NudistSquid
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Cruelty Squad
2021
Today is the 20th of January 2022. I finished this game on the 26th of November last year. Every day since then I have woke up thinking about this game.
When characters in a movie are playing a game on the TV with a PS2 controller, this is the game on the TV. Cruelty Squad was made by a man who has heard of the concept of a game but doesn't have the facilities to actually play one. This game is the opposite of a novelist living in a cave for 20 years to write his magnum opus. This is a man who has plugged his brain into the mainframe. It isn't that Cruelty Squad is post-post-post-modernist - Cruelty Squad is post-criticism, it is caveman art drawn with faeces, it is a sociological phenomenon.
A QWERTY keyboard will wash up on a beach 1000 years from now and anthropologists will use it as proof that we had 100 fingers. They will play Cruelty Squad and say we were blind and deaf.
The levels in Cruelty Squad are impossibilities. Ever since Adventure was released in 1980 we have been hurtling down a predetermined path laid out by God and level designers, alternating between vast open spaces and linear corridors forever, like a fractal. With every game released, the remaining pool of possible games that are left to be created shrinks, not just because one more was just made, but also that the existence of art will influence the existence of other art. There isn't an anti-Mario-64. No one would make an anti-Mario-64. Their brain is permanently cursed with the knowledge that Mario 64 exists and all future decisions will be affected by that.
That isn't to say anything about the quality of Mario 64. The trajectory of video games has been altered by lesser and worse games, but alas. Cruelty Squad is the product of a person with no brain to curse, a spotless mind. Every single level I played surprised me with its ingenuity. I often found myself laughing out loud, not at the non-sequitur or clever jokes, but at how ridiculous and funny the level design is.
When characters in a movie are playing a game on the TV with a PS2 controller, this is the game on the TV. Cruelty Squad was made by a man who has heard of the concept of a game but doesn't have the facilities to actually play one. This game is the opposite of a novelist living in a cave for 20 years to write his magnum opus. This is a man who has plugged his brain into the mainframe. It isn't that Cruelty Squad is post-post-post-modernist - Cruelty Squad is post-criticism, it is caveman art drawn with faeces, it is a sociological phenomenon.
A QWERTY keyboard will wash up on a beach 1000 years from now and anthropologists will use it as proof that we had 100 fingers. They will play Cruelty Squad and say we were blind and deaf.
The levels in Cruelty Squad are impossibilities. Ever since Adventure was released in 1980 we have been hurtling down a predetermined path laid out by God and level designers, alternating between vast open spaces and linear corridors forever, like a fractal. With every game released, the remaining pool of possible games that are left to be created shrinks, not just because one more was just made, but also that the existence of art will influence the existence of other art. There isn't an anti-Mario-64. No one would make an anti-Mario-64. Their brain is permanently cursed with the knowledge that Mario 64 exists and all future decisions will be affected by that.
That isn't to say anything about the quality of Mario 64. The trajectory of video games has been altered by lesser and worse games, but alas. Cruelty Squad is the product of a person with no brain to curse, a spotless mind. Every single level I played surprised me with its ingenuity. I often found myself laughing out loud, not at the non-sequitur or clever jokes, but at how ridiculous and funny the level design is.
America, America, Chicago to Missouri. When i think of the USA's depiction in video games produced within it's own borders, my mental state is assaulted by images of heroic patriotism, defenders of the glorious nation and it's allies repelling evil invaders and bringing honor to the fatherland. The parallel domestic depiction of the nation would of course be the titles that revolve around the mindless violence and larceny that civilians feel compelled to commit, the equally-popular crime game that represents the nation in a simultaneously similar and opposite way.
The foreign idea of the USA has only ever been critical from my experience. Games like Wolfenstein criticize the torrid history of racism and oppression, while games like Dead Rising are simply extended hitpieces on the for-profit medical and general media calousness.
One would then consider Japanese developers when it comes to making American games. The seemingly apolitical hyper-reality action game that's fueled by nothing but pure adreneline and admiration for the American-made tales of military might and superheroism in ordinary soldiers.
Sakura Wars V falls somewhere outside all of them. A game released in 2005 that attempts to romanticize The Big Apple in the way the previous games had done for the settings of Tokyo and Paris. So Long, My Love is a game about New York created through the perspective of a Japanese developer writing a story about a japanese immigrant living life in the city. It's a simple game about learning to live with the hustle and bustle of the greatest in the city in the world.
What strikes me so hard about the game is just how positive it is about the USA, in all aspects, and how it attempts to blend american cultural values and rhetoric together with the usual themes associated with this kind of story. At a certain point in the second half of the game, The Revolutionary War, The Civil War, and the two-party system are cited as examples of americans putting aside their differences to work for the greater good, the typical "power of freindship" story being compared to these concepts. There is a certain knee-jerk reaction when to be had when the game beats you over the head with narrative of New York being a city of hard-work and dreams, a cultural melting pot of people that accept each other. Since stories usually have this little thing called "conflict" things aren't peaceful and just 100% of time, the game delves into the topics of racism, organized crime, class divide, gentrification, poverty, and homelessness with only slightly more intricacy than you would expect from a game about a theater troupe fighting demons with giant robots.
