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.
Metaphor Re:Fascistazio - Another terrible Persona formula retread with incredibly distracting visual effects and word bubbles in 35 different fonts constantly popping up on screen, a fairy sidekick infinitely more condescending and insufferable than Navi, and dialog that all reads like a smug dipshit arguing with his own puppet account on an incel subreddit - nothing but snappy fast-talking dialog cramming as many clichés and zingers and snarky remarks and cutesy turns of phrase and straw men as they can into every single line, and it gets tiresome to read and listen to really fucking fast. Whenever it's not doing that it's treating you like a toddler - the game shows you something, then explains it to you in simple words, then another character (or two, or three) has to tell it to you again five seconds later. Seriously every other scene goes exactly like this:
Shows you a map.
Dipshit fairy: This is a map! Boy it's a well made map! You know what a map is, right Main Character?
Other character: This map will show us to our destination!
Yet another character: Our destination is here! Click the location on the map to lead us there, Main Character!
This is an M-rated game not Dora the fucking Explorer. Hell I'd rather watch Dora the Explorer; at least the characters in that talk like real people and not charismaless Beetlejuices.
Oh yeah and there's a whole plot point about creating a world of "one united tribe", so now they're sanitizing eugenics and ethnocracy in the same way P5 was a lovely coat of whitewash for 8chan and Kiwi Farms culture crusaders. Hey, if you're gonna make a mainstream big budget power fantasy that caters to the worst, stupidest people alive in pursuit of a few more sales, might as well reach for the valuable untapped market that is Stormfront too, right?
