General mix of nausea trying to see this on its own terms versus what the series means for me. I'm moreso feeling to judge towards the latter considering that the game is seeking to be more replacing than going in its own direction, albeit you can still buy the first game on any market for cheap, it's not that sunset, so maybe that's a little mean?

Regardless though, I got about to chapter 5 before I stopped. Then got increasingly upset about it. Positives first it's like, a more competent horror in terms of visual design and understanding of its gore and shock. Genuinely better at pacing its atmosphere than the original, which is something I didn't think I'd find myself saying. I think a lot of that is simply by the original's design, as they couldn't get as visceral with the lighting or do most of the effects presented here, and said lighting back then in gen 7 now looks significantly aged worse even within its context. Dead Space 2 sidelines this entirely by going for a way better fusion with its pocket city meets infection, but still, credit where it's due the devs here's very clearly first project with a game of this kind of tone is firing very well here.

Everything ends there though. The big massive elephant in the room is how Dead Space Remake plays. I think it'd be really really silly to not acknowledge that Dead Space by Clear Intent explicitly and by result is influenced by Resident Evil 4. The OG and especially Dead Space 2 took this influence to give incredibly threatening enemies that were built around a toolset you had properly balanced to deal with them. You manipulated their enemy state between terrifying rush mode and kiting them together so you can get shots in while faster and more difficult incarnations came around the corner later. This significantly added to that horror, the necromorphs were very much abominations that gruesomely formed from humanity and their feral instinctual power that you had to manage and keep your distance especially with their erraticism was The defining factor.

But here? They're entirely defanged. This is utterly indefensible to me. The AI for lack of a better word is total dogshit. They'll constantly, CONSISTENTLY, revert to an idle state both after sprinting or even in the middle of attacks. They're boring, reduced in a manner similar to xenomorphs from Alien to Aliens, their threat deorbited to be replaced by, well, nothing. You're far more powerful too, weapon hitboxes have been so overtuned to where flamethrower just disintegrates now, as an example. Your stomp hitbox is so laughably huge that it brought me out of the game hard. I went through the entirety of chapter 4 trying to see how much I could get by just stomping enemies to death. I succeeded and that was depressing. I'm playing this game on Hard btw, and I've actually never been quite able to power through the original's hardest difficulties. I'm not that good at Dead Space. This remake really is just that toothless.

And that's astonishing to me. This is a remake set to be a powerful recognizable spirit of the original, with an uncharitable doctrine towards its coming entirely because EA still absolutely sunset the original devs with prejudice. But its roots, they're gone! They're not even a part of the equation here. I found playing this less interesting and engaging from a mechanical standpoint than Dead Space 3 and that in of itself is also something I never wished I had to say.

I don't know. On its own terms, I think it's largely understandable that people are seeing this from a nu-standpoint where they, likely honestly, never played the original. Simply observed it from its marketing and its dominating horror appeal and came in hoping to be blown away by that part of things. Which is there. That part is not, like, missing. This is in some sense a strongly competent horror walking sim of sorts (yeah i know, levels are still nonlinear, you still kind of fight things, but it's obviously not the point anymore). Difficult for me to internalize that though. The legacy I loved the series for is gone. I'm not very good with horror games exclusively, I loved Dead Space largely for how its monsters were analogous to the horror and forced me to feel things intrinsically through gameplay. I loved that something something ludonarrative. I liked the power and actualization of accomplishing past these terrible monsters, going through with wounds and scars and feeling like I really just lived through a stone cold hell.

Not here though. Dead Space has moved on. Maybe we should too.

I don't have much to say about Hypnospace Outlaw itself beyond it being one of the funniest, most heart-warming, most endearing, most sincere, most ironic, most fun depictions of the Internet ever presented.

In my review-cum-memoir on World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, I bemoaned the death of online spaces noted for their lack of thorough knowledge. It is perhaps fitting that WotLK's release came a mere five days before the launch of Jim Garvin and Ryan McGeary's 'Let Me Google That For You' website. Perhaps by divine providence too, WotLK's release coincided with the steady downward trend of Bill Dyess' then World of Warcraft database Thottbot and the first massive spike in traffic to Wowhead. The coincidence is staggering, but also points to a trend which has irreversibly altered the gaming landscape, and society at large. Much as WoW players sought user-data-verified hard statistics on their MMO of choice, tech savvy individuals' astonishment and contempt for being asked readily verifiable questions reached a tipping point in late 2008. Confirming and corroborating data on WoW would in time become something accomplished by every player. LMGTFY would in time become a site even your grandparents might send as a slight towards a query. The genuine question 'where is Mankrik's wife?' was less the object of ridicule, more a target for sarcasm and eye-rolling as the naive were directed to Wowhead. With ever increasing databases and wikis, games and media in general have become less about a sense of mystery, more one of minutiae. Players no longer revel in not knowing, they would rather examine the entirety of a game's mechanics and lore and history with a finetooth comb.

My point in bringing this up is two-fold. One: Games have genuinely not been the same since players expected to be able to understand them inside and out at whim. Two: The Internet has genuinely not been the same since users expected others to rely on a corporate search engine, largely constructed (especially now) to deliver advertising rather than substantive content, to remedy their perceived ignorance. As Embracer Group, Microsoft, Tencent, Sony, Epic, Valve, Ubisoft, EA, and other megacorporations oligopolise the gaming space, so too do Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Tencent, Joybuy, Alibaba, Twitter, Spotify, ByteDance, Baidu, Adobe, Block, and others reduce Internet diversity to a minimum. I can't act as if I knew the Internet of eld in its entirety, but a lifelong fascination with Internet obscura and history has me at least somewhat informed.

