at several points in the duration of the new colossus, i have to admit i enjoyed it more than the new order. that's not a reflection of the quality of the new colossus - everything is worse here - but it's a reflection of the fact that i can play this kind of game on PC now. no doubt in my mind if i had played this on console i would have thoroughly hated it. mastery of doom '16 and even eternal on console is achievable, because despite being pc games at their core the tenets of their mechanics (forward momentum at all costs, easily defined hurtboxes and hitboxes, hit and run strategy, weapon chaining, enemy prioritization) are within the realm of gamepad execution. ultraviolence, demanding though it is on a pad, remains an exhilarating affair. wolfenstein, with its emphasis on overwhelming the player, is far too reactive to have struck such a balance. your reliance on headshots and general precision is too great, your movement too improvisational and prone to jerking around, your fight against enemies who can rip you apart is breathless and unabated, all while no resources exist to readily replenish you. these games are simply more at home in this environment. so i did end up having fun, with the difficulty tuned up to my liking, at times greatly so, but there's a paucity of virtues here actively enabling that enjoyment. everything here feels like a first draft, so there's not actually a lot of refinement to the formula, but rather a feeling that things have been pared down, particularly with regards to stealth - not only are your approaches generally more restrictive due to less intricate level design, but your objectives are placed too 'conveniently' (ie the commander, who may call in reinforcements if alerted, is almost always just before the next segment of the level) for their consequences to matter. this also ends up greatly frustrating in the case of the titles optional ubercommandos, equipped wIth kampfpistoles that can easily knock you down and slug you while you're getting up, forcing you to restart several of those segments from the point of origin.

some of the loudest umbrage concerns the issues people have levied with the titles level design, actually. and its true that exploring this cluttered, often inadvertently abstruse geometry often yields little purpose or reward, and sparks no imagination. there's a moment halfway through when you gain access to one of three movement options, for instance, and as soon as you think levels will open up as a result, what ends up happening is the next barrier to progress will simply have three methods of progression all literally right next to each other (in this case a gate, a vent, and a window) to accommodate you and make sure you didn't have to look too hard. even beyond several frustrating incidents like this, in general i think this games problem has less to do with its errant level design and far more to do with its lack of meaningful escalation. the worst offender of this would have to be the final level reusing one of the opening levels environments to do much of the same, culminating in a shrewd arena fight that's only a little bit more taxing than its predecessors, and before you know it the games abruptly over in ten minutes. but there are several instances of this kind of deflation, partially a result of the games lack of evolution and scale. a dream sequence played out for subversion hardly feels like a climax because anyone paying attention can recognize it's a dream; a trip to venus that invokes the aesthetics of doom hardly feels as playful, missing the spark of adventure often found in the new order; a title depicting revolution spends so little time with any perspective that isn't BJ's.

that last point is crucial, because the new colossus is endlessly hokey. any intriguing subtext raised in the first half is promptly dropped in the second, where the game quickly becomes more embarrassing by the stage (either be a machismo-laden power fantasy or don't, stop interrogating this thread half-heartedly especially if you're going to contradict all of your imagery). configuring its assault on nazi ideology through a lukewarm 'the old shall perish at the hands of the progressive young' lens or, worse yet, a game about abusive parenting, ends up really cartoonishly flattening a great deal of the games narrative threads and stakes. BJ, the only mover and shaker in the story, is the only perspective afforded any material representation, so despite being a story about revolution enlisting all walks of life one never gets the sense they're truly liberating anyone, changing anyone's ways of lives, or making any sort of impact. by the time the game resolves what little conflict against its antagonist it had, and it closes on a truly awful cover of a song i won't be spoiling, it becomes apparent it couldn't have ended any other way.

don't be surprised if this eventually turns to 1/5, is all im saying (it did, i can't stand this kind of superficial treatise that people regard highly that nevertheless remains every bit as regressive and annoying as other works before it). discussing whether or not a game has 'aged' mechanically often gives me pause, in part for me because it's difficult to definitively say that they can, but wolfenstein II is an instance of an all-too common type of game: one that has aged narratively. and it's only going to get worse and worse from here on out

With his head in hand, he who bore the pain, would try to reach The Void again; The place where nothing moves, where darkness is lord and silence its preacher - a place of peace.

as someone whose number one dream in life has been to clamber into a sensory deprivation tank for years now, i relate to post void's take on the arcade format. oblivion is inviolable and sacrosanct here, not transcendence - everything between here and that inverse nirvana is stream-of-consciousness anarchy and troublesome white noise, each new threat a tax and handicap on your senses as you try to reach that sweet, sweet cessation of being. so committed to 'noise' post void is that even your upgrades will occasionally contribute to the visual clutter on screen (one explodes enemies on death; another ricochets bullets), and it's up to you to translate that mess to wasd and mouse as you line up headshot after headshot in the world's most deadly funhouse, its sprawling and uneven geometry working against you the whole way through. kind of barebones in design in a way that makes me wish it was designed far more around its purity - pistols just feel right, whereas the shotgun, once kitted out, is way too lenient - but i prefer this minimalistic roguelike compared to the likes of downwell, at least personally. introduces a slide just for the hell of it, cause it feels good but damn if it didnt get me killed more often than not

in a genre well known for conservative sensibilities and a dearth of anthropological and cultural respect, as well as voyeuristic and hedonistic death tourism, blood on the sand stands out as self-aggrandizing, maximalist, and bordering on parodic in a way very few tend to be. a subversive and stately satire this is not, but the mere insertion of 50 cent into a wartorn setting when his previous digital outing humbly involved enacting vengeance against the american criminal underworld says as much about the aughts zeitgeist as our proclivities in the horror genre during that era does. maybe this buries the lede somewhat, because one of the most important facts about this game was only revealed relatively recently, but blood on the sand was alleged to have started as a tom clancy game recently; conflicting reports from development suggested its yarn was spun from a failed covert-one project, an adaptation of bourne trilogy alum robert ludlum's ideas. one article implicitly posits that these prospective titles were stages in a continuum prior to publisher vivendi's decision to use their convenient rights to 50 cent, although its also possible the use of tom clancy was shorthand for use in an interview given that vivendi didn’t have the license to adapt tom clancy’s works. whatever the case, this largely explains the game's constituent elements – fighting tooth and nail through a wartorn middle-east setting, so familiar to video games and film of the era, recontextualized to fit 50 cent.

