I have some nostalgia for Donkey Kong. When my childhood home was flooded, and i spent a year of my life living in a hotel, they had a Donkey Kong arcade cabinet. I was very young when this happened, but i have fond memories of dumping so much of my time on that single donkey kong cabinet. I sometimes miss the hotel. Free breakfast every morning, indoor pool i can swim in everyday, and a small arcade with donkey kong and 3 other games that barely worked. Something about hearing the sounds in this game was a reminder of the childlike joy I felt of being away from home in this shitty hotel. It’s hard to say why i loved this hotel so much, since at the end of the day, it was just a shitty hotel sitting off the side of the highway, but i have fond memories of it. Call it looking through rose colored glasses, but I loved that hotel just like i loved my time playing Donkey Kong this morning in the nes. Instead of being a young child waking up for breakfast and then topping it off with a game of Donkey Kong, I am now a college student waking up with can of monster and a hit from my vape and then topping it off by booting up my switch and playing Donkey Kong. A lot of time may have passed, but I never forgot how to play.

Spent some time browsing itch.io the other day. Passing through all the wannabe FNAF and the [current meme] horror games on there, I found a category for art games. Video games as an art form seem to be in a questionable state with the fact that many will hold up any basic shooter game with garbage philosophy as being the peak of its genre or in other situations, just some game with hours worth of cutscenes that gets adapted into an HBO series that is 10x better than the game ever was. I'm sure the two games mentioned are obvious, and while I don't hate playing them considering how fun the gameplay in both games can be, I hate what they stand for. I hate the underutilization of their medium/overreliance on cinematic storytelling, their lack of good thought-provoking themes, and even just the fact that some of these "art" games can be told in pretty much any other medium. Monuments to Guilt on the other hand fascinates me. A game that doesn't even intend to be a game, but still manages to take advantage of its medium to push its idea of what it means to be exclusionary.

The idea of a virtual museum is always interesting. Most of the ones I've played have been ones that break what is possible with reality and a reasonable budget such as the Namco Museum on the PS1 or the Radiohead Kid A exhibit. There are also some examples of virtual museums just serving to be alternative options for those who will never be able to visit a museum. Monuments of Guilt lies somewhere between the two of them. Monuments of Guilt isn't named after its museum. It's not referred to as the Monuments of Guilt exhibit or museum, but instead just "Monuments of Guilt". Everything featured is real, but it's not real in the sense that this museum could ever exist in real life, because getting the money for this and getting all these benches gathered into one place would be impossible for someone like the creator of this game and yet it maintains it's realistic museum design.

From signs advising you to avoid touching to having a video for the benches that they couldn't get in person, to having bars that make it so you can never see the full screen, there's some kind of irony here. The creator Louis comes off as making much more than an exhibit, but instead making his own meta art piece. A commentary on museums, a commentary on exclusion, and a commentary on class culture. Why would anybody want their own museum art exhibit when when it's all just entertainment for the people causing issues towards society? The idea of Monuments to Guilt using video games to mock and rebel against capitalism and instead do its own thing is something that I adore about this game.

Not very often do I feel like we get games focused more on being art than a game, which makes me admire Monuments to Guilt a lot more than I ever expected to. Right next to Monuments to Guilt on the Itch.io tag for art games was a game called Pineapple on Pizza which is currently the most popular art game on the platform. I personally, don't have much of an issue with the game, but there's just something that bugs me about games as art and the way they can't really take the medium seriously. The idea that a game needs to be fun and goofy is what holds this medium back. As much as I do love goofy games and don't want them to go anywhere, I would really appreciate a push for more games like this in the future.

At what point does a human dissolve into becoming just a mere resource? In the world of Armored Core, humans essentially have become nothing but a resource to the rich and powerful. The average human has been knocked down on the social standing as the capitalist fiends behind the scenes begin prioritizing robots and cybernetics. Armored Core is a game about humanity being replaced and how just a few powerful people can cause the demise of billions.

It's no surprise that Armored Core is a mecha game, compared to most other popular mecha series, Armored Core seems to take advantage of its genre more than any other mecha series. Gone are named characters of most series, as in the world of Armored Core, they have become completely irrelevant. Most structures have to accommodate the size of the armored core units, which creates this barren and dystopian atmosphere. The lack of music during levels creates more of a focus on the mechs themselves since most of the noises you'll be hearing come from combat. It creates a contrast between what you hear in battle, vs the groovy music heard in the menus.

