Recent reviews by Philly Wonken

I hate Konami and I've never really been impressed by Bloober Team... But, this is downright excellent.

Part of me wants to do this video off the cuff and just speak freely. But, given Rimjob's ability to rehinterpret statements like "That's kind of true, but only in a very pointless manner" as people telling him "I fully agree with you, I just chose not to", I figured I'm better off making a scripted video. Now, I would mention that I have interacted with Rimjob before. Idiots who watch his streams with the intent of agreeing with him, instead of just calling him a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ in chat, like I do, might recognise me as the Coomer Tent Guy. I showed up on his stream once and it was as frustrating as it was pathetic.
In short, I directly asked him for evidence that justify his beliefs in god. And his response was to ask vague, poorly constructed questions about the nature of knowledge itself.
So, if you don't know who Rimjob is, I guess this clip from our conversation perfectly illustrate the kind of smug, nonesensical word games that he plays:
Insert Clip Here
Asking what is "the evidence that truth exists" is a purposefully confusing question that neither makes much gramatical sense or leads to the idea that it doesn't exist. I could spend hours in this video alone trying to define what does and doesn't make things true. But, with someone so dedicated to obfuscate language, I would argue that the endeavour would be pointless. Rimjob will simply manipulate language until everything I say is meaningless, anyway. And, the conclusion to my argument is going to be that things can be defined as true if they correlate with known reality. It's not like things being true isn't possible.
I know Rimjob is too stuck up his own semantical ass to accept that answer. But, my goal isn't to convince him he's full of ♥♥♥♥. He already knows that. It's why he dismisses every atheist who responds to his video as a snake that's purposefully blocking out his wonderfull arguments. He's projecting his own faults onto other people. He, perhaps unknowingly, assumes that everyone is as corrupt as he is... No. We're not.
So, I'm not trying to convince him with this video. I'm trying to convince you, Johnathan. My goal here is to, just as many other atheists on youtube have already done, demonstrate why his arguments don't work.
Let's start with his first video. Now, I won't be running clips from his video. Partially because that would make this script much harder to write. But, also because Rimjob is such an annoying, smug prick that I'd rather not give him that much airtime. I'll mostly be telling you what he says. If you don't like that, go watch his videos first to make sure I'm not strawmanning him too badly. But, trust me, his arguments really are that stupid.
So far, he's made three videos in his Arguments Against Atheism series. The first and third video took me while to wrap my mind around. I guess mostly because his smug confidence resembles the one we'd find in someone who isn't completely wrong. Meaning, he's very confident and eloquent in his beliefs, his beliefs just happen to be total nonesense ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
But, what are his claims? Well, to keep this video short. Let me just quote a comment I left on his video that describe: He's literally saying that, since everything is an effect of physics (which it isn't), and since effects of physics have no truth value (which is a completely useless observation) neither do propositions. Which means that propositions (as an effect of physics) have no truth value. So, no one can be wrong about anything because all our thoughts are effects of physics...
Like... The information we create can dictate systems that either do or don't corrhelate with reality, Rimjob. The content of a thought is what counts when determining the validity of a claim, not the process of thinking.
Now, some of that might sound like total word salad. But, once de-entangled, it boils down to the claim that, since everything (and I do mean everything, from frogs to patriotism) is an effect of physics, and effects of physics are neither true or false, any random statement can't be true or false. Think I'm exagerating? Here's Rimjob stating that as plain as day.
Now, I don't know what's the point Rimjob is trying to make with such nonesense. He claims that this drivel is fatal to knowledge itself. But the only thing dying here are my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ braincells. If I had to break down why his argument doesn't work as quickly as possible. I would simply state that not everything is an effect of physics. That effects of physics being true or false is a nonesense idea to begin with. That having a truth value doesn't apply to effects of physics. And I can already hear you scream about how "THAT's the point!". But, our point Rimjob, isn't that you're correct or incorrect when you say that. It's that what you're saying is pointless word play.
Saying "effects of physics have no truth value" is as pointless as saying "green has no truth value". No one expects that category of things to have such a value to begin with. It's an adjective that can't apply to it. It's why we say you're playing word games. You make the pointless assertion that effects of physics can't be right or wrong and then transpose that property onto something that doesn't actually count as an effect of physics, namely "propositions". You then, having juggled with words hard enough, get to make the assinine statement that propositions can't be right or wrong... Right or wrong is pretty much the only things a proposition can be, Rimjob.
And, I think it bares stating what he's arguing for. He's ultimately arguing that knowledge itself doesn't work. That the process of us knowing things is flawed somehow. Not because our minds are prone to fallacies or anything reasonable like that. But because the very methods we use to accertain knowledge don't work. Which, do I really need to disprove that? The truth, Rimjob, is that these methods of attaining knowledge work like hell. We use the knowledge we gather from assuming some degree of physicalism every second of every day. And we make things that demonstrably work with them.
The very existence of literally everything either emerged from knowledge or can be explained trough knowledge. You can argue that we don't know anything until you're blue in the face, Rimjob. It won't change the fact that the objective experiences everyone has, including your idiotic fans, proves the existence of a mind that can know things. Only a literal braindead idiot would accept the idea that knowledge itself doesn't work. Because you'd have to be braindead to fit that description.
And, as far as I'm concerned that breaks down why the first and third videos in his series make no sense. I haven't spent as much time studying the third video. And I'm writing this mostly from memory, because watching Rimjob's videos long enough to understand his point is legitimately painful. Not only because his points are convoluted and idiotic in a way that isn't quite intuitive to explain. But, also because he's such an unlikeable, smug prick. I can't stand watching his videos. Heck, even showing clips of his videos pisses me off.
Lastly, for completion sake, I'll adress his second video. There isn't much of a rebuttal to make, tho. Essentially, his second video is an attempt to rebute the problem to evil. Which, if there was ever an argument that could be considered FATAL to a belief. The problem of evil is definitely it. It destroys the belief in an tri-omni god.
So, why does his video suck? What makes it dishonest garbage? Well, I'm glad you asked, Johnathan. Now, logicked already made quite a beautiful video adressing why his version of the problem of evil isn't correct. In short, he switches evil for suffering and then asks pointless questions like "is a tooth ache evil? Is being served bad chicken evil?" to which the answer is, in a world with a god, it definitely would be. A god would have the power to prevent your teeth from aching.

