Pentiment has an official reading list, partly composed of some of the books that the team used for reference when building the game's art, plot, and characters. They're an interesting collection of books, and since my love of Pentiment overflowed after finishing it originally, I poured that excess enthusiasm into reading them. Now that I have read them all and replayed Pentiment with the knowledge in hand, I thought it would be interesting to dive into the inspirations and how they helped me to have a more complete understanding of the historical and cultural background of the game. Hopefully it won't be too dry, but also bear in mind that this is a very loose analysis. I'm not going to go back and find passages to cite unless they're super important to the point I'm making. I'm enough of a nerd to read five books for a backlog review, not for an academic article.


First things, the books: I read the following from the reading list, which you can find here: (https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/11/10/recommended-reading-of-medieval-history-from-josh-sawyer/)

1 The Name of the Rose: Umberto Eco

2 Peasant Fires: The Drummer of Niklashausen Richard Wunderli

3 The Cheese and the Worms, Carlo Ginzburg

4: The Return of Martin Guerre, Natalie Zemon Davis

5: The Faithful Executioner, Joel F. Harrington

6 Dürer's Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance Artist—Susan Foister and Peter Van Den Brink


The Name of the Rose is perhaps the most important book on the list in terms of understanding the inspiration behind Pentiment. I admit I watched the film before reading the novel, but they are rather different beasts. Besides certain common elements between Pentiment and Name of the Rose, like the fictitious Abbey, certain elements straining the credibility of the historical setting (tassing having all strata of social classes present, the 15th century scriptorium vs. a random ass mountain abbey having a gigantic labyrinthine library), and main characters borrowing from real historical figures who are name-dropped in the story (William of Ockham in Name of the Rose and Albrecht Durer in Pentiment), the main connection is that they both use the classic detective murder mystery setup as a framework to explore both theology, historical moments, conflict, etc.

This is the part where the movie most differs from the book; it makes sense given that you can't really fit all that into 90 minutes. It chooses to keep the juicy murder mystery and some background political intrigue but dispenses with the broader narrative of the book, which is about apostolic poverty and the Avginon papacy. Essentially the gravity of the murders add a sense of urgency in solving them because the Abbey is defending its political independence as neutral ground for a meeting of the pope(or anti-pope really)'s men and several monastic orders and representatives of the holy roman emperor to debate the merits of how the church should function, if it should reject all property and live as paupers, which has both a religious significance but also a political one in the conflict between the Avignon Papacy (essentially for a while the pope left Rome and went to France and this had a pretty massive impact upon european politics of the time with a politically ascendant France) and the HRE and the various religious orders like the Benedictines and Franciscans. This is mirrored in Pentiment, which also uses the murders of Baron Rothvogel and later Otto as a framework to highlight both the purpose of historical memory, the nature of justice and peace in early modern Europe, the importance of religion in their communities and how alien that can feel to modern audiences in rich countries, life, death, our ideas of the past and how they influence us in the present, and a whole bunch of related themes.

Similarly, in Act 1, the murder is also presented as politically inconvenient for the abbot, who seeks a speedy resolution to the issue much like the abbot in The Name of the Rose does, but for the different reason that his Kiersau Abbey is an oddity in the church, maintaining practices such as a double monastery, which have long been frowned at by the catholic authorities but have simply remained unnoticed due to its insignificance. A long, embarassing murder investigation could bring the hammer down on them, which leads to the Abbotts callously attempting to throw Andreas' mentor, Piero, for the murder so that the monastery may continue without issue. There is also the matter of the scriptorium and adjacent library with a secret entrance by the ossuary in Name of the Rose and Crypt in Pentiment (though in truth, I think Brother Volkbert confirms that the crypt just holds bones, so it's probably also appropriate to call it an ossuary) being direct references.

In both stories, the skill of the detectives is a bit suspect. In the case of William of Baskerville, whilst he is definitely closer to the Platonic ideal of your Sherlock Holmes figure, being less of an unbelievable omniscient who has information, the reader doesn't like many of the examples of bad detective fiction (cough cough, BBC Sherlock). His assumptions and thought processes are reasonable (for the most part), but he sure takes his time in solving the case. In fact, he arguably fails pretty much everything he sets out to do. Seven people lie dead, the library got burned down, and the matter of apostolic poverty they had come to debate eventually led to it being branded as heretical, though the Avginon papacy did disappear in due time as the seat of the Holy See returned to Rome. Of course, he does have a sort of moral victory over the reactionary Jorge who set the murders in motion to hide the existence of a lost tome, which would, in his view, help to elevate comedy and laughter, which he views as subversive and leading to heresy and the corruption of the divine truth. It is fitting given the frequent debates in the book that the climax would involve essentially a philosophical discussion. This parallels somewhat Pentiment's ending, wherein Father Thomas brings down the Mithraeum below the church to erase the proof of St. Satia and St. Moritz being essentially just Diana and Mars, pagan figures worshipped before the Bavarian Christians settled on tassing. Andreas is also not the greatest sleuth, though, in large part, being an interactive medium, the character of Andreas' skills depends upon players' actions. Nevertheless, the constant of Andreas having to make difficult choices using incomplete information is a constant; it's impossible for him to ever fully uncover the truth of the matter with the limited time and resources he has to investigate the murders, and much like many things, including historical events, it's not really possible to actually 100% discover the "true" killer. There are likelier candidates, of course, and a good argument can be made for the most reasonable culprit, like in Act 1, where it is rather doubtful that Ottilia did it; I think Lucky is almost certainly the murderer; and it's interesting just how much a second playthrough can change a lot of what I thought. In Act 2, it's rather less clear, with Hanna and Guy both having threads pointing to them.

Either way, there is also the matter that Andreas and Pentiment as a whole are also concerned with the perception of truth rather than the whole matter of it, similar to the Name of the Rose: case in point: when Andreas returns to Tassing a few years later in Act 1, the Innkeeper will refer to a warped version of the events of the original murder, suggesting that either way the truth of the events has already passed into unreliable folklore. There is an angle to consider when choosing a culprit in both acts when considering the consequences for the community. Its still refreshing to me in an industry that still has seemingly not moved on from boring black and white low honor vs. high honor binary choice bullshit that Pentiment presents you with the infinitely more interesting to my mind issue of Ottilia Kemperyn. An old, misanthropic, heretical widow whose husband's death was caused by the murdered Baron Rothvogel's savage beating has essentially given up on life. Her house is just about to be taken away from her by the church because she has no heirs and cannot own property herself. If one were to invent utilitarianism in the 15th century, one could argue that letting the obviously innocent Ottilia take the heat for the murder of the Baron is the optimal choice; indeed, standing up for her by challenging the church's claim to her house does cause her to retain the house onto Act 2, but the church is predictably angry at your actions, and you've done little more than buy a woman a few more miserable years of her life. Of course, in doing so, you will be utterly perverting justice and sentencing a woman to the executioner, whose only crime was being born a peasant woman in the 15th century, with all the trials it entails. These tough choices are not limited just to Andreas, with Act 3 the townsfolk are still reconciling their choices in dealing with Otto's murder in 1525 and subsequent burning of the abbey (which mirrors the ending of The Name of The Rose with the Abbey and Library burning down also) and whilst they all have different perspectives on the issue, its interesting that some regret the foolishness that brought the hammer down on them and resulted in bloodshed whilst also recognizing that that very sacrifice led to their current positions, there is some optimism in the ending, with some arguing that the Abbot's ecclesiastical authority being replaced with the lord's secular one has been beneficial, with slightly less strict oversight and Lenhardt being murdered at least had temporary material improvements for the peasants who wouldn't be completely gouged by the new miller. As with everything, one can only move forward; the wheel of time stops for no man, and making peace with our mistakes and seeing a broader perspective is supremely important to life.

