FemboyGenius
2023
Keep Gambling
2022
What do you know about Ravenous (1999)?
“You live up to your name, Raven. You fight like a bird in flight. You may fly higher.. Beyond Rubicon's scorched skies, to chase the freedom we never knew.”
(Warning! This review is full of spoilers! If you have not completed ACVI in its entirety, I highly recommend that you do that before reading the story segment of this review. Which is the most important part of this review I would say lol. Anyways, take care.)
I feel like most of the entries to this series always fell victim to low budgets and rushed dev time to get in on a console launch, and while they do their best with the time and resources they have, you can see a lot of the jank in the past armored cores. Yet, Armored Core VI is an isolated moment in the series where it looks like the From Soft team has been cooking this for a long time and it shows.
This is the most polished Armored Core I have ever experienced, and don’t get that mistaken as me saying it carries no flaws. No, because perfection isn’t real and not an expectation anyone should have. Its polish comes from a few major factors. One factor being its presentation. This shit is cinema. With the amount that's always happening in this game it’s kinda a miracle it runs as good as it does—on pc at least.
For the next factor let's talk about gameplay. Shit man, what do you want me to say about it? Yes, it does not play like the other armored cores, it’s in its own league. But it absolutely carries the same philosophy that's been developing since AC4/For Answer. They changed the movement and camera for the benefit of the player to feel stronger, to feel like an adequate pilot. But with how diverse the customization is, as well as the amount of movement tech that can be discovered and used for your benefit—this shit is armored core! No matter how hard or “anime” they make a boss fight, it won’t change that.
I’m honest to god bored of the conversation on this game whether it took things from the souls series or not. Listen, here’s what I got to say and then we’re moving on. From Soft has been undergoing the process of refining their formula for a very long time, after iteration and iteration. It comes to no surprise that it would be applied to this game as well. I’m sorry they didn’t just decide to unlearn everything they’ve done for the past decade and make another slow janky PS2 game. I know, it’s a tragedy. But you’ll be okay, we’ll all be okay! If you have to do another playthrough of Last Raven again to cope, that’s okay! I understand and still love you the same.
I’ve seen people say that this game is “shallow” or that it “lacks variety” in its parts and I’m starting to lose my mind! Did they steamline the customization a bit for easier accessibility for players new and old? Yes, absolutely. But each part changes the synergy of a build in a lot of ways— whether that’s to do with movement, your energy gauge, how fast you walk, your aim, etc etc. There’s a lot going on here with plenty of downsides and disadvantages alongside upsides and advantages. Everything has a counter, yes even your duel zimmermans. You’re not safe! You can do so much with this game with patience, experimentation, and skill. (A lot of people haven’t messed around with the parry shields and it shows!). People who think that this game leads you to one build are delusional and think their need for instant gratification is the game’s fault instead of some inner conflict of their own. Hey guys, maybe Vampire Survivors is more your speed?
Anyways, on to the last factor. This one was the most surprising to me! Holy shit, they really did it with the story in this one! Now, I won’t even try to argue how this could be From Soft’s best story because that’s redundant. What I could say is, it may definitely be my favorite story in a From Soft game. This shit hits some emotional high ceilings that I haven’t experienced from them since… Maybe Bloodborne? Don’t get me wrong, Armored Core has had some great stories before. Especially AC4/For Answer—but it’s worth noting how AC VI tells their story in an exceptional way that stands out to me. AC VI is an effective character drama unlike any other. LIKE WHAT EVERY MECHA SHOULD STRIVE TO BE!
Each pilot you encounter in this world is a person that’s self absorbed into their own world and ideals, just gleaming with personality. Rubicon is alive with all the pilots behind these factions going to war against each other. Even Balan’s Redguns are great to be around even if admittedly they are mostly for comedic effect (which isn’t even a bad thing to begin with).
Let’s talk about Handler Walter. The relationship between him and 621 continues to fascinate me. As their relationship develops throughout the game it goes beyond expectation. Because it’s not just a simple slave/master dynamic or employer/employee relationship, no— it’s different. There’s a few interpretations to take it. One being the simple man and his hound (working dog). Another being the father/son relationship.Then there’s the more gayer perspective… How I happened to see it was like Frankenstien’s monster if the monster managed to make a friend after all. Straight from the Story trailer, Walter gives 621 a “reason to exist.” by applying his ideals onto 621, as described as “his legacy”. 621—as an augmented human, isn’t viewed as a human with individuality. 621 is mostly seen as a monster, something inhuman towards the other characters (especially because of their generation). It’s not until 621 is granted an identity as Raven—although it’s a stolen identity—it becomes their identity entirely. Even if Walter calls the pilot 621 throughout the whole story, the pilot is able to practice their will to power through the new self as Raven. After the completion of the third level survey, near the destination of the coral convergence, Walter says to Carla that 621 is going to be the key at the end, which is why he isn’t going to pick which jobs to take. Walter puts all his chips on 621, allowing the pilot to go whichever path in hopes it will lead them to their goal from the beginning—the coral.
Again, there’s many ways you can read this. Walter trusts 621 enough to have them make their own decisions but reminds them there’s a job to do, a legacy to fulfill. Through the lens of a father towards their son, it would explain the references to such familiar concepts like “legacy” that are being used by Walter. This lens comes to connect with the theory that Walter was “the boy” that was referenced in a data log written by one of the RBI researchers before committing the act of the fires of ibs. Through the lens of man and dog, it explains the trust and positive affection Walter expresses towards 621 at times. When Snail refers to 621 as a “mutt” it is nothing but vitriol. It’s demeaning, similar to how people call a dog a mutt in a derogatory way. But with Walter, hound is more affirming—yet it’s a complete misunderstanding of what 621 is and can be.
“Walter told me, you know. Looks like you made a friend of your own. But it’s good to make a choice. Sit on the fence, and you make no enemies…or friends.”
Throughout the game, 621 is met with moments of individuality through the ability of making decisions on their own. The Swineburne mission is a prime example of this! You can first off, not ambush him in the first place and make him think you’re just some grunt for a moment. Then within the fight he surrenders and tries to make a deal with you. You can accept and let him go or refuse and continue the fight. What I did on my first playthrough is accept his deal then blasted him with a pilebunker. The coral friend in your head—Ayre then asks if Walter taught you that. Even Swimeburne was shocked that I could do that. I—myself was a little shocked that it worked. 621 is just as much as a functioning person as anyone else. The whole story is mainly them being able to have a friend for god’s sake.
Back to the paths I’ve mentioned earlier. First playthrough you have two paths. (third playthrough you have another, we’ll get to that.). You either side with Walter and help him achieve his friend’s wishes by destroying the coral or you go with your friend’s wishes and bring down the Xylem, preventing the destruction of coral. On my first playthrough I went with Ayre. The Liberator of Rubicon route quite possibly hits the highest emotional peaks for me. Having to fight Carla and Chatty ripped my heart out. I never wanted to fight those two but it really opened up how emotionally engaging these characters really are. Then you have the Snail fight, then “re-educated” Walter. Walter is a broken man at this point. Walter arguably was never a free man, as he felt what he had to do for his friend was part of some legacy, a torch he attempted to pass on to 621. He saw this as the final job, what would free him and 621—through surgery to make the pilot “normal” again. But as stated before, 621 is just as much a human as anyone else—augmented or not. 621 earns their own freedom through free will, making the Raven name mean something to themselves. Walter is capable of seeing Ayre and upon his defeat he accepts that 621 chose for themself, something that Walter hasn’t done for a very long time.
“Look at you, 621. You found a friend.”
Although it isn’t as emotional as the liberator route, the third playthrough was my favorite. Just because it’s the playthrough that got really into the philosophical and scifi aspects of AC VI. As well as me feeling like the liberator ending feels like a set up to Alea Iacta Est. Together, Ayre and 621 discover how humanity and coral can be one. This playthrough gets into the concept of symbiosis and coral release— crossing to the other side, a point of no return (you see where this is going?). 621 decides that they no longer want to be human. Which is fascinating because through character dialogue the game has explored the big question, what is being human? AI like Chatty provides how individual AI can be in this world. Because of how faceless the characters in Armored Core are like, Chatty is almost no different than a human pilot. Their relationship with Carla is real like anything else. What humanity has that AI or Coral doesn’t is bodily anatomy. From birth, our consciousness has always been mediated through bodily experience. Even if we dream, hallucinate, or dissociate, our conception of consciousness is difficult to untangle from flesh. Even if dualists try to separate the mind from the body (lol), they can’t deny that to be utterly in the body is totally Human.
“My body, in fact, is always elsewhere. It is tied to all the elsewheres of the world. And to tell the truth, it is elsewhere than in the world, because it is around it that things are arranged. It is in relation to it–and in relation to it as if in relation to a sovereign–that there is a below, an above, a right, a left, a forward and a backward, a near and a far. The body is the zero point of the world. There, where paths and spaces come to meet, the body is nowhere. It is at the heart of the world, this small utopian kernel from which I dream, I speak, I proceed, I imagine, I perceive things in their place, and I negate them also by the indefinite power of the utopias I imagine. My body is like the City of the Sun. It has no place, but it is from it that all possible places, real or utopian, emerge and radiate.”
So, what is 621’s relationship with their body? Obviously, not necessarily a concept that’s fully explored in ACVI for its reasons of narrative style. What I have to work with is the story trailer. 621’s body is like the status of a cocoon wrapped in some form of bandages or tape, punctured with large metal needles, skin looks burned or flayed, the body just been punctured by metal all around them. They’re an older generation so they’ve been in this augmented state for a long time. An important note is in this setting, coral is a major factor for human augmentation. Basically, 621 already has one foot into coral. With full awareness that this is simply a personal interpretation, I believe 621’s relationship with their body is either negative or non-existent. Especially considering how one even pilots their AC to begin with. I always assumed it was a place of consciousness into the AC to be controlled. But there’s plenty of arguments for ACs being designed for full body pilot use. Simply put, I see some AC frames and I just struggle to imagine how you can fit a cockpit in there. But what do I know? For the sake of the conversation, let's just say that the device that’s removed from 621’s body and is implied to have been inserted into the AC in the story trailer is their mind. But what is a mech, if not another, different, transhuman body? I can then understand the desire to no longer be human, to no longer be tied to such a body. In the third playthrough, 621 is battling against what other people in this world want them to be. They desire to go beyond the duality of human and dog (inhuman), so becoming-Coral is a breakage, an escape for 621.
There’s a classic gamer argument about the third (secret? true?) ending, where humanity is fused with Coral. Is it The Right Thing To Do? Is it… ETHICAL? IS it… MORAL??? Guys, which ending do I choose so I’m not a bad person? :( I would argue that the ending goes beyond the common understanding of morality, the Humanist ethics. What is it like to become a new type of consciousness in the world? Which brings us back to individuality. People have been comparing the ending to NGE’s with its human instrumentality thing. Same thing right? No. With NGE, humanity is homogenized into a single consciousness, or something like that. The ultimate loss of individuality is death, the dissipation of life’s intensities into the great undifferentiated flow of the planet, the world without oneself. Human instrumentality is tantamount to death. To “kill” a world’s worth of people… pretty immoral! But human-coral symbiosis isn’t that. The becoming a new form of consciousness is unprecedented under humanist ethics and can’t be accounted for. A single event that can change everyone in an unimaginable way, neither for good or for ill, but with retention of individuality? It goes beyond human, yeah, truly post-human.
(Warning! This review is full of spoilers! If you have not completed ACVI in its entirety, I highly recommend that you do that before reading the story segment of this review. Which is the most important part of this review I would say lol. Anyways, take care.)
I feel like most of the entries to this series always fell victim to low budgets and rushed dev time to get in on a console launch, and while they do their best with the time and resources they have, you can see a lot of the jank in the past armored cores. Yet, Armored Core VI is an isolated moment in the series where it looks like the From Soft team has been cooking this for a long time and it shows.
This is the most polished Armored Core I have ever experienced, and don’t get that mistaken as me saying it carries no flaws. No, because perfection isn’t real and not an expectation anyone should have. Its polish comes from a few major factors. One factor being its presentation. This shit is cinema. With the amount that's always happening in this game it’s kinda a miracle it runs as good as it does—on pc at least.
For the next factor let's talk about gameplay. Shit man, what do you want me to say about it? Yes, it does not play like the other armored cores, it’s in its own league. But it absolutely carries the same philosophy that's been developing since AC4/For Answer. They changed the movement and camera for the benefit of the player to feel stronger, to feel like an adequate pilot. But with how diverse the customization is, as well as the amount of movement tech that can be discovered and used for your benefit—this shit is armored core! No matter how hard or “anime” they make a boss fight, it won’t change that.
I’m honest to god bored of the conversation on this game whether it took things from the souls series or not. Listen, here’s what I got to say and then we’re moving on. From Soft has been undergoing the process of refining their formula for a very long time, after iteration and iteration. It comes to no surprise that it would be applied to this game as well. I’m sorry they didn’t just decide to unlearn everything they’ve done for the past decade and make another slow janky PS2 game. I know, it’s a tragedy. But you’ll be okay, we’ll all be okay! If you have to do another playthrough of Last Raven again to cope, that’s okay! I understand and still love you the same.
I’ve seen people say that this game is “shallow” or that it “lacks variety” in its parts and I’m starting to lose my mind! Did they steamline the customization a bit for easier accessibility for players new and old? Yes, absolutely. But each part changes the synergy of a build in a lot of ways— whether that’s to do with movement, your energy gauge, how fast you walk, your aim, etc etc. There’s a lot going on here with plenty of downsides and disadvantages alongside upsides and advantages. Everything has a counter, yes even your duel zimmermans. You’re not safe! You can do so much with this game with patience, experimentation, and skill. (A lot of people haven’t messed around with the parry shields and it shows!). People who think that this game leads you to one build are delusional and think their need for instant gratification is the game’s fault instead of some inner conflict of their own. Hey guys, maybe Vampire Survivors is more your speed?
