Elkmane
2024
First things first, yes its 4.5 cus I'm upset that negan isn't in this game and I'm doubly upset that the closest replacement is an annoying character who's personality is drinking caffeine, a substance i unironically believe should be criminalized. But other than that this game is everything I could want from a Tekken 8. It's quick and easy to play with friends and there's less downtime between matches, thank god. Tekken 7 was my most played fighting game ever and im here for this games launch i cant wait to see how good i get at this game. Im gonna get so good and beat all of you, just watch.
ACTUALLY better than the base game, wtf?
first of all its clickbait because its not even made by telltale. its made by deck 9, telltale just published it and put "the telltale series" for the clickbait and its kind of boring. The dialogue and choices are bad and the qtes are laughable (literally just left click or right click there are no other options)
this game is actually pretty cool when you're exploring shipwrecks in zero gravity. It could've been expanded on, but it reminded me a lot of prey when you could go in space and float around and stuff. But it was still mostly corridors, one way thru, etc.
it's very badly written and it very clearly had one set romance path, i chose not to pursue it but the game acted like i did. The moments you got choices were so random i felt like sometimes i was just straight up watching drummer do her own shit without my input, and sometimes when i got dialogue choices (3 options MAX, 2 for 90% of them) theyd usually be the same thing. "youre a monster"/"youre a killer" ok what if i think he was the best? for the first 2 episodes i considered putting this below even the new frontier on my telltale list. But they manage to clutch it out with 3, 4 and 5. Even if it's not great at least it was like.... i dunno. Maybe the same level as new frontier. But new frontier had clementine in it at least. This didn't have clementine but they had the same running animation as clem in season 4, so at least i had some enjoyment on that front. Shoutout to the goat.
this game is actually pretty cool when you're exploring shipwrecks in zero gravity. It could've been expanded on, but it reminded me a lot of prey when you could go in space and float around and stuff. But it was still mostly corridors, one way thru, etc.
it's very badly written and it very clearly had one set romance path, i chose not to pursue it but the game acted like i did. The moments you got choices were so random i felt like sometimes i was just straight up watching drummer do her own shit without my input, and sometimes when i got dialogue choices (3 options MAX, 2 for 90% of them) theyd usually be the same thing. "youre a monster"/"youre a killer" ok what if i think he was the best? for the first 2 episodes i considered putting this below even the new frontier on my telltale list. But they manage to clutch it out with 3, 4 and 5. Even if it's not great at least it was like.... i dunno. Maybe the same level as new frontier. But new frontier had clementine in it at least. This didn't have clementine but they had the same running animation as clem in season 4, so at least i had some enjoyment on that front. Shoutout to the goat.
2024
i had to put aside my biases and play this despite the fact that it's blatantly ripping off lego fortnite's gameplay mechanics. My thoughts? It's really early access. It's less buggy than i'd expect and honestly has more content than i'd thought, but the gameplay loop is honestly pretty lame. The pals automating the work in your camp is a really cool idea and i can see it becoming self sufficient and satisfying lategame, but in terms of being an actual open world pokemon game it leaves some to be desired. Like, sure the designs are good and it's real time combat and its fun and everything, but you don't control the pals. You attack alongside them which is badass but i'm trying to catch this pal so i got him at 1hp and my pal just does the killing blow without me asking. Sometimes the pal won't attack at all. The AI is busted and janky and i'm honestly not sure if they'll stick with this long enough for it to finish early access and become good. I did manage to catch a human in a pokeball which is f#cking hilarious. I named him kenneth awesomepants (after my iconic baldurs gate 3 character) but he did no damage and couldnt do any camp work so ironically he was the mascot. Has potential. Wait til full release.
2020
So there’s been a lot of controversy on the elkmane official discord server about this game. Is it good, is it bad, is it overrated, is it a masterpiece? Everyone on there’s been putting their two cents in and now it’s time for the big dog to put all the arguments to sleep. Let us begin.
As an intellectual, I love thinking. I think very often a lot about the following topics; The weather, society, politics, geopolitics, and gaming. Sometimes I think about myself too. Recently after playing resident evil 4 remake and Zelda tears of the kingdom, both critically acclaimed games that disappointed the ever living shit out of me, I thought my inner hopeful kind soul was dead. I am now a cynic jerk who wants to be a patrician contrarian so I hate popular things subconsciously to look cool online. It made me sad. I don’t like disliking things because it makes me feel left out, and unlike my usual behaviour regarding videogame acquisition I actually spent money on tears of the kingdom and I felt that it had been wasted.
Then when I played Baldur's Gate 3 I came into it with the same resignation. Sigh, I say. I will probably dislike this too. I’m too cool for mainstream popular games. I am very glad to have been wrong. You see, I’m not cynical. I didn’t dislike totk and re4r because they were popular. I disliked them because they sucked! And Baldur's Gate 3 comes along with its above average d*#k swinging all over the place showing that OMG my expectations of big video games aren’t unrealistic! Yippie! The quests are so fun, the combat asks, nay, FORCES you to vary your stratagems and strategies, with differing enemy types and cool encounter designs. And the story was engaging as SHIT. There was like actual moral dilemmas and stuff. Not just the normal formal bethesda quest things but Shakespearean, Aquinas-esque, Agambenian, foucaultian, philosophy. And like I said I LOVE thinking so I was very engaged for like 1 hundred hours.
Any random thing could be the start of a 10 hour side quest or feed into a main quest. For example (this is made up not a spoiler) you talk to some random rat in the middle of nowhere and oh boom turns out he was the final boss spying on you and now you’re in a secret dungeon no one knew existed omg wtf!! Do u remember disco elysium? This game is like that, for sure. It flew by and I played for like 11 hour sessions sometimes. I love all the companions too. Except for wyll he was kind of boring. And shadowheart because I killed her in act 1 cause she was mean to lae’zel and I wanted to impress lae’zel so she would think I’m cool and eventually have sex with me. The player choice was very good. There was some rigidity to the combat, its obviously not as free as tabletop dnd but it is pretty damn close. I never felt like I couldn’t do something storywise tho. I could do anything I wanted with the quests.
