2001
Incredible movie, kind of weird they decided to do scene transitions by making you play a mediocre survival horror game though.
Probably the only game I played where breaking the mechanics is actually encoded in the story. Pretty satisfying that basejumping the entire continent to stunt on the xenophobic slave-owners is an entirely valid experience. The hard cap on this is that Morrowind easily has some of the worst UX I've ever seen for a game in this era, the map is trash, the inventory system is a mess, and there's so. much. menu. clicking. All this combines with a doo-doo melee system and lackluster quest design to make the early game a slog to play, which is why I broke the game with some console commands and legal exploits. This is easily the best magic system in TES though, spellmaking + alchemy allows for a lot of creative and powerful ways to assert your magical dominance--basejumping, super fast levitation, instanthearthing, autoheals, etc. are totally possible if you know your way around.
Still, the real sell is the main quest, which is actually interesting and a decent look at religious prosecution, the ambiguity of prophecy, traditionalism, etc. with some nice epistemological moments thrown in. The sub theme of what delineates the coincidental from the supernatural is a totally unique thought for video games, as philosophy of religion is totally unexplored in pop culture despite how dominant religious modes of thinking are in our secular age. I mean, you may call yourself a secularist, but if "why do good things happen to bad people?" is a compelling question for you, you're still pretty much a theist. You do have to kind of draw all the philosophy of religion out though, as the actual dialogue and plot-by-plot moments only mention the actual meaning of what's going on in passing; it's thematics are best discovered on long, laborious walks both in-game and out-of-game than through digging journal entries or dialogue.
Ultimately, Morrowind is a game that requires a bit of digging and finessing to make enjoyable, but its such a unique experience with unique things to say its hard to be too mad at it. Patience and faith is the core to all religious experiences after all.
Still, the real sell is the main quest, which is actually interesting and a decent look at religious prosecution, the ambiguity of prophecy, traditionalism, etc. with some nice epistemological moments thrown in. The sub theme of what delineates the coincidental from the supernatural is a totally unique thought for video games, as philosophy of religion is totally unexplored in pop culture despite how dominant religious modes of thinking are in our secular age. I mean, you may call yourself a secularist, but if "why do good things happen to bad people?" is a compelling question for you, you're still pretty much a theist. You do have to kind of draw all the philosophy of religion out though, as the actual dialogue and plot-by-plot moments only mention the actual meaning of what's going on in passing; it's thematics are best discovered on long, laborious walks both in-game and out-of-game than through digging journal entries or dialogue.
Ultimately, Morrowind is a game that requires a bit of digging and finessing to make enjoyable, but its such a unique experience with unique things to say its hard to be too mad at it. Patience and faith is the core to all religious experiences after all.
Video game equivalent to a Domino's pizza on friday night with da homies.
2023
very first characters you run into are three dudes listening to an instrumental cloud rap beat talkin about "finding the light" and "money". this was how all you drainers sounded like to me back in 2016. the good (low fidelity, usage of vaporwave/cloud rap/house music, smoke button) works here more than the bad (a bludgeoning of an ending, "loneliness +1", a general briefness). some striking moments like goin on a elliptical bender in a coastal town & getting really nervous eating potato chips around girls. think the ennui ultimately misses the mark for me in a way that other games with similar experiences don't though--the mood feels so particular to a college-adjacent early 20s anxiety & somehow too abstract to strike a real nerve. the ending convo is going for the jugular on a certain type of person but it feels a lil tacky in how subdued the rest of the experience is. VtM:B still clears for climatic conversations with a taxi driver i fear. i liked it enough to be invested in sad3d's other works when they go on sale tho.
2016
As a shooter nu-DOOM is undoubtedly better than old DOOM, as a game though there's a lot missing. Sure old doom is a fast-paced game and there's a lot of vector-based physics to the gameplay, but equally important are it's level philosophies. Old Doom levels were expansive and sprawling, and even in some cases non-linear. Equally important to your shooting ability was your knowledge of the map, what routes to take and when, resource-management for the harder encounters, when to grab the secrets, etc. 2016Doom has none of this, and most maps are combat tunnel to combat tunnel to combat arena to combat tunnel. 2016Doom is a strong enough shooter that this isn't a big problem enough to really tarnish the game, but it does limit it's potential by quite a bit. You don't have to ape the old doom 1:1, and I appreciate id is trying something different with the franchise, but the maps feels like a step-back in an important regard without anything equally good to replace it.
was locked in on elden ring mods for the past few weeks, this is one of the bigger ones and the first one i tried. its good i think. big sell in comparison to other mods rn is the progression changes--you start out with class specific starting locations and a in-game note to where your class-optimal spells & gear is. the class specifics are tied to relevant locations, so if you roll the blood spellsword guy for instance you'll find alot of ur spells around Mohg's area, his two boss locations, and some other blood subbosses and camps scattered through the game. the mod enables waypoint travelling between all erdtrees and unlocks all medallion/key item gates between zones, so its not uncommon and in fact encouraged to take really weird routing like radahan -> lord of blood mohg -> placidusax -> rykard as your first bosses just to hit all your gear then progress through the game normally. because of how quickly you can sequence break you can breeze through and complete the game in about 15-20 hours instead of the 40+ hours a vanilla run would require of you--this does wonders to make the game more replayable and let you hit the highlights of each area in a respectable amount of time for the working boys & girls of the world. idt this is a comparable experience at all to vanilla elden ring and wouldn't recommend it as a substitute, but as a secondary game mode that can serve as a "last-night's highlight reel" of the game its great.
