Uncharted 2: Among Thieves done. What I like about these games is there isn't that much exposition in Drake's background: He just meets people who are friends or foes, and we get right into the action. As with the previous one, the game plays loosey goosey with historical fact, but who cares in the face of climbing in exotic locations and crazy firefights. Part of me wonders how these highly trained militant groups feel being taken down by like one dude.

Personally I liked the previous game more. Although the initial introduction to the supernatural element was super cool--seeing the outline of the yeti's face as you climb up a cliff--I think discovering it's actually an albino madman underneath loses the mystique. It would've been better if they just remained monsters. Now all I'm thinking is do these people have a society in this secret town and what do they do in their downtime other than making yeti fursuits and crossbows.

Tales of Destiny 2 completed. Although I think the plot is interesting in concept, the game fell flat for me, perhaps because I'm older.

First off, as a sequel I don't think it really was necessary. Yeah, it was cool to meet the Swordians when they were actual people and see how the war played out, but even then it was a messed up timeline and not really what happened. Lion's addition wasn't really fleshed out as well as it could've; although they do cover his guilt and such, he never interacted with OG heroes and able to resolve his feelings. The Destiny Director's Cut was what was needed to explore his journey, not this.

Secondly, I never got invested with Kyle. Going out and just declaring you're a hero really died for me with Snow from Final Fantasy XIII. I'm glad Kyle went through his own character development and by the end of the game realized you can't just decide to become a hero, but it was such a long plot point that it was tiring at times.

Third, Reala didn't make any sense. OK, so Fortuna creates two beings for her mission. Why make one who is vastly inferior to the other? Reala spent most of her time stopping Elrane's mechinations instead of following her own goal. Even when we're fighting Elrane at the end, if we just used Reala that boss fight would've been over in like three seconds. And Reala comes to the conclusion that humanity doesn't need salvation at all and is fine. Is it? Is it really? We've already had two wars that could've destroyed the entire planet. I'm not certain humanity is doing great.

Tying back to expanding the original Destiny, I feel like Fortuna herself didn't fit in. Yes, there was religion, like... whatever they were worshipping at the temple Philia lived in, but where was she before? Where did she come from? Is there a whole pantheon of gods and what will they do?

Besides that, the battle system is probably the second hardest in the series with its stamina system and unforgiving grade. I'm surprised we came out with grade at all for the shop post game. I personally don't like Inomata's character design in general (Jesus Christ, Reala was skinny). There were fun points, like Harold was cool and that guy giving out titles like FREEMAN was awesome. Still, I think it would've done better as its own game instead of as a sequel.

Why the fuck does Kyle have a different last name than both of his parents?

Completely forgot to mention that Tears of the Kingdom was finished. I have a lot of mixed feelings toward this game. Let me start off by saying in terms of plot, I think it's superior to Breath of the Wild by far. Ganon actually makes an appearance as a living being you can have emotions about, rather than some sort of nameless force of calamitous nature. The tie between past and future is great, as well as finding out Zelda's actions and her ultimate plan.

The issue is the game is it's a sequel to Breath of the Wild and it constrains what Tears of the Kingdom was trying to do. Let's start off with these floating islands. Where the hell were they in the first game? They sure as hell didn't rise up at the beginning of the game like Hyrule Castle because there are no other giant holes in the ground. No one thinks this is weird? That there are suddenly islands? I also love how no one even really knew about the existence of the Zonai, but suddenly in Tears of the Kingdom everyone and their mother have a PhD in the topic.

The depths is a big discrepency. Although admittedly pretty cool to explore and kinda creepy the first time around down there, there's literally no point to it. Sure, yeah, 1.5 dungeons are down there and you can get extra equipment, all of that could've easily been written out. Like... even within the plot it doesn't make sense. So the Zonai were flying above in the sky until one day Rauru decided to come down and bang some Hylian priestess. Sure. But before that apparently they were mining in the depths to maintain their society and technology up above? They just... had a major industry and were collecting all these materials and someone no one on the surface noticed these massive amounts of minerals floating back up to the islands above? Honestly I think Nintendo designed the depths to create more content so players didn't realize they were redoing the Breath of the Wild map all over again.

