CasteHappy
19 reviews liked by CasteHappy
Pokémon Red Version
1996
Originally posted on my blog years ago, edited with just the parts that talk about Pokémon Red. Note that since this was written a while ago, it doesn't fully reflect how I write nowadays or think about the game today, although I stand by the general idea: https://xatornova.blogspot.com/2018/06/pokemon-toy-adventure.html
Pokémon was born out of Satoshi Tajiri's will of sharing his experiences as a child to search for, capture and collect insects outside his home, alongside the curiosity to see the creatures and the ingenuity to get them. To him, the games of his era could be better, which is why this fixation could help him to reach the desired level of sophistication. Many elements are in fact coherent with this approach: The focus on capturing wild enemies, their differences with domesticated creatures, random encounters exclusively on wild areas, the intent of making each creature unique in elemental affinity and moveset, the turn-based combat as a representation of giving orders to your creatures, etc. To achieve this, Pokémon needs a world where the player can navigate through, explore and discover. Game Freak would take for this the established structure by Dragon Quest as a stat progression through accumulation of experience points to gather levels alongside a lineal advance led by a narrative, and the one by SaGa as a progression of stats depending on the player's decisions during battle. The problem arises because of this: By using established mechanics, the developers didn't take into account how they diminish the creatures' importance and destroy the interest on its world, failing thus in its communicative intent.
Japanese role-playing games that are inheritors of Dragon Quest's formula allow to increase stats according to the amount of defeated enemies, and the issue shared by them is the possibility of confronting enemies indifinitely without penalization, since it's possible to position oneself near a healing spot while obtaining experience. The consequence of this is that by accumulating enough levels, enemies stop being a menace due to the player having stats so high that the opponent cannot compete with them. Due to this procedure being allowed to the player as an unlimited free resource, its presence, regardless that it's optional, is enough for the player to unconsciously lose respect to the given world, since how to get through the world becomes solvable and predictable. A lot of games attempt to mitigate this issue due to status effects that are hard to compensate, instant death, reduction of experience gain in high levels, or adjustment of enemy parameters to the player's level.
Pokémon Red doesn't just lack something to prevent this, but it worsens it by allowing the player to heal without fee and save anywhere, and by adding the stat progression system inherited from SaGa to represent the superiority of trained creatures against wild Pokémon. By making an enemy faint, one obtains stat experience according to the type of enemy that increases a certain stat. Since these points are added directly to the current stats, and enemies lack access to them, there's a considerable superiority from the player above other trainers even on the same level. There could be a nuance in customization by deciding which stats to increase, but in Pokémon Red this doesn't happen since it's possible to get the highest possible stats on every stat, as well as a lack of transparence of the system to the player, and finally because there isn't a single enemy in the game that poses a threat enough for such customization to be relevant. Not even the final bosses, alluded by the game as the most powerful foes, are saved from this because their creatures' movesets are barely even designed, with choices as rancid as using basic moves or without type variety to exploit elemental effectiveness. For example, the final boss's Arcanine has Ember, the weakest Fire-type move, and his Rhydon has Fury Attack, a weak move that doesn't even have the Pokémon's same type and is more proper of non-evolved enemies from the start of the game than an endgame boss.
In addition to these elements, the player has the capability to use items during combat, from healing items or reviving items to statboosters of cumulative effect to four times the original value. Here opens itself another gap between player and opponent, since the few enemies that have access to items are just limited to healing, have them in very little amount, and they use it with a very deficient artificial intelligence. Since these items are available in shops to be bought repeatedly, with a maximum of ninety-nine of the same type in the inventory, the player's creatures become invincible tanks, capable of eliminating opponents in one or two hits, regardless of the type of their move, except for total immunity to a certain type.
These two qualities promote a playstyle focused on raising few, if not just one Pokémon, generally the one received at the start, and because of this, the relevance of other creatures is offset. If just one monster is needed to complete the game, regardless whom the player uses and who the opponent is, what purpose does serve then to differentiate the fauna beyond cosmetics if they work similarly on a mechanical level? What's the practical incentive to gather different Pokémon beyond their appearance? At the end, the sentiment left by the game is to be looking for collectible cards instead of searching and catching different beings, and in a game where its fauna is in the foreground, it's disappointing that their importance is superficial. Pokémon Red attempts to lessen this issue by limiting the progress with artificial barriers, only solvable with special moves to lighten dark areas, pushing boulders, cutting trees or swimming in the ocean, thus forcing the player to look for creatures who can learn these moves.
This approach only turns looking for Pokémon into a task, a forced process in an artificial way instead of being born out of one's own interest, but above all, it leads to the second big issue: The implausibility of the world due to its eagerness to be servile to the player. The aforementioned elements contribute to this, since allowing the player advantages that the enemy doesn't have suggests an environment to the protagonist's mercy, but this is increased by how much the player is handholded through the game. Since the cities are visited in a specific order, the path is structured as a hallway, and the progress is limited by arbitrary barriers that are only unlocked once the player defeats a boss, the development of the player isn't natural, and one is conscious of a repetitive sequence of defeating the level boss an accessing the next level, turning the perception of its world in less the natural habitat that it wants to suggest and more a series of levels designed for the player not to be lost into.
Game Freak didn't have much confidence when creating Pokémon Red, since a lot of the planned content was cut, and this game is plagued by programming errors that can render the cartridge unusable, which is why it's no exaggeration to call it an unfinished game. The developers were conscious of the limitations of this system, and because of it the sequels would complete the original idea or adjust the formula to attempt to lessen its gravity.
[...]
In spite of the lackluster design and programming errors, it's precisely the first generation the one closer to [its] ideal and the one that expresses it with most strength. It's probably unintentional and a result of technical limitations, but the first generation is the only one that abstains of any forced explanations, without tutorials, without a type chart, or even an explanation of what moves can do, relying exclusively on the player discovering by themself the innate effectiveness of their creatures. It's also the one whose simple story is more fitting to the innocent perspective of a child that runs away from home and discovers the world, in contrast to the plots filled with ideological, apocalyptic conspiracies that flood the series from Ruby onwards, which regardless of their quality, dillute the approach of the personal journey by relegating the player to a secondary role [...]. Finally, because in spite of its artificiality, it's the game that's built the most around mystery (one of the most positive of Dragon Quest's influences), with the Victory Road accessible from the start, but impenetrable without badges, with the wonder of what's there beyond with each unlocked limit the more one ascends to the summit, and the most powerful creatures are optional, barely even alluded by other characters, and hidden in the depths of the earth (Zapdos, Articuno, Mewtwo), or behind numerous levels of training (Dragonite), without forced events, and the merit on obtaining them is on the player. It's an effect that its remake cannot simulate properly due to the additions from the third generation that removes some of these aspects [to "fix" and "update" the game]. Unfortunately, this isn't worth much and doesn't save the game because it vanishes quickly, and relies exclusively on the game being unbeknown to the player. Once the inner workings of the game are deciphered and the unbalance is noticeable, the mystery disappears. Precisely because of this, Pokémon has been uncapable of replicating the social phenomenon that it was back in the 90s, when rumours about what was possible or not in the games ran rampant, and legends about hidden mythical creatures like Mew were in the word of mouth.
A notoriously deficient combat system alongside a linear navigation in hallways in a game where fighting and exploration is the main action results in an anodyne experience, but one that could be compensated by other aspects. However, that these two aspects undermine Tajiri's original intent drastically results in a failure. [...]
When one starts a Pokémon playthrough for the first time, a Pokémon expert welcomes us with the promise of a legend unfolding upon our path in a world filled with dreams and adventures. Though nowadays, coming back to the games as an adult makes one realize about the unfulfilled promise, and that the adventure that took over our dreams isn't more than a toy. A simple plastic trinket.
Pokémon was born out of Satoshi Tajiri's will of sharing his experiences as a child to search for, capture and collect insects outside his home, alongside the curiosity to see the creatures and the ingenuity to get them. To him, the games of his era could be better, which is why this fixation could help him to reach the desired level of sophistication. Many elements are in fact coherent with this approach: The focus on capturing wild enemies, their differences with domesticated creatures, random encounters exclusively on wild areas, the intent of making each creature unique in elemental affinity and moveset, the turn-based combat as a representation of giving orders to your creatures, etc. To achieve this, Pokémon needs a world where the player can navigate through, explore and discover. Game Freak would take for this the established structure by Dragon Quest as a stat progression through accumulation of experience points to gather levels alongside a lineal advance led by a narrative, and the one by SaGa as a progression of stats depending on the player's decisions during battle. The problem arises because of this: By using established mechanics, the developers didn't take into account how they diminish the creatures' importance and destroy the interest on its world, failing thus in its communicative intent.
Japanese role-playing games that are inheritors of Dragon Quest's formula allow to increase stats according to the amount of defeated enemies, and the issue shared by them is the possibility of confronting enemies indifinitely without penalization, since it's possible to position oneself near a healing spot while obtaining experience. The consequence of this is that by accumulating enough levels, enemies stop being a menace due to the player having stats so high that the opponent cannot compete with them. Due to this procedure being allowed to the player as an unlimited free resource, its presence, regardless that it's optional, is enough for the player to unconsciously lose respect to the given world, since how to get through the world becomes solvable and predictable. A lot of games attempt to mitigate this issue due to status effects that are hard to compensate, instant death, reduction of experience gain in high levels, or adjustment of enemy parameters to the player's level.
Pokémon Red doesn't just lack something to prevent this, but it worsens it by allowing the player to heal without fee and save anywhere, and by adding the stat progression system inherited from SaGa to represent the superiority of trained creatures against wild Pokémon. By making an enemy faint, one obtains stat experience according to the type of enemy that increases a certain stat. Since these points are added directly to the current stats, and enemies lack access to them, there's a considerable superiority from the player above other trainers even on the same level. There could be a nuance in customization by deciding which stats to increase, but in Pokémon Red this doesn't happen since it's possible to get the highest possible stats on every stat, as well as a lack of transparence of the system to the player, and finally because there isn't a single enemy in the game that poses a threat enough for such customization to be relevant. Not even the final bosses, alluded by the game as the most powerful foes, are saved from this because their creatures' movesets are barely even designed, with choices as rancid as using basic moves or without type variety to exploit elemental effectiveness. For example, the final boss's Arcanine has Ember, the weakest Fire-type move, and his Rhydon has Fury Attack, a weak move that doesn't even have the Pokémon's same type and is more proper of non-evolved enemies from the start of the game than an endgame boss.
In addition to these elements, the player has the capability to use items during combat, from healing items or reviving items to statboosters of cumulative effect to four times the original value. Here opens itself another gap between player and opponent, since the few enemies that have access to items are just limited to healing, have them in very little amount, and they use it with a very deficient artificial intelligence. Since these items are available in shops to be bought repeatedly, with a maximum of ninety-nine of the same type in the inventory, the player's creatures become invincible tanks, capable of eliminating opponents in one or two hits, regardless of the type of their move, except for total immunity to a certain type.
These two qualities promote a playstyle focused on raising few, if not just one Pokémon, generally the one received at the start, and because of this, the relevance of other creatures is offset. If just one monster is needed to complete the game, regardless whom the player uses and who the opponent is, what purpose does serve then to differentiate the fauna beyond cosmetics if they work similarly on a mechanical level? What's the practical incentive to gather different Pokémon beyond their appearance? At the end, the sentiment left by the game is to be looking for collectible cards instead of searching and catching different beings, and in a game where its fauna is in the foreground, it's disappointing that their importance is superficial. Pokémon Red attempts to lessen this issue by limiting the progress with artificial barriers, only solvable with special moves to lighten dark areas, pushing boulders, cutting trees or swimming in the ocean, thus forcing the player to look for creatures who can learn these moves.
This approach only turns looking for Pokémon into a task, a forced process in an artificial way instead of being born out of one's own interest, but above all, it leads to the second big issue: The implausibility of the world due to its eagerness to be servile to the player. The aforementioned elements contribute to this, since allowing the player advantages that the enemy doesn't have suggests an environment to the protagonist's mercy, but this is increased by how much the player is handholded through the game. Since the cities are visited in a specific order, the path is structured as a hallway, and the progress is limited by arbitrary barriers that are only unlocked once the player defeats a boss, the development of the player isn't natural, and one is conscious of a repetitive sequence of defeating the level boss an accessing the next level, turning the perception of its world in less the natural habitat that it wants to suggest and more a series of levels designed for the player not to be lost into.
Game Freak didn't have much confidence when creating Pokémon Red, since a lot of the planned content was cut, and this game is plagued by programming errors that can render the cartridge unusable, which is why it's no exaggeration to call it an unfinished game. The developers were conscious of the limitations of this system, and because of it the sequels would complete the original idea or adjust the formula to attempt to lessen its gravity.
[...]
In spite of the lackluster design and programming errors, it's precisely the first generation the one closer to [its] ideal and the one that expresses it with most strength. It's probably unintentional and a result of technical limitations, but the first generation is the only one that abstains of any forced explanations, without tutorials, without a type chart, or even an explanation of what moves can do, relying exclusively on the player discovering by themself the innate effectiveness of their creatures. It's also the one whose simple story is more fitting to the innocent perspective of a child that runs away from home and discovers the world, in contrast to the plots filled with ideological, apocalyptic conspiracies that flood the series from Ruby onwards, which regardless of their quality, dillute the approach of the personal journey by relegating the player to a secondary role [...]. Finally, because in spite of its artificiality, it's the game that's built the most around mystery (one of the most positive of Dragon Quest's influences), with the Victory Road accessible from the start, but impenetrable without badges, with the wonder of what's there beyond with each unlocked limit the more one ascends to the summit, and the most powerful creatures are optional, barely even alluded by other characters, and hidden in the depths of the earth (Zapdos, Articuno, Mewtwo), or behind numerous levels of training (Dragonite), without forced events, and the merit on obtaining them is on the player. It's an effect that its remake cannot simulate properly due to the additions from the third generation that removes some of these aspects [to "fix" and "update" the game]. Unfortunately, this isn't worth much and doesn't save the game because it vanishes quickly, and relies exclusively on the game being unbeknown to the player. Once the inner workings of the game are deciphered and the unbalance is noticeable, the mystery disappears. Precisely because of this, Pokémon has been uncapable of replicating the social phenomenon that it was back in the 90s, when rumours about what was possible or not in the games ran rampant, and legends about hidden mythical creatures like Mew were in the word of mouth.