Horizon Zero Dawn is a game where some redhead born out of a mountain shoots down robot dinosaurs with a bow and arrow. It's a pretty wild premise. I won't dwell on it. Because the protagonist surely doesnt. There's a cutscene early on where that guy from the first game I wouldn't have remembered had I not been replaying Zero Dawn in New Game+. He's the son of a warchief who's really gruff and tough and never smiles. I don't remember her name, but she's cool.

Point being, that guy goes ''old on, why do you look exactly like some long dead scientist''. At which point Aloy, our protagonist, explains how she was born of a mountain with the purpose of giving life back to the earth. And the guy goes, that sounds like some spiritual ♥♥♥♥. At which point our protagonist gets annoyed because, as a pariah within her own religion and a well educated person about the true nature of technology, she's become kind of an atheist. Which is interesting.

Now, I'm only like two hours in as of writing and one thing I can say is that the game is gorgeous. It might, in fact, be the most gorgeous. It kind of has a cartoony vibe to everything, but, if pixar level graphics is your standard for visuals. This is one of the few games to truly deliver that. People make a fuzz about her peach fuss. But it's for good reason. I was replaying the older games and, during conversations, people really have this smoothness to their skin.

Adding that layer of grit to the face really makes them seem that much more real. Now, one thing I heard is that the first 10 hours are set in the old game's map. Which is kind of a reverse of red dead redemption 2, if you think about it. I have this distinct memory of peering into the horizon in the first game, seeing the whole expanse of the map and thinking to myself. I'm going to have to walk aaaaaaaaaaaall across this over and over, arent I. I remember simply wanting for my life to be over at that point.

Ok, so I ended up getting a refund on Forbidden West because the performance was just unbearable. The first two hours or so of the game run fine. But, as soon as you leave that linear prologue area, and get back to the larger open world, the game just started constantly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ itself. With certain scenes going as low as 10 frames per second... And that's with frame generation.

Mind you, I have a 4060 ti, which is roughly equivalent to a 2080 or a 3070. Its biggest limitation is VRAM, but the minimum specs seem to say that the game will run on graphic cards with as little as 4gb of ram. And, I'm playing the game at 1080p, not 4K. Vram shortage wouldn't explain such catastrophic framerates anyway. It would create stutters and texture issues, not slowdown.

It should be said that I am pretty much reaching the reccomended specs and beyond. I have the exact recccomended CPU for this game. But, yeah! That's my review of Forbidden West cut short...

These bait and switch microtransactions are cancer.

Tomb Raider 3 is my favourite platformer. It is cruel, technologically limited, mostly ugly, extremely difficult and it plays unlike any other game on the market. But mostly, what makes it great is its cruelty. The developpers assumed players of Tomb Raider 3 had played a Tomb Raider game before, and decided to waste no time torturing them. If you press one wrong button, if you don't take time to plan each jump, if you try to rush it and cut corners, you will die. Tomb Raider 3 isn't a flowing parcour simulator. It is an endurance test of methiculous, high stress platforming where each button press has to be carefully weighed.