and elden ring does have really strong highlights!! even if the challenge is lowered because of all the new tools available i think that has made the spectacle of the major bosses & setpieces really apparent--i was worried after coming back to elden ring after 2 years away stuff like Astel wouldn't hit as hard, but like nah its still rlly cool. the newly added spells and gear also honestly look quite good for a mod this early in development, you can create some imaginary schoolyard wizard looking battles its awesome. for the person who really likes vanilla elden ring mechanically but doesn't care to bother with rerolling/larval tears this might be the ideal mod
(sidebar: its not explicit at all but i also do like how the different starting locations & vocations you pick up tie in with the base game's narrative--similar to how ER poises the player tarnished as an almost self-sparking catalyst to sever the military v. bloodline succession war that grounds the game, your PC in this mod could just be as self-directed: a disillusioned knight looking to pick off legendary warriors & beasts while the lands are in chaos on some Hunt Showdown shit, an overambitious mage whose primary purpose is to fell Radahan and explore the sunken cities, a dragon priest looking to call rank on the wandering dragons in the game, etc...if you got an overactive imagination and RP a little it can add a lot to the experience here imo,,,)
for me tho i kinda fell off like 1.5 playthroughs in lol. its rlly because in the process of playing this one I got geeked on the reforged mod, and having experience what this mod could be doing with the base game's combat i was left wanting more rlly quickly. let me preface this by saying i think sekiro is kinda like the Terra from Teen Titans for the souls community, it was a nice time but we really should let that bitch die and move on with our lives--but also, playing a modded ER game without having a sekiro-stlye deflect feels so awkward. im sorry im sorry i know, but it really is true that adding in more action-y elements via changing the equip load mechanics, dodging, a poise bar, deflecting, parrying, regening FP, etc. do alooooot more for this game on a replay than just a content expansion and a secondary game mode. the start of a run in this mod is rlly great where you're remixing and reworking elden ring like a DJ to build your class out, but once your build is complete it rlly feels like just playing the base game with an overleveled character. and its like ok.......i have a cheat engine for that. reforged has its numerous problems but i lasted longer doing that than i did with this if im gonna keep it a band. ideal modded ER experience would prob be smthn akin to this with like total warhammer ii mortal empires victory conditions + reforged's combat + vanilla's narrative expanded or smthn.
and elden ring does have really strong highlights!! even if the challenge is lowered because of all the new tools available i think that has made the spectacle of the major bosses & setpieces really apparent--i was worried after coming back to elden ring after 2 years away stuff like Astel wouldn't hit as hard, but like nah its still rlly cool. the newly added spells and gear also honestly look quite good for a mod this early in development, you can create some imaginary schoolyard wizard looking battles its awesome. for the person who really likes vanilla elden ring mechanically but doesn't care to bother with rerolling/larval tears this might be the ideal mod
(sidebar: its not explicit at all but i also do like how the different starting locations & vocations you pick up tie in with the base game's narrative--similar to how ER poises the player tarnished as an almost self-sparking catalyst to sever the military v. bloodline succession war that grounds the game, your PC in this mod could just be as self-directed: a disillusioned knight looking to pick off legendary warriors & beasts while the lands are in chaos on some Hunt Showdown shit, an overambitious mage whose primary purpose is to fell Radahan and explore the sunken cities, a dragon priest looking to call rank on the wandering dragons in the game, etc...if you got an overactive imagination and RP a little it can add a lot to the experience here imo,,,)
for me tho i kinda fell off like 1.5 playthroughs in lol. its rlly because in the process of playing this one I got geeked on the reforged mod, and having experience what this mod could be doing with the base game's combat i was left wanting more rlly quickly. let me preface this by saying i think sekiro is kinda like the Terra from Teen Titans for the souls community, it was a nice time but we really should let that bitch die and move on with our lives--but also, playing a modded ER game without having a sekiro-stlye deflect feels so awkward. im sorry im sorry i know, but it really is true that adding in more action-y elements via changing the equip load mechanics, dodging, a poise bar, deflecting, parrying, regening FP, etc. do alooooot more for this game on a replay than just a content expansion and a secondary game mode. the start of a run in this mod is rlly great where you're remixing and reworking elden ring like a DJ to build your class out, but once your build is complete it rlly feels like just playing the base game with an overleveled character. and its like ok.......i have a cheat engine for that. reforged has its numerous problems but i lasted longer doing that than i did with this if im gonna keep it a band. ideal modded ER experience would prob be smthn akin to this with like total warhammer ii mortal empires victory conditions + reforged's combat + vanilla's narrative expanded or smthn.
