joeysobat
155 reviews liked by joeysobat
Nothing Squeenix ever does will make me think Zack Fair is good and/or cool. In fact, the more I learn about him the more I start to actively dislike him.
There is a part of me that feels fundamentally opposed to all the "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII" stuff because FF7 on its own is such an exquisitely self-contained thing. Like, they did a great job with it! We don't need every little detail explained and expanded upon! It frequently makes things worse! Sometimes you do still end up with something that is Cool and Fun (Advent Children) but mostly you end up with stuff that is Bad and Sucks (Crisis Core).
I didn't realize just how much this game pushes Zack and Aerith together. I had always assuming the fandom shipping them was based on some crumbs but they are pretty clearly Together in this, huh. I am choosing to ship Zack with Tseng out of pure spite because both Aerith and Cloud deserve better than this dumpster boy.
Genesis constantly dropping in to quote a play is very stupid and funny. Genesis walked so V Devilmaycryfive could run.
weird prank from squeenix to name the trans woman "Cissnei" but okay
There is a part of me that feels fundamentally opposed to all the "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII" stuff because FF7 on its own is such an exquisitely self-contained thing. Like, they did a great job with it! We don't need every little detail explained and expanded upon! It frequently makes things worse! Sometimes you do still end up with something that is Cool and Fun (Advent Children) but mostly you end up with stuff that is Bad and Sucks (Crisis Core).
I didn't realize just how much this game pushes Zack and Aerith together. I had always assuming the fandom shipping them was based on some crumbs but they are pretty clearly Together in this, huh. I am choosing to ship Zack with Tseng out of pure spite because both Aerith and Cloud deserve better than this dumpster boy.
Genesis constantly dropping in to quote a play is very stupid and funny. Genesis walked so V Devilmaycryfive could run.
weird prank from squeenix to name the trans woman "Cissnei" but okay
Resident Evil 4
2011
un videoxogo de matar españoles descerebrados, o que fai RE4 o máis similar a un ETA Simulator que temos de momento.
Unpacking
2021
the ending :'))))))
Drakengard
2003
Knees buckle before the great expanse
The threshold of ruin overtaken
Thoughts locked into hypnagogic trance
The foundations of reality thoroughly shaken
World screams out a final anguished cry
Searing pain on a land forsaken
A corpse whimpers a final lie
Phantasmagorical tears in space time abound
Clouds frozen in the blackened sky
Trembling ceases within the ground
Destruction slows into the still then
Atmosphere pierced by the soundless sound
A people denied their sundering end
Void spaces of slumber again and again
The threshold of ruin overtaken
Thoughts locked into hypnagogic trance
The foundations of reality thoroughly shaken
World screams out a final anguished cry
Searing pain on a land forsaken
A corpse whimpers a final lie
Phantasmagorical tears in space time abound
Clouds frozen in the blackened sky
Trembling ceases within the ground
Destruction slows into the still then
Atmosphere pierced by the soundless sound
A people denied their sundering end
Void spaces of slumber again and again
My House
2023
"House of Leaves inspired Doom mod" is one of the most esoteric concepts you could probably ever cook up, but man, it sure is an esoteric concept aimed specifically at me.
There's a lot to process and unpack, but I don't think the constant comparisons to Yume Nikki are off the mark here: Myhouse is one of those things best experienced rather than actively discussed, even if the (adorably obvious in its adoration for Danielewski's writing) actual "plot" and imagery around the house has a plenty to delve into, analyze and chew on.
On the technical side of things Myhouse is probably the single most impressive feat in the Zdoom engine to date, which is all the more impressive considering the community around that source port (and Doom as a whole) has become more and more defined by getting as much mileage as (im)possible out of a thirty-year-old engine. I don't have as many positive things to say about the actual Doom aspects of it - there's enemy spam at work here that would put Plutonia to shame - but that's not really what you're playing Myhouse for.
