1994
This review contains spoilers
Final Fantasy VI is the game that changed the way I interfaced with games as a medium. It's the game that changed me as a person.
When I was 12 years old, I didn't really play many games outside of games published by Nintendo. This was partially due to my parents not having any interest in getting me non-Nintendo things, and partially due to my own elitism. Chalk it up to me being 12. I saw Super Paper Mario as the pinnacle of storytelling, which is ironic given how I feel about that game now.
Everything changed when, against all odds, I tried out Final Fantasy VI for the first time. I don't know what spurred on this decision. Maybe it was a lack of faith in the Mario RPGs in general after having been burned by Sticker Star. Maybe it was just a general sense of boredom. Hell, maybe it was even just that I had heard from my dad that it was really, really good. I was enraptured by it almost instantly - the characters, the ensemble opera style of storytelling, the symbolism. It quickly became my favorite game ever made. I had simply never seen anything like it before. I didn't realize a story could draw me in so deeply, that the struggles of a party of characters could be so compelling to me. When you get to choose a scenario, I knew this game was just different.
There are many games I've played now that I would say are better than Final Fantasy VI. Fallout: New Vegas, Undertale, and Celeste. But no game changed me the way this game did. No game shaped my tastes and understanding of the medium like Final Fantasy VI. This overly ambitious love letter to a genre that most people in Japan had never even engaged with, Italian opera, and the swan song for 2D Final Fantasy is the game that has affected me the most over the course of my life. Sure, it has a cast of characters that's too big for its own good. It has a plot that can feel all over the place. It has frankly awful gameplay systems. But it's my game.
And doesn't everyone have one game that's just... theirs?
When I was 12 years old, I didn't really play many games outside of games published by Nintendo. This was partially due to my parents not having any interest in getting me non-Nintendo things, and partially due to my own elitism. Chalk it up to me being 12. I saw Super Paper Mario as the pinnacle of storytelling, which is ironic given how I feel about that game now.
Everything changed when, against all odds, I tried out Final Fantasy VI for the first time. I don't know what spurred on this decision. Maybe it was a lack of faith in the Mario RPGs in general after having been burned by Sticker Star. Maybe it was just a general sense of boredom. Hell, maybe it was even just that I had heard from my dad that it was really, really good. I was enraptured by it almost instantly - the characters, the ensemble opera style of storytelling, the symbolism. It quickly became my favorite game ever made. I had simply never seen anything like it before. I didn't realize a story could draw me in so deeply, that the struggles of a party of characters could be so compelling to me. When you get to choose a scenario, I knew this game was just different.
There are many games I've played now that I would say are better than Final Fantasy VI. Fallout: New Vegas, Undertale, and Celeste. But no game changed me the way this game did. No game shaped my tastes and understanding of the medium like Final Fantasy VI. This overly ambitious love letter to a genre that most people in Japan had never even engaged with, Italian opera, and the swan song for 2D Final Fantasy is the game that has affected me the most over the course of my life. Sure, it has a cast of characters that's too big for its own good. It has a plot that can feel all over the place. It has frankly awful gameplay systems. But it's my game.
And doesn't everyone have one game that's just... theirs?
1992
There really is something to be said for a strong first impression.
Not every game series gets this right. Mega Man's first entry is one of his more forgettable, and I haven't met a single person who has told me that they love any of the original Monster Hunter games. It's a hard thing to do, to break out into the medium.
Kirby manages somehow. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's still a fun time. There's something rather distinct about this game. I'd say the wonderfully saccharine presentation, which is so cleanly animated, maybe. The soundtrack contributes a lot to it too. It's just so Kirby.
As an example, let's look at a contemporary Game Boy platformer - Castlevania: The Adventure. It feels so much like an obviously "downgraded" version of its console predessecors, generic and walking down a path that had already been trodden. Super Mario Land, on the other hand, hits much the same chords as Kirby does. A whole new aesthetic that was especially crafted for the Game Boy which allows it to take advantage of the system.
Kirby focuses on being adorable, and the designs are made to accommodate for the Game Boy's limitations in doing so. I think it's fairly successful. It's just a joy to look at, really, and the simple gameplay adds to all of this. He's a wonderful little puff.
Not every game series gets this right. Mega Man's first entry is one of his more forgettable, and I haven't met a single person who has told me that they love any of the original Monster Hunter games. It's a hard thing to do, to break out into the medium.
Kirby manages somehow. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's still a fun time. There's something rather distinct about this game. I'd say the wonderfully saccharine presentation, which is so cleanly animated, maybe. The soundtrack contributes a lot to it too. It's just so Kirby.
As an example, let's look at a contemporary Game Boy platformer - Castlevania: The Adventure. It feels so much like an obviously "downgraded" version of its console predessecors, generic and walking down a path that had already been trodden. Super Mario Land, on the other hand, hits much the same chords as Kirby does. A whole new aesthetic that was especially crafted for the Game Boy which allows it to take advantage of the system.
Kirby focuses on being adorable, and the designs are made to accommodate for the Game Boy's limitations in doing so. I think it's fairly successful. It's just a joy to look at, really, and the simple gameplay adds to all of this. He's a wonderful little puff.
Kirby's Adventure is one of the most graphically impressive games on the NES. It's so expressive - everything from the facial animations to the color choices to the backgrounds. It benefited a lot from being one of the last game to arrive in the NES' library. One of the best platformers on a system inundated with them.
Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land is not Kirby's Adventure though. Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land is an oddly hollow facsimile of Kirby's Adventure.
Say what you will about the original's slowdown or NES-era sensibilities. The slowdown is, indeed, removed in Nightmare in Dream Land. However, the NES-era design sensibilities aren't solved at all. It's still essentially the same game under the hood.
Which becomes especially odd when you realize that the presentation has taken a significant hit. Gone are the beautifully drawn backgrounds of the original Kirby's Adventure, replaced with ugly, dense pre-rendered backgrounds. The simplistic sprite art that conveyed so much charm and emotion is now made into a depressingly standard art style for Kirby. This is all especially jarring when the game still plays exactly like Kirby's Adventure: presentation matters so much. It looks like a GBA Kirby game, but it doesn't feel like one, and that disconnect is hard to shake while playing.
Kirby's Adventure is a game full of life and character. Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land is a game that tries to strip that character away.
Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land is not Kirby's Adventure though. Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land is an oddly hollow facsimile of Kirby's Adventure.
Say what you will about the original's slowdown or NES-era sensibilities. The slowdown is, indeed, removed in Nightmare in Dream Land. However, the NES-era design sensibilities aren't solved at all. It's still essentially the same game under the hood.
Which becomes especially odd when you realize that the presentation has taken a significant hit. Gone are the beautifully drawn backgrounds of the original Kirby's Adventure, replaced with ugly, dense pre-rendered backgrounds. The simplistic sprite art that conveyed so much charm and emotion is now made into a depressingly standard art style for Kirby. This is all especially jarring when the game still plays exactly like Kirby's Adventure: presentation matters so much. It looks like a GBA Kirby game, but it doesn't feel like one, and that disconnect is hard to shake while playing.