2020
had 2 stop bein a fuckin eater and realize this is real nice. addition of a minimal grinding mode is one of those bridge building moments between the avid hardcore targeting of this with the more casual audience who just wanna experience one of the more polished and passionate romhacks out there. im neither audience (my interest in mons starts and stop with competitive singles) but i had a blast running through this with that mode turned on and building around shit like bulk up ledian and aerliate swellow lmao. like a lot of romhacks these days you gotta like LOOVE offense as an archetype in teambuilding tho because that's where all the novelty in teambuilding is and all you can go against--the most emblematic change of this game's design isn't giving double iron bash to copperajah or delphox magic guard mind blown but that you can't learn recover on pex until after the elite four level cap lmao. the way showdown has influenced a generation of players to pocketwatch stall is so crazy. foucault was so right abt that panopticon shit turning everybody 2 a cop. real heads will sniff out shit like mudsdale getting slack off or regen teleport mega audino tho...deviancy always finds a way.
2009
This review contains spoilers
(Spoilers for Doom Eternal and its DLCs, not in an indepth discussion of them but I guess I imply the shakeout of them. I don’t mention anything here that would qualify as spoilers for Sunder itself)
What a project. If whatever Bethesda was doing in the lore of Doom Eternal and The Ancient Gods is to be taken seriously, Sunder is a jaded boomer chiming in with a welcome "it's not that deep" and reasserting that doomguy is first and foremost, a guy. Obviously the Brutalism/Neo-Gothic aesthetic help counter the conceit that an individual could be of cosmic importance, but really the pedestrian aspect of doomguy is most plainly reinforced through the WAD's combat. Maps 1-14 reiterate that DOOM Is Hell, and so the room design is less neat arenas designed for efficient circlestrafing and instead asymmetric, incongruent hazardrooms designed to fuck over intruders, i.e. you. Map 5 is really egregious with the "hazard" part of that philosophy but in general completing a Sunder map requires erasing the mental map of DOOM’s geography hithertho, and instead engaging with the world laid out before us. It flies in the face of typical DOOM convention to have inescapable pits, instant-death platforming, and damaging floors on every would-be safe space, but it's in here all the same. Also noticeable that insane_gazebo doesn't even really employ crushers, DOOM's intended environmental hazard, for this to work—since you can’t even flip the environment on the demons, it’s only doomguy who struggles to move in this world.
Sunder transforms this combat philosophy into something profound in maps 15-19—the theme of environment-as-enemy continues in this set but we also find insane_gazebo using more targeted and choreographed encounters. Generally in slaughter-based mapsets, you’ll see encounters where around 100+ Hell Knights + Revenants drop in an open area with a BFG to clear them out; in this set however, you’ll find not only stereotypical slaughter encounters but also encounters in very tight rooms, with more frequent “problem enemies” such as Archvilles, Pain Elementals, or Cyberdemons joining in with typical Hell Knight + Revenant combo. You think this might be a return to combat that is more doomguy-centric, but nope, it's even more alienating. The reason being is that the key element of slaughter-maps, the BFG, is just straight up unavailable for most of the maps in this set until the very end. Thus, in an inversion of power, Cyberdemon infighting becomes the new BFG--the intended clears of some rooms in this stretch will have Cyberdemons picking up more kills than doomguy! what the fuck! I've never seen something like it outside of some self-designated challenge and puzzle maps. Sunder’s combat truly felt like something different when I realized that doomguy wasn’t the most dangerous person in the room.
The "doomguy ain't shit" narrative also bleeds over into the aesthetic in this set. Aesthetics which can only be described as Bronze Age Temple Architecture combined with surreal Futurism combined with the Neo-Gothicism of the early levels. And a Beehive motif? IDK what fukken architecture movements I should pull on to sell the point here, I dropped the Annotated Mona Lisa 50 pages in, the levels are genuinely imposing and uniquely beautiful is what I’m saying here. Anyone who has loaded map 15 and stepped out the first room can tell you how immediately insignificant they feel. This invocation of things grander than doomguy is also in this set's 'lore' so to speak--unlike Sunlust's reference to religious ritual and violent machinery, Sunder's evocations are all to mythology, from both Sunder's world and our world. "Archives of the Technomancer", "Whispers of the Gnarled King" and the openly blunt "Babylon's Chimera" are all titles which summon historical specters across the maps, hinting at a chronology of how we ended up here at this time fighting these demons, a chronology that doomguy has nothing to do with.
It is with that realization is where I felt that Sunder as a whole became profound to me. Sure we are nominally the protagonist in these maps, the one who sets everything in motion and clears out the enemies, but it’s hard to look at the encounters, the buildings, the titles, and the grand scale of these maps and surmise that they are still about doomguy. The only thing that can be fairly surmised is that the locations here, their vastness in history and architecture, were the life-projects of somebody else. The thought that broke their sleep schedule, the idea they couldn't stop namedropping in casual conversation, the blueprint not on-paper but in-memory, the dream that spawned endless self-dialogue. We aren’t even poised as some far-flung adventurer who is passing judgment on the projects of history either. These projects are indeed presented without criticism—they aren’t in ruins, there’s no demented final boss guarding these locations, there’s no voiceover that’s trying to guide us to view them as vanities of all vanities. It is in fact a little misleading to talk about this aspect so much because insane_gazebo doesn’t even draw attention to it as Something to Be Admired— he takes that they’re worth and beauty is self-evidently observable.
