BagelGod
14 reviews liked by BagelGod
Mass Effect 2
2010
This game has a massive scope but is still so laser focused, for both good and bad. This game has a new combat system which I feel is much more simple to learn, at the cost of the deeper control over ur party, streamlining in a pretty acceptable way. No more struggling thru menus equipping ur party with species specific armour or micromanaging their weapon mods, bullet types, packing their lunches, giving them a kiss on the cheek (that one was saved special for Ashley only! oo lala!! <3 my wife Ashley! hooray!) a lot of the RPG stuff was changed in favour of a more straightforward buy shit with coins and resources from probing planets, companions are more focused and have less upgradeable skills, weapons were found lying around in mission areas, and its pretty good for letting the player spend less time on a menu. Everything is focused on the shooting, kind of like how focused I am when I'm watching an episode of suits on netflix.
... To a fault. Pretty much every mission mechanically goes the same; go inside a room, sit behind the cover closest to the door, do a 3 minute wave shooting bit until it gets boring and then one of your companions yell CLEAR and you move to the next room. Maybe you'll press a button or do a hacking game. But that's pretty much how it'll go for the whole time you're playing. It's like red dead redemption 2, but at least red dead 2 had the decency to let you go on a hot air balloon or go fuck off and fish for 3 real life days. It gets to the point where there's one tailing mission and I was fucking ENJOYING THAT SHIT. Tali's quest was the absolute worst, spoilers for tali's loyalty quest but she gets framed for a crime, you go onto the flotilla (COOL AF TO SEE IT BUT ITS LIKE TWO ROOMS.) You speak to the judges and nothing you say convinces them. She is said to have brought geth onboard, and they reactivated. She says she didn't know it would do that, one guy says "it doesn't matter if you did it purposely its still a crime by negligence" which is true, according to my legal knowledge. You can't really defend her in any way, you can tell them "your honour she fought geth all the time" they say IDC. So to prove her innocence, they make her.... go to the infected ship in the fleet and kill all the geth. Rly? she needs to kill geth to prove herself? like she hasn't killed enough? whatever, stupid logic, but whatever. Cue another identical 20 minute shooting gallery. Come back. Go up to the court again. They still don't believe. Blue dialogue option pops up. I click it. Patriotic American music starts playing and reginald shepard reiterates what he said before he did the 20 minute shooting gallery. Forgoing the interesting-ish ethical dilemma between throwing her father's legacy under the bus or getting her exiled from the fleet for good. Committing space perjury aside, that was a cool ass idea for a mission completely wasted and that was just another one of the other missions I did room for room but wearing the dead carcass of an episode of suits on netflix.
The repetitive nature of the gameplay was doubled down by the lack of healing. The description on backloggd says they removed the healing gel system to focus on making you regen behind cover, which is a assface move. You have to grind health and shield and damage upgrades with money or resources, so you can do more damage for more time before you have to go back into cover for less time. Getting these resources is done in the space menu. The only other gameplay type being just getting resources from a menu or walking around the normandy can get old, it came to the point where I missed the mako parts or the long and bordering-on-tedious fetch quests in places like the citadel. There are more areas like the citadel in this game, but they're less detailed and connected. The dead, mostly empty planets from ME1 were kind of pointless and repetitive, but it made the universe feel pretty big and had a cool sense of loneliness and scale, y’know? I had a lot of solemn and wistful and cool and quiet moments just walking around on these empty planets, heading to an artifact I saw on the map. But that’s mostly gone in 2. It got to the point where I could only do one or two missions before getting bored and watching an episode of suits on netflix.
I’ve been hard as fuck on this game tho, haven’t I? I gave this a 4.5/5, one of the best scores I could give anything. So I’m gonna say some nice things about this game. 9 aspects out of 10, this makes mass effect 1 look like a tech demo. More companions, all of them have deep stories and fun conversations, they have unique weapon combos and special moves, they interact in unique ways with the environment and you can have full conversations with them about shit you see on planets. The companions themselves are great. Mordin was so charming I completely forgave him for all the genocide he did. Jack is cool and was a nice rebound for me after my ex wife Ashley broke up with me for being in cerberus. NOT MY CHOICE, ASH. I just woke up and they told me to do shit. What was I gonna do? Cerberus brought me into this world, they’re like my mom now. Speaking of mom, Samara had me sitting there asking about every last aspect of her culture and heritage because I actually cared. Justicars are cool as hell and Mass Effect has got to have the coolest fictional lore of any universe because I was sitting there reading every codex entry, pointing out in-universe consistencies in my mind, and they went all in on fleshing the world out. The shadow broker’s computer has info on all your companions and allies, and you can see their internet history. It is very illuminating. Legion is a big gamer and Miranda goes on dating sites but asks for her matches’ medical history via PDF before conversing in any way. Weirdo!! Jack likes poetry which is why I rebounded with her, cus Ashley liked poetry too. Kasumi also wrote poetry but hers is cringy and I didn’t like her. And as much as I talked about many missions blending together, the ones that manage to rise above and overcome their genetic makeup to be varied and cool are amazing. Mostly the DLC stuff. The first half of the shadow broker Liara mission is amazing. The project overlord is amazing. Thane’s loyalty quest is amazing (and you don’t even shoot a single bullet in that one. Huh. Imagine that.) And same with Samara’s. That shit had enough melodrama and tight, witty dialogue to have the makings of an episode of suits on netflix.
The suicide mission at the end there is, by far, no holds barred, one of my favourite missions of any videogame i’ve played in my career. That thing had such palpable buildup throughout the whole game. The structure of the whole of mass effect 2 was finding people in this universe who are loyal or crazy enough to do that shit with you, and by the end you feel like you want everyone to make it. While I was doing it, every close call in a cutscene felt genuinely tense because I knew there were stakes and I knew this would carry over in ME3. Some parts had me flashing back and forth to my adventures with these crazy dorks. Heh. I remember last week I was checking up on Tali. I really didn’t like Tali in mass effect 1. She was really shallow and weak, and every word out of her mouth was about “her people” this or “her people” that. People make fun of me for dating Ashley who is just a teensy weensy bit racist but at least she has a personality. She’s racist, but Tali was just her race. Now? She’s probably my favourite character. She really came into her own and the expanded scope helped her be more fleshed out and less ‘Expository McTell-the-player-about-quarians-and-have-no-room-for-personality’. I could never romance her though, but I see her like a daughter. Which is really weird when mass effect did its mass effect thing and one of my random kind platonic dialogue options had Shepard say the nastiest grossest sex thing of all time. Which I walked back on in our next conversation. Phew, right? Saved? Not so much. You see, my friend who told me to play these games romanced Tali and I'm facing him in a heated bro code court battle right now. He agreed not to romance lae’zel, but now that I flirted with tali ACCIDENTALLY, he wants full rights to go after my baldur’s gate wife like it’s nothing. This is getting out of hand, this whole thing is playing out like an episode of suits on netflix.
... To a fault. Pretty much every mission mechanically goes the same; go inside a room, sit behind the cover closest to the door, do a 3 minute wave shooting bit until it gets boring and then one of your companions yell CLEAR and you move to the next room. Maybe you'll press a button or do a hacking game. But that's pretty much how it'll go for the whole time you're playing. It's like red dead redemption 2, but at least red dead 2 had the decency to let you go on a hot air balloon or go fuck off and fish for 3 real life days. It gets to the point where there's one tailing mission and I was fucking ENJOYING THAT SHIT. Tali's quest was the absolute worst, spoilers for tali's loyalty quest but she gets framed for a crime, you go onto the flotilla (COOL AF TO SEE IT BUT ITS LIKE TWO ROOMS.) You speak to the judges and nothing you say convinces them. She is said to have brought geth onboard, and they reactivated. She says she didn't know it would do that, one guy says "it doesn't matter if you did it purposely its still a crime by negligence" which is true, according to my legal knowledge. You can't really defend her in any way, you can tell them "your honour she fought geth all the time" they say IDC. So to prove her innocence, they make her.... go to the infected ship in the fleet and kill all the geth. Rly? she needs to kill geth to prove herself? like she hasn't killed enough? whatever, stupid logic, but whatever. Cue another identical 20 minute shooting gallery. Come back. Go up to the court again. They still don't believe. Blue dialogue option pops up. I click it. Patriotic American music starts playing and reginald shepard reiterates what he said before he did the 20 minute shooting gallery. Forgoing the interesting-ish ethical dilemma between throwing her father's legacy under the bus or getting her exiled from the fleet for good. Committing space perjury aside, that was a cool ass idea for a mission completely wasted and that was just another one of the other missions I did room for room but wearing the dead carcass of an episode of suits on netflix.
