Goolalala
83 reviews liked by Goolalala
Super Castlevania IV
1991
its fine but the bosses suck lol
God Hand
2006
i've been thinking about my relationship with art, and my thoughts at the moment are that what i want in a piece is to feel something. it's not only about being entertaining, it's about catharsis. it's about feeling extremely happy or deeply miserable. it's about having the teeth grinding, the foot tapping, the head scratched. it's about going insane over the details. i want to feel alive. maybe it's a sick thought. maybe i should just live my own life, but i can guarantee, i've been living my own life a lot! much more than i would like to, sometimes.
all the games i've finished this year so far (very few) were a good time, some of them were amazing, really thought-provoking like anodyne 2, but none of them hit me like a truck. until GOD HAND.
GOD HAND makes you feel extremely happy, deeply miserable, with your teeth grinding, your foot tapping, your head scratching... pretty much at the same time! it's commonly known as a very difficult game and it's not an impossible one, but it does require you full commitment. starting with learning the controls: when action games were about swords and guns, with fast-paced movement, GOD HAND was about throwing punches while moving in tank controls. it's all about positioning, a 1v1 it's already a difficult task, but a 2v1? a 4v1? does not help when your crowd control movements are slow as hell! but don't be confused: GOD HAND is not a slow game! actually, if you can't keep up, you will pretty much ended up cooked lol, you have to adapt to the rhythm of the fight. it's all about learning and once you learn, it's about going wild.
and it's not a flashy game. you throw punches. real punches. punches that hit, than you can feel when it hits. GOD HAND it's a dudes rock game but every single dude is rocking on you (in a not-homosexual-way (unfortunately)), and you got rock on them instead. GOD HAND it's a videogame that loves action games. it's a videogame that recognizes the masculine archetypes about the action genre in overall media and at the same time it honors it and it also makes fun of it. GOD HAND is very "manly"! i mean, having blackjack and poker and dogs races as a way to make money makes me think that shinji mikami and the team are either the funniest guys ever or the most heteronormative of all time! and it's very funny either way.
what really matters is that GOD HAND is a videogame that made me feel everything, and in a year that is definitely NOT being my year, with a lot of work and study and personal problems as well, making me sometimes lost my interest in my favorite hobby, it reminds me how great videogames can be and how i can always just punch a son of a bitch when it needs to. you better watch out mf!!!
all the games i've finished this year so far (very few) were a good time, some of them were amazing, really thought-provoking like anodyne 2, but none of them hit me like a truck. until GOD HAND.
GOD HAND makes you feel extremely happy, deeply miserable, with your teeth grinding, your foot tapping, your head scratching... pretty much at the same time! it's commonly known as a very difficult game and it's not an impossible one, but it does require you full commitment. starting with learning the controls: when action games were about swords and guns, with fast-paced movement, GOD HAND was about throwing punches while moving in tank controls. it's all about positioning, a 1v1 it's already a difficult task, but a 2v1? a 4v1? does not help when your crowd control movements are slow as hell! but don't be confused: GOD HAND is not a slow game! actually, if you can't keep up, you will pretty much ended up cooked lol, you have to adapt to the rhythm of the fight. it's all about learning and once you learn, it's about going wild.
and it's not a flashy game. you throw punches. real punches. punches that hit, than you can feel when it hits. GOD HAND it's a dudes rock game but every single dude is rocking on you (in a not-homosexual-way (unfortunately)), and you got rock on them instead. GOD HAND it's a videogame that loves action games. it's a videogame that recognizes the masculine archetypes about the action genre in overall media and at the same time it honors it and it also makes fun of it. GOD HAND is very "manly"! i mean, having blackjack and poker and dogs races as a way to make money makes me think that shinji mikami and the team are either the funniest guys ever or the most heteronormative of all time! and it's very funny either way.
what really matters is that GOD HAND is a videogame that made me feel everything, and in a year that is definitely NOT being my year, with a lot of work and study and personal problems as well, making me sometimes lost my interest in my favorite hobby, it reminds me how great videogames can be and how i can always just punch a son of a bitch when it needs to. you better watch out mf!!!
wtff anime girl AND she smoke joint okiee this iz awesum :3
This review contains spoilers
Over the past few years I’ve found myself realizing something about myself. I love vocations. Jobs? Yeah, I love those. I would be a great temp recruiter because, apparently, according to the RPGs I love, my favorite thing ever is being given a character and mapping out their career path.
