2023 in Review
No replays 😊
In order finished
In order finished
193 Games
It's an intended experience, honest
Greatest variety of doors in any game, and highlights the horrors of the only cassette deck in Paris belonging to some random lady in her car.
More like Action Lax, like Relaxing, like me in my bed, like me after playing this because it was sleepy.
Kind of a downgrade from Rock Band Unplugged, but at least the graphics are nice.
"go to hell" is basic. "i hope the developers of some of your favourite games get bought by epic and have to make subpar versions of other games so fortnite can try to compete with roblox" is smart. it's possible. it's terrifying.
Difficult to put into words how this makes me feel, but it seems a fitting capstone for a year marked by LLMs, themselves harvesters of every shred of available data gathered by algorithms we've been forced to abide by following the hyper-digitisation of life in the wake of COVID.
A meticulous on-going negotiation between space, architecture, self-doubt, and the rigidity of systems real and imagined.
Go buy and play it. Equip your horse blinders because the store page sours things a bit.
ここでは
左側通行
⬅
Perfect tectonic representation of Japanese underground passageways afforded by advances in games graphics. The hyperreal supplants the original to the extent that, as in reality, it becomes visual noise, consumed without deliberate thought. Without knowing what The Exit 8 delivers, its call to pay attention to surroundings becomes an act of questioning minutiae and the necessary bounds of the game space. In quietly becoming familiar with the space itself, differences should become apparent, but the mind effectively second-guesses itself amid a sea of static. Occasionally it is blatant, more often fleeting as a wandering eye spot, impossible to catch within one's focus and definitively claim it to be actual.
Of course, if it really was that subtle it wouldn't be a very rewarding experience, but the learning experience is reinforced by the dread of seeing 0, an affirmation that you missed something or, more terrifyingly, misremembered something. Were the posters always in that configuration? Did the passerby look like that? How grungy was it last time?
By not repeating itself until the bag of tricks runs empty, The Exit 8 refuses to even give the player the opportunity to enter routine, to become acquainted with the unfamiliar. Even the security of 8 not a perfect shield until the assurance of leaving it behind.
Go buy and play it. Equip your horse blinders because the store page sours things a bit.
ここでは
左側通行
⬅
Perfect tectonic representation of Japanese underground passageways afforded by advances in games graphics. The hyperreal supplants the original to the extent that, as in reality, it becomes visual noise, consumed without deliberate thought. Without knowing what The Exit 8 delivers, its call to pay attention to surroundings becomes an act of questioning minutiae and the necessary bounds of the game space. In quietly becoming familiar with the space itself, differences should become apparent, but the mind effectively second-guesses itself amid a sea of static. Occasionally it is blatant, more often fleeting as a wandering eye spot, impossible to catch within one's focus and definitively claim it to be actual.
Of course, if it really was that subtle it wouldn't be a very rewarding experience, but the learning experience is reinforced by the dread of seeing 0, an affirmation that you missed something or, more terrifyingly, misremembered something. Were the posters always in that configuration? Did the passerby look like that? How grungy was it last time?
By not repeating itself until the bag of tricks runs empty, The Exit 8 refuses to even give the player the opportunity to enter routine, to become acquainted with the unfamiliar. Even the security of 8 not a perfect shield until the assurance of leaving it behind.
Oh this art's kinda cute I hope this isn't actually a foot fetish game. <- Clueless
Helped remind me why I dislike Risk of Rain 2 so much. The power fantasy is lessened here (though still extant) to the point where even won runs feel tight.
With no nostalgia, this was weak but the vehicles were all tremendously fun.
Wonder Flower gimmicks are cute until they turn repetitious, which they do by the end of World 2. The badges largely make up for a lack of platforming aptitude which, as a seasoned gamester, means I have to play the game wrong to accommodate their use. But I'm not gonna unlearn my Mario skills so I don't remember to use them outside of when they are clearly necessary for side objectives like an over-polished immsim. You mean I should use the Dolphin badge on the levels right after I got it? Wowee Zowee!
Broadly speaking this feels like an attempt to teach the kids that grew up with the Switch what Mario is about. The hypersleek UI elements, mountains of spoken text as a replacement for other markers of design intent, the badges, the Wowee Zowee, the oodles of characters, the gacha elements of the standees, the multiple currencies (and decimalisation of Flower coins to further litter the field with shinies), the little emojis, the lack of points. These additions and subtractions are by no means bad but I won't lie, it feels a little like I'm playing a AAA game from the 2020s. Because I am. It's hard to read Wonder as a creative reinvention and reinvigoration of Mario because I know it took thousands of people to make this. That every decision was subject to board meetings and focus groups. It's the same problem as your New Super games -- the formula must be adhered to. And even if the formula changes, it's still a formula. Nothing wrong with that, but it's not what I look for at this point in my life.
I'll keep playing it, I'll probably finish it. It's like a Coca-Cola Creation, y'know? You see it on the shelf, you think 'what the hell do '+XP' or 'Starlight' taste like, the first sip is novel and enchanting, before long you're still drinking Coke. If I want true innovation, I'll reach for the local-made can of kombucha flavoured with some berry I've never heard of before. Like Haskap. Uhhh, for the purposes of this analogy I guess the random shit I pick up on Steam and itch.io are the kombucha.
And I gotta say, I'm sorry but I can't hear the Mario Gang say Wowee Zowee without having flashbacks to Game Grumps Kirby Super Star Part 2 where Jon and Arin argued for like a minute straight over whether or not Arin had said Wowee Zowee before. Back then life was so simple. I was so young. Games held so much potential. Eleven years, gone in the blink of an eye. In another life, I'm the Mario Wonder kid, growing up on a Switch. Who could have known things would turn out the way they did, that I'd be the person I am today...
Feels like a rebrand to cover up some controversial past half the time.
WOAH JUST LIKE GAME GRUMPS 😱
Broadly speaking this feels like an attempt to teach the kids that grew up with the Switch what Mario is about. The hypersleek UI elements, mountains of spoken text as a replacement for other markers of design intent, the badges, the Wowee Zowee, the oodles of characters, the gacha elements of the standees, the multiple currencies (and decimalisation of Flower coins to further litter the field with shinies), the little emojis, the lack of points. These additions and subtractions are by no means bad but I won't lie, it feels a little like I'm playing a AAA game from the 2020s. Because I am. It's hard to read Wonder as a creative reinvention and reinvigoration of Mario because I know it took thousands of people to make this. That every decision was subject to board meetings and focus groups. It's the same problem as your New Super games -- the formula must be adhered to. And even if the formula changes, it's still a formula. Nothing wrong with that, but it's not what I look for at this point in my life.
I'll keep playing it, I'll probably finish it. It's like a Coca-Cola Creation, y'know? You see it on the shelf, you think 'what the hell do '+XP' or 'Starlight' taste like, the first sip is novel and enchanting, before long you're still drinking Coke. If I want true innovation, I'll reach for the local-made can of kombucha flavoured with some berry I've never heard of before. Like Haskap. Uhhh, for the purposes of this analogy I guess the random shit I pick up on Steam and itch.io are the kombucha.
And I gotta say, I'm sorry but I can't hear the Mario Gang say Wowee Zowee without having flashbacks to Game Grumps Kirby Super Star Part 2 where Jon and Arin argued for like a minute straight over whether or not Arin had said Wowee Zowee before. Back then life was so simple. I was so young. Games held so much potential. Eleven years, gone in the blink of an eye. In another life, I'm the Mario Wonder kid, growing up on a Switch. Who could have known things would turn out the way they did, that I'd be the person I am today...
Feels like a rebrand to cover up some controversial past half the time.
WOAH JUST LIKE GAME GRUMPS 😱
Well at least Justin's not here.
Slightly less ad-libbed, as repetitious as ever in its jokes and play. Space Applebees caught you offguard last time? Well here's Cheers under an alien's ass. In case you didn't catch that the slugs are on the salt planet, I'll tell you a few more times. Guys, Amazon workers deal with horrid conditions, get it? Knifey sure is violent.
The new pinball gun is the most interesting weapon in the game, adorned with three phat ass babbling blue boys. High on Knife mostly throws basic enemies at you as a realisation that the gameplay really isn't what you're here for. The bells and whistles providing some auditory relief. Press F topay respects kill enemies instantly and get it over with. Surfing on walls is vaguely cool if poorly realised, especially with Knifey telling you the act itself is cool.
As paltry as the gameplay is, at least it can be engaged with while the cast is yammering. On the other side of the coin, whenever dialogue occurs it is usually two characters talking at you. Or three. Sometimes even four. Three quarters of the screen are eventually squatted in by characters in dark rooms with monotone pink walls and swarms of pink enemies. To call it an assault on the eyes and ears is to undersell it. Maybe it was because thirteen people were goofing in my ears the whole time. Even before the aggravations reach a crescendo, the eye drifts across a featureless white planet, and rote gunmetal corridors. Almost everyone is a slug or a cock with tits. There is simply nothing to break things up.
At least Justin's not here. Not a stammer in sight. As one-dimensional as he is, Knifey carries(?) the whole two hours thanks to Michael Cusack's performance. Though by the end I was hoping even he would shut up. And Tim Robinson. And Gabourey Sidibe. I wish they'd all just zip it for a second if only so my friends could hear my great jokes instead.
Slightly less ad-libbed, as repetitious as ever in its jokes and play. Space Applebees caught you offguard last time? Well here's Cheers under an alien's ass. In case you didn't catch that the slugs are on the salt planet, I'll tell you a few more times. Guys, Amazon workers deal with horrid conditions, get it? Knifey sure is violent.
The new pinball gun is the most interesting weapon in the game, adorned with three phat ass babbling blue boys. High on Knife mostly throws basic enemies at you as a realisation that the gameplay really isn't what you're here for. The bells and whistles providing some auditory relief. Press F to
As paltry as the gameplay is, at least it can be engaged with while the cast is yammering. On the other side of the coin, whenever dialogue occurs it is usually two characters talking at you. Or three. Sometimes even four. Three quarters of the screen are eventually squatted in by characters in dark rooms with monotone pink walls and swarms of pink enemies. To call it an assault on the eyes and ears is to undersell it. Maybe it was because thirteen people were goofing in my ears the whole time. Even before the aggravations reach a crescendo, the eye drifts across a featureless white planet, and rote gunmetal corridors. Almost everyone is a slug or a cock with tits. There is simply nothing to break things up.
At least Justin's not here. Not a stammer in sight. As one-dimensional as he is, Knifey carries(?) the whole two hours thanks to Michael Cusack's performance. Though by the end I was hoping even he would shut up. And Tim Robinson. And Gabourey Sidibe. I wish they'd all just zip it for a second if only so my friends could hear my great jokes instead.
Husk.
Spongy but fun, my boyfriend says I should cosplay Pinocchio and that's stuck in my mind more than any moment of the game itself.
Fast and fun but there's no, I dunno, purpose to its speed?
Tedious, durational bliss. A reclamation of time through singular labour. The hyperconnected, hyperonline, hyperalways world of today does not allow us to take a step back and enjoy an act for its own sake, and the simplicity of counting grains of rice digitally, as in Marina Abramovic's Counting the Rice exercise forces the mind to slow down. So caught up in the act of counting, of organising, of breaking down an insurmountable task into something able to be completed that no thought intruded, no anxiety fomented. Me, and the rice. Even trying to bring stimulus into the space through music, or the spoken word brings into focus the distracting nature of the world. It did not serve to entertain or assist my task, it served to keep me from its total completion.
As Abromavic argues, "the only time we don't think, it is scientifically proven, is when we sneeze and when we orgasm," but through a slow, intentional act we can approach something close to the thoughtless state. For hours my mind was rice, and all was as it should be.
As Abromavic argues, "the only time we don't think, it is scientifically proven, is when we sneeze and when we orgasm," but through a slow, intentional act we can approach something close to the thoughtless state. For hours my mind was rice, and all was as it should be.
