A victim of its own success.

I'm locking this review in now, because the tides are rapidly shifting for Helldivers 2. It should be no secret that this was a surprise darling that nobody expected to blow up to the scale that it did — least of all Arrowhead. There was some early bumpiness as player counts skyrocketed into the deep hundred-thousands and threatened to crack a million, leaving the servers on life support. Unlike its live-service failbrother PAYDAY 3, Arrowhead got Helldivers 2 sorted within a little more than a week, and managed to win back some good will that had been lost in the chaos. Memes were made, TikToks were shared, everyone got in on the in-universe propaganda, and all was well. It's rare for a game to blow up this much and this rapidly, but word-of-mouth was getting around faster than the plague. Helldivers 2 is a complete runaway success, and represents a very, very big win for Arrowhead after their many years of developing games.

What's unfortunate, then, is that Arrowhead have a strong vision for what Helldivers 2 is and should be. For Arrowhead, Helldivers 2 is a game where you get out of scrapes against bugs and bots by the skin of your teeth. You use every stratagem available to you, you coordinate with your team to make sure there are no blind spots in your composition, you run away when shit gets too hot, you focus on objectives and treat the bonuses as nothing more than bonuses, you get a laugh when your friend shouts "Sweet liberty, my leg!" after you accidentally blast them to kingdom fucking come with an orbital barrage. For the broader playerbase, Helldivers 2 is a game where you play exclusively on Helldive, you only bring the Railgun and the Shield Backpack, you only stand stark still in the middle of a field shooting shit until it's all dead, you only play bug missions, and you're not interested at all in anything that doesn't directly give you medals and slips and super credits. For Arrowhead, the draw of the game is the game; for a lot of players, the draw of the game is filling out the battle pass, and the actual gameplay is just the means to that end.

The latest patch at the time of writing has nerfed the Railgun, which has single-handedly sent the widest parts of the community into a complete and utter Three Mile Island meltdown. It used to blow Charger legs open in two shots on Safe Mode, and now requires about four in Unsafe Mode. That's the extent of it. If that doesn't sound like a big change to you, it's because it isn't. There remain an obscene amount of options available to deal with Chargers — EATs, the Recoilless Rifle, the (buffed) Flamethrower, the Arc Thrower, the Spear, impact grenades, just shooting it in the ass with the heaviest gun you have — but none of that matters, because they want to use the Railgun. And they don't want to use it in Unsafe Mode. And they don't want to run away from Chargers. And they don't want to kite them. And they don't want to dodge the Charger and shoot it from behind. And they don't want to call down a stratagem. And they don't want to blow up its ass while it's aggro'd onto a teammate. They want to shoot them twice with the Railgun. Anything else is "unfun". Go and look at the recent Steam reviews/forum or the subreddit right now, if you're reading this shortly after I've posted it, and you'll see for yourself how everyone is proclaiming this one change to the Railgun to be the abject harbinger of the game's immediate demise.

I don't know who to blame this on, because it seems exceptionally clear that the people complaining the loudest don't seem to have any idea what the fuck they're talking about. I've seen several different posts stating that the Railgun is the only gun that deals with heavy armor, which is blatantly false; these are people trying to adhere to "what's meta" without actually understanding why the gun they're talking about is meta. This is something about live-service games in a more modern context that I cannot fucking stand: everyone is a tier whore. There hasn't been a multiplayer game that's come out in the past ten or so years that didn't have day one articles talking about how there's only one viable loadout and if you're not taking it then you're trolling, or tier list videos put together by popular YouTubers who broadly end up dictating a meta rather than reporting on it, because nobody actually questions why something is thought to be good or bad. This whole phenomenon leaked from Everquest and World of Warcraft like the green shit from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and now every game has to deal with the consequences. The secret of the ooze is that it makes everyone fucking stupid.

