Christian Scandariato

Picture of Marjane Satrapi alongside a quote from her. The quote reads: The world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same... - Marjane Satrapi, Iranian-French graphic novelist

Thinking about this quote from Persepolis creator Marjane Satrapi again.

A full-body illustration of an elegant elf with dark skin and bright red hair. She wears a black bodysuit and bustier, a white capelet, and golden armored boots.

2025 comm I don't think I posted!

Gravity Rush, Tearaway, P4Golden, at least Danganropa 1

A full-body illustration of Agrias Oaks from Final Fantasy Tactics. She wears a vibrant blue half cape and silver armor, and holds a sword in front of her.

Agrias from last year :)

elf

DHS Is Lying To You About ICE Shooting a Woman At least four videos show what really happened when ICE shot a woman in Minneapolis on Wednesday. DHS has established itself as an agency that cannot be trusted to live in or present reality.

NEW: At least four videos show what really happened when ICE shot a woman in Minneapolis on Wednesday.

DHS has established itself as an agency that cannot be trusted to live in or present reality.

Our latest:

“i can’t leave twitter, i need it, it’s where my audience is”

Garou is dead and City of the Wolves is still trying to sell its corpse.

From filling the game with real life people, not characterizations, such as Cristiano Ronaldo to fumbling the everloving shit out of the release, City of the Wolves is a shambling corpse of what Garou felt like to play, and continues to wear its skin like a shambling pile of garbage.

The Saudification of the entirety of the FGC has its own long, long series of disappointments and letdowns. With now the world's largest FGC event being owned by the government, their reach is inescapable. To compete, you will be engaging with that system directly: there is no other choice.

FART OF THE YEAR: Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves

I fucking love Garou: Mark of the Wolves. I love it. I played the game when it was new in 1999, it was one of the few games I felt like I was ever a nationally competitive player in for fighting games.

COTW is a failure. It failed me.

HONORABLE MENTION: Islanders: New Shores

Islanders is the closest to a meditative game that I get.

The only downside for this for me was that the campaign, as it is, is really difficult to "Complete" and having to start over from the front harms my flow a bit.

HONORABLE MENTION: Avowed

The combat in this game felt so bad, for just sponge enemies soaking everything I did, but every other aspect was SO tight. I really enjoyed parkour! I loved the worldbuilding! I like that Garrus is back!

Didn't finish it, but I think about it all the time.

HONORABLE MENTION: No, I'm Not a Human

The play on paranoia, the concern with literal basic hygiene being a “tell” and the concept that you can check yourself at any time were all extremely cool. I also like that while everyone may be a visitor, some humans will lie to you and not be a Visitor.

HONORABLE MENTION: Monster Hunter Wilds

It's Monster Hunter, which is great, and it's gorgeous, which is great, but it ended and never really recovered from the lack of monsters to hunt after the finish. I want to play Monster Hunter for a long time, and there just wasn't a long time worth of stuff

HONORABLE MENTION: Demonschool

I love Faye, I really enjoyed the battle system, and it was an interesting take on Persona storytelling, but man the pacing of this game was just too far off for me after getting through to the end of the game. Absolutely worth playing, but maybe don't try to 100% it.

Serafin also being sort of a strange character stapled to the Sleeper for the entire game brought it down a few points for me, what was their deal?

So many characters returned from CS1 to great effect, and a lot of the new characters were wonderful and special to engage with, but Serafin. I dunno.

This almost didn't make the list, and I would appreciably put it at the very bottom of top 5 due to some of the more strange systems that made the early game exceptionally difficult: glitched dice in particular.

OTHER TOP 5: Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector

Wake up, Sleeper.

CS2 continues to drive home all of the aspects that killed it in the first title: gender is a construct, the system is oppressive and does not care about you, community is what will get us through this. We need this in 2025.

The last part of becoming the ball and showing the interconnectivity of all the groups and the city itself was a really nice touch. It made me sentimental for a time and place I've never been, for an event I didn't know that happened on a sport I don't really follow, and that hits.

I think as an art piece, this is stellar. It is very much not a traditional game despite the soccer balling, and I have consistently failed to hit the ball at ANY target I'm trying to aim for, but overall it's making me nostalgic for a place I've never been, and that's a huge success.

OTHER TOP 5: despelote

Truly it's a game all about presentation, but I think it captures the dreaminess of being a kid better than any game I've ever seen. You remember specific details, like your friends and your favorite toys and which toilets work, but not things like what every desk looks like

I have not seen a game do this better than Look Outside did this year: the right amount of random encounter on top of the right amount of potential systemic interaction combined into an extremely interesting cosmic horror title that knew enough to not overstay its welcome. Exceptionally solid title.

OTHER TOP 5: Look Outside

"System Suspense" is a design term I learned this year for when a player performs an action and something unexpected happens, leading them to wonder how many different things COULD have happened, and creating an infinite volume of possibility.

They gave me a female version of Captain America to have a romance subplot with, so what more could I even ask for?

I only recognized this on subsequent plays after the first, but it was extremely noticeable in a way that bumped it down the list.

Being said, I would love love love a season 2, I would get it right away and wait episodically even. I am dying to see where the story goes from here.

Complete with multi-dimensional characters and a really fun puzzle style, it was a great iteration to the normal TellTale format.

Dispatch unfortunately still suffers from trying to tell a specific story in games, which leads to some choices mattering far less than others.

OTHER TOP 5: Dispatch

I fucking love superhero stories. In a time where it feels like all superhero stories represented in games are racing to the bottom, Dispatch gave what felt like a measured and practical view of what superheroes in a modern society looks like.

It's been really difficult. In a way, I really wish I didn't need a game to tell me it's fine to cry over a fictional redheaded daughter, but in a different way of course this is the way it is for me. Why not?

I think i'd be pretty good. I think that's what hurts the most. I'd like a chance.

(Extremely personal anecdote) This year, we learned that Sola and I can't have kids (right now at least.) I very much didn't let myself be sad about it.

The game sort of forced me to confront it.