not a poorly crafted experience in any sense and i'm sure theres a lot here i lacked the generosity to find but i felt like i could completely visualize the creators' concept and reference stack with such exact clarity that it became distracting:

femininely morose akihiko yoshida and ayami kojima art/
lilting twinklechoral keichi okabe-wave ost/
vanillaware storybook Spine animations/
folklore character collection combat/
soulstroidvania wielding its genre structure of labyrinthine sparseness to spin a ludically obvious yarn about seeking ~ absolution amidst decay ~

-- and I had to uninstall because the returns are so diminished for me at this point and it was genuinely making me sad that such a clear and passionate labor of love could feel so utterly taxonomizable and consumed by its own clockably interrelated references

at this point idk its just kind of upsetting to play something with such a rigorous and dogmatic commitment to its reference material that doesnt seem to extend very far beyond the world of games themselves, even if said games are all things i find personally beautiful and worth emulating. felt like a very workmanlike and glossy medley of touchstones from works that clearly moved the creators--but executed in a sort of surface way that belies their inability to cogently, personally express how said works resonated beyond mere facsimile. no judgies girl i relate and its why i havent reliably maintained any true semblance of a dedicated art practice for years!!!

tldr; i saw myself in this and i didnt like it

There's something very addictive to the simplicity of this. Similar to how Flower made me feel, but without the big payoff it had at the end of each level.

I often feel a bit alien when I see people talk about classic games they love, I mean proper GAMES. No story or anything fancy, real arcade type shit. Tetris is one of those that just does nothing for me, and this is almost universally the one I see people laud. I don't hate Tetris, I just get nothing from it. But the way it seems to still hold people after all these years must mean something, and I keep trying to find that somewhere for myself.

Is it this game? No. But I feel like I caught a glimpse here of what people feel when they talk about those kinda games. Simple, rewarding, and almost mechanical after a while.

Also, after this and Flower I am now shit-hot at motion controls. Might try and become a professional Lair player.

Was drawn in by the hook of this being a postal worker simulator, only to be trojan-horsed into another Netflix-brained drama. A Life Is Strange-like that has you driving around a poorly-disguised and thoroughly-sterilised simulacrum of Twin Peaks (this was made by a Dutch dev team - why not show us NL's country life instead of leaning on a well-worn setting?).

You're relatively un-fussed by any of the day-to-day concerns that would no doubt come with delivering the post in a secure and timely manner, and there are so many missed opportunities for fun little gameplay pieces - the truck doesn't take damage, you can't break the speed limit, the parcels don't arrive late, you don't have to dodge dogs - any of these little things could have injected a small sprinkling of spice into it, but the game is only really interested in telling its story. I think I wanted it to be Shin Paperboy.

I get that it's nice, sure, and there are people who really do want a depressurised and bloodless GTA driving/walking game; but without anything really driving (lol) the experience, this is basically just a series of Walking Dead-style dialogue encounters split up with a cuddly coddling truck-driver experience. Nothing ever matters, which seems to kinda contradict the game's nascent notions of changing your life. Dialogue options only seem to be there to move the chatter along most of the time, and characters often react in the ways the developers wanted them to react, rather than the ways you hoped or expected they would. The different ending options are a perfect example of this, but as the game only really has its story going for it, I won't spoil the bizarre surprises here.

The romance options are exactly what we've all come to expect from indie games at this point - utterly toothless and sexless stuff that makes the 40-something main characters behave like preschoolers holding hands on a trip to the park. You can't have a single city gal discover her first kiss is now a huge sexy lumberjack and have it only lead to a nice hug. Come on now! It's about time one of these games played out with all the debauchery of a greasy pulp paperback like A Stranger In Her Bed or whatever.

My postman sometimes come up the stairs of our building mid-joint roll, banging crap metal out of his phone speakers and huffily hurling anything marked FRAGILE onto a rough approximation of our doorstep. Now that's the delivery guy game I wanna be playing. Lemme dropkick an Amazon parcel and shag some lonely lady after I break her windows with a Hello Fresh box.