In my review of GeoGuessr, and corroborated by jobosno's review of Microsoft Flight Simulator, stressed was the importance of appreciating the non-place. So too does this apply to the Internet at large, and Hypnospace Outlaw itself if we wish. Not everything on the Internet is substantive or substantial, nor is every page on Hypnospace. We fall down rabbit holes of Wikipedia deep dives, we examine every page on Hypnospace regardless of its relevance to our duty. Duty and productivity and the confines of time and the constraints of life and gaming guide us towards Internet or Hypnospace use that is conducive to our end goals, but those detours persist as availabilities. In the real world, they dwindle as web diversity shrinks, as webhosts go offline, as swathes of the Internet go unarchives and unremember[ed/able]. In Hypnospace, their finite nature means we cannot search forever.

The Big Crunch theory postulates that at some point, the universe will cease expansion, and will recollapse unto itself as all is returned to zero. To null.

At some point, the Internet might cease expansion, and will recollapse unto itself as all is returned to zero. To null. We will not go to website, we will go to keywords. That which is unadvertisable, incompatible with commercialisation will in effect go dark. In due time fewer and fewer spaces will exist. In due time, all will be one, and one will be none.

The Big Freeze theory postulates that the universe will never cease expansion, and will drift into entropy until all is returned to absolute zero. To null.

At some point, the Internet might expand infinitely to the point of unnavigability. In a web of infinitudes, all will be irrelevant and all will be lost as data becomes unable to be quantified on any scale. In due time, one will be all, and all will be none.

The unknowability of the universe renders any theory pointless. We do not know what will happen. We cannot know what will happen.

The unknowability of the Internet renders any theory pointless. We do not know what will happen. We cannot know what will happen.

Enjoy the Internet as it is now. Enjoy the Internet as it was then. Enjoy the Internet as it will be. Forever is it in flux, forever is it a stable constant. Forever does it all drift apart, forever does it all close in. Forever shall it be known and forever shall it be unknown.

We exist in a cosmic nothing of no import.

We exist in a digital nothing of no import.

Every atom in the universe is critical to its being.

Every byte of the Internet is critical to its being.

As a historian, I live on a periphery of data boundless yet intangible. I scour for that which does not exist, may never have existed.

At the end of Hypnospace Outlaw you are tasked with archiving a wasteland.

Archive our wasteland with the Wayback Machine extension. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wayback-machine/fpnmgdkabkmnadcjpehmlllkndpkmiak https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/wayback-machine_new/

We exist at a time where unfathomable amounts of human knowledge are being erased from existence every hour of every day. This is not a deliberate book burning. This is an incidental blaze.

Save what you can.

What a beautiful thing we are a part of.

Seek the obtuse, obfuscated, and obscure.

A selection of webzones I have found and I enjoy:

https://geocities.restorativland.org/

https://web.archive.org/web/20021215085602/http://www.u-ga.com:80/jp/games/mobile.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20070902163202/http://www.cbs.com/primetime/kid_nation/

https://web.archive.org/web/20050222012115/http://everquest2.station.sony.com/pizza/

https://prairieecologist.com/2020/01/13/finally-a-practical-guide-for-roadside-wildflower-viewing/

https://web.archive.org/web/20010118210000/http://www.l0pht.com/

https://web.archive.org/web/20030207171752/http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,50875,00.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20060314162213/http://www.classicgaming.com/pac-man/Pac-Games/PacManVR/pac.htm

https://www.geo-grafia.jp/product/

http://erogereport.blog.jp/archives/cat_87375.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20060515154050/http://users.stargate.net/~glshir/PLAY.HTM

https://dreamlogos.fandom.com/wiki/Dream_Logos_Wiki

https://web.archive.org/web/20150222012855/http://quitesoulless.com/story.htm

https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=Oi1qbcz2m2SnwUeztGYcnQ

https://web.archive.org/web/20030407094755/http://www.vernonjohns.org/snuffy1186/movies.html

http://www.poetpatriot.com/

https://web.archive.org/web/20000229230522/http://symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/y2kgame.hoax.html

https://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/camping-in-a-u-haul-they-are-cheeper-than-an-rv-and-better-than-a-tent.53919/

https://web.archive.org/web/20140803164736/http://theodor.lauppert.ws/games/

https://tss.asenheim.org/

https://jimedwardsnrx.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/pepsi_gravitational_field.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20130812175052/http://csbruce.com/tv/clone_high/

https://xercesblau.com/

https://www.walgreens2.com/peach-ring/peach17.html?fbclid=IwAR0iWWPkq0qf2kkYIVmUgL2pPuE1023aImBPnYuwmQXAxtyXNiElOnSDlVs

http://www.secondlivestock.com/

https://origamisimulator.org/

https://web.archive.org/web/20180818104057/http://underlinestudio.com/linesbreakingnewspaper/

http://blueteethnovel.tilda.ws/

https://web.archive.org/web/20170207203428/http://pacificitysoundvisions.com/

https://web.archive.org/web/20120915100800/http://meryn.ru/portfolia/

https://web.archive.org/web/20130415230745/http://www.reddit.com/

http://www.woodswoods.com/new-gallery-5

https://web.archive.org/web/20120807153003/http://weblog.liberatormagazine.com/2010/11/minstrel-show-visual-art.html

https://glasstire.com/2012/11/23/the-ten-list-walk-as-art/

https://news.ourontario.ca/page.asp?ID=2910113&po=6&n=1

https://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oaeg-front

http://1x-upon.com/~despens/teletext/

http://www.teletextart.com/

https://web.archive.org/web/20060411023755/http://www.gamengai.com/main.php

http://fullmotionvideo.free.fr/

https://www.amusement-center.com/project/egg/

http://retroblues.sakura.ne.jp/regeokiba/index.htm

http://msx.jpn.org/tagoo/

https://fm-7.com/

https://www.gamepres.org/pc88/library/frame1.htm

http://p6ers.net/hashi/

http://furuiotoko.la.coocan.jp/

http://85data.world.coocan.jp/

http://ayachi0610.blog65.fc2.com/

https://datafruits.fm/

https://www.catsuka.com/player/binge/

http://myduckisdead.org/

https://historicfilms.com/search/?

