I'm not gonna go ahead and say that Rift Apart is without issue or anything. Playing for too long in one session can cause weird visual glitches - hell, I ran into my fair share of collision glitches. Those are easy fixes. My main gripe is the reliance on enemy hordes in the middle of boss battles - it's either a great way to spice things up, or it makes certain segments more cumbersome than they should be.

For every part of Rift Apart I didn't enjoy, however, there's about 10 other parts that hit it right out of the park. The healthy weapon variety, and how fun they are to use, will have you switching for your life and improvising strategies on the fly. Your movement/combat options and the feel of the controls are spot-on - Phantom Dash is one of my new favorite moves in any game. Every planet is visually distinct and well-built in lore, and there's a myriad of cool setpieces.

I mean, what can I even say? This is peak action gaming. I'm floored by how every character has a complete arc - even the scrunkly little robot used for twin-stick shooter levels. I'm floored by what is now possible in video games. God.

it's hard for me to write a review about this game. i feel like it was designed in a lab to be optimally enjoyable for exactly me, much like how McDonald's french fries are chemically engineered to be Mathematically and Provably Delicious for the general American public.

i can't talk about Neon White without talking about Arcane Kids. in the mid-10s, being someone who staked a lot of identity into playing games was profoundly embarassing. ignoring the truly heinous shit that goes without saying, year after year, AAA studios continued to pump out "mids at best." on the other side of things, "indie" games were no longer new and were in something of an awkward puberty. i can't tell you how many "physics-based puzzle platformers with a gimmick" i had pitched to me that promised to be Actually Good. they weren't. however, during this time, the Unity weirdos were churning away in their art scenes around the globe. the new derisive joke became "make a game in unity, make a million dollars." of course, the people making these jokes didn't know what they were talking about, but i guess none of us really did back then.

---

Arcane Kids existed as something of an antithesis to the games of the time. when we had more than enough pixel-art RPGs, they gave us ZINETH. when we got innundated with walking simulators, they gave us Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective. when indies decided to try and be funny with things like Goat Simulator, we got Sonic Dreams Collection, CRAP! No One Loves Me, and this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RNCyc3hzAw). while a lot of these games were "funny" or "jokes," they always had deeper ideas to them beneath the surface around player agency, the joy of moving your avatar, the love of Videogames As Videogames.

i cannot possibly explain how strange it felt to turn on the game and have the title screen after the intro cutscene splash in with a voice echoing "NEON WHITE" as the moodiest witch house track creeps in through your headphones. the fake scanlines, the neon glow on the characters, the tone, the vibes. i thought to myself, "they finally did it." as i played more, i confirmed my suspicions.

Arcane Kids finally made the game it feels like they had been working toward all these years. blazing fast, huge jumps, easy-to-learn-but-hard-to-master, tight, violent, horny, loud, freaky, all at once. in Mission 11, as breakneck-paced breakcore blasted out of my screen, i screamed aloud in my room to my partner who was watching me play "I. FUCKING. LOVE. THIS. GAME." in time with each click of the RMB that shot me across the map at incredible speeds. in moments like this, you know for a fact that moments like Bubsy pulling out an uzi and a katana at the end of Bubsy 3D or them subjecting a crowd of people at a game conference to vape trick videos that inspired their previous game (https://youtu.be/2pO23GTaBtk?si=ldB9w6CU2UC3TkHI&t=1791) was not just them contributing to the general irony-poisoned sense of humor of the time; they legitimately thought that it was tight as fuck.

-----

one line from the infamous Arcane Kids Manifesto (https://arcanekids.com/manifesto) that i always think about is "the purpose of gameplay is to hide secrets."

at a time when even FromSoft has started to move away from their smaller, more-focused world design in favor of chasing the lucrative open-world design potential in Elden Ring, it feels amazing that we have a game like Neon White that is about intricately crafted and infinitely replayable level design. after years of waiting, we finally have the one true Indie Puzzle Platformer, but this time it has guns.

the gameplay (for me, usually) fell into a flowchart like this:
-beat a level once and get whatever medal you get
-go back to find the secret gift
-during this second trip, notice which parts of the levels you can skip or save time on that were hidden to you before
-play the level a 3rd time to get a gold medal
-use the hint from the Gold medal to get an Ace medal on your 4th time
-over time, you begin to amass a collection of "hey, did you know this quirk" movement secrets like shooting bullets, bunny hopping after a dash, or sliding with the shotgun's discard

game design that calls attention to itself like this is beautiful. level designers are artists. we've known this since Doom WADs. however, in the time since Doom we've had several games like Gears of War, Halo, and their ilk that said "wasn't the sickest part about Doom being a huge buff guy with loud guns just blasting disgusting freaks and seeing them explode???" while that does indeed whip, Neon White is on the other side of the coin saying "wasn't the best part about Doom the level design and the joy of figuring out how to move as fast as you can through a level???"

after 11 years of watching speedrunning streams nearly every day, Neon White finally made me feel like maybe i could do it too. first you pit yourself against the Ace medal time, then your friends, then the Dev Times, then your own ghost, and then the world. to this day, i have yet to have a global #1, but i've had a #2 and two #3s. i'll keep going though.