The repetitive nature of the gameplay was doubled down by the lack of healing. The description on backloggd says they removed the healing gel system to focus on making you regen behind cover, which is a assface move. You have to grind health and shield and damage upgrades with money or resources, so you can do more damage for more time before you have to go back into cover for less time. Getting these resources is done in the space menu. The only other gameplay type being just getting resources from a menu or walking around the normandy can get old, it came to the point where I missed the mako parts or the long and bordering-on-tedious fetch quests in places like the citadel. There are more areas like the citadel in this game, but they're less detailed and connected. The dead, mostly empty planets from ME1 were kind of pointless and repetitive, but it made the universe feel pretty big and had a cool sense of loneliness and scale, y’know? I had a lot of solemn and wistful and cool and quiet moments just walking around on these empty planets, heading to an artifact I saw on the map. But that’s mostly gone in 2. It got to the point where I could only do one or two missions before getting bored and watching an episode of suits on netflix.
I’ve been hard as fuck on this game tho, haven’t I? I gave this a 4.5/5, one of the best scores I could give anything. So I’m gonna say some nice things about this game. 9 aspects out of 10, this makes mass effect 1 look like a tech demo. More companions, all of them have deep stories and fun conversations, they have unique weapon combos and special moves, they interact in unique ways with the environment and you can have full conversations with them about shit you see on planets. The companions themselves are great. Mordin was so charming I completely forgave him for all the genocide he did. Jack is cool and was a nice rebound for me after my ex wife Ashley broke up with me for being in cerberus. NOT MY CHOICE, ASH. I just woke up and they told me to do shit. What was I gonna do? Cerberus brought me into this world, they’re like my mom now. Speaking of mom, Samara had me sitting there asking about every last aspect of her culture and heritage because I actually cared. Justicars are cool as hell and Mass Effect has got to have the coolest fictional lore of any universe because I was sitting there reading every codex entry, pointing out in-universe consistencies in my mind, and they went all in on fleshing the world out. The shadow broker’s computer has info on all your companions and allies, and you can see their internet history. It is very illuminating. Legion is a big gamer and Miranda goes on dating sites but asks for her matches’ medical history via PDF before conversing in any way. Weirdo!! Jack likes poetry which is why I rebounded with her, cus Ashley liked poetry too. Kasumi also wrote poetry but hers is cringy and I didn’t like her. And as much as I talked about many missions blending together, the ones that manage to rise above and overcome their genetic makeup to be varied and cool are amazing. Mostly the DLC stuff. The first half of the shadow broker Liara mission is amazing. The project overlord is amazing. Thane’s loyalty quest is amazing (and you don’t even shoot a single bullet in that one. Huh. Imagine that.) And same with Samara’s. That shit had enough melodrama and tight, witty dialogue to have the makings of an episode of suits on netflix.
The suicide mission at the end there is, by far, no holds barred, one of my favourite missions of any videogame i’ve played in my career. That thing had such palpable buildup throughout the whole game. The structure of the whole of mass effect 2 was finding people in this universe who are loyal or crazy enough to do that shit with you, and by the end you feel like you want everyone to make it. While I was doing it, every close call in a cutscene felt genuinely tense because I knew there were stakes and I knew this would carry over in ME3. Some parts had me flashing back and forth to my adventures with these crazy dorks. Heh. I remember last week I was checking up on Tali. I really didn’t like Tali in mass effect 1. She was really shallow and weak, and every word out of her mouth was about “her people” this or “her people” that. People make fun of me for dating Ashley who is just a teensy weensy bit racist but at least she has a personality. She’s racist, but Tali was just her race. Now? She’s probably my favourite character. She really came into her own and the expanded scope helped her be more fleshed out and less ‘Expository McTell-the-player-about-quarians-and-have-no-room-for-personality’. I could never romance her though, but I see her like a daughter. Which is really weird when mass effect did its mass effect thing and one of my random kind platonic dialogue options had Shepard say the nastiest grossest sex thing of all time. Which I walked back on in our next conversation. Phew, right? Saved? Not so much. You see, my friend who told me to play these games romanced Tali and I'm facing him in a heated bro code court battle right now. He agreed not to romance lae’zel, but now that I flirted with tali ACCIDENTALLY, he wants full rights to go after my baldur’s gate wife like it’s nothing. This is getting out of hand, this whole thing is playing out like an episode of suits on netflix.
Animal Jam
2010
bro i was such a stupid kid, i had no idea how accounts worked so i just made a new one every time i wanted to play. I must have had 100 wolf dudes tied to my mom's email
Gotham Knights
2022
Every young gamer had one dream. Just one. A co-op arkham game starring the batfamily, completely playable front to back in seamless multiplayer. Nothing ever really scratched the itch. Justice league heroes, no. DC universe online, no. Batman Arkham Origins multiplayer? … yes, but you had to pray to Jesus and God combined that you and your bro would get to play as Batman and robin. But when you did there was NOTHING I repeat NOTHING even 1% as fun in any videogame ever programmed.
In arkham origins multiplayer, two people would be batman and robin while the rest of the players would be standard goons fighting each other in a gang war on behalf of i think bane and joker. But you could be rushing to the frontlines to get more kills, and suddenly there’d be a shadow flying overhead. Instinctually, you shoot the sky where you saw it. You feel the paranoia. Your buddies are dropping like apples from a tree. And here come the fruit bats. You try to focus on shooting some clown henchmen as you’re suddenly and silently taken down… fuck. You finally understand the henchmen. But I don't wanna be a henchman. Did you go out to recess and pretend to be a henchman on patrol? No. You pretended to be batman, and nightwing, and batgirl, and red hood, and robin, and batwoman, and orphan, and spoiler, and the question, and the signal. EVERYONE wanted to be the signal. But as we grew older and playing outside became cringe, we were forced to play as henchmen and then as no one… when arkham origins online went offline.
Fade to black.
CUT TO: INT. DC Fandome. 2020.
Elkmane: Oh man! I can’t wait to play that game!
Elkmane’s friend: Me too
Elkmane: I hope it’s basically batman arkham knight but multiplayer
Elkmane’s friend: Me too
Note their unearned optimism. Their complete disregard for genie’s law. If something is your wish, it will be granted to you in the most twisted, dramatically ironic way possible. You’ll get your co op batfamily game alright. But first of all, it won’t be in the arkham universe. SECOND of all, batman will be dead.
Elkmane: But how? Batman ‘died’ in arkham knight. Why would you make a second universe just to use the same setup?
Shut up! Third of all, it’s gonna control terribly. It’s gonna be designed for controllers. Keyboard will make it weird for grappling and fine movement.
Elkmane: Why the fuck would I use a controller?
Exactly. Fourth of all, the customization will be fucking strange. Your armour will be one outfit, you can customize certain parts of it and the colour but if you have one style you like you’re gonna have to hope to find a high level version of it.
Elkmane’s friend: Can we at least get a transmog system?
Yes.
Elkmane’s friend: Oh thank god!
BUT it’s gonna be completely uncostomizable and each suit style will have the absolute ugliest colours and detail choices possible.
Elkmane: Whatever, i’ll just use the basic comic accurate suit. You at least have THAT, right?
Sure!
Elkmane’s friend: Aw yeah!
Just gotta pay 30 dollars for the DLC pack.
Elkmane: Whatever man! I don’t care! I don’t care if I look cool, I don’t care if the game is fun, I don’t care if it’s the most repetitive pile of dogshit in the world! Just let me enjoy this as a co-op game where the bat family can play off each other.
I mean, okay? I guess you can have two guys together during open world and the missions. But I’m gonna make it so that only the host shows up in the cutscenes, only the host can open doors, only the host can start missions, only the host can-
Elkmane’s friend: Wait wait wait, what? Only one person shows up in cutscenes?
Yeah
Elkmane: I thought this was a co-op game?
It is. The non-host just pops in after the cutscene ends. Ok i’m gonna end this script bit now. Every single turn I took in this game baffled me. Firstly, the structure. It isn’t like arkham or even other open world games. It operates on a strict nightly basis. Which is actually really cool. There’s only a set amount of crime that happens every night, it wont just infinitely repeat like spiderman or whatever. And it creates a unique loop where you go on “patrol” for the night. We’ve all had fantasies of going on patrol with others, just doing acrobatics across rooftops, sitting on the sides, having deep conversations while waiting for crime to happen. But when you’re out on this patrol, you can’t switch your weapons to anything that you find. You can craft as much as you like, mind you, but you can’t switch them out. So if you have an underleveled weapon, and you loot a high level one, you won’t be able to change. You can change your style. You can’t change into stuff you craft. It’s so, so, so needlessly odd. And I wanna expand on the transmog system. It completely defeats the point of having a transmog system. The only style I like for red hood is the style called year one. It’s basically a bog standard comic accurate red hood suit with the mask and the brown jacket and the black shirt and the red logo. I did not unlock the transmog for it. Even if I DID, it would have a black jacket and a brown shirt (???) so I just used this level 18 armour to when I was level 30 because I wanted to look cool and the game was really easy. There’s a red robin transmog for robin, but the colours are all wrong. Okay. Whatever, who cares about this miniscule clothing miscrap? How about the open world activities? The crimes?