The game is so perfectly content with letting you miss entire chunks of content. (You see how I used the words content and content in the same sentence? That was a coincidence but it’s fun) It’s so confident. It insists upon itself because it knows it’s the shit. It’s like asap rocky calling himself that pretty motherfucka. Ya he can say that shit because he’s the most gorgeous man to exist and baldur's gate 3 can let u just walk past a 5 hour dungeon because it has 7 contingency plans in place for players that didn’t do that dungeon. I said bg3 is the asap rocky of games but it’s also the Batman of games. Probably the best case for early access ever…? Up with ultrakill and hades.
now for the bad parts of the game i don't like….
The final act is less polished than the rest of the game and it has way too many encounters with large groups of enemies where it just takes forever and ever. Sometimes they just stand still for their whole turn. TBF it's a lot faster than other crpgs, but i don't wanna see anyone complain about fallout 1 combat if they're sucking off this game. I’m not trying to diss bg3 im saying theyre the same and fallout 1 haters are dumbfucks and wrong
The jump pathfinding is broken dog crap. I jump across a gap, right? And two of my companions follow, one of them stays stuck there. Ok no problem i’ll switch control to the straggler, you know what the outcome’ll be. I’m batting a thousand it got to the point that these companions don’t even like travelling with me. The second I switch control to the straggler, everyone else jumps to the straggler. It’s a frustrating carousel and a whole ordeal everytime. Sometimes I don’t notice and go into a battle with 1 guy missing. It sucks. I think that’s it.
The end. man this review kinda sucks eh? but watevs i do reviews in one take i'm not editing anything. I've fallen off so hard, i'll never make anything as insightful and entertaining as my review for breaking bad criminal elements
As an intellectual, I love thinking. I think very often a lot about the following topics; The weather, society, politics, geopolitics, and gaming. Sometimes I think about myself too. Recently after playing resident evil 4 remake and Zelda tears of the kingdom, both critically acclaimed games that disappointed the ever living shit out of me, I thought my inner hopeful kind soul was dead. I am now a cynic jerk who wants to be a patrician contrarian so I hate popular things subconsciously to look cool online. It made me sad. I don’t like disliking things because it makes me feel left out, and unlike my usual behaviour regarding videogame acquisition I actually spent money on tears of the kingdom and I felt that it had been wasted.
Then when I played Baldur's Gate 3 I came into it with the same resignation. Sigh, I say. I will probably dislike this too. I’m too cool for mainstream popular games. I am very glad to have been wrong. You see, I’m not cynical. I didn’t dislike totk and re4r because they were popular. I disliked them because they sucked! And Baldur's Gate 3 comes along with its above average d*#k swinging all over the place showing that OMG my expectations of big video games aren’t unrealistic! Yippie! The quests are so fun, the combat asks, nay, FORCES you to vary your stratagems and strategies, with differing enemy types and cool encounter designs. And the story was engaging as SHIT. There was like actual moral dilemmas and stuff. Not just the normal formal bethesda quest things but Shakespearean, Aquinas-esque, Agambenian, foucaultian, philosophy. And like I said I LOVE thinking so I was very engaged for like 1 hundred hours.
Any random thing could be the start of a 10 hour side quest or feed into a main quest. For example (this is made up not a spoiler) you talk to some random rat in the middle of nowhere and oh boom turns out he was the final boss spying on you and now you’re in a secret dungeon no one knew existed omg wtf!! Do u remember disco elysium? This game is like that, for sure. It flew by and I played for like 11 hour sessions sometimes. I love all the companions too. Except for wyll he was kind of boring. And shadowheart because I killed her in act 1 cause she was mean to lae’zel and I wanted to impress lae’zel so she would think I’m cool and eventually have sex with me. The player choice was very good. There was some rigidity to the combat, its obviously not as free as tabletop dnd but it is pretty damn close. I never felt like I couldn’t do something storywise tho. I could do anything I wanted with the quests.
The game is so perfectly content with letting you miss entire chunks of content. (You see how I used the words content and content in the same sentence? That was a coincidence but it’s fun) It’s so confident. It insists upon itself because it knows it’s the shit. It’s like asap rocky calling himself that pretty motherfucka. Ya he can say that shit because he’s the most gorgeous man to exist and baldur's gate 3 can let u just walk past a 5 hour dungeon because it has 7 contingency plans in place for players that didn’t do that dungeon. I said bg3 is the asap rocky of games but it’s also the Batman of games. Probably the best case for early access ever…? Up with ultrakill and hades.
now for the bad parts of the game i don't like….
The final act is less polished than the rest of the game and it has way too many encounters with large groups of enemies where it just takes forever and ever. Sometimes they just stand still for their whole turn. TBF it's a lot faster than other crpgs, but i don't wanna see anyone complain about fallout 1 combat if they're sucking off this game. I’m not trying to diss bg3 im saying theyre the same and fallout 1 haters are dumbfucks and wrong
The jump pathfinding is broken dog crap. I jump across a gap, right? And two of my companions follow, one of them stays stuck there. Ok no problem i’ll switch control to the straggler, you know what the outcome’ll be. I’m batting a thousand it got to the point that these companions don’t even like travelling with me. The second I switch control to the straggler, everyone else jumps to the straggler. It’s a frustrating carousel and a whole ordeal everytime. Sometimes I don’t notice and go into a battle with 1 guy missing. It sucks. I think that’s it.
The end. man this review kinda sucks eh? but watevs i do reviews in one take i'm not editing anything. I've fallen off so hard, i'll never make anything as insightful and entertaining as my review for breaking bad criminal elements
2023
minigame is kind of boring but i love the weeknd. Come on everyone sing along with me! "they say my brain meltin and the only thing i tell em is i live for the future and the present dont exist so baby take your clothes off, a chance like this you may never get to show off, show off, show off what you talkin bout... less you like to tease baby. In reality you dont know how to please, baby. Blue ball queen, take your f#*@in' seat, baby Ride it out, now I know you wanna scream, baaaaaaby, " - the weeknd
2023
The second best deus ex game
2006
This game made me Alexander the great, cus this is like the best action game I've played since dmc3. It has so much depth, the amount of customization you can put into your move set is so impressive and sick. The bosses are well designed and the enemies are all fun to fight. It's always fresh, new shit happening in every level with quaint gimmicks. The difficulty keeps ramping up and u know. Its awesome. It's kind of hard to review games you like. When it's a game i have problems with it's like whackamole, i hit the problem with a classic elkmane joke and make fun of it, and then i finish the review and rake in the backloggd likes. Alright alright ill keep this one short. This is also the funniest game ive played, ever. Cus like you can bet on chihuahua races and fill ur moveset with different pimp slaps, the credits have a poorly translated rock song with lyrics talking about the moves in the game and all the characters doing stock animated dances. It has personality and soul, but more importantly its fun and funny and good and awesome and shannon calls you puppy and like im not into that or anything but like yknow lets just say i save stated and kept losing to her on purpose for a few hours yknow what im sayin haha im just playing lol im just playing lol
2005
An alternate history heightened reality retelling of Julius Caesar’s death with capcom anime shit? And you play as both Agrippa and Augustus in different gladiator games and stealth puzzle sections? YAY!
