Marathon is Bungie’s new game. I’m sure you’ve seen it because of the many conversations it’s generated over the course of its lifetime in the gaming space. It continues to do so, with the trickle of game news outlets starting to release their full, written reviews and scores for Marathon. As far as I’ve seen, it’s been doing really well for itself so far.

The timing is slightly serendipitous, as I’m also releasing a portion of my own thoughts on the game. It’s not a totally encompassing review per my own standards, which is why I’m still wrestling with a title at the time of writing. Is it my impression? Is it part one of two for an entire review? Something different altogether? Creatively, this has been a very interesting project for me to tackle because it lives in a different headspace than what I’m used to for my game reviews. I crave the challenge of new issues to resolve that spawn from variety within my creative work, so I’ve been enjoying myself.

The primary objective with my coverage of Marathon is to highlight why I got interested in the game, why I chose to play it, and what has occurred because I have played it. This first video focuses on the first two of those topics, with an eventual part 2 diving into the latter. I believe that I have a unique perspective by playing Marathon, one that may be helpful to share for the subset of gamers who are similar to me.

Those who understand my gaming tastes know that I do not like PVP-focused games. I’d go as far as to say I even hate some that I’ve tried getting into. I’m good at them from time to time, but my real issue is that I don’t enjoy practicing to become great at them. I’d much rather play a single-player or cooperative game in the majority of circumstances.

So, when Marathon came around, focused on highly competitive, player-focused skirmishes, I was not interested. The extraction angle multiplied my disinterest.

Losses in traditional PVP games I’ve played are just numbers on the screen, which make you feel somewhat bad about yourself. So what? Queue up the next match with different players, try again, and rinse and repeat until the numbers are good numbers. But in extraction, losing is devastating because you suffer a permanent loss of power due to losing your gear from the aftermath of any failed confrontation.

Despite my heavy disinterest towards the game within Marathon, I was highly interested in the art that comprised Marathon. Because doggone it, dudes, Bungie has some incredibly talented artists working for them and alongside them.

Marathon’s far future is designed unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. The bold colors on softly rounded buildings contrast beautifully with sharp, blocky text and UI elements. A lot of objects have a nice matte finish, which calls to mind 3D printing of some kind. Everything looks pristine in all the different lighting situations you may find it in across the maps on Tau Ceti IV. The tidbits of story the game has were mysterious and intriguing to boot, making exploring and learning the lore a tantalizing plus.

There are some gorgeous fonts in this game, used wonderfully. The glitching, pixel/symbol/ASCII dithering, terminal-based goodness is the pinnacle of dark/far future graphic design. Everything is wrapped together with beautiful sound design, which extends through its expressive, intentional, and catchy original god-tier soundtrack that deserves its own accolades. My jaw is on the floor. Marathon’s aesthetic is unmatched.

Which is why I decided to give the game a shot.

As much as I love my single-player games, my cozy couch co-op games, and games that have a de facto start and end... Everything that wasn’t Marathon’s gameplay piqued my interest into a desire to see for myself. Even if only a handful of hours in I determined the game was not for me, I determined that I would be more than happy to have, at the very least, supported such an artistically rich piece of media with my purchase, which I could hopefully continue to enjoy from the sidelines as it evolves, as live services do.

The act of deciding to play Marathon was no small task for me, even beyond my own mental hurdles. I had to reinstall Windows, as I had jumped to Linux, cold turkey, about a half year ago. But... it was worth it.

Playing the game for the first time, I was immediately rewarded with some genuinely gorgeous visuals in its opening cutscene and gameplay sequence. But afterward came the difficult part. Playing the competitive multiplayer-focused extraction shooter game.

I say it in the video, and I’ll say it here: I was not expecting to like it so much. As scary as the extraction part of the game is, I found it was empowering to think it was a different genre of game entirely. My friend reprogrammed my mind with a simple phrase: “Marathon is just a roguelite with PVP mechanics.” With more game time under my belt, I absolutely agree.

Sometimes you find good weapons to use or items to sell, and other times you don’t. Then, there’s always that chance you have to wager it all in a fight against other players. If you’re quiet, you can get in a surprise attack as a little advantage. But if you suck at shooting other players and are bad at player-focused combat - like me - you might just lose those kinds of engagements as well.

You might think, “Okay, Brando, are you some kind of masochist then? Is the ‘art’ really so good that you’re willing to endure devastating loss after devastating loss just to be able to exist in the Marathon universe for a moment and maybe read little codex entries for scraps of lore?”

It’s a bit subjective, obviously. But for me, I have really enjoyed playing the game. I definitely think the dive into a place beyond my comfort zone has been worth it. It has been fun, and here’s why:

There are three things that enable me to have fun, despite not being very good at the game. The first two go together. Marathon’s contracts give you gameplay objectives for experience points and often do not require you to exfiltrate the area alive to complete them. These help me move the goalpost of what victory means to me, at least temporarily.

Going along with this, there is free equipment you can bring into every game. So you’re not required to bring “your” gear into a match if you don’t want to. These both make losses almost meaningless if you let them alter your psyche enough.

The final huge component is being able to play Marathon with friends. There is something really special about how different the experience is when you can play with a full 3-man team of friends. You’ll have some really high highs and some very low lows with your mates. Communicating effectively, synergizing your abilities, sharing loot, and picking off other teams to loot their bones is incredibly rewarding and is perhaps the best cooperative experience I’ve had with an FPS game in recent years.

Our schedules don’t exactly always align, so we can’t play as often as I’d like, but rummaging through the remains of civilization on Tau Ceti IV with people I know has been a fantastic highlight of my time in Marathon. If you have friends to play with on a regular basis, for more than a few hours a week, I think it’s quite likely you’ll all be hooked on it for quite some time. If you can find friends with an open mind to try it, that is.

I say it like that because Marathon has been through a lot of terrible news cycles and has even garnered an anti-fan club. It’s unbelievable to me. About 10 years ago, when Fortnite started to rise in popularity, I was vocal with my dislike of the game and the culture that the youths surrounded it with. But I did not wish Epic Games would financially capsize and make Fortnite unavailable to play, frothing at the mouth as I looked at in-game player counts. I definitely did not curse Tim Sweeney’s name and hope the company would suffer major layoffs. I certainly did not feel compelled to discuss that opinion online either.

But I’ve actually seen those sentiments about Marathon on social media. What twisted culture created this? What happened to contributing positively to communities of things you liked and ignoring those you did not?

It feels like the result of the corporatization of entertainment reaching its apex. The masses have forgotten that games are art and that art is subjective. For these people, big-budget games are products that must be created within these unknowable restraints. Otherwise, the “game’s bad, the studio’s woke and dumb, so fire everyone”, right?

It’s unbelievable the vitriol you’ll come across online. Can you imagine if there were anti-fan clubs against other pieces of art, like the Mona Lisa? Or Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar? They probably exist, sure, but the absurdity is much easier to spot.

This is all to say: Do you have 40 bucks? Do you like FPS multiplayer shooters? Do your friends? Got an open mind? Think it looks cool? You will like this game. The guns handle so well. The world is pristine. The gameplay loop is addicting. It’s entirely worth the price of entry. The outrage online is stupid and should be completely ignored. To back that statement up, go on any site where you can read reviews from real players. They all have a very positive slant. Trust us (AKA, those who have played it). You won’t be disappointed.

This has been a super-ramble of an article, and for good reason. Much as I recommend Marathon, I need more time with it; I WANT more time with it. I’m pushing myself to get better and go further than ever before. I need to see the maps. Then, my next review can completely and fully focus on every aspect of the game and my experience with it.

One of my biggest pet peeves these days is seeing big outlets review games. “Oh, BigGameNewsSite gave this game a 7.” What does that even mean, man? Who reviewed the game? Were they subjective with it? Objective with it? What even is their gaming history? Did that inform the review decision? All these questions, so I just consider the whole thing with a massive chunk of salt.

That’s why following YouTubers and individuals reigns king. I’ve followed Dunkey for 10 years now. I know what he likes. It’s not entirely what I like, but I know enough about his preferences to know if I’d even enjoy something he’s really into. His history gives him value as a reviewer, to me, even when he’s giving a completely personal and subjective opinion on something.

That’s kind of how I look at this article. It’s good to know in advance why I’m playing Marathon and why I don’t think I’ll enjoy the game. My snippet of history informs my overall review, and readers (and viewers!) will be better off for it. Simple as that.

Thanks for reading.

Ultimately, Anthem is a dead game. But I’m glad I got to play it before it got completely shut down. Despite experiencing its many issues, I could see the vision of the game they wanted to make...

ANTHEM has been removed from digital storefronts, and its servers have been shutdown. It’s a dead game. But I played it when it was alive, and I’m going to review it now. This is my ANTHEM RevEulogy.

History

Its history gives us important context. The short version? Its development was tumultuous, exceptionally messy, and is perhaps one of the most mismanaged video game productions of all time by large corporation, producing a AAA product. It’s a game that was created in about 16 months (out of the 72 months EA gave them for it), and was only actively developed on after release for about a year, where only the largest, simple issues were resolved, before leaving active development, then being canned for good a few years after that. That should paint you a pretty good picture.

The long version? Well, there’s a few. Jason Shreier’s ‘How BioWare’s Anthem Went Wrong’, is a 12,000 word expose. Mark Darrah, the games director, gave his experience and opinions in a 4 hour long YouTube video. I’ll leave it to you to educate yourself on either or both of those, though I’d consider the Shreier article an exceptionally fascinating must read.

What is Anthem?

Overview

Anthem, is a lite MMO, third person shooter, with some RPG elements. You control a character, who pilots a Javelin: an “Iron Man” like exosuit capable of flight.

You’ll take this suit into the open world to complete missions and objectives, for the greater good of humanity. Doing these “contracts” make you what the people call a Freelancer, which are the heroes of this world. In between missions, you’ll walk around Fort Tarsis, the games main hub area, to talk with NPC’s, learn the lore of the world, increase your reputation with vendors or factions, get more contracts, purchase or craft equipment, obtain and tweak suit cosmetics, and further the games primary and secondary narratives.

The first time they set me loose in Bastion (that’s the name of the playable open world), I was amazed. This game, running on the Frostbite engine, looks great, even 7 years after release. And man, the first time I jumped into flight with my Javelin I was agog. It’s super slick, and great to control. There are also some elements of exploration and discovery to its open world structure, and you’re encouraged to scavenge materials for crafting gear back at Fort Tarsis.

All Javelin’s can equip primary and secondary weapons from the same pool. But depending on the type of Javelin you’re piloting will determine the kind of melee you’ve got and abilities you can use.

Combat scenarios are a blend of, go here, kill the things, go to the next place, kill the things. Sometimes you’re playing 52 card pickup while avoiding enemy gunfire, or you’re hunkered down capturing a point (and both of those activities kinda lock you out of flying around). But just about everywhere in Bastion, you’ll be finding things that want to kill you, and you’ll probably kill them first. Sometimes they’re humans, sometimes they’re creatures. Doesn’t matter. Everything’s got a chance to drop loot.

Loot drops vary between weapons, abilities, and passive effects. All of it has a very Destiny 2 feeling power scaling to it where your equipment has the “number” and until the you hit the level cap, you basically just want to equip the thing with the biggest “number” to get stronger. Because of the variety of the loot and its passive effects on your javelin and abilities, there is a surprisingly deep build crafting system.

Then, there’s Fort Tarsis. This is basically the tower from Destiny 2. If you’ve seen any of Anthem’s original reviews from anywhere else, you know this place is not an ideal hub area. It’s single player only, for starters, and then there’s a map marker for every NPC that wants to talk with you, not just quest givers, so there is a lot of pointless drivel if you can’t learn to ignore that... it’s the worst when you just want your contract to play the fun part of Anthem. I’d spend like 20 minutes just talking to people after booting the game up if I wasn’t careful.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love lore, and especially world building... when it’s good. And sometimes even when it’s mid. But there’s a limit to how much lore I can be force fed before getting tired of it, and it definitely exceeded that when I played. Don’t even get me started on the really watered down dialogue “choices” either... You choose dialogue A or B. They both give you XP, and have zero consequences beyond immediately hearing a line or two of slightly different dialogue.

Anthem’s Big Picture

You log in. Maybe you talk with some NPC’s to pick up new contracts. Check your loadout. Pick a mission. Then get thrown into the open world. While there, you’ll likely be paired up with other players in a lobby to do a variety of missions for the contract. These will see you flying from place to place, completing objectives in varied environments, some even set in cramped, “indoor” areas. You’ll definitely be killing things throughout this, be it monsters or humans, with your guns and abilities. Maybe they’ll drop loot. You’ll get back to Fort Tarsis, check your new loot, talk with NPC’s about the contracts you completed, who then might offer you new ones to pick up, which is where we’ve kind of come full circle.

