The type of shovelware well-meaning grandmas used to buy their grandkids for the Wii on Christmases and birthdays back in the late 2000s, now on the 9th generation of consoles! Look, developer IguanaBee was forced to make this under some brutal time and financial constraints. They're a talented studio which can be seen in titles such as their incredibly charming MonsterBag. Oddly enough, despite the ultimate results this might actually be further proof of said talent. In roughly a year, without guidance or proper monetary support from the publisher to staff a full team on the project, and after a bit of post-release patching to update stuff such as the map so that it now shows your position on it, they churned out an entirely playable open-world action adventure. Doesn't make it a fun experience, but it's impossible to not be at least minorly impressed with what they were able to accomplish (however minuscule) with so many hurdles in their way.

Alright, now that I’ve given its makers a somewhat obligatory “it’s okay bud, we know it’s not really your fault” pat on the back, it’s time to mercilessly crap all over this abomination! We are looking at a genuinely abhorrent product here. Sure, Rise of Kong is a disaster from technical perspective with bugs that cause you to inexplicably get stuck on invisible snares forcing autosave reloads, graphics that look like they're from a PS2 offering (and not one of the pretty ones), environments that sometimes awkwardly melt into shape as you approach them in a manner akin to a hallucinogenic induced trip, and audio quality so bad it needs to be heard to be believed, but its worst aspects are easily those opening chapters where things are unreasonably challenging.

If there's any ish I can’t stand it’s when a bad game doesn’t have the decency to just let you steamroll through it with little trouble. The early hours are brutally plagued by the titular ape’s pathetically limited range and wimpy attacks that barely chip away at the health bars of his enemies. Shouldn’t this have been some kind of power fantasy? Why am I getting wrecked by what appear to be little green dodo birds? At no point do you feel like a beast powerful enough to have slugged it out in movies with the King of the Monsters. Even the way basic trees and other objects in the scenery tower over him give the impression that you’re controlling a regular-sized gorilla rather than one humongous enough to climb the Empire State Building.

Eventually you do begin to attain the true might you would expect from a kaiju with the first name of “King,” but it never seems to be the result of your investments into any of the skill trees. I can’t prove it, yet I have this unshakable suspicion that the devs artificially lower the difficulty in later chapters to give players the ​illusion of getting stronger rather than legitimately allowing them to become so, because it’s not remotely believable that those meager initial stat boosts I was unlocking would have had such a profound ability to leave foes that were previously causing me problems all of the sudden crumbling at my feet.

Oh well, at least when that happens it becomes pretty smooth sailing to the credits. You’ll still struggle to reach them though. Your motivation will be low. The entire runtime of Skull Island is a mind-numbingly dull loop of running around massive maze-like environments of identical assets to find unmarked, sparsely located “ascension event” arena fights and pick up the occasional collectible on your way to the area’s boss. There are plenty of threats along the way, but engaging with them is totally pointless. Not just because the combat sucks either. Defeating foes outside of the required sections grants you no additional EXP points, meaning they’re literally a complete waste of time. You’re better off simply sprinting past everything and focusing exclusively on whatever boring platforming segment is between you and the next mandatory encounter.

As much as I believe the small Chilean indie developers mostly deserve a pass for this given the circumstances, it is simultaneously not hard to wonder why they continued to try to create a package so grand in scope rather than reducing its scale to something more reasonable. Perhaps they shouldn't escape blame entirely. Their ambition paired with the lackluster resources from GameMill seriously cost them here. There were quite a few shockingly dreadful releases in 2023 and Skull Island: Rise of Kong blows the few I personally played out of the water, proving far fouler than the likes of Gollum or even TWD: Destinies. Is it the worst game of that year? That's highly likely. It's easily the top contender in my eyes.

1/10

With games where you practically require a guide, it feels that your enjoyment will derive from how good the walkthrough you're using is. One of the people I follow on here mentioned that the guide provided by IGN doesn't make much sense, so just in case that is true, USE THIS GUIDE: https://www.zeldadungeon.net/the-legend-of-zelda-walkthrough/ . It tells you exactly where to go and what to do, no waffling or bs.

Even without a guide, this game can be fun. Just jumping in and seeing what you can find or discover is a great time.

