Recently Dropped Games
Jan. 13th, 2022 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingYIIK: A Postmodern RPG
YIIK wants to be like Earthbound, but the writing is atrocious. The voice acting is embarrassing, and you can’t turn it off. The graphics aren’t great. The game takes forever to load every time you go in and out of any given building. The puzzles require super-precision object placement and perfect timing, but the shaky controls don’t allow for precision or close timing.
I’m actually willing to accept the poor game design as an aesthetic, but there’s a lot of strobe lighting that I can’t handle. I don’t call myself “pocketseizure” on Tumblr for nothing.
I don’t know if this means anything to anyone except me, but the combination of unstable controls and self-important overblown writing reminds me a lot of a PS1 era game called Alundra, which was Sega’s answer to Legend of Zelda. There was a lot of potential in Alundra, just like there’s a lot of potential in YIIK, but both games are all but unplayable to a shitty casual such as myself.
Eastward
Eastward is supposed to be a cross between Studio Ghibli, Earthbound, and Legend of Zelda, and the pixel graphics are very pretty. Unfortunately, the writing is awful. There’s a lot of text, and it scrolls extremely slowly. On top of that, I think the writers might hate women. There’s a lot of casual misogynistic humor, and I’m not a fan of the “she’s all right because she’s just like the guys” video game heroine trope. Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate and enjoy misogyny, but in this game it’s just cringe.
The game markets itself as accessible, but the real-time action gameplay is actually quite difficult. Each room is filled with enemies, and they constantly respawn. This means you have to complete puzzles while fighting, which isn’t ideal. You have zero range and miss a lot of hits, and the enemies have incredible range and will kill you in three or four hits. I died half a dozen times while trying to finish a simple block-pushing puzzle in the second room of the second dungeon. To make matters worse, the puzzles reset when you leave a room, as do any unlocked doorways. This is extremely tedious and annoying in the simple early dungeons, and I don’t want to think about what it’s going to be like in longer and more complicated dungeons.
I would be willing to forgive all this and git gud, but there’s a lot of strobe lighting and strobe effects that, again, I can’t handle. The game knows this and warns for it, but it doesn’t let you turn it off. Why are people so into strobe lights, wtf.
The opening animation is gorgeous, but you can watch that on YouTube for free.
Metroid Dread
The story is very silly, and I wish you could turn off the voice acting. I also wish you could skip the opening movies entirely. I feel the same way about Metroid lore and continuity that I feel about Kirby lore and continuity, which is: I am just here for the violence.
The game assumes that you’ve been playing the Metroid series for the past two decades, and the controls are complicated. Precise aiming is necessary from the very beginning, but I couldn’t get the hang of it. Like Skyward Sword, you have to hold the controller in an extremely uncomfortable way all the time. There’s also a special targeting mode where the game switches from 2D platforming to 3D over-the-shoulder shooting, and you basically have two seconds to calibrate the motion controls before you die. These motion controls are mandatory, and I couldn’t figure out how to get them to work properly. Despite giving it my best shot every day for a week, I couldn’t make it past the first serious enemy encounter. In other words, I never made it past the tutorial section.
I want to say that Metroid Dread is more for people who enjoy FPS games than for people who enjoy Metroidvania games. I feel like the game would have the potential to be interesting if the shooting were as simple and intuitive as it is in Breath of the Wild, but I also get the feeling that having the basic controls be easy actually makes games like this less fun for the core audience.
I am not the core audience of sci-fi shooting games, and this game is not for me. I resent all the professional game reviewers who promised that Metroid Dread is accessible to people who don’t play Metroid games, and I resent the $50 that I gave to Nintendo in innocent blind faith.
TLDR: I don’t like games with bad controls. I appreciate difficult games, but not games that are difficult for unnecessary reasons. Also can we stop with the strobe effects already.
YIIK wants to be like Earthbound, but the writing is atrocious. The voice acting is embarrassing, and you can’t turn it off. The graphics aren’t great. The game takes forever to load every time you go in and out of any given building. The puzzles require super-precision object placement and perfect timing, but the shaky controls don’t allow for precision or close timing.
I’m actually willing to accept the poor game design as an aesthetic, but there’s a lot of strobe lighting that I can’t handle. I don’t call myself “pocketseizure” on Tumblr for nothing.
