4.5/5 ★ – jdraco's review of Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby!.
Never in my life have I had a game push me to my absolute limit like Winnie the Pooh’s Home Run Derby has
This game legitimately breaks you down until you have absolutely nothing left
And then it’ll pick you back up, just to break you down again
This game is just absolutely ruthless
It wants to see you fail; it wants to see you give up and run away
But you can’t
You can’t let the game win; you can’t let it get the satisfaction of beating you
This game is a fucking children’s game; the fact that it’s having this kind of effect on me makes me embarrassed, because the damn thing was made for little-ass kids who crush Go-GURTs and piss themselves every 25 minutes
But I can’t help it; this game is just haunting. With its difficulty, it demands perfection; it expects nothing less
And by “it,” I mainly am referring to the main antagonist of the entire game… Christopher Robin…
Yeah, so actually the game up until Christopher Robin really isn’t that bad
There are 7 stages in total, all of which get progressively harder until you reach Tigger, who’s the last stage in the game (before Christopher Robin, whose stage is referred to as the “special” stage)
And, again, these 7 stages aren’t too bad, and they’re actually good for learning the game and leveling up Pooh’s contact, power, and speed, all of which make him better at hitting home runs…
But now, though, I want you to take everything that I just said and toss it out the fucking window
Because for Christopher Robin, none of that shit matters
Christopher Robin is just this transcendent baseball god
Every single Hall-of-Fame pitcher that you can think of, combined, is not shit compared to Christopher Robin
Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux, Roger Clemens
These historic, all-time pitchers all learned their shit from Christopher Robin
His bag is just absolutely unbelievable
He can use every type of pitch, he can adjust the speed of the pitch, the location of the pitch—everything is just completely random, and it legitimately feels like you’re going against a real-life pitcher, because I have no fucking idea what pitch is coming next
Trying to knock multiple home runs off of Christopher Robin, I imagine, is a lot like stepping into an actual MLB game and trying to record a single hit against Tarik Skubal
It’s just not going to fucking happen
Again, this shit is just utterly and completely ruthless
But, I’m giving this game such a high score because of how much this game makes me want to come back to it day after day to try and take this fucker down
This type of drive is not something that a lot of video games give me, but this game does in spades
The determination that I have to take down this little bitch is so engraved in me now, and I have to see it through to the end
I have no idea how long it will take, but I’m going to get it done, mark my words
And when I do, everybody will know; I’ll shout it from the fucking rooftops if I have to…
And then I’ll probably get the cops called on me, but it’ll be worth it, okay?
4.5/5
*It’s not getting a 5/5 pretty much just because I hit too many foul balls, and the game doesn’t make it clear why they’re foul; it just feels random*