LordDarias
BACKER
1972
Me, rating A Trip to the Moon(1902) 2 and a half stars on letterboxd : "Special effects are a bit corny 🤓"
1998
I love Half-Life 1, but up until this week I had never actually seen it through to the end. Am I a Hypocrite? Yes, but not because of that. I think Half Life 1 has a lot of peaks and valleys in terms of levels, but in all honesty I'd rather an excellent game which is occassionally bad than an overall ok or mediocre game; which incidentally gives away my opinion on its sequel.
The paradox of action games, is that they all live or die by their answer to one single question : "what happens when you're NOT shooting/stabbing/bludgeoning/rollerskating etc?". No great action game that I can think of can be ALL action ALL the time because it gets mind numbing. That doesn't mean that you need to load up your stylish action game with ancillary mechanics or a hybrid model until the store page can describe you as "action-adventure" but it means you need to think of something. RE4 to me is one of the most brilliant action games of all time precisely because it understood this : down time is important, in between harrowing, skin-of-your-teeth encounters with cultists and oddly accented spanish peasants there are quiet moments of both relieving and building back up the tension, scavenging for supplies, talking to the pirate merchant, a few odd puzzles.
Doom, the OG FPS (yeah yeah I know about Wolfenstein 3D but Doom was the real smash hit) knew this as well, for all its reputation would suggest, its not just an unending onslaught of cacodemons; there is hunting for secrets, an old id favourite and key hunting. Half Life kind of marks the evolutionary split in shooter design in this respect, both in the attempt at a new sort of immersive storytelling through following a single character without cutting away or through text dumps, and an emphasis on a more grounded take on similar material (i.e earth is invaded by fearsome creatures).
It owes a lot to its predecessors; one can hardly forget that its built on a heavily modified quake engine, but it goes for a decidedly different feel. It also answers the question mentioned at the beginning less with key card hunting or secrets, but with platforming sections and set pieces, as well as the odd puzzle and general ammo and health scavenging. There is an argument to be made, among those who would see the upcoming shift during 6th and 7th gen towards "realistic" shooters heralded by the likes of Halo and Medal of Honor as the death of the traditional subgenre now known as the "boomer shooter" until its eventual renaissance in the mid 2010s, that Half Life marks the turning point in that.
Spoilers for HL1 from here on out I guess, but c'mon, who hasnt played half life yet
Its kind of the missing link between those two currents, its both an attempt at realism, which starts with an unskippable non-combat section akin to most sci-fi B-Movies of old where 1 hour of scientists talking preceded any kind of monster/alien showing up, but you can bunny-hop through most of it. As much as silent protagonists seem to be out of fashion nowadays, it fit perfectly with the immersive narrative of Half-Life 1, where Gordon becomes an avatar of the player, both getting into the character of a scientist going to work at NOT area 51 but also how they react to the unfolding drama. Seeing the soldiers gunning down the scientists from my uninterrupted first person view was a lot more impactful that any amount of similar dramatic turning points in other games where they would have cut to a dramatic shot in a different aspect ration of Gordon looking shocked so you know to be shocked as well. Its half life 2 where this starts to become more incongruous, with a more fully characterised Gordon who apparently has seen the error of his ways and no longer shoots scientists in the head because its funny.
I suppose I should confess that the reason Half-Life 1's middle ground is appealing to me precisely because Im not much of a fan of its predecessors or successors. With both Doom and Quake I can appreciate their place in history but again, whenever the action stops in those I kind of lose interest.
Half Life 1 is definitely frontloaded in quality, which IMO is kind of common in games. I don't hate On a Rail like most people, and even Residue Processing I think is fine. Blast Pit is, well I respect the idea more than the execution, frankly. Whilst I consider Half Life to be a timeless classic, if there is one aspect that has aged horribly its the physics, ironic considering its follow-up being almost defined by its adoption of real time physics, for all of its faults, the havok engine is such an improvement upon the non-physics of pre-HL2 3D games (okay I know HL2 didn't invent physics engines). My kingdom for the stupid seesaw puzzles of half life 2 when the alternative is this system wherein pushing crates in place feels like trying to move a magnet across an ice rink by repelling it across the ground with an oppositely charged magnet. It also seems weird how much of an emphasis HL1 puts on precision platforming ( a certain infamous section in Surface Tension springs to mind ) when you're essentially piloting a Fridge on Rollerskates, which is great for combat as you bunnyhop around shooting at monsters in the face, but even the function to slowdown by holding shift still feels kinda programmed for a different game. Deus Ex has the same issue with its non-physics, and its also the one thing I don't like about it (well, that and its shit tutorial).
On this last and most recent playthrough, I finally decided to finish the game. I'd left a previous playthrough on surface tension but I made my way through the rest of the game including the infamous Xen. I wish I could sit here and join the seeming re-evaluation of Xen being "good, actually" but I think the haters are kind of right this time. Xen isn't awful, in particular though people are referring to the whole of the last part of the game set in the Xen portal world, I think the level called Xen is pretty alright. Gonarch's lair is godawful, however, a buggy, ill-conceived set piece boss fight of the worst kind. Interloper is okay, if a bit haphazard in its design, just sending an insane amount of enemies at you but also having the slow healing chambers at every step feels rushed as hell compared to the measured encounter design of the rest of the game, probably victim of the famously short development time of Xen. Nihilanth sucks, and I will take no argument against this point, its really bad.
The thing with Xen is, it almost works. Its weirdness and shitter level design arguably helps in making it feel more alien, less designed for a human to navigate it, but in practice it never really committs to this aspect enough, with the constant ammo drops around (left by previous scientists I know, still doesn't make it feel not cheap) and the health showers which heal you as well because reasons. And well, a lot of the times its not all that alien, the confusion arising less from the geiger inspired hive being made for other creatures, and moreso that the level design has communicated or implied a path forward through its structure, only to intend a different one. That bit with the holes opening intermittently in the ground springs to mind.
Aesthetically the design is great, with a combination of industrial and biologic flavour to the architecture.
The main issue though for Xen is that it feels like a climax for a different game. Through the unfolding drama of Half Life's Black Mesa incident involving government coverups, desperate escapes, scientists playing god etc. Xen doesn't really feel like a conclusion to all of that. Indeed, the game's ending, whilst a genius sequel-hook, doesn't answer much of anything. Intentionally-so, but Valve has pulled this bullshit so many times its hard to believe they'll ever provide any kind of narratively satisfying conclusion to a half life game ever (ironically, the shittest half life game Blue Shift is the only one which does this, with Barney getting to go home, although undermined by the knowledge that almost inmediately earth got invaded by an all powerful genocidal space empire). I haven't played Black Mesa, because a fan Half Life remake sounds dumb, but I have heard they make Xen last like twice as long, which seems like it would be torturous. For all my complaints I will say, Xen is mercifully short.
At the end of the day, Half Life's later half being not as good isn't really a problem for me, I'd rather have its peaks and valleys as opposed to overall ok games that I'll forget as soon as I play it. In a way, I'd argue Xen's questionable quality has helped HL1 more than hindered it, the flaws make the good aspects shine by contrast.
The paradox of action games, is that they all live or die by their answer to one single question : "what happens when you're NOT shooting/stabbing/bludgeoning/rollerskating etc?". No great action game that I can think of can be ALL action ALL the time because it gets mind numbing. That doesn't mean that you need to load up your stylish action game with ancillary mechanics or a hybrid model until the store page can describe you as "action-adventure" but it means you need to think of something. RE4 to me is one of the most brilliant action games of all time precisely because it understood this : down time is important, in between harrowing, skin-of-your-teeth encounters with cultists and oddly accented spanish peasants there are quiet moments of both relieving and building back up the tension, scavenging for supplies, talking to the pirate merchant, a few odd puzzles.
Doom, the OG FPS (yeah yeah I know about Wolfenstein 3D but Doom was the real smash hit) knew this as well, for all its reputation would suggest, its not just an unending onslaught of cacodemons; there is hunting for secrets, an old id favourite and key hunting. Half Life kind of marks the evolutionary split in shooter design in this respect, both in the attempt at a new sort of immersive storytelling through following a single character without cutting away or through text dumps, and an emphasis on a more grounded take on similar material (i.e earth is invaded by fearsome creatures).
It owes a lot to its predecessors; one can hardly forget that its built on a heavily modified quake engine, but it goes for a decidedly different feel. It also answers the question mentioned at the beginning less with key card hunting or secrets, but with platforming sections and set pieces, as well as the odd puzzle and general ammo and health scavenging. There is an argument to be made, among those who would see the upcoming shift during 6th and 7th gen towards "realistic" shooters heralded by the likes of Halo and Medal of Honor as the death of the traditional subgenre now known as the "boomer shooter" until its eventual renaissance in the mid 2010s, that Half Life marks the turning point in that.
Spoilers for HL1 from here on out I guess, but c'mon, who hasnt played half life yet
Its kind of the missing link between those two currents, its both an attempt at realism, which starts with an unskippable non-combat section akin to most sci-fi B-Movies of old where 1 hour of scientists talking preceded any kind of monster/alien showing up, but you can bunny-hop through most of it. As much as silent protagonists seem to be out of fashion nowadays, it fit perfectly with the immersive narrative of Half-Life 1, where Gordon becomes an avatar of the player, both getting into the character of a scientist going to work at NOT area 51 but also how they react to the unfolding drama. Seeing the soldiers gunning down the scientists from my uninterrupted first person view was a lot more impactful that any amount of similar dramatic turning points in other games where they would have cut to a dramatic shot in a different aspect ration of Gordon looking shocked so you know to be shocked as well. Its half life 2 where this starts to become more incongruous, with a more fully characterised Gordon who apparently has seen the error of his ways and no longer shoots scientists in the head because its funny.
I suppose I should confess that the reason Half-Life 1's middle ground is appealing to me precisely because Im not much of a fan of its predecessors or successors. With both Doom and Quake I can appreciate their place in history but again, whenever the action stops in those I kind of lose interest.
Half Life 1 is definitely frontloaded in quality, which IMO is kind of common in games. I don't hate On a Rail like most people, and even Residue Processing I think is fine. Blast Pit is, well I respect the idea more than the execution, frankly. Whilst I consider Half Life to be a timeless classic, if there is one aspect that has aged horribly its the physics, ironic considering its follow-up being almost defined by its adoption of real time physics, for all of its faults, the havok engine is such an improvement upon the non-physics of pre-HL2 3D games (okay I know HL2 didn't invent physics engines). My kingdom for the stupid seesaw puzzles of half life 2 when the alternative is this system wherein pushing crates in place feels like trying to move a magnet across an ice rink by repelling it across the ground with an oppositely charged magnet. It also seems weird how much of an emphasis HL1 puts on precision platforming ( a certain infamous section in Surface Tension springs to mind ) when you're essentially piloting a Fridge on Rollerskates, which is great for combat as you bunnyhop around shooting at monsters in the face, but even the function to slowdown by holding shift still feels kinda programmed for a different game. Deus Ex has the same issue with its non-physics, and its also the one thing I don't like about it (well, that and its shit tutorial).
On this last and most recent playthrough, I finally decided to finish the game. I'd left a previous playthrough on surface tension but I made my way through the rest of the game including the infamous Xen. I wish I could sit here and join the seeming re-evaluation of Xen being "good, actually" but I think the haters are kind of right this time. Xen isn't awful, in particular though people are referring to the whole of the last part of the game set in the Xen portal world, I think the level called Xen is pretty alright. Gonarch's lair is godawful, however, a buggy, ill-conceived set piece boss fight of the worst kind. Interloper is okay, if a bit haphazard in its design, just sending an insane amount of enemies at you but also having the slow healing chambers at every step feels rushed as hell compared to the measured encounter design of the rest of the game, probably victim of the famously short development time of Xen. Nihilanth sucks, and I will take no argument against this point, its really bad.
The thing with Xen is, it almost works. Its weirdness and shitter level design arguably helps in making it feel more alien, less designed for a human to navigate it, but in practice it never really committs to this aspect enough, with the constant ammo drops around (left by previous scientists I know, still doesn't make it feel not cheap) and the health showers which heal you as well because reasons. And well, a lot of the times its not all that alien, the confusion arising less from the geiger inspired hive being made for other creatures, and moreso that the level design has communicated or implied a path forward through its structure, only to intend a different one. That bit with the holes opening intermittently in the ground springs to mind.
Aesthetically the design is great, with a combination of industrial and biologic flavour to the architecture.
The main issue though for Xen is that it feels like a climax for a different game. Through the unfolding drama of Half Life's Black Mesa incident involving government coverups, desperate escapes, scientists playing god etc. Xen doesn't really feel like a conclusion to all of that. Indeed, the game's ending, whilst a genius sequel-hook, doesn't answer much of anything. Intentionally-so, but Valve has pulled this bullshit so many times its hard to believe they'll ever provide any kind of narratively satisfying conclusion to a half life game ever (ironically, the shittest half life game Blue Shift is the only one which does this, with Barney getting to go home, although undermined by the knowledge that almost inmediately earth got invaded by an all powerful genocidal space empire). I haven't played Black Mesa, because a fan Half Life remake sounds dumb, but I have heard they make Xen last like twice as long, which seems like it would be torturous. For all my complaints I will say, Xen is mercifully short.
At the end of the day, Half Life's later half being not as good isn't really a problem for me, I'd rather have its peaks and valleys as opposed to overall ok games that I'll forget as soon as I play it. In a way, I'd argue Xen's questionable quality has helped HL1 more than hindered it, the flaws make the good aspects shine by contrast.
