55 Reviews liked by ber
Got PLATINUM trophy for this which I never do for games really. I like it but I have a million little problems with it that kind of added up that prevented me from enjoying it as much as I wanted to.
I'm not someone who loved Mario Odyssey so I'll start with saying this mostly improves on that game in a few key areas. You might think "well these are two completely different games, for one Mario Wonder is a 2D game." You're right sure but the gameplay by way of being more engaging with the goal per stage is better. In Mario Odyssey the qualifications for something being worth doing to collect a moon are below sea level. Sitting on a bench, walking in a circle, ground pounding a glowing spot - all warrant a moon. The gap between the input expected of the player versus what the game is actually capable of with Mario's movement is deeper than the grand canyon. Whereas here with Wonder most of the time (great emphasism on most) a stage's wonder seed is fulfilling and satisfying to get. Irrespective of if it lives up to that all the time it does it most of the time which works wonders especially when it isn't bloated like Mario Odyssey with its Moon's. This is the most refreshing Mario game in a long time and it's apparent they've taken time to change up the theme, setting, enemies, music, and power ups. It's also clear there's a good decade of platforming game design and work that hasn't gone unnoticed by the people who worked on this game, this game had to change from the mold started on the DS for 2D mario in "New". There's a lot of what's at play to experience here that's very reminiscent of Rayman Legends especially with the various music tracks among other elements, and it's only been a boon to Mario here. What's stuck around from Odyssey to now is the bite-sized but throwaway gameplay which I loathe. I think the last time a Mario game made full use of the abilities/power ups in a game's runtime was Galaxy 2 which was a long time ago now. Sure most of the power ups here in Wonder are good fun but they don't get time to shine the optional (but game changing) badges especially are inconsequential to how levels are designed. There's so many new and interesting techniques to use in a 2D mario game here but the amount of levels that make any great use of them is so abysmally few. Another glaring weakness is the bosses/castle stages. These can be the highlight of a mario game the 2D ones especially but here they're very lacking, bosses with Bowser Jr come and go and Airships feel too short, the final confrontation boss and castle with bowser in particular felt pretty limp to cap off the experience. With the Special world trying to pick up the pieces it didn't feel great when I started "The Final Test" only to pass without doing any studying (unlike Mario 3D World.) This is undoubtedly the best 2D mario has been in a long time now since Super Mario World. With interesting new enemies, and effects thanks to the wonder seeds even the low points can have a uniqueness that hasn't been around in the 2D games since the first incarnation of the "New" Super Mario Bros way back on the DS. I'm thankful this is decidedly less tiresome and bland than Mario Odyssey's simplistic gameplay to reward structure, but even here the movement and gameplay is held back by a constant stream of familiar and safe levels with a similarly adaptable Mario capable of much much more.
Loop Hero
2021
Card-based reverse tower-defense fantasy roguelite with an old-school pixel art style. That sure checks a lot of indie game boxes.
Fortunately, just about every element of Loop Hero is a best-case-scenario:
Card-Based:
If there’s anything I’m uncontrollably repulsed by, it’s card games. Fortunately this barely qualifies, with your “deck” and “cards” acting as stand-ins for tiles on the map, which are constantly getting replenished as you kill enemies. I know that obviously card games use cards to represent other things, but in this case it’s closer to picking a loadout of units in an RTS. Pro game design tip: if you’re going to use cards, make it easy for the Conman to forget that’s what’s going on.
Reverse Tower Defense:
Tower defense games were my jam back when I was 12, and Loop Hero puts a spin on that concept by making you the one marching automatically through the stage. Your job is to place enemy camps along the simple track, allowing the hero to get stronger with more gear and xp. Even divorced from every other element, it’s a proven, simple gameplay loop that’s highly addicting and satisfying.
Fantasy:
The story and setting of loop hero is a contrivance necessitated by the roguelite structure, but there is a central mystery and several characters… which I didn’t care about on almost any level. You could drop it entirely and if anything it would make repeating the boss encounters a few seconds quicker. The fantasy elements do make sense, and even if I wasn’t invested in the plot they at least tried to tell a semi-unique story.
Roguelite:
The procedurally generated aspect of roguelite games can be used as a crutch for producing theoretically ‘infinite’ content. As with all games, they need something to keep the player interested, and Loop Hero actually excels in this area. Not using any outside reading material, there’s a sense of discovery as you mix-and-match units to generate new combinations. The upgrade tree and hub town are mostly just supplemental to the player’s skill and strategy as well as your engagement with the mechanics. I didn’t have too much trouble with grinding for materials, although I also found the gameplay perhaps a little too easy. I found some pretty optimal setups and ran with them, making me feel like an unkillable god by the end. There are worse things than being too easy, like being boring, and this crap is hella addicting even on an easy run. I’ll probably never touch it again but I got everything I wanted out of it from that perspective.
