The 25th Ward: The Silver Case is a game about the internet, viewed through the lens of an authoritarian government that monitors its citizens and wipes them out with impunity via their government-sanctioned murderers to maintain the illusion of peace.

It's a game about how even in a "perfect" society where the people up top maintain an iron-grip on every minuet detail of its citizens lives, the biggest threat is the power of the individual and the propagation of ideas.

It's a game about the dehumanizing effects of violence, how those charged with keeping the peace are volatile, reckless goons who kill without remorse and never receive any kind of punishment for it. How killing is innate to the human experience, and how the will to kill resides in all men's hearts.

It's a game about trans-humanism. People turned into biological supercomputers built to retain petabytes of information. People who gain identity on the net. AI's so sophisticated that they become indistinguishable from their creators. People who ascend beyond the biological to become ideals, the purest form of information, unlimited by the notions of life or death.

It's a game about games and the people who play them. The relationship between protagonist and player. The rejection of industry norms. The eschewing of any kind of notion of traditional understanding.

The 25th Ward is a game I have a hard time writing about. It juggles a lot of topics, and yet, it sticks the landing with each and every single one of them in a way that is hauntingly prophetic for what was originally a 2005 flip-phone text-adventure game. It's a bit of a cop-out answer, but after a day or two of writing and rewriting this review, I really do feel it's an experience beyond words. It's a game that resonates even more today in the modern internet age, and it's view of the internet via a fictional social experiment of a city where the line between net and reality is non-existent is an intensely interesting backdrop for the triad of storylines that each explore a facet of this society and how it parallels the modern age.

"Don't depend on the net. Depend on the net. God lives in the net. The net will guide you to all answers and wisdom. Doubt the net. Save the net. Kill the net."

Visual Novels were never my cup of tea. I remember trying a few but never really getting into them and dropping them so many times over the last few years, but Mahoyo was different. The first few minutes opening with Liszt's most prominent piece grabbed my attention immediately and I found my new love affair.

I started reading Mahoyo at a really tough and weird time in my life where so much change was going on. I was moving away from home, starting a new job, and all on my own in a new place to me. Mahoyo was one of those stories there to provide joyful and comedic moments of respite in that really stressful time for me when I first read those fan translated chapters almost 2 years ago now. I'm so grateful to have been able to read this and see this journey through as it's a special story about three very different humans moving each other forward and picking each other up towards a better future.

Understanding our pasts and learning how to build upon those things that define us to push forward to a more beautiful future is something I really loved coming out of this story and it's done so gracefully throughout. This is one of those stories that really moved me and I will cherish it for a long time. I love these 3 goons so much <3

I think Mikami understands to an unnatural degree that video games are fundamentally about problem-solving. Unlike an academic interpretation of "problem-solving" though, Mikami understands that the exercise of problem-solving is less about solving the actual problem but of learning new ways of thinking. Sure, other video games are problem-solving in a base sense, but Mikami's problems have that magical "Oh Shit" element to them; everyone who's done one playthrough of this game will instantly remember all three wolverine encounters, the first time they encountered Regenerators, the Krauser section, the entire 4-4 homestretch, etc. Consistent to all these amazing sections is that the game feels like it's adapting along with the player--as if Mikami was a math tutor guiding us along the workbook. "Ok you know how to deal with Wolverine now, but what if we stuck in you a locked cage with one of them? What if we put two of them in the same room? How would you adapt then?" You have to recontextualize and reinvent constantly, without forgetting the fundamentals that got you there. One of the fundamental pillars of a conservative mindset is the idea that change is risky--the problem might get worse if you approach in a new way, so it's safer to keep doing things the same way. RE4 looks at this mindset, kneecaps it, then gives it a head-exploding suplex--change is necessary, even if it is risky; use more of your resources, resupply, be more precise, exploit another weakness, or use a goddamn rocket launcher if you have to--just don't think the old way is the only way if you want to make it through. It's a constant escalation of gameplay, and that the narrative matches this escalation tit-for-tat is just aces. Literally one of the most radical games of all-time, in every sense of the word.

Many years ago, Dara O’Briain did one of the only good standup routines about video games. Video games, O’Briain argued, are the only entertainment medium that actively tests the observer, withholding their content behind challenges of mentality and dexterity. Albums, television shows and films will carry on regardlessly from the moment you press play; sections of a book that prove hard to read can be flipped past; but challenging sections of a game have to be bested or even mastered in order to progress. Want to see what happens next in Dark Souls, but can’t beat the Capra Demon? Too bad. Heard that Through Time and Space is one of the best video game levels ever, but can’t grapple with The Witcher’s inventory management and combat systems? Tough shit.