As for things like gameplay i felt somewhat lukewarm while playing it, but was ultimately satisfied by the unique semi-real time strategy combat, and the heavily unique usage of setpieces. No two levels in this game felt the same, but that could also be a flaw since it means that you have to spend your first attempt at basically every map just figuring out what you were doing. I find the concept of trial and error to be antithecial to a good strategy game, a strategic victory should be brought by proper thinking, not brute force. I did strongly admire the overwhelmingly variaty between the 6 playable characters, all having their own types of attack, move range, super attacks, even their animations have so personality in them, it's the kind of attention to meaningful detail that is rarely seen in modern games.
Not being able to skip animations is always a bummer, and it's not any different in this game. I was playing this on an emulator and making frequemt use of the speed-up function, but even then the tedium was palpable by the end. It's a thorough mixed bag in terms of combat.
As for the VN elements, Sakura Wars has always been the series that i felt accomplished this sort of non-gameplay the best, the high points of this game are all the dialogue and QTE segmants, due in no small part to the genuinely excellent character writing. Even when certain characters aren't the focus in the story they still really stand out, this is one of those stories where the smaller moments are going to stick with you the most.
Choice in Sakura Wars falls inbetween the two pillars of "nothing you do matters" and "every route is a different story entirely", there's more than a few moments in which you make a choice only for it to essentially be erased in order for the narrative to proceed as planned. Your choices will never matter in the grander scheme of things but i found myself making plenty of decisions that felt like they actually affected my enjoyement of the game, again, some of the best parts of this game are entirely optional.
The one thing i genuinely HATED about this game are the technical aspects, the atrocious audio mixing that makes the (often bad) voice acting borderline inaudible at times, the slow-ass UI, unintuitive button assigments, etc. Most of this is probably just the fact that it's an old game.
Overall, i can't name a batter japanese game about america, nor can i name a better dating sim/strategy hybrid video game. Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love left a fairly large impression on me by the end, to the point where i was thinking about going back to it several different times over the 6 years it took me to complete it. It's the black sheep of the series, and the game that some might say put the franchise on hiatus for nearly 15 years, but i never once felt that this game was anything other than stellar.
The foreign idea of the USA has only ever been critical from my experience. Games like Wolfenstein criticize the torrid history of racism and oppression, while games like Dead Rising are simply extended hitpieces on the for-profit medical and general media calousness.
One would then consider Japanese developers when it comes to making American games. The seemingly apolitical hyper-reality action game that's fueled by nothing but pure adreneline and admiration for the American-made tales of military might and superheroism in ordinary soldiers.
Sakura Wars V falls somewhere outside all of them. A game released in 2005 that attempts to romanticize The Big Apple in the way the previous games had done for the settings of Tokyo and Paris. So Long, My Love is a game about New York created through the perspective of a Japanese developer writing a story about a japanese immigrant living life in the city. It's a simple game about learning to live with the hustle and bustle of the greatest in the city in the world.
What strikes me so hard about the game is just how positive it is about the USA, in all aspects, and how it attempts to blend american cultural values and rhetoric together with the usual themes associated with this kind of story. At a certain point in the second half of the game, The Revolutionary War, The Civil War, and the two-party system are cited as examples of americans putting aside their differences to work for the greater good, the typical "power of freindship" story being compared to these concepts. There is a certain knee-jerk reaction when to be had when the game beats you over the head with narrative of New York being a city of hard-work and dreams, a cultural melting pot of people that accept each other. Since stories usually have this little thing called "conflict" things aren't peaceful and just 100% of time, the game delves into the topics of racism, organized crime, class divide, gentrification, poverty, and homelessness with only slightly more intricacy than you would expect from a game about a theater troupe fighting demons with giant robots.
As for things like gameplay i felt somewhat lukewarm while playing it, but was ultimately satisfied by the unique semi-real time strategy combat, and the heavily unique usage of setpieces. No two levels in this game felt the same, but that could also be a flaw since it means that you have to spend your first attempt at basically every map just figuring out what you were doing. I find the concept of trial and error to be antithecial to a good strategy game, a strategic victory should be brought by proper thinking, not brute force. I did strongly admire the overwhelmingly variaty between the 6 playable characters, all having their own types of attack, move range, super attacks, even their animations have so personality in them, it's the kind of attention to meaningful detail that is rarely seen in modern games.
Not being able to skip animations is always a bummer, and it's not any different in this game. I was playing this on an emulator and making frequemt use of the speed-up function, but even then the tedium was palpable by the end. It's a thorough mixed bag in terms of combat.
As for the VN elements, Sakura Wars has always been the series that i felt accomplished this sort of non-gameplay the best, the high points of this game are all the dialogue and QTE segmants, due in no small part to the genuinely excellent character writing. Even when certain characters aren't the focus in the story they still really stand out, this is one of those stories where the smaller moments are going to stick with you the most.