And you know what? He’s fucking right—maybe there’s something inherently “worth it” about the concept of the life-project. I don't have a strong argument for this, and maybe I don't need to since I'm on a video game hobbyist website, but engaging in any project of research, creativity, or expression is a good in and of itself. That too relates back into what Sunder is: a perpetual project for a nearly 30 year old game that after 12 years of development is just now over it's halfway point. Maybe for most of those years Sunder wasn’t in insane_gazebo’s mind, but maps 15-19 certainly feel like insane_gazebo’s thoughts for the past decade. They are unapologetically long, nuanced, surreal, engaging, and deranged. The README file for the WAD details as much: “Long ago I had a vision...”, “In my dream I saw that...”, “So in my head...”. A brain spilled on canvas.
In spite of it all though, playing Sunder felt thoroughly unpretentious and just fun. It is after all a game that, unless your a doomgod, will likely take 30+ hours to complete, with many of those hours spent reloading combat encounters until you ekk out the correct path. Yet beating the WAD as-is won't get you anything--there's no sequel, there's no end credits, there’s no capital M message, nothing even remotely climatic. There's not even a relevant Discourse where beating Sunder will get you a crumb of clout. For most people beating Sunder will become as much of a project as making it was, complete with its own requirements for determination, research, and intuition. A Problem to Be Solved, for sure. And yet, this aspect of finding projects, problems, hobbies, ideas, and obscurities to obsessively tinker about over and over for no particular reason is what makes life interesting, and is why that in spite of the cornucopia of things happening in my life, solving Sunder’s rooms became a past-time both in my head and in the world. This is perhaps, more than cosmic power level stuff, where Bethesda lost me the most with the new lore—the transition from doomguy to Doom Slayer turns his demon-slaying project, an expression of idiosyncrasy and circumstance, into a matter of all-importance. He doesn’t kill demons because it’s fun, or because he thinks its important, or because he has something to protect, or simply because it gives him something to think about it—he kills demons because long ago the cosmic rolling ball set off events that trapped in him in his Sisyphean, Godlike wrath. A perpetual motion machine disguised as the janitor of the universe. He even does it for free!
What a project. If whatever Bethesda was doing in the lore of Doom Eternal and The Ancient Gods is to be taken seriously, Sunder is a jaded boomer chiming in with a welcome "it's not that deep" and reasserting that doomguy is first and foremost, a guy. Obviously the Brutalism/Neo-Gothic aesthetic help counter the conceit that an individual could be of cosmic importance, but really the pedestrian aspect of doomguy is most plainly reinforced through the WAD's combat. Maps 1-14 reiterate that DOOM Is Hell, and so the room design is less neat arenas designed for efficient circlestrafing and instead asymmetric, incongruent hazardrooms designed to fuck over intruders, i.e. you. Map 5 is really egregious with the "hazard" part of that philosophy but in general completing a Sunder map requires erasing the mental map of DOOM’s geography hithertho, and instead engaging with the world laid out before us. It flies in the face of typical DOOM convention to have inescapable pits, instant-death platforming, and damaging floors on every would-be safe space, but it's in here all the same. Also noticeable that insane_gazebo doesn't even really employ crushers, DOOM's intended environmental hazard, for this to work—since you can’t even flip the environment on the demons, it’s only doomguy who struggles to move in this world.
Sunder transforms this combat philosophy into something profound in maps 15-19—the theme of environment-as-enemy continues in this set but we also find insane_gazebo using more targeted and choreographed encounters. Generally in slaughter-based mapsets, you’ll see encounters where around 100+ Hell Knights + Revenants drop in an open area with a BFG to clear them out; in this set however, you’ll find not only stereotypical slaughter encounters but also encounters in very tight rooms, with more frequent “problem enemies” such as Archvilles, Pain Elementals, or Cyberdemons joining in with typical Hell Knight + Revenant combo. You think this might be a return to combat that is more doomguy-centric, but nope, it's even more alienating. The reason being is that the key element of slaughter-maps, the BFG, is just straight up unavailable for most of the maps in this set until the very end. Thus, in an inversion of power, Cyberdemon infighting becomes the new BFG--the intended clears of some rooms in this stretch will have Cyberdemons picking up more kills than doomguy! what the fuck! I've never seen something like it outside of some self-designated challenge and puzzle maps. Sunder’s combat truly felt like something different when I realized that doomguy wasn’t the most dangerous person in the room.