I don’t know if this means anything to anyone except me, but the combination of unstable controls and self-important overblown writing reminds me a lot of a PS1 era game called Alundra, which was Sega’s answer to Legend of Zelda. There was a lot of potential in Alundra, just like there’s a lot of potential in YIIK, but both games are all but unplayable to a shitty casual such as myself.
Eastward
Eastward is supposed to be a cross between Studio Ghibli, Earthbound, and Legend of Zelda, and the pixel graphics are very pretty. Unfortunately, the writing is awful. There’s a lot of text, and it scrolls extremely slowly. On top of that, I think the writers might hate women. There’s a lot of casual misogynistic humor, and I’m not a fan of the “she’s all right because she’s just like the guys” video game heroine trope. Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate and enjoy misogyny, but in this game it’s just cringe.
The game markets itself as accessible, but the real-time action gameplay is actually quite difficult. Each room is filled with enemies, and they constantly respawn. This means you have to complete puzzles while fighting, which isn’t ideal. You have zero range and miss a lot of hits, and the enemies have incredible range and will kill you in three or four hits. I died half a dozen times while trying to finish a simple block-pushing puzzle in the second room of the second dungeon. To make matters worse, the puzzles reset when you leave a room, as do any unlocked doorways. This is extremely tedious and annoying in the simple early dungeons, and I don’t want to think about what it’s going to be like in longer and more complicated dungeons.
I would be willing to forgive all this and git gud, but there’s a lot of strobe lighting and strobe effects that, again, I can’t handle. The game knows this and warns for it, but it doesn’t let you turn it off. Why are people so into strobe lights, wtf.
The opening animation is gorgeous, but you can watch that on YouTube for free.
Metroid Dread
The story is very silly, and I wish you could turn off the voice acting. I also wish you could skip the opening movies entirely. I feel the same way about Metroid lore and continuity that I feel about Kirby lore and continuity, which is: I am just here for the violence.
The game assumes that you’ve been playing the Metroid series for the past two decades, and the controls are complicated. Precise aiming is necessary from the very beginning, but I couldn’t get the hang of it. Like Skyward Sword, you have to hold the controller in an extremely uncomfortable way all the time. There’s also a special targeting mode where the game switches from 2D platforming to 3D over-the-shoulder shooting, and you basically have two seconds to calibrate the motion controls before you die. These motion controls are mandatory, and I couldn’t figure out how to get them to work properly. Despite giving it my best shot every day for a week, I couldn’t make it past the first serious enemy encounter. In other words, I never made it past the tutorial section.
I want to say that Metroid Dread is more for people who enjoy FPS games than for people who enjoy Metroidvania games. I feel like the game would have the potential to be interesting if the shooting were as simple and intuitive as it is in Breath of the Wild, but I also get the feeling that having the basic controls be easy actually makes games like this less fun for the core audience.
I am not the core audience of sci-fi shooting games, and this game is not for me. I resent all the professional game reviewers who promised that Metroid Dread is accessible to people who don’t play Metroid games, and I resent the $50 that I gave to Nintendo in innocent blind faith.
TLDR: I don’t like games with bad controls. I appreciate difficult games, but not games that are difficult for unnecessary reasons. Also can we stop with the strobe effects already.
no subject
Date: 2022-01-14 02:23 pm (UTC)Also have an option to turn off screen shake effects. I'd like to not vomit while trying to play the game.
Ugh, that's so unfortunate about Eastward. I've had that on my to-play list and yeah... not here for that bullshit either - the misogyny or the shitty controls. And despite seeing so many good things about it, I've been putting off Metroid Dread because I don't think my brain can handle gameplay like that any time soon but ugh. Breaks my heart to hear about that. Motion controls belong in the garbage.
Despite all of this, I DO hope you get to play something awesome that you can't put down! 💕
no subject
Date: 2022-01-14 03:46 pm (UTC)Somewhere deep in my closet there is a box with an unopened copy of Stardew Valley. This is my doomsday weapon, and I'm saving it for a true emergency.
Anyway, I think every game should allow you to:
- turn off screen shake effects
- turn off strobe effects
- turn off voice acting
- turn off motion controls
It's not even necessarily about accessibility, it's about politeness. Like, why do 95% of games give you an option, while other games are like, "You will play this game how we designed it, and you will like it." How rude.