When I first played Alan Wake I came out of the game thinking its writing was an absolute mess that debacled what made Max Payne interesting. I thought Sam Lake had gone too much to the extreme of the tropes he was supposed to subvert that he had lost the edge.

A few years passed and a sort of reevaluation happened in my mind; this was not a game about a good writer trapped in its own piece, it was about a bad writer trapped in its own shit. Now, through the remaster I came to a new conclusion that I think relates much more to its author, and it's kind of a middle ground between those two. Alan Wake is just mediocre, but the point is that he is on a deadline.

Alan Wake is not better or worse than any of your bestselling crime authors who fills the bookshelves, he's just a guy suffocated by his own character. This of course relates to the whole Sam Lake - Max Payne thing, with Remedy working on this project for 7 years without knowing exactly what to do and how to make a whole new thing after achieving a cultural hit with both Max Payne games.

Alan Wake is both the tale of a damned common writer and of its own creation, it's nothing new to write about how you can't write, but it's quite hard to do it with enough flair to build a world that can work on this many layers. Alan is a creation by Sam Lake who also created his own hard boiled grime noir detective, but Alan is also being written inside this story by another writer, one who already passed through this cycle of fighting against your creation to get something out of it, which opens a whole new world of possibilities about the meaning and significance of the game itself as a creation.

The brilliance of Alan Wake comes from how its metalayered story resonates with the notion of it being a game itself; its systems working to help Alan and the player through the writing and design, and making collectibles or secrets in the form of ammo crates a coherent helping hand from Thomas Zane (the writer of Alan's Story), Alan itself writing the plot of the game and the whole of Remedy designing the game.

The game manages to build a world of writers and stories that mix up and explicitly (and unashamedly) namedrops a whole lot of writers that might be an inspiration or just a joke. It threads on a line so interesting and dangerous that falls into parody at times, while managing to consistently feel like a rushed yet expertly craft script where everything feels cliché, but builds on itself to metacomment about not only the cliches, but the impossibility to run from them.

And while the game talks about this, it also feels like it missteps on certain decisions on the gameplay and level design. The game is constrained to linear levels that try open up a bit but never manage to do it right, and just let's you travel trough empty spaces that sometimes help to inmerse you in the mood, and most of the times just results in wasted time. This fight inside the game to be two things at the same time, the TV show esque with its own "PREVIOUSLY ON" and musical moments to end each chapter, and a game on its own that wants to open up and give freedom to the player is weirdly idiosyncratic now for the game, but never manages to reconcile in itself. The shooting suffers from the same middle ground, it wants the spectacle but also the horror and tension, and retains the slow-mo epic moments of Max Payne but with a completely broken ammo management that only works on a few ocasions on chapter 4 and 5.

It's a fascinating game all the time, a clear case of a flawed masterpiece that stimulates when it works and when it doesn't. One of the few Twin Peaks inspired games that has manage to actually give enough depth to its message to create a world worth diving into.

The perfect example of style over substance, with a couple of good ideas that can't hold the game together. Such a shame that a game that cares about movility in an open space with no handholding to let you breath its space doesn't have any sense of cohesion.

Tchia seems to be a pretty comfy game with low stakes but builds itself on top of a "save the world and the person you love the most" plot, with enemy camps and an actual villain that ruins the atmosphere every second it stays in the way of its mechanics. And the actual "leit motif" of this game, to celebrate New Caledonia, doesn't feel more developed than to read a panflet made by a tourist agency. It's nice to play songs and see local dishes, but there's never a compelling character, a tale about its history that actually teaches the player how this culture functions and how has been built and developed.

And that is my main problem with Tchia, it doesn't know what it wants to be; and the point that's supposed to articulate the game is flat and condescending to the player and to the place it was meant to celebrate. The celebration of a culture can't be sincere without showing the conflict that culture has been transformed by, and the refusal of any political conversation by telling the story as a kids tale is intrinsically problematic when that estructure only shows the "tourist friendly" side of the place is trying to commemorate.

Team Ninja is punk. From outside it does not seem so, and perhaps in its first steps, the most remembered and acclaimed, they had less of this new spirit; but this renewal of Team Ninja that arises from blatantly copying and without fear with Nioh, doubling the bet with a sequel and relying on the arms of Square Enix to do a double or nothing in the most absolute shamelessness with Stranger of Paradise, finds a very particular reflection in Wo Long.

Wo Long is his Sekiro. No one denies it and no one seems to care too much because we are in a different situation. That Team Ninja has needed references is obvious, and its mechanism of copying the older brother has not been unique or particularly good with what we have behind us. Nioh is a gargantuan game that after five hours gives you a nail and asks you to pierce it because inside it only has air and Nioh 2 as much as it pains me I have not even tried it because the formula immediately clogs. Nioh is a game that is consumed, not played; you have to devour it quickly and without consideration, you have to enter it as someone enters an all-you-can-eat buffet, not valuing each dish and each flavor but filling your mouth so much that the palate does not know what signal has to send to the brain; you have to incapacitate yourself to continue enjoying the combat and the corridors in an animal way, without thinking about level design and much less about the nonsense that the characters spit out of their mouths.

