A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies. Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries? Two things result from this fact: I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power. II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself. To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages. Chapter I. Bourgeois and Proletarians(1)

[German Original] The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master(3) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations. The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed. The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development. The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop. Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturer no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois. Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages. We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange. Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune(4): here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part. The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation. The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades. The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature. The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West. The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff. The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour? We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class. A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented. The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians. In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of machinery, etc. Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is. The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex. No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc. The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population. The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operative of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages. At this stage, the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie. But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots. Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years. This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried. Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie. Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress. Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole. Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat. The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue. In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests. All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property. All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air. Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie. In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat. Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society. The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

Impossível gostar de algo quando ele demonstra tanta casualidade em desumanizar pessoas em situações vulneráveis. Entendo que, em jogos, normalizamos isso com violência: não temos o menor problema em triturar recursos humanos quando se trata de jogos de ação, mas fazer isso com o corpo e a autonomia de mulheres parece tão mais nefasto, e pessoal. Quando Big Boss sequestra soldados pra Mother Base, o tom do ato é de resgate, redenção, arrebatação - em Dohna Dohna é de exploração, nua e crua. O tom comédico que muitas vezes o jogo tenta instaurar nestas situações é intragável quando se trata de um ato como este. E embora a resenha aqui no site, que me convenceu a jogar o jogo, argumente que ele é como é para nos colocar na mentalidade de um monstro como esses, um Drakengard de prostíbulo, por se dizer, tenho opiniões bastante contrárias. Fora da bolha de usuários mais interessados em subtexto, vejo muito mais que a clientela trata com humor e até tesão esta instrumentalização do corpo da mulher; e enquanto procurava mais discussão sobre o jogo, me deparei com diversos comentários do leitor médio de VN reclamando mais de que foi outro cara que comeu a sua waifu do que o fato de que foi um estupro ordenado.

Por que vejo em Karryn’s Prison uma qualidade que aqui não consigo? Talvez porque Karryn faz tudo de sua própria vontade, visão deturpada dos desejos de uma personagem feito para o masculino que seja. Talvez porque nele a violência é minimizada, e tudo ao redor se leve nessa atmosfera hipersexual que faz alguns absurdos parecerem divertidos. Em Dohna Dohna não consegui entrar nessa mentalidade: para mim, o tom foi de horror. Sem comentários também para a presença maldita de conteúdo loli no jogo, que é uma verdadeira vergonha - ainda que majoritariamente opcional, considero indefensável.

Ainda que o gênero eroge pareça estar muito mais avançado do que o tabu que o permeia, é uma pena que jogos tão bem produzidos sejam usados apenas para atingir uma demográfica específica de homens com sérias deficiências em como enxergam relações sexuais. Não acho que uma arte bem desenhada acompanhada de algumas linhas duras sobre resistência e medo configuram bom discurso em relação ao tema de abuso - podem ser chocantes e eficientes no melhor caso, e no pior só servem de material fetichista. Após terminar o jogo, o comentário dos desenvolvedores me deixou claro que não há o menor interesse em diálogo: “desenhei com o pau na mão” - diz o ilustrador.

E levando por essa ótica, o que pensar de Dohna Dohna, o jogo? Não se trata de uma VN, e sim de um turn-based JRPG/management minigame com bastante conteúdo safe for work. O pesadelo de atrelar esse jogo à minha conta é o suficiente para que eu solte o resto dessa entrada sem tentar casar um ponto ao outro, o mais importante já tendo sido dito.

> Alguma coisa me manteve, e não acho que foi a expectativa de dois quadrinhos de hentai mediano a cada 1h de jogo. Seu loop, abstraído o grotesco, impele o jogador a continuar, ainda que num grind nada especial. Provavelmente quem me fez jogar até o final foi uma mistura da apresentação que está honestamente muito além de seu gênero, rivalizando mais um Persona em sua qualidade do que o próximo eroge de RPGMaker humilde: animações desenhadas à mão fazem seu sistema de combate voar: mecanicamente simples e elegante, em certas partes, mal pensado em outras; porém sempre atingindo todos os mandamentos do game juice bem produzido. Um loop de baixa fricção em um jogo bem produzido que consigo jogar cagando é a receita do sucesso para minha retenção.