other games centered around rappers are designed around an understanding of their core ethos; the wu-tang clan, with their sound representing an evocative mix of east asian and black culture, with particular reverence afforded towards martial arts, found themselves on the psx with 1999’s shaolin style, a fighting game that literalized and made tangible the groups stage personae and the aesthetic undercurrents in their discography. or take the def jam franchise, which takes the feuds, the aggression, and the machismo of the music industry during that time and channels that raw energy into a wrestling game developed by AKI. and this was mythological for its cast – there’s an interview with method man that always makes me crack up where he essentially says that all he cared about was having the hottest finishing move in the game. even rap jam volume one, a basketball game for the snes, plays to some of these sensibilities by essentially offering basketball Without Limits. coolio isn’t afraid to throw hands there. rims creak under the weight of dunks from impossible heights. it’s all performance centered around culture, identity, reputation.

what makes 50 cent unique in this regard, especially as far as performance and cultural mythology is concerned, is the now-infamous, oft-referenced incident in which, early in his career, he was shot nine times in south jamaica allegedly as the result of the release of his controversial song, ‘ghetto qu’ran’. ‘bulletproof’ isn’t just the title of a licensed video game, it’s part and parcel of the 50 cent brand and his identity, referenced often in his discography and utilized to demonstrate the artists grit and countercultural edge. the violence of his work is therefore afforded numerous dimensions given his firsthand experience with this kind of trauma, which in turn represents part of the appeal, that kind of verisimilitude. certainly, bulletproof (the game) plays into this mythology. where fighting games seem the natural route for the wu-tang clan, 50 cents life and identity could only ever have seen translation into ludology through firefights. it’s a bit macabre but totally in line with his career sensibilities.

blood on the sand, then, seemingly represents a reactionary inverse to bulletproof’s simple reiteration and expression of the 50 cent persona. instead of playing a nameless, hardened soldier fighting on behalf of an imperialist agenda in the middle east as is the standard in this format, that voiceless force of nature has been replaced by 50 cent, who can easily, cynically, be read as the all-american invulnerable supersoldier - one who built his brand from the ashes of derelict poverty. y'know, bootstraps, the american way. but the game rejects any easy textual understanding. yes, 50, narratively and mechanically, is totally committed as an agent of destruction and havoc, but his quest primarily pits him against a rogues gallery of self-interested judas archetypes; 50 is naturally distrustful and seldom offers aid, only so long as his goals align with other parties. and these rivals are all configured as gangsters, entrepreneurs, those seeking profits. an early conversation is helpful in this regard, in which 50 cent claims new yorks streets are entirely owned by gangsters; his conversational partner claims the middle eastern region theyre in is controlled by organized crime on a scale surpassing that of new york. the kind of americanized conception of gang warfare transplanted onto the middle east revealed through this dick-measuring contest is the crux of blood on the sand’s text, additionally reflected in its color coded enemy design, evoking gang colors and affiliation more than it necessarily does terrorism, as well as in its environmental design, like a hyper-americanized strip club sticking out like a sore thumb. the connotations of the war on terror are there but one gets the sense that blood on the sand uses those familiar political and genre elements as (unfortunately) familiarized backdrop and setting moreso than it does to convey a straightforward narrative about combatting jihadist insurgents.

another thing setting blood on the sand apart from its milieu is 50’s characterization – this alone isn’t revelatory but it’s in stark contrast to others in the genre. uncharted is allowed to disguise its lack of humanity through a constant assault of quips and ironic insincerity, as protagonist nathan drake pilfers the remains of ancient civilizations for profit and slaughters anyone in his path, reenacting colonial tendencies in the process for the sake of ‘a good time’. and this is a constant thread in all the games, encountering ancient societies where something went wrong and the enemy type shifts towards supernatural, impossibly advanced yet primitive ghoul caricatures. these misanthropic attributes are not alone to uncharted, as several other adventure shooters share much of the same problems. perhaps the most brutally honest any of these games has ever been is when you lead a no-holds barred defence against enemies laying siege to a fast food establishment in modern warfare 2.

50 cent, meanwhile, is unceasingly committed to securing the bag – there’s no pretense of nobility or honor here, but he will have banter with the rest of g-unit, air his frustrations with the constantly spiraling nature of his journey to get a skull back, and discuss the setting and architecture with his allies. it's all a matter of debt collection from shady benefactors who continually steer you in the wrong direction, and 50 is content to follow this labyrinthine design so long as payments still on the table. so, blood on the sands rejection of its central middle eastern analogue transforms the game into an interpretive assault on the restraints and foibles of the modern music industry. the whole plot is kickstarted when 50 cents contract isn’t honoured and he isn’t paid a cool 10 mil for a concert he held; a diamond-encrusted skull is offered as a means of recompensation, which becomes the driving force of the narrative and its collection becomes the locus for his rampage. thus, it can be said that blood on the sand is very simply a game about honoring the work of artists, and of fairly compensating them for their labour. one of many traitorous parties in-game is a paramilitary squad who force 50 into committing a heist and then attempt to take the payout for themselves; during the subsequent boss battle, the squad’s commander, voiced by lance reddick, tells 50 to walk away with his life and squander the profit for everyone’s sake. after all, his nephew’s an ardent fan, and 50 should chalk this mishap up to experience before he gets hurt. this read is bolstered by a couple of tidbits: the knowledge that, according to 50, blood on the sand is in part a tie-in to g-unit’s 2008 damning ‘elephant in the sand’ mixtape, which followed a longstanding feud between 50 cent on the one hand and ja rule and fat joe on the other hand, his peers in the industry. additionally, a great deal of blood on the sand’s visual identity and palette was inspired by the film blood diamond of all things, which of course involves atrocities in sierra leone revolving around the highly inhumane and exploitative diamond mining trade, all farmed during a war zone. continuing the read, theres obviously more than a few unsavoury statements one could make about the music industry in this light. that kind of exploitation -> reclamation loop was something i felt that was common to the games mini-arcs.

