The biggest video game mystery of the past decade. It's the most groundbreaking, medium-redefining experience of our generation - and nobody can explain why. I'm convinced this is all a conspiracy orchestrated by YouTube video essayists. The promise (yet unfulfilled) of The Great Open World Video Game blinds us to the fact that we've seen all of this many times before.

Fundamentally, Breath of the Wild is a pastiche of the safest, most focus-tested game design principles of the preceding decade. You could call it the 'Tower' type game. Climb a tower to unlock a new area on your map, which will reveal the repeatable skinner box activities you can complete there. Puzzles, dungeons, enemy camps, the usual. These activities give you something like XP, increased health, or a new item, which account for progression. Once you're done, you climb another tower and repeat the process until you're ready to fight the final boss (or more likely, until you're bored and ready to rush to the game's end).

That's the gameplay loop. And like every single other one of these games ever made, the loop eventually becomes a dull grind. Breath of the Wild does nothing to solve this problem endemic to open world games. Some have praised the game's traversal, which, other than shield surfing (which is cool to be fair), is really just climbing walls, riding a horse, using a glider, or fast travelling; the same traversal methods in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, released seven years earlier (Shadow of the Colossus is also a clear influence). Really I would challenge anyone to explain how Breath of the Wild is a masterpiece while Assassin's Creed is a soulless corporate product. You're playing the same game. What's the difference besides some nice vibes and a cell-shaded art style? Grass? At least Assassin's Creed has that cyberpunk meets ancient aliens meets secret societies meets historical fiction bullshit made up by French people. That's creativity.

Proponents of the game may praise the Shiekah slate physics abilities as an innovation, and that feels true at first. But eventually your enemies become too powerful for hitting them with rocks or whatever to do a thing; you'll need to use some bullshit level-scaled RPG weapon. And even if the Shiekah slate remained effective in combat, you would still end up doing this. Why? Because this game has so much dull, repeated content to wade through that it becomes easier to take the path of least resistance, the least thought required, and just hit them with your sword. 30 hours in, no player is using cool Shiekah slate tricks to clear those regenerating bokoblin camps.

Much discussion has already been had on the monotony of the 120 copy-pasted shrines, which make up the bulk of the game's content (its version of the side tasks from Assassin's Creed), and the 900 copy-pasted korok seed puzzles, which act as the collectibles obligatory of every Tower game. I won't rehash that too much here, copy-pasted content is already the most common criticism of open world games in general. But knowing that, I want to talk about something I've noticed with a lot of the praise for this game.

Some of the most common sentiments expressed toward Breath of the Wild are that it's "magical" and captures the "joy of discovery" and a sense of "childlike wonder". And I think if you play through the entire game and still feel this way, then that is a horror beyond comprehension. What was your childhood like? Did you spend it as a laboratory subject or something? Just completing mundane, repeated tasks and being awarded food pellets? Because that's what Breath of the Wild is: a world filled not with a sense of mystery or infinite possibility, but the exact opposite: A world where you know exactly what you will find under every rock, inside every strange ruin, over every next hill. A completely controlled, sterile environment of utilitarian systems for the player to exploit. Completely antithetical to anything "magical".

I think there's a pretty strong argument to be made that video games fundamentally cannot represent anything magical, emotional, or spiritual. Depicting anything in interactive form drains it of all sacred meaning, makes it a joke; it's the "press f to pay respects" problem. The tenets of game design stipulate systems and mechanics that are rational and understandable to players. That might be the biggest sin of video games as an artistic medium: taking everything unquantifiable and beautiful in life and reducing it to man-made systems for a single individual to exploit (For more discussion of this issue, play the Metal Gear Solid series).

