TheYeti
BACKER
2021
An interesting idea with poor execution and terrible progression.
How's this for a game pitch - the survival and crafting elements of Don't Starve, with the building of Fortnite, and the combat/loot of Diablo. Sounds like a rad game, huh?
Yeah too bad Tribes of Midgard botches literally every single one of those components. The "survival" aspect is dry, the building is barely functional, and the combat is clumsy at best.
The survival aspects of the game basically equate to having to keep a tree well-fed with energy while you survive nightly attacks from enemies that end up being more tedious than fun. And then every few nights a spongey giant will show up and absolutely wreck everything. The jump in difficulty from "you're killing these little guys" to "now this giant is walking through your base and oops it's game over" is wild.
But even if you can get past all that and you can somehow still enjoy the gameplay, the game itself gives you absolutely nothing to work toward beyond a single currency that lets you buy some frankly horrible cosmetics for your character.
Nothing to make your character play different, nothing to vary the runs, nothing to really change any aspect of the gameplay loop. What's more is if the giant kills you before you can race to the Bifrost to escape the realm, you don't get any of that cosmetic. You get nothing.
The game also has a Survival mode which thankfully lets your customize the run a bit by scaling the difficulties of various aspects of the game down to enemy spawns, tree health, etc. It's great. The problem is that Survival mode has zero objectives. You can't even get the cosmetic currency.
Not only that, but you strangely can't even fight any of the special bosses. So why even play this mode?
+ Interesting idea
- No meaningful progression
- Clumsy combat
- Terrible building
- Poor balance resulting in wild difficulty spikes
- Boring
How's this for a game pitch - the survival and crafting elements of Don't Starve, with the building of Fortnite, and the combat/loot of Diablo. Sounds like a rad game, huh?
Yeah too bad Tribes of Midgard botches literally every single one of those components. The "survival" aspect is dry, the building is barely functional, and the combat is clumsy at best.
The survival aspects of the game basically equate to having to keep a tree well-fed with energy while you survive nightly attacks from enemies that end up being more tedious than fun. And then every few nights a spongey giant will show up and absolutely wreck everything. The jump in difficulty from "you're killing these little guys" to "now this giant is walking through your base and oops it's game over" is wild.
But even if you can get past all that and you can somehow still enjoy the gameplay, the game itself gives you absolutely nothing to work toward beyond a single currency that lets you buy some frankly horrible cosmetics for your character.
Nothing to make your character play different, nothing to vary the runs, nothing to really change any aspect of the gameplay loop. What's more is if the giant kills you before you can race to the Bifrost to escape the realm, you don't get any of that cosmetic. You get nothing.
The game also has a Survival mode which thankfully lets your customize the run a bit by scaling the difficulties of various aspects of the game down to enemy spawns, tree health, etc. It's great. The problem is that Survival mode has zero objectives. You can't even get the cosmetic currency.
Not only that, but you strangely can't even fight any of the special bosses. So why even play this mode?
+ Interesting idea
- No meaningful progression
- Clumsy combat
- Terrible building
- Poor balance resulting in wild difficulty spikes
- Boring
2009
My first Assassin's Creed game and the game that got me hooked on the series. I was one of five people who actually cared about the modern-day story, the lore, and all that random bullshit. That's how into Assassin's Creed I was.
Too bad these games are bloated, boring slogs now.
Too bad these games are bloated, boring slogs now.
2014
Paint-by-numbers Ubisoft game.
One of my favorite rhythm games and I think the best in the Bit.Trip series. Soundtrack is killer.
Only issue I had playing it is some of the visuals in the later levels make it difficult to see obstacles in the foreground.
Only issue I had playing it is some of the visuals in the later levels make it difficult to see obstacles in the foreground.
2014
A fun super hero movie. Had a good time with it but not enough of to play more after beating it.
2016
Probably the best single-player FPS campaign I've ever played. Not only is the story decent, but the level variety and mechanics are incredibly fun. Sadly it doesn't reach that point until about the mid-way point in the campaign. Everything before that feels pretty slow and generic.