I really like the combat in this game. It’s so ahead of it’s time that it’s still ahead of our time. Cutting off your enemy’s limbs and picking up said limbs and beating them to death with it is fun and all, but try german suplexing an enemy into a pit of spikes or a pit of fire or into a tiger. Breaking arms, toying with them til they beg for mercy on their knees and then decapitating them and showing their head to the cheers of your adoring audience. The audience in the gladiator parts was sick, because it’s like a gameplay mechanic that ties into the DMC style meter this game has. You keep your meter high, and you do a taunt, the audience will throw you weapons or food for healing. Certain tricks get you more points on the meter, and they can get really specific and they have fun names. Yes, the names are fun. There’s one for letting a female enemy stomp on you repeatedly. I looked that one up. I swear I didn’t do that ingame. Lol.
The different modes can get VERY intense, and many times I actually screamed out loud like a caveman upon finishing a level. They also just added a chariot mode that completely changes everything, used it for like 5 missions and dipped. Games like this just used to do shit for funsies, yknow? I’m sure theres some funsie parts in new games that i haven't played but i bet they were like “yo we should do chariots” “that sounds sick lets do it.” The boss fights are also all super unique and fun, mostly the ones in the gladiator games. Cause the ones outside there’s no audience to throw you cheese. But the non audience ones happen near the end so you’ll be big and strong.
The stealth is very hit or miss and it’s mostly miss. It usually has a very specific and obvious predetermined path you gotta take, it’s linear, the guards are braindead, but there’s something really special about this stealth that I haven't seen in any game, really. This does have a simple hitman-style disguise system, and this game does the suspicion/enforcer mechanic better than ANY hitman game. These words come outta my mouth like sandpaper but I got to give flowers where flowers are due. Sometimes when you’re disguised, say, as a soldier. And you pass another soldier, he isn’t just gonna do the absolution onward thing of being an enforcer and seeing through your disguise immediately. He will be suspicious and ask you a question. They can be something personal, making an awareness check on the player, or on rare occasions just a quiz on roman history lol. Depending on your answer you could talk your way out of it, raise the suspicion meter, or just give away your identity. I thought that was so involved and fun. This one time, you’re disguised as a thief and you’re trying to go past, but this guy won’t let you, even if you’re disguised. I saw one of the thieves had a facemask and I knocked that one out and took it. When I went back he thought I was him, and let me through. I thought I made it til I heard the “WAIT.” That’s what guards say when they wanna ask you a question. But he just called out and said “be careful, okay?” I’m very glad I only just knocked out the mask guy because these two must be very very close friends.
This game’s approach to stealth seems almost pranky and mischievous. Sometimes you need to access an area that’s off limits to you, and you have to distract the guard. There are some hilarious puzzles you need to do, like throwing an apple at a guard and framing some innocent apple eating bystander and getting the guard to chase the innocent apple eating bystander. There’s more but I won't go into it. Oh, one more thing, this game’s slipping mechanic is so funny. There’s banana peels and jars of liquid you can smash that leave a slippery spot. For some reason if you yourself slip on it, then you’ll fall and get back up instantly. Guards, however, get knocked out. So this one time I just smashed a honey jar by a doorway, got myself spotted, and waited til they all ran in and slipped and fell. I just realized this about myself but I love prankster stuff. My favourite movie is dirty work, my favourite show is impractical jokers, my favourite game genre is stealth, which i guess is evil pranks. Something this reminds me of is neighbours from hell, where you sneak around a guy’s house and just do stuff to him. You hide in his closet and wait til he goes to the bathroom and get an egg from his fridge and put it in the microwave or on his chair. And in the sequel he goes on vacation and you fuck with him on there too. If anyone has prank game recommendations let me know.
This game also has a small bunch of hub worlds that you can go to between big missions. In the market you can buy random shit for Octavian’s room, stuff like rugs and dartboards and tables and couches and tigers and maids. There's the forum where the civilians gather and you can do fun stuff. Idk. There’s fun stuff to do. I'm gonna talk about the story now.
The story is really funny. Classic 2005 bad voice acting, half naked female side character, (tbf the male protag has no shirt or pants for most of the game so she's actually more clothed than he is) and I really liked how it took itself seriously and how well the cutscenes were directed, so it was always engaging. Even if the story wasn’t great. I love Agrippa's dumb ass just kind of standing there awkwardly while other characters are crying cause he doesn't know how to interact with people all he knows is punching. He also punches boulders in this so i'm glad capcom's got a history of that. Octavian is an anime final fantasy twink boy that you can put in a maid dress which makes me mad how accurate it is. Isn't it crazy that in real life, my man had to do his business at nights because older women would just harass him all the time? this was before he became emperor and he was emperor at 19 so this is kind of creepy. NOT COOL ANCIENT ROMAN PREDATORS!!! Next, I’m glad to say there is a dmc1 LIIIGHT moment in this! I wont say when or where so just play it and find out!
Anyways the sequel to this got turned into dead rising, which i still need to finish. But honestly I kind of wish this got a sequel anyways. There’s a lot of cool stuff that's yet to happen. And they set up some stuff for another one. Maybe they could’ve done a mix, shadow of rome 2: dead rising. We only ever see zombie apocalypses in modern day with AKs and hospitals and tanks. What if there were zombies in ancient rome? Anyone ever thought of that? They should do that. But zombies in a mall does fulfill my dawn of the dead fantasy. So I guess I’m fine with it.
THE END!
