As someone who got pretty heavy into street photography again this summer, I wanted to give this genre a second chance despite my lukewarm experience with Toem a couple months ago, but in my first impression of Umurangi Generation I just got reminded of some of the same design philosophy and issues as i had experienced back then. However I eventually found more intention here than in Toem.

The gameplay loop consists entirely of following a restriction of checklists with the photos you need to take for the game. Add to that, an incentivesed speedrun for a bonus if you complete all of the bounties in the current location below ten minutes, which seems utterly antithetical to the joy of photography.
Is the act of being a gamefied contract worker really the only possibility for these types of games? Does it really also need a ticking timer in the corner to stress me out on top of that?
And I can understand the feel for the existence of the former, but only because we are trained to expect some kind of tangible objective to follow as gamers and game designers. Umurangi Generation to my suprise actually found a way to elevate this game design obligation. (I get into that a bit further down) "If there are no conditions to be met how else could you call it a game, how else would the game know you did the thing!" could be argued. My problem with this notion is that every photography game I have played inevitably turns the inherent creativity of that artform into something different instead of searching for a way to fully embrace it.

For about fifteen minutes of trying to check off the ten-solar-panel-bounty from the list in the second level "Otumoe Tai" I was naively ignorant towards the little, extra symbol next to that objective, because I genuinely didn't even want to consider that the game asks for further, more specific restric.. I mean conditions to take my shots. I legit thought my game was bugged or some shit, but turns out I was truly a bit naive and that Umurangi Generation wants it's players to take most of their pictures with a very particular lense or distance to the sub- and objects for successful progression. In those twenty minutes my efforts at photography became really uninspired and after that realisation the recovery from this seemed pretty usless to me and the game.
The timer, which in my playthrough continued in red numbers upwards to infinity (it should just disappear after you failed or only be unlocked after your first completed run of a level) for no apparent reason other than to tease me with exactly how much time I have been wasting in this game, was not encouraging a different mindset.
There were two levels after which I gave up on trying to loose myself in "making art" and just tried to speedrun the act of pointing at the right thing with the right thing in the right way, but failed each time to get the bonus and dreaded to complete tasks in which I was asked to count a bunch of things again. If I had known this game was more about counting shit, finding specific stuff or the semi-puzzle of detecting an angle(often a single intended one, for the most egregious of the bounties to my delight illuminated by a neon green circle, which presumably also earns the player some extra cash to stand in and take their photo from but Idk) to combine multiple of the intended sub- or objects in one frame, all with, and I'll say it again, A TIMER STARING AND JUDGING YOUR EFFICIENCY, I probably wouldn't have bought it on a whim and engaged in a little more thinking feller behaviour before that. I should just stop going into games completly blind and adjust my expectations with a bit of research beyond looking at some screen shots or looking at a high number next a promising ramping curve on a Backlogged entry, smh.

Thoughtfull level design kind of alleviates some of those complaints a bit. Like when I was inside the Train a bounty asked to photograph twenty sticky notes. I knew the game wouldn't get my lazy ass to actually count all the things on my screen again, but low and behold I eyeballed it and the first snap I took of a wall in the kitchen had generously, exactly that amount of yellow squares rendered on it. Occasionally my illiterate ass got stumped by a single word in the objective (my dumbest moment, which I would like to share for the readers amusement, was seeing the words "two coffees" next to the word "downlight" in which the context of coffee made me unironically, on autopilot and by association deduct, while also not really questioning the lack of a space between the two, that "downlight" had to be an in-universe drink.. you know like bud light.. In retrospection I am fully selfaware that this was hilariously stupid, but Idc to admit this while simultaneously still blaming the game, because this was the first bounty with two entirely different genres of things, there is an overabundance of in-universe food items in this level and the term "ceiling light" exists. Lol. Hell, I should just play games, with the option available, in German. The word used in that version of the game translates literally into ceiling light and not "Einbauleuchte" as google translates my headcanon light beer,(I only looked this up after the fact tho) would have saved ten minutes of my time which I am now more than matching with this self-reporting paragraph about my own idiocy for your entertainment. Edit: I actually managed to find a streamer with an even dumber thought process than mine https://www.twitch.tv/superantonio64/v/861937373?sr=a&t=20s all love tho and the photo is pretty fire)

But man, thank god, most of these problems seem kind of more.. unimportant once world building does it's magic, the story fully lifts the curtains and the worth of the camera in your hand achieves it's, by the game intended, purpose. (I actually won't spoil that much of the story or themes in here)
Those very specific things you need to photograph lead the player to examine the Mise en scene,(unless of course they just unpluck their thinking box and only scan the enviourment for the crucial thing) so while the gameplay could feel like contract worker's fetch quest to me, the lists are admittedly kinda genius in getting the player to focus on each individual polygon, it's meaning and as a result in it's enviourmental story telling and exposition. A part of this trick Umurangi pulls, which shifted my initial annoyance about it into appreciation once I got what it was doing, were the at first glance decivingly simple descriptions which lead me to inspect every render in some of the comfortably small levels to rule each one of them out. When a prompt asks to photograph a specific word for instance, I would in tandem, even if just accidentally, read most of the sentences on a poster, graffity, the small print on a random box, the food item label, or beyond just the headline of a magazine a NPC might hold in their hands.
This got me to properly inspect the green fireflies while searching for a butterfly which lead to some cool isolated close ups of one, or aware if the large amount of cigarettes, knifes and medkits in the UN millitary camp while searching for those objectives(some of the first clues hinting that there is something more sinister going on than the rooftop photo-session like in the intro level before that), or to fully inspect the unravelling apocalypse outside a moving train while joining the flashing of a red light.
How the entire Walled City is looking for solace inside VR gaming headsets, while I was taking shots of a the word "gamers" a bunch of times. Crazy how a prompt like "photograph the word gamers 7 times" can lead to such a hard hitting declaration by the game I myself was currently escaping into. Seeing a fully armed and ready Military OP right next to a twitching dude with a VR headset tucked to his face is pretty jarring imagery. Or how your first sight in that level are a bunch of joyful folks dancing in the streets, I in an instant felt obligated to capture with my shutter, just to turn that camera lense and understand what the name "Walled City" truly encompasses.

Through this design Umurangi Generation engaged me in it's story, themes and humanity with a sharp but subliminal efficiency. All of the games I've played then forgotten in which the gorgous, painstakingly sculpted 3D models, digitally printed graphic designs, each intentfully placed static pixels on my screen transformed into backround noise after the obligatory respect for the effort, all of which are contrastingly focal in this world and even highlighted in their low-poly beauty through the gameplay of toying around with an array of lenses and settings gifted to the player.
A part of me believes that all of these observations I just attributed to the games design would have still taken place without it's reliance on checklists, but the existence of one itself gives context. Who am I taking these for? Who even pays me for it? The ominous implication of getting a fine for photographing the blue shells, which needs a bit of time to fully settle in, comes to mind. That this at first deceptively simple mechanic to get the player to be more careful with the framing and not just mindlessly waste a filmroll has genuine meaning in the story was brilliantly executed.


