AssignedKnives
2023
This review contains spoilers
Starfield had me in the first few hours. As I think it did most who played it around launch. It was fascinating to watch the general consensus around this game drop off so drastically, so quickly, as more people had the time to get past those initial 5-10 hours that Starfield was able to hold its facade together. In less than a month, the slow dawning realization started to sink in for most that Starfield is just bland. Painfully so.
For the first few hours, I was feeling fairly positive about Starfield, even though I was completely uninterested in any of the characters, story, or world that was presented to me during that time period. My positivity was instead rooted in the notion that Bethesda had seemingly learned from the many missteps they had taken with Fallout 4, that made that game such a terrible roleplay experience. Voiced protagonist, stripped down and truncated dialogue system, extremely restrictive main quest that forced you to play a very specific character, with very specific motivations, and a very very specific backstory, just to name a few. Initially, Starfield didn't seem to have these problems, and this left me feeling good about what my time with it would be like, and more pertinent to my interests, what TES 6 might be like.
It didn't take long however, for me to realize that these supposed lessons learned had seemingly come at the cost of, what is to me the heart and soul of any Bethesda game; world design, lore, and exploration. Starfield, to put it bluntly, has none of these things. The decisions that were made in Starfield's development are truly baffling to me. Why put so much effort into an admittedly pretty good ship building system, and a pretty shit space combat system, and then never present the player with a real reason or opportunity to engage with either? This is a game that was designed around fast travel. A game that mostly forces you to fast travel. A game with no maps to speak of. A game with supposedly 1000 planets to "explore" that all amount to the same few empty areas and generic futuristic structures repeated over and over again. There's nothing here. You play a character who is forcefully conscripted into a literal space exploration organization, and yet there is no space exploration to be found. I am astounded at the lack of cohesion and direction in Starfield's design. It is painfully obvious that no one at Bethesda could ever figure out what they wanted Starfield to be, aside from a game set in space. As an aside, I don't have much to say about Starfield's story, except that I feel the soulless, trend-chasing multiverse pseudo-metacommentary ending was perhaps the perfect way to top off a game that is lacking even the barest hint of a soul. When will the entertainment industry be free of the artistically bankrupt vision of the multiverse that the MCU has forced upon us all.
In my opinion, the worst thing that a piece of art or media can be is boring. Even bad art, I think, has its place. At the very least, things like the launch version of Cyperpunk 2077, or the entirety of the GTA Trilogy provided us with amusing glitch compilations and memes for a time. Starfield couldn't even give us that. Starfield isn't even memeable. Although I suppose that in itself is a remarkable feat.
Mass Effect 3, if you'll allow me a small tangent, is the most disappointing game I've ever played. Based on how much I was anticipating it, versus how drastically it failed to meet any of those expectations. As of this writing, it has been 12 years since my first, and so far only, playthrough of ME3, and I still get a bit mad whenever I am reminded of it. As bad as I personally feel ME3 was, it still managed to produce an emotion in me. A visceral emotion, the remnants of which still persist to this day. But at this point, I'm not even mad about Starfield. I'm just oddly sad, or perhaps just empty. The endless void at Starfield's core has seemingly devoured any emotional response I might have had towards it. At the end of the day, all I can really think about is how Todd Howard talked about Starfield in interviews. That this was supposedly the game he had always wanted to make. That when he was working on TES or FO, he really just wanted to make Starfield. And that to me, is incredibly sad.
For the first few hours, I was feeling fairly positive about Starfield, even though I was completely uninterested in any of the characters, story, or world that was presented to me during that time period. My positivity was instead rooted in the notion that Bethesda had seemingly learned from the many missteps they had taken with Fallout 4, that made that game such a terrible roleplay experience. Voiced protagonist, stripped down and truncated dialogue system, extremely restrictive main quest that forced you to play a very specific character, with very specific motivations, and a very very specific backstory, just to name a few. Initially, Starfield didn't seem to have these problems, and this left me feeling good about what my time with it would be like, and more pertinent to my interests, what TES 6 might be like.
