In a culture of greed, gluttony, and corn syrup, the amount of slop that we put into our bodies (myself included) goes right past our eyes. It's only fairly recently have we been able to see more and more of how our food is made, and how ineffectively it is distributed. Look up the food safety section on Wikipedia. If it's anything I want to take from this game, it's that you should be aware of what you eat. Be very aware of what you eat. Also, really cute creature design! Cheepoof definitely takes my crown. Also in love with Bunger as everyone should be. Bunger Bunger. Hahahaa.

Consistently and entirely brutal. Difficulty is often punishing and unfair, visuals are always brand new and overwhelming, narrative is usually obscure yet in ways direct and in tandem with visual aspects. While I think it's brutal aspects are sometimes detracting, they are mostly enhancing the feeling of prey in a predator's world. Uniquely minimal in ways that are deceptive, vast, and packed with detail and attention to achieve a look and feel unlike any other platformer I've played. A survival game in which you are destroyed.

It's clear that we've moved on from this. Meta-narratives that make the game "sentient" and talk directly to the player have been a trope of the indie dev scene for a short period of time, under a decade. It was run into the ground mostly because of how popular and ever-present the youtube let's play scene was, and this kind of story was perfect for reaction content with a demographic of teenagers and young adults. None were like Stanley Parable though, for better or for worse.

So when a sequel for a game that criticized the monotony of desk jobs and the false sense of choice we have in our lives was announced, people were pretty skeptical. I mean I wasn't, I had faith, but this could easily be not good. We've moved on, new content doesn't seem as new or exciting as a concept because of this culture we left behind. But oh did they know. They knew exactly what we were doing.

The idea of sequels has been severely tainted by American entertainment. They are cash-grabs, sell-outs, rehashes, and they only serve the purpose to milk as much money out of a successful franchise as possible. The cynical fuckers over at Crows Crows Crows introduce you to "new content" with a door that says "new content", until later when it says "new, new content" with a flashy neon sign. Through constant convoluted mechanics that don't do anything, and long one-sided conversations with the narrator, you get more of the different same. The pressure of pleasing everyone around you, the weight of a legacy holding creativity down, the public outcry determining what you make next, and the sad truth that no, this isn't a "good" sequel, all comes together to make me breathe out of my nose a bit and think on how I go about creating. It doesn't matter, really.

Maybe this is my fault. I kinda just hailed this as the best game I've never played, so I was pretty excited to get into it! But I have a lot of issues with this game, like a lot more than I was expecting. While this game is at times really beautiful, a lot of the visual effects that are just plastered all over the game make it so that it's really hard to tell what's going on, a lot of the visual information gets lost to me unless I squint. The combat leaves so much to be desired, it's literally just button mashing in a way that's not even really controllable by you. Also it faults in the same way many platformers do where they add precision platforming with floaty ass controls!!! I just don't understand why that's necessary at all, so inconsistent with stuff. The story is.... boring. So cut and dry and basic ass shit. Cute looking characters, devastation across the world, and you save it, wow, round of applause. I have no attachment to these characters and I just simply don't care about them. I played through this whole thing thinking that at some point when all the mechanics came around that I would finally have it click, and that the poorly implemented music and generic feel to it all was just a lapse of judgement. But then the credits appeared.

A chance at a life we want is all we can really ask for, and it's all we will fight for the most. For better or for worse, our character strengthens when our life begins to change, and colors start to become vivid. These surreal moments of transition in life are shown to the extreme of friendliness and confusion with this hilarious mystery game that I can easily recommend to anyone who doesn't mind reading. This game has a mind-blowing narrative and has such hilarious character moments and art to show off. The remaster especially brings out a lot of that love, and the music sounds so amazing. The Ace Attorney fan in me was extremely pleased with how much charm this had to offer, and I'm so glad it exists in the way it does on its own. What a fuckin ride

Death is not an end. An exercise of extreme empathy through peril and terror. An urge, a need, to understand. We have to try to understand, we cannot be afraid of it for our whole lives. Because our lives are not alone. How we live will affect the way hundreds more will live, and so on. Our life will tell the stories that we leave behind, and those stories will shape life in ways that we will never be able to comprehend. It's amazing, just how small we are. It's endless curiosity, love of life, it's realizing that you as one are just as important as every one. Every one before you, every one after you. We are all so, so fucking amazing, and while it may take us too long to realize, and while we might be too afraid of understanding to notice, the way that we shine is bright, blinding, sheer and pure light, beaming and swallowing us all. An essential narrative to the original.

The vibes are immaculate, I have to give it that. The narrative and aesthetic are pretty enjoyable despite the rushed ending. But the main problem I have with this is just the meander feeling that this game has. While I love how expressive the character's dialogue can be, it tends to mask a lot of hints or just takes its place entirely, making me just be completely lost super easily and a lot of puzzles involving a lot of running around get confusing really quick because of this. A lot of the puzzles make sense on paper, which is rare for an adventure game like this, but the way it's executed just kinda leaves a lot of matches really hazy. This game needed a bit more for me, but I'm sure it's clear by now that I'm a dumbass and most people have a lot more fun with this game, so definitely take it on if you're up for it, you'll at least enjoy the visuals and the fun story, guaranteed.

For every thing, there is something bigger. Something so much bigger than you could ever comprehend, getting farther and farther away from you every second. And for every thing that is bigger, there is something bigger than that, so much bigger than that thing could ever comprehend. All getting farther and farther away. At some point, it will be gone. That thing that you are, that thing that is bigger, the things that are smaller, they all go away eventually. Will we ever know why it all goes away? Can we stop it from leaving, even just a little bit? I'm not so sure that we can. We can certainly try, though. Effort into this multi-dimensional quest for meaning is something that has been a part of human psychology since humans knew they were humans. It has taken us this long to get this far, and we are still so very very far away, and it keeps getting farther away. And even if we find something, a lead, it's just a bigger thing with other bigger things yet to find, also getting farther and farther away.

Maybe it's better to appreciate what's here now. The friends we make, the history we learn, the past we remember, that's what has survived. It's why we try at all. Because at the end of the day trying and failing is something we will all do, but it's failing together that makes the landing just a bit softer. The meaning isn't anything more than beginning and end. What's in between is up to you, and it helps when you know that out there somewhere in the unobservable, someone is playing the same song with you.