It was steering the car far too wide and checking the time to fit someone's schedule and going for the map but then realising I would soon be out of gas, and that there are only a finite number of cars that I can run until they run out of gas, and that there's not enough time in the day to walk everywhere, and then crashing into a tree, that this game broke my brain and changed my life. There is nothing in games more willingly maddening and eccentric as this. We like to laugh at it, and we should, but there's something scary and just unknowable in its total derangement.

Phil Fish is dead. Or like, he doesn't want to do games anymore. Edmund McMillan seems content to just keep releasing Issac over and over. Is Jonathan Blow still around? Seems like no one talks about games from that era anymore. Compare that to 2012: Fez was a huge fucking deal back in the day. For months at a time, Humble Bundle would exclusively feature pixel art puzzle platformers that seemed designed specifically to ride it's wave. Phil Fish, Edmund McMillan, Johnny Blow, there were all these upstart indie devs fucking around getting too big for their britches. It seemed to be a hopeful time for gaming. Games have changed. Indie games, specifically, have changed. Things are different. But despite all that, Fez still holds up pretty well.

It's just nice! The visuals are great, and the world is filled with little animals and foliage, making it feel very alive. There's a cohesiveness to the game that is very apparent after a few hours.

The main puzzles are easy enough, and keep twisting the gimmick in challenging or fun ways. Something as simple as lining up the climbable ivy on walls is satisfying and they replicate that feeling throughout without ever feeling stale. I haven't yet gotten into the more cryptic shit, but surely that will be fun or interesting.

You have to wonder where Fez would've landed if it had been dropped in the 2022 ecosystem. Would it just be the same, maybe. Maybe it would be a Battle Royale somehow, or a rougelite? Would Fish have stuck it out and maybe eventually dropped Fez 2? I don't have answers. I don't even really have questions. Either way, Fez is worth a play. Especially if you're a recovering ironist who may have dismissed it out of hand based on its anti-popularity on video game image boards. I invite readers of this review, if you've made it this far, to check out my notes on my playthrough of this game. No clue how to get to that part of this website, but hey, give it a look.

recently there's been a lot of praise for kane and lynch 2's camera (maybe too much), but i'd argue the way these early rockstar games do the exact opposite thing with the player pov is a lot more succesful - the handheld camera in that game may look superficially filmy, but it almost never helps you look at things a certain way, while bully's actively encourages players to throw objects into the frame in interesting combinations. there seems to have been a lot of consideration to stillness and distance, the way it pans and zooms in relation to the npcs and locations is beautiful (the diegetic camera is a delight), it doesn't encourage you to look at the world because there is no reward in doing so, it simply reminds you that the act itself can be something very nice. i think there's a slightly romantic quality to putting that on a game about a kid completing random objectives to get assimilated into a world that hates him.

The art is gorgeous with an incredible attention to detail, the storytelling so keenly focused on being told without words, the ambient music that works so well building a quiet moody atmosphere that then kicks into high gear for the big challenging fights that make you keep going, all trapped within a game that I wish I actually liked playing.

The health system genuinely ruins so much of the experience for me, because making your health recharges an item with limited pickups means that risky maneuvers with combat and exploration are thoroughly discouraged because you have zero guarantee of when the next time you'll come across another is. That and combined with the player having zero recovery frames and can be endlessly stunlocked by either long attacks or groups of enemies leads to an experience that rather than being delightfully challenging, felt like it was purposefully trying to waste my time and be purposefully dickish for no good reason. Finding medkits as a reward for exploration also just blows and makes it so much less interesting to look around.

It feels a lot like the developers looked at the Souls games as an inspiration for building a world that you want to explore and push through the challenges, but then thoroughly and utterly misunderstood what made those challenges feel rewarding. Having to pick up every item in a room over and over again with each death is obnoxious and genuinely feels like it was done to pad out the playtime. I don't see how it was done for balancing or trying to make sure the player doesn't cheese through things either, because it's not like the game could have been sequence broken by doing so either when the vast majority of those rooms are required to actually finish the game.

There's an Easy difficulty option that does raise your health bar from 5 points to 6 and changes a small handful of fights to have less enemies compared to Normal, but neither of those were my issues with the game's challenge. Being able to survive one more hit doesn't really help in a game that moves lightning fast and also still doesn't give you recovery frames after getting hit, and does nothing to change the actual core issue of how you even receive your healing charges in the first place. It's also incredibly shitty to lock off achievements that say you finished the game if you play on Easy difficulty; I may have played on Normal, but essentially telling the part of your player base on a singleplayer only game who played on Easy that they "didn't really finish the game" comes across as the most stupidly elitist shit that just didn't need to be there.

