Bio
Top 5 over there is just the last 5 games to enter my group of all-time favorites
Personal Ratings
1★
5★

Badges


Loved

Gained 100+ total review likes

GOTY '23

Participated in the 2023 Game of the Year Event

Trend Setter

Gained 50+ followers

GOTY '22

Participated in the 2022 Game of the Year Event

Well Written

Gained 10+ likes on a single review

Liked

Gained 10+ total review likes

Epic Gamer

Played 1000+ games

Organized

Created a list folder with 5+ lists

3 Years of Service

Being part of the Backloggd community for 3 years

Best Friends

Become mutual friends with at least 3 others

Busy Day

Journaled 5+ games in a single day

GOTY '21

Participated in the 2021 Game of the Year Event

On Schedule

Journaled games once a day for a week straight

Popular

Gained 15+ followers

Noticed

Gained 3+ followers

Elite Gamer

Played 500+ games

Gamer

Played 250+ games

N00b

Played 100+ games

Favorite Games

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition
Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
ZeroRanger
ZeroRanger
Armored Core: For Answer
Armored Core: For Answer
Germs: Nerawareta Machi
Germs: Nerawareta Machi

1456

Total Games Played

022

Played in 2024

165

Games Backloggd


Recently Played See More

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Mar 05

Signalis
Signalis

Mar 03

The * BishiBashi
The * BishiBashi

Feb 28

Windjammers
Windjammers

Feb 28

Yakuza 6: The Song of Life
Yakuza 6: The Song of Life

Feb 25

Recently Reviewed See More

This review contains spoilers

So, what the hell is Act 3?

Dragon Quest XI is full of endlessly endearing characters, constantly pleasurable combat, and a sense of warmth and wonder that few experiences can rival. I'd call it one of my favorite games. But, the thing my thoughts kept returning to for days after finishing it was Act 3. What the hell is it??

After DQXI's antagonist is defeated and the ending credits roll, a lengthy additional scenario for the player begins, generally referred to as the Post-Game or "Act 3." Taking place after the end credits, it's framed as an extra optional adventure, though some story elements from the main game only see their ultimate resolution in Act 3. I decided to play through Act 3 in order to see everything that DQXI had to offer. I loved the main game, after all!

I'd characterize my initial experience with Act 3 with two words: Whiplash and bafflement. Why why why is this game un-sticking its own landing to have me undermine its most emotionally impactful moments?

The scenario of Act 3 is built around using time travel to undo the death of the character and party member Veronica. Her death happens suddenly and silently in the main story; the player won't learn that she is dead until many hours after she sacrificed herself. There are no tearful last words, no encouragement to finish the quest from the dying, the player just gets separated from her at one point, and instead of a reunion, there's her body.

In a game principally concerned with the undiluted joys of love and friendship and the appeal of just spending time with people you care about, Veronica's death is titanic. DQXI semi-frequently punctuates its usually lighthearted fairy tale tone with moments of sadness, loss, and despair to contrast with and underscore the importance of its joyful themes, but Veronica's death is a step beyond. It constitutes a massive, tangible loss for both the principal characters and the player. Veronica stops being a playable character, she can no longer be a piece of any party composition in the dozens of battles to come, she won't be hanging out in camp, she won't have any optional dialogue, she won't feature in any story scenes going forward. These things may seem obvious but in the tens of hours I had been playing up til then, Veronica had become a staple of my experience in the game. She was an integral member of my band of friends and I had expected to return her to the party when I found her after all the characters were scattered at the end of "Act 1." After spending so many great hours with DQXI, her death cast a shadow of sadness over the rest of my experience.

She's survived by her sister Serena, who resolves to continue adventuring with the player and to live for the both of them. She cuts her hair and inherits a piece of Veronica's spirit, and from then on in gameplay Serena possesses the powers and abilities of both herself and her sister. She quietly carries Veronica's memory with her for the rest of the game, and every time the player uses her to cast one of Veronica's spells during combat they are reminded that no one is ever truly gone forever. It's a simple, beautiful way to imbue the basic fabric of a game with emotional resonance. Act 3 is about taking all that away.

