Cold_Comfort
394 Reviews liked by Cold_Comfort
Limbus Company
2023
Invisible War to Ruina's Deus Ex
Edit as of 7/25/23:
What the actual fuck
Edit as of 7/25/23:
What the actual fuck
Multibowl
2016
Unequivocally the best video game ever made, though that has to be cheating, right? After all, you wouldn’t say your Raspberry Pi loaded with ROMs is itself a video game. An official compilation already stretches the definition of a video game, much to the chagrin of any dweeb trying to weasel their way out of providing an actual list of their favourite games. Yet this unofficial potpourri does what a mere compilation cannot, what your ROM library fails at. Multibowl! puts these games on equal footing with one another, contextualises them, renders their objectives concrete, and synthesises them into a new, greater whole. It is the wet dream of the games historian, the archivist, the obscura-seeker, the high-score-chaser, the competitive gamer, the informed, the ignorant, and the creative.
Bennett Foddy and AP Thomson have unenviably plumbed the depths of numerous ROM sets to scrounge up treasures both noteworthy and forgotten, presenting them all as equals as games and micro-competitive arenas. Obvious mainstays of games history, Mario Bros., Gauntlet, Metal Slug, and NBA Jam operate as immediately recognisable artefacts with goals and control schema that are already familiar to many. However, they are just as likely to come up as titles which are not generally considered competitive and oppositional: Lemmings; Maze; Bonanza Bros. Though lacking internal mechanisms for confrontational gameplay, clever use of save states and memory analysis allow Multibowl! to check for some change in some variable to grant one player a point.
One of the greatest joys in Multibowl! is its deep cuts, its pulling up of games you have never heard of, the sort of title your eye skips over in your search for that SegaSonic Bros. ROM, titles bordering on the uncanny in their near-familiarity, games that make you quickly jot down their title out of befuddlement or glee. Games you would never reasonably play. In a vacuum of playing them on their own, those works might not hold your attention long enough to grasp their purpose or gameplay. Within the rapid pace of Multibowl!, within a framework of having no choice, they demand attention, dissection, and comprehension. The coercion for the players to stick with these titles for a mere thirty seconds acts as a microexposure to the realities of most of games history, namely the lack of anything else to do. When these games necessarily compete for your attention in backlogs and ROM sets with hundreds, if not thousands, of games, there is no reason for most players to approach an understanding of them. Why expose myself to the dregs of history when Pac-Man is right there?
A games historian, archivist, or obscura-seeker has some secondary goal for their play here, that of context and exposure. Someone like myself is not necessarily playing these for their worth as fun experiences, but to come away with a fuller understanding of games as a whole, games as a cultural expression, games as a reflection of a zeitgeist, games as escapism, games as political tools, games as violence, games as transgression, games as collaborative, games as competitive, games as more than just games. Games as a means, not an end.
Multibowl!’s real purpose is not as a game, at least not to me, but as some smörgåsbord of curatorial excellence, diversity, and inversion. It demonstrates how games have always been inventive and worthy of attention in some capacity, while still remaining semi-boundless in and of itself, conveying the unceasing work of history. Histories are forever rewritten for new contexts. The once irrelevant becomes critically important with changing tides. The once foundational becomes a historiographical assumption. With vast shifts in the goals of games histories, there will always be more to uncover, more to connect.
Here's to 1,000 more.
Bennett Foddy and AP Thomson have unenviably plumbed the depths of numerous ROM sets to scrounge up treasures both noteworthy and forgotten, presenting them all as equals as games and micro-competitive arenas. Obvious mainstays of games history, Mario Bros., Gauntlet, Metal Slug, and NBA Jam operate as immediately recognisable artefacts with goals and control schema that are already familiar to many. However, they are just as likely to come up as titles which are not generally considered competitive and oppositional: Lemmings; Maze; Bonanza Bros. Though lacking internal mechanisms for confrontational gameplay, clever use of save states and memory analysis allow Multibowl! to check for some change in some variable to grant one player a point.
One of the greatest joys in Multibowl! is its deep cuts, its pulling up of games you have never heard of, the sort of title your eye skips over in your search for that SegaSonic Bros. ROM, titles bordering on the uncanny in their near-familiarity, games that make you quickly jot down their title out of befuddlement or glee. Games you would never reasonably play. In a vacuum of playing them on their own, those works might not hold your attention long enough to grasp their purpose or gameplay. Within the rapid pace of Multibowl!, within a framework of having no choice, they demand attention, dissection, and comprehension. The coercion for the players to stick with these titles for a mere thirty seconds acts as a microexposure to the realities of most of games history, namely the lack of anything else to do. When these games necessarily compete for your attention in backlogs and ROM sets with hundreds, if not thousands, of games, there is no reason for most players to approach an understanding of them. Why expose myself to the dregs of history when Pac-Man is right there?
A games historian, archivist, or obscura-seeker has some secondary goal for their play here, that of context and exposure. Someone like myself is not necessarily playing these for their worth as fun experiences, but to come away with a fuller understanding of games as a whole, games as a cultural expression, games as a reflection of a zeitgeist, games as escapism, games as political tools, games as violence, games as transgression, games as collaborative, games as competitive, games as more than just games. Games as a means, not an end.
Multibowl!’s real purpose is not as a game, at least not to me, but as some smörgåsbord of curatorial excellence, diversity, and inversion. It demonstrates how games have always been inventive and worthy of attention in some capacity, while still remaining semi-boundless in and of itself, conveying the unceasing work of history. Histories are forever rewritten for new contexts. The once irrelevant becomes critically important with changing tides. The once foundational becomes a historiographical assumption. With vast shifts in the goals of games histories, there will always be more to uncover, more to connect.
Here's to 1,000 more.
GoldenEye 007
1997
Oh man I love this game it marked my childhood can't wait to play it for the first time.
Bottom of the Ninth
1989
killed maradona
Atomic Heart
2023
another day volunteering at the russian-government funded bioshock museum. everyone keeps asking me if they can fuck the fridge. buddy, they wont even let me fuck it
Holy Diver
1989
‘Shame on the night, for places I've been and what I've seen.’
– Dio, 'Shame on the Night', 1983.
Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (Feb. 21 – Feb. 27, 2023).
Dio was formed under the difficult auspices of the Black Sabbath break-up. The band's aesthetic came from the American counterculture, fuelled by opposition to the Vietnam War and support for hot summers. 1967 saw the explosion of the hippie movement after the Summer of Love. Black Sabbath's albums went in the opposite direction, emphasising a very dark and hopeless aesthetic. The 1970s was a desert without salvation, which the band explored in their albums. Stagflation and the 1973 oil crisis made the middle class feel that they had been crushed by the economic situation: this rather white demographic saw people of colour as an ideal scapegoat, reinforcing the racial tensions of the previous decade. There was also a growing distrust of the political establishment, crystallised by the figure of Nixon and the scandals surrounding his administration.
Conflicts over the Live Evil album (1983) led to Dio and Appice leaving Black Sabbath in 1982 to form their own band, Dio. Holy Diver (1983) marked a departure from the themes of Black Sabbath, with a simplified universe. The references to medieval and Christian material are still present, but the album has a much more heroic and fantastical flavour. This thematic streamlining worked very well and Holy Diver became a hard rock staple. When Irem decided to use the album as the basis for an eponymous platformer in 1989, the result was a strange melting pot that mostly just piled references in every direction, from King Crimson to Randy Rhoads.
The player is Randy, who had to flee to a parallel dimension to escape the Black Slayer's assault on the Crimson Kingdom. Now grown up, he embarks on an adventure across six different worlds to destroy this evil. The title is largely inspired by Konami's action platformers, with Castlevania (1986) at the top of the list. Randy attacks by firing fireballs, which have a fairly short range. As in Adventure of Link (1987), he can use magic to help him progress: the Twin Fire doubles the number of projectiles fired and increases the range of attacks, while the Blizzard freezes lava and small enemies. With each level, the player gains a new spell to add to their grimoire. However, unlike Castlevania, where the use of secondary weapons was optional, Holy Diver requires the use of at least the Blizzard and Overdrive to progress through the platforming. This approach makes magic an important resource to conserve, even though it is an indispensable tool for clearing hordes of enemies.
Holy Diver is particularly sadistic in its enemy placement. Many commentators have pointed out the extremely high difficulty of the title, and BrTedford rightly noted that the title feels almost like a puzzle game. Each room requires the player to find an optimal path and play around with enemy spawn locations to get rid of them in an orderly fashion. While Overdrive is a solid defensive option, it is not perfect and requires caution. The game design pushes the player to make deliberate moves and manage their resources intelligently. This wouldn't be a bad concept if the title wasn't weighed down by the stiffness of its movements. Some precise jumps become an ordeal with Randy's airborne inertia; the character sometimes has a strange delay when turning or jumping, which proves critical when enemies are attacking from both sides.
Regrettably, the title never really reaches its full potential. The levels are all very similar, with a succession of long horizontal corridors or vertical shafts in the style of Metroid (1986). The lava mechanic is quickly worn out, and the game only subverts it once for a single secret passage. This lack of creativity is also evident in the bosses, where strategy often comes down to finding a safe spot rather than using spells creatively. Surprisingly, none of them make use of Blizzard. The sprite flickering, already problematic throughout the levels, often becomes unbearable during these boss fights, certainly the worse-designed parts. The Eye Column is morbidly boring despite a seemingly interesting concept, while Embodiment of Evil is so difficult that the developers probably had to add the alcoves on the sides of the arena to allow players to use the Overdrive from there.
The Holy Diver album carried the legacy of rock history and was an aesthetically new proposition from Dio. 'Don't Talk to Strangers' has a certain contemplative quality, while 'Shame on the Night' takes on a playful, teasing quality. The world of Dio's Holy Diver is a reimagining of the Christian epic with rich fantasy overtones. The game of the same name evokes none of its elements. The enemies are all generic and lazily borrowed from Castlevania, Deadly Towers (1986) or Wizards & Warriors (1997), and the environments are generally monochrome and devoid of any flair. Admittedly, this is only an unofficial adaptation, but why invoke Dio's album and the names of so many famous bands if not to make something of them? In the end, Holy Diver is a functional game, driven by an extremely sharp difficulty that it never manages to justify. There are a few ideas here and there, but they are always one-offs that are immediately forgotten. Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds (1998) managed to establish a unique atmosphere with its unusual soundtrack for a video game, creating a cohesive product that synthesised very different aesthetics and eras. Holy Diver is nothing like that.
– Dio, 'Shame on the Night', 1983.
Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (Feb. 21 – Feb. 27, 2023).
Dio was formed under the difficult auspices of the Black Sabbath break-up. The band's aesthetic came from the American counterculture, fuelled by opposition to the Vietnam War and support for hot summers. 1967 saw the explosion of the hippie movement after the Summer of Love. Black Sabbath's albums went in the opposite direction, emphasising a very dark and hopeless aesthetic. The 1970s was a desert without salvation, which the band explored in their albums. Stagflation and the 1973 oil crisis made the middle class feel that they had been crushed by the economic situation: this rather white demographic saw people of colour as an ideal scapegoat, reinforcing the racial tensions of the previous decade. There was also a growing distrust of the political establishment, crystallised by the figure of Nixon and the scandals surrounding his administration.
