Recent reviews by strebbell grobgob

When I was a kid, we had an original Xbox, a DVD player, and thanks to my dad, a decent collection of movies. Instead of having me watch typical kids movies or disney stuff, he had me grow up on a select trilogy (plus some supplementary certified bangers like The Iron Giant and Treasure Planet).

Star Wars.

I still remember walking to the local 7-11 with my sister on a spring/summer day when Revenge of the Sith was in theaters, getting some sort of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up Slurpee concoction like 1/3 cream soda, 1/3 coke, 1/3 mountain dew, all in one of the limited edition lenticular collab cups, then going home and playing the RotS movie game ("Scrap metal!") for hours.

Naturally, for any 4-10 year old kid, "space wizards wielding literal glowing laser swords" was a pretty cool concept, so I found myself Star Wars pilled for a significant chunk on my childhood (and I still love Star Wars to this day, see my review of Jedi: Survivor). Unfortunately for my dad, dragging him to the local Rogers Video to get him to rent me a game for the week was something I had made a habit of, so it was only a matter of time before I'd hopefully have tried every Star Wars game available on the Xbox.

Things went differently for Kotor. At the time, I was playing through Star Wars: Obi-Wan (that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Xbox exclusive game that had weird ass design philosophy like mapping lightsaber swings to the right control stick, which is a cool idea but the game ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sucked so it went to waste) and was having a decent enough time, but it was the weekend, so it was time to drag my dad out for a new game rental. For whatever reason, we found ourselves at a Blockbuster (RIP) instead, and I saw Kotor on the shelf on discount for like 15 dollars and figured "ooh, Star Wars game I don't know about, cool". I'm pretty sure rentals were about 10 dollars at the time, so it wasn't an outrageous stretch to get him to just buy me it. Thanks dad. The car ride home, as one did, had me reading the back of the box and the manual inside, excited to try it. God I miss physical media.

When I got home, I put the game in, played like 30 minutes of the intro, got completely lost and confused as to what was happening because I was expecting Star Wars and not random Republic goobers and dialogue trees and why the ♥♥♥♥ are the "Sith" just guys with swords decked out in silver armour? I simply didn't get it.

That's when my dad came downstairs for his routine "are ya winnin' son?" moment.

I'm a bad liar. So with me not understanding Kotor and being a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rat child, I had swapped the disc out of the Xbox for that goofy Obi-Wan game I was playing before and tried to pass it off like I was in fact, enjoying the new game I got him to spend his hard earned money on. He didn't believe me, and my memory tells me he kind of sighed and left the room ever so slightly defeated. I'm sorry dad. One of these days I'll find an opportunity to tell you how much Kotor ended up meaning to me.

Eventually, I revisited the game when I had more of a brain on my shoulders. Posted up sitting criss-cross applesauce in front of our ♥♥♥♥♥♥ CRT TV, I popped the game in and gave it a real, proper go - I didn't know it at the time, but doing this would end up shaping my taste in games for the rest of my life.

Knights of the Old Republic uses a lot of weird, DnD3e-esque mechanics under the hood, and a bizarre realtime-turn based-hybrid combat system. It took me some time to wrap my head around modifiers and feats and character builds, but once I did, I was hooked. The story was completely separate from the Star Wars media I was used to and existed in its own little vacuum where a lot of artistic liberty could be exercised, and Bioware (Ah, my sweet Edmontonians, your city sucks but thanks for repping our ♥♥♥♥♥♥ province) went ham on the writing. The world they made was totally interesting and such a cool take on the SW universe, using and abusing existing SW concepts but with new spins and takes that elevate the Old Republic into a world that feels truly fresh and unique. The companions start off... interesting, what with Carth being a weirdo crybaby and Mission kinda just being annoying, but as you dig into their backstories and learn why they are the way they are, and then meet more companions that also have surprising depth to their unique motivations and backstories like Jolee and Bastila, you realize how much care and thought went into designing them. You just can't help but love them all. Also, T3M4 is a great pet dog, and HK is, yep, literally just a murder robot but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is he fun to have around.

