Isambard
3 reviews liked by Isambard
Mass Effect 3
2012
i'm always thinking about how space george w bush embeds a fox news journalist with your crew to make uplifting propaganda about the end of the known universe and this isn't played for comedy even a little bit
in fact there's a lot to be said about how this whole series belongs to the genre of post-9/11 entertainment that very sincerely treats the space us military as an overall morally positive and well-intentioned institution and that's just the funniest bit. but mostly it's just a boring nothing cover shooter
in fact there's a lot to be said about how this whole series belongs to the genre of post-9/11 entertainment that very sincerely treats the space us military as an overall morally positive and well-intentioned institution and that's just the funniest bit. but mostly it's just a boring nothing cover shooter
BioShock
2007
This review contains spoilers
yeah yeah yeah libertarians are dum dums and plot twists are unexpected, who cares
here's my own very personal gripe with bioshock. think about the storytelling in major games released shortly before this, like half-life 2 or psychonauts. what was it driven by? the characters and the environment -- pay attention to what's around you, listen to what people are telling you, and you'll get some part of the story. some parts you just won't get, ever, at all, because they've been left that way, or maybe because you've missed some non-obvious detail; maybe you'll come back to the story at a later time and it'll still surprise you with something you missed. it's up to you to wonder and interpret and use your imagination.
how does bioshock tell its story? through fucking audio logs. everywhere. everyone in rapture is constantly journaling their innermost feelings and secrets. why do they do this? because system shock 2 did it first. but that was on a god damn space ship in the space future, where you could easily believe personal audio recording devices have been commonplace and a part of life for generations, and besides, it was referencing a similar storytelling method from preexisting scifi like star trek: tng, which itself makes a great deal more sense because space naval officers on a journey of exploration would have both the time and the professional motivation to keep journals regularly.
bioshock takes place in like 1960 or so. magnetic tape recorders were "common", sure, in their industrial applications like radio, tv and the music industry, but they were not common household appliances, not until the introduction of cassette tapes in the second half of the 60s.
okay, let's say rapture's magical super technology driven by waves hands led to the creation and popularization of personal audio recording in less than the uhh two decades this city is supposed to have existed for. still doesn't explain why everyone is keeping a damn journal, except that it's for the player's convenience!
okay, so maybe it's a popular hobby, everyone's doing it, it's an expression of unfettered bourgeois individualism to treat your every insipid thought as worth recording for posterity (much like this review), sure, whatever. but then, in the game's timeline, the bad government starts cracking down on dissenters at one point -- you think that wouldn't have led to people destroying both their recorders and the recordings en masse? even people who probably had nothing to worry about but wanted to stay on the safe side anyway?
there's a guy who's supposed to be an ESL speaker doing a funny accent -- why is he recording these very private messages in broken english, instead of his first language? i guess it can be for practice... but come on! you don't really believe that! it's just because audiologs were established as the main storytelling method by the time he appears in the story, so he has to be audiologging for your convenience too.
why is it like this? well, in my personal opinion, vindicated by later developments in the series, it's because ken levine thinks he's a fucking genius among mortals and the rest of us mere jesters and bumblers need every background detail explained very slowly and carefully.
what's worse still, i think bioshock audiologs can be pointed to as one of the first occurrences of the dreaded phenomenon called "lore", which to me is not synonymous with worldbuilding and background detail, but background detail done badly -- i.e., the ubiquity of in-world information that you have no reason to have obtained, but that is given to you anyway, just so you can understand what's going on.
you shouldn't understand what's going on in a place that's gone to hell and eaten itself alive! it should be a lot of work to piece it together! it should be cryptic and disorienting and maybe nonsensical on your first go! but just like the profound moral choice of kill little child vs don't kill little child, this entire game was made for a certain intended player, one that exists solely in ken levine's imagination, and who is a gormless fucking fool. that's what this game thinks you are.
you don't even have to hand it to ken that he's right about the libertarians or whatever. of course the most extreme and ridiculous expression of american free market ideology is extreme and ridiculous! now if he'd managed to examine the same ideology as it expresses itself in more moderate, everyday, "normal" forms and still find the nightmare embedded within it... then maybe he would have made night in the woods instead. but i doubt that's something he's capable of.