Plague Inc made into a clicker dressed in transfemme (but also autogynephilic (not that autogynephilia is a thing)) clothing. Femdemic, like gender and sexuality, is complicated. It is composed of too many independent truths to label it as wholly affirming or fetishistic. It instills profound sadness, regret, and frustration, not only with itself, but with the real world. It makes me feel horrible, happy, hollow. It confuses me. Since Femdemic labels itself as both trans-affirming and kink-affirming, it's only fair to look at it under two distinct lenses.
As a gender-affirming work (though the Liberation mode), Femdemic has you effectively playing the role of HRT under the guise of a microbe. You feminise your subject so they can spread to all the transwomen on the planet. Changes made to the host are subtle, slow, and limited -- there is no facial feminisation, no height changes, minimal alteration to the genitalia, some breast growth, some fat redistribution. In this capacity, Femdemic is shockingly honest with the limitations of non-invasive gender care on the AMAB body, in a way that is usually reserved for downvoted Reddit threads and doomposting on /lgbt/. Perhaps due to the primary focus on trans women, all sexual encounters only occur with other trans women, which is probably fine as sex is not the primary focus of Liberation, but it seems reductive in part of how trans women might express their sexuality. There is no engagement with cis women, nor cis men. As I'm not a trans woman, only a transfeminine NB, I can't speak to how positive of an experience this actually is, but at least it doesn't delve into full-blown fetishistic territory.
Compliance mode is full-blown fetishistic territory. Breasts balloon outward, the penis shrinks to the point it become a vagina, heights dwindle, the increased libido of the host has them in perpetual ahegao before they either perform oral sex on a man, or get fucked. If there was any doubt as to what the player actually is, here it become clear; you are an STD. The host can only have penetrative sex once they have a vagina. This PIV-centrism reads as a doubling down on the ignorance of how sex occurs; is the suggestion that heterosexual men have no interest in a pre-op trans woman? That trans women can't have sex with cis women (or other trans women for that matter)? That trans women, through their heterosexuality, in some way shed their yaoi hole? Is the host even a trans woman? Compliance doesn't render this particularly crystalline, but the need to dominate the host's immune system and irrevocably alter their identity to diminish the perceived negative effects of feminisation, and the emphasis on converting biological men leaves Liberation in a weird psychosexual gray area that's a mix of sissy hypnosis, gooning, forced feminisation, autogynephilia, transvestism, and transmedicalism.
Putting these affirming halves aside, Femdemic is simply one of the laziest applications of the Plague Inc. and clicker formulas I've seen in a while. The loop is rote, you always feminise a host, spread, reset your progress for some light bonuses, and do it again. None of the management involved in Plague Inc. rears its head. And you click to barely speed up an arduous process that puts even lengthy eroge VNs to shame. There isn't even the smallest joy of seeing number go up, just that of maxing your producers, closing the game, and coming back so you can see the boobs become more seeable or watch one of two animations of IMVU characters participating in what might be called sex.
As a gender-affirming work (though the Liberation mode), Femdemic has you effectively playing the role of HRT under the guise of a microbe. You feminise your subject so they can spread to all the transwomen on the planet. Changes made to the host are subtle, slow, and limited -- there is no facial feminisation, no height changes, minimal alteration to the genitalia, some breast growth, some fat redistribution. In this capacity, Femdemic is shockingly honest with the limitations of non-invasive gender care on the AMAB body, in a way that is usually reserved for downvoted Reddit threads and doomposting on /lgbt/. Perhaps due to the primary focus on trans women, all sexual encounters only occur with other trans women, which is probably fine as sex is not the primary focus of Liberation, but it seems reductive in part of how trans women might express their sexuality. There is no engagement with cis women, nor cis men. As I'm not a trans woman, only a transfeminine NB, I can't speak to how positive of an experience this actually is, but at least it doesn't delve into full-blown fetishistic territory.
Compliance mode is full-blown fetishistic territory. Breasts balloon outward, the penis shrinks to the point it become a vagina, heights dwindle, the increased libido of the host has them in perpetual ahegao before they either perform oral sex on a man, or get fucked. If there was any doubt as to what the player actually is, here it become clear; you are an STD. The host can only have penetrative sex once they have a vagina. This PIV-centrism reads as a doubling down on the ignorance of how sex occurs; is the suggestion that heterosexual men have no interest in a pre-op trans woman? That trans women can't have sex with cis women (or other trans women for that matter)? That trans women, through their heterosexuality, in some way shed their yaoi hole? Is the host even a trans woman? Compliance doesn't render this particularly crystalline, but the need to dominate the host's immune system and irrevocably alter their identity to diminish the perceived negative effects of feminisation, and the emphasis on converting biological men leaves Liberation in a weird psychosexual gray area that's a mix of sissy hypnosis, gooning, forced feminisation, autogynephilia, transvestism, and transmedicalism.
Putting these affirming halves aside, Femdemic is simply one of the laziest applications of the Plague Inc. and clicker formulas I've seen in a while. The loop is rote, you always feminise a host, spread, reset your progress for some light bonuses, and do it again. None of the management involved in Plague Inc. rears its head. And you click to barely speed up an arduous process that puts even lengthy eroge VNs to shame. There isn't even the smallest joy of seeing number go up, just that of maxing your producers, closing the game, and coming back so you can see the boobs become more seeable or watch one of two animations of IMVU characters participating in what might be called sex.
When Ketsui is shrunk down for imode phones, it's cute. This ain't cute.
game SUCKS i go to BED
In typical Game Freak fashion, this is technology from a decade ago being paraded around like it's cool when it's Pokemon. Accelerometers tracking your movement in the night certainly works as a means of tracking sleep, but integration with wrist trackers, smartwatches, and smart rings (and AI beds? Whatever that even means?) have allowed a greater degree of fidelity for users. Sleep as Android has been doing a damn good job of telling me I have horrible sleep hygiene for a decade, only improving with time. It has recommended ways of improving my sleep, alarms that go off only when I'm in a light sleep cycle so I'm less groggy, 'captchas' were I can only turn off my increasingly loud alarm with math, or tapping an NFC point, or shaking my phone like it owes me money. Not only am I firmly entrenched in my current sleep tracker, it has always been frictionless. I tap a widget, I put my phone beside me, I sleep.
Pokemon Sleep shows a fundamental misunderstanding of why sleep trackers are used, how they are presently used, where the market lies, and how the gamification of life actually works. This isn't Habitica or Fabulous trying to improve your life through things you don't already do. I have no choice in whether or not I sleep. The appeal of a sleep tracker is that it is set and forget, a companion for something I have to and will do anyways, so it better not be an annoying partner. If Pokemon Sleep wants the user to be concerned about the quality of their sleep, shouldn't it be able to sync up with existing hardware that can supplement its readings? If sleep is meant to be restorative, why is that rejuvenation immediately undone by tutorialisation and currencies and systems and a goddamn battle pass when I wake up? Why am I chastised when I wake that I only got 54/100 sleep points because I woke in the night and can only get 5-6 hours of sleep a night if I'm lucky? Why is the assumption that 8.5 hours of sleep is a perfect ideal for everyone to aim for? Why is there no accommodation for the peculiarities of the human sleep experience, for the insomniac, the narcoleptic, the medicated? The very least it could do is offer a sleep quiz, or a calibration period. The very least it could do is not inundate me with things I have to learn and keep in mind. The very least it could do is not make my phone radiate enough heat that my wrist tracker thinks something is wrong. The very least it could do is not eat 80%(!!!) of my battery at night so I panic when I wake up. And for the chronically eepy like me, the bare minimum amount of effort could be put towards not having a minutes-long load-screen before I can track my sleep. Last night I passed out waiting for it to complete. Y'know what it took for my wrist tracker to document my sleep last night? Nothing.
This polyrhythm ain't shi--
Precision.
Amazing how much fun you can have with a single text field!
Forager 2 (disparaging)
In the old days, the cry in the joints, when they were ready to close, was “you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” -- Boston Herald (March 5, 1944) p. 19, col. 3
The meal is finished, the bill awaiting payment. The din of called orders and いらっしゃいませ indirect signs to leave. Maybe there's a concrete reason for lingering. The train won't arrive for a while. You're waiting for someone to finish shopping. The landlord is fixing the AC. Your parents have been fighting. You get an hour for lunch. Returning home means a slow spiral of distraction until rest and the cycle begins anew tomorrow.
A State Police office and a State Policewoman were on the premises when the Glass Hut was raided in 1960. They reported George Tecci, as was his custom, notified the patrons just before 1 a.m., “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” -- Record American (August 11, 1964) p. 8, cols. 2-3
Does the why matter? Isn't it enough to not want to go home? Isn't it enough to just want to be for a moment? The toll has already been paid, a bowl of negi ramen. Does that not grant me the opportunity to exist in space and time without spending more? The park is too far, my head too aching, the air too chill. I am here. Let me be here. Do I need a reason to exist, to be listless?
食い終わったらさっさと帰れ
There's no point to pecking at the oil in my ramen. No more than there is to counting the grains of rice in a bowl. No more than there is to playing any game. No more than there is to doing anything. Work and leisure both a conscious and unconscious consumption of finite time in exchange for a something which is nothing in truth. Everything is passing time until we die. It might be Zen or Stoicism or Ascetic. In any case, I choose how I while away my dwindling moments.
That, is itself, a freedom.
The meal is finished, the bill awaiting payment. The din of called orders and いらっしゃいませ indirect signs to leave. Maybe there's a concrete reason for lingering. The train won't arrive for a while. You're waiting for someone to finish shopping. The landlord is fixing the AC. Your parents have been fighting. You get an hour for lunch. Returning home means a slow spiral of distraction until rest and the cycle begins anew tomorrow.
A State Police office and a State Policewoman were on the premises when the Glass Hut was raided in 1960. They reported George Tecci, as was his custom, notified the patrons just before 1 a.m., “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” -- Record American (August 11, 1964) p. 8, cols. 2-3
Does the why matter? Isn't it enough to not want to go home? Isn't it enough to just want to be for a moment? The toll has already been paid, a bowl of negi ramen. Does that not grant me the opportunity to exist in space and time without spending more? The park is too far, my head too aching, the air too chill. I am here. Let me be here. Do I need a reason to exist, to be listless?
食い終わったらさっさと帰れ
There's no point to pecking at the oil in my ramen. No more than there is to counting the grains of rice in a bowl. No more than there is to playing any game. No more than there is to doing anything. Work and leisure both a conscious and unconscious consumption of finite time in exchange for a something which is nothing in truth. Everything is passing time until we die. It might be Zen or Stoicism or Ascetic. In any case, I choose how I while away my dwindling moments.
That, is itself, a freedom.
Gave us muddy cum woman.
When the faithful remaster is faithful.
Not quite the same without a touch screen but it's still EO and that's enough for me.
Midwestern emo.
Psyop.
The initial honeymoon is very strong but quickly gives way to a weak Wolfendoom propped up by wonderful aesthetics and weight. The thunk of your marine's boots, the thwack of the boltgun, the thud of your armour into an enemy, the thrill of the chainsword all mean nothing when levels are quasi-labyrinths with the same gothic coat of paint, the same enemies, the same circle-strafing.
The chainsword is cool in theory but is not as snappy as DOOM Eternal's loot granting chainsaw. The weapons feel fantastic but most of the time you can just use the boltgun and ignore everything else. The raison d'etre to charge ever forward to maintain your defenses withers away when you're locked in an arena trying to hunt down one last blue horror so you can get a key, or when you're trying to find the elevator in a sea of brown architecture. The unique models might as well not exist if they blend together or recede into the background as visual mud. It feels like playing the handheld port of a console title, the inferior (if charming) sibling to Space Marine.
