Headbone connected to the headphones
Headphones connected to the iPhone
iPhone connected to the internet
Connected to the Google
Connected to the government

from the TWISTED minds at "Madmind Studio" comes a true turd of shit. Totally dysfunctional, tedious, loathsome in its every misguided design choice. Definitely made by someone with the same edgelordy sixth grade boy mentality as Doom, but by that kid's weirder, grosser rotten.com/suicidegirls obsessed peer with none of the good natured doofiness and a self-serious misanthropic streak that, when juxtaposed with this totally laughable vision of horror, falls completely flat on its face. Skairie lesbianic crunkcore demonesses with corset piercings gyrating on phlegmy cavern protuberances and doing cock and ball torture on poorly edited poser models with softbody physics modifiers flopping their sad little weewees to and fro. completely visually incoherent and devoid of any semblance of a successful horror atmosphere; Every vile environment looks like a bunch of morgellons fibers emanating from a giant petrified dookie. A highlight was the looping animation of the mopey mutilated hell denizen nonchalantly grinding up deformed fetuses and using them as paste for placing cobblestones in a makeshift wall--less a solemn visage of UNSPEAKABLE degredation and horror and moreso just like... legitimately hysterical slapstick? Agony is a completely busted conceptually pathetic mess! needless to say i cant wait for Succubus!

shocked by how into this I am despite it overtly representing like 800 simultaneous trending references and roguelikes not being a thing I typically enjoy at all! The scott/villeneuve style trappings are obvious but they're cleverly wielded to convey a story through refreshingly non-cinematic means, and so much of the housemarque soul is still present here. The playfeel is stellar--the dualsense and sound integration especially--and the grueling pointillist combat is reactive and wondrous in a resogun meets nier meets furi kinda way. The punitive precision and masochistic self-empowerment systems (parasites, malignancies) feel so synchronous with the game's themes about delusions of potentiality and the horror of being trapped within a losing conversation with yourself. The whole "the location is its own character" thing is so pat and tritely overused as an assessment at this point but uh... it kind of is tho and i really like it!!! I haven't finished yet and honestly don't think you're even intended to in order for the experience to meaningfully land; the whole notion of "seeing it all" as a means of understanding game messaging is so parochial and rooted in other mediums and their histories, and an especially odd cudgel to use against Returnal when frustration, obfuscation, and defeat are all integral ideas being directly explored in it!!! I will be genuinely kind of disappointed if the ending brings any semblance of traditional closure. Selene is a wonderful and subtly articulated character and the experience feels much more like a portrait rather than a journey. More cagey, damaged middle aged ladies in games plz, i love a smooth altruistic jrpg teen but it is really nice to get to excavate a thorny character who already comes with so much baggage and life experience!!!!!!!

repression is the most grueling form of labor / regret murders our potential selves

i am vast; i contain malignancies!!!!!!

like part 1 proper, this dlc was joyous and silly and beautiful and expansive and reverent and operatic and imaginative and completely dumb in all the best of ways!!!! i love what they've done with yuffie here, how meaningfully they've expanded the wutai/shinra conflict and her role within it, love that we get to see a whole new mini scenario with Scarlet vamping around and being a camp cartoon villain, and i love the whole remake project in genny!!! sorry 2 be a simp gleefully nursing at the squenix teat unable to focus on people's many thoughtful criticisms about legacy/faithfulness/fundamental change in game aura/sometimes frustrating pantomime of naughty dog or marvel style mechanisms of story divulsion/obnoxious prolonged episodic price-gougey release strategy etc but this shit simply rules and is pure undiluted joy 2 me and i cant help but want to tell the haterz to go break their teeth on a da chao bean!!! get in the car ladies we're getting blasted at the happy turtle 2night!!!!

not a poorly crafted experience in any sense and i'm sure theres a lot here i lacked the generosity to find but i felt like i could completely visualize the creators' concept and reference stack with such exact clarity that it became distracting:

femininely morose akihiko yoshida and ayami kojima art/
lilting twinklechoral keichi okabe-wave ost/
vanillaware storybook Spine animations/
folklore character collection combat/
soulstroidvania wielding its genre structure of labyrinthine sparseness to spin a ludically obvious yarn about seeking ~ absolution amidst decay ~