This is felt especially harshly in a Tower game like Breath of the Wild, where an entire open world is reduced to a few classes of interactive activities. Progressing through a game like this is a process of total disillusionment with the entire world; spiritual death. It accidentally replicates the central theme of Ocarina of Time: the transition from idyllic childhood to grim adulthood. But Ocarina ends with Link confronting the darkness of adulthood and returning to a childlike state of play with his adult wisdom integrated. Breath of the Wild, though, is a state of permanent adolescence - it never goes anywhere, and simply decays over time. Eventually, you exhaust all of this life's possibilities and choose to finally, mercifully end it. Deciding to face Ganon isn't about bringing the story to a climax; it's the gameplay equivalent of taking a plane to Switzerland to get euthanized. And the game practically spits in your face after you defeat him, simply reverting to an old save before the final fight. There is no salvation, no redemption for this world. Only the ceaseless march of content.

Early on I said this game's reputation is a mystery, and I actually lied; there's a pretty simple explanation, one that I briefly mentioned: grass vibes. The game has an incredible atmosphere when you're first starting out, and that's what people are talking about when they call it "a breath of fresh air" or whatever cliché they think of. It has nothing to do with any game design element found here. Because there is no common understanding of what that would even mean. There's no concept of the formal elements of game design, or the storytelling language of video games. We're all just making this shit up.

People only pay attention to, y'know, the actual art: music, animation, visuals. The game itself can be anything, nobody really cares. The discourse surrounding games as a medium of art in themselves is mostly bullshit. People appreciate the traditional artistic aspects of a game (music, animation, visuals, acting performances, writing) and then project that sense of artistry onto the game design itself, where there is none (and in fact, there is a profound dissonance between it and those elements). That's how people process games as an art form. And that's why games like Breath of the Wild are held up as the pinnacle of games as art.

(I'll also say that I have no respect for any open world game like this after the release of Metal Gear Solid V (2015). It correctly portrayed this breed of AAA open world game as something that cannot be revived or rejuvenated as Breath of the Wild attempts to do; this is all salted earth. If MGSV had been properly understood, we would have seen it as the just and merciful execution of games like this.)

Firstly achieves the incredible task of passing the torch of the distinctive lead Altair to an apparent nobody like Ezio only to fuel our hearts with a gutteral need for vendetta and secondly marvels you with a toolbox of polished weaponry wonderlands. Takes the gears of parkour and close-combat as building blocks to mystifying freedom complexities. If you felt annoyed beyond-convincing about the first one's parkour, in this one you'll find yourself enamoured of statuette scouting. You'll actively seek to climb towers like they're Rubics Cubes. Side missions are gratifying and skill growth feels rewarding as fawk. Invigorating rennaisance, a bit of a weightless apocalypse closure - it still had no business getting me to spend so many hours punching through it's secondary quests like everyday bread. Requiescat in pace.

Marvelously written, Sam. Beautiful balancing of idiosyncratic Runyonesque darkly-comedic screenwriting onto hard-hitting, sentimentally drowning Shakesperean tragedy. Every swing hits to the chest in the best-worst way possible for majestic Noir glory. Technologically polished too, added physics and guntotting madness for our trigger-happy amusement which just clicks abundantly satisfying to distract us from the emotional damage. Seems awfully more downing if we say goodbye to Sam Lake's Payne from here onto the Rockstar sendoff. There's no reason for that incredible catharsis that final Poets of the Fall needle drop to hit so tremendously by the end. The witchcraft of evocative storytelling.

Pep's Detective Deep Dive - Game 8
Going from "the two good non-Team Silent Silent Hill games" to this is a hell of jump for Sam Barlow. A far cry from the psychological horrors of his previous work, Her Story is a quiet, FMV murder-mystery that definitely goes into the "not for everyone" pile.

The gameplay is relatively simple: you're presented with an archaic police database system, full of clips from a series of detective interviews with a woman whose missing husband has turned up murdered. Your job is to use the search system to find clips, watch them, and find out what happened. That's it.

