primeiro jogo indie feito inteiramente em Cuba! toda a solidariedade aos nossos irmãos latinos na resistência contra as aves de rapina.

esse jogo (assim como meio que qualquer plataforma de puzzle) possui coletáveis, mas a maneira que são abordados é bem interessante. tudo baseado no detalhe de que não podemos conhecer nosso desfecho se não soubermos a nossa própria história. isso é reiterado pelo personagem Cronista sempre que o encontramos. o único coletável são pedaços de papel que, juntos, viram um item para relembrar o protagonista de seu passado. uma maneira bem interessante de lidar com essa característica super comum nesse gênero e, que fica mais interessante ainda quando se tem uma ideia da história do povo cubano. espero que saiam mais jogos feitos lá. consumir arte de outros países é sempre muito revigorante.

pra terminar gostaria de adaptar uma das minhas frases históricas favoritas. frase essa de Porfírio Diaz:
"Pobre Cuba. Tão longe de Deus mas tão perto dos Estados Unidos."
(na original é pobre México)

Eu teria muita coisa para falar sobre Lies of P, desde um gameplay afiadíssimo (e muito melhorado da demo para o jogo completo, graças a boas práticas de desenvolvimento que levam em consideração feedback dos fãs), personagens memoráveis, uma releitura maravilhosa da Europa vitoriana com um uso exemplar de um cenário steampunk... eu diria que é o melhor soulslike não criado pela From (desculpa, Nioh). Uma jornada espetacular.

Mas vou me resumir em falar das duas features que são marcas registradas do jogo.

A primeira é a criação de armas. Não é simplesmente criar, e sim que tu precisa localizar as armas, para poder desmontar elas e brincar misturando lâminas e cabos de armas diversas, para achar o equilíbrio que você pretende. E isso é absurdamente divertido. Me vi jogando da metade pro fim com um machado gigantesco com o cabo pequeninho, que me permitia swings rápidos e um caminhão de dano. E assim dá pra misturar muitas coisas, efeitos, mudar algumas propriedades de escalonamento de armas caso você queira usar o moveset de um tipo mas está focando em um atributo não favoravel... é genial. Genial, genial. Genial mesmo.

A segunda feature eu creio que seja a mais legal. A que eu quero ver sendo copiada para todos os jogos futuros - incluindo os da From. Quando você usa o último frasco de cura, você tem a chance de carregar um novo frasco por atacar os inimigos. Isso é uma das coisas mais inteligentes e legais que eu ja vi num soulslike, pois gera momentos de risco onde tu sabe que pode recuperar um frasco se for mais agressivo, mesmo que isso possa te custar uma porrada mal desviada que te mate imediatamente... mas tu ganha possibilidades. A mecânica te abre um leque de experimentação e é um excelente modo de introduzir recompensa para jogadores serem mais ousados.

Bom, falando as coisas boas e tal, mas o jogo evidentemente não é perfeito. E aí eu acho que isso se encaixa em alguns bosses que acabam por ser meio repetitivos. Não em design e moveset, isso é extremamente bem feito, com alguns bosses espetaculares (principalmente um certo rei, e uma determinada valquíria perto do fim do jogo). Porém, virtualmente todos os bosses tem o mesmo gimmick de ensaiar um golpe para quebrar o teu ritmo. Não é nada que tu não pegue com algumas tentativas, mas é chato, definitivamente.

Me lembro quando anunciaram esse jogo. Lembro de comentar com uns amigos sobre o quão maluco era um soulslike baseado no Pinocchio. É uma idéia absurda demais para ser ruim e dar errado, e felizmente deu certo pra caramba.

Now, I wasn't originally planning on giving this one a shot because I thought it was gonna be more generic wii mario, but I immediately picked it up when I saw that hilarious xbox brain poisoned tweet that went like:

THEY WANT YOU TO BELIEVE THIS
mario jumping around getting coins yahoo
IS BETTER THAN THIS
guy just walking in starfield doing fucking nothing

DONT WATCH THE GAME AWARDS!

