It’s the big game everyone’s talking about! So I guess I’ll talk about it too!

My experience with the Souls series is a bit scattered. I rented Demon’s Souls on PS3 (yeah renting was still a bit of a thing back then), found it okay but didn’t fully get what was up with it at the time, didn’t end up getting too far into it during my rental. Played a good portion of Dark Souls 1 but not 2 and 3. Enjoyed it decently. Got Bloodborne at launch, really liked that one a lot. Got Sekiro at launch, it is my favorite of the series. And, finally, got Elden Ring at launch, after not being… particularly hyped for it.

The reviews kinda blow my mind because, while Souls games do review very well, this was getting 10/10 scores all over the place, and no game deserves a 10/10… So I was approaching this game with a lot of skepticism. Games that get this kind of hype (from shitty game journo reviewers) tend to get it very… unwarrantedly? Is that a word? Especially when it’s Souls, which is a series that game journo types tend to complain about for extremely stupid reasons, such as them being “too hard” (and trying to make that into an accessibility issue… which it isn’t, game difficulty is never an accessibility issue and anyone who says otherwise is either stupid or lying).

So let’s go and see if this is the good shit or if the scores are dumb!

I had high hopes for this one, it being a game made by ex-Persona staff. So I got it at launch last week and played it a bunch in-between playing Elden Ring.

I am now 20 hours in and I’m fucking done. That puts me around the halfway mark of the game, and I feel like things are either getting worse, or I just can’t take it anymore. This is very unfortunate, but wow, this game is something else. And not in a good way.

So I am NOT reviewing it since… you know… I can’t (because I didn’t finish it… take note, “professional” reviewers), but at least I’ll give my impressions so far and explain why I’m done with it… This is as much as you’re getting from me review-wise for this one.

Let’s go!

Well, I’m going in with this post a bit earlier than usual. The reason why is the same reason I posted my Sifu review before fully finishing it… because things are about to get WILD. Monark is out tomorrow, Elden Ring is out on Friday… and March has a LOT of games. So I’m just getting a bit ahead of the game here, basically.

For March 2022 I’m highlighting: 15 multiplats, 7 Switch games, and 2 PC releases. That number doesn’t look like anything special in a vacuum, but what IS special is what games are there.

Literally, I’m buying at least 8 of these for sure, and there are several “maybes” as well. And even some of the games I’m not interested in myself ARE huge, or look really cool but might not be something I’m that interested in. This might be one of the biggest months in gaming in YEARS.

Let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, small interesting ones I may notice, and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

One of the first few posts in this blog, after terminating my old blog The Save Points and starting JOBOCAN Game Reviews, was a reaction to the February Direct last year… So I figure… why not do it again? I’ve actually reacted to most “main” Nintendo Directs even though I wasn’t planning to, so I might as well keep it going. I haven’t been doing this for much else outside of E3 since the competition isn’t announcing or releasing anything, or doing fun events like this (and, when they do, they’re awful… Hi Playstation), but hey, at least Nintendo tries to be somewhat interesting.

I am writing this intro the day before the Direct, as I always do. I have no real predictions here. There are some weird rumors like a 1-2 Switch sequel, and TWO different Metroid Prime rumors that have been going on for years without anything happening (Prime Trilogy rumors being around since 2017, and those have transitioned into Prime 1 Remaster rumors more recently… pick a side, shitty fake leakers), but I’d say there’s nothing really good to latch on to that’s even slightly believable except the Batman one… which is extremely minor so who cares.

I don’t know what to expect beyond probably a bit of Splatoon 3 stuff since that’s probably coming out around E3 season, but otherwise, it could be anything. I am 99% sure Metroid Prime 4 won’t be there because it’s only been 3 years since it started development, so it’s not like it’s in hell status or anything, and I don’t think the BotW sequel will be there either as that will likely get a big E3-season blowout. So… Yeah, could be fun, might not be, I have no idea. There’s plenty it could be, but Nintendo is largely unpredictable. Like, last February’s Direct had 4-6 new first-party game announcements depending on how you count that. So there’s reason to believe they might do that again… but it’s Nintendo, they don’t do patterns, so they might not.

No idea if I’m actually gonna post this, we’ll see if I click the publish button after writing it. If I do post it… let’s go and watch this Direct!

Well, I at least managed to do some catching up in January, played a couple of games I had missed out on last year before big 2022 releases come out. We do have a new Pokeymanz coming out in a couple of days so that’s something.

While January didn’t have anything big outside of the upcoming Pokemon game, February is basically signs of 2022 starting to shape up a bit. There are several big games, some medium-ish games, and a few I’m getting. There’s actually a good variety here, not a bad month.

For February 2022 I’m listing: 13 multiplats, 3 Switch pieces of filler I included for the lulz, and 1 PC release. As far as what I’m getting, there’s only 2 for sure, but there’s a good 5 “maybes” in there too.

Let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, small interesting ones I may notice, and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

This is gonna be a pretty simple post. I’m just looking at the next year of games and trying to figure out what the games I’m most excited for. I’m keeping it straightforward. I’ll list my 6 most hyped games and talk about them quickly, then just have a big list of other games I’m interested in (with some comments next to some of them), and finally a smaller list of games that might end up being a big deal but that I don’t care about for whatever reason (either because they’ll be shit, or because they’re not my kinda game). Of course, I’ll have a bit of ranting at the end there because why not. Just to be clear about my choices.

So let’s go and discuss the hype for another year of games!

Then I can get back to normal, I still have the January games list to post 😀

EDIT 01/03 I ADDED A GAME (in the “Other games I am excited about” list)! I won’t do this much but the post is still new so why not.