https://www.fontsupply.com/fonts/

https://contactjuggling.org/

http://www.t0.or.at/scl/agents.htm

https://archive.org/details/TheVistaGroup-TheAndersenTiltWashWindowStory1990s

https://cursed-commercials.fandom.com/wiki/Square_Butts

https://www.yygarchive.org/

https://news.nestia.com/detail/%E4%B8%8D%E6%AD%A2%E6%9B%B9%E4%B8%95%EF%BC%9A%E8%BF%99%E6%98%AF%E4%B8%80%E6%AE%B5%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E6%97%A5%E5%BC%8F%E6%88%90%E4%BA%BA%E6%B8%B8%E6%88%8F%E7%9A%84%E7%AE%80%E5%8F%B2/6267619

https://www.jacketsjunction.com/product/wikipedia-editor-jacket/

https://opendirsearch.abifog.com/

https://vimeo.com/729784691

https://ubuweb.com/

https://discmaster.textfiles.com/browse/2902/3D%20Images.iso/bmp/a

http://web.archive.org/web/20040405155729/http://www.mbnet.fi:80/apaja/alueet/

https://carta.archive-it.org/

You know, I can almost envision a reality where this game received the notoriety it so clearly deserved, and it wouldn't take much strain to imagine. Given the time period in which the game launched, it had everything it needed to click with anyone who laid eyes on it: a bright and colorful cast of characters that felt ripped right out of the system they were made for, a story of super heroes fighting off an alien invasion during an era where The Avengers were exploding in popularity, quirky gameplay mechanics you'd come to expect from a company like Platinum Games, an all star team of action game designers who had the experience and passion needed to bring this crazy concept to life and flourish, the works. With Hideki Kamiya at the helm, there was no chance this game could possibly fail, regardless of the system it was launching on.

So what went wrong?

Clearly something didn’t click with people despite Platinum’s best efforts. There are many reasons this could be the case (unorthodox control scheme, confused marketing, niche appeal of the action genre, etc.) but it would be difficult to pin down one specific thing that turned people away.

In my eyes however, what matters most is not that the game lacked something to wrangle in the highest number of potential customers, but that the game did not restrain itself in what it sought out to do.

Let me set the scene for you: June 2020, one of the worst years in recent history and it refuses to let up. Due to the recent shutdown of my job given the status of the world at that time, I had devoted a lot of my free time to playing games, as many others in my position likely do as well. Everything in my life is starting to drag, and I can tell nothing will get better any time soon. However, there is a momentary glimmer of joy coming my way. The Wonderful 101 recently had an incredibly successful kickstarter, and having heard many positive things about the game, I decided to give it a blind shot. Many of my favorite games were action games, so while Platinum didn’t have a perfect track record in my experience, I was interested in trying something I knew so little about. Even if it was disappointing, it probably had some interesting elements to dig into.

I didn’t expect my expectations to be shattered like they were after finishing the game.

I’ve never played a game before that appealed to all my sensibilities like The Wonderful 101 does, and even after nearly 200 hours of play, I’m still picking up on new things to love that I never noticed before. I won’t bore you with the semantics, but every element of the game is emblematic of everything I love about the medium. The story felt cartoonish and stupid in all the best ways, the gameplay presented incredibly distinct systems to set it apart from other action games while tackling problems about the genre in interesting ways I had never considered before, and the whole experience was uncompromising in it’s vision in a truly inspiring way.

In many ways, The Wonderful 101 made me feel like a kid again and ignited a passion for life in my heart at a point where everything felt so aimless and dark. As this global pandemic slows down and eventually fades into nothingness, I’ll be sure to leave a lot of things from this era in the past, but this game is sure to stick with me for years to come.

Regardless of how you may feel about the final product, what can’t be denied is that The Wonderful 101 is everything it wanted to be and didn’t settle for less. And for the time period when it came into my life, that’s all I needed it to be.

Criminally overlooked. This game is a turn-based RPG with a heavy emphasis on survival mechanics in a dark oppressive world. There are some clear inspirations here (one enemy is lifted directly from Demon’s Souls, and an important NPC was no-doubt inspired by Berserk), but the game’s overall aesthetic is wholly unique, visceral, and depraved. The art is equal parts gorgeous and grotesque, and the music, if you can call it music, is oppressive and hair-raising. The whole atmosphere of the game just makes you feel on edge, and stressed about what monstrosity you’ll encounter next.

The dev has a great sense of creating fear and stress through gameplay mechanics as well; attacks from enemies can lead to losing limbs, which makes you unable to hold a two-handed weapon, or a shield. Non-player Party Members will die outright with no way to revive them. Your party can be inflicted with poison, bleeding, tapeworms, and infected wounds, which all require precious resources to treat (and if you can't treat an infected wound, you'll be forced to saw off a limb to stop the infection from killing you outright). You constantly have to scavenge for food to maintain your hunger gauge, and pay attention to your party’s fear gauge, lest they become discouraged and abandon you altogether. All of this is propped up by the coin-toss system, wherein a number of actions in the game require you to pick heads or tails to determine an outcome, such as finding better items while searching chests and bookshelves, or whether you avoid a particularly nasty attack. This system causes you to put more thought into your actions, and play the game a bit more like an adventurer would in real life; being aware of your surroundings and considering the potential risks that your actions carry.

