Content warning for discussions of misogyny, child abuse, reproductive rights, and sexual and physical assault.

Silent Hill 2 deconstructed Silent Hill. Silent Hill 3 deconstructs Silent Hill 2.

The entire ethos of Silent Hill 2 uses Silent Hill as a place of punishment. Rather than being a town filled with monsters brought forth by a cult as it was in the first game, the Silent Hill of Silent Hill 2 is a functional purgatory. It is a place where the guilty must face constructs born of their own sins, taking shape specifically to torment those who have done wrong; children are unaffected, those who can work through their guilt may survive, and those who cannot (or will not) overcome it are punished further with death.

The town in Silent Hill 3 exclusively hurts the innocent.

Heather has done nothing wrong. The worst she’s done is take up smoking, and she’s dropped the habit long before the events of game kick off. She keeps to herself, she doesn’t seem to have any vices, she isn’t promiscuous — which itself is not a bad thing to be, but it’s common knowledge that the horror genre generally doesn’t look too fondly on the libertine — and it’s hard to find something that anyone could fault her for. Why, then, has this world dictated that she must suffer?

Because Heather is a woman.

Technically speaking, she’s only a girl. She’s still just 17. But the horrific acts that men have historically committed against women — stalking, abuse, physical and sexual violence — don’t have a minimum age. A poll conducted in 2018 found that 81% of all female respondents had faced sexual harassment; roughly 27% of those women said that their first time being sexually harassed was between the ages of 13 and 17. 16% said they were as young as 11 to 13 years old. None of these cases happened because they were deserved. There was no justification. There will never be one, because there cannot be one.

But they were women, and for those who are willing to commit these acts, that’s enough of a reason.

I am not myself a woman, nor have I ever identified as one. I’m hesitant to explain my feelings towards this game and the world that it reflects back against ours, because I think it’s easy to come across as a capital-M, capital-A Male Ally who props my voice above those who don’t share the luxury of having a platform like my own. There's a line that must be walked between a point of demonstrating how awful the lived experience of many women is for those who are ignorant, and a point of spouting data and surveys as though these experiences can or should be boiled down to numbers rather than the people behind them. I am an outsider looking in; none of this has happened to me. I don’t face the ever-present threats of patriarchal society in the same way that women do. I’ve never been afraid to walk home by myself. I’ve never had to think my way down a list of what might happen if I reject a guy’s advances. I’ve never been concerned that my government could strip me of my bodily autonomy.

These are not aspects of my reality, but it is the reality of many.

Silent Hill 3 is not a subtle game, nor should it be. Our introduction to Douglas has him silently following behind our protagonist, chasing her into the bathroom and forcing her to escape through an open window; many of the monsters evoke phallic, fetal, or imposing masculine symbols through their appearances; Heather carries a pocket knife for protection on her person long before she becomes aware of the Otherworld. The character of Stanley Coleman is a stalker obsessed with Heather, skulking around to follow her through the hospital and leaving notes to confess his unrequited love for her; always boiling beneath his adoration and fixation is the unspoken threat that he will hurt Heather and/or the people around her if she isn't willing to reciprocate his feelings.

Perhaps most blatant (and thus what guides people into believing that this is the only theme of the game) is the unwanted pregnancy parallel. Heather has been selected against her will to be the one who will give birth to God, constantly being told that she doesn't understand the importance of her role when she says she doesn't want to. The one person who she can rely on to respect her choice — her father, Harry — is unceremoniously killed as retribution for Heather's unwillingness to carry God to term. And the end of the story, moments before Heather is about to be killed by Alessa to stop God's birth, Heather swallows a substance that causes her to expel the fetus from her body.

Silent Hill 3 is a horror story about being a woman.

Heather is an outstanding character. Despite her running through as close to Hell as one could imagine, she refuses to succumb to her environment. She fights. She struggles. She makes jokes and glib observations about the surroundings, studying everything that she can get her hands on to figure out how to survive and push forward. She's funny, and she isn't afraid to call people out on their bullshit directly to their face.

But there's a quiet moment at the middle of the game where she's sitting in Douglas's car on the way to Silent Hill, and she tells him the story of her adoption. She tells him how much she misses her dad, and that she never got the chance to tell him how glad she was to be his daughter.