> Em sua história e narrativa, é muito mais estilo e posturagem do que substância. Um elenco composto por personalidades enlatadas que acaba sendo mais icônico como elenco do que como um conjunto de individuais. Tenta criar um diálogo sobre os horrores de abuso enquanto ao mesmo tempo glorifica e dedica quantidade considerável de recursos pra criar cenas de abuso que só existem porque devem. O próprio argumento de porque a exploração sexual ocorre no jogo não vem de um lugar mais profundo do que: este jogo é um eroge e é isso que nós gostamos de ver.

Acho que com isso encerrei meu horny game arc com um gosto ruim na boca.

FIN?

“Nós vivemos em uma sociedade em que as pessoas acham mais natural violência nos jogos do que uma trepadinha esperta. “ - Joker, o Coringa

Joguei por fins educacionais.

Papo reto? Tem mais cuidado colocado na sua ludonarrativa aqui do que na maioria dos JRPGs que já joguei. A forma como o jogo bem gradualmente trata a personalidade da protagonista ficando progressivamente mais libertina, e como isso influencia e é influenciado por todos os sistemas (base-building, combate, diálogo, narrativa, side-games) é honestamente um exemplo de design a se seguir: nunca vi um nível de noção de sua própria proposta e coesão sistêmica assim em um JRPG, muito menos em um jogo hentai de RPGMaker. Você não só consegue montar uma build pra ganhar os combates deixando os inimigos exaustos (rs), quanto a forma como as árvores de habilidades são liberadas são coerentes com as ações da personagem e a evolução sistêmica de suas consequências.

A quem estou enganando? Straight to horny jail.

Antes de começar a falar sobre o jogo em si, gostaria de deixar alguns pensamentos sobre toda a discussão e raiva envolvida em relação a esse jogo... É uma das grandes provas do quão infectada pelas redes e pelas "opiniões fáceis" essa sociedade está. Acho que aquela coisa de polarização que foi tão falada nos últimos anos vem se expandindo e cada vez mais deixando de ser algo relacionado apenas ao âmbito político. O que teve de gente formando opinião (positiva ou negativa) sobre esse jogo a partir de outras pessoas é inacreditável, e acabou gerando uma raiva generalizada nas pessoas em discussões na internet. Assim como qualquer coisinha hoje em dia (por exemplo, caso do Chico e Luísa Sonza), foi gerada uma repercussão desproporcional para esse jogo, apelando pras emoções das pessoas como forma de gerar engajamento.

Mas enfim, agora falando puramente sobre as MINHAS OPINIÕES após cerca de 70h de jogo... É impressionante como jogos da Bethesda são capazes de te deixar num misto de sentimentos e sensações... Esse jogo definitivamente é um marco pro Todd Howard e pra Bethesda como um todo. Eu particularmente ainda prefiro Skyrim pelo fator imersão, que vou tentar descrever mais ao longo dessa análise, mas eu acho que Starfield tem as melhores ideias que o diretor/estúdio já tiveram. Algumas foram bem executadas, outras nem tanto.

Vou falar logo do que eu achei essencialmente ruim: combate e exploração espacial. Pelo menos durante a minha jogatina, pilotar a nave no espaço era mais um momento de tirar foto das paisagens estelares do que exploração em si, já que pra acessar novos sistemas estelares na galáxia, tem sempre que abrir o menu, sem a possibilidade factível de chegar lá só na pilotagem. Resultado: chegou um certo tempo em que estar com a nave sob a órbita de um planeta era só um passo obrigatório do jogo para eventualmente pousar nele, o que obrigatoriamente me fazia abrir o menu duas vezes seguidas: uma pra chegar no sistema planetário, e outra pra pousar no planeta. Isso quebrou um pouco a imersão em determinado ponto do jogo. Acho que o combate espacial em si não é necessariamente ruim, mas colocar enfrentamentos aleatórios (e obrigatórios, já que não dá pra viajar durante um combate) quando você chega na órbita de um planeta e pretende apenas pousar nele é bem anticlimático.

