joeysobat
155 Reviews liked by joeysobat
cute and funny but it's as much of a democratic socialism simulator as vaush isn't racist
Elden Ring
2022
Y yo que pensaba que tras Dark Souls 3 las cosas sólo podían ir a mejor. La formula souls ya es un hecho, si es como empezó o como fue planeada es cosa del pasado, la gente con los años se armó una visión. Así como parece que en un punto todos nos creímos la mentira de que Doom es frenético, gore y badass, todos nos creímos que Dark Souls es morir, trollear, peleas 1 vs 1 contra jefes épicos de dos o tres fases.
Elden Ring sigue esa fantasía que se volvió realidad con Bloodborne. Por muy libre que te deje el mundo, y por tantas catacumbas o zonas enteras secretas que haya, el juego siempre tiene el mismo fin, jefe gigante, rodar, atacar. Cambia un poco el moveset, un par de delays aquí y allá, pero siempre lo mismo. Escenarios vacíos, amplios, sólo el jefe y vos (Hay alguna variación, un enemigo normal con más vida de lo normal o pelearle a dos jefes previos a la vez). Pero el combate no da para más, tras Sekiro esperaba como mínimo una aproximación más original, pero no nos engañemos, esto pide la gente.
Es entendible lo decepcionante que puede ser pelearle 5 veces al mismo jefe, al árbol ese con martillo o al flaco con una túnica de piel humana. Pero más nefasto es que te teletransporten a arenas aisladas del mapa para pelear con los jefes de verdad importantes. Lo de los jefes secundarios repetidos se podría decir que es una metáfora de lo que se convirtieron los combates, todos iguales. Lo de los principales no tiene perdón, son entidades aisladas de todo, viviendo en arenas gigantes esperando a que te teletransportes y los revientes a palos.
El juego se vendió como el "más accesible que nunca" "el juego para entrar en la saga", ahora se pueden invocar enemigos para que te ayuden, sortear zonas enteras con parkour o la clásica magia a distancia de siempre. Pero buena suerte contra este enemigo que se cura al atacarte.
Uso invocaciones entonces: se cura al atacarlas
Voy a distancia: hace gap closers y no te deja castear hechizos
Voy full tanque: se cura golpeando tu escudo también
solución? suena la campanita. Rodar y atacar.
Uno de los jefes finales es un hombre musculoso que te empieza a hacer movimientos de lucha libre mientras grita lo genial que es. ¿Por qué no puedo tener esa pelea en un juego de acción de verdad? si todos lo quieren, From lo quiere, la gente lo quiere, no es necesario seguir anclados a una formula la cual la acción nunca fue su principal fuerte. Ya ni hablo de que sea al revés, y en vez que transformarse vuelvan a sus raíces, porque soñar se queda corto.
Se me ocurrian un montón de cosas que decir del Elden Ring mientras lo jugaba, pero en un punto pensé en que ni valía la pena, incluso que si escribía algo iba a ser porque era el juego de moda y quiero aportar a la charla más que nada. No me siento muy suelto hablando del juego y me da bronca que no me salga escribir así tampoco de juegos que últimamente jugué y me gustaron mucho.
Pero bueno, no se como encajarlas pero ahí van las cosas que pese a todo me gustaron de Elden Ring:
Pelear contra Miriam, contra mi doppelganger y contra Radhan. Llegar a la zona de Caelid y ver la maquinaria temática del área. La bifurcación de caminos en Liurna y las langostas gigantes de su valle. Parches. Entrar en la torre divina de Caelid. Invertir la torre divina de Liurna. Encontrar como volver a la mini zona del inicio del juego. Desinstalarlo tras jugar 90 horas en una semana y pelearle al peor boss final de cualquier souls, je.
Elden Ring sigue esa fantasía que se volvió realidad con Bloodborne. Por muy libre que te deje el mundo, y por tantas catacumbas o zonas enteras secretas que haya, el juego siempre tiene el mismo fin, jefe gigante, rodar, atacar. Cambia un poco el moveset, un par de delays aquí y allá, pero siempre lo mismo. Escenarios vacíos, amplios, sólo el jefe y vos (Hay alguna variación, un enemigo normal con más vida de lo normal o pelearle a dos jefes previos a la vez). Pero el combate no da para más, tras Sekiro esperaba como mínimo una aproximación más original, pero no nos engañemos, esto pide la gente.
Es entendible lo decepcionante que puede ser pelearle 5 veces al mismo jefe, al árbol ese con martillo o al flaco con una túnica de piel humana. Pero más nefasto es que te teletransporten a arenas aisladas del mapa para pelear con los jefes de verdad importantes. Lo de los jefes secundarios repetidos se podría decir que es una metáfora de lo que se convirtieron los combates, todos iguales. Lo de los principales no tiene perdón, son entidades aisladas de todo, viviendo en arenas gigantes esperando a que te teletransportes y los revientes a palos.
El juego se vendió como el "más accesible que nunca" "el juego para entrar en la saga", ahora se pueden invocar enemigos para que te ayuden, sortear zonas enteras con parkour o la clásica magia a distancia de siempre. Pero buena suerte contra este enemigo que se cura al atacarte.
Uso invocaciones entonces: se cura al atacarlas
Voy a distancia: hace gap closers y no te deja castear hechizos
Voy full tanque: se cura golpeando tu escudo también
solución? suena la campanita. Rodar y atacar.
Uno de los jefes finales es un hombre musculoso que te empieza a hacer movimientos de lucha libre mientras grita lo genial que es. ¿Por qué no puedo tener esa pelea en un juego de acción de verdad? si todos lo quieren, From lo quiere, la gente lo quiere, no es necesario seguir anclados a una formula la cual la acción nunca fue su principal fuerte. Ya ni hablo de que sea al revés, y en vez que transformarse vuelvan a sus raíces, porque soñar se queda corto.
Se me ocurrian un montón de cosas que decir del Elden Ring mientras lo jugaba, pero en un punto pensé en que ni valía la pena, incluso que si escribía algo iba a ser porque era el juego de moda y quiero aportar a la charla más que nada. No me siento muy suelto hablando del juego y me da bronca que no me salga escribir así tampoco de juegos que últimamente jugué y me gustaron mucho.
Pero bueno, no se como encajarlas pero ahí van las cosas que pese a todo me gustaron de Elden Ring:
Pelear contra Miriam, contra mi doppelganger y contra Radhan. Llegar a la zona de Caelid y ver la maquinaria temática del área. La bifurcación de caminos en Liurna y las langostas gigantes de su valle. Parches. Entrar en la torre divina de Caelid. Invertir la torre divina de Liurna. Encontrar como volver a la mini zona del inicio del juego. Desinstalarlo tras jugar 90 horas en una semana y pelearle al peor boss final de cualquier souls, je.
Elden Ring
2022
While it's undoubtedly an impressive achievement on many levels, I just didn't like Elden Ring as much as previous From games - of which I have played a great many, going all the way back to the early 2000s. The introduction of the open world has unfortunately diluted what I valued and exacerbated pre-existing problems to the extent that I actively rushed through the second half of my 80 hour playthrough.
It's all down to level design essentially. Dark Souls and Bloodborne for me were elevated by the sparks of brilliance inherent in their world design and path building, those moments of discovery overcoming my dislike of other game elements - the repetitive nature of boss runbacks, grinding for levels, and so on. This, coupled to a linearity of goals within a context where multiple paths offer district experiences was what drove me onwards.
And this is where ER's design philosophy runs counter to what I enjoy. The introduction of the open world means the addition of plenty of filler content generated from templates; outside of the main legacy dungeons, you are going to have seen most of what the game has to show you before you leave Limgrave, but you better be hyped to fight the same mini-bosses multiple times, because that's what's on offer. This review is an excellent summary of some of my issues, with some mechanical spoilers: https://backloggd.com/u/Woodaba/review/337912/
I've seen many comments praising the side content to the effect of: "if the critical path is too hard or not fun, you can go and do other content until you're ready to take it on". I'm sorry, but that's not how I want to spend my time, making progress by repeatedly seeing the same enemies and areas while grinding out levels and upgrade materials. The joy for me lies in advancing the story and world state, and if I'm not doing that, it feels like time ill spent.
Note: it is a quirk of my personality that I can't stand being bored. I despise repetition and want constant novelty, especially in entertainment. Conversely, I'm also compelled to investigate and seek out what content is available, because not seeing everything I could is deeply unpleasant and unsettling to me - an orientation that open world design with its emphasis on rote box ticking activities interacts with very poorly. This might go some way towards explaining why I had the reactions I did.
At this point, you're probably asking why I'm not mentioning the combat or boss design, which is by all accounts unparalleled. The sad fact is that those things are secondary contributors to my enjoyment, and while I enjoyed working out an effective build and set of strategies, I just can't find it in me to value those systems as much as many obviously do. That said, I found the bosses in Bloodborne far more compelling to face. I also didn't enjoy that I felt funnelled down a particular build path and towards exploiting a small number of mechanics to beat late game bosses—and it's evident by the number of players leaving coop signs with very similar gear that this isn't just a me issue.
So what did I enjoy, and why did I spend so much time finishing this game? Well, it does have some beautiful enemy and location designs, mostly along the critical path. The story itself is thematically linked to the earlier Souls games, but adds just enough unfamiliar elements to sustain my interest through to the finale. Positioning and patience in combat remains tactical and interesting moment-to-moment, and the number of cheap deaths seemed lower this time around.
There are numerous quality of life improvements that were appreciated: for instance, pointing out NPCs on the map is essential in a game with so many small quests in such a large area it would otherwise be impossible to keep track. Having access to NPC summons that mimic coop multiplayer is great, although you're prevented from using them outside boss arenas, a decision that I heartily disagree with.
In summation, this is not the game I would suggest if you were interested in this Miyazaki-verse everyone's been talking about, or if you're interested in an "open world done right", as I've heard it described. Instead, it's an experience that caters to players who love a hard combat experience with a varied array of builds and weapons, and are willing to commit a lot of time to adapting to a flexible if unforgiving set of rules.
If that sounds like you, more power to you, I hope you loved this game. I just... didn't. Perhaps the next one will be an Armored Core, and I'll be the one singing its praises while the world collectively shrugs it off, who knows?
It's all down to level design essentially. Dark Souls and Bloodborne for me were elevated by the sparks of brilliance inherent in their world design and path building, those moments of discovery overcoming my dislike of other game elements - the repetitive nature of boss runbacks, grinding for levels, and so on. This, coupled to a linearity of goals within a context where multiple paths offer district experiences was what drove me onwards.