I really like the combat in this game. It’s so ahead of it’s time that it’s still ahead of our time. Cutting off your enemy’s limbs and picking up said limbs and beating them to death with it is fun and all, but try german suplexing an enemy into a pit of spikes or a pit of fire or into a tiger. Breaking arms, toying with them til they beg for mercy on their knees and then decapitating them and showing their head to the cheers of your adoring audience. The audience in the gladiator parts was sick, because it’s like a gameplay mechanic that ties into the DMC style meter this game has. You keep your meter high, and you do a taunt, the audience will throw you weapons or food for healing. Certain tricks get you more points on the meter, and they can get really specific and they have fun names. Yes, the names are fun. There’s one for letting a female enemy stomp on you repeatedly. I looked that one up. I swear I didn’t do that ingame. Lol.
The different modes can get VERY intense, and many times I actually screamed out loud like a caveman upon finishing a level. They also just added a chariot mode that completely changes everything, used it for like 5 missions and dipped. Games like this just used to do shit for funsies, yknow? I’m sure theres some funsie parts in new games that i haven't played but i bet they were like “yo we should do chariots” “that sounds sick lets do it.” The boss fights are also all super unique and fun, mostly the ones in the gladiator games. Cause the ones outside there’s no audience to throw you cheese. But the non audience ones happen near the end so you’ll be big and strong.
The stealth is very hit or miss and it’s mostly miss. It usually has a very specific and obvious predetermined path you gotta take, it’s linear, the guards are braindead, but there’s something really special about this stealth that I haven't seen in any game, really. This does have a simple hitman-style disguise system, and this game does the suspicion/enforcer mechanic better than ANY hitman game. These words come outta my mouth like sandpaper but I got to give flowers where flowers are due. Sometimes when you’re disguised, say, as a soldier. And you pass another soldier, he isn’t just gonna do the absolution onward thing of being an enforcer and seeing through your disguise immediately. He will be suspicious and ask you a question. They can be something personal, making an awareness check on the player, or on rare occasions just a quiz on roman history lol. Depending on your answer you could talk your way out of it, raise the suspicion meter, or just give away your identity. I thought that was so involved and fun. This one time, you’re disguised as a thief and you’re trying to go past, but this guy won’t let you, even if you’re disguised. I saw one of the thieves had a facemask and I knocked that one out and took it. When I went back he thought I was him, and let me through. I thought I made it til I heard the “WAIT.” That’s what guards say when they wanna ask you a question. But he just called out and said “be careful, okay?” I’m very glad I only just knocked out the mask guy because these two must be very very close friends.
This game’s approach to stealth seems almost pranky and mischievous. Sometimes you need to access an area that’s off limits to you, and you have to distract the guard. There are some hilarious puzzles you need to do, like throwing an apple at a guard and framing some innocent apple eating bystander and getting the guard to chase the innocent apple eating bystander. There’s more but I won't go into it. Oh, one more thing, this game’s slipping mechanic is so funny. There’s banana peels and jars of liquid you can smash that leave a slippery spot. For some reason if you yourself slip on it, then you’ll fall and get back up instantly. Guards, however, get knocked out. So this one time I just smashed a honey jar by a doorway, got myself spotted, and waited til they all ran in and slipped and fell. I just realized this about myself but I love prankster stuff. My favourite movie is dirty work, my favourite show is impractical jokers, my favourite game genre is stealth, which i guess is evil pranks. Something this reminds me of is neighbours from hell, where you sneak around a guy’s house and just do stuff to him. You hide in his closet and wait til he goes to the bathroom and get an egg from his fridge and put it in the microwave or on his chair. And in the sequel he goes on vacation and you fuck with him on there too. If anyone has prank game recommendations let me know.
This game also has a small bunch of hub worlds that you can go to between big missions. In the market you can buy random shit for Octavian’s room, stuff like rugs and dartboards and tables and couches and tigers and maids. There's the forum where the civilians gather and you can do fun stuff. Idk. There’s fun stuff to do. I'm gonna talk about the story now.
The story is really funny. Classic 2005 bad voice acting, half naked female side character, (tbf the male protag has no shirt or pants for most of the game so she's actually more clothed than he is) and I really liked how it took itself seriously and how well the cutscenes were directed, so it was always engaging. Even if the story wasn’t great. I love Agrippa's dumb ass just kind of standing there awkwardly while other characters are crying cause he doesn't know how to interact with people all he knows is punching. He also punches boulders in this so i'm glad capcom's got a history of that. Octavian is an anime final fantasy twink boy that you can put in a maid dress which makes me mad how accurate it is. Isn't it crazy that in real life, my man had to do his business at nights because older women would just harass him all the time? this was before he became emperor and he was emperor at 19 so this is kind of creepy. NOT COOL ANCIENT ROMAN PREDATORS!!! Next, I’m glad to say there is a dmc1 LIIIGHT moment in this! I wont say when or where so just play it and find out!
Anyways the sequel to this got turned into dead rising, which i still need to finish. But honestly I kind of wish this got a sequel anyways. There’s a lot of cool stuff that's yet to happen. And they set up some stuff for another one. Maybe they could’ve done a mix, shadow of rome 2: dead rising. We only ever see zombie apocalypses in modern day with AKs and hospitals and tanks. What if there were zombies in ancient rome? Anyone ever thought of that? They should do that. But zombies in a mall does fulfill my dawn of the dead fantasy. So I guess I’m fine with it.
THE END!
This review contains spoilers
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - The Expose: A Surgical Summer
By Elkmane
ok everyone it's been a while since i've done a proper review. But i'm addy'd up and ready to deconstruct the very notion of what a videogame review can be to show you guys what i like to call my expose. (e with an accent) because after this review you will all see this game is not good. This isn't a matter of opinions, or tastes, or any of that. I don't think that comes into play with my opinions. I will deliver facts so devastating that the most adoring fanboy will become a vengeful hater. I don't do this out of anger or disappointment, This game improves on the first zelda in a few ways. I'll get to it. That's part of the review deconstruction i've talked about. I’m inventing something called “post structuralism.” I may be on a new frontier for criticism but I'll stay humble about it for now. This was the intro paragraph. Yes i'm doing paragraphs. This is gonna be a longy. You’re gonna think this is the harshest 3.5/5 review you ever heard. But I’ve been reviewing games for YEARS now. Probably longer than you, rookie, so step out of the way and let me do my job. Capisce? okay.
