i'd wager there are many who try to undertake a more fair critical analysis when writing about this game. for the sake of transparency, let's just say i can't. this isn't about a stringent inability to separate art from the artist, this is about my inability to separate art from its era.
- it is emblematic of a dark period in capcoms oeuvre, in which they repeatedly made awful creative and financial decisions in an attempt to both maximize revenue and appeal to western markets
- it is easily one of the most repugnant, misogynistic games ive ever played; it possesses some of the worst writing ive ever seen in a game while still supposedly aspiring to shakespearean greatness. none of its musings on society ever come together nor can it be enjoyed as a charming romp when so little of its characterization is either endearing or palatable
- the calvacade of capital G Gamers who were thoroughly unimpressed by this title inspired a desperate and petty form of tribalism from the likes of varying industry figures that continues to resurface to this day...
- ...which, inadvertently, largely reminds of a kind of rampant xenophobia that existed in the seventh generation of games, a quiet dismissal of anything japanese in the medium and a refusal to engage with their works on sincere grounds (look no further than the original niers critical admonishment). ninja theory felt completely comfortable disparaging and blaspheming the original franchise that they now held the keys to in an era where inescapable indie 'beloveds' like jonathan blow and phil fish rallied to antagonize an entire country's output to the medium
- ninja theory had zero right to patronize or criticize, by the way, given that itsuno had to babysit them to teach them anything at all about proper enemy design, combat design, and so on and so forth. their action game couldn't even be considered average until the release of the special edition
- honestly think the games environments look like dogshit, considering it's the one thing everyone is unanimous in praise of. 2000s movie poster type bullshit

a stark reminder of an awful time to be a participant in the medium and the sole reason i refuse to be accessory to ninja theory in any financial capacity. sacrilege if im being real. hilarious that dmc5 reconciles with this games western sensibilities to often brilliant effect by comparison

For a game in its genre, BRC isn't the most deep and replayable. I also do wish that the levels were more consistent, and that some mechanics were a bit deeper. At the same time, who fucking cares?

This game knows what it wants to do and just did it. It's a fun Y2K-styled ride through a set of colourful levels, where the mid-air poses are dramatic and the beats are FUNKY. It was a blast to go through, with barely any drag, and with a lot of memorable moments. More than a month away from beating it, I still sometimes get the itch to reinstall it and just go through the adventure once again. Or just 100% my save file, I dunno.

Fuck Sega! The JSR remake looks generic as fuck! All hail Team Reptile, blessed be thy skates, ever-lasting be thy trick chains.

In Stars and Time feels like when a director takes their short film they made for school and decides to film additional scenes to turn it into a full feature, ruining it because its really just stretching out an idea that worked well as something brief.

Not that I particularly buy into the idea of a so called "unbiased" review but if you are looking for the perspective of someone who simply stumbled across the game and purchased it on a whim, this account most definitely will not be it. Back in 2021 I played a short game called Start Again, Start Again, Start Again : A prologue and fell in love with it. It was short and sweet, set up a very neat idea of an adventurer stuck in a groundhog day esque timeloop in the final dungeon of an RPG. Its concept was novel, its implementation for the most part smart, the characters were compelling, the LGBT rep was cool and obvious sequel hook aside, I think it worked well as a self contained story.

I liked it so much in fact, that I wrote a walkthrough for it, because none existed at the time I wrote it. It was an interesting experience, and made me respect every guide writer whos services I had benefitted from all these years. I did get a bit sick of the game by the end of it, having had to play essentially the same sequence about 6 times or so to write the guide. How naïve I was, If I thought that that was an overlong amount of runs for the game, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I loved the game so much in fact it was one of my first reviews on this very site and I even evangelized for it, getting my friend @MagneticBurn to play it and if my delusional ego can take the wheel for a second, I think I might have gotten the ball rolling on the site and now the page for the game is a lot more full of activity, and maybe even some of my mutuals' wishlisting/backlogging of ISAT? or Maybe not, but either way I was anticipating ISAT for a while now. I have definitely learned why I prefer to not do such a thing usually, and just let games drop on me without fanfare or hype of any kind. I think that was part of why I soured on ISAT.

If you have not played Start Again : A Prologue and are wondering if you need to play it to understand In Stars and Time, not only do you not, I would recommend that you do not play it if you are planning to play ISAT. A more appropriate name in hindsight would be Start Again : A Prototype because in the 17 hours I have played of ISAT the first 10 or so played out like a streeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetched out version of STAT:AP.

Sweet fucking merciful mother of mary, this game is way way way way way way way way way way too long for what it is. STAT:P was not a perfect game by any means but none of its flaws had a chance to become glaring in its short snappy package. The not particularly engaging combat? Whatever, the game was 4 hours long. The repetition of dialogue? 4 Hours Long. The writing not always landing the way it probably was intended to? 4Hours.