The chainsword is cool in theory but is not as snappy as DOOM Eternal's loot granting chainsaw. The weapons feel fantastic but most of the time you can just use the boltgun and ignore everything else. The raison d'etre to charge ever forward to maintain your defenses withers away when you're locked in an arena trying to hunt down one last blue horror so you can get a key, or when you're trying to find the elevator in a sea of brown architecture. The unique models might as well not exist if they blend together or recede into the background as visual mud. It feels like playing the handheld port of a console title, the inferior (if charming) sibling to Space Marine.
In my previous review of Cook, Serve, Delicious?! 3, I closed things out saying that "David Galindo hopefully hasn't peaked with this entry, but if he has it's a magnificent apex." Early showings of Cook Serve Forever made me incredibly anxious that the pinnacle of this microgenre had already reached its logical conclusion, but I'm starting to see that it can't be reduced to hills and valleys.
CSF is inextricable from its CSD/Ore no Ryomi lineage (and the name certainly isn't helping), but the comparison does it, and fans, no favours. We were told time and again that CSF was not a CSD sequel, that it was not following the CSD formula, that we should temper our expectations. With the initial disbelief that, oddly enough, the developers weren't kidding, now somewhat shed, it's clear that CSF has the makings of a great alternate approach to gaming cookery.
Presentation is key for CSF, and the slower, intentional mode of play emphasises that. The name of a recipe is an afterthought, the controls mnemonic-forbidding. All the player can focus on is the dish as it stands, and the two next ingredients. Galindo has spoken previously about the rapid pace and focus on mnemonics meant players didn't look at the food they were making; they simply didn't have time to. PCMRPCMRPCMR, DTCR PFS, and other reductions of recipes to their keypresses rather than their substantive elements has the player's eye locked on the recipe card itself, not its construction. The introduction of holding keypresses further reinforces the pace. Quick accuracy is still valued in CSF, but it is no longer the end all be all of before.
What confuses me most about the game in this state is the purpose of its variable elements. Without those mnemonics or particularities of specific foods, the menu options made are effectively superfluous. While leveling up a specific location will increase the difficulty therein, there is presently no reason outside of that to actually play one location over another. Presumably additional story content and gameplay elements will give these things a purpose, but for now they are an afterthought.
It's far too early to tell where CSF will reign in the pantheon of Ore no Ryouri/Ore no Ryomi/Cook, Serve, Delicious! and I will plainly need to wait for the next entry to get the CSD4 I so crave, but with so much CSD goodness already in my library I can welcome this diverging path. If nothing else, it'll increase my appetite.
CSF is inextricable from its CSD/Ore no Ryomi lineage (and the name certainly isn't helping), but the comparison does it, and fans, no favours. We were told time and again that CSF was not a CSD sequel, that it was not following the CSD formula, that we should temper our expectations. With the initial disbelief that, oddly enough, the developers weren't kidding, now somewhat shed, it's clear that CSF has the makings of a great alternate approach to gaming cookery.
Presentation is key for CSF, and the slower, intentional mode of play emphasises that. The name of a recipe is an afterthought, the controls mnemonic-forbidding. All the player can focus on is the dish as it stands, and the two next ingredients. Galindo has spoken previously about the rapid pace and focus on mnemonics meant players didn't look at the food they were making; they simply didn't have time to. PCMRPCMRPCMR, DTCR PFS, and other reductions of recipes to their keypresses rather than their substantive elements has the player's eye locked on the recipe card itself, not its construction. The introduction of holding keypresses further reinforces the pace. Quick accuracy is still valued in CSF, but it is no longer the end all be all of before.
What confuses me most about the game in this state is the purpose of its variable elements. Without those mnemonics or particularities of specific foods, the menu options made are effectively superfluous. While leveling up a specific location will increase the difficulty therein, there is presently no reason outside of that to actually play one location over another. Presumably additional story content and gameplay elements will give these things a purpose, but for now they are an afterthought.
It's far too early to tell where CSF will reign in the pantheon of Ore no Ryouri/Ore no Ryomi/Cook, Serve, Delicious! and I will plainly need to wait for the next entry to get the CSD4 I so crave, but with so much CSD goodness already in my library I can welcome this diverging path. If nothing else, it'll increase my appetite.
The Far Cry Elden Ring-ification of Breath of the Wild with a smattering of end-of-chapter Fortnite and New Funky Mode.
While BotW was content to let players roam free in a sprawling world, Tears of the Kingdom reins in this freedom considerably and hides the guardrails from the player with horse blinders. Link is still welcome to run around Hyrule at will, but the primary storyline holds the keys which allow actual exploratory liberation. My first dozen hours completely ignored Lookout Landing, leaving me without critical tools like the paraglider and towers. That was the most challenging TotK ever got, and the most it (unintentionally) forced me to think outside the box. I dragged gliders to the tops of hills labouriously, I used a horse and cart, I made elaborate vehicles simply to get around. I scrounged for rockets, fans, batteries, and air balloons to ascend to sky islands, making it to a few of the lower ones with great accomplishment. I committed to putting off the towers as long as I could, not realising they were an outright necessity. Seeing how this additional layer of the map functioned demystified it severely, rendering a challenge into a stepping stone for parcels of content.
The depths, like the skies above, are filled with potential. Many of its spaces are similarly wide open to encourage blind exploration with vehicles. Only there is nearly no purpose to any of it. Lightroots are a checkbox which dismantle the most compelling part of the depths -- their darkness. The depths are a place you visit to grab zonaite or amiibo armour and leave. As the Fire Temple is within the depths, and it being the first I tackled, I falsely believed there would be more dungeons strewn about below, simply a part of the world rather than instanced away from it. Sadly, it is the exception.
The other temples are obfuscated and inaccessible without their related storylines, which is itself fine (the temples are impossible to progress through without their associated power anyways) but this leaves the world feeling more boxed in, a selection of rooms in an overly-long hallway. A spare few rooms complement each other, most of them do not. The walls of the rooms must be thick. Whether it is shrines, side quests, or temples, the developers yet again seemingly have no way of knowing what abilities the player might have, what puzzles they have encountered, what skills they remember. All that they know is that in the Fire Temple, you have a Goron. In the Water Temple, you have Zora armour. The positive is, of course, that these things can thus be tackled in any order without a fear of missing out on anything. The downside is that there is never anything more to a shrine, a temple, or anything than what the player encounters the first go around. There is no impetus to return to a location when you have a better tool, or a wider knowledge of how the game's mechanics work. You show up, experience the room, and leave. With 300 map pins at your disposal, and similar issues arising in BotW, there's a sense that the developers chickened out near the end, too afraid to let the player (gasp) backtrack or (gasp) miss out.
Ironically enough, the lack of FOMO is what I miss most. When I was towerlessly exploring with a hodgepodge of trash scavenged from around the world, I felt free. I felt clever! When I discovered the intended mode of play, however, I felt I was putting a square peg in a square hole. There's a crystal that needs to be moved to a far away island? Before, I might have made a horror of Octoballoons and Korok Fronds with Fans and Springs to get it where it needed to go. When the Fruit of Knowledge was consumed, I saw the parts for the prebuilt Fanplane were right next to the Crystal. There's a breakable wall in a dungeon? Bomb Flowers or a hammer are right there. It is incredibly safe. It is a pair of horse blinders that you can decorate as you please. Go ahead and make your mech, you are still on the straight and narrow path.
TotK tries to bring back the linearity of Zeldas past within the BotW framework, but it ignores that the linearity was speckled with a weave of areas which expanded alongside your arsenal, rather than shrinking. Everything here is incongruous, a smörgåsbord of cool set pieces that simply don't go together. There is too much content (Elden Ring) that is too self-contained (end of chapter Fortnite) and too afraid that you will not experience it (New Funky Mode).
Did I have fun? Yes. But I had to make it myself.
While BotW was content to let players roam free in a sprawling world, Tears of the Kingdom reins in this freedom considerably and hides the guardrails from the player with horse blinders. Link is still welcome to run around Hyrule at will, but the primary storyline holds the keys which allow actual exploratory liberation. My first dozen hours completely ignored Lookout Landing, leaving me without critical tools like the paraglider and towers. That was the most challenging TotK ever got, and the most it (unintentionally) forced me to think outside the box. I dragged gliders to the tops of hills labouriously, I used a horse and cart, I made elaborate vehicles simply to get around. I scrounged for rockets, fans, batteries, and air balloons to ascend to sky islands, making it to a few of the lower ones with great accomplishment. I committed to putting off the towers as long as I could, not realising they were an outright necessity. Seeing how this additional layer of the map functioned demystified it severely, rendering a challenge into a stepping stone for parcels of content.
The depths, like the skies above, are filled with potential. Many of its spaces are similarly wide open to encourage blind exploration with vehicles. Only there is nearly no purpose to any of it. Lightroots are a checkbox which dismantle the most compelling part of the depths -- their darkness. The depths are a place you visit to grab zonaite or amiibo armour and leave. As the Fire Temple is within the depths, and it being the first I tackled, I falsely believed there would be more dungeons strewn about below, simply a part of the world rather than instanced away from it. Sadly, it is the exception.
The other temples are obfuscated and inaccessible without their related storylines, which is itself fine (the temples are impossible to progress through without their associated power anyways) but this leaves the world feeling more boxed in, a selection of rooms in an overly-long hallway. A spare few rooms complement each other, most of them do not. The walls of the rooms must be thick. Whether it is shrines, side quests, or temples, the developers yet again seemingly have no way of knowing what abilities the player might have, what puzzles they have encountered, what skills they remember. All that they know is that in the Fire Temple, you have a Goron. In the Water Temple, you have Zora armour. The positive is, of course, that these things can thus be tackled in any order without a fear of missing out on anything. The downside is that there is never anything more to a shrine, a temple, or anything than what the player encounters the first go around. There is no impetus to return to a location when you have a better tool, or a wider knowledge of how the game's mechanics work. You show up, experience the room, and leave. With 300 map pins at your disposal, and similar issues arising in BotW, there's a sense that the developers chickened out near the end, too afraid to let the player (gasp) backtrack or (gasp) miss out.
Ironically enough, the lack of FOMO is what I miss most. When I was towerlessly exploring with a hodgepodge of trash scavenged from around the world, I felt free. I felt clever! When I discovered the intended mode of play, however, I felt I was putting a square peg in a square hole. There's a crystal that needs to be moved to a far away island? Before, I might have made a horror of Octoballoons and Korok Fronds with Fans and Springs to get it where it needed to go. When the Fruit of Knowledge was consumed, I saw the parts for the prebuilt Fanplane were right next to the Crystal. There's a breakable wall in a dungeon? Bomb Flowers or a hammer are right there. It is incredibly safe. It is a pair of horse blinders that you can decorate as you please. Go ahead and make your mech, you are still on the straight and narrow path.
TotK tries to bring back the linearity of Zeldas past within the BotW framework, but it ignores that the linearity was speckled with a weave of areas which expanded alongside your arsenal, rather than shrinking. Everything here is incongruous, a smörgåsbord of cool set pieces that simply don't go together. There is too much content (Elden Ring) that is too self-contained (end of chapter Fortnite) and too afraid that you will not experience it (New Funky Mode).
Did I have fun? Yes. But I had to make it myself.
A mistake.
A mistake but the scene in the car with Stinger Flynn is an actual spectacle.
Justifies the crank all on its own, a demonstration of how dexterity can actually be translated into video games beyond flicks of sticks.
A persistent theme in eroge with female playable characters is that player defeat leads to sex. This bifurcates the reward system of an eroge: one can achieve a mechanical victory or receive sexual satisfaction. In more difficult titles this trade-off makes sense, a loss is a stumbling block on the road to victory and the pains of that loss are lessened by arousal.
So why would you apply that logic to one of the hardest game genres to lose at?
