I am not immune to this kind of retrospective. This year has been a massive learning experience for me. I’ve started writing about video games beyond just talking at my friends about them; my novel, which sounded like an insane combination of words just a year ago, currently exceeds 100,000 words; I’ve made and kept a group of wonderful friends.

This is also the point where I begin reflecting on my relationship with media. My ruminations on media were extensive and my entire relationship with art has changed—or at least I’d like to believe. For a long time, I was a victim of my own bad habits: I would devour art. On the surface, that doesn’t sound bad. Devouring implies a ravenous appetite for sure, but devouring something can also imply appreciation, right? For me, I fear I would have to say no. Often, I felt like others were getting something out of this medium that I was not.

Watching my friends play video games, I was enamored with their greater sense of appreciation. They were not suffering from my own checklist-minded, objective-oriented approach to gaming. They lingered in these digital worlds, remaining for only as long as it pleased them to do so; the pleasures of the fantasy taking them to places unknown.

The change I wanted to manifest most in myself this year was to find the same sort of appreciation. This little hobby of mine isn’t food; it shouldn’t be something I suckle the bone marrow from until I’m satiated, moving ever onward to something else.

Put simply, I wanted to stop and smell the digital roses.

My success was mixed, if I’m honest. I tried many new games, and I had many new experiences. Some stuck with me, others I forgot shortly after playing them, surprising me when they reappeared in my 2025 Steam replay. But truthfully, it was never my intention to “remember everything.” I had only ever intended to find the things that mattered.

So, after this lengthy year, I have come up with something of a framework for myself, something for me to share with you; the journey I have been on this year, and many years before.

The conceit of video games which has resided in my mind and has colored the very framework of their existence.

Connecting a Dream and a Machine

The humble gameplay mechanic is, to many games, a skeleton which forms the foundation of the experience; the rules as the game—and to an extent you—understands them. The jump of the platformer, the inventory and resource management of survival horror, the spatial, projectile dance of the first-person shooter; these traits, where they exist, define the games attached to them. They are a series of personal choices defining the feeling behind the game’s actions. These decisions are the formation of a fantasy.

The fantasy of gaming is what drew you to it in the first place. A set of rules which enables you to experience things, internalize stories that aren’t possible or feasible in the real world; what it’s like to be an expert sword fighter, the leader of a solar empire, or an impossibly precise musician. A game designer dreams a dream and chooses to express it to an audience. When you and the game design are in sync—when you agree to the fantasy and its means of conveyance is well constructed—you feel the things the game intends. Sometimes, you transcend the dream and manage to find one of your own. A game’s successes or failures are determined by how well it manages to capture the dream it set out to convey.

A single-player action game typically should have a fantasy which synergizes with its narrative. If the fantasy of something like Cyberpunk 2077 conceived of something like augmentation being a metaphor for losing yourself to corporate control and then didn’t have an augmentation system, that would feel incongruous; in its presence, the story and the mechanics inform one another to create a copacetic fantasy. 

Fantasies can also exist metatextually. A multiplayer first-person shooter or fighting game grants the audience a fantasy of clear self-improvement. Learning a set of behaviors makes you into an ideal player and by agreeing with the game on what its own game is, allows you to be in sync with the conveyed fantasy. Fantasy, here, is more in the execution than in the narrative; by dedicating time and energy to this set of game behaviors, you can get constant feedback of improvement in a way real life skill development doesn’t tend to have. Even then, the core fantasy at the end of the day is still there: you may indulge in the dream of being a street fighter or a gunslinger, by engaging in game mechanics analogous with the fantasy. 

To better illustrate my meaning, I’ll use two specific, personal fantasies. These will be superficially similar—at least, similar enough that your grandmother might mistakenly purchase one for the other under duress.

Devil May Cry 5 is an easy example that allows me to talk about Devil May Cry in an essay. The fantasy of Devil May Cry, at its simplest, is about being an effortlessly stylish devil hunter. In the best entries, the synergy between the narrative and the mechanical intricacies are perfectly in sync.

The skillsets of each character differentiate them mechanically, but also add interest and appeal specific to how they orbit the central fantasy of being a hyper-competent monster killer. Stamina is never a concern because, core to the fantasy, the player character would never question if they have enough juice to get through a single encounter—they simply know they do. The character’s most effective tools, in accordance with the fantasy, are metatextually limited by the abstract concept of style. It doesn’t matter if a weapon is technically the dominant, most appealing strategy; if you are playing in an efficient but homogeneous way, you will not score well.

Death in DMC is typically a momentary, fleeting inconvenience. You die and—especially in DMCV—you are granted the ability to resurrect on the spot, albeit with less style points than if you had not. Damage isn’t especially frightening unless you are attempting to go for the best score possible.

By abiding by these mechanics and the spirit they carry, you become the ideal player: you become the devil hunter seeking your own personalized journey of self-expressive violence, and ultimately your own sense of style.

Compare this to something like Dark Souls 3.

Mechanically, Dark Souls 3 encourages, at least on first play, a far more conservative, pensive approach. The game is quick to punish missteps and will require you to adroitly use the right tool for the job. In microplay, you must manage your health, stamina, and encounter-to-encounter resources like magic; this includes managing the durability of your armaments, builds, and the ablation of your resources which determines the arc of an entire play session. There is no style gauge here, no punishment for exploiting the world, the enemy, or any advantage your accumulated bank of knowledge gives you access to.

The game primes you to become the person the narrative fantasy suits: a hardened adventurer surviving a world which has all but rolled over and died. The punishment inflicted by the narrative ideally shapes the game mechanics to punish you in gameplay.

Anyone who knows anything about either of these games would obviously be correct in saying these games could not be further apart in tone or feel. But consider why this is. The games are remarkably similar when stripped of their aesthetics: you are a primarily melee-weapon-equipped dispatcher of monsters in a hostile environment. Each location requires dodge rolls, parries, ripostes; each engagement requires the ideal tool for the job and the situational awareness to know what that is. Where they differ is their mechanical approach, which grows from the fantasy they are attempting to evoke, which in turn shapes their aesthetic, making them grow apart from one another.

This divergence does not indicate either branch as being superior to the other. There is a lot of talk around what makes “objectively good game design;” I would argue such a thing does not exist. When new games come out and their design is said to be a high watermark, there is an unspoken or spoken expectation that it should somehow supersede that which has come before.

“This is how all open worlds should be designed now.”

“This is how combat should work now; everything else is inferior.”

