The more I think about this game the more I fucking hate it. I really wanted to like this game but I just kept getting more and more pissed off as it went on. First off: the control is horrible. How the fuck did they screw up on this when 64 felt amazing. Overly responsive and jittery, Mario has no sense of weight or momentum, just 0 to 1000 in a split second. Collision does not exist. At several points I just fell through the fucking level or got softlocked at random points. Mario will slip if there is so much a slight angle in the geometry.

Level design ie also terrible. Every level blends together because of the beach setting. I hate every one of these levels, far too spacious with very few interesting set pieces to make them stand put besides the general level themes. Platforming in these levels makes want to tear my dick off. Just complete and utter garbage. And Corona Mountain makes me want to jump into an actual volcano.

Blue coins, 100 coin shrines and secret shines are terrible. Needless, bullshit padding to get a fucking postcard.

I hate the enemy designs, they feel so lifeless amd generic and can't remember any of them except the Stus and that fucking wind enemy that makes the game even less fun.

Music is decent but very samey so I have nothing really to say about it.

The last thing I want to mention is the game's structure, its terrible too. Despite this being considered an "open" 3d Mario game this is not one at all. You cannot get any shines you want, you have to do all the shrines before you chase Shadow Mario. That means that the watermelon, sandbird, baby chomp cleaning and the horrible "hidden" shrines.

This game is a pathetic joke and I am baffled at how any one likes this, it is a shitstain on an otherwise consistent franchise.

I'm a retro Fromsoft fan now, nobody can say shit to me about not liking Demon's Souls.

Truly I just don't see what about it is supposed to not have been done objectively much, much better in basically all of its successors. Everybody talks about the atmosphere being so much more haunting and surreal than Dark Souls, and like, I've played Shadow Tower: Abyss and that's the game it sounds like they're talking about when they talk about DeS. When I think about what sets Demon's Souls apart visually from its successors all I can conjure to mind is every texture being greenish gray and every lighting source being horrendous piss yellow bloom. Genuinely fuck ugly game to me, and not because of the polygon count.

Combat is just straight-up bad--people don't really talk much about just how much better the basic gamefeel is in Dark Souls. Yeah, Dark is slow and, affectionately, clunky compared to a lot of games in different subgenres, but I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that it's as big a jump in speed, fluidity and depth as Bloodborne was after it. Your dodge roll, even at low equip weight, is such dogshit in Demon's Souls that in almost all situations it's unironically more reliable to just continuously walk backwards while the rock-stupid AI swings at nothing every few seconds instead of doing anything you have to react to. And of course I'd respect this game not really being focused on combat, if not for there being 18 billion enemies in every level. You might as well play Drakengard, which is at least tedious on purpose.

Of course DeS does have some weirder ideas that didn't carry over into Dark Souls (1), and I'm a big fan of weird ideas, even if the execution is really janky. Take World Tendency, easily the biggest example and the thing Fromsoft has made the fewest overtures towards continuing to evolve (although I'd argue Insight in Bloodborne serves a similar function). The ways in which you manipulate World Tendency are incredibly janky and inconvenient, especially now that the game is offline-only, but that's the kind of thing I'm eager to forgive. But the levels changing into "good" and "evil" versions based on your actions is such an amazing concept.

What kinds of things do they do with it? Well, in levels... 1-1 and 3-1, in pure white tendency (and also pure black for 1-1, it's the same) you gain access to a small new area with some important items in it. And in every other, uh, world, not level, there's one NPC you can talk to for a basic fetch quest in white tendency and that same NPC invades you in black... and...





[shuffles notes]


Okay I swear I had a list of all the other cool things that happen due to World Tendency but--hm? Oh. Huh. Hm. Hmmmm.

So, yeah, interesting but janky I can fuck with. But in order to be interesting the game has to do something. That's what kills me about Demon's Souls; I would absolutely adore a weirder, even more unforgiving ancestor of Dark Souls, but it's not actually weirder in any way that matters. All the stuff that would make it so is an empty promise, ridiculously underbaked not just in quality of life but in substance.

