Every single thing about this game takes what was near universally applauded about DOOM2016 and throws it in the trash. The visceral combat, the gut wrenchingly hardcore soundtrack to match, anti-modern storytelling, and excellent pacing. And they destroyed the online mode for good measure.

I found this game to be obnoxiously overdesigned. On one hand the combat in this game certainly feels different than DOOM2016, so I can't knock this game for just being more of the same. But I can't honestly say any of the new things they force upon you are really any fun. 2016 isn't improved by making you low on ammo the entire game. It's not improved by having popups telling you what enemy to expect and how to beat them optimally in very dry, mechanical terms.

There's an achievement in 2016 for using the chainsaw 50 times. This was one of the last achievements I got. And it's sitting at about an 18% achieval rate on steam. It's like they saw people weren't using the chainsaw as much as they wanted and now you're forced to use it multiple times per encounter. No longer a novel power move but a constant thing you're forced to do. And it's just one of the many abilities they want you to cycle through. They slowed your running speed down to compensate for a new dash move. You have an awkward flamethrower that makes enemies shed armor pickups for some reason but doesn't really damage them. Grenades to 1-shot Cacodemons...Because every demon now has a very specific way to shred them and it's a waste of your much more limited ammo to ignore that specific weakness. Make sure you save your energy blaster for the enemy who specifically dies to the energy blaster almost instantly! Your punch now no longer does damage, unless you charge up the ultra punch through glory kills, then it kills things in an AOE whether you want it to or not, too bad if you wanted to use the enemies around it for ammo or shield replenishment. No longer a game about going sicko mode and mauling demons to a pulp, but a game about cycling through shallow abilities. And to top it all off the Ui is horrible about being clear what's even off cooldown or charged up. Way too minimalistic for how many gamey systems are being juggled. Also it felt random whether your gun auto-swaps to one with ammo when you run out with your currently equipped gun. Sometimes you'll sit there like an idiot trying to fire something with no ammo, sometimes frame 1 of your machine gun running out it'll swap to the BFG and blow up the single low-tier enemy you just wanted to tap for some hp drops.

I could totally see some people preferring this system though. Assuming they found DOOM2016 shallow. There's a lot more nuance to the combat here. Normally I'm all about that nuance, but I think they not only went too far, but they put it in a franchise it doesn't belong. So many times I went "Wow this set piece would be AWESOME in the previous game..." Like the final boss is absolutely sick. Too bad I gotta spend most of it roaming around looking for level 1 zombies to chainsaw so I can actually have ammo to fight. Then I shoot the boss for 15 seconds and have to go hunt down another trash mob for ammo again. The game's just way too restrictive in its design and all the mechanics are so isolated almost none of it came naturally into a seamless rotation, partially because of the minimalist Ui I mentioned. It's so restrictive the design of the game itself requires them to spawn an endless amount of trash mobs for it to even function properly. Almost forgot but there's a lot of weird upgrade paths and trees in this game and none of them felt like they did anything whatsoever.

If it was just the combat that I didn't really click with I probably wouldn't rate it THIS low. Actually exciting encounters on par with 2016 are few and far between but it wasn't absolutely miserable otherwise. It was an ok challenge that was satisfying enough to overcome. Not what I like about DOOM in general but it's something. But you know how early 2000's low budget platformers often had mediocre combat systems thrown in to pad out the game? This game has the opposite. It's got some shallow, nothing platforming that takes up a weird amount of the game. If you told me 30% of the sequel to DOOM2016 was some Nicktoons Unite tier platforming I wouldn't believe you. But here we are...Constant platforming in a game with almost no platforming movement options, meaning the design can't get more interesting than making you dash into a dash refill so you can dash again.

They overcomplicated the combat and filled the rest of the game with baby's first platformer. And Doom Guy doesn't even fist bump the hidden action figures anymore. Smh.

Oh yeah remember how 2016 made a statement against pretentious, invasive, unnecessary stories in video games by making Doom Guy impatiently brute force his way through most of it without listening whatsoever? I got very little of that here. This time it felt like they actually wanted you to pay attention. Not a single word really connected to anything to me, aggressively uninteresting stuff. At least there's no scene where they lock you in a room for an exposition dump, major mistep of 2016 there. But otherwise it's yet another area that feels like they went "This thing everyone loved about the previous game? Bet it would be better if we did the exact opposite!"

Bringing up the soundtrack is risking bloating this review to three times its size given how poorly managed it was and how badly they treated Mick Gordon. Long story short they gave him obscenely unrealistic deadlines to write music with extremely ambitious demands...A literal year before any gameplay or even levels were designed. Forcing hardcore crunch and rejecting the work anyway. Refusing to pay him for anything rejected. Only to end up using 100% of the work they rejected in the final product anyway. Straight up scammed him for double the amount of work in his contract. And that's far from the end of that story. In the end the soundtrack came out ok. But this game as a whole feels like such an unfocused mishmash, not sure if it's the music itself being weaker or the game as a whole being a letdown...But in the end the music doesn't feel like the heart of the game like before. (Absolutely wild read btw if you want to read a long story about how comically incompetent the higher ups were, Mick Gordon released a statement they offered a 6 figure sum to keep him quiet about)

And to top it all off the online multiplayer is the most blatantly unbalanced garbage I've ever seen. And I've never been one to cry balance issues in online games, this is a nasty outlier on that though. One mode and it straight up sucks.

And that's to say nothing of the creative director who talks about crunch in game development like it's a super cool lifestyle. Would love to hear what his staff has to say about that.

H*eckin mid game and horrendously inflated egos of the higher ups after the success of 2016. You make a review on steam criticizing the game and the devs will respond going LoNg TiMe FaNs WiLl ReCoGnIzE wHaT wE'rE gOiNg FoR even if the person has comments turned off because they don't want bethesda and id fanboys barking at them for not loving the game. Bet they didn't expect a dev comment basically saying "you just didn't get it, hope you try it again".

I don't have much to say that hasn't already been said. But it's interesting hearing the history of this game's development and how unconfident they were in a game like this doing well. The FPS genre had gone so long being a lifeless shell of what DOOM created. Total return to form here and more. This is a completely visceral power fantasy that gives you tools to slay, with a healthy amount of optional secrets and easter eggs to find. Just straight up fun. I even had a good time with its online multiplayer for a decent chunk of time.

