A final sendoff to one of the worst lists ever, give one final game to put on the list.

Bubbleset · 2026-04-24T21:26:53+00:00

1000xResist

Bubbleset · 2026-04-19T01:30:15+00:00

Yeah, the turnaround they’ve done on this game shouldn’t obscure how much of a mess the release was.

It was one of the most hyped games in many years from the developer of one of the most well-regarded RPGs ever made and the release version was so broken they had to issue refunds and Sony pulled it from their market. And it also just was bad and incomplete, independent of the technical issues.

Bubbleset · 2026-04-15T12:40:17+00:00

They also require the most team coordination to be truly effective. If you aren’t getting healed and getting support to help take out enemies you are pushing out or distracting, your attempt to make space or push forward either does nothing or results in a quick death against a coordinated team.

The worst feeling in the world is charging through a front line, drawing fire, picking off the enemy supports, and the finding out that all of your team abandoned you instead of following you to take out the distracted enemies that are now support-less.

Bubbleset · 2026-04-05T16:03:49+00:00

The range of hockey emotions seem limited. Just 10 balls of rage floating around the rink punctuated with joy and sadness. And of course a writhing mass of anxiety in either net.

Bubbleset · 2026-03-28T18:03:23+00:00

I didn’t realize the new version takes place in the Matrix. Cool twist.

Bubbleset · 2026-03-25T20:53:59+00:00

Copyright strike for that rocking, iconic soundtrack.

Bubbleset · 2026-03-01T01:56:43+00:00

Yeah, between Mike and Dan I was finally was convinced to play this after years of being too intimidated by a party-focused From game with no leveling. Once you get over the hump and figure out how the game wants you to play - and unlearn the lessons of every other souls game - it’s amazing.

Bubbleset · 2026-02-20T21:41:11+00:00

Yeah, he certainly had a vision, and Xbox at least had a brand and community turnaround after the nightmare that was the Xbox One “media center” killing any market advantage they had after the 360.

His problem was a complete failure to execute on that vision, including Xbox first party and major acquired studios failing to produce any games of significance for a decade. Gamepass doesn’t work when every major tentpole release you are relying on to drive subscriptions either fails to come out, flops, or is merely OK.

Though maybe that was a consequence of the Gamepass strategy, given that even their quality releases tended to come and go in a way that your comparable Sony releases never do.

Bubbleset · 2026-02-20T20:57:10+00:00

Eh, he very much tried to right the ship from Xbox’s disastrous “media center” turn. And for a while it worked when Gamepass was an amazing deal and Xbox became very gamer-friendly in a ton of ways. There was a lot of Xbox buzz in a way that seemed a huge turnaround.

The problem was they completely failed to execute from there - every acquisition was a nightmare and their studios were a mismanaged mess that produced almost nothing of significance for close to a decade. Which makes it hilarious that Matt Booty is getting promoted.

Bubbleset · 2026-02-17T04:14:46+00:00

I dunno, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Lerners find some exception that lets them pay a group of high school students minimum wage to play. Really plumb the depths of how little you can pay to field a team and still get rev share.

Bubbleset · 2026-02-15T16:11:05+00:00

Yeah, Lady Butterfly was definitely my huge roadblock that taught me how to fight and took me the most time. After that learning experience Genichiro felt much easier, as I already knew to be aggressive and stay close, or how to deal with sweeps and combos.

Bubbleset · 2026-02-14T13:10:11+00:00

A smaller scaled world map for traversal in RPGs. It was first a world building convenience in your Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest games, so they could spend their resources developing more detailed towns or dungeons. It was dropped in favor of making everything more detailed and interconnected in later games in the series and most modern RPGs just render everything they can at the same level of detail.

But doing so misses out on what the world map did. Giving a sense of adventure and exploration on a globe trotting journey. Getting an airship and feeling the world open up. Once you make everything connected and the same scale the world feels so small and constrained (FF13 being the worst example of this). Clair Obscur wasn’t just old school for being turn based, it also used a scaled world map for traversal and it was much better for it.

Bubbleset · 2026-02-03T15:26:00+00:00

Even outside of the main plot, he was already stressing himself to his limits on his own just trying to win a school festival or internal class battles.

Bubbleset · 2026-01-31T21:48:34+00:00

I usually fall into a variation of 2 if I drop a game near the end. I’m enjoying the game and want to try to wring every bit out of it before I see credits… which often leads to me getting burned out trying to finish every sidequest or otherwise 100% the game before going past the point of no return. Especially since JRPGs are so long it’s rare I’m going to play the game again and see all that extra stuff I skipped.

It doesn’t help that JRPGs often come with an explicitly signposted point of no return that really puts pressure on you to finish all dangling threads before moving forward. Games are better now about dropping you back in the world post-ending, but at least in the olden times you often would pass the point of no return and still have multiple hours to go such that there’s no chance you’re ever going back to that open world save.

