Guys complaining about Hotline Miami 2 when a real enemies killing you off screen is right here
This review contains spoilers
Arrest of a Stone Buddha is a side scroller "lonely hitman" simulator developed by yeo, whose previous game before this was The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa. I’m not sure what the dev time was like on this game per say; however, my history with the game came from seeing it on a buddy's wishlist around Christmas in 2020. I didn’t know who yeo was before this, nor his other games in development. Influenced by the likes of French New Wave (Jean-Pierre Melville and Louis Malle) and Hong Kong Action (John Woo), I was heavily intrigued and wanted to try it; and with my birthday recently coming around my buddy Regent got me copies of this title and Ringo, so I decided to give this game a run and I have my thoughts.
The plot is a minimalist one: you play as a French hitman whose name is unknown as goes through the motions killing people and escaping. From here, it delves into conversations with his employer where they small talk life, after which you roam the streets of France wasting time before the next job, rinse and repeat over a month's time. I’m about to go “pretentious movie critic” here but between the emptiness/monotony of the open world segments, the lack of dialogue, the insomniac hitman; it’s just a journey of someone who's depressed with no direction in life, who doesn’t feel alive unless he’s on a job. In between jobs the guy just watches movies, gets clothes, drinks, picks up meds and visits his girlfriend and/or the museum. Even with a high octane life he has nothing, so the question is this: What is the purpose? Is there any? For this guy it’s just trying to distract himself, though eventually it comes to a close in the final scene, where you’re forced to hold a gun to your head and you have one or two choices: Pull the trigger or don’t. I didn’t and it ended with the hitman sobbing, living another day but what his life is after that is unknown.
While I’m sure a lot of art film fans will get a kick out of the post-modern display of being a miserable hitman, watching as time wastes away and only getting a kick out of jobs, the actual gunplay itself can be a miserable kick in the teeth. See the whole concept revolves around moving in one direction as goons with guns attempt to approach you and kill you. You walk at a slow pace, almost nonchalant and uncaring, as you let off rounds that take dudes down coming at you at max speed. What happens if you run out of bullets though? Do you pick guns up off the ground? No, you have to disarm them. See the combat feels like a randomized rogue-like puzzle of sorts: each run is randomized so sometimes they’ll get really close and sometimes they’ll hang back a bit as you slowly walk towards them and pray to god you don’t die trying to disarm them. Enemy spawns are random so don’t expect to master the game as much as flow with it and you have to both balance the amount of shots you have, the potential distance that they’ll get to you, and when they’re going to fire from both directions. The only real movements you can make in combat are to move left, right, duck, disarm and shoot. I had used the controller (with RB to hold up the gun, X to shoot, Y to Disarm as your main controls other than thumbsticks and the pause/select buttons) as the keyboard setup didn’t jive with me as much.
Most importantly, you’ll need quick reaction times. This is easier said than done balancing all of this PLUS your personal animations. Sometimes you’ll smoothly double tap everyone and it feels slick, while sometimes I’ve noticed instead of moving left or right that I’d get stuck mid-animation (you can do the arm cross shooting from action movies) instead of moving straight in a direction that I could never really react fast enough to disarm certain enemies and this would cost me time and I’d get shot. The game also has some glitches and/or hang ups that I didn’t appreciate in the slightest: when I was on the last level of the Yacht job, I had enemies who wouldn’t spawn into the map and would just hang out behind the invisible wall at the very beginning or very end of the level. If you had killed everyone before leaving except this guy AND had run out of ammo, it’s a guaranteed basic restart. A much more rare problem was that sometimes when I had brought a shotgun to the next screen, the game wouldn’t let me hold it up and shoot it while other times it did which isn’t a huge problem because I can disarm others but it was kind of annoying.
Overall keep in mind, YOU WILL DIE in this game and every difficulty should be considered hard. The three enemy types (and the only ones) you’ll be facing are the pistol goons, the shotgun goons and the rifle goons; the pistol and shotgun are the only weapons you’ll get as the rifle ones stay as far away from you as humanly possible and will always move away. I’d complain and say I’d like more weapon variation, but with how the game operates (such as enemies for 98% of the time waiting a bit before firing at you), the last thing I need is a machine gun or something high powered to kill me instantly. In its base form while difficult, it was also honestly kind of addicting to go for run after run even with hangups.
The Art Direction/Sound Direction follows along with the plot nicely. Graphically it’s an 8-bit sidescroller, but the atmosphere surrounding it is astounding. Reflecting off of the depressing nature of the hits, you’ll mostly see grays and washed out colors during your times roaming in France while on the jobs you’ll see a lot more colors and environmental variation which fits into the “I only feel alive killing people” mini-narrative they have going on. These backgrounds by Artem “Wedmak2” Belov go hard with the set dressing, with my favorite of them all being the autumn forest near the end of the game as something I would just get lost in.
The sound design is solid as well; there isn’t much in the way of it however. The gun sounds from the pistol and shotgun are impactful and sound phenomenal, straight out of an action movie almost with how powerful it is while the rifle sounds irritating, which really formulates how both afraid I was and how frustrating it gets during gameplay as well. As for the soundtrack: the soundtrack is done by a guy named “danny spider solitaire” mixed in with some royalty free tracks (both links below) and they just slap and REALLY solidify the experience between cool action music and really melancholy acoustic singing that I enjoyed heavily. To finalize the sound design, there’s no voice acting so don’t go in expecting it.
Arrest of a Stone Buddha for me was one of those fascinating titles that held (and still has) a strange grip on me, that I wanted to try one day but hadn’t bothered til' now. Playing through the game, my time ranged from “dude this feels sweet” to “Just shoot me now”. Truth is, out of 6 achievements I had only gotten two; one for beating the first level and one for getting one of the endings. Other achievements apparently consist of playing on hard and insane difficulty, which I WILL NOT do for a very long time if ever. I don’t know if I would play this again, nor do I know if I could recommend it to most people with the sheer difficulty. I would maybe recommend it under the guise that you have A LOT of patience for both the empty world and the game mechanics. This is the definition of an art film in video game format; anyone else I would say kind of steer clear from the title. This is the definition of an art film in video game format; anyone else I would say kind of steer clear from the title. The developer would go on from this game to create Fading Afternoon, which released in September and and has to do with an aging Yakuza that I would love to give a try one day.
Links:
https://www.jamendo.com/playlist/500476262/arrest-of-a-stone-buddha
https://spidersolitaire.bandcamp.com/album/arrest-of-a-stone-buddha
https://twitter.com/shin_yeo
http://by-yeo.ru/c
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The plot is a minimalist one: you play as a French hitman whose name is unknown as goes through the motions killing people and escaping. From here, it delves into conversations with his employer where they small talk life, after which you roam the streets of France wasting time before the next job, rinse and repeat over a month's time. I’m about to go “pretentious movie critic” here but between the emptiness/monotony of the open world segments, the lack of dialogue, the insomniac hitman; it’s just a journey of someone who's depressed with no direction in life, who doesn’t feel alive unless he’s on a job. In between jobs the guy just watches movies, gets clothes, drinks, picks up meds and visits his girlfriend and/or the museum. Even with a high octane life he has nothing, so the question is this: What is the purpose? Is there any? For this guy it’s just trying to distract himself, though eventually it comes to a close in the final scene, where you’re forced to hold a gun to your head and you have one or two choices: Pull the trigger or don’t. I didn’t and it ended with the hitman sobbing, living another day but what his life is after that is unknown.
While I’m sure a lot of art film fans will get a kick out of the post-modern display of being a miserable hitman, watching as time wastes away and only getting a kick out of jobs, the actual gunplay itself can be a miserable kick in the teeth. See the whole concept revolves around moving in one direction as goons with guns attempt to approach you and kill you. You walk at a slow pace, almost nonchalant and uncaring, as you let off rounds that take dudes down coming at you at max speed. What happens if you run out of bullets though? Do you pick guns up off the ground? No, you have to disarm them. See the combat feels like a randomized rogue-like puzzle of sorts: each run is randomized so sometimes they’ll get really close and sometimes they’ll hang back a bit as you slowly walk towards them and pray to god you don’t die trying to disarm them. Enemy spawns are random so don’t expect to master the game as much as flow with it and you have to both balance the amount of shots you have, the potential distance that they’ll get to you, and when they’re going to fire from both directions. The only real movements you can make in combat are to move left, right, duck, disarm and shoot. I had used the controller (with RB to hold up the gun, X to shoot, Y to Disarm as your main controls other than thumbsticks and the pause/select buttons) as the keyboard setup didn’t jive with me as much.
Most importantly, you’ll need quick reaction times. This is easier said than done balancing all of this PLUS your personal animations. Sometimes you’ll smoothly double tap everyone and it feels slick, while sometimes I’ve noticed instead of moving left or right that I’d get stuck mid-animation (you can do the arm cross shooting from action movies) instead of moving straight in a direction that I could never really react fast enough to disarm certain enemies and this would cost me time and I’d get shot. The game also has some glitches and/or hang ups that I didn’t appreciate in the slightest: when I was on the last level of the Yacht job, I had enemies who wouldn’t spawn into the map and would just hang out behind the invisible wall at the very beginning or very end of the level. If you had killed everyone before leaving except this guy AND had run out of ammo, it’s a guaranteed basic restart. A much more rare problem was that sometimes when I had brought a shotgun to the next screen, the game wouldn’t let me hold it up and shoot it while other times it did which isn’t a huge problem because I can disarm others but it was kind of annoying.
