, the voice work in the series has been pretty stellar. It's clear that a lot of this is performance capture, because so much of the work from the cast feels natural. It goes a long way in a series that notoriously has had pretty cheesy voice work.
- There was a part where I like "I wish there was more enemy variety" but then I realized that no, that's not what I want. I hate fighting tough guys in Resident Evil games.
- In typical Resident Evil fashion, the third act is where a lot of sense starts to fall out of the window. Unlike 7, however, I kind of fuckin' dig it here.
- What the hell does a Resident Evil 9 even look like?
• July 3rd • PC •
✓ Completed story
Still the best to ever do it.
• July 9th • PC •
✓ Completed story
Good.
• July 10th • PC •
✓ Completed campaign on Recruit
I was tuned into Lil B's twitch stream one night, and he was playing Call of Duty: World at War. I liked this game enough back when it was new, but listening to Lil B go through it surprised me in how much I fondly remember from the game's campaign.
So, I downloaded a pirate copy and played it again. It's still pretty all right! It feels a lot like Treyarch is the edgy, jealous brother to Infinity Ward's stellar Call of Duty 4 the year before. Mostly because of the rough edges with glitches, weird animations, off-looking set pieces - it's not quite on the execution level of a COD4 but it's still the point where Treyarch tried to come into their own. It's much better than I last remember, mostly because it keeps moving at such a rapid pace that you're pretty much in and out of new battles every 15-20 minutes. It doesn't give itself enough time to be boring, and weird stuff like the dismemberment and celebrity casting help a lot.
I don't know. I don't really have much to say about it. It's a Call of Duty game. It's fun. It made for a nice Saturday afternoon.
• August 4th • PC (via Ninja Gaiden Master Collection) •
✓ Completed story on normal
So, you're probably asking yourself, "But Ajay, why on earth did you decide to replay Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge?" and to that, I have no good answers. Maybe I just wanted to cut some guys in half, or mash buttons incessantly for 6-8 hours. Whatever feeling overtook me, it came to me when I was making sure that all the Ninja Gaiden Master Collection games were running properly on PC. From there, the Curse of the Regent took me over...
Anyway, yes - I played Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge again, skipping all the cutscenes so I can save them for the moment that i inevitably play this with my boyfriend, the poor thing. I like this game. I don't think it's good, or well made, or a particularly good idea by any means, but I like it. The poorly implemented, glitchy dismemberment, the total rehash of weapons, powers and costumes from previous games - it's all here in its gloriously underwhelming self. This game really does feel like they had three months to fix the multitude of unfathomable issues with the original 3, and decided that the best way to do it was to throw in everything from the last game that people liked. Granted, those things do make the core of Ninja Gaiden 3 somewhat better, but it's all so hastily implemented with a lack of context, purpose, originality - fuck, the whole kitchen sink is missing. Razor's Edge feels a lot like a mod that shoehorns in stuff that's not supposed to be there, kind of like a putting a bandage on a dismembered torso. It might help in one way or another, but at the end of the day, it's still a ripped apart human body that you're working with.
Still, there's enough in there to have a campaign's length worth of fun. It all just feels like rushed changes made with what they had, like having the ninpo system run on enemy kills instead of a finite stock like it used to be. They didn't make any new weapons because the game wasn't made with multiple weapons in mind to begin with. It's bizarre, and I don't know if I've quite played something like this. Maybe that's why I'm so drawn to Razor's Edge. Its competence is ironically the least interesting part about it. Instead, the draw for me is in how this is just such a strange mishmash of different ideas, visions, assets - if you can name it, it's probably something that feels out of place, too.
Some stray thoughts:
- The additional Ayane chapters are fantastic, and are by far the best part about Razor's Edge. They nailed Ayane's dialogue, made her character so much more fun to play from Sigma 2 and, like... Ayane's still the best.
- I do not want a Ninja Gaiden 4. I love this series with my whole heart, but with Ni-oh, a slew of licensed games and the collapse of Dead or Alive 6, it's clear that Team Ninja have their heart set on something else. DOA6 felt like they just didn't care anymore, and if there's one thing you can give Ninja Gaiden 3, it's that it was made with love, and care and a direction. Whether all of that turned into a fun, coherent, worthwhile video game is another discussion, but fuck, they really did try to do something new.
