Ok, talvez tudo que fale seja mega anacrônico, mas particularmente não ligo, então sigamos.

É impossível negar a importância desse jogo para a mídia, chegando ao ponto de reformular várias coisas que eu pensava a respeito, nesse caso, o mérito dessa obra é altíssima. Extremamente a frente do seu tempo e fazendo coisas, por mais rudimentar que fossem, os quais são levadas até hoje, como logs e narrativa continua enquanto jogamos.

Dando os devidos créditos para o game, agora precisarei relatar a experiência tão singular que foi passar 20 horas nele: A vantagem primordial dessa versão em particular, se encontra na possibilidade de jogar em tela cheia e em usar o mouse; detalhes que hoje em dia, são básicos, mas dou os créditos para o game, por ser algo tão inédito para a mídia. Contudo, jogar sem esses dois recursos atualmente o torna injogável.

Primeiro que, não faz sentido não usar a tela cheia num geral, pois ela só servia para possibilitar a execução do jogo em sistemas da época, atualmente, ele só se torna um desafio. É quase impossível ler algumas instruções do jogo sem estar em fullscreen, e a falta do mouse transforma a experiência em uma tortura imensa, por isso, ambas as coisas se tornam obrigatórias para se jogar.

E entendo perfeitamente que varias coisas são frutos da época, mas essas questões tornam tudo levemente frustrante em alguns momentos. As fases que são labirintos e às vezes, são confusas demais, o que não ajuda muito que alguns dos objetos interativos, são texturas pouco destacadas, o que te faz ignorar até se acostumar; criam uma dinâmica mais estressante do que divertida. E ao decorrer das longas horas que passei nessa obra, esses detalhes começaram a encher o saco, e o que está até divertido nas primeiras horas, se tornaram um leve martírio.

Não ajudou muito também, que muitas das tarefas eram vagas demais ou meio confusas, o que me deixava mais perdido ainda. O que tornou o uso de um guia, obrigatório para a conclusão, pois diversas vezes eu não tinha ideia de como realizar uma missão em particular por, eu não ter entendido direito ou devido ao mapa que me confundia muito. Várias questão como falta de sinalização também são recorrentes nesse game, nada é dito, tudo é deduzido — às vezes isso funciona bem, mas muitas vezes é só confuso.

Ao menos posso dizer que, a SHODAN foi definitivamente interessante de se ver, ela é basicamente um protótipo da GLaDOS de Portal, o cinismo é recorrente e chega até a ser meio cômico. Há momentos que ela te elogia, mas até quando faz isso, a IA está te xingando ao mesmo tempo, é divertido e interessante de ver sua personalidade medonha.

Outra coisa legal, é o Cyberspace, que sim, é datado hoje em dia, mas segue sendo um dos melhores mini-games de hack que tem. Primeiro que a possibilidade de navegar pelo mundo virtual, torna tudo mais interessante do que diversas outras abordagens que vi por aí. Só precisa ser refinando, pois às vezes, tal como o mapa fora desse espaço, as coisas se tornam um tanto confusa; a quantidade de tempo que passei em um em particular é triste.
O design de som também é algo nessa jornada, ela em si não é ruim, mas também não é boa. Vejamos, é esquecível e alguns sons conseguem ser irritantes a longo médio prazo, e isso com o volume baixo, com ele no padrão a necessidade de remédio para dor de cabeça se torna recorrente. Mas ao menos aqui, existe algum indicativo de inimigos próximos, já que eles fazem barulhos estranhos quando estão na a proximidade. O que é legal.

Tenho outras coisas para falar também, mas como tenho que debater sobre alguns aspectos (inclusive os que citei), deixarei por hora, incompleto. Foram as primeiras impressões pós-conclusão. O resultado é que: temos um jogo datado, mas que até atualmente é possível de se divertir, contudo, os aspectos antiguados pensam muito ao ponto de tornar tudo estressante. Apenas recomendaria em casos de estudo de mídia ou gênero, pois a gratificação de jogá-lo é baixa.