Wo Long is not that far from this. It is also a game that is enjoyed by being devoured and that wants to be opened in half and exploded. But where Nioh was rude and rough Wo Long tries to be cathartic and aware. There are many edges in Team Ninja games that must be overlooked to get carried away by the playable core, and I do not want to be misunderstood, the shortcomings of Wo Long are clear from the first moment because they are already the idiosyncrasies that define the way of making action games of the studio. But there is a clear attempt to reformulate itself without bending through design with some changes that modify the formula enough for the vision that unifies the game as a whole to be seen more clearly, and that makes revisiting the ideas that did not work in Nioh by playing with the form but leaving the structure feel correct.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Wo Long does quite a few things well, and one, the combat system, is so satisfying that it justifies the entire game. The backbone is the parry, as it already was in Sekiro the idea of embodying a nameless warrior who faces combat through blocking and counterattack is immediately pleasant; and Wo Long does not hesitate to emulate some great moments from it in a direct way and above all trying to find its own click with its particular system of parrys. Also like in Sekiro, the basis of each combat lies in the posture bar; an energy system that is spent when we are attacked, block badly or dodge. A way to encapsulate in a single meter the result of combat, blows given and received, like the energy of the character itself with dodges. This posture bar is also present in all our enemies, and works in a similar way, we can lower them by attacking them, correctly blocking their attacks or stalking them from behind when they have not yet seen us to stab them while maintaining stealth. The classic combat of energy and life changes to a kind of boxing confrontation, where each one fights to lower the other's bar, to achieve not immediately killing but breaking posture. And this breaking of posture leads us to the possibility of an execution that, this time yes, significantly lowers the life bar and in our mind represents the victory or defeat of a round, with seconds of delicious animation in the stake to breathe and celebrate or murmur between teeth and seek confidence to win in the next. So far everything is Sekiro, there are no severe changes, simply a base that was already brilliant in Sekiro and that gave us the adrenaline of sword clashes like rarely has been transferred to our control. It is in the way of focusing how we execute the parrys and how it is transferred to the command where Team Ninja seeks its own identity. Everything works also starting from the same button, but the twist it executes is interesting, and what it generates in the playable loop even more so.

In Wo Long the parry’s done with the dodge button, and we dodge with a double tap of the same, this means that speaking in Xbox buttons a tap of B slightly moves us to the side we choose and serves primarily to, adjusted to the timing of the enemy blow, block an attack and lower the posture of the attacker, and the double consecutive tap of B will make us do a long roll that leaves us defenseless during its execution but moves us far enough to gain perspective and space in most confrontations. There is a block button, LB, which serves us to hold our position in place by blocking enemy attacks, but drains our posture bar. This mapping on the controller makes Wo Long focus much more on our mobility than on our rhythm; being the parry the center of combat be linked to movement, blocking goes from being the standard to the alternative and forcing us to bend to combat through parry will make us constantly move because each tap in search of a counter will also be one that will displace us slightly through the scenario. This paradigm shift does not modify the premise of its combat, in the end this is another kind of rhythmic game that forces us to understand the combos of our enemies as sequences of attacks by times that we have to learn and memorize. The main change does not come so much in what we do but in how, and that constant mobility that it imposes makes everything constantly spectacular and opulent, so that we enjoy more the sight than the challenge. The combat is tight and precise, but it does not penalize as much as it seems and the parry windows are wide, the enemies except for a few occasions always have quite telegraphed attacks and although there are stones along the way and we die repeatedly, there is always that feeling that the game does not want to put its foot on the accelerator of difficulty. Not for lack of desire or ideas, but for self-containment.

Nioh started an interesting path in which several of the tics and obsessions that would be seen later were in a primitive state, and where the lack of polish was attempted to be obscured by copying systems that did not work. The online implementation was one of them, it did not work particularly well although it tried to have its own identity, but it was in difficulty where I think they did not know how to measure and frustration at times took over the intensity that the game required of one to get carried away by its combat. Ninja Gaiden is known for being tough but Nioh set up walls in the form of bosses with sometimes impossible to understand attacks and with fights that ended when we were lucky and not experienced. It was not the majority of the time but enough to go from challenge to exhaustion.

However, we do not have that here. The only wall is the first boss, who in order to show us how the parry works serves as a fire test so that we cannot start without perfectly understanding its timings, and in an exercise as noble as regular it serves us to learn and, if we do not leave it for impossible in the first hour, a problem that many people will face, endure with a game that always wants to stimulate us with the breadth of its combos and animations, where the memorability of the bosses comes more from their appearances and the catharsis of chaining attacks on them than from the challenge of finishing them off.
This change from challenge to pleasure is important, because that is where the great change in the formula that Stranger of Paradise already presented but that here is transparent really comes; although Team Ninja imitates From Software, their games are pure action. The spectacle always comes before the challenge, and the animations are a concatenation of pirouettes and jumps that drink much more from Wuxia than from Dark Souls. And the systems that support this idea are as round and clear as the combat itself.