Kirby's Adventure is a game full of life and character. Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land is a game that tries to strip that character away.
Most video game remakes don't impress me. As an example, I don't care for the "remasters" that have inundated the industry in recent memory, with all their artistic shallowness. I'd rather play something new than the same game repackaged. Kirby Super Star Ultra is no different, yet it is praised by people constantly as "one of the best remakes ever." Why?
It seems to be a trend for these Kirby remakes to ditch the unique graphical styles of their previous entries, if the last one was anything to go by. The sprites in Super Star Ultra are much more homogenized than their original counterparts, which had a very distinct style and color palette. It was a lot more muted and the brighter colors really popped as a result of it. Each sprite was more cartoonish and expressive, too. Compare Kirby's damaged sprite from this game to the original and you'll see what I mean. Not to mention that the screen size was larger so things would get in your way less frequently.
In addition to this, it adds a bunch of nonsense filler content. Sure, Masked Dedede is, indeed, a great boss fight. So is Galacta Knight. But people seem to forget the buildup to these fights: rehashes of other modes. Meta Knightmare Ultra, as cool of a concept as it is, is one of the laziest game modes I've ever experienced: just replaying the entire game but as Meta Knight. They could have done so much more with the idea of Meta Knight's journey to become the strongest and they just didn't. Masked Dedede comes after a slightly more inspired mode - a retread of Spring Breeze but more difficult, which is a reference to the original Kirby's Dream Land's extra mode as Spring Breeze adapted the original's normal mode - but even then, it still just feels the same. Helper to Hero is just The Arena again but you play as a helper. The True Arena is mainly just fighting harder versions of bosses from the original game.
Kirby Super Star Ultra isn't a terrible game. At its core, it's still Kirby Super Star: a wonderful anthology experience. I can't help but feel like it heralded in a bad era for Kirby, though: the intense reuse of assets in the name of content. The persistence of The Arena, Meta Knightmare Returns in Planet Robobot and its Dedede themed counterpart in Kirby Triple Deluxe, and everything about Star Allies' structure where the bulk of the content is replaying the same story levels with a different main character in Guest Star ???? all starts with this game. Sure, The Arena was in the original Kirby Super Star as well, but it wasn't a staple until this one. I yearn for the days where Kirby was a much more experimental series, especially with its side modes. The fact that this game covers up the husk of the original Super Star somewhat serves to remind me of that: each of the modes in that game, barring The Arena my beloathed of course, were inventive in their own way. Now it's just content for the sake of content.
I fail to understand how this can be one of the best remakes ever when it's already a lesser version of the original, and what it changes isn't even particularly unique for a remake. It's pointless bloat.
It seems to be a trend for these Kirby remakes to ditch the unique graphical styles of their previous entries, if the last one was anything to go by. The sprites in Super Star Ultra are much more homogenized than their original counterparts, which had a very distinct style and color palette. It was a lot more muted and the brighter colors really popped as a result of it. Each sprite was more cartoonish and expressive, too. Compare Kirby's damaged sprite from this game to the original and you'll see what I mean. Not to mention that the screen size was larger so things would get in your way less frequently.
In addition to this, it adds a bunch of nonsense filler content. Sure, Masked Dedede is, indeed, a great boss fight. So is Galacta Knight. But people seem to forget the buildup to these fights: rehashes of other modes. Meta Knightmare Ultra, as cool of a concept as it is, is one of the laziest game modes I've ever experienced: just replaying the entire game but as Meta Knight. They could have done so much more with the idea of Meta Knight's journey to become the strongest and they just didn't. Masked Dedede comes after a slightly more inspired mode - a retread of Spring Breeze but more difficult, which is a reference to the original Kirby's Dream Land's extra mode as Spring Breeze adapted the original's normal mode - but even then, it still just feels the same. Helper to Hero is just The Arena again but you play as a helper. The True Arena is mainly just fighting harder versions of bosses from the original game.
Kirby Super Star Ultra isn't a terrible game. At its core, it's still Kirby Super Star: a wonderful anthology experience. I can't help but feel like it heralded in a bad era for Kirby, though: the intense reuse of assets in the name of content. The persistence of The Arena, Meta Knightmare Returns in Planet Robobot and its Dedede themed counterpart in Kirby Triple Deluxe, and everything about Star Allies' structure where the bulk of the content is replaying the same story levels with a different main character in Guest Star ???? all starts with this game. Sure, The Arena was in the original Kirby Super Star as well, but it wasn't a staple until this one. I yearn for the days where Kirby was a much more experimental series, especially with its side modes. The fact that this game covers up the husk of the original Super Star somewhat serves to remind me of that: each of the modes in that game, barring The Arena my beloathed of course, were inventive in their own way. Now it's just content for the sake of content.
I fail to understand how this can be one of the best remakes ever when it's already a lesser version of the original, and what it changes isn't even particularly unique for a remake. It's pointless bloat.
1999
A big part of a game for many people is the act of relating to a main character, or for others, the sense of them playing an ideal version of themselves. A lot of games go the direction of having the player directly intuit how their character acts, to varying degrees of success. Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride and Fallout: New Vegas are the gold standards in this department - the amount of focus on the player's interaction with the world in this those games is breathtaking. Your actions in those games say a lot about you. Dragon Quest V really allows you to just be yourself and not the hero, really stressing that you are, in fact, just a regular person. Fallout: New Vegas allows you to play a hand in many questlines that say something about you as a person depending on how you choose to resolve the conflicts.
Sometimes, though, the mere act of a character being someone you enjoy is enough to do that for you. Mileage tends to vary a lot in this department due to the high amounts of variance between people and characters. While I myself am not a huge fan of Cecil from Final Fantasy IV in any sense other than what he pioneered for RPGs as a genre, a lot of people love that game simply because they seem themselves as him. They identify with his struggles to conquer the darkness inside him, which while simple, are something that many people have had to deal with in their lives. Sora is a great example, too. People love Sora and a lot of people saw themselves in him when they were kids experiencing the world for the first time. The first Kingdom Hearts game is very good at showing Sora's earnest wonder at the world in tandem with the children playing it for the first time.
This is a feeling I hadn't really ever experienced for myself in a game. Seeing as I'm a transgender woman in an artistic space that is mainly dominated by cis men, I had never really seen any main character as being like me. The closest is possibly Final Fantasy VI's Terra Branford; a girl who struggles with her own identity as a half-esper, but ultimately I still didn't envision myself as her. She's much too polite and passive for me.