De resto, eu amei a ideia de alguns planetas com bastante conteúdo, com civilização concentrada apenas em pequenas regiões isoladas dos planetas, e outros planetas estéreis sem tanto conteúdo assim. Porque isso é uma visão realista do universo e de como a vida humana está destinada a ser no futuro, se conseguirmos sobreviver a qualquer evento de extinção que nos aguarda. As missões secundárias são, em geral, muito interessantes (algumas chegam a ser espetaculares) e conseguem gerar o interesse nos personagens envolvidos. Já a missão principal, não é tãããão boa quanto algumas secundárias, mas é definitivamente a melhor missão principal já feita pela Bethesda (a de Skyrim é beeem fraquinha, por exemplo). O combate com armas é bem divertido, o que era uma preocupação minha, devido a uns trailers que deixaram um "cheiro" esquisito em relação a isso. Mas a sensação de atirar é bem gostosa, e o jogo disponibiliza uma certa variedade de armas e possibilidades de buildar o personagem, apesar do sistema de mini desafios para subir alguma skill ser beeem chatinho. Além disso, você vai precisar de paciência no gerenciamento de recursos do inventário (recomendo alocar pontos no máximo de capacidade que o personagem pode carregar o mais cedo possível).

Por fim, posso falar que achei Starfield um bom jogo, com momentos que proporcionaram uma experiência incrível, apesar dos problemas apontados pela comunidade (alguns nem considerei problemas tão graves assim), e se você gosta de RPG's estilo Bethesda, vale muito dar uma chance!

Starfield is the surprise of the year. The trajectory of titles developed by Bethesda Game Studios has consistently declined since the launch of Morrowind. This decline has been characterized by a noticeable simplification of game systems to cater to a broader, more mainstream audience.

Starfield is not quite the return to deep, engaging RPG systems, but it seems like the closest thing we could get from the studio now. After an admittedly terrible introductory few hours that feel like an afterthought, the game opens up and lets the player off the leash.

While many have understandably bemoaned the disconnected, fast-travel-oriented nature of the game's structure, when you're in the game's main cities, it's hard to care because it's effortless to get sucked into one of these locations. My first time landing on Neon, the game's cyberpunk-themed city, I got sidetracked from a main quest and wrapped up into the branching feed of side content that mostly felt well crafted before stumbling upon the planet's faction quest, which was shockingly excellent.

The world is much more reactive to the player than BGS's modern output. Characters involved in intersecting quests acknowledge your previous deeds, and occasionally, your choices can significantly impact quest progression, even allowing you to bypass certain parts. Admittedly, there are occasional awkward moments, such as companions who should be aware of specific events acting surprised by related revelations. However, the frequency of these dynamic world reactions is a notable departure from the typical approach found in both Bethesda Game Studios titles and contemporary AAA games.

Here, not only do your choices carry weight, but your character's background plays a pivotal role, too. This manifests in dialogue options that ground your character within the game world and in choices that profoundly impact progression and interactions with the world.
For instance, I opted for the "Neon Street Rat" background and assumed the role of a Cyberunner, and the consequences reverberated through my experiences in Neon and the Ryujin questline.

These effects ranged from characters recognizing my character's prior knowledge of local gangs and politics to dialogue choices that provided alternatives to persuasion when dealing with quest characters. Essentially, it felt like my character was more than just an apparatus for me to navigate the world; they were an actual individual.

It's also a beautiful game, and not just by BGS standards. This is easily the most robust art direction of any title made by the studio, and I found myself taken aback by how gorgeous environments or vistas were, whether I was in space or on one of the game's procedurally generated planets.

The procedural nature of these planets is a hangup, as the game always has a different sense of exploration than one would expect from a BGS game. However, this is offset by the quality of the individual cities, which are incredibly dense.

Even then, it often feels more like an elaboration on Mass Effect than it does Fallout or Elder Scrolls in space. But even within this segmented nature lie small nuggets of discovery that lead to some of the best moments in the game. For example, while fast traveling to a system for a faction quest, I came upon a ship hailing for immediate assistance. I found myself face-to-face with an AI developed from NASA's Juno probe that had been aimlessly wandering through the galaxy for centuries.

The quality of the writing is all over the place, with some incredibly rote dialogue that is easily skipped through and some legitimately gripping sequences such as this.