[EDIT 7/17/23: i did it :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWT2b9pwRMI]

---

Neon White is a love letter in videogame form

“Western adaptation of Snatcher” is the glib one-line review here, but it is remarkable how closely this game mimics Kojima’s Blade Runner fan-game in structure and content, to the point where I’m suspicious about whether someone from Westwood played the 1994 MegaCD release and saw the opportunity for an Officially Licensed Blade Runner™ Product. Click on a corpse, fly-by-night to a multi-storey police station, see a Coca-Cola advertising board with Japanese writing on it, that sort of cyberthing. The key difference between the two games is that Blade Runner is suffocated by the tedium of a traditional point-and-click-and-walk template - while the back of the box brags about not having any puzzles and a story that unfolds regardless of what you choose/fail to do, you’re still going to find your progression blocked by the pixellated whims of a 240p environment and the typical this-noun-then-that-noun chains that govern whether an adventure game can progress; best exemplified by me brick-walling 15 minutes before the finale because I hadn’t found out about the type of cheese sauce a sandwich had, which in turn had locked me out of a whole series of conspiracies that lead all the way back to Eldon Tyrell and the nature of human existence itself. Remember the part of the original movie where Deckard couldn’t confront Roy Batty because he’d forgotten to check which toy was in the Burger King Kidz Menu this month? (“This game really feels makes you feel like Blade Runner!” - PCGamer, November 1997)

To some extent, the game does succeed at making you really feel like Mr. Blade Runner - the music is here (amusingly, Westwood created a room the exists solely for you to stand around listening to Blade Runner Blues from the movie soundtrack), the sleaze is there, the neon is everywhere, and it does, on occasion, achieve the paranoid-android feeling of wondering and worrying whether the next person you interact with is going to be a hostile replicant (the game’s primary claim to fame is that they’re randomised on every playthrough). But it’s mostly superficial simulacra, Blade Runner for the fans who would display Rick Deckard’s Iconic Blaster Pistol on their toy shelf or drink out of a plastic whisky glass that looks like it came from the props cupboard of 2049. Gaff shows up to drop his little origami animals, but more as a referential signifier than a concerted attempt to implant any thoughts or memories beyond those of the movie; compare this with Blade Runner 2049, a sequel that used its predecessor’s philosophy as a foundation to build upon rather than outright replicate as this game does with its Dick Reckard protagonist and little Universal Studios field trips to the original sets. There’s a real lack of the ambiguity that defines Blade Runner - the (well-realised) Voight-Kampf Test’s role here as an absolute judge of character seems to fly in the face of that iconic scene with Rachael, and every crisis can be averted by presenting evidence like you’re a cyberpunk Phoenix Wright - quite the contrast with boozy Harrison Ford showing up half a day late to every crime scene reeking of cigs and regrets. Frankly, I expected more from the writing team who gave us this.

With regards to the “Enhanced Edition” claims - all signs seem to point to this being a big downgrade from the ScummVM port that launched on GOG a few years ago, and my playthrough on the Switch crashed to desktop twice with debug info being written to console (no!!! bad nightdive!!!) Avoid, unless you really wanna play this on console for whatever reason - the “classic” edition is bundled with every purchase of the new PC version now. There was a whole bunch of drama between the scene hackers who originally brought it back from the dead and the otherwise-spotless Nightdive, but seems like they’ve decided to bury the hatchet (due to literal death threats from “fans” over a 90s point and click game) so I won’t get into the morality of that particular can of highly-artefacted electric worms.

Subsonic steps bound off of idyllic tiles, a steadfast one-two sprint. Clasped tightly in his hand, divine intervention is executed by the thunderclap of .500 magnum, a heavenly send-off alternating between the gentle coaxing of automatic fire and the definitive blade of retribution. Closing in, denizens of hell launch bioluminescent bombardments, lethal brimstone sending you down a path 10,000 feet under. As if born to die, the demons are dispatched as quickly as they rise, beings materialized, analyzed, and pulverized within nanoseconds. Speed and focus become one, repetitions on idealized concepts pointing towards sublimity. Your holy arms holstered, your sanctified sword sheathed, you cast your sight upon diamond excellence, an eternity encapsulated in the blink of an eye. Now, beyond the safety of three-round bursts and lead ripostes, you see her.