• October 1st • PC (via EA Play) • Remastered •
✓ Unlocked burnout license and saw credits
I was watching my boyfriend play the new Hot Wheels game the other day, and it reminded me of Burnout. So I signed up for a month of EA Play and accidentally beat Burnout Paradise Remastered - again. It's really fucking good.
• October 4th • PlayStation 4 •
✓ Completed story
Boy.
• October 7th • PlayStation 4 •
x Dropped at Hejibo Arc Mission 10
I love the Senran Kagura series deeply, not just for the big boobies but for fun, mashy combat and a surprising amount of narrative depth and heart. I've cried a lot playing the Senran Kagura games because when it does things right, it's among some of my favorite stuff in games.
Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash is not one of those times. Much like Peach Ball and Reflexions, it is an awful attempt to branch the Senran Kagura series into other genres. In a way, I can admire Tamsoft's desire to diversify the Senran Kagrua series. However, in practice, it is remarkable just how little these games understand about the appeal in the genres they experiment with. Case in point: Peach Beach Splash has bad shooting, stiff and clunky movement, awful aim and a bunch of bad upgrade systems that seem way more complicated than they're worth. There is just nothing about this game that feels good to play under any circumstances. Even Tamsoft's Onechanbara series, for as awful as it plays, still has a bit of merit to its mashy combat and obtuse mechanics. Peach Beach Splash, in lieu of anything fun, just onboards a bunch of bad card abilities, a bad selection of shitty feeling weapons and very little in the way of anything rewarding. It's bad, and the Senran Kagura characters, writing and world deserve better than this.
Some stray thoughts:
- I can't remember the last time that I just straight up gave up trying to finish a game from a series I love. The Big Ryona boss fight is an ADORABLE idea, but it feels really bad in a game that severely limits your options.
- The writing is... fine. Once I realized how bad the game was, I just wanted to quickly breeze through the school arcs so I could move on with my life. I couldn't even make it that far.
- The music is CUTE. The enemy designs are playful and sweet too. All of the art for this game is really nice, but it all serves to be let down by just a crummy playing game.
- I'm salty, man. I love Senran Kagura and I thought this would've been a no-brainer good time. What happened?
• October 11th • PlayStation 2 (via PCSX2) •
✓ Completed championship mode
I have an unusually difficult time trying to word why I like Burnout 2: Point of Impact so much. Part of it is that Burnout 2 is such a quaint, adorable, simple racing game in comparison to how flashy and explosive the series would quickly become after this. The other part is that it's just... extremely playable. It is no-frills, unpretentious car driving which isn't really something that you see anymore - at least, in good games, anyway. It's refreshing to play a game that amounts everything to classic game philosophies, like scoring points and unlocking new tracks and vehicles. There's something about the way it sticks to its simplicity, scrapping fancy vehicle descriptors for names like Sport, and Hot Rod. It makes me feel like I'm playing something that makes me feel like I'm a kid playing a game in a TV show or something, where it's just so quintessentially innocent.
Ugh, it feels like nothing I'm saying can get across the point I feel. I kind of like that Burnout 2, out of anything, is challenging me to rethink how I talk about different video games. That's not what I fucking expected from playing this, that's for sure.
• October 18th • PlayStation 2 (via PCSX2) •
✓ Completed story mode
This game is still fantastic. Of course it serves as some sort of dated male power fantasy circa 2004, but if you can ignore that, the rest of the game still holds up remarkably well. The fighting is fun, the music selection is great, its cast is INSANE and even if none of that held up, it's still a novel idea for a video game. I love replaying Def Jam FFNY because it's like occasionally revisiting a world where illegal street fighting is a huge deal and all these rappers join in on the brutality, and all of them fucking know wrestling moves, or high-flying kung-fu moves or are just violent street fighters. It's like how John Wick creates a world where hitmen are absolutely everywhere and every other person wants to kill John Wick and shit. New York lends itself well to shady underworlds, and for as little setup as this game has about its world, it is so evocative of a fucked up fighting circuit. I love it very much.