There's a lot to process and unpack, but I don't think the constant comparisons to Yume Nikki are off the mark here: Myhouse is one of those things best experienced rather than actively discussed, even if the (adorably obvious in its adoration for Danielewski's writing) actual "plot" and imagery around the house has a plenty to delve into, analyze and chew on.
On the technical side of things Myhouse is probably the single most impressive feat in the Zdoom engine to date, which is all the more impressive considering the community around that source port (and Doom as a whole) has become more and more defined by getting as much mileage as (im)possible out of a thirty-year-old engine. I don't have as many positive things to say about the actual Doom aspects of it - there's enemy spam at work here that would put Plutonia to shame - but that's not really what you're playing Myhouse for.
My House
2023
This review contains spoilers
myhouse.wad is a doom ii mod built for the gzdoom source port that masquerades as if it were simply a recreation of someones real life house (which was all the rage in the early 2000s doom map community). of course, the aforementioned masquerade is just a barrier between the player and the actual game. in actuality, the mod is a psychological horror game utilizing non-euclidian geometry courtesy of well-placed teleports combined with proprietary udmf features that creates impossible geometry and subtly changes scenery as the game progresses
the map editor trickery going on here is nothing short of absolute genius. everything is so seamless and well thought out that, without firsthand mapping knowledge, you would genuinely never know how the game works until watching a video about it. i love that its so easy to run and play on just about any platform but the intricacies here, particularly in terms of sheer game design and layout, run deep. i think that, aside from the obvious psychological toying, my favorite aspect of the entire game is just that its so easy to overlook the depth of the game. one facet i have not read much emphasis on outside my own playthrough is how simple yet genius the idea of putting a generic wad with just the house in the game directory is; i thought that was the entire game. had i somehow downloaded the mod not having watched a video about it, i wouldve finished the first loop-around and quit after the blue gate.
in terms of narrative, the only qualms i had were the incorporation of over-done, over-safe possession tropes; the idea of someones soul inhabiting a computer or a game is tried. now, of course, it makes perfect sense to employ in this narrative, but everything about this game is so unique and presented in a genius way that it feels silly to turn to the journal entries and read about spooky dreams mirroring reality and such.
one thing i immediately thought i would dislike about myhouse.wad was the incorporation of the liminal spaces trope, particularly using viral examples as actual scenery in the game. the backrooms and hotel courtyard are actual playable parts of this game. while i thought it seemed kitschy at first, it really does fit the narrative quite well and only the backrooms feels out of place (which is really fine because you have to cheat to get there anyway)
my last comment is the picture of the author of the map and his late friend is so obviously edited (ai?) it hurts. this isnt serious criticism (look at the set dressing in modern resident evil titles) but its hilarious nonetheless
i am the first person to denounce low effort creepypasta, but really, myhouse.wad is the most refreshing internet horror story in recent memory and i doubt one this interesting will crop up again for the rest of the decade
the map editor trickery going on here is nothing short of absolute genius. everything is so seamless and well thought out that, without firsthand mapping knowledge, you would genuinely never know how the game works until watching a video about it. i love that its so easy to run and play on just about any platform but the intricacies here, particularly in terms of sheer game design and layout, run deep. i think that, aside from the obvious psychological toying, my favorite aspect of the entire game is just that its so easy to overlook the depth of the game. one facet i have not read much emphasis on outside my own playthrough is how simple yet genius the idea of putting a generic wad with just the house in the game directory is; i thought that was the entire game. had i somehow downloaded the mod not having watched a video about it, i wouldve finished the first loop-around and quit after the blue gate.
in terms of narrative, the only qualms i had were the incorporation of over-done, over-safe possession tropes; the idea of someones soul inhabiting a computer or a game is tried. now, of course, it makes perfect sense to employ in this narrative, but everything about this game is so unique and presented in a genius way that it feels silly to turn to the journal entries and read about spooky dreams mirroring reality and such.