Conflicts over the Live Evil album (1983) led to Dio and Appice leaving Black Sabbath in 1982 to form their own band, Dio. Holy Diver (1983) marked a departure from the themes of Black Sabbath, with a simplified universe. The references to medieval and Christian material are still present, but the album has a much more heroic and fantastical flavour. This thematic streamlining worked very well and Holy Diver became a hard rock staple. When Irem decided to use the album as the basis for an eponymous platformer in 1989, the result was a strange melting pot that mostly just piled references in every direction, from King Crimson to Randy Rhoads.
The player is Randy, who had to flee to a parallel dimension to escape the Black Slayer's assault on the Crimson Kingdom. Now grown up, he embarks on an adventure across six different worlds to destroy this evil. The title is largely inspired by Konami's action platformers, with Castlevania (1986) at the top of the list. Randy attacks by firing fireballs, which have a fairly short range. As in Adventure of Link (1987), he can use magic to help him progress: the Twin Fire doubles the number of projectiles fired and increases the range of attacks, while the Blizzard freezes lava and small enemies. With each level, the player gains a new spell to add to their grimoire. However, unlike Castlevania, where the use of secondary weapons was optional, Holy Diver requires the use of at least the Blizzard and Overdrive to progress through the platforming. This approach makes magic an important resource to conserve, even though it is an indispensable tool for clearing hordes of enemies.
Holy Diver is particularly sadistic in its enemy placement. Many commentators have pointed out the extremely high difficulty of the title, and BrTedford rightly noted that the title feels almost like a puzzle game. Each room requires the player to find an optimal path and play around with enemy spawn locations to get rid of them in an orderly fashion. While Overdrive is a solid defensive option, it is not perfect and requires caution. The game design pushes the player to make deliberate moves and manage their resources intelligently. This wouldn't be a bad concept if the title wasn't weighed down by the stiffness of its movements. Some precise jumps become an ordeal with Randy's airborne inertia; the character sometimes has a strange delay when turning or jumping, which proves critical when enemies are attacking from both sides.
Regrettably, the title never really reaches its full potential. The levels are all very similar, with a succession of long horizontal corridors or vertical shafts in the style of Metroid (1986). The lava mechanic is quickly worn out, and the game only subverts it once for a single secret passage. This lack of creativity is also evident in the bosses, where strategy often comes down to finding a safe spot rather than using spells creatively. Surprisingly, none of them make use of Blizzard. The sprite flickering, already problematic throughout the levels, often becomes unbearable during these boss fights, certainly the worse-designed parts. The Eye Column is morbidly boring despite a seemingly interesting concept, while Embodiment of Evil is so difficult that the developers probably had to add the alcoves on the sides of the arena to allow players to use the Overdrive from there.
The Holy Diver album carried the legacy of rock history and was an aesthetically new proposition from Dio. 'Don't Talk to Strangers' has a certain contemplative quality, while 'Shame on the Night' takes on a playful, teasing quality. The world of Dio's Holy Diver is a reimagining of the Christian epic with rich fantasy overtones. The game of the same name evokes none of its elements. The enemies are all generic and lazily borrowed from Castlevania, Deadly Towers (1986) or Wizards & Warriors (1997), and the environments are generally monochrome and devoid of any flair. Admittedly, this is only an unofficial adaptation, but why invoke Dio's album and the names of so many famous bands if not to make something of them? In the end, Holy Diver is a functional game, driven by an extremely sharp difficulty that it never manages to justify. There are a few ideas here and there, but they are always one-offs that are immediately forgotten. Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds (1998) managed to establish a unique atmosphere with its unusual soundtrack for a video game, creating a cohesive product that synthesised very different aesthetics and eras. Holy Diver is nothing like that.
Returnal
2021
Data File-
//defragmented
[#FORCED START OVERRIDE - - LOG OPENED]
BROADCAST: DSE Backloggd - - RA 18h 06m 0s | Feb 20th 2023
====================
XENOGLYPH I
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Writings by “BeachEpisode”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[Translation Accuracy: 86%]
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“Never should have smoked that ҂ѼҎ҉֎ (excrement? physic?), now I’m in the Abyssal Scar.
I must admit to having been left gobsmacked and dumbfounded by how much Returnal has left such a strong impact on me. I don’t have much history with Housemarque’s library of games, despite Super Stardust HD being such a near-permanent fixture on my PS3 that it could have passed for my TV’s screensaver. Outland is relatively slept on these days too, I reckon, but ƺƻƛʥʭФѩ (unneeded digression?). Returnal finally received a PC port, allowing me to give the title a shot. The ᵬᶚỻӜѯ (electronic device?) is so deprived of games it’s genuinely heartbreaking…”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
====================
XENOGLYPH II
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Writings by “BeachEpisode”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[Translation Accuracy: 91%]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
“Typically I’d run for the hills whenever someone threatened me with a roguelite - a genre I often find ƛʥ؆ٱᵯᶈ (disinterest in?) at the best of times, and one that stands in stark opposition to what I personally find fulfilling about videogames at worst. There wasn’t much in place to prepare me for how deftly Housemarque utilised their core arena arcade design tenets around this Cronenberg/Villeneuve aesthetic pastiche with equal parts confidence and purpose. It must be said, because it is ﬗꬳꬲﭏ (true?), that this is the best-feeling third-person shooter I’ve touched. The degree of freedom of expression in the general character movement, as well as the broad utility of the tools available allow for some astoundingly gratifying excursions through arenas fraught with enemies spewing endless pointilist bullet patterns in easily analysable & counterable on the fly attack patterns.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
====================
XENOGLYPH III
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Writings by “BeachEpisode”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[Translation Accuracy: 95%]
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“The compounding subtleties and delicate touches to the way Returnal’s roguelite structure was sculpted for purpose to encapsulate Selene’s purgatorial journey convinces me of this being one of the best character studies I’ve seen since maybe Silent Hill 2? Blurring the line between ﬕתּﻼἕ (symbol?), metaphor and physicality and never prescribing strict and demystifying literalisations. I think it is a very special thing when taking a moment to enjoy the environmental art design can yield subtle narrative realisations, lines drawn between the fragments of a character that they allow you to excavate. The world of Returnal is so dizzyingly all-encompassing.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[!!!!CONTENT WARNING: Topics of suicide!!!!!]
====================
XENOGLYPH IV
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Writings by “BeachEpisode”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[Translation Accuracy: 0%]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
“Rot13 Rneyvre va gur jrrx, V znqr na nggrzcg ng raqvat zl yvsr. Qvqa’g nppbzcyvfu zhpu orlbaq fbzr oehvfrf naq n srj qnlf fcrag va n orq va RE. Va gur zbzragf yrnqvat gb zr npgvat ba zl vqrngvbaf, vg sryg yvxr funeqf bs vpr jrer cvrepvat guebhtu rirel cneg bs zl obql - svyyvat zr jvgu n qrrc puvyy naq fgvyyarff, nyzbfg nffhevat zr gung vg’f bxnl, gurer’f ab funzr, V’ir nyernql orra qrnq. Jura V neevirq onpx ubzr, fgvyy n yvggyr qehax bss gur cnva naq funzr bs vg nyy, V qvqa’g xabj jung gb qb. Guvf ebbz qvqa’g srry yvxr zl bja nal zber. V qvqa’g erpbtavfr gur crefba va gur zveebe, gur crefba jub jebgr zl grkgf be zrffntrf. Yvfgyrff, V gubhtug abguvat bs pbagvahvat zl cynlguebhtu bs Ergheany, vg jnf whfg na rnfl cvrpr bs abeznypl V pbhyq fyvc onpx vagb.
Fryrar ernjbxr ba na nyvra cynarg jurer fur nyjnlf qvq, gur napube cbvag ng gur fvgr bs gur vavgvny nppvqrag. Fur znqr n pbzzrag ba ubj haerpbtavfnoyr gur raivebazrag jnf sebz ure ynfg yvsr, fur yvfgrarq gb nhqvb ybtf erpbeqrq ol urefrys naq rkcerffrf qvfthfg naq pbashfvba ng ubj guvf crefba pbhyq cbffvoyl or ure. Univat na nethzrag jvgu tubfgf naq ybfvat gb lbhe bja ibvpr, qrfcrengryl pynjvat sbe n yvtug ng gur raq bs gur ghaary bayl gb erirny gur znyvtanapvrf naq cnenfvgrf rngvat njnl ng lbhe bccbeghavgvrf sbe frys shysvyyzrag. Fghpx va n fvflcurna gevny sbe frys, sbetvirarff, ngbarzrag gung bsgra srryf qbjaevtug shgvyr.
V xabj nyy bs guvf fbhaqf evqvphybhfyl gevgr, ohg Ergheany fgehpx n areir jvgu fhpu cerpvfvba vg sryg nyzbfg vainfvir. Univat guvf yvggyr fvzhynpehz bs n wbhearl gb puvc njnl ng naq zrgnzbecubfr bagb zlfrys unf urycrq prager zr, svaq pbagrkg va gur abvfr naq pbashfvba, znqr zr srry yvxr V pna nvz gb or abezny ntnva. Znlor gur wbhearl V'z ba vf n shgvyr bar, gurer'f rirel cbffvovyvgl V'yy ybfr zl sbbgvat naq snyy gb gur onfr bs gur zbhagnva lrg ntnva - ohg orsber gura, V'yy fgevir sbe nppbzcyvfuzragf gung whfgvsl zl cynpr va guvf yvsrgvzr. V'yy fubj zl gunaxf gb gur crbcyr jub znxr yvsr n wbl. V'yy xvpx gur jbeyq va gur qvpx orpnhfr fcvgr pna or n cbjreshy zbgvingbe.”
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[LOG CLOSED]
//defragmented
[#FORCED START OVERRIDE - - LOG OPENED]
BROADCAST: DSE Backloggd - - RA 18h 06m 0s | Feb 20th 2023
====================
XENOGLYPH I
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Writings by “BeachEpisode”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[Translation Accuracy: 86%]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
“Never should have smoked that ҂ѼҎ҉֎ (excrement? physic?), now I’m in the Abyssal Scar.
I must admit to having been left gobsmacked and dumbfounded by how much Returnal has left such a strong impact on me. I don’t have much history with Housemarque’s library of games, despite Super Stardust HD being such a near-permanent fixture on my PS3 that it could have passed for my TV’s screensaver. Outland is relatively slept on these days too, I reckon, but ƺƻƛʥʭФѩ (unneeded digression?). Returnal finally received a PC port, allowing me to give the title a shot. The ᵬᶚỻӜѯ (electronic device?) is so deprived of games it’s genuinely heartbreaking…”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
====================
XENOGLYPH II
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Writings by “BeachEpisode”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[Translation Accuracy: 91%]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
“Typically I’d run for the hills whenever someone threatened me with a roguelite - a genre I often find ƛʥ؆ٱᵯᶈ (disinterest in?) at the best of times, and one that stands in stark opposition to what I personally find fulfilling about videogames at worst. There wasn’t much in place to prepare me for how deftly Housemarque utilised their core arena arcade design tenets around this Cronenberg/Villeneuve aesthetic pastiche with equal parts confidence and purpose. It must be said, because it is ﬗꬳꬲﭏ (true?), that this is the best-feeling third-person shooter I’ve touched. The degree of freedom of expression in the general character movement, as well as the broad utility of the tools available allow for some astoundingly gratifying excursions through arenas fraught with enemies spewing endless pointilist bullet patterns in easily analysable & counterable on the fly attack patterns.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
====================
XENOGLYPH III
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Writings by “BeachEpisode”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[Translation Accuracy: 95%]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
“The compounding subtleties and delicate touches to the way Returnal’s roguelite structure was sculpted for purpose to encapsulate Selene’s purgatorial journey convinces me of this being one of the best character studies I’ve seen since maybe Silent Hill 2? Blurring the line between ﬕתּﻼἕ (symbol?), metaphor and physicality and never prescribing strict and demystifying literalisations. I think it is a very special thing when taking a moment to enjoy the environmental art design can yield subtle narrative realisations, lines drawn between the fragments of a character that they allow you to excavate. The world of Returnal is so dizzyingly all-encompassing.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[!!!!CONTENT WARNING: Topics of suicide!!!!!]