And if you ask me...It's a significantly better game than Eternal was.

DOOM Eternal Review next~

Everything I said about the first Insomniac Spiderman game holds true. But I found this one trimmed some unecessary fat. It's all just as good as before but it's got less copy paste content. Just a better paced game in general. Maybe certain story beats could have been a bit better given more time like the first game had, but I still liked a lot about the narrative regardless.

A really good streamlined followup, and just about as good as a game in this style can possibly be. Relatively it's a bit on the shorter side. According to "how long to beat" the time it takes to 100% this game could very well be as long as it takes you to simply play through the story of the previous game. I could see this putting people off but I embrace the streamlined nature of this release. I'm tired of games that feel like they need to justify themselves with an obnoxiously long playtime. While that wasn't really a complaint I had with the other game, I still found this one refreshing for that reason. Still, I always recommend getting games on sale whenever possible anyway. Whether it's Ebay or the very frequent sales digital shops have, always worth it for games you didn't buy during the year of its release.

The ubisoft open world formula actually fits flawlessly with Spiderman. A formula I usually have very little respect for comes off as very genuine and well done in the context of this franchise, and furthermore it's GREAT to see Insomniac Games hit it out of the park again. You can tell they really cared about this one.
Combat is very fluid and engaging. the PS5 upgrade is beautiful. (And hot take, Peter's redesign looks WAY better than the original PS4 one imo. I totally understand not liking it from a "they MCUified" it viewpoint believe me...But I can't help but feel like if the order we got the designs was reversed, people would be up in arms about how they made Peter look like a crackhead. But I also get that Peter's supposed to be a bit older at this point in his story and his design was meant to reflect that. It's an interesting topic and I'm gonna cut myself off 'cuz this was supposed to just be a quick note lol)

I actually really enjoyed the Story and where they took all the iconic characters. And as I said, this takes place after Spiderman has already been long established, not an origin story whatsoever thank goodness. So the obligatory open world collectibles actually serve an interesting purpose. You find Peter's old backpacks he left laying everywhere and these fill you in on what Spiderman stories have already happened in this universe. I'm usually very hard to impress when it comes to stories in video games...And while I was always a spiderman fan, coming up on 20 years of the MCU existing has me very pessimistic of modern superhero stories. But I found myself thoroughly engaged and immersed narratively in a way I can't say I often am with video games. Also love how you can listen to Jameson's anti-spiderman podcast as you swing around.

It's not something I think I'll find myself replaying, the nature of its Ubisoft style doesn't lend well to replay value imo. And going for 100% was definitely on the needlessly grindy side of things. But the game's more than the sum of its parts, said parts I'd usually be calling a game derivative for having. I definitely recommend it to just about anyone.

This is just BotW with balancing issues, aimless mechanics that weren't really thought out, and a half-hearted attempt to actually address anything people asked for. I loved botw, I just wrote a review of it and wind waker to go into how well the series has tackled being a true open world before this. But THIS is pretty unacceptable. I was already not thrilled with it being a direct sequel taking place in the same world map, but getting into the meat of it and finding out almost nothing I liked from botw actually made it over, almost nothing I asked for to improve on botw was even attempted, AND it ate up 6 years of dev time with almost nothing to show?! Giving the benefit of the doubt, there's no way this would have taken 6 years to make without Covid time. I refuse to believe this glorified expansion had 6 years of dedicated development. Majora's mask, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess all came out within a 6 year span of each other and Nintendo's telling me they spent a whole year polishing some half baked vehicle creator?

I've had a very aggressive roller coaster of an experience with this game. It just does not lead you around naturally even a fraction as well as botw did. Trying to play this like I did the first, I turned off quest markers and just roamed around. This was an almost entirely miserable experience that really killed my desire to keep playing. Massive landscapes that were a joy to explore in botw now felt tired and lifeless. Not helping is that there's no guardians in this game so any area that they guarded is now literally empty. The giant towers now very rarely hold any meaningful content around them, or on the way to them, ignoring one of the most important design decisions that made botw actually fun to play. At most now you'll trudge up to one and do some meager quest to get the door open. And like, maybe one or two of them was actually vaguely interesting. They added caves to the game which was exciting at first until you remember the game's sticking to the botw formla really firmly to the point of copying its entire game structure. Meaning you're not going to get ANY meaningful rewards for exploring the caves aside from very rarely, outfit pieces (which are just outfits copy pasted from the first game, there's a LOT of copy paste content here) And doing the shrines just felt exhausting. I really think the game could have been a LOT better and stood on its own as a proper sequel if they just ditched the shrines alltogether. It feels like they're only there because "oh well...we gotta put one near every single stable and town and around every corner too so you can have adequate fast travel points" So it quickly feels like they're not making shrines because they want to, they're doing it because botw needed them. Not even thinking that this game didn't strictly need to be limited to what botw needed. The zelda formula needed botw to begin with because by skyward sword, they had been accumulating design flaws that kept getting bigger and bigger and they just kept doing them out of tradition. Well here they are 2 games into this new style and they're already bending over backwards to stick to the formula even if it hurts the game dramatically. They made the same mistake here. Except it's worse because now because we have to trudge through the entirety of the previous game just to find the nuggets of content they made specifically for this game that don't just feel derivative and/or lazy.

The open ended exploration was a flop so I turned on quest markers and followed the questlines. And when I did this, I started enjoying it a bit more. And I started to think I understood the game. After all I wouldn't mind at all if this one was more about the main quest, the first game excelled at open world exploration that doesn't mean this one needs to do the same thing. Did the water temple and the desert temple. Especially the Gerudo's segment felt substantial and even featured new enemies (a genuine rarity for this game) I even started heading towards all the story tears the game was named after. Some of it was fairly dry but it was great to see Ganondorf, he's a lot of fun. And I just happened to experience the story in the exact right set of circumstances to make certain story revelations SUPER cool and very memorable. I'm not sure everyone will have the same experience though. You can do all of it in any order, I just happened to get lucky to have stumbled across each of its individual pieces in an order that felt impactful. I can see a number of ways certain aspects wouldn't be quite as strong if you did things in a different order. And it's not like the game gives you so much as a nudge in the order it wants you to do things in. But, I had a good time with the story that was presented to me. Where the story falters is in the main quest tied to the 4 dungeons.

