gotobedgabe
3 reviews liked by gotobedgabe
Dead Cells
2017
Sometimes your first impressions are wrong. I too found Dead Cells enthralling in the beginning. You stab and shoot and dodge and go: oh this. But the more I played, the less this mattered. What does this serve?
We still care too much about gamefeel. See Destiny. See also Celeste. There’s something icky about the way game critics fetishize it. That luscious feedback, that perfect extension of your will, that zone you wish to stay in forever. Gross.
I’m not here for your goodfeeling weapons. I’m here for enemies that fuck with my feelings. I’m here for encounters. But Dead Cells has no taste for that. Most of its enemies are locked to their tiny platforms, pacing like caged tigers, awaiting slaughter. It’s all discrete and exploitable. There’s no real dynamism. That precious this becomes rote. Nothing accumulates.
Except your cells, of course. Because Dead Cells never wants you to leave empty-handed. The metagame is all reassuring progress and new toys. It’s a people-pleaser wrapped in a hardcore skin. It’s roguelike comfort food, which goes against the whole point of randomness and permanent death. I don’t even care about getting good. I’m here for chance and uncertainty. I’m here to feel our contingency. And this game feeling, this, is not here.
We still care too much about gamefeel. See Destiny. See also Celeste. There’s something icky about the way game critics fetishize it. That luscious feedback, that perfect extension of your will, that zone you wish to stay in forever. Gross.
I’m not here for your goodfeeling weapons. I’m here for enemies that fuck with my feelings. I’m here for encounters. But Dead Cells has no taste for that. Most of its enemies are locked to their tiny platforms, pacing like caged tigers, awaiting slaughter. It’s all discrete and exploitable. There’s no real dynamism. That precious this becomes rote. Nothing accumulates.
Except your cells, of course. Because Dead Cells never wants you to leave empty-handed. The metagame is all reassuring progress and new toys. It’s a people-pleaser wrapped in a hardcore skin. It’s roguelike comfort food, which goes against the whole point of randomness and permanent death. I don’t even care about getting good. I’m here for chance and uncertainty. I’m here to feel our contingency. And this game feeling, this, is not here.
Final Fantasy VII
1997
within a span of two months, from september to november of 2019, i lost an old friend and former lover to bone cancer at 23 years old, and my father revealed to me that he’d been diagnosed with stage 2 lung cancer. this would indicate a nearly three year journey to where i am now - a sequence of events which tested the limits of my perseverance, willpower, camaraderie, self-love, and actualization of community. my life underwent severe changes throughout this period; essentially revising my entire outlook on my relationships to patching up and mending my relationship with my dad which had resulted in some pretty catastrophic gaps gashed out pretty equally on both sides. some outside events completely reformed how i lived, the safety and love i had to provide myself for my own wellbeing, and fostering a lot of growth and evolution out of a patch where what i’d known and what i held onto were slipping through my fingers.
during this time, my father set an example of how he would choose to live. he combatted cancer and heartbreak with rudiment, structure, dedication and iron will. i watched him break on more than a few occasions. but it was through his search for that light where he found his own branch of buddhism, practice of meditation, and a new outlook on his life. he began to teach me the lessons he’d taken away - both of us being that type of person with loud, constantly-spewing minds. he instilled and internalized the idea that meditation and serenity are not about clearing the mind of thought, but finding a means to acknowledge the thought and move on from it. it was only along the lines of that practice that we both began to unbox our trauma - both conjoined and individual. it was only then when we could cultivate growth, hope, and those first rays of light.
i had no access to therapy or professional help at the time. i was between jobs when i wasn't crammed into ones that abused and berated me and my time. my greatest resources for self-love, as they are now, were my loved ones and my then-cracked-yet-unbroken devotion to art. traumatic attachments kept me apart from those things i loved most, but in the process of recovering from a sequence in time in which i felt like i’d lost myself, figured it took recessing back to those works which had so clearly defined attics of my life to that point to regain shards of who i’d been, and define who i would choose to be moving forward. over the next year, i would play final fantasy vii six times to completion, twice with friends, four times on my own. the hanging threads of grief, trauma, self-actualization v. dissociation, lack of direction - these things culminated in a story which more and more i felt whispered answers directly to me, for my consumption alone. it’s in those moments where a bond is made between art and audience where the attachment becomes not just inseparable, but near essential.