The Good

Of course, flying and combat are the best aspects of this game loop. It’s got some of the best shooting of any game BioWare has ever made. I also enjoyed the abilities, and liked collecting and swapping them out as I obtained new ones to drop from missions. The discovery element to it was fun. Flying does honestly makes for a cozy time, giving a much needed breather between combat encounters, while also serving as (perhaps too good of) a repositioning tool while under fire, when things get a bit dicey.

The performance capture, at some points, really worked for me. The characters can be quite expressive. I think most players would consider Owen to be a really annoying character. But, I thought he had some great charisma. It sounds very ‘Jim from The Office’, but sometimes, he would make a weird face because of what some other character is talking about and I’d have an honest chuckle about it.

The music by Sarah Schachner is wonderful. I love myself a good strong motif, and the one here is fantastic. Schachner does an incredible job blending a choir with robotic voice modulation to not just make a unique identity for the overall OST, but beautifully encapsulates the feeling of the lore being rooted in fantasy-like mysticism, told through the lens of science fiction. The soundtrack, in particular, is one of the standout pieces of this entire game, worth a listen on its own merit.

The Mid

I’ve neglected to mention the story. It never completely clicked with me. On one hand, I love how committed they are to keeping this new world grounded in it’s strange lore. But on the other hand, it still feels like it lacks a layer of polish. To be more specific, I can’t take them seriously with some of their word choices.

When characters talk about “the heart of rage” they’re referencing a very specific storm event in the Anthem timeline. It was so bad it was like a mini-Armageddon. Now, bad, supernatural storms are a big part of the Anthem mythos, called Cataclysms, but this one was so bad the wind threw boulders. The wildlife got really angry. Bad guys took advantage of the chaos and overthrew a big, peaceful city. A lot of people died. It was devastating.

Your character survives this (in fact, it’s the tutorial), so you always hear people talk about how crazy the heart of rage was, and it sounds silly every time it’s mentioned. “Ah man. You were there, at the heart of rage?” It doesn’t sound right to me. My gut tells me the direct influence was BioWare looking for an antonym of “the eye of the storm”. They should have kept iterating.

One more example. “Shaper” is the name of a civilization that left behind advanced technology, when they “vanished” from the planet Anthem takes place on. Instead of their stuff having unique names, it’s always referenced as “Shaper + object”. So characters always talk about Shaper doors, Shaper energy, Shaper relics, Shaper ruins, Shaper puzzles, Shaper tunnels, and last but not least, Shaper keys.

BioWare understandably didn’t have a lot of time to refine this stuff, but by the same token, we can definitely see that in the writing. It’s missing that refinement that probably would have happened if the game had a normal development cycle.

Despite my nitpicks, the lore connects really well on paper, in fact, there’s a beautiful wiki for it if you’re ever curious, but in game... it does not flow, which is a shame because it’s a very strong, new Sci-Fi fantasy series. But backing the writing, is its presentation. There’s a very real limitation with what can be adequately (and interestingly) explained through the a first person perspective in the hub area, just talking with people. Which is where most exposition is given.

Anthem’s enemy variety is also pretty middling. Everything dies the same, and not much thought is needed for that. The depth of combat doesn’t go further than understanding target priority. The anti-air turret will absolutely wreck you. So take that down first. The flying enemies can find you behind cover, which will become an immediate threat. Elite enemies deal more damage to you. That sort of thing.

The mission variety is also, not great. I expressed it earlier, but want to reiterate that it really is variations of flying somewhere to kill things most of the time. After a solid 10 hours you can really start to feel the repetition start to weigh on you.

I genuinely think the real missed opportunity with Anthem is flight combat. You may be surprised to find that there is none. The few flying enemies that do exist, you fight while on the ground. There are no enemies that chase you around in flight mode. No Javelin dog fighting. I believe if they could have doubled down on a couple more gameplay mechanics and a few more mission types that focused on the flight systems, the game’s mission variety, at that point, would have reduced or even removed my fatigue with the general gameplay loop.

But there wasn’t, and I got hit with a lack of desire to play the game after about 20 hours. That’s all it took when I decided, that I’d had enough. So let’s talk about some of the really bad stuff.

The Bad

Here’s what happened to my motivation to play: The story came to a grinding halt. I needed “the MacGuffins” from some tombs in Bastion to keep it going. These are locked behind several different requirements each. Some of which, I genuinely did not understand how to complete due to a lack of in-game explanation, which I looked for, but could not find.

Those I understood, I attempted to complete. Until I forgot what they were. You might think to open the contracts menu to refresh your memory. They’re not listed there. Annoyed, I loaded back into the open world, went back to the tombs, and PHYSICALLY wrote the requirements I needed, down on a piece of paper. My gaming instincts could not believe this was what I had to do, so I looked it up online. Turns out, my instincts were right and the information is in game. But that info is buried deep within several sub menus… in the games codex! Where the lore is organized! Even still, after finding the entry, it did not further explain what to do to complete these things.

Perhaps more annoying is that some of the requirements are a forced grind, such as hitting a certain pilot level. Because the story has been stonewalled, that would have seen me repeating old missions, which is understandable in this genre. But I was level 11, and the level they wanted me to hit was 16. Seems like a small gap right? But, this would mean almost doubling my in-game hours to reach. Or so I assumed. The experience gained from each mission completion, counted for less and less as each level up hightened the necessary threshold. It was a daunting to fathom.

The wall at this point is entirely intentional. In “How BioWare’s Anthem Went Wrong”, we read about this very thing: “it became clear to everyone that the game wouldn’t ship with as much content as fans expected. They came up with some artificial solutions to extend the campaign, like Challenges of the Legionnaires, a tedious, mandatory part of the main story that involves completing grindy quests in order to access tombs across the game’s world.”

It would have been the perfect time to grind for loot, but I couldn’t be bothered with it. While fun to pick up and experiment as I played, weapons and equipment never felt “grind worthy”. Probably, because the game never explains what is grind worthy, or what the loot tables for activities are. I had no idea what a Legendary piece of equipment could even do, let alone what it looked like, or where I’d get it from. A total faiure of communication, more than anything else.

Even if I decided to grind for loot, Anthem relies heavily on its moment to moment gameplay to keep you engaged, long term. That gameplay is genuinely good at times. But it failed to be great enough to have that needed hook. If other parts of Anthem were good enough, they could harmonize, and elevate my overall experience to make up for the lacking hook here, giving me pseudo-enjoyment for grinding loot. But that was not the case.

Can the Game be Fixed?

The real question on everyone’s minds, is could Anthem have been fixed? Would Anthem have been salvageable if it stayed online in active development. Would Anthem NEXT, the planned update to overhaul the games systems, really have resolved this games lingering issues? If not, could future updates after that, have fixed it? If the game came back online today, would it be salvageable now?

I think it’s not so much an idea of CAN Anthem be fixed. But rather, how much time would be given TO fix it. Because, there is a very real alternate universe in which Anthem got enough development time to mature from, what was essentially an Early Access game, into a competent full-featured live service game.

Its core issues, to me, aren’t so much foundational issues, as they are issues of polish. You could probably surmize as much reading the past few sections. But for us in our current timeline to get Anthem to that point of total polish… it would probably require BioWare to have an exceptionally large amount of money. That money translates directly into active development time, which absolutely would in the long term resolve the issues I saw and experienced while playing. In the best timeline, this eventually leads BioWare to seeing beautiful green dividends on Anthem with a dedicated and growing player base.

But that’s all fantasy. The business optics we publically know tell us that much. The doomed launch numbers, in particular, sealed its fate from the very beginning. As a gamer, I would have loved for them to believe in sunk cost fallacy, developing Anthem until it got into better shape. But EA is cutthroat and money first. They saw the end of Anthem within the first few months of sales, but generously gave it a few extra months of grace before finalizing the roadmap to pulling the plug.

There is a silver lining. And it’s that, after all this, BioWare still owns the bones. I genuinely believe that they could end up doing an Anthem sequel that could be successful. I do not think it should be a live service game, but say they take the Borderlands route. Improve on systems already made. Get some passionate developers on the project. I absolutely think it would work and make mad amounts of cash. Hypothetically of course.

Because look. The hard part of creating the foundation to a series is done. It’s backed by some good lore, fantastic art direction on many fronts, and has pretty passable moment to moment gameplay. Pre-production for the next game would just be adding a few things, tweaking what they knew didn’t work, and making a new story. The concept just needs a heavy amount of polish. Polish that comes with sequels.

Maybe sinking more time and money into such a project is way more far fetched than fixing the Anthem that existed, but man. I’d hate to see this series completely die, because it’s so easy to see the potential it had, and still kind of has.

Concluding Thoughts

Ultimately, Anthem is a dead game. But I’m glad I got to play it before it got completely shut down. To see it and experience it first hand.

As I get older, it’s becoming easier for me to see and appreciate the artistic intent that goes into things. Even traditionally “mid” things. One of my favorite memes from twitter in recent years is “there are cathedrals everywhere, for those with the eyes to see”.

We can argue there are better games, far more worth our time, of course. But in these increasingly “AI” driven times, it’s getting more and more beneficial to be able to appreciate the efforts behind any piece of human made art, wherever we find it. It is a genuine shame that Anthem is removed from the world, only to live on in a medium it was not designed for, via videos online. It’s exceptionally sad not just for the consumers who paid for it now being unable to return to it, but for the many artists and developers whose blood, sweat, and tears created the game, through what was a very stressful time for many who worked on it.

Anthem isn’t the exception, either. While it is the topic of this video, there are many games are unplayable today, some becoming such as recent as... right now in fact. Within less than two weeks of the publishing of these words. This loss of art in the world is a modern travesty that should not go unnoticed.

For preservation sakes, I hope Anthem is restored and playable again. There are rumblings of a community attempting fixes for just that, but even if successful to some degree, it’s gonna be a long road. I hope something is done in an official capacity. Because, even beyond preservation, despite my experiences within it and my abandonment of it...

I think I’d still go back to play more of it.

Thanks for reading.

Time slips away effortlessly while playing. Incredibly addicting trying to get that perfect run, chasing a lucky attempt. Would you like to gamble your time for dopamine? I think it’s worth it.

Megabonk is one of those games that introduces a wonderful brain worm to your mind that continually whispers in your dopamine receptors the small, yet convincing phrase... “just one more round”. It may not compel you at first, but with a little time, you’ll find yourself happily donating many hours of your time, again, and again. So how does Megabonk do it?

The game is simple: Survive, against waves and waves of monsters. If you cannot, then “maybe him skill issue?” You’ll increase the odds of your survival by obtaining weapons, tomes, items, and stat boosts, all of which is influenced by the luck of the draw.

When you’re more or less, let’s face it, gambling on random chance with almost every action you make in Megabonk, you can begin to understand how exciting it is thinking about the prospects of doing better, chasing THE attempt, where the stars align, and the game can NEVER kill you. Imagine if you get some legendary items within the first few minutes. Maybe the pillars give you several heaps of boosts in a particular stat. Maybe you get the right combination of weapons and tomes you’re looking for, in the order you want them. What if the randomly generated placement of objects in the map is perfect... But if things don’t start out in your favor... then well... there’s always the next game, right?

Now, getting the perfect combination of things isn’t your only objective in Megabonk. Perhaps along the way you’ll complete little quests like “kill 15000 enemies as such and such character”, or “beat stage one without moving” or something like that. These quests and challenges are certainly fun ways to test what you know about the games systems, and show how well you can “perform” under pressure. Completion of these, and your attempts to survive in general, give a currency which can be spent which unlock access to new characters, weapons, tomes, and items.

Ironically, unlocking more stuff makes it somewhat more difficult to plan out how you’re going to survive in any given attempt by inflating the pool of possibilities and decreasing the odds of obtaining any one thing. BUT, this can be somewhat mitigated by allowing you to toggle unlocked stuff “on and off” to remove it from the pool entirely. Also, during a run, you can also banish, skip, or refresh your possibilities in many of the menus. Overall though, the things you do unlock along the way are very fun and very worth going for.

By making you unlock items, the game achieves a very balanced pace where you learn about weapons, tomes, and items at a rate slow enough to allow you to think about possible synergies as you “unlock” these new possibilities. For example, early on, you might unlock the thorns’ tome, and the life steal tome, then think to yourself... wait, if I can damage enemies by being hurt, can I life steal off of the thorns damage? Does that make me invincible? And... no, it totally doesn’t. BUT, it did teach me about the value of the life steal tome. Which was very helpful until I was punched REALLY HARD.

Discovering basic synergies is certainly one of the better joys in the game. Of course, you are always seeking the super-rare-legendary-tier high of becoming an unkillable god being in any particular survival attempt. But the small victories are what keeps you hooked, and engaged. What happens when you complete a particular quest and unlock this weird item? How will this new character change your strategy? Is your lucky socks making a difference today? Stuff like that.