And her heart just breaks.

No game made in the twenty years since this came out has been able to replicate the sheer amount of pain and exhaustion on her face while she stares out the window and chokes back tears. It's brutal. Her pursuits of revenge and closure and freedom mean that she cannot stop, no matter how worn she is.

A character as strong as Heather needs an equally strong supporting cast, and Silent Hill 3 is no slouch in this regard, either. The game is wonderful at creating these real, multi-faceted characters who carry with them at least one fault for every virtue. Douglas is a careless, headstrong dickhead when it comes to his private investigation work, but we gradually discover that he's a warm, damaged man who wants to be a better person than he was before his son died. Vincent is a shady, narcissistic bastard who's playing all sides for his own selfish desires, but he does legitimately help Heather put a stop to the cult's activities. Claudia is a ruthless murderer, but being abused as a child caused her to adopt a martyr mentality and throw herself wholly into her religion; the bitter irony is that Claudia perpetuates the same cycles of abuse which she suffered in the the name of bringing Paradise to Earth.

There's something to be said about how the non-Otherworld environments seem so keenly tweaked to be strange and dangerous, almost as though they're places where people aren't meant to be. An employees-only hallway in an abandoned shopping mall, an empty subway station that goes five stories underground, maintenance tunnels deep beneath the city, a derelict office building, the manifestation of a nightmare you had about an amusement park; being here feels wrong. Heather — and by extension, you — are all alone in these ethereal places, wandering around in the dark and wondering if every little creak or radio crackle is a warning of something nearby intent on doing harm. In some ways, the scenes in our world are more frightening than the ones in the Otherworld; our reality has the exact same monsters, but you wouldn't know that by looking at it.

As it stands, I'm kind of shocked that this game winds up with a general reputation of being the inferior younger sibling to its big brother, Silent Hill 2. For years I'd heard nothing besides the fact that 2 was the best entry in the series — perhaps the best horror game ever made — and none of the other entries could measure up. I love Silent Hill 2. I love the themes. I love the way it looks. I love the story of Mary and James.

But I think some people love Silent Hill 2 for the reason that it's easy to delve into. Picture in your mind the average person who would be playing games like these in the early-2000s, and then ask yourself if you think they would have an easier time immediately relating more to James or to Heather. It shouldn't be hard to figure out who, and it should be even easier to figure out why.

I think Silent Hill 3 is the better of the two.

Abortion is still de jure illegal in Japan. Those seeking to terminate a pregnancy may only do so if they can demonstrate that the pregnancy would cause a sufficient health or fiscal risk, or if their pregnancy was the result of rape. Married women require written consent from their husbands before they can even be considered. In a Japanese survey conducted during the campaign of an 86,000-signature petition to put an end to mandatory spousal consent, some 13% of women reported being forced to carry a pregnancy to term against their will.

Heather Mason took the aglaophotis in her pendant to terminate God in 2003.

Emergency contraceptives wouldn’t be legalized in Japan for another eight years.

To appreciate Ocarina of Time as a new player is to appreciate a game as the sum of its parts. No individual element will blow you away as "the greatest of all time" because everything ever since Ocarina has outclassed it in individual ways, but it might just be the most solid game you can get when looked at as a whole. As a follow-up to a Link to the Past it does pretty much everything right in steering the series in a new direction; better dungeons, better progression and structure, and more interesting items for the 3D space it now utilizes. Each dungeon has a great gimmick to it with extremely memorable setpieces compared to prior games which often repeated themselves aesthetically to a tiring degree. The game lacks the overall charm and mystique of prior Zelda's on a surface level but maintains a large degree of weird shit (seriously, what is a Dead Hand) and a genuinely solid coming-of-age story under the surface, with an emotional hook to it with how far the journey will take you. This isn't to say it's flawless, far from it; the overworld frankly sucks, combat relies too much on waiting, there's still occasional directional crypticism that involves fucking around and finding out and Ganon's Castle was largely underwhelming. But as far as a game goes, that's a sum of its parts, that sells you the idea of a classical Hero's Journey so thematically powerful you can taste it in the gameplay? Ocarina of Time knocks it out of the park.

