A potentially great game, ruined with terrible controls and gimmicks. The Wiimote was always a terrible controller for traditional video games and that’s especially true in the case of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. The motion control pointer aiming seems like it’s really cool at first, but it doesn’t take long to discover that it’s both too laggy and too spastic for anything approaching the degree of precision the game will eventually require. The greatest enemy you’ll face in Corruption is the controller in your hand. Even when the controls aren’t giving you a hard time in-game, the controller itself still presents a challenge. The button layout simply wasn’t intended for a game this complicated and demanding, it seems. After all, that’s why Nintendo released the Classic Controller for Wii. The controls, at best, are cumbersome and unintuitive. At worst, they’re aggravating enough to warrant shutting the game off, rather than continuing the frustration of nothing working the way you want it to. You should be able to forget about the controller you’re holding when you’re playing an action-adventure game- that’s what immersion IS, in video games. Prime 3 fails at this, possibility more than any game I’ve ever played.
A technical tour de force for legacy 16-bit hardware, Earthion’s visual splendor sadly is not matched by its gameplay direction. For anyone that has ever owned or spent a reasonable amount of time playing Sega Genesis games, the wizardry that powers Earthion is undeniably impressive. It looks and sounds phenomenal. However, I find that the gameplay is a little less impressive. As far as SHMUPS go, I’d say it falls somewhere between classic shooters and bullet hell. There isn’t such a focus on intricate patterns of enemy fire but the game throws a lot more at you than most classic shooters. The weapon variety is decent but the upgrades of each weapon are a little lackluster, not really changing or evolving in any meaningful or surprising ways. The weapons aren’t bad, just maybe a little boring. Giares, this is not. One innovation that I do like is the shield system. It’s not as sacrilegious as a life meter, but it’s more forgiving than single or limited use shields of many similar games. The gameplay loop is an interesting concept. You play through as far as you can, and whether you finish the game or not, you’re given a code that essentially functions as a new game+, allowing you to start your next game with many of the upgrades you collected in your previous run. As much as I like this, it’s also hard not to view it as a concession to mitigate some of the weaker gameplay design decisions. These include often poor visibility of enemy fire and an over-abundance of enemies that can both move and fire through obstacles that block your shots as well as fire in any direction. SHMUPS are generally designed around memorizing enemy patterns. This kind of goes out the window with so many enemies that react to player positioning, rather than the other way around. Many (if not most) enemies explode into debris that must also be destroyed, otherwise functioning as additional projectiles that you must dodge. The game really does throw a lot at you and sometimes it’s a little more than the hardware it’s programmed for can handle. There isn’t a lot of slowdown or flickering sprites, but there is some. Occasionally, you’ll take hits and not really know why. Finally, for modern consoles there are some baffling quality of life oversights. For PS5, you’ll use the X button to confirm choices and the circle button to cancel, as you normally would, in the game’s pause menu. Within the game itself, however, those buttons will be swapped, as is customary for Japan. It’s a very odd choice. Furthermore, there is nothing even remotely resembling a manual in-game (which the physical releases include). You only get a single “How to Play” screen with the most basic information. So, there’s nothing to provide any context or story to the gameplay experience and no list of available weapons in the game. You just have to figure it out for yourself. Overall, Earthion is a good game. On original hardware, probably a great game compared to its competition. It’s odd though… I can’t help but wonder who exactly this game was intended for. Because, if I’m being honest, it seems like it was created for 50 year old men but seemingly expects them to have the response and reaction speed of 13 year old boys.
