IMO Dishonored is one of a scant few series with such masterfully interwoven area design that organically accommodates a variety of playstyles and tactics--without losing its aura of verisimilitude. This economical little cutie puts premiere games like Deus Ex / Cyberpunk and their shrink-wrapped route segmentation to shame; there's little to no "here's the stealth approach air vent, directly beside the combat approach cover corridor! Time 2 pick ur actually kind of meaningless, overbearingly highlighted choice!" bullshit here. Like Souls, you actually have to pay deep attention to largely un-signaled opportunities in the architecture, enemy behaviors, and level design in ways that successfully make you feel like you're discovering exploitable weaknesses in both the diegetic AND directorial structures of the game world itself. Blink/Far Reach still feel like you're playing debug mode and hacking the game but in a totally intentional way and it RULES! It's exhilarating to have to constantly re-evaluate your approach and compromise whatever binaristic roleplay you initially set out on due to the vibrant, chaotic texture within every area, and when you're on a roll it's absolutely some of the coolest zonefeel and adaptive stealth EVAR!!!

Sadly I am kind of godawful at this series despite being a fan, I and struggled immensely to play in the rough style I find most satisfying (stealth-predatorial, with the occasional quick firefight when discovered), especially at the start. D2 is almost immediately much less forgiving than the first game, and the enormous, punishing opening areas do very little to get you acclimated. I was constantly abusing quicksaves and moving at a snails pace until getting my sea legs 8+ hours in, and by that point I had become a bit too reliant on some cheesy, avoidant strategies. This may only be an issue on console, but I found the reload times to be especially ridiculous for such a high-risk game that encourages you to frequently retry; I spent maybe 1/5th of my playtime in the first 3 zones inside a loading screen and that does not feel acceptable!!! I was able to push through this klutzy phase because I knew of the pleasures 2 come once I got my groove back, but the lengthy downtime very likely could have turned me away for good if I were a first-time player. Happy I stayed onboard because some of the later zones are a delight to navigate, especially with a more developed arsenal of abilities. Maybe this isn't a problem on PC, but it really aggravated me on console.

The lore of this world does very little for me and I don't find the story or the characters at all engaging, but the whalepunk theming does lend itself to some areas with interesting mechanical/structural concepts (the 13 Ghosts/Cube-style morphing inventor mansion and witchy taxidermy conservatory were NEAT!). I'm glad for the attempts at stylization that are here, but wish they had taken things even further. The overarching story of braindead political retribution is basically a huge yawn but the lived-in sensibility of individual spaces remains excellent.

ALSO I picked Emily and was HORRIFIED to discover that she can not turn into a rat, which was the coolest ability in the OG and legit feels odd to be locked to one player character--esp when "dethroned edgy steampunk princess" feels WAY more likely to have high rat affinity than boring pseudomute assassin man!!!! felt legit devastated every time I saw a group of rats I could not possess. The game literally should warn you upon character select that if you pick Emily you will NEVER go ratmode :'( Her Naruto self-multiplication/shadow crawl power is NOT an acceptable substitute!!!! legit -.5 a star for this injustice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

it is very short and a mess in its structure sometimes but very interesting and can be kind of deep, too! the dialogue is very well-written and it reminded me of hideaki anno's shiki-jitsu -- the conflict between two different personalities dialoguing, without compatibility but still comfort, until they find each other and, even with their quirks (that, by the way, i really love how a character is written with lower case and another normal, showing a lot about their personalities) keeping a relantioship. there's a whole dreamy sequence about understanding yourself and trying to be sane in a world that is ending everyday it goes on (and for the fault of the system, not yours. but you still are trying to change, you know that maybe you can't, but what it costs try to be a little better for you and the others around you?). also i love the keybord typing sounds in the dialogues!! reminds me of the silver case!! it is really cool and its like, 30 minutes of game? and its free!! you should check it out.