Peasant Fires doesn't cover the more famous 1525 German Peasant rebellion, but rather the lesser known Niklashausen rebellion of 1478, wherein a drummer whipped up a mass of pilgrims to rebel against the ruling authorities, claiming that he had received a divine vision of the virgin Mary, who called on him and the faithful to overthrow the corrupt church and kill the priests, that god had ordained for all land to be held in common and the feudal lords of the time had corrupted his will. The book explores the role of festivals in medieval Europe, with some serving as outlets for repressed anger at the authorities, like carnival being a time of playfully "reversing" the established relations of nobility, royalty, and peasantry. It highlights how, for most peasants, the calendar would be seen through the lens of the various public festivals throughout the year, from Christmas to Carnival to Lent to Easter, etc. Despite the much harsher working conditions, there were many more public holidays for the Europeans of the 15th century than there are for the Brits of today. Its influence is most apparent in Pentiment's Act 2, with Otto claiming a holy vision has revealed that the Lord is with the townsfolk of Tassing against the increased taxes and restrictions of the Abbot, mirroring the drummer. Otto's murder occurs during St. John's Eve, a very popular summer festival, with anger boiling over with the Abbot threatening excommunication to anyone he finds in the forest getting up to mischief. In both examples, the peasants are drawn to revolt against ecclesiastical authorities due to the increasing restrictions on their rights and material conditions. In Tassing, there is a noticeable decline in living standards, with the poor Gertners being particularly destitute due to increased taxes.

In the 1478 rebellion, the drummer started rallying people to the cause by preaching near the pilgrimage site of Niklashausen. In Pentiment, the Abbot further angers the peasants by closing the Shrine of St. Moritz, which is also a pilgrimage site and source of some religious comfort to the Catholic denizens of Tassing who often prayed to Saints for deliverance. The book goes into some depth regarding pilgrimages in the early modern period. While the sale of indulgences is much better known given its importance to the reformation, it is often overlooked that pilgrimages served a similar purpose. The idea of purgatory was such that pilgrims could reduce the suffering of themselves and/or deceased relatives by visiting a site of pilgrimage and receiving a partial indulgence for time in purgatory. It was another way in which the peasants would be essentially emotionally blackmailed into either donating or traveling to a holy site, which of course also had the effect of increasing the prestige and economic power of a church that hosted one of these relics, like the hand of a saint, a piece of the true cross, or what have you.

The main issue with the book is that the sources are very spotty, and so the author basically speculates on a large chunk of them. He at least admits that this is the case and makes clear what is his own imagination and what’s supported by the evidence, but still, it's a rather short book to begin with. Its illuminating at the very least regarding just how fucked medieval peasants were economically, the role of festivals and pilgrimages, and the power of mystics in inciting rebellion.

The Faithful Executioner is a work of microhistory focused on the life of the executioner of Nuremberg during a particularly busy time for such a professional. It has the advantage of drawing upon an unusual source: a detailed journal written by the said executioner during his time working for the city. It was rare for a man like him to be able to read, much less to leave such thorough notes about his work. It's a very interesting tale, which I recommend picking up. It's both a greater history lesson about the role of the executioner and the specific conditions in 16th-century HRE, which led to a significant increase in their work, and the personal story of a man’s quest to advance his and his family’s station from the unfortunate place it was put in. It also does a lot to make us understand the perspective and social attitudes that influenced this institution, which is, to our modern eyes, quite cruel and ghastly, without just making an apology for the indefensible. Its relation to Pentiment is obvious; it is a work that is deeply concerned with justice, crime, and punishment, and the appearance of justice and truth is often times more important than the actual thing itself. In chapter 1, whichever culprit gets selected will get executed violently and publicly, either by the executioner’s sword in the case of the male suspects of lucky or ferenc or being choked to death in the case of the female suspects. Interestingly, in the faithful executioner, we are told that execution by sword at the time was usually reserved for the nobility (even often times being the result of a bribe to the judges to forgo the more slow and painful executions down to the more “dignified” decapitation). I imagine, though, that the choice of the sword was more of a creative decision, being the quickest way to show the culprit being killed. In the case of Prior Ferenc’s execution, it was slightly botched, requiring three slashes to finish him off. In the case of the faithful executioner, part of the titular executioner’s great reputation, which allowed him to eventually appeal his status (executioners were part of the official underclass, unable to perform “honorable” professions, and were oftentimes banned from joining a guild and other legal discrimination), came from the fact that he very rarely botched an execution; indeed, the executioner himself could be in danger when performing a beheading, and it was common for crowds to turn on the executioner if it took more than 3 strokes to fall the criminal. Its not surprising to me that states eventually realized how counterproductive public execution was, with modern ones being performed in some prison room away from the public. The fact is, and Pentiment explores this as well, that it's all well and good to believe that someone deserves to die or that they had their brutal end coming to them; certainly, there are many rapists, murderers, etc., and even if one opposes the death penalty on principle, we would not be sad to hear that they were killed. And yet, I dare to say that if you were to witness such a person being violently killed, well, most well-adjusted people would respond with horror and even sympathy for such a situation.

Certainly, I don’t weep at the thought that some of the hanged nazis at Nuremberg were actually left choking for quite a few minutes before expiring, but even with them, were I to be in the room, I would look away from such a horrible sight. Humans are empathic for the most part, and it's hard to see such things without feeling bad.

It's a sobering moment watching the execution of Ferenc, who might be suspected of performing occult rituals and murdering a man in cold blood, but it's another to see him praying for mercy before being brutally cut down. The victory is hollow; there is a reason why Sherlock Holmes stories end with the suspect in custody and not Sherlock Holmes gloating in front of the gallows with the criminal’s corpse hanging forlornly from the scaffold. Okay, okay, that's enough unpleasantness. Let's move on from this grizzly subject.

The Cheese and the Worms is another work of microhistory, this time on the subject of Mennochio, an eccentric miller in 15th-century France who used his rare literacy and access to a variety of books passed around by his neighbors (who were unusually literate for the time also) to develop his own eclectic brand of religious thought, which eventually got him into trouble with the Inquisition, who were mostly baffled by what seemed to be a unique brand of heresy invented by essentially one random peasant guy, far from the norm of wandering preachers, secret societies, and the like. Its influence is most apparent in the figure of Vaclav, a Romani knife sharpener who will share his equally weird beliefs if you’ll indulge him, which, funnily enough, if you do, he gets burned at the stake for heresy, as evidenced by the town-wide family tree next to the mural in the game's ending. In the case of Vaclav, they’re a weird syncretism of gnosticism, Christian mysticism, and just his own blend of strange esoteric religious theories. The role of increased literacy and the printing press allowing more people to read “dangerous ideas” is brought up often during Acts 1 and 2, with Father Thomas and others being wary of the effects it could have in riling up the peasantry and the danger of certain ideas spreading. The elephant in the room is, of course, the protestant reformation and the 1525 peasant rebellion, which were greatly aided by the increased availability of the written word, further increasing the demand for a translation of the Bible written in German and other vernacular languages as opposed to Latin, which was mainly spoken by the priesthood. Its no surprise that this eventually led to an explosion of different Protestant denominations, as anyone who could read the Bible for themselves could develop a novel interpretation of the scripture.

In the case of Menochio, while from a modern perspective it seems very repressive and authoritarian to be jailed and later executed for having unorthodox beliefs like the universe being created from a primordial cheese eaten by worms who became God and his angels and created the world, it's hard to be sympathetic when the dude just could not shut the hell up about his beliefs. Like, idk about you, Im an agnostic or atheist or whatever, but if I could possibly be executed for it, I would not go around telling people about how god is fake and cringe. Its also funny reading the accounts of the inquisitors, who for the most part, whilst obviously terrible and repressive, would let most cases like a single heretical peasant off with essentially a slap in the wrist, say you’re sorry, do a penance, your priest vouches for you being a good man and for the most part be allowed to rejoin society, but bro just couldn't do it. The number of executions the inquisition actually did was a lot less than we would think; it was usually reserved for wandering preachers, big religious leaders who were trying to get a schism going, etc.

