So I played Drakengard 3 for about 7 hours when I was sick and in bed... and it is chaotic in the best sense of the word. I liked the pre-rendered backgrounds and wish there were more of them. I also liked the facial animations, and I think the game would be better if it had more close-ups of the characters.
In the end, I got tired, but I thought a lot while playing. From the moment I started the game, I liked the violence that the main protagonist inflicts on his enemies. It's chaotic violence, reflected on screen by the same kind of chaotic violence that's input on the controller: left trigger, square x4, triangle x2, jump, left trigger, right trigger, dpad up, change weapon, jump, triangle, square x5-7, triangle, left trigger, right trigger... and that's how a fight usually goes. It's a mashup of musou and hack'n'slash. It's so convoluted, and even at low framerates it's fun and it works, because the combos are simple but effective, and sometimes the enviroments adds to them.
But since the game's mythos is based on songs... I kept thinking about songs and where the ending could be heading to. So somehow I started to wander into what my intentions would be in writing or making a work of art. This problem has a name and it's motivation: "Why am I writing for? Is it because I want to open everyone's eyes by force or surprise?" No, I don't have any desire to be a self-imposer. I don't want others to hear a song that contains what I desire or what I've seen in the past - a song like that would make others want something, anything, and that's not my intention. In the end, I resolved that the kind of art I would like to make is the one where I try to prevent an image, to make a gaze avert or look for an image or vice versa, to actually take something into the future, or to make others dream or wake up... That's not always clear.

Despised this when I originally played it, thought it was an underrated gem when I gave it another shot a couple of years ago, and now I’ve finally cooled on it- still a really admirable title, especially as one that was meant be Capcom’s leap into the 7th generation, but it’s decidedly frontloaded upon further inspection. So many of the offputting design choices, like the ever-present timer and weapon durability system, only really matter for the first couple of days when you’re still fumbling around, learning the layout of the mall, and dealing with the constant upsets the game throws at you just as think you’ve gotten a handle on everything.

Even coming back to it now, there’s an impressive streak of early-game roadblocks: the convicts, the gun-store owner, zombies that are deadlier and more numerous at night, and the infamous fight against Adam the Clown, each of which feels like catastrophe incarnate. But this also means these early hours necessitate, and are gratifyingly open to, experimentation. Was able to trivialize the Cletus fight by bringing in the LMG from the convict’s truck, and snowballed that into a much easier fight against Adam by handing out shotguns to a couple of survivors and having them stunlock him in place- a far cry from some of my initial attempts to tackle these fights while eating at away my time to complete objectives. If you value games for the little emergent stories they provide, the near misses and disastrous failures, then Dead Rising’s opening hours alone are well worth the price of admission. Could rattle on about the interesting moments borne out of the pressure to make the best use of your time, like a moment on this playthrough where I had to ferry two incapacitated survivors through the mall in the dead of night- anti-fun in practice, but a fantastically memorable challenge.

Once you get some of the busted boss weapons and deeper into the game, so much of that initial thrill is pared down, with little planning needed to prep for bosses and less overlapping case files to try and optimize. By its final unlockable section, the “Overtime” mode, the game has regressed into something out of the Simple Series: a threatless fetch quest through the mall carried only by the fact that you now have the opportunity to perform you newly-unlocked wrestling moves on hapless groups of Zombies. It’s a disappointing arc for a title that begins so well, definitely something where its most widely-criticized choices are really what brings the game together, and it's the deeper stuff, the scenario design and balancing, that needed further examination.

Would be much easier to let the campaign’s flaws slide if it coexisted with a mode that was totally centered on trying to save as many survivors as possible under a dramatically shortened timer- the game’s additional “Infinite Mode,” where you have to survive as long as possible in the mall while your health slowly drains also seems an inversion of what the real draw of the game is- just a total slog in practice- and even more of a shame given that Capcom normally excels at making supplemental modes that can highlight the best of a game’s mechanics. (Was an ardent RE6 defender for the longest time due to the relative strength of Mercenaries, for instance.)

At the same time, it’s got a million little cool details that are easy to latch onto, like it’s opening, where you learn the photography controls while doing a fly-by of Willamette’s main street, which handily beats Half-Life out as far as atmospheric intros are concerned- a great intro that offers you some early-game experience if you get the most lurid shots of the disaster unfolding on the ground, and crucially, is entirely optional. Or managing to run into the surprising number of optional scenes where Frank is stripped of gear and has to break out of captivity- tense moments I had completely missed on my first time through. And this to say nothing of the mall proper, which might rank as one of the best-realized locations in the medium, with a huge number of unique storefronts to explore. Easy to lose time just rummaging through and exploring the place, a mundane location given real life through sheer craft of world design.

I’m a couple of hours into Dead Rising 2 as of writing this, and it already seems like a more measured and evenly-paced experience, but the first is still worth a try- it’s a deeply flawed game, but it never seems half-hearted in its attempts to pull so many weird directions.