You absolutely need to be a certain kind of player to enjoy this, ESPECIALLY nowadays. Tower of Druaga is the definition of "guide game". It has cryptic unexplained nonsense coded into its DNA from the instant you insert a coin into the godforsaken machine.

So the game itself is a pretty standard maze game, you move through the maze, find a key, use the key to reach the end, defeat enemies along the way, yadda yadda. The gimmick here is that each of the 60 floors contains an item, and the conditions to make the item appear change between floors. The requirements to make an item show up range from the simple-to-run-into "defeat all the enemies on the floor" to things such as "walk over these exact two tiles on the map in this order", "break your preexisting item" or my personal favorite, "press the game start button". Some items are mandatory to progress further, some items are optional upgrades, and some are permanent downgrades. You need to know EVERYTHING to even remotely have a shot to clear this game, and even then you'd still need the skills to navagate each of the 60 floors without getting a game over.

So how did people do it? Well, in western markets, they didn't. The game bombed all its western test placements hard and never got any widespread popularity. In japanese arcades, however, this game garnered a sense of community between players as everyone worked together to uncover all the secrets. Rumors would spread around, arcades would keep notebooks near the machines for players to write down anything they've noticed while playing and read what past players have discovered, and general word of mouth gave this game a rather substantial following, aided by the home ports which allowed players to discover the secrets at their own pace without needing to spend thousands of yen scoping out secrets. Basically this game took advantage of the social aspect of arcades in order to create a game experience that goes beyond the cabinet, and I think that's really neat.

But in todays day and age, all the secrets have long been found. Not only are walkthroughs on the internet commonplace, but rereleases of this game in Namco Museum titles typically have built-in walkthroughs to guide unsuspecting players through the tower. The Switch Namco Museum is the way to go as it not only has a guide at the click of a button, but also save states and a floor continue system to make this game essentially the most accessible it's ever going to be. I'd definitely reccomend giving the tower a challenge as it is certainly an interesting curiosity, but just make sure you have the proper knowledge onhand.

It is an effective, well-paced conclusion to the series thematically.

I like that exploration is rewarded because you get really useful combat skills/arts and various satisfying fills to your Affinity Goals. The exploration overall is solid enough as it was in the base game; in combination with the DLC's short length this is really the only time I felt like near-completing a Xenoblade game (I'll pass on the superbosses and final Enemypedia entries for now, but I 100%ed everything else).

My biggest gripe with the DLC is that it leans way too much into Xenoblade 1 fanservice for me, and as a result I wish more of the areas (and the final boss) had more of a unique identity visually and atmospherically. At least writing wise it's still very much Xenoblade 3 throughout which is a good thing.

I also wish Aurora Shelf's music wasn't re-used for Ragmos Desolation. It's a nice theme but you hear it a lot throughout the 20-30hrs.

Playing this DLC also kind of just finalized my general stance towards the series as a whole - I like the writing and a lot of the ideas, I love a lot of the presentation elements, but a lot of the gameplay and combat elements just were never my thing since I played Xenoblade 1 years ago. Particularly for similar reasons I dislike ATB combat from the Squaresoft-era: there isn't much slow, methodical strategy (i.e. learning enemy/boss patterns) and combat is more just wailing attacks at the enemy, occasionally scrambling to heal and regroup, and then Chain Attacking for overkills. Most of the fun in gameplay comes from making builds and finding more effective (and broken) ways to put down an enemy before they can fuck you up hard. That is appealing to many fans, and while I had my own share of fun with that in Xenoblade 2 and 3 especially, it's just not my main action game gameplay vibe ultimately.

I could probably say a lot more, such as what I feel about the characters, but I'll leave these thoughts here for now.

Sometimes I need a open world check list every once in a while to cleanse my palate, just a game I don't have to worry to much about and chill out. Tokyo is great looking and detailed. The visual effects in this game are top fucking notch and make me want more. The combat isn't too crazy, but it is definitely satisfying to the brain.