One year ago I finished Elden Ring, a game that I still really adore despite its obvious problems, and that I should have done a better review on. Although I’ll admit my opinion about it has diminished a bit over time, I still regard it as a favorite, but unfortunately I’ll only be talking here about the one major area in which I think the game is lacking: memorability. They should have played it less safe, and I’m glad we’re getting a new Armored Core, because I don’t think I have the necessary mental fortitude for Elden Ring 2: Revenge of Godskin Stitcher.

It’s no secret that the gaming market started to prioritize more and more games that feel similar to one another to standardize the triple A experience, making these products feel more like safe investments from both the developers, and players alike. When games already feel like a luxury in most countries, including mine, and you are feed X amount of content for a moderate price, you just take it, and I don't blame at all the consumers in this parasitic market relation, after all this might the biggest reason to why Xbox even exists.

Back when it was a meme to say that almost all games had the tags “Open World”, “Survival” and “Crafting” (sometimes “Early Access” too), it was inevitable that while playing one of those games there was always a constant self reminder that you had already been there before. If the products didn’t exactly fit this label, they’d improve on the foundations that they already had with less radicalizing changes over time, and you don’t have to look at all the FIFA’s and AC that were getting released, but also to the amount of remasters and remakes that were brought up.

To quote Marty Silva in his much better article than my review: " In the AAA space, the rest of 2023 is filled with high-profile sequels and original games very much cut from the same cloth as a developer’s previous hits. It’ll be interesting to see if Tears of the Kingdom will land with the same impact that Breath of the Wild did six years ago. What new ideas and innovations will Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Final Fantasy XVI, Starfield, Street Fighter 6, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and Assassin’s Creed Mirage bring to the table? In a world where that many sequels are at the top of the mountain, is trendsetting even a reasonable thing to expect? "

This is by all means not a problem exclusive to videogames, I’d argue that the biggest example that everyone is mostly familiar with is the MCU, but unlike movies it seems like the average gamer won't give a shot to different stuff unless it reaches extreme mainstream levels, besides the fact that indies have been getting a lot of recognition after the second half of last decade. If you were an influential figure like Dr. Disrespect but in any other art form and said something among the lines of “I wish there were more games to play. I want to have fun! I want different stuff!” you’d lose all respect that you gathered in your entire life, on the spot. Oftentimes I forget how prevalent the overall r/gaming mentality in video game circles actually is compared to the one present in our own small Backloggd bubble…

With that said, I don’t think it’s controversial at all to state that, comparing it solely to the 00’s, the amount of investments toward games with a more experimental nature that were monetarily risky and the very nature of double A games started to dwindle, as games started to accept that the ‘worth your buck’ mentality was there to stay. Elden Ring unfortunately, undeniably falls under this category.

Besides the exploratory nature, what exactly changed from the gameplay core of Dark Souls 3? I don’t mean this in the sense that nothing was altered, but moreso that I’m playing more from something that I had already experienced, it’s similar to how I think a lot of people, including me, felt with Bowser’s Fury. I really love these 2 souls games individually but I was getting constant flashbacks playing Elden Ring that despite being my first time playing, I felt like I had already pulled the curtain to see the truth behind the tricks that it was trying to play on me.

Despite being my least favorite souls game, I respect DS1 quite a lot. I hate Blighttown, Tomb of Giants and Lost Izalith as much as any other individual with respectable opinions, but I will never forget about how I felt actually overcoming those areas. I hope I’m not alone in finding a certain type of fascination in playing unfair or just bullshit to the core games. Sure it is good to enjoy yourself playing something, but if I am to forget about it tomorrow, how much did it really add to the experience?

I see this debate a lot online and it’s usually something like “Would you rather watch a fun 3/10 movie or a boring 6/10 movie?” and putting aside the fact that I don’t think something boring deserves a high score just because its “competence”, I think the general consensus is that the wacky low-scored one is the one to go for. The highest praise I can think of for a piece of media is saying that it’s unforgettable, and after it, saying that it’s great. Of course that is not to say that you can’t pull off something that is both of quality and memorable, but what I’m saying is, in very controversial gamer terms, I would rather play Devil May Cry 2 than 4 because I can’t recall anything that took place during the latter.

