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Self-proclaimed auteur David Cage is known for his egotistically performative attitude on “games as art,” but he still lets his games speak their own stories rather than a meta-parroting of his design ideologies. Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain, however flawed they may be, will live on as independent stories, “challenging” the medium by how they’re told and not what’s told. This is not the case for Detroit: Become Human.

Detroit: Become Human is not just pretentious; it’s pretentiousness in it’s purest form. The pretentiousness bleeds out from the game and into a clumsy, half-baked attempt at a meta-narrative (which obliviously turned into biting satire of itself). It is one of very few games I would genuinely call offensive and tasteless. I have no idea where to begin with what I hate about Detroit: Become Human, so let’s kick it off with a positive.

Detroit: Become Human has very good graphics. Its aesthetic style, however, is as visually bland as that sentence. Cage is hyper-focused on literally predicting the future to the point where it’s boring; it just looks like Apple stores started popping up around local neighborhoods. There’s no grittiness to the future, there’s only a clean everyman future applied to the grittiness of the modern world. It’s hard to call this game “cyberpunk,” it seems content with just being “cyber.”

Okay, now for an actual positive note: I have never seen a narrative-choice game branch out so far before. Choices do actually matter, fail-states are one-and-done and change handfuls of facets up to the end of the game. Decisions rarely have fleeting impact, where things change then slowly revert back to a one-size-fits-all conclusion; Detroit: Become Human is a game-changer (no pun intended) when it comes to narrative design. Although, it would be way better if the narrative was actually written well.

Here’s where offensive and tasteless come in. Detroit: Become Human has only one message: slavery is bad. Maybe it says more, but I can’t decipher anything else as clear-cut as that, because the game shoves gluttonous amounts of political imagery down the player’s throat so hard, you can’t help but gag.

One character, Markus, is the leader of an android resistance group. In one scene, the player can choose to march peacefully, which I did. It (very blatantly) evokes the 1965 marches from Selma to Montgomery. There’s lots of civil rights imagery that doesn’t come across well, going as far as the “fist-in-the-air” of black power movements being one of four symbols the player can choose to adopt as the new symbol for “android resistance” and graffiti over city walls.

Then I hear the phrase “android camps,” and any good faith I had in this game leaves me like a wet fart. Yes, David Cage decided to co-opt, not just imagery or evocation, but an entire setting and scene based on the Holocaust. Naturally, I’m appalled! You can’t solve the Holocaust through peaceful protest! So, as Markus, I throw away the peaceful approach and ordered my resistance team to turn to violent measures.

It was then that my brain processed these separate moments into a coherent story, and I realized that Detroit: Become Human just combined the American civil rights movement, the Holocaust, and robots into one scene. If this is David Cage’s idea of serious storytelling, I think I’d rupture something if he made a comedy game.

What makes Detroit: Become Human so unenjoyable is not just the cowardice of its non-challenging setting, nor the writing that’s so on-the-nose it picks its own boogers; the worst part is when, for a fleeting moment, I enjoy it. Those moments when I grip my controller tighter, hoping, wanting to heed Cage’s siren call of a briefly compelling scene, are the most unbearable. The story, ears plugged with wax, refuses to face that glimpse of beauty and rows into more toxic waters.

It is never in my interest to recommend substituting the personal experience of playing a game with YouTube videos, but Detroit: Become Human has so little to offer to the player, and what it does offer feels like the game taunting them for expecting better. Watch two playthroughs to ooh-n-aah at the branching paths. This is a game better off being witnessed than involved in; it makes the fremdschämen much easier to bear.

I don’t have a dope quote or anything cute like that to start off this review. I’d have to actually scour through all the vapid dialogue to even attempt to find one that would be even remotely neat or memorable.
This is the worst Assassin’s Creed game. It’s honestly not even a competition. This game is borderline worthless and fails at almost everything that it sets out to do.