Its not as if ISAT is JUST STAT:P but stretched, there are some new bits of course, character moments, concepts, a whole ass hub town kinda. In short, it's a game which has expanded upon its original prototype to give a more complete experience, and oh how I wish I could appreciate it but I simply cannot. Clearly the developer has accrued a bunch of experience and the general production value has increased at least twofold, but its all in service of an idea which simply cannot support such an expansion. Its like building an airliner using toothpicks, impressive certainly but you'll have to forgive me for not wanting to get on it.

As much as the new interactions and character quests and all that are nice and well done, most of the game is in service to an appropriately named gameplay loop which is simply beyond tedious after a while. I don't even really want to discuss the mechanics at length but in short, like most timeloop games you will be going through the same areas over and over and over again. Somewhat ameliorated through the use of mechanics to skip forward and not have to redo the whole dungeon all over again, but still the game is not deep or interesting enough to make the repetition not grating. Especially when it seems to begrudge you at times for taking the skip dialogue options it keeps giving you. And that, in short is the issue I have. After 16 hours of the same thing over and over and not ending and not concluding and 3 million ways of saying the same thing I just want the goddamned game to end. And here's the thing, I'm sure at some point I am going to get the "that was the point!" from someone and admittedly I have not finished the game, but I reject this notion.

Spoiler Warning I suppose.

The whole thing in STAT:P which extends to ISAT is the absolute misery that Sif feels at having to relive the same day over and over again and their friends not even being aware of it, having to pretend to feel fine about it and not let them catch on to his existential nightmare. One could argue then, that the overlong nature of ISAT is meant to serve this, through putting the player through a similar experience. I reject this for 2 reasons: 1 in STAT:P a similar thing is achieved much more succintly, just because I agree to something being necessary does not mean you should not show restraint in how its implemented; and the other being that even if it was this point would not be worth making the game an unmerciful slog. Even the points which clearly are meant to at least be compelling on a first time around like the character quests and whatnot were so dampened by having to trudge through a million loops to get there that I didn't even really connect to their emotional cores much.

Anyways, the breaking point for me was getting to Act 4 after what feels like an eternity, trying to look up in the dev's own discord server the next steps in lieu of a walkthrough which does not currently exist (and Im definitely NOT going to be the one writing it this time) and seeing "act 6 spoilers" and my heart sank. NO, I'm sorry but get fucked. I will look up the ending on youtube whenever someone uploads a walkthrough, I am done. And I feel sad about it, I had looked forward to this game, I thought I would at the very least sort of like it. Clearly it has had a positive reception and I wish I could join the positive consensus but this game makes me miserable.

I think Spiritfarer's greatest strength is being able to wield the specificity of its characters' lives and the real life stories of grief that they take inspiration from whilst also remaining quite universal. Though, in a rather morbid way, I think one's mileage with Spiritfarer will vary mostly by one's life experiences with the subject matter. That's not to say that the storylines are hollow without being able to relate to them, some of my favourite characters in Spiritfarer are meant to serve as catharsis for a particular type of grief I'm simply not familiar with on that level.

This is all to say, one story in particular has had a more profound impact on me in a way that I think would simply not work quite as well if I hadn't lost a loved one in the way that I did.

I am going to put a spoiler warning here, though first of all, I obviously recommend the game if that wasn't clear; and second of all, go and read Drax's Excellent piece on the game, which is genuinely my favourite write-up about spiritfarer on the site, and maybe even the entire web.

I want to talk about Atul. A few days ago a friend of mine @MrCanilla finished his playthrough and wrote a thoughtful piece on it which I enjoyed (and the shoutout was nice too, lol). I then reflected on my original piece on the game and I wasn't very happy with it. So I replayed Spiritfarer and quickly dispelled the idea in my head that there was no way the emotional impact would be as effective on a second go. But the main reason Im writing this is because I never talked about Atul, and that surprises me, because it sat on my mind for a while when I originally played Spiritfarer in 2021.

Atul is a jolly Frog spirit you pick up as one of the first spirits you can ferry to the afterlife. He's the world's least picky eater, he's a handyman who runs the sawmill and breaks out into song, one of my favourites : thunder harvest. He asks you to go on a pretty long and arduous quest to feed him various foods which remind him of memories of his family, which he misses. As you get to know him you realize that behind his jolly facade is a real void, a void that he may be filling with food, judging by his appetite.

The real turn comes when his quest advances to organizing a big dinner for everyone on board, another set of food quests to make a big feast. Then as you go back to the ship and go to sleep, you realize the next morning that Atul is simply not there anymore. And I may be misremembering, because originally I played a much earlier version of the game, but I think originally that was it, you went to his room and found the spiritflower, the symbol left behind by the spirits in their quarters after they are ferried to the everdoor. On replay though, it seems there is a bit more clarification, with characters confirming quite plainly that Atul simply left. I am rather conflicted on this "QOL?" decision for reasons I will explain at the end.