Choice in Sakura Wars falls inbetween the two pillars of "nothing you do matters" and "every route is a different story entirely", there's more than a few moments in which you make a choice only for it to essentially be erased in order for the narrative to proceed as planned. Your choices will never matter in the grander scheme of things but i found myself making plenty of decisions that felt like they actually affected my enjoyement of the game, again, some of the best parts of this game are entirely optional.
The one thing i genuinely HATED about this game are the technical aspects, the atrocious audio mixing that makes the (often bad) voice acting borderline inaudible at times, the slow-ass UI, unintuitive button assigments, etc. Most of this is probably just the fact that it's an old game.
Overall, i can't name a batter japanese game about america, nor can i name a better dating sim/strategy hybrid video game. Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love left a fairly large impression on me by the end, to the point where i was thinking about going back to it several different times over the 6 years it took me to complete it. It's the black sheep of the series, and the game that some might say put the franchise on hiatus for nearly 15 years, but i never once felt that this game was anything other than stellar.
Guitar Hero
2005
Guitar Hero was everywhere until it wasn't. This franchise completely defined video games in the mid-aughts, being synonymous with video games in the media, Guitar Hero was the Pokemon of the 2000's. Within 6 years, the Guitar Hero franchise went from nonexistent, to the second most profitable current brand in video games, to nonexistent once more.
What's truly remarkable about the first Guitar Hero game is just how much they got right on their first try. 16 years after release the game still feels like it could've come out this week. The basic controls are so heavily dependent on which of the many controllers you have, i was lucky enough to still have a 90% functional Rock Band controllers still laying around to play this series with, but everything about the digital aspect of the game just feels good. Hitting notes grants a certain level of satisfaction that you just don't get from any other kind of control scheme, that rewarding simultaneous press of the fret buttons and the strum lever are something that just never gets old. When you fail, it feels like you're screwing up, which makes it all the gratifying when you actually manage to succeed. Guitar Hero is a game where playing well from start to finish doesn't feel as meaningful as failing through most of the song and managing to barely scrape by with a proverbial D+. This game did an excellent job at giving you a sense of worth with your performance, with was especially immersive with this game that focuses so hard on inserting you into the world of Rock.
The setlist was the part of the game that was most improved upon in later iterations. The original lineup of tracks is far from perfect, but certainly not weak. I think this game does a fairly good job at representimg multiple genres, but obviously it's going to lean more to the ones that feel closer to the vibe the game is going for, there was not a particularly large amount of country or swing this time around. The thing that i noticed while playing this one is that these games have a way of elevating the music in them, the first time you play a song in Guitar Hero feels like you're hearing the song for the first time again, so even woefully overplayed tracks can still result in impactful moments. The high point of this game came from jamming out to "More Than a Feeling", a song that's overuse in film is dwarfed only by it's overuse in advertisement.
The aesthetic elements of the game, the reason that i'm playing all of these games individually instead of just loading up Clone Hero and playing 1100 songs of that, are so very simple and sweet the first time around. The enjoyment of experiencing the career of your gutarist of choice is limited with how little there actually is to the campaign, simply going from song to song in a number of different identical venues. My experience was made vastly better by the fact that i was actually playing this game in my basement, and the the first venue, is in fact, the basement of the player character. I chose to spend most of my playtime as the Number 1 Woolie Madden impersonator, Xavier Stone.
As far as firsts in a franchise go it doesn't get much better than Guitar Hero, and the series only gets better from here, but that's a story for another time.
What's truly remarkable about the first Guitar Hero game is just how much they got right on their first try. 16 years after release the game still feels like it could've come out this week. The basic controls are so heavily dependent on which of the many controllers you have, i was lucky enough to still have a 90% functional Rock Band controllers still laying around to play this series with, but everything about the digital aspect of the game just feels good. Hitting notes grants a certain level of satisfaction that you just don't get from any other kind of control scheme, that rewarding simultaneous press of the fret buttons and the strum lever are something that just never gets old. When you fail, it feels like you're screwing up, which makes it all the gratifying when you actually manage to succeed. Guitar Hero is a game where playing well from start to finish doesn't feel as meaningful as failing through most of the song and managing to barely scrape by with a proverbial D+. This game did an excellent job at giving you a sense of worth with your performance, with was especially immersive with this game that focuses so hard on inserting you into the world of Rock.
The setlist was the part of the game that was most improved upon in later iterations. The original lineup of tracks is far from perfect, but certainly not weak. I think this game does a fairly good job at representimg multiple genres, but obviously it's going to lean more to the ones that feel closer to the vibe the game is going for, there was not a particularly large amount of country or swing this time around. The thing that i noticed while playing this one is that these games have a way of elevating the music in them, the first time you play a song in Guitar Hero feels like you're hearing the song for the first time again, so even woefully overplayed tracks can still result in impactful moments. The high point of this game came from jamming out to "More Than a Feeling", a song that's overuse in film is dwarfed only by it's overuse in advertisement.
The aesthetic elements of the game, the reason that i'm playing all of these games individually instead of just loading up Clone Hero and playing 1100 songs of that, are so very simple and sweet the first time around. The enjoyment of experiencing the career of your gutarist of choice is limited with how little there actually is to the campaign, simply going from song to song in a number of different identical venues. My experience was made vastly better by the fact that i was actually playing this game in my basement, and the the first venue, is in fact, the basement of the player character. I chose to spend most of my playtime as the Number 1 Woolie Madden impersonator, Xavier Stone.
