babe, that's our song!!! I say to my beautiful wife while the DOS soundscape sputters and gurgles out the crustiest percussion samples of all time in the purest arrhythmic expression of ambience yet composed

my goons have been punching vines for a while now and I thought they were ready to take it to the next level when I ran into approximately 15+ brigands and rogues. their bitcrushed jeers and exotic slowdown-inducing dances were the last thing my party saw before the death screen hit with what can only be described as a screamer

better save before you open a door. save before you unlock a door. save before you even think of a door unless you want to be hunting down keys from rng drops from rng spawns from random encounters. I can hear dw bradley cackling in the distance as I jam the lock and reload the game again for the nth time in a row. you won't be going a single second without thinking of keys. copper keys, silver keys, iron keys, chrome keys, sour keys — if you're not sniffing for keys at any given time you're all fucked up and doing everything wrong. when you're laying in bed at night with your beautiful wife, thinking about that time the game played your song, you best be ready to start dreaming about keys

which is to say it gets real in the weeds with the circuitous adventure game stuff. of course, sir-tech knew that at the time which is why it came with a 104 page "clue book" complete with annotated maps, walls of hints, and puzzle solutions — we're talking a full on nintendo power guide. much as I'm not fond of the old Roberta Williams design philosophy of making everything as incoherent as possible on a lark, if you're gonna do it you might as well admit it up front and capitulate to common decency. I may be hexen's strongest soldier but even I have my limits

being the first "Save/Rest Anywhere" wizardry — the first where you don't need to make trips back and forth from town, afflicted with grisly ailments or saddled with corpses — marks a significant divergence from previous games. on its face it's more dungeon more of the time, but the lack of separation between the two poles makes for crawling that has a blurrier, softer focus, demolishing the wall between safe and unsafe, and making just about anywhere an acceptable rest spot if you reload your save often enough

the main counterbalance is that you get one save slot. so sure, you can save whenever, but you better think long and hard about it. the potential when hovering over the DISK menu to accidentally click SAVE GAME & QUIT instead of QUIT GAME - NOSAVE is the biggest source of tension in the game, and I think it's caused me to develop a greater level of mindfulness. I am vibrating significantly higher; more serene and in control of my destiny as I go from blitzing thru menus to moving at geological speed on a dime. so far I've only made an error once twice, and I felt terrible both times; sitting there wide eyed in the saddest stupor knowing I've sealed a dark, deserved fate for myself

the other wrench in the gears is that it allows itself to be completely unhinged more or less nonstop. there's a bit of a chicken and egg thing where it's hard to tell whether the game fucks you over constantly because you can save scum, or you're given the option to save scum cos it's constantly fucking you over. it bounces between such extremes that virtually any situation you find yourself in could be drastically different on a second go, be it enemy compositions, stat increases, items in chests, whatever. it's not a stretch to suggest that if you were inclined to min max (couldn't be me) you could find reason and method to shape nearly every situation you find yourself in toward your desired outcome

and really, some of the time you won't be given much of a choice. I don't care who you are, unless you're pulling metagame multiclass shenanigans and stacking hide/criticals you're probably not fighting four full stacks of nightgaunts — you're either reloading the second you see that unholy sight or wishing you did. after hours where six trillion mosquitos and goblins going bananas were the best case scenario I feel like I've seen the most callous design games have to offer. go easy on me fellas, I'm a dumb guy. you see my faerie samurai? the mark of a man with no clue what he's doing. he can't even wear his own gear! his little head is too tiny for kabuto!!!

of all wizary vi's changes and additions to the formula, dw bradley's writing is probably the most significant direct improvement... for the most part (foreshadowing). the game has like one unique tile that's used on every single wall of the castle, caves, river, forest, etc , but by the time I was done exploring each area and reading the sparse flavour text I felt like I had been there myself. quietly spooling just enough information for your imagination to paint it all together over time. you don't even realize how effective it is until it's wormed its way into having you imagine mundane stuff like furniture of your own volition; just sitting imagining the woodwork on some chair. the belfry in particular takes very simple, clean mapping and uses it to perfect effect by coupling it with a touch of descriptive text, onomatopoeia, environmental interaction, and handplaced encounters — all in the span of a couple minutes. it's fabulous, honestly, and while you may not like it, this is peak ambience

but then there's the amazulu. when they were introduced as "very strange looking black women" carrying spears and crossing ravines with vines I had a good idea of where this was going, but then I saw their sprite and then I heard the yipping sounds they make in combat. the internet tells me they're not racist but I am gonna say... seems pretty racist to me!