Anyways, on to the last factor. This one was the most surprising to me! Holy shit, they really did it with the story in this one! Now, I won’t even try to argue how this could be From Soft’s best story because that’s redundant. What I could say is, it may definitely be my favorite story in a From Soft game. This shit hits some emotional high ceilings that I haven’t experienced from them since… Maybe Bloodborne? Don’t get me wrong, Armored Core has had some great stories before. Especially AC4/For Answer—but it’s worth noting how AC VI tells their story in an exceptional way that stands out to me. AC VI is an effective character drama unlike any other. LIKE WHAT EVERY MECHA SHOULD STRIVE TO BE!
Each pilot you encounter in this world is a person that’s self absorbed into their own world and ideals, just gleaming with personality. Rubicon is alive with all the pilots behind these factions going to war against each other. Even Balan’s Redguns are great to be around even if admittedly they are mostly for comedic effect (which isn’t even a bad thing to begin with).
Let’s talk about Handler Walter. The relationship between him and 621 continues to fascinate me. As their relationship develops throughout the game it goes beyond expectation. Because it’s not just a simple slave/master dynamic or employer/employee relationship, no— it’s different. There’s a few interpretations to take it. One being the simple man and his hound (working dog). Another being the father/son relationship.Then there’s the more gayer perspective… How I happened to see it was like Frankenstien’s monster if the monster managed to make a friend after all. Straight from the Story trailer, Walter gives 621 a “reason to exist.” by applying his ideals onto 621, as described as “his legacy”. 621—as an augmented human, isn’t viewed as a human with individuality. 621 is mostly seen as a monster, something inhuman towards the other characters (especially because of their generation). It’s not until 621 is granted an identity as Raven—although it’s a stolen identity—it becomes their identity entirely. Even if Walter calls the pilot 621 throughout the whole story, the pilot is able to practice their will to power through the new self as Raven. After the completion of the third level survey, near the destination of the coral convergence, Walter says to Carla that 621 is going to be the key at the end, which is why he isn’t going to pick which jobs to take. Walter puts all his chips on 621, allowing the pilot to go whichever path in hopes it will lead them to their goal from the beginning—the coral.
Again, there’s many ways you can read this. Walter trusts 621 enough to have them make their own decisions but reminds them there’s a job to do, a legacy to fulfill. Through the lens of a father towards their son, it would explain the references to such familiar concepts like “legacy” that are being used by Walter. This lens comes to connect with the theory that Walter was “the boy” that was referenced in a data log written by one of the RBI researchers before committing the act of the fires of ibs. Through the lens of man and dog, it explains the trust and positive affection Walter expresses towards 621 at times. When Snail refers to 621 as a “mutt” it is nothing but vitriol. It’s demeaning, similar to how people call a dog a mutt in a derogatory way. But with Walter, hound is more affirming—yet it’s a complete misunderstanding of what 621 is and can be.
“Walter told me, you know. Looks like you made a friend of your own. But it’s good to make a choice. Sit on the fence, and you make no enemies…or friends.”
Throughout the game, 621 is met with moments of individuality through the ability of making decisions on their own. The Swineburne mission is a prime example of this! You can first off, not ambush him in the first place and make him think you’re just some grunt for a moment. Then within the fight he surrenders and tries to make a deal with you. You can accept and let him go or refuse and continue the fight. What I did on my first playthrough is accept his deal then blasted him with a pilebunker. The coral friend in your head—Ayre then asks if Walter taught you that. Even Swimeburne was shocked that I could do that. I—myself was a little shocked that it worked. 621 is just as much as a functioning person as anyone else. The whole story is mainly them being able to have a friend for god’s sake.
Back to the paths I’ve mentioned earlier. First playthrough you have two paths. (third playthrough you have another, we’ll get to that.). You either side with Walter and help him achieve his friend’s wishes by destroying the coral or you go with your friend’s wishes and bring down the Xylem, preventing the destruction of coral. On my first playthrough I went with Ayre. The Liberator of Rubicon route quite possibly hits the highest emotional peaks for me. Having to fight Carla and Chatty ripped my heart out. I never wanted to fight those two but it really opened up how emotionally engaging these characters really are. Then you have the Snail fight, then “re-educated” Walter. Walter is a broken man at this point. Walter arguably was never a free man, as he felt what he had to do for his friend was part of some legacy, a torch he attempted to pass on to 621. He saw this as the final job, what would free him and 621—through surgery to make the pilot “normal” again. But as stated before, 621 is just as much a human as anyone else—augmented or not. 621 earns their own freedom through free will, making the Raven name mean something to themselves. Walter is capable of seeing Ayre and upon his defeat he accepts that 621 chose for themself, something that Walter hasn’t done for a very long time.
“Look at you, 621. You found a friend.”
Although it isn’t as emotional as the liberator route, the third playthrough was my favorite. Just because it’s the playthrough that got really into the philosophical and scifi aspects of AC VI. As well as me feeling like the liberator ending feels like a set up to Alea Iacta Est. Together, Ayre and 621 discover how humanity and coral can be one. This playthrough gets into the concept of symbiosis and coral release— crossing to the other side, a point of no return (you see where this is going?). 621 decides that they no longer want to be human. Which is fascinating because through character dialogue the game has explored the big question, what is being human? AI like Chatty provides how individual AI can be in this world. Because of how faceless the characters in Armored Core are like, Chatty is almost no different than a human pilot. Their relationship with Carla is real like anything else. What humanity has that AI or Coral doesn’t is bodily anatomy. From birth, our consciousness has always been mediated through bodily experience. Even if we dream, hallucinate, or dissociate, our conception of consciousness is difficult to untangle from flesh. Even if dualists try to separate the mind from the body (lol), they can’t deny that to be utterly in the body is totally Human.
“My body, in fact, is always elsewhere. It is tied to all the elsewheres of the world. And to tell the truth, it is elsewhere than in the world, because it is around it that things are arranged. It is in relation to it–and in relation to it as if in relation to a sovereign–that there is a below, an above, a right, a left, a forward and a backward, a near and a far. The body is the zero point of the world. There, where paths and spaces come to meet, the body is nowhere. It is at the heart of the world, this small utopian kernel from which I dream, I speak, I proceed, I imagine, I perceive things in their place, and I negate them also by the indefinite power of the utopias I imagine. My body is like the City of the Sun. It has no place, but it is from it that all possible places, real or utopian, emerge and radiate.”
So, what is 621’s relationship with their body? Obviously, not necessarily a concept that’s fully explored in ACVI for its reasons of narrative style. What I have to work with is the story trailer. 621’s body is like the status of a cocoon wrapped in some form of bandages or tape, punctured with large metal needles, skin looks burned or flayed, the body just been punctured by metal all around them. They’re an older generation so they’ve been in this augmented state for a long time. An important note is in this setting, coral is a major factor for human augmentation. Basically, 621 already has one foot into coral. With full awareness that this is simply a personal interpretation, I believe 621’s relationship with their body is either negative or non-existent. Especially considering how one even pilots their AC to begin with. I always assumed it was a place of consciousness into the AC to be controlled. But there’s plenty of arguments for ACs being designed for full body pilot use. Simply put, I see some AC frames and I just struggle to imagine how you can fit a cockpit in there. But what do I know? For the sake of the conversation, let's just say that the device that’s removed from 621’s body and is implied to have been inserted into the AC in the story trailer is their mind. But what is a mech, if not another, different, transhuman body? I can then understand the desire to no longer be human, to no longer be tied to such a body. In the third playthrough, 621 is battling against what other people in this world want them to be. They desire to go beyond the duality of human and dog (inhuman), so becoming-Coral is a breakage, an escape for 621.
There’s a classic gamer argument about the third (secret? true?) ending, where humanity is fused with Coral. Is it The Right Thing To Do? Is it… ETHICAL? IS it… MORAL??? Guys, which ending do I choose so I’m not a bad person? :( I would argue that the ending goes beyond the common understanding of morality, the Humanist ethics. What is it like to become a new type of consciousness in the world? Which brings us back to individuality. People have been comparing the ending to NGE’s with its human instrumentality thing. Same thing right? No. With NGE, humanity is homogenized into a single consciousness, or something like that. The ultimate loss of individuality is death, the dissipation of life’s intensities into the great undifferentiated flow of the planet, the world without oneself. Human instrumentality is tantamount to death. To “kill” a world’s worth of people… pretty immoral! But human-coral symbiosis isn’t that. The becoming a new form of consciousness is unprecedented under humanist ethics and can’t be accounted for. A single event that can change everyone in an unimaginable way, neither for good or for ill, but with retention of individuality? It goes beyond human, yeah, truly post-human.
2023
I'm wet.
2021
"You know about death, that it's just a change, not an end. Hawk. It's time. There's some fear, some fear in letting go. Remember what I told you."
Darkest Dungeon 2 is the second darkest dungeon to conquer.
While the first will still be the first.
Let’s just get this out of the way. If you would like to enjoy Darkest Dungeon 2, then go into your save file and simply with a .txt editor of your choice and unlock all the heroes abilities. You’ll thank me later.
Darkest Dungeon 2 is different to its predecessor but also it really isn’t that different at the same time. Fascinating how the synthesis of difference works.
So what is the difference between the two? Well, for starters—DD2’s combat isn’t the equivalent of a vapid mobile game from the early 2010s. There’s a lot more going on with it, alas the tokens/statuses, i.e the inclusion of “combo” and “dodge”. As well as the heroes being designed to hold more variety in their abilities, like most can do some utility (self heals, stress heal, debuffs, etc.) Paths play into it and can drastically change the hero's abilties for better or worse—it matters what you're looking for. (There are paths that should probably be reworked.)
People enter this game thinking “I need a stress healer, a party needs this role” which is incorrect, you can take whatever you think will help you, as long as you’re doing damage. This comes up with plenty of other turn based combat games—video game or not— damage is the end all be all . The only way to reach the end state of this game is to kill every single enemy that comes in your way during your run. Sure, is having a dedicated healer/stress healer nice to have? Occasionally, yes. But, this is where combat items come into this mix. Why lose out in damage when you can take care of a lot of statuses and missing health with a combat item, it’s a free action to use them. Of course it’s another resource to think about during your run but the right combat item, at the right situation can be a game changer. (This isn’t even that different to DD1 but combat items—I would argue are more powerful, and significant in this one.)
What else is different? Nothing.
You see DD2 is if I picked up DD1 and shattered it into a pile of shards and told you to put it together again.
You see, a lot that people think is “missing” in the sequel that was from the original is in this game. It’s just somewhere else than it was before. It is an image, an idea, a problem, reconstructed into something entirely else.
“Where’s Hamlet, where is my simulation of taking care of mercenaries during the darkest of times???!!!” The inns and candle of hope, as well as the relationship system (which is a lot better than it was before. Polyamory was a REAL problem back in the day.)
“Where is my dungeon crawling!! Fuck this stage coach.” The world is a dungeon, it’s just big enough for your stage couch. There’s plenty of forks in the roads and perhaps at most three routes, for a difference of navigation. Oh—right. We’re going up, instead of going sideways Wow, what a difference. Oh and we can’t back track anymore?? NOOOO DROPPED!!!
“WHERE’S THE CRUSADER!!!” In the fucking grave.
Here’s a question: What is the difference between bringing four Antiquarians in a run to make a lot of gold for your town and bringing four heroes with the wanderer path so you can make a lot of candles for your candles of hope? The only difference here is one is four Antiquarians and the other isn’t.
You see, boys and girls.. Darkest Dungeon 1 and 2 still— fundamentally LOVE to waste your fucking time filling out lists and doing groceries. So with Darkest Dungeon 2 you’re going to be at the crossroads, picking out your party comp and going “what am I going to do today? Going for candles, are we trying to waste our time finding hero shrines, what boss are we doing. Do I even fucking bother doing a boss?” Wow, what fucking game does this remind me of? This is why, and I’ll admit it here, right now. Because this is almost exactly how I feel about the first one. This game— at it’s best is when you are using heroes who have their skills all unlocked so then you can theory craft and strategize a party comp that will synergize their way to fucking victory.
(Also adapting when bullshit happens but the thing is you have to have the ABILITY to adapt in the first place—making it more difficult to do that when you begin the game. But you also have HighwayMan and MAN AT FUCKING ARMS-AKA THE BEST CHARACTER IN THE GAME so if you die it's kinda a skill issue, sorry lol jk kinda.)
If it wasn’t for the fucking hero shrines I would say this is what DD2 does better, it does it better in every way until the fucking hero shrines. Listen, I like the backstories, don’t get me wrong, I think that’s fantastic and works well with it’s themes of the game but holy shit WHAT A TIME SINK it is to unlock all the abilities for ELEVEN characters! Life is too short! I’m too sexy for this! Fuck you!
DD2 is just shards of familiarity that was DD1, moments of reminiscence, pure past of the original darkest dungeon displaced into a sequel. DD2 is making a mistake and reminiscing that mistake, then allowing other mistakes from the pure past into the present. Forgive yourself or don’t— I don’t give a shit.
Darkest Dungeon 2 is the second darkest dungeon to conquer.
While the first will still be the first.
Let’s just get this out of the way. If you would like to enjoy Darkest Dungeon 2, then go into your save file and simply with a .txt editor of your choice and unlock all the heroes abilities. You’ll thank me later.
Darkest Dungeon 2 is different to its predecessor but also it really isn’t that different at the same time. Fascinating how the synthesis of difference works.
So what is the difference between the two? Well, for starters—DD2’s combat isn’t the equivalent of a vapid mobile game from the early 2010s. There’s a lot more going on with it, alas the tokens/statuses, i.e the inclusion of “combo” and “dodge”. As well as the heroes being designed to hold more variety in their abilities, like most can do some utility (self heals, stress heal, debuffs, etc.) Paths play into it and can drastically change the hero's abilties for better or worse—it matters what you're looking for. (There are paths that should probably be reworked.)
People enter this game thinking “I need a stress healer, a party needs this role” which is incorrect, you can take whatever you think will help you, as long as you’re doing damage. This comes up with plenty of other turn based combat games—video game or not— damage is the end all be all . The only way to reach the end state of this game is to kill every single enemy that comes in your way during your run. Sure, is having a dedicated healer/stress healer nice to have? Occasionally, yes. But, this is where combat items come into this mix. Why lose out in damage when you can take care of a lot of statuses and missing health with a combat item, it’s a free action to use them. Of course it’s another resource to think about during your run but the right combat item, at the right situation can be a game changer. (This isn’t even that different to DD1 but combat items—I would argue are more powerful, and significant in this one.)
