Wandersong (2018) is a game that hummed its tune a little bit longer than i wanted it to. from what i saw about this game before i played it (which was admittedly not a lot), i assumed this was going to be a relatively short 4-5 hour experience with nothing but quality segments. its construction paper art style blended with pretty color palettes seemed to scream “charming but short indie game for mae, play now!” in reality? this is a game that has some cool ideas, but gets a little too big for its bardly britches. my playthrough clocked in at approximately 11 hours, and at about the halfway point, i was starting to grow tired of its mimimimi’s and lalalala’s.

the game says: “ok dude you’re a little bard guy that’s kinda a cutie and basically? you’re fucking stupid go sing at some shit” and i said “ok, bet, i’ll be this little bard guy. how did you know i am stupid? and hell yeah, i’m gonna go sing at some shit”. you can move left and right (WHAAAAAT??) and jump (HUH???). it’s a platformer (oh). besides that, the thing that you use to interact with essentially EVERYTHING is singing. it’s an 8-directional input system, that for my controller playthrough, i used the right stick for. move the right stick? little colored arcs will appear around the world’s first :) lookin-ass playable bard-type individual, and depending on the arc you align with, that fucker is gonna start goin “aaaaa”. and for those at home wondering: yes, you will hear it through your audio listening device. wonderful!

when i say that you use singing for EVERYTHING, i mean EVERYTHING, and this is sometimes to the game’s detriment. picking dialogue options is done with singing, which is neat! you will do the first note of the answer, and then you can just freestyle the rest of the syllables across your 8 notes. neat! riding on some sort of creature and wanna tell it what direction to move in? sing that way, baby! picked up a throwable object? guess how you throw that shit. did you say “aaaaa”? if so, then, um… you coulda just said singing? that’d be way more clear, i don’t know why you’re making this so difficult. were you just trying to be cute or something? like “ohhh haha yeah it’s like im singing, maeam from backloggd dot com, isn’t that like such a silly little jest?” eh, i guess? hey, buddy, you’re a little too close, could you uh back up a little bit. ok ok ok i’m sorry i’m sorry!!! umm… security??!! coughs, sputters, dies

anyways, when singing is mapped to inputs in a “rhythm” game like section, it’s pretty alright! it’s never anything too difficult, but hey, fun doesn’t always require difficulty. the music is serviceable enough for those segments, and it’s a pretty alright aspect of the game. however! uh oh! trouble in lukewarm paradise??? sometimes (usually)… there’s segments that aren’t rhythm gamey/ music based. as a result, it’s the equivalent of just being like “oh i need to hold right on the stick because there’s an orange colored right directional cue in the environment” and the ‘dame gavelopers’ slapped a note onto that input. isn’t that just sooo fucked? in all seriousness, it’s not really all that egregious, but when you realize that the vast majority of the gameplay is just a platformer paired with using 8-directional inputs to do things where the fact that it’s “musical” is more aesthetic than mechanical, it takes a decent sized blow.

have you ever heard of that little formula Nintendo sometimes uses for Mario level design? you know, where you set up a new mechanic for the player in a simple way, then make it more complicated or difficult, then hit em with a TWIST, and finally top it off with a grand finale challenge to test the player’s mastery of the mechanic? Wandersong does not do this. while this is obviously not the only way to approach level design or game design in general, Wandersong leans too hard into the repeating part of mechanics and doesn’t do enough to iterate and refine its mechanics each time. you’ll get the hang of a new mechanic for an area, and it will be reasonably fun, for a while. it will increase in complexity, but then i often found it to stagnate sooner than i was hoping, and you will encounter what are essentially the exact same obstacles repeatedly. a great example of this can be seen in one of the final acts of the game. you will do the same type of action over and over and over and over and over ad nauseam (ad nausmaeam haha) and it completely takes the wind out of my sails. if the game was more focused on constantly thinking of what else they could do with their concepts and less so on using them to fill space, i could probably see this game ranking much higher for me. also, this is more anecdotal than anything, but sometimes the ground geometry completely fucks out on screen transitions, causing the player character to jitter wildly and proceed upwards to a better place until they pop out of the terrain. fucker almost got away, too. sigh

okay im going to talk about the basic premise and structure of the game now. if you look at the backloggd page you’ll know what i’m about to say anyways, but hey! maybe you don’t know how to read, so i’m giving you this warning here now :). i’m always gonna look out for you, okay? you can trust me. this is a safe space. image of a very friendly looking cat goes here ← that’s me.