2024
Harold Halibut is a very technically impressive (when its not bugging out or dropping frames) feat, which unfortunately puts its gorgeous claymation style and cinematography in service of an overwritten, overindulgent miserable slog which might have been refreshing were it a fifth of its length instead of the overbearing wank we got instead.
Wank is the operative word here, the game is spiritually similar to jerking off. It takes inspiration from various sources, wes anderson films chief among them, but from what few films I have seen of those, they were much more entertaining and well written. The sheer nothingness of the gameplay even for narrative focused adventure games and amount of dialogue that was 3 lines too long for what it needed to be really fits together when you learn about the game's 10 year development time. This is someone's baby, presumably a labour of love, but thats the thing, sometimes you need to detach yourself emotionally from your work and cut things when they don't actually add anything. The most damning thing of all, after all that, 8 goddamned hours (it felt twice that) I feel nothing. The game is nothing. I am nothing. We're all nothing. And I have 8 fewer hours now before I return to the nothingness of oblivion with little to show for it.
Wank is the operative word here, the game is spiritually similar to jerking off. It takes inspiration from various sources, wes anderson films chief among them, but from what few films I have seen of those, they were much more entertaining and well written. The sheer nothingness of the gameplay even for narrative focused adventure games and amount of dialogue that was 3 lines too long for what it needed to be really fits together when you learn about the game's 10 year development time. This is someone's baby, presumably a labour of love, but thats the thing, sometimes you need to detach yourself emotionally from your work and cut things when they don't actually add anything. The most damning thing of all, after all that, 8 goddamned hours (it felt twice that) I feel nothing. The game is nothing. I am nothing. We're all nothing. And I have 8 fewer hours now before I return to the nothingness of oblivion with little to show for it.
2012
Ico is the type of game I dread to play, critically acclaimed, landmark classic of the medium, influenced various games and designers I love. I dread playing those because of a fear I have, a fear that's come true : I don't like ICO, in fact, I think I might hate ICO. And now I will have to carry that like a millstone around my neck, "that asshole who doesn't like ICO". Its not even really that external disapproval I dread, its the very reputation that causes me to second guess my own sincerely held opinions. I thought I liked minimalism in game design, and cut-scene light storytelling and relationships explored through mechanics but I guess I don't. There's some kinda dissonance, cognitive or otherwise reading reviews by friends and writers I respect and wondering if there's something wrong with me or if I didnt get it or played it wrong or any other similar foolishness that gets bandied around in Internet discussions. "I wish we could have played the same game" I think, reading my mutuals' reviews of ICO. Not in a dismissive asshole way of accusing them of having a warped perception, but moreso in frustration that I didnt have the experience that has clearly touched them and countless others.
But enough feeling sorry for myself/being insecure, what is my problem with ICO exactly? I don't really know. Genuinely. I wasnt even planning on writing a review originally because all it would come down to as my original unfiltered reaction would be "Playing it made me miserable". Thankfully the upside of minimalism in game design is that its easier to identify which elements didnt work for me because there are few in the game. I think the people who got the most out of ICO developed some kind of emotional connection to Yorda, and thats one aspect which absolutely didn't work for me. As nakedly "gamey" and transparently artificial as Fallout New Vegas' NPCs (and Skyrim and F3 etc) locking the camera to have a dialogue tree, they read to me as infinitely more human than the more realistic Yorda; for a few reasons. Chief among them is that despite some hiccups and bugs the game is known for, you are not asked to manage them as a gameplay mechanic beyond your companions and well, my main interaction with Yorda was holding down R1 to repeatedly yell "ONG VA!" so she'd climb down the fucking ladder. She'd climb down, get halfway through and then decide this was a bad idea and ascend again.
ICO has been to me a game of all these little frustrations piling up. Due to the nature of the puzzles and platforming, failing them was aggravating and solving them first try was merely unremarkable. It makes me question again, what is the value of minimalism genuinely? There was a point at which I had to use a chain to jump across a gap and I couldnt quite make it, I thought "well, maybe theres a way to jump farther" and started pressing buttons randomly until the circle button achieved the result of letting me use momentum to swing accross. Now, if instead a non-diegetic diagram of the face buttons had shown up on the HUD instead what would have been lost? To me, very little. Sure, excessive direction can be annoying and take me out of the game, but pressing buttons randomly did the same, personally. Nor did "figuring it out for myself" feel particularly fulfilling. Thats again what I meant, victories are unremarkable and failures are frustrating. The same can be said for the combat which, honestly I liked at first. I liked how clumsy and childish the stick flailing fighting style was, but ultimately it involved hitting the enemies over and over and over and over again until they stopped spawning. Thankfully you can run away at times and rush to the exit to make the enemies blow up but the game's habit of spawning them when you're far from Yorda or maybe when she's on a different platform meant that I had to rely on her stupid pathfinding to quickly respond (which is just not going to happen, she needs like 3 business days to execute the same thing we've done 5k times already, I guess the language barrier applies to pattern recognition as well somehow) and when it inevitably failed I would have to jump down and mash square until they fucked off.
I can see the argument that this is meant to be disempowering somehow but I don't really buy it. Your strikes knock these fuckers down well enough, they just keep getting back up. Ico isnt strong, he shouldnt be able to smite these wizard of oz monkeys with a single swing, but then why can they do no damage to ICO and get knocked down flat with a couple swings? Either they are weak as hell but keep getting remotely CPRd by the antagonist or they're strong but have really poor balance. In the end, all I could really feel from ICO was being miserable. I finished the game in 5 hours but it felt twice that. All I can think of now is that Im glad its done and I can tick it off the bucket list. I am now dreading playing shadow of the colossus even harder, and I don't think I ever want to play The Last Guardian, it just looks like ICO but even more miserable. I'm sure I've outed myself as an uncultured swine who didnt get the genius of the experience and will lose all my followers but I'm too deflated to care. If there is one positive to this experience is that I kept procrastinating on finishing the game that I got back into reading. I read The Name of the Rose and Rumble Fish, pretty good reads. Im going to read Winesburg Ohio next I think.
But enough feeling sorry for myself/being insecure, what is my problem with ICO exactly? I don't really know. Genuinely. I wasnt even planning on writing a review originally because all it would come down to as my original unfiltered reaction would be "Playing it made me miserable". Thankfully the upside of minimalism in game design is that its easier to identify which elements didnt work for me because there are few in the game. I think the people who got the most out of ICO developed some kind of emotional connection to Yorda, and thats one aspect which absolutely didn't work for me. As nakedly "gamey" and transparently artificial as Fallout New Vegas' NPCs (and Skyrim and F3 etc) locking the camera to have a dialogue tree, they read to me as infinitely more human than the more realistic Yorda; for a few reasons. Chief among them is that despite some hiccups and bugs the game is known for, you are not asked to manage them as a gameplay mechanic beyond your companions and well, my main interaction with Yorda was holding down R1 to repeatedly yell "ONG VA!" so she'd climb down the fucking ladder. She'd climb down, get halfway through and then decide this was a bad idea and ascend again.
ICO has been to me a game of all these little frustrations piling up. Due to the nature of the puzzles and platforming, failing them was aggravating and solving them first try was merely unremarkable. It makes me question again, what is the value of minimalism genuinely? There was a point at which I had to use a chain to jump across a gap and I couldnt quite make it, I thought "well, maybe theres a way to jump farther" and started pressing buttons randomly until the circle button achieved the result of letting me use momentum to swing accross. Now, if instead a non-diegetic diagram of the face buttons had shown up on the HUD instead what would have been lost? To me, very little. Sure, excessive direction can be annoying and take me out of the game, but pressing buttons randomly did the same, personally. Nor did "figuring it out for myself" feel particularly fulfilling. Thats again what I meant, victories are unremarkable and failures are frustrating. The same can be said for the combat which, honestly I liked at first. I liked how clumsy and childish the stick flailing fighting style was, but ultimately it involved hitting the enemies over and over and over and over again until they stopped spawning. Thankfully you can run away at times and rush to the exit to make the enemies blow up but the game's habit of spawning them when you're far from Yorda or maybe when she's on a different platform meant that I had to rely on her stupid pathfinding to quickly respond (which is just not going to happen, she needs like 3 business days to execute the same thing we've done 5k times already, I guess the language barrier applies to pattern recognition as well somehow) and when it inevitably failed I would have to jump down and mash square until they fucked off.
I can see the argument that this is meant to be disempowering somehow but I don't really buy it. Your strikes knock these fuckers down well enough, they just keep getting back up. Ico isnt strong, he shouldnt be able to smite these wizard of oz monkeys with a single swing, but then why can they do no damage to ICO and get knocked down flat with a couple swings? Either they are weak as hell but keep getting remotely CPRd by the antagonist or they're strong but have really poor balance. In the end, all I could really feel from ICO was being miserable. I finished the game in 5 hours but it felt twice that. All I can think of now is that Im glad its done and I can tick it off the bucket list. I am now dreading playing shadow of the colossus even harder, and I don't think I ever want to play The Last Guardian, it just looks like ICO but even more miserable. I'm sure I've outed myself as an uncultured swine who didnt get the genius of the experience and will lose all my followers but I'm too deflated to care. If there is one positive to this experience is that I kept procrastinating on finishing the game that I got back into reading. I read The Name of the Rose and Rumble Fish, pretty good reads. Im going to read Winesburg Ohio next I think.
2024
I find myself more intrigued by Infinite Craft's inner workings than the actual act of playing it. My first thought when I saw a screenshot of its mechanics via social media was "isn't that just that one mobile game from when those were new?" and sure enough after wracking my brain trying to remember the name I found that I was thinking of Doodle God, an iphone game from the first wave of popular mobile titles like angry birds, fruit ninja, etc
The concept is similar but Infinite Craft is much more an unstructured sandbox than DG. Its concept is simplicity itself, you combine words with other words to make new ones via some method of semantic association and formula for determining combinations through generative AI. The claim is that this collection of words and sentences is truly infinite and I believe it. As silly as the game is in concept, under the surface its essentially an application of natural language processing, which is an absolutely mindmelting field where computer science, linguistics and philosophy all meet to make the most impenetrable theoretic framework to describe how a system can be devised to make unicorn + death = dead unicorn.
I should preface the rest of this review by saying that I am very much not an expert by any means and that you should look into this yourself. In fact, NLP was the subject which made me drop out of my Computer Science Degree because I hated it so much (well, it also didn't help that this was during Covid so we had to learn this shit remotely), but I know a little bit more than most.
The main problem that NLP needs to "solve" is that a computer doesn't know natural languages (i.e english, mandarin, russian etc) but we do. Hence in order to analyse anything relating to natural language we need to make systems to make it parseable by an algorithm. Its one of those things where its such an integral and unconscious part of human cognition that you don't realize how complex of a task it is to understand words and phrases. One task we got early on was analysing a corpus of Amazon Reviews and determining which reviews were positive and which were negative. Even before any kind of analysis of the review as a whole can be performed you need to parse the whole thing and tokenise the individual words (easy in english admittedly, its just spaces) but then you also need to analyse the individual words and perform Word Sense Disambiguation i.e if the word smith appears in the review you need to determine using adjacent words if it means the name smith or the profession smith or the act of smithing. Even further you have stuff like entity linking, where certain words form part of a broader entity for e.g Duke of Parma refers to a single thing rather than 3 separate unrelated words. It was quite frankly, a nightmare which was nevertheless pretty interesting to learn about. Thankfully we had plenty of resources to tackle these issues (computer science is one of the most "standing on the shoulders of giants" discipline there is) and one resource I was reminded of when playing Infinite Craft was WordNet.
Wordnet is a lexical database, which is a fancy way of saying essentially a beefed up dictionary. Containing not only words and their meanings but also its relations in terms of hypernyms and hyponyms. I.e Amphibian is a Hypernym for Frog, and Oak is a Hyponym of Tree. You can also then make connections between words if they share Hypernyms (i.e we can tell the system that Crocodile, Alligator and Komodo dragon are all "coordinate terms" because they share the hypernym Reptile) and a whole bunch of other things that would take forever to fully explain. In essence, its a database that helps us determine semantic fields for words by essentially outsourcing the work to pre-made materials by humans. Another example would be SimLex-999 which asked people to rank word-pairs between 0-10 in terms of how related they were to each other and produced a dataset with these word pairs.
This is all to say, analysing language such as english is a herculean task, and I hope one day we get a peek behind the curtain at how the language model used by infinite craft works, because it really is quite interesting. The technology is still nevertheless quite rough at times; which can be forgiven mostly because the freeform sandbox nature of its mechanics makes its imprecision and unknowability kind of a non-issue. Hence, all the screenshots of funny combinations of pop culture properties and not the more banal or incoherent combinations that are swiftly forgotten as a new possibility occurs. If it were a more structured set of challenges like Doodle God you would swiftly get blocked by the eternal "point and click" problem of having to think about the one solitary solution and combination which made sense to the designer of combining glue + mummy to make papier maché. So what if most combinations are not particularly engaging or don't produce progress, the more words you make the more words you CAN make through combining previous words with older ones. Sometimes this runs into the issue that certain strings of words presumably associated by the game as part of the same semantic field seem to chain back into themselves. I.e fire + ash makes lava, lava + mud = volcano, volcano + fire makes ash etc. Another issue is, some combinations simply didnt make sense, but of course no system could ever produce infinitely many combinations which would seem reasonable to all people, especially when getting to more abstract concepts. Idk what a dead unicorn + candy would make if they were magically sealed together, but I guess "zombie unicorn" is as good an answer as any.
