not quite my tempo. firstly, you'll have to forgive the uncharitable level of cynicism i walked into this with - the combination of 'scott pilgrim developers' and 'love letter to konami beat 'em ups' had me a little on edge despite the obvious appreciation of the source material shredder's revenge is anchored upon. still, what i quickly found instead was rather unexpected: turtles in time by way of denjin makai. tribute's real sleight of hand here is they've really only sought to give a slight facelift to the konami beat 'em up formula. the enemy count is still ludicrously high, bosses still come fully stocked with super armor, attacks are still stubby...and while these were failings or caveats of the arcade lineage shredder's revenge descends from, here they've been recontextualized as part and parcel of the experience, trials made to be overcome through strength rather than coin. a clear effort's been made to integrate every prerequisite tool for success, which unfortunately included a dodge, but hey, what are you gonna do. fans of constant offence as a means of defence will have plenty to chew on here - the simplistic kits of these characters lend themselves nicely to extended combo strings and artfully dodging barrages of attacks/obstacles - but if you're looking for something a bit more intimate than a button pressing bonanza, i felt it was a bit lacking. it's hard for me to state it's anything more than a competently directed take on castle crashers.

despite its pong-descendant status representing one of the earliest advancements in video game development, breakout - both as a game, and a genre - has never felt like it's had its time in the sun. no one would put forward an invective or dismissive position regarding breakout, but few would argue that it has maintained a foothold in the industry's subconscious, and at present the genre has seemingly been relegated to mobile game fodder. at best, the most you can hope for is for a few eccentrics to remember arkanoid fondly - and why shouldn't they? with its far cry from the mechanics of progressive breakout titles, taito's evolution of form emphasized peculiar stage design, high speed brick breaking, multiple hazards in the form of drone enemies, a space-age lounge aesthetic, and numerous powerups designed to introduce a degree of modularity in the playfield. the paddle - or vaus, in arkanoid - can fire lasers, multiply the number of balls in the field, slow the ball down, or elongate in length, to name a few. importantly, none of these powerups intersected, which introduced an ever-present degree of decision-making superimposed on the frantic juggling act essential to brick breaking. in one of the title's many hypothetical scenarios, i may not want to switch out a power-up in my possession for an oncoming powerup, but attempting to slide out of the new power-up's path of descent might mean allowing the ball to dart past me, thus losing a life. these mechanics dovetailed into a game where turning away from the screen for even a fraction of a second might result in death. arkanoid required precision and demanded attention - it necessitated player's eyes to be glued to the arcade cabinet's digital luster, and cultivated strong engagement as a result.

in spite of these strengths, it's important to understand why the genre's slow-crawl fade into oblivion may have occurred. we can only offer theories for this, but firstly, i'd like to point out that breakout and all of its successors are simplistic games that hinge primarily on instinctual input. which isn't to say these games are bereft of strategy - but that these tactics are minimalistic even to the trained eye and for the uninitiated, almost totally unseen. for the sake of comparison, it's worthwhile to consider how something as reaction-driven as tetris can be has still maintained cultural dominance all these decades later. it's a brisk game, its dense strategy has been unfurled across millions of player-inputted hours and iterations of the formula, its mechanics are perfectly interlocked, and upon failure, a player usually has an idea of how to improve. the same can't be said for breakout or any of its plentiful successors, which are usually content to posit the intrinsically demotivating consequence of 'simply do better, next time.' this is a perfectly acceptable arrangement for some players, and in a different mechanical suite, might be totally permissable. but breakout's simplicity tacitly discourages improvement and feigns a truly fair set of mechanics the way tetris affords. tetris is, at its core, a game of space control. the player is always centered at the helm, and despite the 'randomized' blocks coming your way, the apparatus is entirely yours to execute with as you please. by contrast, you might have noticed i left one power-up out of the medley when discussing arkanoid - the power-up that automatically lets you skip a level. a godsend for some, but it's an exhibition of the kind of seemingly random behaviour that can make breakout frustrating for some players. in other words, in breakout the game exercises jurisdiction over players parallel to players acting within the construct of the game. the pace is not set by the player, as it is in tetris, but is set in conversation between the player's maneuvering of the field and the physics of the ball. tetris is mediation, breakout is negotiation. the consequence of this is simple: if you aren't invested, the breakout experience gets flattened, and there's no steady sense of escalation or improvement. factor this with the game actually getting slower or more cumbersome towards the end of any given stage rather than faster (since players might take haphazard shots or struggle to demolish the last brick), and it's easy to see why players are turned off from the genre with ease.

strikey sisters isn't nearly as blisteringly fast as arkanoid. its stage layouts have more obstacles, but generally ask you to make less complicated shots. screen real estate is arranged slightly more horizontally rather than vertically, which gives it a bit more of a cramped feeling. but the core feature that makes strikey sisters such a compelling take on the arkanoid formula is both a greater degree of consistency than arkanoid juxtaposed with a greater degree of randomness.

these two contradictory tenets - strict order, and total variability - seem like they represent an inherent paradox, but this isn't really the case, and to explain why, it's worth discussing what makes strikey sisters different. the most apparent difference is that you don't control a paddle in strikey sisters - you control one of two sisters, both of whom have the same kits (for fun co-operative action, but i played the game solo). you might argue it would be a bit more difficult to hit the ball with the sprite of a character rather than the sprite of a horizontal paddle, but that's why strikey sisters has not one, but three ways of hitting and manipulating oncoming balls. hitting the ball directly with your sprite in classic arkanoid fashion guarantees a shot that is slower, but a little more difficult to aim. but hitting the attack button lets your character slice in a parabola arc - on contact, the strike makes the ball travel faster and the nature of the arc means you have better, more intuitive control over your aim than in other breakout titles. and finally, charging your attack shot will make the ball travel at the fastest velocity possible, and also guarantee the destruction of a brick, which would otherwise take two shots (something true of every brick in the game, unlike arkanoid's variable hp bricks).