A stunningly gorgeous but unfortunately tedious adventure. I probably don’t need to tell you that this game has absolutely beautiful visuals. The presentation is easily the game’s greatest draw and strength. Sadly, most of the experience beyond this aspect is convoluted and abundant with confusing design decisions. It seems as though the developers were desperate to try to innovate within the genre and failed to question if something that they could do was something that they should do. At times, it almost seems as though they instead asked themselves what the weakest, most disliked aspects of the Metroid franchise were and then chose to make those elements the foundation of Ultros. One of the key mechanics of Ultros is something that all Metroid players are well acquainted with, the loss of key abilities that will be reacquired later in the game. In Ultros, this happens repeatedly, over and over again. Over time, this is mitigated by items than can be collected within the world to “lock in” upgrades that the player might consider most important. Still, this repetition of having to enter the skill tree and allocate points, time after time, buying the same abilities again and again, is a curious choice that is ultimately more annoying than anything else. The game is overflowing with a certain haughtiness that I imagine stems from a director with too few honest people to bounce their ideas off of. It kind of permeates the game, honestly. The writing in particular is absurdly, eye-rollingly pretentious, despite not being overly serious. All that said, I do think the game is worth checking out for the visuals alone, and some fun can be had in the early hours before it begins to feel like a chore.
Currently, screen tearing is VERY bad on PS5 and it really impacts the experience negatively. The graphics are surprisingly bland and character models look pretty rough and cheap when displayed up close. This lack of polish in the game’s presentation doesn’t do the seemingly simplistic gameplay any favors. The game may have potential but, on PS5 at least, it needs a lot of work still.
Round 8 Studio and NEOWIZ could have made Lies of P something truly special, instead they made it a soulslike. Slavish devotion to the formula amounts to almost blatant plagiarism in terms of design fundamentals and squanders the brilliant premise. Seriously, the premise is so strong that it would have worked in just about any genre, and they chose one of the least inspired, least innovative, most over saturated genres of the past fifteen years. One of the most baffling adherences to the formula is the inclusion of a summoning system despite the fact that this is a strictly single-player game. Enemy attack patterns attempt to push the envelope of difficulty to such a degree that it’s offensively nonsensical. Nearly every boss features at least one unblockable rushing attack that spans the arena and can pin the player character against the environmental geometry. The Green Monster of the Swamp boss features such an attack that is also seemingly unable to be dodged as well. In fact, almost all enemies function this way. Combat seems to have one underlying principle that guides every encounter in the game: the enemy should rush down the player, pinning them against edge of the arena, thereby sending the camera into a tailspin and creating a situation that can often be impossible to escape from. Punitive measures are likewise “enhanced” to all but guarantee a deficit of fun. Not only do you lose your EXP when you die, the amount decreases with each hit you take on your way to retrieve it, often making the attempt not worth the effort. What few, new gameplay ideas Lies of P brings to the table are focused solely on making it more aggravating, rather than more interesting. Ultimately, it’s a disappointingly derivative gooning session for the developers and gamers whose kink is outdated, apathetic edginess and tryhard realness.
A disappointing experience after their previous game, Andro Dunos 2. Ganryu 2 has a certain charm but it’s an incredibly barebones package and the presentation is severely lacking. The title screen, menus, and cutscenes all lack style and personality. The game looks nice in parts but there’s too little variety in background elements, with overused tile sets causing things to feel a little cheap, lazy, and bland. It’s a far cry from other, more lovingly crafted modern pixel art games. Instead of being a great example of a retro sensibility with a contemporary approach, Ganryu 2 just feels like an old game that the devs. forgot to release until now.
A cute aesthetic and clever premise isn’t enough to compensate for mediocre gameplay and design. I’ve seen this game described as a “baby’s first soulslike.” That is a fairly apt description not only for the game’s somewhat less severe difficulty but also for the developer’s execution in building the game. While combat is heavily inspired by the Dark Souls franchise and its many spin-offs and copycats, Crab’s Treasure lacks the polish and relative consistency of many of these experiences. Both hit detection and environmental collision/traversal often feels unfortunately imprecise. The camera seems far too zoomed out and floaty (no pun intended) as well as being placed too high for this style of combat. The camera also often squeezes itself into places that will cause it to be unable to frame both your character and your enemy, essentially showing you nothing but an empty piece of the environment while you’re getting attacked offscreen. I personally find the juxtaposition of the cutesy, cozy aesthetic and the somewhat demanding combat and punitive difficulty to be a slightly annoying dichotomy. One aspect of FromSoft’s winning formula is that the unwelcoming, unsettling world keeps players in the mindset that danger lurks around every corner. The atmosphere actually facilitates the difficulty because, even when there is no immediate threat, the player never relaxes enough to be totally unprepared for the next threat. Because Crab’s Treasure eschews this philosophy, there’s a certain tonal whiplash between fighting and exploring that just doesn’t work. Crab’s world is also extremely lacking in terms of the sort of intrigue that inspires exploration. The longer I played, the less I felt compelled to continue.
