I went into Dragon Quest Treasures fairly blind, all I knew (or needed to know!) about the game was that it's a Dragon Quest XI prequel about popular party member Erik and his sister Mia befriending monsters and searching for treasure. This sort of setup with a built-in hook is actually kind of standard for Dragon Quest. We've got spinoffs about Torneko, Yangus, that one smug guy from VII, and Monsters itself as a sub-series is basically just taking V's monster gimmick and running with it. I knew this stuff going in. I'm gonna hang out with my buddy Erik as a young'n and hang out.

What I did NOT expect was the absolutely insane, brilliant, addictive, joyous, dastardly gameplay loop of this fucking thing. Once you break into the meat of the game, you will be turned into an absolute tycoon with an army of monsters acting as truffle hounds at your disposal. Wake up by the campfire, set out on the open terrain and let those fuckers loose as they get to sniffing up valuable goodies made out of 3D models of Dragon Quests past. Fan service fuels the fire in your heart to absolutely rip this shit up and cash in for LUDICROUS amounts of money. Amounts that'll make your eyes spin like slots and show up as dollar signs. It's amazing. Feels wonderful. A game that makes you feel the way that health-conscious moms do when they describe a chocolate cake as "sinful".

So yeah, you play as a rascal in this one and you certainly feel like one too. TONS of fun that doesn't overstay its welcome, don't miss it because it's bound to be overlooked in a weirdly stacked season of mid-budget JRPGs.

Never has a game's tagline been more accurate. It's important to note that PaRappa describes itself as "the original music video game" and not "the original rhythm video game," because being on rhythm punishes you more often than it awards you points. Or, at least, that's what it feels like- it's part of a scoring system that somehow triumphs over the human capability for pattern recognition. There's certainly a logical explanation as to when you'll actually be rewarded for pressing each button, but it continues to elude me, and I think I prefer not knowing how exactly it works. If I did, I wouldn't have any reason to try and experiment, to try and improvise, which is clearly how the game wants you to approach its rap battles. On this chain of thought, never has a genre pioneer been further removed from the games it ended up inspiring. PaRappa obviously paved the way for the likes of Beatmania, Guitar Hero, and Ouendan, but only in the superficial sense, really. Familiarity with any of these titles only makes you worse at PaRappa, because you've been primed to think that there's a correct timing for every individual button press. If you think about it, there's something perverse about how music, arguably the premiere form of self-expression, spawned the single most authoritarian video game genre. "Perform this exact input on this exact frame or else you lose!" That's not to say that PaRappa presents the solution to this problem (I've neglected to mention that it's pretty much unplayable) or that it's even a problem in the first place (rhythm's probably one of my favorite genres) but it's an avenue that feels more than worth exploring. However, I can't even conceptualize what an expressive but still structured music game would look like. It seems apparent that anything like this would inherently be at odds with its scoring system, no matter how advanced, but choosing not to have one would mean it's just a music simulator instead of a game. It's a challenge that feels like it would require an extreme amount of out of the box thinking, and at this point in time it definitely seems impossible, but what can I say... ya gotta believe!

Ah - This is embarrassing. I guess I hadn't played nearly as much of Half-Life 1 as I thought I had. I didn't know there was so much... Valvey stuff in it. I've always thought of it as a kind of more grown-up Quake II. It's actually much more akin to its sequel or the Portal games than I realised. The vehicle sections, giant production line conveyor belts and cliffside descent. It's full of wee sections with their own ideas. Ambitious and exciting. Well paced and varied. Much longer than I expected too.

I've had access to the PC version for about 20 years, but picking up the relatively dated Gearbox PS2 port on Saturday was what finally got me hooked. I had it in my mind that there was something uniquely interesting about the PS2 version. Given some light research, it seems its primary USP is some local co-op stuff that I can't imagine many would be willing to sit through now, given how much the thing can chug in one-player. The thing that I appreciated the most is that the controls have been somewhat idiotproofed for the console market, simplifying the crouchjump command (something I felt was never really explained to me very well on PC) and including an optional lock-on system. That lured me in, I guess. All of a sudden, this juggernaut of PC gaming started to feel like Ocarina of Time.

I find the kind of time capsule aspect of retro gaming is something that's easier to appreciate on consoles than PC. If I loaded up Half-Life on Steam now, it'd be a rose-tinted vision of 1998, boosted with high resolution options and decades of patches. On PS2, the awkward save system and pre-title screen CGI rendered logo really evoke the era of £25 DVDs in cardboard digipacks and Rex the Runt.

Half-Life 1 is Valvey, but it's the "this was made by 20 guys in a rented office" Valve. It's not terribly slick, and the ideas frequently take precedence over the player experience. Unlike Half-Life 2, moments where you feel pinned down or overpowered frequently seem accidental.

I've long understood that Xen was the result of a team all pointing towards some wild, massive conclusion, and having nothing of substance up their sleeves. Actually playing it, it's miserable. Not a misery that's unique to Half-Life - It's pretty standard 90s FPS drudgery, not unlike many sections of Perfect Dark or Turok - but a massive step down from what had been established. Gonarch is particularly awful, and I'm not confident that the PS2 port is even doing it right. I did an honest playthrough of the fight on Half-Life: Source just to test my suspicions and turned on the cheats to power through on PS2 afterwards.

A lot of Xen is only made palatable on PC due to the game's quicksaves, but you can only make one at a time on PS2. If you're not careful, you can completely fuck a playthrough by using a gun too frequently or assuming there's going to be some health pickups around the next corner. I kind of liked that though. There was a more meaningful weight to decision making, even if I did cop out and Google the Invincibility code for a shit boss.

I'm embarrassed for asking for Half-Life 3 before I'd even finished the original game. It's far more reflective of what I like about the series than I had given it credit for. Playing it in 1998 likely felt just as exciting as Half-Life 2 did for me in 2004. I'm very sorry for chucking it on the "I'm never going to actually play this" pile alongside Unreal.

being an axl main is awesome. everyone hates you and routinely skips past playing you for the simple crime of forcing them to play a bit of neutral. you prevent them from running their twenty second lockdown pressure drills for a bit and it’s the end of the world; they’d much rather go up against the litany of other rushdown characters who can all do that or the guy that can eat your healthbar in three decisions.

the game is fine. as far as its pace is concerned, strive is essentially rocket tag, and that’s a fine thing to enjoy. it just comes at the obviously infamous cost of representing a departure from xrd (or prior entries but i won’t pretend to be knowledgeable in this arena). this has invited natural comparisons to street fighter (super turbo in particular) and samurai shodown, but i think the core system mechanics manage to carve their own niche within the high damage subgenre. for all the debate around simplification, it seems clear to me that arcsys’s goal was to create a fighting game that the majority of people familiar with the genre can learn simply through relevant match experience, avoiding the confines of the training room and bringing the title in line with an older arcade experience. again, totally fine thing to be. i do think i prefer xrd’s brand of bullshit but not because it’s inherently more cerebral or anything - matches just tend to feel more dynamic. it’s an instance where strives emphasis on creatively using meter’s hundreds of applicable permutations to open holes in opponents defense is somewhat negated by the lack of opportunities to tap in per round and by how viciously quick some of these rounds can close out.

i strongly dislike the menus, user interface, and lobby system, but this aside it’s curious to me that strive represents an artistic departure from the rest of the series as well and this aspect has mostly been swept under the rug by the community. i assume this is fine for most because it’s pretty and because we will never escape the fondness gamers have for the metal gear rising/anarchy reigns soundtrack. still, its very much an intentional continuation of xrds aesthetic sensibilities - understandable given that titles landmark reception - but it feels worth mentioning that we are at this point quite far removed from the grungy, muted, and punk tone of earlier entries. but giovannas hot so who can say whether this is bad or not

Taito looked at Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal and wondered why they didn't dress like Robert Plant.

Cracking arcade platform shooter, and one of the few examples of a gritty reboot of a cute 80s classic really, really working. Pretty brainless if you're happy to throw in endless credits, but tense and exciting if you're really watching your health. A few too many sections with bullshit enemy arrangement, but it complements the game's chip shop rental charm.

I played through on the new S-Tribute Switch release, which is based on the Saturn port. This brings back the console-exclusive feature of loading screens, and new widescreen borders that you can't turn off. Savvier players may opt to play this on Taito Legends 2 instead, but what's a tenner for the sake of convenience?

If you're as disillusioned with the state of video game comedic writing as I am, then I can't recommend Moon enough. The Undertale inspiration is beyond apparent, but, thankfully, Toby Fox-esque dialogue isn't. Instead, it's written more like a golden age point-and-click, in which every character subscribes to the same sort of backwards logic that you have to make sense of in order to progress. This degree of committal, to me, is what separates retro quirk from modern indie quirk, which typically means presenting the player with a series of jokey, half-sarcastic statements that more often than not clash with the setting rather than characterizing it. And the setting's really everything in Moon, which tasks some kid (who I named "Sirloin," for some reason) with collecting love from the citizens of Love-de-Gard through various means. The more love you get, the further you can venture outside without having to sleep, which gives you more leeway into tracking the villagers' day/night and weekly schedules and allows you to reach new locations on your own accord. The same giddy feeling of planning out how to be in the right place at the right time that would later make Majora's Mask great is present here, but it's also amplified by the fact that you have to earn the ability to even be there. You're not guaranteed three full days, you have to work your way up to that point first. Moon's other stroke of genius comes with it being solely composed of sidequests that all reward you the same thing. Hit a wall in a typical point-and-click and you're done progressing until you eventually flail towards the correct answer, but getting stuck in Moon simply means you get to pursue a different avenue to obtain love. Your character's slow movement speed also gives you plenty of opportunity to consider possible solutions, more or less diffusing the feeling of wasting your time that usually comes packaged with any contextual puzzle game. The cherry here is the game's story, which you really have to stumble upon all by yourself. It's all about collecting love, until it isn't, of course, and it's easy to see how railroading could defeat the entire purpose.

