Okay....finally. I am able to put thoughts on this after finishing, and yet I am to understand that I haven't actually finished - I need to hit NG+ and NG++ for that. I'll get to it at some point, I'm sure.

I really ended up enjoying this. The movement feels extremely awesome. Configuring my AC to look like a mid 1990s palette action figure complete with T-Rex decal and/or Solo Jazz color scheme is also awesome.

The OST is one of my absolute favorites in the FromSoft catalogue, especially the original version of Rough and Decent which mixes industrial techno and jazz and makes me want to get the fuck up and move.

The characters fighting for control, domination, liberation, and just understanding of Rubicon are also fantastic. I don't think the story quite lands as much as I'd like it to (some of the choices are incredibly grand and thought-provoking in theory, but ultimately end up on the "tell" rather than "show" spectrum of things, to use a cliché), but the VA work and just general personalities of all the characters are very memorable and touching.

Most of the combat is pretty fun and exciting. The art direction and visuals stand out, as well as the feedback from firing giant missiles or shoving a giant spike into enemies, and the frenetic pace conjures up a lot of adrenaline. Blasting shit and speeding around an arena was never more fun, and I felt completely in control of my AC at all times. That is definitely a triumph in itself.

I absolutely do not like the ACS system in its current state. It's an intriguing idea that is just not executed well, and most of my problems with the game stem from the quirks associated with the system. It throws off the balance of almost everything, and the game suffers as a result. The levels are incredibly easy, but bosses can be extremely tedious without a build focused on exploiting ACS. Yes, you can beat the entire game with nothing but punching. Yes, you can beat the entire game with just the intro AC. However, in my experience as a normal, average person, I experimented with some fun builds during the missions that were extremely easy, and then some of the bosses I just ran into a complete brick wall that I wasn't going to get over without swapping to an ACS build. Then I swapped to the build, and the boss died in 1-2 tries, and each win was about 3 minutes shorter than me trying to grind out fights with other weapons. The power of ACS exploitation is just that ridiculous. I think it would be much more meaningful to swap between different builds based on the scenario and bosses, but the current system means that a high impact build will always be the best, as the weapons that are good at building impact/ACS are also the weapons that get bonuses for damage while the opponent is stunned - there are no trade-offs.

This chasm between gameplay experiences holds Fires of Rubicon back from being truly amazing for me, as it's just hard for the game to get any footing when it constantly shuffles between push-over easy and punishingly frustrating. Everything else about Armored Core VI's presentation is phenomenal, but its wings have been clipped.

PAUSE BETWEEN NEW REVIEW AND OLD REVIEW BELOW


Record Scratch

Whoops. Pausing this review because I've gone back to the game after some encouragement. Enjoying it again and the Chapter 2/3 bosses I've fought have been MUCH more enjoyable than the Chapter 1 bosses.

Still not sure how I feel about the ACS system, as it feels like you either exploit it and dominate or skirt around it and struggle, but I'm having fun for now.

OLD REVIEW BELOW

Dropping this after beating Chapter 1 and feeling pretty bad about it, but that was about all I needed to realize this one just isn't for me.

The moment-to-moment gameplay bangs but the missions are extremely short and easy. Meanwhile, I did not have fun with any of the bosses I fought except for one that was basically a giant stage - that one was awesome - and I didn't mesh with the mission structure and its relevance on trying out new equipment.

The one thing I did absolutely enjoy were the arena fights. I honestly wish the bosses had been other AC pilots rather than big set-piece bosses.

Sorry, this Raven is going back to the nest.

A Play in Three Acts

ACT I

Setting: A Discord Server

Many People Over the Years: DC, you love Twin Peaks, you should play Alan Wake. It's inspired by Twin Peaks.

Me: Oh wow, sounds cool. I'll check it out. I liked Control but it didn't blow me away.

Many People: Just be aware that the gameplay/combat sucks.

Me: I don't care! How bad can it be? I love Twin Peaks! It has a diner in the opening segment! It's about a writer! How bad can it be?

ACT II

Setting: The First Several Hours of Alan Wake: Remastered

Me: Oh wow, I'm pretty sure my grandma can sprint longer than this guy. How did they go from Max Payne to this? Like...I know he's a writer but still..

Me: Doesn't matter! Hallucinations, fake Mrs. Tremond, a book mystery, a wife mystery! This is great! I'll just turn the game down to easy so I can get through the bad parts faster!

ACT III

Setting: Despair. A lone chair on stage while a disheveled man forces himself through a video game out of spite.

Me, quietly sobbing to my controller: please...make it stop. I never want to see a flashlight ever again.

