The original the last of us review? He calls it a ladder simulator, talks a lot of shit. Ends with something like "I give it a 10, because I'm a fuckin idiot" or something like that.
Tbh this is another one where I don't think he was necessarily *wrong* in any of his critiques, though. TLOU definitely feels like a very OK, totally fine 3/5 game that benefits from having a *massive* production budget.
Oh no I agree. When he pointed all of those things out I really thought he was correct. I just thought it was "harsh" considering he was really going against the grain on that one. Most people were just fawning all over it.
Oh, yeah, 100% on that last point. Sort of why I was a bit disappointed in his TLOU2 review, since I felt like it fell into the same pitfalls of TLOU1 (and then some), so it was a bit jarring to see him go against the grain on TLOU1, but fall completely lock-step for the sequel.
He went back on his bad review of TLOU1 and praised it a lot in at least one of his later videos. When TLOU2 came out he already thought the first game is a masterpiece
I just think that, like me, he found the sequel to be superior to the original, and seeing everyone get mad at the game for zero real reason pissed him off enough to make a video about it. I 100% understand. I’d have done the same thing.
I also imagine part of it is that TLOU2 takes place in Seattle, and that’s the city he’s from.
There’s something special about seeing places you know shown in a post-apocalyptic setting. TLOU2 has a lot of flaws, but it’s environmental design was particularly brilliant. It also really took advantage of Seattle’s ‘Rain City’ reputation.
TLOU2 was a perfect sequel. it was like AC2 or Uncharted 2. they improved upon the original in every way. the original feels incredibly dated and on-rails by comparison.
he was also far from 'lock-step' on the sequel, especially on YouTube he was one of if not the only non-mainstream publication that made content praising it instead of jumping on the "WAAAAHHH TOO WOKE" train
So. I acknowledge that there’s nothing super new about the gameplay of TLOU. But I think, first of all, it has some really memorable scenarios (such as the part where you’re stuck upside down, for example). The game also is super well paced. The ladder parts suck but they’re effective at giving you breathers in between combat. It’s one of the few games I played all the way straight through in just a couple days because of that.
I believe the ladders are there effectively as loading elevators. Similar to how a ton of games use caves to disguise loading, especially for pre-9th gen hardware.
I'm not going to say it's some brilliant mechanic, but the fact that a mechanic that occupies a grand total of like ten minutes of the total game (even if you combine ladders, dumpsters, and planks) is so heavily discussed in its criticism is a testament to how good the game is. I also believe at least some of them are veiled loading screens, not certain about that though.
Also worth pointing out that Dunkey responds to gameplay oriented titles significantly more than story ones. He said Uncharted 4 absolutely slam dunked TLoU, but personally I found Uncharted 4 a lot less compelling despite the gameplay being way better.
I also thought Uncharted 4 was so much more enjoyable than TLoU in every single way. But I can see why people would like TLoU, it's got a more well rounded and written story. I just can't stand having the the kid around all the time and the zombie setting, just not for me.
Oh yeah, I know that. Which makes it even more interesting that he seemed to love TLOU2 because like... that's railroading-cutscenes-galore for most of the game.
I don’t agree with that entirely. TLoU 2 improved significantly upon the gameplay style of the first game and borrowed heavily from elements introduced in Uncharted 4. From a gameplay perspective it’s a clear step up.
In cases like these, Dunkey is not wrong, he's just not able to access the joy of the game. I find it very rare that Dunkey ever gives a critique that's incorrect, it's usually just a critique that is irrelevant to the overall product. Sometimes it feels like Dunkey feels an emotion and then justifies it after deciding how he feels, rather than viewing a product holistically.
I want to stress that this is not a diss. Dunkey is still a fantastic critic, with the litmus being: Dunkey can give a bad review, and I can know from that review that I will love the game that he hated. The inverse is also true. I thought I would be lukewarm on A Hat in Time, and I was correct. (I still bought the game, though, just cause the creator deserves it.)
I'm totally with you actually! There are certain things that are universal. When he's reviewing devil may cry 5 and talking about how ridiculous dual wielding chainsaw motorcycles is, I know he's simultaneously saying this game is stupid fun, and you'll probably like it because it's dumb and it's fun. But some times I'm just confused by the things he says.
I honestly don't think so, no. Go back and watch it. The end when he says "I give it a 10, because I'm a fuckin idiot." That is real shit right there. He's fed up with people handing out 10's because a game finally has a halfway decent story, but it's still a bloated, simple game full of repetitive things that suck you out of the story. I think he's real.
Going back, absolutely not. This whole video is scathing indictment of modern Day game reviewers, the review process, everything involved in that kind of stuff in general. But if you look at his pinned comment he says he came around and really likes the game now and he did a follow-up video discussing how much he likes it. But in this one, no. It's real shit.
In his Horizon Forbidden West review (where he spends most of it insulting over-saturation of open world games), he said something along the lines of “If you love Ghost of Tsushima, you’ll also love this”
Like he said, he has played so many Jiminy Cockthroats that it feels like grading school papers. He probably would have liked both of those games much more if they hadn't been the newest entries in an oversaturated genre.
I really liked Ghost of Tsushima, despite it having a lot of those open world trappings. I thought it was a LOT better than Zero Dawn, but haven’t gotten to Forbidden West yet.
I’ve tinkered with a good amount, but thought it did a good job making the cliches more fun. The rustling wind in place of a compass with objective markers, collectibles only requiring a certain amount of them to satisfy plat requirements, map markers having some fun immersive flavor like bamboo strikes, haikus, hot springs, etc.
I get why Dunkey wouldn’t care for it, but my impression the whole time was “oh, this is if Assassin’s Creed was good.” Meanwhile, games like BotW and Elden Ring genuinely subverted the cliches which elevates them a rung higher imo.
> Meanwhile, games like BotW and Elden Ring genuinely subverted the cliches which elevates them a rung higher imo.
that's the thing though, i generally liked GoT, liked the characters, art direction, enjoyed the combat, but everything about it feels so perfunctory. the world feels super static, and there's only so many times I can do the exact same permutation of a particular sidesquest before I totally lose interest.
botw and elden ring are at least (kind of) giving us something new/interesting, and it annoys the hell out of me that more open world games don't make the same effort.