That is maybe a bit uncharitable to say, but it is fundamentally true. Act 3 sees the hero traveling back in time to keep Veronica from dying and then saving the day all over again with her in tow. In this reality, Serena never suffers that loss and never resolves to remain strong in the face of grief. The bonds of the party are never strained and strengthened by the loss of their loved one. Similarly, other hard lessons are unlearned as well. Another party member, Erik, has his confrontation and reconciliation with his sister erased and replaced with an altogether more abridged and tidy reunion. Michelle the mermaid never sees her tragic story concluded, Sylvando never finds purpose forming a traveling troupe to bring joy to a despairing world. People all over Dragon Quest XI's world never experience the dark era of strife brought on by the game's antagonist. In the main story the hero fails to stop him at the end of Act 1, and the player is made to live with the cataclysmic consequences while experiencing both struggle and hope in the process of rebuilding. In Act 3's revised history, all this darkness is made squeaky clean by comparison. In a game that previously seemed to be putting forth the importance of hope and perseverance in the face of life's tragedies, Act 3 seems to be saying that hardship is fundamentally inappropriate to a happy life, and that it would be better for those hard lessons to never be learned at all, fantasizing that all the bad in the world can be magically painted over, completely exiting any emotional reality that a player could experience themselves in their own life.

This is roughly the message I got from Act 3 at first blush. However, I want to challenge my own premise here, because after some time and a lot of thought, I've come to view Act 3 in a different way that, while not fully making me love its direction, helps me to appreciate and reconcile it with the overall shape of DQXI as a piece of art.

For me to make peace with Act 3, I first had to accept that it's primarily an exercise in wish-fulfillment. At the end of the main game I had so much affection for those characters that a chance to spend dozens more hours with them was everything I could ask for! Act 3 is wish-fulfillment on a deeper thematic layer too. The main story spends a lot of its focus on imparting its ostensibly light-hearted storybook narrative with a sense of emotional tangibility. It reaches out to the player with moments of irrevocable sadness followed by moments of joy, friendship, and solidarity despite it all, and asks the player to see the value in these things. In reality you can't take back regrets or bring back the people you lose. The purpose of Act 3 is to willfully engage in a fantasy contrary to the rest of the game, though just because it's contrary doesn't mean it doesn't have value.

By doing the impossible and rewriting history in Act 3, the player and the hero perform a service out of love for the people they care about. Their friends will never know the strife that might have been. Given the opportunity, What lengths would you not go to, to protect the ones you love from pain? Given that very opportunity, the hero of Dragon Quest XI changes the entire fabric of the world, because reality is a small price to pay to see a friend smile again. The world is already full to bursting with hurt and sadness, it won't miss the little that you take away.

Act 3 taps into the impulse to wish you could truly save the day and make everything okay for the people that matter to you. In real life, this can be an impossible and even unhelpful idea when pushed too far, and I'm personally more drawn to the world of real emotional consequence presented by the main story, so the real Dragon Quest XI will always sort of end for me at the conclusion of Act 2. But Act 3 lets the player spend time in the fantasy, spend more time with their friends, be the hero they cannot be in real life. It's a videogame, why not take this chance to live inside it as you cannot outside it? As a purely additional coda to a game all about the connections we make, it strikes me as somewhat beautiful that in Act 3, you never have to say goodbye.

Remote Control Dandy has it all. It has a complex set of mechanics and systems with 2 player characters that ride the line between deep simulation and deep tedium, it has an ongoing narrative with likeable characters, it has progression systems and a lightweight strategic layer that tie directly into the player's performance in missions.
Playing this I can see how all these great elements are still embryonic in Remote Control Dandy. Everything in this game is begging to be pushed further. It shows me a blueprint to a masterpiece videogame that exists in my head.
I intend to investigate this little genre further and see if that masterpiece exists elsewhere as well.

