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The Legend of Zelda
1986
The first time I played The Legend of Zelda was in 2003, as part of The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition for the Nintendo GameCube. The disc came as a bonus for re-upping my subscription to the magazine Nintendo Power, and it included four of the five mainline games in the series released to that point (excluding only A Link to the Past). Playing the original NES game, for the teenage version of myself, was a joyless experience, a perceived chore undertaken out of a felt obligation to experience the first entry in what was already, less than twenty years after its inception, a storied franchise.
Intent on completing the game as quickly as possible, I printed an FAQ with explicit instructions on how to reach every point of interest in the game's overworld. Perhaps I had internalized the words of the old man who bequeathes Link his sword in the game's opening minutes: "It's dangerous to go alone!" So intimidated was I by the prospect of facing this game with only my own wits (and reflexes) that I had prejudged it to be impossible without the guidance of those who went before. Perhaps inevitably, I abandoned this attempted playthrough after only a couple of hours. I had psyched myself out of experiencing what later games would underscore as the franchise's most elemental strength: the joy of exploration.
Playing the game again in 2021, this time via the Nintendo Switch's official NES emulator, I approached it as I had learned to approach 2017's Breath of the Wild: as a sandbox dotted with treasures, each one locked behind a puzzle. I swept back and forth across the game's overworld looking for them, impressed with the world's expansiveness but also its coherence. Here, fully formed, were the topographical features of so many games in the series that followed: twisting forests, rife with monsters; crags, cliffs, and rockslides to the north; beaches and deserts, bleached white by the sun.
Unwittingly, I completed the first three dungeons out of sequence. When I discovered this, I was even more impressed with the game for its flexibility: truly, this was an adventure of my own making. In fact, I discovered most of the dungeons without looking for them. More than once, I made it deep inside before discovering that I was missing an important item likely to be found in another dungeon; I would need to leave and restart the dungeon later, when I had the proper tools. The first few times this happened, I didn't mind. But as situations like these became more frequent, I finally turned to an online guide simply to tell me which previously discovered dungeon I was meant to clear next.
By about the sixth dungeon, the fundamental experience of the game had changed. Having initially explored the map on my own but with the Internet now serving as my compass, the game had become primarily a dungeon crawler. The overworld went by in a blur as I raced from one dungeon to the next, with occasional detours to explode a rock or burn a tree or buy potions from an old woman. These were secrets I never would have uncovered on my own, and so I didn't mind using the guide to find them. The dungeons, at least, I was able to finish unaided. Did I clear them optimally? Definitely not. In some cases I had to retread my steps multiple times in search of a hidden doorway or a particular item I was missing. But even so, the self-contained nature of the dungeons made each one conquerable in no more than 30 to 40 minutes. That is, until the final dungeon.
At this point, though, it's worth mentioning that at about this point in my playthrough, I came across Backloggd user chump's insightful review of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Chump writes that the Zelda franchise, by and large, "isn't a dungeon crawler, it's an overworld crawler. Don't get me wrong, Zelda dungeons can be fun or even highlights of the game, but the focus has been on the overworld since the very beginning of the series."
This sentiment gave me pause. If it were true, and given that I'd made the conscious decision to stop experiencing The Legend of Zelda as an overworld crawler and instead as a dungeon crawler, then either I was playing the game incorrectly or I was fundamentally misapprehending the game that I was playing. Was I simply approaching the game with the same cynicism that I had as a teenager -- except that, for whatever reason, I was enjoying myself this time?
It seemed worth taking a step back to consider the essential nature of these concepts. I thought of arguably the original dungeon crawler: Dungeons & Dragons, the tabletop game that in its earliest incarnations actively eschewed so-called "roleplaying" in favor of clearing out monsters from dungeons and hoarding their loot.
On the first page of the original Dungeons & Dragons three-volume boxed set (published in 1974), creator Gary Gygax claims that while "it is relatively simple to set up a fantasy campaign," the bulk of the campaign referee's preparation will necessarily be devoted to "laying out the maps of his 'dungeons' and upper terrain." The game's initial rulebooks and supplements, even the ones purportedly devoted to fleshing out alternative campaign settings, are mostly concerned with the ways game organizers (called Dungeon Masters, starting with D&D's second supplement in 1975) might draw out the gameplay and/or make the players' goals more difficult to achieve. The books advocate for nefarious labyrinths escapable only through false walls; doors that lock behind the players until a certain number of enemies have been defeated; traps that send players to the beginning of the dungeon, effectively resetting their progress. In other words, the aim of the Dungeon Master essentially was to troll the other players.
Had The Legend of Zelda released a decade earlier, its later dungeons would have made Gygax and his collaborators proud. Even once you've obtained a map, the final dungeon is truly aggravating. Upon the game's release in 1986, it would have been completable only by means of graph paper, pencil, and a whole lot of patience. This was the one dungeon for which I followed an online guide, and even so it was by far the longest and most difficult to complete. The number of underhanded traps and overpowered enemies the player must surmount simply to advance from one room to the next is absolutely punishing. It's pure dungeon-crawling, in keeping with the design philosophy established by Original D&D.