The lights dim and go out leaving the stage in blackness.

Me, a low, trembling whisper: How did they go from Max Payne to this?

T H E E N D

I love 2D Zelda so much and am very glad I finally got Citra to run this without my potato PC taking flight.

While this doesn't hit the highs of other 2D Zeldas for me, particularly in the dungeon area, the experience was wonderful. The painting gimmick is fantastic and very well done, and the item shop idea is a nice wrinkle in the Link to the Past formula. It was interesting to have the option of renting the items and the tension of having to rent them again if Link's dungeon delving went awry...until I realized that would never happen.

I don't play Zelda for the difficulty or anything, but Link Between Worlds has to be the easiest game in the franchise, and one of its core mechanics is based around the player dying, which just didn't mesh well with me. I only bought a few items to upgrade, and rented the rest because I did not die a single time in my entire playthrough. Again, I don't play these for the difficulty, but it did kind of bum me out that this mechanic was just not ever going to apply.

I do think, however, that at the same time this does qualify Link Between Worlds to be one of the most beginner friendly games in the franchise...however it also relies a bit on knowing the series to get the full experience out of it.

All in all though, this was a charming and fun game, and really scratched the 2D Zelda dungeon diving itch. The redone music is fantastic, and the dungeons fit their themes very well. I have to say, kicking that clown's ass was a pretty good time too.

A bearer sits in chains with branded face
marked as the Other - unbelonging.
Soon giants will clash, the earth shattering,
through time reforms into a more revered shape.

Complexity drawn from it's hiding place
by time again and by power dawning.
Scorched wings unfurl; bearer's strength gathering,
spread wide shows the true measure of its grace.

Voices and rivals maneuver fiercely
to flank, to best, and to be proven right;
angry and frustrated about the blight
that's ravaged this land which they hold dearly.

Despite best efforts to sway and dismiss,
bearer's power, his magic, still exists.

Falling through clouds, untethered from new heights,
wind and brilliant song rush past my ears.
Oops - no paraglider yet, going down.

Falling again through a creature of ice;
sounds of Dragon Roost urge on joyful cheers.
Dungeons still missed and yet fun still abounds.

Falling fast now, island high in the clouds;
fire, ice, and lightning - three heads do appear;
arrows, eyeballs, one spring - I take his crown.

Falling one last time, falling, beneath
the ground.

This fucking game, man.

Here I sit in front of the dim glow of a computer monitor, inebriated, ready to spill my guts over a video game. I will just embrace the cringe and do as the Elden Ring meta dictates and smash that L2 Seppuku.

Playing through the Souls games was a sort-of gaming evolution for me - a transition away from Bioware and Bethesda RPG dominance into widening my perspective. I talked about that in my Dark Souls Remastered review, so if you're interested in more saccharine reflection, it's there. So when Elden Ring was announced and trailers debuted, I thought "holy shit. This is going to be my favorite game of all time."

It's this expectation that has killed me over and over again. I have thought so many times that I loved open world games. I probably put over a thousand hours each into Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. I also love Souls, with over a thousand hours in Dark Souls 3, let alone the series, so it should be the marriage of both things into an epic triumph of everything that I want from a video game. Yet, I remember after finishing Elden Ring for the first time, where this intense excitement and longing had been burning, the shadow of disappointment set in instead. Then followed the guilt.

What a stupid thing to feel - guilt over not liking a video game as much as I expected, and yet it destroyed me all the same. So I parsed out my feelings into a review and then guarded them by joking Elden Ring was a "bad game," because you can't critique me if I'm just being funny! It, obviously, is not a bad game.

And then, I played Elden Ring for about 700 more hours, battling with other Tarnished, and helping others overcome Malenia and her incessant need to remind us of who she is.

Here's the deal: I still mostly feel and believe the same things I did about Elden Ring as I did in my first review, however what has left is the guilt and frustration over those opinions. I still dislike several of the end-game bosses. I still think after the first playthrough the world feels lonely and lacking. I still prefer the more closed structure in these types of games. I still feel like some of the balance is lazy. I still think the multi-player in this game is a big step back.

I don't really care anymore though. The art direction is incredible from the just horrific nightmare that is Caelid to staring down giant arrow-shooting golems in Limgrave in the face of a thunderstorm. The framing of events is spectacular, and I get to be the camera man. There is a ton of customization and build-crafting that can be done, a thousand different ways to overcome obstacles, and despite the irritation I have with some of the end-game bosses, I still look forward to running through the game and fighting everything, as I find something new each time. Sure, some of this transformation does stem from "mad because bad," but so much of it is a result of eschewing expectations.

