Hattori
1989
While Nintendo was never afraid of experimenting with Mario's identity, providing numerous detours in aesthetic and thematic imagery just by jumping from SMB1 to SMB3, Super Mario Land definitely earns its distinction of being "the weird one".
It interprets the plumber's magical landscape as one filled with ancient history and sci-fi cultural artifacts from our own planet that somehow feel more alien than what the Mushroom World has accustomed us to. There is definitely something very otherwordly and dreamlike about starting a level with the implication that Mario arrived on a UFO and that the enemies you will be facing are Easter Island face fellas, and the changes made to accomodate the limitations of the hardware, such as the exploding turtles and the bouncing ball power up, further elevate Super Mario Land's odd quirky vibe.
What I love the most about it though is its brevity. Low of difficulty and brisk paced, Super Mario Land is beatable under 30 minutes with little chance for game overs and with enough variety sprinkled inbetween that makes picking it up for a high score attempt highly leasurable and absolve it of the settling monotony that plagues the repeating assets and levels from SMB1. Add to that the beautifuly simplistic monochrome sprite line work and eternal earworm tunes that will never leave your head for all of your life and I'm very tempted to call it a perfect game, despite its lackluster platforming physics. A priveledged Mario that preceeds its own brand, that's pretty neat.
Try not to feel joy while listening to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f1I1i_t94E&ab_channel=GilvaSunner%3AArchive
It interprets the plumber's magical landscape as one filled with ancient history and sci-fi cultural artifacts from our own planet that somehow feel more alien than what the Mushroom World has accustomed us to. There is definitely something very otherwordly and dreamlike about starting a level with the implication that Mario arrived on a UFO and that the enemies you will be facing are Easter Island face fellas, and the changes made to accomodate the limitations of the hardware, such as the exploding turtles and the bouncing ball power up, further elevate Super Mario Land's odd quirky vibe.
What I love the most about it though is its brevity. Low of difficulty and brisk paced, Super Mario Land is beatable under 30 minutes with little chance for game overs and with enough variety sprinkled inbetween that makes picking it up for a high score attempt highly leasurable and absolve it of the settling monotony that plagues the repeating assets and levels from SMB1. Add to that the beautifuly simplistic monochrome sprite line work and eternal earworm tunes that will never leave your head for all of your life and I'm very tempted to call it a perfect game, despite its lackluster platforming physics. A priveledged Mario that preceeds its own brand, that's pretty neat.
Try not to feel joy while listening to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f1I1i_t94E&ab_channel=GilvaSunner%3AArchive
Knowledge of game design is a curse, akin to having the flavor of steak forever ruined by the awareness of The Matrix programming you to like it, and you can probably count in one hand the games that predate that red pill moment when gaming language forever became familiar and predictable to you. Pokemon Yellow was fortunately one of those games for me, a joyous moment of my childhood where my whole life existed inside a small square screen that could fit inside my pocket and whose 2D 8-bit walls felt as far away from my grasp as my imagination and curiosity were willing to go.
Picking it up nowadays, more than 20 years since that precious moment of my life where I gladly devoted myself to it, the feeling is a bittersweet one. With its secrets, surprises and discoveries now obsolete, the rudimentary gameplay fails to engage, and its combat is one of mindless grind and broken mechanics that are only challenged by the occasional difficulty spike, once a compelling puzzle to be solved as kid, now serving only to expose the game’s more blatant weaknesses.
Its magic wasn’t totally lost on me just yet, however. The sudden color pallet changes when arriving at a new area, the simplest of chiptunes that were instantly recognizable on note one, the kinesthetic pleasure of speeding through its routes with a newly acquired bike and its cheerful theme, and the occasional excitement at the sight of a personal favorite, managed to sustain my interest throughout its primitive JRPG nature, as it quickly took a backseat to the core allure and fun that made this the biggest franchise of all time, one that never fails to leave you in a state of impending suspense as you watch your pokeball twitch its way into a new catch or fill you with excitement as you witness your personalized team finally evolve after your hard effort, regardless if you already know what it will turn into or not.
Reviewing Pokemon Yellow in a vacuum is nonetheless a fruitless endeavor, considering so much of its purpose and qualities are tied to the social aspect that was so crucial to the Pokemon mania of the 90s, leaving the game itself in an incomplete state whose true experience is forever inaccessible to the ones who are unfortunate to not have lived through those magical years. Think of it as trying to relive the early days of your favorite MMO, it’s just not possible, is it? Nostalgia is a double-edged sword, and it’s no truer than in Pokemon Yellow’s case. Still, climbing the ranks through every Gym and surviving the Elite Four gauntlet so you can slap the grin off the face of Blue with your ever trustworthy Pikachu remains a satisfying throwback to a time when I would gladly listen to fake rumors on how to catch Mew from dumb kids at school.
Picking it up nowadays, more than 20 years since that precious moment of my life where I gladly devoted myself to it, the feeling is a bittersweet one. With its secrets, surprises and discoveries now obsolete, the rudimentary gameplay fails to engage, and its combat is one of mindless grind and broken mechanics that are only challenged by the occasional difficulty spike, once a compelling puzzle to be solved as kid, now serving only to expose the game’s more blatant weaknesses.
Its magic wasn’t totally lost on me just yet, however. The sudden color pallet changes when arriving at a new area, the simplest of chiptunes that were instantly recognizable on note one, the kinesthetic pleasure of speeding through its routes with a newly acquired bike and its cheerful theme, and the occasional excitement at the sight of a personal favorite, managed to sustain my interest throughout its primitive JRPG nature, as it quickly took a backseat to the core allure and fun that made this the biggest franchise of all time, one that never fails to leave you in a state of impending suspense as you watch your pokeball twitch its way into a new catch or fill you with excitement as you witness your personalized team finally evolve after your hard effort, regardless if you already know what it will turn into or not.
Reviewing Pokemon Yellow in a vacuum is nonetheless a fruitless endeavor, considering so much of its purpose and qualities are tied to the social aspect that was so crucial to the Pokemon mania of the 90s, leaving the game itself in an incomplete state whose true experience is forever inaccessible to the ones who are unfortunate to not have lived through those magical years. Think of it as trying to relive the early days of your favorite MMO, it’s just not possible, is it? Nostalgia is a double-edged sword, and it’s no truer than in Pokemon Yellow’s case. Still, climbing the ranks through every Gym and surviving the Elite Four gauntlet so you can slap the grin off the face of Blue with your ever trustworthy Pikachu remains a satisfying throwback to a time when I would gladly listen to fake rumors on how to catch Mew from dumb kids at school.
TOTK’s ordeal is one of chasing the new while trying to disregard the familiar, and as the hours start to weight in, that tug of war becomes increasingly harder to ignore. Are we supposed to once again be enchanted by its flora and fauna, when its discoveries, behaviors, and uses have already been demystified? Does defeating the Taluses, Hinoxes, Lynels, or really any of the game’s repeated roster of enemies, entice us if their challenge and enjoyment have already been mastered and depleted? Can TOTK really expect us to not fully dismiss the koroks, dragons, blood moons, or great fairies when their initial wonderment and allure has already been supplanted by their mechanical and transactional grindy nature one whole game ago?
A complete map of the Sky Islands ends up exposing a clear picture of the TOTK experience, one of sparse copy pasted content overlaying a preexisting world already exhausted 6 years ago, and not even The Depths’ initial excitement of surprise and mystery manages to sustain itself when it quickly dilutes into a lifeless landscape of repeated vistas, encounters, and rewards. Ultrahand lit up the internet with numerous videos that showcased the boundless possibilities of TOTK’s outlandish physics engine, but once past that initial, admittedly fun phase of building janky flying vehicles and wonky death laser robots, the motivation or even necessity to waste time on it quickly evaporates as the grind required for Zonite resources starts to overstep the enjoyment of emergent creative building that ceases to be engaging or productive outside the small pockets of content designed around them. Regardless of how fun and limitless the Zonite tools can be, what use are they when placed in a game that wasn’t initially built around them, and ultimately didn’t need them in the first place?
The reduction of Ganon in BOTW into a malevolent cancer secretly expanding its reach all over Hyrule, eventually usurping its technology and turning it against the people who exploited it without truly understanding it, brilliantly paralleled Nintendo’s passive role in the franchise’s stagnation, a company that conformed into a worn-out formula that ended up festering from within. The “Destroy Ganon” quest pop up was the bold statement of a series willing to throw away all its excess to rediscover its core ethos through an aptly amnesiac Link that bridged the gap between the character’s motivations and the player’s desires, and while the scarce narrative might have been a sour spot to most fans, BOTW’s holistic vision of open world design provided unique storytelling mostly told through the mere act of play.