We return to an RPG level system that seems more and more outdated but with a twist that works like a shot. Despite the fact that we can and must increase our level of experience and each mission has its recommended level (of course), all missions have within them a kind of level multiplier. That is, it does not matter that we go to a mission with a recommended level of 12 or 55, we will always start it with an indicator on the screen that says 0, and that is filled with a limit of 20 as we finish off the enemies of the level without dying. Up to here it is a twist that rewards us extra for risking confrontations and rewards us with more damage when hitting and less when receiving, but if we die the counter is reset. And here is where one of the most interesting points of Wo Long comes in; the plot revolves around the era of the Three Kingdoms in China, which serves us to establish each level as a kind of territorial battle in the great war in which we must not only get to the final enemy, but “conquer” the area. This means raising banners throughout the map that are distributed more or less clearly, and each banner we raise will raise our minimum level. It is a lot of information, but basically the game rewards us for exploring levels with a lesser penalty upon death, which in turn makes us level up more because we will find more enemies to kill and better equipment to wear. It is an artificial curve in each level that engages, and structuring always in levels of approximately one hour in duration feels like an immediate gratification that, added to the micro-rewards of combat in the form of animations, sounds and graphics, generate an incredibly stimulating loop that is very difficult to leave.

They are simple systems that work exactly for that and that feed back in very direct ways at the most superficial level but that gain a depth that I surely have not even seen to its ultimate consequences. These two ideas are powerful enough to hold the whole game, but it is when you start to see how the rest of the systems work on a similar scale without overwhelming with abusive tutorials, letting you experiment and try things when the game starts to connect all those things that the study had left abandoned. And in the background with these systems we still have more to help us not stagnate. We can invoke AI companions without any complication to face the bosses, we have a string of spells to use that can tilt the balance quite in our favor and even an invocation with a sort of added Devil Trigger so that we cannot complain about lack of options to face any combat, even the equipment with statistics (a rather severe problem that they ended up facing by simplifying it with a single button to put you the "best possible" in Stranger of Paradise) impacts the parry window, expanding or reducing the frames we have of action but showing up simple and clear in the menu through a very simple color and number code that is noticeable during gameplay. Everything continues to feel as extreme and expansive as before in these accompanying systems, but the playable core is polished to allow us to flow by introducing us only into the scale we want.

That is why Wo Long is a victory. Because it is the first time I see Team Ninja free within their own mannerisms; without renouncing certain vices that are here for better or worse and are already part of their usual repertoire, but polishing them enough so as not to overwhelm those who do not want to see them. It is an admirable display of honesty and lack of shame as Stranger Of Paradise already was, but where that one shone for the twist it presented to the first Final Fantasy, wallowed in its radical sense of humor and defined itself as a game of the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation, this feels like a step forward. Wo Long will not revolutionize anything but it is an action game with intention and focus, still far from reaching the standards of the best Capcom or Platinum but with enough to say to justify itself outside of copying. And where there is a game with a parry as pleasant as this, it is worth being there, no matter the cost.

Lo tenéis en español en mi web :) https://irrationalreviews6.wordpress.com/2023/03/06/critica-wo-long-fallen-dynasty/

What is Disco Elysium about? About fighting against oneself. About understanding the origin of social and political defeats. About finding an identity when life (alcohol) completely erases everything you wanted to leave behind. About class struggle. About the defeat of labor movements. About the farce of social democracy. About what is beyond. About the masks in each ideology. About mirrors. About ghosts. About decadence. About ideals. But above all, Disco Elysium speaks of dreams.

It is very complex to focus a discourse around a game that seems to contain within itself every possible theory and its criticism; Disco Elysium loads itself with a suffocating density that seeks to condense into an extremely complex system of dialogues, decisions and actions that define us within its world the fundamental bases of the most important political theories, their possible acceptations within a society that has lived through an armed uprising, the overthrow of a crown and the violent response of a liberal coalition. In each character we encounter in the world there is a different interpretation of what it means to take a political position within a context as explosive as the almost literal calm between storms. From old communists who mourn the loss of the revolution that raised them, fascists who celebrate their fall but lament that the monarchical regime did not re-establish itself, social democrats who believe themselves above the failed and neoliberals who believe that the future is theirs.

It is a very general image because the vast range of grays that Disco Elysium generates from these ideological premises is fascinating, and it is because from a clearly leftist perspective it knows how to criticize and approach each ideology from a position of deep understanding (not respect), through which the decisions that each individual in its world has taken to get there are legitimate even if their results have led them to be on opposite sides. Putting ourselves in the skin of a policeman from a self-established faction that "upholds the law" is the ideal point to fully immerse ourselves in a world that we find as newborns. Our protagonist loses his memory and we find him naked, in a dark primordial void that calls him to lose himself within himself, that asks us, shouts at us, not to wake up in that world full of pain and noise; to heed our little reptilian brain and sleep, cease to exist and not seek a return to a world that has abandoned us.

But we wake up.

