the first twewy was a fruit of its age: a game about people trying to connect with each other, understating how bounds are importants and learning to accept themselves. settled in shibuya, the epicenter of japanese youth of it’s époque and pretty much adopting all of its aesthetics too: it’s emo, it’s stylish, it sounds like japanese pop, rap, it has scratches, it isn’t “clean”, it’s urban. even in a nintendo ds game, is a city that felt alive, not only for the care they had with the aesthetics but also because you could scan people’s minds and see their feelings, worries and experiences while living in such a city that shibuya was. it was also a game that could only exist on the nintendo ds: a game about utilizing the ds’ two screens to sustain its message. you played, in combat, controlling both neku and his partner of the week, utilizing your stylus and your d-pad to fight enemies on both “sides” at the same time -- basically you had to take care not only of yourself, but also of your partner, too, and when you were in sync, you could unleash an special power. it was weird, for sure, but it worked well enough to what the game was trying to say. yeah, there’s a mobile and a switch version today -- the last one being, basically, the canon one that leads to this game story -- but the original intent still is the ds one.

now, 14 years later, the context is different: people still have the same problems, but the gravity of this is changed by the internet. your presence online is more valuable than yours offline: is easier to form bounds, since you can find your own niche just searching for some keyword on twitter. is not that people are not afraid of being themselves, is more that they can be anyone today at a level that it’s true identity is messier than their own closets. today, the people you scan don’t care anymore about which CD he should buy at tower records or which clothes she should wear on a date. today they care about which CD is worth enough to be physically buyed and which boy is prettier enough on instagram to be worth a date. neo: the world ends with you is still a game about the importance of connections. not exactly about a protagonist that does not have any, but about a protagonist that must know how important they are. you now play with a whole team instead of a partner and each button of your controller represents both a pin and a player. while it seems strange, it’s actually a show of geniality: it gives the same feeling that you should adjust itself with the most comfortable and ergonomic pins, just like the DS gave, but now in a dualshock 4. you have plenty of options to customize your gameplay and it’s basically “what if control scheme was not a quality of life but instead a central game mechanic”. it is addicting too, you know? testing new pins, seeing they evolve, comparing their animation speed and which one has less friction. it feels really great, principally because you soon unlock a mechanic known as “drop the beat”, where you gain a percentage in order to do a special move. there’s a lot going on in this game’s combat and while some enemies are not That Fun, there are some great bosses at kingdom hearts 2 level of flashy-lasers-gimmicky-thing and overall quality and necessity of mastery of it’s system.

thematically, as i said, is still about the importance of connections, but more about understanding that your friends really does matter for you. instead of the fear of knowing new people, the fear now is of missing those people -- what if your best friend just gets erased? the question about accepting your true identity is still here, too. characters wearing masks to distant themselves from who they really are -- they are in fear of being genuine. what if no one likes it? sending a sticker saying “i love you” on telegram is easier than, actually, saying “i love you” in flesh and blood. you can see how those teenagers are influenced by how the internet treats relationships, in both bad and good ways, and also how the overall communication and relation-between-people have changed since the first the world ends with you released. it also talks about The System and how shit it is, where Higher Classes has shit privileges and can do whatever the shit they want to -- they are on the top, after all. having many teams fighting each other, directly and indirectly, trying to survive a game where it seems impossible to win, is pretty much how capitalism works: sometimes you just have to take care of your own group rather than help everyone in order to survive -- and this sucks. “systematic world, killing me” etc. this system, formed by old rules that doesn’t matter for the ones on top, is also what kills the chance of the youth to express themselves better and be able to have healthier relationships. you can’t just go and blame the one on top, so you just keep quiet. you can’t just go and tell how bad you feel, so you just keep quiet. you can’t just go and tell how much something matters to you, its cringe, so you just keep quiet. in the end, either die quietly or try to change things: if you could turn back time, would you do it right? and even if you don’t, would you mind doing it right, now? going against the system? trying to be yourself a little more? trying to understand others a little more? trying to show love a little more? the world ends with you, so you better change your fate.

is interesting noticing the efforts in doing sonic 1 on a older and less powerful hardware than the mega drive was: it tries to emulate md's sonic physics utlizing a more slippy gameplay than your usual 8 bits game and its more of a "normal platformer" than sonic 1 is. it does not always works, since some platformers are too small for your butter shoes but c'mon! they tried! the vertical level design while sometimes punishing is very interesting and scrap brain is such a no-sonic level that i cannot imagine being made anywhere else! also if you don't think that "bridge" evoques such child-dreamy vibes and awakens the little boy or gal inside of you as soon as you heard it, you must open your heart more! is just . . . too special for me.