Old-school pixel art style:
Presentationally Loop Hero is pitch-perfect. The limited color palette and crunchy sound design sets it apart from many other pixel indie games, and puts it right up my alley (especially with the included CRT filter). It legitimately gives the game the outward appearance of an early PC game, without the technological gameplay limitations thereof.
Loop Hero. Pretty good indie game. I liked it.
Fortunately, just about every element of Loop Hero is a best-case-scenario:
Card-Based:
If there’s anything I’m uncontrollably repulsed by, it’s card games. Fortunately this barely qualifies, with your “deck” and “cards” acting as stand-ins for tiles on the map, which are constantly getting replenished as you kill enemies. I know that obviously card games use cards to represent other things, but in this case it’s closer to picking a loadout of units in an RTS. Pro game design tip: if you’re going to use cards, make it easy for the Conman to forget that’s what’s going on.
Reverse Tower Defense:
Tower defense games were my jam back when I was 12, and Loop Hero puts a spin on that concept by making you the one marching automatically through the stage. Your job is to place enemy camps along the simple track, allowing the hero to get stronger with more gear and xp. Even divorced from every other element, it’s a proven, simple gameplay loop that’s highly addicting and satisfying.
Fantasy:
The story and setting of loop hero is a contrivance necessitated by the roguelite structure, but there is a central mystery and several characters… which I didn’t care about on almost any level. You could drop it entirely and if anything it would make repeating the boss encounters a few seconds quicker. The fantasy elements do make sense, and even if I wasn’t invested in the plot they at least tried to tell a semi-unique story.
Roguelite:
The procedurally generated aspect of roguelite games can be used as a crutch for producing theoretically ‘infinite’ content. As with all games, they need something to keep the player interested, and Loop Hero actually excels in this area. Not using any outside reading material, there’s a sense of discovery as you mix-and-match units to generate new combinations. The upgrade tree and hub town are mostly just supplemental to the player’s skill and strategy as well as your engagement with the mechanics. I didn’t have too much trouble with grinding for materials, although I also found the gameplay perhaps a little too easy. I found some pretty optimal setups and ran with them, making me feel like an unkillable god by the end. There are worse things than being too easy, like being boring, and this crap is hella addicting even on an easy run. I’ll probably never touch it again but I got everything I wanted out of it from that perspective.
Old-school pixel art style:
Presentationally Loop Hero is pitch-perfect. The limited color palette and crunchy sound design sets it apart from many other pixel indie games, and puts it right up my alley (especially with the included CRT filter). It legitimately gives the game the outward appearance of an early PC game, without the technological gameplay limitations thereof.
Loop Hero. Pretty good indie game. I liked it.
This review contains spoilers
[Edit: I mulled it over and decided this game deserves to sit among my other 5 star rated games. It's kind of a masterpiece the more I think about how well all its gameplay systems work together. Even if exploring the world can get repetitive at times, I'm certain I will revisit this game every once in a while.]
I'm sort of torn between giving this game 4 and 4.5 stars. This game has so much charm and clever design in how it lays out characters and stories throughout the open world. Revisiting old friends in each region and seeing how the Upheaval has affected them managed to retain a feeling of mystery and intrigue despite being set in the same locations with the same characters. The temples in this game are a vast improvement from the Divine Beasts of BotW, and I found almost all of them exciting to tackle. I almost feel like I enjoyed the build up to each temple more than the temples themselves. Diving into Death Mountain to discover a lost underground city and braving a sandstorm to see an abandonded Gerudo Town overrun by Gibdos were highlights. Stumbling upon the Spirit Temple and getting to build an pilot a mech was such a great surprise that I'm happy wasn't spoiled for me in any way.
The story as a whole was pretty lacking, with all of the regional characters referring to the big bad in the same exact way. I understand why they had to tell the story this way, but I don't think that excuses it or makes it good. What is much more compelling about the narrative are all of the smaller stories you will come across in the world that have nothing to do with Ganondorf.
Discovering new monsters and ways to use their body parts as weapons was such a fun experience akin to a Monster Hunter lite game. I couldn't help but grin each time I discovered a new combination that made a strong and badass looking weapon. The fuse mechanic in general is incredibly satisfying to use, and it made hunting down Koroks again actually bearable for a while. That being said, there is still an insane amount of repetition and filler in this game. Addison puzzles were cute at first, but less cute when I saw this incompetent man trying to put up some monstrosity of a sign in every corner of the map. Fighting the same Hinoxes and Taluses again all these years later gave me little enjoyment. The Battle Talus was ok, but it was still just a rock monster with some Bokoblins on it. Gleeoks were a terrifying and incredible addition to the game, I found myself desperate to find more miniboss enemies like this, but unfortunately there aren't that many.