The main story... I don't even want to say anything. It's really just super ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good and something you should experience spoiler-free first hand, if you can. There's a specific moment, and if you've played the game you obviously know what I'm referring to, but it had me genuinely stunlocked, jawdropped, staring at the TV for a couple solid minutes. It was the moment in my gaming history that had me thinking for the first time, "oh, video games can do this?"

To be fair, Kotor is clunky. The aformentioned combat system is weird and borderline unenjoyable at times. The graphics are, well, from 2003. But if you can get over the initial learning curve and enjoy the dialogue and writing, this game is truly an all-timer. It kinda just plays like a old weird CRPG. I'm currently dumping hours into BG3 and it's reminding me of Kotor way more than I anticipated.

There's also a modding scene for this game 100% worth checking out.

Anyway, if you like funky CRPG-ish gameplay but more importantly, good writing, this game truly is up there. It genuinely shaped my taste in games moving forward and straight up means a lot to me. Banger city.

Oh and I really can't exaggerate how hard I hyperventilated watching the reveal for the remake. Whatever otherworldly forces are out there, please let it make it out of development hell. Do this, and my life is yours.

Mucha shaka paca.

Yes yes, I know, Overwatch 2's release (and frankly, most of its lifecycle) was bad and there were a lot of things worth tearing into Blizzard about (You can read my review of Marvel Rivals if you wanna see my complaints) but despite all that, I fell in love with Overwatch 2 right when it released.

At the time, I was in the tail end of school and was doing full degen things like ordering 5 churros from Taco Time at 3 AM, taking Vyvanse and pulling all-nighters to study for finals the next morning, and most of all, dumping hours into whatever game I was hooked on. The only hero shooter adjacent game I had played prior was basically just Valorant, and while I had some fun during my time with that game it never really fully took over my life at any point.

Overwatch 2 though? It did.

I was watching educational unranked to masters climbs on youtube, loading up custom maps to practice landing sleep darts, grinding aim trainers, and absolutely tilt queuing the ♥♥♥♥ out of ranked. The game was scratching the teamfight itch that League of Legends usually took care of while simultaneously satisfying the craving for a shooter that Halo Infinite (ah, rest in peace my sweet prince) previously was, and I had friends that were playing too, so I just couldn't put it down. I mean, sure, I had a lot of issues with the game, like how annoying it was that the game's format led to one sided stomps for the vast majority of matches, or the questionable balance decisions, or the incredibly toxic community that loves to whine about "healers not healing enough" (if that's the kind of DPS player you are, I trruly wish death and destruction upon your entire bloodline), or even just having to deal with cracked out turbo loser Genji mains ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ up my whole day. The game had high highs and low lows.

Overwatch 2 will probably always have a special place in my heart because it was also one of the few games where I made genuine friends just from matchmaking. There was a night I was spamming ranked solo-queue and ended up with two teammates who were better than me at the game, and we decided to keep queuing together after. Eventually I got to know them a bit better I found out one of them was from my city. Genuinely, those odds are just insane.

Eventually I stopped playing (and said friends did too) but with the release (or, re-release? I guess?) of Overwatch myself and my friend group have been booting the game up and playing... and it kinda feels good to be back. The game's got a lot of nice QOL changes now, like map voting and hero bans in ranked, and the new heroes are really cool too. Ana is still my goat, but Mizuki is really, really fun. More importantly, playing a game with my friends that isn't stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ godawful League of Legends is always great.

I really love Overwatch. It's a flawed game with a horrid community and it feels really bad when you lose, but it also gave me some memories I cherish. It also just is really, really fun and satisfying when it decides to be. It's kind of like coming back to an abusive bipolar ex, but unfortunately for me, I have zero self control and am a complete moron.

Oh and uh, yeah. Widowmaker something something 3AM Walmart parking lot.

♥♥♥♥ this game. You should totally play it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4rWUW48HNk

I played this game pretty religiously on launch. I'm coming back to it after a ~8 month hiatus, and I'm pretty impressed with its current state. They added a number of great gameplay QoL improvements like faster dailies and BP progression, and the newer areas have new interesting traversal mechanics like super sprint and flight. WuWa is a game that really feels like it only gets better with time.