This fucked up Elden Ring Ascended mods fixes just that, believe it or not. I never knew what the fuck the game was pulling upon me at any given point. Renalla’s summonings not despawning after the timer? Every enemy attack inflicting poison? PvE invasions against 3 mfers? Radhan’s passively shooting arrows while using the sword? Cheese weapon locations being changed? Scarlet Rot now fully breaks your equipment? Despite feeling like I knew what the game was doing, the amount of subtle and not so subtle changes was always cool to see, even if its miserable at times, it’s exactly what I’m looking for.

Radahn was the fight I remember liking the most in Elden Ring, and I recall the first time he fucking fell out of the sky like a meteor, but do you know what's more memorable? When his shit comet was homing directly at me with increased speed, giving me Scarlet Rot just by being nearby, even if that didn't touch me. This boss fight took me around 50 attempts, I don't think it's actually possible to avoid being close, what a homophobic attack fr...

The most competent mod from this bunch is easily the DS3 one. Kicks it off with changing the first boss to Champion Gundyr because why not, while also giving you 100 levels worth of souls when you beat it. Oh also, it increases the amount of stats you get per level and reduces any cap regarding it, meaning that, after just the first boss, my HP bar filled completely the upper part of the screen. It was glorious. From Crystal Sage spawning 4 crystal lizards during his 2nd phase, to 4 feral giants being in the Deacon’s arena, to my personal favorite one, Soul of Cinder fighting alongside the 4 lords of Cinder, among other stuff, I felt like I was equally as busted as whatever shit was thrown at me.

I’ll briefly explain the other 2 ascended mods because why not. The one from DS1 is funny because it just amps everything up to 11, to the point that the best build is an archery one because it makes you stay faraway from everything while spamming rolls because you get stamina to spare. The new boss fights suck ass unfortunately, but the areas are cool. The one from DS2… is just plain bad. You know people often complain that the game puts a lot of enemies on screen for no reason? Yeah all they did was adding even more of them because of course. I'll say that the one saving grace it has is that it's the funniest one out of context.

I also can’t wait to play the Sekiro one that is in development right now. I’m sure it’s gonna be absurdly unfair and rage inducing and all that jazz, but Sekiro to me is already one of the most unforgettable games ever made and one that I ‘m sure beating it 4 times will come in handy somehow. Can’t wait to fight the Lady Butterfly and have her illusions being active all the time and for them to one shot me if I touch them.

Overall I’m not sure how to finish this, because I’m also not sure how to feel about Elden Ring as a whole. It sucks slowly starting to dislike something that you once considered as the best of the best, but that’s just life isn’t it? Nostalgia glasses don’t happen only during our childhoods after all. If you told me 2 years ago that I would actually finish Umineko, get a job, and that I’d be working in a Danganronpa cosplay for June this year I wouldn’t believe you, but here we are, right? Life moves on, and so should we. Basically what I’m trying to say is: Armored Core is better.

So for my 1000th review, I chose what I consider to be the most important brazilian game of all time. The mere existence of Unsighted is a miracle in itself, being made by 2 latinas trans women with a short budget is nothing short of impressive, considering it’s quality not only in the gameplay but also in the sprite artwork, music, and so on. How did possibly the greatest achievement in brazilian game developing history become so unknown nationally? To properly answer this question, we first have to analyze the gaming scene in Brazil.

Despite being the 3rd largest country in number of active "gamers", Brazil has a surprisingly small game development scene due to a lot of harsh factors. Hardware and Software prices tend to be too high, the government gives very little incentive in developing technological careers, and both of these have only gotten worse in the last few years by the dystopian combination that is Bolsonaro, crypto bros and Covid-19 working together. Also worth mentioning, is that a lot of programmers and artists who are into game design, straight up just leave the country whenever possible, seeking better life conditions.

