Review

21
Feb
2021
What the Golf? Review – But No One Asks, “How the Golf?”

What the Golf? Review – But No One Asks, “How the Golf?”

Reginald Sockembocker crashed into the pro golf scene like a flaming semi-truck into a bouncy castle, bewildering all the pro golfers jumping unsuspectingly inside. In his high school and college days, he could sink balls into holes better than any other man alive. The golfing world eagerly awaited his professional career, and Reginald—or “Ball Bocker” as he came to be, “B-Squared” for short—stole the scene in addition to every tournament. You see, B-Squared—otherwise known as “BS”—loved his over-the-top antics as much as he loved pegging holes on the first try.

His first spectacle involved him winning a tournament with his non-dominant hand and only a putter. The following year, he ensured every single drive he took ricocheted against a bird in the air before hitting the green. The resulting PETA debacle made his name known in every household. After this incident, BS voluntarily replaced his right leg with a driver and proceeded to win every tournament that year with said leg, all the while speaking and dressing like a pirate.

Although the audience initially loved his show, each progressive year’s silliness soured their fun. By the time BS was using only verbal abuse to force the balls across the green, the viewers had had enough. Golf had lost its meaning, and BS’ wackiness became the norm, making any originality seem banal.

One day, after selling his soul to employ Satan as his golf caddy, BS scored his final hole-in-one for the year. When he turned to his adoring fans, he found none of them. No other golfers had entered the tournament. Even all the birds were dead.  Reginald Sockembocker discovered he was completely alone. As Satan entered into a vortex of fire and pained screams, he looked back at the golfer and shook his head in pity.

Left with only his thoughts, Reginald pondered, “What the golf?”

What the golf?

Solomon giggled to himself as he progressed through What the Golf?. As a parody of golf, the game was fun enough, but what made it unique was how it subverted his expectations. The first stage in the campaign seemed to task Solomon with hitting a ball into a hole shaped like a giant “1.” However, there was no ball, only a cup with its flag. When he took his first shot, the cup uprooted itself from the ground and toward the 1. Once completed, the game congratulated Solomon with “Hole in One.”

Player 2 grew sick of how often Solomon nudged her to look at his game. He wanted others to see how creative the game was, and its zaniness was exactly what he needed to pull him through his current depressive episode. As he progressed through zones based on soccer, music, Super Hot, Portal, Mario, and other sports, Solomon felt he had finally found a game to match Katamari Damacy’s brilliance. Both shared a love for the wacky, emphasizing fun over difficulty. There was even a multiplayer option to include Player 2.

But then Solomon continued to play, and What the Golf? became stuck in a sand trap. Solomon became aware he was just playing golf with extra steps, and the jokes struggled to keep the momentum. Later stages devolved so far from golf that it was no longer a parody but an aimless attempt for more content.

At any point, Solomon could have simply set the game aside, yet he didn’t.  He felt compelled to continue.  He yearned for the dopamine rush it had given him earlier. He’d get small doses here and there, but rather than make him happy, he just became more aware of his withdrawal symptoms. Once a source of happiness, What the Golf? became a target for his anger as he cussed it out. It was supposed to be an antidepressant, but it ended up as a reminder that he was still mired in his low.

What’s good?

Player 2:  I still don’t understand why you wrote it like this.

Solomon Rambling:  I’m trying to reflect…uh…embody What the Golf?’s problem. It starts out crazy and awesome, but it later becomes boring and bad.

P2:  I get that, but that final paragraph just sounds bad. Like you got a fifth-grade kid to write it.

SR:  That’s the point.

P2:  Well, I don’t think it’s good.

SR:  I know. That’s the point!

P2:  No, that’s not what I mean. You start off with that ridiculous story. Then you have that really vulnerable section where you describe Solomon, and then you just go to “What’s bad” like a normal review.

SR:  I did a “What’s good” section like I do in my reviews. With the bullet points.

P2:  You did?

SR:  Yeah, I did. It’s right here. Look. Come look. I say it’s funny, is good for score chasers, and has a good multiplayer mode.

P2:  See, I didn’t hear the difference when you read it to me. It’s fine that you did that, but I don’t think people are going to get it. I still don’t like that ending.