Some words cannot be combined at all, I guess we really are stuck with the "I don't know how to do that" problem of adventure games once more.
Infinite Craft is more of a novelty than a game one would feasibly dedicate themselves to, by a developer who seems quite married to the idea of short, communal browser based experiences. Their website is definitely worth a look beyond IC, its a lovely collection of experiments.
There is one aspect of the game I appreciated, despite the simplicity, Infinite Craft provides a sort of word based micro-storytelling, similar to other implementations of generative AI based on user input. I remember reading an interview given by Gareth Damian Martin, the Citizen Sleeper and In Other Waters dev where they said about their work on "procedural poetry" that even seemingly random or computer generated sequences form a broader sequence (like a story) by Humans' tendencies to fill in the blanks and assign patterns to those which seemingly have none. I think we've all extrapolated seemingly human charcteristics and motivations to NPCs based on certain intended and unintended behaviours. Or even simpler than that, ask a pet owner what their dog/cat's personality is, they will go wild anthropomorphising the animal's thought process to explain their every action.
Tree of Life + Tree of Death = Tree of Knowledge
Tree of Knowledge + Party = Adam and Eve
2 Equations to summarise one of the key episodes of Genesis in christian lore which would not be nearly as impressive if a human had manually come up with such a combination, nor if I hadn't spent most of my time getting much more pedestrian or nonsensical combinations like candy + fisherman = sugar daddy.
The concept is similar but Infinite Craft is much more an unstructured sandbox than DG. Its concept is simplicity itself, you combine words with other words to make new ones via some method of semantic association and formula for determining combinations through generative AI. The claim is that this collection of words and sentences is truly infinite and I believe it. As silly as the game is in concept, under the surface its essentially an application of natural language processing, which is an absolutely mindmelting field where computer science, linguistics and philosophy all meet to make the most impenetrable theoretic framework to describe how a system can be devised to make unicorn + death = dead unicorn.
I should preface the rest of this review by saying that I am very much not an expert by any means and that you should look into this yourself. In fact, NLP was the subject which made me drop out of my Computer Science Degree because I hated it so much (well, it also didn't help that this was during Covid so we had to learn this shit remotely), but I know a little bit more than most.
The main problem that NLP needs to "solve" is that a computer doesn't know natural languages (i.e english, mandarin, russian etc) but we do. Hence in order to analyse anything relating to natural language we need to make systems to make it parseable by an algorithm. Its one of those things where its such an integral and unconscious part of human cognition that you don't realize how complex of a task it is to understand words and phrases. One task we got early on was analysing a corpus of Amazon Reviews and determining which reviews were positive and which were negative. Even before any kind of analysis of the review as a whole can be performed you need to parse the whole thing and tokenise the individual words (easy in english admittedly, its just spaces) but then you also need to analyse the individual words and perform Word Sense Disambiguation i.e if the word smith appears in the review you need to determine using adjacent words if it means the name smith or the profession smith or the act of smithing. Even further you have stuff like entity linking, where certain words form part of a broader entity for e.g Duke of Parma refers to a single thing rather than 3 separate unrelated words. It was quite frankly, a nightmare which was nevertheless pretty interesting to learn about. Thankfully we had plenty of resources to tackle these issues (computer science is one of the most "standing on the shoulders of giants" discipline there is) and one resource I was reminded of when playing Infinite Craft was WordNet.
Wordnet is a lexical database, which is a fancy way of saying essentially a beefed up dictionary. Containing not only words and their meanings but also its relations in terms of hypernyms and hyponyms. I.e Amphibian is a Hypernym for Frog, and Oak is a Hyponym of Tree. You can also then make connections between words if they share Hypernyms (i.e we can tell the system that Crocodile, Alligator and Komodo dragon are all "coordinate terms" because they share the hypernym Reptile) and a whole bunch of other things that would take forever to fully explain. In essence, its a database that helps us determine semantic fields for words by essentially outsourcing the work to pre-made materials by humans. Another example would be SimLex-999 which asked people to rank word-pairs between 0-10 in terms of how related they were to each other and produced a dataset with these word pairs.
This is all to say, analysing language such as english is a herculean task, and I hope one day we get a peek behind the curtain at how the language model used by infinite craft works, because it really is quite interesting. The technology is still nevertheless quite rough at times; which can be forgiven mostly because the freeform sandbox nature of its mechanics makes its imprecision and unknowability kind of a non-issue. Hence, all the screenshots of funny combinations of pop culture properties and not the more banal or incoherent combinations that are swiftly forgotten as a new possibility occurs. If it were a more structured set of challenges like Doodle God you would swiftly get blocked by the eternal "point and click" problem of having to think about the one solitary solution and combination which made sense to the designer of combining glue + mummy to make papier maché. So what if most combinations are not particularly engaging or don't produce progress, the more words you make the more words you CAN make through combining previous words with older ones. Sometimes this runs into the issue that certain strings of words presumably associated by the game as part of the same semantic field seem to chain back into themselves. I.e fire + ash makes lava, lava + mud = volcano, volcano + fire makes ash etc. Another issue is, some combinations simply didnt make sense, but of course no system could ever produce infinitely many combinations which would seem reasonable to all people, especially when getting to more abstract concepts. Idk what a dead unicorn + candy would make if they were magically sealed together, but I guess "zombie unicorn" is as good an answer as any.
Some words cannot be combined at all, I guess we really are stuck with the "I don't know how to do that" problem of adventure games once more.
Infinite Craft is more of a novelty than a game one would feasibly dedicate themselves to, by a developer who seems quite married to the idea of short, communal browser based experiences. Their website is definitely worth a look beyond IC, its a lovely collection of experiments.
There is one aspect of the game I appreciated, despite the simplicity, Infinite Craft provides a sort of word based micro-storytelling, similar to other implementations of generative AI based on user input. I remember reading an interview given by Gareth Damian Martin, the Citizen Sleeper and In Other Waters dev where they said about their work on "procedural poetry" that even seemingly random or computer generated sequences form a broader sequence (like a story) by Humans' tendencies to fill in the blanks and assign patterns to those which seemingly have none. I think we've all extrapolated seemingly human charcteristics and motivations to NPCs based on certain intended and unintended behaviours. Or even simpler than that, ask a pet owner what their dog/cat's personality is, they will go wild anthropomorphising the animal's thought process to explain their every action.
Tree of Life + Tree of Death = Tree of Knowledge
Tree of Knowledge + Party = Adam and Eve
2 Equations to summarise one of the key episodes of Genesis in christian lore which would not be nearly as impressive if a human had manually come up with such a combination, nor if I hadn't spent most of my time getting much more pedestrian or nonsensical combinations like candy + fisherman = sugar daddy.
2023
Much better the second time around. I was originally quite disappointed in Fading Afternoon compared to its predecessor (Stone Buddha not withstanding) The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa. I felt it leaned too much into the combat at the expense of what I most liked about Ringo, namely the character interactions between deeply human shitheads, the true roleplaying in the roleplaying game, the great soundtrack and existential angst. Those were still in the game but I felt as if they were drowned out by the endless button mashing combat.
I guess I should mention Spoilers from here on out
On a second run through, I liked the game quite a bit more. Now, I've never really subscribed to the notion of "playing a game wrong" but I think I was approaching Fading Afternoon with a somewhat unhelpful mindset, though I think it was somewhat of the game's doing that set me in that path. You see, in Fading Afternoon you play as Seiji Maruyama, a Yakuza enforcer recently released from prison (for what I assume was decades) who is also suffering from a terminal illness. Hence, given the mechanics of taking over territory from other Yakuza families through combat being an excellent way to make money (and necessary to advance the game's storyline) and my interpretation of Seiji's character I decided to fight the other families to leave Azuma a decent territory from what pitiful remains he has left.
Seiji and by extension the player's time is limited, as his illness is simulated through a decreasing max health stat constantly ticking down day (or week rather) after day. And given how much the game seemingly punishes dilly dallying (first time I did the first story mission I got slapped by Azuma cause I went to a place at the wrong time and couldnt go back the same day) well, It wasn't the best mindset to enjoy the game.
On a second time around however, I can see the perspective better. Whilst having to constantly go around defending/attacking places is still a thing, time seems to move when you transition from area to area rather than necessarily just time spent. And after discovering I could hire more thugs to defend my territories I started to enjoy seeing more of what the game had to offer whenever I went to an area with some kind of activity to do. I hit a stride much faster knowing what to do, buying a car, getting enough money to buy a house so I wouldnt have to pay the hotel every week, delegating the detective work to Seiji's protege Kato (and incidentally my favourite character in the game). I found some memorable interactions I wasn't aware of, like getting drunk and punching a dude at a bar and then flirting with his girlfriend, helping out a gambler at a casino and then having to pay off the loan sharks, sucking ass at baseball etc.
In the end though, my playthrough followed a similar path to last time, except now I didn't slap Kato, which led to me having to kill him. Thankfully I put enough cash to buy the house from the real estate office and then some into a bag and gave it to Kodama: Seiji's friend and reincarnation wizard. I then dispatched Ando, a Yakuza boss on behalf of Tanaka, another boss who had Seiji's Boss hostage and then I was forced to flee to what looked like Walter White's cabin from Breaking Bad. In character I decided Seiji would have taken up alcoholism, and went to the town bar to get drunk. Seiji must have overdone it though, because after stumbling drunk through the town he collapsed in the snow (incidentally I'm starting to think that the game's trigger to kill Seiji if he's knocked out is the snowfall) and unceremoniously died.
It's a deliberate anticlimax certainly, although I wonder if that was "the intended ending" or if I held out long enough Azuma would have called me to go bowling after that but as usual its hard to tell. Of course now its a bit more clear that pursuing each of the families will yield different endings and presumably also going after all of them, as well as deciding to slap Kato or not amongst other key choices. I do now know, that Seiji is trapped in the cycle of reincarnation described in Buddhism and will receive as much money as he put in the previous loop when Kodama hands him his bag. I also discovered you can kill yourself in this game pretty much at any point. That plus the yakuza loan sharks loaning up to 14m yen at a time gives me an idea for a funny exploit by just constantly looping and getting rich enough to just buy the Yakuza world outright.
The highlight of this playthrough was Kato, for good and for ill, given his ultimate fate. I enjoy the thematic and mechanical convergence of Seiji and his' relationship. Seiji is a yakuza legend slowly dying, so in combat he is an absolute beast but his illness makes him quite fragile, with the whole depleting max health thing, whereas Kato is a young hothead, his combat style is ungraceful and energetic, he levels up fast if you use him in combat. Seiji is sometimes referred as "Gozuki", a demon general from Buddhism who prevents sinners from escaping their penance. Early on, when Seiji is roughing up the streets Azuma mentions new youngsters are being inspired by his actions, including Kato most likely. I didn't reach the climax of that storyline but seemingly in one of them Kato was being set up to share Seiji's exact fate, being forced to spend most of his youth and life in prison in service to a band of thugs. Its not hard to see the parallels. You wonder then if thats the alusion to Gozuki, Seiji being a keeper of doomed souls to be trapped into a life of crime and violence. Though as we see in both the mechanics of the game and Seiji's own circumstances, he might be the one that's truly trapped here.
This is kind of where Fading Afternoon's weakness comes into play for me. I still think FA compared to Ringo punishes first time players beyond the usual obtuseness of Yeo's design simply by nature of the game's multiple endings and seeming ease with which Seiji meets an untimely end. I think I'll enjoy my third playthrough even more, but that first playthrough was rough, not only that but I find it hard to judge the story on a thematic level when so much of it I simply haven't seen. Thats on top of the fact that I still don't like Seiji much. Ringo was just, a lot more sympathetic and resonated with me more. Ultimately though, Yeo's games always give me something to talk about, I love em AND hate em but they're always kind of interesting.
I'd also like to apologize again to @Zoda, I was way out of line in that original exchange.
Also if anyone has played through all the endings, where the hell is Chiba? I picked him up from prison but by the time I found out where his bar was I could never find him. Do you have to just hang out with him inmediately before anything else? Does he just go there at specific times or what?
I guess I should mention Spoilers from here on out
On a second run through, I liked the game quite a bit more. Now, I've never really subscribed to the notion of "playing a game wrong" but I think I was approaching Fading Afternoon with a somewhat unhelpful mindset, though I think it was somewhat of the game's doing that set me in that path. You see, in Fading Afternoon you play as Seiji Maruyama, a Yakuza enforcer recently released from prison (for what I assume was decades) who is also suffering from a terminal illness. Hence, given the mechanics of taking over territory from other Yakuza families through combat being an excellent way to make money (and necessary to advance the game's storyline) and my interpretation of Seiji's character I decided to fight the other families to leave Azuma a decent territory from what pitiful remains he has left.
Seiji and by extension the player's time is limited, as his illness is simulated through a decreasing max health stat constantly ticking down day (or week rather) after day. And given how much the game seemingly punishes dilly dallying (first time I did the first story mission I got slapped by Azuma cause I went to a place at the wrong time and couldnt go back the same day) well, It wasn't the best mindset to enjoy the game.