Revachol opens before us in full view, with as much misery as mysticism; we find it frozen in time, in a social convulsion as enormous as to contain within it the seeds of a new war without anyone seeming alarmed by what is to come, too concerned with what was and without the perspective to think about what will come. Echoes in the streets of a return, of a new change that will awaken from lethargy a society consumed by misfortune and death. And in the background Disco music and an inspector who does not even remember his own name.

Disco Elysium then begins with a murder, a disruptive element that stirs the streets with virulence. The catalyst for an explosion between factions that needed a stimulus to raise their flags and fight again without the moral burden of starting a conflict as the aggressor. A small-scale war between a corrupt union and an abusive company, which in seeking to form their own interpretation of organized crime pervert and destroy their workers. It is the first example of a politically charged climate, on the verge of explosion, where every corrupt system takes advantage of the needs and hopes of its members to exploit them for the sake of a greater end that actually only benefits the interests of its leaders.

This first clash between social democrats and neo-liberals is a perfect example of how each of these currents has replaced its predecessors in Revachol being more moderate but also more profoundly corrupt. After the struggle between absolute ideals comes a lowering of aspirations that betrays its origins, and in the search for a status quo that allows them to survive and gain weight they are irremediably perverted by playing under the rules of a system that cannot maintain anything incorruptible. The neo-liberals only crave growth at the expense of the worker and the social democrats create systems to "help" workers that necessarily lead them to exploitation, and assuming the premises of capitalism they seek growth and expansion at the expense of their workforce forming something much more like a criminal gang than a union of the working class with a collaborative purpose. It will be by meeting their leaders and representatives that we will begin to see the nuances; the disenchanted neo-liberals beheaded by their own nature represented by a woman who takes advantage of her ideological strength; a neo-liberal textbook so disenchanted with the rest that she could only trust herself and has been dragged into an egoistic and destructive worldview. A union led by a coward who seeks to hide his shady business under a veneer of paternalism and does not hesitate to use extortion and deception against those he should defend to expand his command. Both are perfect representatives of the betrayal of their ideology to their own worldview but fervent defenders of thoughts they have not wanted to develop enough to fall under their own weight. They live obscured by the need to find a reason to live in a convulsed world where the absolutes of the past have been destroyed and nothing seems firm.

They live confined by the need for an ideology that defines them.

It is an interesting and rich world construction because it allows us to speak, observe and even define ourselves as these new currents that have taken command today as well as those factions of the past that have fallen into disgrace. We will meet both elderly people who belonged to opposing factions in the war and young people who believe that under a new prism the ideology of the past can be that of the future. We encounter clashing discourses that allow us to long for the past as much as to insult it and literally spit on its legacy; from the perspective of a game proclaimed as communist the constant struggle with its failure and its inability to change in a post-revolutionary society is fascinating.

Disco Elysium is communist, but it is knowing itself worn out and discouraged by the little resonance it can have in the real world. It is a universe built on events that sound close to us, that try to replicate historical facts with their own weight from the Soviet Revolution to Chernobyl or the fall of the USSR itself. It is not difficult to imagine Revachol as an uchronian Russia that contains within itself fragments of France, Germany or the United States for its language and its ideological references, but also for its atmosphere and its aesthetics. Through all these references a world is constructed that wants to reflect on issues that affect us day by day, and that is not afraid to introduce within all these sociopolitical issues supernatural elements that appeal to us emotionally. And that is where Disco Elysium manages to make a difference by being not only a passionate political fiction that reflects on ideals, their underpinnings in postmodernity and the need for identification in a political and moral organization, but also a reading as focused on ideology as on cosmology.

Although the world of Disco Elysium presents itself so marked by its politics we always perceive signs of something that works beyond our own perception. Our protagonist is defined under our command and the attribution of experience points classifies him as a man more devoted to his emotional part, to his intellect, his physical or his motor capacity. Within these four sections there are subdivisions but the most interesting thing is that by defining ourselves under these categories we can increase the preference or style that marks us but not absolutely close any path; our detective is a pre-existing man within the world and one of our missions is to decipher him as much as to define him. The barrier between avatar and character being so blurred in Disco Elysium allows us to delve much deeper into how the consolidation of its world precedes us, its politics is one that we discover but we are also susceptible to being carried away by our perception of what escapes our reason. Although he is a man led by logic if we so decide we will always have, even if we do not want to, a spur of Inner World or Chills that we could easily translate into our instinct. And that instinct constantly incites us to seek in what, despite being outside reason, calls us and seeks our attention.
Our definition within the world comes, like everything in Disco Elysium, from translating its mechanics and pulling one thread or another in its conversations. Our self-determination in the game is what integrates us, marks our path and what we are judged more or less veiled. What clothes we wear, whether or not we do a series of secondary ones, or take or not take alcohol, is something that identifies us and allows us to choose our path within a range that closes us to perceive a concrete reality. These decisions are marked within a context but defining ideology and cosmology within Disco Elysium is very different because one is a conscious decision and the other is, as in any role-playing game, a throw of the dice.