uh oh! world ending haha let’s umm fucking sing about it?? we gotta go get the fuckin parts of the song to maybe make it like,, not do that?? oops! maybe there’s gonna be some twists here and there. anyways, you get to go to a few different locations and do some things, get the song part yippee wahoo yay, next act time. it’s a mostly comical game, and sometimes it’s laugh-out-loud humor, but for the most part, it mostly managed to just be “passable” on that front. there’s some interesting areas and concepts, but by and large, i think they are too drawn out for what they are. act five in particular is FAR too long for the ideas it has plot-wise, much like the game’s earlier issue with refining gameplay elements. it really is such a shame too, because i genuinely do enjoy some parts of the world here and would almost, almost put the general concepts for some of these acts on the same level as chapters from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (2004), which is a game i absolutely adore the worlds in. yet, while TTYD knows when to chill and hold out (for the most part) on dragging things on unnecessarily, Bard Game for the Video Game System (Year) doesn’t. the final segment of this game felt like it would never end, and ultimately caused the ending to fall a little flat for me after that “long”-ass adventure Bard Bardly Barderton went through.

i like some of the characters, especially the two main characters, the Bard and Mariam. you actually get to choose the name of the bard character, but SOMEBODY at [insert Wandersong developer here] okay hold on, lemme google it, okay got it… maybe? fucking GREG developer said “no haha you can’t have a name that starts with M,” so my Bard boy did not get to be named mae and instead was named Lili, which i do think is still cute, so its okay. i forgive you, greg. sorry for yelling. Mariam in particular is pretty great, and while i don’t think the character arcs in this game are too crazy or unique, there’s definitely some cool moments here and there. the game did manage to squeak out a tear or two by the time of its conclusion via some heartwarming scenes, but i’m also an emotional girlie and i wasn’t full on sobbing like i normally would from emotional moments in games, so your maelage will vary. BUT GUESS WHAT?? YOU CAN PET THE CREATURES!!! GAME OF THE YEAARRR BABYY.

overall, Wandersong is a videogame that i have played and enjoyed sometimes. i like what they went for, and though they may have missed the mark for mae at times, they occasionally landed among the cars, and got run over by excessive amounts of motor traffic in a horribly gruesome display. but then they also landed among the stars too, so there’s that. it’s clear that a lot of heart was put into this game, and i think that the game mostly just struggles with restraint and getting too brought down in unnecessary tedium. i don’t think it’s a case of trying to pad runtime, but i think they just had a lot of love and energy that could have been compacted into a more polished gem. video game over. i will now serenade you with a song that i wrote about my journey with this game:


aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa i;m siiingninggg about wandersogngg for the vidoe game ssyiosmtem!!! wahowahowhaohw mimimimi laalalallal ok im done bye

Paper Mario: The Origami King is a rare kind of Mario game that suffers from both bland aesthetics and frustratingly unfun game design. Playing through this game has been a chore all the way through and I hope I never have to touch it ever again.

Origami King is structured in such a way that it always makes the player feel like they are just about to achieve whatever goal they may have in mind, before immediately ripping it away from them. Due to this game's extremely boring gameplay I would always be somewhat excited when I thought I was at the end of one of the game's chapters because I thought it would finally be over with. Instead I would always be presented one of the following:

A) Several rooms with pointless loading screens over and over and over and over and over with no story to make it interesting.

B) A string of tedious, monotonous, and poorly designed battles with no story to make it interesting.

C) A super easy but annoying puzzle with no story to keep it interesting.

D) A cutscene filled with extremely slow unskippable textboxes with no story to make it interesting.

C) The knowledge that I would have to travel to the opposite end of the map with an extremely slow fast travel system and no story to make it interesting.

