Entre esto, The Well y Vía Negativa, empiezo a considerar a Yames une artista de pocas temáticas y muchas ideas. Donde el primer juego tanteaba con los elementos de una novela gótica clásica, y Vía Negativa trata de presentarse como una versión retorcida del sacrificio de Job, Water Womb World es, a mi parecer, la obra suya que más reconoce sus raíces lovecraftianas. A decir verdad, hay historias en los Mitos de Cthulhu que se leen prácticamente igual si excusas el componente religioso.

Como ya he dicho, creo que Yames es un poco de piñón fijo, pero mientras la estética y la presentación me entren, estaré dispuesto a excusarlo. Y aquí lo que me ha entrado es la interfaz de PC-98 que lo impregna todo. Con todo, hecho en falta un poquito más de variedad.

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Between this, The Well and Via Negativa, I'm beginning to see Yames as an artist with few themes but many ideas. Whereas the first game tinkered with the tropes of a gothic novel, and Via Negativa is like a twisted version of Job's sacrifice, Water Womb World is the one work of his that sits closer to Lovecraft. Truth be told, there are stories in the Cthulhu Myths that read pretty much the same minus the religious component.

As I said, I think Yames is a bit of a one trick pony, but as long as the aesthetics and presentation suit me I'll be willing to play. The PC-98 interface is what did it for me this time, but I missed some variety in the end.

A 3D bullet hell monster collector doesn’t sound like something that should work as well as it does.

I’ve been on a bit of an obscure indie game kick lately, primarily because they’re hitting a few intersections that bigger budget games aren’t for me; they tend to be short, they tend to be cheap, and I get a major kick out of unearthing titles that others haven’t seen or have otherwise looked over. It makes me feel like a real tastemaker. It’s immediately obvious that Hamelin’s Journey exists as the almost-platonic ideal of the exact kind of project I’m talking about when I say “obscure indie game”. This, in itself, is a bit of a shame, because it means that not enough people have played it. It’s also a boon to me, however, because I get to be the one who tells you to go play it.

The game itself is quite simple, requiring you to do little more than dodge incoming bullets while your collectible creatures automatically shoot back at the nearest target. You can’t aim, you can’t sprint, you can’t jump; you could play this on an Atari 2600 controller, given that all you’re really capable of is moving around and hitting the interact button to select menu options. When your means of engaging with a game are this simple, you’ve either managed to make something that’s woefully underbaked, or something that’s precisely as realized as it needs to be; this is unquestionably the latter.

A major factor in what makes this as enjoyable as it is comes down to how absolutely broken you can make some of your team compositions. I’m going to declare this as a universal, golden rule in the hopes that everyone in the industry adjusts their design documents accordingly: buffs must always stack, and never refresh. Having two of the same buff doubles the buff, as God intended. Having four of the same buff quadruples it. There’s one obscene strategy you can pull off that flies in the face of everything holy and decent by stacking a “double all outgoing and incoming damage” buff on top of itself four times. It rules. I don’t know if the multiplier is additive unto itself and thus gives you x8 damage, or if it’s multiplicative unto itself and gives you x16, but the only thing you really need to know is that you can pair it with crit boosts and fire rate ups to become the living, walking equivalent of an M134.

But while all of the mechanics are in place, there’s far too much redundancy present for them to shine the way that they ought to. Even in speedruns of the game that last for a little over ten minutes, about half of the runtime is dedicated to grinding basic enemies; leveling up is both exceedingly slow and exceedingly necessary, which grinds pacing to a halt like the game is throwing the emergency brake. Part of the appeal of monster collecting games over traditional RPGs — for me, at least — is the fact that fighting a strong opponent will give you a strong ally if you’re able to capture them. Mewtwo can beat your ass if you go at him with a weak team, but managing to capture him guarantees that you’ve got a WMD sitting in your pocket. Captured monsters in Hamelin’s Journey, however, lose all of their experience and drop down to Level 1 the second you get your hands on them. It’s one thing to grind away at a wall of muscle twenty levels above you in the hopes of getting a rare capture, and another to realize that you have to go through the same grind all over again if you want the powerful creature you got to be a fraction as powerful as it was when you were fighting it. I don’t see why these monsters need to reset to base stats when you get them. Keeping their power level high would certainly make a short game even shorter, but it would do so by cutting out meaningless, consequence-free grinding. That’s not the kind of gameplay worth preserving.