one thing i immediately thought i would dislike about myhouse.wad was the incorporation of the liminal spaces trope, particularly using viral examples as actual scenery in the game. the backrooms and hotel courtyard are actual playable parts of this game. while i thought it seemed kitschy at first, it really does fit the narrative quite well and only the backrooms feels out of place (which is really fine because you have to cheat to get there anyway)
my last comment is the picture of the author of the map and his late friend is so obviously edited (ai?) it hurts. this isnt serious criticism (look at the set dressing in modern resident evil titles) but its hilarious nonetheless
i am the first person to denounce low effort creepypasta, but really, myhouse.wad is the most refreshing internet horror story in recent memory and i doubt one this interesting will crop up again for the rest of the decade
Doom Eternal
2020
You'll be into this if you ever looked at a DOOM game and thought it was missing trash mobs.
What a fucking CRUSHING disappointment.
What a fucking CRUSHING disappointment.
Final Fantasy XVI
2023
I considered strongly putting together a long-form critique of this game, but the most damning statement I could possibly make about Final Fantasy XVI is that I truly don't think it's worth it. The ways in which I think this game is bad are not unique or interesting: it is bad in the same way the vast majority of these prestige Sony single-player exclusives are. Its failures are common, predictable, and depressingly endemic. It is bad because it hates women, it is bad because it treats it's subject matter with an aggressive lack of care or interest, it is bad because it's imagination is as narrow and constrained as it's level design. But more than anything else, it is bad because it only wants to be Good.
Oxymoronic a statement as it might appear, this is core to the game's failings to me. People who make games generally want to make good games, of course, but paired with that there is an intent, an interest, an idea that seeks to be communicated, that the eloquence with which it professes its aesthetic, thematic, or mechanical goals will produce the quality it seeks. Final Fantasy XVI may have such goals, but they are supplicant to its desire to be liked, and so, rather than plant a flag of its own, it stitches together one from fabric pillaged from the most immediate eikons of popularity and quality - A Song of Ice and Fire, God of War, Demon Slayer, Devil May Cry - desperately begging to be liked by cloaking itself in what many people already do, needing to be loved in the way those things are, without any of the work or vision of its influences, and without any charisma of its own. Much like the patch and DLC content for Final Fantasy XV, it's a reactionary and cloying work that contorts itself into a shape it thinks people will love, rather than finding a unique self to be.
From the aggressively self-serious tone that embraces wholeheartedly the aesthetics of Prestige Fantasy Television with all its fucks and shits and incest and Grim Darkness to let you know that This Isn't Your Daddy's Final Fantasy, without actually being anywhere near as genuinely Dark, sad, or depressing as something like XV, from combat that borrows the surface-level signifiers of Devil May Cry combat - stingers, devil bringers, enemy step - but without any actual opposition or reaction of that series' diverse and reactive enemy set and thoughtful level design, or the way there's a episode of television-worth of lectures from a character explaining troop movements and map markers that genuinely do not matter in any way in order to make you feel like you're experiencing a well thought-out and materially concerned political Serious Fantasy, Final Fantasy XVI is pure wafer-thin illusion; all the surface from it's myriad influences but none of the depth or nuance, a greatest hits album from a band with no voice to call their own, an algorithmically generated playlist of hits that tunelessly resound with nothing. It looks like Devil May Cry, but it isn't - Devil May Cry would ask more of you than dodging one attack at a time while you perform a particularly flashy MMO rotation. It looks like A Song of Ice and Fire, but it isn't - without Martin's careful historical eye and materialist concerns, the illusion that this comes even within striking distance of that flawed work shatters when you think about the setting for more than a moment.