I owned a Sega Saturn back in the day and even imported a couple of games but Elevator Action Returns was never on my radar. It’s a shame, too, because this game is fantastic. I can’t comment on the accuracy of the port but it looks and sounds great and plays well also. The graphics really deserve an extra mention; pixel art lovers are in for a real treat. Though I have nothing to base my suspicion on, I suspect there might be just a bit of input lag compared to the original arcade and Saturn versions but don’t let that dissuade you from trying this excellent game if you’re interested in it. This port has a great suite of modern features such as rewind, slo-mo, customizable borders, scan lines, etc. It also includes the original Elevator Action. Highly recommended for fans of retro arcade games and lovers of pixel graphics
A bland, mediocre Metroidvania that is mechanically uninspired and conceptually uninteresting. A rote, paint by numbers effort all around. The game seems to go off the rails in the last third or so, with Meikan Village seeing a bizarre spike in difficulty in what seems to be a weak attempt at stretching out the playtime. I’m guessing that development was rushed as they were finishing up. In Meikan, background screen transitions are nonexistent; one screen you’re outside with small houses behind you, the very next you’re inside some huge, fully enclosed castle that wasn’t even hinted at on the previous screens. I also don’t particularly enjoy the artstyle of the game but your mileage may vary. Some of it looks good while some of it looks quite amateurish, like Momo’s character portrait in the menus. The knock-off anime style with big **** monster girls also seems a little tryhard in this day and age, especially for a game that takes itself so seriously. I played the previous Momodora entry as well and remember enjoying it more but that was quite some time ago.
Worse combat than the first game, bad controls that often seem to result in actions that do not correspond to the actual inputs, more bugs and glitches, a terrible frame rate with constant screen tearing and hitches or terrible resolution and visual effects, audio cuts out frequently, full game crashes… The game lacks many basic quality of life features. Even trophies are either mislabeled or improperly programmed to unlock when they should. A subpar product on nearly all fronts. Two years after release and next to nothing was fixed or improved. Lots of people can make games but so few know how to design one. Bad choices abound and clearly not enough time was given to actually finish the game. A rushed cash grab that is not deserving of anyone’s hard-earned money.
I recently decided to dig the PS3 out of the closet and revisit some games that aren’t available on the PS4 or PS5. I’ve owned Hard Corps: Uprising since it released and have always found it a rather unsatisfying experience despite the acclaim it receives. There’s admittedly a lot to like about it but overall it’s just kind of a slog. The game is intended to be played primarily in its Uprising mode, where you’re able to unlock perks like more lives and hit points as well as new abilities that the game doesn’t bother to explain in any way. Everything has an exorbitant cost to unlock and must be unlocked individually for each character. It will likely take a handful of attempts at the game before you’ll be able to unlock even the least expensive item. The developers expect a lot of playtime to earn these things. That means playing through the same levels again and again to grind the necessary points to unlock items that will help you progress to the next level, only to begin that repetition again to reach level after that. Part of the problem here is the difficulty. If ever there was a game that epitomized the word, “overtuned,” this is it. It’s clear that the developers ate, slept, breathed and gooned over this game and they expect a similar level of dedication from the player. Another problem is the graphics. The game is gorgeous to look at but nothing on-screen is given any more focus or prominence than anything else. There’s a serious lack of “readability,” with the action often devolving into a visual fustercluck of sprites and low-poly 3D models moving around the screen in every direction. The sound design also has issues. I’m sure some love the guitar-heavy hard rock inspired soundtrack but I find to be a little generic and at-odds with the with the rest of the presentation but that’s just kind of Arc System Works’ style. The real issue with sound is the balancing of the voice samples. The enemies’ death cries are ear-piercingly loud to such a degree that I felt compelled to adjust the volume of in-game voices, at which point I could no longer hear any of the other dialogue from characters. Balancing, in fact, seems to be where this game struggles on all fronts. There’s no restraint shown toward any aspect of the game. Everything is turned up to eleven at the risk of blowing your speakers, figuratively speaking.
