Persephony
40 reviews liked by Persephony
Overwatch 2
2022
no thanks! i'd rather throw the 'ol pigskin in the backyard with my five identical adult sons
Overwatch 2
2022
as an owner of a prepaid phone plan i sadly cannot play this, if anybody would be so kind as to leave your phone number down below so i can try it out i'd appreciate it (WOMEN ONLY) ššššššš
Suikoden II
1998
Often praised as the best game in the Suikoden series and it's plain to see why. An already solid game improved in near every aspect made with tons of attention, care, and love.
Suikoden II
1998
im giving this a 9/10 for the fishing minigame, i dont even want to talk about the game
Thief II's sound design creates such a strong sense of space that despite the blocky geometry and stark baked lighting, this really holds up in 2021. Coming from Dishonored, which was fluid & freeform, Thief initially alienated me with its focus on moment to moment movement across mere inches of floorboards, stone & carpet. Each level could be its own world and sneaking through hidden passages, between shadows over soft & hard surfaces has a beautiful rhythm.
The houses drew me in the most, especially the labyrinthine mansions with self-contained stories hidden in basements and attics, each mostly staffed by a bunch of drunk idiots. There is lore here that I couldn't follow and a vague plot I didn't care for, but the brief encounter with the robotic child was the most disquieting shit in recent memory.
Thief is a cat burglar simulator, so doesnāt really capture the sense of overwhelming doom that poverty instills in you (see Pathologic 2 for this), but Garret says his rent is late and I believe him. How often do game characters really worry about money? I usually despise loot hunting, as it sends me into anxious spirals (I flinch at glimpses of numerous pots or crates upon entering a new room in Skyrim) but the treasures here are so sparsely placed and mysterious, that I went through enormous strain to gather everything so Garret could pay his rent and spare a little for water arrows.
Fan missions are worth mentioning, as two decades worth of levels are there to download, many twisting the old tech in strange new ways. The campaign Thief 2x offers some glimpses of Hitmanās hierarchy of public & private spaces, which could have been an interesting direction for the series to take if it hadnāt become whatever bland cinematic experience Th4ef was.
The houses drew me in the most, especially the labyrinthine mansions with self-contained stories hidden in basements and attics, each mostly staffed by a bunch of drunk idiots. There is lore here that I couldn't follow and a vague plot I didn't care for, but the brief encounter with the robotic child was the most disquieting shit in recent memory.
Thief is a cat burglar simulator, so doesnāt really capture the sense of overwhelming doom that poverty instills in you (see Pathologic 2 for this), but Garret says his rent is late and I believe him. How often do game characters really worry about money? I usually despise loot hunting, as it sends me into anxious spirals (I flinch at glimpses of numerous pots or crates upon entering a new room in Skyrim) but the treasures here are so sparsely placed and mysterious, that I went through enormous strain to gather everything so Garret could pay his rent and spare a little for water arrows.
Fan missions are worth mentioning, as two decades worth of levels are there to download, many twisting the old tech in strange new ways. The campaign Thief 2x offers some glimpses of Hitmanās hierarchy of public & private spaces, which could have been an interesting direction for the series to take if it hadnāt become whatever bland cinematic experience Th4ef was.
I am going to use Garrett's mechanical eye as a tennis ball
Beyond Good & Evil
2003
Maybe the real pigs were the capitalists we met along the way.
Beyond Good & Evil
2003
i was vibing with the creative decision to have all spoken dialogue be in an alien-sounding science fiction conlang until i found out the steam copy is just broken to make the voice acting be in french
Max Payne
2001
In the back room of an apartment, I am cut loose from the city. It watches me pass with sharp neon eyes. The sun has gone down with practiced bravado, twilight crawled across the sky and laden with foreboding. The night has gilded the monitor in silver. Every pixel is covered with light. The image of one mean sonnuvabitch called āMax āPayneā, is repeated over and over. The Drug. The red and yellow of a berettaās muzzle flashes fiercely on the white screenās snow.
Something goes clank in the night, and the sound is close enough to remind me Iām playing Max Payne on a PlayStation 2 with a broken controller. Wanted to give the boys at Backloggd something to joke about.
Except no oneās laughing now.
The poindexters at IGN explained it to me:
āRemedy ported this PC code to the PS2 pretty quickly, and simply chopped up the levels into smaller bits in order to work around the 32 MBs of PS2 RAM.ā
āThe result is smaller levels, with more loading, slightly rearranged AI placement, but even worse is the heavy disruption to the flow and tension of the story, which tries desperately to feel like a movie, but instead feels like a TV show with hundreds of commercials shunt into it. It nearly ruins the experience.ā
Thirty-two megabytes of RAM.
Poor kid never stood a chance.
Neither did I.
A couple of days ago it had all come crashing down. The bad PS2 games arrived like a winter storm: Monster Hunter 2. Devil May Cry 2. Sonic Heroes. The Bouncer. Iād been pushed over the edge by a cabal of games junkies who were ready to explode in random acts of senseless posting at any minute.