On a second time around however, I can see the perspective better. Whilst having to constantly go around defending/attacking places is still a thing, time seems to move when you transition from area to area rather than necessarily just time spent. And after discovering I could hire more thugs to defend my territories I started to enjoy seeing more of what the game had to offer whenever I went to an area with some kind of activity to do. I hit a stride much faster knowing what to do, buying a car, getting enough money to buy a house so I wouldnt have to pay the hotel every week, delegating the detective work to Seiji's protege Kato (and incidentally my favourite character in the game). I found some memorable interactions I wasn't aware of, like getting drunk and punching a dude at a bar and then flirting with his girlfriend, helping out a gambler at a casino and then having to pay off the loan sharks, sucking ass at baseball etc.
In the end though, my playthrough followed a similar path to last time, except now I didn't slap Kato, which led to me having to kill him. Thankfully I put enough cash to buy the house from the real estate office and then some into a bag and gave it to Kodama: Seiji's friend and reincarnation wizard. I then dispatched Ando, a Yakuza boss on behalf of Tanaka, another boss who had Seiji's Boss hostage and then I was forced to flee to what looked like Walter White's cabin from Breaking Bad. In character I decided Seiji would have taken up alcoholism, and went to the town bar to get drunk. Seiji must have overdone it though, because after stumbling drunk through the town he collapsed in the snow (incidentally I'm starting to think that the game's trigger to kill Seiji if he's knocked out is the snowfall) and unceremoniously died.
It's a deliberate anticlimax certainly, although I wonder if that was "the intended ending" or if I held out long enough Azuma would have called me to go bowling after that but as usual its hard to tell. Of course now its a bit more clear that pursuing each of the families will yield different endings and presumably also going after all of them, as well as deciding to slap Kato or not amongst other key choices. I do now know, that Seiji is trapped in the cycle of reincarnation described in Buddhism and will receive as much money as he put in the previous loop when Kodama hands him his bag. I also discovered you can kill yourself in this game pretty much at any point. That plus the yakuza loan sharks loaning up to 14m yen at a time gives me an idea for a funny exploit by just constantly looping and getting rich enough to just buy the Yakuza world outright.
The highlight of this playthrough was Kato, for good and for ill, given his ultimate fate. I enjoy the thematic and mechanical convergence of Seiji and his' relationship. Seiji is a yakuza legend slowly dying, so in combat he is an absolute beast but his illness makes him quite fragile, with the whole depleting max health thing, whereas Kato is a young hothead, his combat style is ungraceful and energetic, he levels up fast if you use him in combat. Seiji is sometimes referred as "Gozuki", a demon general from Buddhism who prevents sinners from escaping their penance. Early on, when Seiji is roughing up the streets Azuma mentions new youngsters are being inspired by his actions, including Kato most likely. I didn't reach the climax of that storyline but seemingly in one of them Kato was being set up to share Seiji's exact fate, being forced to spend most of his youth and life in prison in service to a band of thugs. Its not hard to see the parallels. You wonder then if thats the alusion to Gozuki, Seiji being a keeper of doomed souls to be trapped into a life of crime and violence. Though as we see in both the mechanics of the game and Seiji's own circumstances, he might be the one that's truly trapped here.
This is kind of where Fading Afternoon's weakness comes into play for me. I still think FA compared to Ringo punishes first time players beyond the usual obtuseness of Yeo's design simply by nature of the game's multiple endings and seeming ease with which Seiji meets an untimely end. I think I'll enjoy my third playthrough even more, but that first playthrough was rough, not only that but I find it hard to judge the story on a thematic level when so much of it I simply haven't seen. Thats on top of the fact that I still don't like Seiji much. Ringo was just, a lot more sympathetic and resonated with me more. Ultimately though, Yeo's games always give me something to talk about, I love em AND hate em but they're always kind of interesting.
I'd also like to apologize again to @Zoda, I was way out of line in that original exchange.
Also if anyone has played through all the endings, where the hell is Chiba? I picked him up from prison but by the time I found out where his bar was I could never find him. Do you have to just hang out with him inmediately before anything else? Does he just go there at specific times or what?
2011
Replayed RE4, this time using the "real" version with controller rather than mouse and keyboard. The argument I had heard was that re4 wasn't properly balanced for mouselook, which makes the broken headshot + kick combo for crowd control a lot easier. And after playing it, yeah that's definitely the case, especially at first.This WAS my second playthrough though, and after getting used to the stiffness (and the added clunkiness of playing on a handheld switch with default joycons) I found it to not be that much harder than the PC version.
Its a credit to RE4 that even when I was playing horrendously, getting my ass handed to me by that initial village siege and even running out of ammo a few times in the beginning, I was still having a blast. Its also probably indicative of RE4's dynamic difficulty system, that I struggled the most with the early game, so I'm guessing it took pity on me. I admit I haven't played the other RE games other than a bit of Revelations 2, mainly because they seem more horror-y and less action-y.
I played through RE4 during a weeklong trip to london where I was away from my PC. Unfortunately that meant I had to interrupt my playthrough of Killer 7 (which does share some surface similarities to RE4, both part of the capcom 5, both made by mikami, both combine puzzles and shooting at slow enemies, etc) which due to my ADHD almost always murders my motivation/interest for a game. It proved to be the case here as well, I'll have to complete the second half of that game at some other point in the future.
I also attempted pro-mode for re4 but quite frankly, it's beyond my abilities. I made it to stage 3-2 or so and I just couldn't play well enough to not be stomped on by the onslaught of cultists. Supporting my theory that RE4's dynamic difficulty was going easy on me, as pro mode simply locks you to the highest difficulty the whole way through. Its a shame, because for the first few levels, it actually increased my enjoyment of RE4, by forcing me to play "better", exploiting every advantage and learning new strats to overcome the insane odds.
I still think the island is lame, as long as the castle goes on for, I think its the high point for the game. Its also insane to me that the Del Lago bossfight is the first bossfight in the game. First of all, because it sucks, the worst bossfight in the game imo, but also because you'd think the gimmick boss fight using different-ish mechanics to the core gameplay would be put in around the middle or something, to shake things up, but no. Its especially weird cause almost inmediately you have El Gigante which is both a better bossfight and would make a much better first boss.
I still had to laugh during the cutscene before Del Lago, when the castillian peasant says "andale". To those who don't know about spanish dialects, thats like making a game set in rural australia and seeing a random bogan say in his best Larry the Cable guy impression : git er dun! Or something along those lines. Its not even just that the NPCs sound mexican or whatever, cause some of them sound like spanish isn't their first language, others sound plausibly from mainland spain but their dialogue was seemingly machine translated from english? And okay, they kinda get the benefit of the doubt cause the location within spain is never specified, but their pronunciation of "imbecil" indicates they use "seseo" which would mean they are either in southern spain or the canary islands, neither of which sound likely. The real answer is "who gives a shit? They grabbed whomever around the office who knew some spanish and put em in the recording booth" and It doesn't actually bother me, hell, Ive heard the remake replaces the VO with more accurate, professional voices and that sounds lame as hell.
So yeah, RE4 is still good, and now I can say I beat it "properly".
Its a credit to RE4 that even when I was playing horrendously, getting my ass handed to me by that initial village siege and even running out of ammo a few times in the beginning, I was still having a blast. Its also probably indicative of RE4's dynamic difficulty system, that I struggled the most with the early game, so I'm guessing it took pity on me. I admit I haven't played the other RE games other than a bit of Revelations 2, mainly because they seem more horror-y and less action-y.
I played through RE4 during a weeklong trip to london where I was away from my PC. Unfortunately that meant I had to interrupt my playthrough of Killer 7 (which does share some surface similarities to RE4, both part of the capcom 5, both made by mikami, both combine puzzles and shooting at slow enemies, etc) which due to my ADHD almost always murders my motivation/interest for a game. It proved to be the case here as well, I'll have to complete the second half of that game at some other point in the future.
I also attempted pro-mode for re4 but quite frankly, it's beyond my abilities. I made it to stage 3-2 or so and I just couldn't play well enough to not be stomped on by the onslaught of cultists. Supporting my theory that RE4's dynamic difficulty was going easy on me, as pro mode simply locks you to the highest difficulty the whole way through. Its a shame, because for the first few levels, it actually increased my enjoyment of RE4, by forcing me to play "better", exploiting every advantage and learning new strats to overcome the insane odds.
I still think the island is lame, as long as the castle goes on for, I think its the high point for the game. Its also insane to me that the Del Lago bossfight is the first bossfight in the game. First of all, because it sucks, the worst bossfight in the game imo, but also because you'd think the gimmick boss fight using different-ish mechanics to the core gameplay would be put in around the middle or something, to shake things up, but no. Its especially weird cause almost inmediately you have El Gigante which is both a better bossfight and would make a much better first boss.
I still had to laugh during the cutscene before Del Lago, when the castillian peasant says "andale". To those who don't know about spanish dialects, thats like making a game set in rural australia and seeing a random bogan say in his best Larry the Cable guy impression : git er dun! Or something along those lines. Its not even just that the NPCs sound mexican or whatever, cause some of them sound like spanish isn't their first language, others sound plausibly from mainland spain but their dialogue was seemingly machine translated from english? And okay, they kinda get the benefit of the doubt cause the location within spain is never specified, but their pronunciation of "imbecil" indicates they use "seseo" which would mean they are either in southern spain or the canary islands, neither of which sound likely. The real answer is "who gives a shit? They grabbed whomever around the office who knew some spanish and put em in the recording booth" and It doesn't actually bother me, hell, Ive heard the remake replaces the VO with more accurate, professional voices and that sounds lame as hell.
So yeah, RE4 is still good, and now I can say I beat it "properly".
2023
It feels almost absurd to praise Jusant, for its physicality. You are, after all doing no more strenous exercise than pressing and holding a few buttons but its mechanics bring that act as close as it possibly can to the feeling of climbing. Just from the demo I played of it I was instantly sold. Press and Hold LT to grab a ledge with your left hand, use the analogue stick to direct your right hand forward, Press and Hold RT to grab the next ledge with your right hand, let go of LT, rinse repeat.
Jusant uses these ideas as a base which it expands as the game goes along but its so solid as a base, its honestly hard to communicate without barging into your house and handing you the controller to try it out for yourself (incidentally the PC version has a free demo unsubtle hint). I have only ever climbed in indoor rock climbing places or bouldering or whatever its called but it so perfectly recreates the emotional experience of it, a constant tactical and physical question, where do I put my hand next, can I make it from here without losing perch etc.
Added to that the rope mechanics allowing you to set your own pseudo checkpoints, rope swinging physics, momentum, these are all great. Even though the game is really not very hard and the illusion could be broken if you ever honestly tried hard to fuck yourself up, this didnt really bother me. The familiar "Oh is that how you were supposed to do that?" and giddy laughter at pulling off some complicated maneuver as simple as letting a rock bug carry you left so you can place a piton (thing you use to attach the rope to the wall to make sure you dont fall all the way down) to then rappel a bit and use left to right momentum to jump on to a previously unreachable ledge, well, it's pretty goddamned great.
The structure works so well, the constant climb weaves in and out of the rock wall like a sewing needle, after a few subsections in the dark underside of the mountain being greeted by our old friend the sun feels so novel you forget you already saw a similar view 10 minutes ago. The ever vertical climb works narratively and spectacle wise, constantly recontextualising the scale of it all by seeing familiar landmarks grow smaller and smaller until they are but a speck in the distance. And if you pay attention to the changing environments (and admittedly rather weak random documents/journal entries that every videogame and their dog needs to have which rather overexplains things) they tell a story too, of the society which lived on the mountain but which slowly saw the tide and water recede away...
On that note, I share the game's fascination with seeing previously underwater areas dry. I grew up near a beach filled with banks of sandstone and other such structures which made the bay a natural pond when the tide receded. Everything that was unearthed temporarily just made child me fascinated. The game is thankfully, gorgeous, its nice to see a game use Unreal Engine's fancy new tricks to make a nice stylised game which goes for a sort of moebius by way of claymation and pixar movie? I could almost feel the rock and clay surfaces from its smooth gradients of grey, yellow, red and brown.
My only real complaint is the vertical charged jump seems temperamental, and especially when the "sparks" ability is introduced in chapter 4 which is not entirely unrelatedly my least favourite section of the game. It replaces your double jump with a sort of vertical glide but I was just constantly being flung diagonally by my first jump, meaning the upwards thrust left me too far to reach the ledge. With decreasing max stamina from each jump this got quite annoying, let me tell you. Eventually I overcame that section through what seemed to me to be luck, essentially. If there is something Im missing here or a mechanic I misunderstood Id genuinely love to hear it.
I played the Demo for jusant back in June and was dismayed to realize it wasnt coming out until october (almost november, really) but I think it was worth the wait. Loved the soundtrack and the finale is a great little send off for the game as a whole, I would recommend Jusant to anyone who would read this whole thing to the end, have a good one.
Edit : I am the dumbest person alive. On a second playthrough, I realize that I read the tutorial wrong, the charged jump works by pointing towards the thing you want to jump, not inverted. I went through the entire game not realizing that somehow. In my very weak defense, when charge jumping horizontally you point away from the direction youre going (logically, thats how momentum works) but when jumping up/down seemingly the animation is the same i.e pointing down. Anyways I havent finished my replay but as an apology and because it was my only real complaint, Im awarding an extra half star to Jusant, godspeed.
Jusant uses these ideas as a base which it expands as the game goes along but its so solid as a base, its honestly hard to communicate without barging into your house and handing you the controller to try it out for yourself (incidentally the PC version has a free demo unsubtle hint). I have only ever climbed in indoor rock climbing places or bouldering or whatever its called but it so perfectly recreates the emotional experience of it, a constant tactical and physical question, where do I put my hand next, can I make it from here without losing perch etc.
