April 2026
Awkward April
Ongoing
FFXIV
Guilty Gear Isuka
The black sheep of the series and only now do I understand why. Not only does it not want to run well out of a fresh install… but it plays terribly too. Trying to change window sizes, resolutions, and trying to get a controller or leverless to work were all battles each on their own. Even when I got my leverless to work… I found I could not switch directions without throwing or being thrown. Of course once I got everything mostly functioning I felt that the game was more of a beat ‘em up than a fighting game… Imagine my surprise when there is a mode just like that and plays wayyyyyy better than the story/arcade. The arcade mode is absurdity incarnate. You don’t go up a bracket but instead get to the next fighter by leveling up during your fights. After so many levels you start to fight increasingly difficult opponents and even multiple at a time. It gets chaotic to say the least and whatever was meant to be the health bar… well it was lost to me. If you manage to get through the onslaught of chaotic battle all the way to level 100… you face the boss. Dear lord does this boss suck as it’s only damagable part is at jumping attack height and it has many attacks to push you back and/or ignore yours. I’ll give the boss credit, it’s definitely a unique design.
Frankly, after the arcade mode I was only willing to give the beat ‘em up mode a bit of my time before shelving the game for good. The experience was just that awful. It was only during the beat ‘em up mode that I realized there was a button specifically for switching direction… though I don’t think it ever worked on my actual arcade run anyways.
Recommend? No… just no.
Fighter of Choice: Bridget
Smash bros like but with a fairly limited roster of characters that you’ll unlock in the story and even a few guest characters as well. Despite supposedly supporting it, the game does not like controller much at all. Menus often go through multiple selections at a single press of a direction. Not sure if it was because of the controller but characters controlled sluggishly and the combat felt very limited. I also had trouble parsing how some characters could possibly be viable. The upside of bad controls is that the enemy AI is pretty dumb often falling into the same loop or outright eliminating themselves. Bosses don’t have that luxury but they have a decent enough game plan that makes them fair. Story is fine if not mostly silly while the scenes are well animated with some decent voice work. Not a great amount of variety and pretty disappointed the guest characters don’t get any scenes.
Recommend? A bit more midground but overall subpar. Definitely not a Smash Bros replacement. Scenes were nice though.
Dino Crisis 3 
DC1 was a Survival Horror game that leaned heavily into puzzles. DC2 was a very fun arcade shooter. DC3 continued the arcade shooter aspect but merged it with some survival horror aspects of the first and it ended up being a horrible abomination.
What were these aspects? Well, for one limiting just about everything. Inventory space (items starting out at a limit of 1 each), shop items, the amount of upgrades you can get at each save station (usually 1 upgradable gauge across all options and a few upgradable inventory slots), and even capping the amount of kills you can earn points from… which doesn’t make any sense in an arcade shooter. The only benefit that the kill gauge cap gives you is that it gives a bonus depending on how full it is when you turn it in which only incentivizes you to kill and combo the easy and small enemies rather than dealing with the bigger targets. Dino god forbid you slip into a boss battle with a full kill gauge bar. Speaking of disincentivize dealing with bigger dinos not only do they hurt a whole lot at all stages of the game but every medium to boss enemy are just the spongiest of bullet sponges there ever were. The base gun is infinite but does low damage but the other two weapons with limited ammo? Well, those don’t do much either with probably one of the worst shotguns in a game I have ever played and the laser gun does okay with such a slow fire rate. You do get these sort of drone alternate weapons that do good but since they are also used to unlock doors you are trained to basically never use them unless you wish to grind and buy more. Bosses aren’t very engaging as they often have big area of attacks and will take forever to whittle down often requiring the same strategy of strafing while shooting.
With the new space setting it feels a lot like Metroid and Mega Man X. You have your dash boosts that you can use to hover, speed, and jump higher. Charge shots that will destroy certain objects and maybe even hit an enemy if you have the time and aiming ability, as awkward as it can be. The ship itself is modular so it changes shape depending on terminal commands making exploration that of a metroidvania. Unfortunately utilizing the map is a confusing mess that makes a point to constantly beep with your desired location. A lot of the areas are pretty confusing with annoying platform sections. The camera does no favor as it has near-fixed camera angles that always manage to switch at awkward times both in traversal and in combat. The “space dinos” all look weird and have odd abilities, especially considering we kind of just get introduced to them out of nowhere. Despite having two characters, one is so underutilized you’ll forget you even get to play them.
Though DC hasn’t had a particularly great story history, DC3 takes the cake as far as being the worst. First and foremost, suddenly breaking off from the previous two stories into this futuristic space adventure is a whiplash into itself. We also just get thrust into things pretty quickly with little explanation (assuming I didn’t accidentally skip a huge cutscene or maybe it was in a manual?). The story progression is about as abysmal as the gameplay progression often hanging on by a thread of purpose and even worse character interactions.The ending is pretty lackluster which is only followed by a tolerable but more of the same bonus mode.
Recommend? I’m glad I got to play it and see exactly what happened to the Dino Crisis series… but I can not in ANY way recommend this. Not even to my worst enemies. There’s probably issues I haven’t even touched upon or details I’ve omitted.
NOTE: Even when I was trying to look up details on this game it was difficult to find almost as if the collective human race chose to forget about this game.
Project Lunky
Developed by Lixian, Markipliers editor, is a game based on a piece of Markiplier history and lore. I’ve played a game of his before and you can usually expect a short horror game. What I did not expect was a roguelite. Granted it’s very basic and some upgrades are NEEDED to actually progress as combat is largely attack and block (attacks are largely unavoidable). Still, given the right upgrade path you can find a pretty quick way to get everything and have a breeze of a time. There is little attack variation and only one kind of enemy. Upgrades you get our nice and it’s a decent little cycle. The axe being far superior to anything the gun really offers, you’ll find the melee route is the best.
Recommend? It’s fun, neat, and free (though you are more than welcome to donate any amount you wish.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Remake) 
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Watched someone play Ready or Not and felt the urge to play an FPS… but better. Adhering to my youthful days of MW2 I thought I’d try the remake of the original MW. Very quickly I was back in the saddle and thanks to the continued snap shooting system I was able to easily play on veteran with nearly no issue. Unfortunately there are a few missions (often involving vehicle sections) where this difficulty became a problem but few and far between. I don’t really remember it happening much in the originals but I often found myself getting block or trapped by my AI teammates as I tried to join the line, enter doorways, or even just general traversal. Story was solid enough though I can’t really compare as I never played the original Modern Warfare
Recommend? Story wise it felt pretty solid and a nice nostalgic trip down a CoD memory lane. Guns were responsive and battles felt mostly rewarding.