As is typical for a Survivors-like, the power scaling in Glory & Miserable Survivors is astronomical, the player becoming nigh invincible with a few upgrades, every enemy crumbling to dust. The added layer of defending the left side of the screen on a small playing field adds a slight hiccup that is assuaged with a single item. Ignoring that item guarantees defeat, so the player effectively chooses if they want to lose or win. The road to victory is arduous and artificially inflated like other Survivors titles, though it is more nebulous than simply waiting out a thirty minute timer. Dropping your health below ~66% and ~33% has your clothes torn increasingly from the heaving avatar taking up the right side of the screen, but even that reward requires the player to go out of their way to get hit enough. With the slightest effort, the player will receive no overt sexual satisfaction. A successful run is sexless, ending with a static image. Paltry in comparison to the high quality animations that accompany a loss.
Even then, the defeat screen is only part of the sexual content available, the other half tucked away in the gallery. You get some story and voice as well as some CGs. That gallery is so divorced from the game itself that Glory & Miserable Survivors comes across as less of an eroge and more of a game with erotic content on the side.
That's probably for the best -- one of the worst parts of many eroge and nukige can be the tedium of gameplay between scenes. In those works, however, suffering through the game grants a lewd reward. Here, there is no impetus to play well unless you enjoy the gameplay itself. And the gameplay isn't even good! It lacks the dopaminergic audio tingles of Vampire Survivors and contains virtually zero strategy. The most effective build is one where you stack AoEs that fill the screen and then watch a YouTube video for thirty minutes while the bouncing in your peripheral vision makes your own chest ache.
Anyways, I found out about this because namako8982's art takes up the whole screen on Awoo Installer. I guess Switch piracy is a gateway drug to perversion. Just look up the CGs online. Or read a book or something.
So why would you apply that logic to one of the hardest game genres to lose at?
As is typical for a Survivors-like, the power scaling in Glory & Miserable Survivors is astronomical, the player becoming nigh invincible with a few upgrades, every enemy crumbling to dust. The added layer of defending the left side of the screen on a small playing field adds a slight hiccup that is assuaged with a single item. Ignoring that item guarantees defeat, so the player effectively chooses if they want to lose or win. The road to victory is arduous and artificially inflated like other Survivors titles, though it is more nebulous than simply waiting out a thirty minute timer. Dropping your health below ~66% and ~33% has your clothes torn increasingly from the heaving avatar taking up the right side of the screen, but even that reward requires the player to go out of their way to get hit enough. With the slightest effort, the player will receive no overt sexual satisfaction. A successful run is sexless, ending with a static image. Paltry in comparison to the high quality animations that accompany a loss.
Even then, the defeat screen is only part of the sexual content available, the other half tucked away in the gallery. You get some story and voice as well as some CGs. That gallery is so divorced from the game itself that Glory & Miserable Survivors comes across as less of an eroge and more of a game with erotic content on the side.
That's probably for the best -- one of the worst parts of many eroge and nukige can be the tedium of gameplay between scenes. In those works, however, suffering through the game grants a lewd reward. Here, there is no impetus to play well unless you enjoy the gameplay itself. And the gameplay isn't even good! It lacks the dopaminergic audio tingles of Vampire Survivors and contains virtually zero strategy. The most effective build is one where you stack AoEs that fill the screen and then watch a YouTube video for thirty minutes while the bouncing in your peripheral vision makes your own chest ache.
Anyways, I found out about this because namako8982's art takes up the whole screen on Awoo Installer. I guess Switch piracy is a gateway drug to perversion. Just look up the CGs online. Or read a book or something.
Fortnite.. JAPAN
A mistake.
Impressive, not affecting.
If there games are gonna be designed for Twitch streamers they could at least cost 100x more so I'm not tricked into thinking it'll be fun for me and my friends.
I like this game : )
Cute, short, and snap-snap-snappy with a utilisation of the crank that sets it apart from other crank-heavy titles like Crankin's Time Travel Adventure and A Balanced Brew. Whereas those games go for a one-to-oneness between physical movement and gameplay, Direct Drive brings momentum into the picture, leading to a looser style of play. This works stupendously in theory, but the low resistance of the crank, and relatively slow cranking involved, means what should feel like pedalling a bike or grinding coffee beans instead seems unresponsive at times. With generous room for error, however, that never becomes a problem prohibiting progress. Even the managers' requests and harsher timing penalties never make this frustrating or, frankly, challenging. I got three stars on every song on my first try, and only the singular diversion of calibrating the turntable gave me any difficulty.
But you know what? That's fine. I don't use my Playdate to feel frustrated, I use it as a short(er) diversion, a little amuse-bouche of what games can achieve. Purely as a game, Direct Drive could use improving. As a concept, it's great, and it put a smile on my face which is what I want from this little yellow doodad.
But you know what? That's fine. I don't use my Playdate to feel frustrated, I use it as a short(er) diversion, a little amuse-bouche of what games can achieve. Purely as a game, Direct Drive could use improving. As a concept, it's great, and it put a smile on my face which is what I want from this little yellow doodad.
Entirely too short and easy but it's gorgeous to look at and simply to play. I attracted filthy looks in a waiting room while playing this before a blood test.
Dares to justify the Playdate's tilt controls.
Played this during a meeting 👍
A mistake.
Basic engine builder that doesn't overstay its welcome thanks to its short length.
If the last half-decade has demonstrated anything, it is that the terminally online rhetoric of post-ironic who-gives-a-shit is metastasising. Vine was a benign growth, TikTok a malignant tumour. The netizen-hive-mind-collective that 'solved' the Boston Bombing is directly responsible for the fashwave that is/has/does/will erode democracy. Your grandpa has FOMO and bought $GME to 💎🙌 to the moon and we're all gonna make it, gm, gn, and you're buying into my shitcoin so I can rugpull you because Blizzard nerfed Siphon Life during Obamna's first term. Video games and anime used to be so much better before this forced diversity bullshit ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ꜰᴜᴄᴋ ᴀʀᴇ yᴏᴜ ꜱᴀyɪɴɢ ᴅᴏ yᴏᴜ ʜᴇᴀʀ ᴛʜᴇ ꜱʜɪᴛ ᴅʀɪʙʙʟɪɴɢ ᴏᴜᴛ ᴏꜰ yᴏᴜʀ ᴍᴏᴜᴛʜ yᴏᴜ ᴄʀᴇᴛɪɴ took away the possibility of me getting a tradwife with Abigail Shapiro's body and Marin Kitagawa's face while I [REDACTED] to Angela White after a month of semen retention and get those GAIN$$$$ because there's always a bigger fool and it sure as fuck isn't me and you just don't get this new meme and I'm being gangstalked and I haven't [As the owner of a LandNFT, you own your individual Metalverse patch and secure a permanently assigned place on the Met---
The Milennials are the new Boomers [GEN-X ERASURE] and even the Zoomers are coming of age and they've been inundated with information and bullshit bullshit bullshit so they're casting a mirror back at this fucked up world we've made for them in their own art but some people are trying to be cute and coy with it and you get a YIIK or a Neon Whitebut at least one of those was a good game even if it was still corpo-white-washed faux-sthetics. And your cute and coy attempts and being quirky fail to represent how angry you should be that you were born into this mess of a world because don't you know anger results in nothing? Why yes my favourite podcasts are My Brother, My Brother & Me, and The Adventure Zone, I love to choke down the fetid slurry that is the McElroys' toxic positivity of no bummers and horses and you're being force fed advertisements for fast food and you can't even open your eyes to realise it.
So when a game has the moxie to be viscerally angry, I have to take notice because that feels so genuine in the hyperrealistic world we inhabit. And Splatter is mad that the Internet has made us manipulative, lonely, nostalgic, deluded, greedy, and ultimately willing to harm others (or ourselves) for some gain, be it financial or spiritual or egotistical or chemical. This works where other games borne of the online mindset falter because this runs deep. Rat King Collective didn't disconnect to craft up some malformed half-simulacra that is outdated before it comes out. They never stopped being online, they didn't go for the here and now, they struck at the core of fourteen-year-old-me's identity. This isn't the cream of the crap, this is the dregs of a multitude of online cultures that you, yes, had to be there for. Or maybe you didn't. Does it matter? This goes deep enough that a missed referential quip refuses a reading of "oh this is one of those internet things I don't get," it simply recedes into the background, a cacophony of noise.
It isn't as if the gameplay is some marvel though. It's a spongy xoomer-shooter affair with hand guns and a Dark Souls Borne Ring dodge and commitment to the bit. A leaping enemy is gonna leap! Your dodge isn't going to give you i-frames but it'll get you out of the way and into a new harm's way. I'm not here for the gameplay anyways, it's a means to an end.
This is the video game equivalent of B.R. Yeager's Amygdalatropolis and I ravenously ate it up. Get mad. Wreck shit. Tear it all down. WORLD IS A FUCK
The Milennials are the new Boomers [GEN-X ERASURE] and even the Zoomers are coming of age and they've been inundated with information and bullshit bullshit bullshit so they're casting a mirror back at this fucked up world we've made for them in their own art but some people are trying to be cute and coy with it and you get a YIIK or a Neon White
So when a game has the moxie to be viscerally angry, I have to take notice because that feels so genuine in the hyperrealistic world we inhabit. And Splatter is mad that the Internet has made us manipulative, lonely, nostalgic, deluded, greedy, and ultimately willing to harm others (or ourselves) for some gain, be it financial or spiritual or egotistical or chemical. This works where other games borne of the online mindset falter because this runs deep. Rat King Collective didn't disconnect to craft up some malformed half-simulacra that is outdated before it comes out. They never stopped being online, they didn't go for the here and now, they struck at the core of fourteen-year-old-me's identity. This isn't the cream of the crap, this is the dregs of a multitude of online cultures that you, yes, had to be there for. Or maybe you didn't. Does it matter? This goes deep enough that a missed referential quip refuses a reading of "oh this is one of those internet things I don't get," it simply recedes into the background, a cacophony of noise.
It isn't as if the gameplay is some marvel though. It's a spongy xoomer-shooter affair with hand guns and a Dark Souls Borne Ring dodge and commitment to the bit. A leaping enemy is gonna leap! Your dodge isn't going to give you i-frames but it'll get you out of the way and into a new harm's way. I'm not here for the gameplay anyways, it's a means to an end.
This is the video game equivalent of B.R. Yeager's Amygdalatropolis and I ravenously ate it up. Get mad. Wreck shit. Tear it all down. WORLD IS A FUCK
Quick and dirty fun in the vein of my first experience with Serious Sam. Last level is a bit of a ballache but so it goes.
Thought at first the greater focus on movement above all else made it worse than the first title, but the lack of player action in interacting with the environment makes it considerably stronger as a core experience. A little overlong though since you need to revisit planets a lot. The added modes are certainly interesting if nothing else.
I have seen the light, and finally understand why the kids like Fortnite
Inoffensively bland, good opportunities for scoring but little things really hinder the experience cough a slow button would be nice cough
Only has the player agency of SNKRX on the surface, quickly devolving into the same mindless fare of Vampire Survivors. While a tower defense by its very nature lets you eventually kick back and relax, something here feels even less engaging. By minute 10, my towers all get to level 3 and I can alt tab to do something else.
Cute little bunch 'o screensavers and minigames for the Playdate. Nothing spectacular but I think that's fine!
Aggressively inoffensively average.
A mistake.
Falls apart towards the end but its early twists on E1 are shockingly disturbing -- who knew moving a switch could invoke ennui.
It's just my life.
Astonished at how much I enjoyed this considering the disdain it has harboured from many whose opinions I hold in very high regard. Its eschewing of Sans-Serif Corpo committee-design in favour of a maximal exploration of bombastic and obtuse peculiarities from the aesthetic to the mechanical warms my heart. The sincerity on display strikes a chord of 'cringe' within me less because of its actual writing content, and more because it is a contemporary parallel to the endearing, honest, whimsical edgelordiness of video games past. Neon White is the Shadow the Hedgehog, The Bouncer, Vexx, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, Bomberman Act Zero, Dante's Inferno, Jak II, BMX XXX of the 2020s in tone, spit and polished to a shine. It forgoes the failings of mid-2000s muddy and ruddiness, where landscapes and gameplay blended into green-brown smears, and proudly proclaims that games can be capital-C cool and fun as hell. Every skip is the descendant of Ulillillia's Spyro oddities. The soundtrack is the vague memories of Ape Escape and ChainDive, the vibe the immaculate remembrance of youth. It is Lovely Planet with accuracy replaced with speed, speed, speed.