TOTK exploits this dispersed storytelling method once more, this time failing to measure up to the urgency at hand and without the blank slate context that was integral to the premise of BOTW, as a cunning and fully conscient Ganondorf resorts to be put on standby until the end of the game while you stumble about Hyrule doing the repeated song and dance of regathering resources through the completion and collecting of shrines, towers, dungeons and flashbacks that little have to offer in terms of narrative momentum. Most baffling of all is the inclusion of yet another redundant Hyrule ancestry plotline that not only rejects the continuity of the series, but also of TOTK’s own predecessor. What exactly was the point of undermining the Sheikah’s relevancy and influence as Hyrule’s ancient civilization with the addition of the Zonai who just ended up complicating this world’s history with uninteresting and boring lore that substantially leads nowhere and fails to connect to BOTW? Boy did I sure felt stupid when I got excited thinking Ganondorf was directly addressing the Timeline in the opening cutscene.
BOTW reinvigorated both a franchise and a genre, and the stripping off much of the franchise’s baggage in favor of an uninterrupted experience of exploration focused solely on the player’s kinesthetic compulsions will forever represent some of the most fun I have had with a videogame. While recognizing many of its flaws, rarely did they ever diminish my appreciation for the things it did best, and I saw BOTW’s underdeveloped ideas as fertile ground for improvement. A new Majora’s Mask was always a pipe dream, but I’m sure that no one expected TOTK to be little more than just a glorified BOTW DLC. It’s not just that TOTK fails to address any of BOTW’s most agreeable criticisms, but it also manages to exacerbate and accentuate them to an intrusive degree by the sheer redundancy of giving you the same exact 100+ hour experience, and while BOTW had the privilege of letting its magic act before inevitably dissipating, TOTK does not.
The few instances of novelty TOTK allows us are unsurprisingly some of the best and most inspired moments the series has produced and showcase the potential TOTK had, but it becomes difficult to cherish those memories when they are stashed away in-between dozens of hours trudging through a well-known map with no more secrets left to be uncovered and whose repeated content isn’t placed in it with the same care and thought as it once was. Is there truly anything more pathetic than most of The Depths rewards being DLC and Amiibo costumes from the previous game? Ultimately, the biggest problem with TOTK is that it doesn’t just lack an identity of its own, it also ends up robbing it from BOTW and damaging it in the process. You are forgiven, Skyward Sword.
PS: I’ll throw a bone at TOTK, regarding its impressive physics engine and how it revealed how out of touch so much of the videogame discourse is with comments on TOTK’s outdated graphical fidelity and performance while the gameplay itself is leagues ahead of anything that we have been witnessing recently with the big “cutting edge” titles.
A complete map of the Sky Islands ends up exposing a clear picture of the TOTK experience, one of sparse copy pasted content overlaying a preexisting world already exhausted 6 years ago, and not even The Depths’ initial excitement of surprise and mystery manages to sustain itself when it quickly dilutes into a lifeless landscape of repeated vistas, encounters, and rewards. Ultrahand lit up the internet with numerous videos that showcased the boundless possibilities of TOTK’s outlandish physics engine, but once past that initial, admittedly fun phase of building janky flying vehicles and wonky death laser robots, the motivation or even necessity to waste time on it quickly evaporates as the grind required for Zonite resources starts to overstep the enjoyment of emergent creative building that ceases to be engaging or productive outside the small pockets of content designed around them. Regardless of how fun and limitless the Zonite tools can be, what use are they when placed in a game that wasn’t initially built around them, and ultimately didn’t need them in the first place?
The reduction of Ganon in BOTW into a malevolent cancer secretly expanding its reach all over Hyrule, eventually usurping its technology and turning it against the people who exploited it without truly understanding it, brilliantly paralleled Nintendo’s passive role in the franchise’s stagnation, a company that conformed into a worn-out formula that ended up festering from within. The “Destroy Ganon” quest pop up was the bold statement of a series willing to throw away all its excess to rediscover its core ethos through an aptly amnesiac Link that bridged the gap between the character’s motivations and the player’s desires, and while the scarce narrative might have been a sour spot to most fans, BOTW’s holistic vision of open world design provided unique storytelling mostly told through the mere act of play.
TOTK exploits this dispersed storytelling method once more, this time failing to measure up to the urgency at hand and without the blank slate context that was integral to the premise of BOTW, as a cunning and fully conscient Ganondorf resorts to be put on standby until the end of the game while you stumble about Hyrule doing the repeated song and dance of regathering resources through the completion and collecting of shrines, towers, dungeons and flashbacks that little have to offer in terms of narrative momentum. Most baffling of all is the inclusion of yet another redundant Hyrule ancestry plotline that not only rejects the continuity of the series, but also of TOTK’s own predecessor. What exactly was the point of undermining the Sheikah’s relevancy and influence as Hyrule’s ancient civilization with the addition of the Zonai who just ended up complicating this world’s history with uninteresting and boring lore that substantially leads nowhere and fails to connect to BOTW? Boy did I sure felt stupid when I got excited thinking Ganondorf was directly addressing the Timeline in the opening cutscene.
BOTW reinvigorated both a franchise and a genre, and the stripping off much of the franchise’s baggage in favor of an uninterrupted experience of exploration focused solely on the player’s kinesthetic compulsions will forever represent some of the most fun I have had with a videogame. While recognizing many of its flaws, rarely did they ever diminish my appreciation for the things it did best, and I saw BOTW’s underdeveloped ideas as fertile ground for improvement. A new Majora’s Mask was always a pipe dream, but I’m sure that no one expected TOTK to be little more than just a glorified BOTW DLC. It’s not just that TOTK fails to address any of BOTW’s most agreeable criticisms, but it also manages to exacerbate and accentuate them to an intrusive degree by the sheer redundancy of giving you the same exact 100+ hour experience, and while BOTW had the privilege of letting its magic act before inevitably dissipating, TOTK does not.
The few instances of novelty TOTK allows us are unsurprisingly some of the best and most inspired moments the series has produced and showcase the potential TOTK had, but it becomes difficult to cherish those memories when they are stashed away in-between dozens of hours trudging through a well-known map with no more secrets left to be uncovered and whose repeated content isn’t placed in it with the same care and thought as it once was. Is there truly anything more pathetic than most of The Depths rewards being DLC and Amiibo costumes from the previous game? Ultimately, the biggest problem with TOTK is that it doesn’t just lack an identity of its own, it also ends up robbing it from BOTW and damaging it in the process. You are forgiven, Skyward Sword.
PS: I’ll throw a bone at TOTK, regarding its impressive physics engine and how it revealed how out of touch so much of the videogame discourse is with comments on TOTK’s outdated graphical fidelity and performance while the gameplay itself is leagues ahead of anything that we have been witnessing recently with the big “cutting edge” titles.
2023
Some things you can never forgive, and such charity will never be given to the taste makers that absolutely failed Rain World at release, so called professionals of the medium who were unable to engage with its singular vision and holistic design, to put it mildly. Time however has vindicated Rain World, now a work of cult following and ever increasing recognition and prestige within the most fervent supporters of emergent gameplay, transcending its pilgrims through one of the most affecting and affirming experiences of uncompromised talent and understanding of what videogames can and should be.
6 years later, Rain World's simulation of nature's beautiful cruelty remains an untouchable feat of game design that threads its hidden mechanics and systems with the erratic and unpredictable ecosystem of alien yet animalistic critters that instigate the player to subconsciously participate on a food chain of cause and effect, so seamlessly permeated through Slugcat's learning process of overcoming the odds and discovering where their limits lies.
Downpour represents purely an assertion of the undeniable qualities of the base game, filling it with abundant content that dares not touch the core tenets of Rain World but instead just adding on top new toys and rules with which to navigate its sandbox. Be it Gourmand and its insatiable gluttony or Artificer and its pyrotechnic killing spree, the careful balance of Rain World is never tarnished or dilluted in favor of an experience that runs contrary to the cat and mouse art it excels at.
I will save the remaining Slugcats for a later time. Rain World is a once in a lifetime deal that I wish to forget for a while until the day I once again need to be reminded of its beautifully realized environment of industrial decay and out of control flora and fauna that puts to shame much of Metroid's milestones and whose crushing Rain instils in me a humble reverance for its deafening cleansing brutality, listening to it from the safety of a newly found shelter in the nick of time in the same manner I would listen to the rain outside my room from the comfort of my cozy bed.