It didn't take long however, for me to realize that these supposed lessons learned had seemingly come at the cost of, what is to me the heart and soul of any Bethesda game; world design, lore, and exploration. Starfield, to put it bluntly, has none of these things. The decisions that were made in Starfield's development are truly baffling to me. Why put so much effort into an admittedly pretty good ship building system, and a pretty shit space combat system, and then never present the player with a real reason or opportunity to engage with either? This is a game that was designed around fast travel. A game that mostly forces you to fast travel. A game with no maps to speak of. A game with supposedly 1000 planets to "explore" that all amount to the same few empty areas and generic futuristic structures repeated over and over again. There's nothing here. You play a character who is forcefully conscripted into a literal space exploration organization, and yet there is no space exploration to be found. I am astounded at the lack of cohesion and direction in Starfield's design. It is painfully obvious that no one at Bethesda could ever figure out what they wanted Starfield to be, aside from a game set in space. As an aside, I don't have much to say about Starfield's story, except that I feel the soulless, trend-chasing multiverse pseudo-metacommentary ending was perhaps the perfect way to top off a game that is lacking even the barest hint of a soul. When will the entertainment industry be free of the artistically bankrupt vision of the multiverse that the MCU has forced upon us all.
In my opinion, the worst thing that a piece of art or media can be is boring. Even bad art, I think, has its place. At the very least, things like the launch version of Cyperpunk 2077, or the entirety of the GTA Trilogy provided us with amusing glitch compilations and memes for a time. Starfield couldn't even give us that. Starfield isn't even memeable. Although I suppose that in itself is a remarkable feat.
Mass Effect 3, if you'll allow me a small tangent, is the most disappointing game I've ever played. Based on how much I was anticipating it, versus how drastically it failed to meet any of those expectations. As of this writing, it has been 12 years since my first, and so far only, playthrough of ME3, and I still get a bit mad whenever I am reminded of it. As bad as I personally feel ME3 was, it still managed to produce an emotion in me. A visceral emotion, the remnants of which still persist to this day. But at this point, I'm not even mad about Starfield. I'm just oddly sad, or perhaps just empty. The endless void at Starfield's core has seemingly devoured any emotional response I might have had towards it. At the end of the day, all I can really think about is how Todd Howard talked about Starfield in interviews. That this was supposedly the game he had always wanted to make. That when he was working on TES or FO, he really just wanted to make Starfield. And that to me, is incredibly sad.
2023
In a word, disappointing. The demo was really good and convinced me to get this game sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, FFXVI seemingly hits its peak not long after the demo's 2 or so hour slice, and isn't showing signs of reaching such heights again. The combat, which I felt had a lot of potential from the demo, has proven to be a slog. Fights are incredibly drawn out and the system is just not fun enough to make these experiences anything more than tedious. Add to this the fact that there basically is no gameplay in FFXVI except combat, and you've got a real problem. If Square wants FF to go full action combat permanently, they're going to have to figure out a better system. And don't even get me started on the Eikon fights. Huge wasted potential. Nothing but button mashing and QTEs dressed up in ridiculously over the top cinematics. All fluff with no substance. At this rate I worry for the future of the franchise. And if this shit ass combat system gets anywhere near FFVII Rebirth, I will spit nails.
In general, I'm struggling to connect with any part of this game. The story, lore, characters, gameplay, environments. It all feels extremely lackluster and soulless to me. I don't even like the art style. Like Square was trying to have their cake and eat it too by combining the stylized FF aesthetics with this bland, overdone, gritty GOT realism. It's not a good combination, to say the least. FFXV was a huge disappointment when it first came out, but at least I was engaged enough to finish that one. At this rate FFXVI will likely be sitting in my backlog for a long time.
In general, I'm struggling to connect with any part of this game. The story, lore, characters, gameplay, environments. It all feels extremely lackluster and soulless to me. I don't even like the art style. Like Square was trying to have their cake and eat it too by combining the stylized FF aesthetics with this bland, overdone, gritty GOT realism. It's not a good combination, to say the least. FFXV was a huge disappointment when it first came out, but at least I was engaged enough to finish that one. At this rate FFXVI will likely be sitting in my backlog for a long time.
2022
Fucking fantastic game. Great story, great characters, great pokemon, great music, hours and hours of stupid fun. Can even be pretty challenging if you don't grind on trainers or use battle items. This could easily be 5 stars if not for the piss-poor presentation. The pokemon and human characters look awesome, but all the environmental textures look like ass and the performance is embarrassing. GF needed at least one more year to polish this up and it would've been top fucking tier. Really really hoping for some serious patching in the future.
