TLDR: I think that I don’t like Pokémon games anymore because the battle system literally puts me to sleep, I can’t be bothered to “catch them all” all over again, and there’s just nothing else about the mainline games (not even the story or anything) that makes them interesting for me. Anyone else?

Disclaimer: If you love Pokémon, then I’m very happy for you. Seriously. This isn’t a rant about the games being bad (not even the modern ones). I’m not casting judgment on the quality of the games nor the people who buy and play them. This is 100% about my astonishment at how much my personal taste for video games has changed.

I decided to share my thoughts on this matter with all of you here to see if anyone has had a similar experience.

I only got into Pokémon in the year 2000, I think. I still managed to play Red, Blue, and Yellow before Gold, Silver, and Crystal released. Out of these six, the only one I never owned was Gold. But on top of that, I played the ever-loving heck out of Stadium 1 and 2. There is a non-zero chance that I invested more than 1,000 hours into all of these games combined. I even got my mother hooked on the Stadium games. It was wild.

Then gen III rolled around, and while I did get a GBA, I somehow never managed to buy a single new Pokémon game. My guess is that I was too busy fawning over all of the crazy, weird, and fun games that I was playing on the Gamecube, two of which I spent a lot of time on: Animal Crossing and Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. So, I totally missed out on Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed and LeafGreen. I also never played Colosseum or XD: Gale of Darkness.

I returned to the series on the NDS, with Diamond, which was a lot fun (at least I don’t remember anything negative about it), but that was close to the beginning of a period in my life where I played almost no video games, let alone Pokémon.

This may sound silly, but what I enjoy about Pokémon (or at least, what I enjoyed about gen I and II), was the adventure. Does that make sense? I loved exploring the world, befriending six “cute” creatures (I always was more interested in carrying the more animal and pet-like ones in my party), becoming the very best, like no one ever was, defeating bad guys, and learning more about the lore surrounding certain legendary Pokémon.

Side note: I did try to catch them all, but Celebi completely eluded me.

It wasn’t until like... I think, 2023? That I went back to the series and played Emerald (through cough cough “alternative” means), and forced myself to plow through the game until I beat the League. And I mean “forced”. It wasn’t like the game was bad, and I enjoyed the adventure to some extent (though the story didn’t quite “grip” me), but the grinding ground my gears (pun intended).

Yes. I had to grind. I can’t remember what my team was and at what level they were (I think around 55 each) when I reached the League, but I remember grinding at the exit of the Victory Road to raise their levels because my first attempt failed. (It’s definitely, at least partly, a skill issue. lol) I had, however, been grinding a little bit before each gym already, and whenever I did, I had to listen to podcasts or YouTube videos in the background or whatever, because I would literally fall asleep while doing it. lol

Most recently I tried HeartGold. Before that, I tried FireRed and White, and with neither of them, I managed to get past the third or fourth gym before I just couldn’t deal with the tedium anymore and gave up.

Fast-forward to this month of April.

I’ve decided to focus on GCN games, since there are many that I never had the chance to play. I replayed Metroid first (needed to scratch that itch) and had fun. Yesterday I finished Paper Mario TTYD, which was a dream come true. Been waiting 20 years to play it. I absolutely loved it.

But today I tried Pokémon Colosseum.

And... I think that I want to give up. lol

I just can’t anymore.

I think that I have become an Old Person™. lol Like, something about the battle system just literally puts me to sleep. I’m not kidding you. I was playing the game today, and whenever I had to battle, I began to feel Drowzee (pun intended).

I played for a little over an hour and then checked Bulbapedia, only to look at the list of “snatchable” Pokémon and think to myself: “Do I think that the ‘adventure’ in this game will be interesting enough to keep me grinding through all these many battles?”

My hearts tells me no. I don’t think that it will.

So, after all these years, I have to sadly conclude that I just don’t like Pokémon anymore. I can’t deal with the battle system. It’s too tedious for me. I also can’t deal with the grind of catching and raising them. Neither the adventures nor the stories catch my interest anymore. It feels all too repetitive, like I’m playing the same game over and over.

But do you know what the irony is? I have replayed Crystal a few times over the years—maybe a handful. It feels easy to pick up somehow. I still grind, but the grind doesn’t grind me down. And I am willing to bet that I could pick it up today and play it all the way to the end without getting tired. It must be the nostalgia. I don’t know how else to explain it otherwise.

I don’t think that my machine can handle playing gens VI to current through “alternative means”, so those are completely out of the question for now, but I have been following the franchise close enough that I feel skeptical that even those would entertain me.

So, I guess that’s it. I don’t like Pokémon anymore. It’s just a game but it somehow feels so tragic. lol

And I’m not sure what other GCN game to pick up instead. Any suggestions? Here are the ones that I have played so far:

• 1080° Avalanche
• Animal Crossing
• Burnout
• Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
• The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
• Luigi's Mansion
• Mario Party 4
• Metroid Prime
• Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
• Pikmin
• Resident Evil 4
• Sonic Adventure 2: Battle
• Star Fox Adventures
• Super Mario Sunshine
• Super Smash Bros. Melee

I’m mostly interested in 3D, third-person action adventure games—basically singleplayer games where you take control of a main character. I’m open to try out other genres though.

Note: This is NOT a sponsored post. I'm just a happy customer.

Background

When the G'AIM'E Kickstarter was announced, I got the itch to play light gun games again. I grew up playing Time Crisis on my PSX, stepping on a controller plugged into port 2 which acted as a makeshift pedal so I could mimic the arcade experience. A local pizza place near me had an Area 51 machine that I could play for a quarter, and over time I memorized the enemy layouts for that game so that I could play further and further on one coin.

There are a variety of modern light gun models available now, though all of them are at the hobbyist/tinkerer level. There isn't one that "just works" smoothly and easily.