A notoriously deficient combat system alongside a linear navigation in hallways in a game where fighting and exploration is the main action results in an anodyne experience, but one that could be compensated by other aspects. However, that these two aspects undermine Tajiri's original intent drastically results in a failure. [...]
When one starts a Pokémon playthrough for the first time, a Pokémon expert welcomes us with the promise of a legend unfolding upon our path in a world filled with dreams and adventures. Though nowadays, coming back to the games as an adult makes one realize about the unfulfilled promise, and that the adventure that took over our dreams isn't more than a toy. A simple plastic trinket.
Slow Damage
2021
This review contains spoilers
TW: Abuso sexual, autolesión, pedofilia, violencia intrafamiliar.
Se dice que hay historias que están esperándote, escritas para ti, capaces de hablarte a un nivel tan íntimo que parecieran redactadas por aquella persona que más te conoce en el mundo.
Esto, sin embargo, no es real, pero no quita que avive un punto romántico que hace del arte algo tan digno de vivirse. Especialmente si, como en el caso de Slow Damage, se trata de arte sobre el arte.
Lastimosamente, de igual forma a cómo opera Towa con sus sujetos de estudio, esto último que dije no es más que una pequeña mentira. Slow Damage es sobre muchas cosas, pero aunque se trate de la vida de un pintor, no es en lo absoluto sobre la experiencia artística.
El arte para Fuuchi Kabura, siendo ella escritora y directora, parece estar supeditado a la experiencia social. Es un mecanismo de unión y contacto, una conversación entre víctimas. Un último resquicio de pulsiones y pasiones que se concretan en un eterno chorreo de pintura que simula el acto sexual. En la práctica, para Towa, no hay diferencia entre morir rociado por sus pinceles, que hacerlo entre fluidos seminales.
La estructura de rutas de la novela visual se perfiló, casi desde sus orígenes, como una capacidad de elección premeditada ya hacia el usuario. ¿Qué opción romántica buscas? ¿Sobre qué personaje quisieras saber más? Esta última formulación es la que le interesa a Slow Damage, desentendiéndose de las decisiones y premiando el escarbar en las entrañas psicológicas de su protagonista: se trata de obsesionarse con el otro, y avanzar hasta sus heridas.
Será una historia sobre cicatrices, sobre quemaduras, sobre flores que recuerdan a cortadas, sobre querubines y la obsesión con los niños, sobre el amor filial y el amor traumático. Cada capítulo se centra en un sujeto distinto, y es misión de Towa, y por consecuencia de la jugadora, descubrir qué esconde dicho personaje.
Slow Damage baila al ritmo de una historia de detectives, y convierte al sexo en una conversación sobre las parafilias. No utilizamos evidencia, sino que atendemos al aura y las miradas para desnudar al otro, descubrir sus fijaciones y permitirle al animal que reside en cada ser humano tomar control momentáneo sobre su cuerpo. Y, finalmente, culminar aquella relación en una pintura.
El sexo es algo extraño para mí. No es que me importe, y eso corre para ambos lados: no lo busco, pero tampoco me desagrada, al menos no intrínsecamente. Puedo tenerlo si con ello configuro contacto, logro expresar o recibir cariño de la persona con la que lo esté haciendo. En resumen, apenas me interesa. ¿Pero a Towa? A él sí.
Las autolesiones me suponen un posicionamiento extraño. Por un lado, son una oportunidad de inducirme placer, pero no uno que se busque activamente, sino un paliativo que aparece para drenar otra clase de dolores, mucho más íntimos y psíquicos, a los que en principio pareciera que la carne propia no logra procesar. Hoy en día busco evitarlo, pero como experiencia es algo que ha permeado parte de mi identidad, y sigo sufriendo sus consecuencias. Fuera de allí, la mayor parte del tiempo, no es algo en lo que piense, y apenas me interesa. ¿Pero a Towa? A él sí.
La masculinidad es una trampa conceptual que pone en tensión la relación con mi identidad. En varias ocasiones ha sido una fantasía arrojada al aire, algo que nunca nadie podrá capturar, y que encapsula un ideal platónico muy infantil, como lo sería experimentar la vida desde la óptica de un asustado, solitario y profundo artista que está roto por dentro. Sin embargo, ser hombre es una posibilidad que apenas me interesa explorar. ¿Pero a Towa? A él sí le importa.
Las cicatrices son una forma de arte corporal. Marcas estéticas que atestiguan un momento doliente en la vida del individuo. Pero a diferencia de la pieza artística, que eventualmente se independiza transformándose en objeto, la marca corpórea se vuelve social.
Como ya nos enseñó Cindy Sherman, la crueldad humana no necesita representarse, pues se percibe como innata en la experimentación. La performance, para mí la forma más elevada de arte político, es una exhibición constante del cuerpo, una sumisión a la realidad donde a modo de protesta te permites ser vulnerada.
Esto, sin embargo, no es más que la perspectiva interna del corte. Desde el exterior, desde las personas que te adoran, cada parte accidentada de tu físico es una herida por la que alguien se siente responsable. Y duele.
Towa busca el sexo del mismo modo en que busca ser agredido físicamente. Porque el momento de la eyaculación es lo más cercano a la violencia que existe, y la pasividad de quien recibe no es por disfrute, sino porque es la posición perfecta para observar las demostraciones de placer más intensas del resto. Siempre es más rápido y más sencillo dejar que los demás se encarguen de hacer lo que quieren, un espacio donde quien hace el trabajo es quien se exhibe por cómo es. Y aquello aplica tanto a la sexualidad como al arte.
Cada ruta, como cabría esperar, recoge una serie de temas propios. Las hay historias que se enfocan en el arte corporal desde la óptica del tatuaje, visto como una contradicción entre el cuerpo dado (el nexo con el progenitor) y el estilo que uno quiere imprimir en sí mismo. Una latencia interna que observa en las actitudes femeninas una desaprobación no concluida, y cuya resolución parece evidente: encontrar una definición de la masculinidad que permita moldear la expresión propia. Y en un entorno decadente, sucio y dirigido por la yakuza, la masculinidad es algo que solo se obtiene sufriendo. Mutilando el cuerpo en combate.
Más narraciones: el ser cuidador nato, obsesionado con mostrarte como un padre protector que lleve un registro milimétrico de las cicatrices ajenas. El anhelo traumático de la infancia hace evidente acto de presencia, con un pasado olvidado que debe ocultarse a los hijos a toda costa. Una obstinación que no es raro encuentre consuelo en la figura materna, la cual es perfectamente replicable por hombres, que se traduce en la tangente de la presentación (a través de la vestimenta y el maquillaje), que hacen del travestismo una oportunidad para reconectar con los difuntos. Con lo irresuelto.
Towa, sin embargo, es ignorante de dos traumas distintos que han marcado su vida. La tercera ruta se centra en la temprana adultez, época en la que ya perfilaba su futuro como pintor, y por lo mismo, recoge en el lienzo un espacio para pintar heridas y sangre. ¿Pero cuál lienzo? Su propio cuerpo, violentado.
Su ojo perdido procede de un tiempo que no logra decidirse entre la calma y la tensión. La vida callejera, donde todos son enemigos, pero con la alegría aflorando entre hombres que se protegen mutuamente. Al final del día, quienes luchan a mano limpia solo les acaba esperando el mismo final: una vida breve donde cada parte del cuerpo que se pierde se contabiliza como un pequeño precio a pagar, a modo de una deuda siempre acumulándose, mientras intentas mantenerte en torno a la gente que te trae paz.
En la vida real no hay decisiones, solo estilos para interactuar. Es por ello que Towa deambula por las calles recogiendo las tácticas discursivas de otros. Las personas nos influyen, aprendemos de ellas, y podemos aplicar su identidad en nosotras.
De repente, el telón se levanta y se revela un último cuento. El más extenso, el más doloroso. Un daño lento que por más tiempo recorrerá tu cuerpo.
El trauma existe, puede darse en cualquier momento de la vida. Sin embargo, los temores adultos de Towa no son ni remotamente comparables a los infantiles. En el pasado se esconde algo mucho peor, lo podrido que está allí en el cuerpo. Los pequeños gestos inconscientes de uno mismo proceden de un momento anterior, la vida misma de una es un engaño mientras se escapa de la crudeza del mundo.
Todas las demás formas en las que el cuerpo había sido modificado hasta ahora pasan a segundo plano: Slow Damage es, efectivamente, sobre los cortes, las cicatrices y las quemaduras.
Se dice que el mayor momento de empatía que puede vivir alguien es encontrándose con un cuerpo idéntico al propio. La vida habla a través de nuestro físico, y eventualmente toca separar el daño infligido (posesión del agresor) del cuerpo resultante (magullado, agredido, pero en última instancia propio). No somos el evento que nos dejó estas marcas, sino el cómo (y si) decidimos esconderlas.
En Slow Damage hay varios episodios, cada uno dedicado a algún personaje peculiar. Exploramos su psique, sus fisuras, negociamos a través del sexo y la mutilación conjunta, y finalmente pintamos un cuadro. Y sin embargo, ¿por qué hay una ruta verdadera? Porque Kabura, en última instancia, quiere decirnos algo, pero también busca que atravesemos otras formas de lidiar con el dolor.
Discutiblemente hay mejores maneras de afrontar el trauma, o como pronto que pudiesen ser más sanas. Pero eso no significa que los demás Towas, que enfocaron su vida de otro modo (quizá más tóxico, quizá más apático, quizá violento de cara a sus seres queridos, o quizá desinteresado totalmente de su bienestar) no pudiesen haber sucedido, o que no haya personas sufriéndolas de tal modo ahora mismo, en este dolido planeta.
Y puede que por ello su escritora, quizá oponiéndose a las tónicas decadentes de su mentor, nos muestra el peor escenario posible. Y al mismo tiempo, el único donde uno, al final del recorrido y mirando hacia atrás, puede finalmente reconocer que logró ser feliz.
Un Towa nuevo, el peor Towa, que no se deja cortar por los demás, sino que decide agredirse a sí mismo para conectar con el trauma. La amnesia, esa ambivalencia que te hace querer saber de ti, pero al mismo tiempo temerle a tu propio reflejo, marcan una vida que ha sido erradicada de la memoria.
La misma persona que es capaz de causarte el mayor de los daños posibles se transforma en quien por vez primera puede descubrirte que el placer sano existe. Alguien que te suscita curiosidad, pero esta vez no de manera morbosa. Alguien a quien amar de forma honesta, no para querer pintarle un cuadro.
La tragedia de la cicatriz es que revela que siempre hay algo más que lo que está a la vista. Lo que en cualquier otro escenario hubiese sido el terreno para invocar a ‘euphoria’, aquí desvelan el interés real de una historia: conocer la verdad.
El arte, los cuadros, jamás han sido “por el arte”, ni por el placer, ni por matar el tiempo. Para Towa fueron, durante muchos años y en muchas realidades distintas, la consumación de un estilo de persuasión. La verdad de un ser humano resguardada para siempre en paredes de pintura.
Y la última verdad del trauma es que este no es racional. Una opera alrededor suyo incluso sin proponérselo. Puede romperte, puede convertirte en alguien capaz de hacer daño. Y en el peor de los casos, al buscar aceptarlo, uno acaba agarrándose, con esas uñas que carcomen la piel y desgarran la carne, a los últimos resquicios de autonomía personal que todavía nos quedaba.
El trauma condiciona. Nos disminuye. Nos convierte en personas incapaces de vivir de un modo distinto al ya aprendido para soportarlo. E incluso si algún día se le logra dar un cierre, las pesadillas no desaparecen. Las sensaciones violentas trasgrediendo tu cuerpo ahí estarán. Inevitablemente, uno sigue sintiéndose como una carga.
La culpa del superviviente es real. Tras un evento traumático, uno se cree peor que previo a este. Es allí cuando el título finalmente cobra sentido. No se trata de lo tardado del momento en que te infliges dolor, ni del cómo las sensaciones recorren tu cuerpo. El daño es lento, porque avanza por dentro, allí donde no está a la vista, siendo a su vez íntimo y abyecto. Y se queda para siempre.
Cuando un abusador falla, sufre. Solo un humano es capaz de generar tal de nivel de dolor, y el arrepentimiento y la culpa son consecuencias esperables. Pero quienes realmente cargarán con la tragedia por el resto de sus vidas son las víctimas.
Slow Damage es una historia sobre muchas cosas. Sobre el acto de cortarse, el placer auto-concebido en el dolor, y la excitación sexual que puede nacer de allí. También sobre el dejarse agredir, sentir ese etéreo concepto bajo el nombre de masculinidad latir debajo de tu piel, y experimentar ese sufrimiento que, contra todo pronóstico, te hace sentir más vivo. Es sobre abuso, sobre secuestros, violaciones forzadas, y sobre esos momentos tan bajos que desearíamos nadie debiese atravesar. Es también sobre el amor, y las bifurcaciones que lo vuelven tóxico: enamorarte de un amigo, de un padre, de un hermano, y de tu abusador. Son realidades que suceden, demostraciones de que en el mundo, para bien o para mal, hay de todo.
Pero de lo que trata realmente, es sobre supervivientes de abuso sexual infantil aprendiendo a reconectar con la vida. Porque el mundo nos ha fallado, y sobre todo le ha fallado a los niños. Es normal sentir que no hay nada allá afuera que pueda compensar el infierno travestido como sociedad.