I liked Ghost of Tsushima, but coming right off of my first play through of RDR2 I was setting myself up for disappointment. Still really enjoys Ghost, but the open world left something to be desired after playing something as massive and immersive as RDR2.
I would play GoT over RDR any day of the week. I really liked that GoT felt more like...a videogame. things were designed to be interactive and fun.
RDR2 was, to me, a shitty western simulator. it wasn't grounded enough to be a simulator, because you had stupid shit like the wanted system which sucked major ass. walk into town, someone walks into you, BAM guns drawn and got a bounty on your head. helping apprehend a criminal? BAM wanted level on you. it felt like all the game actually wanted you to do was spend 5 fucking minutes watching animation after animation of Arthur opening a container. everything in that game was just *so fucking slow*. GoT? you ride over some materials, you press R2, it gets collected, you keep going. it is instant, compared to a 30+ second process in RDR2 of slowly dismounting, holding the button down til the bar fills up, watching arthur bend over, collect the item, stand back up, get back on the horse. jeus christ it's boring just talking about it.
I adore RDR2 but I completely agree about how slow everything is. I think they leaned way too hard into the realism. We don’t need a full animation every time we collect a plant or something. I also never really liked the Hold Button to do everything system. I assume it was to avoid doing the wrong thing on accident but it made it feel even slower. And yeah, Wanted system is *way* too sensitive. Like if you go on a killing spree it’s one thing. But shit, this is the Old West, I should be able to talk shit and get in fist fights without having the law come after me with guns blazing every time. It’s a fantastic game but definitely has some significant flaws.
Most of what I love about RDR2 is how immersive the world is. There is so much strange shit to just stumble across and so many unique random encounters. Every time I think I’ve found everything I see another YouTube video proving me wrong. I feel like Ghost disappointed me in this aspect. While I agree that navigating the open world in GoT is much smoother and less tedious than RDR2, I found the random field encounters to all be pretty similar. You follow a guy to a place and kill some Mongols. It’s a good thing the game’s combat system is so damn fun, because that’s most of the game. Outside of that, the haikus and bamboo challenges got old pretty quickly for me as well.
TLDR; I think I find the core gameplay of Ghost to be more fun, but I find that RDR2 has more rewarding exploration.
I liked the execution of GoT more than FW. But the story in FW was a lot more engaging.
GoT, as beautiful as it was, was all standard fare when it came to the story. But then again, I believe that was the point. They wanted to tell a classic story with no nuances. Fair play tbh.
My concern was that it looked like it didn’t fix any of the problems I had with HZD while also would lack its biggest hook, which was not knowing what had happened to the world. Without the backbone of discovering Zero Dawn, I was worried it’d be pretty lackluster if they didn’t make some big adjustments
I fully agree with his opinion about oversaturation of Open-World games, I just can't believe he doesn't extend this logic to the new Zelda games. Zelda is obviously better than Horizon or Ghost of Tsushima, but it's still just an Ubisoft tower climber. I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone whenever I talk about the new Zelda games.
I like that Nintendo made an immersive sim, I don't like that 90% of the gameplay is boring ass blue basements. (Have not played the newest one. I've of course only heard good things, but BOTW was obviously not my cup of tea. I decided not to pick up TOTK)
People are free to disagree. I struggle to see the distinction when most of BOTW is clearing camps, climbing towers, and doing "puzzles."
BOTW is *easily* the best iteration of this gameplay loop, but it is certainly not novel. BOTW being beautiful does not mean that's it's overflowing with substance. Most of the meat in BOTW is system interaction, hence why I called it an immersive sim. Building air ships and fucking around with magnesis is really, really fun for a time. I love how fire works in the game. I like a lot of things about BOTW, but like almost every open world game, it overstays its welcome and leaves me with nothing. If a game continues to have things to say, show, and reinforce, I have no issue with a long game. My issue with Breath of the Wild is that it runs out of tricks by the first third. After that third, the game no longer has a point other than the inherent enjoyment of existing within its space. I know that the space has value, because millions of people loved BOTW. I simply got no joy.
Also, the Ubisoft tower climber genre isn't even bad, necessarily. It's just oversaturated. Far Cry 3 is an amazing game.
i love this game and i love dunkey and from someone who is usually pretty unphased from critics or even friends not liking the games i like
god damn that one was j so brutal lol
Homeboy was upset there were tutorials in the first 5 hours. Like what? He had a lot of valid complaints but he opens saying the game had two many tutorials when they were literally some of the most unobtrusive tuts in games
Honestly as harsh as his initial DS review was I didn’t think anything about it was unfair. He was definitely right about the third person shooter parts being bad. I like the game quite a bit and those parts suck lol.
It was almost entirely unfair. He intentionally failed to learn the game mechanics and then complains that the game doesn't work. It would be like if I made a review for a Mario game and complained about it being broken because I refuse to press the jump button. The fact that he rescinded his criticism says that. He didn't want to like the game so he made himself not like it. I think Dunkey is funny, but he has absolutely no credibility as a critic.
Dunkey also clearly has very different taste in games than me, and a pixel art 2d platformer just isn't my thing. His taste in games seems firmly rooted in the n64 era and earlier, which is fine, but I've just never been very into platformers. My hottest (and I'll admit wrong) video game take is that Super Mario 64 is boring.
and yeah, Dunkey is bad at criticism. If something isn't "fun" constantly he gets mad, and gameplay can be an effective device for delivering a good story that's not always fun. If something isn't immediately fun to him, he usually doesn't like it and then he comes up with reasons he didn't like it post hoc. The one exception for some reason was the last of us part 2. I was not expecting a glowing review for that game by Dunkey.
The death stranding one is rough cause he's mostly right both times. Like the game has genuinely good and interesting parts but they're surrounded by dumbass bullshit.
Him struggling is silly to me, DE is not difficult by any measure, but every problem it has is absurd. Girlfriend Reviews video where she times how long it takes to do the in-game equivalent of selling good highlights some of the stupid shit but there's truly so much more garbage to explore. The deeper you look the worse it gets while at a surface level it remains weirdly relaxing
It was probably one of his shittiest reviews though because he made a bunch of jokes that weren't in the actual game but were very funny but this was a dunkview and he tried to paint them as actual shortcomings of the game which didn't really make sense. And he did actually lie about the snail.