𝓬𝓻𝓾𝓮𝓵𝓽𝔂 𝓼𝓺𝓾𝓪𝓭 𝓻𝓮𝓿𝓲𝓮𝔀


𝓒𝓡𝓤𝓔𝓛𝓣𝓨 𝓢𝓠𝓤𝓐𝓓 by 𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖘𝖚𝖒𝖊𝖗 𝖘𝖔𝖋𝖙𝖕𝖗𝖔𝖉𝖚𝖈𝖙𝖘 🄶🄴🅃🅂 🄰🅆🄰🅈 with 🄰 🅆🄷🄾🄻🄴 🄻🄾🅃 🄾🄵 ˢʰⁱᵗ 🄹🅄🅂🅃 🄱🅈 🅅🄸🅁🅃🅄🄴 🄾🄵 🄸🅃🅂 คєรՇђєՇเς รєภรเ๒เɭเՇเєร. ₛᵢₘₚₗy ₜₕᵣₒwᵢₙg ₒᵤₜ wₒᵣdₛ ₗᵢₖₑ 🅲🆁🆈🅿🆃🅾🅲🆄🆁🆁🅴🅽🅲🆈 and l̶̦͍̖̪̂̄a̸̧͖͍̠̤̜͇̮̯̅̈́̈́̔ͅt̷̳͈̔̀̑̓̌͝ȅ̵̛̥̠̯̖̯̮̹̃̅͛̓̂ͅͅ ̵̪̜̹̏̆̃̂s̸̭̙̱̰̓̎̋̇͋̿́́͝t̷̥͔̤̰̻̥̱̪̝̄̊̇̉̓̌͜a̴̡̨͔̙̦͓̮̠̦̮̾̉̎̈́̕͝g̵̰̻̥̊̎͗̂̈́ẹ̷͉̼͉̠̲̪̰͑̈́͆̉̀̔̄͜ ̷̼̩̣̪̺̎̏͋͊ͅç̴̭͕̹̼̓̎̽͛̆̈̚͝a̶̡̟͖̫̫͙͙̤͖̾͂̉̄͒͛̌̓͘p̸͚̖̰̓̓̓̈́͛͋̎̏͠͠i̵̧̮͓̎͛̕ͅͅt̷̠͇͊́̒̃̽̃͌͗̊͒ą̷̝̹̥͇͖̫͖̭̉́̀̄͋́̌̏̕͜͠l̴̺̈́͐͒͋̾͑͊̈́͊̿i̷̧̞̹͗͆̓̆s̵̡͙̝̖̳̳̭͕͚̣͊̌̀̓̕m̷̧̉ seems to be enough to ֆǟȶɨֆʄʏ (っ◔◡◔)っ ♥ online video game critics ♥ 【ｔｈｅｓｅ　ｄａｙｓ．．．】! "𝙀𝙨𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙪𝙣𝙧𝙚𝙫𝙞𝙚𝙬𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚" is the 𝓒𝓞𝓦𝓐𝓡𝓓'𝓢 𝓒𝓛𝓘𝓒𝓗𝓔 𝓒𝓡𝓘𝓣𝓘𝓠𝓤𝓔 𝕨𝕙𝕖𝕟 𝕚𝕥 𝕔𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕤 𝕥𝕠 V⃣ I⃣ D⃣ E⃣ O⃣ G⃣ A⃣ M⃣ E⃣ R⃣ E⃣ V⃣ I⃣ E⃣ W⃣ S⃣, but I think ｃｒｕｅｌｔｙ░ｓｑｕａｄ（ゅヮ桜）, by [̲̅v][̲̅i][̲̅r][̲̅t][̲̅u][̲̅e] of its ιⓝşίˢᵗ乇ᑎς𝐄 on 𝓃𝑜𝓃-𝒸𝑜𝓂𝓂𝒾𝓉𝒶𝓁 𝓅𝑜𝓈𝓉-𝓅𝑜𝓈𝓉-𝓅𝑜𝓈𝓉-𝓅𝑜𝓈𝓉-𝓅𝑜𝓈𝓉-𝓅𝑜𝓈𝓉-𝓅𝑜𝓈𝓉-𝓂𝑜𝒹𝑒𝓇𝓃 𝟤𝟢𝟤𝟢𝓈 𝒾𝓇𝑜𝓃𝓎. truly đỖ𝕖Ⓢ ʏᎸɘb ᴎɘƚᎸo 𝘵𝘺𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘨𝘢𝘮𝘦-𝘫𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘪𝘲𝘶𝘦. . . . . . . . ᶜᴬᴺ ʸᴼᵁ ᴵᴹᴬᴳᴵᴺᴱ ᴼᴾᴱᴺᴵᴺᴳ ⒺⓁⒺⒸⓉⓇⓄⓃⒾⒸ ⒼⒶⓂⒾⓃⒼ ⓂⓄⓃⓉⒽⓁⓎ OR 🅶🅰🅼🅴🆂🅼🅰🆂🆃🅴🆁 🅼🅰🅶🅰🆉🅸🅽🅴 αɳԃ ｒｅａｄｉｎｇ 𝕤𝕠𝕞𝕖𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝓁𝒾𝓀𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓈 about c̴̢̹͔̦͍̯̮͙̜̓̕r̸̦̭̮̼͉̲̒̈́u̴̫͉̞̓̅͌̓̾̚͠e̵̡̠̹̩̱̓̄͂͆́̾͜ļ̷͉͇̱̈́͝ť̵̨̺̗̹̪̑̚ỵ̷̰̥̥̼̈́ ̶̪̙̘͇́̉̉͗̑̇͊̄͌̕ş̶̠͕̭̈́̄͌q̸̧̤͋̎̈̑̈́̆̐̈́͌̿u̸̼̞̟̬̪̻̰̖̇͝a̴̢̞̻̹̩͌̍̅̅d̵̨̨̳̖͔̈̓͠?