====================
XENOGLYPH IV
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Writings by “BeachEpisode”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[Translation Accuracy: 0%]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
“Rot13 Rneyvre va gur jrrx, V znqr na nggrzcg ng raqvat zl yvsr. Qvqa’g nppbzcyvfu zhpu orlbaq fbzr oehvfrf naq n srj qnlf fcrag va n orq va RE. Va gur zbzragf yrnqvat gb zr npgvat ba zl vqrngvbaf, vg sryg yvxr funeqf bs vpr jrer cvrepvat guebhtu rirel cneg bs zl obql - svyyvat zr jvgu n qrrc puvyy naq fgvyyarff, nyzbfg nffhevat zr gung vg’f bxnl, gurer’f ab funzr, V’ir nyernql orra qrnq. Jura V neevirq onpx ubzr, fgvyy n yvggyr qehax bss gur cnva naq funzr bs vg nyy, V qvqa’g xabj jung gb qb. Guvf ebbz qvqa’g srry yvxr zl bja nal zber. V qvqa’g erpbtavfr gur crefba va gur zveebe, gur crefba jub jebgr zl grkgf be zrffntrf. Yvfgyrff, V gubhtug abguvat bs pbagvahvat zl cynlguebhtu bs Ergheany, vg jnf whfg na rnfl cvrpr bs abeznypl V pbhyq fyvc onpx vagb.
Fryrar ernjbxr ba na nyvra cynarg jurer fur nyjnlf qvq, gur napube cbvag ng gur fvgr bs gur vavgvny nppvqrag. Fur znqr n pbzzrag ba ubj haerpbtavfnoyr gur raivebazrag jnf sebz ure ynfg yvsr, fur yvfgrarq gb nhqvb ybtf erpbeqrq ol urefrys naq rkcerffrf qvfthfg naq pbashfvba ng ubj guvf crefba pbhyq cbffvoyl or ure. Univat na nethzrag jvgu tubfgf naq ybfvat gb lbhe bja ibvpr, qrfcrengryl pynjvat sbe n yvtug ng gur raq bs gur ghaary bayl gb erirny gur znyvtanapvrf naq cnenfvgrf rngvat njnl ng lbhe bccbeghavgvrf sbe frys shysvyyzrag. Fghpx va n fvflcurna gevny sbe frys, sbetvirarff, ngbarzrag gung bsgra srryf qbjaevtug shgvyr.
V xabj nyy bs guvf fbhaqf evqvphybhfyl gevgr, ohg Ergheany fgehpx n areir jvgu fhpu cerpvfvba vg sryg nyzbfg vainfvir. Univat guvf yvggyr fvzhynpehz bs n wbhearl gb puvc njnl ng naq zrgnzbecubfr bagb zlfrys unf urycrq prager zr, svaq pbagrkg va gur abvfr naq pbashfvba, znqr zr srry yvxr V pna nvz gb or abezny ntnva. Znlor gur wbhearl V'z ba vf n shgvyr bar, gurer'f rirel cbffvovyvgl V'yy ybfr zl sbbgvat naq snyy gb gur onfr bs gur zbhagnva lrg ntnva - ohg orsber gura, V'yy fgevir sbe nppbzcyvfuzragf gung whfgvsl zl cynpr va guvf yvsrgvzr. V'yy fubj zl gunaxf gb gur crbcyr jub znxr yvsr n wbl. V'yy xvpx gur jbeyq va gur qvpx orpnhfr fcvgr pna or n cbjreshy zbgvingbe.”
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[LOG CLOSED]
Fire Emblem Engage
2023
'The one thing I always wanted... staring me in the face all the while.'
Four years after Fire Emblem: Three Houses (2019), Fire Emblem Engage set itself the task of being an anniversary game, one that would pay tribute to the entire franchise. A Herculean task, if ever there was one, and the title opted to simplify its development cycle by not retaining the core features of Three Houses. With a streamlined story, the team led by Tsutomu Tei and Kenta Nakanishi sought to emphasise the gameplay, while the visuals were designed to appeal to a younger audience, either completely new to the series or having only experienced it after Fire Emblem Awakening (2012).
Overwhelming sub-systems and activities: a pacing issue
The player assumes the role of Alear, whose mission is to save the world from the threat of the dragon Sombron after a thousand years of slumber. As usual, the protagonist travels the continent and recruits companions as the adventure progresses. The big addition is the Emblem Rings, which allow a character to be linked to a past hero from the series. The game piles up its characters very quickly, to the point where it becomes difficult to keep up with the pace. In terms of gameplay, this is perhaps both the strength and the weakness of Engage. The title offers so many options for creating one's team that it can be overwhelming. With a generally harder difficulty, players are encouraged to take an active interest in pairing up Rings, thinking about the skills they want each character to inherit, and doing as many of the various activities on Somniel as possible.
Cold_Comfort pointed out that the stat boosts from meals or training sessions – which force the player to undertake a mini-game that becomes tiresome the second time around – give a significant advantage in combat, therefore compelling the player to complete them, at least in the early stages of the game. Only when one has reached the mid-game with enough Rings and characters unlocked can this phase be skipped. Certain combinations – at least in Hard mode – allow players to get through the dense waves of enemies without any major problems. Yunaka makes a perfect AVO tank, especially with the fog that Corrin can summon; in the second half of my playthrough, she was responsible for almost half the kills on every map.
If the player makes use of all the systems available in the game to customise their characters, it is possible to create teams capable of withstanding adversity in a wide range of situations. The game is less demanding on long-term planning, as it is possible to change classes without penalty – the experience curve remains the same. However, it compensates for this ease of management by making it extremely difficult to obtain money, the key to upgrading weapons. In my case, I felt compelled to take special care of Anna to make her very viable and to use her passive to accumulate gold. Similarly, the flexibility offered by the Rings is very enjoyable, but in a twist borrowed from Fire Emblem Heroes (2017), the Bond Rings have to be pulled in a gacha system. As a result, the game is constantly torn between conflicting choices that are sometimes sympathetic to the player, sometimes irritating, and sometimes tedious. Although most of the problems become less critical in the second half of the game, the early game is extremely unpleasant, as the player spends as much time on the Somniel doing insipid activities as fighting. For a title that was supposed to be all about tactics, this pacing is indicative of a serious deficiency.
A strong combat system
In terms of actual tactics, Engage is a perfectly enjoyable experience. The difficulty has been increased compared to Three Houses, and the map design tries to take advantage of the Emblem Rings, pushing the player to Engage to compensate for their numerical disadvantage. The title encourages one to be aggressive in order to take out enemies quickly, especially with the Break mechanic. This brings the Weapon Triangle back into focus, allowing characters with the wrong weapon to take on duels that would normally be avoided in previous games. The result of these features is that Engage is a much more player phase-focused experience, which proves to be very enjoyable. Some maps really shine with this design, requiring precision as the player progresses: Chapter 17, with a heavy atmosphere and a very open and dangerous terrain for the player to navigate, is arguably one of the best maps. In general, Engage requires a more conscientious approach to character positioning, and rewards creative ideas with the staves or, towards the end of the game, Byleth's Goddess Dance.
The form of the game: a abysmal writing
Enjoyable in combat, generally lacklustre during the Somniel downtime, the game is characterised by its highly variable technical quality and its abysmal writing. Most of the backgrounds are a simple image with a few camera movements as a cover: if Three Houses suffered from underwhelming performances, Engage doesn't even try to hide its shortcomings. Admittedly, some might point to the sumptuous combat animations and the fact that each map is fully modelled, so that the player can explore them after each chapter: this hardly makes up for the poorly staged dialogues and the fact that the explorable locations are largely uninteresting – the player can and should collect resources there, but it is more often a thankless task than a sequence suited to contemplation.
As for the writing, the game starts off surprisingly poorly and takes about ten chapters to gather momentum. The sheer number of characters means that some of them have to be dismissed very quickly, and their supporting dialogue doesn't help to give them depth. This is obviously a chronic issue in the Fire Emblem series, but Engage feels like every character has been built around one or two personality traits, and all dialogue has to revolve around them, in a very linear fashion from C-rank to A-rank. Some characters are more believable and coherent, but they can be counted on one hand – Ivy, Diamant, Citrinne or Yunaka, for example. The title never manages to find the right tone: it sometimes attempts flights of gravitas that immediately fall flat, as the world is so under-explored and uninteresting. The latest chapters have a few interesting moments, especially those involving Zephia, but otherwise Engage goes nowhere, following the same tired clichés of Japanese animation.
For whom is this game?
If incestuous themes do not seem to be present – I did not notice any in my playthrough – the sexualisation of young characters along Japanese idol model and the latent paedophilia surrounding the character of Anna are cause for concern: some dialogues have been modified in the Western localisation, but at its core the game is embedded in a cultural aesthetic that contributes to the banalisation of behaviours and representations. The title is obsessed with the question of motherhood, echoing the recent wave of games inspired by post-Abe family policies. All these choices correspond to a Japanese vision that is still shaped by the JK business and the idol industry; one would like to agree with Masafumi Monden's words: 'Emphasizing sweetness, demureness and femininity without hinting at sexual allure or seeking the objectifying male gaze serves to repudiate the stereotyped representation of femininity as passive, compliant and powerless against the sexual objectification of women' [1], but the swimwear and the characters waking Alear up without their consent do not help in this regard. As a result, characters such as Rosado and Etie appear as stand-ins to fill the gender nonconformity quota. It is impossible to take the game seriously, and it is hard to ignore these elements when the player is forced to spend hours on the Somniel.
What remains after sixty hours of Fire Emblem Engage? Some very creative maps that are genuinely satisfying to solve; hours of frustrating preparation between missions; a desire to get through the dialogue as quickly as possible; and, inevitably, a game whose maximalist approach requires too much effort and time to be truly accessible to newer players. Fates (2015) and Three Houses had divided players, old and new, over game design choices. The idea of having different routes or the activities of Garreg Mach were not to everyone's taste: this is the common lot of concepts that radically change the formula of a series. Engage also has its own innovations and twists, but they seem shrouded in a heavy cynicism: was the title designed to provide Heroes with new characters to populate the banners? Everything feels disjointed, as if Tsutomu Tei and Kenta Nakanishi had no desire to craft a coherent experience from start to finish. As long as one considers gameplay to be the primary purpose of a Fire Emblem game, it is possible to find value in it; however, it seems to me that Engage is a step in a creatively dubious direction and one that prompts me to abandon the adventure that this series represented.
__________
[1] Masafumi Monden, ‘Being Alice in Japan: performing a cute, ‘girlish’ revolt’, in Japan Forum, vol. 26, no. 2, 2012, p. 282.
Four years after Fire Emblem: Three Houses (2019), Fire Emblem Engage set itself the task of being an anniversary game, one that would pay tribute to the entire franchise. A Herculean task, if ever there was one, and the title opted to simplify its development cycle by not retaining the core features of Three Houses. With a streamlined story, the team led by Tsutomu Tei and Kenta Nakanishi sought to emphasise the gameplay, while the visuals were designed to appeal to a younger audience, either completely new to the series or having only experienced it after Fire Emblem Awakening (2012).
