mari_maciota
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Kingdom Hearts
2002
Ever since I was around 14 or so, I’ve made irregular pilgrimages to one of Scotland’s lesser known Lochs. As a large body of water that stretches into the horizon, it is one of the very few features of the surrounding landscape that’s remained untouched since I was born.
I used to live a short distance from it, but these days getting there is a whole journey. In college it took me a full forty minutes to simply get there, and now as a much older adult the entire return trip is around five hours. Where I was once simply passed by some buildings and later a nearby village, I now pass by three entire towns, a significant stretch of wilderness, an old forest trail, and an unmaintained stretch of road which alarmingly doesn’t appear on Google Maps.
I like to make the journey on foot, personally. Despite possessing a not-insignificant case of thalassophobia, reaching the loch after two and a half hours brings a sense of relief after what is always going to be a backbreaking trip.
Why do I make this journey, you ask?
I feel that as we get older, we stop being “bigger versions of ourselves” entirely and start being humanoid matryoshka dolls. While at first we iterate on ourselves, eventually the iterations increase so much that the self we used to be becomes an entirely different, distant person. In time, we lose that older self even if we retain some memories, ideas or feelings.
I like to journey to that loch, and a specific rocky outcrop on its north side, because it’s perhaps the only place on Earth where I have a direct link to my younger selves. The one thing all incarnations of the Mira project have in common is that they’ve sat or been sat on that outcrop, starting as early as one year old, and acknowledging this is humbling.
Let’s snap back a bit though, 2012. Sitting in Maths besides this then-infinitely annoying fuck we’ll call Jason for privacy’s sake - and also because I know he’s the kind of guy that would use Backloggd. Sorry if you see this lad, I still have your copy of Ico & Shadow of the Colossus.
Jason was… The picture most people conjure in their mind when they hear “ned” (or “chav” if you want a more familiar term); he had the “hawhawhaw” laugh, styled himself as a hardman, didn’t dress particularly well, seemed to abhor anything that seemed earnest or intellectual, primarily spoke through his nostrils, and was so dense that I had to explain what organs were to him two years later.
And in 2012, he turns to me and says: “Here, ye like games don’t ye? Git that Kingdom Hearts when it comes oot.”
He whips out his phone, the ugliest Blackberry I’d ever seen, and shows me a grainy bitcrushed trailer for the then-new Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Remix.
This dumbfounded me, because even on that tiny-ass screen I could tell that this was not a game I would ever associate with him. He goes on to tell me that he played it as a wean and loved it, prompting a further conversation about games that led to a friendship which surprised me - a then-isolated nerd who was overeducated and undermedicated for everything academia asked of her.
Per his recommendation, I picked up Kingdom Hearts 1.5 the following year and… Didn’t really get it. I enjoyed the combat, though the music was phenomenal, and the story was neat, but I felt like I was missing something. It compelled me, yes, but the source of that was lost on me. I never had the chance to discuss it with Jason, for despite our unlikely friendship we ultimately moved in different teenage social circles and, once classes started being sorted by performance, he and I never saw one another in class either.
2013 was 11 years ago, so there’s been some time to reflect.
Recently, the KH games came to Steam and, rather hilariously, Square Enix ignored the prior Epic Games Store release to pretend that this was the first time KH had ever touched PC. They even got Utada Hikaru to rerecord Simple & Clean. Hilarious!
I’ve been watching people play KH1 again - not playing it myself, for I don’t really have the energy to tackle a long game so soon after Library of Ruina - and it’s got me noticing a lot of stuff that my younger self fundamentally couldn’t get.
What strikes Adult Mira about KH1 is how it feels… Adolescent. Not in the sense that it’s childish or cringe or whatever disingenuous cynics often call it, but… Man I’m struggling to word this one.
[Insert me closing this doc for like three days and reopening it.]
I remember something that would irregularly happen in High School, and unlike many of my anecdotes I don’t think these are Scotland-specific.
Every now and then, in the very early days, someone would show up to P.E wearing a Disney shirt or whatever, or they’d have a Disney backpack/notepad/whatever. The crueller ones would laugh, while even the nicer ones would side-eye the victim and awkwardly chuckle at their friends.
You might’ve heard someone say “your body undergoes changes through puberty/as you grow up”, and in a way I find this sentiment to be a kindness. It carefully omits the actually harrowing, less obvious parts of adolescence. Namely, the death of youth.
I know the term “irony poisoning” is considered to be an internet thing, but frankly I see it manifest even in fully offline people and it seems to naturally occur in the process of going from a child to a citizen of the world. Joy and earnestness are taboo, and cynicism is expected. Nobody should ever be joyful or love “bad”/”childish” things seriously, and if they do it must be a joke - told by them or at their expense, it matters not. Stuff like that. You must laugh at the awkward undiagnosed autistic girl in your class with the Cinderella backpack. She’s a kid, and you’re not kids anymore. Laugh.
This continues into adulthood. How many people have you seen dunk on ‘cringe fanfiction’, ‘bad art’, or anything else where passion clearly outstreps base level technical talent?
You might wonder what the fuck this has to do with Kingdom Hearts, and I would tell you that I kinda see the game as an analogue for that unavoidable death of youth.
Ignore the fantastical elements for a moment, and the opening hours are of three teenagers longing to find out what exists beyond the horizon of their small corner of existence, only to find out the hard way that it’s so vast as to be deeply and spiritually underwhelming. And, unfortunately for them, they’re now a part of this world. Their forced and unwanted understanding of the world around them drives wedges between them, and through this division, one of them comes into contact with an adult who no longer views them as a child but as a tool to be cultivated and used for their own games.
SImilarly, the Disney elements feel like an attempt to broach that specific brand of teenage existentialism using iconography that’s both universal to the player (unless they somehow avoided the most enduring plague of the modern age: The Walt Disney Company) and relatable to the subject of being an adolescent. Despite the relatively peppy and almost twee trappings of each ~world~, each mini arc Kingdom Hearts doesn’t exactly feel triumphant. Riku always ends up seeming further and further away from Sora, something which only gets worse as the credits roll gets closer and closer. Likewise, the Disney elements start seeming less and less magical, ultimately ending up with the iconic Princesses being used as fuel to further someone’s goals.
I know that Kairi being one of the seven Princesses might seem like the writers trying to build a connection between the Disney stuff and the OC stuff, but c’mon. Surely you must’ve known someone that, as a kid, wanted to be a Disney Princess. It’s all too fitting that such a desire is distorted for Ansem to open his gate to hell.
In particular, my adult self has always been struck by that reference to the stars disappearing out of the sky in this game. The sky sure did seem brighter when we were younger.
As a branch of all of this, it’s easy to see the Heartless as a manifestation of the particularly caustic cynicism and joylessness that awaits children once their childhood begins to evaporate. They are no longer vessels for curiosity or play, they are now cogs, bolts and conveyors in a machine whose operation they have no say in or influence over. The Heartless are a corruptive force that sap everything from the various worlds, in this case Disney ones, which slots in so perfectly as an analogue to that nasty disdain for anything childish that so many people pick up unconsciously and utterly refuse to either interrogate or dispense with.
Jason and I didn’t talk much after High School, even after fate had us in the same college class for a single lesson of the week, but he did tell me something once while we were out on a smoke break that had a lasting impact.
When my teens arrived, I threw all of my stuffed animals in a trash bag and let them fester in the bottom of my closet. Among them was a Winnie the Pooh plush that I’d had since I was literally three years old. I was a big girl then, no time for stuffies. But yet I did yearn for them - in part because I just slept better while holding something, and pillows weren’t a good substitute.
Years later, while in college, Jason - now having reformed himself as a much less ~neddy~ soul who found his passion and the ability to dress well in wargames - offhandedly mentioned that he’d slept with his stuffed bear for years. He showed me a picture, and it was a ratty old thing, but clearly well loved. I didn’t immediately change my tone regarding stuffed animals, I even laughed it off, but the subsequent year was hellish. After that, I was all too eager to crack open that trash bag and free them.
You see the same sort of attitude with Kingdom Hearts itself, really. I’ve noticed that so-called ex-fans of it often point to it as a cringe teenage hyperfixation, while also talking about it with the same fondness most people reserve for significant others or childhood friends they hold some affection for. You ever see a straight dude who’s clearly a hyper-repressed gay man talk about his ‘best friend’? Kinda like that.
KH is, to lots of people, ‘cringe’. It is naked in its sincerity and Nomura makes no attempt to hide that it’s his pinboard passion project where 90% of additions are justified with “I wanted to” and the other 10% are “Square Enix asked me to”. As with everything so unabashedly sincere, those who wear cynicism like a second skin or overly irony-poisoned nerds who still make Sonichu jokes in 2024 often dismiss it. Indeed, much like stuffed animals, so many people seem to think themselves above a game where a twink can stunlock Sephiroth with moves that’d make Vergil look amateurish.
Look, I’ll be honest, even I take potshots at KH sometimes. Not the first game, as you’ve noticed, but subsequent entries do leave a lot to be desired. Where I - and I suspect many other KH fans - differ is that most of my potshots stem from KH losing a lot of the ironclad consistency, relatively self-contained writing and airtight pacing of the first game.
I think it’s really telling that Ansem’s insistence he can “unlock people’s hearts” only leads to them becoming absolute monsters. I wonder if there’s anything to examine there. Riku, tragically, loses this fight to Ansem and becomes yet another pawn for him, while Sora’s unwillingness to entirely sever the ties that bind him to what came before is what allows him to stay free. I hesitate to even jokingly call it ‘corny’, it’s just a very upfront admission that you’ll lose your soul if you can’t keep a hold of any whimsy or an ability to engage in play.
“Mira, where does the Final Fantasy stuff slot in?”
It’s cool as fuck, next question.