While there’s an amusing honesty to the bit, it kinda belies an uncomfortable truth about video games - that the parts where you’re moving the joysticks are likely to be the only moments of intellectual stimulation that most video games have to offer, with cutscenes more or less functioning as rewarding soap opera spectacle. It’s hard to discuss this kind of thing without sounding like a wanker, but it’s just a fact that even prestigious “adult” game-fiction like The Last of Us or God of War still rarely stirs anything more than an acknowledging “huh” in the players who’ve deigned to step outside the cultural borders of electronic entertainment and other mainstream media. Games narratives still tend to rely on cinematic cutscenes to convey information and drama, and most of the time said information or metatext is barely worth parlaying to the player - $10 million spent on comic book writers telling us “man is the real monster” or “depression is bad”. At their very best, our prestige video games are still just doing replicas of better movies.

killer7 differentiates itself from this convention in a number of ways. It’s a game that makes no concessions for those who expect a linear, event-driven narrative, peppering weirdo pseudo-plot and thought throughout map layouts, door keys (ever thought about what the Soul Shells are?) and helpful hints from dudes in gimpsuits who are prone to taking left turns into Baudrillardian philosophy while directing you to the bathroom. Textual and subtextual ambiguity reigns supreme. The gameplay (on Medium, at least) is unlikely to challenge the player all that much - aside from a few head-scratcher puzzles, it’s more or less a case of walking from point of interest to point of interest to open doors and shoot zombies. And, in a strange inversion of the problem outlined above, it’s the cutscenes and character dialogues that will tax a player’s brain far harder than anything that involves clicking buttons.

I think killer7 is a work of profound ridiculousness. Or ridiculous profundity. Something like that, anyway - I’m not quite sure of the precise term I need here, but I think Suda and Mikami are pulling from the playbooks of guys like Thomas Pynchon and David Lynch with this game - keep throwing potentially meaningful ideas and images at the screen, both within and outwith the realm of the cutscene, and let the true ones stick - the viewer will be too busy grappling with the good to remember the bad. It’s a technique that surprisingly few games dabble in, despite the supernatural properties of the medium and the obnoxious, inhuman lengths that most games require a player to play for.

So what are the good images here? Well, I guess it’s a function of the temporal, political and personal preferences of the player. Like abstract paintings, surrealist movies and post-modern novels, killer7 is wholly open to interpretation through your own kaleidoscopic lens. Unlike most game narratives that more or less bluntly prescribe a story and some associated themes (if any at all), killer7, like most Suda games, seems content to spray blood against the walls and do some interactive Rorschach testing with your psyche. Sure, there’s talk of American-Japanese relations and terrorism and borders and killers and the valise of our personae, but there’s nothing proscriptive or particularly didactic here - it’s more or less a presentation of post-9/11 realities that the player is asked to order and interpret as they see fit; a balancing act of feelings versus facts in opposition with fictions. Hand in killer7, the companion book for killer7, even (deliberately?) contradicts the facts of its own reality within the first ten pages - as if to highlight how pointless an endeavour Making Sense of it All is, especially in our Fukuyama/Fisher-influenced End of Capitalist-Realist History-Present.

By complete coincidence, I played through this game in parallel with the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, and finished it on the same day she was convicted - so Target 03: Encounter (Part 2) - where the Killer 7 head to an Epstein-pre-Epstein prescient-simulacra of Little James Island to take out an organ trader and implied child molester - held particular relevancy to me. The Jeffrey Epstein case and its relevant co-conspiracies are probably the best examples of what I’m prattling on about above - get ten, twenty, or a hundred people in a room together, and you’ll probably get a hundred interpretations of what the inner sanctum of Epstein’s reality really was - a whole smoothie bar of blended facts, news, fake news, Facebook news, speculation, fiction, fact and fuck knows what else. killer7 is often lumped together with The Silver 2425 as part of the “Kill the Past” series, and I think this info-meld of history in the melting pot of public consciousness is one of the chief relationships the games have with each other. Ironic that games about removing the past would so thoroughly realise the future of our present.