Most importantly, however, the coin toss system is used for saving, which is no doubt going to turn some people away from the game outright. Failing a coin toss while trying to save (done via sleeping in beds) can cause you to be attacked by enemies, or more often than not the game will simply wake you up without saving, and will prevent you from trying again for a bit of time. The game isn't totally heartless, however, and frequently hands out "lucky coins" which can be used to flip a second coin, essentially reducing your chance of failure to 25%, there are also a couple of totally safe save points which won't trigger anything nasty, and there is also a rare, consumable item which lets you save on the spot. What I love about this system is how it forces you to take the rest of the mechanics seriously, something you wouldn’t do if saving was a more available thing. If, for instance, you’ve been a long while without saving, and you lose an arm, or maybe a party member bites the dust, you’ll be much more inclined to press on rather than save-scumming to avoid a bad outcome, which makes your playthrough all the more interesting. Having to deal with a main character losing his arm and becoming less useful, or your favorite party member permanently dying, are memorable experiences that take you by surprise. And when reaching the end of the game, battered, bruised and probably down a man or two, you’ll feel like you’ve accomplished the impossible.

I can’t recommend this game enough; it evoked a feeling of helplessness and dread that even the scariest horror games can’t get out of me anymore. It’s tough, often bordering on unfair, but if you’re willing to press on, you’ll be left with an experience unlike any other.

In a bygone age where “See you in Rayman 4!” had yet to morph from an innocuous sequel hook into the cruellest lie since the Trojan Horse, Ubisoft were on a hot streak that few developers can claim to have had. It's not uncommon to scoff at them now, but much of the key talent that brought us so many instant classics of this era are still there, including Chaos Theory’s very own Clint Hocking. The personal touch of developers like him has become harder to parse with Ubi’s exponential growth and shifting priorities, but it’s hard not to retain a bit of goodwill so long as at least some of those who made Chaos Theory are still there, because it’s probably the best stealth game ever made.

Contrary to what one might think, Splinter Cell’s chief influence isn’t a certain other tactical espionage stealth action series, but rather Looking Glass. It’s not hard to imagine why – to this day, Thief has better sound design than any game that isn’t either its own sequel or System Shock 2, but the need for its state of the art reverberation system stemmed out of its first person perspective. If immersion is the name of the game, nothing sells it quite like having to track where enemies are through carefully listening the same way Garrett would, as opposed to having a disembodied floating camera that can see around corners do the work for you. How does Sam’s game measure up to that, given it’s in third person?

The answer is through a different kind of genius. In Chaos Theory, every individual part of Sam’s body is affected by light/darkness independently. You might not initially notice this until you arouse suspicion by peeking his head just a little bit too far out of a crawl space into a brightly lit area, or accidentally position him in such a way that his leg’s poking out from around a corner. Even now, it’s exceedingly rare for dynamic lighting to be anything more than window dressing, and yet Chaos Theory was making full use of its potential gameplay applications when N-Gage ports still existed. It goes further than this, too. Heavily armed enemies can not only light flares, but throw them in the direction they last saw or heard you, while others can flick on a torch that they’ll point at various angles as they follow your tracks. No other stealth game can match the anxiety Chaos Theory instils as you cling to a wall and hope that the guard a hair’s breadth away doesn’t turn in your direction while he's holding a light.

It’s important to note that despite its influences, Chaos Theory isn’t an immersive sim ᵃⁿᵈ ⁿᵒ ᴴᶦᵗᵐᵃⁿ, ᴹᴳˢ⁵ ᵃⁿᵈ ᴮʳᵉᵃᵗʰ ᵒᶠ ᵗʰᵉ ᵂᶦˡᵈ ᵃʳᵉⁿ'ᵗ ᵉᶦᵗʰᵉʳ ᵇᵘᵗ ᵗʰᵃᵗ'ˢ ᵇᵉˢᶦᵈᵉˢ ᵗʰᵉ ᵖᵒᶦⁿᵗ. It instead opts for a middle ground between their emergent problem solving and its own predecessors’ affinity for pre-baked scripted set pieces. This may sound eclectic on paper, but it works remarkably well in terms of pacing. Relax one moment as you clamber up and down several floors of an office block in any order and through whatever means you please, but be ready the next when you have to switch the power back on and quickly scramble out of the now gleaming room as a squad of guards floods in. Granted, there’s a slight degree of inconsistency in this respect. The bank level’s famously bursting with alternate pathways to accommodate more play styles than you can shake a stick at, while the end of the bathhouse level could drive even an actual Third Echelon agent to forsake his non-lethal playthrough, but this balancing of peaks and valleys overall allows for lots of creative, freeform solutions while still ensuring that there’ll always be segments which demand your attention even on repeat playthroughs.

The fact that Chaos Theory manages to stay so engaging from start to finish without giving you any new equipment along the way is a testament to this, but other areas of the game deserve as much attention as its level design. For instance, no matter how many people are aware of how much Amon Tobin outdid himself with this game’s music, it’s still not enough. This series of chords is Splinter Cell, as much as thick shadows and green goggles, and if it were distilled into a person they would assuredly be skulking about in the dark. The extra instrumentation which dynamically fades in and out according to enemies’ alertness level (my favourite example being this absolute tune) not only drives home his talent even further, but also acts as another way to communicate important information to the player if the increasingly copious sandbag checkpoints throughout the level hadn’t already clued you in. To put things in perspective, this may be the only example of Jesper Kyd’s involvement in a soundtrack not being the highlight.

Chaos Theory’s also a beneficiary of the time when different ports of one game would have exclusive features for no particular reason. I can’t speak for how it controls on console, but I can say that adjusting Sam’s movement speed with the mouse wheel is a fantastic alternative to the standard method of protagonists instantly becoming silent as soon as they crouch (to my surprise, it doesn’t work that way in real life). Combine it with a camera that gently shifts about to give you the best possible view depending on which direction Sam is moving in and the game feels like a dream to control. On PC you also have the added benefit of being able to toggle whether enemies speak in their native languages, a bit akin to Crysis’ hardest difficulty, which despite being such a minor feature seems like a really underutilised concept.

