saihara
212 Reviews liked by saihara
Resident Evil 3
2020
Having Jill pick up boltcutters and go "these could be used to cut the chains on a door..." while looking straight ahead at a bolted door sets the tone early on, but critiquing the game for this would be treading too closely on its father's hallowed ground; almost everything dumb and gung about this RE3 was present in that RE4 too, so let RE who is without sin cast the first stone.
With the bar set low, there's an unsurprising consistency to how every subsequent puzzle operates precisely one rung below what would be considered an entertaingly 'clever' solution. You'll often pick up an item and think "Aha! So if I just take this to...", only to find the game is all but making it unavoidable that you and your Clown Key will see the Clown Door on your way down the only unbarricaded corridor in a dozen-block radius. It's merely an Imagine Babiez simulation of the Resident Evil mansion-crawler, but nonetheless an enjoyable one. To unload 125 bullets into a zombie and still have enough rounds to glibly massacre twelve more feels positively philistinic when coming straight off the train from Resident Evil 2, but I think this is an admirably different experience - especially given they're in the same engine. RE3 is impressive in its own way - I could actually feel the old Mercenaries DNA bubbling up to the surface during the hospital holdout, and that made me really glad I finally gave up a few hours to play through it. Good times.
I remember borrowing a friend's copy of this game midway through 2020, but ultimately decided against inserting the disc. Something instinctive told me that this game would be Too Much during a pandemic, and I'm sad-glad to learn my gut was right. As I alluded to way back when, 2020 was the first and hopefully last time in my life I'll watch a real human body in a plastic bag be dropped into a makeshift grave, and this game was full to the brim with that same image. Just surreal to think about April 2020 again, isn't it? That unpleasant memory mingled with the game's, giving those opening street sections a unique morbidity that zombie movies never used to have for me; something formerly cartoonish is now psychologically horrific, closing the gap between survival horror as it exists in reality and in fiction. Kinda funny that I was thinking about all of it, again, in a computer game where someone shouts "suck on this, bitch!" while unloading a railgun into a giant tentacle monster. But that's exactly what I wanted to do to the killer virus too.
With the bar set low, there's an unsurprising consistency to how every subsequent puzzle operates precisely one rung below what would be considered an entertaingly 'clever' solution. You'll often pick up an item and think "Aha! So if I just take this to...", only to find the game is all but making it unavoidable that you and your Clown Key will see the Clown Door on your way down the only unbarricaded corridor in a dozen-block radius. It's merely an Imagine Babiez simulation of the Resident Evil mansion-crawler, but nonetheless an enjoyable one. To unload 125 bullets into a zombie and still have enough rounds to glibly massacre twelve more feels positively philistinic when coming straight off the train from Resident Evil 2, but I think this is an admirably different experience - especially given they're in the same engine. RE3 is impressive in its own way - I could actually feel the old Mercenaries DNA bubbling up to the surface during the hospital holdout, and that made me really glad I finally gave up a few hours to play through it. Good times.
I remember borrowing a friend's copy of this game midway through 2020, but ultimately decided against inserting the disc. Something instinctive told me that this game would be Too Much during a pandemic, and I'm sad-glad to learn my gut was right. As I alluded to way back when, 2020 was the first and hopefully last time in my life I'll watch a real human body in a plastic bag be dropped into a makeshift grave, and this game was full to the brim with that same image. Just surreal to think about April 2020 again, isn't it? That unpleasant memory mingled with the game's, giving those opening street sections a unique morbidity that zombie movies never used to have for me; something formerly cartoonish is now psychologically horrific, closing the gap between survival horror as it exists in reality and in fiction. Kinda funny that I was thinking about all of it, again, in a computer game where someone shouts "suck on this, bitch!" while unloading a railgun into a giant tentacle monster. But that's exactly what I wanted to do to the killer virus too.
Soul Hackers 2
2022
A mid-00s light novel come to life, with all the trappings therein. I like some of the gameplay elements here; anyone miffed about the loss of press turn is whinging over some fun experimentation. The Sabbath system offers some interesting choices in combat, forcing you to question how offensive you need to be to maintain your forward advance.
I really like these characters in their downtime, the hangouts and meal segments are sweet and they manage to feel both like coworkers and emotionally stunted 20 somethings meandering through life. Milady was the standout to me and Ringo is a lovely protagonist, I enjoyed Saizo, Arrow was not my fav.
This isn’t a bad game by any means, just a bit simple; the dungeons, particularly the Soul Matrix segments, can be brutally tedious and pale in comparison to the original’s Vision Quests. But it’s a cute and fairly short (compared to its peers) game that never quite coalesces into something truly essential. I will say this game is extremely stable on Series S and ran beautifully. Some fun tunes too.
I think when it leans into its more relaxing, “lo-fi” vibes the game does shine. The hate campaign against this game is saddening because it’s inoffensive at best—you don’t really see this kind of energy for all the Vita RPGs it isn’t too far from
I really like these characters in their downtime, the hangouts and meal segments are sweet and they manage to feel both like coworkers and emotionally stunted 20 somethings meandering through life. Milady was the standout to me and Ringo is a lovely protagonist, I enjoyed Saizo, Arrow was not my fav.
This isn’t a bad game by any means, just a bit simple; the dungeons, particularly the Soul Matrix segments, can be brutally tedious and pale in comparison to the original’s Vision Quests. But it’s a cute and fairly short (compared to its peers) game that never quite coalesces into something truly essential. I will say this game is extremely stable on Series S and ran beautifully. Some fun tunes too.
I think when it leans into its more relaxing, “lo-fi” vibes the game does shine. The hate campaign against this game is saddening because it’s inoffensive at best—you don’t really see this kind of energy for all the Vita RPGs it isn’t too far from
Dead Space
2008
Recommended by KB0 as part of this list.
"Libera temet ex inferis."
The USG Ishimura lies abandoned, harnessed in the orbit of Aegis VII, a metal coffin that holds within the full spectrum of life itself: The dead, the soon to be, and the reborn. The rhythmic thud of our hero Isaac's boots fill the vacant air of corpse-strewn halls, the far-off screams of either a victim or a perpetrator ringing just out of earshot. The ear-splitting thump-thump of the heart, the sounds of labored & panicked breathing on the precipice of hyperventilation, the subtle click of Isaac's repurposed-for-war power tool being raised and aimed at an elevator door that seems to descend into eternity.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
The presentation of Dead Space is easily it's biggest strength. It's insistence at making every mechanic and video game genre convention a diegetic part of the world lends it an atmosphere like no other. Nearly every weapon that Isaac gains is a power tool instead of a designated instrument of war. The menus are hologram projections that we can see the back off when the camera is rotated around with the right stick. The health bar is a physical part of Isaac's suit. Posters around the USG Ishimura mention gameplay mechanics like the Stasis or Kinesis Modules. All these little details culminate in one of the most immersive horror games I've played in recent memory, despite it's futuristic setting and high-concept.
Alongside it's phenomenal UI, the suspense of its exploration is another aspect in which Dead Space shines. The somewhat cramped over-the-shoulder camera closing in on Isaac in cramped corridors. The near-silence of the vacuum of space, where enemies are silent and the only feedback you have is the subtle vibration of your controller as Isaac walks and shoots. The minimal cast of human characters which Isaac very rarely (if ever) directly interacts with or sees in any capacity, exacerbated by Isaac's silence in the face of it all. The entirety of Isaac's nightmarish affair trapped in the great starry abyss is permeated by an intensely isolating feeling that had me aiming my trusty Plasma Cutter at every doorway, tensed up at what could potentially be behind the turn of a hallway. It's a masterclass in horror suspense that had me on the edge of my seat dreading most encounters.
While Dead Space's idea of horror is incredibly cheesy, never really advancing beyond its initial arsenal of spooky monsters going "OOGA-BOOGA!" at you while the orchestral score puts it's whole pussy into the horn section, it's in it's encounter design that Dead Space makes the most of its survival horror aspirations. The Necromorphs unique weakness is their limbs, requiring a different skillset than the average third-person shooter since it's all about dismemberment; careful aiming and precise shots at constantly moving targets that love to ambush you from vents both above and below in these incredibly tight spaces, forcing you up close and personal as you try to line up shots with your limited ammo and somewhat clumsy unarmed moveset (aside from the best stomp in the industry bar none). Every encounter is tense, with item drops being somewhat stingy and usually only enough to barely get you by in a pinch, and it's truly sublime. In my first time playthrough where I never used anything aside from the starting Plasma Cutter, there was a section in Chapter 9 where I was neck-deep in the thick of it, with no shops nearby and only 14 shots left to my name. I was just barely scrapping by each encounter, taking care not to let even a single shot run errant, thanking the lord for every measly pickup of 6 bullets I found in a corner somewhere, and even making mad dashes across an arena looking for anything to use when I ran out of ammo, Necromorphs nipping at my heels all the while. It's the most fun I've had in an action game in a long while and it's the sort of thrill I can't get enough of.
Nearing almost 14 years since its initial release, Dead Space still stands tall above its contemporaries as a standout survival horror title, and no doubt one of the best from the 7th generation alone. It's oppressive atmosphere, love for its sci-fi contemporaries and no-frills tense gameplay make it a must play for both survival horror enthusiasts and action game junkies.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
...
"Hazardous Anomaly Detected. Quarantine Activated."
"Libera temet ex inferis."
The USG Ishimura lies abandoned, harnessed in the orbit of Aegis VII, a metal coffin that holds within the full spectrum of life itself: The dead, the soon to be, and the reborn. The rhythmic thud of our hero Isaac's boots fill the vacant air of corpse-strewn halls, the far-off screams of either a victim or a perpetrator ringing just out of earshot. The ear-splitting thump-thump of the heart, the sounds of labored & panicked breathing on the precipice of hyperventilation, the subtle click of Isaac's repurposed-for-war power tool being raised and aimed at an elevator door that seems to descend into eternity.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
The presentation of Dead Space is easily it's biggest strength. It's insistence at making every mechanic and video game genre convention a diegetic part of the world lends it an atmosphere like no other. Nearly every weapon that Isaac gains is a power tool instead of a designated instrument of war. The menus are hologram projections that we can see the back off when the camera is rotated around with the right stick. The health bar is a physical part of Isaac's suit. Posters around the USG Ishimura mention gameplay mechanics like the Stasis or Kinesis Modules. All these little details culminate in one of the most immersive horror games I've played in recent memory, despite it's futuristic setting and high-concept.