You can completely ruin this part of the game if you look up guides or YouTube videos on the “meta” of items and stuff. I’d highly recommend you not rob yourself of the discovery experience.

But let’s chat about the end game experience for a second. Because holy crap. Some of the unlock conditions for a few items in this game are downright evil. Handfuls of hours of my life have been spent trying to unlock some of these things. There’s a point in a few of them where I’d just lost hope. That was a good time to pull up the guides on Steam. To a degree, some of them are just inklings of ideas of what COULD work, and has worked for some players. For completionists sakes, those have been SUPER helpful, and I do recommend reading those when you get stumped on how to complete some of these challenges.

Basically everything in Megabonk has some kind of joke attached to it. It’s incredibly unserious. I find that, pretty funny and charming honestly, but I’ve read a few reviews where people “wish it didn’t have that.” Buddy, I mean, what did you expect from the game called “Megabonk”, that is more or less gameplay wise, a 3-dimensional “survivor” type game?

Going a bit further into that, the extra jumps from this added dimension might initially feel like, kind of a stupid thing to upgrade initially. But the skilled player understands extra jumps allow you to dodge enemies and boss attacks if you’re paying attention and being smart with your movement. This can even make or break some survival attempts. That’s the primary thing you’re getting from this extra dimension. A little extra something you can do with your free will.

So. You move your little guy. Make some choices. The outcome at the end, win or lose, it’s affected by a collection of what you know and understand about the systems of upgrades, synergies, and items, combined with your experience of what’s seemingly worked for you in the past. Even so, the choices you can make, are always influenced by random chance across the board. The outcome of almost every game you play will still likely be determined because of your luck with the string of random chance events in any given play session.

So the question I’ve thought of is why play games like this?, If me winning Megabonk (or survivor games like it) is largely determined by random chance, why should I even start to gamble my time at all?

The answer is perhaps as simple as Megabonk. The Game is Fun. If I am having fun playing a game that is partially determined by random chance... well, that’s all that should matter in this crazy world. Being able to enjoy a moment in life because of Megabonk’s funny dumb jokes, and mega-fun albeit, very rare instances of successfully wielding godlike power due to some ones and zeros turning on in a very specific way in my computer... mmm. Chasing that feeling makes life just that much more worth living for. Ya know? I’m happy with that.

Performance has been excellent. My favorite way to play has been on the Steam Deck, so you know that it isn’t that demanding of a game. The developer famously has categorized the PC requirements as potato, so I don’t think you’ll have any issues if you have A computer. I’ve even had success running the thing on my phone (whole other can of worms, FEX stuff).

The music slaps, dudes. It is legitimately a part of this game that keeps me enjoying it. I buy the soundtracks for games that have them in Steam when I make videos and I could not be happier to support that specifically and listen to it. The MegaChad theme in particular, is my JAM.

ULTIMATELY, it’s incredibly addicting trying to get that perfect run, chasing a lucky attempt. It’s a blast trying to complete challenges or knock out, unlocking items. Time slips away effortlessly, sometimes even for hours when you’re playing. Are you looking for that kind of escape? Would you like to gamble your time for dopamine? Got a spare 7-10$USD? Then MEGABONK is for you.

Buy the game on Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3405340/Megabonk/

By the nature of this “AfterGame” podcast, expect spoilers at any time without warning!

What games have you been playing lately? What do you think would make for a good “AfterGame” style podcast? Send your feedback! We’d love to know!

If you’re interested in the outline that served as our show notes, those have been included below for your reference.

Game History

• From add on DLC to full standalone, ‘sequel’ game, Hollow Knight Silksong was developed by Team Cherry over the course of maybe 6 or 7 years? Announced it would become a full length game in 2019.

  • the long dev time led to a number of memes like silk posting - “will this game ever release?”

  • (re-read discord messages from that article maybe) this part of the game’s history is mega important IMO

    • images (from “Why ‘Silksong’ Took Seven Years to Make” by Jason Schrier of Bloomberg)

• On release, It’s got a mighty 91 on OpenCritic https://opencritic.com/game/7425/hollow-knight-silksong

• 93% very positive on steam (with a peak player count of 587,150 at launch). Still consistently pulls 20k players a night on steam.

• Will it get game of the year?

• public reception?

  • are they valid? Skim through negative steam reviews the babies left lol, talk about that

    • https://store.steampowered.com/app/1030300/Hollow_Knight_Silksong/#app_reviews_hapublic reception?sh

    • at glance it’s mostly: “everything hurts ow why is this game so much harder than hollow knight I quit”

• quick personal opinions to kinda frame who we are for the rest of the conversation (basically, “I loved it” & perhaps why and how you rank it maybe IDK)

General game flow & Progression

• Introduce the game

  • metroidvania, explore at your own pace, learn lore if ya want, get good, fight bosses, do little quests, etc.

    • similar to hollow knight… but not similar

    • On that note, not so much a sequel as a side story? How to say that thought concept…

Story Synopsis

IDK read Wikipedia if we do this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Knight:_Silksong#Plot

about a 2.5 minute spoken read, so perhaps.

Act 1, 2, 3 Observations?

• Secret-ish act 3? Not sure if this section goes here, lol.

Areas/exploration

• What is Silksong to you? Area wise

https://www.gamerguides.com/hollow-knight-silksong/maps/pharloom

• When I think of this game in the future, I’ll never forget

  • probably the citadel?

  • Loved Mount Fey though, fun area

  • Greymoor is probably another one I’ll remember pretty easily.

• hard to quantify answering this honestly, every area is designed and themed exquisitely how did they do it

skills/tools/crests etc.

https://hollowknight.wiki/w/Tools

https://hollowknight.wiki/w/Crests

https://hollowknight.wiki/w/Skills_and_Abilities_(Silksong)

• perhaps the defining difference between hollow knight

• change your moves

• What did you gravitate towards?

  • Brando

  • I was ALMOST exclusively reaper for at least 80% of the game. I could NOT for the life of me figure out the diagonal pogo, so I’d experiment, love the uniqueness of it, then die because I could not pogo, basically, so I swap to reaper, rinse and repeat lol.

  • I did swap my skills a bunch, though! Cross stitch got a lot of playtime from me, but I’d regularly swap ‘em

  • whenever I was in a bind, I’d use cog flies and long pins, with the pollip pouch and druids eyes.

  • Loved to use the memory crystal with the druids eyes as well when I wasn’t doing particularly well, lol

bosses & dudes & bugs

https://hollowknight.wiki/w/Bosses_(Silksong)

• just about every one is exceptionally well-designed and incredibly fun to overcome

• first boss wall?

• highlight some favs

  • TRRRROBIO!

  • Lace is funnnn to fight

  • Last Judge

  • Cog work dancers

• Also non-favs

  • Carmelita made me want to die

  • Groal can die

  • Seth was difficult but fun (RIP)

  • Savage beast fly the second time kinda evil

• enemies perhaps

• Best NPCs?

  • https://hollowknight.wiki/w/NPCs_(Silksong)

  • Sherma wins

Lore? If we want

• I was thinking about perhaps condensing this video down, but it’s so dense that I’m not sure how to do it, lol. Maybe the story synopsis is enough, unless you got ideas

Misc

• Larkin’s music is, again, so fire?

Additional personal anecdotes? Tips and tricks?

• IDK if it’s interesting as to why it took me 3 months to beat, lol, but I can and perhaps will tell that

  • this is definitely a part of it, which I think is important for all players:

  

• killed grandmother silk first time without double jump lol

• lack of HP haha pain (aka if I can get good, ANYONE can)

• frickin’ Carmelita and swamp dude can screw right off, hah

• uhh platforming challenges (cog work core and the sands of Karak) can die, I had a hard time (even with no diagonal pogo)

• I never got captured?? Seen so much footage of people losing the cloak, and it never happened to me

• yeahhhhh I used a user made map at the end there

• 100% completion worth it?

Comparisons… Must Occur

we must compare to hollow knight

the rub from online:

• Movement and combat are faster and more vertical. Hornet’s tool and silk systems reshape builds and boss approaches.

• Crafting and loadout variety lean into situational swaps rather than a single “set and forget” charm build.

• Level design emphasizes multi-route traversal and speed, with fresh enemy archetypes and boss pacing distinct from Hallownest.

Post launch hopes and dreams?

DLC 👀

Ultimately…

Final thoughts here

Outro Stuff

Thank you for joining us in today’s episode! As always, if you enjoyed it, please like it, or rate it on your platform and share it with a friend.

Void Arcade is an audio production of TheNameBrand, edited by Brando Calrissian. Show notes for this episode can be found at www.TheNameBrand.co/podcast which is also this page that you’re reading them on (not that they’re helpful for you lol)

Vertigo 2 is a single player VR action-adventure game, originally released in 2023. Developed by Zach Tsiakalis-Brown, an amazingly talented solo developer, it fairs great user reviews and has garnered a nice following of fans, many of which are not hesitant to recommend it, me included!

It’s a journey through secret labs and strange worlds, accompanied by a few talkative characters, human and otherwise, with some quippy bits of dialogue from time to time, and some arguably fantastic pieces of humor throughout. The weapons have fun reloads and mechanics, and are all very satisfying to shoot at aliens and robots. Combat encounters at times can be exceptionally difficult through hectic skirmishes, the most challenging of which will see you using every weapon in your arsenal to overcome the odds, especially if you’re up against any of its bosses, of which there’s a nice handful to defeat.

The main game will see you traversing through 18 different chapters, almost all of which will shake up the environment you’re in, and the enemies you face, as you attempt to find your way back home. This all while perhaps saving the universe from certain and uncertain multidimensional dooms.

My biggest praise for Vertigo 2 is actually it’s humor. It’s everywhere. You read a sign on the wall, it’s very funny, gets a good laugh. Characters say something a little off kilter, loved that. Here’s water 2. Here’s anti-matter, aptly labeled as “known by the state of California to cause cancer”. It wears humor on its sleeve, and in little details, and it never missed for me.

It’s not always funny though, Vertigo 2 takes care to commit to making you feel a wide range of emotions, like coolness in an action sequence, wondrous, as you explore a dimension beyond our own, or even scared to death, to my dismay... With an action gameplay loop that’s on paper, pretty standard from start to finish, the perceived variety of the game and range of emotions you’ll feel across your adventure within it is impressive.

Other praise I have, is for the uniqueness of every idea in the game. The monsters look nothing like anything I’ve ever seen before. The plant life and vegetation similarly follow suit. The characters and environments also, quite unique. Guns have their own flare with ammo, reloads, or some other interaction. The uniqueness of every detail makes Vertigo 2 have the weight to feel like a grand interdimensional adventure.

Now, a complaint. The environments are massive in scope and scale, which accents their realism in this fictional universe. The realism the openness brings is awesome, and contributes to the game’s big budget PCVR identity. However, I consistently found Vertigo 2 was inconsistent with hiding its upgrades and secrets in these environments.

I’d find myself exploring deep into the back of some room in a chapter just to find out... it’s just a room. Sometimes, only for set dressing. Occasionally, I’d find a lore collectable there, and in more rare cases, a weapon upgrade. The vastness, and freedom to explore it, while adding to the realism, sure did have its moments where I felt it wasted my time while I was on the hunt for weapon upgrades.

I took a liking to all the weapons, and enjoyed many of the firefights I got into with all the creatures, robots, and bosses across the game. The guns are all wacky takes on real gun archetypes, fitting in snug with the game’s interdimensional themes. It was always a joyous occasion, whenever I’d obtain new ones to play with. I leaned into preferring a few, mainly the revolver, for its precision and long distance, but this leaning into my trusty few didn’t detract from the fun. All the weapons have unique reloads too, and the sound design is also top-notch. My absolute favorite though? The experimental rail gun. That beautiful thing has definitely got the sauce.

Despite my flavorful arsenal of weapons and ‘elite gamer skills’, I struggled with a few sections of the game. But, with time (sometimes an embarrassing amount of it), I overcame my combat struggles and found that I could “lock in” and defeat these on particularly difficult encounters (which were often boss type enemies). This “locking in” usually involved the VR equivalent of (what felt like, from a VR standpoint mind you) Doom Eternal levels of weapon swapping, and copious amounts of teleport based, MELEE wave dashing. All while trying to keep my cool, which admittedly, did not happen sometimes. For the most part, I felt the bosses were a fantastic component of this game, adding some welcome variation to Vertigo 2’s gameplay.

So, what will you do after you beat Vertigo 2? Well, perhaps you’ll play through it again! There’s a time or two where you’re given a narrative deciding choice. Your decision doesn’t branch into a totally different ending (until the last one), but it will change the narrative of that chapter slightly and even affect a few weapons you acquire, which may not be super tempting until I mention that the game’s also got new game plus.

So those few narrative deviations, some secret weapons to find along the way (6 btw), plus starting with my full arsenal of not quite fully upgraded weapons, are all reasons that definitely tempt you to immediately start replaying the game, just to see what else is hidden away.

