Yes, I played the whole thing. All 4 endings. Having played it now, I'm totally unsurprised at the positive reception here (and on the broader internet) due to being written halfway-decently moment to moment, but man, y'all got fuckin psyopped into thinking a game about “fixing" an enby into being your doting submissive wife was good!

Ok, short review out of the way: Snoot Game is a parody/anti-fan-game of Goodbye Volcano High, a game which, as I am writing this review, is still a month or two off from release. GVH looks to be a story-driven graphic adventure game in the same indie niche as games like Night in the Woods and Life is Strange, and despite not being out, has earned quite a lot of ire from places on the net like 4chan. This revulsion is due to the fact... that it's a queer, furry, narrative-heavy game that showed up for a mere 1 minute and 35 seconds in some livestreamed PS5 showcase event. This bitter outrage and derision at something so mundane is nothing out of the ordinary for chanboards, but what followed was, at least in terms of scale.

Enter: Snoot Game. I’m not sure at what point in the development process they decided to focus on the de-transing and courting of Fang over making a “based” version of GVH, but in terms of playtime, this switch seems to happen somewhere about an hour or two into the game. This first section is pretty obviously terrible in a multitude of ways that’re impossible to ignore: the first line of text is a January 6th joke, which is followed up within a minute by the MC (named “Anon”) attempting to troll on a chanboard on his phone, there’s a teacher who speaks with a “comically” over the top Japanese accent (not pictured: the protagonist being like “huh? I can’t understand a single word this guy is saying…”). There is also a lot of blatant trans and enby-phobia on display in this section, from the protagonist accusing Fang of identifying as NB for attention to the constant mental misgendering of Fang with she/her pronouns (a trend which carries across pretty much the entire game, except for a short stint in one of the bad endings). Fang is shown as being short-tempered, rebellious, and is part of a band that sucks at playing music. Their bandmates and Fang’s only other friends at the school are a fentanyl addict, and a manipulative (rolls eyes) SJW Feminazi girl who goes around beating people up to let off her anger. This section also contains probably the single best “gotcha” moment against the writers of this game that I have ever seen within the span of only two textboxes, in the form of the MC complaining about the grammar of using singular “they” while also making two grammatical errors themselves within a single sentence.

But this section is just the opener and is, for the most part, the most spectacularly (read: obviously) bad Snoot Game gets. I think a lot of the people who shit on this game played or saw someone play this section, threw up their hands, and moved on. But not me! However, contrary to popular opinion that the rest of this game is “actually surprisingly heartwarming”, It’s also really bad, but in a much subtler and more insidious way.

There are lots of little things in which the game attempts to force you to accept its worldview to function. I already mentioned the internal monologue only referring to Fang with she/her, but as the story progresses, basically everyone in the game except the most "harmful influences" (Fang's 2 friends I mentioned earlier) switches to using she/her with no fanfare, including Fang's own brother. By the time you meet Fang’s parents everyone’s already switched to it, but they throw in the caveat of deadnaming Fang as well and reiterating that Fang is “just going through a phase” (something that the game later just tells you outright is true).

The sole SJW character from earlier, Trish, is probably the most blatantly propaganda-ish—she is also the only black-coded character, you know, just by happenstance (also Anon says she texts in “ebonics” in ending 1? which just doesn’t make any sense under the worldbuilding here, where species is just a substitute for race mostly? Very odd to fuck up your worldbuilding just to have your MC call something “ebonics”). In a particularly telling sequence of events, she pulls off a heist to embarrass Anon in front of everyone at school for the sole purpose of outcasting him from the band’s friend group, a tactic which succeeds at embarrassing Anon but fails at cleanly removing him from the friend group, as he takes Fang with him, something that Trish is shown at multiple points to be extremely angry about. This cements her (again, probably the only vaguely actively queer-positive main character left in the story at this point) as the “villain”, or at least, the single worst influence on Fang as a person.