Alongside it's phenomenal UI, the suspense of its exploration is another aspect in which Dead Space shines. The somewhat cramped over-the-shoulder camera closing in on Isaac in cramped corridors. The near-silence of the vacuum of space, where enemies are silent and the only feedback you have is the subtle vibration of your controller as Isaac walks and shoots. The minimal cast of human characters which Isaac very rarely (if ever) directly interacts with or sees in any capacity, exacerbated by Isaac's silence in the face of it all. The entirety of Isaac's nightmarish affair trapped in the great starry abyss is permeated by an intensely isolating feeling that had me aiming my trusty Plasma Cutter at every doorway, tensed up at what could potentially be behind the turn of a hallway. It's a masterclass in horror suspense that had me on the edge of my seat dreading most encounters.
While Dead Space's idea of horror is incredibly cheesy, never really advancing beyond its initial arsenal of spooky monsters going "OOGA-BOOGA!" at you while the orchestral score puts it's whole pussy into the horn section, it's in it's encounter design that Dead Space makes the most of its survival horror aspirations. The Necromorphs unique weakness is their limbs, requiring a different skillset than the average third-person shooter since it's all about dismemberment; careful aiming and precise shots at constantly moving targets that love to ambush you from vents both above and below in these incredibly tight spaces, forcing you up close and personal as you try to line up shots with your limited ammo and somewhat clumsy unarmed moveset (aside from the best stomp in the industry bar none). Every encounter is tense, with item drops being somewhat stingy and usually only enough to barely get you by in a pinch, and it's truly sublime. In my first time playthrough where I never used anything aside from the starting Plasma Cutter, there was a section in Chapter 9 where I was neck-deep in the thick of it, with no shops nearby and only 14 shots left to my name. I was just barely scrapping by each encounter, taking care not to let even a single shot run errant, thanking the lord for every measly pickup of 6 bullets I found in a corner somewhere, and even making mad dashes across an arena looking for anything to use when I ran out of ammo, Necromorphs nipping at my heels all the while. It's the most fun I've had in an action game in a long while and it's the sort of thrill I can't get enough of.
Nearing almost 14 years since its initial release, Dead Space still stands tall above its contemporaries as a standout survival horror title, and no doubt one of the best from the 7th generation alone. It's oppressive atmosphere, love for its sci-fi contemporaries and no-frills tense gameplay make it a must play for both survival horror enthusiasts and action game junkies.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
...
"Hazardous Anomaly Detected. Quarantine Activated."
It's not surprising to me that the Battle Royale concept has had such a big reach with mainstream audiences in all forms of media over the years, as putting a group of diverse characters in a situation where they are forced to kill each other until there is only one left is a sure way to inject thrilling drama and immediate excitement into any setting or cast of characters. So say what you will of Danganronpa, but turning such an exhilirating genre into a "whodunit?" mystery is such a concoction of genius that's it's not hard to see where its success lies.
It's not until you find yourself in the thick of the first Death Trial that the strengths of Danganronpa as a VN become apparent. You would think that the game railroading you into an unavoidable solution would hardly engage the player in the puzzle solving process, but once the accusations and reveals start rolling out interspersed with Danganronpa's stylish presentation and Masafumi Takada's bombastic soundtrack, suddenly the paper cut out characters' bickering and absurd over the top twists becomes more real and intense than what you would get out of a movie or tv show, and feeling like an active participant in the murder mystery is an interactive illusion that Danganronpa has over plain text or video.
But that strength is a double edged sword that Danganronpa reveals far more than it should. The VN limitations work wonders when you are figuring shit out alongside everyone else, but if you are instead guessing way ahead of the characters, it soon becomes a game of waiting for them to circle around the obvious solution and playing minigames where deducing evidence and confronting lies is replaced with figuring out what is the exact combination of phrases the game expects from you. This wouldn't be such a problem had Danganronpa been more willing to allow consequential choice and the threat of failure in its life or death world, instead of forcing the player to act dumb for the sake of it. Something as simple as letting the player pick what Truth Bullets to load would have done wonders.
Still, I don't think anything anytime soon will leave me as flabergasted looking at the screen like the Bad Ending of this game did:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2e/86/c8/2e86c801f658934323ace8427347d1a1.jpg
It's not until you find yourself in the thick of the first Death Trial that the strengths of Danganronpa as a VN become apparent. You would think that the game railroading you into an unavoidable solution would hardly engage the player in the puzzle solving process, but once the accusations and reveals start rolling out interspersed with Danganronpa's stylish presentation and Masafumi Takada's bombastic soundtrack, suddenly the paper cut out characters' bickering and absurd over the top twists becomes more real and intense than what you would get out of a movie or tv show, and feeling like an active participant in the murder mystery is an interactive illusion that Danganronpa has over plain text or video.
But that strength is a double edged sword that Danganronpa reveals far more than it should. The VN limitations work wonders when you are figuring shit out alongside everyone else, but if you are instead guessing way ahead of the characters, it soon becomes a game of waiting for them to circle around the obvious solution and playing minigames where deducing evidence and confronting lies is replaced with figuring out what is the exact combination of phrases the game expects from you. This wouldn't be such a problem had Danganronpa been more willing to allow consequential choice and the threat of failure in its life or death world, instead of forcing the player to act dumb for the sake of it. Something as simple as letting the player pick what Truth Bullets to load would have done wonders.
Still, I don't think anything anytime soon will leave me as flabergasted looking at the screen like the Bad Ending of this game did:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2e/86/c8/2e86c801f658934323ace8427347d1a1.jpg
As a casual who only dips into this when they add a funny new skin, Zero Build Mode finally brings the streamlined experience I always wanted from the game: a massive reduction in the number of quiet and confused moments that sat awkwardly among the insanity of an average match’s moment-to-moment survival. Stripping away the construction materials and mechanics (save for the tactile and tactical satisfaction of demolishing walls and floors) improves the pace of play so much, turning a battle for building materials into a more focused super-arena shooter that spans an entire island and at least three hundred multimedia franchises.
As the number of included IPs continues to balloon-bus exponentially, there’s really no reason I should be bored on the plains overlooking Tilted Towers, and Epic are happy to provide me with literally any excuse to avoid playing the game properly - it’s an overwrought joke at this point, but just standing around watching Goku hit the griddy is genuine unpretentious whole-hearted all-American entertainment, and I’m oddly proud of the devs for taking a shitty zombie wave-defense game all the way to this, cultural implications be damned. There’s just something about our programming as a species that makes us predisposed towards finding anime mascots doing club dance moves funny and we have to accept that and move on in enlightenment. Drop the vain expectation of good taste and come as you are to this cocaine-insane royal rumble where you can drive-by kamehameha Indiana Jones while he’s listening to Doja Cat on a jukebox shaped like Darth Vader’s head. It reminds me of Jedi Outcast roleplay servers in the early 2000s, where people would import the Dr. Dre and Doomguy skins from Quake III: Arena and challenge you to lightsaber duels in a map based off that Jim Carrey Grinch movie. If you like Smash Bros. or Multiversus or Gmod or Dante From The Devil May Cry Series, you’ve really got no excuses. It’s all the same thing.
These moments of maximal franchise expression do genuinely seem to lead to something bigger, sometimes, though… Today I did a random Duos with a guy dressed as the stonks meme and instead of gunning for glory we just drove a Major Lazer-themed speedboat along the coast while listening to an Eminem song about drug addiction and wanting to kill yourself (PEGI 12+). When the song was done, the radio faded out to a voice clip of Travis Scott telling us that he really believed we had what it takes to get that Victory Royale. Despite his pride, we died unceremoniously on a trampoline moments later. As our corpses bounced up and down with comic timing, the killcam revealed that Vegeta had been in a water tower with an AWP the whole time, watching the shore from a safe distance. What even is this? I genuinely do not believe there is another game out there that is offering these deeply stupid and satisfying emergent experiences.
As the number of included IPs continues to balloon-bus exponentially, there’s really no reason I should be bored on the plains overlooking Tilted Towers, and Epic are happy to provide me with literally any excuse to avoid playing the game properly - it’s an overwrought joke at this point, but just standing around watching Goku hit the griddy is genuine unpretentious whole-hearted all-American entertainment, and I’m oddly proud of the devs for taking a shitty zombie wave-defense game all the way to this, cultural implications be damned. There’s just something about our programming as a species that makes us predisposed towards finding anime mascots doing club dance moves funny and we have to accept that and move on in enlightenment. Drop the vain expectation of good taste and come as you are to this cocaine-insane royal rumble where you can drive-by kamehameha Indiana Jones while he’s listening to Doja Cat on a jukebox shaped like Darth Vader’s head. It reminds me of Jedi Outcast roleplay servers in the early 2000s, where people would import the Dr. Dre and Doomguy skins from Quake III: Arena and challenge you to lightsaber duels in a map based off that Jim Carrey Grinch movie. If you like Smash Bros. or Multiversus or Gmod or Dante From The Devil May Cry Series, you’ve really got no excuses. It’s all the same thing.
These moments of maximal franchise expression do genuinely seem to lead to something bigger, sometimes, though… Today I did a random Duos with a guy dressed as the stonks meme and instead of gunning for glory we just drove a Major Lazer-themed speedboat along the coast while listening to an Eminem song about drug addiction and wanting to kill yourself (PEGI 12+). When the song was done, the radio faded out to a voice clip of Travis Scott telling us that he really believed we had what it takes to get that Victory Royale. Despite his pride, we died unceremoniously on a trampoline moments later. As our corpses bounced up and down with comic timing, the killcam revealed that Vegeta had been in a water tower with an AWP the whole time, watching the shore from a safe distance. What even is this? I genuinely do not believe there is another game out there that is offering these deeply stupid and satisfying emergent experiences.
Mr. Bones
1996
Maybe buying a Sega Saturn was a mistake...
