Скорошни рецензии на Jellyghost

An extremely cool visual exercise that falls a little flat mechanically, but ends up being a much better version of what Layers of Fear "tried" to do, while feeling much more respectful to the art it portrays and the torment put into its creation.

I went in expecting a pretty cut-and-dry shmup, and was pleasantly surprised to learn that there's a little more under the surface, even with an incredibly narrow range of difficulties for having 6 options, down to "child easy" and "monkey easy." The complexity comes in with the Dragon Shot mechanic, where you launch your dragon forward, temporarily separating it from the rider in a burst of damage and then making it into a sort of stationary turret until recalled. To survive Dragon Blaze, you need to use the Dragon Shot frequently, but this becomes a challenge when now you need to keep track of the location of two entities instead of one. Provided, the dragon will not take damage, and will continue to shoot while it's separated from its rider, but the game provides bonuses for using the Dragon Shot at opportune times, extra coins drop from enemies, some enemies drop special point boosts when hit with the DS, and every boss has a very brief animation where they're prone to being one-shot by the DS, usually in the midst of a cloud of bullets that make navigation even more difficult.
Mechanically, it can feel a little dry compared to other shmups, especially with more modern advances in the genre, but it's charming in its simplicity, its art style is great, and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ it makes me think of Panzer Dragoon just a little bit so call me biased if you must.
Its one very very noticeable flaw is its absolute terrible UI, it feels right out of a mobile game port and reminds me of the early days of the Steam Chrono Trigger port that was just straight up the iphone port with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ default fonts and all

What can I say, Platinum Games rule and Vanquish is no exception. I despise the few reviews I've seen that think the humor was an accident? It's like God Hand curled the monkey's paw and made people think games weren't supposed to be funny unless they use Naughty Dog quips or something. It's not "so bad it's good," somebody wrote this to make you laugh, stop undermining artistic intent.

Planescape: Torment has been high on my playlist ever since I first heard about it. Recently, it's been placed next to Disco Elysium as one of the few most important narrative RPGs ever made, and previously it just was the most important narrative RPG ever made. It was not, however, highly anticipated enough for me to understand that I'd be immersed enough to play for over 6 hours on my first session. Torment is not for everyone, and much like most of my other favorite games it doesn't care for being traditionally "fun" or action packed like its contemporaries in the digitized Baldur's Gate series, and much more revels in its aesthetic ugliness. Only a year behind 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons, Torment's architecture and UI design is maximalised and unsanitized in a way that is only seen in a classic fantasy roleplaying setting, hinges and gears and skulls pasted all over every tea-stained leather-bound page. It's made for a specific niche of RPG enjoyers, and if you're the target audience for Planescape: Torment, fate will inevitably lead you to Sigil someday.

The New Colossus holds a mythical, unkillable love at its core. Once again, it takes the masculinity of action and applies it directly to protection and advocacy and love for people that deserve to be stood up for, especially in times where natural-born privilege means that your voice is a tool to pave paths and lift up those around you who have needs that aren't being heard. B.J. is a modern golem, a point driven further with plot beats throughout this game, he is the embodiment of uncompromising love and justice and the strength that comes from that emotional unity.
This is a ridiculously strong duology, even more successful I'd say than Doom 2016 and Eternal. I don't always love Machinegames' sense of humor, harmless as it is, and Eternal is the peak of it ruining the vibe for me, but Wolfenstein never fails to hit its emotional beats when it needs to and so the balance of comedy and drama works just fine. The characters really shine here, down to NPCs you get a line or two out of in passing. The way they're handled shows a real depth of care from the developers and parallels Metro Exodus' train segments fantastically in making the hub feel like a lived in space full of real people fighting for a cause. The gunplay, again much like Metro, feels weighty in all the right ways and makes the stunts you pull off feel even more legendary before one-upping them with fantastic setpieces one after the other. The design doesn't get old, either, and I never found myself wearing down while going through the extra content. I still haven't played the SAS extras, and I don't know if I will, but everything provided through B.J.'s campaign is just about perfect to me

It's not a bad game exactly, but come on if you're playing this it's probably for the story more than the gameplay. It's no Resident Evil, no matter how much it wants or claims to be, and while there's plenty of good imagery and interesting boss designs, the only real reason to pick this up if you're not in the weirdly active fandom is if you've burnt through every Resident Evil and most of Shinji Mikami's other games.
It's kind of to RE4 what Shadows of the Damned is to Killer7, even if it is objectively more fun to play and artistically deeper than SotD. There are better games to spend your time on before playing this, and from what I've heard it's really kind of just a stepping stone to get to TEW2, which is evidently much more of it's own thing and thus much more worth your time.

