AstrinSchmidt
19 reviews liked by AstrinSchmidt
[Anamnesis] Try to recall Torment: Tides of Numenera by InExile Entertainment: FAILURE.
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i think some people think of me as a bit of a hater at times, which makes me feel bad because I generally like most games I play and talk about, and even ones I don't think too highly of, like Elden Ring, have things about them that I appreciate. tedious negative formalism is, for me, the retreat of the disappointed romantic, and if i do end up there, it's only because I have tried and failed to love something. so please, know that when I say that I do, in fact, hate Tides of Numenera, it is because it is a genuinely rare occurrence for me: a game that repulses above and beyond anything it might have to offer.
i finished this fairly comprehensively when it first released and while I liked it quite a bit back in 2017, my fondness for it fades to an proportional degree to my strengthening fondness for the original Torment.
in a sense the problem is that I resent having to refer to Planscape: Torment as "the original Torment". there is a naked cynicism to the title that is hard to ignore, an almost desperate call to arms for fans of the original to treat this with the weight that something evoking a beloved work warrants. and yet, it rings so hollow. part of this is because by any reasonable metric, planescape: torment has plenty of sequels, there being a clear throughline of thematic exploration and continuity of staff from that game into the likes of Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Mask of the Betrayer, so this game tattooing "TORMENT" onto it's skin feels unnecessary at best and deeply insecure at worst. but the larger problem of the name is that this hollowness and insecurity seeps into the game itself.
a game like this really shouldn't be reminding me so strongly of Dark Souls 3 or - god forbid, The Rise of Skywalker - but those comparisons struggle to leave me when I weigh Tides of Numenera in my mind, this game that so desperately needs to be seen as a true successor to Planescape: Torment that it strains at every opportunity to deliver surface-level reference after vacuous call-back.
tattoos were part of Planescape, and so they are part of Tides of Numenera! except here the tattoos are given a weight and significance by the writing that is afforded only by the fact that they are a reference to the original. tattoos were important in Planescape because they represented the permanency of your past actions and effects on the world. tattoos do not leave us - and neither do our actions and the scars they leave on the world. there is no similar thematic resonance to the choice to use tattoos in numenera. the symbols are, as abstract symbols, important to it, but grafting them onto the flesh of the protagonist says nothing, other than "remember planescape?"
these kinds of embarrassing references are everywhere, but the one that got me to switch the game off in disgust was when you find a Bronze Sphere. The Bronze Sphere in Planescape was deeply important in that game, but its importance was something you had to discover. You can - and many do - simply ignore and forget about it once it first leaves your possession, to treat it like the insignificant bauble it seems. It's only by choosing to keep it - a choice that says a lot about your Nameless One, because the only reason you'd keep it is that you know it was important to a past version of yourself that you increasingly learn to be almost unimaginably cruel - all the way to the end of the game, do you finally learn what it is. in numenera, you find a bronze sphere - proudly labelled as such - in one of the first areas you have access to, a bronze sphere that, essentially, acts as little more than a place for your companions to hang out when you aren't with them. it is a rote mechanical feature that clads itself in one of the most resonant and evocative images of the game it's so desperately trying to summon within itself in order to afford it a weight derived entirely from the audience's recognition of that image in a completely one-dimensional way. it is planescape: torment reduced to brand recognition, a funko pop of the nameless one, dak'kon in fortnite, a disney+ limited series about fall-from-grace. it is the mcu-ification of a singular work that is very, very close to my heart. it fucking blows ass so much oh my god.
part of me wants to resist labelling this a truly terrible game. the writing is, in a vacuum, thought of entirely as a book of disconnected sci-fi short stories you can wander through, engaging, in the moment. there are some characters that work: I think most of the stuff surrounding the character of Rhin is genuinely fantastic and represents a genuinely thoughtful exploration of parenthood, the kind that the medium is historically lacking in. there are moments where the various mechanical concerns of the game - the crisis events, the resource management game you play through wandering the world - do come alive. the soundtrack is actually kind of fantastic. but what's it all in service too? this story, that has no ideas of its own, and is just stripping the scar tissue from one of my favourite games and selling it back to me on Kickstarter? this game that is torn in a dozen different directions by a dozen different writers with no cohesive ideas other than Being Like Planescape? i could begrudgingly admit that there are things Of Interest to be found in this game. but I don't want to, and nor do I think I should. i think i should reject this embarrassing, ambitionless, written-by-committee sludge as the failed attempt to colonize the affections of those who were earnestly affected by the travels of The Nameless One.
so much of the modern media landscape is built entirely on selling you back hollow tokens of your memories in the shape of lightsabers and web-shooters and synths and kids on bicycles. but what we remembered wasn't ever as important as why we remembered them. and because Torment: Tides of Numenera is so singularly focused on the what and not the why, it isn't much of a surprise that it's been so comprehensively forgotten: there's nothing about it to remember.
