Hugh
2023
It's hard to imagine Pikmin getting better than this. Takes the formula of Pikmin 2, a game I had significant issues with, and polishes it up to a frankly absurd degree. Every issue I had with that and all other Pikmin games is gone. Frustrations (other than designed ones in endgame challenges) have ebbed away, all that is left is briliant Dandori bliss. There's an annoying amount of repeated cutscene skipping but that's a fairly minor blemish on a package stuffed full of a huge variety of fun and gorgeous content. It's a must-play Switch title, and the best Pikmin game yet.
1997
As a first time player in 2023, it is impossible for me to truly understand just how astonishing Final Fantasy VII was back in 1997. But it is perhaps the highest mark of praise I can give it that even over 25 years later, much of that wonder still bleeds through. From its story and the way it's told, to the incredible pacing and eclectic progression pathways through the game and its myriad of enjoyable (and often obtuse) side content, Final Fantasy VII now stands tall as a monolith to everything JRPGs spent the NES and SNES generations building toward. A pinnacle achievement that will probably impress forever. Even a decade from now, some of the visual abstraction FFVII uses to tell its story won't be commonplace in its industry.
In short, a game that stands the test of time as well as any PS1 game can. Thank god for the 3X speed in the PS4 port tho.
In short, a game that stands the test of time as well as any PS1 game can. Thank god for the 3X speed in the PS4 port tho.
2022
As a Bayonetta fan since day one, I had sky high expectations for Bayonetta 3. The third in a trilogy of increasingly unlikely-to-exist games, six years of development, and coming over three years after Platinum released their last major single player game. Bayonetta 3 would have to be spectacular to meet my expectations after all that time, but not only did it meet them, somehow it managed to surpass them.
After Bayonetta 2 opted to refine and focus up what Bayonetta 1 already excelled at, to middling results, Bayonetta 3 is an explosive gambit that takes everything Platinum has ever done and launches them full force at the player with shocking fury. Genre switchups are constant (if brief) and the core gameplay itself has seen radical changes with the addition of the Demon Slave and Demon Masquerade concepts. From a distance these changes may seem worrying or clunky, but when playing it all flows so smoothly and feels incredibly satisfying to utilize as a part of your ever expanding tool kit. Not only does Bayonetta 3 have the most overall weapon options in the series, these options are more varied and more fun to use than ever. You could play for 100 hours and not hit the ceiling of what this combat system can do with Bayonetta alone. And that's not even getting into Viola, whose combat flow is wildly different from Bayonetta's and requires a real gear shift to lock into.
Bayonetta 3 never rests, setpiece after setpiece blow your doors down and threaten to drag you out onto the street and mug you in front of your neighbors and God while you try desperately to keep your cool, clenching the controller to aim for those good scores. The game is effortlessly engaging and fun, with the variety of its combat and the expansiveness of its adventurous level design always keeping you busy with something or another, and that something always changing into something equally fun.
Bayonetta 3's only falter is in minor QOL concerns, things like replays not allowing restarts of verses and a few enemies not giving good enough audio cues when they fire their bite-sized arrows at you from the other side of the planet. These are nagging concerns, concerns that become annoyances when you're going for pure platinum rankings and trying to master the higher difficulties. But those are only issues for the crazy people like me who actually want to attempt to do those things. For the sane gamer who just wants to experience a thrilling action game, I posit that you can do no better on the Nintendo Switch than Bayonetta 3.
After Bayonetta 2 opted to refine and focus up what Bayonetta 1 already excelled at, to middling results, Bayonetta 3 is an explosive gambit that takes everything Platinum has ever done and launches them full force at the player with shocking fury. Genre switchups are constant (if brief) and the core gameplay itself has seen radical changes with the addition of the Demon Slave and Demon Masquerade concepts. From a distance these changes may seem worrying or clunky, but when playing it all flows so smoothly and feels incredibly satisfying to utilize as a part of your ever expanding tool kit. Not only does Bayonetta 3 have the most overall weapon options in the series, these options are more varied and more fun to use than ever. You could play for 100 hours and not hit the ceiling of what this combat system can do with Bayonetta alone. And that's not even getting into Viola, whose combat flow is wildly different from Bayonetta's and requires a real gear shift to lock into.
Bayonetta 3 never rests, setpiece after setpiece blow your doors down and threaten to drag you out onto the street and mug you in front of your neighbors and God while you try desperately to keep your cool, clenching the controller to aim for those good scores. The game is effortlessly engaging and fun, with the variety of its combat and the expansiveness of its adventurous level design always keeping you busy with something or another, and that something always changing into something equally fun.
Bayonetta 3's only falter is in minor QOL concerns, things like replays not allowing restarts of verses and a few enemies not giving good enough audio cues when they fire their bite-sized arrows at you from the other side of the planet. These are nagging concerns, concerns that become annoyances when you're going for pure platinum rankings and trying to master the higher difficulties. But those are only issues for the crazy people like me who actually want to attempt to do those things. For the sane gamer who just wants to experience a thrilling action game, I posit that you can do no better on the Nintendo Switch than Bayonetta 3.
2023
Sometimes a game just captures your heart so immediately and so completely that it takes a little time for the gloss to wear off so you can view that game with anything other than "holy shit oh my god I LOVE THIS" lenses. Hi-Fi Rush is the most recent example for me, a new entry in my favorite genre of video game from the team behind The Evil Within 2, one of my favorite games in the last five years. With an unbelievably gorgeous style, music by some of my favorite bands, and incredibly charming writing and characters. "It's like they made this game just for me." It's the sort of game that makes a weirdo like me feel seen. Then, eventually, the gloss wears down, and you can actually analyze the game for what it is. And to its credit, even without the hype and the veneer of self-validation, Hi Fi Rush is still a damn good time.
Hi Fi Rush is the first effort from Tango Gameworks to create a character action game in the style of Devil May Cry, and boy does it feel like it. All the core elements of the genre are there - you've got combat encounters where the boundaries of the room close off, you've got a focus on combo sequencing, you can buy new moves in the shop, it's all there, and it's exceptionally polished and very fun to execute. The rhythm aspect adds a touch of uniqueness to a game that would otherwise feel like a by-the-numbers DMC clone, and that goes a long way to giving the game its own mechanical identity. Unfortunately, that's about all the game has to offer in terms of combat variety. You get a few partners you can call in for assist attacks, but their usage is pretty limited and they seem to exist primarily so they can add really annoying enemies to encounters. Enemies who have to be hit twice with a partner attack to take real damage, which means calling the partner in, hoping they hit the right enemy (there's no lock-on system!), and then waiting for them to recharge and doing it again. It's unnecessary tedium in a game that already struggles with combat variety, because you only get one weapon. It's a fun one, but it's the only one you got.
Presentation in HFR is exceptional. Not only are the licensed tracks all heaters, but a lot of the in-house music is good at its worst, with a few real standouts in the pile. Voice acting is excellent and really brings the loveable cast to life, and anyone who's seen this game will tell you that visual style and particularly the animations are some of the best the video game medium has ever seen. It's a incredible experience to behold, and it all comes together silky smooth and goes down easy. Tango deserves all the credit in the world, because every aspect of the way this game looke and sounds is spectacular. There won't be a more immediately charming gaming for years to come.
One other area where HFR flounders a bit is with its pacing. The combat, as discussed above, is pretty enjoyable when you're actually doing it. But the vast vast majority of its levels are spent walking/dashing through generally samey looking corridors and doing clunky platforming with the most vertical jump in video games. The fight-to-wandering ratio is way off. People complained about this in Bayonetta 3, but I think it's far worse here. A few late game levels don't suffer from this issue nearly as much, but the bulk of the game does, and for a genre that places more importance on replays than that first time experience this is almost a death sentence for maintaining player interest.