As far as firsts in a franchise go it doesn't get much better than Guitar Hero, and the series only gets better from here, but that's a story for another time.
The Good Life
2021
On October 15th, I start playing The Good Life. Its on Xbox Game Pass, so I figured I’ll just give it a try for fun. It features Naomi Haywood, a journalist in crippling debt who needs money fast. She arrives in Rainy Woods with a hatred for “country bumpkins” and a slow run speed. Her first line is her hit catchphrase: “Goddamn hellhole.” The narrator mocks her relentlessly for supposed shallowness, in a way that starts to feel cruel almost instantly.
Slowly, the game opens up and my initial frustrations vanish. When Naomi turns into a cat, she can leap over fences and explore the full map of the game. When she turns into a dog, her run speed increases. Its starting to get really fun. However, I can already tell this isn’t a game I want to sit down and play on the couch for hours. I want this mobile, so I can easily stop playing at any given moment without worrying about finding a save point. I give in and buy the game on my switch for $40. The quality of the visuals is worse, but nothing that particularly bothers me. I start to replay the prologue and finish up sidequests faster. This, initially, gives me more money.
There’s several meters to keep track of. A food meter, a health meter, a stamina meter, an awake meter, and an invisible stress meter. Health meter shouldn’t be confused with HP. The instant the prologue ends, I go to eat some food to rebuild Naomi's food meter. However, it was too many sweet foods too soon. There's a cracking sound and I'm informed Naomi has a toothache. This cuts one of my stats, health, in half. I go to the merged Hospital/Vet. The doctor makes me pay $150 to fix my tooth. I now have less money on this playthrough than I did on the Xbox playthrough.
Problems escalate. Naomi's overall health meter (which I initially assumed was the stress meter) is at 0. This makes her more vulnerable to illness. I step outside of Naomi's house. As the game is loading, it informs me Naomi has caught a cold. Once the village actually loads up, I can see that its raining. A cold cuts Naomi's stamina in half, making it harder to run. Cold Medicine is also $150.
I start running around the map, trying to find opportunities to make money. I learn something interesting about the fast travel system. If you use the shrines to teleport, you can travel without any problems or consequences. If you try to fast travel using the map itself (which only lets you go directly to your house, tbf), it will add to your invisible stress meter and result in a headache. This impacts her Awake meter. If the Awake meter falls to zero, she'll pass out. Fixing a headache also costs $150.
I look online for ways to make money. At this point in the game, there's three plot paths I can progress down, labelled Route A, B, and C. You can do them at any time and you aren't even stuck on them once you pick one to do. I learn that when you finish Route A, an easy minigame opens up that nets you $750 a day.
It's here that I first read the words “DrinKing game.” The reddit and steam forums seem to be consistently bemoaning whatever it might be. I assume it's a pop quiz of some kind and brush it off- I’ll look up the answers later.
Route A is pretty fun, all things considered. I learn how to ride sheep. Unlocking the sheep lets you go even faster on the map, without worrying about your stamina. I go through sheep riding challenge courses, which eventually leads me to a castle. A knight in a squeaky voice gives me a puzzle to solve, which requires me to look at some paintings of local residents and figure out which one is fully accurate to the residents. I teleport back to the village, double check some faces, and then return to the knight. The knight opens up the gate. At this point, I'm locked into Route A and can't do the rest of the game until I finish this story beat. At the castle, Naomi is transported to the distant past. As part of the quest, she needs to smuggle some old whiskeys back to the present. To get to the castle basement, you need to do another sheep riding challenge, followed by slowly carrying some kegs from one side of the room to another.
A drunk vicar enters the room. He won't let me leave unless I beat him in a drinking minigame. He… is the DrinKing.
DrinKing requires you to balance a ball/(beer bottle?) on a plank, allegedly a visual for keeping your sobriety. If the ball falls off within ten seconds, its a game over. You have to survive five different rounds of this game before you can progress.
I fail consistently for an hour.
I return to the forums, searching for help. According to all these DrinKing game threads, alcohol medicine can be used to make the challenge easier. I also see a comment that says “Its not that hard on keyboard, not sure what everyone’s problems are. This game has a lot of issues, but this isn’t one of them.” I briefly, in my darkest of hearts, consider if a Steam version would be a better experience before I toss away the thought. I’m too deep into the game now. I decide to take a risk. I reload my save to before entering the castle and go to find this medicine.
I search for an hour. The Hospital/Vet doesn't sell the medicine. The grocer doesn't sell the medicine. The witch in the woods doesn't sell the medicine.
The clothing store sells the medicine. Mercifully, its only $7 each.
The clothing store has a stock of three sobering up medicine. If I want more, I have to wait for them to restock. They restock every Monday/Thursday.
I decide to finish more of the game. I start Route C, where I meet more wacky characters and take their pictures, which finishes more sidequests. I manage to get a stock of 6 medicine and I return to Route A and the castle.