Mr.Bones is a hell of an interesting game visually and conceptually, which should come as no surprise considering it was designed by Ed Annunziata, who is better known for his work on Ecco the Dolphin and Kolibri; and just like those games, it ain't no damn fun to play. While looking up Ed's body of work I also learned that he helped develop nearly a dozen N-gage games, including Smallball Baseball, which features one of the earliest instances of microtransactions in gaming. With all due respect to Ed, I'm convinced by this point that everything he touches turns to shit.
Similar in spirit to Earthworm Jim, Mr.Bones features a wide variety of unique and often comical gameplay styles, though its bones - if you'll pardon the pun - are that of a platformer. Unlike Jim, it feels like total dogshit at all times, and the numerous gameplay styles it presents are nowhere near as intuitive. Mr.Bones has a bit of a delay to his movements and an awkward weight that makes platforming feel lousy. As he takes damage, pieces of his body fly off, which alters his weight and momentum. A novel concept that backfires spectacularly, causing Mr.Bones' already piss poor controls to constantly change on you. Earnest Evans plays like a dream compared to this.
All that aside, I do think that there's some very interesting levels in this game, and Mr.Bones does do a good job overall at evoking a particular mood. Blues music forms the basis for the game's tone, and despite how tense some levels can be, there's a certain calm that persists throughout the game. I'll give Ed some credit here (I can call him Ed because we're pals), he's great at designing games that have a dream-like atmosphere to them. Ecco and Kolibri make good use of this sort of meditative state to create a sense of loneliness, but Mr.Bones has a certain playfulness to it. This is, after all, a game that has the line "Sure as my name is Mr.Booones," and features a boss battle where you have to string together segments of knock-knock jokes to render your opponent helpless in a fit of laughter.
There's a few noteworthy levels, like "Glass Shards," which acts more as a set piece wherein Mr.Bones must navigate his way through a wormhole to return to the realm of the living as calming blues plays in the background, accompanied by the soothing voice a man contemplating how blues exists in all of us, even Jesus Christ. "Underwater Ride" and "House of Pane" are behind-the-back autoscrollers where the player must dodge obstacles in an FMV that plays ahead of them. I really love the look of these levels, they remind me of the opening of Space Ghost Coast to Coast as they both careen down corridors rendered with early 3D animation software. The contrast of the FMVs and the character sprites also helps give these a trippy feel.
But even Mr.Bones' most high concept levels burn away any good will they might have earned. "House of Pane" is segmented into 14 hallways, each ending with a pane glass window Mr.Bones crashes through, causing him to take significant amounts of damage that can only be recovered through precise navigation of the following hallway. "Glass Shards" requires you make leaps of faith constantly. "Underwater Ride" has hitboxes that are way off from what's depicted on the screen. Other levels like "Shadow Monster" throw you into the action immediately, giving you no time at all to learn what the hell you're even supposed to do. It isn't so much that the game is challenging as it is obtusely difficult and badly designed, and it really doesn't help at all that dying doesn't send you back to a checkpoint, or indeed the start of the level, but to the main menu. Failure is met with multiple loading screens, and if you do decide to not heed my warning and actually attempt to play this trash, and are enough of a masochist that you make it to make it to "Icy Lake," then at least follow my advice and find a good podcast to put on because you're going to be there for a while.
I could have stopped playing this game at any time. It wasn't part of my Retro Games Bucketlist, it isn't part of my backlog of games I spent real money on, I knew it was designed by Ed Annunziata, that idiot, that absolute dolt (I can call him names, we fought in the war together.) I played the first level of this when I was testing my Saturn out and thought "wow, this plays like shit!" and then proceeded to print out a cover for it, slap it in a repurposed DVD case for An American Affair which I bought in bulk, and shoved that fucker onto my shelf. Every step of the way I made the wrong choice, and for no other reason than an apparent compulsion to commit great acts of psychological harm against myself. If you so much as think about playing Mr.Bones, I am begging you, pick up the phone and call a loved one or a professional and get some help. You are special and you matter, there are people who care about you, and you don't have to do this.
Mr.Bones is a hell of an interesting game visually and conceptually, which should come as no surprise considering it was designed by Ed Annunziata, who is better known for his work on Ecco the Dolphin and Kolibri; and just like those games, it ain't no damn fun to play. While looking up Ed's body of work I also learned that he helped develop nearly a dozen N-gage games, including Smallball Baseball, which features one of the earliest instances of microtransactions in gaming. With all due respect to Ed, I'm convinced by this point that everything he touches turns to shit.
Similar in spirit to Earthworm Jim, Mr.Bones features a wide variety of unique and often comical gameplay styles, though its bones - if you'll pardon the pun - are that of a platformer. Unlike Jim, it feels like total dogshit at all times, and the numerous gameplay styles it presents are nowhere near as intuitive. Mr.Bones has a bit of a delay to his movements and an awkward weight that makes platforming feel lousy. As he takes damage, pieces of his body fly off, which alters his weight and momentum. A novel concept that backfires spectacularly, causing Mr.Bones' already piss poor controls to constantly change on you. Earnest Evans plays like a dream compared to this.
All that aside, I do think that there's some very interesting levels in this game, and Mr.Bones does do a good job overall at evoking a particular mood. Blues music forms the basis for the game's tone, and despite how tense some levels can be, there's a certain calm that persists throughout the game. I'll give Ed some credit here (I can call him Ed because we're pals), he's great at designing games that have a dream-like atmosphere to them. Ecco and Kolibri make good use of this sort of meditative state to create a sense of loneliness, but Mr.Bones has a certain playfulness to it. This is, after all, a game that has the line "Sure as my name is Mr.Booones," and features a boss battle where you have to string together segments of knock-knock jokes to render your opponent helpless in a fit of laughter.
There's a few noteworthy levels, like "Glass Shards," which acts more as a set piece wherein Mr.Bones must navigate his way through a wormhole to return to the realm of the living as calming blues plays in the background, accompanied by the soothing voice a man contemplating how blues exists in all of us, even Jesus Christ. "Underwater Ride" and "House of Pane" are behind-the-back autoscrollers where the player must dodge obstacles in an FMV that plays ahead of them. I really love the look of these levels, they remind me of the opening of Space Ghost Coast to Coast as they both careen down corridors rendered with early 3D animation software. The contrast of the FMVs and the character sprites also helps give these a trippy feel.
But even Mr.Bones' most high concept levels burn away any good will they might have earned. "House of Pane" is segmented into 14 hallways, each ending with a pane glass window Mr.Bones crashes through, causing him to take significant amounts of damage that can only be recovered through precise navigation of the following hallway. "Glass Shards" requires you make leaps of faith constantly. "Underwater Ride" has hitboxes that are way off from what's depicted on the screen. Other levels like "Shadow Monster" throw you into the action immediately, giving you no time at all to learn what the hell you're even supposed to do. It isn't so much that the game is challenging as it is obtusely difficult and badly designed, and it really doesn't help at all that dying doesn't send you back to a checkpoint, or indeed the start of the level, but to the main menu. Failure is met with multiple loading screens, and if you do decide to not heed my warning and actually attempt to play this trash, and are enough of a masochist that you make it to make it to "Icy Lake," then at least follow my advice and find a good podcast to put on because you're going to be there for a while.
I could have stopped playing this game at any time. It wasn't part of my Retro Games Bucketlist, it isn't part of my backlog of games I spent real money on, I knew it was designed by Ed Annunziata, that idiot, that absolute dolt (I can call him names, we fought in the war together.) I played the first level of this when I was testing my Saturn out and thought "wow, this plays like shit!" and then proceeded to print out a cover for it, slap it in a repurposed DVD case for An American Affair which I bought in bulk, and shoved that fucker onto my shelf. Every step of the way I made the wrong choice, and for no other reason than an apparent compulsion to commit great acts of psychological harm against myself. If you so much as think about playing Mr.Bones, I am begging you, pick up the phone and call a loved one or a professional and get some help. You are special and you matter, there are people who care about you, and you don't have to do this.
Receiver 2
2020
tap, rack, bang.
essentially an extended exercise in bullet meditation. its arcade-esque structure belies how much rigor and alertness receiver 2 demands of its players regardless of how uncompromising the randomized threats can be. most games become faster as you improve, but receiver 2 instead gets slower; refining your play here often means being methodical, taking your time, steadfastly running through your keyboard rituals as though they were rosary prayer beads, surveying environments carefully, and retaining a stalwart level of composure against the odds. brilliant map design evokes a constant dread & claustrophobia by endlessly looping hallways of industrial boiler rooms, penthouse apartments, and construction scaffolding, suggesting both subconscious impermanence and familiarity ('you' have had gunfights here before, sometime, somewhere else). you're thirty floors up in this intensely alienating, inescapable nightmare realm and the only one who can save yourself is you. and things continue in this genuinely frightening way until you learn to start flipping the script and turning the stringent limitations of its level design into opportunity. whether that means having a quick exit plan between floors, shimmying across ledges to avoid detection, or bolting and jumping through a window to avoid a barrage of turret fire. this isn't even yet digging into the intensely granular gun mechanics - the long and short of it is that by so sternly forcing players to abide by its ruleset, receiver 2's simulacrum is one of the sharpest games to ever transpose ideas of mindfulness onto a set of mechanics. a good few too many games about mental health only demand faux-resilience through narrative affect or through memorizing sequences of buttons in simplistic twitch platforming fashion, but receiver 2's interweaving of constant repetition and punishing failure reveals a strict & cohesive prescription and regimen: your mind and body have to be in sync if you're gonna stand any real shot out there.
tap, rack, bang.
generally speaking, in martial arts, a weapon is an extension of your body. it's cliche, but holds true. the only way to master a sword is to consider it as a limb. and in other games this is, i would argue, felt as a guiding philosophy. thinking and problem-solving is abstracted across these body-oriented mechanics. lavish one-button reload animations in games have conditioned players into seeing a gun as an extension of the player; i've argued in the past that leon in resident evil 4 is a particularly good example of this. a rifle to leon is as central to his kit as a knife, a grenade, a herb, a roundhouse kick, all executed with more or less the same mechanical apparatus.
tap, rack, bang.