How did Suda51 know that the word’s top players would conspire to send an assassin after a sanctioned private ally of the United States government, a living evil who trafficked young girls with both personal and ulterior purpose? And how did he know a global pandemic would (temporarily) return humanity to a road-faring race? As is often suggested with Suda51 (see also: The Silver Case, No More Heroes) he may be one of gaming’s top producers of prophetic works. “Prophetic media” has been in vogue since March 2020 - references to media-elite paedophile rings in mid-2000s Nickelodeon cartoons; references to coronavirus in mid-2010s K-Dramas; references to Tom Hanks getting sick in mid-1990s episodes of The Simpsons. Wow! How do they pull it off?! Well, as with killer7’s imagery, I think it may be down to volume of produce rather than accuracy of content. The Simpsons is able to predict so much shit correctly because every ‘incorrect’ prediction isn’t even recognised as a prediction until it comes close to resembling some form of the truth we want it to be. The same applies to the images that Grasshopper’s games create.

Is this the secret to making remarkable, meaningful art and cultural commentary? Just keep producing, producing, producing until your images become resonant by virtue of the typewriter-monkey principle? That’s maybe underselling what Grasshopper achieved here - the foundations killer7 are built upon are more or less rock-solid. The cel-shaded mono-colour aesthetic is timeless, and the chosen palette for each Target is fittingly eerie. The control system, while initially awkward, is ultimately a solid compromise for a game that distills a gameplay fusion between Mikami’s Resident Evil series and Suda’s Silver Case adventure games - and it feels even better on PC, where 90% of the game can be played with just the mouse.

Although often cited as unconventional, I think the gameplay style of killer7 is a fairly logical compromise for these two creators, who seem more concerned with tone poetry and 2000s-exploration than providing a compelling and practical gamefeel. Anyway, it’s sometimes more important that a game feels good in the brain than on the hands moving the controller. killer7 is a game that locks its content away inside your mind, with progress often being made many hours after you’ve stepped away from the console and allowed your third eye time to process the images your two eyes have seen. It’s all in your head.

Xenoblade 3 is a game that is at war with itself. There’s the two nations, Keves and Agnus, fighting a perpetual, unending war. There’s the true enemy, Moebius, and the ways Keves and Agnus try to fight back against that, however subconsciously. There’s what Keves and Agnus actually represent - the first and second Xenoblade games, respectively - and how that ties into a divided fanbase and perhaps even a conflicted creator. It’s something I did not at all expect when coming into XB3 hot off the heels of completing the original for the first time; a game that I really did not enjoy. A game that I felt was politically incompetent and thematically incoherent, a game that reaches for the stars, and yet, falls to the ground. I respected the ambition, and it wasn’t like there was nothing I enjoyed about the game. Environmentally and musically, it is splendid. And yet, I cannot help but feel that XB3 is a game that reaches for those same stars, with a twisty, gargantuan narrative, a massive ensemble cast, absurd amounts of customization and, above all, a wide breadth of thematic concepts and ideas to cover, dials that up to eleven, and legitimately reaches those stars. It took a while, but I feel I can finally say that a Xenoblade game is good, and not in spite of itself (sorry XB2, love you always).

Covered in my word vomit on XB1, the second of the Blade trilogy was my first JRPG, and as such, you can imagine the ensuing experience if you’ve played that game. The music, the characters, the narrative, the visuals, the depth and width of gameplay.. to be quite honest, at the age I played it, I never really wrapped my head around it. All I knew was that when I understood how the elemental sealing and effects of breaking those seals during a chain attack worked, it tickled my monkey brain. I played it during a pretty miserable time in my life, and it offered a respite to my grievances. It helped that the narrative was about grief and moving on from the past, too. I can’t say for sure if I still think it’s good - it’s been more than five years, after all - but it is undeniably an important game to me, and will continue to be.

So, as I enter the finale, I lie conflicted. I betray my hope to re-experience the pure magic I felt from 2 and come into this new world expecting more of 1. I fully thought that I would drop this after a couple hours. Lo and behold, 100 hours later, I feel happy. It was a very peculiar feeling that XB2 brought up within me. It felt uniquely powerful in its combination of elements: gameplay, narrative, character interaction, visuals/spectacle, and music. To say it was more than the sum of its parts would be an apt choice. I find myself rediscovering this magic once again, in a similarly sorrow-filled part of my life, where the present feels somehow like it stretches on forever, and yet, I fear for my future. I fear where my path has taken me. And this set of circumstances has led for this magic to become even more potent than it already was all those years ago.

