joeysobat
2011
it's sad that the best things of the game are thrown in in the last hour or so (more intense rooms and a chaser monster!).
Still better than the first one though, this one understands better enemy placement and room design, closer to something like Resident Evil 4
Still better than the first one though, this one understands better enemy placement and room design, closer to something like Resident Evil 4
2022
This review contains spoilers
At some point in Act 2, my general impression was "okay, this is some really good exploration of the death of Americana and ultra-feudal-capitalism domination, but I think they're trying to hammer in too many concepts and ideas". By the end of the game, even if I still thought that some parts where less fleshed out than others, the pipeline from absolute corporate greed to Nazi cult filled with teenage bros was more organic than I anticipated.
In the middle of everything, the main character just tries to survive a never-ending collapse. They will hunt them wherever they go.
In the middle of everything, the main character just tries to survive a never-ending collapse. They will hunt them wherever they go.
This might be one of the most beautiful games I've ever played, surrounded by some bullshit platforming and okay-ish combat
Nothing more than a sometimes compelling feud against local gangs and the police, in a setting with more context and specificity than your average open-world, but one that gets lost in that same open-world approach.
They don't even try to hide the reliance on repetition. The same old junky systems, the same dynamics all the time. The first 30 minutes, the same as the last 30.
They don't even try to hide the reliance on repetition. The same old junky systems, the same dynamics all the time. The first 30 minutes, the same as the last 30.
A slow incursion into the depths of hell... Or maybe a chill exploration with funny characters!
Dozens of intersections happening on every room: the cult to capital, our faith in broken structures with empty meanings, the game industry (duh), the dissemination of information in broken systems of transportation, gamification of arts and culture fused with the instrumentation of the police and the state... AND FISH!
And, even then, a joyful spirit spreads through the several hotels, with its humour and cautious optimism around people and the protagonist. So you leave a positive review. 9/10 would come back another time!
Dozens of intersections happening on every room: the cult to capital, our faith in broken structures with empty meanings, the game industry (duh), the dissemination of information in broken systems of transportation, gamification of arts and culture fused with the instrumentation of the police and the state... AND FISH!
And, even then, a joyful spirit spreads through the several hotels, with its humour and cautious optimism around people and the protagonist. So you leave a positive review. 9/10 would come back another time!
2020
This review contains spoilers
The need to replay certain choices and the obsession with clinical death is distracting and takes away from any natural progression, making the later half fall down and loose impact. But even then, the first talks, the stares of love, for me it's quite endearing. Those glimmering eyes looking directly at you.
2008
Nothing much to say about this one, Nero is too easy to use and maybe too serious for his own good, and Dante is quite amusing when he hits the scene, but it doesn't feel as good to play as Nero, given that he's not suited for the same copy-pasted stages and enemies. Maybe I don't enjoy the combat as much as other people, but it's short and fun enough. The Play3 era, when they were able to put a giant and clunky boss battle like Sanctus that gets pretty boring when you figure out the gimmick (maybe too many fucking gimmicks and puzzles).
This review contains spoilers
Better than the maidenless game.
The gameplay connects instantly, when the jobs are all new and the possibilities many. There really is enough customisation, with the different weapons and jobs, for even side missions to not feel boring, even if the menus and loots can be tedious.
The story is another beast entirely. A re-imagination of the very first game, where the only twist it had was a time-warp of the very first boss, to overpower himself and become the very last. And this is an over-complicated journey of that character, Jack Garland, and his later-to-become boss-minions.
By going the extra mile with the time-warping stuff, the dimensional-rifting and the world-resetting shenanigans, I was having a hard time grasping 60% of what was going on. But when fighting Astos, the pieces start connecting and the emotional weight kicks in. After that, the resolve of the characters is set in stone, the not-warriors of light. Everything felt off from the beginning, because this is a different story. The story of memories, of dark crystals, of Chaos and the end of the world, of invoking the greatest darkness in order to wait up the real finale: the blinding shininess of the four warriors of light.