Now every good review starts with a beginning.
First Chapter: personal stuff, AKA origin story
Zelda breath of the wild was given to me as a gift as I recovered from a botched surgery. The only thing I did all day every day was stay home, eat crappy self cooked steak and play breath of the wild. I had a lot of fun. But I'm not here for your tears, please don’t feel bad for me because I had a botched surgery. It really wasn’t that bad. I’m strong and I was ok. Good thing it won’t happen again. [Pause] The thing is, I decided to replay it and found my appreciation really dropped off a cliff when A. the novelty wears off and B. when you’ve done everything there is to do, just getting on and fighting monsters wasn’t fun. Combat was boring because there was no enemy variety and the base mechanics were extremely simple and there was one overwhelmingly powerful stratagem that you could use no matter what on every single encounter and it’d be the most efficient thing to do (its flurry rush.) Yeah, I guess you could use balloons and stasis and trees and rocks to make a super high iq trap to do a quarter of the damage in one very situational situation, but really there’s no point. Everything else about the game was good though. There were a lot of fun things to find, the structure meant you could skip every main checkpoint, do whatever you feel like you want, and go to the final boss. Well, the dungeons in botw sucked but this isn’t a botw review. What I mean is once you were off the plateau that was it. There’s nothing else for you to get. That was good. Because I hate games where I'm 6 hours in and I'm still getting tutorials (like this game I'm playing called Shadow of Rome) and I liked that they knew their strengths and weaknesses. They didn’t have a good story so they were like fuck it we made a little skeleton story and u can go find it if u want. The actual finding of those memory cutscenes was more rewarding than the actual cutscene, but even then you were so starved for info on the main plot that it was kind of intriguing despite the diabetes writing. The way they built it, the world revolved around me (Link) and I was the hero. I didn’t follow anyone, and the simplicity was simple! That takes care of my origin story. Off to the next chapter.
Second Chapter: Dawn of The Day of Defeat
I was so sodding excited! I went all the way to the mall, I waited in line and bought the game along with a pair of joy cons cus my left one had drift. I spent hundreds of dollars on all that purchase. Can you believe that? I ended up using those joycons TWICE! TWICE! I had a knockoff pro controller and I never undocked it cause I don't wanna go outside with my switch! I’m not trying to get robbed. Anyways, I went home, I started playing and BLAM giant wall of disappointment right off the bat! (this ones a shorter chapter. Sry yaul.)
Third Chapter: The Day of Defeat
I told myself in the bathroom mirror before I started writing this review that I’d try to refer to breath of the wild as little as possible. So I'll compare it to another member of the “of the” series. The opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark was the perfect tutorial, I mean opening scene, to the point many would consider it the best part of the game. I mean movie. It was perfect and showing the tone for the rest of the … product. You can ignore everything and rush the objectives to get off the area, and it’s the only place where you ever feel railroaded into a hallway. But at the end of the day it’s done and over before it begins. There’s minimal contact with the other character, and when his true allegiance is revealed , it’s interesting, and after that you’re already out of there. Meanwhile the intro for tears of the kingdom is some draggy ass shit. It’s three times as long and half of it is robots slowly and boringly explaining zonaite and whatever energy thingies, and I can honestly say I did not really think about zonaite for most of my playthrough. This is indicative of a larger problem I’ll touch on later. I’ll come back to it. I will. And once you’re finished with the original island, you’re still not done with your tutorial. You don’t get the glider before you leave. You’re SUPPOSED to go to the main town place, but I didn’t go there. So I played the first 5 hours and did the zora part without a glider. Yes, it’s awesome and a little stupid of me, but I can’t be the only one. The world is open and I’m immediately supposed to go from 8 hours of monologuing robots to more story shit? No I just wanna fuck around in the open world!!! God!! I guess it’s about time we talk about the meat of the game.
Fourth Chapter: Lot of Meat
Firstly, the rune powers are changed. RIP Stasis, RIP bombs, this new array of powers is pretty good though. Rewind and ascend are lame, rewind especially, and ascend always just feels cheesy to use, but the combiner and the telekinesis are cool. Telekinesis just fixed my issue with magnetism, which was that there weren't enough metal objects in the game. And the fuser was this game’s most remarkable attempt at fixing the combat. Maybe second most, because this game actually has a lot more kinds of monsters to fight. And that’s a perfect segue for my giant spine in this review skeleton I'm making. I hereby argue that this game tries to fix the issues of its predecessor by adding and piling on more mechanics, instead of restructuring the foundation, but said new things often don’t mesh together or cooperate with other mechanics to create that organic seamless physics and combat system that everyone likes. Basically, it’s clunky! Add more and more on top of the egg noodles and ketchup , but at the end of the day it’s still waiting for an attack and jumping and flurry rushing, there’s just more stuff on top to navigate around or add onto your fork. Sorry for the food analogy. I read somewhere that food analogies are for bad writers but I wanted to make a goodfellas reference. Plus the chapter name… duh… anyways… yes, the fuse mechanic was the most amazing addition to the game if you ask me. In the last game you’d inevitably have a shitton of random herbs and fruits and crap you’d never cook because no one ever needs “electric resistance” potions. Now you can stick that waste onto your arrows or your sword or shield and it’s AWESOME. Ice attachments break the game a little but it’s fine, breaking the game is ok as long as I’m ok with it. This really made enemy encounters more dynamic. You could do more shit, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, that shit was as effective, if not MORE effective than the egg noodles and ketchup! The other big thing, which was heavily marketed (i dont know, I didnt watch any trailers) was the ability to make machines and contraptions and stuff. I felt this was kind of cool. Making a car or a flying machine like da vinci will be cool forever. But you can only really do it where the developer intends. Yea, you can get the little balls that make them portable, but I didn’t use them much so did it really count? If machines are needed for a puzzle solution, there will be 8 of each part scattered around the area. You walk into a room and there’s a rat shaped hole in the wall. Sure, you could use a stick of play-do to make a clay rat and put it in there, but why not pick up one of the actual rats in the corner of that room? Don’t get me wrong. There are cool puzzle solutions the devs didn’t account for. In the lava dungeon i got into one room by throwing a freeze bomb at the lava (somehow it freezes) and floating on the ice platform until I got underneath the room and then ascending up into it. Cool eh? Yeah, it’s cool. But don’t you show me some twitter clip of a japanese dude making a tank and beating a boss in 30 seconds. Don’t. I won’t look at it and it doesn’t count. Quick topic change, do you remember the ghost warrior guy abilities you got in BOTW? The shield, Revali’s gale, the lightning circle, and the full health revive? Yeah they made you OP as shit, but didn’t you like how unobtrusive and convenient they were? What if, instead of the abilities being expertly woven into the control scheme, you had ghosts of these characters follow you around sometimes, they’d appear whenever they thought they wanted to be let out of your finger pokeball, and walk around willy nilly. To use their power you’d have to walk up to them, tap them, and tap them again. They usually clump around, so try not to activate the three others in the 17 and a half button presses it takes to use one of them. This was such a huge point of frustration for me, and I had all the sages off except for Tulin for the whole game and I only used him for gliding. The game’s giant pile of new mechanics means every button press has 7 actions it could possibly cause depending on what’s near you, what you’re wearing, the phase of the moon, and if your lockon wants to target the dude in front of you or the random bat 6 nautical meters away. Actions like trying to fuse something onto your shield or sword in the middle of a fight can be tough, because if you press it wrong now you have a +40 damage thing on your shield that’s completely useless and irreversible. Am I gonna blame it all on being built around controller usage instead of keyboard and mouse? …………………… no, I won’t. Some games actually play fine on the controller. And considering some people are calling this the game of the year then yeah I say it’s fair I ask it to have decent controller controls. Overall consensus on the meat? Some good, some bad. Unlike chapter five. Spoiler alert: Some bad, some… worse…. What’s worse than bad you may ask… hehehehehehhehee…. EVIL!