"A game for everyone is a game for no one", proudly states the footer of Arrowhead's website. I thought that was an interesting choice of motto, but not just because I agreed with it; Helldivers 2 certainly seemed like one of the most broad-appeal overnight success stories I've ever seen, and I wasn't certain who Arrowhead meant when they said they weren't making games "for everyone". Who was this abstracted "everyone", when everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves? With the way the discourse has been shifting, though, I think it's clear what they mean: Arrowhead has no interest in appealing to people who are playing the game the way that the loudest players complain they can't anymore. These are people who farm the exact same missions the exact same way for hours on end solely to get 100% completion in the battle pass. Why would anyone make games for them? They'd be happier with a piece of paper and some boxes they could fill in. How's that for player expression and a varied meta? You can put a check mark or an X through the box! Make sure to come back every twenty-four hours when your dailies refresh and you can do it all over again on a different piece of paper.

I've been playing on Suicide Mission at a minimum since day one (okay, maybe day three or so), and I've done a fair share of Impossible and Helldive runs, too. They are difficult. I am not surprised that they are difficult because they are the highest difficulty setting available. I have had to improvise, I have had to run away, and I have had to scramble just to barely complete an objective since the moment I started playing the game. At no point did the Railgun — even with a squad of four seasoned players who had come from the first Helldivers, where the difficulty went up to fifteen — allow you to stand your ground and slaughter bugs like a Doom wad. Anyone who attempts to seriously say that they're a Helldive player and that the Railgun nerf has killed their bug-exterminator playstyle is fucking lying. These are players who do not at all know what they're talking about, and they lie about the difficulty that they play on because they think it makes their argument more credible. These people are temporarily-embarrassed god gamers. They think that success and prestige is right there, just barely out of their grasp, if only the devs would allow them to reach it, and all the while they actually belong on the middle difficulties. There's nothing wrong with playing on 5 or 6, or even 1. Play what you enjoy. But don't pretend like you're at a level above where you are when it's obvious to the people who are that you're not. It's sad.

There's a wave rolling in, and I can see the foam at the lip of it from here. We'll have the regular YouTube videos rolling out soon — How Helldivers 2 Failed the Players, Helldivers 2: Dropping the Ball, Arrowhead Studios Gets WOKE and GOES BROKE with Helldivers 2 DISASTER — and leaving players will call themselves "Helldivers refugees" when they find something new to play that they'll hate within a month. What I certainly wish isn't coming is anything resembling an apology or a back-down from Arrowhead. They'll be under a lot of pressure to make changes, and this is the kind of backlash that most companies crumble under. It's been said that players are good at identifying problems and bad and identifying solutions, but I think that's being a bit too generous. I'd argue that the overwhelming majority of players of any game are bad at identifying problems and worse at coming up with solutions. Extremely rarely have I seen a live-service game actually follow through on fan-suggested fixes to fan-suggested problems and not had the game immediately become worse overnight. I hope that they're able to remember their own motto: a game for everyone is a game for no one. Helldivers 2 just got unlucky enough to be branded as a game for everyone.

Anyway, it's pretty good.

     'Rui, do people’s hearts forget how to react to a town that leaves nothing behind to remember it by? In comparison, there is something cruel, merciless about the sight of the Sanriku region, where everyday life was transformed into ruins. For that mountain of debris was the “hope” people had spent years building.'
     – Kyōko Hayashi, Futatabi Rui e, 2013 (tr. Margaret Mitsutani).

Kyōko Hayashi's works attempt to convey to younger generations the lived experience of the hibakusha, the direct survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A particular feature of her work is the blending of temporalities and events, which illustrates her chaotic and almost unspeakable recollection of the events of the 9 August 1945. In Futatabi Rui e (2013), Hayashi writes a new letter to Rui – following the one included in Torinitii kara torinitii e (2000) – meditating on the effects of the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima disaster. She writes: 'perhaps the Great East Japan Earthquake was what turned this destruction in the natural world I thought was eternal into a sign that everything I’d believed in was now crumbling before my eyes' [1].

