Pretty great game, I like the hand holding physics (take notes dead rising) and the animations. The music was nice too. Give it a try.
…
April fools! What did you really think I, the great one and only elkmane would have just one sentence as my final review before my retirement? No. I’m gonna give a nice good long review.

Ico is a really nice game. It's a video game stripped down to its bare essentials and then stripped down even more. Theres no health bar or weapon switching or hud or prompts or any tutorial of any kind. Which is pretty cool and can lead to moments of discovery in puzzles which are really fun, like when i found out i could swing on chains or something. The puzzles in this game are so simple but can be so much fun. They often span a whole room or multiple, and mix cool platforming in and it always left me wanting to play more.

I did something new while playing this game. You see, the PS3 doesn't have a headphone jack on its controller, and I live in a house with other people who can't rly be quiet. Why don't i get a house for myself? because I live in ontario! FUCK YOU DOUG FORD! FUCK YOU WITH THE FREEST OF SPEECH THIS DIVIDED STATES OF EMBARRASSMENT WILL ALLOW ME TO HAVE! FUCK YOU AND THIS DEMOCRACY OF HYPOCRISY! Anyways, I decided every morning I was free to get up super early in the morning like 5 or 5:30 to play Ico. It was usually dark when I started but the sun rose through my window on the side and it was completely silent aside from the birds chirping both ingame and irl and it was a fun experience. Don't worry about me tho, i'm used to waking up at 5 to commute to uni. THANKS AGAIN DOUG FORD... FUCKING IDIOT. Anyways, the 5am complete silence helped me think a lot about what feelings this game was trying to give me. And I do feel it. It hit me when I, Ico, was trying to solve this puzzle by climbing up on this structure. Yorda was looking off into the ocean and occasionally glancing back at me to see how I was doing (yorda is the girl u escort around.) And I think I understood. This game is trying to recapture the greatest years of our lives, that being grade 3. And maybe 4 if you were lucky and privileged. Because there's such peace in meeting someone within 3 years of your age at a playground and not knowing how to speak the same language but still playing together. Hey let me show you something cool on top of this tree. You wait down there. I don't know, it was really evocative of that time for me. Like the time I was at the park at 9pm and met some guy from my class I never spoke to and we talked about owls while sitting on a tree and he told me owls are spies for demons and I believed him. This has nothing to do with the game, i'm rambling... sorry.. in my old age i've gotten sentimental for the happier days back before doug ford was premier. Maybe its good im retiring after this. im losing my marbles. Let me get back on track. Basically, this game is like meeting a new friend and helping her escape from her evil mom who wants her to stay inside and practice piano or multiplication tables.

the environments were all also great. If you liked undead parish/burg this is that but for like the whole game. Gorgeous visuals and the camera placements make this a very unique looking game. No prop or interactable item has any kind of glow or yellow paint marking that its usable or anything like that. Boxes are boxes, chains are chains, ropes are ropes, ladders are ladders, it has no regard for readability except for the fact that there is so little detail in the environment (which adds to its isolating abandoned castle atmosphere) that it really doesn't feel like a hassle or like there was something that shouldve been interactable. It's cool. The camera placement also highlights where you should go. Stepping onto a ledge brings the bottom tip of a chain into your view, prompting you to move the camera and investigate the room further. Now i'm gonna talk about the combat.

The combat is okay I guess, it's interesting and a fun idea to have the playable character be under no threat at all and have yords (me and yorda are on nickname basis) be the target. Theyll try and knock you away, but theyre going for her. Like ashley in re4 kind of. But it's more like ashley in re4 remake. The problem is theyre kind of slippery and can fly- and you have no air attacks. So, lets say I attack and they fly up. I repeat this like 20 minutes. But- if they grab yords then they stay still for a few seconds which lets you hit them as much as you like til they die. It's like re4 remake because ashley gets kidnapped 10x more in that game than she does in re4, and once she IS kidnapped then the ganado or whatever holding her is open to a stealth attack which is a one hit KO. So in that game, I didn't really mind her getting taken five times a fight because it was kind of beneficial to me. Double edged sword though. On one hand, its a way for your sidekick to be useful in their uselessness, but on the other hand it makes the times they DO get taken way less stressful. Honestly I think I would've preferred if they were just less slippery and didn't fly all the time.

I think thats pretty much all i have to say. The review is over now, so newcomers please feel free to drop your like and be on your way. My following message is for my loyal elksters regarding my retirement from backloggd.