There are 4 endings in Snoot Game (Spoilers from here on out! If you care about that, which you shouldn’t.), and only 2 in which Fang remains nonbinary. Of these endings, there is one where Fang shoots up the school, and the other leaves Fang (presumably) depressed, “looking like a junkie”, and with (gasp) tattoos, black lipstick, and a shaved head. During this second ending, which takes place 4 or 5 years after the events of most of the game, Anon thinks to himself that “I couldn’t save her (sic). Why would I save her? In her infinite talent can’t she see she’s a dump?”. Aside from the fact that all of Anon’s conclusions in ending 2 about Fang’s mental state are assumed to be true despite him having only seen them in passing at a restaurant (maybe Fang was just having a bad day or something, you never know), the only 2 endings which allow Fang to be nonbinary are also shown to be the “worst”. Take note of this!

In the other 2 endings, Fang switches back to using their old name (again, this is 4chan-written, so despite everyone else having birthnames like “Naser” and “Trish”, Fang’s birth name is “Lucy”. Real creative.) In these endings, Fang tells you something between that they were pretending to be nonbinary for attention, or that Trish drove them into it. (sidenote: Anon is able to switch almost instantly to calling Fang “Lucy” in both of these endings, despite only ever having known them as Fang. And yet switching names is simultaneously shown as something too confusing and hard for Fang’s parents to do. Interesting.) These are also the “best” endings. In one, Anon reunites with Fang years later and they have settled into a “motherly but still available” role helping out kids at the local church, so basically, the tradwife ending. And in the other one, and also the “best” ending in the game, Anon and Fang date for the rest of the year, break things off temporarily when Anon attends college, reunite after a time-skip and get married. Also, Fang is a schoolteacher in this one, which further reinforces the idea that for Fang to be happy, they need to not only detransition, but they need to take up the “traditionally female” role of being a caretaker. (Also, in one of the endings, you get the context that before Fang “started this whole non-binary deal” they were happier then too, so there’s another data point to correlate, I guess.)

Look—there’s nothing inherently wrong about writing a wish fulfillment romance story about a dominant and self-confident white guy finding his submissive caretaker white wife and living happily ever after. You do you bro. But there is something pretty fucky about presenting a traditional lifestyle as the ONLY path to happiness. And there’s something Extremely fucky about doing this by taking a queer character from someone else’s story, making your story about how de-transing them is the only way they can achieve happiness, and then releasing your story early in the hopes that your fanon interpretation supersedes whatever actually happens in the original source material.

But probably the most fucky is that a lot of this is subtextual and clearly is easily ignored by most, which allows its ideas to spread. Do not take me lightly by my saying that Snoot Game is propaganda, because it is. By word count, most of this game is just standard faire SoL wish fulfillment fantasy. Anon goes stargazing with Fang in one route, he goes to an aquarium with them in another. Normal shit. It’s just coupled with the added caveat of, you know, the whole arc of the game being dependent on the presumption of many of its characters that Fang’s trans-ness is just a phase, and that this presumption is ultimately proven correct. The shot is, (really, any number of bigotries, but most predominantly) transphobia and NB erasure, with SoL romance as a chaser. Again, really insidious shit.

This is why I feel uncomfortable giving this anything more than a 1/10. Snoot Game is generally paced well, has a lot of surprisingly decent music, and a lot of very well-done illustrations, but in service of what? Of fulfilling a delusional fantasy of “solving” someone’s trans-ness? Of spreading the idea that “if I just get them to fall in love with me, I can save them from their wicked ways (being queer)!” And of also spreading the idea that queer people are mentally ill and doomed to loneliness, lest they renounce their ways? Fuck riiiight off.

There's a certain kind of gamebro desire for thee modern open world crime game. One so realstic you can get audited for not doing your taxes, and date in-game e-girls and live the life you feel you're not quite equipped for in the real world. The macho nerd's escapist fantasy.