here's my own very personal gripe with bioshock. think about the storytelling in major games released shortly before this, like half-life 2 or psychonauts. what was it driven by? the characters and the environment -- pay attention to what's around you, listen to what people are telling you, and you'll get some part of the story. some parts you just won't get, ever, at all, because they've been left that way, or maybe because you've missed some non-obvious detail; maybe you'll come back to the story at a later time and it'll still surprise you with something you missed. it's up to you to wonder and interpret and use your imagination.
how does bioshock tell its story? through fucking audio logs. everywhere. everyone in rapture is constantly journaling their innermost feelings and secrets. why do they do this? because system shock 2 did it first. but that was on a god damn space ship in the space future, where you could easily believe personal audio recording devices have been commonplace and a part of life for generations, and besides, it was referencing a similar storytelling method from preexisting scifi like star trek: tng, which itself makes a great deal more sense because space naval officers on a journey of exploration would have both the time and the professional motivation to keep journals regularly.
bioshock takes place in like 1960 or so. magnetic tape recorders were "common", sure, in their industrial applications like radio, tv and the music industry, but they were not common household appliances, not until the introduction of cassette tapes in the second half of the 60s.
okay, let's say rapture's magical super technology driven by waves hands led to the creation and popularization of personal audio recording in less than the uhh two decades this city is supposed to have existed for. still doesn't explain why everyone is keeping a damn journal, except that it's for the player's convenience!
okay, so maybe it's a popular hobby, everyone's doing it, it's an expression of unfettered bourgeois individualism to treat your every insipid thought as worth recording for posterity (much like this review), sure, whatever. but then, in the game's timeline, the bad government starts cracking down on dissenters at one point -- you think that wouldn't have led to people destroying both their recorders and the recordings en masse? even people who probably had nothing to worry about but wanted to stay on the safe side anyway?
there's a guy who's supposed to be an ESL speaker doing a funny accent -- why is he recording these very private messages in broken english, instead of his first language? i guess it can be for practice... but come on! you don't really believe that! it's just because audiologs were established as the main storytelling method by the time he appears in the story, so he has to be audiologging for your convenience too.
why is it like this? well, in my personal opinion, vindicated by later developments in the series, it's because ken levine thinks he's a fucking genius among mortals and the rest of us mere jesters and bumblers need every background detail explained very slowly and carefully.
what's worse still, i think bioshock audiologs can be pointed to as one of the first occurrences of the dreaded phenomenon called "lore", which to me is not synonymous with worldbuilding and background detail, but background detail done badly -- i.e., the ubiquity of in-world information that you have no reason to have obtained, but that is given to you anyway, just so you can understand what's going on.
you shouldn't understand what's going on in a place that's gone to hell and eaten itself alive! it should be a lot of work to piece it together! it should be cryptic and disorienting and maybe nonsensical on your first go! but just like the profound moral choice of kill little child vs don't kill little child, this entire game was made for a certain intended player, one that exists solely in ken levine's imagination, and who is a gormless fucking fool. that's what this game thinks you are.
you don't even have to hand it to ken that he's right about the libertarians or whatever. of course the most extreme and ridiculous expression of american free market ideology is extreme and ridiculous! now if he'd managed to examine the same ideology as it expresses itself in more moderate, everyday, "normal" forms and still find the nightmare embedded within it... then maybe he would have made night in the woods instead. but i doubt that's something he's capable of.
being a xenoblade fan is the jrpg equivalent of cult indoctrination, which is saying a lot because being a jrpg fan is like joining a cult in and of itself, so really it's like separating into an extremist faction of a larger cult that simultaneously infights at every given opportunity while taunting non-members for not finding Dunban "being over there" ticklingly hysterical even after the 167th time it's referenced in deeply brainrotted twitter circles.