Hamelin’s Journey is fun, and a little creepy, and a very unique combination of gameplay elements that all mostly work in harmony together. There’s definitely still room for this to be a lot more than it is, but this is leagues ahead of the developer’s previous work. Not to make it sound like I’m shitting on them, or anything — it’s a good thing if your newest games make the old ones look amateurish by comparison. It’s always nice to see a creator improve on their craft, and Warkus and Xena-Spectrale might just have what it takes to make something truly phenomenal if they can stay the course.

I don’t know who comes up with the itch.io time estimates. This one advertised “two to four hours of gameplay” and barely clocked in over thirty minutes.

So I played Drakengard 3 for about 7 hours when I was sick and in bed... and it is chaotic in the best sense of the word. I liked the pre-rendered backgrounds and wish there were more of them. I also liked the facial animations, and I think the game would be better if it had more close-ups of the characters.
In the end, I got tired, but I thought a lot while playing. From the moment I started the game, I liked the violence that the main protagonist inflicts on his enemies. It's chaotic violence, reflected on screen by the same kind of chaotic violence that's input on the controller: left trigger, square x4, triangle x2, jump, left trigger, right trigger, dpad up, change weapon, jump, triangle, square x5-7, triangle, left trigger, right trigger... and that's how a fight usually goes. It's a mashup of musou and hack'n'slash. It's so convoluted, and even at low framerates it's fun and it works, because the combos are simple but effective, and sometimes the enviroments adds to them.
But since the game's mythos is based on songs... I kept thinking about songs and where the ending could be heading to. So somehow I started to wander into what my intentions would be in writing or making a work of art. This problem has a name and it's motivation: "Why am I writing for? Is it because I want to open everyone's eyes by force or surprise?" No, I don't have any desire to be a self-imposer. I don't want others to hear a song that contains what I desire or what I've seen in the past - a song like that would make others want something, anything, and that's not my intention. In the end, I resolved that the kind of art I would like to make is the one where I try to prevent an image, to make a gaze avert or look for an image or vice versa, to actually take something into the future, or to make others dream or wake up... That's not always clear.

Carries forward the speed and attitude of the original title, and that isn't a bad thing really. The music is given fuller rock instrumentation, and the racers are plentiful and have their own portraits and 2D sprites that provide personality. The inclusion of combat mechanics combines these two focuses well, and it's a smart addition that's risky but can have a big payoff, suiting the volatility of the races. To achieve its sense of speed, the game prioritizes performance. A steady framerate with all those racers and all the track flying by is pretty commendable when so many N64 titles were choppy.

But the overall look of the game suffers a bit for the cost of that performance. Tracks aren't that detailed, vehicles often look blocky (I've heard it called 'soap racer' and at certain distances that tracks), and something about the aesthetic just isn't that attractive. I liked the first game for its vivid colour and mysterious locations, and this game looks washed out and indistinct.

Moreover the game shows the flaws in its game design as you climb in difficulty. Early on you just feel puzzled when you boost next to a racer accelarating normally and don't make up any ground, but when you start playing on expert it becomes obvious that the rules the other racers play by just aren't the same. Rubberbanding gets egregious, and while I managed to beat a couple cups on this difficulty, it felt more like blind luck to me.

It's a solid and distinct racer for the system, a nicely polished iteration, but I think it loses a little bit of the magic and doesn't offer up many surprises.

Playing the House of Asterion highlights the importance of context in art. One could certainly go in blindly(literally) and let the game speak for itself, that was probably the intention given the extremely spartan ReadMe file included with the game and itch.io page description. Its also a common feature of Gareth Damian Martin's games (Citizen Sleeper, In Other Waters) to seemingly drop the player in the setting and encourage them to hit the ground running, narratively. So whilst I would encourage you to play the game and see what you make of it, I can provide the equivalent of the little art piece placards in museums that let you in on part of the creative process.

The House of Asterion is a game based on the short story of the same name by Jorge Luis Borges. The story is further based on the story of Theseus of Greek Myth, wherein our hero Theseus volunteers to be sent to the labyrinth of Minos to slay the Minotaur Asterion, a half man half bull seemingly born of some terrible act by the Queen of Minos. The labyrinth is described as a truly impossible structure built by the famed inventor Daedalus, with near endless twists and turns and one way paths to confound the beast and prevent its escape.