Where Moon succeeds on a mechanical front, however, it often disappoints in the satiric sense... or, at least, that's what the first few hours led me to believe. It starts off as a surface-level subversion of JRPG tropes, positing a protagonist that's really a bully and monsters that are misunderstood animals, but, eventually, the hero fades away from the story, allowing Sirloin to create one of his own. Moon isn't simply a base parody or some milquetoast statement on love being the most important power of all, but a past tense coming-of-age story, a portrait of a very specific type of innocence loss using the framework of video games. We've all been there. Believing that L was real, that the truck in Vermillion City was blocking something important, that Sephiroth could be recruited into your party, or that Sonic was an unlockable character in Melee. The idea that games extended beyond the walls of your TV, housing unexplainable worlds where anything and everything could happen. Judging by Minecraft's Herobrine, this is a phenomenon that transcends both generations and philosophies of game design. But, at some point, we lost the ability, or perhaps the willingness, to reenter this state of mind. Play enough games and you realize there's a limit to what they're capable of, that there are certain rules that all developers more or less follow. This is what the fake/real dichotomy on the cover art refers to, and it's also something that's baked into how Moon works at its core. Learn enough about this world and you begin to find out that there's more to it than meets the eye, doing this also gives you the ability (or, the desire) to spend more time here. Spend too much time here and the seams start to show. Routines become too predictable, dialogue repeats itself, and the solipsistic nature of video games fully sets in. What adds to this is how consistently it subtly hints towards the boundary between fake and real. Take, for instance, this line. One on side of the spectrum, it serves to characterize Minister's anality (think "always watching, Wazowski") but on the other, it's a nod towards his ultrasimple AI. After all, any game trying to create the illusion of real characters would certainly avoid directly stating that doing X will always cause someone to do Y. Moon's puzzles also frequently point towards this separation. In gamespeak, someone telling you to look at a painting means that the player is supposed to physically study its graphical asset for clues, but in Moon, you actually have to literally position your character in front of it and wait for a few moments. This one briefly stumped me- I had to come back to it after awhile to figure it out, in other words, I was effectively punished for being on the "fake" end of the spectrum. I could harp on how Moon could've given you a few more reasons to hang out in town, or how the clock stops feeling like it matters too soon, or how it contains the most banal fishing minigame yet conceived by man, but it's hard to argue against how elegantly it ties its themes into how it plays. There's a reason why the tone's so somber, and why so many of the characters are trying to reignite some long lost spark. The Sirloin that your Gramby knew and loved is gone, replaced by a ghost wearing his clothes, while she lies in bed, Claire de Lune softly playing in the background. Once that dragon's slain, there's no going back.

Stop browsing Backloggd, and go to bed!

Hahahahaha

I played this back at release as a massive fan of the series, and clearly just wiped 99% of it from my mind at the time. This streamed replay was such a miserable experience.

The pivot to full action shooter was a wild decision. There is no horror to be found here. I think I put my head in my hands when 7 chapters deep they introduce a dodge roll. Isaac Clarke was never supposed to dodge roll, what the fuck were you thinking? And co-op? Deary me.

Carver is yer player 2 who's technically with you throughout almost all of the game, but playing on single player means you enter some cutscenes and he just steps out from behind you like creepy Watson. Even him being an AI partner when playing solo would have worked, but as such, it feels like the guy only exists sometimes. This gets even more jarring when you're seeing cutscenes like these two dudes have come to depend on each other, and built up a rapport, despite having maybe spent eight minutes actual game time together. Resulting in it all seeming so forced.

Another way the co-op aspect harms single player is that I'm convinced they didn't turn down the amount of enemies or item pickups. I was never not holding 19 medkits. My inventory was filled with two people's worth of stuff. Which helps when almost every encounter is you getting stuck in a corner by what feels like just too many enemies. Good thing they gave you plenty of ammo, right?

Wrong. Universal ammo was a crap decision. It exists only to facilitate the FUCKING CRAFTING mechanics, but we'll get to those later. You have a gun that fires single rounds. Sweet. You are being told on the HUD that you have 300 ammo. Hella nice... You do not have 300 shots for that gun. 300 is how many rounds of universal ammo you have, but that single shot gun you're weilding might use "5 ammo" per shot. You know, because that makes sense. The numbers might as well not exist.

We're not going to get to the crafting because I can't be bothered moaning about the game anymore. I'm glad it killed Dead Space. The scariest part of all this was going on the Wiki and reading that the director had plans for fourth and fifth entries.

ℑ’𝔪 𝔣𝔯𝔬𝔪 𝔞 𝔱𝔬𝔴𝔫 𝔠𝔞𝔩𝔩𝔢𝔡 ℭ𝔬𝔞𝔱𝔟𝔯𝔦𝔡𝔤𝔢. ℑ𝔱'𝔰 𝔦𝔫 𝔖𝔠𝔬𝔱𝔩𝔞𝔫𝔡. ℭ𝔬𝔞𝔱𝔟𝔯𝔦𝔡𝔤𝔢 𝔦𝔰 𝔬𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔟𝔬𝔯𝔡𝔢𝔯 𝔬𝔣 𝔊𝔩𝔞𝔰𝔤𝔬𝔴 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔦𝔫 2001 𝔦𝔱 𝔥𝔞𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔡𝔢𝔫𝔰𝔢𝔰𝔱 𝔭𝔬𝔭𝔲𝔩𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫 𝔬𝔣 ℑ𝔯𝔦𝔰𝔥 ℭ𝔞𝔱𝔥𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔠𝔰 𝔭𝔢𝔯 𝔠𝔞𝔭𝔦𝔱𝔞 𝔞𝔫𝔶𝔴𝔥𝔢𝔯𝔢 𝔦𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔩𝔡 𝔬𝔲𝔱𝔰𝔦𝔡𝔢 𝔬𝔣 ℑ𝔯𝔢𝔩𝔞𝔫𝔡.

ℑ 𝔡𝔦𝔡𝔫’𝔱 𝔨𝔫𝔬𝔴 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔰𝔞𝔶𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔭𝔯𝔞𝔶𝔢𝔯𝔰 𝔢𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱 𝔱𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔰 𝔞 𝔡𝔞𝔶 𝔴𝔞𝔰𝔫’𝔱 𝔫𝔬𝔯𝔪𝔞𝔩 𝔲𝔫𝔱𝔦𝔩 ℑ 𝔴𝔞𝔰 14. 𝔚𝔥𝔢𝔫 ℑ 𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔭𝔢𝔬𝔭𝔩𝔢 𝔰𝔞𝔶 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔪 𝔬𝔫 𝔱𝔢𝔩𝔢𝔳𝔦𝔰𝔦𝔬𝔫 𝔬𝔯 𝔦𝔫 𝔣𝔦𝔩𝔪𝔰, ℑ 𝔰𝔱𝔦𝔩𝔩 𝔭𝔯𝔞𝔶 𝔞𝔩𝔬𝔫𝔤 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔪 𝔦𝔫 𝔪𝔶 𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔡. ℑ 𝔡𝔦𝔡𝔫'𝔱 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔤𝔬𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔱𝔬 𝔪𝔞𝔰𝔰 𝔴𝔥𝔢𝔫 ℑ 𝔴𝔞𝔰 𝔶𝔬𝔲𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯, 𝔟𝔲𝔱 ℑ 𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔨 ℑ’𝔡 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔦𝔱 𝔫𝔬𝔴. 𝔐𝔶 𝔪𝔲𝔪 𝔰𝔞𝔶𝔰 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔞 𝔩𝔬𝔱 𝔱𝔬𝔬. 𝔖𝔞𝔶𝔦𝔫𝔤 “𝔭𝔢𝔞𝔠𝔢 𝔟𝔢 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔶𝔬𝔲” 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔨𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔥𝔞𝔫𝔡𝔰 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔭𝔢𝔬𝔭𝔩𝔢 𝔴𝔞𝔰 𝔪𝔶 𝔣𝔞𝔳𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔦𝔱𝔢 𝔭𝔞𝔯𝔱 𝔬𝔣 𝔤𝔬𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔱𝔬 𝔪𝔞𝔰𝔰.

𝕿𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖊 𝖆𝖗𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖗𝖙𝖊𝖊𝖓 𝕮𝖆𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖑𝖎𝖈 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑𝖘 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖋𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖓𝖔𝖓-𝖉𝖊𝖓𝖔𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖆𝖑 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑𝖘 𝖎𝖓 𝕮𝖔𝖆𝖙𝖇𝖗𝖎𝖉𝖌𝖊. 𝕴 𝖉𝖎𝖉𝖓'𝖙 𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖞 𝖐𝖓𝖔𝖜 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖔𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝖗𝖊𝖑𝖎𝖌𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖘 𝖊𝖝𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖉 𝖜𝖍𝖊𝖓 𝕴 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖞𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖗. 𝕴𝖓 𝕽𝖊𝖑𝖎𝖌𝖎𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝕰𝖉𝖚𝖈𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖈𝖑𝖆𝖘𝖘, 𝖜𝖊 𝖏𝖚𝖘𝖙 𝖑𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖊𝖉 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖘 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝕮𝖆𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖑𝖎𝖈𝖘 𝖇𝖊𝖑𝖎𝖊𝖛𝖊.

𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝖋𝖎𝖗𝖘𝖙 𝖙𝖎𝖒𝖊 𝕴 𝖜𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝖙𝖔 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖋𝖊𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝕴 𝖙𝖔𝖑𝖉 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖕𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝕴 𝖙𝖔𝖔𝖐 𝖘𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖇𝖎𝖘𝖈𝖚𝖎𝖙𝖘 𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖔𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖚𝖕𝖇𝖔𝖆𝖗𝖉 𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖆𝖘𝖐𝖎𝖓𝖌. 𝕳𝖊 𝖙𝖔𝖑𝖉 𝖒𝖊 𝖙𝖔 𝖘𝖎𝖙 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖐 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖜𝖍𝖊𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝕴’𝖉 𝖉𝖔𝖓𝖊 𝖆𝖓𝖞𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖘𝖊. 𝕴 𝖒𝖆𝖉𝖊 𝖚𝖕 𝖆 𝖘𝖙𝖔𝖗𝖞 𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖒𝖊 𝖇𝖊𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖞 𝖇𝖆𝖉 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖌𝖔𝖙 𝖆𝖓 𝕬𝖈𝖙 𝕺𝖋 𝕮𝖔𝖓𝖙𝖗𝖎𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖙𝖊𝖓 𝕳𝖆𝖎𝖑 𝕸𝖆𝖗𝖞𝖘. 𝕴 𝖉𝖎𝖉 𝖆𝖑𝖑 𝖙𝖊𝖓 𝖔𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖒 𝖇𝖚𝖙 𝖎𝖙’𝖘 𝖔𝖐𝖆𝖞 𝖇𝖊𝖈𝖆𝖚𝖘𝖊 𝖒𝖞 𝖌𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖕𝖆 𝖌𝖆𝖛𝖊 𝖒𝖊 £𝟑𝟎 𝖋𝖔𝖗 𝖉𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖋𝖊𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖊𝖓𝖔𝖚𝖌𝖍 𝖙𝖔 𝖇𝖚𝖞 𝕲𝖔𝖑𝖉𝖊𝖓𝕰𝖞𝖊 𝖋𝖔𝖗 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕹𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖓𝖉𝖔 𝟔𝟒.