I am allowed to say this and mean it endearingly because I am myself an unfathomably deranged xenoblade fan far beyond the brink of salvation. this game has irreparably changed me. I have been ruined. my brain is broken. I'm not sure it ever worked right, but my xenoblade fandom experience has ensured that it will always work wrong. otherwise innocuous terms such as "44 seconds" or "bestest" have pavloved me into laughing forever. when I see shulk take a bite of a sandwich and that bite does not animate on said sandwich, I emphatically applaud. the mere sight of Juju, a child whose only crime is loving his people, makes me black out with vitriolic rage. anytime I slice a hot knife through butter, I cry. anytime I walk on ice, I scream. when I check the time, all I see is Reyn's face on the clock - it is always Reyn time in my world now.
the other day around Reyn time (lunch) I was slicing open a bagel with a freshly sharpened serrated knife in order to make myself a toasted chicken salad sandwich. delicious. yum. bestest. unfortunately, the bagel slipped out from underneath my hand and I ended up slicing my own thumb instead. despite the alarmingly large amount of blood and even more abundant visceral pain, I luckily did not end up needing stitches. was I relieved? no. grateful? no. all that could cross my mind in that moment was that "your blade... it did not cut deep enough."
I mained Shulk competitively in super smash bros. for wii u because of my love and loyalty for this damned game. for those of you unfamiliar with Smash 4 - Shulk is booty buttcheeks doodoo dogass tier in Smash 4. he is fundamentally fucked. hopelessly hoed. maining Smash 4 Shulk is like marathon training for months only to tie a boulder to your ankle at the starting line, or maining Sharla in xenoblade 1. for four whole memorable-but-not-wonderful years I would mosey to local tournaments having extensively practiced my Arts Landing Lag Cancels and Monado B-Reversals and Purge 50-50s and Airslash Ledge Snaps (in AND out of Jump Art!) only to get utterly dicked and shitted and pissed and vomited on by some iron-deficient 14-year-old Kirby player who sucked the monado into his disgusting mouth hole and used Jump and Speed arts to Run The Fuck Away for 6 minutes. all that suffering to appease the cultish urge to remain steadfast in my xenoblade chronicles brainrot. peak fiction. I hate myself. I live for this game, and therefore want to die.
I am a shattered man. I come to you as a cautionary tale. I love xenoblade 1. it is a good game. some might call it a great one. I could even wager that it's a classic. but it is not worth a total fundamental collapse of the self. this game has significant faults that time has further illuminated. sidequests are trash. the game's third act is a disaster. characters have chemistry but very few have arcs. women don't exist in this game. why doesn't unfinished battle loop in that one fight. juju. I have heard it all. it is no longer cool or trendy or tasteful to praise xenoblade 1 as the jrpg bastion it once was.
I do not care. It is far too late for me to view this game objectively, yet I find I am more grateful to have loved a game to an extreme degree beyond objectivity even if it has cost me an entire lifetime of mental fortitude. I wish Dunban was my real dad and was "over there" instead of "forgetting me because of dementia." Riki eats your favorite jrpg mascot character for breakfast and still has time to canonically fuck his probably-smokin-hot-by-nopon-standards wife before lunch. expert worldbuilding dares to ask "what if we were all on A Guy and we climbed up his ass" and thats raw as fuck. expert OST dares to ask "what would it feel like if ears could cum" and then made my ears uncontrollably bust jumbo nut wads for over a decade running. I am one of the deranged freaks who mained Melia and therefore thinks the combat is Pretty Sick Actually. stop maining Shulk, losers. stop cradling that milquetoast monado like a security blanket and get in Melia's pain train, we're starlight kicking god in his Klaussy.
I don't care if this game is "overrated," or if i'm "scaring the hoes." I don't care if xenoblade 1 is "too anime" or "predictable" or "nonsensical" or "boring" or "not a replacement for proper nourishment." I love this game. I eat it up. I consume it in its totality - characters, world, combat, music, fandom, memes, merch, a decade of irreparably damaged culture and identity. like Shulk, it changed my future. Xenoblade Chronicles ruined my life, and I am forever thankful.