The Return of Martin Guerre is interesting because its “plot” is basically 1-to-1, almost adapted into Pentiment’s character of Martin Bauer. The book was written by Natalie Zemon Davis, a historian and advisor to the French film of the same name based upon the real-life historical figure of Martin Guerre. After her experiences with the production, she decided to write a more “official” account of the story without the necessities of a 3-act structure and cinematic storytelling. Martin Guerre was a peasant in what is now modern-day Basque Country (part of Spain and France) who one day disappeared from his town and, unbeknownst to them, went off to Spain to join the army and eventually got wounded in battle during the Italian wars of the mid-16th century. Meanwhile, a man claiming to be Martin Guerre who bore an uncanny resemblance to the man arrived in Martin’s home town and, after some initial skepticism, was able to slide into his old life through his appearance and seemingly access to knowledge that only the real Martin Guerre could know. It also highlights that under the law of the time, Martin’s wife would not be allowed to remarry, and the way in which women were treated, her standing in society, and her ability to fend for herself were adversely affected by having an abandoned husband. Even worse, the real Martin could have died off in battle, but even this would not necessarily be enough to be able to remarry unless she could somehow prove her husband had been killed. It's not surprising then that she may have been, let’s say, willful to “be fooled” by the impostor, knowing that this was a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to solve her situation. Even more so after “Martin” received his deceased father’s inheritance and greatly increased the wealth of his household.

In Pentiment, Martin Bauer similarly runs off during Act 1 after stealing from the murdered baron and “returns” before Act 2 to take over the household after the death of his father. If pressed, you can uncover the fact that this man is actually Jobst Farber, a highwayman who ran off with Martin and eventually, when he died, used his resemblance to the man to take over his life. Similarly, in Pentiment, Martin’s wife Brigita seems consciously or unconsciously aware of the deception but begs Andreas not to rat him out of town, as he’s been a much better husband than Martin ever was, and in a purely utilitarian sense, his identity theft is seemingly the best outcome for everyone. If one remembers Act 1’s Ottilia Kemperyn, households without children or men to inherit property are very much unprotected, and it's easy to see why Brigita prefers to turn a blind eye to this Farber character’s lies. In the real-life case of Martin Guerre, the prosecution was initiated by Martin’s father-in-law who suspected foul play, but “Martin”’s wife was supportive of her impostor husband. Indeed, what ended up resulting in his execution was actually the return of the real Martin Guerre to the town, who, amusingly enough, seemed less able to answer the questions of the judge in regards to information that the real Martin Guerre would know than the fake one! Thankfully for the wife, sometimes misogyny works out in women’s favor, and she was essentially unpunished (and the real Martin Guerre was reprimanded for abandoning his wife and family) for what could have been considered adultery and false witness with essentially the old “ah well, she’s a woman, it makes sense her feeble mind would be fooled by a talented huckster like this” argument. Not as much of a happy ending for the impostor who got executed but was surprising apologetic, much like Martin Bauer is if you accuse him of murdering Otto Zimmerman during Act 2 of Pentiment.

The final book, I’ll admit, is one that I basically skimmed because it was really fucking boring, and I already read a biography of Albrecht Durer a while back, so a lot of it was just stuff I already knew. It was worth owning, if nothing else, A3 copies of Durer’s famous works. Albrecht Durer informs the character of Andreas quite a bit (though he is also a bit William of Baskerville and Andrei Rublev); indeed, his Act 1 design is heavily inspired by a famous Durer self-portrait. They are both painters from Nuremberg; they both (in Act 2) seem to really dread returning to their wives, which they hate back in Nuremberg; and during the lunch with Brother Sebhat, when a kid is having the concept of different ethnic groups and skin colors existing, Andreas chimes in that in the Netherlands he saw art from the New World that was greater than anything Europeans had ever done, echoing Durer’s admiration for New World art in particular made of metal; him being the son of a goldsmith, it makes sense he’d feel particularly fond of such things.

The use of Durer’s famous Melancholia 1 painting is a key aspect of Andreas’ character journey. In Act 1, his inner psyche is depicted as a court composed of King Prester John (a mythical figure in European folklore often thought of as the Ethiopian emperor), Beatrice from the Divine Comedy, St. Grobian, and Socrates. Whenever Andreas is debating a difficult decision, they can be called upon to give their two cents in a sort of id, ego, and super ego-type arrangement. In Act 2, however, it is only Beatrice who gives advice, her moderation and temperance having devolved into self-doubt and fear. At a key point, Andreas finds his court trashed and all absent safe for Beatrice, sitting in the pose of the famous aforementioned melancholia print: “Now I am all that remains, the melancholy of life’s autumn,” a manifestation of essentially a mid-life crisis for Andreas after becoming a successful artist but feeling hollow inside. Its fitting as well given the beliefs about mental health, a common conception of artists and creatives at the time as “melancholics," and a conception of depression and mental illness as markers for creative genius that sadly persists to this day.

4500 words later, and I'm both embarrassed by how long this has been and frustrated by how much more I could have gone into details on each of the entries, but I think that's enough for now. If anything, I hope this encourages anyone who’s played pentiment to check out one of the books and maybe draw their own connections I might have missed or forgot to include. Whenever I think about what differentiates a 5-star game from a 4.5- or 4-star game, I think this is it. A 5-star game will get me to read six books totaling probably like 1000+ pages. I’m currently reading through The Brothers Karamazov as part of The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa’s readable books list (so far I’ve read Winesburg, Ohio, Confessions of a Mask, and Rumble Fish), and maybe I’ll write a similar piece at some point for each (though bear in mind I started reading the first book in this collection a year ago, so y'know).

I think what makes sin & punishment so great — other than the exhilaratingly snappy paced set piece monster sandwich of a campaign, killer soundtrack, and pristine level design paired with a borderline sexual difficulty curve — is that it's the perfect crystallized representation of the core elements of the "shooter game"

Anyone whos played a shmup, run & gun, FPS or TPS knows these games are made up of two core elements. Move to avoid getting hit, line yourself or your reticule up with the enemy and press the shoot button to win. Move and shoot.

What makes S&P stand in contrast to its contemporaries is that there's virtually zero interplay between these two aspects. Moving doesn't affect your aiming (considerably) and aiming has no effect on the camera or your movement.
This disconnect between the two elements ends up creating a unique appeal where you're essentially playing two different games at the same time, a 3D shooting gallery and a 2D "dodge em up".

This inherent multitasking element plus the set camera let the designers create deliciously demanding scenarios like having to focus your aim on a mobile enemy in the top right while noting the missile arriving from the bottom left in your peripheral vision and making a bet with yourself that you'll reflect it without ungluing your eyes from the top right.

Were this a standardized FPS/TPS, the dynamic camera and 3D movement wouldn't afford the same level of clarity or precision that allows S&P's obstacles to be as tight & demanding as they are.
Were this a shoot em up, you'd have the clarity and precise movement but the (generally) restrictive way that shooting works doesn't allow for the multi tasking element to emerge.

This isn't either of those things though. It's straight up moving and shooting at its rawest and most literal. It's Sin & Punishment all the way through, baby.

Of all the changes to Mario's moveset, those regarding the long jump are perhaps the most immediately striking. It's utility has been altered to the point of seeming like an explicit downgrade compared to it's predecessors, sporting much shorter distance and lowered height. So low in fact that you may notice it's altitude throughout the duration is conspicuously aligned with the top of standard sized enemies, allowing for cathartically consistent 3D head bouncing. This is a very welcome addition in isolation but the real kicker is the way you can carry momentum from the long jump after the bounce. This was present in 64 and the Galaxy games as well but there was scarcely any reason to do so. Aside from the awkward high altituide, the long jump was just extremely powerful by itself and the level design didn't really incentivise it. The straight ahead, linear level design of 3D Land has allowed the designers to place enemies in such spaces that abusing them with the long jump allows you to skip past certain sections or just generally enjoy a much faster paced experience. This delightful action feels much like a classic 2D Mario maneuver although I'd say at their best, the multifaceted nature of the 3D environments allow this particular aspect to shine much more than the limited 2D planes did. Additionally, the Tanooki suit's flutter can also carry the long jump's momentum, letting you smugly ignore certain massive chunks of meticulously designed level geometry in a manner reminiscent of it's original SMB3 incarnation.