In that sense, I think it's fair to characterize The Legend of Zelda as at least equal parts dungeon and overworld crawler -- if not skewing toward the former, especially in the late game. Perhaps that became less true for the franchise over time, but part of apprehending this first game is to understand that its oft-labeled "obtuseness" emerges from a philosophy shared by game designers and players alike, one in which testing boundaries (the game's, the player's) is intrinsic to the very idea of "play."
Yes, it's dangerous to go alone. But Zelda has never encouraged going it alone, not really. It has always understood its relationship with the player in terms of its relationships with other players, as part of a network that, for decades now, has helped its constituents come to grips with this exhilarating, mysterious, challenging game and its myriad descendants. Community is Zelda's strength, not its secret shame. The Legend of Zelda does not tell the player much, not explicitly, but its most famous line is followed immediately by the game's endorsement of this truth:
"It's dangerous to go alone! Take this."
Intent on completing the game as quickly as possible, I printed an FAQ with explicit instructions on how to reach every point of interest in the game's overworld. Perhaps I had internalized the words of the old man who bequeathes Link his sword in the game's opening minutes: "It's dangerous to go alone!" So intimidated was I by the prospect of facing this game with only my own wits (and reflexes) that I had prejudged it to be impossible without the guidance of those who went before. Perhaps inevitably, I abandoned this attempted playthrough after only a couple of hours. I had psyched myself out of experiencing what later games would underscore as the franchise's most elemental strength: the joy of exploration.
Playing the game again in 2021, this time via the Nintendo Switch's official NES emulator, I approached it as I had learned to approach 2017's Breath of the Wild: as a sandbox dotted with treasures, each one locked behind a puzzle. I swept back and forth across the game's overworld looking for them, impressed with the world's expansiveness but also its coherence. Here, fully formed, were the topographical features of so many games in the series that followed: twisting forests, rife with monsters; crags, cliffs, and rockslides to the north; beaches and deserts, bleached white by the sun.
Unwittingly, I completed the first three dungeons out of sequence. When I discovered this, I was even more impressed with the game for its flexibility: truly, this was an adventure of my own making. In fact, I discovered most of the dungeons without looking for them. More than once, I made it deep inside before discovering that I was missing an important item likely to be found in another dungeon; I would need to leave and restart the dungeon later, when I had the proper tools. The first few times this happened, I didn't mind. But as situations like these became more frequent, I finally turned to an online guide simply to tell me which previously discovered dungeon I was meant to clear next.
By about the sixth dungeon, the fundamental experience of the game had changed. Having initially explored the map on my own but with the Internet now serving as my compass, the game had become primarily a dungeon crawler. The overworld went by in a blur as I raced from one dungeon to the next, with occasional detours to explode a rock or burn a tree or buy potions from an old woman. These were secrets I never would have uncovered on my own, and so I didn't mind using the guide to find them. The dungeons, at least, I was able to finish unaided. Did I clear them optimally? Definitely not. In some cases I had to retread my steps multiple times in search of a hidden doorway or a particular item I was missing. But even so, the self-contained nature of the dungeons made each one conquerable in no more than 30 to 40 minutes. That is, until the final dungeon.
At this point, though, it's worth mentioning that at about this point in my playthrough, I came across Backloggd user chump's insightful review of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Chump writes that the Zelda franchise, by and large, "isn't a dungeon crawler, it's an overworld crawler. Don't get me wrong, Zelda dungeons can be fun or even highlights of the game, but the focus has been on the overworld since the very beginning of the series."
This sentiment gave me pause. If it were true, and given that I'd made the conscious decision to stop experiencing The Legend of Zelda as an overworld crawler and instead as a dungeon crawler, then either I was playing the game incorrectly or I was fundamentally misapprehending the game that I was playing. Was I simply approaching the game with the same cynicism that I had as a teenager -- except that, for whatever reason, I was enjoying myself this time?
It seemed worth taking a step back to consider the essential nature of these concepts. I thought of arguably the original dungeon crawler: Dungeons & Dragons, the tabletop game that in its earliest incarnations actively eschewed so-called "roleplaying" in favor of clearing out monsters from dungeons and hoarding their loot.
On the first page of the original Dungeons & Dragons three-volume boxed set (published in 1974), creator Gary Gygax claims that while "it is relatively simple to set up a fantasy campaign," the bulk of the campaign referee's preparation will necessarily be devoted to "laying out the maps of his 'dungeons' and upper terrain." The game's initial rulebooks and supplements, even the ones purportedly devoted to fleshing out alternative campaign settings, are mostly concerned with the ways game organizers (called Dungeon Masters, starting with D&D's second supplement in 1975) might draw out the gameplay and/or make the players' goals more difficult to achieve. The books advocate for nefarious labyrinths escapable only through false walls; doors that lock behind the players until a certain number of enemies have been defeated; traps that send players to the beginning of the dungeon, effectively resetting their progress. In other words, the aim of the Dungeon Master essentially was to troll the other players.