Overall keep in mind, YOU WILL DIE in this game and every difficulty should be considered hard. The three enemy types (and the only ones) you’ll be facing are the pistol goons, the shotgun goons and the rifle goons; the pistol and shotgun are the only weapons you’ll get as the rifle ones stay as far away from you as humanly possible and will always move away. I’d complain and say I’d like more weapon variation, but with how the game operates (such as enemies for 98% of the time waiting a bit before firing at you), the last thing I need is a machine gun or something high powered to kill me instantly. In its base form while difficult, it was also honestly kind of addicting to go for run after run even with hangups.
The Art Direction/Sound Direction follows along with the plot nicely. Graphically it’s an 8-bit sidescroller, but the atmosphere surrounding it is astounding. Reflecting off of the depressing nature of the hits, you’ll mostly see grays and washed out colors during your times roaming in France while on the jobs you’ll see a lot more colors and environmental variation which fits into the “I only feel alive killing people” mini-narrative they have going on. These backgrounds by Artem “Wedmak2” Belov go hard with the set dressing, with my favorite of them all being the autumn forest near the end of the game as something I would just get lost in.
The sound design is solid as well; there isn’t much in the way of it however. The gun sounds from the pistol and shotgun are impactful and sound phenomenal, straight out of an action movie almost with how powerful it is while the rifle sounds irritating, which really formulates how both afraid I was and how frustrating it gets during gameplay as well. As for the soundtrack: the soundtrack is done by a guy named “danny spider solitaire” mixed in with some royalty free tracks (both links below) and they just slap and REALLY solidify the experience between cool action music and really melancholy acoustic singing that I enjoyed heavily. To finalize the sound design, there’s no voice acting so don’t go in expecting it.
Arrest of a Stone Buddha for me was one of those fascinating titles that held (and still has) a strange grip on me, that I wanted to try one day but hadn’t bothered til' now. Playing through the game, my time ranged from “dude this feels sweet” to “Just shoot me now”. Truth is, out of 6 achievements I had only gotten two; one for beating the first level and one for getting one of the endings. Other achievements apparently consist of playing on hard and insane difficulty, which I WILL NOT do for a very long time if ever. I don’t know if I would play this again, nor do I know if I could recommend it to most people with the sheer difficulty. I would maybe recommend it under the guise that you have A LOT of patience for both the empty world and the game mechanics. This is the definition of an art film in video game format; anyone else I would say kind of steer clear from the title. This is the definition of an art film in video game format; anyone else I would say kind of steer clear from the title. The developer would go on from this game to create Fading Afternoon, which released in September and and has to do with an aging Yakuza that I would love to give a try one day.
Links:
https://www.jamendo.com/playlist/500476262/arrest-of-a-stone-buddha
https://spidersolitaire.bandcamp.com/album/arrest-of-a-stone-buddha
https://twitter.com/shin_yeo
http://by-yeo.ru/c
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
Started, thinking this was a worse No More Heroes.
Finished, thinking this is a better No More Heroes.
Finished, thinking this is a better No More Heroes.
in spite of being a far worse game compared to The friends of Ringo Ishikawa, Arrest of a Stone Buddha manages to convey it's message better thanks to the empty and monotonous gameplay
i guess post modern games are thing now? i find it enjoyable just because i didn't pay, otherwise i would probably feel scammed
i guess post modern games are thing now? i find it enjoyable just because i didn't pay, otherwise i would probably feel scammed
CWs for Arrest of a Stone Buddah: sui*, breaking bones, execution by gun, dismemberment
This is a game that has a very clear vision that I understand and appreciate the aims of. This is a French new wave homage piece that tries to lean into the misery of an armed assassin. The action missions are a plodding mechanical affair where you simply count your bullets and move slowly to succeed in mowing down hundreds of endless dudes in your escape. Between work, you live your day-to-day life in Paris either getting a drink, seeing the woman who passes out like a rock after your fuck, and watching what seems to be the same movie airing 24/7 at a nearby theater.
This game lands the cinematic register of it's touchstones and then drops it. I get exactly what I would get out of the film version of this game, all the way up to it's abrupt and unceremonious conclusion. There is a strong commitment to the duration and plainness of the entire affair, but this is fundamentally not what video games are suited for. To have truly nothing shift over the course of a game double the length of a long film feels like a waste of the medium. I think there's better general system of nothing changing that could have been deployed, a more specific system of violence, or some combination of the two, to land the same misery but in a way which is expansive and suited to the medium. I think Yeo's sense of narrative design is some of the best in the industry for it's willingness to be loose and unceremonious and I really wish there was an iteration of this game that let the ideas here stew instead of rot.
This is a game that has a very clear vision that I understand and appreciate the aims of. This is a French new wave homage piece that tries to lean into the misery of an armed assassin. The action missions are a plodding mechanical affair where you simply count your bullets and move slowly to succeed in mowing down hundreds of endless dudes in your escape. Between work, you live your day-to-day life in Paris either getting a drink, seeing the woman who passes out like a rock after your fuck, and watching what seems to be the same movie airing 24/7 at a nearby theater.
This game lands the cinematic register of it's touchstones and then drops it. I get exactly what I would get out of the film version of this game, all the way up to it's abrupt and unceremonious conclusion. There is a strong commitment to the duration and plainness of the entire affair, but this is fundamentally not what video games are suited for. To have truly nothing shift over the course of a game double the length of a long film feels like a waste of the medium. I think there's better general system of nothing changing that could have been deployed, a more specific system of violence, or some combination of the two, to land the same misery but in a way which is expansive and suited to the medium. I think Yeo's sense of narrative design is some of the best in the industry for it's willingness to be loose and unceremonious and I really wish there was an iteration of this game that let the ideas here stew instead of rot.
I, too, think Le Samourai is a very cool movie.
Same deal as The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa (very funny title, the selfsame Eddie Coyle is also a very cool movie) - don't think I'd ever touch this again, but I appreciate the experience even if it's dull as all hell, however purposefully. Not sure why the intentional drudgery of this is preferable to me over the same in a Suda game or whatever - maybe because yeo's stuff is overtly about pure ennui (relatable!), or maybe because it takes ~1000th of the time to get through. Anyway watching Le Cercle Rouge on the big screen five times a day to drown out the silence sounds good to me, I dunno what the hitman in this is bothered about.
Same deal as The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa (very funny title, the selfsame Eddie Coyle is also a very cool movie) - don't think I'd ever touch this again, but I appreciate the experience even if it's dull as all hell, however purposefully. Not sure why the intentional drudgery of this is preferable to me over the same in a Suda game or whatever - maybe because yeo's stuff is overtly about pure ennui (relatable!), or maybe because it takes ~1000th of the time to get through. Anyway watching Le Cercle Rouge on the big screen five times a day to drown out the silence sounds good to me, I dunno what the hitman in this is bothered about.
Arrest of a stone Buddha başlangıçta ne kadar hoş gözükse de oyunun öyle bir yapısı var ki oyun başta neyse sonuna doğru da aynı şekilde ilerlemesinden dolayı fazlasıyla bana baygınlık geçirtti. Oyunu benim için sıkıcı yapan en büyük etmen oyun boyunca gram değişmeyen oynanışı olabilir. Fazlasıyla basit bir oynanışa sahip nasıl olduğunu söylemek gerekirse bildiğiniz sadece yürü ve ateş et ara sıra mermin bitince düşmanların elinden bir silah kap tekrar boş boş üstüne gelen milyonlarca adamı vur tamamıyla bu yapıda hiç çeşitlenmeden hiç bir kendine yenilik katmadan kalıyor. Bu arada çeşitlenmiyor deyip hakkını yemeyelim tek tabanca, ikili tabanca ve pompalı tüfek olarak bu kadar bile silah olması oyunun ne kadar sığ olduğunu gösteriyor.
Bir insan evladı neden oyununu bu kadar sığ ve sıkıcı yapmak ister bilmiyorum ama bu yapıda olan bir oyunu bile insanların çoğunluğu seviyor. Benim anlayamadığım sevecek çok bir şey bulamadım oyunda zaten oynanış desen sıkıcılığın 50 tonu gibi bölümler arka plan değişikliği yapılmasa çekilmeyecek derecede monoton ilerliyorlar.
Oyunun en saçma şeylerinden biri ise oyun süresini bir güzel uzatan koşma eylemenin yokluğu oyunda bildiğiniz koşamıyorsunuz kaplumbağa kadar yavaş yürüyorsunuz. Bu koşamama olayı o kadar sinir bozucu ki sizi böyle açıkmış gibi hissettirmeye çalışan minik bir haritaya atıyor ve orada kağnı gibi yürüyerek zaman geçirmenizi istiyor oyun. Bu zaman geçirme olayı tamamıyla oyun süresini nasıl uzatırız çabası ama bu süre uzatma çabasını "ya oyunun hikayesi için destek" gibi yutturmaya çalışıyorlar.
Hikaye için destek dememin sebebi şöyle hikayemiz 70'lerin Fransa'sında uykusuz sorunları ve yaşamdan bunalmış bir suikastçının bir şeylere cevap aramasını anlatıyor. Anlatım diyorum ama oyunun hikayesel çok az gösterdiği hikayenin çoğunluğu bir bölümün sonrasında bir iki diyalog yedirilmeye çalışmışlar.