I’d be remiss not to mention the writing as well. While it’s fair to say that Chaos Theory probably isn’t a game you’d play for the story itself, it’s equally true that it wouldn’t be so beloved if its characters weren’t so charming, including the guards, whose responses to being interrogated are not just genuinely funny but also a glaring counterpoint to the notion that this series takes itself too seriously. Few voice actors understand their characters as well as Michael Ironside gets Sam Fisher. Every delivery of his is golden, whether grumbling in response to his support team constantly bullying him for being old or in the plot’s more cathartic moments. Given both that Ironside has now dabbed on cancer a second time and his recent-ish reprisals of the role in the form of Ghost Recon DLCs, one can only hope they get him to work his magic again in the first game’s upcoming remake.

Regardless of how that turns out, it’s nice to know that Splinter Cell has some kind of future again. Bringing back something old can have just as much value as creating something new, and while asking it to be as good as Chaos Theory is probably a tall order, all it really needs to do is be good enough to prove that pure stealth games still have a place in the mainstream. Sam has saved us from WW3 several times over by now, so hopefully he can also save his genre from the plague of waist-high grass.

Hedging my bets on this one – see you in Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell® (TBD)!

How to surpass 11 years’ worth of expectations in one fell swoop. Newcomers to this series are doubtlessly fortunate to not have to go through several of Erikson’s life stages before they can try DMC5 now, but I think it’ll always be harder to appreciate what an achievement this game is if you weren’t subject to the gargantuan wait for it. For this to exist at all is one thing, but to have ended up being the peak of not just its franchise but arguably its genre in so many ways after all that time is something else entirely.

All four of the main characters are drowning in so many unique mechanics that no amount of text really does them justice, but don’t mistake that for bloat or a lack of focus, because it’s anything but. Nero’s new caveman-like attacks and exploding Devil Breakers hones in on his reckless punky attitude and fleshes out his combat options in a way that finally makes him feel like a worthy heir to his uncle, while also helping him step out of his shadow – talk about ludowudo-whatever harmony. Vergil’s revamped Concentration meter, plethora of just frames and seamless weaving in and out of Sin Devil Trigger at no cost if you time it right feels like the fullest realisation yet of the devilishly precise fighting style that originally made him so popular. V’s characterisation as a squishy wizard differentiates him from other action games that have you fiddling about with multiple characters at once. Dante is Dante, no explanation required, but I will say that I hope Quadruple S does for modern action games what instant weapon switching did for them 20 odd years ago – you can’t help but wonder why every game with a ranking system doesn’t actively integrate it into the gameplay itself like this.

All these options wouldn’t mean much if the game around them wasn’t engaging, so it helps that the level design of DMC5 is staggeringly less obnoxious than all of its predecessors. One level might have you in a giant lift that collapses if you don’t kill the enemies on it quickly enough, revealing an alternate path through the level if it falls as opposed to making you start the challenge from scratch. Another presents you with some brief platforming challenges and doors that are about to shut on either end of them, encouraging you to make a quick decision about which way to go but not punishing you too harshly if you decide to take the path of least resistance. One even has a series of optional, demonic skating parks you can make your way through in multiple ways thanks to Nero’s obscene aerial mobility. The interconnected structure of the previous games’ levels has been shed, and yet, the levels have more ways to progress through them than ever; even the obligatory pick-up-this-item-and-put-it-here “puzzles” feel less egregious now that you can usually tackle them in different orders. A superb trade off for the dice boards and rotating towers of this world, to be sure; it's unfortunate that what's so clearly a series best in this regard is commonly written off for no reason other than that some of the levels look vaguely similar if you squint a bit.

This is true of the enemy design, too. Front to back, DMC5 has the most consistently non-annoying enemy roster in the franchise. No clipping through walls, no long periods of invulnerability that can’t be exploited, just every property of the combat system being stretched to the fullest in ways that feel 100% natural. My favourites are the two that get superarmour or teleport away if you launch them, and picking what moves to use against them becomes even more of a brain teaser when they’re accompanied by other types, who are varyingly more susceptible to being stunned or the hidden fear status effect or clashing with their sword or guard breaks or staying in the air or any number of other under-the-hood tools you have to experiment with. Between the campaign, Bloody Palace and remixed enemy placements on higher difficulties, I don’t think there’s any two enemies that aren’t fought together at some point. Not a single ounce of potential is wasted. The most capital G of gamers might feel that enemies could stand to be more aggressive or have more anti-air options to bring your fancy jump cancels to an end, but I don’t care who you are, because you have absolutely been killed by a stray Riot or Judecca at least once.

Similar credit goes to the bosses, among whom there are miraculously no misfires. Gilgamesh might seem to be on the weaker end until you remember that this is the same series in which Arkham, the Saviour, Nightmare 3 and all of DMC2 exist, after which you suddenly realise he’s either inoffensive at worst or actually quite cool. My favourite is Cavaliere, in part because the first and last of these sword clashes sent my dopamine centre soaring to new heights and it’s all downhill for me from here.

He or any other boss in DMC5 would be a standout if you drag and dropped them into most other action games, and the only reason they’re arguably not in DMC5 itself is because they in turn exist alongside Vergil. I used to prefer his DMC3 iteration – he didn’t define an entire archetype of boss fights for no reason – but as I’ve played this more and more, I realise there’s really no comparison between the two unless you put a lot of stock in presentation. There are more ways to attack, defend yourself from, clash or just generally interact with DMC5’s Vergil than in every previous appearance of his combined, down to him responding to your taunts or commenting on your performance. This isn’t to suggest that more is always better, but the key strength of Vergil has always been that he felt almost like fighting another player, and all these layers upon layers of extra mechanics go huge lengths towards simulating that.