this is both the best and the worst videogame of all times, constantly alternating itself into a newton's cradle, always in movement, stopping only when you turn off the game -- either because your controller doesnt have charge and is too late -- but you want to play more -- or because you just can't bare this any longer.

i could elaborate about how i think that tails' levels are way too long or how knuckles' levels can be very bad like pumpkin hill and how dark mode in general is way better. however, this game shows such peaks of geniality and has such enganging story that, even being, uh, modern sonic narrative, is very cool!

you see, i've been watching boku no hero these days and i have a LOT of problems with it. however, at the end of the day, still is a show where i like the characters enough to just watch, even if some arcs are really bad. we can like things that we found a lot of problems. videogames are relantioships and no one is perfect in a relationship. sonic adventure 2 is a problematic one but, in my heart, i still love him.

live and learn!
hanging on the edge of tomorrow,
live and learn!
from the works of yesterday.
live and learn!
if you beg or if you borrow,
live and learn!
you may never find your way.

can't hold on much longer
-- but i will never let go
i know it's a one-way track
-- tell me now how long this'll last
i'm not gonna think this way
-- nor will i count on others
close my eyes and feel it burn
-- now i see what i've gotta do

open your heart, it's gonna be alright!

it is very short and a mess in its structure sometimes but very interesting and can be kind of deep, too! the dialogue is very well-written and it reminded me of hideaki anno's shiki-jitsu -- the conflict between two different personalities dialoguing, without compatibility but still comfort, until they find each other and, even with their quirks (that, by the way, i really love how a character is written with lower case and another normal, showing a lot about their personalities) keeping a relantioship. there's a whole dreamy sequence about understanding yourself and trying to be sane in a world that is ending everyday it goes on (and for the fault of the system, not yours. but you still are trying to change, you know that maybe you can't, but what it costs try to be a little better for you and the others around you?). also i love the keybord typing sounds in the dialogues!! reminds me of the silver case!! it is really cool and its like, 30 minutes of game? and its free!! you should check it out.

(i only did the neutral-hero because 1) wreck farming enemies 2) it is easier 3) i was playing it with very low fps and if i continued, i would implode till i respawn in another universe. so, if you just don't consider my opinion since i've not played the entirety of the game, you can. but you could also just consider the neutral-hero route as the only one and we will be fine!)

people are very mean to this game. i can see why but honestly? is not as bad as they make it seems. first, i have to say that i really don't care about the "edginess" of this game -- to be honest, i really like it. the dark colors, the rock music, the guns! the opening is at square enix level of quality and is basically devil may cry meets sonic adventure meets linkin park. shadow, by itself, is a very curious character: he wants to know his own purpose - what is him? why is he alive? is he even "him"? is he good? is he bad? the one who decides this is the player and while i completely despise the objectives to go to another route, the idea of having multiples endings and three main routes is the way that sonic team found to translate the existential crisis of shadow the hedgehog as well the answer to who he really is.

and despising aspects of this game despite loving the whole concept is pretty much what this game is about, lol. shadow the hedgehog is a beautiful broken vase that instead of fixing it with glue or tape, sonic team just rearranged the pieces and prayed for no one dare to even look at it --- or it will broken. of course is not buggy at sonic 06 level, is very playable, but there's janky in there. it utilizes the butter-shoes gameplay from sonic heroes as the base, so shadow is very slippy. you can pretty much fall in a hole because of this + the weird level geometry. however, it is pretty interesting nonetheless: the guns are a very fun gimmick, since you are shooting while running, cleaning up your way to the end of the level. if you don't have enough ammo you will not use the gun again and it's arguably useless since you have homing attack -- but i disagree, is more of another option: homing attack is good but using guns is more safe and since this game have some weird geometry sometimes, the best way is using them.

the levels itself are very interesting, at least the ones i played in neutral-hero route: while they are very long, they change your fast-running-pace in very creative and funny ways, like the one that you pass through an acid river with a beyblade or the one that you use a mini-mecha to jump over tall platformers and this, together with the combat with guns, turns the experience to be very refreshing and not just "run". shadow can wall-jump, so you can skip some parts with that and while the levels are big i never felt REALLY tired? like, in sonic rush i felt that the levels could be 2x smaller but this one utilizes its size in a good way, imo: you run > have a new gimmick > run > battle with enemies > run > utilizes the gimmick in a more difficult way > run > battle > end of the level. its great because it seems that they knew how the gameplay would be so they just did bigger levels that Repeat Themselves But Harder in order to get players used to it. and since you probably will do another route in future playthroughs, conceptually, you “never” get tired.