Hikayesi anlatım olarak takılmayacak derecede olsa da ilgi çekici bir tema seçilmiş. Bu yapım hakkında bana iyi gelen şeylerden birisi yine başlangıç kısımlarında atmosferiydi herhalde ama bu iyi taraf bile o kadar sıkmaya başlıyor ki buna bile iyi yön diyemiyorum. Bir de oyunun size sağladığı saçma bir zorluk var. Bu zorluk bölümler içerisinde bir ülke nüfusundan daha çok olan düşman dalgalarının sağladığı bir zorluk ve anlayamadığım şekilde bir bölümde ilerlerken aynı nokta aynı düşman türü tarafından bir çok kez öldürüldüm orada öyle bir şey olduğunu görünce oyun bile bile orada öleceğimiz saçma bir şey mi koymuş acaba diye düşündüm fakat oyunumuz bir iki kez daha ölüp aynı yerde o düşmanı indirmek için o monoton çöp bölümü başından oynatarak süreyi uzatmak istediğini fark ettim.
Uzun lafın kısası oyunu kesinlikle oynamınızı önermem ama merak ettiyseniz azıcık bile olsa şöyle bir şey yapmanızı önerebilirim oyunu indirim zamanı alıp bir yarım saat oynayın sonrasında iade edin zaten o yarım saat içerisinde gördüğünüz şeyler oyunun her kısmında aynı olduğu için zamanınızı harcamaya değmez.
Bir insan evladı neden oyununu bu kadar sığ ve sıkıcı yapmak ister bilmiyorum ama bu yapıda olan bir oyunu bile insanların çoğunluğu seviyor. Benim anlayamadığım sevecek çok bir şey bulamadım oyunda zaten oynanış desen sıkıcılığın 50 tonu gibi bölümler arka plan değişikliği yapılmasa çekilmeyecek derecede monoton ilerliyorlar.
Oyunun en saçma şeylerinden biri ise oyun süresini bir güzel uzatan koşma eylemenin yokluğu oyunda bildiğiniz koşamıyorsunuz kaplumbağa kadar yavaş yürüyorsunuz. Bu koşamama olayı o kadar sinir bozucu ki sizi böyle açıkmış gibi hissettirmeye çalışan minik bir haritaya atıyor ve orada kağnı gibi yürüyerek zaman geçirmenizi istiyor oyun. Bu zaman geçirme olayı tamamıyla oyun süresini nasıl uzatırız çabası ama bu süre uzatma çabasını "ya oyunun hikayesi için destek" gibi yutturmaya çalışıyorlar.
Hikaye için destek dememin sebebi şöyle hikayemiz 70'lerin Fransa'sında uykusuz sorunları ve yaşamdan bunalmış bir suikastçının bir şeylere cevap aramasını anlatıyor. Anlatım diyorum ama oyunun hikayesel çok az gösterdiği hikayenin çoğunluğu bir bölümün sonrasında bir iki diyalog yedirilmeye çalışmışlar.
Hikayesi anlatım olarak takılmayacak derecede olsa da ilgi çekici bir tema seçilmiş. Bu yapım hakkında bana iyi gelen şeylerden birisi yine başlangıç kısımlarında atmosferiydi herhalde ama bu iyi taraf bile o kadar sıkmaya başlıyor ki buna bile iyi yön diyemiyorum. Bir de oyunun size sağladığı saçma bir zorluk var. Bu zorluk bölümler içerisinde bir ülke nüfusundan daha çok olan düşman dalgalarının sağladığı bir zorluk ve anlayamadığım şekilde bir bölümde ilerlerken aynı nokta aynı düşman türü tarafından bir çok kez öldürüldüm orada öyle bir şey olduğunu görünce oyun bile bile orada öleceğimiz saçma bir şey mi koymuş acaba diye düşündüm fakat oyunumuz bir iki kez daha ölüp aynı yerde o düşmanı indirmek için o monoton çöp bölümü başından oynatarak süreyi uzatmak istediğini fark ettim.
Uzun lafın kısası oyunu kesinlikle oynamınızı önermem ama merak ettiyseniz azıcık bile olsa şöyle bir şey yapmanızı önerebilirim oyunu indirim zamanı alıp bir yarım saat oynayın sonrasında iade edin zaten o yarım saat içerisinde gördüğünüz şeyler oyunun her kısmında aynı olduğu için zamanınızı harcamaya değmez.
There's a little museum in-game which is a pixelated art-exhibit, what's the difference between being in there and being outside? Walking around feeling meaninglessness is not really my cup of tea but the shooting sections were fun enough and yeo selection of music is so damn good, just like Ringo Ishikawa.
The sound of bullets whizzing by and the slumping of bodies as they hit the floor. The adrenaline that pumps through my veins as I shoot goon after goon with pinpoint accuracy. Wading through bodies as I march forward towards my exit, an army of men pouring in from every which way in a vain attempt to stop me. Another empty handgun is tossed to the wayside, another poor soul gets his arm broken and soon enough I have another one in my hand. In this march of death, surrounded by a cacophony of shouting, gunfire and the thunderous footsteps of incoming hitmen, there's only one though running through my head:
"I wonder what picture they're showing this week at the theater down the street."
French Existentialism is a philosophy about the isolation of the human experience in a hostile, uncaring world. We don't know why we're here, and all that matters is what you do with your own two hands. Arrest of a Stone Buddha is all about this. Taking influence from French cinema and action directors like John Woo, the game is part aimless life sim and part high-tension shootouts and assassination missions. Between the thrilling (if simple) assassination jobs where you fight legions upon legions of cannon-fodder while trying to make it to your getaway vehicle, there's long stretches of time where our lone gunman is wandering around his neighborhood in downtown France, taking in the sights, drinking at the bar, watching a movie at the cinema or taking a visit to the local art gallery. It's all just a way to kill time between the only moments where you feel truly alive: the ones where you're knee-deep in bodies and pumped up on adrenaline.
It's charming at first, but as the in-game month drags on, it loses its luster, which is ultimately the point Stone Buddha is trying to drive home. You start wandering aimlessly, loitering around the city, going to bed as soon as possible just to make the next day come faster in the hopes our new job will give us a momentary distraction from the mundanity of it all. But a new job will only stave off the ennui for so long. Our hitman is empty inside, and no amount of culture or walks in the park or drinks or new coats is going to fill that hole. Without the killing, without the violence, there's nothing for him.
There's nothing for us.
"I wonder what picture they're showing this week at the theater down the street."
French Existentialism is a philosophy about the isolation of the human experience in a hostile, uncaring world. We don't know why we're here, and all that matters is what you do with your own two hands. Arrest of a Stone Buddha is all about this. Taking influence from French cinema and action directors like John Woo, the game is part aimless life sim and part high-tension shootouts and assassination missions. Between the thrilling (if simple) assassination jobs where you fight legions upon legions of cannon-fodder while trying to make it to your getaway vehicle, there's long stretches of time where our lone gunman is wandering around his neighborhood in downtown France, taking in the sights, drinking at the bar, watching a movie at the cinema or taking a visit to the local art gallery. It's all just a way to kill time between the only moments where you feel truly alive: the ones where you're knee-deep in bodies and pumped up on adrenaline.
It's charming at first, but as the in-game month drags on, it loses its luster, which is ultimately the point Stone Buddha is trying to drive home. You start wandering aimlessly, loitering around the city, going to bed as soon as possible just to make the next day come faster in the hopes our new job will give us a momentary distraction from the mundanity of it all. But a new job will only stave off the ennui for so long. Our hitman is empty inside, and no amount of culture or walks in the park or drinks or new coats is going to fill that hole. Without the killing, without the violence, there's nothing for him.
There's nothing for us.
Assim como no jogo anterior de yeo os momentos especiais vinham quando você parava pra respirar o ambiente, aqui eles vem quando você é atingido pela insônia e tem que vagar a cidade, madrugar o dia e esperar a farmácia abrir para finalmente comprar a única coisa que te permite dormir. Nota-se como que os sensos estéticos de yeo maturaram de Ringo Ishikawa pra cá: a arte é lindíssima, possivelmente uma das execuções de pixel art mais bonitas que já vi num indie; a trilha sonora, carregada de peças de música clássica, é perfeita pra manter e exacerbar o tom melancólico do jogo.
É uma pena que a ação, cujos controles e execução são bem interessantes, é tão dissonante do desespero silencioso que permeia o jogo - simplesmente não conseguia levar tudo que acontecia na história muito a sério depois de, em toda missão, matar literalmente milhares de homens no meio das ruas de uma cidade francesa.Acho que essa hiperviolência pode ser intencional, vendo como o artista credita John Woo (junto de Pierre Melville) no final, porém para mim só serviu para separar o jogo em duas partes - mood piece sobre o tédio cruciante e shooter arcade simples e difícil pra caralho - e não diria que gostei só de uma, mas sim que a mistura de duas ideias legais não ficou tão boa quanto elas soam em isolamento.
No fim, o que mais me impressionou é no trabalho que deve ter dado pra desenhar todos esses cenários lindos e quase não usá-los pra nada. Espero poder voltar pra cá com um yeo mais maduro e com mais tempo e dinheiro - ele certamente já tem minha compra garantida pra qualquer coisa que fizer.