even if we're being extremely charitable here and attribute some of the more suspect aspects of their portrayal to general fantasy schlock, deriving the name of your stereotypical "tribal" caricatures after a real ethnic group they have nothing in common with is real bad, and having them only exist to be monsters you do a wall-to-wall murder on so you can pillage and plunder their dungeon isn't helping things either

I'm here to delve into a spooky ooky cenotaph, give a lich the stone cold stunner, steal his favourite shirt, and smash two beers together like WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? and this is decidedly not that

eventually you move past that and return to the stuff you're here for: the crypts and temples, opaque npcs, incoherent quest item sequences, and tooth shattering random encounters. the last third really benefits from being leaner and more propulsive, and it helps that you finally get some idea of what the game's even about (a special pen, maybe incest) and what your goal is (kill dracula) and if you're a little smarter than I am your party's probably turned into a wrecking ball by then

alas, about three tiles away from the final dungeon I was struck by divine inspiration and sabotaged my samurai by changing his class to ninja without the gear required to make it worthwhile — and then to a monk to try to salvage the smoldering mess. naturally, this occurred after I was past the point of no return, after I relinquished all my gold, and after I lost access to all the equipment shops. not my best work, to be sure; I was so driven to capture EXO's missing potential that I lost sight of who he really was, and perhaps who I really was too

it's not about having 100 NINJUTSU and KIRIJUTSU on every character. it's not even about having a samurai that can wear armour. it's about exploring some of the greatest dungeon designs of all time, enjoying the robust character system, using your imagination, and the appreciating the friends who stand by your side while you do it

I can't shake the feeling that while wizardy vi wouldn't top my list of games in the series, nor games inspired by it, it's something I'll inevitably return to. perhaps the gorgeous SNES version, perhaps another go of the DOS version. who knows. there's a magnetism here that already has me wanting to try other party compositions, or to subject myself to Expert mode and finally break my spirit for good. maybe scam the multiclass system until the game absolutely crumples beneath it

hell of an adventure — sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. the binding thread between classic wizardry and the far more expansive, ambitious follow ups; a singular entry in both the series and genre that showcases dw bradley's immense talent as programmer, designer, and writer, and the transformative nature of his larger than life influence. might be a while til I get around to vii again, but I'm very much looking forward to whenever that may be :)

no way I'm bringing these clowns with me when I do tho

so first thing's first: X86000 version is better than the windows version, and you're probably gonna want some kinda autofire. I use XM6 Pro-68k's built in option, but you can do whatever you want cos I'm not your dad. you can even ignore my suggestion and let your arm balloon into a hellish rod of ruby muscle and errant bone, just as koichi yoshida intended. people will wonder if it's infected or filled with saline or if you're some kinda lab experiment and maybe you'll get a chance to tell them "no, I'm just honourable" before someone calls the national guard and they shoot to kill with those long bullets that explode human heads

maybe you can even survive the first shot and amble into oncoming traffic, horrifying children and dogs and doglike children alike with your heinous appendage as vehicles swerve dramatically out of the way like salarymen about to drive into the ocean

maybe you'll escape your pursuers and find yourself in an old growth forest, the perfect resting spot for the beast you've become. your freakish arm will be a warning to others and you'll spend the rest of your years tearing bark off trees to suck down termites and carpenter worms. once in a while someone will stumble into your leafy manse and see you, but thankfully their photos will be inexplicably blurry and your existence will be deemed a hoax by all but true believers. your family will mourn the son or daughter they lost, your boss will replace you with someone they can pay less, and life will go on as it does so beautifully

in your final moments maybe you'll smile and think to yourself:

"what the fuck does curse know anyway?"