The music is also more than worth mentioning, but I have to admit I fell like condensing a plethora of tones and soundscapes into a few sentences, not wanting to adding another wall of text, always boils down to using genre descriptive buzzwords. In the context of this review a famous Elliot Erwitt quote on photography is fitting "The whole point of taking a picture is so that you don't have to explain things with words"
Maybe that's why I'd rather listen to, or play music than attempting to find the right ones for something that maybe can't be reduced to them and my RYM is as empty as my ball sack after listening to this OST. Anyways.
Bouncy, atmospheric synth- and drum-sample-heavy EDM, Breakbeat and Hip Hop transcends the atmosphere even further and goes hard from the moment you are greeted by the flapping vapor-waves of the penguin at the starting screen. There might be a few duds here and there, but the sheer volume and consistency in the catalogue for such a short game is impressive on it's own.
(Pretty irrelevant, but why did that MF choose the surename Adolf in his music?? Or did his parents do that to him? I couldn't find it out)

Gonna go even more off the rails here and talk about my love for street photography a bit, although truthfully the game feels more like you are a war correspondent, which I cannot speak on in the slightest and like I explained it even kinda convinced me of its game design philosophy on photography after some time and thoughts, but still.
Street photography in general seems impossible to replicate inside of a Video Game. You try to capture the slipt of a second in time, in an endless stream of movement. No looped animation circle could achieve that. Street photography specificially(hell, realistically war photography even more so, but probably for different more legitimate reasons) even if harmless can be an adrenaline rush. "Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear" You'll need to be friendly, confident, subtle and bold in the same breath and not afraid of some verbal confrontation. It is kinda therapeutic to me and genuinely helps me with my, during covid developed, agrophobia and social anxiety. If they catch me while snapping it I just smile and tell them what I am doing, most of the time they don't even care. I only take pictures in touristy spots and mostly groups of old people and their dogs, but I still sometimes catch myself not wanting to disturb anyone and once I only take one picture in a span of twenty+ minutes that's when I am done for the day. I just do it for myself, to get better at it and photography.
It also lets you view the world through a different lense (bad pun intended). You start noticing and appreciating lines, shapes and people you were previously blind towards and develope an eye for when a real or interesting moment is about to unfold out of the nessecity to capture it. "All the the technique in the world doesn't compensate for the inability to notice"
There is no way a glorified screenshot in a Video Game could ever come close to that specific experience. That game would need to be a money-eating, ambitious risk and for a very niche audience. And probably the only, I hate say this next string of words, open-world-game I would get giddy for. Shit I'll just go outside and do my thing there.

Like I said I don't actually want write about or spoil the story, beyond a few observations up to the halfway point at least. Mostly because it's the one thing best experienced for yourself and someone smarter probably did a better synapsis or analyses about it. That reminds me, now I can finally, fully delve into that new Jacob Geller hood classic, this time without skipping the portion about this game. Also this review is way to long already. Holy.

I might bump the score eventually, because I am aware I sometimes like to judge games for what I wish they could have been, which is silly when a game achieves what it set out to do well enough. Despite having even more nitpicks like the finicky 3D platforming I didn't care for or that I wished the NPCs had at least some kind of reaction to shoving a camera up their faces or words to say about it and the world instead of just changing the poses of the player characters friends. The score will always be capped though, because the implementation of a timer is inexcusable to me. (I've said that like four or five times now lol, but I was just unable to ignore it in my playthrough)

The layers of presentation, the very unique branch of the low-poly (gonna throw reductive buzzwords out again) "neonpunk vapor-wave" aesthetic, the bopping OST and the detailed, environmental world building gives Umurangi Generation the worth to spend your time and money on, but I would recommend leaving the house if you go into this expecting it to scratch more than a very simple and gamefied itch for photography, although it found a way to give purpose to it's use in a slightly different context.
I actually would recommend the latter to eveyone here, in all of the ways you choose to interpretate it. Aight, imma grab my film rolls and head out.

During the whole Dracula bit I could feel my brain rotting away as I laughed my ass off at the absurdity of it all. I don't think a game ever made me feel like that and I very much doubt that any other will manage it going forward.

The mid-two thousands and the early 2010’s could be considered the what I like to call ‘’RPG-Maker Horror-Narrative Golden Age’’; that’s not say that there haven’t been any games done with the variations of the engine since, games like Omori and even the Fear & Hunger duology quickly come to mind as two great examples of how recent RPG Maker made-in games can still bring something new to the table of the broader indie scene, but even those games are of an entirely different breed. Experimentation was the name of the game, even if there were your usual and classic RPG suspects, the most prolific games from that era are ones that broke de bounds of conventional RPG’s and explored different ways of telling a story beyond the limitations of the turned based combat structure. Sure, a ton (and I mean A TON) of low quality games spawned in this time with the hopes of jumping into the horror bandwagon, and some games are just plain tasteless and don’t really deserve being in the discussion, but even with this overabundance of low effort, the stars that explored the frontiers of narrative-focused gameplay, isometrical horror or just doing whatever they thought it was interesting: Yume Nikki (A game which also inspired an entire sub-genre of fan-games alone), Ib, OneShot, Mad Father and even more polarizing works like To the Moon are all examples of varying results of this; some noteworthy, some are a couple of the most important games of the whole millennial, and in cases like OneShot, some of my personal favorites. It’s also worth mentioning that around this time there was also the presence of ‘’comical/parody’’ games, most of these are generally products of their time and basically time capsules for memes and internet culture for all those years back. My point with this terrible info-dump is to say that it was up to each developer/s what to make, and how most of the best RPG Maker games focus on one thing at a time and thoroughly explore it, and the results mostly being phenomenal… anyway Space Funeral is a game were you kill ghosts by using old movies, the final boss questions the conditions of perfection and how that can tear minds apart, and a Djinn turns you into a fish…so yeah, it is a liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittle bit weird…

To be honest, and considering I just spat out the most boring Ted Talk possible about the RPG Maker indie scene, it’s only fair that I mentioned that Off (A game which I have yet to play) explored the base ideas of Space Funeral two years prior, that being focusing on bizarre world with and unconventional world and more involved combat compared to its contemporaries, but you see, the difference lies in that, whereas Off used its comedy and bizarreness as a more direct exploration of the fourth-wall and the relationship between protagonist and player, Space Funeral is just FUCKING BATSHIT CRAZY, to a level that I cannot make any funny remarks about it! Like, what I’m gonna say about the fact that you companion is a horse made with horse legs? It’s just a bunch of horse legs, I cannot make the absurd even more absurd! I CANNOT EVEN MAKE FUNNY PUNS WHEN THE MAKE ALREADY DOES THEM FOR ME, THIS GAME IS MY KRYPTONITE, I CANNOT STUPIDIY THE ALREADY DUMB OH GOD HELP M-