The "doomguy ain't shit" narrative also bleeds over into the aesthetic in this set. Aesthetics which can only be described as Bronze Age Temple Architecture combined with surreal Futurism combined with the Neo-Gothicism of the early levels. And a Beehive motif? IDK what fukken architecture movements I should pull on to sell the point here, I dropped the Annotated Mona Lisa 50 pages in, the levels are genuinely imposing and uniquely beautiful is what I’m saying here. Anyone who has loaded map 15 and stepped out the first room can tell you how immediately insignificant they feel. This invocation of things grander than doomguy is also in this set's 'lore' so to speak--unlike Sunlust's reference to religious ritual and violent machinery, Sunder's evocations are all to mythology, from both Sunder's world and our world. "Archives of the Technomancer", "Whispers of the Gnarled King" and the openly blunt "Babylon's Chimera" are all titles which summon historical specters across the maps, hinting at a chronology of how we ended up here at this time fighting these demons, a chronology that doomguy has nothing to do with.
It is with that realization is where I felt that Sunder as a whole became profound to me. Sure we are nominally the protagonist in these maps, the one who sets everything in motion and clears out the enemies, but it’s hard to look at the encounters, the buildings, the titles, and the grand scale of these maps and surmise that they are still about doomguy. The only thing that can be fairly surmised is that the locations here, their vastness in history and architecture, were the life-projects of somebody else. The thought that broke their sleep schedule, the idea they couldn't stop namedropping in casual conversation, the blueprint not on-paper but in-memory, the dream that spawned endless self-dialogue. We aren’t even poised as some far-flung adventurer who is passing judgment on the projects of history either. These projects are indeed presented without criticism—they aren’t in ruins, there’s no demented final boss guarding these locations, there’s no voiceover that’s trying to guide us to view them as vanities of all vanities. It is in fact a little misleading to talk about this aspect so much because insane_gazebo doesn’t even draw attention to it as Something to Be Admired— he takes that they’re worth and beauty is self-evidently observable.
And you know what? He’s fucking right—maybe there’s something inherently “worth it” about the concept of the life-project. I don't have a strong argument for this, and maybe I don't need to since I'm on a video game hobbyist website, but engaging in any project of research, creativity, or expression is a good in and of itself. That too relates back into what Sunder is: a perpetual project for a nearly 30 year old game that after 12 years of development is just now over it's halfway point. Maybe for most of those years Sunder wasn’t in insane_gazebo’s mind, but maps 15-19 certainly feel like insane_gazebo’s thoughts for the past decade. They are unapologetically long, nuanced, surreal, engaging, and deranged. The README file for the WAD details as much: “Long ago I had a vision...”, “In my dream I saw that...”, “So in my head...”. A brain spilled on canvas.
In spite of it all though, playing Sunder felt thoroughly unpretentious and just fun. It is after all a game that, unless your a doomgod, will likely take 30+ hours to complete, with many of those hours spent reloading combat encounters until you ekk out the correct path. Yet beating the WAD as-is won't get you anything--there's no sequel, there's no end credits, there’s no capital M message, nothing even remotely climatic. There's not even a relevant Discourse where beating Sunder will get you a crumb of clout. For most people beating Sunder will become as much of a project as making it was, complete with its own requirements for determination, research, and intuition. A Problem to Be Solved, for sure. And yet, this aspect of finding projects, problems, hobbies, ideas, and obscurities to obsessively tinker about over and over for no particular reason is what makes life interesting, and is why that in spite of the cornucopia of things happening in my life, solving Sunder’s rooms became a past-time both in my head and in the world. This is perhaps, more than cosmic power level stuff, where Bethesda lost me the most with the new lore—the transition from doomguy to Doom Slayer turns his demon-slaying project, an expression of idiosyncrasy and circumstance, into a matter of all-importance. He doesn’t kill demons because it’s fun, or because he thinks its important, or because he has something to protect, or simply because it gives him something to think about it—he kills demons because long ago the cosmic rolling ball set off events that trapped in him in his Sisyphean, Godlike wrath. A perpetual motion machine disguised as the janitor of the universe. He even does it for free!
2014
I was tweaking when I had this at 3 stars. Unironically a kafkaesque comedy of errors, wholesomely committed to painting Doomguy as the "aw, shucks :(" down-on-his-luck Everyman who is able to sustain this weird, hostile world through determination and ingenuity. Encounter design is A-1, a return to the frantic, claustrophobic combat design of retro WAD culture over modern WAD's slaughter-tendencies--even Barons became threatening when you have no room to run. Thoroughly meticulous in environmental design too--there's a skeleton in the closet joke that I didn't even realize until I was watching a YT playthrough. So goofy, yet so earnest! One of my favorites that will probably become an annual revisit.
