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Remember Twisted Metal and how it's basically a dead franchise that hasn't had a game since 2012? Yeah, someone made a new one for free and it kicks ass.

Meanwhile over in Normal Island Trump sycophant, London City stock broker millionaire, man of the people who just happened to receive £5million from a crypto magnate before completely reversing his party's stance on crypto and otherwise trust worthy man of the people Nigel Farage is going to be fighting a by-election where his only noteworthy opponent will be Count Binface. This has led to serious political commentators having to interview a man wearing a bin, about his policies such as "Capping the cost of a 99 Flake ice cream at 99p", "Making the bosses of the UK's privatised water companies swim in the rivers they are responsible for", and "Nationalising Adele". He's also had spots on international news including ABC.

Ace Combat 2 Pretty big improvement over the first one, there's even branching paths and multiple endings! I do miss the Scarface colors from Air Combat though, that was a cool touch. Main issue I ran into where some bugged ground targets, didn't matter how many missiles I shot they would always "miss" pretty much had to crash into them to finally get them lol. Grade: A

Having Lindsay Graham and likely Mitch McConnell dying in the same time period is a bit funny especially when considering how the GOP is trying to keep Mitch under wraps until after August 3rd or whatever so no special election is held. Well, the universe can be kind of funny and force one elsewhere. No rest or peace for either of them.

Super Mario Bros 3 Played this whilst on holiday last week. It's the first time I've actually played it through from front to back and for the most part I really enjoyed it. It's actually kind of amazing to me that this and SMB came out on the same system. This game feels lightyears away from what came before it. The final few worlds felt also like a Super Mario Maker world-set, and that's both good and bad. A few of the levels towards the end (notably the fortress levels) were a little too much for me, and I had to resort to a guide to keep off frustration. Still. Got through it. Can't wait to play it again (probably the GBA remake).

August 20th, had a feeling it'd be out soon lol, "beta" feels pretty polished and complete, price is pretty good too. Side note regarding the price and everything going on with Sony going digital only, Mortal Shell 2 is 600 pesos on Steam and XBOX, on PS5 it's $58, or about 1000 pesos.

The description does mention that this is basically the calm before the storm, but I honestly wouldn't mind a full acoustic album.

Donkey Kong Bananza This is a game of highs and lows. There are times it really shines, but for every part I enjoyed there was another part that was annoying or aggravating to play. The presentation is charming, but it's full of busywork that's not really fun or even engaging, it's just there. I enjoyed it enough to finish it, but that's about all I can say for it. Grade: 2/5

New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe I was under the impression that the New series wasn't that well-liked, so I wasn't sure what to expect but Nintendo fans are crazy, man. This was great! It was like playing a more modern version of Super Mario World. I cleared every level, got every secret exit, collected every star coin and cleared star road to get 5 stars on my save file. Then I did it all over again in New Super Luigi U. I enjoyed Luigi U even more because of its focus on shorter, faster levels. Although it was kind of a bummer that they re-used the same world map as the main game. Anyway, I thought this was going to be a double entry with Star Fox but holy shit, fuck that game! I genuinely can't remember the last time I hit such an insane difficulty spike in a video game. I was enjoying the campaign just fine. Some levels were a little challenging but I was getting used to it. And then I got to the boss of Area 6 and I wanted to fucking scream. Like, death after death after death with no fucking idea what the hell I was doing wrong. And when I finally managed to beat that level, the final one was even worse! You're fighting another squad and you can barely keep them on screen long enough to try to hit them, they keep moving in ways the camera can't even track and as soon as they disappear off-screen they're already behind you somehow, trying to crawl up your ass. I made it to the final boss once, with only one life left and that motherfucker just immediately swallowed me and blew up my ship. I think I hate this fucking game, oh my god!