Well, crimes all happen in set locations. Every time. Just different factions occupy them. The observatory always has a criminal stronghold, this park structure always has an organ harvesting thing, yada yada etc. It gets VERY old and repetitive, but for some odd reason me and my friend continued to do every single available crime every night. No clue why. It wasn’t fun. The combat isn’t really fun. The stealth is godawful. The stealth makes the combat look like sekiro. “Don’t treat it like arkham” they say. Why not? It’s just a much worse version. I’m willing to overlook so much, but the stealth layouts and combat design are so awful and your blueprint was RIGHT THERE. I would’ve been fine if they tried something new and missed. They just made a much blander version of arkham. The counters that kept the momentum going are replaced with easy as shit dodges to super telegraphed attacks. Combos are not emphasised, you should just pick an element and put all the weapon mods you want to make it build faster and hit them until the electric meter or ice meter or poison meter or fire meter gets full and they take big non lethal fire damage. Honestly, all the characters play the same mostly. They have different cooldown abilities which I forget exist half the time. That seems to be where they put their money on. The abilities, the skill trees that do shit like “10% more chance for a critical hit” or “7% increase of defense when your health is 60% or higher” like, ok man. In Arkham Asylum I can spray paint a wall with a bat symbol and wait for someone to walk by and then explode them. I can’t do that here. Arkham asylum came out in 1989.
I do wanna be a little easy on them tho. There is no chance in hell anyone is touching the arkham games. Those were lightning in a bottle. I have to keep reminding myself to be grateful that I exist at the same time as those games and can replay them whenever I want. Genuine marvels in every single way. Sure, there’s games like that everywhere now. But c’mon. I love insomniac spider-man as much as the next guy but none of those are EVER touching an arkham game. I don’t think anything ever will.
And to their credit, they got the batfamily dynamic and writing down. The story is pretty lame and the court of owls plotline is like, completely wasted, but when the batkids and alfred were talking and hanging out was pretty great. Each character has a personal quest, where they do their own little journey that isn’t really about fighting but about a little something called character development and emotions and love. Babs’s was my fav. The quest touches on a big theme of the game, succession. A lot of staple bat-things aren’t here anymore. No batcave, no batmobile, no batman, no commissioner gordon, no leslie thompkins. But we have to make room for the new guard. It also hits really hard during the current conversation around characters like spider-man, who seem to be stuck in a rut and not allowed to develop or grow past 23. The villains are ancient societies trying to cling to the past and extend their lives. This game has fun ideas, especially how unlike most batman adaptations it’s not afraid of the supernatural and goofy end of the comic world. Jason has magic lazarus jumps. Yes. He’s a superhero. Ok? He can do that. He came back to life with magic lazarus juice and now he has magic lazarus jump. It’s sweet. That’s why it’s such a shame you and your friend’s character couldn’t interact in cutscenes during missions. That’s my #1 absolute biggest complaint. I mean, okay, you’re saving resources or whatever. But how many combinations are there between 4 characters? How much dialogue does the partner character need? Host could have all the lines, at LEAST have the other guy in the background, completely mute. I felt bad for my friend. Sometimes we got different cutscenes with our own characters in it and we had to tell each other what our character said. It's so, so weird. It’s not like they skimped out on the amount of lines. My friend was AFK once while we were in the belfry, and there was CONSTANT conversation about the cases we were taking during our place in the game. It was so natural. It was like an unscripted discussion between two dudes talking about the game and what they should do next (albeit taking it a little seriously). And I only saw it because my friend was urinating. They put that there so it wouldn’t feel hollow when you were just chilling out in there. There’s so much effort put in certain parts of this game and absolutely none in others.
For example, this is a looter game. You get loot from chests and enemy drops. But there wasn’t any point I wasn’t able to craft every single blueprint I had. I always had up to date gear, I just had to go to the belfry and craft and equip the new stuff. The armour mods make it so low level stuff can still work higher levels if you want it to. So why even make it a looter if the looting mechanics are so … automated? I don’t even know what word to use to describe it. It’s like, if I wasn’t told that there were all these crafting materials I wouldn’t even know. I would just see the crafting menu as the stuff I unlocked. It’s so oddly designed. But on the other hand there’s awesome stuff, like the side quests. Clayface, Harley, and Mr Freeze. You have to investigate their shit in the open world and do these scripted quests that are like DCUO on duty missions and these scripted segments were a lot better than most of the rest of the game. Chasing Clayface through the streets as he sticks onto passing trucks, or multitasking through Harley’s crazy ass panic inducing games, it’s just so AWESOME sometimes. That’s why although it seems like i’m ripping this game apart, I just can’t say I didn’t like it.
At the end of the day, when I see two enemies and I say to my bro I’ll take the one on the left, and we both do synchronized stealth takedowns, do you really think you’ll be worried about all the other shit? All's right with the world. Everything is gonna be okay.
Elkmane’s friend: You can say that again.
Elkmane: I hope you elksters enjoyed the review. I may be retiring soon, so enjoy it while you can.
In arkham origins multiplayer, two people would be batman and robin while the rest of the players would be standard goons fighting each other in a gang war on behalf of i think bane and joker. But you could be rushing to the frontlines to get more kills, and suddenly there’d be a shadow flying overhead. Instinctually, you shoot the sky where you saw it. You feel the paranoia. Your buddies are dropping like apples from a tree. And here come the fruit bats. You try to focus on shooting some clown henchmen as you’re suddenly and silently taken down… fuck. You finally understand the henchmen. But I don't wanna be a henchman. Did you go out to recess and pretend to be a henchman on patrol? No. You pretended to be batman, and nightwing, and batgirl, and red hood, and robin, and batwoman, and orphan, and spoiler, and the question, and the signal. EVERYONE wanted to be the signal. But as we grew older and playing outside became cringe, we were forced to play as henchmen and then as no one… when arkham origins online went offline.
Fade to black.
CUT TO: INT. DC Fandome. 2020.
Elkmane: Oh man! I can’t wait to play that game!
Elkmane’s friend: Me too
Elkmane: I hope it’s basically batman arkham knight but multiplayer
Elkmane’s friend: Me too
Note their unearned optimism. Their complete disregard for genie’s law. If something is your wish, it will be granted to you in the most twisted, dramatically ironic way possible. You’ll get your co op batfamily game alright. But first of all, it won’t be in the arkham universe. SECOND of all, batman will be dead.
Elkmane: But how? Batman ‘died’ in arkham knight. Why would you make a second universe just to use the same setup?
Shut up! Third of all, it’s gonna control terribly. It’s gonna be designed for controllers. Keyboard will make it weird for grappling and fine movement.
Elkmane: Why the fuck would I use a controller?
Exactly. Fourth of all, the customization will be fucking strange. Your armour will be one outfit, you can customize certain parts of it and the colour but if you have one style you like you’re gonna have to hope to find a high level version of it.
Elkmane’s friend: Can we at least get a transmog system?
Yes.
Elkmane’s friend: Oh thank god!
BUT it’s gonna be completely uncostomizable and each suit style will have the absolute ugliest colours and detail choices possible.
Elkmane: Whatever, i’ll just use the basic comic accurate suit. You at least have THAT, right?
Sure!
Elkmane’s friend: Aw yeah!
Just gotta pay 30 dollars for the DLC pack.
Elkmane: Whatever man! I don’t care! I don’t care if I look cool, I don’t care if the game is fun, I don’t care if it’s the most repetitive pile of dogshit in the world! Just let me enjoy this as a co-op game where the bat family can play off each other.
I mean, okay? I guess you can have two guys together during open world and the missions. But I’m gonna make it so that only the host shows up in the cutscenes, only the host can open doors, only the host can start missions, only the host can-
Elkmane’s friend: Wait wait wait, what? Only one person shows up in cutscenes?
Yeah
Elkmane: I thought this was a co-op game?