SR:  I’m keeping the ending. I like it.

P2:  That’s fine. I’m just saying my opinion like you asked.

SR:  I know. I know. I think the problem is the “What’s good” section. It’s not different enough to be noticeable. I’ll change that. I’ll also switch the “we” to “I” in the next section.

P2:  You don’t have to. I just didn’t like that either.

SR:  I’ll change it.

What’s bad?

I would love nothing more than to heap praises on What the Golf?, but as I had mentioned previously, the game struggles to justify enough content for a full round of golf. The worlds centered on cars, bowling, and Super Hot tend to drag on, featuring more stages than unique ideas. However, the real problem lies with the challenges. Each stage features two additional challenges, with the first often related to hitting par while the second offers a joke or a steeper challenge. These theoretically should further show off the game’s creativity. Instead, they demonstrate why you don’t build off of one-liners.

The par challenges can be especially frustrating due to their uneven difficulty. Some stages will set the par so high that you needn’t even bother with it. Almost all of the timed stages (a variation on par) are similarly generous. Other challenges require near perfect execution from you, and their difficulty translates to multiple retries as you attempt to get it just right. In this limbo, I became distinctly aware that What the Golf?’s level layouts are not nearly as refined as its comedy.

For the majority of players, you can stop once you’re bored, and the game will be good for you. I’m a completionist, however, and I continued coming upon issues. For instance, if you choose not to play the first-person levels in handheld, the game will repeatedly ask you to switch and will not save your decision to remain in docked. Backtracking in the campaign to replay old stages is also a chore, so if you’re looking to 100% the game, you may want to complete all the challenges as you beat each stage. Again, these aren’t big issues, but they still pissed me off.

What’s the verdict?

In conclusion, What the Golf? is a great game, but it has its problems. I liked that it was funny, creative, and fun to play with a friend. I did not like that it was short and not as good at the end. I recommend it to people who enjoy party games or good humor. I give it an 8/10.

Arbitrary Statistics:

  • Score:  8
  • Time Played:  Over five hours
  • Number of Players:  1-2
  • Games Like It on Switch:  Katamari Damacy REROLL, Heave Ho

Scoring Policy

Posted by Solomon Rambling in Review, 0 comments
15
Feb
2021
“World for Two” Review – Too Little Stretched Too Far

“World for Two” Review – Too Little Stretched Too Far

As an amateur creator, sometimes your best doesn’t make the cut. For instance, with each video I have edited, my work improves and sets new standards of quality for myself. However, compare these videos to established YouTubers or anyone with a following, and my lack of skills becomes all the more evident. This is not to say my work sucks. Maybe it does. I kind of dug a hole for myself here. My point is we don’t compare a kindergartner’s finger painting to an art major’s final gallery. It’s unfair to the art major.

World for Two feels like its developer, Shinichi Nishimori, poured everything he had into its production. It’s beautiful and imaginative, and other games should aspire to match its level of polish. Despite the love devoted to this game, it struggles to be actually enjoyable, whether that is a flaw in Nishimori’s vision or the result of him making this game largely by himself. With a few more opinions and developers to hash out World for Two’s gameplay and design, it may have been a greater product, but as it stands now, it looks amateurish compared to other games of its ilk.

What is it?

World for Two basically plays like Doodle God. Those unfamiliar with Doodle God might know its original inspiration, Alchemy. If you haven’t played Alchemy, I imagine it’s a lot like World for Two.

In World for Two, you are an android created by the last human alive. All other creatures have gone extinct, and it’s up to you to populate the world with new species. You begin by harvesting crystals which allow you to produce archetypal genes, and you start with combining two “primordial genes” to make a simple amoeba. By splicing genes with samples of DNA, you’ll spawn new creatures which will begin to inhabit one of four environments. You’ll produce small critters at first and eventually work your way up to larger beasts.

You’ll have to do some legwork to continue your experiments. Once you create a new creature, you must visit it in its environment to retrieve its DNA. If you’re extracting a specific animal’s DNA for the first time, you must complete a simple matching game in which you combine two strands of DNA. Red nucleotides go with blue ones, and yellows pair with greens. After this, you can collect three samples of DNA before the creatures dies and evaporates before you. Normally, a blood sample could provide a sufficient DNA sample in the real world, but World for Two likes to tears chunks off, just to make sure they got everything.