For me, the core of the AC experience has always boiled down to: exploration of beautifully recreated historical locations, and pulling off satisfying one shot assassinations on pretty much any enemy. Odyssey fails in both of these areas due to unnecessary RPG mechanics shoved into a game that is in no way an RPG.
The level gating completely kills this game for me. It ruins exploration by effectively roping off large chunks of the game until you've reached a high enough level (unless of course you enjoy getting fucking annihilated by hoards of enemies every 5 mins), forcing you to waste time grinding low level combat encounters. And, the greatest of all sins, it prevents you from performing an assassination on a target that is higher level than you. This kind of design in an AC game is just baffling to me. Everything else about this game is great but as a long-time AC fan, these issues are complete deal breakers for me. Idk if I'll ever actually beat this one. Damn shame.
The level gating completely kills this game for me. It ruins exploration by effectively roping off large chunks of the game until you've reached a high enough level (unless of course you enjoy getting fucking annihilated by hoards of enemies every 5 mins), forcing you to waste time grinding low level combat encounters. And, the greatest of all sins, it prevents you from performing an assassination on a target that is higher level than you. This kind of design in an AC game is just baffling to me. Everything else about this game is great but as a long-time AC fan, these issues are complete deal breakers for me. Idk if I'll ever actually beat this one. Damn shame.
2009
The pinnacle of the AC storyline. The modern day and historical stories are nicely intertwined and the entire thing feels like slowly chipping away at some big grand mystery. No other AC game has managed to pull this off anywhere near as well. Combat and free running controls are greatly improved from the original, with just the right amount of side content/collectables. One of the best examples of a sequel drastically improving from its predecessor while maintaining what made the og special in the first place.
2007
The og AC is definitely dated at this point. The freerunning is janky, the combat is a bit one note, and the open world is unfortunately quite empty (but still beautiful and lovingly crafted). But the atmosphere, the mystery, the intrigue of this game has aged a whole lot better. And the ending is still a stroke of genius. Blew my mind back in 08.
2020
This game is so fucking stupid and induces a burning hot rage in me but goddamn I've played the hell out of it and loved/hated every second of it. Fuck me.
2003
Jak II was our first taste of Naughty Dog as competent storytellers, and in my opinion, is still the best implemented story and worldbuilding in any of their games. Gritty and "mature" without devolving into pretentiousness, while maintaining the admittedly juvenile humor of the first game to balance things out. It definitely has a very early 00s style about it, which I understand is not to everyone's taste.
Complimenting the writing is a strange mishmash of gameplay and story genres that absolutely shouldn't work, but somehow work perfectly. Is it fantasy? Sci-fi? Post-apocalypse? Dystopian? Yes. Is it a 3D platformer? Third person shooter? Action/adventure? Sandbox? GTA clone? Skateboading game? Also yes. And I fucking love it.
Complimenting the writing is a strange mishmash of gameplay and story genres that absolutely shouldn't work, but somehow work perfectly. Is it fantasy? Sci-fi? Post-apocalypse? Dystopian? Yes. Is it a 3D platformer? Third person shooter? Action/adventure? Sandbox? GTA clone? Skateboading game? Also yes. And I fucking love it.
2002
The og KH did everything right. Its sequels would go on to greatly improve upon the combat and weave a complex narrative around the simple premise of the first game, but KH1 remains the best expression of the original idea behind the series.
KH has a special magic about it that none of its successors were ever able to emulate. Every aspect of this game is lovingly crafted with impressive attention to detail, every gameplay mechanic has an in universe explanation, and the integration of Disney properties, Final Fantasy cameos, and the original content is at its best here.
KH has a special magic about it that none of its successors were ever able to emulate. Every aspect of this game is lovingly crafted with impressive attention to detail, every gameplay mechanic has an in universe explanation, and the integration of Disney properties, Final Fantasy cameos, and the original content is at its best here.
2001
A simple yet immensely effective masterpiece. Its spiritual successor gets a lot more love and praise, and for some good reasons, but there's always been something about Ico that elevates it above others for me personally.
The amazingly realistic character animations were enthralling back in the day, and in retrospect they have become even more impressive. How this was managed on the PS2 back in 2001 is beyond me. The subtle effectiveness of the two main characters speaking different languages and being forced to communicate through said animations just emphasizes how amazing they really are. The fact that Yorda's gibberish speech is not translated in the subtitles drives home for the player the otherworldliness of the situation that Ico has found himself in. Even the clunky controls that people so often complain about, are themselves a storytelling mechanic. Ico is a scrawny 12 year old boy, with no formal training at all. So of course when he picks up a large hunk of wood and starts frantically swinging it to defend himself and his new companion, it's going to feel awkward. Of course he's going to throw himself off balance. Is it frustrating from a gameplay perspective? Sure. But if Ico's atmosphere can successfully draw you in, this frustration becomes a vehicle of immersion rather than a product of bad game design.