There are some obvious things to consider first though: yes, gacha mechanics are predatory, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it's kind of just not-player-friendly to gate playable characters (meta characters, at that) behind a slot machine. You can argue that gambling is part of the fun - I'd agree with that. But I do fundamentally disagree with the idea as a whole. Is that going to stop me from engaging with it?

Not really. Again - gambling can be fun. Just don't get stupid about it.

The other side of this coin is that WuWa does a pretty decent job when it comes to preventing powercreep and also giving you enough pulls through gameplay and time investment - so no, it doesn't ever really feel like you need to spend money, which is a really great thing, considering the game itself is free. There's also a lot of easy to obtain units that are really strong and capable of clearing endgame content - chad MC and Danjin come to mind.

The newest character to come out, Zani, seems to have her optimal gameplay loop basically locked behind having another limited 5 star character in your roster (Phoebe), which is something previous characters haven't really had. This could be a really dangerous precedent, and if the majority of future characters are overly skewed like this I think it could be a really big issue that completely upends the game's F2P player viability. Time will tell.

Under the hood of all the gacha related nonsense is a really fun open world game with some seriously addicting long term grind mechanics, timesinks, and great exploration. I'm also just kind of biased, because WuWa very obviously borrows a lot of its open world from the likes of Genshin Impact, which means by extension it feels like it borrows from Zelda BOTW + TOTK, and i have probably around 800 hours across those two masterpieces. So I kind of just like the formula. Add a genuinely great, mechanically demanding combat system that requires effort and attention rather than statchecking, fun boss fights, and a story that keeps getting better and better and you've got a game that is just straight up good.

On that note, it's important to mention that you do not have to be a sweaty endgame minmaxer to enjoy this game. I have a pretty large amount of playtime now, and my account is Union level 70, and I've never cleared TOA or WhiWa (the two endgame modes). There is mountains of other content to enjoy at whatever pace you'd like. I just explore, do quests, grind for the characters I like, and move on.

And uh, yeah. I need Zani and Cantarella to beat the ♥♥♥♥ out of me. Gotta keep it real.

Aside from being an incredibly addicting, unique, and fresh take on the roguelike genre, Balatro does one thing in particular really, really well - at any given moment, the sensory feedback from the game is insanely satisfying.

Everything on the screen reacts to you hovering on it, clicking on it, or interacting with it in general. With every minute action you take, the game responds - and you're already satisfied and wondering what the game could possibly do to hook you in even more. Guess what?

You haven't even played your hand yet.

Mult. Mult. Chip bonus. Mult.

Winter Soldier. AGAIN.

Mult. Seal Effect. Money. Mult. Money. Again.

Also, this was made by a singular guy from Saskatchewan. I didn't even know they had computers there. I always thought that province was basically just someone's backyard. And bro just hired a dude off Fiverr for the soundtrack (who then proceeded to cook so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hard they had to do an orchestra rendition at The Game Awards).

This game ♥♥♥♥♥, and it's only a matter of time before we see a huge amount of Balatro-likes appear. Even Riot Games made their own in the LoL client recently.

Balatro is unironically a monumental release in indie gaming history.

Oi. Big boy. Come here, you. Just look at that. Just touch it. It's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rushed.

I hold the first of Insomniac's Spider-Man games in really high regard, and I do think Miles Morales was a really solid spin-off too, so I had certain expectations for this game.

Unfortunately, Spider-Man 2 doesn't quite live up to the standard the first game set - in some regards. It is largely, a great game, and it has a lot of the hallmarks of a great sequel - expanded game mechanics, improvements in graphics, sound design, etc... but it's just not enough. Yes, we have a bigger, and denser map than ever, packed with new things to collect, things to do, fun quests that serve to build the world our characters live in, and yet this is all overshadowed by the questionable writing and pacing of the main story.

