Well, he ain't my boy, but the brother is heavy
Gave away my possessions and moved in to a Chevy (van
Yeah, that's the master plan)
(Drive to woods and eat corn out the can)
Yeah I gave it all away, the hard rock band
The groupies, the booze, the all-night jams
Now all these fans, askin' "Where did he go?"
(Meditating on a rock lettin' go of the ego)
So rapping with the squirrels is the way of the mountain
They took half my nuts and berries and riddled "Who's countin'?"
Bit my finger with the truth, the blood was spoutin'
Now my cup overfloweth, just like a fountain
Seen birds in the sky, trees in between
Grubs in the ground, it was so serene
The sky was blue, yeah the grass was green
(And that's three square meals if you know what I mean!)
So now I wake up every morning with a fat cup of piss
My third eye's open, so give me some Swiss Miss
Saw a thirty foot fairy walking down your street
Thought I was down with God, I had to yell "Retreat!"


Because I gone guru so cut the ballyhoo
Rock the tambourines and the didgeridoo
Set the animals free from the pimpin' zoo
And I'll elevate your mind like airplane glue

Out in the desert on a three-day stint
I had a revelation and I made a mint
So take a hit and won't you join the club
Send your wives to my hut for the body rub
Mental guru in the Subaru
Four-wheel drive to the commune
Pick up the crew
And we out to the zen monastery on the prairie
Where I milk the holy cow, but quit the dairy
So run with the yeti eatin' veggie spaghetti
Don't have to live like no refugee, peace to Tom Petty
Ready, steady, spiritually grow
Til I found out my boy worked for the COINTELPRO
Graham, damn, now I gots to scram
And start handin' out my leaflets in Bethlehem
Cause the Bible's played out, so I'm writing a new text
(We are all one, so what's the problem with group sex?)
And so many children want to join the fold
(Mike Love on line two) Put that sucker on hold
And shine, to thine own self be true
They can't tell you what to do when you've gone guru
(Yeah, shine, to thine own self be true
They can't tell you what to do when you've gone guru!)
(You got to shine, to thine own self be true
They can't tell you what to do when you've gone guru)

Gone guru, I'm the new Nehru
So rock the tambourines and didgeridoo
I'll deliver who-ever pays what's due
That's nine for me, and one for you

Awwwwwwwww yeah, we got it going on and it's strong up in here tonight!
We got that incense burning! We got them peacock feathers, tickling!
We got all that cuckoo karma connection, that you can use
So come on, people, get with the program!
We can get this together...
Tonight!

Too many wives for Ohio, they were looking to try me
So I got twelve divorces said aloha, Hawaii
Arrived without traveling, they lost the bags
Another trial for my people, don't scratch the Jag
(They might say hang loose, but they really don't mean it!)
Deported me to Rio and you watched it on CNET
News chumps had me singing the blues
Til thirty thousand showed up with the right to choose
Rose petals in bed, milk in my bath
And now Harrison Ford wants my autograph
I laughed when we met, cause he busted a sweat
Then I stuck out my tongue, he donated a jet
(Stole the spotlight from the Dali Lama
Cause my crews coming tight in the orange pajamas)
(Got 16 Caddies and 29 Rolls
Fuck the shoes, I transcend through soles)
With constant expansion, I live in a mansion
Getting jiggy with Madonna and Marilyn Manson
60 Minutes exposé, taxes you never paid
Papparazzi, Code Blue! Down toupee!
Yes I'm starting to age, I can feel it in my bones
My advisers tell me (Start thinking 'bout clones)
Found out! Heaven is a place on earth!
I cut off my head, it cost all I was worth
Cryogenic robot, now my head can spin
(I'll be around a million years, so let the party begin)
PARTY ROBOT!!! (Now my head can spin
I'll be around a million years, let the party begin)

Gone guru, new Nehru
Rock tambourine and didgeridoo
Must free animals from pimpin' zoo
Deliver who, two plus two
Gone gone gone-gone, gone gone, gone gone gone-gone gone gone
Gone gone gone-gone, gone gone, gone gone gone-gone gone guru

Audiovisual hyperbombast coated in that sweet, sweet Sega Dreamcast slime, a synesthesia-induced trip through techno-dreamland sculpted in wireframe and cast in the chromatic sheen of neofuture web-scapes. Following the steps of an allegorical hackerman, you annihilate endless waves of antivirus battalions as you fast track your way to each area’s AI boss battle. Along the way, beats mix with the game's pseudo-experimental approach to sound design, to form a rich sound system of eclectic cadences tightly wired in orchestra hits and synth crashes.