𝕬𝖙 𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑 𝖉𝖎𝖘𝖈𝖔𝖘, 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖑𝖆𝖎𝖓 𝖜𝖔𝖚𝖑𝖉 𝖜𝖍𝖆𝖈𝖐 𝖆 𝖘𝖙𝖎𝖈𝖐 𝖇𝖊𝖙𝖜𝖊𝖊𝖓 𝖘𝖙𝖚𝖉𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖘 𝖎𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖞 𝖉𝖎𝖉𝖓’𝖙 𝖒𝖆𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖆𝖎𝖓 𝖆 𝖘𝖆𝖋𝖊 𝖉𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖓𝖈𝖊 𝖋𝖗𝖔𝖒 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖎𝖗 𝖕𝖆𝖗𝖙𝖓𝖊𝖗 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖘𝖕𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝖒𝖆𝖓𝖞 𝖉𝖎𝖔𝖈𝖊𝖘𝖊𝖘-𝖆𝖕𝖕𝖗𝖔𝖛𝖊𝖉 𝖉𝖆𝖓𝖈𝖊 𝖓𝖚𝖒𝖇𝖊𝖗𝖘 𝖕𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖋𝖑𝖆𝖘𝖍𝖑𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙𝖘 𝖎𝖓𝖙𝖔 𝖉𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝖈𝖔𝖗𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖘. 𝕳𝖊 𝖜𝖆𝖘 𝖋𝖚𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖚𝖘 𝖜𝖍𝖊𝖓 𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖆𝖚𝖌𝖍𝖙 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖐𝖎𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖓𝖌. 𝕳𝖊 𝖈𝖆𝖚𝖌𝖍𝖙 𝖒𝖔𝖘𝖙 𝖕𝖊𝖔𝖕𝖑𝖊 𝖉𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖘𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖐𝖎𝖓𝖉 𝖔𝖋 𝖐𝖎𝖘𝖘𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖆𝖙 𝖘𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖕𝖔𝖎𝖓𝖙 𝖎𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖎𝖗 𝖙𝖎𝖒𝖊 𝖆𝖙 𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖔𝖔𝖑. 𝕬 𝖋𝖊𝖜 𝖞𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖘 𝖑𝖆𝖙𝖊𝖗, 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖕𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝖜𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝖔𝖓 𝖙𝖔 𝖍𝖆𝖛𝖊 𝖆𝖓 𝖆𝖋𝖋𝖆𝖎𝖗 𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖍 𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖍𝖊𝖆𝖉 𝖙𝖊𝖆𝖈𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖗𝖊𝖓𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖈𝖊𝖉 𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖛𝖔𝖜𝖘.

𝓘’𝓿𝓮 𝓷𝓮𝓿𝓮𝓻 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓪𝓷𝔂 𝓴𝓲𝓷𝓭 𝓸𝓯 𝓼𝓮𝔁 𝓮𝓭𝓾𝓬𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 𝓯𝓻𝓸𝓶 𝓪𝓷𝔂𝓸𝓷𝓮, 𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓱 𝓲𝓽 𝓲𝓼 𝓶𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓪𝓽𝓸𝓻𝔂 𝓯𝓸𝓻 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵𝓼 𝓸𝓯 𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓭𝓮𝓷𝓸𝓶𝓲𝓷𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷𝓼 𝓲𝓷 𝓢𝓬𝓸𝓽𝓵𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓽𝓮𝓪𝓬𝓱 𝓰𝓲𝓻𝓵𝓼 𝓪𝓫𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓹𝓾𝓫𝓮𝓻𝓽𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓼𝓽𝓻𝓾𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷. 𝓞𝓷 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓭𝓪𝔂 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓰𝓲𝓻𝓵𝓼 𝓲𝓷 𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓷 𝓪𝓫𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓸𝓯 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓼, 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓫𝓸𝔂𝓼 𝓰𝓸𝓽 𝓽𝓸 𝓰𝓸 𝓽𝓸 𝓪 𝓵𝓸𝓬𝓪𝓵 𝔀𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓹𝓪𝓻𝓴. 𝓜𝔂 𝓯𝓻𝓲𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓘 𝓶𝓪𝓷𝓪𝓰𝓮𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓫𝓮𝓪𝓽 𝓖𝓪𝓾𝓷𝓽𝓵𝓮𝓽 𝓪𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓪𝓻𝓬𝓪𝓭𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓭𝓪𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝔀𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝔀𝓮 𝓽𝓸𝓵𝓭 𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓸𝓷𝓵𝔂 𝓯𝓮𝓶𝓪𝓵𝓮 𝓯𝓻𝓲𝓮𝓷𝓭 𝓪𝓫𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓲𝓽 𝓵𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓸𝓷, 𝓼𝓱𝓮 𝓼𝓽𝓪𝓻𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓬𝓻𝔂𝓲𝓷𝓰.

𝓐 𝓽𝓮𝓪𝓬𝓱𝓮𝓻 𝓸𝓷𝓬𝓮 𝓽𝓸𝓵𝓭 𝓾𝓼 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓱𝓪𝓿𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓼𝓮𝔁 𝓸𝓾𝓽𝓼𝓲𝓭𝓮 𝓸𝓯 𝓶𝓪𝓻𝓻𝓲𝓪𝓰𝓮 𝔀𝓸𝓾𝓵𝓭, 𝓻𝓮𝓰𝓪𝓻𝓭𝓵𝓮𝓼𝓼 𝓸𝓯 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓻𝓪𝓬𝓮𝓹𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷, 𝓪𝓾𝓽𝓸𝓶𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓬𝓪𝓵𝓵𝔂 𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓹𝓻𝓮𝓰𝓷𝓪𝓷𝓬𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓻𝓪𝓬𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 𝓸𝓯 𝓐𝓘𝓓𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓗𝓘𝓥. 𝓗𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓱𝓽 𝓐𝓘𝓓𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓗𝓘𝓥 𝔀𝓮𝓻𝓮 𝓽𝔀𝓸 𝓭𝓲𝓯𝓯𝓮𝓻𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼. 𝓐𝓘𝓓𝓼 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓖𝓸𝓭’𝓼 𝓹𝓾𝓷𝓲𝓼𝓱𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓯𝓸𝓻 𝓹𝓮𝓸𝓹𝓵𝓮 𝔀𝓱𝓸 𝓭𝓲𝓭𝓷'𝓽 𝓻𝓮𝓼𝓹𝓮𝓬𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓱𝓸𝓵𝔂 𝓼𝓪𝓬𝓻𝓪𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓸𝓯 𝓶𝓪𝓽𝓻𝓲𝓶𝓸𝓷𝔂. 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓼𝓽 𝓰𝓲𝓻𝓵 𝓘 𝓮𝓿𝓮𝓻 𝓼𝓵𝓮𝓹𝓽 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓯𝓻𝓸𝓶 𝓶𝔂 𝓬𝓵𝓪𝓼𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓘 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓴 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓸𝓷 𝓫𝓸𝓽𝓱 𝓸𝓯 𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓶𝓲𝓷𝓭𝓼 𝔀𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝔀𝓮 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓼𝓮𝔁.

𝓐𝓯𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓘 𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓭 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓖𝓸𝓭 𝓓𝓮𝓵𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓸𝓷 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓭𝓮𝓬𝓲𝓭𝓮𝓭 𝓘 𝓱𝓪𝓭 𝓯𝓲𝓰𝓾𝓻𝓮𝓭 𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓱𝓾𝓶𝓪𝓷 𝓮𝔁𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓮𝓷𝓬𝓮, 𝓘 𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓹𝓹𝓮𝓭 𝓼𝓲𝓰𝓷𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓪𝓯𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓹𝓻𝓪𝔂𝓮𝓻𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓶𝓪𝓭𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓲𝓷𝓭𝓲𝓼𝓹𝓸𝓼𝓮𝓭 𝓬𝓻𝓸𝓼𝓼 𝔀𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝓲𝓽 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓽𝓲𝓶𝓮 𝓽𝓸 𝓻𝓮𝓬𝓮𝓲𝓿𝓮 𝓬𝓸𝓶𝓶𝓾𝓷𝓲𝓸𝓷. 𝓘 𝓪𝓵𝔀𝓪𝔂𝓼 𝔀𝓪𝓼𝓱𝓮𝓭 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓪𝓼𝓱𝓮𝓼 𝓸𝓯𝓯 𝓶𝔂 𝓯𝓸𝓻𝓮𝓱𝓮𝓪𝓭 𝓫𝓮𝓬𝓪𝓾𝓼𝓮 𝓲𝓽 𝓲𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓯𝓮𝓻𝓮𝓭 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝓶𝔂 𝓼𝓲𝓭𝓮-𝓯𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓮. 𝓘𝓷 𝓶𝔂 𝓯𝓲𝓷𝓪𝓵 𝔂𝓮𝓪𝓻 𝓸𝓯 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵 𝓘 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓪𝓭𝓿𝓲𝓼𝓮𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓿𝓮 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓰𝓮𝓽 𝓪 𝓳𝓸𝓫 𝓫𝓮𝓬𝓪𝓾𝓼𝓮 𝓘 𝔀𝓪𝓼𝓷'𝓽 𝓮𝓷𝓰𝓪𝓰𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵'𝓼 𝓮𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓼 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓿𝓪𝓵𝓾𝓮𝓼.

𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘴, 𝘐 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘢 𝘫𝘰𝘣 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦. 𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯. 𝘐 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘛𝘰𝘶𝘳, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘶𝘱 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘯. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘸𝘰 𝘔𝘤𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘥𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘊𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘵-𝘪𝘯 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘵.

