Contrary to Tim’s theory, I played at least 30 hours of Hollow Knight to decide that I do not like it. I played on Switch and thought the movement was good. I even came around on the art direction, which I didn’t expect because it sure does flirt with that whole post-Tim Burton mall goth thing. But one day I stood up, asked myself if this all felt like a fun time or a job, and it definitively felt like a job. Looking back, I think it’s kind of a pompous game. It doesn’t need to be as long as it thinks it needs to be. It doesn’t need to be opaque as it thinks it needs to be. And – the biggest unmentioned sin for me – it offers no god dang reason to force me to have to traverse huge swathes of game that I’ve already successfully completed dozens of times in order to re-attempt a teeny tiny slice of gameplay that I’m grappling with (in the incredibly difficult boss fights). I tolerated that sort of rewardless repetition in the ’80s and ’90s because there was no alternative; it sucked then, it sucks now. Very few games have made that not suck; Hollow Knight is not one of those games.
But anyways like SEO teaches us, lists are fun. I’ve had Shin Megami Tensei IV and Fallout New Vegas good n’ downloaded from ya’ll’s previous mentions, and almost always come out with either new stuff to try or new priorities because stuff I’ve already wanted to try has been egged on. RE: New Vegas, I did try it for a bit and thought I figured out how to get it going with my controller, but it forgets that every time I boot it up and I forget that I can’t be bothered to putz around with a game every time I want to play it because the PC is the Number One “Console” That Sucks Exactly As Much As It Rules
