So for years we've had to experience the most lazy horror experiences that can be conceived. Most of it is because every guy played Silent Hill 2 and thought they could do that. So we've been getting the same game (Silent Hill 2) for a fucking decade or something and it's usually worse or just as good (which isn't that good by the way.).

So to finally play a survival horror game that seems to be written by people who have actually put more thought into it's themes and setting to the point they were capable to express something about death and guilt (and probably more than just that.) in a mature and emotional way.

I found the gameplay to be fine and look at it as a vehicle for the story and setting. With a story and setting so good, I really don't mind that. All the radio signals and that mechanic alone really carries it. Not a surprise coming from a game literally called "Signalis."

Anyways, I got all the endings, including the secret one obviously. Man, what a heart breaking game this is. I played this and Pentiment back to back and had to take multiple depression naps.

The more I think about this game the more I'm sure that this is one of the most bitter games out there. It's understandable when a lot of the devs that touched this game had to work with a really unstable and cruel director.

The said bitterness seeps out through the plot and it's dialogue then explodes with it's ending. Oh my god, the ending.

If your main take away from this game was something stupid like "damn maybe I should be a cop" then your media literacy isn't the best or you're just a fascist. Because everything about this game is just man, doesn't this job suck when you go in expecting to do something "good" for your community? When in reality this position of power was never created for that purpose.

I don't have anything to say that someone else has said better. Here it is. Heres what you're going to get from me!

Cheating in this game is kinda badass. It's just digging your hand in the back of a slot machine and pulling on the wires, then getting bored of it after. Then MAYBE I'll do this in a few months when I got 30 minutes to kill. Is it a numbing experience? Absolutely. Sometimes you got to be numb just so you can remember how awesome it is not to be in that state. It's like that one Nietzsche quote. God damn what was it?

Okay let me be really direct here and just say that what I'm about to write is probably going to be very different to anything else I have written on this website so far. First off, I do not see this as a video game, I never "played" it like one. Don't ask me how the story mode is, or how it controls, because I just DON'T know!

I do not see this as a "video game" and more as a tool to create narrative and really magical moments of pro wrestling.
When I'm not writing for my tabletop games, I am writing show cards and storylines for wrestlers in my very own wrestling promotion!

This is what this "review" is going to be mainly: just me talking about the creation of the wrestling promotion GPW (Global Psychosis Wrestling).

I was initially inspired to do this when one of my best friends shared with me their own wrestling show and I was then curious with how far I can go with this "game's" engine and complexity of wrestler creation. My first wrestler was just this blue entity with a ripped muscular figure with a monkey mask/head that mainly just wrestles similarly to Brock Lesnar. I stared at the blank name bar and my only thought at the moment was to just name it "Trauma." So I did.

After that I made more and more wrestlers. Some are very strange and "supernatural" or just straight up just non human (like Trauma.) Or just really violent, cruel, petty, calculated fighters. I will list a few of them or a lot, mostly out of indulgence.

In the strange/supernatural category you got wrestlers like

Fungai Marshall: Ultra rich sovereign from South Africa that wishes to hold power over GPW with an iron fist with the use of gross submissions and the special talent of controlling peoples nerves. He goes nowhere without his "mysterious" unlimited source of income and puts funding into a lab that attempts to create the "perfect wrestler." The attempt creates the first ever homunculus wrestler named GUNK0.

GUNK0: As mentioned above is the first ever homunculus wrestler. The final stage of physical development had some interesting results, like their height being only 4 '11 because their legs lack development in comparison to the rest of their physique. They still weigh a ton and specialize in raw strength and have a death grip from having crustacean claws. (Yes literal crab claws.) Their moves contain a lot of slams, chokes, and suplexes. Their finisher is called "Hellzone Grenade." (lol)

Hazgard Ruffalo: A literal alien from a different world. They have four arms and all they do is really gross looking suplexes and moonsaults.

So not as crazy as those three but still strange you got wrestlers like - Dr. Psycho Lover who's a giant clown. She's the strongest wrestler in GPW. She's very similar to a Zangief type character, power bombs, piledrivers, brain busters, etc. While doing a lot of hijinks, like fainting punches and grapples and spits silly gas mist. She has my favorite finisher name "Waste Matter Death Spiral."

Okay hold on this one is really strange but it would be a disservice to myself if I didn't mention him.
Leisure Suit Leszek is an 80ish year old polish cyborg that's obsessed with disco music. He may or may not wrestle exactly how you would imagine him to wrestle.