Added to that the rope mechanics allowing you to set your own pseudo checkpoints, rope swinging physics, momentum, these are all great. Even though the game is really not very hard and the illusion could be broken if you ever honestly tried hard to fuck yourself up, this didnt really bother me. The familiar "Oh is that how you were supposed to do that?" and giddy laughter at pulling off some complicated maneuver as simple as letting a rock bug carry you left so you can place a piton (thing you use to attach the rope to the wall to make sure you dont fall all the way down) to then rappel a bit and use left to right momentum to jump on to a previously unreachable ledge, well, it's pretty goddamned great.
The structure works so well, the constant climb weaves in and out of the rock wall like a sewing needle, after a few subsections in the dark underside of the mountain being greeted by our old friend the sun feels so novel you forget you already saw a similar view 10 minutes ago. The ever vertical climb works narratively and spectacle wise, constantly recontextualising the scale of it all by seeing familiar landmarks grow smaller and smaller until they are but a speck in the distance. And if you pay attention to the changing environments (and admittedly rather weak random documents/journal entries that every videogame and their dog needs to have which rather overexplains things) they tell a story too, of the society which lived on the mountain but which slowly saw the tide and water recede away...
On that note, I share the game's fascination with seeing previously underwater areas dry. I grew up near a beach filled with banks of sandstone and other such structures which made the bay a natural pond when the tide receded. Everything that was unearthed temporarily just made child me fascinated. The game is thankfully, gorgeous, its nice to see a game use Unreal Engine's fancy new tricks to make a nice stylised game which goes for a sort of moebius by way of claymation and pixar movie? I could almost feel the rock and clay surfaces from its smooth gradients of grey, yellow, red and brown.
My only real complaint is the vertical charged jump seems temperamental, and especially when the "sparks" ability is introduced in chapter 4 which is not entirely unrelatedly my least favourite section of the game. It replaces your double jump with a sort of vertical glide but I was just constantly being flung diagonally by my first jump, meaning the upwards thrust left me too far to reach the ledge. With decreasing max stamina from each jump this got quite annoying, let me tell you. Eventually I overcame that section through what seemed to me to be luck, essentially. If there is something Im missing here or a mechanic I misunderstood Id genuinely love to hear it.
I played the Demo for jusant back in June and was dismayed to realize it wasnt coming out until october (almost november, really) but I think it was worth the wait. Loved the soundtrack and the finale is a great little send off for the game as a whole, I would recommend Jusant to anyone who would read this whole thing to the end, have a good one.
Edit : I am the dumbest person alive. On a second playthrough, I realize that I read the tutorial wrong, the charged jump works by pointing towards the thing you want to jump, not inverted. I went through the entire game not realizing that somehow. In my very weak defense, when charge jumping horizontally you point away from the direction youre going (logically, thats how momentum works) but when jumping up/down seemingly the animation is the same i.e pointing down. Anyways I havent finished my replay but as an apology and because it was my only real complaint, Im awarding an extra half star to Jusant, godspeed.
2017
Night in the Woods is a game by all rights I should have liked, I wanted to like, even. 2 Months ago when I was utterly fixated on Pentiment I watched every interview and talk Josh Sawyer has ever given, kind of obsessively. It was from these talks that I got the recommendation to play Night In The Woods, cited as the main game inspiration for Pentiment, as well as Mutazione and Oxenfree. After Playing the game I can definitely see what he was talking about, the minigames, dialogue structure and format of the setting, even the subjects broached are all pretty similar.
And yet I find myself wondering why does Pentiment work for me so well and NITW really doesnt? The protagonist, Mae Borowski is in theory the most relatable character in fiction to my life circumstances in pretty much every way except for our gender. I also had a complete breakdown when I moved out and utterly crashed spectacularly at uni and came back to try and go back to the stability of home. I also struggle with becoming a "proper adult" and finding meaning in existential questions. I also dread seeing a lot of people here back home cause of embarassing shit I did and feel kind of stuck at times. I also wonder if Im holding back my friends who seem to be making something of their lives unlike me. I am also Bi. I am an atheist, and yet somehow with all of this said and done I found myself relating to Andreas Maler, a deeply religious german renaissance painter 100 times more than Mae.
That's not to say that relatability is the be all and end all of storytelling, but I felt as if in the case of NITW I was SUPPOSED to be relating to her somewhat. Shes just really kind of unlikeable for most of the runtime and of course being a videogame you have to actively aid her in being shitty and doing shitty things at times. I was ready to abandon this game at the 2 hour mark although apparently that wasnt enough of a fair shake so I kept pushing through hoping maybe something would happen beyond the standard coming of age stuff and angst. I can say now that I finished it that something did eventually sort of occur.
Im not slapping this game with a 0.5 cause even though I disliked it, and it takes way, way, WAY too long for it, some good moments eventually do happen in the second/third act. Like 4 hours in this game actually starts (I could have watched Lawrence of Arabia in that time) and we get some kind of intrigue. Some character moments get some actual fucking payoff and one or two lines finally managed to get a light chuckle out of me. I like the gay bear dude, and I also like Angus. And look, I like Wayward Strand, which is a game in which bugger all happens, but that game was full of sympathetic (and unsympathetic too) and interesting characters with lovely dialogue. Being narrative focused with little mechanics focus is FINE, but you are riding on that narrative to hold up everything else and man this dialogue. I really dislike this dialogue, nobody talks like real people; which is fair enough I suppose given they are anthropomorphic animals but this Webcomic from the 2010s type dialogue just poisoned everything else especially for the first couple of hours.
There is some light platforming but its kind of a waste of space. Especially the dream sequences that scream filler to me. At the end of it all, all the existential stuff is the payoff for the game but Ive honestly seen it all before tackled better elsewhere (well, in Pentiment for one thing but I guess thats cheating given the timeline). Nothing is really tackled with much depth and it just makes me scratch my head when I see reviews being like "this is the first time I had played a videogame that explored these subjects" and like theres no way to say this without sounding like an asshole but what? You need to play more videogames then. I love EEAAO but if this is how that movie looks to people who dislike it then I'm sorry for recommending it to people. I think I'm just done with media about positive Nihilism (and yeah I get it, the Null Symbol, you are very clever Mr/Mrs writer), its unfair to rag on NITW for this reason, cause its from 6 years ago now but I have to be honest with how I feel. The art style and sound design/soundtrack are good though.
If you've gotten this far into this horribly written, mess of a review I ask you consider the fact that my life is a mess, which is coincidentally why its weird that I didnt like this game.
And yet I find myself wondering why does Pentiment work for me so well and NITW really doesnt? The protagonist, Mae Borowski is in theory the most relatable character in fiction to my life circumstances in pretty much every way except for our gender. I also had a complete breakdown when I moved out and utterly crashed spectacularly at uni and came back to try and go back to the stability of home. I also struggle with becoming a "proper adult" and finding meaning in existential questions. I also dread seeing a lot of people here back home cause of embarassing shit I did and feel kind of stuck at times. I also wonder if Im holding back my friends who seem to be making something of their lives unlike me. I am also Bi. I am an atheist, and yet somehow with all of this said and done I found myself relating to Andreas Maler, a deeply religious german renaissance painter 100 times more than Mae.
That's not to say that relatability is the be all and end all of storytelling, but I felt as if in the case of NITW I was SUPPOSED to be relating to her somewhat. Shes just really kind of unlikeable for most of the runtime and of course being a videogame you have to actively aid her in being shitty and doing shitty things at times. I was ready to abandon this game at the 2 hour mark although apparently that wasnt enough of a fair shake so I kept pushing through hoping maybe something would happen beyond the standard coming of age stuff and angst. I can say now that I finished it that something did eventually sort of occur.
Im not slapping this game with a 0.5 cause even though I disliked it, and it takes way, way, WAY too long for it, some good moments eventually do happen in the second/third act. Like 4 hours in this game actually starts (I could have watched Lawrence of Arabia in that time) and we get some kind of intrigue. Some character moments get some actual fucking payoff and one or two lines finally managed to get a light chuckle out of me. I like the gay bear dude, and I also like Angus. And look, I like Wayward Strand, which is a game in which bugger all happens, but that game was full of sympathetic (and unsympathetic too) and interesting characters with lovely dialogue. Being narrative focused with little mechanics focus is FINE, but you are riding on that narrative to hold up everything else and man this dialogue. I really dislike this dialogue, nobody talks like real people; which is fair enough I suppose given they are anthropomorphic animals but this Webcomic from the 2010s type dialogue just poisoned everything else especially for the first couple of hours.
There is some light platforming but its kind of a waste of space. Especially the dream sequences that scream filler to me. At the end of it all, all the existential stuff is the payoff for the game but Ive honestly seen it all before tackled better elsewhere (well, in Pentiment for one thing but I guess thats cheating given the timeline). Nothing is really tackled with much depth and it just makes me scratch my head when I see reviews being like "this is the first time I had played a videogame that explored these subjects" and like theres no way to say this without sounding like an asshole but what? You need to play more videogames then. I love EEAAO but if this is how that movie looks to people who dislike it then I'm sorry for recommending it to people. I think I'm just done with media about positive Nihilism (and yeah I get it, the Null Symbol, you are very clever Mr/Mrs writer), its unfair to rag on NITW for this reason, cause its from 6 years ago now but I have to be honest with how I feel. The art style and sound design/soundtrack are good though.
If you've gotten this far into this horribly written, mess of a review I ask you consider the fact that my life is a mess, which is coincidentally why its weird that I didnt like this game.
2009
All games are products of their time, even ones which "bucked trends" or "were ahead of their time" are only so in comparison with their contemporaries. RE5 is interesting historically because it definitely screams 7th gen : the color grading pejoratively described as the "piss filter" of brown environments assaulted with bloom, the co-op multiplayer focus of the days where such things were starting to become mainstream in the console market, the mowing down of hundreds of racist caricatures by a buff white guy, the fact that Albert Wesker's tailor discovered normal maps and is really excited to absolutely plaster them on his jacket etc.
Its hard to avoid noticing the main two things which jump at you when playing re5, namely that its RE4 but not as good and more racist. Asset reuse is fine, honestly, even mechanics recycled from re4 arent unwelcome but its the rehashing of re4 set pieces whilst doing them worse that lets re5 down. Similarly, the ingenious inventory management mechanic of the RE4 attache case : equal parts survival horror resource management and tetris space allocation is replaced by a dull 3×3 grid whose ultimate depth involves exchanging shit to your ai partner to reload a weapon before exchanging it right back.
The multiplayer aspect makes re5 have kind of an absurd difficulty curve based on your luck in finding partners. Some sections with the Ai partner were a bit patience testing, given their passive nature and limited commands, but then Id get randomly paired up with a god on their fifth playthrough who'd hand me 300 bullets for the machine gun and absolutely tear mfers up with endgame weapons. Very funny to me as well, how certain doors and weights and stuff require the cooperation of chris and sheva because of course its too heavy for a guy whos built like a brick shithouse, he needs help from a small framed spinning instructor to move it.
That being said, its got its bright moments and thankfully the multiplayer aspect made the use of QTEs for custcenes impossible so it does have that over RE4. In all honesty, its not an AWFUL game gameplay wise. There are a few levels which are quite striking visually, namely the temple areas and the faster arcadey nature of it all makes it not better but different to the pace of RE4. The implementation of a cover system and gun wielding zombies is as stupid and unwelcome as you'd expect, and the smoking gun for me that the island in RE4 is not only the worst part of that game but an incredibly ill omen of things to come for the franchise.
I suppose I should mention the elephant in the room : the game is set in "Africa". Not very specific where in Africa except the locals speak French so theres about 20 countries that could apply to. The spectre of the war on terror looms large as the intro depicts an american leading a counter terrorism operation and soon we see Akihiko from Persona 3 doing an arab accent get executed by frenzied locals riled up by a preacher. And sure, like in re4 the reason for it all is a parasitic infestation but the visual language of the game borrows a lot from contemporary wars that its hard to miss. There are heroic black characters like Sheva and her captain buddy but they seem there more as a pre emptive defense at criticism.
Admittedly, considering the state of AAA games at the time, RE5 is not THAT much more racist that the other shooters about doing imperialism in thr global south; that is until you get to the chapter where the enemies are all black people wearing grass skirts and chucking spears at you. And im sorry but zombie or no zombie, that sequence made me surprised to find out that Rudyard Kipling's ghost didnt have a writing credit in the game.
Smarter and more personally invested people than me have already talked about this aspect so I won't go much deeper into it except to say that its an odd obsession with studios who thrive on schlock and silliness to try to delve into more serious or thorny subjects that they are not equipped to handle.
Its hard to avoid noticing the main two things which jump at you when playing re5, namely that its RE4 but not as good and more racist. Asset reuse is fine, honestly, even mechanics recycled from re4 arent unwelcome but its the rehashing of re4 set pieces whilst doing them worse that lets re5 down. Similarly, the ingenious inventory management mechanic of the RE4 attache case : equal parts survival horror resource management and tetris space allocation is replaced by a dull 3×3 grid whose ultimate depth involves exchanging shit to your ai partner to reload a weapon before exchanging it right back.
The multiplayer aspect makes re5 have kind of an absurd difficulty curve based on your luck in finding partners. Some sections with the Ai partner were a bit patience testing, given their passive nature and limited commands, but then Id get randomly paired up with a god on their fifth playthrough who'd hand me 300 bullets for the machine gun and absolutely tear mfers up with endgame weapons. Very funny to me as well, how certain doors and weights and stuff require the cooperation of chris and sheva because of course its too heavy for a guy whos built like a brick shithouse, he needs help from a small framed spinning instructor to move it.