This game is, and looking at reviews from different places I’m glad that this notion is accepted, stupid, it’s an incredibly stupid game, so it might perplex you when I also say that this may be one of the most clever games I’ve played in all the year. It’s an unabashedly stupid piece of art, from the moment you open it is gross as it is beautifully dumb; a nonsensical world with no rhyme or reason, mind-boggling lay-outs and maps that have the colors of skunk vomit, characters that are as repulsive as they are comically sincere (seriously, everyone in this fucking game is so direct that reaches absurd levels, and I’m all in for it), the music ranges from pretty good sounding midis to absolute crazy tunes and possibly quite the scariest track I’ve heard in a while and sprite work that is either actually pretty cool and detailed or the most made-in-paint thing you’ll see in your life. It’s stupid… but the game perfectly knows it is. And by that I don’t mean that there’s a huge twist and it becomes super ‘’meta’’ and turns out the brain rot had a point, no, Space Funeral does tackle interesting themes and we’ll get to that, but from beginning to the very end, this game is non stop absurdity, even if it moments were it seems like there should be a more serious moment or the tone should shift, the game manages to still become a joke about itself: the fucking final boss has an incredibly interesting speech, and it decides it to end with the monument of a phrase that is ‘’Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven….. motherfuckerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!’’. You know that friend that sends you stupid unfunny memes but you both now they are stupid and that’s where the ironic hilarity comes from? Now imagine if that friend did LSD and also was Socrates. That is Space Funeral. A game so content with its own foolishness that you cannot do nothing but be marveled by it, so… itself, unlike anything there could be at the time, both script wise and visually, it is one of those RPG Maker games that decided to do whatever it wanted, but it went far beyond I could had possibly imagined. There’s a reason I opened this review talking about the Dracula bit, it’s the perfect mixture of funny and uncomfortable that Space Funeral pulls off so well time and time again, and it’s what makes it so distinct and what made me so incredibly sad that I didn’t play it sooner.

It's even unconventional on how it tackles its themes; I originally thought that this game would be about maybe grief, considering the title, the main character’s sprite and the abundance of skulls and coffins, but that couldn’t have been further away from the truth, and in fact you could argue that it mocks tackling that subject at a certain point! Instead, Space Funeral seems more interested on focusing on battling a criminal lord drawn in paint using Bibles, going to the CRAP store and catching elves, you know, your usual Space Funeral stuff, but it does show snippets of a larger theme in some spare moments, and it all culminates with the ending. Remember when I said that didn’t go ‘’meta’’ at any point? Well, that was both a truth and a lie. Space Funeral seems to seek to tackle not only what ‘’perfection’’ truly means and implies, but the relationship between a creator and its work. I don’t want to get too much into spoilers, but this game does leave on a very interesting note without fully breaking the fourth wall, and even if the result seems to be made better in other games and it feels like too little to late, it was something that I really wasn’t expecting, and hey, maybe the fact it feels rushed or a bit unfocused it’s the point, you never know with this game.

The only thing I have real issues is the combat, not because it’s bad, mind you, and in fact for a game that lasts an hour, it manages to make its encounters feel nuanced and impactful: there’s a huge number of options and skills, a lot of equipment you can find for both characters and it’s very rewarding to learn fast and defeat enemies with the tools the game gives you. However, it’s still a fairly easy game, which I normally wouldn’t have much of a problem with, but that and its short duration made it so there was never a real point where I felt like I needed to use all of my tools or think that strategically, aside from the usual defense drop or heal, and it’s a shame ‘cause the combat seems like a part of the game that was made with genuine intent to be more complex and interesting, but sadly it’s probably the most mind-numbing part about the whole thing.

But, if anything, I’m still ‘’mind-melted’’, Space Funeral reminds me of why I adore exploring weird yet fascinating worlds, and how absurdity and surrealism can make a work so incredibly enjoyable, funny, and even… lovely. That is a weird adjective to use with the game, but hey, the game itself is weird…

… so it kinda fits, huh?

5 minutes with a dino game, 5 minutes well spent...

A game with very light platforming and fantastic humor and delivery, the inventory and the map changing gags specially were really inspired and I found myself with a big ol' smile while playing. While I myself don't have ADHD and that's definitively a barrier for just really knowing how good of a representation of it seems, folks seem to be pleased with how it's shown and represented, and it's a very sincere and fun representation and that. Plus, it's done with dinos. I mean... c'mon, that makes it even better.

So yeah, not much else to say , actually, it's a funny little game that comes from a sincere place while also managing to be effectively comical. It is what it is, and what it is a very sweet and interesting time.

Pseudoregalia strikes me as a short and satisfying 3D platformer, though I hesitate to call it succinct. Its core strength is its simple yet nuanced toolkit, as its multi-faceted movement options provide great depth. For example, the wall-kick serves an obvious purpose as a wall jump by kicking between two opposite walls, but you can also use the wall kick to alter your trajectory and gain more air-time. This can lead to exploits such as wall-kicking up corners to scale previously unreachable platforms, or wall-kicking just below ledges and immediately reversing your trajectory with another wall-kick to grab the ledge. As a result, the game's many obstacle courses never feel prohibitive and are not so much tied to specific upgrades as they are to the player's ability to execute movement tech, making exploration feel much more open-ended. Unfortunately, Pseudoregalia's exploration is stunted somewhat because it's super easy to get lost without any maps or checklists showing the player where to go/what's left to collect. The room layouts further exacerbate this confusion, because the overworld consists of many long branching tunnels instead of focusing on larger, more open areas that allow for hidden shortcuts. If all of the six main sectors had shortcuts to one another so I could access any section from any main hub (as opposed to wasting time mindlessly backtracking through the same central hubs), I think that my overall playtime would have been shortened by a solid hour or more.

Similarly, combat simply exists in Pseudoregalia, and could have been removed altogether with little consequence. Aside from two isolated bosses (one tutorial boss and one final boss), combat is usually unnecessary since most enemies can be easily avoided by constantly moving about. There's generally no tangible benefit to attacking enemies outside of restoring energy for healing. While there is an unlockable ability that lets you gain height while attacking enemies mid-air, I can't recall any real need to utilize this ability against moving foes outside of the collectible's immediate vicinity. The combat's superfluity becomes even more flagrant thanks to a few forced encounters: these tedious affairs require players to exterminate various spongey enemies to unlock a room's exits. As such, I think combat should be taken out while keeping invulnerable enemies around as a threat, and health restoration could be entirely tied to save crystals instead. I'd also be okay replacing the final boss with a final obstacle gauntlet forcing me to put all my movement tech to the test: while not a terrible fight, it felt a bit out of place relying on fairly restrained bait-and-punish + heal to defeat a final boss when I'd much rather be zipping about. Regardless, Pseudoregalia is a solid Steam debut for rittzler that's well worth the price of entry despite its lack of polish, and it's a game that I could see myself warming up to further with additional runs. I can't wait to see what they've got in mind for Electrokinetic.