Very quickly you realize the moment your companion reaches the dungeon you're in for copy paste cutscenes across all 4 both in the beginning and end of their dungeons. In botw the drive to do all 4 dungeons was very well communicated. You're activating these giant mechs to give you the upper hand against Ganon. The story was very clearly all about EVERYTHING you do in botw being about building up to getting strong enough to take on the final boss. And it was very natural to go to the ending once you do get all 4 divine beasts. In TotK though you do them all and just turn in the quest at the NPC who told you to do it and it just completes like a normal quest in any mmo. They basically just go "cool thanks for doing that, great research, still not sure what's going on exactly". Then you get baited into going into hyrule castle, are locked into a room where you fight 3 bokoblins...and then nothing. You're just supposed to go finish the game now. No build up or real prompting or story reason. Literally just "botw's finale took place in the middle of the map and we know you played botw so whenever you're done with the game just go to the middle of the map and do the final boss" Hyrule castle in botw is one of my favorite moments in the series but in this game the ending dungeon is just a linear cave system where you effortlessly run past a bunch of enemies for a few minutes.

So yeah like, some of the dungeons were alright. It was nice to see that they put more effort into the theming. Especially the boss fights were nice as they're all original monsters instead of all being the same thing in botw. But functionally the temples are just lame versions of the divine beasts. Every single one is just about finding and activating the 5 objects to trigger the boss into spawning. But now you're not on a huge mech who's pieces you have control of, you're in THE smallest dungeons the series has ever seen, largely solving 3-4 totally isolated puzzles to beat them. Not helping is that they mark on your map where each thing you need to activate is so it's not really possible to be that challenged. The gerudo one was the best one, feeling the most like a traditional Zelda dungeon. Goron's kinda sucked, it was literally just attaching a fan to a mine cart then putting it on a rail over and over again which is what you did already outside of the dungeon. And its boss fell back on OOT boss design of use new item on boss, attack eye, slay in about a minute The other two temples were pretty samey, being all about floating islands. This is because one is the air temple and the other is water. And since they couldn't exactly do anything with water given botw didn't have any meaningful water mechanics like the older games did... and TotK isn't about to try to add anything substantial to the formula...just ignoring the problem was their solution.

Following the main quest and optional storyline sort of won me back over but sort of fell flat by the end anyway. And worst of all it really just feels like you're rushing through the game playing this way. Each of the 4 dungeons are beaten so quickly and it makes me feel like I'm not engaging with most of what new the game has to offer outside of sticking horns on my swords to have higher attack damage.

Leading to the actually new additions. Gluing anything you want onto your weapons is cool conceptually. But it ultimately doesn't add a whole lot. One of the biggest things they added...Strapping a rock to your sword to be able to mine things you were already mining in the first game without it. Or strapping the same enemy drops onto every single weapon throughout the entire game because it's the only thing that makes sense to do most of the time. For such a seemingly huge addition there's not much room to explore with it...The major issue is this system makes your damage output WAY higher than in botw. As a bandaid fix they spawn higher tiered bokoblins WAY earlier than botw would have. Leading to you trudging through 50 shrines just to have enough health to survive any basic encounter for one. But also enemies are damage sponges unless you attach one of their damage buffing drops onto your weapons. I'm not gonna pretend this system where I can attach literally any object to my sword is that interesting when my options are "gee do I attach a leaf, an acorn, a wooden box, another rusty sword with +3 attack damage, or a spike that triples my damage output?" It's pretty novel attaching a super long sword or spear with the same super long sword/spear. Got that sephiroth reach. Arrows and shields don't fare much better. For example with arrows you now just clunkily manually add the item onto it every single time you want to use a fire arrow. Whereas in the original you could just select fire arrow and throw them out one after another seamlessly. Heck you could do this in Ocarina of Time. Different arrow types aren't new for this series, being able to get a homing arrow for the one flying enemy in the game by putting a bat eye on the tip isn't worth making the entire system cumbersome. There's some cool things you can put on your shield but most of the time they break obnoxiously fast. Never hated the durability system but the way it interacts with a lot of the fusable objects is lame. And it still feels stupid to be rewarded with weapons in any circumstance. It's almost worse now because durability is naturally raised through fusion but now my inventory is full 100% of the time as a result. Almost like the original system WAS actually thought out despite it being divisive. Also taking out small monster parts to fuse from your menu is extremely clunky and poorly implemented and overall just not really worth bothering with. Otherwise it's pretty superfluous and only forces the devs to throw in more damage sponge enemies than ever.

Enemies being stronger variants early on just ends up being annoying. Especially considering they made unlocking the great fairies into a much bigger ordeal and grind (for the exact same upgrades as in botw) Speaks to this game's design philosophy shift. In botw you simply spent rupees to access the Great Fairies. This meant every single thing you do naturally lead to you unlocking the fairies considering all of your materials are worth money. Works real well in an open world setting all about freedom and avoiding player restriction. But here in the sequel you need to follow a linear set of the same side quest over and over again. And you better hope you find the start of the quest first before finding 3 other fairies and no way to save them. And that's where the shifts with this game over the original are. It's taking botw's freedom first focus, and stitching low quality open world fare content on top of it to justify its own existence as a new game.

Enemy variety improvements were something I was desperately asking for if nothing else. But with the removal of guardians...it's almost worse than in botw. There's three new overworld mini bosses, one for each of the 3 tiers of map (chasm, surface, and sky) the rest are the same rock monsters and giant cyclopses from botw. Normal enemy types well there's the new robots that are pretty lifeless and functionally just bokoblins that can use your own combine ability on their weapons. Some flying dudes that they kept showing in trailers that die to one shot of literally anything (even just shield bumping them kills them) I explored the underground chasm for give or take 30 hours and found 0 new enemies aside from some tiny frog things that also die in 1-2 hits and aren't threats at all. The returning redeads can't actually be fought and don't really do much of anything. They don't scream and stun you like before. You literally just use lightning or fire on them and they're as good as dead. Like-likes are back but they're stagnant enemies who are attached to walls and ceilings. They're ignorable most of the time, if you wanna fight them you just wait for them to spit out their glowing weak point and smack it, they're then stunned and you can usually kill them in 1 cycle. There's a new fat bokoblin that doesn't add much. And to round out this incredibly lame list of new enemies we got some new cave-monsters that try to poke you with long sticks on cave ceilings. Unless it's a white one they don't really survive for more than 2-3 sword swings too and they're generally easily ignorable.