Despite seeming simple and clean on the surface, Kingdom Hearts is a series I don’t think one can truly critique, praise or even react to without inadvertently revealing something about themselves that - presumably - they’d want to keep hidden. It’s one of those games where I can often tell how cynical someone is by how willing they are to dismiss everything about it off the cuff. It’s why I just opened with the personal anecdote - I hate subtext, it’s for cowards and subs.
That all said, I do find it somewhat sad that despite this game being aimed at children and teens, neither of them are particularly well equipped to explain why it might be resonant or even resonate with it in the first place. Indeed, I myself didn’t get it all the way back in 2013. They’ll find it fun, sure, but some things you only understand with time I guess.
I feel like, more than anything, the part of Kingdom Hearts that embodies all of this is the very first song you hear on the menu: Dearly Beloved. It’s hardly heroic, not even cool or foreboding. No, it’s a piece that feels sad? It somehow manages to capture that really specific feeling of seeing a normally-populated city at night for the first time and realizing that, without people occupying that space, it’s just concrete, power lines, glass and in Glasgow’s case also a sizable amount of potholes.
To end off… I silently weep for people who think they’re too old for Kingdom Hearts, or indeed for anything like it. Not because I look down on them, but because I feel losing the part of you that can enjoy things like this, stuffed animals, and goofy (hyuk) apparel must be miserable. That first death, right there in the soul, is always a harbinger of worse things to come.
But hey, it’s never too late to claw it back. You, too, can play Kingdom Hearts or spend £1000~ on stuffed rabbits.
I used to live a short distance from it, but these days getting there is a whole journey. In college it took me a full forty minutes to simply get there, and now as a much older adult the entire return trip is around five hours. Where I was once simply passed by some buildings and later a nearby village, I now pass by three entire towns, a significant stretch of wilderness, an old forest trail, and an unmaintained stretch of road which alarmingly doesn’t appear on Google Maps.
I like to make the journey on foot, personally. Despite possessing a not-insignificant case of thalassophobia, reaching the loch after two and a half hours brings a sense of relief after what is always going to be a backbreaking trip.
Why do I make this journey, you ask?
I feel that as we get older, we stop being “bigger versions of ourselves” entirely and start being humanoid matryoshka dolls. While at first we iterate on ourselves, eventually the iterations increase so much that the self we used to be becomes an entirely different, distant person. In time, we lose that older self even if we retain some memories, ideas or feelings.
I like to journey to that loch, and a specific rocky outcrop on its north side, because it’s perhaps the only place on Earth where I have a direct link to my younger selves. The one thing all incarnations of the Mira project have in common is that they’ve sat or been sat on that outcrop, starting as early as one year old, and acknowledging this is humbling.
Let’s snap back a bit though, 2012. Sitting in Maths besides this then-infinitely annoying fuck we’ll call Jason for privacy’s sake - and also because I know he’s the kind of guy that would use Backloggd. Sorry if you see this lad, I still have your copy of Ico & Shadow of the Colossus.
Jason was… The picture most people conjure in their mind when they hear “ned” (or “chav” if you want a more familiar term); he had the “hawhawhaw” laugh, styled himself as a hardman, didn’t dress particularly well, seemed to abhor anything that seemed earnest or intellectual, primarily spoke through his nostrils, and was so dense that I had to explain what organs were to him two years later.
And in 2012, he turns to me and says: “Here, ye like games don’t ye? Git that Kingdom Hearts when it comes oot.”
He whips out his phone, the ugliest Blackberry I’d ever seen, and shows me a grainy bitcrushed trailer for the then-new Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Remix.
This dumbfounded me, because even on that tiny-ass screen I could tell that this was not a game I would ever associate with him. He goes on to tell me that he played it as a wean and loved it, prompting a further conversation about games that led to a friendship which surprised me - a then-isolated nerd who was overeducated and undermedicated for everything academia asked of her.
Per his recommendation, I picked up Kingdom Hearts 1.5 the following year and… Didn’t really get it. I enjoyed the combat, though the music was phenomenal, and the story was neat, but I felt like I was missing something. It compelled me, yes, but the source of that was lost on me. I never had the chance to discuss it with Jason, for despite our unlikely friendship we ultimately moved in different teenage social circles and, once classes started being sorted by performance, he and I never saw one another in class either.
2013 was 11 years ago, so there’s been some time to reflect.
Recently, the KH games came to Steam and, rather hilariously, Square Enix ignored the prior Epic Games Store release to pretend that this was the first time KH had ever touched PC. They even got Utada Hikaru to rerecord Simple & Clean. Hilarious!
I’ve been watching people play KH1 again - not playing it myself, for I don’t really have the energy to tackle a long game so soon after Library of Ruina - and it’s got me noticing a lot of stuff that my younger self fundamentally couldn’t get.
What strikes Adult Mira about KH1 is how it feels… Adolescent. Not in the sense that it’s childish or cringe or whatever disingenuous cynics often call it, but… Man I’m struggling to word this one.
[Insert me closing this doc for like three days and reopening it.]
I remember something that would irregularly happen in High School, and unlike many of my anecdotes I don’t think these are Scotland-specific.
Every now and then, in the very early days, someone would show up to P.E wearing a Disney shirt or whatever, or they’d have a Disney backpack/notepad/whatever. The crueller ones would laugh, while even the nicer ones would side-eye the victim and awkwardly chuckle at their friends.
You might’ve heard someone say “your body undergoes changes through puberty/as you grow up”, and in a way I find this sentiment to be a kindness. It carefully omits the actually harrowing, less obvious parts of adolescence. Namely, the death of youth.
I know the term “irony poisoning” is considered to be an internet thing, but frankly I see it manifest even in fully offline people and it seems to naturally occur in the process of going from a child to a citizen of the world. Joy and earnestness are taboo, and cynicism is expected. Nobody should ever be joyful or love “bad”/”childish” things seriously, and if they do it must be a joke - told by them or at their expense, it matters not. Stuff like that. You must laugh at the awkward undiagnosed autistic girl in your class with the Cinderella backpack. She’s a kid, and you’re not kids anymore. Laugh.
This continues into adulthood. How many people have you seen dunk on ‘cringe fanfiction’, ‘bad art’, or anything else where passion clearly outstreps base level technical talent?
You might wonder what the fuck this has to do with Kingdom Hearts, and I would tell you that I kinda see the game as an analogue for that unavoidable death of youth.
Ignore the fantastical elements for a moment, and the opening hours are of three teenagers longing to find out what exists beyond the horizon of their small corner of existence, only to find out the hard way that it’s so vast as to be deeply and spiritually underwhelming. And, unfortunately for them, they’re now a part of this world. Their forced and unwanted understanding of the world around them drives wedges between them, and through this division, one of them comes into contact with an adult who no longer views them as a child but as a tool to be cultivated and used for their own games.
SImilarly, the Disney elements feel like an attempt to broach that specific brand of teenage existentialism using iconography that’s both universal to the player (unless they somehow avoided the most enduring plague of the modern age: The Walt Disney Company) and relatable to the subject of being an adolescent. Despite the relatively peppy and almost twee trappings of each ~world~, each mini arc Kingdom Hearts doesn’t exactly feel triumphant. Riku always ends up seeming further and further away from Sora, something which only gets worse as the credits roll gets closer and closer. Likewise, the Disney elements start seeming less and less magical, ultimately ending up with the iconic Princesses being used as fuel to further someone’s goals.
I know that Kairi being one of the seven Princesses might seem like the writers trying to build a connection between the Disney stuff and the OC stuff, but c’mon. Surely you must’ve known someone that, as a kid, wanted to be a Disney Princess. It’s all too fitting that such a desire is distorted for Ansem to open his gate to hell.
In particular, my adult self has always been struck by that reference to the stars disappearing out of the sky in this game. The sky sure did seem brighter when we were younger.
As a branch of all of this, it’s easy to see the Heartless as a manifestation of the particularly caustic cynicism and joylessness that awaits children once their childhood begins to evaporate. They are no longer vessels for curiosity or play, they are now cogs, bolts and conveyors in a machine whose operation they have no say in or influence over. The Heartless are a corruptive force that sap everything from the various worlds, in this case Disney ones, which slots in so perfectly as an analogue to that nasty disdain for anything childish that so many people pick up unconsciously and utterly refuse to either interrogate or dispense with.
Jason and I didn’t talk much after High School, even after fate had us in the same college class for a single lesson of the week, but he did tell me something once while we were out on a smoke break that had a lasting impact.
When my teens arrived, I threw all of my stuffed animals in a trash bag and let them fester in the bottom of my closet. Among them was a Winnie the Pooh plush that I’d had since I was literally three years old. I was a big girl then, no time for stuffies. But yet I did yearn for them - in part because I just slept better while holding something, and pillows weren’t a good substitute.
Years later, while in college, Jason - now having reformed himself as a much less ~neddy~ soul who found his passion and the ability to dress well in wargames - offhandedly mentioned that he’d slept with his stuffed bear for years. He showed me a picture, and it was a ratty old thing, but clearly well loved. I didn’t immediately change my tone regarding stuffed animals, I even laughed it off, but the subsequent year was hellish. After that, I was all too eager to crack open that trash bag and free them.
You see the same sort of attitude with Kingdom Hearts itself, really. I’ve noticed that so-called ex-fans of it often point to it as a cringe teenage hyperfixation, while also talking about it with the same fondness most people reserve for significant others or childhood friends they hold some affection for. You ever see a straight dude who’s clearly a hyper-repressed gay man talk about his ‘best friend’? Kinda like that.
KH is, to lots of people, ‘cringe’. It is naked in its sincerity and Nomura makes no attempt to hide that it’s his pinboard passion project where 90% of additions are justified with “I wanted to” and the other 10% are “Square Enix asked me to”. As with everything so unabashedly sincere, those who wear cynicism like a second skin or overly irony-poisoned nerds who still make Sonichu jokes in 2024 often dismiss it. Indeed, much like stuffed animals, so many people seem to think themselves above a game where a twink can stunlock Sephiroth with moves that’d make Vergil look amateurish.