“As flies to wanton boys we are to the gods, they kill us for their sport. Soon the science will not only be able to slow down the ageing of the cells, soon the science will fix the cells to the state and so we will become eternal. Only accidents, crimes, wars, will still kill us but unfortunately, crimes, wars, will multiply.

I love football.
Thank you.”

- Eric Cantona, King Lear, Act IV Scene I

very first characters you run into are three dudes listening to an instrumental cloud rap beat talkin about "finding the light" and "money". this was how all you drainers sounded like to me back in 2016. the good (low fidelity, usage of vaporwave/cloud rap/house music, smoke button) works here more than the bad (a bludgeoning of an ending, "loneliness +1", a general briefness). some striking moments like goin on a elliptical bender in a coastal town & getting really nervous eating potato chips around girls. think the ennui ultimately misses the mark for me in a way that other games with similar experiences don't though--the mood feels so particular to a college-adjacent early 20s anxiety & somehow too abstract to strike a real nerve. the ending convo is going for the jugular on a certain type of person but it feels a lil tacky in how subdued the rest of the experience is. VtM:B still clears for climatic conversations with a taxi driver i fear. i liked it enough to be invested in sad3d's other works when they go on sale tho.

its a cliché but there really is smthn special about loading into a lobby in a COD and just immediately hearing a 40 year old OG tellin some kid over the mic to stop flipping weed packs. or finishing a demolition match and hearing two friends say good night to each other and exchange pleasantries. or hearing a dude ask "is the daddy still in the picture?" when his mom gaming buddy talks about her kids (shooters gotta shoot). im glad this series has over anything retained that strand of anonymous, impermanent interaction--everyone joins a lobby with their mic unmuted, and the mute all feature is legitimately bugged i think. there's little to no carryover of players between matches (crossplay is really seamless which adds the exchangeability of teammates & enemies). COD is rlly like living in the city where these other popular battle royale-tinged shooters are like living in the suburbs where everyone is contained in their own little silo's. not that there's anything wrong with fragmentation & keeping the circle small! but sometimes i just want to be with some strangers for the night. u stay crashin bout a nigga we don go on dates😒

as a game its a lil shite tho lol. but not in an unlovable way. the last COD i played was advanced warfare which had the same sorta lootbox/premium system....coupla years and its still rlly bad. reusing maps from the original Black Ops 2 is so funny, and kind of embarrassing that is the state of the FPS multiplayer experience. weapons are really anonymous, which is a problem i've had with treyarch titles and every COD not named MW2. spawn system is as cooked as it was in the old titles. scorestreak rewards feel extremely underwhelming, at least the nuke was funny. having the usual weapon system level on top of the regular level progression system on top of an operator level system on top of a callcard & emblem system on top of a daily/weekly challenge system makes one of the insane end game screens imaginable. smthn is deeply cooked if im skipping through my unlocks at the end of the match like theyre youtube ads. all of the perks feel inconsequential save a select 6 which every experienced player seems to use. only new positives are i think the scorestreak system here is rlly the best killstreak overhaul they've done & i like the addition to CTF the standard game queue. oh and the level of modularity in the attachment system is rlly quite cool, idk if those are unique additions to this entry but they were appreciated.

the appeal here for me is that this the last title that feels like a complete COD from what fans on the internet say, and the least that's like, fucked with ig. and that the simple truth is that ADS hitscan feels as good as it did in 2010, squeezing the trigger and seeing the hitmakers pop up is some real "neuron activated" gaming what can i say. its infrequent but when you load in a match and its already lit in voicechat and you start puttin up SGA numbers with your red dot SMG hittin all the flanks its like perfect videogame junk food.

not certain how much of it was because of the rebalancing on the remasters' part but i kind of vibed with the leveling system up to a certain point. kept me engaged with all the actions i was doing in regular battles instead of just mashing through my strongest moves to win and it was an interesting way to mold my party according to my own desires. guy was an insane dual wielding barbarian freak by the end of the game and was doing like 2k damage per hit by the end of it. it was sick. that being said once my party got powerful enough i was kind of mashing through battles anyway so does it really matter in the end...

the emperor coming back from hell to take back his throne before your rival boss fight can even happen is an all-time hater move

The brutality of Hotline Miami but totally recontextualized as slapstick comedy. Gabe Cuzzillo and the gang made this game specifically for me but also for everyone that has ever had the innate primal urge to go monkey mode. Doesn’t outstay its welcome, controlling Mr Ape is simple yet fluid, the pop-art inspired graphics and dynamic jazz percussion soundtrack really make this thing shine. This whole thing really clicked for me during the office level where you can just toss dudes out of windows and have them plummet to the cityscape below. Really addicting, captivating stuff. I love monky

does absolutely nothing to distinguish itself from the original except for adding a silly knife parry mechanic and turning all the memorable, interesting encounters in the first game into call of duty levels. I dont know how they copy-pasted so many maps from the first game and somehow have bad level design so frequently? inventory management is basically gone, the changes to the shop suck, the enemy movement from the first game (something rarely replicated but adds a ton of personality) is straight up gone and instead everyone is a bullet sponge like in the re2 remake. man, whatever.