Earlier last year I wrote two overbearing reviews for the mostly-polarizing Fire Emblem Engage, in which both reviews make very obvious that the reason I was able to put 120 hours into that game was because I found the job system to be super dynamic and creative, and something that allows for a lot of exploration and customization. It’s the kind of stuff that has me planning a second playthrough of a game as the credits are rolling, seeing what I can think of to experiment with the next go around. Between my favorite Fire Emblems and other RPGs like Dragon Quest IX, it’s clear what really makes me shiver. Enter Final Fantasy V, a game whose job system is lauded more than anything else and is the sole reason I had any interest in this installment. Come to find out, this game’s job system is basically the same as Fire Emblem Engage. So, well, I had a ball with it.
It’s what kept me engaged in maybe my fifth or sixth try to finish a Final Fantasy game (for realsies), and I had a lot of fun experimenting. I didn’t go for trying to collect a bunch of abilities (I could be fucked to bother with blue magic I’ll be real), but what I did land on made my party members really fun to play with. My problem is that I cannot really figure out if this game is well-designed passed this job system. Which, I will say, the only knock on the job system is if every guide is telling me to use the same two Blue Mage spells and spam !Zeninage, then how well-balanced, really, is the job system?
I was watching a Dragon Quest stream recently and someone in the chat asked what the difference was between that series and Final Fantasy. Beyond my deduction that DQ is “goofy” while FF is “cunty,” the latter is also meaner. So, like, also cunty in the heterosexual meaning of the word. Almost every JRPG has some tricks up its sleeves, but a lot of Final Fantasy games seem to want to make you mad. Bosses feel less designed to challenge your outfit of classes and equipment and more designed to send you to the title screen as annoyed as possible. The only other game in this series I spent meaningful time with was ‘FFX’ and I spent every big boss battle pulling my hair out, trying four times, thinking I was going to give up only to squeak it out, up until I got to the final boss battle and actually did give up! I luckily was pretty overleveled throughout most of this playthrough and got through every boss with a lot less pushback…thanks to GameFAQs! Without the nearly 30 years of information on this game available I definitely would not be able to figure this game out. Shout out to this guide in particular, which was the only reason I got anywhere in this game, ever.
And not because I couldn’t, moreso because I wasn’t having fun figuring it all out for myself. For a lot of other JRPGs, like the older Dragon Quests, I’ll take a peep at a guide once or twice, but with this game I just couldn’t be fucking bothered. Maybe this is me finally figuring out that Final Fantasy is just not for me. Exploration is also tough, too. All these old RPGs hated labeling the maps, but at least most of them had the courtesy of allowing you to memorize the world, slowly, as you explore and get different modes of transportation. Dragon Quest IV does this beautifully, having each chapter focus on a small spot in the world that you memorize and then when the final chapter unites every party character, you know where everywhere is and even some of the NPCs you met in some towns. Maybe two NPCs are remarkable in this world, and every town blends together, AND, to top it all off, the world map changes, twice! It really hit me when I was reading a guide and it told me to go back to a town and I thought, “where?!”
All this to say I may have accidentally turned myself off to this entire series. The spectacle is so grand, and I enjoyed so many of this story’s moments of awe and adventure. I love Faris so much; I always walk away from every one of these games I play with a character to adore (shouts out Yuna, my love). The spritework is to die for, so many enemies and environments look cool as hell and it’s hard to not like the whole vibe of Final Fantasy V. Fantastical space-exploration and ancient mechanisms. I mean, when I wasn't in a battle, I was having the time of my life. I really, really like it, but, it’s just so fucking miserable to play! Every other boss fight after around the 15-minute mark made me want to quit, and most, if not all, required me to do extensive research. Reading the guide for the final battle just made me feel this pit of dread! It seemed not fun! I spent one night giving it a bunch of tries and was not having fun, I almost gave up then, but I didn’t. I spent tonight giving it about seven more tries, and found this spark that I had not felt during this playthrough at all, but did in my playthrough of 'FFX'. I felt I was so close, and that was giving me this rush, but would always get tripped up by something (most usually it was Grand Cross putting berserk on my mages). I would always get easily past Exdeath’s first phase and would get, I wanna say, abour a third of the way through Neo Exdeath before it all fell apart.