Overwhelming sub-systems and activities: a pacing issue
The player assumes the role of Alear, whose mission is to save the world from the threat of the dragon Sombron after a thousand years of slumber. As usual, the protagonist travels the continent and recruits companions as the adventure progresses. The big addition is the Emblem Rings, which allow a character to be linked to a past hero from the series. The game piles up its characters very quickly, to the point where it becomes difficult to keep up with the pace. In terms of gameplay, this is perhaps both the strength and the weakness of Engage. The title offers so many options for creating one's team that it can be overwhelming. With a generally harder difficulty, players are encouraged to take an active interest in pairing up Rings, thinking about the skills they want each character to inherit, and doing as many of the various activities on Somniel as possible.
Cold_Comfort pointed out that the stat boosts from meals or training sessions – which force the player to undertake a mini-game that becomes tiresome the second time around – give a significant advantage in combat, therefore compelling the player to complete them, at least in the early stages of the game. Only when one has reached the mid-game with enough Rings and characters unlocked can this phase be skipped. Certain combinations – at least in Hard mode – allow players to get through the dense waves of enemies without any major problems. Yunaka makes a perfect AVO tank, especially with the fog that Corrin can summon; in the second half of my playthrough, she was responsible for almost half the kills on every map.
If the player makes use of all the systems available in the game to customise their characters, it is possible to create teams capable of withstanding adversity in a wide range of situations. The game is less demanding on long-term planning, as it is possible to change classes without penalty – the experience curve remains the same. However, it compensates for this ease of management by making it extremely difficult to obtain money, the key to upgrading weapons. In my case, I felt compelled to take special care of Anna to make her very viable and to use her passive to accumulate gold. Similarly, the flexibility offered by the Rings is very enjoyable, but in a twist borrowed from Fire Emblem Heroes (2017), the Bond Rings have to be pulled in a gacha system. As a result, the game is constantly torn between conflicting choices that are sometimes sympathetic to the player, sometimes irritating, and sometimes tedious. Although most of the problems become less critical in the second half of the game, the early game is extremely unpleasant, as the player spends as much time on the Somniel doing insipid activities as fighting. For a title that was supposed to be all about tactics, this pacing is indicative of a serious deficiency.
A strong combat system
In terms of actual tactics, Engage is a perfectly enjoyable experience. The difficulty has been increased compared to Three Houses, and the map design tries to take advantage of the Emblem Rings, pushing the player to Engage to compensate for their numerical disadvantage. The title encourages one to be aggressive in order to take out enemies quickly, especially with the Break mechanic. This brings the Weapon Triangle back into focus, allowing characters with the wrong weapon to take on duels that would normally be avoided in previous games. The result of these features is that Engage is a much more player phase-focused experience, which proves to be very enjoyable. Some maps really shine with this design, requiring precision as the player progresses: Chapter 17, with a heavy atmosphere and a very open and dangerous terrain for the player to navigate, is arguably one of the best maps. In general, Engage requires a more conscientious approach to character positioning, and rewards creative ideas with the staves or, towards the end of the game, Byleth's Goddess Dance.
The form of the game: a abysmal writing
Enjoyable in combat, generally lacklustre during the Somniel downtime, the game is characterised by its highly variable technical quality and its abysmal writing. Most of the backgrounds are a simple image with a few camera movements as a cover: if Three Houses suffered from underwhelming performances, Engage doesn't even try to hide its shortcomings. Admittedly, some might point to the sumptuous combat animations and the fact that each map is fully modelled, so that the player can explore them after each chapter: this hardly makes up for the poorly staged dialogues and the fact that the explorable locations are largely uninteresting – the player can and should collect resources there, but it is more often a thankless task than a sequence suited to contemplation.
As for the writing, the game starts off surprisingly poorly and takes about ten chapters to gather momentum. The sheer number of characters means that some of them have to be dismissed very quickly, and their supporting dialogue doesn't help to give them depth. This is obviously a chronic issue in the Fire Emblem series, but Engage feels like every character has been built around one or two personality traits, and all dialogue has to revolve around them, in a very linear fashion from C-rank to A-rank. Some characters are more believable and coherent, but they can be counted on one hand – Ivy, Diamant, Citrinne or Yunaka, for example. The title never manages to find the right tone: it sometimes attempts flights of gravitas that immediately fall flat, as the world is so under-explored and uninteresting. The latest chapters have a few interesting moments, especially those involving Zephia, but otherwise Engage goes nowhere, following the same tired clichés of Japanese animation.
For whom is this game?
If incestuous themes do not seem to be present – I did not notice any in my playthrough – the sexualisation of young characters along Japanese idol model and the latent paedophilia surrounding the character of Anna are cause for concern: some dialogues have been modified in the Western localisation, but at its core the game is embedded in a cultural aesthetic that contributes to the banalisation of behaviours and representations. The title is obsessed with the question of motherhood, echoing the recent wave of games inspired by post-Abe family policies. All these choices correspond to a Japanese vision that is still shaped by the JK business and the idol industry; one would like to agree with Masafumi Monden's words: 'Emphasizing sweetness, demureness and femininity without hinting at sexual allure or seeking the objectifying male gaze serves to repudiate the stereotyped representation of femininity as passive, compliant and powerless against the sexual objectification of women' [1], but the swimwear and the characters waking Alear up without their consent do not help in this regard. As a result, characters such as Rosado and Etie appear as stand-ins to fill the gender nonconformity quota. It is impossible to take the game seriously, and it is hard to ignore these elements when the player is forced to spend hours on the Somniel.
What remains after sixty hours of Fire Emblem Engage? Some very creative maps that are genuinely satisfying to solve; hours of frustrating preparation between missions; a desire to get through the dialogue as quickly as possible; and, inevitably, a game whose maximalist approach requires too much effort and time to be truly accessible to newer players. Fates (2015) and Three Houses had divided players, old and new, over game design choices. The idea of having different routes or the activities of Garreg Mach were not to everyone's taste: this is the common lot of concepts that radically change the formula of a series. Engage also has its own innovations and twists, but they seem shrouded in a heavy cynicism: was the title designed to provide Heroes with new characters to populate the banners? Everything feels disjointed, as if Tsutomu Tei and Kenta Nakanishi had no desire to craft a coherent experience from start to finish. As long as one considers gameplay to be the primary purpose of a Fire Emblem game, it is possible to find value in it; however, it seems to me that Engage is a step in a creatively dubious direction and one that prompts me to abandon the adventure that this series represented.
__________
[1] Masafumi Monden, ‘Being Alice in Japan: performing a cute, ‘girlish’ revolt’, in Japan Forum, vol. 26, no. 2, 2012, p. 282.
Pizza Tower
2023
It feels so gratifying to play a game that wears its inspirations on its sleeve yet feels so confident with its own ideas and execution.
Pizza Tower offers some of the most mechanically dense platforming in its genre. Every level and move you can pull off is so perfectly calculated to encourage the act of speed. What's that? You're bumping into too many walls that make your speed come to a screeching halt? Well just run up them, doofus. You'd think the high you get from going at such blistering speeds would wear off eventually, but each level offers something so different and unique that they become endlessly exhilarating to master.
Combos feel so satisfying and invigorating to chain together with the barrage of moves you can pull off, combat quickly becoming a mad dash towards the next enemy to pulverize or the next batch of ingredients to grab. Bosses contrast the main gameplay by requiring the player to be calm and methodical in their methods to successfully dodge the attacks, yet bosses remain fast paced and never let up on their assaults.
Pizza Tower is practically everything I look for in a 2D platformer: extremely speedy platforming, borderline insane animation, engaging yet challenging bosses, and a well fleshed out moveset. However, that is not even mentioning how Pizza Tower practically begs the player to be replayed. With how every level feels so fun to blast through, having to do so while chaining a massive combo throughout the level, finding all the secrets and collectibles, and doing two consecutive laps on the big rush from the end of the level to the beginning asks the player to use all of their acquired skills. It's brutally challenging, yet unendingly rewarding to finally pull off the golden run.
If Pizza Tower taught me anything, it's that we need more games where you play as a fat greasy Italian man.
Pizza Tower offers some of the most mechanically dense platforming in its genre. Every level and move you can pull off is so perfectly calculated to encourage the act of speed. What's that? You're bumping into too many walls that make your speed come to a screeching halt? Well just run up them, doofus. You'd think the high you get from going at such blistering speeds would wear off eventually, but each level offers something so different and unique that they become endlessly exhilarating to master.
Combos feel so satisfying and invigorating to chain together with the barrage of moves you can pull off, combat quickly becoming a mad dash towards the next enemy to pulverize or the next batch of ingredients to grab. Bosses contrast the main gameplay by requiring the player to be calm and methodical in their methods to successfully dodge the attacks, yet bosses remain fast paced and never let up on their assaults.
Pizza Tower is practically everything I look for in a 2D platformer: extremely speedy platforming, borderline insane animation, engaging yet challenging bosses, and a well fleshed out moveset. However, that is not even mentioning how Pizza Tower practically begs the player to be replayed. With how every level feels so fun to blast through, having to do so while chaining a massive combo throughout the level, finding all the secrets and collectibles, and doing two consecutive laps on the big rush from the end of the level to the beginning asks the player to use all of their acquired skills. It's brutally challenging, yet unendingly rewarding to finally pull off the golden run.
If Pizza Tower taught me anything, it's that we need more games where you play as a fat greasy Italian man.
L.O.L.: Lack of Love
2000
‘I think that in the essence of human civilization, we have the desire to become rich without limit, by taking the lives of other creatures.’
– Hayao Miyazaki, Mononoke-hime Theatre Program, 1997.
Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (Feb. 14 – Feb. 20, 2023).
In a child's mind, Albert Barillé's Il était une fois... l'homme (1978) had an indescribable mystical aura. Perhaps it was not so much the episodes as the opening that left its mark on several generations of children: Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (c.1704) resounded in the background with all the majesty of the organ, while a succession of scenes depicted the evolution of mankind, even in a hypothetical future. In the final scene, with long and painful chords, Pierre runs to a rocket ship to escape a horde of spacemen who also want to leave an overpopulated Earth plagued by chronic and nuclear wars. The whole series was underpinned by the spectre of violence, depicted as the secret template of the human race, despite progress, art and the desire for happiness. Kenichi Nishi takes a different angle in L.O.L.: Lack of Love, but explores the same fears and frustrations, building on the concept already explored in Moon: Remix RPG Adventure (1997).
An alien ecosystem
After an introductory cutscene, accompanied by an ethereal and dramatic melody, the player takes on the role of a small insect born into the world following the arrival of a human rocket, part of the L.O.L. programme, which aims to terraform a habitable planet and transfer some of humanity to it. As overpopulation and epidemics ravage Earth, there is an urgent need to find a new haven to house human life and relieve the strain on vital resources. Ignoring these considerations, the player must explore their environment and help various animal species, seeking their friendship, which crystallises in the form of coloured orbs. These are used to activate crystals and allow the creature to evolve. Little by little, the insect evolves into a mammal, acquiring various skills that enable it to solve the game's various puzzles.