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i think some people think of me as a bit of a hater at times, which makes me feel bad because I generally like most games I play and talk about, and even ones I don't think too highly of, like Elden Ring, have things about them that I appreciate. tedious negative formalism is, for me, the retreat of the disappointed romantic, and if i do end up there, it's only because I have tried and failed to love something. so please, know that when I say that I do, in fact, hate Tides of Numenera, it is because it is a genuinely rare occurrence for me: a game that repulses above and beyond anything it might have to offer.
i finished this fairly comprehensively when it first released and while I liked it quite a bit back in 2017, my fondness for it fades to an proportional degree to my strengthening fondness for the original Torment.
in a sense the problem is that I resent having to refer to Planscape: Torment as "the original Torment". there is a naked cynicism to the title that is hard to ignore, an almost desperate call to arms for fans of the original to treat this with the weight that something evoking a beloved work warrants. and yet, it rings so hollow. part of this is because by any reasonable metric, planescape: torment has plenty of sequels, there being a clear throughline of thematic exploration and continuity of staff from that game into the likes of Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Mask of the Betrayer, so this game tattooing "TORMENT" onto it's skin feels unnecessary at best and deeply insecure at worst. but the larger problem of the name is that this hollowness and insecurity seeps into the game itself.
a game like this really shouldn't be reminding me so strongly of Dark Souls 3 or - god forbid, The Rise of Skywalker - but those comparisons struggle to leave me when I weigh Tides of Numenera in my mind, this game that so desperately needs to be seen as a true successor to Planescape: Torment that it strains at every opportunity to deliver surface-level reference after vacuous call-back.
tattoos were part of Planescape, and so they are part of Tides of Numenera! except here the tattoos are given a weight and significance by the writing that is afforded only by the fact that they are a reference to the original. tattoos were important in Planescape because they represented the permanency of your past actions and effects on the world. tattoos do not leave us - and neither do our actions and the scars they leave on the world. there is no similar thematic resonance to the choice to use tattoos in numenera. the symbols are, as abstract symbols, important to it, but grafting them onto the flesh of the protagonist says nothing, other than "remember planescape?"
these kinds of embarrassing references are everywhere, but the one that got me to switch the game off in disgust was when you find a Bronze Sphere. The Bronze Sphere in Planescape was deeply important in that game, but its importance was something you had to discover. You can - and many do - simply ignore and forget about it once it first leaves your possession, to treat it like the insignificant bauble it seems. It's only by choosing to keep it - a choice that says a lot about your Nameless One, because the only reason you'd keep it is that you know it was important to a past version of yourself that you increasingly learn to be almost unimaginably cruel - all the way to the end of the game, do you finally learn what it is. in numenera, you find a bronze sphere - proudly labelled as such - in one of the first areas you have access to, a bronze sphere that, essentially, acts as little more than a place for your companions to hang out when you aren't with them. it is a rote mechanical feature that clads itself in one of the most resonant and evocative images of the game it's so desperately trying to summon within itself in order to afford it a weight derived entirely from the audience's recognition of that image in a completely one-dimensional way. it is planescape: torment reduced to brand recognition, a funko pop of the nameless one, dak'kon in fortnite, a disney+ limited series about fall-from-grace. it is the mcu-ification of a singular work that is very, very close to my heart. it fucking blows ass so much oh my god.
part of me wants to resist labelling this a truly terrible game. the writing is, in a vacuum, thought of entirely as a book of disconnected sci-fi short stories you can wander through, engaging, in the moment. there are some characters that work: I think most of the stuff surrounding the character of Rhin is genuinely fantastic and represents a genuinely thoughtful exploration of parenthood, the kind that the medium is historically lacking in. there are moments where the various mechanical concerns of the game - the crisis events, the resource management game you play through wandering the world - do come alive. the soundtrack is actually kind of fantastic. but what's it all in service too? this story, that has no ideas of its own, and is just stripping the scar tissue from one of my favourite games and selling it back to me on Kickstarter? this game that is torn in a dozen different directions by a dozen different writers with no cohesive ideas other than Being Like Planescape? i could begrudgingly admit that there are things Of Interest to be found in this game. but I don't want to, and nor do I think I should. i think i should reject this embarrassing, ambitionless, written-by-committee sludge as the failed attempt to colonize the affections of those who were earnestly affected by the travels of The Nameless One.