There are so many great writers on Backloggd. Well-crafted pieces by an incredible group of some of the most passionate people I’ve ever seen anywhere. They make amazing, thoughtful, and profound analysis for games I’ve never even heard of and give them the justice I didn’t know they needed. They are an inspiring group of people, and I feel privileged to interact with them on the Backloggd discord almost every day. I had a passion for writing once, I even went to college for it because it felt like one of the few things I was capable of doing. Since that moment in time though it feels like that passion and others have been wrung out of me. College made me hate writing and I dropped my major, after which I coasted through school like a lost balloon, no care for where the wind was taking me and just hoping that if I landed it would be somewhere safe that I could live from. I’ve been on solid ground again for some time now, but at this point in my life I’m in the middle of a job search that isn’t going so well and that’s giving me a lot of time to myself. Most of it I’ve used to think about passion, some that I’ve lost and some that I’ve been desperately clinging to.

This week I’ve been spending time with Soul Blade, the direct source of perhaps my one and only enduring passion. Soul Blade was my first fighting game, the one that means the most to me, and the reason why fighting games have outlasted anything that could have drained the joy out of the only thing in my life I’ve always loved besides my friends and my brother. I’ve been playing Soul Blade since before I was in school and despite not doing more than mashing buttons when properly playing, it never mattered. I was restarting my PS1 just to watch the intro over and over again, I was lucking my way through the arcade mode just to see the stages, hear the music, to see the characters and mimic their voices and moves because I thought it was all the coolest thing in the world. The adoration only deepened as I got older. I was getting better, I was using training mode, I was acting with intention, beating arcade modes, getting the endings, playing Edge Master mode and reading the journey of each character in it while unlocking all their weapons, all while excitedly showing it to anyone who would give me the time to do it.

Over time, since my love was so obvious for it, family was gifting me other fighting games on birthdays, Christmas, or just to see me smile at the mall. I was exposed to Tekken, King of Fighters, Street Fighter, Capcom vs SNK, Mortal Kombat, Virtua Fighter, Guilty Gear, and of course Soul Calibur. I was obsessed with them all, each had the elements of Soul Blade I loved in their own flavors. Friends often lived quite a bit of time away from each other where I grew up so outside of school most of my time was to myself. I loved plenty of games I played during that time but I always cherished the time I spent in fighting games the most of them all. There was a moment though where I sacrificed some of that time to be a part of the Call of Duty boom, fighting games just weren’t a thing people cared about around me and I was failing to use them as a way to build connections. I realized eventually that there was never any enthusiasm in me when I was playing, it was just the only means I could find to make friends with but I was a damn lucky kid because I underestimated my friends. One day I was tired of forcing myself to play multiplayer FPS games and sold every single one I had played in that three-year period for Persona 4 Arena, ready to face whatever I heard from my group when I gave them the story. Imagine the feelings I had when I realized not a single one of those lovable idiots was ever gonna abandon me and from that moment on they listened to me gush about these games that had made me into who I was.

Fighting games, Soul Blade, and my friends taught me about passion and gave me the tools I needed to use passion to mold me. Even if the world has beat me down, taken some of my joy on its way back, and left me with only what I could hold as tight as possible to my chest this genre specifically has always given me a tool I can use to prove I love something, to remind me I am capable of passion. I don’t know if my passion for writing is back yet, it feels like I might have to build it back up from zero but I know I have to thank Soul Blade again because it taught me another lesson all these years later. That my passions could return and that I’m still capable of what I was before.

Mascot character platformers are one of the most exciting genres in gaming to me. They have the potential to be an intriguing concoction of every visual, aural and story element that normally goes into games, but benefit strongly from their bend towards the main controllable character being the mechanical focus. Characters like Rayman, Ratchet & Clank, Hat Kid, their games are informed by their personalities and rulesets in a way that contextualises the player’s involvement in their worlds. Conceptualised well enough, the degree of exploration and interaction afforded to the characters can elevate these titles to surprising degrees, and give them a unique voice with a sense that they really have something to say.

