Recent reviews by Cheesy

As a Grand Master of Peggle, I recommend this game without reservations. Ode to Joy is the best piece of classical music.

I am bad at this game, but it's fun! You can build the character that you want, as long as you lean into it. Don't be a jack of all trades, master of none. I have no desire to beat the end-game bosses, but I have played maps and focused on Essences, which i enjoyed. But you can focus on whatever you want! The game is free, but I recommend getting a few premium tabs including currency, gems, flasks, and quad.

Underrated game! Cool mechanics make you feel powerful without making the game too easy. The exploration is fun, and there are usually a couple of ways to approach each mission. A good game for completionists, as there are achievements for completing missions with stealth, melee kills only, etc.

In 2024, this game still holds up! Definitely worth about 20 hours of your time. Buy the full bundle for the extra content. I enjoyed it the most of any of the Saints Row games. It's a fun game, not a hard game, but that's good! There is crude adult humor throughout, so if that's not for you, give this one a miss.

In 2023, Eve Online is more accessible than ever. I started playing in 2008 and remember printing out dozens of pages of guides to read before bed. The new player experience (career agents, "AIR Program") and tutorials have been vastly overhauled and improved. In-game tools (for example to simulate a ship fitting before buying the parts) are very helpful and previously existed only as third-party programs. While you can play the game solo, the game truly opens up when you join other players in a corporation. However, with this added element of social commitment to the corporation, Eve can quickly become all-consuming. The trick is to find the right balance of real life and Eve and to play the game the way you want by finding as much or as little community as you can handle.

After 93 hours, I am Elden Lord. This was my first Souls-like game and I can say with confidence that everyone should play it. There's nothing I can really say that hasn't been said by others. After a full play-through, I know there are many side quests left to complete, many secrets left to discover, many builds left to try, and many alternative endings to achieve. I feel a strange sadness like I have finished the last novel in a long series. But if you know that feeling, you know it means Elden Ring truly is something special.

*Story Spoiler-Free Review*

When I was reading reviews and deliberating whether or not to buy Death Stranding Director's Cut, I repeatedly read comments such as, "I was bored and miserable the whole time. It was a life-changing experience. 10/10." After almost 55 hours, I have beaten the main story, and I have to say that, yes, the game was life-changing, and yes, I highly recommend it. But I was never bored or miserable. Though you spend most of your time walking around the map traversing increasingly inconvenient terrain, the game is about more than that. It's a lesson in community, in doing small acts of good for the benefit of strangers, and in turn being lent assistance by strangers in your own time of need. Though the core gameplay is very solitary, you and unseen others make small contributions to the world that make the collective experience more enjoyable. In between story missions, I set my own goals and sometimes spent entire sessions on these unofficial side objectives.

In terms of the plot, Death Stranding is a Kojima game. This means long, back-to-back, self-indulgent cutscenes; over-abundant, mind-bending lore; and gross over-use of symbolism and metaphor. It's a story of ropes and sticks, knots and strands, grasping hands and tangled webs. It would be fun to figure out what Kojima was trying to say, but instead the characters explain it all to you, repeatedly, throughout the game. There's a fair amount of fourth-wall breaking and references to other games. This is the only game I have played where a character let me know when I was half way through the story.

Play Death Stranding. Become a contributing member of society. I will be playing the sequel at launch.

It was fun for a while. Now it's dead. I hope Jack made back his investment.

I can't exactly pinpoint what killed the game. Maybe the realization that everyone's sense of humor is unique and that most people aren't funny? I enjoyed it while it lasted.

My wife asked me what I was doing. "I'm a librarian. I'm running around collecting poop while wearing flowers on my head so I don't go insane."
Fun game with a surprising amount of depth. Quite unrelenting. Game is still in beta right now and I'm excited to see what features they add next.

Terraria is great, especially when you play with friends. Later in the game when you are trying to beat harder bosses it can get very lonely if you don't have buddies to help you out.