Completing Opus Magnum, in terms of getting to the credits roll, is easy. I know that might sound pompous of my own ability to the game, but I'm being very serious, the game is designed for you to make messy brute-forced methods to go through the puzzles if you so desire. The issue is, however, that you're not going to do that. Within the game there's this drive, this scream to optimize, to efficiently solve the problem, to create machinations beyond what is minimally asked of you. This is both a narrative point and a metatextual one, Anataeus is a genius where the fundamentals all come easy to him, but he strives to constantly reach past his limits. He doesn't want to just do what is needed of him he wants to EXCEL. And on top of this there's that leaderboard, that constant reminder that you could work yourself better, lower the cost, contain everything to shorter tapes, etc.. It all feeds into a disgustingly addictive loop.

It's honestly just, my favorite kind of puzzle design. I thought about that a lot, how I really enjoy Opus's intricate meeting between the computer coding aspect and the sad tale of expanding beyond the schoolyard to find that the world is much more complicated and often limiting and frictional. It's simple but very fitting. Most of what I look into with puzzle games is generally something that speaks out at me beyond the A-ha! moments, maybe introduces to me a different way of thinking things through, or encapsulates a lived experience that's interwoven. I think Opus does all of the above to a respect while being infectious to boot. I'm far from done with it either really, because I know doing the whole slew of optional puzzles is going to be cozy comfort for me to just throw on sometimes to wrack my brain for 10-15 minutes. I've also been completely entrenched in Zachtronics now,,, it's only a matter of time till I've played them all. As someone who had Computer Science as a minor degree, mostly not a major because the complexities and conceptual stuff beyond was not my speed, this fills a hole of coding projects that were genuinely fun puzzles to work around.

Think of it this way, imagine if you could code with very clear fundamentals, so clear that the act of debugging was extremely visually and mechanically apparent to you instead of figuring out for hours where your logic error was. And that you don't have to have stack overflow on another tab for all of time. Heaven on earth.

I only played an hour at a time but no matter what I always left with my eyes hurting from getting so focused, and my ears needing great silence for a while. This is kind of the point, it's a good thing. Thumper does absolute fucking violence on your senses, adapt to the rhythm or die. The game only bonuses you for being Perfect, meaning the worse you do on the track, the less it'll give you a chance to live. You have to be fit to survive. The end is great too, although, I think by the last hour I had numbed to the survival. I actually left the final boss feeling a bit lukewarm! I think Thumper relies too heavily on its repetition. It repeats to grind you, yeah, but then once you get used to it there's not really a trick it has left for you. And mastering Thumper isn't quite rewarding, because the mechanics when you strip away the aesthetic and that compounding pain, is too simple. I really wish the game did SO much more to break you, not simply by difficulty, but by overloading. My favorite moments were not in the compounding overwhelming synethesia, but simply not being able to even use my peripheral vision to figure out what to do next in the track because I was hanging on to doing the next steps JUST RIGHT so i was no longer hanging on a twig. Suffuse this game with more danger. I hope there's an inspired successor to this that goes that extra mile.

Still thinking a lot about how much Black Mesa's Xen feels like a complete disgusting counter to everything it's supposed to represent. How it feels much more like a portfolio-driven set of levels in terms of design rather than anything cohesive. How, despite being on a completely alien majestic world, the way you actually interact with said world is obscenely familiar, trivial. You do the same sort of puzzles you did in stuff like Office Complex or earlier. Even in space, you cannot escape 30+ minutes of connect power cord, walk to area, shoot 2-3 enemies, connect power cord. Xen is not Alien. It isn't an apotheosis either. You are empowered to enact a simulacra of other games instead, like later half-life games with the elevator and chase sequence. I do not hold Xen in HL1 in the highest regard possible (nor do I for HL1 much in general anymore, honestly :/), but it was at its core a fervent 'betrayal' of the familiar. It's reviled for this decision but it is altogether fitting, how platforming is a disgusting poor feeling challenge because, well, this planet was not built for the likes of you. You're simply fighting through a world that was never expecting you to be here. But in Black Mesa it doesn't even bother to truly be dangerous. Granted, that's true of Black Mesa in general the more I mull over it. There's a lot to dissect on how Marines function both as an aesthetic issue and a mechanical one here vs all of the other HL's enemies. In a way, Black Mesa is a betrayal in of itself to me because it seeks not to conserve any spirit of what it's remaking as much as it pushes it through a meat grinder (albeit, with soft hands working the parts, I won't say crowbar's effort was exactly soulless) of HL2 and later design. And to that it breaks down most of those foundations until you have something almost unrecognizable for those who played HL1 and Opposing Force in terms of feel and play and understanding. The aesthetic, on a technical and story lens, is conserved to some degree, in grander majesty. But at what cost?