The most well known is the Sinden, which achieves calibration on games by setting up a white border around the game on the screen. This allows the gun to establish its position within that border and "know" where it's shooting.

Unfortunately, when I looked into the Sinden, it seemed like reviews were very mixed, with many mentioning that the border can be kind of a mess to get working. Apparently it can require a lot of legwork and messing around with settings and external programs and whatnot.

After searching around for alternatives, I landed upon a different line of modern light gun and decided to, well, pull the trigger.

Gun4IR Intro

Gun4IR on its own isn't a standalone product so much as it is a framework for making a modern light gun. You can buy the individual components and put them all together in a gun casing, making a functional light gun of your choosing. For example, see the User Guide which goes into detail about which boards you'll need, pin guides, etc. People have made them in Nerf cases and 3D printed ones.

Now, if I'm going to ding the Sinden for requiring too much tinkering, surely soldering wires onto PCBs is a step in the wrong direction?

That's absolutely correct! The good news is that you can sidestep all of this. Gun4IR has some official pre-build sellers, meaning you can buy an already made gun -- no soldering needed! Their site sells builds for the UK, while, RPEG Electronics is their official pre-build seller for the US.

From RPEG, I picked up a pre-built Gun4IR setup in a Guncon 2 housing.

Gun4IR Basics

As is implied by the name, Gun4IR uses 4 different IR clusters for calibration. You can buy a pack of LED sensors that plug into the USB port of your TV. You stick these, facing out, to the midpoint of the top, bottom, left, and right of your TV. The LEDs are black and their light can't be seen with the naked eye but can with a camera (you can check to make sure they're working with your phone).

The gun comes with calibration software that gives you lines on your TV to show the mount points for the LEDs, check how the gun is seeing the sensors, line up shots, etc.

I'm happy to report that, once calibrated, my gun is VERY accurate. I was honestly expecting a bit of jank, but it's genuinely spot on. There's a small bit of jitter that's noticeable when you have a crosshair on (some of that also might be coming from my unstable hands), but when you're playing a game without a crosshair, it's not enough to make you miss shots. The shots I've missed have been because I'm, well, bad at videogames.

Games

Because I wasn't wanting to tinker, I found a big download pack that promised me a pre-configured set of ROMs and emulators that were turnkey and compatible with Gun4IR. I spent days downloading all the individual parts from one of those sketchy download sites, getting all the parts of a multi-part RAR file.

And when I started extracting it, wouldn't you know, it was INFESTED with viruses. I uploaded one of the .exes to VirusTotal and I've never seen so much red.

Shame on me, though. I'm not an internet newbie, and I should know better than to trust random executable files, especially on Windows.

So, I went seeking an alternate solution.

Batocera

Batocera is a Linux distribution focused on retro-gaming. You wouldn't use it as your daily driver, but you would use it if you want to just boot into something so you can play games. Additionally, Batocera has built-in light gun support! Perfect!

I did my usual "setup emulation" dance that I've done so many times before: looking up worthwhile games to play, locating ripping ROMs, getting the right extracting BIOSes, etc. I also bought an external hard drive and attached it to my Windows TVPC. I can now boot off the hard drive to go into Batocera directly (because I didn't want to try to figure out dual booting with Windows).

Batocera is like booting into an arcade cabinet, loading right into ES-DE. It doesn't really expose its file system to you by default, but it's got a killer feature that makes setup easy: Batocera automatically sets up a network share for you. This lets you access all of its folders from another device, meaning I could set everything up on my laptop and transfer it over easily to Batocera.

Furthermore, Batocera automatically knows when you've got a light gun attached and will show a gun icon on games that are compatible. In theory, I'm able to navigate the interface just using my light gun, but in practice I also paired a bluetooth controller. (See Caveats section below for more on this.)

You don't HAVE to use Batocera of course, but it ended up being so easy that it became my preferred setup.

Gaming

So, I got the gun calibrated, and I got my games set up in Batocera. It's time to shoot!

I'm happy to report that the gun works fantastically. Like, seriously good.

For most games and emulators, it "just works" which is exactly what I wanted. I tested out several different games on several different platforms, and it worked on stuff ranging from the Atari 2600 to Naomi arcade cabinets.

I played through the first 10 rounds of Duck Hunt on the NES without missing a shot before getting bored and moving to something else. Time Crisis on the PlayStation (my original light gun love) plays wonderfully.

I had a friend over this weekend who also loves light gun games and has nostalgia for TC (though his is for TC2 and TC3). We traded off rounds playing Time Crisis 2 (which ended up being a good way to do it, as I forgot how my arms and eyes need a rest after 15 minutes of light gun gaming). We beat the full campaign in 2 and almost beat 3.

I also tried the gun out in some Windows games off of Steam, just to make sure that my Batocera success wasn't a fluke. Sure enough, it worked just fine!

I now have an accurate, easy-to-use light gun setup that works on my large, modern LCD TV. I have hours of light gun gameplay ahead of me, and I'm thrilled.

Caveats

Wow, kfwyre, this sounds great! I can't wait to get one for myself!

Easy there, cowboy/cowgirl/cowthem! Let me surface some of the rough edges, lest you think that this is too good to be true.

Conclusion

I am quite fond of my Gun4IR so far. It works better than I hoped it would, and it's unlocked a type of gaming that I thought was extinct. (For some reason, light gun games have a different feel to me than VR shooting gallery games. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I like them a lot more?)

I would recommend it ONLY if you're someone who knows they're going to get their money's worth out of it and are also willing to put up with the mostly minimal tinkering required to get it working. I say mostly minimal because, no matter what gun you're using, you're still going to have to set up emulators and ROMs and whatnot. The configuration that is specific to Gun4IR is really just installing the sensors, using the calibration app, and making sure your gun isn't catching other LEDs.