That being said, its got its bright moments and thankfully the multiplayer aspect made the use of QTEs for custcenes impossible so it does have that over RE4. In all honesty, its not an AWFUL game gameplay wise. There are a few levels which are quite striking visually, namely the temple areas and the faster arcadey nature of it all makes it not better but different to the pace of RE4. The implementation of a cover system and gun wielding zombies is as stupid and unwelcome as you'd expect, and the smoking gun for me that the island in RE4 is not only the worst part of that game but an incredibly ill omen of things to come for the franchise.
I suppose I should mention the elephant in the room : the game is set in "Africa". Not very specific where in Africa except the locals speak French so theres about 20 countries that could apply to. The spectre of the war on terror looms large as the intro depicts an american leading a counter terrorism operation and soon we see Akihiko from Persona 3 doing an arab accent get executed by frenzied locals riled up by a preacher. And sure, like in re4 the reason for it all is a parasitic infestation but the visual language of the game borrows a lot from contemporary wars that its hard to miss. There are heroic black characters like Sheva and her captain buddy but they seem there more as a pre emptive defense at criticism.
Admittedly, considering the state of AAA games at the time, RE5 is not THAT much more racist that the other shooters about doing imperialism in thr global south; that is until you get to the chapter where the enemies are all black people wearing grass skirts and chucking spears at you. And im sorry but zombie or no zombie, that sequence made me surprised to find out that Rudyard Kipling's ghost didnt have a writing credit in the game.
Smarter and more personally invested people than me have already talked about this aspect so I won't go much deeper into it except to say that its an odd obsession with studios who thrive on schlock and silliness to try to delve into more serious or thorny subjects that they are not equipped to handle.
The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa was and is a polarizing game. By virtue of its design decisions and lack of QOL its going to alienate a lot of people, fitting for a game in part about alienation.
If there is one word to describe the game it is ballsy. Only a ballsy game that 25% of its buyers will refund as per the devs own account would let you loose in this 80s Japanese town with basically no guidance. And whilst some parts of this feel intentional and help the mood of the game as you slowly learn how to get ahead in several ways, some just feel petty and/or dumb. Yeo himself could tell me that not telling me how to read books by sitting in any seat and pressing R or having to press B + A to jump to be able to do pull ups(which you have to do to join at least one club) is an intentional part of his design and I wouldnt believe him, and also I would flick his ear for being annoying.
The hunger mechanic is also not explained at all and I was pretty stressed at first losing fights and days trying to scrape enough cash from fights to buy food, but then I got 10k yen from good grades and basically had no money problems from then on, aided by the fact I somehow read a book which apparently doubles the knowledge you get from going to class.
Ringo is a game about roleplaying, not because of its stat elements that very assuredly non RPGs have these days, but because so much of the game revolves around ultimately mechanically inconsequential but nonetheless engrossing stuff. The quality of its writing really shines when you spend an entire sunday reading the Brothers Karamazov so Ringo can give it a good rating on Goodreads and have a 3 or 4 text box discussion about it with a classmate. Its a game where you smoke a limited amount of smokes for 440 yen a pack, which AFAIK has no effect on anything at a mechanical level whatsoever. But its about what Ringo wants to become, maybe you want him to quit smoking. Get straight As and go to the gym every day. Or you can have him play pool and beating up other thugs 24/7.
Ringo is a game that almost alienated me, and honestly I think reading up how to read books at home and do pushups, as inconsequential as they ended up being, increased my enjoyment of the game rather than spoil it. I didnt do many of the "quests" cause in a move that is definitely intentional there is no transcript or anything, if a friend says "Yuko is near the station tomorrow you should go" or something youre just meant to remember where that is in a game without a map and also to remember what day youre on and other such things. I suppose I could replay it but this game is definitely one that loses its luster by the end, maybe intentionally but it didnt seem that way to me and honestly Im tired of speculating on authorial intent, my experience dragged on a bit towards the conclusion even if that ending was...well it gave me something to think about certainly.
EDIT : Always the mark of good art, I have kept thinking about this game after I have finished it, it occupies my mind in a way I hadnt anticipated. Im bumping it up half a star cause I think for what flaws it might have its captured my imagination.
If there is one word to describe the game it is ballsy. Only a ballsy game that 25% of its buyers will refund as per the devs own account would let you loose in this 80s Japanese town with basically no guidance. And whilst some parts of this feel intentional and help the mood of the game as you slowly learn how to get ahead in several ways, some just feel petty and/or dumb. Yeo himself could tell me that not telling me how to read books by sitting in any seat and pressing R or having to press B + A to jump to be able to do pull ups(which you have to do to join at least one club) is an intentional part of his design and I wouldnt believe him, and also I would flick his ear for being annoying.
The hunger mechanic is also not explained at all and I was pretty stressed at first losing fights and days trying to scrape enough cash from fights to buy food, but then I got 10k yen from good grades and basically had no money problems from then on, aided by the fact I somehow read a book which apparently doubles the knowledge you get from going to class.
Ringo is a game about roleplaying, not because of its stat elements that very assuredly non RPGs have these days, but because so much of the game revolves around ultimately mechanically inconsequential but nonetheless engrossing stuff. The quality of its writing really shines when you spend an entire sunday reading the Brothers Karamazov so Ringo can give it a good rating on Goodreads and have a 3 or 4 text box discussion about it with a classmate. Its a game where you smoke a limited amount of smokes for 440 yen a pack, which AFAIK has no effect on anything at a mechanical level whatsoever. But its about what Ringo wants to become, maybe you want him to quit smoking. Get straight As and go to the gym every day. Or you can have him play pool and beating up other thugs 24/7.
Ringo is a game that almost alienated me, and honestly I think reading up how to read books at home and do pushups, as inconsequential as they ended up being, increased my enjoyment of the game rather than spoil it. I didnt do many of the "quests" cause in a move that is definitely intentional there is no transcript or anything, if a friend says "Yuko is near the station tomorrow you should go" or something youre just meant to remember where that is in a game without a map and also to remember what day youre on and other such things. I suppose I could replay it but this game is definitely one that loses its luster by the end, maybe intentionally but it didnt seem that way to me and honestly Im tired of speculating on authorial intent, my experience dragged on a bit towards the conclusion even if that ending was...well it gave me something to think about certainly.
EDIT : Always the mark of good art, I have kept thinking about this game after I have finished it, it occupies my mind in a way I hadnt anticipated. Im bumping it up half a star cause I think for what flaws it might have its captured my imagination.
1990
I'm a big fan of genre mashups. For a while now, the best way to get my attention and stand out from within the neverending tide of new releases is to do "genre 1 + genre 2" to make combinations I haven't seen before. Sometimes these result in great new games that do something innovative, and sometimes they produce an incoherent mess, or just an underwhelming experience. And whilst I associate most of this school of design with modern indie games, I knew that they certainly weren't the inventors of this approach; and I thought I had to pay my respects to the OG weird genre mashup : Actraiser (and yeah I know there were weird genre mixes even further back depending on what you count but remember that video game genres are bullshit anyways so its fine)
The strength of a hybrid gameplay model is 2 fold. One is that its an in-built tool for pacing wherein one mode is a nice change of pace/a break from the other. Though more conventional, games like Persona (3 onwards), XCOM, Recettear etc keep the line going up and down with their respective gameplay models. When I'm tired of hanging out in P5 I can do a dungeon and when Im tired of that I can go back and eat a giant burger in Shibuya. The other is that the gameplay modes can feed into each other and make what might be two vastly different mechanical exercises integrate more closely through these connections like getting weapon fragments from killed aliens in missions in XCOM to build laser rifles back in the base to kill aliens more efficiently to get more fragments etc.
That last part is usually the make or break for the genre hybrid in my experience. At best, the two tie seamlessly together in a way that it makes you wonder how no one thought about this before, at worst both become a slog or one feels bolted to the other unnaturally, you resent one mode from keeping you away from the other. There is also a third approach, where you simply don't try all that hard to integrate the two modes or even at all, which can also work.
Actraiser kinda tries to integrate its city building with its castlevania-esque action platforming, but not super hard. And I think it works in that respect. You play as an avatar of "the NOT Christian God" helping various settlements to grow in population by directing them to build towards available land, clearing swamps and foliage, killing demons who respawn until the towns grow close enough to their lairs to close them etc. You do this so more people can worship you, which makes you more powerful and therefore more able to foil the plans of "NOT Satan". Its a cool (and you'll forgive me for using this word) ludonarrative, wherein a symbiotic relationship exists between god and those who worship him, God protects his flock from evil who in turn make him stronger. It also pre empts the usual narrative question of "how can there be an antagonist to an omnipotent being?" by making the battle between good and evil also a battle for the hearts and minds of people, the will of the creator being realized through their work.
This is brought up more explicitly during the Maranha Arc, an island with a pretty substantial presence of monsters, leaving you to constantly kill the demons in the overworld lest they get 5 seconds to burn the peoples' crops. The narrative of that particular episode involves the people being seduced by the dark forces and eventually even the temple priests who communicate with you go over to the demons' side. After you defeat the evil demons they explain that they were deceived by the demons due to the hardship they suffered, their faith wavering when faced with hunger and violence. This reminds a bit of the story of Job from the bible, who was tested at the behest of "the adversary" to prove to God that his faith was only due to his blessed circumstances. Ultimately Job endures great suffering without turning his back on God which leads him to be greatly rewarded.
There is also the matter of the "demons" being based on figures from other religions like the minotaur, pharaohs (who were the gods' representatives on earth in egyptian mythology) , various others from nordic and hindu mythology etc. The master is a jealous god, angered by these "false idols", its no surprise the game was subject to censorship when being localised in the west to avoid the more overt references to christianity and religion in general. As much as the game is a metaphor for monotheism I think there's also a hint of Buddhism, possibly due to Quintet(the studio which made Actraiser) being a japanese studio. There is mention in the epilogue of reincarnation and whilst in keeping with Christian lore, the idea of humans being straying from righteousness by the allure of demons who keep them in suffering on this earthly realm through violence smacks a bit of Mara, the demonic representative of death, rebirth and pleasure, who tried to stop Siddharta Gautama from achieving enlightenment.
Actraiser does a lot with very little, in this respect, and I kind of wish there was more to this, the game is rather brief and most of the "point" is relayed right at the end after the final boss rush, at which time I'm a bit too high off of the victory to meditate on human's tendencies to abandon religion when their living standards rise. Actraiser is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. The menuing and UX of the city building is a bit clunky, not being able to do anything whilst a town is being constructed is ok, but can you just let me use my powers without having to show me the slow text box explaining its use every single time I use them? The platforming is good, has that weighty movement reminiscent of a Castlevania 1 but the hitboxes can be a bit dodgy, sometimes in the enemy's favour, sometimes in the player's. Hitting enemies at floor height remains kind of a crap shoot all the way to the final boss. I am pretty shit at the game but thankfully Actraiser is a lot more generous with the wall chicken than CV1 is. And hell, worst case scenario you can go back and increase the population to upgrade your max health. Not a big fan of the final boss gauntlet, its always a gut punch reading a guide for a game who says "yeah this boss is bullshit, just use your fuck you spell to kill him quickly, the other bosses can be fought normally".
In the end though, I enjoyed Actraiser, I think its rightfully seen as a classic and will rank highly if I ever make a list of my favourite genre hybrid games. I have heard that the sequel abandons the god game aspect entirely, and that sounds like kind of a waste... I'll play it eventually but not anytime soon.
The strength of a hybrid gameplay model is 2 fold. One is that its an in-built tool for pacing wherein one mode is a nice change of pace/a break from the other. Though more conventional, games like Persona (3 onwards), XCOM, Recettear etc keep the line going up and down with their respective gameplay models. When I'm tired of hanging out in P5 I can do a dungeon and when Im tired of that I can go back and eat a giant burger in Shibuya. The other is that the gameplay modes can feed into each other and make what might be two vastly different mechanical exercises integrate more closely through these connections like getting weapon fragments from killed aliens in missions in XCOM to build laser rifles back in the base to kill aliens more efficiently to get more fragments etc.
That last part is usually the make or break for the genre hybrid in my experience. At best, the two tie seamlessly together in a way that it makes you wonder how no one thought about this before, at worst both become a slog or one feels bolted to the other unnaturally, you resent one mode from keeping you away from the other. There is also a third approach, where you simply don't try all that hard to integrate the two modes or even at all, which can also work.
Actraiser kinda tries to integrate its city building with its castlevania-esque action platforming, but not super hard. And I think it works in that respect. You play as an avatar of "the NOT Christian God" helping various settlements to grow in population by directing them to build towards available land, clearing swamps and foliage, killing demons who respawn until the towns grow close enough to their lairs to close them etc. You do this so more people can worship you, which makes you more powerful and therefore more able to foil the plans of "NOT Satan". Its a cool (and you'll forgive me for using this word) ludonarrative, wherein a symbiotic relationship exists between god and those who worship him, God protects his flock from evil who in turn make him stronger. It also pre empts the usual narrative question of "how can there be an antagonist to an omnipotent being?" by making the battle between good and evil also a battle for the hearts and minds of people, the will of the creator being realized through their work.