It is. The non-host just pops in after the cutscene ends. Ok i’m gonna end this script bit now. Every single turn I took in this game baffled me. Firstly, the structure. It isn’t like arkham or even other open world games. It operates on a strict nightly basis. Which is actually really cool. There’s only a set amount of crime that happens every night, it wont just infinitely repeat like spiderman or whatever. And it creates a unique loop where you go on “patrol” for the night. We’ve all had fantasies of going on patrol with others, just doing acrobatics across rooftops, sitting on the sides, having deep conversations while waiting for crime to happen. But when you’re out on this patrol, you can’t switch your weapons to anything that you find. You can craft as much as you like, mind you, but you can’t switch them out. So if you have an underleveled weapon, and you loot a high level one, you won’t be able to change. You can change your style. You can’t change into stuff you craft. It’s so, so, so needlessly odd. And I wanna expand on the transmog system. It completely defeats the point of having a transmog system. The only style I like for red hood is the style called year one. It’s basically a bog standard comic accurate red hood suit with the mask and the brown jacket and the black shirt and the red logo. I did not unlock the transmog for it. Even if I DID, it would have a black jacket and a brown shirt (???) so I just used this level 18 armour to when I was level 30 because I wanted to look cool and the game was really easy. There’s a red robin transmog for robin, but the colours are all wrong. Okay. Whatever, who cares about this miniscule clothing miscrap? How about the open world activities? The crimes?
Well, crimes all happen in set locations. Every time. Just different factions occupy them. The observatory always has a criminal stronghold, this park structure always has an organ harvesting thing, yada yada etc. It gets VERY old and repetitive, but for some odd reason me and my friend continued to do every single available crime every night. No clue why. It wasn’t fun. The combat isn’t really fun. The stealth is godawful. The stealth makes the combat look like sekiro. “Don’t treat it like arkham” they say. Why not? It’s just a much worse version. I’m willing to overlook so much, but the stealth layouts and combat design are so awful and your blueprint was RIGHT THERE. I would’ve been fine if they tried something new and missed. They just made a much blander version of arkham. The counters that kept the momentum going are replaced with easy as shit dodges to super telegraphed attacks. Combos are not emphasised, you should just pick an element and put all the weapon mods you want to make it build faster and hit them until the electric meter or ice meter or poison meter or fire meter gets full and they take big non lethal fire damage. Honestly, all the characters play the same mostly. They have different cooldown abilities which I forget exist half the time. That seems to be where they put their money on. The abilities, the skill trees that do shit like “10% more chance for a critical hit” or “7% increase of defense when your health is 60% or higher” like, ok man. In Arkham Asylum I can spray paint a wall with a bat symbol and wait for someone to walk by and then explode them. I can’t do that here. Arkham asylum came out in 1989.
I do wanna be a little easy on them tho. There is no chance in hell anyone is touching the arkham games. Those were lightning in a bottle. I have to keep reminding myself to be grateful that I exist at the same time as those games and can replay them whenever I want. Genuine marvels in every single way. Sure, there’s games like that everywhere now. But c’mon. I love insomniac spider-man as much as the next guy but none of those are EVER touching an arkham game. I don’t think anything ever will.
And to their credit, they got the batfamily dynamic and writing down. The story is pretty lame and the court of owls plotline is like, completely wasted, but when the batkids and alfred were talking and hanging out was pretty great. Each character has a personal quest, where they do their own little journey that isn’t really about fighting but about a little something called character development and emotions and love. Babs’s was my fav. The quest touches on a big theme of the game, succession. A lot of staple bat-things aren’t here anymore. No batcave, no batmobile, no batman, no commissioner gordon, no leslie thompkins. But we have to make room for the new guard. It also hits really hard during the current conversation around characters like spider-man, who seem to be stuck in a rut and not allowed to develop or grow past 23. The villains are ancient societies trying to cling to the past and extend their lives. This game has fun ideas, especially how unlike most batman adaptations it’s not afraid of the supernatural and goofy end of the comic world. Jason has magic lazarus jumps. Yes. He’s a superhero. Ok? He can do that. He came back to life with magic lazarus juice and now he has magic lazarus jump. It’s sweet. That’s why it’s such a shame you and your friend’s character couldn’t interact in cutscenes during missions. That’s my #1 absolute biggest complaint. I mean, okay, you’re saving resources or whatever. But how many combinations are there between 4 characters? How much dialogue does the partner character need? Host could have all the lines, at LEAST have the other guy in the background, completely mute. I felt bad for my friend. Sometimes we got different cutscenes with our own characters in it and we had to tell each other what our character said. It's so, so weird. It’s not like they skimped out on the amount of lines. My friend was AFK once while we were in the belfry, and there was CONSTANT conversation about the cases we were taking during our place in the game. It was so natural. It was like an unscripted discussion between two dudes talking about the game and what they should do next (albeit taking it a little seriously). And I only saw it because my friend was urinating. They put that there so it wouldn’t feel hollow when you were just chilling out in there. There’s so much effort put in certain parts of this game and absolutely none in others.
For example, this is a looter game. You get loot from chests and enemy drops. But there wasn’t any point I wasn’t able to craft every single blueprint I had. I always had up to date gear, I just had to go to the belfry and craft and equip the new stuff. The armour mods make it so low level stuff can still work higher levels if you want it to. So why even make it a looter if the looting mechanics are so … automated? I don’t even know what word to use to describe it. It’s like, if I wasn’t told that there were all these crafting materials I wouldn’t even know. I would just see the crafting menu as the stuff I unlocked. It’s so oddly designed. But on the other hand there’s awesome stuff, like the side quests. Clayface, Harley, and Mr Freeze. You have to investigate their shit in the open world and do these scripted quests that are like DCUO on duty missions and these scripted segments were a lot better than most of the rest of the game. Chasing Clayface through the streets as he sticks onto passing trucks, or multitasking through Harley’s crazy ass panic inducing games, it’s just so AWESOME sometimes. That’s why although it seems like i’m ripping this game apart, I just can’t say I didn’t like it.
At the end of the day, when I see two enemies and I say to my bro I’ll take the one on the left, and we both do synchronized stealth takedowns, do you really think you’ll be worried about all the other shit? All's right with the world. Everything is gonna be okay.
Elkmane’s friend: You can say that again.
Elkmane: I hope you elksters enjoyed the review. I may be retiring soon, so enjoy it while you can.
Mortal Kombat 1
2023
Such a shame that NetherRealm lost to the woke mind virus. I used to admire their commitment to one of the highest values of conservatism: treating workers like shit
This review contains spoilers
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - The Expose: A Surgical Summer
By Elkmane
ok everyone it's been a while since i've done a proper review. But i'm addy'd up and ready to deconstruct the very notion of what a videogame review can be to show you guys what i like to call my expose. (e with an accent) because after this review you will all see this game is not good. This isn't a matter of opinions, or tastes, or any of that. I don't think that comes into play with my opinions. I will deliver facts so devastating that the most adoring fanboy will become a vengeful hater. I don't do this out of anger or disappointment, This game improves on the first zelda in a few ways. I'll get to it. That's part of the review deconstruction i've talked about. I’m inventing something called “post structuralism.” I may be on a new frontier for criticism but I'll stay humble about it for now. This was the intro paragraph. Yes i'm doing paragraphs. This is gonna be a longy. You’re gonna think this is the harshest 3.5/5 review you ever heard. But I’ve been reviewing games for YEARS now. Probably longer than you, rookie, so step out of the way and let me do my job. Capisce? okay.
Now every good review starts with a beginning.
First Chapter: personal stuff, AKA origin story
Zelda breath of the wild was given to me as a gift as I recovered from a botched surgery. The only thing I did all day every day was stay home, eat crappy self cooked steak and play breath of the wild. I had a lot of fun. But I'm not here for your tears, please don’t feel bad for me because I had a botched surgery. It really wasn’t that bad. I’m strong and I was ok. Good thing it won’t happen again. [Pause] The thing is, I decided to replay it and found my appreciation really dropped off a cliff when A. the novelty wears off and B. when you’ve done everything there is to do, just getting on and fighting monsters wasn’t fun. Combat was boring because there was no enemy variety and the base mechanics were extremely simple and there was one overwhelmingly powerful stratagem that you could use no matter what on every single encounter and it’d be the most efficient thing to do (its flurry rush.) Yeah, I guess you could use balloons and stasis and trees and rocks to make a super high iq trap to do a quarter of the damage in one very situational situation, but really there’s no point. Everything else about the game was good though. There were a lot of fun things to find, the structure meant you could skip every main checkpoint, do whatever you feel like you want, and go to the final boss. Well, the dungeons in botw sucked but this isn’t a botw review. What I mean is once you were off the plateau that was it. There’s nothing else for you to get. That was good. Because I hate games where I'm 6 hours in and I'm still getting tutorials (like this game I'm playing called Shadow of Rome) and I liked that they knew their strengths and weaknesses. They didn’t have a good story so they were like fuck it we made a little skeleton story and u can go find it if u want. The actual finding of those memory cutscenes was more rewarding than the actual cutscene, but even then you were so starved for info on the main plot that it was kind of intriguing despite the diabetes writing. The way they built it, the world revolved around me (Link) and I was the hero. I didn’t follow anyone, and the simplicity was simple! That takes care of my origin story. Off to the next chapter.
