hotpoppah
2003
Rot your brain while watching Pikachu rot his brain. He won't let me outside. I'm trapped, please help me.
He keeps guessing incorrectly at the quiz show and we're in extreme debt. I've seen Pichu Bros. 3,934 times and he still laughs when the Houndoom dies. I can't take it anymore.
He keeps guessing incorrectly at the quiz show and we're in extreme debt. I've seen Pichu Bros. 3,934 times and he still laughs when the Houndoom dies. I can't take it anymore.
1999
Playing this game with rentals against the AI competitors is almost as awesome as having someone judo kick your pelvis into your torso.
The mini-games are where it's at, brother. Lickitung has so much screen time in this game, it almost makes it a good game.
The mini-games are where it's at, brother. Lickitung has so much screen time in this game, it almost makes it a good game.
1998
The pee rat does not listen.
2022
This game actually has some neat strategy to it when it comes to the card's abilities. The rounds are incredibly quick so it's pretty easy to waste time playing this game. I loved obliterating people who snapped way too early, it was always funny as fuck.
Then you beat the free part of the battle pass and all of a sudden it starts asking you for money like it's gonna starve to death and I uninstalled lol.
Then you beat the free part of the battle pass and all of a sudden it starts asking you for money like it's gonna starve to death and I uninstalled lol.
This game really do be making you feel like a medieval peasant, from it's combat, menus, music, allllll the way down to the potato looking graphics.
I find the whole combat learning curve to be pretty interesting both in it's believability with what the themes are going for. As Henry, you really shouldn't be able to slay 15 people in the first hour because it's not something that Henry is meant to be good at, rather it's something he and you, by extension, become better at the longer you put up with the mechanics. Once I was able to unlock nicer perks and fully grapple the idea of it, it became very fun to master the fighting by the end. It's absolutely not a mechanic that everyone would like though, and I don't blame anyone for dropping this game because of the combat. You can be a professional at it in this game and still die in a fight against 2 enemies who just dog-pile you. It's frustrating as all hell to learn, but it can be rewarding if you give it a chance.
For me, I was loving the whole medieval setting thing, probably a bit too much, but mainly because it was so different than the other games that I was used to. I found it all so goofy as Hell to be honest, I was weirdly immersed in being a random dude fighting for his life in a world where a sneeze could kill you. There are processes to just about everything. Henry is illiterate until you decide to put him through a reading class. Brewing potions is like a weird recipe based cooking mini-game. You can only save from sleeping in a bed you own or by drinking a potion, etc. It's very consistently detailed to make it feel like you're a medieval idiot and I found that to be the most interesting aspect of the game. Again though, it's not a gimmick that everyone would like and I also don't blame them. It's weird to describe this game to someone who's never played it before because my favorite parts are the ones that sound so boring on paper.
I really do wish that the story had a bit more oomph to it. It's.. fine? But, there's a reveal later down the line that sort of ruins the whole theme for me that I just gushed over above and it's kind of unfortunate. I wouldn't want to spoil it, but it's not a reveal that's done well and left a bit of a poor taste in my mouth for the rest of the main questline. That coupled up with the fact that some cutscenes are just a bunch of royal lords sitting around spewing massive historical infodumps for several minutes at a time will just put you to sleep at times. This game shines best when you're going through dialogue trees because you can sometimes change the outcomes through speech checks and optionally learn more about the context if you desired. There's some genuinely funny outcomes to some of the quests, both main and side, but as soon as the pre-rendered cutscenes start, just know that you're in for the world's longest AP European History lesson.
The ending is huge sequel bait and is ruined further by the DLC. If you have all the DLC for this game, your companion friend literally halts progress right at the end to make you go on one of the most trivial quests of all time. It's a fun quest and all but if you were thinking of maybe doing all the DLC after the epilogue, you can't. The game will force you to do this random side quest before showing you the world's shortest ending cutscene and allowing you to call it a day. My only guess for why they did this, is because the events of the DLC will be canon later?? But, it was still a weird as fuck choice.
On the subject of speech, it's done very interestingly here because it's affected by the clothes that you're wearing. If you're wearing nice, expensive looking clothes when you speak to someone, you're probably going to pass most of your speech checks. On the other hand, if you're wearing garish, bloody armor then you may not be able to. You could theoretically pass more intimidation checks instead though. It's a cool idea but there are some instances where it doesn't seem to work? Each dialogue has numbers that indicate whether you would win against that person or not in a speech check, but a lot of the times it doesn't seem to matter. You could have +4 points above someone and you will still fail apparently because the dialogue option is "so unbelievable" that not even that person believes you, even though you have super high Charisma. Why is it an option then LOL? You can use speech checks to get out of a lot of hard combat scenarios or get better quest rewards, but this will fuck you sometimes without warning.