one other film i didn’t expect to weigh on my mind so heavily over the course of my playthrough was uncut gems! the image of 50 holding a diamond encrusted skull, a symbol of his labour and his persona, is downright operatic. it parallels kevin garnetts role in uncut gems, who perceives entire iridescent universes, with his lived experiences superimposed and rapidly cutting in and out of frame, and the metaphorical blood, sweat, and tears of many in an unethically sourced black opal. he becomes determined, obsessed even, to hold on the alluring gem, as he considers it a symbolic representation of wealth, fortune, and physical prowess - like a good luck charm. clearly, the skull, with its own implied sordid history, has similar value for 50 as well - it's considered priceless, but his intentions with it are undisclosed for the entire narrative. he simply wants it. both fictionalized portrayals of these 'characters' are in conversation with their mythologized roles in culture, but where uncut gems is concerned with destiny, stability, and fortune, with questions of materialism and faith at the forefront, blood on the sand makes no such appeals to higher powers – 50 is, after all, bulletproof, and the game is more than happy to let him manifest his own payback narrative, the gods be damned. the exploitation of miners in uncut gems’ prologue frames its narrative, but through bombast and hyperbole 50 uses the lens of a militarized zeitgeist to take revenge on his own enemies in the industry, both real and perceived - which serves its purpose as a reclamation narrative.

perhaps these are some highbrow, navel-gazey interpretations and readings on why you should play blood on the sand. but you wanna know the lowbrow, crass, real reason? the game’s just fun as hell. even leaving aside its aesthetics this is a white-knuckled responsive third person shooter, rapidly maneuvering you through conflict after conflict in an arcade setting with more of a semblance of actual encounter design than the majority of its peers. these mechanics are framed by an unrelenting tempo of macro and micro goals in visually distinguishable and legible skirmishes while aiming for combo chains and high scores. 50 cent and devil may cry’s dante alike both see the value of taunting enemies to bolster their ranks and to style on their enemies. 50 cent basically gets heat moves as well, and he can activate max paynes bullet time. this bullet time mechanic is known as gangsta fire, and it essentially makes 50 move faster while also slowing down time. its meter is quite strict and can only reliably be filled up quickly by means of stage pickups, meaning that there's a balancing act between meter preservation and combo priority at all times. and it’s all set to a wide selection of 50 cents discography, freely customizable in the games playlist function. even where the game fails in its design from time to time (optional scoring goals are too often intertwined with the overt objective of the mission, thus not pushing players out of their comfort zone; an overabundance of helicopter encounters, charmingly explained away by 50 cent’s son’s obsession with them and request to include them; gold ranks are almost impossible to acquire outside of hard mode), the experience of listening to P.I.M.P. while racking up the body count with a mossberg and with a LMG as 50 hurls shittalk is unlike anything else in the medium. but i think this paragraph is fairly obvious to anyone who’s played this. so here’s my consensus: i was grinning ear to ear the whole time. this is by far one of the finest exploitation genre games you can play, bordering on high art. in a games industry that now lies about american war crimes, and in a music industry dominated by spotify, blood on the sand is one of the last bulwarks of honesty left. hands down the most culturally significant response to 9/11 right here in this game.


(this game invokes dmca's ire so almost all the gameplay footage you can find of it online doesnt have the soundtrack blaring. totally misrepresents the intensity of the experience imo! no 21 questions or candy shop though...)

art restoration is a subject thats been broached since the days of babylon - we, as a people, have dealt with the minutiae of this delicate work, with its chief dilemmas and hermeneutics, for as long as civilization has existed. there's a particular technique with regards to reconstruction of architecture: anastylosis. this occurs when you take a crumbling edifice, monument, or structure and you restore it, using the original elements and components, to its untouched, initial form - at least, to the extent that you can. this is to preserve the original texture. it's a noble, aspirational endeavour, one rooted as much in aesthetic appreciation as it is in simple respect for past achievements and a desire to transpose oneself into bygone eras. on a macro-scale, you see this practiced in countries like greece, india, and turkey - any country with a rich tapestry of culture and history, really - but id wager it occurs in everyday life on a micro-scale, too. there's a hindu temple in my region that causes a lot of trouble for its proprietors because they've imported all the necessary construction materials from india so as to bring it in line with the specifications of their native temples. those materials arent made to last canadian winters, so the temple get absolutely battered in frigid temperatures, which leads to frequent reparation and reconstruction in other seasons. still, they go ahead and continue to toil away anyways, in large part because, well, it's important to them, and they're deeply committed. is it the same temple that it once was, originally? is it even an edifice with the same rich history as its predecessors? probably not, but thats fine.

games partake in reconstruction and restoration as well, but it cant be said that we practice anastylosis. anastylosis, no matter how well-intentioned the practice is, attracts criticism, particularly in the finer arts, because crafting a representation of the original state of being yields a host of problems from a theoretical standpoint. while this opens up dialogue with regards to other forms of art im a bit too out-of-my-depth to tackle, a few of the same questions can be raised for games. as the discipline continually evolves, how do you become so acute in execution, so empiricist in approach, that something can functionally resemble the original? moreover, with something as ludic as the simple act of 'play', should you attempt to craft a representation of the original in the first place?

some give up, some dont even try, some bend the knee towards market pressure. remakes, remasters, and ports have been in news cycles frequently over the past few years, and it's clear that the industry - let alone your average consumer - doesnt have a unified approach to this, nor do they often care. there are several remasters and remakes that have attracted as much staunch criticism as they have fervent praise - demon's souls, final fantasy vii, crash bandicoot, shadow of the colossus, resident evil 2 and 3, ratchet and clank...the list goes on. botched remasters exist as well, haunting the original forms like specters, such as the silent hill hd collection, the arkham collection, diablo II, and so on. or how about cases where preservation has failed from the outset, like when developers fail to preserve source code, leaving the world with inferior versions of the same product? the recent ninja gaiden collection comes to mind.