You see, up until that point in the game (and they made damn sure that Atul's quest cannot be finished before sending at least 3 or 4 spirits I think to the everdoor) the game had established a sort of routine. Relating to the main thrust of the game being essentially the experiences of a palliative care nurse who would take care of patients in what little time they had left, all of the spirits follow the pattern of seeing off a dying relative, the spirits gathering around when taking their fellow to the everdoor analogous to gathering around a deathbed, as Drax pointed out. It doesn't get easier but it does follow a pattern; you take the spirit to the everdoor, they have some parting words somewhat concluding their storyline and then you cry and they leave forever.

Atul, however, simply leaves, utterly subverting the established pattern brilliantly. My reaction and many others was that of utter confusion : "What? What the hell? Where did he go? I didn't even get to say goodbye! That's not how it was supposed to go?" to anger "how could he leave without saying goodbye! How could he do this to me?". I simply couldn't believe it. In the case of Atul, there is some implication given his character arc that he simply didnt want to make Stella sad and went to the Everdoor himself, characteristic of his personality, but there is also an implication in my mind that this may well be Stella and by extension the audience trying to make sense of that which has none. And sometimes our loved ones will leave us without the chance to make peace or say one final goodbye, and we kind of just have to live with it and make what time with them count.

The reason this was all so devastating is that with a simple upending of established mechanics, spiritfarer pulled me back to 2018 and the exact emotional reaction I felt when my father unexpectedly past away. Without getting into needless details, it was simply an accident, one of tragically countless which happen every day. I was studying abroad at the time and got a call from my mother on an evening that was until then utterly mundane, I think I was planning on playing skyrim and procrastinating on work as I always did back then. Unbeknownst to me my Father had already passed when I received the call, but I was just told he was in the ICU and to get home ASAP. I hurried to the airport as fast as I could to take a late night flight back home. Looking back I am almost thankful for the eventful trip which took my mind off it all, getting lost and without battery in central london until some helpful people pointed me in the right direction, talking to a tourist on the plane, etc.

But of course when I landed I got the news. It was quite surreal, in a way. Now, I don't think anyone is fully prepared to lose a loved one ever, but when someone young and healthy leaves in such a fashion it makes you question a lot of things. And my Dad was not all that similar to Atul, personality wise, but much like the sawmill he used reminds you of Atul even when he's gone and you miss his supply of planks and all the other helpful activities he would do like most spirits in the game, I realized a few weeks later when I started to cycle again, that I was going to finally have to learn how to change tyres by myself. A sad reminder of who I lost but also an important lesson to move on and to let life's hardships as well as its good times serve as lessons. Its been 5 years now, and though this replay may have resurfaced a few bits, I am doing well, And I can confidently say that Spiritfarer is still a great game which accomplishes with its mechanics what couldnt be accomplished in a different medium. Its personally inspiring to me genuinely.

I must say, playing Spiritfarer in 2023 makes me think we should mandate Minecraft's version history system into every single game, because I think Spiritfarer 2020 was a great game which was a little padded and could have ended a bit earlier than it did, and lo and behold that's even more so the case now. In principle, I understand why they clarified a bit more on Atul, even if it robs it of the full impact of the utter confusion and shock it was originally intended to convey. However, if you are one of the people who complained enough about it that they added the option to turn off the Bus stop music, we cannot be friends; and I will see you in hell. And I have the sneaking suspicion that the new spirits were always supposed to be there in the original version but were cut due to time constraints and later added in, in which case I can see why they were chosen to be cut out of all of them, I'm sorry. They're not awful, but y'know.

Anyways, I don't know If I have much of conclusion beyond the obvious plea to love those closest to you and live a life you won't regret, so let's idk share our favourite spiritfarer tracks in the comments. Have a good one

When I first played Jak 2, I hated it. No up-and-down camera controls, huge hub world that's a pain in the ass to navigate, non-stop gameplay switch-ups, a hoverboard that didn't work, bonus missions with strict time limits. It seemed at every turn, Jak 2 resisted the idea of having fun.

Turns out I just needed to get good.

The gunplay in this is really good, and it's what brought me back after that miserable first run. All the weapon mods feel good to use, whether it's the Scatter Gun pushing back waves of critters, the Vulcan Fury filling enemies with countless needles, the Peacemaker vapourizing several goons in one shot, or the old reliable Blaster with its maybe-too-generous auto-aim. These jump-and-gun missions are the highlights of Jak 2.

Cutsecenes have also seen an upgrade from Jak 1 by being skippable and fully subtitled. They're still all very entertaining, with solid writing, acting, and animation across the board. Unfortunately none of the dialogue from Jak's floating walkie-talkie is subtitled, and the old radio effect makes it hard to parse when Krew or Torn are speaking. Fortunately I never felt lost on what to do if I missed something.

With each playthrough, I died a little less, found a new Precursor Orb, perfected the gimmicky one-shot missions, learned I can do a 360 on the way up during a hoverboard jump and still get the speed boost. Haven City is still a pain in the ass to navigate. Jak 2 is now one of my favourite games ever.