Recent reviews by COOL DAD

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, except Rodney Mullen has a shotgun and is just wasting dudes left and right while pulling sick aerial moves.

Rad.

(the difficulty curve is pretty damn steep tho.)

I outran the Batmobile in a hot dog-themed race car.

This game rules.

Best $15 I spent all summer.

This is an incredibly silly game that only sort of attempts to take its premise seriously.

You're a badass super... not a spy, because there's no stealth here. You do stuff for the CIA but also you're ostensibly a good guy.

Mostly you just go around this giant fake Aegean island archipelago and break stuff.

Why?

You know why.

Just 'cause.

Absolutely brilliant.

This is the next evolutionary level of the classic 2.5D PC role playing game format, with the same level of intelligence, humor, and creativity as the original Fallout series, Planescape: Torment, and the like.

This isn't to pooh-pooh games like Pillars of Eternity or what-have-you, but Disco Elysium presents a world that is uncomfortably familiar but also distinctly different from our own.

Also, it has politics in it. Lots of politics. You shouldn't complain about the politics in the game, because it's more than willing to let you be a monstrous fascist or an ultra-liberal moral scold or a wild-eyed commie or a devoted monarchist... or none of the above. Pick your poison.

It's also wickedly funny and a thoughtful musing on growing old, The Kids These Days, holes in reality, etc.

You really oughta play this one, just to experience the worldbuildiing and thought that went into it.

It may just be Art, and I'm not saying that because I somehow became The Art Cop while playing it.

ADDENDUM: After completing the game, I can strongly insist you avoid any sort of walkthroughs or spoilers or any other guides to steering the game - just play and let it wash over you and soak in the experience. Don't overthink it or try to min-max the "best ending" or scum for achievements your first playthrough.

Just experience it.

Did you get a chance to try DropMix? The direct spiritual ancestor of FUSER, it was a toys-to-life-ish deal where you had a "board" and collectible cards with samples of pop songs on them, and you could use the board and a mobile app to create DJ mixes.

FUSER takes that gameplay and brings it to console/PC. You're an up-and-coming DJ with a crate full of samples, and you have to Get Good.

Functionally, it's a very clever rhythm game in the vein of Rock Band or DJ Hero or even Dance Dance Revolution, mixing and matching the samples to create new songs, hitting the drops at just the right time (cueing up the whistled parts of "All Star" over the bass from "O.P.P." and the synths from "bad guy", for instance), and adjusting the tempo, key, etc. to produce something fun.

Single-player is a curious toy, a fun thought exercise.

Multiplayer is where this game truly shines - co-op allows four players to "dj" a "set" for an audience, and the game is generally structured in such a way that it's a positive experience for everyone. There's a mini-game for the people watching a set to give "praise" or offer requests, the player-base generally seems supportive of new players who are still learning how to drop, etc.

You can use Real Money to purchase extra aesthetics for your avatar (clothing, pyrotechnics for your stage) and, of course, additional DLC songs that thus far seem to cover a couple of key genres (pop, rock, dance, R&B/soul, Latin/Caribbean, and country) from the past couple decades. The oldest songs here look to be a handful of 1960s and 1970s tracks, while the latest are from the last year or so.

The biggest gripe is that old Harmonix woe - they don't trust you with all the content at the start. The career mode seems to be an extended tutorial, you have to pay in-game XP (that is readily unlocked by leveling up and doing other tasks) to access songs you paid real-world currency for, and you can't even use the "effects" until you've hit a certain level in the game.

Just let me play around with my new toy, dangit. I don't need to play through the story mode to enjoy this game!

(also, I feel like I have to calibrate my system pretty much every time I start up or it's off by a half-beat or so.)

Is this the most overrated game of all time?

Seriously, there's a great premise based around American exceptionalism gone horribly awry, a flying city built by geniuses that goes rogue and commits genocide while maintaining a fascist ethno-racist caste system... and then just dumps it in the toilet.