Neon White is unabashedly itself, for good and for ill.
Neon White is unabashedly itself, for good and for ill.
Coco big boobs seeable
Just as in real life, food burns if it's on the grill for a second too long.
While a bit on the easy side for all but one of its levels, Pick Pack Pup exemplifies the best approaches to Playdate game design. Bold outlines, varied shapes and textures, and clearly defined UI elements ensure no consternation, and in the off-chance the litany of items bleed into one, the custom item options keep things moving along swimmingly. The minor twists of gravity, shipping your matches, and unimpeded tile movement on the Bejeweled/Shariki formula leave things unique enough for Pick Pack Pup to stand on its own. The just tense enough gameplay, relaxing tunes, and artwork befitting of Susan Kare's contributions to General Magic's Magic Cap software or type foundry Emigre's illustrative typefaces make for a cohesive package that had me playing well after next week's games arrived.
PS: I can't believe I'm saying this, but Pick Pack Pup has the possibly best dog petting of any video game. It is never brought up during the game, it has no bearing on the game, it is arguably a hindrance, but the crank can be popped out and rotated to move your hand over the onscreen dog. There is a tactility and deliberate effort to this that elevates it above any other virtual animal touching.
PS: I can't believe I'm saying this, but Pick Pack Pup has the possibly best dog petting of any video game. It is never brought up during the game, it has no bearing on the game, it is arguably a hindrance, but the crank can be popped out and rotated to move your hand over the onscreen dog. There is a tactility and deliberate effort to this that elevates it above any other virtual animal touching.
Weird: Automaton
The only instance in Keita Takahashi's oeuvre of overt difficulty and challenge. Whereas stages in Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari occasionally presented the player with moments that tested their skill and know-how -- primarily in the former's Ursa Major and Taurus levels, the latter's Cowbear request -- Crankin Presents Time Travel Adventure offers little of the toy-like reprieve found in Takahashi's other titles. This has no doubt caught most Playdate owners off-guard, particularly those who, like me, picked up a Playdate almost exclusively for a new digital Takahashi playground. What we received instead is a (literally) mechanically intense movement-based, animation-frame-dependent dodge-em-up featuring memorisation and routing like one would expect from Gradius, with the pixel perfect precision of I Want To Be The Guy in a coat of Wattam paint.
Here more than with any other Playdate title, the specifics of the crank must be appreciated. Like an electromechanical re-imagining of a well-oiled wooden crank toy, the rotation is smooth and defined with just enough resistance to keep it steady when not being turned. This is critical in Crankin Presents as it means each position of the crank at a point in time correlates exactly with a state in Crankin's timeline. Rotating the crank, say, exactly 476.2 degrees, then cranking it the other way 476.2 degrees back puts me in the exact same frame of animation, the same location I was in. This results in two layers of memorisation being demanded of the player.
On a macro level, many date's layouts must be roughly mentally mapped out to understand where hazards are, and where they can be avoided. On the micro level, each attempt's variations in where your cranking starts and ends, and the need for positioning Crankin in a specific point in time, means remembering roughly where he will be situated in relation to the physical crank. On some dates, this amounts to ensuring the crank starts in the same spot on each attempt to try and enact some semblance of actualised muscle memory. The advice of some to simply crank as quickly as possible and listen to sound cues to know when to slow down, generally works as well but tighter sequences still require specificity of movement. Needing to move to specific frames/times would be tedious with conventional controls, but the crank makes it exceedingly natural and easy to do. The physical act of speeding up or slowing down your cranking is a tremendous joy that promotes a oneness with Crankin.
Aesthetically, Crankin Presents is starkly contrasted against most other Playdate titles. Rather than black on white, everything is presented in white on black which is gorgeous. The high level of detail (or at least smoothness) means nothing reads as pixellated, but that avoidance of chunky pixels means hitboxes are exacting and occasionally unforgiving. This is most pronounced with Poopy-kun. Being so much smaller than most other hazards (and situated near the constant ambulation of Crankin's legs), this tiny guy represents one of the greatest headaches despite being my favourite character. The particles emanating from him are themselves part of the hitbox, but as singular pixels they are often difficult to see or understand where they are in relation to Crankin. Poopy-kun's exacting demands are not often the sole reason for failure, but he is nonetheless testament to the potential issues of favouring fidelity over clarity on the Playdate.
If the difficulty were not enough of a departure, the sound design also makes Crankin Presents stand out from Takahashi's gameography. There is no music, and the only sounds are your footsteps accompanied by pitch-shifting "One, two" chants, and the indicators of obstacles. Curiously, I think this is entirely to its benefit as a title on a pick-up-and-play device. While I lose something by not having the sound on, I don't lose everything like I would with Wattam or Katamari. For those titles their sound is perhaps less important for their gameplay, but so much more vital to their identity. I love the squeakiness of Crankin Presents, but I'm not getting a fundamentally lesser experience if I play in its absence.
The greatest joy of Crankin Presents is its surprises. Those 'A-ha!' moments of discovering how a specific animation can be used for a multitude of obstacles, or the realisation that supposedly superficial graphical pleasantries serve gameplay functions as well. Those feelings of thinking the game surely must be done only for there to be so many more dates. Those ever-present subversions of level expectations. And in true Keita Takahashi fashion, coming away from a 100% par-time completion realising there was no extrinsic reward for doing so, only a profound sense of self-satisfaction in taking this meticulously designed mechanical toy and figuring out how every part of it ticks. The Mechanical Turk has been dismantled only for me to realise how human it was all along.
The only instance in Keita Takahashi's oeuvre of overt difficulty and challenge. Whereas stages in Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari occasionally presented the player with moments that tested their skill and know-how -- primarily in the former's Ursa Major and Taurus levels, the latter's Cowbear request -- Crankin Presents Time Travel Adventure offers little of the toy-like reprieve found in Takahashi's other titles. This has no doubt caught most Playdate owners off-guard, particularly those who, like me, picked up a Playdate almost exclusively for a new digital Takahashi playground. What we received instead is a (literally) mechanically intense movement-based, animation-frame-dependent dodge-em-up featuring memorisation and routing like one would expect from Gradius, with the pixel perfect precision of I Want To Be The Guy in a coat of Wattam paint.
Here more than with any other Playdate title, the specifics of the crank must be appreciated. Like an electromechanical re-imagining of a well-oiled wooden crank toy, the rotation is smooth and defined with just enough resistance to keep it steady when not being turned. This is critical in Crankin Presents as it means each position of the crank at a point in time correlates exactly with a state in Crankin's timeline. Rotating the crank, say, exactly 476.2 degrees, then cranking it the other way 476.2 degrees back puts me in the exact same frame of animation, the same location I was in. This results in two layers of memorisation being demanded of the player.
On a macro level, many date's layouts must be roughly mentally mapped out to understand where hazards are, and where they can be avoided. On the micro level, each attempt's variations in where your cranking starts and ends, and the need for positioning Crankin in a specific point in time, means remembering roughly where he will be situated in relation to the physical crank. On some dates, this amounts to ensuring the crank starts in the same spot on each attempt to try and enact some semblance of actualised muscle memory. The advice of some to simply crank as quickly as possible and listen to sound cues to know when to slow down, generally works as well but tighter sequences still require specificity of movement. Needing to move to specific frames/times would be tedious with conventional controls, but the crank makes it exceedingly natural and easy to do. The physical act of speeding up or slowing down your cranking is a tremendous joy that promotes a oneness with Crankin.
Aesthetically, Crankin Presents is starkly contrasted against most other Playdate titles. Rather than black on white, everything is presented in white on black which is gorgeous. The high level of detail (or at least smoothness) means nothing reads as pixellated, but that avoidance of chunky pixels means hitboxes are exacting and occasionally unforgiving. This is most pronounced with Poopy-kun. Being so much smaller than most other hazards (and situated near the constant ambulation of Crankin's legs), this tiny guy represents one of the greatest headaches despite being my favourite character. The particles emanating from him are themselves part of the hitbox, but as singular pixels they are often difficult to see or understand where they are in relation to Crankin. Poopy-kun's exacting demands are not often the sole reason for failure, but he is nonetheless testament to the potential issues of favouring fidelity over clarity on the Playdate.
If the difficulty were not enough of a departure, the sound design also makes Crankin Presents stand out from Takahashi's gameography. There is no music, and the only sounds are your footsteps accompanied by pitch-shifting "One, two" chants, and the indicators of obstacles. Curiously, I think this is entirely to its benefit as a title on a pick-up-and-play device. While I lose something by not having the sound on, I don't lose everything like I would with Wattam or Katamari. For those titles their sound is perhaps less important for their gameplay, but so much more vital to their identity. I love the squeakiness of Crankin Presents, but I'm not getting a fundamentally lesser experience if I play in its absence.
The greatest joy of Crankin Presents is its surprises. Those 'A-ha!' moments of discovering how a specific animation can be used for a multitude of obstacles, or the realisation that supposedly superficial graphical pleasantries serve gameplay functions as well. Those feelings of thinking the game surely must be done only for there to be so many more dates. Those ever-present subversions of level expectations. And in true Keita Takahashi fashion, coming away from a 100% par-time completion realising there was no extrinsic reward for doing so, only a profound sense of self-satisfaction in taking this meticulously designed mechanical toy and figuring out how every part of it ticks. The Mechanical Turk has been dismantled only for me to realise how human it was all along.
A layered cocktail that needs some shaking and stirring of its components.
The process of learning a new roguelite is one that, with enough experience, boils down to determining what works with what. This goes doubly for an engine-builder where the composition of the engine is just as important as its execution. Your Isaacs and Gungeons can be finished with poor items and pure skill, but when constructing a deck the parts need to work in harmony.
Peglin wants to have it both ways with its appropriation of Peggle's adaptation of pachinko machines. Whereas Peggle largely removed the element of luck in all but name (the Zen Ball making it most apparent that this is a game of skill), Peglin has done away with the possibility of winning with skill. Everything is down to RNG in one way or another, and the worst part is that Peglin refuses to admit this to the player. In this sense, Peglin is no different from its pachinko machine grandfather, the specific tuning of the latter's pins betraying the simple proposition of getting a ball to its goal.
The crux of the issue is that the player has no way of changing their odds in a meaningful way. Like other engine-builders, you are presented a few random choices for what passive items or balls you want to take. After battle you can upgrade your orbs if you wish. While other engine-builder roguelites like Slay the Spire and Monster Train offer the choice of card for free, Peglin assigns a cost to this and grants shockingly few opportunities to remove balls from the deck. Each shop does let you remove one ball for a fee, but you're going to have to bounce your way over there and thus structure your play in service of those spare few chances.
Building an engine is itself troublesome due to the nature of play. For starters, balls can have their own gravity which is further affected by bouncy pegs, bombs, gravity wells, slime bubbles, and other hazards. On top of this, the ball does not necessarily go to where the pointer is -- Peggle's balls always went straight to the pointer. Coupled with a paltry shot preview, each shot is a skewed gamble, a vague gesture of intent that is rarely realised. The game's confusion status which rapidly rotates your aim might as well be on by default, the end result is nearly identical. Even ignoring the inefficacy of aiming, without a way to meaningfully affect your luck, you can end up with a build that shoots itself in the foot. Whether due to my own (un)luck of the game's internal weighting, nearly every run of mine has been focused on increasing non-critical damage to ludicrous levels. That feels fun, but it is made instantly worthless if my ball hits a crit modifier, my damage cut down tenfold if not more. With a proper ability to aim my shots that would be fine, I would simply aim away from my Achilles' heel, but a refreshing of the board, an errant moving peg, a black hole, any number of possibilities will ensure my ball is heading straight for the one thing I don't want to have happen. That does not feel like I played poorly, it feels like the rug was pulled out from under me.