Anyways you should have a clear picture with how ridiculous I let myself be with this promotion. Not every wrestler is like this but I would like to say I try to have every one of them be eccentric and full of life in some way, with how they look, fight, or their personality.

A lot about GPW is chaotic in nature but I really went out of my way to have that be known with ring designs and stage textures. I fucked it all up. At the time I was really inspired by Cruelty Squad and if you saw it, it would really be obvious. I had a really fun time just fucking around and putting face textures on walls and having all the colors be so abrasive with saturation. While the stage I use for Trauma matches is just a void of black with the ring at the center. I have one stage look like they’re wrestling in a fucked up train station from silent hill. I’ve done a lot to make my game look the way it does.

Allow me to share a favorite storyline of mine that happened during two seasons of GPW.

THE MR. PAIN VS MICKEY ANHEDONIA FEUD.

There's a wrestler in GPW named Mr. Pain. He's the most fragile wrestler as he suffered from a treacherous accident that resulted in him being sensitive to pain and tends to bleed easily. He's covered head to toe in bandages, almost mummy-like, with two red domes for hands as his biological hands were utterly destroyed from the accident. He wrestles passively, as he focuses on distancing himself away from his opponents. Lots of ducking/weaving, you know- boxing shit. He got some submissions to slow down the match, counters frequently. Obviously can't take a hit for shit..

Season 1 mainly covered a tournament called "THE DESPERATE STRUGGLE TOURNAMENT." The winner of said tournament is rewarded a match against Trauma. Win against Trauma and you get yourself the "Catharsis belt." and rule GPW.
Mr. Pain found himself to be in the losers bracket and was in a match against GUNK0. One of them will be eliminated from the tournament. In an attempt to help his own creation advance in the tournament- Fungai Marshall tries to bend the match in GUNK0's favor as he lets loose a new wrestler, a wrestler that is revealed to be the supposed perpetrator to Mr. Pain's suffering. Their name is Mickey Anhedonia and their physical features are a complete mystery! They are a walking void of identity as they are paper white with ambiguous black shapes covering their body, with a pixelated abyss for a head. Mr. Pain has never seen this person before and all he knows is that this person has hurt them before and they will do it again.
Mr. Pain ends up winning the match against GUNK0 and Mickey just barely after throwing Mickey out of the ring then putting GUNK0 into a roll up.

The Feud continues throughout all of Season 2 and it resumes AGGRESSIVELY! Mr. Pain and Mickey are at each other’s throats, Mr. Pain’s fighting style gradually becomes more aggressive and excursion is really on display here. Mickey’s nasty submissions are revealed throughout this season as well, with his submission finish “Witness Protection” causing plenty of wrestlers in GPW to tap out.

The feud reaches its climax by the last episode of season 2 with a Identity VS Identity match, whoever loses must reveal their true face/real name. Of course this match is in a cage too, to top it all off. This match is where the magic really happens here. I didn’t change anything with their logic, no mods I had influenced this. This match turned into a fucked up endurance test between the two, with the longest submissions and mounted punches I have EVER seen in a match! I was on the edge of my damn seat, watching a simulated wrestling match like it was a real thing being taped. It really looked like Mr. Pain was facing head on into the jaws of pain! It’s moments like these where I really get engrossed in it all, forgetting that these wrestlers are CPUs with just bunch of percent changes in your logic, and how I spent oh so many hours tweaking every single one of them to behave in a way of my liking. It becomes real pro wrestling, a real story between real wrestlers and that’s fucking beautiful. It’s matches like these is why I even do this whole show!

I think that’s all I can really say about my show without just outright showing you it. I can see myself writing more about it in the future. Maybe I’ll journal it. Still don’t really know how that works.. This website is weird, man.

LMFAO oh god man this game.. I think what I want to say here is I think this game has been the vehicle for a take that's been developing in my mind ever since MGSV came out. I really don't think you can make a stimulating stealth game while it holds so many qualities of your average triple A open world game. Like okay.. The environments are nice. Graphics are good, okay! But I don't know, man if I wanted to just chill and look at nice landscapes I would look at paintings because you know a lot of painters tend to do weirder shit than whatever the average "open world environmental!!" game offers!

