In Kakariko village, there's an elderly gentleman who punishes you for treading on his property by forcing you to listen to tedious schpiel. So the developers understand that dull, pointless interruptions are the opposite of fun. Why, then, are they punishing me every time I FIND, ENTER, and COMPLETE a shrine? Every time I get a stat upgrade? Talk to a stable proprietor? Activate a lightroot? Complete any phase of a labyrinth or temple? Find or use a skyview tower? It's a good game, but Jeez Luise! This coulda been a 4, easy.

What a beautiful little game, with a charming, vibrant art style. I'd say it's perfect for younger players who fancy the idea of a huge, open world RPG such as Zelda, but are rather overwhelmed by the scale and time involved in such an epic quest. Ravenlok only took me 5-ish hours to complete, and I managed to unlock all achievements (which are very generous) in that time. A Microsoft Reward hunter's dream really.

It's a charming little story - you play as a small girl whose family has just moved house from the city to the countryside, and as you brood from leaving behind all your friends, you find an old mirror in your new barn, and that's the gateway to a fantastical world and a new adventure. Lots of Alice in Wonderland references, and it works well.

Ravenlok has pretty much all the tropes from bigger games in the genre, there's absolutely nothing new or original here in that sense, and it's all very basic. You get a sword, a shield, the ability to block and dash, and 4 separate special moves that require cooldowns to use, utilised with the 4 shoulder buttons - these unlock as you progress through the story.

Again, there's a simplicity to everything, particularly the combat. It's fine, it's serviceable, it's fun. Don't expect complicated combos or advanced enemy AI here, but enemies are varied and interesting and there are plenty of really good boss fights. But nothing that will put up too much of a challenge. Levelling up is done via accumulating XP and it doesn't take long at all to reach the max level of 20 (pop achievement unlocked!)

Puzzles mainly involve fetch quests, all are very charming - but trying to find certain items can be a bit annoying with no indication of where you need to look whatsoever. That's probably the biggest issue I have with Ravenlok as I found myself searching every nook and cranny for quest items that were found in a totally different place, seemingly with no real reason for its location. Not a huge issue, but a bit of a pain at times.

Ravenlok is so pretty, so charming, with a plethora of cute creatures littering the landscape (and lots of those are bunnies). The art style is tremendous, the different areas all vibrant and interesting to look at. At the moment, there's a lot of exasperation regarding Game Pass and a particular title flopping so badly, but a game like this is the reason why Game Pass is such a good service which for me means far more successes than failures. I'd never heard of Ravenlok 24 hours ago, and now I can recommend it to anyone who wants a short, fun experience and it's a brilliant game to recommend to kids. Oh - and achievements. So many achievements in so little time.

The first game I ever beat, almost twenty years ago. I haven’t played or seen anything from it since, so this review is made while wearing olive-tinted glasses. Any mention of the narrative is a complete guess, so please don’t lambast me for any errors. The errors are probably more interesting. Don’t message me, telling me that my review is “total frogwash”, because I already know.

I don’t have to replay the game after two decades to know this: the controls are horrible. I vividly recall failing jumps multiple times, and shrieked like a typical squeaker. They really made the experience realistic by making Frogger jump with as much force and randomness as a real frog. They set the realism in overdrive by giving Frogger a mastery of martial arts. And you can spit. I don’t know why, but you can.

You spend the majority of the game hoping to platform successfully, collecting…gems? And there are runes that you can pick up to get magic abilities. Oh that’s right, it’s set in a medieval-like fantasy world. This is either due to Frogger using a time machine, getting lost in a nightmare, or being stuck in this purgatoric-like fever dream after getting squished flat by a semi. Or maybe this story follows the ancestor of the Frogger we know and love.

I really don’t remember the story. I was too busy being pissed at the controls and the enemies. All I remember is feeling an overwhelming sense of accomplishment for beating it. I mean, I beat this game, after giving up on Halo: Combat Evolved on the easiest difficulty (I got to the end! I just hated timed levels when I was younger and gave up before trying).

Would I recommend this game? No. Not at all. I just needed to gloat about conquering this pile of frogspawn. This was the first game I beat, so I wanted it to be my first game review. In the words of Mark Twain, “if it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning.”

As the only clown on this website who has played the whole game (in one sitting right at release to secure a free Pickle Rick back bling in Fortnite), I can say with confidence High on Life is dreadfully weak. And that's a bit of a shame since it theoretically has good bones.