Compared to the G'AIM'E (which is a bit of a fool's errand at this point because that one's still theoretical while this one's here to kiss you in real life), Gun4IR doesn't offer the "plug and play" promise, but it also is compatible with far more games. If you're in the market for the G'AIM'E, however, it's probably worth waiting out that release to see how it fares (and whether people can get it working with more games besides the included ones).

On the other hand, if you're like me and need some light gun fun NOW then I give the Gun4IR a pretty strong recommendation, with a secondary recommendation for Batocera. The two of them together are really great, and I'm delighted that I have hours upon hours of shooting games ahead of me.

If anyone has any additional questions or wants me to test specific games/systems, let me know. I'm happy to report back and help in whatever way I can.

Epigraph has been a joy, especially when you consider that it's only $3.

I love puzzle games like Portal, The Outer Wilds, Etc., but when I try to explore further in the genre, I often struggle to find many that provide a sufficient challenge.

I found that Epigraph, while short overall, provided a solid 4-6 hours of playtime.

The goal in the game is decipher a series of stones and tablets containing a totally unknown language.

The Zachtronics games are also phenomenal and probably even more difficult overall if you're like me and looking for a challenge.

I wanted to share this, in case there are interested folks who haven't checked it out yet. This is me gushing about a thing I love and hoping other folks are listening because the story is so good.

Worlds Beyond Number is a podcast run and owned by Brennan Lee Mulligan, Aabria Iyengar, Erika Ishii, and Lou Wilson with the goal of being able to tell the stories they want without time/production pressures. Taylor Moore is the producer and composer.

What stories are they telling?
The first and largest story so far is The Wizard, The Witch and The Wild One, set in the world of Umora using D&D, that starts from Level 1 (with a children's level 0 adventure) with the intent of this being the first long term campaign. The characters are in a world that I'd describe as Ghibli inspired - which includes some of the lightest sweetest moments and some of the most devastating moments of war. There's a bit of a running joke about which character is getting a Kiki or Ponyo moment vs a Mononoke moment in an episode. The Witch is a custom class, the Wizard has a custom subclass, and the Wild One has a custom paladin subclass.

But they've also played a few side games, Erika ran a game of Roll for Shoes, a chaotic game featuring a gangster chicken, a goat that may or may not be the devil, and a retired race horse doing a heist of corn from the county fair. A space jam inspired Space Cram two shot Aabria ran using Tournament Arc and a few prequels set in different areas of the world of Umora.

Where can it be found?
Any podcatcher, with the talkback "Fireside Chats," Children's Adventure, and the side adventures behind a $5 a month Patreon. No other tiers, the goal is to just fund the podcast.

What makes it stand out from other shows

The level of sincerity, and the fact these are some of the absolute best storytellers in the field who consider this their favorite story. In most actual play the rails are firmly on (dimension 20 due to # of episodes) or the episodes are essentially unedited (Critical Role), but these characters have fully split the party multiple times, and have come into genuine conflict, so much so that listeners have, para socially, been upset with players on behalf of the other players for how the characters are acting.

The show is also edited so some rolls and table talk are cut from the finished episodes (the narrative play label), but never to a point where you can't track what's happening. And you still get to hear a delighted squeal, a stressed exhale or a "let's go!" at the table.

The aesthetics are also wonderful with music and sound effects, the characters and different factions have themes that will come back and blend into motifs.

What's coming up next
The fourth "chapter" and first "book" is wrapping up here soon with a bit over 50 episodes, characters around level 5, and major character arc conclusions and then the show is going to take a break from Umora to start another longer campaign run by Aabria, probably hopping back and forth in the future as the goal is not for Brennan to run for like 5 years straight.

Anyway I love these folks (in a non-boundary crossing way) and I love their stories and hope some of y'all are already watching or will check it out and want to talk about it too!

(Note idk where to put this, podcast isn't a group, I went with games.tabletop)

I was a fan of GameRevolution’s reviews for a long time. They always seemed to have a criteria to reviews that not only sold me on what to pursue, but what to truly avoid even if I loved the franchise. (MGS: Ground Zeros, I’m looking at you.) They have seemingly reduced to one reviewer…

I love the weekly Tildes thread of “what games are you playing” and it has truly opened my eyes to some games I would never have heard of, or even tried (Balatro).

Anywho the point of this is to ask where everyone else looks for reputable/intelligent reviews currently? I enjoy listening to Luke Stephens talk about the industry, but it’s not as concise as an A-F or star or 1-10 rating system. IGN doesn’t have my attention… I just don’t know where to turn, as there are so many options.

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD USE EXPANDABLE AND WELL LABELED SECTIONS WHEN REPLYING ABOUT ANYTHING THAT COULD BE CONSIDERED A SPOILER IN THIS TOPIC. IF NOT JUST FOR OTHERS READING IT THAN FOR MYSELF AS WELL

As tildes formatting help isn't stellar, here's how to do it from the docs:

<details>
<summary>Click to view the hidden text</summary>

Here's all the hidden text.

It can have **markdown** in it too.
</details>

Actual Content:
This game necessitates discussing in only the vaguest of terms. I cannot recommend it highly enough if you like puzzle games at all. To that point I'll keep the rest of this succinct:

I have gotten to Room 46 of Blue Prince. It is, by far, one of the best puzzle games I've ever played, maybe one of the best things I've experienced. I am in awe of just how much work this must have taken.

The vaaaast majority of the discourse i'm seeing (while avoiding the HELL out of spoilers) is about the RNG. Reviewer after reviewer focusing solely on the RNG.

Some small % of this is because yes, it's a very hard game to discuss, but the rest of it is literally because it seems that everyone hits a bad run or, what they feel is, a bad streak of luck and says "oh lol nice try, but i guess this game sucks".