Second Chapter: Dawn of The Day of Defeat
I was so sodding excited! I went all the way to the mall, I waited in line and bought the game along with a pair of joy cons cus my left one had drift. I spent hundreds of dollars on all that purchase. Can you believe that? I ended up using those joycons TWICE! TWICE! I had a knockoff pro controller and I never undocked it cause I don't wanna go outside with my switch! I’m not trying to get robbed. Anyways, I went home, I started playing and BLAM giant wall of disappointment right off the bat! (this ones a shorter chapter. Sry yaul.)
Third Chapter: The Day of Defeat
I told myself in the bathroom mirror before I started writing this review that I’d try to refer to breath of the wild as little as possible. So I'll compare it to another member of the “of the” series. The opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark was the perfect tutorial, I mean opening scene, to the point many would consider it the best part of the game. I mean movie. It was perfect and showing the tone for the rest of the … product. You can ignore everything and rush the objectives to get off the area, and it’s the only place where you ever feel railroaded into a hallway. But at the end of the day it’s done and over before it begins. There’s minimal contact with the other character, and when his true allegiance is revealed , it’s interesting, and after that you’re already out of there. Meanwhile the intro for tears of the kingdom is some draggy ass shit. It’s three times as long and half of it is robots slowly and boringly explaining zonaite and whatever energy thingies, and I can honestly say I did not really think about zonaite for most of my playthrough. This is indicative of a larger problem I’ll touch on later. I’ll come back to it. I will. And once you’re finished with the original island, you’re still not done with your tutorial. You don’t get the glider before you leave. You’re SUPPOSED to go to the main town place, but I didn’t go there. So I played the first 5 hours and did the zora part without a glider. Yes, it’s awesome and a little stupid of me, but I can’t be the only one. The world is open and I’m immediately supposed to go from 8 hours of monologuing robots to more story shit? No I just wanna fuck around in the open world!!! God!! I guess it’s about time we talk about the meat of the game.
Fourth Chapter: Lot of Meat
Firstly, the rune powers are changed. RIP Stasis, RIP bombs, this new array of powers is pretty good though. Rewind and ascend are lame, rewind especially, and ascend always just feels cheesy to use, but the combiner and the telekinesis are cool. Telekinesis just fixed my issue with magnetism, which was that there weren't enough metal objects in the game. And the fuser was this game’s most remarkable attempt at fixing the combat. Maybe second most, because this game actually has a lot more kinds of monsters to fight. And that’s a perfect segue for my giant spine in this review skeleton I'm making. I hereby argue that this game tries to fix the issues of its predecessor by adding and piling on more mechanics, instead of restructuring the foundation, but said new things often don’t mesh together or cooperate with other mechanics to create that organic seamless physics and combat system that everyone likes. Basically, it’s clunky! Add more and more on top of the egg noodles and ketchup , but at the end of the day it’s still waiting for an attack and jumping and flurry rushing, there’s just more stuff on top to navigate around or add onto your fork. Sorry for the food analogy. I read somewhere that food analogies are for bad writers but I wanted to make a goodfellas reference. Plus the chapter name… duh… anyways… yes, the fuse mechanic was the most amazing addition to the game if you ask me. In the last game you’d inevitably have a shitton of random herbs and fruits and crap you’d never cook because no one ever needs “electric resistance” potions. Now you can stick that waste onto your arrows or your sword or shield and it’s AWESOME. Ice attachments break the game a little but it’s fine, breaking the game is ok as long as I’m ok with it. This really made enemy encounters more dynamic. You could do more shit, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, that shit was as effective, if not MORE effective than the egg noodles and ketchup! The other big thing, which was heavily marketed (i dont know, I didnt watch any trailers) was the ability to make machines and contraptions and stuff. I felt this was kind of cool. Making a car or a flying machine like da vinci will be cool forever. But you can only really do it where the developer intends. Yea, you can get the little balls that make them portable, but I didn’t use them much so did it really count? If machines are needed for a puzzle solution, there will be 8 of each part scattered around the area. You walk into a room and there’s a rat shaped hole in the wall. Sure, you could use a stick of play-do to make a clay rat and put it in there, but why not pick up one of the actual rats in the corner of that room? Don’t get me wrong. There are cool puzzle solutions the devs didn’t account for. In the lava dungeon i got into one room by throwing a freeze bomb at the lava (somehow it freezes) and floating on the ice platform until I got underneath the room and then ascending up into it. Cool eh? Yeah, it’s cool. But don’t you show me some twitter clip of a japanese dude making a tank and beating a boss in 30 seconds. Don’t. I won’t look at it and it doesn’t count. Quick topic change, do you remember the ghost warrior guy abilities you got in BOTW? The shield, Revali’s gale, the lightning circle, and the full health revive? Yeah they made you OP as shit, but didn’t you like how unobtrusive and convenient they were? What if, instead of the abilities being expertly woven into the control scheme, you had ghosts of these characters follow you around sometimes, they’d appear whenever they thought they wanted to be let out of your finger pokeball, and walk around willy nilly. To use their power you’d have to walk up to them, tap them, and tap them again. They usually clump around, so try not to activate the three others in the 17 and a half button presses it takes to use one of them. This was such a huge point of frustration for me, and I had all the sages off except for Tulin for the whole game and I only used him for gliding. The game’s giant pile of new mechanics means every button press has 7 actions it could possibly cause depending on what’s near you, what you’re wearing, the phase of the moon, and if your lockon wants to target the dude in front of you or the random bat 6 nautical meters away. Actions like trying to fuse something onto your shield or sword in the middle of a fight can be tough, because if you press it wrong now you have a +40 damage thing on your shield that’s completely useless and irreversible. Am I gonna blame it all on being built around controller usage instead of keyboard and mouse? …………………… no, I won’t. Some games actually play fine on the controller. And considering some people are calling this the game of the year then yeah I say it’s fair I ask it to have decent controller controls. Overall consensus on the meat? Some good, some bad. Unlike chapter five. Spoiler alert: Some bad, some… worse…. What’s worse than bad you may ask… hehehehehehhehee…. EVIL!
Chapter Five: Bad And Evil
The story, the cutscenes, the quests, and some such of the sort. What do I have to say about them? Well, quite frankly, it’s not good at all. The story is very bad. The last game's story was also bad, but they knew that and they kept it minimal. They kept it to the side. They had to serve you a meal of human meat and they presented it like a trail of blood, a manageable cool murder mystery. This game has an ice bucket challenge filled with gore and guts and giblets. Sorry for the food analogy again. The cutscenes were unbearably boring, and every time there was some scene of the story that was happening without you and which did not affect you in any way I would really really contemplate skipping. And what’s worse, these cutscenes were rewards for finding them out in the world. Not in the cool way of finding a location where an image was taken, but by going to these giant eyesore nazca lines and walking around it until you find a puddle. They took out the fun of finding it and the fun of the reward from this whole process. And the boss fights are all mostly pretty big improvements, if just the spectacle. The only boss fight I’d consider good mechanically is the human demon king ganondorf, whose third phase has just about the only new idea for combat in like, the whole game. Yeah, you flurry rush him, but he dodges your first flurry rush and you have to dodge again and NOW you can flurry rush. It’s not artorias or anything but it was probably the best boss fight. And then after that it’s oooh giant dragons, and a reskin of the wind temple boss where it’s all a huge spectacle but all you do is go to the glowing hole and hit the balls three times.
Chapter Six: Outro
Yeah, I think this game and the last both work better when your character is barely scraping by. It really lends itself to self induced challenges. My most memorable moment in this game was doing the lurelin village freedom quest, which I remember forcing myself to use no armour and no healing at all for the whole thing. It took so many tries, but in the end i remember finishing them off and feeling such a thrill and pride that was so alien in my 100+ hours on this game. You have to make yourself have fun in this game, which yeah every game is like that, but usually the game is the one helping you have fun, not holding you back. Well, about now i’m feeling bad for writing such a mean review. And if you have nothing nice to say then say nothing at all. So i’m going to chatgpt this and ask it to make the review worded more politely and more kindly. Brb.