so much of the modern media landscape is built entirely on selling you back hollow tokens of your memories in the shape of lightsabers and web-shooters and synths and kids on bicycles. but what we remembered wasn't ever as important as why we remembered them. and because Torment: Tides of Numenera is so singularly focused on the what and not the why, it isn't much of a surprise that it's been so comprehensively forgotten: there's nothing about it to remember.
Baldur's Gate 3
2020
a game crushed by its own ambition. all the best creative elements of 5e are stripped away leaving one of the weakest narratives I've seen in an RPG and companions so shallow that even minor side characters were more interesting. maybe one day I'll bother to pick up bg3 again and start act 3, but I'm at the end of act 2 and the only thing that's left me impressed has been the production values and a single moment involving DU + shadowheart
This review contains spoilers
High highs and low lows. The 3D art is bland, possibly because I have no nostalgia for the PS1 look and certainly because I have no love for the muddy desaturated color palette. On the other hand, the 2D art is as strong as it was in Anodyne 1, and indeed is made stronger by the benefit of multiple worlds each with a distinctive and appealing look.
The plot is achingly predictable--the god-analogue is revealed to be a cold ideologue who's strangling free will? Quelle surprise! But the smaller-scale character interactions are fun and the writing is mostly quite solid with a few great moments and fewer terrible ones.
I think the most frustrating thing about this is that its mechanical ambition extends beyond the capacity of its control scheme. Movement in both 3D and 2D sections of the game is clunky in a way that's surely an intentional riff on the consoles the game evokes, but conflicts painfully with the challenging maneuvers it occasionally demands. It's a question of suiting the design of the tasks you set before the player to the context in which the player acts.
The plot is achingly predictable--the god-analogue is revealed to be a cold ideologue who's strangling free will? Quelle surprise! But the smaller-scale character interactions are fun and the writing is mostly quite solid with a few great moments and fewer terrible ones.
I think the most frustrating thing about this is that its mechanical ambition extends beyond the capacity of its control scheme. Movement in both 3D and 2D sections of the game is clunky in a way that's surely an intentional riff on the consoles the game evokes, but conflicts painfully with the challenging maneuvers it occasionally demands. It's a question of suiting the design of the tasks you set before the player to the context in which the player acts.
I forgor
Silent Hills
TBD
Like that's ever gonna happen!
BioShock
2007
This review contains spoilers
yeah yeah yeah libertarians are dum dums and plot twists are unexpected, who cares
here's my own very personal gripe with bioshock. think about the storytelling in major games released shortly before this, like half-life 2 or psychonauts. what was it driven by? the characters and the environment -- pay attention to what's around you, listen to what people are telling you, and you'll get some part of the story. some parts you just won't get, ever, at all, because they've been left that way, or maybe because you've missed some non-obvious detail; maybe you'll come back to the story at a later time and it'll still surprise you with something you missed. it's up to you to wonder and interpret and use your imagination.
how does bioshock tell its story? through fucking audio logs. everywhere. everyone in rapture is constantly journaling their innermost feelings and secrets. why do they do this? because system shock 2 did it first. but that was on a god damn space ship in the space future, where you could easily believe personal audio recording devices have been commonplace and a part of life for generations, and besides, it was referencing a similar storytelling method from preexisting scifi like star trek: tng, which itself makes a great deal more sense because space naval officers on a journey of exploration would have both the time and the professional motivation to keep journals regularly.
bioshock takes place in like 1960 or so. magnetic tape recorders were "common", sure, in their industrial applications like radio, tv and the music industry, but they were not common household appliances, not until the introduction of cassette tapes in the second half of the 60s.
okay, let's say rapture's magical super technology driven by waves hands led to the creation and popularization of personal audio recording in less than the uhh two decades this city is supposed to have existed for. still doesn't explain why everyone is keeping a damn journal, except that it's for the player's convenience!
okay, so maybe it's a popular hobby, everyone's doing it, it's an expression of unfettered bourgeois individualism to treat your every insipid thought as worth recording for posterity (much like this review), sure, whatever. but then, in the game's timeline, the bad government starts cracking down on dissenters at one point -- you think that wouldn't have led to people destroying both their recorders and the recordings en masse? even people who probably had nothing to worry about but wanted to stay on the safe side anyway?