Hey buddies. How's everyone doing? okay? i hope so. I know I'm addressing a crowd of hundreds, but honestly you're all my sons and daughters and children to me. All of you are appreciated by me equally. But I have to go now. Why? well, it's because I had a dream. What was my dream? well, I'll tell you now. I had put my copy of breath of the wild on sale in kijiji. What's kijiji? oh kiddo its like canadian craigslist. I wanted to sell my copy of breath of the wild or trade it for a copy of bayonetta 2. I did this in real life, so its interesting that it carried over in my dream. Anyways, I recieved a message (in my dream) saying they would trade me a copy of starbound for botw. I said no, considering starbound is worth like 15 dollars and I was selling botw for 45. The guy didn't like that. Not one bit. He took to backloggd and he posted something. He somehow managed to find every bad thing I've said on the internet, every weird search i've ever made, every guy i've yelled at on rainbow 6 voice chat. My elksters know I have a dark past. The comments were my beloved elksters; all of them felt so betrayed. Comments like "i cant believe elkmane would do this to us." "i can't support him anymore" "he was my idol." I tried to go back and give him my game, hoping for him to take it down but he didn't budge. It was over. My fans hated me. And that dream made it known to me that i can't be elkmane anymore. It's too much. This role isn't something i can mentally handle. The past 6 presidents of the united states have all gone on record as to saying that their job is 2nd hardest in the world right before being elkmane. And they're right. It is tough. So i've decided to hang up my elk hat and retire. And I know some shit's so hard to swallow, but I just can't sit back and wallow in my own sorrow but I know one fact: I'll be one tough act to follow. One tough act to follow. I'll be one tough act to follow. Here today, gone tomorrow - M.M

Here is my goodbye song!

wait, no. sorry. wrong one.

THIS is my goodbye song.

This game’s music and style is #awesome. I know it was supposed to be green but my emulator played it in black and white and the screen is super zoomed in, you can’t see 3 feet in front of you and the soundtrack is just these harsh noises and beeps and screeches, there’s rooms and dark hallways with no enemies and it gets more and more frequent the more you progress and the deeper into the planet you go. I feel so unwelcome, tense, out of my depth, and on edge. Super cool af.

I hear a lot about how metroid 1’s abrasive and alien design was lost in future games and while I do like the thought of duplicate rooms, death traps, and in general just map design that is meant to trip the player up and fuck with them, (See tricks and traps from doom 2; one of the greatest videogame levels of all time.) that wasn’t what stopped me from wanting to finish metroid 1. It was just unfun to control. Moving around sucked, shooting sucked, the health economy sucked unless you were willing to grind those bug ejecting tubes for like 10 minutes, and it was huge so if you got lost (no map) you were LOST for real. This game is genuinely fun to control, the movement as well as the combat is smooth and is up to modern standards. The game is much more linear so the lack of a map isn’t as big of a deal (though, not having any colour made it hard to mentally isolate where it was you needed to be. As well as remembering all these BS normal ass blocks that you can crawl thru.) ((double also, i’m probably a little advantaged on this front cause i played AM2R))

I do feel the metroid fights themselves got old really quick and despite the mutations my strategy of just tanking it all and spamming missiles never changed. It was like the same fight but reskinned and they gradually got more and more bullet spongey. And also there wasn’t enough health recharges in the later stages cause there were so little enemies to regain hp from. I had to backtrack just for hp. Later I looked it up (AFTER I FINISHED!!) and it turns out yea that was the closest one lol

I think this game is worth playing and I had fun. At least give this one a fair try.

I thought my Metroid marathon was done but I saw this in the store for 10 dollars and I remembered I had a 3ds and that can play ds games. So I got it and physically played it on a physical 3ds which was really cute of me to do that. Every aspect of this little demo thing is cute + precious. The controls are giga fucked tho. U can move with the stick or the d pad or XYAB for some reason, shoot with the bumpers, and move your camera by dragging ur finger across the bottom half of ur ds. to jump u tap ur finger on the bottom half of ur ds twice and to change to missiles u press a button on there, to change to morph ball bla bla u get the idea. There’s not much to do here but i had fun for like 5 mins. Worth 10 dollars and digging out my 3ds for? Absolutely fucking not. But tbh I feel I’ve been overlooking the 3ds. It’s more portable than the switch and i can comfortably take it on the bus with me and not get robbed. I’ll play Samus returns I guess. I did see it at the store and it was still $60 tho so… yea u understand why I haven’t really ever been much of a Nintendo fella. Even tho I’m replaying mgs4, my Metroid marathon will continue to march forth. I’m still not gonna play other m though.

this game is fusion done right. not that fusion is bad but every single idea that game had is reintegrated here PERFECTLY. The X are more interesting and come later in the game, letting you see the actual enemies change and having the original to compare to the parasitized versions for context, as well as having powered up respawning enemies serve as more of a gradual transition in challenge. The Adam AI acts more as a chill hint machine and story recapper rather than a waypoint placer, and the SA-X role is replaced by the cool emmis. I don’t even have to talk about how fucking amazing and perfect the emmi encounters are. But I will. They encapsulate everything about why I love videogames and life. Well, I don’t love life as much as I love the emmi fights in this game but whatevs. The boss fights in this game all rule, and though maybe they lean too heavily on the parry mechanic, at least 99% of them are beatable without it and it's pretty generous with its timing and visibility. You just have to play the game on its own terms and it works.

It did take me a little while to get used to it. This is my first time controlling a 2d samus with a stick and it felt weird to say the least. But there is a button you can hold to stand firmly in place and point your gun with a red laser. So if you play it like RE4, it's a bit easier.

This game is, in my opinion, a good compromise between linear style and super style. I kind of prefer the super style in general, but at this point in the series I had to realize that only the first one, super, and prime 1 seem to use this formula that everyone including me fellatiaizes. This is a good compromise. It's very clear at all times where you need to go, and at the end of every area an elevator or tram pops up with the next room ready for you.

