As soon as I've put "metroidvania" in the grave I'm going after "roguelike/roguelite" next because it's damn embarrassing that you have to keep distinguishing between a genre and its diet version like that. It's like describing a game "it's not as violent as KOF; it's more a Shover than a Fighter."

Been playing some of the fourth SFC Goemon game (Kirakira Douchuu) and, damn, this is considerably worse than the previous three. To the extent that it feels like a completely different team worked on this and biffed it horribly. Makes sense now why they didn't add a numeral to this one.

It should be so easy to make it look like he died naturally of a heart attack, what are we doing here?

If I ever become one with the internet like the Lawnmower Man I'm just going to go around deleting errant apostrophes from the possessive "it's", plurals, acronyms, and numbers in everybody's posts/comments. Like the Greek gods of old I intend to get obnoxiously petty with my omnipotence.

YouTube is perhaps the only website I visit regularly that can both crash and freeze up. A marvel of technology. Will its owners spend any of the billions that site makes on fixing it? Nah, they should spend more on AI algorithms that demonstrably don't work and then pocket the rest. Business 101.

I've been watching someone play Mario 64 for the first time with a sense of smug superiority, since I know the game back to front, when all of a sudden he grabs one of those koopa shells inside the oysters and I'm all "wait, you can do that?". There really is no end to that game's little secrets.

Whenever I see Greg Bovino's name on here I keep thinking it's this guy: achewood.com/2007/11/01/t...

Getting the Plat for Kena was roooooough. That game on its highest difficulty thinks it's Dark Souls and it very much is not. Great looking game though; dig the whole Kubo and the Two Strings aesthetic. Oh, and I recorded this for anyone curious about the difficulty: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkYT...

Now that RetroAchievements has implemented Multiset compatibility I can finally unlock all 852 Dark Cloud 2 achievements in a single playthrough. Should tide me over for the weekend at least.

I'm glad I found out that the PS5 saves video clips of every trophy earned by default sooner rather than later. That would've filled up the ol' SSD quick.

In honor of his creator's passing, Dilbert's tie will be raised at half-mast today.

2025 is officially over with the last Mento's Month of the year! Shoehorned most of my GOTY content into this one, since I'd already written about them all elsewhere, plus thoughts on the season/year's anime and a dramatic finale to that Master System thing I was doing giantbomb.com/users/4945/a...

The monkey power-up alone turns Astro Bot from a 5-star game to a 4-star one. Unforgivable to make speedrun courses with this garbage. (The game also has serious hitbox issues throughout but, man, that horrible ape climbing mechanic in particular though.)

I'm finally done talking about Blue Prince in lists/blogs/whatnot and sad I never got to use the alternative title I came up with, 50 First Estates.

Everyone else was writing GOTY stuff and I let the peer pressure get to me, so here's the Giant Bomb Site Moderators (a.k.a. "Those Jerks") GOTY list that I contributed to: giantbomb.com/articles/gia...

As a writer, I've let go of most of my linguistic bugbears over time because the internet is largely ESL doing the best they can and I don't need to litigate every its/it's typo. Yet using "prequel" incorrectly will always irk the hell out of me. It's a very specific word w/ very specific usage.

I hope the developers of Clair Obscur don't feel dismayed by how many people only refer to it by its subtitle, because to me that suggests everyone wants more from the series and they're only referring to this one by the subtitle to preemptively distinguish it from its sequels.

While writing my year-end review I've been trying to find the right term for an apparent phenomenon where the Japanese government boosts anime/TV about raising kids to address the country's flagging birth rates, and I managed to land on "papaganda".

This one hurts, ngl. www.eurogamer.net/falcom-is-th...

I hope there's a "Best Unseen Character" category for GOTY awards this year, between the jacked nudists of Expedition 60, whomever kept leaving me money in Blue Prince, and this dude (who is someone I can get into) from Avowed:

After seeing folks struggle on some of its new superbosses, I think Clair Obscur's major design insight was taking Final Fantasy X as a template and (correctly) deducing that Sin wasn't the real final boss but rather it was the time when you had to perfectly dodge lightning 200 times in a row.

I'm all for some studios using genAI. With tons of games coming out every year (not to mention the backlog) it'd make things so much easier to know which of them I can safely abandon because they're made from garbage-ass lake-guzzling beep-boop slop.

Just under the wire before the big site transition, I managed to publish the November edition of my usual round-up of game and anime talk. Stick around for thoughts on many potential 2025 GOTY candidates along with... ALF, for Master System. Truly, time well spent. www.giantbomb.com/forums/gener...

Man, I've been playing some Blue Prince but this is not doing anything for me at all. The run-based aspect is really putting me off. I've heard it said that it grows on you once you understand it more so I'll give it a few more runs, but... well, plenty of other games came out this year.

