[SOUL HACKERS 2, HONKAI: STAR RAIL, THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TEARS OF THE KINGDOM] - CONTENTSLOP


One of the things I've decided to internalize for the new year is to move away from the term "media"; a bit of an empty blanket statement, technically correct but functionally vapid. Anything can be "media", something we all play or read or write, but games don't stop at the moment of interaction, but what separates content or media from art is how it's able to transmit itself and become a part of you. The three titles mentioned here are incapable of surpassing that, being vapid experiences living off of its own unearned notoriety. I struggle to call these "art" even as I try to internalize it. Soul Hackers 2 takes a legacy series spun off from Megami Tensei, being closely interntwined with the Persona series while also placing emphasis on the demons, and decides to take three steps back by spinning its point of connection to simply be "cyberpunk", and all other aspects of its identity overwritten for mass appeal that falls short by its own inability to be proper art.


Honkai: Star Rail loves to pretend that it is a "real game" wearing the skin of JRPG seried like the Trails series, but one look at its structure and writing reveals the demon of babylon in its DNA: an extremely predatory gacha requiring heavy grinding and commitment to advance its lackluster story, made to push these limited characters and their (lack of) charm on you, charming you in order to obtain them in its gambling surrounded by masturbatory writing composed exclusively of surface level Leo DiCaprio Point segments. You like Fight Club? MiHoYo sure does!


Tears of the Kingdom fails as a sequel to Breath of the Wild to enchant the player, relying entirely on a one-trick pony of its physics engine to build upon all of its puzzles and sense of creation and wonder, yet its attitude to fall back on a classic fight against Ganondorf for its story with an abysmal structure that fails to hook the player means that the journey feels less than the sum of its parts. With Breath of the Wild, the player is enchanted by its idyllic atmosphere, but Tears of the Kingdom fails to persist because it wants its cake, and to eat it too.

[THE ENTIRE TOWELKET SERIES, FEAR & HUNGER, HAT WORLD - NEW TESTAMENT] - ARTS AND CRAFT


Isn't it neat how a little engine called RPGMaker can herald such a creative tour de force of a wild variety of genres? Even in its multiple constraints, the capability of it has created such a large variety of auteur-driven works that the very engine itself is its own little subgenre of games as art. Kanao's Towelket series feels the most proper "arts and craft", having its series be of such reused assets reorganized and reimagined from one to another. Is Towelket a space opera? Is it a feminist-driven work? Is it a horror game? Is it a buddhist folk tale? What or who are we to define Towelket as a series with such terms when it embraces its evolution, taking our understanding of it and changing it with each consecutive game, both as an overarching story and as an overarching array of works of art by Kanao.


Fear & Hunger ad well feels like a mishmash of aspects glued together to create its own mythos, replicating a strong survival-horror atmosphere characterized by the Silent Hill games and sewed together by its middle ages Berserk influences and Dark Souls difficulty, tension, and level design. For this game to have defined such a strong identity speaks to the developer's expert sense of game design, being able to ignore how much it wears its influences on its sleeve becahse the body's designs is far more than the sum of its parts.


And Hat World - New Testsment also shines by how pure of an "RPGMaker RPG" it is, taking clear inspiration from the SaGa series and Touhou in how it approaches its design in its world, its characters, and its game design. To be able to see such inspirations to the degree of being a debatable "ripoff", but being able to create an identity distinct from the sum of its parts is what makes the RPGMaker game feel distinct for my first proper dive into it.

[DODONPACHI RESSURECTION, MUSHIHIMESAMA, IKARUGA, STELLAVANITY, KATAMARI DAMACY REROLL] - DOCTOR CAVE, OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE CARNAGE


I only played Galaga before I started playing danmaku before today, but wow was I not prepared for going from it years ago to Mushihimesama and the rest of the games I played this year; STGs, danmaku, or whatever else you'd call them have been a deep blind spot for me, being something I've never really chosen to indulge myself as I always marked it as "not for me". Little did I know that I just played shit ones beforehand like two stages of EoSD, and was also just not as equipped to deal with the challenges they brought on. But being eased in by Mushihimesama's simple shot patterns and exquisite aesthetical, insect-like design created the hook for me to understand these games, only to be hammered in by Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu, especially Black Label stitching together the power fantasy appeal of a one-man army and the challenges imbued with it, while its strong art design and impeccable soundtrack helped for me to become one with my ship and embrace carnage.