The combat can be a little weird at first, cause (at least on mouse/keyboard), it feels like they want to you be very precise. Targets are usually skinny and your magic bullets are pretty small. If there was a accuracy %, I would probably be pretty low. However, sometimes I felt myself get into zones where I wasn't missing shots and that felt pretty good. The arsenal is kind of lackluster to me tbh. The green energy is the best one, shoots fast. I didn't use the red or blue ones until basically end game when I had them fully upgraded, then I saw their uses. Red one just does high single damage, or big AOE; blue is also crowd control to hit multiple people horizontally. They all have special upgrades (from the Spider Thread update I think) and they kind of blow I think. Red is a flamethrower (feels pointless), blue is a freeze zone around you (feels too small/slow), and the green is the only good one (rapid fire a bunch of small bullets). The talismans i didnt use cause, 1.) I dont use throwable type items ever really 2.) they didnt seem too helpful. Grabbing cores is basically at the 'core' (teehee) of the combat and that is about as fun as any other glory kill system, its dope you can do it from a range, and do multiple at the same time.

The open world collectables felt pretty similar to Saints Row 4 to me. Just going on tangents of collecting things cause they are in your vision, then returning back to what you were doing (brain loves that). The side missions are usually pretty cool. Most are unique (story wise, gameplay not really).

This game hits you out of the gate with cool visuals though, probably the best part of the game. This right here i am obsessed with. The ending shot is fucking crazy, and it feels like some 90's CG art (with modern power). These Torii Gate animations also just look like CG cutscenes to me, like shit from FF7. It's probably because my computer just isn't good enough to for them to run recommended, but if it produces that effect I'm happy as hell. The game will tap into a lot of wonky visuals when going into the spirit zone(im just gonna call it that). Textures going crazy, impossible geometry, eye tricks; just so cool. There is a side mission where a painted dragon comes off the wall and you gotta chase it around an area. It's texture slithers on the ground and eventually leads up to a huge mural on the wall and it looks fucking cool. There are some spirit zones that are just kind of Blame! type shit if instead of clean concrete squares, it was just a bunch buildings. Or there are just beautiful serene areas. Point is, the game has a good ass style.

The story is whatever for the most part. Wasn't attached to characters, even though Akito and KK were fun together. The ending sequence though is great. Akito goes through walking sim of his memories. The visual effects and music really captured the power of "wading through your troubled past" for me. Even past that to the end is just a solid ass ending for the characters and I was very pleased.

Overall, yup open world check list game, if you want one of those, I think this a great one to try. Sets itself apart with the Tokyo you explore and the visual effects they play. Combat is fun and the supernatural stuff is fun flavour.

Forgot to include this while adding all the multiplayer-oriented games that you can't exactly "complete" but I've played well more than enough of this game to warrant it as such. TF2 is another one of those games that borderline transcends its own medium. To call this game Western Touhou wouldn't even be that outlandish of a claim. The amount of impact this game had on the internet cannot be understated, and the memes created by this game are immense. As for the game itself, it's a damn good shooter. Each class is unique and the game is (for the most part, playing casually) balanced. With 9 classes to learn, there's a solid amount of variety yet not an overwhelmingly large number of characters to learn. The hat and weapon unlock system also allows for player personalization both on a cosmetic and gameplay level while also just straight up creating its own trading economy. Later on they did introduce a PvE mode where you and the lads fight robots but I never could get into it too much tbh. I heard that the game is now littered with bots that ruin the game experience, so that's kinda lame. Despite my many dozens upon dozens of hours of playing this game, I am still a scrub W+M1 pyro and I wouldn't have it any other way. If you somehow haven't played this game before, I don't know what to say to you outside of go play it dangit. 2fort is my home