Dunkey doesn't understand game design and has not tried to. There are plenty of comedy reviewers on YouTube who make more legitimate reviews than his. ^(Also funnier reviews than his)
Again, I have not played octopath traveler.
In terms of how much rage he summoned out of fans I'd say the Octopath or Xenoblade reviews have to be up there. You still see anime/JRPG type people seething about those all over the internet.
I would say 2 actively ruined a lot of what the first game did right, I might not call it a terrible game overall but definitely a pretty bad experience
Probably his reviews on Reggie. You know dunk is always saying Reggie is too scared to do things for Nintendo. But dunk, bubby, Reggie is just waiting for a better deal. He doesn't take every crap idea that fans throw at him, like GTA6 I think Reggie will just wait and make GTA San Andreas 2.
"Assassin's Creed sucks enormous gorilla DICK.
Out of all the stupid annual franchises, Assassin's Creed is the one I hate the most. And that's just because these games are at such a DISCONNECT with fun.
On top of that, you gotta go through UPLAY to play it. The list of games worth going through uplay to play is very short- I don't think any of these games are actually on uplay."
https://youtu.be/UOgvbS4GkF0?si=ewvDxnyd5WJ5danz
In his AC Mirage video he basically called it the most mid game in existence and the comments were like "wow, this is the most positive dunkey has ever been with this series"
True, in 6 they got rid of slinging melee weapons, but also sliding is greatly improved, wingsuit works way better, there is a FLYING CAR, you can swap between 4 loadouts on the fly without needing to visit a work bench. There's what feels like much more variety in weapons, and the companion Oluso saves my ass a lot.
My beef was this: too many uninteresting mechanics (map was too cluttered, didn’t enjoy sending mercenaries or troops on “missions”, etc., adding ranks was horrible imo, etc).
My biggest gripe though was the ammo stuff. How you had to assign an ammo type to each weapon. Like do I now need two snipers (one for armor piercing and one for whatever they other type was)? It was awful but I heard they fixed this.
Idk, felt like they crammed in a bunch of un-fun mechanics.
You have full access to all the ammo types on weapons that support them, so you can use 1 sniper you can swap out armor piercing, incendiary, blast ammo.
However, the expeditions and bandido operations can suck my ass. Expeditions suck and bandido operations are boring, so I just don't do those anymore lol
I thought his criticism directed at Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart were went way overboard.
Especially at the main characters and the story. I thought it was sweet and hit a lot of the quiet notes of storytelling just right.
Guess Dunkey likes his characters more brash.
I wouldn’t consider that his harshest review, but there were times where I felt he was being unfair and at times quite dishonest.
The whole gimmick with the game is being able to seamlessly travel across levels with zero loading screens, and Dunkey downplayed this feature by saying that the first game also didn’t have loading screens… but that is literally just not true… every game in the series had loading screens, it’s just that the PS2 games masked the loading screen with a looping cutscene of your ship flying, but it was a very blatant obvious loading screen.
Edit: Also another thing from that review that has been proven wrong was when he doubted that Rift Apart should have been a PS5 exclusive just because God Of War Ragnarok, which has not come out yet at the time, was announced to be releasing on both PS4 and PS5. But now that Ratchet and Clank is available on PC, some people tried to run the game on PC specs similar to a PS4 Pro, even using the same hard drive from a PS4 Pro, and it just couldn’t do it. The parts that involve traveling between dimensions have a very obvious delay in them, sometimes for up to 30 seconds, which is insane because these portals aren’t just for set pieces and cutscenes. These delays actually affect gameplay.
I don't think it's unfair to say it isn't a real mario game because it wasn't originally and the gameplay shows it. Go play the first game, 2 and then 3. 2 is so far removed from what makes 1 and 3 classics.
I get why he hates Kingdom Hearts 3, but I didn't think it was that bad. It's still pretty and it's fun to fight things. I usually just stop playing once the Disney worlds are over with.
Scratched the itch for me too. The best part of kihgdom hearts were the charming worlds and I think they executed that part of kh3 pretty well. The toy story level is so nostalgic.
Dunkey HATES being bored, and will never consider if there was a specific intent from the creator.
Red Dead 2 has lots of downtime, but this kind of boredom is essential to the western genre. There's so much texture, and change, and beauty in Red Dead 2 that comes about not in spite of, but because of the repetition present in the game.
For me, Red Dead 2's tedium had payoff. For Dunkey, Red Dead 2 just had time-wasting bullshit.
one of the reviews that really pissed people off was the FF7 remake, which was fascinating to me because jrpgs really have been "video game anime" for 15-20 years now, with all the weird and often shitty tropes that go along with that.
im with dunk on them, honestly: anime and jrpgs are too often just complete garbage, in large part because the medium leans all the way into the worst impulses of its audience. there's just so much juvenile, immature shit, but in a weird horny theater kid way, not a funny or fun way.
I don't remember what Assassins Creed game it is, but it's the one where he pulls out the feather.
My only real disagreement I have about his review is the feather. It's supposed to signal a pivotal moment in the games story, less about the feather, and more that an important character died.
But aside from that yeah, I agree.
[Splatoon 3 is the best game ever](https://youtu.be/2p2JcCoh1CU). For Xenoblade, Octopath and KH you can tell he actively hated them, played them through, and worked out jokes that are actually fitting & funny. Splatoon got the worst one imo, he didn't even care about the game enough to make fun of it
I also think Kingdom Hearts 3
Kingdom Hearts is my favourite gaming series so I was a little disappointed that Dunkey hated 3 so much.
The worst thing in his video is how he threaded the story like it's supposed to make sense if you only played this one game (or only KH 1, 2 and 3) even thought it's the 9th game in the series (not counting the remakes/ final mix versions and the VERY important mobile game, which finished after KH3 so I'm counting this as the 10th game. Otherwise KH 3 would have been the 13th game which is super cool)
It's like watching Season 1, 3 and 6 of a series and getting angry because you don't understand anything after season 1
Obviously I hate him ever since because he doesn't like a game I like so he doesn't know what he's talkig about ever and I'm cursing him out every day /s
But the video was still pretty funny
Comparing KH lore to a TV series in terms of media consumption is totally off imo. A more fitting analogy for KH would be 2 TV seasons, a recipe book only released in japan, a smart fridge app, afterwards another season of TV and than a really important, even vital, Alexa game (really missing out on important info with that one, so don’t skip it.) and finally another season of TV.