Whenever you say this game didn't have enough content to warrant even existing people go But the chasms and the sky islands! They basically added two entire new worlds to explore But the underworld chasms are straight up 99% empty. So unthreatening and unengaging that you don't even need to light it up. Seriously you can just hold forward towards the next light-root and a majority of the time you won't be stopped. I only ever lit up the areas between light roots when I needed to see how high a cliff was to plan a climb. Otherwise it's empty ground. Then what's down here exactly? A lot of the exact same enemy camps you see above ground. A few pitifully easy Yiga clan boss fights. A miniboss that can be stunlocked by throwing bombs into its mouth like king dodongo...I WAS hyped to find an NPC asking for Poe souls and rushed down into a chasm, excited to see Poes come back. Only to find they've been reduced to being tiny flames you collect like normal items, scattered aimlessly everywhere by the hundreds. All you do with them is turn them in for dark link outfit pieces from the first game, and then an outfit that makes the gloom even easier to ignore than it already was. They also hide a lot of the amiibo outfits and botw's dlc costumes down here. Which is kind of nice but means nothing to me as someone who has the amiibo and played botw's dlc already...And even if I didn't, they're just costumes, many of which you can't upgrade. Or worse, weapons that'll break 3 minutes later.
I was anticipating a surprise twist where you find out there's another 4 dungeons in the chasms or something as I felt like the underground area was completely disconnected from the rest of the game. That and the 4 dungeons weren't substantial enough to be "IT" both in story and content. Then there's the sky which is not substantial at all. There's a handful of really samey islands with the same minecraft lookin' boss on many of them. The starting tutorial island is the biggest sky island if I'm not mistaken, they're all downhill from there and that's about all I can say about them aside from there was a decent diving minigame on a few. (And the tutorial island sucks beans compared to the great plateau)

Idk sorry this is such a long review but I just don't quite get this game. The chasms are straight up empty, the sky is not substantial, the surface world itself feels disposable now that you're so easily able to fly over it. (And not flying over it is slow and miserable in a way that botw wasn't) What's there to like about this game? And to top it all off this game copy pastes botw's soundtrack. A few of the new boss themes were awesome but really? The same exact piano bits in the open world? This is where the game really had an opportunity to stand out and be something new. Give some new stylistic flair and personality. Botw's ost was minimalistic because it was all about the literal breath of the wild. But this game isn't about that, yet you still have to suffer through it and now it's for no reason this time. The building mechanic feels like it's just there for viral marketting and the occasional vaguely interesting shrine puzzle. The upgraded battery is weirdly easy to miss, and I thought it was attached to a mission in the chasms so I didn't actually even upgrade my battery til super late into the game. Frankly idk what I'd have done even if I did fully engage with the building beyond do some korok missions a bit faster. It feels like such an afterthought that has very little actual focus. Like cool people are able to make comically impractical machines for funny twitter videos, otherwise it's not something that I feel the game even knows what to do with. Like...it's vaguely interesting to make your own vehicles but we already experienced driving a motorcycle across this world in botw's dlc so even that's not exactly novel. I'm sure some people are going to get a lot out of it, and I have no doubt I could have gotten at least a bit more out of the system beyond some basic shrine puzzles. But it's not really something you have to engage with much at all for the 4 main story quests, and past that there's not a whole lot to do beyond visiting a bunch of shrines and finish the game. For such a major mechanic like this it's weirdly not-present for so much of the game. It's even extremely easy to miss major upgrades to it that make it a lot more usable. Most I got out of it was a mission they have you do 85 times where you make a structure to help this guy's sign stay up. That and escorting koroks were all I did for the first 10 hours of this game and it was mind numbing. 60 hours in I've got the entire map filled out on the surface, about 80% filled out in the chasms, every sky island I could reach, done. Hundreds of koroks found. I still felt like I had done nothing outside of the 4 incredibly small dungeons, a bunch of unmemorable shrines, and some shallow side quests with poor rewards. 60 hours in I found 3 actually new clothing sets and like 12 sets copy pasted from the first game. I found that the game still just spams bokoblins and lizards at you and they added no truly substantial new enemies. One npc said their hometown was invaded by pirates and I was excited at the prospect but was disappointed to find it was just a bunch of bokoblins on a beach and a stagnant ship I had to slay to get nothing of value in return. Was absolutely floored and crushed when I got to the end of the game and they just spammed an insane amount of bokoblins, lizards, and moblins at me before the actual boss fight (which was an ok fight tho I beat it pretty easily without even being very prepared) Like wow, 6 years of dev time and boatloads of reused content and they just resort to spamming a bunch of the exact same enemies from the first game during the finale. I was pretty hyped to see the first korok escort mission as seeing a korok be a physics object was charming and fun the first time. I was intrigued to see what missions they'd have you do for seeds this time. Only to find out that's literally the only mission they made for koroks and almost all the rest were identical to the original game's. Hope you like getting a korok from A to B a hundred times. (Ok there's one other one that's just putting a rocket on a cork every single time you got me)

Also no details but somewhat of a spoiler, the ending undoes the most interesting and cool thing that actually happens in the story. They couldn't stomach having any meaningful stakes or consequences. And Ganondorf, the funnest part of the story otherwise, has almost no screen time.

Should have been such an easy hit. Just remove shrines and hide health and stamina upgrades in the caves. Boom HUGE part of the game becomes meaningful and you remove literal tens of hours worth of needless bloat. This alone would make the game fun and stand out on its own from botw. I have so much negative to say but this core design change would change so much. Because as it is, you have no legitimate reason to explore this map. "But you need shrines to fast travel" people say like there's any reason they can't just let you fast travel to towns you've already been to and let you place more of your own fast travel points. They could have done anything they wanted to make it work. Make more original music that plays in each section of the map, have more than 4 completely disconnected and tiny questlines and dungeons holding together your game you're meant to spend a hundred hours playing. And maybe don't spend literal years of development on a mechanic that ultimately adds very little to the game beyond mobility that's often not even more convenient than just riding your horse.