This is brought up more explicitly during the Maranha Arc, an island with a pretty substantial presence of monsters, leaving you to constantly kill the demons in the overworld lest they get 5 seconds to burn the peoples' crops. The narrative of that particular episode involves the people being seduced by the dark forces and eventually even the temple priests who communicate with you go over to the demons' side. After you defeat the evil demons they explain that they were deceived by the demons due to the hardship they suffered, their faith wavering when faced with hunger and violence. This reminds a bit of the story of Job from the bible, who was tested at the behest of "the adversary" to prove to God that his faith was only due to his blessed circumstances. Ultimately Job endures great suffering without turning his back on God which leads him to be greatly rewarded.
There is also the matter of the "demons" being based on figures from other religions like the minotaur, pharaohs (who were the gods' representatives on earth in egyptian mythology) , various others from nordic and hindu mythology etc. The master is a jealous god, angered by these "false idols", its no surprise the game was subject to censorship when being localised in the west to avoid the more overt references to christianity and religion in general. As much as the game is a metaphor for monotheism I think there's also a hint of Buddhism, possibly due to Quintet(the studio which made Actraiser) being a japanese studio. There is mention in the epilogue of reincarnation and whilst in keeping with Christian lore, the idea of humans being straying from righteousness by the allure of demons who keep them in suffering on this earthly realm through violence smacks a bit of Mara, the demonic representative of death, rebirth and pleasure, who tried to stop Siddharta Gautama from achieving enlightenment.
Actraiser does a lot with very little, in this respect, and I kind of wish there was more to this, the game is rather brief and most of the "point" is relayed right at the end after the final boss rush, at which time I'm a bit too high off of the victory to meditate on human's tendencies to abandon religion when their living standards rise. Actraiser is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. The menuing and UX of the city building is a bit clunky, not being able to do anything whilst a town is being constructed is ok, but can you just let me use my powers without having to show me the slow text box explaining its use every single time I use them? The platforming is good, has that weighty movement reminiscent of a Castlevania 1 but the hitboxes can be a bit dodgy, sometimes in the enemy's favour, sometimes in the player's. Hitting enemies at floor height remains kind of a crap shoot all the way to the final boss. I am pretty shit at the game but thankfully Actraiser is a lot more generous with the wall chicken than CV1 is. And hell, worst case scenario you can go back and increase the population to upgrade your max health. Not a big fan of the final boss gauntlet, its always a gut punch reading a guide for a game who says "yeah this boss is bullshit, just use your fuck you spell to kill him quickly, the other bosses can be fought normally".
In the end though, I enjoyed Actraiser, I think its rightfully seen as a classic and will rank highly if I ever make a list of my favourite genre hybrid games. I have heard that the sequel abandons the god game aspect entirely, and that sounds like kind of a waste... I'll play it eventually but not anytime soon.
2009
January 2022 I played Dark Souls 2 : Scholar of the first sin for the first time, it took a while to click but eventually I fell in love with it and the series as a whole.
April 2024 It is with a heavy heart that I must face facts : I cannot play these games anymore. A similar thing has happened to me before, in 2022 I had the same realization about the total war games, but I have since been able to replay them a few years later. So I'd like to say its not "goodbye souls" but "see you later souls". I've simply grown too used to them, as replayable as they are, there is just nothing to excite me anymore. I will note however, that demons' souls was the last holdout.
Admittedly, this is probably less due to Demons' Souls' qualities than it is to the fact that I have done fewer runs of it than DS1 and 2 which I have played to death, by virtue of having to get my ps3 out of storage to play it, but nevertheless I find myself thinking about IT in particular lately.
Spoilers for Demons Souls I guess
The last time I played it I felt like the protagonist of Shadows over Insmouth or even 1984 when the cosmic horror hit as I made my way through the swamp of sorrows and thought to myself "oh god, I'm actually enjoying this". Miyazaki's psy-op finally got to me, whichever pheromone infused miasma the swamps emanate has made it into my head. Are these thoughts my own anymore? Am I but a vessel for the sacrifice to the great god of toxic swamp water that From Software has built an altar to?
Before any of the Demon Souls superfans get too pleased with their new convert, I think my overall enjoyment of DeS has stayed about the same; case in point I think I fucking hate 1-3 and 1-4. I think DeS strengths lie in atmosphere, in novel challenge revolving around environmental traversal, elemental match-ups, slow, methodical exploration and puzzle bossfights. In terms of straight up combat gauntlets its been utterly left in the dust by later entries, and its my least favourite aspect of the game. My ass also got killed because I accidentally climbed over a railing my rubbing too close to it and jumped into a 3 enemy gank, which felt less like punishing poor awareness and more getting fucked by weird controls. How hard is it to add a button press for mantling over obstacles? Either way, FromSoft abandoned that shit almost inmediately so its nice to know they agree with me.
The Blue dragon fucking sucks. The red dragon as an obstacle in 1-1 and 1-2 works perfectly, thematically and mechanically it serves its role of pseudoboss/setpiece wonderfully. The blue dragon sucks, whether or not you get past his second phase seems more luck to me than anything else given the disconnect between the visual outline and hitbox of his fire breath (especially if you rescue the knight dude) and given he guards the false king, as a player you're going to be seeing him a lot, leaving you to either absolutely master his bullshit timing or do the slow, tedious process of killing him with arrows. I have only ever fought King Allant "honourably" like 2 times maybe, because by the time I get to 1-4 my enthusiasm for DeS has grown thin and the tedium of the dragon and runback occupy such a space in my mind, that I usually just pull out the thief ring + poison cloud cheese combo, and I admit that with 0 shame. Its unfortunate, because the first time I fought King Allant I was legitimately sweating by the end of it, it was an incredible rush of adrenaline, but that fucking dumbass dragon had to fuck it up.
That's kind of DeS' double edged sword. It fucks with you, and dares you to fuck with it back, which is great when you max out health regen items so you can tank the poison and absolutely breeze through the swamp, but less great when you realize the optimum interaction with the world tendency system is to act in such a way that you dont have to engage with it at all i.e kill yourself in the nexus and always go in soul form. I get the logic in body form having the supposed risk/reward of extra health vs the chance to make the entire area harder if you die with it, but the usual obtuseness added to the fact that 25% extra health isn't particularly helpful compared to potentially getting into black world tendency, there isn't much of a choice. The added mechanic of item drop rates going up with black world tendency is also kind of pointless because pure white levels with sub-optimally upgraded weapons are infinitely easier than pure black with maxed out weapons. There's just not much of a choice here. You could argue that maybe there wasnt intended to BE a choice, given that the NPC which explained this mechanic was removed during development, but even as an opaque mechanic it cannot help but incentivise not bothering with it at all. Especially given the focus on cooperation I think they had to have realized people would crack the code on it eventually.
The poise system is weird, in that its an example of a system that is both too punishing and way too forgiving for the player, which is weird. Compared to the later souls games (though admittedly DS1 maybe went a bit too far in making poise OP) it fucks with the usual dynamic of the combat wherein you commit to every attack, both yours and the enemies' being slow and interruptable leading to tense back and forths. In DeS though, there is no poise, just hyper armor given by attacks. This leads to some weirdness. Take the scale miners in world 2. They are extremely tough skinned mindless workers in the mines of boletaria, they are very resistant to slashing damage but vulnerable to magic and pierce (and maybe blunt I think). So you'd think then that they would be able to shrug off any attacks from you and attack uninterrupted. This isnt really the case though, because hyper armor only kicks in during certain frames of attacks, hence if they start their pickaxe attack they are absolutely impossible to interrupt by quick thinking, as the attack has basically 0 windup before it enters the hyper armor phase, but if you hit em before they attack you can absolutely stunlock em into oblivion. The same is true of the blue and red-eyed knights who are way easier than they were likely intended to be because they don't have poise. This is what I mean, its both too punishing (doesnt seem to follow the dynamic of the rest of the combat) and too easy to abuse. The red eye knights in 1-3 are absolute dickheads for this, their charging spear attack can get spammed ad infinitum, with basically 0 cooldown and grants hyper armor. Thankfully I have a bow, but the amount of enemies in 1-3 is one reason why I hate it so much.
But nowhere is this poise problem demonstrated more than with Garl Vinland. Poor garl, serving a corrupt demon without poise. For some reason, of the heavy weapons which get hyper armor in DeS, seemingly the ultra greatswords and his fuck off hammer were excluded, and even if it wasnt easy as hell to parry him / get his hammer to smack the wall harmlessly, his dumbass heavy armor grants him 0 resistance to being stunlocked into oblivion. Compare him to Havel, who can also be cheesed, but at least he shrugs off attacks with a toothpick and hits you with his fuck off hammer regardless.
All that said, I love worlds 2,3 and to a lesser extent 4 and 5. 1-1 and 1-2 are great. Atmosphere and visual design wise they are great treats. I read an article I'll link here which brought up an interesting point I've been thinking about lately, which speaks to DeS' longstanding cult status. In the article they compare the flamelurker design in DeS and its remake, and how the latter looks like "artstation fire demon", which is harsh but kind of true. Its what you make when a director asks you for a fire demon, and if there is something that defines DeS I think, its that it embodies the opposite, for good and for ill. The vanguard demon, the storm king, maiden astraea, phalanx even, these all subvert usual genre expectations and give something rather unique without feeling try-hard. Everything else about its design from its mechanics to the art all seem to follow the rule of not just doing the obvious, the easy, the straightforward.
Think about the tutorial, where after maybe defeating the vanguard demon (which again, is not the type of enemy one would usually put as a beginner boss, both in its lethality and slight goofiness of the design) you are taken to an area with some loot and then are put in front of a giant humanoid dragon, who kills you not by breathing fire and melting you (i.e what you would expect) but by hitting you with a big old punch.
So all my complaints aside, I have to respect Demons' Souls, and if I manage to get back into souls at some point in the future, I hope I get to enjoy being brainwashed into liking 5-2 again. And despising that fucking dragon asshole.
April 2024 It is with a heavy heart that I must face facts : I cannot play these games anymore. A similar thing has happened to me before, in 2022 I had the same realization about the total war games, but I have since been able to replay them a few years later. So I'd like to say its not "goodbye souls" but "see you later souls". I've simply grown too used to them, as replayable as they are, there is just nothing to excite me anymore. I will note however, that demons' souls was the last holdout.
Admittedly, this is probably less due to Demons' Souls' qualities than it is to the fact that I have done fewer runs of it than DS1 and 2 which I have played to death, by virtue of having to get my ps3 out of storage to play it, but nevertheless I find myself thinking about IT in particular lately.
Spoilers for Demons Souls I guess
The last time I played it I felt like the protagonist of Shadows over Insmouth or even 1984 when the cosmic horror hit as I made my way through the swamp of sorrows and thought to myself "oh god, I'm actually enjoying this". Miyazaki's psy-op finally got to me, whichever pheromone infused miasma the swamps emanate has made it into my head. Are these thoughts my own anymore? Am I but a vessel for the sacrifice to the great god of toxic swamp water that From Software has built an altar to?
Before any of the Demon Souls superfans get too pleased with their new convert, I think my overall enjoyment of DeS has stayed about the same; case in point I think I fucking hate 1-3 and 1-4. I think DeS strengths lie in atmosphere, in novel challenge revolving around environmental traversal, elemental match-ups, slow, methodical exploration and puzzle bossfights. In terms of straight up combat gauntlets its been utterly left in the dust by later entries, and its my least favourite aspect of the game. My ass also got killed because I accidentally climbed over a railing my rubbing too close to it and jumped into a 3 enemy gank, which felt less like punishing poor awareness and more getting fucked by weird controls. How hard is it to add a button press for mantling over obstacles? Either way, FromSoft abandoned that shit almost inmediately so its nice to know they agree with me.
The Blue dragon fucking sucks. The red dragon as an obstacle in 1-1 and 1-2 works perfectly, thematically and mechanically it serves its role of pseudoboss/setpiece wonderfully. The blue dragon sucks, whether or not you get past his second phase seems more luck to me than anything else given the disconnect between the visual outline and hitbox of his fire breath (especially if you rescue the knight dude) and given he guards the false king, as a player you're going to be seeing him a lot, leaving you to either absolutely master his bullshit timing or do the slow, tedious process of killing him with arrows. I have only ever fought King Allant "honourably" like 2 times maybe, because by the time I get to 1-4 my enthusiasm for DeS has grown thin and the tedium of the dragon and runback occupy such a space in my mind, that I usually just pull out the thief ring + poison cloud cheese combo, and I admit that with 0 shame. Its unfortunate, because the first time I fought King Allant I was legitimately sweating by the end of it, it was an incredible rush of adrenaline, but that fucking dumbass dragon had to fuck it up.
That's kind of DeS' double edged sword. It fucks with you, and dares you to fuck with it back, which is great when you max out health regen items so you can tank the poison and absolutely breeze through the swamp, but less great when you realize the optimum interaction with the world tendency system is to act in such a way that you dont have to engage with it at all i.e kill yourself in the nexus and always go in soul form. I get the logic in body form having the supposed risk/reward of extra health vs the chance to make the entire area harder if you die with it, but the usual obtuseness added to the fact that 25% extra health isn't particularly helpful compared to potentially getting into black world tendency, there isn't much of a choice. The added mechanic of item drop rates going up with black world tendency is also kind of pointless because pure white levels with sub-optimally upgraded weapons are infinitely easier than pure black with maxed out weapons. There's just not much of a choice here. You could argue that maybe there wasnt intended to BE a choice, given that the NPC which explained this mechanic was removed during development, but even as an opaque mechanic it cannot help but incentivise not bothering with it at all. Especially given the focus on cooperation I think they had to have realized people would crack the code on it eventually.