The same story goes for Katamari Damacy, a game I was aware of but not cognizant of to a degree of my thirst to play it existing until recently, where my friend's love of the game nudged me to obtain it; and while Cave's entries of tough-as-nails shooters and Namco's momentum puzzle levels feel as far as they could be, both are capable of tapping into a zen state of senseless carnage; as I became one with the katamari did the lives of those I rolled for my cause faded into the sounds of Que Sera Sera and the euphoric feeling of constant progress and growth.

[THE ENTIRE TOUHOU SERIES AND SOME FANGAMES] - GAY PEOPLE BE LIKE


ZUN's little series of massively influential danmaku games are the sort of second part to my previous section, being the games that trained me more into understanding danmaku, but more important here is not the games themselves as games but the series and world that ZUN has cultivated, becoming a titan of the doujin circles, becoming wedges for creators to flex their muscles while using such a blank state yet defined world as their canvas. I didn't only play the main Touhou series this year with some side games; I listened to the ZUN Music Collections and read their stories. I read all of the manga; Lotus Eaters, Foul Detective Satori, the Bougetsushou collection of works. I played these fan games such as Artificial Dream in Arcadia and gave games such as Sengoku Gensokyo a shot. I've immersed myself into Zounose's doujins, and even bought and played 19 on release! All of this is to demonstrate my immense respect to ZUN as a creator and as an individual; a man defined by such a distaste of contemporary capitalism, weaving his mythological, historical, and pop culture references into a setting defined by its malleability. Of my ever-growing love of auteurs in games does ZUN truly feel like one overshadowed by Touhou's reputation of hey its C⁹rno woahhhh as well as fans intentionally downplaying Touhou's depth as a series; and I can't blame them! So much of what I take as analysis is because I'm surrounded by people whose love of Touhou is because of their knowledge of japanese and their ability to be able to accurately read the text and his interviews, and to be able to understand him, his history, his politics, and his tastes.

[ATELIER SOPHIE, ATELIER FIRIS, CRYMACHINA, MAX PAYNE, ALAN WAKE] - JANK IS GOD


Look at these FUCKING NERDS who believe in "polish" and "QA" and "UX"; frauds who live and breathe by moving in grass and taking mathematical points off if the grass doesn't move 100% accurately to reality when the bizarre defines memorability. Why would you ever actually want a game that controls exactly like real life? Do you lack the soul of a rockstar, unwilling to abandon the standard to embrace art with edges? Pussies like YOU should play some Atelier; one of Gust's most smartly handled series, laying upon a strong reuse of assets and concepts to be able to take that inherent rough edge to its gameplay and iterate some truly creative systems; Firis being my main example. An exceedingly well-created open world game as it uses a similar zone system to its previous entries and discards the hub-style gameplay where you expand from a central town, rather taking that very journey into a long-term process to become a proper alchemist. Firis is rough; it can look either extremely good or terribly, with some weak combat and not the best style of alchemy the series has had. But Firis is memorable; it is excellent in its faults and in its balls to stick to its incredibly ingenious style of open-world, open-narrative gameplay that to this day is unique!


This isn't just Firis but edge to design gives things its own identity; Max Payne is a classic for its gameplay, adapting that John Woo/Matrix style of slo-mo into proper gameplay, but its cheesy, shoe-string budget making this small team act out its own mythos creates a strong charm! Alan Wake retrofitting itself into a linear style gives that TV series-esque direction a much stronger pop, with its lackluster gunplay but use of a pointer dynamic creating a methodical style of resource management; it's simple to think and execute! Jank is god: without that god, what do games have in variety?

[CROSS CHANNEL, TOKYO NECRO] - VISUAL NOVELS ARE BETTER THAN YOUR FAVORITE GENRE


So in my attempt to be a narcissist I have to parrot that I actually think visual novels are #deep and that these works are way better than that Final FantaZZZy or Dragon SNOOZE garbage; I have superior taste and none of you could ever hope to compare about how visual novels are better!


Jokes aside however I didn't do much this year for visual novels other than these two, but both feel right for what I've felt is the general feel of this year while also being excellent in their own rights. Cross Channel was a bit of a myth for me; an untranslateable work of endless praise, from machine translated garbage to an unmedicated heap of delusions, all to our favorite fan translator, ixrec!