If this game wasn't so cryptic, and had better hints (and if the darknuts didn't exist, I FUCKING HATE THEM SO MUCH STOP TURNING AROUND I HATE DEATH MOUNTAIN), the rating would be alot higher, but I used a guide so idk what i'm talking about. All in all, its pretty good. Not sure Zelda 2 will hold up to that standard though lmao

Huge shout-out to @paq250_, with whom I played the entire campaign, and that made this whole experience 10 times more fun than it otherwise would have been, it was amazing to experience the sheer insanity and absurdity on display here alongside someone else, and let’s be real, probably the way this game was intended to be played. And despite how much I’m about to tear into it, I can say one thing for certain; it sure is a tolerable and, at best, fun co-op experience with some pretty tense moments and cool sections, especially when the two of us were separated and had to frantically find a way to save each other’s asses, which sometimes ended poorly since I can’t aim for shit.

There are some genuine smart decisions here and there: the down time feels like proper moments of respite, and it’s always exciting to see what’s new in the store and talk about what weapons each should carry and what strategies to follow after losing. So it is simply thinking on your feet, scrambling for any way to get out of a tough situation, and saving each other constantly, especially if there’s an enemy that has one-shot potential involved. There’s no master-class in design here, but still, even if shooting Lickers down while your buddy tries to access an out-of-reach area or getting the attention of a boss or strong enemy while the other tries to set up mines and explosives aren’t the most creative shit out there, they are nonetheless fun, and tense moments that work when being alongside someone to share them. Resident Evil 5 works as a co-op third person shooter game, that I can say for certain….

Doesn’t change the fact that this shit is ASS

I know this may sound rich coming from the guy who hasn’t beat any RE game till this one, but I’ve played and know enough about other RE games to confidently say that it astounds me how much RE5 misses the mark considering the potential it had and how it sacrifices the wonderful cheesiness of previous games for half-ass seriousness which doesn’t work at all. The concept of ‘’RE4 but Co-Op’’ is fucking amazing, and I understand that Capcom made this at it is, but in the process, they seemed to have forgotten everything that made that game, or any RE for that matter, interesting in the first place aside from the core shooting.

You only get 9 inventory spaces each, and even the size of times doesn’t factor in at all anymore, that just makes this inventory system less interesting out of the bat, and that’s on top of being a pretty cumbersome and limited system in a game that at times offers you too much loot and throws you into extremely hectic situations that don’t really let you stop and manage your items properly.

Puzzles are a huge letdown, and the fact they are even here boggles the mind. If they wanted to make a pure action game, sure, go for it, but then throwing in some puzzles that aren’t fun or interesting in the slightest just because it isn’t exactly fun. Hell, nw that I think about it, I don’t even know why you have to sell the treasures you get instead of getting the money automatically, since you can’t combine any items aside of healing herbs! The closest this game comes to creating an actual involved headscratcher is the classic ‘’you need x number of items to open this door’’, if only they didn’t have the most annoying hazards and the most questionable area designs, they may have even been pretty fun!

RE5 just seems eternally confused, not only by its existence as the next RE game, but also as a sequel to RE4 and even as a game on its own: Did you like the hooded man with a chainsaw from RE4? Well, he’s back, bois! Did you like the Gigante and the sea monster? Well, they are also back... in boring turret section form! How about unskippable, weird as hell cutscenes that feel like there should be a quick time event of sorts… except it isn’t? How about a story and tone that are... questionable, to say the least…

I swear, I haven’t felt so bewildered at a game as watching one of the fucking main characters talk about how horrible imperialism is and how the terrible practices of an American company have doomed an entire African company… only to massacre an entire population of tribesmen and steal every treasure you come across in the following chapter. Hell, you keep fighting them even in the chapter after that! Isn’t that neat and not at all questionable and horrifying?

Every time the game tried to make a statement of some sort regarding the horrors of neo-imperialism, I couldn’t get that out of my mind; the first two chapters and maybe the last two aren’t that bad in that regard, but 3 & 4 are heinous and kill every chance this game had at being a serious critique of sorts, more than the motorbike scene and the showcase of every single military-movie cliché possible, I mean.

And hey, even if chapters 5 & 6 aren’t horrible story-wise, they sure are gameplay-wise. It’s in these areas that the game is completely mind-numbing: before, you had some interesting vertical design or interesting areas and mazes, but now we have metal corridors and cover emphasis in cover mechanics and it’s… not good, to be honest. There are no opportunities to be stealthy in Licker encounters, most battles feel more frustrating than engaging, and it all starts feeling like a race to the finish line that lasts too long.