     Disasters and environmentalism in Japanese fiction

The atomic bombings and the Fukushima disaster have had a lasting impact on Japanese cultural production, like a never-ending ghost that is periodically fanned by current events. Fumiyo Kōno's Yunagi no machi, sakura no kuni (2003) illustrates this concern in a multi-generational story. It is a cathartic narrative whose main purpose is to nurture and reconcile the painful memory for the hibakusha, but also for those who did not directly witness the events. The acceleration of climate change and Japan's new energy mix are also of growing concern, conjuring up an image of a Japan on the brink of extinction and ravaged by disasters. Two examples illustrate the epidermal nature of these issues. In 2014, the famous gourmet manga Oishinbo (1983) tackled the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster head-on, highlighting the harmful effects on the environment and the people of the region, who suffered regular nosebleeds. These scenes clashed with the official discourse on the effects of the accident, so much so that Shinzo Abe directly condemned the manga [2], leading to the series' ongoing hiatus.

More recently, Makoto Shinkai's films have oscillated between neo-traditionalism and social conservatism, as in Tenki no Ko (2019). Maria Mihaela Grajdian has already pointed out that Mamoru Hosoda's films, by idealising concepts such as family, parenthood and masculinity, 'shows both that he understands the critical situation and that he does not regard it as his duty to offer alternative solutions, more in tune with the spirit of the 21st century' [3]. In Tenki no Ko, Shinkai is content with the same naive, depoliticising position: climate change and the disappearance of Japan under the sea are seen as inevitable natural phenomena, and the film prefers to focus on the fleeting happiness of a few teenagers from a purely individualistic, conservative perspective.

With The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017), Nintendo's flagship series has also taken up these themes anew. This is less a first exploration than an updated discourse. The Zelda games have always contained elements of shintō philosophy, contrasting Arthurian mythology with the typically Japanese depiction of environments, whether through non-human creatures, the abundance of islands – literal or figurative – or the sacred aspect of nature. Breath of the Wild depicted the world after a catastrophe and the restoration of nature, everlasting despite the scars left by disasters. Tears of the Kingdom is a direct reflection of this vision, by reversing the representation.

     Flowers of ruin: looking at micro-gardens

A variation on the theme of Majora's Mask (2000), Tears of the Kingdom also shows humanity on the brink of extinction. However, the tone is quite different. Whereas Majora's Mask was a journey into nihilism and the lack of communication that breaks down interpersonal relationships, Tears of the Kingdom explores the persistence of solidarity and the opening up of societies. Recontextualised, the world of Hyrule is a fable that sings of the resilience of nations in the face of natural disaster. Even within the first few hours of surface exploration, the world is teeming with life, yet societies live hidden away, sheltered from the elements. There is something charming about re-exploring a world that is decidedly optimistic, but still a little fearful, like the first buds of spring breaking through the snow.

Rather tellingly, the Zonai Ruins are still harbouring life: the sky islands are still inhabited by birds, while the debris that has fallen to the ground is home to plants that normally only grow in the heavens. Despite these chaotic elements, however, the world of Hyrule is somewhat more domesticated. The roads are well trodden by travellers, stables provide regular resting places, and construction materials are plentiful along the roadsides. Tears of the Kingdom has swapped the 'miniature plant garden' and 'garden in a box' (hakoniwa) [4] for a lusher shrubland. Hyrule is shaped by the collaborative work of its inhabitants, and their presence can be seen in the little accents that dot the landscape: Zelda and Magda's little flower garden, or Pyper's glittering tree, are clear signs that humans have made the environment their own, creating a symbiotic relationship between society and nature.

Tears of the Kingdom is, in a way, an ode to primordialism and man's passivity when it comes to influencing nature. Unlike Breath of the Wild, where the equipment forged by humans quickly becomes the most powerful, the player can make do with items found on monsters for most of the adventure. It's not until fairly late in the game that the shift occurs, when Zonai items can become more valuable. More generally, Tears of the Kingdom allows the player to contemplate the world and its inhabitants through tighter resource management, at least in the first few dozen hours. But even when Link is well equipped, nature is not easily tamed, as the introduction of world bosses keeps exploration somewhat terrifying or majestic. The exploration of the Depths, while often undermined by visual monotony, illustrates the sinister nature of what crawls beneath the gaze of the living, and the importance of ruin, not just of human civilisations, but of a world tainted by corruption (kegare).