-- and I had to uninstall because the returns are so diminished for me at this point and it was genuinely making me sad that such a clear and passionate labor of love could feel so utterly taxonomizable and consumed by its own clockably interrelated references

at this point idk its just kind of upsetting to play something with such a rigorous and dogmatic commitment to its reference material that doesnt seem to extend very far beyond the world of games themselves, even if said games are all things i find personally beautiful and worth emulating. felt like a very workmanlike and glossy medley of touchstones from works that clearly moved the creators--but executed in a sort of surface way that belies their inability to cogently, personally express how said works resonated beyond mere facsimile. no judgies girl i relate and its why i havent reliably maintained any true semblance of a dedicated art practice for years!!!

tldr; i saw myself in this and i didnt like it

the opening montage of Up really destroyed a whole generation's concept of effective nonverbal storytelling by making them think a parade of prefab domestic clichés embellished with flavorless Milestone clipart set to overbearing music is in any way sophisticated or interesting huh

this girl is a tasteless unfuckable dweeb and i wish her all the worst. the way she's simultaneously a self-insert wish fulfillment character AND the most hapless and bland cozycore dork imaginable is really dark tbh. inexcusable taste in stuffed animals! stop decorating with your diploma already you absolute MONSTER!!! When a sappy celeste-adjacent chiptune ballad plays as it's revealed via context clues that she came into her own after a trip to Japan (and returned w/ a bevvy of basic tourist kiosk tchotchkes) and now feels confident enough to explore rockabilly-lite fashion...hell. It's all so flavorless and antiseptic--she is 30 where the hell is her hitachi wand and why CANT i stuff her horrid garb into the closet in the ideal organizational format--the pile? the subject here is so unpalatable that i honestly would have preferred they scrap the whole progressing narrative concept entirely (esp. when its used in such an unambitious way that communicates very little beyond trite sentimentality; life has its ups and downs, #gratitude, don't make time for haters who dull your shine, the more things change the more they stay the same, when god throws out a mug he buys you a wacom tablet) and instead present a medley of varying rooms/spaces occupying a plethora of subjects, aesthetics, and experiences, but also idt the same devs who chose this protag have anywhere near the worldliness or savvy to attempt something like that. impressive amount of unique isometric assets and cool implementation of foley though!

wanderer above the sea of fog above the 45th boss arena above the medieval fort archipelago adjacent to the nodal sprinkling of challenge tower/upgrade caves in conversation with the impenetrable questline diaspora above the ancient pagan city above the ancienter pagan plague swamp above ash lake above the fromsoftware slurpee dispenser of mass effect 3 endings

Frightfully fun, often peerlessly gorgeous devourer of my finite life! Truly engrossing and addictive for its often well masked vacuity and kind of horrifying that this and FFXIV will likely end up being the longest single campaigns of any story I've ever experienced. I like it I love it I want some more or it and dear god I hate myself

God bless Harmony Korine's DmC!!!!!!

Fashion Model Cole Mohr stars in a fascinating time capsule of the last dying gasp of the late 2000's misanthropic Hot Topic nu-metal scene that existed between the downfall of VH1 and the looming rise of ~ influencer culture ~ !!!!!!!! SKRILLEX IS MY LIFE and the CW's Supernatural RULES and iM noT a PaWn 2 MaSs mEdiA and vocally slut shaming Paris Hilton/the Kardashians and wanting them to Graphically Die is mega awesome and ok actually!!!! if this came out 3 years later it would have like a Swaggy Kpop Raver vibe and if it came out now it would probably just be Assassination Nation or Euphoria!!! it is a total reflection of such an era-specific "atrocious corporate content 4 edgy teenz" attitude and i LOVE THAT ABOUT IT as an anthropological artifact AND as like a bizarro world version of the original DMC series and its own dedication to (an also very strange concept of) sTyLE!!!!!! IMO this is a legitimately interesting, if kind of vomitous and inexcusable, piece of the cultural record because of how well it encapsulates all these puerile and venomous trends across SO many axes!! We need 2 maintain a historical record of our aesthetic crimes so as never 2 repeat them!!!!

also it's pretty decently put together and a totally solid action game!