I would have never imagined that an obscure SquareSoft RPG from 1999 would be the game that broke this for me. One of the main characters of Threads of Fate is a young girl named Mint, an abrasive princess who has been banished from her kingdom. When I see her, I see the person I always aspire to be as a transfem person: a proud, beautiful lady. Sure, she's annoying occasionally, but I find her overconfidence to be more endearing than grating. It's a trait of hers that I respect immensely, and it's something that I wish I had for myself. Every time she makes a rude remark, or comments on how beautiful and smart she is, it just makes me wish I could have that level of confidence. She is unabashedly herself, and I would give anything to be that. Never before have I enjoyed embodying a character this much before, and I'm not sure I will again.
The game itself is fairly simple, but for giving me such a strong and strange sense of identification, it's something special.
Sometimes, though, the mere act of a character being someone you enjoy is enough to do that for you. Mileage tends to vary a lot in this department due to the high amounts of variance between people and characters. While I myself am not a huge fan of Cecil from Final Fantasy IV in any sense other than what he pioneered for RPGs as a genre, a lot of people love that game simply because they seem themselves as him. They identify with his struggles to conquer the darkness inside him, which while simple, are something that many people have had to deal with in their lives. Sora is a great example, too. People love Sora and a lot of people saw themselves in him when they were kids experiencing the world for the first time. The first Kingdom Hearts game is very good at showing Sora's earnest wonder at the world in tandem with the children playing it for the first time.
This is a feeling I hadn't really ever experienced for myself in a game. Seeing as I'm a transgender woman in an artistic space that is mainly dominated by cis men, I had never really seen any main character as being like me. The closest is possibly Final Fantasy VI's Terra Branford; a girl who struggles with her own identity as a half-esper, but ultimately I still didn't envision myself as her. She's much too polite and passive for me.
I would have never imagined that an obscure SquareSoft RPG from 1999 would be the game that broke this for me. One of the main characters of Threads of Fate is a young girl named Mint, an abrasive princess who has been banished from her kingdom. When I see her, I see the person I always aspire to be as a transfem person: a proud, beautiful lady. Sure, she's annoying occasionally, but I find her overconfidence to be more endearing than grating. It's a trait of hers that I respect immensely, and it's something that I wish I had for myself. Every time she makes a rude remark, or comments on how beautiful and smart she is, it just makes me wish I could have that level of confidence. She is unabashedly herself, and I would give anything to be that. Never before have I enjoyed embodying a character this much before, and I'm not sure I will again.
The game itself is fairly simple, but for giving me such a strong and strange sense of identification, it's something special.
Narratives are finicky things. They're so inherently personal, so reliant on one's own experiences. There's no real way to ensure that a narrative will resonate with everyone, nor should you even try - the individuality of each narrative is what makes each one special. However, that doesn't stop us from trying to quantify them, even for the worse.
When I was a young child, I thought that the longer the narrative was, the better. Clearly, I would think, more content meant more fleshing out of ideas, more meaning. My favorite game of all time was Super Paper Mario mainly due to the fact that it had the most convoluted narrative I had played up until that point. The only thing that broke me out of this idea was when I read Naruto and realized that that was pretty terrible. For a long time though, I held that length equaled depth.
Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade is much a game that appeals to that sensibility. At every natural narrative conclusion, the game finds a way to artificially extend itself and retain relevancy. When the main villain dies and suddenly there's another villain behind him that adds another ten or so hours of gameplay, it feels a lot like a television series trying to keep itself running after the story loses steam just for the sake of profit. There's an absolutely bloated number of vestigial characters who only exist in case you've had your units dying (which in and of itself is a mechanic that Fire Emblem refuses to do anything interesting with on a narrative level.) It's rather silly - by the end of the game, you kind of forget what you were doing in the first place. This game jumps from unrelated narrative thread to unrelated narrative thread at an astonishing pace.
The Blazing Blade isn't the most bloated or artificially extended narrative out there. But to me, it will always represent them because it was one of my first introductions to the concept in a video game. There are so many points where this game can end but it chooses not to. There are so many characters who exist only to exist, without their existence meaning anything. Content for the sake of content.
Bigger does not always mean better.
When I was a young child, I thought that the longer the narrative was, the better. Clearly, I would think, more content meant more fleshing out of ideas, more meaning. My favorite game of all time was Super Paper Mario mainly due to the fact that it had the most convoluted narrative I had played up until that point. The only thing that broke me out of this idea was when I read Naruto and realized that that was pretty terrible. For a long time though, I held that length equaled depth.
Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade is much a game that appeals to that sensibility. At every natural narrative conclusion, the game finds a way to artificially extend itself and retain relevancy. When the main villain dies and suddenly there's another villain behind him that adds another ten or so hours of gameplay, it feels a lot like a television series trying to keep itself running after the story loses steam just for the sake of profit. There's an absolutely bloated number of vestigial characters who only exist in case you've had your units dying (which in and of itself is a mechanic that Fire Emblem refuses to do anything interesting with on a narrative level.) It's rather silly - by the end of the game, you kind of forget what you were doing in the first place. This game jumps from unrelated narrative thread to unrelated narrative thread at an astonishing pace.
The Blazing Blade isn't the most bloated or artificially extended narrative out there. But to me, it will always represent them because it was one of my first introductions to the concept in a video game. There are so many points where this game can end but it chooses not to. There are so many characters who exist only to exist, without their existence meaning anything. Content for the sake of content.
Bigger does not always mean better.
A lot of games have alternate routes that really fail to capture the spirit of the character they're about. For as fun as I think a game like Sonic Mania can be, the fact that each character essentially goes through the same narrative and it doesn't feel natural really shines through. It doesn't feel like an ensemble piece; it feels like Sonic's leftovers. And Knuckles.
That's not to say that using the same levels can't be the right choice. Far from it. Threads of Fate is a perfect example of the same areas being used to recontextualize the narrative in interesting ways, with how Rue and Mint end up meeting each other over and over again over the course of their two stories. There's a time and a place for those kinds of crossroads.
Plague of Shadows, however, is my favorite utilization of this.
A lot of people don't like Plague Knight's campaign, especially on their first playthrough. He's far more complicated to control, and his plot runs through a lot of the same levels as Shovel Knight. He's a lot more repetitive on the surface.
However, his story encapsulates his character eloquently. The levels, then, are completely recontextualized: since he's a villain, he's sneaking around in the background of Shovel Knight's journey. This is most directly shown at the beginning of the game when Plague Knight runs in the sewer directly below Shovel Knight, but it's an idea that's present throughout the entire game. You even fight what Plague Knight refers to as the Blue Burrower as a boss.
Your home base isn't the village this time around, it's a small hideout underneath that very same village. There are several parts of levels that only Plague Knight could access that feel like pulling back the curtain on an established area.
Plague of Shadows is often dismissed as the worst of its contemporaries, as overly complicated with shallow level design. But to dismiss it as that is to miss the point: those who live in the shadows of other's adventures have value. They have love, they have lives. Plague Knight is considered a nuisance at best and a terrorist at worst, in one town he is attacked by the guards upon entering. Yet he still has a great sense of humor, he has insecurities, he has desires - he wants to impress a girl he loves. And in the end, he gets that love. Even if it's cloaked in shadows.
