i played every bioshock game several years ago after they were already out. To be honest they are amazing games, my favorite series so far. I never even knew people where disappointed when infinite came out or that they where promised other things. The story is so neat and well done. i've been in the hype side for so many other games titles, seeing every trailer and keeping up with the news to just be dissapointed when they came out. This keeps me wondering if i would have hated nfinite too. Guess my lesson is to just play the games when they come out and not reading about them before that.

Hellblade 2 is AAA in a nutshell. All the money, technology, and corporate backing in the world and all you can come up with is an overpriced bastardization of what creativity came before. It reminds me of a quote I too shall now bastardize: Art comes from limitations. Tell an artist what they can't do and they'll show you what they CAN do. But give them all the freedom to do whatever they please, and they will come up with nothing.

The way you describe the game reminds me of The Order: 1886, graphically and technically impressive, but extremely lacking in actual gameplay.

Ahti’s friends are the Old Gods Of Asgard

Great video dude! Had to leave this comment cause I just finished Arkham shadow and need to tell you it’s worth your time. A review on this game is 100% a must

Yeah im definitely gonna watch this whole video. The "Snow White/Snow Blanc/Snow Black" bit has me cracking up. I love her already lol

That was a much longer list at the end than I was expecting.

Love the “Won’t Say I’m in Love” versions. They seemed to fit right in. Nice touch!

A 5 hour game isn’t worth $50.00 They deserve to go out of business.

8:52 I love it when Astro says “Thank you !”

I asked in the hbomberguy discord if there was a BioShock critique series, analyzing the stories of all three games. And these were stellar and fair analyses of them. I never played Burial At Sea: I got the Infinite game on release, and played the absolute hell out of it. Thank you for the retrospective.❤❤❤

Gabrage Politics, but you maoe good game critiques.

I only recently discovered your channel and, while I have enjoyed all of the videos I have watched to date, this one is going to stay with me for a long while. Phenomenal work. Thanks so much for sharing and hope all is well on your end.

I've never known just exactly how much of a game the first game was. All the marketing told me was that its got pretty cutscenes. That, and a main character with GIANT TEEETH. I've developed a big teeth phobia ever since seeing the trailers for the first time.

I don't particularly like Alan Wake 2, but I still watched all 5 hours because this video is an absolute masterpiece and you should be VERY proud of it. The level of creativity and effort is unlike anything I've seen in this space - the skits and supplementary material like the storybook at the end are fantastic ideas and you did a great job. Your videos only get better my man you consistently prove you're the king of game breakdowns.

harsh, but fair

Play Bioshock Infinite, completely ignore Burial at Sea. Got it!

Personally I have to disagree on the ‘Gotham Shitty’ take. Despite the rest of this game’s flaws I think it’s Gotham is genuinely beautiful and unlike in any of the Arkham games it feels like you’re in a city with a variety of areas.

This beautiful game with its disney characters and Ghibli world would be perfect to play for a small child... that is until they meet a boss. What were they thinking making a chillax game with souls combat??

A baby humanus nice! Congrats!

Awesome work, Monty. Thank you. I really enjoyed the video.

Random comment, but the Batman Inc. suit from City is my favorite (even compared to the Knight version)

I just finished playing it. For me, the biggest flaw was that the story wasn't as engaged with mythology--and because of that, it had trouble engaging Senua's mental reality. Her psychosis came across as "out of touch with reality" just like many other games and media, while Hellblade 1 really felt like it understood why people who experience psychosis make sense with the symbols of the world they know. E.g. Schizophrenics in happier cultures tend to hear cheery voices versus oppressive cultures where people experience voices as antagonistic. By dimissing Senua's culture in Hellblade 2, as a player, it was hard to FEEL her own struggles mentally. I felt like I was playing two games, one with Senua making sense of what she learned in Hellblade 1 (which sucks for people that DIDN'T play the first game--which means a lot of people will not understand her "darkness" like I did and will find it kind of empty storytelling). The second game was the new characters and Senua becoming their leader, but even that feels a little empty. I don't understand their reality much at all, and I find it hard to understand why they follow Senua. All of it feels impersonal and it makes me wonder if Microsoft sacrficed parts of the game that had deeper exploration of Senua's mental anguish. The first game had longer parts for Senua to come to one small piece that made her feel better, but she still struggled until the very end of the game. At the end she feels better, but it's hard to say if she will actually traverse the world better--because the point is that she finished her quest, in a very real way, fate pushed her and she accepted the call--even if she was imperfect. And that's what made me love her as a character. In the second game I'm not sure what her character is supposed to be about, it feels very fragmented all around.

Monty obviously didn't read the Dark Knight Returns and just skimmed through it. Batman *did* indeed shoot a gang member dead in the Dark Knight Returns. This is Epic Fail on multiple levels. You didn't even read the Dark Knight Returns, the greatest written work on Batman of all time, yet you pose as some expert on Batman. What makes him look even more foolish is he went out of his way to faceplant and fail. The video is supposed to be on the Arkham video games, then you make a hard left to critique Zach Snyder's Batman V Superman, and get it totally wrong. Any *real* Batman fan owns all Frank Miller's Dark Knight books. Exposed. You're trying to defame Zach Snyder because you're some zesty cat owner. In the Dark Knight Returns, a female member of the Mutant gang was holding a baby at gunpoint. She says " believe me, I'll k*** her, believe me" . Batman shoots her dead, cradles the baby and says " I believe you". Miller's version of Batman was a *realistic* portrayal, and the scene illustrated he *would* kill if he had no choice.

