Elden Ring is a very entertaining videogame.

The movement and combat is the most polished of any Souls style game developed by From Software to date (besides Bloodborne perhaps), there's a bunch of cool abilities and spells which the game does a good job at encouraging you to try out and experiment with even when playing non-magic builds, riding around on a horse is fun and feels surprisingly intuitive to Souls style gameplay, and you can enjoy all of this is in a truly massive and often times beautiful open world with Hundreds of Hours of Content™. This is "junk food gaming" at its absolute finest.

Elden Ring could have also been so, so much better.

When I first saw the announcement trailer for Elden Ring and subsequently heard that it was going to be a Souls style game, but with an open world, I was hoping for, if not outright anticipating a truly special take on the formula, which blends the weird and wonderful aspects of Souls style level design with open world progression.

I was imagining vast, non-euclidian labyrinths, dense fog-filled forests which warp the player's sense of perspective and scale, giant Shadow of the Colossus style bosses which traverse the world, some as passive wanderers and others as active pursuers. A game where the world itself is another enemy to defeat and puzzle to solve, but can also lend a helping hand to more observant players through a wealth of environmental interactions.

All of this in a setting which takes unique inspiration from traditional depictions of fairy tales alongside a helping of Celtic and Norse folklore to distinguish itself from Dark Souls, like how Bloodborne used the unique inspiration of Lovecraftian fiction to effectively distinguish itself from Dark Souls whilst having similar game mechanics.

What we ended up with is a bunch of generic swamps and fields dotted with ubisoft-style enemy camps and the occasional scripted encounter against a dragon or yet another big guy in armour wielding a large weapon. The lore of Elden Ring, while interesting and presented just as well as any other modern From Soft game, doesn't really do anything to make itself distinctive from Dark Souls.

I like to believe that the version of Elden Ring that is actually an industry-shaking masterpiece is out there somewhere, if even just in the heads of certain developers and fans, but the Elden Ring we're playing is a literal world of missed potential. Now I understand I am probably sounding contrarian, maybe even melodramatic here, and I admit that I'm not exactly the biggest fan of open world game design even at the best of times so I may be biased, as such I'll take some time to elaborate on my issues with Elden Ring's gameplay and setting:

It's no exaggeration to say that the open world is the main draw of Elden Ring, as evidenced by the fact that most of the game's content is in the huge world that is The Lands Between, and various standard Souls mechanics have been changed slightly to account for open world progression. To give credit where its due, the world in Elden Ring is massive and beautiful, at the same time it is capable of showing a restraint that feels refreshing compared to many other AAA games, with its comfortably minimalist UI and lack of annoying checklist side quest markers. Unfortunately, this is where my praises of Elden Ring's open world end.

Elden Ring's world feels like less of an actual, breathing world and more like a painting. It's pretty for sure, but it's next to completely static and falls into the tedious open world loop of move to new place, clear enemy camps, maybe fight a boss or two, pick up loot, rinse and repeat.

I've seen plenty of people compare Elden Ring's open world to Breath of the Wild, or even saying that Elden Ring surpasses BotW, but I just never saw this at any moment in my 55 hour playthrough. For all of BotW's many flaws, BotW excelled at making you feel like a guest of Hyrule. The world was rich with many different environmental interactions and you needed to respect the game's environment to survive. More skilled/knowledgeable players could take advantage of the interactions to perform tricks that allow them to traverse the world faster and more efficiently.

In comparison, Elden Ring feels like something more akin to Far Cry 3, where you can't do a whole lot besides move around and kill enemies. Hell, even Genshin fucking Impact has considerably more environmental interaction and variety in its open world compared to Elden Ring, since at least that game has scripted elemental reactions and environmental puzzles to solve. The only things that could even constitute as environmental interaction I found in my playthrough of Elden Ring were that non-threatening storms could appear in certain areas at night and very few special enemy types and bosses would appear only at night. There's also a surprising amount of invisible walls that railroad progression and in the worst cases, punish players for jumping across a gap to what they would reasonably think is a secret area. For the so-called "greatest open world of all time", this feels pathetic.