You have access to only one environment (the Bog) at the beginning, with the rest becoming available as you produce more unique species. Different crystals can then be harvested from each biome, opening up more genes for you to manufacture and combine with DNA. In the course of this gameplay loop, you’ll glean information about the world and story by interacting with the scenery, killing animals, or talking to the scientist. It’s like the circle of life from the Lion King but bleak and pixelated.

What’s good?

  1. Nishimori has crafted stunning pixel art. The backgrounds are specifically gorgeous, with the Bog treating you to spiraling vines riddled with thorns. Each animal features a unique color scheme, and later, you’ll encounter new takes on various mythical creatures. It would’ve been nice if the backgrounds and designs contributed to a larger lore, but alas, they’re just eye candy.
  2. Although some of the DNA combinations ignore all logic, World for Two helps steer you toward successful matches without giving away any solutions. Most importantly, it keeps track of your incorrect guesses. You can also peek at a book which features an evolutionary tree of sorts which shows which animal DNA can still be manipulated to produce a new creature.

What’s bad?

  1. Most of the gameplay feels like unnecessary busywork. You click a button by a tower to collect crystals. You harvest DNA with that same button. The DNA minigame is nothing more than a multiple-choice question. The meat of the game is figuring out how a mouse becomes a beluga whale, but you’ll spend most your playtime running and tapping A to gather materials in order to enjoy the fun part.
  2. The fact that harvesting DNA kills your creatures not only results in more busywork but undermines your goal to repopulate the world. As I mentioned before, each animal yields three copies of DNA and then disappears. If you want to keep the animal around, you can only harvest two DNA samples. If you waste those samples in incorrect pairings, you need to recreate the old animal (plus any creatures needed to make it), go harvest its DNA, and then return to the lab to try again. Due to how monotonous this process is, keeping animals alive is a needless luxury, and your environments may remain as barren as they were at the start. If animals could regain their DNA over time, this issue would be largely mitigated
  3. Even with all of the needless padding, you’ll quickly reach the end of World for Two. I chose to keep one of each animal alive, so my playtime of four hours may be a little longer than other playthroughs. Of that time, I maybe spent 90 minutes actually puzzling out which combinations to make.  
  4. If the story was a creature, its DNA would be a combination of science fiction clichés and half-hearted philosophies. Our android makes fleeting observations during its journey, questioning the meaning of life. It doesn’t come to any major epiphanies, and while it can question where we go after we die, it quips that religion is beyond its understanding. The ending adds the prerequisite drama needed to slightly tug at the heartstrings, but it’s easier to predict the ending than determining how a lion is the evolutionary ancestor of the polar bear.    

What’s the verdict?

Shinichi Nishimori didn’t commit any grave sin when making World for Two. It’s competent and largely harmless, and I imagine it’s a better fit on the smartphone where it had originated. It’s also monotonous and lacking any substance. When other solo developers have made the likes of Return of the Obra Dinn, Undertale, Stardew Valley, and Axiom Verge, I can’t excuse World for Two’s failings.

That doesn’t mean Nishimori couldn’t build on his concept. In fact, World for Two is the type of game that would be perfect to dissect for my “I Can Do It Better” video series. Doing that, however, would involve me creating a video on my own, and that’s just a tad too meta right now.

Arbitrary Statistics:

  • Score:  5
  • Time Played:  Over four hours
  • Number of Players:  1
  • Games Like It on Switch:  Doodle God, Scribblenauts Mega Pack

Scoring Policy

Posted by Solomon Rambling in Review, 0 comments
10
Jun
2020
The Town of Light Deluxe Edition

The Town of Light Deluxe Edition

Now Featuring Half the Content – For Both the Game and the Review

[98 words inaccessible with this version of the review]

The Town of Light on the Switch is exactly like that sensation. The game is total excrement, a porting disaster so horrendous you’d think the developers hadn’t played it.  It’s entirely possible they didn’t because if they had, they would’ve caught the bug which stops progress completely halfway through the game. And yet, the Nintendo community stopped giving shits (or never gave any) and moved on. Otherwise, someone would have noticed the bug, but here we are with a broken game, four months since the game came out and two months since I notified the publisher of the issue.