In fairness, Final Fantasy XVI does bring more than just the surface level into its world: it also brings with it the nastiest and ugliest parts of those works into this one, replicated wholeheartedly as Aesthetic, bereft of whatever semblance of texture and critique may have once been there. Benedikta Harman might be the most disgustingly treated woman in a recent work of fiction, the seemingly uniform AAA Game misogyny of evil mothers and heroic, redeemable fathers is alive and well, 16's version of this now agonizingly tired cliche going farther even than games I've railed against for it in the past, which all culminates in a moment where three men tell the female lead to stay home while they go and fight (despite one of those men being a proven liability to himself and others when doing the same thing he is about to go and do again, while she is not), she immediately acquiesces, and dutifully remains in the proverbial kitchen. Something that thinks so little of women is self-evidently incapable of meaningfully tackling any real-world issue, something Final Fantasy XVI goes on to decisively prove, with its story of systemic evils defeated not with systemic criticism, but with Great, Powerful Men, a particularly tiresome kind of rugged bootstrap individualism that seeks to reduce real-world evils to shonen enemies for the Special Man with Special Powers to defeat on his lonesome. It's an attempt to discuss oppression and racism that would embarrass even the other shonen media it is clearly closer in spirit to than the dark fantasy political epic it wears the skin of. In a world where the power fantasy of the shonen superhero is sacrosanct over all other concerns, it leads to a conclusion as absurd and fundamentally unimaginative as shonen jump's weakest scripts: the only thing that can stop a Bad Guy with an Eikon is a Good Guy with an Eikon.
In borrowing the aesthetics of the dark fantasy - and Matsuno games - it seeks to emulate, but without the nuance, FF16 becomes a game where the perspective of the enslaved is almost completely absent (Clive's period as a slave might as well not have occurred for all it impacts his character), and the power of nobility is Good when it is wielded by Good Hands like Lord Rosfield, a slave owner who, despite owning the clearly abused character who serves as our introduction to the bearers, is eulogized completely uncritically by the script, until a final side quest has a character claim that he was planning to free the slaves all along...alongside a letter where Lord Rosfield discusses his desire to "put down the savages". I've never seen attempted slave owner apologia that didn't reveal its virulent underlying racism, and this is no exception. In fact, any time the game attempts to put on a facade of being about something other than The Shonen Hero battling other Kamen Riders for dominance, it crumbles nigh-immediately; when Final Fantasy 16 makes its overtures towards the Power of Friendship, it rings utterly false and hollow: Clive's friends are not his power. His power is his power.
The only part of the game that truly spoke to me was the widely-derided side-quests, which offer a peek into a more compelling story: the story of a man doing the work to build and maintain a community, contributing to both the material and emotional needs of a commune that attempts to exist outside the violence of society. As tedious as these sidequests are - and as agonizing as their pacing so often is - it's the only part of this game where it felt like I was engaging with an idea. But ultimately, even this is annihilated by the game's bootstrap nonsense - that being that the hideaway is funded and maintained by the wealthy and influential across the world, the direct beneficiaries and embodiments of the status quo funding what their involvement reveals to be an utterly illusionary attempt to escape it, rendering what could be an effective exploration of what building a new idea of a community practically looks like into something that could be good neighbors with Galt's Gulch.
In a series that is routinely deeply rewarding for me to consider, FF16 stands as perhaps its most shallow, underwritten, and vacuous entry in decades. All games are ultimately illusions, of course: we're all just moving data around spreadsheets, at the end of the day. But - as is the modern AAA mode de jour - 16 is the result of the careful subtraction of texture from the experience of a game, the removal of any potential frictions and frustrations, but further even than that, it is the removal of personality, of difference, it is the attempt to make make the smoothest, most likable affect possible to the widest number of people possible. And, just like with its AAA brethren, it has almost nothing to offer me. It is the affect of Devil May Cry without its texture, the affect of Game of Thrones without even its nuance, and the affect of Final Fantasy without its soul.
Final Fantasy XVI is ultimately a success. It sought out to be Good, in the way a PS5 game like this is Good, and succeeded. And in so doing, it closed off any possibility that it would ever reach me.
It doesn’t really surprise me that each positive sentiment I have seen on Final Fantasy XVI is followed by an exclamation of derision over the series’ recent past. Whether the point of betrayal and failure was in XV, or with XIII, or even as far back as VIII, the rhetorical move is well and truly that Final Fantasy has been Bad, and with XVI, it is good again. Unfortunately, as someone who thought Final Fantasy has Been Good, consistently, throughout essentially the entire span of it's existence, I find myself on the other side of this one.