Look, I’ll be honest, even I take potshots at KH sometimes. Not the first game, as you’ve noticed, but subsequent entries do leave a lot to be desired. Where I - and I suspect many other KH fans - differ is that most of my potshots stem from KH losing a lot of the ironclad consistency, relatively self-contained writing and airtight pacing of the first game.
I think it’s really telling that Ansem’s insistence he can “unlock people’s hearts” only leads to them becoming absolute monsters. I wonder if there’s anything to examine there. Riku, tragically, loses this fight to Ansem and becomes yet another pawn for him, while Sora’s unwillingness to entirely sever the ties that bind him to what came before is what allows him to stay free. I hesitate to even jokingly call it ‘corny’, it’s just a very upfront admission that you’ll lose your soul if you can’t keep a hold of any whimsy or an ability to engage in play.
“Mira, where does the Final Fantasy stuff slot in?”
It’s cool as fuck, next question.
Despite seeming simple and clean on the surface, Kingdom Hearts is a series I don’t think one can truly critique, praise or even react to without inadvertently revealing something about themselves that - presumably - they’d want to keep hidden. It’s one of those games where I can often tell how cynical someone is by how willing they are to dismiss everything about it off the cuff. It’s why I just opened with the personal anecdote - I hate subtext, it’s for cowards and subs.
That all said, I do find it somewhat sad that despite this game being aimed at children and teens, neither of them are particularly well equipped to explain why it might be resonant or even resonate with it in the first place. Indeed, I myself didn’t get it all the way back in 2013. They’ll find it fun, sure, but some things you only understand with time I guess.
I feel like, more than anything, the part of Kingdom Hearts that embodies all of this is the very first song you hear on the menu: Dearly Beloved. It’s hardly heroic, not even cool or foreboding. No, it’s a piece that feels sad? It somehow manages to capture that really specific feeling of seeing a normally-populated city at night for the first time and realizing that, without people occupying that space, it’s just concrete, power lines, glass and in Glasgow’s case also a sizable amount of potholes.
To end off… I silently weep for people who think they’re too old for Kingdom Hearts, or indeed for anything like it. Not because I look down on them, but because I feel losing the part of you that can enjoy things like this, stuffed animals, and goofy (hyuk) apparel must be miserable. That first death, right there in the soul, is always a harbinger of worse things to come.
But hey, it’s never too late to claw it back. You, too, can play Kingdom Hearts or spend £1000~ on stuffed rabbits.
Elden Ring
2022
Continua sendo uma masterpiece. Elden Ring é insano e realmente me deixa embasbacado a existência de um jogo de tamanha magnitude. Já é a terceira vez que vou do início ao fim e continuo descobrindo itens, armas, builds, chefes, personagens e locais totalmente novos. Tudo nesse game é viável fazer caso o jogador entenda como usar seu arsenal. Apesar do jogo ter problemas que a fórmula do mundo aberto acarreta e chefes com designs duvidosos, poder aventurar em um SoulsLike rico como esse compensa bastante. Muito empolgado e com o personagem preparado para a DLC!
31 Minutos The Game
2013
Que juego tendría como favorito en backloggd Tulio? Yo creo que God of War (2018) (jugo diez minutos después de comprar una ps4 y no la volvió a tocar(
The Talos Principle
2014
não ironicamente uma excelente introdução à filosofia. continuo não gostando de puzzle. quebra-cabeça pra mim é decidir qual opção de diálogo eu vou escolher em um dilema sociopolítico de Disco Elysium. aliás, jamais abandonarei o time do meu mano Sócrates. além de craque da seleção fez uma das defesas mais belas da história na meio noggers Ágora grega. sofista bom é sofista imaginário pra treinar shadowboxing 👍
off: o amor em Platão é cringe.
off: o amor em Platão é cringe.
this would have ruined my life if i'd read it at 19
now im just going "you're allowed to say half-life is bad. it feels like boring sludge because it is. it exists to make you proud of the price tag on your graphics card."
which i guess means she's right. games could have been so much more than what they became. they very nearly were, but alas, Long 2014. i can cope with that, though. i'm still having fun despite it all.
i like to play games for the same reason i like to play with synthesizers. someone made a little guy and now its in my computer. it has wants and needs and ideas of what we should do next after we get done with this. we develop a little relationship, the game and i. that's cute, even if it's showing me sweaty men getting turned into red#40 velveeta. a bad date is still a date. maybe i wouldn't have realized this if i didnt have other computer hobbies. but i do, so,
if this gets someone there then who am i to say it's bad
software is art too
see now i'm writing like her
theres love in my heart despite it all
i wish i'd never gone on /lgbt/
now im just going "you're allowed to say half-life is bad. it feels like boring sludge because it is. it exists to make you proud of the price tag on your graphics card."
which i guess means she's right. games could have been so much more than what they became. they very nearly were, but alas, Long 2014. i can cope with that, though. i'm still having fun despite it all.
i like to play games for the same reason i like to play with synthesizers. someone made a little guy and now its in my computer. it has wants and needs and ideas of what we should do next after we get done with this. we develop a little relationship, the game and i. that's cute, even if it's showing me sweaty men getting turned into red#40 velveeta. a bad date is still a date. maybe i wouldn't have realized this if i didnt have other computer hobbies. but i do, so,
if this gets someone there then who am i to say it's bad
software is art too
see now i'm writing like her
theres love in my heart despite it all
i wish i'd never gone on /lgbt/
Demon's Souls
2009
The moon began to cry
Toree 3D
2021
I accidentally played this whole thing while watching a lute video. Did you guys know Nintendo mandated that they own 50% of the copyright for every game made on the Famicom Disk System? God, what an evil company! Anyway this is pretty cute lol.
Paratopic
2018
More non racing/open world games should understand the delights of a late night car drive i will give it that.
Feels drawn out even for it's short length. Pretty characterless surrealism.
Feels drawn out even for it's short length. Pretty characterless surrealism.
Aterrorizante
O título traz uma palavra com vários significados, "aterrorizante" pode ser usado pra vários contextos sejam eles bons ou ruins. O que importa mesmo é que Musya encaixa em todos os sentidos que essa palavra é usada.
E isso vai desde o momento que você inicia e ver a historinha, até o momento que você finalmente começa a controlar o personagem. Os primeiros passos dado no cenário inicial, me deu calafrios e uma vontade de abandonar o jogo, vontade essa que perdurou até eu conseguir terminar ele.
Mas não se assuste, ou melhor, se assuste. Esse provavelmente vai ser o sentimento que você vai ter durante a sua jogatina em Musya, mas gostaria de te fazer enxergar as coisas boas da vida, experiências ruins não necessariamente são experiências inúteis.
E é claro que eu sinceramente não recomendo você a jogar Musya se você não quiser arruinar o seu dia, porém, Musya me fez enxergar a beleza por trás das coisas feias assim como sua mãe, que diz todos os dias que você é bonito ou bonita.
Por trás de toda feiúra, existe uma coisa bela e Musya faz isso muito bem com a sua direção de arte, seus cenários apesar de tecnicamente serem mal aplicados, artisticamente eles são vivos e deixam a atmosfera de terror bem forte, cada inimigo que enfrentamos são vindos de lendas japonesas afinal, o jogo mesmo é de um conto japonês (ao menos é o que diz no nome), mas não vou dizer muito sobre porque sinceramente eu não entendo muito das histórias japonesas apesar de boa parte delas terem passado pra nós através de filmes e desenhos.
E essa boa parte é o suficiente, ao menos foi pra mim, pra que eu pudesse identificar alguns inimigos que passavam pela imperdoável estocada de lança de nosso protagonista. Protagonista esse que é um lanceiro com um design chamativo e nem um pouco esquecível, como se já não bastasse o design chamativo. Nosso menino da lança evolui tem uma progressãozinha, se você explorar os mapas que lhe é colocado você consegue arranjar itens que fazem a sua lança aumentar, quando digo aumentar não é no tamanho, e sim na qualidade e alcance de seus ataques, ela fica mais forte e mais tranquila de usar, uma pena que os inimigos também vão ficando, então em alguns momentos pouco se vê eficiência nessa evolução.
Mas quem sou eu pra reclamar de evolução, desde dos 12 anos de idade eu ainda erro o que é esquerda e o que é direita, então pouco posso dizer sobre a evolução e eficácia de algo. E mal posso reclamar também, sobre os desafios que nos fazem aprender mais coisa sobre a vida a cada dia, desafios esses que muitas das vezes são injustos, e Musya imita isso muito bem.
Cada boss que você enfrenta nesse jogo, um clamor é levantado para alguma entidade, pra que ela te leve logo embora dessa vida. Tudo que você aprendeu ou ao menos tentou aprender jogando, é posto em prática, mas de uma forma bem desagradável tal qual aquela prova difícil que você estudou estudou e no final, não caiu nada daquilo que você esperava.
Os bosses em minha visão dão ataques repetidos e chatos que tiram fácil a nossa vida, o lado bom é que também podemos dar ataques repetidos e pra ser sincero, é melhor darmos ataques repetidos do que usarmos o especial que demora de ativar e tira pouco dano dos monstrões, se mostrando mais eficaz apenas pra limpar a tela. Porém, uma coisa que gostei muito de Musya, é que ele avisa quando um poder que você vai usar vai ser útil ou não na batalha, evitando assim de fazer você gastar seus poderzinhos tão chatos de conseguir, em uma luta que não fará efeito nenhum, e sinceramente, outros jogos da época deveriam usar isso como exemplo. Tenho certeza que boa parte deles teriam envelhecido bem melhor.
Calma, eu disse isso mas não vai pensando que Musya envelheceu lá tão bem assim, os controles são chatos e travados e você vai sentir o gosto amargo de água enferrujada na sua boca por um bom tempo enquanto joga, então se for joga-lo, fique esperto nisso.