Ok I'm back and I didn’t like it. It was really boring and it cut out the whole Indiana Jones part. I’ll just try and be a little gentler going forward. I don’t hate this game. I don’t like hating things. I gave this a positive score! Just try and understand, I really really really wanted to like this game. I never want to hate anything. I always wanna like stuff. That’s the dream, liking everything. But I just can’t help my patrician tastes. Yknow guys this has been my most personal review to date. It’s like my autobiography or something. Do you remember when I said I had a botched surgery in 2017 before I played zelda? Well I had a botched surgery in august of this year, yeah I know my SECOND ONE!! And I was excited for history to loop around again and I’d get on zelda and start enjoying it like the olden days!! But instead I found that my motivation to do anything had stopped. I got on, walked around, tried to explore but there was nothing fun to do, really. Every puzzle basically solved itself and while the combat was fun, I was so drained from doing the crappy dungeons (except for the desert one, that dungeon was fun) and not finding anything substantial in the overworld that I just kind of stopped playing. Instead, my recovery was assisted by seasons 5-11 of AMC’s The Walking Dead. Maybe that’s why I hated the story of the game so much, because I was experiencing peak writing at the same time. No, I don’t hate games and I haven’t grown out of it. I just played House of the Dead, another entry of the “of the” series and it was cool. So I guess this one just didn’t really work for me. Sorry, everyone. I told you this would be rough.. But thanks for sticking with me to the end of my review. Thanks to my patrons who keep the lights on and thanks to my surgeons for never getting it right with me. Goodbye for now guys. Off to game some more.
By Elkmane
ok everyone it's been a while since i've done a proper review. But i'm addy'd up and ready to deconstruct the very notion of what a videogame review can be to show you guys what i like to call my expose. (e with an accent) because after this review you will all see this game is not good. This isn't a matter of opinions, or tastes, or any of that. I don't think that comes into play with my opinions. I will deliver facts so devastating that the most adoring fanboy will become a vengeful hater. I don't do this out of anger or disappointment, This game improves on the first zelda in a few ways. I'll get to it. That's part of the review deconstruction i've talked about. I’m inventing something called “post structuralism.” I may be on a new frontier for criticism but I'll stay humble about it for now. This was the intro paragraph. Yes i'm doing paragraphs. This is gonna be a longy. You’re gonna think this is the harshest 3.5/5 review you ever heard. But I’ve been reviewing games for YEARS now. Probably longer than you, rookie, so step out of the way and let me do my job. Capisce? okay.
Now every good review starts with a beginning.
First Chapter: personal stuff, AKA origin story
Zelda breath of the wild was given to me as a gift as I recovered from a botched surgery. The only thing I did all day every day was stay home, eat crappy self cooked steak and play breath of the wild. I had a lot of fun. But I'm not here for your tears, please don’t feel bad for me because I had a botched surgery. It really wasn’t that bad. I’m strong and I was ok. Good thing it won’t happen again. [Pause] The thing is, I decided to replay it and found my appreciation really dropped off a cliff when A. the novelty wears off and B. when you’ve done everything there is to do, just getting on and fighting monsters wasn’t fun. Combat was boring because there was no enemy variety and the base mechanics were extremely simple and there was one overwhelmingly powerful stratagem that you could use no matter what on every single encounter and it’d be the most efficient thing to do (its flurry rush.) Yeah, I guess you could use balloons and stasis and trees and rocks to make a super high iq trap to do a quarter of the damage in one very situational situation, but really there’s no point. Everything else about the game was good though. There were a lot of fun things to find, the structure meant you could skip every main checkpoint, do whatever you feel like you want, and go to the final boss. Well, the dungeons in botw sucked but this isn’t a botw review. What I mean is once you were off the plateau that was it. There’s nothing else for you to get. That was good. Because I hate games where I'm 6 hours in and I'm still getting tutorials (like this game I'm playing called Shadow of Rome) and I liked that they knew their strengths and weaknesses. They didn’t have a good story so they were like fuck it we made a little skeleton story and u can go find it if u want. The actual finding of those memory cutscenes was more rewarding than the actual cutscene, but even then you were so starved for info on the main plot that it was kind of intriguing despite the diabetes writing. The way they built it, the world revolved around me (Link) and I was the hero. I didn’t follow anyone, and the simplicity was simple! That takes care of my origin story. Off to the next chapter.
Second Chapter: Dawn of The Day of Defeat
I was so sodding excited! I went all the way to the mall, I waited in line and bought the game along with a pair of joy cons cus my left one had drift. I spent hundreds of dollars on all that purchase. Can you believe that? I ended up using those joycons TWICE! TWICE! I had a knockoff pro controller and I never undocked it cause I don't wanna go outside with my switch! I’m not trying to get robbed. Anyways, I went home, I started playing and BLAM giant wall of disappointment right off the bat! (this ones a shorter chapter. Sry yaul.)
Third Chapter: The Day of Defeat
I told myself in the bathroom mirror before I started writing this review that I’d try to refer to breath of the wild as little as possible. So I'll compare it to another member of the “of the” series. The opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark was the perfect tutorial, I mean opening scene, to the point many would consider it the best part of the game. I mean movie. It was perfect and showing the tone for the rest of the … product. You can ignore everything and rush the objectives to get off the area, and it’s the only place where you ever feel railroaded into a hallway. But at the end of the day it’s done and over before it begins. There’s minimal contact with the other character, and when his true allegiance is revealed , it’s interesting, and after that you’re already out of there. Meanwhile the intro for tears of the kingdom is some draggy ass shit. It’s three times as long and half of it is robots slowly and boringly explaining zonaite and whatever energy thingies, and I can honestly say I did not really think about zonaite for most of my playthrough. This is indicative of a larger problem I’ll touch on later. I’ll come back to it. I will. And once you’re finished with the original island, you’re still not done with your tutorial. You don’t get the glider before you leave. You’re SUPPOSED to go to the main town place, but I didn’t go there. So I played the first 5 hours and did the zora part without a glider. Yes, it’s awesome and a little stupid of me, but I can’t be the only one. The world is open and I’m immediately supposed to go from 8 hours of monologuing robots to more story shit? No I just wanna fuck around in the open world!!! God!! I guess it’s about time we talk about the meat of the game.
Fourth Chapter: Lot of Meat
Firstly, the rune powers are changed. RIP Stasis, RIP bombs, this new array of powers is pretty good though. Rewind and ascend are lame, rewind especially, and ascend always just feels cheesy to use, but the combiner and the telekinesis are cool. Telekinesis just fixed my issue with magnetism, which was that there weren't enough metal objects in the game. And the fuser was this game’s most remarkable attempt at fixing the combat. Maybe second most, because this game actually has a lot more kinds of monsters to fight. And that’s a perfect segue for my giant spine in this review skeleton I'm making. I hereby argue that this game tries to fix the issues of its predecessor by adding and piling on more mechanics, instead of restructuring the foundation, but said new things often don’t mesh together or cooperate with other mechanics to create that organic seamless physics and combat system that everyone likes. Basically, it’s clunky! Add more and more on top of the egg noodles and ketchup , but at the end of the day it’s still waiting for an attack and jumping and flurry rushing, there’s just more stuff on top to navigate around or add onto your fork. Sorry for the food analogy. I read somewhere that food analogies are for bad writers but I wanted to make a goodfellas reference. Plus the chapter name… duh… anyways… yes, the fuse mechanic was the most amazing addition to the game if you ask me. In the last game you’d inevitably have a shitton of random herbs and fruits and crap you’d never cook because no one ever needs “electric resistance” potions. Now you can stick that waste onto your arrows or your sword or shield and it’s AWESOME. Ice attachments break the game a little but it’s fine, breaking the game is ok as long as I’m ok with it. This really made enemy encounters more dynamic. You could do more shit, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, that shit was as effective, if not MORE effective than the egg noodles and ketchup! The other big thing, which was heavily marketed (i dont know, I didnt watch any trailers) was the ability to make machines and contraptions and stuff. I felt this was kind of cool. Making a car or a flying machine like da vinci will be cool forever. But you can only really do it where the developer intends. Yea, you can get the little balls that make them portable, but I didn’t use them much so did it really count? If machines are needed for a puzzle solution, there will be 8 of each part scattered around the area. You walk into a room and there’s a rat shaped hole in the wall. Sure, you could use a stick of play-do to make a clay rat and put it in there, but why not pick up one of the actual rats in the corner of that room? Don’t get me wrong. There are cool puzzle solutions the devs didn’t account for. In the lava dungeon i got into one room by throwing a freeze bomb at the lava (somehow it freezes) and floating on the ice platform until I got underneath the room and then ascending up into it. Cool eh? Yeah, it’s cool. But don’t you show me some twitter clip of a japanese dude making a tank and beating a boss in 30 seconds. Don’t. I won’t look at it and it doesn’t count. Quick topic change, do you remember the ghost warrior guy abilities you got in BOTW? The shield, Revali’s gale, the lightning circle, and the full health revive? Yeah they made you OP as shit, but didn’t you like how unobtrusive and convenient they were? What if, instead of the abilities being expertly woven into the control scheme, you had ghosts of these characters follow you around sometimes, they’d appear whenever they thought they wanted to be let out of your finger pokeball, and walk around willy nilly. To use their power you’d have to walk up to them, tap them, and tap them again. They usually clump around, so try not to activate the three others in the 17 and a half button presses it takes to use one of them. This was such a huge point of frustration for me, and I had all the sages off except for Tulin for the whole game and I only used him for gliding. The game’s giant pile of new mechanics means every button press has 7 actions it could possibly cause depending on what’s near you, what you’re wearing, the phase of the moon, and if your lockon wants to target the dude in front of you or the random bat 6 nautical meters away. Actions like trying to fuse something onto your shield or sword in the middle of a fight can be tough, because if you press it wrong now you have a +40 damage thing on your shield that’s completely useless and irreversible. Am I gonna blame it all on being built around controller usage instead of keyboard and mouse? …………………… no, I won’t. Some games actually play fine on the controller. And considering some people are calling this the game of the year then yeah I say it’s fair I ask it to have decent controller controls. Overall consensus on the meat? Some good, some bad. Unlike chapter five. Spoiler alert: Some bad, some… worse…. What’s worse than bad you may ask… hehehehehehhehee…. EVIL!
