That the most oppressive dungeons to memory barely have any enemies is already surprising, that the fear is tangible even when not a single monster is encountered is exceptional. It is not just the great atmosphere designed to overwhelm (the darkness, the narrow corridors, the labyrinths, the ambiguous noises) but the craving for which, originally, any dungeon calls for adventure. Search for treasures (or scrap…) and try to control the craving for that one more bit as the time limit approaches, the monsters multiply and the risk of losing absolutely everything looms around the corners. A necessary craving, because money is needed to keep playing, and encouraged, because the more you get, the more you can buy to have easier incursions. With the variety of threats to encounter, the behaviors and ways of dealing with each monster being notably different, and the randomness of each round, there is no safe plan.

To finally find the lost sense that the dungeon originally had, the incursion is carried out by four people in first person view, not a single entity capable of controlling four bodies. The proximity chat helps to confuse more than to coordinate, also to frighten, it will be common to be scared of the scare of the scare from someone who wrongly jumped because of a strange harmless silhouette. Even monitoring on the ship, an assignment that carries quite some strategy behind, is by no means a menial, minor or boring task. The tension of those in the dungeon is translated and transmitted through the viewing of the red dots of undefined danger, the communications through walkie working with the expected quality (none) and the possibility of a dynamic role where you can always take all your bravery and ruin a game by trying to be the rescuing hero of the party.

Nowadays, to think of dungeons is to think of playing roulette while devastating everything in the path with the aim of conquering. At some point, the dungeon overwhelmed the explorer’s desire, the act of making a profit being only a loan from the infinite terror that the darkness hides. That is the dungeon and the adventure of Lethal Company.

------------------------LUNA-TERRA------------------------

Soaringly, defiantly, almost certainly the best prose I've ever seen in a Visual Novel. In what is so often an insular, overwritten form that constantly fails to leverage the advantages of, y'know, visuals in order to trim their ludicrously overwritten manuscripts (feel confident in saying Umineko's much-memed length could be halved if you cut out the explanations of things we can see with our eyes and repeating the same descriptions over and over again), the density and gravitational weight of HWBM's beautifully poetic prose shines like a star about to go supernova.

Each line says something important, something meaningful, and it's central metaphors are so perfectly pitched and utilized that the clarity of the text is never in question, even deep into an in-universe e-mail about the metaphysics of generating miniature black holes in the ruins of Side 3. I know not everyone gets on with the writing here, but for me, this was so frequently beautiful and impactful that it blows most traditional novels I've read in the past few years out of the water. The incredible music doesn't exactly hurt, either.

Weighty and important yet flippant and understated. As heady and political as it is emotional and introspective. It's everything I want to be able to write like.

------------------------PLUTO------------------------

As pointedly political as the best of Gundam and as nakedly personal as the highest highs of Evangelion, Heaven Will Be Mine is remarkable in its understanding of what Mecha means, an understanding that eclipses much of the work that so visibly inspires it.

Heaven Will Be Mine is about bodies, and takes a transhumanist perspective of our own bodies to discuss both broad, heady concepts of imperialism, as well as how we ourselves characterise, well, our selves.

Who am I? Am I these hands, these eyes, this flesh, or am I less, just the thoughts that exist behind my AT Field. Is everything else is just an endless layer of shells built to protect it? Or am I more than that, the words you read now, the voice I speak and the things I create? The reviews I write, edited and carefully constructed to present a meaning I want to present, the videos I make, a series of images that tell the narrative I want to tell, all of these things are as true a Me as exists. When I take a selfie, and edit it, erasing beard shadow and smoothing out the bags under my eyes, I'm not creating an inauthentic self, I'm showing you a truer me than a simple photo could, a picture that shows you what I value, what I want you to see and what I want you to Not See.

Is Earth the ground we walk on? Or is it everything we look up to and crave, the planets we've named, the stars we've numbered and categorized the heavens that we want to be ours? Our culture is an udurgh - a thing that contains many things - expanding beyond its borders imperceptibly, imperialism of thought and metaphysics that claims all that exists as territory that belongs to it or will belong to it.

Heaven Will Be Mine gets it. At almost every turn, it understands. It knows that mechs are guns. It knows that the Gundam is the White Devil. It knows that we could have made them look like anything, but we made them look like us. And it knows that we love them anyway.

There's a lot to think about, and a lot to say when it comes to this game. But more than anything else, Heaven Will Be Mine stands as absolute proof of the necessity of diverse voices telling diverse stories. Neither Tomino nor Anno could have told this story, and asking them to is ridiculous. It's a story we have to make for ourselves, using what the things they created told us to say something new.

Eternally glad there are other queers who think about Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack as much as I do.