My hero's path in botw showed the ENTIRE map covered from head to toe. In this game it's a bunch of straight lines as I flew over the map to all the actually new content, most of the bigger picture untouched. I played for about 70 hours and it felt like I rushed through the game yet I didn't really have anything left to do. I don't really feel like I missed anything whatsoever. Like what's left beyond a few side quests that'll give me either nothing OR some clothing item (Likely from the first game) that I probably won't wear anyway. At most I'd just be doing another 60 samey shrines for no reason. Hard pass. There's so many points I would have just stopped playing if this wasn't a Zelda game, making me feel obligated to see it through. And I don't often drop games with zero interest in picking them back up.

This game is just botw without any of the smart game design and innovation, lacking any new novelty, and lacking in direction in general. As I did shrines for hours it just felt like I was playing an unfinished tech demo for an indie physics puzzle game with no personality. I was worried at the idea of the future of the Zelda series after botw because I didn't just want the series to become one predictable open world after another. What I didn't expect was for them to literally copy paste the same world. When you don't have the novelty and game design backing up this world, all you have to focus on is the new content. And said new content feels like every other open world game, as in, lazy and unsatisfying. This game steps on every mistake BotW tried so hard to avoid.

Worst Zelda by a long shot. Nuts and bolts did physics based vehicle creating significantly better in 2008, and did a way better job integrating it into the game. Because when you spend literal years making a mechanic maybe design the game around it? Only lingering thought is gee would I have a more positive experience if I tried it again but made better vehicles? Then I remember I'd have to sit through a horrendously long intro segment spanning hours, then do an obscene amount of boring shrines to get hearts (many of which being extremely slow tutorial shrines explaining basic botw mechanics because they forgot they made botw to get away from horrible tutorials like this), and then all I'd have left to do is 4 tiny dungeons that don't even utilize the vehicles anyway.

Aonuma says: "We always try to create something that offers more than previous titles. In that respect, we really aren't concerned with our older games anymore. We prefer to look to the future." Right after he makes a game that lifts 80% of the game they made 6 years ago, and forgets why he even made that first one to begin with. He also says he finds the old Zelda style restricting. Again, ironic considering this new style wastes over half a decade of dev time with nothing to show for it apparently. Story and music are some of the biggest parts of the franchise and they've NEVER been "restricted" until this new style came along. Dungeons were never this small and meaningless. They weren't forced to make 120 lifeless physics testing shrines in the old format. They used to be able to make thoroughly thought out, iconic locations. Now they have to invert the world and turn the lights off as a cheap way to get an extra 30+ hours of playtime out of a game they made like 5 hours of actual content for. There sure used to be a lot more dev time focused on enemy variety, set pieces, and the tight, smart design Nintendo is known for. But now that they're "not limited" they gotta spend so long coding physics objects they just have to slap them onto a game they already made because they wasted too much time already.

Man...botw really sold me on the new direction in a lot of ways but this makes me forget I ever liked it in the first place.

I was so worried about this game as I'm generally not a fan of this style of open world game. But they made a LOT of really smart design decisions to navigate the flaws of the genre near perfectly. First of all it's a game you can really just turn off the waypoint quest markers and explore and still end up having a meaningful experience and you may even find your way to where you need to be anyway due to how well they're able to lead the player almost entirely naturally. And even if you do choose to follow quest markers, there's very few. Within an hour or two your quest basically is just "finish the game in any way you see fit".

They did so well knowing what would catch players eyes and designing the world to be engaging around said eye catching set pieces. Like oh naturally you're going to want to activate the giant towers to fill out your map. This let the designers make meaningful content not only around the towers themselves, but in areas leading up to them.

I also really think the weapon breaking system was strictly in the game's benefit. As one of the biggest flaws is the lack of enemy variety. Battles never getting dull due to the huge variety of tools and weapons you have at your disposal is integral to the combat. It may be less flashy than previous games in the series but it's the most well balanced and engaging by a long shot. The game's got room for improvement in general, but as a very necessary overhaul of the formula at the time, it was a HUGE step in the right direction. But yeah getting rewarded with a fancy weapon in this game is never not super lame as you know it'll be gone within a minute of actually using it.

Like I said, I was initially very worried about the game but I also thought...if I did end up liking the game, I was worried about where the series could go from here. But within the few downsides lies the answer to my question. Story is borderline nonexistant and I actively just do not care about the few characters that do get a spotlight for the combined total of 0.1% of your total playtime. And the dungeon theming and soundtrack leaves a LOT to be desired as a long time Zelda fan. Stuff like every dungeon and shrine being visually identical and the music being very minimalistic worked really well for what this game was trying to do though. It doesn't exactly make for my ideal Zelda game, but it does make for the most well designed and fun game in its genre. And gee as much as I complain about the dungeons not being as thematically interesting as before, I'd be lying if I said the dungeons being giant walking mech animals that roam around while you're inside of them wasn't absolutely sick. And the puzzles revolving around controlling certain parts of the animal to change the layout of the dungeon itself fit really well with the open ended nature of the game. Seeing all the different iconic Zelda races and locations like the lost forest is really cool. Earning the master sword by finding it and needing enough hearts to pull it out or it'll kill you for not being worthy is amazing.

I think it's a little easy in hindsight to downplay just how well thought out and how much this game accomplished not just for Zelda but for the entire open world genre. Especially after years of Nintendo kind of milking the game a tad bit too much. Like overtime I got so sick of the botw universe itself because it's very much made to NOT tell a story (outside of the excellent environmental storytelling) Them adding onto the intentionally nothing story through DLC and spinoff games just got more and more tiring.

BUT I've explored every single inch of its map and loved all that was there. Stuff like the bosses being all very samey is something a future game could easily improve. All I'm asking is that a sequel takes what they learned from making this one, and applies what worked about the old zelda formula. Or really, just make more locations with amazing music and interior dungeon design like hyrule castle. Exploring that castle is one of my favorite moments in the series. Could have used a lot more places like that to explore. But for now this game's more than a big enough exciting step. It did everything it needed to do, when it needed to do it.

The technical polish and graphics are definitely above average for a game like this, but the whole experience is extremely derivative. Think Spiderman PS4 with worse pacing, writing, voice acting, story, combat... everything really. Side quests are very repetitive and lazily made and the game as a whole does not take advantage of being open world at all. Very often you'll just end up doing some hunting quest ripped straight out of the shovelware "hunters trophy 2 America" on ps3. Which is to say, mindlessly chasing a trail of glowing mist to find where the game wants you to go.