Now, since I have you trapped, I'll mention that, as of writing this paragraph, the Tomb Raider Remastered Trilogy still isn't out. It's coming out in like three days. And, let me make something clear. I have never pre-ordered a game more than a day or two before it launched. And every time I regretted it. I pre-ordered Colonial Marines a day before its launched and I still have PTSD from that.

Yet, when I saw the first trailer for this remaster. I had to put money down right away. I have been waiting for these games to get proper ports for so long. I'm looking at the store page over and over, just looking at the seconds slowly tick down until the game finally releases. I honestly don't remember the last time I was so excited to play a game. I'm trying to come up with a game that had me more excited. And the only game I can think of would've been Metal Gear Solid 5, for which I spent half a year with Midge Ures' cover of The Man Who Sold the World as my morning alarm...

And, with that, the Remastered Trilogy is finally done downloading.
Now the first thing I did when opening the game, after meticulously reading 40 pages of legal documents, was to play The Lost Artifact. The Lost Artifact was essentially old school 90s DLC for Tomb Raider 3. It's a collection of two or three levels that complete or expand or have nothing to do with Tomb Raider 3's main plot.

Now, it should be said that, despite being someone who likes games for their narrative, my interest with Tomb Raider is purely gameplay related. I have no idea what is happening in any of these old games and I don't care.

One thing I needed to get to grips with right away was the new camera. It used to be, in the PS1 version, that using the right analog stick would stick you in the back of Lara's head. And pressing all the way down would make you instantly look all the way up. It sounds dumb, but it really worked and it connected the camera and the character in a way that just felt natural.
The new camera is more modern. It simply pivots around the character, like normal. It seems like it would be a blessing. But these games were never constructed around having a free camera. And, paired with tank controls, it just doesn't feel quite as right. I essentially never used it.

The only times I did, it would get stuck on the environment and bug the hell out anyway. I really wish that they give us the option of using the old right stick camera, eventually. Thankfully, there is still a button to look around. So the old camera is mostly here. It's just not as well implemented as the one in the PS1 versions of Tomb Raider 3, 4 and 5.
Really, all I miss is being able to make Lara go down with the sickness...
Now, I started with The Lost Artifact, and you might wonder why. Why start with the tail end of the trilogy? Well, it's simple. On PC, every release, for the original trilogy, had a few extra levels. These levels weren't part of the main game, though. They were distributed for free as a sort of demo. Or, at least, it was the case for the first two games.

But, with Tomb Raider 3, Eidos got greedy and they decided to release that extension, not as a demo, but as a cheaper standalone game. Except, nowadays, that expansion pack costs about as much on ebay as the full game. Which isn't much, actually. These games are surprisingly cheap. But, what it means is that I never got to try these levels.

It should be mentionned that my love for old school Tomb Raider games isn't born out of nostalgia. The oldest memory I have of these games was seeing other people play them, rather than playing them myself. I remember seeing someone playing one of the games, when I was about 10 years old. He kept dying on the same part over and over. I tought the game looked pretty hard... Only, later, I discovered the part he was dying to over and over to was the very first slope of the very first level of Tomb Raider 3.

But, it wasn't until around 2010 that I personally dipped my toe into that franchise, by buying the first game and installing it on my PSP. I never finished the first game. I might finish it now. But I simply find it a lot less interesting, varied and creative then the following two games. I mean, let me put it this way. Tomb Raider 2 has a venitian opera house and a shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean. Tomb Raider 3 has the London Underground and area 51. Tomb Raider 1 has tombs... You raid the tombs... It's a game about raiding tombs. Yeah, it is very basic.

But, anyway, let me give you some tips to get you going if you wan't any chance to beat these games. You can light a flare, at any time, by holding select and pressing R1. If you get stuck, which will happen, don't be ashamed to look up a playtrough. These games were essentially desinged on a whim and their level and puzzle desing isn't always the most orthodox.

Take this switch in Shakespeare Cliff, the third level of The Last Artifact, I would never have assumed that there'd be a crutial switch there, but here it is. Its placement is so random, so cruel. You don't feel like an idiot for not figuring it out; You feel like an idiot for not checking a guide sooner. This cruel "where the hell do I go and what do I do" attitude of the old Tomb Raider games is kind of what makes these games special.

Especially before the real internet, this difficulty was at the core of the experience. The fact that you'd get stuck and have to ask a friend who's played the game for help, or something. It's what made the Tomb Raider games feel like genuine adventures. These games used to take months to beat because of sheer complexity. But now, with a guide, you can easily beat one of these suckers in less than a week.