Unlike Moon, which was completely nonviolent, Lack of Love allows the player to attack other creatures in a survival perspective. In addition to a health bar, the player has to contend with a satiety meter that must be filled by eating other animals or the fruits that grow on each level. The game discreetly allows the player to choose their diet without any real consequences, as it is a simple illustration of an ecological habitat. This natural law of life is also reflected in the game's progression. While a certain number of orbs are required to progress to the next level, there is no obligation to help all species; conversely, nothing prevents the player from doing everyone a favour for the sake of altruism. There is an optimism about the living world that is beautifully underlined by the art direction: the environments are luxuriously detailed, with a very alien ecology. Although the species featured are reminiscent of the various animals found on Earth, they still possess an exotic idiosyncrasy. Walking through tall, curving grasses in search of strange-sounding pseudo-bellbirds is a unique and poetic experience.
To love is to live: aesthetics of the living world
This extraordinary and organic vibrancy is reflected in the design of the quests. One must either help an animal under attack, bring gifts, imitate other species, or play with them. The interactions are always filled with love and concern for others, contrasting with the coldness of the human world and the technologies used to transform this newly colonised planet. In the final section, Lack of Love provides a stark contrast between the two worlds, highlighting the violence of the L.O.L. project from the ground, without the instigators of this ecological disaster even realising the consequences of their actions. The experiments of Level 9 bring their share of anxiety with the tight timer, as a counterpoint to the very free and relaxed exploration of the first levels.
In this respect, the long waits for certain triggers are probably intentional, forcing the player to contemplate their surroundings. This approach has a lot of merit, but sometimes interacts unfavourably with the cryptic nature of certain tasks. Particularly in the early levels, it is difficult to know what to do to progress, and the fickleness of the collisions can prevent a quest from being completed, even if the method was the right one. This choice of game design can therefore lead to real frustration, which is quite at odds with the artistic approach of the game. Surprisingly, this problem is solved in the second half of the game, as Lack of Love communicates its instructions much more clearly, always without words. The sequence in Level 8, in which the player has to interact with another member of their species in order to progress, is an example of perfectly mastered game design that encapsulates the title's aesthetic project while being accommodating from a gameplay perspective. Similarly, the puzzles in Level 9, with their intuitive but very strict instructions, highlight the artificiality of the human world, with rules that now seem like a yoke. The remaining levels brilliantly build on this momentum.
Hayao Miyazaki and the call for harmony
Looking at Lack of Love, one might think of Studio Ghibli films. Hayao Miyazaki's artistic work does not advocate the complete elimination of human industry, but points to its negative consequences, both for humanity and the environment. In Mononoke hime (1997), Lady Eboshi is not a one-dimensional character, but finds herself at the crossroads of several challenges: her rational choice is to prioritise the well-being of her workers, even if this means destroying the forest. Miyazaki has always emphasised the complexity of societies in their environment and the difficulty of finding a subtle balance. Perhaps his most elaborate ecological programme is in Kaze no tani no Naushika (1982), where he calls for harmony between all species: the young girl does not hesitate to trade her life to appease the Ohmus, titanic insects with bulging eyes. Michelle J. Smith and Elizabeth Parsons write of Mononoke hime: 'The cult of cuteness embodied by the almost adolescent girl has both a perverse sexual connotation for the school-girl lust that is a known phenomenon in Japanese porn that Miyazaki subverts and refuses in ways integral to his environmentalist project.' [1]
This subversion is also found in Kaze no tani no Naushika and Lack of Love, where the appearance of the various animals is not intended to conjure up cuteness in order to gain the audience's sympathy. In both cases, the proof that these species are alive is what makes the two productions effective. In Kaze no tani no Naushika, the baby Ohmu symbolises the cycle of life, while all the player's interactions with other species contribute to the ecology of Lack of Love. Humans must find their place in this pre-existing ecosystem and live in harmony with it. Admittedly, mistakes could be made along this long road; in Mononoke hime, the resolution of the film is not a return to the status quo or to a world without humans. Lady Eboshi is still there, and the forest bears the brunt of the violence of war and industry. In Lack of Love, part of the planet has been devastated by the L.O.L. project, but from a Japanese perspective, this is just one step in a long cycle of regeneration. The ending of the game features the same haunting melody as the opening: it will probably take a lot of love to find an answer to the question of survival and existence, but the cycle continues, hopefully in a better direction.
__________
[1] Michelle J. Smith, Elizabeth Parsons, ‘Animating child activism: Environmentalism and class politics in Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke (1997) and Fox’s FernGully (1992)’, in Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, vol. 26, no. 1, 2012, p. 32.
– Hayao Miyazaki, Mononoke-hime Theatre Program, 1997.
Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (Feb. 14 – Feb. 20, 2023).
In a child's mind, Albert Barillé's Il était une fois... l'homme (1978) had an indescribable mystical aura. Perhaps it was not so much the episodes as the opening that left its mark on several generations of children: Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (c.1704) resounded in the background with all the majesty of the organ, while a succession of scenes depicted the evolution of mankind, even in a hypothetical future. In the final scene, with long and painful chords, Pierre runs to a rocket ship to escape a horde of spacemen who also want to leave an overpopulated Earth plagued by chronic and nuclear wars. The whole series was underpinned by the spectre of violence, depicted as the secret template of the human race, despite progress, art and the desire for happiness. Kenichi Nishi takes a different angle in L.O.L.: Lack of Love, but explores the same fears and frustrations, building on the concept already explored in Moon: Remix RPG Adventure (1997).
An alien ecosystem
After an introductory cutscene, accompanied by an ethereal and dramatic melody, the player takes on the role of a small insect born into the world following the arrival of a human rocket, part of the L.O.L. programme, which aims to terraform a habitable planet and transfer some of humanity to it. As overpopulation and epidemics ravage Earth, there is an urgent need to find a new haven to house human life and relieve the strain on vital resources. Ignoring these considerations, the player must explore their environment and help various animal species, seeking their friendship, which crystallises in the form of coloured orbs. These are used to activate crystals and allow the creature to evolve. Little by little, the insect evolves into a mammal, acquiring various skills that enable it to solve the game's various puzzles.
Unlike Moon, which was completely nonviolent, Lack of Love allows the player to attack other creatures in a survival perspective. In addition to a health bar, the player has to contend with a satiety meter that must be filled by eating other animals or the fruits that grow on each level. The game discreetly allows the player to choose their diet without any real consequences, as it is a simple illustration of an ecological habitat. This natural law of life is also reflected in the game's progression. While a certain number of orbs are required to progress to the next level, there is no obligation to help all species; conversely, nothing prevents the player from doing everyone a favour for the sake of altruism. There is an optimism about the living world that is beautifully underlined by the art direction: the environments are luxuriously detailed, with a very alien ecology. Although the species featured are reminiscent of the various animals found on Earth, they still possess an exotic idiosyncrasy. Walking through tall, curving grasses in search of strange-sounding pseudo-bellbirds is a unique and poetic experience.
To love is to live: aesthetics of the living world
This extraordinary and organic vibrancy is reflected in the design of the quests. One must either help an animal under attack, bring gifts, imitate other species, or play with them. The interactions are always filled with love and concern for others, contrasting with the coldness of the human world and the technologies used to transform this newly colonised planet. In the final section, Lack of Love provides a stark contrast between the two worlds, highlighting the violence of the L.O.L. project from the ground, without the instigators of this ecological disaster even realising the consequences of their actions. The experiments of Level 9 bring their share of anxiety with the tight timer, as a counterpoint to the very free and relaxed exploration of the first levels.
In this respect, the long waits for certain triggers are probably intentional, forcing the player to contemplate their surroundings. This approach has a lot of merit, but sometimes interacts unfavourably with the cryptic nature of certain tasks. Particularly in the early levels, it is difficult to know what to do to progress, and the fickleness of the collisions can prevent a quest from being completed, even if the method was the right one. This choice of game design can therefore lead to real frustration, which is quite at odds with the artistic approach of the game. Surprisingly, this problem is solved in the second half of the game, as Lack of Love communicates its instructions much more clearly, always without words. The sequence in Level 8, in which the player has to interact with another member of their species in order to progress, is an example of perfectly mastered game design that encapsulates the title's aesthetic project while being accommodating from a gameplay perspective. Similarly, the puzzles in Level 9, with their intuitive but very strict instructions, highlight the artificiality of the human world, with rules that now seem like a yoke. The remaining levels brilliantly build on this momentum.
Hayao Miyazaki and the call for harmony
Looking at Lack of Love, one might think of Studio Ghibli films. Hayao Miyazaki's artistic work does not advocate the complete elimination of human industry, but points to its negative consequences, both for humanity and the environment. In Mononoke hime (1997), Lady Eboshi is not a one-dimensional character, but finds herself at the crossroads of several challenges: her rational choice is to prioritise the well-being of her workers, even if this means destroying the forest. Miyazaki has always emphasised the complexity of societies in their environment and the difficulty of finding a subtle balance. Perhaps his most elaborate ecological programme is in Kaze no tani no Naushika (1982), where he calls for harmony between all species: the young girl does not hesitate to trade her life to appease the Ohmus, titanic insects with bulging eyes. Michelle J. Smith and Elizabeth Parsons write of Mononoke hime: 'The cult of cuteness embodied by the almost adolescent girl has both a perverse sexual connotation for the school-girl lust that is a known phenomenon in Japanese porn that Miyazaki subverts and refuses in ways integral to his environmentalist project.' [1]
This subversion is also found in Kaze no tani no Naushika and Lack of Love, where the appearance of the various animals is not intended to conjure up cuteness in order to gain the audience's sympathy. In both cases, the proof that these species are alive is what makes the two productions effective. In Kaze no tani no Naushika, the baby Ohmu symbolises the cycle of life, while all the player's interactions with other species contribute to the ecology of Lack of Love. Humans must find their place in this pre-existing ecosystem and live in harmony with it. Admittedly, mistakes could be made along this long road; in Mononoke hime, the resolution of the film is not a return to the status quo or to a world without humans. Lady Eboshi is still there, and the forest bears the brunt of the violence of war and industry. In Lack of Love, part of the planet has been devastated by the L.O.L. project, but from a Japanese perspective, this is just one step in a long cycle of regeneration. The ending of the game features the same haunting melody as the opening: it will probably take a lot of love to find an answer to the question of survival and existence, but the cycle continues, hopefully in a better direction.
__________
[1] Michelle J. Smith, Elizabeth Parsons, ‘Animating child activism: Environmentalism and class politics in Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke (1997) and Fox’s FernGully (1992)’, in Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, vol. 26, no. 1, 2012, p. 32.
Elden Ring
2022
Nearly a year removed from its launch, free of recency bias, no longer swarmed by the theses of those more eloquent than I, I'm content in saying I don't like Elden Ring. I've beaten it a couple times, played solo and online, used a variety of builds, gone completionist and not, tackled its world in intended and unintended order, had fun and glazed my eyes over in boredom, been in awe of and readily mocked it through and through. I like so very much of it, but I don't like Elden Ring.
I don't like this GRRM-gilded world. There's a prevailing sense of deliberate obfuscation that apes the peculiarities of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls but it's a mere mimick. It is an inverse Rowling-style approach to worldbuilding -- she fills her holes and says they were always filled, Dark Souls had holes and never noticed them, Elden Ring creates holes to taunt the VaatiVidya watcher with the tar with which to fill them.
I don't like this ocean of content. Even if wondrous tsunamis are few and far between, the impetus to purposefully seek them renders them decreasingly effective. The novelty of Walking Mausoleums, Erdtree Avatars, winding tombs, subterranean cities all turn quickly to routine. I can only laugh so many times at a man getting hit in the groin by a football.