The sheer amount of items in this game and how filled to the brim the controller feels with combos and inputs and items was a blessing and a curse. Firstly, there's really cool shit like the seeker missiles from the prime games (renamed storm missiles which is way cooler) as well as this awesome dash that you'll be using in every boss.. but there's also stuff like the cross bomb. Which... kind of pointless... and boring... and you use it like three times. It seems cool in theory to have 500 gadgets but all of them overlapping on one measly dainty little switch controller means im gonna be fumbling around trying to do zl+y+quartercircle+flip the controller upside down like... idk. But its interesting that the two best metroid games both have bad controls. shoutout to the select button.

The story in this game is also my favourite since the 2/super wombo combo silent tragedy. The chozo have always felt like the only thing these games cared about (xcept echoes) but this game expanded their lore a shit ton. That whole ending sequence is just.... i hate this phrase but theres no other way to say it so im gonna whisper it. /whisper Peak fiction.

The environments though, are completely terrible. Why's every metroid game gotta have the fire world, the ice world, the cave world, the factory world, like have some cooler and more creative places? Echoes sucks ass but at least it had new settings like... swamp, and.. factory but in the sky. Corruption had factory but STEAMPUNK SKY ISLANDS!!!! Even so, the other games did interesting stuff with their locations. The water world in fusion was like an aquarium, the factory world in am2r was a water treatment facility, (BTW don't get up in my face about me treating am2r as a mainline entry. She's an adopted sibling and she counts just as much as the others.) Yeah, the environments are bland and the art direction is too. I suppose you'd WANT interactibles to clash with the environment, but it wasn't the best game to look at. The graphics are fine, but the areas weren't really that well put together. The music as well, was nothing to write anywhere about. The only songs I remember from this was the use of samus' theme and the one for this bug boss that reminded me of flight of the bumble bee.

Last thing im gonna complain about is the save rooms. They kind of feel redundant. There’s save rooms, and you can also save in map rooms and Adam rooms. It makes me wonder, though. Why? This game has an insanely generous checkpoint system. If you die to an emmi you respawn just outside the last door you used. And it extends to more than just emmi encounters. So many times I thought I had lost progress only to find out a checkpoint brought me 20 seconds back. Which is nice, but lost progress is the only tangible threat to the player in game design and while frustrating, the game doesn’t seem to mind some intentional frustration baked into its (awesome) design. You can keep the checkpoints outside boss rooms, or maybe just put the save room close to them, but EVERY emmi door is a checkpoint? I see one on the side, what’s the reason not to pop in and out just to save my progress? This makes me less engaged in the current life i'm at, I remember in other games when I was low and struggling and aware that any death would lose me 20 minutes of my irl time I was super on edge and invested with a capital i. Speaking of investment and capital, someone emailed me last month and told me the save rooms are there if you wanna save and leave the game, because restarting the game will lose your checkpoint. To you I say; No one does that. You press the home button to return to the home screen and turn off the switch. It’s not like you need to swap between games. The switch isn’t exactly a console where you’re playing more than one game at a time, I sold my copy of tears of the kingdom to buy dread and the sales tax still nearly bankrupt me. Boom, capital and investment setup paid off.

the intro being a watered down halo CE knockoff put a bad taste in my mouth and made me think this was gonna suck, but honestly I loved this game. I think I like it more than fusion, although I think I like fusion's tone more (this one kind of felt like an action movie, especially whenever the federation was on screen) but this game felt more free and explorable. It did at least something with having other characters, the other hunters had pretty cool designs and it was cool to see why samus is the best. I think another reason of why this one felt more free was because of the length. It's about 9 ish hours compared to fusion's 4, and if there was 30 minutes of dialogue in fusion and 30 minutes of dialogue in corruption, it feels less suffocating in corruption. Think of it like this. You get a 20 on a test. But the test is out of 20. That's 100%. but if the test is out of 100, that's a 20%. which is a failing grade in most countries.

This one's gonna be a bit of a shorter review cause I gotta step out for a smoke and mentally prepare for Other M. Few last things I wanna quickly touch on. One, I liked the hypermode in this. It makes this one a bit harder than echoes (thank god) because the enemies have to do damage balanced around your potential immortality. But it also helps you choose when you wanna clear the room of bulletsponge enemies. It was a cool addition. I just wish less upgrades were focused on it. I'm not gonna be in it all the time, and upgrades like the electric wave when ur in hyper boost ball feels gimmicky and designed only to add another puzzle type. Goes onto my next point. Something I love about the other prime games is how once you get a hold of the controls that's all there basically is. Every action you get is an extension of your base movement. There's no buttons to press because you scan with your lock on or jump into it with your morph ball. The grapple hook is also an extension of your lock on, your super missiles are an extension of your charge beam, etc etc. This game has button prompts to get awkward fallout 3 conversation cams with npc's, levers where you gotta pull the wiimote to pull the lever (i played on primehack kbm so all of those puzzles were replaced with the button W) or something. It just kind of breaks immersion when you try to open a door and you see a huge text popup saying MOVE THE WII REMOTE TO THE RIGHT TO OPEN THIS DOOR. Speaking of wii remote, the grapple hook in this game is front and center. You grapple to pull shielded enemies' shields off, you grapple random debris, you grapple everything. It unfortunately also feels kind of tacked on and not like the rest of sammy's natural movement. You see something glow yellow or an enemy pop up with a shield and think "oh yeah." Okay, last point is the scavenger hunt. There is one in the game. But I think they finally got it right? By the time I was ready to head into the endgame, I had all of the keys but three. And this game is pretty linear, one planet to the next, so I hadn't been to these places in a while. The whole point of the scavenger hunts in these games is to encourage the player to do one last sweep/victory lap around the world picking up spare e tanks and missile expanders before they can face the final boss. But in prime 1, it was kind of redundant because I'd been to all these areas over and over before and gotten all the shit and I was only there for the keys and in prime 2 it was annoying because the game sucked and I didn't wanna play anymore (im just playing. but the prime 2 one was a SLOG I legit almost abandoned right there.)