Themed broadly on icons of civilization and humanities broader evolution, each level leading up to Area 5 is a tease at what the game represents, a build to the game’s grander view of humanity and the inevitable future of human life. Speaking less pretentiously: You are here for Area 5, backed by the flawless masterpiece “Fear”. A crescendo on the themes the game is throwing down, the level spins a tale on the birth of human life, rising from the oceans as millions of species ebb and flow with the tide of time, culminating with the final step of live, another evolution to the afterlife, the void, the Other.

Weightlessness and audiophilia are the key components of Rez, in design and in execution. Flawlessly, the game encapsulates this ephemeral bliss I can only associate with Detroit Techno and 90s Hollywood Hacker pop culture, a flashpoint reflecting on a prior decade’s genre evolution, razed to the ground and resurrected as a new, hi-tech, form. A crisp single-hour runtime packs in a feeling that can only be associated with the era it comes from, inseparable from the past while looking to the future in cautious optimism.

Speaking as simple as possible: Rez rips. Play Rez. It’s on so many things. Go for it. Mess around with Area X too; such a fun addition.

When I was a kid, around fall my family would always plan big camping trips up north. After a decade and a half, the exact locales blur, all dirt campsites and sleepy towns, cut by endless drives down quiet backroads. Connecting every single trip, however, is the same singular image: laying in the backseat, staring to the sky as the pine, beech and maple trees ebbed and flowed with the breeze, a shimmer of greens, golds and reds against a still, cloudless ether.

Despite its northwestern setting, Alan Wake is a game that feels like home. Beyond the woodsy vibes, the spirit of the game keeps that same autumnal energy I associate with those countless trips, down to the same Halloween haunts that filled hours of my life. Alan Wake is read through the lens of Steven King and The Twilight Zone, a sort of contemporary / old school horror fusion, and the game makes it's infatuation with these influences blatant, to the point of embarrassment.

Horror molds the story and setting, leaning into a gun-toting Twin Peaks atmosphere, but the mold is not the full experience. Despite billing itself as a horror game, it feels more aligned with being an acknowledgement of horror's influence. In a sense, Alan Wake isn't a horror game; it's a game about horror, where horror itself is light and breezy.

Alan Wake is a beautiful game, a picturesque capturing of the woods and towns I spent much of my childhood in. To imply the game is mechanical deep or systematically unique would be disingenuous, but as a reflection of some of the most calming, perfect moments of my life, it's flawless. I love this game.

On the foggy streets of Rengkok South, destitute cyborgs loiter around flickering neon lights, spread thin under the towering headquarters of the HEAVEN Corporation. Painted in the rust of body mods and neurotechnology, bodies are thrown into the cybernetic grinder, a new coat of inescapable sickly red floods the alleyways and crosswalks. Bound to black market contracts and transhumanist dehumanization, the denizens of this neo-Purgatory live cheap lives and meet horrid ends.

Cut whole cloth from the script of a thousand cyberpunk stories, RUINER’s world isn’t a unique one. Biotech gone amuck, Capitalism encroaches on it’s hellish end state, and the only person willing to stand up to the one watching over it all is a faceless, nameless psychopath. A story sold to the tune of “whoa, cool robot”, the game wears its influences on its sleeve. A dash of Akira here, a slice of Ghost in the Shell there, some odd Berserk nods to taste. RUINER isn’t an original story by any stretch, but in all reality, you don’t come to it expecting some groundbreaking plot. You expect hyperviolence; grindhouse extremity backlit by LEDs, a crimson wash from a lead pipe brush, to the head splitting tones of weapons-grade darkwave and witch house.

A surface level comparison to Hotline Miami is obvious, I mean, same publisher, same gorehound vibe, same top-down arcade pastiche, complete with timers and letter grades, and a high dose of difficulty to put it above its contemporaries… RUINER and it’s 80s tinged buddy are close, but where the comparison falls apart is in the feel. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a load of mechanical similarities connecting the two, but whereas the former thrives on the minute-to-minute tension of quick, unrelenting death, where a single mistake will spell a splatterhouse finale for our favorite Drive wannabe, RUINER rips through swaths of nameless corporate goons and extremist mercenaries, flipping through an endless array of weapons, blasting, cleaving, and crushing anyone in his path, packing frag grenades, reality bending energy shields, and flash-steps out of a shonen anime. It’s comparing a sociopathic mad lad with a mask fetish to a literal murdering machine, who… also has a fancy mask. Maybe the comparison isn’t so unheard of.

Gameplay wise, RUINER doesn’t stand out as exemplary, sitting somewhere between mediocre and alright depending on the moment-to-moment twists the game throws at you. The one and only area the game fully strives on is it’s presentation. The moment the feel of the world clicked for me was wandering the streets of Rengkok South, a wall of fog casting a smoky haze. As I walked by Time’s Square-style LED billboards, the mournful wails of Susumu Hirasawa’s Island Door cut through the mist, a second of harmony between the soundscape and the world that Reikon Games built out of an obvious love of the genre. There’s very little I loved about RUINER, but the style of the game deserves mention, especially in regards to the soundtrack.