Even the bosses are pretty middling overall; the only ones I can call enjoyable are the first and last one, anything in between is a passable set piece at best and a boring bulled sponge at worst… scratch that, at worst is the fuCKING 5-2 BOSS OF MY FUCKING GOD. We spent more than half an hour wondering what we were doing wrong, ‘cause that piece of crap wouldn’t die except, no, we weren’t doing anything wrong, is just that bad of a fight that it takes an eternity to beat even if you set it aflame constantly, and it even reuses the fucking model of the first boss! HOW DID THIS SHIT GO PAST TESTING??????

I can get mad all day, but honestly, RE5 isn’t terrible most of the time, just incredibly basic and full of mistakes that bog down the overall experience, and it’s sad that I have to say this; this was one of the games I vividly remember watching my father play all those years back. Should I have him play that game at such a young age? Probably not! But still, RE5 was the first RE game I ever came into contact with, and it’s sad to finally arrive at it and encounter a product that can be so inferior to what came before while trying to replicate exactly that, and how it manages to be the most predictable and by the number of things ever while also being spectacularly terrible at times… and honestly? That may be the thing that gives it charm.

I can’t stress how much me and Paq laughed at the motorbike cutscene, how we lost our minds at the punch and kick animations, how much we laughed after finding out a way to one shot that shitty 5-2 boss, and how worth the whole journey was to see Chris punching that damn rock and Western yeeting us to a fucking volcano. The game is not cheesy, it’s a joke, one that’s still funny nonetheless, and despite it all, it somehow had fun to offer, both intentionally and unintentionally.

RE5 may be generic, but there ain’t anything quite like it… And maybe that’s for the best, but hey, the guy punches a rock! Funniest shit I ever se-

First of all, thanks a bunch to @DeemonAndGames for agreeing to play through the entirety of this in spite of his fear to weird mutated zombie spiders. Very sorry for that.

Finally, the 7th-Genification of Resident Evil 4.

It is widely said that RE4 is the most influential third person shooter to define what action games should be moving forward, and while that’s definitely true, it is the games that released later, like Gears of War or Call of Duty, that ended up having a bigger impact on the industry and leaving a bigger mark. When we talk 7th Gen, the term “COD Clone” was way more used than “RE4 Clone”, because while it is Resident Evil 4 the one that helped establish some of the elements, later released games sort of, for the lack of a better word, elevated the third person shooter formula, and now you had gritty self-serious military-themed cover shooters that looked like gray sludge and leaned more towards empty spectacle rather than improving player interactivity.

Resident Evil 4 brought the blueprint, Resident Evil 5 fell victim to its master’s apprentices. Now the gun laser point is replaced by a generic crosshair, the level design is more streamlined, and exploration is reduced in favor of hallway shooting gameplay. From the get go, you’re shown a handful of set-pieces remade from RE4; you got: village shootout, masked guy with a chainsaw, and as you go on you’ll find yourself driving a boat on a lake and fighting in underground mines. Late game enemies are zombie soldiers that bear a resemblance to the island chapter of RE4. All of these callbacks make it feel like they’re trying to replicate the success of the previous entry to lesser effect, but most importantly is that this shows off the shift in videogame design in-between generations. By 2009, the directing force of game design was to be visually spectacular and comfortable to play. In contrast to RE4, which demanded more dedication from the player to progress and overcome the challenge, RE5 wants you to follow the only path possible, open a door or cross a hallway, get a cutscene and jump straight to the next set-piece or hallway.

The problem with the overabundance of cutscenes is that they create a feeling of disconnect with the world, and since level navigation is reduced to the minimum, the resulting experience is a game that might feel fun to play in small doses, but one that overstays its welcome way too fast. The journey of RE5 is one of set-pieces. You never know when a door or an elevator might lead you to another set-piece in which you fight a shit-ton of enemies in enclosed spaces - did I already mention the level design is hallway gaming -. Also, the soldier zombies now have guns instead of crossbows, so you better enjoy the cover mechanics you’re given. Yeah, Resident Evil has cover mechanics now. The way these mechanics are implemented could not feel more out of place. You can only take cover behind specific walls and corners that have a diegetic visual indicator (red and white stripes, not yellow paint, sorry twitter nerds) to make you know you can take cover there, since you cannot take cover anywhere else.

