(advertencia de contenido: violencia machista y pensamientos suicidas)

En una época en la que las aventuras de texto han crecido tanto y desarrollado tantas facetas, Aisle se siente cada vez más pequeño. Ahora que la gimmick ha quedado completamente integrada en el lenguaje de las aventuras de texto, sobrevive más como producto de una ventana partes más calenturientas y frustradas de Barlow, así como una puesta a prueba de lo sádicas que pueden ser las decisiones del jugadore. Y la verdad, no me interesaba tanto saber lo que Barlow piensa cuando rompe con alguien.

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(Content Warnings: Sexist violence and suicidal ideation)

In an age where text adventures have grown so much and developed so many new facets, Aisle only gets smaller and limper. Now that the gimmick has been fully integrated into the language of text adventures, it survives more as a window through Barlow's wettest, most frustrated parts of his psyche, and as a morbid take on how much verbs can a sadistic player conjure. And honestly, I wasn't that interested in knowing what Barlow imagines when he breaks up with someone.

Hey Borderlands, you're set in sort of a sci-fi rust belt where rampant industrialization and subsequent ecomonic abandonment has driven people to lead lives of total desperation and violence to survive, can I get some type of interesting or thought-provoking politics from you?
Borderlands: haha dude video game references in the video gaaame... fart shit funnyy...
Like, listen, I like cool explosions and laser guns as much as the next person, but you can't just fill your world with a series of mediocre jokes. You need to give me something substantial to latch on to.

It's janky. It's clunky. The devs doen't know what kind of game they want it to be. Neither does the game. It's highly moddable. It's got too much going on, too many greebly little systems that don't really work right and too many conflicting themes and moods vying for your attention. The NPCs are cardboard cutouts lacking the depth of Dwarf Fortress. And yet, C:DDA still manages to be compelling. I probably would not like this game in its current state if the devs were not completely open about how it is not finished yet and that they are actively working on it.

What is it? Ok not speaking as a total hate train person, legitimate question, What is it? I won’t forgive this game for making timed shop exclusives a thing, or popularizing battle passes, or the weird thing they do where all of my favorite items don’t exist anymore for a whole, but mostly i just kinda look at this game and wonder what the heck is going on in there. It’s not something that can easily make sense to me, it’s a game where you try to be the last one alive, yeah, but it’s also a game where you can default dance as Rick Sanchez in the middle of a lovingly crafted MLK remembrance digital museum, and a game where goku can put a suction cup on you and ride a weird ball, and a game where you get resources and when you shoot someone they construct a tower in two seconds the size of a traveling fair slingshot. I am glad kids are having fun with something, everyone needs a childhood brain empty thing, i had roblox, these kids have fortnite…it’s just so wild to see this glob of pop culture move and swirl, what is it?

Ok, so, a lot of people love this game for the lol so weird factor, and that is a definite part of the experience. But LSD Dream Emulator is kind of a work of art? like I get it, it’s easy to bounce off of it because it doesn’t get especially wild until time has passed, but it’s kind of full of emotion. Osamu Sato is one of my favorite visual artists, and while his point and click games are cool if not obtuse, this game is the equivalent of being thrown in the deep end filled with vibrant oil and sharp corners. This game is surprisingly abrasive, effectively surreal and not afraid to jerk the player around or make them feel like something is definitely wrong. All while your controls are just walk, turn, look up, look down. Honestly while the game itself is amazing and one of my favorite things ever, the cutscenes sort of make it a five for me. Randomly getting shown a little short film with music made by or commissioned by Osamu of varying lengths and intentions is so very rad, my favorite being a tie between the UFO and the Fish Bowl Elevator. Also if you are in a need for a surrealist breakcore experience listen to the soundtrack for this game, legitimately primo i have the remixes on vinyl.

Perhaps more importantly than making a good game, Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya has assured the world that, provided you have *a* computer (any computer still running can play this, I imagine) and an internet connection, you will always have free access to something universally cherished, something intelligent and forthcoming with ideas of simple design, and something (in its original form) untouched by the inherent evil that coats large-scale game development.

I love this game, but let's be real: it's a public service first, great game second. Give Pixel a key to a city or something.

