i'm always thinking about how space george w bush embeds a fox news journalist with your crew to make uplifting propaganda about the end of the known universe and this isn't played for comedy even a little bit

in fact there's a lot to be said about how this whole series belongs to the genre of post-9/11 entertainment that very sincerely treats the space us military as an overall morally positive and well-intentioned institution and that's just the funniest bit. but mostly it's just a boring nothing cover shooter

people like to throw around the word "pretentious" when talking about things that they don't like, but i don't think that they Actually know what it means. when we, as people, describe something as pretentious, we mean that it is attempting to peacock as though it is more intelligent or significant than it actually is.

well, buddy, look no further than this game for that definition. a game whose gameplay is worse in nearly every way than its predecessors, one that makes grand gesticulations towards the ideas of "racism" and "american exceptionalism" only to fall flat on its face every step of the way, and possessive of a "twist" so meaningless in the context of the plot that acts merely as a smokescreen to quickly make its escape as it hopes players will walk away unable to remember anything else about the game.

if there were a poll online for "The Most Pretentious Game of All Time", i would bet money on the collective reddit-esque hive mind of "gamers" choosing something like Braid. well Bioshock Infinite, you've got my vote, friendo!

I really love the beautiful animation, the pleasantly sweet soundtrack, and the end of life storytelling that’s genuinely moving more often than not while showing a diverse range of ways people handle their end. The slow reveal of exactly what’s being depicted is great, too.

What’s not great (for me at least) is the specific type of repetitive and compulsive crafting busywork that makes up most of the gameplay. I generally find this sort of cozy chore doing to be loaded with needless friction and time-wasting, and that’s pretty much the case here. It’s not helped by how overly long the story is, though I’m not sure which characters I’d want to remove or even cut down my time with.