So when the game said the medicine "sobered up" Naomi, I assumed it would stop the ball from falling off the plank for a while. Instead, it extends the length of plank. This gives you more time to survive and make a recover if you're spiraling out of control, but not much.
I play the minigame for another hour. I make no progress.
I realize I need more medicine.
Throughout all this, I haven’t stopped thinking that comment about how easy this game was.
I look at the clock.
Its 6 am. I had started that current session around 8 pm, intercut with some chatting with my partner and googling. I had an eye doctor appointment in three and a half hours.
Despite all my frustration and anger and despair and existential dread…. I couldn’t put this game down for a second.
Its a bad game to play. The writing is clumsy and cliche, its mean to its protagonist in a way that makes it unclear if its targeting the player too. The mechanics, the game feel of it all, is utterly atrocious. But… I kind of love it. I don’t know how to explain why. There’s a real possibility I go for all the sidequests. I can't stop thinking about this game. Its... incredible.
Slowly, the game opens up and my initial frustrations vanish. When Naomi turns into a cat, she can leap over fences and explore the full map of the game. When she turns into a dog, her run speed increases. Its starting to get really fun. However, I can already tell this isn’t a game I want to sit down and play on the couch for hours. I want this mobile, so I can easily stop playing at any given moment without worrying about finding a save point. I give in and buy the game on my switch for $40. The quality of the visuals is worse, but nothing that particularly bothers me. I start to replay the prologue and finish up sidequests faster. This, initially, gives me more money.
There’s several meters to keep track of. A food meter, a health meter, a stamina meter, an awake meter, and an invisible stress meter. Health meter shouldn’t be confused with HP. The instant the prologue ends, I go to eat some food to rebuild Naomi's food meter. However, it was too many sweet foods too soon. There's a cracking sound and I'm informed Naomi has a toothache. This cuts one of my stats, health, in half. I go to the merged Hospital/Vet. The doctor makes me pay $150 to fix my tooth. I now have less money on this playthrough than I did on the Xbox playthrough.
Problems escalate. Naomi's overall health meter (which I initially assumed was the stress meter) is at 0. This makes her more vulnerable to illness. I step outside of Naomi's house. As the game is loading, it informs me Naomi has caught a cold. Once the village actually loads up, I can see that its raining. A cold cuts Naomi's stamina in half, making it harder to run. Cold Medicine is also $150.
I start running around the map, trying to find opportunities to make money. I learn something interesting about the fast travel system. If you use the shrines to teleport, you can travel without any problems or consequences. If you try to fast travel using the map itself (which only lets you go directly to your house, tbf), it will add to your invisible stress meter and result in a headache. This impacts her Awake meter. If the Awake meter falls to zero, she'll pass out. Fixing a headache also costs $150.
I look online for ways to make money. At this point in the game, there's three plot paths I can progress down, labelled Route A, B, and C. You can do them at any time and you aren't even stuck on them once you pick one to do. I learn that when you finish Route A, an easy minigame opens up that nets you $750 a day.
It's here that I first read the words “DrinKing game.” The reddit and steam forums seem to be consistently bemoaning whatever it might be. I assume it's a pop quiz of some kind and brush it off- I’ll look up the answers later.
Route A is pretty fun, all things considered. I learn how to ride sheep. Unlocking the sheep lets you go even faster on the map, without worrying about your stamina. I go through sheep riding challenge courses, which eventually leads me to a castle. A knight in a squeaky voice gives me a puzzle to solve, which requires me to look at some paintings of local residents and figure out which one is fully accurate to the residents. I teleport back to the village, double check some faces, and then return to the knight. The knight opens up the gate. At this point, I'm locked into Route A and can't do the rest of the game until I finish this story beat. At the castle, Naomi is transported to the distant past. As part of the quest, she needs to smuggle some old whiskeys back to the present. To get to the castle basement, you need to do another sheep riding challenge, followed by slowly carrying some kegs from one side of the room to another.
A drunk vicar enters the room. He won't let me leave unless I beat him in a drinking minigame. He… is the DrinKing.
DrinKing requires you to balance a ball/(beer bottle?) on a plank, allegedly a visual for keeping your sobriety. If the ball falls off within ten seconds, its a game over. You have to survive five different rounds of this game before you can progress.
I fail consistently for an hour.
I return to the forums, searching for help. According to all these DrinKing game threads, alcohol medicine can be used to make the challenge easier. I also see a comment that says “Its not that hard on keyboard, not sure what everyone’s problems are. This game has a lot of issues, but this isn’t one of them.” I briefly, in my darkest of hearts, consider if a Steam version would be a better experience before I toss away the thought. I’m too deep into the game now. I decide to take a risk. I reload my save to before entering the castle and go to find this medicine.
I search for an hour. The Hospital/Vet doesn't sell the medicine. The grocer doesn't sell the medicine. The witch in the woods doesn't sell the medicine.
The clothing store sells the medicine. Mercifully, its only $7 each.
The clothing store has a stock of three sobering up medicine. If I want more, I have to wait for them to restock. They restock every Monday/Thursday.
