I love Darksiders. I have since the moment I first saw the trailer for the first game. It’s a series that has constantly disappointed me in the grand scheme of things, but I have loved every game, even though none of the games have moved beyond the ending of the first. It’s been ten fucking years and I’m STILL waiting on a continuation of the first game!
Unfortunately, Darksiders Genesis is not that continuation, it’s a spinoff prequel. But it’s still pretty good…mostly.
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I really want to like every video game I play. Why else would I buy them? I play to have fun, not suffer or critique – I’m not a journalist. It’s never particularly pleasant when I play something utterly unenjoyable…and this often happens with games I really want to enjoy, too. Games that seem just made for me end up being…awful, frankly. I don’t have very high expectations of games; I’m easy to please – I can overlook one bad element as long as the rest of the product is good…most of the time. But sometimes a game just makes me throw my hands up in disgust and wonder what I did to deserve this.
Yeah, this was another one of THOSE games.
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This is the first Megaman title I’ve played in nearly 18 years, the second one I’ve played overall, and the first I’ve actually finished. After an absolutely disastrous experience with Megaman Zero on the Gameboy Advance (which I am very much looking forward to trying again when I get the ZX collection on Switch, masochist that I am) I swore off this franchise for years. There is hard, and then there is unfair, and Megaman seemed to blur the line to the point that every death was a personal slight.
Well, I’m thirty now. I can handle a bit of frustration. Hahaha.
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I have never once wondered “What if NieR was set in purgatory and the cast was a bunch of magical girls?” but if I HAD, I expect the result would be Crystar. Now, on paper that might sound like a good thing – I absolutely love the original NieR – but when you consider how depressing NieR is, you’ll realise what you’ll actually get in such a scenario is a video game adaptation of Puella Magi Madoka Magica…which, again, may sound good to some, but I absolutely despise Madoka.
Crystar isn’t as bad as Madoka, but it comes perilously close to pushing the limits of tolerance sometimes.
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One thing I have never liked about the video game industry is its glorification of “classic” titles, which may or may not even hold up particularly well by today’s standards. It’s like a QoL blindfold is put over people’s eyes when it comes to improvements made on the original formula. The original is the best, no ifs, ands, or buts. The games that were amazing back then are still amazing, even if their gameplay has been improved upon thanks to new innovations and existing hardware. He who does it first, does it best. It’s an attitude I really cannot get behind, and one that irritates me every time it comes up in conversation…and it inevitably does, because people just LOVE their nostalgia.
Don’t get me wrong here, I do too…well, to some extent. It is important to understand video game history, and where these ideas and trends originate. But what is NOT acceptable, or realistic, is putting the origin of these ideas up on a pedestal as the best example of the medium.
Fans of Secret of Mana, look away now.
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There are games where I finish them and I ask myself: What the fuck did I just play?
There are games where I finish them and I ask myself: Why the fuck did I just play?
…and then there are games like Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore, where I’m not sure which question is more appropriate or if I should be adding more expletives in there somewhere.
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Controversial opinion time: The Enemy Within is the best Telltale game ever made. Better than The Walking Dead (although not by much when it comes to the second season in particular) and significantly better than the rest of them.
Controversial opinion time #2: John Doe is the best Joker not voiced by Mark Hamill.
Yeah, I fucking love this game.
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I am probably not as knowledgeable about Batman as I ought to be. Growing up with the 90s animated series should have made me a fan of the comics as well really, but I was very much a Marvel comics fan, and with subsequent Batman media being very hit-and-miss (Gotham, The Batman, select episodes of Brave and the Bold, and the one-off DC animated movies were amazing, the rest – and yes, I include Nolan’s trilogy in this – were trash) I’ve never really been as huge of a fan as I might have otherwise been if Marvel didn’t have better comics during the 90s and cartoons that were at least on-par.
…come on, everyone knows the 90s X-Men theme. You know I’ve got a point.
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It’s not very often I triple dip with games, although with the Dusk trilogy, much like the Arland trilogy (which I STILL haven’t played on Switch…fuck, I’ve never even played Rorona Plus!) I made an exception, because I love these games.
When JRPGs that require you to save the world are a dime a dozen, and laid-back simulator games are so DAMN BORING (I’m sorry, but they are) it’s nice to have a series that takes the best parts of both and blends them together to create something that, whilst not always relaxing (goddamn time limits and event triggers…) is a lot more laid back than your typical JRPG these days. The domesticity of the Atelier franchise has always appealed to me, and despite the appalling (digital-only in the West!) price, I wasn’t about to pass these up…not when I had £40 in gold points, anyway.
…it’s a shame Koei Tecmo now have control of Gust and are fucking it all up, but I’ll always have the games up to and (mostly) including the Dusk trilogy.
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What can I say about DAEMON X MACHINA? Not much, honestly. I wasn’t impressed when it was revealed, I wasn’t impressed by the demo, and it turns out these things run in threes – I wasn’t impressed by the game itself either.
If this were a Gundam series, it’d be closer to Reconguista in G than it would Zeta.
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Dawn's Video Game Corner 