not morally egregious per se but rather a depressing culmination of a decade's worth of design trickery and (d)evolving cultural/social tastes and otherwise exists as insipid twitchcore autoplaying bullshit that should come with a contractual agreement binding its devotees to never speak prejudicially about mobile games or musou ever again lest they face legally enforced financial restitution. just play nex machina man. or watch NFL. been a fun season for that. fuck the review man let's talk sports in the comments

cannot say i am particularly enamored with the idea that we should frame this discussion in any way that pretends it is not ultimately a willful net loss for games preservation. the idea that in order to aggressively push hardware a development team was enlisted to resurrect a long forsaken ip, in the process fundamentally misunderstanding the majority of its artistic sensibilities (sometimes aggressively so) to showcase a console’s power rubs me the wrong way for several reasons. and there’s potent irony here because we must also remember that in essence sony is banking on from softwares death cult to launch a console cycle for the second time in a row now. recall the invective words of shuhei yoshida, 2009: 'This is crap. This is an unbelievably bad game.' surely what is now a valuable ace in the sleeve for sonys financial strategy in the 9th generation of consoles onwards deserves more respect than this?

as an immediate contrast in the field of remakes, i’ll put forward that at the very least, ff7 is one of the most ubiquitous games of all time - to such a degree that altering its content and expanding on its themes in a rebuild-esque scenario is not only sensible, but appreciated. the same case is difficult to make for demon’s in my opinion.

perhaps bluepoints alterations, seldom rooted in any reverence for aesthetics but instead prioritizing largely perfunctory gameplay, are to your tastes. but they are not to mine. the original demon’s souls is an intensely difficult work to assess, litigate, and reconcile with, to be sure, but whatever your stance on it, it’s difficult to deny how exquisitely it worked with its limitations to fashion something that was entirely inspired and bold, yet quintessentially from software. none of that same evocative ethos is reflected here, and for these reasons i find bluepoint’s iteration extremely difficult to respect - doubly so because im in a position now of having twice been told to give bluepoint a chance on a remake, both times to personally and deeply unsatisfactory results. i only wish more folks had a convenient way of experiencing the original so they were free to pass their own judgments

what may just separate the veterans from the inexperienced in this game is the quality of their knifework. leon might pack an arsenal replete with the sexiest weapons of all time, but it's the tried-and-true double-edged stiletto he's packing that remains your eternal companion out there in the shit. utilizing it to its fullest requires confidence to an extent that resembles rashness - a full understanding of where to strike, when to kick, and how to deke. if you ask me, coming fresh off a run of professional, this is one of the most compelling elements of RE4 - the convergence between melee and gunplay is transformative, configuring leon into a living weapon. there is no element of his kit that goes unused or registers as unnecessary.

i once jokingly claimed that a remake of this title needed to simply superimpose re6's base of mechanics on to the game, but actually convey to players how best to parse these systems. there's actually probably a little nugget of gold buried in there - after all, i refuse emphatically the addition of a block button ala the ethan winters duology, or the presence of a parry which, when mishandled, tends to choke combat systems with its rote all-encompassing applicability. what they really need to do here is expand and tailor the level of knifework present. imagine if we got rid of the need for qtes because we got a game with hitboxes every bit as fair, but your knife mode had dozens of options attached to it resembling something like genes dodges from god hand, informally and unofficially linking mikamis action game tenure...errant slashes leading to blades clashing...im talking high risk high reward knife action in such a manner that it doesn't compromise on leons fragility. that, to me, would be a good rendition of re4. shouldn't bend the knee or make concessions to enemy design so as to make the holy grail 'knife only challenge run' more palatable to layfolk...people figured out how to do it with the original, they'll do it again

also id like to be able to throw my knife

looking back to the miserable state of the games industry in the seventh generation, i have to say that the feverish cries to find the citizen kane of gaming - basically paltry, philistine shorthand for the holy grail of the medium, a work that legitimizes the practice and is enshrined in the canon - were super funny, not only because of the obvious nod to that works strengths with relation to filmmaking (which cant be replicated in games wholesale), but also way more specifically because that movie is the direct result of several contextual, social, and political factors that basically 100% mean games will literally never, ever get their own citizen kane. the last of us, for a time, was that 'citizen kane', in the eyes of many. which is insane because this title introduces literally nothing new in the AAA environ through either storytelling, mechanics, or structure (even when it was released it was patchwork pastiche of everything that came before it) and on top of that it was heavily corporate funded focus-tested prestige slush which in effect fully betrays the idea of this game being a ‘citizen kane’ type. a citizen kane of the medium would have to do more than be soulless and perfunctory interactivity Big Video Games decide for you has artistic merit - i'd even go one step further to say that if anything, Big Video Games would probably frown on the citizen kane of video games, similarly to how orson welles legacy was attacked and dismantled by hollywoods vanguard again and again, and again and again and again. it amuses me this is happening yet again with god of war but what can i say i guess it's tough being a sore winner