On that note, this game is still incredibly buggy at times. Supposedly when it first came out, it had massive problems that have been mostly fixed today. Unfortunately, I did still run into some issues. For the most part, they just stuck to graphical bugs where textures load weirdly or some characters T-pose here and there, which.. sure broke my medieval peasant immersion sometimes. I did however run into problems where dialogue would freeze infinitely if I skipped over some choices too quickly, which was annoying because I'd have to reload. There were also some battle scenes where the friendly AI just wouldn't function properly sometimes and I'd die because of it.
All and all, I found a lot of fun with this game but I would only ever recommend it to the right person who I know would thoroughly enjoy it and it's mechanics. It's not the greatest story ever and can be drier than ancient wood at times, but I really dug the actual gameplay. It's very unfortunate though that after enjoying the hell out of this game, I found out later that the guy who made it is an outspoken member of a movement who thinks that I'm a sub-human who's out to destroy the gaming industry. It's a game that I already bought and played so I won't piss on it because of this, but you can use that information however you like.
I find the whole combat learning curve to be pretty interesting both in it's believability with what the themes are going for. As Henry, you really shouldn't be able to slay 15 people in the first hour because it's not something that Henry is meant to be good at, rather it's something he and you, by extension, become better at the longer you put up with the mechanics. Once I was able to unlock nicer perks and fully grapple the idea of it, it became very fun to master the fighting by the end. It's absolutely not a mechanic that everyone would like though, and I don't blame anyone for dropping this game because of the combat. You can be a professional at it in this game and still die in a fight against 2 enemies who just dog-pile you. It's frustrating as all hell to learn, but it can be rewarding if you give it a chance.
For me, I was loving the whole medieval setting thing, probably a bit too much, but mainly because it was so different than the other games that I was used to. I found it all so goofy as Hell to be honest, I was weirdly immersed in being a random dude fighting for his life in a world where a sneeze could kill you. There are processes to just about everything. Henry is illiterate until you decide to put him through a reading class. Brewing potions is like a weird recipe based cooking mini-game. You can only save from sleeping in a bed you own or by drinking a potion, etc. It's very consistently detailed to make it feel like you're a medieval idiot and I found that to be the most interesting aspect of the game. Again though, it's not a gimmick that everyone would like and I also don't blame them. It's weird to describe this game to someone who's never played it before because my favorite parts are the ones that sound so boring on paper.
I really do wish that the story had a bit more oomph to it. It's.. fine? But, there's a reveal later down the line that sort of ruins the whole theme for me that I just gushed over above and it's kind of unfortunate. I wouldn't want to spoil it, but it's not a reveal that's done well and left a bit of a poor taste in my mouth for the rest of the main questline. That coupled up with the fact that some cutscenes are just a bunch of royal lords sitting around spewing massive historical infodumps for several minutes at a time will just put you to sleep at times. This game shines best when you're going through dialogue trees because you can sometimes change the outcomes through speech checks and optionally learn more about the context if you desired. There's some genuinely funny outcomes to some of the quests, both main and side, but as soon as the pre-rendered cutscenes start, just know that you're in for the world's longest AP European History lesson.
The ending is huge sequel bait and is ruined further by the DLC. If you have all the DLC for this game, your companion friend literally halts progress right at the end to make you go on one of the most trivial quests of all time. It's a fun quest and all but if you were thinking of maybe doing all the DLC after the epilogue, you can't. The game will force you to do this random side quest before showing you the world's shortest ending cutscene and allowing you to call it a day. My only guess for why they did this, is because the events of the DLC will be canon later?? But, it was still a weird as fuck choice.
On the subject of speech, it's done very interestingly here because it's affected by the clothes that you're wearing. If you're wearing nice, expensive looking clothes when you speak to someone, you're probably going to pass most of your speech checks. On the other hand, if you're wearing garish, bloody armor then you may not be able to. You could theoretically pass more intimidation checks instead though. It's a cool idea but there are some instances where it doesn't seem to work? Each dialogue has numbers that indicate whether you would win against that person or not in a speech check, but a lot of the times it doesn't seem to matter. You could have +4 points above someone and you will still fail apparently because the dialogue option is "so unbelievable" that not even that person believes you, even though you have super high Charisma. Why is it an option then LOL? You can use speech checks to get out of a lot of hard combat scenarios or get better quest rewards, but this will fuck you sometimes without warning.
On that note, this game is still incredibly buggy at times. Supposedly when it first came out, it had massive problems that have been mostly fixed today. Unfortunately, I did still run into some issues. For the most part, they just stuck to graphical bugs where textures load weirdly or some characters T-pose here and there, which.. sure broke my medieval peasant immersion sometimes. I did however run into problems where dialogue would freeze infinitely if I skipped over some choices too quickly, which was annoying because I'd have to reload. There were also some battle scenes where the friendly AI just wouldn't function properly sometimes and I'd die because of it.