Slow Damage es un gesto de fe, una pequeña carta invitando a quienes, seguramente, sean las personas que más han sufrido en este planeta, para decirles que son válidas y pueden salir adelante. No necesitamos más retratos de víctimas de abuso pintando sus vidas como si fuese una tragedia que nadie debería vivir. Tus experiencias son válidas. Déjate querer. Permítete sobrevivir. Nunca deja de doler, pero eventualmente ya no es solo silencio.
Yo no estoy entre esas personas, y aun así, siento que había una historia allí, esperándome, aunque fuese para alguien más. Escrita para mí, aunque jamás se hubiese pensado en un caso como el mío. Con la capacidad de hablarme a un nivel tan íntimo, como si Kabura me conociese más que nadie. Y aquí seguirá, sin saber jamás que existo, pero no puedo sino, con la garganta apretada y la experiencia de haber aguantado el sexo, los fluidos y la sangre no consentidos, darle las gracias.
Merezco ser amade. Tú también, mereces ser amada. Jamás lo olvides: allá afuera, hay gente que te ama.
Se dice que hay historias que están esperándote, escritas para ti, capaces de hablarte a un nivel tan íntimo que parecieran redactadas por aquella persona que más te conoce en el mundo.
Esto, sin embargo, no es real, pero no quita que avive un punto romántico que hace del arte algo tan digno de vivirse. Especialmente si, como en el caso de Slow Damage, se trata de arte sobre el arte.
Lastimosamente, de igual forma a cómo opera Towa con sus sujetos de estudio, esto último que dije no es más que una pequeña mentira. Slow Damage es sobre muchas cosas, pero aunque se trate de la vida de un pintor, no es en lo absoluto sobre la experiencia artística.
El arte para Fuuchi Kabura, siendo ella escritora y directora, parece estar supeditado a la experiencia social. Es un mecanismo de unión y contacto, una conversación entre víctimas. Un último resquicio de pulsiones y pasiones que se concretan en un eterno chorreo de pintura que simula el acto sexual. En la práctica, para Towa, no hay diferencia entre morir rociado por sus pinceles, que hacerlo entre fluidos seminales.
La estructura de rutas de la novela visual se perfiló, casi desde sus orígenes, como una capacidad de elección premeditada ya hacia el usuario. ¿Qué opción romántica buscas? ¿Sobre qué personaje quisieras saber más? Esta última formulación es la que le interesa a Slow Damage, desentendiéndose de las decisiones y premiando el escarbar en las entrañas psicológicas de su protagonista: se trata de obsesionarse con el otro, y avanzar hasta sus heridas.
Será una historia sobre cicatrices, sobre quemaduras, sobre flores que recuerdan a cortadas, sobre querubines y la obsesión con los niños, sobre el amor filial y el amor traumático. Cada capítulo se centra en un sujeto distinto, y es misión de Towa, y por consecuencia de la jugadora, descubrir qué esconde dicho personaje.
Slow Damage baila al ritmo de una historia de detectives, y convierte al sexo en una conversación sobre las parafilias. No utilizamos evidencia, sino que atendemos al aura y las miradas para desnudar al otro, descubrir sus fijaciones y permitirle al animal que reside en cada ser humano tomar control momentáneo sobre su cuerpo. Y, finalmente, culminar aquella relación en una pintura.
El sexo es algo extraño para mí. No es que me importe, y eso corre para ambos lados: no lo busco, pero tampoco me desagrada, al menos no intrínsecamente. Puedo tenerlo si con ello configuro contacto, logro expresar o recibir cariño de la persona con la que lo esté haciendo. En resumen, apenas me interesa. ¿Pero a Towa? A él sí.
Las autolesiones me suponen un posicionamiento extraño. Por un lado, son una oportunidad de inducirme placer, pero no uno que se busque activamente, sino un paliativo que aparece para drenar otra clase de dolores, mucho más íntimos y psíquicos, a los que en principio pareciera que la carne propia no logra procesar. Hoy en día busco evitarlo, pero como experiencia es algo que ha permeado parte de mi identidad, y sigo sufriendo sus consecuencias. Fuera de allí, la mayor parte del tiempo, no es algo en lo que piense, y apenas me interesa. ¿Pero a Towa? A él sí.
La masculinidad es una trampa conceptual que pone en tensión la relación con mi identidad. En varias ocasiones ha sido una fantasía arrojada al aire, algo que nunca nadie podrá capturar, y que encapsula un ideal platónico muy infantil, como lo sería experimentar la vida desde la óptica de un asustado, solitario y profundo artista que está roto por dentro. Sin embargo, ser hombre es una posibilidad que apenas me interesa explorar. ¿Pero a Towa? A él sí le importa.
Las cicatrices son una forma de arte corporal. Marcas estéticas que atestiguan un momento doliente en la vida del individuo. Pero a diferencia de la pieza artística, que eventualmente se independiza transformándose en objeto, la marca corpórea se vuelve social.
Como ya nos enseñó Cindy Sherman, la crueldad humana no necesita representarse, pues se percibe como innata en la experimentación. La performance, para mí la forma más elevada de arte político, es una exhibición constante del cuerpo, una sumisión a la realidad donde a modo de protesta te permites ser vulnerada.
Esto, sin embargo, no es más que la perspectiva interna del corte. Desde el exterior, desde las personas que te adoran, cada parte accidentada de tu físico es una herida por la que alguien se siente responsable. Y duele.
Towa busca el sexo del mismo modo en que busca ser agredido físicamente. Porque el momento de la eyaculación es lo más cercano a la violencia que existe, y la pasividad de quien recibe no es por disfrute, sino porque es la posición perfecta para observar las demostraciones de placer más intensas del resto. Siempre es más rápido y más sencillo dejar que los demás se encarguen de hacer lo que quieren, un espacio donde quien hace el trabajo es quien se exhibe por cómo es. Y aquello aplica tanto a la sexualidad como al arte.
Cada ruta, como cabría esperar, recoge una serie de temas propios. Las hay historias que se enfocan en el arte corporal desde la óptica del tatuaje, visto como una contradicción entre el cuerpo dado (el nexo con el progenitor) y el estilo que uno quiere imprimir en sí mismo. Una latencia interna que observa en las actitudes femeninas una desaprobación no concluida, y cuya resolución parece evidente: encontrar una definición de la masculinidad que permita moldear la expresión propia. Y en un entorno decadente, sucio y dirigido por la yakuza, la masculinidad es algo que solo se obtiene sufriendo. Mutilando el cuerpo en combate.
Más narraciones: el ser cuidador nato, obsesionado con mostrarte como un padre protector que lleve un registro milimétrico de las cicatrices ajenas. El anhelo traumático de la infancia hace evidente acto de presencia, con un pasado olvidado que debe ocultarse a los hijos a toda costa. Una obstinación que no es raro encuentre consuelo en la figura materna, la cual es perfectamente replicable por hombres, que se traduce en la tangente de la presentación (a través de la vestimenta y el maquillaje), que hacen del travestismo una oportunidad para reconectar con los difuntos. Con lo irresuelto.
Towa, sin embargo, es ignorante de dos traumas distintos que han marcado su vida. La tercera ruta se centra en la temprana adultez, época en la que ya perfilaba su futuro como pintor, y por lo mismo, recoge en el lienzo un espacio para pintar heridas y sangre. ¿Pero cuál lienzo? Su propio cuerpo, violentado.
Su ojo perdido procede de un tiempo que no logra decidirse entre la calma y la tensión. La vida callejera, donde todos son enemigos, pero con la alegría aflorando entre hombres que se protegen mutuamente. Al final del día, quienes luchan a mano limpia solo les acaba esperando el mismo final: una vida breve donde cada parte del cuerpo que se pierde se contabiliza como un pequeño precio a pagar, a modo de una deuda siempre acumulándose, mientras intentas mantenerte en torno a la gente que te trae paz.
En la vida real no hay decisiones, solo estilos para interactuar. Es por ello que Towa deambula por las calles recogiendo las tácticas discursivas de otros. Las personas nos influyen, aprendemos de ellas, y podemos aplicar su identidad en nosotras.
De repente, el telón se levanta y se revela un último cuento. El más extenso, el más doloroso. Un daño lento que por más tiempo recorrerá tu cuerpo.
El trauma existe, puede darse en cualquier momento de la vida. Sin embargo, los temores adultos de Towa no son ni remotamente comparables a los infantiles. En el pasado se esconde algo mucho peor, lo podrido que está allí en el cuerpo. Los pequeños gestos inconscientes de uno mismo proceden de un momento anterior, la vida misma de una es un engaño mientras se escapa de la crudeza del mundo.
Todas las demás formas en las que el cuerpo había sido modificado hasta ahora pasan a segundo plano: Slow Damage es, efectivamente, sobre los cortes, las cicatrices y las quemaduras.
Se dice que el mayor momento de empatía que puede vivir alguien es encontrándose con un cuerpo idéntico al propio. La vida habla a través de nuestro físico, y eventualmente toca separar el daño infligido (posesión del agresor) del cuerpo resultante (magullado, agredido, pero en última instancia propio). No somos el evento que nos dejó estas marcas, sino el cómo (y si) decidimos esconderlas.
En Slow Damage hay varios episodios, cada uno dedicado a algún personaje peculiar. Exploramos su psique, sus fisuras, negociamos a través del sexo y la mutilación conjunta, y finalmente pintamos un cuadro. Y sin embargo, ¿por qué hay una ruta verdadera? Porque Kabura, en última instancia, quiere decirnos algo, pero también busca que atravesemos otras formas de lidiar con el dolor.
Discutiblemente hay mejores maneras de afrontar el trauma, o como pronto que pudiesen ser más sanas. Pero eso no significa que los demás Towas, que enfocaron su vida de otro modo (quizá más tóxico, quizá más apático, quizá violento de cara a sus seres queridos, o quizá desinteresado totalmente de su bienestar) no pudiesen haber sucedido, o que no haya personas sufriéndolas de tal modo ahora mismo, en este dolido planeta.
Y puede que por ello su escritora, quizá oponiéndose a las tónicas decadentes de su mentor, nos muestra el peor escenario posible. Y al mismo tiempo, el único donde uno, al final del recorrido y mirando hacia atrás, puede finalmente reconocer que logró ser feliz.
Un Towa nuevo, el peor Towa, que no se deja cortar por los demás, sino que decide agredirse a sí mismo para conectar con el trauma. La amnesia, esa ambivalencia que te hace querer saber de ti, pero al mismo tiempo temerle a tu propio reflejo, marcan una vida que ha sido erradicada de la memoria.
La misma persona que es capaz de causarte el mayor de los daños posibles se transforma en quien por vez primera puede descubrirte que el placer sano existe. Alguien que te suscita curiosidad, pero esta vez no de manera morbosa. Alguien a quien amar de forma honesta, no para querer pintarle un cuadro.
La tragedia de la cicatriz es que revela que siempre hay algo más que lo que está a la vista. Lo que en cualquier otro escenario hubiese sido el terreno para invocar a ‘euphoria’, aquí desvelan el interés real de una historia: conocer la verdad.
El arte, los cuadros, jamás han sido “por el arte”, ni por el placer, ni por matar el tiempo. Para Towa fueron, durante muchos años y en muchas realidades distintas, la consumación de un estilo de persuasión. La verdad de un ser humano resguardada para siempre en paredes de pintura.
Y la última verdad del trauma es que este no es racional. Una opera alrededor suyo incluso sin proponérselo. Puede romperte, puede convertirte en alguien capaz de hacer daño. Y en el peor de los casos, al buscar aceptarlo, uno acaba agarrándose, con esas uñas que carcomen la piel y desgarran la carne, a los últimos resquicios de autonomía personal que todavía nos quedaba.
El trauma condiciona. Nos disminuye. Nos convierte en personas incapaces de vivir de un modo distinto al ya aprendido para soportarlo. E incluso si algún día se le logra dar un cierre, las pesadillas no desaparecen. Las sensaciones violentas trasgrediendo tu cuerpo ahí estarán. Inevitablemente, uno sigue sintiéndose como una carga.
La culpa del superviviente es real. Tras un evento traumático, uno se cree peor que previo a este. Es allí cuando el título finalmente cobra sentido. No se trata de lo tardado del momento en que te infliges dolor, ni del cómo las sensaciones recorren tu cuerpo. El daño es lento, porque avanza por dentro, allí donde no está a la vista, siendo a su vez íntimo y abyecto. Y se queda para siempre.
Cuando un abusador falla, sufre. Solo un humano es capaz de generar tal de nivel de dolor, y el arrepentimiento y la culpa son consecuencias esperables. Pero quienes realmente cargarán con la tragedia por el resto de sus vidas son las víctimas.
Slow Damage es una historia sobre muchas cosas. Sobre el acto de cortarse, el placer auto-concebido en el dolor, y la excitación sexual que puede nacer de allí. También sobre el dejarse agredir, sentir ese etéreo concepto bajo el nombre de masculinidad latir debajo de tu piel, y experimentar ese sufrimiento que, contra todo pronóstico, te hace sentir más vivo. Es sobre abuso, sobre secuestros, violaciones forzadas, y sobre esos momentos tan bajos que desearíamos nadie debiese atravesar. Es también sobre el amor, y las bifurcaciones que lo vuelven tóxico: enamorarte de un amigo, de un padre, de un hermano, y de tu abusador. Son realidades que suceden, demostraciones de que en el mundo, para bien o para mal, hay de todo.
Pero de lo que trata realmente, es sobre supervivientes de abuso sexual infantil aprendiendo a reconectar con la vida. Porque el mundo nos ha fallado, y sobre todo le ha fallado a los niños. Es normal sentir que no hay nada allá afuera que pueda compensar el infierno travestido como sociedad.
Slow Damage es un gesto de fe, una pequeña carta invitando a quienes, seguramente, sean las personas que más han sufrido en este planeta, para decirles que son válidas y pueden salir adelante. No necesitamos más retratos de víctimas de abuso pintando sus vidas como si fuese una tragedia que nadie debería vivir. Tus experiencias son válidas. Déjate querer. Permítete sobrevivir. Nunca deja de doler, pero eventualmente ya no es solo silencio.