6 years later, Rain World's simulation of nature's beautiful cruelty remains an untouchable feat of game design that threads its hidden mechanics and systems with the erratic and unpredictable ecosystem of alien yet animalistic critters that instigate the player to subconsciously participate on a food chain of cause and effect, so seamlessly permeated through Slugcat's learning process of overcoming the odds and discovering where their limits lies.
Downpour represents purely an assertion of the undeniable qualities of the base game, filling it with abundant content that dares not touch the core tenets of Rain World but instead just adding on top new toys and rules with which to navigate its sandbox. Be it Gourmand and its insatiable gluttony or Artificer and its pyrotechnic killing spree, the careful balance of Rain World is never tarnished or dilluted in favor of an experience that runs contrary to the cat and mouse art it excels at.
I will save the remaining Slugcats for a later time. Rain World is a once in a lifetime deal that I wish to forget for a while until the day I once again need to be reminded of its beautifully realized environment of industrial decay and out of control flora and fauna that puts to shame much of Metroid's milestones and whose crushing Rain instils in me a humble reverance for its deafening cleansing brutality, listening to it from the safety of a newly found shelter in the nick of time in the same manner I would listen to the rain outside my room from the comfort of my cozy bed.
2022
Certain video games don’t necessarily require innovation, originality or trailblazing to stand out from the crowd as works to be celebrated and classics to be. Specifically, titles in the indie scene such as Hyper Light Drifter, Dusk or ZeroRanger have proven time and time again that execution and presentation can far outweigh the well from which their ideas are stolen from, and whose aesthetic perfectionism and gameplay polish and varnish ultimately become the craft to be praised.
Signalis is one such title, unabashedly putting on full display its 5th gen survival horror roots and influences, both visually and mechanically, with a sci-fi coat of paint that covers it with a collage of homages to groundbreaking works that range from Evangelion, Blade Runner and Blame!, all the way to Tarkosvsky, Lynch and Lovecraft. Marrying Resident Evil’s resource management tension with Silent Hill’s purgatorial psychological assault lends Signalis the opportunity to evoke an unparalleled lyrical and dreamlike experience that never sacrifices the tenets from which those series made their name from, perfecting the art of environmental storytelling and backtracking revelatory dread.
In an age of understandably unsubtle and overbearing dystopian nightmares presented through art, Signalis instead places much of its totalitarian regime imagery into the background of its setting, visuals, lore and puzzles, making its love story of inevitable tragedy the central core of the narrative. The retrofuturism of Signalis serves not only as an artistic pursuit for tactile and analogue nostalgia, but also as a tool to convey the priorities of a fascist empire that has consciously dwindled the mental liberty, self-expression and unconformity of the main characters now stuck in an ever perpetuating restrictive world of redundancy and self-mutilation, doomed to a slow, empty death.
The cohesiveness in which Signalis threads its story, gameplay and art design is ultimately the game’s greatest feat. It elevates an otherwise universal and familiar language to new heights, thanks to a talented dev duo that understands the strengths of their interests and influences and manages to funnel into a production effort that would put many triple A endeavors to shame. Can’t wait for what rose-engine has in store next, this is a homerun already.
Signalis is one such title, unabashedly putting on full display its 5th gen survival horror roots and influences, both visually and mechanically, with a sci-fi coat of paint that covers it with a collage of homages to groundbreaking works that range from Evangelion, Blade Runner and Blame!, all the way to Tarkosvsky, Lynch and Lovecraft. Marrying Resident Evil’s resource management tension with Silent Hill’s purgatorial psychological assault lends Signalis the opportunity to evoke an unparalleled lyrical and dreamlike experience that never sacrifices the tenets from which those series made their name from, perfecting the art of environmental storytelling and backtracking revelatory dread.
In an age of understandably unsubtle and overbearing dystopian nightmares presented through art, Signalis instead places much of its totalitarian regime imagery into the background of its setting, visuals, lore and puzzles, making its love story of inevitable tragedy the central core of the narrative. The retrofuturism of Signalis serves not only as an artistic pursuit for tactile and analogue nostalgia, but also as a tool to convey the priorities of a fascist empire that has consciously dwindled the mental liberty, self-expression and unconformity of the main characters now stuck in an ever perpetuating restrictive world of redundancy and self-mutilation, doomed to a slow, empty death.
The cohesiveness in which Signalis threads its story, gameplay and art design is ultimately the game’s greatest feat. It elevates an otherwise universal and familiar language to new heights, thanks to a talented dev duo that understands the strengths of their interests and influences and manages to funnel into a production effort that would put many triple A endeavors to shame. Can’t wait for what rose-engine has in store next, this is a homerun already.
1998
Ikaruga is a game I respect. While the brilliant simplicity and genius of its polarity mechanic and the way it intrisically threads Ikaruga's aesthetic with the game's challenge and scoring is a craft I'm deeply fascinated with, its art remains inaccessible to someone like me who is incapable of conquering its methodical demanding difficulty reserved only for the greatest of masochists. By stage 3 my grip on the controller is long gone, as the synapses of my small brain fail to register the assault of shifting color threat and I'm inevitably resigned to abuse the unlimited continues boon that ultimately turns Ikaruga into a vacuous theme park ride devoid of its initial purpose.
While Radiant Silvergun doesn't at all abandon the Ikaruga ethos of being a near impenetrable gauntlet of overwhelming enemy and boss patterns to be decoded with twitch precision, the versatility of its weaponry lend the player a level of expression, freedom and puzzle solving that avoids the pitfalls of its spiritual successor that would constrict you into an eternal scrolling of repeating mistakes and hardships that deplete all your lives in the same recurring manner. Added to that, the Story Mode provides a clever compromise over an unlimited continues system that has the difficulty scaling towards you in unison, giving the illusion of progress and personal improvement instead of feeling like outright cheating.
But Arcade Mode is of course where Radiant Silvergun truly shines. Unlike the immediacy of other shmups where the road to success mostly lies in the ability to dodge and shoot everything, mastering the color chain scoring is a requirement you will be forced to engage with in order to level up your weapons and diminish the chances of imminent death, a prospect that finally reveals the link between Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga, in addition to the counter intuitive Destruction scoring where you allow the bosses to last longer and strike harder for a chance at a higher score.
Treasure have a natural talent for taking any genre and making it their own, and Radiant Silvergun is no exception. The unique mechanics and challenge of Radiant Silvergun are accompanied by an ever crescending orchestral bombastic soundtrack and beautifully 32bit backgrounds that elevate the scope and portentousness of its exhausting and rewarding apocalypse to a league beyond most shmups, allowing the noobest of noobs like me to feel fullfillment with the completion of Easy Mode.
While Radiant Silvergun doesn't at all abandon the Ikaruga ethos of being a near impenetrable gauntlet of overwhelming enemy and boss patterns to be decoded with twitch precision, the versatility of its weaponry lend the player a level of expression, freedom and puzzle solving that avoids the pitfalls of its spiritual successor that would constrict you into an eternal scrolling of repeating mistakes and hardships that deplete all your lives in the same recurring manner. Added to that, the Story Mode provides a clever compromise over an unlimited continues system that has the difficulty scaling towards you in unison, giving the illusion of progress and personal improvement instead of feeling like outright cheating.
But Arcade Mode is of course where Radiant Silvergun truly shines. Unlike the immediacy of other shmups where the road to success mostly lies in the ability to dodge and shoot everything, mastering the color chain scoring is a requirement you will be forced to engage with in order to level up your weapons and diminish the chances of imminent death, a prospect that finally reveals the link between Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga, in addition to the counter intuitive Destruction scoring where you allow the bosses to last longer and strike harder for a chance at a higher score.
Treasure have a natural talent for taking any genre and making it their own, and Radiant Silvergun is no exception. The unique mechanics and challenge of Radiant Silvergun are accompanied by an ever crescending orchestral bombastic soundtrack and beautifully 32bit backgrounds that elevate the scope and portentousness of its exhausting and rewarding apocalypse to a league beyond most shmups, allowing the noobest of noobs like me to feel fullfillment with the completion of Easy Mode.
I'm not a fan of Dark Souls III. While admitedly course correcting much of DS2's lackluster kinesthetics, dubious design choices and overall uglyness, its lustrous presentation of a dying world filled with grotesteque ghouls and tragic beasts to be put out of their misery once again failed to compel me to be absorbed by its story and challenge as I once was with DS1 and it left me questioning the path the series had decided to taken upon itself for the future.
My early disappointment started to set in when I realized that the promise of a converging world filled with different realities and structures stacked on top of each other in a sea of chaos, ash and rot established in its intro cutscene and promotional art wasn't going to be delivered. Instead, that narrative thread served as an excuse to place incompatible and unrelated levels one after another in a straight line to the credits, without much consideration for thematic or aesthetic consistency and purpose. Much of that disregard was evidently a direct result of the decision to give fast travel to the player from the start.