I think the part that impressed me the most was the decision to have the core cast together in the beginning. It removes the aspect of intrigue of who the next party member was going to be, as is how JRPGs are. This ended up really hurting XC1 in my experience, with Melia, Riki, and Seven not getting anywhere near enough screen time for me to really care about them (Seven especially god I hate Seven). It inspired confidence within me about the game, and made me think, how are they going to keep this going? How are they going to keep the momentum going here? It turns out, by having the best core cast in the series. Noah, Mio, Eunie, Taion, Lanz, Sena - all of them are a joy to play around with. Noah is my favorite of the three, and my other favorites were probably Mio, Lanz, and Taion. I like Eunie and Sena a lot too, but they feel a little underdeveloped, especially Sena, whose side story is just kind of a misfire. Creating a character focused narrative was definitely the right choice though, as was the decision to remove the affinity systems and Heart-to-Hearts. It allows you to get to know characters organically, rather than having to grind killing monsters with party members you don’t like so you can get an extra scene with them. It’s a really nice simplification, and having them together at the start allows all the dynamics to really shine.

I don’t have much to say about the gameplay but I think I enjoyed it the most. Yes, chain attacks are the most powerful tool in your arsenal, but when they have not been? The class system is awesome. I was always eagerly awaiting the next hero quest so I could see what hero I would unlock next. I thought a lot of them were really unique and cool, but I could’ve used less Attackers and more Defenders. I would’ve liked to see more variety other than Physical/Ether and flat DMG/Crit/DEX. In the end, though, it didn’t really affect me much at all, I just enjoyed the variety of switching up classes to have you really get a feel for all of their different playstyles and which party members they were best on. Also, Ourobouros fucking rules. More games should have you turn into Evangelions with your enemy of the state girlfriend.

The narrative itself is nothing really special I think, which is weird to say considering I loved this game so much. Instead of focusing on these world-ending threats from the get-go, like Rex and the Aegis and Shulk and the Monado, Noah and the rest of Ourobouros just feel like a bunch of kids trying to find their place in the world. The universe ending threats and stuff do come in, because of course they do, but it feels like we have a chance to see these characters grow into the legendary Ourobouros, rather than have it thrust upon them. It also helps that we learn extensively about their pasts, which isn’t really something you can say for XC1. Most of the twists are incredibly easy to guess, which is mostly because the characters don’t have the same lens we do. I’m conflicted on it, but I think it works, because in the end it’s much more important how these characters react to these reveals than I do. And then there’s Chapter 5… just, fuck man. The “all is lost” moment is done so well in these games. I love Noah and Mio so much.

Thematically, the game takes cues from both 1 and 2, as well as creating its own thematic fiber. Broadly, Xenoblade 1 is about the future, and Xenoblade 2 is about the past. Really, I think Xenoblade 3 is about both, and also the present. The whole reason why the present is what it is is because it is the mediator between past and future. It is the line between regret and hope. Instead of banging you over the head with silly plot twists, it questions and ask questions and it iterates upon itself until it finds its answer. Is there more to life in this world than just fighting? Yes. Then what is there to life more than fighting? Infinite things, and yet precious few are afforded the choice to do such a thing instead of fight. Then is the world my enemy? Yes. Then should I tear it apart? Even if the future is uncertain? If the world that takes the place of this current world is worse than the last? What then? It answers all these questions and more.

What’s more than this, though, is a creator that feels caught in his own work. In a game that tries to escape its own infinity. It is so, so difficult to talk about without spoilers, but I think it’s a really beautiful thing, to acknowledge the absolute finality of things. I have my reservations about the upcoming DLC, as I think that this is the perfect ending for this series, but I will reserve judgment until I can get my hands on it - if there’s anything this game has taught me, it’s that my expectations when it comes to these series are not to be trusted.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 urges us to step away from it. It tells us that we can enjoy it for what it is, and we can enjoy this series for what it is, but at some point, it will fade. Our current reality will continue moving forward, and we must move with it. We must have faith in the path we have traveled, and continue down it. It urges us to walk on - quite literally. If I can’t get the brainworms out of my head, I’ll edit this review with my thoughts on it while delving deep into it. Just, fuck man, what a game.

Some things I disliked: Overleveling is a big problem. You should absolutely be able to de-level, it’s stupid that’s locked behind beating the game. I don’t think area design is the best, but it’s whatever. The final dungeon is too long, and there’s too much padding that really messes with the game pacing. That’s all I can think of really, though. Amazing game, I really loved it a lot. I’ll definitely be checking out Gears and Saga in the coming months.

Sumio Mondo is staying in Room 402 of the Flower, Sun & Rain hotel on Lospass Island. He's been called here to investigate a bomb threat at the airport, and needs to arrive there before the plane taking off explodes mid-flight.