The sky islands and chasms were initially mind blowing, I couldn't fathom that there was an entire map beneath the overworld of the same size. I guess I should have been more skeptical because there just isn't anything down there. Hunting down Kohga and seeing the Divine Dragons flying through the chasms was pretty entertaining though, but other than that there's just kind of nothing to do. I could look for all the statue merchants so that I could buy armor that I wouldn't even be able to upgrade fully without some grinding, but that didn't seem very fun to me. Similarly, a lot of the sky islands offer a lot of the same challenges as well. Go to this island to get a crystal so that you can go into a shrine and get a weapon or resource. The only thing that made the sky islands more interesting than the chasm were their vibrancy and the fact that you could just jump down to the overworld from them.
I don't think I will ever be able to go back and play BotW again as this game is just kind of everything BotW had, but better. I was also one of the few people that thought BotW was pretty overrated, and honestly I'm torn on whether or not I feel the same about this entry. However, I do think it deserves the high marks as it's a technical marvel and filled with charming moments.
If you stick to the critical path, you'll have an amazing, physics driven, Zelda experience with total player freedom in how you approach your tasks. If you try to turn over every rock and explore every cave, you will absolutely burn out on the game like I did. There were several times, specifically after my first region clear of Hebra, and during my third region clear of Necluda, that I felt unmotivated to continue playing. I do think I can see myself revisiting this game someday, but I will absolutely not spend as much time scouring the map as I did on my first playthrough.
I'm sort of torn between giving this game 4 and 4.5 stars. This game has so much charm and clever design in how it lays out characters and stories throughout the open world. Revisiting old friends in each region and seeing how the Upheaval has affected them managed to retain a feeling of mystery and intrigue despite being set in the same locations with the same characters. The temples in this game are a vast improvement from the Divine Beasts of BotW, and I found almost all of them exciting to tackle. I almost feel like I enjoyed the build up to each temple more than the temples themselves. Diving into Death Mountain to discover a lost underground city and braving a sandstorm to see an abandonded Gerudo Town overrun by Gibdos were highlights. Stumbling upon the Spirit Temple and getting to build an pilot a mech was such a great surprise that I'm happy wasn't spoiled for me in any way.
The story as a whole was pretty lacking, with all of the regional characters referring to the big bad in the same exact way. I understand why they had to tell the story this way, but I don't think that excuses it or makes it good. What is much more compelling about the narrative are all of the smaller stories you will come across in the world that have nothing to do with Ganondorf.
Discovering new monsters and ways to use their body parts as weapons was such a fun experience akin to a Monster Hunter lite game. I couldn't help but grin each time I discovered a new combination that made a strong and badass looking weapon. The fuse mechanic in general is incredibly satisfying to use, and it made hunting down Koroks again actually bearable for a while. That being said, there is still an insane amount of repetition and filler in this game. Addison puzzles were cute at first, but less cute when I saw this incompetent man trying to put up some monstrosity of a sign in every corner of the map. Fighting the same Hinoxes and Taluses again all these years later gave me little enjoyment. The Battle Talus was ok, but it was still just a rock monster with some Bokoblins on it. Gleeoks were a terrifying and incredible addition to the game, I found myself desperate to find more miniboss enemies like this, but unfortunately there aren't that many.
The sky islands and chasms were initially mind blowing, I couldn't fathom that there was an entire map beneath the overworld of the same size. I guess I should have been more skeptical because there just isn't anything down there. Hunting down Kohga and seeing the Divine Dragons flying through the chasms was pretty entertaining though, but other than that there's just kind of nothing to do. I could look for all the statue merchants so that I could buy armor that I wouldn't even be able to upgrade fully without some grinding, but that didn't seem very fun to me. Similarly, a lot of the sky islands offer a lot of the same challenges as well. Go to this island to get a crystal so that you can go into a shrine and get a weapon or resource. The only thing that made the sky islands more interesting than the chasm were their vibrancy and the fact that you could just jump down to the overworld from them.
I don't think I will ever be able to go back and play BotW again as this game is just kind of everything BotW had, but better. I was also one of the few people that thought BotW was pretty overrated, and honestly I'm torn on whether or not I feel the same about this entry. However, I do think it deserves the high marks as it's a technical marvel and filled with charming moments.
If you stick to the critical path, you'll have an amazing, physics driven, Zelda experience with total player freedom in how you approach your tasks. If you try to turn over every rock and explore every cave, you will absolutely burn out on the game like I did. There were several times, specifically after my first region clear of Hebra, and during my third region clear of Necluda, that I felt unmotivated to continue playing. I do think I can see myself revisiting this game someday, but I will absolutely not spend as much time scouring the map as I did on my first playthrough.
This is not the perfect open world Zelda game we all hoped for. Given that I’ve had some time away from the game now that I’m pretty much done with it with about 100 hours on file, the longer I think, the more I find problems with it.