Had The Legend of Zelda released a decade earlier, its later dungeons would have made Gygax and his collaborators proud. Even once you've obtained a map, the final dungeon is truly aggravating. Upon the game's release in 1986, it would have been completable only by means of graph paper, pencil, and a whole lot of patience. This was the one dungeon for which I followed an online guide, and even so it was by far the longest and most difficult to complete. The number of underhanded traps and overpowered enemies the player must surmount simply to advance from one room to the next is absolutely punishing. It's pure dungeon-crawling, in keeping with the design philosophy established by Original D&D.
In that sense, I think it's fair to characterize The Legend of Zelda as at least equal parts dungeon and overworld crawler -- if not skewing toward the former, especially in the late game. Perhaps that became less true for the franchise over time, but part of apprehending this first game is to understand that its oft-labeled "obtuseness" emerges from a philosophy shared by game designers and players alike, one in which testing boundaries (the game's, the player's) is intrinsic to the very idea of "play."
Yes, it's dangerous to go alone. But Zelda has never encouraged going it alone, not really. It has always understood its relationship with the player in terms of its relationships with other players, as part of a network that, for decades now, has helped its constituents come to grips with this exhilarating, mysterious, challenging game and its myriad descendants. Community is Zelda's strength, not its secret shame. The Legend of Zelda does not tell the player much, not explicitly, but its most famous line is followed immediately by the game's endorsement of this truth:
"It's dangerous to go alone! Take this."
The Legend of Zelda
1986
Breath of the Wild’s attempt to bring Zelda back to its roots revitalized the discourse surrounding the original entry. Since Breath of the Wild was advertised as a return to the classic ideals, the positive reception has spilled over to the first Zelda, and their shared tutorial-free open design has received a ton of praise. The only downside for modern audiences who want to check out the original is that it’s known for being extremely confusing, and a game that you can't complete without a guide. I decided to put these ideas to the test, and I was surprised at how wrong they were. The game is certainly as open as people have been saying, but the caveat is that going outside recommended areas will lead to getting your ass kicked incredibly quickly. The idea that you’re left with no direction in a gigantic open world really isn’t true, it’s just that the direction is given implicitly through difficulty and item limitations rather than explicit dialog. With this perspective, the genius of Zelda’s world design became a lot easier to appreciate. The way you’re always close to the next bit of progression while still being allowed to figure things out on your own gives the advantage of a linear difficulty pacing while still feeling completely open. The truth about this game lies in between the new and old conceptions about it, in how it forms the perfect illusion of openness and mystery even when your journey has actually been planned from the start.
It should be a legal mandate for every video game shotgun to be good enough to warrant its own intro cutscene.
Gunslinger's an easy recommendation for anyone who enjoys arcade-like games and chasing high scores - when you get into the flow of things, it almost starts to feel like a western Hotline Miami in the best way possible. But to say that's all it is would be selling it short. For one thing, it's also great example of how a well-executed art style can actually benefit gameplay; the deeply saturated, exaggeratedly bright colours of enemies' clothes means there's always just enough visual clarity for them to never get lost in the midst of the game's lovingly crafted environments.
And while the story might seem like a standard revenge tale on the surface, it actually tackles a theme you don't often see explored in much media outside of historiographical studies - that being how little we know about what historical events and figures were really like, even those from as recently as the early 20th century. It occasionally risks undermining itself in this regard with how matter-of-fact some of the little historical trivia collectibles can be, but its playfulness in twisting the fates of famous outlaws and shootouts into boss fights or set pieces is so endearingly creative it's hard not to appreciate.
John Cygan (RIP)'s performance as Silas is also absolutely excellent in how naturally he flows from humour to vengefulness to even singing in a couple of instances. It's up there with some of gaming's best voice work for sure.
Gunslinger's an easy recommendation for anyone who enjoys arcade-like games and chasing high scores - when you get into the flow of things, it almost starts to feel like a western Hotline Miami in the best way possible. But to say that's all it is would be selling it short. For one thing, it's also great example of how a well-executed art style can actually benefit gameplay; the deeply saturated, exaggeratedly bright colours of enemies' clothes means there's always just enough visual clarity for them to never get lost in the midst of the game's lovingly crafted environments.
And while the story might seem like a standard revenge tale on the surface, it actually tackles a theme you don't often see explored in much media outside of historiographical studies - that being how little we know about what historical events and figures were really like, even those from as recently as the early 20th century. It occasionally risks undermining itself in this regard with how matter-of-fact some of the little historical trivia collectibles can be, but its playfulness in twisting the fates of famous outlaws and shootouts into boss fights or set pieces is so endearingly creative it's hard not to appreciate.
John Cygan (RIP)'s performance as Silas is also absolutely excellent in how naturally he flows from humour to vengefulness to even singing in a couple of instances. It's up there with some of gaming's best voice work for sure.