Also the remake is fine, I played both versions so I can say that too, I hate this game and I played it twice because I don't want hypothetical people on the internet to think my opinions are invalid why isN'T ANYONE FIXING ME

It's Undertale! No, wait, it's Paper Mario! No, wait, it's a creepypasta! No wait, it's a metaphor for toxic relationships!

Impressively enough, Buddy Simulator manages to fumble all of these things individually, and rather than fumble the job of blending them together, it doesn't bother. The elements don't mesh, nor do they clash. They're just sort of there. It does one thing it's seen before, and then it does another, like a monkey imitating a man with no real understanding of why he does the things he does.

In fact the entire game can be described as a series of monkey see, monkey do moments. Undertale had irreverent NPC dialogue and creepy tonal shifts, so we can do that too. Paper Mario had quirky side kicks and action commands, so we can do that too. All of these elements are used once and then discarded because there's no overarching thought to how they contribute to the whole, either in terms of gameplay loop or thematic resonance. The narrator is clingy and annoying and that's supposed to be scary. Surprise! Your computer is haunted, and it's possessed by a discord sadboy.

Stunning to learn that Daniel Mullins didn't make this game because it really does have his stink all over it.

Tears of the Kingdom is an evil video game. It is a shallow, meandering homonuculus in the shape of a "critically acclaimed video game." It is sinister in how it slithers along wearing the skin of a game we all liked seven years ago. It is deceptive in how it tricks the player into thinking it's wealth of "content" is fun. It is manipulative in how it attempts to wring tears out from the player despite the story meaning nothing.

It is a game about nothing for everyone. It is formless sludge to keep your fingers busy and your mind vacant. It is the death of art. It loots the corpses of the good Zelda games and uses them for fuel for the content mill.

It's kinda fun to skydive though

I won't call Tears of the Kingdom the worst game I've ever played - that'd be obviously hyperbolic. It's mechanically sound, looks nice, and there is some meager bits of fun to be had. But I think it's absolutely one of the worst pieces of art I've ever experienced. It does nothing to justify it's own existence, seemingly satisfied with just being. It has nothing new to say, nothing interesting to do, nothing cool to see. But hey, there's 900 Korok seeds, 700 locations, 194 caves, 152 shrines, 120 lightroots, 58 wells, 35 chasms, 35 settlements, 60 side adventures, 31 shrine quests, 139 side quests, 18 memories, it's so awesome dude there's so much content the game is great it has content I like this game because it has content I love content

This is the most worthless game Nintendo's ever put out. Straight up unacceptable. There's 3 map layers. Sky, surface, and the depths. Surface is ripped straight from BotW. What was once a land painstakingly crafted from the ground up to be inherently wondrous to explore...Is reduced to mindlessly checking off a barrage of F tier copy paste content. There's borderline NOTHING new or surprising to find. And you get NOTHING for wasting a hundred hours engaging with it. The caves and wells add nothing to the game. This was such a cool opportunity for them to really FILL the map. Expand towns, introduce new ones, flesh out the enemy variety, and fill the world with music. An exciting "rebuilt Hyrule" approach that links the old Zelda style with the new in a very natural way. I genuinely don't think that's a lot to ask of this series. But - they did nothing. Heck with the removal of a strong enemy concept like the guardians, and the artificially tripled size of the world, I'd argue enemy variety has been made worse.

The sky and depths fare even worse. The tutorial island is the only large sky island. The rest are tiny and filled to the brim with copy pasted content. The depths themselves are the biggest waste of time in the industry. You can get more engaging gameplay and sense of wonder out of heckin' Cookie Clicker than the depths. What you initially assume will be a dangerous, scary place with a lot to discover...Pretty much IMMEDIATELY reveals itself to be so devoid of meaningful content or even hazards, that you're not missing any information by leaving it pitch black. The classic Poes are reduced to mindless collectibles scattered across the floor. Woulda been sick to hunt down a variety of ghosts, like a fully realized version of hunting the 10 poes in Hyrule Field in OOT. But alas, you're merely fighting 99% enemies from BotW, or getting rewards that are merely costume pieces from BotW's DLC or Amiibos.