Her heliotrope hues leave psychoactive cigarette burns; if true angels drive one to madness, her presence in Heaven is well established. Like sewing needles piercing taut eardrums, her voice spikes out, an aural trepanation. More lethal than chambered rounds and heavy ordinance, she implants in your brain the same innate fear that courses through you as you enter convention halls, the same fight-or-flight micropanic as the first step within a college’s Japanese Culture Club, for she is the eidolon of modern otakudom. When you breach the seal on Neon White’s world, what resides underneath isn’t the long-forgotten Y2K Japanimation mecca, but a puréed distillation of the wretched refuse of anime fandom, the Anitwitter and r/animemes congregation speaking in post-post-ironic references, where every man is either a razor-edged twink or a hulking himbo, and every woman either an e-girl yandere or a wannabe mommy-dom that covets humanized mediocrity. Buried under the pretense of being “by freaks, for freaks”, the reality of Neon White puts you in the nightmarish scenario of living through the dreams of the most typical of indie weeb softboys.

Such is the loop of Neon White: for every moment of precise platforming bliss, an hour of Young Thotticus making your amygdala fire on all cylinders, a century of watching history’s straightest couple verbally hate-fuck, an eon of remembering Tumblr-Sexy-Man-ified Junkrat saying “you were my Sasuke!”, an eternity of knowing that the core message of the game is that you have a moral imperative to forgive those who abused you in life, lest you literally go to Hell. Both sides of the equation, fraught and unstable, struggle to maintain a semblance of balance.

When Ben Esposito, Enemy of the People, claimed this project as a game “for freaks”, it masks the reality of what Neon White stands for. Decked in the style of the forums of yesteryear, Online Signature UI and Neocities buttons intact, with a heart beating to the 200bpm pulse of breakcore, the aestheticism of pre-Web 2.0 culture is broken by the asphyxiating smog of The Modern Anime Fan. Sincerity and passion die at the cross of venomous disingenuity, nailed down by ironic detachment and love in the key of “Waifu of the Month”. The work of Angel Matrix, the latest in rebrands of Esposito's predictable shtick, axes even the most optimistic of readings: Neon White is the new face of pretension, wearing the oh-so-relatable mask of an adored time for the sake of drawing attention, not out of love, nostalgia, or passion. Soullessness masquerading as soulful.

and someone please tell the writers that run-on sentences don’t read as like, relatable or quirky. It just looks bad. It’s like, your job to Make Text Read Good. come on.

impressively, all of sonic team's greatest minds have come together to fuck up remastering already great ports of 30 year old games


if you'd love to pay five dollars for expansive day one content such as... the characters moving in the menus, then this is the game for you. integer scaling? fuck you. everything is blurry, play at 320x224 for the authentic Sega Genesis experience. shitty DRM to protect these untouchable, pirate proof genesis games? check. do you like your games optimized, because we don't, god bless whatever rig you're using because it won't get past the title screen. high quality audio? nope, it sounds and loops like shit. also we couldn't get the sonic 3 songs back so here are awful rearrangements of the prototype tracks that sounded fine lmfaooooo. welcome to the museum featuring NEVER BEFORE seen content such as youtube.com sonic mania adventures part 2. it's a 2d platformer but sorry! you're not allowed to bind anything to arrow keys.

you get the idea. somehow, this isn't all of it. sucks because somewhere under the slew of baffling decisions and technical issues is a great collection, but I suppose sonic being run through a shit filter a few dozen times is par for the course now. better versions of these games exist already via Sonic 1 Forever, Sonic 2 Absolute, Sonic 3 AIR, and Sonic CD Restored, but if you want to play the last two legally, you're probably out of luck - because both sonic 3 and CD have been delisted.

at least the cutscenes are boss

"Please buy my new, definitive collection of classic Sonic games, featuring new content like mission modes, animations, wid-"

Shut the fuck up Iizuka, ain't nobody gonna drop 40 dollars for some dumbass romset.

"ソニックオリジンズを購入するか、私があなたの指を取ります！"

Anything for you, my queen. I only regret that I have but 40 dollars to lose for you, my queen.

This era of gaming was sort of a bloodbath for Japanese games that tried to chase western trends only to end up being generic, often baffling messes that ended up alienating their audiences, most of whom were never interested in the games they were chasing after in the first place.

Vanquish was absolutely not one of those cases. It's a perfect example of taking a genre that was feeling horribly over-saturated and done to death (namely, cover based third person shooters) and putting an inventive and wildly fun spin on it, turning it into an absolutely manic and entertaining joy that's basically just a "character action" game (as horribly vague as that genre term is) disguised as a shooter.

I love the aesthetic as well. Like the game itself, it feels like a smart, well-realized mashup of the gritty, realistic art direction that games of this era loved, but meshing it with a certain sci-fi look and styling that almost feels like its descended from the Dreamcast in some ways. The soundtrack, though not really anything I'm hankering to listen to outside of the game, fits this vibe quite well too.