The straw that broke the camel's back and prompted this brief writeup was a "minimal spoiler review" (i disagree, don't watch if you haven't been to room 46, don't even listen) from Tom Francis. Tom is probably most known for the "defenestration trilogy" of which most recently had Tactical Breach Wizards, a well liked game.

What blows my mind about this review is that at some point he says "I just feel like I wasted my time for those 25 hours", in relation to X not occurring which prevented him from doing Y.

I cannot IMAGINE playing this game, and somehow feeling like that was your only goal at that point. The laundry list of stuff I have had to investigate and try has been basically constant, and I am CERTAIN he did not exhaust all of that before X happened, no matter how late in the game it was. ESPECIALLY not in 25 hours (my room 46 time for reference was just shy of 20 hours).

If you're reading this, and you liked Myst, Riven, Tunic, Outer Wilds, Animal Well, La Mulana, Environmental Station Alpha, or any of the many other great puzzle games, you owe it to yourself to at the bare minimum wishlist this game and pick it up on sale. To me it's absolutely worth the $30.

Major Edit/Caveat:

I wanted to mention the one legit criticism of this game i've seen that's also not remotely spoilery. Once you start a run, your only option is to finish it. You cannot save and quit in the middle of a run. This is not the huge problem it might feel like it is, if for some reason you have to stop and turn off your computer rather than leave it running, but the fact people are just leaving their machines running to not lose a run shows how silly the limitation is.

As such it's worth noting that since runs can be nice and quick, or can sometimes take an hour +, you kinda have to block out your time in such a way that you commit to a longer run without knowing if it will be. I do hope they fix that, because obviously yes we all have real lives and this game really doesn't gain anything from this limitation.

I just got back from the 'Nintendo Switch 2 Experience', so I though I'd share my thoughts on the console for those who didn't/won't get a chance to check it out.

The Console Itself - 8/10

The S2 is a decent amount larger than the original, which really helps with the ergonomics. Pretty much all the controls are bigger, and the rounder shape might alleviate fatigue when holding it (I never got to hold it for long, the demos were mostly on TVs). I think it looks a lot worse than the original, but that's neither here nor there. The pro controller was a huge upgrade from the (already great) original, super comfortable materials and nice buttons. The screen is not OLED, which I think is ridiculous for the price tag. It theoretically has HDR, but I could not tell. Overall, it's bigger and better, but nothing super special.

Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour - 0/10

For the price of $10, Welcome Tour is a complete joke. There's absolutely nothing to say about it, it's basically an ad for hardware you'll already own. Should be free, don't buy it.

Donkey Kong Bananza - 5/10

This is the Mario Odyssey formula applied to Donkey Kong, you run around, collect bananas in some semi-open worlds. All the environments are destructible, which is super fun but adds one huge caveat: the game runs like shit. A nice 60fps when running around, but as soon as you try smashing stuff (the main gimmick of the game) the framerate jumps all over the place, and going to the world map tanks the fps to 20-30. I enjoyed surfing on chunks of the ground I pulled up, but I was constantly pulled out of the fun by performance hiccups. It looked about as good as Mario Odyssey (but at native 4k ~60pfs, of course).

Mario Kart World - 9/10

Okay, now I can start saying nice things! Mario Kart World is–as you might expect–awesome. It's a really fun twist on the formula that was perfected in 8 Deluxe. There's no more kart customisation, which I don't mind, but each kart looks really nice and detailed. I got a slight taste of free-roam mode before each knockout tour I played, and it was... fine? The open world looks great and plays well, but I'm curious to see how it's "gamified". The knockout tour was the main booth on the floor, with 24 people playing at once with the last placing racers getting eliminated at different checkpoints. It was chaos, but that classic Mario Kart chaos that works really well. I managed to come 2nd on my first race. It looks quite a lot better than 8 Deluxe, but that's mostly in the art style and animations.

Drag X Drive - 9/10

This is the gimmicky competitive game for this system (like Arms or Splatoon), showing off the mouse controls in the form of Wheelchair Basketball. I was super surprised by this game, the gimmick clicked with me instantly. I got dunked on like twice, but I also only had 5 minutes to prepare, so cut me some slack!

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond - 7/10

Again, the mouse controls work super well. It all felt pretty simple and intuitive, but that might be because I'm a PC player most of the time anyway. I don't know anything about the Metroid series, so I can't comment on the story or gameplay beyond that. It looked pretty good and ran at (I think) the full 120FPS the whole time.

Cyberpunk 2077 - 4/10

Cyberpunk was... rough. It had that classic "really really upscaled" look, and dipped down to 10fps a lot in combat. I tried both "performance" and "quality" mode, but both looked and played about the same (which might be a bug).

Breath of the Wild: Nintendo Switch 2 Edition - 2/10

I can't believe they're charging for this. It's literally just the original game running at 60fps with slightly better draw distances. You can get this look with CEMU. This is how I felt about all the "Nintendo Switch 2 Edition" games that I tried.

Conclusion

While the games were pretty good and the experience was nice, I don't think the console has justified itself costing as much as it does, and so I'm not going to buy it on launch. I'll probably pick it up used when there's a reliable jailbreak, but the preview event really dissolved any feelings of FOMO that I might have had about it, which I'm glad about because now I can save that $800! I hope there's still people playing Drag x Drive when I get to it in a few years.

Feel free to ask me any questions, and hopefully I can answer them.