Final Fantasy XV convinced me that I could still love video games when I thought, for a moment, that I might not. That it was still possible to make games on this scale that were idiosyncratic, personal, and deeply human, even in the awful place the video game industry is in.
Final Fantasy XVI convinced me that it isn't.
Oxymoronic a statement as it might appear, this is core to the game's failings to me. People who make games generally want to make good games, of course, but paired with that there is an intent, an interest, an idea that seeks to be communicated, that the eloquence with which it professes its aesthetic, thematic, or mechanical goals will produce the quality it seeks. Final Fantasy XVI may have such goals, but they are supplicant to its desire to be liked, and so, rather than plant a flag of its own, it stitches together one from fabric pillaged from the most immediate eikons of popularity and quality - A Song of Ice and Fire, God of War, Demon Slayer, Devil May Cry - desperately begging to be liked by cloaking itself in what many people already do, needing to be loved in the way those things are, without any of the work or vision of its influences, and without any charisma of its own. Much like the patch and DLC content for Final Fantasy XV, it's a reactionary and cloying work that contorts itself into a shape it thinks people will love, rather than finding a unique self to be.
From the aggressively self-serious tone that embraces wholeheartedly the aesthetics of Prestige Fantasy Television with all its fucks and shits and incest and Grim Darkness to let you know that This Isn't Your Daddy's Final Fantasy, without actually being anywhere near as genuinely Dark, sad, or depressing as something like XV, from combat that borrows the surface-level signifiers of Devil May Cry combat - stingers, devil bringers, enemy step - but without any actual opposition or reaction of that series' diverse and reactive enemy set and thoughtful level design, or the way there's a episode of television-worth of lectures from a character explaining troop movements and map markers that genuinely do not matter in any way in order to make you feel like you're experiencing a well thought-out and materially concerned political Serious Fantasy, Final Fantasy XVI is pure wafer-thin illusion; all the surface from it's myriad influences but none of the depth or nuance, a greatest hits album from a band with no voice to call their own, an algorithmically generated playlist of hits that tunelessly resound with nothing. It looks like Devil May Cry, but it isn't - Devil May Cry would ask more of you than dodging one attack at a time while you perform a particularly flashy MMO rotation. It looks like A Song of Ice and Fire, but it isn't - without Martin's careful historical eye and materialist concerns, the illusion that this comes even within striking distance of that flawed work shatters when you think about the setting for more than a moment.
In fairness, Final Fantasy XVI does bring more than just the surface level into its world: it also brings with it the nastiest and ugliest parts of those works into this one, replicated wholeheartedly as Aesthetic, bereft of whatever semblance of texture and critique may have once been there. Benedikta Harman might be the most disgustingly treated woman in a recent work of fiction, the seemingly uniform AAA Game misogyny of evil mothers and heroic, redeemable fathers is alive and well, 16's version of this now agonizingly tired cliche going farther even than games I've railed against for it in the past, which all culminates in a moment where three men tell the female lead to stay home while they go and fight (despite one of those men being a proven liability to himself and others when doing the same thing he is about to go and do again, while she is not), she immediately acquiesces, and dutifully remains in the proverbial kitchen. Something that thinks so little of women is self-evidently incapable of meaningfully tackling any real-world issue, something Final Fantasy XVI goes on to decisively prove, with its story of systemic evils defeated not with systemic criticism, but with Great, Powerful Men, a particularly tiresome kind of rugged bootstrap individualism that seeks to reduce real-world evils to shonen enemies for the Special Man with Special Powers to defeat on his lonesome. It's an attempt to discuss oppression and racism that would embarrass even the other shonen media it is clearly closer in spirit to than the dark fantasy political epic it wears the skin of. In a world where the power fantasy of the shonen superhero is sacrosanct over all other concerns, it leads to a conclusion as absurd and fundamentally unimaginative as shonen jump's weakest scripts: the only thing that can stop a Bad Guy with an Eikon is a Good Guy with an Eikon.
