Dualmask

The NA gets my vote. Takes me back... I loved that image so much, it might be one of the things that inspired me to start making my own art in the first place.

Nice outfit, bland and distracting facial expression. I couldn't see myself paying $200 for that even if I were a figure collector.

Wilds is fine on PS5, but I can see why it's declining. I still play it from time to time, but aside from the performance issues (which really aren't much of a problem on consoles), the game just feels lacking compared to previous entries. I'm hoping that will change when the inevitable expansion rolls around, but that won't help a lot of the game's innate design flaws.

In my opinion, one thing that hurts Wilds a lot is the developers masking the game's lack of real content with ever escalating difficulty of the same old monsters. First it was tempered, then it was arch-tempered, and then it was 9-star tempered, along with tedious time-attack challenges for simple pendants... but it's the same old fights. I felt like World and Rise had a lot more going for them even before the expansions. Another less pronounced issue is the sheer size of the game world. You often spend several minutes chasing fleeing monsters (or rather, watching while your mount auto-tracks them) and having a mount just masks the fact that the areas are just too expansive, filled with empty space.

I didn't pre-order the game, but I don't regret buying it. I got my money's worth in general, but compared to other MH games, it's a bit disappointing.

I emulate through RetroArch on my Steam Deck. Just got finished playing Life Force the other day... really forgot how fun the game is... and how short.

I mean... sure, why not?

This is fine.

Seth got stuck out of bounds on me once. The boss in Bilewater had a similar issue for me.

Often when I played on Steam Deck, the game would just randomly crash to 'desktop' for no apparent reason. Happened quite a bit in Acts 1 and 2. But it didn't bother me all that much, because it rarely resulted in lost progress.

A game as large as Silksong is bound to have little issues that even the best QA team can miss. And even though I've beaten it 100% now, I still like to see what changes are being made. Maybe I'll give it another playthrough someday.

Sounds interesting and looks great. Nice to see more devs doing what they can to revive and refine the beat-em-up genre.

I remember this from back in the day. I liked what it was trying to do, but I never could get used to the isometric gameplay.

I always find myself saying, "I'm Mary Poppins, y'all!" whenever I make heavy use of the Drifter's Cloak.

That's what makes Silksong a truly well made masterpiece--it's bleak, it's hard and it's a slog at times, but everything you see and do is meticulously crafted to keep you engaged through beauty, charm and/or humor.

Play the Needolin in the Mist and you get through much more easily.

Save and quit if you know you're about to die and you don't want to risk losing rosaries. Turn them into rosary strings if you don't want to worry about them at all. At a certain point, they become trivial anyway, and you even get a weapon that fires rosaries as ammo.

(Though getting your cocoon back does have the advantage of giving you silk, you could also use a Silkeater to get it without having to run back to the boss room. And there's an NPC that regularly creates them in Sinner's Road.)

If all else fails, use the Architect Crest + Plasmium health method. That got me through a couple of tough late game fights and parkour sections.

Plus if you play the Needolin next to Sherma, you can hear the pleasant jingle whenever you want.

The game gets easier as you go along too. Any concerns about difficulty have long since evaporated for me (of course, I was enjoying it from the beginning, but it's just plain fun now.)

I think the difficulty is very manageable. They did a great job giving the player many ways to tackle the problems. I just got stuck on a boss in Bilewater until I tried using the regenerating health setup and it got me through. Rarely bothered with the Architect crest much before (I tend to stick with Reaper or Wanderer), but it has its uses.

It started out rough, but I wanted to see it through. Now that I have a plethora of tools and equipment, I look forward to the challenges. It's actually getting a lot easier as I go along.

@SpaceboyScreams but that costs like 25% of them, so that's not something I like to do unless I have to.

By the way, one way to really alleviate some of the difficulty frustration is to simply quit the game when you know you're about to die. You'll reset back at the last bench you passed but without the frustration of having to retrieve your rosaries. I've gotten into the habit of doing this whenever I complete any taxing challenge, because I don't want to have to redo anything tough due to a crash.

I fought the chef boss in Sinner's Road (Lugoli) and when the midpoint of the fight came around, it jumped under the surface and never came back. It happened twice. I managed to win, but that was an issue for sure.