Some stray thoughts:
- They could NEVER make a game like this today, where rappers are getting thrown into subway trains and are getting beaten up by women and shit. It's like how car manufactures have varying levels of damage that they want their vehicles to be depicted under - the egos are simply too much to make something like this again.
- I've never played Def Jam Icon but I would still like to find a copy one day. If anything, I'm interested because it ditches the AKI engine entirely and goes for some crazy hip hop wizard street fighting shit.
- Part of why I like this game so much is that it puts you into situations where fights just happen in unconventional places. Garages, subway stations, offices, junkyards - it's the sort of spontaneity that makes me so fond of The Warriors, and Dead or Alive and the Yakuza series. It's just cool to have fights in places where you don't expect them.
• October 20th • Xbox 360 (via Xenia) •
✓ Completed story on agent
I felt like playing Goldeneye, so i did.
• November 1st • PlayStation (via Retroarch) •
✓ Completed arrange mode
I've played the first Resident Evil a handful of times at this point, but I've never tried the arrange mode. Rearranging items and enemies has never sounded too exciting, but I wanted to replay this game anyway so I figured it would be fun to try it a little differently. I like the idea of switching up the camera angles, but it really only seems to commit to that in the early stages of the mansion. Likewise, the mansion is probably the only place where you're doing a lot of key hunting and exploring. Once you're past the mansion, the rest of the game is actually pretty much the same. There are a lot more enemies that make battles tough, but otherwise... it's kind of just the same old Resident Evil - which is to say that I like it.
• November 23rd • PC •
✓ I think I'm good after 956 hours
I don't really have much to say about Cookie Clicker? I had it running idle for like, three months and I had fun watching the numbers go a lot. There's a lot of weird stuff going on in this game, but I like it when I get more cookies. Yeah.
A stray thought:
- I'd play another one of these.
Grand Theft Auto III
• (early) December 3rd • PC •
✓ Miraculously completed story (with 🐶)
I feel like, with all of the garbage I've played over the years, I tend to have a tolerance for stupid shit. In a way, "stupid shit" kind of describes my entire ethos as a human being. In my heart, my soul, my being - I love a certain type of chaos and nonsense, to the point where it follows me everywhere I go and in everything I do. It's a part of me, and in recent years I've grown to accept and find a healthy ground to embrace the chaos.
For this very reason, perhaps it is not entirely surprising that my favorite trilogy of video games have been completely and utterly butchered under the guise of a "remastered" re-release. A re-envisioning, of sorts. The Grand Theft Auto "Definitive Edition" (as my boyfriend so lovingly chastises) is a chance for me to recalibrate my perspective on my favorite games. Maybe I can understand how other people see them?
No, not really, as it turns out. This thing is creatively, technically and morally corroded across the board. All the characters look even uglier than they did in the original game. The world is stripped of its charm, the missions void of the impressive scale and the systems even more ineptly put together than they were in 2001. This remastering of GTA III is a total nightmare in any way that you look at it. It doesn't play good, it doesn't look good, and it's just... not good.
I wonder how Vice City will fare? Poorly, I figure.
• December 10th • PC •
✓ Completed campaign
Do you remember Alien Shooter? No? It's a game where you shoot a lot of aliens. This is Zombie Shooter, which is literally Alien Shooter but you're shooting zombies instead. Same power ups, same types of levels, same weapons, same upgrades. It's the same game, but with zombies, which is to say that it's good as hell.
• December 28th • PC •
✓ Completed campaign
I saw my mom watching the new Matrix movie, and it reminded me of Max Payne. So, I installed Max Payne and played it again. It's still real good. It's campy and self-serious in all the right ways, with gunplay that nails the vibe it's going for and character + voice work that eats the scenery whole. This is just a shooting game made by guys that liked John Woo and The Matrix who are also a bunch of freaking film nerds who wanted to throw in as many references to their favorite movies as possible. I can relate.
• December 30th • PC •
✓ Completed campaign
Max Payne 2 is the perfect sequel.