I have only played 2 Yakuza games previously: Yakuza Zero and Yakuza Kiwami. I enjoyed both of them, but the sheer number of sequels and versions paired with the long length of each game scared me away. The only reason I own Like a Dragon is because it was part of my PlayStation Plus backlog and I kept hearing it was a great jumping on point for newcomers. I'm so glad that I gave it a shot, because Yakuza: Like a Dragon is one of the best turn-based RPGs of the century. The protagonist, Ichiban Kasuga, frequently references the Dragon Quest series; It's very fitting because Dragon Quest XI is maybe the only modern turn-based single player game I'd put ahead of this one, by a hair. The story is a standard Japanese Crime Noir, but what makes it come alive are the colorful characters, each memorable in so many unique ways. And I'm not just talking about the main cast; playing the games "substories" (side quests) was my favorite part. What would have been busywork in another game becomes fun little vignettes with the weirdos who populate the city of Ijincho. The game knows how to be funny, but also depicts it's characters as real people, in a way that never really clicked for me in the other games I've played in the series. Literally my only gripe is that the business minigame is NOT intuitive or entertaining, despite being the most consistent way to grind for money. But despite mostly ignoring it I had a great (and long) time playing this game. Gameplay is simple, very intuitive especially if you've played any entry in a popular JRPG before (DQ, Final Fantasy, Pokemon, any Mario RPG etc.). Try it ASAP, even if you have no familiarity with the series or don't care for turn-based gameplay. It's charm will get its claws in you. There's a sequel in the works, I hope it's even more ambitious.

A very peculiar game. The idea and the implementation of it is great - super easy to understand, super easy to get into, makes for a lot of diverse puzzles with different solutions while still being able to challenge at some points. The setting is mostly good too - trying to escape from a giant underground testing facility? Not the most complex plot, but it makes for some good locations and a sense of progression.

It's obviously very inspired by Portal and used some of the good parts of it, but it's got the problem of trying too hard to lean onto that reference. The narrator references Aperture Science once and you think 'ok it's a reference, not a punchline but a reference' but then it keeps happening with no punchline or actual resolution. The whole narrative fizzles out, which is very unfortunate. But still, it provides good entertainment and is an actual adventure game that doesn't just let you run through hundreds of puzzles, which I appreciate.

This game is really good. The gameplay is satisfying, the world is epic, and the overall experience is definitely one worth having.

4.5 stars because a couple of the bosses have terrible designs, and Blighttown & Tomb of the Giants exist. Even so, the experience of defeat-frustration-retries-success is a one-of-a-kind experience that hasn't been emulated in any other game series. This is where the whole "Souls-like" experience starts, & for a reason: it all just works.

Get ready to be incredibly frustrated at a couple of areas/bosses, be angry at the zero hints the game gives you, and be very glad when it's all over: beating Dark Souls was one of the most memorable gaming experiences I've ever had, and it's well worth your time.

That said, if you want a comfortable, armchair gaming experience where you can sit down and rest easy, don't play this game. It's a 4.5 for me--challenge is what I'm looking for!--but it'd likely be a 0.5 for you.

Rain Project is a decent Touhou fangame which could have been great if it had more polish. The main thing that makes Rain Project stand out to me in the crowd of other touhou fangames is the more somber, reflective mood of the game and soundtrack.While it's not by any means a "grimsokyo" game, Rain Project does attempt to create an atmospheric setting for its interpretation of Sanae's origin story in Gensokyo. While the nerd emoji part of me is internally complaining about a lot of the locales and npcs not being accurate to the touhou canon, I have to admit it's pretty good stuff, that's only hampered slightly by some obnoxious memey references that feel out of place. Another thing I liked in rain project is the fast and snappy movement, which feels great in both the semi-open stages and boss fights. Once you have unlocked Sanae's full moveset and the stage shortcuts, you can really zip around the game world and schmoove on bosses, which is very satisfying.

Speaking of the boss fights, they feel like a bit of a mixed bag overall. Each boss has a lot of good concepts for their attack patterns, and I like that each have several spellcards to get through, but the execution is lacking at points. Whether it be the random platforms in Aya's boss making things a crapshoot, Tenshi's broken hitboxes or Hina's position bugging out so she's impossible to hit, each boss feels like there's some major flaw which makes me not enjoy these fights as much as I should. The final boss Kanako is a massive difficulty spike and her two final patterns are a festival of RNG, but she was still my favourite of the bosses overall just because of the music and how dramatic the background changes felt. Since the boss fights are the main aspect of gameplay in Rain Project, the lack of a boss rush mode or a secret boss fight for completing all of the sidequests also feel like missed opportunities. There are a few optional bosses hidden around but they lack substance compared to the main boss fights.