No matter how enamored I am with this series as a whole, as I have been for so long, I just can’t see myself trudging through anymore of these games against my will when I have so many other JRPGs from series I’ve never tried, or! already know that I enjoy sitting through, on my shelf waiting to be played and enjoyed. It’s a somber goodbye, for now, Final Fantasy, and even though I didn’t finish this, I do still feel slightly proud of myself for how close I got. I may not try any more of the games in this series (well, except for 'FFIV', because I own 'FFIV', lol), but I definitely see myself seeking revenge one day…
Earlier last year I wrote two overbearing reviews for the mostly-polarizing Fire Emblem Engage, in which both reviews make very obvious that the reason I was able to put 120 hours into that game was because I found the job system to be super dynamic and creative, and something that allows for a lot of exploration and customization. It’s the kind of stuff that has me planning a second playthrough of a game as the credits are rolling, seeing what I can think of to experiment with the next go around. Between my favorite Fire Emblems and other RPGs like Dragon Quest IX, it’s clear what really makes me shiver. Enter Final Fantasy V, a game whose job system is lauded more than anything else and is the sole reason I had any interest in this installment. Come to find out, this game’s job system is basically the same as Fire Emblem Engage. So, well, I had a ball with it.
It’s what kept me engaged in maybe my fifth or sixth try to finish a Final Fantasy game (for realsies), and I had a lot of fun experimenting. I didn’t go for trying to collect a bunch of abilities (I could be fucked to bother with blue magic I’ll be real), but what I did land on made my party members really fun to play with. My problem is that I cannot really figure out if this game is well-designed passed this job system. Which, I will say, the only knock on the job system is if every guide is telling me to use the same two Blue Mage spells and spam !Zeninage, then how well-balanced, really, is the job system?
I was watching a Dragon Quest stream recently and someone in the chat asked what the difference was between that series and Final Fantasy. Beyond my deduction that DQ is “goofy” while FF is “cunty,” the latter is also meaner. So, like, also cunty in the heterosexual meaning of the word. Almost every JRPG has some tricks up its sleeves, but a lot of Final Fantasy games seem to want to make you mad. Bosses feel less designed to challenge your outfit of classes and equipment and more designed to send you to the title screen as annoyed as possible. The only other game in this series I spent meaningful time with was ‘FFX’ and I spent every big boss battle pulling my hair out, trying four times, thinking I was going to give up only to squeak it out, up until I got to the final boss battle and actually did give up! I luckily was pretty overleveled throughout most of this playthrough and got through every boss with a lot less pushback…thanks to GameFAQs! Without the nearly 30 years of information on this game available I definitely would not be able to figure this game out. Shout out to this guide in particular, which was the only reason I got anywhere in this game, ever.
And not because I couldn’t, moreso because I wasn’t having fun figuring it all out for myself. For a lot of other JRPGs, like the older Dragon Quests, I’ll take a peep at a guide once or twice, but with this game I just couldn’t be fucking bothered. Maybe this is me finally figuring out that Final Fantasy is just not for me. Exploration is also tough, too. All these old RPGs hated labeling the maps, but at least most of them had the courtesy of allowing you to memorize the world, slowly, as you explore and get different modes of transportation. Dragon Quest IV does this beautifully, having each chapter focus on a small spot in the world that you memorize and then when the final chapter unites every party character, you know where everywhere is and even some of the NPCs you met in some towns. Maybe two NPCs are remarkable in this world, and every town blends together, AND, to top it all off, the world map changes, twice! It really hit me when I was reading a guide and it told me to go back to a town and I thought, “where?!”
All this to say I may have accidentally turned myself off to this entire series. The spectacle is so grand, and I enjoyed so many of this story’s moments of awe and adventure. I love Faris so much; I always walk away from every one of these games I play with a character to adore (shouts out Yuna, my love). The spritework is to die for, so many enemies and environments look cool as hell and it’s hard to not like the whole vibe of Final Fantasy V. Fantastical space-exploration and ancient mechanisms. I mean, when I wasn't in a battle, I was having the time of my life. I really, really like it, but, it’s just so fucking miserable to play! Every other boss fight after around the 15-minute mark made me want to quit, and most, if not all, required me to do extensive research. Reading the guide for the final battle just made me feel this pit of dread! It seemed not fun! I spent one night giving it a bunch of tries and was not having fun, I almost gave up then, but I didn’t. I spent tonight giving it about seven more tries, and found this spark that I had not felt during this playthrough at all, but did in my playthrough of 'FFX'. I felt I was so close, and that was giving me this rush, but would always get tripped up by something (most usually it was Grand Cross putting berserk on my mages). I would always get easily past Exdeath’s first phase and would get, I wanna say, abour a third of the way through Neo Exdeath before it all fell apart.