Devil May Cry 2
2003
The Devil May Cry games, and arguably action games as a whole, wouldn't be what they are today without DMC2. Everyone knows it's bad, but I think there's an unfortunate tendency to gloss over what an important piece of action game history it is. Few games are as absolutely brimming with legitimately really good and innovative ideas as DMC2 is, it's just that it didn't have anywhere near the development time it needed to realise them. Because of this, I think it's much more interesting to look at DMC2 in terms of what it did well & why it's ultimately much more influential than one would initially assume.
So, what did DMC2 bring to the table? Among other things, we've got:
- Instant weapon switching (albeit only for guns, but a paradigm-shifting precedent regardless).
- Prototypes of what would later become Styles; dodging & wallrunning were refined into Trickster, the air combo into Swordmaster, Rainstorm and Twosome Time into Gunslinger, etc.
- Bloody Palace, which pretty much every 3D action game worth its salt has a loose equivalent of.
- Majin Devil Trigger, which eventually led to Sin Devil Trigger (i.e. the coolest thing ever) in DMC5.
- A level select menu, which is probably taken for granted now.
- Multiple playable characters, which became enough of a series staple that it's effectively the main selling point of DMC3, 4 and 5's Special Editions.
- Customisation of your equipment in the form of amulets, which carried over into DMC3 and was eventually taken to an unparalleled extreme in DMC5.
Make no mistake: DMC2 is atrocious. But if not for its existence, both the DMC series itself & action games in general would be unrecognisable. For that reason, I think DMC2 is worth experiencing for yourself, even if you understandably don't finish it. You probably won't enjoy it, but you will inevitably gain a greater appreciation for why the games that came after this are as good as they are. Hideaki Itsuno and the rest of the developers under him probably deserve more credit for salvaging and expanding upon virtually every ounce of potential that this game had.
So, what did DMC2 bring to the table? Among other things, we've got:
- Instant weapon switching (albeit only for guns, but a paradigm-shifting precedent regardless).
- Prototypes of what would later become Styles; dodging & wallrunning were refined into Trickster, the air combo into Swordmaster, Rainstorm and Twosome Time into Gunslinger, etc.
- Bloody Palace, which pretty much every 3D action game worth its salt has a loose equivalent of.
- Majin Devil Trigger, which eventually led to Sin Devil Trigger (i.e. the coolest thing ever) in DMC5.
- A level select menu, which is probably taken for granted now.
- Multiple playable characters, which became enough of a series staple that it's effectively the main selling point of DMC3, 4 and 5's Special Editions.
- Customisation of your equipment in the form of amulets, which carried over into DMC3 and was eventually taken to an unparalleled extreme in DMC5.
Make no mistake: DMC2 is atrocious. But if not for its existence, both the DMC series itself & action games in general would be unrecognisable. For that reason, I think DMC2 is worth experiencing for yourself, even if you understandably don't finish it. You probably won't enjoy it, but you will inevitably gain a greater appreciation for why the games that came after this are as good as they are. Hideaki Itsuno and the rest of the developers under him probably deserve more credit for salvaging and expanding upon virtually every ounce of potential that this game had.
God of War
2018
an appalling, self-righteous, insecure act of apologia for a generation of emotionally distant fathers that characterises motherly love and affection as smothering, manipulative, and toxic, whilst characterising casual emotional neglect and abuse as Good, Actually.
god of war 4 is just as sexist as the earlier games in the series, it's just more crypto about it, and the vast swathes of people taken in by this completely surface-level nuance baffles me to a degree not seen since DmC: Devil May Cry was hailed as the "more mature" reboot that series needed despite the existence of a literal sniper-rifle abortion scene and the fact that every single female character in it was called "whore" ad nauseum.
the "one take" gimmick is just that: a total gimmick, adding absolutely nothing to the story and in many ways detracting from it. the staccato nature of this journey, of going up and down the same mountain and teleporting all over the place is only made more absurd by the camera framing this as an uninterrupted trek which it clearly is not.
also it plays like ass and you fight the same boss twenty times. i hope you like that animation of kratos slamming a big pillar down on an ogre because you're going to see it an awful lot.
EDIT: removed a shitty joke.
god of war 4 is just as sexist as the earlier games in the series, it's just more crypto about it, and the vast swathes of people taken in by this completely surface-level nuance baffles me to a degree not seen since DmC: Devil May Cry was hailed as the "more mature" reboot that series needed despite the existence of a literal sniper-rifle abortion scene and the fact that every single female character in it was called "whore" ad nauseum.
the "one take" gimmick is just that: a total gimmick, adding absolutely nothing to the story and in many ways detracting from it. the staccato nature of this journey, of going up and down the same mountain and teleporting all over the place is only made more absurd by the camera framing this as an uninterrupted trek which it clearly is not.
also it plays like ass and you fight the same boss twenty times. i hope you like that animation of kratos slamming a big pillar down on an ogre because you're going to see it an awful lot.
EDIT: removed a shitty joke.
"wot if u were a boy with no personality but two hot babes fell in love with you because you were nice to them on the most basic level possible and also the hot babes were part of a marginalised group considered your property but it's ok it's not weird we promise they actually like that you are Their Master it's ok :)"
You should all be ashamed of yourselves.
