enjoyed my time with this series of shallow slapstick playgrounds well enough but not well enough to really bother scrawling anything exploratory about the game itself!!! What i do want 2 say is that I continue to be really confused by the jarring contrast between something like Hitman's reception and the incurious disdain people have for Quantic Dream joints, because the choose your own adventure-style structural rigidity and corny netflix-ified cinematic aspirations of both teams are really not all that different!!!!! Look I 100% get taking political/mechanical/directorial umbrage with David Cage's work but also cant help but marge simpson groan at the way so many people thoughtlessly celebrate equally fraught games (in general, not even specifically talking about Hitman here) with no sense of awareness, using something like Detroit as an ideological whipping boy to absolve themselves of perceived complicity despite its admittedly infantile notions about racial/revolutionary politics being like, literally the violent cultural boilerplate and not some uniquely grotesque cringe failure! This is also a politically sloppy series full of questionable racial/gender depictions and a lot more faux-prestige cinemawanking "interactive movie" elements, CYOA routing, and schticky preordained scenarios than many admit so like... why is something like Detroit so uniquely fucking abhorrent from an interactivity perspective!!! Not to even go to bat for a noxious cornball doofus like David Cage but it irritates moi that Hitman and many other titles have sooo many exalting reveries about the brilliant structure of play whereas almost no structural assessments of Detroit exist without an intense haze of hyperbolic projection and unnecessary personal distancing. There's a lot in common going on here and tbh I think the way some of these similar mechanics and structures manifest in QD projects is way more successful and elegant than the "select chosen route and follow the oversignaled breadcrumb trail between story nodes to the divergent kill, then replay" shit here!!!!!!! Cringe about press x to jason and other prefab moments of hackish film-blocking as contextual gesture in HR all you want but IMO the failed illusion of opportunity and spontaneity in Hitman is a way more offensive sin! at least "interactive movie CYOA" games know full well what they are and don't build these elaborate and hollow palaces of obfuscation that only serve to disappoint once the presumption of opportunity sours. god why am i writing about david cage on this site at all let alone on a totally unrelated page about Hitman i'm going to lock myself in a slaughterhouse freezer forever bye

I was immediately on board with this after learning it was a game with an illustrative rendering style largely indebted to Shinto mythology, but was really taken aback by some of the fascinating gameplay choices here as well. Sakuna has such a gorgeous and warm spirit that's easy to like, but it's also a bit confrontational and strenuous in the way it incentivizes work and discomfort as measures of both personal and cultural development. Imo this game has some of the most artfully utilized and philosophically moving interactive explorations of toil/fatigue since the microwave chamber sequence in MGS4. I will never forget my first few manual harvests that were legitimately filled with menial, largely thankless labor! I completely get why anyone would feel insulted or turned off by some of the more audacious frontloaded mechanical frustrations here but it's 100% what hooked me! It has plenty of the same DNA and sometimes overbearing anime stylization as its pseudo sister Rune Factory, but Sakuna stuck to me so much more because of how directly and beautifully it conjures these intimate moments of discipline and culture and history--WOW it must be nice to belong somewhere with a specific cultural legacy spanning back many hundreds of years!!! The obsessively intimate attention to detail given to the wildly granular (lol get it) rice farming and dinner mechanics feels deeply reverent, almost spiritual. I love the exploration/harvesting dichotomy but sadly found the merely serviceable combat to be pretty repetitive after several seasonal loops, and the simplistic level/encounter design cant accommodate so much repetition without turning a little sour. Still loved my time with this! also if you even consider playing with the English voice acting you are doing self harm please do NOT do that!

I quickly discovered that the the tenor of the prose and overall narrative style in this is really not to my tastes--Not to any unforgivable fault by any explicable metric, it just has some repeated quirks and a specific tonality that really gets under my skin. Your mileage will DEFINITELY vary and I hope to get over my taste aversion and return to see where it leads ~eventually~ !
I decided to bounce after about 90 minutes, so it feels totally unfair to give this a rating. I'm only writing anything here because it MUST be said that the cutscene direction, composition and flow between frames, and overall visual design/execution here are top class and put other static VNS (or like, most games with cutscenes or "cinematic" aspirations in general) coming from studios with infinitely more resources and manpower to shame. Imagine if the charming but minimal graphic novel sequences from like, Bayonetta/Folklore/Gravity Rush were pushed to their absolute limit and treated with enthusiasm as a space for immense visual opportunity rather than mostly a sleek-ish way to save some development time--that's the entirety of Necrobarista, and it rules to see something capitalizing off a limited style this well. This is a really incredible achievement in cel-shading and kinetic framing and I was pretty stunned by the segment I played!! Im sorry though i just really struggle with the whole snarky slice of afterlife anime urban fantasy thing (Necrobarista feels very kindred with Dead Like Me which is another thing my palate just has complete revulsion to) and the little highlighted words with quippy jaded comments did very little for me! Literally no hate if this is your thing i'm happy for you because what a gorgeous masterful package for your thing to be delivered in!!!! maybe it could be my thing too someday but I need to do some wounded child primal scream regression therapy or something to get over whatever it is i cant stomach about media with this vibe