What else is different? Nothing.
You see DD2 is if I picked up DD1 and shattered it into a pile of shards and told you to put it together again.
You see, a lot that people think is “missing” in the sequel that was from the original is in this game. It’s just somewhere else than it was before. It is an image, an idea, a problem, reconstructed into something entirely else.
“Where’s Hamlet, where is my simulation of taking care of mercenaries during the darkest of times???!!!” The inns and candle of hope, as well as the relationship system (which is a lot better than it was before. Polyamory was a REAL problem back in the day.)
“Where is my dungeon crawling!! Fuck this stage coach.” The world is a dungeon, it’s just big enough for your stage couch. There’s plenty of forks in the roads and perhaps at most three routes, for a difference of navigation. Oh—right. We’re going up, instead of going sideways Wow, what a difference. Oh and we can’t back track anymore?? NOOOO DROPPED!!!
“WHERE’S THE CRUSADER!!!” In the fucking grave.
Here’s a question: What is the difference between bringing four Antiquarians in a run to make a lot of gold for your town and bringing four heroes with the wanderer path so you can make a lot of candles for your candles of hope? The only difference here is one is four Antiquarians and the other isn’t.
You see, boys and girls.. Darkest Dungeon 1 and 2 still— fundamentally LOVE to waste your fucking time filling out lists and doing groceries. So with Darkest Dungeon 2 you’re going to be at the crossroads, picking out your party comp and going “what am I going to do today? Going for candles, are we trying to waste our time finding hero shrines, what boss are we doing. Do I even fucking bother doing a boss?” Wow, what fucking game does this remind me of? This is why, and I’ll admit it here, right now. Because this is almost exactly how I feel about the first one. This game— at it’s best is when you are using heroes who have their skills all unlocked so then you can theory craft and strategize a party comp that will synergize their way to fucking victory.
(Also adapting when bullshit happens but the thing is you have to have the ABILITY to adapt in the first place—making it more difficult to do that when you begin the game. But you also have HighwayMan and MAN AT FUCKING ARMS-AKA THE BEST CHARACTER IN THE GAME so if you die it's kinda a skill issue, sorry lol jk kinda.)
If it wasn’t for the fucking hero shrines I would say this is what DD2 does better, it does it better in every way until the fucking hero shrines. Listen, I like the backstories, don’t get me wrong, I think that’s fantastic and works well with it’s themes of the game but holy shit WHAT A TIME SINK it is to unlock all the abilities for ELEVEN characters! Life is too short! I’m too sexy for this! Fuck you!
DD2 is just shards of familiarity that was DD1, moments of reminiscence, pure past of the original darkest dungeon displaced into a sequel. DD2 is making a mistake and reminiscing that mistake, then allowing other mistakes from the pure past into the present. Forgive yourself or don’t— I don’t give a shit.
2007
"I think I'm gay, wanna prove me wrong?" - Travis Touchdown
No More Heroes is shit. Let me rephase that. No More Heroes is shit full of passion. Clearly, Suda is just trying to work with what he had. He had the challenge of making an engaging action game on the wii. For the most part, he did *a* job. If you're reading this, you know how it works, you probably know how it feels even. The combat in No More Heroes is good- in bursts, and Suda knows that.
"I know a lot of gamers don't have a lot of patience."
This is what I respect about No More Heroes. It knows it's pacing way more than the player. The player thinks they just want to get to the next mission and do nothing but the hack & slash but as the game goes on, it grows repetitive and dull. Killer 7 has two good bosses. (I'm being nice here). No More Heroes has no good bosses. It's almost like a Pathologic affect here where you realize the combat in Pathologic is clunky and risky because fighting is clunky and risky. While killing as a career is tedious and draining of empathy and ectascy. The side jobs here are your escape, it's your exit from all of this. Leave while you still can, manchild.
"That cannibal capital makes everything sensory"
If you've read my Killer 7 review, then you got a clear picture with where I stand with Suda's nerd culture and indulgent love for video games. Funnily enough. I think it works better here than Killer 7. You see, we're playing in the role/perspective of a manchild. This is this dude's fantasty and it fucking blows. Suda is making fun of himself and people that think he's so cool and god damn, I got to respect that. I can only wonder if its coming from a position of critical self reflection or just boring self deprication.
Last thought on No More Heroes: Like this and many other works of Suda, I find myself finding enjoyment thinking about the concepts of his games, rather than playing it. I think a way to make a concept like this more effective is have the game mostly be a bus/farm simulator instead of reptitive
side job minigames. With little to no assassinations. It should be like Desert Bus with an out of nowhere, shocking hit and run at the end.
No More Heroes is shit. Let me rephase that. No More Heroes is shit full of passion. Clearly, Suda is just trying to work with what he had. He had the challenge of making an engaging action game on the wii. For the most part, he did *a* job. If you're reading this, you know how it works, you probably know how it feels even. The combat in No More Heroes is good- in bursts, and Suda knows that.
"I know a lot of gamers don't have a lot of patience."
This is what I respect about No More Heroes. It knows it's pacing way more than the player. The player thinks they just want to get to the next mission and do nothing but the hack & slash but as the game goes on, it grows repetitive and dull. Killer 7 has two good bosses. (I'm being nice here). No More Heroes has no good bosses. It's almost like a Pathologic affect here where you realize the combat in Pathologic is clunky and risky because fighting is clunky and risky. While killing as a career is tedious and draining of empathy and ectascy. The side jobs here are your escape, it's your exit from all of this. Leave while you still can, manchild.
"That cannibal capital makes everything sensory"
If you've read my Killer 7 review, then you got a clear picture with where I stand with Suda's nerd culture and indulgent love for video games. Funnily enough. I think it works better here than Killer 7. You see, we're playing in the role/perspective of a manchild. This is this dude's fantasty and it fucking blows. Suda is making fun of himself and people that think he's so cool and god damn, I got to respect that. I can only wonder if its coming from a position of critical self reflection or just boring self deprication.
Last thought on No More Heroes: Like this and many other works of Suda, I find myself finding enjoyment thinking about the concepts of his games, rather than playing it. I think a way to make a concept like this more effective is have the game mostly be a bus/farm simulator instead of reptitive
side job minigames. With little to no assassinations. It should be like Desert Bus with an out of nowhere, shocking hit and run at the end.
2019
"i need silence. so that there's only pain."
shit on the walls, shit on the floor, shit on my face, its in my lungs, its in my blood, i cannot breathe, i cannot see.
This shit makes you feel more like a pathetic meat sack of shit and piss than the original System Shock.
Everything about GTFO is depraved and a big cost on your time. At first its just a hardcore co-op tactical horror shooter with a clear objective. Do whatever it asks then leave. As you get deeper in it's contained layers, the more suffocating this game gets.
Hey. Do you like sitting in your own shit? Or.. Perhaps. A cloud of mold? You don't? What if I told you, that you don't have a choice.
The deeper levels really loved these posion clouds, it was littered in it. If you think the FNV DLC Dead Money was bad, this is probably worse! I hope the sounds of choking and heaving stimulates you because you will be hearing the sounds of the failure to recieve oxygen for hours.
I shit you not, there was a level where it was NOTHING but this fucking green cloud of mustard gas. You or one of your annoying friends had to sacrifice their autonomy and become a pissy human home depot cart, carrying around an air purifier.
I use past tense here because, at this point, I don't even fucking know if any of these levels I reference here are still in the game, they change the levels all the damn time. The changes can go from miniscule to just a completely different level.
You can into one level and find 10 of those siren fucks and think 'wow there's a lot of Sirens here! What an ass level!'. Stop playing, go to sleep, wake up, then you find a patch that removed 1 siren from the level you were playing.
Anyways if you want my actual take on this shit. It should be more of a humilating experience. They should just remove all the firearms in the game and have it be a bunch of stupid cavemen with gimp masks strapped around their tiny heads, wielding their useless hammers and go to town.
shit on the walls, shit on the floor, shit on my face, its in my lungs, its in my blood, i cannot breathe, i cannot see.
This shit makes you feel more like a pathetic meat sack of shit and piss than the original System Shock.
Everything about GTFO is depraved and a big cost on your time. At first its just a hardcore co-op tactical horror shooter with a clear objective. Do whatever it asks then leave. As you get deeper in it's contained layers, the more suffocating this game gets.
Hey. Do you like sitting in your own shit? Or.. Perhaps. A cloud of mold? You don't? What if I told you, that you don't have a choice.
The deeper levels really loved these posion clouds, it was littered in it. If you think the FNV DLC Dead Money was bad, this is probably worse! I hope the sounds of choking and heaving stimulates you because you will be hearing the sounds of the failure to recieve oxygen for hours.
I shit you not, there was a level where it was NOTHING but this fucking green cloud of mustard gas. You or one of your annoying friends had to sacrifice their autonomy and become a pissy human home depot cart, carrying around an air purifier.
I use past tense here because, at this point, I don't even fucking know if any of these levels I reference here are still in the game, they change the levels all the damn time. The changes can go from miniscule to just a completely different level.
You can into one level and find 10 of those siren fucks and think 'wow there's a lot of Sirens here! What an ass level!'. Stop playing, go to sleep, wake up, then you find a patch that removed 1 siren from the level you were playing.
Anyways if you want my actual take on this shit. It should be more of a humilating experience. They should just remove all the firearms in the game and have it be a bunch of stupid cavemen with gimp masks strapped around their tiny heads, wielding their useless hammers and go to town.
2005
If you still like this game, your kids are about to go to college.
I spent a good chunk of my adolescence playing this stupid game. I've only beaten it once throughout my many playthroughs! It starts off strong with Angel! Kinda slows down in Sunset but still a moderate pace. The shit peaks with Cloudman. Andre Ulmeyda stays goated. The game never comes close to getting as good as that. Everything else is just vapid, tedious, and obnoxious in comparison. Also, I just don't give a shit about this guy's nerd culture! note: I don't care about nerd culture in general, but especially here.
Perhaps I've just lost the appeal to a lot of this game's charm, I've out grown it or some shit. Which is why setting this bs as "retired" is more fitting to me. I COULD set it as 'complete' but nah. Who cares. Anyways.
Suda LOVES video games, I fucking hate them. This is the difference between us.
I spent a good chunk of my adolescence playing this stupid game. I've only beaten it once throughout my many playthroughs! It starts off strong with Angel! Kinda slows down in Sunset but still a moderate pace. The shit peaks with Cloudman. Andre Ulmeyda stays goated. The game never comes close to getting as good as that. Everything else is just vapid, tedious, and obnoxious in comparison. Also, I just don't give a shit about this guy's nerd culture! note: I don't care about nerd culture in general, but especially here.
Perhaps I've just lost the appeal to a lot of this game's charm, I've out grown it or some shit. Which is why setting this bs as "retired" is more fitting to me. I COULD set it as 'complete' but nah. Who cares. Anyways.
Suda LOVES video games, I fucking hate them. This is the difference between us.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance for Zoomers.
"Shit, religious people startin' to scare me"
"Shit, the government wrote the Bible"
Someone wrote their marvel fan fic and turned it into a sexless mass effect. Playing this was as engaging as watching those perky housewives on Bravo, but without any hint of sexuality. Superheros are so scared of sex, my super god person should not fuck whatsoever. Jesus didn't fuck either because he was to good for that too. Dude, why even put Venom in this shit. That man wears a pregnant martian.
Sex aside, talking to the characters here is just talking to a wall, you're also a wall in this game too, so its two walls talking to each other. Wow, they did a really good job remaking Mass Effect!
Games really love to tip their little toes into dating sims mechanics just to waste your time and not do anything interesting with it, just cause its funny or something. What the hell is this bit?
Oh right, gameplay. No one cares, use iron man, kill everyone, next mission. (Iron Man, Venom, Dark Hunter, is all you really need.) Anyone thats trying to be a tank or whatever is fucking useless. Captain America is a bum! Then you got nerds that would be like 'bro you don't understand if you play like nightmare survival hardcore oddball mode you will wish you had the captian.' and all I will say is bitch, clean your room.
Hold on, let me add this shit right here. Fuck that stupid fucking demon dog dude, That useless piece of shit should get turned into sausage or something. Way more useful that way. I love this stupid mission that was like holy fucking shit dude, your DOG is here! And all I'm thinking is, oh great, this dumb fucking dog is ruining my deck cuz it's now filled with the most useless fucking cards in existence. Oh fuck hes not ok cuz I didn't pet the fucking shithead every day. Video games are pointless, brain smoothing tools.
They made Blade fucking ass in this game too. How the hell you fuck that up?
Why do all the women sound the same?
Why can't ya smoke sherm with Magick?
They gave plastic surgery to a skull. Ghost Rider wack.
Everyone Dripless.
I'll stick to XCOM, my guy.
"Shit, religious people startin' to scare me"
"Shit, the government wrote the Bible"
Someone wrote their marvel fan fic and turned it into a sexless mass effect. Playing this was as engaging as watching those perky housewives on Bravo, but without any hint of sexuality. Superheros are so scared of sex, my super god person should not fuck whatsoever. Jesus didn't fuck either because he was to good for that too. Dude, why even put Venom in this shit. That man wears a pregnant martian.
Sex aside, talking to the characters here is just talking to a wall, you're also a wall in this game too, so its two walls talking to each other. Wow, they did a really good job remaking Mass Effect!
Games really love to tip their little toes into dating sims mechanics just to waste your time and not do anything interesting with it, just cause its funny or something. What the hell is this bit?
Oh right, gameplay. No one cares, use iron man, kill everyone, next mission. (Iron Man, Venom, Dark Hunter, is all you really need.) Anyone thats trying to be a tank or whatever is fucking useless. Captain America is a bum! Then you got nerds that would be like 'bro you don't understand if you play like nightmare survival hardcore oddball mode you will wish you had the captian.' and all I will say is bitch, clean your room.