I believe this fundamental change to the way the long jump works is just one of many in favour of truly holistic game design. The long jump's original value to cross vast spans of distance still exists, it's just now dependant on other game factors. The enemies and power ups have been made quite valuable as a result, something 3D Mario had been struggling to accomplish-if not outright ignoring- for 15 years.

Perhaps the most apparent addition to Mario's new 3D control scheme is the dash which functions much like it did in Super Mario World as opposed to a more analogue momentum focused system. There is a short period where Mario goes into an initial dash state and will then transition into a distinct full speed state. What differentiates 3D Land's dash from World's is that the extra dimension allows this full speed state to be maintained as long as you have some flat ground as opposed to being forced out of it whenever you need to press left. Much like the long jump example, maintaining said speed for as long as possible across this Willy Wonka's Platform Factory of gimmicks is a pleasure that is most delightfully & texturally reminiscent of a momentum focused side scrolling Mario. That delicious taste of self authored risk that one can ebb and flow between to differing degrees depending on the context of the situation is just the right kind of dynamic and intrinsic magic that made the original so great.

The real genius of the dash's implementation, however, is how it solves the general movement problems of past 3D Mario's. In the Galaxy games, the lack of momentum helps in aiding precision but isn't as intrinsically enjoyable as 64's mobility. The problem with 64's movement is that when the game asks you to be precise, the slippery controls end up feeling like a hinderance. In 3D Land, you are defaulted to a precise and rigid movement system à la Galaxy and may opt in to a more slippery, risky, and enjoyable movement style whenever you please. This allows the level designers to create situations that are made with precision in mind but still let you to approach them with caution thrown to wind if you so wish. 3D Land takes the concept of World's dash, manages to conjure an appeal similar to it's momentum focused ancestors with it as a result of it's context and solves the issues with general movement from past 3D games all in one fell swoop.

When I concieved my hypothosis about 3D Land's holistic design goals, I believed I'd caught the game slip with it's big/small Mario system which seemed haphazardly thrown in for tradition's sake. I was pleasantly surprised to realise that the concept of breaking blocks from underneath has simply been replaced by rolling into discreet ground level blocks holding secrets in walls instead. This isn't as nuanced or dynamic as the more generally applicable blocks of old but handing out more concrete rewards for not getting hit is a decent compromise, especially considering the comparatively low difficulty.

From the innate joy of maintaining speed, jumping on enemies for big air and creating a wholly holistic dish
of mechanics, 3D Land is much more than just "3D Mario but now there's a goal pole at the end". This is a meticulous, virtuosically contructed true translation of Super Mario's very soul.

In the Iwata Asks: 3D land interview, director Hayashida commented that he wanted the game to be like a hamburger. Something you could "just gobble down".
Gobble it down I did, but I'd argue that the game is actually much more like homemade soup.
It's familiar in all the right ways. All the aspects that you remember being good are just as good as they always were.
It's comfortingly simple and easy to to digest, but you can taste the nuance and love underneath.
Yeah, maybe it could use a couple fewer dashes of auto/quasi-auto scrollers.
Yeah, maybe you aren't quite sure why those slices of side jumps are in there, but you're thankful for em anyway.
Gobble it down I did, indeed Hayashida. Needless to say that I'll be coming back for seconds.

I love this sullen, gangly, size zero interpretation of shinobi. I love the freezeframe bisection polyptychs, the d'n'b soundtrack, and the mobility. it's an exceptionally stylish, confident game, and while a lot of folks have already said it: when it works it really works

the big draw past the point when you're no longer in awe of its scarf physics and relentless bangers is the tate (殺陣; fatal wind) mechanic. it's like the chip BURST chip dynamic modern action games love, only instead of an mmo-grade phase rotation it's more of a split second setplay puzzle where the "burst" is seeing an entire health bar explode in a single hit while you go full vogue

each successive kill within a four second window builds power and prolongs the chain until it's ready to come together for the photogenic finish. it's the most shinobi shit on the planet, and when everything plays out the way you planned you immediately forget how much the camera made you wanna bite the controller as hard as you could ten seconds prior. you no longer wanna send magazine cutout letters to the guy who decided the wretched lock-on should only target stuff you've never seen before. you might even find it in your heart to forgive the paul ws anderson lasers (I actually kinda liked em!)

main knock against it's that the levels & encounters are borderline procgen. on 3A I was getting a bit dozy and for a second there you could've successfully convinced me I was playing persona 4. there's no discernable sense of structure or pacing to the stages; they go on, cycle through a handful of identical rooms with identical enemy setups, and then a boss shows up whenever the mappers felt there were enough empty boxes, shiba dogs, and bottomless pits to call it a day

but the one thing that puts a bullet in the idea of replaying it on higher difficulties is the final boss. I hate this hocus pocus motherfucker. iframes and teleports out the ass, flying minions with wonky hurtboxes, one of those long intro sequences where the real fight doesn't start til you're a minute in. the sighs and groans I made when he decided to spin like a beyblade every time I managed to get the 8-chain going were downright ancestral -- real cave creature shit. I never wanna do that again, and I probably never will

happy to have played it but happy to be done. I hate mages so much man, you don't even know

There’s a part of this where you can only see the boss you’re fighting through a rearview mirror and have to damage him by judging which of the three trains you’re running along the top of to decouple behind you, which is immediately followed up by having to raise a series of platforms said boss’ baby is standing on to prevent him from dipping your co-protagonist into rising lava via crane, both while dodging hails of projectiles. These just about make the top fifteen or so wildest scenarios in the game, maybe.

If Successor of the Skies (PAL supremacy) sounds crazy, that’s because it is, though it’s crazy with a purpose. Its mechanics seem straightforward enough initially: either flying or grounded, the player’s tools are exclusively shooting, charging up a more powerful shot, melee attacks or a dodge, and these are never added to from start to finish beyond minor alterations during certain setpieces. Only when you’re thrust into a genuinely overwhelming slarry of obstacles littering the screen from every angle is it that you’re driven to discover these moves’ less obvious nuances. The level I’ve referenced in the first paragraph has a great example of this, with a sequence in which enemies who are resistant to gunfire but get OHKO’d by melee attacks charge at you in such a rhythm that doing the full melee combo’s liable to get you hit (thereby teaching you that doing just its first one or two hits is sometimes preferable), but this kind of thing’s present in other areas too. A favourite of mine is how it handles parrying bosses – instead of telegraphing which attacks can be countered with a lens flare or something, as you might expect from other action games, you’re trusted to put two and two together when a boss enters the foreground and the intrusive thought of “What if I try kicking this gigantic claw swipe out of the way?” takes hold. Be it these, gauging just how much charge a shot needs to stun a given enemy or reflecting explosive projectiles back via melee, every interaction’s connected by the philosophy of nudging the player in the right direction without explicitly telling them.

How consistently intuitive it manages to be’s pretty staggering when you consider not just this hands-off approach, but also the creativity bursting out of it at every turn. As impossible as it is not to involuntarily grin at sights like a gruff military general splitting into three giant dolphins made of ink or a supersized lion wrapping a vulture around itself to become a griffon, it runs deeper than just presentational or conceptual levels. When a nominal rail shooter switches dimensions to chuck you into scenarios like a swordfight against a flying samurai lady or a fistfight in which you’re tethered to a particular spot on the floor, it’s tempting to think of these as borderline genre switches until the initial wow factor wears off and you realise that the moveset you’re utilising hasn’t really changed throughout the whole ride. As aforementioned, it’s never added to, though it is occasionally diminished to spice things up; apart from those examples, the segment following my favourite line in the game is an especially strong instance of design by subtraction, forcing you to approach familiar enemies differently both via said alien donkey/bike’s inability to fly and restricting your ability to fire if you hit the railings at each side of the screen. What gets me isn't just the fact the few tools at your disposal are versatile enough to be twisted into situations like this while never once feeling disparate from standard gameplay, it’s also that this isn’t even the only time that the borders of your screen are weaponised against you.