Also some bizarre technical design choices and issues with the PC version: the game stutters nonstop unless you switch your monitor to run at 60Hz because the game doesn't do it for you for some reason, and there is no cloud save support on Steam because saves are encrypted to your own PC for some truly asinine reason. You can fix it with an online community tool which I did to continue playing on a Steam Deck, but this is a singleplayer offline only game and I don't buy the developer's excuse of "Game Maker Studio is just like that" when plenty of other indie titles use the same engine and don't have this limitation, there's zero excusable reasons why this should've been done.

I wish I could like playing Hyper Light Drifter more than I did because everything else carries the game so much, enough that I didn't hate it but I just feel indifferent to it. I really hope Hyper Light Breaker next year does something more interesting with the world at least and changes up more by being 3D.

the opening montage of Up really destroyed a whole generation's concept of effective nonverbal storytelling by making them think a parade of prefab domestic clichés embellished with flavorless Milestone clipart set to overbearing music is in any way sophisticated or interesting huh

this girl is a tasteless unfuckable dweeb and i wish her all the worst. the way she's simultaneously a self-insert wish fulfillment character AND the most hapless and bland cozycore dork imaginable is really dark tbh. inexcusable taste in stuffed animals! stop decorating with your diploma already you absolute MONSTER!!! When a sappy celeste-adjacent chiptune ballad plays as it's revealed via context clues that she came into her own after a trip to Japan (and returned w/ a bevvy of basic tourist kiosk tchotchkes) and now feels confident enough to explore rockabilly-lite fashion...hell. It's all so flavorless and antiseptic--she is 30 where the hell is her hitachi wand and why CANT i stuff her horrid garb into the closet in the ideal organizational format--the pile? the subject here is so unpalatable that i honestly would have preferred they scrap the whole progressing narrative concept entirely (esp. when its used in such an unambitious way that communicates very little beyond trite sentimentality; life has its ups and downs, #gratitude, don't make time for haters who dull your shine, the more things change the more they stay the same, when god throws out a mug he buys you a wacom tablet) and instead present a medley of varying rooms/spaces occupying a plethora of subjects, aesthetics, and experiences, but also idt the same devs who chose this protag have anywhere near the worldliness or savvy to attempt something like that. impressive amount of unique isometric assets and cool implementation of foley though!

The various landforms of Miami are interconnected with bridges that arch dramatically over the waterways, bringing about a ropey spatialisation in contrast to Grand Theft Auto III's boxed in claustrophobia. Driving around in Vice City you will never be glued to the road for too long because soon you will be flying. There's a kick to be had in noticing people go by in boats beneath you, because it reveals a cross section of the game-space where different surfaces follow different paths and call for different types of action. Vice City's horizons are all densely knotted with distraction, with other possibilities. The glistening ocean and waterways are a gelatinous mass that pulls turquoise ripples across the ocean floor more swimming pool than anything else, which all adds to the game's garish charm. In the spirit of 1980s excess everything in nature comes filtered through its artificial counterpart: every sunset and palm tree. Vice City is celebrated by fans for having every texture and action derived from an imploded database of 80s pop signifiers that's denser than dense, and happy to be that way. It also, maybe inadvertently, captures the ambiguous place of an artefact like Scarface in pop culture, in that it is presented here as both 'badass' and a work of seedy exploitation. To quote Waikay on this, however, "it is Scarface without de Palma, Pacino, and pathos". Not that the game needs to say anything Shakespearean necessarily, but beyond the reference it's just kind of empty.

And blank pastiche is the issue here. I don't see the point in distinguishing between form and content because any artist will tell you that expression is always negotiated between tools and ideas; moreso where the player/audience is involved. Focusing solely on game systems ignores the way we make sense of them sensorially in play, and likewise an account of only narrative beats and visuals precludes the way these things are actualised in-game. And so with Vice City there is a hypersaturated audiovisual style that nevertheless feels both naked and abrasive. Where every other Rockstar game has the player avatar firmly rooted to the ground beneath their feet (even to the detriment of responsiveness in later titles), Tommy's movements jerk in sharp directions and seems to flicker away just short of the game surfaces. I can understand this sense of irritation adding to its coked up atmosphere, but Tommy's twitchy body along with the game's more lightweight driving physics creates a distance between the player and texture of the world that just seems like a waste. It is always unfun to play, or, the pleasure is less in feeling your way through the game-space than in actively connecting your actions to the game's audiovisual signifiers. Sure, you get a chainsaw, but where is the weight of it? Where is the gravity of the scene it's referencing, or otherwise the pull of the machine itself? It doesn't help that the missions put more of an emphasis on combat than its predecessor but that its lock on and run system is even more scrappy. It's more stylised and grisly, but its flimsiness has it oscillate between agitation and frustration.

Again the case can be made for the amped up coke logic of its embodied play combined with the dizziness of its hollow 1980s signifiers. That's obviously enough if you buy it, but I need a sense of gravity in my ultraviolent sleaze.

