A Green Mushroom

Cyberpunk 2077 finally released the current gen version of the game this year alongside patches that fixed a lot of the bugs and major complaints from early reviews.  I had been waiting for it to hit that point so I grabbed it on sale and ended up liking it enough to play through the whole game. That being said, this game is mostly... fine.  It's a fine game.  It's not amazing but not horrible either. The fidelity of the world they've created is a huge achievement.  Night City feels well realized.  I was impressed by the overall look and feel of the game. But the gameplay wasn't great.  It felt like so many first person western RPGs that I've played before.  If you've ever played an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game, this is very similar.  The combat is serviceable but not actually very fun moment to moment.  There's a lot of side content but ultimately not much reason to engage with it.  The main story is what kept me interested enough to f...

Citizen Sleeper may be my favorite cyberpunk story ever.  I loved this game. Citizen Sleeper is an interactive storytelling game.  It has some visual novel elements, but it also has dice rolling, and also some resource management.  I've never been able to click with actual visual novels because there's not enough interaction for me.  This game hits the sweet spot of having some gameplay mechanics to grapple with to get you to the next story beat while still being primarily about the story. And the story is truly what makes Citizen Sleeper land for me.  I don't have the space here to talk through everything that happens... and I wouldn't want to spoil it anyway.  But, I will say that Citizen Sleeper deals with deep thoughts about what makes a person a person.  It delves into whether you are you mind or your body while also tackling themes of chronic conditions through the cyberpunk lens. I hope this one turns into an indie darling in game of the year di...

  The Stanley Parable is a game I missed out on when it originally came out.  I played something like 10 minutes of it, didn't get what it was trying to do, and set it down. Last week, a newly updated "Ultra Deluxe" version of the game came out on basically all the consoles.  People were finally talking about it more openly instead of being cagey around the core premise and I quickly realized the game is very meta and very much about exploring different choices over and over again in the same game.  I decided to give it another shot and am glad I did. I kind of love this game.  I also now see why it was so hard for people to talk about.  To give any concrete examples from the game is inherently to spoil some of the core fun. But, I can talk a little bit about what this game is.  At it's core, it could be reduced to a "walking simulator" but that doesn't do it justice.  It's also a choose your own adventure... and an examination of what makes a gam...

  Chrono Cross The Radical Dreamers Edition is a remaster of the original PS1 game that just released a few weeks ago.  I played the original Chrono Cross when it first came out so I wanted to dip back into it to see if it held up to my memories. I'm honestly kind of surprised that I stuck with it, finished the whole game, and generally enjoyed the experience.  There's some roughness around the edges and there are a lot of things that wouldn't fly in modern games from a quality of life features perspective, but all of that is because it was a PS1 game and this is just a remaster. They did end up adding a few things that help if you feel like enabling them.  There's a battle boost, a no encounter mode, an autobattle mode, and (my favorite) the speed up mode.  Speed up mode in particular went a long way towards making this game more acceptable through a modern gaming lens.  I basically had the speed up enabled in every battle and every time I was exploring th...