taken together, these elements underscore far more transparency in the game's set of mechanics (no one would argue that arkanoid isn't a fair game, just that its unrelenting speed and errant physics somewhat obscures this and has the detrimental side effect of stopping would-be interested players). but these components of strikey sisters intersect with the way it handles its bestiary and powerup mechanics. throughout its many stages, strikey sisters has a full-fledged bestiary of enemies designed to trip you up at every turn while you try to break bricks. some fire projectiles that slow you down. some strike the ball right back at you. some fire projectiles at you in varying speeds and quantities. some will summon tornadoes to block the path of the ball. some will shake the earth and alter the arc of the ball when you least expect it. and all of them, upon hit, will alter the ball's direction. since enemies will randomly spawn in and try to thwart your efforts right up until the last brick is broken (by which point you just have to mop up the last few enemies remaining), this means that your progress is continually and organically impeded by a constant barrage of foes, which brings the juggling quality that defines breakout at its best to the forefront. importantly, your charged attack will destroy enemies in one hit and repel projectiles back into either enemies or bricks, and the attack more generally has a close-quarters function should enemies get a bit too close.

threading these systems together is the nature of powerups. you gain no powerups from destroyed bricks, but every slain enemy will drop a randomized powerup which either affects the ball (for instance, double balls or an iron ball which, while significantly weightier, will plow through bricks undeterred), the player in passive form (shields, an hp point, or speed), or spells which are offensive or defensive in nature (traps, projectiles, and so on). managing every power up you get effectively is often the key to victory on a stage, and leads to any number of insane interactions. the double ball powerup is particularly enjoyable this time around since the control you have over the ball's speed and arc means skilled players can more reliably keep both balls in rotation, whereas the multiple ball upgrade in arkanoid felt more like a single use shotgun if anything.

as if all this managing of various systems wasnt enough, the final key to the puzzle is how far strikey sisters goes in the completionist angle. it's one thing to clear a stage, but to clear it well means collecting coins dropped from every brick you destroy, which effectively means players have to intelligently manage a ball in rotation, enemies attempting to trap or kill them, and coins falling from destroyed bricks at any given moment. it's a tough balancing act, but with every tool at your disposal it can be made fair. the more coins you've amassed, the more likely it is you'll get other collectables as well from chests which you still have to hit to open - emeralds, keys which unlock secret levels, and a tarot spell which, if successfully used, destroys enemies and adds them to your bestiary. breakout as a genre is at its best when there are several components interwoven with the core mechanics of keeping a ball in rotation, and for those pursuing mastery strikey sister presents an incredibly compelling solution.

like many great games, strikey sisters threads together order and chaos to brilliant effect. it's a smart and tightly designed title with a great deal of miscellaneous content to dig into. i've always had a fondness for these kinds of coffee break games you can play in between long days spent working - i wouldn't have put as many hours into the first risk of rain as i did if this wasn't the case - but strikey sisters is so, so easily the gold standard of this branch of design. bravissimo, dya games

this was my first exposure to the W40K mythos, and my overarching impression based on what little i know is that it probably functions a bit better in RTS or tabletop form. that permeating sense of hostility and indifference afforded by all those mechanical abstractions as you make callous tactical and strategic decisions with the lives of your units, in theory, would go a long way in selling just how brutish and expendable life in this ultrafascist universe is.

having said that, there's merit in a straightlaced and threadbare third person shooter campaign in this world too, precisely because it instead operates on a starship troopers-esque wavelength. space marine isn't nearly as subversive or seductive as it could be - certainly failing to reach true verhoeven heights - but by so warmly embracing form (both that of the archetypal 7th gen corridor shooter and the 6th gen hack and slash power fantasy), and so doggedly committing to its faux-noble glorification of brotherhood, combat, and military service, space marine inadvertently slots itself a few notches above spec ops: the line with regards to relative intelligence. its simplistic suite of mechanics, familarized through genre convention and repetition, only underlines how effortless it is to embody the psychologically stunted role of the space marine, whose subservience to a 'greater' cause, emotionless affect, and death-drive fueled tenacity makes for a suitable one-man-army. the vistas you reach and the environments you inhabit all carry symbolic value, with architectural achievements (and their subsequent destruction/'defilement' post-invasion) frequently serving as justification for further escalation of bloodshed. each and every imperial guard is beyond awestruck by your mere presence, as if to further drive home the hopelessness of this conflict without intrepid intervenors such as yourself. it's a game constantly striving for a catharsis that never really comes.

naturally, divergences from scripture and codex are punished in the religious ultranationalist imperial cult W40K depicts, so it's only fitting that by the campaign's end tidus (and by association, the player) is castigated and incarcerated precisely for the 'valor' that singlehandedly thwarted the hostile takeover of an entire arms manufacturing planet. glory to the machine god, i guess.

the establishment fears when a normie instagram explore tab girl and a mentally ill fujo become stalwart allies. let's go ladies!

alright, time for an actual review, albeit low effort. you can't convince me this isn't actually a grasshopper manufacture title in disguise. its lurid and gaudy spin-off premise replete with masafumi takadas acidic electronica, occasionally psychedelic environments, and frequent parodic overtones share much in common with GHM's scuzzier, more mercenary body of work. these segments are incredibly unpolished, but not unenjoyable.

similarly, the half of the narrative that's komaru and the best character from the first game interacting with each other lands well-enough that i consider it better than anything in the first two games! though it's true i don't have any particular love or reverence for either of those, for reasons sharply articulated by my respected peer BlueTigerSide's work. your mileage in this regard is likely to vary.