~Once I got that sweet poor memory (meeeemmmoryyyyyy) and -- capsule toys!!!~

A capsule venture that fits in thee pocket! A smile never left my face. More things should just be completely compartmentalized happiness,, or just there needs to be more things that are just this. Well, there's always worlds of untold joy around the horizon, isn't there?

Maybe it's oft in ye westernly directione. Letus takethflight!

The systems are fruitless, the construction is tainted, everyone will use these mechanics of 'justice' for their own ends because they have accepted that where one comes shadow they must also come with shadow. But that doesn't mean that light, that 'truth', doesn't exist. To avert your eyes and act like the pursuit of truth and justice is naive and nothing more, is cowardice. Cowardice at the enormity of the issue, the complexity, the sheer size of the web. We must strive "to keep going down the straight and narrow road."

The politics are all simplified, but I couldn't help but have it hit me within a current situation that has me viscerally frustrated both in my ability to speak and others' ability to speak. In the modern world the idea of acquittal is a self made one in that the players of power and in power will do everything to keep control of the exploits they've crafted to stamp on my rights, so even if one untouchable person was brought down, nothing would change. In a sense, Resolve, asks for some hope in the people to find their way. The comparison is trite if I try to make it any more tangible, it's simply a feeling I had while trying to keep my positivity afloat amongst the sludge of pain recently. I'm not even in a good enough emotional state to try to conclude the train of thought on what I should be doing, it's radicalizing and disgusting to continue to swallow. So really I don't know where I'm going with this to a very insecure extent. I guess what I'm trying to say is that at the least, GAA2 Resolve offers comfort in a belief that we'll get there together again. I doubt me saying that will offer any solace, and it's of no use to others to oversimplify this shit.

But like at some point you have to confront the message of the work, what the characters believe, if you want to talk about it right? "To fight those who dwell in the darkness requires at least some of us to occupy the darkness ourselves." is wrong, that's wrong. It doesn't feel good though. Like an hour and a half ago I watched an excruciatingly fucked up 3 minute video of some absolutely infuriating vein-popping preacher openly saying to kill queer people with the only response being applauding and agreement, and to my side my SO is watching a 5 minute news clip of senator's arguments juxtaposed with other real senators full audibly feigning to care about mental illness of a school shooter to then say trans is the problem. If I loaded up any additional social media right now it would be a hilarious juxtaposition to the game I just played because it would be complete doomscrolling. Because like, what else is there to do? they'll say.

I want Sholmes' ray of light. I want to believe.

Extraordinarily frustrating. For much more good than bad in the end, but I really did need to talk with others about it, it was like "i'm going to destroy a pillow" with the feelings I had left in the brain stew.

It's in one way, fucking ridiculously well written. Delilah is talk on "not real" escaped to relationships as well as an explicit message on confronting memories. Henry is a "failure" and "cowardly" who cannot confront the pains around him ultimately thrust to realize he has to go back home and come to terms with life. Other characters, their relationships and stories whether surrounding Henry or being left behind to be found by Henry are also failures, painful retellings of this conflict with specters these people saw as real. It's all set to this sunset painting, this growing sense of longing shared by all involved for a sunrise we will never see come up for us on screen. We're denied even the beautiful, serene sunset as it goes up in smoke.

But on the other hand, there's actually too much catharsis. Too much foreground, really. What I loved most of what I was playing was how these background elements intersected, how I was left to feel that pain and wince in real time rather than when the reins were clearly torn from me. I don't mean to say that the cuts were bad, in fact they were perfect, it's more how this structure intrinsically needed to throw the perspective in someone else's agency for us to look at and realize we can't become the sludge trapped in the park. A lot of potential really is left to the cutting floor by this move, a timeline where we never feel a bit of catharsis by a mystery left unsolved, or one where we watch ourselves fail again by Henry's own hands, etc etc. This is what's extremely thorny to talk about though. Like can you imagine just walking up to a work, and going, "you know this works really well but it'd be better if you actually just flipped the whole structure to lean the other way thank you". Like who asked? It works for me not for you?