I don't like the perpetual breadcrumbs. Scattered like millet for fowl lay treasures for the taking. Of what use is a thousandth herb, a hundredth spirit, a tenth greatsword? None, so say I, if it caters only to that which I am not: the theorycrafter, the PvPer, the challenge runner. And for these redundant fragments to be handed to me after a repetitious romp through yet another imp infested tileset with a singular twist? I am left wondering why I put in the effort.
I don't like the ramp. Other FromSoftware titles, deliberately or not, have tremendous peaks and valleys in their presentations of power and the scope of encounters. From the terror of Ornstein and Smough to the odd simplicity of Sif to the potential headache of Four Kings to the humour of Pinwheel to the fear of Nito to the melancholic ease of Gwyn. Here, outside of minibosses, I proceed uphill eternal as Sisyphus. On paper it is an ideal, in reality it is a fatigue. Does it seek to frustrate? Does it matter? There is no reprieve on the intended path.
I don't like that this is designed for me to like it. Polished to a mirror sheen, every aspect is intended to appeal to me. A personality in flux to receive my adoration, never showing me that true, imperfect self. I long for the idiosyncrasies of a chance encounter.
I had so much fun with you, and I came away with the understanding it was all a falsehood. The dopamine was real. The sentimentality, a fiction.
I don't like this GRRM-gilded world. There's a prevailing sense of deliberate obfuscation that apes the peculiarities of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls but it's a mere mimick. It is an inverse Rowling-style approach to worldbuilding -- she fills her holes and says they were always filled, Dark Souls had holes and never noticed them, Elden Ring creates holes to taunt the VaatiVidya watcher with the tar with which to fill them.
I don't like this ocean of content. Even if wondrous tsunamis are few and far between, the impetus to purposefully seek them renders them decreasingly effective. The novelty of Walking Mausoleums, Erdtree Avatars, winding tombs, subterranean cities all turn quickly to routine. I can only laugh so many times at a man getting hit in the groin by a football.
I don't like the perpetual breadcrumbs. Scattered like millet for fowl lay treasures for the taking. Of what use is a thousandth herb, a hundredth spirit, a tenth greatsword? None, so say I, if it caters only to that which I am not: the theorycrafter, the PvPer, the challenge runner. And for these redundant fragments to be handed to me after a repetitious romp through yet another imp infested tileset with a singular twist? I am left wondering why I put in the effort.
I don't like the ramp. Other FromSoftware titles, deliberately or not, have tremendous peaks and valleys in their presentations of power and the scope of encounters. From the terror of Ornstein and Smough to the odd simplicity of Sif to the potential headache of Four Kings to the humour of Pinwheel to the fear of Nito to the melancholic ease of Gwyn. Here, outside of minibosses, I proceed uphill eternal as Sisyphus. On paper it is an ideal, in reality it is a fatigue. Does it seek to frustrate? Does it matter? There is no reprieve on the intended path.
I don't like that this is designed for me to like it. Polished to a mirror sheen, every aspect is intended to appeal to me. A personality in flux to receive my adoration, never showing me that true, imperfect self. I long for the idiosyncrasies of a chance encounter.
I had so much fun with you, and I came away with the understanding it was all a falsehood. The dopamine was real. The sentimentality, a fiction.
Wilmot's Warehouse
2019
I've loved Wilmot's Warehouse mostly from afar since it's release, occasionally picking it up for an hour until reaching around 100 items, getting overwhelmed, and shelving it again. Over the past few weeks, however, and after five years of my living space becoming increasingly chaotic (particularly throughout the pandemic), renovations have been underway and are almost complete. With more clothes than dresser space, more books than bookshelves would allow, and a collection of tchotchkes, bulky controllers, and piles on top of piles of things that my cat kept knocking over, reorganisation was crucial just as more storage was. Within that context of shuffling everything around, not simply moving it out and plopping it back in, Wilmot's Warehouse finally made sense.
The shuffle of the warehouse is ongoing as mental categories ebb and flow across artificial boundaries. A bottle of liquid goes from my medicine area to the science area to the food area to the liquids area back to the medicine area. A tent goes with outdoor paraphernalia on the side for temporary shelter (opposite my weather conditions), itself abutted against permanent structures, construction goods, and patterns. An influx of tree stumps upsets the spacing of all my botanical wares, so much so that I move them with other measurement iconography (tree rings show time, are they not the calendars of nature?).
Like the pillars cleared with my performance stars, those new vast storage spaces let me categorise my own collection. Books with books, sure, but with academic texts in a place of their own, art books elsewhere, historical tomes too receive a space, writing on games adjacent to other books but also physical games. Those, of course, are near my music CDs. My archival cases of X68000 print media and diskettes stay with texts on games because they too are referential works.
It sounds innocuous and almost childlike to describe this in such a way, but these spatial allocations are the product of manoeuvring things around other things for a fortnight. It approaches a completeness, but the few remaining things threaten to displace other things meaning a potential collapse of this established order of things. If necessary, I'll dedicate a weekend to my own stock take, laboriously but methodically getting everything back into its place. For now.
Every collection of things is ultimately a self-serving system of chaos teetering on the brink. Archives, libraries, stores, warehouses, attics, bookshelves, museums, landfills, mechanics, grocers, blogs, directories, transit systems. With my post-graduate studies in library and information science beginning in the autumn, I too will be a cog in the machine of sorting one of humanity's warehouses. Like Wilmot, I hope to have a smile on my face all the while. :^)
The shuffle of the warehouse is ongoing as mental categories ebb and flow across artificial boundaries. A bottle of liquid goes from my medicine area to the science area to the food area to the liquids area back to the medicine area. A tent goes with outdoor paraphernalia on the side for temporary shelter (opposite my weather conditions), itself abutted against permanent structures, construction goods, and patterns. An influx of tree stumps upsets the spacing of all my botanical wares, so much so that I move them with other measurement iconography (tree rings show time, are they not the calendars of nature?).
Like the pillars cleared with my performance stars, those new vast storage spaces let me categorise my own collection. Books with books, sure, but with academic texts in a place of their own, art books elsewhere, historical tomes too receive a space, writing on games adjacent to other books but also physical games. Those, of course, are near my music CDs. My archival cases of X68000 print media and diskettes stay with texts on games because they too are referential works.
It sounds innocuous and almost childlike to describe this in such a way, but these spatial allocations are the product of manoeuvring things around other things for a fortnight. It approaches a completeness, but the few remaining things threaten to displace other things meaning a potential collapse of this established order of things. If necessary, I'll dedicate a weekend to my own stock take, laboriously but methodically getting everything back into its place. For now.
Every collection of things is ultimately a self-serving system of chaos teetering on the brink. Archives, libraries, stores, warehouses, attics, bookshelves, museums, landfills, mechanics, grocers, blogs, directories, transit systems. With my post-graduate studies in library and information science beginning in the autumn, I too will be a cog in the machine of sorting one of humanity's warehouses. Like Wilmot, I hope to have a smile on my face all the while. :^)
Nintendo seems to love surprising me with Metroid at the most unexpected times! Similarly to when I cried when Dread was announced, I was probably the loudest I’ve ever been during a direct when this got shown off, and even more so when the announcer just came out and said “Later Today”. Metroid is thriving and I could not be happier. With this and Dread coming out within the past 2 years, and with a version of every single 2D Metroid soon to be playable on the Switch and the other 2 Prime games and Zero Mission likely to come, I’ve never been more excited for the future of a series. Anyway, about Prime, every time I play this game it keeps getting better and better, especially this time thanks in no small part to the amazing work that was done for this remaster. The remastered visuals are gorgeous, while keeping the original feeling of the gamecube original, and the new control choices (ESPECIALLY Dual Stick) bring a convenience with controlling Samus that makes this already extremely good-feeling game to play feel better than ever before. Shoutout to the color assist and other accessibility options, as a colorblind person it makes me so happy to feel that I’m being cared about thru these options. I’m so so ecstatic that Metroid is back, and it really does feel like it’s here to stay this time!!
YOU -- "But what if humanity keeps letting us down?"
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST -- "Nobody said that fulfilling the proletariat's historic role would be easy. It demands great faith with no promise of tangible reward. But that doesn't mean we can simply give up."
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST -- "I guess you can say we believe it *because* it's impossible. It's our way of saying we refuse to accept that the world has to remain... like this..."
---
A 2 week old fetid corpse hangs from a tree, a ghastly sight; a human life reduced to a macabre piñata for small children to pelt stones at in a twisted idea of entertainment. The children themselves, a hopped-up junkie and a nameless orphan respectively, both the result of a broken system that has unequivocally failed them. The district of Martinaise, pockmarked by the remnants of revolutionary war, abandoned by the world at large, it and its people subject to the pissing contests of petty government officials to see who is lumped with the task of looking after the place, the site of a months-long, on-the-brink-of-warfare labor dispute that's about to boil over with the lynching of a PMC soldier who was meant to "defuse" the situation. All of this, left to the hands of a suicidal, vice-riddled husk of a cop who can barely get his necktie down from the ceiling fan without potentially going into cardiac arrest. Disco Elysium is an undeniably depressing experience that isn't afraid to cover the messy spectrum of humanity, from insane race-realist phrenologists to meth-addled children to every kind of ghoulish bureaucrat under the sun. The district of Martinaise, as fictional as it is, is a place I've seen before, reflected in the streets, reflected in the people, reflected in the system; an undeniably full-faced look at the horrors faced by those below, and the resulting apathy expressed by those above.
---
SUGGESTION -- Brother, you should put me in front of a firing squad. I have no words for how I failed you.
---
Every aspect of Disco Elysium reflects its overall theme of "failure". Martinaise itself has been failed by the institutions meant to help it, abandoned by the powers that be, who only intervene when it looks like anyone is trying to enact change. NPCs can reminisce on days gone by, of the tragedies in their past, or of their cynical rebuke of the future. The various schools of political thought you can adopt and their representatives are mercilessly picked apart, from the Communists too entrenched in theory to take notice of the suffering around them, to the frankly pathetic fascists who use their prejudiced beliefs to shield themselves from their own flaws. Our protagonist is constantly haunted by his past and even starts the game recovering from his own self-destructive ways, and on a gameplay level, the way that our intrepid detective can fumble the bag in nearly every way imaginable and still be allowed to make progress in investigations and sidequests is commendable. Failure is so integral, so vital to Disco Elysium that it's not only an aspect deeply ingrained in its story, but also its very gameplay.
---
VOLITION [Easy: Success] -- No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive.
---
And yet, despite this cloying cynicism and acknowledgement of the ugliness of reality, Disco Elysium is magical because of the fact that it ultimately believes that there is a world worth fighting for in the end. It would be incredibly easy to be defeatist in the face of such constant, institutional and societal failure we are presented with in Revachol, to be ceaselessly apathetic in the face of your own overwhelming shortcomings, to fall back into the comfort of old vices instead of facing our problems head on. Still, Disco Elysium has that fire inside of it, an untapped hatred for fence-sitting, for passivity in the face of oppression and valuing the status quo over any meaningful change. Roll up your sleeves and fight for a better future.
---
RHETORIC -- "You've built it before, they've built it before. Hasn't really worked out yet, but neither has love -- should we just stop building love, too?"
---
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST -- "In dark times, should the stars also go out?"
---
RHETORIC -- "Say one of these fascist or communist things or fuck off."