And this is where ER's design philosophy runs counter to what I enjoy. The introduction of the open world means the addition of plenty of filler content generated from templates; outside of the main legacy dungeons, you are going to have seen most of what the game has to show you before you leave Limgrave, but you better be hyped to fight the same mini-bosses multiple times, because that's what's on offer. This review is an excellent summary of some of my issues, with some mechanical spoilers: https://backloggd.com/u/Woodaba/review/337912/
I've seen many comments praising the side content to the effect of: "if the critical path is too hard or not fun, you can go and do other content until you're ready to take it on". I'm sorry, but that's not how I want to spend my time, making progress by repeatedly seeing the same enemies and areas while grinding out levels and upgrade materials. The joy for me lies in advancing the story and world state, and if I'm not doing that, it feels like time ill spent.
Note: it is a quirk of my personality that I can't stand being bored. I despise repetition and want constant novelty, especially in entertainment. Conversely, I'm also compelled to investigate and seek out what content is available, because not seeing everything I could is deeply unpleasant and unsettling to me - an orientation that open world design with its emphasis on rote box ticking activities interacts with very poorly. This might go some way towards explaining why I had the reactions I did.
At this point, you're probably asking why I'm not mentioning the combat or boss design, which is by all accounts unparalleled. The sad fact is that those things are secondary contributors to my enjoyment, and while I enjoyed working out an effective build and set of strategies, I just can't find it in me to value those systems as much as many obviously do. That said, I found the bosses in Bloodborne far more compelling to face. I also didn't enjoy that I felt funnelled down a particular build path and towards exploiting a small number of mechanics to beat late game bosses—and it's evident by the number of players leaving coop signs with very similar gear that this isn't just a me issue.
So what did I enjoy, and why did I spend so much time finishing this game? Well, it does have some beautiful enemy and location designs, mostly along the critical path. The story itself is thematically linked to the earlier Souls games, but adds just enough unfamiliar elements to sustain my interest through to the finale. Positioning and patience in combat remains tactical and interesting moment-to-moment, and the number of cheap deaths seemed lower this time around.
There are numerous quality of life improvements that were appreciated: for instance, pointing out NPCs on the map is essential in a game with so many small quests in such a large area it would otherwise be impossible to keep track. Having access to NPC summons that mimic coop multiplayer is great, although you're prevented from using them outside boss arenas, a decision that I heartily disagree with.
In summation, this is not the game I would suggest if you were interested in this Miyazaki-verse everyone's been talking about, or if you're interested in an "open world done right", as I've heard it described. Instead, it's an experience that caters to players who love a hard combat experience with a varied array of builds and weapons, and are willing to commit a lot of time to adapting to a flexible if unforgiving set of rules.
If that sounds like you, more power to you, I hope you loved this game. I just... didn't. Perhaps the next one will be an Armored Core, and I'll be the one singing its praises while the world collectively shrugs it off, who knows?
Elden Ring
2022
Aunque Sekiro o DS3 sean propuestas más concisas y pulidas, como adaptación a mundo abierto de lo Souls triunfa sin demasiados problemas: el combate es excelente, la cantidad de contenido monstruosa y almacena algunos momentos ciertamente inolvidables. Las contras: haber pasado el último cuarto del juego pidiendo la hora y que el reciclaje de bosses/mazmorras acabe cantando demasiado, además de algunos pequeños males endémicos que arrastra la saga desde el principio.
Por lo demás, tampoco lamentaría que este fuera el último Souls del estudio o su único mundo abierto, hay mucho talento en ese estudio como para no probar cosas nuevas y lo mismo ya va tocando dar un buen volantazo.
Por lo demás, tampoco lamentaría que este fuera el último Souls del estudio o su único mundo abierto, hay mucho talento en ese estudio como para no probar cosas nuevas y lo mismo ya va tocando dar un buen volantazo.
Elden Ring
2022
Hacía mucho que un juego no me ponía de tan mal humor, y no, no lo digo por su dificultad.
Sinceramente me gustaría que a los videojuegos se les catalogara más por las emociones(terror, suspenso, drama) y menos por las mecánicas (RPG, shooter, hack n slash) . Me da igual que al tacto sea lo más pulido, dinámico y responsivo, me da igual que como "RPG de acción" sea lo más cómodo y accesible. Digo que me da igual porque nada de eso sirve cuando todo lo que me rodea tiene nula inspiración. Elden Ring es, no estoy segura pero quizás, el peor o uno de los peores juegos de aventura y fantasía que he tocado en mi vida.
Porque nada de lo que pretende lo cumple, pero NADA.
Creo que hasta empecé a sentir un poco más de aprecio y respeto por el hype que se había ganado Dragon Quest en su lugar y tiempo, ahi dentro de todo lo puedo entender, pero esto? Para esto ya estamos en los 2020's, la información abunda y no hay que ser Holmes para ver que la fórmula de los juegos de Miyazaki se volvieron en el nuevo McDonalds.
No entiendo bien que valor tiene Elden Ring cuando buena parte de lo que propone ya lo hicieron un montón de juegos, otra vez, como el caso de Dragon Quest pero mucho mucho peor.
Digo, está bien pretender solo dar un juego de mundo abierto destacable (ponele) con fantasía y epicidad sin pensarlo mucho al jugarlo, pero es que justamente ESO ya nos lo dieron otros juegos y mucho mejores.
Curiosamente antes de jugar Elden Ring jugué Dragon's Dogma, un juego de mundo abierto con fantasía heroica y medieval. Superficialmente ese juego es mucho más genérico, pero esconde un montón de decisiones puestas con mucha cabeza y corazón para poder transmitir al máximo ese clásico estereotipo de fantasía medieval, yo no le pido más porque supo centrarse enteramente en eso.
Elden Ring no sirve ni para eso porque no ha habido tan solo un encuentro que realmente diga algo, lo pretende todo. Es de lejos una máscara imposible de creerle.
Don't think you're the hero, be the hero
Sinceramente me gustaría que a los videojuegos se les catalogara más por las emociones(terror, suspenso, drama) y menos por las mecánicas (RPG, shooter, hack n slash) . Me da igual que al tacto sea lo más pulido, dinámico y responsivo, me da igual que como "RPG de acción" sea lo más cómodo y accesible. Digo que me da igual porque nada de eso sirve cuando todo lo que me rodea tiene nula inspiración. Elden Ring es, no estoy segura pero quizás, el peor o uno de los peores juegos de aventura y fantasía que he tocado en mi vida.
Porque nada de lo que pretende lo cumple, pero NADA.
Creo que hasta empecé a sentir un poco más de aprecio y respeto por el hype que se había ganado Dragon Quest en su lugar y tiempo, ahi dentro de todo lo puedo entender, pero esto? Para esto ya estamos en los 2020's, la información abunda y no hay que ser Holmes para ver que la fórmula de los juegos de Miyazaki se volvieron en el nuevo McDonalds.
No entiendo bien que valor tiene Elden Ring cuando buena parte de lo que propone ya lo hicieron un montón de juegos, otra vez, como el caso de Dragon Quest pero mucho mucho peor.
Digo, está bien pretender solo dar un juego de mundo abierto destacable (ponele) con fantasía y epicidad sin pensarlo mucho al jugarlo, pero es que justamente ESO ya nos lo dieron otros juegos y mucho mejores.
Curiosamente antes de jugar Elden Ring jugué Dragon's Dogma, un juego de mundo abierto con fantasía heroica y medieval. Superficialmente ese juego es mucho más genérico, pero esconde un montón de decisiones puestas con mucha cabeza y corazón para poder transmitir al máximo ese clásico estereotipo de fantasía medieval, yo no le pido más porque supo centrarse enteramente en eso.
Elden Ring no sirve ni para eso porque no ha habido tan solo un encuentro que realmente diga algo, lo pretende todo. Es de lejos una máscara imposible de creerle.
Don't think you're the hero, be the hero
Elden Ring
2022
This review contains spoilers
"You have died, and the Nexus has trapped your soul."
"You cannot escape the Nexus."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CW: Brief discussion on the game's use of rape
In Elden Ring, you can never discover anything once. That was the thought that entered my head early in the experience and never quite left it. One of the most evocative parts of the game's genuinely stunning art direction is the walking cathedral, a strange and arresting colossus that stumbles across the Weeping Peninsula, each step ringing the bell that hangs beneath its torso. It was a sight of strange, beautiful magic, the kind of which these games have been good at in the past.
Except, to describe this creature in the singular would be inaccurate. Because Walking Cathedrals appear all over the world of Elden Ring, each one identical in appearance, each one performing an identical, express mechanical function for the player. This cannot be left alone as a strange, unique beast, it has to be reduced to a Type of Content a player can engage with over and over again for a characterless transaction of pure mechanics. It is the excitement of coming across something esoteric that the Souls games have made a core part of their identity, utterly commodified and made into the exact same arc that applied to Assassin's Creed the moment climbing a tower to survey the environment and taking a leap of faith into a haystack below shifted from an exciting and evocative moment into a rote and tiresome mechanical interaction.
Because, that's right everyone, Dark Souls Is Now Open World. Not an open world in the same way that Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, or Dark Souls II were, where you could freely venture down different paths to different bosses and take things in an order outside of the game's expected leveling curve. No, this is an Open World as we understand it today: an enormous ocean of discrete repeated Activities dotted with islands of meaningful bespoke design. There's plenty of stuff to do in this world, but it's all of a specific type - in a catacomb you will navigate stone gargoyles and chalice dungeon designs to a lever that will open a door near the entrance that will contain a boss that you've likely found elsewhere in the world, and will be filled with stone gargoyles. Mines will be filled with mining rock-people and upgrade materials. Towers will have you find three spectral creatures around them in order to open them up and obtain a new Memory Slot. Camps will contain a patrolling enemy type and some loot. Even genuinely enchanting vistas and environments get their space to be repeated in slight variations. Boss battles too will be repeated endlessly, time and time again, with delightful designs like the Watchdog tragically becoming something I sighed and was annoyed to see crop up half-a-dozen times over the course of the adventure, and I was truly, deeply annoyed at fighting no less than about ten or twelve Erdtree Avatars and Dragons, with whom the moves never change and the fight plays out the exact same way every single time.
The first time I discovered these things, I was surprised, delighted even, but by even the second time, the truth that these are copied-and-pasted across the entirety of the Lands Between in order to pad it out became readily apparent, and eventually worn away even the enthusiasm of that first encounter. When I look back on my genuine enjoyment of the first battle with the Erdtree Avatar, I can only feel like an idiot for not realizing that this fight would be repeated verbatim over and over and become less fun every single time. When you've seen one, you've really seen all of them, and this means that by the time you leave Limgrave, you've already seen everything the Open World has to offer.