"Don't you know that Blackmail is way uncool?" - Ryo Hazuki

I played Shenmue through the Shenmue 1 and 2 compilation on Steam, I think its pretty much the same version as the original minus disc swapping but if there are any major differences I wouldnt know. I was mainly interested in Playing Shenmue after really enjoying The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa a couple of months ago, which is a game that takes some inspiration from Shenmue in some aspects. And, since I think Shenmue has already been talked about from a myriad different angles on this site I think a nice compare and contrast will be good to do, especially to explain my personal experience with Shenmue and Ringo.

I was genuinely surprised when I started Shenmue and found myself enjoying the game, which underscores the benefits of playing things you might not think you'll like on the off chance you will. Its reputation for being slow and obtuse had my "filter-dar" screaming at me. Fortunately this reputation turned out to be mostly undeserved, especially the first 2/3rds of the game. It was honestly smooth sailing for most of the game, following a routine of exploring the various areas of the town interacting with locals and practicing combos at the local park. Shenmue is basically a point and click adventure game, you talk to people, follow leads, write down what you know in your notepad etc. At first the rather odd control scheme (not just the tank controls in a non horror game but the RT + joystick to shift Ryo's gaze until the camera locks on into something interactable was certainly not what Im used to) threw me off but its not too hard to get used to it.

At first there is a nice balance of progressing the main story and also doing side activities like the arcade, a couple of sidequests that flesh out the lives of the inhabitants of the town. The pacing is slow but its nice how much of it is dictated by the player, letting you take it all in, hell even the decision to not have fast travel (well, kinda) at first seemingly encourages going back and forth and running into scripted events. The problem however, and here's where the comparison to Ringo becomes more relevant, is that as you progress the pacing becomes a lot worse, the activities you have to do to kill time are really not all that compelling after a while, you get told to come back tomorrow or in a few hours and time just moves way too slowly. See, in Ringo the activities arent great either but times moves a lot quicker and the decisions you make are so much more rooted in roleplaying and just being able to squeeze as much as you can onto a day that until the very end of the game you are basically never bored. In Shenmue however by the time Dobuita started putting up christmas decorations I was just spending most of my time pressing forward + x to strengthen my pit blow combo.

Its funny, Ringo is a game about an aimless youth with no future where you're constantly trying to do it all but Shenmue is a game about a singleminded youth driven by revenge constantly fucking around doing nothing of note. If the mechanic is the message, Shenmue's time system could honestly work well for a reverse of Outer Wilds message. I find Ryo Hazuki to be not particularly compelling, mainly cause he's constantly alienating everyone who's ever loved him and who's telling him that his quest for revenge is stupid and dangerous, which they are right to do so. Now, I know that that is the point, its the whole martial arts drama schtick where a tragic quest for revenge means the MC must give it all up to pursue it, and Im sure if we ever get Shenmue 30 or whatever there will be some ironic twist to make Ryo doubt his own resolve and all that stuff. But I just dont find him or that arc compelling. Ringo is also a tragic figure who pushes away his friends and is seemingly doomed to waste his life away or even have it cut short, but he's much more human and relatable to me. Ringo is a game to me, about having too little time, but Shenmue is a game about having too much.

Its hard to sympathise much with Ryo when his Dad had no appearance beyond his inmediate murder when the game starts and incidentally, whilst the lack of certain modern conveniences enhance this game, if it were made today there would definitely be a playable prologue before the events of the game with Ryo doing some errands or something for his dad, tutorialising the various mechanics and such. A lot of this might also be the legendarily wooden acting of the english dub which I admit I picked due to its infamy but honestly there is just too little of Ryo himself being anything other than stoic angry man for me to really care. This isnt even a matter of Ryo being pretty distinct from the player because again in Ringo you are even more disconnected, not even privy to most of the conversations Ringo has with his gang members.

The kind of character and structure of the game with its slow humanism, feeding cats, helping the bullied etc makes the main quest jarring to me, Ringo should be collecting signatures to save the local school or something, not plotting murder. Perhaps this is just a personal thing, but then again if you were expecting anything else from this review then you were mistaken.

The game definitely takes a dip when the harbour is introduced, which is even more barren and boring than the main town, though thankfully most of your time is spent with forklift races and box moving, which are unironic highlights of the game. By this point though, Shenmue was really starting to wear thin, even the fights started to become more of an annoyance than a nice change of pace. There are a couple of scenes where Ringo shows some interesting side to him with Mark and Gui Zhang and Tom, but after a slightly annoying battle (I am also fairly shit at fighting games, so whilst I did well for 90% of the game I struggled with the final bout) the game just sort of ends. Its kind of ballsy just how much of a sequel hook the game ends on, seemingly treating Shenmue 1 as the first season of a drama series, fitting, I suppose but from what I have gathered the story of the series is far from over 20+ years later.

So why did I love Ringo but not so much Shenmue? Other than the points mentioned above, Ringo's character moments are so much more memorable to me, I will remember some lines in Shenmue for their delivery and silliness, but moments like Ringo not sharing his literature essay in class or his exchange with his teacher about wasted talent stick to me a lot more. I still enjoyed Shenmue and I'm glad I played it, but whatever it is that the people who love this game (and a lot of them being people who's writing I admire and respect on this very site) saw in it I just didnt quite find. Perhaps the nature of the "right place, right time" events meant I missed a bunch of things, and apparently Ryo's love interest Nozomi has most of her lines relegated to phone conversations? Of which I saw none and was wondering why she's such a flat line for most of the game despite her importance to Ryo and parts of the plot.

I'm not rushing to Play Shenmue 2 any time soon but who knows, maybe Ill play it at some point and come back to revise my thoughts on the first entry.

Minor spoilers ahead? But probably worth knowing?:

Hey, game designers! If you're going to do a fakeout ending, please signpost it in literally any way! This game signified absolutely in no way that its fake ending was actually fake. Myself and at least 3 other people I've talked to about it fell for it. The credits played in full and I literally uninstalled the game after it because I straight up thought it was over. I only found out that I hadn't actually finished the game because I tried looking up alternate endings and everything was completely foreign! Please just tell me in any clear way that I'm not done please?

Ive slowed down a bit on the amount of reviews I write because I feel like for most games I play I simply dont "have anything to say" about them. I think thats still the case for this game but I just kind of need to get it out of my system : fuck this game.