I don’t know if the Town of Light redeems itself in the second half. I can only review the first half.  Keeping with the spirit of this theme, I provide you a half of a review.

What is it?

The game follows the fictional Renée in modern-day times as she returns to the very real asylum, the Ospedale Psichiatrico di Volterra, in Italy.  Closed in 1978, the psychiatric hospital has succumbed to decay.  Broken furniture, papers, and weeds are the sole residents, and graffiti artists have left their marks along the walls.  As she wanders the abandoned facility, Renée recalls her memories of when she was committed in the 1940s, piecing together the trauma she experienced to understand the horrors perpetrated by the ward’s staff. 

Renée comes prepared, however, to deal with the demons of her past.  In addition to walking, she can interact with objects, turn on her flashlight, collect journal pages, turn off her flashlight, and monologue.  Wherever you wander, she prattles on about her behavior, sometimes offering direct clues to where you must go.  Occasionally, you—presented as some voice in her head—can respond to her incessant narrating to help or hinder her mental health.  Whichever you do impacts the gameplay as much as my attempts to complete the game.

[115 words inaccessible with this version of the review]

The dreaded puzzle…

What’s good?

  1. [54 words inaccessible with this version of the review]

What’s bad?

  1. The Town of Light is broken.  As I have learned from the publisher, “the button is off set [sic] on the boiler” in the aforementioned unsolvable puzzle, and there is no way to push this button otherwise.  With no way to progress (to my knowledge), be it through a cheat or chapter select, the Switch port is an incomplete game.  On principle, this type of game cannot score anything other than a 1 out of 10.
  2. [135 words inaccessible with this version of the review]
  3. Renée’s story often seems exploitative in how depressing and gruesome it is.  As the developers state, Renée is based on multiple stories of actual patients in the Ospedale Psichiatrico di Volterra.  As a result, she seems to have a bingo card of mental health symptoms and trauma.  These traumas are then graphically presented in still animated scenes.  On one hand, I like how the Town of Light does not shy away from the atrocities committed in the hospital, but the story seems almost indulgent in making Renée suffer.  Perhaps the full game justifies the bleak presentation, but other works like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Girl, Interrupted have provided better glimpses into the lives of patients in mental hospitals.  
  4. The Town of Light plays too linearly.  Most doors, corridors, and other sections of the grounds are inaccessible until your next task takes you to them, so exploration is discouraged.  Even if you do wander, Renée will remind you—almost exasperatedly—that you’re not going where you should.  Whereas Gone Home and What Remains of Edith Finch made linear progression seem natural through the design of the houses, the Town of Light must stick with the floor plan of the Ospedale Psichiatrico di Volterra, which could act like a labyrinth.  Rather than allow players to get lost and find their way to the story, the game presents an overly strict tour guide who chides you for being curious.
  5. [80 words inaccessible with this version of the review]
This journal is supposed to be visible, not a representation of the dark.

What’s the verdict?

Even on PC and consoles, the Town of Light is not a great game.  In the unlikely event in which the developers do patch the Switch version, it will still be a poor port.  Those with a perverse interest in this game after this review can get it on PC.  At least with that version, you can see how the developers cared deeply about telling this story and talking about mental health.  [76 words inaccessible with this version of the review]

Arbitrary Statistics:

Scoring Policy

Read the full review here.

Posted by Solomon Rambling in Review, 0 comments
16
Jul
2019
Spacecats with Lasers

Spacecats with Lasers

From Executive Producer Michael Bay

When I was 16, I finished writing my one and only novel.  At over 300 pages of single-spaced, 12-point-sized text, it was a behemoth achievement for me, two years in the making.  It also sucked.  My mother—bless her—couldn’t get past the first fifty pages.  I will forever treasure my deformed, malnourished book baby, but I will never self-publish it, let alone charge money for it.  Even if I reach Stephen King levels of popularity, my first book will never see the light of public eye, much like the erotic retelling of Care Bears I penned for Netflix.