Chapter Five: Bad And Evil
The story, the cutscenes, the quests, and some such of the sort. What do I have to say about them? Well, quite frankly, it’s not good at all. The story is very bad. The last game's story was also bad, but they knew that and they kept it minimal. They kept it to the side. They had to serve you a meal of human meat and they presented it like a trail of blood, a manageable cool murder mystery. This game has an ice bucket challenge filled with gore and guts and giblets. Sorry for the food analogy again. The cutscenes were unbearably boring, and every time there was some scene of the story that was happening without you and which did not affect you in any way I would really really contemplate skipping. And what’s worse, these cutscenes were rewards for finding them out in the world. Not in the cool way of finding a location where an image was taken, but by going to these giant eyesore nazca lines and walking around it until you find a puddle. They took out the fun of finding it and the fun of the reward from this whole process. And the boss fights are all mostly pretty big improvements, if just the spectacle. The only boss fight I’d consider good mechanically is the human demon king ganondorf, whose third phase has just about the only new idea for combat in like, the whole game. Yeah, you flurry rush him, but he dodges your first flurry rush and you have to dodge again and NOW you can flurry rush. It’s not artorias or anything but it was probably the best boss fight. And then after that it’s oooh giant dragons, and a reskin of the wind temple boss where it’s all a huge spectacle but all you do is go to the glowing hole and hit the balls three times.
Chapter Six: Outro
Yeah, I think this game and the last both work better when your character is barely scraping by. It really lends itself to self induced challenges. My most memorable moment in this game was doing the lurelin village freedom quest, which I remember forcing myself to use no armour and no healing at all for the whole thing. It took so many tries, but in the end i remember finishing them off and feeling such a thrill and pride that was so alien in my 100+ hours on this game. You have to make yourself have fun in this game, which yeah every game is like that, but usually the game is the one helping you have fun, not holding you back. Well, about now i’m feeling bad for writing such a mean review. And if you have nothing nice to say then say nothing at all. So i’m going to chatgpt this and ask it to make the review worded more politely and more kindly. Brb.
Ok I'm back and I didn’t like it. It was really boring and it cut out the whole Indiana Jones part. I’ll just try and be a little gentler going forward. I don’t hate this game. I don’t like hating things. I gave this a positive score! Just try and understand, I really really really wanted to like this game. I never want to hate anything. I always wanna like stuff. That’s the dream, liking everything. But I just can’t help my patrician tastes. Yknow guys this has been my most personal review to date. It’s like my autobiography or something. Do you remember when I said I had a botched surgery in 2017 before I played zelda? Well I had a botched surgery in august of this year, yeah I know my SECOND ONE!! And I was excited for history to loop around again and I’d get on zelda and start enjoying it like the olden days!! But instead I found that my motivation to do anything had stopped. I got on, walked around, tried to explore but there was nothing fun to do, really. Every puzzle basically solved itself and while the combat was fun, I was so drained from doing the crappy dungeons (except for the desert one, that dungeon was fun) and not finding anything substantial in the overworld that I just kind of stopped playing. Instead, my recovery was assisted by seasons 5-11 of AMC’s The Walking Dead. Maybe that’s why I hated the story of the game so much, because I was experiencing peak writing at the same time. No, I don’t hate games and I haven’t grown out of it. I just played House of the Dead, another entry of the “of the” series and it was cool. So I guess this one just didn’t really work for me. Sorry, everyone. I told you this would be rough.. But thanks for sticking with me to the end of my review. Thanks to my patrons who keep the lights on and thanks to my surgeons for never getting it right with me. Goodbye for now guys. Off to game some more.
I’m already a human, dumbass
Starfield
2023
My mom asked if the dishes were done and I yelled "BETHESDA!"
She hugged me. She knew they were washed.
She hugged me. She knew they were washed.
"I'm going to fucking kill myself" were the words I found myself uttering over and over while I played this game.
Coming off of the third game you'd expect Devil May Cry 4 to be much better than it is. Enter NERO. Moody and arrogant, in essence he is HIM. You know I had a really funny joke regarding Nero but it's too funny and I'm absurdly proud of it so I'm going to save it for later and don't you fucking dare say that it probably wasn't gonna be funny it absolutely fucking is everyone I've told it to has laughed at it fuck you. Anyways this kind of thing is exactly what DMC4, it set ups tons of things which make you feel like this will be "peak peak goatly goat raw fire", you kill demons in the first level that banger of a soundtrack comes in and you are getting into the grove of playing as Nero and just when you've had enough of the foreplay the game rips your nuts apart by having dogshit level design and enemies which range from mediocre to annoying
Devil Bringer is really something I felt was missing in DMC3, a way to bridge the gap between you and the enemies outside of mashing Stinger. The game is smart with it as almost every enemy in the game feels like they're designed with Devil Bringer in mind, right down to the bosses. Speaking of which, how are they bosses? Well they start off all right and it all goes downhill when I got to Mission 6 and went "oh my god this is so dogshit". Agnus can SHOVE those fucking swords UP HIS ASSHOLE and fiddle them around like a fucking DILDO and I hope that he doesn't have a G-spot cause my god that fucking FUCK does not deserve any form of pleasure. Then in the last 8 missions they start fucking reusing bosses like crazy to the point where the second final/final boss (depending on who you ask) is just a fucking beefier version of a boss you've fought before and they made said boss even MORE dog shit fuck your fucking BUBBLES fuck YOU.
Right when you get the hang of Nero the game throws you a curve ball and gives you control of Dante and baby? This was the best Dante yet, gameplay wise. "YEEESSSS BRO YESS 😍🥰🥵" was my reaction once I remembered how to play Dante. I should add that I didn't buy this game myself to play it but got it from a friend, and I noticed that she had bought souls with real world money, so I had an abundance of souls at the beginning which I spent into upgrading myself. In hindsight I'm kind of grateful for it as it gave me the chance to get my bearings in the game without being overwhelmed but when I got to Dante's section I was running low on souls. Fuck you Angela could you have seriously not bought MORE??? WHAT THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO FOR THE LAST FUCKING HALF OF THE GAME?? PLAY IT NORMALLY? Fuck you it costs like 2 fucking pounds, are you really THAT broke???? And don't you dare act like you don't have 2 pounds, I am the poor broke boy from a third world country, NOT you. So please sell that fucking Nando's gift card already and give ME the fucking money you are fucking RUINING my gaming experience.
Remember how I said how each enemy was designed with Nero in mind? Well that comes back to bite this game in the ass when you play as Dante cause it's something that becomes really apparent especially when you start to fight old bosses again. Don't worry my DEAR reader, I didn't do a gamer rage moment and throw my controller. No, I'm a civilised man. I just beat the shit out of cardboard boxes like a REAL man cause this game is for REAL men like me and nobody should dare challenge me on that fucking front.
