games

Persona 5.

Probably the biggest investment by Atlus in a game; something like 5 years of active development, and nearly 10 separating it from the previous episode; a slew of audacious themes seldom approached by videogames, even less so by JRPGs, at its time, and all that for what? a Persona 3.75 whose writing falls apart before the end of the first arc (making a character say to an antagonist that he treats women like objects after a close-up shot of her jiggly boobs... talk about stupidly tone-deaf, and that's just the beginning), and whose gameplay is now even more dissonant than before from what the game clumsily attempts to say, because it's an imposed marketing constraint and not something thought out to be harmonious... That's a feat. Bravo Hashino.

City Skylines. It was fun for a few hours and then it become boring

i've mentioned it before on here, but Final Fantasy 15. no idea how it got 9's and 10's on release. i'm assuming it was just vibes and how much you liked hanging out with the boys. you had to watch a movie and anime series to even understand the plot and characters. combat was egregiously shallow and easy. game just pissed me off. not sure what the royal version changed and if they fixed any of these problems.

I did not care for Mario Odyssey very much.

It might just be because I have little baby hands but I found the primary movement cappy hat bounce maneuver to be extremely unpleasant to pull off, especially having played Mario Galaxy 2 recently before it.

It was a very pretty game but imo there were not nearly enough cool set pieces. But then again I am a Sunshine enjoyer so my opinion can be taken with a grain of salt.

Super Mario World. Super Mario Bros 3 perfected 2D Mario platforming movement, then they added a cape that lets you skip most of SMW by flying at the top of the screen. Because of this, and because of other things that the cape makes too easy, speedrunners have created the "No Cape, No Starworld" category that features the parts of the game that would otherwise be skipped.

The spin jump is also BS, the fact that you can now jump on a bunch of things that should cause damage keeps me wishing that they stuck with SMB3 mechanics instead.

My two are Ori and the Blind Forest and also Soma.

I played Ori several years ago, so my disappointment with and rage at that game have cooled. It was bad though. The art style didn't look at all cohesive, but rather like there were assets from two or three different games. The story was generic and boring, but yet somehow confusing at the same time. I played through the Ginso (?) Tree escape, and I hated the movement the whole time. It was too floaty and felt imprecise. (But people speedrun it, so the movement is actually probably plenty precise, it just felt bad to me.) I also absolutely despised how I could never tell whether the environment was safe to land on or would kill me instantly. And this isn't even getting into the combat, which basically everyone agrees is bad. I don't know, I wish I had liked Ori, it feels like it should be right up my alley, but I hated it so, so much.

Soma I played recently, and I'm still seething about how much time I spent on that stupid, shitty game. Its story wasn't deep and I didn't care about the characters. The game pulled the exact same story trick 3 fucking times, and apparently expected you to still be surprised by it the third time? Yeah, no, I'd rather experience a sci fi story that doesn't treat me like I'm too stupid to understand it. The monsters also fucking sucked, they weren't scary, they were just fucking annoying. It was always extremely easy to figure out their gimmick, and once you'd done that, it was just a matter of exploiting it and hoping you didn't fuck up or get lost in the overly dark environment that all looked the fucking same. Also, I hated having to try and find the lever or button or switch or whatever that I needed to interact with. It was very hard to tell what was background non-interactable stuff and what was the tiny little switch that was blocking my progress. If the story had been good, I could have forgiven the gameplay, but it was just like tech bro's first sci fi kind of plot, I fucking hated it.

Boltgun, it got hyped to hell and back as an epic awesome BOOMER SHOOTER but its literally not a boomer shooter, it's just doom 2016 with pixels.

Just felt really boring to keep being locked into rooms and having a bunch of shit spawn at me until I kill enough for the game to decide to release me. Also the weapon balance felt off, you get an upgrade powerup in almost every level that upgrades a gun for that level, but the only gun worth upgrading seems to be the titular boltgun, the default weapon, cause it gets like doubled mag size, pinpoint accuracy, big damage etc, while other guns just get gimmicks like bouncing shotgun shells.

The Witcher 3

The game has some pretty graphics at times but all in all the story was a boring slog and the gameplay could be neatly split into "puzzles" where you just press the Witcher sense button to see what to interact with and combat where despite, the large bestiary you fight everything the same way.

There were some alright side quests, but most of the open world felt like an unnecessary hurdle between point A and point B instead of an interesting place to explore.

Imho the best thing about The Witcher 3 being popular is that there were enough fans of the series knocking around that the books got English translations.

A. Star wars knights of the old republic 2. The music and environmental color palette are so dull and drab compared to its predecessor, I despise kreia and atton for being pieces of shit but unfortunately they're important/major characters in the narrative (especially kreia, and how the game itself tries to portray this shitbag as "correct" especially with the infamous nar shadda beggar scene), it completely doesn't capture the magic of star wars that the first game did (I know it was supposed to be a deconstruction, but it's way too dark and edgy), I hate darths nihilus and sion (again, too edgy, and I think their force power gimmicks are stupid). It also basically invalidates all the player has accomplished in the story of the first kotor game, regardless of side (by the time of kotor 2 both the jedi and sith are collapsing and revan is missing).

Regarding kreia and her portrayal, IIRC chris avellone is apparently a sex pest creep who has had allegations made against him

B. Pokemon Legends Arceus. I think I've ranted about this game before. I personally think that it has a very boring and flawed gameplay loop, dull environments with music that rarely/barely plays (the music itself is good, but why the fuck is most of the game uncomfortably silent then), a botched combat system, unfun/tedious wild pokemon aggression mechanics, a horrible lack of quality of life features and an truly unbearable amount of grinding. Then there's the colonial apologia in the narrative (wholesome chungus peaceful colonizers who just want to make a home in a foreign land and live harmoniously with the natives, d the gracious colonizers' help in dealing with sacred local pokemon they've revered for generations)

i just hate all videogames, despite playing them all the time. they pale in comparison to the shit i imagine while i play them. even my favorite games just piss me off with all the ways they could be hypothetically improved upon. this game needs bigger maps, that game could use a prone mechanic, this other game needs leaning around corners... i just can't stop myself. and thats without getting into microtransaction games-as-a-service shit that i can't afford but still want because i am a needy little treat goblin who has to farm any tiny scrap of dopamine out of the world that i can.