Certain video games don’t necessarily require innovation, originality or trailblazing to stand out from the crowd as works to be celebrated and classics to be. Specifically, titles in the indie scene such as Hyper Light Drifter, Dusk or ZeroRanger have proven time and time again that execution and presentation can far outweigh the well from which their ideas are stolen from, and whose aesthetic perfectionism and gameplay polish and varnish ultimately become the craft to be praised.

Signalis is one such title, unabashedly putting on full display its 5th gen survival horror roots and influences, both visually and mechanically, with a sci-fi coat of paint that covers it with a collage of homages to groundbreaking works that range from Evangelion, Blade Runner and Blame!, all the way to Tarkosvsky, Lynch and Lovecraft. Marrying Resident Evil’s resource management tension with Silent Hill’s purgatorial psychological assault lends Signalis the opportunity to evoke an unparalleled lyrical and dreamlike experience that never sacrifices the tenets from which those series made their name from, perfecting the art of environmental storytelling and backtracking revelatory dread.

In an age of understandably unsubtle and overbearing dystopian nightmares presented through art, Signalis instead places much of its totalitarian regime imagery into the background of its setting, visuals, lore and puzzles, making its love story of inevitable tragedy the central core of the narrative. The retrofuturism of Signalis serves not only as an artistic pursuit for tactile and analogue nostalgia, but also as a tool to convey the priorities of a fascist empire that has consciously dwindled the mental liberty, self-expression and unconformity of the main characters now stuck in an ever perpetuating restrictive world of redundancy and self-mutilation, doomed to a slow, empty death.

The cohesiveness in which Signalis threads its story, gameplay and art design is ultimately the game’s greatest feat. It elevates an otherwise universal and familiar language to new heights, thanks to a talented dev duo that understands the strengths of their interests and influences and manages to funnel into a production effort that would put many triple A endeavors to shame. Can’t wait for what rose-engine has in store next, this is a homerun already.

One of the most unfortunately Mid games of all time. Every vertical slice of this game LOOKS amazing, FEELS really compelling, and seems as if it is amazing, but it does NOT stretch across an entire game's length. It's one of the most bizarre feats of game design ever, to make 30 seconds of fun but not one whole minute of it.

I adore the game's commitment to darkness, utilizing beautiful 2004 stencil shadows to create a true sense of claustrophobic darkness that only the Thief games can match, and the willingness to surround you in that darkness. But I absolutely fucking despise the BFG Edition for capitulating to morons who thought the darkness was a NEGATIVE and not something Doom 3 should have doubled down on.

What really kills Doom 3 is a few things: the terrible spread on the shotgun that renders a weapon you are going to use a lot really bad. The terrible damage indicator that shakes and flashes your screen, which makes getting ganked more annoying than it is frightening. But most importantly: this game is boring.

It starts off so promising, an effectively tension driven survival horror game, and as you get more powerful weapons you start to feel more in control of the situation, but there are so many grey corridors you can go through before you are just like, "I don't really care anymore." Unfortunately, Doom 3 ends up here when you still have like, 9 hours left of game to play. It's a genuine chore to beat this game, it isn't able to sustain pressure like System Shock 2, which it clearly was paying attention to. But it also isn't paced like Half Life, where you are never doing the same thing for too long. Hell, its gameplay loop isn't as perfect as FEAR, ensuring you wouldn't want to do anything else. It's just a kind of annoying gameplay loop that gets old real fast.

Like I said, a huge shame. As the way the game looks, the panicky way the guns swing around as you are getting swarmed in the dark, the animations on the guns are just superb, there is so much here that makes me wish I was a diehard Doom 3 defender, but unfortunately the bigger picture proves everyone right: this shit is Mid.

Klonoa: Door to Phantomile sigue siendo una obra que no ha sido replicada. Es una experiencia bastante única en el repertorio de la consola, es decir, ser un plataformero sumamente pulido y bien diseñado no es suficiente para ser algo realmente especial, pero ¿qué dirían de uno que se mantenga consistente en temática y estética para ser armónico con cada uno de sus elementos?, o ¿qué tal uno que ignore las tendencias de la época y juegue con sus tropos para hacerlo alcanzar un nivel de auto-entendimiento aún mayor?

Pasa que detrás de su aparente simplicidad, se esconde un maravilloso mensaje que ha sido pasado por alto en las discusiones del juego por bastante tiempo, razón por la que decidí explayarlo con atención al detalle en un video análisis. Si piensas que la historia acaba en lo triste y amargo que resulta su giro argumental en vez de notar la inspiradora carta de amor que simboliza su totalidad, déjame decirte que hay mucho más detrás de la Puerta a Phantomile.

~ ANÁLISIS COMPLETO: https://youtu.be/rBbGlcSyjtM ~