Project Wingman Played this game in VR with a flight stick and goddamn is it cool as hell. All y'all in the discord already know this because I've been spamming gameplay clips, but it's basically off-brand Ace Combat. It doesn't have quite the presentational flair that AC does, but it's fun and epic and silly and that's what matters. If this had released this year it would easily be my GOTY-so-far. My only complaint is that there's not more of it. Grade: 5/5 Project Wingman: Frontline 59 Guess what, there's more of it! This DLC is only 6 missions compared to the base game's 21, so it's not much more, but it's still just as great. Arguably better because it doesn't have the same kind of boss fights that the base game did, which were the least best part of that. Unfortunately, it's so short that I can't rate it quite as highly. Still a must-play though if you have and enjoy the main game. Grade: 4/5

The Signal State This is a Zach-like where the premise is that you're in a post-apocalyptic world (basically all the computers broke which made all the machines stop working which meant society collapsed), and you're on a farm trying to jury rig reactivating the machinery so that you can grow crops and stuff. You do this by wiring up analog electronics to replace the digital computer parts the machines were using. It's a neat setup, but the import thing is the puzzles are very well designed. This is easily the best Zach-like I've ever played that wasn't actually made by Zachtronics. I highly recommend it if you like their other stuff. It's maybe a little short, and the puzzles don't really get quite hard enough, but otherwise it's great. Grade: 4/5

Air Combat Trying to get through all (or at least the ones that I can get my hands on) of the Ace Combat games before 8 comes out lol. I'd say this holds up pretty well, big part of it is that whether you're playing this or Ace Combat 7, the basic combat controls (gun, missiles, map, change target) are the same. The flight through the ravine was a pain, but it's also a fairly short mission so it evens out. The alarm beep that keeps playing during briefings was really annoying though. Grade: A

Mina the Hollower Sweet Jesus, this game is hard. Shovel Knight could be decently challenging but this one is just straight up brutal if you play without modifiers. It's still great, though. The controls, level design, and combat all feel fantastic. Don't even get me started on that soundtrack full of absolute bangers courtesy of Jake Kaufman again. Hollowing is also one of those mechanics that make you go "man I wish I could do this in every game." I'd give it a strong 9/10, though I have to dock a point because the game is determined not to have tutorials but at the same time isn't always as intuitive as it thinks it is. Did you know the mirrors are the fast travel system and to activate one you have to walk into the mirror for about two seconds? Well now you do so congratulations, you won't have to backtrack to every region of the game to activate the mirrors like I had to do when I realized I'd overlooked this absolutely crucial step to accessing the endgame. There's also a section of the game where you have to burrow through deep water in order to cross large gaps. They drop a subtle hint by putting a tiny collectible in the water, but up until now jumping into water has also resulted in taking damage so the game has trained me by this point to NOT jump into water only to suddenly make an exception without really telling me. I actually had to look up a guide to be told that it's okay to jump in water now. Honestly, if you can make it through this entire game without having to consult a guide even once then my hat's off to you because some things it expects you to do are incredibly cryptic. Despite this flaw, I'd still recommend it to anyone. If the Souls-like difficulty is a turnoff to you then there are plenty of modifiers to adjust the experience. I refrained from using them myself because I wanted to beat it as the developers intended but there's so many options I'm sure you can fine-tune it to be as hard or as easy as you want it to be.

Grabbed this on Steam. Looking for something to play whilst on holiday and I'm hoping this'll be it.

Two Zacklikes, an expansion for Project Wingman, and a JRPG I've been eyeing for a while.

Man same, I'd be all over that.

Gun-Nac I was playing around with shaders whilst setting up my new retro-doodad and found myself really digging this thing. Ultimately ended up playing it through over a few sessions. It's a super cool (and fairly accessible) NES schmup with some nice enough art and a steller weapon/upgrade system. It also may have opened up a new genre to me.

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening I was looking for something short to play on my Switch until Star Fox and ended up picking this because the Ocarina of Time Remake announcement put me in a Zelda mood. It's basically a smaller version of Link to the Past, so I don't need to tell you how great it is. I ended up going for all hearts containers (and every other optional things I could find) which I don't think I've done in any Zelda games since the original OoT on N64. I hope they'll remake Link to the Past in this style eventually. I'd be way more excited for that than I am for Ocarina. Although before that, I need Nintendo to stop fucking around and put Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD on Switch already!

It does at least sound like a full-on remake (like Resi 3), not a scene for scene upscaling remaster like Demons Souls. So there will hopefully be enough novelty in there.

Same. I'll buy it, but I won't be happy about it...

Much as I love OOT, I sorta wish it was a new game in that style. I feel a bit remaked-out. I mean, I'll still get it and play it and all, but...

I literally just bought Xenoblade 3 so I guess I ain't playing it until the upgrade patch comes out.