Bosses are a mixed bag. A few are excellent, and a few (including the final boss, unfortunately) are pretty messy. The final boss commits the cardinal action game sin of forcing you to wait around for him to do certain attacks before he's vulnerable, making that entire section of the fight a frustrating slog. But when you're fighting the bosses that kick ass, and you're flowing with the music, dodging attacks and landing specials, it really is one of the best feelings in video games.
Hi-Fi Rush is one of the best looking games ever made, and its combat and story are no slouches either. Between its loveable characters, unique central gimmick, and effortless charm it's a game destined to go down as a cult classic. But a few issues with tedious enemies, bad pacing, and poor boss design hold it back from being one of the greats in its genre. What's most exciting about Hi-Fi Rush is its potential sequel. John Johanas and the team at Tango are incredible talents, so I have little doubt that a sequel will polish up these rough edges and give us a game that can sit proudly at the very top of the character action world.
Hi Fi Rush is the first effort from Tango Gameworks to create a character action game in the style of Devil May Cry, and boy does it feel like it. All the core elements of the genre are there - you've got combat encounters where the boundaries of the room close off, you've got a focus on combo sequencing, you can buy new moves in the shop, it's all there, and it's exceptionally polished and very fun to execute. The rhythm aspect adds a touch of uniqueness to a game that would otherwise feel like a by-the-numbers DMC clone, and that goes a long way to giving the game its own mechanical identity. Unfortunately, that's about all the game has to offer in terms of combat variety. You get a few partners you can call in for assist attacks, but their usage is pretty limited and they seem to exist primarily so they can add really annoying enemies to encounters. Enemies who have to be hit twice with a partner attack to take real damage, which means calling the partner in, hoping they hit the right enemy (there's no lock-on system!), and then waiting for them to recharge and doing it again. It's unnecessary tedium in a game that already struggles with combat variety, because you only get one weapon. It's a fun one, but it's the only one you got.
Presentation in HFR is exceptional. Not only are the licensed tracks all heaters, but a lot of the in-house music is good at its worst, with a few real standouts in the pile. Voice acting is excellent and really brings the loveable cast to life, and anyone who's seen this game will tell you that visual style and particularly the animations are some of the best the video game medium has ever seen. It's a incredible experience to behold, and it all comes together silky smooth and goes down easy. Tango deserves all the credit in the world, because every aspect of the way this game looke and sounds is spectacular. There won't be a more immediately charming gaming for years to come.
One other area where HFR flounders a bit is with its pacing. The combat, as discussed above, is pretty enjoyable when you're actually doing it. But the vast vast majority of its levels are spent walking/dashing through generally samey looking corridors and doing clunky platforming with the most vertical jump in video games. The fight-to-wandering ratio is way off. People complained about this in Bayonetta 3, but I think it's far worse here. A few late game levels don't suffer from this issue nearly as much, but the bulk of the game does, and for a genre that places more importance on replays than that first time experience this is almost a death sentence for maintaining player interest.
Bosses are a mixed bag. A few are excellent, and a few (including the final boss, unfortunately) are pretty messy. The final boss commits the cardinal action game sin of forcing you to wait around for him to do certain attacks before he's vulnerable, making that entire section of the fight a frustrating slog. But when you're fighting the bosses that kick ass, and you're flowing with the music, dodging attacks and landing specials, it really is one of the best feelings in video games.
Hi-Fi Rush is one of the best looking games ever made, and its combat and story are no slouches either. Between its loveable characters, unique central gimmick, and effortless charm it's a game destined to go down as a cult classic. But a few issues with tedious enemies, bad pacing, and poor boss design hold it back from being one of the greats in its genre. What's most exciting about Hi-Fi Rush is its potential sequel. John Johanas and the team at Tango are incredible talents, so I have little doubt that a sequel will polish up these rough edges and give us a game that can sit proudly at the very top of the character action world.
2023
Frictional's key strength, for me, has always been their sound design. The prior Amnesia games and Soma aren't particularly scary, but their excellent sound design takes them over the edge and makes them wonderfully nerve-wracking experiences. Unfortunately these games weren't much more than trial and error haunted house sims beyond that, and while Soma had a compelling narrative to keep the player invested the Amnesias often wore thin long before the credits rolled. Rebirth in particular I wouldn't hesitate to call downright bad, a miserable experience that grows more tedious than frightening by the halfway point and only continues to sour from then on.
The Bunker, then, is a revelation. Frictional have decided to combine their strong sound and tense point-to-point gameplay with a classic survival horror focus on resource management and non-linearity and it has paid off in spades. Easily their best game so far, perhaps the most exciting thing about The Bunker is the knowledge that this game only serves as a testbed, a first pillar in some great structure Frictional could build down the line. If their first foray into true survival horror is this good, just imagine what they could do next? The possibilities are enough to make a horror fan salivate.
But The Bunker itself is no small feat. After a quick tone setting tutorial, the player is dropped into the titular bunker and given a task that seems simple on paper. You're locked in this bunker with one very angry ghoul. The exit is blocked by debris. Find two items to remove the debris and exit the bunker. Seems simple enough, but the way to those items are locked behind barred doors and broken generators. The game offers you one safe room, in the middle of the bunker, and it's here that you'll manage your inventory, activate or deactivate the power, and save your game. There are no checkpoints in The Bunker. A death will send you back to the last time you saved in the safe room, and deaths come quick to those who aren't careful. The monster reacts to sound, and you're guaranteed to make quite a bit of noise as you deal with the obstacles that stand in between you and escape.
The Bunker's monster is brilliant, and it's here that Frictional's sound design prowess really comes into play. The sounds this thing makes are awful, but even worse are the sounds of it crawling through the walls, honing in on you as explore. One moment you're exploring a room with only one entrance, locked to keep yourself safe. But then you notice a small hole in a wall behind a crate. And then you hear the wheezing breathing coming from it. Moments like this happen all throughout the 4-8 hours it will take you to finish The Bunker (my results screen said 2 hours, but there's no way that's right.) and they are thrilling and terrifying each time. Sometimes artillery will strike the bunker, a randomly generated jump scare that was effective every single time it happened.
Amnesia: The Bunker is Frictional's best work yet, and one of the most stressful games in a famously stressful genre. It doesn't outstay its welcome and the pacing is great, with fun little diversions being thrown your way whenever the core loop threatens to get stale. Plus, the randomization of resources and the imsim elements make for a very replayable experience, a must for any survival horror game. All in all the game is a remarkable first effort by the team at Frictional to expand their style outward. Their great sound and world design combined with classic survival horror resource management and minimal but intense combat has made for something special, and the possibilities before them feel limitless and golden.
The Bunker, then, is a revelation. Frictional have decided to combine their strong sound and tense point-to-point gameplay with a classic survival horror focus on resource management and non-linearity and it has paid off in spades. Easily their best game so far, perhaps the most exciting thing about The Bunker is the knowledge that this game only serves as a testbed, a first pillar in some great structure Frictional could build down the line. If their first foray into true survival horror is this good, just imagine what they could do next? The possibilities are enough to make a horror fan salivate.
But The Bunker itself is no small feat. After a quick tone setting tutorial, the player is dropped into the titular bunker and given a task that seems simple on paper. You're locked in this bunker with one very angry ghoul. The exit is blocked by debris. Find two items to remove the debris and exit the bunker. Seems simple enough, but the way to those items are locked behind barred doors and broken generators. The game offers you one safe room, in the middle of the bunker, and it's here that you'll manage your inventory, activate or deactivate the power, and save your game. There are no checkpoints in The Bunker. A death will send you back to the last time you saved in the safe room, and deaths come quick to those who aren't careful. The monster reacts to sound, and you're guaranteed to make quite a bit of noise as you deal with the obstacles that stand in between you and escape.
