very conflicted on this one.

it's incredibly cool that something like this exists, and that it existed back in '98, and it's often very effective at being unsettling and weird, but i don't think i really got the experience i wanted out of it. all the recurring locations and not as many crazy wtf moments as i hoped for kinda left me disappointed, and maybe i just need to play it more to get to the weirder stuff but after 35 days it got really repetitive. might just be me doing something wrong, since i have no idea how the linking system works. the fmv sequences were pretty sick though.

i don't really enjoy the actual experience of playing this, either. moving around is kinda weirdly unfluid and slow. the sound design is also very weird. this is some truly penis music and it's kinda neat that they went with this approach as opposed to just making some boring dark ambient, but the footstep sound effects and many others just take me out of it. just feel like this could've been presented in a better way overall. as far as games like this go, i much prefer yume nikki, or even something like 2:22 AM.

stylish as hell, incredible soundtrack, simple yet gripping mechanics and a wildly intense challenge. everything i love about a modern indie game like this. brutal difficulty spike towards the end, but otherwise i love how gradually this game introduces new mechanics and mixes them up with old ones.

however,

ow my fucking fingers

i have a lot to say about this game at all times, and i've thought about writing a big, expansive review detailing everything i think about it. that might happen some day, i don't know, but for now, i think i kinda wanna write up one shorter review at a time, each dedicated to more fleeting thoughts and smaller moments experienced in the game.

i was a little bored, so i decided to just start this game up again and see how far i'll get. it was going pretty nicely, in one sitting i managed to climb like 90% of the mountain this time around. i've had the ocassional fall but nothing too bad, at least until the end of this playthrough. i reached the bucket, near the end, for the third or fourth time this playthrough, and just messed about for a bit trying to clear it. at one point, i slipped up, fell underneath the snake and then all the way down to rock bottom. and you know who else was there? the orange from orange hell, the infamously terrifying part of the game. at this moment i just stared at the game with my mouth agape, in awe over what this game dared do to me. i moved my hammer a bit. i couldn't bring myself to start over. i bounced down and just started randomly jumping around and trying to play cricket with the orange, and then quit the game.

now, sure, this fall is nothing new to me, seeing as i've beaten this game before, and it's nothing unusual to anyone who's played this game before. basically everyone who has touched this game knows that feeling of defeat all too well. it's still sorta interesting, though, because i really do feel a sense of reality in that failure. there's just something so true about life to be found in this game, in this moment, this loss of everything from the top. foddy's words from the beginning of the game, "starting over is harder than starting up", rang loudly in the back of my head. this moment is what actually made me bump this from a 4.5 to a 5.0. i can't not have infinite respect for how cruel it allows itself to be.

i've always thought of this game as a charlie kaufman film in video game form, and it's something that, like this game itself, feels much easier to feel than to actually explain, but i'll try. it's this sense of infinite absurdity that plagues both the game and kaufman's works, the trails of surreal humour that envelops these worlds while also bringing forward a clearer understanding of them, the feelings of discomfort and the way human nature is intervowen with its nonsensical surroundings. i think it's very interesting how the feelings of patheticness and pitifulness have a strong effect on us humans, how they simultaneously evoke sadness and amusement, how that misery can feel profound while also arousing a laugh that feels like it must be hidden at all costs. i climbed all the way up that mountain, and i lost to a bucket. is there anything funnier or sadder than that?

this game is a difficult and unwelcoming work of art, and it is aware of that, but if i was to command you how to use up your time, i would tell you to endure through it. accept each setback, forgive every fall, even if you think you have better uses for your time, even if it feels impossible, even if it just feels completely absurd (and it probably is). this is as rewarding as art gets when you really let yourself succumb to it, when you let yourself be vulnerable to it, when you take in every act of cruelty it does upon you with its unforgivingness and push through it to see the end of it. don't turn your back on it forever when it punches you in the face. accept every punch. climb on.

this took me a bit longer than expected to finish due to being busy with other things while playing so i didn't have much of a unified experience sadly. oh well.

this game is very funny and i love pirate-themed stuff so i was naturally drawn to this, and for the most part the great humour i expected was delivered: this has some of the most memorable comedic moments in any game i've ever played. if there's one thing i've learned, though, it's that i am absolutely useless with this kind of point-and-click puzzle game. i seem to absolutely lack the capacity of silly lateral thinking that this game requires. while i did solve a good deal of these puzzles by myself, for the most part i overused the hints system out of pure confusion. the lame part is that whenever i did, my reaction was never "aw why didn't i think of that!?", it was just "that's so fucking stupid i wouldn't have ever thought of that". i expected the puzzles to be tricky but clever, but a lot of them just felt obtuse and learning what i was supposed to do rarely impressed me. as far as puzzles go, the game peaked early with the fight against the sword master, which i really really loved and found actually super clever, and i wish the game had more moments like that.

overall, i dunno. i liked everything about this game except for the gameplay itself. i don't really feel a whole lot of interest to explore point-and-click stuff besides the handful of big representatives of the genre. some of the worst puzzles in this game made me rage more than any rage game. the humour and silly atmosphere made it a positive experience, but i don't think i particularly have much interest in playing the sequels. neat, but not really for me