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT launches tomorrow (6th March) for a MRRP of:

• $600 USA before taxes
• £570 UK after taxes

Reviews:

• Have They Finally Done It? - Hardware Unboxed
• Review & Benchmarks vs. 5070 Ti, 5070, 7900 XT - Gamer Nexus
• Nvidia in Trouble? The RX 9070 XT has great potential - der8auer
• AMD Radeon RX 9070 / 9070 XT review: back to winning ways - Eurogamer
• AMD, I Could Kiss You - 9070 and 9070 XT Review - Linus Tech Tips
• AMD's Radeon RX 9070 XT is the most exciting GPU to launch in years - XDA Developers

Bonus:

• AMD FSR 4 Upscaling Tested vs DLSS 3/4 - A Big Leap Forward - RDNA 4 Delivers! - Digital Foundry

I dont know how many people here play Runescape, but the latest seasonal League has just started a day or two ago.

It is a temporary event during which you start a new profile and all the xp rates and drop rates are boosted considerably, making it really fast to level up and progress.

Ive been having a blast with it. Its a fun way to try out skills you dont typically enjoy and get up to hogh level quickly.

For those playing, what relics and areas have you chosen? Ive unlocked Kandarin as my first area and am currently levelling slayer so I can finally try out the trident of the seas on my ironman account.

Churchill Solitaire is a mobile game that you can play on Apple or Android devices. It came out in 2016. I found out about it in 2018. It had some very good reviews. It was mentioned that the game is difficult to beat. At the time I was playing some different solitaire games on mobile so I decided to try another. I paid $4.99 to unlock "all deals and free play".

The game is pretty good. $5 was a little expensive to pay for a game that only had one variation of solitaire. For example, I had the game Solebon Pro which has 160 variations. That game cost $10.

So Churchill Solitaire is not a great value. Not all games have the same value of course. But the reason I stopped playing it is because it charges you to get hints and undo moves. A game that is this hard just wastes your time if you can't undo. You can get quite near the end of a session and need to completely restart because you had several choices earlier and picked the wrong one.

Here is the In-App purchase list that is currently on the App Store in 2024. I don't remember if these prices were the same in 2018, but they are the current prices if you want to unlock any of the features:

• Undos - 15 Pack $0.99
• Hints - 15 Pack $0.99
• Undos - 100 Pack $5.99
• Hints - 100 Pack $5.99
• Unlock All Deals & Freeplay $4.99
• Game Pack 1 $0.99
• Daily Game (Monthly) $4.99
• Game Pack 2 $0.99
• Game Pack 3 $0.99
• Undos - 50 Pack $4.99

I understand that the developer should get paid money for unlocking the basic game. I understand that making additional winnable deals may take developer time (most deals are unwinnable in this game, but there is a "campaign" that has winnable deals). I understand that having a daily game may cost the developer to maintain servers and create winnable deals.

But I don't understand charging for hints or undos. I mean, I understand it from a greed perspective. But not from an "I respect the people who paid money for my game" perspective. Yes, I know about Candy Crush and all the other super addictive mobile games that are pay to win and farm money from whales. But this one just pissed me off in particular. This is the mobile game equivalent of heated seats in a BMW.

Since 2018 I've only bought 2 mobile games. So sorry other game devs, I don't even check the app store for games anymore.

Edit: It has been rightfully pointed out that this is a bit of a cranky post. I didn't make clear my intention. Maybe someone can recommend some recent small mobile games, like card or sudoku or something, that aren't pay to win. I am aware of one: Good Sudoku.

I almost need a "thumb sideways" button but I can't give this game a thumbs up.

Why should you listen to me?

For background, I beta tested Homeworld for Relic back in '98-99. I've played every single PC Homeworld game. I've sunk hundreds of hours into playing vanilla Homeworld, Complex, and Every. Single. Star Trek mod that anyone has ever made for Homeworld and Homeworld: Remastered.

That's to say: I adore love Homeworld/Homeworld 2. Over 25 years of PC gaming, they may be my all-time favorite games period!

Of course, I bought the "Fleet Command" edition. In truth, I did it to encourage the developers to keep pumping out more Homeworld.

Alas, the only thing I want right now is a complete and amazing mod toolkit so that this game can quickly become the substitute and successor for the original.

A little history: Homeworld (and Remastered) thrived with its mod community. The original game was not designed for modding. Yet so many intrepid individuals out there struggled their way through cracking the binary format(s?) of the game. And, at least, as I understand it, some of the game behavior is scripted in Lua, a less common but publicly available programming language. Just go look at the Workshop for Homeworld: Remastered. The number of different total conversion mods out there is staggering. The love put into so many of those mods is utterly mind-blowing!

In a nutshell, HW:3 plays a lot like Homeworld (the original) but, if anything, dumbed-down
significantly from the original but with 2024 visuals--except for the cut-scenes that oddly look rendered using vintage 2000 technology. The game mechanics lack the depth of any of the HW sequels. The campaign is linear and, at times, glitchy (I'm looking at you, asteroid mission and you, the one cut-scene where some of the lines repeat causing me to wonder if I'm suffering auditory hallucinations or if their QA missed something like that).

The gameplay is not particularly innovative or deep. The default pace of combat itself tends to be faster than previous Homeworlds. Though, in single player, you can change the game speed. However, the default speed can be overwhelming compared to previous Homeworld games, which can make multiplayer frustrating.

For fans, while it should not be surprising It's not Homeworld: Complex (or EVO), I expected to see more of the depth, introduced by HW:C and HW:2, For instance, there are no subsystems on ships; you can't target engines or weapons. Ships either blow up or they don't. There's no defense field frigates and no cloak generators.

My hope is that the mods (Star Trek or The Expanse, anyone?) will make this game shine. But right now? Unless you're a true super-hardcore Homeworld fan, who needs their Homeworld story fix, you should hold off.

On the plus side: it doesn't crash as often as a NASCAR driver like Helldivers 2 or the original Homeworld, for that matter.