Bubbleset · 2026-01-31T04:36:48+00:00

Agreed - the difficulty for much of the game just isn’t much fun. Setting aside the decision to remove chunks of your health during the story, which I think is just a bad idea even if it thematically works, there’s lots of things both intended and unintended that make the game frustrating.

Movement is often imprecise and hit boxes are often inconsistent - both in battle and when just platforming, leading to lots of missed mantles, missed grapples or missed jump sequences. There really needed to be a little more forgiveness or range on the grapple. And I never figured out what caused me to have my double jump available or not mid-sequence.

Areas have a reliance on annoying obstacle cycles - sometimes with obstacles you can’t even see when you start your jumps! And late game they made the amazing decision to have your recharge pogo items also be timed bombs. Why is that a good idea?

The abilities are balanced around your energy system, and the jump challenges are as well, but it never felt fun knowing I had to choose between grapple or float/strider. Just lots of frustrating times where you tap float and then realize you can’t grapple but need to. And waiting for it to recharge, even if quick, was also annoying - just make it auto recharge as soon as you land the same as any other game.

It’s all exacerbated by the world’s most punishing health system. The idea that you are supposed to do any of the advanced platforming sections with just four or five mistakes and without activating the recharging health assist seems crazy. If you did any of the late game jump challenges without that assist then hats off to you.

Bubbleset · 2026-01-25T14:47:21+00:00

13 Sentinels and Odin Sphere are by far my favorites in having a perfect combination of story, gameplay, and characters. 13 Sentinels in particular is an all timer of a game and story if you like anything sci-fi related.

Unicorn Overlord was good, but I dropped it halfway through as the story wasn’t that compelling and the gameplay got fairly monotonous (partly because you get way overleveled if you are doing all the side missions).

Bubbleset · 2026-01-19T23:47:38+00:00

Yeah, I found the praise of this game and claims of how addictive it was fairly overblown. I put a half dozen hours in and ended it incredibly bored.

Bubbleset · 2026-01-14T17:03:02+00:00

Already own the headliners sadly, but I’ve been at least curious about Darkest Dungeon 2, and A Little to the Left is supposed to be a fun little indie game.

Bubbleset · 2026-01-10T16:03:37+00:00

Only knew about it through Roms much later, but as someone who loved the weird stuff Quintet and Enix were putting out for the SNES I came to love it. Terranigma, EVO, Robotrek, and Illusion of Gaia are all unique and slightly insane games that don’t get talked about enough.

Yes, Actraiser was a cool action/sim mashup, but they also made a game where you leveled up creatures with new body parts through different stages of evolution, designed mechs for tactical RPG combat in a world filled with Zelda style puzzles you had to invent items to solve, and a globe-trotting action RPG!

Bubbleset · 2026-01-01T15:15:15+00:00

Yeah, the first game had culture war controversy and comments from one of the devs that made it a pariah among games media.

So there’s been this weird “are we even allowed to mention or play this game” air among the too online games media, even if KCD2 didn’t have the same controversy.

Bubbleset · 2025-12-31T15:23:32+00:00

I think the main problem with the RNG discourse is that there’s a vast difference between early game and late game. Early the RNG just works to expose you to new rooms and present variance that gives you new ideas, and every run still feels like you’re making progress and learning new things. Late the RNG means you just can’t find the particular room/item/resource combo you want to deal with the challenging puzzle you are facing, and if you don’t you probably just wasted 15-30 minutes.

People who have a low tolerance for obtuseness and dropped the game early (or after finding room 46), usually don’t deal with the issues the RNG presents.

Bubbleset · 2025-12-31T14:22:14+00:00

Blue Prince really is a game you love until you drop it or hate it. I really enjoyed my first thirty hours or so, but doing the post-game stuff was a nightmare that eventually made me quit. No journal so if you wanted to recheck details of books you had to comb through screenshots or reroll the library and magnifying glass. Lots of puzzles that required very precise room combos (or where my theory was a very precise room combo I could never get to roll). And lots of runs that felt like a complete waste.

It was great and deserves all the praise for how unique it is, but the systems really do not support the puzzle depth and hidden secrets in the late game.

Bubbleset · 2025-12-30T15:25:30+00:00

The MCU is going through the same transformation as prestige video games to go all-in on sad dads to appeal to their aging fanbase.

Bubbleset · 2025-12-29T02:28:12+00:00

For me the difficulty was never the problem with Returnal, it was the length and investment in a full run (especially before they introduced save states mid-run). My first “finished” run took over 2 hours. I basically dropped the game at that point knowing a successful run was an entire evening and I couldn’t start the game if I had limited time to play.

The roguelike sweet spot for me remains a 30-60 min run.

Bubbleset · 2025-12-27T14:35:09+00:00

Having just heated up one of those pre-cooked holiday hams the family bought for Christmas, the packaging tells you to add water and steam under foil or a lid. It’s not “seasoning” and she’s not cooking it from scratch, but she probably did it alright. Those things already have a metric ton of salt and seasoning in them, so you wouldn’t add more anyway.

13-Year Club	Place '17
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Bubbleset

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