🄶🅁🄰🄿🄷🄸🄲🅂0/10
🄶🄰🄼🄴🄿🄻🄰🅈6/10
🅂🄾🅄🄽🄳4/10
🅁🄴🄿🄻🄰🅈🄰🄱🄸🄻🄸🅃🅈7/10
🄾🅅🄴🅁🄰🄻🄻8/10

The best roguelites are all about toying with choice, expectation, and consequence. The very best games the genre has to offer often forces players to choose between an item or a weapon, a damage boost or a health pickup, a dangerous encounter with better loot or a safer encounter with a lesser outcome. They force you to make tough decisions and live with those decisions, with even early-run items and mechanics can have lasting consequence until the end of a run.

Hades is one of the most linear games I've ever played and it results in a game that barely feels like a roguelike. Each run features a fixed number of rooms that you move through, and a small variety of hand-crafted rooms that start to feel very retreaded after a handful of runs. Every run feels the same because there's no way to go beyond what the game expects of you with structure.

My favorite roguelikes feature very dynamic level design or offer a variety of additional challenges like bonus floors or areas, specific challenges to make the game have extra longevity, and secret bosses or bonus modes.

Hades is able to spice up a bit of its variety with options like the pact of punishment, but these are merely difficulty modifiers that tune numbers or force you to play more cautiously or quickly. According to Steam I spent around 22 hours in this game, and I reckon that's closer to 19 or 20 once you shave off extraneous dialogue and the few cutscenes the game has. Throughout those 20 hours I played about two or three dozen runs. None of them stand out. Every run felt the same.

A common complaint with roguelites is that they are often unfair and success relies on getting a good item that will win you the game. I understand these complaints but the genre is often deliberately designed to be unfair to make runs interesting. When a game forces you to play through the same components dozens or hundreds of times, it's essential that runs feel interesting and diverse. There are many runs I've had in games like Enter the Gungeon where I got screwed over by lack of good items, but for every one of those, there's a run where I got some incredibly unique gun or item that made the game extremely fun to play. Those runs stick out and are the reason why the best roguelites are paragons of good game design.

