Ufouria: The Saga 2 (Red Art Games, PC/Switch/PS4/PS5/XBox Series)
Ufouria on the NES was easily one of its better games, providing a light-hearted and comparatively uncomplicated Metroid-style experience with a quirky sense of humor and a charming, exaggerated visual style. Ufouria 2 certainly looks and sounds the part and the humor is on point, but the gameplay... oh lordy, what have they done to this Sunsoft cult classic? Why, they bogged every single element of it down with tedious cash farming despite the fact the original didn't even have money or a shop system! Want more health? No, you don't find heart containers like in the original; go to the vending machine in the hub and cough up! Want basic features like crouching to slip into narrow corridors? Pay up, bitch! Recruit a new character and want to use them right away? Too bad, you can't! Go collect X number of cans and a couple hundred coins to buy a particular item they need and then they'll join you! Want a fucking map so you can figure out where you've been and where you need to go next? You get the idea. Padded-out, utterly worthless filler at its absolute worst; the only way they could besmirch the original any further is by tying it all to paid DLC. Or even better yet, lootboxes...
Microsoft (the entire company)
Ah, Microsoft. For a brand that looked to finally be turning their reputation around after the travesty of the Kinect and the numerous horrible decisions made with the XBox One that tanked their market share, they've sure gone out of the way to make even more horrible decisions in the last few years. Paying billions of dollars for Activision and Bethesda, paying out a few hundred mil to shit-eater Bobby Kotick, spending way too much money to churn out an underwhelming mess of a game in Starfield, then turning around the following year and closing down nearly all of the latter's outside studios. Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog Games, Roundhouse Studios, all gone overnight. Some gratitude, especially since Tango Gameworks just released Hi-Fi Rush, easily one of the best games Microsoft has had to their name in a very long time; highly acclaimed and a strong seller besides. Brilliant move, guys; so much so that I won't be buying an XBox Series or Game Pass from you any time in the near future. Hell even Windows 11 is looking pretty unappealing for my next PC upgrade right about now...
And a few others I didn't bother with at all:
Dragon's Dogma 2 - Shitty microtransactions and game-bricking DRM. Plus the original wasn't that great anyway. Good job Capcom...
Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth - Sega follows up on the horrible precedent Atlus set by ruining the pacing of their games so they can sell you DLC to make leveling up not a fucking chore. Then they require you to pay $80 for the Digital Deluxe Edition just to access basic features like New Game Plus. Yeah fuck that; not supporting this scummy business practice.
MAGAphor Re:Fascistazio - Atlus pandering to the worst of humanity again. A game where the 'real world' is now "one united tribe" (a deliberately vague phrase so any self-important turd can project whatever eugenic/ethnocratic pipe dream they want onto it) and the fictional world the game takes place in is just some empty power fantasy for the reader to pretend they care about others by knocking down all the evil cartoonish straw man who make no attempt to hide their racism and elitism? Yeah, that's right up there with people who talk about 'fighting all the evil commies' when all they do is play Call of Duty and shitpost on social media all day. Or Tumblr/YouTube warriors who pretend they're good people helping those in need when they're mostly just bullies who want free brownie points and Patreon bucks for making a shitty vlog once every three six eight months and scold-posting at anyone who doesn't fit their impossible and hypocritical standards of what an "ally" should be, all while hoping all those brown and gay people just get relocated or genocided already so they can reap the benefits of the ethnostate. Fuck this phony virtue signaling horseshit with a rake.