É uma pena que a ação, cujos controles e execução são bem interessantes, é tão dissonante do desespero silencioso que permeia o jogo - simplesmente não conseguia levar tudo que acontecia na história muito a sério depois de, em toda missão, matar literalmente milhares de homens no meio das ruas de uma cidade francesa.Acho que essa hiperviolência pode ser intencional, vendo como o artista credita John Woo (junto de Pierre Melville) no final, porém para mim só serviu para separar o jogo em duas partes - mood piece sobre o tédio cruciante e shooter arcade simples e difícil pra caralho - e não diria que gostei só de uma, mas sim que a mistura de duas ideias legais não ficou tão boa quanto elas soam em isolamento.
No fim, o que mais me impressionou é no trabalho que deve ter dado pra desenhar todos esses cenários lindos e quase não usá-los pra nada. Espero poder voltar pra cá com um yeo mais maduro e com mais tempo e dinheiro - ele certamente já tem minha compra garantida pra qualquer coisa que fizer.
A side scrolling action adventure mood piece about a hitman in the 1970s. The developer's previous game The friends of Ringo Ishikawa dealt with Japanese Yankii culture and a lead with friends and events to interact with and at times and still at a point where there could have been a chance for his future to lead him in a different direction than the gang brawls he is drawn into as his friends begin to abandon that lifestyle through misfortune or wanting something better. The protagonist here begins as a man who has nothing and no longer cares for anything except for the time when he is doing a job that briefly pulls him away from the meaninglessness of his life. In between jobs you spend your time wandering through a lonely city with the only abilities being to take out and light a cigarette, put on sunglasses, wander the town, visit a lover who is never shown spoken to or doing anything to change the music or atmosphere presented, or to buy a drink, cigarettes, a new coat, and sleeping pills. There are no friends to interact with, books to read, new fighting moves to learn, or teachers attempting to make you work towards a different life for yourself all you have is the wait until your next job, just lying on your bed staring at the ceiling watching the smoke come out of the cigarette until there is nothing left of it.
Each job begins with you and your target, seemingly someone in a position of power, before you raise your gun and shoot them then work your way to the exit of the areas or to your escape vehicle. In your paths are never-ending waves of enemies coming from both sides. You maintain your slow movement pace but can rapidly shift your aim in front, behind, or on both sides of you as you continue to push your way forward as the action becomes a slower moving John Woo film. You can walk forward while firing your gun or guns at a slower rate, hold up to remain still but fire your guns much faster, or crouch down to prioritize enemies that are currently aiming at you. You start with a pistol and when you need more ammo your only way to get more is to break the arm of a nearby enemy before taking their gun, doing this can get you a pistol, a second pistol, or a shotgun that can hit multiple enemies at once. Some enemies will rush towards you being the ones you want to leave alive to disarm while others will draw their pistol or shotgun sooner and will remain station to aim or slowly walk towards you while aiming, enemies with rifles that try to aim and shoot shortly after appearing at each end of the screen are also frequent threats. There is no health bar or indicator of remaining ammo and while every shot you fire will kill an enemy that may or may not be true for them.
When a job ends it's back to a life of nothing. Only brief conversations with the man who gives you your assignments over time revealing that they both consider that they aren't living life how they thought would or ever want to, that there is nothing but the work, and what they will do once there are no more jobs left to take.
The developer keeps a somber atmosphere outside of the moments of actions while also giving a well detailed city environment and an excellent and mood fitting music. When fighting starts it is a simple but fun and fast and while your movements are limited there is a variety of ways that you maneuver your gun and arms while aiming that reminds of a variety of action film shootouts.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCFVVd0MRWc&ab_channel=Legolas_Katarn
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1740050010077831666
Each job begins with you and your target, seemingly someone in a position of power, before you raise your gun and shoot them then work your way to the exit of the areas or to your escape vehicle. In your paths are never-ending waves of enemies coming from both sides. You maintain your slow movement pace but can rapidly shift your aim in front, behind, or on both sides of you as you continue to push your way forward as the action becomes a slower moving John Woo film. You can walk forward while firing your gun or guns at a slower rate, hold up to remain still but fire your guns much faster, or crouch down to prioritize enemies that are currently aiming at you. You start with a pistol and when you need more ammo your only way to get more is to break the arm of a nearby enemy before taking their gun, doing this can get you a pistol, a second pistol, or a shotgun that can hit multiple enemies at once. Some enemies will rush towards you being the ones you want to leave alive to disarm while others will draw their pistol or shotgun sooner and will remain station to aim or slowly walk towards you while aiming, enemies with rifles that try to aim and shoot shortly after appearing at each end of the screen are also frequent threats. There is no health bar or indicator of remaining ammo and while every shot you fire will kill an enemy that may or may not be true for them.
When a job ends it's back to a life of nothing. Only brief conversations with the man who gives you your assignments over time revealing that they both consider that they aren't living life how they thought would or ever want to, that there is nothing but the work, and what they will do once there are no more jobs left to take.
The developer keeps a somber atmosphere outside of the moments of actions while also giving a well detailed city environment and an excellent and mood fitting music. When fighting starts it is a simple but fun and fast and while your movements are limited there is a variety of ways that you maneuver your gun and arms while aiming that reminds of a variety of action film shootouts.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCFVVd0MRWc&ab_channel=Legolas_Katarn
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1740050010077831666
When it comes to atmosphere, this is just as good as yeo's previous game. However unlike Ringo's adventures, it suffers from a lot of problem.The game is really devoid of content and I find it hard to justify its price. Where Ringo had a lot of things to explore in town, it'll take you maybe 20min to see everything this game has to offer. There's really nothing much to explore. You can't talk to anyone but one character and all the dialogue with that guy never ends up making sense.Ringo allowed you to interact with characters and do activies, while still being a very depressive game where you felt emptiness in a similar manner. AoSB feels like a huge downgrade : smaller world, literally nothing to do in it except try to get to the evening. Perhaps this is the feeling the dev wanted to make you feel, how to waste away your days and the protagonist's despair? But I feel like we could still have had more to do or at least more places to explore, to just look at. The city feels way too dead and empty. The game could have been shorter to justify the lack of anything to do. You don't need to do 3 hours of this nothing.The other gameplay part is a side scrolling shooter which is quite fun and has an interesting "lucky hit" mechanic where you die in one shot, but only if a bullet randomly manages to hit you. Unfortunately it feels extremely unfair, I've been shot close to the end of the level so many time that I'm pretty sure there's something unnatural about it. Also there are enemies outside the screen AND the entire map that can shoot at you, in some levels they'll even spawn right at the beginning and you won't realize they're there until it's too late.I liked the game overall but it's even more frustrating than it should have been.