Other than the segmented nature of "Loadingfield," another issue is how long it can take for builds to activate and many of the game's most interesting systems (such as shipbuilding) being locked behind skills. I understand that this was done because the developers intended players to play through multiple NG+ runs, but it often feels at odds with the type of game that BGS wants to make, one that allows players to see nearly everything. This game has substantially benefitted from cutting players off from certain factions or questlines due to their allegiances since it focuses on NG+ runs and alternate realities.

My most significant problem was grappling with the game's confusing politics and vision of a future society that seemingly never evolved beyond contemporary neoliberalism. Jemison and the UC are emblematic of this, as they have classes for their citizenship. The Freestar Rangers, billed as the antithetical faction, are just a different flavor of capitalists in that they are raging libertarians. Overall, it tries to present a hopeful vision of the future.

Still, I was disappointed by such a myopic view of the future held back by contemporary capitalist ideology. That could be an unrealistic expectation since this game was made under said ideology. And Jesus does this game like cops. Almost every faction is a different flavor of space cop. Thankfully, some of these end with the player getting to choose to kill CEOs and political war criminals, which makes this an easier pill to swallow, even if the game presents these people as isolated evils instead of symptoms of a more immense superstructure.

All in all, Starfield is a thoroughly enjoyable, if low-stakes, adventure. The end of the game offers a rather poignant and genius play on the concept of the Bethesda protagonist that makes at least the main quest worth playing for anyone who enjoyed even one of BGS's previous titles.
If there are multiple realities, as Starfield posits, there's definitely a better version of this game in one of those. But in this one, Starfield would never be able to live up to the expectations placed upon it by Bethesda, Microsoft, and fans. But in a world where development times have reached 5-6 years, that's ok because sometimes a flawed but enjoyable experience is enough.

Graças a Deus acabou...nossa, eu não vim pro Harmony esperando que ele fosse a vinda de Cristo, muito menos ser melhor que Symphony ou Aria, to na vibe de Metroidvanias e tava afim de jogar outro Castlevania já que pretendo zerar todos. Inicialmente eu estava gostando, mas foi ficando cada vez pior. É legal jogar um metroidvania com um Belmont e chicotar os inimigos, mas isso logo sai pela culatra pois um dos maiores problemas de Harmony na minha opinião é sua progressão, que é uma das progressões já feitas.

O jogo já é fácil, então a sensação de explorar pra achar alguma arma melhor é inexistente, tendo só algumas variações de efeitos pro chicote. Equipamentos eu devo ter trocado umas quatro vezes apenas, nunca senti a necessidade de ficar trocando. Harmony peca muito nisso, a sensação de ver quer você está ficando mais forte é quase nula. Os livros de magias são legais, mas o que já era fácil se torna um passeio no parque de tão apelonas que as magias são, é só ativar a magia com a cruz equipada e ver o God Mode ativado. Os bosses foram feitos, alguém teve a ideia, alguém fez o design, alguém pensou nos padrões dos golpes, eles existem. A trilha sonora é inimiga da audição, o chip de áudio do GBA já é conhecido por ser limitado, mas aqui foi demais, eu quase parti pro Spotify ouvir alguma coisa enquanto jogava mas isso iria tirar a imersão do jogo, então aturei aquelas músicas águdas horrorosas até o fim. A história é o padrão de jogos do gênero, encontra algum NPC, 20 segundos de dialógo, ele entra numa sala que é sem saída e some, sem grandes surpresas.

Agora vem o elefante da sala e ao meu ver, o maior problema de Harmony, a porcaria da mecânica de dois castelos. O level design do jogo já não é lá o mais primoroso, tanto visualmente quanto em layout, agora ter que ficar passando por essas mesmas salas duas vezes com variação de cor o jogo inteiro? No thanks. O infâme castelo invertido do Sympohny ao meu ver é um bonûs, você pode em menos de meia horinha pegar as partes do Drácula e partir pro abate, mas se você quiser tem várias áreas novas pra explorar com inimigos, bosses armas e equipamentos pra descobrir, aqui não. Estamos presos em passar pelas mesmas áreas várias vezes e tendo que voltar pra warp room pra trocar de castelo toda hora, é uma verdadeira desgraça. Agora imagina se perder nesse castelo mediano porque o item ou porta que você precisa ir está em outro castelo? Ugh.