Chapter Five: Bad And Evil
The story, the cutscenes, the quests, and some such of the sort. What do I have to say about them? Well, quite frankly, it’s not good at all. The story is very bad. The last game's story was also bad, but they knew that and they kept it minimal. They kept it to the side. They had to serve you a meal of human meat and they presented it like a trail of blood, a manageable cool murder mystery. This game has an ice bucket challenge filled with gore and guts and giblets. Sorry for the food analogy again. The cutscenes were unbearably boring, and every time there was some scene of the story that was happening without you and which did not affect you in any way I would really really contemplate skipping. And what’s worse, these cutscenes were rewards for finding them out in the world. Not in the cool way of finding a location where an image was taken, but by going to these giant eyesore nazca lines and walking around it until you find a puddle. They took out the fun of finding it and the fun of the reward from this whole process. And the boss fights are all mostly pretty big improvements, if just the spectacle. The only boss fight I’d consider good mechanically is the human demon king ganondorf, whose third phase has just about the only new idea for combat in like, the whole game. Yeah, you flurry rush him, but he dodges your first flurry rush and you have to dodge again and NOW you can flurry rush. It’s not artorias or anything but it was probably the best boss fight. And then after that it’s oooh giant dragons, and a reskin of the wind temple boss where it’s all a huge spectacle but all you do is go to the glowing hole and hit the balls three times.
Chapter Six: Outro
Yeah, I think this game and the last both work better when your character is barely scraping by. It really lends itself to self induced challenges. My most memorable moment in this game was doing the lurelin village freedom quest, which I remember forcing myself to use no armour and no healing at all for the whole thing. It took so many tries, but in the end i remember finishing them off and feeling such a thrill and pride that was so alien in my 100+ hours on this game. You have to make yourself have fun in this game, which yeah every game is like that, but usually the game is the one helping you have fun, not holding you back. Well, about now i’m feeling bad for writing such a mean review. And if you have nothing nice to say then say nothing at all. So i’m going to chatgpt this and ask it to make the review worded more politely and more kindly. Brb.
Ok I'm back and I didn’t like it. It was really boring and it cut out the whole Indiana Jones part. I’ll just try and be a little gentler going forward. I don’t hate this game. I don’t like hating things. I gave this a positive score! Just try and understand, I really really really wanted to like this game. I never want to hate anything. I always wanna like stuff. That’s the dream, liking everything. But I just can’t help my patrician tastes. Yknow guys this has been my most personal review to date. It’s like my autobiography or something. Do you remember when I said I had a botched surgery in 2017 before I played zelda? Well I had a botched surgery in august of this year, yeah I know my SECOND ONE!! And I was excited for history to loop around again and I’d get on zelda and start enjoying it like the olden days!! But instead I found that my motivation to do anything had stopped. I got on, walked around, tried to explore but there was nothing fun to do, really. Every puzzle basically solved itself and while the combat was fun, I was so drained from doing the crappy dungeons (except for the desert one, that dungeon was fun) and not finding anything substantial in the overworld that I just kind of stopped playing. Instead, my recovery was assisted by seasons 5-11 of AMC’s The Walking Dead. Maybe that’s why I hated the story of the game so much, because I was experiencing peak writing at the same time. No, I don’t hate games and I haven’t grown out of it. I just played House of the Dead, another entry of the “of the” series and it was cool. So I guess this one just didn’t really work for me. Sorry, everyone. I told you this would be rough.. But thanks for sticking with me to the end of my review. Thanks to my patrons who keep the lights on and thanks to my surgeons for never getting it right with me. Goodbye for now guys. Off to game some more.
By Elkmane
ok everyone it's been a while since i've done a proper review. But i'm addy'd up and ready to deconstruct the very notion of what a videogame review can be to show you guys what i like to call my expose. (e with an accent) because after this review you will all see this game is not good. This isn't a matter of opinions, or tastes, or any of that. I don't think that comes into play with my opinions. I will deliver facts so devastating that the most adoring fanboy will become a vengeful hater. I don't do this out of anger or disappointment, This game improves on the first zelda in a few ways. I'll get to it. That's part of the review deconstruction i've talked about. I’m inventing something called “post structuralism.” I may be on a new frontier for criticism but I'll stay humble about it for now. This was the intro paragraph. Yes i'm doing paragraphs. This is gonna be a longy. You’re gonna think this is the harshest 3.5/5 review you ever heard. But I’ve been reviewing games for YEARS now. Probably longer than you, rookie, so step out of the way and let me do my job. Capisce? okay.
Now every good review starts with a beginning.