It's no secret that much of the success of DS1 was achieved on the shoulders of its beautifully crafted world design that revealed itself with every twist and turn the player conquered one step at a time and whose immersive oppression was built up throughout the long treks it forced you to make between bonfires. Reaching Ash Lake after hours spent trudging through Blighttown only to realize I would have to go back up again was one of the most defeated feelings I had ever experienced in a videogame, and also the exact moment I fell in love with the series. There is truth to the criticism that DS1's peak is Anor Londo and the game kinda deflates from then on out, but it's telling that that's also when you happen to gain the ability to fast travel.
DS3 methodically perfects the level design formula of its predecessors, to such a degree that robs its world of much of the allure, mystery and sense of adventure one came to expect of the series, regardless of how genuinely picturesque and challenging its settings can be. Reaching a new area only to see gate with an obvious shortcut elevator behind it never ceased to immediately halt my excitement for what lied ahead, a reminder that the next set of hardships would be a tightly controlled environment saved by the proper placement of a bonfire only to be discarded once conquered.
And for the DS3 fan reading this and wanting more reason to hate me, consider that my favorite area of the whole game was Farron's Keep. Yeah, the fuckin slow moving swamp, the one moment of DS3 where you are allowed to push into the unknown, surrounded by unseen threats and lacking any specific direction while witnessing monstrosities far off in the distance, and whose small stories of discovery, action and terror that occur within it further expand your understanding of this universe's history and interconnectivity. And then, a bonfire is found in the middle of it, and all that beautiful tension immediately evaporates.
While technically harder than anything that came before it, DS3 never feels as punishing and harsh as DeS or DS1 could be. None of DS3's misfortunes manage to match the dread of getting cursed or losing the Firelink bonfire in DS1 nor do its unseen tricks every feel as crippling and nasty as DeS's persistent world. Instead, it's a repeat of most of those games unique ideas refurbished in a way as to not upset its new fandom, focusing on b-lines to a franchise rapidly being about fighting highly challenging and fast paced bosses. In a sense, the new Firelink Shrine is a fitting representation of DS3, a safe hub set in a controlled void without conflict and struggle, where the player can indulge himself with all the commodation and comfort the game is able to provide.
Such reasons kept me away from its DLC for this long, and while it didn't absolutely dazzle me I was pleasantly surprised to find it to be an improvement over the main game. One of my biggest gripes with DS3 was its eagerness to display an abundance of iterations on the themes and concepts of DS1 without giving them breathing room to develop and imprint their significance into the whole of the series. Coming hot of Bloodborne's tightly cohesive world and lore, detours into the Cathedral of the Deep or the Profaned Capital felt like half baked underwhelming experiences that could have gladly filled an entire game and ended up just overcomplicating the mythology of the franchise. Both Ashes of Ariandel and Ringed City manage to fix that sore spot.
Decaying, rotting and decrepit vistas of ash, cold and death, whose denizens comprise of locusts, flies and crows waiting for the end of the world. The thematic ensemble of the DLC finally does justice to the DS3 promise and presents an intimate conversation with the player on the inevitable finality of all things in a visual language much stronger than anything present in the rest of DS3, overtly revealing the last remaining secrets of its lore and converging all of its ideas into one final epilogue. While too little too late, Dreg Heap is the game I wanted out of DS3, at last placing you at the center of the infamous "time is convoluted in Lordran" meme with crumbling buildings and toppled civilizations merging into one another. The Amnesiac Lapp questline is a brilliant understated encapsulation of Dark Souls that perfectly endcaps the dark/light motif of the series, and both Sister Friede and Gael provide the best DS3 boss experience that manages to be challenging while remaining doable and fair, unlike much of Elden Ring's unbalanced roster.
Going through Dark Souls III again and finally experiencing its DLC after coming off of Elden Ring, I've gained a bit more appreciation for it and what it set out to do. It will never be one of my favs from the franchise, as it branched into a path that further removed a lot of the design sensibilities that made me a fan of its predecessors, but considering what it eventually evolves into, I find it to be a very good videogame.
My early disappointment started to set in when I realized that the promise of a converging world filled with different realities and structures stacked on top of each other in a sea of chaos, ash and rot established in its intro cutscene and promotional art wasn't going to be delivered. Instead, that narrative thread served as an excuse to place incompatible and unrelated levels one after another in a straight line to the credits, without much consideration for thematic or aesthetic consistency and purpose. Much of that disregard was evidently a direct result of the decision to give fast travel to the player from the start.
It's no secret that much of the success of DS1 was achieved on the shoulders of its beautifully crafted world design that revealed itself with every twist and turn the player conquered one step at a time and whose immersive oppression was built up throughout the long treks it forced you to make between bonfires. Reaching Ash Lake after hours spent trudging through Blighttown only to realize I would have to go back up again was one of the most defeated feelings I had ever experienced in a videogame, and also the exact moment I fell in love with the series. There is truth to the criticism that DS1's peak is Anor Londo and the game kinda deflates from then on out, but it's telling that that's also when you happen to gain the ability to fast travel.
DS3 methodically perfects the level design formula of its predecessors, to such a degree that robs its world of much of the allure, mystery and sense of adventure one came to expect of the series, regardless of how genuinely picturesque and challenging its settings can be. Reaching a new area only to see gate with an obvious shortcut elevator behind it never ceased to immediately halt my excitement for what lied ahead, a reminder that the next set of hardships would be a tightly controlled environment saved by the proper placement of a bonfire only to be discarded once conquered.
And for the DS3 fan reading this and wanting more reason to hate me, consider that my favorite area of the whole game was Farron's Keep. Yeah, the fuckin slow moving swamp, the one moment of DS3 where you are allowed to push into the unknown, surrounded by unseen threats and lacking any specific direction while witnessing monstrosities far off in the distance, and whose small stories of discovery, action and terror that occur within it further expand your understanding of this universe's history and interconnectivity. And then, a bonfire is found in the middle of it, and all that beautiful tension immediately evaporates.
While technically harder than anything that came before it, DS3 never feels as punishing and harsh as DeS or DS1 could be. None of DS3's misfortunes manage to match the dread of getting cursed or losing the Firelink bonfire in DS1 nor do its unseen tricks every feel as crippling and nasty as DeS's persistent world. Instead, it's a repeat of most of those games unique ideas refurbished in a way as to not upset its new fandom, focusing on b-lines to a franchise rapidly being about fighting highly challenging and fast paced bosses. In a sense, the new Firelink Shrine is a fitting representation of DS3, a safe hub set in a controlled void without conflict and struggle, where the player can indulge himself with all the commodation and comfort the game is able to provide.
Such reasons kept me away from its DLC for this long, and while it didn't absolutely dazzle me I was pleasantly surprised to find it to be an improvement over the main game. One of my biggest gripes with DS3 was its eagerness to display an abundance of iterations on the themes and concepts of DS1 without giving them breathing room to develop and imprint their significance into the whole of the series. Coming hot of Bloodborne's tightly cohesive world and lore, detours into the Cathedral of the Deep or the Profaned Capital felt like half baked underwhelming experiences that could have gladly filled an entire game and ended up just overcomplicating the mythology of the franchise. Both Ashes of Ariandel and Ringed City manage to fix that sore spot.
Decaying, rotting and decrepit vistas of ash, cold and death, whose denizens comprise of locusts, flies and crows waiting for the end of the world. The thematic ensemble of the DLC finally does justice to the DS3 promise and presents an intimate conversation with the player on the inevitable finality of all things in a visual language much stronger than anything present in the rest of DS3, overtly revealing the last remaining secrets of its lore and converging all of its ideas into one final epilogue. While too little too late, Dreg Heap is the game I wanted out of DS3, at last placing you at the center of the infamous "time is convoluted in Lordran" meme with crumbling buildings and toppled civilizations merging into one another. The Amnesiac Lapp questline is a brilliant understated encapsulation of Dark Souls that perfectly endcaps the dark/light motif of the series, and both Sister Friede and Gael provide the best DS3 boss experience that manages to be challenging while remaining doable and fair, unlike much of Elden Ring's unbalanced roster.
Going through Dark Souls III again and finally experiencing its DLC after coming off of Elden Ring, I've gained a bit more appreciation for it and what it set out to do. It will never be one of my favs from the franchise, as it branched into a path that further removed a lot of the design sensibilities that made me a fan of its predecessors, but considering what it eventually evolves into, I find it to be a very good videogame.