No fim eu ainda acho Harmony bacana, ele só acaba se tornando mais irritante do que precisava por causa dessa gimmick de castelo, mas ainda foi divertidinho pois a movimentação é bacana, sair por ai matando bicho acaba por ser divertido, o jogo tem uma vibe bem diferente também, mas eu gastei muito mais tempo nesse jogo do que gostaria, demorei bem mais que o Aria pra zerar. Harmony podia ser só um arroz com feijão mas tentou inventar graça e acabou prejudicando a experiência.

Caraca mané tô lembrando aqui de quando eu era criança

A nostalgia é maravilhosa, não? Enfim. Eu como muitos cresci jogando os jogos do Crash no PS1, e embora tenha jogado o CTR eu nunca tinha zerado, sabe-se lá porque. Buscando algum jogo pra jogar no celular durante os períodos ociosos, eu decidi que ele seria um jogo tranquilo de se jogar no touch-screen, e o quão errado eu estava, ainda não tinha noção... eu cheguei até o quarto mundo de alguma forma na marra até que o emulador sumiu com meu save e tive que engavetar o jogo. Depois disso, insatisfeito eu comprei seu remake e zerei, achei um jogão. Com sorte após ter terminado, de alguma forma consegui recuperar meu save do clássico e decidi terminar de zerar, só que dessa vez no controle e com a mecânica de drift boost devidamente aprendida e explicada pelo remake eu pude aproveitar o que restou, tendo um feel real do gameplay do jogo e de como ele é gostosinho de se jogar, não ficando muito pra trás do remake não, embora o mesmo tenha se expandido muito, tornando esse aqui quase obsoleto em termos de conteúdo. É realmente um jogo que envelheceu como vinho, os modelos 3D são lindos, as fases, efeitos são todos com a capacidade total do PlayStation, que na época do lançamento já estava perto do fim da vida. Não tem muito no que se estender, é um daqueles jogos que todo mundo já conhece, um jogão que continua divertidão até hoje.

PS: a voz do Crash de quando ele apanha nesse jogo é simplesmente hilária, eu dou risada sozinho lembrando.

O grande reavivamento da franquia é também uma enorme ruptura com os clássicos - tão grande ou maior até mesmo que a de Doom 3. Por baixo de sua estética demoníaca e metaleira noventista, é possível ver que as inspirações do reboot são eminentemente modernas. O level design de Half-Life, as armas e movimentação de Quake, os sistemas de upgrade e habilidades onipresentes em games atuais: dá para repartir cada elemento do game e compará-los diretamente com outros jogos, mas comparações diretas com Doom 1&2 são mais difíceis de achar. Em nenhum momento essa ruptura fica mais evidente que nos mapas clássicos. Tanto a movimentação mais cadente do Doomslayer quanto o comportamento dos novos inimigos parecem realmente "deslocados" dentro daqueles níveis pixelados dos anos 1990. Doom 2016 não atualiza as mecânicas de seus antecessores para uma audiência moderna; ele se comunica com ela usando sua linguagem contemporânea.

O que torna o game tão bem-sucedido e querido tanto por novatos quanto veteranos é como e para quê ele usa essa linguagem familiar. Ele consegue ser uma negação aos shooters modernos usando as mesmas ferramentas que eles. Se em sua forma observamos uma ruptura, em seu conteúdo há um resgate. Doom 1&2 eram mais do que uma inovação tecnológica ou mecânica. Eles eram uma experiência sentimental, uma explícita explosão de violência e visceralidade. É esse sentimento que o reboot resgata de maneira triunfal. Cada mecânica nova, cada upgrade nas armas, cada segredo, estão lá com o solene objetivo de fazer você, o jogador, ter somente uma preocupação: matar demônios.

Sabe aquela sorrisinho malicioso que o Doom Guy fazia nos clássicos sempre que pegava uma BFG, como se ele estivesse dizendo "agora sim eu vou !@#!@@## esses monstros!"? Ele vai estampar a sua cara toda vez que você fizer um glory kill ou sobreviver a um grande tiroteio.

Rip and tear, until it's done.