Dungeons were still not of the same level of previous generations, but they were a definite improvement from Breath of the Wild. Probably the closest we got to a traditional Zelda dungeon was the Lightning Temple. I still stand by my stance way back in A Link Between Worlds on lack of linear direction: If you can go to any dungeon at any point, there's no sort of difficulty curve for any of them. Compare say the Deku Tree to the Shadow Temple way back in Ocarina of Time. I actually can beat the Deku Tree without taking any damage, that's how easy it is. But then compared to the confusing nature of the Shadow Temple, I feel a sense of accomplishment when I see how far I've come. Jumping around with Sidon in the sky didn't feel any different than using mine carts in the volcano with Yunobo.

One thing that boggles my mind is they replaced Teba with Tulin. Why? He was probably my favorite dude from Breath of the Wild. Everyone else was the same. Did Nintendo feel with Riju more grown up, little kids don't have representation?

Personally I didn't like the building aspect of the game. The first couple of hours I think I screamed a lot from frustration when some mechanation I spent ten minutes working on fell apart because I accidentally grabbed the wrong thing. Although I became skilled with it toward the end, it's not my cup of tea, although I can see other people really enjoying it.

Final boss fight was a major upgrade from Breath of the Wild. The fact we had to trade counter attacks, a nod to previous Ganon fights where you had to hit his move back to him, was a really nice touch. Props to Nintendo for that.

After all this, I still prefer Breath of the Wild. Maybe it's because by the time Tears of the Kingdom had come around, I was tired of walking all over this map. If Nintendo had developed Tears of the Kingdom on its own, it could've been very superior. Now I'm hoping they'll get rid of this open world shit and return to the Zelda I know and love, but given how popular Breath of the Wild was, I doubt it.

Final Fantasy XVI completed, and wow, I think it's my favorite Final Fantasy since IX, and I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it (focusing on VIIR2?). It's not a perfect game and has some glaring flaws, but I haven't had this much fun playing a Final Fantasy in a long time.

I'll start with the issues, and I think number one is the items, which affects the game twofold. First is there's a completely fucked up weapon upgrade system. Literally after I get a shiny new sword, barely an hour later I've gotten another one. It's like Square didn't track when a player should get trying out something new. The second is the rewards for exploration or epic battles don't matter. There are maybe a dozen different upgrade materials in the whole game, most of which you get pretty early on. So I'm literally running around the final area and finding fucking sharp fangs, which I started collecting way back in the beginning when Clive was like fifteen. Yeah, (some) bounties have good drops, but I literally defeated Bahamut and got forty bloody hides, of which I already owned hundreds. None of the accessories felt like game changers either, so opening up treasure chests felt like meh. You need a sort of nice reward for effort. If I'm gonna walk across the map for some distant treasure, it better not be five of what I already have hundreds of. It's annoying because they put so much effort into everything else, so literally hiring one dude whose sole job is this I feel shouldn't've been hard.

Then there are regular battles. Let me say this first: boss battles were amazing and I was completely satisfied with them. But XVI suffered from the same issue as Hogwarts Legacy: too little variation in enemies and you're way overleveled early on. There's no incentive to fight regular enemies on the map because you're not getting much EXP since you're already way over, their drops are pointless like every other item, so they're more or less just an annoyance you avoid. I didn't put any effort in trying basic encounters, and I beat the game one level below max. So what's the point. Given how much effort Square put into the battle system, it's a shame they didn't let me flex my muscles with it more often.

This is a personal preference but I think others would agree: I'm a big environments fiend, and you don't get to explore any of the major cities. Hell, you never see the Iron Kingdom's capital even in a cutscene. The cities are just dungeons, so you're basically there as a continuous fight so you don’t have time to appreciate the surroundings, and when you do everything is in the process of being destroyed or already is. You don’t even get to visit what should be a moderate town, Port Isolde, and even Northreach felt like a minor checkpoint before the capital moved. All that's left are small towns or even just hovels. I wonder if they were trying to save resources on environments; Oriflamme looks amazing from the outside, I can't imagine having the render all of that.

That being said, dungeons are following the trend of a linear path with perhaps a quick diversion for treasure. There's no puzzles, no thought (although a good portion of the time the dungeons are mid-battle of a large attack so there isn't time). XVI isn't alone in this; I've noticed most RPGs in recent years don't do the puzzle route as much anymore.