You should all be ashamed of yourselves.
Doom
1993
Quite simply the greatest porno game ever made.
Halo 3: ODST
2009
‘Jazzy neo-noir Halo game’ is such a bonkers idea that I can’t be too mad that it mostly doesn’t work. I love quiet loneliness in games, but the toolkit that the Halo franchise is unable to leverage it properly with its fabricated, cultureless personality devoid city design inspiring only boredom as you wander the empty streets. ODST is a deeply fractured, conflicted experience but it at least provides the spectacle of examining an oddball creative vision colliding into the routine bombast expected of the franchise up to this point.
(Continued from the Pokémon Alpha Sapphire Review...)
Turns out, Pokémon FireRed is just flat-out what I’d wanted out of Alpha Sapphire. My Twilight Princess friend (see the Final Fantasy VII Review) implored me to try it several years after the Alpha Sapphire debacle (because there is truly no escape), and when I finally did (after much procrastination), I…actually became a temporary fan of this series. FireRed was less Absolutely Mortified that I might lose or get stuck and vow never to buy their patented Pikachu merchandise ever again, and more of a confident videogame. Later Pokémen would force the player to admit that they “love Pokémon” before even being allowed to choose a starter, as though swearing their undying allegience to the brand. FireRed let me make honest mistakes and decide that for myself. Turns out, real love takes work. I had to manage which of my Pokémon would receive exp. and at which times (even after nabbing the exp. share), I had to raise each of my ‘mons from the ground-up and spend some amount of brainpower deciding how I’d construct my party. It even had the courtesy to open up at certain junctures and let me decide the order in which I’d tackle its gyms. Finding a new Pokémon somewhere never failed to blast some Good Chemicals into my brain, as I’d quickly begin to wonder whether it had a place as part of the crew. Even if it didn’t, I’d have to consider whether I was equipped with an efficient way to take it down.
Pokémon FireRed is hardly a Herculean Challenge, but it didn’t need to be in order to succeed where Alpha Sapphire failed. The important thing is that it trusted its own systems and guided me using the language it had established. There are genuine discoveries to be made in FireRed, and some of them even feel like they could be the player’s own. Its simple rivalry, sparse story and quaint setting included everything I might’ve wanted, and nothing I didn’t. Here was a game I could thoroughly respect. To think that an empire had been built on the back of its original version on the GameBoy. To think it released after Final Fantasy VII internationally and still slaughtered the competition on the basis of its universally appealing game design. I thought maybe I’d already be bowing my head and succumbing to the scam artistry if the games had stayed this good. After another, I realized that this was not to be.
P.S. I highly discourage playing any Pokémon game on "Shift" Mode. It outright removes a significant piece of the combat puzzle, and I don't think the game does nearly enough to express this. "Set" all the way (I can't begin to tell you how many times I've confused the two. C'mon Game Freak, just call "Set" the "Real Mode").
(To Be Continued in the Pokémon Crystal Review...)
Turns out, Pokémon FireRed is just flat-out what I’d wanted out of Alpha Sapphire. My Twilight Princess friend (see the Final Fantasy VII Review) implored me to try it several years after the Alpha Sapphire debacle (because there is truly no escape), and when I finally did (after much procrastination), I…actually became a temporary fan of this series. FireRed was less Absolutely Mortified that I might lose or get stuck and vow never to buy their patented Pikachu merchandise ever again, and more of a confident videogame. Later Pokémen would force the player to admit that they “love Pokémon” before even being allowed to choose a starter, as though swearing their undying allegience to the brand. FireRed let me make honest mistakes and decide that for myself. Turns out, real love takes work. I had to manage which of my Pokémon would receive exp. and at which times (even after nabbing the exp. share), I had to raise each of my ‘mons from the ground-up and spend some amount of brainpower deciding how I’d construct my party. It even had the courtesy to open up at certain junctures and let me decide the order in which I’d tackle its gyms. Finding a new Pokémon somewhere never failed to blast some Good Chemicals into my brain, as I’d quickly begin to wonder whether it had a place as part of the crew. Even if it didn’t, I’d have to consider whether I was equipped with an efficient way to take it down.
Pokémon FireRed is hardly a Herculean Challenge, but it didn’t need to be in order to succeed where Alpha Sapphire failed. The important thing is that it trusted its own systems and guided me using the language it had established. There are genuine discoveries to be made in FireRed, and some of them even feel like they could be the player’s own. Its simple rivalry, sparse story and quaint setting included everything I might’ve wanted, and nothing I didn’t. Here was a game I could thoroughly respect. To think that an empire had been built on the back of its original version on the GameBoy. To think it released after Final Fantasy VII internationally and still slaughtered the competition on the basis of its universally appealing game design. I thought maybe I’d already be bowing my head and succumbing to the scam artistry if the games had stayed this good. After another, I realized that this was not to be.
P.S. I highly discourage playing any Pokémon game on "Shift" Mode. It outright removes a significant piece of the combat puzzle, and I don't think the game does nearly enough to express this. "Set" all the way (I can't begin to tell you how many times I've confused the two. C'mon Game Freak, just call "Set" the "Real Mode").