But the result, at least on my end, is that I ended up decoupled from Henry and Delilah's story for a good portion because the disconnect from the first hour and a half to the latter hour and a half set me ablaze. The dialogue and delivery was still incredible but my emotional investment was missing, at least mostly. Mercifully the background actually never left, as the finale to Dave left me moving away from my desk and pushing myself into a pillow for a good minute.

It's ironic really. I think the idea that this "huehue should've been a movie" has things so backwards (and also it's just really fucking bankrupt, like i'm not taking you seriously). There's so much here to add to, via additional player agency, without even taking away from the narrative focused on. I ended up exploring the whole map completely unintentionally, on the way and a couple times off the beaten path just to finish what qualifies as "the side story". I ended up fishing for a while too. In the end the release I'm looking for needed more 'play,' albeit, I'm no editor. This story still has volumes to speak for what it is, like I ended up discovering not through my own hands how Henry's parasocial relationship has an even bigger relevance as we are today.

I do hope there's a dawn for Campo Santo somewhere down the line. They made something truly special here.

Completed in the ethereal sense in that while playing a couple custom levels I felt a 'complete' feeling, of which got me very emotional that will be difficult to explain but I'll try to elaborate.

I felt it near the end of the initial level included. It's a really robust intro, a casual warm hand showcasing to you what the level creator can be on offer here. It's completely short and sweet yet goes through everything you might come to expect in games of this time, even a light shocking horror segment, a heavenly vibe above the sky in the snowy mountains etc etc. It tells a full lovely almost wordless story of adventure.

And all of it is to service the spark of creation. Did you ever make custom content for anything? That wasn't really my thing. Even though I grew up around Minecraft, I'm very much a work on others' foundations sort. I like putting things within my own sort of spin rather than creating a whole drum beat from scratch. I like to marvel at what the current of electric creativity has granted others, though. I kept thinking about it since I left the starting 'story' and started downloading others. Loading up a late 00s archive and putting in folders, opening the cavern to more people's stories, from the very notoriously trippy, to calm and relaxing, to dastardly puzzly. And honestly, I bet a lot of the levels I could look at are probably shit who knows. It's very, um, human though. This whole game is very human. The community though it has long since walked away from any nurturing light that kept it growing, is very human. It's like I just stumbled upon a garden of dreams and little bits of people messing around with this same honestly janky editor. The further down the rabbit hole I got the more emotional it felt.

I hope I managed to put the feeling together right. It's very rambly to put together but it's tough to actually describe a sense of a connection, one so strong that it made a wide incredible forest you never knew about, of planters who you may never ever meet.

ABSURDLY nostalgic game for me. Defined my music taste when i was like 10, never managed to clear it on Expert and only skated by on Hard. Coming back to this and destroying it on Expert is as satisfying as it is vaguely introspective on how far I've grown/changed since then.

But omg it's still SO good, amazing setlist to hammer out the tunes of and just listen to. Everything about this aesthetic works, it's totally for rock nerds by rock nerds. I still got a smile on my face seeing their pictures in the credits. On a mechanical level it's greatly mapped too, minus a couple "holy shit really" because hammer-on chords were not a thing here. Or taps. But then again that additional difficulty is crucial for Through the Fire and Flames to make the entirety of my hands agony. I cleared it yes, but at what cost to my soul.

Additional quick notes:
-I like how the drummer still has the dumbest smile lmao it makes my day
-FCPREMIX is the best song ever
-The boss battles are WAY easier coming back to them. They should all follow lou and let the other side go first but even then you can game over lou in two power usages if you're good. This isn't really an issue, i just think it's sick how good i've gotten :3 it's a flex
-it's still a total shame to kid me and now that I can't play the versus songs solo without buying them as dlc (yeesh). I get that is what Clone Hero is for, but wow :/
-The developer videos are like the soul of the bungie vidocs but setting the amp volume to 11 energy. It's great.

I really want to get through this... I had half a mind to shelve it simply because I don't have the patience, but the combat takes soooo long to do and it's soooo easy to do. I try to play so optimally so it's difficult to measure whether I should be autobattling or optimizing the tactics, and there's not a lot of reward for playing super well at all early in. With Caligula making a theatric out of combat every single time, I immediately missed the massive amount of rpgs I played where attacks and small engagements go quick and painlessly. When the first dungeon took me more than three hours because I kept exploring and checking out the whole map I realized I was sort of playing this "wrong" but the game honestly doesn't give me a way to do this "right", other than cheating just to skip the combat equation altogether. But now it's too late. The cold clinical aesthetic has drained me dry, the budget is wearing on me, the main battle music has already gotten "annoying" (dangerous), the weight of the real anxieties these characters are facing that I imagine could be incredible note drops later have become a grueling Ask. Disgustingly unfortunate.