whatever your stance on any of these remakes or remasters are - one thing that unifies them is that they're all beloved intellectual properties that are routinely and steadfastly discussed. less attention is given towards works that havent penetrated this cultural consciousness, or dont quite so easily belong to these strata of iconography. if you google any niche game that taps into that endless well of childhood nostalgia, you will hear the cries and pleads for a remaster or remake. blinx the cat hd longplay on youtube? "this needs a remake!" scaler, on the ps2? "ahh, underrated gem from my childhood. there should have been a sequel or a remaster." metal arms: glitch in the system? the suffering? robotech invasion? you betcha.

obviously these developer-sanctioned treatments will never come, despite the sincerity of these wishes. but, again, with a medium as ludic and experiential as games, maybe there's an argument here. and im certainly willing to hear some of these arguments out, particularly when they’re a direct result of passion. you want to hear about a dispassionate restoration? how about when demon’s souls was treated with no respect during its development by a plethora of executives, only to then resurface as a remake, missing its aesthetic expressive core and led by a completely separate team a decade later because those very same executives knew they could push hardware at retail in such a way? and there is precedent for touching up older titles that are given far less reverence. were it not for the dedication of a few, we would not have discovered that aliens: colonial marines, a title infamous for its lack of polish, could be somewhat fixed by simply altering a typo in its code.

this is what makes redriver 2 – a fanmade project which exists to reverse engineer the PS1 copy of the game, allowing for a fully playable, unofficial PC port – a fascinating exercise. driver 2 released to mixed reception because it was too visionary. developer reflections’ ambitions to improve their in-house formula severely taxed the processing power of the PS1, resulting in performance issues, a litany of bugs and technical issues, poor draw distance, bad load times, and so on. this is an open-world, mission-based wheelman extravaganza featuring four sweeping, painstakingly rendered maps, dozens of high-octane car chases, several animated CGs, licensed music (kenny rogers!!), an on-foot mode, and so on. pedestrians, vistas, cars – everything we take for granted in the open-world format is utilized in nascent form here. it may not sound like much, but driver 2 is very much an early precursor to grand theft auto III and games of that particular species, all of which resulted in an icarus-like title that couldn’t excel in its environment.

redriver 2, through grit and precision, fixes a lot of these issues. it’s still a smidge prone to glitches, but the draw distance has been improved, the performance is stable, the load times are near instant – it results in a game that doesn’t have both its shoelaces tied together anymore, and can be taken on its own terms as a direct sequel to the original driver, no longer shackled to its original form. it’s like it’s been given a healthy dose of nitrous. it’s a game that’s exceedingly fun as a result, improving on the original in myriad intelligent and easily discernible ways.

reflections work here is really something special. the original driver is strongly self-assured – the most infamous tutorial in gaming is simply a reflection of how well-tuned its goldilocks-esque handling, vehicular weight, and driving mechanics were. it was intuitive, very much designed for the PS1 controller and not in spite of – a crucial difference of approach in a racing title. but it was very much a prototype, nonetheless. its maps were too gridlike and disorderly, too littered with straightaways to fully capitalize on its frequent cat-and-mouse chase missions; its difficulty was inconsistent, vicious, and unflinching; its approach to immersion was appreciated but conflicted with errant AI and a non-diegetic UI.

driver 2 ameliorates many of these concerns while retaining the excellent driving mechanics of the first. wetting one’s whistle as a wheelman here is still every bit as improvisational and reactionary as before, but the game is far more playful and granular. the most impressive thing here (and something redriver 2 so excellently preserves) is how well textured and moody these worlds are. weather effects, a canvas of painterly skies, and catchy jingles set the tone here, but reflections is excellent at landmarking their maps and making streets visually distinct and legible in spite of issues with draw distance. this is really impressive work with regards to creating a sound representation of a city for its era across four maps, particularly considering the genre we’re dealing with. on top of this, maps have added complexity in structure – no longer beholden to straight roads, driver 2 packs plenty of curvy roads, twisting alleys, underground tunnels and highway ramps that allow for more player expression and more opportunities for evasion. for instance, winding between trees and weaving a path in and out of traffic, effectively creating a slalom route, is something i found myself doing to a much greater extent than in the original, specifically when these opportunities actually exist for once.

the difficulty of driver 2 still subscribes to the same few tenets – the AI remains as predatory and uncompromising as ever, cars are still difficult to takedown, missions still have very little margin for error, time limits are still strict, RNG means traffic patterns will always reset on a re-attempt of a mission (and occasionally the path your enemy will take does as well), when youre chasing somebody you have to be roughly within 100 m of them or they will escape – but the game remains more playful in mission variety and execution. it’s a heartpounding moment when you have a set amount of time to take down an ammunition supply truck, only to then have your hopes dashed the minute you actually take down the truck because now you have to commandeer a heavily damaged truck to its new destination under the same time limit. my fingers practically seized up when i actually made it there, and then with ten seconds on the clock i was still told i had to open up the garage, park the truck, and close the garage. and then in the next mission you chase another truck except its throwing a grenade every second at you. so the difficulty is as nailbiting as ever, but tuned for least amount of frustration, save for a few borderline kaizo instances. the most infamous of these is chase the gunman – a mission which inevitably combines every single element of driver 2s difficulty, revolving around drifting alongside a narrow canyon to take down a gunman while contending with jutting out fences, trees, and other traffic – but even this is far less frustrating than the presidents run from the first game, and despite its hardcore difficulty, at least feels within the realm of human execution. when i finally cleared it i had essentially achieved a perfect run, my car in delicate lockstep with my opponents, drifting in perfect synchronization and carving a path to exploit traffic patterns and put him down for good. just about the only annoyances here are inconsistent time limits on retries.

the on-foot element of the game is frequently cited as a distraction but i found it charming and unintrusive, and usually achieved appropriately within its mission design. driving on to a boat and veering to a halt to clamber out of the vehicle and plant c4 charges, then rushing back into your car and accelerating to jump off the boat….beating a train and exiting your car to save someone in the trunk of another car on the brink of railway execution…it’s charming in execution, perhaps not vital but fresh for its time and respectable. this element, too, is greatly improved from its PS1 incarnation by simple virtue of improved performance.