unfortunately this half of the narrative intersects with the separate half that attempts to be an examination of child abuse, depictions of which range from 'aggressively mediocre and one-dimensional but bearable through gritted teeth' to 'abhorrent and irresponsible with not even a semblance of anchoring in a story as unserious and fickle as this'. this half is markedly worse than anything in the first two games. the sudden explication of abuse in kotokos chapter particularly is like having an anvil fall on you. not attempting to be reductive here with regards to menial discussions of responsible depiction but this is a case where the story actively cannot handle the sheer weight of its inclusion, and doesn't even try to (instead opting to continue undeterred with the usual generalized insincerity), which to me at least scans as repugnant and honestly vile. nothing more to say about this one really, i mean what they're posturing at here is more or less in-line with what the rest of the series is about but it just comes across as tasteless and i think the narrative spending the first two chapters being mostly breezy is the primary facilitator of this extreme whiplash. would have been fairly manageable to just change some things around and have something a bit more solid.

there's often too much emphasis placed on the value of narrative that is intrinsically gamey - stories that 'can only be told within the parameters and constructs of a game'. the idea here is simple: one wants to demonstrate the value their medium can bring to the table, so naturally any stories that can 'only' exist as a game and would face extreme adaptational hurdles presents the most appealing case for games as art.

i think this line of thought is suffocating, though. leaving aside the fact that this thwarts and diminishes the potential and creativity of other mediums in adaptation, the kinds of narratives that are lauded for best-in-class video game storytelling are often entirely subservient to structure or gimmick, or engage in reflexive and banal meta exercises. what's more, i'd posit that most (maybe even all) video game narratives are only feasible within the context of video games. taking play seriously means looking for the syntax linking the abstraction of mechanics to traditional forms of storytelling and presentation and the bearing that the coalescence of the two has on emotion and thought.

all this is to say that 13 sentinels represents another homecoming for the 'stories that are beholden to complex ADV structure' genre, and that it distinguishes itself from the usual suspects with nothing but endearing and unrelenting passion for its subject matter while considering some surprisingly insightful meditations on japans relationship to the media environment its fostered since the post-war era. character interactions are really fun and they're easy to get attached to, its breezy and freeform format makes for some incredibly comfortable gaming, and yes - it takes a lot of skill to hold a narrative this ridiculously convoluted together. 13 sentinels is practically bursting at the seams, but it's pretty sharp in how it chooses to disseminate its key narrative points. i also found it refreshing in that its far more shoujo than it is shonen.

this is really more of a pulpy 3.5 than a 4 - it's pretty scuffed mechanically and even structurally. it loses a significant amount of steam in the last quarter of the game (having exhausted a lot of its appeal and doing itself no favours when the emotional resonance the final battle should have fails to land), its RTS component can be exhilirating but fails to integrate itself as essential within the ADV structure and is often unbalanced to its own detriment, and certain characters get relegated to expository mouthpieces with only the occasional bursts of charm buoying their place within the game (gouto being the primary offender here).

still, how can i argue with a game in which ultimately, the brash and youthful human spirit triumphs over the petty squabbles and needlessly labyrinthine overcomplications of adults?

such a bizarre main narrative this time around. opens with nary a hint of subtlety as per usual but, on the contrary, suggests its writers have direct experience with the subject matter in a way that hasn't exactly been the case for any RGG title prior to this. despite proudly displaying this burgeoning inkling of something rather unique, it shows every card in its deck by the time the second half rolls around and we're made to watch the narrative spin its wheels fruitlessly time and time again. pair that with a modicum more self-awareness than usual and you've got a somewhat frustrating and cumbersome package - the hyperreality of these games is often ill-suited to meaningfully address any issues plaguing modern society because you know the way you'll end up mechanically addressing this is by putting some middle aged guy who represents an extreme solution to the core problem in an armbar. which is still fine, don't get me wrong, but opening the final boss by spelling out 'well, maybe he's got a point here...' feels very much like they don't trust me to reach my own conclusions. obviously it's all endowed with the usual charisma and strength of direction but it's an amateurish legal drama and very likely a weak detective narrative depending on your perspective.

thankfully, lost judgments buoyed by the strongest combat in the dragon engine yet and by its compelling extension to the originals approach to side content. much of the original judgment's side content revolved around currying favour with your community and in building up your reputation bit by bit as you work to dispatch the keihin gang, arms-dealing nuisances who functioned as massive thorns in your side. lost judgment sets much of its side content within the walls of seiryo high school, wherein yagami serves as an advisor to the mystery research club and is made to infiltrate various other clubs and societies at the school in order to investigate a school-wide conspiracy. this facet of lost judgment is often really good! extrapolating a lot from the tenets of substories in previous games is greatly enriched by this adolescent context, which seems to serve as an excellent opportunity for the series' characteristic optimism and humanism to surface while still retaining a lot of the same devil-on-your-shoulder humor. the high school setting obviously never strays too far from the JRPG subconscious, but it's nice to participate in these activities as an adult where the goal is not to lead a kind of fulfilling life but instead to help these kids grow and to tell them to take it easy sometimes cause life ain't easy. a lot of it ends up being touching in ways i didn't expect, and chronicling the journeys of all these respective students and clubs culminates in yet another effective substory finale, something i wish these games would do more rather than throw amon at me and call it a day. some infelicities with some of these minigames - it's both extremely funny and entirely predictable that you're expected to remember more about stray cats than you are about any of the hostesses from girl's bite - but for the most part lost judgment shines in this department.

reminded me a lot of Y5. that's a good thing! appreciated that RGG studio seems to slowly be going back to the Y1/Y2 model of being rewarded for exploration with the judgment subseries; there's still work to be done in this respect but anything beats the borderline mobile game side content structure of, say, Y:LAD. that said im told they hid a fourth battle style behind dlc and that's unforgivable. loved skating through ijincho and kamurocho, weaving through crowds to keep up momentum. similarly enjoyed putting the fear of god into high schoolers.