Others on this website have already talked plenty about the reuse of discoveries/boss fights in Elden Ring, so I won't elaborate much on that here, but it really can't be understated how much this further makes Elden Ring feel static. The aforementioned restraint goes out of the window when you keep seeing the giant walking cathedrals and erdtree avatars in each new area you get to. This feels like the most "AAA" FromSoft title to date, and you can tell that a lot of magic and soul has been sacrificed to the great altar of Content.

While exploring the world of Elden Ring, it's inevitable that you will come across dungeons pretty regularly which serve as both a break and distinction from the open world. These come in two main varieties: optional underground dungeons, and what the community has come to call Legacy Dungeons (some of which are also optional).

To avoid dancing around the issue, the underground dungeons are bad. They take the form of either mines, caverns or crypts, and most of the dungeons in these three archetypes repeat the same ideas and enemy types constantly even in Limgrave - the game's first region. At the end you get a boss that typically represents the bottom tier of Elden Ring's many boss fights. There's not much else to say other than that these dungeons are trash and I stopped bothering with them after the first 10 or so hours of my playthrough. Some of them are so badly designed that I refuse to believe that they weren't procedurally generated in some way.

The Legacy Dungeons can be described as areas in the style of previous modern FromSoft titles scattered across the open world of Elden Ring. Each of these dungeons are an oasis in the proverbial desert of the static open world. Once I was in the middle of Stormveil Castle, I had already decided to myself that the legacy dungeons were my favourite areas in Elden Ring and this impression lasted all the way to the end of my first playthrough.

At the same time however, these Legacy Dungeons aren't anything amazing. While they are as well designed as Dark Souls 3's areas, they also suffer from the same issue as Dark Souls 3's areas that they feel iterative at this point. Exploring a large castle with cleverly-placed shortcuts that loop around in satisfying ways is still fun, but it also evokes feelings of "been there, done that". It also doesn't help that most of the Legacy Dungeons in Elden Ring are castles of some kind.

The only Legacy Dungeons that felt like something new were the locations in the underground section of the world (not to be confused with the aforementioned crappy underground dungeons), and it's a good thing that best girl Ranni's side quest has you exploring most of these areas.

This game has a ton of boss fights to find and overcome. I glanced on the wiki that including repeated battles, there are at least 120 (!!) boss fights in Elden Ring. This is a massive step up from previous FromSoft titles (and most other games in existence). Players who are just looking for a completionist challenge will have a field day here.

However, you can tell that quantity over quality was the focus with the boss design in Elden Ring, and in a general sense the bosses in Elden Ring feel like the strongest culmination yet of the misguided design priorities at FromSoft ever since Dark Souls 2.

Gone are the interesting, puzzling encounters of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1, all bosses must be homogenised into being flashy, fast, high execution skill tests, with an increasing presence of annoying tricks such as attack animations that are delayed to the point of being unintuitive and unfun to dodge that are only there to keep veterans from getting too complacent.

These games are action RPGs, so of course there's nothing wrong with boss fights including an element of testing mechanical skill, but the simple matter of fact is that while Souls style games are certainly challenging, the combat systems themselves lack depth. As such, there's not really any mechanical skills that can be tested in these fights outside of dodge roll timings and capitalising on punish windows. There are still some bosses that I greatly enjoyed in Elden Ring, such as Radahn (who is closest to what I was hoping boss fights in this game would be like), Rennala and the second phase of Maleketh, but the idea of going through over 120 fights that ultimately boil down to testing the same couple of skills is one that will inevitably become a tedious slog towards the end.

There are plenty of other, more nitpicky issues I have with Elden Ring that I could talk about, including but not limited to not being able to talk to NPCs while on horseback, the lock-on system still failing to focus on the enemy that's closest to you when there's many enemies charging at you from different distances, and FromSoft's previous title: Sekiro, actually having better QoL than Elden Ring in various ways, but this review is already long enough.

Elden Ring is a good timesink while it lasts, and part of me respects it for just how ambitious FromSoft were with the scope of this game, but at the same time, it misses the mark in so many ways and tries to hide these ways with the smoke and mirrors that are the size and beauty of its game world. Once you look past that, Elden Ring feels like an iterative game, which has a lot of good ideas but fails to fully commit to any of them out of a desire to be as "AAA" as possible.