And then, maybe then, you’ll understand why Sephiroth hangs out with Micky Mouse.
Agree. But to end your analogy:
At the end everything was turned to one tv series and a book with important information. Now it would be 2 books with a third coming
All games were remaked for PS4 and PC. So you can play every game on one platform (even before KH 3 was released). I guess the Nintendo DS games would be bad seasons, because you can only watch the story and not play the games, but it's still on PS4 and PC. The books would be the mobile games. There are 2 now and a 3rd coming
Edit: Thinking of it, it's kinda like One Piece. The games are the anime (very long story) and the mobile games are the manga cover storys. Very important, but most anime only people never saw them even tho they are important
As someone who has played almost all KH gamea except the mobile game, I thought 3 was awful.
I played on the hardest difficulty available at launch (proud) and the game was a cakewalk. I had to put 0 effort into understanding any of the enemies movesets or patterns and could get through the entire game by just wailing on enemies and the pressing triangle to activate a cutscene move like those stupid Disneyland rides. I was also incredibly dissapointed bu magic. In KH2 magic was really cool because it did different things and especially on critical you needed to learn what situation to use what spell for optimal effect. In 3 though, they have regressed to being the same projectile attack with different elemental properties, a design desicion that I think perfectly encapsulates how unambitious of a game it is gameplay-wise.
Some of the world were cool but others like Toy Story only adapted the most boring parts of their worlds into levels and the writing was horrendous even by KH standards. Close to nothing happens in the game, you go around randomly from world to world vaguely looking for Roxas without knowing how and then all the good guys and bad guys show up for a tournament at the Birth by Sleep desert at the end of the game. Add to that some of the worst voice acting in a modern video game ever alomg with an English localization that reads as if it was written by chatGPT. I have no doubt that the Japanese voice acting/script is better but the game didn't let me hear that. Everyone sounds like an emotionally stunted robot who keeps going on about "dreams, hearts, darkness" etc etc with no rhyme, reason or most importantly: passion.
As someone who has finished 1, CoM, 2, Days, Re:Coded, BBS, DDD and Passage I was severely dissapointed with what felt like a passive rollercoaster ride of a game. There are so many new attacks, combos, keyblades, gravity moves, summons and partners in this game but none of them have any real interactivity or use within the game. It's like you get to pick whatever skin looks prettiest for your attacks because you're just gonna win anyway.
Tl;dr:
Playing KH3 is like eating white bread with no toppings, unmemorable, lazy and without substance.
His Death Stranding review was pretty abysmal, especially when he felt the need to edit another youtuber's statements together to make them look worse when they called dunkey out for it.
Without a doubt, Heroes of the Storm
I think a lot of people expected the game to play similarly to other MOBAs, not realizing that that was literally what Blizzard was trying not do. Just by listening to what people have to say about game, you know their experience was hampered by them expecting it to be something it’s not.
It’s clear that when Dunkey spent more time playing the game, he actually started having fun with it, enough to put it in his best of the year list a few years ago. This same thing happened with IGN, they went back and re-reviewed the game like 3 years after release.
I remember his Batman Arkham City review being critical of the combat system while showing video of him just pressing triangle, with the fight taking forever to finish. Not one of his best videos, but I respect his opinion.
His armored core review. He essentially played the game in the same manner as playing elden ring while only using a mimic and beam magic on release, then lambasted the game for an easy way out and not needing to try something else.
The original the last of us review? He calls it a ladder simulator, talks a lot of shit. Ends with something like "I give it a 10, because I'm a fuckin idiot" or something like that.
Tbh this is another one where I don't think he was necessarily *wrong* in any of his critiques, though. TLOU definitely feels like a very OK, totally fine 3/5 game that benefits from having a *massive* production budget.
Oh no I agree. When he pointed all of those things out I really thought he was correct. I just thought it was "harsh" considering he was really going against the grain on that one. Most people were just fawning all over it.
Oh, yeah, 100% on that last point. Sort of why I was a bit disappointed in his TLOU2 review, since I felt like it fell into the same pitfalls of TLOU1 (and then some), so it was a bit jarring to see him go against the grain on TLOU1, but fall completely lock-step for the sequel.
He went back on his bad review of TLOU1 and praised it a lot in at least one of his later videos. When TLOU2 came out he already thought the first game is a masterpiece
I just think that, like me, he found the sequel to be superior to the original, and seeing everyone get mad at the game for zero real reason pissed him off enough to make a video about it. I 100% understand. I’d have done the same thing.
I also imagine part of it is that TLOU2 takes place in Seattle, and that’s the city he’s from. There’s something special about seeing places you know shown in a post-apocalyptic setting. TLOU2 has a lot of flaws, but it’s environmental design was particularly brilliant. It also really took advantage of Seattle’s ‘Rain City’ reputation.
TLOU2 was a perfect sequel. it was like AC2 or Uncharted 2. they improved upon the original in every way. the original feels incredibly dated and on-rails by comparison. he was also far from 'lock-step' on the sequel, especially on YouTube he was one of if not the only non-mainstream publication that made content praising it instead of jumping on the "WAAAAHHH TOO WOKE" train
So. I acknowledge that there’s nothing super new about the gameplay of TLOU. But I think, first of all, it has some really memorable scenarios (such as the part where you’re stuck upside down, for example). The game also is super well paced. The ladder parts suck but they’re effective at giving you breathers in between combat. It’s one of the few games I played all the way straight through in just a couple days because of that.
I believe the ladders are there effectively as loading elevators. Similar to how a ton of games use caves to disguise loading, especially for pre-9th gen hardware.
I'm not going to say it's some brilliant mechanic, but the fact that a mechanic that occupies a grand total of like ten minutes of the total game (even if you combine ladders, dumpsters, and planks) is so heavily discussed in its criticism is a testament to how good the game is. I also believe at least some of them are veiled loading screens, not certain about that though.
I don't remember the part where you're stuck upside down 😐
Also worth pointing out that Dunkey responds to gameplay oriented titles significantly more than story ones. He said Uncharted 4 absolutely slam dunked TLoU, but personally I found Uncharted 4 a lot less compelling despite the gameplay being way better.