Anyways, yeah that's about all. Thanks for reading. Sorry I was so serious this time. I've been having a lot of problems with the wife. I'll be writing serious reviews with no jokes for the time being.

EDIT: i played metroid other m for 12 minutes and got to a part where it told me to turn my wiimote sideways. there is no way to play it with keyboard sooo i guess ill have to skip that one and move onto dread oh noooo oh nooo thats awful

Note: I used primehack and played with keyboard and mouse controls, widescreen, 60fps, and 1080p. Jealous? jk. Later I talk about the game being easy and stuff and that just may be because kbm controls are better. Supported by the evidence that i played dark souls 1 on ps4 and it took me 60 hours and i played dark souls 2 on pc and it took me just under 20. And furthermore, it doesn't really change my experience with the game I don't think. Without further ado let's begin the review. Enjoy.

Hey everyone it's me elkmane and i just finished metroid prime 2 echoes. Why do your other beam types have limited ammo? Do they want me to just use the normal one from the start? You get light ammo from killing enemies or boxes with the dark beam and you get dark ammo from killing enemies or boxes with the light beam. Tell me, retro studios. Be honest. Did you do that because you can’t have light without dark or whatever? Was it worth it? Was that shallow ass meaningless ass platitude ass harry potter quote ass white woman tattoo ass reasoning worth getting rid of the cool ass beams from prime 1? Was it worth me using normal beam for 99% of the game and only using the special beams to open doors? You can find max ammo increases just like for missiles but that’s not the point here. What purpose does this serve? I guess it's fine because I didn't really ever run out of ammo? because I was just using my regular beam on everyone? But the combat was kind of dog this time around. enemies disappear and fade into nothing so often. It’s annoying. Nothing’s worse than having a full charge shot super missile and they just martian manhunter the thing. “Oh they dont want you to spam charge beam” okay so I’ll spam normal beam for twice as much time, since the other beams are too expensive to be used on stuff that isn’t doors and portals. Why base a bunch of enemies on chozo ghosts from the first one? Didn’t you know Yahtzee from zero punctuation () didn’t like those guys?

() formerly! He is now from Fully Ramblomatic! By the way yahtzee, if you’re reading this, hi! I’m a big fan and I’m glad you enjoy my reviews, because I enjoy yours too! Please shout me out and donate to me! I’d really appreciate it!

And the bosses too. Most bosses are just giant versions of an enemy you've fought in the area and their name spoils what item they're gonna drop. Oh god I hope morph ball bomb mackenzie gives me the screw attack!!!!1!!!!!!! And these bosses are like prime 1 bosses. Long and uneventful. It's gonna take you forever, you're not gonna lose any hp, you're just gonna jump around waiting for the move they do that makes them vulnerable and then attack. It's torturous.

The other new thing is the dark world. Which, I always said I'd respect a swing and a miss more than sticking to what works, but this idea is on VERY THIN ICE. Every time you go into a portal to change your dimension, which you’ll be doing a lot- you’re gonna get the same cutscene, maybe two depending on what kind of portal it is. The cutscene is unskippable and boring. Do you know what I do when I hit a cutscene? I go on my phone. I text my attractive girlfriend. (Visual aid: She looks like Zendaya and Rihanna combined) I say hey, why am i waiting for this stupid cutscene instead of cuddling u sugar bear… she says ikr… i say come over.. She says ok… and I get off the game to prepare. Do you see why that’s not beneficial to the game’s longevity? It's just not satisfying in any way. These portals are put in strategic spots, yes, your trips in and out of them are all scripted and planned but it feels like such a pain. It's not even because you take damage while you're in there. Not only are there the fortnite storm beacons/baldurs gate 3 act 2 lamps/risk of rain 2 void field cells, but you get a suit really early on that lowers your damage taken from negligible to unnoticeable. Let's talk about the dark suit a little. It's the suit you're gonna be wearing for 99% of the game. This game has such a snail's pace level of upgrades, It's even worse when you're not upgrading your beams. You get the light and dark beam within the first hour, and you get your final beam an hour before you finish the game and you get your 2nd suit upgrade right BEFORE THE SCAVENGER HUNT WHICH IS STILL IN THIS GAME!!!!!!!! I'll talk about you later. Side note on the dark suit, it looks really cool. it looks like it was designed by travis scott. It’s nice, probably the only metroid suit i could see someone actually wearing in public.