E) All of the Above. (With no story to make ANY of it interesting)

Every single time I thought I was about to feel the sweet relief of never having to play this game again, it would switch things up and make me play for another 20 days (about 1 to 2 hours a day of this mess was all I could really handle).

Anyways let's talk about the fact that there is no story to make anything in this game interesting. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY ZERO STORY TO MAKE ANYTHING IN THIS GAME INTERESTING. This game feels like if you took the plot from a generic kids cartoon, stripped it down to its most basic, simplified, and boring form possible, and then shat 20 trillion completely irrelevant, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, SLOW unskippable text boxes all over it. None of this is helped by the fact that this game is completely bankrupt of any creativity at all. Do you like characters in your stories? Because TOO BAD, this daring game takes the bold new approach of simply not having them at all. And for this complete lack of creativity, what do you get in return? Some origami… and nothing else. It's worth noting as well that most origami characters in this game are completely incapable of emoting or expressing personality in any way at all, which is even less than I can say about the copy and pasted toads.

Everybody knows that the only thing better than a mediocre story is incredibly infuriating and unfun gameplay! So let's take a look at how Intelligent Systems decided to ruin their Paper Mario battle system for literally no reason at all, again, this time around. If you took the action commands from the battles of previous paper mario entries and removed everything else from them, then voila! You have the battle system in paper Mario the origami king! Because it is so boring, the developers added on a completely unrelated and annoying ring minigame to every match. So now you get to waste your time playing an annoying timed puzzle game that literally has nothing to do with anything else in the game. But now because this puzzle game is complete ass, the developers added a button that exchanges in game currency for not having to play the game. Aso, battles are literally worthless and don't give you XP or anything valuable, so they are literally just a setback to this already bad game.

If there is one somewhat positive aspect to this game's gameplay, it's the boss fights. They are kind of tense in a fun way until the last 3 or so expect you to predict the bosses weakness in 1 turn and if you don't do it right immediately it softlocks you until you die. Also I am speaking solely about gameplay here because why the hell are this game's bosses generic office supplies. Like why??? Do the developers of this series get dragged straight to hell if they come up with anything new and original or even, god forbid, SLIGHTLY INTERESTING?

If There is one somewhat positive aspect to this game’s story, it's NOTHING. Everything about this game's narrative is literally paper thin.

Don’t waste your time on this game.

For the longest time, I had no idea that Axelay was even a thing, and even after knowing it was a thing, I didn’t really know too much about it. From the little footage I had seen of it, it looked decent enough, looking like another typical energetic and bombastic shooter from Konami, but nothing that was gonna make me stop everything that I was doing to try to jump on it myself. After a while though, I did find out that the people that made this game were the ones that would eventually go onto forming Treasure, so that’s pretty cool, and since their games are known for being extremely solid, I figured I would go ahead and check this one out to see how it turned out. Now that I have played it, yeah, I can definitely see bits and pieces of Treasure sprinkled all throughout this game, and while I wouldn’t say I liked this game as much as other people, I will say that it is a really damn good shmup from the early 90’s, one that definitely deserved a lot more attention then it ended up getting, and one that will give you plenty of what you are looking for from the genre and from Treasure.

The story is extremely generic, where in the distant solar system of Illis, the planets and their inhabitants lived peacefully for many years, until an evil alien race known as the Armada of Annihilation came along and started to take over, spreading their chaos out as far as the eye can see, so, in a last ditch effort to save their world, it is up to the lone D117B fighter pilot to set out into space and to take down the armada once and for all, which is basically just the plot of every shmup ever at this point, but I guess it works for what this is, the graphics are fantastic, having as much detail, polish, and smooth animations as you would expect from a Konami game from the SNES era, and plenty of the action and explosions help make the visuals that much more impactful and memorable, the music is pretty sweet, having plenty of energetic tracks that feel right at home with the developer that made them, and fitting perfectly with whatever is going on on-screen, and the gameplay/control is almost exactly as you would expect it to be, with some tiny little innovations put into play that do make this experience feel more unique and enjoyable compared to other titles.