All and all, I found a lot of fun with this game but I would only ever recommend it to the right person who I know would thoroughly enjoy it and it's mechanics. It's not the greatest story ever and can be drier than ancient wood at times, but I really dug the actual gameplay. It's very unfortunate though that after enjoying the hell out of this game, I found out later that the guy who made it is an outspoken member of a movement who thinks that I'm a sub-human who's out to destroy the gaming industry. It's a game that I already bought and played so I won't piss on it because of this, but you can use that information however you like.
A massive improvement from the previous two Dark Picture titles. Man of Medan was very "meh" and Little Hope squandered the ending. House of Ashes swung with its very unexpected setting and did not miss.
First off, the monsters in this one? Peak. God damn, that's all I ever could ask for with these games. I really wish that I wasn't thinking "There is no way they do me wrong 3 times in a row" the entire time I was playing, but I had been burned too many times before. Nope. There is a genuinely icky threat to deal with here and while we don't learn all that much about them, they are violently diabolical enough to garner a few repulses from me whenever they showed up again. The setting sells it a lot. You feel trapped and claustrophobic. You're really unsure if there is a light at the end of the tunnel when it seems like the only way to go is further down into the darkness.
I really enjoyed those aspects a lot. There's much more action in this game in comparison too. I found it way easier to accidentally murder the shit out of the characters in this one, mainly because the thematic tells in this one were way less obvious. There was some genuine pants filling whenever you missed a QTE because you never knew if it meant life or death in that one moment.
There's two storylines going on in this one and one of them is very uninteresting. I don't want to get into it without spoilers, but there's a certain triangle of characters that have some extremely annoying scenes you have to get through when you really just want to see more of the horror instead. The other plotline was fairly predictable where it was going right from the beginning, but it made for a surprisingly warm ending if you were able to keep those character's alive.
It's short and takes you for a wild ride. I was pleasantly surprised.
First off, the monsters in this one? Peak. God damn, that's all I ever could ask for with these games. I really wish that I wasn't thinking "There is no way they do me wrong 3 times in a row" the entire time I was playing, but I had been burned too many times before. Nope. There is a genuinely icky threat to deal with here and while we don't learn all that much about them, they are violently diabolical enough to garner a few repulses from me whenever they showed up again. The setting sells it a lot. You feel trapped and claustrophobic. You're really unsure if there is a light at the end of the tunnel when it seems like the only way to go is further down into the darkness.
I really enjoyed those aspects a lot. There's much more action in this game in comparison too. I found it way easier to accidentally murder the shit out of the characters in this one, mainly because the thematic tells in this one were way less obvious. There was some genuine pants filling whenever you missed a QTE because you never knew if it meant life or death in that one moment.
There's two storylines going on in this one and one of them is very uninteresting. I don't want to get into it without spoilers, but there's a certain triangle of characters that have some extremely annoying scenes you have to get through when you really just want to see more of the horror instead. The other plotline was fairly predictable where it was going right from the beginning, but it made for a surprisingly warm ending if you were able to keep those character's alive.
It's short and takes you for a wild ride. I was pleasantly surprised.
It's Dead Rising 2 but runs way god damn worse. It barely even functions. Crashes often and just like Frank, screams to be put out of its misery the entire runtime.
It's still good Dead Rising fun, albeit, a copy paste of the second one. I much prefer the first game over 2 but 2 is still a handful of fun. They tried to fix certain aspects that missed the mark with it's sibling, but falters even more in others. Sure, auto-save could come in clutch during certain moments after a boss fight or after the game shits itself to death again but you can tell they simply added it in because they completely wrecked the survivor escort missions. They went from being way too easy to beyond broken. I'm not really sure what would have fixed the difficulty issue from before but it sure the fuck wasn't to make the survivors instantly drain health on grab. They basically explode if you look at them wrong in this game, it made for almost constant reloads.
The story is a non-factor. It doesn't make any sense at all, but we didn't ask it to be. It's just simply an alternate reality where some things stay the same and others don't. Whatever. Except for the fact that it values money way too much. Before, money was just a bonus that could net you some neat rewards. Here it's literally required to scrounge up a decent amount of money to progress, which is boring as shit. The fun mini-games in the original 2 were meant to be optional content that sold the theme of Fortune City. I liked to gamble in that game because it was an easy way to waste some time that I would spend standing around instead. I know you can just grab Gambling books to acquire it faster, but that's not my point. I find the whole thing stupid just in concept. I play Dead Rising games because I like exploring a fun map, saving survivors, and finding cool items to kill zombies/psychopaths with. This game takes all of those things, pisses them out, and then asks you to clean it up as a chore.
