harveegee
2002
Metroid Dread incorporates a better executed version of every good idea this has and fixes all of its (pretty massive) problems. So coming to it after already having played Dread was a bit of a boneheaded move on my part.
2022
Classic Frankenstein game combining building/management, hack & slash dungeon crawling, and soft roguelike elements, creating a dense web of overlapping and complimentary systems which is very satisfying and compelling to get into. Combine this with a great visual style and a wicked sense of humour and initially I felt like this was a genuine 2022 Game of the Year contender.
And then the other shoe dropped. I would say, once you really get into it, each individual aspect of the game is quite shallow & the payoff for progress and mastery is rarely satisfying. I got all the way to the end and the brutally hard final boss fight, I felt, made some pretty wild assumptions about how much fun the player would still be having with the combat. Despite not being a truly massive game, you do feel the playtime by the end & there’s pretty much only just enough quality content to justify the length.
Combined with a design desperately in need of some quality of life improvements, overall I can only give a soft recommendation. And I absolutely couldn’t recommend it over more focused roguelites like Hades or management sims like Stardew Valley.
And then the other shoe dropped. I would say, once you really get into it, each individual aspect of the game is quite shallow & the payoff for progress and mastery is rarely satisfying. I got all the way to the end and the brutally hard final boss fight, I felt, made some pretty wild assumptions about how much fun the player would still be having with the combat. Despite not being a truly massive game, you do feel the playtime by the end & there’s pretty much only just enough quality content to justify the length.
Combined with a design desperately in need of some quality of life improvements, overall I can only give a soft recommendation. And I absolutely couldn’t recommend it over more focused roguelites like Hades or management sims like Stardew Valley.
2021
Found the control gimmick intensely frustrating, kept accidentally skipping stuff I wanted to see when I didn’t actually blink no matter how many times I recalibrated. I think because I wear glasses the sensitivity needs to be super high to work at all, and consequently even the slightest movement of my long beautiful eyelashes set it off. Combined with my pretty chronic dry eye which makes me blink a lot anyway, the end result is a game that was pretty close to unplayable, and then when I decided to play it without eye tracking the last checkpoint was like ten minutes prior to when I quit and I just couldn’t be arsed anymore.
Fundamentally uninteresting & repetitive gameplay-wise - a game carried by its aesthetics, cutesy vibe and writing. As someone who doesn’t go in for this uwu self care is important shit, and isn’t a fan of stories where every character feels like the creation of a writer who spends more time in therapy or thinking about the stuff they learned in therapy than actually living their life, I can’t say this really spoke to me. Perplexed by the overwhelmingly positive reviews tbh.
2015
The question of which Miyazaki game is my favourite is always neck and neck between this and the first Dark Souls. I’m not embarrassed at all to say that I usually give Bloodborne the nod because:
- Trick weapon go clickety-clack, vrrrm, BOOOOM, or make other cool noise;
- Every armour is a cool swishy long jacket that go swish-swish;
- Parry with gun and then rip at flesh with bare hand (so metal);
- Every upgrade material is blood (blood echoes, blood gem, blood rock, etc).
- Trick weapon go clickety-clack, vrrrm, BOOOOM, or make other cool noise;
- Every armour is a cool swishy long jacket that go swish-swish;
- Parry with gun and then rip at flesh with bare hand (so metal);
- Every upgrade material is blood (blood echoes, blood gem, blood rock, etc).
I don’t know if this is my favourite game of all time, but it’s certainly the one which prompts the most confusion and sometimes side eye in me when people heavily criticise it or say they “don’t get it”.
For me it’s “Stuff I’d Been Wanting Games To Do For As Long As I Can Remember: The Game” & it’s here to unlock the chains other games bind you in.
That a genuinely fairly large proportion of people who play it can only respond with “I miss the predictable & samey structure of other 3D Zeldas” or, even worse, “I don’t see why this is better than other open world games with towers”… well, it depresses me more than it perhaps should.
For me it’s “Stuff I’d Been Wanting Games To Do For As Long As I Can Remember: The Game” & it’s here to unlock the chains other games bind you in.
That a genuinely fairly large proportion of people who play it can only respond with “I miss the predictable & samey structure of other 3D Zeldas” or, even worse, “I don’t see why this is better than other open world games with towers”… well, it depresses me more than it perhaps should.
2019
When someone tells you this or that video game is comparable to a great film or novel, as a general rule, no it isn’t. People who say that only do so because they lack media literacy.
Disco Elysium is the very, very rare exception to this rule. This is interactive literature.
Disco Elysium is the very, very rare exception to this rule. This is interactive literature.
2005
The #1 reason Shinji Mikami is on my personal Mt Rushmore of game directors (Shigeru Miyamoto, Hidetaka Miyazaki, Shinji Mikami, fourth name yet to be chosen). I don’t think anyone else matches Mikami’s knack for the exact right combination of game mechanics, movement rules, pacing and perfectly tuned difficulty to generate maximum fun. ‘Stun zombie + do kick/suplex + knife slash’ should get old eventually. It doesn’t.
Right up there with Super Metroid on the ‘lightning in a bottle’ scale - the common denominator there appears to be that both are atmospheric in a way which can’t be replicated with or improved upon by future technology - and something which will always be one of the best games in its genre no matter what else follows.
Right up there with Super Metroid on the ‘lightning in a bottle’ scale - the common denominator there appears to be that both are atmospheric in a way which can’t be replicated with or improved upon by future technology - and something which will always be one of the best games in its genre no matter what else follows.
2007
I’ve had the weirdest journey with this game. On my first playthrough I thought it was good, I enjoyed it, but it didn’t blow my mind. Since then I’ve replayed it almost annually and every time I find new things which delight me. The central gravity gimmick + the constant introduction, development & combination of new gameplay mechanics + the bonkers level design combine to create the most richly varied and playful 3D platformer ever (I honestly don’t think the sequel matches it on these fronts). Certainly doesn’t hurt that it’s also an aesthetic masterpiece, perhaps as beautiful a game as has ever existed.
2020
It’s hard to overstate the degree to which this article really crystallised a lot of my thoughts on this game: https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-is-the-horniest-rpg-ive-ever-played-and-honestly-its-a-bit-much/
BG3 deserves commendation for its commitment to player agency and the kind of work which must have gone into the optionality allowed to the player. But there’s just something about it which rubs me the wrong way. Maybe not every party member should be pansexual and keen to bone you irrespective of your gender identity, character class, ethos, etc. Maybe you shouldn’t be able to defeat this many of the bosses by tricking them into killing themselves by passing a couple of easy charisma checks! Maybe not every toy in the playground should exist mainly to tell me I’m awesome and try to suck my dick! You know?
BG3 deserves commendation for its commitment to player agency and the kind of work which must have gone into the optionality allowed to the player. But there’s just something about it which rubs me the wrong way. Maybe not every party member should be pansexual and keen to bone you irrespective of your gender identity, character class, ethos, etc. Maybe you shouldn’t be able to defeat this many of the bosses by tricking them into killing themselves by passing a couple of easy charisma checks! Maybe not every toy in the playground should exist mainly to tell me I’m awesome and try to suck my dick! You know?