TOTK inherits more flaws of BOTW than we hoped for. Hyrule is essentially the same- largely busywork, beautiful environments tied together with mixed-quality plot beats, awful fetch quests, and a vicious cycle of getting meaningless rewards and burning through weapons with no larger meaningful end goal accomplished. The sky is barren, strewn about in a baffling manner, and while there’s some fun puzzles that are, generally, more fun than the shrines and other puzzles on the surface, it lacks substance and consistency. The depths are a joy to explore… until you quite literally hit a wall, wandering aimlessly in this inverted map in the pitch black. The story is barebones, with the highlights again being memories that depict events in the past, leaving the present, here-and-now motivation to progress suffering (though the motivation through the memories is better in this game). Characters and fun personalities are nigh-nonexistent, but Link remains a paragon silent protagonist. Environments are gorgeous, but the frame rate dips and pushing of the Switch’s aging hardware are felt even more here than in its predecessor.
So why do I love this game so much?
To play Tears of the Kingdom is to engage in a really, really exciting world that, for the most part, masks its flaws with its initially-seemingly endless possibilities. The illusion of content is, somehow, the game’s biggest strength. Ultrahand, the layered map, weapon fusing, and the like give you this incredible feeling, one that paradoxically fills you with a feeling of unrestricted control over the mechanics of the game while also presenting you with even more to do and harness on the horizon. How much of it TOTK acts on is up for debate, but the prospect of more is, in essence, the driving force of the game.
Finding the right words for this game is difficult. Like BOTW, it is frustrating, unintuitive, and cannot act on its incredible ideas due to either an inability or resistance to narrowing the scope of the world. But what TOTK does with its groundwork is something that truly has to be experienced to believe. Through all the flaws, clunk, and padding, Tears of the Kingdom is a game that delivers on a beautiful journey where, in many ways, the pros outweigh the cons.
TOTK inherits more flaws of BOTW than we hoped for. Hyrule is essentially the same- largely busywork, beautiful environments tied together with mixed-quality plot beats, awful fetch quests, and a vicious cycle of getting meaningless rewards and burning through weapons with no larger meaningful end goal accomplished. The sky is barren, strewn about in a baffling manner, and while there’s some fun puzzles that are, generally, more fun than the shrines and other puzzles on the surface, it lacks substance and consistency. The depths are a joy to explore… until you quite literally hit a wall, wandering aimlessly in this inverted map in the pitch black. The story is barebones, with the highlights again being memories that depict events in the past, leaving the present, here-and-now motivation to progress suffering (though the motivation through the memories is better in this game). Characters and fun personalities are nigh-nonexistent, but Link remains a paragon silent protagonist. Environments are gorgeous, but the frame rate dips and pushing of the Switch’s aging hardware are felt even more here than in its predecessor.
So why do I love this game so much?
To play Tears of the Kingdom is to engage in a really, really exciting world that, for the most part, masks its flaws with its initially-seemingly endless possibilities. The illusion of content is, somehow, the game’s biggest strength. Ultrahand, the layered map, weapon fusing, and the like give you this incredible feeling, one that paradoxically fills you with a feeling of unrestricted control over the mechanics of the game while also presenting you with even more to do and harness on the horizon. How much of it TOTK acts on is up for debate, but the prospect of more is, in essence, the driving force of the game.
Finding the right words for this game is difficult. Like BOTW, it is frustrating, unintuitive, and cannot act on its incredible ideas due to either an inability or resistance to narrowing the scope of the world. But what TOTK does with its groundwork is something that truly has to be experienced to believe. Through all the flaws, clunk, and padding, Tears of the Kingdom is a game that delivers on a beautiful journey where, in many ways, the pros outweigh the cons.
i just cant beat mike tyson
What a wild fucking ride. A must-play for anyone who loves mysteries. It's so satisfying to watch the larger story unfold over these chapters. I could play 1000 of these.
This review contains spoilers
In a game of constant revelations and unexpected twists, maybe my favorite was the growing understanding that you aren’t really a detective, unraveling the mystery and bringing the guilty party to justice, but more just an observer, simply charting the flow of history and watching the chaos unfold. Especially as you get deeper and deeper in the game, the conspiracy’s generational scope and ever-expanding reach seems like it’s only been afforded by this unique position, but I do wonder if it’s an approach that explains some of the game’s weaknesses.
You’re meant to fill in a mad-libs style description of events with the names and phrases you find in the environment, and you get a notification if you're down to missing two clues or fewer, so once you know the basic shape of the mystery and feel out the one phrase that you’re missing, it’s easy to spend much of the game feeding data into the machine until it spits out the correct result, and not earnestly working on understanding the "who" and "why" of the case.