The plane explodes.

Sumio Mondo wakes up in Room 402 of the Flower, Sun & Rain hotel on Lospass Island. It's morning, and he needs to get to the airport before the plane explodes. But there's a sense of deja vu. He's been here before, and he's going to be here for quite a while. There's no past, no future, just an infinite present.

The Flower, Sun & Rain hotel, and by extension, Lospass Island is one of the more unsettling locations I've ever seen in a game. A lo-fi purgatorio, perfectly represented by a hotel on a tropical island resort. Hotels are naturally a place of transitions: a temporary abode between here and there, only called home in short bursts. Accommodating, but ultimately unfriendly and sterile. An island resort, beautiful in its view, yet also meant to be experienced in short bursts. It's beauty is only so because it is ultimately fleeting. A perfect combination for the infinite time loop Mondo is stuck in: an eternal transitional period, an infinite present, constantly resisting change and any possible futures that may be trying to take shape. The past is dead, but so is the future.

The plane explodes. Sumio Mondo wakes up in Room 402.

The core gameplay loop involves two things: puzzle solving and walking. Lots of walking. Equipped with his handy briefcase Catherine and an extensive island Guidebook, Mondo must solve the various ills of the island residents who always seem to be in the way of his path to the truth. The interesting thing about Flower, Sun & Rain's (FSR's) puzzle design is how it gives you all the tools from the start. You always have the answer to every puzzle right at the tip of your stylus, but you must figure out what page in the Guidebook applies to the problem in front of you. Just like the time loop, it's constant: the answer will always be a number, and every problem will have a page in the Guidebook.

The plane explodes. Sumio Mondo wakes up in Room 402.

The other standout aspect of FSR is how much contempt it seems to hold for the player. Every step that Mondo takes is impeded by another problem to solve, another riddle to answer, another resident who strong-arms Mondo into solving yet another predicament. It takes us half the game just to finally walk out the front doors of the hotel, and with every step closer to our goal, FSR resists us more and more fervently: the puzzles become more complex, the requests more insane, and the amount of walking the game expects you to do to get between each goal bordering on sadism. Every chapter is book-ended by a shot of the plane exploding, a constant reminder of our raison d'etre and our failure to fulfill.

The plane explodes. Sumio Mondo wakes up in Room 402.

FSR is a trial-by-fire. A task from God. An exercise in insanity. Yet it's intensely compelling. It's a game that doesn't want to be played by anyone, but it invites you to defy it with its mysteries and charming cast of characters. It dangles answers in front of you like a carrot on a stick and asks you to jump through hoop upon hoop if you want to truly want to see them for yourself. It asks you if you have what it takes to discover the truth and grinds your patience to dust in the way only tedious gameplay can to truly test your resolve. In a way, it's the perfect sequel to the Silver Case: it shares the same punk attitude and desire for truth, asking you to once again test your resolve to "Kill the Past". Discover Sumio Mondo's past, kill it if you have to, and free the entirety of Lospass Island from it's infinite present.

"Tomorrow is calling me. Maybe you'll catch up with me there?"

completely unjustifiable and anarchic. what we have in FSR is a surrealist pseudosequel to a 1999 visual novel that was not localized at the time that FSR was, making the game upon original release borderline incomprehensible. compelling analysis can still be written without knowledge of the silver case, but the vast majority have settled into a comfortable deconstructionist lens - austin walkers interpretation is one such prominent take, evincing the game's dissatisfactory DS implementations (useless bonus puzzles, step counter) as part and parcel of the game's antagonistic design, antithetical to its own industry ('It's mean. It's cruel. I kind of love it.')

despite this, one of the most beautiful games ever and the work of someone i am increasingly convinced by the day is one of the most valuable devs in the industry. masterful in tone and delivery, FSR sharply threads together various disparate narrative and thematic strands to excellent effect, resulting in an anti-game package that stands head and shoulders above the crowd by closely resembling something akin to video game poetry. what does FSR pontificate on, if not to act the provocateur or to senselessly challenge convention? in no short order: truth, mystery, identity, purity, artifice, colonialism, primitivism, paradise, death, rebirth, spirituality. the influence of kafka, jodorowsky, and lynch, for example, is felt strongly, but never so strong that it is cynical or unoriginal - to be ensnared in suda's mosaic of cultural references is only to gain appreciation for the ingenuity of his work.

i think FSR and NMH's reputations precede them such that suda is seen as a figure whose sole developmental shtick lies in deconstruction and satire, but FSR is so much more than that - it only requires the player to ascend to match its level, to bask in the sunlight and take solace in ocean waves, to intuit what can't be sensed through mere deduction and speculation. truth is, after all, as natural, forthcoming, and innate as the bright blue skies around us, sometimes.