It's not immediately obvious at first, but you don't need to do anything other than watch the clips. You don't have to place them on a timeline in the correct order or anything like that. Hell, you don't even need to watch every clip to "finish" the game. At a certain point, the game will decide that you've seen enough to know what happened and gives you the option to roll the credits, should you so choose. But you absolutely should try to watch as much as you can. Why? Because of Her.

Viva Seifert's performance as the titular Her is nothing short of mesmerising. She's natural, she's likeable, and the gamut of emotions she runs through in a relatively short series of videos is astounding. Once you reach a certain point in the story, you begin to really notice all these subtleties in her acting, and it really brings the game to another level. That Game Award she won was well-deserved.

The narrative twists and turns as well as any good crime thriller. The non-linear nature of finding the clips means that you only get the story in bite-size chunks, and your interpretation is always changing based on what new info you've just seen. It's like Sam Barlow dumps all the puzzle pieces in front of you and says "figure it out".

The joy is in paying attention, making notes of any potential keywords and finding that next important clip to give you another chunk of the story. Finding the one clip that recontextualises the entire story was an incredibly satisfying moment for me. And even then, when you've seen every clip there is to see, there's just enough ambiguity left in certain story threads to keep you wondering long after the credits have rolled.

It's absolutely not for everyone - hell, a few years back this wouldn't have been for me either - but if you've got a few hours then grab some friends, a notebook and pen and get sleuthing.

After playing through Silent Hill 2 last October and the original Silent Hill in December, I decided to embark upon the final leg of my journey in the original trilogy. Silent Hill 1 I think emphasizes the power of the macabre while Silent Hill 2 emphasizes guilt and psychological struggles. So where did Silent Hill 3 choose to take me?

It's definitely a sharp contrast from Silent Hill 2, which had this gloomy and somber ambiance about it; Silent Hill 3 seemed much more visceral and angry, and as a result, it's constantly in your face about nothing seems right in this twisted sick world and how rejection is everywhere. The increase in graphical fidelity from Silent Hill 1 makes the Otherworld from the original seem almost tame; this other world is constantly growling and glaring crimson, prowling just around the corner, stalking you and assaulting you with screeching and thumping noise as you have to fend off yet another meat demon Yeti Kong while your strikes barely graze the creature. This effect gets even more grotesque and infernal as you progress, where there are even certain sections where the walls seem to bleed around you while static flares up with danger becoming omnipresent. I suppose what I'm trying to say is, that Silent Hill 3 is easily the most terrifying and acutely uncomfortable of the original trilogy; this demented universe around you is constantly rejecting your ever approach as you trudge through to you next destination, and hell feels just a slip away. This unrelenting assault on the senses will absolutely wear you down, and not even the first two installments of Silent Hill have really conveyed this to me to this extent. It really speaks volumes that this was the first of the games where I did not feel the need to take down every enemy around me, and in fact tried to actively avoid conflict as much as possible.

And more than that I suppose, it still manages to maintain that troubled visage that comes with all the Silent Hill games, only now that there's an active layer of anger felt from all the characters as they struggle to find their own meaning in a world that has mostly abandoned them and left them to their own devices. The game is great at setting up Heather as this troubled teenager trying to reconcile her past, present, and future, and her interactions with those around his characterize just how unwilling everyone is to let go of their troubles. The soundtrack of course, reflects this perfectly; my favorite track would still have to be Breeze in Monochrome Night, which starts off with the distant ring of dark bells and then leads right into a trippy, ambient synth alongside the cascading piano. The game understands that there's this haunting beauty to be found in this messed up psychologically damaging world, and it's such a vibe.

All in all, it's exactly what you would expect from a great psychological horror game, but unlike the original Silent Hill, those shiny new graphics have aged magnificently and will absolutely leave you wondering when the nightmare starts and ends. Not a single moment wasted as you deal with the consequences of 17 years ago; just sit back and watch the horror unfold.