all this and more from a title left in the dust, but rebuilt and re-enforced so as to highlight its strengths.
cesar brandi has a particular view on restoration which i happen to like. he posits that restoration is "the methodological moment in which the work of art is recognized, in its material form and in its historical and aesthetic duality, with a view to transmitting it to the future." i think this is what redriver 2 accomplishes so compellingly, so deftly, in a way that a lot of remasters and remakes fail to capitalize on – and in this climate of publishers and developers routinely exploiting the audience’s desire for regressive nostalgia, for re-experiencing puerile, unchallenging, dopamine-inducing entertainment from youth, i think it’s an almost necessary title. it certainly gave me a lot to think about, and its staggering how the right craftsmanship can elevate a title previously deemed inferior. im really hoping for more of these cleverly considered projects to blindside me in the future.

github for download and installation instructions: https://github.com/OpenDriver2/REDRIVER2

combat queen is a disorderly stew of the greatest forms of art known to man:
- on-rails shooter
- live action fmvs
- tank control survival horror
- digital cinematography
- cute girls with energy rifles slaying hordes of insects

taitos patchwork approach to design makes sense - this is clearly a low budget affair and most of its features are indicative of that. a bit of this and that for a scuzzy exploitation medley. hard to dislike, aside from overly long unskippable cutscenes.

core to the experience is a dichotomy between health and ammunition. at the pause menu you can siphon away health to store ammunition, or vice-versa, which is the kind of player-centered decision that can help in a pinch. naturally this limitation of resources has implications for the rest of its level design - on-rails levels arent based around enemy prioritization and a quick trigger-finger but instead more closely resemble cardboard cutout shooting galleries. not every bug will attack you and most arent visually distinct in type or movement pattern, so the game revolves around scrupulously racking up the score while aiming for a high enough quota of slain bugs to replenish health and ammunition by the end of the stage, which is rendered somewhat difficult by bug hitboxes. this mechanic also means you can save into an unwinnable position - there's one bottleneck stage in particular that reflects an Absence of Design and that you'll most likely want to trek into fully stocked-up if youre aiming for the 1cc. likewise, the tank control stages are simple pacebreakers with occasionally fun gimmicks. the expectation isn't to be an adroit dodger ala resident evil, but instead to calmly and efficiently carve your way through as many overgrown fauna as you can.

this certainly can make the experience one-note in execution and its very much capable of being reduced to nothing but a mere trinket or novelty but i'll be damned if it isnt replete with an abundance of charm. this is the kind of frantic, unpredictable energy modern indie devs should be aiming for, not some marketing guru endorsed wholesome sludge. i wanna ride with my gals in a pink jeep fending off all manners of insects in metropolitan/rural japan. more lurid and raunchy less catering to twitter/IMDB users ala Going Under (2020) Developed By Aggro Crab and Published by Team17 or Twelve Minutes (2021) Developed By Luis António and Published by Annapurna Interactive

you hear the one about avid players of tetris? their minds basically get rewritten because of exposure to the damn thing. thing is, this is true of any earthly activity that brings together body, mind, and soul. its psychosomatic, kinaesthetic. any activity that informs consciousness will bleed into the subconscious. my dreams aren't really like the ones LSD presents, but my fear is that they will be.

a product of its time in all the ways that matter and bolstered as a result. psx architecture struggling under the weight of hell and failing to load in the density of its worlds in time leaves the mind incapable of guarding itself for whats going to happen next - legitimately unsettling, unpredictable, uncanny, uncaring. youre sieved through textures and atmospheres at a rapid clip. no barriers exist here, everything is simply a permeable membrane. every scene, vignette, happenstance, and interaction a stitched-together quilt one night and a tesseract the next. like any work of its kind it requires a certain level of maturity and commitment - particularly these days when the only thing you can reliably bet on about an audience is their urge to demystify - but you ought to take the leap. this is really affecting work here that i cant possibly be cynical about and a great alternative to melatonin

i keep thinking about strangereal. strangereal is a terrific name for the world of ace combat. it aptly denotes the franchise’s mechanics, functions as a wry descriptor for the series’ daredevil aesthetic, and evokes a fantastical image. when it’s working effectively, the realism of strangereal is achieved by means of a kind of unconscious shorthand.

speaking anecdotally, a surprisingly significant number of people look at an ace combat title – the box art, the community, brief snippets of gameplay – and uncharitably make the assumption that it’s plane call of duty. given project aces’ reverence for realistic fighter jets, high altitudes contrails, and dogfighting dusk to dawn, this isn’t necessarily an unfair assumption to make. it’s sometimes uncommon for media to be so attentive to verisimilitude in the little details while simultaneously dabbling in the kind of magical realism that ace combat does. ace combat has top gun romanticism in its veins; it has more in common with afterburner than it does with microsoft flight sim. its primordial essence might as well have been scooped from galaga. but make no mistake, ace combat will imbue its systems with all the affectations of reality. you’ll learn a wealth of complex maneuvers to navigate three dimensional space, all the while stalling accidentally, evading the onslaught of enemy missiles from your periphery, and avoiding crashing into complex architectural spaces. the open air becomes your arena, cities and their edifices your escape shafts, ravines your trenches. it’s tempting – and very funny – to say this is a series about locking on to green squares and waiting for them to ding red, but the core gameplay loop finds its sense of pure excitement in all the minutiae, the calculations (yaw, roll, pitch, speed, missile trajectory) you have to make in order to synchronize with your jet and down a target. the moment you start becoming more comfortable using your regular outfitted machinegun in aerial engagements is the moment you ascend. it all comes down to your nerves. immelman turns, chandelles, cuban eights – cramped tunnel runs. you might call the experience holistically ‘strangereal’. but the most important thing is, of course, that this is a very highly attuned, enthralling natural drama that occurs in all the games – that of plane maneuverability.