This is, of course, to be expected. Open world games simply have to do this. They are an enormous effort to bring into life, and the realities of game production mean that unless you're willing to spend decades on one game, you're going to have to be thrifty with how you produce content. I expect this, I understand this. Fallout: New Vegas is probably my favorite Open World game, but its world is also filled with this template design. But what's to be gained from this in a Dark Souls game? Unlike contemporaries like Breath of the Wild, your verbs of interaction in these games are frighteningly limited, with almost all of the experience boiling down to fighting enemies, and without a variety of interactions, the lack of variety in the huge amounts of content stands out all the more. Does fighting the same boss over and over and traversing the same cave over and over make Souls better? Even if you choose to just ignore all of these parts of the Open World (which is far easier said than done, as due to a very harsh leveling curve and the scarcity of crucial weapon upgrade materials outside of The Mines, the game's design absolutely pushes towards you engaging in these repetitious activities), the Legacy Dungeons that comprise the game's bespoke content are functionally completely separate from the Open World, with not even your Horse permitted to enter. This is no Burnout: Paradise or Xenoblade Chronicles X, which retooled the core gameplay loop to one where the open world was absolutely core to the design: this is a series of middling Dark Souls levels scattered among an open world no different from games like Far Cry or Horizon: Zero Dawn that many Souls fans have historically looked down on, and the game is only worse for it.
NPC storylines in particular suffer massively, as the chances of you stumbling upon these characters, already often quite annoying in past games, are so low as to practically require a wiki if you want to see the end of multiple questlines. However, that assumes that you will want to see the end of these stories and that you are invested in this world, and I decidedly Was Not. Souls games have always had suspect things in them that have gone largely uninterrogated but Elden Ring really brings that ugliness to the surface, with rape being an annoyingly present aspect of the backstories of many characters, and even having multiple characters threaten to rape you, none of which is deployed in a way that is meaningful and is just insufferable edgelord fantasy writing, and the same could be said of the grimdark incest-laden backstory, the deeply suspect trans panic writing surrounding one of the characters, and the enthusiastic use of Fantasy Racism tropes in the form of the Demi-Humans. I remain convinced that George RR Martin's involvement in this game was little more than a cynical publicity stunt, but certainly the game's writing indulges in many of that man's worst excesses, whilst having almost none of his strengths.
None of this is to say that Elden Ring is devoid of enjoyment. While the fact that it did hit just in time for a manic-depressive mood that made me perfectly suited to play a game I could just mindlessly play for a couple of weeks, I did see it through to the end in that time, even if I did rush to the end after a certain point. From Software's artists remain some of the best in the industry, with some incredible environments and boss designs that deserve Olympic gold medals for how much heavy-lifting they're doing to keep the experience afloat. I loved being kidnapped by chests into other parts of the world, and I wish it happened more than a couple of front-loaded times. But the enjoyment I had in it never felt like stemmed from the open world, and even its highest points don't hang with the best bits of the prior installments. Stormveil is probably the level design highlight of the game but it already fades from my mind in comparison to the likes of Central Yharnam or the Undead Burg or the Dragon Shrine. Indeed, the fact that they exist as islands in an ocean of vacuous space between them precludes the so-called "Legacy Dungeons" of this game from having the satisfying loops and interconnections that are often the design highlights of prior entries. The bosses are a seriously uneven mixed bag as well; even setting aside the repetition, as the nasty trend of overturned bosses that started in Dark Souls III rears its unfortunate head again. The superboss Melania is an interesting design utterly ruined by her obscene damage output, and my personal highlight of the game, Starscourge Radagon, who is the only boss fight that felt like it played to the things that Elden Ring brought to the table, and is a moment among the series that the game can truly claim as it's very own...but the tuning of the fight prevented it from being the triumphant coming-together moment that it is clearly attempting for many of my friends, who left the fight feeling that it was just annoying and tedious. Modern From Software could never make a fight like Maiden Astrea again because they'd insist on making her really hard in a way that actively detracts from the emotional experience in the fight. Boss fights can be about more than just providing a challenge, and I think From has forgotten that.
Taken as a series of its legacy dungeons, of its finest moments, I think Elden Ring would only be a middling one of these games. The additions to the formula feel anemic and unbalanced, the multiplayer implementation is honestly a quite considerable step back from prior games (the decision to have the majority of invasions only occur during co-operation feels like an attempt to weed out trolls picking on weaker players but in reality what it does is make equal fights are next-to-impossible and put Seal-Clubbers in a place where they are the only players who can effectively invade, a completely baffling decision), but it's really the open world I keep coming back to as the reason this game doesn't work. Not only does it add nothing that wasn't already present in better ways in prior games, but it actively detracts from the experience. The promise of the Open World is one of discovery, of setting off in uncharted directions and finding something new, but do Open Worlds actually facilitate this any better than more linear games? I don't know if they do. I felt a sense of discovery and finding something in so many of these games, even the most linear ones, and felt it stronger because the game was able to use careful, meticulous level design to bring out those emotions. Walking out of a cave and seeing Irithyll of the Boreal Valley, or Dead Man's Wharf stretch out before me, were moments of genuine discovery, and they would not be improved if I found six more Dead Man's Wharfs throughout the game. Contrary to their promise, in my experience, the open world, rather than create a sense of discovery, undermine it due to the compromises necessary to create these worlds. All the openness does for your discoveries is let you approach them from a slightly different angle as everyone else.
That is, if you can even claim to have discovered anything in the first place. To call Elden Ring derivative of prior games in this milieu would be a gross understatement. I am far from the first person to note that the game's much-hyped worldbuilding is largely content to regurgitate Souls Tropes with the Proper Nouns replaced with much worse ones, but it goes beyond that - entire questlines, plot beats, character arcs, dungeon designs, enemies, and bosses are lifted wholesale from prior games practically verbatim. More often than not Elden Ring feels closer to a Greatest Hits album than a coherent piece in and of itself, a soulless and cynical repackaging of prior Souls Classics, irrevocably damaged by being torn from the original context from which they belonged. I'm not a fan of Dark Souls III, in part because it too is also a game that leans on repetition of prior games, but at the very least the game was about those repetitions, where yes, old areas and characters would be repeated, but at least it was thematically resonant with what the game was doing. Elden Ring can't even claim that. Whatever this shallow mess of a narrative, easily the worst of the franchise thus far by my reckoning, is going for, it is done no favors by being this stitched-together Frankenstein of Souls.
I was particularly shocked by the sheer ferocity with which the game steals from the fan-favorite Bloodborne. Quick, tell me if you've heard this one before: you encounter a hunched, bestial foe, who fights you with their fists, but once you get their health halfway down, the battle stops, a cutscene plays, where they speak coherently, summon a blade from their past, and stand with their former dignity restored, the music changes, and their name is revealed to be "X the Y Blade". Or what about a hub area, separated in its own liminal space from the rest of the map, that can be discovered in its True Form in the material world? What about when that hub area is wreathed in spectral flame and begins to burn as the final hours of the game is nigh? These are far from the only examples, as there are multiple enemies and ideas throughout the game that are shamelessly lifted from my personal favorite From Software effort, but these stand out as the most noxious of all, as they simply repeat beats that were effective in the game they originated from because the game was able to build to them and have them resonate with the rest of the experience. You cannot just graft things whole cloth from prior work onto a new one and expect it to work as a coherent piece, the very prospect is ridiculous.
When Elden Ring did all this, my jaw about hit the floor from the sheer unmitigated gall. When it chose to conclude itself with a straight-faced Moon Presence reference, complete with an arena that directly evokes the Hunter's Dream, I just had to laugh. The final statement the game made on itself, the bullet point it chose to put on the experience, was "Remember Bloodborne? That was good, wasn't it?" Because in many ways, that really was a perfect conclusion to this game.
While it would be a mistake to claim, as people seem increasingly eager to, that Souls emerged entirely out of the magical ocean that is Hidetaka Miyazaki's unparalleled genius or whatever, as these games have always drawn heavy inspiration from properties like Berserk, Book of the New Sun, and The Legend of Zelda, and were built on top of a framework clearly established by past Fromsoft series King's Field, the reason I think that myself and many others were initially enthralled by the promise of Demon's Souls or Dark Souls was because they were decidedly different. Their esoterica, willingness to buck modern design conventions and hugely evocative online elements were why these games set imaginations alight so strongly, and proved enormously influential for the past decade of game design.
Demon's Souls felt like something new. And while successive games in this series have felt far less fresh, none of them have felt as utterly exhausted as Elden Ring: a final statement from the designers and writers at From Software that they have officially Ran Out of Ideas, that the well has long gone dry, that all they can do is to hastily staple on the modern design trends they once rejected onto a formula that does not gel with them, and that they are wandering without life through a never-ending cycle of their own creation, branded by the Darksign. Perhaps it's no surprise that their least inventive, least consistent, and least creative game since Demon's Souls is also by far their most successful. Once From Software defied conventions and trends, and now, they are consumed by them.
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"You have died, and the Nexus has trapped your soul."
"You cannot escape the Nexus."
"You cannot escape the Nexus."
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CW: Brief discussion on the game's use of rape
In Elden Ring, you can never discover anything once. That was the thought that entered my head early in the experience and never quite left it. One of the most evocative parts of the game's genuinely stunning art direction is the walking cathedral, a strange and arresting colossus that stumbles across the Weeping Peninsula, each step ringing the bell that hangs beneath its torso. It was a sight of strange, beautiful magic, the kind of which these games have been good at in the past.
Except, to describe this creature in the singular would be inaccurate. Because Walking Cathedrals appear all over the world of Elden Ring, each one identical in appearance, each one performing an identical, express mechanical function for the player. This cannot be left alone as a strange, unique beast, it has to be reduced to a Type of Content a player can engage with over and over again for a characterless transaction of pure mechanics. It is the excitement of coming across something esoteric that the Souls games have made a core part of their identity, utterly commodified and made into the exact same arc that applied to Assassin's Creed the moment climbing a tower to survey the environment and taking a leap of faith into a haystack below shifted from an exciting and evocative moment into a rote and tiresome mechanical interaction.