That's not to say that using the same levels can't be the right choice. Far from it. Threads of Fate is a perfect example of the same areas being used to recontextualize the narrative in interesting ways, with how Rue and Mint end up meeting each other over and over again over the course of their two stories. There's a time and a place for those kinds of crossroads.
Plague of Shadows, however, is my favorite utilization of this.
A lot of people don't like Plague Knight's campaign, especially on their first playthrough. He's far more complicated to control, and his plot runs through a lot of the same levels as Shovel Knight. He's a lot more repetitive on the surface.
However, his story encapsulates his character eloquently. The levels, then, are completely recontextualized: since he's a villain, he's sneaking around in the background of Shovel Knight's journey. This is most directly shown at the beginning of the game when Plague Knight runs in the sewer directly below Shovel Knight, but it's an idea that's present throughout the entire game. You even fight what Plague Knight refers to as the Blue Burrower as a boss.
Your home base isn't the village this time around, it's a small hideout underneath that very same village. There are several parts of levels that only Plague Knight could access that feel like pulling back the curtain on an established area.
Plague of Shadows is often dismissed as the worst of its contemporaries, as overly complicated with shallow level design. But to dismiss it as that is to miss the point: those who live in the shadows of other's adventures have value. They have love, they have lives. Plague Knight is considered a nuisance at best and a terrorist at worst, in one town he is attacked by the guards upon entering. Yet he still has a great sense of humor, he has insecurities, he has desires - he wants to impress a girl he loves. And in the end, he gets that love. Even if it's cloaked in shadows.
It's hard to determine what is the biggest emblem of soulless capitalism that I've ever seen in the gaming sphere. Triple A developers put stuff like it out all the time. Games with no soul, no ambition. Even though there are probably worse offenders out there, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate takes the cake for me.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate doesn't have anything it wants to say. It's a masturbatory experience, one full of references to the history of the gaming industry devoid of any meaning beyond understanding the nature of the reference. It parades around facsimile of characters you recognize with no intention of making them meaningful, of recontextualizing them. The fact that people see a character they like getting into Smash as an honor shocks me; it only ensures that they'll be flanderized to the point of unrecognizability. A shell of a game with no identity aside from the vague notion of video games.
But hey, that guy you like is in it, right? Might as well have eternal brand loyalty or whatever.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate doesn't have anything it wants to say. It's a masturbatory experience, one full of references to the history of the gaming industry devoid of any meaning beyond understanding the nature of the reference. It parades around facsimile of characters you recognize with no intention of making them meaningful, of recontextualizing them. The fact that people see a character they like getting into Smash as an honor shocks me; it only ensures that they'll be flanderized to the point of unrecognizability. A shell of a game with no identity aside from the vague notion of video games.
But hey, that guy you like is in it, right? Might as well have eternal brand loyalty or whatever.
This review contains spoilers
The way we interact with narrative is part of a narrative. It's why so many reviews go into their experiences with a game. I will always love Final Fantasy VI because of it being hugely formative to my understanding of storytelling. Video games have a special method of tapping into this interactivity. They directly speak to the player and make them feel empowered in a narrative unlike any other medium with the amount of direct control you exert over them.
Undertale manages this flawlessly. The metatext intersects with the text in a beautiful way, the game recontextualizing the nature of video games themselves. When Flowey tells you that to 100% a game is to exhaust it of its meaning, of it being a world you could inhabit (not in those exact words, mind you, that would be a little too blunt for my liking) and draw upon his experiences a player-like entity, it made me think about the way I played video games. The way I interacted with the art form on the whole. Had I been making games worse for myself by 100%ing them? Had I been stripping them of their meaning by hollowing them out?
Doki Doki Literature Club! doesn't bother with messaging. Doki Doki Literature Club! consists of a game that interacts with metatext but only in its aesthetics, it uses it to say nothing and do nothing. When you reach the big twist of the game about halfway through, that it was actually self-aware akin to a creepypasta game, the game doesn't ever move on from that. It wears the guise of making commentary on visual novels, but never says anything specific. What am I supposed to take away from this experience?
What even is Doki Doki Literature Club! about? Who is it about? It's often cited as a satire of visual novels, but satire has to have direction behind it. It has to have meaning. This is just a game that aims for nothing. It uses the nature of metatextuality and shock horror in order to pretend it's saying something profound but it has no claims to make. It's wearing the husk of a better game.
Some people may be surprised to see that I dislike this game so much because I relate so heavily to Yuri's struggles with borderline personality disorder prior to the obnoxious creepypasta-ification. I do like Yuri and her portrayal.
I just wish she was in a game that stood for something.
Undertale manages this flawlessly. The metatext intersects with the text in a beautiful way, the game recontextualizing the nature of video games themselves. When Flowey tells you that to 100% a game is to exhaust it of its meaning, of it being a world you could inhabit (not in those exact words, mind you, that would be a little too blunt for my liking) and draw upon his experiences a player-like entity, it made me think about the way I played video games. The way I interacted with the art form on the whole. Had I been making games worse for myself by 100%ing them? Had I been stripping them of their meaning by hollowing them out?
Doki Doki Literature Club! doesn't bother with messaging. Doki Doki Literature Club! consists of a game that interacts with metatext but only in its aesthetics, it uses it to say nothing and do nothing. When you reach the big twist of the game about halfway through, that it was actually self-aware akin to a creepypasta game, the game doesn't ever move on from that. It wears the guise of making commentary on visual novels, but never says anything specific. What am I supposed to take away from this experience?
What even is Doki Doki Literature Club! about? Who is it about? It's often cited as a satire of visual novels, but satire has to have direction behind it. It has to have meaning. This is just a game that aims for nothing. It uses the nature of metatextuality and shock horror in order to pretend it's saying something profound but it has no claims to make. It's wearing the husk of a better game.
Some people may be surprised to see that I dislike this game so much because I relate so heavily to Yuri's struggles with borderline personality disorder prior to the obnoxious creepypasta-ification. I do like Yuri and her portrayal.
I just wish she was in a game that stood for something.
2017
This review contains spoilers
The found family is one of the oldest storytelling tropes out there. The idea that a group of people who have never met can come together and find companionship in each other, that they can cross destinies, is really compelling. After all, many of us haven't had very good families in our lives, and society's depressing obsession with the intrinsic value of blood relations leaves us even more alienated. It's a very inherently queer narrative, too - we're outcast, and shunned, and betrayed by the rest of society, having to find solace in each other. And find great solace we do, often emboldening each other to do incredible things. Howl's Moving Castle is very emblematic of this, as are many of Hayao Miyazaki's works. That one just takes time to point out the newly created family to its audience through Howl vocalizing it, and easily has the largest one. As somebody who grew up on that movie, memories of it traveled through my head a lot while playing this game.