receiver 2 brings guns and mental health to the forefront, but it shrewdly elides the easy question or metaphor regarding the grisly culture surrounding firearms in the united states to instead focus on your simulated gun as an extension of your mind and the implications of that idea in a diseased sociopolitical climate. reloading has been calibrated across not just one key, but several, and each gun will have different quirks or tics to master in this regard. revolvers are simple and reliable, but slower to reload and less equipped to deal with multiple threats, whereas the automatic pistols have more complex inputs in tandem with more versatility, but similarly present more opportunities to malfunction (and yes, your guns will jam in multiple different ways - good luck diagnosing and treating that while threats have their watchful eyes on you). likewise, dozens of other minor nuances are present: a colt m1911 has a safety switch, but when using a glock that same key is utilized to turn the glock's full-auto feature on, so holstering unsafely with a glock you attempted to make safe means your thigh is about to eat two or three bullets. without weapon acumen you are every bit as likely to kill or incapacitate yourself as a turret or drone is likely to gore you.
tap, rack, bang.
the central structure of receiver 2 revolves around the collection of analog tapes concerning firearms history, media representations of guns, common logical and emotional fallacies, and tips for maintaining a more lucid mind. these tapes are randomized and don't explicitly spell out their associations given how wildly varying they can be, but its lessons and mantras all hone in on a few key ideas which are subsequently internalized over the unfolding hours. the act of physically pointing and shooting has been entirely stripped of context and weight - what has this gratuitousness and gratification done to us? we live in a fractured environment which has the potential to fracture ourselves in turn - how can we safeguard ourselves against these negative influences? just as there are rules in place for the safe operation of a firearm, so too are there rules for the exercise of one's mind. and if you can safely train to have a mind impervious to adversity, you can begin to survive and aid others in survival.
tap, rack, bang.
receiver 2 is mechanically, narratively, and artistically sympatico in a way very few games have achieved. its prescription of an analog remedy for the digitized nightmare we've slowly come to inhabit over the past couple of decades is novel and commendable, regardless of a couple of minor issues i have with the game's prose (that said you will find no other game which explicitly draws a parallel between the birth/subsequent expansion of the universe and a chambered round shot in the dark). and it is a game presented with total earnestness and clarity regarding its subject matter. few sequels expand on the core concept as meaningfully as receiver 2 - a third game would be redundant, but its ending gracefully reminds us that the work we've set in motion doesn't end with our investment in these abstracted life-or-death scrambles. we break free, and we are made to live with the lessons we have slowly accumulated and grasped. "perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time". excellent stuff.
tap, rack, bang.
your mind's eye sharpens.
essentially an extended exercise in bullet meditation. its arcade-esque structure belies how much rigor and alertness receiver 2 demands of its players regardless of how uncompromising the randomized threats can be. most games become faster as you improve, but receiver 2 instead gets slower; refining your play here often means being methodical, taking your time, steadfastly running through your keyboard rituals as though they were rosary prayer beads, surveying environments carefully, and retaining a stalwart level of composure against the odds. brilliant map design evokes a constant dread & claustrophobia by endlessly looping hallways of industrial boiler rooms, penthouse apartments, and construction scaffolding, suggesting both subconscious impermanence and familiarity ('you' have had gunfights here before, sometime, somewhere else). you're thirty floors up in this intensely alienating, inescapable nightmare realm and the only one who can save yourself is you. and things continue in this genuinely frightening way until you learn to start flipping the script and turning the stringent limitations of its level design into opportunity. whether that means having a quick exit plan between floors, shimmying across ledges to avoid detection, or bolting and jumping through a window to avoid a barrage of turret fire. this isn't even yet digging into the intensely granular gun mechanics - the long and short of it is that by so sternly forcing players to abide by its ruleset, receiver 2's simulacrum is one of the sharpest games to ever transpose ideas of mindfulness onto a set of mechanics. a good few too many games about mental health only demand faux-resilience through narrative affect or through memorizing sequences of buttons in simplistic twitch platforming fashion, but receiver 2's interweaving of constant repetition and punishing failure reveals a strict & cohesive prescription and regimen: your mind and body have to be in sync if you're gonna stand any real shot out there.
tap, rack, bang.
generally speaking, in martial arts, a weapon is an extension of your body. it's cliche, but holds true. the only way to master a sword is to consider it as a limb. and in other games this is, i would argue, felt as a guiding philosophy. thinking and problem-solving is abstracted across these body-oriented mechanics. lavish one-button reload animations in games have conditioned players into seeing a gun as an extension of the player; i've argued in the past that leon in resident evil 4 is a particularly good example of this. a rifle to leon is as central to his kit as a knife, a grenade, a herb, a roundhouse kick, all executed with more or less the same mechanical apparatus.
tap, rack, bang.
receiver 2 brings guns and mental health to the forefront, but it shrewdly elides the easy question or metaphor regarding the grisly culture surrounding firearms in the united states to instead focus on your simulated gun as an extension of your mind and the implications of that idea in a diseased sociopolitical climate. reloading has been calibrated across not just one key, but several, and each gun will have different quirks or tics to master in this regard. revolvers are simple and reliable, but slower to reload and less equipped to deal with multiple threats, whereas the automatic pistols have more complex inputs in tandem with more versatility, but similarly present more opportunities to malfunction (and yes, your guns will jam in multiple different ways - good luck diagnosing and treating that while threats have their watchful eyes on you). likewise, dozens of other minor nuances are present: a colt m1911 has a safety switch, but when using a glock that same key is utilized to turn the glock's full-auto feature on, so holstering unsafely with a glock you attempted to make safe means your thigh is about to eat two or three bullets. without weapon acumen you are every bit as likely to kill or incapacitate yourself as a turret or drone is likely to gore you.
tap, rack, bang.
the central structure of receiver 2 revolves around the collection of analog tapes concerning firearms history, media representations of guns, common logical and emotional fallacies, and tips for maintaining a more lucid mind. these tapes are randomized and don't explicitly spell out their associations given how wildly varying they can be, but its lessons and mantras all hone in on a few key ideas which are subsequently internalized over the unfolding hours. the act of physically pointing and shooting has been entirely stripped of context and weight - what has this gratuitousness and gratification done to us? we live in a fractured environment which has the potential to fracture ourselves in turn - how can we safeguard ourselves against these negative influences? just as there are rules in place for the safe operation of a firearm, so too are there rules for the exercise of one's mind. and if you can safely train to have a mind impervious to adversity, you can begin to survive and aid others in survival.
tap, rack, bang.
receiver 2 is mechanically, narratively, and artistically sympatico in a way very few games have achieved. its prescription of an analog remedy for the digitized nightmare we've slowly come to inhabit over the past couple of decades is novel and commendable, regardless of a couple of minor issues i have with the game's prose (that said you will find no other game which explicitly draws a parallel between the birth/subsequent expansion of the universe and a chambered round shot in the dark). and it is a game presented with total earnestness and clarity regarding its subject matter. few sequels expand on the core concept as meaningfully as receiver 2 - a third game would be redundant, but its ending gracefully reminds us that the work we've set in motion doesn't end with our investment in these abstracted life-or-death scrambles. we break free, and we are made to live with the lessons we have slowly accumulated and grasped. "perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time". excellent stuff.
tap, rack, bang.
your mind's eye sharpens.
When you’re a young kid in the 00s who hasn’t quite figured out that you’re trans yet, there’s certain pieces of media you fixate on. Things that give you Feelings that you don’t fully understand or know how to explain. This is particularly weird with media that is created by people that are absolutely not trying to create a trans message and would probably spit on in your face if you implied they were. Polyjuice potions in Harry Potter, the entirety of Ranma, and, of course, the "Boy Who Would Be Queen" episode of Fairly OddParents.
There's a bizarre nature to these kinds of projects. The creators are so single minded in their idea of how things are "supposed" to be and so consistent in using things they consider "wrong" as a cheap gag, it kind of swerves back around to give some kids (or least me) some young gender euphoria. A lot of FOP falls under this umbrella, but The Boy Who Would Be Queen episode toys with some interesting attempts at examining the idea of gender. Timmy is magically transformed to become "Timantha" to understand his crush, and discovers how his tastes haven't really changed as a girl. He still likes soap operas and comics, but now he's supposed to be ashamed of the latter rather than the former. He discovers his crush falls into the same problem. Trixie likes comics and video games but feels the pressure of society forcing her to fill the traditional gender roles. The prison of gender hurts all parties involved. What's particularly easy to read as queer in the episode is how both Timmy and Trixie are presenting themselves. Timmy's obviously dressed as Timantha, but Trixie is also trying to pass as a boy. In these disguises, these two can express genuine, vulnerable feelings to each other that they will never express in the rest of the show. Trixie tells Timantha, a girl she's known for just a few hours, like a normal straight girl would, "If only you were a boy, then I'd date you for sure." The gag is obviously supposed to be that Timmy's crush is still out of reach, but its so on the nose its hard not to read into it. To a young 10 year old who was just lectured and ostracized for agreeing with the girls that "girls are better than boys", this episode sent a chill up my spine. And I wasn't the only one. If you dive into fanfiction communities, you'll find more than a few stories that center around Timmy choosing to permanently stay as Timantha so that Trixie can have a real "friend."
Much of Breakin' Da Rules rehashes various plots from the early FOP canon. Timmy becomes a dog. Timmy becomes microscopic. Timmy fights aliens. Timmy and friends trapped in a video game. And, of course, Timmy becomes Timantha.
There was a time in my life where I would focus in on that ten minute segment where you're Timantha, trying to ignore the "could this GET any more silly?" quips. Begging for something more, I would spin elaborate narratives in my mind where this segment could go on forever. I never finished the game proper, that segment was all I needed.
Now I'm an adult and I can do two things:
1. Mod the game to add the Timantha face onto Timmy full time, which I sat down and learned how to do.
2. Understand how deeply bad this game is past that ten minute segment.
There's certainly ambition here. When you crack into a game's files, you get a greater understanding of just how much work went into the game. There's dozens of different models that Timmy plays as throughout the game. Timantha, Dog Timmy, Superhero Timmy, Robin Hood Timmy, Greek Toga Timmy, and so on and so forth. Modding the game required me to manually change the eyes of every single one of these models. The levels themselves clearly built a lot of assets. Each level has a different gimmick, sometimes multiple gimmicks. The time travel level required a bunch of different textures and assets built for all three of the time periods you travel to. I can certainly respect how much effort went into that.