Not every game benefits from capitulating to the same fantasy. Trends can be useful for understanding what is common, or what is most desired on average; fantasies can be demanded by an audience as well, especially when no one is seen to be building it. This should not dictate what the fundamental building blocks of art must be however.

No, I don’t believe new designs are somehow objectively superior to the old in the same way I don’t believe this year’s smart phones are objectively superior to last year’s. There are different needs for different people, different stories; ultimately, some design is as temporary as the tech waste filling tomorrow’s landfill.

Paying attention to these Mechanical Fantasies has been foundational to improving my consideration this year. I feel I am better prepared to receive what games are telling me; I am more interested in coming halfway. Where I would have griped at a particularly frictive gameplay mechanic, I find myself more likely to identify whether it captures the spirit of the game’s dream.

Streaming Signalis back in October, I was vocal about my irritation of the oppressively limited inventory. In the moment, I found it cumbersome and a contributing factor in lengthening the game. Now, I am brave enough to admit I disliked it for how it forced me to feel the pressure of resource management and scary monsters—I am, after all, still a gigantic weenie.

Considering the exact fantasy of Signalis enabled me to say it works even if it’s unpleasant to play. You are a creation of a fascist government; the programming of institutional hegemony limits your language, stymieing your ability to articulate that which oppresses you—and in the video game also. Ultimately, you can still find it distasteful, too frictive to deal with, but it does suit the story Signalis wishes to tell. Without mindfulness I wouldn’t be able to say that; I’d be just another person saying, “the game should never inconvenience me” even if that inconvenience was thoughtful design.

For less mechanically frictive games, like the Trails games I’ve indulged in this year, considering the fantasy made me something of a better actor. I was able to slip into the role the story had planned for me. Slotting into the story in both tone and spirit allowed me to find a place for myself, which the game had helpfully left open for me. Fitting the role of the role-playing game makes the experience more thoughtful, engaging, more immersive. You care. This is the heart of my understanding of Mechanical Fantasy: the calibration process which comes from wanting to meet art where it’s at. 

None of this comes easily though; it is often an unintuitive process. Many outside factors can contribute to forcing you out of sync with a game’s mechanics. Let’s talk about those factors now.

The Burden of Other People’s Thoughts and Our Own

In this era of internet communication, we are more or less constantly burdened with the weight of other’s opinions or consideration. The moment a game releases, if you’ve shown even a passing interest and find yourself victimized by discovery feeds, you are burdened with an unrelenting tide of gamer opinions. They linger in comments, they post YouTube videos, they even live in your Discords: gamers are coming to deliver their opinion, telling you that your method of playing a game is stupid and wrong.

Elden Ring upon its release, back when I still used the dipshit website for morons (formerly Twitter), was a veritable mudslide of angry gamers in the mood to talk smack. I saw everything from Spirit Ashes to the concept of magic being stated as inferiorities in playstyle. 

Accidentally, in my essay about loving games, I have maneuvered myself into a gamer catastrophe: I might need to talk at least a little bit about difficulty in gaming. Let me get my opinions clear: regardless of the game in question, the best way to play a game is by maximizing the amount of fun you find in it. Completionism, difficulty, mods, they’re all distractions from the fact that this is a hobby. You are meant to be fulfilled and have a good time doing all this; let’s not pretend we’re Oakley-wearing dads yelling at the little-league mound, none of this shit actually matters, Richard.

Yet, we are all burdened with the weight of other’s thoughts. Even speaking as flippantly as I have, I have second guessed my own ability to have a good time because of other people. There are games I have spent dozens, sometimes hundreds of hours on, because someone argued I had an obligation to calibrate myself to the whims of another person.  When calibrated to someone else’s whims, it’s easy to find yourself in positions of discomfort or pain. The desire to prove yourself to internet strangers, even those who don’t know or care that you exist, can cause you to contort yourself into positions where the fun becomes unfun.

Beyond society is our own personal inbuilt ability to carry bias. I am often embarrassed by the amount of times I just thought I knew better, or was somehow better than the game trying to instruct me. This could manifest as thinking I already knew the material and carried an in-built advantage, or just the smug certainty that I wouldn’t need to care.

This refusal to match with the fantasy of a game, either out of a misinterpretation of what the fantasy is or because of the dreams imposed by other people, leads to disconnection and friction. You throw yourself against the game’s mechanics; you burn yourself out doing the things the game isn’t demanding of you; you forget what you’re even doing this for.

This doesn’t even need to be out of bias; sometimes, our own prior experiences render us incompatible with a story. That is a topic one could discuss at length, but in short, sometimes it’s not anyone’s fault—there’s nothing to correct. The correct action is simply choosing to walk away and find something better aligned to your dreams.

I’ve made the mistake of not walking away many times myself. To illustrate how easy it is to fall into such mistakes, I shall share two such cases now. Mercifully, in these cases I learned from my mistakes with time; though, there is still the potential for me to make them again in the future. My intention is not to paint myself as a victim of circumstance. I am a fallible person but in making my mistakes public, perhaps you–and even I–might derive some meaning from it. 

Exhibit A: Beyond the Pale

We are once again forced to dwell in the bygone year of 2019 or so; forgive me, as an amnesiac I only have so many memories to call upon; we’re probably going to be here a few more times.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a 2019 FromSoft action game of some repute. I was not originally going to meet its release date—life circumstances being what they were—until a friend’s generosity saw my life’s trajectory once more altered. FromSoft had ridden high in my mind for years, hitting home run after home run; each of these releases from Dark Souls to Dark Souls 3 had compelled me into a hundred-hour transaction. I had expected Sekiro to be no different.  

To reiterate a rhetorical passage from an earlier review: I fucking hated it.

Sekiro, to my fascination, is simultaneously similar and dissimilar from FromSoft’s prior Souls offerings. The slashing of swords and the presence of bosses to slay is staple, yet there is only one primary melee weapon and no real “build-crafting” to its gameplay. “Stealth mechanics? In a FromSoft game? How odd!” many felt. Self-resurrection featuring prominently in its identity had many speculating if this wasn’t to be the easiest FromSoft game yet.

One internet firestorm and an incredibly funny copypasta later, it was determined this was not the case.

So, where did Lily fall on this?