Hey I also published a version of this with some pretty pictures on medium

At first blush Germs: Nerawareta Machi is another entry in that class of oddball PSX Japan-only curios, a game good for glancing at and then digesting into a piece of trivia or a short youtube video. "Do you know about this weird game Germs?? Check out the cover art."

When you dig deeper into it though, Germs reveals itself to be a genuinely fascinating and worthwhile work of art about the terror of change, full of ideas and ambition so great the game itself can struggle to contain it all. A team of just six developers crafted a 3D open-world narrative action-adventure game set in a single explorable city, on console, in 1999. Germs's use of space anticipates the contemplative, barren landscape of Shadow of the Colossus. It had a fully 3D drivable open world two years before Grand Theft Auto did. It features survival elements that would become ubiquitous in popular games in the 2010s. It predates Deadly Premonition by over a decade. There's still nothing quite like it.

Germs sees its protagonist coming back home after many years away. They left to work as a journalist at a respected newspaper, but all these years later a series of strange occurrences in their hometown have inspired them to return and investigate the mystery while working for the local paper. Germs opens on a foreboding note, the brooding soundscape suggesting that perhaps this old city was better left alone.

But the temptation is too great, something remarkable is definitely happening in the town. Reports have come in of a shining ball of light flying over the mountains. A strange office has appeared in town that sends emails to residents about viruses, change, evolution, and ascension. Dozens of citizens are found wandering out of the abandoned coal mine in a state of fear and confusion; nobody ever goes in but people keep coming out. A tale of invading aliens using a virus to mutate humans gets underway, and it's up to the player to get to the bottom of it all.

The player is lowered into this mystery with minimal guidance. The computer terminal at their office has a few unread emails that point in the right direction, and their assistant suggests they ask around the information center nearby, and that's it. Germs offers an open-ended adventure where the player can poke around the town at their leisure, and investigate the leads in their emails in a non-linear order.

The world outside the office is rendered in stark black and white. Recalling the paranoia of films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Them!, the grayscale visuals present the town as full of latent danger yet drained of energy, a place no one should inhabit. The coal mine the town was built around has long since closed down, and the rows of blocky buildings form a giant skeleton that houses only a few sources of life. The game's interior spaces are in color, as if the survivors in the town are the only remaining sparks of life hiding from the oppressive atmosphere outside. This eerie environment is one of the most striking I've ever inhabited in a videogame. It feels like a surreal nightmare bottled and preserved. The world is inert. For the protagonist, being back home is like being trapped in a faded photograph.

At the start of the game, upon receiving an email from an old friend asking the protagonist to meet them at their house, the player is faced with Germs's first and most definitive challenge: to figure out how public transportation works in the city. There are multiple bus routes, an underground metro, and a train in Germs's city, all on top of the car the player is given from the start. This series of transportation systems is realized with beautiful detail. The large scale of the city makes learning their operation essential for getting around, and their interconnections make the overall world design the greatest single aspect of Germs as a work of interactivity. This is a game that turns remembering directions for taking the subway and walking a few blocks into a thrilling experience.

Nearly as impressive is the game's approach to narrative design. Germs's narrative plays out in a modular series of events, which the player can tackle non-linearly. Each key building in the game goes through several major story states, from pre-invasion, to invasion, to liberation. Locations in Germs get recontextualized from mundane spaces to dungeons full of combat encounters, then back again, which makes the sense of invasion feel all the more real. Tied into these main beats are the stories of several characters, from some old friends of the protagonist, to a mad scientist, to a secret agent tasked with investigating the town. Their narratives progress as the player liberates buildings and visits them in optional sequences, which makes the overall narrative design lightweight and fluid, especially for a game of this era. Empowering the player to talk to people and clear out locations in the order they choose helps to ground them in the city, and allowing them to help dictate the narrative's progression makes the town feel like a real place in real danger. Finally of note is Germs's unique fail state. If the player is defeated in combat they do not get a Game Over, instead they're reborn in the coal mine as the sort of mutant they've been killing. In this state they can talk to the other mutants peacefully and carry on with their life, though they won't be able to progress further in the game until they get cured at the hospital. On top of all the other interesting things Germs was doing in 1999, it also turns a player's failure into a narratively and mechanically intriguing, thematically resonant feature, something most games two decades later are struggling to do.