Our closeness to the paranormal and the irrational is what allows us to approach universal truths within what the game allows us to see. The extraordinary, the unusual, works in Disco Elysium as a kind of missing link, always completely out of reach of our gaze but present in the amalgam of drama, tension and comedy that underlies almost every scene in the game. The closeness of our character to perceive those things that we should not be able to perceive naturally is always framed in a character who, let us remember, starts from a hangover so strong that he does not even remember his identity; such a powerful premise gives rise to the lens through which we look at the rest of the game always starting from a lack of full confidence in our avatar. Within its range of dialogues there will always be purely illogical or comical things, and when we are asked for an act of faith it would seem complicated to give it to him knowing his background. But that is precisely where Disco Elysium fuses what makes it so special and where it manages to generate through these two pillars a true discourse that unifies everything.
Yes, Disco Elysium is about dreams.

From here on, the content of the text is direct spoiler of the final stretch of the game. I highly recommend that if you have not finished Disco Elysium you do so before reading it because the game is incredible and because little sense will make this out of context.

Why does such a cynical and disenchanted game decide to define itself so decisively as communist? Disco Elysium proposes a failed revolution; a worn and abandoned world by its own failure where the possibility of revolution was real, where the right steps were taken and the armed uprising was successful, but where the war ended the dream and the fall of the working class did not return it to its previous state, but destroyed the idea of a better future. It seems that Disco Elysium is burned out. That it speaks from defeat and despair. And it's true. Halfway.

In the first openly oneiric sequence of the game we find ourselves hung in the position of the victim of the murder we are investigating. It is the first of many nights in which we will find ourselves conversing with ourselves, lamenting our own existence, our decisions and our failures. It is a constant and alternating dialogue that we live in our waking hours, where only small hints remind us of our stored pain; only in solitude, in sleep, do we achieve a true dialogue that begins by drowning us and leading us directly to glimpse ourselves dead and hung but that each night gives us a little more truce. In each new conversation with our own brain we understand each other a little more, we empathize with our own pain and we are able to transcend pain. Our mind warns us that it will not stop hurting, that hopelessness and the desire to end it all will always be there, and that the defense mechanisms we activated the night we decided to forget will go away and face us with the greatest possible terror. The origin of pain. Lost love.

The last of these scenes presents Harry confronting our beloved directly, as always in Disco Elysium our attitude can vary deeply depending on who we decide to be, and in these sections of sleep it is even easier to get lost in our own sorrow, letting ourselves be carried away by impulses that make us do what will cause us the most pain. But despite the fact that the game remains open to our interpretation, the tone has modulated and this seems to be a point of no return. In her last intervention, the projection of our beloved tells us that she will not see us again, but we will see her; and projected into the body a divinity moves away from us, leaving us alone again, ready to wake up. But we are not the same, no matter how bad the conversation goes and we cling to the unreachable desire, we have come to a notion that is even clearer when we later talk to Kim about our dream. Harry accepts the pain and recognizes the trauma.
Despite the fact that Disco Elysium starts cynical and hopeless, after assimilating pain, loss and disappointment within itself, our character, and his own world, show us a reality much stronger than our sorrow. Harry does not understand how to live with such deep sorrow that not even alcohol has been able to erase, he is doomed to confront his trauma every night, and every time he remembers the slightest thing about his past, there is a palpable physical and mental damage, which the game marks as such and which can kill us of a heart attack. But it is in the passage of days, in acceptance and dialogue where we can achieve enough serenity to face mourning and move on, not forgetting and renouncing the past, but confronting it as an immovable reality from which to grow and believe.

Several of the most secondary elements lead us to do things a priori ridiculous and very out of tone for what a police officer investigating a homicide case "should" do. We can help a group of kids set up an alternative music club in a church, constantly try to appeal to our inner world or extracorporeal notions during investigations, or help an elderly couple look for magical creatures never found. During the mission to help set up the music club we can find an empty space, nothingness, a 2mm hole that absorbs everything. It is a terrifying notion, the existence of a tangible void that the characters look at with horror and seek to explain so as not to succumb to something they do not understand. It is the gaze into the abyss that confirms that such an abyss exists, and that in a world so ruled by rational notions or human impulses the supernatural is an imbalance that explains as much as it anguishes.

But despite this the game continues. The positioning of this cosmic horror is a secondary mission. Its discovery will not incapacitate us or stop us and the rest of the world will continue to spin and our role in it will continue to have value. A value that is discovered at the end, with the appearance of the phasmid.

The final revelation of Disco Elysium is that the elderly couple wandering in search of extraordinary creatures was right, and at the moment when reality shows itself harshest, with the identity of the assassin (an old communist refugee on an island) uncovered, the universe has a last message for us in the most beautiful scene of the entire game. The conversation with the phasmid gives meaning to all of Disco Elysium, above what shines as a game, of all the social, political and thematic construction that it has at every step, this conversation is the game's response to our doubts. Harry was right. The elderly were right.