The Bunker's monster is brilliant, and it's here that Frictional's sound design prowess really comes into play. The sounds this thing makes are awful, but even worse are the sounds of it crawling through the walls, honing in on you as explore. One moment you're exploring a room with only one entrance, locked to keep yourself safe. But then you notice a small hole in a wall behind a crate. And then you hear the wheezing breathing coming from it. Moments like this happen all throughout the 4-8 hours it will take you to finish The Bunker (my results screen said 2 hours, but there's no way that's right.) and they are thrilling and terrifying each time. Sometimes artillery will strike the bunker, a randomly generated jump scare that was effective every single time it happened.
Amnesia: The Bunker is Frictional's best work yet, and one of the most stressful games in a famously stressful genre. It doesn't outstay its welcome and the pacing is great, with fun little diversions being thrown your way whenever the core loop threatens to get stale. Plus, the randomization of resources and the imsim elements make for a very replayable experience, a must for any survival horror game. All in all the game is a remarkable first effort by the team at Frictional to expand their style outward. Their great sound and world design combined with classic survival horror resource management and minimal but intense combat has made for something special, and the possibilities before them feel limitless and golden.
1996
In 1903, the Wright brothers invented the airplane, a machine that allowed humans to travel through the sky at higher speeds than they could manage on the streets below. It changed everything, revolutionized both travel and commerce, and airplanes today remain possibly the single most popular method of long-form transportation for both people and goods. In 1996, Nintendo released Super Mario 64, a landmark achievement that trumps the Wright's' in every conceivable way. No longer were we doomed to walk this world in two dimensions. Now we could run, jump, slide and dive through the world in full 3D. And yes, we could even fly.
Where the Wright brothers went wrong was in their failure to understand that Mario games are better than actual real life. Super Mario 64 is no exception, a game that even in its modern-day ancientness is still so much fun to play that it makes entire evenings disappear if you allow it to. Mario's controls - again, for his first ever 3D outing - are somehow flawless and fun on some sort of primal level. It's just a joy to make that little guy run around. The camera gets some flak now that we live in an era of fully controllable third person cameras but 64's snappier method more than works for the game, and the contextualization of it via the Lakitu is such a charming addition it's absolutely worth the occasional fumble.
64's worlds are all a delight to explore, some maybe a little more than others, but the objectives in them are so varied and your methods of completing them so freeform that it's a thrill just to load into a world and goof around until bumble your way into getting a power star you may not have even known was there. But it's the hub world that really cements Super Mario 64 as a sheer photon blast of joy. Peach's Castle is burdened by secrets, and wandering the halls searching for hidden treasures and secret passageways, pushed onwards by thr iconic score, is no less alluring and comfortable now than it was 25 years ago. The soundtrack throughout the entire game is brilliant, if a bit lacking for unique tracks. Every song is iconic.
There's no filler in Super Mario 64. No wasted time. You decide what level to play, you get in there, and you have a blast until you're done. It's a game that's been with me all my life, first as a barely cognizant child just basking in wonder at it, and now as a grizzled veteran of Adult Problems who still has an amazing time playing through all 120 stars in the course of one afternoon. Almost 30 years on, Super Mario 64 remains a delight that does not end. A star that does not fade.
Where the Wright brothers went wrong was in their failure to understand that Mario games are better than actual real life. Super Mario 64 is no exception, a game that even in its modern-day ancientness is still so much fun to play that it makes entire evenings disappear if you allow it to. Mario's controls - again, for his first ever 3D outing - are somehow flawless and fun on some sort of primal level. It's just a joy to make that little guy run around. The camera gets some flak now that we live in an era of fully controllable third person cameras but 64's snappier method more than works for the game, and the contextualization of it via the Lakitu is such a charming addition it's absolutely worth the occasional fumble.
64's worlds are all a delight to explore, some maybe a little more than others, but the objectives in them are so varied and your methods of completing them so freeform that it's a thrill just to load into a world and goof around until bumble your way into getting a power star you may not have even known was there. But it's the hub world that really cements Super Mario 64 as a sheer photon blast of joy. Peach's Castle is burdened by secrets, and wandering the halls searching for hidden treasures and secret passageways, pushed onwards by thr iconic score, is no less alluring and comfortable now than it was 25 years ago. The soundtrack throughout the entire game is brilliant, if a bit lacking for unique tracks. Every song is iconic.
There's no filler in Super Mario 64. No wasted time. You decide what level to play, you get in there, and you have a blast until you're done. It's a game that's been with me all my life, first as a barely cognizant child just basking in wonder at it, and now as a grizzled veteran of Adult Problems who still has an amazing time playing through all 120 stars in the course of one afternoon. Almost 30 years on, Super Mario 64 remains a delight that does not end. A star that does not fade.
2001
“Everyone has lost something precious. Everyone has lost homes, dreams, and friends. We can make new homes for ourselves, and new dreams. But the people and friends we have lost, the dreams that have faded. Never forget them.”
In 2000, with the Playstation 2 already released, Squaresoft released Final Fantasy IX for the Playstation 1. A grand adventure full of obtuse side content and immaculate presentation, FF9 felt like the culmination of generations of experience making these games. A year later, Final Fantasy X arrived for the Playstation 2, beginning a new era for the franchise that took all those lessons learned and used them to pivot the franchise into an exciting new direction. One that clearly owed thematically and structurally to its predecessors, but that wasn’t afraid to excise and build until it felt so much like its own thing that a new Final Fantasy was able to feel truly fresh. And it paid off in spades, because Final Fantasy X is maybe the single truest 3D masterpiece of the franchise.
The key differences with FFX and what came before it lie in the nitty gritty of its gameplay approach. Most notably, the ATB system that had been iterated on so prominently for the last several entries has been entirely replaced by a more traditional turn based system. Characters get EXP for participating in battle, but you can only have three in battle at a time. Every character has a specific use-case, and where the game brings it all together is in its switching system. You can switch an active character with anyone else in your roster on their turn, and the switched character will still get to act. This is brilliant, and battles will often center around figuring out when a certain character needs to use a specific maneuver against an enemy and swapping around to capitalize. Using Tidus to cast Slow on flying enemies that can petrify your party, then swapping over to Wakka who specializes in taking down flying enemies and taking them all out before they can move. It’s a really snappy system and it feels very good to play. After the molasses slowness of FF9’s take on ATB, FFX feels like a colossal readjustment for the better in every conceivable way.
The other significant changes are with the leveling system and the gear system. I won’t go as in-depth with these mechanics, just know that it’s all in the service of allowing the player to truly customize their experience. Traditional level ups have been replaced with an insane gigantic skill tree, with each level giving a character a single move along the tree. This allows you to pick and choose how you want to progress your characters - make your white mage the strongest physical attacker on the team, turn your nimble protagonist into a Vivi-tier black mage, do whatever the hell you want. Coupled with the new gear system, which completely removes stats from equipment and focuses entirely on passive buffs, mastery and excessive play can allow you to essentially turn your entire party into invincible demigods that turn every fight into a joke. But it’s a long journey there.
Narratively, Final Fantasy X centers around a pilgrimage. A few great characters, traveling together on a journey to a specific destination, making a few necessary stops along the way. FFX’s most obvious difference in world design from the games that came before is its linearity, but because of this narrative structure it feels kind of hard to fault it. Of course you’re going down straight linear paths - you are doing a tried and true journey and following in the footsteps of your forebears. It’s definitely an early mark against the game regardless, but I think this narrative conceit is the reason people are less harsh on FFX for this as opposed to, say, FFXIII. The game also does a great job pacing itself, every long linear path is usually punctuated with some sort of switch-up, whether that be a series of intense boss fights, a dungeon, a puzzle sequence, or some awful underwater soccer. There’s enough variety to keep things fresh despite the repetition of its general level progression, which is a huge boon that helps wipe away some of the disappointment from the lack of freedom.