becoming increasingly NFL brained. the sell here is Midway's tender love of turbo mixes with Blitz The League's grisly lust for gore mixes with generic dark fantasy at the 50 yard line--its an alluring alchemy for not real adolescents (surprised if anyone born after janet jackson's super bowl titty has any fondness for NFL Blitz '00) but adolescents in spirit like me. like alot of sports fans of a darker complexion I've developed an understanding that I might be challenged to a game of Madden (or really 2K) wherever & whenever, and so have come to an acceptance of the video game mega franchises for what it is and learned to enjoy it, but there's still a burn to see my favorite actually-kinda-mid QBs shake off 3 tackles in the pocket and then throw a 40 yard dart that the sim games can't give. MFL understands my wants, and provides me the experience of a juiced Matt Ryan (personified here as a skeleton named Ratty Ice) scrambling for an unheard of 15 yards and throwing 40 yard lasers as I desired--but then, it started asking questions that made me deeply uncomfortable. "If you gave Cooper Kupp steroids mid play, how many yards do you think he would get after the catch?" "Let's say Adrian Peterson lit himself on fire after the handoff. He isn't hurt by his own flames. Would the defense still try to tackle him?" "What if Josh Allen had a pump action in his off-hand during his run plays?" "If Trevor Lawrence could literally throw an IED at the opposing cornerbacks every half, would his QBR improve?" The other sell of this game are the "Dirty Plays", normal run option or play action plays that morph into Hanna-Barbera skits after the snap: all the aformentioned questions are scenarios you can find the answer to in here, along with the option to supersize one of your Dline men, jumping the line of scrimmage in an attempt to kill the quarterback within the next 5 seconds, completely Diavolo-ing the last touchdown pass, etc. although imposing at first each dirty play has some form of legitimate counterplay, or at least mitigation, and strategizing around timing and potentiality becomes this game's own unique metagame separating it out from the myriad of other arcade football prospects. And perhaps, most brutally, each player has their own health bar, meaning that taking too many late hits (completely legal btw) or being on the receiving end of a dirty play can actually just kill one of your players, with the only chance of revival being the reward for winning a half-time mini-game. while killing all of the team's opposing QBs is a win condition, and part of this game's market pitch, I've played about 60-70 games and never seen it happen, nor really come close; teams usually have 3 or more QBs on rotation and killing more than 2 requires alot of sacks or a lucky dirty play, and that's assuming a QB doesn't get revived. What I have seen happen though is me instantly killing Aaron Rodgers on the first snap of the game and dominating the ackers from there. if you have any vindications against a signed NFL player this is the time to let it loose.
it's all a good time, and as i plummed deeper into this i found there is a core of being rewarded for playing the rosters of yesteryear the "right way"--running the damn ball with the falcons along with masterminded ref bribe management lead to an easy chip in a season mode, instead of trying to play honest 2008 peyton manning offense with a shit OLine like the 2021 falcons did. still i wasn't able to find a perfect happy medium of difficulty between the relatively somber arcade gameplay and the literal explosives of the series gimmicks for this to be a forever game, in spite of finding the base elements really appealing. turning off stage hazards and lessening the damage a bit was my standard mode of play, but I can't help but feel that more modulation, in spirit of the sim mega franchises, would help here. Being able to adjust or nix the ref bribery metagame, lessening the efficacy of stiff arms, and other under-the-hood tweaks would make this even more of my thing even if the rosters never updated again. there's a thread on the steam forums right now about how easy is too easy and normal is too punishing that I mostly agree with, and the dev rep mentions even more fine-tuning of the difficulty along with a roster update in store,,, which is all well and good but I'd rather have those fine-tuning sliders for myself than have devs try to calibrate for some abstract universal medium. I'm hoping MFL 2 will be a breakthrough in this regard, but for now I don't see this game getting a ring quite yet in spite of its elite talent...that might be for the other bitches
it's all a good time, and as i plummed deeper into this i found there is a core of being rewarded for playing the rosters of yesteryear the "right way"--running the damn ball with the falcons along with masterminded ref bribe management lead to an easy chip in a season mode, instead of trying to play honest 2008 peyton manning offense with a shit OLine like the 2021 falcons did. still i wasn't able to find a perfect happy medium of difficulty between the relatively somber arcade gameplay and the literal explosives of the series gimmicks for this to be a forever game, in spite of finding the base elements really appealing. turning off stage hazards and lessening the damage a bit was my standard mode of play, but I can't help but feel that more modulation, in spirit of the sim mega franchises, would help here. Being able to adjust or nix the ref bribery metagame, lessening the efficacy of stiff arms, and other under-the-hood tweaks would make this even more of my thing even if the rosters never updated again. there's a thread on the steam forums right now about how easy is too easy and normal is too punishing that I mostly agree with, and the dev rep mentions even more fine-tuning of the difficulty along with a roster update in store,,, which is all well and good but I'd rather have those fine-tuning sliders for myself than have devs try to calibrate for some abstract universal medium. I'm hoping MFL 2 will be a breakthrough in this regard, but for now I don't see this game getting a ring quite yet in spite of its elite talent...that might be for the other bitches