Vertigo 2 also has some DLC which adds a few more weapons and toys, which starts immediately after you complete the base game. You play as the scientist Brian, and go through a short little Metroidvania type experience. I thought it was short, scary, and good. Beyond that, the game has USER generated content, so you can download maps and scenarios and play the game endlessly. This, on top of after you get bored with new game plus, of course. I absolutely believe that regardless of the price you pick the game up at, you’ll find Vertigo 2 more than earns its price. Replay-ability definitely gets an “A+”.

Performance is great, by the way! Vertigo 2 ran fine with my setup, which isn’t entirely up to date or even ideal for VR gaming, and I still had a wonderful time in the headset and didn’t have any FPS drops or stuttering issues to take me out of the experience.

Ultimately, I can’t help but recommend you play Vertigo 2. This is easily among the best VR games ever made, and is certainly on my must-play list if you have access to PCVR. This is all the more impressive when you comprehend it’s all been created by a single, solo developer. It is criminally underrated! It has an excellent blend of exploration and gun based action, a nice dash of humor, and overall, has very few shortcomings that are easy to look past, in order to experience the game’s defining moments. I highly recommend you play it!

Ah, the holiday season. As the social anxiety from odd familial interactions sets in, the new year begins coming to a close at blinding speeds set to the tune of your Spotify Wrapped. Good times.

I wanted to make a post about my gift-giving process this year. For the past few years, I’ve forgone buying myself a gift… in favor of purchasing an extra digital game gift or two for others. Some family, some friends… of course, I always hope the investment comes back to me in the form of games hitting my accounts paha, but that’s not always the case, and that’s fine. All the same, I wanted to highlight, not the people, but the games that I sent out this season. A few micro-reviews, if you will!

I really wanted to stick with the indies this year, So that’s mostly what I’m featuring. I pushed myself to find games that they had never heard of previously, and on top of that, I was looking for titles that have a smaller time commitment. My thought is, if it’s indie, and the recipients had never heard of it, a smaller time commitment may reduce skepticism and push them to give it an honest try. So without further ado:

NeoDash

The first game I’d like to showcase: NeoDash. I have actually had this on my radar since it was in development. TikTok’s algorithm thought I was a game dev for a couple of days, and it showed me all these in-development games. NeoDash came on, and I was hooked. With fast gameplay, tight controls, drifting, and flying through the air using Rocket League-Esque physics, it looked like a dream. It was actually NeoDash that gave me the idea to focus on sending out a bunch of indies this year.

The recipient of NeoDash is incredible at Rocket League and is a connoisseur of racing games, so even back when it was in development I knew this would be my pick for them. Additionally, it also plays like Geometry Dash, something I also know the recipient really enjoys. When I played through it, I loved it myself, so I know they’ll enjoy it, should they give it a chance.

Spark the Electric Jester 3

The second indie I was really excited to send out the door is Spark the Electric Jester 3. At first glance, you might look at this and completely disregard it… the art style is a bit weird, and it’s the third game in a series no one I know has EVER heard of. I found out about it, about a half year or more ago when I thought to myself… I wonder if anyone took the “Sonic Adventure Battle” formula and did something with it… Well, someone did. A solo developer from Brazil. This is their game. A spiritual successor of Sonic Adventure Battle.

When I successor, I MEAN it. It’s truly an indie-based evolution of the Sonic Adventure games without the Sonic characters. The physics and speed feel as though they’re ripped straight from SEGA’s own code, then given a dose of steroids to put it up with modern standards. It sounds crazy, almost too good to be true, but check out the videos on the Steam page for yourself. There may only be 200-some-odd reviews on Steam… but many are saying it’s the best Sonic game they have ever played, with some noting its impressive character-brawler combat system jammed in there making it something really special. After having played it myself, I can’t help but agree!

The recipient of the game I know has enjoyed Sonic games of days past, and they just recently played through Sonic Frontiers. When I think about this game, I think of this person playing it, and I just know it’s the right fit. I really hope they enjoy playing.

Stacklands

Next up here: Stacklands. Such a short, yet fun game! Perfectly giftable! I’ve known this recipient for a very long time… they’re constantly pressed for time because of their job, and it seems like they are never able to sit down and relax to do what they want to do. So that said, my priority was certainly a short run-time… And with Stacklands filled with strategy and resource management, I can draw ties to Rimworld, and perhaps even Cult of the Lamb, which are two games they played recently, and know they enjoy. The comparison will make it an even easier sell. I feel like Stacklands is an odd but fantastic combination of genres, but the best part is that it’s a pretty cheap game, coming in at under $5 USD. It fit all my criteria for this person, and I’m really happy to get it into their hands. I hope they really enjoy it.

Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator

Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator. That’s a mouthful, huh? The recipient of this game… we go way back. It’s hard to describe the strange enjoyment this person and I share from misfortunes and excellently presented dark humor stuff. Lately I’ve noticed a theme… Whether we’re doing a bad job in Surgeon Simulator, or installing mods to Rimworld so we can make money from doing very legal and ethical trades of the organs, to watching YouTube videos of people in Fallout 4 making an organ processing factory. It seems, rather coincidentally, we’ve been in the organ sphere of things, and this game definitely fits in with the jokey, meme based nature of that fascination. And, according to one of my favorite YouTubers, there is a competent and fun game beneath the surface, with gameplay that I’m pretty sure this person could get very much into.

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown

Another game I was happy to gift was Ace Combat 7. Saw that bad boy on sale for like $7 bucks and knew precisely to who I wanted to send it. The recipient has been playing many “war simulator” type games lately. Hell Let Loose, World of Warships, that sort of thing. They also enjoy tactical (almost impossibly complicated) realistic [insert war vehicle] simulators. But in that light, you might think that Ace Combat 7 would be a poor choice for this person. I’ll admit, I did take a bit of a gamble. It’s much more of an arcade based flight sim than, say, War Thunder.

But one thing sold me. The HOTAS support. This person has a really nice HOTAS. At the very least, I figured they could hook it up, and have a little bit of fun zipping around in some of the fastest jet fighters ever built with their nice HOTAS controller. Of course, I hope they enjoy the game, either through single-player or online multiplayer. But that HOTAS support I hope will add enough value to the game (behind my own stellar recommendation) for this individual to consider it a fine addition to their collection.

FURI

One game I pulled right from someone’s wishlist. Not something I wanted to do this year! But I wasn’t sure what to buy this person, truthfully they are so much more dialed into the indie machine than I am that it was positively impossible for me to begin to think of something they hadn’t put on their list already. So… I went with FURI.

If you know my gaming preferences, you might think my love of FURI is odd. I’ve got a bittersweet relationship with souls games like Elden Ring, and all FURI really is, is a massive gauntlet of boss battles. However, if you know me a lot, you’ll know that I love this OST. Every artist featured in this game is one of my favorites. The soundtrack is God-tier. This, combined with some of the more generous countering (as compared to a souls-like game) makes it an incredible experience for anybody. All the bosses have 2 or 3 phases with checkpoints, you don’t level up or get new gear, it’s just you, and the next guy in line to die. It’s fun to learn all the boss mechanics, and then absolutely slaughter them (after you’ve died to them 10+ times), with the raging electro-synth in the background. Excellent finale as well. Not sure what the DLC holds yet, as I haven’t played it, but it was included in this gift purchase.

This individual I know loves the souls-like formula, they’re a big enjoyer of the soul’s formula, particularly with bosses. Lots of that here. If it’s too easy though… there are difficulty modifiers…

End

So, what did you think of the games I sent out? What games did you send out for the holiday season, and what games are you looking forward to in the coming year? Thanks for reading.

If you’d like to hear my thoughts on Destiny Rising, and hear me verbalize my Destiny 2 history discussed throughout this article, you can do that by watching my latest YouTube video here:

Destiny 2, over the past decade has without a doubt, been one of my favorite game experiences of all time. I enjoyed participating as an active force in its live service, week to week plots.

This is unquestionably true. Bungie’s Destiny is what I believe to be one of the greatest science fiction universes ever imagined. From game mechanics interacting deeply with the most complex of its lore, to the quippy characters that grow on you, the guns and powers you wield, against the gods you kill, all while making a few friends along the way. It’s fantastic. There’s nothing like it.

When you do play, it is so interesting to do so regularly. You have a community that experiences that current vertical slice of game all at the same time. There’s a lot of camaraderie in that. You live the high’s and the lows of the grind. You speculate where things could go next in the story. It’s like you’re a character in a TV show. It’s a super novel concept, and while you’re actively playing and thinking about it, it’s a fantastic hook.

But the candle burns away as it’s made. Stop playing for a week, that’s fine. One month, and you’re behind. Six months and you may as well be a new player. A year and it’s a whole new game. That vertical slice you played a year ago, is now inaccessible. Sometimes even just a month or two ago, brings changes to the game, making no singular time ever the same. No mechanic or detail is safe. Eventually, everything you play will never be something you can return to, no matter how much you enjoy it or want it to stick around, unless development completely ceases.

I can’t go back and play the Destiny 2 I picked up and started playing in 2019. I can’t use the weapons from that time period today either. You can, but they are not good compared to the new stuff in the current game sandbox. There’s always new stuff. It replaces old stuff. It’s a constant cycle, an ouroboros if you will, and the foundation of D2 is that it can never stop. I can “feel nostalgic” about classic Destiny 2 but I can never indulge in the feeling by replaying old stuff. Just like real life, you can only look at old pictures or videos and remember how you felt, as you saved the solar system with your friends during that unique slice of game you all played together. It’s unique that way, but as a game, a piece of media, that sucks, man.

It allowed me to create mountains of positive memories with my close friends through many of these experiences.

But if memories were currency, boy, Destiny 2 would make me rich. Late nights with your buddies. Super long day one raiding sessions. Excitedly earning exotics and playing through some difficult end game content solo. Learning this universe and its secrets piece by piece, season by season, tied to the digital guns I’ve amassed in my vault. Metaphorically speaking, I’ve got a different kind of vault in my mind rich with these glorious memories I’ve made in the game. It’s always made the sacrifice to play worth it.

But after all 1500+ of these hours, and all the money I’ve thrown into that game, I became super burnt out after I concluded the games Final Shape campaign.

What’s that sacrifice specifically? My time.

I got a rage-bait comment under my Destiny Rising video that said “1500 hours is nothing!” along with some other rude things so I banished them from my channel forever (lol). While understandably the internet is full of mostly 12-year-olds, here’s why this is a significant number for me: This is the most time I’ve ever given any entertainment IP. Ever. I do not play games like this, for this long. The only thing that MAY come close is Minecraft, which I have played on and off since it was released to BETA, and has not tracked my play time at all.

And before you go and double check my steam hourly counts, yeah, 1500 is a bit higher than what’s tracked. I played a crap ton on Stadia while on my college campus, while that was a thing. Several hours a day, in the middle of the day... it was good times. I round up for my fair guess-timation of that portion of my life force. But anyway,

The game I have the most hours in behind D2 is Satisfactory, at 312 Hours. Which includes maybe 20 hours of idle. The game below that is Warframe at 262 hours. (CS:GO was played by a friend who had my account on loan, but still) These are the outliers. From here it’s games that hardly crack 100. Most commonly, I’m playing stuff for 20-50 hours. 1500? That’s exponentially more than anything else.

At my core I’m a variety gamer. I love experiencing all sorts of narratives, playing with fun and inventive mechanics, and absorbing intriguing new world-building ideas. You can do that in live service games. But it’s most potent when you just complete one game, then pick another one up.

However, D2 was successfully varied for a long time. Lightfall was ABYSMAL in its story telling, but the new gameplay mechanics with the grapple hook were to die for. Final Shape’s Prismatic mixing and matching ability set gave me unprecedented amounts of control in my build-crafting, but also delivered on a satisfying end to it’s overarching story.

Other expansions had their own things. Beyond Light took my weapons away from me in the first ever sun-setting, but introduced Stasis abilities. Witch Queen didn’t have new abilities, but had a phenomenal story, and introduced craftable weapons. Along the way they had their own little moments of spice and spectacle, and all provided these vibrant worlds to explore, teeming with lore and secrets. Some seasons were rough, and had me leave for their duration due to some boring grind or another, combined with their usually weaker plots.

I found myself returning year after year, if nothing else but to play the campaign and continue the story, and have something to play with friends for that year or so. But of course, the main plot concludes in Final Shape, and what happens?

It got difficult to look at Destiny 2 and Bungie without being critical for one reason or another, because of something or other. With each new hour I threw into the game beyond that finale, my cynicism towards it and Bungie grew… Until I stopped playing.

The content after The Final Shape could not have been more of a disappointment. The outliers were of course, the dungeons, which were always fun to play. But the stories of the episodes felt more phoned in as compared to their seasonal counterparts, and became a less substantial part of the game. There were no new ability sets on the horizon. Weapons stopped being craftable. The new activities? Could not be more boring. No new overworld / patrol areas to explore either, so it’s more of the same old stuff... well, minus the areas that were still removed, of course.

