An Unqualified Game Reviewer

Spelunky has been one of the most bizarre gaming experiences I’ve had for a long time. More accurately, it’s given me one of the most bizarre reactions to a game I’ve had for a long time. Every time I sit down to play the game I inevitably get frustrated to the point of rage quitting. I have yet to quit the game thinking “that was a lot of fun, but I’ve had enough for today”. No, I always quit the game with thoughts of “this game is completely unfair”, or “procedural generation really makes this game feel pointless”, or more commonly “fuck this game”. Those are the feelings I get when actually playing Spelunky , but when I’m not playing it I can’t help but think back on the game with high regard as a well-designed, enjoyably hard, and ultimately fun game. What is wrong with my brain? It’s not the first game that I’ve said “fuck this game” when quitting, only to come back five minutes later and carry on, but I guess that’s the point. A game like Dark Souls I rage quit early on in my...

It’s been a while since I’ve posted one of these, although seeing as nobody reads them it shouldn’t matter. But still, keeping up the practice of writing can’t be a bad thing, so I’m going to talk about several games that I’ve been playing recently. I’m talking about several games in one article or essay or review or I think “blog-post” is probably the most accurate names for these things because they are posts that I’m putting up on a blog. Anyway, the first game I’m going to talk about is The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt . Having finally gotten around to playing this enormous game, I have to admit that I’m struggling to remain interested. Let me clarify that statement: the writing is fantastic, the story is engaging and not overly complex to point of confusion, and the world design is interesting. The gameplay is serviceable, but for something that’s apparently inspired by Dark Souls , it’s one of the bits that I think is slowly letting it down for me. Again, it’s not bad, but there are ...