When the fact that you can legitimately never guess what’s up next on a minute-per-minute basis combines with the sheer amount of nonsense you have to navigate through at any given time, it’d be reasonable to worry about visual clarity becoming an issue, but it remarkably never does. There are enough actors, other interactable assets and particle effects jumping around that I frequently find myself wondering how Treasure got it running so smoothly on the Wii, although the hardware’s probably due thanks in this regard. Character models and environments being only so detailed hits a sweet spot in the same way that the visuals of the previous console generation did, teasing at realism enough to be immediately understandable while still being abstract and stylised enough to stoke the player’s imagination as to what else is out there in this bizarre vision of the future. It’d be myopic to attribute it all to working around technical limitations, though; the relatively muted palettes of levels’ backgrounds are clearly an intentional decision given just how much they help all the vital information pop out, from the seas of mooks you can’t take your eyes off of to the brightly coloured timer/score multiplier lining your peripheral vision. It’s a wonderful translation of art to game, which I think this wallpaper I can’t find the source of exemplifies pretty well (you’re welcome).

Although I like to waffle on about how much I value a game feeling focused, I’m pretty used to reading the parts of games I enjoy the most and which I couldn’t imagine them without written off by others as “bloat” or something similar to a point that my brain sometimes autotranslates it to “the fun parts.” Successor of the Skies is different to many of my favourites in that I genuinely can’t think of anything extraneous in it. So much as the file select music you hear when booting up the game is pitch perfect in terms of how well it sets the tone for what you can expect over the course of the next few hours, with all its boisterousness and excitement and undercurrents of melancholy. Don’t let how over the top it is fool you – not many games understand themselves as well as this one.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes feels like an anachronism. I don’t just mean this from how the game haphazardly scatters documents from 1847 and 2014 throughout the hotel set in 1962, or how it references multiple past eras of gaming with PS1 survival-horror fixed camera angles or DOS-inspired 1-bit adventure game segments hidden away on floppy disks, though these elements certainly play their part in creating what developer Simogo refers to as “collage of styles, ideas, and disparate inspirations.” No, what instantly caught my attention was how uncompromising yet thoughtful the game felt. In an era where most developers seem content to simply pay lip service to the great mystery/adventure games of old while over-simplifying their gameplay mechanics, Simogo seems to have figured out the formula of creating a final product that feels intricately designed, yet ultimately accessible.

I’ll admit that I’m not too familiar with Simogo’s previous work; the only other game I’ve played by them is Sayonara Wild Hearts. That said, I would not have immediately guessed that Lorelei was by the same developers from my first hour alone. In some ways, Lorelei presents an interesting foil to Sayonara. Sayonara’s persisting strength is its grasp on harmony: the epitome of what is essentially a playable music video, it’s pure and immediate gratification racking up points to the beat in this flashy and lush arcade game. On the other hand, Lorelei feels deliberately constructed to emphasize its dissonance. From the uncomfortably quiet manor clashing with the occasional audible off-screen disruption to the vibrating monochrome textures interspersed with low poly environment, nothing seems right in its place. It’s a much slower burn than Sayonara as well, with most players taking fifteen hours or more (in comparison to Sayonara’s two hour runtime) to navigate the sprawling hotel with no hand-holding provided whatsoever.

As different as these two titles appear however, they do have one thing in common: minimalism. For example, both games require just a d-pad/joystick and a single button to be played. Sayonara gets away with this because the available actions on input feel clearly telegraphed by the visuals and generally boil down to moving and timed dodges with the music. Lorelei similarly gets away with this because it deemphasizes more complex/technical interactions (i.e. the usage suite of adventure game verbs in look, touch, obtain, etc) with sheer puzzle intuition. Simogo describes this as forcing the player to “get a deeper understanding… and connection to [the world]” and just like Sayonara, “wanted the complexity of the game to revolve around this, and not dexterity.”

What makes this particularly impressive is how Simogo was able to strike a fair balance between simplicity and variety. According to the game’s development page, the game became “a very iterative toy box” where many different systems conceptualized over the game’s development cycle could interact and interplay with one another in different ways. Interestingly, I found that most of the solutions to these different puzzles were not that difficult or complex to determine. Even so, despite Lorelei’s simple controls and straightforward objective (figuring out passwords/key phrases to unlock new areas and information), the game is able to successfully obfuscate the means to achieve said objective by drastically changing the means in which information is presented to the player, for instance by using different camera angles and systems that allowed them to “change a lot of rendering parameters on the fly” from the aforementioned iterative toy box. Additionally, Simogo highlights key details from clues to ensure that players don’t get too confused, but leave enough ambiguity by never outright leading the players onto specific logic trains and refusing to provide any specific assistance (no in-game hint system and no specific feedback aside from telling players if they’re right/wrong). The result is a confident final product that understands the persisting strength of a good puzzle adventure game: a game that gives the player all the information they need to succeed while giving them the room to work out the connections themselves, and a game that constantly surprises the player with new opportunities to intuitively understand the world around them without ever feeling too frustrated by unfamiliar mechanics.

I do have to admit however, that there are a few instances where Lorelei’s minimalism and uncompromising nature can backfire. For instance, the lack of detailed player feedback aside from a right/wrong sound effect usually isn’t a significant deterrent, given that players can fine-tune most of the game’s one-variable solutions and are encouraged to tackle the hotel’s many branching paths and puzzles at their own pace, since they may not even have the pertinent information required and might have to work out other puzzles to obtain said information. However, certain late-game puzzles require multiple sets of answers (ex: a computer that requires three different types of phrases in a password), and it can be frustrating getting barricaded by such puzzles and not knowing which part of the answer requires more investigation. I’ll also echo some of the previous complaints regarding the controls, because while I appreciate that Simogo has crafted a base system where more complex controls aren’t required, I also don’t think that it’s a huge ask to add a “cancel/back” input for a second button. As a result, it takes significantly more scrolling to get out of menus or spamming random inputs to erroneously enter passwords if I want to back out of a puzzle, and the amount of wasted time per menu/puzzle really builds up over a playthrough.

While I did find the somewhat telegraphed ending slightly underwhelming given how elaborately the game wove its lore into its many clues, I nevertheless really savored my time with Lorelei. I might not have laser eyes, but I can certainly see this game’s approach upon system cohesion influencing many puzzle adventure games to come. As it stands, it’s another solid entry for Simogo’s innovative yet familiar library, and I’ll be thinking about its many secrets for quite some time. Perhaps it's finally time to delve into Device 6.

The central narrative problem with the first Alan Wake was the overly simple metaphor that dominated its focus; it's the light versus the darkness, and the light is the power of art, and the darkness is some sort of nebulous bad vibes or something. To be honest, I don't really care all that much. This metaphor continues to be the central focus of Alan Wake II but is made more nuanced by the introduction of our second protagonist, Saga Anderson. Saga, being a detective, rather than an artist, faces different demons and insecurities than Alan, and has her own ways of dealing with them. Art is certainly powerful, but that doesn't mean it's the only or even best way of dealing with our internal struggles - at the very least it depends on the person, and presenting it in such a metaphysical binary as light vs dark runs the risk of making a rather masturbatory work of art.

Now, just because it's careful not to oversell the importance of art, doesn't mean Alan Wake II doesn't love art; this is a Remedy game after all. Hilariously crass and deadpan commercials, a twenty minute short film, a level set in an interactive theater, another set set in a cheesy theme park, even the talk show and a set piece I dare not spoil here, this game is stuffed with impressive recreations of various ways humans express themselves and communicate with each other. Add to that Remedy's ever improving presentation skills, (the best in the business, no less) with flourishes such as live action superimposed over gameplay and the arresting imagery of the stock videos accompanying the monologues read from the plot altering manuscript pages, and of course, Ilkka Villi's ability to portray the most baffled man in history purely through facial expressions, and you have a rich visual vocabulary that makes for a fantastic horror experience.