The visually interesting dystopia is basically a high school theatrical set - you can walk around all you want, but unless the game has decided that there's loot in a particular building, you can't go in. If you DO go in, all you can do is loot and fight inside. The promise of exploring this vast world boils down to "you can see if there's stuff to steal inside".

The vaunted plot is stoned-redditor "both sides are bad actually" nonsense. You spend the first half of the game being told to sympathize with the plight of a genuinely oppressed underclass, but then you murder their leader and spend the second half of the game slaughtering those selfsame allies you just liberated in the interests of making some kind of absolutely brainless commentary about power or whatever. Read some Frantz Fanon, ffs.

The precious sidekick character might as well be a dog for all the use she has in-game. She can fetch things for you and occasionally rips up her clothing or cuts her hair to show you how Very Serious Things Have Become.

And all of it, every last bit, the dystopia, the george washington machine gun robots, the mysterious sidekick, the workers' revolt... all get sidelined at the end for some bongwater goofiness about multiple realities. Why didn't you just make that game instead?

I hate this game and this franchise, and if I hadn't bought these things years ago on sale, I'd get my money back.

On the one hand, this is an INCREDIBLY jam-packed game, full of alternate universe and time travel hijinks in the Mighty Marvel Manner. There are over a hundred characters to discover and explore with, from the legendary likes of Spider-Man and Captain America to more obscure choices like Squirrel Girl.

On the other hand - no Fantastic Four, no X-Men. Not a single solitary one. If you want to play as Wolverine or any of Marvel's other merry mutants, you're out of luck. Howard the Duck, yes. The ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing? No.

Mutantphobia aside, the game is almost TOO full of options, with characters having multiple abilities that range from "very useful" (flight, bombs to break walls) to "a pretty funny joke" (Star-Lord will put on headphones and dance around to short snippets of 70s rock, like the opening credits of Guardians of the Galaxy).

Beyond that, it's a LEGO adventure game and by now that formula has been well established. Set piece missions to introduce the core cast, unlock new characters, double back to the old missions with the new characters to solve puzzles you couldn't complete the first time around.

There's a robust-yet-limited character creator. I was able to whip up a decent-enough version of 80s Marvel UK standard-bearer Death's Head (the first one, yes? Met the Transformers and Doctor Who?), but if you're thinking "Aha, then all I have to do is go in and make Storm/Quentin Quire/Dr. Doom" you are sadly out of luck, as the essential pieces to pull that off... aren't in the game.

Oh, the plot?

Uh, Kang the Conquerer shows up and breaks time so all the different Marvel eras slam together and they all fight and do stuff.

TLDR: Lots of fun in the Mighty Marvel LEGO Manner that attempts to pay homage to the vast depth and breadth of the world Stan and Jack and Steve and the rest of the Marvel Bullpen created.... but the omission of some major parts of the canon is glaring and disappointing.

A disappointing port of a classic.

First and foremost - the music is different. If you came expecting Bad Religion and The Offspring, well, you're gonna have to find a fan patch for that.

More importantly, the controls are jacked up, especially if you're trying to use analog controllers for the gas/brake.

For $2 it's probably worth it for nostalgia, but it's... not unplayable, but definitely very hard to complete as-is.

Finally, a video game with politics in it.

Something funny happened back around 2008 - Saints Row, which began as a so-so GTA clone, took a turn for the strange. Not sure where it happened, probably with the "your player's voice sings along with the car radio" joke, but while GTA grew increasingly concerned with creating Serious Art and pushing the boundaries of digital storytelling, Saints Row went in the exact opposite direction - creating the most over-the-top mayhem simulator possible within the "steal cars do crimes" format.

Saints Row IV is the apex of this mindset - the player is not only a criminal overlord, s/he is President of the United States. Then aliens invade. Then you learn to fly. And it just gets sillier and stranger from there. It's a ridiculous, delightful, game, if a bit repetitive in the way that these games usually are (get the enemy gang out of your hood! Complete this mini game to control your turf!).

And then you fight a giant alien who sounds like Frasier Crane while wearing the Iron Man armor and blasting "You Got The Touch" and it all makes perfect sense. This is the pure unrestrained id of video games.