Marvel Rivals is ADHD substantiated. It’s like hypnosis with the exact opposite approach: it’s meant to force you into a pliable, erratic mental state through chaotic lights and sounds rather than through calm, measured stimuli. If you take a step back after playing the game, it’s easy to see just how intentionally things have been arranged to induce addiction. It’s honestly quite sinister just how acceptable this sort of thing has become in online gaming. The game does make great use of the Marvel license and it really can be fun, in the way that toddlers have fun running in circles, screaming their heads off for no reason. However, you begin to realize how imbalanced and inconsistent everything seems to be, which ultimately results in the realization that none of it really matters. Eventually, win or lose, it’s all meaningless because regardless of your efforts the game will often force outcomes that are likely to keep the most players playing. One of the most egregious examples of this is that, after a handful of losing matches against human teams, the game will corral potentially demoralized players into a match with bots and the game will ensure the players’ victory in an attempt to curb their frustrations and keep them playing. Keep in mind, the game is not transparent about this. It never tells you that you’re suddenly playing against and with bots in a game mode that is reasonably assumed to be populated by only human opponents and teammates. Unlike the bots in the “versus AI” practice mode which are simply labeled as the character and the difficulty, these bots are given player names like those that any human player might have. The developers also have penchant for terrible, grindy, time-wasting mini-games. None of them have been fun so far but they do offer decent rewards which can usually be obtained without too much hassle.
This collection includes Valis III for the Megadrive but not the SEGA Genesis version (there are slight differences) and the Megadrive version is missing sound effects. This sort of laziness in compiling a collection such as this is beyond disappointing, it’s nearly unforgivable.
Edia’s releases leave a bit to be desired across the board. The rewind function is laughably bad by comparison to how the feature is implemented in other retro releases. Why is the background music on the menu twice as loud as the game itself? The menu design is absolutely archaic. Still, Gaiares is a classic shooter that was excellent for its time but it doesn’t quite hold up today. The control is VERY “digital” and feels incredibly clunky - there is no momentum to the movement of the ship whatsoever and it stops on a dime. The game was always this way, of course, it just feels very strange by today’s standards. However, this lack of smooth movement also means that control is actually VERY precise, which is good if you can get used to it because the game is quite challenging. Great graphics, amazing music, beautiful character designs, and… a surprisingly interesting story in a shmup? Yeah, Gaiares was ahead of its time. It’s no Gley Lancer or even Thunder Force III or IV but it’s still really cool and worth checking out if you like shooters from this era.
