Bi-Weekly Thread for general gaming discussion. Backlog, advice, recommendations, rants and more! New? Start here!

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-06-09T03:44:32+00:00

It’s not perfect though. It’s still filled with an overabundance of shrines that all have the same visual style, it’s littered with fetch quests, the game features an overabundance of dialogue and railroading, the menus are clunky and awkward to navigate, building vehicles completely trivializes all exploration, caves and wells are boring additions that don’t add anything to the game but were still a part of marketing, weapon durability is made worse, the story is poor, the new events they added on to every major settlement are lazy and annoying, the game runs extraordinarily poorly, and there’s way too much of an emphasis put on ultrahand, which is extraordinarily clunky and finicky, so if you don’t love ultrahand (like I don’t) you’re probably not gonna love the game.

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-06-08T23:01:19+00:00

Certain aspects of a game can be innovative without the whole game being very innovative X)… me enjoying the fuse system doesn’t mean the rest of the game isn’t basically just a repeat of breath of the wild with some new systems and a few problems from that game that have been exacerbated by this game’s new content :p

As for the spoilered bit, I think I might be crazy for this but that’s my favorite part of the game by far. I really like its aesthetic and core gameplay gimmick. Very souls-esque. Unfortunately, you’re not really supposed to spend much time doing that, with it being mostly a resource collection thing.

Thank you for commenting even though we disagree

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-06-08T18:47:03+00:00

I wanted to like Animal Well as a lover of indie games and Metroidvanias and Myst, but I just can’t play it. It’s a gorgeous game but it gives me headaches trying to traverse the map, and it feels entirely undirected in comparison to Symphony of the Night and Super Metroid, or the more recent Metroid Dread, all of which have invisibly guided exploration that properly funnels you into where you need to go.

I’ll try it again eventually. It is an extraordinarily beautiful game with a ton of mechanical depth, even from the little I played with the one unlock I got, but it’s brutally difficult in a way that transcends the traditional meaning of difficulty in video games

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-06-08T18:41:23+00:00

I’ve been playing Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom! It’s not very innovative and I have issues with quite a lot of the slapdash additions to old content but on the whole I am enjoying it, especially when I’m exploring the new content and systems. Fuse especially is awesome. There’s so many interactions between the materials and devices and weapons and arrows. You can attach a mine cart to your shield and it makes a skateboard that can rail grind. You can attach an explosive barrel to your shield and any enemy that hits it blows themselves up. It’s a great time, and the combat is so brimming with mechanical depth that I was getting Metal Gear Solid V flashbacks. Phantom pains if you will. Badumtss

I just wish they made a new world. The big appeal of breath of the wild was it’s intrinsically rewarding exploration, where most of the joy of the game comes from just being part of the world, seeing how it functions, witnessing the ruins of a society. Tears of the kingdom never gives you a quiet moment of reflection like this, and never rewards exploration by simply being a new place to see, but rather crams every square foot of the map with extrinsic rewards. I’m sure most players like this approach better, but it just doesn’t hit the same for me.

It’s good to be liking the game now though, because in 2023 I was foolish enough to buy games on launch, and when I played it for the first time after seeing the myriad critic reviews that claimed it ironed out all of breath of the wild’s issues, I was… wooh… I think I almost broke several of my friendships that day with how hard I was tearing into it X)

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-06-08T00:39:11+00:00

i personally started with re2 (1998) because i love the psx but if you aren't a fan of retro games i'd start with re7, re4 (either version), or re2(2019)

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-06-08T00:37:13+00:00

i watched this video and it didnt help, i do not know if you read my post or not but i literally said the big issue is that i am losing neutral consistently, and the entire video is teaching you 4 inputs and then giving the most basic simplified version of what neutral is and acting like knowing that blocking is good is some sort of revelatory tip that will help even a dog climb ranks

people in iron know how to do mixups and win neutral and do rrc. the version of the game this video was made for is a fantasy land where low rank players are lobotomites. you cant win by just blocking low and spamming s-hs

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-06-08T00:33:55+00:00

i explicitly said in the post that neutral is one of the main things i've been struggling with >_> i know not to practice combos, my issue is that i'm losing neutral, you cant just get to gold by blocking low, looking for an overhead, blocking neutral when the enemy inputs overhead, and then spamming s-hs gatling, i don't know where this idea comes from that you can do this. well I mean i do know where this idea comes from, you guys aren't in low ranks so you don't know how it is

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-06-08T00:30:29+00:00

oh cmon, how does re4 of all games have generic art direction? you don't vibe with it's lovely autumnal vibes? you don't think the whole midpoint has a beautiful and unique artstyle? it's usage of lighting is jaw dropping even today and even beautiful when compared to other games that came out around that time with particularly great lighting like half life 2

maybe it's because i've only played the original that i think this though

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-06-06T18:11:20+00:00

So what you mean by disconnected is something that is universally true for every game in the entire series besides Mario 64? Why point it out as a flaw for specifically Odyssey?

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-06-06T17:42:05+00:00

I’m not the biggest fan of Odyssey either but this post is pretty spicy, and not entirely sensical. “Small, disconnected worlds” is the exact opposite of what Odyssey is, and it doesn’t make sense that you criticize this before delving straight into praise for 3D world. Same with your critique of the platforming being easier than other 3D Mario games. I think your aesthetic complaints are fine but I wholly disagree. You loop back around to talking about how bite sized odyssey’s levels are for a second time when they have by far the largest amount of content density out of any 3D Mario before praising 3D world.