there's a guy who's supposed to be an ESL speaker doing a funny accent -- why is he recording these very private messages in broken english, instead of his first language? i guess it can be for practice... but come on! you don't really believe that! it's just because audiologs were established as the main storytelling method by the time he appears in the story, so he has to be audiologging for your convenience too.
why is it like this? well, in my personal opinion, vindicated by later developments in the series, it's because ken levine thinks he's a fucking genius among mortals and the rest of us mere jesters and bumblers need every background detail explained very slowly and carefully.
what's worse still, i think bioshock audiologs can be pointed to as one of the first occurrences of the dreaded phenomenon called "lore", which to me is not synonymous with worldbuilding and background detail, but background detail done badly -- i.e., the ubiquity of in-world information that you have no reason to have obtained, but that is given to you anyway, just so you can understand what's going on.
you shouldn't understand what's going on in a place that's gone to hell and eaten itself alive! it should be a lot of work to piece it together! it should be cryptic and disorienting and maybe nonsensical on your first go! but just like the profound moral choice of kill little child vs don't kill little child, this entire game was made for a certain intended player, one that exists solely in ken levine's imagination, and who is a gormless fucking fool. that's what this game thinks you are.
you don't even have to hand it to ken that he's right about the libertarians or whatever. of course the most extreme and ridiculous expression of american free market ideology is extreme and ridiculous! now if he'd managed to examine the same ideology as it expresses itself in more moderate, everyday, "normal" forms and still find the nightmare embedded within it... then maybe he would have made night in the woods instead. but i doubt that's something he's capable of.
here's my own very personal gripe with bioshock. think about the storytelling in major games released shortly before this, like half-life 2 or psychonauts. what was it driven by? the characters and the environment -- pay attention to what's around you, listen to what people are telling you, and you'll get some part of the story. some parts you just won't get, ever, at all, because they've been left that way, or maybe because you've missed some non-obvious detail; maybe you'll come back to the story at a later time and it'll still surprise you with something you missed. it's up to you to wonder and interpret and use your imagination.
how does bioshock tell its story? through fucking audio logs. everywhere. everyone in rapture is constantly journaling their innermost feelings and secrets. why do they do this? because system shock 2 did it first. but that was on a god damn space ship in the space future, where you could easily believe personal audio recording devices have been commonplace and a part of life for generations, and besides, it was referencing a similar storytelling method from preexisting scifi like star trek: tng, which itself makes a great deal more sense because space naval officers on a journey of exploration would have both the time and the professional motivation to keep journals regularly.
bioshock takes place in like 1960 or so. magnetic tape recorders were "common", sure, in their industrial applications like radio, tv and the music industry, but they were not common household appliances, not until the introduction of cassette tapes in the second half of the 60s.
okay, let's say rapture's magical super technology driven by waves hands led to the creation and popularization of personal audio recording in less than the uhh two decades this city is supposed to have existed for. still doesn't explain why everyone is keeping a damn journal, except that it's for the player's convenience!
okay, so maybe it's a popular hobby, everyone's doing it, it's an expression of unfettered bourgeois individualism to treat your every insipid thought as worth recording for posterity (much like this review), sure, whatever. but then, in the game's timeline, the bad government starts cracking down on dissenters at one point -- you think that wouldn't have led to people destroying both their recorders and the recordings en masse? even people who probably had nothing to worry about but wanted to stay on the safe side anyway?
there's a guy who's supposed to be an ESL speaker doing a funny accent -- why is he recording these very private messages in broken english, instead of his first language? i guess it can be for practice... but come on! you don't really believe that! it's just because audiologs were established as the main storytelling method by the time he appears in the story, so he has to be audiologging for your convenience too.
why is it like this? well, in my personal opinion, vindicated by later developments in the series, it's because ken levine thinks he's a fucking genius among mortals and the rest of us mere jesters and bumblers need every background detail explained very slowly and carefully.
what's worse still, i think bioshock audiologs can be pointed to as one of the first occurrences of the dreaded phenomenon called "lore", which to me is not synonymous with worldbuilding and background detail, but background detail done badly -- i.e., the ubiquity of in-world information that you have no reason to have obtained, but that is given to you anyway, just so you can understand what's going on.