There wasn’t any super cool armor sets to earn, and the weapons, while some were interesting, seemed more and more like optional things I didn’t need to grind for. After all, I have 20 trusty god rolls of everything else, plus a heap-load of crafted alien-killing machines, with some of the strongest exotic and legendary armor pairings with their respective builds in the game... and the biggest bad of this universe is dead.

Plus, when the activities are the most boring they’ve ever been, with the narrative stakes also at their very lowest, playing more of the same game I’ve played almost one HUNDRED times longer than the majority of other games I sink my teeth into in a month to month basis... I mean... really though, what’s the point?

Well the point is to keep making memories with friends of course. So I bite the bullet and keep playing the boring stuff. I grind out pinnacles almost against my will. To keep up with my friends light level, I’m spending like 5-8 hours a week to keep up. I’m shoving D2 in the morning hours of 5-7am before my day job. Few seasons the light cap isn’t increased which feels like an incredible relief. Playing the game should be the relief though right? From life?

So much solo prep... I chased what was interesting for me, and did the power grind for as long as I could, then slowed down and played less and less solo stuff, until I wasn’t playing solo anymore and it was just once or twice a week. Then when that died out, I kinda just was like, well I’ll wait for someone to ask me to play with them and I will. And when those invitations ran out... I guess that’s when my adventure in Destiny 2 kinda ended.

But it wasn’t like, I woke up one day and decided I’d never play again. No, I was open to playing with an invitation for a long time, up till recently. Even still, to this day, I’m just as every bit tapped into Destiny 2 news as I was when I was regularly playing. The thing is, I want Bungie to succeed and make a fun game. I want them to introduce fun ideas. I want the game to sell gang busters. I’ve been there for every live stream and showcase for the past two years, hoping I’d see ANYTHING interesting enough to get me to return to a fun and interesting game.

Of course, nothing has done it for me. In fact more often, they’ve introduced ideas that have pushed me away from the game further. The portal has to be one of the bigger deterrents. Pick a bunch of difficulty modifiers from a huge pool of them and be scored on it? Then here’s some tiered rewards, which are some of the most incomprehensible loot of any game ever made. Oh! Also, the new stuff you get invalidates every other piece of gear you have. Weapons specifically have, straight up, a RAW FAT bonus on damage, just because it’s new. That happens every expansion too now. “But it’s not sunsetting guys!” I can hear modern Bungie mockingly say.

Also, the sense of exploration is completely invalidated by this design choice. Sure, the whole, ‘vendor at a location’ thing was getting stale, but man, at least it contributed to the atmosphere of the universe. You’re robbing the game of its sense of adventure. Its glorious skyboxes. “It’s so fast though! Just click and boom you’re playing the game!” Bungie might say, in defense of it. Well dude, the ‘game’ may have always had a core of looting and shooting, but come on. The destinations connect it all together. Without those... Bah. Where’s the spirit of it gone? On that note...

What is modern Bungie thinking? Who is making this game? You look at any of the proposed (and even implemented) changes and it’s unfathomable how a team of people carrying a legacy game could even come up with some of this stuff. Even a few weeks ago I saw that they’re changing how bounties work? Are you serious? Yeah. That’ll bring players back. An excellent Gambit of developer man hours. Not like the game continues to shrivel up and die or anything! Like, are they trying to rage bait people with this stuff just for the buzz of the press or what? Unbelievable. There are actual core, fundamental issues they could focus on, a myriad of which would bring players back. Yet everywhere I read, they are not doing stuff even remotely in that sphere of things.

Their PR team is listening though! Apparently!

I dunno man. The old Bungie guard, both good and bad, are off and away now. This new generation is trying to make Destiny 2 their own thing and around every turn it seems that their decisions have been critical missteps. Everyone can say what Bungie should have done post-Final Shape, even I’ve said things. Oddly enough, that’s the one thing this crayon eating community can agree on. That this new direction in the majority of its ways, just sucks. Funny how that is.

For the record, so it’s written down somewhere, my perspective is that no new content should have been added after The Final Shape. Those “episodes” of epilogues right after the finale, they should have never been conceived. That entire expansion should have wrapped up with the Witness dying, and further development time should have been put into remastering old content to bring back into the game (so you can actually play through the entire story), while you have a handful of people brainstorming a sequel on the strings of questions left on that finale. Destiny 2 should have FINISHED development, just like Destiny did. But it should have started on the road of becoming content complete for preservation reasons. I’m biased and that may be impossible, but that’s what I think should have happened.

I know the technical impossibilities of it (they don’t have working builds of things, etc. etc.), but I’m dead serious dude. How many players could they have wrangled back if they had “remastered” Red War content, post The Final Shape? Can you imagine? I would have happily been there. Let me get armor from the old battle passes. Let me work on those titles. Let people be completionists. Give the IP time to breath for a bit.

The journey concluding has been bitter sweet. The bitter, from losing out on opportunities to continue creating new memories with my friends, the sweet being the time I’ve gained in my life to quite literally start this YouTube channel.

I’ve made so many sacrifices to start making YouTube videos, and some days I even regret that I began on the path in the first place. It’s cost me extra tension in my marriage, and a reduction in my relationships with friends and family across the board, even beyond D2. I play less games than I ever have. Games I do play for me and not YouTube take me months to complete. The backlog grows. I’m tired.

I might even be crazy for even attempting to do this, in the current climate of YouTube, and the world’s economics. There’s a real part of me that believes I should have just got a second job instead and been done with my life as I knew it. Same degree of sacrifice to my time, immediate monetary results, and a path everyone could understand and empathize with instantly.

I’ve mentioned this in a few of my Case Study articles (paywalled, sorry). Dune inspired me to recognize the trajectory of my life from this point and it’s not great. I only have so much time to improve it before I really do get stuck as a multi-job slave the rest of my life. YouTube is my gamble of life force to the universe that if successful allows me to break out of that future which I have so envisioned myself stuck in.

Had modern Bungie made a game I was more interested to play, I simply would not have had the time to even experiment with any of this content creating stuff. Sacrificing it and my other gaming habits is the time allotment it needs to work.

Does it make me sad? Immensely. But I’m playing on a board much larger than people realize, plotting many turns in advance.

Still keep up on the news for D2 though. That has been... even more disheartening to say the least.

I think this was covered enough earlier.

Overall, I really do wish Bungie would make a fun, digestible version of Destiny 2. I can’t fathom committing time to it right now though. There are too many Great games out in the world that I have not played. To play anything I consider less than great, in the little spare time I allow myself, would just be a disservice to my mental health, honestly. I can play other games with friends. For my Destiny fix, Destiny Rising can be casually played in short play sessions. Until Bungie really WOW’s me, I’m good being out of D2 for now.

I’ll never forget my time with Destiny 2. I’d recommend my journey in that game to any player 1000 times over. But, sadly these days, oh reader mine, you must carve out your own adventure, and create your own destiny, in whatever vertical slice is currently available to you. Should you so choose to take the dive into the game now, I wish you the best of luck, as you navigate what may very well be the dying breaths of a fictional universe that I have truly loved greatly.

Here’s to wishing that the franchise still has a chance at a sequel.

But first, Here’s your sneak preview at this videos editing timeline:

And the video in case you’ve forgotton to give it a watch:

Sorry this one is a month late! I’ve been through the ringer mentally, but I’m slowly getting it all back together. Free subs, I’ll catch ya round, paid subs, let’s jump into it:

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Destiny Rising is a *mobile* spin-off of Destiny, *created by NetEase*. This means that there is a massive moon called the Traveler that entered the solar system, that grants power to humanity, and seemingly brings with it aliens that desire to control it. You’ll play as space magic Traveler infused, gun wielding warriors called light bearers (or guardians), and you’ll fight these aliens to protect humanity.

As you follow an overarching narrative, you’ll get loot in the forms of currency to upgrade your character, as well as GUNS, the majority of which ‘roll’ with a selection of random perks. Over the course of your time with the game, you’ll play and replay a vast majority of activities in an attempt to collect materials, guns with specific perk synergies, and special exotic weapons. Everything you do contributes to your character’s power level, eventually qualifying them to be able to play tougher and tougher activities, which also contain the best chances to obtain the most powerful and rare rewards in the game. Then, to a degree, rinse and repeat sections of that cycle per each in-game season. Do some of it with your friends or other players in a light MMO setting. It’s all good fun.

Pretty bog-standard stuff if you’ve played destiny 2 right? The “MOBILE version” phrase in that initial paragraph does a lot of heavy lifting. As a ‘mobile’ version of a very similar game play loop to Destiny, you can expect a few differences, such as the game’s overarching scale, activity length, graphical fidelity, and of course, the ability to play on your smartphone.

Alongside those differences, this may not be a game made by Bungie... but NetEase is trying to emulate their strongest of suits, which I believe they’re doing with an incredible degree of success. The game FEELS so spot on similar to Destiny 2, it’s SHOCKING when you first experience it. Even if you don’t ever commit to playing this game long term, there’s some real novelty in walking around an open patrol zone, exploring, and taking out groups of enemies to get a sense of that signature ability and FPS action gameplay that the franchise is known for.

In addition to following core gameplay mechanics, it follows a number of essential core lore concepts, helping existing Destiny fans feel right at home in the universe, with tweaks and changes in those regards being very minor. All of Destiny Rising is also set “many years” before the events of Bungie’s Destiny, in a completely alternate (non-canon) timeline, which gives NetEase some wiggle room to get creative, and honestly? To cook up some fantastic ideas (like giant light wielding sentient mechs, for example).

The true NetEase sprinkle of magic is through one-off acts of ‘spectacle’ both in cut-scenes and gameplay. You’ll see the power of the characters as they fight beside you in missions, and you’ll play fun sequences that only happen once, for cool factor or plot reasons. Now, you may not entirely be the main character of Destiny Rising, but the perfectly balanced trade off is being able to participate in the histories of MANY characters, through quests focused on a defining adventure for them, which make for some powerful, unique world building.

The game comes together quite beautifully against the backdrop of music created with the help of Bungie music veterans, some of which have composed Destiny tracks for 10 years. For Rising, they did not hold back in creating tracks with the gravitas you’d expect a new Destiny game to have, and I appreciate them greatly.

So. The gacha system. In your time playing for free, you’ll earn enough to draw at least 100 times before feeling that well dry and slow to a crawl. But, that’ll be enough to get you all the basic characters and some duplicates. They’re nice to have, but to get to the game’s credits at the end of its initial campaign, none of it will be necessary.

So the question you’re wondering, is Destiny Rising pay to win? Well. In a way, it can be. Big spenders will have characters and duplicates. You can also outright purchase some materials. Do these all directly affect how strong you are in the game, absolutely. But PVP in this game isn’t competitive, (they heavily balance character power in there and in ‘Gambit 2’) and I’m not doing a day one Destiny Rising “raid race” anytime soon, so I honestly don’t even care that people can do this. Just... stay away from interacting with all this stuff if you feel this type of shortcut would tempt you.

In relation to all this, there are what will initially feel like one million different items you’ll need for one million corresponding actions. Every activity in this game drops a little something different. Miraculously, you don’t have to remember where a single thing comes from because the game deep links its source right on the item itself. It’s a quality of life game changer. Can’t upgrade something because you’re missing a resource? Easy. Just a few clicks, and you’re immediately queuing into the activity that will drop it. You’re never in the dark wondering how to become more powerful, or where something comes from.

This robust documentation seeps into other systems like game mechanics, character kits, weapon perks, activity descriptions, and every game system in this entire game. I have never had to use a 3rd party resource or search online for the answer to a single question about Destiny Rising, and that is a direct testament to their unspoken commitment to being thorough in their documentation.

In addition to looting and shooting, there are a number of “casual” activities to play. There is fishing (which also gives you mythic guns sometimes, by the way), sparrow racing, which is pretty novel, Shadowshaper, which is practically a carbon copy of Gwent, and PVP, which is also relegated to the casual activities. The mode there is Destiny’s classic ‘control’ with the maps currently in rotation being 1:1 D2 ports. They’re fun time wasters, adding just a few things you can do if you just pop it open for a few minutes at a time. I like them a lot.

Truthfully, none of this would matter if this game wasn’t a Destiny game. But it is. Further, nobody would care if it didn’t feel like it too… and yet, it does. Everything from game-feel, character abilities, gun-feel, cascading down to world design, narrative, and activities, it all feels exactly like a mobile version of Destiny should. NetEase has cooked, and it’s a scrumptious meal, that’s loads of fun to play. I think any previous Destiny player that can manage to drop their staunch inhibitions and give it an earnest try will undoubtedly have a blast, as I’ve had while playing.

