I really do love horror that focuses on houses! The more ARG/Creepypasta inspired elements were also really, really cool, and I liked how mostly unobtrusive they were. This game (rom hack?) pushes the boundaries of the Doom engine to give you a brilliant experience. The only reason I didn't rate this higher is because there are other pieces of media with similar premises which I felt executed this better, and I felt like the Doom aesthetic shot this in the foot a bit. It didn't quite manage the vibe of liminal spaces for me. But I'm not a Doom person anyways so maybe I just don't have the required context.

If you like Doom, then I strongly recommend giving this a shot. Either way, a neat experience.

I don't think there's a lot I can say about Pokemon Insurgence that hasn't already been said. This fan game is one of the most beloved darlings of the Pokemon fan games/rom hacks of the online Pokemon community, and notable because it's been around for almost a decade and has not gotten DMCA'd by Nintendo. In my opinion, all of the love this game gets and it's cult status are very well deserved (pun intended). This game is plenty worth playing nowadays, and that's primarily because of the star of this show, which is, of course, the Delta Pokemon. They are ridiculously well designed and very fun to team build with and around.

Now, onto what is probably the single aspect of this game that will probably make it hard for any new fans to get into... the story. It's gratuitously edgy and dark and not entirely well written in that sort of teenage angst phase way, which makes it kinda cringey looking back on it. If that isn't to your taste, then no harm no foul, this probably isn't the fan game for you.

...but is it kinda bad that I love it for this? I don't know, to me it feels like a similar experience to sitting down and reading My Immortal or watching the Saw movies. It's silly and a little cringe, but it feels earnest and charming, and it's best done with friends on late night discord calls while intoxicated. It feels like a teenager wanted to make a game, so they went out and freakin' made it without ever making any compromises about it's creative vision. And yes, there are soooo many plot holes, it's hard to follow, and in some ways it over stays it's welcome. But despite all of that, or maybe because of it, I had spent more time of my play through of this game having fun than I didn't.

Besides, I think there were also a lot of genuinely interesting concepts on display here even if the execution is rough. I mean, Pokemon Cults were a fantastic idea, and I have yet to really see any other big projects including them, which is a shame because the idea of a cult replacing the more corporate, evil teams works incredibly well with the original Pokemon formula. And of course the aforementioned Delta Pokemon and the Custom Megas are absolutely stunning works of character design and sprite artwork.

So, should you play Pokemon Insurgence? I'd say it depends on the kind of experience you're looking for. If you don't wanna take the plot seriously and/or need an excuse to do something fun with friends, then I'd say go for it. There are very few pieces of art that I can say I enjoyed in a post-irony sort of way, and this is one of them. But then again, this game DID burrow its' way directly into my brain and hasn't left for 8 fucking years so maybe I have some very rose tinted glasses on lol. That being said, I had fun, and that's good enough for me.