What an amazing first impression, the music, the artstyle and even the writing with its subtlety and charm. Unfortunately as you get through it all you'll start to realize how boring most of the game is, mainly through repetition. Its kind of impressive how much a mere 3 hour (at least thats what my 2 runs ended up clocking at) game can outstay its welcome in this manner. The very backgrounds that were once gorgeous to look at become a reminder of the annoyance of having to see it again. You basically go through every single location twice, in a game which demands multiple runs of you!

I get the feeling that at some point someone is going to beat this game and tell me that "oh, that was the point" somehow, as usually happens on the internet whenever I dislike a particular design decision, but honestly I dont see it. I fail to see how the repetition adds to anything, it isnt moody or atmospheric, it doesnt reinforce any point about the themes of the game (unless being bored out of my mind has anything to do with entropy, stories or colonialism) and even if it did would not be worth doing anyways.

The puzzles are lame but honestly I didnt even mind that all that much. More than anything I think Ive started to despise the "syke, you got the bad ending! try again to get the good one" structure that historically a lot of videogames have adopted, doubly so in a game which is again, repetitive and boring. I am admittedly unhinged and I did think for a joke about copy pasting each paragraph of this review 3 or 4 times to make reading it a chore in a parallel to the game but even I'M not pretentious enough for that.

At the end of the day, I ran through the game once, got a bad ending, got told to find something, did another run, this time doing different things and seemingly being pushed in a different direction, but again a different bad ending. Now, am I going to run through again to get the good ending? No, get fucked, the game already lost me after the first run, a third run would count as self flagellation. Its my own damn fault for playing an adventure game on launch, always play this shit a few months down the line when you can look up the true ending path and not have more of your limited time on this planet wasted.

Edit : half a star for the "flora de las islas canarias" tome in the background of one of the locations

Edit 2: Okay, someone posted a walkthrough of the game and now I can say for sure I didnt miss much by bailing on this game. As it turns out the "runs" are entirely artificial, they all go the same, you do 1st run, then 2nd then you get the true ending on the 3rd. The ending sort of contextualizes why and its not the worst thing Ive seen, but the writing in general smacks of (to quote fellow Backloggd user Gare) "this is my project in submitting because I want an internship at Pixar but I never learned how to tell a story" though I guess that should be toei and not pixar cause its a japanese game. The runs are KINDA justified in conveying the themes of the story but that still doesnt make the game any less dull or repetitive so whatever, I stand by my original review

Pseudoregalia is one of the best executed 3D metroidvanias I've seen. It's a game almost entirely focused on movement, and it really nails that. Your abilities are fun and interesting, and many of them aren't the generic upgrades you'd expect from many games in the genre. You can find them very out of order and it feels like the game almost encourages sequence breaking with the amount of opportunities it gives for that. The combat for the most part is just there, it's not great but it's not in the way to the point of being annoying either, with the exception being the final boss fight which I found surprisingly fun. The vibes of this are great, you're exploring a huge castle with very N64-inspired visuals, and it gets those right in a way that feels very authentic and nostalgic as someone who grew up with that system. The music is also really good and adds a lot to the tone of the game.

My biggest complaint that while the castle has a variety of areas, navigating between them can be a little confusing. The game doesn't have any sort of map, and I mostly respect that decision. I feel like if it had one I probably would have been over-reliant on checking it constantly, and the challenge of mapping everything out in my head in a complex 3D space was pretty fun. That's a pretty fine line to walk though of balancing that complexity without frustrating the player, and where it failed at that was near the end of the game when I had to backtrack to specific areas. Within a single area I was usually fine with navigating off of memory, and didn't get stuck often at all, but in the later parts of the game I would know a specific location I needed to get to, and remembering where the zone transitions were and figuring out how the areas all connected together was more frustrating than fun.

Overall it's a very neat game that's good at what it does, and it's very short and underpriced for what it is, so it's an easy recommendation. I could see myself replaying it just to see how doing things in a different order went, or trying to speedrun it as it seems like a really good game for that.

In his video last year regarding context sensitivity, Matthewmatosis opens by describing Ghost Trick as entirely context-sensitive: the main action button ("trick") always performs a different action depending on the item possessed. However, he points this out as an exception to the trend of heavy context-sensitivity weighing down modern titles, because simply put, Ghost Trick uses context-sensitivity not as a crutch, but as its core. It never seems to suffer from fuzzy context: the game not only gives you plenty of safe time to experiment with set-pieces leading up to timed sequences (since untimed traversal to the victim is every bit a puzzle in itself), but also briefly describes the single "trick" of each object possessed to give players an idea of how to progress. Furthermore, Ghost Trick's difficulty hits a perfect sweet-spot: it doesn't feel free because traversal and manipulating objects to your advantage require a good degree of planning and experimentation, but failure also never feels too punishing because other characters and the environment are great at providing thoughtful feedback upon failure, so the player isn't just banging their head against a wall via quick restarts at built-in checkpoints.

Essentially, it's like playing the ancestor of Return of the Obra Dinn but with a time loop mechanic attached. The objective remains simple (travel back to four minutes before death to avert fate), but how to achieve said objective is always completely dictated by your surroundings. As a result, it naturally iterates upon its basic structure to create more unconventional scenarios: soon you're not just manipulating objects for traversal and foiling assassins, you're also solving locked room mysteries, or traveling to different environments to save victims from elsewhere, or diving into deaths within deaths to avert multiple fates at a time. Through all of this, Ghost Trick understands one of the key strengths of video games: creating virtual playgrounds of experimentation unsaddled by the limitations of time to reward players through the joy of discovery. The player is constantly surprised time and time again not only from unexpected object interactions, but also from how the narrative weaves in and out of death sequences to create suspenseful moments. It's a minor miracle in itself that the story never jumps the shark: the gameplay mechanics remain firmly consistent alongside its lore, and every plot thread is neatly wrapped up by the end of the game after a series of subtly foreshadowed twists. Combine this marrying of storytelling and gameplay with expressive animations, a colorful and very personable cast, an understated yet powerful soundtrack, and a great mix of humor and emotional moments, and you get what is perhaps the most cohesive title in the DS library.

It's rather poetic that a game which looked simple on the outside provided such an intricate exercise for Shu Takumi to prove that he was no one-trick pony. I'm grateful that Ghost Trick has finally been ported to modern systems for a whole new audience to lose their minds over this, for it's a masterpiece that everyone owes to themselves to check out. At the end of the day, nothing feels quite as cathartic as miraculously changing destiny in the face of inevitable death.

Pokémon White Version 2 ? More like, PEAKmon White Version 2!... Ok that one wasn't even funny I'm sorry...