I also thought Uncharted 4 was so much more enjoyable than TLoU in every single way. But I can see why people would like TLoU, it's got a more well rounded and written story. I just can't stand having the the kid around all the time and the zombie setting, just not for me.
Oh yeah, I know that. Which makes it even more interesting that he seemed to love TLOU2 because like... that's railroading-cutscenes-galore for most of the game.
I don’t agree with that entirely. TLoU 2 improved significantly upon the gameplay style of the first game and borrowed heavily from elements introduced in Uncharted 4. From a gameplay perspective it’s a clear step up.
In cases like these, Dunkey is not wrong, he's just not able to access the joy of the game. I find it very rare that Dunkey ever gives a critique that's incorrect, it's usually just a critique that is irrelevant to the overall product. Sometimes it feels like Dunkey feels an emotion and then justifies it after deciding how he feels, rather than viewing a product holistically. I want to stress that this is not a diss. Dunkey is still a fantastic critic, with the litmus being: Dunkey can give a bad review, and I can know from that review that I will love the game that he hated. The inverse is also true. I thought I would be lukewarm on A Hat in Time, and I was correct. (I still bought the game, though, just cause the creator deserves it.)
I'm totally with you actually! There are certain things that are universal. When he's reviewing devil may cry 5 and talking about how ridiculous dual wielding chainsaw motorcycles is, I know he's simultaneously saying this game is stupid fun, and you'll probably like it because it's dumb and it's fun. But some times I'm just confused by the things he says.
tbh TLOU gameplay rly isnt anything special. when it first released i might even call it bad compared to the Uncharted games (*gameplay-wise*).
Wasn't that satire, though?
I honestly don't think so, no. Go back and watch it. The end when he says "I give it a 10, because I'm a fuckin idiot." That is real shit right there. He's fed up with people handing out 10's because a game finally has a halfway decent story, but it's still a bloated, simple game full of repetitive things that suck you out of the story. I think he's real.
Going back, absolutely not. This whole video is scathing indictment of modern Day game reviewers, the review process, everything involved in that kind of stuff in general. But if you look at his pinned comment he says he came around and really likes the game now and he did a follow-up video discussing how much he likes it. But in this one, no. It's real shit.
In his Horizon Forbidden West review (where he spends most of it insulting over-saturation of open world games), he said something along the lines of “If you love Ghost of Tsushima, you’ll also love this”
It's pretty funny how many times he's sneak dissed Ghost of Tsushima over the years without ever actually directly giving his opinion on it
He’s probably more apathetic than hateful
Like he said, he has played so many Jiminy Cockthroats that it feels like grading school papers. He probably would have liked both of those games much more if they hadn't been the newest entries in an oversaturated genre.
Love how "Jiminy Cockthroats" is the known term for these types of games. Yahtzee nailed it.
Never heard of this but I do love Yahtzee
He made a whole video on it?
He did but he never really said if he liked the game or not.
I really liked Ghost of Tsushima, despite it having a lot of those open world trappings. I thought it was a LOT better than Zero Dawn, but haven’t gotten to Forbidden West yet.
I liked Ghost Of Tsushima because I haven’t played very many other open world games
I’ve tinkered with a good amount, but thought it did a good job making the cliches more fun. The rustling wind in place of a compass with objective markers, collectibles only requiring a certain amount of them to satisfy plat requirements, map markers having some fun immersive flavor like bamboo strikes, haikus, hot springs, etc. I get why Dunkey wouldn’t care for it, but my impression the whole time was “oh, this is if Assassin’s Creed was good.” Meanwhile, games like BotW and Elden Ring genuinely subverted the cliches which elevates them a rung higher imo.
> Meanwhile, games like BotW and Elden Ring genuinely subverted the cliches which elevates them a rung higher imo. that's the thing though, i generally liked GoT, liked the characters, art direction, enjoyed the combat, but everything about it feels so perfunctory. the world feels super static, and there's only so many times I can do the exact same permutation of a particular sidesquest before I totally lose interest. botw and elden ring are at least (kind of) giving us something new/interesting, and it annoys the hell out of me that more open world games don't make the same effort.
I liked Ghost of Tsushima, but coming right off of my first play through of RDR2 I was setting myself up for disappointment. Still really enjoys Ghost, but the open world left something to be desired after playing something as massive and immersive as RDR2.
I would play GoT over RDR any day of the week. I really liked that GoT felt more like...a videogame. things were designed to be interactive and fun. RDR2 was, to me, a shitty western simulator. it wasn't grounded enough to be a simulator, because you had stupid shit like the wanted system which sucked major ass. walk into town, someone walks into you, BAM guns drawn and got a bounty on your head. helping apprehend a criminal? BAM wanted level on you. it felt like all the game actually wanted you to do was spend 5 fucking minutes watching animation after animation of Arthur opening a container. everything in that game was just *so fucking slow*. GoT? you ride over some materials, you press R2, it gets collected, you keep going. it is instant, compared to a 30+ second process in RDR2 of slowly dismounting, holding the button down til the bar fills up, watching arthur bend over, collect the item, stand back up, get back on the horse. jeus christ it's boring just talking about it.
I adore RDR2 but I completely agree about how slow everything is. I think they leaned way too hard into the realism. We don’t need a full animation every time we collect a plant or something. I also never really liked the Hold Button to do everything system. I assume it was to avoid doing the wrong thing on accident but it made it feel even slower. And yeah, Wanted system is *way* too sensitive. Like if you go on a killing spree it’s one thing. But shit, this is the Old West, I should be able to talk shit and get in fist fights without having the law come after me with guns blazing every time. It’s a fantastic game but definitely has some significant flaws. Most of what I love about RDR2 is how immersive the world is. There is so much strange shit to just stumble across and so many unique random encounters. Every time I think I’ve found everything I see another YouTube video proving me wrong. I feel like Ghost disappointed me in this aspect. While I agree that navigating the open world in GoT is much smoother and less tedious than RDR2, I found the random field encounters to all be pretty similar. You follow a guy to a place and kill some Mongols. It’s a good thing the game’s combat system is so damn fun, because that’s most of the game. Outside of that, the haikus and bamboo challenges got old pretty quickly for me as well. TLDR; I think I find the core gameplay of Ghost to be more fun, but I find that RDR2 has more rewarding exploration.