Not everything NetEase has done is an innovation for the Destiny franchise, like the gacha elements, and being able to pay to speed up the resource grind. But the new things both minor and major, from narrative spectacles, casual activities, challenging missions, and its many quality of life improvements, make for a fantastic start in what already makes for a really fun and compelling spin-off game that you can take with you anywhere.

Ultimately, Destiny Rising is a great game that has thus far been a very enjoyable experience. The campaign alone has my seal of approval and recommendation, and I highly recommend you get to that point where it rolls credits. That’ll give you the best possible taste of the game’s offerings quite easily, all for free.

Perhaps more important than anything else, Rising has allowed me to come back to this wonderful Sci-Fi universe on a much smaller scale, through a few breaths of fresh air. For now, for me, that’s enough. I’m very much looking forward to continuing to casually play it, and I’m hopeful that it will just get better as it evolves over time.

Star Vortex is A solo developer made game that's simple, complex, and deviously addictive. It might be only in early access, but I'm comfortable recommending you keep this space RPG looter shooter on your radar.

Your journey begins with a surprising amount of customization options for your starting ship, and initial difficulty, which quickly transitions into a brief tutorial of the game's controls and mechanics, twisted together with an introduction to Star Vortex's overarching narrative.

The controls are quite simple, and if you're familiar with twin-stick shooters, you'll feel right at home. The ship has basic movement in any direction, a small dodge, and a boost. Then there's your weapons, which you can aim independently of the ship. Later you can pick up, or spec into, other utilities that activate on a button press. Lastly, there's a tractor beam, for picking up dropped money or items, and that's it! Like I said, pretty simple to pick up! You'll feel comfortable controlling your ship in no time at all.

But, Star Vortex makes up for these simple controls, by being complex in all of its other systems, which I'll get into in a moment.

Opening the map for the first time blew me away. 159 different nodes to explore, was crazy to see. I figured that most of the nodes were going to be optional or for try hard completionists, but what I found quick was that I needed to play many of them in order to level up my ship. Over the course of my time through with my first save, I actually did end up completing every single node there... and in the second sector as well.

Levelling up is one of the most satisfying aspects of Star Vortex. You gain an upgrade point that you can allot into a sprawling tech tree. These upgrades can affect anything from major changes such as what types of equipment your ship will be capable of using, to minor stat bumps like overall hull or shield capacity.

Most importantly, at certain level thresholds, you're awarded with MORE weapon slots. But, I'm getting slightly ahead of myself.

These nodes contain a selection of randomly generated events that affect what type of activity you'll do when arriving at any given node. Of course, the common DNA is: Kill the bad guys. The space dogfights are one of the foundational pillars of Star Vortex, so it's good that they're fun.

There are several different factions of enemies you'll face, and each one has a proper combat identity, both visually, and in what they prefer to use against you. Some face you in swarms. The stand-outs are certainly the boss encounters, which really shake things up and can wreck you in an instant if you're not careful.

During your travels, you may obtain loot for various different parts of your ship, weapons included. All loot has a rarity, and they come bundled with random stats, the rarity determining how many modifiers the item can have. Find something with a better random stat? You can actually transfer it to a similar item if you'd like, but it will consume that one in the process. I imagine some joy in the late game comes with min-maxing all of your stats with this feature.

But as I said, this system is in place for all other pieces of loot, which can include your shields, engine, utility, passives, and whatever else you have on your ship. It's fun to inspect all the loot you get, piecing together your ship, and using upgrade points to make a truly formidable, bespoke hunk of space metal.

If at any point you're not happy with how your ship is shaping up, or if you find a legendary piece of loot that you want to immediately use, you can, for a small fee, respec your upgrade tree and try a completely different configuration. It's pretty easy to experiment if that's what you'd like to do.

So, combat is the first pillar of Star Vortex. The other foundational pillar? Customization.

As previously mentioned, at certain levels, you can equip more weapons. But this isn't an automatic system, no. You must BUILD your ship to have the capacity to equip those weapons. And not only do you decide what types of weapon or utility slots to put on your ship, you decide where they go and how they look. The ship builder is where you must do that.

You unlock the builder pretty early on, and it's a robust system. The controls, even on mouse and keyboard, are a little iffy, but you can make your ship entirely custom, so long as you keep within whatever limitations your current level has you at. Initially this area will be pretty small, but by the time you're level 35, you can make a real gargantuan battleship.

Don't feel creative enough to make your own ship? Steal a "familiar" looking one from the games' community, directly inside the game. I'm very impressed with how robust this system is, and the more I played, the more attached to my rust bucket I became.

Another bright spot for the game, is in how consumable it is as a Steam Deck game. Playing there with it being a second screen game, time flew. Before I knew it, I had completed every node in sector 1.

The subsequent cross saving to PC allowed me to, in more dedicated play sessions between the Steam Deck crusades, manage my ship with a little more finesse. Move some modifiers around. Customize the ship a bit. Throw some items into storage (of which there's a ton of space for, by the way). Plot out a course or do a node with an elite that may require a little more focus. Later in the evening, back to grinding the nodes, then rinse and repeat. I love that interplay there.

Zorg has a roadmap right on the home page of the game, and I like where the game is headed! Zorg is also very active in his discord, and comments on his development progress intermittently as he includes updates or otherwise. I'm very excited to see Star Vortex grow and mature as a full-length, feature complete game, and I wish Zorg all the luck in the world.

At the time of writing, I'm nearing 20 hours of play time. With the game currently sitting at $25.00 USD, I'm anticipating playing until I hit 25 hours played total at the least. Even in early access you don't have to strain yourself playing Star Vortex to hit that mark, and I can attest that what you do play in that time is surprisingly solid in its gameplay mechanics, presentation, and overall performance.

Ultimately, Star Vortex is an incredibly promising solo-made game, and is one that I feel comfortable recommending you to check out. It's awesome to build your own ship, and grow in power as you fight across sectors in large scale space faring dogfights. If my impressions of this Early Access has stirred your curiosity in any way, I wholeheartedly recommend you check out Star Vortex for yourself, and join Zorg's discord if you'd like to participate in its active development.

(I received a free review copy of this game from keymailer.co, but neither Keymailer, nor Zorg had any editorial input at any stage of the review process.)

This was a doozy of a video to make, and I’ve got quite the packed article for you all to sink your teeth into. I’m anticipating it coming out a few days after the video upload for that reason. Check out this massive timeline!

Hey, screw AI summaries, but let’s do a Brando Overview in a similar format so you know what to expect:

• Holy crap, I spent a long time on this project.

• Wow, I love Dune a lot.

• Big ‘Literjon’ Brand acts like a fool at the Little Sahara park (VIDEOS of that).

• Can I do this ever again? And,

• Would a depressed man make a magnum opus?

All this and more if you’re a paid subscriber!

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Dune Awakening has been a fever dream for me. I've not been more pleased with a 'book to game' adaptation than this, which isn't saying much, but boy. They did a real bang-up job tying back just about every world building detail and gameplay system, no matter how small or weird, right back to the novels. Even though the games' story is a parallel timeline to the books (without Paul Atreides), the devs put a lot of care towards creating a book accurate Arrakis and I greatly appreciate it.

I mention this very first because I believe my enjoyment of Frank Herbert's universe makes me incredibly biased. I have loved every second of playtime in this game, as it has allowed myself to become even more immersed in this sci-fi universe that I love. Objectively, it is not a perfect game, but it has served the purpose I purchased it for, with all the precision I could have ever hoped for. Perhaps more, when all the DLC has been released.

Though, even Dune fans may not find the gameplay systems in Dune Awakening appealing. Surviving on the planet is tough. The game systems take a bit to get used to, and can feel quite unfair. You must log in continuously to keep your base powered, or it will be destroyed. You must endure the might of the sand worm, which can wipe your inventory clean without a word. Other players may wipe the floor with you in designated PVP areas. You might die of thirst, a storm, or from an overwhelming number of foes. Maybe, as you sit there playing, you die of boredom due to the mining and collecting resource grind. In any case, Welcome to Arrakis.

I say all that as though it's a negative sentiment, but overcoming the difficulty is a rewarding part of the journey. You'll get better resources, vehicles, machines, and items that all help you ease your questing across the Hagga Basin. The progression is extremely fulfilling, as you become a real desert threat with para-natural abilities. It feels as though you could very well be a great main-character level fighter found within the pages of Herbert's books.

Building your character is one of the most generous systems I have ever seen in a game like this. Class skills, passives, and techniques are not restrictive and can be mixed and matched with other class options freely. Selectable skills and techniques can be swapped at any time, and you can refund every point spent on skills once every 48 hours for free, so you can try other builds to your heart's content. After playing so many games with more restrictive systems, I thought this implementation was an awesome change of pace. It has continuously allowed me to find and enjoy many types of play styles over the course of my time experimenting with it.

The heat and water mechanics at first glance may seem difficult to manage, but as you progress in the game and become as the Fremen, maintaining these becomes second nature. Later into the game, not only are you not worrying about managing those, but you'll have an overabundance of water and many resources, which can keep you going for days and even weeks on end.

The other survival elements are built well. Making a base is very intuitive, and they give you plenty of options and decorations to really make something unique for you, or for you and your friends, which is easily done with its exhaustive permission settings. No need to really worry about organizing your inventory's either, as all your bases machines can pull from any of your chests. This is already a welcome change for the genre, but they take it a step further and allow you to set up entire networks of machines and chests via the UI, with no resource cost.

You eventually do earn yourself vehicles in this game, and they make your journeys quicker and simpler in between destinations. They're pretty fun to drive as you explore the landscape and uncover the map. The ornithopter is definitely a high point in the game, where you can truly fly around the map with ease. At any point (even while not in a vehicle), you can pass the time listening to the in-game radio which as a wide collection of in-universe entertainment, even including audio-dramas. It's very cool.

The combat is quite enjoyable and moving fluidly between ranged and melee combat is very satisfying, and can at times be quite challenging. The melee combat in particular has an addicting flow to it, and I always look forward to that deep THUD after a successful breach of the enemies Holtzman shield. I always look forward to clearing out the game's version of "dungeons" to exercise my combat skills.

The stories you encounter across the Hagga Basin were all excellently written, and captivated me to find and finish just about every single one of them. The main quest in particular is very interesting and even has you interacting with high-profile characters from the novels. Funcom has done such a good job weaving these stories that I will be returning to play all the free story expansions as they are released.

My biggest gripe isn't even that much of a gripe -- I wish the several enemy factions in the game had more of a distinctive identity. I felt they could have all posed a unique signature challenge to me as the player to accomplish this. As they are now, they mostly vary in difficulty, with a sprinkling of differentiating (excellently written) lore and armor.

I played this game entirely solo and had a phenomenal time doing so. I could see how this game would be simpler with a group of friends (or even a guild of random players) all contributing to a base, sharing resources. It is an MMO, after all, and some later game machines show it in their resource costs. But my ultimate objective was to live out the Dune fantasy. So I treated this game like the RPG it is, and had voice & text chat off, and have had a wonderful time playing.

Dune Awakening's got quite the handful of negative user reviews. Most I've read should be in support tickets, or on the game's discord; not reviews. Stuff like "I lost my gear because of X bug" and "I don't agree with the direction of end game Y". Weirdly, notice the trend of how buried in many of these negative reviews, players share their positive thoughts on the game up until their very specific frustration... As for me, I've never lost anything due to a glitch, and I haven't been bothered by how the end-game is being managed. You'll be fine, too.

The (very) optional end-game is the "Deep Desert". Some people consider this the meat and potatoes of the games offerings, practically the reason you'd play it, but I disagree, as you may have been able to put together from my earlier statements.

Truthfully, the value of end-game content will vary from person to person. The correct and properly weighted perspective is to realize that there is an exceptional Dune centric Survival RPG to play for at least 100 hours (with more after all the DLC is released). In that time, you will build out your character and live the Dune fantasy of being a desert Fremen nomad on Arrakis. When your main quest is over, if you still want to continue playing Dune Awakening, there's a whole 'game-mode' dedicated to making the game, more or less, endless, where you will get out of that experience, whatever time you put into it.

Ultimately, I highly recommend Dune Awakening, and especially so to Dune fans. There's so much to enjoy here if you know the universe upon which you tread, and I feel this niche of players will get the most value out of it. If you don't know Dune, but perhaps have enjoyed Valheim, or Death Stranding (weird combination, I know), I'm almost positive you'll enjoy this game as well due to some of the shared DNA between those titles.

I'm happy with the devs roadmap, and I can't wait to sink my teeth into whatever crazy story they have cooked up in future story expansions. I may not play as much in between new chapters... But I'll always remember how much I've loved my journey across Arrakis.

Paid Subscribers, check out this exclusive behind the scenes styled Case Study article, which goes in depth behind my creative process, includes some extra videos of me out in the desert, and more!

For everyone else, I’ll catch you in the next one!