E só para finalizar: Bioshock não é e nunca será um Immersive Sim.

kamiya is an arcade guy, that's his sensibility, dmc3 and 4 aren't arcades and they don't mesh well with one, here there is a pretty good base for an expressive action game that gets cannibalized by vehicle sections and qtes and a lot of stuff that either limits character expression or is outright annoying in this context, this dumb mixeup now hangs on the shadow of almost all of platinum's work and that's a shame. also this is very unsexy because kamiya is incapable of charm, he tries too hard and he isn't itsuno, nothing here comes even close to the dmc3 dante pizza intro, i won't dream of bayonetta for years to come.

The image of what a car represents to me changed continuously ever since I was a child. Playing with miniature vehicles felt magical not because I enjoyed the idea of driving one itself (the roaring of the engine and the complexities seen by my infant eyes in the act of turning and parking made me dread their physical form) but rather for the feeling that the spacial possibilities of their inherently small and inconsequential formats were fundamentally richer than their 'real life' counterparts, not being bound by any of the stiffness that comes with the rigid set of rules required to stipulate safety in traffic. Trying to see whether I could or could not manage to propel a bootleg Hotwheels toy to speed all the way from the kitchen to the entrance door without losing the coolness of its unstability and invencibility amidst the environment it ventured itself across was an almost primal, reflexive pleasure to dwell in throughout my childhood. That being said, just like the naive idealizations and images of life come and go without any sort of warning or consolation, the embellished picturing of that car I used to believe in so fiercely drove away from me very early on - as I became progressively ashamed to play with toys in a silly, childish struggle to create a more mature image of myself. Not because I wanted to be an adult, but because I wanted to be taken seriously by grown-ups and groups of friends alike, a naturally stubborn feeling that a lot of people might have had when they were kids. In the span of one night and countless visions, I'd lost that world I could call mine without even acknowledging it until many years later.

Deadly accidents, the unbearable stress of roundabouts and the idea of having to pay attention to multiple factors at once constituted my idea of speed, transportation, and most of all, vehicles. Speed in particular always bothered me. The rampant, cutting breeze slashing across my cheeks while my body felt so vulnerable due to the absence of inertia made me uneasy rather than excited when being driven around in a motorbike. The quickly changing nature of matter while in this state of velocity reminded me of the consequences of its possible sudden halt - crashings. In such a way I've seen happening around me and to people that I knew, the image of the car, the motorcyle, the speed and the traveling, were all perceived in my own eyes as symbols of death. I could no longer remember or even picture the joy of moving, of acting, of unpredictability and of the changing vistas remaining subservient to the stillness of the horizon even in their own seemingly never-ending implants of mirages on the sides of our eyes, burning in the realm of the subconscious. Outrun and its sucessor, Outrun 2 did not magically suck me in on its dreamscape of diegetic sounds and silly animations of bumping your car max speed on an outdoor and violently being thrown away only to come back unscathed in half a second on a first play, but God, did it eventually make me believe in it and love it as if I was a kid playing with car toys again for the first time.

