Not a mad world, THE mad world. A nonsensical cumulus of places, still clinging after so many iterations of preserving a feeling, an element, an ember.

Replaying it after almost 8 years has been amazing. I remembered even the enemy placement, but almost forgot the sensations of the places themselves. There's been a lot of complaints about Blight Town, but i love how horrific it looks, how sick the enemies look, the platforms and the wood don't make any physical sense, you are able to pass through out of pure luck! It was one of the instances where I stopped and felt a sinking feeling in my stomach, thinking how many ages you would need to backtrack in time for any of this to make sense, any logical sense based on our world.

Also, I don't understand people saying this is TOO SLOW of a game. "I've played Dark Souls 3 and now I can't get back to 1". Like bitch, just go for endurance and dexterity, you can dodge anything and move gracefully, you can even get strong armour and tank many bosses while still moving a lot; that's how I killed the DLC bosses and Gwyn on first try.

More thoughts in my Elden Ring review.

In the production of the Season 7 Episode 8 of South Park, "South Park is Gay!", creators Matt and Trey brainstormed the ending for hours, before coming up with a completely goofy out-of-the-blue third act that barely tied into the entertaining initial premise and have since referred to the episode as "one of their worst" due to this random reveal dragging down the entire setup; yet despite that, fans at large seem to have found the ending hilarious and have professed great enjoyment of Crab People.

The last two seconds of Iron Lung are the horror equivalent of Crab People.

i'll fight you to the death, and win, if you don't like ketsui. if you don't like greg, well, you're wrong, but i guess i can respect it

personally, because i'm a dickhead, i admire that this game absolutely bombs away most strict ideas of "good design". the bullets are grey and brown on brown and grey. bombs are flawed, imperfect solutions for both offense and defense that are hard to rely on. the rank system is invisible -- yet must be constantly observed. getting anywhere with greg requires external study and theory which is enacted with guesswork and risk. (though the "all in" feeling of cranking your autofire and finally fully powering yourself up to try to burn the end of the game down before the rank catches up with you -- this is a rare thrill in games). the best player ships are crossovers from mahou daisakusen, unlockable via cheat code. and yet i still love this game!

a particularly interesting and undersung thing about garegga is how scoring works. we generally think of scoring as an extra rule or two to follow, a covenant, a loop. medal chaining serves this purpose to a degree, but it's not the heart of the game's scoring -- which is about oddly-balanced score values, tick points and how you get the damn medals to appear in the first place. medal chaining is simply there to link all these little stunts together

each stage in greg has a massive amount of inscrutable scoring rules which, again, are never said to the player. bomb the pipes for extra points, destroy the tanks while they're on the houses, bomb the flamingoes, self-destruct into the blimps. bosses even moreso -- a scoring run of garegga is tasked with a very systemic dismantling of the various intricate mechanical bosses not unlike reading a technical manual in reverse. no, you fucking idiot, you were supposed to destroy that part with a non-piercing shot!

if you can surmount the tragedy of having to look up scoring information on the internet, this does a lot for the game -- each stage feels and plays so differently, is always asking different things of you, yet always does nothing more than use the basic tools of shooting, moving, managing your options, and bombing.

as with the rank system, it's up to the aspiring player to put it all together and succeed -- which means constantly juggling resource against resource, constantly asking if you should burn a life to appease the rank demon or hold onto it for a safety with no future, constantly wondering how low your power should be for a given section, micro-managing bomb fragments. greg makes you sweat the small stuff.

this level of absolute detail, this level of nurnied out machine-like inelegant intricacy, is frankly incompatible with having to explain everything twice every five seconds. something has to give way, and this game is of an older era where it was friendliness who'd generally give way. i love you greg

Una de las experiencias más hermosas y únicas que he tenido el placer de probar, mientras que a su vez, es de las que más conciente está de la forma en que funciona el medio en el que se desarrolla.

Legítimamente, es imposible contar ésta historia de cualquier otra forma que no sea mediante un videojuego sin cagarla, porque incluso teniendo detalles que uno vería como irrelevantes (Cómo lo es la perspectiva en primera persona, el hecho que tengas que rejugarlo varias veces para conseguir el verdadero final o que ciertos diálogos cambien dependiendo del personaje que elijas), terminan siendo piezas esenciales para el Plot Twist final.

Quizá el único "Pero" que uno podría tener es que hay ocasiones muy puntuales en que el juego opta por un ritmo absurdamente lento y pesado de leer (Aunque a final de cuentas sirva para darle peso a las relaciones que formes con los personajes), pero que una vez y te llegas a acostumbrar, serás recompensando con caracterizaciones preciosas de su muy extrañable cast.

Ever17 fue juego que me dió perspectivas sobre la ficción y la vida misma que nunca se me hubieran pasado la cabeza en ningún instante, que me enseñó lo bello que puede ser una simple casualidad; pero sobretodo, que no importa la cantidad de dudas que uno pueda tener sobre si mismo... Siempre habrá una forma de encontrar una respuesta... Siempre habrá una forma... De salir del infinito.

I can see the sun, you can see the moon.
and there are a little dream and hope in the sky.
I can see the sky, you can see the sky.
and I'll show you our sunshine...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMn9ZPJ_8D0