The game is a space-themed shmup, where you take control of the D117B fighter, go through a set of six different levels that will take you through many different galaxies, planets, and installations in space, shoot down everyone you see with the many different weapons that are available to you to use, dodge every single bullet that flies at you, or else you will lose all of your lives before you even realize what is going on, and fight plenty of huge and deadly bosses, who will do everything in their power to turn you into a pile of space dust floating around uselessly, so you will need to bring your A-game in order to properly take them down. Most of what you expect from a typical shmup is here and accounted for, all coming together to make a very fun and exciting package that any fanatic of the genre can enjoy, with a little extra layered on top of that to make it more worthwhile.

Like with Life Force, the game primarily swaps between two different perspectives throughout the whole game, starting off with this vertical view where you will be soaring over many different enemies and hazards to reach the end, before then swapping to the typical horizontal view for the second stage, and then swapping between the two styles for the rest of the game. Both of these angles work extremely well, with the horizontal one working as well as it should, and the vertical view is fantastic, with it taking advantage of the SNES’s Mode 7 in every possible way, making for some truly fantastic visuals for the time, and while neither of these views really change up the gameplay that much, they do get you into the action and to shooting down whatever foes are in your way.

Alongside that, the game also has a pretty unique way of handling weapons, where like in the Gradius games, before every level, you are able to choose three different kinds of weapons to take into the stage with you, and in the stages themselves, you can swap freely between all three weapons on the fly whenever you need it. Not only that, but as the game goes on, you will unlock access to new weapons, allowing you to properly experiment with them to see what works best for you and what will allow you to take down your foes more efficiently. Thankfully though, the game isn’t programmed to where you can just stick with one weapon the whole time and just clear through the whole thing with no effort, as there are plenty of situations in which you will need to swap weapons in order to take out your foes, which I can really appreciate, especially how the game does show some mercy to the player by having the different weapons be extra hits for you before you die.

Aside from all that though, really, what you see is what you get here. It is just another typical shmup through and through, with nothing else really going on to make it stand out, but then again, in this case, I don’t mind that very much. You can tell that a lot of effort and love was put into this game, with the visuals, level design, music, and gameplay being top notch for the genre, and managing to be a blast from start to finish. But also, in another traditional fashion that we have come to expect from shmups, especially those from Konami, this game is extremely difficult, with it doing everything in its power to stop you at every given moment, and while you do have some saving graces like additional hits before death and respawning immediately back into the action, you will still need to be careful and move and shoot like hell in order to stand a chance at surviving.

Overall, despite some lack of originality and how brutal it can be at times, Axelay is definitely an underappreciated gem of a shmup to come from the 16-bit era, and a really good game in general, giving you plenty of the classic, explosive and satisfying shmup action that you want and crave, while also providing some decent changes and innovations to keep things from going too stale. I would definitely recommend it for those who are shmup fanatics, as well as those who are big fans of what Treasure and the 90’s era Konami were putting out, because while this game might not be as universally praised and remembered as some of their other titles, it is definitely one that holds up on its own, and one that you will have a blast with when you give it a shot. It’s too bad though that, even though it was teased in the game itself, we never did end up getting Axelay 2 at any point after this game…………. I’m not saying I’m surprised, but still.

Game #638.5

For a decade or so there, games just kept getting bigger and bigger. Larger worlds. More collectibles. Longer playtime. Never mind that the large maps were full of dead space and the extra content was often mindless drivel. Maximalism was the name of the game, for better or for worse.

The key to Tomb Raider’s success, then, is that it adopts maximalist game design while avoiding the associated bloat. This game really does have everything. Shooting? Check. Crafting? Check. Graphics? Cinematics? Collectibles? Check, check, check. While it’s really not that different from say, Resident Evil 4, in terms of overall scope, the ability to fast travel back and forth throughout the world injects it with just enough open-world energy to hide the fact that it’s a series of linear stages at heart.