right off the bat, there's a binary choice to make here. either you opt for a traditional story mode, or you experience the los perdidos outbreak through the lens of 'nightmare mode' - a feature designed to bring the game more in line with previous dead rising entries. as a fan of the hectic hustle and bustle core to the franchise's dna, in which significant organizational sense and stringent time management were required to succeed, the choice hardly posed a dilemma for me. but nightmare mode more or less revealed an incogruous title on all fronts - appending a time limit to dead rising 3's broader framework shines a spotlight on the pervasive rot at its core. where previous titles succeeded in designing interconnected networks to immersive oneself in, with main arteries clogged by zombies, psychopaths and hapless survivors, dead rising 3 has almost zero semblance of focus. the game's insistence on depicting a city is part of the problem here. willamette was nothing more than a mall, content to function as quaint romero pastiche, and fortune city gets a pass as a somewhat believable gambling district, but DR3 devotes its attention towards depicting a citywide outbreak somewhere in socal, with the titles marketing boasting about los perdidos' size utterly eclipsing both willamette and fortune city. you can chalk it up to the typical western AAA developmental decision, largely in service of traditionally rigid AAA expansion (bigger! better!). im also gonna speculate that it was primarily to shine a spotlight on just how many zombies can exist on the screen at once with this new #tech, and, credit where credits due, there's a lot of em. scores and scores of them can be on the screen at any time, even, with no loss to frame rate on my decrepit laptop. however, thanks to the ease of play this time around, you're rarely put in a position where this is an actively stressful thing, nor is there ever enough incentive to utilize the games sparse strokes of verticality to traverse the environment too much. getting around rapidly in nightmare mode also means using a car a lot of the time, which chokes any interesting decision-making and essentially turns this into a game of going to marked waypoints in a vehicle that's half as slow because it keeps running into cattle. inventory management's barely a consideration since there's food everywhere and you can craft weapons on the fly. nightmare mode doesnt tell you where any save points are because the game was built with autosave in mind despite the mode adhering to traditional tenets of the series regarding save management ie if you die fuck you, reload your last save. the clock is way faster now which makes Doing Everything in One Shot, another series staple, virtually impossible, meaning to complete nightmare mode you have to jettison almost everything that isnt the main story. 'escortable survivors' have been reconfigured into 'stranded survivors' where the goal is to just kinda kill the zombies around them and let them escape on their own. the list goes on and on, beyond what im willing to critically focus on - it's not really dead rising, it's in an incredibly frictional state where it has to bow down to western design convention while simultaneously juggling series expectation which mostly results in some incredibly annoying, gimmicky bosses and incredibly strange design decisions. the end result is total gratuitousness, essentially dead rising as musou, and it's not even an interesting musou. dull as dishwater for the most part.

at most i suppose i should thank nightmare mode for being such a babymode breeze that i wasnt compelled to stick around this world for any longer like i otherwise might have in a normal playthrough. not touching the narrative with a ten-foot pole, a total bastardization of dead rising's playful sense of tone and humor to such an inexplicable extent that i remain unsure how capcom vancouver was responsible for dead rising 2 as well. weirdly misanthropic and tasteless game overall, there's a kind of collectible you can get called a 'tragic ending' where you just stare at a dead body while a piano plays and they make a pun about their death and it's all...lacking in harmony. nick kind of sucks a lot too. part of the appeal for this series for me has been embodying atypical protagonists - dour and often selfish schlubby everymen who overcome insurmountable obstacles with a servbot smile, and nick is just too naive, one-note, and inconsistently characterized for me to be invested in his plight. also jesus christ, this games ugly. something about this game's aesthetic and colour palette was revolting to me, made me have a headache trying to focus on everything, and the UI which bleakly resembles this infamous riff on modern AAA design does it no favours. this 'XBone Launch Title Art Direction', as i've come to call it, really produced some of the most nauseating games on the planet. lococycle, ryse: son of rome, panzer dragoon de puta, powerstar golf, and fighter within...the idea that this game has a sequel that people hold in even less regard scares the shit out of me. if i ever get around to it, dead rising 4 might just be the worst game i'll ever play. impressive!

they made the psychopaths in this game represent the seven deadly sins. fucking grow up

this is the specific brand of hyper-alienating, misery-laden, no-easy-answers experience i enjoy in multiplayer games. its overwhelming willingness to flood the match with a thoroughly unpredictable set of unknown variables keeps things tense and frightening, and as you explore the dimensions of its mechanics you start to realize that there are a few more loose bricks in the wall than first appearances would suggest. there's a 12 player cap, but you never actually know how many are in there with you, and you certainly don't know their names. youre not even notified when you kill someone. in fact, it's entirely possible that matchmaking couldn't find 12 bodies to pair you up with, and in practical terms that means the fog of war is the norm. you might spawn into a match where almost everyone is on a team of three but you; conversely, there may be instances where it's you and an ally against 10 other solo queuers. you have a broad goal that's always explicitly spelled out to you, but within that framework there's enough faith in the players to figure out their own strategies. accumulating the most treasured resources needed to extract out of any given mission will, in simplest terms, require going through a boss battle, holding out in a dilipidated structure while everyone is alerted to your presence, and cleanly escaping, contract completed (although enemies will still be able to roughly approximate your position). so the fact is that at every stage, the game is merciless, but there's enough (surprising!) variability in the games set of verbs to offset that fact. after all, no one said you were beholden to the guidelines, and whether or not you want to skip a couple of sequential steps is left to your jurisdiction. govern yourself accordingly. maybe i'll wait to start banishment rituals when another team starts the second banishment ritual on the map, thus forcing opponents on the map to scatter haphazardly and spread antagonistic forces thin. maybe i'll camp out by extraction points and wait to see who arrives to make their getaway, plucking the bounty away from them when their escape seems all but guaranteed. maybe i dont even want to collect contracts! maybe i decided if i want to keep my hunter around (since permadeath exists that will reset all progression upon death, which includes weapons and perks), all i've gotta do is stay calm and composed enough to kill anyone in my way. maybe i'll just intercept hot zones and pick off stragglers for some easy xp gain and then depart, leaving the rogues none the wiser. the possibilities go on into the infinite.