Hold on, let me add this shit right here. Fuck that stupid fucking demon dog dude, That useless piece of shit should get turned into sausage or something. Way more useful that way. I love this stupid mission that was like holy fucking shit dude, your DOG is here! And all I'm thinking is, oh great, this dumb fucking dog is ruining my deck cuz it's now filled with the most useless fucking cards in existence. Oh fuck hes not ok cuz I didn't pet the fucking shithead every day. Video games are pointless, brain smoothing tools.
They made Blade fucking ass in this game too. How the hell you fuck that up?
Why do all the women sound the same?
Why can't ya smoke sherm with Magick?
They gave plastic surgery to a skull. Ghost Rider wack.
Everyone Dripless.
I'll stick to XCOM, my guy.
2022
AN ELEVATED MEET N FUCK
"but a machine of pure metal is a luxury."
"most often reserved for facades; to insulate the squeamish from uncomfortable realities."
As I am writing this, I am having a very stressful day. So let's destress by chatting about EROSTASIS for a little while.
It’s exactly what it says on the tin, AN ELEVATED MEET N FUCK. So you must be wondering, what is an elevated meet n fuck? What does such elevated meet n fuck entail?
You already know that I cannot answer this without indulging in the opportunity to talk about the Meet n Fuck games. You know, those point n click erotic dating sims that infested Newgrounds back in the mid 2000s? Those games that were completely jury rigged with stolen hentai art, and random assets found on the internet (like the moans from porn videos in 144p). Anyways, there are two things worth noting from these games. One, is obviously the poorly written dialogue that always has a typo, and two, the foreplay. The foreplay is the “challenge”, it is the wall in your way to getting your dick wet. How can it be done, boys? Well, it’s simple. You rub her left thigh first, DON’T DO THE RIGHT, FIRST! That’s a rookie mistake. It's the left thigh, then the right thigh. Then the hips- LEFT SIDE OF HIP FIRST- THEN RIGHT. Never touch the arms, always touch the cunt last, folks. This is the order, this is Meet n Fuck Lady’s way, and you will follow her way. You will serve the Meet n Fuck Lady! You think she’s servicing you? Bitch, if she doesn’t like your vibes, you ain’t getting in! You are constantly comforting her needs, at all times! You think you’re swooning her with the stupid shit you say? No, she loves desperate clowns that humiliate themselves to get her to smile. She responds to your bullshit with incomprehensible shit because she's not really listening to you, she's just thinking about eating you in one bite. Why’d ya think when ya cum, the game fades to black with a “The End” title card? Because she just ripped your head off like a prey mantis. You died, to sustain her desire, and you will be born again to service her at a later time.
Some people reading this is going to have the audacity to think “that isn’t Meet n Fuck at all.”. What are you going to do? Play them to prove me wrong? No, go ahead, go serve the Meet n Fuck Lady then come back, so I as well can put you in your place. I will choke you out like a rattlesnake, you fucking freak.
Ready to talk about EROSTASIS?
Actually, I know what’s best for you. No, I don’t think you are ready to talk about EROSTASIS. Let me just get this out of the way. This play is grotesque, with some vile, intense, and hysterical imagery of all sorts of perversions. Along with tone piercing sonic sounds that fit just beautifully with it. But obviously, this is not for everyone and I will talk more in depth about it (because that’s more fun for me.). If it does not sound like your thing then move on or keep reading so I save you the trouble. IF this does interest you. Then you will stop reading right now and play it. You will come back after playing it.
OBSERVE, PERCEIVE, AND CONTEMPLATE.
Erostasis begins by double tapping the BEGIN CYCLE. button, then your ears are immediately sonically challenged with this sickening high squeal of frequencies. Black waves swarm the screen, bordered by abyssal metal. The second button you double tap is SURVIVE..
You are then punched into consciousness! First thing you see is an open chest cavity with its beating heart, with all sorts of scrap metal and tubes lingering beside it. BWONG, BWONG, BWONG, BING!
“DO NOT
ATTEMPT
TO SPEAK.
IN FACT,
DO NOT ATTEMPT
ANYTHING
AT
ALL.
YOUR ROLE IS
TO OBSERVE. o”
Third button you double tap is OBSERVE..
At this point, you understand what you’re doing here. You’ve done a great job following instructions. You clicked three buttons already!
This entity that’s speaking to you is in full control of your body. You are only really blessed with the perception of it all. As it says best.
“YOU WILL WATCH
AS YOU
SERVICE
THE SHIP. o”
So it’s pretty obvious here. You aren’t a person, you aren’t Paul The Private Detective that’s trying to fuck every woman he sees to find a birthmark on their ass, nor are you some guy fucking your friend at a BDSM club. There are no Charlies or Veronicas here. Just organs, as the ship is nothing but a body of organs, and you are just one of them. So like any organ, it’s got a function that needs to be done for survival. What is your function? It’s simple, because it already told you. Your function is to service. You must cater to the other organs’ “exotic demands.”. You observe, perceive, and contemplate. What does that entail though? Where do I even start?
There’s seven accessible areas on this ship. The play begins in fabrication, duh. Then you must go through five other areas before entering the COMPUTER CORE! Starting at the top is HAEMOPONICS.
HAEMOPONICS
“the human body is a remarkable machine.
self-constructing, self repairing, highly adaptable.
it is by far the most economical form of automation"
I don’t have anything really smart to say about this quote. It’s self explanatory, really. The fuck machine ship is just spitting. Anyways, you’re going to approach this fleshy motherly figure. It’s the heart. What does the heart need? The heart wants maternal intimacy, you are going to embrace the heart and feed from it. Blood is a fuel of life, so is breast milk.(duh) The maternal relationship between mother and the baby in her womb explains the ‘self-constructing’ part of the beginning quote. A baby is constructed inside a human’s body, they share the same blood. She never gets to hold her damn kids. You really are doing this bitch a service.
VENTILATION
“I didn't dare go far
Saving oxygen
For Modern Business Hymns
Before the Warp Guard”
The lungs are dicks. Just because we don’t like to think/be self aware of our breathing, that means the lungs feel we’re entitled. Honestly, everything that happens here is just what it feels like to be sick. The times where your lungs are weak but forces you on your knees, begging for air.
“a desire for power is always a fantasy for the weak.”
Let’s just hope we won’t be needing portable oxygen tanks in our lifetime. Don’t forget to breathe.
NAVIGATION
“The pain, the pain
The pain, the pain
Relief, again, the pain
The pain, the pain
The pain, the pain
The pain, the pain”
The nerves are here and they need something beyond pleasure. Make them base, human, and animal, for a moment. Make them feel pain.
DOUBLE CLICK FUCK.
We made it boys, the service top representation that we’ve been demanding!!!! This is the real meet n fuck experience, right here. You click the word fuck, you click the word hurt, then you hear the aaahs and oooooofs. Then you leave! It’s over in that section! Like a real meet n fuck!
“30 seconds left
In a golden light”
BIOREMEDIATION
I got canceled after jerking off during Sir James Corden’s show, and now I work in the piss and shit factory. I sit in shit and piss and theres fucking ghosts in the waste and want my body. Anyways I’m trying to destroy them. This isn’t even just relief, I’m out right destroying these fuckers with my body. I guess that can count as relief, you’re letting these ghosts, waste spirits(?), move on instead of sitting in shit. Anyways, they get overwhelmed by being in my body and implode. Bioremediation. Worst part of this play? It does nothing for me. I don’t even have an edgy theory for this. Maybe it’s about people who watch porn but don’t even jerk off, they love the audio for it and they just death grip their dick the entire time, eventually cumming, maybe.
WEAPONS
This is the best part of the fucking play, right here. It does EVERYTHING FOR ME. Weapons on this ship are basically obsolete, they never use them! It makes these fuckers desperate! So what do we gotta do? Well, we gotta remind them that these weapons are nothing without us. So what I’m about to describe here, is possibly the most hysterical thing about this play. I sure hope that if you made it this far reading this, that I hope you played it so you know what I mean here. To people who haven’t. This is YOUR SECOND CHANCE! If you continue reading you are about to be robbed of an experience that’s seeing this shit with your own eyes. Okay so immediately you see a woman getting her gaping asshole filled with a TORPEDO, and of course it's making her belly stretch and inflate. These weapons are literally begging you to fill them, bro. They are so empty! What are you gonna do? Not fill them? Let them die? Of course not! Let’s load a round!
“I’ll kill and explode and explode until everything’s broken and i can suck it all in to fill me.”
Cool, I’m convinced.
LOAD TORPEDO
Bitch get loaded, it’s pleased but it wants to be fired. But it needs our permission. Are we? Gross, no fucking way.
DENY.
“you’re so cruel, my tormentor. thank you.”
There’s a world where Suda was making shit like this if he wasn’t so held back and repressed all the time.
COMPUTER CORE
Alright, relief has been given to every organ on the ship. Well, until we learn that this AI has something that needs to be fulfilled as well. Although this AI and its ship is purely amoral, there’s a simmering thirst of sadism that needs to be quenched. Luckily we’re an organ that’s very adaptable to the kinks of other organs in this post reproduction world, meaning we’re absolutely perfect for the job. It’s going to make us discharge, obliterating us completely. We’ve reached erotic apoptosis, folks. That’s right, it’s a cellular system that happens everyday, billions of times, and will happen again. Do you need relief? You got something that needs to be sedated?
Begin Cycle.
"but a machine of pure metal is a luxury."
"most often reserved for facades; to insulate the squeamish from uncomfortable realities."
As I am writing this, I am having a very stressful day. So let's destress by chatting about EROSTASIS for a little while.
It’s exactly what it says on the tin, AN ELEVATED MEET N FUCK. So you must be wondering, what is an elevated meet n fuck? What does such elevated meet n fuck entail?
You already know that I cannot answer this without indulging in the opportunity to talk about the Meet n Fuck games. You know, those point n click erotic dating sims that infested Newgrounds back in the mid 2000s? Those games that were completely jury rigged with stolen hentai art, and random assets found on the internet (like the moans from porn videos in 144p). Anyways, there are two things worth noting from these games. One, is obviously the poorly written dialogue that always has a typo, and two, the foreplay. The foreplay is the “challenge”, it is the wall in your way to getting your dick wet. How can it be done, boys? Well, it’s simple. You rub her left thigh first, DON’T DO THE RIGHT, FIRST! That’s a rookie mistake. It's the left thigh, then the right thigh. Then the hips- LEFT SIDE OF HIP FIRST- THEN RIGHT. Never touch the arms, always touch the cunt last, folks. This is the order, this is Meet n Fuck Lady’s way, and you will follow her way. You will serve the Meet n Fuck Lady! You think she’s servicing you? Bitch, if she doesn’t like your vibes, you ain’t getting in! You are constantly comforting her needs, at all times! You think you’re swooning her with the stupid shit you say? No, she loves desperate clowns that humiliate themselves to get her to smile. She responds to your bullshit with incomprehensible shit because she's not really listening to you, she's just thinking about eating you in one bite. Why’d ya think when ya cum, the game fades to black with a “The End” title card? Because she just ripped your head off like a prey mantis. You died, to sustain her desire, and you will be born again to service her at a later time.
Some people reading this is going to have the audacity to think “that isn’t Meet n Fuck at all.”. What are you going to do? Play them to prove me wrong? No, go ahead, go serve the Meet n Fuck Lady then come back, so I as well can put you in your place. I will choke you out like a rattlesnake, you fucking freak.
Ready to talk about EROSTASIS?
Actually, I know what’s best for you. No, I don’t think you are ready to talk about EROSTASIS. Let me just get this out of the way. This play is grotesque, with some vile, intense, and hysterical imagery of all sorts of perversions. Along with tone piercing sonic sounds that fit just beautifully with it. But obviously, this is not for everyone and I will talk more in depth about it (because that’s more fun for me.). If it does not sound like your thing then move on or keep reading so I save you the trouble. IF this does interest you. Then you will stop reading right now and play it. You will come back after playing it.
OBSERVE, PERCEIVE, AND CONTEMPLATE.
Erostasis begins by double tapping the BEGIN CYCLE. button, then your ears are immediately sonically challenged with this sickening high squeal of frequencies. Black waves swarm the screen, bordered by abyssal metal. The second button you double tap is SURVIVE..
You are then punched into consciousness! First thing you see is an open chest cavity with its beating heart, with all sorts of scrap metal and tubes lingering beside it. BWONG, BWONG, BWONG, BING!
“DO NOT
ATTEMPT
TO SPEAK.
IN FACT,
DO NOT ATTEMPT
ANYTHING
AT
ALL.
YOUR ROLE IS
TO OBSERVE. o”
Third button you double tap is OBSERVE..
At this point, you understand what you’re doing here. You’ve done a great job following instructions. You clicked three buttons already!
This entity that’s speaking to you is in full control of your body. You are only really blessed with the perception of it all. As it says best.
“YOU WILL WATCH
AS YOU
SERVICE
THE SHIP. o”
So it’s pretty obvious here. You aren’t a person, you aren’t Paul The Private Detective that’s trying to fuck every woman he sees to find a birthmark on their ass, nor are you some guy fucking your friend at a BDSM club. There are no Charlies or Veronicas here. Just organs, as the ship is nothing but a body of organs, and you are just one of them. So like any organ, it’s got a function that needs to be done for survival. What is your function? It’s simple, because it already told you. Your function is to service. You must cater to the other organs’ “exotic demands.”. You observe, perceive, and contemplate. What does that entail though? Where do I even start?
There’s seven accessible areas on this ship. The play begins in fabrication, duh. Then you must go through five other areas before entering the COMPUTER CORE! Starting at the top is HAEMOPONICS.
HAEMOPONICS
“the human body is a remarkable machine.
self-constructing, self repairing, highly adaptable.
it is by far the most economical form of automation"
I don’t have anything really smart to say about this quote. It’s self explanatory, really. The fuck machine ship is just spitting. Anyways, you’re going to approach this fleshy motherly figure. It’s the heart. What does the heart need? The heart wants maternal intimacy, you are going to embrace the heart and feed from it. Blood is a fuel of life, so is breast milk.(duh) The maternal relationship between mother and the baby in her womb explains the ‘self-constructing’ part of the beginning quote. A baby is constructed inside a human’s body, they share the same blood. She never gets to hold her damn kids. You really are doing this bitch a service.