Perhaps the best word to describe Tomb Raider is “polished.” It’s a game with few obvious faults, yet at the same time it lacks any elements that make it feel truly exceptional. The shooting mechanics are solid but unremarkable; the puzzles are sparse and easy; the story is better than it gets credit for, boasting quite a few shades of grey, but comes up a twist or two short of greatness. The very best games always have one or two mechanics or story beats that make you go “Damn, that’s really cool.” But there’s nothing like that here.

(If I were playing on an Xbox 360 in 2013, I’m sure I would’ve been supremely impressed by the graphics. The visuals of the Definitive Edition hold up well, especially at 60FPS on Xbox Series hardware, but as of 2024 they are hardly exceptional.)

While it won’t go down as one of my all-time favorites, Tomb Raider was still a fun ride, and one that was easily worth my time. A big advantage it has over open-world games from the same era is that it doesn’t overstay its welcome. The areas are small enough that exploring them never feels tedious, and the number of collectibles is manageable. I was able to gather all of them in well under 20 hours.

Pulling back and considering how this game fits into the series as a whole, I do wonder if the franchise has started taking itself a bit too seriously. While the series has always been gritty with elements of horror, there was always something patently ridiculous about running through tombs with double pistols and booty shorts. Times have changed, and I don’t want or expect the booty shorts to return, but I do think this game could benefit from a pinch of levity. A little zaniness can go a long way. If the two sequels in this trilogy are as grim as this one, I could see playing through all of them becoming quite the slog.

Where it Shines:
Innovation - 9/10
Trendsetting - 10/10
Instant Classic - 8/10

The Good:
I mean, it's Mario. This is THE game that people think of when they think of first home console video games, aside from maybe Pac-Man and Pong for arcade and atari.
The platforming is great, the level design is great, the sprite work and music is top notch. It set the standard for video games for years to come.

The Bad:
It's an old game. There are just better games than this now. That's not this games fault mind you, but it's a very average experience to play in a modern age.

Summary:
I gave this an exact 50% rating not because it's bad, because it just is what it is. Not good, not bad, but influential as heck. If I was rating it solely on it's influence, it's an easy 5 stars, but I'm not, I'm judging it on it's gameplay, and let's be frank, there are better games on the NES than this.

Note on my ratings:

Treat my stars like Michelin Stars - just having one means the game is worth playing in some way.

1/2 ⭐: hot trash garbage, since you can't do zero stars here
⭐: below average, needs work
⭐⭐: average
⭐⭐⭐: pretty good
⭐⭐⭐⭐: excellent
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: all time favourite

Pikmin? more like PEAKMIN!!!.
This quirky little gem got me completely obsessed with this franchise from the very moment I got introduced to it. It's my favorite in a series that every game stands out on its own for adding something to the formula for the simple fact that it's the most balanced Pikmin game and it stays engaging throughout its entire runtime. Each subsequent game doesn't fully live up to the original in my eyes. Pikmin has the type of unforgiving challenge I want in Pikmin, without being unfair or annoying.The 30 day time limit gives you enough time to challenge yourself and also keeps up the pace but doesn't overwhelm.

The areas are so masterfully crafted, there are likely thousands of ways to tackle any number of tasks in a single day so it's fun to see what is the most efficient.

Pikmin also has the best protagonist of all time. No joke, Olimar has so much personality hidden away in the Pikmin logs. Olimar is such a family man I love him. Read those goddamn logs he writes and get to know this multi-layered, funny, amazing character. The Pikmins are also the most charming little silly guys ever invented, Pikmins to me are what breathing is to the human. A world without Pikmin is just a sad gloomy world with nothing to live for. Pikmin are the greatest thing i have ever seen, my life now has greater meaning because i have laid eyes upon Pikmin. I feel a sharp pain in my heart whenever I accidentally kill some of the Pikmin with a bombrock.

In the end though, Pikmin is the first of its kind. From the great level design to the strategies on how to obtain treasure I can assure that everybody will enjoy Pikmin in one way or another.. Pikmin offers an incredibly charming and unique experience that's still enjoyable. Everything in this game is intentional and doesn’t overstay its welcome; the game isn’t padded out with unnecessary frills that prolong the runtime. This franchise is really special and I'm glad that it still lives on and still gets installments.