The boss fights of this game are a real downer. It’s not just that they’re not as iconic as those from the previous game, the important thing here is that most of them are just set-pieces. And not the cool kind, they’re the visually-great-but-not-half-as-enjoyable kind. By this I mean that you fight the same giant from RE4 but instead of having a rad doggo by your side and stabbing the monster on the back, now it’s a lamer version of Time Crisis. And of course, all of them have blatant weak points, same as ever. There was this one boss in chapter 5-2 which I and @DeemonAndGames spent like more than half an hour trying to beat, blowing up its weak points and lighting it up with the flamethrower over and over. We died and restarted so many times that we thought “maybe we’re doing something wrong?”, but no, it’s just that that boss has a fuck ton of health, so I decided to buy an RPG to one shot it because we didn’t have enough ammo to take him on. And not only that, it is also a reused miniboss from earlier in the game. And it’s not the only boss they recycle. Not all bosses are like that, some are even fun, but none feel special or particularly interesting.

Everything RE5 attempts feel like a downgrade from the previous game, and the constant callbacks make it more apparent. Sure, the co-op mechanics are really interesting and bring a much-needed fun component to the game, and there are certainly some improvements like the more limited inventory that does not pause the action and that lets you switch weapons on the fly, something that brings more tension to the game and immersion to the world, but that immersion is broken when you’re thrown into set-piece after cutscene after set-piece while being presented the most lame and mind numbing puzzles ever thought out by a human being. It’s hard to connect with the world. A similar thing happened to me while playing The Evil Within last year; everything was so unconnected and random that I could not connect with the world and it started feeling more like a random array of rooms and less like a world, which kind of worked there since it never really took place in an actual place, but it took me out of the experience more times than I can remember. This ends up feeling more like a trend-chasing and risk-aversive version of a far better game.

The story of RE4 had its silly moments but was a more relaxed experience and less bombastic. Meanwhile, Resident Evil 5 story goes full-on gonzo summer blockbuster insaneo style. You got biker zombies! a Temple of Doom (no Indiana Jones minecart sequence this time sadly)! Huge-ass sci-fi underground facilities with… clones I guess! Volcano showdown! The story here is equal parts unbelievably stupid and unbelievably racist. Since the story in games like this is just an excuse to generate challenge, the game makes use of anything it can to create a new type of enemy, or boss, or set-piece, or whatever. This means you end up shooting up an entire local tribe of natives because……. reasons - we were looking for one of the bad guys I think, which for some reason was hiding somewhere nearby or something like that I don’t quite remember sorry -. And since there is a shop in here (another one of the lame as hell decisions this game has is completely removing the merchant. I’ll count it as a failed opportunity to include a zombie weapons trader or something like that since this has huge Black Hawk Down/Lord of War/Blood Diamond vibes), all of the money comes from looting and selling to literally no one all the looted gold and treasures from the people the game keeps telling you that you are saving in some fakeass moral discourse or whatever they said in the final cutscene. RE4 did something like this, but it never drew much attention to anything and it felt more like a B-movie fun ride. At some point in the development of RE5 someone thought that what this franchise needed was getting serious and making actual statements about real problems. The issue here is that the anti-colonialist or whatever message here is contradicted by how you slaughter these guys and steal their stuff. Yeah, they might be zombies, but who’s gonna be left if you go around world police style instead of looking for actual solutions that aren’t gunning down everyone that gets in the way. Resident Evil should’ve stayed in the gonzo silly style instead of taking itself so seriously, because the end result is the disaster that Resident Evil 5 is.

This is pretty much an average game, and I found myself enjoying the overall stupidity at points (boulder punching should be a worldwide sport!!) but like, it is so unmemorable that none of this is gonna stick with me the same way Resident Evil 4 did. RE5 feels insecure about itself, trendy, and uninteresting at times, especially towards the second half, so the game ends up being just perfectly fine, or mid as the kids say nowadays. But it is the boring set-pieces and levels and the lame attempt at Saying Something that hurts the game the most.