Now, the tank controls might seem like a hindrance at first, but the level desing in these games demands so much precision and care that, by the end of the first few levels, you'll be thanking some made up deity for giving you these tank controls. That being said, I'm sure playing without them would do just fine. I am not going to play without them, though. Not even for the simple thoroughness of making a review. For me, Tomb Raider either has tank controls, or its not Tomb Raider.

While I'm talking specifically about this remaster, there are a few oddities that I noticed. Like the fact that the quicksand, deep mud or whatever it is no longer wobbles. Making it seem essentially no different than standard terrain. Then there's also the issue that piranhas and fish seem to have no models. They game still has piranhas, they simply happen to be visible only in classic mode.

But, anyway... I ended up giving up on the Lost Artifact on the fifth level. Specifically because of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ like the fact you have to safely land on spikes right here. I had to check two guides, just to make sure this really was what you're supposed to do. And, apparently it is! So, I'm just gonna call that whole level ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and move on to talking about Tomb Raider 2.

Konami needs to die out, lose all their money, get killed by the yakuza, have the yakuza get killed by the doom slayer, have the entirety of the Konami franchises get poached by all the mega corporations and this sentence needs to end. That being said, let me tell you about one of my favourite konami games. My second favourite silent hill game and a game I've finished so many times, I can't even count anymore.

Since you're lazy, youtube watching, god believing filth. I'm gonna assume you've never played this game before and you're never going to because you assume it sucks. I'm even gonna assume you've seen the Internet Historian video of it or something. Better yet, I'll assume you're a big tall black woman with hips that could crush a melon.

One thing we don't have to assume is that the game has aged pretty well, despite sporting PS2 level graphics and a made for Wii control scheme, the game translates very well to every device. Altough you're seeing me play the PC version, which totally exists, trust me. I used to play this game on PSP all the time as a teenager. The version with tank controls, that is...
But why replay a game like this? I thought this was hot garbage?! I hear you say. And you're wrong, this game is amazing and you will sit down and listen, you impetuous child. It goes like this: You're seemingly coming back from your day at the fair with your daughter, when suddenly the entire seasons change, it's winter now, so you slip on ice and end up crashing in a silent hill junkyard.

There's also a therapy session going on between you and your therapist, obviously. He makes you fill a short form which will allow him to get a general bearing on your personality. This will shape not only how Harry Mason (that's you by the way) how he interacts with people, but it also changes who you'll meet, what their attitude towards you is, how they're dressed. Tons of big and small differences emerge from playtrough to playtrough.

So you wake up in the snow, the car is a mess and your daughter is nowhere to be seen. By pressing the interact key, you can shout her name in the vain hope of finding her back. You make your way trough a gas station's garage and quickly end up with your first big decision. Do you search for her in the electronic's store or the dress shop. You can't explore both and it's quite unclear how it affects the narrative.

Because every decision in SHattered Memories ends up being somewhat of a moral decision. All of it is fed into what the game more or less calls a psychoanalysis program. And what you look at, how you respond to the therapy sessions and which doors you go trough, all gets used to forge a different experience from beginning to end. It's really unique and I love it. Every time I try to give an honest but different answer and every time I get a subtly different experience.

Regardless, you go trough one of the two stores and you end up with two possibilities. Either the diner is closed and you'll end up having a chat with a friendly bartender. Or diner is open, at which point you'll end up talking to cybil bennet, a returning character from Silent Hill 1. In fact, this whole game is intended as a remake of the original silent hill, but it's really more of a complete reimagining of the entire franchise. It doesn't care about cults or any of that silly god nonesense. It's actually not a supernatural story, believe it or not.

Now, I won't describe the whole game, because that would take hours and it wouldn't accomplish the goal of this review which is to convince people to play it. Because, Shattered Memories is such a heavy hitter of narrative prowess and the acting is really well directed. There is some iffy acting at times, it's no Death Stranding. But its nothing to compare with some of the disasterous acting of the japanese games. I mean, I love Silent Hill 2 with all my heart but, some of these scenes feel like they lack proper direction. They just sound so weird. It is part of that game's charm. But, you know?
Shattered Memories' acting and writing won't leave you giggling. Everyone does a top notch job adapting to all these different possible tones and scenarios. And the symbolism is strong. What I like most about Shattered Memories is the music. It is perhaps my favourite soundtrack in the franchise. They range from straight up beautiful songs, to a lot of screeching and yelling which work's really well in context all the way to a literal Elvis Presley cover.

One of the songs, Hell Frozen Rain, is absolutely burned in my mind. Let me type it out from memory.