"content dictates form. less is more. god is in the details.
all in the service of clarity, without which, nothing else matters."
- stephen sondheim

above is a quote from one of my lifelong heroes who passed away a few months ago. mr. sondheim's work defined a great deal of my teenage and transitional years and upon hearing the news of his tragic passing, i took the opportunity to reflect on the ways with which he'd influenced my art, my views, and my conduct. i'm by no means a theatre type - while i spent a few years in high school co-directing and acting as a dramaturge for a local company, by no means do i enjoy the theatre as it exists to the common eye and ear. i left that world to escape the despotism of what 'must be' and what 'sells' by the overseeing eye of the major companies and self-satisfied bigwigs because, as any artist knows, when you climb a few rungs of the ladder no art is political, but all art is politics.

yet i find myself, years removed from theatre, years removed from pushing my own envelope of personal expression to a public eye, many nights in front of a google doc, or a blank notepad, or staring at my shelf, wondering when the spark is going to hit and i'll write the next pieces of my screenplay, or my next chorus to a song, or my next analysis of some 20-year-old adventure game made by a small passionate team from the literal opposite of the world. sometimes i wonder if my minimalism, my expression of big feelings in small boxes, through white and black forms with bright technicolor lights, if it's a crutch, if i'm an imitator of the conglomerate great ideas of people before me... if i shoot half this short film adaptation of a novel as a silent work, am i up my own ass for it? if i push myself creatively as a musician to a one-man audience by design, am i selling myself short? have i missed my shot at truly expressing MYself?

of course, if you've got your head screwed on halfway right, you'll realize this self-talk is a complete load of bullshit. just put the pen to the paper. put the fingers to the keys. don't worry about who sees it, don't worry about why you do it, but if you believe in it - content dictating form - and if your style is simple short strokes with deep, cutting lines - less is more - and if your heart hurts to watch it play back - god is in the details. if you are an artist, if you are a person who needs to be able to say something for the sake of saying it, you must throw away preconceptions, you must disregard what people have said of you and your work, you must take that future into your hands and seize it. all in the service of clarity, without which, nothing else matters.

live your daily rut. get up, go to work.
push hard to make those days count.
let your work be your work, and let your work be your work.
to find happiness is to be honest with oneself.
recognize the monotony but don't let it overtake you.
your career isn't your person.
every person on this site, every person reading this
i think each one of us has art inside of us waiting to blossom.
you need to be willing to find love in your heart for that, for yourself, and the willingness to seize that potential regardless of the cost and regardless of how you've hurt before.
you need to seize the future.
you need to kill the past.

flower, sun & rain was me all along, wasn't it?

an odd one out of suda's ouevre. largely avoids the fixation on violence grasshopper's games are known for, foregoing the hard boiled cybercrime noir of the silver case, the post-9/11 sentai horror bloodbath of killer7, and the sillier nerdfighter grindhouse bloodbath of no more heroes (which would set a pattern followed by most of the studio's subsequent games as bloodbaths, with suda only occasionally as the director. its humor is also pretty close to fsr's at times). tonally very different from these but thematically very familiar, flower sun and rain should be taken as both sequel AND side story at once to tsc, and its very hard to talk about without also bringing up that game, in a way i dont think is as true for the more standalone k7 or nmh. there really is an appeal i'm finally starting to understand with taking tsc, this, and likely 25th ward--which is next up for me--as a trilogy with its own arc.

the silver case itself, as the starting point, is obsessed with the internet and the city, finding a formal link between the two. it's in the clacking text boxes, the film windows, the backgrounds with rotating numbers and flashing shapes and out of context phrases, altogether an abstracted space of words and pictures that feels like website presentation. its also in the player movement thats restricted to hotspots with rigid pathing befitting of street grids, apartment buildings, your home that you make the same linear motions in everyday. both feel non-naturalistic and cramped, but that just emphasizes the experience we have with these spaces. surrounded by cold geometric cells online and off, everyone so close together yet so far away. it gets exhausting, being unable to find ourselves outside of these boxes, to get some picture of truth. the game recognizes the need to reach for the light within yourself, outside of this darkness, but what would that even look like?