Spacecats with Lasers feels like a programmer’s first video game.  He tried his darned hardest, but his skill could not match his ambitions.  The final product ended up being amateurish.  Sure, the game may mark the first step in a remarkable career for the programmer, but unfortunately, this first step landed in the litter box.  Maybe we could accept it if it were free, but it’s not.  I know this is not Bitten Toast’s first game, but unlike the commendable Rocket Fist, Spacecats with Lasers would have done better to remain in the developer’s unpublished portfolio than with the rest of the eShop’s shovelware.    

What is it?

After years of feline oppression, the pug king has rallied all of the mutated mice scattered across the universe and has launched a war against the cat species.  You control Meowsky Tongue-Catcher, the Puss Empire’s ace pilot, who must destroy wave after wave of mice forces to ultimately assassinate the pug king and quash the last of the resistance.  All seems to be going smoothly for Meowsky until he realizes he has single-handedly caused mass genocide.  In an act of retribution, he allows the mice forces to decimate his ship with him inside.  Spacecats doesn’t actually contain any of this plot, but it makes for a great rough draft for my second novel.

As I dramatized, Spacecats is a multidirectional shooter, tasking you with killing ever-growing waves of mice, with the pug king making an appearance every ten levels.  You shoot with ZR, reload with R, and dodge with ZL.  Between levels, you choose a permanent upgrade (increased fire rate, more health, larger lasers), and enemies can drop temporary powerups.  Lose too much health or hit an enemy directly and you die.  Lose all three lives, and it’s game over. 

You can choose from one of three difficulty levels at the beginning, and different hats and ships can be purchased with trinkets you earn from playing.  If you’re feeling frisky, you can even look at your high scores.  If you’re feeling super frisky, you can close out of the game altogether.        

What’s bad?

  1. Much like the life of a moon, Spacecats’ gameplay is slow, dull, and based predominantly on moving in big circles.  Your enemies largely gravitate toward the middle of the level, so circle-strafing will help you dodge almost all bullets and bogeys.  This may make waves easy, but it sure doesn’t make them go quickly.  Your ship moves through space like it’s lard, and enemies soak up several hits before blowing up.  Add a small ammo clip and a long reload time and Spacecats is only one half of the bullet hell it wants to be.
  2. Upgrades barely impact gameplay.  They typically improve your ship’s capabilities by five or ten percent, but these raises account for little more than cost-of-living as each wave brings more enemies.  In another game, these upgrades would make for cool offensive or defensive builds, but for Spacecats, the upgrade screen only offers a change of scenery. 
  3. Spacecats’ bugs can kill you, as if even they know you shouldn’t be playing.  One glitch causes you to be stuck reloading, and another prevents you from respawning after you die, forcing you to quit out. 
A bug captured in its natural environment.

What’s also bad?

  1. If the bugs don’t kill you, poor design choices will finish the job.  The camera sits at a tilt rather than directly above you.  This allows you to see more space above you but leaves little room below you, allowing enemies to creep up on you before your floaty controls can guide you to safety.  Your dodge is unintuitive because you dodge toward where you’re aiming, not where you’re moving.  This may seem innocuous until you realize you’re typically shooting at enemies when you need to dodge suddenly.  Two enemy types further mess up gameplay.  Shield mice provide impenetrable barriers to their neighbors until they’re destroyed, and these neighbors tend to cluster and create a forcefield around your target.  Killing them will try your patience more than your skill.  Yellow laser mice somehow prove more annoying.  Sometimes their lasers barely follow you; other times they cling to you like sweaty skin on leather, destroying a third of your health.
  2. If the presentation were a space ship, it would be a cardboard cut-out of a PT Cruiser with “UFO” painted on it.  The character models seem like free downloadable assets designed for the Wii, and the backgrounds of each stage are no more than static images of faraway galaxies.  The cliché electronica soundtrack attempts to create a heart-thumping beat but comes off as a toddler pounding at a keyboard.  Hitting mute is recommended, followed by power.
  3. Spacecats is a sickly kitten with no meat on its bones.  New enemies stop at the tenth wave, and the hard difficulty only emphasizes the game’s faults.  With no online leaderboards, there is absolutely no point to continue playing past an hour unless Spacecats is your final trial before achieving Zen. 