A shmup tends to live or die on its aesthetic and music. Both here (other than the characters <3) were largely a miss for me, sorry! I would think that would be a death sentence right there. Not so! At least, I certainly enjoyed myself the whole time while playing it. That has a lot to do with its main mechanic being extensively interesting and fun to utilize, the graze-to-bomb that's actually required. And the bosses genuinely test that well, giving me a nice smile on my face to get over each challenge by being at constant Risk.

Unfortunately the biggest disappointment is that it, for lack of a better word, feels underbaked. The levels themselves are quite a bit too easy for me, and this genre usually breaks my teeth in. Besides never really getting close to dying in the 'run-up' to a boss, they themselves don't afford much other than scorerunning by grazing as soon as possible. Having full health by said boss is almost guaranteed too because the game is sooo generous there. And what really sunk my heart is that you have to A rank/Not Die To The Boss on each level to get the True Final Boss and hit the ending. 1ccs are a fun definitely understandable staple, but when the run-up isn't dangerous... what's even the point? You pretty much lose nothing but time when the 'onslaught' to the final monster is paltry. And while it's nice that the game saves your A-rank so you don't REALLY have to 1cc, doing such contradicts the meta reasoning for including it in the first place...

So it's fine! I liked it enough that I hope to see more from Newt :3

In terms of understanding the all too encompassing 'drive' of consumption, both self made by years and years of false productivity and perhaps even inherently by our own selves, Mr Rainer is the most comprehensive stake on it. On every level even, emotionally, physically, metaphysically, it's all there! And because of that it is so so so draining. It's got buckets of symbolism and weaved online metaphors, it is so Learned on the aftermath of our connected minds and muses poignantly on where that all leaves us.

I think like, just flashing through some highlights real quick:
-the way self-help is recontextualized as a society "sustaining" coping mechanism that at best adds to the noise
-how value is a disgusting mortifying structure that we are required to keep in the back of our minds to exist, where its true attainment is in real connection. And how it's the only real warmth seen in this cold dying world.
-on that topic, how much I really want to just cuddle with Rene right now. Please.
-how each character and thread deals dually with sating hunger as it is in creating more of it
-despite being super gestural about many different things the raw imagery manages to evoke exactly what's happening to you/what you should be thinking about at any given moment
-that this game looks SOOO fucking visually good there's not a thing i can think of since El Shaddai that has swept me off my feet with its incredible choice in style and drawing. Also the music, 'mwah
-that this one managed to make me laugh the most out of etherane's black comedy catalog by embracing my terminally online memetic qualities like personality tests

This is not including lots and lots and lots more to think about!! I don't think I even really scratched the surface on its particularly heavy social media commentary (there are a couple things I won't talk about though because I doubt they'd ever get a real conversation otherwise), or just how the work communicates its lore and world! And how that actually just ends up defining the characters.

God it's SOOO good <3 I'm going to be a rainer stan until I die

Simultaneously more and less legible. I don't want to necessarily say I 'roll' my eyes at postmodern accelerationist philosophical musing but it's like... well I definitely feel something close. It's all very jumbled, intentionally messy and sure there's threads everywhere but the yarn ball being interesting on each strand, to me, is not impactful. More musing ego death, not much more. The concepts are high and abstract but scrutinizing the aspects of it doesn't reveal messages it reveals craft at best. And for what it's worth, it's much better craft, although I think this sort of aesthetic makes me feel a bit insecure when I go "mmm yes very nice postmodernism" but yeah I do think the imagery is great <3 A friend of mine pointed out to me inspirations/clear references she saw so it was a bit more museum-esque in that regard. Definitely can see this being a One To Appreciate for some more entuned to this class of Getting down and dirty with the truths of Fearing Time, but for me it's sort of pouring off the windshield.

The sounds of Flores con Historias end up feeling like an eerie procession, a calm cacophony to horror. The horror of stories left untold and repressed, pierced down and pinned under buckets of pain and intentional misery. And yet despite the timeline in front of me, nothing has changed. In my own country a 50 year tide is threatened to be overturned by a decision that feels progressively powerless to counteract in time. Stories like this are a reminder to fight, for the garden of lively flowers we help live on, hopefully to never see reaped.