     A melancholic sky: fall and burden as elements of game design

This aesthetic owes a great deal to the vision of Hidemaro Fujibayashi and Daiki Iwamoto, given that they apprehend the sky through the act of falling. There is a certain tragic irony to this Upheaval, as it is used to discover the reasons for the fall of the Zonai. As in Skyward Sword (2011), the exploration of the skies begins with a long fall. But the world of Skyward Sword allows for much easier exploration thanks to its bird mounts [5], whereas in Tears of the Kingdom Link is constantly being pulled down by gravity. He is destined to fall, and this sense of heaviness is present throughout the game: in particular, the interactions with the various inhabitants of the world emphasise their insecurity and, by extension, their fallibility. Despite the humour and joviality that runs through the dialogue, all the characters are undermined by self-imposed desires and missions. Addison continues to hold signs for endless days, Reede is forced to admit that his vision of tranquillity is no longer sustainable, and Penn struggles with his fear of actively participating in field investigation. There is something deeply human about them, and Link emerges in turn as a mythologised figure as he performs heroic deeds and helps others. In this respect, it is striking that everyone knows his name, but his identity sometimes remains a mystery.

This philosophy no doubt helps to explain other design elements and Fujibayashi's characteristic wandering. Tears of the Kingdom opts for a more scripted progression, with the player openly encouraged to help the various tribes. Each storyline is fairly engaging and recontextualises nicely the characters met in Breath of the Wild – with the exception of the Goron quest, which neutralises its anti-capitalist themes far too quickly. The main quests in each region are refreshingly varied, with some unexpected sequences such as the defence of Gerudo Town. The downside of this approach is the disappointment of the dungeons. These are particularly mediocre, a simple series of puzzles inferior to those in the Shrines. The same structure as The Minish Cap (2004) is found in Tears of the Kingdom, with an inability to think holistically about design. These sequences do a poor job of incorporating the great freedom of Link's powers; it would probably have been more interesting to emphasise the oppressive aspect of confined spaces and a survival approach, for example by removing the map in dungeons.

As it stands, the non-linearity of the title works against many of the design ideas. In addition to the identical flashbacks for each Sage, the dungeons do not adapt well to the upscaling that players experience as they accumulate more resources and power. For the most part, the dungeons restrict the new skills unlocked, rather than showcasing them as other mini-dungeons and celestial islands can, where Ultrahand shines very brightly. The Fire Temple is perhaps the only exception, as it is possible to completely ignore the various puzzles if the player has enough resources and has been diligent in their exploration. On the other hand, the non-linearity works well with the side quests, as it feels genuinely satisfying when an NPC tells Link that he has already completed the mission he was given. Similarly, the Proving Grounds Shrines benefit greatly from player progression and a larger heart pool, turning a careful experience into a speed challenge, while the other Shrines allow for creative expression for players familiar with the advanced grammar of the various powers and machines.

Perhaps more importantly, it is the combat that suffers greatly from this approach: while Tears of the Kingdom features much larger waves of enemies, the system remains clunky. The combat system is designed for duels rather than large-scale melee, and the lack of ergonomics often renders Fuse unusable in battle. Similarly, the Sages' avatars are a welcome touch, emphasising the fact that Link is no longer alone, but the implementation is so unpleasant that it is easier to ignore their powers outside of certain puzzles. To a certain extent, the heaviness of the game and the idea of the fall serve to underline a contemplation of the world and its societies, provided one is receptive to Fujibayashi and Iwamoto's themes, but at the expense of the gameplay and the fluidity of the experience.

     To live is to atone for one's sins: neo-traditionalism in Japan

Breath of the Wild had already begun to return to a very Japanese aesthetic, a trend that continues in Tears of the Kingdom. Certain elements are obvious: Kakariko Village retains the same visual appearance, and the soundtrack features many more Asian elements – 'Master Kohga Battle' makes more use of the shamisen, and the 'Main Theme' is largely driven by an erhu, to name just two examples. Thematically, the universe more readily embraces East Asian mythology. Dragons are explicitly Japanese, as are the quest for immortality, magatama, the constant search for home (ibasho), and the genealogical links between humanity and the gods – the royalty of Hyrule is descended from the union of Zonai and humans, just as Emperor Jimmu is described as a descendant of Amaterasu.