“Wait for it to start doing its spin attack. Switch to Morph Ball. Boost Ball into it while it's spinning to stun it. While it's stunned, roll between its legs, and lay a bomb on its flashing weak point. When the body is destroyed, the head flies off and starts attacking. The head will have a light or dark shield; switch to the opposite colored beam to dispel it. Then you can use a Super Missile to destroy the head.”

This is me describing how to kill a Normal Non-Miniboss Enemy in one of the late game areas of Metroid Prime 2. I swear to god every fucking enemy is like this. God forbid you design an FPS enemy where the optimal strategy is “shoot it until it dies”; it always has to be some five step process to make then enemy vulnerable, then you have a half second window to shoot them (from just the right angle, of course) and finally deal Real Actual Damage.

Of course, even with all that, many enemies take three or four Super Missiles to kill. So now every encounter takes a full minute to finish, and often they’ll put three or four of these fuckers in the same room. So of course I run past every single enemy I can, because combat is a miserable ordeal with no reward, and I’ve already been through this room seven times anyway, god fucking dammit.

Don't you dare use anything besides Super Missiles or maybe the occasional charged light/dark/annihilator beam. I can't think of an FPS with a more pathetic default gun. There's almost never a good reason to use any of the non-charged shots against enemies. I counted the number of regular beam shots an extremely piddily enemy took later on -- 26 hits! What's even the point of having a beam at that point? Where are the popcorn enemies? Why is everything a painfully involved miniboss? Why do the beam combos cost so many resources when I never found a single practical use case for any of them?!

While I don’t think the combat works at all for the regular enemies, I think there’s a perverse rom hack joy to the bosses. They have all the same problems and jank as the enemies, but multiplied several times over. Every major boss is a 10+ minute encounter, and because the timing to dodge enemy attacks is much stricter here than in Prime 1, they often come down to the wire. The thing is, once you’ve beaten a boss, it’s over. And you’re generally rewarded with a cool power-up! The regular enemies are miserable because the game expects you fight them over and over for no reason. The bosses don’t have that problem.

All my most memorable moments in Prime 2 were barely scraping by at the end of the painfully long boss fights. I beat the Spider Guardian on my first try with 10 total energy to spare. If I'd taken a single additional hit, I would've died and had to start the whole grueling trial over again. The release I felt nailing each of those super-strict bomb jumps and defeating the boss was orgasmic.

The finale is epic. The Ing Emperor’s second phase is the scariest fight in the game outside maybe the Boost Guardian, and after barely scraping by that fight you still have another timed boss fight to deal with, one that’s exceptionally confusing and opaque in its execution even by this game's standards. All without any checkpoints of course. No notes, pristine conclusion.

The best thing you can say about Metroid Prime 2 is that it’s a weird, obnoxiously strict, rom hack-y sequel to Metroid Prime 1. Prime 1 was polished, streamlined, and generally pretty easy. It’s a good game that definitely called for a sequel that’s annoying in the ways Prime 2 is annoying.

Prime 2 is far too long, and the story is contrived videogame bullshit in contrast to Prime 1’s gracefully unfolding mystery. Calling it an FPS feels unfair because it invites comparisons to games where the combat is actually fun. But it has some good tunes, and in spite of (and sometimes because of) its myriad failings, it still takes you on a journey that feels substantial. There’s a catharsis to reaching its hard-won conclusion.

I definitely don’t think Retro is the best to ever do it, and I’m in no rush to revisit Prime 3. But they make games that feel like real adventures, and that’s something I’ll always appreciate.