Yet still continuously discomforting how the voices of men compound, breaking down so clearly visceral lived experiences like this. "Not nuanced." "Not of sufficient interest". "So clearly explicit and lacking in subtlety." There is not a shred of empathy in those words, there is no understanding of rights and life there is only an impulse to eye roll at stories that do not affect them. Much better to live in detached houses away from the world, letting the violation continue, refuse the memoir for the easier to consume, to play with the world in centrist "high art" but seek nothing of what's real. I am not surprised, but it will forever be continuously torturous. Eventually they will become discarded wastelands, but as of now they make the gripping darkness of these stories more apparent. We have to keep striving to give these flowers light. For a brighter future. Salud.

Been biding my time thinking about my experience with Halo infinite because I sort of just logged hours when I felt like it and I never really shared it with any friends. Mostly because it's like a flurry of fights not just with the expectation this game brings out, but also my lightly nostalgic feelings on the series, and my tumultuous actual time with the series over time. To describe my conclusion now would be 3 steps forward and 2 major falls back.

We made one big step for suffusing the campaign again with a great deal of charm and a flurry of lovely 'moments' that reminds me what this series Can bring as an experience.
We made another step up in that same area by really stressing the word "infinite" in an interesting place, an infinitely recharging grappling hook that somehow perfectly combines halo textbook shooty patooty with freedom to bring to encounters. Especially doing such in a way where it really never got old for me by campaign's end.
And finally another strong step by having a really super competently put together multiplayer. While I mourn what 5 gave me I'm not at all unhappy with this Halo 3-meets-more-arena-fundies.

The first trip-up was in the story. The immeasurably gross moe Cortana-but-not-Cortana that we infantilize in such a fashion that the meme people make about "Dad Games" is somehow more true here than any other actual example. It's so disgustingly misogynistic while also once again slamming Halo 4's sense of letting go. The idea is twisted into a semblance of moving on by neither addressing john's problems and instead just letting him have a girl he can have grieving fatherly control on.
The second was the multiplayer beginning to regress. Besides the fact that it has no real timeline to keep it afloat while lacking in SOOOO much that pretty much every other Halo multiplayer has as a staple, it's already pushing me back into a Halo Reach situation again, removing the tech I actually enjoyed doing with no communication beforehand (Honestly it's just shocking. I was modding waypoint when I got to see Bungie just sack ability tech in favor of making each one stronger on their simplest shit which is how you got modern armor lock. I'm reliving it!). The idea of compromising with long term vets and re-introducing people to Halo of old is now dissipating like the smokescreen it is.

This leads to such a discombobulate frustrating experience. Even if they reverse some of what I've talked about it won't change how Halo has become so trashy in having a coherent vision. For fucks sake

Trying to delve into this is a lot of insecurity because I have two besties where this is an allll time fav for them, which is difficult because I have such kneejerk rejections to this writing and character dialogue. It's a fine definitely amateur charming dating sim/CYOA hybrid wrapped around murder mystery, but progressively everything about it is a major turn-off. The writing is what I kept looping around to, it's just really dry, and generally nonsensical. Not in the sort of "plot hole" but in sort of how tone/attitude/character motivations can really just shift within the given context and things feel vastly more immature versus the conceit's expectation. Emphasis on tone shifts, within a serious conversation discussing a dragon's corpse right in front of you there'll be meme humor drops that, albeit small, add up. It never quite feels like things are ever settling on how a scene is supposed to feel and while some of the unnerving nature of it is intended this makes things feel more detached and constantly wavy when it very clearly doesn't want to intend such sometimes.

The characters are at least ok, definitely take time to get somewhere and a lot of them do not have what I feel is requisite character voice (delivery is too muted for my tastes it's certainly not personable enough). A lot of the story is backloaded and the first route requiring you to get a bad ending before you can really get to anyone's good ending and true ending is enough to really ice this because it's asking for upfront patience I no longer have for something that is, unfortunately, anti-my-shit. Would I say it's bad? Kind of. I certainly don't like it but it's very glaringly obvious the sort of first work it constantly feels like which is why this entire... rant feels a little sour to type. Like I need to vent my thoughts on this because fuck the dichotomy between me and said besties here hurts and I doubt my perception of this work is alone but it definitely doesn't Deserve much scrutiny. It doesn't ask for it. The writing's just kind of mostly whatever! It's not even interesting for being problematic for something!!