Strikingly, the noble female characters in Tears of the Kingdom are all marked by the Japanese stain of tragedy, whether through the burden of blood, motherhood or the sins for which they take responsibility. The thematic development and presentation of Rauru and Sonia form a striking parallel with Izanagi and Izanami. As parental figures, the royal couple represents a familial and affective ideal, albeit a highly traditional one. Despite its seemingly progressive themes, Tears of the Kingdom revels in social stagnation and a status quo that must be protected at all costs – the True Ending emphasises that the point was not just to defeat Ganondorf, but to preserve 'eternal peace' (eien no an'nei) [6]. Hyrule may have undergone a number of transformations since Breath of the Wild, but they have always occurred within continuities: clan leaders have changed, but only to be replaced by blood descendants. Similarly, the multicultural discourse is always tempered by the service that the different tribes provide to the Hylian royalty, according to a strict hierarchy.

Tears of the Kingdom is a parenthesis and a intermediary conclusion to the series. At the end of the adventure, Link returns the powers he used to explore the world. The gameplay of the title is designed to be a natural extension of the powers used in Breath of the Wild, increasing the creative and traversal possibilities. It is, however, a temporary experience; to the player, Tears of the Kingdom repeats the same old message: 'this is what I propose, and if you do not like it, so be it'. The title makes no concessions in its approach, to the point where it suffers structurally. Its extraordinary density may seem almost antiquated – but such has been Fujibayashi's legacy since The Minish Cap – and some will find the idea of the game providing bits and pieces of the solution to every puzzle heavy-handed.

Hyrule is still scarred by the damage of the Upheaval; there is no sign of the islands falling to the ground again, nor does Hyrule Castle. The Chasms are unlikely to close either, with only the Gloom gone. Mankind will have to learn to live with this new and distorted world. Like Japanese disaster fiction, Tears of the Kingdom looks to the future – to the resilience of the people – but it also reflects on the trauma that will not fade away: Kyōko Hayashi laments the inaction of institutions while the traces of destruction are still present in Japan, and the promise of the Sages at the very end of the game seems to be a response to this concern. Tears of the Kingdom guides the player's gaze almost relentlessly towards a contemplation of Japanese society in its environment, even if it means verging on the artificial, and whether or not this approach is welcomed is up to the player.

__________
[1] Kyōko Hayashi, 'To Rui, Once Again', tr. Margaret Mitsutani, in The Asia-Pacific Journal, vol. 15-7, no. 3, 2017, p. 3.
[2] Justin McCurry, 'Gourmet manga stirs up storm after linking Fukushima to nosebleeds', in The Guardian, 22nd May 2014, consulted on 10th July 2023.
[3] Maria Mihaela Grajdian, 'Compassionate Neo-Traditionalism in Hosoda Mamoru’s Animation Movies', in Russian Japanology Review, vol. 3, no. 2, 2020, p. 148.
[4] Victor Moisan, Zelda : Le jardin et le monde, Façonnage, Lyon, 2021.
[5] On spatiality, the traversal aspect and the design of the sky and Skyloft, see 'Volume Five: The Dense Sky and Town', in Nintendo, Iwata Asks – The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, 2011.
[6] Note that the English translation conveys the original idea slightly differently, balancing Ganondorf's defeat with the idea of 'eternal peace'. The Japanese text reads: 「あの方たちが願ったのはつかまあ束の間ではなく永遠に続くハイラルの安寧。」Here, the comparison is much more focused on the ephemeral and the eternal, while the term 安寧 expresses both Hyrule's public peace and Zelda's inner tranquillity.

The Far Cry Elden Ring-ification of Breath of the Wild with a smattering of end-of-chapter Fortnite and New Funky Mode.