I have managed to make some amazing memories in the Lands Between, and will continue to find more. I hereby change my disappointed 9/10 review to a 10/10. Please, cringe at me. I invite it - I know the Vow of the Indomitable.

Style is amazing as hell from the cutscenes to the pixel art, plus there's a thumping OST in there. Full eyes, full ears, mid game.

I was pretty pumped for this one but can't help other than feel utterly let down by the actual gameplay itself. It's decent enough but over the 5-6 hour runtime, despite some pretty cool platforming ideas, it doesn't ever truly break out of the box in a way that is exciting or satisfying, nor does it scratch the metroidvania itch very well, as everything is pretty much discoverable on your first time through.

There are also some...interesting...design/balance choices. You have a health/energy bar which refills by hitting enemies, or when you hit zero you can regen some. You also have to use this bar to damage certain enemies, which honestly, I think is a pretty cool idea. However, the rate at which you lose/gain back energy/health is weirdly disproportionate.

In one boss fight, you can only trigger a damage phase on the boss by hitting him with a special attack that drains your energy. However, the rate at which you regen this energy from hitting the boss, as well as his projectiles, is not enough for what you actually need for the fight. The solution is in a damage phase to pause actually doing damage in order to dump all of your energy/health to zero and then use the regen ability to get enough back. This is incredibly backwards and weird and feels much more like an oversight in encounter balancing than a purposeful strategy.

9 Years of Shadow has the outline of a fantastic game but unfortunately it comes off like a term paper written at the eleventh hour - the introduction and main ideas are fantastic but...shit, it's due at midnight so let's throw this conclusion on there, a few block quotes, make those periods into 16-pt font, and pray that 9 and 2/3rds pages will count for 10. Have we tried bolding the title?

There are almost 600 reviews already but not one sonnet. So here goes:

A brutal axe slashes right at my face.
I knife parry while dynamite explodes
then whirl around and empty clips with grace;
blasting at filthy parasites exposed.

Heart attacks wait around every corner;
each encounter abounds with gripped tension.
Static no more - frenetic, sans torpor,
yet more options to fight apprehension.

This time I have a friend, not a burden;
a teammate that I miss when she is gone.
Each NPC became their own person,
fleshed out, built up, and much improved upon.

Despite a taste for slower paced RE,
this remake scores a big BINGO from me.

I may return to this at a later time, but I feel pretty disappointed with it right now.

The idea of the setting is cool, but as every other Team Ninja game I've played before, the levels are completely bland and uninspiring, which is also somewhat of a double-edged sword in this one as they want you to clear them in order to raise your power level to fight bosses.

The bosses themselves are okay, but there's no intimacy to any of them or weight that makes them feel exciting, which is a huge step back from Stranger of Paradise that, for all its other flaws, had some amazingly fun boss fights.

I don't believe Wo Long is necessarily a poor game or anything, but I just can't find myself wanting to play it when there's so much more out there that does excite me. I will just leave my review with a sophomoric: does not pass vibe check.

A ship descends on rocky crusted earth.
Alien, yet familiar excitement;
A world I have dreamt to explore preserved.
Nostalgia, though not mine, still existent,
Somehow shapes me - I acquiesce and bend.
Intensely immersed; Samus' view as mine,
Pounding drums smash my ears as I begin;
I completely fucking love Metroid Prime.

Through lava and ice, water, steel, and dirt,
Freedom and exploration - heaven sent.
Boss fights were fun, though some of them sure hurt;
the Omega Pirate, I do resent,
Power Missiles to the face said "get bent."
Definitely was humbled by the mines,
but in adversity, I stayed content -
I completely fucking love Metroid Prime.

In ranking Metroids, I'd put Prime in first.
Though I love Dread and its gameplay augments,
Exploration and atmosphere are worth
More to me by far, one-hundred percent.
I'm glad that I got to experience,
Finally after waiting so much time.
Reputation deserved and I'm content.
I completely fucking love Metroid Prime.

Prime 2 and 3 - continue the ascent,
Remaster them both, so I can spend time
Writing more poems, reviews to be penned -
I completely fucking love Metroid Prime.

Captive in a dark cabin;
No death, no chance to escape
Until I turned the tables
On my sadistic captor I learned to hate.

Yet, that world crumbled away,
And I began to see truth.
Passion for playing the game -
T'was showmanship all along, and not abuse.

Surprised by how much I grew
to love this game, front to end,
narrative truly grabbed me,
as once loathed opponents transformed into friends.