First, some background context. Credits had been rolled on basically every contemporary FromSoft game in the Soulsborne sphere (even some Armored Core, but that is a story for yet another time). I was not immune to frustration or feelings of “stuckness,” but having played them some dozens of times to completion, I felt like I was well equipped for a new challenge. I don’t say this in the gross, gamer meritocracy way: a person need not have beaten the entire game with a plastic guitar or a banana before critiquing a game the internet likes. I say it primarily because it better articulates the mindset I was in. I was, I thought, someone at the best possible state to engage with Sekiro fairly.

I am not immune to the perspective-warping arguments that circulate around these games. I am mature enough to admit I had been subtly coerced into a mindset which did not suit growth. Playing the game with a big sword, no shield, no spells, no tools, without summons, friendless, very sweaty, made me hot or attractive or cool or all of the above, so said the internet; and up to that point, FromSoft’s games had not pushed back hard enough to disabuse me of that notion.

Then, I played Sekiro.

From the get-go, one could imagine Sekiro would be almost easier to fall into this mindset with. There were no summons; there weren’t any other weapons to make wrong choices with; there was no easy way to grind your problems away. The first few hours passed easily. The first enemies were dispatched with ease. I started appreciating the improved agility, the tactility of the audio queues of the parry system; I was permanently mutated into the plastic-plinking parry pervert who writes this essay now.

I found the first shinobi tool. Within moments, the previous web of connections and neurons in my fried, elitist brain drove me to an inevitable conclusion: this is to be discarded. Mentally, I cast it aside. It was something to distract me from the purity of my precious sword-fighting game. Even as the currency to use said shinobi tools accumulated in my inventory, I elected not to use them; I didn’t need it, so I wouldn’t use it.

The game, within a matter of hours, ceased to be particularly kind to me.

Enemies, now far greater in number, with far better weaponry for dealing with me, began to—phrased as delicately as I am able—kill the absolute fuck out of me. Bosses expanded beyond the scope of what I was capable of comfortably dealing with. Flailing, crab-crawling Voldo cosplayers; Headless corpses who would actually, literally, fist your soul out of your ass; a really, really fucked up bull.

How had my prior experience failed me so? I asked myself.

I managed, through immense effort and no small amount of mental-illness-induced refusal to give up, to get to the first Guardian Ape fight. I will not belabor this point. I got systematically and humiliatingly destroyed. I got destroyed in the way that makes you question why you even play video games. I got owned so hard it makes you feel like a child; like a bully has specifically targeted the load-bearing piece of your self-esteem and kicked it out from under you. I knew, even then, it was unhealthy to base this much of my self-worth on my performance in something as stupid as a game. I just didn’t care.

“I fucking hate this game,” I told anyone who would listen.

I dropped my controller and closed the chapter on Sekiro.

A year passed. A pandemic happened, and while I listlessly played what had been old comforts, Sekiro continued to gaze at me from my Steam library. I had nothing better to do, I reasoned, and I decided to take the plunge again.

The first chunk of the game passed in much the same way. I played, got frustrated, took breaks, came back. In lockdown, it wasn’t like I had much else to occupy my time, and the confidence-bruising boss fights couldn’t make my mental state much worse. Grinding away, I made many of the same mistakes and found myself descending the same path again.

Then, through sheer coincidence, I met a character I had not given much attention to previously. Isshin Ashina is an important character in Sekiro’s world. Mechanically, he is a vendor who grants you scrolls which improve your already robust abilities; narratively, he’s mentor, opposition, and provisioner of lore; but in that moment, he acted as a bridge between the narrative and the mechanics. He gave me the gift of a single set of lines.

“About the ways of the Ashina blade… It’s our school of fighting, but there are no hard and fast rules. You just win your battles. That alone is the most important rule of the Ashina style.”

It seems simple, but it was a revelation then—it single handedly broke down every wall in my way. “None of this honor shit matters, there are no rules,” he seemed to say, “just win.” The gears, previously grinding, found their tread; I had recalibrated.

Connecting to the fantasy of Sekiro—that of the Shinobi inured to bloodshed and willing to do anything to win—did not suddenly make the game easy. There were still fights to win or lose, there was still training I needed to grind into my fingers and hands. But suddenly, there were no rules to force myself to abide by. The game didn’t hurt anymore.

The idea of needing to synchronize with a game was certainly planted then, but had not grown. Arguably, it made a secondary, worse idea:

“I can’t trust my gut instinct. I need to give everything a fair shake or else I risk acting like this again.”

More to the point, it also made me hostage to the fear that I was “missing” something. People did not like things by accident; they were clearly seeing something you weren’t. This prompted me into the second parenthetical to come. A second revisitation and another anecdote; my apologies.

Exhibit B: A Perpetual State of Indifference

My partner is a superfan of Final Fantasy XIV. Over the course of about 3 years of our relationship, she tried to convince me to play it approximately 94,608,000 times. At the time, I smugly asserted—despite my previous and ongoing affection for the Final Fantasy series—it wasn’t for me.  MMOs were something I could not imagine the appeal of; the grinding, the social interdependency, and the general fantasy did not sit with me. The wrath of Counter Strike’s finest had ensured I wasn’t interested in environments where social conduct was something I needed to count on in others.

At heart, I’m still a romantic though. Seeing the excitement in her eyes during one of her visits from over 1500 miles away as she watched the world premiere of the Shadowbringers teaser trailer in 2018, I was inspired to give it a try.

To reiterate a rhetorical passage from earlier in this very article: I fucking hated it.

Once more, I’m emotionally mature enough to admit wrongdoing. I played Final Fantasy XIV wrong in just about every way possible to play it wrong. If Sekiro was the finger painting in the art of playing games wrong, this was me sculpting marble busts dedicated to playing them wrong.

I played the story singlemindedly, desperate to find these supposed “good parts” of this game. I walked when I could have rode, in a self-flagellating exercise in better hating this world I had begrudgingly paid money for. I pressed one button in a rotation, when I should have pressed three, all the while saying this game was brain-dead and empty for not forcing me to do better. I zoned out in dungeons and generally made my partner drag my limp body through slate-colored piss cave after slate-colored piss cave. I make myself sound more intentionally villainous in my misbehavior than perhaps is due; from my perspective at the time, I was trying; I simply did not understand how to make the gears click.

To me, the writing was pedestrian and slow, the worldbuilding was cool but constantly forcing me to run this-way-and-that doing favors for people. The coolest parts of the game, I believed, were inexplicably hidden behind hours of busy work. My partner put up with many thankless hours of my grumbling, intolerant prejudging to show me something she loved very much; and to spend time with me.