First Chapter: personal stuff, AKA origin story
Zelda breath of the wild was given to me as a gift as I recovered from a botched surgery. The only thing I did all day every day was stay home, eat crappy self cooked steak and play breath of the wild. I had a lot of fun. But I'm not here for your tears, please don’t feel bad for me because I had a botched surgery. It really wasn’t that bad. I’m strong and I was ok. Good thing it won’t happen again. [Pause] The thing is, I decided to replay it and found my appreciation really dropped off a cliff when A. the novelty wears off and B. when you’ve done everything there is to do, just getting on and fighting monsters wasn’t fun. Combat was boring because there was no enemy variety and the base mechanics were extremely simple and there was one overwhelmingly powerful stratagem that you could use no matter what on every single encounter and it’d be the most efficient thing to do (its flurry rush.) Yeah, I guess you could use balloons and stasis and trees and rocks to make a super high iq trap to do a quarter of the damage in one very situational situation, but really there’s no point. Everything else about the game was good though. There were a lot of fun things to find, the structure meant you could skip every main checkpoint, do whatever you feel like you want, and go to the final boss. Well, the dungeons in botw sucked but this isn’t a botw review. What I mean is once you were off the plateau that was it. There’s nothing else for you to get. That was good. Because I hate games where I'm 6 hours in and I'm still getting tutorials (like this game I'm playing called Shadow of Rome) and I liked that they knew their strengths and weaknesses. They didn’t have a good story so they were like fuck it we made a little skeleton story and u can go find it if u want. The actual finding of those memory cutscenes was more rewarding than the actual cutscene, but even then you were so starved for info on the main plot that it was kind of intriguing despite the diabetes writing. The way they built it, the world revolved around me (Link) and I was the hero. I didn’t follow anyone, and the simplicity was simple! That takes care of my origin story. Off to the next chapter.
Second Chapter: Dawn of The Day of Defeat
I was so sodding excited! I went all the way to the mall, I waited in line and bought the game along with a pair of joy cons cus my left one had drift. I spent hundreds of dollars on all that purchase. Can you believe that? I ended up using those joycons TWICE! TWICE! I had a knockoff pro controller and I never undocked it cause I don't wanna go outside with my switch! I’m not trying to get robbed. Anyways, I went home, I started playing and BLAM giant wall of disappointment right off the bat! (this ones a shorter chapter. Sry yaul.)
Third Chapter: The Day of Defeat
I told myself in the bathroom mirror before I started writing this review that I’d try to refer to breath of the wild as little as possible. So I'll compare it to another member of the “of the” series. The opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark was the perfect tutorial, I mean opening scene, to the point many would consider it the best part of the game. I mean movie. It was perfect and showing the tone for the rest of the … product. You can ignore everything and rush the objectives to get off the area, and it’s the only place where you ever feel railroaded into a hallway. But at the end of the day it’s done and over before it begins. There’s minimal contact with the other character, and when his true allegiance is revealed , it’s interesting, and after that you’re already out of there. Meanwhile the intro for tears of the kingdom is some draggy ass shit. It’s three times as long and half of it is robots slowly and boringly explaining zonaite and whatever energy thingies, and I can honestly say I did not really think about zonaite for most of my playthrough. This is indicative of a larger problem I’ll touch on later. I’ll come back to it. I will. And once you’re finished with the original island, you’re still not done with your tutorial. You don’t get the glider before you leave. You’re SUPPOSED to go to the main town place, but I didn’t go there. So I played the first 5 hours and did the zora part without a glider. Yes, it’s awesome and a little stupid of me, but I can’t be the only one. The world is open and I’m immediately supposed to go from 8 hours of monologuing robots to more story shit? No I just wanna fuck around in the open world!!! God!! I guess it’s about time we talk about the meat of the game.
Fourth Chapter: Lot of Meat
Firstly, the rune powers are changed. RIP Stasis, RIP bombs, this new array of powers is pretty good though. Rewind and ascend are lame, rewind especially, and ascend always just feels cheesy to use, but the combiner and the telekinesis are cool. Telekinesis just fixed my issue with magnetism, which was that there weren't enough metal objects in the game. And the fuser was this game’s most remarkable attempt at fixing the combat. Maybe second most, because this game actually has a lot more kinds of monsters to fight. And that’s a perfect segue for my giant spine in this review skeleton I'm making. I hereby argue that this game tries to fix the issues of its predecessor by adding and piling on more mechanics, instead of restructuring the foundation, but said new things often don’t mesh together or cooperate with other mechanics to create that organic seamless physics and combat system that everyone likes. Basically, it’s clunky! Add more and more on top of the egg noodles and ketchup , but at the end of the day it’s still waiting for an attack and jumping and flurry rushing, there’s just more stuff on top to navigate around or add onto your fork. Sorry for the food analogy. I read somewhere that food analogies are for bad writers but I wanted to make a goodfellas reference. Plus the chapter name… duh… anyways… yes, the fuse mechanic was the most amazing addition to the game if you ask me. In the last game you’d inevitably have a shitton of random herbs and fruits and crap you’d never cook because no one ever needs “electric resistance” potions. Now you can stick that waste onto your arrows or your sword or shield and it’s AWESOME. Ice attachments break the game a little but it’s fine, breaking the game is ok as long as I’m ok with it. This really made enemy encounters more dynamic. You could do more shit, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, that shit was as effective, if not MORE effective than the egg noodles and ketchup! The other big thing, which was heavily marketed (i dont know, I didnt watch any trailers) was the ability to make machines and contraptions and stuff. I felt this was kind of cool. Making a car or a flying machine like da vinci will be cool forever. But you can only really do it where the developer intends. Yea, you can get the little balls that make them portable, but I didn’t use them much so did it really count? If machines are needed for a puzzle solution, there will be 8 of each part scattered around the area. You walk into a room and there’s a rat shaped hole in the wall. Sure, you could use a stick of play-do to make a clay rat and put it in there, but why not pick up one of the actual rats in the corner of that room? Don’t get me wrong. There are cool puzzle solutions the devs didn’t account for. In the lava dungeon i got into one room by throwing a freeze bomb at the lava (somehow it freezes) and floating on the ice platform until I got underneath the room and then ascending up into it. Cool eh? Yeah, it’s cool. But don’t you show me some twitter clip of a japanese dude making a tank and beating a boss in 30 seconds. Don’t. I won’t look at it and it doesn’t count. Quick topic change, do you remember the ghost warrior guy abilities you got in BOTW? The shield, Revali’s gale, the lightning circle, and the full health revive? Yeah they made you OP as shit, but didn’t you like how unobtrusive and convenient they were? What if, instead of the abilities being expertly woven into the control scheme, you had ghosts of these characters follow you around sometimes, they’d appear whenever they thought they wanted to be let out of your finger pokeball, and walk around willy nilly. To use their power you’d have to walk up to them, tap them, and tap them again. They usually clump around, so try not to activate the three others in the 17 and a half button presses it takes to use one of them. This was such a huge point of frustration for me, and I had all the sages off except for Tulin for the whole game and I only used him for gliding. The game’s giant pile of new mechanics means every button press has 7 actions it could possibly cause depending on what’s near you, what you’re wearing, the phase of the moon, and if your lockon wants to target the dude in front of you or the random bat 6 nautical meters away. Actions like trying to fuse something onto your shield or sword in the middle of a fight can be tough, because if you press it wrong now you have a +40 damage thing on your shield that’s completely useless and irreversible. Am I gonna blame it all on being built around controller usage instead of keyboard and mouse? …………………… no, I won’t. Some games actually play fine on the controller. And considering some people are calling this the game of the year then yeah I say it’s fair I ask it to have decent controller controls. Overall consensus on the meat? Some good, some bad. Unlike chapter five. Spoiler alert: Some bad, some… worse…. What’s worse than bad you may ask… hehehehehehhehee…. EVIL!