Less of a problem as the game goes on and each scenario gets has so many moving parts that it’s faster just to try and make sense out of everything, but it seems like the behavior that would be harder to get away with if you were a key figure in the story (Like, I doubt in most other mystery games you would let accuse everyone- and then every combination of names in the word pool- without reminding you of how graceless of a solution that is.)
On the other hand, this voyeuristic quality helps embrace another side of player behavior; as you progress through the game you end up building on so much of your prior knowledge that it’s often valuable to jump back to some older scenario and refresh yourself who’s related to who and the other bits of connective tissue in the world. Certainly wouldn't be disastrous if this was a non-diegetic action, but it comes far more naturally to a game that frames everything as part of the timeline of events- flipping back and forth between key points until you finally understand the connective tissue of the world.
Though even as I started to really get into the game, scribbling theories and notes about each of the cases, I also couldn’t help but think a lot about the one-off nature of these detective games as well. Know it was on the mind of because of a talk mentioned by CarbonCanine is his review of Tunic on his GOTY 2022 list, where designer Eriz Zimmerman questioned the legitimacy of the mysteries provided puzzle-box games, in comparison to the continual sense of systemic discovery provided by games such as Chess or Tennis.
While his framing of the point is kind of harsh, I generally agree with what he's saying, and it also seems like one of other limitations of this sort of puzzle-box design is that you also get very fragile mysteries- have a solution or the story spoiled for you, and it's likely you’d lose a tremendous reason to play through them. I know it was the reason I was so reluctant to look up hints and one of the reasons I’ve been so wary to discuss the plot in greater detail. I’m not even sure whether or not knowing that you’re going to really fully experience the game once is good or bad, certainly felt like it prompted a greater degree of engagement with it than if I knew I was going to revisit it again and again, but I also wonder about the enduring qualities of such games- which seem to fall by the wayside once everything is solved and filed away.
Hope that one day we get some mystery titles where those mechanical truths aren’t just limited to that first playthrough.
—
Extra thoughts:
- Great example of “perfect information” as well, similar to something like Into the Breach. Most scenarios only consist of a few screens, and the default setting highlights every interactable object in the environment, so you don’t have to engage in pixel-hunting or worry that you're stuck on some puzzle you don’t even have a full understanding of.
- Loses points for framing "overthrowing the monarchy” as villainous.
—
References:
CarbonCanine, The Thirty-Five Best Games I Played in 2022, Link
"...on the one hand, it seems like you are creating this wonderful palette for players to have these wonderful experiences of discovery and mystery...on the other hand, I also kept on thinking that it's almost like we're sort of coddling the player...You're designing this sort of baby crib for the player...like a special place for them to be able to crawl around and have these artificial experiences of discovery and mystery...and I was thinking about Meg Jayanth (who's a game writer), and she was writing and speaking about her experience with 80 Days and talking about this notion of 'player entitlement'; that as game designers often we are there to service the players and bring them pleasure, and as an alternative we have to kind of challenge them, to not put them at the center of the universe...and I don't know what the answer is, and one wonders what the alternative can be, but I think about what 'mystery and discovery' is if one is getting really deep into Tennis or Chess, like uncovering a system as you are in conversation with another player...or uncovering the way that other people are expressing themselves through the game, which is different than...finding the little trails of breadcrumbs that you've laid out for them."
You’re meant to fill in a mad-libs style description of events with the names and phrases you find in the environment, and you get a notification if you're down to missing two clues or fewer, so once you know the basic shape of the mystery and feel out the one phrase that you’re missing, it’s easy to spend much of the game feeding data into the machine until it spits out the correct result, and not earnestly working on understanding the "who" and "why" of the case.
Less of a problem as the game goes on and each scenario gets has so many moving parts that it’s faster just to try and make sense out of everything, but it seems like the behavior that would be harder to get away with if you were a key figure in the story (Like, I doubt in most other mystery games you would let accuse everyone- and then every combination of names in the word pool- without reminding you of how graceless of a solution that is.)
On the other hand, this voyeuristic quality helps embrace another side of player behavior; as you progress through the game you end up building on so much of your prior knowledge that it’s often valuable to jump back to some older scenario and refresh yourself who’s related to who and the other bits of connective tissue in the world. Certainly wouldn't be disastrous if this was a non-diegetic action, but it comes far more naturally to a game that frames everything as part of the timeline of events- flipping back and forth between key points until you finally understand the connective tissue of the world.
Though even as I started to really get into the game, scribbling theories and notes about each of the cases, I also couldn’t help but think a lot about the one-off nature of these detective games as well. Know it was on the mind of because of a talk mentioned by CarbonCanine is his review of Tunic on his GOTY 2022 list, where designer Eriz Zimmerman questioned the legitimacy of the mysteries provided puzzle-box games, in comparison to the continual sense of systemic discovery provided by games such as Chess or Tennis.