RUINER is deeply flawed, and I don’t see much reason for anyone to stick through until the end: I mostly did because I found a single character cute, and anyone who knows me will guess who in about zero seconds. But as a replication of a setting that’s been done to death and patched together again, it shows such an obvious love for the inspirations surrounding it. That’s not enough to make an interesting game, but it’s enough to make me think fondly of this weird, messy, flawed shooter.

The peak in aesthetics in arcade racers. Nothing hits like the buildup to Shooting Hoops, backed by one of the strongest soundtracks the PS1 has to its name. Beyond the music, this flawless techno / d'n'b mix, the presentation of this game, namely the audio-visual design of the game, culminates into this ultra slick, pristine visage of early 2000s style.

Mechanically, you're looking at drift heaven, impeccably smooth driving centered careening down straightaways and power sliding around hairpin turns, with the Grand Prix giving you this gradual growth from the easy-breezy pace of 90mph to the breakneck pace of 200mph, all through the lens of progress through heats, the games progression gates that small bit of tension to push to qualify, break through to the new batch of racetracks. Giving each race team a unique (and variable, depending on your skill) storyline gives that extra push to make you feel special about landing that first place victory.

Ridge Racer Type 4 is a love-letter to speed, to the arcade, to Namco as a brand. Amazing game.

Dog Days, and by relation Dead Money, are both games predated by the notion of violence: Dead Money taking it for granted, a cruel necessity of the genre and it’s inspirations, Dog Days as a meditation of violence entirely, a framing device for something that is less a compelling narrative and more a dive into the commodification and acceptance of violence in digital spaces. Two unfixable men dive headlong into bloodshed for less-than-stable reasons, one fueled by a half-assed savior complex, another locked into this life through violent psychopathy, both completely unfit to fill any sort of heroic role.

Stylistic violence is the bread-and-butter of shooters, so having Dog Days specifically focus on such an abrasive art direction is a very hardline choice. Breaking apart from its contemporaries, the violence isn’t glorified, nor is it treated as some absolute evil that is done by cruel men. It just… happens. The game, in that sense, takes a lot of its stylistic inspiration less from films and games, but more from accident compilations on LiveLeak and BestGore. Keeping with that tone, everything reflects the kind of videos you’d find on the cursed, blighted side of the web: blown out colors leaving darkness in monotone and searing in bright neon signs, artifacting and corruption over any abrupt action, cameras shaking and audio clipping mercilessly as firefights escalate, and particularly gruesome shots are covered in mosaic by some unseen editor. It’s a game where low-resolutions and frame rates are ideal: anything to fit the grainy, lo-fi nature of online video in the late 2000s.


The mechanics do a bit of the lifting to sell the nihilistic vision, for better or for worse. Dog Days doesn’t feature interesting mechanics, satisfying gameplay loops, or, really, any systems worth pointing out. Mediocrity is the name of the game, further showing how the violence on screen isn’t enticing, dramatic, or worthy of excitement. That does mean the game is not very interesting to play for it’s short four hour run time, but I suppose that’s part of the point. The game exists as more of a vibe experiment than an actually entertaining game, and on that it works amazingly.

Kane and Lynch live on deals written in terms they refuse to understand, inked in innocent blood, signed with bullets and bodies. Over the course of ten hours, between two separate games, the only language the pair are fluent in is that of pointless violence, where cruel men and the victims they amass pop into view, cause pain, and see their own life cut short. Mechanically, stylistically, narratively, the life that Kane and Lynch follow is never portrayed as anything less than meaningless, a series stupid games with stupid prizes. Somewhere between bumbling incompetents and ghoulish slaughterers, no one questions their choices, for questioning them would imply any sort of control, a desire to change, ideas incomprehensible to the middle-aged menaces. Wherever they go, people die.

Neither game is great, but the series as a whole is interesting. The short length of Dog Days alone, along with its low price in most places, should be enough of an excuse to at least experience the aesthetic work on display.

A massive love letter to toku media, from the "monster of the week" framing of the bosses to the way the fighting is extremely choreographed and more akin to dance than a full on fight. Also works as a light criticism of the stereotypical moviegoer: Joe exists as an embodiment of the negative aspects of film bro culture, living entirely through shitty b-movies, to the detriment of his real life relationships. Fun game! Mechanically a lot of elements come together to emphasize the love of cinema, including the necessity of FX, key in particular to toku series. Short and sweet, but with enough content to make repeat playthoughs worthwhile