Recent reviews by drcakey

This is the most conflicted I've ever been about a game. I've never seen a game with such a vast gulf between its highs and lows. It has, without exaggeration, made me question my perspective on the world -- and that isn't a compliment. But at the end of the day, the question is "Do I recommend The Messenger?" and in good conscience I simply cannot.

From the start, this game is fantastic to play. It accomplishes something extraordinary: it gives you complex, tough-as-nails retro action-platforming...while not being retro tough. I don't know how to put this in a way that makes sense, it was just hard without being hard. I was challenged and asked to do things that at first glance looked impossible, but I learned and adapted. And each upgrade drastically altered and expanded my mobility. And you don't need me to tell you how amazing the game looks and sounds.

Sure, the dialogue was bad and the meta "humor" was unwelcome (and the writer doesn't know what a "comma splice" is), but those were minor issues, and even there it felt like there was true passion, just misplaced passion. And then came the fake ending. To be clear, I knew the game wasn't about to end; even if I'd gone in totally blind, the game literally tells you that this isn't the real ending. And sure it was a little unsatisfying, and the story wasn't wrapping up in quite the elegant way it should have and was set up to do, but still it had an ending that was both tidy and yet also shocking, the best possible way. If the credits had rolled right there, The Messenger would be in contention for the best game I've ever played.

But then.

The future refused to change. After the halfway point, everything falls apart. The first half of the game is linear; the second half is a Metroidvania. If you've read other reviews, you've probably seen someone else say this, but they're actually giving the game too much credit, because the game doesn't become a Metroidvania...it becomes a Metroidvania...merged with a collectathon. Now, over time I've grown to dislike Metroidvanias as a genre (except Super Metroid, which is my friend), but I can still tell the difference between a good and a bad one. And gluing a bunch of rooms together, in a straight line with virtually no shortcuts, each room being meant to be traversed in only one direction despite the fact that you can and should be going in both directions...that's a bad Metroidvania. On top of that, you're given a series of cryptic clues telling you to crisscross the map, backtracking over and over again, to complete a series of tasks to acquire various widgets. Now I said "cryptic clues", but they're not meant to be hard to interpret, and most aren't. Some, on the other hand, are literally WRONG, like a clue that tells you to go to a place with "emerald streams" when nowhere in the game has green rivers. Oh, and I should have mentioned, as you're doing all this backtracking, the map has doubled in size, because there's a past and future version of every room. The two versions are basically identical. But now they're twice!

And the story...Look, you're not reading a Steam review for a breakdown of the story, and I don't want to do one, and it would be ridiculous to do one for a throwback platformer anyway. But The Messenger sure has a lot of dialogue, and plot points, and characters, and sure makes a lot of reference to storytelling as a concept. So I'll just say that while it has twice as much plot as it probably should, that's five times as much plot as it's equipped to handle. Despite only having like, ten plot points total, they make no sense together and all contradict each other. It's the storytelling equivalent of a broccoli-and-banana sandwich.

The fact that the first half is so good while the second half (more than half, by playtime) is so bad really distresses me. I'm left with two possibilities, neither of which I can accept. First, the first half isn't actually as amazing as I think it is. There are flaws with it I haven't perceived, and it's actually mediocre, and only marginally better than the second half. Or second, the second half of the game is awful on purpose, and the developers are trying to communicate some theme that I just can't perceive.

In summary, The Messenger is a land of contrasts.

I have always wanted to like SMT and Persona games, but I don't, because they're bad. So when I heard that the #AtlusFaithful didn't like this game, I thought, "If they say Soul Hackers 2 bad... Maybe Soul Hackers 2 actually...good?"

nope turns out atlus just put out a product so hollow and tedious even MegaTen fans couldn't stomach it. Do not be like me. Do not fall for the "Hitler Said the Sky is Blue" fallacy.

Dark Souls 2 is a bad game, and it is bad on purpose.

After you attack or drink your Estus, after the animation finishes, there's a little pause where your character stands around doing nothing. This was intentional, in order to make the game feel unpleasant to play. The input buffer has been altered so that, depending on what action you're in the middle of, your input might get buffered, or it might get thrown away. This was intentional, to make combat more frustrating. Bonfires are more plentiful, and you can now warp from the start of the game, and can warp to any bonfire you like...but the boss runs are just as long as before. This was intentional, to make the runs feel even more punishing. And then there are the fog gates...

Do I recommend this game? Absolutely not. But I know some people play games in order to feel miserable, and in that respect, Dark Souls 2 has raised the bar compared to its predecessors. But I'm told Scholar of the First Sin is even worse so you should probably play that instead.