But its hard not to compare this to its successor Shadow Showdown. The other FOP focuses in on the fantastical and allows the developers to build huge, elaborate levels with bizarre mechanics and designs. Breakin' Da Rules sticks with the human world and the established FOP episodes, to its detriment. The level centered around Timmy's neighborhood is empty and miserable, its almost haunting. It doesn't feel lonely in Shadow Showdown when you're journeying through someone's dream or investigating a spooky mansion. It would be easy to call this a beta for Shadow Showdown until you look at all the same files I did. If they centered in on developing Timmy's central model and mechanics, even if it meant losing my girl Timantha, the game might at least feel alright to play. But they had to program all the ways these different models had to move and it clearly bogged the game down. The actual art decision and level design are messy, but at least that can be something I know they learned from moving forward. The mechanics themselves are similarly flawed. Each level requires collecting five stars for a wish, which typically involves "press this button to progress" with no change to the actual gameplay. The game operates on the life system, which most platformers had moved past already. Losing all your lives get punted past to the last save point, which forces you to repeat tedious and dull levels just to reach whatever stupid thing trapped you for so long. You just get the sense this game suffered from poor direction even beyond being an underfunded licensed game in the 00s. Its a real shame but its tempered with the face that the sequel is so much better.
And also, I learned to mod shit in the pursuit of fulfilling some childhood dreams, so I gotta give that to it.
There's a bizarre nature to these kinds of projects. The creators are so single minded in their idea of how things are "supposed" to be and so consistent in using things they consider "wrong" as a cheap gag, it kind of swerves back around to give some kids (or least me) some young gender euphoria. A lot of FOP falls under this umbrella, but The Boy Who Would Be Queen episode toys with some interesting attempts at examining the idea of gender. Timmy is magically transformed to become "Timantha" to understand his crush, and discovers how his tastes haven't really changed as a girl. He still likes soap operas and comics, but now he's supposed to be ashamed of the latter rather than the former. He discovers his crush falls into the same problem. Trixie likes comics and video games but feels the pressure of society forcing her to fill the traditional gender roles. The prison of gender hurts all parties involved. What's particularly easy to read as queer in the episode is how both Timmy and Trixie are presenting themselves. Timmy's obviously dressed as Timantha, but Trixie is also trying to pass as a boy. In these disguises, these two can express genuine, vulnerable feelings to each other that they will never express in the rest of the show. Trixie tells Timantha, a girl she's known for just a few hours, like a normal straight girl would, "If only you were a boy, then I'd date you for sure." The gag is obviously supposed to be that Timmy's crush is still out of reach, but its so on the nose its hard not to read into it. To a young 10 year old who was just lectured and ostracized for agreeing with the girls that "girls are better than boys", this episode sent a chill up my spine. And I wasn't the only one. If you dive into fanfiction communities, you'll find more than a few stories that center around Timmy choosing to permanently stay as Timantha so that Trixie can have a real "friend."
Much of Breakin' Da Rules rehashes various plots from the early FOP canon. Timmy becomes a dog. Timmy becomes microscopic. Timmy fights aliens. Timmy and friends trapped in a video game. And, of course, Timmy becomes Timantha.
There was a time in my life where I would focus in on that ten minute segment where you're Timantha, trying to ignore the "could this GET any more silly?" quips. Begging for something more, I would spin elaborate narratives in my mind where this segment could go on forever. I never finished the game proper, that segment was all I needed.
Now I'm an adult and I can do two things:
1. Mod the game to add the Timantha face onto Timmy full time, which I sat down and learned how to do.
2. Understand how deeply bad this game is past that ten minute segment.
There's certainly ambition here. When you crack into a game's files, you get a greater understanding of just how much work went into the game. There's dozens of different models that Timmy plays as throughout the game. Timantha, Dog Timmy, Superhero Timmy, Robin Hood Timmy, Greek Toga Timmy, and so on and so forth. Modding the game required me to manually change the eyes of every single one of these models. The levels themselves clearly built a lot of assets. Each level has a different gimmick, sometimes multiple gimmicks. The time travel level required a bunch of different textures and assets built for all three of the time periods you travel to. I can certainly respect how much effort went into that.
But its hard not to compare this to its successor Shadow Showdown. The other FOP focuses in on the fantastical and allows the developers to build huge, elaborate levels with bizarre mechanics and designs. Breakin' Da Rules sticks with the human world and the established FOP episodes, to its detriment. The level centered around Timmy's neighborhood is empty and miserable, its almost haunting. It doesn't feel lonely in Shadow Showdown when you're journeying through someone's dream or investigating a spooky mansion. It would be easy to call this a beta for Shadow Showdown until you look at all the same files I did. If they centered in on developing Timmy's central model and mechanics, even if it meant losing my girl Timantha, the game might at least feel alright to play. But they had to program all the ways these different models had to move and it clearly bogged the game down. The actual art decision and level design are messy, but at least that can be something I know they learned from moving forward. The mechanics themselves are similarly flawed. Each level requires collecting five stars for a wish, which typically involves "press this button to progress" with no change to the actual gameplay. The game operates on the life system, which most platformers had moved past already. Losing all your lives get punted past to the last save point, which forces you to repeat tedious and dull levels just to reach whatever stupid thing trapped you for so long. You just get the sense this game suffered from poor direction even beyond being an underfunded licensed game in the 00s. Its a real shame but its tempered with the face that the sequel is so much better.
And also, I learned to mod shit in the pursuit of fulfilling some childhood dreams, so I gotta give that to it.
trying to fish for compliments and sending a girl I have a crush on a picture of Orphan of Kos and asking "do I look like him :(" with the steadfast hopes that she'll respond "no, you look like this..." and send back a picture of Lady Maria but instead she just replies "idk. not that much." and I read way too deep into it and get really depressed and don't get any sleep that night and accidentally crash my car into a stop sign on the way to work
Bloodborne
2015
kicking and screaming and crying and pounding a hole through my wall because I couldn't use the Burial Blade on my first play-through but otherwise I feel like this may be the single most perfect FromSoft game I've played as far as its mechanics and narrative are concerned; this is the Soulslike where the ambient storytelling of trying to piece together a bunch of little clues from item descriptions, snippets of dialogue and environmental clues felt the most satisfying. The combat is at its peak, the rally system is a fantastic way to make the more highly paced combat work, and god!!!! Every trick weapon!!! Every piece of armor!!!! They're all fucking fantastic!! My only real complaint, and the thing that keeps it from being a 10/10 in my book, is that I feel as if my time in the base game was spent waiting for a boss that would actually blow me away, and that just never really came. There are highlights! But by and large I feel like the really good fights lie in The Old Hunters, and honestly? I'm cool with that.
Shenmue
1999
shenmue may require no introduction, but it's amusing for me to have played so many of suzuki's games beforehand...they're all these exceptionally spirited games preoccupied with total acceleration, scenic vistas, the simple pleasures of competition (whether inward or external). their pace and their fixations are romantic and idealized, representing a striking antithesis to shenmue's monotony. just about the only thing that matches shenmue's dreamy sense of melancholy is outrun's results screen.
while suzuki's prior obsessions & formal language might ironically seem entirely absent from shenmue, im not sure this is a completely accurate assessment. ryo might be a slave to time, but just as in outrun, super hang-on, space harrier, etc, his path is pre-determined, foretold by prophecy. he has no choice but to staunchly and pragmatically follow his compulsions. a discordant sense of urgency underscores and animates his every action, and you can see his internal frustrations with the mundane & lackadaisical rhythms of his neighbours. ryo's a shark, all he knows how to do is move forward. reality might suffocate him otherwise.
iwao hazuki's last words to his son are pleading with him to keep his friends and family close to him; the rest of shenmue is a quietly straining, slow-brewing tragedy as ryo does the exact opposite. he's alienated and alone; his family never quite knows how to effectively respond to and treat his grief; he distances himself from peers, structure, romantic interests. he is made painfully aware of every passing minute of every day, but he fails to truly understand or comprehend the weight of time and of his life in yokosuka as a whole. people care about him, but he's distant & removed, and eventually they figure it may be for the best to let such a headstrong young man go his own way. ryo's defining contradiction is a naïveté characteristic of his youth at odds with his relentless drive to make forward progress. he has this unspoken expectation that yokosuka is comprised of unchanging and permanent fixtures, that things will be the same as he left them upon his return, but everything around him explicitly and implicitly signals the obvious: people, locales, and contexts change. over the course of the game ryo runs into a hot dog vendor named tom constantly, someone whose vibrance and zest for life marks him as distinct and dissimilar from ryo. he's content and lively in a way that is alien to ryo. near the end of the game, he learns that tom a.) has surprising martial arts prowess and b.) has been planning to leave yokosuka for quite some time. ryo is taken aback by this information, but it was no secret - ryo simply never asked. by the time ryo makes his way to hong kong, so much has been left unsaid. even he, for a brief moment, just beginning to grasp the gravity of his decisions, wishes he had more time.
it's an excellent game, filled to the brim with quietly devastating scenes and working with subtlety that seems unmatched compared to contemporary AAA experiences... while many cite shenmue as a game that has aged, or only has value from an innovative perspective, its deliberate and measured inclinations reveal just the opposite: that games today have regressed, and have only taken the wrong lessons from shenmue.
while suzuki's prior obsessions & formal language might ironically seem entirely absent from shenmue, im not sure this is a completely accurate assessment. ryo might be a slave to time, but just as in outrun, super hang-on, space harrier, etc, his path is pre-determined, foretold by prophecy. he has no choice but to staunchly and pragmatically follow his compulsions. a discordant sense of urgency underscores and animates his every action, and you can see his internal frustrations with the mundane & lackadaisical rhythms of his neighbours. ryo's a shark, all he knows how to do is move forward. reality might suffocate him otherwise.