The best games tend to be more than the sum of their parts, so it helps that every other aspect of DMC5 is about as strong as how it plays. The art direction is HUGELY undersold, juggling the weird bio-Gothic architecture of the Qliphoth with the most overtly horror enemies since DMC1 and westernised photorealism, marrying it all into a single oddly cohesive package. Bingo Morihashi ᴵ'ᵐ ˢᵒʳʳʸ ᴵ ᵈᶦˢᵖᵃʳᵃᵍᵉᵈ ʸᵒᵘʳ ʷᵒʳᵏ ᶦⁿ ᵃ ʸᵒᵘᵗᵘᵇᵉ ᶜᵒᵐᵐᵉⁿᵗ ˡᶦᵏᵉ ᵗʰʳᵉᵉ ʸᵉᵃʳˢ ᵃᵍᵒ reconciles the series’ trademark themes of family with a metanarrative about leaving red man vs. blue man behind us in ways that cement Nero as just as legendary as either of them. You already know what the soundtrack’s like, but you probably never noticed how underrated Unwavering Bravery is, so listen to that.

As per Dragon’s Dogma 2’s recent announcement, we’re at most a few years away from video games becoming a solved medium, but DMC5 should by no means be seen as just a pit stop on the way there. You can tell Itsuno threatened to quit if Capcom’s higher ups didn’t let him carry out this game exactly the way he wanted, because every last iota of it oozes passion both for the series itself and everyone who's ever worked on it. Dante has a taunt sourced from a Kamiya tweet, and if that isn’t love, what is?

“DMC is back,” and it’s such a satisfying outing that I don’t mind if it never is again.

How different games might be if we didn’t have it in our heads that the right stick must be for camera control. Part of the fun of early 3D games is how little about them was standardised. Jump between any given two of them and there’s a decent chance that few, if any, of the skills or habits you develop in one will translate to another. The lengths a unique control scheme goes toward accentuating this sort of variety and distinctiveness probably goes without saying, but Ape Escape also makes a similarly strong case for how much more intuitive it can be.

Being able to swing a doodad in any direction you want with a simple tilt of the stick, no matter your positioning or which way you’re facing, feels so natural it’s unreal. It’s the type of seemingly mundane thing you don’t realise is so rare in games until you first encounter it and, given how erratically the monkeys move upon being alerted, comes in so handy I can’t imagine the game controlling any other way. That would already be worthy of enough praise as is, but the game’s bolstered even further by how the gadgets get more creative as it goes on.

The RC car is a particular standout. Few platformers will get your proverbial gears turning as much as guiding both Spike and the RC car through two different sets of moving obstacle courses at the same time. It’s really, really striking how similar the car feels to some action games of recent years in which controlling multiple characters has become increasingly common – if there was ever a context where “ahead of its time” was 100% appropriate to use, this is it, though Ecclesiastes 1:9 also comes to mind.

Don’t let the revelation that Astral Chain is secretly an Ape Escape sequel distract you from how remarkably forward thinking other aspects of this game are, though. Past a certain point, platforming sequences will demand you quickly rotate between several gadgets in quick succession to get to the monkey on the other side, but this is a totally fluid experience thanks to how you can instantly switch between gadgets with the face buttons. You can even go straight to the equipment menu without having to go through the pause menu first if you’d like to quickly swap out your current gadgets. Excessive menuing plagues many a game even now, to say nothing of how this could easily have been compounded by memory limitations of the day, which makes it all the more impressive how effortlessly Ape Escape almost completely circumvents that issue.

The water net and the (very few) tank segments are more finicky, but some misses here and there are to be expected when you’re tackling such an ambitious range of level concepts. When you’re rigorously working your way through precision platforming segments in a castle floating in Earth’s orbit at the end, it’s easy to forget that this is the same game in which you were sniping monkeys with a slingshot inside the belly of a dinosaur just a few hours ago.

Beyond using the time travelling premise to the fullest, the levels – and the game as a whole – are great at letting you progress at your own pace. Only half of all the monkeys in the game are required to catch to get to the end, so it feels very much like a precursor to the Jak & Daxter school of “don’t like it, don’t do it.” This freedom’s aided by the levels’ complexity and nonlinearity, especially those later on in the game, full of optional rooms packed with unique challenges you’re not likely to see anywhere else. Because of this, there’s also plenty of incentive to revisit previous levels with gadgets you didn’t initially have, a bit akin to one of those veinytroids or whatever they’re called.

Do that and you’ll eventually unlock a bunch of minigames that’re a fair bit more interesting than they have any right to be, again thanks to the unique use of the right stick. I found it hard to not walk away from them wishing that we could get a fully fledged monkey-centric boxing or ski racing game that simulates those even more closely, until I remembered that Japan Studio (pbuh) went kaput and the concept of fun was forever cancelled as a result.

Tempting as it is to mourn them, the same infectious charm that courses through everything else they worked on is present in Ape Escape in spades, which helps cast it in a more celebratory light. I can’t imagine the Sony of today greenlighting a game this outlandish visually, tonally and mechanically any time soon, but at least they did once. Somewhere, sometime, someone at Sony decided we needed a sci-fi monkey hunting simulator which happens to feature the world’s finest turn of the century drum ‘n’ bass album as its soundtrack, and I’m delighted not just because we've gotten some fantastic games out of that, but also because this shows that somebody out there truly understands my needs.

When it’s all said and done, Ape Escape is as fun as a barrel of... you know.