In your mind's eye
Lives a memory
Hard to find
Blinded by sorrow
and a cold voice
sings a melody
hear her sing
Hell Frozen Rain falls down
DOO DOO DOODOO DO DO

So yeah, as you can tell I'm a big fan of this game. I love to see games being used as a medium for storytelling and, as that, Shattered Memories is one of the most story focused action game I've ever seen. So much of this game is spent reading posters, listening to voice mail, chasing ghosts and having conversations. There are many action scenes, but those live somewhat seperate from the bulk of the game. Essentially, in Shattered Memories' interpretation of Silent Hill, the normal world is mostly normal. It's empty, filled with ghosts and most of the roads are snowed in except for when you're being driven somewhere. But, in line with normalcy, there are no monsters. Making the nightmare world actually feel very distinct in both gameplay and level desing.

There's a level of intelligence in Shattered Memories that many other silent hill games do not have. All of the other western made silent hill games tried so hard to please the fans. But Shattered Memories has no time for that. It pays passing nods, and tangentially it is a silent hill game. But, in application, it's very much it's own thing. It is perhaps the most experimental the series has ever got.

Real reviewers like to describe parts they like, and since I'm a fake reviewer, I'll copy them and make it seem like this is a real review! There's this part where you have to arrange bubblegums in the correct order based on the beak patterns of a toucan. Because this is a silent hill game and puzzles make sense.

Anyway, the caveat is that the toucan is thirty seconds of running around in enemy territory away. And, once you're there, you either have to commit the colors on the beak to memory, write them down or whip out your phone in the game, take a picture, and use that picture back at the bubblegum machine. All while creatures are roaming around. It's super tense.
And it's not the only clever nightmare moment in the game. There's one where you have to gather pictures of girls in the shower. There's one where you're trapped in a labyrinth of repating doors and rooms and you have to figure out the pattern somehow. And there's the final one where you have to run and swim as far as you can, while underneat are frozen statues representing significant events. There's also the one where you're in a car at the bottom of the river and suddenly a hand slams into the window.

My favourite moment might be the therapy session where you are told a story about a princess who dies under unceremonious circumstances. The goal ends up being to chose which of the story's characters are most or least guilty for her death. The twist being that her death hardly has a guilty party. She dies getting trampled by a bull, afterall. Yet, there is definitely stuff the characters, including the princess herself, could've done to avoid the situation getting so catastrophic. In the end, I can never chose which is most guilty. Sometimes I blame the bull and sometimes I put him as the least guilty party.

It's strong stuff.

Overall world coherence is one of the biggest issues with bethesda games. With the Elder Scrolls, it's not too bad. But, Fallout is one series where I feel they consistently fail to present a believable, grounded world. From what I understand, part of the problem stems from the original plans for Fallout 3. You see, when making Fallout 3, the plan was to set it long before the events of the originals. Which is why the world of Fallout 3 has been far less ''reclaimed'' than what we saw in the originals.

But, then people complained about the absence of stuff like the Enclave or the Brotherhood of Steel. So, rather than sticking to their guns. They decided to keep the same world and art desing, but artificially push the story further up the timeline. Decisions like these are at the core of why Bethesda's take on Fallout fell flat to hardcore fans. There's also the issue of leaning too far into binary good or bad choices. You always get the option of doing something bad, but you're almost never presented with a real moral quandry. The decision to blow up megaton is a bad decision, it has no nuance.
Still, on it's own, Fallout 3 is an impressively ambitious game. There really was nothing like it at the time. The amount of freedom was unparalleled. Fallout 3 is one of the only games that I not only finished twice, I finished it twice in a row. So, while certain people can be harsh at Fallout 3 for how limp the story feels or how inconsistent the world is. I think it is still a fantastic accomplishment of a video game. On its own, it's perfectly fine.

But, we're here to talk about New Vegas. Simply said, New Vegas is everything that was brilliant about Fallout 3 plus 15 piles of genius added on. The most standout element of New Vegas has to be its ability to give greater context to everything. Not a single enemy is placed half hazzardly. Everyone in the game has an origin, a crew, a place where they belong. There is no such thing as a generic human enemy in New Vegas. Even the few raiders that do exist aren't placed randomly across the map for maximum engagement. Instead, they have their own territory that they must realistically protect.

New Vegas feels like a real place where people realistically live.

Simply put, world coherence is far from being an issue in New Vegas. In fact, it's the opposite. New Vegas might have the most believable, most internally consistent open world I've ever seen. Everyone and everything feels part of a cohesive whole. And that helped by strong writing and narrative desing.

Speaking of which, the game opens up with your character dying. A contrast to the previous game, which opened with your birth. Basically, there's this wise guy giving a speech about how its nothing personal kid, before shooting you in the brain and burrying you. Seemingly not realising that, in the fallout universe, it takes at least 4 headshots to take down anybody. So, a robot digs you back up, brings you to a doctor. And, after you've chosen your personality, race and gender, you're just set free...