Because, that's right everyone, Dark Souls Is Now Open World. Not an open world in the same way that Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, or Dark Souls II were, where you could freely venture down different paths to different bosses and take things in an order outside of the game's expected leveling curve. No, this is an Open World as we understand it today: an enormous ocean of discrete repeated Activities dotted with islands of meaningful bespoke design. There's plenty of stuff to do in this world, but it's all of a specific type - in a catacomb you will navigate stone gargoyles and chalice dungeon designs to a lever that will open a door near the entrance that will contain a boss that you've likely found elsewhere in the world, and will be filled with stone gargoyles. Mines will be filled with mining rock-people and upgrade materials. Towers will have you find three spectral creatures around them in order to open them up and obtain a new Memory Slot. Camps will contain a patrolling enemy type and some loot. Even genuinely enchanting vistas and environments get their space to be repeated in slight variations. Boss battles too will be repeated endlessly, time and time again, with delightful designs like the Watchdog tragically becoming something I sighed and was annoyed to see crop up half-a-dozen times over the course of the adventure, and I was truly, deeply annoyed at fighting no less than about ten or twelve Erdtree Avatars and Dragons, with whom the moves never change and the fight plays out the exact same way every single time.
The first time I discovered these things, I was surprised, delighted even, but by even the second time, the truth that these are copied-and-pasted across the entirety of the Lands Between in order to pad it out became readily apparent, and eventually worn away even the enthusiasm of that first encounter. When I look back on my genuine enjoyment of the first battle with the Erdtree Avatar, I can only feel like an idiot for not realizing that this fight would be repeated verbatim over and over and become less fun every single time. When you've seen one, you've really seen all of them, and this means that by the time you leave Limgrave, you've already seen everything the Open World has to offer.
This is, of course, to be expected. Open world games simply have to do this. They are an enormous effort to bring into life, and the realities of game production mean that unless you're willing to spend decades on one game, you're going to have to be thrifty with how you produce content. I expect this, I understand this. Fallout: New Vegas is probably my favorite Open World game, but its world is also filled with this template design. But what's to be gained from this in a Dark Souls game? Unlike contemporaries like Breath of the Wild, your verbs of interaction in these games are frighteningly limited, with almost all of the experience boiling down to fighting enemies, and without a variety of interactions, the lack of variety in the huge amounts of content stands out all the more. Does fighting the same boss over and over and traversing the same cave over and over make Souls better? Even if you choose to just ignore all of these parts of the Open World (which is far easier said than done, as due to a very harsh leveling curve and the scarcity of crucial weapon upgrade materials outside of The Mines, the game's design absolutely pushes towards you engaging in these repetitious activities), the Legacy Dungeons that comprise the game's bespoke content are functionally completely separate from the Open World, with not even your Horse permitted to enter. This is no Burnout: Paradise or Xenoblade Chronicles X, which retooled the core gameplay loop to one where the open world was absolutely core to the design: this is a series of middling Dark Souls levels scattered among an open world no different from games like Far Cry or Horizon: Zero Dawn that many Souls fans have historically looked down on, and the game is only worse for it.
NPC storylines in particular suffer massively, as the chances of you stumbling upon these characters, already often quite annoying in past games, are so low as to practically require a wiki if you want to see the end of multiple questlines. However, that assumes that you will want to see the end of these stories and that you are invested in this world, and I decidedly Was Not. Souls games have always had suspect things in them that have gone largely uninterrogated but Elden Ring really brings that ugliness to the surface, with rape being an annoyingly present aspect of the backstories of many characters, and even having multiple characters threaten to rape you, none of which is deployed in a way that is meaningful and is just insufferable edgelord fantasy writing, and the same could be said of the grimdark incest-laden backstory, the deeply suspect trans panic writing surrounding one of the characters, and the enthusiastic use of Fantasy Racism tropes in the form of the Demi-Humans. I remain convinced that George RR Martin's involvement in this game was little more than a cynical publicity stunt, but certainly the game's writing indulges in many of that man's worst excesses, whilst having almost none of his strengths.
None of this is to say that Elden Ring is devoid of enjoyment. While the fact that it did hit just in time for a manic-depressive mood that made me perfectly suited to play a game I could just mindlessly play for a couple of weeks, I did see it through to the end in that time, even if I did rush to the end after a certain point. From Software's artists remain some of the best in the industry, with some incredible environments and boss designs that deserve Olympic gold medals for how much heavy-lifting they're doing to keep the experience afloat. I loved being kidnapped by chests into other parts of the world, and I wish it happened more than a couple of front-loaded times. But the enjoyment I had in it never felt like stemmed from the open world, and even its highest points don't hang with the best bits of the prior installments. Stormveil is probably the level design highlight of the game but it already fades from my mind in comparison to the likes of Central Yharnam or the Undead Burg or the Dragon Shrine. Indeed, the fact that they exist as islands in an ocean of vacuous space between them precludes the so-called "Legacy Dungeons" of this game from having the satisfying loops and interconnections that are often the design highlights of prior entries. The bosses are a seriously uneven mixed bag as well; even setting aside the repetition, as the nasty trend of overturned bosses that started in Dark Souls III rears its unfortunate head again. The superboss Melania is an interesting design utterly ruined by her obscene damage output, and my personal highlight of the game, Starscourge Radagon, who is the only boss fight that felt like it played to the things that Elden Ring brought to the table, and is a moment among the series that the game can truly claim as it's very own...but the tuning of the fight prevented it from being the triumphant coming-together moment that it is clearly attempting for many of my friends, who left the fight feeling that it was just annoying and tedious. Modern From Software could never make a fight like Maiden Astrea again because they'd insist on making her really hard in a way that actively detracts from the emotional experience in the fight. Boss fights can be about more than just providing a challenge, and I think From has forgotten that.
Taken as a series of its legacy dungeons, of its finest moments, I think Elden Ring would only be a middling one of these games. The additions to the formula feel anemic and unbalanced, the multiplayer implementation is honestly a quite considerable step back from prior games (the decision to have the majority of invasions only occur during co-operation feels like an attempt to weed out trolls picking on weaker players but in reality what it does is make equal fights are next-to-impossible and put Seal-Clubbers in a place where they are the only players who can effectively invade, a completely baffling decision), but it's really the open world I keep coming back to as the reason this game doesn't work. Not only does it add nothing that wasn't already present in better ways in prior games, but it actively detracts from the experience. The promise of the Open World is one of discovery, of setting off in uncharted directions and finding something new, but do Open Worlds actually facilitate this any better than more linear games? I don't know if they do. I felt a sense of discovery and finding something in so many of these games, even the most linear ones, and felt it stronger because the game was able to use careful, meticulous level design to bring out those emotions. Walking out of a cave and seeing Irithyll of the Boreal Valley, or Dead Man's Wharf stretch out before me, were moments of genuine discovery, and they would not be improved if I found six more Dead Man's Wharfs throughout the game. Contrary to their promise, in my experience, the open world, rather than create a sense of discovery, undermine it due to the compromises necessary to create these worlds. All the openness does for your discoveries is let you approach them from a slightly different angle as everyone else.
That is, if you can even claim to have discovered anything in the first place. To call Elden Ring derivative of prior games in this milieu would be a gross understatement. I am far from the first person to note that the game's much-hyped worldbuilding is largely content to regurgitate Souls Tropes with the Proper Nouns replaced with much worse ones, but it goes beyond that - entire questlines, plot beats, character arcs, dungeon designs, enemies, and bosses are lifted wholesale from prior games practically verbatim. More often than not Elden Ring feels closer to a Greatest Hits album than a coherent piece in and of itself, a soulless and cynical repackaging of prior Souls Classics, irrevocably damaged by being torn from the original context from which they belonged. I'm not a fan of Dark Souls III, in part because it too is also a game that leans on repetition of prior games, but at the very least the game was about those repetitions, where yes, old areas and characters would be repeated, but at least it was thematically resonant with what the game was doing. Elden Ring can't even claim that. Whatever this shallow mess of a narrative, easily the worst of the franchise thus far by my reckoning, is going for, it is done no favors by being this stitched-together Frankenstein of Souls.
I was particularly shocked by the sheer ferocity with which the game steals from the fan-favorite Bloodborne. Quick, tell me if you've heard this one before: you encounter a hunched, bestial foe, who fights you with their fists, but once you get their health halfway down, the battle stops, a cutscene plays, where they speak coherently, summon a blade from their past, and stand with their former dignity restored, the music changes, and their name is revealed to be "X the Y Blade". Or what about a hub area, separated in its own liminal space from the rest of the map, that can be discovered in its True Form in the material world? What about when that hub area is wreathed in spectral flame and begins to burn as the final hours of the game is nigh? These are far from the only examples, as there are multiple enemies and ideas throughout the game that are shamelessly lifted from my personal favorite From Software effort, but these stand out as the most noxious of all, as they simply repeat beats that were effective in the game they originated from because the game was able to build to them and have them resonate with the rest of the experience. You cannot just graft things whole cloth from prior work onto a new one and expect it to work as a coherent piece, the very prospect is ridiculous.
When Elden Ring did all this, my jaw about hit the floor from the sheer unmitigated gall. When it chose to conclude itself with a straight-faced Moon Presence reference, complete with an arena that directly evokes the Hunter's Dream, I just had to laugh. The final statement the game made on itself, the bullet point it chose to put on the experience, was "Remember Bloodborne? That was good, wasn't it?" Because in many ways, that really was a perfect conclusion to this game.
While it would be a mistake to claim, as people seem increasingly eager to, that Souls emerged entirely out of the magical ocean that is Hidetaka Miyazaki's unparalleled genius or whatever, as these games have always drawn heavy inspiration from properties like Berserk, Book of the New Sun, and The Legend of Zelda, and were built on top of a framework clearly established by past Fromsoft series King's Field, the reason I think that myself and many others were initially enthralled by the promise of Demon's Souls or Dark Souls was because they were decidedly different. Their esoterica, willingness to buck modern design conventions and hugely evocative online elements were why these games set imaginations alight so strongly, and proved enormously influential for the past decade of game design.
Demon's Souls felt like something new. And while successive games in this series have felt far less fresh, none of them have felt as utterly exhausted as Elden Ring: a final statement from the designers and writers at From Software that they have officially Ran Out of Ideas, that the well has long gone dry, that all they can do is to hastily staple on the modern design trends they once rejected onto a formula that does not gel with them, and that they are wandering without life through a never-ending cycle of their own creation, branded by the Darksign. Perhaps it's no surprise that their least inventive, least consistent, and least creative game since Demon's Souls is also by far their most successful. Once From Software defied conventions and trends, and now, they are consumed by them.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You have died, and the Nexus has trapped your soul."
"You cannot escape the Nexus."