of course, as with most games of its caliber, the experience on offer is both alone in execution and fundamentally disjointed. this level of meticulous attention paid towards audio design ensures a shrewd and cunning approach is required at all times - after all, an errant snap of a twig under the weight of your boots may signal your location to wary onlookers - but the teamwork required to succeed with friends usually necessitates a third-party voice chat application, which then typically renders some of that audio design a bit inert. that said, it's not as though there isn't fun to be had with the right partner - the sound of a murder of crows dispersing seemingly unprompted within my vicinity, for instance, was usually enough to bring a sharp end to whatever conversation i was having, forcing my friend and i to agonizingly scrutinize the ambience for half a minute of silence, waiting for any footsteps or gunshots to pierce the veil. and this applies to any number of sounds in the bayou - the rattle of chains, the onslaught of PVE enemies, the roiling of a stagnant lake, the cacophony of gunfire in the distance. still, your senses are capable of failing you, as even dead silence can be a real killer - who knows how my quarry felt when i plugged a thin rusted bullet through his skull, with a reticle trained on him some 50m away through the slits of barn boards? and there's something to be said for the kind of player that will fully immerse themselves here by using the voice chat function to essentially larp. hunt has some of the strongest binaural audio in games, and at one point i was pinned down by a team of three in a desolate former prison, all the while my stalkers taunted me with southern drawl from afar while they tried to triangulate my position (i was kinda shitting my pants). and then at another point after dealing with an intense firefight between four posses, my friend and i, who assumed the coast had been made forcibly clear, set to work on the banishment ritual, only to be interrupted by someone with no weapons who claimed to just want mercy and to be granted passage. more than a little hopped up on adrenaline and unfortunately quite trigger happy, we both screamed and immediately shot his jaw clean off mid-monologue. those are the kinds of little things that can happen in hunt. the schema's pretty widely accommodating and always engaging. being able to outplay and outgun people in a shooter this tense has always appealed to my sensibilities; im never going to claim that its any more or less cerebral than the best early aughts deathmatches per se but it offers a kind of thrill thats impossible to experience anywhere else. for my money? throw me right back into that bayou, dead man walking, ive got something needs proving

[part of what initially brought me to this site in late 2020 was that in early 2020, i had already begun trying to take writing a bit more seriously by writing condensed reviews of games that i had finished. low ambition, maybe, but it combined a hobby i was sinking back into again with the potential for experiential learning vis-a-vis a skill i valued and respected in others during a pandemic that locked me inside for some time. a lot of that writing i don't quite stand by, but some of it i do. figured i'd post at least one for archival purposes. this was june of 2020. with that, i think ill take a break from writing for the year! happy holidays, ty very much for the cool year everyone]

Years of playing Yakuza has conditioned me to forget that a particularly vicious baseball bat swing can cave an individual’s skull in, and that’s only the most optimistic scenario. Manhunt, bundle of cruel violence that it is, serves as a quaint little reminder of the frailty of the human physique pitted against blades, bullets, and all other manners of grievous bodily harm. It’s downright inventive in its murder at some points, and what sets it apart in its depiction of savagery 17 years later is terrific sound design rather than cutting edge visuals. Listen carefully as protagonist James Earl Cash, ‘freed’ from his execution at death row and forced to participate in illegally produced snuff films at the behest of a mysterious director, strains to choke the life out of a common enemy. The panting, the struggling, the movement of men at the edge of their mortal coil serving as a coda to life itself before a sharply accented note ends it all: the grisly snap of one’s neck. Add a soundtrack influenced by John Carpenter’s particular lineage of horror, dark visual designs, and a narrative ethos recalling 70’s film vigilantism and you have a recipe for controversy. It’s survival of the fittest against thugs, Nazis, the criminally insane, cops, and paramilitary forces – a conservative ideologue’s worst nightmare and sadistic wet dream given form.
Needless to say it is the context of violence that sets Manhunt apart from its peers at the time – so much so that the game incited a wave of moral panic and remains infamous to this day as an emblem of violence in video games. Here it is unapologetic, squeamish, laborious, and yet titillating for players, audiences, and directors alike. As the medium grapples with these questions yet again it became worthwhile to return to Manhunt – a game so dedicated to its emulation of illicit film that it’s presented as a DVD and adopts film grain, conventions of found footage, and visual artifacts to convey its gameplay and narrative. It is brutality incarnate in the era of digital art, which makes it especially funny that in the face of numerous worldwide bans, my home province of Ontario had to market it as a film in order to sell it. It’s also worth noting that the game sometimes has interesting subtext, the kind that makes violence purposeful and artful, which is a hilarious contrast to The Last of Us Part II. We’re a long ways away from the era where Rockstar almost had an internal mutiny over the development of this game.
Unfortunately, the most interesting questions Manhunt raises are tertiary as it is host to numerous design issues that plague the experience which only get worse as the game increasingly outstays its welcome. A heavier emphasis on trite, unengaging gunplay in the second half distracts from atmospheric stealth which already at its best was predatorial but at its worst, which was much of the time, suffers from downright terrible A.I, awful level design, and questionable balance which turns the game into a cheeky exploitation of systems rather than an immersive and cutthroat struggle. That this is lampshaded as a part of the game’s intent and craft feels insulting and cynical rather than genuine. Setpieces that are genuinely great are ignored in favour of bowing to video game convention of the era, and the mechanics that are illogical but thematically appropriate stop being resonant as a result. Toying with the conventions of ranking systems is welcome, but this only registers as worthwhile if the game is actually fun to play, which Manhunt often isn’t. I very often welcome games that aren’t traditionally fun, but I don’t believe it works here especially since Manhunt’s audience condemning metanarrative and its musings on society register as juvenile rather than meaningful and yield very little in the way of a compelling textual or visual experience. In our efforts to condemn voyeuristic violence we often forget that a better point to be made is in its intoxicating allure, or in its usage in institutions of power, or violence as a means of self-expression and liberation. Manhunt is perpetually disinterested in this to its own disservice.