i'd wager there are many who try to undertake a more fair critical analysis when writing about this game. for the sake of transparency, let's just say i can't. this isn't about a stringent inability to separate art from the artist, this is about my inability to separate art from its era.
- it is emblematic of a dark period in capcoms oeuvre, in which they repeatedly made awful creative and financial decisions in an attempt to both maximize revenue and appeal to western markets
- it is easily one of the most repugnant, misogynistic games ive ever played; it possesses some of the worst writing ive ever seen in a game while still supposedly aspiring to shakespearean greatness. none of its musings on society ever come together nor can it be enjoyed as a charming romp when so little of its characterization is either endearing or palatable
- the calvacade of capital G Gamers who were thoroughly unimpressed by this title inspired a desperate and petty form of tribalism from the likes of varying industry figures that continues to resurface to this day...
- ...which, inadvertently, largely reminds of a kind of rampant xenophobia that existed in the seventh generation of games, a quiet dismissal of anything japanese in the medium and a refusal to engage with their works on sincere grounds (look no further than the original niers critical admonishment). ninja theory felt completely comfortable disparaging and blaspheming the original franchise that they now held the keys to in an era where inescapable indie 'beloveds' like jonathan blow and phil fish rallied to antagonize an entire country's output to the medium
- ninja theory had zero right to patronize or criticize, by the way, given that itsuno had to babysit them to teach them anything at all about proper enemy design, combat design, and so on and so forth. their action game couldn't even be considered average until the release of the special edition
- honestly think the games environments look like dogshit, considering it's the one thing everyone is unanimous in praise of. 2000s movie poster type bullshit

a stark reminder of an awful time to be a participant in the medium and the sole reason i refuse to be accessory to ninja theory in any financial capacity. sacrilege if im being real. hilarious that dmc5 reconciles with this games western sensibilities to often brilliant effect by comparison

in a genre well known for conservative sensibilities and a dearth of anthropological and cultural respect, as well as voyeuristic and hedonistic death tourism, blood on the sand stands out as self-aggrandizing, maximalist, and bordering on parodic in a way very few tend to be. a subversive and stately satire this is not, but the mere insertion of 50 cent into a wartorn setting when his previous digital outing humbly involved enacting vengeance against the american criminal underworld says as much about the aughts zeitgeist as our proclivities in the horror genre during that era does. maybe this buries the lede somewhat, because one of the most important facts about this game was only revealed relatively recently, but blood on the sand was alleged to have started as a tom clancy game recently; conflicting reports from development suggested its yarn was spun from a failed covert-one project, an adaptation of bourne trilogy alum robert ludlum's ideas. one article implicitly posits that these prospective titles were stages in a continuum prior to publisher vivendi's decision to use their convenient rights to 50 cent, although its also possible the use of tom clancy was shorthand for use in an interview given that vivendi didn’t have the license to adapt tom clancy’s works. whatever the case, this largely explains the game's constituent elements – fighting tooth and nail through a wartorn middle-east setting, so familiar to video games and film of the era, recontextualized to fit 50 cent.

other games centered around rappers are designed around an understanding of their core ethos; the wu-tang clan, with their sound representing an evocative mix of east asian and black culture, with particular reverence afforded towards martial arts, found themselves on the psx with 1999’s shaolin style, a fighting game that literalized and made tangible the groups stage personae and the aesthetic undercurrents in their discography. or take the def jam franchise, which takes the feuds, the aggression, and the machismo of the music industry during that time and channels that raw energy into a wrestling game developed by AKI. and this was mythological for its cast – there’s an interview with method man that always makes me crack up where he essentially says that all he cared about was having the hottest finishing move in the game. even rap jam volume one, a basketball game for the snes, plays to some of these sensibilities by essentially offering basketball Without Limits. coolio isn’t afraid to throw hands there. rims creak under the weight of dunks from impossible heights. it’s all performance centered around culture, identity, reputation.