There is a distinct moment towards the later half of the game where the story becomes "Peter Parker Apologizing Simulator". It's not good. It feels like this game forgot how goated Peter was in the first game in favor of somehow boosting Miles and MJ into the spotlight. And like, yeah, I get it, and I love Miles, but that's my boy right there. The OG. We can't just cuck Peter like that. And stop making me play as MJ. It makes absolutely no sense that she would be capable of sneaking up on and 1 tapping 250 pound bald eastern europeans who probably eat raw onions for breakfast and presumably have extensive training in hunting and combat.

And then the main story ends. The whole thing happens at a breakneck pace, and before you know it, multiple insane arcs come to an end and an equal amount of arcs get completely forgotten about. Peter's mortgage is like 5 grand. How the ♥♥♥♥ is he gonna pay that? Give me these Peter Parker stories. One of the best moments in the first game is when he gets evicted from his apartment. Moments where we are reminded that Peter is just a dude trying his best are what make him such a relatable and likable character.

I am disappointed, because clearly, they just needed more time. The combat is tighter and has more options, and the movement is the best its ever been. It's so much faster, and there are so many fun mix ups you can do, like the loop-de-loop and the web wings. Getting around the city and doing alert missions with all the cool new abilities the game added, parrying and dodging enemies and chaining sick aerial combos - the moment to moment gameplay is stellar and a serious bar above the previous instalments. It is seriously, seriously good, and the boss fights are actually interesting this time too. Memorizing boss patterns and stringing parries and dodges together is something I associate with games like Elden Ring or Jedi: Survivor, but it works really well here too.

Overall, we're left with a solid game lacking a good story to back it up. And when the story in the first game felt like a true love letter to the character because it was done so well, and set the bar so high, it really does just hurt a little extra. I hope hope hope Insomiac just gets more time to develop Spider-Man 3. We know what they're capable of, and I trust they can show it.

Moral of the story: give me more Black Cat. I desperately need her to beat me within an inch of death.

One last thing: the suits in the final act? What, it was time for a "Miles Morales original"? Yeah. That ♥♥♥♥ was ass. Never let bro cook again.

This game gets a solid "Damn. What a shame." on the Gordon scale.

PS: any discussion about this game being "woke" is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ braindead. If you're the kind of person who feels threatened by a tiny sidequest where you help a dude ask his boyfriend to prom, not only are you stupid, but you clearly don't understand Spider-Man as a character. Because that small scale, menial ♥♥♥♥ like saving cats from trees or helping someone ask someone to prom, is exactly what being a "Friendly Neighborhood" hero is all about. Spider-Man wouldn't give a ♥♥♥♥ whether someone is gay, purple, an alien, or any other denomination inside or outside of any spectrum you can think of. Be more like Spider-Man.

When OW2 came out I fell in love with the game and the hero shooter genre. I clocked like 300 hours one-tricking Ana, and had a blast. Unfortunately, OW2 is kind of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, Blizzard is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ joke of a company, and where that game used to tickle my moba itch I've relapsed on League of Legends, so my overall motivation to play OW2 has been really low. They also, y'know cancelled the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ PVE mode, can't figure out how to monetize or balance the game well, etc etc.

I was expecting rivals to give me a huge spark to enjoy hero shooters again, but it just hasn't hit the same for some reason. I don't know if it's because when I play Rivals it makes me want to play OW2, or if it's because too much of my gaming real estate is occupied by LoL at the moment, or what really. But it just hasn't done it.

Which is a shame, because Rivals is actually really good, and I'm a huge comic nerd (See my review of Marvel's Spider-Man). Rivals does a lot right. 6v6 is great, the art style is unique and gorgeous, and it's fun to see so many cool Marvel characters come to life in a competitive game. I strongly feel they've done justice to pretty much everyone in the roster, and it's so cool to see them portrayed in interesting ways. Samurai Psylocke? Yeah, slice me, mommy.
It's also really great to hear these characters' iconic VA's portraying them. Steve Blum, Yuri Lowenthal, and more are doing their thing and it really adds to how authentic Rivals feels. This is a game that feels like care was put into it, no doubt.