Gathering items to heal and refill ammo just gets tedious over time. Like cool just did a difficult fight, time to pick up 20 flowers and 20 sticks again and watch the grab animation on every single one. The rpg mechanics feel very unimportant as levelling up is really only for the most basic skill tree possible and it's not often you even find gear worth buying. The main character gets more exhausting the more she talks, which is constantly. There's not a single interesting character in general. Decent presentation for story early on, quickly devolves into cheap ugly Skyrim type back and forth for most of the game. Combat CAN have satisfying moments but a lot of big enemies don't have realistic weight to them, making it hard to hit their weak spots as they rotate almost like an mmo boss or twitch around. And it being almost exclusively ranged focused feels repetitive after 40+ hours.

A few decent moments here and there and some mindless Ubisoft open world gameplay at best. Can't help but constantly ask myself "Why did they bother making this?" Like on an artistic level a game like this CAN'T be a passion project. Feels focus tested beyond belief. A completely overproduced void of uninspired, tired mechanics taken from an entire decade of factory produced cynical corporate tripleA shovelware.

Idk call me a gaming snob if you want, I totally understand someone who's less picky about this kind of thing having a blast. It works well, looks pretty, you shoot the big robot over and over again for hours...You can easily get 40+ hours out of the game...And that's all some people need. I don't consider myself that much of a snob tho like bro I'll stream the Cars 2 game over a laggy connection and have fun with it. I just don't respect games like this whatsoever. Fun fact I found this game so painfully mid it's what got me to start reviewing games on sites like this. (Recently moved over to this one after being on a different site for about a year, lovin you guys already <3)

No other game quite has the same feeling Limbo gives off. The mysterious and ominous world is very much up for interpretation and I think when the game taps into that aspect, it's phenomenal. I do feel like the second half of the game struggles to maintain the core appeal of the game though. Early on the game has a bit of a Skull Island from King Kong feeling. A completely foreign and uncomfortable place that seems built from the ground up to kill you. I absolutely love that the whole game takes place on one map. It never cuts away or loads up a new area. It's one big seamless level. It's very reserved in its sound design as well which makes what sound is there very effective.

Encounters with other living creatures are where this game shines. These moments, along with a lot of the quieter set pieces, really experiment and explore what a 2D platformer can be, which is still very seldomly touched on to this day. The level design feels very down to earth and immersive, and the mechanics are very simple, yet the world somehow feels overbearing and intimidating anyway. The Spider featured in the box art especially gets used very well. Where the game does slip up a little bit in my opinion, is later on some of the obstacles and set pieces start feeling a bit more video gamey. And a lot of the puzzles and obstacles end up being largely timing based more than anything. And despite the very short length of the game, can start feeling a tad repetitive by the end. In the first half of the game you could realistically survive a lot of the set pieces with an observant eye and careful progression. Creating a very sudden shock when you mess up and something kills you. Early on you really feel every death. But later there's so many instant kill floors and buzz saws tied to timing based puzzles, you could very well get numb to it by the end. Not that it ever gets that difficult, it's just that later on the hazards are less about tense situations that could put you on edge, and more about some basic physics puzzles that kill you if your timing was off. Just not quite as memorable or impactful as earlier moments. Not bad by any means, but it holds the game back from being a total masterpiece imo.

There is an achievement for beating the whole game while dying less than 5 times. Which is kind of nice to have as it makes the whole game tense. But also you're not really likely to die until you're farther in the game. Getting to the end and getting the timing wrong on a couple jumps will send you all the way back to the start while going for this challenge. I'm generally positive on this achievement as it's very tense and is such a relief when you make it. It's great for a game this short, and definitely fits with the immersive nature the game has if you're not dying repeatedly. But again the end stages of the game could make this a bit frustrating, but at least you can practice with chapter select. There's also hidden eggs which are fun to find.

Bare minimum Limbo is very much worth a playthrough. The game's only 10$ at most and was added to PSPlus. And it's a very short game, only about 2 hours give or take on a first playthrough. I don't know that it would be super mind blowing for newcomers but this game was part of one of the earliest pushes for indie games in the mainstream and there's a lot to love about the atmosphere it creates at the very least.

5/5 at its best
3/5 otherwise

If you're the kind of person who tends to be overwhelmed by the genre but always liked the idea of getting into it...This game is an excellent place to start. There's so many smart design choices that makes this game more beginner friendly than a lot of other modern fighting games, and they did this without sacrificing mechanical depth at a high level. One major thing helping is that there's a very substantial single player mode, something even the best of the genre has been missing for well over a decade. As fighting games chased Esports they put all their dev time into making stacked rosters and balance changes and forgot the single player modes are what used to hook people. I sure didn't fall in love with smash melee because I went online and lost 30 times in a row to wave dashing maniacs. You play as a custom character (with a VERY malleable character creator to say the least)...And you just roam around an open area meeting all the iconic street fighter characters and becoming their students. The quests and custom character in general are all framed in a way that naturally teaches you fighting game fundamentals. Even slowly introducing the iconic movesets one ability at a time. Like you'll learn the hadouken from Ryu and equip it like an MMO ability or something. Perhaps a lot of it will be pretty rudimentary for experienced players but it's a novel mode regardless, and there's a lot of fun character moments.

All this aided with an optional modern control scheme that simply lets anyone at all pick up the game and just play it. I don't have to feel bad about being in a casual setting and knowing all the proper inputs but friends/family don't. The beginner options are so strong there's literally an Ai driven mode (locked to local matches only) that just does moves the game thinks will be a good idea. That coupled with handicap options let even my elderly grandmother play and have fun. And I've been playing fighting games my whole life, none of this is needed for me personally. But I think it's really cool all the ways they've streamlined the experience for newcomers without sacrificing the experience for everyone else.

This is by far the best modern traditional fighting game out there. A month in I've got over 100 hours and there's still so much depth and content I could sink into. The initial roster is on the smaller side, launching with 18 fighters. (Especially small considering games like Smash Ultimate have absolutely spoiled me). But you quickly find every single character is extremely well defined with endless depth. It's easy to get sucked up into wanting 40+ characters in every fighting game and seeing that FAT select screen...But the roster we got here is very deliberate and very fine tuned. Absolutely quality over quantity.