fsr shows a world "outside" by taking the reverse approach. your movement is "freer", your sense of space perceivable with the player character's own two legs in relation to analog control. hotel guests, staff, and people of the island get in your way to ask for "help", more or less, with tasks that are nonsensical in their solution and often ridiculous in their premise too, but the experience of it creates a sense you are working for a net good out of mondo's own developing kindness. you gain more and more of the world to move in until you eventually feel your sense of self stretch across long roads and pathways--literally as the in-game guidebook itself says. you can check bathrooms, take unnecessary detours, hear the rolling waves and the chirping birds. maybe this is where you can find the light.

but this "naturalistic" feeling of freedom the game allows compared to tsc, however, belies the truth of lospass's paradise as being just as artificial as the 24 wards, in a different way. the puzzles you help others with are just solved with codes based off relevant trivia from a pamphlet, blatantly mechanical logic as it can get (reminds me a little of riven, though the juxtaposition of natural and unnatural here is more unmistakably intentional). the staff hide themselves behind friendly smiles, and some of those you help may be tricking you. the hotel, a temporary place to stay, is the only "living space" you can find. structures feel too new, too slick, to feel some engrained identity behind them. the island lost its own past, perhaps even had it stolen, with whatever it is that looks like "history" you find not necessarily being factual. it goes beyond feeling touristy, it's like people can't really live and be oneself here for all that long.

what i like about flower sun and rain not being a silver case sequel in name is that its another way the game frames itself as an escape from the confines of the wards--meaning then that 25th ward may be a return to the grime so to speak, to confront that space again. fsr is trying to forget the past that built it, only to find a new kind of artifice that reminds you of the one you knew before. this doesn't mean the game is saying its escapism is ultimately useless and selfish though, because when you're in the dark it might be a matter of needing to see something different, anything else, to gain a better understanding of yourself and your past that made you yourself. new memories tinged by a new sun, even as artificial light, might be whats needed to really move forward.

loved doing math homework and taking daily jogs on my tropical vacay. ps the walking around wasn't even as bad as it was made out to be, you guys are just weak and need to break your brain like i did with aimlessly backtracking for no real reward in other games that have even larger and emptier worlds

Desperately clinging to the only meme that defines his remaining identity, if there’s any at this point, is the role of a medic, someone who saves lives, someone who refuses to let go of lives he was determined to save, someone who wished for… peace. Except it’s nowhere to be found, it was never a thing to begin with. He can no longer save lives, instead every action he takes leads to another being lost. Spreading the venomous seeds of revenge, forced to play the role of a legend who perpetuates this futile cycle of hatred against his will. He has no meme or gene to pass on. No one will remember him. No one will speak of him.

VNs simply don't get better

If I had to describe what Umineko means to me concisely, it's the story that conveyed to me no matter how hard being happy or finding happiness is, it should always begin with acknowledging the things and people that surround you who could make you happy. From where you can actually feel hopeful about trying to look for happiness.

I've come across many stories that want the world and the people in it to be better people but none that do it as sincerely as Umineko. And in turn it truly does inspire me to try to be better, it all begins with the perspective...without love it cannot be seen I suppose.

Reading this as a lost, depressed and helpless teen made me appreciate how it tackles the struggles of transitioning from a teen to adult that much more. It is certainly my favourite coming of age story in that aspect.

You'd think a story that wants to be so personal would have a laid back narrative but nope, Umineko is as meticulous and full of effort in laying out its story as a story could aspire to be.

though it might not be held in the same "well, obviously" monotonic unison as its colleagues across other mediums, i truly believe that, give it a decade, and metal gear solid 2 will be held as the monolithic peak of this medium. even if i cannot say that it's my sole favorite game, however close it may be, it is my immediate answer for the greatest game ever made. metal gear solid 2 not only manages to capture what makes video games a truly unique tool with which artists can convey emotion, atmosphere, content/form and delivery of ideals in the most abstract and interactive means outside of, potentially, very earnest performance art... it also serves as a truly post-modernist work, a truly of-the-times critique of the world, of the coming future, and of itself.

the thing about metal gear solid 2 which many players may take for granted now is that the experience extends far beyond the confines of the game itself. the marketing phenomena of mgs2, with the deliberately misleading information siphoned from trailers, promotional artwork, and interviews, offered a very different, very deliberately pleasing and gratifying experience for fans of the original metal gear solid than the final project would involve. solid snake encompassed all of the commercial footage, including areas in which he wouldn't appear or be playable in the final title. though i didn't play mgs2 upon its release in 2001, i can imagine the shock and confusion players must've felt from that slip-cover alone; a barren white cover in which gackt (oh my god lmao) holds an infant in his hands and the two lock eyes. really? THIS was the game to follow up metal gear solid? and of course, a sigh of relief might come when the tanker mission unfolds, and the familiarity of snake, otacon, ocelot, and the standard mgs fair enters the canvas. at last, this is what we'd been waiting for. of course, kojima pulls the covers out under that very quickly, and gaming's greatest left turn begins not long after.