With such a strong foundation it's hard to nitpick issues about it, but there are really just two major things I can't stand so far:

1. Performance. It's actually a shame this game runs like absolute ♥♥♥♥. That's one of the few things OW2 blows this game out of the water in comparison on. It is extremely difficult to play well in competitive mode when I'm routinely dropping below 60 FPS. I'm constantly above 200 FPS in OW2 and that game honestly looks only marginally worse. They've gotta work on this.

2. Balance. Waiting for Luna and Mantis to rotate their ults so you can actually play the game is very boring, and I main support, so it's not like I'm being your typical 3 IQ Moon Knight player whining about "healers". It's just tiring to see the same supports like, every match, and consistently being able to completely nullify like 90% of the roster by pressing Q on Luna gets old quick.

Rivals has a ton of potential, and I can't wait for them to tighten it up. I can see myself really loving this game, but in it's current state I'd categorize it as just "great". Which, hey, is still really good! It's totally worth your time, and if you have an OW2 itch like me that OW2 can't scratch because that game, again, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stinks, then try Rivals. There's a lot to appreciate here.

Sometimes, a game doesn't have a grand scale, nor is it a massive timesink, nor is it mechanically demanding or even particularly challenging, and that's okay. In MiSide's case, that's what makes it genuinely fantastic, and a really refreshing change of pace if you're like me and rotate between depression simulators like League, CS, and Overwatch.

And uh, Cappie is best girl, obviously.

How SOTE differs compared to the base game is difficulty. It's hard as hell. Bosses are tough to say the least, and regular enemies are absolute menaces in this expansion. You really have to change your approach to combat and start preparing for fights: hotswapping your armor, weapons, ashes of war, Physick tears, talismans, consumables, and strategies is crucial for surviving the combat encounters in the Realm of Shadow, and makes it feel that much more satisfying to come out on top when its because you fine tuned your character using supplies you collected over your whole playthrough. I'm not exaggerating when I say I literally did not use the crafting system a single time across my 500+ hours pre-SOTE, but certain bosses and enemies kicked my ass so hard in this DLC that I needed to actually craft consumables that granted bonus resistances, just to try and sway odds back towards my favor.

I think this is good game design. Obviously, you can raw-dog everything in Elden Ring, but if the difficulty is cranked so hard that you have to exhaust all available resources and game mechanics, I think that makes for a fun, cohesive experience. I got by in the base game without doing so, but I think I would've enjoyed it even more had I used this approach the entire time. The feeling of being pit against insurmountable odds is potent in this DLC, and I loved every moment of it.

Gameplay was not the only thing that impressed me. The pure spectacle of many different situations and environments blew me away. (gorgeous view ahead) I took a ton of screenshots because there were so many different areas that were beautiful. There were multiple boss fights that I think were designed to be visually memorable rather than flawlessly designed combat encounters, and personally, I appreciate that. There were also multiple times where I had to pause and enjoy the soundtrack (shaman village... plin plon). The quests are familiarly cryptic, but actually more digestible than the base game in my opinion, and that was a welcome change. I enjoyed them, and I think FS succeeded at making me feel certain emotions if that was their goal. Story spoiler: I'm not sure why I didn't see it coming, but yeah, everyone being ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dead at the end in classic FromSoft fashion was still a gut-punch for me. I really liked Thiollier, Moore, and even Ansbach. (lovable sort ahead)

However, I don't think SOTE is flawless. For example, the Furnace Golems are a joke, don't get me started on how bafflingly poorly designed those encounters are when compared to the rest of the field bosses the game has to offer. Some story bosses have questionable gameplay design choices too. Although SOTE holds the highest rating of any DLC ever on Metacritic, I think that has more to do with how good Elden Ring is than how good SOTE is individually.

That said, this expansion is truly fantastic. It's massive, packed with content, and I strongly recommend playing it. It's about as good, if not slightly better than the base game when evaluated as a standalone, cohesive experience, and we're talking about Elden Ring here, so yeah, that's pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ amazing.