Currently the most noticeable games in the minds of the average brazilian gamer, are not the likes of Dandara, Chroma Squad, Momodora or Sludge Life, who even if they don’t make your cup of tea, had a lot of effort and love put into it. The most usual names you’ll hear are the cheap ones that were made to be bad, hoping that you either play them or buy them for your friends as a joke. Kandidatos, Ultra Miner Adventures, Zueirama, and the ever infamous Bad Rats, are probably the ones that get the most recognition.

The ironic praise and fetishization of trashy national media has always existed throughout the entire world, however, I think that the extent in which it happens in Brazil is absurd, especially considering it started off as a counter movement in direct response to the enforced nationalism by government endorsed media during the dictatorship years and the “Brazil: Love it or Leave it” mentality. For decades, our most watched movie genre were softcore porn movies called “pornochanchadas”, that benefited the state by suppressing other types of movies that didn't support the regime, in perhaps the weirdest panis et circenses case I can think of.

The good neighbor policy, enforced by the american government at the time, only directly affected Rio and São Paulo as they were portrayed as the definitive tropical paradise for other first world nations to exploit. Culturally wise, the majority of the country was abandoned, which meant that the imposed nationalism had to come from within every single state, creating a sense of animosity from others, as they were perceived more as enemies than neighbors. Xenophobia became ingrained in our culture, which meant that the idea of being born in a specific state became more important than being born in Brazil itself. Mocking the idea of being brazilian while hyper valorizing your own cities had unfortunate lasting effects even after the dictatorship was dissolved.

Although the respect for other states has gotten better in the last 10 years, the disdain for the government has only ever increased as we’re facing our worst political decade yet, ranging from multiple extensive corruption scandals to a forced government takeover publicized as a democratic impeachment. However, what I think is the series of events that perfectly encapsulates our political scene, happened when our current president, Jair Bolsonaro, denied covid for 2 months after it was declared a worldwide pandemic, only to accept it’s mere existence months later by contracting it himself, only to deny it again weeks later as he was cured, claiming that his “past as an athlete wouldn’t let him die by a simple fever”.

More than 600.000 lives were lost due to covid, a number elevated by Bolsonaro’s actions and denialism. 3 ministers of health were fired during the height of the pandemic, because any measurement that went against his agenda that Covid was nothing special, resulted in them being dismissed. While most nations were trying to buy and distribute vaccines, he denied 11 deals until april 2021, with common names such as Pfizer, Covax, and even the vaccine being developed in the national territory by the Butantan institute, deemed as untrustworthy. He tried to push a chloroquine agenda, claiming it to be the true cure to covid, which to no one's surprise proved to be ineffective even before he made his announcements. Couple of months and many deaths later, Bolsonaro would end up, surprisingly, accepting a vaccine deal, which turned out later that he only actually accepted as there was embezzlement involved.

Amongst our presidential wrongdoings, the indie gaming scene flourished around the world, and although it didn’t thrive as much in Brazil, it had an impact nonetheless. Developing codes, creating digital art, publicizing media, have only gotten easier as time goes on, despite creating the unfortunate consequence that it’s more scattered around the net as ever, making so that the mere chance of a spotlight is to be considered a miracle for the average indie dev. In the last 2 years, the gaming scene was severely hit by Covid-19, however, that didn’t affect small studios a lot, especially when the amount of people working on them is as small as 2 in Unsighted’s case.

Still here after the overly simplified history lesson? Good, let’s actually talk about the game now.

The easy way to explain Unsighted to someone is that it’s a mix of Hyper Light Drifter fast paced combat alongside the limitations of a punishing stamina bar, with a metroid map progression. I’m NOT calling this game a metroidvania because it has nothing to do with the usual 2D combat, however if you think metroidvanias are more of a “feel” with progression based items with pseudo open world games, I won’t stop you. The constant back and forth of experimenting with your new upgrades is one of gaming’s greatest sensations when done right, now imagine doing that in a punishing time limit. Sounds stressful when you can’t progress in your own way? Good, that’s the main idea behind Unsighted.