White Version 2 is such an anomaly that I'm even surprised it even exists as it is; now-a-days, the concept of the ''Third Version'' of Pokémon games has completely disappeared, with the jump to 3D a ton of stuff began to change, so much so that for the sixth generation there wasn't any kind of third version, for the seventh we got the ''Ultra'' games, and now in the eighth and ninth generations, DLC has been the main focus for a way to add more content to the original games. There's a ton to be discussed about this topic, if the DLC's are worth it; if the extra editions, despite consistently being the definitive version of any given generation, were just another way to scoop more money out of mechanics and enhancements that should have already been on the base games, which were dual releases in the first place… whichever the case, one thing’s for sure: for the longest time, they have been constantly expected, and the expectations for the fifth generation were no different. I mean, c’mon, games called Black & White that also have a third dragon legendary that gas grey as the main color? It was clearer than water that sooner or later Pokémon Grey Edition was gonna appear on the shelves… except no…

…no it did not…

Well-over a year into the 3DS life-span and in an extremely surprising and different move (tho that’s kinda in brand for B&W as a whole), B2&W2 were released for the DS, and not only this was the first instance of a generation not having a having an upgraded version as we know it, but also it was the first and, so far, only instance of this franchise having a direct sequel that takes place in the same region. It’s clear that despite the initial controversies among some fans with the original games, the team at Game Freak loved the original Black and White games as much as people (such as myself) do to this day; in several interviews and even in a ‘’Iwata Asks’’, game’s director Takao Unno mentioned the desire within the team to expand further in certain characters and the regions, keep pushing forward the themes of battle of ideals the the original entry stablished, as well as to explore new mechanics within the same world and Unova’s lay-out. Even form its very conception, B2&W2 was conceptualized as anything but a simple repeat of the original, but I also think that calling a more complex remix would also be a disservice, and it’s far more than just a simple follow-up.

Two years have passed in-game and between releases, and it very much shows; while yes, the region of Unova hasn’t seen much big changes, every city is still were it once was and pretty much unchanged from two years ago, we traverse a lot of locations never before seen: from bran new places like Virbank City and its complex, the not so far-off Pokéwood, or even routes that has seen complete revamps, like route 4 turning into a small apartment complex in Black 2 or the results of an archeological excavation in White 2, which not only are some rad differences to have between versions than just some changes of gym leader, but also reflects perfectly on the ideas of duality that these games strive to make the center off. Both past and new locations feel alive and vibrant, and there’s arguably much more variety in the design of the cites and sub-areas here than there it ever was in the original game. The way you traverse the games is also much more refreshing compared to the original game: not only there are a ton more of de-tours in before known places, like seeking Team Plasma in Castelia City’s sewers, which were inaccessible before, but also, while the game is fairly linear, you jump constantly from area to area, and half way through the game you take a plane that takes you to the routes that were once just post-game content, and they are much more expanded and lead to never seen before places, both before and after the league. Some characters also sport brand new looks and teams; both Cheren and Bianca feel a ton more mature and experienced than their younger, more insecure and reckless selves from B&W, and they are a perfect showcase of how much the events of the original game and the 2 years that have gone by have affected them and the entire region; even the gym leaders, while they do leave much less of an impact and don’t have as much of a presence as they did in the original, are still by far the best in the series, sporting new teams, their proudness in showcasing the progress of the region (Like Clay and his beloved Pokémon World Tournament), some even having new looks and gyms, and some of them just retiring, leaving the mantel of gym leader to new aspiring trainers in different places. It’ all just so… natural, the passage of time is communicated incredibly well and makes traversing this brand new Unova so compelling and exciting to discover, and be soaked on its mystique.

Visually and sound-wise is still the same ten out of ten as it was once; the new music is great as ever, but much of the graphics and songs are lifted from its predecessor, and while yes, they are still fantastic, I think that’s more of a victory of the original Black & White than of these games (and believe me, I’ll also talk about those in the future). What was also a victory of the past games was the simply impeccable narrative. B&W explored what it meant to a Pokémon trainer, questioned the grounds for what the series stands for, and crafted a evil team that, while ultimately was head-speared by a disgusting megalomaniac that sought control of the region under the façade of a good ‘cause and manipulated the entire region creating basically a cult for the leader (I really need to get into Ghetsis in the future), the cause of N was and still is well-spirited, a movement that seeks to help the Pokémon and that, to this day, is brought back time and time again in the series as a talking point. B&W questioned itself, and it didn’t take the cowards way out by simply saying that all of Team Plasma was wrong; N truly had a point, and B2&W2 biggest narrative strength is the exploration of one simple question: What happens next? While it was easy to englobe all of B&W’s themes under the fight between different beliefs (or truth and ideals, as the games puts it) and how there are certain things that shouldn’t be looked at through a black or white lenses, B2&W2 are not as easy. Ironically, despite being still being called Black & White, the game does for sure lean into that grey territory; aside of the Plasma and the Rival’s storyline, many of the characters don’t have much conflict, not even the returning N; some characters like Colress bring the interesting perspective of extreme pragmatism and how that inevitably leads people to be closed off from possible positive ideals and ultimately fall into the exact violence and coldness they seem to be against (Funnily enough, is in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon where Acromo gets a really cool ending to his character arch, so I really recommend checking it out if you like his character) and the rival does have a cool arch of leaving behind wrathful vengeance in exchange for compassion and it’s probably one of the most underrated rivals in the series; but the game as a whole doesn’t really center on those topics. Instead here’s this feeling of… resolve, of hope, and despite the past coming back more violent than ever, the people and Pokémon of Unova are more united than ever, and this inner peace and ravenous excitement for the tomorrow can be seen in the champions of the region, both old and new.

It is an interesting perfective to take in the sequels, even if ultimately it isn’t as compelling or gripping as the previous game was; it’s for sure a more celebratory and optimistic take, and it’s warranted considering the ending of the past adventure, but it doesn’t stop it from feeling less grounded, and more akin to what you would encounter in a ‘’normal’’ Pokémon game. The Team Plasma stuff is clearly the winner of the whole narrative department tho; even if at a glance it looks like they ‘’rocketized’’ the Plasma fellows, I actually adore this direction for them; the division of those who follow N and those who follow Ghetsis, with two of the old sages at the front of each, Roof and Zinzolin, it’s the true reason this game is still called Black &White. A division of those who seek atonement for their past mistakes and truly want to help Pokémon, and those who still follow their deplorable excuse for a leader, who now only want to use strength and fear to reach their end, who embrace foolishness and ignorance. It’s so, so fucking compelling, not only it’s the expected outcome since it’s clear some of the past Plasma members would realize their errors and Ghetsis is a petty piece of shit that would inevitably come back, but it’s also just so satisfying to see a brighter future for truly altruistic people, as well as to kick the asses of the Neo Team Plasma and destroy the madman’s aspirations once again. It’s a return to the more classic formula of the Evil Team, but one that works wonderfully, and makes me wish that the game had explored it even more and put the main focus into this division once again, but do not mistake my disappointment in certain regards by disgust; B2&W2 are still fantastic games, probably the ones with the most interesting content, the most interesting Pokémon variety and balancing, and even if I ultimately prefer the originals, they are still a monumental achievement for the series, and even if they back-pedal in certain aspects and I’m not really fond of certain major and minor battles compared to the originals, I don’t think there will be any other game in the main series that reaches this level of pure personality and fulfillment….