Acredito que com essa Review, você agora entendeu o que eu quis dizer com aterrorizante, só espero que não tenha achado minha escrita tão aterrorizante, quanto Musya.
O título traz uma palavra com vários significados, "aterrorizante" pode ser usado pra vários contextos sejam eles bons ou ruins. O que importa mesmo é que Musya encaixa em todos os sentidos que essa palavra é usada.
E isso vai desde o momento que você inicia e ver a historinha, até o momento que você finalmente começa a controlar o personagem. Os primeiros passos dado no cenário inicial, me deu calafrios e uma vontade de abandonar o jogo, vontade essa que perdurou até eu conseguir terminar ele.
Mas não se assuste, ou melhor, se assuste. Esse provavelmente vai ser o sentimento que você vai ter durante a sua jogatina em Musya, mas gostaria de te fazer enxergar as coisas boas da vida, experiências ruins não necessariamente são experiências inúteis.
E é claro que eu sinceramente não recomendo você a jogar Musya se você não quiser arruinar o seu dia, porém, Musya me fez enxergar a beleza por trás das coisas feias assim como sua mãe, que diz todos os dias que você é bonito ou bonita.
Por trás de toda feiúra, existe uma coisa bela e Musya faz isso muito bem com a sua direção de arte, seus cenários apesar de tecnicamente serem mal aplicados, artisticamente eles são vivos e deixam a atmosfera de terror bem forte, cada inimigo que enfrentamos são vindos de lendas japonesas afinal, o jogo mesmo é de um conto japonês (ao menos é o que diz no nome), mas não vou dizer muito sobre porque sinceramente eu não entendo muito das histórias japonesas apesar de boa parte delas terem passado pra nós através de filmes e desenhos.
E essa boa parte é o suficiente, ao menos foi pra mim, pra que eu pudesse identificar alguns inimigos que passavam pela imperdoável estocada de lança de nosso protagonista. Protagonista esse que é um lanceiro com um design chamativo e nem um pouco esquecível, como se já não bastasse o design chamativo. Nosso menino da lança evolui tem uma progressãozinha, se você explorar os mapas que lhe é colocado você consegue arranjar itens que fazem a sua lança aumentar, quando digo aumentar não é no tamanho, e sim na qualidade e alcance de seus ataques, ela fica mais forte e mais tranquila de usar, uma pena que os inimigos também vão ficando, então em alguns momentos pouco se vê eficiência nessa evolução.
Mas quem sou eu pra reclamar de evolução, desde dos 12 anos de idade eu ainda erro o que é esquerda e o que é direita, então pouco posso dizer sobre a evolução e eficácia de algo. E mal posso reclamar também, sobre os desafios que nos fazem aprender mais coisa sobre a vida a cada dia, desafios esses que muitas das vezes são injustos, e Musya imita isso muito bem.
Cada boss que você enfrenta nesse jogo, um clamor é levantado para alguma entidade, pra que ela te leve logo embora dessa vida. Tudo que você aprendeu ou ao menos tentou aprender jogando, é posto em prática, mas de uma forma bem desagradável tal qual aquela prova difícil que você estudou estudou e no final, não caiu nada daquilo que você esperava.
Os bosses em minha visão dão ataques repetidos e chatos que tiram fácil a nossa vida, o lado bom é que também podemos dar ataques repetidos e pra ser sincero, é melhor darmos ataques repetidos do que usarmos o especial que demora de ativar e tira pouco dano dos monstrões, se mostrando mais eficaz apenas pra limpar a tela. Porém, uma coisa que gostei muito de Musya, é que ele avisa quando um poder que você vai usar vai ser útil ou não na batalha, evitando assim de fazer você gastar seus poderzinhos tão chatos de conseguir, em uma luta que não fará efeito nenhum, e sinceramente, outros jogos da época deveriam usar isso como exemplo. Tenho certeza que boa parte deles teriam envelhecido bem melhor.
Calma, eu disse isso mas não vai pensando que Musya envelheceu lá tão bem assim, os controles são chatos e travados e você vai sentir o gosto amargo de água enferrujada na sua boca por um bom tempo enquanto joga, então se for joga-lo, fique esperto nisso.
Acredito que com essa Review, você agora entendeu o que eu quis dizer com aterrorizante, só espero que não tenha achado minha escrita tão aterrorizante, quanto Musya.
Still Wakes the Deep
2024
vou resumir o jogo inteiro: Uh oh, quebrou alguma coisa aqui! atravesse o lugar inteiro até o Ponto B. Uh oh! outra coisa quebrou novamente! atravesse o lugar inteiro de novo até o ponto C... OH NO!! QUEBROU DE NOVO!!!
Junta um sistema de gato e rato do Amnesia The Dark Descent (só que ainda mais simples), e uma série de corredores lineares e temos Still Wakes the Deep. Essa ser a desenvolvedora que está fazendo Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 é realmente uma divina comédia.
Junta um sistema de gato e rato do Amnesia The Dark Descent (só que ainda mais simples), e uma série de corredores lineares e temos Still Wakes the Deep. Essa ser a desenvolvedora que está fazendo Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 é realmente uma divina comédia.
Bomba Patch
2007
A ignorância é um presente, e em alguns momentos, é muito bom não desperdiça-la.
Se você chegar pra mim e perguntar qual o melhor jogo pra começar com beat 'em up, eu saberei lhe responder e irei te indicar o melhor em minha visão, mas se você chegar em mim e perguntar qual o melhor jogo de futebol pra jogar.. bom.. aí a história é diferente.
Eu sou um inútil quando o assunto é jogos de esporte, especificamente de futebol. Não vejo la muito jogo e muito menos me interesso pelos demais títulos que são lançados, e isso ajudou eu manter a minha "ignorância" sobre esse gênero tão popular e amado.
A minha ignorância fez eu me aproximar do antigo, do amado, acariciado, machucado e desejado.. Bomba Patch.
Faz tempo e eu reforço, muito tempo mesmo desde que encostei no Bomba Patch. Se eu me lembro bem a ultima vez que joguei o meu play 2 ainda estava vivo funcionando e nem pensava que seria vendido pra que a gente fosse adquirir o Xbox 360. E milagrosamente, como um jovem que lembra pouco o início dos anos 2000, eu ainda lembro da TV de tubo na nossa frente rodando Bomba Patch 100% atualizado. Havia momentos que a gente preferia inserir o disco do Bomba Patch, do que do PES.
Mas porque tanto carinho? Porque tanto apreço por um jog- digo.. mod, que lançou lá na época do PS2? Eu te respondo com uma simples palavra, conforto.
O conforto inexplicável que Bomba Patch passa pra nós, ignorantes em futebol, é gigante. Entrar no jogo e apenas jogar sem medo sem precisar de fazer um TCC pra ganhar uma partida, é maravilhoso cara. Por mais que pareça saudosismo de minha parte, e talvez até seja. Mas você concorda comigo que os jogos de hoje em dia de futebol são sim mais complicados de se jogar, quando pouco se entende de videogame.
E toda essa complicação de entender como funciona o jogo, muitas das vezes nos desanima e faz a gente perder toda a vontade que tínhamos de aprender. Mas com bomba patch é diferente, mesmo anos e anos sem jogar eu consegui me divertir, consegui fazer gol consegui saber o que eu estava fazendo em campo e me senti a pessoa mais estrategista possível jogando contra a máquina (e todas minhas estratégias eram horríveis).
Ultimamente eu ligo esse conforto que sinto ao Bomba Patch como ignorância, claro nos dias de hoje eu digo. Já que naquela época nem ignorância era, era apenas a informação que não chegava na gente e quando chegava, era pouca e estava longe do suficiente pra transformar quem joga em um mestre (apesar de ter alguns)
E toda essa minha ignorância me fez enxergar no final a beleza que é não saber e não entender do assunto, jogar Bomba Patch sem olhar crítico sobre o que está errado ou não, é reconfortante e me fez perceber que é bom não ser chato em alguns momentos.
Se o jogo tem erros? Eu não sei, e na verdade eu prefiro continuar sem saber. Os únicos erros que são notáveis mas na verdade são engraçados são os erros de áudio, que hora ou outra buga a voz do narrador e ele fala nada com nada, mas isso são erros engraçados que tira uma risada muito boa da gente. E se você quiser rir.. tipo muito, te recomendo jogar Bomba Patch com alguém.
Claro que Co-op em jogos de esporte é quase sempre algo impossível de errar, com Bomba Patch não é diferente, nem vou me aprofundar muito nessa questão do jogo porque sinceramente eu me diverti tanto nela que nem me interessei e nem cogitei trocar de jogo enquanto jogávamos.
Ufa.. foi grande essa né? Nem eu pensava que ia escrever tanto, mas aparentemente bomba patch despertou em mim o meu espírito de escritor, tá aí, mais um motivo pra vocês JOGAREM bomba patch seja lá em qual ano você estiver lendo isso.
Se você chegar pra mim e perguntar qual o melhor jogo pra começar com beat 'em up, eu saberei lhe responder e irei te indicar o melhor em minha visão, mas se você chegar em mim e perguntar qual o melhor jogo de futebol pra jogar.. bom.. aí a história é diferente.
Eu sou um inútil quando o assunto é jogos de esporte, especificamente de futebol. Não vejo la muito jogo e muito menos me interesso pelos demais títulos que são lançados, e isso ajudou eu manter a minha "ignorância" sobre esse gênero tão popular e amado.
A minha ignorância fez eu me aproximar do antigo, do amado, acariciado, machucado e desejado.. Bomba Patch.
Faz tempo e eu reforço, muito tempo mesmo desde que encostei no Bomba Patch. Se eu me lembro bem a ultima vez que joguei o meu play 2 ainda estava vivo funcionando e nem pensava que seria vendido pra que a gente fosse adquirir o Xbox 360. E milagrosamente, como um jovem que lembra pouco o início dos anos 2000, eu ainda lembro da TV de tubo na nossa frente rodando Bomba Patch 100% atualizado. Havia momentos que a gente preferia inserir o disco do Bomba Patch, do que do PES.