“Just get to Heavensward,” I told myself. “Just get there, and that’s where the game gets good.” That’s what I had been told, and I had no issues blindly believing it.

Imagine my disappointment then, when Heavensward gave me much of the same. Worse, it had introduced me to, at first blush, the exact sort of traditional fantasy that I went to Final Fantasy to escape from in the first place. Elves in a cold stone castle under attack by dragons.

“Babe. I can’t do this.”

“That’s ok. Thank you for trying it.”

And then we did something else. Even then, it made my heart hurt, disappointing someone I loved so much.

Then a pandemic happened. Then Sekiro happened. Then, as mentioned before, I doubted myself. I decided to give a game I maligned another chance.

So, I booted up Destiny 2. I played it for 500 hours during the pandemic in the most mentally ill state this body could manage and let me tell you: that game is still a piece of shit!

Then, after getting that out of my system, in 2021, I pivoted to Final Fantasy XIV.

It felt strange being back in this betrayed game. I reemerged into this virtual world in the same place, the same position now years later; time appearing to restart as I arrived. Overjoyed at my change of heart, my partner was once more along for the ride. Many of my grievances were still the same: stiff writing, banal world building, snow, dragons. Whatever.

Then, I found the Dark Knight questline. Then, I played the Dark Knight questline. I cried many incredibly complicated tears over the Dark Knight questline; an incredible number of mental-illness-related tears were shed because of the Dark Knight questline.  

Another set of clunking gears snapped into place. I found my calibration in the fantasy of the world. In a fashion, I discovered more than one fantasy could exist within the fantasy; if a dream was big enough, it could contain other dreams. Here was a class, a role in the game, whose writing seemed just as irritated at the banality of being a yes man to the whims of fate. Sometimes, you can’t help but express near vengeful derision at being used by people who don’t appreciate you. Yet, it is because you care about people, you care so much about being a protector for those the world would see fit to discard, you must care. Someone has to.

I wailed to myself. I had fucked up again. I had somehow managed to once again get a game completely wrong.

The game whispered, “I forgive you; I forgive you; I forgive you.”

After that, my avatar stopped being a polygonal cage and started being as real as the meat and blood I presently occupy. My calibration afforded me the ability to find a place in this virtual world. I could feel things about it; I could imagine that which the world did not stipulate. It wasn’t about difficulty or the right or wrong way of doing things. It was about reaching out just as far as the game reached to me; letting our gears intermesh until we could understand one another.

Final Fantasy XIV is now one of my most played games.  It’s something I still play frequently with my partner. This calibration to the fantasy of the game was not me somehow breaking or lowering my standards; I realized I just needed to be willing to allow myself to connect. The mechanics and the world design of XIV are often at odds. There are flaws in the way it presents the dream it wants you to feel—even I can admit that as a fan. But, even imperfect things can be worth finding value in, if you’re willing to try. Aligning myself, and discovering the dream that suited me within the fantasy, allowed me to care. I clicked into place and found my own in the many disparate dreams which make up this strange, slow, incoherent, beautiful world.

Force Your Way

My framework, my anecdotes, are not meant to convince you my perspective is correct. I have struggled for a long time to feel like I was enjoying things correctly; this is my little attempt to make this make sense to me. Finding the point of synchronicity between myself and a game was something I had to fight for.

Everyone dreams. Everyone has their little, illogical, private dreams. Maybe you imagine being the kind of person who can own a successful business or run an empire. Maybe you’re someone who dreams about brandishing a raw, impossible slab of iron, wielded to protect those who can’t protect themselves. Maybe you dream about just having the energy to clean your room or take care of yourself.

Our shared hobby has room for all these dreams. Allowing myself to sink into the dreams of others has allowed me to find and appreciate things I never knew were within me. Taking the time to think, “what is the fantasy the creator is trying to share with me?” has enabled me to find the stories that best sing to my soul.

I’m not saying thinking this way will liberate you from playing bad or mediocre games ever again, far from it. Playing many games just gives you much more opportunity to play something disappointing. For me, thinking this way is worth it. Games can succeed or fail at delivering a dream. They can do things badly or contradictory and you still endure the lost potential of what could have been. Trust me, I have been haunted by the thought of games just short of being amazing.

Really, this is not self-help. Art is profoundly useless; but it still might save you. This is an exercise for the soul. Feeling things is a muscle you need to exercise. Meeting a game halfway isn’t weakness or rule breaking. Sometimes, you just need to take your feelings out, rotate them in your palm, and find what you need right now.

Play isn’t something taught. You can’t intellectually get into a state of play. It’s something you find, feel, grow within yourself. In this hobby, and its attached parasitic industry, so obsessed with achievement and right and wrong ways of playing, it can be easy to forget this is something we do for fun. Even now, however, this is a part of you that remembers how to dream. This is a part, if you are like me, that you can grow, and grow, and grow; No matter what your age, it can grow. So, make it a pleasant dream, for your own sake.  

The post Mechanical Fantasies or: How I Made an Art Out of Playing Games Wrong appeared first on Gamesline.

John, Rose, and Lily come together to discuss a whole host of games and news! Games discussed include: Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster, Nuclear Throne, Time Snatcher Handy, Devil May Cry, Lone Fungus 2, Routine, Tales of Xillia Remastered, andElden Ring Nightreign: The Forsaken Hollows!

News discussed include: Netflix attempting to purchase Warner Bros., Micron exiting the consumer market, the passing of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, the possibility of Shenmue 4, the incoming fan translation of Segagaga, the file size shrinkage of Helldivers 2, and genAI usage in a new Postal game.

Plus, the crew take questions from you, the listeners! What games do they associate with the Christmas season? When has a game’s story been lessened by the player losing focus for only a moment? And which film directors should show up in a video game?

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Social Media @gamesline.net, Rose, Lily, and John.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and tell a friend about the show!

If you want to send in questions, send them to our email podcast@gamesline.net!

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Edited by Lorelai and Produced by John

The post The Gamesline Podcast Episode 77: Oomf May Cry appeared first on Gamesline.

John is joined by Rose, Nikolas, and Lily to go over an absolutely jam-packed week of video games. Various game company CEOs posted cringe, Half-Life 3 is becoming more real by the day, Disgaea 4 is better than it should be, Ghost of Yotei is funny but not in a haha way (okay maybe in a haha way a little), Digimon Story: Time Stranger is just okay, Left 4 Dead 2 is as good as we remember, and folks…It’s Devil May Cry Autumn.