At the top of a seemingly ordinary mountain in Pokemon Silver you find a familiar figure. A few dozen or so hours before, you shrugged off the finality of the Pokemon League and indulged your motivation to continue exploring a virtual world that seemed endless to you, crossing a small unassuming river to find yourself setting foot in a whole new continent with more Gyms to conquer and new Pokemon to discover. Shocked and ecstatic to find out you knew this new world like the back of your hand, you return to an older game affected by the passage of time and your previous presence in it. Having exhausted both Johto and Kanto, you proceed past the bounds of its world and up the summit of a seemingly ordinary mountain where you find a familiar figure. To anyone who lived through that experience during their childhood and stood in front of a mute Trainer Red that threw a lvl 81 Pikachu at them, you know that at that very moment that was as good as videogames were gonna get.
And in some sense, that has always been true to me. Despite losing interest in the franchise over the years, Pokemon occupies a special place in my heart as it was the first video game I truly surrendered myself to, at a time where the magic and enigma of video games weren't lost to me and the reward of exploration and experimentation weren't bogged down by hindering familiarity with game design, and while Pokemon is now bigger than it's ever been, it has never again been able to recapture the same mania of the late 90s I was fortunate to have witnessed. Excuse me while I step away from my unbiased persona for a sec to tell you that if you didn't play Pokemon in a pre-internet age, where secrets and rumours were exchanged word of mouth by snot nosed lying kids, doing battles and trades meant having to deal with the annoying neighbour rich bully that had the one link cable, and where the game extented past the screen into a shared cult of watching the tv show, collecting the trading cards and buying the toys, then the Pokemon experience is no longer accessible to you because you simply. weren't. there.
Anyways, Arceus is none of that. Understandably and rightfully so, it doesn't try to remake the unremakeable but instead demonstrates to be the most effort Game Freak has put into the series in 20+ years of stagnation, being the closest Pokemon has ever gotten to creating the fantasy sequel me and many others envisioned all those years ago while being transfixed by a Game Boy and a small cartridge. It sounds shallow on paper, but it's astounding how drastically being able to see the critters moving around in the distance in full 3D changes the entire series. Reducing the scope beyond the simplicity of Gen 1, Arceus removes the towns, gyms, trainer battles and traditional progression of the main series to focus exclusively on the core experience of "catching them all", and while that ends up being a bare bones gameplay loop, it sustains its appeal through free form BOTW like set of landscapes that present the Pokemon as wild dangerous beasts to be carefully observed and approached and that give brief glimpses of the kind of excitement for exploration encountered in those old games of yore.
Does Arceus get a pass, that its contemporaries wouldnt benefit from, just for being Pokemon? Yeah. Catching one Pokemon means you have essentially catched them all, as they all share the same behaviors, movements and animations while stumbling about their primitive AI, battles are included in a meandering compromise of broken and mindless combat with little strategy and bond between your team, and the lack of interaction between the Pokemon and the environments they inhabit relegate the few and far between moments of personality and characterization to the quests and cutscenes. But goddammit, I'm human too, and I would be lying if I said I didn't get a sense of eager satisfaction everytime I watched that pokeball jump around into a sucessful catch. It's not the dream Pokemon game we have learned to forget over the decades, it will probably take another 20+ years to get there. But it's an evolution, and that has to mean something in the case of Pokemon.
And in some sense, that has always been true to me. Despite losing interest in the franchise over the years, Pokemon occupies a special place in my heart as it was the first video game I truly surrendered myself to, at a time where the magic and enigma of video games weren't lost to me and the reward of exploration and experimentation weren't bogged down by hindering familiarity with game design, and while Pokemon is now bigger than it's ever been, it has never again been able to recapture the same mania of the late 90s I was fortunate to have witnessed. Excuse me while I step away from my unbiased persona for a sec to tell you that if you didn't play Pokemon in a pre-internet age, where secrets and rumours were exchanged word of mouth by snot nosed lying kids, doing battles and trades meant having to deal with the annoying neighbour rich bully that had the one link cable, and where the game extented past the screen into a shared cult of watching the tv show, collecting the trading cards and buying the toys, then the Pokemon experience is no longer accessible to you because you simply. weren't. there.
Anyways, Arceus is none of that. Understandably and rightfully so, it doesn't try to remake the unremakeable but instead demonstrates to be the most effort Game Freak has put into the series in 20+ years of stagnation, being the closest Pokemon has ever gotten to creating the fantasy sequel me and many others envisioned all those years ago while being transfixed by a Game Boy and a small cartridge. It sounds shallow on paper, but it's astounding how drastically being able to see the critters moving around in the distance in full 3D changes the entire series. Reducing the scope beyond the simplicity of Gen 1, Arceus removes the towns, gyms, trainer battles and traditional progression of the main series to focus exclusively on the core experience of "catching them all", and while that ends up being a bare bones gameplay loop, it sustains its appeal through free form BOTW like set of landscapes that present the Pokemon as wild dangerous beasts to be carefully observed and approached and that give brief glimpses of the kind of excitement for exploration encountered in those old games of yore.
Does Arceus get a pass, that its contemporaries wouldnt benefit from, just for being Pokemon? Yeah. Catching one Pokemon means you have essentially catched them all, as they all share the same behaviors, movements and animations while stumbling about their primitive AI, battles are included in a meandering compromise of broken and mindless combat with little strategy and bond between your team, and the lack of interaction between the Pokemon and the environments they inhabit relegate the few and far between moments of personality and characterization to the quests and cutscenes. But goddammit, I'm human too, and I would be lying if I said I didn't get a sense of eager satisfaction everytime I watched that pokeball jump around into a sucessful catch. It's not the dream Pokemon game we have learned to forget over the decades, it will probably take another 20+ years to get there. But it's an evolution, and that has to mean something in the case of Pokemon.
2022
Like a Dante or a Sonic, Bayonetta exemplifies the hallmarks from which all the greatest videogame characters are built from, with a characterization and raison d'etre easily expressed and inferred from the moment you pick up the controller. Bayonetta is a constant controllable blitz of unwavering and cathartic violence presented with all the female bravado and sexuality that the character is able to exude, which made Bayonetta 3's relentless propensity to rob the world of what defines the character so disappointing.
While I understand the divide it created within the fanbase, Bayo 2 was never the sore spot to me as it is with some. The indulgence in game breaking overpowered moves and gimmicky boss battle setpieces diminished much of the combat complexity expected of the series, but it was still an engaging exploration of action that still pertained to the pillars that defined the first game and the bombastic and boastful personality of its heroine. Bayo 3 taking 2's route would have been an acceptable compromise in my book, had its central shitck of devil summons not been so half-baked into it.
Bayo 3 fills most of the experience and screen with sluggish summons that disarm the player of their surroundings and control, rewarding button mashing that feels disconnected and completely at odds with the core fast paced Bayonetta gameplay, and while providing some of the most memorable and exhilirating moments of the series, be it riding demon artillery trains, fighting giant kaijus Godzilla style or witnessing the Baal Zebul recital, the inconsistent game language these setpieces demand never fail to feel like the game is being put on hold while the critters have their fun and Bayoneta stands in a corner.
Expecting Bayo 3's story to compensate this shift in protagonism spotlight, it was disheartening to follow along a nonsensical plot devoid of much of the over the top personality and cheeky endeavours Bayonetta had accustomed us to. I'm not gonna pretend that the previous two Bayonettas were bold masterpieces of storytelling, but they managed to cohesively escalate the stakes with the right dosage of stylized larger than life action and portentious melodrama, permeated by a thematically and aesthetically rich set of enemy encounters and environments that would build into a crescendo of satisfying wickedness.
Meanwhile, Bayo 3's underutilized metaverse motif has you world travelling to bland, visually disconnected civilizations meeting alternate versions of Bayonetta that absolutely fail to build any kind of fun, riveting and exciting chemistry with our protagonist, all leading up to a deflating and awkward finale that misses the mark so hard, you have to wonder how it has the Platinum name attached to it. Bayonetta is so absent from the narrative, not even the new fun hairstyle prevents her from being as boring as she was in the previous game (eat it, Bayo 2 hair nerds).
This is the part where we talk about Viola. It doesn't take long before you start to draw parallels between Viola and Nero from DMC, but while that character benefited from being the emotional core that ended up tying the whole series together through the course of 2 full games, Viola is an uncharismatic, tonally deaf, and forced protagonist that Bayo 3 expects us to receive with open arms and without earning her place, and I take personal offense that Platinum would entertain the idea that a character so irrelevant to the narrative of the series would be the one carrying the torch, and not just let it be another weapon in Bayonetta's arsenal.