𝚆𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝟸𝟷, 𝙸 𝚐𝚘𝚝 𝚊 𝚓𝚘𝚋 𝚊𝚜 𝚊 𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚌𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝙶𝚕𝚊𝚜𝚐𝚘𝚠 𝚄𝚗𝚒𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗 𝚊 𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚔 𝚍𝚎𝚌𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚊 𝚠𝚑𝚘𝚕𝚎 𝚝𝚎𝚗 𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝚊𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝙲𝚘𝚊𝚝𝚋𝚛𝚒𝚍𝚐𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚗𝚘 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚛𝚎𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐. 𝙾𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚍𝚊𝚢 𝙸 𝚕𝚎𝚏𝚝, 𝚖𝚢 𝚖𝚞𝚖 𝚐𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚛𝚘𝚜𝚊𝚛𝚢 𝚋𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝙿𝚘𝚙𝚎 𝙹𝚘𝚑𝚗 𝙿𝚊𝚞𝚕 𝙸𝙸 𝚋𝚕𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚜𝚊𝚒𝚍 𝚜𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍𝚗’𝚝 𝚋𝚎 𝚊𝚋𝚕𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚎𝚎 𝚖𝚎 𝚘𝚏𝚏 𝚋𝚎𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚜𝚑𝚎 𝚑𝚊𝚍 𝚊 𝚍𝚘𝚌𝚝𝚘𝚛’𝚜 𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚘𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝. 𝙰 𝚏𝚎𝚠 𝚢𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚜 𝚕𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝙸 𝚏𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚗𝚘 𝚍𝚘𝚌𝚝𝚘𝚛’𝚜 𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚘𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝. 𝚂𝚑𝚎 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚠𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚊 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚠𝚊𝚕𝚔 𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚑.

The most polished version of Contra is the Famicom port, which differs from its American counterpart in several ways. The presence of Konami's multi-memory controller VRC2 allows the Japanese version to mobilise its ROM more effectively: cinematics punctuate the title and some levels display more visual effects. After the release of several major games – Green Beret (1985) or Castlevania (1986) –, which solidified the expertise of the in-house team, Contra stood out as the synthesis of the run-and-gun.

The player takes on the role of Bill in the distant future, who must free the Galuga archipelago from the Red Falcon, an organisation of aliens and brainwashed humans. The title is composed of eight different levels, with various environments. The majority of them take place in a horizontal scrolling mode and the player must reach the end of the level to face a boss. On the way, it is possible to find eagle insignias, that allow to modify Bill's weaponry. Contra stands out from the games of this era because of the high flexibility of its protagonist's moveset. If it is possible to shoot in all eight directions, the player can also crouch while continuing to shoot, thus avoiding a large part of the projectiles. Only the jump is a bit confusing, as it is not possible to control its height: it can cause issues in some of the more projectile-heavy sequences. Those controls allow the player to advance in a very proactive way, and the game seems to encourage this approach. Indeed, the difficulty is quite high and it is not uncommon for the screen to be cluttered with enemies: death is always very likely and it is only by knowing the location of the turrets that the progression becomes easier. Contra is thus difficult right from the start, but the game becomes even more challenging in the later stages, especially with the appearance of the machine gunners. The timing of their gunfire is quite tricky, especially when they appear in conjunction with other enemies.

However, Contra still manages to be enjoyable, precisely because the ability to lay down on the floor is so effective, once the general layout of the level is known. If Bill is equipped with a proper weapon, the game strikes a fairly clever balance in its difficulty. It succeeds in minimising the frustration that repeated deaths can cause. The variety of environments, along with their unique bosses, also helps to keep the player entertained. Some may regret the stages with a perspective camera, as they turn out to be messier, but they also provide variety without ever becoming too long. These passages also reinforce a certain claustrophic quality, underlining the influence of Alien (1979). It is generally a feeling of dynamism that emanates from the title and that constitutes its strength, compared to the other NES titles - too long, too repetitive, too soporific.

It's hard to say more about this game or to put into words the fluidity that emanates from it, as it is simply very enjoyable to play. The design choices put Contra in the category of fairly difficult NES games, but without turning it into an insurmountable monster. The infamous Konami Code also makes for a more relaxed approach to the playthrough, although this is entirely dispensable. There was no real doubt about the success of Contra, which is why its sequel Super Contra (1988) was released the same year, adding new gimmicks and borrowing design ideas from other games. This prestige, on Nintendo's consoles, has never been compromised.

Pokémon Scarlet is the first new game I’ve played in the series since Sun back in 2016. While I enjoyed that game well enough, I felt like the series was going in a direction that no longer appealed to my sensibilities. I still kept up with the series, but I was content to stave off trying a new game until something new sparked my interest. Had I reviewed Sword and Shield, I likely would have been immensely unkind to it. While I understand that the true value of Pokémon for many is its multiplayer, the truth is that many players make it through the campaigns and post-game quests before never going through again. Their own multiplayer experiences would likely boil down to a few matches against friends with their in-game teams. The increasingly pilpul-like reasons given in interviews behind the stripped-down story quests of newer entries, and the willingness of the fanbase to defend virtually any decision made by GameFreak, turned me off to the series for a long while.

I never cared about the “dex cut” that occurred in Sword and Shield, to be clear. I have never once transferred old Pokemon to new games, and frequently wipe the slate clean on save files. Cycling Pokemon in and out was an inevitability as the catalog of monsters grew larger and larger. I found it immensely unfortunate that this potentially reasonable development decision became the chief criticism of GameFreak’s work when there was so much more to complain about. Of course, there were many people arguing the point with more nuance, pointing out how the production value and content density/quality of the game was clearly not compensating for the dex cut, but sadly the waters were already muddied. Those darn entitled gamers were at it again, bullying the hardworking developers. All the bitching was to no avail, as Sword and Shield obliterated sales charts, and it seemed like GameFreak would never have any reason to improve or reassess their insane yearly churn out of games.

So what drew me back in here? Well for one, I was gifted an early copy of the game for my Nintendo PC, so the opportunity cost was literally just my time. Secondly, this game swerves off hard from Sword and Shield’s literal straight line region and Sun and Moon’s tiny unfinished areas. It’s a full-on open world with 18 main quest missions that can be completed in any order. For me, this is the final nail in the Cofagrigus for any excuse over the main campaigns being lacking in order to quickly shuffle players along to the multiplayer. Pokemon is supposed to be an adventure, and for more reasons than just that open world, Scarlet and Violet occasionally succeeded in bringing that feeling back to the franchise for me. They got there stumbling all over themselves but they sort of did it. Please bear in mind that my experience does not involve much engagement with Pokemon Legends: Arceus, which to my understanding is similarly open ended but dissimilarly not so focused on battles. I know many people who disliked Sword and Shield walked away from Legends feeling pretty positively about it, so these last few releases may bode well for the future of the franchise so long as GameFreak can please, please get someone else to help them make the game.

So with these 18 missions, there is no level scaling. This can be a bit of a double edged sword. With this format, the world definitely feels more alive, particularly wild Pokemon encounters way outside the average level of your team. You can also challenge yourself by taking on higher level bosses earlier. This was my experience with the game, going after the highest level gym fourth, the highest level Team Star boss third, and the highest level Titan third as well. Hilariously, I would often ignore the victory road storyline until I reached the obedience level cap that demanded I drag my ass to the nearest gym so that my character would stop trying to roleplay as the average pitbull owner. The world was not accommodating me, and I liked that, even though I knew where it was leading. Eventually, I had to go back and blitz through those lower level missions I had ignored. I quickly decided to only use Pokemon around the same levels as those missions, which made for a more enjoyable experience. However, I know most players won’t think about self-policing that way. Games are meant to be beaten, so people don’t even think twice about doing the most optimal, low risk task in order to destroy any semblance of fun. A Quick Ball at one overleveled wild pokemon that may not even obey, four gym badges in, and then you go back and stomp the entire rest of the game. I can’t help but feel that a lot of people will be robbing themselves of something much more memorable, but GameFreak designed the game this way. They’ve always let you play Pokemon in just about the most boring way possible, just look at all those starters with four STAB moves twenty levels higher than the nearest boss.

SPEAKING OF GameFreak and boring design decisions, let’s talk about SET MODE and how everyone who defends its removal with “Just press B lmao” is brain damaged. Yes, Set Mode is no longer available, a totally baffling decision. Like I stated above, people don’t even think about just how boringly they can play games if it’s less stressful to win by being boring, not even necessarily accomplishing things more expediently. I have played plenty of ROMhacks, and I can tell you that even the toughest hacks eventually lose their luster if you stick with Shift Mode. Knowing what your opponent is sending out and being able to swap to another Pokemon at no risk to you is objectively the best decision you can make. Developers usually put some degree of separation between easier options that allow anyone to beat the game and tougher options they think will be more fun. These are usually called “difficulty modes'' for the uninitiated. Many people considered Set Mode to be a difficulty option, and indeed people who defend the often braindead difficulty curve of the games tell you to just turn on Set Mode. I can only speculate, but I’m sure that those same people are now defending Set Mode’s removal by telling others to “just press B”

The problem is that most people don't even think about how much Shift Mode affects the experience, or how GameFreak removing Set further removes the singleplayer experience from the multiplayer experience completely unnecessarily. They already have VGC, a double battle format, as their main competitive option, something the singleplayer does virtually nothing to garner interest for. Now they’ve gutted yet another way to have singleplayer battles to remotely reflect multiplayer battles. Imagine the frustration a kid will feel when all the power granted to him by Shift is gone the moment he battles a friend, having no means of understanding that’s an intended part of the game. Yeah, I can just press B, in fact, I did press B. Every time. The whole game. Nor did I use items in battle, and it was better for it. These games don’t need ROMhack level difficulty to be interesting. The games are fundamentally expressive enough for you to find a lot of your own fun. The problem is that GameFreak is pretty hellbent on making that expressiveness less palatable. You are presented with an optimal decision constantly, and you have to deny it. Your brain interprets denying the switch as an objectively bad decision nearly every time you see the prompt. You're talking about one decision, turning the game to Set Mode, versus hundreds, denying shift every time you're given the option. Passive versus active. Imagine if you had to hit LB in Halo every time you met an Elite's line of sight in order to activate its good AI. Nobody would find that acceptable except for Pokemon fans. You also get to know what pokemon is coming next which OBJECTIVELY removes part of the game's ability to surprise on a first playthrough. Go ahead and tell me to play blindfolded next.