I honestly don't even hate this game as much as it sounds like I do, but my experience with it unfortunately ended completely awfully. I played my 2nd playthrough with a friend and we couldn't complete it. There is a major soft-lock bug near the end of the game where it'll play an infinite loading screen and I've tried everything to fix it. There was a moment where I sat back and said, "Why am I doing this?" and just stopped trying. Playing this game on multiplayer makes it much easier to swallow for sure, but no amount of fun moments we had together is going to outweigh the fact that it's an abandoned port that doesn't function. I should not have to mod in controller support or windowed mode to get this game to function like a game, and I definitely should not have to edit any files to prevent it from breaking right at the end.
Edit: Used to be a 0.5 star rating, but I stopped doing halfsies.
It's still good Dead Rising fun, albeit, a copy paste of the second one. I much prefer the first game over 2 but 2 is still a handful of fun. They tried to fix certain aspects that missed the mark with it's sibling, but falters even more in others. Sure, auto-save could come in clutch during certain moments after a boss fight or after the game shits itself to death again but you can tell they simply added it in because they completely wrecked the survivor escort missions. They went from being way too easy to beyond broken. I'm not really sure what would have fixed the difficulty issue from before but it sure the fuck wasn't to make the survivors instantly drain health on grab. They basically explode if you look at them wrong in this game, it made for almost constant reloads.
The story is a non-factor. It doesn't make any sense at all, but we didn't ask it to be. It's just simply an alternate reality where some things stay the same and others don't. Whatever. Except for the fact that it values money way too much. Before, money was just a bonus that could net you some neat rewards. Here it's literally required to scrounge up a decent amount of money to progress, which is boring as shit. The fun mini-games in the original 2 were meant to be optional content that sold the theme of Fortune City. I liked to gamble in that game because it was an easy way to waste some time that I would spend standing around instead. I know you can just grab Gambling books to acquire it faster, but that's not my point. I find the whole thing stupid just in concept. I play Dead Rising games because I like exploring a fun map, saving survivors, and finding cool items to kill zombies/psychopaths with. This game takes all of those things, pisses them out, and then asks you to clean it up as a chore.
I honestly don't even hate this game as much as it sounds like I do, but my experience with it unfortunately ended completely awfully. I played my 2nd playthrough with a friend and we couldn't complete it. There is a major soft-lock bug near the end of the game where it'll play an infinite loading screen and I've tried everything to fix it. There was a moment where I sat back and said, "Why am I doing this?" and just stopped trying. Playing this game on multiplayer makes it much easier to swallow for sure, but no amount of fun moments we had together is going to outweigh the fact that it's an abandoned port that doesn't function. I should not have to mod in controller support or windowed mode to get this game to function like a game, and I definitely should not have to edit any files to prevent it from breaking right at the end.
Edit: Used to be a 0.5 star rating, but I stopped doing halfsies.
2023
It took me a minute to wrestle with how I felt about Pikmin 4 because while playing it, I really didn't know where it stood with me. I love Pikmin to death and waited so long for this game but weirdly felt so "meh" with it at first. The limit to 3 types on the screen at once really threw a wrench in my face, I'm not gonna lie.
The tutorial is a bit of a slog and there's a ton of QoL changes they made that didn't sit well with me at first. I was wanting the game to challenge me a bit more with every passing minute and those challenges weren't really hitting. I was pretty annoyed the game would constantly ask if you wanted to restart when you messed up or lost some Pikmin.. at first.
All of those things are optional so I just said, "No" to those things and went on my merry way. I remembered how torturous the older games can be and I think those times really hardened us Gamers for a future dystopia, but we in turn got a utopia instead. There's no need to fight our demons anymore, we can just accept the light and bask in the glory. I realized how fucking awesome it is that this game even came out in the first place and I slowly dropped my guard and just let this game take me for a ride. I do HOWEVER, wish that you could turn the side character tips off. If I could do anything, I would beat Colin to a pulp. That dude never shuts up and we gotta stop letting the side characters spoil puzzles for you if you don't figure it out in .3 milliseconds. That was the only thing that truly aggravated me about this game.
I do still wish that the game had a bit more challenge, like a hard mode maybe. But, it turned out that the challenge was mostly packed into the incredibly gigantic post-game that I wasn't expecting. Basically the 2nd half of the game is after the initial plot ends and I found some of the caves in that section to be exactly what I was looking for. Yeah, the game is basically Pikmin 2: The Second One, but Pikmin 2 was hard as fucking balls to play as a kid and I rather enjoyed the remix on it.