The poise system is weird, in that its an example of a system that is both too punishing and way too forgiving for the player, which is weird. Compared to the later souls games (though admittedly DS1 maybe went a bit too far in making poise OP) it fucks with the usual dynamic of the combat wherein you commit to every attack, both yours and the enemies' being slow and interruptable leading to tense back and forths. In DeS though, there is no poise, just hyper armor given by attacks. This leads to some weirdness. Take the scale miners in world 2. They are extremely tough skinned mindless workers in the mines of boletaria, they are very resistant to slashing damage but vulnerable to magic and pierce (and maybe blunt I think). So you'd think then that they would be able to shrug off any attacks from you and attack uninterrupted. This isnt really the case though, because hyper armor only kicks in during certain frames of attacks, hence if they start their pickaxe attack they are absolutely impossible to interrupt by quick thinking, as the attack has basically 0 windup before it enters the hyper armor phase, but if you hit em before they attack you can absolutely stunlock em into oblivion. The same is true of the blue and red-eyed knights who are way easier than they were likely intended to be because they don't have poise. This is what I mean, its both too punishing (doesnt seem to follow the dynamic of the rest of the combat) and too easy to abuse. The red eye knights in 1-3 are absolute dickheads for this, their charging spear attack can get spammed ad infinitum, with basically 0 cooldown and grants hyper armor. Thankfully I have a bow, but the amount of enemies in 1-3 is one reason why I hate it so much.
But nowhere is this poise problem demonstrated more than with Garl Vinland. Poor garl, serving a corrupt demon without poise. For some reason, of the heavy weapons which get hyper armor in DeS, seemingly the ultra greatswords and his fuck off hammer were excluded, and even if it wasnt easy as hell to parry him / get his hammer to smack the wall harmlessly, his dumbass heavy armor grants him 0 resistance to being stunlocked into oblivion. Compare him to Havel, who can also be cheesed, but at least he shrugs off attacks with a toothpick and hits you with his fuck off hammer regardless.
All that said, I love worlds 2,3 and to a lesser extent 4 and 5. 1-1 and 1-2 are great. Atmosphere and visual design wise they are great treats. I read an article I'll link here which brought up an interesting point I've been thinking about lately, which speaks to DeS' longstanding cult status. In the article they compare the flamelurker design in DeS and its remake, and how the latter looks like "artstation fire demon", which is harsh but kind of true. Its what you make when a director asks you for a fire demon, and if there is something that defines DeS I think, its that it embodies the opposite, for good and for ill. The vanguard demon, the storm king, maiden astraea, phalanx even, these all subvert usual genre expectations and give something rather unique without feeling try-hard. Everything else about its design from its mechanics to the art all seem to follow the rule of not just doing the obvious, the easy, the straightforward.
Think about the tutorial, where after maybe defeating the vanguard demon (which again, is not the type of enemy one would usually put as a beginner boss, both in its lethality and slight goofiness of the design) you are taken to an area with some loot and then are put in front of a giant humanoid dragon, who kills you not by breathing fire and melting you (i.e what you would expect) but by hitting you with a big old punch.
So all my complaints aside, I have to respect Demons' Souls, and if I manage to get back into souls at some point in the future, I hope I get to enjoy being brainwashed into liking 5-2 again. And despising that fucking dragon asshole.
2000
Finished my replay of this game on hard mode. There wasn't much of a difference with normal except that obviously you take fewer hits before you go down. Perhaps one day I'll play on realistic but something tells me that will cross the line into being annoying for my playstyle.
If you've followed me for a while or even if you've been in the same room as me for more than 15 minutes you might now that I despise stealth games. I've tried, but I genuinely hate them all. MGS, Thief, Dishonored, even stealth sections in games I like (shenmue, max payne, disaster report 4). I've had bad luck with so called Immersive Sims because of it, as most of them are essentially stealth arpg hybrids like Deus Ex, but so far its basically only the OG (and consortium by virtue of not having stealth) that I mess with. Its not exactly a mystery why, and consider this a plea for other games to follow suit : let me murder everyone. Give me an actual choice between stealth and combat and not just stealth and "you fucked up the stealth you idiot! you might as well reload a save"
Importantly, Deus Ex's combat is deceptively fun to get to grips with. Its so simple but really effective the way that you start out as someone who takes 2 business days to line up a pistol shot to being able to run around with the gep gun blowing people up like nothing. I'm surprised no one else has tried emulating the system, with your RPG esque weapon stats determining how fast your crosshair takes to narrow and become fully accurate, presumably imitating how it takes someone to aim down the sights and prepare to fire a shot.
Now, obviously for this kind of game there has to be push back, and even with a combat build your ass is not going to last if you're trying to play the game like half life, which is precisely why its satisfying to completely forgo stealth and murder everyone through traps, ambushes etc. This playthrough I discovered how useful the non lethal gas grenades are for murder runs (ironically) cause it makes enemies freeze up to rub their eyes, lining up to get headshot with the pistol for maximum murder efficiency.
The playthrough did however highlight Deus Ex's biggest flaw : the save system. Its one of those systems which is simultaneously too annoying and too forgiving. Its annoying because I am forgetful, and losing 15 mins of progress because I forgot to save is just... frustrating. On the other hand, there is basically nothing stopping you from hardcore save scumming every 5 seconds. Ironically, there is nothing more appropriately "mean" for a choice based rpg than an aggressive auto save, as it is, you can basically game most of the big decisions and encounters. Maybe even a save room system like RE4 might be appropriate? Could even lock them behind doors with an interesting weighing up of resources if its worth risking a loss of progress for a lockpick or multitool? Idk now Im playing armchair designer but either way.
Area 51 is still kinda annoying, I didnt use console commands to noclip through it this time but I still fused with Helios because it was the fastest way to complete the level, the later bits of the game are kind of a downgrade from the initial half of the game.
If you've followed me for a while or even if you've been in the same room as me for more than 15 minutes you might now that I despise stealth games. I've tried, but I genuinely hate them all. MGS, Thief, Dishonored, even stealth sections in games I like (shenmue, max payne, disaster report 4). I've had bad luck with so called Immersive Sims because of it, as most of them are essentially stealth arpg hybrids like Deus Ex, but so far its basically only the OG (and consortium by virtue of not having stealth) that I mess with. Its not exactly a mystery why, and consider this a plea for other games to follow suit : let me murder everyone. Give me an actual choice between stealth and combat and not just stealth and "you fucked up the stealth you idiot! you might as well reload a save"
Importantly, Deus Ex's combat is deceptively fun to get to grips with. Its so simple but really effective the way that you start out as someone who takes 2 business days to line up a pistol shot to being able to run around with the gep gun blowing people up like nothing. I'm surprised no one else has tried emulating the system, with your RPG esque weapon stats determining how fast your crosshair takes to narrow and become fully accurate, presumably imitating how it takes someone to aim down the sights and prepare to fire a shot.
Now, obviously for this kind of game there has to be push back, and even with a combat build your ass is not going to last if you're trying to play the game like half life, which is precisely why its satisfying to completely forgo stealth and murder everyone through traps, ambushes etc. This playthrough I discovered how useful the non lethal gas grenades are for murder runs (ironically) cause it makes enemies freeze up to rub their eyes, lining up to get headshot with the pistol for maximum murder efficiency.
The playthrough did however highlight Deus Ex's biggest flaw : the save system. Its one of those systems which is simultaneously too annoying and too forgiving. Its annoying because I am forgetful, and losing 15 mins of progress because I forgot to save is just... frustrating. On the other hand, there is basically nothing stopping you from hardcore save scumming every 5 seconds. Ironically, there is nothing more appropriately "mean" for a choice based rpg than an aggressive auto save, as it is, you can basically game most of the big decisions and encounters. Maybe even a save room system like RE4 might be appropriate? Could even lock them behind doors with an interesting weighing up of resources if its worth risking a loss of progress for a lockpick or multitool? Idk now Im playing armchair designer but either way.
Area 51 is still kinda annoying, I didnt use console commands to noclip through it this time but I still fused with Helios because it was the fastest way to complete the level, the later bits of the game are kind of a downgrade from the initial half of the game.
Daily Thread : The Sewing of Discontent was a pleasant surprise, a historical sewing simulator might not sound rivetting but when an accidental rip on a jacket because you were rushing to meet the quota in the incredibly tight schedule of your work day means you can't afford to pay medicine, well, there are few games which have made me more tense (in a good way).
The controls are a bit awkward at first, especially as you're thrown right into it, but I think you just have to accept that your first run is a wash and learn the basics before the real runs begin.
If you've played Paper's Please or the like the structure will seem familiar - during the day you try to sew as many pieces as possible to meet or even exceed the quota without sewing outside of the lines, each "rip" deducting 1p from your daily wages and 3 meaning game over. This of course creates a tense dilemma between going fast to meet the quota and going slow and making sure you don't mess up. It's super stressful especially at first, and I found it very compelling. I'm not even the biggest fan of the sort of "player antagonism" type of design but here I couldnt help but enjoy it, given the context and also the fact that I was actually not that bad at the sewing.
At the end of each day the budgeting portion requires you to choose how to spend your money, with rent being mandatory to not get an inmediate game over, as well as food, doctor visits if anyone is sick and finally a newspaper which progresses the story. Importantly, the Main Character, Henrietta is the only essential character, if she starves or dies of illness the game is over, but not so much the other members. You will lose the money the adults earn in their jobs but the children do not contribute, which does lead to a grim calculus when money is scarce to only feed those who provide, left to die, there is more money to go around. Of course this is where this sort of simulation of real life tragedy falls short, when it cannot account for simulation of y'know, not wanting your 3 year old child to starve even if they cannot help you out currently.
Importantly for me, Daily Thread avoids the unrelenting grim pessimism by actually having a clear goal beyond surviving as long as possible or whatever it is that happened in the Papers Please endings (I could never be assed to finish it, I think you overthrow the government or something). By buying newspapers with what little extra cash you can muster, the wave of labour organizing and reform arrives in England, and you progress from going to meetings, to paying union fees to finally organizing the world's first general strike. The satire in these newspapers is admittedly about as subtle as being punched in the jaw, but the humour helps add some levity to an otherwise grim game, and it reminded me of Imperialism(1997) so it's fine by me.
I have a couple nitpicks, the music is too loud but the only option is to turn it off, which feels like overcorrecting. Also for all the educational value the game has (I've already started to look more into chartism and the 1842 strike) there is no Bibliography! Which seems like a massive wasted opportunity, especially given that the game was developed by 3 people, 2 of which have PHDs.
Daily Thread was a pleasant surprise, and its currently on sale on steam, where as per the game's own store page "Half of all revenue from the game will be donated to Labour Behind the Label, a UK-based non-profit co-operative organisation which campaigns for workers' rights in the clothing industry". So if being put in the shoes of a victorian seamstress being crushed under the bootheel of industrial capitalism sounds like your thing, check it out
The controls are a bit awkward at first, especially as you're thrown right into it, but I think you just have to accept that your first run is a wash and learn the basics before the real runs begin.
If you've played Paper's Please or the like the structure will seem familiar - during the day you try to sew as many pieces as possible to meet or even exceed the quota without sewing outside of the lines, each "rip" deducting 1p from your daily wages and 3 meaning game over. This of course creates a tense dilemma between going fast to meet the quota and going slow and making sure you don't mess up. It's super stressful especially at first, and I found it very compelling. I'm not even the biggest fan of the sort of "player antagonism" type of design but here I couldnt help but enjoy it, given the context and also the fact that I was actually not that bad at the sewing.
At the end of each day the budgeting portion requires you to choose how to spend your money, with rent being mandatory to not get an inmediate game over, as well as food, doctor visits if anyone is sick and finally a newspaper which progresses the story. Importantly, the Main Character, Henrietta is the only essential character, if she starves or dies of illness the game is over, but not so much the other members. You will lose the money the adults earn in their jobs but the children do not contribute, which does lead to a grim calculus when money is scarce to only feed those who provide, left to die, there is more money to go around. Of course this is where this sort of simulation of real life tragedy falls short, when it cannot account for simulation of y'know, not wanting your 3 year old child to starve even if they cannot help you out currently.
Importantly for me, Daily Thread avoids the unrelenting grim pessimism by actually having a clear goal beyond surviving as long as possible or whatever it is that happened in the Papers Please endings (I could never be assed to finish it, I think you overthrow the government or something). By buying newspapers with what little extra cash you can muster, the wave of labour organizing and reform arrives in England, and you progress from going to meetings, to paying union fees to finally organizing the world's first general strike. The satire in these newspapers is admittedly about as subtle as being punched in the jaw, but the humour helps add some levity to an otherwise grim game, and it reminded me of Imperialism(1997) so it's fine by me.
I have a couple nitpicks, the music is too loud but the only option is to turn it off, which feels like overcorrecting. Also for all the educational value the game has (I've already started to look more into chartism and the 1842 strike) there is no Bibliography! Which seems like a massive wasted opportunity, especially given that the game was developed by 3 people, 2 of which have PHDs.
Daily Thread was a pleasant surprise, and its currently on sale on steam, where as per the game's own store page "Half of all revenue from the game will be donated to Labour Behind the Label, a UK-based non-profit co-operative organisation which campaigns for workers' rights in the clothing industry". So if being put in the shoes of a victorian seamstress being crushed under the bootheel of industrial capitalism sounds like your thing, check it out