Mas porque tanto carinho? Porque tanto apreço por um jog- digo.. mod, que lançou lá na época do PS2? Eu te respondo com uma simples palavra, conforto.
O conforto inexplicável que Bomba Patch passa pra nós, ignorantes em futebol, é gigante. Entrar no jogo e apenas jogar sem medo sem precisar de fazer um TCC pra ganhar uma partida, é maravilhoso cara. Por mais que pareça saudosismo de minha parte, e talvez até seja. Mas você concorda comigo que os jogos de hoje em dia de futebol são sim mais complicados de se jogar, quando pouco se entende de videogame.
E toda essa complicação de entender como funciona o jogo, muitas das vezes nos desanima e faz a gente perder toda a vontade que tínhamos de aprender. Mas com bomba patch é diferente, mesmo anos e anos sem jogar eu consegui me divertir, consegui fazer gol consegui saber o que eu estava fazendo em campo e me senti a pessoa mais estrategista possível jogando contra a máquina (e todas minhas estratégias eram horríveis).
Ultimamente eu ligo esse conforto que sinto ao Bomba Patch como ignorância, claro nos dias de hoje eu digo. Já que naquela época nem ignorância era, era apenas a informação que não chegava na gente e quando chegava, era pouca e estava longe do suficiente pra transformar quem joga em um mestre (apesar de ter alguns)
E toda essa minha ignorância me fez enxergar no final a beleza que é não saber e não entender do assunto, jogar Bomba Patch sem olhar crítico sobre o que está errado ou não, é reconfortante e me fez perceber que é bom não ser chato em alguns momentos.
Se o jogo tem erros? Eu não sei, e na verdade eu prefiro continuar sem saber. Os únicos erros que são notáveis mas na verdade são engraçados são os erros de áudio, que hora ou outra buga a voz do narrador e ele fala nada com nada, mas isso são erros engraçados que tira uma risada muito boa da gente. E se você quiser rir.. tipo muito, te recomendo jogar Bomba Patch com alguém.
Claro que Co-op em jogos de esporte é quase sempre algo impossível de errar, com Bomba Patch não é diferente, nem vou me aprofundar muito nessa questão do jogo porque sinceramente eu me diverti tanto nela que nem me interessei e nem cogitei trocar de jogo enquanto jogávamos.
Ufa.. foi grande essa né? Nem eu pensava que ia escrever tanto, mas aparentemente bomba patch despertou em mim o meu espírito de escritor, tá aí, mais um motivo pra vocês JOGAREM bomba patch seja lá em qual ano você estiver lendo isso.
This review contains spoilers
[Disclaimer: I’m going to spoil Lonesome Road from head to toe, but I’m also likely to spoil everything else in NV. I also need to discuss the Fallout TV Show. This is your only warning.]
I have a very nebulous relationship with the concept of ‘Death Of The Author’, but to dig into why we really need to back up a little.
You’ve probably heard the phrase “all art is political” before, and you likely have feelings on it. In having feelings on it, you’ve inadvertently validated it. When that phrase is uttered, I imagine most people’s minds dart over to the most obvious indicators of politics: Democrats, Republicans, Conservatives, Greens, etc etc.
This isn’t wrong per se, but the real meaning of “all art is political” is simple: Human beings are deeply opinionated creatures, and many of these opinions concern matters that’ve become, if not explicitly political, then at least ideological. Critics of that sentiment, lacking in self-awareness, would often point to paintings of forests or something “neutral” as a counterargument - unaware that the portrayal of nature as a calming or beautiful place is an idea that’s implicitly in support of nature and in implicit opposition to industrial expansion or deforestation. Like, c’mon dude, the idea that nothing can be something is so substantial to the human condition that we have a word specifically for it.
Now, to go back to my opening statement: As both an author myself (and one who’s had people read parts of my text in wildly different ways) and as someone who puts way too much thought into everything, I don’t necessarily believe one truly can invoke death of the author. Everything, from how one depicts the poor to what is considered ‘evil’ to how a work treats the concept of ‘order’, betrays something about the author. To me, the act of engaging with art has always been a three way split between the viewer, the art or subject, and the creator. Even the dumbest of humans, raised in isolation, would be a political creature whether they knew it or not.
With that all said, I consider Lonesome Road to be Chris Avellone’s finest work. Not out of any love for the man or even the DLC, no, but because it’s one of the few stories I can think of where I struggle to have an opinion of it.
A good chunk of that struggle comes from what I said a few sentences ago: Lonesome Road’s meaning, ideals, and politics vastly change depending on whether you prioritize Chris Avellone’s personal beliefs and intent, or whether you read the text as-is. People who’ve played Bioshock 1 may be getting serious Deja Vu right about now.
I don’t necessarily consider this a good thing, mind you. But, enough of the exposition for now. Let’s take it from the top, and talk about the text.
Lonesome Road is the culmination of a story arc alluded to in New Vegas proper (as early as the player reaches Primm, if they’re inquisitive!) and which properly began in Dead Money. This story arc revolves around the preemptively mythologized confrontation between the player (Courier Six) and a man named Ulysses - the former Courier Six.
And… I think what sticks out to me nowadays is that Lonesome Road’s meaningful content is mostly relegated to the chats with Ulysses. It’s a bit denser than the other three DLCs for sure, but much of that content is gunning down Marked Men (Ghouls but red) and Tunnelers (Trogs but brown) ad infinitum in relatively bland, linear shooting corridors. This will be important later.
As a brief recap in case you’ve not played LR for years or are just tourist-browsing: Ulysses is an ex-Caesar’s Legion Frumentarii whose tribe - the Twisted Hairs - was eventually forcibly assimilated by the Legion. He left in disgust after the White Legs tribe (from Honest Hearts) ‘honored’ him by carrying out cultural appropriation and styling their hair after Ulysses’ tribes’ signature dreadlocks. After the Legion were beaten back at the first battle of Hoover Dam, Ulysses stumbled upon a community named (and based in) The Divide.
The Divide as a community was established by people too stubborn to move, and Courier Six (again, that’s you) was their lifeline due to, well, delivering packages. Much like the rest of the territory surrounding Nevada though, it soon became a target for annexation by the NCR due to being a (functional) second highway into the Mojave. This, naturally, drew the attention of the Legion, who began enacting plots to convert or destroy it.
But it wasn’t any of the major factions that destroyed the Divide. On a routine job, Courier Six (that’s you) delivers a package to the Divide and walks away. This package, a transmitter keyed to nuclear warheads, ignites bombs underneath the Divide and destroys everything in it - NCR, civilian, Legion, you name it.
This recap is very important, I wouldn’t have included it otherwise and if you’re familiar with my writing you’re likely already aware that I fucking hate narrating the text to you.
Ulysses’ specific bone to pick with Courier Six (that’s you) is… Alright, before I begin, I need to do something out of character here: I don’t like to address other people’s criticisms directly, because these are my reviews and they should concern my opinions exclusively, right?
However, over the last ten or so years I’ve seen an alarming amount of people hate on LR for “forcing a backstory on the player”, and this criticism bothers me because it’s both wrong and hyperreactive. The only thing LR adds to Courier Six’s (that’s you) backstory is that they delivered packages to a place, and one of those deliveries went awry. This not only isn’t much of a backstory, it’s also literally the opening of the game. It’s already set in stone that Courier Six (that’s you) has walked all over the place, LR is completely inoffensive on that front. Hell, it’s entirely debatable as to whether the Courier he remembers is the same one you control: Noticeably, the player has a lot of options to recall things from their past across the game, but none to acknowledge the Divide or Ulysses.
But speaking of unworkable criticisms, let’s talk about Ulysses.
I’ve seen a lot of analytical pieces about LR and Ulysses written over the last decade, and many of them are wonderfully well-written, but… I think taking Ulysses at face value about everything is a mistake, and any approach to LR which posits him as a 100% reliable source of information that you’re meant to agree with is a non-starter.
From where I stand, it’s pretty obvious he’s both a hypocrite, and an angry man lashing out because he can’t accept that events happening by association does not mean those events have correlation. In other words, he can’t handle that “shit happens” sometimes is the only explanation.
Ulysses holds a grudge against Courier Six (that’s you) because, in simple terms, his experiences with the Divide and the Legion have convinced him that history is exclusively written by special individuals. He feels that Courier Six (that’s you) should ‘take responsibility’ for the atrocity you ‘caused’ in the Divide. This in itself is madness, for all that was done was a simple delivery - from the Enclave to the Divide. Ulysses does not hold the Enclave responsible - betraying how fake his world-weariness is - nor does he hold the NCR or the Legion responsible for what they were doing to the Divide.
Similarly, Ulysses betrays his own biases upfront in his logs and conversations. Despite his allegedly balanced approach to the world, he’s delusional enough to think the Legion is good at empire management and that the NCR are secretly the evil ones. This is despite being so high up in the Legion’s command chain that he reported to Caesar directly, and was trusted enough to attempt an assassination of Joshua Graham, so he really should know how bad things really are.
There’s also the matter to consider of his own actions. Ulysses believes he alone has a divine right to punish the Courier, the NCR and the Legion for what happened before his eyes, yet he pays no mind to anything he’s done. Ulysses is, to wit, directly responsible for the last three DLCs even occurring, set the plot of New Vegas in motion by rejecting the delivery of the Platinum Chip, and started the NCR-Legion war in its entirety by reporting the discovery of Hoover Dam to Caesar. In short, everything is his goddamn fault.
Lastly, despite the fact Ulysses will castigate the player for refusing to pick a side in the Mojave war, Ulysses himself doesn’t support any particular side and will admit upon interrogation (should he survive) that he thinks all four options are uniquely terrible. His attempts to punish the Legion and the NCR are just petty.