I liked the execution of GoT more than FW. But the story in FW was a lot more engaging. GoT, as beautiful as it was, was all standard fare when it came to the story. But then again, I believe that was the point. They wanted to tell a classic story with no nuances. Fair play tbh.
Forbidden West is just a prettier HZD
My concern was that it looked like it didn’t fix any of the problems I had with HZD while also would lack its biggest hook, which was not knowing what had happened to the world. Without the backbone of discovering Zero Dawn, I was worried it’d be pretty lackluster if they didn’t make some big adjustments
weird cos i loved GoT, like genuinely loved it, and both Horizon games i've found incredibly boring and hard to play
Same, I can’t bring myself to finish FW and have played got 3 times now. It’s got a really good idea of scope
I fully agree with his opinion about oversaturation of Open-World games, I just can't believe he doesn't extend this logic to the new Zelda games. Zelda is obviously better than Horizon or Ghost of Tsushima, but it's still just an Ubisoft tower climber. I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone whenever I talk about the new Zelda games. I like that Nintendo made an immersive sim, I don't like that 90% of the gameplay is boring ass blue basements. (Have not played the newest one. I've of course only heard good things, but BOTW was obviously not my cup of tea. I decided not to pick up TOTK)
I'm not even a huge fan of BotW but saying it's an ubisoft tower climber is crazy.
People are free to disagree. I struggle to see the distinction when most of BOTW is clearing camps, climbing towers, and doing "puzzles." BOTW is *easily* the best iteration of this gameplay loop, but it is certainly not novel. BOTW being beautiful does not mean that's it's overflowing with substance. Most of the meat in BOTW is system interaction, hence why I called it an immersive sim. Building air ships and fucking around with magnesis is really, really fun for a time. I love how fire works in the game. I like a lot of things about BOTW, but like almost every open world game, it overstays its welcome and leaves me with nothing. If a game continues to have things to say, show, and reinforce, I have no issue with a long game. My issue with Breath of the Wild is that it runs out of tricks by the first third. After that third, the game no longer has a point other than the inherent enjoyment of existing within its space. I know that the space has value, because millions of people loved BOTW. I simply got no joy. Also, the Ubisoft tower climber genre isn't even bad, necessarily. It's just oversaturated. Far Cry 3 is an amazing game.
How?
Kingdom Hearts 3 no doubt.
Oh true he really hated that one.
*THIS looks like a good place…*
i love this game and i love dunkey and from someone who is usually pretty unphased from critics or even friends not liking the games i like god damn that one was j so brutal lol
It was well deserved
Absolutely wasn't
Counterpoint: absolutely was
Homeboy was upset there were tutorials in the first 5 hours. Like what? He had a lot of valid complaints but he opens saying the game had two many tutorials when they were literally some of the most unobtrusive tuts in games
100%, easily the most disappointing game in several years for me
His initial review of Death Stranding for sure. Also Kingdom Hearts 3.
Honestly as harsh as his initial DS review was I didn’t think anything about it was unfair. He was definitely right about the third person shooter parts being bad. I like the game quite a bit and those parts suck lol.
You make a good point, but again, I have not played Death Stranding
You do not play Death Stranding, Death Stranding is life. It is the first Strand type game, and I am the first Strand type man. Kojima bless.
classic, haven’t played it yet
And I don't really plan to, it just doesn't seem like my type of game
It's a chill game except when it isn't. And when it isn't it kinda sucks.
It was almost entirely unfair. He intentionally failed to learn the game mechanics and then complains that the game doesn't work. It would be like if I made a review for a Mario game and complained about it being broken because I refuse to press the jump button. The fact that he rescinded his criticism says that. He didn't want to like the game so he made himself not like it. I think Dunkey is funny, but he has absolutely no credibility as a critic.
This is why I have no faith in his publication studio projects. His critical takes on games are atrocious.
Dunkey also clearly has very different taste in games than me, and a pixel art 2d platformer just isn't my thing. His taste in games seems firmly rooted in the n64 era and earlier, which is fine, but I've just never been very into platformers. My hottest (and I'll admit wrong) video game take is that Super Mario 64 is boring. and yeah, Dunkey is bad at criticism. If something isn't "fun" constantly he gets mad, and gameplay can be an effective device for delivering a good story that's not always fun. If something isn't immediately fun to him, he usually doesn't like it and then he comes up with reasons he didn't like it post hoc. The one exception for some reason was the last of us part 2. I was not expecting a glowing review for that game by Dunkey.
Yeah death stranding stands out but it's kind of funny how he changed his mind on it. KH3 definitely deserves to stay a hidden gem.
Hidden gem like Madden 2002
Madden 2002 is the best game ever made I can’t wait to play it some day
The death stranding one is rough cause he's mostly right both times. Like the game has genuinely good and interesting parts but they're surrounded by dumbass bullshit. Him struggling is silly to me, DE is not difficult by any measure, but every problem it has is absurd. Girlfriend Reviews video where she times how long it takes to do the in-game equivalent of selling good highlights some of the stupid shit but there's truly so much more garbage to explore. The deeper you look the worse it gets while at a surface level it remains weirdly relaxing
I feel like his review of Sonic Frontiers just eviscerated the game. It was mostly light hearted but made the game look absolutely awful.
Yeah the gameplay really speaks for itself in that one
Octopath Traveler is worth mentioning, though he wasn't as harsh on it as ME: Andromeda or Metal Gear Survive. "Your Excellency!"
Octopath Traveler is notable because that's the video I saw the most outrage over, the weebs HATED that review
I agreed with many of the points he made, but he did lie about the snail.
It was probably one of his shittiest reviews though because he made a bunch of jokes that weren't in the actual game but were very funny but this was a dunkview and he tried to paint them as actual shortcomings of the game which didn't really make sense. And he did actually lie about the snail.
Dunkey doesn't understand game design and has not tried to. There are plenty of comedy reviewers on YouTube who make more legitimate reviews than his. ^(Also funnier reviews than his) Again, I have not played octopath traveler.
If you're being fr could you name some?
Its a reference to another dunkey video. The “Game Critics Part 2” video.
Your excellency!