My bitterness towards Bayonetta 3 stems not from thinking it's a bad game, which I don't. At its lowest, Bayonetta still represents some of the most engaging action you will ever experience, and in the few glimpses the game allows us, the umbra witch shines all the spotlights on her. It's just a shame that what should have been a celebration of one of videogame's greatest instead feel like nails in the coffin of the character and the series. And if you want a clearer indication that the people behind this project didn't understand Bayonetta at all, consider that the traditional credits verses happens during the classy old tune pole dancing and not during the "Let's Dance Boys!" musical act. That's one massive L.
While I understand the divide it created within the fanbase, Bayo 2 was never the sore spot to me as it is with some. The indulgence in game breaking overpowered moves and gimmicky boss battle setpieces diminished much of the combat complexity expected of the series, but it was still an engaging exploration of action that still pertained to the pillars that defined the first game and the bombastic and boastful personality of its heroine. Bayo 3 taking 2's route would have been an acceptable compromise in my book, had its central shitck of devil summons not been so half-baked into it.
Bayo 3 fills most of the experience and screen with sluggish summons that disarm the player of their surroundings and control, rewarding button mashing that feels disconnected and completely at odds with the core fast paced Bayonetta gameplay, and while providing some of the most memorable and exhilirating moments of the series, be it riding demon artillery trains, fighting giant kaijus Godzilla style or witnessing the Baal Zebul recital, the inconsistent game language these setpieces demand never fail to feel like the game is being put on hold while the critters have their fun and Bayoneta stands in a corner.
Expecting Bayo 3's story to compensate this shift in protagonism spotlight, it was disheartening to follow along a nonsensical plot devoid of much of the over the top personality and cheeky endeavours Bayonetta had accustomed us to. I'm not gonna pretend that the previous two Bayonettas were bold masterpieces of storytelling, but they managed to cohesively escalate the stakes with the right dosage of stylized larger than life action and portentious melodrama, permeated by a thematically and aesthetically rich set of enemy encounters and environments that would build into a crescendo of satisfying wickedness.
Meanwhile, Bayo 3's underutilized metaverse motif has you world travelling to bland, visually disconnected civilizations meeting alternate versions of Bayonetta that absolutely fail to build any kind of fun, riveting and exciting chemistry with our protagonist, all leading up to a deflating and awkward finale that misses the mark so hard, you have to wonder how it has the Platinum name attached to it. Bayonetta is so absent from the narrative, not even the new fun hairstyle prevents her from being as boring as she was in the previous game (eat it, Bayo 2 hair nerds).
This is the part where we talk about Viola. It doesn't take long before you start to draw parallels between Viola and Nero from DMC, but while that character benefited from being the emotional core that ended up tying the whole series together through the course of 2 full games, Viola is an uncharismatic, tonally deaf, and forced protagonist that Bayo 3 expects us to receive with open arms and without earning her place, and I take personal offense that Platinum would entertain the idea that a character so irrelevant to the narrative of the series would be the one carrying the torch, and not just let it be another weapon in Bayonetta's arsenal.
My bitterness towards Bayonetta 3 stems not from thinking it's a bad game, which I don't. At its lowest, Bayonetta still represents some of the most engaging action you will ever experience, and in the few glimpses the game allows us, the umbra witch shines all the spotlights on her. It's just a shame that what should have been a celebration of one of videogame's greatest instead feel like nails in the coffin of the character and the series. And if you want a clearer indication that the people behind this project didn't understand Bayonetta at all, consider that the traditional credits verses happens during the classy old tune pole dancing and not during the "Let's Dance Boys!" musical act. That's one massive L.
A seasoned understanding of the series strengths, Fatal Frame 3 contains some of the best scares of the trilogy, with a good dosage of effective and earned jumpscares and subdued moments of increasing unease and tension developed through the masterful environmental storytelling and its ever present voyeuristic fixed camera, additionally course correcting the lack of challenge from FF2 with a much more scarce availableness of ammo and health aids that hearken back to the last tense hours of FF1.
Taking survival's guilt as its core premise, FF3 is a more introspective journey than its more fetishistic predecessors, antagonizing its main character Rei with grief through unsettling hauntings that invade the player's safe space long after your wanderings inside the nightmarish Shintoistic mansion game world, in a similar fashion to what Silent Hill 4 succeeded with its titular room and ultimately the unique aspect that makes FF3 stand out from the remaining series.
It's shame that FF3 spends so much of its time with Rei out of the spotlight in service of other playable characters. It certainly benefits the now familiar setting of the series, as it creates some of the more understated hair raising moments from the mere act of opening a door to suddenly find yourself in an area from FF1 or FF2, while also elevating its dream mansion with a maze-like set of hallways and rooms that have a propensity to make you feel lost.
But the overbloated runtime plagues the game with patience testing backtracking that turn the dread of familiarity betrayal into exhausting fetch quests that have you passing through the same static corridors more than enough times, a feeling exacerbated for players who have done the FF song and dance before FF3. And the added characters introduced with the intent to connect all 3 FF games into one over-arching story rob Rei's inner turmoil of a more deserving focused storyline.
It doesn't contain the brevity of FF1 nor the cohesiveness of FF2, and it definitely starts to feel like a dead end to a series that would expand into even more polarizing and acquired taste sequels. But it ties the trilogy neatly with sorrowful bow, as it manages to combine the core themes of the series with a more grounded and personal ghostly tale that provides the series with a poignant and oddly satisfying happy closure to a series so defined by its tragic haunting tales.
Taking survival's guilt as its core premise, FF3 is a more introspective journey than its more fetishistic predecessors, antagonizing its main character Rei with grief through unsettling hauntings that invade the player's safe space long after your wanderings inside the nightmarish Shintoistic mansion game world, in a similar fashion to what Silent Hill 4 succeeded with its titular room and ultimately the unique aspect that makes FF3 stand out from the remaining series.
It's shame that FF3 spends so much of its time with Rei out of the spotlight in service of other playable characters. It certainly benefits the now familiar setting of the series, as it creates some of the more understated hair raising moments from the mere act of opening a door to suddenly find yourself in an area from FF1 or FF2, while also elevating its dream mansion with a maze-like set of hallways and rooms that have a propensity to make you feel lost.
But the overbloated runtime plagues the game with patience testing backtracking that turn the dread of familiarity betrayal into exhausting fetch quests that have you passing through the same static corridors more than enough times, a feeling exacerbated for players who have done the FF song and dance before FF3. And the added characters introduced with the intent to connect all 3 FF games into one over-arching story rob Rei's inner turmoil of a more deserving focused storyline.
It doesn't contain the brevity of FF1 nor the cohesiveness of FF2, and it definitely starts to feel like a dead end to a series that would expand into even more polarizing and acquired taste sequels. But it ties the trilogy neatly with sorrowful bow, as it manages to combine the core themes of the series with a more grounded and personal ghostly tale that provides the series with a poignant and oddly satisfying happy closure to a series so defined by its tragic haunting tales.
2001
Ass backwards as I like to go about these things, Fatal Frame II was my first introduction to the series, a delightful masterpiece of survival horror that piqued my interest to try its inception title this Halloween season. Having heard Fatal Frame being described as a tech demo for the PS2 over the years, I find that distinction a bit patronizing and unfair, considering how successfully the series hits it out of the park on its first try.
Fatal Frame is a testament to the aesthetic prowess and hoist Shintoism is capable of instilling in the horror genre, placing the player in an otherwordly creacky dilapidated mansion of suffocating folkloric symbolism and eerie culturally alien soundscapes drenched in darkness that elevate its humble Resident Evil-like fixed angle backtracking into one of the most oppressive and nerve-racking house of horrors that has you dreading getting past static kimono stands and samurai armor statues.
The highlight of Fatal Frame is of course its antagonistic force: the ghosts. Not just the crafsmanship put into their creepy and unsettling designs and the inherent capacity ghosts have to scare the shit out of us, but ultimately the concept of having to dispel them using a photo camera. Forcing the player to gaze straight into fear as it slowly glides towards them until the very last moment is one of the most ingenious design choices ever conceived in the genre that affirm videogames as the superior venue to explore horror, placing the responsibility of creating tension and scares on the one holding the controller.
Fatal Frame II is a refined revision of the concepts presented by its predecessor, improving upon the established core gameplay loop and retelling much of the same story, ideas and themes of ritualistic dogmas imposing on individualism in a more confident coat of paint that might make the first entry obsolete in the eyes of many. But as the foundation of the entire franchise, Fatal Frame is a singular cohesive haunting experience that doesn't overstay its welcome and utilizes the early stages of PS2 development to invoke one of the scariest games of all time.