In gaming, the found family is often invoked through the usage of party members in RPGs. Final Fantasy VI dabbles in this, through Cyan who has lost his wife and seeing Gau and Sabin as adopted sons, and a scrapped party member named Angela would have been a new flame for him. Dragon Quest V has you construct your own family from the ground up after all of it has been destroyed. The monsters that form up your friend group in Undertale all become parental mentors to the main character in some way or another.
Pyre, however, is truly the first game to make me feel deeply included in that family, in such a way that I didn't think any medium other than a video game could. Throughout the course of this game, you find yourself talking to the various people that make up your party and learning all about them. Each one is compelling in their own right. The game also gives you a lot of time to get to know them. The way everyone gets so familiar with you, even the ones who don't like you at first... it's perfect. The rites themselves, the sports that make up the game's main brunt of gameplay aside from dialogue, are a great way of conveying that camraderie as well. You're literally working together and your teamwork strengthens as you learn each others skills.
Then the game rips you apart from your new family in one of the most powerful storytelling decisions I've seen.
As a band of people exiled from the game's major civilization, you all have some common ground and reason for participating in the rites: your freedom from exile. Toward the end of the first cycle of the rites, though, you find out something bleak: only one person may be liberated at the end of the rites. This leads to some really heart-wrenching decisions about who has to stay and who has to leave. You have to decide to the best of your ability based on what you know about them. And the game accommodates any choice you make, even loss, making the family feel as fluid as a real one might be. Sometimes I wanted to lose liberation on purpose just to keep the people I cared about. But even those who are liberated still send you letters from time to time. They find a way to get back to you, no matter how hard it is.
I've never felt as loved by a fictional group of characters as I have with Pyre. I've never felt as deeply part of a fictional group before. Even the people I disagree with strongly - I take a lot of umbrage with Volfred's weird obsession with peaceful protesting - I can't bring myself to dislike him as I would normally. They're all people I care about.
There's much to be said about the milquetoast liberal politics of this game's ending. I don't like that things barely change. Just a changing of the guard. If it were framed differently, as a bittersweet ending, I would like it, though. The idea that not everyone can make it out, the family that you've built not being able to come together at the end... it's really heartbreaking. The game treats it as some triumphant victory, unfortunately. I don't appreciate it.
The way Pyre's cast is crafted is immaculate, and the stakes that they exist around only further serves to elevate them. An eclectic yet familial party who never really fails to endear themselves to you, like the endearing little sister-esque vagabond who you get to help name, or the pet bird Ti'zo who was invaluable to victory time and time again. It would be shameful of me to not mention lesbian girlfriend banished spirit Sandra, my personal favorite and one I talked to frequently. Her experiences trapped in an orb being endeared to people, then cast aside over and over and fears about being abandoned again were highly relatable to my own experiences with borderline personality disorder. I was reflected in that orb of hers, and I'm glad she at least got to be happy. Their triumphs, their defeats... it all pulled me in so much. This is the only fictitious family I've ever truly felt like I was a part of. I see myself returning to the world of Pyre time and time again just to see these faces again, to be a part of their world again.
I only wish they all could have been happy.
In gaming, the found family is often invoked through the usage of party members in RPGs. Final Fantasy VI dabbles in this, through Cyan who has lost his wife and seeing Gau and Sabin as adopted sons, and a scrapped party member named Angela would have been a new flame for him. Dragon Quest V has you construct your own family from the ground up after all of it has been destroyed. The monsters that form up your friend group in Undertale all become parental mentors to the main character in some way or another.
Pyre, however, is truly the first game to make me feel deeply included in that family, in such a way that I didn't think any medium other than a video game could. Throughout the course of this game, you find yourself talking to the various people that make up your party and learning all about them. Each one is compelling in their own right. The game also gives you a lot of time to get to know them. The way everyone gets so familiar with you, even the ones who don't like you at first... it's perfect. The rites themselves, the sports that make up the game's main brunt of gameplay aside from dialogue, are a great way of conveying that camraderie as well. You're literally working together and your teamwork strengthens as you learn each others skills.
Then the game rips you apart from your new family in one of the most powerful storytelling decisions I've seen.
As a band of people exiled from the game's major civilization, you all have some common ground and reason for participating in the rites: your freedom from exile. Toward the end of the first cycle of the rites, though, you find out something bleak: only one person may be liberated at the end of the rites. This leads to some really heart-wrenching decisions about who has to stay and who has to leave. You have to decide to the best of your ability based on what you know about them. And the game accommodates any choice you make, even loss, making the family feel as fluid as a real one might be. Sometimes I wanted to lose liberation on purpose just to keep the people I cared about. But even those who are liberated still send you letters from time to time. They find a way to get back to you, no matter how hard it is.
I've never felt as loved by a fictional group of characters as I have with Pyre. I've never felt as deeply part of a fictional group before. Even the people I disagree with strongly - I take a lot of umbrage with Volfred's weird obsession with peaceful protesting - I can't bring myself to dislike him as I would normally. They're all people I care about.
There's much to be said about the milquetoast liberal politics of this game's ending. I don't like that things barely change. Just a changing of the guard. If it were framed differently, as a bittersweet ending, I would like it, though. The idea that not everyone can make it out, the family that you've built not being able to come together at the end... it's really heartbreaking. The game treats it as some triumphant victory, unfortunately. I don't appreciate it.
The way Pyre's cast is crafted is immaculate, and the stakes that they exist around only further serves to elevate them. An eclectic yet familial party who never really fails to endear themselves to you, like the endearing little sister-esque vagabond who you get to help name, or the pet bird Ti'zo who was invaluable to victory time and time again. It would be shameful of me to not mention lesbian girlfriend banished spirit Sandra, my personal favorite and one I talked to frequently. Her experiences trapped in an orb being endeared to people, then cast aside over and over and fears about being abandoned again were highly relatable to my own experiences with borderline personality disorder. I was reflected in that orb of hers, and I'm glad she at least got to be happy. Their triumphs, their defeats... it all pulled me in so much. This is the only fictitious family I've ever truly felt like I was a part of. I see myself returning to the world of Pyre time and time again just to see these faces again, to be a part of their world again.
I only wish they all could have been happy.
2021
Not every game is going to click with people, especially when they're incredibly experimental or when their tediousness is part of what makes them so special. A slow pace, as an example, can be used to do some very interesting things, like creating a bond with other characters or getting much more immersed in a world. This can backfire spectacularly, obviously, if none of that is interesting. Golden Sun is a good example of that. I can't help but adore it when it does shake out for me, though.
I understand that Eastward is a fairly divisive game. It is confusing, complicated, and incredibly overwrought in some aspects. But I think there's something really special about the world that you exist in in Eastward, the way you just live there.