VENTILATION
“I didn't dare go far
Saving oxygen
For Modern Business Hymns
Before the Warp Guard”
The lungs are dicks. Just because we don’t like to think/be self aware of our breathing, that means the lungs feel we’re entitled. Honestly, everything that happens here is just what it feels like to be sick. The times where your lungs are weak but forces you on your knees, begging for air.
“a desire for power is always a fantasy for the weak.”
Let’s just hope we won’t be needing portable oxygen tanks in our lifetime. Don’t forget to breathe.
NAVIGATION
“The pain, the pain
The pain, the pain
Relief, again, the pain
The pain, the pain
The pain, the pain
The pain, the pain”
The nerves are here and they need something beyond pleasure. Make them base, human, and animal, for a moment. Make them feel pain.
DOUBLE CLICK FUCK.
We made it boys, the service top representation that we’ve been demanding!!!! This is the real meet n fuck experience, right here. You click the word fuck, you click the word hurt, then you hear the aaahs and oooooofs. Then you leave! It’s over in that section! Like a real meet n fuck!
“30 seconds left
In a golden light”
BIOREMEDIATION
I got canceled after jerking off during Sir James Corden’s show, and now I work in the piss and shit factory. I sit in shit and piss and theres fucking ghosts in the waste and want my body. Anyways I’m trying to destroy them. This isn’t even just relief, I’m out right destroying these fuckers with my body. I guess that can count as relief, you’re letting these ghosts, waste spirits(?), move on instead of sitting in shit. Anyways, they get overwhelmed by being in my body and implode. Bioremediation. Worst part of this play? It does nothing for me. I don’t even have an edgy theory for this. Maybe it’s about people who watch porn but don’t even jerk off, they love the audio for it and they just death grip their dick the entire time, eventually cumming, maybe.
WEAPONS
This is the best part of the fucking play, right here. It does EVERYTHING FOR ME. Weapons on this ship are basically obsolete, they never use them! It makes these fuckers desperate! So what do we gotta do? Well, we gotta remind them that these weapons are nothing without us. So what I’m about to describe here, is possibly the most hysterical thing about this play. I sure hope that if you made it this far reading this, that I hope you played it so you know what I mean here. To people who haven’t. This is YOUR SECOND CHANCE! If you continue reading you are about to be robbed of an experience that’s seeing this shit with your own eyes. Okay so immediately you see a woman getting her gaping asshole filled with a TORPEDO, and of course it's making her belly stretch and inflate. These weapons are literally begging you to fill them, bro. They are so empty! What are you gonna do? Not fill them? Let them die? Of course not! Let’s load a round!
“I’ll kill and explode and explode until everything’s broken and i can suck it all in to fill me.”
Cool, I’m convinced.
LOAD TORPEDO
Bitch get loaded, it’s pleased but it wants to be fired. But it needs our permission. Are we? Gross, no fucking way.
DENY.
“you’re so cruel, my tormentor. thank you.”
There’s a world where Suda was making shit like this if he wasn’t so held back and repressed all the time.
COMPUTER CORE
Alright, relief has been given to every organ on the ship. Well, until we learn that this AI has something that needs to be fulfilled as well. Although this AI and its ship is purely amoral, there’s a simmering thirst of sadism that needs to be quenched. Luckily we’re an organ that’s very adaptable to the kinks of other organs in this post reproduction world, meaning we’re absolutely perfect for the job. It’s going to make us discharge, obliterating us completely. We’ve reached erotic apoptosis, folks. That’s right, it’s a cellular system that happens everyday, billions of times, and will happen again. Do you need relief? You got something that needs to be sedated?
Begin Cycle.
1996
"Wouldn't it be cool?
If the Space Jam Characters?
Were all Gay?
I think so...
Wouldn't it be cool?
If all the cartoons from my childhood?
Would come to life and fuck me?
Space Jam's awesome."
If the Space Jam Characters?
Were all Gay?
I think so...
Wouldn't it be cool?
If all the cartoons from my childhood?
Would come to life and fuck me?
Space Jam's awesome."
This review contains spoilers
“I ramble and give up, once upon a shut up.”
Just to get it out the way I played both Milk inside a bag and Milk outside a bag back to back, and like others here have said, I highly recommend that you do this, if you decide to play this.
Important notice: I find it difficult to talk about these plays without devolving into personal experiences from my life, so if you would like to continue the comfort of knowing nothing about me, please do yourself a favor and don’t read this. If you do continue, then take care.
For the sake of understanding, I will be referring to the protag as “Null”. I saw Erato do it in her review and I found it more understanding and comes off less demeaning than referring to her as “girl” or “milk”.
I’m going to try my best to organize my thoughts although it can be quite difficult but what you end up seeing is what you get.
Maybe you can help?
Exploitation and “The Connection.”
So to briefly touch on the topic of whether or not these plays are exploitive of mental illness.. I believe it’s understandable to have that gut feeling upon its first impressions considering the lain like art-style/aesthetics. Lain is something I question the intentions of but still feel some connection to it for a reason I am still internalizing to this day, it still feels paradoxical to me. I believe for this play, there’s something deeper than that. Perhaps it’s not as deep as what I wanted it to be but maybe it doesn’t have to be? Maybe the fact that it has the potential to begin new thoughts to be created in my mind is enough? Maybe not new but different, it’s always different.
Upon playing Milk inside a bag of milk, I already felt some form of emotional connection with its eerie music and atmosphere, the preparation of leaving your home to the store, rehearsing your social role/ques over and over again, then getting overwhelmed by your own thoughts and saying “I’m ready to burst into tears!” When I read those words I started crying a lot. It was that moment that I really felt like I was crying with this play, not at it. Which is an important distinction to me. The last time I felt this connection was playing Disco Elysium for the first time (and the other many many times..) in October, 2019.
Dissonance.
As hinted from the title, Milk inside a bag of milk is focused entirely on the internal conflicts and rambling of Null. Yet Inside a bag of milk still holds a level of dissonance, you have a name, she talks to you, asks you questions under her boundaries. The only time your name is said is if you’ve been nothing but disruptive and hurtful towards her, that’s when she gives up getting milk and you as well, hoping to find someone else for next time. Successfully helping her buy a bag of milk then leads to the beginning of Milk outside a bag of milk. Which then opens another level of dissonance where you can see her and she can see you, as if you’re really there, as if she trusts you.
In Disco Elysium, you play and interact with Harry Du Bois and his dissociative mind, you decide which thoughts come and go, his contradictions, his political beliefs, etc, in a matter of days. While the Milk plays have you as some form of entity projected by Null, it’s the only thing she has to not be alone, she doesn’t like the silence, she finds your presence to be “grateful” at times. By the words you choose to say, you can influence her emotions and lead her in directions in thoughts, causing either a level of understanding or a panic attack. This also influences the dream she will have when she finally goes to bed. The milk plays is an interactive dissociative experience, only witnessing a single day of Null’s life.
Medication.
”When I am under the influence of drugs, terrible and unpleasant melodies sound in my head. Mixing with the sounds of the world around me, they create a terrible dissonance in my head.”
Both entries also touch on a subject that I found to be lacking when talking about the experiences with mental illness, that would be the relationship with medication and its effects.
Null’s lifestyle is messy and unconventional, especially with her medication intake, either she takes none at all or more than she needs too, or just wastes them completely. She believes she can handle it without it until the “pain” comes back and she has to take her medication with defeat.
Psychiatry is what I would describe as a sensitive tread on wire in brain chemistry. It took me the twenty four years I’ve been alive for me to really internalize that the altering of chemicals in your mind can only do so much when everything else about your life fucking sucks. Of course, I thought I knew that enough to do a fine job during my psychology courses in college but it took a while for me to place that into my own life.
When I was growing up in my teens, all I did was sit in my room and feel bad about something, whether that would be something in my head or the effects of the medication. I mostly took antidepressants and amphetamines. I hated taking my meds, I hated how they made me feel, how it made the world feel, just all of it. At worst I felt awful, at best I felt nothing. But I took them because they were supposed to help me “function”, giving me this push to do labor which at the time was just school. I’ll let you know that I’ve dropped out of school multiple times. I dropped out of public high school because of a paranoia induced panic attack, I didn’t feel safe there, I couldn’t. I tried home schooling, I was too mentally disfigured at the time to really do it, my father tried to help but he just simply wasn’t patient enough. All I could hear when he tried to help me with algebra was how much I annoyed him. I would later get my GED which would feel like a drugged up trance, a lot of the details are very blurred to me when looking back. The medications I’ve had throughout my life have given me sprints of euphoria and long droughts of sedation.
I think one of the worst medications I’ve experienced was when I was put on Zoloft. It made the world spin and feel so slow, the voices I could hear at the time were slow, almost paul stretched whispers. I couldn’t understand them and for some reason that only angered me. I wanted to scream it all out of me but I couldn’t, just felt dazed instead. There’s an intense Thanksgiving story that’s very much about my episodes from the influence of Zoloft but ask me about it later. Speaking of medication induced episodes, did you know heavy use of amphetamines can cause episodes of psychosis? I sure learned that between the years of 2019 - 2020. I hate every medication I was put on! You name it. I hate Vyvanse, Adderall, Ritalin, Lexapro, Wellbutrin, Fluoxetine, and of course fuck Zoloft. I fucking hate Zoloft.
Ever since my last breakdown in early 2022, I’ve been clean from medications, I haven’t taken anything since. I’ve mostly been taking it easy and focusing on what I can do about how I live my life, to make it less suffering. I aim to be productive every day, to talk to someone, do literally anything but nothing. My episodes of psychosis have worked in conjunction with my long episodes of depression. If I learned anything last year, it’s “Inevitable depression when I do nothing.”. Of course, I’m not saying medication is just bad and that no one should take it, it can help, even save lives. But the relationship between one and their medication isn’t always as simple as taking a painkiller to make the pain go away. It’s complicated, it can hold pros and cons, like I said in the beginning of this: it’s a balancing act.
Repetition
“I do not repeat because I repress, I repress because I repeat.” - Guess who said this.
The repetition in Milk outside a bag of milk is miserable. The repetition of the same bad day, the same initial breakdown, over and over again. It’s just sometimes Null’s entity can influence her late night to be ok or worse. Don’t confuse this as me saying this is a “bad” thing about the play, on the contrary, this is fitting for the type of lifestyle she and many others live.
“So every thought would make a senseless and merciless circle in my head, destined to go back to where it started.”
Your conversations with her are nothing but circular thoughts that she's had before and will have again. She leaves everything in her room at their exact place to help her collect her thoughts, it supposedly helps her see. Whether that’s true or not, I am not sure. It is simply explaining an idea with another idea. Null’s lifestyle is nothing but repetition in disguise, interacting with these displaced objects of past and present. The synthesis of the past is tied to these objects in the present, this affects the synthesis of the real/present. Think of it like this, the objects you interact with are sets and inside the sets are elements of memory. (We’re going to talk more about this later.). Null desperately wants to forget her memories of the past but is still emotionally clung to these memories. The mind is constantly infatuated with the pure past, looking to understand its pure past. She doesn’t want to forget, you can’t forget, it’s about understanding. She begins to understand through reminiscence when interacting with these objects that contain the elements of memory, the objects in her room. You must collect all of her thoughts through this reminiscence for her to reach a greater understanding of herself.
-The book bag reveals that she hasn’t been in school for a long time, and how her last day of school was like. In addition, with prodding, you get a glance of what her relationship with her father was like, as well as detail that she was too old for her school curriculum at the time.
-The notebook consists of early sketches that Null has done, while the rest are blank unused pages. She doesn’t want to use the rest of the notebook because that would mean she would be out of paper. Being out of paper means you have to get more, having to get more means you have to go outside, having to go outside means problems. You can suggest that she asks her mom for a new notebook, all she does is insult herself and her way of thinking in response. The wind blows, moving the pages. This causes her distress, she closes her eyes, preventing any engagement with her past drawings. You convince her to open her eyes, none of the pages moved, she hears the rustle of pages and closes her eyes again, but only reveal is a firefly, one of her thoughts.
- The “bizarre” laptop that she had for years. She used to have plenty of hobbies with the laptop until she encountered the web. Similarly to the book bag, you can prod to gain more information about her time with the web. This part was very interesting because here you get to learn how she sees the web and the people on it and what she considers is “friendship.”. Here she explains that people on the web aren’t actual real people, that in fact they are just like computing programing, nothing but numbers. Yet she is eager to be friends with these people on the web just based on similar interests. It doesn’t matter if they don’t know her, if they both like video games then they are friends. This isn’t that bizarre of a perspective on the internet, in fact, I’ve encountered plenty that were similar. Her idea of friendship isn’t fully developed because clearly she doesn’t have a lot of experience with different forms of friendship to reference on. Well that’s until she manages to form a deeper relationship with someone on the internet, this person convinces her that he’s real, in her words, he tricked her. He cyber bullied her with bots and put her information online, this results her to believe that there are people watching her, always. You learn that part of information if you go to the balcony which results in
Death
Null can die two times in Milk outside a bag of milk. It triggers during specific things you say/lead her to do as her thoughts. These are just glimpses of dissociation episodes of her experiencing her own death, whether that's strangulation or jumping off of a balcony. What I find interesting about this is that you can’t gain a deeper level of understanding of Null without having to experience these parts of the play. It’s a lot like experiencing your own episodes, it’s not a good time in the moment but to reach a level of understanding of yourself and your conditions you have to engage with why and how it happens in the first place. The episodes of death have a major impact with how the rest of the night will go for Null. It affects her dreams when she finally goes to sleep.
Dreams
“Imagining myself to be outside of my mortal shell, but at the same time still being me. Ridiculous, like milk outside a bag of milk.”
The dreams Null can experience vary and are based on a few things. How many thoughts you collected, which deaths did you experience if any at all, did you explore certain thoughts deeper, and did you pick up that phone number? The results always show which of the five dreams Null ends up experiencing.