at first blush clear sky's beautiful: rich sunlit autumn with its blues, greens, oranges, and browns warm and radiant; chornobyl's surface murk all but lifted entirely and soaked up into the soils and waters and still breathing bodies that inhabit the zone

but it soon becomes plain that the cosmetic changes are something of a diversion; sleight of hand that draws the eyes away from the coming suckerpunch: twenty odd hours of being flanked by grenades, bled to death, mulched by MGs, and robbed blind. a cursory search shows that the lion's share of its legacy revolves around torturing and bamboozling those who expected a straightforward sequel to SoP instead of an Iterative Pain Milker, but as the saying goes: "you opened it, we came"

the heart of the experience is nothing short of broken; theoretical emergent turf wars reduced to ceaseless big boss killing field masturbation due to poor macro level AI and myriad bugs and glitches. every claim and conquest soon snuffed out or stolen; all elaborate actors, a-life improvements, hard fought battles, pleas for help, and catastrophes rendered as droning background noise. this world is doomed, and your input is worthless

it's exhausting, and even more so to know a great deal of it's the result of a series of inefficiencies so great they actively sabotage the very firmament. at times it almost feels like a comedy of errors when the stoned anarchists or authoritarian paramilitary freaks manage to bungle every single lead or advantage you give them. five idiots loping so slowly across the zone that by the time they arrive (if they even bother) they're inevitably pressed into hamburger by the dozen guys who somehow respawned in the interim

when sutured up nicely with the likes of Sky Reclamation Project it lurches upward, alive. all the blood for blood's sake recontextualized: the junkyards and warehouses turned sacrificial pits summon successfully, allies arrive, and land changes hands; guns still jam, MG nests still butcher, and grenades still flow freely, but there's purpose and direction granted. movement in the zone is given breath and motive outside of the infinite looping thresher, conflict finds a utile path, and there's reprieve and closure and tangible winners and losers. unfortunately, it lasts about an hour

once you join a faction you'll walk point-by-point through enemy checkpoints, get into a few scraps, take their base, and that's about it. somehow adhering to intentionality and giving all the dopey wind-up toys a chance to fulfill their goals and retire does nothing but harm. without the futility it oddly ends up even more meaningless; all perpetual motion and conflict rendered still and dull in the blink of an eye. omnipresent inferno degraded into sidequest

the more I dabbled with alterations the more I came to feel that shaking it from its stasis and evening out the unintended caustics made for a lesser experience. SRP's default settings are undoubtedly the best option for keeping clear sky roughly in line with its original intentions, but the tradeoff between the accidental and the deliberate isn't always worth it

if you tinker a bit further there're countless other options that make "improvements" to the likes of ballistics, enemy behaviour, and damage values, but almost all of them do so at the cost of its core identity, sanding it down to another shadow of chernobyl at best and another call of pripyat at worst. most of SRP's optional addons in particular feel designed from the ground up to wrench its teeth out one by one, and while I'm not gonna be a shitty cop about how people wanna enjoy things, I can't help but feel like docile's the wrong look

for me clear sky's best as an experience in overwhelming reduction — of the player, of power, and of dominion. a living space occupied by the dead and a set of systems in perpetual, unavoidable collapse. gears turning and great machines moving in an endless cycle of yearning greed and control. one big dumb bright cozy purgatory

win today, lose tomorrow. spin the world's wheel again

NG2 sits squarely between grindhouse shlock and yukio mishima's erotic fascination with guido reni's perfectly penetrated saint sebastian. it frames deaths both as uncritically Sick As Fuck and hypermasculine poetic climax; peerless in its ability to find perverse beauty in carnage while reveling in how cool it looks when a head goes gusher mode

for something best known for involuntary amputations, torrents of blood, and forward motion, it's surprisingly graceful and delicate. almost everything comes undone with a few swings and the aestheticization of violence is so heightened it verges on romanticism. much like its predecessor it revolves around deceptively simple movement and positioning over dazzling combo sequences, but the adventure bits have been hacked off to make room for a more laterally complex combat gauntlet where all inhabitance exists to maim and disfigure for the good of the greater limb economy

going in I thought the loss of black's circuitous world design would be a knock against it, but it wasn't. turns out you can make more linear, directed stages that aren't boring as fuck, who knew? 😲😲😲 the ghost lake with those dreamy overlaid effects, the castlevania clocktower, the coliseum, the airship; there're so many neat ideas and memorable flourishes in even the most straightforward bits. any time someone tells me 10 hours of homogeneous slop corridors is Good, Actually I'm gonna roll my eyes just a little bit harder from now on cos this shit has a werewolf kitchen

