john romero pulls up to this shit like a maestro. john romero pulls up to this shit like doom's his dimepiece and it's club night. john romero pulls up to this shit like he's been touched by the hand of God. anybody - and i mean anybody - who says that sigil isn't the best episode of doom is lying through their filthy fucking teeth. the level of complete ownage on display is rivaled only by the gnarliest of total conversions. the fact that it's sitting .3 below the base game (as of this review) and not being lauded over is nothing short of dumbfounding, dawg. i want anyone who disagrees with me to show me a smarter doom level than abaddon's void*.

the audacity of this romero, to map his enemy encounters and ammo stashes (and light sources!) like a survival horror title. either you grind out those secrets or you play sigil like it's resident evil with no inventory. enemy prioritization here is more important in half these levels than perfect hatred on ultraviolence. even with the secrets (which i found about half of) i was forced to run away from many enemies, rather than spill their guts. those baron of hell placements are perfect hatred pure evil. glorious, glorious Evil.

speaking of glorious, the music. Lord have mercy on my soul, these are the most killerest of tunes! i'm of course talking about the james paddock soundtrack that comes with the freeware version as filtered through my lovely timbres of heaven 3.4 soundfont. the buckethead soundtrack is... fine. i will take james' absolute mastery of midi rock over it any day. there is no truer joy than knowing that sigil's soundtrack sounds good through opl3 emulation. doom's soundtrack has always sounded like dogwater in opl3, but james... he gets it. he really gets it. if you won't play the wad, at least do yourself the favor of listening to its soundtrack.

it only took 25 years, but the truly ultimate doom episode that thy flesh consumed was promised to be is here. my hat is off and my knees are bruised. john romero has made me his bitch.

* = (i maybe prefer slough of despair, though i don't respect it nearly as much. )

(Demo abandoned)

What the fuck are we doing? How the hell did Dark Souls 3 become the template for action games?

"Oh, it's the potential for good levels!" But what would good level design even look like in this context? Dark Souls 1 has a simple combat system that doesn't rely on large open spaces without obstacles. This way the player can be trusted to defend themselves in most terrain, which in turn enables designs like Blighttown, Sen's Fortress, New Londo Ruins, etc. where enemies can meaningfully interact with the level geometry. One can argue how consistently applied or successful this was in practice, but there is a solid design goal there that's still visible even up to Elden Ring (as scattershot as that game is).

As you make combat systems and enemy AI more complex though, generally you'll have to start making the simplifying assumptions of plenty of open space and no blocking terrain, which in turn restricts your level design capabilities. This is fine if you build the game accordingly, i.e. most of the classic linear action games. But Dark Souls 3 likes do not actually seem to be aware of this and so have dragged along huge amounts of bloat sections (Stellar Blade: swimming, keypads, climbing) so they can continue to pretend that the spaces between fights have any relation to the actual mechanics.

Similarly constructed arguments can also be made for the following Souls systems, which I will leave as an exercise to the reader: items, camera, pacing, leveling.

So I guess the whole point of these games is to grit your teeth so that you can experience the combat system? But is the combat really all that interesting? The camera limits how many aggressive enemies you can reasonably handle at once, and not being able to hitstun enemies with normal attacks pushes you into hit and run defensive play, which in turn pushes you to abuse the simplistic, timing-based parrying and iframe systems that all these games are cursed with. Why bother when you can just play Nioh 2, which commits all the soulslike sins above but at least has actually interesting resource management, accessible hitstun, deep weapon movesets, and so on. Why play any of these games at all when you can play Monster Hunter where the defensive, commitment driven style that soulslikes are known for is a hundred times better executed?

This whole subgenre is a complete dead-end design wise and doesn't look to be getting better anytime soon. What a mess.

Absolutely perfect game from start to finish. After playing Returns I can clearly see that it walked so that Dread could run. Dread takes all of the best aspects in the previous games along with refining all the issues of the previous games and combined them to create this masterpiece. Every area is super memorable and fun to explore; the gameplay flow is just seamless and that makes returning to previous areas feel natural and not like a chore. The abundant number of boss fights is incredible and they're all super fun to fight against. They also added so much enemy and boss variety which was a problem that I had with Returns. The EMMIs are leagues above the SA-X in Fusion when it comes to gameplay due to their unscripted nature and forcing you to be skillful in avoiding them until you have the means to destroy them.