Overpriced, overhyped, overtuned, and poorly optimized. Playing on PS5, there is infrequent but consistent frame hitching that can severely impact gameplay. The game requires very precise timing and spacing for both platforming and combat and these things can be adversely affected by an inopportune hitch. Post release of the DLC, the additional content is made available within the core game far too early and can result in the player being waylaid into an area where abilities and upgrades are completely independent from the main game and very little carries over when returning to the campaign. The gameplay content of the DLC area is significantly more difficult than the main game and can lead to undue frustration by funneling players away from the experience they were enjoying only to present them with with lengthy, overly complicated puzzle-platforming challenges for virtually no discernible reward. It’s an absolutely mind boggling decision on the part of the developers to, for all intents and purposes, force relatively new players into this content that was clearly intended for players looking for a more hardcore challenge. This mode does include some additional storytelling but it revolves around a character that, at the point the mode becomes available, has appeared for perhaps a total of two minutes and uttered three sentences. Again, why the developers thought it was wise to position a lengthy, frustrating mode about a character the player knows nothing about and therefore cares little for so early into the game is baffling. I’m continually convinced that the art of game design is concept that is all but lost on today’s developers. Once, game design revolved around finding ingenious ways to create new and exciting experiences within the limitations of the hardware. Now, the only limitation (excluding time and money) is that we still can’t quite achieve truly believable, photo realistic human characters. With so few limitations, most developers don’t have the restraint to achieve what I’d call elegant game design. Because they can do everything, they will. The Lost Crown’s combat noticeably suffers from this failure of conceptualization. The most basic fodder enemies have numerous attacks, counters, and evasive maneuvers. This is true of all enemies in the game, including the very first that you encounter. Basic enemies that have projectile attacks can hurl them in any direction they choose. Tools that make implementing these actions simple means that they’re included with little consideration for why they’re being included. Because they can, they will. Almost all enemies are overtuned in this way, with the even lowliest grunts having nearly as many offensive and defensive options available to them as the player themselves. This means that combat can always be fun and exciting… or frustrating. Running around, exploring and platforming can be brought to a halt in an instant by a single, stubborn enemy grunt. It affects the game’s pacing in a way that, while not ruinous, is not ideal. This unnecessary complexity, incorporated without consideration for how it affects other aspects of gameplay, is mirrored in the DLC’s tediously lengthy and complicated platforming challenges. In the DLC, your playtime will be padded with lengthy treks and numerous difficult jumps and dashes from a faraway checkpoint to the spot where failed by the slightest mistake, only to fail again a few steps past that. These puzzle-platforming challenges are designed in such a way that you can never see what’s ahead so your progress is limited to extremely small gains that you only achieve by doing the preceding segments countless times. I found it maddeningly unfun. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown retails for $39.99. ($49.99 for the Complete Edition) While Metroid Dread might have justified its $60 price tag, I do not feel that PoP:TLC justifies its asking price. The core game is competently made aside from the poor optimization on my platform of choice but it lacks some of the polish and charm of better games in the genre. I believe that it also loses sight of what makes a truly compelling Metroidvania; atmosphere. The map layouts and design are fine but lack the character to be truly memorable or immersive. The backgrounds look decent but they’re just kind of there and don’t really draw you into the fantasy as much as they could and fail to create any real intrigue. I paid $15 for The Lost Crown new on disc and an additional $5 for the DLC at a 50% discount, which was a savings of $30 from the initial asking price and still $5 cheaper than the current sale price of buying both as digital copies. I think this range of $20-$25 if a fair price for anyone interested in playing this title. I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND postponing the start of the DLC until some time after it becomes available as attempting it that early greatly diminished my enjoyment of the game and irrevocably damaged my opinion of the game as a whole.
A very poorly balanced game. It feels like it was designed expressly for co-op play and the developers thought that simply scaling down enemy health and damage would be a satisfactory single player experience. It is not. Overall, it’s extremely disappointing and definitely not worth the asking price. There is basically no in-game explanation of any game mechanics or concepts. You have to delve into the main menu for even the most fundamental game info. Certain challenges and objectives are essentially impossible for certain characters unless you focus on only that. Because areas are quite large for the amount of time you have to explore them, many of these challenges seem pointless because encountering them early means you’re not prepared for them and may have to waste continues to complete them, while on the other hand, waiting until you’re better prepared for them often means you don’t have time for them. Speaking of which, since there are really no permanent upgrades for characters (It’s a Roguelike, not a Roguelite) many runs will be a complete waste of your time unless you’re easily entertained and enjoy repetition for the sake of it. Runs are timed by a number of days with an automatic boss fight at the end of those days. The length of days/number of days often seems inadequate for accomplishing anything worthwhile. Wait for a deep discount or meaningful improvements.