Towards the very end of the game, it opens up substantially. Once you can go wherever you want whenever you want, suddenly there are a million things to do. Many of them are annoying, many of them are obtuse, and many of them are difficult. I didn’t do all of them, but I did go through the hassle of acquiring everybody’s Celestial Weapon and all of the Aeons. And while dodging 200 lightning bolts and playing like six hours of Blitzball did suck, that’s kind of… the fun? It’s an impossible feeling to describe, but there’s something about overcoming an obtuse and ridiculous challenge and getting rewarded by becoming so strong you can sleep through endgame superbosses that makes you feel incredibly accomplished. It’s sort of like the game’s own narrative structure - journey through something painful to experience a relaxing calm.
What a wonderful journey it is, too. Final Fantasy X tells possibly the single greatest story in the franchise, with a unique and well thought out world populated with interesting characters. Not all of them get tons of development, but they don’t have to. They all serve a role in both battle and the group dynamic, and they’re great to have around. When they do have a role in the narrative - and they all do - it’s always done with tenderness and weight. And I think that’s the best way to describe the game’s story and script: tender and heavy. So many great individual lines, individual moments, individual scenes. The early PS2-era animation and voice acting cruft largely wears off early on, so by the time you’re getting to the seriously impactful scenes you are all in, and the actors are doing great work. Tidus especially is given a lot of work to do, and actor James Arnold Taylor is able to pull it all off. From confident braggadocio to covert sadness to out and out despair, he’s able to make it all work. Even the infamous laugh scene works well in context and is called back to many hours later in a way that felt genuinely moving. I have no complaints about the narrative, which trucks along at a pretty good pace and ends perfectly. No notes.
So what we have here is a Final Fantasy for fans and first timers, one that reinvents so many aspects of the series while maintaining the core of its soul. Through its excellent storytelling, phenomenal soundtrack, and deep gameplay it marks itself as possibly the single greatest rpg of its era and easily one of the top Final Fantasy games.
I never want to play Blitzball again.
In 2000, with the Playstation 2 already released, Squaresoft released Final Fantasy IX for the Playstation 1. A grand adventure full of obtuse side content and immaculate presentation, FF9 felt like the culmination of generations of experience making these games. A year later, Final Fantasy X arrived for the Playstation 2, beginning a new era for the franchise that took all those lessons learned and used them to pivot the franchise into an exciting new direction. One that clearly owed thematically and structurally to its predecessors, but that wasn’t afraid to excise and build until it felt so much like its own thing that a new Final Fantasy was able to feel truly fresh. And it paid off in spades, because Final Fantasy X is maybe the single truest 3D masterpiece of the franchise.
The key differences with FFX and what came before it lie in the nitty gritty of its gameplay approach. Most notably, the ATB system that had been iterated on so prominently for the last several entries has been entirely replaced by a more traditional turn based system. Characters get EXP for participating in battle, but you can only have three in battle at a time. Every character has a specific use-case, and where the game brings it all together is in its switching system. You can switch an active character with anyone else in your roster on their turn, and the switched character will still get to act. This is brilliant, and battles will often center around figuring out when a certain character needs to use a specific maneuver against an enemy and swapping around to capitalize. Using Tidus to cast Slow on flying enemies that can petrify your party, then swapping over to Wakka who specializes in taking down flying enemies and taking them all out before they can move. It’s a really snappy system and it feels very good to play. After the molasses slowness of FF9’s take on ATB, FFX feels like a colossal readjustment for the better in every conceivable way.
The other significant changes are with the leveling system and the gear system. I won’t go as in-depth with these mechanics, just know that it’s all in the service of allowing the player to truly customize their experience. Traditional level ups have been replaced with an insane gigantic skill tree, with each level giving a character a single move along the tree. This allows you to pick and choose how you want to progress your characters - make your white mage the strongest physical attacker on the team, turn your nimble protagonist into a Vivi-tier black mage, do whatever the hell you want. Coupled with the new gear system, which completely removes stats from equipment and focuses entirely on passive buffs, mastery and excessive play can allow you to essentially turn your entire party into invincible demigods that turn every fight into a joke. But it’s a long journey there.
Narratively, Final Fantasy X centers around a pilgrimage. A few great characters, traveling together on a journey to a specific destination, making a few necessary stops along the way. FFX’s most obvious difference in world design from the games that came before is its linearity, but because of this narrative structure it feels kind of hard to fault it. Of course you’re going down straight linear paths - you are doing a tried and true journey and following in the footsteps of your forebears. It’s definitely an early mark against the game regardless, but I think this narrative conceit is the reason people are less harsh on FFX for this as opposed to, say, FFXIII. The game also does a great job pacing itself, every long linear path is usually punctuated with some sort of switch-up, whether that be a series of intense boss fights, a dungeon, a puzzle sequence, or some awful underwater soccer. There’s enough variety to keep things fresh despite the repetition of its general level progression, which is a huge boon that helps wipe away some of the disappointment from the lack of freedom.
Towards the very end of the game, it opens up substantially. Once you can go wherever you want whenever you want, suddenly there are a million things to do. Many of them are annoying, many of them are obtuse, and many of them are difficult. I didn’t do all of them, but I did go through the hassle of acquiring everybody’s Celestial Weapon and all of the Aeons. And while dodging 200 lightning bolts and playing like six hours of Blitzball did suck, that’s kind of… the fun? It’s an impossible feeling to describe, but there’s something about overcoming an obtuse and ridiculous challenge and getting rewarded by becoming so strong you can sleep through endgame superbosses that makes you feel incredibly accomplished. It’s sort of like the game’s own narrative structure - journey through something painful to experience a relaxing calm.
What a wonderful journey it is, too. Final Fantasy X tells possibly the single greatest story in the franchise, with a unique and well thought out world populated with interesting characters. Not all of them get tons of development, but they don’t have to. They all serve a role in both battle and the group dynamic, and they’re great to have around. When they do have a role in the narrative - and they all do - it’s always done with tenderness and weight. And I think that’s the best way to describe the game’s story and script: tender and heavy. So many great individual lines, individual moments, individual scenes. The early PS2-era animation and voice acting cruft largely wears off early on, so by the time you’re getting to the seriously impactful scenes you are all in, and the actors are doing great work. Tidus especially is given a lot of work to do, and actor James Arnold Taylor is able to pull it all off. From confident braggadocio to covert sadness to out and out despair, he’s able to make it all work. Even the infamous laugh scene works well in context and is called back to many hours later in a way that felt genuinely moving. I have no complaints about the narrative, which trucks along at a pretty good pace and ends perfectly. No notes.
So what we have here is a Final Fantasy for fans and first timers, one that reinvents so many aspects of the series while maintaining the core of its soul. Through its excellent storytelling, phenomenal soundtrack, and deep gameplay it marks itself as possibly the single greatest rpg of its era and easily one of the top Final Fantasy games.
I never want to play Blitzball again.
2023
Never has a game like this been made before, and never could a game like this be made until now.
That hasn't stopped Remedy from trying though. Ever since the original Max Payne their efforts to blend cinematic gameplay with storytelling devices that are trademarks of non-gaming mediums has been apparent. Sometimes for the better, like Max Payne and Control, and sometimes for the worse like in Quantum Break. Every game, they've pushed further and further, trying different tactics to marry disparate elements into a cohesive whole that punches above its weight because of the sheer force of its combined elements. With Alan Wake II, for the first time, they have succeeded.