what makes 50 cent unique in this regard, especially as far as performance and cultural mythology is concerned, is the now-infamous, oft-referenced incident in which, early in his career, he was shot nine times in south jamaica allegedly as the result of the release of his controversial song, ‘ghetto qu’ran’. ‘bulletproof’ isn’t just the title of a licensed video game, it’s part and parcel of the 50 cent brand and his identity, referenced often in his discography and utilized to demonstrate the artists grit and countercultural edge. the violence of his work is therefore afforded numerous dimensions given his firsthand experience with this kind of trauma, which in turn represents part of the appeal, that kind of verisimilitude. certainly, bulletproof (the game) plays into this mythology. where fighting games seem the natural route for the wu-tang clan, 50 cents life and identity could only ever have seen translation into ludology through firefights. it’s a bit macabre but totally in line with his career sensibilities.

blood on the sand, then, seemingly represents a reactionary inverse to bulletproof’s simple reiteration and expression of the 50 cent persona. instead of playing a nameless, hardened soldier fighting on behalf of an imperialist agenda in the middle east as is the standard in this format, that voiceless force of nature has been replaced by 50 cent, who can easily, cynically, be read as the all-american invulnerable supersoldier - one who built his brand from the ashes of derelict poverty. y'know, bootstraps, the american way. but the game rejects any easy textual understanding. yes, 50, narratively and mechanically, is totally committed as an agent of destruction and havoc, but his quest primarily pits him against a rogues gallery of self-interested judas archetypes; 50 is naturally distrustful and seldom offers aid, only so long as his goals align with other parties. and these rivals are all configured as gangsters, entrepreneurs, those seeking profits. an early conversation is helpful in this regard, in which 50 cent claims new yorks streets are entirely owned by gangsters; his conversational partner claims the middle eastern region theyre in is controlled by organized crime on a scale surpassing that of new york. the kind of americanized conception of gang warfare transplanted onto the middle east revealed through this dick-measuring contest is the crux of blood on the sand’s text, additionally reflected in its color coded enemy design, evoking gang colors and affiliation more than it necessarily does terrorism, as well as in its environmental design, like a hyper-americanized strip club sticking out like a sore thumb. the connotations of the war on terror are there but one gets the sense that blood on the sand uses those familiar political and genre elements as (unfortunately) familiarized backdrop and setting moreso than it does to convey a straightforward narrative about combatting jihadist insurgents.

another thing setting blood on the sand apart from its milieu is 50’s characterization – this alone isn’t revelatory but it’s in stark contrast to others in the genre. uncharted is allowed to disguise its lack of humanity through a constant assault of quips and ironic insincerity, as protagonist nathan drake pilfers the remains of ancient civilizations for profit and slaughters anyone in his path, reenacting colonial tendencies in the process for the sake of ‘a good time’. and this is a constant thread in all the games, encountering ancient societies where something went wrong and the enemy type shifts towards supernatural, impossibly advanced yet primitive ghoul caricatures. these misanthropic attributes are not alone to uncharted, as several other adventure shooters share much of the same problems. perhaps the most brutally honest any of these games has ever been is when you lead a no-holds barred defence against enemies laying siege to a fast food establishment in modern warfare 2.

50 cent, meanwhile, is unceasingly committed to securing the bag – there’s no pretense of nobility or honor here, but he will have banter with the rest of g-unit, air his frustrations with the constantly spiraling nature of his journey to get a skull back, and discuss the setting and architecture with his allies. it's all a matter of debt collection from shady benefactors who continually steer you in the wrong direction, and 50 is content to follow this labyrinthine design so long as payments still on the table. so, blood on the sands rejection of its central middle eastern analogue transforms the game into an interpretive assault on the restraints and foibles of the modern music industry. the whole plot is kickstarted when 50 cents contract isn’t honoured and he isn’t paid a cool 10 mil for a concert he held; a diamond-encrusted skull is offered as a means of recompensation, which becomes the driving force of the narrative and its collection becomes the locus for his rampage. thus, it can be said that blood on the sand is very simply a game about honoring the work of artists, and of fairly compensating them for their labour. one of many traitorous parties in-game is a paramilitary squad who force 50 into committing a heist and then attempt to take the payout for themselves; during the subsequent boss battle, the squad’s commander, voiced by lance reddick, tells 50 to walk away with his life and squander the profit for everyone’s sake. after all, his nephew’s an ardent fan, and 50 should chalk this mishap up to experience before he gets hurt. this read is bolstered by a couple of tidbits: the knowledge that, according to 50, blood on the sand is in part a tie-in to g-unit’s 2008 damning ‘elephant in the sand’ mixtape, which followed a longstanding feud between 50 cent on the one hand and ja rule and fat joe on the other hand, his peers in the industry. additionally, a great deal of blood on the sand’s visual identity and palette was inspired by the film blood diamond of all things, which of course involves atrocities in sierra leone revolving around the highly inhumane and exploitative diamond mining trade, all farmed during a war zone. continuing the read, theres obviously more than a few unsavoury statements one could make about the music industry in this light. that kind of exploitation -> reclamation loop was something i felt that was common to the games mini-arcs.