(minimal spoilers until a certain point that will be labeled)

having finished the dlc a few hours ago, i’m reminded that, in my review for the base game of elden ring, i likened it to a walking corpse. i still stand by that, but i bring it up because, while playing shadow of the erdtree, i was reminded that this was not always the case. there were times in this expansion where i was just in awe at the construction of this world - how they created something even more laden with secrets, somehow with even more beautiful visuals, with a level of verticality and interconnectedness that is overwhelming to even conceptualize - and there were times were i was in awe, not out of respect, but out of sheer bewilderment. how could the same people who brought me such joy create encounters this terrible, this frustrating, this… boring? the shadow realm is an exacerbation of all the best and worst qualities present in the lands between, resulting in an experience that is, somehow, even more bipolar than the base game.

to begin discussing why that is, we have to first broach the topic of difficulty. it’s been the brand of developer fromsoftware since the very first dark souls, with the “prepare to die” edition to the death counter in majula, to the streamer reactions of orphan of kos and slave knight gael - the reputation of fromsoftware as “the developer that makes hard games” is one that they’ve fully embraced. phrases like “git gud” and “skill issue” have become emblematic of the design trend of these games, especially as they progressively get harder and harder.

the problem with this kind of brand image is that the fixation of difficulty as a ways to entice and engage the player has slowly given way to a very rapid, nearly exponential increase in difficulty. can you imagine showing a demon's souls player blackflame friede? or a dark souls player maliketh

demon's souls, dark souls and dark souls 2 respectively handle difficulty all pretty similarly - they all feel like an extrapolation of the same design ethos, though interpreted in different ways. dark souls 3 (and from what i’ve played of it, probably bloodborne) is where the trouble starts to crop up, especially 3. because it’s the end of a trilogy, and because it’s coming off the heels of bloodborne, the boss design is still in the same vein as what came before - but it results in a feeling of overcompensation all the more. you can’t make something easier than what came before, so what else to do but make it harder?

this kind of approach to difficulty continues into sekiro (although that game is much easier to stomach due to it having a much different combat system) and flows into elden ring with a ferocity that made that game’s combat pretty unfun for me. it was a mixture of a lot of things - hyper delayed moves with attacks that came out incredibly quickly, resulting in the only way of learning a fight by dying over and over; combo extender and mixups, where a boss could sometimes launch into a move sometimes in the middle of a combo where sometimes they wouldn’t; and especially in the back half of the game, bosses with extremely long and punishing combos where it was only possible to get one or two hits in before they launched into yet another extremely long and punishing combos, just to name a few. because of this, it’s a markedly different style of difficulty than seen in demon souls or dark souls 1, and it’s why the discussion surrounding the difficulty in these games are so boring and trite. there’s no nuance, no discussion of the level of difficulty, it’s simply regarded as a binary and not a spectrum. this treatment of game design has lead to the boss design in erdtree. it’s a natural progression, and as much as i loathe it, it is understandable.

what i don’t understand is why fromsoft seemingly insists on devaluing their creations so much. before fighting a hidden superboss, i had fought no less than five dragons in this dlc, more if we’re counting non-boss ones. there are still the same catacombs, shrines and caves as in the base game - filled with the same reused enemies and bosses (no, i don’t count unique npcs as unique bosses). the fact a few connect to new areas, like the sewers catacombs to the frenzied flame in the base game, is a welcome addition - but it still makes the ones that don’t stick out like a sore thumb. and if you want new bosses that aren’t a part of the story, then you’re out of luck. have fun fighting three runebears with a boss name for some reason! or a deathrite bird, for some reason! they even have the dancing dragon - a boss with an intro cutscene, for gods sake - in some random fucking temple, except this time he spits deathblight and summons those annoying frog guys that also spit deathblight. like what??

what is easily and glaringly the worst part of the dlc, though, is the fact that’s been impossible to ignore - these boss fights no longer have summons as an option, but are designed around them. i don’t have a problem with summons in these games, not at all. i think they allow more people to experience these games and that is undoubtedly a good thing. the issue is that, in the ever increasing difficulty of these games, it becomes increasingly not manageable to use summons. for the record, i’ve beaten all the dark souls games (and sekiro, obviously) without ever using summons. i’ve also done the same with elden ring - and would’ve been able to say the same about the dlc, if it wasn’t for the final fight.