Most damning of all is that Peglin lacks the aesthetic, dopaminergic je ne sais quoi that makes Peggle so ultra-satisfying. Hitting a peg is a flaccid act without whimsy, the visual feedback a nothingburger of a number, the audio presented as effective white noise. The labouriously slow traversal of the ball makes each shot a tedium, something the developers are clearly aware of as there is a prevalent fast forward button which can knock the speed up to 300%. I am never on the edge of my seat, gnawing my nails hoping my shot was planned correctly, that I will hit that last peg with my final shot, the world holding its breath. I never feel my aptitude increasing. I only feel my time is being wasted, just as Peglin's potential is.
The process of learning a new roguelite is one that, with enough experience, boils down to determining what works with what. This goes doubly for an engine-builder where the composition of the engine is just as important as its execution. Your Isaacs and Gungeons can be finished with poor items and pure skill, but when constructing a deck the parts need to work in harmony.
Peglin wants to have it both ways with its appropriation of Peggle's adaptation of pachinko machines. Whereas Peggle largely removed the element of luck in all but name (the Zen Ball making it most apparent that this is a game of skill), Peglin has done away with the possibility of winning with skill. Everything is down to RNG in one way or another, and the worst part is that Peglin refuses to admit this to the player. In this sense, Peglin is no different from its pachinko machine grandfather, the specific tuning of the latter's pins betraying the simple proposition of getting a ball to its goal.
The crux of the issue is that the player has no way of changing their odds in a meaningful way. Like other engine-builders, you are presented a few random choices for what passive items or balls you want to take. After battle you can upgrade your orbs if you wish. While other engine-builder roguelites like Slay the Spire and Monster Train offer the choice of card for free, Peglin assigns a cost to this and grants shockingly few opportunities to remove balls from the deck. Each shop does let you remove one ball for a fee, but you're going to have to bounce your way over there and thus structure your play in service of those spare few chances.
Building an engine is itself troublesome due to the nature of play. For starters, balls can have their own gravity which is further affected by bouncy pegs, bombs, gravity wells, slime bubbles, and other hazards. On top of this, the ball does not necessarily go to where the pointer is -- Peggle's balls always went straight to the pointer. Coupled with a paltry shot preview, each shot is a skewed gamble, a vague gesture of intent that is rarely realised. The game's confusion status which rapidly rotates your aim might as well be on by default, the end result is nearly identical. Even ignoring the inefficacy of aiming, without a way to meaningfully affect your luck, you can end up with a build that shoots itself in the foot. Whether due to my own (un)luck of the game's internal weighting, nearly every run of mine has been focused on increasing non-critical damage to ludicrous levels. That feels fun, but it is made instantly worthless if my ball hits a crit modifier, my damage cut down tenfold if not more. With a proper ability to aim my shots that would be fine, I would simply aim away from my Achilles' heel, but a refreshing of the board, an errant moving peg, a black hole, any number of possibilities will ensure my ball is heading straight for the one thing I don't want to have happen. That does not feel like I played poorly, it feels like the rug was pulled out from under me.
Most damning of all is that Peglin lacks the aesthetic, dopaminergic je ne sais quoi that makes Peggle so ultra-satisfying. Hitting a peg is a flaccid act without whimsy, the visual feedback a nothingburger of a number, the audio presented as effective white noise. The labouriously slow traversal of the ball makes each shot a tedium, something the developers are clearly aware of as there is a prevalent fast forward button which can knock the speed up to 300%. I am never on the edge of my seat, gnawing my nails hoping my shot was planned correctly, that I will hit that last peg with my final shot, the world holding its breath. I never feel my aptitude increasing. I only feel my time is being wasted, just as Peglin's potential is.
A toothless introduction to the Playdate.
"You're just depressed because you play Sonic the Hedgehog without any QoL improvements"
Cool now I'm suffering through Labyrinth Zone with a Bubble Shield in widescreen 👌
Great as a decompilation that lets me play in widescreen but the litany of options and tweaks are the real source of interest for indecisive Sonic nerds like myself. Sonic Frontiers took its own approach to the Goldilocks dilemma with its bevy of customisation options, but the confined space of 2D Sonic simply isn't conducive to heaping on tons of alterations. The Drop Dash feels great in Green Hill Zone's wide fields, but it offers nothing beyond that. Same with the Spin Dash. And the Super Peel Out. The Elemental Shields make segments of Marble Zone and Labyrinth Zone more tolerable, but they feel tacked on.
As with every Sonic game, the systems in place in the original are intentional, with the levels designed around those constraints. Messing with the formula is fun for a moment, but it is hardly an improvement. It is interesting to see how quickly the game falls apart with the verticality afforded by Tails, Knuckles, and Amy, but if I'm blowing past the stages and their obstacles is that really an improvement, or am I just admitting I don't really like the core experience to begin with?
It's all clearly done with love but I'd rather keep things vanilla.
Cool now I'm suffering through Labyrinth Zone with a Bubble Shield in widescreen 👌
Great as a decompilation that lets me play in widescreen but the litany of options and tweaks are the real source of interest for indecisive Sonic nerds like myself. Sonic Frontiers took its own approach to the Goldilocks dilemma with its bevy of customisation options, but the confined space of 2D Sonic simply isn't conducive to heaping on tons of alterations. The Drop Dash feels great in Green Hill Zone's wide fields, but it offers nothing beyond that. Same with the Spin Dash. And the Super Peel Out. The Elemental Shields make segments of Marble Zone and Labyrinth Zone more tolerable, but they feel tacked on.
As with every Sonic game, the systems in place in the original are intentional, with the levels designed around those constraints. Messing with the formula is fun for a moment, but it is hardly an improvement. It is interesting to see how quickly the game falls apart with the verticality afforded by Tails, Knuckles, and Amy, but if I'm blowing past the stages and their obstacles is that really an improvement, or am I just admitting I don't really like the core experience to begin with?
It's all clearly done with love but I'd rather keep things vanilla.
Subtler and all the better for it.
Though the grafting of Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic Mania' mechanics onto Sonic the Hedgehog only emphasised how much of an outlier the first Sonic is, here they serve to supplement an already great game. The introduction of the Spin Dash, and levels better built around Sonic's improved speed and handling (and Tails' game-busting flight), means the Drop Dash and Super Peel Out are not at odds with the core experience. The Flame Barrier and Lightning Shield become options rather than borderline cheating. With Knuckles already playable in the original with Lock-On Technology, his inclusion doesn't feel like afterthought (though it's a shame there's no Amy).
Widescreen and being able to actually see the Special Stages was already more than enough, everything else is a cherry on top.
Though the grafting of Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic Mania' mechanics onto Sonic the Hedgehog only emphasised how much of an outlier the first Sonic is, here they serve to supplement an already great game. The introduction of the Spin Dash, and levels better built around Sonic's improved speed and handling (and Tails' game-busting flight), means the Drop Dash and Super Peel Out are not at odds with the core experience. The Flame Barrier and Lightning Shield become options rather than borderline cheating. With Knuckles already playable in the original with Lock-On Technology, his inclusion doesn't feel like afterthought (though it's a shame there's no Amy).
Widescreen and being able to actually see the Special Stages was already more than enough, everything else is a cherry on top.
Oh my god.
Nothing could have prepared me for the last third of this.
Cute OoT-like, though the expansive world is to its detriment when I'm dragging my sorry ass across the map because I forgot something.
YoyoGames-core
I hesitate to call this is a game in the truest sense since it feels more like a logic puzzle for six year olds.
Like playing flOw if it were comprised of destrutturato IKEA symbology.
Just as much not-a-roguelite as Hades but Returnal knows how to make that actually work for narrative and gameplay purposes.
The best rhythm games don't just feel good to play, they feel cool to play. SDVX is as insane to watch as it is to experience, even lower difficulty charts making one feel like a cool ass wedding DJ.
Near ground zero at Hiroshima is a peace museum, housed in what was once Fukuromachi Elementary School. One concrete wall of the school remained standing after the bombing, charred black from flame. Hibakusha etched messages on the wall, searching for missing friends and family and letting others know they were alive. Set up as one of nineteen aid stations within 500 metres of the detonation, it was a locus for the injured and their networks.
"Please Yuko, tell me where you are, from your mom"
The messages were documented by the Ministry of Education in October 1945, but repairs to the school obfuscated these messages from spring 1946 until 1999. Deteriorating architecture served as an opportunity to see if the messages remained after all this time. Behind plaster and blackboards, the messages indeed remained. For some, it brought closure as an assurance from five decades prior that a relative had lived, fallen ill, or died. The school was reopened as a museum in 2002, the remnants of the past subsumed into the architecture itself, a stark abutment of a grim reality within halls that otherwise seem ordinary. A temporary measure to reach out to others is now made permanent, a concrete symbol of the collective memory of Hiroshima.
The late Jean-Luc Vilmouth unveiled his "Café Little Boy" at the group exhibition "Hiroshima Art Document 2002," held in the Hiroshima Branch of the former Bank of Japan, one of the only buildings untouched by the bombing. Three walls of a room were coated in green chalkboard paint, as were small stools and tables. The space is interrupted by photographs of Little Boy's damage on one wall, and a single unmarred analogue clock on another. Coloured chalk litters the floor, and the five visitors permitted inside at a time are encouraged to leave messages, scrawling over or erasing others if needed. After a short time, they are to leave, and the cycle continues.
Vilmouth's work, now part of the Contemporary collection of the Centre Pompidou, creates a participatory narrative wherein collective memory is continually rewritten, added to, and taken away. Without any degree of permanence, many (including myself) take to writing their innermost secrets on the surfaces, certain that they will disappear. Even if they remain forever, they become anonymised by virtue of how much information there is. Like Fukuromachi's wall, there is no expectation for this history to persist beyond that brief interaction.
Dear Future takes this construction of collective memory and digitises it. The participant is given a camera and has twenty minutes to explore a procedurally-generated world in the wake of collapse. Buildings seem shelled, literal Greco-Roman ruins litter the landscape, scant remnants of the human struggle to survive remain in the form of mattresses and vehicles. A journal documents the rise and fall and revival of an autarchy. Errant ghosts share their brief thoughts when photographed. When the sun sets, the game ends.
SELECT A MEMORY TO PASS ON
ALL OTHER MEMORIES WILL BE LOST TO TIME
Only one of the participant's photographs is allowed to persist. Future participants have access to this (and others') single image, otherwise the entirety of one's participation has no record. All traces are permanently erased. A participant can aid the reconstruction of a wider narrative by imparting a meaningful visual text, or a participant can leave behind an aesthetically pleasing image. A participant can even leave behind a shitty picture of a garbage pile. This is an anonymous act. It gives the participant no benefit to be helpful to others, nor a penalty for refusing progress.
The participant does have one other tool in their arsenal to pass on their heritage. They can leave a note at a location, constructed from pre-defined parts.
They, and the photographs, tell us not of the whereabouts of the participants, those who chronicle the past in the present for the future.
They bring a closure, an assurance that we were once here.
"Please Yuko, tell me where you are, from your mom"
The messages were documented by the Ministry of Education in October 1945, but repairs to the school obfuscated these messages from spring 1946 until 1999. Deteriorating architecture served as an opportunity to see if the messages remained after all this time. Behind plaster and blackboards, the messages indeed remained. For some, it brought closure as an assurance from five decades prior that a relative had lived, fallen ill, or died. The school was reopened as a museum in 2002, the remnants of the past subsumed into the architecture itself, a stark abutment of a grim reality within halls that otherwise seem ordinary. A temporary measure to reach out to others is now made permanent, a concrete symbol of the collective memory of Hiroshima.