how much you enjoy it's gonna depend on your tolerance and appreciation for at least some amount of bullshit. there's no denying it's one of the all time messy bitch games that strains and grates against good taste, better judgement, and hardware itself. the infamous staircase sequence grinding and sputtering to an underwater crawl exemplifies its attitude better than any amount of polish ever could: they knew they shouldn't do it, did it anyway, and it ended up the best use of slowdown outside of STGs

on the other hand, there are some pretty big misses in the boss department, and the way it ramps up higher difficulties (mentor, master ninja) isn't gonna work for everyone. you'll know pretty fast if stuff like Incendiary Shurikens makes your hairline recede to some heretofore unknown ass norwood or inspires you to learn the tricks to deal with them, and honestly I don't think there's a wrong answer. but when you manage to chain the iframes just right to avoid the IS explosion, hit the On Landing Ultimate Technique, sequester a bunch of armless fucks on the other side of the arena, and toss their buddies into the wall so their legs blow off, it reaches a level of perfect survivalism other games haven't even considered

like, yeah, no one was sitting up all night dreaming of "the resident evil dogs but way worse", or gigadeath, or the bloom armadillos, but when it all comes together it's so good I wanna hoot and holler Team Ninja #1 with a big foam hand. I am in love with the eclipse scythe, I am starting to see humans as limb holsters. no amount of shit ass centaurs can sway me. I'm gonna bring back ratings and 5.0 is the NG2 rating. fuck itsuno's butthole tree

early on as I was running thru venetian canals, izuna dropping fiends headfirst onto the water's surface like it was concrete, I thought about how lucky everyone else was that this released hurried and unfinished. the genre dodged a real End Of History moment by the narrowest margins; another six months and this would've been untouchable. sigma could've finished the job, but Team Ninja Dog used the opportunity to backtrack on NG2's entire identity instead and then lose the source code for good measure. a fuck up so big it's still the best reason to buy an xbox in 2024

anyway, between the big gay mishima energy here and the awooga hello nurse stuff in NGB I'm claiming the ninja gaiden duology as official Bi Dude Canon, even if ryu's ass looks a lot like hank hill's sometimes

I ain't claiming the third one

glass syrup, moon tears, and primordial soup: the lunar restaurant in forever stasis. chit chat turns to noble chit chat turns to desperate chit chat as hours slip past by the dozens, hundreds, and thousands

melancholy gives way to a peculiar sort of idealism. not the sort where everything works out swimmingly and all outcomes are optimized to perfect mathematical parameters, but a more material state where the possibility for more and better is present and included; the swells of grief, guilt, regret, loss, and forgetting existing in purgatorial space where they can be unwound and untied and unfurled and worked out. where given enough time, anything can find adequate closure and resolution — a mirror placed in opposition to eternity's ability to persist in unfettered rack and ruin

hopeful and kind and unassumingly warm. peculiar and off balance and stark in its duo toned sketches and sheepishly brief musical loops and soft little jokes and heartfelt excavations of personhood and unpersonhood and everything in between

time unspooled as radiant promise and mending touch

there's something particularly grimy about this one that wasn't present in the others. something instigating and coarse and spiteful and reactionary. "language as a virus" as interpreted in the most corrosive way possible. characterized by emptiness; overwhelmingly pro-nothing

HC2 was positioned like an anaglyph where the heightened elements were layered just askew of the seen&felt "human" elements despite their differences, and when paired they were able to speak earnestly to lived experience. HC3 bristles at the very thought; too suspicious and cynical to allow anything to resonate so cleanly; too preoccupied with how earned it is; too uncomfortable with its own audience; too busy wagging its finger at ghosts

this is a work defined by unpleasant, uncharitable metacommentary; the shock of gore, body fluids, and pointlessly cruel backstories amounting to little more than a yawning (bored, boring) void. violent death of the author offered the instant every page's been torn to confetti. one last mean little joke from a particularly mean little game

a neurotic stormcloud reckoning with creation and voyeurism and expectations and consumption. the reclaiming of catharsis thru punishingly overcorrective countermeasure. a last gasp chance to weaponize itself against that what came prior, itself, and the "puppeteer". denouement as calculated sabotage that can't be walked back

rpg maker's BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode 2 (2014)