That said, I don’t think any of this is bad writing, no. On the contrary, I like that Ulysses is a deeply hypocritical and miserable piece of shit that’s built his entire worldview on a house of cards. People have debated the meaning of throwing “Who are you, who do not know your history?” back at him, but I’ve always taken it to be a reminder that shit does, indeed, happen. That Ulysses oftentimes was the shit that happened, and he’s no better than the Courier. Really, Ulysses being such a shitheel is in character for a game where Caesar misrepresenting Hegelian Dialectics is the first bullet point on the “Caesar is secretly a moron” list.
In a way, I’d compare Ulysses to an IRL conspiracy theorist. He’s fundamentally unable to accept that the nuking of the Divide was at worst an unfortunate, terrible terrible accident that nobody could’ve seen coming.
If anything, a lot of the guilt he seemingly wants Courier Six (that’s you) to feel reads like guilt he feels, given the overwhelming implication that he considers himself to have failed the Divide’s citizens. New Vegas’ dialogue files contain script notes, and a surprising amount of Ulysses are flagged with a note indicating that he’s trying to convince himself more than he is the player.
But this is just the text, divorced from everything I know about the real-world writing, authorial intent, and intended outcome.
Just to open on a loud note: Chris Avellone has admitted several times that Ulysses is his mouthpiece. Knowing this, I feel, drastically changes how a lot of Lonesome Road reads.
The Fallout TV show came out recently and, spoiler alert, it involves the NCR being nuked out of existence shortly after New Vegas ends (though the show’s writers got their dates wrong and had to clarify), essentially resetting the entire West Coast back to the Fallout 1 days. This sparked a lot of discussion online, surprisingly well-intentioned discussion too, about what “post-post-apocalypse” means.
As early as Fallout 2, the Fallout series had already begun to move into the post-post-apocalypse. No less than 7 major settlements occupy its map, with what’s considered to be “wilderness” vastly shrinking. Cities have already moved towards having printed/minted currency, and fledgling governments are beginning to strike out. New Vegas leans heavier into this, with the Mojave being relatively civilised and endless allusions to civilization existing beyond the playable borders. The NCR in particular have grown so large that they are, for all intents and purposes, beyond the post-apocalypse entirely.
Much of the discussion around this is derived from Bethesda’s ostensible hatred for the concept of a post-post-apocalypse. That, from where we’re standing, it seems like they want to tell stories about wastelands and misery and bad iconography forever. To me personally it was a tacit admission that Bethesda just want to make theme parks with the Fallout IP rather than games or stories. Fallout isn’t games anymore, it’s merch.
It’s worth noting that Chris Avellone is on the “keep the apocalypse forever” side of this debate, and doesn’t seem to hold much love for New Vegas’ central conceit.
Somewhat ironically for a DLC about roads, I find myself at a crossroads knowing all of this.
With Chris Avellone’s opinions and intent in mind, a lot of the praise I levelled at Lonesome Road starts to feel uncomfortable. Thorny even. Ulysses being a raving hypocrite seems like good writing at first, but knowing that Chris Avellone is just doing videogame blackface and using his self-insert to vent about how much he doesn’t like New Vegas kinda rubs me the wrong way.
And I think the reason it rubs me the wrong way is because it basically turns the DLC into Fallout 3.
Like Fallout 3, Ulyssesvellone is obsessed with both moral dichotomies and a very straightforward, incurious depiction of a ~post-apocalypse~. There’s a lot of decay in New Vegas, but it tends to shy away from outright ruination. Lonesome Road, naturally, sets the counter back to Fallout 3’s corner - the asset reuse from 3’s Raven Rock just adds to it.
Like Fallout 3, Lonesome Road is a hallway shooter with little in the way of exploration and a somewhat gratuitous obsession with gore, dark tunnels and subways.
And, like Fallout 3, the fail state isn’t actually any choices you do or don’t make. It’s speech checks. NV loves its dialogue checks, sure, but it both varies the skills you need to use (rather than JUST speech) and offers alternatives either in the forms or hidden objectives or in reactivity to things you’ve already done. Ulysses only demanding a speech or reputation check calls back to Colonel Autumn in ways that might not’ve been intended.
But where the Fallout 3 comparisons really start getting bothersome, they really get bothersome. In my Fallout 3 review I talked at length about how that game is obsessed with great men and how they’re the only ones allowed to lead civilization.
New Vegas steps back from this significantly: The Legion isn’t held aloft by one great man 0 it just thinks it is - but tons of subjugated and indoctrinated tribals using guerrilla warfare, tribal assimilation and salted earth tactics.
The NCR wins fights with well-equipped and well trained soldiers, but those soldiers are just people. Even Courier Six (that’s you) is just some schmuck.
House and the Legion crumple easily because they put all of their eggs in one human-sized basket, and if that basket is killed then it’s all over. Really, House and Caesar feel like scathing commentary on the whole concept.
Lonesome Road sort of veers back into that territory though. As a mouthpiece, Ulysses designates himself as a divine prophet that can pick who is the right great man to restore civilization, and explicitly calls out all factions as unworthy. In his eyes, it’s only you that can dictate the path of civilization.
Now, NV isn’t perfect about avoiding great man stuff, few RPGs are, but it’s very upfront with the idea that you’re just Some Guy who accidentally stumbled into a position of importance. Indeed, I can’t help but wonder if the relative unimportance you actually have initially is what makes it so compelling. So to suddenly have Courier Six (that’s you) be so important, and placed on such a pedestal, is alarming.
There’s also this strange dissonance between LR’s attempts to show you the horrors of nuclear bombs firsthand in the Divide, and the almost fetishistic veneration it actually has for nukes. I loathed the Fat Man in 3, resent its inclusion in New Vegas, hate that cars are nuclear bombs waiting to go off, and am frankly kind of annoyed that small-scale nuclear warheads are so commonplace in Lonesome Road. There’s a very strange love for the nuke underscoring Lonesome Road that is, to be entirely honest, a lot more alarming here than it was in Fallout 3 or 4.
I don’t think Chris Avellone is a total hack, he did write Planescape almost entirely by himself after all, but he’s more often than not one of the lesser RPG writers than he is one of the greats. Lonesome Road, to me, is a very curtains-pulled moment. It’s layered in a left-handed, overly serious derision for its source material and seems to care more about itself than anything around it, both of which are the same reasons why KOTOR 2 can be so suffocating - though LR thankfully has no women to be misogynistic about.
It’s a window into what a lot of his contributions to games end up as. I have an endless distaste for Divinity Original Sin 2’s Fane because he just reeks of that white nerd writing Avellone unfortunately built a career on. LR isn’t trying to be funny, at least, but there’s a sort of… Condescension, I’d say, baked into the foundation.
It’s funny, if you think about it. Remember when people thought the finale to LR was stupid? How the hell was one man gonna nuke the NCR? That’s an insane thing to put in a DLC.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand then the Fallout TV show did it anyway. One has to wonder how Bethesda feels about Courier Six (that’s us) despite their claims of love.
I realize this might come across as me hating Chris Avellone, and I don't - even if he is a weird ghoul who struggles to say much of anything. I just deeply dislike his work, because even decades later it still has that weird grease to it that makes playing Fallout 2 so suffocating. Said dislike comes to a head here, in a DLC where his OC goes on stage and proclaims that everything in NV sucks and everyone involved is stupid. If anything, this review is more about the Fallout TV show than anything, as LR lays the groundwork for what came next.
I want to end off with a funny joke, but nothing comes to mind. Uh... Isn't it funny that the single part of NV's overall narrative that tries to say "all sides are wrong" ends up being more wrong than anyone involve in the Mojave, yet Ulysses will try to call you a centrist if you don't have particularly high faction rep?
I dunno man. The more I think about this DLC the more it feels like self-parody, and I regret knowing that it's meant to be taken seriously.
I have a very nebulous relationship with the concept of ‘Death Of The Author’, but to dig into why we really need to back up a little.
You’ve probably heard the phrase “all art is political” before, and you likely have feelings on it. In having feelings on it, you’ve inadvertently validated it. When that phrase is uttered, I imagine most people’s minds dart over to the most obvious indicators of politics: Democrats, Republicans, Conservatives, Greens, etc etc.
This isn’t wrong per se, but the real meaning of “all art is political” is simple: Human beings are deeply opinionated creatures, and many of these opinions concern matters that’ve become, if not explicitly political, then at least ideological. Critics of that sentiment, lacking in self-awareness, would often point to paintings of forests or something “neutral” as a counterargument - unaware that the portrayal of nature as a calming or beautiful place is an idea that’s implicitly in support of nature and in implicit opposition to industrial expansion or deforestation. Like, c’mon dude, the idea that nothing can be something is so substantial to the human condition that we have a word specifically for it.
Now, to go back to my opening statement: As both an author myself (and one who’s had people read parts of my text in wildly different ways) and as someone who puts way too much thought into everything, I don’t necessarily believe one truly can invoke death of the author. Everything, from how one depicts the poor to what is considered ‘evil’ to how a work treats the concept of ‘order’, betrays something about the author. To me, the act of engaging with art has always been a three way split between the viewer, the art or subject, and the creator. Even the dumbest of humans, raised in isolation, would be a political creature whether they knew it or not.
With that all said, I consider Lonesome Road to be Chris Avellone’s finest work. Not out of any love for the man or even the DLC, no, but because it’s one of the few stories I can think of where I struggle to have an opinion of it.
A good chunk of that struggle comes from what I said a few sentences ago: Lonesome Road’s meaning, ideals, and politics vastly change depending on whether you prioritize Chris Avellone’s personal beliefs and intent, or whether you read the text as-is. People who’ve played Bioshock 1 may be getting serious Deja Vu right about now.
I don’t necessarily consider this a good thing, mind you. But, enough of the exposition for now. Let’s take it from the top, and talk about the text.