I DID IT WOOOOOOOOOOOO

still traumatized by the stress i experienced during my playthrough so instead of reviewing it (which i've already done 2/3 times) i'll just summarize my winning run.

So let me just first say that I was starting off fucking AMAZINGLY. I messed up a little on Yamato, but was still able to beat Robot X with 1 life and 2 continues left. This was it. All I had to do was not mess up.

I then beat the 1st part of Stage 6 before the timer ran out, and completed it with 1 continue and 4 lives left. God had blessed me. NO matter what I did, I couldn't mess this up, I was sure of it.

I then lost 3 lives during the 1st part of Stage 7, and 4 in the 2nd part with those stupid ass conveyor belts.
I was mortified. If I didn't get the fights against Dr Dahm and Robot X perfect, it would end my perfect run.

Thankfully, I DESTROYED Dr Dahm with no damage taken (he IS the easiest boss in the game though), and got ready to take on Robot X.

I went in for a jump-kick as soon as the fight started, however, instead of going in the circle movement he usually goes in, he immediately grabbed me and slammed me onto the floor. However, a few seconds after that, one of my specials knocked him off-screen, which allowed me to use the jump-kick strategy (if you don't know what that is, i'll leave a link showing it in action right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07-Zi2ynuPE). I continued it until he only had 2 health bars left, which was when he broke out of it. I was thankfully able to get him back into the cycle, and watched as his life-bar went lower than mine. I allowed myself to enjoy my victory. Mr X is killed, and All is Well.

Would I recommend putting in the effort to beat this game on normal? Well, it's your choice, man. All i'll say is that BK3 and SOR3 are both very different experiences. Even if it's a butchered version of a way better game, this shit still fucks.

I beat this game years ago but seeing how it's the 6th anniversary and how it's a game I adore so much it's worth a review. The gorgeous pixel art and addicting gameplay made it an instant classic when I played it.

Celeste is easily one of the best puzzle platformers of all time, it can get really difficult but it does it in a way that motivates me to keep going forward. When you die it only restarts you from the room you died in and very instantaneously so you can get back right in the action and keep adapting to it's obstacles with a fresh memory. It doesn't waste your time and still lets you feel satisfied overcoming it.

The game does a marvelous job at constantly introducing new gameplay mechanics while still keeping the same relative movement and it doesn't get old. It's insane how much variety they packed into it's many levels.

It's worth applauding the story too which even in it's limited form is able to tell a captivating tale of overcoming our inner insecurities and anxieties being able to have it's humorous moments and still nail a strong emotional journey.

Replayed this as part of my Atelier replay marathon. It definitely is not the best Atelier game, but it was still a ton of fun.

There are tons of charming characters and the gameplay is leisurely enough to just make you want to sit back and chill with it. The story is somewhat cliche and isn’t my favorite, but is still decent. I really do miss the heavy humor present in the Arland sub series, but I can still appreciate this entry of the Mysterious series all the same.

I am changing my rating from back in 2020, raising it by half a star. My reason for doing so is probably due to how I played the game this time versus last time. I tried to progress in the main storyline quickly last time…and had to grind levels at the end for the final boss. This time, I played more slowly, doing side content and character quests while leveling. This is definitely how the game is supposed to be played. There is more to it than battle and narrative, as I am learning is the case with Atelier in general.

If you want a chill game that is fun, play this! Not the best game or even the best one in the series by any means, but a solid entry and beginning of a new sub series.

Edit: finally got plat!

Nowhere near as good as 3D Land. It drags on for too long, the amount of Green Stars needed for the last 2 castles are fucking ludicrous, and basically every gimmick in this game is annoying. Even the final boss is boring. All you do is climb this long ass tower and.. that's it.

I do love the Captain Toad and Mystery House levels though, if they made a full game of Mystery House levels just like how they did a full game of Captain Toad levels in treasure tracker, I would buy that shit instantly.

Jon Blow is a bit of a douche, and the story elements of this game are pretentious as fuck, but I still do love this game.

The art is great, the music is great, the puzzles are extremely well designed and unique, and the secrets are neat albeit incredibly obnoxious to find. While the secret "le atomic bomb metaphor" twist is dumb, the actual ending sequence is still cool to me, if only because of its visual storytelling through a gameplay mechanic.

Also it's still really weird to think that Jon Blow of all people put a speedrun mode in his first game.