you shouldn't understand what's going on in a place that's gone to hell and eaten itself alive! it should be a lot of work to piece it together! it should be cryptic and disorienting and maybe nonsensical on your first go! but just like the profound moral choice of kill little child vs don't kill little child, this entire game was made for a certain intended player, one that exists solely in ken levine's imagination, and who is a gormless fucking fool. that's what this game thinks you are.
you don't even have to hand it to ken that he's right about the libertarians or whatever. of course the most extreme and ridiculous expression of american free market ideology is extreme and ridiculous! now if he'd managed to examine the same ideology as it expresses itself in more moderate, everyday, "normal" forms and still find the nightmare embedded within it... then maybe he would have made night in the woods instead. but i doubt that's something he's capable of.
System Shock 2
1999
The RPG mechanics only get in the way and the combat is terrible, I can't think of anything I prefer in this compared to SS1. I'm sure it gets better on later playthroughs but I don't want to do another one.
Elden Ring
2022
Overall it's an overrated hassle of a game, and unnecessarily long. The first like, 20-30 hours was stellar; though that is only like a quarter of the game.
Some of the boss fights were actually good, although they can only be counted on one hand. Exploring the densely interwoven legacy dungeons was fun and tense at times, and the jump button is greatly appreciated for making (some of, lol) the platforming actually fit more neatly into the game. There's some pretty/stunning reveals for areas to explore or boss encounters, cool art design, atmosphere, yadda yadda.
But everything else brings the game down. ESPECIALLY how long the game is, how BS the bosses become, and how often you start seeing everything else being shamelessly copy-pasted.
As for that huge, sprawling open world? Not fun. There's a decent amount of encampments of enemies/cave dungeons/catacombs dotted here and there, but the single reward chest that is a useless item 95% of the time/all those items that turn out to just be mushrooms just make me question why I even explore.
The rest of that overworld space is filled with basically nothing but pointless copy-pasted BS enemies that you should never even bother to fight, but if you do, horse combat with colossal weapon heavy attacks is the best way to do it, and it is awful.
Concerning combat, fighting humanoid non-boss enemies is generally fair, even when they're hard. But idk why the devs made every single animal like dogs/rats/birds/big dogs/big rats/big birds/big bears/dragons, or the two mechanical enemies so god-awful and unfun to fight.
Massively large enemies that take up the entire screen so that their telegraphs are obscured - even if you try to free-aim the camera - are awful all around. All dragons, golems, tree spirits, Astel (though dodging his laser beam was cool). Have fun running past their attacks to get to their back legs or underside, and then have a third of your attacks not hit because the enemy decides to shift around. Then they stomp their feet and you can temporarily move to the side, or they do some big goofy attack that makes them clip through the walls, or a disengaging attack that puts them a ten second run away from you. It's mindblowing that these unpolished encounters even made it into the game.
Also there's a ton of times where an encounter is made up of multiple minibosses clumsily thrown into the same arena - but at least this was supposedly patched to make them a bit less aggressive. Yet coming back at a higher level, using a busted weapon/bleed attacks, or using spirit ashes/summons just feels like cheesing the fight, but honestly that is the only solution if you value your sanity.
And speaking of higher levels, being overleveled was a big issue for me, because I wanted to explore everything. But it turns out that the ideal way of playing this open world game and not having too easy of a time with some earlier boss fights is to, uhh, not explore at all? Just run straight to the legacy dungeons? And maybe explore stuff for a few levels if you find that your ass is getting handed to you a bit more than it should be? Man, I wish I knew that before, so I didn't just have the stats to blow through some of the earlier or midgame content which might have actually been enjoyable.
Concerning enjoyment, I had heard before I started playing that some stuff was absolutely busted - Moonveil, bleed attacks, various sorceries, etc. I felt that I wanted to have a balanced experience, the sort of one that the devs would have 'intended'. In hindsight, me trying to divine a sort of 'intended' experience out of this unbalanced mess should never have been my job to do, and I should have just stuck to what stuff looked cool and did a lot of damage, instead of stubbornly doing jump attacks with dual colossal weapons. As the game goes on, the bosses get longer more obnoxious combos, and have shorter and fewer windows to be punished (which also have a chance of reading your inputs and extending their combo anyway). So if you want to have a better view of the game by the end, I guess the key to that is just using the broken stuff that looks cooler. But maybe hold back until you feel like you've seen enough of the boss, before you just delete it.