Actually I don't wanna talk about the scavenger hunt. It's like the one in prime 1 but instead of getting rid of it they kind of bandaided it. Doesn't help the fact that the prime 1 artifacts you could sorta find like half of them just by regular exploration without even knowing what they're for. Ok I don't wanna think about it anymore. I'm gonna talk about the visors now. The dark visor is just the x ray vision but now you see into the dark dimension! not the dark dimension that you go into, just the third secret dark dimension that houses all the invisible platforms. And the other visor, I just don't see what they were going for. At all. You use it like three times. It's there I guess. The scan is still cool. Let me talk about the lore modules. When you scan, it doesn’t give you the module right there like prime 1. It sends it to your log book so you can read it later. I’m not a fan of this, because in prime 1 i would read whatever i scanned fully. I enjoyed the lore or the space pirate blogposts talking about how scary samus (me) is. But in this, it would just send it to your log book. Which is tough to navigate A, and B I have to go out of my way to go get it and find it and read it. It’s like, sure I’ll read an article on the history of can openers if it was shared with me on google drive. But if someone told me “go look up can openers for me” I’d be less likely to oblige because that’s more effort on my part. I’m doing you a favour by reading ur shit, yknow? Just like how u guys are doing me a favour by reading my reviews. This is my livelihood and you guys just won’t stop supporting. Appreciate y’all so damn fucking much.

Is that enough of a nitpick to let u guys know I'm done with the negative part of my review? Let me move onto the nice parts! :D

I like how there's more of a hubworld and travelling between areas is so much easier. No more going thru all of magmoor to head to phendrana or the mines, theres easily accessible elevators to everywhere now. Not that you'll get much use outta them, theres no real backtracking in this game. Its pretty similar to metroid fusion kind of. Oh, this and fusion both kind of have a evil samus. But this one was more intended to be a rival. Like dark link or dark sonic or dark mario. Usually these rivals are supposed to have the opposite personality to the hero. Vergil and Shadow are mean while sonic and dante are funny and nice. I think dark samus shouldve been a wisecracker, like she even does the evil laugh but seeing as how there's already talking moth people in this game having a talking rival couldn't hurt. We haven't gotten a stoic hero/silly villain combo like this since batman and joker. I just think it would've been cool.

Last point, the music. It was pretty sick. Metroid music always rocks, but I wanted to point out one specific song. This one: https://youtu.be/HA0svtSeG0I?si=pRzbgNZPhHiVCAM_
it sounds pretty cool right? a little familiar, maybe? that's right! It's a remix of this! https://youtu.be/U9FgsySskAA?si=fAcvJu8d8C1S9fYP&t=23 it's pretty cool. I like the music.

Now I'm really scared what prime 3 is gonna be like. And i'm even more scared cus i realized i gotta play other m... O_O

u know the saying "this isn't remotely good" ? well, this game is remotely good. I respect it a lot for completely 180ing and changing pretty much everything about the metroid formula, I like the scarcity of health drops making it feel like i have to be more careful, I like how we finally get to see what samus talks like, (she uses the word "must" like 6 times in one text box once, it was interesting) and I like how they kept the computer so ingrained and prevalent to the game. All of this is in theory of course. This game was really irritating to me, I didn't really enjoy the progression. I liked the bosses (most of them), I liked the areas, I liked the music, and I loved the art. I just feel this isn't really what I wanted. The SA-X was also kind of a let down for how cool of an idea it was. But the thing that interests me is how cool the themes are. The streamlined-ness and linearity and taking orders from a computer is supposed to be irritating, to contrast with how free the other games were. Samus is supposed to die in 3 hits to a random bee, because it shows that we don't have our armour anymore. Bravo. It's so thematic, it reminds me of dark souls 2. Annoying spider boss, save companion that won't shut up, and the coolest part being the dude that pursues you.

so i wonder what i should play next, metroid dread or metroid prime 2? dread would continue my 2d streak but prime 2 i can emulate and wont have to spend any money on. Plus I found this thing called primehack which gives metroid prime 1,2, and 3 keyboard and mouse controls. I'll give it some thought.

From the first minutes of the game I could already understand why this one was everyone’s favourite. Palpable atmosphere, and I finally got the people complaining about zero mission and am2r missing that “isolating, lonely, cold” atmosphere of the originals. This is what they were talking about. It's a pretty substantial tone shift, from the station to going back to Zebes. Everything is darker, more terrifying, lonely, and hopeless. Almost like Peace Walker to Ground Zeroes, raiders to temple of doom, or high school to university. It adds so much to the depowering at the beginning of the game, and the contrast to eventually tearing shit up everywhere feels like such a cool progression. You become more comfortable and less scared, and now you're back on your grind!! The main path is more like a corn maze where all the dead ends had corn for you to eat. I never felt like going off the beaten path just got me random power bomb increases, they could be whole ass optional upgrades. It's nice knowing that no matter how much I cheese out the order, I will never get softlocked. I always think I am, but super metroid has me covered. I eventually learned to leave it all to god's plan and explore without worry. The bosses were so cinematic too, seeming so well balanced that I was always reasonably challenged no matter how much e tanks or super missiles I got. I also wanna talk about the dash in this game, and how much I cheesed with it. The dash, the wall jump, the space jump, I did stuff out of order and I LIKED IT. The charge beam was the last upgrade I got because FUCK YOU THAT'S WHY!!!!!! and tell me how the ending made me emotional despite the fact that no one in this series has spoken a word? I love this game a lot, I'm giving it 5 stars, and I'm gonna play metroid fusion next.

