All of my videogame reviews from 2025. Keep in mind that 'Date' means the date that I've finished/dropped a game rather than the date the game was released.
Date: 17/05/2025
Rating: 8/10
I was expecting TF2 to be a crappy free-to-play pay-to-win garbage dump of a game, but after seeing that it was made in the 2000s with servers still up and people who like similar games to me playing it, I decided to try it.
I'm glad I did, because it's actually a very fun game! Each class being represented as a different character with different personalities is clever and the game's lore is bizarre. If you want to play a fun game and have no money, I highly recommend TF2!
Status: Quit
Date: 08/05/2025
Rating: NR
Valkyria Chronicles has a beautiful art-style and fun game-play, but I was unable to finish the game because whenever I attempted to exit a menu in Chapter 3, the game crashed and then closed, meaning my progress was lost. I tried to play again, just to have the same glitch happen again. This game is probably great on other consoles, but it's Steam port has some major glitches.
Status: Finished
Date: 30/04/2025
Rating: 9/10
Great commentary on addiction and the internet, and the constant chasing of attention done by its users. It contains many more touchy subjects, such as self-harm, suicide and drug abuse to name a few, but manages to keep the game fun with dark humour every so often, but not to the point of watering down what the game is attempting to say.
Whenever I stopped playing I was still thinking about it -- even with the cute art-style and occasional humour it retains an unsettling feeling.
As for gameplay, it has many endings with each playthrough being one hour at most, making it highly re-playable. It didn't have any crashes or glitches, though I played through Steam instead of the console ports, which may differ. The music and art design is wonderful as well. I think the soundtrack helps amplify the game a lot, I liked how the music would increase in speed at certain points.
I think fans of Doki Doki Literature Club! would enjoy Needy Streamer Overload. They're both disturbing but appear to be cute and fun. NSO also has a few endings which break the fourth wall and reminded me of Monika.
Status: Finished
Date: 09/03/2025
Rating: 7/10
I won't lie, I bought one of Guitar Hero's DS games mainly because I was interested in how it could work on a handheld console. I chose to start with Decades as it has the best setlist in my opinion and didn't care too much about starting with the first ha.
Anyway, I was honestly expecting it to be gimmicky and barely functioning, but I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that it's pretty good!
I found the grip to be a clever idea, utilising the GBA game insert point was creative (although it means that DSI users can't play). I often see people complain about wrist pain, and whilst I did have this if I played for hours it didn't affect me much.
Every function you'd want on a GH game is pretty much here: there's easy to expert difficulty levels, you can play both lead guitar and bass/rhythm guitar, etc.
Considering the fact that this is Guitar Hero, I should probably talk about the songs. I liked the setlist a lot. It has Buddy Holly as a playable song, which is an automatic win.
Unfortunately, the order you play songs in is completely screwed. Each venue is done by music era, it starts off with modern (mid-later 2000s) and ends with the 70s. Because of this, the difficulty of the songs are messed up. I was playing on medium difficulty and Smooth Criminal was insanely hard. All of the 70s songs were easier than Smooth Criminal.
But, besides that, I don't really have any other complaints. I think this is a really fun game and if you don't mind potential wrist pain and want a portable GH game, you should definitely check it out!