"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.

I'm a reasonable normal guy. I can have a discussion about this.

This is the worst Resident Evil. Yeah, dude. It's worse than 6 or some other obscure Resident Evil that no one fucking played but boomers. I'm sure village is worse by the way, I just refuse to waste my time playing it when I know I'm going to hate it. But with what I played? This is the fucking WORST! Don't get me wrong the first two hours is fine I guess. But once you leave the house everything is such a blurred mess. It's a completely forgettable experience. I wonder why! All you do is the same shit, fight the same shit, with mediocre boss fights to break between the fights against the blobs of grey and brown in the most NOTHING level designs!

At least I can remember Resident Evil 6! At least 6 has the courage to be dick out the zipper stupid!! This game has the aesthetic of every horror movie in the 2000s/early 2010s that you cannot for the life of you remember the names of.

"I told all the people on the team, "This is my proudest moment, the fact that I came up with this trophy on this project." We were conscious to have fewer fights, but it came more from a desire to have a different kind of pacing than to answer the "ludonarrative dissonance" argument.

Because we don't buy into it. I've been trying to dissect it. Why is it that Uncharted triggers this argument, when Indiana Jones doesn't? Is it the number? It can't be just the number, because Indiana Jones kills more people than a normal person does. A normal person kills zero people. And Indiana Jones kills a dozen, at least, over the course of several movies. What about Star Wars? Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, are they some sort of serial killers? They laugh off having killed some stormtroopers. And in The Force Awakens, we see that a stormtrooper can actually repent for the person he is and come around, and there are actually real people under those helmets.

It's a stylized reality where the conflicts are lighter, where death doesn't have the same weight. We're not trying to make a statement about Third World mercenaries, or the toll of having killed hundreds of people in your life." - Neil Durkinstein

Thanks for the very relevant and funny quote, Neil.

Anyways I snored during my experience with the Last of Us and lets just say for my sanity my hands-on experience with its sequel was brief. I hate how these games are played, I despise its narrative. I despise every idea that's a part of this game beside the accessibility options. My feelings with this game are very similar with how I feel about the film Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. Listen here, if I wanted to watch a movie that utilizes absurd dark comedy with themes of human beings being depraved that causes a fucked up domino effect, I would just watch Happiness or literally any Coen Brothers movie (FUCK IT! Add Haneke to the mix! See if I give a shit!) and have a better time! So with The Last Of Us Part 2 why would that be any different for me? I do not care for its cycle of violence, nor its emotional drive for revenge because Joel is bitch-made and had it coming! Everything about this game is so negative, the world, how it's played, it's flow, how it was made, etc. I want nothing to do with it!

There have been a lot of times where I think about how I have engaged with "negative" stories/experiences in media in the past. There's plenty of albums I could reference, already cited a movie. Fuck it, might as well talk about a book while I'm at it.
Last year I read a book called Negative Space by B.R Yeager. To summarize, the book is a horror that delves deep in the minds of several gen z teenagers living in a dying town in New Hampshire that's suffering from a youth suicide epidemic. So while there's fucked up hallucinogens, intense occult rituals, and the grooming presence of something transcendental (maybe.), that all takes the backseat as what drives the story are the teenager's bleak lives. Although it's a hard read, it displays what the current generation must face off against. The numbness/desensitization of cruelty in late stage capital.

So what's the point in me bringing up this book? I don't know. It's a good book and I guess I see The Last Of Us Part 2 as nothing but a product of that exact cruelty of late stage capital.

There's a chance someone is still wondering why I even included that old Neil Durk quote.. I told you, it's funny.

Oh yeah could we also get some adult representation in the next last of us?

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.

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!

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.".

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!

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.

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?