There are several junctions in the story where you stay in one place for a brief period of time, and have ample room to talk to everyone there whose dialogue updates with the story, each one with their own unique sprite art and their own lives. The presentation in this game really sells how everything feels like a diverse and unique world. Taking in the atmosphere, learning about the daily troubles of random people... this is where Eastward shines.
As you go from place to place, you're powerless to do much of anything besides bring joy to the lives of these people, too. The main characters aren't particularly special, they can't stop the world-ending threat that seems to follow them everywhere. All they can do is make the world a little better, and I think that that's far more interesting than if it were some grand heroic quest.
Unfortunately, the last few hours of the game decide to make it a weird, save-the-world plot instead of just an experience of two people traveling. It doesn't work for me at all, especially since it's so starkly different to the rest of the game. But I think that up until that point, this story of this father and daughter who take in the wonder of each location they go to is just wonderful. A train full of film-making monkeys, a feudal Japan infused steampunk city, a quiet village ravaged by an apocalyptic force of despair. It's beautiful.
Eastward is a portrait of a dying world, and a testament to the natural wonder of life.
I understand that Eastward is a fairly divisive game. It is confusing, complicated, and incredibly overwrought in some aspects. But I think there's something really special about the world that you exist in in Eastward, the way you just live there.
There are several junctions in the story where you stay in one place for a brief period of time, and have ample room to talk to everyone there whose dialogue updates with the story, each one with their own unique sprite art and their own lives. The presentation in this game really sells how everything feels like a diverse and unique world. Taking in the atmosphere, learning about the daily troubles of random people... this is where Eastward shines.
As you go from place to place, you're powerless to do much of anything besides bring joy to the lives of these people, too. The main characters aren't particularly special, they can't stop the world-ending threat that seems to follow them everywhere. All they can do is make the world a little better, and I think that that's far more interesting than if it were some grand heroic quest.
Unfortunately, the last few hours of the game decide to make it a weird, save-the-world plot instead of just an experience of two people traveling. It doesn't work for me at all, especially since it's so starkly different to the rest of the game. But I think that up until that point, this story of this father and daughter who take in the wonder of each location they go to is just wonderful. A train full of film-making monkeys, a feudal Japan infused steampunk city, a quiet village ravaged by an apocalyptic force of despair. It's beautiful.
Eastward is a portrait of a dying world, and a testament to the natural wonder of life.
2017
This review contains spoilers
A lot of video games try to use their worlds to create a sense of wonder in the player. This is most often seen in the open world genre - games like New Vegas have a slew of interesting locations for you to stumble upon. A lake full of strange, Creature from the Black Lagoon type monsters that felt like a strange dream when I first encountered them to the south. New Vegas in particular is really impressive in how tightly packed its world ends up being, and I adore that about it.
With that being said, this wonder isn't typically achieved for me in video games. A lot of people love Breath of the Wild, but it falls flat for me just due to the world being incredibly repetitive. So many of the areas are just generic enemy encampments. I feel no compelling reason to even care. The act of exploration on its own doesn't interest me: there has to be something interesting for me to find, or I'll feel like I've wasted my time.
The other genre that banks on this idea of wonder in the world quite a bit is the metroidvania. It usually achieves it to greater effect with me due to there being a tighter focus on a smaller world and progression. Metroid Fusion is a fantastic game about the brutality of government experimentation and biological warfare. The exploration, and lack of choice, is designed with purpose to it. It feels like a claustrophobic adventure where you're being strung along by the government. The sense of wonder comes from the mystique of when you do get to go off the beaten path, the unease you get when you feel like you're doing something you're not supposed to. It's palpable.
The world of Hallownest, however, doesn't give me a sense of wonder. I feel no reason to explore it. There's no motivation, no direction. You're just plopped into the world and expected to enjoy it inherently. The game feels like a vast, empty wasteland. There are quite a few fun characters you can encounter along the way, but the majority of things you'll find aren't related to that. Many secret passageways you find from exploring will just bring you to literal garbage that only exists to be sold. It's... disheartening to pull of an incredibly difficult platforming challenge and find nothing of value. Why bother risking your life when so often it leads to nothing of value?
The corpse running mechanic adds to this lack of interest in exploration. Upon death in this game, you lose all of your money and have to go find your soul and fight it to the death in order to get it back. It adds a lot of tedium to the game, backtracking in order to get to where your soul is, and it makes it so you won't want to explore, lest you compound the time you spend backtracking after failing a difficult challenge.
It certainly doesn't help that most of the areas in Hollow Knight have a very similar feel to each other. So many of them are drab recolors - it's hard to care about finding new areas when it all has the same atmosphere. Forgotten Crossroads, Deepnest and Kingdom's Edge all have very similar feel to each other, just with a different coloration. I understand the game is trying to be oppressive, but I think that it's too large for its own good. You end up feeling very overwhelmed and exhausted by the end of the experience.
While I do think the characters of Hollow Knight are often well-written, and a great reward for exploration, I also think that they're too cryptic for their own good. They often allude to vague notions of what's going on, with the assumption that the listener has already been filled in on it - with the obvious situation being that, no, you don't know. You have to spend a long portion of time in this game doing the homework on what's going on for yourself, and I simply find that unappealing. By the ending, it becomes clear, but before then, you're essentially an aimless wanderer, which isn't compelling to me. There's no diegetic reason for what you're doing. You're just there.
Hollow Knight is a story about finding meaning in futility, and the level design reflects that. If you can find a way past the literal junk that is thrown at you constantly throughout the levels and the monotony of going back to where you died, then I suppose you've solved the game. However, I think there were better ways of illustrating these ideas - and I certainly don't think the game had to be this long to do it.
Hollow Knight could have been a short game about a cyclical world, one where the ones in power choose to not solve problems but temporarily dress them with a band-aid. Instead, it's a long game about those ideas, and a cast of characters who are often unrelated to these ideas despite how entertaining and meaningful they can be. It's often charming, but ultimately, huge and unwieldy.
With that being said, this wonder isn't typically achieved for me in video games. A lot of people love Breath of the Wild, but it falls flat for me just due to the world being incredibly repetitive. So many of the areas are just generic enemy encampments. I feel no compelling reason to even care. The act of exploration on its own doesn't interest me: there has to be something interesting for me to find, or I'll feel like I've wasted my time.
The other genre that banks on this idea of wonder in the world quite a bit is the metroidvania. It usually achieves it to greater effect with me due to there being a tighter focus on a smaller world and progression. Metroid Fusion is a fantastic game about the brutality of government experimentation and biological warfare. The exploration, and lack of choice, is designed with purpose to it. It feels like a claustrophobic adventure where you're being strung along by the government. The sense of wonder comes from the mystique of when you do get to go off the beaten path, the unease you get when you feel like you're doing something you're not supposed to. It's palpable.