So like picture this:

You are sitting beneath an old piano in your grandmother's dingy basement. The ground is rather dirty--you can feel it with your hands-- but the lighting is subpar so you cannot see it. Upstairs, your brother is practicing piano with his piano teacher, who also happens to be your grandmother. As you sit beneath that creaky, old piano on the dusty floor in the dingy basement, you look over towards your binder and shudder at the thought of straining your eyes trying to do your maths homework. You immediately turn the other way and notice a bunch of old records. You've seen these records before, all of them are by people who died long before you were born, except for Nick Cave. As soon as you remember Nick Cave, you feel just as dusty as the floor you're sitting on, so you look the other way. Your eyes have adjusted at this point, so now you can see the stick horse in the back corner. You haven't ever noticed this stick horse before, so you attempt to stand up and walk over to get a closer look, but you hit your head on the piano you forgot you were sitting beneath. It lets out a quiet groan, and you do the same. After quickly recovering from your collision, you wonder when the piano was last tuned; when will it wake from its slumber? You worry that you might've hit the piano a little too hard because you notice that your brother stopped playing the one upstairs. As you tilt your ear toward the basement staircase, you notice that you can see the floor a little bit clearer. It is a sickly shade of beige, although it's not clear whether or not the tiles actually look like that. Suddenly, you hear the basement door open. You have no idea who it is, but you feel incredibly uneasy. Is it your brother? Is it the teacher? Is it...is it grandma? Is it your parents? You hear someone's foot meet the first creaking step and your heart starts to race. What do you do...

screeeech

You remember that you're supposed to be doing your maths homework.

creeeaaak

You haven't even started it.

screeaaak

Do run over and open your binder?

Screeeech

No wait, your binder is zipped up, they'll hear you!
Skreeek
Do you delay?
Creeeaaak
Well maybe it's-
skreeeaaak
Do you hide?
screech
Oh god.
Creak
You are panic-
Skreak
You will be-
Creak
Why are you still under the piano?!
stomp

They've reached the bottom of the staircase. The footsteps stop for a moment; you hold your breath. The silence is maddening. You look towards the sliding door and you notice that the evening has slipped away. Suddenly, the footsteps begin again....and they're getting louder...
You close your eyes.
...and louder...
You start to shudder.
...and LOUDER...
You put your head on your knees.
...until they stop right in front of you. You fear what will happen next.



In this scenario, Anodyne is the stick horse. I don't have much else to say about it.

Monopoly is just a rip-off of Florida. Hospice care is also a rip-off of Florida. Florida is basically death's waiting room, and this is the board game that you have to play while you wait. Monopoly is like listening to a terrible teacher lecture you, and that teacher is the father of the Six Flags guy. The most optimal way to play Monopoly is with an oxygen tank while Everywhere At The End Of Time is playing over a loudspeaker, and if you're really hardcore, you should try playing it while on an IV drip too. Monopoly is basically like a disappointing trip to Sea World where you have to also watch the 'trainers' abuse the animals after the show. Playing Monopoly is equivalent to starring in Dallas Buyers Club and then watching it all the way through multiple times. You just sit there and watch yourself physically waste away into nothingness over and over and over again until you're sick of watching yourself in the process of dying and just want the grim reaper grant you the sweet release of death, but instead he just gives you more fucking Monopoly money. I hate Monopoly. I hate Monopoly! I fucking hate Monopoly.

bear with me on this one

it’s an admirable feat for pixel pusher union to supplant the domineering individualist (and disturbingly often, bordering on authoritarian) power fantasies common to the medium with a collectivist power fantasy, and certainly it’s worth noting that the fledgling studio has put their money where their mouth is by operating as a worker-owned cooperative. still, one look at tonight we riot’s tongue-in-cheek steam page and you can easily see how they’ve mobilized to target their chosen niche. the only two prominent reviews chosen to represent their title shine a spotlight on the game’s overt politics. one, offered by variety, is a rather bog standard but affable description of the title’s unapologetically political nature, and the other undercuts variety’s blank cheque review vis-à-vis this political quality because it is written by a middle-aged economist chud who claims the game is socially ‘repulsive’ with all the intellectual grace and cutting rhetoric of that one infamous matt bors comic (‘yet you participate in society. curious!’) this kind of clearly ironic spotlight on bad-faith condemnation doesn’t necessarily call the sincerity of PPU’s endeavour into question, but it does function as a kind of signal to the intended audience. ‘come on, look at this petty bourgeois rube…don’t you want to stick it to this guy who so clearly represents the structures of power you’re starving to utterly demolish, to gloriously overthrow?’

while i am loathe to admit it, and while he obviously didn’t intend it in this way, the chud may have a point in the grace note of his dismissive conjecture when he suggests that as an alternative to tonight we riot, you can ‘download streets of rage 2 for a dollar’. that title is, of course, a dystopian beat ‘em up in which four turned-vigilantes from varying socioeconomic classes unite to thwart the machinations of white collar criminal mr. x, a man whose accrued wealth, power, and despotic nature gives him carte blanche to inflict systemic pain on wood oak city and to treat disenfranchised individuals as nothing more than cogs in his exploitative machine, which disempowers the entire city on a macro-level and on a micro-level, whittles down the beauty of everyday life – the desolation of wood oak city contrasted with the opulence of his headquarters, the devolution of martial arts’ inherent philosophical honor seen in shiva’s character or in the eagle mini-bosses (that martial arts is often a path out of poverty remains a despairingly easy connection to make), the mechanization of society running as an undercurrent throughout the streets of rage 2 campaign. ive always argued that a hallmark of streets of rage is its humanist bent when contrasted against other beat ‘em ups, corny though it is. you’re fighting for the future, the only way you know how, which maybe in itself turns out to be a problem. this is prominently, albeit inadvertently, demonstrated through the franchise’s successive entries, which implicitly question just how sustainable those hard-fought victories are. the fight goes on, the rage never dies down, the future must always be defended by egalitarian vanguards – the existence of a world untainted by corruption and power is never denied.

