Nunca había estado tan cerca de dormirme jugando a algo. Tengo poco que comentar de su diseño que no se haya dicho ya. Parece el juego que saldría si introdujeras todos los vídeos de Mark Brown en un algoritmo.

Más allá de eso, ¿por qué bichos? ¿Cuál era la idea? No se qué diferencia los insectos que mato de los npcs con los que hablo o los gusanos que rescato. Supongo que es lo que tiene imitar a ciegas, es fácil quedarse con lo superficial y olvidar algo tan básico como el propósito. Matar a Drácula puede ser una chorrada pero basta para establecer una motivación y un contexto mínimo. Aquí solo tenemos una sombra sin consciencia que extermina mecánicamente toda forma de vida con la que se cruza.

A veces parece que quiere evocar algo con sus escenarios pero la desgana con la que lo intenta es irrisoria. Hay una localización que se llama Ciudad de lágrimas donde llueve constantemente y suena música melancólica. Ese es el nivel.

I'm aware this review isn't a popular opinion, but Nier: Automata is an ok game at best somewhat held together by superb animations and a wonderful soundtrack.

I'm aware it's got quite a cult following but I just could not get invested in it though it starts off pretty good. You play the role of 2B a combat android sent on a mission to earth. The opening section is pretty action packed and though linear sets a great atmosphere and a big boss and I got what I was expecting from a Platinum games title. Past the opening though the cracks start to appear.

Nier: Automata is an empty experience trying to give the appearance of something greater. It has a semi open world but it's bland, barren and empty to explore. It has a lot of side quests but they are mostly forgettable busy work. It has a lot of combat and upgrade options but the battles soon become stale due to the level design etc. Just nothing quite clicks.

I kept pushing through as I had heard the story was the highlight. The way the plot weaves though feels very disjointed, I never felt the flow of the story was very well done. To get the full ending is a chore playing through several paths and the final payoff was just meaningless nonsense. The game tries hard to dip into philosophy and existentialism which are themes I appreciate, but I feel it never truly grabbed my attention perhaps because I was so uninterested in the characters even if the world premise was interesting.

It all just results in missed potential as far as I'm concerned. That said there were some positives. As mentioned in the header, the animations are super smooth. The way 2B moves and switches from move to move is like she's gliding on silk, it's beautiful. The OST is also an absolute knock out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTOuspYpbNc

I also really like the art design of a lot of the characters even if the environments are dull and washed out. They really stand out and have already become pretty iconic. Just a shame the designs do not go with the context of who the characters are even remotely.

That all said, I don't regret playing it, it just wasn't the experience I was looking for.

+ Animations are fantastic.
+ Soundtrack is exquisite.
+ Character art design....

- .....completely out of place and inappropriate.
- Empty world and environments.
- Poor plot and story. Getting the full ending is a chore and not worth the payoff.
- 9S is insufferable.
- Side quests are boring.

(For a much better critique, for I am no wordsmith, I agree with try youtuber Pixel a Day (there are story spoilers): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWpjyTw8-Pc )

Song Accompaniment

This post-silicon faux introductory approach to platform character programming design, well meaning as it is, obscures information in 2 ways.

1. The toolkit here gameifies entirely around you the player being able to tweak towards a working character slowly through the introduction of new information rather than give you a top down understanding of how a good character looks and plays and working backwards from there. As such the useful part of the information is put at the end rather than at the beginning. I believe this is probably because Mark creates his videos in mind for an audience constantly in burnout so he has to 'slow cook' his observations rather than lead with information. You don't want to risk overstimulating the player with information so you give them 1 thing at a time but the player character themselves is going to feel like shit until you have all the functions to tweak open to you.

2. This corporate silicon mess doesn't feel good no matter what you do, because games are actually more about their visuals and music than they actually are about their 'movement'. As he explains, all the movement is completely up to what style of game you're trying to make, and as such its about the audio visual design. You can't make the character feel good to play when you have a horrible non-progressing mallsoft B-Side trumpet song playing in the background and with the visuals all looking like Paper Mario: Sticker Star put through a smoothie blender. It will always feel like chemotherapy that way. Yes you first start by prototyping the movement with simple pixel art and usually throw the sounds and music in last in these projects at the end, but before you start designing at all you imagine a world you want to externalize, is it a fluffy pillow or an industrial nightmare? You can't make a game with just a base awareness of mechanics and free art assets like this. You need to have an idea of what you want it to look and sound like. It would be remarkably less glamorous but this should have been made with simple pixel NES style limitations, possibly with a black background like how Metroid (1986) or Ice Climbers (1985) looks.

There's a lack of firm data, for example the acceleration and deceleration seem useful but they don't give you frame data of the stop and start points (or even just a second timer). Everything is styled to be interesting but not informative. As an actual toolkit, this is worthless. Like yes the preset for mario is slow, but that's because in mario you run and there isn't a coded run button to oscillate the speed.

Anyway, even if we ignore all that, there's just other functional issues that get in the way. For whatever reason run input information on the controller buffers data so your character always turns with uncontrollably slippery lag after changing inputs. I gave up playing this twice because I didn't realize this was just because of poor coding. The input keyboard controller is the arrow keys and the space button which is also a terrible layout.

This is the part where I'm supposed to say something needlessly snarky about how GMT should stick to making videos or how essayists should stay in their lane. I'm not going to say that. I think information simulation games are great, Balance of the Planet (1990) is an information game and it's one of the most ambitious and informative titles out there. I think Video Essays about Game Design are great, people can have great information without even having a hands on approach with the numbers and coding. Xator has a fantastic video/essay on the Mario bounce, which is relevant here, and from my understanding that's all gathered from historical data and reviews. To his credit, I don't know GMT that well and he seems to make shallow stuff but apparently his Boss Key video inspired one of my favorite levels in a game, the esoteric sky dungeon from Yo! Noid II: Enter the Void (2018).