Its perhaps fitting then, that Borges would adapt this story, given so much of his works center the idea of infinity (garden of forking paths, library of babel, funes the memorious etc). The story of the House of Asterion tells the story of the minotaur from the first person perspective of the "monster", who becomes less a monster and more a pitiable creature, its upbringing isolated within an torturous infinity resulting in a sort Lenny from Of Mice and Men type. Through changing the perspective of the story even Theseus becomes less of a hero and more of the villain of the story, as the final lines of the tale reveal that Asterion let himself be killed, presumably to escape his cruel fate. Its a well told tale that plays with the idea of the inherent connection of the reader to the main character in a story, how our perspectives and lack thereof affect how we perceive character motivations, an idea that Borges was seemingly interested with, given another of the stories in Ficciones Tlon, Uqbar, Orbius Tertius starts with Borges discussing a possible story with a first person narrator who would present a relatively innocent story but which eagle eyed readers could decipher as revealing an atrocity committed by the Main Character.

House of Asterion the game plays a similar card by putting us in the shoes of the titular Asterion, blindly (literally) wandering around the infinite labyrinth whilst hearing voices narrate parts of the short story. Presumably being spoke aloud by Theseus? As the direction of the voices seems to be from above the Labyrinth, though given the story it might make more sense to be simply a product of Asterion's jumbled memories, endlessly tortured by fragments of others speaking of him but not with him. In another common feature of Gareth Damian Martin's games, House of Asterion tries to compensate for its faults, though less successfully here. Given the blindness of Asterion and difficulty in a solo developer in building a whole ass detailed labyrinth, the game limits what you can see with a listening mechanic; you can press a button to "see" for a second, mainly to tell where you're going through a maze of basic lambert shaded default unity cubes stretched out into semi convincing architecture. It feels like a Game Jam game, though I can find no confirmation that this is the case.

And well, as a tool to make us empathise with the plight of Asterion its effective, certainly. I too, would wish to be killed by Theseus is this was the extent of my existence, slowly wandering about blind an infinite expanse of repeating, endless corridors with nothing else to see or do. I can respect it in that sense, but without the context of the story it just falls flat and even as a companion piece it cannot help but be one note. I do not even know if its actually ends. Because I had read the story and wandered around for ages with no end in sight (going in circles even) I assumed that the game simply does not end, much like Asterion's life before Theseus shows up. But maybe it does? There are no documented let's plays or even comments on the itch.io page so who knows. Imo it almost works better if there isn't one, but on the off chance someone figures out how to finish the game, let me know.

Much better the second time around. I was originally quite disappointed in Fading Afternoon compared to its predecessor (Stone Buddha not withstanding) The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa. I felt it leaned too much into the combat at the expense of what I most liked about Ringo, namely the character interactions between deeply human shitheads, the true roleplaying in the roleplaying game, the great soundtrack and existential angst. Those were still in the game but I felt as if they were drowned out by the endless button mashing combat.

I guess I should mention Spoilers from here on out

On a second run through, I liked the game quite a bit more. Now, I've never really subscribed to the notion of "playing a game wrong" but I think I was approaching Fading Afternoon with a somewhat unhelpful mindset, though I think it was somewhat of the game's doing that set me in that path. You see, in Fading Afternoon you play as Seiji Maruyama, a Yakuza enforcer recently released from prison (for what I assume was decades) who is also suffering from a terminal illness. Hence, given the mechanics of taking over territory from other Yakuza families through combat being an excellent way to make money (and necessary to advance the game's storyline) and my interpretation of Seiji's character I decided to fight the other families to leave Azuma a decent territory from what pitiful remains he has left.

Seiji and by extension the player's time is limited, as his illness is simulated through a decreasing max health stat constantly ticking down day (or week rather) after day. And given how much the game seemingly punishes dilly dallying (first time I did the first story mission I got slapped by Azuma cause I went to a place at the wrong time and couldnt go back the same day) well, It wasn't the best mindset to enjoy the game.

On a second time around however, I can see the perspective better. Whilst having to constantly go around defending/attacking places is still a thing, time seems to move when you transition from area to area rather than necessarily just time spent. And after discovering I could hire more thugs to defend my territories I started to enjoy seeing more of what the game had to offer whenever I went to an area with some kind of activity to do. I hit a stride much faster knowing what to do, buying a car, getting enough money to buy a house so I wouldnt have to pay the hotel every week, delegating the detective work to Seiji's protege Kato (and incidentally my favourite character in the game). I found some memorable interactions I wasn't aware of, like getting drunk and punching a dude at a bar and then flirting with his girlfriend, helping out a gambler at a casino and then having to pay off the loan sharks, sucking ass at baseball etc.