They are the warriors who have fought so hard to preserve a prophecy they cannot be part of. Or at least, not as how they imagined. In the end, they were part of the world's salvation, but they did it their way.
The gameplay connects instantly, when the jobs are all new and the possibilities many. There really is enough customisation, with the different weapons and jobs, for even side missions to not feel boring, even if the menus and loots can be tedious.
The story is another beast entirely. A re-imagination of the very first game, where the only twist it had was a time-warp of the very first boss, to overpower himself and become the very last. And this is an over-complicated journey of that character, Jack Garland, and his later-to-become boss-minions.
By going the extra mile with the time-warping stuff, the dimensional-rifting and the world-resetting shenanigans, I was having a hard time grasping 60% of what was going on. But when fighting Astos, the pieces start connecting and the emotional weight kicks in. After that, the resolve of the characters is set in stone, the not-warriors of light. Everything felt off from the beginning, because this is a different story. The story of memories, of dark crystals, of Chaos and the end of the world, of invoking the greatest darkness in order to wait up the real finale: the blinding shininess of the four warriors of light.
They are the warriors who have fought so hard to preserve a prophecy they cannot be part of. Or at least, not as how they imagined. In the end, they were part of the world's salvation, but they did it their way.
This would really be a great game for schools
2011
Not a mad world, THE mad world. A nonsensical cumulus of places, still clinging after so many iterations of preserving a feeling, an element, an ember.
Replaying it after almost 8 years has been amazing. I remembered even the enemy placement, but almost forgot the sensations of the places themselves. There's been a lot of complaints about Blight Town, but i love how horrific it looks, how sick the enemies look, the platforms and the wood don't make any physical sense, you are able to pass through out of pure luck! It was one of the instances where I stopped and felt a sinking feeling in my stomach, thinking how many ages you would need to backtrack in time for any of this to make sense, any logical sense based on our world.
Also, I don't understand people saying this is TOO SLOW of a game. "I've played Dark Souls 3 and now I can't get back to 1". Like bitch, just go for endurance and dexterity, you can dodge anything and move gracefully, you can even get strong armour and tank many bosses while still moving a lot; that's how I killed the DLC bosses and Gwyn on first try.
More thoughts in my Elden Ring review.
Replaying it after almost 8 years has been amazing. I remembered even the enemy placement, but almost forgot the sensations of the places themselves. There's been a lot of complaints about Blight Town, but i love how horrific it looks, how sick the enemies look, the platforms and the wood don't make any physical sense, you are able to pass through out of pure luck! It was one of the instances where I stopped and felt a sinking feeling in my stomach, thinking how many ages you would need to backtrack in time for any of this to make sense, any logical sense based on our world.
Also, I don't understand people saying this is TOO SLOW of a game. "I've played Dark Souls 3 and now I can't get back to 1". Like bitch, just go for endurance and dexterity, you can dodge anything and move gracefully, you can even get strong armour and tank many bosses while still moving a lot; that's how I killed the DLC bosses and Gwyn on first try.
More thoughts in my Elden Ring review.
2008
Much more restrictive than I realised in previous playthroughs, but I come back to it once every two-three years, and every time I'm faster and have more flow.
Don't know why, but this may be one of the few ultra-clean ultra-saturated aesthetics I absolutely love. An outlier in a generation full of murky AAA.
Don't know why, but this may be one of the few ultra-clean ultra-saturated aesthetics I absolutely love. An outlier in a generation full of murky AAA.
2022
Elden Ring gets caught into the trap of the open-world design: bigger always means better.
There is a sense of discovery in the first 20 hours or so, where you slowly uncover the elements that form the world (characters, enemies, levels, systems...). Many of them are well-known by now, as everyone has pointed out, given their iterative nature. But it's in how is iterated that I think lies the magic of those first 20 hours. The caves, dungeons and mines are my favourite part, having to keep your lantern with you at all times, not knowing where those little assholes will come you from. Little passages, some secrets, a nice boss battle at the end and out. A little adventure in the midst of all that grandiosity.