Are you here for Eivor’s “Raven Saga”? An epic tale of Vikings taking over Medieval England and pacifying it from the clutches of the Saxon King Aelfred? Well, if you think a vapid 60 hours long pseudo political narrative about as deep as a kid’s pool featuring disposable and generic characters that get dropped or killed off at the drop of a hat because that’s how much they matter in the long run, then sure yeah maybe you’ll get what you want here.
Are you here for, you know, “Assassin’s Creed”? Well, I’m very glad to tell you that this game does indeed feature the Hidden Ones, which automatically make this game a “return to roots” according to some. It’s very epic to have Hytham and Basim around, 2 Hidden One companions. The former being a schmuck who doesn’t do anything in the entire game outside of telling Eivor to do literally all his work for him, while the latter is a borderline incomprehensible schizo who’s barely in the game, has absolutely nothing of interesting to say or add and turns out to be maybe the stupidest and most obvious twist villain of all time.
Are you here for a fun video game that feels nice to play and has a very cool open world to explore like Odyssey? Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you bro because this game plays like ass, controls like a boulder and has the most uninteresting setting in the series by a colossal margin.


I could legit end the review then and there since I believe it’s already a perfectly understandable summary on why this game is a colossal turd that easily signals the death of this series. I’m not even mad honestly, 11 games that I really like is a great run when you think about it. However, it is impressive how this game’s conclusion leaves no room for any hopes towards the future. Let’s get into it a bit more deeply, shall we? I’m not going spoiler free for once because honestly, I don’t care and you shouldn’t either. This narrative is not worth worrying about spoilers and I want to dissect its utter insanity.


Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is the 12th game in the AC series. It’s the final chapter in the RPG Trilogy of games, following up on the events of both AC Origins (Past section takes place after Bayek and Ahmunet forming the Hidden Ones) and AC Odyssey (Present section follows Layla Hassan for one last time as the world begins to collapse like in AC3, forcing her alongside Rebecca and Shawn to find a way to stop the catastrophe once again with the power of the Staff of Hermes passed on by Alexios).


I’m gonna go over some of the overall positives first since there really aren’t many this time.


The leveling system from the previous 2 games has been replaced by the power system. This basically exists to cut down level grinding alongside a revised and more streamlined gear loot cycle. It does indeed work and makes the need for level grinding almost nonexistent while also allowing you to feasibly fight underleveled and still have a fair shot at winning (well most of the time). It’s a good change even if it ultimately led me to pretty much not touching this game’s side-quest offerings. However, the devs were probably aware about that fact since the side-quests in this game were pretty much reduced to few minutes long one-off events instead of the beefier short narratives of the previous 2 games. The writing for those most likely got transferred to the Arc system which I will get into later.
The Bayek letter and the Desmond audio files are easily the best parts of the game. 3 audios that have absolutely nothing to do with the actual story of the game. Speaks volumes but they are beautifully written and voiced acted by Abubakar Salim and Nolan North.
This game is pretty, I cannot deny that.
Some gameplay additions like the slide and action wheel are almost useless but they are still welcome.
I like flyting and fishing, easily the most fun side-activities.

Yea that’s all the nice things I have to say. Let’s get into the meat of it.

The gameplay of this game is awful. It is stiff, janky and just not fun at all. Eivor moves like a fucking boulder even after upgrading her mobility and the combat is a tumor half-breed between Origins and Odyssey that just fucking sucks.
The longboat is easily the worst addition tho, what a tacky gimmick. It’s a glorified horse that you sometimes have to use to traverse the rivers of England. There’s no naval combat or anything interesting involved, it’s just letting that shit travel on autopilot to your destination and taking a piss break ig. Same goes for the horses because the number of times I just let mine go on auto to my destination because that shit was super fucking far away in this bloated ass map while I played a gatcha on my phone or something is actually not even funny.
Climbing and traversal feel even worse than in the previous 2 games somehow, it’s floaty and stiff at the same time somehow shit’s actually awful.
I think the whole mentality of looking at games in bad faith by saying “you’re just doing the same thing over and over again” is pretty dumb because you can legit break any game down like that but GOOD GOD, I have never played a game that made me think about how I’m just wasting my time doing the same fucking formulaic shit over and over again for 50+ hours more than this piece of shit.
TLDR; Gameplay garbage.

What about the story?
To which I respond: WHAT STORY?

This game took me 60 hours and I can confidently say if it was around 5 hours long you could achieve the exact same narrative.

Eivor’s character has next to 0 progression until the final HOUR of the game. The main characters that should drive the narrative like Sigurd or Basim DISAPPEAR FOR OVER 30 HOURS AND THEN COME BACK TO STAY FOR LESS THAN ONE. It is such a fucking achievement in storytelling incompetence that it’s astounding.
To break down this narrative into a sentence: Eivor and her brother Sigurd travel from Norway to England in search of Glory.