Despite its achievements in narrative and world design, the game is not without its share of rough edges. The combat is clunky at best, though it doesn't commit the sin of also being challenging. Circle strafing or ducking behind corners with a decent weapon is all it takes to defeat any mutant, and frankly this is a positive. In an experience full of friction the combat itself proves mercifully straightforward.

Likewise, Germs's integration of role-playing and survival simulation mechanics is forward thinking but embryonic in execution. The player has to manage hunger that doubles for health, damage to their individual limbs, and the need for sleep. The game also features an experience point system that lets the player level up their competency with individual weapon types as they use them, increasing accuracy. The kitchen sink-ish inclusion of these elements adds to Germs's overall ambitiousness in design, but in the course of play they end up feeling a bit perfunctory. Keep your health up at restaurants, see a doctor and sleep at the end of the day, and stick to one good weapon to make it accurate, that's the extent of the decision making.

The area where Germs's various design elements do cohere into brilliance is in the interplay between the health system and the aforementioned world design. To get through a building full of mutants, the player will want as much health as possible going in, and since their health depletes slowly over time, they're incentivized to get from place to place as efficiently as possible. This means skillful play in Germs is not in the shooting, it's in the navigation. The game trains you to plan a day trip to the coal mine by learning the fastest route to a delicatessen to get food to go, then knowing which bus will get you to the closest station for the special train that heads north to the mine, and then knowing the quickest way to get back to the hotel via the subway so you can squeeze in a visit to the strange old man living near the mountains before bed.

Germs's somewhat sparse story speaks to the pain and fear that comes with change, and the fear that stasis might be even worse. Two of the major characters are old friends of the protagonist. One of them is coming back to town for a job, what else, and by the end she feels the virus welling up within her, stuck between the human she was and the deformed thing she might soon become. The other friend never left, he stayed and dried up along with his hometown, and all he has now is his endless study of the virus. Even when the invasion has been stopped and the mutants killed, he just thanks you politely before stating that he really ought to get back to his research. The alien virus engulfing the town changes the host into some other type of being, and the transformation is described by turns as either horrific or sublime, and often both. The long abandoned town is now the site of cataclysmic change, and interestingly, the protagonist has come back to their lifeless home in order to stop that change.

I come from something of a ghost town myself. It's a small place with lots of dead ends that seemed to me growing up like it was specially built to be moved away from. The idea that I could one day go back there, take up a job, and pick up my old life, gives me a sort of creeping sensation like I can feel my body decaying around me. But on the other hand as I move forward in life and set big goals that I inevitably fail to reach, I feel the fear of the unknown future, wondering if I'm up for whatever strange and difficult form it's sure to take. Germs speaks to me as an examination of that tension, staying still is unthinkable but moving forward is terrifying. The understated tragedy at the heart of Germs's slim narrative lies in how, after defeating in the final boss the part of themself that wishes to embrace the grotesque future of mutation, the protagonist dismantles the source of the change in the name of safety. The choice makes sense, it's an alien invasion after all, but what is left in the end? The game has no distinct ending, no fade to black with credits rolling. The player is just sent right back to their office at the newspaper, the only change being that the citizens are more grateful and fewer in number now. Color does not find its way back to the targeted city, it's just the same old town. No alien invasion killed this place, it was already dead. The ending of Germs: Nerawareta Machi is just that faded photograph, an endless, quiet purgatory. The future the aliens promised may have been horrific, but without it what the hell is the present? It's a brilliant, haunting non-ending that follows the player even after the game is shut off for the last time.

Germs deserves to be more than trivia. It's shockingly prescient, systems-rich, full of harmony between narrative and mechanics, and the only game from a small team of artists biting off the biggest goddamn gulp they could imagine with zero thought as to how they might chew it. I love it, it's one of the finest pieces of foreboding and alienation I've ever played.