Fatal Frame is a testament to the aesthetic prowess and hoist Shintoism is capable of instilling in the horror genre, placing the player in an otherwordly creacky dilapidated mansion of suffocating folkloric symbolism and eerie culturally alien soundscapes drenched in darkness that elevate its humble Resident Evil-like fixed angle backtracking into one of the most oppressive and nerve-racking house of horrors that has you dreading getting past static kimono stands and samurai armor statues.
The highlight of Fatal Frame is of course its antagonistic force: the ghosts. Not just the crafsmanship put into their creepy and unsettling designs and the inherent capacity ghosts have to scare the shit out of us, but ultimately the concept of having to dispel them using a photo camera. Forcing the player to gaze straight into fear as it slowly glides towards them until the very last moment is one of the most ingenious design choices ever conceived in the genre that affirm videogames as the superior venue to explore horror, placing the responsibility of creating tension and scares on the one holding the controller.
Fatal Frame II is a refined revision of the concepts presented by its predecessor, improving upon the established core gameplay loop and retelling much of the same story, ideas and themes of ritualistic dogmas imposing on individualism in a more confident coat of paint that might make the first entry obsolete in the eyes of many. But as the foundation of the entire franchise, Fatal Frame is a singular cohesive haunting experience that doesn't overstay its welcome and utilizes the early stages of PS2 development to invoke one of the scariest games of all time.
2022
The stagnation brought about by trends is an illness you can only truly see when you manage to get your hands on something unique and fresh, a moment that I gladly experienced when I first played Devil Daggers all the way back in 2016. The simplicity of its unachievable taunting goal and its hellish display of lovecraftian inevitability did more to revitalize a genre in less than 30 seconds than what a decade+ of modern console First Person Shooters failed to do.
Sorath's audacious nonchalant drop of its spiritual sequel Hyper Demon is somehow even better than Devil Daggers. Watching the stroboscopic migraine inducing trailer, it doesn't really manage to convey the sense of presence and awareness Hyper Demon puts you in until you are the one actually holding the mouse and keyboard inside its hellish prism of anxiety.
While at first glance not doing much to differenciate itself from its predecessor, the brilliance of Hyper Demon only reveals itself when you start fighting against the real innovation and evolution of this project: the score. Constantly ticking down beyond the zero digit, the challenge of Hyper Demon revolves around outrunning an indifferent ever reversed clock that assaults you with endless pursuing, screen filling and noise making nightmare projections inside a kaleidoscopic void.
Getting a high score in Devil Daggers was a curse disguised as a blessing that further extended downtime and proportionally decreased your engagement with it, a design flaw that the dev team picked up on and cleverly exploited in Hyper Demon to constantly force you into the frying pan of death, and the added versatility of its new combo stringing mechanics, power ups and enemies instill a level of verticality and speed that far outmatches its now tamer older sibling.
The arcade-y nature of Hyper Demon is a trait that inevitably puts it into a niche that will understandably discourage some players off who require more tangible and extrinsic rewards than a high score like narrative and progression, but you will be hard pressed to find this year another experience that in the span of a couple of seconds consumes your senses with a level of clarity that has you ignoring every survival instinct and throwing yourself into death, grasping at an always escaping victory while skulls from hell spell your misfortune through ghastly red premonitions.
What stays is the terrifying image of me sitting alone in front of a computer screen in the corner of a dark room at 1 am, in a daze of lunacy and caffeine while I witness my name toppling hundreds of poor souls while ascending a ladder that further demands more of my sanity. This is my GOTY, and I don't see it being topped.
Sorath's audacious nonchalant drop of its spiritual sequel Hyper Demon is somehow even better than Devil Daggers. Watching the stroboscopic migraine inducing trailer, it doesn't really manage to convey the sense of presence and awareness Hyper Demon puts you in until you are the one actually holding the mouse and keyboard inside its hellish prism of anxiety.
While at first glance not doing much to differenciate itself from its predecessor, the brilliance of Hyper Demon only reveals itself when you start fighting against the real innovation and evolution of this project: the score. Constantly ticking down beyond the zero digit, the challenge of Hyper Demon revolves around outrunning an indifferent ever reversed clock that assaults you with endless pursuing, screen filling and noise making nightmare projections inside a kaleidoscopic void.
Getting a high score in Devil Daggers was a curse disguised as a blessing that further extended downtime and proportionally decreased your engagement with it, a design flaw that the dev team picked up on and cleverly exploited in Hyper Demon to constantly force you into the frying pan of death, and the added versatility of its new combo stringing mechanics, power ups and enemies instill a level of verticality and speed that far outmatches its now tamer older sibling.
The arcade-y nature of Hyper Demon is a trait that inevitably puts it into a niche that will understandably discourage some players off who require more tangible and extrinsic rewards than a high score like narrative and progression, but you will be hard pressed to find this year another experience that in the span of a couple of seconds consumes your senses with a level of clarity that has you ignoring every survival instinct and throwing yourself into death, grasping at an always escaping victory while skulls from hell spell your misfortune through ghastly red premonitions.
What stays is the terrifying image of me sitting alone in front of a computer screen in the corner of a dark room at 1 am, in a daze of lunacy and caffeine while I witness my name toppling hundreds of poor souls while ascending a ladder that further demands more of my sanity. This is my GOTY, and I don't see it being topped.
1998
As long as dreams keep providing a subconscious creative outlet of jumbled feelings and emotions wrapped in absurdism, the motivation to interpret them in any attempt to shed light into the human condition right before they dissipate from our lucid grasp will always be a fascinating fruitless endeavor. Dr. Melfi once said said that you can't really determine the meaning of someone's dream, as "the meaning is illicit, it's re-verbalization", to which Tony understandably replied "yeah, and the gehoxtahogen is framed up by the ramistan".
It's a bit surprising that there really aren't that many videogames out there like LSD fully commited in recreating the actual feeling of being inside a dream. The barrage of familiar but alien imagery and mundane uncontextualized scenes that assaults the first half hour of LSD successfully transmit the hyper awareness of color and space that accompanies a lucid dream, and the allure of constant discovery through the mere act of touching anything sells the flimsy stability of dreams and their propensity to evade settling clarity. It sadly doesn't last long, as you quickly expend the limited set of wacky scenarios LSD has in store for you and the initial wonder of an ever changing landscape is ultimately replaced by a familiar comprehensible demystified 3D space.
Continue to push onward though, and LSD becomes a much more fascinating interactive painting of low poly deterioration. As the textures suddenly shift into an aesthetical mess of offputting and unmatching color and images, LSD becomes an interactive museum of early 3D counter intuitive beauty that doesnt stray too far from contemporary art like Cruelty Squad, ENA videos, or vaporwave aesthetic, and the landscapes that were previously exhausted turn into uncanny tone pieces that further illustrate the accidental artistry of old videogame technology.
LSD is not meant to be deciphered and you shouldn't play it as something to be "beaten". Created during an age where colaboration between the videogame industry and outside artists was simultaneously a novelty and a way to legitimize the artform, it constitutes a cultural artifact that has gained significantly more relevance over its "datedness", and will continue to elude its tourists by keeping its secrets so closely sealed. Refuse interpretation and let yourself get lost in its simulation of a dreaming PS1.
It's a bit surprising that there really aren't that many videogames out there like LSD fully commited in recreating the actual feeling of being inside a dream. The barrage of familiar but alien imagery and mundane uncontextualized scenes that assaults the first half hour of LSD successfully transmit the hyper awareness of color and space that accompanies a lucid dream, and the allure of constant discovery through the mere act of touching anything sells the flimsy stability of dreams and their propensity to evade settling clarity. It sadly doesn't last long, as you quickly expend the limited set of wacky scenarios LSD has in store for you and the initial wonder of an ever changing landscape is ultimately replaced by a familiar comprehensible demystified 3D space.
Continue to push onward though, and LSD becomes a much more fascinating interactive painting of low poly deterioration. As the textures suddenly shift into an aesthetical mess of offputting and unmatching color and images, LSD becomes an interactive museum of early 3D counter intuitive beauty that doesnt stray too far from contemporary art like Cruelty Squad, ENA videos, or vaporwave aesthetic, and the landscapes that were previously exhausted turn into uncanny tone pieces that further illustrate the accidental artistry of old videogame technology.
LSD is not meant to be deciphered and you shouldn't play it as something to be "beaten". Created during an age where colaboration between the videogame industry and outside artists was simultaneously a novelty and a way to legitimize the artform, it constitutes a cultural artifact that has gained significantly more relevance over its "datedness", and will continue to elude its tourists by keeping its secrets so closely sealed. Refuse interpretation and let yourself get lost in its simulation of a dreaming PS1.