I know my more critical take on Elden Ring probably feels contrarian as of the time of writing this review, but once the hype fully wears off a year or two from now, I'm confident that the community consensus regarding this game will be much closer to my outlook.

“We’re beyond sympathy at this point. We’re beyond humanity.”

A maximalist, sprawling epic and a disgustingly under-appreciated entry in this increasingly transforming franchise. Packed storylines weave in and out of various perspectives and connect with glowing ferocity, gameplay and thematic elements from past entries are remixed and redefined for a prime convergence of tradition and innovation, and it subliminally sets the groundwork for what would come with the remakes and Biohazard. On top of just being an absolute joy (for the most part) to work through, with bombastic set pieces and crisp gunplay and ridiculous one liners and silliness to be found in every corner, it’s downright the most wistfully romantic and optimistic the franchise has ever been. There’s little to no regard for nuance and restraint and 6 is all the stronger and more singular for that. While it is packed with fascinating vision and consistent creativity in its visual design and structure, it lacks cohesive direction as it feels like a diverse hodgepodge of all the classic Resident Evil tropes while attempting to lay foundation for something new. It’s the expected progression from what 4 and 5 offered even it lacks the compact polish that those two had. However for something of this massive caliber it should be anticipated that it occasionally drops the ball in pacing or makes some of the most awkward decisions I’ve seen in a AAA title. It’s a pioneering experience that feels otherwise unprecedented and yet released in a time when endless content reigned supreme. There’s a sincerity and enthusiasm here to impress that transcends the faux-profound pretensions of what we see nowadays more often than not. Resident Evil 6 is proud of itself and deeply loving of its history, blemishes and all, and chooses to take no prisoners in the process of whisking the player on their grandest and most reckless expression of humanity’s endurance in the throes of seemingly unbeatable odds.

I think that if there is any art-form that successfully reflects the condition of living under late-capitalism, that would be videogames (what a start, I know lol, but hear me out). There is always this idea of control that a player has when going through the experience. The feeling that you are the one that has the freedom to do whatever you want. That you have a choice over your actions and that whatever you are lead to, is because of your own interests. Since you are the one controlling this figure and making everything that seems relevant in this world.

However, you are never truly in control of your actions because everything you do in the virtual space has been predetermined and calculated by people above you who designed this system. You’re directed to perform certain tasks that they want you to, while others you’re limited to because they either didn’t plan for you to use the system in that way or because they went out of their way for you to not do that which you’re trying. Agency is nothing more than an illusion that any game sets on you because you are not doing more than what they ask you or what they allow you. The system was designed by them, and you are not doing more so than acting under its restrictions.

Some videogames, like for example those in the sandbox genre, capitalize on the power fantasy of being free. They sell you the idea that you are going to be allowed to do whatever you want. That you’re going to indulge in your wildest wishes and accomplish them. Living in this space as if it was reality and ascending in a hierarchy until you, as the exceptional you are, end on the top.

However, that cannot be seen as nothing more than dishonest because in the end video game are always limited. There are many tasks you cannot perform in GTA V, for example. No matter how much they thought it out, the system can only account for what the creators set up, along some outsiders that are produced out of its failures more than anything else. They might make it seem as freedom, but it is nothing more than the fantasy of freedom. (Not something that makes the games bad necessarily as there is still value in the illusion, but there is no denying in what it is).

And even without that, those very same sandbox games, ironically enough, end up having very linear and hermetic story modes in which you’re strictly told what to do. The instructions are clear and there is not space for the player to take a different path for that target. The contrast in the process reveals the farce of the surrenders and that you never had any freedom in the first place. The control is taken away from you from the start and the only things you can do are things you are asked to do.

The existence of this aesthetic hegemony of games that favor false freedom and saturation of options to hide your lack of agency only makes it more interesting when a game comes out and sets itself to be conscious about the conditions you are put in as player. Hotline Miami being one I recently talked about, but on the other hand there is also, among many others, Portal.