Earlier on, the game was prone to crashing to the desktop. Once it happened to me just after winning a particularly hard enemy gauntlet and I had to redo it. It was frustrating, but I enjoyed playing the game so much I got over it quickly.

Patching things is always good to see.

Most challenging and rewarding game I've played in a long while. It succeeds where hard-for-no-reason games like Aeterna Noctis failed. It's a challenge that I find myself wanting to overcome. I want to see every nook and cranny of the game world. I haven't beaten it yet--I'm over 40 hours in on Act 2 trying to explore as much as I can, but I have no complaints. Everything in my backlog is pushed aside until I finish Silksong.

Brilliant game.

I fell for it when I got there. Fortunately, I had full health at the time. It didn't make me that angry. I played the first game to completion, so this felt like par for the course. And the trap did its job-- reminded me that HK and Silksong go much more smoothly if you advance cautiously and pay attention to your surroundings.

It's tough, and I die a lot, but it feels mostly fair and very doable.

It's definitely not easy, but I don't think I would use any accessibility options myself. I recently made my way to Sinner's Road and that was the first area that was so challenging I was unable to retrieve lost rosaries on death (those jumping beast critters are the worst). But I believe I will get through it if I'm patient and persistent... I just need to stop worrying about filling out the enemy kill requirements for that side quest right off the bat.

One thing I would welcome is not having to take up an equipment slot for the compass. I know it was like that in the first HK, but it's still annoying.

And they do need to fix the runbacks.

I was there when Bubsy was first introduced, trying to capitalize on the popularity of Sonic. Rented the game for my SNES and had a terrible, terrible time. The developers had no idea what they were doing. Everything said in this review is spot on. How does a garbage series like this persist and get a collection... well, the great thing is no one is forced to play it. It's just laughable that this exists at all.

They should just make an easier mode if they're going to do all of this. I think some changes would make the game a bit more enjoyable, but a lot of those changes are on things I've already managed to get past myself (I'm not that far into the game but I managed to handle Moorwing and Sister Splinter already).

They will no doubt do more patching and changing, but I'm unlikely to use any accessibility options at this point myself. I'm about 13 hours in and committed to the core experience.

One can never have too much (of the original) Puzzle Quest. The Legend Returns was great, but also glitchy and had some really, really bad artwork in places. Hopefully that's been cleaned up.

Planning to add this to the library as soon as I can. It feels amazing to play, at least going by the demo I played.

The demo already sold me on the game, so this review for me was just looking for other details. I played the demo on Steam Deck OLED and I don't think the performance was an issue--it held 60FPS most of the time and I was too busy enjoying the gameplay to notice a few muddy textures. I liked the first game well enough and I'm thinking I'll enjoy the sequel too.

I kind of want the deluxe edition, but not for the asking price. I generally love all Shantae games--even the weaker ones are more fun that a lot of other platformer action games, but I'm going to give this one a wait.

And here I thought it was Daemon " " Machina...

I generally don't play horror games, but this one deserves support.

These folks really stuck hard to the old adage, "A delayed game is eventually good..." I hope.

I just played the demo on Steam. It runs pretty nicely on my potato. It's a lot of fun to play, leagues better than the original. I didn't spend a lot of time with it so far, but this one seems like it's going to have a lot going for it.

Neato...I'm interested.

Looks and sounds like this could be a winner. Monster-Hunter-with-mechs sounds like everything I'd want to be a part of.

It's nice to see more and more manufacturers going with symmetrical analog sticks for their controller designs. I wish Nintendo would go back to that themselves.

I already wanted it because one can never get enough Shantae, but that Sizzle outfit is the icing on the cake.

I can always appreciate pixel art games. They're timeless when done well. What I never understood was this obsession with going back to the time of the ugliest 3D graphics in existence. I didn't like them even back when they were new; the game experiences were novel enough for me to look past PS1/N64 graphics, but I never thought they were objectively 'good'.

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

Looks like it could be neat. It gives Oneechanbara vibes.

I was there from the beginning. Enjoyed SMK, but after MK64 I really stopped liking Mario Kart. It was never my favorite racing game, but the series' reliance on chaos with the various items, skill being a secondary (but still important) factor in winning races pushed me away. I kept trying, and I got some enjoyment out of Mario Kart Wii, but the series' existence isn't what makes me buy Nintendo consoles. I don't even have the Switch game--ended up selling it years ago.