The shop dream is the above quote taken to the most literal. Null is experiencing a re-contextualized perspective on the beginning of her day (Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk..). This said perspective is a projection of her negative thoughts towards herself. This is also influenced by how she believes everyone around her sees her. Treska (the boy she's helping go to the store.) interacts with a customer, asking for directions. This causes a bad interaction as the customer wanted nothing to do with Treska, as the boy stood there in fear. Treska causes a scene, disrupting the atmosphere of the store. This displeases everyone. The part that stands out is how everyone talks to Null, and refers to Treska as her son. (The cashier also calls Treska a very mean word!) Null pays for the milk (and outrageous fees) with anger and leaves with Treska. After Treska’s attempts at breaking the silence are ignored by Null, he begins walking away from Null, and says “It seems like you’re not helping me at all.” (This is what Null says to you when you do a bad job during Inside a bag of milk.). The thoughts I took away from this was perhaps this is also showing how it was like for her to go to the store with one of her parents. Also I think in attempts at a meta narrative, it’s displaying how people were feeling when exposed to Null and her neurodivergent behavior. It expresses the undeniable frustration that’s emoted from everyone involved in this specific context.
[Here's a note you can read!]
[ As we get closer to this topic (the social perspective on the neurodivergent) it gets more difficult not to express more of my thoughts on it. At best I believe people treat neurodivergent people as children and at worst, subhuman. Either way, it's a very frustrating thing to spectate and experience myself. The tone of discussions about it are always a mix between being condescending and accusatory. People get frustrated over others putting themselves down, thinking they can’t do said things because [insert flavor of neurodivergence here]. But never wonder why that’s the case? Why do they put themselves down? Perhaps, it’s because no one wants to help or no one wants to understand? Everyone is so indulged in their own selfishness, that anyone that's acting out of the social script is too much of an inconvenience to handle. It’s this ‘settle your own shit’ type of attitude that helps nothing! All these different flavors of the same discourse is nothing but just a meaningless cycle of psychic assaults. I realized that when expressing this whole paragraph made me realize that this could be applied to a lot of other different contexts of discrimination (because what I’m describing here is basically ableism). That’s because this shit is just a symptom of power in our current socio economic environment but I finally digress.]
The shop dream is, what I believe to be, the default dream. This is the dream you get on your first playthrough. Or at least you’re most likely to? (I learned from my girlfriend that she got the mirror ending on her first playthrough. I believe the shop dream is triggered based on the first death.) Remember that repetition? That sweet synthesis? It’s still here, and something that’s to be experienced to witness Null’s other dreams.
The mirror dream is probably the most simple one out of the five. Wake up everyday, feel the weirds again, look at the mirror, my face is dumb, repeat. Her face changes all sorts of ways, shit you would see on a piccrew- no offense. Anyways, it’s a weird feeling, that’s the best I can describe it. It’s a little humorful out of all the dreams, which makes sense. It is easy to make fun of your own appearance. It’s really easy. Trust me.
The next two dreams are interesting because they are more like nightmares in comparison to the other last mentioned dreams. It makes sense that they’re more intense because they are triggered if you let Null go to bed without collecting all of her thoughts. Which nightmare you get seems to dictate whether you decided to learn more about her history on the web (that includes going to the balcony.).
The room and field dream is a suffocating, paranoia induced nightmare. Everything about this dream is completely influenced by her thinking deeply about her time on the internet, everything that happened, and being on the balcony. It’s the common moment in a dream where you physically fail to do one task in every way that’s possible, it tends to feel slow and clutching to me. In the context of this dream, it’s opening a door while being trapped in a dark silent room. The sounds that play during this dream are noteworthy here, the beginning is nothing but these rapid wooden staccato taps and quiet droning in the background, while the field section is a louder drone with whispering wind. The dream consists of running from the uncertain darkness, then the slow dread in the fields with a looming presence of, you guess it, dark uncertainty! Null screams questions of Who are you? What do you want? Just for this presence to explode into darkness, looping back to the beginning of the dream- she wakes up.
The stairs ending is awful. It’s nothing but degrading, numbing, and despair. This is absolutely the dream she gets when you don’t even fucking try to help! Everything visual and sonically about this dream is abrasive and cold like metal. The giant concrete structures with stairways even look like drill bits to me. It reminded me of a recurring dissociation I would experience where I felt paralyzed and someone was drilling a hole in my head. Funnily enough there’s something about this dream that reminds me of Cruelty Squad. It’s most likely the abrasiveness and the flashing abstract smiling face. Also it quotes Wozzeck out of nowhere. Which speaking of which what the hell? (It explains the whole blood moon sky that’s going on in this play.) This dream is insanity inducing because it’s exactly what it’s like. Am I recovering? Am I making progress? Where am I going? Does it matter? Is it all meaningless? Do I have control? No, I don't have control. I cannot move my body, I cannot say what I want to say, I am trapped in my own head. There’s no thoughts, it's just words. Everyone is looking but not talking. There isn’t actually anyone, there is no me either. Everything is empty yet everything is heavy as well. I WANT TO SCREAM UNTIL MY EARS RING, I HATE DOING NOTHING, I HATE BEING NOTHING.
“I DON’T DOUBT THAT YOU’RE GOING THROUGH SOME HARD TIMES. BUT YOU HAVE TO MAKE SACRIFICES. GROW UP. ONLY THEN YOU’LL BE ABLE TO OBTAIN THE MEANING OF LIFE. DO YOU GET IT? TRY THAT IF YOU FIND IT IMPORTANT. EVERY PASSING DAY IS A PRECIOUS GIFT.”
“IF YOU SHARE A PIECE OF THAT GIFT WITH THE WORLD EVEN ONCE, IT’LL SEEM LIKE A SPECK OF DUST. DO YOU GET IT? NO, I’M SORRY. I WON’T GET THAT, THEN. DO YOU GET IT?”
“DO YOU GET IT? DO YOU GET IT? YES, EVEN YOU GET IT. WHEN YOU NOTICE HOW PEOPLE LOOK AT THEMSELVES IN THE MIRROR WHEN YOU LOOK AT YOUR OWN REFLECTION AND REALIZE THAT IT EXISTS IN REALITY. DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW EXACTLY IT EXISTS?”
“I WEEP”
“YOU ARE A ROTTEN HUSK”
“YOU OVERFLOW WITH BOUNDLESS POWER.”
“YOU HAVE THE SOUL OF AN EMPEROR”
“SACRIFICIAL HERO. BLESSED BY PRIMORDIAL LUCK.”
“YOUR FRIENDS ARE IN HELL YET YOU SMILE.”
“ONLY GOOD THINGS WILL COME TO SOMEONE LIKE YOU”
“SET GOALS. HAVE A TEN YEAR PLAN. INVEST. WAKE UP EARLY. CEO MINDSET.”
“GOOD LUCK”
The Last Dream and The Empty Set
“This is how the story of time ends: by undoing its too well centered natural or physical circle and forming a straight line which then, led by its own length, reconstitutes an eternally decentered circle.” - Guess who said this.
Before I move on to the last dream. Let’s talk about her sweatshirt or specifically the symbol on her sweatshirt. The symbol is referred to as the Null sign. I’ve been referring to her as Null this entire time because I feel like she truly identifies with this symbol. She goes on the whole mathematical rant about people on the internet not being real, and explains things with number binaries.
“If I lose something and then find it, it’s just going back to the starting point. No changes at all. A zero sum.”
The Null sign is the mathematical notation of “the empty set”, nothing resides within the empty set, there cannot be multiple empty sets, hence the name the empty set. It is a void but it is not nothing. No, a set is something. It is an empty bag.
The last dream requires a collection of all her thoughts, don’t trigger any deaths, and lastly to pick up a small thing on the ground. Some people say this is her phone, it’s probably that (or the phone number to the pizzeria.). Visually, this is the most mundane of her dreams, it’s the closest you’re gonna get to reality in this play. It starts with her sitting on a balcony with her phone, then throughout the dream she roams around the city. She’s mainly expressing all of her thoughts through texts on her phone.
“I’m all alone, but at the same time it feels like I’m not. There’s a lot of thoughts in my head, they always keep me entertained. I can create a whole world with them. I’m sure it’ll be able to fill the void around me if I try hard enough!”
If it wasn’t obvious enough, this dream is just thoughts about emptiness, she feels neither sad nor happy, but the places she finds herself to be are safe. She feels the world is empty around her, like a void. A lot of the thoughts displayed here are very circular, here’s an idea, she responds to it with another idea. If her presence is a waste of time, is there a point to it? Is she just part of the void instead of containing it? If the place I’m in feels nothing, then how come I can warm myself with warm thoughts? I can fill the void around me with my thoughts! Wait a minute. I’m still here even though there’s nothing around me? Ah. The world ain’t so empty after all.
Just to get it out the way I played both Milk inside a bag and Milk outside a bag back to back, and like others here have said, I highly recommend that you do this, if you decide to play this.
Important notice: I find it difficult to talk about these plays without devolving into personal experiences from my life, so if you would like to continue the comfort of knowing nothing about me, please do yourself a favor and don’t read this. If you do continue, then take care.
For the sake of understanding, I will be referring to the protag as “Null”. I saw Erato do it in her review and I found it more understanding and comes off less demeaning than referring to her as “girl” or “milk”.
I’m going to try my best to organize my thoughts although it can be quite difficult but what you end up seeing is what you get.
Maybe you can help?
Exploitation and “The Connection.”
So to briefly touch on the topic of whether or not these plays are exploitive of mental illness.. I believe it’s understandable to have that gut feeling upon its first impressions considering the lain like art-style/aesthetics. Lain is something I question the intentions of but still feel some connection to it for a reason I am still internalizing to this day, it still feels paradoxical to me. I believe for this play, there’s something deeper than that. Perhaps it’s not as deep as what I wanted it to be but maybe it doesn’t have to be? Maybe the fact that it has the potential to begin new thoughts to be created in my mind is enough? Maybe not new but different, it’s always different.
Upon playing Milk inside a bag of milk, I already felt some form of emotional connection with its eerie music and atmosphere, the preparation of leaving your home to the store, rehearsing your social role/ques over and over again, then getting overwhelmed by your own thoughts and saying “I’m ready to burst into tears!” When I read those words I started crying a lot. It was that moment that I really felt like I was crying with this play, not at it. Which is an important distinction to me. The last time I felt this connection was playing Disco Elysium for the first time (and the other many many times..) in October, 2019.
Dissonance.
As hinted from the title, Milk inside a bag of milk is focused entirely on the internal conflicts and rambling of Null. Yet Inside a bag of milk still holds a level of dissonance, you have a name, she talks to you, asks you questions under her boundaries. The only time your name is said is if you’ve been nothing but disruptive and hurtful towards her, that’s when she gives up getting milk and you as well, hoping to find someone else for next time. Successfully helping her buy a bag of milk then leads to the beginning of Milk outside a bag of milk. Which then opens another level of dissonance where you can see her and she can see you, as if you’re really there, as if she trusts you.
In Disco Elysium, you play and interact with Harry Du Bois and his dissociative mind, you decide which thoughts come and go, his contradictions, his political beliefs, etc, in a matter of days. While the Milk plays have you as some form of entity projected by Null, it’s the only thing she has to not be alone, she doesn’t like the silence, she finds your presence to be “grateful” at times. By the words you choose to say, you can influence her emotions and lead her in directions in thoughts, causing either a level of understanding or a panic attack. This also influences the dream she will have when she finally goes to bed. The milk plays is an interactive dissociative experience, only witnessing a single day of Null’s life.
Medication.
”When I am under the influence of drugs, terrible and unpleasant melodies sound in my head. Mixing with the sounds of the world around me, they create a terrible dissonance in my head.”
Both entries also touch on a subject that I found to be lacking when talking about the experiences with mental illness, that would be the relationship with medication and its effects.
Null’s lifestyle is messy and unconventional, especially with her medication intake, either she takes none at all or more than she needs too, or just wastes them completely. She believes she can handle it without it until the “pain” comes back and she has to take her medication with defeat.
Psychiatry is what I would describe as a sensitive tread on wire in brain chemistry. It took me the twenty four years I’ve been alive for me to really internalize that the altering of chemicals in your mind can only do so much when everything else about your life fucking sucks. Of course, I thought I knew that enough to do a fine job during my psychology courses in college but it took a while for me to place that into my own life.
When I was growing up in my teens, all I did was sit in my room and feel bad about something, whether that would be something in my head or the effects of the medication. I mostly took antidepressants and amphetamines. I hated taking my meds, I hated how they made me feel, how it made the world feel, just all of it. At worst I felt awful, at best I felt nothing. But I took them because they were supposed to help me “function”, giving me this push to do labor which at the time was just school. I’ll let you know that I’ve dropped out of school multiple times. I dropped out of public high school because of a paranoia induced panic attack, I didn’t feel safe there, I couldn’t. I tried home schooling, I was too mentally disfigured at the time to really do it, my father tried to help but he just simply wasn’t patient enough. All I could hear when he tried to help me with algebra was how much I annoyed him. I would later get my GED which would feel like a drugged up trance, a lot of the details are very blurred to me when looking back. The medications I’ve had throughout my life have given me sprints of euphoria and long droughts of sedation.
I think one of the worst medications I’ve experienced was when I was put on Zoloft. It made the world spin and feel so slow, the voices I could hear at the time were slow, almost paul stretched whispers. I couldn’t understand them and for some reason that only angered me. I wanted to scream it all out of me but I couldn’t, just felt dazed instead. There’s an intense Thanksgiving story that’s very much about my episodes from the influence of Zoloft but ask me about it later. Speaking of medication induced episodes, did you know heavy use of amphetamines can cause episodes of psychosis? I sure learned that between the years of 2019 - 2020. I hate every medication I was put on! You name it. I hate Vyvanse, Adderall, Ritalin, Lexapro, Wellbutrin, Fluoxetine, and of course fuck Zoloft. I fucking hate Zoloft.
Ever since my last breakdown in early 2022, I’ve been clean from medications, I haven’t taken anything since. I’ve mostly been taking it easy and focusing on what I can do about how I live my life, to make it less suffering. I aim to be productive every day, to talk to someone, do literally anything but nothing. My episodes of psychosis have worked in conjunction with my long episodes of depression. If I learned anything last year, it’s “Inevitable depression when I do nothing.”. Of course, I’m not saying medication is just bad and that no one should take it, it can help, even save lives. But the relationship between one and their medication isn’t always as simple as taking a painkiller to make the pain go away. It’s complicated, it can hold pros and cons, like I said in the beginning of this: it’s a balancing act.