What’s the verdict?

Spacecats with Lasers earns the dubious award of being the worst game on my Switch, a feat which I hope stays with it.  With games of this caliber, I would love to read a review written by the developer.  Would they criticize their game as viciously as I do?  Could they honestly recommend their game to anyone?  We all have rough patches in our careers, but ideally, others don’t have to experience them.

Arbitrary Statistics:

  • Score:  2.5
  • Time Played:  Over 3 hours
  • Number of Players:  1
  • Games Like It on Switch:  Assault Android Cactus+, I Hate Running Backwards

Scoring Policy

Posted by Solomon Rambling in Review, 0 comments
06
Jun
2018
Solomon Rambles About the Only Elder Scrolls Game Seemingly in Existence

Solomon Rambles About the Only Elder Scrolls Game Seemingly in Existence

The Elder Scrolls V:  Skyrim

FUS-TRA-TING

From its initial release in 2011 to its Switch port in 2017, the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has outlived the Wii U’s production run. You can take that as a compliment to Skyrim’s enduring appeal or a sad reminder that Nintendo’s last generation console was an infertile wasteland of sadness and solitude. Skyrim has received a fair amount of flak for its endless ports, and with each edition, reviewers have collectively shrugged their shoulders and stated, “It’s still good.” Being a Nintendo-only gamer/fungus, I was one of 25-or-so hermits that was looking forward to playing Skyrim for the first time, so I was eager for the port. At long last, people would shut up about how I was missing out on one of the greatest games of all time.

Six years of hype creates a damningly high expectation to surpass, but it is not uncommon for a game to prove itself to be a timeless gem. In a sense, Skyrim is one of those gems, but whereas Ocarina of Time is a diamond, the fifth rendition of the Elder Scrolls is a just a humble pearl. I imagine a dose of nostalgia would have sedated many of my frustrations with the game, but without that, each glitch, repetitive side quest, and instakill jangled my nerves. What once was a Game of the Year now feels like a mere stepping stone for a later, better Elder Scrolls sequel.

Solomon’s best attempt to capture a scenic picture.

What is it?

Skyrim is Dungeons and Dragons watered down to an action RPG for the cool kids. From the outset, your character is set to be executed despite no one knowing what you did because, hell, they had to find some way to start the story, didn’t they? A dragon soon crashes the death party, allowing you to escape and explore the vast region of Skyrim. As luck would have it, you happen to be Dragonborn, an individual who can use the magical shouts of the dragons and suck out their souls. With this power, you can not only end Skyrim’s current civil war but rebel against the dragon menace that threatens civilization’s existence. You can also screw that nonsense and busy yourself with fetch quests, building a house, and other matters far more important than war and mass extinction.

As you can tell so far, Skyrim allows you to sculpt your play experience as you see fit. You select your character from a number of different races (each with different abilities), design their physical appearance, and then name them. From there, you choose how you fight, be it with magic, melee weapons, bows, sneaky-sneaky daggers, or a combination of the above. Each of your hands can hold a weapon/spell, so there is a lot of mixing and matching if you so choose. Forget any hopes of addressing conflict nonviolently because bloodshed is the universal language in Tamriel.

The most holy of all the weapons: the floating iron sword.

Almost every action you take builds experience. Sling a few fireballs, and your destruction level will improve. Pick a few locks, and bam, level up for lock-picking. Sell a few iron swords? Sure, that’s reason enough to up your speech level. Skyrim follows the logic that if you do the same thing enough times, you’ll improve. Prepare enough ramen noodles, and one day, you, too, can make peppercorn-crusted filet mignon. As you grind your individual abilities’ levels, they contribute to an overall experience meter, and once filled, you can upgrade your magic, health, or stamina in addition to allocating a skill point to further buff your skills.