Cruelty Squad
2021
cruelty squad understands what made shooters from the mid-90s to early 00s so distinct and special better than pretty much every other so-called boomer shooter revival game: a combination of weird atmosphere, uncanny map design, and a genuine sense of mystery and crypticism that eventually payoff in discovery and reward. secrets feel like secrets in an old-timey sense, the way they're all buried away and provided without fanfare or notification that they're supposed to be secrets. it encourages you to explore, which in turn makes you get the most out of the (mostly) super tight level designs
i feel like people overstate the grossout/poor graphics aesthetic. that stuff is all there in spades but acting as if that's the game's main selling point kind of sells the game short - the gameplay and game design, atmosphere, themes and even the bits-and-pieces of story and capital l Lore are all really, really solid. you hear a lot about the "tactical shooter" angle but i was pleasantly surprised to find out how much this game encourages, accomodates and necessitates FPS Shit like bunny hopping, surfing, rocket jumping and wall jumping and makes it work with the slow, methodical, routing-and-planning emphatic aspect of things. this game has Schmovement and it's good! it's just real, real good
mostly, anyways. the level designs can be a little bit inconsistent (it's mostly the big, wide-open levels that suffer, as i feel cruelty squad is at its best when things are small, compact, and tightly designed with every run through exposing a new possible plan of action for your next run), and flesh rats are fucking bullshit and seem to exist only to make you rely on rote memorization instead of knowing the level well enough to improv as obstacles necessitate, which most of the gameplay otherwise focuses on and excels at.
the plot, lore, themes, ideas, etc. are all super interesting too but i think i need to digest them and think about them a bit more before i have anything meaningful to say about them. they're pretty obfuscated and delivered with very opaque and dense prose that almost kind of reminds me of the stilted and imperfect english that the original quake used? just on the opposite side of the spectrum, a lot more verbose and eloquent than i was expecting
for once i have more to say about the gameplay than i do about the writing. they're both good. really, really good. it's just a really good game
i feel like people overstate the grossout/poor graphics aesthetic. that stuff is all there in spades but acting as if that's the game's main selling point kind of sells the game short - the gameplay and game design, atmosphere, themes and even the bits-and-pieces of story and capital l Lore are all really, really solid. you hear a lot about the "tactical shooter" angle but i was pleasantly surprised to find out how much this game encourages, accomodates and necessitates FPS Shit like bunny hopping, surfing, rocket jumping and wall jumping and makes it work with the slow, methodical, routing-and-planning emphatic aspect of things. this game has Schmovement and it's good! it's just real, real good
mostly, anyways. the level designs can be a little bit inconsistent (it's mostly the big, wide-open levels that suffer, as i feel cruelty squad is at its best when things are small, compact, and tightly designed with every run through exposing a new possible plan of action for your next run), and flesh rats are fucking bullshit and seem to exist only to make you rely on rote memorization instead of knowing the level well enough to improv as obstacles necessitate, which most of the gameplay otherwise focuses on and excels at.
the plot, lore, themes, ideas, etc. are all super interesting too but i think i need to digest them and think about them a bit more before i have anything meaningful to say about them. they're pretty obfuscated and delivered with very opaque and dense prose that almost kind of reminds me of the stilted and imperfect english that the original quake used? just on the opposite side of the spectrum, a lot more verbose and eloquent than i was expecting
for once i have more to say about the gameplay than i do about the writing. they're both good. really, really good. it's just a really good game
Violet
2008
Only one objective, to write 1000 words in order to finish your dissertation and, most importantly, prevent your girlfriend Violet from going away as she has been waiting too long for that task to be done, this is the last chance. The intention is always to get rid of the immediate distraction which then leads to another distraction, and so forth. Creating a very strong sense of space by focusing on detailing a single room (which adds to the lack of attention), the solutions to each problem are obtuse, not so much for the sake of getting you stuck (using the hint command will end up giving you the exact actions to execute) but to reach exaggerated absurdist situations unexpectedly twisted for the setting, ending up in a very intimate total chaos.
Forgot to say, everything in the game is narrated by Violet, or better said, by the Violet that the protagonist imagines, as she is still patiently waiting somewhere else far away. Adding a more catchy flow to every line where the narrator has a personality while still being absent, there is some more cute obvious twist behind it. No matter the small distractions, what the main character cannot get out of their head and what motivates them to write is the same thing. They cannot stop thinking about Violet.
Forgot to say, everything in the game is narrated by Violet, or better said, by the Violet that the protagonist imagines, as she is still patiently waiting somewhere else far away. Adding a more catchy flow to every line where the narrator has a personality while still being absent, there is some more cute obvious twist behind it. No matter the small distractions, what the main character cannot get out of their head and what motivates them to write is the same thing. They cannot stop thinking about Violet.
Loot, out of place sidequests, the weirdest decisions at the most crucial cutscenes, keeping everyone dressed up during the most dramatic events (poor souls that don’t disable visible headgear and have to stare to a close up of a helmet or the dumbest mask), and yet…
The action has some good fundamentals in order to keep you active and managing space, but if it stays fresh for the whole game it is because of the combination of the different variations. Small gimmicks in every mission, trying new jobs, some slight changes in the enemies that may not seem that much but end up making you plan some new strategies, specially when the placement is a little thought out, and why not, infinite comboing against the wall your least liked monster with your friends, never gets old. And bosses don’t fall behind, they often take the highlight, a good arsenal to cover all the surroundings and distances, barely taking any breath between an attack and the next, good luck finding an opening.
And what a bunch, three thirty-something years old join with two twenty-something years old to play the most visually overdesigned sci fi dungeons and dragons campaign ever. The IA distracting the boss when you need a rest, trying to keep every distraction away from your target, helping you to not drop the staggering… Not anything never seen nor complex, but always very present while fighting side by side nonetheless, giving more strength to every chit chat, to every dialogue, to every fist bump. The Warriors of Light… not, they don’t fit that role no matter which side they are viewed on, that prophecy would materialize later. What is the role of the outcasts forced to complete a prophecy that not even they understand? The biggest merit of the narrative is that even with the amount of giant obstacles that it likes to place arbitrarily, you never leave Jack's resolve, a guy that speaks in punches, and me backing up every single hit thrown. To fight with all that he has for what he knows is right, no matter the cost, with Ash, Jed, Neon and Sophia on his side, even if the role of the heroes is for another group. Finding their way to make it work.
You’ve got to be crazy if you want to change the world.
The action has some good fundamentals in order to keep you active and managing space, but if it stays fresh for the whole game it is because of the combination of the different variations. Small gimmicks in every mission, trying new jobs, some slight changes in the enemies that may not seem that much but end up making you plan some new strategies, specially when the placement is a little thought out, and why not, infinite comboing against the wall your least liked monster with your friends, never gets old. And bosses don’t fall behind, they often take the highlight, a good arsenal to cover all the surroundings and distances, barely taking any breath between an attack and the next, good luck finding an opening.
And what a bunch, three thirty-something years old join with two twenty-something years old to play the most visually overdesigned sci fi dungeons and dragons campaign ever. The IA distracting the boss when you need a rest, trying to keep every distraction away from your target, helping you to not drop the staggering… Not anything never seen nor complex, but always very present while fighting side by side nonetheless, giving more strength to every chit chat, to every dialogue, to every fist bump. The Warriors of Light… not, they don’t fit that role no matter which side they are viewed on, that prophecy would materialize later. What is the role of the outcasts forced to complete a prophecy that not even they understand? The biggest merit of the narrative is that even with the amount of giant obstacles that it likes to place arbitrarily, you never leave Jack's resolve, a guy that speaks in punches, and me backing up every single hit thrown. To fight with all that he has for what he knows is right, no matter the cost, with Ash, Jed, Neon and Sophia on his side, even if the role of the heroes is for another group. Finding their way to make it work.
You’ve got to be crazy if you want to change the world.
Baba is You
2019
Recommended by turdl3 as part of this list.
BABA IS YOU
Back when I was in high school, my campus offered a Computer Science course as an elective of sorts, and I remember sitting in that classroom with six other kids while our teacher explained the basics of programming.
"Think of programming like a logic puzzle. You have a set of rules you always have to abide by, and you need to figure out a solution to each problem by working within those rules."
Obviously, this is a very reductive way of approaching the subject, but I bring it up because I recognize that same programming mindset is at the core of Baba is You. The game's main mechanic of moving Nouns, Operators and Properties around to change the logic of the world is basically a programming language in and of itself. The internal syntax logic remains consistent, and each level in Baba is You is always centered around working within the logic of a level to achieve the same goal of making some variation of X IS WIN. It's just up to you to figure out how.
BABA IS MOVE AND OPEN
Despite that simple goal, Baba is You is a very difficult game in practice. Baba is You is always introducing a new Modifier or Property to experiment with well into the endgame, making sure that every area is constantly reinventing the wheel in a way that ensures that the player retains that sense of wonder the game held from minute one. But even with this unrelenting avalanche of ideas and mechanics, Baba is You remains accessible through its incredibly free-form approach to progress. The branching path level structure always gives the player options to progress, with completed levels unlocking other levels in an immediate radius instead of a linear fashion. The player is only asked to complete a relatively small fraction of an area to have it marked as "complete", meaning that even if you are truly stumped, you only need to complete the bare minimum to see the game through. The final level is even unlocked once you complete about third of the game, meaning that at any time, you can stop and clear the game if you have the smarts. Baba is You may be rigid in its puzzle structure and logic, but it's sense of progression is anything but.
BABA IS LOVE
Above all else, Baba is You is delightful. It's adorable aesthetic and endless innovation kept me going long after the ending was waiting for me, and even though the game could potentially be beaten after an hour or so, I put off that final level until the very end just to see what other tricks Baba is You had up its sleeve. Even in the final areas, puzzles were still wowing me with their creativity and putting a smile on my face even as I slammed my head against a wall for hours on end trying to figure out the solution. Baba is You is a truly one of the most creative puzzle games in recent memory, and its clear how much passion was put into its creation by the people behind it, and it's a game I highly recommend if you love a good brainteaser.
BABA IS YOU
Back when I was in high school, my campus offered a Computer Science course as an elective of sorts, and I remember sitting in that classroom with six other kids while our teacher explained the basics of programming.
"Think of programming like a logic puzzle. You have a set of rules you always have to abide by, and you need to figure out a solution to each problem by working within those rules."
Obviously, this is a very reductive way of approaching the subject, but I bring it up because I recognize that same programming mindset is at the core of Baba is You. The game's main mechanic of moving Nouns, Operators and Properties around to change the logic of the world is basically a programming language in and of itself. The internal syntax logic remains consistent, and each level in Baba is You is always centered around working within the logic of a level to achieve the same goal of making some variation of X IS WIN. It's just up to you to figure out how.