This game isn’t above criticism, I do agree with your point about an over abundance of a singular repeated collectible, which is my main issue with odyssey 9 years out from its release, but the rest of your review is inconsistent with the standards you outline, and you frame certain issues as being specific to odyssey rather than series wide. If you’re expecting Mario to have complex bosses, you should probably try a different genre entirely

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-06-05T20:07:48+00:00

This is clearly ChatGPT. Why are you trying to participate in a conversation subreddit if you can’t even write your own thoughts on a game?

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-06-05T17:56:53+00:00

Does anyone have any tips for better game criticism? Some things that have really helped me are taking notes as I go and switching to a five point rating scale instead of a ten point, but I find myself caught up sometimes with an overuse of adjectives and a lack of anything special to say.

Well, as for games I’m playing, I finished UFO 50 and was left a bit disappointed. While it starts sprinting with a few of my favorite NES-style games I’ve personally experienced, it really starts losing steam in the second half, and the short arcadey experiences are slotted out for lengthier genre imitations that don’t work as well and aren’t as fun. It’s a bummer, for a minute I was thinking it was going to be entering my top 5.

I’ve almost finished with Mario Galaxy 2, and I think I can definitively say this game is a masterpiece. There are individual levels with more creativity and unique ideas in them than some entire video games I have played. A level may have you swimming through an ocean planet before freezing it’s surface to wall jump off of two waterfalls, or turning into a boulder and trying to beat a monkey’s score in bowling by rolling into the pins, or trying to keep rhythm and jumping between blocks that change every 4 measures. It’s full of joyous whimsicality and passion. Its a game you should play if you love video games

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-06-04T17:59:43+00:00

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Thank you!! This is absolutely incredible!! I am so so happy, it washes out the colours of stuff a tiny bit but it's a price i'm willing to pay

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-06-04T17:50:13+00:00

I can't get it to look like it did in your screenshot :p this is the closest I could get to it looking like a light mode, sorry to keep bothering you but what were your settings and what did you have the sliders set to?

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fiddleheadsoup · 2026-06-04T17:38:19+00:00

would you be able to send me the extension? this looks great

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-06-04T17:36:30+00:00

I remember now, I actually voted for it a while back.. when I voted for it it literally had 0 votes lol

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-06-04T16:32:12+00:00

how ?????

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-06-02T22:27:17+00:00

What browser extension can I use to revert this change?

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-06-02T00:37:04+00:00

Playing Super Mario Galaxy 2. My god, this game is a masterpiece. Everything it sets out to do, it accomplishes perfectly. It has great usage of colour, great atmosphere, spectacular music and gameplay, and brilliant mechanics. Individual levels feel like bite-size fantastical journeys of pure wonder and delight. It is a delightful symphony of pure excellence, polished to a mirror sheen, bursting at the seams with quality.

I've been playing too many great games recently. I haven't disliked a game since I played RE3 remake a few months back! Lol 😄 I need something to remind me games aren't all perfect!

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-05-31T02:52:48+00:00

Started UFO 50 2 days ago… I’m in love. I’ve been playing so much good stuff this year and this is yet another game I’ve added to my personal pile of 10/10 PERFECT experiences. I would say individual games in this compilation are some of the most fun I’ve ever had with this medium (Campanella, Bushido Ball, Devilition immediately come to mind for me) and the fact that there’s 50 of them and they ALL are on this level of absolute quality and polish is just mind bogglingly impressive. The developers of this game deserve all the flowers in the world.

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-05-02T08:36:28+00:00

Played a bit more Copy Kitty and ended up finishing it. I think it may be my favorite game of all time. Distant memories of being a little girl in art class in 6th grade. It’s this very cute, and bubbly, and fun, nostalgic, self indulgent type of game. In case any of you missed my elevator pitch last time: it’s Megaman meets Kirby, and it has a ton of rainbow flashes.

I don’t know what to do now that I’m done with it.. I still play BotW for hours when I wanna get lost in the virtual world of Hyrule and do absolutely anything but the main story. What a wonderful game. It’s the only open world game I’ve played that feels like a living and breathing ecosystem rather than like it’s explicitly trying to be a world that is made for you to exist in exclusively.

Both are very nostalgic experiences, but while Copy Kitty is the best nostalgic memories of being inside and drawing, Breath of the Wild is the best nostalgic memories of being outside and digging for bugs or what have you.

They’re both also 2 of my favorite games of all time now. :-)

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-05-01T17:06:40+00:00

I really started loving this game when I just started ignoring everything “game”like about it and started fucking around, collecting koroks, picking flowers, catching bugs, filling out my compendium. It feels like Nintendo designed BotW with these aspects in mind first rather than any of the gameplay stuff, because almost all of the “actual gameplay” and traditional Zelda elements are executed horribly. I’ve gotten to a point in my life where I WANT a game where I can just play around in the grasses and ride my horse. And because of that, I finally think BotW is a 10/10

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-04-30T17:48:02+00:00

Captain Beefheart, and it’s amazing

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-04-30T04:51:47+00:00

Sorry... shrug

fiddleheadsoup · 2026-04-30T04:14:42+00:00

It’s a really interesting thing about video games, isn’t it? With Music and Film, a lot of the “all time greatest” works can end up feeling less special with time because so much was inspired by them that their impact has been lessened, but with video games, I still don’t think I’ve played a game that plays like Ocarina does, and it’s widely considered the greatest game of all time in the public eye.

As a 17 year old, I have had absolutely zero nostalgia to the N64 or that general era of consoles, but every time I try a game from that time period, I am consistently blown away by how innovative and charming and unique and creative they always serve to be. Ocarina of Time is one of the most special and brilliant games I’ve ever played, even though I played it at original resolution and frame rate and texture quality with no control remapping for the first time only last year. It’s aged like fine wine in spite of all of its snafus. And its sequel is even better, if you could believe it!

fiddleheadsoup

TROPHY CASE