I’ve got a relatively complex history with the DOOM franchise, and honestly I’m just as shocked as you are that it’s taken me this long to play it. My first DOOM game I ever owned and played was DOOM 3, which was, coincidentally, the first game I had ever purchased because it looked cool, and quickly abandoned because I hated jump scares. I determined that “no, I’m not going to keep playing this scary game anymore.” I was in my early teens, so cut me some slack!

The DOOM (2016) revival series by ID Software, however, took me by complete surprise. I had an astoundingly good time playing, booming and shooting my way through hordes of demons as a silent war machine of a protagonist. I loved it so much that I bought a copy to play on the Nintendo Switch, so I could play it wherever I went. Topped off my fascination with some merch for the game, which is a rare luxury I afford myself every few years if I REALLY love something.

Fast-forward to DOOM ETERNAL, and boy, I couldn’t get enough of it. One of my greatest gaming accomplishments is playing and beating ETERNAL on nightmare difficulty. It’s so fluid, fast, and everything my untreated ADHD addled mind loves about movement shooters. But then they released the Ancient Gods DLC and… I’m not sure what happened? I still haven’t played it.

DOOM: The Dark Ages released earlier this year, and all throughout its many reveals, I thought it would be my masterful return as the DOOM GUY. All the marketing made it look absolutely bananas. Pacific Rim style mech? A totally metal dragon? Interesting parry system? Medieval theme? It has it all. I side stepped my rule and got merch of the game (though, it was a gift!). But, shockingly, I still haven’t played it. I consider myself a touch too poor and out of time at the moment.

You know what doesn’t cost $70 USD and related to all this? The original DOOM. That I’ve never played. So I picked that up, found the time, and now here I sit, having finished it, reflecting on the experience.

DOOM (1993), has been an awesome ride. I can’t believe how captivated by this ol’ gem I’ve been. I will say, to the detriment of my gamer cred, I save-scummed though the entire experience. As much as I’d like to play it like a rogue-like, my heart wasn’t in it for that. The difficulty was surprisingly tough! I found myself constantly scoring way beyond par, especially in E3 and E4, where I would double, triple, and occasionally quadruple par-time. Much of this was from exploring, and looking for secrets, but I’m sure it’s also because I’m not super great at it!

The game controls tightly! Guns are punchy, and the enemies have good feedback for when they’re getting hit. Moving around is a little wonky, but I did get used to it after a few stages. Perhaps as another detriment to my cred, I did play on the digital Switch version, but I’ve got no notes there because it played great.

The music was also awesome to hear for the first time in its natural habitat. It was really cool to have my ears perk up every once in a while with a melody that would bring me back to something I remember from DOOM (2016) or ETERNAL. By the end of my time with it, I was wishing for some variation in the demon death sounds & gun noises, but that’s a minor nitpick.

There were some areas where I could not figure out what to do to progress (running isn’t exactly explained in the Switch version), and I had some instances where even with save-scumming, I had quite a difficult time. A number of failures in those situations felt like some deaths were not my own fault and due to causes beyond my understanding of the game. More simply said, I felt a few deaths were unfair, and I’m not sure if that was by design or not.

Overall, I recommend you play DOOM (1993). Some of its gameplay systems are dated and even archaic, which makes for some sections to feel a bit grind-y and dry. But even still, it was an awesome experience for me as a DOOM (2016) and DOOM ETERNAL fan to see the roots of the series. Despite the hiccups here and there, I found it to be enjoyable enough—especially with the switch port and the save-scumming—to prove to me, that it’s a surprisingly timeless game that every player should eventually visit.

Have you ever wanted to be Spider-Man? Ever dreamt of it? I have. I’d been searching for a game in VR for a long time to fulfil that fantasy. The official Spider-Man Far From Home Virtual Reality ‘demo game’ didn’t cut it. Modding BONEWORKS felt close but off still. Tried another game that promised that fantasy, and I’ve even tried rope swinging worlds in VR Chat. Again, and again, close… but I’ve always felt there was something missing from everything I’ve ever played. Until I tried YUPITERGRAD.

The interesting thing about YUPITERGRAD is that I’ve tried and played other games with grapple hooks. But none of them come close to the rush you feel here. I’m calling YUPITERGRAD, the only grapple hook game you need. It’s also, somehow, the closest I’ve ever felt to that proper web swinging, Spider-Man fantasy, even as compared to other games that are specifically engineered to fulfil that fantasy.

If I had to take a stab as to why, I’d guess it’s because the freedom of expression is lost in translation. When I’m playing Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered (2020) there are all sorts of tricks and maneuvers I can make through the environment. Even Spider-Man 2: The Game (2004) had some similar systems. But the depth of that is too much for VR. You go too deep, and it becomes too crazy to learn (i.e. like the Attack on Titan Fan Game). So what do we get? Swinging our arms around slowly like monkeys around square buildings that vaguely resemble something you might see in New York. It’s not thrilling anymore. It’s just a different locomotion method.

I am honestly floored at how good YUPITERGRAD is. From the first moment you’re airborne, until the last time trial stage completed for that final achievement to 100% the game, you will have an absolute blast. I did. The secret, I believe, is that their physics systems are dialed in to perfection. Combined with tighter spaces, it’s given me a sense of speed that I haven’t felt in any other VR game. It’s exhilarating.

It’s hard to express how, through the game’s tight controls, you feel completely free. Once you get the hang of the grapple hooks light feedback in the controllers, combined with the small corrections you can do with the analog stick, you can zip around the space station at Mach speeds. This is especially satisfying during YUPITERGRAD’s short campaign, which will have you (in a very light Metroidvania fashion) occasionally backtracking to and from locations to complete little objectives. Mastering where you’re going and how you’re going to get there is a big part of the fun, and I can only imagine becomes ever richer as you play the campaign again in attempts to speed run the whole thing.

I truly believe it must have taken ages to code the physics just right. What I find particularly interesting is, not only have I never gotten motion sick playing (I do have very strong VR legs), but no one I’ve ever shown has gotten sick either. You’d think that would absolutely happen in a game where you’re constantly moving at breakneck speeds, around corners, and across these spaces, but almost magically, it just works. I’m not sure if anyone can ever deduce why, and if they do, I’d love to know because it is truly whimsical.

As a final anecdote, let me just say that not only have I tried a handful of Spider-Man type games, I’ve tried other “grapple hook” games as well, across various sources. Among them all, YUPITERGRAD is my choice as the best of the bunch. By comparison to everything similar to it, it feels exceptionally refined.

Ultimately, if any of this has sounded interesting to you, then I highly recommend you do yourself a favor and buy the game. It’s a great time, and I can’t stop coming back to it, even after I’ve completed everything. It’s that satisfying. When you do, I’ll see you on the leaderboards comrades!

Grow Home is a short but endearing little game that will captivate you immensely with its cozy, calm vibes, as you explore a miraculously tall world growing a strange plant. I absolutely enjoyed the time I spent playing it, and can’t help but recommend it.

It’s easy to compare it to something along the lines of Death Stranding, where the journey through the world is what makes the experience great. Though here, definitely imagine a much smaller scope, and climbing mechanics instead of walking mechanics.

Initially, it’s a bit tough to get used to the controls, because it’s so unique as compared to anything else I’ve ever played, but that’s something that you learn to really master by the time you’ve finished your journey growing upwards, which occurs after around 4 hours or so.

Other than the last fetch quest, which was a little nerve-racking because of the stakes of it, Grow Home was great to have as a casual, secondary game to jump into in-between me playing other games. I’d log in, explore a bit, find some collectibles, grow the plant, appreciate the vibes, and its overall artistic value. It’s nice to play as a way to wind down after playing something more fast-paced or intense.

The game has an excellent little ambient soundtrack that aids your journey quite nicely, and I noted to myself that I appreciated that more than I typically do.

Grow Home is quite the short game. However, I think the length works to its benefit, leaving me itching for more (can’t wait to see what’s in the sequel), but it also felt like it tied off all the loose ends as far as letting me experience literally everything it had to offer, just shy of a few achievements. That was nice for a change!

Ultimately, this has been a great experience that I could definitely see myself coming back to, making for a game that I see myself recommending to many of my friends. I recommend you play Grow Home!

I was conversing with another user on Medium who made mention of my Medium Membership status, when they asked, “is [the subscription] worth it?” Little did they know, I was currently exiting the midst of crossroads between platforms. I’ve been on Medium for almost two years, yet in the past few weeks, I have been researching new sites to move to. I wasn’t even sure I’d made the decision until that very same day. So, I gave a terribly long reply, which I’ll now use as the foundation for the below.

Is It Worth It?

I wouldn't recommend a Medium Subscription to anyone. I’ll share my history, which will give good context as to why.

Why Not?

My blogging quest began a few years ago. My passion is games, so I was writing reviews, sometimes quite lengthy ones, but was only publishing them on Steam, and Backloggd (which I ADORE and recommend wherever I can). I realized some time after this, if I’m going to ever try and use my degree—which is officially Technical Communication and Rhetoric with a Multimedia Development minor, but is also technically what they make students obtain who want to go into Journalism—I’m going to need a more official looking site to host my writing. It was my impression that gaming publications or whoever else wouldn’t take me seriously otherwise. Thus, my Medium journey was born.

I already had written over 100 game reviews by this point, and luckily Medium’s ‘import story’ tool made moving them all over a cinch. In no time, I had swaths of articles ready to be published in a very professional looking space with the push of a button. But then, Medium tempted me with their membership model. ‘Paywall your articles and get paid to write’, was the name of the game, and I was ready to play.

“Why not get paid to write?” I told myself, as I filled out my credit card information. I wasn’t a fan of the ‘pay us to pay you’ business model, but hey, in no time I’m sure it’ll pay for itself right? Let’s enable that paywall and get paid. So I got started, and began uploading my back-catalogue of game reviews, almost consistently publishing one or two a day.

Growth in those beginning times was slow, but expected. But I was gaining followers, and earning money. Here are some charts that showcase that time period.

That massive spike? Not sure what happened. You can see the trend line for views starts at 2.5 views per day and ends at around 7.5, so it was trending upwards. But the read trend line? Starts at one, and ends at one. No significant growth there. I have two charts because at one point I had both of these combined, but as my follower count stagnated, and my article count grew, those two metrics started to really hurt how I viewed the chart so they got moved into their own, weird combo chart together.

The interesting thing to note is that, while I stopped publishing articles for a minute, that initial surge in December injected that much-needed lifeblood into my overall performance.

Previously I said that I earned money doing this, but I’ll be real with you. It was pennies. But I was getting them paid out to me every month. “I’ve got dinner tonight, babe! My Medium payout just hit!” I’d joke, flaunting the 15 cents that I earned in the last month.

So I made $2.45, but lost $47.55 to earn it. It didn’t initially bother me, as the year previous I had made a similar venture into the world of Squarespace for $150 bucks, but I got cold feet when Medium announced a minimum $10 payout. No more spare change for me. So, I did my research. I learned that to break even on the subscription, I’d need a solid 1000 views (or reads?) at the very least. At the pace I was growing, with this trend line I had… I could see that wouldn’t be anytime soon. So I quit cancelled my monthly subscription.

Wait a Minute…

It’s interesting how during this time, I really didn’t put in a ton of work. Honestly, I half gave up on this whole thing entirely, and didn’t recommit to it until earlier 2025, hence all the growth there. The odd thing to me is that even just publishing one article here or there during the ‘drought’ would make my analytics surge.

You can see in the start of February, my reading line started lift-off. Went several weeks without hitting 0 reads, then it touched down just once in March, but kept climbing after that. Trend lines looking good too, views are at about 9, reads around 4, which shows good growth, +1.5 views, and +3 reads as compared to the previous period. Not much but it’s something, and I knew at some point because of the back catalogue it had the potential for an exponential spurt.

It’s not a ton of growth, since the old membership times, and it’s nowhere near the ‘1000’ I needed to zero out the cost of a membership. But… I resubscribed.

We’re… back?

I’ve only just recently recommitted to being a part-time unpaid creator, but I’ve been diligent about doing just about everything. One of the affordances of games journalism is being able to receive free games to review, if you’re considered Accredited Press. This is most popularly done through Keymailer.co, a game key distribution platform. They have a section that allows you to claim yourself as a games’ journalist. I had over 100 articles, so I’d consider myself as much. I applied.

They rejected my application. Reason cited? Medium is not considered reputable press. But the person reviewing my application left me with a secret. If it was under a different domain, they’d pass my off as accredited

“Alright” I said to myself, “I’m pretty sure I can do that on Medium…” Turns out you can. But you have to get a membership.

Listen, folks, I don’t need to be considered ‘Accredited Press’. I really don’t. I have 3,600 followers on TikTok and 500 on YouTube. Among that following, I don’t have many regulars, and can hardly even get my friends to interact with my stuff. I’m the smallest fish in the sea to anyone who has ever been anyone in games journalism. But… Wouldn’t it be cool, though?