Ultimately, I'm disappointed that Homeworld 3 plays like a dumbed-down version of Homeworld 1. I suppose this shouldn't be surprising, what with game studios increasingly desperate to get that larger market share which means appealing to a broader audience. But that means that if you long for the depth of Homeworld 2 or Complex, you're waiting for mods.

The modding tools aren't out yet.

And, so, thumbs down.

click here for mood music for this post

Sometime recently I got it into my head that I wanted to go back and replay all of the so-called "Igavania" games in the Castlevania series - the three on Gameboy Advance, the three on Nintendo DS, and, of course, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on PSX. I played through most of these back when I was a teenager and liked them, but haven't touched them since. Metroidvania games are a dime-a-dozen these days but I haven't found anything else that scratches the itch of exploration-meets-RPG-elements-meets-gothic-aesthetics.

Well except Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, I guess. That game was pretty good.

I decided to begin with the GBA trilogy since Circle of the Moon is the first Igavania I ever played and the one I have not played in the longest. I pieced through the whole trilogy in release order over a few weeks; here are some stray thoughts from the experience:

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon

• The graphics in this game have aged beautifully. It's the only of the GBA & DS games that - to my knowledge - doesn't heavily re-use sprites from Symphony of the Nights, and as a result it has an aesthetic cohesion a step above any of the following games. Circle of the Moon is infamous for being way too dark on the original, non-backlit GBA screen (I had to use a wormlight back in the day to be able to see it), but with that limitation irrelevant on modern hardware it has a clean, moody aesthetic that's just solid.
• Overall, the game feels very much like "classic Castlevania stuff, remixed." That's certainly true of the music, which is primarily (very good) remixes of classic Castlevania tunes with just a few (very good) original compositions. This applies to the gameplay too, which is classic (you only get a whip, the upgrades are very standard stuff) but with a big new twist thrown in:
• The DSS system. Throughout the game you can collect 20 cards, divided into two categories, and by equpiping two at once you can utilize your magic meter to activate one of 100 DSS effects. Some are straightforward stat boosts, some offer reprieve like healing or invulnerability, and others offer really fun magic, weapon, and transformation effects. It's a joy to try out the combinations every time you get a new card, and they help give the game a lot of space for exploring your personal play style.
• Did I mention that the whip feels really good? The whip feels really good. The sound effect and animation are really satisfying.
• Circle of the Moon has some rough quirks that keep it from being a 10 out of 10, though. DSS cards, for instance, are locked behind random drops by enemies, some with absurdly low drop rates. If you just play through the game normally, without consulting a guide on specific drops or farming cards, there's a decent chance you'll pick up <50% of the cards before you finish the game. I get that you don't want to give the keys of the kingdom to the player right away, but why on earth would you build an awesome, fun game mechanic, and then set it up so players won't see most of it without extremely un-fun farming and grinding? Thankfully a "Magician" mode that gives you access to all of them straight away opens up after you finish the game once, but not everyone will make it that far or want to go back for a second playthrough.
• The difficulty is also allllll over the place. As a teen I got stuck forever at the twin-headed dragons, and going back as an adult ... yeah, I got stuck again. I had to look up strategies, go hunt down a specific sub-weapon (the cross, which is very overpowered in this game), grind a few more levels, and steal away to an alcove of the battle arena to a specific spot where the dragons can't touch you to abuse the DSS healing power. The dragons are the most egregious example but they're far from the only one; there are several points where the game switches from hard-but-fair to ha-ha-eat-shit-stupid. It seems like the designers fully expected the players to use and abuse DSS, especially the healing abilities, because there's no way someone played through this and thought "yeah that's a smooth difficulty curve."
• Special shout out to the optional battle arena. Yes, it's optional, but the difficulty of this 17 room gauntlet is truly hilarious. I was only able to beat it - near the end of the game, at a high level, with the best equipment available - by abusing save states and playing the last half of it in slow motion (the wonders of emulation). And it still took me over an hour!
• There are also some design decisions that are just strange. Your character, Nathan Graves, begins with an excruciatingly slow walk speed and a unwieldy jump that's almost vertical. Within the first 15 minutes of the game you pick up a character upgrade to be able to run - i.e. move at a normal speed - but you have to double tap a direction on the d-pad to activate it. So now you have to spend the next 6-8 hours of your playthrough double-tapping a direction any time you want to move just to move at a normal speed. Why? Very strange.
• There's also a whole area of block pushing puzzles. They're not too difficult, but is this really what Castlevania needed? 20 minutes of slowly pushing boxes?
• I've read that Circle of the Moon was made by a different team, with a different director, than the rest of the "Igavanias." You definitely get that sense when playing it, that it's just a bit different, and it really endeared me to the game. It has its issues, but most of those can be smoothed out with modern backlit screens, save states, and online wiki guides. Overall it was a joy to revisit, probably an 8 or 9 out of 10 in my book.
• I also highly recommend Jeremy Parish's retrospective look at Circle of the Moon