There’s the biggest issue with the gameplay experience of SV. You need to have the self-discipline to make the game more enjoyable. This isn’t going to apply to everyone, and of course Pokemon games have never been hard, but there are people out there who will walk through the latter half of the game dozens of levels higher than the opponents they need to beat in order to progress due to the openness of the game. Players who aren’t just kids with overleveled starters, doing this completely by accident. There are some solutions to this. One might be having moderate scaling based on your progression, with certain opponents having higher minimum and maximum levels for their pokemon. That leaves the game fairly open without giving you as much exp.

Further muddying the divide between singleplayer and multiplayer is the TMs. It seems like GameFreak just can’t decide whether or not their decision to make these items infinite use in Gen 5 was good or not. Here, they are back to single use, but you can make new TMs at any time by using materials from wild Pokemon. This is a pretty new thing for Pokemon that brings it a little closer to a traditional RPG. I found it to be a pretty neat idea for singleplayer but its implementation leaves a lot to be desired. Most people have severe loss aversion. As such TMs before Gen 5 were notorious for being nothing but bag space from those suffering from analysis paralysis. With them becoming unlimited in their use, they could act as much better rewards for exploration or progression, and do more than sit in your bag until you were ready for multiplayer. Here, you might have had the best of both worlds; You have more decision-making added to your playthrough, asking yourself if it’s going to be worth it to teach this Pokemon a certain move without it feeling like a total loss. Except it’s still kind of a grind to acquire these once you want to jump to multiplayer, not nearly the grind it used to be, but it’s just going to feel like unnecessary extra time once we all move past the main campaign. Among all the ways GameFreak has tried to make transitioning to viable competitive teams more smooth, they still find ways to make it a little bit silly. However, this may be a compensatory measure for a lack of move tutors in the game, as the list of TMs is substantial. You can ask yourself whether or not those were worth it to grind for as well, or whether or not you should just boot up Showdown. It seems like GameFreak wants you to earn that optimal team, and in this case, it’s certainly among the easier grinds for moves.

The way these TMs are displayed in the menu where you craft them is pretty subpar though. It reminds me of how modern digital storefronts just show you a thumbnail of the game’s box art, that either doesn’t have the title visible or has it displayed with an illegible font. No font here or anything, but I wish there was. You just have a zoomed in picture of the move in action. You can sort by type but there was no reason the UI had to be so unintuitive.

Quality of life features have always been a mixed bag with Pokemon. Here, for example you can still reset EVs for your team, but not with the same ease you could after Sword and Shield’s DLC. I guess GameFreak considers that feature a premium service. You can, however, have your Pokemon relearn any moves they previously knew at any time, including TMs they had, should they have been deleted. This carries over from Legends, I believe. This is honestly a great change, and helps open up team building for the whole game. While I can see the appeal of more committal decision-making previous games had, even going down to how the much maligned HMs affected team building, I much prefer this system. This is one feature that makes the games easier at basically no expense to their ability to craft interesting encounters, even if they don’t choose to make those encounters. With this set up, you can basically go about every major mission with a completely new team made up of each area’s surrounding Pokemon, which is exactly how I plan to play it next.

The major battles seem to have finally gone back to having decent coverage and preparation for certain Pokemon you plan to sweep with. I’ve always felt like type specialists should really ease off on just how much they specialize in their type by the late game. Players should understand type matchups by that point, and in fact they can even see what types are effective against what Pokemon at all times now. I absolutely never understood the criticism when bosses didn’t have a full team consisting of their preferred type, this should almost always be considered a good thing. Even if cases like Flint in Diamond and Pearl only got that way from desperation. Both the Team Star and Titan Pokemon quest lines involve taking down boss Pokemon with health bars equivalent to that of the Tera Raid you encounter on the overworld. Each Team Star boss has a magic car of their respective type that you fight. Interestingly, the game never tells you this car has taken on their type, but it’s easy to surmise. Go ahead and spam that same super effective move, kiddo.

Each quest line provides a lower stakes adventure for you that eventually opens up to a typical storyline where you save the world, but I liked the ride getting there. Operation Starfall involves you running through each base before engaging in a boss battle. The base raids have you run through on auto-battle mode in a “race” to KO thirty Pokemon. This timer is all too generous, and in most cases all you need to beat these challenges within 2-3 minutes is a slight level advantage and type advantage, as that is all that goes into determining whether or not you even take damage in an auto-battle. However, if you go in underleveled, you might find these moderately interesting, as you have to select who among your three chosen Pokemon you send out at what time to deal with what enemies are throwing out. Dual types on both sides mean that certain Pokemon may be more vulnerable than you thought going in.

There’s an adorable little anti-bullying message for the kids in this storyline. It didn’t do much for me but I appreciated the effort. The game is sadly afraid to fully commit to the premise of Team Star becoming the bullies they hated. They did nothing but act truant, they are completely innocent and have nothing to apologize or be held accountable for. GameFreak seems to have settled into the villainous teams no longer being the world ending threat for each game, which I think is a better tone to set for something as laid back as Pokemon. That being said, I’m sure people will eventually want to go back to something more threatening than kids playing hooky. For the time being though, I don’t mind it in concept. This is still the weakest part of the game thanks to the poorer structure of its storytelling that seems unshakable in these Ohmori-directed games.

Secondly, there’s the Titan Pokemon storyline. This is a more intimately character driven story, and I think it shows that GameFreak’s storytelling abilities CAN get better. They’re still nothing special, but this is an improvement over Sun and Moon and a huge improvement over Sword and Shield. While I may have enjoyed certain aspects of SM’s story more, SV is clearly more competent at actually presenting its story. SM’s story is highly intrusive and you are often made to feel like a bit player in it. You just want to get through your island trial but you’ve got to mend this broken family first. It made subsequent playthroughs of the game much harder to stomach than any of its predecessors. Sword and Shield could win an award for being just as intrusive as SM while having absolutely nothing going on in its plot. In SV, you have to go out and pursue these story segments when you feel like it, and you feel like a much more active presence in the story yourself. Arven, the principal role of the Titan’s story, has a very down-to-earth struggle to heal his wounded friend. Something the player is made to relate to, as this quest is used to power up your lizard bike buddy. I wasn’t a fan of either box legendary’s design this time, but it’s hard not to be at least a little endeared to Koraidon after spending so much time with it and watching it regain its strength before finally coming through in a (scripted) battle sequence. If ever there was a time where “Pokemon held on so wouldn’t feel sad” felt appropriate, this would be it.

Lastly there’s Victory Road. This is the traditional run through eight gyms you expect from Pokemon. These gyms, like most of the boss fights, might surprise you with decent coverage, but they have a disappointing flaw. They use Terastalyzation to change the type of one of their nonconforming team members to the type they specialize in. So you can safely spam that STAB super effective move if you want. Go right ahead. The Elite Four and champion is comparatively more challenging because they just Terastalyze to their own specialized STAB that the Pokemon already has, giving them a free boost. Just a very boring use of the mechanic.

You also have your rival, Nemona, checking in on your progress throughout the way. Framing for rivals is pretty important, and I think SV succeeds here. Many people mistakenly focus on a lack of “asshole” rivals in newer games, even though we have examples like Gladion and Bede. I think the problem is that rivals should feel like people you really want to bring down and the games have often struggled with this. Bede is basically broken and never comes off as anything but pathetic. For comparison, Blue has an awful team, you beat the hell out of him every time you see him, but he never takes you seriously even when he loses, and he’s always one step ahead of you in the story. When you get to the League and find out this little shit you’ve slapped throughout the game actually beat you to being champion, you want to teach him a lesson. Like I said, framing is important.

Nemona is a friendlier rival, and she’s built up by the story as highly competent, the best of the best. She’s testing you, she’s holding back in fights against you until the very end of the game. So even though she loses every time, bringing her down remains a credible goal throughout the game. She does use the starter weak to yours, which many players have taken umbrage with through the years. I agree with this as an issue to an extent. It is probably better to teach players about type matchups by giving them something to wail on that they’re strong against. A rival with the starter that counters yours means that you won’t even get to start with STAB moves. I see the logic, but I also think it harms the feeling of you as an underdog overcoming the odds. That being said, the games have become so adamant about worshiping at your feet that I’m not sure if GameFreak even wants to give players that impression. Anyway, it would have been much better if Nemona used Terastalyzation to change her starter’s type to one that countered your own. That would have been the best of both worlds right there.

A persistent problem with some of these Ohmori-directed games compared to Masuda-directed games, even “post-decline” so to speak, is that they’re totally in love with their own characters. It’s like Ohmori is straight up limerent for characters he has full control over, so it’s weird that it feels like they don’t love him back. They spend just a little too much time on “quirky” traits for these characters that come off as shallow and insincere. Perhaps the poor production value is to blame for that. Characters are still completely silent and move like automatons on an axis. There is a rap battle in this game, a fucking rap battle, and it manages to be more lifeless than it is cringeworthy. That’s got to be an achievement. Hip-hop in children’s media is almost always pure, organic cringe, but here it’s just befuddling. The game can really fall flat here with the Team Star members. It wants to sell you on their personalities and friendships, and I guess it’s a better effort than Ohmor’s other work, but not enough to get me to read most of their dialogue. I got the gist, their ending was kind of cute. Each member did not need their own flashback. Especially when each flashback is not about their individual problems but more about what each of them did to bring Team Star to life, not ideologically, but in terms of presentation. Like a fucking friendsgiving.

