Very sweet. I didn't love the text box screen design, but i fuck with the vision. There's something that lets me imagine a more dynamic line read if I can see more of the character on screen. like even if they had those profile pics pop up on screen super imposed on the game, i think I would've been more into it than cutting away to a black screen like that. But it wouldve been less impactful upon returning to the 3d space, and seeing all the characters in their new positions.

I really loved the blocking of these scenes. kinda reminds me just how much a sweet spot between comics and theatre this medium is. It's just that slight bit more agency it gives its audience over pace and perspective. I love it. Very cool stuff.

The script was great. I wish they got INTO it a little more but not every story has to show so much of their characters so obviously. I like how we just got peeks into their lives outside of this camping trip. Maybe I just loved em so much I wanted more. Ah well. I guess I'll just go camping with my own loved ones. hell yeah.

With no tutorial, barely a UI, and not a single english character in sight for the entire game, HWMR is unleaded, stay home from church, rubber melting fun. I just wish it was longer.

More games should have secret tunnels, corridors, unexplained and unhinted stumble-upon-ables. This one has exactly 9, but they each feel like a handshake with bigfoot upon discovery. What if we kissed in the hidden star room through the snake's mouth on the toy track in hotwheels microracers?

Besides - what's not to love about a miniature environment? Minish cap, chibi robo, toy story for the playstation - all those games make the house feel bigger. If you ever went "ZHOOO00000M, BRRRRRRRRR, or even NYYEEeeeeuuww, with hotwheels. Or even raced with paperclips along your desk... Idk what else to say, this is that feeling.

Someone for the love of hasbro pick up the loose thread from this game. The sensation of racing little toys along a smooth surface, imagining your hand transparent to effortlessly picture the sickest tricks played out by your little car. That feeling, with all thresholds and simulacrums it crosses and carries in the human imagination, is one I'm dying to see explored in games.

Probably the best game to play when you just ducked the cops after getting way too high at an animal collective concert, your second ever weed moment, whereupon you blacked out, and came back awake slapping yourself in the mirror due to losing all feeling in your body for several hours, but thank god petting your wide whale corduroy pants brought your heart rate down because the line between panic attack and overdose had blurred during pre-show, which by the way, someone explain to me why the tour for Centipede Hz included Bohemian Rhapsody in the pre-show music, I mean that album is overdue for a revisit, because its more than just the "king of limbs" of their discography, but even if it isn't, it doesn't get enough love for an ambitious follow up to Merriweather, maybe it's their Kid A, not to mention the security guard making me call my mom outside the bathroom forcing her to drive out to boston in a record breaking blizzard and share a bed with me in the house of my friend of a friend and all these other kids I'd never met who needed shelter from the snow, the vacuous horror at the thought of losing my mind to the same murderous abyss my uncle did still a din too loud to ignore; a verbless enmity to an endless identity, making it all too difficult to explain to mother I'm still a good kid but a shame there wasn't a follow up with better UI.

No, see, this is special to me.

After playing butterfly soup, I immediately sent it to all three of my younger siblings. Later that month when I came home from college, all three of them casually came out to me in the same night. Did this game turn us gay? Yes, and we're still looking for the cure.

I was in college, unhealthily offline, and had zero language around gender sexuality identity or whatever when I played this. Looking back, this was THE catalyzing piece of art to give me the license, but more importantly, the joy to come out. Same deal for my partner - this shit was spreading gay like peanut butter on toast.

It's a love story so effortlessly funny that it quietly earns its earnestness moment after moment. I still recommend it to any friend of mine needing a pick me up. It's a feel-good story! Pretty freakin rare quality in visual novels, and even games in general that are considered "impactful."

Idk man, it was also like the first visual novel I played and its music kinda sounds like the interlude music from Blonde? Brianna didn't have to go so hard but damn. Can't wait to play 2.

like if pac-man had a gun and bullets were bulldozers. maybe more people would like it actually if it had more recognizable characters, if you could anthropomorphize its patterns.

but god what a beautiful co-op game. the criticisms against its aesthetic... listen i get it but i think if you give it a minute and play with a friend, and with an aim to "catch a vibe" (good rule of thumb for making any new taste), it'll grow on you! it did on us, and the last game he played was tf2 in highschool. far from this living othello board, minimalist mumbo jumbo.

Homie and I could honestly barely stop playing the versus mode on this. it was soooo sick. like we kept saying "one more game okokokok LAST one" and then we took turns on the arcade? just frothin w fun. this shit would have crushed alongside tetris back when "new" games looked like this. but damn new games can look like anything. maybe these blocks have names.

mine were susan and harry. they were divorced but still in love.

There's something special about reading a book before seeing a movie these days. Book cover aside, you get to stake your claim to its imagined aesthetic: what their voices sound like, what their faces look like, and the crown jewel of the reader's relationship to their story, the pacing. You want a long pause where Bilbo runs his fingers across the petrified trolls? So be it. You want Gandalf to cough out a kracken as he blows his little ship through smoke rings? Wish granted. A drunken kiss between Kíli and Glóin? Well... don't tell their great great Granddwarf. It's such a fucking mind hack. But getting to play The Hobbit on the PS2 as your very first introduction to one of the most ubiquitous fantasy worlds of all time? Now that is worth a trip to mordor.

And these days, it kind of has dibs on how i visualize these stories upon reading them. Its own inspiration clearly being the Ranken/Bass animated film from 1977 (a rank and ass classic). As by the time it was in development and the live action trilogy was coming out, it was probably too late to pivot art directions, but I wonder how much they did change.

Anyway - so fucking fun. never beat it as a kid cuz it actually gets really hard in that laggy and unspecific hitbox combat frustrating sort of way. Apparently there was new life breathed into it from the speed-running community. A good time, especially if you like to see different interpretations of your favorite stories.

Extra half a star for the uncanny cutscenes. Unironically a very special time for 3d animation.

I was in Sweden on a job. That's all you need to know.

For now.

I had 3 hours to kill and a nearby science museum had a games exhibit. Since it was the middle of the school day and a museum, there were no children using said games exhibit. I waltzed up to the dreamcast, a system I never had as a kid and booted up the strangest, most un-me looking game available. That was chu-chu rocket. Something in its fluid motion puzzles, struck me as gorgeous. It was fluid algebra. And that math seemed to see me. Write my problems into a simulacrum of saccrine colored, synchronized squeakers. It melted my cold, American heart and forced me to see the shining hope in that Scandinavian town. To make the most out of the problems I had. Because even when you feel like a scared little robot mouse or whatever, there's always a next cheese level or something. I dont know - listen i was dehydrated, it was a great fucking time though.

I cried walking out of the museum. I couldn't afford any other exhibit.