Alan Wake II, most importantly, plays well. It's a genuinely good survival horror game with weighty combat and tense situations. The enemy variety leaves a little to be desired, but there really isn't a whole lot of combat in the game overall so it winds up not really marring the experience too much. Even on Hard Mode resources felt too plentiful, and I had a shoebox full of flares and excess med kits by the time my journey was over, but limited inventory space meant that I could never reliably have too much on me at one time which kept the actual battles nerve-wracking and tense. Some of the early bosses are great examples of this, particularly Nightingale and Cynthia.
This game is also scary as HELL. One of the best looking and sounding game's ever made, Remedy shows no restraint with the scares here. From dreadful buildups of atmosphere, to enemies surprising you from around corners, to straight up screen-filling deafeningly loud jumpscares, every type of scare is here and they are used to great effect. The game is utterly overwhelming in its employment of horror, like Resident Evil 2 Remake mixed with a giallo, and it keeps the player engaged and terrified during every moment of its 30ish hour narrative. And yet while the game rubs up against being "too long," it's smart enough to thrust you into the endgame and change up the flow of gameplay right when you're ready for what you're doing to end. It's a long slow burn, but one that plays to the strengths of that style of pacing and doesn't fall apart the way many games like it do. Some of the most disturbing and inventive sequences are saved for the endgame, with similarly terrifying and memorable moments sprinkled in from start to finish. The game will let you get bored if you just wander around for trinkets every time the option opens up to you, though I felt the game was very good about clueing you in on when you should actually be going back around to locations via both story progression and item procurements. It's an extremely smartly designed game - a blessing after Control fumbled some of its metroidvania elements.
Writing-wise, Alan Wake II is probably 2023's best game. Baldur's Gate 3 has more writing, and better developed characters, but Alan Wake II has what I'm looking for: that headswimming shit that sticks in you and makes you perceive the game's visuals and audio in new ways. Seeing the light of the FBC's bunker on Cauldron Lake flashing the tops of trees caused me to flashback to the very beginning of the game where you see a similar visual employed in the game's first overlap. Little things like this are littered all throughout the game in both its dialogue and its visual design, leading an inventive player to pin up case boards in their own Mind Place to try to sort through the weeds of the game's many themes. It's plot actually gets a little too explained for me by the end, but Remedy was smart enough to dangle many more mysteries in front of us with the very end of the game to keep us thinking and wanting more.
I spent most of Alan Wake II loving it but thinking it was one of the least replayable games in recent memory. After finishing it, I'm foaming at the mouth for New Game+ to be added in a future update so I can go back in and experience it again. It's not often that a 30 hour narrative adventure with minimal combat can accomplish that feat, and that AW2 pulls it off is a real testament to its writing and inventiveness. I want to spend more time in Bright Falls. I just need a good reason. I wasn't as big on Control as most people were, and the first Alan Wake definitely shows its age now even more than many other 2010 games do. But with its sequel, Remedy has finally made THE Remedy game, and cracked their own future wide open. They have become one of video game's premium developers, and Sam Lake one of its great auteurs. I hope this road keeps looping for a long time to come.
That hasn't stopped Remedy from trying though. Ever since the original Max Payne their efforts to blend cinematic gameplay with storytelling devices that are trademarks of non-gaming mediums has been apparent. Sometimes for the better, like Max Payne and Control, and sometimes for the worse like in Quantum Break. Every game, they've pushed further and further, trying different tactics to marry disparate elements into a cohesive whole that punches above its weight because of the sheer force of its combined elements. With Alan Wake II, for the first time, they have succeeded.
Alan Wake II, most importantly, plays well. It's a genuinely good survival horror game with weighty combat and tense situations. The enemy variety leaves a little to be desired, but there really isn't a whole lot of combat in the game overall so it winds up not really marring the experience too much. Even on Hard Mode resources felt too plentiful, and I had a shoebox full of flares and excess med kits by the time my journey was over, but limited inventory space meant that I could never reliably have too much on me at one time which kept the actual battles nerve-wracking and tense. Some of the early bosses are great examples of this, particularly Nightingale and Cynthia.
This game is also scary as HELL. One of the best looking and sounding game's ever made, Remedy shows no restraint with the scares here. From dreadful buildups of atmosphere, to enemies surprising you from around corners, to straight up screen-filling deafeningly loud jumpscares, every type of scare is here and they are used to great effect. The game is utterly overwhelming in its employment of horror, like Resident Evil 2 Remake mixed with a giallo, and it keeps the player engaged and terrified during every moment of its 30ish hour narrative. And yet while the game rubs up against being "too long," it's smart enough to thrust you into the endgame and change up the flow of gameplay right when you're ready for what you're doing to end. It's a long slow burn, but one that plays to the strengths of that style of pacing and doesn't fall apart the way many games like it do. Some of the most disturbing and inventive sequences are saved for the endgame, with similarly terrifying and memorable moments sprinkled in from start to finish. The game will let you get bored if you just wander around for trinkets every time the option opens up to you, though I felt the game was very good about clueing you in on when you should actually be going back around to locations via both story progression and item procurements. It's an extremely smartly designed game - a blessing after Control fumbled some of its metroidvania elements.
Writing-wise, Alan Wake II is probably 2023's best game. Baldur's Gate 3 has more writing, and better developed characters, but Alan Wake II has what I'm looking for: that headswimming shit that sticks in you and makes you perceive the game's visuals and audio in new ways. Seeing the light of the FBC's bunker on Cauldron Lake flashing the tops of trees caused me to flashback to the very beginning of the game where you see a similar visual employed in the game's first overlap. Little things like this are littered all throughout the game in both its dialogue and its visual design, leading an inventive player to pin up case boards in their own Mind Place to try to sort through the weeds of the game's many themes. It's plot actually gets a little too explained for me by the end, but Remedy was smart enough to dangle many more mysteries in front of us with the very end of the game to keep us thinking and wanting more.
I spent most of Alan Wake II loving it but thinking it was one of the least replayable games in recent memory. After finishing it, I'm foaming at the mouth for New Game+ to be added in a future update so I can go back in and experience it again. It's not often that a 30 hour narrative adventure with minimal combat can accomplish that feat, and that AW2 pulls it off is a real testament to its writing and inventiveness. I want to spend more time in Bright Falls. I just need a good reason. I wasn't as big on Control as most people were, and the first Alan Wake definitely shows its age now even more than many other 2010 games do. But with its sequel, Remedy has finally made THE Remedy game, and cracked their own future wide open. They have become one of video game's premium developers, and Sam Lake one of its great auteurs. I hope this road keeps looping for a long time to come.
1993
It's fucking DOOM.
2023
A Capcom game where you travel back in time in a mech suit to fight dinosaurs who are traveling forwards in time so an evil AI can harvest their blood and use it to power rich people's houses.
It's a stupid, wacky, over-the-top amazingly fun time. I don't often like multiplayer games, and I especially don't often like hero shooters. Capcom manages to avoids the many many pitfalls of games of this ilk by prioritizing fun over everything else. Microtransactions are there, but they are inobtrusive and wholly unnecessary. Most importantly, every single suit - every Assault, every Tank, and every Support - is fun as hell to play. They all feel unique and satisfying as hell, both in PvP and PvE. Most brilliantly of all, it's quick and easy to swap suits mid-match to fit the current scenario, and there's no better feeling than realizing how to handle a tricky encounter, swapping over, and leveling the playing field.
It took me 60 matches and 25 hours on the dot to finish Exoprimal's campaign. I played a few hours with friends who were behind me, without that I would've finished in closer to 50 matches and 20 hours probably. But I didn't mind a single one of them. After a slow early game the variety spiked tenfold, and the vast majority of matches I played were unique and had really fun arrangements of enemies and hazards. Very rarely was I not having a good time.
To top it all off, Exoprimal has a few 10 player cooperative Raids. These Raids are the most fun I've had with a video game all year, full stop. They are chaotic, they are difficult, and they are incredibly cool. Every system sings beautifully in these moments, and they always feel special when they come up.