Enough story bullshit though, what the hell is so good about this game that I basically enjoyed it despite everything? Well, the world is densely populated with Pokemon to find, team building is intuitive, routes feel expansive, the game is truly not lying about it being open. I genuinely like the idea of feeling blocked off by high levels and either needing to find somewhere else to go or toughing it out up a dangerous trail. Picking up items no longer stops you in your tracks. If you do want to challenge yourself, you still can. I genuinely liked Arven’s storyline. The weakest link as far as the quests go isn’t dragging things down too horribly, as the boss fights were a good time. The movement options opening up over the course of the game feels empowering. I got to see Sudowoodo and Toedscool book it from me hilariously. Ditto and Zorua never appear on the overworld because they’re always disguised as other Pokemon. When the world feels alive for a bit, when you come across an old favorite roaming in the wild, something about the game genuinely sings for a moment.

That is the thing though, the game is basically a series of boss fights. Your mandatory battles are the gym leaders, E4, Champion, Nemona a few times, each team star boss, the titans, a few wild pokemon in Area Zero, and your game’s respective professor. Probably about thirty battles. You can run by every trainer, they’re all optional. Like a lot of decisions for this game, it’s a double edged sword. I’m rarely jumping into anything I’m not asking for beyond accidental wild encounters. Going about each open area to find every trainer and get your TM/item gift can be fun, but you can’t replace the feeling of overcoming a harder fight you were completely caught off guard by. You run into a trainer you didn’t want to see, your lead goes down, but a Pokemon you thought very little of pulled through and helped you to keep going. It’s a feeling that’s lost here even on the more perilous routes. Even knowing there were a few trainers who very nearly kicked my ass, I still know I asked for that ass kicking.

This might be a sharp step down from Legends. To my knowledge, that game tried to mix up the mission structure with modified tasks focused on capturing Pokemon. There’s no progression within any of the main storylines that doesn’t just involve battling here. The best you get as a pace breaker is gym “puzzles” that barely qualify as such. I understand that SV and Legends were developed at the same time, but it’s just odd that this open world game doesn’t have any side missions to tackle. You have Tera Raid battles. Okay, fine I guess. What about something like Totem Battles from SM? Double battle focused side quests? Triple and rotation? Oh sorry, GameFreak doesn’t want you to remember those. A sidequest that’s all inverse battles? Restricted quests with rental Pokemon? Rewards for quests like rare Pokemon or rare Tera types?

At the end of the day, the huge world is really neat to go through for the first time. Discovering every ecosystem and every Pokemon that dwells in it, but I’m unsure if this would hold up on subsequent playthroughs. That’s all there is to do here except fight the bosses. Pokemon’s formula is still the most sustainable solid gold in all of video games. Even at its worst it’s still probably mindlessly enjoyable, but even with all the expressiveness the games give you, the developers always seem confused over whether or not they want to give you anything interesting to express yourself to. One thing’s for sure, it’ll be a pain to get through that intro again. My god, that had to have been nearly two hours before I felt like I could do anything.

SPEAKING OF slow as fuck. This game is Shuckle slow. I thought it was the PC at first, but apparently reports are coming out that the Switch version has the same performance issues. Stuttering framerate, major pop-in, outright freezing, long load times. All the stars are here. Not to mention, this battle engine seems like it’s giving Gen 4 a run for its money with the lulls between text boxes and animations. By the way, YOU CAN’T TURN OFF ANIMATIONS ANYMORE. Yeah, it looks like GameFreak took those comments about their animation work in SwSh to heart. They were so proud of their work this time that they wanted you to see all of their high quality animations forever. All at a stunning 21 fps. The lack of interiors to buildings sure is disappointing but damn you have to wonder how much worse the game would have run if they were present. In fact there appears to be MORE issues on the official console release of the game than the day -10 PC version.

Not to mention, we are so far beyond Pokemon’s current battle presentation at this point. Tell me the necessity for all these text boxes and animations playing out separate from one another. Persona 5 was able to communicate relevant information on screen in a very timely manner. At one point, I realized that things like Leftovers recovery, poison damage, or sandstorm damage occurred at the same time as the prompt displaying your team receiving exp and I’m like HOLY SHIT IMAGINE THAT. How the hell are those five-hit moves still the way they are? Pick up the pace. Also I don’t need to see a text prompt telling me that the move hit three times AFTER the Pokemon I hit it with already fainted. Display the information on screen as it’s happening, it CANNOT be that hard. Move makes contact, visual indicators for CRITICAL HIT and SUPER EFFECTIVE pop up at the same time the health bar is going down and maybe even slap on a KO on top of that. Like I need an extra prompt to see my Pokemon’s HP reaching zero. Jesus Christ. Cut down on this dead air. POKEMON USED MOVE - ANIMATION - it’s SUPER EFFECTIVE - FAINTING ANIMATION - POKEMON FAINTED - USE NEXT POKEMON? Dead air between every single one of those prompts and animations.

There have been a FEW improvements to the presentation. The Pokemon models really are updated this time. Tropius and others are at last free from Sky Battle hell. Charizard has its caveman brow back. Pokemon now have actual interiors to their mouths and their eyes are modeled rather than just being painted on. Pokemon are more properly scaled to get a sense of their size. This is a huge boon for making the world feel more lively, with some monsters being so small you have no idea you’re running into them. Just pray you’re not caught in a crowd because it will be a constant stop and go. The scaling is handled a little strangely in battle. In the open routes, you control the camera during battle, so you can move it to get a better view of things. During important battles, the camera is fixed, and many Pokemon on your side are viewed from such angles that you basically never see them during fights.

Many Pokemon have cute overworld animations, and most have sleeping animations. Near inexplicably, none of these sleeping animations make it into battle. Pokemon don’t even close their eyes when sleeping in battle anymore. I thought the removal of such a thing was a result of the aforementioned modeled eyes, but they close their eyes in the overworld. What the hell did they mean by this?

Among the most important parts of presentation in a Pokemon game would be character design. This is just about as subjective as it gets. Everyone has wildly different favorite Pokemon. I’m of the mind that Gen 3 had the most consistently decent designs across the board despite having very few of my personal favorites. By contrast, I consider Gens 5 and 7 to have some odd choices for designs, yet they have way more of my favorites, so maybe there’s something to be said about polarizing design philosophies yielding stronger results. You can still go too far with that polarization though, as Gen 8 was what I considered to be a clear low point in design quality. Little did I know that Gen 9 was just around the corner to give it a run for its money. Running the math, I liked about 4/10 new designs on average.

The starters in particular are still leaning a little too hard into these fixed character archetypes. I’ve always felt that starters are better off feeling more general in personality. The best one, Skeledirge, is saved by virtue of still feeling like an animal first and a guy second. Even then, it is trying to balance things like emulating the relationship between the crocodile and the Egyptian plover bird, Dia de Los Muertos, and being a vocalist. That’s a lot at once and the design is made weaker for it. At least it was spared the humiliating fate of Quaxly, becoming a large-rumped duckperson with giant sausage toes instead of its first form’s webbed feet. Still, it’s nice to see “animal + element = Pokemon” is going strong all these years later with designs like Killowattrel and Mabosstif. Other designs like Ceruledge and Armorouge just throw caution to the wind and go all in on being as cool as possible, your expectations of Pokemon designs be damned, and they did this to great success. Those designs are cool and you have no inner child if you say otherwise.

My friend Steve is a noted crab hater. The man just hates crabs. He hates Klawf and he hates any crabs reading this review. I however, think Klawf is an immensely welcome addition with its horrifying eyes that follow you wherever you go. Among all the new designs, Klawf is the one that most feels like an unpredictable, dangerous animal, that cannot feel anything resembling love or affection. Its silliness actually lends itself very well to that sense of unease around it. Klawf will never be my “bro” and that’s beautiful.

Bug types seem like they got the short end of the stick in this generation. Rather than drawing them out first, these designs look like they were modeled in Blender with thirty minutes of work before calling it a day. There’s a great looking snail Pokemon, but it’s not a Bug type. There’s at least Slither Wing, but that’s just comfy pajama Volcarona.

It’s tough to really assess what exactly the design language behind each new generation is. There are several different designers, after all. There is a clearer throughline for things like the ancient and future variants of existing Pokemon, though. Ancient Pokemon clearly got the better roll here. They have some thematic consistency with more spikes and tails, but they don’t feel needlessly uniform. The future variants fell flat on their faces. They’re all robots. Some just look like a robotic sheen slapped on an existing design. I’m not usually one to complain when Pokemon do not always reflect their types, but these completely fail to visually communicate their general lack of Steel typing. In the future, all these Pokemon become robots that exhibit the exact same animal behavior. Dumb. Don’t give me any BS about cyborgs. These are robots, get out of my face.

Of all the complaints Sword and Shield received, character design wasn’t really one of them. Many have observed a change in human design philosophy over the years to favor a more “cosplay” style of dress, but it’s more like a passive acknowledgment rather than a straight criticism. So what exactly is going on with this sudden change for SV? Characters look almost doll-like, and no longer reflect their official artwork nearly as accurately as the past three entries on Switch. This velvety texturing of skin and clothing along with the glossy eyeballs only serve to make the animations look more unnatural and automaton-esque. Certain characters clash just standing next to each other. Geeta’s eyes are three times the size of other characters. Also bitch is the goddamn big boss of the league and uses a fucking Gogoat holy shit.

Player character designs have remained a pretty important part of each new game’s identity, but Scarlet and Violet seems like the first time the developers chose to make the player characters as blank as humanly possible. It’s not necessarily bad, it’s just another notable change. The default male and female designs used for promotion were previously distinct, but now really feel like identical twins. It’s both fitting and strange that the school uniforms are the context through which this blandness is achieved. Of course this was the golden opportunity to scale back the importance of a default trainer to identify, given that you’re uniformed at all times. But you’re uniformed at all times, so you don’t even have anything close to the range of fashion customization available to you in XY, SM, and SwSh. You do however have a greater number of options for your head, and both genders share those options. So you can really live out that discord moderator dream. I however, was content to just give my guy a signature jewfro and call it a day.

Strangest of all is the absolutely hideous crop of random NPCs. Many of them are adults dressed in school uniforms. I suppose framing the school as something more like a college for Pokemon enthusiasts is meant to lend itself to the franchise being all-inclusive to everyone everywhere. The result is instead a bunch of creepy looking adults waiting around for you in the dead of night. Also some very broad shouldered women. Why the hell are they so broad? Are they okay? They look like they’re in pain.