BABA IS MOVE AND OPEN
Despite that simple goal, Baba is You is a very difficult game in practice. Baba is You is always introducing a new Modifier or Property to experiment with well into the endgame, making sure that every area is constantly reinventing the wheel in a way that ensures that the player retains that sense of wonder the game held from minute one. But even with this unrelenting avalanche of ideas and mechanics, Baba is You remains accessible through its incredibly free-form approach to progress. The branching path level structure always gives the player options to progress, with completed levels unlocking other levels in an immediate radius instead of a linear fashion. The player is only asked to complete a relatively small fraction of an area to have it marked as "complete", meaning that even if you are truly stumped, you only need to complete the bare minimum to see the game through. The final level is even unlocked once you complete about third of the game, meaning that at any time, you can stop and clear the game if you have the smarts. Baba is You may be rigid in its puzzle structure and logic, but it's sense of progression is anything but.
BABA IS LOVE
Above all else, Baba is You is delightful. It's adorable aesthetic and endless innovation kept me going long after the ending was waiting for me, and even though the game could potentially be beaten after an hour or so, I put off that final level until the very end just to see what other tricks Baba is You had up its sleeve. Even in the final areas, puzzles were still wowing me with their creativity and putting a smile on my face even as I slammed my head against a wall for hours on end trying to figure out the solution. Baba is You is a truly one of the most creative puzzle games in recent memory, and its clear how much passion was put into its creation by the people behind it, and it's a game I highly recommend if you love a good brainteaser.
Lobotomy Corporation
2018
There isn't any way I can separate this game from my own extremely personal emotional investment in it and I don't particularly want to air all of that out in public forum for strangers' viewing pleasure, so I'll keep it short:
Lobotomy Corporation's subject matter and primary themes are particularly pertinent to my own life and the kind of person I am, and in that regard it's the story I've been searching for for as long as I've been alive. I've never seen my own point of view on the matter reflected so clearly and wholly before.
It's a laborious experience, but a worthwhile one.
Lobotomy Corporation's subject matter and primary themes are particularly pertinent to my own life and the kind of person I am, and in that regard it's the story I've been searching for for as long as I've been alive. I've never seen my own point of view on the matter reflected so clearly and wholly before.
It's a laborious experience, but a worthwhile one.
Elden Ring
2022
One of my favourite traits of Fromsoft's work on their assorted Souls games is their ability to make worlds feel larger than they actually are. The way these games will have you be able to visually see in the distance places you will reach over ten hours in the future, or looking back and seeing where you journeyed from and feeling so small compared to this world around you. How the very existence of illusory walls makes it feel like there could be a secret hiding basically anywhere. Huge chunks of content being hidden in compelling, obtuse or even outright bizarre ways, with no concern for the notion of players missing out on literal entire regions or multiple major boss fights as a result, leading both to excitement and surprise when you manage to stumble upon these secrets or figure them out on your own, and to those amazing moments where you get to share discoveries with others or learn from them, the game repeatedly opening up to be even bigger and more mysterious somehow. I typically don't love the npc quests in these games but even those, with their habit of careening off-course as if some player's unfortunate choices unknowingly ruined their dungeon master's plans, make the world feel somehow larger than you and beyond your strict control.
This is also why I think lore videos for these games have ended up coming awfully close to just being their own miniature industry. You're always playing as someone showing up long after the main event has already concluded, with the history of these worlds and characters being something spoken of in riddles and hidden in item descriptions of the relics you find, etched into the environment around you. You have to piece together what happened to get the world to this state from incomplete information, often with the gaps leaving things up to player interpretation. Yet again this all leads to you feeling very small, and the world around you feeling incomprehensibly large with a history so rich that someone as inconsequential as some random undead/hunter/unkindled can't possibly hope to fully grasp all it.
A lot of this would be considered by many to go against a lot of principles of Industry Standard Good Game Design™, but the sum total of it is game worlds that become just endlessly fascinating and evocative to the people they connect with; it turns out designing games is a lot more than just fulfilling a bunch of heuristics on how games and narratives should look, and FromSoft's holistic approach to how the design and lore of these worlds interact with their mechanics is such a great example of this.
This is the environment into which Elden Ring is born. On the one hand an open world game feels almost inevitable in some sense; FromSoft has spent so much time designing game worlds that have their first priority set as making you feel miniscule contrasted with your environment, the player often feeling like a footnote in a long and storied history, and so going ahead and making these feelings come a bit less from smoke and mirrors and a bit more from something literal feels like, at the very least, something they must have been curious to experiment with ever since the original Dark Souls' deeply interlinked, almost Metroidvania-esque map design. On the other hand, isn't it a bit redundant? If they're already instilling these emotions in people what is there to gain from actual, physical vastness, and wildly excessive runtimes, and aren't there just too many costs involved in pushing your game to be this large? This forms the central conflict at the heart of Elden Ring's existence, and whilst I do largely have a lot of fondness for this game, laying out the conflict in this manner makes it very easy both to see why some people are so besotted with Elden Ring, and also to see why others feel like FromSoft jumped the shark here compared to their previous work. Towering, spectacular, intoxicating ambition meets the awkward reality of trying to make that sense of scale be something rendered so literally in a world where realising that takes unfathomable hours of labour.
If you had asked me what I thought of Elden Ring 30 hours into my playthrough I would have said it felt like one of the best games I'd ever played, and that I was anticipating the possible reality where it ends up becoming my favourite FromSoft game. This opening act for me was frankly magical, and really shows what FromSoft can bring to open world games as they apply many of the principles that they approached their previous Souls games with but on a grander scale. I'm going to avoid explicit spoilers here and make oblique references instead, but the manner in which I first discovered Caelid and Leyndell, how you are shown Siofra, and interacting with The Four Belfries for the first time, all rank as some of my favourite moments in gaming as multiple different tricks are taken advantage of, that follow through on FromSoft's usual strategies but writ unthinkably large, to impart a sense of scale, wonder, curiosity and awe on the player. Combine these tricks with how rich these environments are to explore, the handcrafted element that even the various catacombs or caves had to them, and the ways in which, in stark contrast with other open world games, ticking off lists and markers is heavily de-emphasised in favour of advocating for intrinsic motivation and player agency being much greater focal points of your journey, and I found exploring the Lands Between simply enchanting.
If you had asked me what I thought of Elden Ring 60 hours into my playthrough I would have said it was a really great game, but one that is not without sizable flaws. This is the point at which the cracks start to show as the sad reality of trying to make any open world game is you're going to need to re-use a lot of content to make that achievable. The Erdtree Avatar fight that I'd really enjoyed several hours into my playthrough had been repeated to the point where it had become mundane, the wriggly Tree Spirit I'd found in Stormveil Castle that really wasn't very fun to fight but was still interesting because it was a fairly unique encounter was, apparently, nowhere even close to being a unique encounter, and almost any boss that I found in a catacomb or cave would end up being dredged up again, sometimes multiple times, sometimes even as a normal mob enemy. Even some of the wonderful early-game surprises become diluted a bit as they're repeated, the recurrence of the walking mausoleum being the saddest example to me. The crafting system, that I touched only a handful of times in my entire playthrough, is very much a symptom of the open world format too; you need something you can scatter around the world for players to pick up, some reason for them to jump to that hard to reach ledge, but you can only put so many runes and swords and hats in the game so crafting materials start to seem like a necessity and yet it's hard to say that they really add anything to the game except more menus and a slight pang of disappointment when you finally fight your way to that shiny purple item and it turns out it's just another Arteria Leaf.
Despite this I understand that these design decisions are largely just a necessity in a game this large, and outside of them the game was a really great time for me at this point in my playthrough. Exploring was still lots of fun and whilst the exciting moments of discovery had become a bit less frequent they were still there, often delightful, and the quieter, emptier moments found in areas like the Altus Plateau made for a sense of palpable loneliness that served the game well. Build variety felt the best it ever has to the point where I was toying with the idea of a second playthrough later this year. Ranni's and Fia's questlines were very compelling to me, emotionally, narratively and in terms of the physical journeys they involve, and are among the highlights of the game. The bosses felt like a clear step down in quality from Dark Souls 3, but there were a handful of fights that were still really enjoyable to me in different ways, and the game has a great sense of spectacle that sold even some of its overwise more uneven fights.
By far the most impressive portion of the game at this point were its legacy dungeons though. Even the weakest ones among these are still largely fantastic, and the level design in the two highlights, Stormveil Castle and Leyndell, is among the finest work FromSoft has ever done; packed with secrets to an almost ludicrous extent, constantly looping back in on themselves in really cool ways, and with great encounter design throughout. I adored these portions of the game, but I could never fully shake the notion from my head that if the very best portions of this game are the bits that are contained to a single zone then why exactly is it open world?
Sadly, this is where things start to really drop off for me. My playthrough landed at a little over 90 hours and I'm honestly a little exhausted? Leyndell was the highlight of the game for me, and after this area was complete I was very satisfied with my experience and honestly pretty ready for the game to end soon but it just kept going.
A part of the problem here is that I'm not convinced a game like this was ever meant to be this long; the various Souls design tropes that are very entertaining in a shorter game start to wear thin when you're seeing an enemy with their back to you mournfully looking at an item on the ground for the 25th time. A part of this too is that reused content was starting to rear its head to an absurd extent; a beloved enemy type that I was thrilled to see be brought back and placed in a tonally appropriate area earlier in the game would go on to reappear a few more times in areas much less fitting to it, earlier enemies in general just get brought back far too much (the hands are a great example of this; I adored their first appearance and how well suited they were to that locale, and every appearance since felt like the game was just struggling to know what to fill the environments with), Erdtree Avatars, dragons and Tree Spirits showing up yet again would just start prompting eyerolls from me, even a storyline boss from earlier in the game could be found roaming out in the wild in multiple different places. In possibly the most insulting example a secret boss from earlier in the game, that felt very important from a lore perspective and which was very visually unique and impressive, ends up reappearing as the final boss of an otherwise inconsequential cave. This is the sad reality of trying to make a game this literally vast instead of simply instilling a sense of vastness.
Despite all of this I think I would still have mostly been onboard with the late-game stretch, or would have at least been more forgiving towards it, if all the bosses after you leave Leyndell didn't just...kind of suck? There are far too many ridiculous AoE attacks with some bosses having a few different variations of these, shockwave attacks that hit on multiple different frames and so feel very janky and unintuitive to dodge, ridiculous combo attack strings that would appear a couple times per game previously become the norm now instead, every boss had multiple attacks with ridiculous wind-ups (again, a thing that was used but sparingly so in previous games) to the point that fights feel weirdly disjointed and impossible to sight read, multiple bosses are placed in the same arena without any real concern for how these are going to interact with one another, windows to get in attacks are narrowed to the bare minimum especially for anyone who wants to play the game purely melee, and there are a handful of bosses that are gigantic to the point where you can only see their feet as you slash at them oblivious to whatever is actually happening. In two different cases with these oversized bosses I felt like I spent as much time charging across the arena to reach them whenever they ran away as I did actually engaging in combat.