Also the quests in this game are as godawful and as impossible to do without looking up a guide as they always are in From games. But this time, the game being open world/having the time of day mechanic really exacerbates this problem.
But yeah, sure. 10/10, flawless game.
Some of the boss fights were actually good, although they can only be counted on one hand. Exploring the densely interwoven legacy dungeons was fun and tense at times, and the jump button is greatly appreciated for making (some of, lol) the platforming actually fit more neatly into the game. There's some pretty/stunning reveals for areas to explore or boss encounters, cool art design, atmosphere, yadda yadda.
But everything else brings the game down. ESPECIALLY how long the game is, how BS the bosses become, and how often you start seeing everything else being shamelessly copy-pasted.
As for that huge, sprawling open world? Not fun. There's a decent amount of encampments of enemies/cave dungeons/catacombs dotted here and there, but the single reward chest that is a useless item 95% of the time/all those items that turn out to just be mushrooms just make me question why I even explore.
The rest of that overworld space is filled with basically nothing but pointless copy-pasted BS enemies that you should never even bother to fight, but if you do, horse combat with colossal weapon heavy attacks is the best way to do it, and it is awful.
Concerning combat, fighting humanoid non-boss enemies is generally fair, even when they're hard. But idk why the devs made every single animal like dogs/rats/birds/big dogs/big rats/big birds/big bears/dragons, or the two mechanical enemies so god-awful and unfun to fight.
Massively large enemies that take up the entire screen so that their telegraphs are obscured - even if you try to free-aim the camera - are awful all around. All dragons, golems, tree spirits, Astel (though dodging his laser beam was cool). Have fun running past their attacks to get to their back legs or underside, and then have a third of your attacks not hit because the enemy decides to shift around. Then they stomp their feet and you can temporarily move to the side, or they do some big goofy attack that makes them clip through the walls, or a disengaging attack that puts them a ten second run away from you. It's mindblowing that these unpolished encounters even made it into the game.
Also there's a ton of times where an encounter is made up of multiple minibosses clumsily thrown into the same arena - but at least this was supposedly patched to make them a bit less aggressive. Yet coming back at a higher level, using a busted weapon/bleed attacks, or using spirit ashes/summons just feels like cheesing the fight, but honestly that is the only solution if you value your sanity.
And speaking of higher levels, being overleveled was a big issue for me, because I wanted to explore everything. But it turns out that the ideal way of playing this open world game and not having too easy of a time with some earlier boss fights is to, uhh, not explore at all? Just run straight to the legacy dungeons? And maybe explore stuff for a few levels if you find that your ass is getting handed to you a bit more than it should be? Man, I wish I knew that before, so I didn't just have the stats to blow through some of the earlier or midgame content which might have actually been enjoyable.
Concerning enjoyment, I had heard before I started playing that some stuff was absolutely busted - Moonveil, bleed attacks, various sorceries, etc. I felt that I wanted to have a balanced experience, the sort of one that the devs would have 'intended'. In hindsight, me trying to divine a sort of 'intended' experience out of this unbalanced mess should never have been my job to do, and I should have just stuck to what stuff looked cool and did a lot of damage, instead of stubbornly doing jump attacks with dual colossal weapons. As the game goes on, the bosses get longer more obnoxious combos, and have shorter and fewer windows to be punished (which also have a chance of reading your inputs and extending their combo anyway). So if you want to have a better view of the game by the end, I guess the key to that is just using the broken stuff that looks cooler. But maybe hold back until you feel like you've seen enough of the boss, before you just delete it.
Also the quests in this game are as godawful and as impossible to do without looking up a guide as they always are in From games. But this time, the game being open world/having the time of day mechanic really exacerbates this problem.
But yeah, sure. 10/10, flawless game.
The Witness
2016
for jonathan blow's next game, it's just tetris except the board is upside down. when you reach speed level 5 a bertrand russell video plays behind the board where he debates god's existence on a single shot for 40 minutes. then when you hit level 20, the game pauses and Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916) plays for three and a half hours over the top with an ending questionaire about how it made you feel. once you hit level 50, the game ends. the amazing twist is revealed that it was a pov shot of a man playing the game on a screen the entire time. he looks to the left and gets hit by a truck. metacritic 95
Elden Ring
2022
This review contains spoilers
Elden ring feels like a game with 30 hours of content with 20 of that being repeated over and over again for 70 hours straight. With 88 hours as my final time, I'm looking back on the game, and I realize that around 80% of the game was just not worth my time.