Lastly I wanna talk about the story and Samus' character in this game. While this game is much more focused on the gameplay (as the previous games mostly were as well), there isn't an insane amount of story content, which is fine. Instead we get major story reveals throughout the game which unveil a ton of cool lore and story that ties the previous stories together. Overall, this made Samus' character the most interesting she has been in the 2D series, and she didn't need to utter a single word for me to feel that way about her.

Dread is easily the best 2D Metroid, and probably the best 2D platformer I've played so far. It expands on everything the previous games had set up for it, and refines all the issues to create the most smooth gameplay experience in the series.

Genuinely the most disappointing game I've ever played. It promises so many things in the trailer but so little comes to fruition.
The gameplay is probably the best aspect of this entry, and it's not even that good. It's fun for a couple hours but starts to become repetitive and mindless. Having the game alter between two protagonists is also really annoying because you have to keep switching out your equipment.
The characters do not get any development, except for Chitose. Not the party nor the main antagonists, which are also just really boring and generic. They're barely present in the story and don't have any interesting dynamics with the cast, and the plot is as good as the antagonists.
Lastly, the ending is another beast of its own. I didn't think it was possible to write an ending worse than LAD7's but here we are. To keep it as spoiler free as possible: if you were interested in this game for the satisfying conclusion it promised, you'll be as disappointed as I was because there is no conclusion.
Everything is just kind of brushed off because RGG wanted to play it safe.

I do not recommend this game. It is seriously not worth the time or money and I regret falling for the hype and buying it day 1.

Rating: 90/100

Summary:
I should preface by saying this game is certainly more of a experience and a work of both musical and cinematic art than it is an entertaining game.
Death Stranding is a game about connections and piecing together a once devastated world. The game follows Sam Porter Bridges, a member of Bridges on a mission to connect the UCA (United Cities of America) via the chiral network, a sort of post apocalyptic internet. This is important because average people no longer go outside as they live in underground bunkers. Porters or delivery people are the only people left to make deliveries to and from different cities, Sam being one of the them. This story incorporates many people that Sam meets along his journey, each with their own story to tell of what life was like for them before and after the Death Stranding and how they can help Sam on his journey to save his sister and reconnect the UCA.

Story: 10/10
The story of Death Stranding is certainly the most impactful part, the depth of each act and the thought that goes behind each of the logs and emails that you receive make it one of the most well written stories I've had the chance to experience either in film or game. Though at first glace many may see this as game centered around saving the girl and going home all happy, it is much more centered around Sam's growth as a person and his connection with his BB. This combined with the characters you meet along the way really shows the connection and growth that Sam experiences throughout the game.

Characters: 10/10
The characters in death stranding are what make this game so heartfelt and moving. Each character is so fleshed out that it feels like you're talking to real people with a real lives. There isn't too much I can say without spoiling, but everyone you meet will have you thinking deeper about both them as a character and Sam and his connection with them.

Gameplay: 6/10
The game was not meant to be played in my opinion, it was meant to be experienced. Though the gameplay score is low I don't hold that against Death Stranding with very much weight. The bulk of the game involves you making deliveries from point A to point B most of the time by foot, this for many can become tedious. The score of Death Stranding is beautiful and thought provoking, this combined with the amazingly detailed cinematic world of a post apocalyptic America makes walking through it something that you feel. For this reason I value the gameplay less so than the average game.

Conclusion:
Death Stranding is a game I will recommend to anyone who has an interest in experiencing something new. Everything about the game is a work of art, each character you meet is a new continuation to Sam's life and the journey you follow as the player. Though many may not find walking and not overly exciting gunplay thrilling, I assure you Death Stranding is more than worth your time.

Iwata’s dead, Shiggy’s checked out, and there’s no one to tell Aonuma no.

What the fuck is this.

I really shouldn’t be surprised, but I still am. This is the same game. It's the same people who made Breath of the Wild. I loved the first game, but still didn’t pay attention to the hype cycle of this one at all. I guess all the paraphernaleous cultural impact still seeped in somehow.

Remember when people thought there’d be playable Zelda? Fucking lol.

This review is only based on the five (5!) hours it took to get the paraglider, and I gotta say, it only kept making me appreciate the Great Plateau in Breath of the Wild more. The thematic cohesion. The mystery. The framing of how that whole game was going to work in miniature. What my abilities would be, what my relationship to game information would be like, what kinds of emotions I could expect to experience playing that game.