If I could change anything, I would make the Ice Pikmin appear later in the game since they tend to end fights incredibly quickly. Their ability to freeze water is extremely useful but you also get Blue Pikmin fairly early as well, so the freezing water ability gets reserved mostly for Dandori. You need to use Ice Pikmin in most levels so it was hard to not use them to attack literally everything. The downside is you can't harvest the enemy bodies for more Pikmin, but that never proved to be an issue for the ones that get their own Onions early.
Oatchi is a great addition to a fault. He is outrageously powerful, which is nice in a pinch but he suffers from my same complaints as the Icy boys. He is however incredibly useful during Night raids and Dandori, on top of just being a goober so I can't complain too much about him. I did like the upgrade system that came with him, but I hope if they bring it back it gets fine tuned a little bit. It was so easy to become immune to literally everything. Most of my complaints about this game is literally just it not being torture porn and I should probably talk to someone about it.
The post-game really sealed the deal for me though. Most of my Pikmin deaths were during that phase of the game. Some of the post-game Dandori missions really made me want to toss my joycons into a volcano. The final dungeon was asking for quite a lot. I was so happy to see it all.
I will not fault it too much for the lack of challenge though. Pikmin 4 left me very excited to see where a possible Pikmin 5 could go and hopefully I'll be alive in 2048 to see it. More and more people got into the series because of this game so I have a lot of hope. The QoL changes were not made for me, those changes were made for them and I can accept that. This game is beautifully well done and I still enjoyed every second of it, even if it took me a minute to realize.
Edit: Used to be a 4.5 star rating, but I stopped doing halfsies.
The tutorial is a bit of a slog and there's a ton of QoL changes they made that didn't sit well with me at first. I was wanting the game to challenge me a bit more with every passing minute and those challenges weren't really hitting. I was pretty annoyed the game would constantly ask if you wanted to restart when you messed up or lost some Pikmin.. at first.
All of those things are optional so I just said, "No" to those things and went on my merry way. I remembered how torturous the older games can be and I think those times really hardened us Gamers for a future dystopia, but we in turn got a utopia instead. There's no need to fight our demons anymore, we can just accept the light and bask in the glory. I realized how fucking awesome it is that this game even came out in the first place and I slowly dropped my guard and just let this game take me for a ride. I do HOWEVER, wish that you could turn the side character tips off. If I could do anything, I would beat Colin to a pulp. That dude never shuts up and we gotta stop letting the side characters spoil puzzles for you if you don't figure it out in .3 milliseconds. That was the only thing that truly aggravated me about this game.
I do still wish that the game had a bit more challenge, like a hard mode maybe. But, it turned out that the challenge was mostly packed into the incredibly gigantic post-game that I wasn't expecting. Basically the 2nd half of the game is after the initial plot ends and I found some of the caves in that section to be exactly what I was looking for. Yeah, the game is basically Pikmin 2: The Second One, but Pikmin 2 was hard as fucking balls to play as a kid and I rather enjoyed the remix on it.
If I could change anything, I would make the Ice Pikmin appear later in the game since they tend to end fights incredibly quickly. Their ability to freeze water is extremely useful but you also get Blue Pikmin fairly early as well, so the freezing water ability gets reserved mostly for Dandori. You need to use Ice Pikmin in most levels so it was hard to not use them to attack literally everything. The downside is you can't harvest the enemy bodies for more Pikmin, but that never proved to be an issue for the ones that get their own Onions early.
Oatchi is a great addition to a fault. He is outrageously powerful, which is nice in a pinch but he suffers from my same complaints as the Icy boys. He is however incredibly useful during Night raids and Dandori, on top of just being a goober so I can't complain too much about him. I did like the upgrade system that came with him, but I hope if they bring it back it gets fine tuned a little bit. It was so easy to become immune to literally everything. Most of my complaints about this game is literally just it not being torture porn and I should probably talk to someone about it.
The post-game really sealed the deal for me though. Most of my Pikmin deaths were during that phase of the game. Some of the post-game Dandori missions really made me want to toss my joycons into a volcano. The final dungeon was asking for quite a lot. I was so happy to see it all.
I will not fault it too much for the lack of challenge though. Pikmin 4 left me very excited to see where a possible Pikmin 5 could go and hopefully I'll be alive in 2048 to see it. More and more people got into the series because of this game so I have a lot of hope. The QoL changes were not made for me, those changes were made for them and I can accept that. This game is beautifully well done and I still enjoyed every second of it, even if it took me a minute to realize.
Edit: Used to be a 4.5 star rating, but I stopped doing halfsies.
Finally, a good remake.
This game goes nasty for a good 10 hours, but after that the swirling of the yogurt starts to make you question why you're even alive on this planet.
After about my 406th customer, I turned it off and got a job.
This game goes nasty for a good 10 hours, but after that the swirling of the yogurt starts to make you question why you're even alive on this planet.
