The messenger, the oldest and most widespread role in video games.
Communication condensed in a small, fleeting and adorable society like the hamsters themselves
Director Mariko Yumoto hints at delicacy by treating and demanding understanding from NPCs in a manner similar to Love-the-lic games in an approach more focused on small interaction commands than time and space.
Even so, the game is very small and calls for expansion in concept, but the small achievement of being able to encapsulate slang communication with delicacy and rhythm in a game that (probably) was aimed at children is admirable.

It's not about hunger, the television media, or deformed and abusive adult authority figures, but the consequences of suffering from a dehumanized environment during childhood, which is nothing less than becoming selfish and sinful.
Mono crosses a dehumanized and deformed city forming a bond with Six and being pursued by a lean, suit-clad figure (probably a reference to Michael Jackson) facing situations that suggest nurturing without empathy and self-centered survival as a way of life. At the end of the game the acts of kindness are in vain and Mono (protagonist) and Michael Jackson-TvMan-slim man (antagonist) turn out to be the same entity trapped in a space-time cycle created by the emptiness of Mono and the accumulation of hatred during his childhood, we become our own monsters , even more, it turns out that the intentions of the opposing figure are not bad at all, his only defect is to demand attention. Somewhere is a really good videogame but its lack of pacing during various sections of the game and the inability to detach itself from environmental puzzles makes its almost master set-pieces and its enormous visual imaginary buried. btw, points for not fetishizing Playdead's style children's deaths (fuck Playdead)
and this game is in fact a prequel, not a sequel

Also i have a crush on Buffy the vampire slayer (1997)

the music drowned out by the sound of bullets.
the war of styles for the war of covers.

For some reason, several rappers have shown to have a fairly strong relationship with video games, or maybe it is the rappers' own public that has that relationship and ends up joining both things, I don't know.
def jam icon or wu tang clan shaolin style are fighting games that got a more violent fantasy, a collage of martial arts and Asian cultures mixed with black culture, and it makes sense to me.
I am not going to stop to explain the connection among some hip hop or bboying artists, (maybe this movie can help as an entry point https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqW15TUzPc8 )but their relationship with martial arts cinema was key to developing styles and establishing schools and competitions,

Now then, what is this game? Why is the 50 cent and the ultra militarized G-unit shooting soldiers in the Middle East? Why does everything look like anti-jihadist weapons propaganda?

It can be very interesting, but I don't get it.

I assume we all know the basics of Fatal frame, so I skip the mechanical description
________
Body vs Soul. the camera captures both
The most linear Fatal Frame and at the same time the most sensitive to the global image, with a hyperkinetic camera both in navigation (3rd) and combat (1st). The most outstanding Texture of the series: The static, the video, The skin, the tissues , the liquids on them, all creates an image of contained lust subjected to the horror of those who associate sex and death. A formally cleaner Silent Hill
A bit voyeuristic too, suggesting forbidden relationships between siblings and offering mechanics that show us moments of death, murder or suicide as a reward after capturing a ghost with the camera.
Although many of my favorite works have their origin in Japan, I feel that it is a country whose art and mythopoeia are sometimes based more on texture than on deeper formal personality, especially in music and video games, and it is funny that you find in Maiden of the black water a kind of allegory of this: Approach and contemplate bodies that, human or ghost, seem drained of emotional personality and ooze aesthetics.
And again; the texture, the image, that sticky friction of some old Koei Tecmo games, that obsession in the production that Makoto Shibata and his team led to record game scenes on crumpled videotapes to achieve worn VHS effects, paranormal document.

I don't know, I just like this game.

The recent peak of the contrarian minimalist video game. it's weird that I never knew the differences between V engines until I played this game and didn't even have to touch any parts of the car
Perhaps that is the greatest virtue of Art of Rally, it makes you understand and become aware of the nuances of driving, the history of the rally summarized through this plastic model in the shape of a video game. It's arcade and it's simulation too, but nothing about to choose parts of the car and no driving action type mindless you just need precise math with your fingers and refined touch, just that.