There's been a lot of shit slung around this game, and it's not hard to see why. From a distance it looks like the kind of awful, soulless market drivel that the Capcom that made Resident Evil 6 would put out in hopes of earning the Call of Duty audience or something. But play the game, stick with it, and you've got the most fun and rewarding multiplayer game since the initial launch version of Overwatch. It's well worth your time, and with it being on Gamepass you've got nothing to lose.
Strongest 4/5 game I've played in years.
It's a stupid, wacky, over-the-top amazingly fun time. I don't often like multiplayer games, and I especially don't often like hero shooters. Capcom manages to avoids the many many pitfalls of games of this ilk by prioritizing fun over everything else. Microtransactions are there, but they are inobtrusive and wholly unnecessary. Most importantly, every single suit - every Assault, every Tank, and every Support - is fun as hell to play. They all feel unique and satisfying as hell, both in PvP and PvE. Most brilliantly of all, it's quick and easy to swap suits mid-match to fit the current scenario, and there's no better feeling than realizing how to handle a tricky encounter, swapping over, and leveling the playing field.
It took me 60 matches and 25 hours on the dot to finish Exoprimal's campaign. I played a few hours with friends who were behind me, without that I would've finished in closer to 50 matches and 20 hours probably. But I didn't mind a single one of them. After a slow early game the variety spiked tenfold, and the vast majority of matches I played were unique and had really fun arrangements of enemies and hazards. Very rarely was I not having a good time.
To top it all off, Exoprimal has a few 10 player cooperative Raids. These Raids are the most fun I've had with a video game all year, full stop. They are chaotic, they are difficult, and they are incredibly cool. Every system sings beautifully in these moments, and they always feel special when they come up.
There's been a lot of shit slung around this game, and it's not hard to see why. From a distance it looks like the kind of awful, soulless market drivel that the Capcom that made Resident Evil 6 would put out in hopes of earning the Call of Duty audience or something. But play the game, stick with it, and you've got the most fun and rewarding multiplayer game since the initial launch version of Overwatch. It's well worth your time, and with it being on Gamepass you've got nothing to lose.
Strongest 4/5 game I've played in years.
2013
Dreck.
Bioshock Infinite is easily the worst game in its franchise, and one of the most repugnant AAA games of the last decade. Elizabeth is a likeable character and Songbird is a cool design that the game ultimately wastes, and I can't deny that the setting and some of the core plot ideas are neat or at least interesting. But interesting ideas aren't enough to save a game so mind numbingly dull, so significant a step back from its predecessors you'd believe it if someone told you this was the first game in the trilogy. Every single aspect of Infinite's gameplay is a watered down bastardization of the prior games. The firearms feel weak, the magic abilities are lame and unfun, the upgrade system is a total bore. The checkpointing system totally fails to actually account for failure, so it's possible to lock yourself into nigh-unwinnable situations in the late game as every botched attempt to overcome an encounter just leaves you with less resources for your next effort. It's awful.
The both-sides, oppressed-as-oppressors plot that takes center stage as the game goes on is absolutely disgusting. Even as someone who barely understood politics in 2013 it left a foul taste in my mouth, one that's only grown more rancid over the ensuing decade of political lunacy. Playing Bioshock Infinite is never fun and increasingly crass. One good jumpscare and two cool characters are not enough to save this from being one of the worst high profile video game releases of all time. Avoid at all costs.
Bioshock Infinite is easily the worst game in its franchise, and one of the most repugnant AAA games of the last decade. Elizabeth is a likeable character and Songbird is a cool design that the game ultimately wastes, and I can't deny that the setting and some of the core plot ideas are neat or at least interesting. But interesting ideas aren't enough to save a game so mind numbingly dull, so significant a step back from its predecessors you'd believe it if someone told you this was the first game in the trilogy. Every single aspect of Infinite's gameplay is a watered down bastardization of the prior games. The firearms feel weak, the magic abilities are lame and unfun, the upgrade system is a total bore. The checkpointing system totally fails to actually account for failure, so it's possible to lock yourself into nigh-unwinnable situations in the late game as every botched attempt to overcome an encounter just leaves you with less resources for your next effort. It's awful.
The both-sides, oppressed-as-oppressors plot that takes center stage as the game goes on is absolutely disgusting. Even as someone who barely understood politics in 2013 it left a foul taste in my mouth, one that's only grown more rancid over the ensuing decade of political lunacy. Playing Bioshock Infinite is never fun and increasingly crass. One good jumpscare and two cool characters are not enough to save this from being one of the worst high profile video game releases of all time. Avoid at all costs.
2019
Gnosia is the best game about a guy with a cat living inside of his neck ever made.
A Visual Novel lives and dies on its story and characters, its art and music, and its VIBES. And in all these ways, Gnosia sings the sweetest song you'll ever hear. A social deduction game where everyone is certifiable and your strategies are ever changing, because so are the rules.
What makes Gnosia realltly stand out among its contemporaries is how it handles progression. Not only do you level up your stats as you play, allowing you to build out your character like an RPG, but the world of Gnosia and the lunatics trapped therein are rife with mysteries and riddled with secrets. As you learn more and more about the gameplay systems and how to manipulate the other characters onboard the ship, you become more able to use that knowledge to advance your understanding of the backstories of the characters and world of Gnosia, and that knowledge will further enable you to manipulate the characters in search of the results you're looking for with every round you play. Gnosia's "final boss" is a spectacular culmination of these mechanics, forcing you to execute every skill you've learned over your 20 or so hours with the game with peak precision against a terrifying threat. It's one of the most memorable boss fights I've played in a game this decade, and Gnosia is a visual novel. It's awesome.
Gnosia excels in its presentation as well. The art is excellent and unique and oh man, the music is blissful. Tense, exciting, nerve-wracking, and always enhancing the mood of every scene. The only fault to be found within Gnosia is that locating the game's final secrets may become a bore, but even that feels thematically and mechanically appeopriate. It's a very unique game well worth seeing through to its poignant and memorable conclusion. Cannot recommend it enough.
A Visual Novel lives and dies on its story and characters, its art and music, and its VIBES. And in all these ways, Gnosia sings the sweetest song you'll ever hear. A social deduction game where everyone is certifiable and your strategies are ever changing, because so are the rules.
What makes Gnosia realltly stand out among its contemporaries is how it handles progression. Not only do you level up your stats as you play, allowing you to build out your character like an RPG, but the world of Gnosia and the lunatics trapped therein are rife with mysteries and riddled with secrets. As you learn more and more about the gameplay systems and how to manipulate the other characters onboard the ship, you become more able to use that knowledge to advance your understanding of the backstories of the characters and world of Gnosia, and that knowledge will further enable you to manipulate the characters in search of the results you're looking for with every round you play. Gnosia's "final boss" is a spectacular culmination of these mechanics, forcing you to execute every skill you've learned over your 20 or so hours with the game with peak precision against a terrifying threat. It's one of the most memorable boss fights I've played in a game this decade, and Gnosia is a visual novel. It's awesome.
Gnosia excels in its presentation as well. The art is excellent and unique and oh man, the music is blissful. Tense, exciting, nerve-wracking, and always enhancing the mood of every scene. The only fault to be found within Gnosia is that locating the game's final secrets may become a bore, but even that feels thematically and mechanically appeopriate. It's a very unique game well worth seeing through to its poignant and memorable conclusion. Cannot recommend it enough.
2023
An improvement over the first game in every conceivable way. Its writing isn't significantly better, and its pacing still suffers significantly when getting to new characters. But the dungeons are all fun to explore, and most importantly its bosses present very fun and varied challenges. The soundtrack is outstanding, best of 2023. And the way the game teases little pieces of the plot that all come together for the final sequence is genuinely an impressive bit of worldbuilding and game design. Final boss feels way too difficult, but I understand that it's a challenge for the JRPG freaks who actually want to teambuild and engage with the game's systems to their limits. Hard to do better than this for a JRPG in 2023. Masterclass.
