23 reviews liked by heavenly_persona


This review contains spoilers

you know what? fuck it. spec ops: the line is worth five stars and then some. for a long time i sat on the fence about it, and had it collecting dust, uncommentated, at 4.5 stars - no more.

the fact this game was shuffled out-of-sight by 2k games, that an attempt is being made to erase its existence from the public under dubious pretenses at worst, or that it's been dropped in a double-whammy of corporate greed and convenient timing at best, shows us that this game is just as sorely needed now as it was 12 years ago.

many like to do a little joking about its "look what i made you do"-narrative, but those people are unaware that this precise portrayal of leadership at the hands of a vague authority is part of the point. this is taking down not merely the modern military shooter alone, but the entirety of the military industrial complex and its implications. the game design here is a direct analogue of the military chain of command, and the way it attempts to dissuade individuals and society as a whole from seeking blame in the hands of the actor.

on february 25th 2024, united states airforce member aaron bushnell self-immolated rather than continuing to maintain part in the u.s. military's support of yet another genocide - a genocide funded and fueled by this global force for despicable violence, a genocide committed, in part, with white phosphorous used against a civilian population.

the timing is just a bit TOO on-the-nose. we are supposed to forget that the same thing fuels this propaganda as fuels the systematic dehumanisation and killing of several peoples in asia and africa. spec ops, unlike every single other "modern military shooter", didnt flinch, and didnt lie. and for that, it had to disappear.

this is the only game that had the guts to give the player a gun, and let them shoot at a peaceful civilian population - then stand there with the implications of their actions. no fade-out. no game over. only you and the simulacrum of a dead body.

from the river to the sea, palestine will be free.

Level-up girl is my dream job

This review contains spoilers

(Content warning for unreality.)

The Otherworld bleeds into the real. The industrial, dull and muted tones of our ethereal counterpart appear all over reality. Heather Mason is subjected to the nightmare both in and outside of it. There is barely any distinction.

Likewise, the spaces of the Otherworld are far more visceral this time around to make up for it. Pulsating, bloody walls and the corpses of humans with their babies in clear view. It's an onslaught on her mind, with no escape from it. Unlike James and Harry, Heather has no overworld to escape to for a bit - there is scarcely a town of Silent Hill for her to clear her head in. It's a never-ending nightmare.

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At the time of me writing this, I am about to be placed into a mental residency against my will for a few weeks. While I'm there, I will be almost completely isolated from my support network and unable to write. In a lot of ways, I feel like I'm about to face a never-ending nightmare with very little help.

I don't know what they're going to do to me there. But the uniform walls and ambience of the place all feel familiar. Like I've been trapped there before. I feel as if I'm entering another reality that I've visited in a dream, shrouded in darkness.

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It is an extremely compelling choice to kill off Harry Mason in this entry. When Heather comes home from her long way home, which comprises the first half of the game, she finds his corpse sitting in his armchair. It's something I didn't expect, I thought Harry was just going to be absent throughout the game.

Harry's death marks when Heather starts to truly see the cult as a threat: something that she was earlier able to relegate as his responsibility. Now, it's on her shoulders to handle.

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I used to look up to my father.

I used to aspire to be like him, to want to make him proud of me.

Now I don't know what to think of him.

The proverbial death of my father's image in my mind some years ago came with it my political evolution. As I started to see the systems we live for what they really are through reading more theorists, I came to see what my father was. A slave to capital who worshiped those systems, and didn't like me pointing that out. I was thrust into the true darkness of our world without support and it broke me.

He is still superficially kind to me. He claims to have my best interests in mind.

But then he sends me away against my will. He tells me to not think of it this way, but I know that the version of my father that I looked up to so much back then never existed. He was always just looking out for the interest of capital, and I need to be "fixed" and become more useful to it.

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When Heather comes to the end of her journey, after defeating the reborn god like her father did seventeen years ago, she is born anew - but retains who she was before in some respect.

She's gained a greater sense of who she is, regained her memories of her previous life as Alessa.

But she's still the same Heather we've followed throughout. She even keeps her hair the same.

Was the journey through Silent Hill worth it to gain a greater understanding of herself?

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At the end of the day, I don't know what's going to happen to me when I'm away. I played Silent Hill 3 with my boyfriend as one of our last calls together and just... felt it. Silent Hill has a way of doing that to you.

However, I think that if Heather could make it through hell and come out better, maybe I could too.

That doesn't make me any less terrified, but it does make it a little easier.

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In my restless dreams,
I see that site,
Backloggd.
I promise I'll return there someday.
Wait for me...

so so so glad I waited so long to play this one. any earlier and I was def not emotionally mature/stable enough to play something this meditative and slow and dark as this.

u can def tell this was made by a musician, stuff like how tiles make up the score for that worlds music is rlly rlly neat and I love it. found myself clanging the bell on the bicycle in tune w the music a lot. also very shocking how many of the songs I knew just through cultural osmosis, it makes smth as dark as this feel more comforting than it actually is and less otherworldly than it tries to be but in like a positive way. there’s an interview w one of the kinsella brothers where he mentions not even rlly being into emo/90s math rock/other stuff like capn jazz and yet ended up being a trendsetter for a whole sub genre of emo. it’s how I feel about this. obv the earthbound influence is front and center and also kind of lulls you into this sense of tranquility bc it’s smth familiar. like I never played earthbound for myself, it’s just not a kind of game that I can devote time to, but I did watch my boyfriend play the entirety of it on our modded wii when we originally moved in together and so seeing stuff like the mall looking area where u get the flute or the nes styled worlds or even the designs of the neon ghosts reminds me of half-watching him play that. it’s cute I love it. but I think more than anything this is def inspired by silent hill and other survival horror of its era.