Lonesome Road is the culmination of a story arc alluded to in New Vegas proper (as early as the player reaches Primm, if they’re inquisitive!) and which properly began in Dead Money. This story arc revolves around the preemptively mythologized confrontation between the player (Courier Six) and a man named Ulysses - the former Courier Six.
And… I think what sticks out to me nowadays is that Lonesome Road’s meaningful content is mostly relegated to the chats with Ulysses. It’s a bit denser than the other three DLCs for sure, but much of that content is gunning down Marked Men (Ghouls but red) and Tunnelers (Trogs but brown) ad infinitum in relatively bland, linear shooting corridors. This will be important later.
As a brief recap in case you’ve not played LR for years or are just tourist-browsing: Ulysses is an ex-Caesar’s Legion Frumentarii whose tribe - the Twisted Hairs - was eventually forcibly assimilated by the Legion. He left in disgust after the White Legs tribe (from Honest Hearts) ‘honored’ him by carrying out cultural appropriation and styling their hair after Ulysses’ tribes’ signature dreadlocks. After the Legion were beaten back at the first battle of Hoover Dam, Ulysses stumbled upon a community named (and based in) The Divide.
The Divide as a community was established by people too stubborn to move, and Courier Six (again, that’s you) was their lifeline due to, well, delivering packages. Much like the rest of the territory surrounding Nevada though, it soon became a target for annexation by the NCR due to being a (functional) second highway into the Mojave. This, naturally, drew the attention of the Legion, who began enacting plots to convert or destroy it.
But it wasn’t any of the major factions that destroyed the Divide. On a routine job, Courier Six (that’s you) delivers a package to the Divide and walks away. This package, a transmitter keyed to nuclear warheads, ignites bombs underneath the Divide and destroys everything in it - NCR, civilian, Legion, you name it.
This recap is very important, I wouldn’t have included it otherwise and if you’re familiar with my writing you’re likely already aware that I fucking hate narrating the text to you.
Ulysses’ specific bone to pick with Courier Six (that’s you) is… Alright, before I begin, I need to do something out of character here: I don’t like to address other people’s criticisms directly, because these are my reviews and they should concern my opinions exclusively, right?
However, over the last ten or so years I’ve seen an alarming amount of people hate on LR for “forcing a backstory on the player”, and this criticism bothers me because it’s both wrong and hyperreactive. The only thing LR adds to Courier Six’s (that’s you) backstory is that they delivered packages to a place, and one of those deliveries went awry. This not only isn’t much of a backstory, it’s also literally the opening of the game. It’s already set in stone that Courier Six (that’s you) has walked all over the place, LR is completely inoffensive on that front. Hell, it’s entirely debatable as to whether the Courier he remembers is the same one you control: Noticeably, the player has a lot of options to recall things from their past across the game, but none to acknowledge the Divide or Ulysses.
But speaking of unworkable criticisms, let’s talk about Ulysses.
I’ve seen a lot of analytical pieces about LR and Ulysses written over the last decade, and many of them are wonderfully well-written, but… I think taking Ulysses at face value about everything is a mistake, and any approach to LR which posits him as a 100% reliable source of information that you’re meant to agree with is a non-starter.
From where I stand, it’s pretty obvious he’s both a hypocrite, and an angry man lashing out because he can’t accept that events happening by association does not mean those events have correlation. In other words, he can’t handle that “shit happens” sometimes is the only explanation.
Ulysses holds a grudge against Courier Six (that’s you) because, in simple terms, his experiences with the Divide and the Legion have convinced him that history is exclusively written by special individuals. He feels that Courier Six (that’s you) should ‘take responsibility’ for the atrocity you ‘caused’ in the Divide. This in itself is madness, for all that was done was a simple delivery - from the Enclave to the Divide. Ulysses does not hold the Enclave responsible - betraying how fake his world-weariness is - nor does he hold the NCR or the Legion responsible for what they were doing to the Divide.
Similarly, Ulysses betrays his own biases upfront in his logs and conversations. Despite his allegedly balanced approach to the world, he’s delusional enough to think the Legion is good at empire management and that the NCR are secretly the evil ones. This is despite being so high up in the Legion’s command chain that he reported to Caesar directly, and was trusted enough to attempt an assassination of Joshua Graham, so he really should know how bad things really are.
There’s also the matter to consider of his own actions. Ulysses believes he alone has a divine right to punish the Courier, the NCR and the Legion for what happened before his eyes, yet he pays no mind to anything he’s done. Ulysses is, to wit, directly responsible for the last three DLCs even occurring, set the plot of New Vegas in motion by rejecting the delivery of the Platinum Chip, and started the NCR-Legion war in its entirety by reporting the discovery of Hoover Dam to Caesar. In short, everything is his goddamn fault.
Lastly, despite the fact Ulysses will castigate the player for refusing to pick a side in the Mojave war, Ulysses himself doesn’t support any particular side and will admit upon interrogation (should he survive) that he thinks all four options are uniquely terrible. His attempts to punish the Legion and the NCR are just petty.
That said, I don’t think any of this is bad writing, no. On the contrary, I like that Ulysses is a deeply hypocritical and miserable piece of shit that’s built his entire worldview on a house of cards. People have debated the meaning of throwing “Who are you, who do not know your history?” back at him, but I’ve always taken it to be a reminder that shit does, indeed, happen. That Ulysses oftentimes was the shit that happened, and he’s no better than the Courier. Really, Ulysses being such a shitheel is in character for a game where Caesar misrepresenting Hegelian Dialectics is the first bullet point on the “Caesar is secretly a moron” list.
In a way, I’d compare Ulysses to an IRL conspiracy theorist. He’s fundamentally unable to accept that the nuking of the Divide was at worst an unfortunate, terrible terrible accident that nobody could’ve seen coming.
If anything, a lot of the guilt he seemingly wants Courier Six (that’s you) to feel reads like guilt he feels, given the overwhelming implication that he considers himself to have failed the Divide’s citizens. New Vegas’ dialogue files contain script notes, and a surprising amount of Ulysses are flagged with a note indicating that he’s trying to convince himself more than he is the player.
But this is just the text, divorced from everything I know about the real-world writing, authorial intent, and intended outcome.
Just to open on a loud note: Chris Avellone has admitted several times that Ulysses is his mouthpiece. Knowing this, I feel, drastically changes how a lot of Lonesome Road reads.
The Fallout TV show came out recently and, spoiler alert, it involves the NCR being nuked out of existence shortly after New Vegas ends (though the show’s writers got their dates wrong and had to clarify), essentially resetting the entire West Coast back to the Fallout 1 days. This sparked a lot of discussion online, surprisingly well-intentioned discussion too, about what “post-post-apocalypse” means.
As early as Fallout 2, the Fallout series had already begun to move into the post-post-apocalypse. No less than 7 major settlements occupy its map, with what’s considered to be “wilderness” vastly shrinking. Cities have already moved towards having printed/minted currency, and fledgling governments are beginning to strike out. New Vegas leans heavier into this, with the Mojave being relatively civilised and endless allusions to civilization existing beyond the playable borders. The NCR in particular have grown so large that they are, for all intents and purposes, beyond the post-apocalypse entirely.
Much of the discussion around this is derived from Bethesda’s ostensible hatred for the concept of a post-post-apocalypse. That, from where we’re standing, it seems like they want to tell stories about wastelands and misery and bad iconography forever. To me personally it was a tacit admission that Bethesda just want to make theme parks with the Fallout IP rather than games or stories. Fallout isn’t games anymore, it’s merch.
It’s worth noting that Chris Avellone is on the “keep the apocalypse forever” side of this debate, and doesn’t seem to hold much love for New Vegas’ central conceit.
Somewhat ironically for a DLC about roads, I find myself at a crossroads knowing all of this.
With Chris Avellone’s opinions and intent in mind, a lot of the praise I levelled at Lonesome Road starts to feel uncomfortable. Thorny even. Ulysses being a raving hypocrite seems like good writing at first, but knowing that Chris Avellone is just doing videogame blackface and using his self-insert to vent about how much he doesn’t like New Vegas kinda rubs me the wrong way.
And I think the reason it rubs me the wrong way is because it basically turns the DLC into Fallout 3.
Like Fallout 3, Ulyssesvellone is obsessed with both moral dichotomies and a very straightforward, incurious depiction of a ~post-apocalypse~. There’s a lot of decay in New Vegas, but it tends to shy away from outright ruination. Lonesome Road, naturally, sets the counter back to Fallout 3’s corner - the asset reuse from 3’s Raven Rock just adds to it.
Like Fallout 3, Lonesome Road is a hallway shooter with little in the way of exploration and a somewhat gratuitous obsession with gore, dark tunnels and subways.
And, like Fallout 3, the fail state isn’t actually any choices you do or don’t make. It’s speech checks. NV loves its dialogue checks, sure, but it both varies the skills you need to use (rather than JUST speech) and offers alternatives either in the forms or hidden objectives or in reactivity to things you’ve already done. Ulysses only demanding a speech or reputation check calls back to Colonel Autumn in ways that might not’ve been intended.
But where the Fallout 3 comparisons really start getting bothersome, they really get bothersome. In my Fallout 3 review I talked at length about how that game is obsessed with great men and how they’re the only ones allowed to lead civilization.
New Vegas steps back from this significantly: The Legion isn’t held aloft by one great man 0 it just thinks it is - but tons of subjugated and indoctrinated tribals using guerrilla warfare, tribal assimilation and salted earth tactics.
The NCR wins fights with well-equipped and well trained soldiers, but those soldiers are just people. Even Courier Six (that’s you) is just some schmuck.
House and the Legion crumple easily because they put all of their eggs in one human-sized basket, and if that basket is killed then it’s all over. Really, House and Caesar feel like scathing commentary on the whole concept.
Lonesome Road sort of veers back into that territory though. As a mouthpiece, Ulysses designates himself as a divine prophet that can pick who is the right great man to restore civilization, and explicitly calls out all factions as unworthy. In his eyes, it’s only you that can dictate the path of civilization.