After about my 406th customer, I turned it off and got a job.
2023
If I could describe this game to the best of my ability, it's kind of like you're riding a bike down a hill at full speed. As soon as you realize you're having a blast, all of a sudden a metal pipe clotheslines you and knocks all of you and both of your shoes off.
It opens to one of the most enthralling prologues to a game I've played of recent, with fun gigantic battles and fantastic orchestras that vibrate your nuts off. It's epic and mature, and I really enjoyed the more political aspect that the story of this one leaned into. It just unfortunately has horrific pacing.
The character's talk so slowly and there's so much exposition that's drawled out in explanations rather than shown. It sure as Hell makes the combat and boss sections way more exciting, but the abrupt fall into the most boring, endless MMORPG fetch quests and lore dumps made me speedrun depression, especially near the end. When it's finally time for that sick Kaiju battle theme song to start playing again, it's like getting cold water splashed on your face to wake you up. By far that is the worst thing about this game.
The combat for the most part is fun and flashy, but it gets so repetitive down the line. It's watered down and fairly bare bones for an RPG. It was okay, but I found myself wanting a bit more to play around with because there's so little powers you can use. The plot linearity didn't necessarily bother me at all because I feel like we've been getting assaulted by really shitty open-worlds lately. The areas are still gigantic and it was nice to take in the beautiful scenery for a change.
All of that being said, the story still goes pretty hard despite the pacing issues. The emotional beats did hit for me and Clive is a very refreshing protagonist for this series. You can tell that they put a lot of care in nurturing his relationships with the other characters to help bolster the themes, but I do wish that that care extended to some others. In my opinion, Jill is just yet another example of Square's inability to write women because she's basically cardboard. Honestly, a ton of the random as shit side characters get more development than her through the side quests, which is very weird.
Overall, it's good but it can be a bit of slog to get to the end. I don't think I'd ever replay it, but if I did, most of it is getting skipped in chunks.
It opens to one of the most enthralling prologues to a game I've played of recent, with fun gigantic battles and fantastic orchestras that vibrate your nuts off. It's epic and mature, and I really enjoyed the more political aspect that the story of this one leaned into. It just unfortunately has horrific pacing.
The character's talk so slowly and there's so much exposition that's drawled out in explanations rather than shown. It sure as Hell makes the combat and boss sections way more exciting, but the abrupt fall into the most boring, endless MMORPG fetch quests and lore dumps made me speedrun depression, especially near the end. When it's finally time for that sick Kaiju battle theme song to start playing again, it's like getting cold water splashed on your face to wake you up. By far that is the worst thing about this game.
The combat for the most part is fun and flashy, but it gets so repetitive down the line. It's watered down and fairly bare bones for an RPG. It was okay, but I found myself wanting a bit more to play around with because there's so little powers you can use. The plot linearity didn't necessarily bother me at all because I feel like we've been getting assaulted by really shitty open-worlds lately. The areas are still gigantic and it was nice to take in the beautiful scenery for a change.
All of that being said, the story still goes pretty hard despite the pacing issues. The emotional beats did hit for me and Clive is a very refreshing protagonist for this series. You can tell that they put a lot of care in nurturing his relationships with the other characters to help bolster the themes, but I do wish that that care extended to some others. In my opinion, Jill is just yet another example of Square's inability to write women because she's basically cardboard. Honestly, a ton of the random as shit side characters get more development than her through the side quests, which is very weird.
Overall, it's good but it can be a bit of slog to get to the end. I don't think I'd ever replay it, but if I did, most of it is getting skipped in chunks.
2023
I want to try to talk about this game without mentioning the P word because it gets exhausting and to this game's credit; it has a lot of it's own great ideas to mess around with.
Sure, while it is a riff off of the classic P word we know and love, I found myself really getting into the vibe of this game a lot more because it's very strategic at it's core. Battles felt much of like a song and a dance, very fittingly, where you're given control of two characters that work off of a charged gauge to attack with. There are times where you're super strong and stomp on the enemies but for the most part, most of the battles are won using clever set ups and defense buffs to mitigate as much damage coming to you as possible. It was fun, and it always felt like there was constantly more to learn when it came to the type charts and their advantages/disadvantages. In some parts it even made the game more challenging than I expected, which is very refreshing.
The creatures are nutty weird, especially the fusions. I'd mix two things together and be like, "uhhhhhhhhh?" wondering how it's able to stay alive in it's state, but I didn't hate them by any means. I was much more interested in finding out what they even turned into in the first place.
For the most part I did get myself lost in the open-world aspect, to my own suffering, but there were parts that just didn't quite land with me. The game can be a bit overwhelming at first with the constant onslaught of quests, but it gets better with time.