No matter how enamored I am with this series as a whole, as I have been for so long, I just can’t see myself trudging through anymore of these games against my will when I have so many other JRPGs from series I’ve never tried, or! already know that I enjoy sitting through, on my shelf waiting to be played and enjoyed. It’s a somber goodbye, for now, Final Fantasy, and even though I didn’t finish this, I do still feel slightly proud of myself for how close I got. I may not try any more of the games in this series (well, except for 'FFIV', because I own 'FFIV', lol), but I definitely see myself seeking revenge one day…
Yume 2kki
2007
yume 2kki definitely has a different vibe from yume nikki, but i think it really works in its favor. i love the sort of eclectic vibe this game has going on, since every area is made by its own dev. it makes it really feel like a dream, not every dream is a perfectly laid out set of events that tells a story, sometimes just some wack ass shit happens and i love that. yume 2kki is awesome, and i can't recommend it enough. absolutely check this out
Ico
2012
a little quaint but very much a beautiful work of art that i adore. i had a conversation with a friend about how brain rotting fortnite is and it deeply depresses me that hardly anyone touches this masterpiece. the puzzles are challenging but never impossible, even an idiot like me was able to complete it without a single use of any guide. playing it made me realize this must be an amazing game to experience as a kid; puzzle solving, keeping track and caring for another that helps your patience and to completely immerse yourself in a mostly quiet ambience. some moments of silence that is elevated with a rush of ocean wind should not only be much appreciated in video games but also in todays world especially with how chaotic everything has been (i sound dumb as hell but i hope my point comes across).
Gunstar Heroes
1993
Goonstar Heroes
It’s a common joke that Samus Aran never hunts bounties. She’s always either stumbling into heroics for free by accident or hired for, essentially, mercenary work by Da Army. The only game where Samus’ work could I think be conceivably considered actual Bounty Hunting is Metroid II: Return of Samus. She’s given her hit list and she trudges down into the depths to do her job.
And what we get out of it is arguably the most ambitious Metroid game to date, clearly pushing the limits of its hardware in terms of delivering a gameplay experience that, similar to its predecessor with the NES, is just clearly beyond the ken of the Gameboy but also accidentally in terms of themes and mood. It’s not a secret that Metroid 2 has gotten the coolguy art gamer reevaluation over the years as a secret death of the author gem but that doesn’t make it work any less well as one.
Samus takes up a huge chunk of the screen. You can barely see where you’re going. You can barely remember where you’ve been. The world isn’t hostile, necessarily; how could it be hostile when you dominate it so powerfully from the very beginning? Samus is untouchable – more agile and powerful than anything she’ll face from the first second to the last as she trudges down, down, ever downward, through endless twisting corridors as she practices the tedious chore of genocide. She only becomes more durable and more powerful as her targets become fewer and more vulnerable to her weaponry.
No, the only resistance is from the world’s indifference, its ambivalence to Samus and her violence, and even then only in the few places where she cannot enforce herself upon it. The only dangers on SR388 are momentary environmental hazards, getting frustrated by disorientation, being frightened by surprise or by unknown sounds. But never by anything remotely similar to what Samus herself brings to the Metroids, to the other fauna she might encounter.
Atmosphere is king in Metroid, and narrative – explicit and implicit – is rarely given much heft in these games, especially early in the series. It’s hard to imagine that Samus, given what we know of her (with her military background, her most frequent contractor being the Federation marines, literally spending all her time with one of her hands replaced with a gun) has spent a lot of time considering the morality of her place in the galactic landscape. She probably doesn’t have to think much about it, since she mostly seems to fight, like, animals and the Space Pirates who do seem like assholes (I don’t have time to go into the absolutely batshit colonialism allegories happening in Prime 2 but that game is a weird can of worms). So I really have to wonder what’s going through her head when she’s struck by the burst of compassion that leads her to spare the last metroid. What’s she thinking about as she makes that long ascent back to the surface with a little buddy who doesn’t know that its mom just butchered its race. Does she think she’s done a kindness? Is she considering the enormity of the act she’s just failed to complete? Are these things she thinks about at all?
I don’t know. Metroid 2 is a masterpiece.