Because levels don't fundamentally change, all of Hades' variety is dependent on boons. Some boons make the game feel different, like Athena, whose boons are largely defense-related, or Hermes, whose boons alter speed and dodging. However, every other Olympian's boons usually have to do with a specific status effect. Chill. Doom. Jolt. Drown. Drunk. Charm. All these statuses are different names for the same general effects. Once you pass the opening hours of Hades, the smoke and mirrors dissipate and the game's façade of variety falls apart.

That's not to say that Hades is a bad game--it's an alright game. The art is gorgeous, and combat feels good to play in the most direct fashion, but combat is also extremely simple, with pretty much every enemy except the last two bosses being defeatable by spamming attack and dodge. The music is fantastic as it always is for a Supergiant game. Surprisingly, I felt like the story left a lot to desire. The thing that has always drawn people to Supergiant games is their stunning art, music, and writing--all the elements of games that other studios and developers often fail with.

The story in Hades is actually really underwhelming largely because there isn't really a story. There's no general plot and everything is communicated in through dialogue. The narrative is carried by loose relationships between thinly-defined characters, and as such feels like pretty much any other roguelite without a story. Early on I felt impressed by the fact that there was no repeating dialogue (which is certainly a feat), but after enough time I realized that this was just another gimmick. Non-repeating dialogue carries no importance when characters use a multitude of words to say nothing at all. Every dialogue or conversation feels identical to the previous and by the time I got to the end of the game I found myself skipping, or skipping through, most of these encounters.

It's really quite a bummer that I didn't enjoy this game more especially because of how much I enjoy world mythology and how much a strong impression the game made in the opening hours; but just like Doom 2016, even the most thrilling gameplay loops can stagnate without innovation.

Static places that are already fixed in time and space, is photography worthless there? Well, there comes perspective as a way of reinterpreting those places, emphasizing what the photographer considers most important.

But before the player can put their subjective view there are objectives to complete. While a weird decision, to say the least, I can welcome the developers giving a guiding hand to help lazier people (like me) in appreciating the details of these spaces. But what is it that the developers emphasize with these objectives? I’m sorry but I hope it is understandable that I don’t really have much energy left after making me shoot “a text that reads 'Property of the UN' in a sarcastic tone” or “a picture that contains ‘Gamer’ at least 7 times” (I don’t need to search for neoliberalism when it is all over the place), applying some filters to the photos, doing all of that hopefully in less than 10 minutes and then getting paid some money.

At least after that I can give it a rest and now take on a more free view of the stages. But I’m still unconvinced. The world is ending so I get the carefree youth trying to enjoy what they have left with the 15 years old nihilism written on the walls, I’ll let that slip. The critique of the world capitalizing the worst disaster even when the world is about to end is neat, definitely shows that the game was developed through 2020. The critique to cops and military forces? That’s another story. Countless messages written on walls denouncing how bad cops are and how hollow it ends up being a soldier. But then you turn around and what are these supposedly bad forces doing? Soldiers fighting the aliens with all they have in order to protect humanity? I understand the duality between the youth that has already accepted the end and the forces that refuse to give up, but neither of them are exactly doing anything bad, just dealing with the inevitable as best as they can.

What is left? I’ll go and ignore everything and take a picture of all my friends, nothing can take that away no matter when and where. Everyone on frame... 3, 2, 1…

“3.17$ COLORFUL DETAILED FISH EYE GROUP”

Just Cause 2 is not about overthrowing dictatorships or causing disorder or saving anyone, but is instead about the velocity of grappling hooks, the aerodynamics of parachutes, and the peculiar bliss of combining the two. It is about following the contours and open expanses of this fictional archipelago, gliding and cutting shapes like you were the wind.

Just Cause 2 is one of the finest world-as-playground videogames because it is never clear whether you are playing the game as it should be played or haphazardly combining various broken mechanics. And it is stupid throughout but only as seriously stupid as an arcade shooter cutscene. Unlike the followups it doesn't need you to know that it's in on the joke because the joke is just for you. Same with the broken mechanics. It is sincerely stupid and for that it is beautiful.