this noreason fellow is an interesting character. in comparison to his more crafted and measured works like death in excess or disparate realities, nosp3 is an effigy of slaughter & megaWAD motifs with scribbled Crayola crayon marks and protruding nails. here lies 32 1000+ monster count maps where the bestiaries of valiant, eviternity, scythe 2, and probably some other shit all mix together with some of the most excess combat you can design while being boom-compatible. 'fuck it, we gotta fuse now' is the siren's call: not only is the bestiary getting an exponential increase but so are your ammo limits (200 rockets and 440 energy cells that double with a backpack, can i get a hell yea), your health totals (megasphere brings you to 400% health and 400% armor, 100 dollars on the chain n its not no game), and your weaponry (Plasma Rifle + RL + BFG are often your first 3 pickups, and occasionally an infinite ammo RL with cave's auto fire enabled...i see the opps outside less go catch em 🏃♂️🏃♂️). ion think a doom wad has felt like this much of a bootleg since the original chillax, so that noreason is able to craft something mostly coherent out of the 100 different cogs at work? very impressive sir very impressive. i say mostly coherent though because the core combat here is actually being sprite-to-sprite in a monster horde with BFG in tow n holding onto mouse 1 for dear life, until you hit the next megasphere or energy cell pack, then skirting around the edges of the crowd to hit the next objective point. i have and will make a lot of hyperboles bout slaughter but this is the most salmon-swimming-upstream, Ys-bump-combat, kusoge-idea-kamige-execution headass game i played this year, even as i write this 7 months out of my completion. prime example of what im talking bout is map 23, you don't even gotta fight a whole lot in this one the finale is just to light the infighting dynamite and hope you don't die when the hordes start self-combusting. made me feel like riley with the steel chair effect. map pack is low down n dirty but ingenious; i didn't even mention the fact that there's cacodmeon variant here that shoots cyber rockets, but the only visual difference is that its a slightly brighter sprite than the regular one. like what is blud even cooking up in this wad 😭😭😭. crusty & rusty ass game get a tetanus shot after every play session.
Alright not to get on my soapbox further but the Trails series is pretty much the anti-Rance, pretty unsurprising since both take a lot from Suikoden and the big ensemble casts manga that inspired Suikoden, yet Trails has ended up being less inventive than the porn game series. I'm not sure Trails has a moral high ground to stand on either, considering 1) the siscon and loli fetishism, which even Rance didn't stand for and 2) the unironic all-encompassing harem Rean assembles. At least Rance's harem ranges from genuine affection to Stockholm Syndrome to rape fantasies to Johnny Bravo ironies, Rean's harem ranges from "you fixed my life's problems, will you fuck me?" to "you're my step-brother, will you fuck me?".
There's also the fact that every entry in this series is like a 50+ hour investment, of which often only half or so of those hours are substantially saying anything or engaging combat systems in any new way. The finale of these things are often these great, grandiose segments in which Shit Blows Up Everywhere Forever, and I often wonder what's going in the writer's room where Trails can't just be like this all the time. There's ways in which you can keep the sort of small-town vibes of the early parts of these games and also not bore me to tears.
There's also the fact that every entry in this series is like a 50+ hour investment, of which often only half or so of those hours are substantially saying anything or engaging combat systems in any new way. The finale of these things are often these great, grandiose segments in which Shit Blows Up Everywhere Forever, and I often wonder what's going in the writer's room where Trails can't just be like this all the time. There's ways in which you can keep the sort of small-town vibes of the early parts of these games and also not bore me to tears.
Don't think I'll ever really understand what is it about the Witcher series which gets people to gush so hard about it; I guess because fantasy novels have gone by the way side, it can be a bit novel to the general public to have a fantasy story that deals with discrimination, alienation, classism, sexual violence, etc. in an explicit, non-gratuitous way. For me though, it always struck me as if the point of CDPR's Witcher interpretation was that it was a gritty fantasy story, and that was it, rather than the point being that the grittiness is necessary to embolden the themes in the work. Like, one of the main takeaways people have of this series is that life has a whole lot of gray, morality is ambiguous, and every decision we make carries far dire consequences than we can envision.
And it's like yea, no shit buddy that's how the world works lmao. Why do you think those 'simple' fantasy stories were created in the first place? I don't mean to be callous but it's a weird mental schema we have that people in the past were somehow not dealing with as complex lives and problems as we were, and that the solutions and narratives they created were somehow less 'complex' and 'realistic' than ours. You can see this especially with how some people decry medieval policy around executions as 'barbaric'; there's an argument for the sanctity of life, sure, not very compelling but its there.
But if you're going to make that argument, you also have to recognize the fact that political executions were a quick, effective fix to the problem of treason. You can't just expect traitors to just stop spreading their ideas once they've been defeated or caught; there's always a strong possibility that the values of the traitor spread across the region, and you now are no longer looking at treason but a revolution. You can see this particularly with the American South: the Southerners may have "lost", but the culture of anti-black sadism and rigid economic hierarchies has persisted until present-day, to the point where America is just now realizing how odd it is to openly display the Confederate flag. Not to engage in alt-history, but you have to ask yourself if antebellum Southern values would have persisted for so long if we executed all Confederates for high treason, instead of voting them into office.
But I'm digressing; aside from the on-paper plot the Witcher 2 is an interesting case-study of multi-narrative video games, and the fact that this game released with as many branching paths as it did is a minor miracle. Doesn't make the game any funner to play or the plot more insightful, but you have to admire CDPR's technical work.
