A series that was once at the cutting edge of game design has officially ran out of tricks, although this was pretty much already the case with DS3 6 years ago.

Very frontloaded main quest, exploring Limgrave, Liurnia and accidentally stumbling into Caelid was very impressive and gave the game a sense of adventure.

There is also a staggering amount of freedom given to the player. You can access Liurnia, Volcano Manor and Atlus Plateau and many other areas from the beginning without killing anything.

Unfortunately there is a very evident nose dive after Leyndell, Mountaintop of the giants is practically empty in comparison to the 3 earlier mentioned areas. Farum Azula is practically a straight line with possibly the worst boss in the entire series.

This nosedive extends to the side content as well, the level of recycled content in the dungeons/caves/mines is beyond embarrassing. If this was any other dev aside from the current hivemind darling then forums would be rammed with your typical internet gamer rage.

Overall i'm glad I played it, but it's just clear to me that Souls is tired, the game conforms heavily to the tropes that earlier games established to the point of it being mundane. I was rolling my eyes when the mid boss anime power up cutscene played on the ~10th different fight. Sure it was cool when Ludwig did it but that was back in 2015. Time to get some new tricks Fromsoft.

Today is the 20th of January 2022. I finished this game on the 26th of November last year. Every day since then I have woke up thinking about this game.

When characters in a movie are playing a game on the TV with a PS2 controller, this is the game on the TV. Cruelty Squad was made by a man who has heard of the concept of a game but doesn't have the facilities to actually play one. This game is the opposite of a novelist living in a cave for 20 years to write his magnum opus. This is a man who has plugged his brain into the mainframe. It isn't that Cruelty Squad is post-post-post-modernist - Cruelty Squad is post-criticism, it is caveman art drawn with faeces, it is a sociological phenomenon.

A QWERTY keyboard will wash up on a beach 1000 years from now and anthropologists will use it as proof that we had 100 fingers. They will play Cruelty Squad and say we were blind and deaf.

The levels in Cruelty Squad are impossibilities. Ever since Adventure was released in 1980 we have been hurtling down a predetermined path laid out by God and level designers, alternating between vast open spaces and linear corridors forever, like a fractal. With every game released, the remaining pool of possible games that are left to be created shrinks, not just because one more was just made, but also that the existence of art will influence the existence of other art. There isn't an anti-Mario-64. No one would make an anti-Mario-64. Their brain is permanently cursed with the knowledge that Mario 64 exists and all future decisions will be affected by that.

That isn't to say anything about the quality of Mario 64. The trajectory of video games has been altered by lesser and worse games, but alas. Cruelty Squad is the product of a person with no brain to curse, a spotless mind. Every single level I played surprised me with its ingenuity. I often found myself laughing out loud, not at the non-sequitur or clever jokes, but at how ridiculous and funny the level design is.

Hacer un videojuego sobre agentes secretos de la psique. Adentrarnos físicamente en los pensamientos de los demás, cada mente un mundo. Sin reglas, sin necesario apego a lógica espacial alguna, con la imaginación como único límite a lo que pueda presentarse en pantalla. Y que no haya nada nuevo ni original ni creativo ni salvaje ni sorprendente en él. Que todo sea apenas adorno pseudosurrealista para las ideas más masticadas, el diseño más convencional, el desarrollo más anodino, la jugabilidad más blanda. Supongo que los rincones más recónditos de la mente se rigen a rajatabla por el good-game-design.

El término disonancia ludonarrativa se nos ha aparecido hasta en la sopa, pero cuando la discrepancia es entre fondo y forma, ¿qué nombre le ponemos? Para eso todavía no han sacado un palabro. Por el bien de este texto digámosle, no sé, incoherencia formafondil. Bueno, pues la incoherencia formafondil es a Psychonauts 2 lo que la disonancia ludonarrativa a BioShock. Vamos, que la contradicción es sangrante, y el videojuego un plataformas del montón repleto de coleccionables engañifa.

En su día ya me disgustó notoriamente el Psychonauts original, pero al menos aquel diseño primerizo, tedioso y chapucero poseía ambición, intentaba cosas. Cada mente una forma de operar diferente. Lo que se llama tener espíritu. ¿Esta secuela? Un doblaje con chispa en un videojuego sin alma.

Stop me if you've heard this one before

We're gonna make an rpg. It's gonna be made in rpg maker. It's gonna be needlessly quirky and random, there's gonna be a jarring about face turn with attempts at drama that fall flat, Non characters will populate the story, and its climax will rip off a much better game that you'd rather be playing

Sound familiar? Welcome to indie rpgs of the last decade