There's a few slow, boring bits in the already brief campaign, the story is pretty boring (though it has its moments) and if I'm telling the truth, in retrospect the lack of any multiplayer does genuinely feel like a bit of a missed opportunity. But overall, this is a genuine classic from Platinum, and definitely one of their finest hours.

Shame the initial release sold like shit, though. In another timeline Sega and Platinum could've had a genuine franchise on their hands.

After my first session of Dokapon, I put a review up on this site maligning how I had been dead for about a quarter of the playtime thus far, beset by a whole pile of RNG bullshit and being fucked over by every other player in the game. I was having a fun time but sheesh.

Oh, how little i knew.

Dokapon Kingdom's sheer chaos starts at a level that makes Mario Party look like checkers. From week 1, straight up murder is on the table, with all players having the ability to fight both each other and enemies within a RPG battle system which is, of course, heavily luck based. All the while you're meant to be clearing towns of monsters and doing quests to earn the highest monetary worth.

And then things get worse.

The sheer amount of things that WILL fuck you over in full playthrough of dokapon, often completely out your control, is remarkable. The game will both continually mess with you with random events, broken enemies, stupid locations which are hard to get to, random drops, etc, whilst also giving your fellow players all the tools to make it worse. Want to send a killer robot after your friends? Sure. Want to nuke your friend across the map with magic? Go ahead. Want to ruin two sessions' progress for everyone by forcing them to your current position? Yeah.

With Dokapon, it's not a question of will you get fucked, it's when, and how. And somehow, I have no idea how, the game constantly one-ups itself. Just when you think it can't get any more stupid, it does. This is partially due to the map opening up slowly throughout the game, giving access to more places to lose, more insane dungeons to get caught up with, more places to be crabs in a bucket together. And it's an absolute riot.

I think the genius of Dokapon is that it gives you just the right amount of control. It's an RNG-fueled madness festival for sure, but the game lets you influence things, lets you play in enough different ways, lets you go about enough diferent means to progress and raise your own stonks that there's a true tension to when the best laid plans of mice and men fall apart, or very occasionally, don't.

During the 30 hour ish playthrough we did, there were just too many great moments to count. So many story arcs of each of us all murdering each other as we pursued one goal, so many times where we just murdered each other for dubious reasoning, about 10 different truces and agreements broken, a lot of lying, a lot of begging, a fair amount of stealing, a few times sparing people by exchanging their deaths for putting poop on their head and only two or three complete collapses of the economy.

I could not begin to tell you how fun it is. After a first session where i was feeling kinda peeved at the game, I slowly began appreciating the absurdity, and when it was at my expense, I started laughing more. And somehow, between all it's randomness it did tend to even things out and make for a game that was tense and surprisingly close the whole entire time, even after 700 turns - which is a testament for how good a manged chaos it pulls off, and maybe also a testament to how much we enjoyed fucking each other over constantly.

Of course the game has plenty of problems. Many of which are intwined with it's benefits. If you don't have the right sort of environment for this I think it could legitimately make you lose friends (which to be fair, is advertised). There's a level of camraderie needed at some point, and you kinda need to understand that being murdered is really quite funny. If you take this game too seriously, and focus too hard on the ultimate winner, you will not have the best of times.

There's also just a fair amount of broken stuff, and weird balance. There's a handful of routes to effectively infinite money that you basically need to ban as a house rule, Magic is either incredibly busted or useless iwth no inbetween as a stat, and a couple of the super secret classes are weirdly useless despite being a massive pain in the arse to even obtain. It's kinda dubious and i'd chalk up a lot of it to this game effectively being a straight remake of the original Super Famicom Dokapon - warts and all.

A natural consequence of the game system is also that the endgame gets a little stalemate-heavy if you're trying to guarantee first place. Because the game finishing relies someone beating the final dungeon and getting the big final reward, but that also takes quite a while, it creates a game state where it's arguably best to let some other fucker do it. It's not a huge issue, but I think it's something i'd probably house rule around in the future.

But who cares about that, because this game is incredible. It really did not take long for Dokapon Kingdom sessions to become the highlights of my week, eventually trying to sneakily suggest the sessions happen more often than usual in our group chat and finding that, for some fucking reason, everyone was as ok with that as I was.

I have outright never had as much fun in a Multiplayer game. It's a game where i got 30 Hours plus of scheming, dying, killing, and most importantly, laughing my ass off. Yes, you probably a group that is level-headed enough to not actively want to kill each other afterwords. But as a lens for sheer absurdity, comedy, and extracting the best moments out of group interactions, I am not sure i will ever experience something again quite like Dokapon Kingdom.

It is an absolute masterpiece.

Special shoutout to fellow players:
Sombes (This was her fucking idea)
Arnust (Schemer and no balls)
Tacos (Banged his head on the table at least once this playthrough)