The late Jean-Luc Vilmouth unveiled his "Café Little Boy" at the group exhibition "Hiroshima Art Document 2002," held in the Hiroshima Branch of the former Bank of Japan, one of the only buildings untouched by the bombing. Three walls of a room were coated in green chalkboard paint, as were small stools and tables. The space is interrupted by photographs of Little Boy's damage on one wall, and a single unmarred analogue clock on another. Coloured chalk litters the floor, and the five visitors permitted inside at a time are encouraged to leave messages, scrawling over or erasing others if needed. After a short time, they are to leave, and the cycle continues.
Vilmouth's work, now part of the Contemporary collection of the Centre Pompidou, creates a participatory narrative wherein collective memory is continually rewritten, added to, and taken away. Without any degree of permanence, many (including myself) take to writing their innermost secrets on the surfaces, certain that they will disappear. Even if they remain forever, they become anonymised by virtue of how much information there is. Like Fukuromachi's wall, there is no expectation for this history to persist beyond that brief interaction.
Dear Future takes this construction of collective memory and digitises it. The participant is given a camera and has twenty minutes to explore a procedurally-generated world in the wake of collapse. Buildings seem shelled, literal Greco-Roman ruins litter the landscape, scant remnants of the human struggle to survive remain in the form of mattresses and vehicles. A journal documents the rise and fall and revival of an autarchy. Errant ghosts share their brief thoughts when photographed. When the sun sets, the game ends.
SELECT A MEMORY TO PASS ON
ALL OTHER MEMORIES WILL BE LOST TO TIME
Only one of the participant's photographs is allowed to persist. Future participants have access to this (and others') single image, otherwise the entirety of one's participation has no record. All traces are permanently erased. A participant can aid the reconstruction of a wider narrative by imparting a meaningful visual text, or a participant can leave behind an aesthetically pleasing image. A participant can even leave behind a shitty picture of a garbage pile. This is an anonymous act. It gives the participant no benefit to be helpful to others, nor a penalty for refusing progress.
The participant does have one other tool in their arsenal to pass on their heritage. They can leave a note at a location, constructed from pre-defined parts.
They, and the photographs, tell us not of the whereabouts of the participants, those who chronicle the past in the present for the future.
They bring a closure, an assurance that we were once here.
For when you really don't have Uno.
For my next trick, I'll make your interest disappear!
Immensely frustrating.
Immensely frustrating.
It's a shame really, to have a game so tightly designed hidden behind subscriptions and convoluted menus. But damn if full speed tracks don't get the blood rushing.
Wonderful reduction of the Search Action genre to its actual barest element. The presence of usable items muddies it somewhat, however, as it requires an action beyond movement.
I Shoulda Never Smoke That Shit Now Im At Peshay Studio Set (1996)
A genuinely lovely and methodical puzzle platformer that leans into abstraction without sacrificing its internal logic for the player's sake. Much the same as The Witness, Popol Maya, and even Clutter 1000, Venineth is entirely atextual, its ruleset deduced purely through play. Whereas those other titles can lead to frustration and walls when their logic is not understood, Venineth makes every effort to delicately railroad the player towards their objective. These enormous levels might seem incomprehensible in scale at first, but clever design and the nature of the respawn system ensures that progress is always made, never undone. Patience can certainly be worn down -- one segment near the end of the game had me wandering in one locale for over an hour because I had missed an object -- but the experience on the whole is meditative enough to encourage slowing down and thoughtfully considering what lay before you. And if the atmosphere itself does not suggest such a pace, your immeasurable momentum does.
Gameplay isn't where Venineth shines brightest. Its landscapes are undoubtedly the best I have seen in possibly any game. The dev team's Polish background is abundantly clear through sweeping vistas and reflective corridors that seem ripped straight from the mid-2000's demoscene. Impossible geometric hyperstructures float above eternal seas of clouds, cubes intersect in perpetuity, hexagonal prisms stretch like unceasing columns of basalt. Yet even as an Unreal Engine 4 title, this feels less like a tech-demo and more like a set of playable Bryce renders. There is a specificity to its textures and lighting that encapsulates a simultaneously horrifying and heart-warming liminality. The abutting of perfect cones, cubes, tori, and spheres against the natural world exacerbates this. It is a (post?/hyper?)mechanical imposition on places not our own. The only evidences of life are those geometries, the occasional fleshy nodule, rare flittering yellow wings in the sky. All the while, space ambient music is your steady companion, sometimes puncuated by DnB. The absence of tracker music is to Venineth's benefit, as its presence would no doubt make the illusion err on the side of nostalgiabaiting.
By no means for everyone, by all means for me.
A genuinely lovely and methodical puzzle platformer that leans into abstraction without sacrificing its internal logic for the player's sake. Much the same as The Witness, Popol Maya, and even Clutter 1000, Venineth is entirely atextual, its ruleset deduced purely through play. Whereas those other titles can lead to frustration and walls when their logic is not understood, Venineth makes every effort to delicately railroad the player towards their objective. These enormous levels might seem incomprehensible in scale at first, but clever design and the nature of the respawn system ensures that progress is always made, never undone. Patience can certainly be worn down -- one segment near the end of the game had me wandering in one locale for over an hour because I had missed an object -- but the experience on the whole is meditative enough to encourage slowing down and thoughtfully considering what lay before you. And if the atmosphere itself does not suggest such a pace, your immeasurable momentum does.
Gameplay isn't where Venineth shines brightest. Its landscapes are undoubtedly the best I have seen in possibly any game. The dev team's Polish background is abundantly clear through sweeping vistas and reflective corridors that seem ripped straight from the mid-2000's demoscene. Impossible geometric hyperstructures float above eternal seas of clouds, cubes intersect in perpetuity, hexagonal prisms stretch like unceasing columns of basalt. Yet even as an Unreal Engine 4 title, this feels less like a tech-demo and more like a set of playable Bryce renders. There is a specificity to its textures and lighting that encapsulates a simultaneously horrifying and heart-warming liminality. The abutting of perfect cones, cubes, tori, and spheres against the natural world exacerbates this. It is a (post?/hyper?)mechanical imposition on places not our own. The only evidences of life are those geometries, the occasional fleshy nodule, rare flittering yellow wings in the sky. All the while, space ambient music is your steady companion, sometimes puncuated by DnB. The absence of tracker music is to Venineth's benefit, as its presence would no doubt make the illusion err on the side of nostalgiabaiting.
By no means for everyone, by all means for me.
Might be cute if it came out in 2013.
take me back
I've loved Wilmot's Warehouse mostly from afar since it's release, occasionally picking it up for an hour until reaching around 100 items, getting overwhelmed, and shelving it again. Over the past few weeks, however, and after five years of my living space becoming increasingly chaotic (particularly throughout the pandemic), renovations have been underway and are almost complete. With more clothes than dresser space, more books than bookshelves would allow, and a collection of tchotchkes, bulky controllers, and piles on top of piles of things that my cat kept knocking over, reorganisation was crucial just as more storage was. Within that context of shuffling everything around, not simply moving it out and plopping it back in, Wilmot's Warehouse finally made sense.
The shuffle of the warehouse is ongoing as mental categories ebb and flow across artificial boundaries. A bottle of liquid goes from my medicine area to the science area to the food area to the liquids area back to the medicine area. A tent goes with outdoor paraphernalia on the side for temporary shelter (opposite my weather conditions), itself abutted against permanent structures, construction goods, and patterns. An influx of tree stumps upsets the spacing of all my botanical wares, so much so that I move them with other measurement iconography (tree rings show time, are they not the calendars of nature?).
Like the pillars cleared with my performance stars, those new vast storage spaces let me categorise my own collection. Books with books, sure, but with academic texts in a place of their own, art books elsewhere, historical tomes too receive a space, writing on games adjacent to other books but also physical games. Those, of course, are near my music CDs. My archival cases of X68000 print media and diskettes stay with texts on games because they too are referential works.
It sounds innocuous and almost childlike to describe this in such a way, but these spatial allocations are the product of manoeuvring things around other things for a fortnight. It approaches a completeness, but the few remaining things threaten to displace other things meaning a potential collapse of this established order of things. If necessary, I'll dedicate a weekend to my own stock take, laboriously but methodically getting everything back into its place. For now.
Every collection of things is ultimately a self-serving system of chaos teetering on the brink. Archives, libraries, stores, warehouses, attics, bookshelves, museums, landfills, mechanics, grocers, blogs, directories, transit systems. With my post-graduate studies in library and information science beginning in the autumn, I too will be a cog in the machine of sorting one of humanity's warehouses. Like Wilmot, I hope to have a smile on my face all the while. :^)
The shuffle of the warehouse is ongoing as mental categories ebb and flow across artificial boundaries. A bottle of liquid goes from my medicine area to the science area to the food area to the liquids area back to the medicine area. A tent goes with outdoor paraphernalia on the side for temporary shelter (opposite my weather conditions), itself abutted against permanent structures, construction goods, and patterns. An influx of tree stumps upsets the spacing of all my botanical wares, so much so that I move them with other measurement iconography (tree rings show time, are they not the calendars of nature?).
Like the pillars cleared with my performance stars, those new vast storage spaces let me categorise my own collection. Books with books, sure, but with academic texts in a place of their own, art books elsewhere, historical tomes too receive a space, writing on games adjacent to other books but also physical games. Those, of course, are near my music CDs. My archival cases of X68000 print media and diskettes stay with texts on games because they too are referential works.
It sounds innocuous and almost childlike to describe this in such a way, but these spatial allocations are the product of manoeuvring things around other things for a fortnight. It approaches a completeness, but the few remaining things threaten to displace other things meaning a potential collapse of this established order of things. If necessary, I'll dedicate a weekend to my own stock take, laboriously but methodically getting everything back into its place. For now.
Every collection of things is ultimately a self-serving system of chaos teetering on the brink. Archives, libraries, stores, warehouses, attics, bookshelves, museums, landfills, mechanics, grocers, blogs, directories, transit systems. With my post-graduate studies in library and information science beginning in the autumn, I too will be a cog in the machine of sorting one of humanity's warehouses. Like Wilmot, I hope to have a smile on my face all the while. :^)
I sure wish I was playing actual Sonic Adventure right now. At least it's kinda fast?
The sort of game a dude with an English major loves to wax poetic about to try and impress a goth lesbian enough that she'll fuck him.
Utterly okay. Dusty water cup.
Outstanding as a showcase for Cosmo D's musical talents, ineffectual in every other regard. The Norwood Suite represents a turning point for Cosmo D's oeuvre towards commercialisation and an acceptability for the gaming masses. The wide-open amorphous slapdash spaces of Off-Peak have been cast aside in favour of regimented, interconnected spaces which ultimately refuse the possibility of wasted time and effort on the part of the player. That isn't to say that earning money for your labour is bad. Rather, there is a sense of sterility in presentation and experience.
Though Off-Peak allowed the player total freedom in their approach to collecting their ticket pieces, The Norwood Suite has a fairly prescriptive path in place for progression. Some items may be found off the beaten path, but the primary objective feels at times like railroading -- ironic given it was the previous game which featured trains. The widespread, warm reception of The Norwood Suite in comparison to the non-coverage of works of Oleander Garden, TIMEframe, or 0_abyssalSomewhere exemplifies my issue with the former; it is off-beat, 'outsider' art presented in a manner which is palatable to non-outsiders.
To pilfer the thoughts of our greatest mind, "Cosmo D reminds me of Mr Brainwash." Like Mr. Brainwash or Banksy, there feels to be a sort of appropriation of the work by those on the periphery of the core game/art world. Cosmo D's human are of malformed flesh less to make some grander point of bodily discomfort and dysmorphia, but to come across as too weird to be uncanny, too ordinary to be anything but human. This holds true throughout the experience, striking me less as the autonomy of the self as actualised in Second Life, and more like the interpretation of that digitised Other by one who exists as an observer, a trouble maker, a mocker. By way of example, The Norwood Suite is Griffin and Justin McElroy's intentional grotesqueries made for their corporate sponsored, lampooning of the Other in their Second Life Monster Factory videos. It is insincere. Superficially about something, but altogether hollow.