This is pretty much where Psychonauts comes in. The first game came about in the full swing of the mascot platformer craze of the 00’s - and with the help of Double Fine’s history in sharp character writing and adventure exploration, concocted a game where the themes are both broad and accessible: Psychics exist and can explore people’s mental planes to empathise with visualisations of their own unique psychological issues.

Part of my adoration for the first Psychonauts comes from its strong visual direction, with off-beat and illustrative takes on individual character’s mindscapes. Psychonauts goes above and beyond with its core concepts by allowing its cast to express themselves through clever writing and impressionistic environmental caricature. Likely inspired by Rankin Bass stop motion movies and the artwork of Tim Burton, who’s styling has roots in ideas of eccentrism, depression and nonconformity - as well as have a level of cheeky humour that complements its attempts to depict darker themes. It sets the perfect stage for what Psychonauts is setting out to do; to let its cast express themselves in unique and personal ways of which the player is tasked with physically navigating, a visual metaphor for the therapist and the client. All these abstractions never go too far into sheer chaos because they’re balanced wonderfully and grounded with stereotypical visual metaphors that help keep things grounded, like “censors”, “emotional baggage”.


Psychonauts 2 is great, I’m amazed that it not only delivered on its promise of being a follow-up to the original title, it also exceeded it in almost every aspect. My main complaints are that I simply didn’t find it anywhere near as laugh-out-loud funny, and that the climax is a little contrived to the point it simply wasn’t satisfying. One of the strengths of the original was the level of interaction you had with the world in the form of use-items and environmental objects, and character count… something Psychonauts 2 seems to have made an effort on trimming down. I think a lot of my disappointment in the humour of this game stems from how little there is to reveal, by comparison? Still, it’s a fun story to see unfold - I’m hugely fond of how there is a throughline across the levels in the form of a kind of shared trauma within the cast.

This is simply one of the best looking games I’ve ever seen from a technical standpoint. Uses, and masters every trick in the Unreal Engine book while also inventing new ones. Unbelievable work with gravity tricks, false scale, shaders and portals. Every area is simply stunning. I can’t believe how good it looks. Oh my god. Platforming feels wonderful and mercifully there’s an easy mode for the less-than-stellar combat.

This review feels bad to me so I'll just end it here.

"If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing."

When I first started the journey, I wept when the grandmother recognized me for what she no longer had, but still loved. I didn't think too deeply on how much that would mean as the game continued, but I still accepted that love.

"Love is patient, love is kind."

When the feral kittens I cared for died, I wept when I found closure in saving the animals of the world of Moon. I saved every single one, not leaving a single life to chance to the "Hero". And a lot of it was waiting, patience is a virtue when it comes to understanding the lives of a world that walks on without you. Stories and people do not just come when called, they come around
to those who empathize and seek them out on their own time. And many of these moments are minor, small simple things that add on to something much bigger. Something that really encapsulates that feeling the adventure will call back to time and time again.

"But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away."

When I finally did what accounted as a final homecoming to areas I had been, people I had touched, I wept once more. I may not remember every single individual moment, but I'll remember what I felt towards them, and they'll live on with me.

"For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face."

When I walked into technopolis, and so many of the earnest areas capturing the real mirrored reflections of our mundanity, I wept realizing that even in these hollowed out moments love still exists. People reflect on dystopian hells and find sorrow but there's light underneath those tunnels too. Even in its hilarious critiques of people it does not treat any of it maliciously or callously. Moon understands why we are the way we are sitting at the couch watching TV every evening.

"But the greatest of these is love."

When the game asked me to open the door, the one that mattered. With love in my heart, I went through.

(From the words of 1 Corinthians 13, thank you to a friend who showed a brighter way to see life. I hope you found love too!)

i'm just gonna post the Arcane Kids manifesto and let it speak for itself:
- shut up about video games
- the fastest way to the truth is a joke
- stop listening to advice
- start your own scene
- art isn't about giving people what they want
- do NOT call us punk
- communities need spaces to grow
- fuck formalism
- fuck puzzles
- play with structure
- bad is more interesting than good
- the purpose of gameplay is to hide secrets
- make games u wish 2 see on the dreamcast

https://arcanekids.com/manifesto#=