[ROOM I]
do the movement
do the attack

[ROOM II]
do the advanced movement
do the advanced attack

[ROOM III]
kara cancel the yojimbo scram hustle
bravely default the zapruter film into majestic donovan dippy

[ROOM IV]
🙾🛠🏠 🚭 👽 🕸 🗘
🖃 🌨 🐕 🌶 🏭 🟈🗠

so my "rampage" themed set bombed at the last comedy club I played at... an audience member said it made them want to ralph

laughter

I mean, the only thing those freakazoids are destroying... is my wallet

extremely laughter

the only "rampage world tour" i want to see involves millions of dead cops

for all its messy sci-fi tangles and caustic irony and sprawling mythologizing this felt raw and tender in a way that kind of really hurt. doubles down on the eminently alien as a ruse to make its naked human ugliness more potent when the time comes, presenting a scenario where the essence of all stress, tension, and threat is mundanely, terribly, crushingly adolescent at heart

a wealth of increased design hospitality baits a hostility that draws from acrid power dynamics, self-destructive altruism, loss of autonomy, strained health, and the uniquely miserable feeling of being a fucked up teenager. that its concluding act leads with its most insincere, grating posturing only to directly pivot into end times earnestness makes for one of the most convincing tonal portrayals of angst and isolation I can think of

instant teencore classic (deeply affectionate)

my good friend morris requested I write a review for this after she bought it for me so I'm going to review it for my friend. she has tried to influence this review and stifle my creative voice, but I do not bend under pressure

orbo is a person but also a projectile weapon. his body is the arrow that is drawn against all evil such as draculas. pull the string taut and cast him unto enemies, cast him into the heavens, cast him with aim true and noble and climb skyscrapers and caves and other normal places bald people tend to hang out in

slide your body around like the godless physics object it is. shuffle your corporeal meat around like you're an enemy in yakuza kiwami 2. hurl and spike and spring your doomed mortal form just to feel something. stave off entropy and nihilism thru reckless, impulsive behaviour

on this wretched earth one must have the conviction to whip their bulging corpus unto hell like orbo. one must "collect the orbs" and forge an arm both strong and utile in order to open doors and attain true autonomy

sorry I gotta be the one to tell everyone this but the controls are good and the combat is good

RPG encounter design doesn't get any better than this: no scaling, no magical handwave to explain why enemies suddenly hit the road and get replaced with other enemies once you hit a certain level, no bandits in glass armour; the world is constant and if you fuck around you're gonna get got by an orc or some kinda weird bird just like real life

it's the earthiest and most respectable method of approaching these things; the rare instance where the game doesn't treat the player character as an elevated actor with undue importance and insists they participate on even ground. you start off at the very bottom and are tasked with earning respect and trust gradually, shaping the way you're perceived, your station, and opening doors to people and opportunities you wouldn't have had otherwise

this emphasis on a more grounded world extends to most everything else as well. NPCs have routines and sub-routines; monsters sleep, eat, roam, and flee from predators if attacked; and objects with no mechanical value or purpose can be interacted with for cosmetic or roleplaying purposes. while many, many, many games prior had schedules and day/night variance, few if any operated on this level, and many of gothic's contemporaries wound up looking rigid and staid in comparison

if there's any stumbling here it's that the second half loses some steam after you choose a faction and get railroaded into more linear action oriented quests, but it's not enough to detract much from the overall experience because.........

the controls are good
the combat is good

about ten years ago I was goin thru a crosswalk when a car sped from behind, narrowly missed me, and drove full speed into the side of a house. I didn't see shit cos my back was turned, but the sound it made was otherworldly — impossible to describe

thumper trades in that kind of inexplicable catastrophic energy: a series of collisions in staccato; moments of grisly impact sped up, slowed down, and looped on repeat like endlessly rewound homemade horror tapes

monolithic droning violence that goes on & on til it takes the form of a numbing agent, delivered thru increasingly off kilter time signatures, railway tracks that churn and coil in on themselves, and a haunted windows media player visualizer aesthetic

its stubborn insistence on stretching a single tonal idea into a homogeneous sprawl won't be for everyone, but I can't imagine it any other way

something like this should feel like it lasts forever