Yo no estoy entre esas personas, y aun así, siento que había una historia allí, esperándome, aunque fuese para alguien más. Escrita para mí, aunque jamás se hubiese pensado en un caso como el mío. Con la capacidad de hablarme a un nivel tan íntimo, como si Kabura me conociese más que nadie. Y aquí seguirá, sin saber jamás que existo, pero no puedo sino, con la garganta apretada y la experiencia de haber aguantado el sexo, los fluidos y la sangre no consentidos, darle las gracias.
Merezco ser amade. Tú también, mereces ser amada. Jamás lo olvides: allá afuera, hay gente que te ama.
A estas alturas no le descubro a nadie nada si le digo que Detroit: Become Human es, como cualquier otra obra de Quantic Dream, una idea profundamente fallida que se desploma por su propio peso, y que cualquier virtud que puedas hallar a las horas echadas para diseñar este monstruo (el impresionante árbol de decisiones, la calidad singular de algunas escenas e incluso, por difícil que cueste creer, la fuerza de algunas partes del guion) se va a ver menoscabada por multitud de pequeños detalles molestos que dejan del trabajo de Quantic Dream una impresión antipática. Pero lo que no he visto comentar mucho es que, detrás de todas sus ínfulas de "película interactiva", lo que los trabajos del estudio francés me recuerdan sobre todo es al boom de la aventura gráfica europea de los 2000. Detroit: Become Human no merece ser burlado por no lograr, pese a todo el dinero invertido, acercarse a Blade Runner o a Yo, Robot; merece ser burlado por no acercarse a la calidad de Post Mortem y Still Life.
Sinceramente, me da más lástima que otra cosa a estas alturas.
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At this point I'm not telling anything new if I say Detroit: Become Human is, like any previous Quantic Dream work, a deeply flawed idea work collapses under its own weight, or that any virtue that you may find within, like the choice tree, the quality of some maps and even, as hard as it is to believe, the strength of some aspects of the script, will be undermined by many annoying little details that leave a heavily unpleasant experience. But what I haven't seen being talked about that much is that, behind all its "interactive movie" pretensions, this French studio's work sits closely to the European graphic adventures of the 2000s than anything else. Detroit: Become Human doesn't deserve to be mocked for failing to look like Blade Runner or I, Robot. It deserves to be mocked for reaching the quality of Post Mortem and Still Life.
Honestly, I pity these games more than anything else by now.
Sinceramente, me da más lástima que otra cosa a estas alturas.
--------------------------------
At this point I'm not telling anything new if I say Detroit: Become Human is, like any previous Quantic Dream work, a deeply flawed idea work collapses under its own weight, or that any virtue that you may find within, like the choice tree, the quality of some maps and even, as hard as it is to believe, the strength of some aspects of the script, will be undermined by many annoying little details that leave a heavily unpleasant experience. But what I haven't seen being talked about that much is that, behind all its "interactive movie" pretensions, this French studio's work sits closely to the European graphic adventures of the 2000s than anything else. Detroit: Become Human doesn't deserve to be mocked for failing to look like Blade Runner or I, Robot. It deserves to be mocked for reaching the quality of Post Mortem and Still Life.
Honestly, I pity these games more than anything else by now.
Iwata’s dead, Shiggy’s checked out, and there’s no one to tell Aonuma no.
What the fuck is this.
I really shouldn’t be surprised, but I still am. This is the same game. It's the same people who made Breath of the Wild. I loved the first game, but still didn’t pay attention to the hype cycle of this one at all. I guess all the paraphernaleous cultural impact still seeped in somehow.
Remember when people thought there’d be playable Zelda? Fucking lol.
This review is only based on the five (5!) hours it took to get the paraglider, and I gotta say, it only kept making me appreciate the Great Plateau in Breath of the Wild more. The thematic cohesion. The mystery. The framing of how that whole game was going to work in miniature. What my abilities would be, what my relationship to game information would be like, what kinds of emotions I could expect to experience playing that game.
Maybe Tears of the Kingdom is a fine game. Maybe it is every bit as fun to exist in as Breath of the Wild, in theory. But in practice, it won’t be, can’t be. It didn’t start in the wilderness, letting me discover its game essence on my own terms. It started with a prestige-game walking-sim lore dump. A lore dump that ended with a bunch of Hot Anime Nonsense™.
Zelda and Link confronting mummy Ganon was like walking into the mid-season finale of a show that’s already on its second or third season. Except I’ve already played the previous season, and that context did not help me at all! Ganon’s no longer a miasma, but a dude with a voice? And there’s a goat dragon that’s Zelda’s great-great-grand-furry? And the Master Sword’s just useless?
Here’s my beef. All of this is great for trailers and generating “hype” because “hype” is fueled on speculation and curiosity. But the elements that generate hype are not the same as the elements that fuel a sincere emotional connection with a character, story, or world. I’m frustrated because Breath of the Wild knew this so well.
The old man on the Great Plateau was mysterious, but allowed to be goofy. He was generous, but mischievous. You could see him in different contexts, learn about him by exploring his house when he wasn’t around. There was a fun little emotional connection built up by being around him. The twist of his true identity, and the further twist of his ultimate fate, made me feel little pings of emotion. Nothing fancy, but he was the tutorial NPC. He primed me to think, “Oh, this is a game and a game world where it’ll be fun to get invested in people.” And he was the perfect segway into telling me what my mission was, what the stakes were, and why I, the player, should care.
The goat dragon great-great-grand-furry is none of this. We know he’s dead when we first meet him. His dialog makes no sense. There are a ton of slave robots on his little island that he comments with surprise are still running. Did he not program them? Can he not de-program them? Am I supposed to feel something about how he made a race of robot slaves? Are they sentient? I would have rather had signs in the ground Super Mario Style telling me all the tutorial things I needed to know. Because it feels weird for a robot to jovially say “Hey, there are some robots that’ll try to kill you, so, like, don’t feel bad about killing them. Here are some combat tips for killing them!”
And then his sequence at the end of his tutorial level practically screamed to me, “Hey, remember when you felt something at the end of your time with the Old Man in Breath of the Wild? We’re doing the same thing here! Don’t you feel something? Don’t you remember loving that?” And like yeah, I do remember that. And now I’m mad you’re trying to copy your own damn homework without understanding why it worked the first time. I have not built up a relationship with great-great-grand-furry goat dragon. I do not know why he is chill with Zelda. Honestly, all the statues with him and Zelda holding hands at the end of every shrine is weirding me out! Is Link a cuck now?
I want to say this is all superficial, but it’s really not, because everything about my time with Tears of the Kingdom so far felt like it was being led around by the tail. This is a re-skin of Breath of the Wild, but it doesn’t even have the decency to be honest with me. If we’re gonna have shrines, and they’re gonna function exactly the same way, why did you go through the bother of giving them new, thematically incoherent designs. Why do the upgrade orbs need new names, new lore. Changing the shrines’ glowy color from blue/orange to green is a downgrade, actually! Those other colors were a lot easier to see at a distance in a game world that has lots of green!
Jumping ahead of myself for a moment, I knew I was done when I unlocked the first new Shiekah Tower. (You can’t even call them Sheikah Towers anymore, these days!) The emergence of the Sheikah Towers in Breath of the Wild was iconic, cinematic, promising adventure in a changing world. The equivalent cutscene in Tears of the Kingdom felt like getting a homework assignment. Hey, someone you know has already explored the world, had time to build fantastic structures in every corner, and just needs a cable guy to come by and make sure the wiring is up to code! You know, that person who was a 100-year old loli in the last game! Well, now she’s been aged up to guilt-free fuckable waifu status! And she’s super plot relevant! You’ll get to talk to her more than Zelda over the course of the game, probably!
Seriously, that loli was my least favorite part of Breath of the Wild, and Tears of the Kingdom felt it important to put her loli portrait on her encyclopedia page?? When she will never look like that in this game??? She has the gall to rename Zelda’s magic iPad after herself! I was thinking about her (and taking internal bets as to whether she’d be a waifu or had somehow de-aged even more) hours before I saw her.
ANYWAY. None of what I said so far really matters more than the gameplay. And a Great Plateau 2 this was not.
I was so disappointed with how linear this was. In theory, I understand the concept that led to it existing the way it does. Tears of the Kingdom is a Lego game. It purposefully had sections of little Lego kits structured in a way where pieces from one would not mix with pieces of another and confuse people who have never touched Legos before. But giving kids Lego kits can change the way they interact with Legos. Hell, I remember I thought it was sacrilege when my sisters disassembled my Bionicle to make their own Voltron-esque monstrosities. But to them, who had not, could not, would not read the instructions, their style of play was more intuitive, more pure than mine.
Fundamentally, Tears of the Kingdom was not encouraging me to think for myself, to become resourceful, to seek my own path through things. It was priming me to expect that for any task that needed to be accomplished, the tools and materials would be provided for me. And without the spark of original creativity, putting the Lego pieces together was the dull monotony of fulfilling someone else’s factory work blueprint.
When I saw the jumble of lumber next to a korok in an adorable backpack, I immediately mentally put together what needed to be done, and thought, “What kind of Nintendo Labo bullshit is this?” The tediousness of rotating wood, sticking it to a hook, waiting for the korok to go down the slide - this was minutes of gameplay execution from the seconds of intuition I had of what the game wanted from me. And the reward was a measly two gold turds. I felt like I deserved five.
I feel like Aonuma has gone off the deep end. He’s spent so long in this game engine that he’s forgotten what made the original Breath of the Wild experience so special. He’s made a game for speedrunners without designing a game for the common folk first. In Breath of the Wild, the myriad systems, the freedom of choice, the hidden depth of the game’s chemistry and physics mechanics - all of those were introduced slowly in juxtaposition to a Link who had nothing but a shirt and a stick to his name. Everything felt special because the game beat you down and dead early on to make you appreciate and critically examine anything that could provide the slightest advantage to survival.
In Tears of the Kingdom, you gain the ability to Ascend through ceilings, (without stamina cost!!!), before you get the option to increase your stamina. Before you have even found anywhere worth climbing, any heights out of reach. There is nothing to instill that feeling of “I can’t climb there now, but some day, I will!” This is so wild to me. That emotion will never blossom when you’re given a cheat code at Level 1. It will cause people to look for places they can exploit their cheat code instead of… engaging with what was the entire foundation of the freedom of exploration in the first game!
Cannot overstate how much I felt something thematically crack inside of me when Tears of the Kingdom did not even suggest the possibility that I could upgrade my stamina wheel with my first blessing, locking me into more health. For a cutscene.
For a god-awful cutscene where Zelda fucks off before we chase down some NPCs to chase down some other NPCs to watch her fuck off again.
Does this all sound nit-picky? Do I sound insane? I sound petty to myself! But I have to be honest, this game failed to ignite my curiosity! And I gave Breath of the Wild 5 stars! It really does make me wonder how much of a game experience is built on the expectations built by its opening hours. In a way, if the only difference between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is the introduction and framing, that would be a valuable lesson on how important those beginning elements are.
I know that’s not the only difference. Tears of the Kingdom is anime as fuck. It’s tacky as hell. I lost it when Zelda’s magic iPad made the real-world iPad camera shutter sound.
Tears of the Kingdom is not a new game. It’s a jerry-rigged retrofitting of an existing game by an old man who saw Fortnite once since 2017, approved by a company who has no idea what he’s doing or why the old game sold so many millions of copies. Of course they’d be up for a direct sequel asset reuse that sounded vaguely like Minecraft! I’m just disappointed that the same team who showed they were capable of creating such a fully realized thematic throughline of a game were content to corrupt something beautiful just for the sake of convenience.
Maybe Link’s awful haircut and corrupted hand are a perfect visual metaphor for this game’s soul. A bunch of concepts grafted onto something great with no regard for how inelegantly they clash, while also showing a lack of maintenance to keep what came before presentable.
I’m so glad I didn’t pay $70 ($70!) for this game, or else I would have felt obligated to stick around long enough to understand the gacha mechanics enough to get mad at them.
——
June 28th 2023 Edit: wish different reviews could have different play statuses. Oh well. “Completed” the game with more words,, but in my heart this review should stay Abandoned.
What the fuck is this.
I really shouldn’t be surprised, but I still am. This is the same game. It's the same people who made Breath of the Wild. I loved the first game, but still didn’t pay attention to the hype cycle of this one at all. I guess all the paraphernaleous cultural impact still seeped in somehow.
Remember when people thought there’d be playable Zelda? Fucking lol.
This review is only based on the five (5!) hours it took to get the paraglider, and I gotta say, it only kept making me appreciate the Great Plateau in Breath of the Wild more. The thematic cohesion. The mystery. The framing of how that whole game was going to work in miniature. What my abilities would be, what my relationship to game information would be like, what kinds of emotions I could expect to experience playing that game.
Maybe Tears of the Kingdom is a fine game. Maybe it is every bit as fun to exist in as Breath of the Wild, in theory. But in practice, it won’t be, can’t be. It didn’t start in the wilderness, letting me discover its game essence on my own terms. It started with a prestige-game walking-sim lore dump. A lore dump that ended with a bunch of Hot Anime Nonsense™.
Zelda and Link confronting mummy Ganon was like walking into the mid-season finale of a show that’s already on its second or third season. Except I’ve already played the previous season, and that context did not help me at all! Ganon’s no longer a miasma, but a dude with a voice? And there’s a goat dragon that’s Zelda’s great-great-grand-furry? And the Master Sword’s just useless?
Here’s my beef. All of this is great for trailers and generating “hype” because “hype” is fueled on speculation and curiosity. But the elements that generate hype are not the same as the elements that fuel a sincere emotional connection with a character, story, or world. I’m frustrated because Breath of the Wild knew this so well.
The old man on the Great Plateau was mysterious, but allowed to be goofy. He was generous, but mischievous. You could see him in different contexts, learn about him by exploring his house when he wasn’t around. There was a fun little emotional connection built up by being around him. The twist of his true identity, and the further twist of his ultimate fate, made me feel little pings of emotion. Nothing fancy, but he was the tutorial NPC. He primed me to think, “Oh, this is a game and a game world where it’ll be fun to get invested in people.” And he was the perfect segway into telling me what my mission was, what the stakes were, and why I, the player, should care.
