Not my favourite overall even though it does tug the heart strings. But I have to say finicky/fixed on me is a great slant rhyme.

I don't feel it in games as much, but I still haven't found any film critic whose tastes match mine since Roger Ebert passed, so I kind of know what you're feeling. Having that one person you trust completely is so good.

I guess there might still be some delusional ones left. I would hope even Christiano fans are able to recognise Messi is greater at this point, but you're probably right.

Is there anyone left who is actually disputing that he is the greatest of all time?

You made the correct choice.

I have only played like... three of them, I think?

Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree was a lot of fun. Out of the ones I've played it's probably my favourite, even though it's by no means a revolutionary game that is going to blow someone's mind. What I liked was that it felt like 90% 2D Soulslike and 10% Metroidvania. I struggle with platforming and so I liked that there really wasn't much of difficult precision platforming here. The character building was fun with a light PoE-inspired skill tree and multiclassing and it was in general just good clean gaming and a smooth ride that you don't have to think too hard about. Story is whatever but there are some okay characters. The vampire lord has some hilarious over the top voice acting and the goldsmith Yrsa is genuinely pretty funny.

Blasphemous has some of my favourite art direction and world building in all of Souls. The twisted Spanish catholic lore is just phenomenal, the music is wonderful, pixel art is beautiful, story is interesting... as a piece of art I adore it. I didn't have all that much fun playing it, though. It has a lot of platforming, with instant kill hazards everywhere. It also has some really janky and poor detection for ledge/ladder grabs that lead to very frustrating deaths. And it has some of that DS2 "fuck you, player" about it too. Lots of enemy placement that deliberately prevents you from rushing through areas, which is unfortunate because there is also a lot of backtracking and limited fast travel. It may be the game I'm most conflicted about overall. I love it, but I hated playing it.

GRIME is a fantastic game that I just cannot get into. I think again this is because it's heavy on the Metroidvania part of Soulsvania. There is a ton of platforming, although less clunky than in Blasphemous. The lack of fast travel (at least so far) also makes it feel annoying to play, as the world is pretty large and there is a lot of backtracking. The story is also rather weird, and while I love the art direction and think the world building is cool the plot hasn't really hooked me either. I don't know. I pick it up every now and then and play for like 45 minutes but I never get hooked. I have I think 9 hours total playtime over the last few months and beat a couple of bosses but it never sticks. Which is weird because I can tell it's a good game.

This is great news, I continue to be very hopeful for the future of Fluxer. Self hosting and native apps are both huge.

That would typically be called naïve art rather than amateur.

The Visa situation is unbelievably awful, but man. That Cape Verde performance shows there is still some sparkle left in the World Cup. It can still be magical, no matter how hard Infantino and Trump try to ruin it.

Was about to wishlist this lightning quick, but it was apparently on my wishlist. Looks fantastic!