iwao hazuki's last words to his son are pleading with him to keep his friends and family close to him; the rest of shenmue is a quietly straining, slow-brewing tragedy as ryo does the exact opposite. he's alienated and alone; his family never quite knows how to effectively respond to and treat his grief; he distances himself from peers, structure, romantic interests. he is made painfully aware of every passing minute of every day, but he fails to truly understand or comprehend the weight of time and of his life in yokosuka as a whole. people care about him, but he's distant & removed, and eventually they figure it may be for the best to let such a headstrong young man go his own way. ryo's defining contradiction is a naïveté characteristic of his youth at odds with his relentless drive to make forward progress. he has this unspoken expectation that yokosuka is comprised of unchanging and permanent fixtures, that things will be the same as he left them upon his return, but everything around him explicitly and implicitly signals the obvious: people, locales, and contexts change. over the course of the game ryo runs into a hot dog vendor named tom constantly, someone whose vibrance and zest for life marks him as distinct and dissimilar from ryo. he's content and lively in a way that is alien to ryo. near the end of the game, he learns that tom a.) has surprising martial arts prowess and b.) has been planning to leave yokosuka for quite some time. ryo is taken aback by this information, but it was no secret - ryo simply never asked. by the time ryo makes his way to hong kong, so much has been left unsaid. even he, for a brief moment, just beginning to grasp the gravity of his decisions, wishes he had more time.
it's an excellent game, filled to the brim with quietly devastating scenes and working with subtlety that seems unmatched compared to contemporary AAA experiences... while many cite shenmue as a game that has aged, or only has value from an innovative perspective, its deliberate and measured inclinations reveal just the opposite: that games today have regressed, and have only taken the wrong lessons from shenmue.
did you know the unskippable map moving scenes take more than 1 whole hour total of this game
Marvelous duality to everything here. The story from the ground up is my shit, with the world surrounding Jack being a perilous shell of other FF games bereft of context as we are complete strangers to this place, both textually and metatextually. Haunting, unfeeling, then recontextualized at last in the end to these ghosts looking towards Paradise we say a mighty fuck you to. And on the other side, probably the most frustratingly dull interior and exterior for the vast vast majority of its time spent playing.
I'm not one to give props to being "intentionally" sludge, as in, I wanted to buy that maybe this gripping sense that Team Ninja simply Did Not Give a single SHIT past what they were asked to is an Intentional choice. But no I really think it brings everything down, as much as emulating the FF feel is nice the "variety" is genuinely smokescreen. Options between classes blend together real quick without much uniqueness to them, even with a kinesthetically sound toolset to all of them too much boils together into tedium. In hindsight, part of this is my fault for playing Monster Hunter at the same time as this, which pretty much takes the uh, for the sake of levity let's call it the 'soulsborne' system of whiff punishing, to an actually fantastic conclusion. Even beyond that though, somebody else mentioned it that, Nioh was never THIS bad. Nioh was never THIS tiring and boring. Even when upping the difficulty to hard and losing the party assist (which, tbh, i never used it anyway but needed to take away the temptation), things formulate too much together. The most praiseworthy aspect of the design is in its bosses but even that comes with a lot of caveats, as so many of them, almost all of them really, limit themselves with their pre-ordained telegraphing. In that the purple-orange-red system is bluntly, a fucked system that pretty much lowers the ceiling tremendously on what a boss's attacks and moves are capable of!!! After Tiamat the game might as well have ended, because once my head entered the rhythm that is how to respond to every single one of these attacks, nothing else ever puts a wrench in it.
Additionally, this project could not have had less caring hands on it for the lead-up to those final couple hours. Not so much in a budgetary way, but more so in a "this is a first draft, and it shows!!!" Found myself a lot of the time script doctoring how I could've paced so many of these elements better, because there's so little to emotionally buy into. And no it's not like that Is the idea, the last hour or so is absolutely riding on that payoff ludicrously.
So, something something duality, two teams who conceptually MAY have been a match made in heaven rather turned the whole thing into a smushed together crust that formulates only barely by the strength of some of its parts rather than the sum. I don't know, I really do love high concept stuff, I really really really really love Nomura's markings and pullings here, the futurism and its cracks and Jack's very multifaceted awakening! Maybe my standards have simply been put too high to accept a very good story told super terribly. I wanted to be floored, I was rooting and hollering for Jack but he just said meh and walked off. And you know what, I somehow enjoyed this a good deal overall.
So good for him, good for him. Respect.
I'm not one to give props to being "intentionally" sludge, as in, I wanted to buy that maybe this gripping sense that Team Ninja simply Did Not Give a single SHIT past what they were asked to is an Intentional choice. But no I really think it brings everything down, as much as emulating the FF feel is nice the "variety" is genuinely smokescreen. Options between classes blend together real quick without much uniqueness to them, even with a kinesthetically sound toolset to all of them too much boils together into tedium. In hindsight, part of this is my fault for playing Monster Hunter at the same time as this, which pretty much takes the uh, for the sake of levity let's call it the 'soulsborne' system of whiff punishing, to an actually fantastic conclusion. Even beyond that though, somebody else mentioned it that, Nioh was never THIS bad. Nioh was never THIS tiring and boring. Even when upping the difficulty to hard and losing the party assist (which, tbh, i never used it anyway but needed to take away the temptation), things formulate too much together. The most praiseworthy aspect of the design is in its bosses but even that comes with a lot of caveats, as so many of them, almost all of them really, limit themselves with their pre-ordained telegraphing. In that the purple-orange-red system is bluntly, a fucked system that pretty much lowers the ceiling tremendously on what a boss's attacks and moves are capable of!!! After Tiamat the game might as well have ended, because once my head entered the rhythm that is how to respond to every single one of these attacks, nothing else ever puts a wrench in it.
Additionally, this project could not have had less caring hands on it for the lead-up to those final couple hours. Not so much in a budgetary way, but more so in a "this is a first draft, and it shows!!!" Found myself a lot of the time script doctoring how I could've paced so many of these elements better, because there's so little to emotionally buy into. And no it's not like that Is the idea, the last hour or so is absolutely riding on that payoff ludicrously.
So, something something duality, two teams who conceptually MAY have been a match made in heaven rather turned the whole thing into a smushed together crust that formulates only barely by the strength of some of its parts rather than the sum. I don't know, I really do love high concept stuff, I really really really really love Nomura's markings and pullings here, the futurism and its cracks and Jack's very multifaceted awakening! Maybe my standards have simply been put too high to accept a very good story told super terribly. I wanted to be floored, I was rooting and hollering for Jack but he just said meh and walked off. And you know what, I somehow enjoyed this a good deal overall.
So good for him, good for him. Respect.
Live A Live
2022
This review contains spoilers
A SLIME draws near!
Command?
> FIGHT
OERSTED attacks!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
there's nothing new under the sun.
it's a pithy statement to the point of reductiveness, as such things usually are, but there is a truth to it, not one that condemns, but one that liberates. forgive me for drinking deep of the well of ideology here, but even though all of us may indeed be the products of the words and systems that surround us, no one is quite the same combination of influences as any other, which gives us a wholly unique perspective. but this is also why ensuring our horizons are broad is important, because although we can never widen our scope enough to take in everything, narrowing it in turn only presses the walls in around us, and leaves us with only one path forward.
dragon quest, then, is not a wholly unique game that sprung fully-formed out onto the famicom, but was once that represented a conscious effort to translate a specific mode of game - the popular pc rpgs of the time like wizardry and ultima - and many of the decisions it made clearly have immense thought and care put into them as a result of this, and the result was a game that changed the landscape of the entire industry. but in doing so, it provided a template, a set story for how these things go. defeat monsters. gather experience. explore dungeons. destroy T̵̲̼͆̅͘ͅȟ̸̲̇e̷̡̬̪͛ ̶͙̰͇̍̓̏L̵̪̽̒͌o̷͍͛r̴͖̙͋̾̕d̸̘̜͔̅̋̽ ̷̳͌́̑o̸̪͌̚f̶̗̹͓̆͂ ̶̗̗͊Ḍ̴̪̽͠a̸̙͌̍r̸̜͎̾k̶̻̽.
games that came in dragon quest's wake drew from this story, telling it over and over again. i do not wish to claim here that dragon quest is the only truly original work in the entire jrpg form because that's clearly a completely unhinged and wrong thing to say, but i do wish to argue that the things dragon quest put thought and care into creating were adopted wholesale, without the same level of purposefulness, by many other games, creating an intrinsic language of expectation and reference that in turn provides a bedrock of norms through which audiences and creators can process the form. this is useful, both artistically and financially for both the audience and the artist, but by it's nature it narrows the scope of the form arround it, and allows ideas that were never challenged or interrogated, even ones as simple as defeating enemies to gain experience points, to crystalise around the work, creating something that may indeed be beautiful, but is unmoving, unchanging.
while there are heavier consequences to this - the widespread homogenisation of monetization and progression systems in games undoubtedly is self-served by their uncritical ubiquity, and many stories continue to carry forth regressive ideas built into their hearts because the creators are unaware of them or unwilling to divest themselves from them - one that should also be considered is that the more and more complex the language of norms around a form becomes, the more insular and closed-off it is at risk of becoming.
one need only look at the third most-important JRPG to release in july 2022 to see what this results in: a complete mess of a game, only barely held together by self-justifying tropes and glue that the prospective player - intimately familiar with the construction of and tropes of these games - will simply accept and enjoy singularly. ask a single question about it's world or it's characters or it's plot and it's illusion of cohesiveness will shatter instantly. why does the party react with such horror to someone killing for sport in this cutscene, but will happily recruit the sexy warrior woman who also kills for sport in the very next cutscene? because each one is a trope that carries a set of norms that is implicitly understood and accepted by it's core audience, and proves to be completely baffling to anyone who does not speak this language - or, indeed, Thinks for One Minute.