The goat dragon great-great-grand-furry is none of this. We know he’s dead when we first meet him. His dialog makes no sense. There are a ton of slave robots on his little island that he comments with surprise are still running. Did he not program them? Can he not de-program them? Am I supposed to feel something about how he made a race of robot slaves? Are they sentient? I would have rather had signs in the ground Super Mario Style telling me all the tutorial things I needed to know. Because it feels weird for a robot to jovially say “Hey, there are some robots that’ll try to kill you, so, like, don’t feel bad about killing them. Here are some combat tips for killing them!”
And then his sequence at the end of his tutorial level practically screamed to me, “Hey, remember when you felt something at the end of your time with the Old Man in Breath of the Wild? We’re doing the same thing here! Don’t you feel something? Don’t you remember loving that?” And like yeah, I do remember that. And now I’m mad you’re trying to copy your own damn homework without understanding why it worked the first time. I have not built up a relationship with great-great-grand-furry goat dragon. I do not know why he is chill with Zelda. Honestly, all the statues with him and Zelda holding hands at the end of every shrine is weirding me out! Is Link a cuck now?
I want to say this is all superficial, but it’s really not, because everything about my time with Tears of the Kingdom so far felt like it was being led around by the tail. This is a re-skin of Breath of the Wild, but it doesn’t even have the decency to be honest with me. If we’re gonna have shrines, and they’re gonna function exactly the same way, why did you go through the bother of giving them new, thematically incoherent designs. Why do the upgrade orbs need new names, new lore. Changing the shrines’ glowy color from blue/orange to green is a downgrade, actually! Those other colors were a lot easier to see at a distance in a game world that has lots of green!
Jumping ahead of myself for a moment, I knew I was done when I unlocked the first new Shiekah Tower. (You can’t even call them Sheikah Towers anymore, these days!) The emergence of the Sheikah Towers in Breath of the Wild was iconic, cinematic, promising adventure in a changing world. The equivalent cutscene in Tears of the Kingdom felt like getting a homework assignment. Hey, someone you know has already explored the world, had time to build fantastic structures in every corner, and just needs a cable guy to come by and make sure the wiring is up to code! You know, that person who was a 100-year old loli in the last game! Well, now she’s been aged up to guilt-free fuckable waifu status! And she’s super plot relevant! You’ll get to talk to her more than Zelda over the course of the game, probably!
Seriously, that loli was my least favorite part of Breath of the Wild, and Tears of the Kingdom felt it important to put her loli portrait on her encyclopedia page?? When she will never look like that in this game??? She has the gall to rename Zelda’s magic iPad after herself! I was thinking about her (and taking internal bets as to whether she’d be a waifu or had somehow de-aged even more) hours before I saw her.
ANYWAY. None of what I said so far really matters more than the gameplay. And a Great Plateau 2 this was not.
I was so disappointed with how linear this was. In theory, I understand the concept that led to it existing the way it does. Tears of the Kingdom is a Lego game. It purposefully had sections of little Lego kits structured in a way where pieces from one would not mix with pieces of another and confuse people who have never touched Legos before. But giving kids Lego kits can change the way they interact with Legos. Hell, I remember I thought it was sacrilege when my sisters disassembled my Bionicle to make their own Voltron-esque monstrosities. But to them, who had not, could not, would not read the instructions, their style of play was more intuitive, more pure than mine.
Fundamentally, Tears of the Kingdom was not encouraging me to think for myself, to become resourceful, to seek my own path through things. It was priming me to expect that for any task that needed to be accomplished, the tools and materials would be provided for me. And without the spark of original creativity, putting the Lego pieces together was the dull monotony of fulfilling someone else’s factory work blueprint.
When I saw the jumble of lumber next to a korok in an adorable backpack, I immediately mentally put together what needed to be done, and thought, “What kind of Nintendo Labo bullshit is this?” The tediousness of rotating wood, sticking it to a hook, waiting for the korok to go down the slide - this was minutes of gameplay execution from the seconds of intuition I had of what the game wanted from me. And the reward was a measly two gold turds. I felt like I deserved five.
I feel like Aonuma has gone off the deep end. He’s spent so long in this game engine that he’s forgotten what made the original Breath of the Wild experience so special. He’s made a game for speedrunners without designing a game for the common folk first. In Breath of the Wild, the myriad systems, the freedom of choice, the hidden depth of the game’s chemistry and physics mechanics - all of those were introduced slowly in juxtaposition to a Link who had nothing but a shirt and a stick to his name. Everything felt special because the game beat you down and dead early on to make you appreciate and critically examine anything that could provide the slightest advantage to survival.
In Tears of the Kingdom, you gain the ability to Ascend through ceilings, (without stamina cost!!!), before you get the option to increase your stamina. Before you have even found anywhere worth climbing, any heights out of reach. There is nothing to instill that feeling of “I can’t climb there now, but some day, I will!” This is so wild to me. That emotion will never blossom when you’re given a cheat code at Level 1. It will cause people to look for places they can exploit their cheat code instead of… engaging with what was the entire foundation of the freedom of exploration in the first game!
Cannot overstate how much I felt something thematically crack inside of me when Tears of the Kingdom did not even suggest the possibility that I could upgrade my stamina wheel with my first blessing, locking me into more health. For a cutscene.
For a god-awful cutscene where Zelda fucks off before we chase down some NPCs to chase down some other NPCs to watch her fuck off again.
Does this all sound nit-picky? Do I sound insane? I sound petty to myself! But I have to be honest, this game failed to ignite my curiosity! And I gave Breath of the Wild 5 stars! It really does make me wonder how much of a game experience is built on the expectations built by its opening hours. In a way, if the only difference between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is the introduction and framing, that would be a valuable lesson on how important those beginning elements are.
I know that’s not the only difference. Tears of the Kingdom is anime as fuck. It’s tacky as hell. I lost it when Zelda’s magic iPad made the real-world iPad camera shutter sound.
Tears of the Kingdom is not a new game. It’s a jerry-rigged retrofitting of an existing game by an old man who saw Fortnite once since 2017, approved by a company who has no idea what he’s doing or why the old game sold so many millions of copies. Of course they’d be up for a direct sequel asset reuse that sounded vaguely like Minecraft! I’m just disappointed that the same team who showed they were capable of creating such a fully realized thematic throughline of a game were content to corrupt something beautiful just for the sake of convenience.
Maybe Link’s awful haircut and corrupted hand are a perfect visual metaphor for this game’s soul. A bunch of concepts grafted onto something great with no regard for how inelegantly they clash, while also showing a lack of maintenance to keep what came before presentable.
I’m so glad I didn’t pay $70 ($70!) for this game, or else I would have felt obligated to stick around long enough to understand the gacha mechanics enough to get mad at them.
——
June 28th 2023 Edit: wish different reviews could have different play statuses. Oh well. “Completed” the game with more words,, but in my heart this review should stay Abandoned.
This review contains spoilers
I wrote about Three Houses in my blog: https://xatornova.blogspot.com/2020/05/three-houses-teachers-pet.html
In spite of the advertising claims from developers, Three Houses doesn't really resemble Genealogy of the Holy War. The drama between the protagonists in Three Houses, Edelgard, Dimitri and Claude, is different than Sigurd's, Quan's and Eldigan's in Genealogy. In Three Houses, the student representatives are barely friends. They're rather rivals, while in Genealogy, the trio is perceived from the moment they're introduced that they're very close friends. It isn't about moral or political dilemmas or perceiving different perspectives either. The game becomes actually worse being interpreted this way, since one isn't conscious of the implications of each faction when you're choosing a team, and it avoids having a political position to suggest opposite options as equally positive to the social conditions of its world, which is a coward measure to dress a story with vagueness to fake depth while avoiding alienating the audience. A purely commercial resource, in the worst case a toxic one, and the division that it provokes within Fire Emblem enthusiasts is proof of it.
In truth, Three Houses owes its development to two franchises: Langrisser, because of its medieval fantasy in strategy role-playing game format where narrative branches itself according to the player's decisions, and they face characters that would be your allies under other circumstances to accentuate the drama; and Persona due to the social simulation, school setting and the calendar with activities. By putting the player on the shoes of a teacher, Three Houses uses this structure to involve them with the students emotionally. One is responsible of their education, their motivations and the game allows to transfer them to your class if they belong to another one. When the player gets to the second half, the time that has been spent with them hurts when seeing young promises facing each other in the name of a political cause, and feeling remorse not just at them falling by your hands, but also at not having saved them in spite of having had the possibility, since the game deprives the player from this possibility by the second half. Three Houses's biggest accomplishment is thus exploring loss in the genre beyond permanent death or defeat, which potentially expands the magnitude of the conflict for the player more strongly than previous entries. However, the poor development of two main aspects undermines its communicative power: The characterization and the combat mechanics.
The issue with the characters is that they're generally preset archetypes from japanese animation. The flirtatious girl, the womanizer, the lazy guy, the timid girl that hides in her room, the religious chaste, the nerd, the dumb big guy with a good heart, the fangirl, the damaged boy that needs comfort, the antisocial guy with hidden depths, the exchange student that doesn't understand some concepts, etc. The game tries to justify these archetypes with backgrounds to try to give them depth, but the dialogues, the voices, the gestures and everything else accomodates to the archetype. What a person suggests from themselves through the subtlety of a gesture, the game leaves it explicitly and without interpretation, to the immediate understanding of the player, and thus they're not believable people, regardless of whether they're nice or not. That's an issue with a lot of fiction, but this game requires that you believe that there are people there, and if they're not convincing, the impact is destroyed.
The matter with the characters isn's just limited to our perception of the conflict, but also the perception of the bonds due to how servile is the presentation of the characters. The implausibility that was mentioned above contributes to this, but it's the mere fact that other characters can join you in spite of the political alignment, since they show diametrically opposite convictions in different narrative branches, and this turns their motivations into dubious and without any other explanation than they join you because they like you, you give them gifts that they like, or tell them what they want to hear. The clearest example is in Edelgard's path. You have the option of betraying her, and almost every student will follow your decision and comment a different political position according to your decision. This self-centered logic applies to different aspects of the game. Because it's you is that one of the factions wins or is the good side. Because it's you is that they join and admire you. You're the chosen one by Sothis, you have the Divine Pulse to undo actions and your impact is always positive. This issue has existed since the introduction of a self-insert avatar as an unit in battle since New Mystery of the Emblem, but it's a bigger issue here due to the goal of the game being the the player's involvement with the students on an emotional level. It doesn't allow for a genuine connection because the game portrays your bonds as a teacher like a vending machine for favors, when in truth it's more laborious to win over the trust of a student.
It's curious, too, that the game's servitude is reflected in the combat mechanics, since the monastery, which serves as refuge to prepare for battle, gives the player tools that are much more potent than the opponent's and they give room to unbeatable combinations, such as skills that make an unit attack first and perform critical hits from any distance continuously. The most notorious advantage is the extension of movement. Since the players can change their class freely, they can become flying units, undoubtedly the best class in the game, to ignore terrain and avoid obstacles that grounded units wouldn't be able to. Besides, the player has easy access to the Stride command, which increases the movement of many units in five spaces, and the game allows access to the Warp spell, which transports an adjacent unit to another point of the map. The game doesn't seem to be thought up with these three mechanics, since the player has an easy time inferring how to get to the boss in one turn on most maps, and because the main objective in them is to kill the boss, that turn is the only one even in the highest difficulty. That maps lack valuable incentives to prefer other approach doesn't help.
By itself, the presence of this dominant strategy is the sign of a negligent design due to how little the map composition, classes and abilities that aren't the most powerful ones end up mattering, but the anticlimax that's caused by finishing maps in one turn decreases the graveness of the conflict that Three Houses pretends to suggest. Japanese simulation role-playing games utilize the grid system as an abstraction of a battlefield since 1982 with The Dragon and Princess, and Fire Emblem contextualizes this in a medieval fantasy with the field being the place of a warfare conflict where anyone can die, and loss rears its head. Since it's the way to perceive the war directly, danger and map length are important to involve the player mentally by placing them amidst the conflict, and this is recognized by the series's creator by stating that what's important about difficulty is how it makes us feel by the end. With this in mind, when the player completes maps in one turn intuitively, the melodrama that surrounds this game isn't more than just lip service that doesn't correlate to our direct perception of the battle. The scope of the conflict becomes minuscule, and the map's presence doesn't evoke any sentiment. It's disappointing that it happens due to Intelligent Systems looking to resemble other Japanese role-playing games to catch their audience and make the player feel better about themselves.
The most pitiful thing is that these aspects pale in comparison to efforts from simulation role-playing games that preceded Three Houses many years ago. Mystery of the Emblem deprives mounted units in indoor maps, forcing the player to forego the movement advantage. Genealogy of the Holy War doesn't allow any step through the terrain to become imperceptible due to the mechanics that extend movement benefiting grounded units, which gives a strong impression of the scope of the conflict in spite of clearing maps in few turns. Langrisser 4 doesn't fall into having dubious motivations because the political convictions of its characters have to align to yours to be able to become a part of your team, which happens after many battles, and belonging to an alignment involves coherent actions with the world beyond picking from a menu. Berwick Saga also has an explorable base where resources are accumulated and the player can prepare for the next mission, yet it doesn't need to lose time with superfluous activities; and the characters that you recruit demand a monetary payment during each mission until the bond with your cause becomes strong through the player's action, creating thus a more intimate connection and giving more uniqueness to the characters due to the variety of requirements.
Three Houses is unfortunately more of a concept than execution because its promising premise is dampened by its characterization and counterproductive mechanics that are there as complacency. It feels like it doesn't matter to concentrate on the point of the game, but rather to accomodate to commercial standards, without any consideration for consistency or focus. It's a tendency that I observe in high-budget Japanese games of the last few years, even those that I like the most, and I consider it worrisome for the future of the series since it sets yet another precedent in having acceptance by compromising the communicative impact, and depriving the game from its potential.