Beyond that the online setup is intuitive and gets you in matches quickly. The netcode is some of the best I've ever seen and nearly every match has been lag free whether I'm facing someone wired or a wifi warrior with a shaky yellow bar. Not to say I've never seen lag at all but 1. I'm a smash fan I've got high tolerance for it, and 2. It's genuinely never been more than a brief stutter.

I almost feel like I need to knock off half a star for the somewhat disappointing monetization. It's weird because on one hand a lot of the stuff this game pulls I could easily see people being absolutely enraged about online. But on the other, none of the stuff they charge extra for is like...truly anything worth caring about. Actual character releases are reasonably priced (Though the fake currency reminiscent of xbox360 microsoft points does make you awkwardly buy a bit more coins than you need for them. Conveniently giving you just enough to buy the battle pass though) But said battlepass has literally never had anything worthwhile in it. We're talking stuff like shoes for your avatar, frames to use in photo mode, backgrounds for your in-game phone. And half the time the best avatar clothing option in the pass has had a recolor they give you free in the free pass. I just wish there were more proper unlockables. I want to be able to grind for skins. Them charging like $25 for a pirate outfit for your avatar is so goofy I almost can't even complain about it because that's so out of the realm of anything I'd actually consider buying. Especially considering there's plenty of customization options elsewhere for free. Would be really nice if I could grind for 70 hours to get the recent Ninja Turtles collab outfits though. Would make it feel like more of a proper event and less We're gonna play Ninja turtles music in the lobby on repeat hoping you drop 60, yes, $60 on getting all 4 turtle avatar outfits They at least give you some banners and the theme song itself free. (Funny thing is the avatar creator is so advanced I'm seeing a lot of people making free versions of the turtles that are obviously bootleg looking but amazing anyway) Would also be nice if there was a way to earn the purple tickets outside of doing a weekly/monthly mission. I'd literally take just getting one ticket per fight man you need 500 just to unlock an alternate color. Side note they have been pretty generous with the amount of character rentals they've given out already. These let you play DLC characters for an hour if you have one. Pretty cool, would love to see other games use these.

5 Stars for now because the core fighting game experience is unmatched here. Not only mechanically but the game's oozing personality, charm, and style. It may lose points eventually if they don't release more costumes and/or give you something to grind for other than rank.

This game immediately stands out. Personally I recommend turning off the button prompts. If you have them on you just kind of spend the whole game feeling like you're holding forward and pressing A every time a prompt comes up. But with it turned off it's much easier to be immersed in a very unique way. They did a great job making the world feel overbearingly big, given you're looking at it from the perspective of a cat. Navigating it (with prompts off) is engaging enough from on observational standpoint and stays novel throughout the whole game, which doesn't overstay its welcome.

I'm generally not big on the modern triple A kinda open ended kinda linear pseudo rpg with automated platforming type experience but this game subverts a lot of the tiring aspects by putting its heart on a stand out unique concept and taking it to its logical extreme.

Unsure if I'd say it holds up quite as well on repeat playthroughs, but I had a nice time with it. Especially considering they put it on playstation plus to permanently own day 1 of release.

So I wasn't absolutely in love with the wiiU version. And the switch port featuring Funky Kong doesn't change a lot...And the meme/critique of them functionally charging $60 for Funky Kong is absolutely valid...But I got a lot more into this release than the original.

While I still feel like it's a disappointing follow-up to the original trilogy I actually really enjoy speedrunning this one. Specifically with Funky mode added in the Switch port. His movement is a lot of fun and the tropical settings with jazzy music kind of fit better when you're just air surfing all over the place as Funky. I'm just able to get into the vibe the game's going for a lot more with the inherently charismatic Funky Kong. And the levels are fun to learn. The improved load times over the WiiU also help keep the flow going much better. Also it's a lot more complicated but Cranky's speedrun capabilities are also a lot of fun. The speedrun just flows so beautifully.

To me this game is best played speedrunning, and the Switch Port is the best version to speedrun. Very standard New Super Mario Bros style sequel otherwise though. It's a testiment to how good this game is that despite all my objections it's still a consistently enjoyable game, regardless of which version you're playing. I definitely recommend it to someone looking for a competent 2D platformer that's a bit more modern, there's a good chance you'll have a great time with it regardless of if you're speedrunning or not. Though I will say Funky IS meant to kind of be the easy mode, not sure if he'd be as fun to play if I wasn't going for speed, just to put that out there.

To me Tropical Freeze is Funky Kong's own dedicated game and I have a lot more appreciation for it from that point of view.

It's hard to say if I should rate this one slightly worse or slightly better than the first DKC Returns game. No motion controls and significantly better visuals should edge it a little higher. However the fatigue in the fact that it's practically the exact same game as the previous one makes me even less accepting of this game's flaws. Said flaws being....the massive list of issues I had with the first game that weren't even remotely addressed (mostly).

There's still a very small variety of bonus rooms, all hidden the exact same ways they were in the first game. Copy paste bonuses show up real quick. Rambi is very sparingly used and there's still no other animal buddies. Level select map at least uses DK himself instead of a floating coin, but now every world is a completely separate island which is a modern trend I don't understand when it comes to level maps. Level theming is still very strictly tied to a tropical setting for the whole experience. Like come on the 2nd game had us in beehives and haunted roller coasters, why is it so limited now? It absolutely gets a lot out of what they have, but honestly this and returns blend together for me. If it weren't for Dixie and Cranky and the SD to HD generational leap I wouldn't be able to tell Returns and Tropical Freeze apart.

At least there's a lot more original music now, and I am a fan of a lot of it. David Wise's classic style was able to sneak into this game at points and it's great to hear. Still iffy on the upbeat jazzy music that they go for sometimes. Not that I dislike those tracks, it just feels a lot like new donkey kong to me. And what New DK is, is a series Nintendo doesn't know what to do with that's lacking a lot of the heart and charm Rare gave it so long ago. And on a related note, the new snowmad enemies are even less interesting than the Tikis from the previous game IMO. I didn't even realize I was on the final boss when I beat him. Very anticlimactic. Also doesn't help that all the enemies are just penguin versions of the exact same enemies used in the previous game.