Another minor complaint is at times they would shove the point down the player's throat until it became fantastical. Yes, slavery is bad and people abuse slaves. However, I cannot imagine even in the cotton-picking South some person would purposefully have other people's slaves be killed by a giant wolf. That is someone else's property. Slaves to that extent are safe from others besides the master. Some dude is not going to go out and start murdering slaves randomly because even the law protects the master's possessions. It just doesn't make any sense.

Now onto the good things: pretty much everything else. The plot is solid and feels like Final Fantasy returning to form. Big crystals that need to be destroyed, kingdoms falling, a higher power controlling things behind the scenes... One thing I appreciate, and I think many recent games have lost this, is XVI had many sidequests that had us check in on friends we've met along the way and continue with their subplots. You never really forget these people and it shows how a network of connections and bonds is maintained. Even Eastpool, which was massacred fairly early on, rises up again much later on.

Another factor that I think is important is I just like Clive a lot. He's also my favorite Final Fantasy protagonist since IX. Don't get me wrong; I did like Lightning but if I ever had to work toward a common goal with her in real life, I probably would punch her in the face. I have no idea how she was ever in the military because she has zero sense of teamwork, and she acts like an asshole to even people who are actively trying to help her. Clive in constrast is very mature, has strong leadership abilities, not overly angry or obnoxious or lonerlike, and is just trying to do good in the world. He does make mistakes, but they're reasonable ones that happen because he didn't have all the information or there were circumstances he couldn't've foreseen, unlike other protagonists who do things you know are wrong and stupid but they do it anyway for the sake of plot. He makes the effort to play with the kids even though he isn't great at it, and they admire him for that. Even when he's angry in the beginning of the game, he's still respectful toward Cid and says, "Thanks for saving me, I have nothing against you or your group, I just have my own path I need to take." He recognizes his own weaknesses, and in such situations seeks assistence or delegates to others. He feels like an actual, filled-out human being, and kudos to whoever wrote him.

The other members of the cast are great too. Jill is very badass but a bit quiet and subdued, but given her time in the Iron Kingdom that's understandable. I thought Joshua would just be a plot point, but he really grew into his own. Cid was fun to be with, and I was sad when he was gone. Gav as always was cool. The enemies were great too. Benedikta died early on, but they threw in a great backstory with the little time they had. Kupka was an idiot and not deep, but you could feel his love and pain. Dion's path was surprising and I never knew what his next step was.

The battle system is definitely the best in the series. It was cool to experiment with each of the summons, and really it can be tailored easily to your style. No one I've asked equipped the same three summons. It feels like they were trying to reach a God of War level of combat, but simultaneously they fumbled on the actual fights. Again, bosses were amazing, but regular fights were just meh. I guess that's why they threw in so many boss fights so frequently.

In terms of music XV was definitely better, but I wouldn't stick my nose up to this. As with many aspects of the game, there were a lot of throwbacks. Prelude and the Final Fantasy Theme came up repeatedly, but also On the Shoulders of Giants had the traditional Final Fantasy regular battle opening. And also randomly for one of the times you fight Ultima, it's the FFI world map theme. I've definitely heard better, but I could listen to this OST on its own. The lyrics however are stupid. From what I'm understanding, they tasked the English translator to provide them, and considering this is the dude that wrote out "such foul attaint may not be sublimed through gainstanding," you can tell where this is going. I'll give a few examples:

A sickle forged of adamant
To server the man from his hooded past
No more a slave to sorrow's gloom

In onychine eyes burn chthonic doom
An evil hidng from the sun

Blinding, he screameth eschaton immanent
Now in its wake yawned lightless abyss
Yon gaping maw his circumfix

I feel like this written by a high schooler who believes using as much SAT vocabulary they just learned makes them sound more intelligent. I don't know why anyone would compose this.

Visually it's all right. XV had a prettier environment, but this wasn't bad, especially when you're walking around Rosaria. I touched on how you never explore epic architecture, but the nature is beautiful. Unfortunately in the second half of the game when everything goes to shit, the world gets this haze over it and nothing is appealing to look at (which isn't unusual; other Final Fantasies, especially VI had catastrophic situations in the second half of the game). I guess that's kinda the point; the Blight is wiping out everything and actually Clive's efforts could ultimately be for naught and it's too late.

Which is how I'm going to end: It's a very depressing game. There's a lot of death, a lot of tragedy, a lot of loss. Clive lives a totally fucked up life, and he's not alone. The fact I still enjoyed this never-ending sadness demonstrates how well it was done. Totally recommend, play it as soon as you can.