SPOILERS
Potential that appears unexpectedly on an element to which we can relate: The cruel repercussion of the passing of time in our friendships. In one of the scenes, it is explained that Dimitri and Edelgard used to be very intimate friends many years ago, and even the first romantic feelings are insinuated, yet they were separated by political circumstances. In their last day together, Dimitri gifts Edelgard a dagger, which will serve her to open her path to her dreams. Years later, each one went through their lives, with very tragic events in them that shaped them, and later they become representatives of different political ideologies. Because of this they are barely friends when they see each other again, and they have changed a lot, to a point where they lead their nations in war against each other. Even if Edelgard preserved the dagger for years as a proof of her appreciation towards him, both of them accept in front of the other shortly before the final confrontation that they aren't the children that used to be friends anymore, and their differences are irreconcilable. It's the most moving part of the game because growing up and realizing that you have become distant from somebody hurts, even when you wish another opportunity. However, that the emphasis on the emotional side of the conflict between each other only exists in one of the narrative branches is a testament to the little importance that Intelligent Systems gives to these feelings by dilluting them among so much content and indulgence. It's a pity that it's a testament to them having changed, too.
In spite of the advertising claims from developers, Three Houses doesn't really resemble Genealogy of the Holy War. The drama between the protagonists in Three Houses, Edelgard, Dimitri and Claude, is different than Sigurd's, Quan's and Eldigan's in Genealogy. In Three Houses, the student representatives are barely friends. They're rather rivals, while in Genealogy, the trio is perceived from the moment they're introduced that they're very close friends. It isn't about moral or political dilemmas or perceiving different perspectives either. The game becomes actually worse being interpreted this way, since one isn't conscious of the implications of each faction when you're choosing a team, and it avoids having a political position to suggest opposite options as equally positive to the social conditions of its world, which is a coward measure to dress a story with vagueness to fake depth while avoiding alienating the audience. A purely commercial resource, in the worst case a toxic one, and the division that it provokes within Fire Emblem enthusiasts is proof of it.
In truth, Three Houses owes its development to two franchises: Langrisser, because of its medieval fantasy in strategy role-playing game format where narrative branches itself according to the player's decisions, and they face characters that would be your allies under other circumstances to accentuate the drama; and Persona due to the social simulation, school setting and the calendar with activities. By putting the player on the shoes of a teacher, Three Houses uses this structure to involve them with the students emotionally. One is responsible of their education, their motivations and the game allows to transfer them to your class if they belong to another one. When the player gets to the second half, the time that has been spent with them hurts when seeing young promises facing each other in the name of a political cause, and feeling remorse not just at them falling by your hands, but also at not having saved them in spite of having had the possibility, since the game deprives the player from this possibility by the second half. Three Houses's biggest accomplishment is thus exploring loss in the genre beyond permanent death or defeat, which potentially expands the magnitude of the conflict for the player more strongly than previous entries. However, the poor development of two main aspects undermines its communicative power: The characterization and the combat mechanics.
The issue with the characters is that they're generally preset archetypes from japanese animation. The flirtatious girl, the womanizer, the lazy guy, the timid girl that hides in her room, the religious chaste, the nerd, the dumb big guy with a good heart, the fangirl, the damaged boy that needs comfort, the antisocial guy with hidden depths, the exchange student that doesn't understand some concepts, etc. The game tries to justify these archetypes with backgrounds to try to give them depth, but the dialogues, the voices, the gestures and everything else accomodates to the archetype. What a person suggests from themselves through the subtlety of a gesture, the game leaves it explicitly and without interpretation, to the immediate understanding of the player, and thus they're not believable people, regardless of whether they're nice or not. That's an issue with a lot of fiction, but this game requires that you believe that there are people there, and if they're not convincing, the impact is destroyed.
The matter with the characters isn's just limited to our perception of the conflict, but also the perception of the bonds due to how servile is the presentation of the characters. The implausibility that was mentioned above contributes to this, but it's the mere fact that other characters can join you in spite of the political alignment, since they show diametrically opposite convictions in different narrative branches, and this turns their motivations into dubious and without any other explanation than they join you because they like you, you give them gifts that they like, or tell them what they want to hear. The clearest example is in Edelgard's path. You have the option of betraying her, and almost every student will follow your decision and comment a different political position according to your decision. This self-centered logic applies to different aspects of the game. Because it's you is that one of the factions wins or is the good side. Because it's you is that they join and admire you. You're the chosen one by Sothis, you have the Divine Pulse to undo actions and your impact is always positive. This issue has existed since the introduction of a self-insert avatar as an unit in battle since New Mystery of the Emblem, but it's a bigger issue here due to the goal of the game being the the player's involvement with the students on an emotional level. It doesn't allow for a genuine connection because the game portrays your bonds as a teacher like a vending machine for favors, when in truth it's more laborious to win over the trust of a student.
It's curious, too, that the game's servitude is reflected in the combat mechanics, since the monastery, which serves as refuge to prepare for battle, gives the player tools that are much more potent than the opponent's and they give room to unbeatable combinations, such as skills that make an unit attack first and perform critical hits from any distance continuously. The most notorious advantage is the extension of movement. Since the players can change their class freely, they can become flying units, undoubtedly the best class in the game, to ignore terrain and avoid obstacles that grounded units wouldn't be able to. Besides, the player has easy access to the Stride command, which increases the movement of many units in five spaces, and the game allows access to the Warp spell, which transports an adjacent unit to another point of the map. The game doesn't seem to be thought up with these three mechanics, since the player has an easy time inferring how to get to the boss in one turn on most maps, and because the main objective in them is to kill the boss, that turn is the only one even in the highest difficulty. That maps lack valuable incentives to prefer other approach doesn't help.
By itself, the presence of this dominant strategy is the sign of a negligent design due to how little the map composition, classes and abilities that aren't the most powerful ones end up mattering, but the anticlimax that's caused by finishing maps in one turn decreases the graveness of the conflict that Three Houses pretends to suggest. Japanese simulation role-playing games utilize the grid system as an abstraction of a battlefield since 1982 with The Dragon and Princess, and Fire Emblem contextualizes this in a medieval fantasy with the field being the place of a warfare conflict where anyone can die, and loss rears its head. Since it's the way to perceive the war directly, danger and map length are important to involve the player mentally by placing them amidst the conflict, and this is recognized by the series's creator by stating that what's important about difficulty is how it makes us feel by the end. With this in mind, when the player completes maps in one turn intuitively, the melodrama that surrounds this game isn't more than just lip service that doesn't correlate to our direct perception of the battle. The scope of the conflict becomes minuscule, and the map's presence doesn't evoke any sentiment. It's disappointing that it happens due to Intelligent Systems looking to resemble other Japanese role-playing games to catch their audience and make the player feel better about themselves.
The most pitiful thing is that these aspects pale in comparison to efforts from simulation role-playing games that preceded Three Houses many years ago. Mystery of the Emblem deprives mounted units in indoor maps, forcing the player to forego the movement advantage. Genealogy of the Holy War doesn't allow any step through the terrain to become imperceptible due to the mechanics that extend movement benefiting grounded units, which gives a strong impression of the scope of the conflict in spite of clearing maps in few turns. Langrisser 4 doesn't fall into having dubious motivations because the political convictions of its characters have to align to yours to be able to become a part of your team, which happens after many battles, and belonging to an alignment involves coherent actions with the world beyond picking from a menu. Berwick Saga also has an explorable base where resources are accumulated and the player can prepare for the next mission, yet it doesn't need to lose time with superfluous activities; and the characters that you recruit demand a monetary payment during each mission until the bond with your cause becomes strong through the player's action, creating thus a more intimate connection and giving more uniqueness to the characters due to the variety of requirements.
Three Houses is unfortunately more of a concept than execution because its promising premise is dampened by its characterization and counterproductive mechanics that are there as complacency. It feels like it doesn't matter to concentrate on the point of the game, but rather to accomodate to commercial standards, without any consideration for consistency or focus. It's a tendency that I observe in high-budget Japanese games of the last few years, even those that I like the most, and I consider it worrisome for the future of the series since it sets yet another precedent in having acceptance by compromising the communicative impact, and depriving the game from its potential.
SPOILERS
Potential that appears unexpectedly on an element to which we can relate: The cruel repercussion of the passing of time in our friendships. In one of the scenes, it is explained that Dimitri and Edelgard used to be very intimate friends many years ago, and even the first romantic feelings are insinuated, yet they were separated by political circumstances. In their last day together, Dimitri gifts Edelgard a dagger, which will serve her to open her path to her dreams. Years later, each one went through their lives, with very tragic events in them that shaped them, and later they become representatives of different political ideologies. Because of this they are barely friends when they see each other again, and they have changed a lot, to a point where they lead their nations in war against each other. Even if Edelgard preserved the dagger for years as a proof of her appreciation towards him, both of them accept in front of the other shortly before the final confrontation that they aren't the children that used to be friends anymore, and their differences are irreconcilable. It's the most moving part of the game because growing up and realizing that you have become distant from somebody hurts, even when you wish another opportunity. However, that the emphasis on the emotional side of the conflict between each other only exists in one of the narrative branches is a testament to the little importance that Intelligent Systems gives to these feelings by dilluting them among so much content and indulgence. It's a pity that it's a testament to them having changed, too.
DISCLAIMER: this review will spoil both the original game and official remake for Metroid II. If you're unfamiliar with how either play out, I'd strongly recommend playing the original first, and then the remake.
It's pretty easy to separate remakes into two distinct categories: those that are supplementary to the original (Final Fantasy VII Remake, Twin Snakes) and those that are replacements to the original (Demon's Souls, Shadow of the Colossus). I tend to be more apprehensive towards the latter, but that's not to say it can't be done well. With the right team at the helm (usually including the original designers) it's possible to create something truly special that polishes the original's shortcomings and reinvents what it represented without the constraints of it's era. I haven't played the Resident Evil Remake, but from what I'm told it's the best example of a game that repaints the original while still capturing the spirit and soul present in the PlayStation version.
Having said that, most replacement remakes tend to stumble over themselves and create a product that doesn't really do justice to the source material in any way. Samus Returns is no different.
Looking at it in a vaccum, it's a standard Metroid adventure. Many areas tend to blend into one another and the stop-and-start nature of combat got old quickly, but a lot of it is pretty familiar and comfortable if you're familiar with the series. Looking at it in the context of the source material is where it really starts to fall apart in my eyes.
Much of the charm of Return of Samus was how cramped and stressful the whole journey was. The first game presented a complete mirror of the Zelda series that felt both swashbuckling and mysterious with it's alien world while still feeling like an adventure. It's sequel, by comparison, wasn't nearly as pleasant and leaned more into a psudo-horror atmosphere. You were tasked with exterminating an entire alien race, and the game quite fittingly was upsetting to trek through. Traversing the caves of SR388 always felt tense, the limited visibility meant you never knew what was around every corner, and the Metroid encounters were a mad scramble to stay alive more than anything. Nothing about it felt triumphant. While repetitive towards the end, each subsequent Metroid encounter would eventually feel as if you're just filling a quota, like you're just clocking in for a drab job only to slog through the day and clock out. It was interesting to see Samus not only get tasked with commiting genocide on an alien planet, but for it to be presented without any of the energy you might expect. And yet, in one final subversive gesture, it doesn't end on a sour note. Samus comes across a Metroid hatchling, and instead of greeting it with hostility, she changes her tone and takes it back to the federation. One would expect a game like this to end in bombast, yet the player gets a moment of quiet relief. The mission was over, there was no need for any more violence or conflict. The galaxy was at peace.
Presumably in an effort to modernize the game and have it fall more in line with other popular titles, the official Metroid II remake manages to sand down nearly all distinct elements of the GameBoy classic and create a game that hardly resembles that which it's trying to replicate. It seems as though every change made in Samus Returns was made to make everything bigger, better, and louder. In place of pitch black dour caves you have brightly lit neon crystal formations, enemies are more aggressive promoting the use of your new parry action to make combat feel more "engaging", the list of changes is pretty massive and it'd be boring to just list them all. Instead, I think it'd be valuable to mention how these changes all fit together. In other words, each step in the remake progress was logical.
Newer games are expected to be bigger so they made the map bigger, and by extension added an actual map to track your progress. The lack of any map in the original is a big sticking point for many, but what makes it work is how you only needed to keep a small chunk of the map in your mind at any time, once you finish an area you can move on and never look back. It created a dizzying feeling while exploring, but the excellent layout and sprite designs guaranteed the player should never be lost for too long. Now that the world is massive, it'd be ridiculous to force the player to track it all in their brain, so the map makes some amount of sense. It just comes at a cost of the rewarding feeling players got by picking apart the world completely on their own.
More pressingly, the huge world greatly effects the thrill of hunting Metroids. In the original, not only could they spring up at any moment, but encounters never felt gamey for lack of a better term. Fights could take place in sand pits, cramped caves, or anywhere for that matter. They never felt like video game combat arenas, so the whole journey felt natural. The heart sinking feeling of finding a Metroid never lost it's spark since you never knew when they'd appear. Naturally, SR opts into a dedicated radar that beeps like a metal detector as you approach a Metroid removing the thrill of discovery, and every fight takes place in one of a handful of deliberately designed sterile arenas.
None of these elements stand up to the scrappy yet elegant design of the original, but the biggest blunder has got to be the overall tone and feel of the game. As I mentioned earlier, hunting Metroids in the original rarely felt fun. It was a nerve-wracking crawl through claustrophobic caves and generally just felt miserable. The remake instead wants the player to feel as cool as posible while shredding this world to pieces. Samus's parry is the most immediate example of this cheap pop of energy, but the series first of Cutscenes That Wrestle Control From The Player to Show You Something Sick Nasty From Samus is the most obnoxious. Walking into an unknown area and having control taken from me is the quickest way to let me know I'm in absolutely no danger, and anything that happens is bound to be awesome. Because nothing screams genocide like Samus backflipping off of an alien as she shoots it to death.