The ability to somehow cobble together a sci-fi epic juggling multiple intertwining characters dealing with time travel, parallel universes, clones AND memory loss in a constantly timeline shifting plot that doesn't absolutely fall on its face is alone worthy of 13 Sentinels price of admission. Vanillaware's propensity to indulge on its talent for crafting some of the best 2D artwork ever realized in detriment of everything else is best served in 13 Sentinels, as it presents itself as a Visual Novel above all else, putting its genre comtemporaries to shame with gloriously drawn lived in backgrounds filled with small details and movement that give life and humanity to the game's bonkers story. Why can't all VNs be like this?
Despite its singular aesthetic and universe, 13 Sentinels is a treasure trove of sci-fi influences and homages that span the entire history of cinema, literature and anime, each character presenting a familiar premise that further complicates the stakes of the overall story and increasingly entangles its web with hard to keep up concepts and twists taken from your favorite formative fiction stories like E.T., Evangelion, War of the Worlds or Total Recall, to name a very short few. This admiration and obssession allows 13 Sentinels to muse and explore our relationship with media and how it inevitably informs our perception of the future and past, serving as both as escapism and a means of making sense of the present. Media dealing with the future always says more about the present, anyways.
Fitting that 13 Sentinels' situates itself in 1985, as it stands as a reflective stage of Japan history where art and socialeconomic outlook expressed the anguishes and aftermath of post-war through the lens of modern and futuristic optimism that rejuvenated the country to the world's eyes. Being a story of human failure, where puppetmasters endlessly obssess with revisiting and rectifying the past within the confinements of their own sins and biases, hoping they can somehow influence the fate of a future that no longer belongs to them, 13 Sentinels pits its cast of young passionate characters against an already unsalvageable world where its culprits are adamant in not passing the torch to the next generation. Waking up to a world suddenly being ravaged by giant robots might feel like a infantile analog for real world issues, but you have to wonder if having your homeland suffer nuclear bombing shouldnt be just as inconceivable.
Much has been said about 13 Sentinels' divide between story and gameplay, and while I do tend to champion videogames that seamlessly intertwine both components, 13 Sentinels manages to be successful in this endeavour by allowing the choice of how you wanna build the story of its characters and recontextualize on your own the partnership that happens in its RTS matrix. Playing on Intense difficulty let's the screen be flooded with seemingly never ending enemies that sells the desperation of the characters and decimating them all with a cathartic single attack never gets old. Where it falters is not so much on its detatchment from the story, but instead in how it positions itself as the culmination of it. One of the major setpieces that acts as a Macross homage doesn't hit as hard as it should because at that point you might not yet be sure why it should even matter. Minor issues that are swept aside by the emotion and fun of it all, and considering that 13 Sentinels' "RTS game" is a tangible thing in its world with inner logical explanation needed to understand the story, it's already going above and beyond what most games do.
13 Sentinels is a mess. It's convoluted, it's overcomplicated, and it's too self indulgent. But it's also beautiful, resonant, and totally japanese. It doesn't matter if you don't understand what the song is about, as long as it was sung well.
https://i.imgur.com/D1HkWTd.png
Despite its singular aesthetic and universe, 13 Sentinels is a treasure trove of sci-fi influences and homages that span the entire history of cinema, literature and anime, each character presenting a familiar premise that further complicates the stakes of the overall story and increasingly entangles its web with hard to keep up concepts and twists taken from your favorite formative fiction stories like E.T., Evangelion, War of the Worlds or Total Recall, to name a very short few. This admiration and obssession allows 13 Sentinels to muse and explore our relationship with media and how it inevitably informs our perception of the future and past, serving as both as escapism and a means of making sense of the present. Media dealing with the future always says more about the present, anyways.
Fitting that 13 Sentinels' situates itself in 1985, as it stands as a reflective stage of Japan history where art and socialeconomic outlook expressed the anguishes and aftermath of post-war through the lens of modern and futuristic optimism that rejuvenated the country to the world's eyes. Being a story of human failure, where puppetmasters endlessly obssess with revisiting and rectifying the past within the confinements of their own sins and biases, hoping they can somehow influence the fate of a future that no longer belongs to them, 13 Sentinels pits its cast of young passionate characters against an already unsalvageable world where its culprits are adamant in not passing the torch to the next generation. Waking up to a world suddenly being ravaged by giant robots might feel like a infantile analog for real world issues, but you have to wonder if having your homeland suffer nuclear bombing shouldnt be just as inconceivable.
Much has been said about 13 Sentinels' divide between story and gameplay, and while I do tend to champion videogames that seamlessly intertwine both components, 13 Sentinels manages to be successful in this endeavour by allowing the choice of how you wanna build the story of its characters and recontextualize on your own the partnership that happens in its RTS matrix. Playing on Intense difficulty let's the screen be flooded with seemingly never ending enemies that sells the desperation of the characters and decimating them all with a cathartic single attack never gets old. Where it falters is not so much on its detatchment from the story, but instead in how it positions itself as the culmination of it. One of the major setpieces that acts as a Macross homage doesn't hit as hard as it should because at that point you might not yet be sure why it should even matter. Minor issues that are swept aside by the emotion and fun of it all, and considering that 13 Sentinels' "RTS game" is a tangible thing in its world with inner logical explanation needed to understand the story, it's already going above and beyond what most games do.
13 Sentinels is a mess. It's convoluted, it's overcomplicated, and it's too self indulgent. But it's also beautiful, resonant, and totally japanese. It doesn't matter if you don't understand what the song is about, as long as it was sung well.
https://i.imgur.com/D1HkWTd.png
It's not surprising to me that the Battle Royale concept has had such a big reach with mainstream audiences in all forms of media over the years, as putting a group of diverse characters in a situation where they are forced to kill each other until there is only one left is a sure way to inject thrilling drama and immediate excitement into any setting or cast of characters. So say what you will of Danganronpa, but turning such an exhilirating genre into a "whodunit?" mystery is such a concoction of genius that's it's not hard to see where its success lies.
It's not until you find yourself in the thick of the first Death Trial that the strengths of Danganronpa as a VN become apparent. You would think that the game railroading you into an unavoidable solution would hardly engage the player in the puzzle solving process, but once the accusations and reveals start rolling out interspersed with Danganronpa's stylish presentation and Masafumi Takada's bombastic soundtrack, suddenly the paper cut out characters' bickering and absurd over the top twists becomes more real and intense than what you would get out of a movie or tv show, and feeling like an active participant in the murder mystery is an interactive illusion that Danganronpa has over plain text or video.
But that strength is a double edged sword that Danganronpa reveals far more than it should. The VN limitations work wonders when you are figuring shit out alongside everyone else, but if you are instead guessing way ahead of the characters, it soon becomes a game of waiting for them to circle around the obvious solution and playing minigames where deducing evidence and confronting lies is replaced with figuring out what is the exact combination of phrases the game expects from you. This wouldn't be such a problem had Danganronpa been more willing to allow consequential choice and the threat of failure in its life or death world, instead of forcing the player to act dumb for the sake of it. Something as simple as letting the player pick what Truth Bullets to load would have done wonders.
Still, I don't think anything anytime soon will leave me as flabergasted looking at the screen like the Bad Ending of this game did:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2e/86/c8/2e86c801f658934323ace8427347d1a1.jpg
It's not until you find yourself in the thick of the first Death Trial that the strengths of Danganronpa as a VN become apparent. You would think that the game railroading you into an unavoidable solution would hardly engage the player in the puzzle solving process, but once the accusations and reveals start rolling out interspersed with Danganronpa's stylish presentation and Masafumi Takada's bombastic soundtrack, suddenly the paper cut out characters' bickering and absurd over the top twists becomes more real and intense than what you would get out of a movie or tv show, and feeling like an active participant in the murder mystery is an interactive illusion that Danganronpa has over plain text or video.
But that strength is a double edged sword that Danganronpa reveals far more than it should. The VN limitations work wonders when you are figuring shit out alongside everyone else, but if you are instead guessing way ahead of the characters, it soon becomes a game of waiting for them to circle around the obvious solution and playing minigames where deducing evidence and confronting lies is replaced with figuring out what is the exact combination of phrases the game expects from you. This wouldn't be such a problem had Danganronpa been more willing to allow consequential choice and the threat of failure in its life or death world, instead of forcing the player to act dumb for the sake of it. Something as simple as letting the player pick what Truth Bullets to load would have done wonders.
Still, I don't think anything anytime soon will leave me as flabergasted looking at the screen like the Bad Ending of this game did:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2e/86/c8/2e86c801f658934323ace8427347d1a1.jpg