" Heard the bosun ain't doin so well after Morocco "
X " Aye, what does he have? "
" 'Perantly is something called Ligma "
" среди нас самозванец | sredi nas samozvanets "
X " Who's that Stevay Jobs?"
" ME BALLS "
gun shot

Sometimes your first impressions are wrong. I too found Dead Cells enthralling in the beginning. You stab and shoot and dodge and go: oh this. But the more I played, the less this mattered. What does this serve?

We still care too much about gamefeel. See Destiny. See also Celeste. There’s something icky about the way game critics fetishize it. That luscious feedback, that perfect extension of your will, that zone you wish to stay in forever. Gross.

I’m not here for your goodfeeling weapons. I’m here for enemies that fuck with my feelings. I’m here for encounters. But Dead Cells has no taste for that. Most of its enemies are locked to their tiny platforms, pacing like caged tigers, awaiting slaughter. It’s all discrete and exploitable. There’s no real dynamism. That precious this becomes rote. Nothing accumulates.

Except your cells, of course. Because Dead Cells never wants you to leave empty-handed. The metagame is all reassuring progress and new toys. It’s a people-pleaser wrapped in a hardcore skin. It’s roguelike comfort food, which goes against the whole point of randomness and permanent death. I don’t even care about getting good. I’m here for chance and uncertainty. I’m here to feel our contingency. And this game feeling, this, is not here.

I've been trying to get to this review, but every time I start it, I think about eating handfuls of delicious Pikmin and I get too distracted. I like to imagine myself lying flat on my belly with my mouth open, hundreds of Pikmin lined up and marching right down my gullet. As you can imagine, it's hard to write a review with such decadent fantasies dancing through my mind.

If I could, I would shrink myself down to Pikmin size, and like Captain Olimar, I would gain their trust. There are so many Pikmin that they would never notice one or two of their own missing. Rather than satiate myself on many Pikmin, I can gorge myself on one. A plump Pikmin roasting over an open fire, filling my nose with such smells, my ears with the gentle crackles and pops of its searing flesh... Ah, a delight for the senses.

By the time my many crimes are exposed it will be too late. My belly will have popped, come undone like some flimsy seam on an old overworn shirt, and they will have to roll my bloated form into the autopsy room. "Cause of death: overconsumption of Pikmin," they'll note. "At least the bastard died with a smile."