if i’m being honest, most of my animosity for this expansion comes from this fight. not from a lore perspective, no, that’s not my thing. the design of this boss, is so incredibly, unbelievably, viciously abhorrent that there’s only two ways this was allowed to actually be in the final release of the game - that miyazaki has his head so far up his own ass he actually thinks this is fun, or he’s a giant troll and wanted to see just how bullshit he can make a fight before people stop blindingly praising the ensuing product. make no mistake - this fight is dogshit. it is monumentally so, it towers above and blinds the rest of the experience to such a comical degree. it reminded me, again, why i thought elden ring was a walking corpse - there’s only so much you can do with a combat system that only has a dodge roll and its central pillar. if malenia strained that framework, this fight shatters it - in my eyes, beyond all repair.

misc stuff that i couldnt fit in, with spoilers:

-the roster of fights in this expansion is very much on the malenia / maliketh side, much to my disappointment. it makes me sad, because much like those fights, there’s a lot to love, but it’s just executed so poorly that it results in a supremely diminished experience. the divine dragon isn’t as much a fight with a creature as much as it is a flailing, writhing mess of bone and flesh - and the camera, of course. rellana is an exercise in excessively long combos and over-the-top spectacle more than anything else. messmer would be a great fight if it wasn’t for a few minor things - the flurry attack as part of his longest combo, annoying mixups that require a level of reflexes that i found unfair, and a second phase that just felt ridiculously excessive in nearly every way. the other bosses i do actually mostly enjoy, even if i have some minor problems - scadutree avatar was a really cool, unique fight, commander gaius was rather simple and had an annoying charge move, but was simple enough, putrescent knight had a great flow when you got the hang of it, and bayle is probably their best dragon fight to date, even if it still suffers from a feeling of the devs trying to up themselves yet again – i think placidusax was more than enough, personally.

-it’s cool that so many areas of this dlc are so secret and difficult to find, but i do wish there were more ways to get to these areas. i had to resort to using a guide to find the last one, and that’s never really a fun feeling for me. i know the intent is to create a world where people collaborate to find a solution, but who’s asking their friend if they know something and not just looking at a wiki? it’s a design that worked when the internet wasn’t so omnipresent, but it doesn’t hold up now imo.

-as much as i love the open world, there’s a bizarre amount of empty space? there’s not really a ton of stuff to do in a lot of these areas - areas like abyssal woods, scaduview, and jagged peak, while gorgeous, just don’t have a lot of interesting stuff in them.

-new weapon types are really cool!!

-the last thing isn’t related to the game, but i do wonder how those who sneer at people complaining about the difficulty will regard the final boss. these games have been worshiped for so long, it makes me wonder: can they do anything that will break the spell they have on people?

Can you Double Jump in this Game? No.

This is a weird interactive story book, and if you are familiar with the old Disney ones, it is not like those at all. While those are basically like the edutainment point and click of that era, in this you barely get to do much besides walk left and right (or do nothing) while a guy reads what happens in Alice in Wonderland.

This game is very interesting though in its artstyle, because its just real ass beautiful photos of nature and then jpegs of either drawings or real objects plastered places. Its a neat looking collage art style I think. This game also has the strange choices only a person making what the fuck they want can have, like when it asks you to kick a lizard from a chimney it plays a cannon noise and the wilheim scream. Or they announce that the Red Queen is coming, and it starts playing loud ass Imperial March ass music and she walks across the whole screen, stops, then raises her hand and points at Alice. Or when you have a croquete minigame, every round it says "Round Start" in a deep stereotypical game voice.

Kind of whatever, but its fun to see a bunch of fun stuff.

I believe this game makes for a fantastic introduction to VR.

It doesn't do anything ground-breaking nor does it ask you to do anything too complex in VR. It gives you a simple world with tasks to do and some fun voice acting to encourage you along.

I enjoyed my time with it and it's genuinely funny at parts (something I rarely say for games actively trying to be funny). I would likely start someone off in this game to get them adjusted to VR and see what it is like to interact with items in the game space.

I feel the need to make this point atleast once on my account.

I think Kojima sucks and his games are lame.

I've dabbled with MGS a few times over the years, this was the only one I felt warranted spending a significant amount of time in and I didn't care for it.

This is my "and I refuse to elaborate" moment.