However, there is this character named Rika, an Elite Four member. This character is unreasonably sexual. Only Anabel’s Sun and Moon design compares. Designs like these are so beyond degenerate in appearance and I need this stop before they destroy my life.

I have many, many negative thoughts on the state of pokemon, on the directions it’s taken, and even the very idea of calling this game a step in the right direction. How many steps in the right direction are we going to have? How many indicators of great things to come will we need before we’re ready to properly judge the here and now? It’s undeniable though, that my curiosity about this series is back, and Scarlet offered enough novelty that I’m interested in replaying just to see how much further I can push it. There may come a day where GameFreak strips me of any ability to create something fun out of Pokemon, but it hasn’t come yet. If nothing else, it has the absolute craziest ending to a Pokemon game ever, complete with Ed Sheeran coming out of nowhere to scare the living shit out of me.

Please get someone else to make the games.

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐊! 𝐀𝐆𝐀𝐈𝐍! 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐭, 𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞, 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐁𝐀𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐆𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐑.

𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲'𝐬 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐫𝐮𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐧𝐨 𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐇 𝐂𝐈𝐑𝐂𝐋𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐇𝐄𝐋𝐋:

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐔𝐍𝐈𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐃𝐎𝐌 𝐎𝐅
𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐓 𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐀𝐈𝐍 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐍𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐍 𝐈𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐃

𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐚𝐬...

𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐑'𝐒 𝐓𝐄𝐂𝐇𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐄: 𝐀𝐑𝐂𝐀𝐃𝐄 𝐄𝐃𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

------------------------------------

September 24th, 2021: About an hour after THATCHER'S TECHBASE is shared with the world, I'm filled with an overwhelming urge to never think about it again. I go out for a pint of Tennent's Lager at the pub.

September 25th, 2021: Despite my best efforts to pretend I don't care at all, I spend most of the day fixing all the bugs people found in THATCHER'S TECHBASE. There are a lot of them, but I'm buoyed by the fact that there is something really funny about debugging a joke.

September 27th, 2021: A representative from Channel 4 calls me up and suggests that THATCHER'S TECHBASE be included as a challenge in a reboot of the classic British gameshow GamesMaster. The smart part of my brain that thinks it sounds like Channel 4 are looking for someone to do a bunch of free work for them in exchange for exposure is immediately overridden by the mental image of famous British people shooting Margaret Thatcher in the face on television. I agree to make some stuff for the show.

September 28th, 2021: I have a surprisingly terse conversation with someone on Twitter who tells me that the Thatcher's Graveyard section of THATCHER'S TECHBASE is not optimised for four-player co-op play and that I should consider redoing that entire section of the wad for all the people out there who are playing THATCHER'S TECHBASE in 4-player co-op. I swallow the surreality of the situation and give in to plain old spite by making some of the corridors in that section a little narrower, immediately pushing a v1.3 to production.

October 15th, 2021: Conservative MP David Amess is stabbed multiple times at a constituency meeting in Leigh-on-Sea and later dies at the scene from his injuries. Ali Harbi Ali, a 25-year-old man, is arrested at the scene.

October 21st, 2021: Ali Harbi Ali is charged with murder and preparing terrorist acts.

October 22nd, 2021: Another representative from Channel 4 calls me up to say they are now considering whether THATCHER'S TECHBASE is a "right fit" for GamesMaster. They stop responding to emails shortly after.

November 1st, 2021: Putting faith in the great professional relationshop we had previously established, I apply for a £5000 creative funding grant from the Tennent's Lager Grassroots Arts & Culture Project, explaining my intention to make [REDACTED], a new game about [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] in the [REDACTED].

November 3rd, 2021: My application for a £5000 creative funding grant from the Tennent's Lager Grassroots Arts & Culture Project is rejected for "cultural" reasons.

November 11th, 2021: During his day job as a community organiser in an assisted living facility, my dad finds out one of his elderly residents has watched the trailer for THATCHER'S TECHBASE via a Hillsborough Justice advocacy group on Facebook. This is the kinda shit that just makes me smile and feel glad that I went insane making a DOOM wad lol, idk

November 17th, 2021: EDGE publish their Christmas 2021 issue, which contains an article about THATCHER'S TECHBASE entitled "How Doom mod Thatcher's Techbase became the most talked-about videogame satire of 2021". Therein, I sheepishly admit that Tim Rogers baited me into making a DOOM wad by doing an incredibly affecting video about how great DOOM is and Tim responds in kind, closing the loop on a year-long project that was inspired by an off-hand YouTube comment. I am happy that I convinced Chris Schilling to print some of the Irish Republican Army's most famous attack lines in his computer game magazine.

December 5th, 2021: THATCHER'S TECHBASE finally appears on Channel 4's GamesMaster, much to my surprise. Because of the game's content, it is shown from very far away, blurred down to a small assemblage of black and white pixels that kinda look like maybe it was maybe Doomguy punching something for a second? Who knows. The Scottish professional wrestler Grado claims he killed Margaret Thatcher with a chainsaw, but players of THATCHER'S TECHBASE know that you can't use the chainsaw in THATCHER'S TECHBASE. The chainsaw has been replaced with a stream of piss.

December 7th, 2021: The GamesMaster reboot is cancelled after three episodes.

December 8th, 2021: Margaret Thatcher wins the coveted "Best Demon" award at Esquire magazine's 2021 Esquire Gaming Awards.

December 24th, 2021: Following three months of surprisingly involved legal back-and-forth with the law firm representing Tennent's Lager, the company finally acquieses to my nervous demands and donates £500 each to Stonewall UK, The Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation, and the Hillsborough Justice Campaign. Realising they have no further legal obligation to reply to my emails, the company ignores my queries about donations for the other organisations on the THATCHER'S TECHBASE website.

January 1st, 2022: I start a new job; one that doesn't involve banking or banks or people having full-scale meltdowns about share prices.

March 18th, 2022: The Scottish government declares an end to all mandatory coronavirus measures across the country.

May 18th, 2022: After a long break from thinking about Margaret Thatcher, Hell and THATCHER'S TECHBASE, I return to the Tenth Circle of Hell once more when the wad is exhibited at the Southside Games Festival in Glasgow and I am invited to attend and do a Q&A panel. Expecting questions like "do you like doom lol" and "who is margaret thatcher??" I am completely utterly blindsided when actual, real, not-pretend game developers start asking me questions about political theory and its applications in game design. I don't remember the things I said because my brain was too busy suppressing the urge to piss and didn't have enough free CPU cycles to record memories, but I do know that one dude asked "So what's the deal with all the timewasting elevators?" and then nodded in a satisfied way when I told him I really liked that one part of The 25th Ward where you have to solve the toilet maze and knock on 100 apartment doors - the TECHBASE lifts are meant to be sort of like that. Thank you, Backloggd, for allowing me to get away with being a little bit pretentious in front of people who make real art games. To the guy who nodded - I know you totally have a Backloggd dude, drop the @ in the comments below.

July 7th, 2022: REUTERS, BREAKING (via CNN): "U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned Thursday, bringing an acrimonious end to a nearly three-year premiership that has been beset by controversy and scandal."

August 3rd, 2022: As part of his election campaign, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak promises that people who vilify Britain will be treated as extremists and referred to the Government’s deradicalization "Prevent" programme.

August 18th, 2022: The build team from The World Transformed, a political festival that takes place at the same time as the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, ask me if they can turn THATCHER'S TECHBASE into an arcade machine that will support Living Rent, a Scottish tenants union who are struggling against record rent increases and ruthless landlord action.

August 19th, 2022: I try to explain to the build team from The World Transformed that a DOOM wad won't translate to a pleasant arcade cabinet experience, but my protests are finally suppressed by the part of my brain that is yelling "THEY ARE MAKING AN ARCADE MACHINE OF THE WAD YOU MADE". I give sincerely cheerful thumbs-ups when the design plans for the cabinet are waved in front of my eyes, irresistibly activating the huge clusters of "VIDEO GAME" neurons in my hippocampus.

August 20th, 2022: I get to work on making a version of THATCHER'S TECHBASE that's more suited for an arcade experience. This mostly involves unlocking all the doors and pumping the player full of ammo and milk.

August 28th, 2022: I realise that even Capcom puts a little bit more effort into their Arcade Editions than this, and decide to put out feelers for an artist who can help me add some new enemies to the game because I am not living through a coronavirus lockdown any more and cannot spend five hours a day dragging little blue suits onto cyberdemons. By pure luck, the guy who originally helped me make the CyberThatcher sprites - Rafael Batista de Lima - responds to my advert without even realising it's the same project, a moment of serendipity that I have no choice but to recognise as divine intervention from Satan himself.

August 30th, 2022: Keeping proud design traditions from the original game alive, I start dragging Thatcher wigs onto the Archvile and other baddies and share the designs with Rafael.

September 2nd, 2021: Upon finding out what the project is, a workshop in Liverpool offers to provide and work on materials for THATCHER'S TECHBASE: ARCADE EDITION free of charge. This, in essence, means that the game will be making a "net profit" for Living Rent from the moment it comes online.

September 5th, 2022: Liz Truss becomes prime minister of the Tenth Circle of Hell.

September 10th, 2022: Despite making a strong case for her inclusion, I ultimately reject the invitation from TWT to make Liz Truss one of the new enemies in THATCHER'S TECHBASE: ARCADE EDITION, fearing that someone may be pictured performing violence upon a standing Member of Parliament.

September 20th, 2022: Development work is completed on THATCHER'S TECHBASE: ARCADE EDITION.

September 22nd, 2022: Development work on THATCHER'S TECHBASE: ARCADE EDITION is no longer completed, because my artist legend friend Rafael comes in clutch at the last minute with some more incredible sprites. The final art and polish is applied, and development work is completed on THATCHER'S TECHBASE: ARCADE EDITION. For real this time.