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Social Media @gamesline.net, Nikolas, Lily, Rose, and John.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and tell a friend about the show!

If you want to send in questions, send them to our email podcast@gamesline.net!

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Edited and Produced by Lorelai

The post The Gamesline Podcast Episode 75: Blood and Surgical Steel appeared first on Gamesline.

John hosts Rose and Maverick on a bountiful episode of The Gamesline Podcast. This time, we learn what Switch 1 games are getting Switch 2 bumps on day one, discuss why Kingdom Hearts‘ latest mobile game was scrapped, the Marathon plagiarism debacle, and more! Plus, Rose lays out Hundred Line‘s quality, Maverick ruminates on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas‘ writing in 2025, and John keeps playing grindy RPGs for some reason.

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Social Media @TheGamesline, John, Rose, and Maverick.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and tell a friend about the show!

If you want to send in questions send them to our email podcast@gamesline.net

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

The post The Gamesline Podcast Episode 52: A Marathon Run Into the Ground appeared first on Gamesline.

As always, you can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Twitter @VGChooChoo, @ChorbySP, and @SolaireHazard

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via iTunes, hipcast, direct download, or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 378: PVPilled appeared first on Gamesline.

I don’t want to gloss over the abysmal reality of 2020 and its impact on everyone, but there also isn’t much I could say that you haven’t heard already: that you haven’t experienced already. Weathering such a year has exacted its toll on all of us, and I can only hope you and yours have taken care of each other in this hellstorm. For me, this past year was a time to dig through my backlog, to keep hacking away at digital art, and to try and make people laugh when the day’s work had them down. I will continue those goals moving forward because even though I’d say I met them spectacularly, they’re worth bringing into the new year once more.

While my list only features a few of the highlights in a dimly-lit year, these games helped me connect with my past, my friends, and myself, and I hope the connections you make going forward help you as much as these ones helped me.

V. Black Mesa

Many of my early childhood memories are watching my father play games on his computer. One of these was Half-Life, and I still remember him going down a spiral staircase into a flooded generator room, only to be ambushed by a headcrab zombie on his right flank. Every time I’ve replayed Half-Life and get to that part, the memory comes back and greeting that zombie with lead is like reaching into my past. While playing through Black Mesa, I felt more connections throughout my experience, as the Crowbar Collective team did a phenomenal job recreating and updating all parts of Half-Life.

Black Mesa isn’t a replacement for the original – both have their merits. Many old and influential games have been “remastered” or “remade” into more modern iterations. Some have been wonderful – some have been lacking. Out of all the remakes I’ve played, Black Mesa stands as the best example of how effective it can be to let your team take liberties with the source material. The Crowbar Collective has shown exceptional focus and an understanding of what made the original great. The lackluster Xen chapters in the original Half-Life, some of the most boring parts of that game, have been expanded upon to great effect and actually give narrative context that better bridges the gaps between the first and second Half-Life games.

Various touches throughout the game have simultaneously invoked those old memories of mine while forging new ones to sit alongside the old. My mind has two Half-Lifes now, and I couldn’t tell you which one I liked more.

IV. DOOM Eternal

I played DOOM Eternal well before touching DOOM 2016, though I had played original DOOM and DOOM II several years prior. I did end up playing through DOOM 2016 late last year, and I found myself realizing how mindless that game’s combat was. In Eternal, I developed various tactics for dealing with certain enemies. I’d use the Heavy Cannon’s scope function to snipe turrets off of Arachnotrons, weakening them and forcing them into melee range. I’d employ the Combat Shotgun’s grenade launcher to quickly dispatch Cacodemons whenever those funky meatballs showed up. It was a blast and I loved the dashing and movement mechanics they added. They felt like a logical step forward from the gameplay that I’d see later in my playthrough of DOOM 2016.

2016’s DOOM felt… sluggish by comparison. Like something was missing. I had just about the same arsenal as Eternal, but I wasn’t thinking much about which weapons I was using or what enemies I’d focus down first. As long as I kept moving and shooting I didn’t have much trouble, but the real issue was that moving was boring (compared to Eternal) and shooting was more intuitive than tactical (compared to Eternal.) I realize now that both of these approaches to DOOM worked. 2016 was more of an aesthetic overhaul of older DOOM games, while Eternal felt more like an evolution of the core gameplay into an FPS/Character Action hybrid. DOOM Eternal has more in common with Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, and that really clicked with me in a way that 2016 didn’t. I still enjoyed 2016, but I’m in Eternal’s camp without question. For me, I was sold on DOOM Eternal when the first Cacodemon showed up, looking like it was ripped straight from classic DOOM, and after opening it up for a Glory Kill, it made a hilariously cartoonish -pop- noise as I plucked its peeper out. Going back to DOOM 2016 and seeing how tepidly designed their meatballs are, the winner for Best Meatballs In Gaming is Eternal without question.

One last thing – the story elements in DOOM Eternal were more distinct than the ones in DOOM 2016, because Eternal both bought into and delivered on the lore set up by its predecessors. DOOM 2016 was content to stick lore snippets in menus, and focused on a story that may as well have asked “What if DOOM was in the MCU?” DOOM Eternal pulls from the entire library of DOOM history, enriching its story without sacrificing anything that makes DOOM fun or memorable. It sticks to “The Canon” without getting lost in its own guts about how special the franchise has been over the years. It doesn’t try to recreate DOOM like 2016: it tries to rip and tear its way into the modern era in new and refreshing ways, and it’s a wonderful addition to the DOOM catalog as far as I’m concerned.

III. Destiny 2: Beyond Light

I have long, long been a skeptic of Destiny as a franchise since its inception. Though that skepticism has always come from a place of having watched people early buy into it simply because of studio prestige. “Bungie made the Halo games, I liked the Halo games, therefore Destiny will be the new Halo games, and I will like them too and they will be the best games of all time and will single-handedly win video games forever, just like the Halo games did.” I played Halo 1 and 2, and enjoyed them, but never really got into the online multiplayer suites those two were known for. When people would claim that Bungie knew how to make shooting guns in video games feel good, I had no idea what they meant.

Boy oh boy, do I understand what they meant now. I’ve been playing Destiny 2 since Beyond Light launched back in November, and it all makes sense. I understand how this game has stuck around for so long, and why people enjoy it so much. I’m especially proud of a moment in the Last Wish raid where my friends and I were on a timer to kill the boss, as someone had died and we were out of revives. Using an exotic helmet, the Celestial Nighthawk, I activated my Super ability and shot the boss in the face with a single godkilling bullet that immediately took out the last chunk of her health instantly. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done in a video game.