And what we get out of it is arguably the most ambitious Metroid game to date, clearly pushing the limits of its hardware in terms of delivering a gameplay experience that, similar to its predecessor with the NES, is just clearly beyond the ken of the Gameboy but also accidentally in terms of themes and mood. It’s not a secret that Metroid 2 has gotten the coolguy art gamer reevaluation over the years as a secret death of the author gem but that doesn’t make it work any less well as one.
Samus takes up a huge chunk of the screen. You can barely see where you’re going. You can barely remember where you’ve been. The world isn’t hostile, necessarily; how could it be hostile when you dominate it so powerfully from the very beginning? Samus is untouchable – more agile and powerful than anything she’ll face from the first second to the last as she trudges down, down, ever downward, through endless twisting corridors as she practices the tedious chore of genocide. She only becomes more durable and more powerful as her targets become fewer and more vulnerable to her weaponry.
No, the only resistance is from the world’s indifference, its ambivalence to Samus and her violence, and even then only in the few places where she cannot enforce herself upon it. The only dangers on SR388 are momentary environmental hazards, getting frustrated by disorientation, being frightened by surprise or by unknown sounds. But never by anything remotely similar to what Samus herself brings to the Metroids, to the other fauna she might encounter.
Atmosphere is king in Metroid, and narrative – explicit and implicit – is rarely given much heft in these games, especially early in the series. It’s hard to imagine that Samus, given what we know of her (with her military background, her most frequent contractor being the Federation marines, literally spending all her time with one of her hands replaced with a gun) has spent a lot of time considering the morality of her place in the galactic landscape. She probably doesn’t have to think much about it, since she mostly seems to fight, like, animals and the Space Pirates who do seem like assholes (I don’t have time to go into the absolutely batshit colonialism allegories happening in Prime 2 but that game is a weird can of worms). So I really have to wonder what’s going through her head when she’s struck by the burst of compassion that leads her to spare the last metroid. What’s she thinking about as she makes that long ascent back to the surface with a little buddy who doesn’t know that its mom just butchered its race. Does she think she’s done a kindness? Is she considering the enormity of the act she’s just failed to complete? Are these things she thinks about at all?
I don’t know. Metroid 2 is a masterpiece.
The Legend of Zelda has a strong case as the greatest overall gaming franchise, so much so that its a victim of suffering from success at times. That is to say, this series has so many incredible games that even a great classic entry like Link's Awakening can easily go overlooked, in part due to its advanced age, but also on account of at least a handful of Zelda games considered even better still. In a vacuum from the greater franchise however, what we have here is one of the very few remaining Game Boy games that still holds up well in the present day, a remarkable feat.
The most striking aspect of Link's Awakening to me is just how impressive it is for a game of such high quality to exist on limited and primitive hardware. In development, this game began as a side project to port A Link to the Past to the handheld Game Boy, but soon grew into its own unique game with an island setting completely independent of the Hyrule we'd come to know. While measuring up to its legendary console predecessor may have been an impossible task, Link's Awakening carved itself a distinct identity all its own, even introducing some series staples that would carry over into the N64-era 3D games to follow.
Link washes up on the shore of Koholint Island, and is informed by an owl that in order to return home, he must awaken the Wind Fish, encased in a massive egg atop Mt. Tamaranch. This entails an Earthbound-style quest of collecting eight melodies, or in this case eight magic instruments, needed to play the song to awaken this mythical creature. This island setting is of a smaller scale than usual, but the classic Zelda dungeons are here, and they're mostly pretty good. The only dungeon I found to be especially annoying/confusing was The Eagle's Tower. Collapsing pillars of the dungeon to render higher areas accessible is a cool dungeon concept, but in practice its convoluted to understand just how the dungeon changes each time, and lugging around iron balls to accomplish this is pretty tedious in itself. The typical Zelda gameplay loop of finding a new item in each dungeon that must be used to solve puzzles within returns, and while most of this equipment existed in A Link to the Past, jumping around with the new Roc's Feather is really fun. Combining this with the Pegasus Boots allows Link to travel super quickly across the small screen.