ace combat’s strangereal setting is designed as simulacra over facsimile – where realities contend with abstraction. our history and theirs sometimes align, but only to invite comparison and perspective. the bleakness of electrosphere’s setting of strangereal seems callously exaggerated in its lack of regard for bodily autonomy, free will, and self-actualization, but its developers were only drawing upon influences readily understood unconsciously, enlisting production ig’s aid in setting the tone by way of formal shorthand. electrosphere, in depicting a world impoverished and emancipated by the whims of megacorporate warfare, grapples with the tenets of a large body of cyberpunk work depicting profound trepidation over technological revolution, with the venality and frank hostility of nations beset by late-stage capitalism, and draws upon a wealth of easily comprehensible mixed media – the advertising wars waged by microsoft and apple come to mind as a heady influence. this is deliberately reflected in electrospheres plane design. one dominant corporation, neucom, is sleek, futurist, impossibly glossy and curved; general resources, reflecting a down-to-brass-tacks utilitarian brand, serves as their stylistic inverse. this, too, is shorthand. it furthers the realism of strangereal while also exploring new ideas.

or take the strangereal of shattered skies for a comparatively more grounded approach. with terrain pockmark ridden at best (and irreversibly altered for the worst in many other instances) by a deluge of asteroid fragments following a global crisis, shattered skies immediately establishes political instability and humanity in crisis as the norm, which informs its setting and its depiction of warfare. this is a world picking up the straggling pieces after a semi-successful defense against a cataclysm of untold proportion, with these actions still inevitably leading to widespread devastation and the collapse of infrastructure. this is first introduced with the first lines spoken in ace combat 04:
“I was just a child when the stars fell from the skies. But I remember how they built a cannon to destroy them. And in turn how that cannon brought war upon us.”
the war in question is shattered skies’ continental war, which was triggered by loss of infrastructure, tensions with displaced refugees, and trade quotas. in brief summation, it involves the invasion of a nation with a railgun capable of destroying the ulysses asteroid, and repurposing it as an anti-aircraft weapon, and the fight to take it back. ace combat takes the struggles of reality – climate and extinction anxiety, humanitarian crises, warfare itself – and alters them through the lens of strangereal to convey its action. that, alongside the gameplay, is also a big appeal of the franchise.

all of these elements, depictions, and sensibilities coalesce to create a series that is continually compelling even at its messiest. shattered skies is the predecessor to the unsung war, and the franchise’s debut on the PS2. with that uncertain introduction, especially following the commercially unsuccessful yet wildly ambitious electrosphere, came a very solid, if unambitious title with a wide range of problems. the flow of its military campaigns made sense, its world was compelling and understated, its narrative quiet and melancholic yet taut, but it was sorely lacking in visual identity and mission variety. it returned to the traditional ace combat 2 military campaign structure of working towards an explicit goal through various missions, each sensibly placed one after the other. and the narrative emerging opposite this is one following the enemy aces who have no choice but to engage with you by the end, thus lending the proceeding battles weight through dramatic irony. it’s an unsettling moment when you kill one of yellow squadrons pilots for the first time and radio silence fills the airwaves, and it’s part of ace combat continuing in the footsteps of electrosphere: the necessary interrogation, however minor or subtle, of an arcade flight sim that feels great but derives influence from realism. this is something shattered skies nails (although electrosphere does it better) and to me it’s the crux of the series identity – it’s strangereal. it’s the feeling that this world could have been our own, but everything is affected by a layer of digital remove.

ace combat 5 finds this characteristic off-kilter reality in abeyance. the unsung war tips tips the formerly tightly wound balance (strange/real) far more towards the tonally ‘strange’, the magical realism. this isn’t the biggest problem ace combat 5 has, but it is absolutely the lynchpin of all my criticism because the approach undertaken by project aces in this game informs all the issues i have with it.

these changes, in my opinion, were seemingly made to ameliorate the problems people had with shattered skies. ace combat 04 is a dry but very candid and forthright title with a simple, but well-executed narrative. ace combat 5 has more personality from the get go and packs a bit more production value. the environments don’t look quite as dreary, the planes move a bit more responsively, and the cutscenes are 3D CG this time. on top of that there’s an actual cast of characters this time around and missions are usually set up with intrigue, so there’s a sense that something is happening to you rather than you being a lone agent in an ongoing overarching struggle. one mission starts from first person perspective as you remain in the cockpit, watching the bombs drop in your vicinity, before rushing to takeoff and defend the skies.

but this increased narrative focus carries with it several unique problems. i want to start with the first moment this became clear to me, because ace combat 5 opens decently enough that you might not notice the cracks in its seams, and with a charitable focus on the game one might not be so inclined to interrogate any potential mishaps or wrongdoings. seven missions into the game you’re pulled into a situation where you and your squad must lead a counter-assault against a submarine carrier; you had previously survived your last encounter with the submarine by the skin of your teeth. the submarines anti-aircraft weaponry consists of burst missiles which annihilate anything under an altitude of 5000 feet when it fires. you know this, your wingmen know this, the mission briefing specifies this – it won’t catch you off guard like it did the last time. on top of this you have now retrofitted a satellite with an orbital laser so that you have further means of dispatching the burst missiles.

the dilemma is this: lacking personnel with which to conduct the sortie, your commanding officers send your squadron and many cadets-in-training, affectionately named ‘nuggets’. despite their lack of dogfighting experience, they know enough that they’ll be able to hold their own against enemy ordinance, especially with full knowledge of what will be attacking them, no surprises.

wrong. all of the ‘nuggets’ died in the sortie because after three successful strikes, the orbital laser malfunctions. everyone realizes this and makes a big fuss over it, but rather than elevate aircrafts to an altitude of above 5000 feet within 30 seconds after the first warning from nagase (which, by the way, only takes three to four seconds to accomplish from a base altitude, if that) every single nugget perishes in burst missile range. this is because ace combat 5 is a game that for all intents and purposes begins favoring drama and wayward polemic at the expense of realism. it wasn’t a demanding altitude, a demanding time limit, or a demanding number of enemies and every cadet died to further the casualties suffered under war and to add to the cast’s understanding that War Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be, We’re All Cogs™. while i haven’t tested it yet, it would not surprise me in the least if the AI for the nuggets climbed to an altitude just below 5000 feet, and then right before the safe zone, they stalled so as to perish in battle.