In borrowing the aesthetics of the dark fantasy - and Matsuno games - it seeks to emulate, but without the nuance, FF16 becomes a game where the perspective of the enslaved is almost completely absent (Clive's period as a slave might as well not have occurred for all it impacts his character), and the power of nobility is Good when it is wielded by Good Hands like Lord Rosfield, a slave owner who, despite owning the clearly abused character who serves as our introduction to the bearers, is eulogized completely uncritically by the script, until a final side quest has a character claim that he was planning to free the slaves all along...alongside a letter where Lord Rosfield discusses his desire to "put down the savages". I've never seen attempted slave owner apologia that didn't reveal its virulent underlying racism, and this is no exception. In fact, any time the game attempts to put on a facade of being about something other than The Shonen Hero battling other Kamen Riders for dominance, it crumbles nigh-immediately; when Final Fantasy 16 makes its overtures towards the Power of Friendship, it rings utterly false and hollow: Clive's friends are not his power. His power is his power.
The only part of the game that truly spoke to me was the widely-derided side-quests, which offer a peek into a more compelling story: the story of a man doing the work to build and maintain a community, contributing to both the material and emotional needs of a commune that attempts to exist outside the violence of society. As tedious as these sidequests are - and as agonizing as their pacing so often is - it's the only part of this game where it felt like I was engaging with an idea. But ultimately, even this is annihilated by the game's bootstrap nonsense - that being that the hideaway is funded and maintained by the wealthy and influential across the world, the direct beneficiaries and embodiments of the status quo funding what their involvement reveals to be an utterly illusionary attempt to escape it, rendering what could be an effective exploration of what building a new idea of a community practically looks like into something that could be good neighbors with Galt's Gulch.
In a series that is routinely deeply rewarding for me to consider, FF16 stands as perhaps its most shallow, underwritten, and vacuous entry in decades. All games are ultimately illusions, of course: we're all just moving data around spreadsheets, at the end of the day. But - as is the modern AAA mode de jour - 16 is the result of the careful subtraction of texture from the experience of a game, the removal of any potential frictions and frustrations, but further even than that, it is the removal of personality, of difference, it is the attempt to make make the smoothest, most likable affect possible to the widest number of people possible. And, just like with its AAA brethren, it has almost nothing to offer me. It is the affect of Devil May Cry without its texture, the affect of Game of Thrones without even its nuance, and the affect of Final Fantasy without its soul.
Final Fantasy XVI is ultimately a success. It sought out to be Good, in the way a PS5 game like this is Good, and succeeded. And in so doing, it closed off any possibility that it would ever reach me.
It doesn’t really surprise me that each positive sentiment I have seen on Final Fantasy XVI is followed by an exclamation of derision over the series’ recent past. Whether the point of betrayal and failure was in XV, or with XIII, or even as far back as VIII, the rhetorical move is well and truly that Final Fantasy has been Bad, and with XVI, it is good again. Unfortunately, as someone who thought Final Fantasy has Been Good, consistently, throughout essentially the entire span of it's existence, I find myself on the other side of this one.
Final Fantasy XV convinced me that I could still love video games when I thought, for a moment, that I might not. That it was still possible to make games on this scale that were idiosyncratic, personal, and deeply human, even in the awful place the video game industry is in.
Final Fantasy XVI convinced me that it isn't.
Street Fighter 6
2023
probably my favourite system mechanics in any fighting game, battle hub perfectly encapsulates the arcade setting as cordial yet caustic, netcode is excellent, this is the best starting roster any of these games has ever had, world tour gets dry after a little bit but finally manages to capture these characters essences in a personable and human way which has been a rarity in SF up to this point, endless quality of life features officially make this the new standard to aspire to for all pending releases, dhalsim sounds like he’s telling opponents to kill themselves whenever i land drive impact. five stars
Doom
2016
Bad platforming and level design ruining an otherwise great shooter
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