final fantasy vii doesn’t hand you answers for the questions you come to it with. there isn’t a resolution to the trauma, there isn’t a solution to the pain or the grief. it is an embrace, and a hold of the hand, and a gentle call; “here is how you live with yourself. here is how you learn to be alive again.” the sociopolitical conflicts, the internal struggles, the budding seeds of affection and fraternity don’t reach a natural apex - they hum in anticipation of a deciding factor which never comes. perpetually trapped within the question, but offering you the means to provide your own answer in life. the final shot of the game isn’t a conclusion meant to be expanded upon. it’s simply a closing of the cover, the final page turned before the index of note paper before being passed to you with the command - “apply yourself. turn this into something that matters.” so i chose to.
and i found myself in midgar again, with new friends and a new outlook.
you come back to the slums of wall market and sector 7 with a new worldview and appreciation each time. there’s a different purpose, when your relationship with this game is as intimate as mine, for coming back here. i know the smog, the street life, the feeling of inescapable, walled-in urban destitution well. you grow up in any city poor enough and you get to know midgar intimately. it’s a familiar setting with a familiar social agency. the seventh heaven crew, they’re all faces i’ve known, fires in bellies i once shared, and now understand in a different light. they’re old friends i knew in my activism years as a teenager, they’re people i looked up to and lost through the years. i’ve lost a lot of people and a lot of faith over time. it might seem like a quick moment to many but the sector 7 tower fight reminds me of people and things that exist only in memories now.
the moment the world opens up and the main theme plays, while unscripted, is one of the most powerful in the game to me. i retain that this title track might be my favorite piece of video game music and such a perfect encapsulation of the game’s philosophy and emotional core. stinging synth strings meet acoustic woodwind and orchestral drones. playful countermelodies give way to massive, bombastic chords in a rocking interplay that rarely fails to inspire, intrigue and invoke. uematsu-sensei, unquestionably at the apex of his mastery here, provides his most timeless score. i think about, am inspired by, and draw from his work here intensely. the artistry pours out from every nook of final fantasy vii - the models, the cutscenes, the background renders, the gameplay systems, the story, the use of diegetic sound, the pacing, the designs - everything came together in a way that somehow evokes equal feelings of nostalgia, futurism, dread, fear, warmth, love, hope, and utter timelessness. streaming and voice-acting this entire game with my close friends was one of the best experiences of my year. hitting each turn with a decently blind audience provided both knowing and loving perspective and the unmitigated rush of first experience - in tandem, a passing of the torch, an unspeakable gift of an unbroken chain shared between loved ones. if final fantasy vii saved my life once before, this was the run which restored its meaning and direction.
i’ve been cloud, i’ve been tifa, i’ve been barret, i’ve been nanaki. i’ve been zack, i’ve been aerith. there are lives lived in the confines of final fantasy vii which i hold as pieces of my own, countless repetitions of those stories with those resolutions my own to meet, different each time. there was something magic about the ability to, a year after that painful strike of all of that anguish, that death, that loss, that fear, sit on the end screen as the series’ endless “prelude” played amongst 32-bit starfields and openly sob for a half hour surrounded by the voices and words of my loved ones. that was the day i learned to live again. it’s more than a game when you know it this intimately. it’s more than an experience when you share these scars. it’s more than art when you hold onto so dearly. there isn’t a classifier for what final fantasy vii means to me other than, “a lot”. sometimes, less is more. i don’t have a conclusion beyond that for you. the experience recalls everyone and everything i've ever loved and lost, and all that i've come to gain and hold dear. goodbye to some, hello to all the rest. true, reading this, it may have been a waste of your time, but i’m glad i was able to share this with someone. i hope this reaches at least one of you on a level you needed today, or maybe it invokes something in you about something you love so dearly. i’m here to tell you - this is how i learned to live again. if you need someone to tell you, today, that you can too, here it is. you aren’t alone. go find those answers for yourself.
please don't step on the flowers on your way.
during this time, my father set an example of how he would choose to live. he combatted cancer and heartbreak with rudiment, structure, dedication and iron will. i watched him break on more than a few occasions. but it was through his search for that light where he found his own branch of buddhism, practice of meditation, and a new outlook on his life. he began to teach me the lessons he’d taken away - both of us being that type of person with loud, constantly-spewing minds. he instilled and internalized the idea that meditation and serenity are not about clearing the mind of thought, but finding a means to acknowledge the thought and move on from it. it was only along the lines of that practice that we both began to unbox our trauma - both conjoined and individual. it was only then when we could cultivate growth, hope, and those first rays of light.