While his framing of the point is kind of harsh, I generally agree with what he's saying, and it also seems like one of other limitations of this sort of puzzle-box design is that you also get very fragile mysteries- have a solution or the story spoiled for you, and it's likely you’d lose a tremendous reason to play through them. I know it was the reason I was so reluctant to look up hints and one of the reasons I’ve been so wary to discuss the plot in greater detail. I’m not even sure whether or not knowing that you’re going to really fully experience the game once is good or bad, certainly felt like it prompted a greater degree of engagement with it than if I knew I was going to revisit it again and again, but I also wonder about the enduring qualities of such games- which seem to fall by the wayside once everything is solved and filed away.
Hope that one day we get some mystery titles where those mechanical truths aren’t just limited to that first playthrough.
—
Extra thoughts:
- Great example of “perfect information” as well, similar to something like Into the Breach. Most scenarios only consist of a few screens, and the default setting highlights every interactable object in the environment, so you don’t have to engage in pixel-hunting or worry that you're stuck on some puzzle you don’t even have a full understanding of.
- Loses points for framing "overthrowing the monarchy” as villainous.
—
References:
CarbonCanine, The Thirty-Five Best Games I Played in 2022, Link
"...on the one hand, it seems like you are creating this wonderful palette for players to have these wonderful experiences of discovery and mystery...on the other hand, I also kept on thinking that it's almost like we're sort of coddling the player...You're designing this sort of baby crib for the player...like a special place for them to be able to crawl around and have these artificial experiences of discovery and mystery...and I was thinking about Meg Jayanth (who's a game writer), and she was writing and speaking about her experience with 80 Days and talking about this notion of 'player entitlement'; that as game designers often we are there to service the players and bring them pleasure, and as an alternative we have to kind of challenge them, to not put them at the center of the universe...and I don't know what the answer is, and one wonders what the alternative can be, but I think about what 'mystery and discovery' is if one is getting really deep into Tennis or Chess, like uncovering a system as you are in conversation with another player...or uncovering the way that other people are expressing themselves through the game, which is different than...finding the little trails of breadcrumbs that you've laid out for them."
A really enjoyable game of deduction, with good-looking pixel art reminiscent of '90s point-and-click games. With only 12 levels, I wish the game was a bit longer, but what's here is fantastic, and exploring each scenario to hunt for clues is a lot of fun.
Hi-Fi Rush
2023
It feels like playing an amazing animated movie. The music is amazing, the characters are captivating and the gameplay keeps itself fresh at every point of the playtrough
Hi-Fi Rush
2023
A welcomed reminder that video games do not need to be 60+ hours long, open-world, bloated with content and heavily relying on multiplayer, to be fun. Hi-Fi Rush literally came out of nowhere and nearly every second of its playtime SLAPPED!
'Sunset Overdrive' meets 'Crypt of the Necrodancer' with the flavourings of 'Bayonetta' and the comic comedy of 'Scott Pilgrim vs. The World'. Every element to this neatly packaged experience was brimming with charm, personality and just plain fun. The soundtrack, ranging from Nine Inch Nails to The Prodigy, slapped when flailing my guitar to the beat. The art stylisation was impeccable. The voice acting charismatic. The combat fluid and incredibly satisfying. The bosses intense and varied. Just...what a game!
My only gripes are the forced parrying (I suck at parrying, so that's a me issue) and the occasionally long level design. But these are nitpicks to what is a flippin' rockstar video game. ELECTRIFYING!!!
'Sunset Overdrive' meets 'Crypt of the Necrodancer' with the flavourings of 'Bayonetta' and the comic comedy of 'Scott Pilgrim vs. The World'. Every element to this neatly packaged experience was brimming with charm, personality and just plain fun. The soundtrack, ranging from Nine Inch Nails to The Prodigy, slapped when flailing my guitar to the beat. The art stylisation was impeccable. The voice acting charismatic. The combat fluid and incredibly satisfying. The bosses intense and varied. Just...what a game!
My only gripes are the forced parrying (I suck at parrying, so that's a me issue) and the occasionally long level design. But these are nitpicks to what is a flippin' rockstar video game. ELECTRIFYING!!!
Disco Elysium
2019
I absolutely love Kim 😌
God of War Ragnarök
2022
This review contains spoilers
I have a lot of thoughts on this, but I need this to sink in before I express them fully. But for now, I think this has amazing gameplay and writing, but the latter gets clumsy in the third act and sours the story for me.
Earlier this week I watched a video about what makes good combat in video games, and GoW (2018) checked all the boxes. Ragnarok adds a few more boxes and checks them too. The combat is really solid. Sure, it's mostly the same from 2018, but I love the extra polish and how there's more opportunity to switch between weapons. I ended up doing all the side quests, fighting all the side bosses, upgrading all my weapons and armor, finishing all the combat challenges... and I still wasn't bored with the combat. The weight and flow of it is consistently satisfying.