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

• Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance is what you get when you learn mostly the wrong lessons from the feedback the previous game received. I played this one back in the day and but lost interest and never finished it. I now see why.
• I'll start with the good. The character movement feels better; we finally have a normal run speed and the shoulder buttons can be used for left and right dashes that are very satisfying to use. Together they give this game a much faster pace than Circle of the Moon. The jump is weirdly floaty but you get used to it.
• The graphics have also seen a big improvement in a technical sense. The sprites are larger and more impressive - especially on bosses - though this is also the beginning of heavily re-using sprites from Symphony of the Night. You'll definitely recognize some old favorites if you played that game.
• Honestly, though, that's where the improvements end.
• The art direction has taken a big step back. Konami heard that Circle of the Moon was too dark and now as a result we've got Harmony of Dissonance, a game so insanely bright and chock full of garish psychedelic color choices that not only did it completely remove the moodiness of the first game, it led me, for the first time in my life, to download and install a romhack. Maybe on the original, unlit GBA screen these choices looked good, but on modern displays it feels like Castlevania by way of a Big Top Circus. And then if that wasn't enough the game adds an extra bright outline around your character at all times. Good grief.
• The music has also taken a humongous step back. Supposedly more of the GBA's processing power was used up by the graphics so the sound had to be deprioritized. But even putting aside the big step down in fidelity most of these compositions - save the main theme and one or two others - are not memorable, hummable, or fun to listen to. They're just ... there. There, with bad sound quality.
• All of this would be excusable if the gameplay were tremendous, but again we've learned the wrong lessons and gone backwards.
• DSS has been removed, and there's nothing nearly as interesting to take its place.
• ...but they decided to leave in block pushing. WHY?!
• The rocky difficulty of Circle of the Moon is gone, and now the game is far too easy. I beat almost every boss in this game on my first try, which is definitely not true of either of the other two GBA Castlevania games. The fun movement options have a side effect of making the game even easier, since you can quickly dart around the screen dodging things.
• The level design is poor, with endless, unmemorable hallways and generally boring layouts. Plus the entire first half of the game is basically linear
• Then the cherry on top is that halfway through the game reveals that there are two parallel castles, and it sends you on an excruciating fetch quest across both of them. So you get two identical castles of boring level design, middling music, recycled bosses, and the most tedious backtracking I've done in years.
• There are so many aspects of the game design that just feel sort of busted. Once you're 10 levels above an enemy they only grant you 1 EXP for each kill, so there is truly no upside to all of the tedious backtracking you're forced to do. There are shops in the game, but they all have weird requirements you have to meet to spawn them, and even once you do there's barely anything interesting to buy.
• This game is a chore, and is the only one I would not recommend. It's not "bad," necessarily - I'd give it a 5/10 - but I had to consult guides so many times to figure out where in which castle I needed to go, and I was downright relieved when it was over.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

• It feels like this is where the team at Konami finally found their groove. Aria of Sorrow is a very good game.
• The graphics are still brighter than Circle of the Moon's moody look, but the color choices are dialed back to a sensible, tasteful level. No more wild acid circus backgrounds, and no more bright outlines around characters!
• The music has taken a big step up, with tons of memorable tunes.
• The character control has finally found a nice middle ground between Circle of the Moon's stiffness and Harmony of Dissonance's hyperfast floatiness. Instead of left and right dashes letting you zip around the map there's just a backdash, which is a sensible compromise that allows for lots of maneuverability in combat.
• The level design is a huge, huge step up from Harmony of Dissonance, and is probably better than Circle of the Moon's. Aria of Sorrow does a great job at giving compelling reasons to backtrack with interesting ability unlocks and thoughtfully placed warp zones and area connections.
• The difficulty curve is pretty smooth throughout, except maybe the boss fight with Death - but I found that one an interesting challenge, rather than a brick wall. This is still an easier game than Circle of the Moon, but not a total pushover.
• We've finally got a system to rival DSS: souls that you can gather from enemies and then equip for all sorts of passive and active effects. It's still luck based, but you'll get enough of a variety of souls through normal play for it to not be too bothersome. There are lots of interesting souls, but I missed the "combination" aspect of DSS, of experimenting between combining different cards and seeing what they do together. Here we've just got basically three slots for three types of souls - passives, abilities, and attacks. This is a totally fine way to do it, but it means that one or two of those slots are always just going to be the same one or two souls that give you whatever stat boost you need and whatever ability you rely on the most.
• There are a few more interesting abilities that tie into the exploration as well. When you start the game you can't sink into water and explore, you merely float at the top. Before you even get that ability, though, you get the ability to walk on top of water as if it's a hard surface, opening up interesting level design gimmicks. Later on you can both sink or stand on top depending on what you have equipped.
• The downside is this does mean too much time in menus switching between the same 3 or 4 souls over and over again - at least until you get flight abilities that let you skip a lot of the navigational tedium. One wonders why they couldn't have made things like on top of water / in water contextual abilities (maybe you land on the water, but then press down to sink into it?) instead of requiring players to unequip the ability they want to use 95% of the time, equip a water navigation soul for one room, then open the menu again to switch back.
• At least we don't have any huge block puzzle rooms any more! The environmental puzzles that do exist are far more interesting.
• Instead of the whip of the previous two games there are several classes of weapons the main character, Soma, can equip, including swords, axes, and even a handgun (which seemed pretty useless in my time with it). The variety is neat, but I have to say none of the weapons felt as good to use as the satisfying whip of Circle of the Moon, with its supremely meaty sound effects. I didn't expect to, but I found myself missing the straightforward, satisfyng combat of Circle of the Moon.
• And that's sort of my feeling on the game as a whole. It is a very good game, at least as good as Circle of the Moon, and it doesn't have nearly as many strange friction points as CoTM. It's an 8 or 9 out of 10, for sure. But for me, specifically, something about Aria of Sorrow sort of came and went for me, like it was much smoother than CoTM but didn't leave me with as many memorable moments. I'm not sure how to describe it, so I'll chalk it up to personal insanity.

Oh also all three of these games have a story. Does anyone care about the stories in Castlevania games? I skim the character dialogue while quickly clicking through it and that's pretty much it.

I've now moved on to the DS games, and am loving revisiting Dawn of Sorrow so far - my favorite from back in my teenage years. I'm very interested to revisit Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia, which I don't remember as clearly, and Symphony of the Night, which I remember loving...and then loathing the inverted castle. Still, it's been >10 years, so who knows how things will hit these days.

Has anyone else played (or replayed) these Castlevania games recently? What were your thoughts?

I wrote a blog post for basically my first time ever. It's a first draft, but whatever. I never share my thoughts because I lack confidence, but I want to work on that. I welcome criticism of the way I've presented my thoughts, but my main priority is just discussing Starfield here! I want to hear what y'all think, mainly about the world of Starfield.