That said, I also don’t understand why the game is designed the way it is. I come from the world of Final Fantasy XIV, where getting to the endgame can take hundreds of hours for a new player, but once you’re there, you can pick and choose which upgrades to get and how to get them. Destiny 2 is engram lootboxes all the way down – even your highest-tier rewards can be squandered by the game randomly deciding to give you an upgrade in the wrong gear slot. The gameplay is undeniably solid (even if I’d like a bit more balancing of subclasses so that some no longer only feel useful in PvE or PvP), and while the upgrade grind is laughably unconscionable, the worldbuilding and moment-to-moment experience is fantastic.

As for Beyond Light itself, I think it was silly how the story instilled this uneasiness and apprehension with The Darkness being an even more present entity, and then gleefully forces you to use the new Stasis powers to kill story bosses. I even tried forgoing Stasis in favor of my Solar abilities since that felt more in line with my character, but they straight-up made the bosses immune to damage at a certain point until you equip the Stasis powers. It’s very jarring. I wasn’t even expecting a narrative divergence – I simply wanted some fun bonus dialogue or a hidden triumph for defeating the Beyond Light bosses without Stasis. But no, the dark ice powers are a Big Selling Point of a Product, so they had to make it enticing for players to try out. It’s a shame, but funnily enough my favorite story moments in Destiny 2 overall don’t revolve around the epic boss fights and Big Story Sequences. The game’s storytelling is so good when it focuses on tiny moments with characters like Eris Morn, the Exo Stranger, the Crow, and even the coin-pervert Drifter himself. I’m looking forward to playing more Destiny 2, and it’s been fun so far – but please somebody tell them to play other MMO-style games so they understand why relying on engrams and RNG for everything is a bad idea.

II. Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition

This is one of the best games, which I know because I played through the main campaign before dealing with Vergil, and it’s made all the better with the inclusion of Vergil as a playable character. If Lady and Trish were playable characters as well, this would be beyond perfect. As it stands, there really isn’t much more I can say that hasn’t already been said as the main game has been out since 2019. It says a lot that this game is in my #2 despite me never really being a fan of Character Action games (until now).

Vergil isn’t even my favorite character to play, but he’s apparently my best since I effortlessly S-ranked the first five missions of his campaign whereas it took me quite some time to get an S-rank in the main campaign. Judgement Cut End is absurdly satisfying to use, to the point where I don’t even know why he has two other finishers – it’s like giving a double-edged sword two additional edges. One of my favorite parts is how he has a meter that builds if you stand still or “RP walk” toward your enemies, and drains if you act recklessly or run around like a fool. It’s a genuinely inspired design point and helps to put you into his mindset as you play him.

If you have never been a fan of Character Action games I implore you to try this one out. It’s unreasonably fun and I had no idea how expertly crafted these kinds of games could be until I got my hands on Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition. Unchained levels of enjoyment, Smokin’ Sexy Style — that’s all there is to say.

I. Arknights

Rare are the games that have such a keen sense of style and detail in their presentation. Being a tower defense gacha game, Arknights was fighting on two fronts to keep me interested and engaged, yet its acute sense of direction and design had me coming back all year. Tower defense games have never held my interest for more than a couple hours at most, and Arknights takes that framework and bolsters it by turning towers into characters with a wide array of classes, skills, and specialties. There’s enough strategic depth here to satisfy all kinds of team compositions, and even the weaker units can be linchpins if you play to their strengths.

One of my recent feats was perfectly completing the third “Annihilation” map. These are large-scale encounters where the goal is to take out as many enemies as possible while dealing with various waves and enemy formations. You get rewarded based on how many enemies you can take out before 10 of them get into your base, and if you defeat all 400 enemies, you increase your weekly reward limit. Most of the strategies online involved using heavy-duty casters or characters with absurdly powerful skills, and while I could’ve invested the time and resources to build those characters up, I wanted to do things my way instead. It took me several attempts, but I slowly improved my score – 320, 335, 350, 367, 395, 396, etc. The linchpin hero responsible for clutching out those last 4 enemy kills was Jessica: a 4-star operator who is given out for free after completing the third tutorial mission. I didn’t need SilverAsh and his Truesilver Slash. I didn’t need Eyjafjalla and her tower of lava. Give me the catgirl with the 9mm pistol.

On the gacha side of things, it’d be easy to think that the rarest characters are the best, and while it is true that six-star operators can be very powerful, that isn’t always the case. Certain skills or passive talents can make lower-rarity operators on par or even better than their six-star counterparts. It never feels like a unit in Arknights is completely useless. Even the 2-star tutorial characters are useful for the game’s base management minigame, which even lets you decorate living quarters with furniture to make them look like pizza shops, noodle vendors, cafeterias, or chill zones.

What really won me over, though, was Arknights’ absolutely incredible UI design. Every facet of the interface, from menus, to tooltips, to font choice and iconography is the most congruent with its aesthetics and gameplay that I’ve ever seen in a video game. While crisp, clean, minimalist UIs have become something of a trend in modern games, they often lack a lot of character and coalescence with the rest of the game’s aesthetics. Arknights, being a tower defense game where most of the gameplay is interfacing with menus, had to nail this aspect in its entirety, and they did so flawlessly.

The post Spencer’s Top Five Games of 2020 appeared first on Gamesline.

There’s a new Animal Crossing Uudate, the #fremelee hashtag has people mad at Nintendo, IO interactive is making a new James Bond game and MAG is having problems with their administration.

As always you can support us on our patreon, and follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @john_michonski, and @SolaireHazard

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via iTunes, Hipcast, Direct Download, or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 338: Play a Different Game appeared first on Gamesline.

As always you can support us on our patreon, and follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @john_michonski, @JudgmentScythe, @PunkParfait, and @Solonface.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via iTunes, Hipcast, Direct Download, or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 310: Bagged Milk Whales appeared first on Gamesline.

For me, this was a year where I started with a clear assumption that gradually got torn away as time went on. While I expected certain games to be in my good graces, and they absolutely still are, so many hidden threats seeped out of the woodworks and weaseled their way into my heart. On top of all the new hits, I actually went back to play a bunch of older games for the first time, such as games I’ve meant to play for years and years but never really got around to doing it. To start off my list, I’m gonna write a few bits about those games, and why I think they hold up, and should be given a shot even today.

