Darren Nakamura
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Writing For
Destructoid Latest Reviews
Like the main character, I’m of two minds about it. Thinking back on it there were pieces I really enjoyed. But it was also the kind of game I couldn’t play for more than a half hour at a time. Even when I was enjoying it, I could feel it overstaying its welcome. It’s decent in short bursts, but marathoning it would just expose its warts even further.
Even though Golf Story isn’t quite what I expected it would be, it is an absolute delight. It’s more than just a golf game with RPG mechanics, but it’s not quite a full RPG with golf mechanics either. It lies in a sweet spot in the middle, where people who care about one but not the other can still get into it.
Everything else is just fine. It’s a decent adventure with varied combat, cool boss battles, and semi-interesting locales. I’m going to keep at it until I’ve obtained everything there is to obtain, but even then I know I won’t have seen everything there is to see. Some of the neatest stuff possible isn’t scripted in by the designers, it’s waiting to be imagined and created by an aspiring magician.
I’ve spent a few work nights staying up way too late playing, just to see what it would throw at me next. With the replayability built into each mission, I can imagine a few more of those nights on the horizon.
That’s World of Final Fantasy in a nutshell. For those invested in the series up to this point, it’s so worth playing. It’ll mean a lot to the fans to go on an adventure, fight, and grow with the monsters that were only ever enemies in the past. Its weak story detracts from the experience a little, but the power of well-done nostalgia farming overshadows it easily.
I’m not chomping at the bit to keep playing, but I am curious to delve deeper. Different combinations of explorers can beget different tactics both in and out of battle. That thought alone is enough to keep me from uninstalling it.
On the surface, The Beginner’s Guide is a game about game design and critical analysis. Digging deeper, it provides a window into the mind of a man I might not have fully understood otherwise. It does all of this in a way only a video game could. More than anything else, it has caused me a lot of introspection, a feat few games ever achieve.
So what we have in all is a beautiful platformer with ups and downs (literally and figuratively), a mundane narrative with a good message, and some real difficulty toward the end. The whole game probably only takes about an hour or two to finish (with full game speedruns clocking in at about 45 minutes.
Still, when I think about I am Bread as a whole, I’m reluctant to say it’s good. It’s a silly idea and it seems like developer Bossa Studios had a lot of fun building all of the different modes, but I wish I were having that much fun playing it.
Finding the right groove and reaching a hypnotic state, that’s 0rbitalis at its best. Fire a shot, have it smash into an asteroid. Fire another, have it slingshot off into deep space. Fire another, then contemplate the nature of the universe as it bends and loops around for minutes at a time, leaving behind a trail of where it has been.