My main disappointment though was that they give you a cast of characters to work with and some of them really didn't connect with me in the way I think they were meant to. There's two in particular that really aren't on your side long enough to get to know more about them and because of that, the ending was not as emotional for me as it was trying to give off. There are however some plotlines that were done very well, that don't treat you like an idiot. I just wish I could have had that feeling for everyone.
Overall though, it's a solid game and the music fucking rips as an added bonus.
Sure, while it is a riff off of the classic P word we know and love, I found myself really getting into the vibe of this game a lot more because it's very strategic at it's core. Battles felt much of like a song and a dance, very fittingly, where you're given control of two characters that work off of a charged gauge to attack with. There are times where you're super strong and stomp on the enemies but for the most part, most of the battles are won using clever set ups and defense buffs to mitigate as much damage coming to you as possible. It was fun, and it always felt like there was constantly more to learn when it came to the type charts and their advantages/disadvantages. In some parts it even made the game more challenging than I expected, which is very refreshing.
The creatures are nutty weird, especially the fusions. I'd mix two things together and be like, "uhhhhhhhhh?" wondering how it's able to stay alive in it's state, but I didn't hate them by any means. I was much more interested in finding out what they even turned into in the first place.
For the most part I did get myself lost in the open-world aspect, to my own suffering, but there were parts that just didn't quite land with me. The game can be a bit overwhelming at first with the constant onslaught of quests, but it gets better with time.
My main disappointment though was that they give you a cast of characters to work with and some of them really didn't connect with me in the way I think they were meant to. There's two in particular that really aren't on your side long enough to get to know more about them and because of that, the ending was not as emotional for me as it was trying to give off. There are however some plotlines that were done very well, that don't treat you like an idiot. I just wish I could have had that feeling for everyone.
Overall though, it's a solid game and the music fucking rips as an added bonus.
2023
Extremely fun and wildly satisfying rhythm based combat in a world that shines bright as fuck in a sea of brown/gray color palette dreary, poopy, and depressing games.
Music lives in this game's veins from the action, to the environments, right down to the details in every animation. The GODLY developers worked with a band to create a whole entire 2nd soundtrack for Streamer Mode that goes just as hard and is more emotionally charging than the licensed tunes. The characters are a fun blended mix of goof n' troop that balance each other out as the story progresses.
It deserved way more than being randomly hot dropped during a stupid Xbox Gamepass conference. My only complaint: it was too dang short!!
Music lives in this game's veins from the action, to the environments, right down to the details in every animation. The GODLY developers worked with a band to create a whole entire 2nd soundtrack for Streamer Mode that goes just as hard and is more emotionally charging than the licensed tunes. The characters are a fun blended mix of goof n' troop that balance each other out as the story progresses.
It deserved way more than being randomly hot dropped during a stupid Xbox Gamepass conference. My only complaint: it was too dang short!!
2023
Very happy to see this game see the light of day after all the issues it ran into for years, and to it's credit; it did extremely well for having the massive amount of weight on it's back.
They kept it simple and refreshed instead of trying to go hog wild on a gigantic mechanic overhaul that may not have worked nearly as well. They focused entirely on what made the series stand out to begin with: a zombie kill simulator.
Each character has their own build for different playstyles that branches out much further than the original, "this guy good at hammers and this woman good at gun". Now they're all pretty proficient at most things with various other skill scales. I do think that some characters have more OP abilities than others, but getting swarmed by a barrage of zombies tends to obliterate all of them in the same way.
I played it with a friend and it was a blast through and through, but I wish it were a bit longer. I really feel as though if we didn't do the side quests, we would have been done with it in two sessions.
The plot is moreso what I expect from a Dead Island game, just a goofy romp around from place to place picking up whatever diabolical weapon I can find. The only unfortunate thing is that they felt the need to try to explain the character's immunity but kind of skirted over it just to set up DLC expansions down the line, which makes the ending feel incredibly abrupt for a game that's already very short.
It's still very fun and I hope they're able to make more now that it's finally released.
They kept it simple and refreshed instead of trying to go hog wild on a gigantic mechanic overhaul that may not have worked nearly as well. They focused entirely on what made the series stand out to begin with: a zombie kill simulator.
Each character has their own build for different playstyles that branches out much further than the original, "this guy good at hammers and this woman good at gun". Now they're all pretty proficient at most things with various other skill scales. I do think that some characters have more OP abilities than others, but getting swarmed by a barrage of zombies tends to obliterate all of them in the same way.
I played it with a friend and it was a blast through and through, but I wish it were a bit longer. I really feel as though if we didn't do the side quests, we would have been done with it in two sessions.