In the end though, my playthrough followed a similar path to last time, except now I didn't slap Kato, which led to me having to kill him. Thankfully I put enough cash to buy the house from the real estate office and then some into a bag and gave it to Kodama: Seiji's friend and reincarnation wizard. I then dispatched Ando, a Yakuza boss on behalf of Tanaka, another boss who had Seiji's Boss hostage and then I was forced to flee to what looked like Walter White's cabin from Breaking Bad. In character I decided Seiji would have taken up alcoholism, and went to the town bar to get drunk. Seiji must have overdone it though, because after stumbling drunk through the town he collapsed in the snow (incidentally I'm starting to think that the game's trigger to kill Seiji if he's knocked out is the snowfall) and unceremoniously died.

It's a deliberate anticlimax certainly, although I wonder if that was "the intended ending" or if I held out long enough Azuma would have called me to go bowling after that but as usual its hard to tell. Of course now its a bit more clear that pursuing each of the families will yield different endings and presumably also going after all of them, as well as deciding to slap Kato or not amongst other key choices. I do now know, that Seiji is trapped in the cycle of reincarnation described in Buddhism and will receive as much money as he put in the previous loop when Kodama hands him his bag. I also discovered you can kill yourself in this game pretty much at any point. That plus the yakuza loan sharks loaning up to 14m yen at a time gives me an idea for a funny exploit by just constantly looping and getting rich enough to just buy the Yakuza world outright.

The highlight of this playthrough was Kato, for good and for ill, given his ultimate fate. I enjoy the thematic and mechanical convergence of Seiji and his' relationship. Seiji is a yakuza legend slowly dying, so in combat he is an absolute beast but his illness makes him quite fragile, with the whole depleting max health thing, whereas Kato is a young hothead, his combat style is ungraceful and energetic, he levels up fast if you use him in combat. Seiji is sometimes referred as "Gozuki", a demon general from Buddhism who prevents sinners from escaping their penance. Early on, when Seiji is roughing up the streets Azuma mentions new youngsters are being inspired by his actions, including Kato most likely. I didn't reach the climax of that storyline but seemingly in one of them Kato was being set up to share Seiji's exact fate, being forced to spend most of his youth and life in prison in service to a band of thugs. Its not hard to see the parallels. You wonder then if thats the alusion to Gozuki, Seiji being a keeper of doomed souls to be trapped into a life of crime and violence. Though as we see in both the mechanics of the game and Seiji's own circumstances, he might be the one that's truly trapped here.

This is kind of where Fading Afternoon's weakness comes into play for me. I still think FA compared to Ringo punishes first time players beyond the usual obtuseness of Yeo's design simply by nature of the game's multiple endings and seeming ease with which Seiji meets an untimely end. I think I'll enjoy my third playthrough even more, but that first playthrough was rough, not only that but I find it hard to judge the story on a thematic level when so much of it I simply haven't seen. Thats on top of the fact that I still don't like Seiji much. Ringo was just, a lot more sympathetic and resonated with me more. Ultimately though, Yeo's games always give me something to talk about, I love em AND hate em but they're always kind of interesting.

I'd also like to apologize again to @Zoda, I was way out of line in that original exchange.

Also if anyone has played through all the endings, where the hell is Chiba? I picked him up from prison but by the time I found out where his bar was I could never find him. Do you have to just hang out with him inmediately before anything else? Does he just go there at specific times or what?

I was gonna write up a whole blog post about this, but upon reflection I don't have a whole lot to say. It's a good remake, one that updates the source material so it feels like it hasn't aged a day, but keeps the core of the original intact. For ex, cutting out transphobic jokes, and adding more opportunities to bond with your team, are both much appreciated changes.

That being said there's some things that I feel got lost in translation. For one, a couple of the original's animated cutscenes are now in engine, and every time that happened they were just much blander, which was disappointing. That's my one concrete criticism.

Beyond that, I don't like new tartarus as much as old tartarus. It feels like there's too much going on, like the game is pulling away from its dungeon crawler roots, and it just makes it a little tough to completely chill out while exploring like I did in the original. Plus your teammates talk a LOT more, which went from endearing to annoying after about 30 hours of it.

