It's fucking insane, but it's the *way* it wears its insanity that makes it so ravenously compelling to me. It has a voice, it has something to say, it wants you to take it seriously! - but its voice is either yelling over some of the most absurd events or setpieces you'll ever see, or yelling its point directly *at* you in a way that sometimes manages to be even more unbelievable than the former (they did NOT just call a guy TREVOR PEARLHARBOR?????). Whisk in a healthy serving of spectacle that doesn't mean anything and is just thrown in for the hell of it, and you’re sent on a wild ride where you spend as much time finding meaning in absurdity as you spend *trying* to read into meaningless absurdity.

It's that razor's-edge balance of sincerity and stupidity that defines this game, and it extends further than the plot itself - something I find incredibly interesting is its relationship with gore and death. You'll spend most of your time blasting off the limbs of nondescript humanoid monsters, absorbing streams of blood that billow out, and giving it to the lovely man in the TV to turn into experience points. Yet despite its revelry in cartoon bloodshed it’s still able to pull back and use gore more disquietingly when it wants to - and manages to do so successfully, over and over again - even when the gore itself still borders on the absurd.

Its lace of intent and earnestness is what makes its batshit absurdity really stick. You desperately want to carry on and see what the hell it’s gonna throw at you next, but in a way where it gets you genuinely invested in it. Back that with its strange-yet-satisfying gameplay and a killer aesthetic and presentation, and there’s no way it won’t leave a hell of an impression.