i had no access to therapy or professional help at the time. i was between jobs when i wasn't crammed into ones that abused and berated me and my time. my greatest resources for self-love, as they are now, were my loved ones and my then-cracked-yet-unbroken devotion to art. traumatic attachments kept me apart from those things i loved most, but in the process of recovering from a sequence in time in which i felt like i’d lost myself, figured it took recessing back to those works which had so clearly defined attics of my life to that point to regain shards of who i’d been, and define who i would choose to be moving forward. over the next year, i would play final fantasy vii six times to completion, twice with friends, four times on my own. the hanging threads of grief, trauma, self-actualization v. dissociation, lack of direction - these things culminated in a story which more and more i felt whispered answers directly to me, for my consumption alone. it’s in those moments where a bond is made between art and audience where the attachment becomes not just inseparable, but near essential.
final fantasy vii doesn’t hand you answers for the questions you come to it with. there isn’t a resolution to the trauma, there isn’t a solution to the pain or the grief. it is an embrace, and a hold of the hand, and a gentle call; “here is how you live with yourself. here is how you learn to be alive again.” the sociopolitical conflicts, the internal struggles, the budding seeds of affection and fraternity don’t reach a natural apex - they hum in anticipation of a deciding factor which never comes. perpetually trapped within the question, but offering you the means to provide your own answer in life. the final shot of the game isn’t a conclusion meant to be expanded upon. it’s simply a closing of the cover, the final page turned before the index of note paper before being passed to you with the command - “apply yourself. turn this into something that matters.” so i chose to.
and i found myself in midgar again, with new friends and a new outlook.
you come back to the slums of wall market and sector 7 with a new worldview and appreciation each time. there’s a different purpose, when your relationship with this game is as intimate as mine, for coming back here. i know the smog, the street life, the feeling of inescapable, walled-in urban destitution well. you grow up in any city poor enough and you get to know midgar intimately. it’s a familiar setting with a familiar social agency. the seventh heaven crew, they’re all faces i’ve known, fires in bellies i once shared, and now understand in a different light. they’re old friends i knew in my activism years as a teenager, they’re people i looked up to and lost through the years. i’ve lost a lot of people and a lot of faith over time. it might seem like a quick moment to many but the sector 7 tower fight reminds me of people and things that exist only in memories now.
the moment the world opens up and the main theme plays, while unscripted, is one of the most powerful in the game to me. i retain that this title track might be my favorite piece of video game music and such a perfect encapsulation of the game’s philosophy and emotional core. stinging synth strings meet acoustic woodwind and orchestral drones. playful countermelodies give way to massive, bombastic chords in a rocking interplay that rarely fails to inspire, intrigue and invoke. uematsu-sensei, unquestionably at the apex of his mastery here, provides his most timeless score. i think about, am inspired by, and draw from his work here intensely. the artistry pours out from every nook of final fantasy vii - the models, the cutscenes, the background renders, the gameplay systems, the story, the use of diegetic sound, the pacing, the designs - everything came together in a way that somehow evokes equal feelings of nostalgia, futurism, dread, fear, warmth, love, hope, and utter timelessness. streaming and voice-acting this entire game with my close friends was one of the best experiences of my year. hitting each turn with a decently blind audience provided both knowing and loving perspective and the unmitigated rush of first experience - in tandem, a passing of the torch, an unspeakable gift of an unbroken chain shared between loved ones. if final fantasy vii saved my life once before, this was the run which restored its meaning and direction.
i’ve been cloud, i’ve been tifa, i’ve been barret, i’ve been nanaki. i’ve been zack, i’ve been aerith. there are lives lived in the confines of final fantasy vii which i hold as pieces of my own, countless repetitions of those stories with those resolutions my own to meet, different each time. there was something magic about the ability to, a year after that painful strike of all of that anguish, that death, that loss, that fear, sit on the end screen as the series’ endless “prelude” played amongst 32-bit starfields and openly sob for a half hour surrounded by the voices and words of my loved ones. that was the day i learned to live again. it’s more than a game when you know it this intimately. it’s more than an experience when you share these scars. it’s more than art when you hold onto so dearly. there isn’t a classifier for what final fantasy vii means to me other than, “a lot”. sometimes, less is more. i don’t have a conclusion beyond that for you. the experience recalls everyone and everything i've ever loved and lost, and all that i've come to gain and hold dear. goodbye to some, hello to all the rest. true, reading this, it may have been a waste of your time, but i’m glad i was able to share this with someone. i hope this reaches at least one of you on a level you needed today, or maybe it invokes something in you about something you love so dearly. i’m here to tell you - this is how i learned to live again. if you need someone to tell you, today, that you can too, here it is. you aren’t alone. go find those answers for yourself.
please don't step on the flowers on your way.