The other criticism I have is just about the general feeling of the game. Persona 3 is now a modern game, one that bends over backwards to make things nice and convenient for you. Social Links seem more stable, it's harder to get locked into things, etc. And that's not a bad thing, but I think there's a little lost when you move a game that used to be somewhat hostile to players into a more welcoming direction, especially a game with themes and tone like Persona 3. It feels like the balance between social sim and wish fulfillment sim has been tipped even further towards the latter. I appreciate that they seem to have made it impossible to 100% the game in one run though, you have to actually choose which relationships to foster.

Again, it's a good remake, one with the original atmosphere fully intact (once you bring the default brightness down 3 or 4 pips), and it's one that to 90% of people I would recommend over the original. But even if this had all of the content that'd ever been released for persona 3, I don't think I'd call this the definitive best version.

a melancholic wound which bleeds for the virtue of creativity, unfortunately — ironically — weighed down by the influence of its inspirations so much that it's afraid to be itself. each new callback feels like a shopping list of narrative elements, tropes or imagery utilised with no sense other than "we also enjoyed [media property]"; it stops eliciting a simple eyeroll and crosses into absurdity when symbolism lifted wholesale from other titles is transplanted for extremely pivotal moments or scenes.

to speak to its strengths, Signalis maintains a highly unique visual language and style across 3d and 2d artistic assets as well as its tactile UI and graphic design. the sleek utilitarian replikas vs the rosy warmth of the gestalts is rendered skillfully with a mere pixel monopen, their representative polygonal forms surprisingly expressive in their minimalistic textures and animations. the accompanying score is also something really special, particularly the piano arrangements which command this epic sadness matched by the tale of Elster and her beloved. i only wish so much attention was given to navigating the game itself as it remains a glorified note hunt segmented by barely responsive doors, with combat feeling more a universal frustrating necessity enforced by the label "survival horror" than anything tense or scary.

like a lot of these gorgeously stylised and well-loved indies, i really did want to love Signalis as its themes and genre are among my favourites along with the recommendation from a few good friends. either way i'm glad to have finally played it despite my own average reception and am inspired by its longing viscera and heartache.

McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure was not the first advergame made for McDonald's. There were two other games before it, one made for the Famicom that I will probably get around to playing eventually and this game, M.C. Kids. However, this was this first McDonald's game I heard about as I watched the AVGN video on M.C. Kids many years ago. I had pretty much forgotten about it until McDonald's released Grimace's Birthday for the Game Boy. All of a sudden memories came back to me and I took interest in playing this and the other advergames released for McDonald's over the years.

Instead of some random aliens being the villian, our antagonist is the Hamburgular who stole Ronald's magic bag. Instead of going to look for the bag himself, Ronald, being the selfish clown he is, decides its a good idea to let two children go on a dangerous journey to retrieve it. Those two children being, the M.C. Kids.

Compared to other platformers, it is fairly unique in the sense of how you progress through the game. In each level, you will be tasked with finding all of the cards of Ronald's pals in order to move onto the next world alongside just beating the level. It may not be the most ideal as far as design goes, but its different enough in that its not "just another Mario clone."

With that being said, its a decent platfomer and most of the cards are fairly easy to find even if you have to backtrack a little to get them sometimes. Difficulty-wise, it was definitely harder than Treasure Land Adventure but not as difficult as the majority of the NES library. There were a few annoying cards to get but overall it wasn't too bad. The final boss on the other hand has a weird limit that was both confusing as it was infurating.

The biggest glaring flaw the game has is that in order to beat the final boss, you need to reach the farthest right side of the goal in as many levels as you can. The fewer times you do this, the less ammo you will have against the final boss. You run out of blocks, you don't get them back. It's like if you needed to reach the top of the flag pole every time you beat a level in Mario if you want a chance at defeating Bowser. It's the dumbest design choice I've seen in a video game and it makes what was a fun platformer a worse expirence.

Besides how horribly designed the final boss was, I mostly had fun with the game. I don't know if I'd ever play it again though. Overall, I'd say M.C. Kids is a game worth playing at least once, especially if you're into those weird advergames.

Ever since it's release, Divinity Original Sin 2 has been hailed as one of the best western RPGs in recent memory, the highlight of the CRPG resurgence, and is subject to such widespread fondness that it's developers got handed the keys to make an actual Baldur's Gate 3. Which has always flummoxed me, because I played this game at launch and fucking hated it.