Koholint Island itself is lighthearted and cozy, also notable for the unexpected presence of Mario enemies like Chain Chomps and Goombas. It's fun to see this rare crossover, but these guys don't seem like they belong in the Zelda universe at all. And that is because they aren't. Yes, as Link collects more instruments it is progressively revealed that Koholint Island and everyone on it is actually a dream. The "it was all just a dream" ending is typically a cheap narrative no-no, but in Link's Awakening its framed in a bittersweet way, the player burdened with this knowledge ahead of time means that by completing their quest they'll also be essentially removing the Koholint community they've come to know from existence. Realistically though, the only character that will truly be missed is Marin, she's the sweet and spunky girl who initially finds Link shipwrecked, and helps on his quest several times throughout the game. My favorite of these is easily her journey to the Animal Village. Featuring all-stars including the Chef Bear and the Sleepy Walrus that only Marin can sing to wake up, this is an all-time Zelda location just for how delightfully cartoony it is alone.
There are other quirky product-of-the-time things with Link's Awakening, like taking in-game pictures meant to be printed out with the Game Boy Printer, kinda wish I was there to experience that when it was new and cool. Any further complaints with the game are fairly nitpicky and fall under the subjectivity of puzzle-type games being either too cryptic at times to figure out how to progress, or merely the player's fault for being unable to solve it. There's an old man Link can phone for hints, but sometimes his advice basically just amounts to "idk just figure it out yourself lol." I found the final boss underwhelming as well for what its worth, and deciphering the path to reach this final confrontation felt unnecessarily obtuse.
The Game Boy was surely bursting at the seams trying to fit a substantial full-length adventure in that clunky cartridge, but Link's Awakening found a way. Even the music is pleasant, despite playing from speakers that often were a headache simulator, "Tal Tal Heights" and "Ballad of the Windfish" stand out especially. This game has a strong case for the best on the original Game Boy (Color), and holds up better compared to the rest of its franchise than I ever could have expected, an exception where it's okay to be just a dream.
4.0/5.0
The most striking aspect of Link's Awakening to me is just how impressive it is for a game of such high quality to exist on limited and primitive hardware. In development, this game began as a side project to port A Link to the Past to the handheld Game Boy, but soon grew into its own unique game with an island setting completely independent of the Hyrule we'd come to know. While measuring up to its legendary console predecessor may have been an impossible task, Link's Awakening carved itself a distinct identity all its own, even introducing some series staples that would carry over into the N64-era 3D games to follow.
Link washes up on the shore of Koholint Island, and is informed by an owl that in order to return home, he must awaken the Wind Fish, encased in a massive egg atop Mt. Tamaranch. This entails an Earthbound-style quest of collecting eight melodies, or in this case eight magic instruments, needed to play the song to awaken this mythical creature. This island setting is of a smaller scale than usual, but the classic Zelda dungeons are here, and they're mostly pretty good. The only dungeon I found to be especially annoying/confusing was The Eagle's Tower. Collapsing pillars of the dungeon to render higher areas accessible is a cool dungeon concept, but in practice its convoluted to understand just how the dungeon changes each time, and lugging around iron balls to accomplish this is pretty tedious in itself. The typical Zelda gameplay loop of finding a new item in each dungeon that must be used to solve puzzles within returns, and while most of this equipment existed in A Link to the Past, jumping around with the new Roc's Feather is really fun. Combining this with the Pegasus Boots allows Link to travel super quickly across the small screen.
Koholint Island itself is lighthearted and cozy, also notable for the unexpected presence of Mario enemies like Chain Chomps and Goombas. It's fun to see this rare crossover, but these guys don't seem like they belong in the Zelda universe at all. And that is because they aren't. Yes, as Link collects more instruments it is progressively revealed that Koholint Island and everyone on it is actually a dream. The "it was all just a dream" ending is typically a cheap narrative no-no, but in Link's Awakening its framed in a bittersweet way, the player burdened with this knowledge ahead of time means that by completing their quest they'll also be essentially removing the Koholint community they've come to know from existence. Realistically though, the only character that will truly be missed is Marin, she's the sweet and spunky girl who initially finds Link shipwrecked, and helps on his quest several times throughout the game. My favorite of these is easily her journey to the Animal Village. Featuring all-stars including the Chef Bear and the Sleepy Walrus that only Marin can sing to wake up, this is an all-time Zelda location just for how delightfully cartoony it is alone.