Chrono Cross
1999
This review contains spoilers
i don't get nostalgia.
i talk to a lot of people who do, and hold that sort of thing pretty close to their hearts. and on a level of pure understanding, i suppose i understand the concept - but on an intimate level of relatability, i just don't see it. maybe it's because my childhood didn't exactly harvest positive memories, maybe it's because much of what i held dear in my formative years i continued to revisit and recontextualize my feelings towards as i entered adolescence and my early adulthood... maybe it's a bit of both. but yes, as i've said - i don't get nostalgia.
i do, however, know chrono trigger. i know most of it pretty much like the back of my hand. it's a game i've played through like six or seven times now - twice in the last year - and i think it's a game that, when considered within its own vacuum, i have largely come to understand and solidify my opinion on. a marvel of technical achievement and pacing, but largely uninteresting and uncompelling to me as far as narratives within the jrpg genre go. a zenith of the first decade of the development of the genre, to be sure, but that first generation largely isn't what pulls me into my favorite titles within the jrpg canon.
when recontextualized, though, as a necessary step to get to chrono cross, and in considering the narrative symbiosis of these two titles - neither "distant" sequel nor alternative, rather two parts of an epic that cannot exist without either piece - chrono trigger becomes a subversion of itself. chrono trigger becomes an ouroboros-like monster with "FATE" written on both head and tail. would it be better to let history stay its course, or to revise the future for the sake of humanity? or is it perhaps humanity's fate, in turn, to protect itself at all costs?
the ripple effects stir and create the crashing waves of opassa beach, and when chrono cross rears its head, everything locks into place. chrono trigger becomes heightened in its execution because it is, ultimately, set up for a game truly first of its kind: a metafictional reanalysis of the first 15 years of jrpgs, the hero's journey, the satisfaction of victory, the thrill of the hunt vs. the plight of the prey. chrono cross does not look back in anger at the heroics of crono, lucca, and marle - a very common misconception held by decades of detractors. no - like the oceanic backdrop of the entire game, from title screen to final fmv, chrono cross simply considers the ripple effect. these are not the stories of haughty, self-righteous children, nor are they exactly the legendary tales of virtuosity that trigger would have you believe. it's as simple as lucca's plight at the orphanage. these are just people doing the best they can to do what's right.
it is no coincidence how young and innocent the trigger kids appear in their spectral forms throughout chrono cross. it drives home their naivete, their innocence and purity. the world was too big and it swallowed them whole. there is no saving them, there is no stopping the hands of fate. it's a ballsy move to kill them off screen, but it asks the player to stake their nostalgia, their memories, their attachments by the throat. this is not what was, or rather, what these children and the children who fell in love with chrono trigger, thought it to be. as citan uzuki in sister title xenogears says - "this is reality". the story didn't work out the way we thought it would. the ending wasn't the ending, just as chrono cross's start isn't the beginning...
in reading chrono cross as a post-modernist work, i'd like to consider the notion that despite the entire story literally revolving around an oppressor called FATE, the irony of cross is that its plot has already concluded by the time the game begins. where trigger grants the option to literally warp the events that will play out, FATE remains constant in cross. you cannot go back, you cannot revise history, you can only make lateral moves. harle remains damned to her fate, schala remains to be captured each and every time. chrono trigger's choices seem liberating and wildly free in comparison, but when the player meets miguel in cross, that illusion is stripped away entirely. the hero's journey of chrono trigger was itself an illusion, a jrpg narrative boxed in and around its central characters, but indeed, as the player learns, the world was larger than those children understood, and the future did refuse to change.
again, they were just people doing the best they could.
cross only leans into absurdity and borderline nonsensical nature further, with mid-dimensional travel, a biblical last act of cataclysm and apocalypse, and the unyielding terror of true chaos around every bend. you begin to get the feeling that serge, nor kid, nor harle, was every the real protagonist of this story, because they lack the ability to change that these things happen. indeed, as i said earlier, the story has already happened, but these kids must make lateral moves in an attempt to reconcile fate and redefine the future - the only way forward, literally - for their world.