POST-MILLENNIUM RACING. type 4 is for your worldly mensch, the racing connoisseurs and aficionados. the final legs of real racing roots '99 ushered in the new millennium on new year's eve, signalling celebration of what came before and eager anticipation of what was to come. the future arrived in V, a title with sensibilities that cut deeper than expression.

competitive sports (and more particularly mixed martial arts/combat sports) over the past few decades have long reckoned with and compulsively obsessed over the perfect distillation of instinct and science; they have subsequently raced toward achieving idealized equilibriums of the two to sharpen emerging talent, and in no ridge racer is this competitive element more clearly expressed than in V. V is for the drifting junkies, the highway savants, the people who communicate in shifting gears. ridge racer's humble offerings have long skewed towards quality over quantity, and V remains no exception with only seven tracks, but they're by far the best tracks in the entire franchise - the perfect intersection between high-octane enjoyment and intense opportunity for replayability and mastery. even at normal difficulty this is a significant degree more demanding than any ridge racer prior to it. not only is the general tempo of a racing bout faster, but success (and lack thereof) can be determined in the first lap depending on whether or not you have demonstrated the prerequisite driving IQ. without a consummate level of control and without the ability to read flow, you're going to be almost immediately outclassed by the enemy AI which has now been retooled to be far more aggressive than in prior entries. at a minimum, you'll need to configure every single corner and stretch of the track into an equation to be solved and make an effort to intimately understand their nuances, which is compounded by the handling of the default six cars feeling more distinct than ever before. no two vehicles are ever going to approach a situation the exact same way anymore, with routes on a map feeling tailored to each of their advantages and disadvantages. one vehicle might be able to get away with gripping asphalt til their rubber is chafed and raw; another might find that shifting gears down temporarily is the only option for success. it was the first time in the franchise i felt like all the minutiae of a match really mattered and if i wasnt countersteering appropriately, looking for opportunities to shunt out trailing cars behind me, and committing terrain to memory i'd be done for. the relentless difficulty coalesced into probably the most intense racing game i have ever played, but it felt alien at first; more than ever, drifting, seemingly built on new physics, appears to factor in gear, weight, speed, acceleration undertaken during the drift, countersteering input, proximity to other vehicles, and terrain, so it almost evokes ace combat's core appeal of a constant set of calculations to be undertaken. aesthetically it's really impressive for one of the first games launched on the PS2: muted winter-blue skies, sunsets on the hills of ridge city, darkened city apartment blocks as if to suggest no life exists outside of the competition on the streets. strong art direction has really allowed it to stand the test of time in a similar capacity to type 4. drifting into the warm and heightened glow of the sun at dusk is everything in this game. once again the soundtrack just does not miss a beat, this time incorporating more diversity in the tracks that really perfectly encapsulate the game's identity as an early aughts project. fogbound serving as the game's lo-fi grungy breakbeat anthem is just perfect for immersing you into the hyper-vigilance required for a race and euphoria is pretty much one of the all-time great VGM tracks. really didn't expect this but i think i have to give V the edge over type 4, with its gorgeous menus and evocative soundtrack it genuinely goes blow for blow with type 4's accomplished aesthetic while simultaneously offering the in-depth and transformative qualities i tend to look for in racing games. i think there's something to be said for type 4's aesthetic idealization for driving versus V's gesturings at reality that games of its generation would later become obsessed with, expressed through an air of practicality that emphasizes function over form, a less flashy yet sleek UI combined with more in-depth mechanics. to put it a different way: never did the characteristic racing game lean in type 4, did it unconsciously in almost every race in V. gonna be playing this one for a looong time. the only real problem i have here is that going for a grip class vehicle with automatic transmission is unquestionably the easiest way to play which is unfortunate for people like me who prefer the exact opposite

also ai fukami is a much hotter race queen than reiko nagase is, it's insane. earnestly upset she never came back because people thought she wasnt as iconic as reiko. once again tenure has sabotaged the prospects of a promising young lady and all you fools have deprived her of a JOB! sorry your 3D waifish mascot lady who only appears in pre-rendered CG to fawn over you and your big [engine] can't compare to the brazen edge of realtime animated ai fukami!!!! as if to say 'show me what you're made of, first!' well, i pledge this grand prix to you, fukami! drift-class danver toreador, manual transmission, i know what im about

(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

for a while there as i was progressing through this series i was beginning to think that ridge racer and i were incompatible in much the same way that garou: mark of the wolves and i are incompatible. this might take a while to explain, so let me be self-indulgent. garou is a beloved fighting game set in the fatal fury universe, analagous to what third strike's position within the street fighter canon is in that it is furthest ahead in the chronological timeline while simultaneously being made up of 90% new characters. it's a gorgeous game; like an abundance of their fighting games, SNK's spritework there was emotive, refined, and confident, boldly speaking to their artistry as fighting game aesthetes. at their peak, SNK was able to configure their cast of characters with both larger than life charm and an inexplicable verisimilitude despite the usually insane subject matter grounding the proceedings, and i think that can be sensed through both the unusual amount of care put into designing and characterizing the cast but also their comparably muted fashion. the best example of this is someone like iori yagami, a particular combination of a grouchy yet soulful disposition and completely unique attire that is considered almost untouchable by SNK (you might even remember sakurai calling this design genius and he was right). but in almost every iteration of king of fighters where he's wearing some new outfit you can feel SNK attempt to translate not only the core design tenets of what makes iori 'iori', but also to bring that look in-line with what iori might reasonably wear for the day. this is impossible to sum up without devoting a great deal more time towards this than is necessary, but it's my view that SNK probably cares for their stable of characters more than any other fighting game developer you can imagine.