The Atelier Series

I’ve been meaning to play the Atelier series for like, what, five years or something? I’m huge on the Neptunia games and they’ve always been sold to me as those but with an extra bit of polish and a whole lot more gameplay direction. For once I actually feel like that selling point was right on the money, and boy does it rule. The Atelier games are all about cute girls doing alchemy and going on adventures with friends and family members while they solve generally laid back mysteries. While there are some entries that go more serious than others, I’ve found myself especially enjoying the Dusk Trilogy of games, which take place in a really grim post apocalyptic world, but almost entirely ignore this. Using a grim spooky setting as the backdrop for upbeat lesbian adventures is like my fucking ambrosia and if you’re the type of person who maybe is into that sort of thing then I highly recommend picking up Atelier Ayesha or Escha and Logy if you get the chance.

Final Fantasy VIII

So I haven’t gotten incredibly far into FF8, but I am absolutely in love with pretty much everything it has going on. This is a AAA juggernaut revolutionary game for the time where they make you spend like five minutes watching a man freak out and get a leg cramp falling over himself trying to ask a girl out on a date. For the time especially that’s incredible, and I found myself continuously impressed by more and more of the game’s presentation and ideas. People say a lot of games were ahead of their time, and that usually applies to complete failures or overlooked niche hits. I’d argue, however, that Final Fantasy VIII was the type of game that was absolutely appreciated for specific reasons back in 1999, and can be appreciated for even more twenty years later. Oh yeah the draw system by the way? Kicks ass. You know it’s a good FF game when everyone’s a Blue Mage.

Titanfall 2

You know I do a whole lot of talking about how Halo Reach is my favorite shooter of all time, and like, one of the best games ever made. In the time since Halo Reach, I’ve been increasingly disappointed both inside and outside the Halo series, as everyone tried desperately to either throw out any semblance of clever design and balance in favor of aping Call of Duty, or worse, Battle Royales. Titanfall 2 however, is one of the best damn shooters I have ever played and it is a CRIME that it didn’t get the staying power of any other big name shooter. With tons of options for traversal, a bunch of different mechs that all feel meaningfully different, and a co-op mode that’s a thousand times better than the suckfest that is Call of Duty Zombies, there’s just so much to do that it’s always a fun time. Sure the game is a little rough around the edges, with a very freemium style UI and an aesthetic that is simultaneously the best and worst, but it’s still a game I kept having a blast in no matter how many hours I threw in. I still haven’t even done the campaign which everyone hypes up so much, and I’m this in love with it! Please try it if you can because it’s a hell of a lot better, and has a much more cohesive design philosophy than any other FPS released in the last decade.

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age

https://t.co/bUyb7Lrf6R pic.twitter.com/RZ361MOIbl

— RMT (@horngal) June 18, 2019

I like the Dragon Quest games now! As someone who actively avoided the franchise because I thought they would be incredibly boring and ugly, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed playing through the eleventh major installment. Though I still don’t care for the overall appearance of the game, something about seeing high fidelity Toriyama characters works surprisingly well, and the monster designs more than make up for whatever disgusting humanoids the game throws at you over the course of its 100+ hour campaign. Though the series did end up being as faithful to the core tenants of a JRPG as I expected, that never made it boring, and the characterization of even the most simplest of mechanics made things feel much more impactful than they actually would’ve seemed to be. I’m excited to dig into a bunch of the back catalog of this endless thousand game long series now that I know more about it, and maybe finally understand what’s going on with that crazy “Rocket Slime” guy everyone’s always talking about.

Also!

So yeah! Go play those games! I also highly recommend Radiant Historia, specifically for the 3DS. It’s a great game that uses time travel in an actually clever and well considered way, and I really enjoyed it for its unique tone and feeling. Crosscode is a pretty good banger from last year too, taking the atmosphere and concepts of an MMO and popping them into a puzzle-filled RPG. Anyways, 2019.

10: Indivisible

Indivisible is by no means a perfect game, but it’s also one that I genuinely had a blast playing for almost the entire time I spent with it. Sure the backtracking got a little annoying, and there was a lot left to be desired in the story department, but I found myself completely unable to put this game down until I beat it which is something that has become increasingly rarer as the years have gone on. Hopefully with future updates inbound, Lab Zero can clean up any of the lingering issues with the game because there really is a lot to like. With a colorful cast, satisfying thwacks, and a whole bunch of womens for me to go “wahow!” at, I think Indivisible was well worth the time I gave it.

9: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

I might not be the wildest Castlevania head out there but god damn do I love me Symphony of the Night. With the rough history of Kickstarter-backed spiritual successors, everyone was afraid that Bloodstained might just sputter out and die at release but luckily this wasn’t even close to a Mighty No. 9. There’s so many systems in this game that it sometimes gets overwhelming, but interacting with them and fooling around with exploration and different character builds is still fun in a way that pretty much no other game in the Metroidvania genre has done in years. It was pretty easy to cheese most of the game, but you get to do so by turning into a bunny girl demon so who can possibly say if it’s bad or not? There’s still lots of content coming to this game down the line, and I’ll totes dive back in for some more hoppin’ and choppin’.

8: Kingdom Hearts III

Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever thought that a Kingdom Hearts game could end up this low on a top ten list, but Kingdom Hearts III really gutted me in a lot of bummerific ways. It was still fun, and it was an outrageous spectacle in the way that I expect Kingdom Hearts to be, but there was just something…off about the whole thing. I don’t know if it was an overfocus on the Disney side of things, a mostly sterile interpretation of those properties from a series that once pit Cloud Strife against Hercules with complete and utter sincerity, but after waiting over ten years for a true blockbuster follow up to Kingdom Hearts II, we got what feels like yet another side game. 

There are moments where Kingdom Hearts III shines, where it delivers on years and years of plot build up and emotionally resonates with the deepest most innocent parts of our brains. Unfortunately for each time of triumph, there’s a handful of “what could have been”s and “what should have been”s. Throw into that the series’ worst handling of female characters to date and damn, I just couldn’t help but shake my head. I still love Kingdom Hearts, and I’m excited to play the DLC, but Kingdom Hearts III deserved better than this.