Not even the beautiful ending leaves unscathed, what used to be a calm reflective escape to your ship is now an action packed sprint through every basic enemy in the game's roster followed by the most embarrassing form of fanservice in the game, a brand new final boss against the most iconic villain of the series, Ridley. Of course the game with the most subversive ending had to end with bombast, that's what they always intended for with the classic violence free ending right?
The cherry on top is the baby Metroid itself, once a symbol of hope to strategically shift the tone before the end is now relegated to a key for item collection right after the Queen Metroid encounter, but before the final boss, leading to the most frustrating item cleanup in the series.
I recognize most of this write up has been me whining about why the remake fails when stacked up against the original, and while that may seem sloppy and unfair, it's only natural given the fact that they share a title. Samus Returns was meant to be a cozy return to form for the series, and in many ways it accomplished that goal. It's nice to see a series come back in a familiar setting after lying dormant for a decade, but that's never what the original was meant to be. It was a brand new adventure that didn't have to follow an arbitrary ruleset laid in place by the series legacy, it was an interesting sequel to a groundbreaking title and nothing else. These days people don't look fondly on Return of Samus, so this could have been a perfect opportunity for Mercury Steam to show the world what made the original so special in their own Resident Evil Remake moment. Instead what we got was a safe installment that proudly wears the series on its sleeve, but holds no reverence for the game that bore the title of Metroid II.
It's pretty easy to separate remakes into two distinct categories: those that are supplementary to the original (Final Fantasy VII Remake, Twin Snakes) and those that are replacements to the original (Demon's Souls, Shadow of the Colossus). I tend to be more apprehensive towards the latter, but that's not to say it can't be done well. With the right team at the helm (usually including the original designers) it's possible to create something truly special that polishes the original's shortcomings and reinvents what it represented without the constraints of it's era. I haven't played the Resident Evil Remake, but from what I'm told it's the best example of a game that repaints the original while still capturing the spirit and soul present in the PlayStation version.
Having said that, most replacement remakes tend to stumble over themselves and create a product that doesn't really do justice to the source material in any way. Samus Returns is no different.
Looking at it in a vaccum, it's a standard Metroid adventure. Many areas tend to blend into one another and the stop-and-start nature of combat got old quickly, but a lot of it is pretty familiar and comfortable if you're familiar with the series. Looking at it in the context of the source material is where it really starts to fall apart in my eyes.
Much of the charm of Return of Samus was how cramped and stressful the whole journey was. The first game presented a complete mirror of the Zelda series that felt both swashbuckling and mysterious with it's alien world while still feeling like an adventure. It's sequel, by comparison, wasn't nearly as pleasant and leaned more into a psudo-horror atmosphere. You were tasked with exterminating an entire alien race, and the game quite fittingly was upsetting to trek through. Traversing the caves of SR388 always felt tense, the limited visibility meant you never knew what was around every corner, and the Metroid encounters were a mad scramble to stay alive more than anything. Nothing about it felt triumphant. While repetitive towards the end, each subsequent Metroid encounter would eventually feel as if you're just filling a quota, like you're just clocking in for a drab job only to slog through the day and clock out. It was interesting to see Samus not only get tasked with commiting genocide on an alien planet, but for it to be presented without any of the energy you might expect. And yet, in one final subversive gesture, it doesn't end on a sour note. Samus comes across a Metroid hatchling, and instead of greeting it with hostility, she changes her tone and takes it back to the federation. One would expect a game like this to end in bombast, yet the player gets a moment of quiet relief. The mission was over, there was no need for any more violence or conflict. The galaxy was at peace.
Presumably in an effort to modernize the game and have it fall more in line with other popular titles, the official Metroid II remake manages to sand down nearly all distinct elements of the GameBoy classic and create a game that hardly resembles that which it's trying to replicate. It seems as though every change made in Samus Returns was made to make everything bigger, better, and louder. In place of pitch black dour caves you have brightly lit neon crystal formations, enemies are more aggressive promoting the use of your new parry action to make combat feel more "engaging", the list of changes is pretty massive and it'd be boring to just list them all. Instead, I think it'd be valuable to mention how these changes all fit together. In other words, each step in the remake progress was logical.
Newer games are expected to be bigger so they made the map bigger, and by extension added an actual map to track your progress. The lack of any map in the original is a big sticking point for many, but what makes it work is how you only needed to keep a small chunk of the map in your mind at any time, once you finish an area you can move on and never look back. It created a dizzying feeling while exploring, but the excellent layout and sprite designs guaranteed the player should never be lost for too long. Now that the world is massive, it'd be ridiculous to force the player to track it all in their brain, so the map makes some amount of sense. It just comes at a cost of the rewarding feeling players got by picking apart the world completely on their own.
More pressingly, the huge world greatly effects the thrill of hunting Metroids. In the original, not only could they spring up at any moment, but encounters never felt gamey for lack of a better term. Fights could take place in sand pits, cramped caves, or anywhere for that matter. They never felt like video game combat arenas, so the whole journey felt natural. The heart sinking feeling of finding a Metroid never lost it's spark since you never knew when they'd appear. Naturally, SR opts into a dedicated radar that beeps like a metal detector as you approach a Metroid removing the thrill of discovery, and every fight takes place in one of a handful of deliberately designed sterile arenas.
None of these elements stand up to the scrappy yet elegant design of the original, but the biggest blunder has got to be the overall tone and feel of the game. As I mentioned earlier, hunting Metroids in the original rarely felt fun. It was a nerve-wracking crawl through claustrophobic caves and generally just felt miserable. The remake instead wants the player to feel as cool as posible while shredding this world to pieces. Samus's parry is the most immediate example of this cheap pop of energy, but the series first of Cutscenes That Wrestle Control From The Player to Show You Something Sick Nasty From Samus is the most obnoxious. Walking into an unknown area and having control taken from me is the quickest way to let me know I'm in absolutely no danger, and anything that happens is bound to be awesome. Because nothing screams genocide like Samus backflipping off of an alien as she shoots it to death.
Not even the beautiful ending leaves unscathed, what used to be a calm reflective escape to your ship is now an action packed sprint through every basic enemy in the game's roster followed by the most embarrassing form of fanservice in the game, a brand new final boss against the most iconic villain of the series, Ridley. Of course the game with the most subversive ending had to end with bombast, that's what they always intended for with the classic violence free ending right?
The cherry on top is the baby Metroid itself, once a symbol of hope to strategically shift the tone before the end is now relegated to a key for item collection right after the Queen Metroid encounter, but before the final boss, leading to the most frustrating item cleanup in the series.
I recognize most of this write up has been me whining about why the remake fails when stacked up against the original, and while that may seem sloppy and unfair, it's only natural given the fact that they share a title. Samus Returns was meant to be a cozy return to form for the series, and in many ways it accomplished that goal. It's nice to see a series come back in a familiar setting after lying dormant for a decade, but that's never what the original was meant to be. It was a brand new adventure that didn't have to follow an arbitrary ruleset laid in place by the series legacy, it was an interesting sequel to a groundbreaking title and nothing else. These days people don't look fondly on Return of Samus, so this could have been a perfect opportunity for Mercury Steam to show the world what made the original so special in their own Resident Evil Remake moment. Instead what we got was a safe installment that proudly wears the series on its sleeve, but holds no reverence for the game that bore the title of Metroid II.
This review contains spoilers
Why do we enjoy video games?
Sure, it can be an easy question to answer with the response of “because they’re fun and entertaining,” but Moon: Remix RPG sees a little bit more within this simple question.
Taking place from the perspective a young boy sucked into a video game, Moon: Remix RPG is a very unorthodox game at times being frustrating, obtuse, or convoluted, but it’s a game bursting at the seams with love for its medium. The beautiful art style, the diverse soundtrack, the engaging gameplay, and the unique story and set of characters have hooked only the most patient of players to the very end. There’s a very nice, warm feeling you get whenever you save an animal, obtain someone’s love, or make a connection between the many varying locals and characters to progress little by little through the grand yet small world of Love-De-Gard.
But for as much as Moon: Remix RPG is about love, there lies a deep cynicism beneath the surface.
The hero of Moon is a violent, blunt, and tongue and cheek portrayal of the typical RPG protagonist who is tasked to defeat the moonlight-eating dragon. Although he only appears a handful of times throughout the game his presence is always felt, being the very same person to slaughter the animals you try to save and becoming a general public nuisance to the people of Love-De-Gard. However, while we see him as the villain of this game, Moon sees him as anything but.
One of the ugly truths about Moon is its practice of predeterminism. The illusion of choice may rear its head in Moon, but how many animals you save, how much love you accumulate, what characters you interact with, and what music you listen to all lead to the same ending. The hero is programed to always remain triumphant and slay the dragon, and as he approaches the misunderstood dragon with a few slashes, he destroys everything you know as the screen goes to black.
It’s an off-putting ending, one that comes off as deeply cynical. Luckily for us however, Moon is just a video game.
As your mom tells you to stop playing video games and go to bed, you are transported back to the real world. Then, Moon: Remix RPG gives you something you’ve never had before: a choice that matters. Do you continue this never-ending cycle of predetermined fate? Or do you stop playing video games, and open the door to the outside world?
Moon: Remix RPG asks the question: “Why do we enjoy video games?” The answer is not their predetermined nature, but it’s the experiences we gain over our hours long adventures, it’s the connections we form with the characters, it’s the ability to go out into the world and share our passion and love with the rest of the world. Art has the power to change the world around you, to make what was fake become a reality. But in order to do that, you have to open the door.
Sure, it can be an easy question to answer with the response of “because they’re fun and entertaining,” but Moon: Remix RPG sees a little bit more within this simple question.
Taking place from the perspective a young boy sucked into a video game, Moon: Remix RPG is a very unorthodox game at times being frustrating, obtuse, or convoluted, but it’s a game bursting at the seams with love for its medium. The beautiful art style, the diverse soundtrack, the engaging gameplay, and the unique story and set of characters have hooked only the most patient of players to the very end. There’s a very nice, warm feeling you get whenever you save an animal, obtain someone’s love, or make a connection between the many varying locals and characters to progress little by little through the grand yet small world of Love-De-Gard.
But for as much as Moon: Remix RPG is about love, there lies a deep cynicism beneath the surface.
The hero of Moon is a violent, blunt, and tongue and cheek portrayal of the typical RPG protagonist who is tasked to defeat the moonlight-eating dragon. Although he only appears a handful of times throughout the game his presence is always felt, being the very same person to slaughter the animals you try to save and becoming a general public nuisance to the people of Love-De-Gard. However, while we see him as the villain of this game, Moon sees him as anything but.
One of the ugly truths about Moon is its practice of predeterminism. The illusion of choice may rear its head in Moon, but how many animals you save, how much love you accumulate, what characters you interact with, and what music you listen to all lead to the same ending. The hero is programed to always remain triumphant and slay the dragon, and as he approaches the misunderstood dragon with a few slashes, he destroys everything you know as the screen goes to black.
It’s an off-putting ending, one that comes off as deeply cynical. Luckily for us however, Moon is just a video game.
As your mom tells you to stop playing video games and go to bed, you are transported back to the real world. Then, Moon: Remix RPG gives you something you’ve never had before: a choice that matters. Do you continue this never-ending cycle of predetermined fate? Or do you stop playing video games, and open the door to the outside world?
Moon: Remix RPG asks the question: “Why do we enjoy video games?” The answer is not their predetermined nature, but it’s the experiences we gain over our hours long adventures, it’s the connections we form with the characters, it’s the ability to go out into the world and share our passion and love with the rest of the world. Art has the power to change the world around you, to make what was fake become a reality. But in order to do that, you have to open the door.
La gallina de los huevos de oro de Naughty Dog, la obra que marcó un antes y un después en la historia del triple A respetable (y la que, en muchos aspectos, estableció el estándar de cómo juzgar el videojuego inglés "de prestigio") se juega hoy en día como un Jak & Daxter anímico y pasado por cuatro cosillas de los Tomb Raider. En numerosos aspectos, la cultura y experiencia previa del estudio permean la dirección de esta aventura de poca monta, desde las secuencias de acción desenfocadas hasta la extraña actitud maniática de los protagonistas cuando actúan (no ayuda que, con el remasterizado, todo se mueve más fluido y exagerado). Donde más se nota, obviamente, es en las secuencias más arcade, que parecen sacadas literalmente de las carreras y escenas de tiro de Jak II. Más allá de esos elementos, el juego incorpora elementos superficiales de muchas otras franquicias; un sistema de cobertura básico y poco intuitivo, una sección de saltos y escaladas extremadamente simple, e incluso algún QTE escondido. Cuando el juego te presenta estos retos, el conflicto con le jugadore se hace especialmente obvio, y morir porque escogiste pararte a ver algo en vez de seguir el guión prefijado ocurre demasiado a menudo. Por otra parte, las secciones con puzzles prometen cierta ruptura de la monotonía, pero su nula profundidad los acaba haciendo inanes como auténticos retos y los acerca más a los momentos de alivio a las que las películas de aventuras a las que se quiere parecer este juego recurren tanto.
En muchos aspectos, Uncharted se entiende menos como un juego que como un modelo de laboratorio para construir La Experiencia Lúdica Cinemática, y al igual que muchos otros modelos, eso le hace sentirse inerte, cuando no hostil, a los actos del jugadore. Para cualquiera que proviniese de la era de complejidad adquirida durante los plataformas de PS2, esto tenía que sentirse por fuerza como una vuelta atrás. Algo similar, dicho sea de paso, a lo que pasaron los plataformas durante el salto de los 8 a los 16 bits. Tal vez era necesario que esto existiera para que lo próximo fuera mejor, pero eso no lo hace un buen juego.