but the troubles don’t really end there. the increased focus on the narrative proceedings and on wingman banter has direct ramifications for gameplay as well. several of ace combat 5s missions are unnecessarily padded so your squadmates can speak, ordained by the script, before progressing to the next stage of the mission. i played on hard difficulty and even then i was stunned to see that because i had dispatched all enemies well before the mission dictates that i should have, the mission simply continues to respawn enemies on the ground and in the air so that you have something to do to fill out the dead time. not only is this obscenely artificial once you come to grips with what’s going on, but it also throws a significant wrench into preparing for a sortie. i accept the premise that a mission briefing could be wrong so as to further the stakes and to amplify the tension of the gameplay, but this is a case where all your mission briefings might be lying to you and you have no way of foreseeing it. a mission with 30 ground targets and 15 aerial targets could easily become a mission with twofold that amount, with one particularly egregious mission respawning enemy bunkers repeatedly after you had already dealt with them. complicating this is both the lack of resupply lines from ace combat 4 and targets with greater health pools than prior iterations of ace combat, meaning you waste more ammunition to deal with enemies that were not specified to be there and you have to micromanage your ammunition to counter this fact in what is supposed to be a replayable, score-based arcade title. missions are stuffed to the brim with this kind of dead time and overindulgence in enemy count. one mission has you follow a truck for five minutes with zero friction – you cant even target structures so as to stop the trucks path. at least the mission where you flew slowly at low altitude for ten minutes possessed a semblance of mild danger. your wingmen barely make a dent in any of this despite any of the tactical orders you might try to give them. if you don’t believe me, kindly look at my squadmates numbers by the end of the campaign.

https://imgur.com/a/BfwCqNN

this is also the longest campaign in an ace combat title, topping out at 27 missions plus a victory lap. with the litany of scripted missions and gimmick missions that this title has, ace combat has never felt so much like an exhausting marathon. there are moments that it all works as a nice composite, but these moments are so few and far in between that the game is actively drowning in mud for most of it. it’s quite amusing to me that this entry in the franchise has the opposite problem of something like nier or drakengard – both of which are recipients of ace combat’s conceptual dna. in nier, the problem is the casts dialogue during battles, which are both narratively important and entertaining, but can easily be cut off by player input; in ace combat 5, the script, oftentimes for worse, obstructs player input in service of narrative. despite this, this can easily be interpreted in niers favour, which i won’t do for the sake of avoiding spoilers. ace combat 5 gets no such reprieve.

some of this might be excused if the unsung war had a good narrative, but it rather unfortunately registers to me as hisitronics. it’s bereft of the kind of nuance, humanity, or expressiveness of previous entries in the series in favour of aerial schmaltz. these characters are paper thin apex predators fighting against the machinations of war by doing hardly anything different from any other title in the series – indiscriminate slaughter. and far be it from me to reject something that has the potential to be subversive or satirical in intent, but nothing about the unsung war is even vaguely suggestive of this to me. it’s markedly less thoughtful than both electrosphere and shattered skies before it, without the comparative mechanical strengths of the relatively narrativeless ace combat 2. it sacrifices what works for an anti-war fairy tale that culminates in a squadron’s shared anti-war anthem, right before eviscerating the enemys offence entirely in a show of brute military strength. the whiplash is unreal to me. particularly so when the conspiratorial bent of the narrative seems like it will dismantle the kind of jingoist nationalism that fuels combative sentiment, but stops before even attempting to.

it takes a lot to pull me out of this kind of high octane schlock, but ace combat 5 represents the worst of both worlds. its lack of meaningful hooks renders its explosive highs destitute by the time you get there, and all the strengths it possesses as a mechanical ace combat title are negligible once you remember that they’re reflected better in the games before it. i much prefer the cowboy bebop-esque fatalism of something like shattered skies over the sluggish and preachy, constantly disconnected nature of ace combat 5. my argument here doesn’t intend to suggest that ace combat can’t be corny, but this tone should operate in tandem with the systems rather than disrupting them. and likewise, the mechanics should leverage the storytelling. because ultimately, project aces are right – in spite of the destruction they represent, planes are cool. they’re kinetic. they dance and joust in the skies. but so much of this game is repellant instead – it misses what makes ace combat work mechanically, and it misses what makes it work narratively. it aspires to the self-interrogation of games past, but instead opts for having your squadmate say ‘dogfights suck’ in the first mission of the game. its attempts to evoke reality are both underwritten and lacking in subtlety (yuktobania in this game is absolutely just russia; the antagonists in this game are cartoonishly committed to being evil). it ain’t strangereal, it’s just strange. and i can get similar, but more considered joys, somewhere else.

crisis city is most easily comparable to shock troopers. like shock troopers, there's a bevy of characters to embody who must each traverse linear environments with aplomb, dodging their way through the tumult of gunfire and shrapnel. the difference lies predominantly in perspective and framing. unlike shock troopers, which concerned itself with jungles and mountainous ranges and military structures, in crisis city the characters must dash through littered city streets, highways, grungy parking garages, and opulent edifices with nothing but their wits and 30 or so grenades. in addition to this, shock troopers is an isometric 2D run n' gun; crisis city, by contrast, is 3D, using fixed camera angles to convey its hectic action.

i dont think i can classify it as a hidden gem; rather than succeeding mechanically it is primarily exhilirating aesthetically. i wish so bad i could tell you what's going on here. before the game begins in earnest, there are three separate text scrawls: one you may skip that goes on for three minutes, a second introducing the character you have chosen, and a third outlining the first level (although each stage is introduced in this manner). on top of that, you fight the rest of the games playable cast as bosses in each stage, and ramiel is here, unexpectedly. there's clearly some kind of madcap narrative unfolding in the midst of the chaos onscreen, usually involving no less than twenty explosions per boss battle lighting up the screen in rhythmic tempo. so believe me when i say that when the game looks like an electrifying canvas, it usually kind of does!

unfortunately, there are a few too many issues with the game to really consider it anything more than a middle-of-the-pack run and gun, if that. the fixed camera angles are sometimes obstructive despite their visual intrigue; you can dodge roll to avoid enemy bullet patterns, but you can also crouch which seems to beat out almost everything; and the enemy design, as well as the difficulty curve, seem borderline nonexistent. a lot of this title is just kind of barren despite the adrenaline coursing through its veins.