For as much as I love Elden Ring, it's mechanics and world and the fact that it loves me back in a way that most games fail to - especially in the triple-A space - the fact of the matter stands that I burnt out on it, not once but twice.

When I think about Elden Ring, now, I don't consider the ways it impacted and inspired me like I do with Dark Souls and Bloodborne, I think about the time I spent with it - twice over, almost to completion both times. I think about my arbitrary decision to beat it, to power through the burnout and see the credits roll in time for (in actuality, weeks late for) the DLC to release; something new, a reward for my time that comes in the form of more time spent, albeit with new colors and shapes and a new sense of wonder this time.

It burns me deeply to see a FromSoft game this way, after all the history I've accumulated with their work, all the love that's been traded between myself and the rusted swords and cracked tiles of King's Field and Shadow Tower and Dark Souls, and now Elden Ring. All the love in the time I spent disregarding fanfare around various titles, prestige internet drama surrounding difficulty and gatekeeping and lore. These games are a special little haven I prefer to keep personal, that I want to continue to love as a piece of my own artistic upbringing rather than a consumer object on the front page of Steam.
With Elden Ring, none of that stayed true, it was a gift from a friend for my birthday overriding my decision to save it for later, everyone wanted to talk to me about it and so I engaged with the conversation, saw what everyone else was doing, looked at the art and speculation, got angry with the discourse and the gatekeeping and the entitlement of the loud minority of the playerbase, and then I burnt out, not simply because I was tired but because exhaustion was inflicted upon me in the exact method I was trying to avoid. Again, not once but twice, almost 200 hours - less than most other excited players - spent with a looming premonition that I can't possibly reach the end without being taxed by one factor or another. Taxed by the community, the time I spent hammering out bosses, the sheer size of the world and my waning excitement over exploration irregardless of how consistently visually striking the game is.

It's true, I love Elden Ring, but at what cost?

I wish steam had a better reviewing criteria because no, I wouldn't recommend this game, it's a terrible game but at the same time it's a great game. For better or worse, this is Suda's MGS4. Everything he's worked for, everything he's struggled with all leads up to this point. Every expectation you have for it is shattered, it's not a fun arcade game, the story isn't as meta as you'd think, its subtext isn't as deep as it would have you believe, all the cameos are flat, almost bastardizations of the original characters. Really the whole point is just that it's made by a guy for himself and only for himself, it's like vent art that breaks the fourth wall.
Its greatest strength is being artistically motivated above everything else, even pushing out what some would see as crucial mechanics in favor of a few more lines of good dialogue. You can't just come in and say "wow that was so weird, anyways time to play more Hotline Miami or whatever," you have to meet it on common ground, play by Suda's rules, listen to everything he's trying to say here. It's a sequel to every Suda game, you can't just pick it up and expect to like it without doing your homework first, especially if you've only ever seen Suda's recent work. Whether or not you like it, that's up to you, but in the end it's not really made for you is it? It's made for Suda, for all of his characters, for one push at artistic freedom above all else.
The art direction throughout the game is phenomenal and the music is uncharacteristically good for the context it's put into. Welcome to Hell is still probably my favorite track from any video game ever.

Much like Suda's other early work -- even up to Killer7, a much less conceptually and mechanically challenging game comparatively -- it's hard to recommend to people without an intimate understanding of who *they* are and how they receive art, as well as providing *them* with an intimate understanding of Suda's background and why his work is important to look at - and in what order to present it, also based entirely on who you're talking to.
These games ask a lot of you, both in terms of patience and willingness to dig deeper on your own. Kill The Past is something you have to come to on its own artistic terms, and it's incredibly rewarding once you start to piece it together.

One of the best 360-era shooters, period. I don't really like the extra stories, it's weird that they're all basically built on racial stereotypes, but that's fine it's whatever the campaign is great. Very Italian.