Further benefiting from Remedy's pitch perfect presentation are the environments. Bright Falls is a cozy enclave from what feels like insurmountable wilderness, Watery is an impoverished yet tight knit rural community, but it is Nightmare New York that stands out as an all timer of a video game setting. Drowning in smog and rain, awash in neon, and flooded with garbage, it is devoid of people and yet it feels eerily alive. Exploring the lush details in these environments is paired with the fundamentally solid bones of Resident Evil 2 Remake’s gameplay, which combines straight forward adventure game style puzzles with fairly standard third person shooting combat. It's managing resources and inventory space that provides the tension vital for making horror game work, and the combat encounters do a good job of having the player stockpiling necessities and blowing through powerful items such as flares and flash grenades to make it through. Additionally, the ambiguity of which shadow presences in Alan’s levels were hostile and which were just standing there, menacingly, made even just navigating those areas perpetually unsettling, and I never felt safe in the dark woods around Bright Falls. Unsurprisingly though, for a Remedy game, the enemy variety is rather thin, but the teleporting enemies make me wish it was thinner still. At least there's a truly inspired new monster design in the halfway point of Saga’s campaign, which leaves a tantalizing glimpse into what could be if enemy variety is given a greater focus in future Remedy titles.

Playing through the game, between the previously described components and the gripping roller coaster thrills of the plot, there was one thing I was worried would prevent the game reaching masterpiece status; an unsatisfying ending, such as those that plagued Alan Wake and Control. Initially, my fears bore fruit, with an ending that forced a cliffhanger and a seeming sequel tease, and with the games industry undergoing a calamitous contraction in the wake of pandemic over-speculation and rising interest rates, good luck getting that made. However, the NG+ ending, entitled The Final Cut, adds a resolution to the cliffhanger as well as additional details that recontextualize the game and entire Remedyverse into seemingly being the machinations of an almost cosmic horror-like entity, providing ample fodder for fascinating theory crafting. I am a bit conflicted about the somewhat steep ask of having the player replay the entire game (full disclosure; I haven't yet played the Final Cut and I instead watched this playlist for the sake of this review) but it is narratively and thematically justified, commentating on the twisted nature of Alan's predicament and the extreme lengths required to make art feel ‘real.’ There are some unrelated narrative quibbles that I have as well. The Sheriff Breaker stuff is baffling, as a normal person who did not play Quantum Break, and the strangeness surrounding the game’s depiction of Sam Lake and the real and fictional Alex Casey is too weird for such a hurried cop out of an explanation. Still, I am ultimately satisfied with the ending and that is all I wanted. Should this be the end of Alan Wake, aside from the DLC, I am quite grateful we got such a bold and confident game from a franchise that had once seemed destined to die in obscurity.

Also, how is the game that produced this video still not profitable? What is wrong with ya’ll?

Let’s make a time loop game. First, we need to establish a mystery, something that’ll really play into the strength of the format, with something new to discover each loop. Since we at Arkane have mastered the magical assassin concept, we’ll blend the ideas, and have players discover how to assassinate a list of targets across a repeating day.

But how do we prevent players from just lucking into a solution, going to the right places and beating the game in two hours? Dishonored was already criticized for being short, and if even 1% of players beat the game in one run, we’ll never hear the end of it. So, we’ll have to force some repetition: necessary codes will be mutually-exclusive, so players will have to loop at least a few times before they’re able to unlock the ending. We’ll author a linear sequence of events that will guide the player and pace the experience.

What about players who don't like the repetition though? It won’t take long for people to get tired of repeatedly fetching their favorite weapons. To solve that, we could have players preserve their loadout between runs… but that would mean that we need to add a little more depth to it, so they don’t just gather everything once and stop caring. The weapons could have randomized bonuses like a looter-shooter, and collectible trinket buffs as well. Adding in character buffs and loot rarity would ensure that there’s always something new to find each run.

Of course, that will work well with the invasion-based multiplayer. Everyone will be fighting a unique opponent, which is great. We can also kill two birds with one stone by limiting the amount of powers players can equip at one time, further emphasizing unique approaches and making gunfights easy to follow. Speaking of limitations however, there will need to be some sacrifices in the realm of map design, since having a one-on-one fight across sprawling maps with load zones would be a nightmare, especially if hiding on rooftops and turning invisible is on the table. So, we won’t have events progress in real time, just in a single time-of-day per mission, because we won’t know how long those encounters may last. It also wouldn’t be good to lock weapons and buffs behind the multiplayer system, because that would let expert assassins steamroll new players. As a final failsafe, we’ll include an option to only play single player, in case it devolves into an invisible sniper camp fest.

Great. This design makes sense from front to back. We’ve walked through all the decisions and how they fit with all the others. We’ll have a time loop game where… players preserve everything from loop to loop, with no time pressure to navigate a linear sequence of events. We’ll prevent players from being bored with excessive repetition by… having them farm currency and random items. They’ll do that until they feel comfortable with tackling the big challenges and handling multiplayer invasions, because losing to an invader resets all the progress on your current loop. You’ll only ever do it when you’re not trying to focus on completing the story, since multiplayer has no benefits compared to isolating yourself in single player.

Hold on, how did this happen? We made decisions that made perfect sense; why is everything so wrong? Why do all our systems work against themselves? I guess it’s because we started with some good ideas, like the time loop assassin stuff and spy-versus-spy multiplayer invasions, but then immediately focused on how to sterilize those core concepts for people who aren’t interested. We made a time loop game and then removed all the time pressure! We took the magical powers and intricate maps we’re great at creating, and saddled them enough limitations to where they're worse than our old games! We made those sacrifices so the multiplayer would work, and then disincentivized engaging with it, killing the point and the playerbase in one shot! Next time we try this, we gotta keep it simple. Focus on what we think is cool and commit to it. Start from scratch. Ok.

Let’s make a time loop game.

With a garish and brightly colored comic book aesthetic, The Darkness II somehow looks more visually dated than its predecessor five years its senior, having abandoned the harsh shadows and blaring lights that defined that title’s atmosphere.. To its credit, it is quite ugly, and that does fit the moral sensibilities that this franchise trades in, but this entry as a whole does lose the more subtle warmth that distinguished the first game, perhaps best exemplified by the new gravel laden drawl of Jackie’s recast voice actor. Admittedly, the wackier villain, more involved lore, and the more bombastic twists and turns of the plot make for a more enjoyable pulp experience, but one that lacks the sharper texture and memorable flavor of Starbreeze’s take on the franchise. After giving into his vengeful urges at the end of the prior game but putting them under wrap between titles, Jackie Estacado is back on his bullshit and using The Darkness in order to defend his found mafia family and to cope with the loss of his girlfriend, Jenny. Any emotionally grounded storytelling the game might have achieved concerning grief and addiction is thoroughly undone not only by the sheer ridiculousness of the game’s descent into the mythically fantastical, but also by a hammy post credits scene introducing an extraneous cliffhanger. Still, I must admit that the core conceit of the franchise, deploying fucked up monster powers as the world’s most emo mob boss, is enough to make plot decently enjoyable.

Where The Darkness II unambiguously improves over the original and fully embraces the joy of fucked up monster powers is, famously, in the gameplay, which sees the Darkness appendages streamlined from a rotation of singular powers into a constant presence that allows for fluid transitions from quad wielding, to grabbing and throwing environmental tools and weapons, and viciously devouring the hearts of one’s enemies. Still, there are downsides to combat that prevent *the game from realizing its full potential as a shooter, the most notable of which are the clashing systems that lead to combat rhythms with mismatched tempos. On one hand, the game encourages rushdown because eating hearts both restores health and grants experience points, and on the other, it encourages precise stop-and-pop shooting thanks to how disabling being in the light is, and the necessity of shooting out all of the sources of artificial light in an arena. Further frustrating are levels that feature a combination of shield enemies, which require Darkness powers to defeat, and light wielding enemies, which disable your Darkness powers. It adds up to be an excessive amount of friction for a game that is trying to be most appreciated for its base pleasures. Still, it’s definitely more approachable than the original, and its own merits is a solid enough roller coaster for those who want to unleash hell and fury upon hapless video game enemies for a few hours.