Also... can we address that whole Barnabas and his mom thing? They had literally one scene with that and never mentioned it again. What the fuck was with that?

Switch version of Super Mario RPG completed. This was one of my favorite games from my childhood and I played the original several times so I had a pretty good memory of everything, and what took me by surprise is how faithful the developers were to the original. 99% of everything was the same. For example, I don't think they changed the 90s translation at all, except for a few lines about the modernity of autosaving and Culex musing about how the party is 3D rendered whereas he's still a pixel. Even the choreography for the cutscenes were exact, down to how many times Mario would jump or Bowser would weep. Not a single dungeon was changed down to the layout or the positioning of the enemies. The game is basically as it was first published thirty years ago but for upgraded graphics.

However there are two parts they tweaked and it does affect gameplay: The first is the introduction of team attacks, and they are very powerful. The second and more important is you can switch your party members out midbattle. Oh Geno is now a mushroom? We'll just replace him with Peach. The boss is weak to lightning? Time for Bowser to bow out in favor of Mallow. Instead of bringing only three people to the fight, you have the whole party.

Honestly I think Super Mario RPG has stood up to the test of time as a good game. If you want to relive your childhood, I'd say try this out. And if you've never played before and want to see what we had in the 90s, plop it into your Switch.

(Also, can I just say I'm blown away Yoko Shimomura made the track for this? Comparing it to Street Fighter II, Parasite Eve, and Final Fantasy XV, it's a completely different tone. I had her sign my original SNES cartridge, I think she was a bit surprised someone brought it.)

Psychonauts done. I have mixed feelings about this game because a lot of people have given it so much praise, but I'm coming to it about eighteen years late and I don't feel the same awe as people back in 2005 probably experienced. That being said, I think it stood the testament of time because I still was impressed.

Let's get some of the complaints out of the way first. The PS2 was an interesting time in gaming because a lot of them were delving into 3D, oftentimes not really understanding how to handle a camera. Psychonauts isn't great in terms of platforming, which is unfortunate considering the game relies heavily on it. Is it the worst in the world? No, I've experienced far worse (the first Tomb Raider comes to mind), but after living in the PS5 era, I know we can do much better. Playing this game pulled me back into high school and feeling frustration at doing the same jump about seventy times, something I haven't experienced in years.

Other than that, it's a fun game with an interesting concept. You're Raz, a kid with psychic abilities who snuck into a psychic sleepaway camp and uncovered a plot to take over the world by harvesting psychic brains to power tanks. To save everyone, you need to enter people's minds and discover their mindset, their beliefs, their past, their insecurities, their fears... Whoever designed the levels definitely has a special imagination that I cannot comprehend. For example, there is a man who was in his high school wrestling team, and his girlfriend dumped him on the day of an important match to date someone else and he lost. Seemingly random things in his mind, like a bull running around or dogs painting or the queen of hearts, come together in the end (his team name was "the Bulls" and he's working on his own version of the famous painting of dogs playing poker. I would say the earlier levels aren't as interesting, mostly because you're exploring the minds of your teachers who are more ordered and have already faced their demons, but once you enter the "civilian" population, the levels really blossom. The mind of a man with paranoia is a suburb with cameras everywhere. Or the one of a former actress is a play about her failures. Even ones that aren't intellectually stimulating are still fun. One teacher is a dance club where you race on giant balls. Or you're a kaiju monster in another. Psychonauts definitely has great variety that keeps you guessing.

Beyond that, it has a memorable and fun cast of characters. As Raz meets and becomes friends with his fellow campgoers, each of them have their own little plotlines. At the time, the voice acting must've been incredible. Even for a modern-day audience, much of the converasations from NPCs go on waaaaay longer and are more engaging than expected. I found myself laughing aloud more than once.

There are some unanswered questions though, like why Raz has this terrible impression of his father yet he turned out to be the opposite of that. Or what was up with this drowning curse. And the game does end on a cliffhanger, but probably Double Fine didn't expect to take sixteen years to make a sequel. As a studio, I think Double Fine is able to come up with very unique and fun ideas but aren't able to keep it interesting throughout; Stacking got a little boring after a while, and I didn't feel like replaying The Cave to get everything, but Psychonauts not only kept a consistent level of quality, it improved over time.