Dungeons have never been less interesting. They in no way resemble the classics and are just less creative divine beasts. Goodbye giant walking animal mechs you have some control of, hello random tiny floating island in the sky. Story sucks too. Cop out ending ruining the one and only cool moment. Rest is slow, meandering, and repetitive with dreadful writing. Ganondorf is wasted. No attempt was even feigned to tie this game into the series overall lore let alone timeline. Frustratingly the response to this issue is often "they never cared" which I disagree with strongly. This game's story is so lazy we have to rely on what is made up on the spot in interviews to even connect it to BotW properly and even then there's inconsistencies at every turn. The fuse gimmick adds very little to the overall experience. Not super useful or gracefully implemented. I can't pretend to care about how technically impressive it might be, it doesn't do combat, ui, puzzles, or traversal any favors. Genuinely just a sloppy, unfocused, actively lame version of Banjo Nuts and Bolts. There's even more shrines in this than botw, with a higher percentage of horrible filler or boring non-puzzles for good measure. Being either insultingly slow, redundant tutorials for basic mechanics, functional tutorials for car parts, or a bad reward for poking around the sky islands or sidequests for a few minutes.
I have no doubt in my mind if the Zelda team was forced to make a brand new game from the ground up in under 2 years with no delays, they could have put out something more deserving of the Zelda name. But alas, another series falls to the irresistible temptation to make objectively bad content and spend 6+ years spreading it as thin as possible. The kind of design that's just allowed to happen these days is upsetting. Imagine telling someone in the year 2000 that in 20 years they'll release a Zelda game where you do the same exact low effort mission over 88 times in a row and that it's one of the only new things they added - and while they were at it 85% of the enemy types have been removed.

P.S. Trying out making shorter versions of my obscenely long reviews. This is still getting rather long, but compared to my original review... 4 paragraphs vs 18's a pretty good TL;DR. I just like to really explain myself when having unpopular opinions. Prolly gonna make a List of all the reviews I do this with. Follow for the eventual TL;DR of my TL;DR. Also the more I dig into this game the more upset I get and I just wanna keep babbling about it.

American Mcgee's Alice may be my favorite adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. In terms of writing and atmosphere, it's certainly the cream of the crop. What Rouge Entertainment accomplished on the Quake 3 engine, of all things, is nothing short of incredible. I genuinely think when it comes to translating an Art style with the tech they had, they couldn't have done better. The dark, twisted atmosphere is killer and the soundtrack unmatched. The voice acting is also one of the best I have ever heard, with Sussie Bran as Alice and Roger Jackson as the cheshire cat beeing pitch perfect. I could honestly listen to them banter for ages. Its all wonderful, except for the gameplay. That is an entirely different can of worms.

Alice suffers what I like to call "second half dropoff syndrome". An unfortunate decease many, many games up until fairly recently have suffered from. Basically the first half is excellent, falls right into what its gameplay limitation are capable of, but then you hit the midway point. From then on it becomes awful, with bullshit enemies, instant death pits and levels that stretch on for way too long. For Alice, that point is about when you reach the level Mirror Image, the mad hatters' domain. The platforming turns to shit and most of the weapons become useless. The ice wand is already crazy overpowered, but introducing the jabberwocky's eye staff makes even that redounded. It kills all the challenge, and now the only threats are instant death pits. Unlucky then that Alice has tons of enemies who's single job it is to push you off narrow pathways. Great. I don't exactly think we needed that in a game where jumping isn't great to begin with. I probably shouldn't be surprised about those issues, considering American Mcgee used to work at Id software and many of Alice's exact issues can be found in Id's early catalog. The storm on the red queen's castle was a slog, combining all those issues. The atmosphere still fucks, but it's the point where I wouldn't blame anyone for just watching a Let's play instead.

I still recommend you check out Alice in any way you see fit because I think it's one of the defining pieces of Video Game art from the early 2000s, that sadly never got the spotlight it deserved. On the bright side, EA pretty much stopped giving a shit about the series and now just sells its sequel completely DRM free. So it's super easy to mod the original into the sequel, since it was originally sold as a bonus DLC remaster for Alice: Madness Returns. You can then just access it through the main menu of Madness Returns. So fuck EA and pirate the fuck out of their games. Rise up, Goth Gamer Nation.