(Note: I am just putting a general content warning here as I feel that is the right thing to do.)

Everything this game tries to tell you is all wrong.

And yes, it is a game. When I was really young, I had a passion to try and make an adventure game and I used this really awful little program called TADS to make a demo for something called Gates to Purgatory. I only coded a starting area, some basic puzzles and interactions, and an "ending." After that I never touched it again. You can still view the TIGsource thread for it and even play it. (Don't play it.) It's nothing but a bunch of nonsense text, but I still consider it a work of art; a work of creativity. We can argue at length about the intrinsic qualities of art, what constitutes art, what constitutes specific types of art. Entire schools of philosophy discussing these intangibles but in the end its easiest to default to broad interpretations.

Maybe there is no real art to either my game or Notch's, but there is "passion"; in Drowning in Problems there is a passion to appear extremely profound, a passion to sound smarter than everyone else, a passion to express how much of a tortured soul you are. Notch released this in 2014, the same year he jumped ship from Mojang and the creation that had made him a literal millionaire. The game's thesis boiled down to the absolute futility of life and death- baby's first rumination on nihilism. Nothing matters, what's the point?

I went through this exact same conversation with myself well into my mid-20s, dealing with the worst depression of my life. Two inpatient stays, many medical leaves, some broken hearts (I guess it would be 3 on Drowning's meter). I don't look back at this as a deficiency, but I learned from it and grew from it. Notch was 35 years old and rich as hell, and two years later he decided to double down on his prejudices towards the others he felt had somehow wronged him. Going into social media tirades and projecting his own extreme self-hatred on people much more at risk than he is. Notch can pay for therapy. The entire groups of people he chose to antagonize and target, a lot of them cannot. He never learned or grew from Drowning in Problems, he just channeled it into cruelty. This is one of the major problems with adults who choose to be defeatist and nihilist; when all that discontent and dissatisfaction gets funneled through the pipeline of hatred.

You get +Body at the start of this game... there are people who are born into this world without a fully functioning body, or mind. People who can never walk, talk, see. What does Notch propose here? That they have even less in their inventory were we to gamify their existences? There are people born with nothing. Born without any of the comforts or conveniences that you and I share, who still choose to greet each day with courage and strength. People in Gaza are drowning in more than just self-pity and yet they continue to resist in the face of overwhelming death and despair. If nothing matters, what's the point of them doing what they are doing?

Life is worth much, much more than Notch implies it to be. You do not need to be told that what you do doesn't matter. Your actions will affect people no matter what. This tantrum of his could come from the most sincere place of extreme depression and that would not change anything about how fundamentally wrong it is. When I was depressed, I didn't go around telling other people they didn't matter. I felt that about myself, but it was all a product of extreme self-hatred. I knew even then how irresponsible it was to extrapolate my own psychosis and apply it uncritically to everyone else. With the benefit of hindsight, it just feels like Notch is trying to absolve himself of the consequences of having to exist in a world that is always going to be "political" in the way he didn't want it to be.

Just like Notch himself, Drowning in Problems is trash, and as such, belongs to the dustbin of history.

I love this sullen, gangly, size zero interpretation of shinobi. I love the freezeframe bisection polyptychs, the d'n'b soundtrack, and the mobility. it's an exceptionally stylish, confident game, and while a lot of folks have already said it: when it works it really works

the big draw past the point when you're no longer in awe of its scarf physics and relentless bangers is the tate (殺陣; fatal wind) mechanic. it's like the chip BURST chip dynamic modern action games love, only instead of an mmo-grade phase rotation it's more of a split second setplay puzzle where the "burst" is seeing an entire health bar explode in a single hit while you go full vogue

each successive kill within a four second window builds power and prolongs the chain until it's ready to come together for the photogenic finish. it's the most shinobi shit on the planet, and when everything plays out the way you planned you immediately forget how much the camera made you wanna bite the controller as hard as you could ten seconds prior. you no longer wanna send magazine cutout letters to the guy who decided the wretched lock-on should only target stuff you've never seen before. you might even find it in your heart to forgive the paul ws anderson lasers (I actually kinda liked em!)