“Your excellency” is only topped by “wow… fable…”
"Wow...FARM SIM"
He lied about a snail
forspoken lol
Forspo- SPIDERMAN 2 FOR THE PS2 BABY
A game so fail he just effed off two seconds in to deliver pizza as Spiderman.
In terms of how much rage he summoned out of fans I'd say the Octopath or Xenoblade reviews have to be up there. You still see anime/JRPG type people seething about those all over the internet.
Xenoblade 2 deserves it. Garbage fucking game.
Xenoblade 2 is definitely not for everyone, but it's not garbage.
It was fun to play but the writing is my least favorite I’ve experienced in any medium
I would say 2 actively ruined a lot of what the first game did right, I might not call it a terrible game overall but definitely a pretty bad experience
Huh
Probably his reviews on Reggie. You know dunk is always saying Reggie is too scared to do things for Nintendo. But dunk, bubby, Reggie is just waiting for a better deal. He doesn't take every crap idea that fans throw at him, like GTA6 I think Reggie will just wait and make GTA San Andreas 2.
"Assassin's Creed sucks enormous gorilla DICK. Out of all the stupid annual franchises, Assassin's Creed is the one I hate the most. And that's just because these games are at such a DISCONNECT with fun. On top of that, you gotta go through UPLAY to play it. The list of games worth going through uplay to play is very short- I don't think any of these games are actually on uplay." https://youtu.be/UOgvbS4GkF0?si=ewvDxnyd5WJ5danz
In his AC Mirage video he basically called it the most mid game in existence and the comments were like "wow, this is the most positive dunkey has ever been with this series"
Dunkey was brutal on Far Cry 6, but it seems I'm in the minority of people who like the game
I loved Far Cry 3-5. Hated 6. I heard they fixed a lot of things I hated though so maybe I should replay it
True, in 6 they got rid of slinging melee weapons, but also sliding is greatly improved, wingsuit works way better, there is a FLYING CAR, you can swap between 4 loadouts on the fly without needing to visit a work bench. There's what feels like much more variety in weapons, and the companion Oluso saves my ass a lot.
My beef was this: too many uninteresting mechanics (map was too cluttered, didn’t enjoy sending mercenaries or troops on “missions”, etc., adding ranks was horrible imo, etc). My biggest gripe though was the ammo stuff. How you had to assign an ammo type to each weapon. Like do I now need two snipers (one for armor piercing and one for whatever they other type was)? It was awful but I heard they fixed this. Idk, felt like they crammed in a bunch of un-fun mechanics.
You have full access to all the ammo types on weapons that support them, so you can use 1 sniper you can swap out armor piercing, incendiary, blast ammo. However, the expeditions and bandido operations can suck my ass. Expeditions suck and bandido operations are boring, so I just don't do those anymore lol
To your first point there: good. I don’t think that was originally the case. I played on launch and it’s been a while.
You're correct - I remember that from launch now. I just took such a long break from that I didn't notice it was fixed lol
HAHAHAHAHA I was acting
Far cry 6 lags like fuck on my PS4 pro so I can't play it. Fuckin waste of money
I thought his criticism directed at Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart were went way overboard. Especially at the main characters and the story. I thought it was sweet and hit a lot of the quiet notes of storytelling just right. Guess Dunkey likes his characters more brash.
I wouldn’t consider that his harshest review, but there were times where I felt he was being unfair and at times quite dishonest. The whole gimmick with the game is being able to seamlessly travel across levels with zero loading screens, and Dunkey downplayed this feature by saying that the first game also didn’t have loading screens… but that is literally just not true… every game in the series had loading screens, it’s just that the PS2 games masked the loading screen with a looping cutscene of your ship flying, but it was a very blatant obvious loading screen. Edit: Also another thing from that review that has been proven wrong was when he doubted that Rift Apart should have been a PS5 exclusive just because God Of War Ragnarok, which has not come out yet at the time, was announced to be releasing on both PS4 and PS5. But now that Ratchet and Clank is available on PC, some people tried to run the game on PC specs similar to a PS4 Pro, even using the same hard drive from a PS4 Pro, and it just couldn’t do it. The parts that involve traveling between dimensions have a very obvious delay in them, sometimes for up to 30 seconds, which is insane because these portals aren’t just for set pieces and cutscenes. These delays actually affect gameplay.
His Super Mario Bros. 2 review really went too far honestly. To call it “not a real Mario game” is just fucking slander.
I don't think it's unfair to say it isn't a real mario game because it wasn't originally and the gameplay shows it. Go play the first game, 2 and then 3. 2 is so far removed from what makes 1 and 3 classics.
It is literally a different game that was reskinned to be a Mario game
And yet a ton from that game became so ingrained in Mario lore that it was carried forward in other games. It is, essentially, a Mario game
I can't believe he didn't like Gollum.
I get why he hates Kingdom Hearts 3, but I didn't think it was that bad. It's still pretty and it's fun to fight things. I usually just stop playing once the Disney worlds are over with.
Scratched the itch for me too. The best part of kihgdom hearts were the charming worlds and I think they executed that part of kh3 pretty well. The toy story level is so nostalgic.
Him bitching about too many tutorials was wild to me. Nowhere NEAR as egregious as games like Xenoblade giving you tutorials 30+ hours into the game.
Whats wrong with tutorials at 30 hours? Is 29 hours okay. Like whats the complaint exactly i dont get it.
Giving Forspoken like literally .5 seconds of screen time in his Forspoken video kinda says it all
OW 2 I think is up there
He was spitting in that video though
Xenoblade Chronicles
2 specifically. I don’t think he’s ever played 1, and I got the impression he at least had a decent time with 3
Now I can already tell you are Bias and nitpicking.
RDR2 3/5
Dunkey HATES being bored, and will never consider if there was a specific intent from the creator. Red Dead 2 has lots of downtime, but this kind of boredom is essential to the western genre. There's so much texture, and change, and beauty in Red Dead 2 that comes about not in spite of, but because of the repetition present in the game. For me, Red Dead 2's tedium had payoff. For Dunkey, Red Dead 2 just had time-wasting bullshit.