Chapter Five: Bad And Evil
The story, the cutscenes, the quests, and some such of the sort. What do I have to say about them? Well, quite frankly, it’s not good at all. The story is very bad. The last game's story was also bad, but they knew that and they kept it minimal. They kept it to the side. They had to serve you a meal of human meat and they presented it like a trail of blood, a manageable cool murder mystery. This game has an ice bucket challenge filled with gore and guts and giblets. Sorry for the food analogy again. The cutscenes were unbearably boring, and every time there was some scene of the story that was happening without you and which did not affect you in any way I would really really contemplate skipping. And what’s worse, these cutscenes were rewards for finding them out in the world. Not in the cool way of finding a location where an image was taken, but by going to these giant eyesore nazca lines and walking around it until you find a puddle. They took out the fun of finding it and the fun of the reward from this whole process. And the boss fights are all mostly pretty big improvements, if just the spectacle. The only boss fight I’d consider good mechanically is the human demon king ganondorf, whose third phase has just about the only new idea for combat in like, the whole game. Yeah, you flurry rush him, but he dodges your first flurry rush and you have to dodge again and NOW you can flurry rush. It’s not artorias or anything but it was probably the best boss fight. And then after that it’s oooh giant dragons, and a reskin of the wind temple boss where it’s all a huge spectacle but all you do is go to the glowing hole and hit the balls three times.
Chapter Six: Outro
Yeah, I think this game and the last both work better when your character is barely scraping by. It really lends itself to self induced challenges. My most memorable moment in this game was doing the lurelin village freedom quest, which I remember forcing myself to use no armour and no healing at all for the whole thing. It took so many tries, but in the end i remember finishing them off and feeling such a thrill and pride that was so alien in my 100+ hours on this game. You have to make yourself have fun in this game, which yeah every game is like that, but usually the game is the one helping you have fun, not holding you back. Well, about now i’m feeling bad for writing such a mean review. And if you have nothing nice to say then say nothing at all. So i’m going to chatgpt this and ask it to make the review worded more politely and more kindly. Brb.
Ok I'm back and I didn’t like it. It was really boring and it cut out the whole Indiana Jones part. I’ll just try and be a little gentler going forward. I don’t hate this game. I don’t like hating things. I gave this a positive score! Just try and understand, I really really really wanted to like this game. I never want to hate anything. I always wanna like stuff. That’s the dream, liking everything. But I just can’t help my patrician tastes. Yknow guys this has been my most personal review to date. It’s like my autobiography or something. Do you remember when I said I had a botched surgery in 2017 before I played zelda? Well I had a botched surgery in august of this year, yeah I know my SECOND ONE!! And I was excited for history to loop around again and I’d get on zelda and start enjoying it like the olden days!! But instead I found that my motivation to do anything had stopped. I got on, walked around, tried to explore but there was nothing fun to do, really. Every puzzle basically solved itself and while the combat was fun, I was so drained from doing the crappy dungeons (except for the desert one, that dungeon was fun) and not finding anything substantial in the overworld that I just kind of stopped playing. Instead, my recovery was assisted by seasons 5-11 of AMC’s The Walking Dead. Maybe that’s why I hated the story of the game so much, because I was experiencing peak writing at the same time. No, I don’t hate games and I haven’t grown out of it. I just played House of the Dead, another entry of the “of the” series and it was cool. So I guess this one just didn’t really work for me. Sorry, everyone. I told you this would be rough.. But thanks for sticking with me to the end of my review. Thanks to my patrons who keep the lights on and thanks to my surgeons for never getting it right with me. Goodbye for now guys. Off to game some more.
shoot a zombie in the chest, his chest has a hole in it now. Shoot a zombie in the head sometimes his eyeball falls out. It's so simple to make games fun :)
2023
its cute i think ... idk, i didnt care much about the characters or story and the decisions didnt do much if anything at all. But the representation was really good and the art/animation was smooth and nice. That's it
2006
2hours 45 minutes speedrun
i did so well. im so proud of myself.
i did so well. im so proud of myself.
What i hate is people calling this game tryhard or wannabe edgy. Is it so hard to believe some people are just cool? Am I supposed to hate my awesome life like everyone else? No. I think i'm awesome, i think awesome things are awesome, and im not joking at all. pisses me off. The game is so cool All the guns feel awesome, i love it very much. It has a lot of personality and you can feel zane's real personality slipping in every corner. also learned this is a spinoff of a game called hypnospace outlaw and ill definitely play that too after this. I love the s blade as well as the glass shotgun, which is a very unique way of getting the player to focus on the environment and not just run through it all.
2023
nice game, i have a lot to say about it but i wont . my therapist told me to do mindfulness