Fallout New Vegas doesn't waste your time setting up the story for 2 hours. It has an intro that's very much designed to get you into the world as quickly as possible. I did find a mod that changes the intro. But its main goal isn't to bypass annoying stuff, it's to introduce more possible scenarios from which you could start the game. And the quality of New Vegas' intro doesn't stop there. While you can just wander anywhere you like from the get go, New Vegas isn't designed to be an open sandbox where every new location is an awesome gunfight for you to win.

New Vegas doesn't care about killing you. It will put giant, terrifying insects that hit like Sean Connery when the dinner's cold in your way if it doesn't want you to go somewhere. Fallout 3 just had a 'do what you want, when you want' attitude. But New Vegas simply doesn't. And that's a good thing. New Vegas lets you know that wandering the mohave with nothing but a pair of overalls and a BB gun is a recipe for getting torn to ♥♥♥♥. As a role playing game, New Vegas isn't lenient. It will ask you to make choices, to form alliances with groups you probably shouldn't.

Speaking of which: The Ceasars Legion. A bunch of barbaric, slave owning totalitarians who deserve every death you'll give them. They can be joined. As can the former inmates or the paranoid boomer ♥♥♥♥♥ that nuke everyone. The only group you can't join is the raiders. In short, New Vegas doesn't want you to feel comfortable in some power fantasy. It understands that its main purpose as a role playing game is to immerse you into the role you're playing.

It's hard to feel like a proper human being when everyone treats you as the obvious protagonist and hands you the keys to ♥♥♥♥ their wives after every sidequest, which is what Bethesda games are like. Obsidian, though, likes to treat the player as a regular person. Side quests aren't given to you because you're the most important person who has to do everything. I mean, unavoidably, you do have to be the one who does everything, more or less. But, there's never a sense of providence. Like everyone's just waiting for the player to show up.

New Vegas is great in its ability to make you feel like a small part of a bigger story.

Now, given that I love New Vegas so much more than Fallout 3. You'd expect me to have finished it multiple times by now. Afterall, it is one of the few PC games I bothered buying a boxed copy of. But, the truth is that, despite having amassed over 100 hours in the game by now, I never actually finished New Vegas on PC. I actually only ever finished the game once, on PS3, around the beggining of 2020.

Why the PS3? Well, mostly because the console ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sucks, and is terribly ill fitting when it comes to running something like New Vegas. You can tell that the hardware isn't a fan of the Creation Engine. Also, there's the fact that, the more you play, the bigger your save file gets until it starts eating so much ram, the game goes to a crawl. Usually, those would be the reason not to play that version. But it is, partially, that pushing upward syndrome and this ticking clock element that helped me buckle down and enjoy the game as is. To me, a game is more impressive and fun when you feel like its straining the hardware.

Because, on PC, New Vegas isn't an impressive game. It pretty much never was. With stuff like the lack of shadows or real dynamic lighting; New Vegas just doesn't look as sleek as its predecessor. Not that Fallout 3 had shadows but, if there's one thing Fallout 3 did well, it was constructing a visually attractive world. Every rock in Fallout 3 feels like it was meticulously placed. Yet, New Vegas is much more utilitarian in it's desing. Far more focused on creating a world that feels real, rather than making one that simply looks attractive.

So, why did it take me so long to finish this game? There's multiple factors. I think the biggest one is that the game came out 6 days before my 16th birthday. Not that I celebrated my birthday, being that my parents were jehovah's whitenesses, but that's the story for another day. Basically, I was young and dumb and, by contrast, New Vegas was smart and mature in ways that I wasn't ready for. New Vegas is a deeply intellectual game, filled with nuance and big questions that can't be boiled down to simple good or evil.

In short, I had to get good intellectually. Form a political and personal identity first, before I could tackle a story like New Vegas. Simply wanting to do the right thing will only get you so far, here. Because, even the most benevolent path, namely siding with the NCR, will still place you in between a rock and a hard place. They will command you to do things you won't feel comfortable doing. I've never had a game deal with morality this extensively.

Elden Ring might be the greatest game ever made.

To illustrate that, let me try to explain the plot as best I can. Godfrey the Grafted is some coward who had a bunch of extra parts shipped in from overseas. He is not important. Much more important is ranni the witch, she has a cool dress, is some god lady's daughter and will give you a key that flips a temple upside down. Then, you go underground and fight giant ants.
I'm sure there's a war somewhere in there between everybody. And now everyone is just husks of their former selves, for some reason. And big kaboom we got a perfect setup for a dark souls.

Moving on to gameplay and oh boy. You can be who you wan't to be in this game. As long as you want to be someone who murders gods for a living. Which I do! I'm a strong believer in god genocide. If there's a god out there somewhere, it's my duty to plan its death. Coming for you yaweh.