A degree of this is that me and the game simply have different priorities. When it comes to a game like this, I want to create a character, a person to embody, rather than being handed one of the DMs shitty edgy OCs to play as, but DOS2 disagrees, and will in fact offer a fairly substantially lesser experience (losing access to multiple sidequests and altering a number of key scenes for the worse) if you don't pick one of it's stable of interminable snarky edgelords. I know that for a lot of people, not having to make a character is actually a plus (i remember all those thinkpieces positing Geralt as proof that player-created characters should be a thing of the past) so you may not find this as immediately distasteful as I did, but I'd expect more people to agree that this game is terribly written.

Every single character in this game feels like someone's edgy OC, but not in an endearing way. There's zero earnestness here, no honest investment in this world or belief that what is happening matters, just a bunch of archly smug edgelords quipping at each other, like a cut of Drakengard directed by Joss Whedon. Lohse was the only character I had any fondness for, and even she has a bizarre edgy streak that feels totally incongruous. These eminently hateable assholes will bring up a theme, float an idea, and then stick their tongue firmly in their cheek and laugh at you for wanting to engage the idea in any meaningful way.

The thing about this game that made me angry was how it brought up incredibly heavy source material on a whim (the first act of the game is you escaping what is essentially a concentration camp and genocide is a major part of the backstory) but utterly refused to engage with it on any level beyond a Redditor smugly correcting the grammar of a post detailing the very real atrocities that exist in our world. It leverages these things purely aesthetically, draping itself in a cloak of the most rancid vibes imaginable. If you're the kind of person who writes entries on TV Tropes about "deconstruction" you probably think it's genius.

CRPGs like this have been described as digital dungeon masters, creating a virtual tabletop space that reveals it's character through what aspect of the experience it chooses to focus on. Icewind Dale focused on pure combat and dungeon delving, Baldur's Gate on the charmingly amateurish emulation of epic fantasy, and Divinity Original Sin 2 focuses on all the ugliest, most cynical, and rotten tropes and expectations that players of fantasy RPGs have come to expect. If it's a dungeon master, it's the kind of guy who describes a field of brutally massacred gnomes while lighting up a blunt.

Oh, but what about dat combat though? Yeah, it's ok. There's fun to be had in throwing a barrel of oil to set on fire, or throwing a barrel of water to electrocute, or teleporting someone far away from you, but thanks to inflated health pools and interminable turn times, all the "creative solutions" that this game's passionate fanbase eulogise about eventually yield to much more standard and predictable turn-based combat with a truly obscene level curve that drags out every single fight to absurd lengths. And even this is being generous, as after the (admittedly, genuinely good) first act the quality of encounters begins to tumble down a cliff before practically giving up entirely by Act Three. I'll fully admit that I turned the game down to easy by that point because I just wanted this obscenely drawn-out overlong game done with already. These people were going to make a tactics game??? Thank god we were spared that reality.

Oh, but it's got co-op! That's fun, that's unique! Yeah, it is, but if you think I'm going to play a story-driven Role Playing Game where only the person who clicked on a character first is allowed to have any input in the story whatsoever, you must have confused me for someone who thinks Travis McElroy's Adventure Zone is good. Co-op was definitely the most fun I had playing this, but at the same time, it did make a game that was already long, slow, and drawn-out even longer, slower, and more drawn-out, a bit like this review.

The version of this game I played was the pre-definitive edition version, so this may not be reflective of the game as it is now, but the game was already receiving comically overblown praise even before that update, so clearly I'm missing something greater than was added there. Still, my impression of the game was certainly not helped by a final act so unfinished it verged on parody, which culminated in endings that would have grated enough for their abruptness, adolescent nihilism and fascist apologia if they actually Worked. Instead every time I picked an option it gave me a different one and I had to go through each one until it actually gave me the one I wanted, at which point the game called me a fucking idiot for not comitting genocide. 93 on Metacritic.

Most of the time when I don't line up with the wider consensus on a game, I at least understand why people thought that way. I cannot understand why anyone who finished this game left with positive feelings. By the time I finished it, any positive feelings I had about this game were an easy 60 hours behind me. A complete trainwreck on every conceivable level.