Polyphony Digital at the time of of writing this review have made 17 games since their founding in 1994. 16 of these are racing games with Omega Boost, a 3D mech action game being the one outlier in their repertoire. With the lead programmer on Omega Boost being Yuji Yasuhara (Panzer Dragoon Zwei), the mech designs by Shoji Kawamori (Macross, Visions of Escaflowne, Transformers) it's kind of amazing this is somewhat of a hidden gem considering the pedigree behind it.

And the thing is, a gem it really is. This is the first time I've played it in the 25 years since it's original release and it's amazing how well it holds up. The most impressive thing about it is actually the control scheme. It's simple yet highly effective at allowing players to traverse 3D environments having dog fights with a variety of enemies. It essentially uses 5 buttons. Boost, fire, special, hover and lock on. That's it. Your mech, The Omega Boost will always move forward unless you hover which will lock you in place from auto moving. This with the lock on that will auto target you facing the nearest enemy allows for a surprising degree of control in aiming, moving and shooting all at once that still holds up better than some more recent games. Once used to them you can strafe around targets, stop to fire, boost away and reacquire all with ease.

It has a very arcade feel to it with only two main weapons of a rapid fire gun and homing lasers when held down called boost. You get a special with a bar that builds up that does great damage but can only use sparingly but there are no other options or upgrades so to speak. There are 9 levels in total and each one you get scored on for how quickly you can beat them and the amount of enemies killed which can unlock more boost lock on segments to hit more targets at once. The game probably takes an hour or so to beat if you play straight and know what you are doing but it took me longer due to the aforementioned roots above. You only get 5 continues and only recover a chunk of life at the end of each level rather than starting full. I can think of no reason to do this other than to create an artificial difficulty. Honestly, I found it really pointlessly annoying as I would have almost full health but not quite at the start of each level. Just why?

The levels themselves are pretty varied and have this great chunky mechanical industrial feel to them that PSX visuals did so well. Initially I thought this would be a purely space based shooter but very early on you end up fighting ships in planet atmospheres watching them explode onto the planet as you destroy them, artificial tunnels with giant robots, sand plains with floating embers like a giant fire in the darkness as you fight a variety of enemies with some really creative bosses. I really hated the final couple of levels though with a needless difficulty spike. One of them has an annoying timer to beat two bosses then a very tough mini boss rush to finish that feel a little thrown together with no level before them. Maybe on sequential play throughs that would be easier but with only 5 continues and having to start the whole level over if you die it's just needlessly brutal.

The story is kind of basic. Essentially you are trying to go back in time to prevent a catastrophe where humanity are losing a war with an AI. It's presented in cutscenes that use a mixture of live action actors and CGI. The opening video if left to play seems to have a surprisingly high budget of a command centre, getting into the Omega Boost and flying off all to a completely out of place rock song. The rest of the music except the end credits sound more like something from Nier which I feel fit the aesthetic far better. The music feels bizarrely inconsistent in places though I like the actual cutscenes themselves, extremely 90's and I mean that in the best way.

So even with it's minor flaws, Omega Boost is a pretty crazy intense game that looks amazing. To think Polphony Digital made this cool 3D mech game and then went on to make nothing but racing games forever more will never not feel like wasted potential to me.

The US TV advert for Omega Boost as an extra.

+ Controls are really fluid, they hold up amazingly well.
+ Varied levels and fantastic visuals.
+ Some great music....

-....Also some really out of place music. It's like someone's put their rock track over the opening and ending videos for no reason.
- Brutal continue system and life recovery between levels just take some of the fun away from actually playing the game.

The Darkness stands out as a 7th Gen title with so much love and care put into the grit and grime of its exaggerated depiction of New York City that you can smell the piss in glorious 720p. While that doesn't exactly make for a virtual space that is pleasurable to inhabit, it does make for one that feels tangible and weighty, a fitting backdrop for the inhumanity of institutions and individuals that the story explores. Notably, the only wealth you see in the game is possessed by the guy trying to kill you for spurious reasons; it’s not a setting where the structures humanity have built benefit anybody but the cruel and short-sighted. However, that's what makes the warmth and humanity that persists shine through, from the entire feature length amount of time the player can spend watching TV with Jackie’s girlfriend to the various personalities and graffiti that decorate the subways, it's lovely to see depictions of how people and culture persist in such conditions. This is what makes Jackie Estacado, the Hot Topic Italian mobster, such a compelling protagonist, with his wild anecdotes and asides about the wacky and wretched things that have happened to him growing up in such a city. He's undeniably shaped by his environment, and while he's hardly a good person, seeing how he remains his humanity through it all is a great place to center the drama. This is where The Darkness, the supernatural entity possessing Jackie and providing him with his powers, comes in as a metaphor, representing an embrace of nihilistic vengeance, fostered by inherited sin and inherited trauma. It's fitting that its origins in the Estacado family are found in World War I, a historical event that demonstrated how the marvels of modernity created new ways to fuel humanity’s inhumanity to each other. The potency of this metaphor is what makes it a shame that the plot sees The Darkness make an unforced error, which turns Jackie against it and undermines his arc by saving him trouble of finding his own good reasons to reject the power that The Darkness provides, which in turn undermines his ultimate failure to overcome it.

Still, it's quite a blessing that the city captures the themes and drama of the game so well, because the player is forced to trudge through it with slow movement, sluggish combat, and plenty of backtracking. Shooting the lights out to maintain The Darkness's powers with aiming this slow is truly a chore, and words fail to convey just how much the traversal ability Creeping Darkness fucking sucks (!!!!!!!) so I am forced to resort to formatting gimmicks to communicate that fact. Furthermore, The Darkness, with its thick atmosphere and strong deployment on genre, was threatening to be one of the more tragic examples of the undeniable truth of the maxim ‘if the shotty bad, the game bad’ until its final hour where it kindly bestows a high-powered AA-12 to blast away the game’s endless waves of mooks and goons; a mechanical deus ex machina, if you will. Distinctly strong and distinctly flawed alike, The Darkness is solid pulp genre fare that doesn't deserve to be lost to history just quite yet.

-Played on Windows PC via RPCS3.

The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa was and is a polarizing game. By virtue of its design decisions and lack of QOL its going to alienate a lot of people, fitting for a game in part about alienation.

If there is one word to describe the game it is ballsy. Only a ballsy game that 25% of its buyers will refund as per the devs own account would let you loose in this 80s Japanese town with basically no guidance. And whilst some parts of this feel intentional and help the mood of the game as you slowly learn how to get ahead in several ways, some just feel petty and/or dumb. Yeo himself could tell me that not telling me how to read books by sitting in any seat and pressing R or having to press B + A to jump to be able to do pull ups(which you have to do to join at least one club) is an intentional part of his design and I wouldnt believe him, and also I would flick his ear for being annoying.

The hunger mechanic is also not explained at all and I was pretty stressed at first losing fights and days trying to scrape enough cash from fights to buy food, but then I got 10k yen from good grades and basically had no money problems from then on, aided by the fact I somehow read a book which apparently doubles the knowledge you get from going to class.

Ringo is a game about roleplaying, not because of its stat elements that very assuredly non RPGs have these days, but because so much of the game revolves around ultimately mechanically inconsequential but nonetheless engrossing stuff. The quality of its writing really shines when you spend an entire sunday reading the Brothers Karamazov so Ringo can give it a good rating on Goodreads and have a 3 or 4 text box discussion about it with a classmate. Its a game where you smoke a limited amount of smokes for 440 yen a pack, which AFAIK has no effect on anything at a mechanical level whatsoever. But its about what Ringo wants to become, maybe you want him to quit smoking. Get straight As and go to the gym every day. Or you can have him play pool and beating up other thugs 24/7.