(i kinda like it though. i am a student of this language, after all.)
the games that result from this aren't necessarily bad, but i think truly exceptional works will strive to be more than the perpetuations of their genre, want to create an experience that aspires to more than simply playing the hits and playing them adequately. because when your path is narrow, there's really only one way forward.
which brings us, at last, to live a live, and to what makes it truly special. while I think this game is clever and inventive constantly, i don't want to let that be mistaken for a game that is unlike anything you've seen or played before. indeed, in many ways, live a live revels in cliche, with each of its scenarios merrily indulging in the rote tropes of its genre. the difference is not merely in the choice to tackle stories that are - still! - rarely glimpsed within the JRPG form, but in how these stories are told. these are not 7 different miniature jrpgs in one - these are 7 stories that, like the original dragon quest before it, think so carefully about each aspect of themselves, and use jrpg mechanics in unique and surprising ways to tell those stories. and because it earnestly and completely invests in these stories, they are brought to new and wonderful life.
i have seen the story of a master training a prospective student to succeed them, but until live a live, i have never so completely been that master, thinking carefully about what techniques most benefit each of the students under my care, and trying to teach what I can in the time I have left. when i see my student finally surpass me, i feel genuine pride, because them reaching Level 9 means so much when I have been stuck in my Level 8 ways for all this time. i've seen heroes scramble to put together traps and tricks in a time limit to defeat an overwhelming enemy, but by utilizing a creative conception of the RPG loop of rifling through chests and cabinets for loot, it becomes realized kinaesthetically in a way i've scarcely seen before. not every chapter is wholly successful - for me, akira's near future anime ova riff does the least work to make the beats it's playing sing with new life by relying on a conception of the cliches themselves as self-evidently worthwhile, in a way that is shockingly prescient of the direction increasingly anime-influenced jrpgs like tales and xeno end up taking - but in almost all cases, live a live's creative use of its mechanics, presentation, and design makes what could potentially be rote stories play in beautiful harmony, a harmony that resounds through the commonalities that exist through the stories. there's nothing new under the sun, after all, and so each of these stories, these ideas, feed into one another across history, ultimately fighting the same enemy - hatred - across all time, as a straight club banger plays over the same fight being fought across the millennia.
live a live's unwillingness to accept for granted the norms of the RPG extends to all facets of it's construction, and the battle system is the clearest case for this. random encounters do exist, but they are confined behind the bars of the kingdom of lucrece, rpg conventions being a malady that haunts that land as a sickness more virulent than any the lord of dark could spread. but even here, you are subtly encouraged to flee from battle much more often than you would in other games of its type, due to both the game's EXP system making rewards for fighting weaker enemies to be so utterly negligible as to be practically nonexistent, and the way it offers rewards for escaping from battles with a certain character. In comparison to earthbound simply skipping encounters when you hit them, whilst still giving you all the rewards for combat, such as they are, live a live instead invites you to exercise your own restraint, to consciously choose to sheathe your sword, which is an interesting wrinkle that adds a layer of intentionality to it's violence once you realize that this isn't one of the long list of other jrpgs where you should never really use the flee button.
the chapters that come closest to being purely normative in their play are prehistoric and near future, but even here, the former invites you to become a hunter by having your nose track encounters in the world, and the latter has enemies patrolling the city streets of neo-japan in such a way that you can avoid confrontation but can also get cornered and blocked off. both are thematic and evocative, as are wild west's maneuver of a long buildup to a single gunfight and edo japan's invocation of the idea that a sword drawn is a conscious decision that invites violence (slightly hampered by certain traps putting you in a position where you have no choice but to draw it), but it's the far future that has the most thoughtful approach to combat in the game: because it mostly doesn't have it.
well, that's not true. you can actually play an arcade game using the game's combat system at almost any time, but it is consciously a distraction, separate from the ongoing concerns of the ship. your role in this chapter is that of a witness: a silent observer to the sci-fi horror film playing out around you. here, live a live demonstrates a remarkable awareness of the limits of it's own form - combat is how you interact with this world and combat won't help you here: all you can do is watch, and make coffee, as personal tragedies play out in front of you time and time again. fittingly for a chapter that takes place at the farthest reaches of time and humanity, far future explores the furthest edge of it's systems by depicting a story somewhat beyond the reach of the framework it finds itself in. like a beacon of hope shot in the night, pleading for a more nuanced world than this one. it's not surprising that the final moments of the chapter have you explicitly use the medium of a video game to kill a nascent life form, nor is it shocking that there is a twinge of regret that this is the only way this could have gone. isn't it a little sad that this is the way games currently are?
each element of the game is so well-considered, so carefully constructed to resonate and cohere with the wider piece and with itself. never is something there simply because it is expected to be there, never is a trope invoked without care or consideration into how it can be made to work with the greater whole. and when assumptions are found to be lacking, where the gaps of implication they leave behind are too big to ignore, they are challenged.
the oersted chapter is something of a flashpoint both for the game's critical legacy - such as it is - and the narrative around it. after a series of adventures that use rpg mechanics in creative and exciting ways to bring these pulp adventures to life, ending with a rote dragon quest riff could only be a bizarre self-defeating maneuver. is it any wonder then, that oersted was doomed? it's easy to look at the final moments of the hero declaring himself odio, lord of the dark, near-exclusively, but it's the moments beforehand - elevated by the remake's tastefully extended script, producing that exceedingly rare remake that i prefer to the original, whilst still having things the original does better - that make it work. the princess' agonised cries over the man she actually loved being murdered by the uncaring mute she was betrothed to because he happened to defeat the man she loved in combat at a tourney followed by her suicide is the real shock of this chapter, one where the care and attention live a live shows to all the cliches it invokes is turned on the dominant form of it's genre, exposing the sexist ideology that persists through dragon quest's vision of the heroic narrative. oersted's blind adherence to the script of his genre might lead to him falling to the darkness, but i will point out that the game doesn't use this to say that dragon quest is evil - this isn't spec ops: the line for jrpgs. the story of a band of heroes setting out to defeat the evil is not the issue: it is doing so unthinkingly, accepting rewards and events blindly, of assuming a love belongs to you simply because you are the hero that is entitled to it. oersted is not evil because jrpgs are evil: he's evil because he didn't think for a single second about the narrative handed to him.
it's why the final chapter itself still plays out like a traditional JRPG: assembling a party and travelling to the final dungeon to defeat the final boss with the power of friendship. but because it earns it, because it does the work to make every single step on that journey, because it refuses to simply take for granted the baked-in assumptions of it's genre and it's form...it works. it feels natural, it feels right. there's a strong argument to be made that live a live is something of a naive idealist in how it argues that the broad arcs of these stories are never irredeemable but are corruptible through thoughtlessness, but when it makes it's arguments with this much care and confidence it's very difficult to quibble with it. i never have to feel like I have to stop thinking, or just embrace that this is the way this story has to go in order to enjoy it, like I might have to do for so many other modern jrpgs, that are so wrapped up in their own convulution that they forget to do the work to actually make you care. as jackson tyler touches on in their own piece on the game, live a live is arguably even better in 2022 than it was in 1994, because of the way the genre has changed and, maybe more importantly, the ways that it hasn't, becoming more and more wrapped up in the snake eating its own tail without bothering to ask why we have the snake eat the tail in the first place, what might be gained by doing something new.
there is nothing completely new under the sun. live a live knows this, and accepts it, but remains inventive, remains questioning, remains determined to push up against the boundaries of what rpgs - what video games - can do, to find new ways to tell old stories, and old ways to tell new stories, playing the old hits with a purpose and style that makes them sing like they never quite have before, and hitting out with some new singles that won't ever leave you. Inspired, and inspiring in turn: live a live is a game to make you love games, a creation to make you want to create, and a memory I don't think I'll ever forget.
Command?
> FIGHT
OERSTED attacks!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
there's nothing new under the sun.
it's a pithy statement to the point of reductiveness, as such things usually are, but there is a truth to it, not one that condemns, but one that liberates. forgive me for drinking deep of the well of ideology here, but even though all of us may indeed be the products of the words and systems that surround us, no one is quite the same combination of influences as any other, which gives us a wholly unique perspective. but this is also why ensuring our horizons are broad is important, because although we can never widen our scope enough to take in everything, narrowing it in turn only presses the walls in around us, and leaves us with only one path forward.
dragon quest, then, is not a wholly unique game that sprung fully-formed out onto the famicom, but was once that represented a conscious effort to translate a specific mode of game - the popular pc rpgs of the time like wizardry and ultima - and many of the decisions it made clearly have immense thought and care put into them as a result of this, and the result was a game that changed the landscape of the entire industry. but in doing so, it provided a template, a set story for how these things go. defeat monsters. gather experience. explore dungeons. destroy T̵̲̼͆̅͘ͅȟ̸̲̇e̷̡̬̪͛ ̶͙̰͇̍̓̏L̵̪̽̒͌o̷͍͛r̴͖̙͋̾̕d̸̘̜͔̅̋̽ ̷̳͌́̑o̸̪͌̚f̶̗̹͓̆͂ ̶̗̗͊Ḍ̴̪̽͠a̸̙͌̍r̸̜͎̾k̶̻̽.
games that came in dragon quest's wake drew from this story, telling it over and over again. i do not wish to claim here that dragon quest is the only truly original work in the entire jrpg form because that's clearly a completely unhinged and wrong thing to say, but i do wish to argue that the things dragon quest put thought and care into creating were adopted wholesale, without the same level of purposefulness, by many other games, creating an intrinsic language of expectation and reference that in turn provides a bedrock of norms through which audiences and creators can process the form. this is useful, both artistically and financially for both the audience and the artist, but by it's nature it narrows the scope of the form arround it, and allows ideas that were never challenged or interrogated, even ones as simple as defeating enemies to gain experience points, to crystalise around the work, creating something that may indeed be beautiful, but is unmoving, unchanging.
while there are heavier consequences to this - the widespread homogenisation of monetization and progression systems in games undoubtedly is self-served by their uncritical ubiquity, and many stories continue to carry forth regressive ideas built into their hearts because the creators are unaware of them or unwilling to divest themselves from them - one that should also be considered is that the more and more complex the language of norms around a form becomes, the more insular and closed-off it is at risk of becoming.
one need only look at the third most-important JRPG to release in july 2022 to see what this results in: a complete mess of a game, only barely held together by self-justifying tropes and glue that the prospective player - intimately familiar with the construction of and tropes of these games - will simply accept and enjoy singularly. ask a single question about it's world or it's characters or it's plot and it's illusion of cohesiveness will shatter instantly. why does the party react with such horror to someone killing for sport in this cutscene, but will happily recruit the sexy warrior woman who also kills for sport in the very next cutscene? because each one is a trope that carries a set of norms that is implicitly understood and accepted by it's core audience, and proves to be completely baffling to anyone who does not speak this language - or, indeed, Thinks for One Minute.