"For Resident Evil 4, I actually didn't stop my frenzy myself. I wanted a producer to step in and stop it for me," - Shinji Mikami

resident evil 4's gameplay mechanics can be summed up as the following: you have four different main gun types accompanied by grenades. enemies walk up slowly towards you with a few different weapon types, and to shoot them you must stop in place and take aim in an over-the-shoulder perspective. generally with multiple enemies, the goal is to stagger one and then run up and kick it, which not only gives leon copious I-frames but also serves as an AoE to any surrounding enemies. the handgun generally serves as your bread-and-butter choice in most close-quarters situations, while the shotgun clears out groups quickly, the rifle can eliminate precise long-distance targets, and the TMP allows a low-damage spray-and-pray solution for specific high-density situations. leon comes equipped with a knife at all times that can quickly kill downed enemies without expending ammo as quickly as well as open item crates strewn across the world. the majority of enemies are identical "ganados" fodder which can wield a variety of weapons, and can generally be taken down quickly with headshots. however, after a ganados's head explodes, there is a potential for a dangerous parasite "los plagas" to extrude from the wound, which can attack from range and generally requires high-powered weaponry (or a flash grenade) in order to kill. with all of this in mind, the core tenets of gameplay consist of keeping leon a comfortable distance from enemies, setting up AoE opportunities when possible, and strategically prioritizing highly-dangerous targets with complementary weapon selections.

that's the "gameplay" in a nutshell. it's a bit like saying super mario bros. 3 is a "game where the player must traverse from platform to platform via jumping, while analyzing the hazard space for the safest path..." blah blah blah. for so many games I feel like you can summarize the core experience with the mechanical interaction description, but when you get to something as unconventionally designed in terms of scenario as re4, it sort of defies being encapsulated by its mechanics. it takes virtually no time for the game to spread its wings, sort of like a biblical angel, literally so complex that it's not completely comprehendable upon first glance. and even this metaphor feels overwrought now that I've written it out because the game is so nonchalant about its own vastness. its almost workmanlike in how stuffed with content it is, treating the abundance of twists and new ideas as simply part of what it takes to put together a AAA.

that comparison with mario 3 wasn't idly tossed in; both games share a need to constantly change the objectives and gimmicks level-by-level, room-by-room. I don't think I can name a single time in re4 where I felt like it reused an idea, or remotely let a concept get stale before the credits rolled. yet the game delicately avoids feeling unfocused at the same time. instead of adding too many ingredients and risking a muddled palette, the designers instead simply rearrange old components in a new way every time you walk through a transition. you don't necessarily need to introduce a new enemy type every five minutes when you can just add switches you need to hit, or hidden doors that flood new enemies in when you hit a certain trigger, or a series of staircases that put leon on his back foot when attempting to attack those at the top, or even wrecking ball controls you need to nurse while facing an onslaught of enemies from all directions. the base gameplay is simplistic enough to apply to virtually any situation you could ever imagine and fun enough to carry whatever you throw at it, so why not throw everything into the pot?

the garradores are a great example of this. the first garrador you meet is fresh enough to stand on its own; you enter its dungeon, grab some key item or flip some switch (honestly can't remember), and attempt to leave, only for it to violently awake and begin chasing you. while its long iron claws make it immensely dangerous, it is blind and thus can only track you by sound. tricking it to getting its claws embedded in a wall or simply sneaking behind it opens up an opportunity to strike its plagas from behind, exposing its weak point and allowing you to dispose of the monster before exiting the dungeon. not long after this it appears for a second time. surely the logical iteration would be simply to add some other enemies into the equation, right? or maybe put it in a room where there are fewer ways to trick it into chasing after noises away from your position?

the game plops you into a cage with the garrador with multiple enemies on the perimeter snarl and take potshots at you, safe behind grates enclosing you in with the murderous creature. attempting to fight back will alert the garrador to your presence, ensuring your swift defeat. there happens to be an door the player can use to exit the cage, but it has a padlock that requires the player shoot it off, again putting the player at risk of the garrador closing in. does the player choose to avoid the attacks from outside the cage, luring the garrador into a spot where the player can take care of them before dealing with the rest? or do they risk leaving the cage with the garrador in immediate pursuit, hoping that the space to maneuver outside makes the encounter easier? one intrepid forum user in a thread I read discussing favorite parts of the game shared their solution: throw a grenade near the door, which instantly disintegrates the padlock, distracts the garrador towards the blast, and allows the player to sneak out and begin taking care with the external opponents. as someone who has always been a bit grenade-shy no matter why game I play, I would've never thought of this (I took the garrador out and ate the external damage before leaving the cage). it's this multiplicity of solutions for any given confrontation that makes the design truly sing.

all of these are strung between simple feel-good classic resi item fetching and some small puzzles here and there that keep the game structured and the locality of each area present in the player's mind. when even with these elements the combat becomes overbearing, the game throws a curveball, letting the player navigate the hedge maze or forcing them to evade the verdugo. that latter boss concept gets repeated later with the U3 without reusing a single lick of content, instead choosing a completely different way to instill the horror of a disgusting entity chasing you. imagine how easy it would've been for them to use multiple elevator-ride fights; the design team threw in a ski-lift section instead. area with ashley operating switches while you provide cover fire? somehow they restricted themselves to only doing it once. which lest I forget, when the game feels like there's not quite enough spice, they'll toss ashley into the equation, who you must escort and protect to avoid an instant game over. somehow they even made this work! the enemies primarily focusing attacks on you and your ability to instantly take care of anyone who attempts to abscond with her in their grasp goes a long way towards making what should be a detestable mechanic overall rather nonintrusive.

