for how much this game goes violently haywire and coughs up blood the entire time there's actually a tragic amount of good stuff here.

to get it out of the way this game is just so decomposed beyond a functional state of like. working. the presentation is just absolutely horrible. the juxtaposition between concept/box art and the actual game is ridiculous. this game begs you to take it seriously which is absolutely impossible to do given the state of its animation. quite a few of the plot twists are frivolous, with at least one being so useless and extraneous that it's shocking to me it was left in. the pacing is both breakneck and overlong as a result of the cheap development. they could not afford to make even half of the scenes needed to tell this narrative properly, and for the ones they could afford, they wrung out every drop of time they could get. there are plot devices introduced to the series that are very stupid. they did not need to be here. perhaps most unfortunately out of all the characters that are brought back for this game half of them are so pathetically misused that i'm honestly just disappointed uchikoshi bothered at all. it feels like their personalities are altered arbitrarily to lend scenes conflict which is just pathetic. how are you strapped for conflict in a death game.

and yet for all this game crashes and burns i can't help but be awestruck by some of the stuff the game does successfully get away with. scores of funyarinpa worth of ink has been spilled about the way the narrative is presented but i think it is unilaterally great. experiencing a story in a seemingly random order not only gives a disorienting effect analogous to the characters' experiences but also creates one of the only legitimately fun mysteries to put together out of all of uchikoshi's catalog. the masked child is pretty great (and not just because we can't see any shoddy facial animations). to be honest, i actually quite like this game's original cast with the exception of mira. uchikoshi isn't especially gifted at character writing but there was something about most of the cast that felt so much more human and desperate this time around.

the death games finally unshackle themselves from being about picking a group to go through a door with or doing repeated basic game theory exercises to being a much more freeform set of fucked up decisions. they're bountiful set pieces especially in the bizarro zero escape world and it creates an environment from the start where it's impossible to know what's coming next. also, the final stretch of the game kinda just rules.

uchikoshi's most masterful trick however is that instead of being an elucidating perspective of a victim of one of these death games, the voyeuristic view the player gets of this often meaningless cacophony of decisions and causality that make up this game elucidates a different perspective altogether. the sense of apathy and desensitization to all the stupid decisions that go into this narrative evokes the perspective of the characters who have peered into the web of causality and lost touch with the people and world around them. zero time dilemma makes you that person.

it lays bare that in the grand scheme of the messy chain of events that make up all possible realities, we are sometimes victims at the hands of fate, we are sometimes violent opportunists, we are sometimes even decomposed by the grandiosity of it all.

but most of the time, we just trudge along, unaware of our surroundings. we're small, we're weak. we're a dog that follows its training, blissfully unaware of any danger. we're an unhinged idiot who can only safeguard against the unknown with violence. we're a child who is incapable of understanding the self, much less death.

we're a snail, inching forward just a little bit at a time and obliviously causing ripples in the world around us.

you don't need to be a bethesda game (although there is definitely a way to beat them at their own game if you are brave)

you don't need to be new vegas again (even though it is obvious that's what you are trying to be)

you just have to be SOMETHING

why are you so reluctant to be anything at all

you are the lorax movie on repeat for thirty hours, followed by a smarmy grin and a "i hope that gave you a lot to think about"

animal crossing finally concludes its slow and steady descent into a list of chores served alongside a heaping helping of bread and circuses. the experience of playing new horizons is closer to playing a dead mmo than it is to any sort of zen-like getaway game.

animal crossing has always had a nasty hook monster but it is no longer lurking around the small town, showing its face to you rarely and at a distance. now, it has picked up a beach-front property and firmly moved in. it is now the most important resident, and by god, if you do not play by its rules, you are not going to have a good time.

I've always found the ✨wholesome vibes✨ literary aesthetic to be pretty indicative of anodyne schlock and Assemble With Care doesn't fully escape the echoes of that vortex despite being pretty well crafted. Story is cute and well-considered even if unambitious. Puzzles feel great and sound design is on point but the repairs are made of the same basic parts instead of being fully bespoke experiences (despite the miniature runtime of ~1 hour). PC controls are especially wonky, unless you slow down to an uncomfortable extent you will be dropping and picking things up on accident repeatedly multiple times per puzzle. Made me smile a couple times.