There are other quirky product-of-the-time things with Link's Awakening, like taking in-game pictures meant to be printed out with the Game Boy Printer, kinda wish I was there to experience that when it was new and cool. Any further complaints with the game are fairly nitpicky and fall under the subjectivity of puzzle-type games being either too cryptic at times to figure out how to progress, or merely the player's fault for being unable to solve it. There's an old man Link can phone for hints, but sometimes his advice basically just amounts to "idk just figure it out yourself lol." I found the final boss underwhelming as well for what its worth, and deciphering the path to reach this final confrontation felt unnecessarily obtuse.
The Game Boy was surely bursting at the seams trying to fit a substantial full-length adventure in that clunky cartridge, but Link's Awakening found a way. Even the music is pleasant, despite playing from speakers that often were a headache simulator, "Tal Tal Heights" and "Ballad of the Windfish" stand out especially. This game has a strong case for the best on the original Game Boy (Color), and holds up better compared to the rest of its franchise than I ever could have expected, an exception where it's okay to be just a dream.
4.0/5.0
Ico
2012
Ico is the type of game I dread to play, critically acclaimed, landmark classic of the medium, influenced various games and designers I love. I dread playing those because of a fear I have, a fear that's come true : I don't like ICO, in fact, I think I might hate ICO. And now I will have to carry that like a millstone around my neck, "that asshole who doesn't like ICO". Its not even really that external disapproval I dread, its the very reputation that causes me to second guess my own sincerely held opinions. I thought I liked minimalism in game design, and cut-scene light storytelling and relationships explored through mechanics but I guess I don't. There's some kinda dissonance, cognitive or otherwise reading reviews by friends and writers I respect and wondering if there's something wrong with me or if I didnt get it or played it wrong or any other similar foolishness that gets bandied around in Internet discussions. "I wish we could have played the same game" I think, reading my mutuals' reviews of ICO. Not in a dismissive asshole way of accusing them of having a warped perception, but moreso in frustration that I didnt have the experience that has clearly touched them and countless others.
But enough feeling sorry for myself/being insecure, what is my problem with ICO exactly? I don't really know. Genuinely. I wasnt even planning on writing a review originally because all it would come down to as my original unfiltered reaction would be "Playing it made me miserable". Thankfully the upside of minimalism in game design is that its easier to identify which elements didnt work for me because there are few in the game. I think the people who got the most out of ICO developed some kind of emotional connection to Yorda, and thats one aspect which absolutely didn't work for me. As nakedly "gamey" and transparently artificial as Fallout New Vegas' NPCs (and Skyrim and F3 etc) locking the camera to have a dialogue tree, they read to me as infinitely more human than the more realistic Yorda; for a few reasons. Chief among them is that despite some hiccups and bugs the game is known for, you are not asked to manage them as a gameplay mechanic beyond your companions and well, my main interaction with Yorda was holding down R1 to repeatedly yell "ONG VA!" so she'd climb down the fucking ladder. She'd climb down, get halfway through and then decide this was a bad idea and ascend again.
ICO has been to me a game of all these little frustrations piling up. Due to the nature of the puzzles and platforming, failing them was aggravating and solving them first try was merely unremarkable. It makes me question again, what is the value of minimalism genuinely? There was a point at which I had to use a chain to jump across a gap and I couldnt quite make it, I thought "well, maybe theres a way to jump farther" and started pressing buttons randomly until the circle button achieved the result of letting me use momentum to swing accross. Now, if instead a non-diegetic diagram of the face buttons had shown up on the HUD instead what would have been lost? To me, very little. Sure, excessive direction can be annoying and take me out of the game, but pressing buttons randomly did the same, personally. Nor did "figuring it out for myself" feel particularly fulfilling. Thats again what I meant, victories are unremarkable and failures are frustrating. The same can be said for the combat which, honestly I liked at first. I liked how clumsy and childish the stick flailing fighting style was, but ultimately it involved hitting the enemies over and over and over and over again until they stopped spawning. Thankfully you can run away at times and rush to the exit to make the enemies blow up but the game's habit of spawning them when you're far from Yorda or maybe when she's on a different platform meant that I had to rely on her stupid pathfinding to quickly respond (which is just not going to happen, she needs like 3 business days to execute the same thing we've done 5k times already, I guess the language barrier applies to pattern recognition as well somehow) and when it inevitably failed I would have to jump down and mash square until they fucked off.