-The power and futility of images
-The unreconcilable friction between self expression, documentation, and occupation
-The urgency and necessity of cultural perseverance and joy, even as bloody torrents surge through broken dams
-The act of bearing witness to the places and people whose glittering specificity will be dashed and diluted by apocryphal, self-absolving media narratives scrawled by the servants of those who erased them
-The film reel collectibles are TOO SMALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

david kanaga/shawn mcgrath are cool weirdos who clearly went to the osamu sato cool weirdo school of being a multi-talented generalist using art 2 uncompromisingly chase your psychedelic sensorial obsessions!!!! Dyad goes way beyond just pretty neon fractal fluff though and milks so much creativity and genuinely varied level experiences out of the simple gameplay framework of Tempest. It actually takes a level of thoughtful construction and mentally demanding stimulus to induce a state of "trance gaming" and Dyad totally understands that, while also having a peerlessly blip bloopy ost that really carves out a unique place for itself and eludes the trappings of "vapor/synthwave" or any tedious genre signifier! the 20 minute finale named after a david lynch quote is kiiind of indulgent and embarrassing but also hell yeah go 4 it dudes!!! More than anything i wish i could play this game in the fully ridiculous custom VR arcade chair/sensory deprivation tank thing they used to promote the game at cons way back when

mom: we have bayonetta at home
bayonetta at home: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/952971429485624132/38347DAB23A7862A21020B2C40B3C0E9A6AB494A/

this is pretty janky and unsure of itself in a lot of ways (is it a musou?? an arcade shooter?? a big setpiecey spell combat thing?? its mostly just empty and busted!) but the tacky B movie vibe is hysterical and does a lot of legwork. A few of the more surrealist levels rule (loved fighting a bunch of 5fps quadrupedal eyeballs atop a plane) and the baffling cutscenes keep things moving just well enough to milk some gonzo enjoyment out of the whole deal. At its best this feels like Earth Defense Force meets an Underworld movie. A lot of bizarre sound effects feel a bit knowing: the mutated zombie enemies that flail at you while making turkey gobbling noises are up there with the "DONT WANT 2 DIEEEE" zombies from dead prem and i adore them. It's honestly pretty sad there are so few semi-big publisher games that feel as peculiar, haphazard, and gleefully tacky as this nowadays. Alicia's rose spear spell is also literally the origin point for the Dark Execution sealed verse in Nier (Cavia clearly re-used a slightly reskinned version of the same animation and programming) so thats a fun little trivia thing I guess!!!!

love 2 take one of the most resourceful and ambitious pixel art masterstrokes of its era and thoughtlessly reinterpret its gestural warmth as a vacuous pantomime of a low rent Tales game! The broad (but endearing) granular ensemble story of Trials was never, like, that stellar or thought provoking, but the new visual treatment makes this fluffy fable feel so much more undignified and alienating. Some of the voice acting in this is a war crime!!!!

The modernized gameplay translation is way more successful than the art design. Totally solid little sugar cookie of an action rpg that retains the chunky class-based beat em up fun of the OG. Any time I was not in combat I forcibly induced ego death as a self-preservation mechanism!!!!

IMO Dishonored is one of a scant few series with such masterfully interwoven area design that organically accommodates a variety of playstyles and tactics--without losing its aura of verisimilitude. This economical little cutie puts premiere games like Deus Ex / Cyberpunk and their shrink-wrapped route segmentation to shame; there's little to no "here's the stealth approach air vent, directly beside the combat approach cover corridor! Time 2 pick ur actually kind of meaningless, overbearingly highlighted choice!" bullshit here. Like Souls, you actually have to pay deep attention to largely un-signaled opportunities in the architecture, enemy behaviors, and level design in ways that successfully make you feel like you're discovering exploitable weaknesses in both the diegetic AND directorial structures of the game world itself. Blink/Far Reach still feel like you're playing debug mode and hacking the game but in a totally intentional way and it RULES! It's exhilarating to have to constantly re-evaluate your approach and compromise whatever binaristic roleplay you initially set out on due to the vibrant, chaotic texture within every area, and when you're on a roll it's absolutely some of the coolest zonefeel and adaptive stealth EVAR!!!

Sadly I am kind of godawful at this series despite being a fan, I and struggled immensely to play in the rough style I find most satisfying (stealth-predatorial, with the occasional quick firefight when discovered), especially at the start. D2 is almost immediately much less forgiving than the first game, and the enormous, punishing opening areas do very little to get you acclimated. I was constantly abusing quicksaves and moving at a snails pace until getting my sea legs 8+ hours in, and by that point I had become a bit too reliant on some cheesy, avoidant strategies. This may only be an issue on console, but I found the reload times to be especially ridiculous for such a high-risk game that encourages you to frequently retry; I spent maybe 1/5th of my playtime in the first 3 zones inside a loading screen and that does not feel acceptable!!! I was able to push through this klutzy phase because I knew of the pleasures 2 come once I got my groove back, but the lengthy downtime very likely could have turned me away for good if I were a first-time player. Happy I stayed onboard because some of the later zones are a delight to navigate, especially with a more developed arsenal of abilities. Maybe this isn't a problem on PC, but it really aggravated me on console.

