Elkmane
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
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
2021
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.
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.
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 review contains spoilers
This game is like kojima giving fans everything they want but crossing his arms and doing it angrily. Oh? Oh u want to play as solid snake again? U thought raiden was lame? Ok, here, you’re snake and he’s old and lame and has back problems and raiden is a badass lightning ninja cyborg now. Remember snake’s girl from mgs1? Poopy pants Johnny just married her. He’s not as good at sneaking as u are, player, but he is nice. It’s no accident that every other character ends the game dancing and chilling at a wedding together and snake/player is wasting his short remaining days being exposited to. Spending more and more time being stuck within the metal gear story, milking and draining every bit of information from it until eventually the player hates it. The game gives you fanservice the same way eating lasagna every meal for every day wil give u lasagna poisoning. I feel it’s a critique of the culture where everything is theorized and discussed and answers for every mystery are demanded. The game’s so stuck within itself that every boss is a remix of an old one. You literally press x to see pictures of whatever metal gear moment this scene references. I’m not qualified at all to talk about meta commentary and stuff but there’s a part in this game where snake asks why they kept big boss’ body alive. She says “because people need their hero to stay forever” and looks directly at the camera. I don’t think it’s really an avoidable topic when discussing this game.
I love Kojima but this is prob his most flawed dialogue and exemplifies a lot of problems I have with his later games stories. This and peace walker are the only mainline mgs games I’ve never replayed. There’s obviously too many cutscenes and the gameplay segments are mediocre after the first act. The game’s psych meter system is an interesting concept to shift the physical health first aid care system from mgs3 to mental health and make it more about ptsd, but it does quite literally nothing with it. The therapist character on your codec doesn’t even give you therapy she just says to wait in the corner until ur stress level goes down. Or says some shit like “the boss you’re fighting, unhappy armadillo, is unhappy. According to psychology, this is caused by lack of happiness. Good luck snake.” The bosses are terrible and the boss roster themselves have no personality (unless you like their wattpad trauma backstory that is omnisciently told to you by the gun merchant after you beat them) which is such a downgrade from every other game’s boss rosters, every single one of which I would have a drink with. I don’t even drink but I would defile my sacred mouth with the poison that is alcohol just to make fatman or sniper wolf or the pain happy. But there’s much to appreciate with what this game does.
“Don’t waste the life you have left fighting”
=
“Stop playing this video game 😡”
Maybe I’m completely illiterate or I’m projecting but my interpretation is valid and yeah. Also the ray fight and the ocelot fight are amazing. The end. Sry for the serious review.
I love Kojima but this is prob his most flawed dialogue and exemplifies a lot of problems I have with his later games stories. This and peace walker are the only mainline mgs games I’ve never replayed. There’s obviously too many cutscenes and the gameplay segments are mediocre after the first act. The game’s psych meter system is an interesting concept to shift the physical health first aid care system from mgs3 to mental health and make it more about ptsd, but it does quite literally nothing with it. The therapist character on your codec doesn’t even give you therapy she just says to wait in the corner until ur stress level goes down. Or says some shit like “the boss you’re fighting, unhappy armadillo, is unhappy. According to psychology, this is caused by lack of happiness. Good luck snake.” The bosses are terrible and the boss roster themselves have no personality (unless you like their wattpad trauma backstory that is omnisciently told to you by the gun merchant after you beat them) which is such a downgrade from every other game’s boss rosters, every single one of which I would have a drink with. I don’t even drink but I would defile my sacred mouth with the poison that is alcohol just to make fatman or sniper wolf or the pain happy. But there’s much to appreciate with what this game does.
“Don’t waste the life you have left fighting”
=
“Stop playing this video game 😡”
Maybe I’m completely illiterate or I’m projecting but my interpretation is valid and yeah. Also the ray fight and the ocelot fight are amazing. The end. Sry for the serious review.
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 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.
2012
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.
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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.
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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.