7: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

I like that when i see a boss for the first time now this is how it goeshttps://t.co/aJ00OyZt11 pic.twitter.com/h0NPxAgUIB

— RMT (@horngal) March 29, 2019

When Sekiro is good? It’s easily one of the best games you could ever play in your entire life. Full of blistering high speed high stakes combat- the natural progression of FromSoftware’s design ethos after Bloodborne– this is a game that rewards your mastery of its mechanics more than almost any you or I could name. The fight against Genichiro on the top of the castle towards the middle of the game is one of the best vibe checks in gaming; one that’s patient but demanding. Gradually unraveling the ways you can use your sword to fuck shit up feels sooo satisfying, and the adrenaline you get from slamming your sword into any of the game’s bosses after a long battle feels amazing.

When Sekiro is bad though? It really just bums you all the way out. For a game that succeeds at 1v1 battles, it has a propensity to increase the difficulty by just…tossing in an identical second enemy that you have to contend with. This wouldn’t be a problem if you could use your tools more but all of your tools use up /the same/ currency that doesn’t even regenerate upon death so you always feel like you have to save them rather than actually experiment with them. Sometimes fights go on just a little too long (looking at you final boss), and sometimes they’re just way too short! While I appreciate FromSoft branching out and getting a little wild with their game format, and I think that they mostly pulled it off, I wish they had the courage to not rely on a lot of the trappings people have come to expect from Souls games to complete their package.

6: Death Stranding

God I wish I was the babyhttps://t.co/l3ZVZ9Qk8z pic.twitter.com/sp2Z3IJfEh

— RMT (@horngal) November 22, 2019

Speaking of games I wish weren’t held back by something hey when the hell is Kojima going to let himself have a proper invested editor again? I’m of the mind that when it comes to designing and executing on unique game mechanics Kojima is almost second to none. The man has an incredible way of nailing not only a consistent atmosphere that keeps you engrossed but incredibly wacky and imaginative things to do that no one else would even dream of trying. It’s just a shame he has to hold himself back with his weird hyper specific tastes and mediocre script writing! Why!

MGS V, while being one of my favorite Metal Gear games, already painted a troubling picture for what Kojima considered to be “a good story,” and Death Stranding pretty much followed its exact blueprint. While I loved the core gameplay loop of Death Stranding, the social narrative of creating easier ways for others to play the game alongside you, and the overwhelming and oppressive atmosphere the world cultivates, the core narrative was kind of just a bummer. More than anything it made me feel disappointed in the game as a whole, a cohesive whole brought down by some of the worst D grade TV writing has to offer. 

That said though the gameplay was truly incredible stuff that one would never have expected from a major AAA release. Walking is a big deal that actually matters, combat is a tertiary system you want to mostly avoid, and you spend most of the game building roads and other random structures out in the middle of the wilderness so that you get “likes” which don’t actually do anything! It’s great! When people call Kojima a visionary it’s because of stuff like this, these are really great, unique, and well implemented ideas that make Death Stranding a game like no other. I just hope that for Kojima’s next project he can maybe get someone else to proof his work, that way we can get a whole lot less of Die-Hardman telling us how to recharge a motorcycle’s battery over and over, and more of Die-Hardman telling us how stacking pizza correctly is real important shit.

5: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

There’s not much I can say other than I love Fire Emblem so of course this is here, here are some miscellaneous thoughts. 

• Some of this game’s writing sucks ass but almost all of the character writing is top notch stuff. It relies heavily on tropes, but the way that each member of your house plays off each other means you’re gonna have a hard time not falling in love with all of your rowdy students/soldiers/killing machine. 
• It’s not Fire Emblem Fates: The Incest Olympics! 
• Edelgard is my wife.
  

  4: Disco Elysium

Man we never get any fuckin’ real RPGs anymore! Ever since Mass Effect and the Bioware format in general took to the scene we’ve had to sit by and watch as voiced protagonists and bombastic set pieces limited what could happen in experiences meant to be molded out of various options. While there’s been plenty of stuff going on in the CRPG scene between hits like Pillars of Eternity and Divinity: Original Sin, the combat in those games has always been a huge hill I could never overcome due to various issues and personal sentiments. Thankfully Disco Elysium came, kicked ass as a completely original Role Playing Game, and didn’t make me do a million clickings or strategizings to experience what it had to offer.

I feel like everyone’s said what makes Disco Elysium good by now, but I’m just gonna reiterate that, it’s very good. Kim is one of the best partners in video games, and gradually seeing what kind of person he is over the course of your interactions humanizes him in a way that most writers could only dream. The character building is incredibly unique with a huge slew of unique personality options that most games would never consider “something you spec into.” I don’t want to spoil anymore of this game than what you might’ve seen online but if you love to read and enjoy leftist politics I cannot recommend Disco Elysium enough.

3: Control 

Control Rules https://t.co/eNF4P0fQXO pic.twitter.com/vNhOOyqRcb

— RMT (@horngal) September 1, 2019

I am the hardcore Alan Wake head. I think at Video Game Choo Choo, more than any other website, you will find a lot of Alan Wake heads. With good reason too! Remedy has this incredible style and direction that they put into all of their games that few can even dream of matching. Wearing their influences on their sleeves, Remedy has the courage to do what no one else in the business is even trying to do: Incorporate both musical sequences, and Full Motion Video to full effect in a 2019 big budget title. 

Seeing an SCP game brought to life outside of the clunky vaporware that is Containment Breach is the best shit ever, and having it all be delivered in a similar format to the best television show of all time, Twin Peaks: The Return? Incomparable stuff. Add in a strong female lead who doesn’t rely on any tropes to be sick as hell, a ton of easter eggs about Alan Wake, and some of the most thought out and realistic environmental design that actually encourages you to read signs to figure out where to go next (!!!) and you have a recipe for yet another Remedy classic.

2: Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers

1: Devil May Cry V

The hype shithttps://t.co/bdm1DWFHsT pic.twitter.com/2VIqxrJRhG

— RMT (@horngal) March 26, 2019

Pullin’ shots – aimin’ dots – Yeah I don’t miss

Branded by Fire – Born in the abyss

Red hot temper – I just can’t resist

All this vengeance inside me

All of these thoughts runnin’ through my head

Arm on fire, veins burnin’ red

Frustration is gettin’ bigger

Bang Bang Bang – Pull my Devil Trigger!

The post Rose’s Top Video Games in The Year of Pandering to Her appeared first on Gamesline.

As always you can support us on our patreon, and follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo , @horngal, @yourpalniall and @John_Michonski.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to podcast@videogamechoochoo.com, or into our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask

You can also join our discord channel at thegamezone.zone !

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via iTunes, Hipcast, Direct Download or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 256: Vacuum Sealed appeared first on Gamesline.