my brief foray into research seems to suggest there's some contention over whether or not this game is kusoge. i'm not too sure about this. it's hard to deny the heart and soul of this kind of jank. it's picturesque, in a way; there are brief moments where it really does succeed in pulling you in and bewitching you. and at the end of the day it's pure unadulterated and unpredictable mania. clearly the developers agreed to an extent, otherwise there wouldn't be a versus mode nor would there be a time attack mode to fool around in. but i do worry sometimes that we don't have the language to really dissect or scrutinize any of these more obscure titles, with our constant urge to reframe, recontextualize, reassess. these games have value simply by virtue of their existence. i didnt go into crisis city expecting a new favourite - i came in because i was interested and i wanted it to show me a good time. and it did. and now i want to play shock troopers.

also it seems to sample the house of the dead 2 boss theme? well, it's more likely both share the same sample but it's so weird that i heard it, instantly paused, and thought 'wait a minute...'

jeff tremaine crushes his balls on a fire hydrant and it's up to you to step in and direct a season of jackass

CONS: - misses some of the homoerotic camaraderie that defines the franchise in favour of an assortment of kind of puerile minigames that you chuckle at once or twice before they become grating and lose a lot of their potency. no breakneck editing and no physicality (both of which are replaced by a kind of virtual uncanniness) render a great deal of its charm null. youre just here to see steve-o's tattoo rendered in sixth-generation glory
- bam was contractually barred from appearing so he could not manifest as a force of evil in the game

PROS: - this game is nostradamic in that it predicted twitch streamers and v-tubers years before their inception by often placing the character model of your chosen jackass in the bottom left where they face react to the havoc they wreak. this also functions as a health bar. steve-o looks the happiest ive ever seen a human be, and also the most totally cognizant of his own mortal coil.
- bam was contractually barred from appearing so he could not manifest as a force of evil in the game

thesis: yoko taro is often listed among the foremost auteurs of the medium but the reality is his strengths lie in a kind of prototypical 'video game' method of work, borne out of necessity, that prioritizes collaboration between a consistent set of screenwriters, an unorthodox style of design targeting emotional resonance, and a plethora of unique flourishes specifically aimed at facilitating the empathy, immersion, and connection of its players (researching drakengard 1s development makes this especially apparent - it's arguably not even a yoko taro game in the usually defined sense of the term). his works, when in production, are thwarted frequently by compromise, limitation, and sacrifice - stumbling blocks, all in service of eventually reflecting a well-trodden title which charms on the virtues of its rustic artistry. wear and tear and a heart of gold. this style of development, marked by haste and experimentation and fueled by pure zeal and love for the craft, perhaps reveals why the pillars of video games, the codified monomythic genres and the primordial archetypes and the frequent allusions to popular work, so often impress themselves upon yoko taro games, and why so often his work succeeds in connecting to people where other talent may struggle. the video game of it all, if you will. incidentally, this collaborative style allows for a large breadth of potential interpretation and analysis afforded towards his work, and ive long maintained that a YT game is at its most interesting when it's not about what he intended for it to be about. did the tragedies in nier gestalt sometimes fall flat for you? me too! thankfully that's not what the game is about, at least not to me. in sum: the work of many, each willing and able to leave a fingerprint on the mosaic of development, enriches the product in the long-run, creating a full-bodied textured work of art and contributing immensely to the humanity at the core of these games. if any given chord strikes you as dull, a separate melody will enchant you - that's the nature of YT's games. they're artisan because of what they value and because of how they achieve their mission statement, and especially because of their passion, always demonstrated by the little details in these games. passion will always reveal itself, but so too will a dearth of passion reveal itself.

proof: nier re[in]carnation
if these games worked because of a certain je ne sais quois shared by the collaborative nature of a team in a trying work environment, i don't think my prospective next project would be a game in an exploitative genre where a new team of writers handled an endless barrage of one-note vignettes while YT sat back, nodded halfheartedly at his desk, and tried to string every vignette together using an overarching plot catering to obsessive drakennier fans. just my two cents

what may just separate the veterans from the inexperienced in this game is the quality of their knifework. leon might pack an arsenal replete with the sexiest weapons of all time, but it's the tried-and-true double-edged stiletto he's packing that remains your eternal companion out there in the shit. utilizing it to its fullest requires confidence to an extent that resembles rashness - a full understanding of where to strike, when to kick, and how to deke. if you ask me, coming fresh off a run of professional, this is one of the most compelling elements of RE4 - the convergence between melee and gunplay is transformative, configuring leon into a living weapon. there is no element of his kit that goes unused or registers as unnecessary.

i once jokingly claimed that a remake of this title needed to simply superimpose re6's base of mechanics on to the game, but actually convey to players how best to parse these systems. there's actually probably a little nugget of gold buried in there - after all, i refuse emphatically the addition of a block button ala the ethan winters duology, or the presence of a parry which, when mishandled, tends to choke combat systems with its rote all-encompassing applicability. what they really need to do here is expand and tailor the level of knifework present. imagine if we got rid of the need for qtes because we got a game with hitboxes every bit as fair, but your knife mode had dozens of options attached to it resembling something like genes dodges from god hand, informally and unofficially linking mikamis action game tenure...errant slashes leading to blades clashing...im talking high risk high reward knife action in such a manner that it doesn't compromise on leons fragility. that, to me, would be a good rendition of re4. shouldn't bend the knee or make concessions to enemy design so as to make the holy grail 'knife only challenge run' more palatable to layfolk...people figured out how to do it with the original, they'll do it again

also id like to be able to throw my knife

this games tutorial is unconventional in that it demands mechanical proficiency and a degree of fluency from the outset but its honestly a fantastic way to immerse players with a free-form challenge and familiarize themselves with the skills that will be expected from them across the campaign. there's even a demo reel that shows you an example of how to accomplish it right there in the main menu. it's all there. you guys were just 7 (or possibly 15) and didn't bother to look up slalom in a dictionary. me at age 7? Built Different. I Drive. I Listen to Kavinsky Nightcall.