i think the first time i finished this game, i almost hated it but pretended i didn't. something about the abruptness, the smallness, the way the mechanics don't all get Really Used, like they're vestigial hanger-ons from a previous iteration that was more interested in platforming and less interested in place

i think it got an extra star the first year after finishing it. i didn't play it again. i still haven't. it just sat with me. not even the politics. not even the people, or the dialogue, or the music, or the visuals (maybe the visuals a bit) but the actions. i could still remember, a year later, entire in-game days of walking from right of town to left of town, up the hill on the way to the church to attend because i wanted to connect with something in this mess, and maybe god had an answer? to my pet cat. to spending the day inside rotting playing all of demontower and thinking "that was okay at best, why did i play that all the way" and then messing with it a little bit after that, and then sending my friend i barely know a message and not realizing that night would end in me getting too drunk to take inputs correctly and then in real life the next night i ended up doing the same thing without really ever thinking about it.

i remember the feeling of understanding that the place was beautiful and the people who rotted it out were there for the wrong reasons. a feeling i never got at the time, but that i have overwhelmingly upon thinking about my memory of this.

i remember the journal.

i remember the melody to die anywhere else.

i remember how stupid i thought the hand control minigames were and how effective they were when they show up picture-in-picture.

i remember the mineshaft and the earnest thought that one of these characters might really die.

i still haven't replayed it.

i was almost ready to call this a masterpiece in the early going.

i'm not sure it quite is that; it cowers out of being genreless and meandering and quickly becomes A Game With Design, falling into a very clean little-nightmares-lite progression with small puzzles and small chases. but the extremely good dialogue stays so, the music stays emotionally bizarre, the atmosphere stays whimsically unfriendly in an honest way, and sweetness continues to puncture the overwhelming rot. it remains to be seen if it will grow in estimation in the memory or fade but the important thing is that it will definitely remain.

initially i buried the lede, but i'm angry enough that i won't: this is a story david cage would write wrapped in a game good enough that he would hate every second of it.

lorelei and the laser eyes is a flawless dollhouse construction of beautiful puzzleboxes. the art and design is excellent and when it pulls a gimmick it pulls it excellently. it pushes, dramatically, towards one-upping the mechanical center of outer wilds' climax (with several more moving parts, each with a highlights mathmania's worth of fun little tricks to solve).

the problem is that the game also wants to one up the emotional climax of outer wilds, and it doesn't know what the fuck a human being is. the best it can offer you is a mannequin, with a mannequin of that same mannequin off to the side, in the corner, winking solemnly. it is a sad joke, an attempt at a gut punch so limp that it made me the angriest i've been at a video game all year. it is rare that i am this impressed by a video game i feel for a moment i might actually hate.

the worst part is that i know these motherfuckers can do the work. there is good writing in many inches of the margins here, and, besides, they've made one bonafide goddamn video game narrative masterpiece (device 6, a much better game than this overall) so it's all the more disappointing.

at least the end credits song is basically another sayonara wild hearts track.

probably the most angry i've been at a video game in years. hell, even twelve minutes was funny to think about.