The world of Hallownest, however, doesn't give me a sense of wonder. I feel no reason to explore it. There's no motivation, no direction. You're just plopped into the world and expected to enjoy it inherently. The game feels like a vast, empty wasteland. There are quite a few fun characters you can encounter along the way, but the majority of things you'll find aren't related to that. Many secret passageways you find from exploring will just bring you to literal garbage that only exists to be sold. It's... disheartening to pull of an incredibly difficult platforming challenge and find nothing of value. Why bother risking your life when so often it leads to nothing of value?
The corpse running mechanic adds to this lack of interest in exploration. Upon death in this game, you lose all of your money and have to go find your soul and fight it to the death in order to get it back. It adds a lot of tedium to the game, backtracking in order to get to where your soul is, and it makes it so you won't want to explore, lest you compound the time you spend backtracking after failing a difficult challenge.
It certainly doesn't help that most of the areas in Hollow Knight have a very similar feel to each other. So many of them are drab recolors - it's hard to care about finding new areas when it all has the same atmosphere. Forgotten Crossroads, Deepnest and Kingdom's Edge all have very similar feel to each other, just with a different coloration. I understand the game is trying to be oppressive, but I think that it's too large for its own good. You end up feeling very overwhelmed and exhausted by the end of the experience.
While I do think the characters of Hollow Knight are often well-written, and a great reward for exploration, I also think that they're too cryptic for their own good. They often allude to vague notions of what's going on, with the assumption that the listener has already been filled in on it - with the obvious situation being that, no, you don't know. You have to spend a long portion of time in this game doing the homework on what's going on for yourself, and I simply find that unappealing. By the ending, it becomes clear, but before then, you're essentially an aimless wanderer, which isn't compelling to me. There's no diegetic reason for what you're doing. You're just there.
Hollow Knight is a story about finding meaning in futility, and the level design reflects that. If you can find a way past the literal junk that is thrown at you constantly throughout the levels and the monotony of going back to where you died, then I suppose you've solved the game. However, I think there were better ways of illustrating these ideas - and I certainly don't think the game had to be this long to do it.
Hollow Knight could have been a short game about a cyclical world, one where the ones in power choose to not solve problems but temporarily dress them with a band-aid. Instead, it's a long game about those ideas, and a cast of characters who are often unrelated to these ideas despite how entertaining and meaningful they can be. It's often charming, but ultimately, huge and unwieldy.
1999
Something that is lost in a lot of RPGs is the sense of there being anything outside of the plot. That what you're doing isn't the end all be all of the world. Some games achieve this with great effect - here's my obligatory reference to Fallout: New Vegas. The intersecting and intertwined narratives of that game are endlessly fascinating to me. Most games are like Secret of Mana, though: NPCs typically have one line of dialogue upon speaking to them, or at the very least an incredibly minimal amount.
Ted Woolsey, the translator of the aforementioned Secret of Mana, seemingly thought that that wasn't enough, because when he made Shadow Madness, he filled the world with bespoke interactions. Nearly every house you walk into in the strange, dream-like city of Karillon has somebody new for you to meet and learn the troubles of, a character interaction between your party members that tells you more about them or the world they inhabit. It's impressive in some ways, how much of the game is dedicated to this idea. There are several areas that exist just to exist, like a strange art gallery where the party just argues about their thoughts on abstract art for a bit. This is what I like to be rewarded with for exploring in games. Character interactions.
The problem here is that it's still a game written and directed by Ted Woolsey. While I think his work on the scripts of Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger are perfectly fine, despite their errors, his original writing is nowhere near as solid. Most of the character interactions I described are characters merely quipping at each other. The game has a strong sense of malice toward the homeless and people with mental illnesses, with homeless people being a regular enemy in the game. The female party member is constantly harassed in really uncomfortable ways as a "joke".
There's a strange narrative about man vs. machine that never really picks a side, with the protagonist working with machine party members but constantly being racist toward them. Almost every interaction with Harv-5, your robot party member, is the party deriding him for being a robot. Similarly, there's a city vs. country dynamic here that isn't resolved meaningfully either: characters just make fun of you for being a "bumpkin" constantly. In this respect, it feels oddly personal, like Woolsey feels as if he's getting back at people who make fun of him for this in his own life. Characters are adversarial to you wherever you go, but you always end up wowing them nigh instantly. In one instance, you go to a town where the guards want to arrest you for committing crimes before the events of the game, all the while making fun of you for being from the country, but then change their minds because you say something that they find vaguely interesting. You sure showed them!
To add to this, nothing about it takes itself seriously. This can be fun in theory, but in this case, it just leads to you not caring about any of the interactions that play out in front of you, especially when they're not that funny anyway. Why should I care when Harv-5, the robot wheat farmer, waxes philosophical about the nature of experience? It's treated as somewhat poignant, that a robot is the one who realizes the most that experience is a valid form of learning just as much as reading is, but he's a silly wheat farmer robot whose sarcastic remarks are often the source of the game's comedy in his interactions with our main character. It reeks of MCU, but a decade removed.
Shadow Madness is an example of a game that exists not for any particular narrative, but to be a world you can exist in. And in some ways, it succeeds at this. The interactions are complex and varied. Unfortunately, it's written by Ted Woolsey.
Ted Woolsey, the translator of the aforementioned Secret of Mana, seemingly thought that that wasn't enough, because when he made Shadow Madness, he filled the world with bespoke interactions. Nearly every house you walk into in the strange, dream-like city of Karillon has somebody new for you to meet and learn the troubles of, a character interaction between your party members that tells you more about them or the world they inhabit. It's impressive in some ways, how much of the game is dedicated to this idea. There are several areas that exist just to exist, like a strange art gallery where the party just argues about their thoughts on abstract art for a bit. This is what I like to be rewarded with for exploring in games. Character interactions.
The problem here is that it's still a game written and directed by Ted Woolsey. While I think his work on the scripts of Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger are perfectly fine, despite their errors, his original writing is nowhere near as solid. Most of the character interactions I described are characters merely quipping at each other. The game has a strong sense of malice toward the homeless and people with mental illnesses, with homeless people being a regular enemy in the game. The female party member is constantly harassed in really uncomfortable ways as a "joke".
There's a strange narrative about man vs. machine that never really picks a side, with the protagonist working with machine party members but constantly being racist toward them. Almost every interaction with Harv-5, your robot party member, is the party deriding him for being a robot. Similarly, there's a city vs. country dynamic here that isn't resolved meaningfully either: characters just make fun of you for being a "bumpkin" constantly. In this respect, it feels oddly personal, like Woolsey feels as if he's getting back at people who make fun of him for this in his own life. Characters are adversarial to you wherever you go, but you always end up wowing them nigh instantly. In one instance, you go to a town where the guards want to arrest you for committing crimes before the events of the game, all the while making fun of you for being from the country, but then change their minds because you say something that they find vaguely interesting. You sure showed them!