Probably the best follow-up to Silent Hill 1 that could be made, given the critiques of the second game at the time. More nightmarish. More gruesome, better to control, and flat-out more fun to play in general. A lot fewer puzzles than I expected, and the combat still has a few hiccups, but the overall progression throughout the game feels great. Heather may be my favorite protagonist in all of Silent Hill, simply because she is not a Silent Hill character. She's like if you put a normal teen into Silent Hill. She hates the place. She's tired of the nonsense about God and Paradise. She's freaking funny, charming, and such a stark contrast to the stoic Dad of SH1 and the apathetic and depressed husband of SH2.

I think what keeps me from loving this game is the fact that it's indeed a follow-up to SH1. The wow factor of that game really can't be topped, which is why the direction of Silent Hill 2 feels so fresh. Sh1 is a nightmare, while SH2 is dread. Sh3 is returning to The Nightmare, which works but is not nearly as impactful as the other two titles. The environments and the visual design are impressively terrifying but almost familiar at this point. It also doesn't help that I think the weakest part about SH1 was the plot with the cultists. I've always seen Silent Hill as a catalyst to explore a character and their fears, but focusing on the rebirthing of a God plot is just too goofy of a premise for me to ever take seriously. In other words, there's nothing for me to latch onto with this title. I can just recognize how expertly the game is crafted, and how much better it feels to play SH3 in comparison to the rest of the series. It's the perfect sequel on paper, but I don't think it's allowed to shine as much when it has so many roots to uphold.

Silent Hill Again/10

After 80+ hours of Red Dead Redemption 2, a question pops up in one’s mind:
In the process of making a game that examines the fall of the American frontier and the decline of the Wild West, did the irony register at all with Rockstar that they were also making a game about the end of the triple A design structure that has plagued the medium ever since the birth of the 7th gen?

Regardless of what pre-established biases one might come into RDR2 about the value of graphical fidelity and closeness to real life and focus on cinematic design and film language in games, it’s impossible not to be impressed by Rockstar’s commitment to the simulation of realism. Your character will meticulously grab each item he loots and place it in his satchel, craft each new tonic or bullet one at a time with detailed animations, remove and place his weapons on his horse whenever you switch them up, shuffle dominoes and grab each piece one by one in every game, and skin every hunted animal with gruesome detail and carry them on his back to his horse every single time. NPCs all have their per-determined schedules that happen regardless of your presence or not, wild animals behave accordingly to their nature and even hunt other species, and every mundane action, be it taking a shower, mounting a camp, cleaning your guns, or brushing your horse, carry a level of detail and weight never before seen in a blockbuster game. It also boasts one of the most beautiful environments to walk around, filled with detail and big expansive nature landmarks, frequently creating moments of awe as you ride around the mountains and landscape.

This level of realism is further elevated in the gang’s camp, where you have a group of misfits you can deal with daily and who all have their respective quirks, goals and actions. Rarely will you hear the same line of dialogue from these characters in the course of 80 hours, and the impressive amount of scenes and conversations that occur not only between your character and them, but also between themselves, means that you will finish the game without experiencing half of the camp scenes that happen dynamically and without feeling like scripted events. When you find yourself around a campfire with your gang after a well succeeded mission, being able to join in the singing and festivities with them, suddenly all the effort in creating a realistic world comes together and for a few seconds the immersion is achieved and one feels like he is a part of a fully realized world and that these characters are tangible and real.

It’s unfortunate then that each time you get into a story mission, that effort is collapsed and you are thrown back into the videogame. What was once acceptable in RDR1 now feels incredibly dated and restrictive, with the usual design structure of having you ride to the mission on horseback and having a chat with an NPC while you follow a yellow line, following every single instruction the game tells you without any chance to deviate from it, waiting for something to inevitably go wrong, and then shooting a comical number of enemies that spawn out of nowhere like a NES game until everyone is dead. Rinse, and repeat. The level of realism found in the open world aspects of RDR2 only serves to call attention to how detached and out of touch the story missions are, leading to incredibly absurd scenes where the main character chastises a crew member for killing too many people during a story cutscene, when you the player yourself have been forced to kill 50 people during a house robbery just the previous mission.