Repetition
“I do not repeat because I repress, I repress because I repeat.” - Guess who said this.
The repetition in Milk outside a bag of milk is miserable. The repetition of the same bad day, the same initial breakdown, over and over again. It’s just sometimes Null’s entity can influence her late night to be ok or worse. Don’t confuse this as me saying this is a “bad” thing about the play, on the contrary, this is fitting for the type of lifestyle she and many others live.
“So every thought would make a senseless and merciless circle in my head, destined to go back to where it started.”
Your conversations with her are nothing but circular thoughts that she's had before and will have again. She leaves everything in her room at their exact place to help her collect her thoughts, it supposedly helps her see. Whether that’s true or not, I am not sure. It is simply explaining an idea with another idea. Null’s lifestyle is nothing but repetition in disguise, interacting with these displaced objects of past and present. The synthesis of the past is tied to these objects in the present, this affects the synthesis of the real/present. Think of it like this, the objects you interact with are sets and inside the sets are elements of memory. (We’re going to talk more about this later.). Null desperately wants to forget her memories of the past but is still emotionally clung to these memories. The mind is constantly infatuated with the pure past, looking to understand its pure past. She doesn’t want to forget, you can’t forget, it’s about understanding. She begins to understand through reminiscence when interacting with these objects that contain the elements of memory, the objects in her room. You must collect all of her thoughts through this reminiscence for her to reach a greater understanding of herself.
-The book bag reveals that she hasn’t been in school for a long time, and how her last day of school was like. In addition, with prodding, you get a glance of what her relationship with her father was like, as well as detail that she was too old for her school curriculum at the time.
-The notebook consists of early sketches that Null has done, while the rest are blank unused pages. She doesn’t want to use the rest of the notebook because that would mean she would be out of paper. Being out of paper means you have to get more, having to get more means you have to go outside, having to go outside means problems. You can suggest that she asks her mom for a new notebook, all she does is insult herself and her way of thinking in response. The wind blows, moving the pages. This causes her distress, she closes her eyes, preventing any engagement with her past drawings. You convince her to open her eyes, none of the pages moved, she hears the rustle of pages and closes her eyes again, but only reveal is a firefly, one of her thoughts.
- The “bizarre” laptop that she had for years. She used to have plenty of hobbies with the laptop until she encountered the web. Similarly to the book bag, you can prod to gain more information about her time with the web. This part was very interesting because here you get to learn how she sees the web and the people on it and what she considers is “friendship.”. Here she explains that people on the web aren’t actual real people, that in fact they are just like computing programing, nothing but numbers. Yet she is eager to be friends with these people on the web just based on similar interests. It doesn’t matter if they don’t know her, if they both like video games then they are friends. This isn’t that bizarre of a perspective on the internet, in fact, I’ve encountered plenty that were similar. Her idea of friendship isn’t fully developed because clearly she doesn’t have a lot of experience with different forms of friendship to reference on. Well that’s until she manages to form a deeper relationship with someone on the internet, this person convinces her that he’s real, in her words, he tricked her. He cyber bullied her with bots and put her information online, this results her to believe that there are people watching her, always. You learn that part of information if you go to the balcony which results in
Death
Null can die two times in Milk outside a bag of milk. It triggers during specific things you say/lead her to do as her thoughts. These are just glimpses of dissociation episodes of her experiencing her own death, whether that's strangulation or jumping off of a balcony. What I find interesting about this is that you can’t gain a deeper level of understanding of Null without having to experience these parts of the play. It’s a lot like experiencing your own episodes, it’s not a good time in the moment but to reach a level of understanding of yourself and your conditions you have to engage with why and how it happens in the first place. The episodes of death have a major impact with how the rest of the night will go for Null. It affects her dreams when she finally goes to sleep.
Dreams
“Imagining myself to be outside of my mortal shell, but at the same time still being me. Ridiculous, like milk outside a bag of milk.”
The dreams Null can experience vary and are based on a few things. How many thoughts you collected, which deaths did you experience if any at all, did you explore certain thoughts deeper, and did you pick up that phone number? The results always show which of the five dreams Null ends up experiencing.
The shop dream is the above quote taken to the most literal. Null is experiencing a re-contextualized perspective on the beginning of her day (Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk..). This said perspective is a projection of her negative thoughts towards herself. This is also influenced by how she believes everyone around her sees her. Treska (the boy she's helping go to the store.) interacts with a customer, asking for directions. This causes a bad interaction as the customer wanted nothing to do with Treska, as the boy stood there in fear. Treska causes a scene, disrupting the atmosphere of the store. This displeases everyone. The part that stands out is how everyone talks to Null, and refers to Treska as her son. (The cashier also calls Treska a very mean word!) Null pays for the milk (and outrageous fees) with anger and leaves with Treska. After Treska’s attempts at breaking the silence are ignored by Null, he begins walking away from Null, and says “It seems like you’re not helping me at all.” (This is what Null says to you when you do a bad job during Inside a bag of milk.). The thoughts I took away from this was perhaps this is also showing how it was like for her to go to the store with one of her parents. Also I think in attempts at a meta narrative, it’s displaying how people were feeling when exposed to Null and her neurodivergent behavior. It expresses the undeniable frustration that’s emoted from everyone involved in this specific context.
[Here's a note you can read!]
[ As we get closer to this topic (the social perspective on the neurodivergent) it gets more difficult not to express more of my thoughts on it. At best I believe people treat neurodivergent people as children and at worst, subhuman. Either way, it's a very frustrating thing to spectate and experience myself. The tone of discussions about it are always a mix between being condescending and accusatory. People get frustrated over others putting themselves down, thinking they can’t do said things because [insert flavor of neurodivergence here]. But never wonder why that’s the case? Why do they put themselves down? Perhaps, it’s because no one wants to help or no one wants to understand? Everyone is so indulged in their own selfishness, that anyone that's acting out of the social script is too much of an inconvenience to handle. It’s this ‘settle your own shit’ type of attitude that helps nothing! All these different flavors of the same discourse is nothing but just a meaningless cycle of psychic assaults. I realized that when expressing this whole paragraph made me realize that this could be applied to a lot of other different contexts of discrimination (because what I’m describing here is basically ableism). That’s because this shit is just a symptom of power in our current socio economic environment but I finally digress.]
The shop dream is, what I believe to be, the default dream. This is the dream you get on your first playthrough. Or at least you’re most likely to? (I learned from my girlfriend that she got the mirror ending on her first playthrough. I believe the shop dream is triggered based on the first death.) Remember that repetition? That sweet synthesis? It’s still here, and something that’s to be experienced to witness Null’s other dreams.
The mirror dream is probably the most simple one out of the five. Wake up everyday, feel the weirds again, look at the mirror, my face is dumb, repeat. Her face changes all sorts of ways, shit you would see on a piccrew- no offense. Anyways, it’s a weird feeling, that’s the best I can describe it. It’s a little humorful out of all the dreams, which makes sense. It is easy to make fun of your own appearance. It’s really easy. Trust me.
The next two dreams are interesting because they are more like nightmares in comparison to the other last mentioned dreams. It makes sense that they’re more intense because they are triggered if you let Null go to bed without collecting all of her thoughts. Which nightmare you get seems to dictate whether you decided to learn more about her history on the web (that includes going to the balcony.).
The room and field dream is a suffocating, paranoia induced nightmare. Everything about this dream is completely influenced by her thinking deeply about her time on the internet, everything that happened, and being on the balcony. It’s the common moment in a dream where you physically fail to do one task in every way that’s possible, it tends to feel slow and clutching to me. In the context of this dream, it’s opening a door while being trapped in a dark silent room. The sounds that play during this dream are noteworthy here, the beginning is nothing but these rapid wooden staccato taps and quiet droning in the background, while the field section is a louder drone with whispering wind. The dream consists of running from the uncertain darkness, then the slow dread in the fields with a looming presence of, you guess it, dark uncertainty! Null screams questions of Who are you? What do you want? Just for this presence to explode into darkness, looping back to the beginning of the dream- she wakes up.
The stairs ending is awful. It’s nothing but degrading, numbing, and despair. This is absolutely the dream she gets when you don’t even fucking try to help! Everything visual and sonically about this dream is abrasive and cold like metal. The giant concrete structures with stairways even look like drill bits to me. It reminded me of a recurring dissociation I would experience where I felt paralyzed and someone was drilling a hole in my head. Funnily enough there’s something about this dream that reminds me of Cruelty Squad. It’s most likely the abrasiveness and the flashing abstract smiling face. Also it quotes Wozzeck out of nowhere. Which speaking of which what the hell? (It explains the whole blood moon sky that’s going on in this play.) This dream is insanity inducing because it’s exactly what it’s like. Am I recovering? Am I making progress? Where am I going? Does it matter? Is it all meaningless? Do I have control? No, I don't have control. I cannot move my body, I cannot say what I want to say, I am trapped in my own head. There’s no thoughts, it's just words. Everyone is looking but not talking. There isn’t actually anyone, there is no me either. Everything is empty yet everything is heavy as well. I WANT TO SCREAM UNTIL MY EARS RING, I HATE DOING NOTHING, I HATE BEING NOTHING.
“I DON’T DOUBT THAT YOU’RE GOING THROUGH SOME HARD TIMES. BUT YOU HAVE TO MAKE SACRIFICES. GROW UP. ONLY THEN YOU’LL BE ABLE TO OBTAIN THE MEANING OF LIFE. DO YOU GET IT? TRY THAT IF YOU FIND IT IMPORTANT. EVERY PASSING DAY IS A PRECIOUS GIFT.”
“IF YOU SHARE A PIECE OF THAT GIFT WITH THE WORLD EVEN ONCE, IT’LL SEEM LIKE A SPECK OF DUST. DO YOU GET IT? NO, I’M SORRY. I WON’T GET THAT, THEN. DO YOU GET IT?”
“DO YOU GET IT? DO YOU GET IT? YES, EVEN YOU GET IT. WHEN YOU NOTICE HOW PEOPLE LOOK AT THEMSELVES IN THE MIRROR WHEN YOU LOOK AT YOUR OWN REFLECTION AND REALIZE THAT IT EXISTS IN REALITY. DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW EXACTLY IT EXISTS?”
“I WEEP”
“YOU ARE A ROTTEN HUSK”
“YOU OVERFLOW WITH BOUNDLESS POWER.”
“YOU HAVE THE SOUL OF AN EMPEROR”
“SACRIFICIAL HERO. BLESSED BY PRIMORDIAL LUCK.”
“YOUR FRIENDS ARE IN HELL YET YOU SMILE.”
“ONLY GOOD THINGS WILL COME TO SOMEONE LIKE YOU”
“SET GOALS. HAVE A TEN YEAR PLAN. INVEST. WAKE UP EARLY. CEO MINDSET.”
“GOOD LUCK”
The Last Dream and The Empty Set
“This is how the story of time ends: by undoing its too well centered natural or physical circle and forming a straight line which then, led by its own length, reconstitutes an eternally decentered circle.” - Guess who said this.
Before I move on to the last dream. Let’s talk about her sweatshirt or specifically the symbol on her sweatshirt. The symbol is referred to as the Null sign. I’ve been referring to her as Null this entire time because I feel like she truly identifies with this symbol. She goes on the whole mathematical rant about people on the internet not being real, and explains things with number binaries.
“If I lose something and then find it, it’s just going back to the starting point. No changes at all. A zero sum.”
The Null sign is the mathematical notation of “the empty set”, nothing resides within the empty set, there cannot be multiple empty sets, hence the name the empty set. It is a void but it is not nothing. No, a set is something. It is an empty bag.
The last dream requires a collection of all her thoughts, don’t trigger any deaths, and lastly to pick up a small thing on the ground. Some people say this is her phone, it’s probably that (or the phone number to the pizzeria.). Visually, this is the most mundane of her dreams, it’s the closest you’re gonna get to reality in this play. It starts with her sitting on a balcony with her phone, then throughout the dream she roams around the city. She’s mainly expressing all of her thoughts through texts on her phone.
“I’m all alone, but at the same time it feels like I’m not. There’s a lot of thoughts in my head, they always keep me entertained. I can create a whole world with them. I’m sure it’ll be able to fill the void around me if I try hard enough!”
If it wasn’t obvious enough, this dream is just thoughts about emptiness, she feels neither sad nor happy, but the places she finds herself to be are safe. She feels the world is empty around her, like a void. A lot of the thoughts displayed here are very circular, here’s an idea, she responds to it with another idea. If her presence is a waste of time, is there a point to it? Is she just part of the void instead of containing it? If the place I’m in feels nothing, then how come I can warm myself with warm thoughts? I can fill the void around me with my thoughts! Wait a minute. I’m still here even though there’s nothing around me? Ah. The world ain’t so empty after all.
2012
Kill a man, and you are a murderer. Kill everyone, and you are a god. - Barack Obama
Last time I played this game it was about three years ago. The first time I played this game was probably 2014. I played it again tonight (as of February 17, 2023, at 11:00 PM) to have it fresh on my mind.
This game is absurd, intense, and really funny. That reads like something you would see in a Netflix description but it's my immediate take away from this game when I clicked start a new game.
"I exist and I find it nauseating." - Yukio Mishima
The game stars FemboyGenius. That's me by the way. I play Walker, Walker is me. This is all my fault, I killed everybody like OJ and I enjoyed it. Put me down like the mad dog I am.
I don't think this obviously, this is all Walker's fault! He's such a fucking loser!!!! Trying to save his Hero that saved his ass in a failed operation, he ain't gonna talk about what went down in Kabul, no surprise there!! Also he's the one that's like THERE IS NO OTHER OPTIONS! That's HIS problem. Not mine! Speaking of options!