(i kinda like it though. i am a student of this language, after all.)
the games that result from this aren't necessarily bad, but i think truly exceptional works will strive to be more than the perpetuations of their genre, want to create an experience that aspires to more than simply playing the hits and playing them adequately. because when your path is narrow, there's really only one way forward.
which brings us, at last, to live a live, and to what makes it truly special. while I think this game is clever and inventive constantly, i don't want to let that be mistaken for a game that is unlike anything you've seen or played before. indeed, in many ways, live a live revels in cliche, with each of its scenarios merrily indulging in the rote tropes of its genre. the difference is not merely in the choice to tackle stories that are - still! - rarely glimpsed within the JRPG form, but in how these stories are told. these are not 7 different miniature jrpgs in one - these are 7 stories that, like the original dragon quest before it, think so carefully about each aspect of themselves, and use jrpg mechanics in unique and surprising ways to tell those stories. and because it earnestly and completely invests in these stories, they are brought to new and wonderful life.
i have seen the story of a master training a prospective student to succeed them, but until live a live, i have never so completely been that master, thinking carefully about what techniques most benefit each of the students under my care, and trying to teach what I can in the time I have left. when i see my student finally surpass me, i feel genuine pride, because them reaching Level 9 means so much when I have been stuck in my Level 8 ways for all this time. i've seen heroes scramble to put together traps and tricks in a time limit to defeat an overwhelming enemy, but by utilizing a creative conception of the RPG loop of rifling through chests and cabinets for loot, it becomes realized kinaesthetically in a way i've scarcely seen before. not every chapter is wholly successful - for me, akira's near future anime ova riff does the least work to make the beats it's playing sing with new life by relying on a conception of the cliches themselves as self-evidently worthwhile, in a way that is shockingly prescient of the direction increasingly anime-influenced jrpgs like tales and xeno end up taking - but in almost all cases, live a live's creative use of its mechanics, presentation, and design makes what could potentially be rote stories play in beautiful harmony, a harmony that resounds through the commonalities that exist through the stories. there's nothing new under the sun, after all, and so each of these stories, these ideas, feed into one another across history, ultimately fighting the same enemy - hatred - across all time, as a straight club banger plays over the same fight being fought across the millennia.
live a live's unwillingness to accept for granted the norms of the RPG extends to all facets of it's construction, and the battle system is the clearest case for this. random encounters do exist, but they are confined behind the bars of the kingdom of lucrece, rpg conventions being a malady that haunts that land as a sickness more virulent than any the lord of dark could spread. but even here, you are subtly encouraged to flee from battle much more often than you would in other games of its type, due to both the game's EXP system making rewards for fighting weaker enemies to be so utterly negligible as to be practically nonexistent, and the way it offers rewards for escaping from battles with a certain character. In comparison to earthbound simply skipping encounters when you hit them, whilst still giving you all the rewards for combat, such as they are, live a live instead invites you to exercise your own restraint, to consciously choose to sheathe your sword, which is an interesting wrinkle that adds a layer of intentionality to it's violence once you realize that this isn't one of the long list of other jrpgs where you should never really use the flee button.
the chapters that come closest to being purely normative in their play are prehistoric and near future, but even here, the former invites you to become a hunter by having your nose track encounters in the world, and the latter has enemies patrolling the city streets of neo-japan in such a way that you can avoid confrontation but can also get cornered and blocked off. both are thematic and evocative, as are wild west's maneuver of a long buildup to a single gunfight and edo japan's invocation of the idea that a sword drawn is a conscious decision that invites violence (slightly hampered by certain traps putting you in a position where you have no choice but to draw it), but it's the far future that has the most thoughtful approach to combat in the game: because it mostly doesn't have it.
well, that's not true. you can actually play an arcade game using the game's combat system at almost any time, but it is consciously a distraction, separate from the ongoing concerns of the ship. your role in this chapter is that of a witness: a silent observer to the sci-fi horror film playing out around you. here, live a live demonstrates a remarkable awareness of the limits of it's own form - combat is how you interact with this world and combat won't help you here: all you can do is watch, and make coffee, as personal tragedies play out in front of you time and time again. fittingly for a chapter that takes place at the farthest reaches of time and humanity, far future explores the furthest edge of it's systems by depicting a story somewhat beyond the reach of the framework it finds itself in. like a beacon of hope shot in the night, pleading for a more nuanced world than this one. it's not surprising that the final moments of the chapter have you explicitly use the medium of a video game to kill a nascent life form, nor is it shocking that there is a twinge of regret that this is the only way this could have gone. isn't it a little sad that this is the way games currently are?
each element of the game is so well-considered, so carefully constructed to resonate and cohere with the wider piece and with itself. never is something there simply because it is expected to be there, never is a trope invoked without care or consideration into how it can be made to work with the greater whole. and when assumptions are found to be lacking, where the gaps of implication they leave behind are too big to ignore, they are challenged.
the oersted chapter is something of a flashpoint both for the game's critical legacy - such as it is - and the narrative around it. after a series of adventures that use rpg mechanics in creative and exciting ways to bring these pulp adventures to life, ending with a rote dragon quest riff could only be a bizarre self-defeating maneuver. is it any wonder then, that oersted was doomed? it's easy to look at the final moments of the hero declaring himself odio, lord of the dark, near-exclusively, but it's the moments beforehand - elevated by the remake's tastefully extended script, producing that exceedingly rare remake that i prefer to the original, whilst still having things the original does better - that make it work. the princess' agonised cries over the man she actually loved being murdered by the uncaring mute she was betrothed to because he happened to defeat the man she loved in combat at a tourney followed by her suicide is the real shock of this chapter, one where the care and attention live a live shows to all the cliches it invokes is turned on the dominant form of it's genre, exposing the sexist ideology that persists through dragon quest's vision of the heroic narrative. oersted's blind adherence to the script of his genre might lead to him falling to the darkness, but i will point out that the game doesn't use this to say that dragon quest is evil - this isn't spec ops: the line for jrpgs. the story of a band of heroes setting out to defeat the evil is not the issue: it is doing so unthinkingly, accepting rewards and events blindly, of assuming a love belongs to you simply because you are the hero that is entitled to it. oersted is not evil because jrpgs are evil: he's evil because he didn't think for a single second about the narrative handed to him.
it's why the final chapter itself still plays out like a traditional JRPG: assembling a party and travelling to the final dungeon to defeat the final boss with the power of friendship. but because it earns it, because it does the work to make every single step on that journey, because it refuses to simply take for granted the baked-in assumptions of it's genre and it's form...it works. it feels natural, it feels right. there's a strong argument to be made that live a live is something of a naive idealist in how it argues that the broad arcs of these stories are never irredeemable but are corruptible through thoughtlessness, but when it makes it's arguments with this much care and confidence it's very difficult to quibble with it. i never have to feel like I have to stop thinking, or just embrace that this is the way this story has to go in order to enjoy it, like I might have to do for so many other modern jrpgs, that are so wrapped up in their own convulution that they forget to do the work to actually make you care. as jackson tyler touches on in their own piece on the game, live a live is arguably even better in 2022 than it was in 1994, because of the way the genre has changed and, maybe more importantly, the ways that it hasn't, becoming more and more wrapped up in the snake eating its own tail without bothering to ask why we have the snake eat the tail in the first place, what might be gained by doing something new.
there is nothing completely new under the sun. live a live knows this, and accepts it, but remains inventive, remains questioning, remains determined to push up against the boundaries of what rpgs - what video games - can do, to find new ways to tell old stories, and old ways to tell new stories, playing the old hits with a purpose and style that makes them sing like they never quite have before, and hitting out with some new singles that won't ever leave you. Inspired, and inspiring in turn: live a live is a game to make you love games, a creation to make you want to create, and a memory I don't think I'll ever forget.
This review contains spoilers
I'm so glad I went into this game knowing absolutely nothing because watching as this story unfolds slowly in front of you and all of the little pieces of the puzzle start to come together as you near the end is such a fantastic experience.
The twists and turns that this game took honestly left me speechless more than once, especially in those moments where I thought I'd figured out exactly what was happening, only to have everything turned on its head.
Despite how thoroughly I enjoyed the overall experience of this game, I have a number of gripes with it that honestly detract so much from the story, to the point where some of this game hits closer to a 2 star than the 4 star that I've settled on.
The biggest issue I have is with the dialogue - Date's dialogue specifically. The jokes about him being a pervert obsessed with porno magazines didn't land the first time and they certainly didn't land the 30 times they tried to shoehorn them in afterwards.
Even worse was all of the comments directed at Iris who Date points out on numerous occasions is 1) far younger than him and 2) still in school, and yet he still feels the needs to make weird observations about her boobs and underwear??
And it somehow managed to get worse when it's revealed that Date was something of a father figure to Iris ... and yet he continues to be incredibly inappropriate with her?
There's a very distinct thread of weird humour throughout this whole game which for the most part, I was totally on board with, but some of the "jokes" just went into the realm of creepy and uncomfortable. It's hugely unfortunate for a game that as a complete package, would probably go down as one of my favourites of all time if they just ... reworked some of the dialogue.
The twists and turns that this game took honestly left me speechless more than once, especially in those moments where I thought I'd figured out exactly what was happening, only to have everything turned on its head.
Despite how thoroughly I enjoyed the overall experience of this game, I have a number of gripes with it that honestly detract so much from the story, to the point where some of this game hits closer to a 2 star than the 4 star that I've settled on.
The biggest issue I have is with the dialogue - Date's dialogue specifically. The jokes about him being a pervert obsessed with porno magazines didn't land the first time and they certainly didn't land the 30 times they tried to shoehorn them in afterwards.
Even worse was all of the comments directed at Iris who Date points out on numerous occasions is 1) far younger than him and 2) still in school, and yet he still feels the needs to make weird observations about her boobs and underwear??
And it somehow managed to get worse when it's revealed that Date was something of a father figure to Iris ... and yet he continues to be incredibly inappropriate with her?
There's a very distinct thread of weird humour throughout this whole game which for the most part, I was totally on board with, but some of the "jokes" just went into the realm of creepy and uncomfortable. It's hugely unfortunate for a game that as a complete package, would probably go down as one of my favourites of all time if they just ... reworked some of the dialogue.