Maybe Tears of the Kingdom is a fine game. Maybe it is every bit as fun to exist in as Breath of the Wild, in theory. But in practice, it won’t be, can’t be. It didn’t start in the wilderness, letting me discover its game essence on my own terms. It started with a prestige-game walking-sim lore dump. A lore dump that ended with a bunch of Hot Anime Nonsense™.

Zelda and Link confronting mummy Ganon was like walking into the mid-season finale of a show that’s already on its second or third season. Except I’ve already played the previous season, and that context did not help me at all! Ganon’s no longer a miasma, but a dude with a voice? And there’s a goat dragon that’s Zelda’s great-great-grand-furry? And the Master Sword’s just useless?

Here’s my beef. All of this is great for trailers and generating “hype” because “hype” is fueled on speculation and curiosity. But the elements that generate hype are not the same as the elements that fuel a sincere emotional connection with a character, story, or world. I’m frustrated because Breath of the Wild knew this so well.

The old man on the Great Plateau was mysterious, but allowed to be goofy. He was generous, but mischievous. You could see him in different contexts, learn about him by exploring his house when he wasn’t around. There was a fun little emotional connection built up by being around him. The twist of his true identity, and the further twist of his ultimate fate, made me feel little pings of emotion. Nothing fancy, but he was the tutorial NPC. He primed me to think, “Oh, this is a game and a game world where it’ll be fun to get invested in people.” And he was the perfect segway into telling me what my mission was, what the stakes were, and why I, the player, should care.

The goat dragon great-great-grand-furry is none of this. We know he’s dead when we first meet him. His dialog makes no sense. There are a ton of slave robots on his little island that he comments with surprise are still running. Did he not program them? Can he not de-program them? Am I supposed to feel something about how he made a race of robot slaves? Are they sentient? I would have rather had signs in the ground Super Mario Style telling me all the tutorial things I needed to know. Because it feels weird for a robot to jovially say “Hey, there are some robots that’ll try to kill you, so, like, don’t feel bad about killing them. Here are some combat tips for killing them!”

And then his sequence at the end of his tutorial level practically screamed to me, “Hey, remember when you felt something at the end of your time with the Old Man in Breath of the Wild? We’re doing the same thing here! Don’t you feel something? Don’t you remember loving that?” And like yeah, I do remember that. And now I’m mad you’re trying to copy your own damn homework without understanding why it worked the first time. I have not built up a relationship with great-great-grand-furry goat dragon. I do not know why he is chill with Zelda. Honestly, all the statues with him and Zelda holding hands at the end of every shrine is weirding me out! Is Link a cuck now?

I want to say this is all superficial, but it’s really not, because everything about my time with Tears of the Kingdom so far felt like it was being led around by the tail. This is a re-skin of Breath of the Wild, but it doesn’t even have the decency to be honest with me. If we’re gonna have shrines, and they’re gonna function exactly the same way, why did you go through the bother of giving them new, thematically incoherent designs. Why do the upgrade orbs need new names, new lore. Changing the shrines’ glowy color from blue/orange to green is a downgrade, actually! Those other colors were a lot easier to see at a distance in a game world that has lots of green!

Jumping ahead of myself for a moment, I knew I was done when I unlocked the first new Shiekah Tower. (You can’t even call them Sheikah Towers anymore, these days!) The emergence of the Sheikah Towers in Breath of the Wild was iconic, cinematic, promising adventure in a changing world. The equivalent cutscene in Tears of the Kingdom felt like getting a homework assignment. Hey, someone you know has already explored the world, had time to build fantastic structures in every corner, and just needs a cable guy to come by and make sure the wiring is up to code! You know, that person who was a 100-year old loli in the last game! Well, now she’s been aged up to guilt-free fuckable waifu status! And she’s super plot relevant! You’ll get to talk to her more than Zelda over the course of the game, probably!

Seriously, that loli was my least favorite part of Breath of the Wild, and Tears of the Kingdom felt it important to put her loli portrait on her encyclopedia page?? When she will never look like that in this game??? She has the gall to rename Zelda’s magic iPad after herself! I was thinking about her (and taking internal bets as to whether she’d be a waifu or had somehow de-aged even more) hours before I saw her.