First of all, there's almost no congruence between Yu Suzuki's visualization of the car and my own childish ideals about its inconsequential nature inside whatever world it ventured across - acceleration and impact could storm through any surface or background, whereas in Outrun the image of the vehicle is bound to the road and to the idea of an eternity beneath the horizon's ephemerality, consistently being attached to an infinite, pixelated diorama of the sky that morphs between moods seamlessly yet constructs the game's own very characteristic feeling throughout - excitement. The tilitating anxiety of grasping another world beyond the ticking clock that urges us to attain the next checkpoint, the demanding nature of wanting to impress your loved one with the speed that brings divinity to the showcase of those rapidly moving pictures, the slightly trembling hands as you realize you're almost finishing a run for the first time. To present us with all of these feelings, the antithesis of movement is brought upon as turns - which require you to understand the drift as a mechanic and think about the most optimal way of drifting without losing speed, and to maintain that speed while also not crashing. Its 'easy to learn, hard to master' arcade construct makes it easier for players to constantly look for better times on stages, making Outrun become this sort of comfortable space where one can dream and believe in nothing but moving forward - there are no cars to unlock, no new songs, no skins, just the wonder of discovering new landscapes and of feeling how they move beneath the blue sky. I can only imagine how much more tense the experience must've been while playing in actual arcade machines; depending on your money or on how crowded the arcade was, you only had a few opportunities to play it before somewhere else got their chance. In that regard Outrun also understands and exhales its own excitement outside of the pixel display, as an object of shared attention it is incredibly satisfactory to see someone else play it and beat it for a first time - much like the girlfriend exhibits that anticipation and expectation towards the player's performance (even making requests in Outrun 2's heart mode), there is a sunset-colored romance in the idea of sharing the joy of runnning through these roads only picturing the next view you'll see, the next gasp of surprise someone will exclaim to try to cheer you up, the idea of leaving everything else behind. For the short bursts in which I play whichever Outrun game, Yu Suzuki's Ferrari Testarossa Spider drives into my heart and completely blinds me with his own vision of driving, of seeing, of not letting the road bumps scare you and of consistently challenging you to see more each time you boot it up, of the physicality of those images burning away at the sound of Splash Wave along with my own worries. It awakens desires of sensations I constantly rejected, longing of places I've never been and of objects I'd almost always dreaded.

The game over screen of these games always stood out to me. A short bit of melancholy as the palm trees darken and the sun goes down, a calm and slightly sad song telling you "goodbye, you're always welcome here.", a powerful contrast to the otherwise constant excitement the game portrays in every corner of its universe. The horizon too has an end, just like the feelings of riding across exhilarating sceneries and of feeling loved are uninterruptedly moving and transforming through different meanings and pictures without us even realizing it. Outrun is a dreamy reminder of the worlds I could immerse myself upon as a child, and a statement that it is impossible to talk about videogames without dreaming through our ideal realities.

Is Tokyo as predictable and artificial as its depiction in Yakuza 0? The city only seems alive when you happen upon one of many absurd but inconsequential quests. These wacky sidebars also stand out because of their contrast with the standard soap opera crime narrative of the main story. Perhaps Yakuza 0's endless contrivances could be forgiven if the martial arts action weren't so awkwardly telegraphed and designed. The game tries to convince you the combat is cool with its monotonous use of multi-angle cutscene finishers, but anyone with basic knowledge of the beat-'em-up genre and fighting games has seen all of this crap before in more fluid packages. The desaturated still-frame shot that one activates with a victory speaks to the desperate dullness at hand in Yakuza 0. Critics should be jailed for giving this game a pass on its flagrant lack of creativity back in 2017.

I'm gonna be completely honest this game is fun as hell, I love its art, its music, its gameplay, it's all really good and would have been a highlight of 2023. Why did I give it less then one star? becuase I dont think you should buy it. The devs are just blatantly racist for putting in an antisemitic and anti indigenous stereotype in their game while knowing FULL WELL it's a stereotype. This is not a case of "they didnt know" they knew and mocked the people showing concern for it. The devs are shity, they drop ableist and homophobic slurs and are very transphobic and misogynistic. I get when games have shitty aspects to them, some games just have casual racism, homophobia, transphobia, ect without the creators being really malicious or even aware (hell a lot even apologize or patch them out) but McPig knows what hes doing is shitty and he thinks it's funny. I dont really care what people spend their money on I'm really not gonna give you a hard time for it (hell I have 100+ hours in this game before I saw the discord messages) and it's ok to like this game. But personally I do not support putting money into the pockets of bigots.

tldr; game is good but I cannot in good conscience reccomend it to anyone becuase the artist cannot be separated from the art.
also this isnt "cancel culture" if anybody wants 2 whine about that. you literally can play the game all you want I dont care this is my review

edit: I should have put a link in the first place my apologies lol thanks for the comment (sorry for making you look at tumblr but it basically complies everything) https://at.tumblr.com/girlballs/i-dont-pay-attention-to-pizza-tower-stuff-what/ix9vftouw3nb