i bring all this up not only because the existence of a better world is a thread that both of these titles share in common, but also because by contrast, tonight we riot has no easily identifiable hooks to sink into; there’s no imagination here. if i described the game to you as ‘insular leftist agitprop brawling power fantasy’, everything that could reasonably come to mind for you is on offer here, like it’s some kind of derivative checklist borne from endless amounts of doomscrolling. the trumpian caricature, a narcissistic billionaire – he’s the antagonist, and when you whittle away his means of production and armed forces throughout the game he turns out to be the most pitiful opponent you’ve ever faced. check. okay, we got the literal invisible hands of the market as a mecha boss battle. check. we threw in leftist myths with a degree of universality and cuteness behind ‘em in the form of shoutouts to loukanikos and possibly even el negro matapocos, check. corrupt media denouncing your efforts only to then demonstrate fear as your success continues, check. it is what it is – unambitious, serving as an attempt at an antidote to a perceived conservative culture in games. you could make the argument that conservatism in gaming isn’t borne out of anything other than malaise – apoliticism taken to its furthest extent, with developers treating their audiences as pigs lining up for escapism slop. but then that ignores the culture that breeds this sentiment, and it ignores the role the state plays in the creation of all kinds of media. just as the pentagon finances film if they can be depicted benevolently, so too does the military fund games like call of duty and use these titles as recruitment tools. so maybe there is in fact a need for titles that do the opposite.

but, see, here’s where i get kind of hung up on this. depicting collective action in a mechanics-driven arcade format is difficult. that’s the primary reason the individual is venerated in action games – it’s borne not out of conservatism necessarily, but out of constraint and out of an understanding that any of these concepts could easily be abstracted and then transposed onto the actions of the individual. the only title that springs to mind that may serve as an exception to the difficulty in portraying collective mechanics is the fantastical and tokusatsu-influenced the wonderful 101, which many in action-game circles purport is one of the greatest games ever made, so while it’s not a politically driven game per se already there’s a particularly high bar to clear for this kind of thing. not beholden to any tokusatsu schmaltz, the way in which tonight we riot depicts this collective action – by still conforming to standards of dozens of arcade action titles – feels hollow to me. the fact that it’s not well-designed by any metric or even cathartic to play is ancillary to me. (and no, it’s not cathartic to play when it wears the aches of the world as pastiche and when its core gameplay loop still revolves around managing faceless comrades, who can and will get brutalized, played out against the backdrop of a brazenly idealistic take on a revolution…the game tries to sidestep concerns that you’ll see everyone as gamified Units To Sacrifice and Expend by having no narrative hooks/leader role protagonists but it’s not a great solution either. also good god those controls are horrid) the problem for me is that what should be ample opportunity to subvert expectations or preconceived notions is done away with in favour of a terribly bland arcade experience that seems to only exist to affirm people’s political beliefs, like some kind of reward for Good Online Leftism, and it’s made worse by how insular the whole thing is. it uses the language of an aging aesthetic and of a particular kind of power fantasy and just wears its skin without doing much more with the concept. im left wondering who is left for this to appeal to, and i kind of have an answer, but it’s not a particularly nice one so i see no reason to write about it.

‘why get hung up about a game that still unabashedly shares your politics, it’s fine that it exists! six days in fallujah just got greenlit again out of nowhere in the most unhinged move the medium has seen in years, talk about how that’s fucked up instead!’ im only writing this because i do care! because i think games of this kind should do more than be escapism or reiterate what we already know ala cynically celebrated films like parasite, itself revered in a similar vein to tonight we riot. i think there’s genuine room for emotionally mature experiences that respect audience intelligence, that reveal deep and moving truths, and that achieve more than just being the same kind of escapism under a different ideology or that exist only to plainly acknowledge blanket issues (i don’t expect remedy but i do love insight). and i think it’s part of a weird overall trend in discourse that largely revolves around the sanitation of art and the rejection of anything that doesn’t 100% conform to our stringent politics.

ultimately, tonight we riot has no charred or abrasive edges, in spite of what it sells to you – it’s every bit as inoffensive and unremarkable as it claims to not want to be.