ACCREDITED PRESS OUTLET THENAMEBRAND

Since then, I decided while I’m here, I might as well enable the paywall. After all, a lot of Medium creators say the rumour is, when the paywall is up, articles get boosted throughout the site to other members, and actually improve performance. So that’s exactly what I did… There’s no easy option to do it either. I had to re-enable the paywall on every single individual article. Though that process, I consistently added new articles, more so than ever before, and you know what I’m seeing now that it’s all behind that beautiful wall? Disappointment.

ALL of my metrics have been trending downwards. In these past 60 or so days, I've earned exactly $0.08 cents. My reads have dropped to zero multiple days and are not showing signs of improvement. Views took a hit too. Despite consistenting pushing out articles over the longest period of time since I started this journey, it’s clear that the Medium paywall killed my growth on the platform considerably. In May I had 471 views, 197 reads. June was the first paywall month and gave me 342 views and 125 reads. Now, all of July shows I only had 287 views and 77 reads. I guess we can kiss that ‘paywall boosting’ rumor goodnight, because it is clearly not true for me!

In fact, I think turning on the paywall was a huge mistake. Unless I magically start to have my analytics pop off after this goes live, it’s clear to me that adding articles to the paywall is doing nothing but negatively affecting my overall growth on the platform. Time to manually remove most of them from the paywall then…

To a degree, my meager earnings and performance is totally understandable. I'm not writing the 'gospel' recommended 2 articles per day, and more than that, I think that Game Reviews are a subset of a subset that most people aren't just gonna casually seek to read as an audience. So I knew from the start it would likely be a failing venture. But originally, it wasn’t about gaining an audience right? This is the professional place for my ‘professional work’. If it cost me a membership to be press, it cost me the membership. That’s business. Right? But still… Why is this happening to me?

In my small understanding I know that Google favors Medium and ranks articles from them quite high in search. I have a few pieces that must have hit the search jackpot which naturally brought in a bunch of readers during the no-paywall era. I can see as much in the analytics of a few YouTube videos that I've linked at the top of some articles that some traffic is indeed originating from Medium.

Perhaps with the paywall, they are ranked differently or prevent viewers from converting into followers or readers, or something along those lines. I'm not sure, but that feels like what's going on because that’s the only thing that’s changed. So I’m definitely going to slowly revert it. Perhaps I’ll have a follow up article. I don’t know.

Let’s talk about my Charts

You may have noticed all of my charts are snippets from Google Sheets. I’ve got my own way of tracking every metric I get from Medium, except for claps. Can you guess why?

The metrics in Medium, and the way they display them for users is extremely annoying. They have all this data on me, for every single day I’m on the platform, for every single article and interaction, and what do they do with it? Create the most basic of chart to show me, with a restrictive date range. That is why I made my own sheet. Compare what I’ve shown you so far with the only chart and data Medium generates for you on your “Stats” page.

You can see why I started MY OWN spreadsheet so that I could log, myself, every day, my own metrics. It’s borderline unhelpful. I want to be able to manipulate the data and see it in ways that are actually meaningful.

Here’s a fun fact as a consequence of that: today is my 663rd day on Medium, aka, the 663rd column on my spreadsheet. My charts have customizable ranges, and trend lines that help me determine my growth. They show me all the money I’ve lost. I can attempt to correlate some key metrics together. It's wild that there is no other way to do this on the platform. You know what, if you want a template version of my spreadsheet, let me know, maybe I’ll add it to my Patreon or something.

You might be thinking, “okay. I definitely won’t get a Medium membership in attempts to earn money. It’s not working out for this guy. But I still think it would be fun to read the member-only stories.” Now, I don’t want to continue to be negative, but I've never read an article on there, that was for member's only that has ever made me reflect and think "wow, I'm glad I have my membership so I could read that!" (my articles included). A little subjective, but still.

Get to the Point Already

My objective was to house all of my writing in a semi-professional way to show potential employers, should I ever want to go into games journalism. Medium has helped with my objective. I succeeded with it there. But it seems public sentiment with Medium has trended downtrend (perhaps alongside my metrics), so what if I left? What if I casually looked at other options. So I have been. It’s been very rewarding.

If I had an audience on something like YouTube, and wanted to leverage that outlet, hands down I’d move in a heartbeat to Patreon or Ko-Fi, which would make a ton more sense. They have some exceptionally powerful tools, each of them, to be able to write blog posts, and give you greater ways to give back to readers. My only issue with that, is that it may not look as professional as Medium, and I believe in both cases you cannot bring your own domain name, both of which would go against my original objective. Perhaps if I already had an audience, I could probably circumvent that. In any case, it’s free to start with no membership option to tempt me so I have accounts on both of those platforms ready to go.

Here We Are

I rediscovered Substack alongside Ko-Fi and Patreon, set up my account, and poked around a bit. Everything on Substack makes so much sense. Using my domain is a one time purchase. Every user has their own “website” essentially, to organize different articles or forms of content. It’s clean, modern, CLASSY. I could not believe my eyes. Competitor to Medium? No. Medium is just a cheap copy of Substack. It just makes sense for how I want my writing to exist online. It's extremely customizable, and it feels so good to use as compared to Medium, which is laughably archaic in contrast.

Like, for example, if you’ve used Medium, maybe you’ve been lucky enough to get a reply on one of your stories. Do you have email notifications on for that? Very cool how it puts as much of the reply in the subject line as possible, right? That was definitely thought through for sure...

Conclusion

Honestly, I recommend all humans look into Substack, which seems to have more of a growing culture of community, and the site seems to be getting frequent updates that make it feel professionally modern. I’ve spent several good long hours setting up my website, and it feels even more profssional than how my Medium profile or publication looks. Maybe it’s just personal preference but I’ll let you decide for yourself by providing a handful of screenshots.

Substack has so many customization options it makes my mouth water. The settings run for miles and miles. The metrics tracked on each post? Absolutely beautiful as well, I loved seeing that.

Medium helped me see the vision of online blogging, but after poking around for a few afternoons with their alternatives, I don't think it's my end game. If you want a simple way to blog, Medium will serve you great, but don’t expect to ever get paid from it if you’re not going to dedicate your life to writing oodles of SEO infused articles. And in any case, I wouldn't recommend the membership. No article has ever been worth reading, and the amount of members eyes you need on your stuff before you actually start making a profit is ludicrous. Since that’s the case, why not start on a platform where getting paid will come from people that actually care about what you’re writing? Alas, these are just one man’s thoughts.

I don’t usually write rambly, lengthy articles about this kind of stuff. I should have been writing about games today in all honesty. But, maybe this is helpful to you, and even if a single word was helpful then I’ll have met my objective with it.

If you’re into video games and don’t mind reading reviews about them… Consider subscribing to my Substack. Thanks for reading, and best of luck to you.

After spending 30 hours playing Mario Kart World, I dove back into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, to see how the two compared. Above all else, Deluxe felt easier, confirmed by a large winning streak. If I had to guess, this is likely due to Deluxe featuring fewer racers, which results in far less item spam, making it easier to focus on just the technicalities of driving, and getting ahead of the pack.

In Mario Kart World, with 24 racers and 28 items, I truly believe the game requires more strategy and luck for you to succeed. But that's not painting the whole picture, and in fact it almost feels disingenuous comparing the two of them because of their differences. So, I'd like to propose that we consider World as more of a spin-off to Mario Kart 8, rather than it being a true 'Mario Kart 9' style sequel, due to the minutia of their differences.

Categorizing it as a spin-off, I believe, will remove many initial inhibitions players have against Mario Kart World's changes, and I think that's great because this game is a blast to play. I love the long, interconnected races and high skill ceiling of the new parkour mechanics. The local co-op experience is very enjoyable, and it's also where I've spent most of my time.

Admittedly, the game can be quite difficult at times. Because of this difficulty, I'm starting to get tired of a small handful of tracks where the 3-star trophy eludes me, but overall I do find the game very replayable. This isn't even scratching the surface of what's available to me, as well, as I haven't explored the online multiplayer or other modes beyond Knockout or Grand Prix. In total, I'm expecting to enjoy playing Mario Kart World for at 80 hours over the next 10-years (the potential lifespan of the Switch 2), which will eventually qualify it for my dolla' per hour guarantee.

Adventure mode needs its own paragraph because it is a childhood dream come true. Initially I was not impressed, particularly with its reward structure, but over time it's grown on me. The exploration helps you appreciate the detailed environments that normally you'd just zip by and through without a second thought. The ?-panels and creative P-Switch missions allows you to expand that appreciation, by giving you a fun, short challenge. Some are exceptionally helpful, and show you interesting parkour routes that you can attempt in races. Others will be a one-off experience with unique mechanics you'd never see in a race. The sticker rewards are still pretty weak, but the 'Adventure' in this mode isn't about being rewarded in the traditional sense; it's about having fun. This is easily my favorite part of this game.

Overall, I recommend Mario Kart World, and consider it to be a Name Brand product. It has exceeded my expectations greatly. I consider it to be absolutely worth playing, and even buying at a good price. Mario Kart World may not be entirely comparable to previous entries in the series, especially if you hold them under the microscope, but the new elements here are quite fun. The game is ripe for any kind of expansion or DLC, and I hope we get that. But, I personally wouldn't buy it expecting more content to come. Though, to note, what is here is very enjoyable, worth it on its own, and I do believe it doesn't necessarily need DLC or expansions to enhance it further. It has great potential though to be iterated upon. Ultimately, Mario Kart World is a beautifully crafted Mario Kart 'spin-off' that my kid-self has always wanted, and I recommend it.

EXTRA ARTICLES ABOUT THIS VIDEO

If you’re interested in reading my original, unaltered script for the video, check out this article!

But, if you’re super curious beyond that, and would like to learning about what went on behind the scenes during the production of this video review, become a paid subscriber to my Substack, then check out my Case Study linked below. See you there!

Another 29 days, another video made! The world keeps turning, but at least I have this Mario Kart World video to mark my influence on a niche subset of modern culture. If you’re curious, after my solid 25+ hours of work on the project, the timeline looks like this:

And if you want the juicer details on the minutia of production on this video, you’ll just have to be subscribed, or get subscribed! Otherwise, I’ll see you around! Thanks!

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Check out this review in podcast form by searching for VOID ARCADE anywhere you listen to podcasts!

Metroid DREAD is the perfect fifth and final installment to the METROID series. It pays homage to all the systems and legacies of the originals and improves on them. Its gameplay feels like a natural evolution of those games in the most perfect way, and is a beautiful send-off in every regard. I recommend it.

Its only flaw, is that I believe its potential is held back, because of its commitment to being the perfect sequel. Don’t get me wrong, it is, in its own right, a masterpiece game. However, I feel as all these years have flown by waiting for Metroid DREAD, we’ve seen its own ‘Metroidvania’ genre grow and expand in exceptional ways. We’ve seen absolute masterpieces like Hollow Knight, fun cute interpretations such as Yoku’s Island Express, and highly replayable experiences like Dead Cells, not to mention the many games in between them all. Metroid DREAD, coming after all of these wonderful games inspired by its own source material, is inspired by none of those ideas and the genre niceties invented because of them.

As I played Metroid DREAD, I could see its potential behind the curtain, you can feel the unexplored ideas and quality of life features begging to be realized at every frustration. I understand the narrative arc has been completed so we can’t get a true sequel, but I hope Nintendo commissions a spiritual sequel, built on the bones of Metroid DREAD, with some improvements. A new story line to become immersed in, with the same game engine. I don’t want to sound negative, by all means this is a fantastic game that gets so much right, that I wish it could be tweaked that last 5–10% to be perfect.

The movement is phenomenal, and addicting, only marred by the times you’re slowed down intentionally. Combat is smooth and flows exceptionally well, which is deeply satisfying. Controls on all counts are tight and responsive, which leads to you feeling at fault for every death and mistake, rather than anything unfair the game does.

The pacing and exploration do feel a bit unbalanced. It almost seems as if there was supposed to be a much larger game for you to play, with the frequency at which you’re obtaining new items and abilities. If I had to take a guess, this happens about every 15–30 minutes, and when you do get that shiny new thing, you’re rushed to the next boss or ability (or both), despite how much you try to ensure you’re completely exploring the world.

There is some of the best game design I’ve ever seen in how I somehow, despite exploring everything and making every turn imaginable… I never got lost. Not only that, but I knew exactly where to go at all times, from memory, which is a very rare achievement in this genre. In relation to this, I was happy to read up later that there are portions of the game you can sequence break to get a better clear time, in true OG Metroid fashion. But for this first play through I was very satisfied with the route I took through the game, quite impressed at how it subliminally guided me.

Overall, Metroid DREAD is an incredible game that I recommend to any and all Metroidvania enjoyers out there. However, if you see it on sale, perhaps for around 25 bucks, I think that’s a price that would be a steal for anyone to pick up.