you can't stop the orphanage from burning,
but you can give the kid a place to call home.
and in that final fmv, as schala wistfully sets out on her journey, it's silently understood that the best those people could do, it turned out to be good enough.
i talk to a lot of people who do, and hold that sort of thing pretty close to their hearts. and on a level of pure understanding, i suppose i understand the concept - but on an intimate level of relatability, i just don't see it. maybe it's because my childhood didn't exactly harvest positive memories, maybe it's because much of what i held dear in my formative years i continued to revisit and recontextualize my feelings towards as i entered adolescence and my early adulthood... maybe it's a bit of both. but yes, as i've said - i don't get nostalgia.
i do, however, know chrono trigger. i know most of it pretty much like the back of my hand. it's a game i've played through like six or seven times now - twice in the last year - and i think it's a game that, when considered within its own vacuum, i have largely come to understand and solidify my opinion on. a marvel of technical achievement and pacing, but largely uninteresting and uncompelling to me as far as narratives within the jrpg genre go. a zenith of the first decade of the development of the genre, to be sure, but that first generation largely isn't what pulls me into my favorite titles within the jrpg canon.
when recontextualized, though, as a necessary step to get to chrono cross, and in considering the narrative symbiosis of these two titles - neither "distant" sequel nor alternative, rather two parts of an epic that cannot exist without either piece - chrono trigger becomes a subversion of itself. chrono trigger becomes an ouroboros-like monster with "FATE" written on both head and tail. would it be better to let history stay its course, or to revise the future for the sake of humanity? or is it perhaps humanity's fate, in turn, to protect itself at all costs?
the ripple effects stir and create the crashing waves of opassa beach, and when chrono cross rears its head, everything locks into place. chrono trigger becomes heightened in its execution because it is, ultimately, set up for a game truly first of its kind: a metafictional reanalysis of the first 15 years of jrpgs, the hero's journey, the satisfaction of victory, the thrill of the hunt vs. the plight of the prey. chrono cross does not look back in anger at the heroics of crono, lucca, and marle - a very common misconception held by decades of detractors. no - like the oceanic backdrop of the entire game, from title screen to final fmv, chrono cross simply considers the ripple effect. these are not the stories of haughty, self-righteous children, nor are they exactly the legendary tales of virtuosity that trigger would have you believe. it's as simple as lucca's plight at the orphanage. these are just people doing the best they can to do what's right.
it is no coincidence how young and innocent the trigger kids appear in their spectral forms throughout chrono cross. it drives home their naivete, their innocence and purity. the world was too big and it swallowed them whole. there is no saving them, there is no stopping the hands of fate. it's a ballsy move to kill them off screen, but it asks the player to stake their nostalgia, their memories, their attachments by the throat. this is not what was, or rather, what these children and the children who fell in love with chrono trigger, thought it to be. as citan uzuki in sister title xenogears says - "this is reality". the story didn't work out the way we thought it would. the ending wasn't the ending, just as chrono cross's start isn't the beginning...
in reading chrono cross as a post-modernist work, i'd like to consider the notion that despite the entire story literally revolving around an oppressor called FATE, the irony of cross is that its plot has already concluded by the time the game begins. where trigger grants the option to literally warp the events that will play out, FATE remains constant in cross. you cannot go back, you cannot revise history, you can only make lateral moves. harle remains damned to her fate, schala remains to be captured each and every time. chrono trigger's choices seem liberating and wildly free in comparison, but when the player meets miguel in cross, that illusion is stripped away entirely. the hero's journey of chrono trigger was itself an illusion, a jrpg narrative boxed in and around its central characters, but indeed, as the player learns, the world was larger than those children understood, and the future did refuse to change.
again, they were just people doing the best they could.
cross only leans into absurdity and borderline nonsensical nature further, with mid-dimensional travel, a biblical last act of cataclysm and apocalypse, and the unyielding terror of true chaos around every bend. you begin to get the feeling that serge, nor kid, nor harle, was every the real protagonist of this story, because they lack the ability to change that these things happen. indeed, as i said earlier, the story has already happened, but these kids must make lateral moves in an attempt to reconcile fate and redefine the future - the only way forward, literally - for their world.
you can't stop the orphanage from burning,
but you can give the kid a place to call home.
and in that final fmv, as schala wistfully sets out on her journey, it's silently understood that the best those people could do, it turned out to be good enough.