I'll start off with the things I did like about the game:
The environments are super pretty! Apart from Limgraive and the Weeping Peninsula (which are mostly just typical open world green grass + grey mountains), I was never tired of finding new areas to explore because they would almost always be a treat to look at. The underground areas in particular are a highlight IMO. Speaking of areas, most of the legacy dungeons are some of the best levels fromsoft has designed. Stormveil felt massive and going through it the first time, I was consistently amazed by just how much there was to explore. I wasn't as big a fan of the Academy or Volcano Manor, but they were still pretty solid. Leyendell was the next great place for me to explore, and while it didn't quite match up to Stormveil for me, it came close. One thing I really liked is that the combat in ER is probably the best it's ever been in the souls series (because this really just is open world DS). It feels like a refined version of DS3's (which in turn was a refined version of DS1's), and it's pretty fun! I think the extra additions like jump attacks and guard counters are pretty cool and add some more options for people to try in combat. The spirit ashes are a good way for people to be able to tweak the difficulty to their liking, and being able to swap out your weapon art is a nice option that adds more freedom to player builds. I also really like how you can respec your character (which I did myself a few times) and upgrade as many weapons as you want to +9/+24. I do think it's a pretty bad design choice that they limit you on how much you can respec/get a weapon to +10; there really should've been a way to farm or infinitely buy those mats. Finally, I think the last few areas and their bosses are some of the most challenging fromsoft has made. I did a gauntlet of Malenia, Mohg, and Maliketh in one day, and while I think all of those fights have some issues (especially the first one and her flurry move that I think is impossible to dodge in some scenarios), they were some of the only fights that took actual effort, and it felt great when I finally managed to beat them. Unfortunately that's all I can priase Elden Ring for.
Going into the problems the games has, the one that stuck with me from my 15th hour all the way until the end is the insane amount of recycled/reused content. I don't think there's a single enemy that I fought in limgraive that didn't appear somewhere else in the game, and that was incredibly disappointing. On top of reusing content that is introduced in ER, the game even copies and pastes enemies from dark souls. It feels unreal that this is a new IP and yet the game just rips the dogs, Silver Knights, and other enemies from DS, changes their appearance a bit, and then calls it a day. And that's not the only thing that feels like it was pulled right from DS either. The ploti s basically "what if someone did a madlibs version of the stories from dark souls". Just replace Hollow with Tarnished, Flame with Elden Ring, etc. I do think George R. R. Martin's involvement helps make the setting and world more cohesive, and it's nice that we have a loremaster in the game in the form of Gideon, but at the end of the day, it just feels like the same plot fromsoft has been using for over a decade now. One thing that ties back to the problem of reused content is the dungeons. I'm pretty sure I did every single one, and my god they were awful. There were maybe a handful that were worth doing but the rest were awful caves/mines with no semblance of level design that would always end with me fighting a boss that I'd already gone up against like 5 times that would grant me a useless reward. Now, I know I can't expect every item I get from exploring to be useful to my build, but man, even after switching up my weapons and stats close to 10 times, there were so many items just left sitting in my inventory that I never used. Speaking of bosses, Elden Ring manages to give DS2 a run for it's money in terms of worst bosses in modern fromsoft games. For 80% of the game you're going up against bosses that only have a few moves that are super easy to dodge and once you get to that last 20%, you can finally go up against the ones that really felt like they required full atention. It certainly doesn't help that this game makes DS2 look tame in it's recyling of bosses, but also every single dungeon boss was just a cakewalk. I don't think i died more than 10 times total across all the dungeons, and a good part of the reason for that is because after doing a couple I already ened up learning the moveset for the ones I would be doing for the rest of the game. One thing to note about the comat, is that even after all these years, fromsoft has still kept in the god awful input buffering and the camera is just as bad as ever. Last thing I want to talk about is the music. I know fromsoft doesn't like to use music very often and it's a clear stylistic choice, but it's one I've always hated and it's no different here. There is at least some very faint bgm in the openworld, but I think the game would be better if it had some actualy music to add to the atmosphere.
I'm glad so many people enjoyed this game, but to me it's a game that has made me lose faith in fromsoft being original. DS3 has some similar problems in being too referential and reusing content in regards to DS 1/2, but at least there it was used in a way that made sense thematically, as the game was a conclusion to the series. Here? It feels downright lazy and derivative, and ultimately Elden Ring is just a boring game, something that I didn't think I would call a fromsoft game.