I can see the argument that this is meant to be disempowering somehow but I don't really buy it. Your strikes knock these fuckers down well enough, they just keep getting back up. Ico isnt strong, he shouldnt be able to smite these wizard of oz monkeys with a single swing, but then why can they do no damage to ICO and get knocked down flat with a couple swings? Either they are weak as hell but keep getting remotely CPRd by the antagonist or they're strong but have really poor balance. In the end, all I could really feel from ICO was being miserable. I finished the game in 5 hours but it felt twice that. All I can think of now is that Im glad its done and I can tick it off the bucket list. I am now dreading playing shadow of the colossus even harder, and I don't think I ever want to play The Last Guardian, it just looks like ICO but even more miserable. I'm sure I've outed myself as an uncultured swine who didnt get the genius of the experience and will lose all my followers but I'm too deflated to care. If there is one positive to this experience is that I kept procrastinating on finishing the game that I got back into reading. I read The Name of the Rose and Rumble Fish, pretty good reads. Im going to read Winesburg Ohio next I think.
But enough feeling sorry for myself/being insecure, what is my problem with ICO exactly? I don't really know. Genuinely. I wasnt even planning on writing a review originally because all it would come down to as my original unfiltered reaction would be "Playing it made me miserable". Thankfully the upside of minimalism in game design is that its easier to identify which elements didnt work for me because there are few in the game. I think the people who got the most out of ICO developed some kind of emotional connection to Yorda, and thats one aspect which absolutely didn't work for me. As nakedly "gamey" and transparently artificial as Fallout New Vegas' NPCs (and Skyrim and F3 etc) locking the camera to have a dialogue tree, they read to me as infinitely more human than the more realistic Yorda; for a few reasons. Chief among them is that despite some hiccups and bugs the game is known for, you are not asked to manage them as a gameplay mechanic beyond your companions and well, my main interaction with Yorda was holding down R1 to repeatedly yell "ONG VA!" so she'd climb down the fucking ladder. She'd climb down, get halfway through and then decide this was a bad idea and ascend again.
ICO has been to me a game of all these little frustrations piling up. Due to the nature of the puzzles and platforming, failing them was aggravating and solving them first try was merely unremarkable. It makes me question again, what is the value of minimalism genuinely? There was a point at which I had to use a chain to jump across a gap and I couldnt quite make it, I thought "well, maybe theres a way to jump farther" and started pressing buttons randomly until the circle button achieved the result of letting me use momentum to swing accross. Now, if instead a non-diegetic diagram of the face buttons had shown up on the HUD instead what would have been lost? To me, very little. Sure, excessive direction can be annoying and take me out of the game, but pressing buttons randomly did the same, personally. Nor did "figuring it out for myself" feel particularly fulfilling. Thats again what I meant, victories are unremarkable and failures are frustrating. The same can be said for the combat which, honestly I liked at first. I liked how clumsy and childish the stick flailing fighting style was, but ultimately it involved hitting the enemies over and over and over and over again until they stopped spawning. Thankfully you can run away at times and rush to the exit to make the enemies blow up but the game's habit of spawning them when you're far from Yorda or maybe when she's on a different platform meant that I had to rely on her stupid pathfinding to quickly respond (which is just not going to happen, she needs like 3 business days to execute the same thing we've done 5k times already, I guess the language barrier applies to pattern recognition as well somehow) and when it inevitably failed I would have to jump down and mash square until they fucked off.
I can see the argument that this is meant to be disempowering somehow but I don't really buy it. Your strikes knock these fuckers down well enough, they just keep getting back up. Ico isnt strong, he shouldnt be able to smite these wizard of oz monkeys with a single swing, but then why can they do no damage to ICO and get knocked down flat with a couple swings? Either they are weak as hell but keep getting remotely CPRd by the antagonist or they're strong but have really poor balance. In the end, all I could really feel from ICO was being miserable. I finished the game in 5 hours but it felt twice that. All I can think of now is that Im glad its done and I can tick it off the bucket list. I am now dreading playing shadow of the colossus even harder, and I don't think I ever want to play The Last Guardian, it just looks like ICO but even more miserable. I'm sure I've outed myself as an uncultured swine who didnt get the genius of the experience and will lose all my followers but I'm too deflated to care. If there is one positive to this experience is that I kept procrastinating on finishing the game that I got back into reading. I read The Name of the Rose and Rumble Fish, pretty good reads. Im going to read Winesburg Ohio next I think.
5 lists liked by Goolalala
by CorpsSansOrganes |
43 Games
by CorpsSansOrganes |
52 Games
by stovetop |
18 Games
by AlphaOne2 |
10 Games