Now, NV isn’t perfect about avoiding great man stuff, few RPGs are, but it’s very upfront with the idea that you’re just Some Guy who accidentally stumbled into a position of importance. Indeed, I can’t help but wonder if the relative unimportance you actually have initially is what makes it so compelling. So to suddenly have Courier Six (that’s you) be so important, and placed on such a pedestal, is alarming.
There’s also this strange dissonance between LR’s attempts to show you the horrors of nuclear bombs firsthand in the Divide, and the almost fetishistic veneration it actually has for nukes. I loathed the Fat Man in 3, resent its inclusion in New Vegas, hate that cars are nuclear bombs waiting to go off, and am frankly kind of annoyed that small-scale nuclear warheads are so commonplace in Lonesome Road. There’s a very strange love for the nuke underscoring Lonesome Road that is, to be entirely honest, a lot more alarming here than it was in Fallout 3 or 4.
I don’t think Chris Avellone is a total hack, he did write Planescape almost entirely by himself after all, but he’s more often than not one of the lesser RPG writers than he is one of the greats. Lonesome Road, to me, is a very curtains-pulled moment. It’s layered in a left-handed, overly serious derision for its source material and seems to care more about itself than anything around it, both of which are the same reasons why KOTOR 2 can be so suffocating - though LR thankfully has no women to be misogynistic about.
It’s a window into what a lot of his contributions to games end up as. I have an endless distaste for Divinity Original Sin 2’s Fane because he just reeks of that white nerd writing Avellone unfortunately built a career on. LR isn’t trying to be funny, at least, but there’s a sort of… Condescension, I’d say, baked into the foundation.
It’s funny, if you think about it. Remember when people thought the finale to LR was stupid? How the hell was one man gonna nuke the NCR? That’s an insane thing to put in a DLC.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand then the Fallout TV show did it anyway. One has to wonder how Bethesda feels about Courier Six (that’s us) despite their claims of love.
I realize this might come across as me hating Chris Avellone, and I don't - even if he is a weird ghoul who struggles to say much of anything. I just deeply dislike his work, because even decades later it still has that weird grease to it that makes playing Fallout 2 so suffocating. Said dislike comes to a head here, in a DLC where his OC goes on stage and proclaims that everything in NV sucks and everyone involved is stupid. If anything, this review is more about the Fallout TV show than anything, as LR lays the groundwork for what came next.
I want to end off with a funny joke, but nothing comes to mind. Uh... Isn't it funny that the single part of NV's overall narrative that tries to say "all sides are wrong" ends up being more wrong than anyone involve in the Mojave, yet Ulysses will try to call you a centrist if you don't have particularly high faction rep?
I dunno man. The more I think about this DLC the more it feels like self-parody, and I regret knowing that it's meant to be taken seriously.
First things first. Let’s get my bias out of the way. I spent a semester at a university in Tokyo and I adore the Shibuya area. I could spend all day at music stores there. I’ve been to the underground bars and to the 10th floor karaoke rooms, to the Hachiko statue and to the Sega GiGo arcade (RIP).
So when a game opens with a flyover video of Shibuya, it really hits me in the feels.
The opening chapter was a bit tedious as I came to grips with the jump mechanic and frequent dead ends, but in the second hour the game added three more protagonists to the mix and the entire experience came alive. Seemingly inconsequential choices began impacting other characters’ timelines, and the bad endings that seemed like annoying roadblocks in the first chapter became more and more entertaining.
The story and characters mostly follow the old tropes, and towards the end there are plenty of those character-building flashbacks that are all too common in manga and anime. But the characters are fun, the pacing never falters, and there are just enough twists to keep the proceedings engaging. Most of them I saw coming but the biggest one was a total surprise.
What really elevates 428 above similar VNs, though, is the decision to use real actors. It keeps the story grounded and prevents the game from drifting into the metaphysical and fan-servicey holes that occasionally derail other Spike Chunsoft VNs.
Unfortunately, there is still a handful of cringe here. For example, an important aspect of the story focuses on a character’s trip to the “Middle East” (which country?) where he/she meets a girl named Canaan. What a name, eh? (And as I writing this review, I’m realizing that another character is probably named after a Toyota minivan. Wow.) Although I’m kind of inured to the fact that Japanese media usually represents foreign people and countries in oddball, half-baked ways, I still wish they could do better.
But honestly, that’s my only real complaint. Yeah, the interface is dated. There aren’t enough female protagonists. The most interesting main character (Minorikawa!) has the weakest connection to the underlying story. I could go on, I’m sure. But when it comes down to it all the little imperfections are kind of perfect.
All that is to say I agree with Famitsu on this one. 40/40.
So when a game opens with a flyover video of Shibuya, it really hits me in the feels.
The opening chapter was a bit tedious as I came to grips with the jump mechanic and frequent dead ends, but in the second hour the game added three more protagonists to the mix and the entire experience came alive. Seemingly inconsequential choices began impacting other characters’ timelines, and the bad endings that seemed like annoying roadblocks in the first chapter became more and more entertaining.
The story and characters mostly follow the old tropes, and towards the end there are plenty of those character-building flashbacks that are all too common in manga and anime. But the characters are fun, the pacing never falters, and there are just enough twists to keep the proceedings engaging. Most of them I saw coming but the biggest one was a total surprise.
What really elevates 428 above similar VNs, though, is the decision to use real actors. It keeps the story grounded and prevents the game from drifting into the metaphysical and fan-servicey holes that occasionally derail other Spike Chunsoft VNs.
Unfortunately, there is still a handful of cringe here. For example, an important aspect of the story focuses on a character’s trip to the “Middle East” (which country?) where he/she meets a girl named Canaan. What a name, eh? (And as I writing this review, I’m realizing that another character is probably named after a Toyota minivan. Wow.) Although I’m kind of inured to the fact that Japanese media usually represents foreign people and countries in oddball, half-baked ways, I still wish they could do better.
But honestly, that’s my only real complaint. Yeah, the interface is dated. There aren’t enough female protagonists. The most interesting main character (Minorikawa!) has the weakest connection to the underlying story. I could go on, I’m sure. But when it comes down to it all the little imperfections are kind of perfect.
All that is to say I agree with Famitsu on this one. 40/40.
Although it's a prequel to the game that's often held up as the quintessential immersive sim, Human Revolution is in fact an entirely different beast. Sure, it looks like a Deus Ex game, but when I peer deeply into its mechanics, I see two major influences, neither of which was produced by Ion Storm.
Those influences are none other than Metal Gear Solid and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
The radar, the tranquilizer rifle, the shifts between first- and third-person POV ... maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like these devs wanted to emulate Kojima. And it's not just Metal Gear -- they were clearly fans of Japanese games in general. These are guys who grew up playing Final Fantasy VII and they aren't shy about it.
The quest design, on the other hand, follows more of a Western approach. Quests are doled out just as they would be in a Bethesda game, with clear goals recorded in a journal and juicy rewards upon completion. While the side quests take a back seat later in the game, the early areas of Detroit and Hengsha play as like miniature open-world RPGs.
MGS gameplay plus Western RPG elements, then? It's a perfect combination, and for the most part Human Revolution makes good use of it. Outside of the boss battles, which are universally lame, the game plays smoothly and maintaining stealth is fun. I think I had more fun with the stealth here than I did in any of Arkane's games, if I'm being honest.
What drags the game down, then, is the big-picture stuff. The story makes sense, but there are too many characters who each get too little screentime, and because of this nothing resonates like it should. You can tell the developers wanted to make this game absolutely epic -- a globe-trotting Oblivion, if you will -- but ultimately they ran out of time. The end product is still great but it feels oddly incomplete. Hengsha really suffers in this regard -- it's essentially a copy/paste dystopia of ma-and-pop convenience stores and butcher stalls with a few key locations added for good measure.
Before I sign off, I just want to say that I do really admire the game's visual design. Like I said in my review of Bulletstorm, games from this era feel huge in a way that modern games often don't. It turns out massive dams and endlessly sprawling cities are more impressive when you can only gaze at them from afar -- once you can visit and explore them, the spell is broken.
Those influences are none other than Metal Gear Solid and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
The radar, the tranquilizer rifle, the shifts between first- and third-person POV ... maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like these devs wanted to emulate Kojima. And it's not just Metal Gear -- they were clearly fans of Japanese games in general. These are guys who grew up playing Final Fantasy VII and they aren't shy about it.
The quest design, on the other hand, follows more of a Western approach. Quests are doled out just as they would be in a Bethesda game, with clear goals recorded in a journal and juicy rewards upon completion. While the side quests take a back seat later in the game, the early areas of Detroit and Hengsha play as like miniature open-world RPGs.
MGS gameplay plus Western RPG elements, then? It's a perfect combination, and for the most part Human Revolution makes good use of it. Outside of the boss battles, which are universally lame, the game plays smoothly and maintaining stealth is fun. I think I had more fun with the stealth here than I did in any of Arkane's games, if I'm being honest.
What drags the game down, then, is the big-picture stuff. The story makes sense, but there are too many characters who each get too little screentime, and because of this nothing resonates like it should. You can tell the developers wanted to make this game absolutely epic -- a globe-trotting Oblivion, if you will -- but ultimately they ran out of time. The end product is still great but it feels oddly incomplete. Hengsha really suffers in this regard -- it's essentially a copy/paste dystopia of ma-and-pop convenience stores and butcher stalls with a few key locations added for good measure.
Before I sign off, I just want to say that I do really admire the game's visual design. Like I said in my review of Bulletstorm, games from this era feel huge in a way that modern games often don't. It turns out massive dams and endlessly sprawling cities are more impressive when you can only gaze at them from afar -- once you can visit and explore them, the spell is broken.
Final Fantasy X
2001
hey guys when you say something is for the girls and the gays can you include me in as well? the girls the gays and tidus if its not too much trouble thanks guys