---
Disco Elysium believes in the people. It believes in humanity, no matter how messy our supposed paragons are, or how flawed our beliefs and values can be, or how cyclical we can be in the face of it all. In a city plagued by an inability to move on, Disco Elysium says that there is always a possibility of change. If two broke Communists and a junkie wino can defy the very laws of physics in a slummy apartment, no matter how briefly, with the power of their faith and co-operation; imagine what we could do as a group. As a city. As a species.
Disco Elysium says that the cup is half full. Even if we won't see the own fruits of our labor in our lifetimes, it still looks you in the eyes and says:
"The only promise it offers is that the future can be better than the past, if we're willing to work and fight and die for it," a conviction belted out by the youths of tomorrow.
"Un jour je serai de retour près de toi", written in bright burning letters across a market square.
"TRUE LOVE IS POSSIBLE/ONLY IN THE NEXT WORLD--FOR NEW PEOPLE/IT IS TOO LATE FOR US," painted on the side of an eight-story tenement.
"Disco Inferno...," a lone voice belted out through a boombox's speakers across a frost-bitten sea.
---
MANKIND, BE VIGILANT; WE LOVED YOU
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST -- "Nobody said that fulfilling the proletariat's historic role would be easy. It demands great faith with no promise of tangible reward. But that doesn't mean we can simply give up."
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST -- "I guess you can say we believe it *because* it's impossible. It's our way of saying we refuse to accept that the world has to remain... like this..."
---
A 2 week old fetid corpse hangs from a tree, a ghastly sight; a human life reduced to a macabre piñata for small children to pelt stones at in a twisted idea of entertainment. The children themselves, a hopped-up junkie and a nameless orphan respectively, both the result of a broken system that has unequivocally failed them. The district of Martinaise, pockmarked by the remnants of revolutionary war, abandoned by the world at large, it and its people subject to the pissing contests of petty government officials to see who is lumped with the task of looking after the place, the site of a months-long, on-the-brink-of-warfare labor dispute that's about to boil over with the lynching of a PMC soldier who was meant to "defuse" the situation. All of this, left to the hands of a suicidal, vice-riddled husk of a cop who can barely get his necktie down from the ceiling fan without potentially going into cardiac arrest. Disco Elysium is an undeniably depressing experience that isn't afraid to cover the messy spectrum of humanity, from insane race-realist phrenologists to meth-addled children to every kind of ghoulish bureaucrat under the sun. The district of Martinaise, as fictional as it is, is a place I've seen before, reflected in the streets, reflected in the people, reflected in the system; an undeniably full-faced look at the horrors faced by those below, and the resulting apathy expressed by those above.
---
SUGGESTION -- Brother, you should put me in front of a firing squad. I have no words for how I failed you.
---
Every aspect of Disco Elysium reflects its overall theme of "failure". Martinaise itself has been failed by the institutions meant to help it, abandoned by the powers that be, who only intervene when it looks like anyone is trying to enact change. NPCs can reminisce on days gone by, of the tragedies in their past, or of their cynical rebuke of the future. The various schools of political thought you can adopt and their representatives are mercilessly picked apart, from the Communists too entrenched in theory to take notice of the suffering around them, to the frankly pathetic fascists who use their prejudiced beliefs to shield themselves from their own flaws. Our protagonist is constantly haunted by his past and even starts the game recovering from his own self-destructive ways, and on a gameplay level, the way that our intrepid detective can fumble the bag in nearly every way imaginable and still be allowed to make progress in investigations and sidequests is commendable. Failure is so integral, so vital to Disco Elysium that it's not only an aspect deeply ingrained in its story, but also its very gameplay.
---
VOLITION [Easy: Success] -- No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive.
---
And yet, despite this cloying cynicism and acknowledgement of the ugliness of reality, Disco Elysium is magical because of the fact that it ultimately believes that there is a world worth fighting for in the end. It would be incredibly easy to be defeatist in the face of such constant, institutional and societal failure we are presented with in Revachol, to be ceaselessly apathetic in the face of your own overwhelming shortcomings, to fall back into the comfort of old vices instead of facing our problems head on. Still, Disco Elysium has that fire inside of it, an untapped hatred for fence-sitting, for passivity in the face of oppression and valuing the status quo over any meaningful change. Roll up your sleeves and fight for a better future.
---
RHETORIC -- "You've built it before, they've built it before. Hasn't really worked out yet, but neither has love -- should we just stop building love, too?"
---
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST -- "In dark times, should the stars also go out?"
---
RHETORIC -- "Say one of these fascist or communist things or fuck off."
---
Disco Elysium believes in the people. It believes in humanity, no matter how messy our supposed paragons are, or how flawed our beliefs and values can be, or how cyclical we can be in the face of it all. In a city plagued by an inability to move on, Disco Elysium says that there is always a possibility of change. If two broke Communists and a junkie wino can defy the very laws of physics in a slummy apartment, no matter how briefly, with the power of their faith and co-operation; imagine what we could do as a group. As a city. As a species.
Disco Elysium says that the cup is half full. Even if we won't see the own fruits of our labor in our lifetimes, it still looks you in the eyes and says:
"The only promise it offers is that the future can be better than the past, if we're willing to work and fight and die for it," a conviction belted out by the youths of tomorrow.
"Un jour je serai de retour près de toi", written in bright burning letters across a market square.
"TRUE LOVE IS POSSIBLE/ONLY IN THE NEXT WORLD--FOR NEW PEOPLE/IT IS TOO LATE FOR US," painted on the side of an eight-story tenement.
"Disco Inferno...," a lone voice belted out through a boombox's speakers across a frost-bitten sea.
---
MANKIND, BE VIGILANT; WE LOVED YOU
Fire Emblem Engage
2023
This was an absolute anime fever dream from start to finish, somehow managing to be unfathomably terrible in ways I would never have expected. I’ve played every Fire Emblem game except for the spin-offs; so when I found out that Intelligent Systems was planning on releasing an ‘anniversary’ game that celebrates the entire franchise, to say I was confused was an understatement as I’d thought they’d already achieved that in Awakening, which was far from a perfect game, but it was one that had a lot more integrity and care for long-term fans compared to Engage. Whilst I do have more criticisms than praise, I’m going to be fair to this game, even when I don’t think it deserves it at times.
I’m very happy the weapons triangle is back - it’s one of my favourite ‘core’ mechanics of the franchise because of how easy it is to remember. It’s also nice that permadeath feels ‘good’ again as one of my biggest gripes with Engage’s predecessor, Three Houses, was how the game gives you a limited amount of units that you had to invest a lot of time in and no replacements to replenish your ranks if you lose anyone. Engage on the other hand feels a lot more in line with designing around permadeath even though casual mode is an option, as it gives you more than enough units throughout the game that even if you lose one or two per each map, you'll gain enough replacements of the appropriate level to finish the game. The UI definitely feels like a good step foward as well; very readable font type and size and I much prefer the simple menu rather than an aesthetically pleasing wheel that is nothing but confusing as hell to navigate. Animations are clean and feel ‘punchy’ again, which seem very inspired by classic FE animations. The game runs extremely well, only experiencing some framerate drops when using heavier tomes or on the bigger Jugdral paralogue maps. I also liked that they brought back a wide variety of utility staves - Silence, Warp, Rewarp, Freeze, Obstruct…which you could then pair with Micaiah’s emblem ring to warp 4 units across the map and delete a boss in one turn, if you really wanted.
Personality wise the emblem rings are a fever dream in how they speak to you and that’s all I’m going to say. The engage mechanic tied to them is quite fun though. Each of the emblem rings feel varied enough in their utility that they allow the player to customise their gameplay in a way that suits them the most. You can even inherit some of their skills, or forge bond rings for additional stat boosts and abilities. It is a shame that the bond rings are easily overshadowed by the existence of the Emblem Rings themselves as well. Some of the maps have a low unit deployment so most players would feel inclined to simply ignore the gacha of rolling bond rings entirely (which can be exploited through save scumming to guarantee an S rank ring anyways) because why would you bother with a measly stat boost when you can just warp Celica across the map? The S rank bond rings give you some powerful tools (Shove, Swap, Brave Thunder), without asking you to sacrifice your hard earned SP to spend on skill inheritance - something I appreciated a lot on Maddening mode. However, all of this preparation and investment ended up rather useless as I steamrolled the last four or so chapters of the game after lowering the difficulty to Normal. At that point I had grown so exhausted with the map design in the game that I just wanted to get things over with.
I will say the first half of Engage is decent in terms of map design. You’re given completion objectives that aren’t just ‘route the enemy' and bringing back Radiant Dawn style party splits is a huge positive for gameplay going forward. There's even a well executed escape map no less than 10 or so chapters in! That’s great! However, maps really started to go downhill in the second half, with uninspired gimmicks on rectangular boxes where you fight your way through seemingly endless waves of enemy reinforcements. The paralogues are definitely some of the better maps in this game, which is sad to say, since they’re just rehashed maps from previous games. This lacklustre map design resulted in the worst final map in the entire franchise, complete with an utterly boring map theme as the icing on top. Not only was the map insultingly easy, it also presented you with one of the most unintuitive, potentially stupid, 2nd boss phases I’ve ever seen. Fighting the iconic villains from previous games, in the form of corrupt Emblem rings? Sounds cool, right? The promise of obtaining some fanservice flavor text if you manage to pair the Emblem ring with their respective villain is obviously very tempting for long-term fans! It would have been cool, if the game didn’t ask you to walk around in a circle for an hour to achieve this. I would have preferred literally any other style of final map compared to this. Not only that, the villain’s descriptions were so ridiculously vague that that I wonder what a new player would gain from this, other than being hit with waves of annoying reinforcements that just make you want to burst the boss down in a single turn. It’s a very short map when you ignore those bosses, so it does feel like some very intentional padding.
I’m not against simplicity in Fire Emblem at all - in fact, I’d argue the franchise has excelled at that in the past e.g the GBA games, which manage to capture a good balance between simplicity and fun, whilst still managing to create short but interesting character supports which ultimately still respect the playerbase. Bringing back the weapons triangle in Engage is an example of where simplicity felt like it wasn’t bordering on insulting - which is what the game manages to excel at everywhere else. Whilst Three Houses saw the franchise take several steps forward in terms of making nuanced character supports and world building, we’re back to the days of having little to no world development with one-dimensional, cliche characters founded upon singular tropes. Engage manages to feel almost insultingly dumbed down to a point where certain character supports felt utterly mind numbing, and no amount of good gameplay can make up for that. I reached a point where I gave up interacting with characters around Somniel, because the characters would not say anything interesting, they would just give you a line of generic avatar bootlicking that makes Alear feel like they were designed to be Corrin on steroids - was there even a single character in this game that was rude or indifferent to Alear? Even Alear’s greatest enemies ended up kissing the ground they walked on. After all that developer discussion on whether or not to remove a player avatar (even having success without one in Three Hopes), we somehow went back to the WORST kind: chosen one power fantasy. I understand why video games want the player avatar to feel powerful and special, but we've seen previously in Fire Emblem (Corrin, Byleth) that this comes at a significant cost as the quality of character writing begins to take a nosedive when every line of dialogue boils down to praising the Divine Dragon. Whilst there are some characters I ended up enjoying - Ivy, Goldmary, Alcryst, Panette and her brother Pandreo - for the most part, each character’s interests, motivations, personalities and relationships with each other felt extremely empty or straight up nonexistent in their support dialogue. Having a reference book with personality profiles of the units is a cool idea, but it would have been nice to see that information reflected in their supports! Three Houses excelled at this, which is why it makes me feel like we somehow went several steps backwards in Engage, and it is disappointing to see this decision going forward. The cutscenes will have someone mention just “how bad the war is” but…what war? The story and world setting just didn't feel developed enough to make you really feel like there were high stakes. The story COULD have portrayed a conflict between between multiple nations, each lead by people with different social and political aspirations, learning to forge peaceful relations between each other (Ivy and Alcryst’s support even leans into this idea, albeit briefly) - it just chose not to. Though I'm not sure if 'terrible story, but great gameplay' can really make up for it in this game.