It's well designed and everything good about Returns made it over. 2D Platformer fans should absolutely give it a go, high chance you'll get more out of it than me. Definitely just a me thing, I need more than just good level design to really love a game.
Thankfully this game was released on Switch years later and that release gave me more to appreciate. I'll go into it on the listing for that version in its own review.

Side note that I don't really have any real thoughts on. It's weird they added a breath meter to the underwater levels. Historically all Kongs can breath underwater infinitely in every game, including Returns. This doesn't really effect the water stages a whole lot either, you've got plenty of time. Somewhat peculiar.

(Review continued on the Switch version)

This is a good game and definitely one of the better traditional platformers Nintendo put out in this era. I think this game has a pretty wide appeal and follows the DKC tradition of being a more impressive, challenging version of 2D mario. Platformer enthusiasts should definitely try it and the sequel out. I love DK's weight, they somehow made him feel both heavy yet acrobatic and precise at the same time. Climbing on walls is a great addition to the formula as well. And a lot of the level design is very engaging and the whole experience is masterfully polished. I say all this right off the bat because I don't want to give the impression this is a bad game or that I even dislike it.

It's just that at some point, retro revivals became more and more common. And VERY rarely did they seem to ever even attempt to match all the qualities of the 20 year old entry, let alone follow up on any of it. And this game is no exception. You now ONLY play as DK, Diddy is simply an accessory that lets you float for a moment and gives you extra HP. All animal buddies except Rambi for like, 2 levels, are entirely omitted. The variety of bonus rooms and all the different rewards for doing them that built over the course of the first 3 games? Reduced to a SINGLE bonus room type, almost all hidden in the exact same very predictable ways. That type? Collect all the bananas, and there's only a handful of different layouts within this goal, and you'll very quickly see copy paste repeats throughout the whole game. All you get are puzzle pieces that give you concept art for a game who's art I'm not really intrigued by.

Memorable level themes? Largely nonexistent, it's all jungle and tropical beaches with...more factory stuff near the end I guess that's pretty much just a visually uninteresting grey wall through the whole thing. This holds back an already held back soundtrack, that's mostly just songs taken from the first game. Good versions of the songs at least, but honestly sometimes they don't even fit in this game's lack of aesthetic. Just playing old songs that used to mesh beautifully with the art direction and overall tone specifically the original games went for, over a very standard bright beach level doesn't really evoke the emotion these songs do in the SNES games. The actually new music fits a lot more with the more new super mario bros-ified version of DKC this game's got going on.

Kremlings are entirely absent though I don't hate the tikis tbh. Their mind control gimmick they do with the bosses is charming enough. If it was just this one game I wouldn't harp on the lack of K.rool but it's one part of a seemingly endless attempt to scrub Rare's identity out of the series and it really does these games no favors. The world maps are all tiny, and even though it's all on one island they still feel very disconnected from each other. Honestly most of the worlds just blend together. Your character being represented by a floating arrow icon on the map is lame too. I always end up maxing out at 999 coins because they're largely worthless if you're decent at the game. And to top it all off I don't understand the direction they went for with the Kong's voices in the modern games. I love every previous iteration...Never really cared for the more standard human sounding voice he's got now.

Among other things that aren't just direct downgrades from the old games. Like I really don't care for all the interactable objects they have scattered all over the floor. ground pound this to make stuff appear above it, blow on this to make stuff appear, grab and pull this thing to move something These binary interactions are everywhere and get repetitive really fast. Blowing done by shaking the wii remote is just weird. Motion controls should have been limited to slamming the floor, it being tied to your roll is such a genuinely bad decision and probably one of the only genuinely obtrusive uses of motion control from a first party Wii game I can think of. If I ever replay this game again, which I probably will, I'll be getting the 3DS version. It's actually a lot of fun to infinitely roll when you have diddy and donkey together but you're gonna be shaking the remote literally the entire game. Imagine if you had to shake the remote to run in New super mario bros or something. Also small thing, Diddy's fully playable by himself. But is exclusively locked behind player 2 for some reason. Even him just being like, a hard mode unlockable where you play the game without being able to get DK or something would have been....something. But nope, forever just player 2.

I like that the K O N G letters unlock special super hard platforming challenges that all form to unlock a special world at the end. The mine cart levels are very dynamic which is a lot of fun. Frankly though that's honestly the only two things they took from the originals that they really tried to actually expand on.

Good game, just very much a product of its time in a very...New Super Mario Bros/Sonic 4 kind of way.

DKC Tropical Freeze review next!

I struggle to give this game a concrete star rating. I could easily complain about a lot of this game's pacing and design...But dang it, Rare knew how to present Donkey Kong. I could easily understand why some would find it archaic and boring, with the constant Kong switching back and forth. Levels are huge and you'll be walking across the same ground over and over again with really slow movespeed. Not a whole lot of platforming. Bosses are good but two of them get reused. Challenge ranges from nonexistent to absolutely obnoxious.

Realistically, it's very flawed, way moreso than the 2 Banjos on 64. But, I like the sound it makes when you pick up banana. There are a lot of bananas. Ergo, I like this game. Every single little corner of this game is packed with charm and personality and every sound along with the masterful score by Grant Kirkhope drives me forward. Can't even pause the game and press "save" without something unique to this game happening. Gonna tell me the game that opens with the DK rap ISN'T inherently lovable at all times?

Despite the legitimate design issues, it's got a lot of fun bonus barrel minigames or challenges using character abilities that are a nice change of pace. These are where the gameplay is actually engaging. It has a bad rep for having so many collectables but I never really understood this complaint. Like, ammo to use your items, coins to buy stuff, hidden fairies to increase inventory limits, and everything else feeding into a golden banana count of 200 (only 100 of which are needed to beat the game). Nothing really too excessive or annoying to deal with there imo. The atmosphere is genuinely weirdly good in this game in a way that holds up to this day. Some areas are still a bit uncomfortable and scary, love it. Of course aided again by Grant Kirkhope's genious. Despite a few reused bosses I really like all the fights.

Call it a guilty pleasure or nostalgia or anything you want, but I think this game is a testimate to how much a good soundtrack, sound effects, and aesthetic design, can really carry an experience. If you can stomach some pacing issues between challenge rooms, there's a lot to love here.

DKC Returns review up next!