it is . . . not really that good, but not really that bad. i liked, probably will not play again and if i do i will try to use some cheat to unlock levels and just appreciate this weird level design. its basically sonic - the kusoge starring shadow the hedgehog. you all like this kind of game, right? why not try it. at least its very funny, shadow just tells eggman to go to hell and he says the F-word in a cutscene. it is worth!

when you think about video games, reducing the form to the most simple level, it will be an experience where you press a button and things happen on screen: it's the so-called interactivity. when you think about buttons, the most important one, the one that is buried deep into your mind, next to some pop music from the 2000s that you listened to a lot as a kid but don’t remember the name and don’t want to (the magic will be gone!) is the “action button”, the button where your character or the game cursor or whatever is the representation of your actions in that world, does the most iconic mechanical thing he can do. you jump with “A” on super mario bros., is also the button which you select things on menu. is the most important button on that game -- not because the others doesn’t matter, you need to walk and run, but because is the button that defines the most important thing about super mario: mario jumps, we like mario because he jumps, we like mario because it feels good seeing him jumping with all his inertia through an alice in wonderland-like level, falling into the head of a apparently-innocent-goomba. perhaps we like mario because he kills? i don’t know, and it doesn’t matter either!

in killer7, your “action button” -- A, on the gamecube -- is the button which you walk and shoot. run and gun. movements and kills. the 2005 goichi suda’s masterpiece is a “on-rails” videogame -- not exactly what you expect from it, since you do move the character on this game, but your exploration is limited to where the game allows you to be, with options to go to corners and rooms popping up on screen and you, of course, selecting where you want to go with the action button. yes, you do utilize the other buttons a lot as well: there’s the R button, where you change the perspective of your character to first person in order to kill enemies, but not before you press the L button to scan them. you choose the place you want to shoot movementing the control stick, that is also used to choose things in the game in general. but still, the most important button is the one that you use to do what an assassin should do: localize yourself in a field and kill enemies. the game is so focused in letting you feel the viscerality of being an assassin and fighting biological terrorist weapons (heaven smiles) that don’t let you go to places you don’t have to, you just need to concentrate, to don’t let your guard down, doing what the game wants you to do. doing what the government wants you to do.

the group “killer7” is a group of assassins (or better, a multi-personality-body-something) leadered by harman smith, ordered to do the “dirty job” to the usa government under the covers, in a age where, until the heaven smiles appeared, world peace has been achieved. of course there is some questions about the validity of the usa, as well as a whole west vs east fight. the thing is: the usa, the country, can explode japan or any other country with, guess what, an “action button”. is a country to have fear of, if you think well, they have nuclear weapons, they have the most powerful marine, they are the most powerful country. and with a simple button they can explode a whole other one. politics are just like videogames: you have a lot of mechanics and tools, but there’s one, acessible with a simple button, that is the most important of all of them and, oh boy, can do a lot of damage.

the “action button” is also the button where you press the trigger of the gun. to what? to kill the enemy. what is the enemy? the past. killer7 is a videogame where the past always haunts you -- the ones you killed appear as “remnant psyches”, giving you advice or thanking you for killing them: they are no longer stuck in the past, they are free to move forward. even in politics, if you don’t kill the past, you will probably turn into a fascist. so what are you waiting for? kill the past, jump over the age, they say. press the “action button” to begin the game. press the “action button” to move. press the “action button” to shoot. press the “action button” to kill. kill the heaven smiles. give me blood! blood thirsty. oh no dan is dead, press the “action button” to revive him - give it life! press the “action button” to kill. kill the past.

finished rn and i can't believe how good this game is. you see: i'm not a big dimps fan, dislike advance 2 and 3 and couldn't even finish the first rush for how bad i thinked it was. this one is just . . . something else. the levels are not "pit fall compilation" anymore and the gimmicks are way better implementated and fun!! doing combos is way more essential here than on rush imo but i believe that the game actually having a tutorial kind of helped it? the boat sections were great, too! playing wave race, assassin's creed 4 - the good part - and elite beat angels surely was fun and good gameplay variety. marine is so cute, the history is pretty much what i would expect from a good kid's show. if i played this years earlier it could be my favorite sonic, ngl. shame that the models on dialogues are awful, but i find them cute on map!!