Level design and atmosphere is something that's also worse in this game. As bad as DMC2 is I will at least admit that due to the fact it reused a lot of shit from DMC1, it remained just as atmospheric. DMC3 was also really atmospheric! And I know DMC4 came out during the height of ugly brown Unreal Engine 3 games but goddamn does this game not hold up as well graphically as 1 and 3. I could really go on about how shit some of the puzzles in these levels are like holy fuck DICE WOO DICE it's fucking YAHTZEE ALL OVER AGAIN but I feel like I'd add nothing to the discussion except dry humping a limp corpse while I go "what's up my fellow Devil May Cry-ers I am also on the team".
Now we come to the story and there's really nothing much to be said. I don't CARE about old dude, I DON'T care about evil scientist, I don't CARE about the fact the girl who has 3 minutes of screentime. Nero aside, all new characters are a bust and even old characters take a hit. Still, I fucking laughed out loud when Dante used Royal Guard in his boss fight. Although, there is one new character I'd like to talk about...Gloria.
Let me start off by saying that, as you may have surmised, me and "sex" don't have the best of relations. I never had sex-ed in school, I didn't know what a "clit" was until I was 16, when a girl said that she'd make me her bitch I just replied with "woah cool", when a girl confessed to ME, I FUCKING RAN AWAY. So to have Gloria pop up and have my mind for the first time in a while go "Hmm while I usually don't find characters attractive this Gloria person is very pretty I hope she's good" is no easy feat. "Is this it?" I wondered. Like Nero, did I finally awaken a demon inside me, but instead of being a cool fucking arm that can grab things, the demon inside me is called "sex drive". Maybe I could finally give this sex thing a shot, maybe I don't have to be scared of anything sexual, even while alone, anymore. In that moment, I got Nero, I became him. I looked at my hand like it was Devil Bringer as I wondered if I should give this "jacking off thing" a go. Is this a new chapter for me, Quade Pad? Did Devil May Cry 4...change my life? As I slowly came to terms with this new side of me, it all came crashing down via the fucking costume select screen where I got spoiled on Gloria's true identity and oh my god jokes aside I laughed so fucking hard. Which made me realise a new truth.
"White women are mid"
Thank you Devil May Cry 4, for opening my eyes and changing my life.
The final mission pretty much cemented my view of the game. Truth be told I'm going through a rough patch in my life at the moment, and during these trying times where I've distanced myself as much as possible from everyone who loves me, I'm playing one of the worst boss fights I've ever seen in a video game. FUCK that boss FUCK you FUCK Dante FUCK old men FUCK statues FUCK everything FUCK me and Dante WILL WE FUCK AGAIN?
Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to kill myself and this review is my last mark on this world. Also it's my birthday! Please say "Happy Birthday Quade!" in the replies. It'd really make me feel better! Cheers and god bless Devil May Cry. I will see you next time.
Coming off of the third game you'd expect Devil May Cry 4 to be much better than it is. Enter NERO. Moody and arrogant, in essence he is HIM. You know I had a really funny joke regarding Nero but it's too funny and I'm absurdly proud of it so I'm going to save it for later and don't you fucking dare say that it probably wasn't gonna be funny it absolutely fucking is everyone I've told it to has laughed at it fuck you. Anyways this kind of thing is exactly what DMC4, it set ups tons of things which make you feel like this will be "peak peak goatly goat raw fire", you kill demons in the first level that banger of a soundtrack comes in and you are getting into the grove of playing as Nero and just when you've had enough of the foreplay the game rips your nuts apart by having dogshit level design and enemies which range from mediocre to annoying
Devil Bringer is really something I felt was missing in DMC3, a way to bridge the gap between you and the enemies outside of mashing Stinger. The game is smart with it as almost every enemy in the game feels like they're designed with Devil Bringer in mind, right down to the bosses. Speaking of which, how are they bosses? Well they start off all right and it all goes downhill when I got to Mission 6 and went "oh my god this is so dogshit". Agnus can SHOVE those fucking swords UP HIS ASSHOLE and fiddle them around like a fucking DILDO and I hope that he doesn't have a G-spot cause my god that fucking FUCK does not deserve any form of pleasure. Then in the last 8 missions they start fucking reusing bosses like crazy to the point where the second final/final boss (depending on who you ask) is just a fucking beefier version of a boss you've fought before and they made said boss even MORE dog shit fuck your fucking BUBBLES fuck YOU.
Right when you get the hang of Nero the game throws you a curve ball and gives you control of Dante and baby? This was the best Dante yet, gameplay wise. "YEEESSSS BRO YESS 😍🥰🥵" was my reaction once I remembered how to play Dante. I should add that I didn't buy this game myself to play it but got it from a friend, and I noticed that she had bought souls with real world money, so I had an abundance of souls at the beginning which I spent into upgrading myself. In hindsight I'm kind of grateful for it as it gave me the chance to get my bearings in the game without being overwhelmed but when I got to Dante's section I was running low on souls. Fuck you Angela could you have seriously not bought MORE??? WHAT THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO FOR THE LAST FUCKING HALF OF THE GAME?? PLAY IT NORMALLY? Fuck you it costs like 2 fucking pounds, are you really THAT broke???? And don't you dare act like you don't have 2 pounds, I am the poor broke boy from a third world country, NOT you. So please sell that fucking Nando's gift card already and give ME the fucking money you are fucking RUINING my gaming experience.
Remember how I said how each enemy was designed with Nero in mind? Well that comes back to bite this game in the ass when you play as Dante cause it's something that becomes really apparent especially when you start to fight old bosses again. Don't worry my DEAR reader, I didn't do a gamer rage moment and throw my controller. No, I'm a civilised man. I just beat the shit out of cardboard boxes like a REAL man cause this game is for REAL men like me and nobody should dare challenge me on that fucking front.
Level design and atmosphere is something that's also worse in this game. As bad as DMC2 is I will at least admit that due to the fact it reused a lot of shit from DMC1, it remained just as atmospheric. DMC3 was also really atmospheric! And I know DMC4 came out during the height of ugly brown Unreal Engine 3 games but goddamn does this game not hold up as well graphically as 1 and 3. I could really go on about how shit some of the puzzles in these levels are like holy fuck DICE WOO DICE it's fucking YAHTZEE ALL OVER AGAIN but I feel like I'd add nothing to the discussion except dry humping a limp corpse while I go "what's up my fellow Devil May Cry-ers I am also on the team".
Now we come to the story and there's really nothing much to be said. I don't CARE about old dude, I DON'T care about evil scientist, I don't CARE about the fact the girl who has 3 minutes of screentime. Nero aside, all new characters are a bust and even old characters take a hit. Still, I fucking laughed out loud when Dante used Royal Guard in his boss fight. Although, there is one new character I'd like to talk about...Gloria.
Let me start off by saying that, as you may have surmised, me and "sex" don't have the best of relations. I never had sex-ed in school, I didn't know what a "clit" was until I was 16, when a girl said that she'd make me her bitch I just replied with "woah cool", when a girl confessed to ME, I FUCKING RAN AWAY. So to have Gloria pop up and have my mind for the first time in a while go "Hmm while I usually don't find characters attractive this Gloria person is very pretty I hope she's good" is no easy feat. "Is this it?" I wondered. Like Nero, did I finally awaken a demon inside me, but instead of being a cool fucking arm that can grab things, the demon inside me is called "sex drive". Maybe I could finally give this sex thing a shot, maybe I don't have to be scared of anything sexual, even while alone, anymore. In that moment, I got Nero, I became him. I looked at my hand like it was Devil Bringer as I wondered if I should give this "jacking off thing" a go. Is this a new chapter for me, Quade Pad? Did Devil May Cry 4...change my life? As I slowly came to terms with this new side of me, it all came crashing down via the fucking costume select screen where I got spoiled on Gloria's true identity and oh my god jokes aside I laughed so fucking hard. Which made me realise a new truth.
"White women are mid"
Thank you Devil May Cry 4, for opening my eyes and changing my life.
The final mission pretty much cemented my view of the game. Truth be told I'm going through a rough patch in my life at the moment, and during these trying times where I've distanced myself as much as possible from everyone who loves me, I'm playing one of the worst boss fights I've ever seen in a video game. FUCK that boss FUCK you FUCK Dante FUCK old men FUCK statues FUCK everything FUCK me and Dante WILL WE FUCK AGAIN?
Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to kill myself and this review is my last mark on this world. Also it's my birthday! Please say "Happy Birthday Quade!" in the replies. It'd really make me feel better! Cheers and god bless Devil May Cry. I will see you next time.
Rayman Legends
2013
I dead ass only bought this game for the music levels, I never heard of Rayman before this, but gah damn this is one of my favorite games ever.
Batman: Arkham City
2011
This shit is beyond perfect. Rocksteady was not human at the time of development. I want to have sex with every line of code in this videogame. And direct me to the catwoman folder i'd like to start there