Many of these late-game bosses are just not fun, poorly designed, and beating them for me felt less like I learnt the fight and played it well and more like I just got lucky and rng landed correctly. Even that exciting feeling of how much build variety the game had started to slip away at this point; the late-game requires that your build be incredibly powerful and severely limits what things are viable as a result. Maybe this is just a case of FromSoft just misbalancing things or having an off-day, a bunch of the bosses in Dark Souls 2 are very disappointing too so it's not like this is a first, but I think this is actually the final, and most frustrating, manifestation of the downsides of open world games. It's so hard to keep one-upping yourself over the course of a 90 hour playtime, in a game with a colossal number of boss fights, that the only way you can guarantee the bosses become even more spectacular is to start pushing them in the direction where they also start to feel unfair too, and with how big the game is leading to there being so much game to test it's easy to believe that maybe these bosses just weren't given as much playtesting as they should have as a result.
I see everyone talking about how Elden Ring refined open world games and is going to change them for years to come and whilst I do think there are a bunch of elements of Elden Ring's approach to the quasi-genre that make for a more satisfying, rewarding, and less cloying experience than what you'd find elsewhere, I think ultimately it made me feel like the best thing this game could do for open world games is convince more developers to just make tighter, more refined experiences instead.
I wouldn't blame someone for being just completely turned off of Elden Ring by these problems that crop up in this final stretch. It left a really sour taste in my mouth at points, even in between moments of still genuinely enchanting imagery and art direction. Ultimately though I really loved so much of my experience with Elden Ring in its earlier hours, and there are many moments from this game that will stick with me for a long time, so despite its fairly severe flaws I can't help but find a lot of love in my heart for it regardless. Elden Ring is a display both of the reasons I love FromSoft's approach to game development, and of why I hope they never make another open world game again.
This is also why I think lore videos for these games have ended up coming awfully close to just being their own miniature industry. You're always playing as someone showing up long after the main event has already concluded, with the history of these worlds and characters being something spoken of in riddles and hidden in item descriptions of the relics you find, etched into the environment around you. You have to piece together what happened to get the world to this state from incomplete information, often with the gaps leaving things up to player interpretation. Yet again this all leads to you feeling very small, and the world around you feeling incomprehensibly large with a history so rich that someone as inconsequential as some random undead/hunter/unkindled can't possibly hope to fully grasp all it.
A lot of this would be considered by many to go against a lot of principles of Industry Standard Good Game Design™, but the sum total of it is game worlds that become just endlessly fascinating and evocative to the people they connect with; it turns out designing games is a lot more than just fulfilling a bunch of heuristics on how games and narratives should look, and FromSoft's holistic approach to how the design and lore of these worlds interact with their mechanics is such a great example of this.
This is the environment into which Elden Ring is born. On the one hand an open world game feels almost inevitable in some sense; FromSoft has spent so much time designing game worlds that have their first priority set as making you feel miniscule contrasted with your environment, the player often feeling like a footnote in a long and storied history, and so going ahead and making these feelings come a bit less from smoke and mirrors and a bit more from something literal feels like, at the very least, something they must have been curious to experiment with ever since the original Dark Souls' deeply interlinked, almost Metroidvania-esque map design. On the other hand, isn't it a bit redundant? If they're already instilling these emotions in people what is there to gain from actual, physical vastness, and wildly excessive runtimes, and aren't there just too many costs involved in pushing your game to be this large? This forms the central conflict at the heart of Elden Ring's existence, and whilst I do largely have a lot of fondness for this game, laying out the conflict in this manner makes it very easy both to see why some people are so besotted with Elden Ring, and also to see why others feel like FromSoft jumped the shark here compared to their previous work. Towering, spectacular, intoxicating ambition meets the awkward reality of trying to make that sense of scale be something rendered so literally in a world where realising that takes unfathomable hours of labour.
If you had asked me what I thought of Elden Ring 30 hours into my playthrough I would have said it felt like one of the best games I'd ever played, and that I was anticipating the possible reality where it ends up becoming my favourite FromSoft game. This opening act for me was frankly magical, and really shows what FromSoft can bring to open world games as they apply many of the principles that they approached their previous Souls games with but on a grander scale. I'm going to avoid explicit spoilers here and make oblique references instead, but the manner in which I first discovered Caelid and Leyndell, how you are shown Siofra, and interacting with The Four Belfries for the first time, all rank as some of my favourite moments in gaming as multiple different tricks are taken advantage of, that follow through on FromSoft's usual strategies but writ unthinkably large, to impart a sense of scale, wonder, curiosity and awe on the player. Combine these tricks with how rich these environments are to explore, the handcrafted element that even the various catacombs or caves had to them, and the ways in which, in stark contrast with other open world games, ticking off lists and markers is heavily de-emphasised in favour of advocating for intrinsic motivation and player agency being much greater focal points of your journey, and I found exploring the Lands Between simply enchanting.
If you had asked me what I thought of Elden Ring 60 hours into my playthrough I would have said it was a really great game, but one that is not without sizable flaws. This is the point at which the cracks start to show as the sad reality of trying to make any open world game is you're going to need to re-use a lot of content to make that achievable. The Erdtree Avatar fight that I'd really enjoyed several hours into my playthrough had been repeated to the point where it had become mundane, the wriggly Tree Spirit I'd found in Stormveil Castle that really wasn't very fun to fight but was still interesting because it was a fairly unique encounter was, apparently, nowhere even close to being a unique encounter, and almost any boss that I found in a catacomb or cave would end up being dredged up again, sometimes multiple times, sometimes even as a normal mob enemy. Even some of the wonderful early-game surprises become diluted a bit as they're repeated, the recurrence of the walking mausoleum being the saddest example to me. The crafting system, that I touched only a handful of times in my entire playthrough, is very much a symptom of the open world format too; you need something you can scatter around the world for players to pick up, some reason for them to jump to that hard to reach ledge, but you can only put so many runes and swords and hats in the game so crafting materials start to seem like a necessity and yet it's hard to say that they really add anything to the game except more menus and a slight pang of disappointment when you finally fight your way to that shiny purple item and it turns out it's just another Arteria Leaf.
Despite this I understand that these design decisions are largely just a necessity in a game this large, and outside of them the game was a really great time for me at this point in my playthrough. Exploring was still lots of fun and whilst the exciting moments of discovery had become a bit less frequent they were still there, often delightful, and the quieter, emptier moments found in areas like the Altus Plateau made for a sense of palpable loneliness that served the game well. Build variety felt the best it ever has to the point where I was toying with the idea of a second playthrough later this year. Ranni's and Fia's questlines were very compelling to me, emotionally, narratively and in terms of the physical journeys they involve, and are among the highlights of the game. The bosses felt like a clear step down in quality from Dark Souls 3, but there were a handful of fights that were still really enjoyable to me in different ways, and the game has a great sense of spectacle that sold even some of its overwise more uneven fights.
By far the most impressive portion of the game at this point were its legacy dungeons though. Even the weakest ones among these are still largely fantastic, and the level design in the two highlights, Stormveil Castle and Leyndell, is among the finest work FromSoft has ever done; packed with secrets to an almost ludicrous extent, constantly looping back in on themselves in really cool ways, and with great encounter design throughout. I adored these portions of the game, but I could never fully shake the notion from my head that if the very best portions of this game are the bits that are contained to a single zone then why exactly is it open world?
Sadly, this is where things start to really drop off for me. My playthrough landed at a little over 90 hours and I'm honestly a little exhausted? Leyndell was the highlight of the game for me, and after this area was complete I was very satisfied with my experience and honestly pretty ready for the game to end soon but it just kept going.
A part of the problem here is that I'm not convinced a game like this was ever meant to be this long; the various Souls design tropes that are very entertaining in a shorter game start to wear thin when you're seeing an enemy with their back to you mournfully looking at an item on the ground for the 25th time. A part of this too is that reused content was starting to rear its head to an absurd extent; a beloved enemy type that I was thrilled to see be brought back and placed in a tonally appropriate area earlier in the game would go on to reappear a few more times in areas much less fitting to it, earlier enemies in general just get brought back far too much (the hands are a great example of this; I adored their first appearance and how well suited they were to that locale, and every appearance since felt like the game was just struggling to know what to fill the environments with), Erdtree Avatars, dragons and Tree Spirits showing up yet again would just start prompting eyerolls from me, even a storyline boss from earlier in the game could be found roaming out in the wild in multiple different places. In possibly the most insulting example a secret boss from earlier in the game, that felt very important from a lore perspective and which was very visually unique and impressive, ends up reappearing as the final boss of an otherwise inconsequential cave. This is the sad reality of trying to make a game this literally vast instead of simply instilling a sense of vastness.
Despite all of this I think I would still have mostly been onboard with the late-game stretch, or would have at least been more forgiving towards it, if all the bosses after you leave Leyndell didn't just...kind of suck? There are far too many ridiculous AoE attacks with some bosses having a few different variations of these, shockwave attacks that hit on multiple different frames and so feel very janky and unintuitive to dodge, ridiculous combo attack strings that would appear a couple times per game previously become the norm now instead, every boss had multiple attacks with ridiculous wind-ups (again, a thing that was used but sparingly so in previous games) to the point that fights feel weirdly disjointed and impossible to sight read, multiple bosses are placed in the same arena without any real concern for how these are going to interact with one another, windows to get in attacks are narrowed to the bare minimum especially for anyone who wants to play the game purely melee, and there are a handful of bosses that are gigantic to the point where you can only see their feet as you slash at them oblivious to whatever is actually happening. In two different cases with these oversized bosses I felt like I spent as much time charging across the arena to reach them whenever they ran away as I did actually engaging in combat.
Many of these late-game bosses are just not fun, poorly designed, and beating them for me felt less like I learnt the fight and played it well and more like I just got lucky and rng landed correctly. Even that exciting feeling of how much build variety the game had started to slip away at this point; the late-game requires that your build be incredibly powerful and severely limits what things are viable as a result. Maybe this is just a case of FromSoft just misbalancing things or having an off-day, a bunch of the bosses in Dark Souls 2 are very disappointing too so it's not like this is a first, but I think this is actually the final, and most frustrating, manifestation of the downsides of open world games. It's so hard to keep one-upping yourself over the course of a 90 hour playtime, in a game with a colossal number of boss fights, that the only way you can guarantee the bosses become even more spectacular is to start pushing them in the direction where they also start to feel unfair too, and with how big the game is leading to there being so much game to test it's easy to believe that maybe these bosses just weren't given as much playtesting as they should have as a result.