The memories I have with this game are as strong as with the originals, and I revisit this game, way, way more simply because of the fun of team building, doing stuff in it and just… taking it in, taking it slow, enjoying the music, the views and the pixelated beauty of it all. Each new change, be it aesthetic, narrative or even in the gameplay department (the Hidden Grottos and the new revamped learn-sets are two fantastic additions that come to mind) showcase just how hellbent the team was on crafting the best fifth gen experience possible, and even if I still believe that it doesn’t quite reach the same highs as its pre-quels, B2W2 is a swansong, and even if it’s up to each if the series never reached the same highs as it did here, it’s for sure that the team left the DS with on a spectacular note.


Man, fuck a possible remake of the original, give us B3&W3 or a Legends: Kyurem/Victini! Give us kino, Game Freak!

My Child: Lebensborn concerns the fate of the children born to the Lebensborn program in Norway after the Second World War. I was not aware of such a program before I came across this game but it did a good job of explaining it specifically in the case of Norway as well as attempting to explain why these children faced the abuse they did without veering into apologia.

I am going to provide a few links below but without going into too much detail, the Lebensborn program was an initiative by head of the SS Heinrich Himmler to promote the birth of "biologically valuable" children as per the Nazis own racial eugenics policies. It took place all over the occupied territories but Norway especially given its place in Nazi racial ideology. The Nazis would set up centers for women giving birth to children from soldiers/ss officers away from the judging eyes of their families and neighbours.

After the war, many of the women involved in the program and even just suspected of having slept with german soldiers were punished severely with public humiliation and even arrest/internment. As the game points out, at times these women were treated more harshly than people who had actively collaborated with the occupiers, mostly due to a misogynistic "their bodies belong only to norweigans" attitudes.

The children born of the program faced mental and physical abuse by the general population following the war, hatred for the nazis and their ideology being channeled into mistreating children who had nothing to do with it beyond the circumstances of their birth. Many were even interned in mental asylums for years following prevailing psychiatric consensus that they must be mentally stunted.

My Child Lebensborn follows a single parent adopting one of these children, a boy or a girl depending on your choice. It follows essentially the same core mechanics as Pou or other pet simulators, which seems insane to say about raising a human child but thats genuinely what the mechanics most resemble, taking care of hunger, cleanliness and boredom of the child whilst having to go to work monday through saturday with limited time to do everything from sewing clothes, cooking, bathing the child etc.

You follow this routine as little (klaus in my case) starts to go to school at seven years old and starts to wonder about their biological parents as well as facing bullying from the schoolchildren and even the teachers at the school. There is a walking dead style system of dialogue choices pushing Klaus into either hardening his heart to endure the stigma he will have to deal with and trusting no one or trying to keep whatever innocence is being taken from him by the cruel conditions hes facing. Its genuinely heart breaking stuff, it makes me wonder what I would do if I ever had childen myself and dealt with such a horrible thing happening to them without inmediately flying into a white hot rage and doing something impulsive.

There is also the subject of either investigating and sharing Klaus' parentage with him, including also whether or not to try to explain what the nazis were and why their actions are responsible for the bullying he endures whilst also making clear that none of this is Klaus' fault, which is hard for a kid to understand and for an adult to explain.

I don't really have much of a conclusion here, this game was honestly upsetting, but in a way that is obviously intentional. I think I would just encourage anyone who's read this far to read up on the stories of these children which are documented below. I would also encourage people to visit the Children of War website, I believe part of the profits made from the game go to the NGO.

https://mychildlebensborn.com/about-us/
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lebensborn-program
https://www.thechildrenofwar.org/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-chosen-ones-the-war-children-born-to-nazi-fathers-in-a-sinister-eugenics-scheme-speak-out-771017.html

I walk into the castle of horrors and nothing is intimidating.
I am in the future, in a time of resurgence. there is tradition, but also new blood. everything is recognizable, linear corridors, rectangular rooms and architecture by pieces, disengaged, okay I guess, there are no rules in this space. But wait, there are laws, those that manage the danger and therefore the challenge. shit, there are levels, a lot of weapons, was it in the future? This feels the same as it did in the 90s.
the premise itself is contradictory; Aria of Sorrow is set in 2035 (I think lol) but the structure and direction remains unchanged, frozen and subjected to SoTN, the power of dominance is impressive at first, but many souls end up becoming projectile weapons or typical metroidvania tools, and that's fine, it's one more resource, but it is a shame to know that it is such an important element in this installment.
There are so many mobility options and so little space to move around here, so many weapons, so many resources and everything feels trivial because of something so harmless to some people like the level system, why is there a level system? Why so many tools and that gigantic map if what rules the world is arithmetic?
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AoS has a great charisma, but not that much

Disaster Report 5 is a very memorable ride that makes up for its flaws in sheer entertainment value. Its the kind of game that makes me rethink if I should even be giving games numerical scores out of 10. Its kind of a mess? But a very fun mess, the kind that can only come about when a game attempts to be simultaneously silly, somber, challenging, funny, absurd, human and dramatic at the same time.

I am not familiar with the rest of the disaster report franchise but judging by the other reviews on the page it would seem this was a fairly big departure from the series which was up until then focused more on the schlock, action sequences and cartoonish supervillains than the relatively more toned down, more serious natural disaster and human drama of 4... er, I mean 5!

From what little I know, it seems that the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake kind of forced the change in the series (also the transition to HD that caused so much trouble for the japanese industry around 7th gen), a deeply traumatic event in the japanese collective psyche, I presume not addressing it or treating it lightly might have been very poorly received. Instead we have a very episodic series of vignettes and character moments threaded by adventure game inventory puzzles, light survival sims and moral choices; all of which tie back into the broader theme of natural disasters and their impact on people. Indeed one of MANY 4th wall breaks includes a random citizen in "not Shibuya" pointing to a poster for Disaster Report 4 and wondering something along the lines of "I wonder if this will affect the games' release", acknowledging the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake's effect on both the dev cycle of the game and the impact on its writing.

The game doesnt completely give up on its roots and this is kind of where my earlier point of the game being "kind of a mess" comes from. Its a hard thing to complain about, tonal shifts; cause even beyond the usual subjectivity of any criticism, it feels like they are more susceptible to a third person going "it didnt feel jarring/it worked for me" and the discussion cant really go anywhere from there. Personally its just hard to take the more melancholy gritty drama when so much of the game is really silly. I just get whiplash and honestly the number one emotion I have experienced playing this game is laughter and joy ; which I like, but it feels like the underlying message is being lost a bit.