This is what y'all played instead of Tyranny? shake my damn head

all that being said the sex scene is so hilariously terrible that it's maybe worth playing just for that so five stars best CRPG of the renaissance

pretty fun but god that is one of the worst and most tactless narratives i've ever seen in a mainstream video game. the usual Yakuza conspiracy plot structure's presence here is absurd. since the game deals with bullying and the actions that victims' families take to get their own version of justice on the matter, Lost Judgment can't help but to relativize every instance of torture and murder commited against the bullies. it genuinely expects the player to have so little empathy for the bully that they don't see them as human. Yagami just hangs out with the serial killer here. has a toast with him. he's fully convinced that the guy's logic makes sense, but the only problem is getting other innocent people hurt while trying to hide his instances of moral torturemuder.

this only bothers me because this game is mostly a morality tale. it constantly stops to lecture you about bullying and the justice system in an attempt to make you try to think about the situation as if it was hard to decide who's right or wrong. like, man.... most people know bullying is a problem. it's very easy to empathize with someone who got bullied to the verge of suicide. i don't need to see that shit pushed to it's logical limit without any care at all.

also, Yagami kinda goes insane in this game. while he empathizes with many psychos in Lost Judgment, he also stalks and emotionally manipulates 3 different women (1 innocent, 2 guilty) in order to get answers for his investigation. i think his more social and brute way of doing detective work is pretty cool, it fits RGG studios' style. but here, he always goes to the most vulnerable women around him for answers, and pressures them while knowing they won't handle it and can't fight back. this is how he makes most of the more important discoveries. it kinda makes me sick.

ok so, i really like the combat, school stories and substories. for me these games are always more about their whole world than just the main plot, and Lost Judgment is one of my favorites in regards to side stuff! but the Judgment duology is also more focused on story and dialogue than other RGG games, and god this narrative is so long and expository that i can't help but to see as tainting a lot of the game.

i am sad but i will continue trying to have fun with these games. here's hoping i still enjoy the rest as much as i did the first half of the Yakuza series!

Se me ocurrió una idea, pero antes:
Jugué Skyrim unas 350 horas hace años, así que escribiré con base en mis recuerdos.
Lo peor que hace Skyrim es volverte el participante central de los asuntos de todo el mundo. Incluso si quisieras pasar por un pueblo, así, tan sólo de paso, cualquier diálogo que entablaras con los npc's del lugar terminarían por implicarte en sus dilemas, rencillas, complots, etc. Y me parece que la intuición que originó esa dinámica era que el jugador, en tanto "extranjero", siempre encontraría una manera de dar solución a cuanto problema le fuera planteado. O al menos de inmiscuirse/interesarse en él. De aportar algo al mundo, vaya.
Pero es que en todos los arcos, incluso en las historias de los gremios, el clímax siempre sucedía poco después de haberte unido. Y absolutamente lo que recuerdo a día de hoy del juego no tiene nada que ver con las historias donde me volví el agente principal de otros grupos.
En cambio, recuerdo con mucho cariño cómo gocé cuando los asesinos me reclutaron: recibiendo una carta inesperada conteniendo sólo una marca sin saber qué era o qué hacer con ella; después, haberme ido a domir a casa y despertar en medio de la nada como si me hubieran sacado un riñón.
Incluso el inicio del juego se plantea como fuego colateral en donde te ves implicado y sólo tienes que huir como todos. Y cuando entras en la cueva durante esa "misión", tuve una sensación muy potente, la de sentir que en las profundidades podría protegerme, pero al mismo tiempo que en ellas se abriría todo un mundo. Así que es lógica la inmediata aparición de barriles, y el impulso por tomar todo lo que contengan (hasta los cestos), aunque no se sepa para qué servirán. Claro que pronto tu capacidad de carga llega al límite y comienzas a caminar lento. Pero ahí se pone en evidencia cómo la ambición de este juego cae sobre su propio peso.
Antes de hacer mi punto, haré otros recuentos:
Que las misiones encomendadas por los dioses fueron mis favoritas. De cierta manera se sienten apartadas del mundo y como si alguien estuviera jugando contigo. Pero también te relacionan de manera más memorable con los npc's, como cuando en una misión te dicen que le robaste ganado a un pastor por andar borracho, y tienes que ir a restituirlo.
Así se siente el inicio de la historia del gremio de ladrones, donde comienzas orientándote por rumores, hasta que los encuentras en las alcantarillas. Y cuando te les unes, comienzas en plan "sí, vamos a robarle al don del mercado xd".