main knock against it's that the levels & encounters are borderline procgen. on 3A I was getting a bit dozy and for a second there you could've successfully convinced me I was playing persona 4. there's no discernable sense of structure or pacing to the stages; they go on, cycle through a handful of identical rooms with identical enemy setups, and then a boss shows up whenever the mappers felt there were enough empty boxes, shiba dogs, and bottomless pits to call it a day

but the one thing that puts a bullet in the idea of replaying it on higher difficulties is the final boss. I hate this hocus pocus motherfucker. iframes and teleports out the ass, flying minions with wonky hurtboxes, one of those long intro sequences where the real fight doesn't start til you're a minute in. the sighs and groans I made when he decided to spin like a beyblade every time I managed to get the 8-chain going were downright ancestral -- real cave creature shit. I never wanna do that again, and I probably never will

happy to have played it but happy to be done. I hate mages so much man, you don't even know

the community tanking this game's reputation by suggesting that everyone play a version that makes the level and encounter design infinitely worse makes me so upset. surpasses the original in every way for me personally, whether that's in the world, bosses, or even characters you meet along your journey. please don't fucking play scholar though that shit made me hate this game for the longest time. and also just because miyazaki wasn't the director doesn't mean the game is automatically bad lol, souls doesnt start and end with him in the director's chair as the end all be all, and dark souls 2 is proof of that.

considering WotC and chimera squad were already Figurative Marvel Shit, the pivot to Literal Marvel Shit is about the least surprising thing ever; if you didn't see this coming I suggest staying out of the entrail reading business. the real surprise here's that everyone buried the lede blubbering about deckbuilding stuff so thoroughly that I had no idea this was Meet n Fuck Marvel

not since borderlands 2 has a game's dialogue filled me with the primal unease of an ape seeing a particularly snakelike vine. started this up while my wife was in the shower and when she texted asking if I could make some coffee I knew the choice was to smash ALT+F4 or risk being divorced on the spot

the cardgame bit I'm kinda whatever about. I think I'd like it more if the camera was positioned anywhere else and it didn't lean so hard into Epic Cinematic Presentation that even the most basic actions take a century to unfold. it's cool you can do the type of MTG blue deck bullshit where your turn lasts so long the person on the other side of the table regrets being a nerd, but not cool enough to endure the simpering social layer, endless cutscenes, and deranged tutorializing that make up the bulk of the game

have to imagine you'd have a better time stuffing hulk hands in your ass while playing slay the spire

...I AM A ROCKSTAR!
Oh man, this is gonna be a tough review. There's so much I love about this game, so much it might be a new favorite of mine. Okay let's get into it...

Our game opens with the protag, Chai, jamming out to The Black Keys and waiting in line to get into Project Armstrong, an effort by Vandelay Technologies to give robotic prosthetics to those needing of them. One surgery later, and he's got a new arm... and a MP3 player in his chest? AND KILLER ROBOTS AFTER HIM?? Seems something went awry! However, it's not all bad, as said MP3 player has integrated itself into his new robot arm and is giving him strange musical superpowers. Not wanting to get killed by robots, he heads out to look for an exit.

This leads me into the gameplay and oh my god it's so good. I suck at rhythm games and I suck at most hack n' slashes, but put em together and you have a match that could rival peanut butter and chocolate. It's hard to describe, the feeling of landing combos, the shouts of "HEY! HEY! CHAI! HEY!" as you turn robots into scrap metal, it all...rocks!! Although there are a few things that annoy me, mostly enemies with shields. Enemies with shields require you to summon your friends, Peppermint and Macaron to break them for you (oh and Macaron can be especially annoying since his shield take two attacks to break and his attack takes the longest to recharge). Oh, and speaking of characters...