That’s literally it. Along the way Sigurd ends up learning about the ancient civilization and becoming obsessed with it while Eivor struggles with her place in this story as someone who seeks glory but is always second fiddle to her brother. They develop a convoluted hostile relationship with time since Sigurd fears that Eivor wants to hog all the glory for her which makes no sense because at no point does she ever try to do that in the whole game. After 58 hours the game has its climax where they just say fuck it and rip-off the ending of the hit visual novel euphoria. Sigurd and Eivor make amends and decide true glory can’t be physically everlasting, what matters is what you leave behind (admittedly the only nice narrative beat of the game which I did get some enjoyment out of). Then after that nice sequence they get confronted by Basim for some reason and you fight the worst final boss in video game history (NARRATIVELY AND IN THE CONTEXT OF GAMEPLAY), concluding the past narrative.
After that in modern day, Layla’s story comes to an end. A story that had absolutely no roadmap or coherence about a character I barely know outside of the OPTIONAL EMAILS AND FILES YOU CAN READ ON HER COMPUTER DURING THE 3 RPG GAMES. About 30 minutes of the most stupid and idiotic sci-fi jargon and bullshit ensue which is legit just not even worth trying to explain because one of the plot points is STRAIGHT OUT OF FUCKING FATE/EXTELLA.
Desmond is alive and is actually a God who keeps the multiverse in balance (I’M NOT FUCKING JOKING), I guess? Layla is now also a God who helps Desmond, I guess? Basim is in modern day now, I guess? Basim is a sage, I guess? Basim is very clearly going to sabotage the modern-day assassins, I guess? Does any of this mean anything? It does, it signals that the series is officially dead.
The shark wasn’t jumped, the shark got launched straight into space. None of this makes any sense and has absolutely no narrative weight or value. Remember when the animus was just a machine that could read the memories of your ancestors? Now we’re on some straight up Matrix Reloaded bullshit that has absolutely no place in this franchise.
And after all that you still have ONE MORE POST-GAME ARC FOR SOME REASON.
Eivor fights King Aelfred with all her allies, he dips off-screen, bunch of Eivor’s buddies get killed off for cheap shock value. Peak storytelling.
Once that’s done you can go kill all the members of the Order of the Ancients if you want which leads to the 4th ending scene of the game where King Aelfred reveals himself as the mastermind of the Order of Ancients who actually manipulated Eivor to destroy them from inside out in order to give birth to the Templars, this would be cool if I cared about any of this ig.

What a fucking shitshow of a story.
And you may be wondering “But Doti there’s literally a 50+ hour long chunk of the game you just glossed over like it doesn’t matter!”

YEAH, BECAUSE IT DOESN’T.

YOU SPEND 90% OF THE STORY COMPLETING THIS GAME’S “STORY ARCS” WHICH ARE LITERALLY GLORIFIED SIDE-QUESTS THAT VARY FROM BAD TO BORING TO DECENT AT BEST. YOU ARE FORCED TO DO ALL OF THEM WHO 98% OF THE TIME DO NOT MOVE THE GRANDER STORY IN ANY WAY. IT’S FUCKING ASS.

Characters? Idk, Eivor is decent and she has her moments of shine during the 2% of the story where they actually give her something to do. Sigurd is fine. I liked Ivarr and Ceolbert for the few hours they were in it. Hytham was there. Basim is the worst antagonist of all time. I think those are my thoughts, idk I’m kinda tired of even talking about them.

Music? I remember like 2 tracks and I swear they literally just played this one track the whole time in the overworld. Main theme is good that’s it.

Setting? Boring and lame, game being pretty doesn’t make up for it. Big open fields of nothing and 0 tree traversal in an Assassin’s Creed game that mostly takes place in the woods.



Idk this game is both a nothing burger and the most egregious piece of shit of all time. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what made Assassin’s Creed work in the first place and above all, just a shitty game in its own right. Easily one of the most worthless games ever made and one I cannot recommend in any capacity. A melancholic way to end this journey but having the 12th game fumble after 11 good runs is definitely still a very commendable legacy.