one other film i didn’t expect to weigh on my mind so heavily over the course of my playthrough was uncut gems! the image of 50 holding a diamond encrusted skull, a symbol of his labour and his persona, is downright operatic. it parallels kevin garnetts role in uncut gems, who perceives entire iridescent universes, with his lived experiences superimposed and rapidly cutting in and out of frame, and the metaphorical blood, sweat, and tears of many in an unethically sourced black opal. he becomes determined, obsessed even, to hold on the alluring gem, as he considers it a symbolic representation of wealth, fortune, and physical prowess - like a good luck charm. clearly, the skull, with its own implied sordid history, has similar value for 50 as well - it's considered priceless, but his intentions with it are undisclosed for the entire narrative. he simply wants it. both fictionalized portrayals of these 'characters' are in conversation with their mythologized roles in culture, but where uncut gems is concerned with destiny, stability, and fortune, with questions of materialism and faith at the forefront, blood on the sand makes no such appeals to higher powers – 50 is, after all, bulletproof, and the game is more than happy to let him manifest his own payback narrative, the gods be damned. the exploitation of miners in uncut gems’ prologue frames its narrative, but through bombast and hyperbole 50 uses the lens of a militarized zeitgeist to take revenge on his own enemies in the industry, both real and perceived - which serves its purpose as a reclamation narrative.

perhaps these are some highbrow, navel-gazey interpretations and readings on why you should play blood on the sand. but you wanna know the lowbrow, crass, real reason? the game’s just fun as hell. even leaving aside its aesthetics this is a white-knuckled responsive third person shooter, rapidly maneuvering you through conflict after conflict in an arcade setting with more of a semblance of actual encounter design than the majority of its peers. these mechanics are framed by an unrelenting tempo of macro and micro goals in visually distinguishable and legible skirmishes while aiming for combo chains and high scores. 50 cent and devil may cry’s dante alike both see the value of taunting enemies to bolster their ranks and to style on their enemies. 50 cent basically gets heat moves as well, and he can activate max paynes bullet time. this bullet time mechanic is known as gangsta fire, and it essentially makes 50 move faster while also slowing down time. its meter is quite strict and can only reliably be filled up quickly by means of stage pickups, meaning that there's a balancing act between meter preservation and combo priority at all times. and it’s all set to a wide selection of 50 cents discography, freely customizable in the games playlist function. even where the game fails in its design from time to time (optional scoring goals are too often intertwined with the overt objective of the mission, thus not pushing players out of their comfort zone; an overabundance of helicopter encounters, charmingly explained away by 50 cent’s son’s obsession with them and request to include them; gold ranks are almost impossible to acquire outside of hard mode), the experience of listening to P.I.M.P. while racking up the body count with a mossberg and with a LMG as 50 hurls shittalk is unlike anything else in the medium. but i think this paragraph is fairly obvious to anyone who’s played this. so here’s my consensus: i was grinning ear to ear the whole time. this is by far one of the finest exploitation genre games you can play, bordering on high art. in a games industry that now lies about american war crimes, and in a music industry dominated by spotify, blood on the sand is one of the last bulwarks of honesty left. hands down the most culturally significant response to 9/11 right here in this game.