------------------------SATURN------------------------

at the time of writing, well. it's a bad time to be writing. the uk's systemic pervasive transphobia has reached a fever pitch, and currently both the party in government and their supposed opposition trade in barely-concealed terf ideology designed to dehumanize trans people and make us inverse. in the part of the uk's earth where I live - ireland's terra, uk's earth - there is literally no hope for trans people, as we have exactly one gender clinic in the entire country, and they aren't taking consultations. it is impossible to transition right now without obscene wealth and stability that the vast majority of trans people do not possess.

and don't even get me fucking started on the wave of nakedly evil anti-trans legislation that is hitting the USA right now. fuck me.

we live eternally reminded of how much they hate us. how much they hate what we are, and what we want to be. and the few of us that do become accepted, that let themselves fall into the gravity well of their expectations, prostrating themselves before their culture, only highlights how inhuman they think of us.

and in art, in fiction, time and time again, they tell us about the way queer people should exist, hidden in the margins, their queerness incidental rather than defining, something that just exists.

the message is clear. either we be who we are on their terms, or we aren't allowed to be here at all.

Fuck. That.

they think we're not like them? that we're something else, something inverse, inhuman?

fine. let's be "inhuman". let's be new genders and pronouns and names. let's change into new angles, new shapes. let's be loud and obnoxious and screamingly gay.

let's find out just how inverse we can be.

------------------------TRUE-END------------------------

I cannot tell you how much I love this. But I tried my best. A new all-time favourite.

This thing is good, but it is also the epitome of this increasingly predominant logic that Nintendo has with its present and its past, a toymaker one, and not a craftsman who cares with affection for his games and ideas put into his creations, rather like that of a luxury company that offers disposable and immediate products with a careful presentation.

Here is the new one of the toy known as "SUPER MARIO 3D WORLD WOHHOHHUHOOO", with improvements that will make you not want to go back to the original Wii U, in fact, they do not want you to, nor will they want you to go back to this version of switch when remaster it again on their next generation of hardware.

This logic extends to the entire game itself because its approach to action, while satisfying on the spot, also reveals how little real thought went into the designers working on such a solid and simple foundation as Super Mario. 3d Land- That game was in good health, but it was addictive like pringles-.
Why is there a multitasking button [Run], [Use Powerup],[Pick Up Player]
[Throw Things/Player] on a controller with so many buttons?
Probably no one thought of it, but in 3DLand it worked, so here too, right?
Yeah, no, the truth is that it doesn't work that well. With so many different power ups that alter the way the game space is operated, objects to throw, enemies that need to be dealt with in different ways, and, most importantly, a multiplayer in which all this is multiplied and also adds the possibility picking and throwing other players to win levels in the (seemingly) funniest and most creative way... One can't rely on a multitasking button, it's just impossible. Because obviously it's not just about the actions you can perform with your character, but how those actions relate to and impact the environment, or in this case -action platforms- what the environment demands of you as a player.
And precisely that, the environment, the levels, the world, Why is this game called 3D WORLD?
Not even the world map, probably the freest interplay of all the level-structured Super Marios, offers a sense of the world. It's a minor detail, and I don't have much problem with this, I think that the sensation of the digital world is achieved through more resources than simple physical literalness, but I also think it illustrates another point that was dealt with on autopilot.
The levels capture very well the texture of super mario in my opinion: color, fluffiness, sound... Joy as a whole.
But also full of ideas that, while creative and enjoyable, are also disposable almost the moment they are presented, more articulated around the mobility/attack variations provided by the Powerups than the jump itself, and that's a problem, because if you don't get the necessary powerup in advance the level design turns out to be a little soft, and that coupled with the problems of the multitasking button leaves some absurdly frustrating moments for a game that, if it had a better interactive layout, would be even easier than 3D LAND. Apart from the moments where the game tries to create a directed action sequence in which we have to fight a boss or stay on a platform on rails while the camera beats us - you go out of frame, you're dead - they make me sick, There is no redemption there, neither here nor in almost any platform game, it is an absurd way of killing pacing.

In the end, I liked the game, and I give it 4/5 because of Bowsers Fury and also because from time to time I actively look for a Toylogic game, that is just plain fun. I will probably come back to this game with friends.

--------------------------------------
I haven't been a Nintendo believer for a decade, but this way of supercharging its sequels with mechanics that born and die in the moment which a level takes place is a super evil company move

"duh, Nintendo is a company"



Yes, but even so I would dare to say that Nintendo has not had its own ideas or approaches since the 80s. Rather, it has offered quite innovative pieces of hardware (Nintendo DS?) to share -or even take advantage of- the ideas of others producing works of studies external or minor that would enrich their own corporate image as well as their catalogs

"well, sure, but Nintendo was always like that deep down"

Didn't understand much, given that I don't speak Portuguese (or Brazilian). Yet withing my linguistic limitations, I still found the design utterly compelling. Mind you, this is a text game and writing is its gameplay, you write. So there I was trying to decipher what the text said, copying it, looking with Google Translator. By the end, is safe to say, that I was completely in the dark regards of the narrative. However, I find the concept fascinating. Never had I thought of a game as something you could experience by sound design, still images and lots of writing (typing), yet here I am, completely in awe with whatever this short-game, specially by how it does it.