What ends up happening is that most of the stuff you will be doing in the open world won’t matter at all because that would be stepping on the story’s toes. Regardless of how much money you have or how much you have contributed to the camp and NPCs, nothing will have effect on how the story will progress, with the exception of a very simplistic and outdated Honor system. This in turn inevitably leads to the open world map feeling like just a bunch of lines between check marks to fill, with the occasional scripted event to deviate you, but not much!, from the beaten path, and the rare exploration quest that happens when the game decides you should. Even the act of hunting an animal in the wilderness is affected by Rockstar’s grip on your hand, having a highlighted line on the ground that flashes and leads perfectly to your prey. The simulation aspects end up being surface level mechanics used to visually impress the player, not really influencing in any meaningful way either the gameplay or the story. It’s all shallow spectacle.

Which is a shame, because RDR2 has one of the most compelling videogame characters ever created. Arthur Morgan’s story takes a very contemplative and introspective direction in it’s final act, as he finds out he doesnt have much time left in this world, and it leads to some of the most interesting and emotional moments that Rockstar has ever created. Arthur’s effort in making something out of the few life he has left ends up influencing the player’s action outside of the story, and in one of the most poignant and humane moments in the whole game, you are forced to lay down your controller for a few secs, as Arthur requests a moment from you so he can catch his breath, something that makes the player care and empathize with a bunch of polygons much more than any cutting edge cutscene in the whole game could. Even the act of playing the last stretch of the game mimics Arthur’s new perspective, the missions feeling like a slog to go through, Dutch becoming increasingly frustrating, repetitive and annoying to be around, and the creativity being lesser and lesser, which would have been an interesting and insightful direction, had that actually been the intention by Rockstar. But RDR2 is adamant in separating the story from the gameplay, even bafflingly inserting black bars on top and bottom of the screen each time control is removed from the player, as if to signal that it’s now movie time and no time for interactivity. Regardless of all the issues with the story and gameplay, Arthur’s story is enough to carry the whole game on it’s back, and any player invested in his tale will have a hard time not getting emotional at the gut-wretching ending.

But then the game continues. For 5 more hours. And it’s at this point that the dam breaks and the flaws of the game become full center and aren’t easy to ignore anymore. The epilogue, which lacks any self awareness as it presents itself as a two parter, drags it’s way into a fan pandering ending, filled with needless shooting, redundant subplots, and characters that completely undermine the impact of the actual ending of the game. We can’t have a simple mission about just herding some sheeps, shopping with a friend, or fly a hot air ballon. No, every mission has to have a bloody battle with a body count that would make Stalin jealous, because Rockstar cannot bear the idea that some players might be bored if there isnt anything to shoot at. During an exchange between Morgan and an NPC the screen fades to black as they start talking about their lives, as if to spare the player from all those “boring details”, instead leading straight to the action once more. Rockstar can’t bear the thought of giving more opportunities for normal interactions between the player and the NPCs, while I sit here thinking about how one of my favorite missions was when I crossed the whole map to see a character I was fond of, only to get a kiss and that being the end of the mission.

RDR2 is a bloated game that can’t read a room on when’s it’s time to bow down and stop the show, deciding instead to outstay it’s welcome for an absurd amount of time, like an old frail man clawing at the last moments before his time to move on. And maybe it’s also time for Rockstar to move on, and let ideas of cinematic grandeur and realism in videogames finally lay rest once and for all.

It's hard to fault 'Ethan Winters and The Great Spooky Coochie' for drawing inspiration from RE4. Not only is 4 one of Capcom's best selling titles, it's flat out one of the best action games of all time!

But 'The Winters' Winter Holiday' constantly bungles its attempts at emulating RE4, robbing the game of any tension or tactical depth.

At its best, RE4 would put you in elaborate, multi-level jungle gyms with enemies slowly approaching on all sides, testing your ability to traverse tricky environments while applying precise and effective crowd control.