https://i.gyazo.com/76525f4af06a9a6194b6128055fe48d8.png
yeo's environmental design, soundtrack direction, and laissez-faire approach to 'structure' elevates the somber and dour proceedings here and the title's very much so animated by its refusal to guide the player in any strict sense. it's commendable how driven yeo is towards theme and feeling and the world has just enough in the way of flourishes to stimulate a sense of role-playing but too little to fully and succinctly become immersed in; yeo does well to play with this disconnect, causing the complete and utter listlessness of the game to swell and swell and continue to swell prior to the game's climax (if you could call it that) on a frigid november day
on the other hand...there's a dearth of particulars here for me to really feel invested in or compelled by. backtracking here: ringo ishikawa's ultimate success lies in a delicate marriage between the formal & aesthetic language of a kunio-kun game, and the - you'll have to forgive the reductive if undemanding comparison - exploratory, life-sim mechanics of something like shenmue. and the idea's so obvious, so axiomatic even in the kunio-kun games that ringo does little to iterate upon that idea, with certain environmental backgrounds and even mechanics feeling directly lifted from its NES progenitor. thrusting the lifesim framework to the forefront, then, is the most transformative quality of ringo and it achieves this by inviting players to test the boundaries of the world and create their own sense of meaning within that structure - that ringo obscures how tightly directed the game actually is only serves to further entrench just how well-considered and intelligent its design is as well. the game is also underscored by honest-to-god literary ambition which all eventually coalesces into an absolutely devastating ending but whatever i digress
point is, stone buddha...bit less going for it. it's a mood piece first and foremost - which, to its credit, its executes with total conviction and belief in the premise - but everything that you'd expect a game which probes into ennui would have is here, which honestly does it no favours. a lack of concrete narrative + good deal of economical prose invites some lovely interpretations, but you can see this specific ending coming a mile away and there's just too little that's actually transformative about it to really have the same sense of emotional resonance
sounds like im ragging but it's still a great time. unpolished sections and inelegant difficulty curve, sure, but it doesn't overstay its welcome and yeo's willingness to eschew conventional game design continues to delight. there's a lot to love about how the mechanics inform the atmosphere and how you eventually build an innate and instinctual feeling for exactly what you're supposed to do (and i particularly did enjoy how rote it felt when finally mastered - that contrast between what's supposed to be kinetic and improvisational versus the reality that you're a slowly advancing turret) but im also unconvinced that that part of the game was supposed to be intentionally monotonous like everyone says or whatever which does make me feel a bit of internal conflict. id bet my apartment on yeo designing the combat with a bottle of beluga going like 'yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa'. good for him
yeo's environmental design, soundtrack direction, and laissez-faire approach to 'structure' elevates the somber and dour proceedings here and the title's very much so animated by its refusal to guide the player in any strict sense. it's commendable how driven yeo is towards theme and feeling and the world has just enough in the way of flourishes to stimulate a sense of role-playing but too little to fully and succinctly become immersed in; yeo does well to play with this disconnect, causing the complete and utter listlessness of the game to swell and swell and continue to swell prior to the game's climax (if you could call it that) on a frigid november day
on the other hand...there's a dearth of particulars here for me to really feel invested in or compelled by. backtracking here: ringo ishikawa's ultimate success lies in a delicate marriage between the formal & aesthetic language of a kunio-kun game, and the - you'll have to forgive the reductive if undemanding comparison - exploratory, life-sim mechanics of something like shenmue. and the idea's so obvious, so axiomatic even in the kunio-kun games that ringo does little to iterate upon that idea, with certain environmental backgrounds and even mechanics feeling directly lifted from its NES progenitor. thrusting the lifesim framework to the forefront, then, is the most transformative quality of ringo and it achieves this by inviting players to test the boundaries of the world and create their own sense of meaning within that structure - that ringo obscures how tightly directed the game actually is only serves to further entrench just how well-considered and intelligent its design is as well. the game is also underscored by honest-to-god literary ambition which all eventually coalesces into an absolutely devastating ending but whatever i digress
point is, stone buddha...bit less going for it. it's a mood piece first and foremost - which, to its credit, its executes with total conviction and belief in the premise - but everything that you'd expect a game which probes into ennui would have is here, which honestly does it no favours. a lack of concrete narrative + good deal of economical prose invites some lovely interpretations, but you can see this specific ending coming a mile away and there's just too little that's actually transformative about it to really have the same sense of emotional resonance
sounds like im ragging but it's still a great time. unpolished sections and inelegant difficulty curve, sure, but it doesn't overstay its welcome and yeo's willingness to eschew conventional game design continues to delight. there's a lot to love about how the mechanics inform the atmosphere and how you eventually build an innate and instinctual feeling for exactly what you're supposed to do (and i particularly did enjoy how rote it felt when finally mastered - that contrast between what's supposed to be kinetic and improvisational versus the reality that you're a slowly advancing turret) but im also unconvinced that that part of the game was supposed to be intentionally monotonous like everyone says or whatever which does make me feel a bit of internal conflict. id bet my apartment on yeo designing the combat with a bottle of beluga going like 'yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa'. good for him
Arrest of a Stone Buddha is about depression. It tells the story of an emotionless man who goes through his life in a state of numbness. He finds joy only in killing people, justified by the will of the organization that commands him.
What elevates the narrative is that it’s told almost entirely through the player’s mechanical interaction with the world. Arrest of Stone Buddha is separated into two parts: highly entertaining shootout sequences and the simulation of an empty daily life. Between every mission, you’re forced to wander around a small, colorless town engaging in activities utterly devoid of meaning. You watch a movie, you visit an art gallery, you spend time with a lover, you stay at home lying on your bed staring at the ceiling… All of these share the same purpose. You're waiting for the day to end. It's a loop that perfectly translates the main character's situation and lifestyle to the player's experience. With each passing cycle, this connection grows stronger, the game becomes more and more boring. Even the music gets irritating. By the third level, you'll most likely have done everything there is to do in the town, and at that point you'll find yourself constantly checking the time, eagerly anticipating the moment you're allowed to sleep. You're going through the motions, at least until it's time to kill people again.
Combat is the only fun part of this game.
It's always the same core loop for every level with little to no variation, but it's a solid, engaging core that never stops being entertaining. And that's all that action is for the main character, too. The part of his life that's still engaging, that makes him feel something.
Violence is the only meaningful interaction he has with other human beings, even dialogue is kept to a minimum and exists only to reinforce what ideas were already solidified by the gameplay. People serve the purpose of objects. His lover provides pleasure, the pharmacist provides sleep medication, his friend provides missions and the men he kills provide entertainment. He doesn't care about Lanky, he doesn't care about politics, he doesn't care about real life. All he cares about is his next assignment. People, to him, are like NPCs, which further his disconnection from reality and connection to the player. He sees the world through a narrow, detached point of view and interacts with it as a player interacts with systems.
In a sense, the main character lost his humanity. He has become an emotionless machine of hedonism. His choice in the end, the only one that matters, is whether to accept his death (now physically) or let a last sign of humanity slip through by giving up and crying.
What elevates the narrative is that it’s told almost entirely through the player’s mechanical interaction with the world. Arrest of Stone Buddha is separated into two parts: highly entertaining shootout sequences and the simulation of an empty daily life. Between every mission, you’re forced to wander around a small, colorless town engaging in activities utterly devoid of meaning. You watch a movie, you visit an art gallery, you spend time with a lover, you stay at home lying on your bed staring at the ceiling… All of these share the same purpose. You're waiting for the day to end. It's a loop that perfectly translates the main character's situation and lifestyle to the player's experience. With each passing cycle, this connection grows stronger, the game becomes more and more boring. Even the music gets irritating. By the third level, you'll most likely have done everything there is to do in the town, and at that point you'll find yourself constantly checking the time, eagerly anticipating the moment you're allowed to sleep. You're going through the motions, at least until it's time to kill people again.
Combat is the only fun part of this game.
It's always the same core loop for every level with little to no variation, but it's a solid, engaging core that never stops being entertaining. And that's all that action is for the main character, too. The part of his life that's still engaging, that makes him feel something.
Violence is the only meaningful interaction he has with other human beings, even dialogue is kept to a minimum and exists only to reinforce what ideas were already solidified by the gameplay. People serve the purpose of objects. His lover provides pleasure, the pharmacist provides sleep medication, his friend provides missions and the men he kills provide entertainment. He doesn't care about Lanky, he doesn't care about politics, he doesn't care about real life. All he cares about is his next assignment. People, to him, are like NPCs, which further his disconnection from reality and connection to the player. He sees the world through a narrow, detached point of view and interacts with it as a player interacts with systems.
In a sense, the main character lost his humanity. He has become an emotionless machine of hedonism. His choice in the end, the only one that matters, is whether to accept his death (now physically) or let a last sign of humanity slip through by giving up and crying.
Arrest of a stone Buddha lies.
It’s not immediately apparent nor is the revelation striking in nature but the lie or, rather, the absence of telling permeates each frame. Flair is the primary mode of conveyance here ; the charm of retro games meets the stylishness of a John Woo flick. Hitman is searching for an answer in 70s France. Take the dread of Slavic game-design and watch it morph into high-concept anime motions. You’re fast and lucky enough so you don’t plan your actions too far. You kill with one shot and you never miss. It’s the kind of nihilistic manifesto games have become so good at over the years, where killing turns into an operation of existential purge. What’s the point of moving forward when death is so clearly in sight ? We’ve all seen this story - this swan song – a million times. Virtual entrapments. This play, repeated in front of us, by us. In a sense, even before us. You know from minute one, nested in this “fausse” Notre-Dame with a gun to the priest’s temple, how it all ends. Killer is Dead.
But let’s rewind nonetheless. What is Arrest of a stone Buddha about ? Like I said, it’s explicitly about the back of the box : An assassin and a city and a question. There’s no point in really teasing it any further ; it’s the story of a man searching for meaning in-between the killings that punctuate his life. Though perhaps we can see it in reverse ; actually, let’s look at it this way. It’s the story of a man actively searching for meaning within the killings themselves. So every time his job’s done he sits on a bench with a friend, his contractor – his lover ? Lines are blurred anyway. And then comes a question. “When’s the next assignment ?” It’s a one-way conversation between the world and his shadow. ”Lanky got killed.” No response – none that matters anyway. He mutters a few words as Erik Satie‘s Gnossienne plays in the background. If it wasn’t evident enough beforehand, I’ll reiterate for good measure ; Arrest of a stone Buddha is not just moody, it’s bleak.
“Just find something okay ?“
”I will.“
Now you roam the streets from dusk till dawn. Light a cigarette on your way to the movies. Or scratch that, turn around and booze yourself into altering the very soundscape of the game in some Parisian cafe. It’s the other side of the experience : Call it daily-reality simulator. Shenmue impersonator. A performative exercice in living stuck inside a death loop. From the graveyard to the bar and back again, the only certainty is our forward movement in time. Somedays a storm, somedays a mere wandering. Until you reach the date that’s been circled in red above your bed. This 7th of November 1976. The day one chooses to die.
.