(this game invokes dmca's ire so almost all the gameplay footage you can find of it online doesnt have the soundtrack blaring. totally misrepresents the intensity of the experience imo! no 21 questions or candy shop though...)

shenmue may require no introduction, but it's amusing for me to have played so many of suzuki's games beforehand...they're all these exceptionally spirited games preoccupied with total acceleration, scenic vistas, the simple pleasures of competition (whether inward or external). their pace and their fixations are romantic and idealized, representing a striking antithesis to shenmue's monotony. just about the only thing that matches shenmue's dreamy sense of melancholy is outrun's results screen.

while suzuki's prior obsessions & formal language might ironically seem entirely absent from shenmue, im not sure this is a completely accurate assessment. ryo might be a slave to time, but just as in outrun, super hang-on, space harrier, etc, his path is pre-determined, foretold by prophecy. he has no choice but to staunchly and pragmatically follow his compulsions. a discordant sense of urgency underscores and animates his every action, and you can see his internal frustrations with the mundane & lackadaisical rhythms of his neighbours. ryo's a shark, all he knows how to do is move forward. reality might suffocate him otherwise.

iwao hazuki's last words to his son are pleading with him to keep his friends and family close to him; the rest of shenmue is a quietly straining, slow-brewing tragedy as ryo does the exact opposite. he's alienated and alone; his family never quite knows how to effectively respond to and treat his grief; he distances himself from peers, structure, romantic interests. he is made painfully aware of every passing minute of every day, but he fails to truly understand or comprehend the weight of time and of his life in yokosuka as a whole. people care about him, but he's distant & removed, and eventually they figure it may be for the best to let such a headstrong young man go his own way. ryo's defining contradiction is a naïveté characteristic of his youth at odds with his relentless drive to make forward progress. he has this unspoken expectation that yokosuka is comprised of unchanging and permanent fixtures, that things will be the same as he left them upon his return, but everything around him explicitly and implicitly signals the obvious: people, locales, and contexts change. over the course of the game ryo runs into a hot dog vendor named tom constantly, someone whose vibrance and zest for life marks him as distinct and dissimilar from ryo. he's content and lively in a way that is alien to ryo. near the end of the game, he learns that tom a.) has surprising martial arts prowess and b.) has been planning to leave yokosuka for quite some time. ryo is taken aback by this information, but it was no secret - ryo simply never asked. by the time ryo makes his way to hong kong, so much has been left unsaid. even he, for a brief moment, just beginning to grasp the gravity of his decisions, wishes he had more time.

it's an excellent game, filled to the brim with quietly devastating scenes and working with subtlety that seems unmatched compared to contemporary AAA experiences... while many cite shenmue as a game that has aged, or only has value from an innovative perspective, its deliberate and measured inclinations reveal just the opposite: that games today have regressed, and have only taken the wrong lessons from shenmue.

you hear the one about avid players of tetris? their minds basically get rewritten because of exposure to the damn thing. thing is, this is true of any earthly activity that brings together body, mind, and soul. its psychosomatic, kinaesthetic. any activity that informs consciousness will bleed into the subconscious. my dreams aren't really like the ones LSD presents, but my fear is that they will be.

a product of its time in all the ways that matter and bolstered as a result. psx architecture struggling under the weight of hell and failing to load in the density of its worlds in time leaves the mind incapable of guarding itself for whats going to happen next - legitimately unsettling, unpredictable, uncanny, uncaring. youre sieved through textures and atmospheres at a rapid clip. no barriers exist here, everything is simply a permeable membrane. every scene, vignette, happenstance, and interaction a stitched-together quilt one night and a tesseract the next. like any work of its kind it requires a certain level of maturity and commitment - particularly these days when the only thing you can reliably bet on about an audience is their urge to demystify - but you ought to take the leap. this is really affecting work here that i cant possibly be cynical about and a great alternative to melatonin