surely this game was conceived as an FPS while Cavia probably had to break their balls trying to justify the Ghost in the shell license by jumping and hand-to-hand combat, Or maybe it was entirely the opposite judging also by how little "designed for the player" that the levels feel, the thing is that it works like a basic first person shooter set in third vision with vertical complexity and using well the emptiness of its almost naturalistic spaces. It is a game about empty spaces. Also, why are there so many "worst ps2 games" lists with this game? people need to stop looking for content-packed games.
video games usually do 3 or 4 things, hopefully, of what they set out to do

psychotic bishounen, HIGH&LOW in a world of horror

-The most natural evolution of action-horror ever developed. Its spaces respond to that attempt at polygonal evolution of flat and reflective corridors to give a cleaner and more sterile sensation, not as charismatic or dirty as in the first Galerians, more aware of its diegetic and Futurist possibilities and limitations, Y2k after all, empty space, reflections and liquids become something mystical again. FULL 3D, a sense of grandeur with cameras and cutscenes - limited, but visually seductive - replace controlled motion planning in the psOne's pre-rendered backgrounds, and its kinesthetic orthotics also move toward agile gameplay.
Nothing very naturalistic, however: the corridors and rooms do respond to a certain habitability logic, but the menus get in the way of the action, the protagonist's portraits appear as reflections on the screen when we pick up an object (looking at us) and the characters act differently. robotics. I think of these things when someone says "ps2 desing" I think of the start of the BIOS immersing myself in a virtual world. I think of a universe built without pretensions to hide in what medium it is based, embracing the digital in its presentation, out of necessity or conviction.
-The game is full of brutally interesting images, (this is only from its first hours https://twitter.com/Ardwyw/status/1575538820933906432) something in the middle between Event Horizon, BLAME!, Matrix, Cronenberg (that body horror ), something from the old Squaresoft and a J-Pop concert... Although this is seen more from the cinematographic (Cutscenes) than from the cinematic (in-game camera and scenery) and it's a shame because if sections like the final boss were more abundant the canned structure in labyrinths whose transit is not so interesting from a spatial point of view, it's not that I don't appreciate slow gaming but those corridors... I don't know.
- The action is only interesting with the bosses or sub-bosses, the rest were exercises to control resources and my nervousness, something that I already have very internalized. I also don't ask for the incredible exploration of objects and their effects on my avatar and enemies that BAROQUE had but, meh

I really appreciate this Galerians: Ash, but through sight, not so much when I play it
Although I will definitely return.

Arduween 1x03

"If there is such a revival of 2d beat em ups it is because creating a good 3d action game that orbits in combat is something that only a select group can do."

-Homogies 3/12 or something like that
It's strange that sometimes people refer to this game as "the precursor to Bloodborne", I don't see anything substantial that leads to this thought beyond the setting. Castlevania 64 had a similar settig as well, its internal clock triggering gates and important events, suggesting the importance or insignificance of your presence and feel of the world, something Bloodborne does as well.
What could have been top action at the time only seems correct right now. Not because of "it has aged badly" but because at least solutions have been found -not so elegant- to how to plan the action in pseudo-naturalistic orographies within the gamy logics. in Nightmare creatures you cannot take high ground, there is no place for it in almost any situation, you cannot control hordes or even pairs of enemies because their attack and defense mechanics only contemplate 1 vs 1 and, having no control over the camera always has to guess that attack will come from outside the frame the game chooses and there is no encouragement to express yourself (because you basically can't) or to behave like an aggressive hunter. More like a kid playing with a bo. Not that I want to praise the post Ninja Gaiden Black post Devil May Cry 3 structure because that would be choosing the easy way out but... Look at The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge or Van Helsing, They have the Capcomnian structure and half the problems are solve by themselves (generously speaking) and they don't encourage you to go beyond generating moments of explosive action without many nuances, but at least it's functional within 3d.

Arduween 1x07

Shooting Thatcher with a shotgun directly in her face is a concept that had to be realized in real life. jokes aside (jokes, right) the concept of punk theme is carried throughout the game; from objects to progress due to excessive use of switches and super labyrinthine architecture and somewhat reduced, or so I interpret, but from a certain point, momentum is lost and the climax is not as satisfactory as its stimulating thematic premise, it is a too bad, because this Wad could be tremendous.
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Sometimes I feel sorry for the little that is explored the ability to recreate historical moments and places in video games, the ability to immediately transport to an environment of the past through digital architecture is usually reduced to a masturbatory revisionism, made for the player . be a cowboy, a viking, be the weeb representation of a samurai, explore the forgotten city. explore the past that did not exist.
I am not making a real criticism here, I think that the reinterpretation of the first God of War or Spartan Total Warrior can be interesting as a tragic fantasy, more visceral and tactile, or explore alternative mythologies, where the Nazis dominate the world ... or where samurai are not a folk lie (lol).
Of course there are games where you can explore the past in a quasi-faithful way, but the pop example that comes to mind is Shenmue, and that one didn't even recreate the past!