Anodyne (PC)

I WAS going to review another game that I had in mind, but I was suddenly gifted a review copy of Anodyne and though "why not?" So instead of a game that everyone has heard on, might as well review a game inspired my the Zelda series, but remarkably, mixed the dark storytelling of the silent hill series before silent hill sold their soul to the devil that is commercialism. So Shadow The Hedgehog might as well relax until I finish bashing the hell out of this game-- metaphorically, after all.

Picture this: You are a player named Young Ying, and you are in a subconscious within someone's mind trying to restore balance within itself and must find your inner brother, Baird Yang.

Within the game, you travel to dark lands and eery places, while there's not really any jump scares like in most horror games, the atmosphere can be somewhat spooky.  Like Zelda you start off with nothing until you find your weapon...A...broom... Then you move on to dungeons and reach the end of the game. Along the way, you also have to collect card to open doors to complete the game.

While being a Zelda clone might be a great idea, that also means the game has the similar issues as past Zelda games. For one, the game becomes liner as the Link to the past and you get lost and there's little-to-no-clues to where to go. While this dose help exploration and you can find Blood Fairies that can extend your life, you have to use a guide to just to figure out where to go.

Another issue that  players would face would be the level design, while can be fair at sometimes, it can still push back and slap players in the face. For example, you will run across a maze near the end of the game, but to get everything, you have to come back after you beat the game and complete an outrageous challenge just to get ONE card.

While there are some silly, hidden cards in post-game, it feels that they're just in just for spits-and-giggles. There's only so little replayiblity in the game besides the achievements in the steam version of the game. In my opinion, the achievements are not worth it. While it is not easy to get that one achievement, the game has only few achievements in the first place.

If you played the devilish ROM-hacks of the Zelda NES, you would probably get a kick out of this game. If you're a newcomer to Zelda-Hill'ish game-types, I recommenced you to play the Zelda Gameboy series, as they are well implemented, as well as Wind Waker HD . Anodyne isn't a bad game at all, it's just it had ideas that it didn't execute very well because of it's identity crisis. I felt that if there was better programing, it would have run smoothly. Maybe if it stuck out as it's own game instead of feeling like a Zelda ROM hack, it would have been a great game.

Well, that review was short than expected. the game was short, so there was so little to say. now if you excuse me, I have to take cover since the horse-headed people have invaded planet earth and I'm ore than scared by these co-called people. It won't be long until I kill them and sell their corpses for glue, but too bad I just offended the furies of this world....