(recommended by clownswords on this list. i remembered!)
reigning champ and apotheosis of the ridge racer formula, type 4 finds namco on much more confident ground when compared to the shaky foundation rage racer built. a lot of rage racer's aesthetic musings - the idealization and veneration of wheelmen, the sleekness of these machines, the grunge and beauty of asphalt and cobblestone - have all essentially been given a facelift, no longer resembling a gloomy concrete jungle but instead coming across as suggestive, painterly, and sometimes ghostly. like many games of its kind, its romantic, but instead of invoking the arcade palette of saturated hues or gleaming vistas, this game is adorned with earthier tones that really strongly compliment its otherwise exuberant and kinetic approach to racing ('out of blue' is a particular fave of mine - cruising through a picturesque port town during a misty morning). personally i sensed a lot of overlap with ace combat 3 - obviously both works' existence as namco projects goes without saying but relating to their fidelity, they both have similarly moody approaches to lighting that really become apparent as you speed down highways at night that are pockmarked by pale green lights and transition into tunnels that explode with hazy amber. to say little of that incredible soundtrack shared between both titles! electrosphere with its comparatively cold electronic soundtrack has its antithesis in type 4, with polished evocative tracks that go down like smooth scotch (although 'motor species' is actually just a dead fucking ringer for some ace combat 3 tracks, which makes sense given that three composers are common to both games). it's not the furious rave techno of prior ridge racer entries, but it's mellow and heartthumping and just so goddamn arresting, my favourite soundtrack in a long while. drifting in sync has never felt better. so much of the reason this game is adored is largely for its aesthetic which is, to be sure, excellent, but this belies that it's every bit as strong mechanically as prior entries. rage racer's experimentalism is done away with for a more conservative experience, so hills are no longer sisyphean trials and drift/grip type vehicles see further segregation, but it's hard to complain when the end result is a game with some legitimately wicked track design that packs intelligent re-use of assets. the campaign, which has four levels of 'tuning' difficulties that all offer simplistic but reactive stories that depend on your performance as a racer, was a really nice touch - didn't need to be there but thoroughly enjoyed that element nonetheless. all their discussion about willpower and unattainable ideals is a fun way to motivate the player but also to underscore that these games are time trials in disguise, with your rival opponents being obstacles to surmount and benchmarks to ascendancy rather than acting as traditional opponents. about the only complaint i have in that regard is that it's strange that the peak of the game's difficulty is at the midway point; it's really disappointing that the final stage can be overcome without any of the predilection for appropriate technique that the game demonstrated prior to this (again, somewhat excusable, movin' in circles is one of the best tracks on the OST). even so, this is still a game that's firing on all cylinders - i had cynically expected some resistance to that idea heading in but it really is the peak of the franchise so far while carving out its own spot as a giant in arcade racing.

this is a game for the fellas who have It. if you dont know what that might be, you gotta do some soulsearching on these streets

this game requires no introduction anymore so i'm not beating around the bush. drakengard has been on my mind a fair bit recently - on the off chance you'll forgive a second log i think it's worth examining some of what the title accomplishes uniquely well, or what it's able to achieve with respect to the various titles that it's in conversation with. first of all: there's nothing quite as flatline-inducing or revealing of the author's own tendencies as reading that drakengard was intentionally poorly designed, a commonly held idea in various hobbyist communities frustratingly stemming just as often from its supporters as from its detractors. not only is this a frightfully pedantic and dull reduction of the text - it's also just an elaborately constructed fiction masking deeper truths. for instance, i think it's plain as day our burgeoning critical language still struggles with titles seemingly antithetical to traditional enjoyment, and are only able to escape from suffocating evaluative lexicon through irony or genre labels. survival horror isn't normally 'fun' & people appear willing to understand this so the genre gets a normative pass en masse, although it seems worth mentioning that the longer they exist in the public eye the more their mechanical frameworks get totally demystified by the public, arguably reducing them to vehicles for pleasure and gratification anyways, resident evil being the prime example.

drakengard, of course, isn't survival horror. it's largely a musou with some horror trappings, but it's rather plain about its affectation. however, because the traditional 'game' part of it is in such conflict with its aesthetic, we end up with the idea that this dissonance is a result of intentionally languid, engineered dissatisfaction. oh wow that wacky yoko taro wanted you to feel bad so he made his debut game bad. bzzzzt. wrong. square enix wanted a commercial success with drakengard. if they didn't, they wouldn't have requested that a project starting out as a simple remix of ace combat (owing massive inspiration to electrosphere in particular, another game that combines peerless arcade bluster with bleak narrative proceedings) would incorporate elements of its contemporary blockbuster peer, dynasty warriors. none of this is to say that drakengard can't be an awkward game, but it's in large part due to a friction with cavia's inexperience/lack of technical expertise, their attempts at holding true to their initial vision for the project, and square enix being desperate for a worthy competitor to koei tecmo's success.