I decide to finish more of the game. I start Route C, where I meet more wacky characters and take their pictures, which finishes more sidequests. I manage to get a stock of 6 medicine and I return to Route A and the castle.
So when the game said the medicine "sobered up" Naomi, I assumed it would stop the ball from falling off the plank for a while. Instead, it extends the length of plank. This gives you more time to survive and make a recover if you're spiraling out of control, but not much.
I play the minigame for another hour. I make no progress.
I realize I need more medicine.
Throughout all this, I haven’t stopped thinking that comment about how easy this game was.
I look at the clock.
Its 6 am. I had started that current session around 8 pm, intercut with some chatting with my partner and googling. I had an eye doctor appointment in three and a half hours.
Despite all my frustration and anger and despair and existential dread…. I couldn’t put this game down for a second.
Its a bad game to play. The writing is clumsy and cliche, its mean to its protagonist in a way that makes it unclear if its targeting the player too. The mechanics, the game feel of it all, is utterly atrocious. But… I kind of love it. I don’t know how to explain why. There’s a real possibility I go for all the sidequests. I can't stop thinking about this game. Its... incredible.
No More Heroes
2007
This review contains spoilers
When asked about how the title “No More Heroes” relates to the game itself, director Goichi Suda confirmed that it’s in reference to how protagonist Travis Touchdown thinks of assassins as heroes; the game depicts him growing past his need of such idols and taking them down one by one — using all the “life lessons” he’s picked up through anime, video games and wrestling.
I’d argue the title is a bit of a double entendre though, with perhaps the even more obvious interpretation being that Travis himself is a break from the types of heroes we’re used to in games: an uncompromising display of what it would actually look like if an American weeb really did buy a lightsaber off eBay and went out to murder people to fulfill his fantasies of rising to the top of a real life-highscore board. Tired of cookie-cutter agreeable heroics? Well, here’s a game for you.
Looking at NMH in the context of Grasshopper’s previous game Killer7 is fascinating, because the evolutionary and thematic chain between the two is a lot more logical than you might first expect. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that Killer7 is Suda’s first international release, while also being explicitly about anti-Eastern xenophobia and the disturbing ways the West will impregnate the minds of following generations with their toxic ideas. What we know for sure based on interviews is that his new audience was a major consideration for Suda when designing Killer7’s absurdist control scheme, essentially asking “if you’re only walking in straight lines anyway, why not boil that process down to just holding a gigantic-ass green button?” With the controls now totally in the background, your mind is free is to fully take in the game’s sights, sounds and themes.
If Killer7 was a game about using the GameCube pad’s in-your-face A button to run through corridors and shoot at nightmarish abominations, then No More Heroes is a game about using the Wiimote’s equally in-your-face A button to slash away at regular people and do janky mini-games. If Killer7 was a game about fear of Eastern culture, then No More Heroes is a game about the commodification of that same culture. The ways that manifests may not be quite as explosive as what’s depicted in Killer7, but the implications are no less disturbing if you stop to think about them.
NMH predates the words “Gamergate” and “incel” entering our everyday vocabulary, so replaying this cold-blooded takedown of nerd culture with a 2021 perspective is almost eerie in its predictiveness. In her final phone call, Sylvia’s finally 100% blunt about the fact that Travis never had a shot with her in the first place and that he’s an idiot for ever thinking otherwise: “You are a dopy otaku assassin. The bottom of the barrel. No woman would be caught dead with you… unless she was a desperate bitch.” Given that Sylvia’s calls are delivered through the Wii remote’s speakers, which you have to hold to your head to hear, meaning she’s speaking directly to you, the connection to actual real life video game players couldn’t be more explicit.
I just used the word “predictiveness,” but it’s actually more illuminating to think about how this game, in reality, has to be a reflection of how Suda perceives our consumption of his country’s culture. It’s interesting that Travis is regularly referred to as an “otaku” by different characters; today and in the West, the word we’d instead use is “weeb” (I already have in this review,) because it’s more strongly connoted as specifically in reference to obsessive Westerners, whereas the word “otaku” is more understood as a descriptor for a “general” nerd in Japan.
From that (and some cursory research I did,) it’s safe to assume “weeaboo” doesn’t really mean anything to most Japanese people, and yet Suda clearly understands the concept and is able to portray it at its most alarming extreme. Over the course of the game, you and Travis spend mountains of cash on surface-level obsessions: you can get dripped out, buy a goofy new laser sword or dummy grind to enter your next ranked fight, but Travis’s life will never actually meaningfully progress, he’s never moving out of that motel, the game’s rigid structure of ping-ponging between work and play is never broken. The significance of either of the two endings (Travis being doomed to be continually challenged by new assassins + him and Henry literally saying they can only keep running now, never to find the exit) didn’t really hit me until I wrote down this paragraph.
