AtheistPreacher talks about the fourteen video games that he enjoyed playing the most in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-five.
AtheistPreacher talks about the fourteen video games that he enjoyed playing the most in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-five.
I haven’t blogged in a while, and it’s probably because I tend to have unrealistic expectations for myself of feeling like I need to write about 5,000 words on something for it to be “blog-worthy.” I’ve decided that the solution is to simply write about several things at once in shorter form. Hopefully you’ll all still find it amusing. For this blog I’ll be discussing three very different piece...
I’ve been on a bit of a visual novel kick recently. It started when a did a blog on a pervy gay visual novel I’d played about half a decade ago, which on balance was good but not great. I got a number of suggestions for other visual novels I could try in the comments, and ended up playing Our Life: Beginnings & Always , which I absolutely adored . I’d long been pretty dismissive of visual novel...
About a week ago, when it looked like the site would soon be gone for good, @bladeofcreation started a thread entitled “ I’m Ready to Speak My Truth ,” and admitted actually liking Redfall . A brave thing to admit, we can all agree. In the same spirit, I made a confession of my own : As long as we’re making confessions, some years ago I played a kickstarted erotic BL/gay-themed visual novel gam...
I’ve been a little bored with video games lately. Part of that is likely just a cyclical mood thing, but another part is probably that I’ve been anticipating Monster Hunter Wilds (out in about 48 hours as I write this), and when you’re anticipating a game, everything else can seem a little lackluster in comparison. Nothing over the past few months had really been able to get me out of my funk.....
Had to share this because it really tickled me. When Freelancer Mode launched on January 26, 2023—almost two years ago now—it came with one bug that I found particularly annoying: the "ICA Outstanding Service Coin" was unobtainable. It would never show up in a shop to buy, and would never show up in the crate of tools as a post-mission reward. In the latter case, the game is supposed to randoml...
I’m doing something slightly different with my list this year: I’m going to list games in the rough order that I played them (one might say an autobiographical ordering), rather than picking a ranked order. That’s simply because I was having trouble coming up with a ranked list that I felt good about. No one game (or couple of games) stood out to me as head-and-shoulders more enjoyable than the...
Actually, this blog could just as easily be called “My month of tech upgrades,” since I bought all this stuff between mid-November and mid-December. However, “year” seems more appropriate since all but one of the devices I’m replacing has seen at least eight years of service. There are essentially two major reasons why I decided to buy all this stuff now. The first reason is one that I already...
So I beat this thing... almost twice, actually. More on that shortly. I had some vague ambition of doing a lengthier blog on this game comparing it to the Persona games in some detail, much as I did with RE4 and last year's remake. But I'm feeling a little too lazy to do that right now. Instead, here's some shorter and less organized thoughts, mostly about the game's setting. I'll first say, as...
I enjoyed my time with Diablo 4 last year and placed it at #5 on my GOTY list , but even so, the game had issues and there was clear room for improvement. E.g., leveling was too grindy, stash space was a problem, and there was really very little to do at endgame after capping your character level at 100. It was definitely a better game than Diablo 3 had been at its own launch (remember the auct...
I’ve more or less given up on trying to craft this “blog” into some kind of coherent whole that all hangs together and flows nicely, etc. Err… sorry? What can I say, writing is hard and time-consuming, and I think I’m just going to have to be content with blurting out a list of fairly disconnected thoughts about this game, some longer and some just quick hits. Hopefully you’ll find something in...
I’m posting my GOTY list unfashionably early this year because, looking ahead at the upcoming releases, there’s nothing else this year that I’m looking to buy at launch. As usual, if time and money were no objects, there are other games I would have liked to try, like the Dead Space remake or the recently released Alan Wake II . But any other tentpole 2023 releases are things for which I’m prob...
Lords of the Fallen was released on October 13, a sequel of sorts to the 2014 game of same name. Like its predecessor, it wears its influence on its sleeve—it makes no attempt to hide the fact that it’s aping the formula of From Software’s Soulsborne titles. In fact, it looks and feels more like a Soulsborne game than any other pretender to the crown to date. Whether that’s a good thing or not...
The free new mode is out for Hitman 3 (now renamed to Hitman: World of Assassination ), and I'd been looking forward to it since it was announced early last year as something that might help reinvigorate my interest in the game. I love Hitman , but at some point you've done everything there is to do. I've spent a few hours playing it today and have some thoughts. For the most part, I think the...
I’ve always voted in the GB Community GOTY poll, but have never actually posted my own list. Partly that’s because I’ve rarely had ten games that I’ve felt that good about in a single year (not that these things actually need to have exactly ten games), and I’ve also usually felt like I had little to add to the discussion, and that there were too many things I had never gotten around to playing...
In two words: knife durability. I already didn’t this mechanic in the RE2 remake, but bringing it into RE4 is manifestly more egregious because it fundamentally clashes with the gameplay loop and mechanics in a way that it didn’t in RE2. My aim here is to explain why that’s the case. But first let’s look at how knives worked in the other RE games and the changes in the design that happened. Ear...
Recently released for PS4, PS5, and PC (Epic), the “2D Souls -like” Salt and Sacrifice is a game I really wanted to like. And for the most part, I do like it. I’ve logged a little over 44 hours on it so far, and mostly enjoyed myself. But there’s no denying that the game has problems. Its tight and well-executed core gameplay is marred by some bizarre design decisions, and by a bunch of minor U...
Rogue Legacy 2 has just hit version 1.0 , and I knew I wanted to post something about it for the release. I’m not sure I would call what follows a “review,” if only because I love this game so much that I find it hard to be all that objective about it (for the record: I’ve logged 174 hours on the early access version of the game). But hopefully someone out there will find it informative and be...
Possibly the most impressive fan remaster of a video game to date? Way back in February 2014, two RE4 superfans—Albert Marin and Cris Morales—officially began work on their ambitious RE4 re-texture project, making their first blog post about their intentions. It was originally meant to be purely an HD texture pack. But in the course of eight years—in which Albert and Cris toiled away for more t...
My only regret is that I don't have video. I was playing on PS5, which I think even has a function to capture the previous 30 seconds if you're on the ball about it. But the whole thing was so astonishing that it never occurred to me. I was playing the current double-target on Sapienza. I believe the Congressman target was an old target from the first game, and that the second target was added...
I really liked the first Nioh , so much so that I logged 640 hours and 34 minutes playing it. It was a unique combination of combat that split the difference between Ninja Gaiden and From Software's Souls titles, plus a Diablo -like color-coded loot system, all of which are things I like. I've already pre-ordered the special edition of Nioh 2 (out on March 13, about a month away as I write this...