As a side note, the precision platforming section in the valley was the most obnoxious part of the game. It wasn't particularly difficult, but it's one of those things where you could tell the developers put it in just because Hollow Knight and/or Celeste did it, which is just not how I think indie devs should be approaching level design.

I did enjoy my time with Rain Project enough to play through the game twice, and I am interested in checking out the second game by this dev team, but to most people I can only give Rain Project a tentative recommendation. Play it if you like Sanae and her umbrella as much as I do.

At what point does a human dissolve into becoming just a mere resource? In the world of Armored Core, humans essentially have become nothing but a resource to the rich and powerful. The average human has been knocked down on the social standing as the capitalist fiends behind the scenes begin prioritizing robots and cybernetics. Armored Core is a game about humanity being replaced and how just a few powerful people can cause the demise of billions.

It's no surprise that Armored Core is a mecha game, compared to most other popular mecha series, Armored Core seems to take advantage of its genre more than any other mecha series. Gone are named characters of most series, as in the world of Armored Core, they have become completely irrelevant. Most structures have to accommodate the size of the armored core units, which creates this barren and dystopian atmosphere. The lack of music during levels creates more of a focus on the mechs themselves since most of the noises you'll be hearing come from combat. It creates a contrast between what you hear in battle, vs the groovy music heard in the menus.

When outside of battles, the player will have to pay close attention to their stats. Creating a mech in Armored Core is one of the biggest selling points with plenty of options making it seem like the combinations are endless. The game provides the player with stats that are essentially designed to overwhelm and complicate the player playing further into the idea that the human is insignificant. Having to deal with conflicting stats such as whether having a heavy part is worth it, and having to consider the cost of ammo for a specific weapon. However, considering this is From Softwares first dip into the mecha genre, it's not perfect. There seems to be a large array of items that just don't seem necessary. While the game seems to encourage having a custom and unique mech, it almost seems like by the halfway point of the game, I had myself a perfect mech that nobody would possibly be able to match. While there were some things that I could imagine changing, the only thing that cemented the idea that I did in fact have a perfect mech, was when I went online and saw most people were using an almost identical build to me. Mech building in Armored Core certainly isn't bad, but there is plenty of room for improvement.

One of the most obnoxious complaints I see about Armored Core is people complaining about the controls which has always baffled me because I always considered AC to have one of the greatest control schemes ever put in a game. The game will always make sure to remind you that you are controlling a mech and that the mech is more important than the human inside. You will feel the weight, and you will make every slight movement count. The actual controls themselves feel complicated similar to what is being felt inside the mech. No mech real mech would give the pilot a controller with two analog sticks and easy to learn controls. Armored Core doesn't care about the pilot. If the pilot dies, they will be replaced, meanwhile, if an AC Unit gets destroyed, It's gonna cost a lot.

Armored Core truly is a capitalist nightmare. A story about a few guys who got so rich that they feel like they're at the top of the world, and even then the ending cutscenes for each corporation show how their lack of respect for the human race caused them to get betrayed by the same robots they valued over humans. When technology goes too far, who will be there to stop it? When humans become irrelevant, we will become the machine and the machine will power over humanity until it is met with the next largest obstacle. Capitalism and greed creates an existential nightmare and will fuel the demise of humanity.

Side note: fuck the platforming segment in the final level.

Persona 3 is a pretty flawed game. Tartarus, though the layout is a lot more interesting than Persona 4’s hallway dungeons, requires you to get through 20 floors in order to reach a teleporter which are essentially checkpoints, which becomes very repetitive very quickly. Social links have a timer on them in which if you don’t hang out with them for a while, their social link will reverse, which on paper sounds interesting but just ends up bringing unnecessary pressure in trying to keep track of when to hang out with who and how long until the timer runs out rather than just going at my own pace and choosing which characters I want to hang out with. There is also very little to do in this game, especially at night, there are only a handful of places to increases social stats, even then, during the daytime you want to save as much time doing Social Links because there are only 2 social links at night, which means you spend pretty much half the game going to the arcade because it gives you the biggest increase in social stats out of anything else in the game.