one might be mistaken into believing mgs2 to be something of a cruel joke played on its audience. indeed, many attempts at post-modernism in videogames post-msg2 seem to miss the target of its satire. you look at many of these supposed post-modern opuses of the 2010s like undertale and spec-ops: the line, and the constant seems to be that the player must be punished or chastised in order to be made to feel some form of remorse or questioning of their actions. "do you feel like a hero yet?" indeed - especially damning and hypocritical criticism for games in which the player is subjected to this criticism for actions they cannot command choice over. i'd liken mgs1's approach to this tread path to michael haneke's 1997 film funny games - rather than chastise the viewer for participating with the medium, poke satirical fingers at the schadenfreude of the situation, highlight what the medium typically offers, and indulge in it and overexpose it with that in mind. YES, the moral quandry of snake enjoying killing or not is curious, especially in the rise of the first-person shooter golden era (as mgs1 of course was released around the likes of half-life, thief, quake ii et al) but it never guilts the PLAYER themselves for indulging in this medium. it isn't a half-hearted criticism of the audience partaking with the art. it's acknowledgement and glutton. and that's every bit more shocking and earnest.

compare this, then, to mgs2, which is about as opposite to player-critical as post-modernism in the medium comes. the controls are freer, easier and vastly improved over the original game. raiden's adventure is MOCKINGLY linear, with the varied landscapes and level variety of shadow moses now smoothed out into monotone, opaque, lifeless, sterile, fluorescent-lit halls that wouldn't feel out of place at one of my life's half-dozen 9 to 5 churn and burns. there is no life, there is only objective. there is no snow, there is no hill, there are no snowmobile getaways. only sterile, empty, vast nothingness. big shell itself has no heart, there is no beat to its rhythm. only a low, electric hum devoid of heart. an invisible set of eyes monitoring every move.

rose, the colonel, the whole crew outside of the mgs1 crew, emma and solidus, they're equally robotic and lifeless. all of their dialogue is stilted and phony. the sham is held together with scotch tape. the teenage fantasy of metal gear solid is lost, what little it had, and what is left is a sterilized y2k reality. your seldom moments with pliskin, otacon, and emma, they are the flicker of life that remains in the hulking machine. they are dave inside of hal-9000. the only pieces of humanity left in a world growing more autonomic and bleak. more than ever, snake and otacon shed their humanity to one another. no longer held to the machismo/nerd dynamic that defined their arcs in mgs1, there is a true acceptance and love, however you read it (it's gay as fuck though let's be honest) between them and a shared understanding of the others masculinity - on THEIR terms - that undermines the exact gamerbro audience that rejected this game for a decade after its release. these two would have every right and reason to become cold, sterile, and unwanting towards the world which has turned them away, but instead their agency is to pull the robot boy out of the system and teach him what it is to be human, to be ALIVE, and seek his own path.

the final hour of mgs2 is one of the most terrifying and harrowing experiences you will have in media. kojima et al shift into full swing as the absurdist (yet minimalist) humor which has defined their image warps into a vouyeristic exploitation, literally stripping the player nude and subjecting them to the harsh reality of the 21st century. everything is live and on air, everything is watched, everything is recorded. truth bends to subjectivity and context defines everything. what is the game and what is the commentary, and where that line crosses is irrelevant and it is in THIS sequence where mgs2 hits peak post-modernism in its medium. it is not criticizing its player, it is not criticizing within the confines of the game itself - whatever defines "the game" at this point is purely speculation as far as i'm concerned - it is a call to arms for unity, realization, acceptance of the hard pill to swallow, and a call to action against the status quo and against the system before and while it swallows us whole. what defines the simulation and what defines a breach into reality, dog tags or no, is your call.

mgs2 is a game about a lot of things. it's about games. it's about the internet. it's about america. it's about america from outside america. it's about art. it's about love. it's about masculinity. it's about trauma. it's about healing. it's about the future. it's about understanding our past. it's about acceptance. it's about prevention. it's also the game where snake can shred the fuck out of some grind-rails and eat shit when he skateboards into an airborne bomb. what the fuck else do you want? greatest video game ever made.