I also can't praise the direction of this game enough. The performances, the direction, the fine details are phenomenal. All of it raises the bar for the future AAA games.
I think the main thing is stopping this from being perfect is the story. I feel as if the writers had a sense of what they were going for in the first 2/3 of the game, but the last act is just incredibly rushed and unpolished.
Here's a list of gripes I had with the story (and especially the pacing):
- things just feel too rushed. There's a point where Freya goes back to Vanaheim and we follow her, and suddenly her brother is kidnapped? Now we have to find the moon and save her brother within like 5 mins of things having been okay?
- After we rescue Freya's brother, there's a scene on a flying boat. Everything is chill and suddenly dragons attack. Now we see this guy sacrificing himself. There's music playing and its supposed to be emotional, and I'm sitting there thinking... "who the fuck was that guy? was I supposed to know him?". It's just some NPC that we never really interact with. Why have him there, and why give him such a big sendoff if we've never talked to him?
- We never fully understand the World Serpent's story. It's just "implied" that he went back in time after Ragnarok. Wtf? It's such a big thing that they kept teasing in 2018 but now its an afterthought.
- So many new characters are introduced (specifically Thrud and her family, Freyr, that Midgardian kid)... and they never feel fleshed out. Their storylines aren't explored enough, and they all kind of pop in in the last act and just leave. They all feel poorly written as a result of it.
- We never explore what happened to Sindri after Brok's death. He's angry, helps in the war, and then what? Brok's death is such a huge moment but we don't get to see anything about how Sindri was impacted and how he's doing.
- Throughout the game, Kratos says he doesn't want war. And then in the third act, he wants war and works to make it happen. Then 5 minutes into the war, he doesn't want it anymore and wants to go after Odin alone? What the fuck happened?
- Surtr says he can't help. Then a minute later he's like "jk, actually I can"
- There is no army to wage war with. Characters go to raise an army offscreen. We see none of it. Then we step into Asgard and suddenly there's already a war happening. Everything is so rushed!!!
- After the war is over, Atreus wakes up, sees his dad and the first thing he wants to talk about is how he is leaving. They hug and he leaves. What? They literally just killed Odin and lost 2 friends in the last 24 hours. The writing here just felt so unrealistic. Either Atreus is a sociopath who only cares about himself and his adventures, or the writers just forgot what these characters have been through in the last day
- Faye is brought up a lot in this game, and with every occurrence Kratos is reminded that she held back information from him throughout their relationship. They keep hinting that they will receive some information, some missing puzzle piece, that will make Kratos understand why she did this. But they never do.
- A big focus for this story is prophecy. The characters are constantly following what a prophecy says they will do... but then suddenly they tell themselves that prophecy is all bullshit... and then none of it matters. It just feels like there was more here that we didn't get to see. They just change prophecy by saying "we make our own path"? What is this, Narnia?
Idk, I guess its really clear that I had a big issue with the pacing and the writing in the 3rd act of the game. The first 2 acts are solid, really a masterclass in video game writing. But the last act left such a sour taste in my mouth. My theory right now is that this very clearly needed an extra game. They needed to flesh out the new characters, give more insight into the story, let the "prophecy" and "war" plot simmer a bit more.
Right now, I'm leaving towards a 4/5 for this game. Despite all these issues I had with the third act, I can't deny that the rest of the game is pretty incredible.
Earlier this week I watched a video about what makes good combat in video games, and GoW (2018) checked all the boxes. Ragnarok adds a few more boxes and checks them too. The combat is really solid. Sure, it's mostly the same from 2018, but I love the extra polish and how there's more opportunity to switch between weapons. I ended up doing all the side quests, fighting all the side bosses, upgrading all my weapons and armor, finishing all the combat challenges... and I still wasn't bored with the combat. The weight and flow of it is consistently satisfying.
I also can't praise the direction of this game enough. The performances, the direction, the fine details are phenomenal. All of it raises the bar for the future AAA games.
I think the main thing is stopping this from being perfect is the story. I feel as if the writers had a sense of what they were going for in the first 2/3 of the game, but the last act is just incredibly rushed and unpolished.
Here's a list of gripes I had with the story (and especially the pacing):
- things just feel too rushed. There's a point where Freya goes back to Vanaheim and we follow her, and suddenly her brother is kidnapped? Now we have to find the moon and save her brother within like 5 mins of things having been okay?
- After we rescue Freya's brother, there's a scene on a flying boat. Everything is chill and suddenly dragons attack. Now we see this guy sacrificing himself. There's music playing and its supposed to be emotional, and I'm sitting there thinking... "who the fuck was that guy? was I supposed to know him?". It's just some NPC that we never really interact with. Why have him there, and why give him such a big sendoff if we've never talked to him?