I am allowed to say this and mean it endearingly because I am myself an unfathomably deranged xenoblade fan far beyond the brink of salvation. this game has irreparably changed me. I have been ruined. my brain is broken. I'm not sure it ever worked right, but my xenoblade fandom experience has ensured that it will always work wrong. otherwise innocuous terms such as "44 seconds" or "bestest" have pavloved me into laughing forever. when I see shulk take a bite of a sandwich and that bite does not animate on said sandwich, I emphatically applaud. the mere sight of Juju, a child whose only crime is loving his people, makes me black out with vitriolic rage. anytime I slice a hot knife through butter, I cry. anytime I walk on ice, I scream. when I check the time, all I see is Reyn's face on the clock - it is always Reyn time in my world now.
the other day around Reyn time (lunch) I was slicing open a bagel with a freshly sharpened serrated knife in order to make myself a toasted chicken salad sandwich. delicious. yum. bestest. unfortunately, the bagel slipped out from underneath my hand and I ended up slicing my own thumb instead. despite the alarmingly large amount of blood and even more abundant visceral pain, I luckily did not end up needing stitches. was I relieved? no. grateful? no. all that could cross my mind in that moment was that "your blade... it did not cut deep enough."
I mained Shulk competitively in super smash bros. for wii u because of my love and loyalty for this damned game. for those of you unfamiliar with Smash 4 - Shulk is booty buttcheeks doodoo dogass tier in Smash 4. he is fundamentally fucked. hopelessly hoed. maining Smash 4 Shulk is like marathon training for months only to tie a boulder to your ankle at the starting line, or maining Sharla in xenoblade 1. for four whole memorable-but-not-wonderful years I would mosey to local tournaments having extensively practiced my Arts Landing Lag Cancels and Monado B-Reversals and Purge 50-50s and Airslash Ledge Snaps (in AND out of Jump Art!) only to get utterly dicked and shitted and pissed and vomited on by some iron-deficient 14-year-old Kirby player who sucked the monado into his disgusting mouth hole and used Jump and Speed arts to Run The Fuck Away for 6 minutes. all that suffering to appease the cultish urge to remain steadfast in my xenoblade chronicles brainrot. peak fiction. I hate myself. I live for this game, and therefore want to die.
I am a shattered man. I come to you as a cautionary tale. I love xenoblade 1. it is a good game. some might call it a great one. I could even wager that it's a classic. but it is not worth a total fundamental collapse of the self. this game has significant faults that time has further illuminated. sidequests are trash. the game's third act is a disaster. characters have chemistry but very few have arcs. women don't exist in this game. why doesn't unfinished battle loop in that one fight. juju. I have heard it all. it is no longer cool or trendy or tasteful to praise xenoblade 1 as the jrpg bastion it once was.
I do not care. It is far too late for me to view this game objectively, yet I find I am more grateful to have loved a game to an extreme degree beyond objectivity even if it has cost me an entire lifetime of mental fortitude. I wish Dunban was my real dad and was "over there" instead of "forgetting me because of dementia." Riki eats your favorite jrpg mascot character for breakfast and still has time to canonically fuck his probably-smokin-hot-by-nopon-standards wife before lunch. expert worldbuilding dares to ask "what if we were all on A Guy and we climbed up his ass" and thats raw as fuck. expert OST dares to ask "what would it feel like if ears could cum" and then made my ears uncontrollably bust jumbo nut wads for over a decade running. I am one of the deranged freaks who mained Melia and therefore thinks the combat is Pretty Sick Actually. stop maining Shulk, losers. stop cradling that milquetoast monado like a security blanket and get in Melia's pain train, we're starlight kicking god in his Klaussy.
I don't care if this game is "overrated," or if i'm "scaring the hoes." I don't care if xenoblade 1 is "too anime" or "predictable" or "nonsensical" or "boring" or "not a replacement for proper nourishment." I love this game. I eat it up. I consume it in its totality - characters, world, combat, music, fandom, memes, merch, a decade of irreparably damaged culture and identity. like Shulk, it changed my future. Xenoblade Chronicles ruined my life, and I am forever thankful.