Diablo IV done. In July I sat down for about nine hours straight playing it and got severe carpal tunnel that lasted for months, which in retrospect is nuts because I injured myself for a game that's only... OK.

I think the issue with Diablo is it should have ended after II. Any extensions to the plot feel forced. Let's step back to III for a bit. I actually would get angry playing the game because of all the retconning happening, which Blizzard did to justify moving this forward. However it ended (particularly with the expansion pack) with the revelation the player is a Nephalem and a heavy hint that from now on the Nephalem would be wrenching humanity's fate back from angels and demons, setting up the next game. Which is crazy because I don't think the word "Nephalem" was mentioned a single time in IV. Although I could see connections between III and its predecessors, no matter how much I disliked the story, IV feels more detached. Cain's dead, and Diablo himself appears I think for maybe half a second in a cutscene. Of course Tristram was shoveled in needlessly, but it feels like we're doing that by rote at this point.

It terms of plot itself it's... it's fine. There's nothing terrible about it, I think it was better than III actually just because it didn't upset me. Lilith is all right as a villain, although I think for a "mother" she's very eager to kill her children, but I guess for her ultimate survival is more important. Starting from II, each act in a Diablo game is in a different area, and IV is no different except you can walk to any location from the beginning of the game (although you may be underleveled) and there are six areas, therefore six acts. Normally each of these is fleshed out, but toward the end I think they were rushing it. I actually timed myself, I beat act IV in a 1.25 hours. I didn't even go to the major town there because the plot didn't direct me toward it. At some point I'm like why did you even make this a separate thing?

The only major criticism I have of the game though is why I was rushing: You max out your level way too early on. Kind of. So you level up normally and unlock abilities all the way to 50. Once you hit 50, it stops and you can just add stats. That's fine, but all the enemies cap at 50. You can increase the difficulty to hard... but to go above that, you gotta beat the game. And I hit 50 toward the end of act II. Meaning I had trudge through four more of these without facing much opposition. And it's not like I was grinding; I just did all the sidequests and extra dungeons I found along the way. I don't see the point of preventing me to have a greater challenge should I wish. Overall I did find IV to be much easier than III, even when I wasn't overpowered. Like remember those enemies that would drop rotating arcane beams on the floor and you had to retreat so you wouldn't die? Yeah, that's not an issue anymore.

In terms of gameplay it's... again, OK. It's Diablo, we all know what it's about by this point. They changed up the abilities a bit in that you can put whatever one you want on any key, including the base attack on say... 1 or 2 instead of on the mouse. It allows for greater flexibility for fighting style and experimentation. But I think III was more fun. Take for example the witch doctor. You could make your base attack a jar of spiders. That was hilarious and enjoyable. I'm not feeling the same in this game.

Also with the environment. III had some pretty crazy areas. Like remember Cydaea? As you went down her web, there were all these giants in bondage gear in the back. Or finally going up to heaven and it had this weird, glass-like quality? IV is just miserable. Here's Russia where everyone is starving and cold. Next is Scotland where everything is muddy and wet. And then there's the desert, again, and after following Zultan Tulle so much in III I'm tired of that. Nothing really stroked my interest until we got to hell, and even then it was... aight. I mean, we've gone to hell in pretty much each game so you need to create something that's really gonna wow me at this point.

Maybe it's because I'm getting older or perhaps because the world feels awful now, but there's something about the helplessness you see in Diablo games that are getting to me. There's no happiness even after you help people; you try to find a cure for someone but it turns out it's too late and they transform into a monster you have to kill. You help a child find their parents' grave, and their ghosts come and attack you, blaming the child for "leaving them alone." A man is looking for his son, and upon finding him, he's transformed into a demon, rejecting his father's love and cursing him. It gets to the point that you wonder how humanity has survived. Like for example, how does trade even exist with all these giant scorpions, murderous trees, bandits, werewolves, and fourteen-foot snakes are running around. You see countless bodies rotting on the ground wherever you go. Like back in Diablo I, yeah shit was terrible, but you get the sense that wasn't the norm and what was happening under the church is an unusual situation. Now in IV it feels like this happens all the time and there's no hope left. You come out of it feeling worse than before.

In the end, if you like Diablo, sure, play it. There's nothing offensive about it, but it doesn't particularly shine in any aspect. I wanted to do the post-game stuff, but my carpal tunnel started flaring up whenever I did, so whatever. I'll move onto Final Fantasy XVI now.