"White phosphorus is a common allotrope used in many types of munitions. It can set fire to cloth, fuel, ammunition, and flesh." - Kane
This part of the game is especially stupid when the thing I did right before this is sticking my neck out in a boring scripted stealth segment, so I can save TWO civilians instead of just going guns blazing to save some CIA cunt. So IMMEDIATELY after we come to the white phosphorus section, where the guy who wanted to save two civilians is like damn there are so many of these 343s units, let's use the artillery! Then the other guy is like oooh jeez boss are you sure?? This may not be it boss.. Just for Walker to then say the epic line of "WE DON'T GOT A CHOICE." The fuck you mean??? You just had one a moment ago! But all of a sudden this is it? Make it make sense!! He goes out of his way to save two civilians but not when its hundreds or a whole city worth of them? One could say that Walker didn't know about the refugees but on the drone screen its like.. so fucking obvious? At that point to when launching the shit the only thing that's standing between them and the refugees is just ONE Humvee. You kill all those people just to take out one Humvee! All the other choices in this game are so irrelevant and dull. It all resorts to "Shoot this guy? Or.. This guy!"
"If Lugo were still alive, he would likely suffer from PTSD. So, really, he's the lucky one." - My Therapist
The combat is probably what I should've talked about first but I don't know, MAN. What is there to talk about? Anyone that fucking uses this site KNOWS what this game is. All I will say is that I think this game is hilariously similar to Metal Gear Rising. It's an ok shooter/action game which has boring stealth elements, the dumbest narrative ever, and it tries to make you feel bad with its combat but also rewards you for your brutality. Both of these games try to be critical with the protag/your actions but then do a double flip and go HGH rage mode!
"It's time for you to wake up." - My mom.
Revisiting this game really got me to realize how stupid this game is. I know I keep saying this but what else can I say? It's stupid! Everyone that got mad because they felt like they were "tricked" by this game is stupid too! You want to know why? Because all these military games do is trick you, this one was just dumb enough to tell you.
"WW2 was my idea." - Franklin D. Roosevelt
Last time I played this game it was about three years ago. The first time I played this game was probably 2014. I played it again tonight (as of February 17, 2023, at 11:00 PM) to have it fresh on my mind.
This game is absurd, intense, and really funny. That reads like something you would see in a Netflix description but it's my immediate take away from this game when I clicked start a new game.
"I exist and I find it nauseating." - Yukio Mishima
The game stars FemboyGenius. That's me by the way. I play Walker, Walker is me. This is all my fault, I killed everybody like OJ and I enjoyed it. Put me down like the mad dog I am.
I don't think this obviously, this is all Walker's fault! He's such a fucking loser!!!! Trying to save his Hero that saved his ass in a failed operation, he ain't gonna talk about what went down in Kabul, no surprise there!! Also he's the one that's like THERE IS NO OTHER OPTIONS! That's HIS problem. Not mine! Speaking of options!
"White phosphorus is a common allotrope used in many types of munitions. It can set fire to cloth, fuel, ammunition, and flesh." - Kane
This part of the game is especially stupid when the thing I did right before this is sticking my neck out in a boring scripted stealth segment, so I can save TWO civilians instead of just going guns blazing to save some CIA cunt. So IMMEDIATELY after we come to the white phosphorus section, where the guy who wanted to save two civilians is like damn there are so many of these 343s units, let's use the artillery! Then the other guy is like oooh jeez boss are you sure?? This may not be it boss.. Just for Walker to then say the epic line of "WE DON'T GOT A CHOICE." The fuck you mean??? You just had one a moment ago! But all of a sudden this is it? Make it make sense!! He goes out of his way to save two civilians but not when its hundreds or a whole city worth of them? One could say that Walker didn't know about the refugees but on the drone screen its like.. so fucking obvious? At that point to when launching the shit the only thing that's standing between them and the refugees is just ONE Humvee. You kill all those people just to take out one Humvee! All the other choices in this game are so irrelevant and dull. It all resorts to "Shoot this guy? Or.. This guy!"
"If Lugo were still alive, he would likely suffer from PTSD. So, really, he's the lucky one." - My Therapist
The combat is probably what I should've talked about first but I don't know, MAN. What is there to talk about? Anyone that fucking uses this site KNOWS what this game is. All I will say is that I think this game is hilariously similar to Metal Gear Rising. It's an ok shooter/action game which has boring stealth elements, the dumbest narrative ever, and it tries to make you feel bad with its combat but also rewards you for your brutality. Both of these games try to be critical with the protag/your actions but then do a double flip and go HGH rage mode!
"It's time for you to wake up." - My mom.
Revisiting this game really got me to realize how stupid this game is. I know I keep saying this but what else can I say? It's stupid! Everyone that got mad because they felt like they were "tricked" by this game is stupid too! You want to know why? Because all these military games do is trick you, this one was just dumb enough to tell you.
"WW2 was my idea." - Franklin D. Roosevelt
2021
Me when Deterritorialization gives me a fucking boner, dude.
I loved this play so much, gave me a big smile on my face and has only given me an itch to draw one of my OCs.
A lot of the dialogue here really reads like a lot of the text RP I do with my friends! I lack the words to describe it other than that. It's just that to me.
God, during the pegging conversation, I thought I was about to start the review with a Southland Tales quote from Krysta Now. Fantastic beginning.
Anyways I won't delve deeper than that. It's short and sweet. It reminds me that the people who are making art that I want to experience are just people like me instead of any big corpo's product.
I loved this play so much, gave me a big smile on my face and has only given me an itch to draw one of my OCs.
A lot of the dialogue here really reads like a lot of the text RP I do with my friends! I lack the words to describe it other than that. It's just that to me.
God, during the pegging conversation, I thought I was about to start the review with a Southland Tales quote from Krysta Now. Fantastic beginning.
Anyways I won't delve deeper than that. It's short and sweet. It reminds me that the people who are making art that I want to experience are just people like me instead of any big corpo's product.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA UUUUUUUUUUUUUGH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA FUUUUUUUUUUCK IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS!!!!!!!!!" - That's me yelling as I was suffering from the David mash duel causing a minor hemorrhage in my right eye. Just because I forgot I had V-sync on.
KILLER IS DEAD is a hack and slash video game!
End review.
No, there's more to be said.
KILLER IS DEAD is a hack and slash video game with women in it!
There's plenty of women to fulfill your liking I guess. Do you like small ones? Tall ones? Uh. Ones that act like children. Freaky ones! Well whatever interests you, you can look at them. That's right you can look at women. Personally, I loooove looking at women. They make my heart feel so warm inside. Oh the object of a woman sure is something to behold folks!
This game is misogynistic. I know this information may trouble you but it is the truth.
Suda, my guy. I know your hand was forced in a few ways, but you guys really could've made the shit interesting at least? I knoooow all you want to do is make a freaky violent action game! Like that sweet sweet punk rock music! But fuck it if you had to put dating game elements you should've just went all the way dude. Don't half ass, use your whole ass!!
Anyways, remember that KILLER IS DEAD is a hack and slash? I guess I did. The combat is ok. If you love mashing X then gradually watching Mondo do more things as you mash X then you will love this game! Because that's all it is. It gets more engaging, the more there's enemies on the screen. More things to mash x at. Okay, I'm really wrong, you occasionally mash B as well. That special arm of his.. that's something. So with enough upgrades and unlocks, you can basically ditch any effort of this being a hack and slash and just play this as the worst third person shooter you will ever play in your life! That sounds enticing, doesn't it?
KILLER IS DEAD has a story.
Is it a good one? I'm.. really not sure. Before I go on. I have to mention this. So for a long time and including two days ago I've found myself saying that I feel myself as a "defender" of this game. That there was a time where I would say I loved this game even and that I saw something in it. I think it was in the story, but now I'm not so sure. It's easy to put your theory hat on and start thinking all sorts of ideas but I have to remember that this was made by a guy whos made the dumbest fucking games I have ever witnessed. So I never want to give Suda too much credit at this point. It’s very easy to get philosophical with this game because the story is just filled with vague themes and loads of characters that are completely nothing! Eros and Thanatos/ Freud’s pleasure principle and death drive seems to be a sort of popular theory with this game and while it’s an interesting look into it, I myself have a simple take away from KILLER IS DEAD. This game is about working for “the state” and its repetitive sheltered normative lifestyle. Because Suda said he wanted dark twisted James Bond so we’re going to get dark twisted James Bond. Mondo Zappa is the failed son who's oh so content with his murderous “apolitical” lifestyle because it’s what gets him pussy and soft boiled eggs. While David has done it all and to prevent boredom, he wants to reach new absurd heights. Legendary executioner? Been there, done THAT. Let’s take the moon, ok I got that. Guess I should take Earth. Hey loser brother, want to do something else with your life and have this moon? No? Okay, that’s funny. They bicker, they fight, Mondo’s arm hurts just like mine after yesterday's workout, they have their final altercation and honestly I think they settle it just fine like brothers. Mondo learns there's more to life and that there's a lot more shit he's got to regulate and work through. The state and Moon River want to destroy him now because he now challenges the status quo or so to speak. That’s all I got with the story. It’s a kind of dumb one and the story is told not the best way because this was created in the era of action games where everyone thought it was really cool for the protag to just walk really slowly while talking to someone. Also again.. A lot of the characters here are just absolutely nothing.
This game comes off as all style and no substance. It’s Killer 7 but somehow they made it uglier. The cell shading and it’s lighting is just REALLY fucked up in this game, it can be hard on the eyes because the game is desperately trying to have the hard contrast of dark and light look good (oh my god just like the battle between gold and black chess pieces aAAaAaAaAaAAaa.). I’m trying to understand what I saw in this game, I guess I really enjoyed action games where you just mashed buttons. Hey, I was REALLY into Dynasty Warriors back in the day! I think I’m just looking for something more to chew on without just projecting my theory onto cardboard. I spared myself and everyone here my Deleuzian ass (It’s why I mentally get stun locked on the conversation of repetition in games).
God damn why did I love this game? Was I just charmed by Mundo’s hypnotic blood moon eyes? OoooOoo cool horny suit sword man, time to base my entire gender identity off of him and many like him. Are the women in this game just like me? Is that why they don’t talk to him but just LOOK at the guy??? Okay I’m just saying shit now but hey, I bled for this review so I can say fucking whatever.
KILLER IS DEAD is a hack and slash video game!
End review.
No, there's more to be said.
KILLER IS DEAD is a hack and slash video game with women in it!
There's plenty of women to fulfill your liking I guess. Do you like small ones? Tall ones? Uh. Ones that act like children. Freaky ones! Well whatever interests you, you can look at them. That's right you can look at women. Personally, I loooove looking at women. They make my heart feel so warm inside. Oh the object of a woman sure is something to behold folks!
This game is misogynistic. I know this information may trouble you but it is the truth.
Suda, my guy. I know your hand was forced in a few ways, but you guys really could've made the shit interesting at least? I knoooow all you want to do is make a freaky violent action game! Like that sweet sweet punk rock music! But fuck it if you had to put dating game elements you should've just went all the way dude. Don't half ass, use your whole ass!!
Anyways, remember that KILLER IS DEAD is a hack and slash? I guess I did. The combat is ok. If you love mashing X then gradually watching Mondo do more things as you mash X then you will love this game! Because that's all it is. It gets more engaging, the more there's enemies on the screen. More things to mash x at. Okay, I'm really wrong, you occasionally mash B as well. That special arm of his.. that's something. So with enough upgrades and unlocks, you can basically ditch any effort of this being a hack and slash and just play this as the worst third person shooter you will ever play in your life! That sounds enticing, doesn't it?
KILLER IS DEAD has a story.
Is it a good one? I'm.. really not sure. Before I go on. I have to mention this. So for a long time and including two days ago I've found myself saying that I feel myself as a "defender" of this game. That there was a time where I would say I loved this game even and that I saw something in it. I think it was in the story, but now I'm not so sure. It's easy to put your theory hat on and start thinking all sorts of ideas but I have to remember that this was made by a guy whos made the dumbest fucking games I have ever witnessed. So I never want to give Suda too much credit at this point. It’s very easy to get philosophical with this game because the story is just filled with vague themes and loads of characters that are completely nothing! Eros and Thanatos/ Freud’s pleasure principle and death drive seems to be a sort of popular theory with this game and while it’s an interesting look into it, I myself have a simple take away from KILLER IS DEAD. This game is about working for “the state” and its repetitive sheltered normative lifestyle. Because Suda said he wanted dark twisted James Bond so we’re going to get dark twisted James Bond. Mondo Zappa is the failed son who's oh so content with his murderous “apolitical” lifestyle because it’s what gets him pussy and soft boiled eggs. While David has done it all and to prevent boredom, he wants to reach new absurd heights. Legendary executioner? Been there, done THAT. Let’s take the moon, ok I got that. Guess I should take Earth. Hey loser brother, want to do something else with your life and have this moon? No? Okay, that’s funny. They bicker, they fight, Mondo’s arm hurts just like mine after yesterday's workout, they have their final altercation and honestly I think they settle it just fine like brothers. Mondo learns there's more to life and that there's a lot more shit he's got to regulate and work through. The state and Moon River want to destroy him now because he now challenges the status quo or so to speak. That’s all I got with the story. It’s a kind of dumb one and the story is told not the best way because this was created in the era of action games where everyone thought it was really cool for the protag to just walk really slowly while talking to someone. Also again.. A lot of the characters here are just absolutely nothing.
This game comes off as all style and no substance. It’s Killer 7 but somehow they made it uglier. The cell shading and it’s lighting is just REALLY fucked up in this game, it can be hard on the eyes because the game is desperately trying to have the hard contrast of dark and light look good (oh my god just like the battle between gold and black chess pieces aAAaAaAaAaAAaa.). I’m trying to understand what I saw in this game, I guess I really enjoyed action games where you just mashed buttons. Hey, I was REALLY into Dynasty Warriors back in the day! I think I’m just looking for something more to chew on without just projecting my theory onto cardboard. I spared myself and everyone here my Deleuzian ass (It’s why I mentally get stun locked on the conversation of repetition in games).
God damn why did I love this game? Was I just charmed by Mundo’s hypnotic blood moon eyes? OoooOoo cool horny suit sword man, time to base my entire gender identity off of him and many like him. Are the women in this game just like me? Is that why they don’t talk to him but just LOOK at the guy??? Okay I’m just saying shit now but hey, I bled for this review so I can say fucking whatever.