In the series of missions when you define yourself as a communist, the last conversation you can have ends in a question. The greatest doubt about what communism means. And despite the fact that you build the phrase with whatever argument you want, the resolution will always be the same. Although it has failed, although its theoretical construction is not perfect and although its realization has involved a war, it is worth believing in an intangible. The dream of the liberation of the people is so strong because beyond all its theoretical construction the only thing that a revolutionary political current can really sustain itself on are intangible ideals. In dreams and hopes of a better future that supported by political theories generate unity. In the existence of a creature that seems rushes and modifies the mind of the human race. In a 2mm hole that absorbs everything in its path. That those flowers were at the crime scene for a reason and I promise you, Kim, that they had a reason even if it seems crazy.

Behind all the cynicism in Disco Elysium there is hope in its future; that Harry despite having seen that the reality in which he believed has changed axis completely continues to believe that he has to help people. The most revolutionary thing about Disco Elysium is that it believes that despite believing that we are doomed to fail, it is worth fighting because we are not certain that this is true. That even though we believe that reason and experience support us, we must believe above what our mind tells us. That that 8% throw can go well. That we can make the people of Revachol live a little better than the day before. And that we can be better.
Because deep down everything makes sense.
Because this is about dreams.

Lo tenéis en castellano en mi blog :) https://rb.gy/8n2qtt

Creo que lo más interesante de Sable está en qué no hace. Ante la propuesta de hacer un mundo abierto no va a agobiarte con iconos y misiones que rellenen estadísticas vacías. Viendo que bebe directamente de la filosofía más moderna de diseño en la saga Zelda, no va a centrarse en grandes mazmorras o puzzles intrincados. Sabiéndose limitado pero ambicioso Sable despliega todas sus cartas (pocas) a un solo concepto que guíe el camino: libertad.

Su mundo nunca nos fascinará por su frescura, lo hará por su naturalidad rebelde, por una idiosincrasia que mezcla Dune y Ghibli y que consigue tener lo mágico y atractivo del primero con lo bondadoso y particular del segundo; cada nuevo entorno se erige tan seguro de si mismo como el propio juego en su conjunto, sabiendo que lo poco bien construido genera intriga, que los escasos elementos que pueblan el mundo de Sable impactan porque nunca redundan, y cuando el diseño puede pecar de reiterativo nos damos cuenta de que esa línea de misiones que ya estaba empezando a repetirse ha acabado, y que la lección que nos ha enseñado es válida y resonante. Donde no llega por presupuesto, llega con su texto, unos diálogos cálidos y reconfortantes, con tanta poética como prosa, que consiguen rellenar los huecos de personajes que no pueden llegar a definirse por sus animaciones o sentimientos que se sintonizan a través de la música y ganan fuerza con las cuatro palabras que en el texto le dan voz. Y es que Sable al final es un ejercicio de contención soberbio, caracteriza con poco y nos lleva de la mano con muy buen gusto, dejando que el peso de cada minuto lo lleve su música y su preciosista diseño artístico; y que si vamos a recordar cinco momentos en nuestro viaje sean todos los más cuidados y trabajados que el juego pueda dar de sí.

Y es que si decía que lo más interesante es lo que Sable no hace es porque lo que hace es brillante, pero dudo que pudiera llegar a más, y sin embargo no lo necesita. Un paseo por sus dunas es suficiente para generar un ritmo y un discurso, una poética en las imágenes y la cadencia de su gameplay que tiene carácter, y dónde me he encontrado más veces de las que me esperaba parando a sacar fotos, pensando en cada una de ellas en el placer que me estaba generando el hecho de sencillamente observar, pasear y moverme; un mundo rico en lo más importante, personalidad.

Si Sable decide poner el foco en tan pocas cosas y desarrollarlas para dejarnos siempre con ganas de ver qué hay al otro lado del mapa, que su resolución final sea la de decidir qué queremos hacer con nuestra vida es aún más resonante, porque la clave no está en la elección sino en la renuncia. La exploración, el placer y la sorpresa adolescente nos llevan necesariamente a la maduración de la elección, a que sabiendo todo lo que el juego nos ha puesto en los dientes y nos ha dejado probar levemente, decidamos dónde nos gustaría marcar la dirección de nuestro camino. Un juego más grande que Sable habría planteado entonces una nueva historia, donde todo lo vivido hubiera sido tan solo un prólogo de una épica aventura para salvar al mundo de una amenaza colosal. Sable sabe mejor que lo crucial está en nuestro progreso como individuos, en que nuestra relación con sus mecánicas y su mundo ya han sido más que suficientes, y que la especialización solamente lleva a la repetición y al tedio. El descubrimiento es adolescente mientras que el trabajo es adulto. Y Sable solamente quiere llevarnos de la mano hasta que sepamos cuál es nuestra identidad y darnos la agencia para decidir, sin juzgar ni valorar nuestra decisión. Como en cada momento de nuestra partida, Sable nos deja ser quienes queramos y hacer cuanto decidamos.

Las limitaciones son adultas.

La libertad, eterna y juvenil.


https://irrationalreviews6.wordpress.com/2023/01/25/critica-sable/

A nice surprise that doesn't excel in anything but charms in almost everything it tries. It's obviously counting on the player liking the Roiland style of comedy, which everyone seems to hate and I get it; it's not innovative, edgy and so baroque and overwhelming that can throw you out in an instant. But I (most of the time) enjoy it.