Death Stranding comienza planteando al protagonista como una bomba andante, y por tanto, un riesgo probable (junto al adjetivo de leyenda por lobo solitario) para los demás. Lo que me pareció un mero vehículo dramático cobró un sentido mecánico para mí más adelante, cuando me topé con que no podía cruzar por la punta de una montaña por la inclinación, y porque había enemigos cerca que, sin querer, me mataron. Y entonces sucedió: como tu personaje es inmortal (eso no es spoiler xd), al revivir, el "penalti dramático" del que hablaba, es que formas un cráter enorme en la zona de tu muerte. Es decir: destruyes todo a tu alrededor. Y para mi sorpresa, esa explosión alteró la geografía del lugar de modo que me permitió atravesar por donde no podía. Y woah, la revelación. (Sólo que esa "mecánica", como mecánica, me pareció bastante inútil en Death Stranding xd, para empezar porque ni mecánica es, sino una nimiedad, y por lo tanto, accidental).
En un mundo como Skyrim, en donde la información que obtienes de los npc's no puede ser más que: mitología, pistas o guías, era una gozada entrar a una cueva random y toparte con un diario de arqueólogos que buscaban localizar la tumba de 3 guerreros, y luego, ya sea sin querer o habiendo encontrado otras pistas, encontrar esa tumba. Y el desarrollo de esta misión de la que hablo es más épica que la de la historia principal: por una maldición, los 3 cadáveres reviviven, y por haberlos profanado tienes que combatirlos: primero uno a la vez, y luego a todos juntos. Y al final rompes su maldición y mueren en paz.
Experiencias así son las que te harían decir: "hm, voy a empezar mi propia guild de arqueólogos". Y ahí es donde se originaría el cambio real del mundo que es Skyrim, y no mediante asesinar al rey para que luego el mundo siga igual. Por un lado, algo así como lo acabo de plantear, daría pie para pensar en cómo funcionaría una experiencia de The Elder Scrolls con online.
Pero lo más importante para mí tiene que ver con lo que dije de Death Stranding. Pero también tiene que ver con juegos como Minecraft, porque en Minecraft puedes destruir y luego crear como se te de la gana. Y entonces me pongo a pensar en un TES donde haya una habilidad, por ejemplo un grito, que te permita destruir, y otro grito que te permita reconstruir. Pero donde puedas reconstruir hasta donde consideres necesario, incluso dejando incompleto lo destruido: por ejemplo, destruir una roca y luego reconstruirla hasta la mitad. Con las nuevas consolas, incluso podría percibirse partícula por partícula, para realizar la medición a ojo de buen cubero. O algo así.
Y bueno, fue lo que se me ocurrió xD

Si los capítulos y retos finales de Celeste ya mostraban síntomas de agotamientos, Celeste: Farewell trata de arreglarlos con un par de objetos excelentes (los peces y las medusas). Pero la configuración misma de los niveles ha dado un inmenso paso atrás. Ya no se trata de ser inventive ni de dominar el dash, ahora todo se reduce a hacer exactamente lo que tienes que hacer y no equivocarte ni un milímetro. La sección final es una prueba de resistencia que puso a prueba tanto mi frustración como mi valoración entera de la obra. Si lo único que tienes que ofrecer al final de todo es dificultad extrema y técnicas de speedrunner, entonces tu juego ya se ha quedado sin ideas.

En un vídeo de Patricia Taxxon sobre Celeste oí no hace mucho que la dificultad en los juegos podría entenderse como añadir picante a un plato, y me pareció una analogía bastante buena. Aquí sería como si alguien hubiera echado un bote entero de wasabi que, en vez de aumentar gradualmente, se limitara a hacerte toser entre cada cucharada.

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If the final chapters of Celeste already showed signs of exhaustion, Celeste: Farewell tries to fix them with a couple of excellent objects that do wonders for me-the fish and the jellyfish. But the design of the levels has taken an immense step backwards. It's no longer about being inventive or mastering the dash, now it's all about doing exactly what you have to do and not getting an inch wrong. The final section is an endurance test that tested both my frustration and my entire assessment of the game. If all you have to offer at the end of it all is extreme difficulty and speedrunner techniques, then your game has officially run out of ideas.

In a video about Celeste I heard not long ago that difficulty in games could be understood as adding spice to a dish, and I thought that was a pretty good analogy. Here it would be as if someone had poured a whole pot of wasabi that instead of gradually increasing would make you cough a lot with each spoonful.