I see everyone talking about how Elden Ring refined open world games and is going to change them for years to come and whilst I do think there are a bunch of elements of Elden Ring's approach to the quasi-genre that make for a more satisfying, rewarding, and less cloying experience than what you'd find elsewhere, I think ultimately it made me feel like the best thing this game could do for open world games is convince more developers to just make tighter, more refined experiences instead.
I wouldn't blame someone for being just completely turned off of Elden Ring by these problems that crop up in this final stretch. It left a really sour taste in my mouth at points, even in between moments of still genuinely enchanting imagery and art direction. Ultimately though I really loved so much of my experience with Elden Ring in its earlier hours, and there are many moments from this game that will stick with me for a long time, so despite its fairly severe flaws I can't help but find a lot of love in my heart for it regardless. Elden Ring is a display both of the reasons I love FromSoft's approach to game development, and of why I hope they never make another open world game again.
Tokimeki Memorial
1994
La fantasía de revivir la adolescencia como excusa para reflexionar sobre esa sensación agridulce de mirar atrás, de las decisiones tomadas y lo que pudo ser. Un tablero de juego sobre el que representar una función de adolescentes aparentando, evolucionando, enamorándose y equivocándose.
Versión larga: https://yosoyira.medium.com/tokimeki-memorial-8edd29c91070
Versión larga: https://yosoyira.medium.com/tokimeki-memorial-8edd29c91070
El prologo al capitulo perdido de esa saga que medita sobre la dualidad.
Inesperado plot twist. Ground Zeroes es un reflejo del primer episodio de MGS2, pura pornografia de accion y espionaje que deriva hacia un final turbio y extraño que parece enganchar la fantasia con la realidad. Tambien es, como MGS2, un reflejo sobre la imposibilidad de desligarnos de las nociones de lo que es "un buen videojuego"
Jugar con la linea que separa la explotacion, la parodia y la autocritica parece estar prohibido en los videojuegos, la necesidad de brindar un punto de acceso asequible para el jugador por medio de un centro moral facil donde se acepta antes la accion cartoon que la posibilidad de manejar la pornografia estetica y la abstraccion. Casi todos los acercamientos formales parecen basarse en la calidad del apartado, el tejido en si, por encima de la expresion y el retrato, confundiendo forma con materia y calidad con profundidad que, partiendo de ahi, ese razonamiento se arrastra hasta lo narrativo, lo literal y lo moral. la sustraccion selectiva a la que juegos como MGSV se ven sometidos es prueba de lo poco que en ocasiones entendemos realmente (me incluyo, por supuesto), ya no de videojuegos, si no de posibilidades. Con Sustraccion selectiva me refiero a la focalizacion de aspectos concretos que nos hacen salvar o condenar un videojuego concreto, en MGSVgz:
-La bomba en la vagina como condena.
-La jugabilidad como redencion.
Para mi ninguno tiene sentido.
La cuestion de la misoginia interiorizada de Kojima es evidente y una absoluta lastima, tan evidente que el mismo la reconoce de forma casi abierta. ha intentado varias veces de manera honesta tratar la sexualidad como parte de sus mundos, siempre una mix entre la nocion japonesa y Norte-americana del sexo y los cuerpos, el exhibicionismo y el empoderamiento, tanto para hombre como para mujeres, aunque claramente al ser MGS una saga que maneja la masculinidad y el mito del heroe, la peor parte se la lleva el genero femenino.
Dicho esto, el asunto de la bomba me parece mas una super-dramatizacion de un acto atroz que sadismo sexual en si. Quiza me equivoque, pero no veo mas atencion en ello que la incomodidad y el retrato de una tragedia de guerra, crafteada dentro de un momento intencionalmente incomodo, Y Quiet me hace sentir demasiado incomodo, entiendo que forme parte del punto de TPP, me gusta la teoria, pero no comparto las formas.
La cuestion de la jugabilidad es el punto de sustraccion selectiva mas grande y en la que mas "Criticos" caen: Apuntan a una ausencia de autocritica mientras alaban las posibilidades del gameplay cuando ven un video de Dunkey, sin pensar en disociar o hilar lo que sucede con nada que no este dentro del videojuego, siempre desde la relacion avatar-jugador. lo que vemos es lo que hay y los videojuegos son literales.
Es un modo de ver las cosas con el que cada vez concuerdo menos.
Aparte,hay algo mas anti- americano que ofrecerte guantanamo como un campo de juego para despues desatar un 9/11 sobre el hogar del avatar/protagonista??
Bastante genio.
La posibilidad de crear mundos digitales donde el autor pueda integrar personificaciones de sus predilecciones, preocupaciones y, por que no? Fallos y problemas personales como un mashup se ve lapidada por las cuestiones de tono, necesidad de un ancla moral y la necesidad de satisfacer al jugador, claro, un juego se supone que debe ser divertido.
Pues No.
No necesariamente.
En que punto perdimos la capacidad de entender que el contenido ideologico cuestionable que un autor incluya en su obra no tiene que ser una personificacion 1 a 1 del mismo? Ni idea, pero en videojuegos es algo extendido. Quiza porque gozan de menor reconocimiento cultural? Por sus cualidades inmediatas? Porque son divertidos?
En ocasiones uno debe separar para ver con perspectiva, encontrar ese algo especial, pero habria que empezar a pensar como separar mejor para reencajar mejor todo.
Inesperado plot twist. Ground Zeroes es un reflejo del primer episodio de MGS2, pura pornografia de accion y espionaje que deriva hacia un final turbio y extraño que parece enganchar la fantasia con la realidad. Tambien es, como MGS2, un reflejo sobre la imposibilidad de desligarnos de las nociones de lo que es "un buen videojuego"
Jugar con la linea que separa la explotacion, la parodia y la autocritica parece estar prohibido en los videojuegos, la necesidad de brindar un punto de acceso asequible para el jugador por medio de un centro moral facil donde se acepta antes la accion cartoon que la posibilidad de manejar la pornografia estetica y la abstraccion. Casi todos los acercamientos formales parecen basarse en la calidad del apartado, el tejido en si, por encima de la expresion y el retrato, confundiendo forma con materia y calidad con profundidad que, partiendo de ahi, ese razonamiento se arrastra hasta lo narrativo, lo literal y lo moral. la sustraccion selectiva a la que juegos como MGSV se ven sometidos es prueba de lo poco que en ocasiones entendemos realmente (me incluyo, por supuesto), ya no de videojuegos, si no de posibilidades. Con Sustraccion selectiva me refiero a la focalizacion de aspectos concretos que nos hacen salvar o condenar un videojuego concreto, en MGSVgz:
-La bomba en la vagina como condena.
-La jugabilidad como redencion.
Para mi ninguno tiene sentido.
La cuestion de la misoginia interiorizada de Kojima es evidente y una absoluta lastima, tan evidente que el mismo la reconoce de forma casi abierta. ha intentado varias veces de manera honesta tratar la sexualidad como parte de sus mundos, siempre una mix entre la nocion japonesa y Norte-americana del sexo y los cuerpos, el exhibicionismo y el empoderamiento, tanto para hombre como para mujeres, aunque claramente al ser MGS una saga que maneja la masculinidad y el mito del heroe, la peor parte se la lleva el genero femenino.
Dicho esto, el asunto de la bomba me parece mas una super-dramatizacion de un acto atroz que sadismo sexual en si. Quiza me equivoque, pero no veo mas atencion en ello que la incomodidad y el retrato de una tragedia de guerra, crafteada dentro de un momento intencionalmente incomodo, Y Quiet me hace sentir demasiado incomodo, entiendo que forme parte del punto de TPP, me gusta la teoria, pero no comparto las formas.
La cuestion de la jugabilidad es el punto de sustraccion selectiva mas grande y en la que mas "Criticos" caen: Apuntan a una ausencia de autocritica mientras alaban las posibilidades del gameplay cuando ven un video de Dunkey, sin pensar en disociar o hilar lo que sucede con nada que no este dentro del videojuego, siempre desde la relacion avatar-jugador. lo que vemos es lo que hay y los videojuegos son literales.
Es un modo de ver las cosas con el que cada vez concuerdo menos.
Aparte,hay algo mas anti- americano que ofrecerte guantanamo como un campo de juego para despues desatar un 9/11 sobre el hogar del avatar/protagonista??
Bastante genio.
La posibilidad de crear mundos digitales donde el autor pueda integrar personificaciones de sus predilecciones, preocupaciones y, por que no? Fallos y problemas personales como un mashup se ve lapidada por las cuestiones de tono, necesidad de un ancla moral y la necesidad de satisfacer al jugador, claro, un juego se supone que debe ser divertido.
Pues No.
No necesariamente.
En que punto perdimos la capacidad de entender que el contenido ideologico cuestionable que un autor incluya en su obra no tiene que ser una personificacion 1 a 1 del mismo? Ni idea, pero en videojuegos es algo extendido. Quiza porque gozan de menor reconocimiento cultural? Por sus cualidades inmediatas? Porque son divertidos?
En ocasiones uno debe separar para ver con perspectiva, encontrar ese algo especial, pero habria que empezar a pensar como separar mejor para reencajar mejor todo.
Lieve Oma
2016
Like that scene in Bergman's Saraband where the young girl cuts up vegetables with the old woman waiting for her grandfather to come back.
Reminds me of the more recent Sciamma's Petite Maman on what's here and what isn't.
Reminds me of a lot of things, cause it's short and it's things I never did.
A game like pine, honey, cinnamon, the warmth of autumn.
There's that empty but not sad moment of self conciousness in the present when you only hear your feet in the snow cut up by short silences.
It could've had purposeful camera angles instead of the free camera.
After the grandma tells you the snow was like ice cream to her younger self the following last present part could've had more saturated colours.
Made me realise more complex things on the symbolism of autumn: it's an inbetween or an end, appropriate for anger and sadness, weirdly (or not!) enough that's where its comfy feel comes from, it touches ALL of your emotions.
Reminds me of the more recent Sciamma's Petite Maman on what's here and what isn't.
Reminds me of a lot of things, cause it's short and it's things I never did.
A game like pine, honey, cinnamon, the warmth of autumn.
There's that empty but not sad moment of self conciousness in the present when you only hear your feet in the snow cut up by short silences.
It could've had purposeful camera angles instead of the free camera.
After the grandma tells you the snow was like ice cream to her younger self the following last present part could've had more saturated colours.
Made me realise more complex things on the symbolism of autumn: it's an inbetween or an end, appropriate for anger and sadness, weirdly (or not!) enough that's where its comfy feel comes from, it touches ALL of your emotions.