The world of Panau is lovingly crafted to be as anonymous as possible. It is assembled from Google Earth, travel ads, and shitty travel photos, all of which erase human specificity for a passive tropical emptiness. It's not even really a fantasy, it's too abstract for that. I almost feel bad because Just Cause 2 is so wasteful. It's huge, and filled with all these beautiful little townships and hideaways that could each sustain an entire game. Every now and then you might stop at one and walk around on foot and try take in the architecture and the views, and see where the people go to shop and eat, but then you feel like a fake.

You're so used to seeing the world blur past that actually appreciating Panau as something concrete and liveable is impossible. It's only ever as real as Google Earth, Expedia ads, and travel photos. Rico's role in The Company means he is defined only by his transience, his anonymity, and the world around him hollows itself out into an expansive non-place: a motorway/airport/mall decorated to look like some place else. Some place far far away.

This is the limit of Just Cause 2 and also the best thing about it. When you are in the playground you might find it difficult to leave, but enough time away from it and it dawns on you that it was only ever a playground. Unlike Grand Theft Auto and Far Cry, Just Cause 2's open chaos is always completely weightless. It's meditative, more meditative than any game that's ever been. Because again in Just Cause 2 you are the wind.

I'm not giving this a low rating to be contrarian or whatever. Genuinely think this is a bad video game.

It starts out really strong then immediately nosedives into a corridor shooter, and soon nosedives once again as the narrative pivots to just terrible territory.

Absolutely dreadful by the end.

“An American tragedy. An odyssey of debt, of grief, of broken promises, of hope. A painful, melancholic fable composed of fables and more fables, spreading out and weaving in and out of itself. A dream ebbing back and forth between memory and fantasy. A plea for you to care about something.”

...This was my original review for Kentucky Route Zero. I still think it’s a good description. But on consideration, I feel as though I need to be bold and say it: Kentucky Route Zero is not only one of my favorite games, but one of my favorite things ever made.

This is not an assessment of quality. I am not telling you what to feel. I am telling you how I feel. And Kentucky Route Zero makes me feel a way.

I specifically say “Favorite Thing”, because Kentucky Route Zero doesn’t affect me like a game. When I think about many of my favorite games, I often think of them as games. They are full of mechanics, of challenges, of systems. That’s certainly not all games are, and games can be many things, but in the capacity that they affect me, enchant me, or fascinate me, it is often within this vague category of “game”. But Kentucky Route Zero is different. To call it “my favorite game” and leave it at that misses something. It’s certainly a game, but it doesn’t make me feel the way games usually make me feel. First and foremost, Kentucky Route Zero is a story. It’s unlike most. The main body of this story is a game, but it’s also a multimedia saga. There’s something quintessential permeating my experience of Kentucky Route Zero that transcends that category.

It is a hauntological melancholy. It conjures a world more like a memory than a reality. Kentucky Route Zero tells the story of people who seem familiar but you’ve never met, with jobs that were never really secure, in situations that could never happen, in a version of Kentucky that has never existed. Magical realism constructs a vision not of reality, but of memory, of a sensate fabric that you swear could have been but never was. Americana is a mythic entity made visible, standing in front of me within Kentucky Route Zero, and it’s on its last breaths.

It’s a hopeful story. That doesn’t mean it’s happy. The world around you is a wasteland. Everyone is dying. Everyone is suffering. Everything is weighed down by debt, pulled deep down into pools of darkness. To live is to work, work, and die. But there are other ways to live. There always have been. Should we move on? I think the answer is clear. But that doesn’t make the pain go away. We have to be willing to feel both grief and hope in the same breath.

All of its blemishes are dismissable. Fleeting problems with UI, incidentally clunky writing, weird mechanical tangents, overwhelming scope, these melt away when I take a moment to remember what Kentucky Route Zero is and feel the frisson travel up and down my skin. I'm trying to not be too longwinded here, but it's hard. I can't get into specifics. So I wax poetic instead. I could write thousands of words on every minute I spent with Kentucky Route Zero and still feel like I was forgetting to say something. It is a multitudinous masterpiece, refracting and reflecting endlessly, timelessly, quietly.

Kentucky Route Zero is one of my favorite things.