What I appreciate most about Elden Ring is the realism, Estus Flasks and magic aside, you really feel properly vulnerable. Elden Ring demands that you read each enemies' attacks carefully, because every bit of damage compounds down the line and most boss attacks are instant death. Now getting utterly confused at the lore and dying all the time is great, but It's nothing new.

What's new is the level desing. Namely, Elden Ring is wide open, damn near everthing you see is accessible. It still has a fair bit of linearity; the world is crescent shaped for a reason. But, seeing the tight and narrow hallways of previous games suddenly turn into giant sprawling landscapes is quite liberating.

Honestly, I wish I could do more with this review. Like, talk about the minutia of each animations, how fleshy and impactfull they are. But I don't know enough about animation. I honestly don't know much about anything.

All I can do is sit stupidly in awe of it all. Just staring at how intricate and huge such a project was. And for it to come out so violently great. It is awe inspiring that people smart enough to make a game like this exist.

Since I feel like I haven't said anything of worth yet, I'm gonna keep on not saying anything of worth. Because a game like Elden Ring is more brilliant than words can describe. But, I'll use words to describe it regardless because... Well, what else is there? I guess I could do an interpretive dance about it. But unfortunately, I'm not gay enough to do that yet.

You know what? I hate this script. Elden Ring is a transcendental work of art on par with the Sistine Chapel. And this review is wholy insufficient. It doesn't do Elden Ring justice.

I give elden ring a perfect score out of 8 billion.

I am a ridge racist. I race along the races of the ridge rager like the absolute racist that I am. I drive the car around drift. Drift the corner. make sure to bump into the wall fifteen times. but thats ok, there are no car accidents, just happy little car mistakes. Use the boost in straightaways and use the drift during turns. you hit the wall again. This drift is quite something. I honestly can't wait for the first minute or so of this video to be over for me to be able to start swearing at the game.
I can't seem to find people who have quite my oppinion of ridge racer. It's either, the driving suck and I hate it. Or ridge racer is a revolutionary masterpiece of technological and gameplay prowess. Personally. That's yeah, both are basically how I feel. Ridge Racer is one of the most consistently impressive series of all time. From the original game basically showcasing what the PS1 could do at a rock solid 30 fps, back in 1994.

To the impossibly impressive fact that ridge Racer 7, an early release for the PS3, runs at a locked 1080p 60fps. Name a single other 1080p60fps game on the ps3. Name a single one. God of War Ghost of Sparta. That's it. Basically, ridge racer almost never failed to impress tech nerds like me. The problem is that showcasing the good graphics doesn't mean a thing if your gameplay is garbage nonesense from planet mars. Which is exactly what ridge racer is.

As they progressed, they got less stilted and awkward. And some could say they operate on arcade logic. But, the truth is that they don't operate under any logic. The controls in a ridge racer game kind of just do whatever they feel. The drift is barely functional and often doesn't carry out momentum in a correct fashion. It's like the game has two very different types of physics based on wether you're drifting or not. The drifting doesn't feel like it belongs in the same game as the rest of the driving.

And the way it activates and deactivates is unbelievably jarring. You just don't feel like you're in direct control of the car anymore. It's also unbelievably random what will and what won't activate the drift. Sometimes it activates when you release the accelerator and slam it down again. But sometimes, that doesn't work. Sometimes it'll activate by braking, which makes sense, but it rarely ever does, which doesn't make sense. In short, activating the drift mode in a Ridge Racer game is unresposive, frustrating and just plain messy. Which also describes the drifting itself.

And notice how I worded that, you don't naturally start drifting as the weight of you car starts to shift or whatever. You activate the drift mode, there's really no other way of describing it. It's just so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stilted and wrong. Deactivating the drift mode is a nightmare in and of itself, and in the early games, it would have the tendency of launching you car in a random direction when it happens.

Another issue with the game is difficulty. I'm pretty good at racing games. I'm not anything resembling great. But, I beat Mafia 1's racing mission on the second try, in both the original and the remake. So, I don't entirely suck. But Ridge Racer demands nothing less than perfection and it is unbelievably annoying. The games will literally berate you for getting second place. Second ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ place.

And getting first place is a nightmare. You really have to master each track. Which, in a game with predictable controls, would be fun. But, with ridge racer, it's all a matter of luck. I managed to finish the 99 grand prix once, and I have no idea how.

Visually, the games can also suck pretty hard. The ones on PS1 and N64 look pretty amazing. And I think the fifth one aint too bad either. But everything after that is just uninteresting bluish garbage. None of the cars look memorable and most of them look pretty stupid in fact. They just look super generic and lack personality. And that applies to the overall presentation too. Ridge racer is painfully generic. Some could say it was a pioneer. But, so was doom, and that game has tons of personality.