You could target explosive enemies to efficiently clear groups without wasting ammo. Risk closing the distance in exchange for powerful melee attacks. Abuse context sensitive obstacles like ladders, bookshelves, and bear traps to limit enemies' range of movement.

Or maybe it would put you in a tiny enclosed space where split-second decisions and exaggerated hit-reactions were your only tools. Snap target enemies' limbs to slow them down or disable their attacks, giving you baaaarely enough room to breathe in these claustrophobic encounters.

'Spillage Village' levels are mostly simple roundabouts where you can endlessly kite tiny groups of enemies in circles.

Apart from pushing bookshelves and distracting enemies with flour, most of the tactical options in RE4 are gone. No more risky suplexes. No more abusing hit-reactions. No more statregies beyond 'run in circle shoot in head.'

There's one big elaborate fight towards the end, introducing some much needed verticality and enemy density, but at that point Ethan is so powerful that it feels closer to a victory lap than a challenging gauntlet.

Inventory is so big you can pick up everything you see without worry. Currency is so abundant you can buy nearly whatever you want. Chase sequences are too linear and easy to be scary. 'Regenerators' are susceptible to all ammo types, undermining the risk/reward present in the original.

Whatever complexity RE4 had going for it was stamped out in favor of hokey setpiece-fights that are too linear and predictable to arouse any feelings.

But it's not all bad! The snowy village and its surrounding dungeons are absolutely gorgeous, providing what might be my favorite setting in the series, even if it's not very original.

Booby lady and Hammer daddy are cool as hell, with the supporting cast being weird and compelling in their own ways!

And hell, some of the emotional moments were strangely potent, especially in a series known for B-movie cheese.

If 'Dommytrescu's Daunting Donkaroos' (Diggeri-daddy's Despicable Date?) leaned into its vibes and storytelling instead of being a half-assed action game, this might've been a unique entry in the series that stands on its own 2 merits! Right now, it's just a bland mess that makes me want to replay 4 instead.

i've played enough games in my life that something that's merely there to pass the time doesn't really interest me anymore, when i play a game i want it to really grab me with something, be it unique and engaging mechanics or interesting storytelling, just something that'll stick out my memory and make me go 'yeah!! that thing!!'

another thing i really value in a game is replay value, i generally enjoy diving deep into the games i'm interested in so that of course often leads to me wanted to do multiple full playthroughs, so i appreciate games that create adventures that retain their appeal in some form not just on the first time, but the sixth

so when i play a game like resident evil village where i spend the first ten minutes holding forward to put a baby to sleep, or holding forward to like walk through a load of snow before anything actually happens i'm not just bored, i'm thinking, 'oh, i will have to do this every time' and the game has moments like this so frequently and is so disgustingly average otherwise that i could only stomach the one playthrough, and with that, a large part of its staying power in my memory is eviscerated

the game's structure is similar to 7's, in that you meet a group of koopalings who all go off to their individual castles and you go to each one of them and kill them, this time to collect 1 out of 4 thingies to get you to the endgame, and also similarly to 7 they are by the numbers facsimiles of resident evil levels where you collect items and kind of solve puzzles and piece together the whole map and blah blah blah it's fine, it's serviceable, but not once was there anything that like wowed me or made me feel much or anything really, i'd like to be able to critique them further but i honestly don't remember that much about these areas aside from their general aesthetic, which i suppose is a step up from 7's one-two punch of 'brown house, grey boat'

there's one setpiece in house beneviento (generally my favourite area) that i found actually rather unsettling, but i knew after finishing it that it would never scare me again, there's hardly a gameplay element to it and it would be reduced to a glorified cutscene on a hypothetical second playthrough unfortunately