this is like top 3 nintendo and its not even by nintendo! OMG! the movement is so freeing, the dash and the screw attack make me (samus) feel in complete mastery of my domain. The dash is easier to use and better implemented here than it was in zero mission, and much better than in prime (it wasnt in prime) backtracking here isn't a problem because you could be across the map in 20 seconds. But there really is not much backtracking here at all. You COULD backtrack, but every area feels very separate and distinct. Once you're done with one, you go onto the next. All the times i was lost and decided to backtrack, every single locked door that i now had access to just led to missile upgrades or something, not much progression or whatever. Progression in this game goes like this: u go into an area, this area has a set amount of metroids. You kill them all, then an earthquake happens and it drains some lava so you can go there and go to the next area to kill the next area's metroids. On the one hand, the metroid killing objective always gives u some kind of direction, it feels cooler than just being there “to kill the space pirates” cus your goal being destroying an invasive species before it inevitably consumes every ecosystem in the galaxy is cold as fuck. On the other, it makes everything feel segmented and further disincentivizes backtracking. Which could be a plus? I mean, I really enjoyed this setup. It felt a little linear, I guess, but I liked it. I understand both sides but i'm leaning more towards cool. If you read my zero mission review you know how much I loved fighting the metroids in that game. Each one needing the specific method to be defeated and how relentless they were in both movement and numbers made them such fun enemies. In this, there's "evolved" metroids which.. yeah, took another approach which I didn't appreciate nearly as much. But hey, at least zero mission metroids are still in this game. Doesn't excuse the boring and monotonous bullet sponge evolved metroid fights in this. Oh well. In other news, the rest of the bosses in this game are beautiful. Gone are the giant stationary dudes with one weakness!!! these bosses take full advantage of your mobility, they don't just test your ability to measure how short of a jump you need to shoot your missile at their weak point, you gotta do other cool stuff too that I don't wanna spoil. The final boss? boom? u guys know what im talking about. this guy gets it. Now, I was really close to giving this a 5/5. And the hesitation is what took it down to a 4 and a half. I just thought you guys should know I considered it. I'm really excited to play super metroid next, because apparently that's the videogame to end all videogames. So far i've been very impressed with the metroid series. And to all my vampire the masquerade bloodline awaiters, I will finish that game too. Give me time! Im doing malkavian so it takes me 20 minutes to respond to each dialogue choice.

this went by really fast. its a complete breeze, yeah its a little linear and some bombable tiles blend in with the rest of them, but it's okay. Combat was snappy and cool, the animations are also really awesome (U can hold onto the ledge and aim and shoot. Tell me that isnt the most badass thing ever!! :D) The movement options are pretty fun but i never really got a hold of them lol. I also think this is the first instance of a stealth part of a non stealth game that i actually really enjoyed. Also wanted to give a shoutout to the metroids for being insane in this game. In metroid prime they're not much other than a nuisance but in this they're genuinely terrifying and intense when you fight them. More than one? omg. And then there was one part where i messed up and I had 5 on me at the same time? and I CAME OUT ALIVE!! WOOHOO!! it felt like doom eternal down there man. Yea, fun game and i am prob gonna play am2r next. cus the other options are either old or i have to go to a store and buy a 3ds game... yuck

This game reminds me of batman arkham asylum because she gets new items and that opens up old areas that were locked off. It's a really cool game with awesome atmosphere and an interesting story despite the fact no one says a word. The puzzles were fun, the zones were cool, the music was really great and the progression was easy as pie. There are so many items and upgrades but it always feels intuitive, every new thing is an extension of the old thing. You're never blindsided, nothing feels tacked on, and you never forget about any of your tools. HOWEVER. The combat and first person platforming were two weak points. They're both serviceable, even fun, but later in the game when the enemies come at you in sevens and they're all bullet spongey it can be tough. Especially since theres a lot of knockback and, also, later in the game, platforming sections can go vertically for hundreds of thousands of centimeters. "Hey elk you have some problems with later in the game don't you?" well Reader (heh, can I call you reader?) you'd be right. Metroid prime has a bad endgame. Like an atrocity on par with xen. But Xen is just a bad part that you instantly go into, metroid's slow descent is like a pot of boiling water and you're the frog. Colour coded rock paper scissors enemies that are immune to your other bullets that come in pairs of 5 and can replicate at will, so theres 3 or 4 of them and each can only be damaged by one of your blaster types and changing your blaster type you gotta hold x and then hit the d-pad and then try to lock on but the lock on is finnicky especially near a grappling point because that will take priority. Another victim of being a videogame on controller. Another case of console exclusive game being worse due to the fact that it's stuck on and had to have been designed around four buttons and two sticks. Imagine if u could change ur blasters with 1-2-3-4 and aim with a mouse? bro. Even if u could aim freely, there's easy bosses with 2 or 3 moves where you just wait for their weak state so you can do damage, but hold on though. I don't care about the last hour or three. CUS this game is really cool and good. So i'll give it a 4.5

Ok now it's time for the elkmane personal journal hour.
fanbase: Finally!
thank you elksters. Hm... what to talk about.. I know. What's the best Rihanna album? I know everyone's mind immediately goes to Anti and honestly I get it. Loud is also a fan favourite (im guessing? I don't really interact with the rihanna fanbase or any other rihanna fans) I'd like to throw talk that talk into the ring. Cockiness is one of my fav riri songs, i'd put it up there with love on the brain (i know i know, basic pick) What do u guys think? Email me.