and i think that influenced garou's reception in subtle ways, because the game is impossibly cool while carrying a lot of what makes SNK such an excellent team. redesigning fatal fury's own running wild wolf, terry, feels like sacrilege, but they somehow made him every bit as cool while staying true to terry; likewise, garou's centerpiece character, rock howard, is so impossibly well conceived that he's almost a bit like baiken from guilty gear fame in terms of being a character more beloved and renowned than the game he originated from. and that's part of the problem - far be it from me to suggest a fighting game cannot succeed on the basis of its aesthetics (i am, after all, a huge fan of the last blade 2), but actually playing garou feels kind of...not great. we're getting into 'gamefeel' territory now but genuinely i think that for all that's great about garou, it's a really stiff fighting game with questionable design decisions, subpar feeling normals, combo routing and inputting that feels like im a bit underwater, and on the fighting game spectrum resembles street fighter more than a SNK flagship title to its own detriment. garou earned its place in the canon through sheer force of will, which is worthy of respect if nothing else, but more and more over the years i've learned that despite still appreciating some of its qualities i would also rather play anything else. and that's as controversial as it gets for fighting games for me; it's a genre that i love but am usually quite lenient towards because the gulf between the perception of the masters and the people eternally stuck at midlevel (me) is comically vast.

ridge racer came across as something similar initially. could not for the life of me figure this series out - there was a perceived friction between what i felt was an arcade racer taken to its most extreme definition (cars that are like feathers in currents of wind, a proclivity for breakneck speed, a dismissal of 'reality' and an invocation of emotion and adrenaline, cars that bounce off walls as though they're padded) mixed with mastery-oriented mechanics that were strict in implementation, requiring instinct and precognition in tandem. essentially what i felt was that i would be getting one game on the straightaways, and an entirely different game the moment it was time to tackle a corner while preserving full momentum. drifting was really the make-or-break mechanic for me and i spent a long time, uninitiated, trying to crack open that puzzlebox to see the valued core buried within, because everything else about ridge racer rocked. there was only one track, essentially, but it was an intelligently designed track with an almost sega-like approach to bright blue visuals accompanied by a perfectly executed rave/techno soundtrack. it worked when you were cruising, but it was so goddamn grating when your car stalled out of a drift with seemingly no control.

anyways, i played revolution, rave racer, and then rage racer all after that, and rage racer was the moment that everything snapped into focus. this awakening was so sudden and violent, however, that i immediately dropped rage racer and returned to the older entries to discover that they were actually really good, and the unfortunate reality for rage racer is that when i came back i felt kind of disappointed with it.

so basically with these four titles (with rave racer being a bit of an exception), there were a few keys to 'proper' play. firstly, part of what ended up working for me was abandoning the third-person camera entirely. there's a tendency for me to use that camera orientation because i think it's easier to gauge distance with my surroundings and because it lets you more intimately connect with your vehicle of choice. not so in ridge racer! not only are you missing out on some truly roller-coaster paced competitive drama, but i also found it abundantly more difficult to drift effectively without the first-person camera orienting my approach on corners and letting me exercise my control over cars and making sure the drift didn't suddenly send me careening into a wall. prior to this, these cars kind of felt like wild stallions - maybe it's reasonable to assume that anyone can casually 'ride' a horse if they were just placed on it, but actually exercising legitimate control over them takes time and practice to overcome temperament.

the second, and by far the most important key to success, was learning that there are two kinds of drifts in ridge racer. the first is the most obvious for anyone familiar with other games - accelerate into a corner, begin the turn, hit the brakes, and complete the turn while accelerating to complete the movement. but that's only one type of drift here, recommended for low speeds because executing such a maneuver at high speeds would, more often than not, take a cudgel to your momentum and control. rather, the preferred movement is slightly less intuitive, but far more simple: accelerate into a corner, take your foot off the gas, begin turning into the corner, and then accelerate again. during the drift you would have to meticulously angle your car with the hopes of aligning its body with the road and allowing for safe acceleration, but this was pretty easy when executed properly.

the final key was just exceedingly obvious: not every corner needs to be drifted! understanding of the topography became an obvious necessity here, because sometimes it's far more efficient to just grip the asphalt with your brakes and turn the corner without executing a full-on drift. it's the easiest technique by far, and the beauty of ridge racer becomes discovering which corners correspond best to which techniques. all this meant that i was able to finally begin appreciating these games and the unique niche they occupy in the genre - maybe this all sounds obvious to the veterans but im not going to let my pride prevent me from stating that i struggled for a while here and all of the advice i consulted online was really poorly articulated.

rage racer is technically the second title in the series that feels like it was genuinely considered for the home console market, but in practice it feels more like the first. revolution before it was not too dissimilar from the original ridge racer, existing as an updated port of ridge racer 2 which was, itself, an update to the original. rage racer is comparably more meaty, but this ends up being injurious to its cause. the most interesting thing they've done here is turning grip and drift into a fully customizable mechanical feature - on top of choosing between modes of transmission, you can select what your car will specialize in in a manner that feels more explicit than it did in prior entries. it allows for different takes on the same tracks, which is nice! it's clearly a feature added for replayability, similarly to the fact that you earn money from GPs now to funnel into tune-ups and new cars. you can even customize your car's logo using a mini MS-paint feature!

but despite retaining many of the usual great quintessentially ridge racer qualities (albeit muddier this time), what most of this engineered replayability is in service of is redoing by far the most boring tracks in the series yet. five to seven minutes per session and nary a hint of the usual excitement to make it worth the time invested. previously i complimented ridge racer's roller-coaster pacing, but rage racer feels quite literally like a roller-coaster in that its track design now includes multiple hills that feel downright glacial to surmount. this obviously incentivizes opting for manual transmission and shifting gears to accomodate for loss of speed but it's incredibly dry and barebones in practice. these tracks are just so much less interesting than their predecessors that it killed the appeal of the game for me.