Though Off-Peak allowed the player total freedom in their approach to collecting their ticket pieces, The Norwood Suite has a fairly prescriptive path in place for progression. Some items may be found off the beaten path, but the primary objective feels at times like railroading -- ironic given it was the previous game which featured trains. The widespread, warm reception of The Norwood Suite in comparison to the non-coverage of works of Oleander Garden, TIMEframe, or 0_abyssalSomewhere exemplifies my issue with the former; it is off-beat, 'outsider' art presented in a manner which is palatable to non-outsiders.
To pilfer the thoughts of our greatest mind, "Cosmo D reminds me of Mr Brainwash." Like Mr. Brainwash or Banksy, there feels to be a sort of appropriation of the work by those on the periphery of the core game/art world. Cosmo D's human are of malformed flesh less to make some grander point of bodily discomfort and dysmorphia, but to come across as too weird to be uncanny, too ordinary to be anything but human. This holds true throughout the experience, striking me less as the autonomy of the self as actualised in Second Life, and more like the interpretation of that digitised Other by one who exists as an observer, a trouble maker, a mocker. By way of example, The Norwood Suite is Griffin and Justin McElroy's intentional grotesqueries made for their corporate sponsored, lampooning of the Other in their Second Life Monster Factory videos. It is insincere. Superficially about something, but altogether hollow.
Too much game without being good of game. The amount of 'depth' would be admirable if it weren't overwhelming.
Unequivocally the best video game ever made, though that has to be cheating, right? After all, you wouldn’t say your Raspberry Pi loaded with ROMs is itself a video game. An official compilation already stretches the definition of a video game, much to the chagrin of any dweeb trying to weasel their way out of providing an actual list of their favourite games. Yet this unofficial potpourri does what a mere compilation cannot, what your ROM library fails at. Multibowl! puts these games on equal footing with one another, contextualises them, renders their objectives concrete, and synthesises them into a new, greater whole. It is the wet dream of the games historian, the archivist, the obscura-seeker, the high-score-chaser, the competitive gamer, the informed, the ignorant, and the creative.
Bennett Foddy and AP Thomson have unenviably plumbed the depths of numerous ROM sets to scrounge up treasures both noteworthy and forgotten, presenting them all as equals as games and micro-competitive arenas. Obvious mainstays of games history, Mario Bros., Gauntlet, Metal Slug, and NBA Jam operate as immediately recognisable artefacts with goals and control schema that are already familiar to many. However, they are just as likely to come up as titles which are not generally considered competitive and oppositional: Lemmings; Maze; Bonanza Bros. Though lacking internal mechanisms for confrontational gameplay, clever use of save states and memory analysis allow Multibowl! to check for some change in some variable to grant one player a point.
One of the greatest joys in Multibowl! is its deep cuts, its pulling up of games you have never heard of, the sort of title your eye skips over in your search for that SegaSonic Bros. ROM, titles bordering on the uncanny in their near-familiarity, games that make you quickly jot down their title out of befuddlement or glee. Games you would never reasonably play. In a vacuum of playing them on their own, those works might not hold your attention long enough to grasp their purpose or gameplay. Within the rapid pace of Multibowl!, within a framework of having no choice, they demand attention, dissection, and comprehension. The coercion for the players to stick with these titles for a mere thirty seconds acts as a microexposure to the realities of most of games history, namely the lack of anything else to do. When these games necessarily compete for your attention in backlogs and ROM sets with hundreds, if not thousands, of games, there is no reason for most players to approach an understanding of them. Why expose myself to the dregs of history when Pac-Man is right there?
A games historian, archivist, or obscura-seeker has some secondary goal for their play here, that of context and exposure. Someone like myself is not necessarily playing these for their worth as fun experiences, but to come away with a fuller understanding of games as a whole, games as a cultural expression, games as a reflection of a zeitgeist, games as escapism, games as political tools, games as violence, games as transgression, games as collaborative, games as competitive, games as more than just games. Games as a means, not an end.
Multibowl!’s real purpose is not as a game, at least not to me, but as some smörgåsbord of curatorial excellence, diversity, and inversion. It demonstrates how games have always been inventive and worthy of attention in some capacity, while still remaining semi-boundless in and of itself, conveying the unceasing work of history. Histories are forever rewritten for new contexts. The once irrelevant becomes critically important with changing tides. The once foundational becomes a historiographical assumption. With vast shifts in the goals of games histories, there will always be more to uncover, more to connect.
Here's to 1,000 more.
Bennett Foddy and AP Thomson have unenviably plumbed the depths of numerous ROM sets to scrounge up treasures both noteworthy and forgotten, presenting them all as equals as games and micro-competitive arenas. Obvious mainstays of games history, Mario Bros., Gauntlet, Metal Slug, and NBA Jam operate as immediately recognisable artefacts with goals and control schema that are already familiar to many. However, they are just as likely to come up as titles which are not generally considered competitive and oppositional: Lemmings; Maze; Bonanza Bros. Though lacking internal mechanisms for confrontational gameplay, clever use of save states and memory analysis allow Multibowl! to check for some change in some variable to grant one player a point.
One of the greatest joys in Multibowl! is its deep cuts, its pulling up of games you have never heard of, the sort of title your eye skips over in your search for that SegaSonic Bros. ROM, titles bordering on the uncanny in their near-familiarity, games that make you quickly jot down their title out of befuddlement or glee. Games you would never reasonably play. In a vacuum of playing them on their own, those works might not hold your attention long enough to grasp their purpose or gameplay. Within the rapid pace of Multibowl!, within a framework of having no choice, they demand attention, dissection, and comprehension. The coercion for the players to stick with these titles for a mere thirty seconds acts as a microexposure to the realities of most of games history, namely the lack of anything else to do. When these games necessarily compete for your attention in backlogs and ROM sets with hundreds, if not thousands, of games, there is no reason for most players to approach an understanding of them. Why expose myself to the dregs of history when Pac-Man is right there?
A games historian, archivist, or obscura-seeker has some secondary goal for their play here, that of context and exposure. Someone like myself is not necessarily playing these for their worth as fun experiences, but to come away with a fuller understanding of games as a whole, games as a cultural expression, games as a reflection of a zeitgeist, games as escapism, games as political tools, games as violence, games as transgression, games as collaborative, games as competitive, games as more than just games. Games as a means, not an end.
Multibowl!’s real purpose is not as a game, at least not to me, but as some smörgåsbord of curatorial excellence, diversity, and inversion. It demonstrates how games have always been inventive and worthy of attention in some capacity, while still remaining semi-boundless in and of itself, conveying the unceasing work of history. Histories are forever rewritten for new contexts. The once irrelevant becomes critically important with changing tides. The once foundational becomes a historiographical assumption. With vast shifts in the goals of games histories, there will always be more to uncover, more to connect.
Here's to 1,000 more.
Wholly uncompromising in its grandiose, buckling vision. Crumbling under the weight of its world of ideas. Breakneck and glacial, confused and confusing. To call it a flawed masterpiece is an admission that it is a masterpiece all the same.
The plot is frequently limp, characters incensed by seemingly random motivations. The world folds out into eternity while railroading the Regalia to a two lane highway. The ache for reprieve from ballooning stakes goes eternally unanswered. What starts as a granting of ever more freedoms becomes a collapse of everything being taken away from the player bit by bit. An unceasing tide of fetch quests forgotten in a shift to eternal linearity. Yet none of this takes away from the experience, it only reinforces a consistent theme of loss and trade-offs.
The first playable moments bring this into laser focus. The iconic Regalia, a literal symbol of freedom carries nothing but unfulfilled promises as it is laboriously pushed across the desert. When it is repaired, Noctis receives a single opportunity to drive his steed, only to discover he is no more in control of it behind the wheel than he is as a passenger. It is often a hindrance, barely moving at night, unable to ever meaningfully approach points of interest, as manoeuvrable as a train on the tracks. Yet each time it is taken away, the notion of freedom dissipates, eventually passing forever into history. Similarly, the temporary departure of party members makes what were once mechanical nothings into tangible absence; Gladio, Prompto and Ignis all bringing something crucial yet invisible to the dynamics of the party and combat.
This typifies what the Final Fantasy XV experience is; one of dashed expectation. Chase down your MacGuffin of a betrothed only for her to fade away. Collect a litany of ingredients, lures, paint jobs, CDs, quests, hunts, medals all for it to become meaningless in an instant, no indication that the time for a relaxed approach has drawn to a close. The only fragment of a 'road trip with the boys' being memories made concrete through Prompto's photographic documentation of the journey. Much as one might scoff at an overabundance of filters, selfies, extreme angles, and inadvertent captures of Gladio's ass, these joyful glimmers of what was and could have been resonate with nostalgic depression. When our story draws to a close, all we have to remember it by are our memories. Wishes that it had gone better, not just for ourselves, but for those who would walk a doomed path.
The plot is frequently limp, characters incensed by seemingly random motivations. The world folds out into eternity while railroading the Regalia to a two lane highway. The ache for reprieve from ballooning stakes goes eternally unanswered. What starts as a granting of ever more freedoms becomes a collapse of everything being taken away from the player bit by bit. An unceasing tide of fetch quests forgotten in a shift to eternal linearity. Yet none of this takes away from the experience, it only reinforces a consistent theme of loss and trade-offs.
The first playable moments bring this into laser focus. The iconic Regalia, a literal symbol of freedom carries nothing but unfulfilled promises as it is laboriously pushed across the desert. When it is repaired, Noctis receives a single opportunity to drive his steed, only to discover he is no more in control of it behind the wheel than he is as a passenger. It is often a hindrance, barely moving at night, unable to ever meaningfully approach points of interest, as manoeuvrable as a train on the tracks. Yet each time it is taken away, the notion of freedom dissipates, eventually passing forever into history. Similarly, the temporary departure of party members makes what were once mechanical nothings into tangible absence; Gladio, Prompto and Ignis all bringing something crucial yet invisible to the dynamics of the party and combat.
This typifies what the Final Fantasy XV experience is; one of dashed expectation. Chase down your MacGuffin of a betrothed only for her to fade away. Collect a litany of ingredients, lures, paint jobs, CDs, quests, hunts, medals all for it to become meaningless in an instant, no indication that the time for a relaxed approach has drawn to a close. The only fragment of a 'road trip with the boys' being memories made concrete through Prompto's photographic documentation of the journey. Much as one might scoff at an overabundance of filters, selfies, extreme angles, and inadvertent captures of Gladio's ass, these joyful glimmers of what was and could have been resonate with nostalgic depression. When our story draws to a close, all we have to remember it by are our memories. Wishes that it had gone better, not just for ourselves, but for those who would walk a doomed path.
Any boys out there that look like Gladio, hit me up
Transcendent
🥹 why
Short and sweet meditative experience that doesn't overstay its welcome. When the revelation of the UI's workings wear off, the realisation that the map contains so many secrets in such a small space feels fantastic. Though completing the last few objectives becomes an act of finding needles in haystacks, the undulating landscapes and swelling ambient soundtrack are more than enough to hold your attention. If I have any gripe, it is that some of the controls become irrelevant rather quickly, when they could have been better integrated into the primary puzzles. Still, that its 'ending' managed to widen my eyes and send me down my own rabbit hole is a feat unto itself. It effectively contextualised the gameplay in a manner not too dissimilar to Brenda Romero's Train, without feeling as though I had been tricked or made to feel ignorant.
Extant.
Batman, can you solve my hardest riddle yet: a three lap time trial race?
4 Comments
Goddamnit I knew I missed some. Fixed.
i mean this in a way that only a stranger possibly can: you’re so cool
DeemonAndGames
5 months ago
For real tho I'm so glad you made this, I didn't even know you made a follow up to your 177 review so early in the year until I just saw it here, same things goes for a ton of reviews I hadn't checked out till now. Amazing year full of amazing reviews, that's something that I could say about a ton of the talented people on here (which is a lot) but your works are always a fantastic read and an inspiration for me and I'm sure also for many others. Excellent work!