After finishing the tutorial, you’ll notice that everytime you go to a new room, a small text appears in the middle of the screen telling you how much time you have left until you become an unsighted yourself, a walking android with no thought beyond primal instincts hard coded in their metallic soul. The game tries to calm you down by explaining that you can give yourself and your friends more time, with an item called Meteor Dust, which you can find by exploring, however you’ll quickly realize that giving 1 day’s worth of time is not very impactful when a day ingame happens in less than 40 minutes. You may also share them to increase your “friendship meter” to get unique rewards, which is the opposite of what anyone would do in that situation: Embracing a decaying materialism in a world that needs only solidarity.

By accepting the loot social aspect more than the emotional one, you can in theory, save more people than before, since you’ll be increasing your combat capabilities which results in you resolving the game’s conflict faster, which means you’ll be bringing salvation to even more individuals. This could also be my half assed coping mechanism that I ended up developing after letting 2 characters that were really special to the main character die, both meeting their fate because although I tried really, I ended up failing, but chose to move once again. As we all have to do sometimes.

Gear Village is one of the most comfortable hubs I have seen in gaming, facing fierce competition against Majula from Dark Souls 2 and Rosalina’s ship from Mario Galaxy. Not only it has a plethora of charming characters wandering around, but also it looks like a place I could live in, if I travel enough to the south. The androids are all visually distinct and offer different essential functions from one another, like upgrading your items, selling useful stuff, or giving you hints on where to go next.

Exploration is not obtuse in the slightest, since there’s a clear indicator in what you can and can’t do, and early on you don’t even have to get key items in a set order, so it becomes a question in how you want to approach the game. The best weapon, until the very last dungeon, and some gadgets that allow you to completely bypass some puzzles to get powerful items early on, can be obtained after the very 1st dungeon if you’ve been exploring. It’s only after a long while, that you’ll have to progress in the way the game wants you to, which is honestly pretty well executed, because it ends up coinciding, for the average player at least, to a certain “event” in the cathedral which I’ll explain later.

Fighting also feels amazing, mobility is key in this game and it feels wonderful running around. By allowing the players to never take damage by missing platforming sections, even if you have to “respawn” again, it encourages a riskier and more fun approach to both combat and puzzles. Parrying is both smooth and responsive, and also if you land it gracefully with precise timing, it restores your stamina bar fully, making it so that if you take the effort to master it, you’ll be rewarded by never having to back down from a fight. There’s also a colossal weapon arsenal to choose from, including swords, pistols, axes, shotguns, dual wielding weapons, flamethrowers, and even grappling hooks.

Well, I’m gonna get into spoilers now, so if that’s what you wanted to see from this review, have a good one, and make sure to give this game a shot, it’s worth it.

Eventually, while exploring, you’ll receive some notifications about some npc’s who have less than 24 hours remaining. The feeble, the fragile and the old ones fall victim first, however soon you’ll start to notice that the character that teaches you how to parry better and is known as the village’s chief, is also one of the first ones. And that’s when it clicked with me, that this curse comes for everyone, independent of who you are, what you’ve done, and even if you have a “past as an athlete”. While not directly being a covid metaphor, the way Unsighted handles the story, themes, and the mechanics around time being a currency, are inherently something that could only happen in our current political and social scene.

One important thing I purposefully didn’t mention until now, is that during the entire game you’ll be accompanied by a small pixie called Iris, who doesn’t exactly have much time in her hands. She greatly helps you, not only navigate and solve puzzles, but also by being your only source of actually “leveling up”. In this game, the only progression you’ll get, besides equipping discardable gears with single uses and buying expensive items to improve your healing at the cost of time, is increasing your chip slots, which might give you more health, defense, damage, stamina, etc. The fact that the only fixed progression you’ll get is tied to a npc low in time is astonishing, because it forces you to sacrifice precious time with her. Due to the nature of video games we usually don’t end up thinking much about our sidekicks, but Unsighted makes sure you know how much she’s sacrificing for you and asks you to at least keep it mutual. If you intentionally or not, let her go unsighted, your journey is not only going to be a lot lonelier, but also immensely harder, because you took her feelings, dreams, and maybe even existence, for granted.