However even with that said, to say that Persona 3 isn’t something special is a huge understatement. The atmosphere that this game creates is unparalleled compared to the rest of the series, the feeling of dread when exploring Tartarus, the feeling of nervousness when things get tense, the feeling of hope in the final month of the game and so on are all so well done. The characters were really fun and complex (though I wished they were more events where we hung out together) and I love the spin that having a Persona isn’t actually a great thing, the social link characters are pretty enjoyable as well, I like how it feels as though you are just hanging out with a friend, not a sudden saint ready to help somebody in need. The Tartarus bosses are extremely challenging and will truly test your abilities. The soundtrack is so good and the story, though starts off slow, quickly soars in quality near the end to give the best ending of any Persona game.

If you get past the clunkiness and repetitiveness, you will be in for an unforgettable experience!

After finishing undertale I really wanted something similar to it…I’m sure if I said that to anyone they’d all turn to me and go ‘just play earthbound/mother’ but unfortunately I’ve already done that so this will have to do.

After the surprising success of undertale, Toby fox was hoping to recycle one of his old ideas into his own undertale au just to jump on the trend. This idea would turn into deltarune, not only an anagram of undertale, but a game trying to be its own thing entirely…does it succeed? Kind of

You play as kris, a silent protagonist like in undertale but in this there’s just something different about him…(not gonna spoil here) you then meet suzie, a wolf girl who is basically the school bully, they then both get sucked into the dark world where they meet ralsei and are forced to close one of the dark fountains. The chapter tries to bring suzie closer to kris and it tries to show her that violence isn’t always the first option…which is gonna bring me into combat.

The combat in this game is…kind of better than undertale? Imo anyway. It’s a lot more exciting and built up then in undertale, which makes a lot of sense as undertale almost tries to deter you from killing but in chapter 1…it feels like they almost don’t really care. If you want to kill every enemy go for it, if you don’t you barely get anything (won’t spoil here) so it almost feels like it’s not worth it.

After playing chapter 2, the problems for chapter 1 sticks out cause it feels like chapter 2 does everything 10x better and fixes some of the grudges I have with this chapter…but I can explain that another day.

Great story, decent characters, wonderful music per usual, sans deltarune is now a thing

Once, there was an explosion, a bang that gave rise to life as we know it. And then, came the next explosion. An explosion that will be our last.

Those words from the opening of Hideo Kojima’s epic Death Stranding sat in the back of my head for the nearly 70 hours I spent playing the game. Kojima always has an underlying message with his projects and for some reason, those lines, among the hundreds of others within the dialogue, were the ones that stuck with me.

Even after getting the gist of the game's message midway through, it wasn’t until the game reached its twilight moments that I fully comprehended this quote’s gravity.

Death Stranding is a game that has been divisive for many reasons. Some won’t find anything appealing about the “Fed Ex simulator” as it has been mockingly reduced to and some find Kojima’s ego grating. Those are all fair assessments, but I think some people may be missing the point.

In this game, nothing is superfluous. In many open-world titles, which have littered the release windows this generation, all the emphasis is on the destinations. Rarely is time given to contextualize the game’s world. Open worlds merely serve to artificially extend the experience out, a sandbox that exists instead of thoughtful level design.

This couldn’t be further from the truth for Death Stranding.

In Death Stranding, gameplay consists of delivering items between destinations and encouraging denizens, existing in the wake of an apocalypse that has destroyed America, to join a new nation and become part of a connected network. You must efficiently adjust your inventory for optimal weight distribution while simultaneously traversing through hazardous territory that can range from swamps, rocky hills, and blizzard-laden mountain peaks that would make Everest shudder.

What happens at point A and point B is important, for sure. The people you make deliveries to are grateful for and eventually join the network you’re creating during your trek from the East to the West Coast of America. But the real meat and potatoes of the game is the experience of what happens during the journey.

Whereas navigating worlds in other games is often an afterthought — a way to artificially extend the experience — it is the game in Death Stranding. Some have compared it to walking simulators like Gone Home. But even in those games, the walking only serves to vector the player between items and points of interest. All of the exposition will occur when reaching these locations but nothing really occurs between them.