- Elkmane

Every young gamer had one dream. Just one. A co-op arkham game starring the batfamily, completely playable front to back in seamless multiplayer. Nothing ever really scratched the itch. Justice league heroes, no. DC universe online, no. Batman Arkham Origins multiplayer? … yes, but you had to pray to Jesus and God combined that you and your bro would get to play as Batman and robin. But when you did there was NOTHING I repeat NOTHING even 1% as fun in any videogame ever programmed.

In arkham origins multiplayer, two people would be batman and robin while the rest of the players would be standard goons fighting each other in a gang war on behalf of i think bane and joker. But you could be rushing to the frontlines to get more kills, and suddenly there’d be a shadow flying overhead. Instinctually, you shoot the sky where you saw it. You feel the paranoia. Your buddies are dropping like apples from a tree. And here come the fruit bats. You try to focus on shooting some clown henchmen as you’re suddenly and silently taken down… fuck. You finally understand the henchmen. But I don't wanna be a henchman. Did you go out to recess and pretend to be a henchman on patrol? No. You pretended to be batman, and nightwing, and batgirl, and red hood, and robin, and batwoman, and orphan, and spoiler, and the question, and the signal. EVERYONE wanted to be the signal. But as we grew older and playing outside became cringe, we were forced to play as henchmen and then as no one… when arkham origins online went offline.

Fade to black.

CUT TO: INT. DC Fandome. 2020.

Elkmane: Oh man! I can’t wait to play that game!

Elkmane’s friend: Me too

Elkmane: I hope it’s basically batman arkham knight but multiplayer

Elkmane’s friend: Me too

Note their unearned optimism. Their complete disregard for genie’s law. If something is your wish, it will be granted to you in the most twisted, dramatically ironic way possible. You’ll get your co op batfamily game alright. But first of all, it won’t be in the arkham universe. SECOND of all, batman will be dead.

Elkmane: But how? Batman ‘died’ in arkham knight. Why would you make a second universe just to use the same setup?

Shut up! Third of all, it’s gonna control terribly. It’s gonna be designed for controllers. Keyboard will make it weird for grappling and fine movement.

Elkmane: Why the fuck would I use a controller?

Exactly. Fourth of all, the customization will be fucking strange. Your armour will be one outfit, you can customize certain parts of it and the colour but if you have one style you like you’re gonna have to hope to find a high level version of it.

Elkmane’s friend: Can we at least get a transmog system?

Yes.

Elkmane’s friend: Oh thank god!

BUT it’s gonna be completely uncostomizable and each suit style will have the absolute ugliest colours and detail choices possible.

Elkmane: Whatever, i’ll just use the basic comic accurate suit. You at least have THAT, right?

Sure!

Elkmane’s friend: Aw yeah!

Just gotta pay 30 dollars for the DLC pack.

Elkmane: Whatever man! I don’t care! I don’t care if I look cool, I don’t care if the game is fun, I don’t care if it’s the most repetitive pile of dogshit in the world! Just let me enjoy this as a co-op game where the bat family can play off each other.

I mean, okay? I guess you can have two guys together during open world and the missions. But I’m gonna make it so that only the host shows up in the cutscenes, only the host can open doors, only the host can start missions, only the host can-

Elkmane’s friend: Wait wait wait, what? Only one person shows up in cutscenes?

Yeah

Elkmane: I thought this was a co-op game?

It is. The non-host just pops in after the cutscene ends. Ok i’m gonna end this script bit now. Every single turn I took in this game baffled me. Firstly, the structure. It isn’t like arkham or even other open world games. It operates on a strict nightly basis. Which is actually really cool. There’s only a set amount of crime that happens every night, it wont just infinitely repeat like spiderman or whatever. And it creates a unique loop where you go on “patrol” for the night. We’ve all had fantasies of going on patrol with others, just doing acrobatics across rooftops, sitting on the sides, having deep conversations while waiting for crime to happen. But when you’re out on this patrol, you can’t switch your weapons to anything that you find. You can craft as much as you like, mind you, but you can’t switch them out. So if you have an underleveled weapon, and you loot a high level one, you won’t be able to change. You can change your style. You can’t change into stuff you craft. It’s so, so, so needlessly odd. And I wanna expand on the transmog system. It completely defeats the point of having a transmog system. The only style I like for red hood is the style called year one. It’s basically a bog standard comic accurate red hood suit with the mask and the brown jacket and the black shirt and the red logo. I did not unlock the transmog for it. Even if I DID, it would have a black jacket and a brown shirt (???) so I just used this level 18 armour to when I was level 30 because I wanted to look cool and the game was really easy. There’s a red robin transmog for robin, but the colours are all wrong. Okay. Whatever, who cares about this miniscule clothing miscrap? How about the open world activities? The crimes?