The plot is moreso what I expect from a Dead Island game, just a goofy romp around from place to place picking up whatever diabolical weapon I can find. The only unfortunate thing is that they felt the need to try to explain the character's immunity but kind of skirted over it just to set up DLC expansions down the line, which makes the ending feel incredibly abrupt for a game that's already very short.
It's still very fun and I hope they're able to make more now that it's finally released.
I tried very hard to give this game a chance after not liking BOTW but I just can't seem to get myself to really care about this universe. I found the first game incredibly boring and this one only offers little change between the two.
The sky islands and underground are annoying to get to and offer little rewards, which made me disinterested in investigating them. I seemed to still struggle to want to explore in a game where exploration is the main mechanic. I despise that core functions like upgrading your armor are blocked behind annoying as shit chores with annoying characters.
But for a positive, the powers were far more fun and creative here though, which benefitted the shrines a lot more to me. The free hand manipulation of items made for a more engaging experience where the puzzles felt more unique compared against each other.
However, building fantastic things is only fun for a limited time when you realize that objects have a lifespan and explode when they've decided you're no longer allowed to have any fun. Fusing weapons is a neat feature that made weapon durability less of a problem for me, so that downgraded from boiling my blood to just an inconvenience from time to time.
I feel like the story does a better job this time around although the global phenomenon questline gave me horrid flashbacks of Mass Effect: Andromeda.
I had a better time overall here, but it's still unfortunately not my cup of tea.
The sky islands and underground are annoying to get to and offer little rewards, which made me disinterested in investigating them. I seemed to still struggle to want to explore in a game where exploration is the main mechanic. I despise that core functions like upgrading your armor are blocked behind annoying as shit chores with annoying characters.
But for a positive, the powers were far more fun and creative here though, which benefitted the shrines a lot more to me. The free hand manipulation of items made for a more engaging experience where the puzzles felt more unique compared against each other.
However, building fantastic things is only fun for a limited time when you realize that objects have a lifespan and explode when they've decided you're no longer allowed to have any fun. Fusing weapons is a neat feature that made weapon durability less of a problem for me, so that downgraded from boiling my blood to just an inconvenience from time to time.
I feel like the story does a better job this time around although the global phenomenon questline gave me horrid flashbacks of Mass Effect: Andromeda.
I had a better time overall here, but it's still unfortunately not my cup of tea.
I searched for this game for a long time before realizing earlier this year that it was remade on PS4 and I just never knew about it for some reason.
I went into this excited just on the art style alone and that department did not disappoint me one bit. I was surprised to find myself playing a beat 'em-up type RPG and completely creamed my jeans. Each character has their own playstyle and powerful abilities to unlock that breaks up a bit of the monotony from obliterating endless hordes of enemies. I preferred Cornelius and Mercedes personally, but each one stood out in unique ways.
The leveling system is interesting, but easy to manage. It was pretty easy to just pop an XP boost right before shoveling several of the best food in the game down your character's throat right before a huge battle and demolishing them.
While the remake added some changes to make this process go by a little smoother, it still feels extremely routine to downright annoying near the end of the game. I like that the story is stilted per character, it makes you surprised to find out how things came to be later down the line when you realize their timelines aren't exactly running simultaneously, but it can get monotonous fighting the same boss 3-4 times throughout the game. Especially if you hate fighting that boss. That big ass Dwarf battleship fight made me want to tear my face off every time I ran into it and you fight it 5 times.
Play it in one go if you can deal with that, but it may benefit to taking breaks between chapters because of this. I recommend at least giving it a try because the art style juxtaposed with the dark plot makes for a very compelling experience. Dread starts to seep in as you push forward and the build up to that was my favorite part.
I went into this excited just on the art style alone and that department did not disappoint me one bit. I was surprised to find myself playing a beat 'em-up type RPG and completely creamed my jeans. Each character has their own playstyle and powerful abilities to unlock that breaks up a bit of the monotony from obliterating endless hordes of enemies. I preferred Cornelius and Mercedes personally, but each one stood out in unique ways.
The leveling system is interesting, but easy to manage. It was pretty easy to just pop an XP boost right before shoveling several of the best food in the game down your character's throat right before a huge battle and demolishing them.
While the remake added some changes to make this process go by a little smoother, it still feels extremely routine to downright annoying near the end of the game. I like that the story is stilted per character, it makes you surprised to find out how things came to be later down the line when you realize their timelines aren't exactly running simultaneously, but it can get monotonous fighting the same boss 3-4 times throughout the game. Especially if you hate fighting that boss. That big ass Dwarf battleship fight made me want to tear my face off every time I ran into it and you fight it 5 times.
Play it in one go if you can deal with that, but it may benefit to taking breaks between chapters because of this. I recommend at least giving it a try because the art style juxtaposed with the dark plot makes for a very compelling experience. Dread starts to seep in as you push forward and the build up to that was my favorite part.