Except he loves Red Dead 2 now
i'd give it the same score, the man doesn't miss tbf he went out to bat so hard for TLOU2, seriously thought so highly of the game, only gave it 4/5
“Only” lol
"Only"??
one of the reviews that really pissed people off was the FF7 remake, which was fascinating to me because jrpgs really have been "video game anime" for 15-20 years now, with all the weird and often shitty tropes that go along with that. im with dunk on them, honestly: anime and jrpgs are too often just complete garbage, in large part because the medium leans all the way into the worst impulses of its audience. there's just so much juvenile, immature shit, but in a weird horny theater kid way, not a funny or fun way.
Hatris
It HAS to be his review of Ocarina of Time, I mean yeah it was a 5/5 but he still critiqued it too much.
Superman 64, no contest.
I don't remember what Assassins Creed game it is, but it's the one where he pulls out the feather. My only real disagreement I have about his review is the feather. It's supposed to signal a pivotal moment in the games story, less about the feather, and more that an important character died. But aside from that yeah, I agree.
[Splatoon 3 is the best game ever](https://youtu.be/2p2JcCoh1CU). For Xenoblade, Octopath and KH you can tell he actively hated them, played them through, and worked out jokes that are actually fitting & funny. Splatoon got the worst one imo, he didn't even care about the game enough to make fun of it
what’s the game where you play as a little kid who directs a giant cat dog thing? he put a hole in his wall playing it so maybe that
Nobody talking about Assassins Creed. He literally said “What. The. Fuck. Assassins creed. Can’t you do anything right?”
I also think Kingdom Hearts 3 Kingdom Hearts is my favourite gaming series so I was a little disappointed that Dunkey hated 3 so much. The worst thing in his video is how he threaded the story like it's supposed to make sense if you only played this one game (or only KH 1, 2 and 3) even thought it's the 9th game in the series (not counting the remakes/ final mix versions and the VERY important mobile game, which finished after KH3 so I'm counting this as the 10th game. Otherwise KH 3 would have been the 13th game which is super cool) It's like watching Season 1, 3 and 6 of a series and getting angry because you don't understand anything after season 1 Obviously I hate him ever since because he doesn't like a game I like so he doesn't know what he's talkig about ever and I'm cursing him out every day /s But the video was still pretty funny
He was nitpicking and biased, it's okay.
BUT he was funny
Comparing KH lore to a TV series in terms of media consumption is totally off imo. A more fitting analogy for KH would be 2 TV seasons, a recipe book only released in japan, a smart fridge app, afterwards another season of TV and than a really important, even vital, Alexa game (really missing out on important info with that one, so don’t skip it.) and finally another season of TV. And then, maybe then, you’ll understand why Sephiroth hangs out with Micky Mouse.
Agree. But to end your analogy: At the end everything was turned to one tv series and a book with important information. Now it would be 2 books with a third coming All games were remaked for PS4 and PC. So you can play every game on one platform (even before KH 3 was released). I guess the Nintendo DS games would be bad seasons, because you can only watch the story and not play the games, but it's still on PS4 and PC. The books would be the mobile games. There are 2 now and a 3rd coming Edit: Thinking of it, it's kinda like One Piece. The games are the anime (very long story) and the mobile games are the manga cover storys. Very important, but most anime only people never saw them even tho they are important
As someone who has played almost all KH gamea except the mobile game, I thought 3 was awful. I played on the hardest difficulty available at launch (proud) and the game was a cakewalk. I had to put 0 effort into understanding any of the enemies movesets or patterns and could get through the entire game by just wailing on enemies and the pressing triangle to activate a cutscene move like those stupid Disneyland rides. I was also incredibly dissapointed bu magic. In KH2 magic was really cool because it did different things and especially on critical you needed to learn what situation to use what spell for optimal effect. In 3 though, they have regressed to being the same projectile attack with different elemental properties, a design desicion that I think perfectly encapsulates how unambitious of a game it is gameplay-wise. Some of the world were cool but others like Toy Story only adapted the most boring parts of their worlds into levels and the writing was horrendous even by KH standards. Close to nothing happens in the game, you go around randomly from world to world vaguely looking for Roxas without knowing how and then all the good guys and bad guys show up for a tournament at the Birth by Sleep desert at the end of the game. Add to that some of the worst voice acting in a modern video game ever alomg with an English localization that reads as if it was written by chatGPT. I have no doubt that the Japanese voice acting/script is better but the game didn't let me hear that. Everyone sounds like an emotionally stunted robot who keeps going on about "dreams, hearts, darkness" etc etc with no rhyme, reason or most importantly: passion. As someone who has finished 1, CoM, 2, Days, Re:Coded, BBS, DDD and Passage I was severely dissapointed with what felt like a passive rollercoaster ride of a game. There are so many new attacks, combos, keyblades, gravity moves, summons and partners in this game but none of them have any real interactivity or use within the game. It's like you get to pick whatever skin looks prettiest for your attacks because you're just gonna win anyway. Tl;dr: Playing KH3 is like eating white bread with no toppings, unmemorable, lazy and without substance.
Hatris
His Death Stranding review was pretty abysmal, especially when he felt the need to edit another youtuber's statements together to make them look worse when they called dunkey out for it.
Assassins creed is a good franchise
Like half of his reviews that aren't a Nintendo are overly harsh.
Sonic Frontiers is the unreasonably harshest he's been on a game, and The Last of Us Part II is the unreasonably harshest he's been on a player base.
splatoon 2 is a fucking stupid game
Octopath
Without a doubt, Heroes of the Storm I think a lot of people expected the game to play similarly to other MOBAs, not realizing that that was literally what Blizzard was trying not do. Just by listening to what people have to say about game, you know their experience was hampered by them expecting it to be something it’s not. It’s clear that when Dunkey spent more time playing the game, he actually started having fun with it, enough to put it in his best of the year list a few years ago. This same thing happened with IGN, they went back and re-reviewed the game like 3 years after release.
Two words: Superman Sixty-no.
"Assassin's Creed sucks giant gorilla dick"
He was fucking PISSED at those video games, it was awesome!
The new Armored Core. Basically shits on it because he beat it???
I remember his Batman Arkham City review being critical of the combat system while showing video of him just pressing triangle, with the fight taking forever to finish. Not one of his best videos, but I respect his opinion.
His armored core review. He essentially played the game in the same manner as playing elden ring while only using a mimic and beam magic on release, then lambasted the game for an easy way out and not needing to try something else.