And it's like yea, no shit buddy that's how the world works lmao. Why do you think those 'simple' fantasy stories were created in the first place? I don't mean to be callous but it's a weird mental schema we have that people in the past were somehow not dealing with as complex lives and problems as we were, and that the solutions and narratives they created were somehow less 'complex' and 'realistic' than ours. You can see this especially with how some people decry medieval policy around executions as 'barbaric'; there's an argument for the sanctity of life, sure, not very compelling but its there.
But if you're going to make that argument, you also have to recognize the fact that political executions were a quick, effective fix to the problem of treason. You can't just expect traitors to just stop spreading their ideas once they've been defeated or caught; there's always a strong possibility that the values of the traitor spread across the region, and you now are no longer looking at treason but a revolution. You can see this particularly with the American South: the Southerners may have "lost", but the culture of anti-black sadism and rigid economic hierarchies has persisted until present-day, to the point where America is just now realizing how odd it is to openly display the Confederate flag. Not to engage in alt-history, but you have to ask yourself if antebellum Southern values would have persisted for so long if we executed all Confederates for high treason, instead of voting them into office.
But I'm digressing; aside from the on-paper plot the Witcher 2 is an interesting case-study of multi-narrative video games, and the fact that this game released with as many branching paths as it did is a minor miracle. Doesn't make the game any funner to play or the plot more insightful, but you have to admire CDPR's technical work.
2013
nah yall cant fuck with ribbiks tho. map02 is a nice iteration on mixing the purple (stargate) with the blue (oceanic moodiness) but map 03 is on some other other shitt entirely. a flooded amusement park thats actually your prison + doom's most devious sniper cyberdemon + a 40 minute long math problem disguised as "ammo scarcity" are just the base elements, what happens after that are some fucked up fucked up encounters with the demon kind--its "slaughter+plutonia" sort of still yea but this time instead of just straight up negating safety ribbiks is on his manipulator bullshit and will triangulate in third parties to make you understand that safety was nothing more than a delusion. any given 2x2 area of "safe space" in a room is just bait setup so that you get munched by the sniper cyberdemon, or get sent packing by a homing reveant missile from 100 yards away, or get tag teamed by the archville you ran out of ammo to kill 2 rooms back and the one behind the 20 revenants in front of you. or lose 50 health damn near instantly because its a chaingunner right above you. fuck you. and the infamous cyberdemon room in here is just like...damn. you get put into a room with about 40 hell knights and revenants while you're locked in a new york studio apartment-sized box, then 4 cyberdemons teleport into this same box and you're asked to not die instantly within the next 30 seconds. while the difficulty of that isn't as alarming in the 2022 era the immediate flex-or-die demand is still as arresting as it was damn near ten years ago. and when you step onto the final platform and hit the intermission screen you can't help but feel like the #1 stunna despite the sprite of doomguy's no dobut near-death visage on the bottom of your screen just seconds prior...but fuck it we swag n we surf.
(list&writeup of slaughter stuff impending by the way twizzys 🤞there's about 20-25 major entries i needa hit & 50+ entries i need to add in igdb still but im seeing the sunset. gives me grief that i won't have that discovery high anymore but equal excitement that i'll be able to contextualize and narrative this shit cuz literally all of it was fucking crazy lmao. like look @ some of this shit dawg this shit doesn't even look like it was meant to be played by humans anymore lmao its so techno-mystical & esoteric)
(list&writeup of slaughter stuff impending by the way twizzys 🤞there's about 20-25 major entries i needa hit & 50+ entries i need to add in igdb still but im seeing the sunset. gives me grief that i won't have that discovery high anymore but equal excitement that i'll be able to contextualize and narrative this shit cuz literally all of it was fucking crazy lmao. like look @ some of this shit dawg this shit doesn't even look like it was meant to be played by humans anymore lmao its so techno-mystical & esoteric)
This review contains spoilers
Still think about this one a lot, particularly some of the idiosyncratic theories. Is SCA-DI offering one of the very very few honest analysis of futanari? Is Takuji trans? Does Zakuro suffer because she refuses to "live happily"? Does "live happily" entail that we ignore all negative aspects of life? If not, how do we know to stop annotating, like Ayana suggests? Is it really possible, or even further, necessary, for delusions to help cope with life? Why does Ayana's theme contain Morse code stating that she's Mahou Shoujo Riruru? What the fuck was the point of that Asumi interlude? Do we need to know any of the answers to these questions to understand Subahibi? Maybe not, which might tie into SCA-DI's theory that we take stories and narratology too seriously.
On the real though, totally understand why some people despise this, desperately needs an editor and is completely submerged into channer-esque culture (see: the weird ironic homophobia in Jabberwocky I). Still a pretty profound narrative, especially for the medium.
On the real though, totally understand why some people despise this, desperately needs an editor and is completely submerged into channer-esque culture (see: the weird ironic homophobia in Jabberwocky I). Still a pretty profound narrative, especially for the medium.