Needless to say that I agree with the hype; Tanaka Romeo deserves all the praise he recieves and also deserves a good translation; so much of Cross Channel feels like the ideal of a galge subversion with the edge of a perfect approach towards neurodivergence and one of the strongest protagonists in the medium.


On the opposite spectrum is Tokyo Necro. While Cross Channel is an amazing subversion made off of a very flimsy and shoestring production, Tokyo Necro is perhaps one of the highest-effort works Nitro+ has developed; and while most people define them by their shock value, Necro understands its own legacy better than its detractors, returning to that downer, sci-fi work aesthetic with an emphasis on martial arts linked to that timeframe; think Gun-Fu like in Equilibrium, a movie that Gen Urobuchi wrote fanservice about! It embraces that while also its more contemporary queer angle and a much happier ending, while also having cutting-edge 3D rendered graphics for its combat. It's an impressive work that accurately celebrates its history and marks a new age for Nitro+'s next body of work.

[LITTLE GOODY TWO SHOES, ALAN WAKE II] - ART IS LIFE


Thank god for the concept of art direction but perhaps its time to call it wraps as it's clearly peaked, and in two distinct ways as well! A small little context to this part; I made my GotY selection back when it originally released, with me having played LGTS before AW2 at that point. As I played Alan Wake I had to heavily debate to myself: which style do I think edges out? Both are excellent, and I think perhaps, instead of choosing one, I'd much rather love to talk about how both excel.


Alan Wake 2 is Remedy and Sam Lake's newest game, a sequel 13 years in the making, and it marks that studio's true peak. It is an excellent game graphically; faces are perfectly detailed, allowing a wide variety of facial expressions without feeling as awkward as Control's did when zoomed in; environments are vibrant, displaying a wide variety of colors fitting to each setting and making every locale distinct purely through color palette while still portraying graphical fidelity. Its use of real-life sections, interwoven with the game is done excellently; they are well directed and gripping, and catching a section in the wild is forever appreciated, be it a Koskela Brothers commercial of comedic regard or a section where Alan rants about his creative process! The way these scenes are built upon constantly and flipped on its head, leaving you with very little time to digest the ever growing complexity is astoundingly well-directed! So much of Alan Wake 2 is a representation of how Remedy has truly done their golden child, and done it justice!


AstralShift's Little Goody Two Shoes is graphically impressive NOT because of its graphical fidelity and impressive use of live-action but in how proudly it is to feel so authentic to its 80s shoujo aesthetics while still having a cohesion between a variety of art styles! Every single asset of LGTS is masterfully drawn with leagues of passion behind it, such as the backgrounds being made with paint in real life! To play LGTS is to be constantly impressed with how beautiful it is in every frame, to feel that passion for a bygone era of anime reborn in a frankenstein of authentic art styles and "modern" game design, reminiscent of RPGmaker games. Both of these games breathe life into already excellent works of art, making their narratives shine even harder, their characters to pop and the experience of living through these works even more memorable.

[LABYRINTH OF GALLERIA]


I already wrote a review on this game; I think everyone who knows me knows how much I adore this game, how much of it speaks to me and my tastes. It is an impressive feat of dungeon design, both in general game design and pacing but also in pure cohesion with story. It is an expertly made team builder with an immense variety of classes. It is tough as shit. And more than anything is Labyrinth of Galleria one of the game industry's most ambitious stories, talking about art, of modern queer struggles, of love and pain. So much of this game feels written in its blood of a game suffering in its own developmental issue, where each line of dialogue about the struggle of creation feels as if it was typed with the pain of passion carried through years of hardship. Labyrinth of Galleria invites you to share in that pain and to see how much you really value love. Do you value it enough to struggle through this game's sheer difficulty? Do you truly think games are art? Then feel the pain of that very development, of the struggles that come from shipping a game through the hundred hours you'll spend in the dungeons.


And by the end, that love that persists inside you sprouts to a perfect ending full of love! The struggle is worth it! That passion is worth the years of pain! To make art justifies itself! Labyrinth of Galleria wants you to suffer, but behind the layers, its core is of love! It loves art and it loves life, and it loves to have been created in strife, and it loves that you as a player have struggled to reach that core, to hope that very story, that struggle lives in your heart forevermore. And it lives on in me, as life goes on, I can think of Labyrinth of Galleria and be astounded that such a work of art has been made, and that I was able to experience it to its fullest.