I was starry eyed when I first launched Starfield, but it ultimately left me feeling spaced out. After spending around 25 hours with the game I've realized that I wanted something different from Starfield, and that the game just doesn't keep my mind engaged and imagination running. I feel some guilt saying that. It took a buttload of human working hours to bring Starfield to fruition after all, and I don't want to dismiss that work. It's a very pretty game, with a lot of mechanics, characters, and stories. On paper, it's an ideal game for me. It's a first person adventure through the stars meeting strangers and ogling at alien planets packed in with loot and rpg elements. That's my kind of treadmill to be running on. The type of game loop I enjoy. Ultimately though, it did not fill the space in my head that I wanted it to.

Starting with the core game play, it's what I had the least expectations for. I am no Bethesda mega fan, but I've dabbled in their games. Their combat, stealth, traversal and so on have always registered as just serviceable to me. That's not really even a criticism as I've never gotten the impression that Bethesda's intention was to draw fans on those elements. They want to provide a simple set of tools to interact with their worlds. The tools they've provided here in Starfield feel fine. They all work. Gun play feels fine, traversal feels fine, stealth feels fine. It's the way those tools interact with their environments, characters, and narration that typically attract me, but don't here. Even their newest game play addition in space ship combat echoes their standard approach. It feels simple but solid. No extravagance like a Star Fox 64 barrel roll, but there's enough going on to feel good. Like the rest of the tool set, it's serviceable enough to let the player interact with their world. The world is what has left me cold.

Bethesda introduces us to Starfield's world in a baffling place, a place almost opposite to space, a mine. Sure, they planet isn't Earth, but it might as well be Earth. It's dark, dirty, rocky and far from a feast for the eyes. It's no surprise that mines are in the game as Bethesda has always included similar spaces in their games. Such environments are perfect for stuffing loot and combat encounters into, but imagine if Skyrim had began in a cave instead of out in its beautiful landscape. Starfield could've opened in space on a ship or on a number of visually alien worlds, and I think it's a misstep to begin the player in the most unappealing of its environments. Unfortunately, I think it's telling of a large part of the way you will be seeing Starfield's world. From a lot of interior spaces. It's often easy to forget that I'm playing a sci-fi game set in an open world space setting.

Starfield's world looks like what I imagine it would look like if human space colonization were to actually happen. In that regard, I think they were incredibly successful. It's the realization of this image that I think held Starfield back. Just like a lot of our own real universe, it is often empty and dull. Many landscapes of the planets and moons of Starfield, while sometimes pretty, are more often unremarkable. Procedural generation is an incredible tool that can easily lead to unimaginative results. I'm never able to escape the thought that what I'm looking at was probably computer generated. After visiting around 15 planets, I began to feel as though I'd seen it all before, just in different colors. Often fauna and foliage looked strange but lacked a certain spark of hand crafted creativity. I was never struck by their beauty nor their horror but only their only seemingly random assortment of attributes. On planets with human inhabitants their lacked personality in their work and living spaces with exceptions being the hand crafted major settlements. Buildings and structures felt modular and mass produced by the same manufacturer. All of this is probably an accurate depiction of a real future where we branched out into space, but it doesn't make for a fun video game to see and soak in. Major cities like New Atlantis and Akira City lent much more life to Starfield's world with obvious heart put into their creation. You can see their influences from the sci-fi genre in their construction. Instead of aiming for a large and marketable open world, it's a smaller handcrafted galaxy I wish we would have gotten. Somewhere with its own politics and drama taking place on landscapes with intent and personality. A larger existing universe could be hinted at with follow ups in sequels. Bethesda is bursting at the seems with creative talent, but there was simply too much space to make aesthetically daring from every angle. Instead that talent was stretched an inch thin and a mile wild.

The inhabitants of Starfield are offensively inoffensive and so dry they'll leave you parched. They're boring, full stop. They lack nuance and detail in their personalities. They begin and end at their core archetypes. The meaning of their existence is only to facilitate the player and be impressed by you. In my 25 hours of play, I didn't find my self endeared to any character except for a sweet old grandma exploring space, but I only liked her because I like that trope. Characters are very formal and professional which I believe was Bethesda's intent. After all, the context of most every interaction has you acting in an official capacity for one of the factions. You're a representative for the professional work these factions are doing, like being a volunteer cop for the United Colonies or Freestar Collective's Rangers or an explorer-researcher for the stuffy Constellation. It makes sense that conversations would be formal, professional, and often to the point. Ultimately that just doesn't make for compelling conversation. I engage with fiction, especially genre fiction, for its strong sense of personality. The characters I found in Starfield feel like they're just going through the motions of their 9 to 5 job. Their framing as a talking head when having conversations with them only highlights their stiffness.

I believe Starfield is a well-done realization of Bethesda's intent. It's a very corporate and made by committee vision, but it's well executed. It seems they wanted to create a world that resembles a legitimate future where humans leave Earth and colonize the stars. The result is barren unremarkable planets, sterile labs, boring mining and manufacturing facilities, mass produce modular homes, and plenty of empty space. I think they're right, this is what a settled galaxy looks like, but it just doesn't make for a satisfying video game.

edit: fixed spelling from "feel" to "fill"

A different thread reminded me of this unique for me and frustrating but enlightening experience.

This war of mine is a survival game where you have to manage food, building equipment, scavenging, security, stealth, possibly weapons and the morale of your companions for an unknown period of time until the siege is lifted. The art is beautiful but simple. The pace is slow. The emotions are profound. At the end of the game there are different stories for how your companions lives progress depending on how well or poorly you handled the circumstances of the game. It is very easy to die.

It is the only war game I have seen where you are a civilian.