The lore of this world does very little for me and I don't find the story or the characters at all engaging, but the whalepunk theming does lend itself to some areas with interesting mechanical/structural concepts (the 13 Ghosts/Cube-style morphing inventor mansion and witchy taxidermy conservatory were NEAT!). I'm glad for the attempts at stylization that are here, but wish they had taken things even further. The overarching story of braindead political retribution is basically a huge yawn but the lived-in sensibility of individual spaces remains excellent.

ALSO I picked Emily and was HORRIFIED to discover that she can not turn into a rat, which was the coolest ability in the OG and legit feels odd to be locked to one player character--esp when "dethroned edgy steampunk princess" feels WAY more likely to have high rat affinity than boring pseudomute assassin man!!!! felt legit devastated every time I saw a group of rats I could not possess. The game literally should warn you upon character select that if you pick Emily you will NEVER go ratmode :'( Her Naruto self-multiplication/shadow crawl power is NOT an acceptable substitute!!!! legit -.5 a star for this injustice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by way of Noby Noby Boy and Banjo: Nuts and Bolts. I love a good industry polemic, and only Ice Pick Lodge (or like, Keita Takahashi/Yoko Taro) could deliver such a scathing satire of the market/cultural forces rendering Big Games™ into such braindead immediate gratification sludge with this much wit and eccentricity. The phantasmagoric grotesquerie of this visual universe is so peculiar; it's a scummy melange of Terry Gilliam, bootleg educational cgi kid's cartoon, and 90's faux-utopian "found art" park (think the St. Louis City museum or Austin's Cathedral of Junk). I love the headache-inducing maximalism and nails-on-a-chalkboard visual confrontation here, and the aesthetic is used to make some cutting points.

However, I cant fully get on board with this game because I feel like many of its most splenetic critiques come across as cynical, cruel, and directed at the wrong people. While the bitter bitch part of me DOES love the depiction of AAA game consumers as lobotomized crotchless potato babies, there's just a little too much "look at the piggie philistines eagerly slopping up garbage" energy in this, and I don't feel like its a particularly useful message coming from people who ostensibly believe in nurturing games as an expressive, mature medium (and have pushed the boundaries with their other titles in ways that eventually reached positive cult acclaim and reappraisal, changing some small semblance of the games community for the better IMO!). IPL are obviously a team that have been burned by financial struggle and frequent misinterpretation by games pundits/consumers, and I completely sympathize with their venomous attitude, but Cargo ends up a simplistic and inefficient critique--more of a troll than a thesis--because of it. It's a jaded dead end, uninterested in suggesting alternatives to this idiocy ouroboros or celebrating what more individuated, challenging games could be and do for people--it's all insult and no imagination, and the insults feel like hyperbolized projections that I don't buy as a reflection of the interiority of most gamers (even the DUMBEST ones that i HATE!!!). The fact that it exists is still cool as hell (A lot of my issues with Cargo are moreso that so few meaty self-reflexive games analyzing actual marketing and consumption exist to accompany/complement its very mean-spirited perspective) and I still prefer it as a piece of medium analysis over something like The Stanley Parable because it's eccentric and confounding and Slavic instead of droll and clinical and BRITISH!!!!!

my "haute take" is that aside from select elements of FFT/Tactics Ogre (which largely share the same story and overt themes), Matsuno, while certainly a welcome and serious artistic voice in games, actually isn't some master craftsman of deep political intrigue/class narratives. I think his stories frequently end up feeling needlessly obfuscated, compromised, and hard to fully engage with!! It feels a bit telling how rarely I encounter any meaty explorations of FFXII or Vagrant Story's actual themes; It's way more common to come across people simply exalting the fact that "jrpgs with dark political stories instead of rainbow anime teens" exist. I would argue that something like "icky nomura rainbow animu" FFX has WAY more to say about politics and tradition and control than this does, and does it in a more sprawling and artful way! The style and delivery of the narrative in Vagrant Story is remarkable, especially for the time, but it feels too archetypal to be anything ideologically substantive and too staid and self-serious to succeed as an engaging pulp story. Like, I also enjoy the variety and surface level visual/stylistic sophistication here in a big way but A Tale of Two Cities this ain't.

This is legitimately one of the most beautiful games of all time and the cutscene direction remains pioneering and stellar, but so much about VS has kept me at arms length despite my repeated, desperate attempts to fall in love with it. The unforgiving, obscurantist battle and equipment systems require so much tedious menu navigation (which could be FINE if the game thematically referenced the menu navigation / made meticulousness a motif in some meaningful sense OR made the menus nearly as visually appealing as the rest of the world, but it doesn't) and many of the dungeons feel strangely disengaged with the story due to the way they run in parallel with flashbacks or cutaways. The fatiguing systems and stages make the game feel like you're looking in on a story through a foggy window rather than inhabiting and experiencing one. Vagrant Story is an incredibly interesting and visually arresting title that is rightfully a historic gaming curio, but I really don't think it has that much to offer beyond that. Maybe your experience will be different, but I keep searching for meaning here and ending up frustrated.