it's got a killer soundtrack, even still, and i hate to slam a game that has silver case sfx in its menus and inarguably has one of the coolest intros of all time but, especially having properly learned to play the series, it's so much less compelling than the games before it. the most interesting thing is that this sows the aesthetic seeds of what will eventually manifest as ridge racer type 4, but it's otherwise inessential.

ive been trudging through konamis assortment of licensed 90s beat em ups and finding them less than revelatory given their stature. my assumption here is that in the same way memory can redefine space and sound, it kind of lends to a transformative aspect of play. broadly speaking x-men, the simpsons, and turtles in time are all one dimensional beat em ups in several ways. the operative strategy is to play as an outfighter and stuff every option an opponent might throw at you with careful jabs. enemy AI is usually homogenous with little to differentiate their behavior aside from the attacks that they use. player characters' kits are fickle, sometimes bordering on unresponsive (ie throws in turtles in time), and lack any discernible crunch or impact when attacking. movesets between those characters are often quite limited or extremely comparable. the design as a whole across all three titles is bent towards highway robbery, with excessive damage, stages that are far too long, limited enemy patterns, and annoying bosses all constituting the core of a game that demands money more than it does time. they're not good beat em ups, certainly not when compared to many of their arcade contemporaries, but they've managed to endure, id wager, largely because of their simplicity. it's difficult for me to say it's worth it given that games like these have largely contributed to the widely-prevalent stigma against arcade design: their overexposure means one can too easily stake an arrogant claim that this was an era in gaming entirely defined by quarter feeding, ignoring that the best games of this type can be consistently overcome frugally with practice, diligence, and community consultation (something that seems less and less true, or at the very least obscenely inconsistent with konamis library here). but by focusing largely on easily understood aesthetics and offering convenience of co-operative play, these games have anchored their position as history, and, for many comprise some of the most notable entries in the genres canon. you only need to listen to the way people talk about them to get a sense for why, their eyes will glaze over and they'll think about how them and three other friends got together to take down shredder after saving quarters for a few months. maybe throw in a pizza too, or something. because it's not about the game, and it never was. theyre beat em ups for the crowd, in that sense. the way of the road for many of these arcade genres is that the flashiest and most easily understood will be remembered regardless of quality; those aesthetic virtues lend themselves to ease of recall (it's the nostalgia/brand loyalty thing again). it's why konamis licensed beat em ups, and contemporary games like scott pilgrim and castle crashers, are still some of the most popular games in the genre, not really for people who are actually devoted to the genre but instead for the layperson. you'll see this in other genres that have made the transition to the home console market (dead space extraction is an example of something id call a rail shooter for non-rail shooter fans) and there's nothing wrong with that per se. would i ruin some shitkid brats day out with his peers by telling him to be playing streets of rage or final fight instead? i mean, it's so goddamn tempting, but it doesn't matter so much, really. so few of us end up becoming invested in these kinds of things that it's better to just focus on the present. commitment to art over people can sabotage some good times.

so it fills me with great irrational joy that the konami beat em up closest to being competent is also the one based on an IP i have a lot of fondness and childhood nostalgia for! i read a lot of asterix and obelix as a kid and had no idea this game existed until recently but it's a crowd-pleaser executed in top form, and i would have gladly played the hell out of this if i was younger. whether intentionally or not much has been done to ameliorate the annoyances and quirks of konamis patent formula by offering two characters who feel distinct in kit and expression; it funnels you from varied stage to varied stage in rapid pace; it has like, actual mechanics, or at least an attempt at actual mechanics; and as far as konamis fanservice stylings go this is easily the best translation of the bunch. x-men looked kind of muddy, simpsons looks washed out, but asterix meanwhile represents such a ridiculously accurate and loving rendition of albert uderzos art (including all the ethnic stereotypes/racism!) and im simply at a loss for how it was accomplished. just a joy for people familiar with this body of work, i had the widest grin imaginable when i saw the first boss was a roman phalanx cowering behind their mass of shields. and of course, it all ends with a village feast (get owned, cacofonix). no better genre for that indomitable gaul spirit than a beat em up, just casually strolling around as obelix slapping the tar out of roman centurions. now i just need a good tintin game and im set

i have been 'down bad' for cleopatra, since my impetuous youth,

knights at the round table, and the unseen, unheard figures and machinations animating their movements and dismantling their legend. it's ironic that the arthurian myth lens that frames the narrative means that the game is necessarily skewed towards fable and folklore in a way that AC5 had already attempted to, but 0 provides far more fertile ground - there's a wealth of generative potential buried here, i think, in a way that's proven difficult to write about but is central to the text (particularly as it relates to codes of honor and wartime engagement but im not deluded enough to pretend i know much beyond the bare essentials of arthurian legend). but there's a lot of moving parts here, so personally i think its greatest success is reconfiguring AC3s framework (emphasis on simulation, expertly grounding its thematic heft on a silent protagonist (cipher lol) piloting aerial death machines) through the lens of 90s post soviet armed conflict and trying to better understand a period marked by great political uncertainty and loss of life. however in doing so 0s concerns feel far more individually oriented and i think politics are felt here largely as a specter orchestrating every sortie; pilots try to exercise autonomy here because they've had the skies bequeathed to them but it's like its instead their prison. there's a sense that even as the documentarian/archivist narrator conducts interview after interview attempting to ascertain some kind of truth on the belkan war (disseminated through glorious FMVs) it's futile to totally encapsulate and it matters less than the surprisingly well-realized individuals caught up in the conflict, the truths they extracted from the war and how they've continued to live outside of war. anyways. tricky game. complicated and cynical and messy in ways i appreciated. obsessively dedicated to its premise in the best possible way. spanish flamenco guitars. my fave of the games ive played this year

also the 'morality' system (if you can call it that, im still not convinced) isn't corny it's part and parcel of what the game is attempting to say and i appreciated its passivity and complete lack of judgment. one of the top five final bosses of all time but that goes without saying