I'm also not a fan of the main hub/Somniel at all. In fact I think it is worse than the monastery in Three Houses, because everything is locked behind minigames that I simply did not want to dedicate the time to completing just for some stat boosts! As cool as it is to traverse across a world map, I genuinely just want linear game progression back. There’s a reason why FE9/10 have some of the best worldbuilding the franchise has ever seen and they achieved it without a hub area that pads out game time. Base conversations in FE9/10 provide useful insight into how characters are responding to various events outside of their support conversations...but that would also require IntSys returning to putting effort into creating a decent plot and characters that don’t feel like you’re reading a section on tvtropes to begin with. I do think this problem extends from having a player avatar as the protaganist, rather than allowing the main lord/s drive the story forward.
Fire Emblem is a franchise that was built upon the idea that it’s completely okay to make mistakes - in fact, it used to embrace that! Your first blind playthrough of any game can never be replicated, so it’s one you should enjoy. For a strategy game, that’s a huge boon because it provides a huge amount of replay value: everything you learn on your first playthrough, you can utilise to your advantage on the next one. That’s another reason why I miss the classic, map only recruitments where you felt like you ‘earned’ each member of your roster, as opposed to being spoonfed units. It only adds an extra layer of strategy when you see the speech bubbles appear and know that if you navigate towards this character, whether they’re an enemy or a potential new ally that you need to reach before they die. That only enhanced how rewarding it felt when you unlocked a new support conversation between units! It felt like a missed opportunity to not do classic recruitment in Engage, complete with a homage to an iconic recruitment theme like Together We Ride. Optimising your strategies, knowing where all the useful items are hidden, knowing when surprise reinforcements will spawn, experimenting with units you didn’t use (or lost on previous runs) adds to gameplay value. I think that’s why, when you talk to longterm fans, they’ve often replayed the older games. I don’t see much replay value here for me personally, because so much of the game turned me off the idea of going through it again. It even feels like a NG+ mode was somehow missing at the end.
I can’t really say I am surprised or disappointed when I knew this would be some sort of fanservice, monster of the week, anime cheesefest. Personally, I would have much preferred that IntSys focus on making the previous titles accessible to play for those who are hesitant or cannot emulate the older games. Or, perhaps just a fanfestival with some artbook re-releases, merchandise, a new premium arrange album, a new Cipher (rest in peace) series art drop, literally anything other than this would have been preferable.
I only hope that if you’re new to the franchise, if you enjoyed this game and it made you want to try the older ones; go ahead! I'd personally recommend Path of Radiance or The Blazing Blade to anyone looking for a place to start after this.
I’m very happy the weapons triangle is back - it’s one of my favourite ‘core’ mechanics of the franchise because of how easy it is to remember. It’s also nice that permadeath feels ‘good’ again as one of my biggest gripes with Engage’s predecessor, Three Houses, was how the game gives you a limited amount of units that you had to invest a lot of time in and no replacements to replenish your ranks if you lose anyone. Engage on the other hand feels a lot more in line with designing around permadeath even though casual mode is an option, as it gives you more than enough units throughout the game that even if you lose one or two per each map, you'll gain enough replacements of the appropriate level to finish the game. The UI definitely feels like a good step foward as well; very readable font type and size and I much prefer the simple menu rather than an aesthetically pleasing wheel that is nothing but confusing as hell to navigate. Animations are clean and feel ‘punchy’ again, which seem very inspired by classic FE animations. The game runs extremely well, only experiencing some framerate drops when using heavier tomes or on the bigger Jugdral paralogue maps. I also liked that they brought back a wide variety of utility staves - Silence, Warp, Rewarp, Freeze, Obstruct…which you could then pair with Micaiah’s emblem ring to warp 4 units across the map and delete a boss in one turn, if you really wanted.
Personality wise the emblem rings are a fever dream in how they speak to you and that’s all I’m going to say. The engage mechanic tied to them is quite fun though. Each of the emblem rings feel varied enough in their utility that they allow the player to customise their gameplay in a way that suits them the most. You can even inherit some of their skills, or forge bond rings for additional stat boosts and abilities. It is a shame that the bond rings are easily overshadowed by the existence of the Emblem Rings themselves as well. Some of the maps have a low unit deployment so most players would feel inclined to simply ignore the gacha of rolling bond rings entirely (which can be exploited through save scumming to guarantee an S rank ring anyways) because why would you bother with a measly stat boost when you can just warp Celica across the map? The S rank bond rings give you some powerful tools (Shove, Swap, Brave Thunder), without asking you to sacrifice your hard earned SP to spend on skill inheritance - something I appreciated a lot on Maddening mode. However, all of this preparation and investment ended up rather useless as I steamrolled the last four or so chapters of the game after lowering the difficulty to Normal. At that point I had grown so exhausted with the map design in the game that I just wanted to get things over with.
I will say the first half of Engage is decent in terms of map design. You’re given completion objectives that aren’t just ‘route the enemy' and bringing back Radiant Dawn style party splits is a huge positive for gameplay going forward. There's even a well executed escape map no less than 10 or so chapters in! That’s great! However, maps really started to go downhill in the second half, with uninspired gimmicks on rectangular boxes where you fight your way through seemingly endless waves of enemy reinforcements. The paralogues are definitely some of the better maps in this game, which is sad to say, since they’re just rehashed maps from previous games. This lacklustre map design resulted in the worst final map in the entire franchise, complete with an utterly boring map theme as the icing on top. Not only was the map insultingly easy, it also presented you with one of the most unintuitive, potentially stupid, 2nd boss phases I’ve ever seen. Fighting the iconic villains from previous games, in the form of corrupt Emblem rings? Sounds cool, right? The promise of obtaining some fanservice flavor text if you manage to pair the Emblem ring with their respective villain is obviously very tempting for long-term fans! It would have been cool, if the game didn’t ask you to walk around in a circle for an hour to achieve this. I would have preferred literally any other style of final map compared to this. Not only that, the villain’s descriptions were so ridiculously vague that that I wonder what a new player would gain from this, other than being hit with waves of annoying reinforcements that just make you want to burst the boss down in a single turn. It’s a very short map when you ignore those bosses, so it does feel like some very intentional padding.
I’m not against simplicity in Fire Emblem at all - in fact, I’d argue the franchise has excelled at that in the past e.g the GBA games, which manage to capture a good balance between simplicity and fun, whilst still managing to create short but interesting character supports which ultimately still respect the playerbase. Bringing back the weapons triangle in Engage is an example of where simplicity felt like it wasn’t bordering on insulting - which is what the game manages to excel at everywhere else. Whilst Three Houses saw the franchise take several steps forward in terms of making nuanced character supports and world building, we’re back to the days of having little to no world development with one-dimensional, cliche characters founded upon singular tropes. Engage manages to feel almost insultingly dumbed down to a point where certain character supports felt utterly mind numbing, and no amount of good gameplay can make up for that. I reached a point where I gave up interacting with characters around Somniel, because the characters would not say anything interesting, they would just give you a line of generic avatar bootlicking that makes Alear feel like they were designed to be Corrin on steroids - was there even a single character in this game that was rude or indifferent to Alear? Even Alear’s greatest enemies ended up kissing the ground they walked on. After all that developer discussion on whether or not to remove a player avatar (even having success without one in Three Hopes), we somehow went back to the WORST kind: chosen one power fantasy. I understand why video games want the player avatar to feel powerful and special, but we've seen previously in Fire Emblem (Corrin, Byleth) that this comes at a significant cost as the quality of character writing begins to take a nosedive when every line of dialogue boils down to praising the Divine Dragon. Whilst there are some characters I ended up enjoying - Ivy, Goldmary, Alcryst, Panette and her brother Pandreo - for the most part, each character’s interests, motivations, personalities and relationships with each other felt extremely empty or straight up nonexistent in their support dialogue. Having a reference book with personality profiles of the units is a cool idea, but it would have been nice to see that information reflected in their supports! Three Houses excelled at this, which is why it makes me feel like we somehow went several steps backwards in Engage, and it is disappointing to see this decision going forward. The cutscenes will have someone mention just “how bad the war is” but…what war? The story and world setting just didn't feel developed enough to make you really feel like there were high stakes. The story COULD have portrayed a conflict between between multiple nations, each lead by people with different social and political aspirations, learning to forge peaceful relations between each other (Ivy and Alcryst’s support even leans into this idea, albeit briefly) - it just chose not to. Though I'm not sure if 'terrible story, but great gameplay' can really make up for it in this game.
I'm also not a fan of the main hub/Somniel at all. In fact I think it is worse than the monastery in Three Houses, because everything is locked behind minigames that I simply did not want to dedicate the time to completing just for some stat boosts! As cool as it is to traverse across a world map, I genuinely just want linear game progression back. There’s a reason why FE9/10 have some of the best worldbuilding the franchise has ever seen and they achieved it without a hub area that pads out game time. Base conversations in FE9/10 provide useful insight into how characters are responding to various events outside of their support conversations...but that would also require IntSys returning to putting effort into creating a decent plot and characters that don’t feel like you’re reading a section on tvtropes to begin with. I do think this problem extends from having a player avatar as the protaganist, rather than allowing the main lord/s drive the story forward.
Fire Emblem is a franchise that was built upon the idea that it’s completely okay to make mistakes - in fact, it used to embrace that! Your first blind playthrough of any game can never be replicated, so it’s one you should enjoy. For a strategy game, that’s a huge boon because it provides a huge amount of replay value: everything you learn on your first playthrough, you can utilise to your advantage on the next one. That’s another reason why I miss the classic, map only recruitments where you felt like you ‘earned’ each member of your roster, as opposed to being spoonfed units. It only adds an extra layer of strategy when you see the speech bubbles appear and know that if you navigate towards this character, whether they’re an enemy or a potential new ally that you need to reach before they die. That only enhanced how rewarding it felt when you unlocked a new support conversation between units! It felt like a missed opportunity to not do classic recruitment in Engage, complete with a homage to an iconic recruitment theme like Together We Ride. Optimising your strategies, knowing where all the useful items are hidden, knowing when surprise reinforcements will spawn, experimenting with units you didn’t use (or lost on previous runs) adds to gameplay value. I think that’s why, when you talk to longterm fans, they’ve often replayed the older games. I don’t see much replay value here for me personally, because so much of the game turned me off the idea of going through it again. It even feels like a NG+ mode was somehow missing at the end.
I can’t really say I am surprised or disappointed when I knew this would be some sort of fanservice, monster of the week, anime cheesefest. Personally, I would have much preferred that IntSys focus on making the previous titles accessible to play for those who are hesitant or cannot emulate the older games. Or, perhaps just a fanfestival with some artbook re-releases, merchandise, a new premium arrange album, a new Cipher (rest in peace) series art drop, literally anything other than this would have been preferable.
I only hope that if you’re new to the franchise, if you enjoyed this game and it made you want to try the older ones; go ahead! I'd personally recommend Path of Radiance or The Blazing Blade to anyone looking for a place to start after this.