2005
Capcom released Haunting Ground for the Playstation 2 in May of 2005, sandwiched in between the Gamecube and PS2 releases of Resident Evil 4. With that context, it's no surprise that Haunting Ground wound up both middlingly received by critics and completely overlooked by gamers at the time. "The future," they thought, "is over there." At first glance Haunting Ground seems antiquated and droll. Fixed camera angles, hiding from stalkers, no upgradeable shotguns. Haunting Ground may have seemed like regression, something to be beaten back after having just tasted the sweet sweet nectar of Resident Evil 4. But it's not 2005 anymore, and hiding from scary enemies while solving puzzles has come back in vogue. It's impossible to search through Youtube or Twitch without being assaulted by a litany of videos thumbnailed by a man screaming in terror at a game you've never heard of, a game that is proably about hiding in a closet while waiting for some kind of freak to walk away. That most common element of modern day horror games forms the base component of Haunting Ground, and if Haunting Ground were just this it would still be a successful enough horror game. It's what Haunting Ground uses that baseline to become that turns it from Acceptable Horror Game into a game that I think is an all-time horror classic.
Haunting Ground casts you as Fiona Belli, a young woman who wakes up naked in a cage in a shack behind a giant castle. Not ideal. Within 15 minutes it becomes clear that your parents are dead, you can't leave, and the castle's inhabitants are into some bizarre research and they want you for their schemes. From here the game is split into four separate 'chapters,' each involving a different primary entity hunting you down and each taking place at least partially in a separate segmented area of the castle. Fiona and her loyal pup Hewie have to explore the area, uncover items, and find the clues necessary to solve the puzzles scattered about the play area if they want to escape. All while being pursued by that section's primary antagonist. This sounds annoying on paper, and at first perhaps it can be. But the game is very smart about how it doles out its stalker characters. Each of the 4 have vast differences in the way they search the area for Fiona, and as you spend more time around them you become more and more familiar with their unique quirks. One likes to close doors behind them, slowing them down but cutting off your escape routes. One might have louder footsteps than the others but move more quickly, which turns evasion into something less strategic and more white-knuckle responsive. Unlike a lot of games of its type, Haunting Ground also provides you with a lot of options for dealing with these enemies once you've been found. From defensive items that can be both thrown and planted, to commands that allow Hewie to assist in various ways, and physical attacks Fiona herself can land on her assailants, the game manages to make you feel vulnerable without turning failure into a frustrating chase. It's a tightrope walk, but one the game pulls off with grace.
Getting familiar with the various enemy AIs is fun and satisfying, but would mean nothing if the play area itself wasn't fun to explore and master. Fortunately, Belli Castle and its grounds make for one of the most enjoyable and tense areas to explore in any horror game I can think of. The atmosphere is dense, unnerving but also inviting. Each room is detailed, and most have interactable objects that give interesting flavor text if nothing else. The shadowy corners and run down cabinets offer excellent places to hide from the game's stalkers, and also serve as tight and terrible places to be trapped in when the noose is tightening. The puzzles that these areas house are just as much the star of the game as its stalkers, with each area housing several elaborate, multiroom puzzles that must be studied and understood and then executed while the pressure is on. None of these are truly difficult, but they're momentary roadblocks that feel satisfying to overcome, not unlike a good Zelda puzzle. Often solving a puzzle will alter the area in some way to grant you a momentary repreive from your various harrassers, so solving them brings both satisfaction and relief.
The story of Haunting Ground is clunky and the game does occasionally stumble when dealing the maturity and complexity of its themes, but by and large I think this area too is a success. It's not often that a video game taps into a Giallo-esque portrayal of femininity and the cruelty of men, but Haunting Ground soundly utilizes that theme as the bedroot of the games horror. Fiona is objectified and victimized in every moment, and while occasionally it does become laughably ridiculous (her breast physics are for real outrageous) when the game wants to mine that topic for horror I think it does so very successfully. It's been 17 years as of this writing since the release of Haunting Ground, and earlier this year women in the United States lost the right to choose whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, unwanted or otherwise, in many states even in the cases of rape and incest. Even as a straight man, this eradication of human rights disgusts and disturbs, and its looming shadow is presented with stark clarity in Haunting Ground. A game older than most gamers that not only manages to feel more topical than most modern games, but far scarier than them because of it.
Haunting Ground is a triumph, a genuine landmark of the horror genre that went sadly overlooked because of the initial context of its release but that still surprises and delights and terrifies even today. It's not perfect - the controls can be clunky and Hewie's AI occasionally causes more frustration than feels intended - but most horror games made today could still learn a lot from it. Personally, I think Capcom is sitting on a goldmine here. A faithful remake of this game in the RE Engine that cleans up its controls, corrects those minor thematic miscues and tightens up the script, I really think could be a massive success in the modern environment. Oftentimes when I go back to these older titles and experience them for the first time I have the enlightening experience of seeing how those games became a part of how video games were designed from then on, like Resident Evil 4's camera angle or Devil May Cry's combat mechanics. With Haunting Ground, however, I had the much more fascinating experience of seeing a game that clearly still has a lot to give. It's a golden gem, waiting for its moment. I see it clearly. It might take another five or even ten years, but Haunting Ground is a moment of cultural significance waiting to happen. All it needs is the right push.
Haunting Ground casts you as Fiona Belli, a young woman who wakes up naked in a cage in a shack behind a giant castle. Not ideal. Within 15 minutes it becomes clear that your parents are dead, you can't leave, and the castle's inhabitants are into some bizarre research and they want you for their schemes. From here the game is split into four separate 'chapters,' each involving a different primary entity hunting you down and each taking place at least partially in a separate segmented area of the castle. Fiona and her loyal pup Hewie have to explore the area, uncover items, and find the clues necessary to solve the puzzles scattered about the play area if they want to escape. All while being pursued by that section's primary antagonist. This sounds annoying on paper, and at first perhaps it can be. But the game is very smart about how it doles out its stalker characters. Each of the 4 have vast differences in the way they search the area for Fiona, and as you spend more time around them you become more and more familiar with their unique quirks. One likes to close doors behind them, slowing them down but cutting off your escape routes. One might have louder footsteps than the others but move more quickly, which turns evasion into something less strategic and more white-knuckle responsive. Unlike a lot of games of its type, Haunting Ground also provides you with a lot of options for dealing with these enemies once you've been found. From defensive items that can be both thrown and planted, to commands that allow Hewie to assist in various ways, and physical attacks Fiona herself can land on her assailants, the game manages to make you feel vulnerable without turning failure into a frustrating chase. It's a tightrope walk, but one the game pulls off with grace.
Getting familiar with the various enemy AIs is fun and satisfying, but would mean nothing if the play area itself wasn't fun to explore and master. Fortunately, Belli Castle and its grounds make for one of the most enjoyable and tense areas to explore in any horror game I can think of. The atmosphere is dense, unnerving but also inviting. Each room is detailed, and most have interactable objects that give interesting flavor text if nothing else. The shadowy corners and run down cabinets offer excellent places to hide from the game's stalkers, and also serve as tight and terrible places to be trapped in when the noose is tightening. The puzzles that these areas house are just as much the star of the game as its stalkers, with each area housing several elaborate, multiroom puzzles that must be studied and understood and then executed while the pressure is on. None of these are truly difficult, but they're momentary roadblocks that feel satisfying to overcome, not unlike a good Zelda puzzle. Often solving a puzzle will alter the area in some way to grant you a momentary repreive from your various harrassers, so solving them brings both satisfaction and relief.