2021. It was 2020 again, but weirder. On my side, I’ve been stuck in my house, working from home, since March 2020, I’m fine with that. Just working, working out, watching an unhealthy amount of vtubers and playing an unhealthy amount of video games. I had cataracts all of 2020 and early 2021 so I could barely see for a while, I got those fixed this year so that’s nice. I don’t really have much else to say on the non-gaming side of things, no big health emergencies in the family this year so that’s good. Not much activity overall. That said there was SOMETHING new… this website. I talked about this in the first post I made here, but I had a different site before this (called The Save Points, which originally was a group project but became a solo project fairly quickly), but ran into some DNS issues and decided to abandon the site I had built for the last 13 years. Switched how I did a few things, but yeah, having fun with this new site now. Definitely want to improve things a bit, I want to post more than I do.

As far as gaming, 2021 was actually pretty solid. I don’t know how it happened, but I constantly had something to play. Every month had at least 2 great games (plus a bunch of smaller decent games) which is not something that happens in most years. I didn’t even play all the games I was interested in this year, it was too busy. I didn’t even play too many stinkers, pretty much just Outriders, Axiom Verge 2 and NEO TWEWY.

So I have my own way of doing things for the GotY. Instead of being lame and choosing one winner, or being even lamer and doing a bunch of weird meaningless categories that have a ton of shitty nominations (made by people who hate video games), I just choose, like, 7 winners. I do put one winner on top of everyone else for maximum subjectivity, but yeah, 7 winners, the 7 best games of the year, let’s fucking go.

Since this IS an end-of-year post about the top games of the year, I do want to take the time to look back on some things, so I’ll rant about the console manufacturers a bit and whatever else catches my fancy, then select the 7 GotY winners. I also list a bunch of honorable mentions because I’m just a nice guy like that.

Oh hey I conveniently linked to the relevant sections if you want to skip my inane rantings. You’re welcome.

• Rant (seriously skip this part if you just want to see the winners)
• Games of the Year Winners
• Games of the Year Super Winner
• Honorable mentions

I will note before this that there are in fact games I haven’t played. So if a game you liked isn’t on the list, know that it’s either that I didn’t play it, or it sucked balls. It’s okay, you’re allowed to like bad games. Also I didn’t get a PS5 this year (for reasons I might rant about), so the one good exclusive on it is also a game I didn’t play. I’m sure Ratchet is great (impressions are basically all positive), I just didn’t want to buy a PS5 just to play that one game. I didn’t play Village (though I did analyze the gameplay from watching Gura playing it, it needs some help). I hear great things about Inscryption, I didn’t buy it. And there’s other games I’m interested in I didn’t play like Cruisn’ Blast, Super Robot Wars 30, Eastward and probably some others. I also literally just got a few other 2021 games that I will review later, maybe they’re good too.

Without further ado, let’s do this thing. 2021 Games of the Year let’s fucking go!

I love PC gaming to bits. It’s objectively better than consoles in literally every way, from controller support, to troubleshooting to performance to game library. The only thing it does worse is… it costs more if you want WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more performance… so it’s not actually worse. Heck, you could (in a regular non-stupid market) almost-realistically pay LESS than one of the current consoles and actually get pretty equivalent, or better, performance. But if you go mid-to-high-end, the consoles are basically potatoes in comparison.

That said, in 2021, things haven’t been… ideal. Namely, costs rocketed up, for EVERY semi-useable video card. To a really wild level. I was gonna put a mini-rant about PC in my GotY post, but it ended up taking a life of its own… so I’m just gonna separate that. My GotY post will focus on the console side of things, at least as far as my ranting about the big 3 console manufacturers in the industry.

So I figure… I’ve always wanted to talk about PC gaming, why not do it now! Let’s go!

Actually got several posts out in September, that was decent. 2 of them were reaction posts, which is fine. I don’t always do these, but sometimes I feel like it makes sense. I wouldn’t do a reaction to the Smash showcase on october 5th, for example. That’s not really worth reacting to. As far as future posts, I do still have a so-called “backlog” (i.e. games I want to play but haven’t bought yet), I haven’t bought No More Heroes 3 yet, or Axiom Verge 2 (amongst many others), and I was made aware that Deathloop may actually be an okay game so I just started that. And there’s obviously upcoming games I’ll write about. So I still have plenty on the go writing-wise.

So this month I’m highlighting: 17 multiplats, 2 Switch games, 2 PC games and 1 PS4 exclusive for some reason. For me, in all that, there’s only 2 “getting for sure” games, 2 I’m probably getting, and a couple that are going on the maybe list. It’s actually a weirdly quiet month despite having the hypest game of the year, so I might be able to get into some backlog games.

Let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, small interesting ones I may notice and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

Another one I dunno if I’ll post, we’ll see after the thing ends, see if I have any particularly big reactions or not. Or something to rant about like with the Playstation thingy where Sony had nothing to show. I will note I am writing this intro hours before the Direct starts.

There are rumors, but they’re very solid, because they literally come from Nintendo’s japanese website. Bayonetta 3 finally getting SOME real info would be solid, and I’m really curious about that Kirby game (Kirby Discovery of the Stars, I think that title is probably wrong). Outside of that leak, there’s lots of rumors for a new Xenoblade, I’m not putting a lot of stock into that one. And there’s some stuff like new systems added to NSO which… who cares, paying for online on a console is a scam.

I do have fairly low expectations overall for this Direct, but September directs always have some kind of big announcement. There’s definitely gonna be a bunch of stuff we already know about for some of the games coming out this year as well as some of the early-next-year stuff, the possibility of a Smash character reveal (though I could see that being later). We definitely won’t see Metroid Prime 4.

So it’s starting in a minute, let’s see if there’s something here, and after we’ll see if I’m even posting this. Let’s go!