The body count of Buddha is thankfully ridiculous. Every gunfight acts as the missing link in a series of finales that keep on stacking upon one another. At times it’s exhausting, an impossible march where enemies keep pouring out of each side of the screen until we either make an escape or join the growing pile. But one does not rush to the finishing line here – the death drive must be consumed, soaked-in through accumulation. There’s no denying the scene is absurd, but contemplate it long enough and it forces a certain kind of empathy upon you. The relentlessness with which Buddha forces you to slog through murderous armies demands a pause, a constant inhabitance in this body of labour – it’s one kill to a thousand, all located at the source of your character. Breathe in, then dance. This is By Yeo at his best : Beauty by blunt force; a trauma that outlasts the bang of the iron. If Arrest of a stone Buddha was to be shrunk down to its most basic elements, it would be a matter of binaries. Left or Right. Whisky or murder. Which direction spares us a bullet and which one keeps the killer going for another day? Bullseye or bust. An affair of life and death in the plural – or rather of exquisite repetition, of withstanding this dying in service of something. I noted earlier that the gunfights of Arrest of a stone Buddha were a unique gesture of pedestrian violence ; looking back on it, I think a better term would be “limping”. Failure is inevitable, the game makes sure of that (the further you move through a shooting gallery, the more accurate the goons around you become and sometimes a cruel trick is pulled on you ; just as you’re about to walk out of the frame, you meet your fate at the end of a barrel summoned by off-screen depths). Weapons are made irrelevant by their empty magazines, so the only way to procure yourself another is to wrestle one away from your agressors. This in turn requires a closer approach, leaving you vulnerable to the pace of the game’s incessant happening. There is always something, both wonderfully intricate and brutally evident, going on in those exchanges of bullets – dodged shots followed by a collective charge, a scope adjusting its aim with your skull. Out of fire and out of time. The key here is to embrace how perpetual the collapse is in hindsight. You get good at it eventually, it’s still just a videogame after all. But the feeling never really goes away. Miss the coup de théâtre and another swiftly comes your way. Now your move friendo ; you have to, keep walking. Shooting. Doing. Something’s got to give, so even when it means nothing a choice must be made. Hell or high water.
.
Every assassination attempt begins with Buddha at a standstill. Tinted windows for a stray car. A restaurant table whose dishes are getting cold. The killer and the target. Hold [R] to aim your weapon ; press [X] to shoot – and then the music starts.
“I’ve got to get the hell out of here.“
In Arrest of a stone Buddha, every assassination attempt culminates in a single frame of grotesque still life. The pure and quiet spectacle of sidescrolling generation. Stop, start ; and suddenly, a wave.
A parking lot, overflowing.
Mobsters by the dozen, all converging
On this single point in time
And space, where you lie.
A forest shootout leaving
No trace.
“I have a train to take.“
To nowhere, in particular.
To a room with a view,
To a rooftop, another
Man is sitting at a bus stop with
Ten corpses down.
.
In the streets of Arrest of a stone Buddha, I always stroll with my hands in my pockets. It’s not really about the style, it’s performance. I am comfortably away from the simulacra but I wish to engage, to blend-in. At night, the edges of my screen become vectors of paranoïa ; silhouettes in trench coat walk past me quickly and I come to fear their passage. They’re just bots – pallid imitations of behaviour – but my violent strides have produced this strange overlapping motion where I am, simultaneously, above and beneath. My rampage invades every spaces of the city – bullet wishes against glass pedestrians. They share my proximity for a fleeting second before disappearing again, never interacting, never harming my little killer in any way. The greatest trick Arrest of a Stone Buddha pulls on the player is to switch perceptions into a set of compulsory habits, from one space to the other; what does it take to press the trigger ? Nothing more – and nothing less – than a corridor to dwell in the levels where I can properly identify and recognize better. A target that was never really there in the first place.
It's a story of the meaningless decisions that animate everyday life.
It's a tale about choosing to be someone else, even if it’s just for the time it takes to smoke a cigarette.
A lie on a respirator.
A fantasy fed one day at a time, until the date is reached. Until it’s impossible to go on anymore.
7th of November.
You’re alone in your room. I am alone in mine. You hold the first button to aim.
Then I press [X] to shoot.
Or maybe not. Maybe both decisions are taken at the same time.
Maybe in the end we keep on dancing.
In this life or the next.
—————————————
Originally posted on VDT, a while ago.
It’s not immediately apparent nor is the revelation striking in nature but the lie or, rather, the absence of telling permeates each frame. Flair is the primary mode of conveyance here ; the charm of retro games meets the stylishness of a John Woo flick. Hitman is searching for an answer in 70s France. Take the dread of Slavic game-design and watch it morph into high-concept anime motions. You’re fast and lucky enough so you don’t plan your actions too far. You kill with one shot and you never miss. It’s the kind of nihilistic manifesto games have become so good at over the years, where killing turns into an operation of existential purge. What’s the point of moving forward when death is so clearly in sight ? We’ve all seen this story - this swan song – a million times. Virtual entrapments. This play, repeated in front of us, by us. In a sense, even before us. You know from minute one, nested in this “fausse” Notre-Dame with a gun to the priest’s temple, how it all ends. Killer is Dead.
But let’s rewind nonetheless. What is Arrest of a stone Buddha about ? Like I said, it’s explicitly about the back of the box : An assassin and a city and a question. There’s no point in really teasing it any further ; it’s the story of a man searching for meaning in-between the killings that punctuate his life. Though perhaps we can see it in reverse ; actually, let’s look at it this way. It’s the story of a man actively searching for meaning within the killings themselves. So every time his job’s done he sits on a bench with a friend, his contractor – his lover ? Lines are blurred anyway. And then comes a question. “When’s the next assignment ?” It’s a one-way conversation between the world and his shadow. ”Lanky got killed.” No response – none that matters anyway. He mutters a few words as Erik Satie‘s Gnossienne plays in the background. If it wasn’t evident enough beforehand, I’ll reiterate for good measure ; Arrest of a stone Buddha is not just moody, it’s bleak.
“Just find something okay ?“
”I will.“
Now you roam the streets from dusk till dawn. Light a cigarette on your way to the movies. Or scratch that, turn around and booze yourself into altering the very soundscape of the game in some Parisian cafe. It’s the other side of the experience : Call it daily-reality simulator. Shenmue impersonator. A performative exercice in living stuck inside a death loop. From the graveyard to the bar and back again, the only certainty is our forward movement in time. Somedays a storm, somedays a mere wandering. Until you reach the date that’s been circled in red above your bed. This 7th of November 1976. The day one chooses to die.
.
The body count of Buddha is thankfully ridiculous. Every gunfight acts as the missing link in a series of finales that keep on stacking upon one another. At times it’s exhausting, an impossible march where enemies keep pouring out of each side of the screen until we either make an escape or join the growing pile. But one does not rush to the finishing line here – the death drive must be consumed, soaked-in through accumulation. There’s no denying the scene is absurd, but contemplate it long enough and it forces a certain kind of empathy upon you. The relentlessness with which Buddha forces you to slog through murderous armies demands a pause, a constant inhabitance in this body of labour – it’s one kill to a thousand, all located at the source of your character. Breathe in, then dance. This is By Yeo at his best : Beauty by blunt force; a trauma that outlasts the bang of the iron. If Arrest of a stone Buddha was to be shrunk down to its most basic elements, it would be a matter of binaries. Left or Right. Whisky or murder. Which direction spares us a bullet and which one keeps the killer going for another day? Bullseye or bust. An affair of life and death in the plural – or rather of exquisite repetition, of withstanding this dying in service of something. I noted earlier that the gunfights of Arrest of a stone Buddha were a unique gesture of pedestrian violence ; looking back on it, I think a better term would be “limping”. Failure is inevitable, the game makes sure of that (the further you move through a shooting gallery, the more accurate the goons around you become and sometimes a cruel trick is pulled on you ; just as you’re about to walk out of the frame, you meet your fate at the end of a barrel summoned by off-screen depths). Weapons are made irrelevant by their empty magazines, so the only way to procure yourself another is to wrestle one away from your agressors. This in turn requires a closer approach, leaving you vulnerable to the pace of the game’s incessant happening. There is always something, both wonderfully intricate and brutally evident, going on in those exchanges of bullets – dodged shots followed by a collective charge, a scope adjusting its aim with your skull. Out of fire and out of time. The key here is to embrace how perpetual the collapse is in hindsight. You get good at it eventually, it’s still just a videogame after all. But the feeling never really goes away. Miss the coup de théâtre and another swiftly comes your way. Now your move friendo ; you have to, keep walking. Shooting. Doing. Something’s got to give, so even when it means nothing a choice must be made. Hell or high water.
.
Every assassination attempt begins with Buddha at a standstill. Tinted windows for a stray car. A restaurant table whose dishes are getting cold. The killer and the target. Hold [R] to aim your weapon ; press [X] to shoot – and then the music starts.
“I’ve got to get the hell out of here.“
In Arrest of a stone Buddha, every assassination attempt culminates in a single frame of grotesque still life. The pure and quiet spectacle of sidescrolling generation. Stop, start ; and suddenly, a wave.
A parking lot, overflowing.
Mobsters by the dozen, all converging
On this single point in time
And space, where you lie.
A forest shootout leaving
No trace.
“I have a train to take.“
To nowhere, in particular.
To a room with a view,
To a rooftop, another
Man is sitting at a bus stop with
Ten corpses down.
.
In the streets of Arrest of a stone Buddha, I always stroll with my hands in my pockets. It’s not really about the style, it’s performance. I am comfortably away from the simulacra but I wish to engage, to blend-in. At night, the edges of my screen become vectors of paranoïa ; silhouettes in trench coat walk past me quickly and I come to fear their passage. They’re just bots – pallid imitations of behaviour – but my violent strides have produced this strange overlapping motion where I am, simultaneously, above and beneath. My rampage invades every spaces of the city – bullet wishes against glass pedestrians. They share my proximity for a fleeting second before disappearing again, never interacting, never harming my little killer in any way. The greatest trick Arrest of a Stone Buddha pulls on the player is to switch perceptions into a set of compulsory habits, from one space to the other; what does it take to press the trigger ? Nothing more – and nothing less – than a corridor to dwell in the levels where I can properly identify and recognize better. A target that was never really there in the first place.