Everything about this game is a masterclass in subtle storytelling. I can't say enough good things about it. But goddamn that NA cover art is atrocious.
The amazingly realistic character animations were enthralling back in the day, and in retrospect they have become even more impressive. How this was managed on the PS2 back in 2001 is beyond me. The subtle effectiveness of the two main characters speaking different languages and being forced to communicate through said animations just emphasizes how amazing they really are. The fact that Yorda's gibberish speech is not translated in the subtitles drives home for the player the otherworldliness of the situation that Ico has found himself in. Even the clunky controls that people so often complain about, are themselves a storytelling mechanic. Ico is a scrawny 12 year old boy, with no formal training at all. So of course when he picks up a large hunk of wood and starts frantically swinging it to defend himself and his new companion, it's going to feel awkward. Of course he's going to throw himself off balance. Is it frustrating from a gameplay perspective? Sure. But if Ico's atmosphere can successfully draw you in, this frustration becomes a vehicle of immersion rather than a product of bad game design.
Everything about this game is a masterclass in subtle storytelling. I can't say enough good things about it. But goddamn that NA cover art is atrocious.
An endlessly charming game that's unfortunately quite janky. Combat is very rough, lacking many quality of life features, and is frequently frustrating because of it. Story mode is amazingly bland and repetitive with very little variety in story or side missions, and none of the amazing cutscenes this series would come to be known for. Even the best part of this game, Konoha free roam, is hindered by Konoha itself being disappointingly empty. Although Naruto's silky smooth mobility in free roam makes bouncing around the rooftops endlessly satisfying. It's a tragedy that no other game in this series tried to refine this particular aspect.
However, even having said all that, Ultimate Ninja Storm still manages to be fun and incredibly charming. The character models, animations and combat techniques are amazingly detailed, and Konoha village has been lovingly recreated by someone who either really loves the series, or was very dedicated to doing a good job. The music, aesthetics, and Japanese voices also add to the experience. Overall I'd say this is a solid foundation for a truly great series to build off of.
However, even having said all that, Ultimate Ninja Storm still manages to be fun and incredibly charming. The character models, animations and combat techniques are amazingly detailed, and Konoha village has been lovingly recreated by someone who either really loves the series, or was very dedicated to doing a good job. The music, aesthetics, and Japanese voices also add to the experience. Overall I'd say this is a solid foundation for a truly great series to build off of.
This review contains spoilers
Graphically beautiful game with a surprising amount of branching pathways to the story. And while it was engaging enough to keep my attention till the end, it was way too sloppily handled, and lacks the nuance and depth required to present its heavy narrative themes competently.
And for me personally, the plot twist of Alice being an android completely killed Kara's entire story arc. That was so unbelievably dumb. Not only does it make no sense in retrospect, but it invalidates the entire theme of Kara's story, and arguably the entire game. Wtf.
And for me personally, the plot twist of Alice being an android completely killed Kara's entire story arc. That was so unbelievably dumb. Not only does it make no sense in retrospect, but it invalidates the entire theme of Kara's story, and arguably the entire game. Wtf.
2006
From a purely gameplay perspective this is a very solid JRPG and quite a long one at that. I enjoyed the battle system, map, atmosphere and art style enough to track down and beat all the optional bosses and finish all the side quests. The experience is weighed down by an uninspired plot and underdeveloped characters, however.
The best pirate game ever made only slightly hindered by the nonsensical narrative muck of the overarching AC storyline. Best cast of characters in the entire series.
You can run out of things to do pretty quickly if you no life it, as most of us did during lock down. Tons of features are still missing a year after release and the villager dialogue really needs an overhaul. But the building elements are so good I can personally forgive most of that. In my opinion what this game needs more than anything is multiple save files and/or islands. I spent hundreds of hours making a Dragon Quest themed island and now I can never build anything else ever cause there's no way I'm tearing it all down to start over. I don't know why Nintendo is so opposed to this kind of thing in their games. Can't deny how much I enjoyed playing it though.