Interestingly enough, a game that was created few years after Half Life 2 by the same company. That one founding itself in empowering oneself against the system through revolution, just for your efforts to become meaningless. Despite how much other characters in the game try to enhance you as myth, you are nothing more than a puppet for a supernatural entity that decides to put you in this scenario just to take you as soon as you finished your task. Portal is not too distant, but I would argue its use of symbols to evoke similar territory is more sophisticated.

You wake up in a room with no information about yourself, and right away, a machine guides you through tests that you have to pass (while not being given an explanation). From that point on everything you perform in this space, every gesture and every action is instructed directly by the machine, who gives you information about how to solve the scenarios. You might be the one resolving the set pieces, but it is not too different from a laboratory rat that is promised a cheese at the end of the maze (in your case, a cake). The scenarios were designed by them for you to resolve in only one way, and there is nothing you can do in response other than obey. A brilliant touch to demonstrate this is how at the start the portals are put by the machine for you to solve the puzzles instead of giving you the gun and the two kind of portals right away.

Something that, on one hand is functional from a design standpoint. Since it allows the player to get used to the systems. Leaving a space between every element you are given so you can assimilate the information, giving a sense of there being a difficulty and complexity curve increasing at your pace. However, symbolically, it already presents the element about lack of agency revealing the fakery of it all. That the scenarios are artificially constructed for you with a single path to cross.

The dynamic of control that the machine GLaDOS has on you, however, changes halfway through. When you stop being useful to her and her tasks, she attempts to murder you. You served her interests and since you were nothing more than a tool now you have to be thrown away like many others before you. That is the point in which you rebel against your position. You stop being submissive, and you start using the gun to create portals where GLaDOS did not plan. You move behind the red curtain where you see everything going on to make the puzzles possible. In dark industrial places characterized by its violent cylinders that smash the walls and give little room for motion and comfort. Contrasting with the clean and polished places you are presented for the tests.

You do what it was not planned for you to do. You take what you are learned (with help of efforts by someone that preceded you and suffered in the same environment) and apply it without being told by a superior what to do and how to do it. In fact, you assert dominance by repeatedly doing the opposite of what you are told. The oppression reached such point of violence that now the only solution is to fight back. Which is very interesting in how the game applies it in multiple ways, including especially that you kill GLaDOS by using the missiles of her gun turret against her with the portals.

Like by the end of Half Life 2, there is a sense of empowerment in this comeback. You do not only fight back, you are even better with you tools that you were before. Now that you are at your peak, nothing can stop you from achieving the emancipation of the powers that repress you. However, through a melancholy finale, that empowerment is recontextualized as futility. And for Portal specifically, that gives sense to its individualist focus throughout the journey.

You might have successfully defeated the one machine that was gaslighting you, manipulating you and controlling you, but such effort was meaningless. So concentrated into a single being that it practically produces zero material effects outside of the little story you lived.

You see the woods; you see nature after having seen exclusively the mechanical. But an unknown robot takes your body to pull you back into the structure. Because the structure is still there, and you cannot change it by destroying one individual. You are back in your submission, probably to repeat the cycle of tests and control.

Is a more than functional exploration of corporative control against human interests, neoliberalism advancing towards structures that are more detached and cold, resulting in the further alienation of the people. Moreover, it is even more successful as a metaphor for games and the dynamics between creator, player and the game itself due to the precision of the symbols and aesthetics employed to evoke this significance. I would even prefer it to Half Life 2 in this reading of the political and the Meta as both interconnected because of the synthesis.

The way this plays out so simply, with no more than what is needed to tell its story, instead of extending itself to a duration that would conform to what is expected, feels almost “anti-commercial” (as much as an accessible, mainstream game can be) in its attempt. Two hours of content, a main story and that’s it. This was something that, when I first played it, underwhelmed me about the work because it felt like it was offering too little in comparison to the standards of what a game offers. However, is exactly that what compels me so much about this and makes me prefer it to its sequel.