Although the civil war and dragon storylines are the main focus of Skyrim, you have several other opportunities to dive into the Elder Scrolls lore. Each major town has at least one substantial quest, be it to climb the ranks of the Thieves Guild, eradicate the vampire threat or join them, or confront one of the many Daedric (demon-like) princes. Countless smaller quests can be attained from speaking to townsfolk or other NPCs. The large majority of all quests will task you to delve into a dungeon, cave, or fortress infested with hostile EXP livestock. Should you accomplish your missions, all the NPCs of the land will recall your deeds forever and always, mainly because they have few dialogue options.

Even Agnes – who is forever stuck in the wall – will herald you.

What’s good?

  1. Skyrim is immersive because of how much control you have over the game world. You can align with certain factions and rout others, betraying those who you dislike. You can read through the multitude of books littered throughout the land, learning everything you could have discovered from the Wiki. If you wish to be self-sufficient, you can craft all of your materials through alchemy, smithing, and enchanting. Hell, you can even marry and adopt kids. With this virtual autonomy, the real world is simply a vestigial appendage of your mortal coil.
  2. The amount of content can easily suck out a hundred hours from your life. The number of quests in the original game is staggering enough to topple a large class of fifth graders, and this is further bolstered by the included Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and Dragonborn expansions.  Multiple playthroughs are encouraged to try out other character races and follow different questlines (such as choosing to become a werewolf).  There is a lot to do, even if a quarter of your playtime is spent on loading screens and small talk with the locals.
  3. Certain quests ooze with creativity. The civil war quests see you fighting alongside an army while conquering enemy fortresses or cities.  You can join the Dark Brotherhood (a league of assassins) or opt to eradicate them. You can enjoy a night of drunken debauchery and suffer the next day with a hangover and the unsettling fact that you proposed to a hagraven.  The Daedric prince quests, in general, offer adventures that can be unsettling, epic, and/or hallucinogenic.

Nazir was so amazed by Solomon’s archery that he refused to move as Solomon shot arrow after arrow into his face.

What’s bad?

  1. Bethesda produced a lazy port. Upon its initial release, Skyrim was riddled with more bugs than a Riften vagrant, but this was supposedly forgiven due to the massive scope of the game.  However, six years later, Bethesda has done nothing to reduce the pests.  Entire questlines cannot be completed; enemies flip and fly through the air; crashes occur; and controls can be unresponsive.  Apart from the bugs, the only new additions to this Switch edition are botched motion controls and free items from amiibo.
  2. Combat often feels more like a battle of attrition than technique. Most fights boil down to who whacks who harder.  Dodging and blocking are too inconsistent to be reliable, so you will often spam the attack button until you run low on magic, health, or stamina.  At this point, you flee the battle or to your menu to guzzle eight potions or devour eighteen sacks of flour.  Hit detection is variable but particularly horrendous against dragons or when using a bow.  Some scuffles can be fun, but the combat system does not feature the depth needed to keep it entertaining over hundreds of hours of content.
  3. Much like the life of an NPC, Skyrim becomes numbingly repetitive, contrary to my opinion in my padding blogitorial. It’s great that the game has fifty billion caves, dungeons, ruins, and fortresses, but when they all follow the same basic archetypes, it’s hard to distinguish between Location 23 and Locations 46, 72, 138, or 95b.  It certainly doesn’t help that you’re constantly fighting the same spiders, bandits, and goddamn Draugrs. Even dragons eventually devolve into annoying houseflies, albeit big, burny ones.  I get that some things will repeat in a massive game, but Skyrim often feels like the product of one designer/programmer falling asleep on the Ctrl+V buttons.

The best bug was when Solomon’s magic meter never diminished. Ungodly power, I tell you.

What’s the verdict?

Skyrim slammed the gaming world like a comet in 2011, blowing away all other releases and distinguishing itself as a game to be remembered.  In the years since, Bethesda has tried its damn hardest to make sure we won’t forget it either.  In reviewing this game, I haven’t a clue if I’m biased due to my unrealistic expectations or if everyone else is due to their nostalgia-addled brains.  New players will likely get a kick out of the freedom offered by the Elder Scrolls, but veterans need not slog through the same game they have been force-fed for years.  For any of my readers on the fence, you can wait and make your decision when I repost this review in two years for the Elder Scrolls V:  Skyrim – Anniversary Edition – Pocket Edition.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Scoring Policy

Posted by Solomon Rambling in Review, 0 comments