Credits rolled on Clair Obscur. Damn. Lot I want to say but that'll wait for a review. Yet to play much from 2025 but I can't imagine anything will surpass it as my GOTY. Last time a French RPG made me this sad and confused was when I got ate by that giant panther head signpost in Drakkhen.

Of all the surreal and confusing things about Expedition 33, the one that keeps me awake at night is how no-one can do basic math about the Gommage (a.k.a. Compulsory Carousel Age) mechanic.

Look, guys, the holiday Coca Cola commercial might be super rushed AI slop this year but it was vitally important they got it on screens before November 3rd, the first day of Christmas, so what other choice did they have? They're just a tiny company, after all.

Liking Expedition 33 so far but the whole time I was thinking "old French RPGs used to be way weirder and more obtuse than this, it's not really honoring its antecedents". But then I got hit with whatever this is and all was forgiven:

I'm a big fan of City Hunter because it's in my favorite genre, Saebapunk.

New monthly update has landed and I perhaps overdid it this time with the word count. Talking points include: formative frights, puppet parries, aristo assaulting anime, spooky Sega, intriguing Indies, sketchy sudoku, and a really cool Picross 3D variant. Check it: www.giantbomb.com/profile/ment...

Follow @wario64.bsky.social and repost for a chance to win 1 of 5 Steam codes for Once Upon a Katamari courtesy of @gamesplanet.bsky.social. Giveaway closes on Oct 27th, 6:30 PM PT Game is $32.97 on Gamesplanet w/ code KATAMARI buff.ly/j4qOsMG

On the one hand, YouTube updating their video UI so it covers a quarter of the screen for some reason is kinda bad, but at least it's an update that doesn't explicitly involve vindictively screwing with people that use adblockers.

One month before my plan to spend a bunch of Bing points on Game Pass to play some of the year's biggest games before GOTY season, and they just go ahead and discontinue that offer while hiking up the price. Classy.

September update is in the bag. Discussion topics this time: three whole exploraction games since I have no self control, prototype picross, a deluge of SNESsy goodSNESs, crimesolving ducks, space turtles, and the summer's best anime (that I felt like watching): www.giantbomb.com/profile/ment...

Just finished a month-long series looking at some of the more off-beat offerings in the vast SNES library. For October: maybe some games released this century? www.giantbomb.com/profile/ment... www.giantbomb.com/profile/ment... www.giantbomb.com/profile/ment... www.giantbomb.com/profile/ment...

Shigeru Miyamoto in a 1991 interview, probably: "When creating Super Mario World it was important to us that we balanced fun, challenge, and imagination. Something new and exciting in every level." Every SMW hack level designer, kaizo or otherwise: "yo how many chargin chucks can i fit into this"

While I do think the response to Sunshine's relatively tepid reviews (like 8.9s instead of 9s) should've been "let's spend three more months on the next one to fix all the darn bugs" and not "let's just go fully stage-based again but with 3D," Galaxy's still kinda unimpeachable.

Either a whole bunch of people on my timeline are watching the end of Star Trek: Generations for the first time or they're talking about a different Kirk getting merked.

New monthly rundown for August! For this sibilant summation we scrutinized: Slayers, Shinobi (not the new one), space subterfuge, seasonal anime, Saturn jigsaws, Scrooge, and... Selda: Ocarina of Time. Dang. Almost had it. www.giantbomb.com/profile/ment...

With this piece where I finally watch Slayers, the fourth season of Game OVA comes to an end. It's been a great deal of fun this summer so I hope folks check in to see what the '90s anime-to-video-game adaptation circuit was like (not as bleak as you'd expect?). www.giantbomb.com/profile/ment...

Does TikTok/YouTube Shorts have like a dropdown menu of generic music tracks to put over your clip the same way Twitch has its default emotes? I hear the same half-dozen in almost every video and they all sound like weird royalty-free things.

Guys, I'm worried they'll make my OS defunct soon. At this rate I'll have to jailbreak on through to the other side.

New monthly update! We have Master System tie-ins, strange N64 hacks, summer anime debuts, Mystic Quest apologia, a bunch of sci-fi Indies, and that one Pinocchio game people seem to like: www.giantbomb.com/profile/ment...

16 of those pages cover the cutscenes, the other 600 are for all the "What was that? ...Just the wind" stealth sequence ambient dialogue. That, and notes in the margin by Druckmann saying "this wind line is powerful because it metaphorically intimates how ephemeral human lives are in this world".

Couldn't pick a favorite for #randomgametuesday so here's a few of them:

Playing some totally normal Super Mario 64.

Just booted up Axiom Verge 2 and the achievement set requires you complete the game at least five times. Sigh. Why can't devs figure this shit out? We've had these things almost 20 years now.

The 7th greatest N64 game deserved better than this. (For context: www.giantbomb.com/profile/ment...)

I also have a Considerable Unease of Missing Out with regards to becoming mayor of NYC.