(To Be Continued in the Pokémon Crystal Review...)
Servicable and inoffensive remake, but missing almost all of the mechanical and aesthetic peculiarities that make gen 1 interesting, like the chiptune music, the low-fi bichromatic GBC colorized visuals, the primordial off-model monster designs, and most importantly, the terrifying pantheon of the imagination that is glitch Pokemon and glitch interactions
I'd take Glitch City over the Sevii Islands any day, the most important part of gen 1 is the unauthorized feats of alchemy, Missingno multiplying your items, obtaining Mew to finish your dex by leaving a specific trainer alive and going on a fetch-quest, getting your game frozen by an infinitely screaming interdimensional creature with a gender marker for a name, stuff like that
FR/LG is missing all the cool stuff
I'd take Glitch City over the Sevii Islands any day, the most important part of gen 1 is the unauthorized feats of alchemy, Missingno multiplying your items, obtaining Mew to finish your dex by leaving a specific trainer alive and going on a fetch-quest, getting your game frozen by an infinitely screaming interdimensional creature with a gender marker for a name, stuff like that
FR/LG is missing all the cool stuff
Bayonetta
2009
Bayonetta has been my number one favorite game pretty much since I first played it back in 2010, but when I had that initial realization I’d honestly barely even scratched its surface. To this day I’m still finding new ways to play and improve my strats, which speaks to just how hard it nails that sweetspot between mechanics that are intrinsically satisfying, malleable, but also highly intentional; somehow it’s the one action game that does everything. The control system is so smooth and flexible it’s influenced every genre title since; knocking dudes into each other or tearing through the battlefield with Beast Within offers a sense of physicality other comparable games still don’t come close to; the enemies are some of the most aggressive, varied and polished you’ll ever encounter in a melee combat game; and all of that is wrapped up in a scoring system that miraculously manages to give you clear rules to work with while still allowing for a huge degree of expression. Even the ridiculous Angel Weapons make sense from that perspective — they give you a generous buffer to use whatever playstyle appeals to you in and still earn a Platinum combo in the end.
Between Witch Time, the equipment system and Dodge Offset, Bayonetta makes it easy to name-drop its most obvious gimmicks and leave it there, but those last two in particular are an insane step up for the genre when it comes to freedom and intentionality. How to trip an enemy up, where to launch them, whether to use magic or not: no other action game makes you consider these questions so actively at this fast of a pace, and I can’t get enough of it.
Between Witch Time, the equipment system and Dodge Offset, Bayonetta makes it easy to name-drop its most obvious gimmicks and leave it there, but those last two in particular are an insane step up for the genre when it comes to freedom and intentionality. How to trip an enemy up, where to launch them, whether to use magic or not: no other action game makes you consider these questions so actively at this fast of a pace, and I can’t get enough of it.
Bayonetta
2009
This review contains spoilers
CW: this one is...it's maybe NSFW in the same way that you wouldn't play some Bayonetta in the same room as your parents, if you catch my drift.
ben esposito, director of neon white, has claimed that that game was made "by freaks, for freaks", which got me thinking. what does such a game look like? what does a true game that flies it's freak flag high wear before it begins to peel it off, teasing all around it just enough to excite them before baring it's full naked form for an audience it knows will bark and howl for it? bayonetta. obviously.
such blood has been spilt over one question, rephrased and relitigated countless times: is bayonetta exploitative or empowering? feminist or objectivist? I'm here to tell you that the answer to these questions is Yes. bayonetta is a character designed by a woman under the direction of a man who wanted his dream woman brought to life. bayonetta is an all-powerful dominant force rarely not in complete control of the situation, that dances and parades herself for the male gaze as well as her own amusement. spank material for straight cis teenage boys and the most delightfully camp For The Gays drag show energy in the world, and earnest transition goals for transfems. bayonetta is all these things at once. the perceptions of bayonetta and what she is and does tangle up in themselves in a mess under the covers: sex, and by extension erotica, is inherently messy and you aren't going to get the clear-cut answers you want by demanding obsequious deference: you're in mommy's house now. be good, and maybe she'll give you what you want.
kinesthetic erotica to boil your blood and make the hairs on your neck stand on end like almost nothing else in the world. the thousand tiny moments of ever-building tension until it explodes into relief that the wicked weave system creates will never fail to make me shiver with delight, a bed of deep satisfaction that makes it so easy to excuse all the awkward fumbling when it reaches out of its comfort zone. it's an intoxicating (s)witch, one that's open to anything you can imagine and more besides. turn the difficulty down and you can effortlessly style on heaven's soldiers as the dominatrix supervillain of your wildest fantasies, or turn the difficulty up and have the game break you over its knee and make you beg for more, whilst still consenting to your learning how to turn the tables and show paradiso what a real witch can do.
many games are very bad at being convincingly erotic for a wide variety of reasons, whether out of the depressing commercialism of it all, the narrow audience of straight cis teenage boys most big games are aiming for, or just for taking themselves far too seriously. bayonetta succeeds because it puts such immense effort and care into fooling around, into not only its ludicrous high camp world and story, but also in the act of playing it, and enticing you to engage with it on terms both you and it consent to. dom or sub, any, all, or none of the toys of it's bedside table, in cutscenes and in play, bayonetta has one goal that overrides all others: to bring you to it's infinite climaxes, over and over again.there are many many tiny irrations and dissatisfactions with bayonetta that crawl into my mind once i'm hit with the clarity of the afterglow, but once i'm in there, it's hard to think about them, it's hard to think about anything else, other the game's intoxicating invitations push harder and faster against your limits and its, until either you or it or both of you can't take anymore, until...