Under that light, it’s NMH’s combat that warrants more detailed analysis. Again, very much like Killer7, No More Heroes is a piece of extremely impressive interface design in how the control layout, camera and general mechanics correspond into this vehicle for beautiful kinesthetic violence, but as an actual fighting system it’s fundamentally ill-fit to make for compelling engagements: having to shift between high and low stances to connect attacks and maintain combos doesn’t result in meaningful choices, you basically wail on the enemies until they decide to not take hit stun anymore, at which point it’s time to dodge roll away and look for another chance to get back in. The parry system is so free (you hold one button to block and then wiggle the analog stick) that the game has to sometimes arbitrarily decide to not reward you for it because fights would otherwise be over in like two seconds.
It’s cool that contextual QTE finishers can hit multiple enemies — there’s very little in gaming that’s as satisfying as taking out an entire crowd of NMH goons in a single strike, fountains of blood gushing from where their heads used to be, your Nintendo Wii completely shitting itself as the frame rate hits single digits. Creating opportunities to make that kind of carnage happen by spacing correctly or singling out problematic foes with a dash attack knockdown is engaging enough. The problem is that this dynamic with its periodic cathartic payoffs isn’t whatsoever present in boss fights. Instead they only highlight the rigidity I mentioned previously: you chain as many parries and basic attacks together as the game will let you, until the boss runs away for a minute and throws out gimmicks for you to dodge roll; rinse, repeat.
It’s easy to see how the game’s creative fighting scenarios and audacious violence wowed players (myself included) back in the day, but on my most recent playthrough it’s been kind of difficult not to be underwhelmed with pretty much every single boss fight here — which is ironic when eccentric bosses are the number one thing you associate No More Heroes with. This game is for all intents and purposes a boss rush: it spends a vast amount of its runtime edging you for the next ranked fight, only to never really let you cum.
A deliberate series of anti-climaxes, then? My honest answer to that is “probably not;” I’m unconvinced any mainstream developer would specifically set out to make something that’s shitty in this particular kind of way. Either way, entertaining these debates is pointless with no insight into the actual process. I feel the real achievement here is to have a game that’s interesting enough to make you question the developer’s intentions in the first place. The point isn’t that the feeling of dissatisfaction I got from most of NMH’s gameplay necessarily brings me more in tune with its themes, it’s that the specific combination of elements here is distinct and interesting enough that I find my mind regularly trailing off of the nitty-gritty procedures and instead trying to untangle the experience as a whole while I’m playing. If this reminds you of what I said earlier about Suda’s intentions with Killer7’s mechanics, now you know why I keep comparing the two games.
In an odd way, No More Heroes being so much more conventional than Killer7 on the surface does an even better job of making you let your guard down. That lack of abstraction makes it hit all the harder whenever you follow Travis into yet another dingy, blood-tinged fighting arena where only one more psychopath awaits; to say a couple words, give you a shitty fight and then die without leaving a meaningful mark. I not only appreciate that it balances that darkness with comforting levity, I’d argue it kind of needed just enough anime antics to be interpreted as a celebration of that culture by at least some of its playerbase, rather than the uncompromising condemnation it actually is. The way it walks that fine, almost satirical line is so much of what drives my interest in the experience. Under that light, it’s hard not to consider No More Heroes a resounding success, even if it’s not a game I will revisit much in the future.
I’d argue the title is a bit of a double entendre though, with perhaps the even more obvious interpretation being that Travis himself is a break from the types of heroes we’re used to in games: an uncompromising display of what it would actually look like if an American weeb really did buy a lightsaber off eBay and went out to murder people to fulfill his fantasies of rising to the top of a real life-highscore board. Tired of cookie-cutter agreeable heroics? Well, here’s a game for you.
Looking at NMH in the context of Grasshopper’s previous game Killer7 is fascinating, because the evolutionary and thematic chain between the two is a lot more logical than you might first expect. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that Killer7 is Suda’s first international release, while also being explicitly about anti-Eastern xenophobia and the disturbing ways the West will impregnate the minds of following generations with their toxic ideas. What we know for sure based on interviews is that his new audience was a major consideration for Suda when designing Killer7’s absurdist control scheme, essentially asking “if you’re only walking in straight lines anyway, why not boil that process down to just holding a gigantic-ass green button?” With the controls now totally in the background, your mind is free is to fully take in the game’s sights, sounds and themes.
If Killer7 was a game about using the GameCube pad’s in-your-face A button to run through corridors and shoot at nightmarish abominations, then No More Heroes is a game about using the Wiimote’s equally in-your-face A button to slash away at regular people and do janky mini-games. If Killer7 was a game about fear of Eastern culture, then No More Heroes is a game about the commodification of that same culture. The ways that manifests may not be quite as explosive as what’s depicted in Killer7, but the implications are no less disturbing if you stop to think about them.
NMH predates the words “Gamergate” and “incel” entering our everyday vocabulary, so replaying this cold-blooded takedown of nerd culture with a 2021 perspective is almost eerie in its predictiveness. In her final phone call, Sylvia’s finally 100% blunt about the fact that Travis never had a shot with her in the first place and that he’s an idiot for ever thinking otherwise: “You are a dopy otaku assassin. The bottom of the barrel. No woman would be caught dead with you… unless she was a desperate bitch.” Given that Sylvia’s calls are delivered through the Wii remote’s speakers, which you have to hold to your head to hear, meaning she’s speaking directly to you, the connection to actual real life video game players couldn’t be more explicit.