Playing GTA V for the first time in nine years, I'm more impressed with its recreation of modern Los Angeles than I was at the time of release. It "holds up" remarkably well, still maybe the king of the castle as far as open world games go. The depth of detail is still really impressive. I get lost just walking around looking at the cracks in the footpath, the trash littering the streets, the pedestrian and traffic AI and the way they'll give me the finger if I rev my engine at a stop light. It's in a word, 'impressive'. It's closest gaming has gotten to creating that escapist fantasy. I could feel myself wanting to just live inside the game; drive around a picturesque Los Angeles in a nice car, buy some sick suits, some flashy guns and live the American dream of looking cool and owning destructive property.

And that's ultimately what GTA V is: a game with a pretty setting you're there to destroy (not actually admire or live in); itself a pretty piece of technology made through backbacking labour practices.

It's all kind of a vapid nothing. This is fully emphasised whenever anybody - a main character, side character, or NPC - speaks in this game. Not simply because there's no charming or quietly interesting dialogue (if anything, it is an actively terribly written game - a shame for a game full of long driving-and-talking scenes), or that the voice acting is bad, but because characters are such functioning non-entity cliches. A game written by an AI with the brain of a 14-year-old British boy with only the cultural knowledge of America via Michael Mann movies, The Sopranos and Superbad. It's a pity because I feel like there's a lot of potential with the various intertwining protagonist story structure and the allure of cool action setpieces with all the hesists in the game (most of which are just the same Heat scene told from different angles over and over).

I played this - and only this - for the entire month of August, in a state of depression, while doing a lot of E, listening to Frank Ocean and rewatching Breaking Bad. All in all I found it rather soothing. I'm not going to look back on my time fondly with it but I am kind of sad and at a loss now that it's over. I wish it were a better game. I wish I lived in LA for real.

at its best, when sparks are flying and the audio fills with sounds of crashing metal and fiery explosions, mad max is, for a moment, the perfect snapshot of any of Fury Road's breathtaking action scenes.

that memed "this licensed game really makes you feel like that licensed character" critique is sincerely relevant here because this does make you feel like you're inside a mad max action scene. i feel like the game even goes to great lengths to paint each equally barren but distinct desert biome with a colour grading fitting each and any of the four mad max movies (there are areas where the desert looks more desaturated and akin to the early mad max movies, to areas that are as proudly and vibrantly orange as fury road). it's a beautiful and very unique game world where with the addition of random brutal car combat encounters creates a thrilling tension of disorganised chaos. any simple trip from point a to point b in mad max can turn into a spectacle potentially worthy of its own scene in fury road.

where the game really falls flat on its arse is in how tied all this natural freedom and chaos is to such a banal and ubiquitous modern open world game formula. the actual game is never truly as untethered and unbounded as it appears. it locks a lot of story progression behind level systems and upgrade paths that are like concrete to breakthrough. the map is littered with junk (literal junk, that you collect as currency). i can see a argument for how this is reinforcing theme, e.g. this is a game set in a harsh, cruel, unapologetically post-apocalyptic environment where survival is not a given, it's something each and every occupant of mad max world is fighting for 24/7. but at a certain point the game where you crash a car fitted with flamethrowers and spikes into other cars, trucks and through gates and steel structures at high speeds should feel like more than work, and after only just a few hours they really manage to turn a mad max game into work. and it's not like this is an RPG that's demanding you think your place in these environment, the whole game is designed to be a simulated mad max playground. it just kinda sucks it isn't more fun to actually progress. i ended up putting this down for two years for this reason.

and maybe i don't rewatch the early mad max films as much as fury road, but i also think it's disappointing that for a game released seemingly in unison with 2015's fury road - a movie famously celebrated for the feminist themes underpinning its entire narrative - that this is would be game seemingly written in a room with "women?" circled around it on a whiteboard. forgetting how rote and tiresome "save this damsel in distress" is as a plot device, where it ultimately goes with it (and it's only major female character) is so lazy and thoughtless it's like a cold slap in the face. the ending of this game is only somewhat redeemable to my eyes because for how ultimately committed it is to Max's nihilistic surrender to living in the past and how dreamlike the whole game is.

enough colour and personality in the world and gameplay here shines through for it to be a nicer alternative to any number of similarly boring modern games, imo.