Spoilers for the game generally from here on out

I absolutely love the dialogue options, even though I am a coward who never picked the evil options, just their presence alone has made me laugh more than almost any other game this year. Lines such as "before I inform you, will you give me money" or the contextually funny "I pray only for those who worship me" after becoming the leader of a cult or "I felt lonely upon realizing I cant meet her again in the sequel" after the tragic death of a character (though this one incidentally completely saps away any sadness I could have felt for this moment). Its also the fact that a big chunk of the game is collecting and wearing stupid outfits, which is cool but also deflates the seriousness whenever the game tries its hand at it, personally.

On the subject of morality, I genuinely don't know if the moral/inmoral points are supposed to be taken seriously or not or who is even deciding what they are. I won't be the first or last person to complain about quantifying morality as a variable in a game, but even accepting it, why do I get 100 good guy points for taking over as cult leader but 200 bad guy points for blowing up a ship full of human traffickers who are currently kidnapping me and others? At points the morality system makes sense in that good guy points are won by being selfless and helping out in a crisis situation whereas being a selfish, "every man for himself" type prick nets you bad guy points. The rest of the time however they feel arbitrary and in all honesty the story is going to railroad you into doing good and bad things regarless of your character if you were roleplaying as mother teresa or patrick bateman.

Much has been talked about the infamous "miracle water" episode wherein we trick a bunch of stand ins for the tendency in humans generally and presumably some japanese people specifically to devolve into in-group out-group xenophobia and prejudice in an emergency situation, into buying our magic water which is just regular plain water. Its pretty upsetting how that subplot ends and though I havent played the epilogue yet, I think Danny, the foreign exchange student who gets caught up in our scheme through no fault of his own gets beaten up by the mob dies? Im not too sure, it was kind of unclear. A nitpicky complaint I have also: why cant I use my money here? Were victimized by the xenophobic pricks at the school and have to beg them to share their food but I had 30 million yen? Surely even the biggest UKIP voter would have given us an onigiri for a 100k? I think the cult subplot bears mention, even if its kind of rushed and bizarre. Essentially you join an obvious cult preying on people's desesperation and vulnerability and get promoted to leader in about 15 minutes, before just as quickly being run off as a traitor (though not before making off with their money).

The actual gameplay for the most part is just basically fine, mostly "find the NPC to talk to" and trying not to get crushed or otherwise killed by debris from the quake aftershocks for the first few hours. I like the narrative and gameplay progression of there being fewer physical dangers as the days go by, you return to old areas which are now being repaired, generators being set up to light up darker areas etc. There's a real sense of time passing and the situation slowly returning to normal, in a sense. I like some of the cooler details like early on there is no power or running water anywhere but the CEO of a company has seemingly the only generator in the building powering a fan to keep them cool in their office. There is a bit of that whole point and click adventure bullshit with "You havent talked to person A yet, so person B hasn't materialized from the Ether yet" flag based causality which can get annoying. Similarly there is a tendency for game continuing cutscenes to not trigger unless you approach them in a specific direction or whatever which can get annoying, especially at first.

The character's generally are quite memorable even if they (not including the epilogue I havent played through yet) don't all have a resolution or their arc just sort of stops at some point. I like Danny, the phoney store manager is hilarious, Kanae etc. There is also one very jarring and sudden inclusion of violent SA which is admittedly not shown to the audience but is so jarring and seemingly quickly brushed aside as to cause actual whiplash. I think the issue of violence against women is definitely one worth exploring in media, especially by a piece which is trying to create some kind of broad representation of society and their various reactions to trauma and disasters, but this game is really not equipped to do so in this case and just feels very ill-advised and even exploitative, imo.

It ties into the broader trend of the game struggling to keep both its identity as a wacky unserious disaster schlock sim and an obligation to treat its subject matter more seriously.

That aside, I hope I havent created the impression that I dislike this game, because for all I can complain about its still a game I enjoyed more than most this year and has kept me hooked for its entire runtime, though it is admittedly an 8 hour game. Fitting for a game with the subtitle 'Summer Memories' I played it during the bits of free time I have had during a recent summer trip to a hot spring town, and I will remember both the trip and the game vividly for a long time.

I was already enamored with the demo, and the full version is even better. I absolutely love The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, it's a beautiful game that manages to create so much narrative intrigue through its core gameplay system of creating your own Tarot cards and then reading them. It's really fun designing your own card designs. There's also lots of lovely little moments where you are reminded of the choices you have made and cards you pulled, the game manages to really feel like a cohesive whole with a suprisingly large amount of impact the player has on the narrative - I imagine there's a relatively huge variety of ways the story can play out. I especially loved where they took the entire thing in the end, it's a really nice, explicitely political direction (although the implementation leaves some things to be desired).

There's also a lot of joy to be found in the interactions between characters and the way they develop. Some themes and moments really pulled on my heartstrings. Even though this game is about immortal witches, the way the story is told is really down to earth and focused on the small moments, it's kind. The game rules, I want to say, it absolutely rules. I played through it in one sitting (Yes, it's 5hrs long), it's that good. A lot of queer joy here, too. The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood has impeccable vibes, a tight grip on its loose themes & a really fun and cleverly implemented central gameplay mechanic. It's a space I will return to, sometime in the future!

2023 is a really great year for visual novels.

I've been thinking of the LIS games more in terms of the locations than the characters. Obviously the characters are the focus and are almost universally compelling but the towns they exist in are the critical backdrop that make them pop. Max and Chloe need Arcadia Bay for their story to work. Sean and Daniel are sculpted by every place they pass through on their journey.

Haven Springs doesn't exist. Yeah, I've seen photos of the place it's based on, it's kinda similar, but visual similarity only goes so far. It's a town "where everyone knows your name" to such an extreme that it has a dedicated social media app. Leisure activities include city-wide LARPs and going to the record store. It's a fantasy, I suspect a particularly generational fantasy, and it's taken for granted that you will love this place, because you, dear Life is Strange player, fall over for mountain aesthetics and alternative music, we know this. And, look, they're right. I'm not immune. I want to live here.

Also taken for granted: Typhon's motivations. We understand they are evil with little more setup than the words "corporation" and "mining." I finished episode 5 still trying to puzzle out if the grand conspiracy was actually worthwhile to any party involved, and at that point the game had long left me behind.

Those complaints aside, what kept me invested was the same thing that's kept me invested for the other 3 or 4 games. I liked spending time with Alex. And Duckie. And Steph and Ryan and the ice cream shop owners and that guy who lost his cat. Disappointing as the plot may be, the crew that guides you through it almost make it work. If anything I'm bummed we didn't get more time with the supporting cast. (The game runs short compared to the previous entries.) Charlotte seems like she has a lot going on, should I do another playthrough and see what happens if I choose other options for her?

I probably won't, because I'm too satisfied with the route and ending I got. I thought a lot of the decisions were fairly obvious, but the end-of-chapter stats screens tell me the masses were surprisingly split.

Part of me is worried what I'm actually describing is growing up. The other part of me is booking a flight to Colorado.