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Naughty Dog's golden goose, the work that marked a before and after in respectable triple-A production and set the standard for "prestige" video games, now plays like a minimalist Jak & Daxter with Tomb Raider tidbits. In many ways, the studio's previous culture and experience permeate this slapdash adventure, from the unfocused action sequences to the oddly manic attitude of the protagonists when they act (it probably doesn't help that the Remastered Edition makes everything look smoothier). You can tell this better in the arcadey sequences, which seem lifted straight up of the racing and shooting of Jak II. Beyond those elements, the game incorporates superficial elements from many other franchises; a basic and unintuitive cover system, extremely simple jumping and climbing sections, and some hidden QTE. When the game challenges you with these, the conflict with the player becomes apparent. Dying because you chose to stop and look at something instead of following the pre-set script happens all too often. On the other hand, the puzzle sections promise some break from the monotony, but their lack of depth renders them inane and brings them closer to the relief sequences that the adventure film this game wants to be would have.
In many ways, Uncharted works less as a game and more as a blueprint of The Cinematic Gaming Experience, and like many other blueprints, that makes it feel inert, if not hostile, to the player. For anyone coming from the complexity reached on PS2 platformers, this was bound to feel like a setback. Something similar happened with platformers during the 8-bit-to-16-bit as well. Maybe this needed to exist in order for the next thing to be better, but that doesn't make it a good game.
En muchos aspectos, Uncharted se entiende menos como un juego que como un modelo de laboratorio para construir La Experiencia Lúdica Cinemática, y al igual que muchos otros modelos, eso le hace sentirse inerte, cuando no hostil, a los actos del jugadore. Para cualquiera que proviniese de la era de complejidad adquirida durante los plataformas de PS2, esto tenía que sentirse por fuerza como una vuelta atrás. Algo similar, dicho sea de paso, a lo que pasaron los plataformas durante el salto de los 8 a los 16 bits. Tal vez era necesario que esto existiera para que lo próximo fuera mejor, pero eso no lo hace un buen juego.
-------------------
Naughty Dog's golden goose, the work that marked a before and after in respectable triple-A production and set the standard for "prestige" video games, now plays like a minimalist Jak & Daxter with Tomb Raider tidbits. In many ways, the studio's previous culture and experience permeate this slapdash adventure, from the unfocused action sequences to the oddly manic attitude of the protagonists when they act (it probably doesn't help that the Remastered Edition makes everything look smoothier). You can tell this better in the arcadey sequences, which seem lifted straight up of the racing and shooting of Jak II. Beyond those elements, the game incorporates superficial elements from many other franchises; a basic and unintuitive cover system, extremely simple jumping and climbing sections, and some hidden QTE. When the game challenges you with these, the conflict with the player becomes apparent. Dying because you chose to stop and look at something instead of following the pre-set script happens all too often. On the other hand, the puzzle sections promise some break from the monotony, but their lack of depth renders them inane and brings them closer to the relief sequences that the adventure film this game wants to be would have.
In many ways, Uncharted works less as a game and more as a blueprint of The Cinematic Gaming Experience, and like many other blueprints, that makes it feel inert, if not hostile, to the player. For anyone coming from the complexity reached on PS2 platformers, this was bound to feel like a setback. Something similar happened with platformers during the 8-bit-to-16-bit as well. Maybe this needed to exist in order for the next thing to be better, but that doesn't make it a good game.
No sé por dónde empezar. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune es, pese a todos los defectos que le veo, una aventurilla al uso de plataformas limitado y acción simplona, que cuanto menos se deja jugar. Uncharted 2, como todas las secuelas triple A, trata de incluir más cosas, y en el camino se convierte en un batiburrillo incoherente de ideas y elementos que puedes encontrar mejor expresados en cualquier otro lado. Esto hace que, para mí, recomendar el juego en base a su mérito lúdico resulte imposible. Las secciones de sigilo apenas permiten variedad y se suelen limitar a seguir el camino trazado de antemano, los puzzles son poco más que un juego de memorización y espera, y las armas se solapan entre sí. La oportunidad de desarrollar estrategias personales de combate, que podrían tener sentido dado el carácter más de arena que tienen esas secuencias, ofrece cierto dinamismo en los modos más difíciles, pero el ridículo modo Brutal te fuerza a situaciones de completo desgaste, donde la única opción aceptable es quedarte en una esquina y rezar porque no te llegue una bala suelta (jugar estos niveles de dificultad sin trucos es imposible).
Todo esto hace que jugar a Uncharted 2 sea más molesto que el estilo simple pero, al menos, directo, del primero, pero si a eso le sumas una narración que sólo puedo calificar como de "culpa blanca a lo Josh Whedon", acabas con un relato reducido a mero espectáculo visual y que, a pesar de todo, no puede evitar esconder la cochambre sobre la que está montado. Por encima de todo, hace relucir la prepotencia detrás de su concepción. Un proyecto que, cuanto más lo intenta, más vacío parece. La próxima vez que alguien me diga que este tipo de juegos son necesarios para un público que no esté acostumbrado a jugar, por lo menos que me lo defienda con un casting más soportable.
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Don't know where to start with this. For all its flaws, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is a competent adventure game with limited platforming and basic action, and it leans itself to be enjoyed. Uncharted 2, like every triple A sequels, attempts to go bigger, becoming an incoherent hodgepodge of ideas that you can find better expressed elsewhere. This makes recommending the game on its mechanical terms impossible for me. Stealth sections barely allow for expression and are often limited to following the path laid out before you, puzzles are little more than a game of memorization and waiting, and weapons overlap with each other. The opportunity to develop a combat strategy makes sense with the arena-styled sections, and it offers some dynamism in harder difficultires. But the preposterous Brutal setting constantly forces you into a stalemate, where the only acceptable option is standing by a corner and praying that you won't get hit (honestly, playing this mode without cheats is impossible).
All of this makes playing Uncharted 2 more annoying than the first one on mechanical terms alone. But when you compound add with a narrative that I can only describe as "White Guilt Josh Whedon", you end up with a work that's barely anything more substantive than snippets of visual spectacle. For all its glitz, this game can't hide the rot behind its façade, and in a way it makes its authors possessed by an even higher hubris. The next time someone tells me that this kind of games are necessary for non-playing audiences, I'm gonna ask to come up with something better than this unbearable casting.
Todo esto hace que jugar a Uncharted 2 sea más molesto que el estilo simple pero, al menos, directo, del primero, pero si a eso le sumas una narración que sólo puedo calificar como de "culpa blanca a lo Josh Whedon", acabas con un relato reducido a mero espectáculo visual y que, a pesar de todo, no puede evitar esconder la cochambre sobre la que está montado. Por encima de todo, hace relucir la prepotencia detrás de su concepción. Un proyecto que, cuanto más lo intenta, más vacío parece. La próxima vez que alguien me diga que este tipo de juegos son necesarios para un público que no esté acostumbrado a jugar, por lo menos que me lo defienda con un casting más soportable.
------------------------------------------
Don't know where to start with this. For all its flaws, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is a competent adventure game with limited platforming and basic action, and it leans itself to be enjoyed. Uncharted 2, like every triple A sequels, attempts to go bigger, becoming an incoherent hodgepodge of ideas that you can find better expressed elsewhere. This makes recommending the game on its mechanical terms impossible for me. Stealth sections barely allow for expression and are often limited to following the path laid out before you, puzzles are little more than a game of memorization and waiting, and weapons overlap with each other. The opportunity to develop a combat strategy makes sense with the arena-styled sections, and it offers some dynamism in harder difficultires. But the preposterous Brutal setting constantly forces you into a stalemate, where the only acceptable option is standing by a corner and praying that you won't get hit (honestly, playing this mode without cheats is impossible).
All of this makes playing Uncharted 2 more annoying than the first one on mechanical terms alone. But when you compound add with a narrative that I can only describe as "White Guilt Josh Whedon", you end up with a work that's barely anything more substantive than snippets of visual spectacle. For all its glitz, this game can't hide the rot behind its façade, and in a way it makes its authors possessed by an even higher hubris. The next time someone tells me that this kind of games are necessary for non-playing audiences, I'm gonna ask to come up with something better than this unbearable casting.
Bubble Bobble
1986
Personal best: 159,280pts
"Bubble Bobble" is a precious cinnamon roll of cuteness, atested with its cartoony sprites of dinosaurs fighting humanoid contraptions, winning impossible amounts of saccharine fruits and snacks and the irresistable theme song. It is also a gameplay that hits all the right spots without being merciless, offering a quick, easy and uncompromising fun.
You by yourself, or with another player cooperatively, clear off enemies from the levels by shooting bubbles. The bubbles engulf the enemies and trap them, which you can then either jump into to pop and defeat them(in a chain link with other nearby enemies for bonus scores), or you can find other uses for the bubbles, such as climbing or using specific power-ups to get rid of enemies in creative ways, like causing floods, lightning bolts, or setting the floor ablaze.
All versions of the game offer 100 levels with widely differing platform layout, making each map distinctly situational, and where the real challenge in progressing through the game comes from however best you can use the surroundings to your advantage. The way the levels teach you the functions of power-ups is very gradual and easy-paced, but will then demand you show your expertise in the later levels HARD. There are often maps which offer a specific power-up(for example level 88 conveniently places all the enemies in a pit to be lit on fire), or other maps where you have to take tactical precaution and know from which side of the map to strike, weighting the risk of hunting a power up that skips levels(or in particular the potions that offer bonus rounds are a life-saver), and others that rely on high-class platforming skills where you literally have to climb your way using your own bubbles. Here and then the levels are peppered with boss battles that you can only beat with power-ups, and are so dynamic that they bring some freshness after tens of, frankly, stale levels and enemy placements.
The game has multiple endings where the good ones are achievable through picking up secret doors to secret stages. Discovering the secret doors without a walkthrough is impossible as the hints to their whereabouts were only published in the Japanese version of the game, and even then they were really convoluted. The game running has so many secret variables running behind the surface that it effectively takes from the "Tower of Druaga" design book, which can be endlessly frustrating for ardent completionists. The secret doors, when attempted to be reached, do offer unique gameplay rules, as some are triggered by specific events, such as say, not harming any enemies, or defeating a certain number of enemies at the same time.
The arcade version of the game is the pinnacle version with its high-end sound and graphics, making it definitive. Most people know the NES port the most which is an alright port that gets the job and all the level mechanics intact. The best port is the Master System version, however, which stays completely true to all the rules, graphics and sets of the arcade version, but adds its own special cutscenes for the endings, as well as another set of a hundred levels, the Super Mode which is available in the arcade edition through cheats. However, the Super Mode is just the same 100 levels just with different enemies swapped, to varying difficulty. A lot of the levels are actually made easier this way, but the Master System version is also less suited for two-player runs.
Bubble Bobble is easy to pick up and play because it is so immediate, but chances are both you and your friend will easily be bored after about 10 levels or so. Difficulty really begins to spike in the 20s or 30s where you have to really know how to get the hang of bubble climbing, and will be a future source of many game over screens. Luckily you can always continue from your current level, but very few people would be patient to beat all 100 levels in one go because of its repetitive gameplay. In every other regard though, it's a true classic.
(Glitchwave project #018)
"Bubble Bobble" is a precious cinnamon roll of cuteness, atested with its cartoony sprites of dinosaurs fighting humanoid contraptions, winning impossible amounts of saccharine fruits and snacks and the irresistable theme song. It is also a gameplay that hits all the right spots without being merciless, offering a quick, easy and uncompromising fun.
You by yourself, or with another player cooperatively, clear off enemies from the levels by shooting bubbles. The bubbles engulf the enemies and trap them, which you can then either jump into to pop and defeat them(in a chain link with other nearby enemies for bonus scores), or you can find other uses for the bubbles, such as climbing or using specific power-ups to get rid of enemies in creative ways, like causing floods, lightning bolts, or setting the floor ablaze.
All versions of the game offer 100 levels with widely differing platform layout, making each map distinctly situational, and where the real challenge in progressing through the game comes from however best you can use the surroundings to your advantage. The way the levels teach you the functions of power-ups is very gradual and easy-paced, but will then demand you show your expertise in the later levels HARD. There are often maps which offer a specific power-up(for example level 88 conveniently places all the enemies in a pit to be lit on fire), or other maps where you have to take tactical precaution and know from which side of the map to strike, weighting the risk of hunting a power up that skips levels(or in particular the potions that offer bonus rounds are a life-saver), and others that rely on high-class platforming skills where you literally have to climb your way using your own bubbles. Here and then the levels are peppered with boss battles that you can only beat with power-ups, and are so dynamic that they bring some freshness after tens of, frankly, stale levels and enemy placements.
The game has multiple endings where the good ones are achievable through picking up secret doors to secret stages. Discovering the secret doors without a walkthrough is impossible as the hints to their whereabouts were only published in the Japanese version of the game, and even then they were really convoluted. The game running has so many secret variables running behind the surface that it effectively takes from the "Tower of Druaga" design book, which can be endlessly frustrating for ardent completionists. The secret doors, when attempted to be reached, do offer unique gameplay rules, as some are triggered by specific events, such as say, not harming any enemies, or defeating a certain number of enemies at the same time.
The arcade version of the game is the pinnacle version with its high-end sound and graphics, making it definitive. Most people know the NES port the most which is an alright port that gets the job and all the level mechanics intact. The best port is the Master System version, however, which stays completely true to all the rules, graphics and sets of the arcade version, but adds its own special cutscenes for the endings, as well as another set of a hundred levels, the Super Mode which is available in the arcade edition through cheats. However, the Super Mode is just the same 100 levels just with different enemies swapped, to varying difficulty. A lot of the levels are actually made easier this way, but the Master System version is also less suited for two-player runs.
Bubble Bobble is easy to pick up and play because it is so immediate, but chances are both you and your friend will easily be bored after about 10 levels or so. Difficulty really begins to spike in the 20s or 30s where you have to really know how to get the hang of bubble climbing, and will be a future source of many game over screens. Luckily you can always continue from your current level, but very few people would be patient to beat all 100 levels in one go because of its repetitive gameplay. In every other regard though, it's a true classic.
(Glitchwave project #018)