Sigh, another attention-seeking pick-me who thinks 'realism' is the apex of gaming. I personally haven't cared about GTA since Vice City, but GTA6 will sell like crazy no matter what, no one is doubting this... why is it in any form of competition with Mario Kart other than the fact that they are both video games?

Makes me want to give Cyberpunk 2077 one more try just to have the whole game on a cartridge. The first-person only perspective made it really hard for me to get into, but I love the concept and I want to support the devs who do the right thing.

I didn't get far in the first one. The concept had me intrigued but the execution felt lacking. I'll need to see more before I'm sold on this. Combat looks interesting, but I'm going to want a great deal of customization, interesting weapons and a good variety of things to fight for it to win me over.

I already double dipped on ER via PS4 and Steam, and I wasn't going to bother with it for Switch 2, but I also never bought Shadow of the Erdtree, so it might make more sense for me to just get ER again with all the content on S2 when the time comes.

It's an amazing game that I've pumped more hours into than anything not named Monster Hunter in recent memory...

I wouldn't trade mine in anyway, but even if I wanted to, there's no chance I could. My left Joy-Con ended up in pieces after I tried to replace the sticks myself, and while my right one is fine, I ended up buying some third party solutions and gave up on the regular Joy-Cons. (Currently using a Nitro Deck, it works well even though it feels bulky.)

But I decided I'm not trading in my consoles anymore. It was a mistake I made too many times in my youth and I've no reason to do it these days. I can afford to buy new at full price.

This is my second attempt at playing XCX; I abandoned it on Wii U the first time. At first I couldn't stand the battle system in the XC games, but I finally started finding the fun with it and I'm now deep into the game. Just got the Skell and I see what all the fuss is about... it really is a massive world that I have grown to love exploring and I haven't been able to put the game down since I got it.

Being able to create my own avatar likely has a lot to do with it as well, since that's my preference. I loved Elden Ring as well. Liked BoTW but I don't think I'm ever going to bother with TotK.

Played the demo, found it to be...fine. Not a game I feel I need to play, but if I see it on a deep sale I'll add it to the library. Inti Creates is very consistent with the quality, but perhaps a bit too consistent for me nowadays.

It practically looks like a whole new game, no real connection to the first at least visually. But I'm not complaining... it just looks like we're going from large robots to Iron Man-style suits and that's fine. Cautiously optimistic...the first game was appealing at first, but it didn't hold my interest very long.

One of the few games I doubled dipped on (PS4 and Steam). There was something special about this game, I felt it the moment I booted it up for the first time and it did not disappoint. Creators of all kinds need to make what's in their hearts to make. It might succeed or it might fail, but chasing trends and making 'safe' games is the main thing causing the slow death knell of AAA gaming.

This is the first Xenoblade I'm diving heavy into and it seems like a lot to get the hang of. But I'm having fun with it so far. This guide makes me think it might end up overwhelming for a simple old gamer like myself but... we'll see.

I struggled to get into this game on Wii U, even though it sounds like my dream game. Sci fi atmosphere, fully customizable protagonist, lots of content, flying a giant robot...

I'm going to give it one more go on Switch. I'll certainly have time while waiting for Monster Hunter Wilds' content to beef up a bit.

I wanted to get it for Switch but the performance sounding as bad as it does, since I also have access to Steam Deck and PS5, I guess I'll have to go with one of those. Portability is preferable, but physical is most desirable...

Like others have said, Switch 2 can't come fast enough.

It's a pretty cool game with great animation, a large world to explore and decent writing, but some annoying quirks too. Nothing game breaking, but its reliance on a hard-to-time parry to deal the most damage gets frustrating especially when dealing with multiple threats. Enemy projectiles can't be parried and pass through solid walls... it was annoying enough for me to put the game down for a while, but I'll also attribute it to a skill issue.

If you like MVs, you can do a lot worse.

@drypaphmrbro https://funko.com/pop-yourself.html

I recently had custom Funko figures made of myself and my wife. I thought that was neat. But I could never imagine any universe where I would buy a game based on the things.