So tired of these Naughty Dog style walking sims where you get an encounter and than 30 minutes of pretty visuals with ZERO engagement and ham-fisted story telling. It's especially irksome because I would agree that not all games have to be fun. Indeed, I prefer games that emphasize story and character development over many hours of content or complicated game mechanics. But because this exact genre of "combat/puzzle arena and exposition hallway" is so prevalent, all of my friends assume this is what I'm talking about.

2:38:07 it would have been cool if Brainiac at least cloned the SS. Might have been cool to add them in as enemies for the live service part.

I have Game Pass and when Hellblade 2 released I played Hellblade 1

Waited to watch this until I had played through alan wake myself, and I have to say I really loved the episodic chapters. I treated the game like a tv show, after (almost) every episode I would take a 1-2 day break to breathe everything in. And when I jumped back in, it was phenomenal seeing how the buildup I allowed myself to feel payed off.

The problem is that they made the game woke and turned mental illness into a super power

I know it's a snowball's chance in hell, though what I wouldn't give for monty to do the Mass Effect trilogy. I love this channel and I genuinely want him to analyze my favorite series ever but I know it's probably not going to happen. Please keep making videos, they always make my days better!

Senua's bougalou

It's like Ninja has a version of Robert Zemeckis Disorder. Like how RZ got so absorbed in "hyper-real" animation his storytelling & directing has totally suffered & everything he works on now feels like a weird tech demo.

This had to be one of the biggest gaming disappointments of 2024. I absolutely adored the first game & it's surreal, tense, & tragic story, but it's sequel make the same mistakes that all of the over-ambitious & undercooked sequels that came before it. The old adage of 'don't fix what isn't broken' is acutely applicable for Hellblade 2. I'm sad to think that this could be the last we get to see of Senua, because she is a truly compelling character that deserves a better story than what she got in H2.

After being a fan of Hollow Knight for around a year, this was the video that convinced me to actually play it, even though I SUUUUUUUUUCK at platformers. And I'm pleased to announce, that after MONTHS of playtime, I have finally beaten... the False Knight. And that's it so far.

worst remake ever. pixelart is not the core of systemshock.

1:48:41 Is it me or does Shawn Ashmore deliver all of his Jack lines in a rush like he's late for an appointment?

"It is also not recommended you listen to this while you try to fall asleep" How DARE you

The impression I got from the Lore Dump of this is that Paul, Beth and Hatch are the only interesting characters.

From what I recall, during the first game's production, they briefly incorporated Senua's symptoms as a gameplay mechanic in some significant way. They quickly decided against that, specifically because of the implicit narrative it would create for the player (e.g., "you should trust the voices"). It's disappointing that this game doesn't seem to have taken that same level of care with the narrative.

@49:40 RE the orbs and their connection to her psychosis: I saw in one of the first orb puzzles outside what seemed to be a flock of spiralling birds around where an orb was, and when I got closer the orb appeared. It made me think then that the orbs are to do with living patterns in the environment. But they also appear underground, so I'm not sure.

I absolutely hated the combat, And it kind of ruined the game for me. I was frequently frustrated and often furious while wrestling with the terrible combat. The way it locks you on a rail with enemies, constantly ambushes the player in scripted events, and takes away the player's agency in catastrophic ways to the gameplay. The dodge and especially the parry are completely broken, or they're terribly designed. But it's impossible to tell with this game, because it takes so much agency away from the player even when it's supposedly allowing the player agency. Thus, you don't know whether you ACTUALLY failed, or the game has simply scripted it. AND even IF success and failure ISN'T scripted, the game doesn't give remotely enough feedback so that the player knows the reason why. And the sad thing is, this was all done on purpose. I have no faith anymore that game developers pay attention to any feedback like this.

4:25:49 I think i cracked it. What if Alan isn't rewriting Reality, but creating new Realities?

One theory I've seen nobody considering, is that Tom Zane is Alan's abusive Father.

4:24:18 So Alan Wake it's like Jojo, different generation from the same family, and Tom Zane is his father?

3:06:48 My theory as to why Odin changes the eye from young to old, is that when he was young it was just an aesthetic thing, and he had both eyes, but after he lost the right eye, he had to flip the eyepatch, and that's when he got the power to see through the story.

56:15 I remember walking through this section and one of the voices rewarded senua for her good deeds by making her see the world as super colourful and beautiful music began playing in the background 😊I was like wow this is nice and it never happened again

To me, this game felt like a tech demo. And considering how everything else is compromised other than the graphics, it makes me think vast majority of the development time was spent of troubleshooting and messing and tweaking around with the technical side of the game, to the point they ran out of time to really do anything artistic with the tech

My man out here slaying another long-form video essay. Great work and thank you!