Sadly, those 20 hours of discoveries and secrets comes to an end rather abruptly, when the iterative becomes repetitive. The same locations, the same enemies, the same bosses, the same items, the same strategy, the same vistas. A boring mosaic. All the magic got swept away for the sake of squeezing all those hours that become junk.
There is much more than just small dungeons, of course. The rest is an extension of dark souls 3, not dark souls 1, with very big and intricate castles, and at the end a stupidly giant mega boss awaiting to be slayed and make a fucking super epic moment, which in many cases read as very similar encounters. I would lie if I'd say that i didn't enjoy (very much enjoy) some of those battles, mainly Radahn and Rennala. They offered something more varied and interesting than just battle, and very refreshing.
Dark souls games have been compered to Berserk ad nauseam, pointing at all the homages and references to Miura's biggest work. It is considered that Dark Souls 3, even this one, kept some of the spirit of the manga faithfully. Recently, I was once again listening to Susumu Hirasawa's ost for the anime while re-reading the manga, and when this song started https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZa0Yh6e7dw, I realised that we view Berserk through different lenses, because there is no moment in all Elden Ring that even resembles this.
If that wasn't enough, I've also been replaying Dark Souls 1 at the same time, and it's really jarring the comparison. People destroyed Dark Souls 2 for not capturing the essence of the first one, but I now think they only meant the world wasn't fully interconnected, because Elden Ring is nothing like the first one in the worst ways! DS1 gets much better the spirit of Berserk, the melancholy of a dark and twisted world, full of violence but with traces of hope to continue. Some of the characters you meet along the journey are too cynical to keep going, some of them still hold the will to go forward, many will fall into despair, madness and death, but every single one of them are bound to the strength needed to dream a different future. The idea that the world is not going to die this time. Some still believe it, some stopped believing a long time ago. You yourself keep persevering in a world that has died so many times that it doesn't make sense anymore. Buildings are not going down, but the concept of architecture itself is fading. Ugliness can be felt in the colors of the walls, in the faraway trees and landmasses. Elden Ring is too concrete and clean to show that ugliness, and is too convoluted with power plays to make character interactions tragic or memorable (also, maybe having much more characters doesn't help). The only exception is the woman's hug in The Round Table, something that could perfectly have been in DS1.
I read someone explaining the game as "imagine the moment in DS3 when you saw Irithyll for the first time. That's Elden Ring all the time", implying that it was something great. For me, it's not. I got saturated of so much "beauty", so much brightness, so much clarity, so many perfect compositions that it didn't strike me anymore. Since you are going to be traversing a world for a long time, they decided to make STUNNING VISTAS all the time, every time. An attempt to naturalistic open-worlds. In Spanish, there is a word that perfectly describes my sensations: relamido.
Yes, the gameplay is obviously good. Its the previous games with more weapons, which translates in fun ways to approach fights. But I find pretty underwhelming that the thing this game has going for is what people criticise constantly: polish. A bigger and uniform forest with polished trees.
Maybe I'm being more harsh with this game than with any other, but seeing the comparisons with previous games and Berserk, and spending maybe 70 hours with no moving or alienating experiences unlike the previous ones, has made me more bitter towards this spouting of thoughts. Beware games, don't make me play for that long.
There is a sense of discovery in the first 20 hours or so, where you slowly uncover the elements that form the world (characters, enemies, levels, systems...). Many of them are well-known by now, as everyone has pointed out, given their iterative nature. But it's in how is iterated that I think lies the magic of those first 20 hours. The caves, dungeons and mines are my favourite part, having to keep your lantern with you at all times, not knowing where those little assholes will come you from. Little passages, some secrets, a nice boss battle at the end and out. A little adventure in the midst of all that grandiosity.
Sadly, those 20 hours of discoveries and secrets comes to an end rather abruptly, when the iterative becomes repetitive. The same locations, the same enemies, the same bosses, the same items, the same strategy, the same vistas. A boring mosaic. All the magic got swept away for the sake of squeezing all those hours that become junk.