Still, they are fun time wasters and you can do a lot worse than ridge racer. They're simply more relevent for their history than their timeless gameplay and storytelling. I give Ridge Racer, as a franchise, a generous 79%.

Half Life is the best N64 game I've ever played. It has skeletons in its animation budget and bullet decals and ennemies that run around like they don't want to die. What a revolutionary title. But what's it about? Well, Half Life is about a regular guy working at a giant government complex in the middle of the desert, named Gordon Freeman. The place he works at is called Black Mesa and your mom is a hoe.

But then, you slam the space rock into the mega laser and time and space breaks loose. Everyone dies, there's blood everywhere. And transdimentional creatures are turning your coworkers into zombies. So you fight your way to the surface, hoping the military has a solution for this whole mess and you find out they do have a solution... Mass Scientific Genocide.
I feel like an idiot explaining the plot of a game like half life. It's so ingrained into gaming culture what half life was, what half life meant. But, being that this is a review. I feel forced to lay down the basics, at least. Which is appropriate, because laying down the basics is exactly what Half Life does. While playing half life, without being told anything, you feel like you're being taught about the basics of game desing.

And it's fair to say that its appraoch to narrative is still quite revolutionary. How many story rich games released in the past 10 years without cutscenes. Try naming one, I'll wait! Half life is special in that it offers one long unbroken narrative. Where you control the character at the begining of the story, and you don't stop doing so until the credits roll. It felt game changing at the time, and it's still impressive to this day.

Once, again, I feel like a dumbass explaining this ♥♥♥♥. Like, if you haven't played half life, you're probably looking at this, not getting what makes it special. Because, from a modern lense, it just looks like any regular shooter. But, that's exactly what makes it special. The fact that it looks and feels like a standard game is mostly explained by the fact that modern gaming was built on the shoulders of it.

It elevated the bar so greatly that, 25 years later, it's still a rather fresh experience. It's weird that the default speed is running, and pressing shift makes you walk, but other than that, Half Life very much manages to feel modern in a way few 90s games can. What most stands out is the heavy reliance on setpieces and scripted sequences. Characters talking to you and interacting with the environment. Half Life is so full of clever moments. You often feel like the devs are watching you play, thinking how best to mess with you this time.

There's flow and coherence to half life. Still, it's an old game and it can be pretty unfair and janky. The speed of the game can make it feel a bit slippery and the plot beyond its initial setup, is just a random set of NPCs telling why you're moving forward trough these linear corridors. But hey, Half Life is the grandfather of storytelling in action games. It's always been old, in a way. It made everyone realise just how early in the life of gaming we still live. If we don't all die of global warming within the next 20 years. We can always look back at half life, to try and understand what made the medium so special to begin with.

One thing that's weird is that 25 years later the game is still getting patches, fixing animation syncing issues like this scientist being grabbed by the Tentacule. You're probably surprised looking at this footage, because you've gotten so acclimated to it looking wrong but yeah. It took 25 years, but someone at valve fixed that. It's funny because the game is still really, really buggy and messy, in a lot of ways.

One issue I encountered is this event where you're forced to take damage. They try to counter that fact by placing medpacks there, but, as you can see. It's not ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ working. The problem is that the closest med station is literally 5 minutes and one flaming Tentacule spelunking expedition ago and I used it all up anyway. I was forced to reload to a manual save. Which I was lucky to have. Because, otherwise I would've had to redo the whole chapter.

There's also this elevator that causes you to take damage, for some reason. Still, masterpiece masterpiece, this game is a masterpiece. So, maybe, from a modern lense, Half Life can seem pretty quaint. Some of the levels, like Xen and the waste processing plant, are just really bad. They're hard to navigate and they fail to feel like functional, real places. Still, even at its weakest, Half Life is still more creative than most games will allow themselves to be.

In short, Half Life is a golden example of brilliant game desing. It was made on dinosaurs by a bunch of quake modders helmed by two guys who used to work at microsoft and it rehinvented what it meant to make video games. It served as a guideline to what video games had to be from now on and, to this day, there is still a lot that could be learned from half life.

Its music is wonderfully atmospheric and it always manages to fit the mood perfectly. I honestly don't know what else to gush about. Half Life is just so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ wonderful.

I give half Life a flawed but beautiful 119 out of 124. Something this brilliant needs to be played to understand how to make games. Sentence that makes sense and concludes the video. Brain brain brain. I am a talking brain. I use my appendages to interact with the glyph device and the monolith formulates it into text on the display board. How magical is the whole human experience? The answer is not magical at all. Which is what makes it so magical to begin with.