Portal 2 might expand on the concepts and might give more to the player to extend the life of the title, but in my opinion it feel like a sequel that tries to replace the original by giving the same but More. More story, more characters, more puzzles, more tools, more Lore, more duration, more play modes, more everything. It’s a way of creating sequels that feels uncomfortable to me because it presumes video-games as a commodity to constantly improve on rather than as pieces of art to revisit, which is something that Valve’s sequels (except for Half Life 2) suffer from.

On the other hand, Portal is comfortable being concise. Making every element memorable rather than trying to saturate the experience. And it makes it feel like more artistic and sincere in its exploration of thematic ideas and ludic concepts (using the first person format for a genre like puzzles, using the mechanics of Half Life to explore and figure out rather than to make your way killing). And is the kind of simplicity that makes its speech more convincing, more so when comparing it to Half Life 2 that runs into some contradiction due to how it is designed.
Honestly, games should learn from this that not all stories need to be extensive, and sometimes brevity can be your virtue.

A story of love and revenge told through ellipsis. A tale of violence reduced to its visceral fundamentals. Abstracted until the literal no longer matters and the work can indulge in the essential symbols and aesthetics.

In my opinion, it outdoes other games released at the time that tried to be self-critical of the mechanics being designed for violence and the implications of such. That because of Hotline Miami’s emphasis less on the shaming of the player, and more on the ways we distance ourselves from our actions in virtual spaces with context and the particular abstraction inherent to the videogame look.

Pushing us out of the comfort that virtuality gives us by constantly involving us, asking us question and calling attention to what we exert. Every time we kill dozens of enemies, having the need to contemplate the destructed bodies of every one of them on our way back to the place that we started in.

Video-game avatars as masks (like those Jacket wears before committing atrocities). Figures we control that serve to express ourselves in a space. Even when the only way that we can see of achieving that expression in the digital being through violent acts. All a performativity that the creators allow themselves to break down. Pointing at its farce and putting it apart so they can directly involve us in a conversation about what makes us wish for enacting these stories.

We might want to moralize our habits of playing through intellectualizing. The actions as means for encountering meaning of any kind, especially if it is irony. That it is okay that I exert violence in a virtual space because the game is making a critique of violence (the military FPS being the quintessential example of this falsity).

However, any of that would be nothing more than dishonest. We are not given a reason by the game of what we did. Nothing that rationalizes our journey, because we were not looking for anything in the first place. We just wanted to indulge ourselves. It is as intellectually unrewarding as that.

In so, the game not only explores exerted virtual violence and our relation to it as perpetuators, but also the futility of our agency in any form of system. We are taking from place to place by the designers to execute a very strict set of actions without possibility for more. We might like to indulge in the power fantasy, but in the end, we are being used by the game. We don’t have a choice over where we will go because it is all designed a priori. Anything we do having been not only considered but also planned. And any illusion of choice is all within the restrictions that the game puts us in. So we can do what they want us to do.

An anxiety that gains a political dimension with how it parallels how Jacket and Biker are used by a group with its own agenda, as if they were nothing more than tools. An agenda that they are not told about. Just doing it because it is what they have been ordered to. If anything, this game shows an understanding of its particular source (Drive, which itself was inspired by Le Samourai) that goes beyond the mere appropriation. That these symbols all served for stories about lonely men defined purely by their labor that are finally confronted with the consequences of their involvement, being left with nothing in the end. Although to this, Hotline Miami adds a viscerality in the trauma of normalizing violence that fits with its conceptual interests.

The only real shame is how this effect is kind of undermined by how there is, in the end, a rational explanation that gives meaning to all of us actions. A revelation that enhances the political side of the story in its usage of cold war confrontations and PTSD. However, in the process also takes away from the abstraction that is part of why this works so well on an aesthetic level. And so it kind of falls in what it tries to critique by giving us the comfort of the reason to justify what we did. Still, the experience of playing the game and getting these conflicted emotions by the situation that we are put in is something that cannot be taken away even by the worst twist (it does make it easier to forgive that when it's a secret ending that you need to find collectibles for, rather than being what you get when you only complete the story). More so with design this polish and an understanding of video-game language this intense.

I am very much sorry for bringing my big pretensiousness to video games too. It's what being bored and not being able to sleep does lmao.