I just used the word “predictiveness,” but it’s actually more illuminating to think about how this game, in reality, has to be a reflection of how Suda perceives our consumption of his country’s culture. It’s interesting that Travis is regularly referred to as an “otaku” by different characters; today and in the West, the word we’d instead use is “weeb” (I already have in this review,) because it’s more strongly connoted as specifically in reference to obsessive Westerners, whereas the word “otaku” is more understood as a descriptor for a “general” nerd in Japan.
From that (and some cursory research I did,) it’s safe to assume “weeaboo” doesn’t really mean anything to most Japanese people, and yet Suda clearly understands the concept and is able to portray it at its most alarming extreme. Over the course of the game, you and Travis spend mountains of cash on surface-level obsessions: you can get dripped out, buy a goofy new laser sword or dummy grind to enter your next ranked fight, but Travis’s life will never actually meaningfully progress, he’s never moving out of that motel, the game’s rigid structure of ping-ponging between work and play is never broken. The significance of either of the two endings (Travis being doomed to be continually challenged by new assassins + him and Henry literally saying they can only keep running now, never to find the exit) didn’t really hit me until I wrote down this paragraph.
Under that light, it’s NMH’s combat that warrants more detailed analysis. Again, very much like Killer7, No More Heroes is a piece of extremely impressive interface design in how the control layout, camera and general mechanics correspond into this vehicle for beautiful kinesthetic violence, but as an actual fighting system it’s fundamentally ill-fit to make for compelling engagements: having to shift between high and low stances to connect attacks and maintain combos doesn’t result in meaningful choices, you basically wail on the enemies until they decide to not take hit stun anymore, at which point it’s time to dodge roll away and look for another chance to get back in. The parry system is so free (you hold one button to block and then wiggle the analog stick) that the game has to sometimes arbitrarily decide to not reward you for it because fights would otherwise be over in like two seconds.
It’s cool that contextual QTE finishers can hit multiple enemies — there’s very little in gaming that’s as satisfying as taking out an entire crowd of NMH goons in a single strike, fountains of blood gushing from where their heads used to be, your Nintendo Wii completely shitting itself as the frame rate hits single digits. Creating opportunities to make that kind of carnage happen by spacing correctly or singling out problematic foes with a dash attack knockdown is engaging enough. The problem is that this dynamic with its periodic cathartic payoffs isn’t whatsoever present in boss fights. Instead they only highlight the rigidity I mentioned previously: you chain as many parries and basic attacks together as the game will let you, until the boss runs away for a minute and throws out gimmicks for you to dodge roll; rinse, repeat.
It’s easy to see how the game’s creative fighting scenarios and audacious violence wowed players (myself included) back in the day, but on my most recent playthrough it’s been kind of difficult not to be underwhelmed with pretty much every single boss fight here — which is ironic when eccentric bosses are the number one thing you associate No More Heroes with. This game is for all intents and purposes a boss rush: it spends a vast amount of its runtime edging you for the next ranked fight, only to never really let you cum.
A deliberate series of anti-climaxes, then? My honest answer to that is “probably not;” I’m unconvinced any mainstream developer would specifically set out to make something that’s shitty in this particular kind of way. Either way, entertaining these debates is pointless with no insight into the actual process. I feel the real achievement here is to have a game that’s interesting enough to make you question the developer’s intentions in the first place. The point isn’t that the feeling of dissatisfaction I got from most of NMH’s gameplay necessarily brings me more in tune with its themes, it’s that the specific combination of elements here is distinct and interesting enough that I find my mind regularly trailing off of the nitty-gritty procedures and instead trying to untangle the experience as a whole while I’m playing. If this reminds you of what I said earlier about Suda’s intentions with Killer7’s mechanics, now you know why I keep comparing the two games.
In an odd way, No More Heroes being so much more conventional than Killer7 on the surface does an even better job of making you let your guard down. That lack of abstraction makes it hit all the harder whenever you follow Travis into yet another dingy, blood-tinged fighting arena where only one more psychopath awaits; to say a couple words, give you a shitty fight and then die without leaving a meaningful mark. I not only appreciate that it balances that darkness with comforting levity, I’d argue it kind of needed just enough anime antics to be interpreted as a celebration of that culture by at least some of its playerbase, rather than the uncompromising condemnation it actually is. The way it walks that fine, almost satirical line is so much of what drives my interest in the experience. Under that light, it’s hard not to consider No More Heroes a resounding success, even if it’s not a game I will revisit much in the future.
Kingdom Hearts II
2005
KH 1 is slow and clunky, in just 3 years the combat was able to be improved dramatically. You feel so fast and light, yet still having power behind your attacks. Your party has also improved greatly from being a liability to competent support. This was mind blowing back in 2006 and still is to this day. I can probably write a much longer review, but I do think the combat change is the most important facet of this game.
Kingdom Hearts II
2005
homestuck but gayer. devil may cry for disney channel kids. an unmistakable part of arab culture. kingdom hearts 2 is all these things and more. may god only comprehend it.