kinda sucks that any kind of art that’s like vague or mysterious or doesn’t spell itself out for u now needs a BLANK EXPLAINED article or video for everyone that felt somewhat confused by the newest a24 horror film. idk no shame if smth leaves u feeling confused, I just watched blade runner 2049 w my bf this week and I literally kept asking him to explain it to me bc I don’t get get it. and I don’t understand all the imagery here and that’s okay, I don’t need to. the search for answers w smth like this is kinda idk dumb and redundant. this says everything it means to say, it can mean anything u want it to bc it’s so open ended and cryptic and vague and no one would technically be wrong bc the creator of the game has never said what it’s actually about, and even if they did and even if this meant smth super specific and personal to them like it most likely did doesn’t mean it can’t mean smth else entirely to u.

v relaxing, have played this for an hour or two each night after coming home from work and it felt good like it felt rewarding and also comforting.

reminds me of just in a general way of the feeling of being vulnerable and exposed, not many games, not even many horror games or other pieces of media make me feel so strongly like this. it reminds me of watching the 2001 horror movie pulse w some guy I barely knew in my basement as a teenager or when me and my boyfriend were taking a bus w a transfer on it back from a festival late at night and this very old very big drunk guy kept following us around and harassing/hitting on me. obv nothing happened in either situation but it’s like the feeling that it might and how that kind of sticks w u for a while after. scary stuff imo

Yume Nikki is one of those games I often point to in conversation with fellow designers as a shining example of how well a video game can capture a specific person's experience. These types of RPG Maker horror games usually get a bad rap; they are often cheap products made by inexperienced designers who believe that mashing teenage girl protagonists with horrific set pieces will instantly make a work profound. Yume Nikki does not deserve to be lumped in with the contemporaries. Kikiyama, the developer, managed to extract clever narrative meaning within the bounds of RPG Maker's limited toolset in a way that left me genuinely floored. This game is best approached completely blind, so I will refrain from saying any details, but it has transformed the way I approach experiential design even if the games I want to make look nothing like this.

When you riff off of something in design philosophies according to gameplay and themes it's really important that one actually hold true to that foundation and/or offer something actually unique. Salt & Sanctuary understood 2d spacing and level design when it came to a slow methodical action platformer. Blasphemous seems intent on knowing nothing at all.

What's the point of having a disgustingly powerful parry and dodge when the enemies have ridiculously slow attacks and are placed in such easy not very interesting locations? What even is enemy placement here? What's the point of making platforming punishing for failure when the platforming isn't interesting? Why copy the structure of ringing the bells at all?

I had to ask myself these questions while I played a lot as I searched for an answer on why I was playing this game at all other than the indie buzz that barely caught my ear. (4.5/10)

my roommate walked in on the end of the final fight of pacifist to my gf crying during the hug scene and me consoling her because the goat was sad and was so lost (he knows nothing abt the game)

This review contains spoilers

The way we interact with narrative is part of a narrative. It's why so many reviews go into their experiences with a game. I will always love Final Fantasy VI because of it being hugely formative to my understanding of storytelling. Video games have a special method of tapping into this interactivity. They directly speak to the player and make them feel empowered in a narrative unlike any other medium with the amount of direct control you exert over them.

Undertale manages this flawlessly. The metatext intersects with the text in a beautiful way, the game recontextualizing the nature of video games themselves. When Flowey tells you that to 100% a game is to exhaust it of its meaning, of it being a world you could inhabit (not in those exact words, mind you, that would be a little too blunt for my liking) and draw upon his experiences a player-like entity, it made me think about the way I played video games. The way I interacted with the art form on the whole. Had I been making games worse for myself by 100%ing them? Had I been stripping them of their meaning by hollowing them out?

Doki Doki Literature Club! doesn't bother with messaging. Doki Doki Literature Club! consists of a game that interacts with metatext but only in its aesthetics, it uses it to say nothing and do nothing. When you reach the big twist of the game about halfway through, that it was actually self-aware akin to a creepypasta game, the game doesn't ever move on from that. It wears the guise of making commentary on visual novels, but never says anything specific. What am I supposed to take away from this experience?

What even is Doki Doki Literature Club! about? Who is it about? It's often cited as a satire of visual novels, but satire has to have direction behind it. It has to have meaning. This is just a game that aims for nothing. It uses the nature of metatextuality and shock horror in order to pretend it's saying something profound but it has no claims to make. It's wearing the husk of a better game.

Some people may be surprised to see that I dislike this game so much because I relate so heavily to Yuri's struggles with borderline personality disorder prior to the obnoxious creepypasta-ification. I do like Yuri and her portrayal.

I just wish she was in a game that stood for something.

The use of repetition and laborious exploration is fascinating. Not enough games are bold enough to waste your time with office drudgery, and even fewer manage to pay off those lost hours with a rewarding end. Challenging to recommend a game that requires 3-5 straight hours to play, but worth the investment if you can find time and enjoy media about the absurdist nightmare of an office building.

I have played this game like 8 times now, somehow it has taken hold of me like an illness that I will not heal from. Its secrets, its closure that it will not grant me is crushing as well as exhilarating. I am writing this review with the hope that others will share what information they have and we may compare notes here. Please, I will be institutionalized soon otherwise. Thank you

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