The best way I can summarize this game is Ratchet & Clank meets South Park The Stick Of Truth without the polish of the first and the charm of the second, never getting into the brilliant moments they both have but maintaining a consistenly high bar where it tries to go.

As a shooter it expands and offers a balanced experience on the highest difficulty, level design is just okay and the worlds while looking very beatiful and expanding through new gadgets and habilities in a satisfactory way never earn a comeback for the lack of reward; in 2022 you can't pretend a player will collect cards without the game feeling incredible at your hands, and this is not the case. On the good side every weapon has its own function and style, lacking synergies but working as a refresher for the arenas not feeling all the same, and manages to build up to the last weapon feeling like Doom's BFG, which honestly feels as a reward and compensation for a finale that's anticlimactic but solid.

Good game; will not revolutionize anything but is a great addition to Game Pass and a nice adventure for the PS2 esque fans out there. With good pacing, almost no filler and a few well crafted parody levels that don't do anything new but work quite nicely.

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Una agradable sorpresa que no despunta en nada pero consigue ser carismático con prácticamente todo lo que intenta. Cuenta con la predisposición del jugador para disfrutar del estilo de la escritura de Roiland, que todo el mundo parece odiar y lo entiendo; está algo manido, es edgy y tan barroco que sobrepasa y puede echarte a poco que no le compres las primeras bromas. Pero, la mayor parte de las veces, me funciona.

La mejor forma de describirlo sin florituras es una mezcla entre Ratchet & Clank y South Park, sin el pulido del primero ni el carisma desbordante del segundo, no estando a la altura de los mejores momentos de ninguno de ellos pero sabiendo mantener el tono y la compostura en un estándar bastante alto en todas las direcciones en las que se propone ir.

Como shooter consigue expandirse a buen ritmo y se siente balanceado y justo, el diseño de niveles no está particularmente inspirado pero lo que tiene funciona y los mundos que plantea aun siendo siendo sorprendentemente detallados y bonitos tanto en lo artístico como en lo técnico (y abriéndose a través de nuevos gadgets y habilidades) no tienen alicientes de peso para recompensar una exploración que parece buscar y pedir; en 2022 no puedes pretender basar tu esquema de pseudo metroidvania en base a unos coleccionables sin importancia ni peso en lo jugable o narrativo si el control y la movilidad no son una justificación en sí misma. A pesar de esto todas las armas tienen su función y estilo, compensando lo que carecen de sinergias en servir como un revulsivo para que los enfrentamientos nunca resulten tan repetitivos como para cansar, y consigue una curva que culmina en un arma final reminiscente (directamente) al BFG de Doom que se siente tanto recompensa como disculpa por un nivel final anticlimático pero sólido.

Un buen juego que no revoluciona en nada pero es un agradecido añadido a Game Pass. Y en definitiva otra iteración de uno de mis géneros favoritos, los AA que podrían haber salido en PS2; buen ritmo, prácticamente carente de relleno y con varios niveles parodia que sin reinventar funcionan y enganchan.

Loving AA european games is something one is born with, and this game's atmosphere and pacing delivered for me where everything else tended to go the opposite way. The writing and performance are a step higher than the usual and the delivery of climactic moments (except for the ending) is well built enough to be satisfactory and engaging, with honorable mention to the framing of certain shots in the cutscenes.

The "madness" sections are irregular and sometimes feel underdeveloped, but they make it up with the sheer amount of "vibes" it brings to the table. Didn't thought I would care about some of the characters but again, a welcome surprise to be found here.

Nothing revolutionary but an enyojable 8 hour linear game with choices, nice visuals and a well rounded plot.

A lot has been said about Sonic Frontiers and most of it has been built on the fact that "there's no good 3D Sonic", which has made the conclusion for some people about this game that of course it's fine but just because the expectations where so unbelievable low that everything above a downright bad game would be acceptable.

Sonic Frontiers is rough, not as well blended as it should be and elements from its design and technical aspects are so disconnected from each other that they downplay on areas that are out of the question for a completed AAA game. I don't care about the popping until I can't make the route to a collectible because I can't see the platform where it stands. I don't mind the lack of tutorials on new areas (in fact I appreciate it!) until an obligatory enemy has a unique, never before explained, attack that has to be used because anything else is useless (which happens with every single boss fight and most radically with the red big bobbles on island 4). This game simply lacks playtesting, the kind of playtesting that can tell you the game can not just be completed without major bugs, but that a player will not be frustrated when trying to complete it.

I find this kind of slips all the more hurtful when I realize Sonic Frontiers is one of the most fun platformers I've played since Mario Odyssey.

Even when the design of both games that colide inside this huge pile of ideas doesn't find its foot there is always something to attach yourself: the incredible game feel that Sonic has (especially in the open world). The sheer amount of ideas and distinct challenges that has made its way into the game is fantastic, refreshing to see another game take the Yoko Taro and Yakuza route on mixing crazy gameplay sections that doesn't interconnect necessarily with the rest of the game but alleviates pacing and keeps you engaged to see the next fine platforming section or new minigame that is going to hide without warning, something very classic for a Sega that has finally let the Sonic Team be what its name should uphold.