It's a story of the meaningless decisions that animate everyday life.
It's a tale about choosing to be someone else, even if it’s just for the time it takes to smoke a cigarette.
A lie on a respirator.
A fantasy fed one day at a time, until the date is reached. Until it’s impossible to go on anymore.
7th of November.
You’re alone in your room. I am alone in mine. You hold the first button to aim.
Then I press [X] to shoot.
Or maybe not. Maybe both decisions are taken at the same time.
Maybe in the end we keep on dancing.
In this life or the next.
—————————————
Originally posted on VDT, a while ago.
While the style is palpable and piercing, it's the type of existentially nihilistic experience that makes me go "whats the point Yeo?" I think most reviews on this site have captured the duality of the gameplay, it is both a game about stylishly killing dozens of goons as well meaninglessly killing time. There's never really a time in the game where excitement or even engagement comes into the Killers life. The piles of bodies only grow as the levels go on yet nothing changes in the characters life. Killing adds nothing, yet neither does art, sex, drugs, shopping or even sleep. Everything is a delay for the end. The killer is given the chance to leave, go on vacation, do anything outside of his life but he's long since given up. The only reason he kills is because of this small notion that he's good at it.
Now if we're being real this is an incredibly well crafted game with some premium animation and music leading to top tier vibes, but I don't really care for anything in this. What's the takeaway I'm supposed to get from this... that I don't wanna live like that? This reflects a piece of the human condition that the french have been trying to capture for centuries at this point but this game doesn't feel additive. A certainly refined example, but if this was a film I'd turn it off halfway and switch over to In Bruges or something.
I think Yeo is a unique and inspired creator in the medium, and there's nothing broken with the game as it certainly accomplishes everything it sets out to do. Thematically though its kinda in one ear and out the other.
Now if we're being real this is an incredibly well crafted game with some premium animation and music leading to top tier vibes, but I don't really care for anything in this. What's the takeaway I'm supposed to get from this... that I don't wanna live like that? This reflects a piece of the human condition that the french have been trying to capture for centuries at this point but this game doesn't feel additive. A certainly refined example, but if this was a film I'd turn it off halfway and switch over to In Bruges or something.
I think Yeo is a unique and inspired creator in the medium, and there's nothing broken with the game as it certainly accomplishes everything it sets out to do. Thematically though its kinda in one ear and out the other.
Played without context I could easily think this is Yeo's first game. Much more focused and in its own way minimalistic, Arrest of a stone Budha is as a hit or miss title as Ringo but bolder and faultier in the same range.
The game presents a very simple plot that one knows how it's going to end since reading the sinopsis, that doesn't detract the game in any way. It's moody, atmospheric, haunting and purposefully unpurposeful.
The game presents a very simple plot that one knows how it's going to end since reading the sinopsis, that doesn't detract the game in any way. It's moody, atmospheric, haunting and purposefully unpurposeful.
As I write this, I find that this review perfectly captures how I feel about Arrest of a stone Buddha.
Recommended by MrPixelton, this is the eleventh game on my obscure games list. Thanks again for the recommendation.
I really wanted to fully like this game. Just like with Critters for Sale, the cover art for the game had me very curious. I thought for a while about what the game would be. Would it be a detective story? A puzzle game?
What I got was an interesting character study of a depressed French hitman wrapped within a very low quality and unpleasant to play 2D Sidescrolling Run & Gun.
From the moment the game starts, you find yourself in a Church. For a moment I wandered back and forth, not really knowing what to do, but taking in the beautiful background art and sprite work. It was a lengthy moment of thoughtful respite.
I then saw the priest praying on the ground, and that's when the game told me to fire my loaded gun on him. Once I did, the problem with this game became almost immediately evident: the combat fucking sucks.
Don't get me wrong, it's hectic as hell and the backing music for these sections are fucking great, but combat itself is nothing but an utterly miserable chore.
You have to aim with a separate button and fire with another. In my case, I made by Aim Button the Left Bumper and my shoot button the X Button. If you aren't pressing the Aim Button, you cannot fire your gun, however the Aim Button will (initially) stop you in place so you can fire.
You can fire while moving, you simply need to hold the direction you're going in while holding the button, but that initial pause will occur every single time you use the Aim Button.
Of course, who are you shooting? Why, none other than the never-ending police force, which leads to my second problem. Enemies do not stop spawning, at least not until you reach the final screen of the mission you're in. They frequently appear on both sides of you at rapid speeds, which requires you to Aim and shoot them before they shoot you, which means you are spending 99% of the combat sections of this game pausing, shooting, moving for 3 seconds, and then pausing and shooting again.
You have to be quick too, or else you'll get shot and die at what feels like random intervals. Why does it feel random, you may ask? BECAUSE THERE'S NO HEALTH BAR IN THIS GAME!! There's no indication of how much damage you're taking, which means you have to rely on the sound cues, and it's very, very inconsistent
This game was released in 2020, there is zero excuse for there to not even be a health bar in your Run & Gun video game. Even games in the 80s and 90s within this genre had at least that.
Now, I'm sure the oppressive and harsh nature of the combat is entirely intentional, as I'll get into in a minute, but for games that are relatively short, I look to the gameplay loop to give me a solid reason to come back to it someday. Arrest of a stone Buddha's combat is just not satisfying to me, and while I find the story interesting, it's not going to be enough to get me to slog through the misery of combat just to see a different ending.
Plus, combat is just too utterly simple. There's no dodge rolling, no jumping, you just shoot and occasionally kick/break enemies' arms to get ammo.
Unlike the last game I played, ICEY, this game does not have remotely interesting combinations or different ways to handle the mooks you face. It's all just the same dredging murderfest, and it doesn't even make it fun like Gungrave.
Now of course, with all of this complaining, you'd probably be wondering why this isn't rated 1 star or lower, and that is where the narrative comes in to save this game.
SPOILERS AHEAD
I say narrative, but I moreso mean the subtext the game feeds you from almost the very beginning. The opening of the game makes it very clear that you, the unnamed protagonist of our tale, are a hitman.
You receive missions from someone who appears to be a childhood friend of yours, who is unhappy with this career choice that you both have chosen, and you meet at a park bench near your apartment after every successful mission (though the friend tries to get you to go to the museum twice, and only one time do you go).
You and him spend a lot of time talking about the good old days, how things went wrong. Before you part ways before your next mission.
Before every mission there is a gap period, much like how the game starts with that thoughtful moment of respite that I mentioned earlier. You'll spend time just... wasting time. There are no side quests, there are no other stories to find in this small town. There is just you, a lone hitman, wandering around trying to pass time.
It became immediately evident that the protagonist suffers from some form of chronic depression, and much like the last game I played that MrPixelton recommended, Flesh, Blood, & Concrete, I empathized with that struggle. However, unlike that game, Arrest of a stone Buddha does not have a bright light at the end of the tunnel.
For example, you can spend the game doing various menial things. You can smoke so many cigarettes that your lungs will turn to pitch, or watch a bunch of movies in the movie theatre and nothing else. Spend your entire day drinking hard liquor, or go out and have sex with your lover. These things are all treated by the game with the same mundanity of sitting in your apartment and doing nothing.
The only time the protagonist ever seems to feel alive is when he is actively putting himself in harms way. This is why I feel the combat's suckiness is intentional. He isn't trying to actually succeed in his mission, he doesn't even run to attack or defend himself, he just takes his enemies head on with no hesitation, as if hoping that they'd kill him.
At the end of the game, when you have finished all of the missions, and your friend stops meeting with you, the day you marked down at the beginning of the game comes to pass...
And you kill yourself.
Arrest of a stone Buddha ends with you, the protagonist who was devoid of a life or a purpose besides committing mass homicide, taking your own life because of the pointlessness of it all. And you, the player, have to pull the trigger.
It's a sad, yet poignant end. And while I'm aware there is an alternate ending, this is the canon ending of the game.
The truth is, the game isn't wrong that life is a pointless thing. Our lives as individuals does not serve any grand purpose. In the big picture, we are merely specks of paint that have been splattered onto the canvas.
However, that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the lives that we have. The problem with our protagonist is that he simply couldn't anymore. If he had just gotten the help he really needed, maybe things could have been different.
Arrest of a stone Buddha is a painful game, and not one I can actively give a recommendation for because both gameplay wise and narrative wise, it isn't going to be an experience that everyone can appreciate or truly understand. It's 15 dollars on Steam if you find yourself interested, just don't expect to come out of it fulfilled.
Recommended by MrPixelton, this is the eleventh game on my obscure games list. Thanks again for the recommendation.
I really wanted to fully like this game. Just like with Critters for Sale, the cover art for the game had me very curious. I thought for a while about what the game would be. Would it be a detective story? A puzzle game?
What I got was an interesting character study of a depressed French hitman wrapped within a very low quality and unpleasant to play 2D Sidescrolling Run & Gun.
From the moment the game starts, you find yourself in a Church. For a moment I wandered back and forth, not really knowing what to do, but taking in the beautiful background art and sprite work. It was a lengthy moment of thoughtful respite.