To add to this, nothing about it takes itself seriously. This can be fun in theory, but in this case, it just leads to you not caring about any of the interactions that play out in front of you, especially when they're not that funny anyway. Why should I care when Harv-5, the robot wheat farmer, waxes philosophical about the nature of experience? It's treated as somewhat poignant, that a robot is the one who realizes the most that experience is a valid form of learning just as much as reading is, but he's a silly wheat farmer robot whose sarcastic remarks are often the source of the game's comedy in his interactions with our main character. It reeks of MCU, but a decade removed.
Shadow Madness is an example of a game that exists not for any particular narrative, but to be a world you can exist in. And in some ways, it succeeds at this. The interactions are complex and varied. Unfortunately, it's written by Ted Woolsey.
The history of animation is something that I've studied extensively. There was a point in time where I wanted to animate, after all, and though I quickly realized that it wasn't for me, I still hold a fascination for it. I love watching animation, a lot of my favorite films and TV series are animated, and I love discussing it. The eras of animation are something that I'm all too familiar with at this point.
These eras are pretty hard to pin down in any meaningful capacity, especially once you take into account international animation styles and other mediums like stop motion, but it's definitely easy to see a difference between the works of Ub Iwerks and the works of James Baxter. At the very least, the rubberhose style of the early 1900s is itself very distinct for many reasons.
Unfortunately, however, it's also the one that seems to get the most love, which often leads to its racist connotations being carried over into its depictions. A lot of early animation in America took inspiration from racist minstrel shows, and those sentiments have carried over into the many love letters to that era of animation that seem to either ignore or not care about those things - Cuphead comes to mind with its minstrel gloves and its invocation of old shorts about how black people like to gamble in its main narrative, even if it is unintentional. There is a hyperfixation in the animation sphere on the cartoons of old, and it's often for the worse.
So, then, it's refreshing to see something like Garfield: Caught in the Act, which takes cues from contemporary animation, at least for its time. It's kind of incredible that a significant portion of the stuff in this game was drawn by Jim Davis himself - probably more than the current Garfield comics, which are so lifeless by comparison. This game is so fluid, each of the characters are imbued with so much life. It's a visual delight.
Above all else, I appreciate that it doesn't call back to rubberhose animation, not even out of just its harmful aspects, but just because it's nice to see something outside of it in a time where that kind of animation is held on a pedestal. I'd love to see a reanimated version of this game released today, I'm sure it'd look wonderful.
These eras are pretty hard to pin down in any meaningful capacity, especially once you take into account international animation styles and other mediums like stop motion, but it's definitely easy to see a difference between the works of Ub Iwerks and the works of James Baxter. At the very least, the rubberhose style of the early 1900s is itself very distinct for many reasons.
Unfortunately, however, it's also the one that seems to get the most love, which often leads to its racist connotations being carried over into its depictions. A lot of early animation in America took inspiration from racist minstrel shows, and those sentiments have carried over into the many love letters to that era of animation that seem to either ignore or not care about those things - Cuphead comes to mind with its minstrel gloves and its invocation of old shorts about how black people like to gamble in its main narrative, even if it is unintentional. There is a hyperfixation in the animation sphere on the cartoons of old, and it's often for the worse.
So, then, it's refreshing to see something like Garfield: Caught in the Act, which takes cues from contemporary animation, at least for its time. It's kind of incredible that a significant portion of the stuff in this game was drawn by Jim Davis himself - probably more than the current Garfield comics, which are so lifeless by comparison. This game is so fluid, each of the characters are imbued with so much life. It's a visual delight.
Above all else, I appreciate that it doesn't call back to rubberhose animation, not even out of just its harmful aspects, but just because it's nice to see something outside of it in a time where that kind of animation is held on a pedestal. I'd love to see a reanimated version of this game released today, I'm sure it'd look wonderful.
1999
This review contains spoilers
You're very fortunate if you happened to have not grown up in a religious household. Not all religious households are awful, of course, but many are. The structure and hierarchy of a lot of organized religions lead to a lot of abuse and damage.
A lot of my fellow queers have experienced this firsthand. I won't go into specifics here, one for privacy reasons and two for the fact that you probably know the story already. Organized religion, especially the big ones like Christianity, aren't often kind to us, in spite of what their belief systems say. It's one of the most often used excuses for violence - whether that be ostracizing people or outright killing them.
It's no surprise, then, that Silent Hill resonates a lot with queer people, even if that wasn't really the original intent. In many ways, it itself is a game about dealing with religious abuse and the scars that it leaves on a community, the way that cult-like mentalities can be integrated so easily into family models.
Alessa is the victim in this situation, to her abusive mother and the main villain, Dahlia. Alessa was only born in order to serve as the mother for the cult's god - and in doing so, was forced to do horrible things for the church. Even though the source of my familial abuse wasn't religious, it was very uncomfortable how familiar the scenes where Dahlia guilted Alessa into using her powers or being experimented on were. It all culminates in Alessa being forced to become god by merging with her other half - the half that she wanted to give new life away from the town of Silent Hill.
Alessa's abuse formed the twisted, feverish dream that is Silent Hill, a town where nothing ever feels right because it's not right itself. A town born out of religious trauma, from Alessa's own horrible experiences. From her horrible experiences in school to her many stays in the hospital from her abuse (including her own mother trying to torch her to death), it's all reflected here.
And that's the truest horror. Just a poor, scared little girl who's been betrayed by everything that was supposed to protect her. As so many of us were when we were young.
A lot of my fellow queers have experienced this firsthand. I won't go into specifics here, one for privacy reasons and two for the fact that you probably know the story already. Organized religion, especially the big ones like Christianity, aren't often kind to us, in spite of what their belief systems say. It's one of the most often used excuses for violence - whether that be ostracizing people or outright killing them.
It's no surprise, then, that Silent Hill resonates a lot with queer people, even if that wasn't really the original intent. In many ways, it itself is a game about dealing with religious abuse and the scars that it leaves on a community, the way that cult-like mentalities can be integrated so easily into family models.
Alessa is the victim in this situation, to her abusive mother and the main villain, Dahlia. Alessa was only born in order to serve as the mother for the cult's god - and in doing so, was forced to do horrible things for the church. Even though the source of my familial abuse wasn't religious, it was very uncomfortable how familiar the scenes where Dahlia guilted Alessa into using her powers or being experimented on were. It all culminates in Alessa being forced to become god by merging with her other half - the half that she wanted to give new life away from the town of Silent Hill.
Alessa's abuse formed the twisted, feverish dream that is Silent Hill, a town where nothing ever feels right because it's not right itself. A town born out of religious trauma, from Alessa's own horrible experiences. From her horrible experiences in school to her many stays in the hospital from her abuse (including her own mother trying to torch her to death), it's all reflected here.
And that's the truest horror. Just a poor, scared little girl who's been betrayed by everything that was supposed to protect her. As so many of us were when we were young.