I played one of the betas and I’ve played since launch. There are things that I like about the game but it’s very poorly designed, overall. Aside from the Descendants themselves, there’s very little variety. Missions are constant repeats of maybe ten different types and even the eight areas (further subdivided into a handful of zones) are not especially distinct or interesting. Repetition is part and parcel of the genre of looter shooters but the monotony extends to every facet of the game. Despite the potentially overwhelming plethora of modules to equip characters with, end game seemingly pushes everyone into the same optimized builds for each character, limiting experimentation and player expression. Even the character designs, which are the highlight of the game, end up feeling homogeneous due to the fact that they all have nearly identical proportions and all have the same posture (one stance for women, one for men) and the exact same idle animations across the board. While the cute/sexy female characters are the obviously intended selling point of the game, it goes beyond pandering and fully into a sort of fetishistic stupor, lacking self awareness or any redeeming charm. Further limiting player expression is the minimal and cost prohibitive ways in which a Descendant can be customized. There’s next to nothing in the way of accessories for changing a Descendant’s appearance and outside of the sparse selection of free dyes you’ll earn through non-repeatable challenges, dyes must be bought with real money and can only be used once per skin. If you want to use the color you just bought on another Descendant, or even on the same Descendant’s helmet in addition to their armor, you’ll have to buy it twice. Furthermore, you cannot change the colors of base characters. So, if you don’t want your Bunny to look like every other Bunny, you’ll first have to buy a skin and then probably some dye if you want a cohesive color scheme. The story is ridiculously stupid, with all the bad sci-fi jargon and gibberish you can imagine, including an inter-dimensional, cybernetic, alien villain the developers chose to name Greg - without even the slightest hint of irony or humor. The delivery of the story is divided across in-game comms chatter, static-camera, one-sided character conversations, and cinematic cutscenes that range from pretty bad to unexpectedly awesome. The static conversation scenes are at least ten years behind the times with no camera cuts or movement and characters that stand stiffly and oddly still - not gesturing - with blank expressions and barely blinking, dead eyes and their mouths flapping out of sync with the recorded speech. The bosses known as Colossi can be extremely demanding, requiring many, many hours of grinding in order to be properly geared, and sometimes feature gameplay mechanics that are unique to them, which the game makes absolutely no attempt whatsoever to alert the player to. Either do your research online first and pray that the random players you’re paired with have done the same, find a regular group that communicates well, or prepare to have you progress halted entirely until you do one of those two things. Speaking of playing in groups regularly: until recently the game didn’t even allow matchmaking for the hardest content yet the game includes no clans or guilds to build up a stable of regular teammates. So, have three buddies willing to commit all their free time or go screw yourself, I guess. The First Descendant is a free-to-play game and these games have to recoup their cost through in-game shop purchases for things like characters, cosmetics, and boosters but the pricing of the things on offer here seem a tad exorbitant. There’s an abundance of ways that the game attempts to nickel and dime the player. Chief among them is the Battle Pass which, unlike nearly ever single other game in the sphere of free-to-play games with season passes, gives less than an equal amount of in-game currency for its real world price. On top of that, the Battle Pass offers very little in terms of meaningful rewards for completing its challenges so, all in all, it’s kind of a rip-off. The bones **** game can be found in The First Descendant but unfortunately the meat that encases them has already begun to rot, I’m afraid.