The characters are one part of Hi-Fi Rush that didn't grab me at first. Chai and our deuteragonist, Peppermint, start rather annoying. One an annoying dumbass, the other an annoying smartass. It's not until we meet Macaron and his robot buddy CNMN (pronounced cinnamon) that things get good. Chai and Peppermint go through some development, 808 is adorable, Macaron is a big lovable teddy bear, and CNMN is deadpan in all the right ways while still having a lot of heartwarming moments. The heads of Vandelay are a lot of fun too. Rekka is pro-wrestler turned boss with anger issues, Zanzo is a massive JoJo reference that you beat by draining him of all his budget, Korsica is probably taken the most serious by the game, Mimosa is and egocentric diva with a fantastic boss fight, Roquefort is a no-nonsense grumpy old man with an even BETTER boss fight, and Kale is the big bad, evil as hell, multimillionaire who you really want to punch in the face. All and all, the cast is amazing and fit the games tone to a T. I would get into the story, but most of the actually reveals are character based and spoilery, most of the actual story is just "Corpation plans to use robot limbs to mind control people, go stop em" and to be honest, that's all I need for a game like this.

OH SHIT I ALMOST FORGOT TO TALK ABOUT THE SOUNDTRACK! HOW DID I FORGET!? Uh...the soundtrack is really good! I tend to have a hard time talking about music other than "it's good!" or "it fits the tone!" and Hi-Fi Rush's music does both of those, but something about it just feels GOOD. The original tracks are amazingly made and the licensed tracks fit the mood perfectly. A part near the end set to Whirring by The Joy Formidable almost made me cry while I was playing.

So, that's Hi-Fi Rush, a game that is now one of my most favorites. I could gush about it for a few paragraphs but I feel like I'd either end up spoiling the game or repeating myself. I love this game with every fiber of being and I'm so glad I got to play it. How sadly ironic that Tango Gameworks fell to very villain of this game. Fuck you microsoft.

cherishes human connection in an endearingly immature way. very quaint but also overbearingly self-conscious in its approach to standard conventions, sometimes to a fault? “design by subtraction” sounds genius on paper, though to me it can lend itself to one of two mentalities in execution. it pushes the player towards experimentation; resulting in immense satisfaction when success occurs due to intuitive forward-thinking, or the absence of any emotion at all in triumph as the logic of the solution may have never transpired within the player. thankfully i think ico manages to lean more towards the former overall with only a few moments that underwhelmed my train of thought. the inquisition of the existence of swinging on chains was that of satisfaction. i noticed when jumping on chains that they’d naturally swing back and forth a little, so i figured there was a way to voluntarily execute that on my own and voilà! the action button had answered my prayers. in opposition to this, much later into the game you’re required to blow up the base of a water tower to progress, as for some reason when its blown up part of the tower conveniently falls to form a bridge leading to the next part of the area. this seemed odd to me because there’s… no indication this would happen and i dont think the average person would assume it’d either. you just throw a bomb at the tower because in the scenario there’s no other options of what to do. this was a time where i was met with dissatisfaction in puzzle solving. even if it is kinda minor it still racked my brain a bit.

anyway i believe this “subtraction” psychology applies to more than just the diminishing of useless aspects that dont add to the artist’s vision. namely it contributes to the progression. frequently we’re paraded with the great expanse of the castle utilizing overhead views and wide shots. in continuing our journey we inherently subtract the unknown of that expanse, and perhaps any fears of it that had construed our view of it. i suppose any action in the (or any) game can be interpreted as a subtraction. subtracting enemies, problems, etc etc…

some further things i had noted…
i was heavily reminded of love-de-lic and cing’s work while invested, i think mainly because of the childlike innocence on display in both of our protagonists alongside the organic vibes of the atmosphere respectively. ico’s selflessness struck me in a similar way to moon’s main character and yorda that of another code’s ashley.
the deprivation of any music aside from minor points is an oddly fitting choice that i appreciate a lot. im a sucker for nature ambience and this is no exception. in a way it kept me grounded throughout the entire experience.
the first time i was met with the blissful save theme it had sounded awfully familiar, within seconds my mind uttered “Based God sampled this!” precisely in Flowers Rise on batshit insane mixtape GODS FATHER. i fucking love that tape man i’ll take any chance i can get to shill it.

this was a really resonant experience for me and i’m glad i finally got to this one. i definitely see where people like taro and miyazaki were influenced here. in the industry nowadays you can still feel tremors that this game insinuated way back when (for better or for worse). brilliant display of the importance of environmental attention to detail.