Ringo is a game that almost alienated me, and honestly I think reading up how to read books at home and do pushups, as inconsequential as they ended up being, increased my enjoyment of the game rather than spoil it. I didnt do many of the "quests" cause in a move that is definitely intentional there is no transcript or anything, if a friend says "Yuko is near the station tomorrow you should go" or something youre just meant to remember where that is in a game without a map and also to remember what day youre on and other such things. I suppose I could replay it but this game is definitely one that loses its luster by the end, maybe intentionally but it didnt seem that way to me and honestly Im tired of speculating on authorial intent, my experience dragged on a bit towards the conclusion even if that ending was...well it gave me something to think about certainly.

EDIT : Always the mark of good art, I have kept thinking about this game after I have finished it, it occupies my mind in a way I hadnt anticipated. Im bumping it up half a star cause I think for what flaws it might have its captured my imagination.

There's an in-game bookstore in The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa which predictably sells books which Ringo can read. They all have slightly parodic, possibly copyright dodging titles but are all clearly based on existing words of literature e.g Odysseus - > Ulysses, Brothers -> Brothers Karamazov etc.

Reading each of them involves figuring out the slightly obtuse method of finding a bench and using the right shoulder button and letting the slow progress bar fill up. If you've read the speed reading books in the school library you can speed the process up but it will take a significant amount of ingame time to read through the longer novels like Ulysses and Anna Karenina. There is basically 0 mechanical benefit in doing so, negative, if you factor in opportunity cost. Well, there is one female friend of Ringo's who has unique dialogue if you've read any of the russian novels but other than that (and the achievement for reading them all I suppose) like in real life you basically have to read for shock horror its own sake.

It is perhaps silly, but The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa's particular roleplaying, simulation charm had such a grip on me on replay that I sat on a bench in the park on a sunday and would periodically pause reading The Brothers Karamazov to light up a cigarette and continue where I left of, then stopping to put it out. I can't even really put my finger on why, perhaps its because for all the maturity of the subject matter and perceived adult-ness (which is even addressed in one of the conversations with Ringo's bookworm friend declaring that Adults didnt watch anime) its the kind of thing that taps into that dormant desire to make up stories of our toys of childhood; when play and learning went hand in hand.

Its also because smoking in a game is as close as I'll hopefully ever get to it IRL after giving it up a few years ago. Reading whilst smoking brings a nostalgia for one of the worst years of my life when I was 18 and had just started university in a different country.

I don't smoke anymore, but I've been getting back into reading. Reading Rumble Fish recently it was hard not to notice the influence in Ringo's story, a tale of a troubled teen gang leader's deep existential emptiness and misplaced idealism about the "rules" of chivalry supposedly involved. Even the scene in RI of Goro staring off into the lit up city across the river wondering if there's anything greater out there, a naïve hope of escaping the ennui of their hometown into a mythical "other place" smacks of a particular chapter in Rumble Fish; seemingly the only time at which the main character is comfortable is when drunk and surrounded by the pretty lights and party atmosphere of the city, shortly before being mugged.

I'm currently reading through Winesburg Ohio, I suppose I could have waited until i read through all of the books to come back and replay Ringo and do some kind of overlong comparative analysis of the influences, but I can't be assed right now. Maybe I will do that in the future. In replaying Ringo there was the unfortunate realization that the combat is kinda shit compared to Fading Afternoon and a few bugs got a bit annoying, as well as the confirmation that the pacing of the final few weeks was as weird as I remembered it, but everything else about the game was stellar, and I think I enjoyed it even more than last time. Ringo is a bit like Paprika and other works I love to revisit in that it feels like you're finding something new every time. For as obtuse and even abrasive as the design philosphy of Yeo's games can be, they are equally mesmerising.

For example, I discovered upon replay that you can squat to recover health. I also learned that story events do not trigger if you have your gang with you, which is both useful in setting the terms of the progression but thematically appropriate: Ringo's friends are coming apart, him seemingly the last one to realize this, and his various activities calling upon him to be alone and not keeping the gang together accelerates the process. That ending still hits fucking hard man. God. Y'know what? Fuck it, for all its faults, this is a 5 star game for me now. I don't think it will be most people's cup of tea but I humbly ask for everyone to play it at some point, even if just for a few hours

Seeing Animal Well getting so many perfect scores kind of put me on the offensive with it, and that's not fair. I should be looking at it in a vacuum, removed of comparisons to other Metroidvanias, and the opening gambit of a comedy YouTuber who had the gall to start his own publishing house. It's a game that invites scrutiny, but not on those criteria.

The core of Animal Well is its sense of physicality. There's a very grounded and well-supported sense of logic behind each puzzle and obstacle. There doesn't appear to be any attention given to lore or narrative (and if there is, it's hidden behind additional challenges in the post-game). Your player character is essentially a walking sprite tile, with little other defining features. You get a sense of how high they jump and how fast they move, and that's all you learn about them. As far as I can tell, they don't even have a name. The design's focus is on utility above all else. You gain an inventory of toys, and find out how they can be used in a range of different scenarios. Unlike a lot of games in the genre, your items don't feel like elaborate keys, only introduced to solve specific sets of puzzles, but useful tools that you'll need to experiment with to discover their full value.

The game's ruthlessly abstract, rarely giving any explanation of its ideas. You have to figure it all out through experimentation. It wraps itself up in neon pixels and ambient soundscapes, and you just pick away at it, slowly uncovering more of the map and gaining a deeper understanding of how to traverse it. I spent hours doddering around with puzzles before I realised what I was focusing on was optional post-game content, and discovered what my immediate objective was supposed to be. I have to go really far back to find other games that took such a hands-off approach. Like, 8-bit microcomputer far back. And none of those games could dream of approaching this level of complexity. The closest modern comparison I can think of is VVVVVV, and that's, what, fourteen years old now? I think you only get these games when one guy makes the whole thing himself, and spends an entire console generation tinkering around with ideas, reworking the entire thing each time some new mechanic has an unintended knock-on effect. When someone never has to get a team on-board with their logic, and can just play around with the esoteric ruleset that lives in their own head.

Animals appear to be the game's one constant theme, and I think it's probably just because the developer liked them and they're fun to draw. It doesn't appear to be making any statement about real-world animals, and they all appear in different scales with clashing art styles. Some are cartoony, some are realistic, some have complex logic and a wide range of movement, some are very constrained and function as part of the fundamental level design. They're just a soft face on an otherwise abstract gamepiece. They're not the point. It almost seems coincidental that so many of the things that the game's made up of are animals. Play this game for the experimental approach to Metroidvania design, and the ever-expanding depth. Don't play it because it has Animal in the name.

It's a good game, but it feels a little cold to me. Like they didn't want to give us something to love. I'm not saying it should have Kirby in it (not that I'd complain, but the suggestion would undermine the point I'm making), but a big part of what I love about Metroid is how cool Samus is, and how exciting it is to see her doing cool stuff. Animal Well can feel a little like playing with a desktoy or something. It's so barebones in its expression of character and worldbuilding, and that's not going to be a problem for a lot of people, but it makes me feel a little too detached from it. Again, I can try to appreciate it on its own merits, but it's my main complaint. Maybe it's childish, but I like being the cool hero on the big adventure. Metroid Dread makes this look like Minesweeper.

As a medium, food is rather underrated. I don't mean that in the sense that it provides sustenance and sensual pleasures, but rather in terms of the information it can convey. Mediums, after all, are tools for communication and are defined by what they provide directly to the recipient and what they leave to interpretation. Venba, for example, left without the senses of taste and touch, uses its vibrant art and lively music to convey the appeal of its food, and does so wonderfully. In the case of the medium of food, it carries with it cultural history, geographic context, our tastes and preferences, shared knowledge and tradition, and the product of collective and individual experimentation, and most importantly, our labor and care for each other. This is what makes the somewhat narratively contrived puzzle mechanic of the incomplete cookbook a compelling metaphor, it shows how cultural knowledge can be lost and restored across generations, provided the effort is put into preserving it. The actual plot of Venba explores the pain that can happen when direct communication fails at helping its characters understand each other, but it also shows the beauty in that such methods leave room for us to connect through more abstract means.