Always love a game that invents an entirely new kind of game by combining two seemingly unrelated genres. Rhythm game + roguelike is not a combo I would expect to work but the results is rad. I only wish the difficult were a little less punishing. The game is hard af and the "easy mode" character isn't nearly as satisfying.
The perfect video game that revolutionized the open world genre and how a game can naturally encourage its players to explore and engage with a story at their own pace. Years after BOTW's release, I would still see new funny videos, crazy speedruns, and cool tricks online. It's the gift that keeps on giving and is one of those games that will be used as a blueprint for game design for decades to come.
2017
This is a great game for a laugh with a room full of family that don't really play many video games. We brought this with us on a family vacation and, after the first night, every day had someone asking us to bust it out so we could play more. That said, this game should've been a pack-in. Charging $50 for what is essentially a tech demo is highway robbery.
2020
My wife and I started played this together and it seemed kind of promising but it ultimately just wasn't very fun. Controls felt bad and the story wasn't all that interesting,.
2017
Destiny 2 is a better game than Destiny 1 in every way I could think of measuring it; however, I put about 1/3 of the time into Destiny 2 before getting burned out and bouncing off and my clan fell apart shortly after release. The biggest thing that Destiny, as a series, always struggles with is how to be accessible to new or casual players while still keeping the hardcore players engaged. Destiny 2, at some point, swung way too far to the "hardcore players" side of that pendulum and the game became a massive un-fun grind. So, I quit and never went back. At its core, Destiny is still the best-feeling shooter I've ever played and the raids are some of the most fun game content I've ever experienced, but I have no interest in no-lifing this game anymore.
I know this is probably a hot-take but I actually really enjoyed the Let's Go games as a nice, fun super-casual entry into the Pokemon franchise. I know it's not the Pokemon Red/Blue remake we were all hoping for (and I'd still maybe like to see that some day), but I thought this was a fun way to re-experience the Kanto region. I enjoyed spending time to complete my Pokedex and do a bit of easy shiny hunting.
2015
A cute, silly game that is a fun concept but not actually a very good game.
Disclaimer: These are my brief thoughts based on my memory of playing this 7 years ago:
Disclaimer: These are my brief thoughts based on my memory of playing this 7 years ago:
2018
I don't actually know how good this game is but it was a fun game to play with a friend. The multiplayer story experience where you're seeing both characters points of view as the story progresses for both of them at the same time is a really cool idea.
Ark is the least user-friendly video game I have ever played in my entire life. This game is not just unintuitive, it is aggressively anti-user experience.
Once you've parsed the terrible menus and fumbled your way into an online game, be prepared for the most opaque gaming experience of your life. Not only is nothing explained to the player, but nothing is even remotely intuitive. Anything you think you might know how to do from years of playing video games, you're wrong. Nothing works how you would expect it to.
Straight-up, Ark is a bad video games and I'm baffled that people choose to play this. I guess it's because it has dinosaurs but even taming a dinosaur (which I had to look up online to figure out) wasn't that satisfying. The time it took to successfully tame a dinosaur was about 5x longer than the amount of time I spent enjoying having a pet dinosaur.
Only reason this game gets 2 stars instead of 1 is because my friends and I had a fun time goofing around for a couple sessions. It's a poorly-made, unintuitive mess of a video game. Do not play Ark.
Once you've parsed the terrible menus and fumbled your way into an online game, be prepared for the most opaque gaming experience of your life. Not only is nothing explained to the player, but nothing is even remotely intuitive. Anything you think you might know how to do from years of playing video games, you're wrong. Nothing works how you would expect it to.
Straight-up, Ark is a bad video games and I'm baffled that people choose to play this. I guess it's because it has dinosaurs but even taming a dinosaur (which I had to look up online to figure out) wasn't that satisfying. The time it took to successfully tame a dinosaur was about 5x longer than the amount of time I spent enjoying having a pet dinosaur.
Only reason this game gets 2 stars instead of 1 is because my friends and I had a fun time goofing around for a couple sessions. It's a poorly-made, unintuitive mess of a video game. Do not play Ark.