The most glaring problem is, of course, the dialogue. The pre-release comparison to Borderlands 3 is apt as characters literally do not cease their oral spew, and you are forced to listen to them before you can progress at key points. Borderlands has ameliorated this in part with the ECHOnet transmissions, keeping you apprised of plot elements as you messed about on Pandora. Save for key story moments, the dialogue therein is accompanied by your mad dash for loot and slaughter. High on Life quivers in its boots at the mere thought that you might miss a single phoneme. There is no means to skip dialogue. There is no opportunity to play the game when characters are talking. If you are not physically glued in place, you are locked in a distraction-less room. And should you dare to break from the tedium of a suburban hardwood floor and off-white walls by heading upstairs, you are scolded by your guns to pay attention. In a properly written, compelling narrative this would be fine, but a substantial chunk of the game is NPCs yammering incessantly. Fake arguments become auditory static, the white noise penetrated only by mention of racism, misogyny, or a cavalcade of 'fuck's. Does a holstered gun have something to say? Worry not, they'll speak to you over radio. That there is so much dialogue is rather interesting in and of itself, particularly seeing how your different weaponry will engage in conversations with NPCs, but there is not a moment where speech is not occurring. The only moment of respite is if you stay in place.

And some of the writing is passable, some even bordering on good. But it never comes out of Justin Roiland's many mouths. The closest I came to cracking a smile was when Zach Hadel, Michael Cusack, Rich Evans, Jay Bauman, Mike Stoklasa, or Tom Kenny was the focus. In a vacuum, some of their witticisms might have earned a chuckle or at least a considered exhale, but these moments are paltry oases after being duped by an infinitude of mirages. You know in your bones that a joke will not be allowed to stand on its own, and that Roiland or his other hack voice 'actors' will need to get their own two cents in. It is a Reddit comment thread not only in content, but in presentation, someone always retelling the above poster's joke but worse. In Roiland's world, stuttering is a feature, not a bug. His stammering makes Porky Pig seem eloquent. A one-take wonder.

"Is the gameplay good?" This question was asked more times than I can count during my marathon. As I emphatically repeated there, "no." There's a weightlessness to every second of combat that betrays the animations and premise of your guns being living things. There is more weight, more oomph, more impact to Spore's creature stage combat than there is to this gunplay. Your bullets genuinely feel as if they are lobbed foam balls. The only times at which there is some punch is when detonating sigh Sweezy's crystals with her charge shot. I can't tell if it's all a consequence of your enemies being shrouded in goop or not. Your shots take away the goop to expose their regular flesh, but this somehow imparts little feedback. Is it because there is so much flash and bedlam occurring that I can't even tell where and when my shots are landing? I have no idea. At the very least the juggling of enemies is semi-novel (even if it comes after Kenny begs lustfully for me to use his 'Trickhole'), and Creature is semi-satisfying if only because you can launch his children and go find a quiet[er] corner to recuperate mentally in. You get some basic manoeuvrability upgrade which makes this a Metr- Search Action game in some sense when coupled with returning to planets to find extra cash. You can upgrade your weapons and unlock modifiers for them but the changes are so minute I couldn't really tell how much of an impact they were having. What the mods do do is change the colour of your weapons. Given that so much of your screen real estate is occupied by their "beautiful dick-sucking lip" visages, this is the most substantial alteration you can make.

The music is like Temporary Secretary by Paul McCartney but bad.

Visually there is something of value here (in theory). While many of the alien inhabitants blend together with their amorphous sausage anatomies, the unique NPCs typically bear striking designs. Sweezy notwithstanding, the guns are cute as well, even if I feel Kenny is perpetually doing the Dreamworks smirk. Kenny and Gus' iron sights are adorable, and the way Gus clamps onto your hand indoors melts my heart. Creature reminds me of that Skylander that had the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. Inoffensive! Until you see his actual full model and you realise he has three tits and a prolapsed anus for a barrel. And Gus looks like he has a turtle's cock.

Errant thoughts:

Boy howdy is there a lot of mpreg talk.

One of the scenes you can warp in is a movie theatre where you can watch all of Demon Wind with the RLM crew. That would be okay but I don't think the MST3K style commentary works for a film that belongs in a Best of the Worst episode. There's a reason why they show you fragments of them watching it, and why their film commentaries are for more compelling films.

There is so much overlapping of dialogue that I genuinely got a headache that intensified over the game. A horror during a Tylenol shortage in Canada.

I put more effort into gathering my thoughts than they did making this shit.

I wish that I had always been in a grave.