September 23rd, 2022: I arrive in Liverpool. After spending some time looking at things that have been built to look like The Beatles and having a few surprisingly cheap pints, I head to the community centre where The World Transformed is being hosted. A little buzzed, I enter the basement of TWT's venue for the weekend and see a giant vinyl sticker of the CyberThatcher lying on the floor in front of me; it's probably the beers, but I suddenly have to suppress the urge to be sick. I feel like I'm in a weird dream, sort-of-a David Lynch dream, one of those intense dreams where you're interacting with things that had only ever existed in your mind as if they were/are real, tangible actors in meatspace - playing tulpa Tetris with real bricks from on high, going ice-skating with Sonic the Hedgehog, getting freaky with some 32-bit polygonal video game hero you found sexy when you were thirteen... That sort of thing. It shouldn't exist, but there isn't much time to contemplate this concept further because suddenly I am knee-deep in adhesive paste and wood shavings, a Glaswegian dwarf at a forge of MDF and gorilla glue, trying to create a convincing simulacra of a machine that existed in a forgotten age so that I can put my political parody satire game-mod-wad thing inside it and ask people to pay money to piss on graves and fight the ghosts in the shell, those nasty little demon dudes wearing Margaret Thatcher wigs. I also end up painting protest signs and hanging lights somehow - can you believe they gave the drunk video game guy a hammer?! - while a local school teacher uses his arts & crafts kit to give the cabinet its beautiful finishing touches. At 1am or thereabouts, the owner of the venue insists we cease our demonic rituals and go home for the night. He is thoroughly creeped out by this B&Q obelisk.

September 24th, 2022: Having failed to actually install the computer and PCBs the night before, most of the morning is spent rotating source ports and virtual machines to try and get the split-screen experience going - to no convincing avail. While I'm in the middle of looking up the best ways to emulate a local DOOM multiplayer server, a woman asks me what the fuck I'm doing in the basement's basement, a little sweaty goblin tapping away on a giant arcade machine with Margaret Thatcher's face down the side of it. I try to explain my deeds in a number of ways, but she rightly cuts through the bullshit with a hot, shameful knife of "I don't have a clue what you're on about". The woman encourages me to K.I.S.S. and get something, anything out on the floor - especially if it's for a charity. About half an hour later, the experience has been simplified down to just the single player campaign, the second stick and buttons functioning as a cool little Geometry Wars/Steel Battallion/whatever dual-stick aiming system. I try explaining the absence of multiplayer and the new control scheme to people who try playing the game on the conference floor, but I'm quite rightly drowned out by people going "you can punch her? coooool" and "have you seen the shooting game where you can go into wetherspoons". I eventually stick an Xbox controller on the front of the arcade machine because there is no fucking way people are getting past the first area of THATCHER'S TECHBASE without being able to turn and shoot at the same time. It bothers me a lot less than I thought it would.

September 25th, 2022: Nothing of interest happens. I go do some sleep-deprived disassociating at a talk about a student doctor's plan to do post-colonial restructuring of the global pharmaceutical industry through "community action", and some more people play the THATCHER'S TECHBASE: ARCADE EDITION cabinet, including a few old men who were in town for the Labour Party Conference. I go home and play with my cat for a bit.

September 26th, 2022: The Independent, a UK newspaper, publishes an article: "Jeremy Corbyn played a version of Doom that lets you 'kill Thatcher'". About an hour later, my phone is turned off and thrown into the back of my desk.

September 27th, 2022: I find out about Denis Through The Drinking Glass, a 1984 title for the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro where you play as Denis Thatcher and have to try and escape from Maggie's lair in No. 10 while maintaining a certain blood-alcohol level. I think it's kinda funny that despite hours of research on the original THATCHER'S TECHBASE, I never found this game. Life is crazy like that!

September 28th, 2022: I do an interview with a newspaper journalist where I'm just filled with this overwhelming urge to just, I dunno, keep apologising for how ridiculous every story I'm telling sounds. This can't actually have happened, can it?

September 29th, 2022: After doing some "ideological trolling" with a very tired and exasperated BBC intern, I sign over the rights for THATCHER'S TECHBASE to be used as material on Friday night's """political comedy""" panel shows in exchange for some private donations.

September 30th, 2022: THATCHER'S TECHBASE appears on BBC 1 panel show Have I Got News For You, wherein British newspaper editor and satirist Ian Hislop compares CyberThatcher to the current prime minister, Liz Truss. On Twitter, I jokingly claim this is yet another example of the BBC's left-wing bias and a woman from Basingstoke sends me a DM to accuse me of being a traitor to the nation of Great Britain because I "only think about the 1%". Whoops!

October 1st, 2022: I discover that there is a mod for DOOM II called Pinochestein 3D. The final boss of the wad is a giant robotic Pinochet. I've never heard of this one before either. Pretty cool!

October 2nd, 2022: THATCHER'S TECHBASE: ARCADE EDITION is released to the general public.

October 3rd, 2022: Jeremy Corbyn plays THATCHER'S TECHBASE: ARCADE EDITION in Duke Nukem 3D mod Duke Smoochem 3D.

October 4th, 2022: Conceding to pressure from the Scottish Greens, Living Rent and other tenants' unions, the Scottish Government institutes an immediate rent freeze for six months and makes it illegal for tenants to be evicted during this time.

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There isn't much to say about THATCHER'S TECHBASE: ARCADE EDITION that isn't covered by the events above. If you've ever "finished" making something - an essay, a presentation, a drawing, a song, a game - you'll probably know the feeling of wanting as little to do with your work as possible once it's done. We all know the Picasso quote about paintings never being complete. It's not necessarily a feeling of shame or dislike for what you've created, but when you finally hit 'Save' on a _𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋_𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋_𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋.𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐣 once and for all, there's always this sense of a weight being lifted - a job done, a book closed, an era's ending. A past confronted, hopefully, by your idea, and now captured in some media that lies external to your self.

As I spoke about in the original review for THATCHER'S TECHBASE, there was an overwhelming sense during this project that I'd kicked out a stone of a joke and caused it - sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally - to gather more and more moss of meaning, rolling downhill at such speed that I couldn't really contain it. By the end of 2021 I thought it was all finally, mercifully, over, but somehow the stone managed to roll back up a bigger hill and start the nightmare all over again, with me reluctantly chasing behind it.

The funny thing about THATCHER'S TECHBASE is that I spent a lot of the intervening year haunting myself with the ghost of its imperfections as a mechanical device. I was ultimately nonplussed by its crass political implications, and the gamer within bubbled over to fuss about gameplay. Dumb, I know; but for some reason, people messaging me about bugs, puzzle problems and balance fuckups concerned me far more than the people who wanted to report the WAD to the police for unthink. I spent a lot of time in my own head about such a trivial issue, grappling over whether I should go back and fix layouts and redo encounters and hand over more ammo to players who were SOL an hour into the WAD, my own little welfare state in the battle against Thatcher. Fortunately, a good friend of mine shook me back to reality by pointing out how fucking annoying it was when George Lucas went in and changed Han Solo shooting Greedo in the Star Wars movies. I didn't wanna be like Kanye West patching The Life of Pablo or some shit, did I? I'm glad I put the stupidity behind me and moved on with my life, leaving that Save button untouched for good, accepting that I'd made what I'd made.

... For a while, lol. Just when I thought I was out, they etc. etc. etc. Oh, go on then.

If there was something that was going to draw me back to THATCHER'S TECHBASE, it was always the chance to rectify the failures of the project that lay beyond just correcting linedefs and spawn triggers. While I was delighted that Tennent's Lager made good on their promise to donate money to charity in exchange for me compromising my perfectly legal right to express myself in a satirical work, I was still pissed off that they chose not to associate themselves with some of the more "contentious" organisations on my list. Partnering with Living Rent on ARCADE EDITION was the resurrection of a dying dream come true once more for a useless bohemian layabout like me, a spindly little computer guy who looks at tenant action movements and picket lines up and down the country and feels like he can't do jack shit but spectate and hold a placard up the back.

You read about what's going on in the world in newspapers and on Twitter; you see the results of government policy in your bills, your loans and the rising cost of milk and bread at the supermarket; somehow, it still feels abstract, remote, and far away. But actually going to a "hard left extremist fringe event" (per the Daily Mail article on THATCHER'S TECHBASE, September 26th, 2022) makes a lot of this evil become real to you in a sense it hasn't been before: You see people planning military-like operations to keep soup kitchens and food banks running; you see collections that will keep picket lines fed and watered for weeks at a time; you see people teaching other how to get out of handcuffs; and then you look over at the little MDF box with its game controller hanging over some Margaret Thatcher stickers and feel like you didn't really do jack shit but make jokes and crack wise about the end of the world. I was stewing in this feeling for a lot of that Saturday at The World Transformed, a combination of sleep deprivation and day-drinking becoming an ironic feeling of self-involvement at a festival of collective action. Oh poor me and my selfish little video game toy. What have I actually done here?

That night, however, I attended a rally in support of the striking dock workers in Liverpool, who were standing in the rain only a few miles down the road from the festival. Many hard-working people spoke passionately about their unfair treatment and burning desire to address the injustice of neoliberal wealth distribution, but there was one speech in particular that has stuck to my mind. A union leader from the Port of Baltimore told the crowd about the 2013 longshore workers strike, and how the 2000 members of the International Longshoremen's Association had stepped up across the world to defend the rights of their friends in the United States by threatening strikes and collective action of their own, no matter how small or large the organisation - including the men and women who were now picketing the Liverpool Docks at this very moment. He spoke of a lodge banner that's brought out for special occasions like these. It’s almost a hundred years old. A simple symbol - two hands, joined together in a union. That’s what the labour movement means. You support me and I support you. Whoever you are. Wherever you come from. Whatever you can do. Shoulder to shoulder. Hand to hand.

If you’re one of the people who’s supported us by putting money into buckets - the literal one lurking within the innards of THATCHER'S TECHBASE: ARCADE EDITION's flimsy wooden hide, the virtual one at the other end of the QR code on its display panel, or in the real/virtual buckets of any other charity that's come to your attention because of the wad - thank you. Because what you’ve given the people who made THATCHER'S TECHBASE is more than money. It’s friendship. And when you’re in a fight as bitter and as important as this one, against an enemy - like the CyberThatcher and her minions - who is so much bigger, so much stronger than you... Well, to find out that you have a friend you never knew existed - it’s the best thing in the world. So thank you. 🙂