here's where i'll stake a claim on something potentially contentious and risible. on the basis of the title's struggles in production & development, it is somewhat shocking that drakengard is not just 'not bad', but is a totally competent musou game. given the milieu in which it released, you might even dare to call it 'good', or 'well-made'. i'll double down with something absolutely no one wants to hear: most people have no point of reference because musou is rarely put in its historic context, appreciated for its strengths, or even, broadly speaking, played. disregarding popular experimental offshoot licensed games which carry their own unique magnetism, dynasty warriors has an especially prevalent stigma in contemporary action game circles, and few seem willing to return to reevaluate the franchise. if we accept this as the case, we can begin to understand why nostalgia is the primary driver of fondness for early musou, and why you always hear dynasty warriors 3 is the best one. 'load of bull', you say, 'drakengard is not good', you say, 'dynasty warriors sold millions and is beloved for inventing the drama; surely it's better', you say, but take a look at these admittedly small sample sizes (evidence A and evidence B) and you tell me which is actually the niche ip at present. one of these broader game worlds got a FFXIV collaboration. it was not dynasty warriors.

anyways the idea that drakengard could be a respected peer to dynasty warriors - or even, perhaps, better - is not ahistorical. drakengard came out in 2003, only a few months after the release of dynasty warriors 4. by this point in the dynasty warriors timeline, your only sources of inspiration for the musou canon are dynasty warrior 2 and dynasty warriors 3. they're fine games for what they are - content-rich, pop recontextualizations of romance of the three kingdoms that fold the intense political drama, grandiose character dynamics, and poeticizing of feudal history intrinsic to the novel and morphs them into larger-than-life battles of one against one hundred. it works for that series, but having played dynasty warriors 3, it's also very simply orchestrated. DW3 is kinetic and energetic, sure, but form is not function. as a still nascent series, DW3 has yet to experiment with elements that would come to define later entries, such as a strong emphasis on field management - its presence in 3 is largely muted and, dependent upon your stats, can often be negated. it is mostly a game of fulfilling your objectives, grinding up your stats, and engaging in undemanding combat pulling the same strong combo strings against some unique generals and a multitude of carbon copy generic ones. and i happen to appreciate it for what it is, but there is no question in my mind if you slotted that exact same mechanical framework into drakengard's tone and setting, it would be similarly deemed bad on purpose.

other than its tone what does drakengard do differently from this purely mechanical perspective? honestly, not too much from DW3! archers are still often priority targets, because if you don't prioritize them you will get knocked off your horse dragon. mission structure is usually quite similar, arguably with a bit less back and forth. combos require virtually the exact same input. the camera in both games is kind of fucked up. aside from abstruse unlock requirements and a...unique, system of progression, the biggest differences are mostly relegated to additions rather than subtractions. there are more enemy designs than just grunt soldiers. you can dodge now. the game is weapon-driven rather than character-driven ala DW3, which allows for its own form of unique experimentation. the soundtrack is excellent, i'm not accepting complaints. to aid in breaking up the pace, there are aerial missions that play somewhat comparably to panzer dragoon on-rail segments which are actually quite fun; likewise, the hybrid missions allow for angelus to be used as a means of offence in ground warfare and rain hellfire from above. it keeps things relatively varied. there's no troops to manage because caim is fighting a losing war and willingly formed a pact with the only being capable of potentially turning the tides, and the game is content to use the musou form to communicate ideas about caim and angelus to great effect.

of course, it's the narrative which gives drakengard a lot of its greatest texture (and is also demonstrative of its greatest strengths and appeals as a DW clone), but we can save discussion of that for some other time; for now it's more important for me to say that it's not quite the outright condemnation of violence through ludology that so many claim it is (it's far more interested in more subtle forms of violence than the explicit and ceaseless murder it depicts anyways). really, this was just a self-indulgent exercise in placing drakengard in its historic context once and for all, away from all the retrospectives it's been getting as a result of nier's runaway success. drakengard is a game that won't be for most, but it's a game that's lingered in my memory long since i first played it. it takes an, at the time, relatively new genre, and through sheer passion and dedication spins it into a uniquely transgressive idea while still remaining an enjoyable title to let unfold. if it feels numbing or meditative, that's more or less the exact emotional resonance that something like DW3 is targeting - drakengard just uses it to achieve more things than a sense of gratifying white noise. it remains peerless because of all of its contradictions, because of how messy and thorny it is as a game, and because we'll never see anything approaching this utterly unique interplay of emotional rhythms and macabre, uncanny storytelling wearing the skin of its crowdpleasing predecessors ever again.