...until we are all satisfied.
ben esposito, director of neon white, has claimed that that game was made "by freaks, for freaks", which got me thinking. what does such a game look like? what does a true game that flies it's freak flag high wear before it begins to peel it off, teasing all around it just enough to excite them before baring it's full naked form for an audience it knows will bark and howl for it? bayonetta. obviously.
such blood has been spilt over one question, rephrased and relitigated countless times: is bayonetta exploitative or empowering? feminist or objectivist? I'm here to tell you that the answer to these questions is Yes. bayonetta is a character designed by a woman under the direction of a man who wanted his dream woman brought to life. bayonetta is an all-powerful dominant force rarely not in complete control of the situation, that dances and parades herself for the male gaze as well as her own amusement. spank material for straight cis teenage boys and the most delightfully camp For The Gays drag show energy in the world, and earnest transition goals for transfems. bayonetta is all these things at once. the perceptions of bayonetta and what she is and does tangle up in themselves in a mess under the covers: sex, and by extension erotica, is inherently messy and you aren't going to get the clear-cut answers you want by demanding obsequious deference: you're in mommy's house now. be good, and maybe she'll give you what you want.
kinesthetic erotica to boil your blood and make the hairs on your neck stand on end like almost nothing else in the world. the thousand tiny moments of ever-building tension until it explodes into relief that the wicked weave system creates will never fail to make me shiver with delight, a bed of deep satisfaction that makes it so easy to excuse all the awkward fumbling when it reaches out of its comfort zone. it's an intoxicating (s)witch, one that's open to anything you can imagine and more besides. turn the difficulty down and you can effortlessly style on heaven's soldiers as the dominatrix supervillain of your wildest fantasies, or turn the difficulty up and have the game break you over its knee and make you beg for more, whilst still consenting to your learning how to turn the tables and show paradiso what a real witch can do.
many games are very bad at being convincingly erotic for a wide variety of reasons, whether out of the depressing commercialism of it all, the narrow audience of straight cis teenage boys most big games are aiming for, or just for taking themselves far too seriously. bayonetta succeeds because it puts such immense effort and care into fooling around, into not only its ludicrous high camp world and story, but also in the act of playing it, and enticing you to engage with it on terms both you and it consent to. dom or sub, any, all, or none of the toys of it's bedside table, in cutscenes and in play, bayonetta has one goal that overrides all others: to bring you to it's infinite climaxes, over and over again.there are many many tiny irrations and dissatisfactions with bayonetta that crawl into my mind once i'm hit with the clarity of the afterglow, but once i'm in there, it's hard to think about them, it's hard to think about anything else, other the game's intoxicating invitations push harder and faster against your limits and its, until either you or it or both of you can't take anymore, until...
...until we are all satisfied.
Embrace the chaos. Balance is for those caged by design handbooks and a palpable lack of imagination.
My dad stopped playing with me when I learned how to drift boost and he refused to let me show him how. Also it pissed him off when I just had Wario and Waluigi swap seats and they'd just go WAH, WEH, WAH, WEH
Hotline Miami
2012
A story of love and revenge told through ellipsis. A tale of violence reduced to its visceral fundamentals. Abstracted until the literal no longer matters and the work can indulge in the essential symbols and aesthetics.
In my opinion, it outdoes other games released at the time that tried to be self-critical of the mechanics being designed for violence and the implications of such. That because of Hotline Miami’s emphasis less on the shaming of the player, and more on the ways we distance ourselves from our actions in virtual spaces with context and the particular abstraction inherent to the videogame look.
Pushing us out of the comfort that virtuality gives us by constantly involving us, asking us question and calling attention to what we exert. Every time we kill dozens of enemies, having the need to contemplate the destructed bodies of every one of them on our way back to the place that we started in.
Video-game avatars as masks (like those Jacket wears before committing atrocities). Figures we control that serve to express ourselves in a space. Even when the only way that we can see of achieving that expression in the digital being through violent acts. All a performativity that the creators allow themselves to break down. Pointing at its farce and putting it apart so they can directly involve us in a conversation about what makes us wish for enacting these stories.
We might want to moralize our habits of playing through intellectualizing. The actions as means for encountering meaning of any kind, especially if it is irony. That it is okay that I exert violence in a virtual space because the game is making a critique of violence (the military FPS being the quintessential example of this falsity).