This game screams Sega in a way that Sonic (for the little I have tried) hasn't felt in years; it's actually trying ideas that nobody would, faulty to the point where it feels earned, and it absolutely shows the energy of a teenager who doesn't care about what the adults are going to think because it wants to do things "its own way". This right here is much more characteristic of the idiosyncrasy of a character based upon the collision of slow platforming and fast movement than what a copy of a 3D Mario that always aims for excelency and, frankly, has more budget than all of this franchise combined, could ever be. Sonic has found itself.

Playing the excellent Spark trilogy I was constantly thinking that games need to rely a lot less on polish and so much more on ideas. The modern AAA is so focused on giving an experience that anyone can call solid that lacks everything that can make a true difference; and the greatest games are the ones that do its own thing with enough confidence and perspective to make all the flow of concepts, ideas and elements work in sync. This game is a miracle because it stands out of the clonic formula that the industry and its own franchise made to bring to the table irregular but engaging systems that make this game truly alive. You can play every section of this game feeling the intention and passion to make something that it's surprising, dynamic, and most of all, engaging. And with just a bit more polish on where the technical messes with the design this would have been a truly great one. But I hope there is another chance to make this even better, without renouncing to being a bit broken, just enough to be more exciting than "good".

Sega at its best embodies the spirit of a rebellious teen and this game screams (literally on its music) that it doesn't need a guiding hand on where to go, just a little more time to practice before it stands out to the crowd to be able to play "Complicated" without a broken guitar.

Don't get the hate for this game at all. It's really charming and well written, the characters are a standout, specially since episode 3; the music is fantastic and the musical sections, even if they are the poorest thing about the game for its lack of mechanical engagement, they're imaginative and very consistent with transmitting how the band itself is trying to communicate with its audience, special mention to the section in the last episode that made me tear up with joy.

The most problematic thing about this game is that at times I get the same feeling as watching a Noah Baumbach movie, this (featuring a diverse and brilliant cast) feels too much like a White First World Problems story. It is undoubtedly a story that talks about priviledged people living very specific lives being anoyed by not getting the fullest of it all. The most important thing if you can cope with this, is that the game goes beyond the most standard and superficial layer of this classic L.A characters to focus on modern relationships, the hardships of working together and the how all of this relates to an artistic job that feels impossible to tackle and success.

This game has a discourse and heart, and for what it tries to say I think it manages in a pretty beautiful way to elevate all of this characters and their relationships to the point the player can relate to them feeling a part of the team. Really hoping this game gets on Netflix or any subscription service that can make an audience resonate with it.

It deserves more.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about spaces and time in fiction. Not just literal spaces and time (that is an incredible whole thing on itself) but how pacing can be deliberately built on what might seem boring or cheap.

Believe me when I tell you I didn't think in the slightest that a Shin Chan game (for a newby on Boku Not Natsuyasumi) could give me such a fresh and beautiful argument through pure mundanity.

If I had to describe this game with a word that would be "honest", it is what it is, pure and simple; never tries to go beyond its own limitations and those are so clearly well thought out and developed, built with such talent and intimacy on details and rhythm, that every in-game day was met with a smile on my side of the screen.

It is, as the best Nintendo games manage to be, a creator of joy; a game that doesn't force, only asks. The lack of impositions on the player changes the question of the commonly (and wrongly) compared Animal Crossing from how much can you do today to what do you want to do today. Shin Chan progresses without input, it's a game where everything passes through and not thanks to you, and with that, time can not be forced and places will be seen infinitely, changing on the slightest; gaining new perspectives only if the player wants to stablish a relationship with the town and his vistas and particular flow. But that is exactly the point where the game shines and delivers, everything apart from what which happens without question, feels like a treasure.

The gameloop might turn tedious if you rush the game or obsese about everything having a definitive purpose, but the beauty of it all is that it's there, as it is in life, for the sake of itself. Dialogues doesn't need to hide anything, they're fun, activities throughout the world are simple and basic because the reward is on the evocative it results presented in the way they are. Fishing shines when you stop to look at the water, the light and how stunning the framing of every single shot of this town is, how it can transport you to the most dreamy place and make you feel like a 5 year old; everything is shallow because the complexity responds to the emotional core of all that commands this game.

Spaces and time.

It is quite fantastic how a game can literally put you out of feeling like a piece of shit simply through sincerity and purity; how this game has brought me to good places on bad days, and how its themes as basic as they are, can resonate and echo thanks to the atmospheres and the little it demands of you.

Sometimes an Elden Ring can be the catalyzer of great things, through discovery and work one can feel the best of itself can get out and turn the worst of you where it should be. Other times it's really good to know that one can just walk hearing the summery sound of cicadas and wind, with a bugcatcher up my shoulder, and look for people I ended up caring a lot for to hear a silly phrase and take a picture in a lake. That innocence and good faith can be all there needs to be in the craziest of situations, and I'm a sucker for any piece of art that knows how to breath and wants you to keep the same tempo with good ideas and a good heart.

Time, spaces and people.

It's all there is.