stevenz
2018
Systemic but clunky. Some man made this. He has some weird ideas and a vision. Could not play more than a few hours.
2019
Saccharine, full of twitter-speak. Did make me misty at the end.
2020
Delightful as ever, but disappointing. Hate platforming.
2022
Orientalist and uncreative
2022
Great ideas, some not-quite-disco writing. Some good rural american humor. I need to get back to it.
2021
I expected shallowness, saccharine indie gaming. You know. But it's too well written. The art is too well-made to be a gimmick.
The tutorial area sucks, and the game is buggy, but - the crystal farmers are these non-human kinda guys who are very otherized and strange. You go to them and you just... chill. Kind of interface with their otherness, recognize it, and appreciate it. Exchange some curt words of awkward connection. Deeply good.
The tutorial area sucks, and the game is buggy, but - the crystal farmers are these non-human kinda guys who are very otherized and strange. You go to them and you just... chill. Kind of interface with their otherness, recognize it, and appreciate it. Exchange some curt words of awkward connection. Deeply good.
2018
The shape of games like this is all wrong. A map is a square, all sorts of space. We can only travel in one direction, and pressing W to do it is rather light. Looking for points in a big square is slow, aggravating, and constantly gives the sense of missing out. Why do we walk and not fly or teleport? Why do we look for points and not patterns or lines or spaces? Why is it a square? Every game where I load up and wander around feels like waiting for suicide by exit-button.
2021
A functional shooter, very rare for an indie game. Rather washed-out looking at times, like a lot of photoreal indie games are, as if the exposure and lighting were beyond their skill. Still, it builds an atmospheric space and engagingly strings you along it, which is all I ask for.
2001
Replaying, I found it very tedious. But the low-fidelity 3d sandboxes are deeply, primally captivating. I want to wander the empty deserts forever.
2004
One of the first games I ever played. Today, it's surprisingly slapdash, full of dips and peaks in quality with no particular plot under its honest charasmatic exterior, preferring to babble about the idea of politics and sci-fi plots when it's really just jamming hard on a few simple ideas. See the Arbiter, who has a very captivating and well-delievered story that is ultimately not reckoned with very hard.
The low-fidelity evironments are still evocative. The music and environments are strangely solemn, and it deserves to be stood in quietly and wondered at.
The low-fidelity evironments are still evocative. The music and environments are strangely solemn, and it deserves to be stood in quietly and wondered at.
2007
I get a feeling playing Halo that I cannot shake off - could not formulate into words as a kid. I just want to get out of the map and wander the fields, wander forever and ever, a stoic green titan treading quietly through foggy forests and savannahs and mountains smattered in cloud-filtered lighting. Through ruin-littered deserts and past dulcet seas. I just wanted to walk and see. To listen. To explore a dream that never ends.
I don't know why I feel that way. I don't even know what I would do if I wandered. What I would want to see, or not see. But the fringes of Halo's environments evoke that - that you are somewhere arbitrarily lonely, illuminated only briefly by the dazzling adrenaline of combat before the warring parties move elsewhere and leave the wind to slowly erode what they left.
I felt that way as a child, when Halo 3 was my favorite thing. I spent years reading the stupid books and pining for the expensive action figures I couldn't afford and exploring or escaping the boundaries of multiplayer maps and playing make-believe halo with my friends in forests and creeks of rural kansas. I did this all to chase that feeling to varying degrees of success.
Playing the game now, I still feel that way. The empty multiplayer maps speak volumes, the combat bowls after encounters feel... full of mysterious potential.
So, well, I do love the shooting in Halo 3. The god-awful plot is sold 300% by Bungie's insane in-the-moment line deliveries, by sandboxy but focused missions that change shape and tone frequently and expertly. The stupid drama still works. But how can I think of this game straight?
Halo 3 in my hands? Like an 8 out of ten, one of the better shooters ever made, aged but charismatic. Halo 3 in my imagination? Well, it's boundless, driving, entirely unlike the game, and impossible to attain. Replaying it has reawakened it, and made me really reconsider the person I am.
I don't know why I feel that way. I don't even know what I would do if I wandered. What I would want to see, or not see. But the fringes of Halo's environments evoke that - that you are somewhere arbitrarily lonely, illuminated only briefly by the dazzling adrenaline of combat before the warring parties move elsewhere and leave the wind to slowly erode what they left.
I felt that way as a child, when Halo 3 was my favorite thing. I spent years reading the stupid books and pining for the expensive action figures I couldn't afford and exploring or escaping the boundaries of multiplayer maps and playing make-believe halo with my friends in forests and creeks of rural kansas. I did this all to chase that feeling to varying degrees of success.
Playing the game now, I still feel that way. The empty multiplayer maps speak volumes, the combat bowls after encounters feel... full of mysterious potential.
So, well, I do love the shooting in Halo 3. The god-awful plot is sold 300% by Bungie's insane in-the-moment line deliveries, by sandboxy but focused missions that change shape and tone frequently and expertly. The stupid drama still works. But how can I think of this game straight?
Halo 3 in my hands? Like an 8 out of ten, one of the better shooters ever made, aged but charismatic. Halo 3 in my imagination? Well, it's boundless, driving, entirely unlike the game, and impossible to attain. Replaying it has reawakened it, and made me really reconsider the person I am.
2019
I ugly cried in the shower months after finishing this game because of the bug who tells you human consciousness is a wonder to them. This whirlwind of images and memory and torment is special, even if it sucks.
2021
one of the most sexless games ever. has some good encounters.
A hostile game with little relief. I've never beaten it. Feels like more of the worst parts of Prime 1 with stressful gauntlets and backtracking.
This time I found it to be very rigid, but that's probably due to the sorcery it requires to get a game like this to run on gamecube. More open and exploratory games weren't possible.
The moth people rock.
This time I found it to be very rigid, but that's probably due to the sorcery it requires to get a game like this to run on gamecube. More open and exploratory games weren't possible.
The moth people rock.
2002
Dense design, evocative retro realism, and low-paced combat make this unique among games. There's a sort of ecological plot where Samus, an avatar of the planet's previous stewards, must stop the exploitation of phazon upsetting the balance of Tallon IV's ecosystem. It's cool.
The game falls apart in the back half. I really don't like the stressful combat encounters; the X-Rays in the dark, the ghosts, the phazon mine incursion. A specter of horror seems appropriate for Metroid but the pace is too high and the rooms replayed too much.
All the strengths of quiet exploration fold when the game becomes a sequence of menial task execution. You are already cognitively, spiritually done with the game. Running through Magmoor to get to every corner is already tedious. A bolder version would have simply ended.
The game falls apart in the back half. I really don't like the stressful combat encounters; the X-Rays in the dark, the ghosts, the phazon mine incursion. A specter of horror seems appropriate for Metroid but the pace is too high and the rooms replayed too much.
All the strengths of quiet exploration fold when the game becomes a sequence of menial task execution. You are already cognitively, spiritually done with the game. Running through Magmoor to get to every corner is already tedious. A bolder version would have simply ended.