A certain event happens when your character has less than 100 hours: she is contacted by an entity in the cathedral. There, you’ll meet a powerful person who talks like an old friend of yours that wants to “help you”, by giving you an accursed power: You can take hours away from your friends and give them to yourself. Although this might sound like a relief for some, the idea of killing your friends for your own benefit is nothing but sickening, and it doesn’t help that every single one of them was written in the story to be a good willed android, trying to survive while helping others. This is the only place in the game in which Iris won’t accompany you, as she feels a malevolent presence nearby, which means that you’re the judge, jury and executioner of yourself while in there.

You can by all means challenge her to an absurdly hard secret boss fight that will give you 10 dusts, however it not only takes a lot of effort, but also gives a reward that doesn’t benefit you as much. By working with the current dystopian system, you can guarantee yourself a safe future in this cruel world, as it’s easy to live at the cost of others, specially when your job is to be selective to who has the rights to live, however, even challenging them, won’t help as much unfortunately, as the entire fundamental aspect of being an unsighted won’t change by dethroning a single individual within a intrinsically corrupt order. There is a secret ending that requires you to beat the self proclaimed angel, however I won’t get into details because I’d have to explain a lot more elements in the story, but to summarize: You can’t vote your way into revolution, fight for what you believe in.

So now to properly answer the question: Why is Unsighted so special, even when not considering the gameplay? In an interview for Screenrant in October 2021, the devs Tiani Pixel and Fernanda Dias answered the following question “...Could you talk about what gaming was like when you were younger, and compare it to what's happening now?...” made by Leo Faierman.

“One big thing here in Brazil, and it kind of ties in with some of the discussion that has been going around lately, is with piracy. Because, for example, in the city that I lived throughout my childhood, you could never find an original game to buy. Like, it wasn't even an option. I'll be honest with you: I never saw an original PS2 game in my life, and it's common for all Brazilians. Like, I even doubt that those exist, because there was never an original game being sold here in Brazil. However, this came with a lot of positives. English is not our native language, so we received pirated games from all over the world, so there's a lot of Japanese games that are famous here that a lot of people in the US don't know, and kind of ended up being inspirations here for game designers in Brazil.”

Transforming and adapting cultures from around the world is how Brazil became Brazil. Independent if it were the natives, or the portuguese in the 15th century, or the spanish a couple years later, or the dutchman in the 16th century, or the germans and the italians in the following years, or the japanese in the 19th century, or the many other that I forgot to mention: We are in the end, a mixture of cultures from around the world, trying our best. The cultural difference between some states in Brazil is higher than the ones from entire european countries, and yet we’re all stuck in the same tropical paradise. In the end Brazil was molded by those who were molded by Brazil, therefore making something made in Brazil only possible if it was made in Brazil.

We had a lot of games in the past that captured the brazilian essence, like 171 or Tcheco in the Castle of Lucio, however those were projects made in mind to be enjoyed by mostly brazilians. We’ve also had games that tried their best to abandoned that convention, accepting their own existence as a product meant to be mostly enjoyed for those that aren’t from Brazil, but seen as the same foreign product for those that are, like Heavy Bullets or Spark. Unsighted is the first project that not only doesn’t follow that convention, but also actively tries to display such ethos for those that weren’t born here or the ones that do but fail to recognize it.

Unsighted is a game made by 2 trans women fighting not only to survive in one of the most transphobic countries there are, but also to make a project that will never get mainstream attention. Unsighted tells the story of those that struggle, for those that don’t care. Unsighted is the essence of a story forever doomed to be praised yet not seen by many. Unsighted to me, is the most important brazilian game of all time.