Well, crimes all happen in set locations. Every time. Just different factions occupy them. The observatory always has a criminal stronghold, this park structure always has an organ harvesting thing, yada yada etc. It gets VERY old and repetitive, but for some odd reason me and my friend continued to do every single available crime every night. No clue why. It wasn’t fun. The combat isn’t really fun. The stealth is godawful. The stealth makes the combat look like sekiro. “Don’t treat it like arkham” they say. Why not? It’s just a much worse version. I’m willing to overlook so much, but the stealth layouts and combat design are so awful and your blueprint was RIGHT THERE. I would’ve been fine if they tried something new and missed. They just made a much blander version of arkham. The counters that kept the momentum going are replaced with easy as shit dodges to super telegraphed attacks. Combos are not emphasised, you should just pick an element and put all the weapon mods you want to make it build faster and hit them until the electric meter or ice meter or poison meter or fire meter gets full and they take big non lethal fire damage. Honestly, all the characters play the same mostly. They have different cooldown abilities which I forget exist half the time. That seems to be where they put their money on. The abilities, the skill trees that do shit like “10% more chance for a critical hit” or “7% increase of defense when your health is 60% or higher” like, ok man. In Arkham Asylum I can spray paint a wall with a bat symbol and wait for someone to walk by and then explode them. I can’t do that here. Arkham asylum came out in 1989.

I do wanna be a little easy on them tho. There is no chance in hell anyone is touching the arkham games. Those were lightning in a bottle. I have to keep reminding myself to be grateful that I exist at the same time as those games and can replay them whenever I want. Genuine marvels in every single way. Sure, there’s games like that everywhere now. But c’mon. I love insomniac spider-man as much as the next guy but none of those are EVER touching an arkham game. I don’t think anything ever will.

And to their credit, they got the batfamily dynamic and writing down. The story is pretty lame and the court of owls plotline is like, completely wasted, but when the batkids and alfred were talking and hanging out was pretty great. Each character has a personal quest, where they do their own little journey that isn’t really about fighting but about a little something called character development and emotions and love. Babs’s was my fav. The quest touches on a big theme of the game, succession. A lot of staple bat-things aren’t here anymore. No batcave, no batmobile, no batman, no commissioner gordon, no leslie thompkins. But we have to make room for the new guard. It also hits really hard during the current conversation around characters like spider-man, who seem to be stuck in a rut and not allowed to develop or grow past 23. The villains are ancient societies trying to cling to the past and extend their lives. This game has fun ideas, especially how unlike most batman adaptations it’s not afraid of the supernatural and goofy end of the comic world. Jason has magic lazarus jumps. Yes. He’s a superhero. Ok? He can do that. He came back to life with magic lazarus juice and now he has magic lazarus jump. It’s sweet. That’s why it’s such a shame you and your friend’s character couldn’t interact in cutscenes during missions. That’s my #1 absolute biggest complaint. I mean, okay, you’re saving resources or whatever. But how many combinations are there between 4 characters? How much dialogue does the partner character need? Host could have all the lines, at LEAST have the other guy in the background, completely mute. I felt bad for my friend. Sometimes we got different cutscenes with our own characters in it and we had to tell each other what our character said. It's so, so weird. It’s not like they skimped out on the amount of lines. My friend was AFK once while we were in the belfry, and there was CONSTANT conversation about the cases we were taking during our place in the game. It was so natural. It was like an unscripted discussion between two dudes talking about the game and what they should do next (albeit taking it a little seriously). And I only saw it because my friend was urinating. They put that there so it wouldn’t feel hollow when you were just chilling out in there. There’s so much effort put in certain parts of this game and absolutely none in others.


For example, this is a looter game. You get loot from chests and enemy drops. But there wasn’t any point I wasn’t able to craft every single blueprint I had. I always had up to date gear, I just had to go to the belfry and craft and equip the new stuff. The armour mods make it so low level stuff can still work higher levels if you want it to. So why even make it a looter if the looting mechanics are so … automated? I don’t even know what word to use to describe it. It’s like, if I wasn’t told that there were all these crafting materials I wouldn’t even know. I would just see the crafting menu as the stuff I unlocked. It’s so oddly designed. But on the other hand there’s awesome stuff, like the side quests. Clayface, Harley, and Mr Freeze. You have to investigate their shit in the open world and do these scripted quests that are like DCUO on duty missions and these scripted segments were a lot better than most of the rest of the game. Chasing Clayface through the streets as he sticks onto passing trucks, or multitasking through Harley’s crazy ass panic inducing games, it’s just so AWESOME sometimes. That’s why although it seems like i’m ripping this game apart, I just can’t say I didn’t like it.

At the end of the day, when I see two enemies and I say to my bro I’ll take the one on the left, and we both do synchronized stealth takedowns, do you really think you’ll be worried about all the other shit? All's right with the world. Everything is gonna be okay.

Elkmane’s friend: You can say that again.

Elkmane: I hope you elksters enjoyed the review. I may be retiring soon, so enjoy it while you can.