While BotW was content to let players roam free in a sprawling world, Tears of the Kingdom reins in this freedom considerably and hides the guardrails from the player with horse blinders. Link is still welcome to run around Hyrule at will, but the primary storyline holds the keys which allow actual exploratory liberation. My first dozen hours completely ignored Lookout Landing, leaving me without critical tools like the paraglider and towers. That was the most challenging TotK ever got, and the most it (unintentionally) forced me to think outside the box. I dragged gliders to the tops of hills labouriously, I used a horse and cart, I made elaborate vehicles simply to get around. I scrounged for rockets, fans, batteries, and air balloons to ascend to sky islands, making it to a few of the lower ones with great accomplishment. I committed to putting off the towers as long as I could, not realising they were an outright necessity. Seeing how this additional layer of the map functioned demystified it severely, rendering a challenge into a stepping stone for parcels of content.

The depths, like the skies above, are filled with potential. Many of its spaces are similarly wide open to encourage blind exploration with vehicles. Only there is nearly no purpose to any of it. Lightroots are a checkbox which dismantle the most compelling part of the depths -- their darkness. The depths are a place you visit to grab zonaite or amiibo armour and leave. As the Fire Temple is within the depths, and it being the first I tackled, I falsely believed there would be more dungeons strewn about below, simply a part of the world rather than instanced away from it. Sadly, it is the exception.

The other temples are obfuscated and inaccessible without their related storylines, which is itself fine (the temples are impossible to progress through without their associated power anyways) but this leaves the world feeling more boxed in, a selection of rooms in an overly-long hallway. A spare few rooms complement each other, most of them do not. The walls of the rooms must be thick. Whether it is shrines, side quests, or temples, the developers yet again seemingly have no way of knowing what abilities the player might have, what puzzles they have encountered, what skills they remember. All that they know is that in the Fire Temple, you have a Goron. In the Water Temple, you have Zora armour. The positive is, of course, that these things can thus be tackled in any order without a fear of missing out on anything. The downside is that there is never anything more to a shrine, a temple, or anything than what the player encounters the first go around. There is no impetus to return to a location when you have a better tool, or a wider knowledge of how the game's mechanics work. You show up, experience the room, and leave. With 300 map pins at your disposal, and similar issues arising in BotW, there's a sense that the developers chickened out near the end, too afraid to let the player (gasp) backtrack or (gasp) miss out.

Ironically enough, the lack of FOMO is what I miss most. When I was towerlessly exploring with a hodgepodge of trash scavenged from around the world, I felt free. I felt clever! When I discovered the intended mode of play, however, I felt I was putting a square peg in a square hole. There's a crystal that needs to be moved to a far away island? Before, I might have made a horror of Octoballoons and Korok Fronds with Fans and Springs to get it where it needed to go. When the Fruit of Knowledge was consumed, I saw the parts for the prebuilt Fanplane were right next to the Crystal. There's a breakable wall in a dungeon? Bomb Flowers or a hammer are right there. It is incredibly safe. It is a pair of horse blinders that you can decorate as you please. Go ahead and make your mech, you are still on the straight and narrow path.

TotK tries to bring back the linearity of Zeldas past within the BotW framework, but it ignores that the linearity was speckled with a weave of areas which expanded alongside your arsenal, rather than shrinking. Everything here is incongruous, a smörgåsbord of cool set pieces that simply don't go together. There is too much content (Elden Ring) that is too self-contained (end of chapter Fortnite) and too afraid that you will not experience it (New Funky Mode).

Did I have fun? Yes. But I had to make it myself.

As time has gone on I've really soured on this game honestly, which is disappointing given my love for this franchise. I totally understand why the people who love this game love it. This game is a technical marvel. I think I've just changed as I've gotten older. What was once exciting about BOTW isn't really present in TOTK. The magic of discovery isn't nearly as powerful this time around since I've already spent hundreds of hours on the above ground map. I'd just really hoped there would be more new settlements and characters to make it feel starkly different to BOTW's vast emptiness.