Elden Ring + Shadow of the Erdtree is probably my second favorite game of all time now. Sorry Skyrim, I still love you. But FromSoft didn't just cook with this; they were on some Gordon Ramsay type ♥♥♥♥, and I'll gladly hope and pray for thirds if the seconds were this good.

yeah this ♥♥♥♥ dont even make no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sense

Coruscant is basically the prologue section of the game and for some reason the game has a hard time running nicely during that part. but once you leave, the game starts to perform how you'd expect. game is sick so far, I'l update this later when i finish it. Just wanted to say dont let the negative reviews throw you off too hard, the game is glaringly better than fallen order basically off rip so if you liked that one then get this one too. Also to everyone having a rough go with the Rancor... Remember Oggdo Bogdo? Yeah. Just you wait.

Edit: May 1 Patch vastly improved performance on Coruscant for me. night and day difference. Would still like to see some improvements on Koboh though.
An unfortunate side effect of the patch though is that crash frequency has increased by a good chunk, particularly noticeable in my experience when doing Force Tears (Evergaols) and also Alt-Tabbing. The game either completely freezes, forcing me to kill it with Task Manager, or, it completely crashes my graphics drivers, making my entire PC lock up for a couple seconds, making both my monitors go black until they reset. Remember how when Elden Ring crashes, when you boot it up again it drops you exactly where you left off? Yeah. This game doesn't. So if you go treasure hunting for an hour without touching a Site of Grace and the game decides to cuck you, you now have to repeat that hour of gameplay. This is a AAA 2023 release.

Also, what AAA developer releases a game in 2023 without DLSS? I mean, AMD FSR is fine, and it's certainly the more globally compatible option, but was why not both? This might be the only game I can think of that only has FSR and not DLSS. What a weird decision.

The only other criticism I have for this game is that Jedi Grandmaster difficulty feels ridiculous sometimes. When the game can't think of a new boss to throw at you, it'll just throw 2 or 3 of an old boss at you, which is insane considering how aggro they are. maybe I suck, but double Rancor Evergaol and double Oggdo Evergaol are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ brutal. In either case, they both throw massive fast hitboxes at you with basically no time to breathe, if you miss a parry your poise meter gets instantly depleted, stunning you, and the Rancors like to throw this huge unblockable grab move at you where if it connects, it's an instant kill/oneshot every time.

But then sometimes the game has really epic bosses that just have a learning curve. Second Encounter Rayvis (Especially Phase 2) is a straight up Sekiro boss. So if you were struggling like me for a couple hours, get ready to lock in and start memorizing his combos. Parry/Perfect Dodge his strings and weave in 1 or 2 attacks when you have a (small) window. When you win, it feels awesome, because it's not like it was unfair at any point, you just had to git gud.

I'll update again when I beat the game.

It's really such a shame that this game has been plagued by performance issues since launch, because it's one of the more notable releases from 2023, which was one of the most incredible years for gaming, ever. In my eyes, Jedi: Survivor is quite literally a perfect sequel to Fallen Order, and an amazing single player experience on its own.

Survivor expands upon every single mechanic and element that was already done well in Fallen Order and then tops it. And it just keeps doing this throughout your playthrough. I consistently had moments where I thought, okay, surely this is where the game has a lull in momentum, or stops doing everything so well, and it just never did. I was blown away by this game. Combat is tighter yet more expansive, the level design is more interesting and has more depth, the story is captivating, and they went ham with the collectibles and customization. There's some serious Elden Bling to wear.

Full stop, this is how you do a sequel.

This game reminds me of Cyberpunk. People love to ♥♥♥♥ on games that are poorly optimized, or have technical issues of any kind, and yeah, that's super valid and important. Games are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ expensive nowadays, and we absolutely should hold studios to a higher standard of quality. But I must've just rolled the dice pretty good because every issue I ran into wasn't a big enough deal for me to turn off the game. No, my experience wasn't perfect from a technical standpoint, like I doubt anyone's was. However, like Cyberpunk, underneath the negative press, random crashes, FPS drops, and mass review bombing, lies a seriously exceptional game that Respawn clearly put their heart and soul into. I love this game and the story it tells and I strongly recommend you play it.