All I'll say is that good observation comes from thoughtful consideration and research. Not out of being performative or hitting a production deadline, nor by babysitting readers/players with a series of continuous priming statements. Historical comparison or Breaking down a graph goes much further. Even without that, just get to the point, you really don't have to tutorialize the audience constantly. It does help to have a good taste in non-verbal music though because otherwise people will get sick, faze out and click off :3

The fact that Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days has to get described as some kind of """anti-game""" because the taste makers and machinations of big-Video Games have decided for you, or through you, that feeling disempowered and disoriented are inherently non-video game feelings (they're not, and calling it an anti-game is cope against this conservatism) just goes to show that gamers and the games they play and the games that are made for them are most of the time absolutely the tackiest, kitsch ♥♥♥♥. I don't want to hear anyone tell me about what makes the latest Sony movie video game exclusive the vanguard of this industry's accomplishment and cultural worth when Kane & Lynch 2 gets denigrated as either a ♥♥♥♥ game or a anti-game.

Y'all have never played a damn game in your life, is what it really sounds like. This one, and the first, however, slap. So maybe start here.

boneless gta 3

now, this game is not bad by any means. it's quite decent and there is definitely some fun to be had here. in terms of mechanics, LCS improves on 3 in every single way possible (barring crouching not being available). you actually have bikes now, the shooting isnt annoying, the cars handle normally compared to 3's cars which couldnt stay stable for a second.

however, it's a complete downgrade in every other aspect imaginable. somehow, LCS manages to have a less engaging story than 3's fairly simple and barebones story because around 80% of the cutscenes in this game are not motion captured so any sort of impact they could have had is thrown out the window (the final showdown with the main antagonist isnt motion captured lol). toni is a terrible protagonist with awkward voice acting and writing, it genuinely would've been better if he was just silent. the main antagonist is someone we've passed by once or twice in the game and he doesnt even know toni exists, gta 3's main antagonist on the other hand is someone we are familiar with the entire game so it works well. the pacing is awkward and it takes too long for anything interesting to happen. something else that makes this story less engaging is the fact toni is tied to the mafia the entire game, despite the story being more or less moving the same path as gta 3 did (working for a yakuza member, working for donald love, working for a corrupt cop, etc.), it does not work as well as 3 did because claude was a one man army, he wasnt affiliated with anyone and would do anything just to progress giving for interesting missions and ideas we dont see in LCS (i.e. sayonara salvatore and waka-gashira wipeout in 3).

3's radio is one of my personal favorites in gta because of how short the stations were and that gives almost a sense of comfort while playing the game, LCS's was also short but it felt more obnoxious than 3 despite them trying to imitate the same radio sound and a lot of songs were more annoying than nostalgic or good.

the missions were not nearly as chaotic or open ended as 3's were, i would always be excited playing 3's missions despite them getting really hard sometimes because of the chaoticness most missions provided. however this is not present here as a lot of missions rely on gimmicks such as following cars (ugh), just generally forgettable missions.

now, i have criticized this game to hell and the sensible thing to do would be to give it like a 1/5 or something, right?

despite all that i said here, i think there is still quite some fun to be had here with the game as some missions were still fun and the improved mechanics make driving around LC way more fun. i still prefer 3's more darker atmopshere in its city but it's still LC here so i had a lot of fun driving even if a lot of the songs sucked ("sing it back" fucks hard though). decent game that was a serious achievement as it was made for a handheld.

toshiko my beloved.

PRESS E TO EXAMINE THE CLUE
Max: "I needed to stop dawdling. People were dying, and I was just standing here."
Giovanna : "AHHHHHHHHHHHHH MAX NOO! THEY'RE SHOOTING AT ME MAX!!!"
Max: "Giovanna had a lot of courage. And she was smart. Very competent woman in a lot of respects. But right now, she needed me to shoot these guys before she ran out from behind cover in a hysterical panic."
Evil Brazilian military cop: "Stupid American! You don't even know our language! How could you hope to understand this?"
Max Payne: "Maybe I was a dumb, violent gringo subsisting on whisky and my own self-pity, but I still needed to do what needed to be done. Brazil was diseased to its core, the roads and rivers were a circulatory system filled with sewage and cocaine. I was a white blood cell sent to tear out the infection, one U.F.E and gangbanger at a time. But still... I had sympathy. These people had been raised to hate middle-income assholes with delusions of grandeur (GRANDEUR) like me, but that wasn't gonna stop me from saving the decent folks who just happened to live in this cesspool.... everything slowed down. That AC unit looks loose. I can shoot the air conditioning unit to make it fall."
COLLECTED! GOLDEN SMG PARTS: 2/3!
Max: "I had let these scumbags go the first time. But now, they were about to have their way with a gorgeous female woman. Not on my watch."
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: "YOWCH! Shoot 100 guys in the dick"

Edit: To actually explain my thoughts on MP3 in a non-goofy way, the shoot dodge is very fun and it leans into the ugliness of Max as a character and makes gunplay feel genuinely morbid and grisly in a way I liked. great cutscene direction as well and in theory I like Max's arc here, but those elements come along with some very Xbox 360 racism/annoying third person shooter design from that era that feels as if it's rubbing up against the tone. should've been called White Man's Hurtin'.
Would really recommend reading this review by replicantgestalt for a way more detailed and informed take on how it handles Brazil as a setting: https://backloggd.com/u/replicantgestalt/review/1541848/