The story is easily my least favourite 3D zelda story. The story of the old formula are just so much more impactful to me because of their pacing. This game really screwed up by reusing the same story formula as BOTW. I was never in love with BOTW's memories but I've grown to accept the story structure as it fits the game's themes of discovery. TOTK's dragon tears try to replicate this but in reality they just take all of the story's interesting events, place them eons in the past, make it so you can't play them, tell them out of order, and destroy any dramatic tension or investment in the story. This, combined with the literal copy paste cutscenes at the end of the dungeons and an ending which reverses any sacrifice the characters made led to a story I did not enjoy at all. Compared to any other 3D zelda stories, where the end was often the most impactful part, this is honestly laughable.

I know this review has seemed very negative, but there are still high points in this game. there are two moments I legitimately love and have stayed with me since playing it. Firstly, the entire Hebra section was fantastic. The ascension to the heavens as you approach the dungeon is a legitimately fantastic set piece, and the boss fight is really great. The second is the pilgrimage to thunderhead isle. The constant thunderstorm and obscured path led to a really satisfying moment of clarity and an incredible view once you reach the end, topped off with an incredibly soothing piece of music once you get to the isle. The rest of the soundtrack is also fantastic.

I really hope Nintendo changes course and focuses on story more with the next game, because those are the parts that have stuck with me the most from the old games.

I absolutely love this game, but if you know how it works, you probably shouldn’t buy it.

That may sound odd, especially when it’s a social co-op game that was popularized by Twitch streams, but playing with that context may actually hurt your experience. Personally, all I knew about Phasmophobia going in was that it was about ghost hunting, it had online co-op, and it had a well-received VR mode. Luckily I had buds who were willing to buy the game even when they knew as little as I did, along with a VR headset, which makes anything scary about ten times scarier. We all agreed not to look up anything about the game, nothing about how any of the items work, nothing about the behavior of the ghosts, everything we learned would be through experimentation. The twenty hours it took for us to learn these lessons and go from “the idiots in the abandoned house” to “The Bustin’ Crew” were fantastic, since the gameplay itself is so unique, along with its satisfying learning process, and the added hilarity of learning how your friends would act in a scary situation. However, as soon as we knew how things worked, all that was left was going through the motions, doing the same things on the same maps over and over again. Repetitiveness is the most common critique to see in reviews, but I believe this issue has been aggravated due the aforementioned viral nature of the game’s popularity. If you watch a few streams of it, you’ll know the maps and how to play effectively, and will only get a few hours of interest from it before it feels tedious. If you play with friends or randoms who already know the maps, you will follow them or just be told how everything works, and the appeal will dry up quickly. It’s also natural for any game that generates its content randomly and doesn’t have a set progression path to be considered repetitive to some degree, as the only definitive endpoint is getting bored and deciding to move onto something else.

I do realize that’s a pretty bad sell for a game I want people to play, though. “Check out this game, except don’t research it, just take my word for it, and also convince three of your friends to do the same thing, and it’ll get repetitive eventually” is hardly the best way to get people to shell out cash. However, the humor, the terror, the mystery, and the uniqueness of learning how to hunt ghosts is so compelling to me that I really want people to see it for themselves. Sometimes the best experiences are the ones that take you by surprise.

I actually beat Rollerdrome back in March and was quite enamored at first, but I've since cooled down on it somewhat. A quick replay today has only confirmed my suspicions that there's unfortunately a lot left to be desired. Feel free to take my word here with a grain of salt: I'm not a particularly huge Tony Hawk fan and was more or less playing this as part of a warm-up via Jet Set Radio-likes (since Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is coming out in less than a week, and I replayed the original Jet Set Radio right before this). Still, if I had to put my finger on why this didn't hit the mark the second time around, my best guess would be that Rollerdrome doesn't understand how to create an engaging difficulty curve, and here are some of my theories as to why:

- Progression: Rollerdrome locks its stages behind completing challenges (collect all the tokens, do a certain trick while killing a certain enemy, rack up enough points, etc), with ten challenges per stage and sixty completed challenges required to unlock the finals. This is supposed to incentivize players to tackle as many challenges as possible while going through stages, but in reality what I found myself doing was farming the earlier stages for the easiest challenges to get the base completion requirement out of the way, and throwing away dry runs to farm the more manageable challenges at the beginning before resetting and running through the stages proper. This unfortunately feels like an artificial implementation of coercing me to explore its mechanics when I was usually more concerned with straight efficiency regarding combat.