However, any of that would be nothing more than dishonest. We are not given a reason by the game of what we did. Nothing that rationalizes our journey, because we were not looking for anything in the first place. We just wanted to indulge ourselves. It is as intellectually unrewarding as that.
In so, the game not only explores exerted virtual violence and our relation to it as perpetuators, but also the futility of our agency in any form of system. We are taking from place to place by the designers to execute a very strict set of actions without possibility for more. We might like to indulge in the power fantasy, but in the end, we are being used by the game. We don’t have a choice over where we will go because it is all designed a priori. Anything we do having been not only considered but also planned. And any illusion of choice is all within the restrictions that the game puts us in. So we can do what they want us to do.
An anxiety that gains a political dimension with how it parallels how Jacket and Biker are used by a group with its own agenda, as if they were nothing more than tools. An agenda that they are not told about. Just doing it because it is what they have been ordered to. If anything, this game shows an understanding of its particular source (Drive, which itself was inspired by Le Samourai) that goes beyond the mere appropriation. That these symbols all served for stories about lonely men defined purely by their labor that are finally confronted with the consequences of their involvement, being left with nothing in the end. Although to this, Hotline Miami adds a viscerality in the trauma of normalizing violence that fits with its conceptual interests.
The only real shame is how this effect is kind of undermined by how there is, in the end, a rational explanation that gives meaning to all of us actions. A revelation that enhances the political side of the story in its usage of cold war confrontations and PTSD. However, in the process also takes away from the abstraction that is part of why this works so well on an aesthetic level. And so it kind of falls in what it tries to critique by giving us the comfort of the reason to justify what we did. Still, the experience of playing the game and getting these conflicted emotions by the situation that we are put in is something that cannot be taken away even by the worst twist (it does make it easier to forgive that when it's a secret ending that you need to find collectibles for, rather than being what you get when you only complete the story). More so with design this polish and an understanding of video-game language this intense.
I am very much sorry for bringing my big pretensiousness to video games too. It's what being bored and not being able to sleep does lmao.
In my opinion, it outdoes other games released at the time that tried to be self-critical of the mechanics being designed for violence and the implications of such. That because of Hotline Miami’s emphasis less on the shaming of the player, and more on the ways we distance ourselves from our actions in virtual spaces with context and the particular abstraction inherent to the videogame look.
Pushing us out of the comfort that virtuality gives us by constantly involving us, asking us question and calling attention to what we exert. Every time we kill dozens of enemies, having the need to contemplate the destructed bodies of every one of them on our way back to the place that we started in.
Video-game avatars as masks (like those Jacket wears before committing atrocities). Figures we control that serve to express ourselves in a space. Even when the only way that we can see of achieving that expression in the digital being through violent acts. All a performativity that the creators allow themselves to break down. Pointing at its farce and putting it apart so they can directly involve us in a conversation about what makes us wish for enacting these stories.
We might want to moralize our habits of playing through intellectualizing. The actions as means for encountering meaning of any kind, especially if it is irony. That it is okay that I exert violence in a virtual space because the game is making a critique of violence (the military FPS being the quintessential example of this falsity).
However, any of that would be nothing more than dishonest. We are not given a reason by the game of what we did. Nothing that rationalizes our journey, because we were not looking for anything in the first place. We just wanted to indulge ourselves. It is as intellectually unrewarding as that.
In so, the game not only explores exerted virtual violence and our relation to it as perpetuators, but also the futility of our agency in any form of system. We are taking from place to place by the designers to execute a very strict set of actions without possibility for more. We might like to indulge in the power fantasy, but in the end, we are being used by the game. We don’t have a choice over where we will go because it is all designed a priori. Anything we do having been not only considered but also planned. And any illusion of choice is all within the restrictions that the game puts us in. So we can do what they want us to do.
An anxiety that gains a political dimension with how it parallels how Jacket and Biker are used by a group with its own agenda, as if they were nothing more than tools. An agenda that they are not told about. Just doing it because it is what they have been ordered to. If anything, this game shows an understanding of its particular source (Drive, which itself was inspired by Le Samourai) that goes beyond the mere appropriation. That these symbols all served for stories about lonely men defined purely by their labor that are finally confronted with the consequences of their involvement, being left with nothing in the end. Although to this, Hotline Miami adds a viscerality in the trauma of normalizing violence that fits with its conceptual interests.
The only real shame is how this effect is kind of undermined by how there is, in the end, a rational explanation that gives meaning to all of us actions. A revelation that enhances the political side of the story in its usage of cold war confrontations and PTSD. However, in the process also takes away from the abstraction that is part of why this works so well on an aesthetic level. And so it kind of falls in what it tries to critique by giving us the comfort of the reason to justify what we did. Still, the experience of playing the game and getting these conflicted emotions by the situation that we are put in is something that cannot be taken away even by the worst twist (it does make it easier to forgive that when it's a secret ending that you need to find collectibles for, rather than being what you get when you only complete the story). More so with design this polish and an understanding of video-game language this intense.
I am very much sorry for bringing my big pretensiousness to video games too. It's what being bored and not being able to sleep does lmao.