When exploring the world, does anything really go on when you do it? Oh yeah you find supplies, maybe a note or two about how the radiation is so spicy or a weird Easter egg that involves those weird screen blur/shakes that metro loves to do. I'm sorry but this game is so fucking boring and not in a meditating way of a Tarkovsky film, so don't you fucking there try to tell me that! I found the gameplay to be intensely vapid. Maybe this is just nostalgia speaking but I felt like the stealth in the past Metro games were more intense, it required more wits and patience than whatever the fuck is going on here! Or at least it held the illusion of these feelings with just great level design. None of that is in this game!

By the way, I never finished this game. After so many replays and attempts to see the ending, I just couldn't be fucked! All the banter between chapters was neat on the first playthrough but it gets old when you're trying to replay the game. This is the only metro game in the series where I couldn't bother to finish, so maybe that'll mean something to you.

Anyways, here is a list of stealth games with open world elements that I think just get so so so wrong.
MGSV, Metro Exodus, Deathloop (Fuck you).

The only one that gets it right is Hitman because it's not just an empty open world that sometimes has a weird guy/monster and ammo! It's an alive world, the motherfuckers are constantly doing shit, there's so much to do in that fucking beast of a game! But whatever, this ain't a hitman review but god damn if you like stealth games just fucking play that! It's really that simple!

I feel like once I hit play, my life was forever changed! No going back, this is the path I chose. If I never played this, I think I would be a completely different person right now. I don't know if its good or bad, I don't think that even matters honestly. Either way, I think the best way I can describe Phantasmagoria 2 is that it's like the equivalent to my favorite "young adult book" that I read all the time as a teenager and still, to this day, I can think back on Phantasmagoria 2 and say "God damn, that's a Story with a capital S.".

Here's my main takeaway from this game. It has a very compelling setting that's just got the vibes I love. A lot of the guns feel amazing to use, the gun-play is SO GOOD! Which is something to me because I feel like I have become more and more picky with my shooters. Here's a funny take, if I shoot you with a gun, you should die. I hate dumping mags, I hate bullet sponges, I hate all that RPG/shooter mechanics. When I was playing this game I was just vibing. I go out, kill shit, leave. I want to drink a fucking beer while playing this game and I’m not even the biggest beer guy. You know what? This game is basically fishing. You go out, you catch a fish or two, maybe you do it while pondering about some deeper shit happening in your life, OR perhaps you do it to not think at all. Either way it’s a slow methodical process where you get something out of it. In context of the game, maybe you get the bounty and enjoy seeing the cash/xp flow in, or you’re like damn that gun felt really good to use. Either way the game HAS a flow and it’s a nice flow to be a part of once in a while, well until..

This is the part where the fishing metaphor gets really funny. Imagine you’re fishing by yourself at your favorite lake, then a “party” of guys come in with their big fuck off boat and loud music. Now this becomes very disruptive for you, so.. What do you do? I suppose you got a few options here. You can just leave and find a different fishing spot, maybe sit around and wait for them to leave (but where's the fun in that?). OR. You can listen to the devil in your ear and try to ruin their fun. In Hunt: Showdown a lot of these options are options you can certainly do.. But I have to add an additional factor to this. Those party fishing guys? They fucking hate people that aren’t them. So you better hope they didn’t see you to begin with! Or they’re going to make your boat sink, maybe steal your fishing rod.. MAN, maybe if you’re lucky they’ll call you the f slur or something. The first two things I listed, I don’t really blame them for because the game promotes that. The bigotry, lol no people just suck sometimes. The PVP aspect of the game really complicated my feelings on the game, any of the nice things I’ve said about it just becomes more of an emotional gray to me. The gun play, remember when I said that was good? Well when you include PVP scenarios to it.. That becomes muddy because a good amount of guns become problematic. Here’s a fucking example! Shotguns! They either feel amazing or absolute dogshit! No in-between, because this game’s delay is so strange,if you’re using shotguns prepare for the inevitable trades. Which for a game that has “permanent death” as a mechanic is pretty grating! At least, I sure did when I was playing this. Also in context to PVP, there is no reason why you wouldn’t use a Winchester/ or any gun that offers multiple shots before reload. I mean fuck, all you need is a good sidearm in this game. A lot of people (including myself) were using the Uppercut then you got assholes who use the fucking Dolch. I’ve heard and seen good things about the spitfire too but whatever I digress.