I then saw the priest praying on the ground, and that's when the game told me to fire my loaded gun on him. Once I did, the problem with this game became almost immediately evident: the combat fucking sucks.
Don't get me wrong, it's hectic as hell and the backing music for these sections are fucking great, but combat itself is nothing but an utterly miserable chore.
You have to aim with a separate button and fire with another. In my case, I made by Aim Button the Left Bumper and my shoot button the X Button. If you aren't pressing the Aim Button, you cannot fire your gun, however the Aim Button will (initially) stop you in place so you can fire.
You can fire while moving, you simply need to hold the direction you're going in while holding the button, but that initial pause will occur every single time you use the Aim Button.
Of course, who are you shooting? Why, none other than the never-ending police force, which leads to my second problem. Enemies do not stop spawning, at least not until you reach the final screen of the mission you're in. They frequently appear on both sides of you at rapid speeds, which requires you to Aim and shoot them before they shoot you, which means you are spending 99% of the combat sections of this game pausing, shooting, moving for 3 seconds, and then pausing and shooting again.
You have to be quick too, or else you'll get shot and die at what feels like random intervals. Why does it feel random, you may ask? BECAUSE THERE'S NO HEALTH BAR IN THIS GAME!! There's no indication of how much damage you're taking, which means you have to rely on the sound cues, and it's very, very inconsistent
This game was released in 2020, there is zero excuse for there to not even be a health bar in your Run & Gun video game. Even games in the 80s and 90s within this genre had at least that.
Now, I'm sure the oppressive and harsh nature of the combat is entirely intentional, as I'll get into in a minute, but for games that are relatively short, I look to the gameplay loop to give me a solid reason to come back to it someday. Arrest of a stone Buddha's combat is just not satisfying to me, and while I find the story interesting, it's not going to be enough to get me to slog through the misery of combat just to see a different ending.
Plus, combat is just too utterly simple. There's no dodge rolling, no jumping, you just shoot and occasionally kick/break enemies' arms to get ammo.
Unlike the last game I played, ICEY, this game does not have remotely interesting combinations or different ways to handle the mooks you face. It's all just the same dredging murderfest, and it doesn't even make it fun like Gungrave.
Now of course, with all of this complaining, you'd probably be wondering why this isn't rated 1 star or lower, and that is where the narrative comes in to save this game.
SPOILERS AHEAD
I say narrative, but I moreso mean the subtext the game feeds you from almost the very beginning. The opening of the game makes it very clear that you, the unnamed protagonist of our tale, are a hitman.
You receive missions from someone who appears to be a childhood friend of yours, who is unhappy with this career choice that you both have chosen, and you meet at a park bench near your apartment after every successful mission (though the friend tries to get you to go to the museum twice, and only one time do you go).
You and him spend a lot of time talking about the good old days, how things went wrong. Before you part ways before your next mission.
Before every mission there is a gap period, much like how the game starts with that thoughtful moment of respite that I mentioned earlier. You'll spend time just... wasting time. There are no side quests, there are no other stories to find in this small town. There is just you, a lone hitman, wandering around trying to pass time.
It became immediately evident that the protagonist suffers from some form of chronic depression, and much like the last game I played that MrPixelton recommended, Flesh, Blood, & Concrete, I empathized with that struggle. However, unlike that game, Arrest of a stone Buddha does not have a bright light at the end of the tunnel.
For example, you can spend the game doing various menial things. You can smoke so many cigarettes that your lungs will turn to pitch, or watch a bunch of movies in the movie theatre and nothing else. Spend your entire day drinking hard liquor, or go out and have sex with your lover. These things are all treated by the game with the same mundanity of sitting in your apartment and doing nothing.
The only time the protagonist ever seems to feel alive is when he is actively putting himself in harms way. This is why I feel the combat's suckiness is intentional. He isn't trying to actually succeed in his mission, he doesn't even run to attack or defend himself, he just takes his enemies head on with no hesitation, as if hoping that they'd kill him.
At the end of the game, when you have finished all of the missions, and your friend stops meeting with you, the day you marked down at the beginning of the game comes to pass...
And you kill yourself.
Arrest of a stone Buddha ends with you, the protagonist who was devoid of a life or a purpose besides committing mass homicide, taking your own life because of the pointlessness of it all. And you, the player, have to pull the trigger.
It's a sad, yet poignant end. And while I'm aware there is an alternate ending, this is the canon ending of the game.
The truth is, the game isn't wrong that life is a pointless thing. Our lives as individuals does not serve any grand purpose. In the big picture, we are merely specks of paint that have been splattered onto the canvas.
However, that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the lives that we have. The problem with our protagonist is that he simply couldn't anymore. If he had just gotten the help he really needed, maybe things could have been different.
Arrest of a stone Buddha is a painful game, and not one I can actively give a recommendation for because both gameplay wise and narrative wise, it isn't going to be an experience that everyone can appreciate or truly understand. It's 15 dollars on Steam if you find yourself interested, just don't expect to come out of it fulfilled.
a game of two parts. one casts you as a bored insomniac strolling through a drab 1970s paris, doing anything just to pass the time before the other side of the game kicks in: a slow, hard boiled walk towards your escape while you mow down goons flooding in from both sides with quick gun fu. it's "le samourai" without a guiding objective, then it's "the killer" without passion (jean pierre melville and john woo, and louis malle as well, are given special thanks in the credits (the COOL AS FUCK soundtrack by danny spider solitaire in general reminds me of a certain organ-led track from le samourai)).
the first half asks you to improv an aimless life, having the man cross arms on rooftops, or light a cig, or go out for a film you can't watch, or for an exhibition you yourself can't enjoy the art of. yet its significant in that you drive him; you become his will in a very existential sense. you only take tiny actions but they are actions nonetheless, so they become meaningful bits of your own characterization, creating context where there would otherwise be none. its "boring" but i absolutely eat this kind of un-directed roleplay in games up, so it along with the bleak atmosphere did an excellent job of immersing me in the character, even when there is relatively little "narrative" to speak of.
the second half is the adrenaline shot by comparison, but even saying like that makes it sound too "fun" (though it might say something about me that i think this game is more fun than the short amount of the friends of ringo ishikawa i played). it's numbing, in a word. not as hard as its been made out to be imo but definitely not easy either, there is the initial hurdle of feeling out the combat to get over but once you've become accustomed to the flow of enemies, keeping your left and right flanks in check and sensing when it's time to get another gun...you start to feel like a death automaton. the excitement isn't gonna come and you'll have to make peace with that.
if i had to find a fault, it might overstay its welcome a little towards that end, i think the point could've been came across just as well with a level or possibly even two cut, but i still greatly enjoyed this. i don't think ringo can beat the atmosphere of arrest, but i'm interested enough in its greater focus on bonds between boys with this kind of evocativeness going for it to give it a fairer shot now. playing a level or two of this on nights when you can't sleep is ideal.
the first half asks you to improv an aimless life, having the man cross arms on rooftops, or light a cig, or go out for a film you can't watch, or for an exhibition you yourself can't enjoy the art of. yet its significant in that you drive him; you become his will in a very existential sense. you only take tiny actions but they are actions nonetheless, so they become meaningful bits of your own characterization, creating context where there would otherwise be none. its "boring" but i absolutely eat this kind of un-directed roleplay in games up, so it along with the bleak atmosphere did an excellent job of immersing me in the character, even when there is relatively little "narrative" to speak of.
the second half is the adrenaline shot by comparison, but even saying like that makes it sound too "fun" (though it might say something about me that i think this game is more fun than the short amount of the friends of ringo ishikawa i played). it's numbing, in a word. not as hard as its been made out to be imo but definitely not easy either, there is the initial hurdle of feeling out the combat to get over but once you've become accustomed to the flow of enemies, keeping your left and right flanks in check and sensing when it's time to get another gun...you start to feel like a death automaton. the excitement isn't gonna come and you'll have to make peace with that.
if i had to find a fault, it might overstay its welcome a little towards that end, i think the point could've been came across just as well with a level or possibly even two cut, but i still greatly enjoyed this. i don't think ringo can beat the atmosphere of arrest, but i'm interested enough in its greater focus on bonds between boys with this kind of evocativeness going for it to give it a fairer shot now. playing a level or two of this on nights when you can't sleep is ideal.
WHEN WHAT USED TO EXCITE YOU DOES NOT, LIKE YOU'VE USED UP ALL YOUR ALLOWANCE OF EXPERIENCE
This is a game about a guy who's bored senseless with everything. The action is hypnotic rather than exciting, the activities in-between are merely ways to pass time. There's every chance you'll get nothing out of this. I thought it was beautiful.
At the start you have to choose a date in November to circle on a calendar, and the game takes place in the couple of weeks running up to that date. My birthday is in November, so I picked that, and you can probably guess what happens when you get there.
Also it's rock hard.
Pick it up if you see it cheap, it's an experience.
This is a game about a guy who's bored senseless with everything. The action is hypnotic rather than exciting, the activities in-between are merely ways to pass time. There's every chance you'll get nothing out of this. I thought it was beautiful.
At the start you have to choose a date in November to circle on a calendar, and the game takes place in the couple of weeks running up to that date. My birthday is in November, so I picked that, and you can probably guess what happens when you get there.
Also it's rock hard.
Pick it up if you see it cheap, it's an experience.