alivedovedoeat
2017
If web publishing hadn't become as commercially impracticable as print at some point about a decade ago, they would've eventually rebooted MAD Magazine as site and had something like this as its modernized form of the old movie parody comic format. Has a single brilliant moment in putting Omoide wa Okkusenman in the area where you fight Godzilla as a Transformer.
First time playing a game of this to completion after years of giving up halfway through. Kind of tensionless and rote towards the end but there was something fun about seeing a simple version of an international balance of power emerge out of its events.
2021
Move over, Bubsy.
There's something kind of sweet about conjoining instinctual childhood objections to certain kinds of art with more mature objections to the fine art market and the kind of work it encourages.
There's something kind of sweet about conjoining instinctual childhood objections to certain kinds of art with more mature objections to the fine art market and the kind of work it encourages.
This review contains spoilers
My interactions with your mother are quite explicit.
Feels out of time: not just like a YouTube essay but like YouTube essays a decade ago, as if it were still shaking off the baby feathers of Mr. Plinkett and the Angry Video Game Nerd. Fundamentally wrongheaded assessment of design born of a desperate love of dichotomies. Thought it might be a joke when he mentioned Shadow of the Colossus. Earns half a star for bashing Final Fantasy XVI.
Feels out of time: not just like a YouTube essay but like YouTube essays a decade ago, as if it were still shaking off the baby feathers of Mr. Plinkett and the Angry Video Game Nerd. Fundamentally wrongheaded assessment of design born of a desperate love of dichotomies. Thought it might be a joke when he mentioned Shadow of the Colossus. Earns half a star for bashing Final Fantasy XVI.
2021
I'm glad there's a yuri one of these. Loved the Herzog Nosferatu atmosphere and actually lost it at the Henry James bit.
2021
The closest game thus far to the old style, 50 Short Games-era thecatamites and a little rote as a result, but damn dude video games are like being forced to be a terrible actor. Found the first-person opening sequence to be the strongest part of it, the deep black surrounding flat, brightly-colored surfaces reminds of the best parts of Thief: The Dark Project. The allusions to futurism felt a little less purposeful than they did in Hands, but do work to give the series a Brand Identity: remains to be seen if it'll do anything funny with that. Cop encounter had the best punchline in the series thus far.
Contemplating whether BB and ZZ should be read as they're written or like CC from Code Geass.
Contemplating whether BB and ZZ should be read as they're written or like CC from Code Geass.
2021
Gave a little too much liminal space mascot horror this time around but god damn that texture work.
2020
Dares to ask what video games might look like had we all gotten home computers in 1917. Much more substantial than the first one, with kind of a symphonic structure. The first section, the modern apartment building, had all the instinctive joy of pointless exploration that I remember experiencing the first time I played Deus Ex. The kitsch architectural substrata are themselves a kind of a pale, kitschy callback to something like Goblet Grotto, but it blossoms really nicely into a manic final sequence that reminds me of the experience of reading Une semaine de bonte in one sitting at 4am.
2020
It's nice to see something from thecatamites that's neither self-referential nor concerned about video games. Feels like a mature piece of cartoonistry.
2010
Does some really clever stuff in juxtaposing York/Zach's increasingly close relationship to the town against a conception of death as continued existence in a state of alienation. SWERY represents the Pacific Northwest as functionally Shinto and still manages to create the most effective portrait of the United States in the medium, in which the corrosive dreams of self-transcendence and absolute unity with the other can only be countered by a kind of boddhisattva of pop culture appreciation. Where Revengeance anticipated 2016 in some odd details, Deadly Premonition's a lot more on the nose thematically.
All of this is peripheral to the sheer charisma of York which is the sustaining quality of the game. While he's obviously modeled on Kyle McLaughlin, the Twin Peaks comparisons kind of understate the influence of The Hidden on this game, ironically suggesting that SWERY and Lynch were influenced by the same source.
All of this is peripheral to the sheer charisma of York which is the sustaining quality of the game. While he's obviously modeled on Kyle McLaughlin, the Twin Peaks comparisons kind of understate the influence of The Hidden on this game, ironically suggesting that SWERY and Lynch were influenced by the same source.
2012
Seemed more important before I'd read Blame! but still one of the better things to come out of the Twine scene.
2016
Solid level design and some short-lived mechanical novelty, but never really rises above being good by the standards of a campaign in a multiplayer FPS. Rare example of a game that understays its welcome, there's a few more hours worth of ideas in this one. The ending's effectively set up and then delivers absolutely nothing: it was very funny when the villain threw an Apex Legends ad at you, though.
2016
Lack of item scarcity and complete freedom of movement in wide open arenas makes every combat sequence more or less identical. About twice the length its ideas warrant. Still pretty fun.
Writing that makes you really appreciate The Missing.
It's a paid demo, but the art's got a lot of character and it borrows effectively from silver age Squaresoft writing, Le Guin and CLAMP. There's something very genuine about the father-daughter stuff that cuts through a lot of the more conventional, competent genre writing, and it's on the very short list of games that are actually funny. I look forward to the day when solsov is real.