(advertencia de contenido: violencia machista y pensamientos suicidas)

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

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(Content Warnings: Sexist violence and suicidal ideation)

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

abandoned after lady butterfly, during seven spears. 'not my shit', which it could be argued, is less the grounds for a critical assessment than admission of defeat. the elegant linearity of the level designs, all heading to predictable difficulty choke points in boss fights, means that one doesn't so much inhabit the world of sekiro as its mechanics. there is nothing here beyond wolf's capabilities, activated through training one's nervous system to align with contextual demands, and so the joke about fromsoftware games being rhythm games is actually true of this one. you must respond in a pre-given way to the rhythm, and this gives sekiro a kind of kinesthetic purity i wish i could appreciate more than i do.

but so what i wanted from lady butterfly was the heavy sense of accomplishment i get from any game with considerable challenge — between the weightless noise of the battle and cue to activate a 'death animation', however, i returned to the world without catharsis and doubting anything had ever really occurred. perhaps this is due to the repetition of boss battles, that because the next is up in fifteen minutes, this one's already been forgotten to make room for the next set of steps to memorise. or perhaps this weightlessness is inherent to the shinobi. the camera is placed further from the body than in other fromsoftware games, which communicates the broader field of possibilities available to wolf across any given environment. (he scales walls, ducks beneath things, flings himself across ravines). this also though gives a sense of remoteness to the fights which should require intimacy — instead of a red symbol flashing up to cue a response, it would be nice to actually see the actions performed by our adversaries in order to anticipate a response. unfortunately though they all look like miniatures you are to deal with through a kind of microscope. in the much desired 'flow state' of play you are an abstract flurry of white slices, and the enemy only the distant recipient of the barrage. i like everyone else have praised the dance-like flow of bloodborne, but the emphasis on fluidity here does not have the requisite physicality to be called dance.

it's a pity, because the stealth sections between bosses are some of the most fun i've had in a game by this developer. the camera closes in, and the space becomes vivid.

i had every intention of finishing it just to say 'i dislike this game and have the right to say so' but jesus christ i'm old who cares

there's a lot said already abt the hypnotically repulsive audiovisual presentation with the frantic camera and barebones controls, it made me feel tweaked out and paranoid in a horrifying way and it rocked, but the thing worth talking about for me is the structure of this game, how vitally spartan its character is. how utterly, necessarily devoid it is of much sympathy for its leads. i skimmed through a playthrough of K&L1 after playing this, which i have no desire to ever play, and it just felt very of its time. a pair of antiheroes make a huge mess of things and argue incessantly and ruin lives but you gotta love their camaraderie and attitude!! and then the women in their life dare to nag nag nag at them about all the fucked up shit they get put through because of them until they inevitably get shot, because they talk too much

the second game inherits their disgusting personalities and their capacity for misery--in fact increases that aspect to a fever pitch--and you might look at it as just following in the boring footsteps of its predecessor with a more interesting aesthetic going for it. but the difference is how unsettlingly off things feel from what you'd expect. the cutscenes are so curt, there is hardly any kind of relatable stakes for the characters other than some vague deal to further imperialism (they dont care abt that part obviously why would they). everything happens with hardly any dramatic rhythm, just hot headed banter and death, with things getting worse and worse. the misogyny is still here but even that has a different tone; the women in kane and lynch's lives this time become little more than convenient excuses for them to continue their evil rampaging, not the motivation to do better that they probably tell themselves they are to help them sleep at night. they're in a hell of their making.

the bluntness behind the narrative helps make the bond between the two MILES more interesting. lynch's schizophrenia isn't exploited for :twisted: funny comedy this time but instead to render him as a pathetic crazed animal with a gun. and the stroke of genius of basically ignoring how K&L1 ends gives kane's more levelheadedness by comparison a delusional sociopathic underpinning. they scream at each other about how much they ruined each other's lives (much like the women they love in the previous game hmm [thinks really hard abt this]) yet at no point in the game does that tension come to a head between them like the first game would tease. it always evaporates away awkwardly. there's no bro moments of "heh you're alright" or anything like that ever in sight because they do not deserve that, they just drop their in-the-moment tantrum and go back to doing the only thing they ever know how to do. this is because, despite how they are unable to actually feel love or not destroy things, they ultimately understand each other better than anyone. they NEED each other so bad. AND YET!!! not even this is portrayed with much more than a kind of pity, if that, it's just a human tendency to prefer not being alone in your cosmic punishment. it's nothing to get too attached to.

if this game has anything that could be called a positive human emotion it wants to hone in on, it's this, and it is so incredibly compelling in its smallness to me that it sticks out beyond the rest of the genre subversion in the game to heighten it further. even a couple of rabid dogs will feel loyalty towards each other, when they know neither of them's going to heaven