When outside of battles, the player will have to pay close attention to their stats. Creating a mech in Armored Core is one of the biggest selling points with plenty of options making it seem like the combinations are endless. The game provides the player with stats that are essentially designed to overwhelm and complicate the player playing further into the idea that the human is insignificant. Having to deal with conflicting stats such as whether having a heavy part is worth it, and having to consider the cost of ammo for a specific weapon. However, considering this is From Softwares first dip into the mecha genre, it's not perfect. There seems to be a large array of items that just don't seem necessary. While the game seems to encourage having a custom and unique mech, it almost seems like by the halfway point of the game, I had myself a perfect mech that nobody would possibly be able to match. While there were some things that I could imagine changing, the only thing that cemented the idea that I did in fact have a perfect mech, was when I went online and saw most people were using an almost identical build to me. Mech building in Armored Core certainly isn't bad, but there is plenty of room for improvement.

One of the most obnoxious complaints I see about Armored Core is people complaining about the controls which has always baffled me because I always considered AC to have one of the greatest control schemes ever put in a game. The game will always make sure to remind you that you are controlling a mech and that the mech is more important than the human inside. You will feel the weight, and you will make every slight movement count. The actual controls themselves feel complicated similar to what is being felt inside the mech. No mech real mech would give the pilot a controller with two analog sticks and easy to learn controls. Armored Core doesn't care about the pilot. If the pilot dies, they will be replaced, meanwhile, if an AC Unit gets destroyed, It's gonna cost a lot.

Armored Core truly is a capitalist nightmare. A story about a few guys who got so rich that they feel like they're at the top of the world, and even then the ending cutscenes for each corporation show how their lack of respect for the human race caused them to get betrayed by the same robots they valued over humans. When technology goes too far, who will be there to stop it? When humans become irrelevant, we will become the machine and the machine will power over humanity until it is met with the next largest obstacle. Capitalism and greed creates an existential nightmare and will fuel the demise of humanity.

Side note: fuck the platforming segment in the final level.

Such a wonderful game about societys fascination with violence. The cyberspace setting serves the purpose of housing a deathmatch where everyone is represented by a smiley face. While they roam endlessly through the bland and uneventful maze, the smiley faces always keep a smile on their faces. It doesn't matter to them how boring things get as long as they can live out their realistic murder fantasies. While the game doesn't seem like it's condemning violence in media, It instead seems like it's acknowledging it as it's only human nature for us to get excited over something that we cannot do. In cyberspace, anything is possible and even if primitive, the process of technology becoming more and more advanced will always excite some people no matter how primitive it is. In a way, Faceball can almost be compared to modern day VR technology. Just take a look at Mark Zuckerberg and his all of his rich dick suckers buying into the "metaverse". The metaverse is this massive leap in technology, but since it's still in its primitive stages, it's somewhat humorous to watch and laugh at these rich millionaires getting excited and happy over the idea of something as basic as legs. However, getting excited over something so simple isn't so far away from Faceball and the excitement of simulated violence in cyberspace.

Really good example of a pre Tony Hawk extreme sports game. Back before the genre had any sort of expectations. No trick based scoring, no grinding, no punk soundtrack, and gameplay more reminiscent of Cruisn over anything else. I love it though! The game feels really good to control and punching someone in the face after they try to pass me is so much fun. I was also a really big fan of the Metroidvania style of gameplay which was a complete shock for a game like this. Early on in the game it will be extremely hard to come close to first and some of the gates on the track and other obstacles will be impossible to get through or just really hard unless you pay money to get a better vehicle. It's a really fun way of progression and it kept me way interested in playing the game when I wasn't cracking the top 5 in every race. I feel like an issue with modern racing games comes from how easy it is to get 1st, but when games make it impossible to win every race, it adds more of an incentive to get better and work towards that goal. There is an amazing sense of reward in this game that isn't seen enough in other games. I really loved this game, and considering the hilariously bad name change after they lost the ESPN license, it was still a fun time. Looking forward to playing the sequels.