- We never fully understand the World Serpent's story. It's just "implied" that he went back in time after Ragnarok. Wtf? It's such a big thing that they kept teasing in 2018 but now its an afterthought.
- So many new characters are introduced (specifically Thrud and her family, Freyr, that Midgardian kid)... and they never feel fleshed out. Their storylines aren't explored enough, and they all kind of pop in in the last act and just leave. They all feel poorly written as a result of it.
- We never explore what happened to Sindri after Brok's death. He's angry, helps in the war, and then what? Brok's death is such a huge moment but we don't get to see anything about how Sindri was impacted and how he's doing.
- Throughout the game, Kratos says he doesn't want war. And then in the third act, he wants war and works to make it happen. Then 5 minutes into the war, he doesn't want it anymore and wants to go after Odin alone? What the fuck happened?
- Surtr says he can't help. Then a minute later he's like "jk, actually I can"
- There is no army to wage war with. Characters go to raise an army offscreen. We see none of it. Then we step into Asgard and suddenly there's already a war happening. Everything is so rushed!!!
- After the war is over, Atreus wakes up, sees his dad and the first thing he wants to talk about is how he is leaving. They hug and he leaves. What? They literally just killed Odin and lost 2 friends in the last 24 hours. The writing here just felt so unrealistic. Either Atreus is a sociopath who only cares about himself and his adventures, or the writers just forgot what these characters have been through in the last day
- Faye is brought up a lot in this game, and with every occurrence Kratos is reminded that she held back information from him throughout their relationship. They keep hinting that they will receive some information, some missing puzzle piece, that will make Kratos understand why she did this. But they never do.
- A big focus for this story is prophecy. The characters are constantly following what a prophecy says they will do... but then suddenly they tell themselves that prophecy is all bullshit... and then none of it matters. It just feels like there was more here that we didn't get to see. They just change prophecy by saying "we make our own path"? What is this, Narnia?
Idk, I guess its really clear that I had a big issue with the pacing and the writing in the 3rd act of the game. The first 2 acts are solid, really a masterclass in video game writing. But the last act left such a sour taste in my mouth. My theory right now is that this very clearly needed an extra game. They needed to flesh out the new characters, give more insight into the story, let the "prophecy" and "war" plot simmer a bit more.
Right now, I'm leaving towards a 4/5 for this game. Despite all these issues I had with the third act, I can't deny that the rest of the game is pretty incredible.
SuperHot
2016
A puzzler disguised as a first person shooter, SUPERHOT asks you to pierce through ruby foes with whatever you can find, while managing your position to avoid getting shredded by bullets. Time is frozen when you aren't in motion, and while you'd be fooled to think this makes it easy, its honestly a saving grace. Enemies are relentless, and your character is as fragile as a vase.
This game mixes the brevity of Hotline Miami's gameplay with the clean, corporate aesthetic of Mirror's Edge. However, it manages to come out feeling wholly unique. Despite its seeming inspirations, its story is practically nonexistent. I mean, there is one present, but it doesn't amount to anything. Its honestly a shame, because the cutscenes are incredibly stylish, and fun to watch.
The game keeps things short, and manages to sit under two hours. I honestly loved this, as it means the game does not overstay its welcome. That said, I do feel as if more could've been done with the level design. There are a few twists here and there, but overall the gameplay loop doesn't really evolve beyond the first chunk of levels. I'd almost say this is style over substance, as the sharp art direction and killer sound design kept me completely engaged throughout my playthrough.
I missed this one upon its initial release, and though I don't regret skipping out on it for so long, I can see why its so beloved. SUPERHOT has its flaws, but overall, it manages to be a unique, memorable, entertaining experience. You'll know if this one is for you.
This game mixes the brevity of Hotline Miami's gameplay with the clean, corporate aesthetic of Mirror's Edge. However, it manages to come out feeling wholly unique. Despite its seeming inspirations, its story is practically nonexistent. I mean, there is one present, but it doesn't amount to anything. Its honestly a shame, because the cutscenes are incredibly stylish, and fun to watch.
The game keeps things short, and manages to sit under two hours. I honestly loved this, as it means the game does not overstay its welcome. That said, I do feel as if more could've been done with the level design. There are a few twists here and there, but overall the gameplay loop doesn't really evolve beyond the first chunk of levels. I'd almost say this is style over substance, as the sharp art direction and killer sound design kept me completely engaged throughout my playthrough.
I missed this one upon its initial release, and though I don't regret skipping out on it for so long, I can see why its so beloved. SUPERHOT has its flaws, but overall, it manages to be a unique, memorable, entertaining experience. You'll know if this one is for you.
Up there with 2 and 0 as the best that Yakuza has to offer. A new beginning that switches everything up and provides some funky fresh flavour for the series.