I found myself in the cold no-man's land between kamige and kusoge, no road signs on a crash course to a 3D Realms rush job with nothing to lose. Iād died to jank before. I could die to jank again.
A gunshot. My last meeting with Alex before Max found out what his old friendās brains looked like splattered across a wall. Iād been writing a review in the style Max Payneās dialogue while the loading bar crawled across the screen for mercy. Now I was awake, brought to my senses by the rapid fire of an AK alarm clock.
Buckshot pierces through me like a wind of rusted razor blades. Iām dead. Again. Two more minutes of dead-eyed disc-reading before I see Alexās brains. Again. A console port purgatory I wouldnāt wish on my own worst enemy.
Drawing from my vape pen like Bogart, I enter the big house once more with the odds stacked against me. Third-person aiming in an early PlayStation 2 game was nigh-on impossible, and the gamepadās joystick had been busted for a decade or more.
I could relate.
Game like this wouldāve been a pixellated piece of cake in my younger years, a fresh-faced gamer on the sixteen-bit beat. But the strain of sleepless night after sleepless night spent on the graveyard shift with a chain gang of falling tetrominoes had shot my dexterity all the way to Hell. I was no pro gamer now.
My thirteenth gunfight of the night. Unlucky for some, and the way this one started didn't promise anything better than the last dozen. Bullets and bastards coming at my face, an army of dead men with only a few brain cells of artificial intelligence between them holding one-way tickets to the river Styx. I was trying to look for the answers, but every gunshot created a hole with more technical issues leaking out. A spreading labyrinth of questions and QA tickets spreading like a pool of blood on the snow at six frames a second.
Somewhere in the background of the game-goon banter and stock explosion sound effects, I heard the end howling after me. Polygonal hatchet men sped by on fast forward, rooftop water towers disappearing in 240p darkness, a dead forest of antennas and chimneys, all a blur beyond the draw distance. Another level come to a merciful end.
They were all dead. The final gunshot was an exclamation mark to everything that had led to this point. I released my finger from the plastic trigger, and then it was over.
Something goes clank in the night, and the sound is close enough to remind me Iām playing Max Payne on a PlayStation 2 with a broken controller. Wanted to give the boys at Backloggd something to joke about.
Except no oneās laughing now.
The poindexters at IGN explained it to me:
āRemedy ported this PC code to the PS2 pretty quickly, and simply chopped up the levels into smaller bits in order to work around the 32 MBs of PS2 RAM.ā
āThe result is smaller levels, with more loading, slightly rearranged AI placement, but even worse is the heavy disruption to the flow and tension of the story, which tries desperately to feel like a movie, but instead feels like a TV show with hundreds of commercials shunt into it. It nearly ruins the experience.ā
Thirty-two megabytes of RAM.
Poor kid never stood a chance.
Neither did I.
A couple of days ago it had all come crashing down. The bad PS2 games arrived like a winter storm: Monster Hunter 2. Devil May Cry 2. Sonic Heroes. The Bouncer. Iād been pushed over the edge by a cabal of games junkies who were ready to explode in random acts of senseless posting at any minute.
I found myself in the cold no-man's land between kamige and kusoge, no road signs on a crash course to a 3D Realms rush job with nothing to lose. Iād died to jank before. I could die to jank again.
A gunshot. My last meeting with Alex before Max found out what his old friendās brains looked like splattered across a wall. Iād been writing a review in the style Max Payneās dialogue while the loading bar crawled across the screen for mercy. Now I was awake, brought to my senses by the rapid fire of an AK alarm clock.
Buckshot pierces through me like a wind of rusted razor blades. Iām dead. Again. Two more minutes of dead-eyed disc-reading before I see Alexās brains. Again. A console port purgatory I wouldnāt wish on my own worst enemy.
Drawing from my vape pen like Bogart, I enter the big house once more with the odds stacked against me. Third-person aiming in an early PlayStation 2 game was nigh-on impossible, and the gamepadās joystick had been busted for a decade or more.
I could relate.
Game like this wouldāve been a pixellated piece of cake in my younger years, a fresh-faced gamer on the sixteen-bit beat. But the strain of sleepless night after sleepless night spent on the graveyard shift with a chain gang of falling tetrominoes had shot my dexterity all the way to Hell. I was no pro gamer now.
My thirteenth gunfight of the night. Unlucky for some, and the way this one started didn't promise anything better than the last dozen. Bullets and bastards coming at my face, an army of dead men with only a few brain cells of artificial intelligence between them holding one-way tickets to the river Styx. I was trying to look for the answers, but every gunshot created a hole with more technical issues leaking out. A spreading labyrinth of questions and QA tickets spreading like a pool of blood on the snow at six frames a second.
Somewhere in the background of the game-goon banter and stock explosion sound effects, I heard the end howling after me. Polygonal hatchet men sped by on fast forward, rooftop water towers disappearing in 240p darkness, a dead forest of antennas and chimneys, all a blur beyond the draw distance. Another level come to a merciful end.
They were all dead. The final gunshot was an exclamation mark to everything that had led to this point. I released my finger from the plastic trigger, and then it was over.
Ultrakill
2020
This is like if cum had gameplay
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