I'll start off with the things I did like about the game:
The environments are super pretty! Apart from Limgraive and the Weeping Peninsula (which are mostly just typical open world green grass + grey mountains), I was never tired of finding new areas to explore because they would almost always be a treat to look at. The underground areas in particular are a highlight IMO. Speaking of areas, most of the legacy dungeons are some of the best levels fromsoft has designed. Stormveil felt massive and going through it the first time, I was consistently amazed by just how much there was to explore. I wasn't as big a fan of the Academy or Volcano Manor, but they were still pretty solid. Leyendell was the next great place for me to explore, and while it didn't quite match up to Stormveil for me, it came close. One thing I really liked is that the combat in ER is probably the best it's ever been in the souls series (because this really just is open world DS). It feels like a refined version of DS3's (which in turn was a refined version of DS1's), and it's pretty fun! I think the extra additions like jump attacks and guard counters are pretty cool and add some more options for people to try in combat. The spirit ashes are a good way for people to be able to tweak the difficulty to their liking, and being able to swap out your weapon art is a nice option that adds more freedom to player builds. I also really like how you can respec your character (which I did myself a few times) and upgrade as many weapons as you want to +9/+24. I do think it's a pretty bad design choice that they limit you on how much you can respec/get a weapon to +10; there really should've been a way to farm or infinitely buy those mats. Finally, I think the last few areas and their bosses are some of the most challenging fromsoft has made. I did a gauntlet of Malenia, Mohg, and Maliketh in one day, and while I think all of those fights have some issues (especially the first one and her flurry move that I think is impossible to dodge in some scenarios), they were some of the only fights that took actual effort, and it felt great when I finally managed to beat them. Unfortunately that's all I can priase Elden Ring for.
Going into the problems the games has, the one that stuck with me from my 15th hour all the way until the end is the insane amount of recycled/reused content. I don't think there's a single enemy that I fought in limgraive that didn't appear somewhere else in the game, and that was incredibly disappointing. On top of reusing content that is introduced in ER, the game even copies and pastes enemies from dark souls. It feels unreal that this is a new IP and yet the game just rips the dogs, Silver Knights, and other enemies from DS, changes their appearance a bit, and then calls it a day. And that's not the only thing that feels like it was pulled right from DS either. The ploti s basically "what if someone did a madlibs version of the stories from dark souls". Just replace Hollow with Tarnished, Flame with Elden Ring, etc. I do think George R. R. Martin's involvement helps make the setting and world more cohesive, and it's nice that we have a loremaster in the game in the form of Gideon, but at the end of the day, it just feels like the same plot fromsoft has been using for over a decade now. One thing that ties back to the problem of reused content is the dungeons. I'm pretty sure I did every single one, and my god they were awful. There were maybe a handful that were worth doing but the rest were awful caves/mines with no semblance of level design that would always end with me fighting a boss that I'd already gone up against like 5 times that would grant me a useless reward. Now, I know I can't expect every item I get from exploring to be useful to my build, but man, even after switching up my weapons and stats close to 10 times, there were so many items just left sitting in my inventory that I never used. Speaking of bosses, Elden Ring manages to give DS2 a run for it's money in terms of worst bosses in modern fromsoft games. For 80% of the game you're going up against bosses that only have a few moves that are super easy to dodge and once you get to that last 20%, you can finally go up against the ones that really felt like they required full atention. It certainly doesn't help that this game makes DS2 look tame in it's recyling of bosses, but also every single dungeon boss was just a cakewalk. I don't think i died more than 10 times total across all the dungeons, and a good part of the reason for that is because after doing a couple I already ened up learning the moveset for the ones I would be doing for the rest of the game. One thing to note about the comat, is that even after all these years, fromsoft has still kept in the god awful input buffering and the camera is just as bad as ever. Last thing I want to talk about is the music. I know fromsoft doesn't like to use music very often and it's a clear stylistic choice, but it's one I've always hated and it's no different here. There is at least some very faint bgm in the openworld, but I think the game would be better if it had some actualy music to add to the atmosphere.
I'm glad so many people enjoyed this game, but to me it's a game that has made me lose faith in fromsoft being original. DS3 has some similar problems in being too referential and reusing content in regards to DS 1/2, but at least there it was used in a way that made sense thematically, as the game was a conclusion to the series. Here? It feels downright lazy and derivative, and ultimately Elden Ring is just a boring game, something that I didn't think I would call a fromsoft game.