Experiencing this game’s PVP really helped me come to some conclusion with the frustration I have towards its “instrumental” play style. It offers these “options” when some of these options just feel like quality of life improvements of the game, meaning, it creates this air of “why the fuck WOULDN’T you take this???”. Like serpent, why the fuck wouldn’t you take serpent??

[For additional context this is what Serpent does, quoted from the wiki. “Using Dark Sight, interact with nearby Clues, Rifts, Banishable Targets, and abandoned Bounty from a safe distance.”]

Fuckers be like “oh if everyone just had it from the start it would be too strong!!” Would it really?? Because with how I fucking see it, with how PVP is like in this game, picking up the bounty is almost ALWAYS a disadvantage. Oh you gain the ability to see other hunters around you? In a game where you almost always see better with sound? WOW! What a game changer! For how long will I get this blessing? Five seconds? That’s so lovely! What do they get? Oh they always know where I’m going? It’s basically having a fucking supernatural tracker on me? Wow. Seems like a fair deal to me! Don’t even get me started on the recently added pact that grants you the ability to self revive as a solo hunter with the Necromancer trait. Like WOW. An “OPTION” that makes the solo experience more playable!! WHY WOULDN’T YOU FUCKING TAKE THIS?

No matter the PVP “play style” it always churns into some form of online shit flinging (Like fuck it shows up during this review. Fuck Dolch users!!). A lot of people in the community hate “campers”/”snipers”, that was in some form a big discourse within the community because you had people that were taking advantage of a particular hunter skin that had a lot of dull colors that easily blend in the game’s environments. Also trappers! The toxicity within the use of traps sure is something. There was this problem of what I will describe it as “turtling” where a team would set up base at one of the settlements (probably the one with the bounty in it) and just place barb wire traps (or just barb wire) EVERYWHERE! Then hunters outside of this settlement would combat this by just waiting outside and stare at the timer going down, because eventually the team would have to make a break for it. SO these moments are just stalemates that murder any hint of fucking momentum in this game and it all comes down to a battle of pettiness. This factor of the game definitely got me to stop playing because it was this shit- every time. The simple enjoyable flow of hunt showdown was not worth having to put up with this shit. 

The only hint of feeling of “magic” with this game’s PVP is when PVP conflicts feel like an actual SHOWDOWN. You know- the title of the fucking game? Go figure. Anyways the moments of multiple hunters meeting head to head at the same settlement, having an all out gun battle, is where the drama happens! That’s the moment that gets me to understand why the developers wanted to make the game the way that it was. You really feel that set up to it, (when it happens of course.). It has the pacing of a spaghetti western (Like fistful of dollars) without any words being said. That comparison is probably why I always found myself preferring to play Hunt Showdown alone than with friends. Maybe I’m just a sucker for a good underdog story. Not that Fistful of Dollars is one but... Playing Hunt Showdown solo really feels like both to me. I guess that was and still is the main appeal to me with Hunt Showdown. It’s the stylish world and the drama it can generate with tension. It’s why at this point I find myself having the preference to watch people play it over playing it myself. The guy I usually watch play this game makes this game look so enticing. His aggression, the way he goes up against teams of two and three, using every weapon he can get his hands on that were left behind on dead hunters because the ammo being so scarce. That shit is intense and a joy to watch! 

I don’t know, man. I guess I would just enjoy this game more if it was a single-player game. If this shit was a fucked up western stalker it would be one of my favorite games ever. It’s why sometimes I just played on the Oceania servers because no one in the Oceania area uses their own servers. That’s the closest I’ve gotten to a single-player Hunt Showdown experience. It was alright. Part of me feels like I enjoyed Elden Ring so much when it released because before it came out I was getting tortured by this fucking game! So yeah at the time, it felt like a blessing that I could look like a queer, hold a huge sword, and ride a horse in a weird vast world without having to feel like an asshole. Yes, I play the souborne games with no multiplayer because that shit adds nothing to the experience I enjoy from those types of games. Anyways, I don’t regret getting into Hunt Showdown even though most of my experience with it was negative because it gave me the inspiration to begin writing my very own setting for a TRPG game. It revealed to me that I have a dream to create a world/experience similar to Hunt Showdown but with focus on the type of play that's more freeing and alive than whatever the hell is going on here!

This experience would've been a lot better if nothing about it's world was explained.

Every time I talk about Death Stranding with someone I always said that I enjoyed it when I knew nothing about it.

I'm convinced Kojima understands that the people who indulge in his work are morons.