There is much more than just small dungeons, of course. The rest is an extension of dark souls 3, not dark souls 1, with very big and intricate castles, and at the end a stupidly giant mega boss awaiting to be slayed and make a fucking super epic moment, which in many cases read as very similar encounters. I would lie if I'd say that i didn't enjoy (very much enjoy) some of those battles, mainly Radahn and Rennala. They offered something more varied and interesting than just battle, and very refreshing.
Dark souls games have been compered to Berserk ad nauseam, pointing at all the homages and references to Miura's biggest work. It is considered that Dark Souls 3, even this one, kept some of the spirit of the manga faithfully. Recently, I was once again listening to Susumu Hirasawa's ost for the anime while re-reading the manga, and when this song started https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZa0Yh6e7dw, I realised that we view Berserk through different lenses, because there is no moment in all Elden Ring that even resembles this.
If that wasn't enough, I've also been replaying Dark Souls 1 at the same time, and it's really jarring the comparison. People destroyed Dark Souls 2 for not capturing the essence of the first one, but I now think they only meant the world wasn't fully interconnected, because Elden Ring is nothing like the first one in the worst ways! DS1 gets much better the spirit of Berserk, the melancholy of a dark and twisted world, full of violence but with traces of hope to continue. Some of the characters you meet along the journey are too cynical to keep going, some of them still hold the will to go forward, many will fall into despair, madness and death, but every single one of them are bound to the strength needed to dream a different future. The idea that the world is not going to die this time. Some still believe it, some stopped believing a long time ago. You yourself keep persevering in a world that has died so many times that it doesn't make sense anymore. Buildings are not going down, but the concept of architecture itself is fading. Ugliness can be felt in the colors of the walls, in the faraway trees and landmasses. Elden Ring is too concrete and clean to show that ugliness, and is too convoluted with power plays to make character interactions tragic or memorable (also, maybe having much more characters doesn't help). The only exception is the woman's hug in The Round Table, something that could perfectly have been in DS1.
I read someone explaining the game as "imagine the moment in DS3 when you saw Irithyll for the first time. That's Elden Ring all the time", implying that it was something great. For me, it's not. I got saturated of so much "beauty", so much brightness, so much clarity, so many perfect compositions that it didn't strike me anymore. Since you are going to be traversing a world for a long time, they decided to make STUNNING VISTAS all the time, every time. An attempt to naturalistic open-worlds. In Spanish, there is a word that perfectly describes my sensations: relamido.
Yes, the gameplay is obviously good. Its the previous games with more weapons, which translates in fun ways to approach fights. But I find pretty underwhelming that the thing this game has going for is what people criticise constantly: polish. A bigger and uniform forest with polished trees.
Maybe I'm being more harsh with this game than with any other, but seeing the comparisons with previous games and Berserk, and spending maybe 70 hours with no moving or alienating experiences unlike the previous ones, has made me more bitter towards this spouting of thoughts. Beware games, don't make me play for that long.
Wish it had more to do with the mountains and country-side, but at least it has some nice perspective plays going for
Taps the sign Social democracy IS NOT democratic socialism!!!
Sometimes funny, okay, but I can only see this serving as some educational tool in high schools, but they'll never allow it enter in any school, neither is that educational and can be actively misleading in MANY areas...
Sometimes funny, okay, but I can only see this serving as some educational tool in high schools, but they'll never allow it enter in any school, neither is that educational and can be actively misleading in MANY areas...
Something that this game gives me that other walking sims like "The vanishing of Ethan Carter" didn't is actual landmasses. This island is carved with the feelings of nature, the altitudes and heights and cliffs and winds and the anticipation lying behind the elevations in the terrain, knowing that it hides everything at the other side.
For what is worth, this makes me want to organise another trip to some mountain with friends.
For what is worth, this makes me want to organise another trip to some mountain with friends.