Been playing for a month and I’ve come to hate this game, for a number of reasons. First, the game as a packaged product: I bought the “Premium” edition digitally sometime after its release. Premium includes the Kombat Pack, which is essentially what other games would call a season pass. I played through the game’s story mode and, near the end, the game required that I play as one of the franchise’s most recognizable villains, Shang Tsung. After completing the story I went to Invasions, a mode where you play through various maps, fighting different characters and completing a variety of mini-games to gain experience and unlock cosmetics. It’s basically a lazier, much less interesting version of The Crypt present in previous entries. This is where I discovered that Shang Tsung, the character that I had just been playing, wasn’t included in the game outside of story mode and had to be purchased separately as he was only included at no additional cost if you preordered. Rather than the character feeling like something extra and something worth buying it seemed as though the character had been taken away and held for ransom until I gave them more money. Because I had bought the “Premium” edition, which included everything else, this was even more confusing and aggravating. Invasions mode is also where I discovered how little thought and care had been put into the game. Invasions features and particular type of missions called “Survive”. These missions vary quite a bit but are unified by their reliance on primeval gameplay tropes. It’s a lot of dodging screen-filling projectiles or positioning your character to avoid some kind of damage and they’re very much all or nothing propositions. The problem with theses missions is that none of them are the least bit interesting or engaging and for every one that has been designed in an attempt to make it less boring there seems to be five more that rely on completely random arrays of projectiles rather than a pattern that the player could learn to overcome. So they’re less about trial and error and more about playing until you get lucky. I’ve seen these Survive missions throw all the projectiles they’re allotted at the player with literally fives seconds remaining, resulting in the player character just standing around, waiting for it to end. They’re blatant time-wasters, intended only to frustrate and prolong rather than entertain. Beyond Story and Invasions modes there’s very little else to do and none of it is particularly fun. There is competitive online play, of course. Online play is similarly shoddy. MK1 is certainly not alone in this regard —No fighting game functions the way it is intended the majority of the time when online connections are involved— but I can’t help but feel that it’s substantially worse performing than its predecessor, MK11, was/is. Furthermore, ranked matches online are equally intended to waste the player’s time while dangling the carrot of meaningless, recycled cosmetics. As you win matches, you gain experience and level up, allowing you to earn more cosmetics. But of course, if you lose matches you also risk losing experience and working backwards, eventually being demoted to a lower rank. You better believe that every time you’re close to going up a rank the game will manage to pair you with a player that has played significantly more matches, has a much higher win to loss ratio than you, or is just outright higher ranked than you in an attempt to thwart your progress. It’s really disheartening how much more consideration and effort was put into trying to trap the player in a loop that will keep them playing and spending than was put into making the game an enjoyable experience that one might naturally want to play. I played the Mortal Kombat games as teenager from the very first until the third. I came back to the franchise with MK9 and have bought and played each since. This is the last one I’ll buy. I’d love to lay all the blame for the sad state the series is currently in at the feet of Warner Bros. alone but at some point NetherRealm Studios must be held accountable for their part. There are clearly a whole lot of very talented artists at NRS that have given MK1 their blood, sweat and tears —the game sounds and looks fantastic. NRS needs more or better gameplay designers though because the content in that regard is both lacking in scope and quality.
Initially, I was really enjoying Returnal. It was difficult but not overwhelmingly so and I loved the atmosphere. I died a few times in the first biome and it took me a few attempts to defeat the first boss after reaching it. The same was true of the second biome and its boss. Upon reaching the third biome, the difficulty escalated and I was simply unable to reach the boss of that area with enough health and resources to defeat it, even after several attempts. Then the patches started being released. I never lost my overall progress but without the option to heal at the ship I was unable to build up enough integrity to sustain me through longer runs. I was having to reset the game nearly every other run due to doors that wouldn’t open. More difficult enemies from longer runs began appearing en masse in the very first rooms. Now, I could barely survive the first biome long enough to collect a few artifacts and increase my integrity before moving onto biome 3 and I was surely dead not long after arriving there. The more I played, the less I enjoyed the game. I began making fewer runs each time I played and skipped playing entirely on some days. Shortly, I found myself starting the game up and then shutting it down just a room or two into the first biome. Every time my adrenaline reset or I sustained heavy damage it just felt entirely pointless. Finally, I just deleted the game. I’ve enjoyed most of Housemarque’s other games but I’m afraid that after spending $80 on Returnal they’ve lost me as a customer. I’m not a stranger to difficult games and there are some that I was unable to finish but still enjoyed my time with (including Housemarque’s own Outland). Sadly, Returnal’s design seems antagonistic and disrespectful to me. It demands much of the player in terms of skill, focus, and commitment in regard to length of runs and the need to leave the game active while in rest mode. In return, it does nothing to encourage a struggling player to persevere. It’s not enough for a developer to tell the audience that their game is difficult when that’s both relative and highly subjective. Returnal goes beyond being challenging by disregarding the player’s time and need to use their console for other activities in addition to punishing design. Returnal should have had a demo prior to release so that players could gauge their interest prior to spending a minimum of $70 on it.