unfortunately, with the relative simplicity of the gameplay, bosses tend to be less exciting and more of an afterthought. unload bullets into the boss, run away, reload, rinse and repeat. it doesn't help that virtually every boss is replete with attacks that require dodging via a QTE, which show up far too often in the game in general and jeopardize any real fear or unique qualities for each fight. at worst you can simply use a rocket launcher to instantly kill any boss that is giving you a hard time (I used the free one in the castle on salazar), but overall most of them are more like ammo dumps rather than true tests of skill. on that note, I also can't say I like the regenerators or iron maidens very much. it's a late-game reminder that the genre is technically survival horror, and I think it does a solid job on that note, but hitting the weak spots can be fiddly, especially when they're located on the monster's back like in the first iron maiden fight. for a game that otherwise doesn't really penalize non-optimal shots on regular enemies it's a bit of a nuisance, but I never ran out of ammo regardless and it seems like eventually you will kill one of these enemies with raw damage even if you don't quite hit the final weak spot.

obviously a game this utterly rich with peerless design drew a lot of attention, and like that aforementioned angel, grotesque in its majesty and scope, onlookers and fellow designers created images of it that couldn't capture the vastness of its splendor. more specifically, everyone ran with the novel camera perspective to instead make legions of less-inspired shooters bursting with endless arenas of slight variations on the same theme, with none of the charm or endless inspiration capcom production studio 4 seemed to contain. in hindsight, I don't think resident evil 4 really separates itself all that much from something like gears of war in the sense of carrying a certain level of prestige or dignity. both games simply set out to make great action experiences for those interested. resident evil 4 is humble in its creativity, but frenzied in its drive to never give the player a second of boredom amidst its staggering campaign.

I played some DJMAX for the first time today. It brought me an unexpected amount of happiness to start a rhythm game in 2022 and be greeted by expressive UI and a setlist of songs I didn't first download off of some Google Drive account. Don't get me wrong, the post-copyright rhythm game landscape we live in where games like osu!, Clone Hero and, if we're really getting unambiguous, PPDXXX and TJAPlayer3 practically hand the keys to the already-invested audience is hard to argue against, especially from the perspective of said enthusiasts who couldn't possibly squeeze anything more out of the original property.

But there is something to be said of music games as a celebration of music first and foremost, which is something that I can't help but think enthusiasts lose sight of. The one I'm most familiar with is this very one - I've been an on/off member of the GH community since GH1, and it's obvious that Clone Hero is second only to the money-spewing titan GH3 in maintaining the lifespan of that game, and for good reason! It's what you could only hope in your wildest dreams would pop up if the computer-illiterate you from 15 years ago typed "guitar hero pc free" into a search bar. It comes with... like 3 songs to start, but with some resources which are SHOCKINGLY easy to find and use, you can fill this bad boy up quick with free, high-quality, community-handled charts. As a former child who begged my parents for money to buy 1-3 DLC songs at a time, it fucking rules. It feels like having all of your birthdays at the same time.

I... I don't know how to explain this next part quickly, but I'll try my best. At some point a few years ago, it was discovered that the GH guitars made for the Wii, coupled with an adapter which made them wired, were unmistakably superior as far as latency and poll rate went. This was seen as a great thing for Clone Hero considering how easy it was to find them at Goodwill for like, $20 or w/e. However, a slow but inevitable discovery crept over the horizon, which is that CH at 2ms lag and 1000hz poll rates is trivially easy at times and absolutely exploitable! You see, the game has a relatively large hit window for the notes and unlike, say, Rock Band, there's no punishment for players who press incorrect frets between notes. This, without you knowing it, has likely saved your ass several times while playing the game casually, as charts which would've been difficult in the console games are inherently easier due to these things in tandem making note inputs more lenient than ever.

I would love for the game to take some inspiration from the older games and tighten that hit window down to only the strikeline (and in their defense, there's an optional modifier that alleviates this a bit). As it is right now, it's an issue, I think. But it is only an extension of the true issue.

Put some vaseline on your fingers (note: some don't and literally injure their skin! AAAH!) and get ready to TAP BABY! We've all mashed the buttons in a rhythm game, trying to maintain a combo only for the game to likely spit out negative feedback instead for trying to one-up it. Well, Clone Hero is one of a scant few games which sees this and goes, "Woah! You're really good!"

This has obvious effects in the short-term. Section FCs of dense tapping patterns are no longer that impressive by themselves in a world where anyone with a wool glove can mash that shit out. And mash it they do, as some of the more recent community accomplishments in the game have been done while utilizing these techniques. High-level players left scorned by these exploits have to place trust in the discerning audience to understand that them playing "clean" is impressive for its own sake. But for me, as an observer and player, the true bumps have only been felt long-term.

When I watch someone play a song at 250% speed and the accompanying webcam SFX is just a blitz of plastic meeting skin, it induces an existential episode within me where I'm not even sure why this game is being played to begin with. Like, if rhythm games are on one side of the spectrum then, I dunno, Go is on the other. One asks you to press buttons precisely and in a strict order and the other is played in a partnership, within an unknowable context, as to know it would be to understand human consciousness on a person-to-person basis.

This comparison isn't to disparage rhythm games at a foundational level, but rather it's to highlight how deep tremors like this can be felt. What is the message that a rhythm game this exploitable is sending out to the universe? I'm not a Go expert, but I do understand it to be a pretty rigid strategy game that has withstood ONE HELL of a timespan. Frankly, where CH is at in its small life, I wouldn't be surprised if a problem of this scale means the heights of the game have already passed us by. Imagine if Go had to reckon with something like that. It probably wouldn't have left the damn Zhou dynasty.

When I played DJMAX today, I'll admit I found it pretty easy to play even the hardest stuff because I have experience in the genre. And hell, it might also be in the same boat as CH as far as engine-born problems go. I have no idea. But at least providing the warmth of curated, varietal multimedia has wooed me for a bit, and I'll likely be keeping it around for a while as a result.

P.S.: Clone Hero also has drum support and all the issues from above do not exist there. I love playing drums on CH and I do it often!