- Tricks: You need to perform tricks constantly in Rollerdrome to restore your ammo, and tricks are also a way to quickly rack up points in-between shooting to exploit your current combo multiplier. Again though, I found tricks to be unnecessarily complicated and superfluous outside of doing the required tricks to complete necessary challenges: if you don't care about your score, then all you have to do for quick ammo restoration is to just hold the stick forward and perform the same grab/flip/spin while not in combat, or just spend your time grinding on rails/edges and firing since you'll automatically regain ammo for grinding up to a certain point. It also doesn't help that I found the inputs for more complex tricks a bit fiddly and perfect dodges refresh some of your ammo anyway, reducing the reliance upon tricks. Speaking of which...

- Dodge/Super Reflex: The dodge is a little too good in Rollerdrome. You can basically invincible frame roll at any time in the game (including in mid-air and while grinding), outside of a few frames right after the roll animation ends as far as I can tell. This not only provides a reliable method for quickly getting out of danger, but also you can roll in any direction to quickly alter your momentum and enter Super Reflex if you activate bullet-time right as you perfect dodge (that is, dodging in the first few frames of an active enemy attack). To summarize, this strategy easily gets you ammo refills, allows for relative invincibility when confronted by a barrage of attacks, and powers up your shots while in Super Reflex, which as a result makes Rollerdrome almost feel too reactive as opposed to proactive since it's far too advantageous to not abuse this to safely and quickly wipe out waves.

- Stages: Rollerdrome only has 11 stages, and quite a few of these stages are just repeated locales with few hazards outside of the enemies and a lot of empty, open space outside of a few trick ramps and grind rails/edges. A bit more variety in the set design (and more walls to wall-ride, which I thought was a little underutilized) would have been appreciated since by halfway through, some of the arenas started to bleed into one another for me.

- Laser: I'm fine with most of the weapon balance in Rollerdrome, but the Z-11 (the in-game laser gun) is an exception. The main caveat to using the Z-11, aside from the three shot capacity (still more than the grenade launcher though), is that you can't use aim assist to automatically lock on to foes with it and thus must manually point your reticle at them. Not a very difficult task though, since Reflex gives you more than enough reaction time and the reticle turns red as soon as you hover over a target. Because the shotgun and pistol are limited somewhat by range for aim assist (especially the shotgun due to perfect slug shots), the laser is a godsend: it bypasses this system entirely and lets you snipe foes from across the arena, taking out most enemies after a double charge and can also pierce through multiple enemies at a time. It further disrupts this balance because the Z-11 is unlocked halfway through, meaning the game's earlier combat/combo challenges are a lot more difficult without it at first but often rather trivial once you've unlocked it.

- Boss fights: I've already mentioned that Rollerdrome's dodge roll is a bit overcentralizing, but nowhere does this become more evident than during the two boss fights, shifting the prevailing strategy from any semblance of ammo management/route planning to just basic bait and punish. Simply wait for enemy attacks, dodge to regain ammo/enter Super Reflex to finish off goons, and then approach the big robot to deal damage and enter the next phase. There's no scoring optimization or crazy tricks/maneuvering involved, and as a result, these tend to be pretty dry affairs that could have been removed from the game entirely with little value lost.

I certainly get the appeal of Rollerdrome, given its potential for optimization to maximize the combo meter and quickly speedrun stages, but unfortunately I find that the game doesn't get harder, but rather gets longer with more enemies that take more hits and throw out more attacks. Even so, I had enough fun constantly filling foes with lead in slow-mo, but even this thrill began to wear itself thin an hour in. I can't help but feel that the separate movement and combat mechanics are undercooked despite how promising "Tony Hawk with bullet-time gunplay" sounds on paper. More power to those who find the core gameplay engaging enough to try and complete all the challenges + the "Out for Blood" post-game replay with stricter margins: as for me, I'm content with putting this down after a few hours and completing Finals with a C rank. Rollerdrome is by no means a bad game, but I know Roll7 is capable of so much more.