ANYWAY. None of what I said so far really matters more than the gameplay. And a Great Plateau 2 this was not.

I was so disappointed with how linear this was. In theory, I understand the concept that led to it existing the way it does. Tears of the Kingdom is a Lego game. It purposefully had sections of little Lego kits structured in a way where pieces from one would not mix with pieces of another and confuse people who have never touched Legos before. But giving kids Lego kits can change the way they interact with Legos. Hell, I remember I thought it was sacrilege when my sisters disassembled my Bionicle to make their own Voltron-esque monstrosities. But to them, who had not, could not, would not read the instructions, their style of play was more intuitive, more pure than mine.

Fundamentally, Tears of the Kingdom was not encouraging me to think for myself, to become resourceful, to seek my own path through things. It was priming me to expect that for any task that needed to be accomplished, the tools and materials would be provided for me. And without the spark of original creativity, putting the Lego pieces together was the dull monotony of fulfilling someone else’s factory work blueprint.

When I saw the jumble of lumber next to a korok in an adorable backpack, I immediately mentally put together what needed to be done, and thought, “What kind of Nintendo Labo bullshit is this?” The tediousness of rotating wood, sticking it to a hook, waiting for the korok to go down the slide - this was minutes of gameplay execution from the seconds of intuition I had of what the game wanted from me. And the reward was a measly two gold turds. I felt like I deserved five.

I feel like Aonuma has gone off the deep end. He’s spent so long in this game engine that he’s forgotten what made the original Breath of the Wild experience so special. He’s made a game for speedrunners without designing a game for the common folk first. In Breath of the Wild, the myriad systems, the freedom of choice, the hidden depth of the game’s chemistry and physics mechanics - all of those were introduced slowly in juxtaposition to a Link who had nothing but a shirt and a stick to his name. Everything felt special because the game beat you down and dead early on to make you appreciate and critically examine anything that could provide the slightest advantage to survival.

In Tears of the Kingdom, you gain the ability to Ascend through ceilings, (without stamina cost!!!), before you get the option to increase your stamina. Before you have even found anywhere worth climbing, any heights out of reach. There is nothing to instill that feeling of “I can’t climb there now, but some day, I will!” This is so wild to me. That emotion will never blossom when you’re given a cheat code at Level 1. It will cause people to look for places they can exploit their cheat code instead of… engaging with what was the entire foundation of the freedom of exploration in the first game!

Cannot overstate how much I felt something thematically crack inside of me when Tears of the Kingdom did not even suggest the possibility that I could upgrade my stamina wheel with my first blessing, locking me into more health. For a cutscene.

For a god-awful cutscene where Zelda fucks off before we chase down some NPCs to chase down some other NPCs to watch her fuck off again.

Does this all sound nit-picky? Do I sound insane? I sound petty to myself! But I have to be honest, this game failed to ignite my curiosity! And I gave Breath of the Wild 5 stars! It really does make me wonder how much of a game experience is built on the expectations built by its opening hours. In a way, if the only difference between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is the introduction and framing, that would be a valuable lesson on how important those beginning elements are.

I know that’s not the only difference. Tears of the Kingdom is anime as fuck. It’s tacky as hell. I lost it when Zelda’s magic iPad made the real-world iPad camera shutter sound.

Tears of the Kingdom is not a new game. It’s a jerry-rigged retrofitting of an existing game by an old man who saw Fortnite once since 2017, approved by a company who has no idea what he’s doing or why the old game sold so many millions of copies. Of course they’d be up for a direct sequel asset reuse that sounded vaguely like Minecraft! I’m just disappointed that the same team who showed they were capable of creating such a fully realized thematic throughline of a game were content to corrupt something beautiful just for the sake of convenience.

Maybe Link’s awful haircut and corrupted hand are a perfect visual metaphor for this game’s soul. A bunch of concepts grafted onto something great with no regard for how inelegantly they clash, while also showing a lack of maintenance to keep what came before presentable.

I’m so glad I didn’t pay $70 ($70!) for this game, or else I would have felt obligated to stick around long enough to understand the gacha mechanics enough to get mad at them.

——

June 28th 2023 Edit: wish different reviews could have different play statuses. Oh well. “Completed” the game with more words,, but in my heart this review should stay Abandoned.