Every aspect of the gameplay is methodical. You have to plan ahead and decide what tools are most important since they take up weight just like the cargo you will be carrying. You can be thrown off balance by rocks, slopes, or water. You can run out of stamina while trying to balance your load and end up dropping and damaging it. Mercenaries can try to steal it or even kill you. Every moment of this game demands your attention and engagement.

I expected Death Stranding to be a statement of games not needing to be fun to be good, like Spec Ops: The Line or Depression Quest. But that wasn’t the case.

Death Stranding is a blast. All of the game’s meticulous mechanics and contextualization result in an addictive, rewarding gameplay loop that shaved hours off my days before I realized it.

When playing Death Stranding, The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus came to mind. Camus’s central argument is that in the face of overwhelming adversity and the apparent insignificance one person’s existence may have, shouldn’t individuals just kill themselves? Get it over with? If there’s no purpose, if the universe is apathetic to our struggles, then why bother? What’s the point?

Camus analogizes this futility with the Greek tale of Sisyphus, a being who is cursed by the gods to carry a boulder up a hill by day only to have it fall down at night. Then to do it again every day for eternity. Given the burden he incessantly carries on his shoulders and the futility of his actions, one could assume him miserable.

But in rejecting nihilistic thoughts and finding purpose in the actions he can control, defining his own existence, and moving forward even when something might seem fruitless, one can imagine Sisyphus happy.
Comparatively, when Sam Bridges, the player character, feels what he is doing may serve no purpose, he carries on. He also does so in the face of nihilistic antagonists such as Higgs, who is aware of a systematic disaster that will end all life. His motivation is to expedite humanity’s extinction in the face of its inevitable end.

This brings us back to that opening quote. Near the end of the game, I realized Death Stranding was a commentary on the global climate crisis – that this seemingly inescapable calamity facing our planet means we should probably just not care.

But Death Stranding says otherwise.

There is a purpose in the struggle. Purpose in the moment-to-moment decisions we make. Purpose in the relationships we build with those around us.

One of the core gameplay mechanics is asynchronous multiplayer. If I reach an obstacle, I can use one of my tools to build a bridge to cross a ravine or drop a rope to rappel down a cliff. These things you left behind by you will appear in other players’ games to offer them relief if they don’t share the same tools to build what’s necessary. It speaks to a level of communal effort.

This ties into the game’s social system of “likes.” Players can click a dedicated like button, resulting in positive reinforcement and doubling the same appreciation that non-player characters have for Sam and the player by extension.

Norman Reedus’s performance as Sam and Mads Mikkelson’s as Cliff Unger are outstanding. Well-acted and voiced, the characters all feel human. Kojima’s camera work rivals that of some film directors, and the attention to detail is staggering.

The relationship with BB, your infantile companion who can sense the BTs (who are made of a substance very similar in appearance and viscosity to oil), the game’s main antagonistic force, was genuine. I ended up caring about BB as if they were a real person. One of the most poignant moments in the game involves the culmination of Sam and BB’s relationship, which came after the narrative climax and had me reaching for tissues.

Death Stranding is flawed, as all games are. The script can be clunky, and Kojima’s penchant for convoluted character development still remains. However, the genius of Death Stranding is in its confrontation of existence which captures the essence of the digital age by using gameplay to manifest our collective pathos.

What I took from this game is that though things might seem bleak, none of us are alone in our struggles. We have to take things day by day and work together towards building a future and that a better world is always possible.

Nothing is truly futile and all we have is us.

A video game about making video games while showing love for video games but also the baggage that comes from making video games.

Suda's absolute masterpiece for putting himself out there in writing and showing his struggles and love for the industry he's put work into for decades now.

Everything from the bizarre levels, absolutely eccentric soundtrack, and writing that puts it at the top of Suda game. This game is a bizarrely bland but also engaging piece of work with some of the wildest choices I've seen in terms of aesthetics and references.

The gameplay definitely won't be for everyone and it definitely drags for too long in a few stages, but I'll tell you one thing:

The second DLC is one of the greatest pieces of gaming media ever created and drops this for a boss tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eemi8NrrPTE