the dlc campaign, shadows of rose which i also played, has a different setpiece at this point that kind of blew me away honestly, as it wasn't just something creepy and unique within the series (to my knowledge) but also challenging to the point that i actually failed it the first time, and the second time was an incredibly close call, it actually had me panicked because i, the player, had to survive this part, i felt in sync with the character on screen in a way i've rarely felt playing 7 or 8, as i usually feel like an outsider watching the character trying to survive

i don't want to spoil what happens in the segment just in case, but it's something to do with manikins

these games are far too much of a reassuring prescence in what are meant to be horror games, coddling me and making sure i'm impressed and not too uncomfortable, wrestling control away from constantly so something scary can happen to ethan or rose in my stead, someone will jump on me and starting like eating my face or something and it'll be awkward because idk if this is just a cutscene and the game is proceeding as intended, or if i actually fucked up half the time, i'll be mashing one of the face buttons when something like this happens (probably a habit i picked up from resident evil 4) and then the little 'skip cutscene?' thing will appear in the corner and i'm like oh okay i'll just get comfy then

there's also a lot of segments that are railroaded to the point that they may as well be cutscenes, with the fish guy's area being a particularly bad offender, it all just feels so phony, the hand of the designer is so visible at all times i never just get lost in the world i'm meant to be in

i also think that the RE engine's bend towards realism just makes the games look incredibly bland and samey, everything's kinda lit realistically and all the environments are just kinda, normal looking, it feels like there's not really any interesting composition or focal points or any sort of mood to like anything i'm looking at, all this supposedly impressive detail all blurs together and washes over me and i'm really sick of how these games look, especially considering the very first games in the series still impress me with how well they're presented

i'd really like these games as well as devil may cry to move away from this kind of style personally, maybe then we won't have to rely so much on yellow paint to make things you can interact with visible

this review is probably very messy and i apologise if it sounds dismissive, just playing this back to back with 7 was very disappointing as this direction the series is going right now really isn't my cup of tea, it feels like we're resting on the series' laurels a bit, combat that get the job done, exploration that gets the job done, and a lot of showy, flashy setpieces and nods to older games that i like much more

i'm just always left feeling a bit empty after an experience like this, when i think about resident evil village in the future, will any memories of my experience come flooding back? what will get me talking about it and recommending it to my friends? what is so special about it that i'll end up with that itch, that drive to experience it all over again and return to its world for years to come? it's always a bit of a shame when i don't have an answer

This is the stupidest RE installment yet, the Ethan Winters saga is the most homogenically western and cliche-ridden American horror duology literature I've played in years.

VILLAGE writer Anthony Johnston gets lost in his snobbish American lens delivering a portrait of a lost rural village where the most uninspired monsters clumsily assault us. Licantropes riding horses, Vampires, zombies with swords? A guy with magneto abilities that transforms himself into ... A transformer ??? What the Fuck (well at least this one is more creative, even if it causes embarrassment)

Although inspired by RE4, the cliches also devour the approach to action and navigation, with a standard array of weapons and a first-person perspective, the combat does not differ one bit from the rest of survival FPS of the last decade, feeling The regression of the multiple and superior combat options in RE4, and the semi-open level design does not turn out to be as threatening or challenging to navigate as the corridors of RE2 2019, or Union, the city of The Evil Within 2, seems the Little inspiration of VILLAGE turns to the voyeurism of playing hide and seek with Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters (visual delight for otakus) and the grotesque images of Ethan being injured and maimed,.a waste of energy from my point of view. Not a theme park, not a true gender collage.

It is curious that this game makes me appreciate The evil within 2 more since in essence they are the same, a Japanese collage of universal horror with strong American influences, but while VILLAGE takes it in a bland and voyeuristic way, the evil within 2 is more elegant and creative with its context and spatial flow. Oh! and the setting in rural lost towns has to end, the anonymous rural Spain frozen in time with pesetas included from R4 was fun, but .

BTW, if you are going to comment on something like "American through a non-American lens", please save it, the point is not the lens, it is the cliche and voyeurism to which cities and villages are reduced under that vision