The story of Haunting Ground is clunky and the game does occasionally stumble when dealing the maturity and complexity of its themes, but by and large I think this area too is a success. It's not often that a video game taps into a Giallo-esque portrayal of femininity and the cruelty of men, but Haunting Ground soundly utilizes that theme as the bedroot of the games horror. Fiona is objectified and victimized in every moment, and while occasionally it does become laughably ridiculous (her breast physics are for real outrageous) when the game wants to mine that topic for horror I think it does so very successfully. It's been 17 years as of this writing since the release of Haunting Ground, and earlier this year women in the United States lost the right to choose whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, unwanted or otherwise, in many states even in the cases of rape and incest. Even as a straight man, this eradication of human rights disgusts and disturbs, and its looming shadow is presented with stark clarity in Haunting Ground. A game older than most gamers that not only manages to feel more topical than most modern games, but far scarier than them because of it.
Haunting Ground is a triumph, a genuine landmark of the horror genre that went sadly overlooked because of the initial context of its release but that still surprises and delights and terrifies even today. It's not perfect - the controls can be clunky and Hewie's AI occasionally causes more frustration than feels intended - but most horror games made today could still learn a lot from it. Personally, I think Capcom is sitting on a goldmine here. A faithful remake of this game in the RE Engine that cleans up its controls, corrects those minor thematic miscues and tightens up the script, I really think could be a massive success in the modern environment. Oftentimes when I go back to these older titles and experience them for the first time I have the enlightening experience of seeing how those games became a part of how video games were designed from then on, like Resident Evil 4's camera angle or Devil May Cry's combat mechanics. With Haunting Ground, however, I had the much more fascinating experience of seeing a game that clearly still has a lot to give. It's a golden gem, waiting for its moment. I see it clearly. It might take another five or even ten years, but Haunting Ground is a moment of cultural significance waiting to happen. All it needs is the right push.
2020
Jessica and I danced under the lights at the Lombard Graduation Recital, June 21st 2014. Our senior years had finally ended three weeks prior, and the graduation ceremony had at last come to a close. I don't remember why we danced together, but we did. She was leaving for Iowa in August. A terrible Coldplay song was playing. Somehow our hands fell together, and there was a harmony. We melted like two squares of butter on the flat of a pan, and when my eyes next opened our lips were pressed together. It didn't last long. We returned to ourselves and separated. She blushed deeply. "I don't think my boyfriend is going to like that." She said with a smile. We parted ways.
Three days later I was sitting at a Steak & Shake fauxdiner with my friends Marco and Brandon. We were in the midst of some ugly spat, but we were hungry, so we ate. At some point during the meal all in the restaurant grew quiet, and just as I sensed a presence coming up from behind me my head was being slammed into the table, directly onto the small pool of ketchup I was using to finish up my fries. "What the fuck is wrong with you, man!?" It was Jared. "I should kill you for putting moves on my girl." I strained my eyes to the other side of the table where Marco and Brandon had been sitting. It was empty now. I was on my own.
"Sorry, I'm sorry." I squeezed out, the pressure in my head turning to pain. For a moment I felt his grip release, and I lifted my head only for it to be roughly smashed back down, this time into the corner of my meal tray. I yelled in pain, and fell onto my back on the booth. I heard some people gasp and a few goons laughs, but Jared didn't seem to think it was funny. He leaned over me and grabbed my shirt collar, pulling me up towards him, my life in his hands.
"Don't fucking tell me it was her. Why did you mack on my girl?" This was red hate. His spit flecked onto my face.
"I really don't know, I don't remember kissing her. Maybe it was her!" I stammered out the words, growing desperate for relief. He looked at me for a long time, his dark eyes seething. Eventually, he let me go.
"Stay the fuck away from her." He and his bros left the restaurant, while I gagged and bled over what was left of my meal. The waitress told me that I didn't have to pay.
In October of the following year my friends shared with me a news story that Jessica was dead. Beaten by Jared, her body found on some forgotten roadway in Iowa somewhere. For his defense, Jared said she was cheating on him, using his money to go to bars in town and meet boys and have one night stands with them while he was out with his friends. He said he couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't help but feel the smallest wince of blame.
Omori was released on Chirstmas Day, 2020. I bought it that day, and played through it to completion over the following two weeks. My playthrough took me around 33 hours. I have not booted up Omori since, nor have I purchased the later ports of the game that feature additional content.
In the coming-on two years since Omori's release, I have thought about it every single day.
Ignoring any and all gameplay or aesthetic discussion, where Omori leaves its mark is the heart. This game has a heart that beats and bleeds and pumps its feeling from itself into you, and you see yourself in the mirror and you see the things Omori put into you creeping across your face. You see smiles forgotten. You see tears wiped away. You see a hand on your shoulder. Everything will be okay. It's a game that may well have the most potent and excellently constructed narrative of any game ever made. Every single decision made during this game's development was one done to amplify the potency of the way this game makes you feel. It never goes away. If I'm fortunate enough to grow old, I wil still think about Omori every day. It will always be relevant. The things it says don't rust over with age. It will no longer just be my face in the mirror. I will always see her, and countless others.
Three days later I was sitting at a Steak & Shake fauxdiner with my friends Marco and Brandon. We were in the midst of some ugly spat, but we were hungry, so we ate. At some point during the meal all in the restaurant grew quiet, and just as I sensed a presence coming up from behind me my head was being slammed into the table, directly onto the small pool of ketchup I was using to finish up my fries. "What the fuck is wrong with you, man!?" It was Jared. "I should kill you for putting moves on my girl." I strained my eyes to the other side of the table where Marco and Brandon had been sitting. It was empty now. I was on my own.
"Sorry, I'm sorry." I squeezed out, the pressure in my head turning to pain. For a moment I felt his grip release, and I lifted my head only for it to be roughly smashed back down, this time into the corner of my meal tray. I yelled in pain, and fell onto my back on the booth. I heard some people gasp and a few goons laughs, but Jared didn't seem to think it was funny. He leaned over me and grabbed my shirt collar, pulling me up towards him, my life in his hands.
"Don't fucking tell me it was her. Why did you mack on my girl?" This was red hate. His spit flecked onto my face.
"I really don't know, I don't remember kissing her. Maybe it was her!" I stammered out the words, growing desperate for relief. He looked at me for a long time, his dark eyes seething. Eventually, he let me go.
"Stay the fuck away from her." He and his bros left the restaurant, while I gagged and bled over what was left of my meal. The waitress told me that I didn't have to pay.
In October of the following year my friends shared with me a news story that Jessica was dead. Beaten by Jared, her body found on some forgotten roadway in Iowa somewhere. For his defense, Jared said she was cheating on him, using his money to go to bars in town and meet boys and have one night stands with them while he was out with his friends. He said he couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't help but feel the smallest wince of blame.
Omori was released on Chirstmas Day, 2020. I bought it that day, and played through it to completion over the following two weeks. My playthrough took me around 33 hours. I have not booted up Omori since, nor have I purchased the later ports of the game that feature additional content.
In the coming-on two years since Omori's release, I have thought about it every single day.
Ignoring any and all gameplay or aesthetic discussion, where Omori leaves its mark is the heart. This game has a heart that beats and bleeds and pumps its feeling from itself into you, and you see yourself in the mirror and you see the things Omori put into you creeping across your face. You see smiles forgotten. You see tears wiped away. You see a hand on your shoulder. Everything will be okay. It's a game that may well have the most potent and excellently constructed narrative of any game ever made. Every single decision made during this game's development was one done to amplify the potency of the way this game makes you feel. It never goes away. If I'm fortunate enough to grow old, I wil still think about Omori every day. It will always be relevant. The things it says don't rust over with age. It will no longer just be my face in the mirror. I will always see her, and countless others.