wife_cake
2023
feels v good to play & gets better/gathers momentum as it progresses because u are not forced into an endless sewer/lab gauntlet, but the intrinsic goofiness (dare i say "camp" ...) of RE4 doesn't survive the move to REngine. bemoaning the state of resident evil is the most resident evil fan thing u can do (it's like being a knicks fan) and i even think the designers did an admirable job straddling silly & "serious" here but ... deep down ... i think its an unsolvable problem. its an intuition thing idk. u get it or u don't ...
2017
doing unfriended as a game is a great idea ... someone should make a better game out of it :) Its crazy what u have to do to get the good ending in this LOL
miserable autofiction. has a kind of dworkinite intensity in moments but wayyyyy too heavy on disclaimers and apologies. actually most successful in the little section about how 80% of prostitution is customer-service hell. feels like a relic from the early 2010s indie scene
2018
i am probably never gonna actually finish this because it makes kingdom hearts 1 feel like bayonetta. but the vibes are kinda enticing (i cry a lot too!!!) & theres a fluffy dog. one of those games where the specter of unlockable swimsuits haunts every moment
2022
the narrative is elliptical in a way i wouldve loved to chew on like 10 years ago ... but i'm old now and insensate and respond only to sensory inputs like color and sound. luckily this game is full of weird crunchy noises and gross textures in addition to a cast of morose lesbians who look like fanart of themselves. If everyone is gay i think ... no one is gay. i have so much patience and LOVE for proudly tedious, unreconstructed survival horror mechanics!!! the loop here is finessed just enough; you'll come upon puzzle solutions naturally as u explore new rooms, but it's also exhausting to find the item you need with a full inventory and the nearest save room half the map away :))))) a masterclass in what i think the kids call "filtering" ...
also happy to see a game that doesn't bother with delicately alluding to other art (subtle intertextuality ... that thing videogames are famous for); it just plops it in front of you whole-cloth. the silent hill save screen and meat world slop are really obvious, all the classical pieces & cosmic horror texts, but the use of the böcklin painting "isle of the dead" is especially canny — he painted a handful of versions (plus a cheerier follow-up "isle of life"), there are several potential IRL inspirations, it was widely proliferated in his home country ... its so thematically relevant girl!!
also happy to see a game that doesn't bother with delicately alluding to other art (subtle intertextuality ... that thing videogames are famous for); it just plops it in front of you whole-cloth. the silent hill save screen and meat world slop are really obvious, all the classical pieces & cosmic horror texts, but the use of the böcklin painting "isle of the dead" is especially canny — he painted a handful of versions (plus a cheerier follow-up "isle of life"), there are several potential IRL inspirations, it was widely proliferated in his home country ... its so thematically relevant girl!!
love the way your guy's head is primed to explode the INSTANT u hit zero health. this really is dogshit — its like if someone whacked every one of the original dead space devs in the skull with a lead pipe and left them to remake the game.
2002
in the words of pantera ... fucking hostile!!!! an antifun tour de force, disrespects every second of the player's time, mocks u, kills u out of nowhere repeatedly and without mercy... AND teaches you that Love is all that can lighten the misery of Work :-)
2000
extreme amount of aesthetics going on here. menacing vibes. so many weird cg people!! i watched english translated vids on utube xo
wtf
played this while devastatingly high on a 4 hr flight ... cute until u realize your adopted fairy daughter wants to fuck u. harrowing!!!!!!!!
2022
post-disco elysium UI design is already cementing into cliche w this & norco. this has the roughest on-the-ground writing of all 3 (feels like under-edited/sloppy short stories split apart w arbitrary dialogue options) BUT the mechanics are pleasantly gummy and the background noise (lore, worldbuilding, etc) is put together well.
2022
cute - this is the first chilla's game i've actually played vs watching an LP. i like the weird rigid coffee-making mechanics (u can't take the lid off a drink once it's on and so have to trash mismakes even if "fixable" logically or how everything u pick up goes into inventory lol) and having to focus on something so fiddly is a good source of tension.
it doesn't amount to a whole lot tho -- i think i like their supernatural games moreeeee but this still scared me a lil :)
it doesn't amount to a whole lot tho -- i think i like their supernatural games moreeeee but this still scared me a lil :)
2017
xtremely clean & åesthetic persona clone, gorgeous UI, shimmering melodramatic score, monomaniacal fixation on soaking our heroic schoolgirls in water——?
2018
this is why i hate videogames lol. super meat boy x girl in red. ce-let's get you some bitches u squishy mfs
1998
xo