all week i have been rewatching the same Conner O'Malley videos on YouTube. in particular, one video compilation from early 2019 named the Howard Schultz tapes. in it, O'Malley appears shirtless, at various active dumpsites (or construction sites). with workers often busy in the background, O'Malley (also wearing a new era Deadpool cap with 'Howard Schultz 2020' graffiti'd across in red marker pen) begins aggressively and manically (and very loudly) pleading to - and demanding Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz to run for president.

O'Malley appears sweaty, unhinged, sometimes in a Master Chief helmet. he screams completely normal things like "we want medicare for dogs" ,"if we put a starbucks to Kabul the war in the Afghan will be over", and "please send me and my family a monthly envelope of pills". he declares himself, in an extremely murderous growl, a "slut for schultz" as he pounds his chest like Marky Mark in Fear. he laughs like a starving hyena. gradually, over the course of the videos, he appears more and more frantic; he becomes dirtier and dirtier. at one point he is covered in medical equipment. various oozing, bleeding/burn wounds start appearing on his face (these get bigger and smaller, change what side of his face they're on before eventually settling to cover 2/3s of his upper face).


it is a harrowing depiction of a deranged persona desperately seeking validation. it is basically just unfiltered social media comments. but O'Malley turns it into performance art.

eventually, his pleas turn more aggressively sexual. he talks about fucking his boomer friends in a Buick Enclave. he's gagging, awaiting these instructions from Howard Schultz that we, the viewer, presume will never come. then they do, through a forced kidnapping by Starbucks employees. they drag him off into a van and the videos escalate and begin to more vividly resemble Guantanamo Bay esque torture vids as they violently deprogram this avid Schultz devotee.

Eventually they dump O'Malley outside a mall, and the final few minutes of the video are of him walking around in a visible haze, trying to convince random mall shoppers that he is, in fact, normal. a nice normal person. he was weird, but Howard made him normal.

i describe this video in detail for this review because basically the complete lack of chill going on there is the exact same lack of chill going on in Dead Space.

you can't go longer than three minutes without triggering a combat encounter in this game, and triggering a combat encounter is always met with music and sounds that signify that this is THE SINGLE MOST DRAMATIC FUCKING THING in the world. every THREE minutes the game is like this. it can't ever just CHILL. well, there are a couple of moments where the gravity is turned off in an area and you're encouraged to maybe solve a puzzle, but even these moments ARE INFILTRATED with enemies. and all the enemies are gross and loud and like screaming in your FACE aarrrGGH.

most of your weapons are industrial tools. they're loud and clanky. my fave weapon, the ripper blades, sounds like broken glass being mixed in a demonic nine inch nails branded blender. every level in this game is some mix of oozing organic tissue, scattered human limbs, sleek sci-fi surfaces and razor sharp jagged metallic textures that make you feel like you'll need a tetanus shot after playing the game. and they're all lit like a halloween scare room. flickering lights and heavy shadows disguising god's abominations in every corner. graffiti is everywhere, over every surface, even though living people are not. you get the feeling you missed all the cool, demonic orgy action.

although i love that sense of isolation. there are like five speaking characters in this whole game and a handful of suicidal/homicidal NPSs you occasionally encounter. with all this isolation, death and suicide, on top all of JUMP SCARE COMBAT ENCOUNTERS, playing this game alone in my room for four nights (in the middle of a state-wide pandemic lockdown) was a weird trip.

but it's not a bleak game. it's not a power fantasy either. but with all the mining equipment and general atmosphere of feeling like a labourer (every mission is just you taking orders), i found Dead Space captured what my average work week feels like really well. every chapter a new day; every new day met with that cj "aww here we go again" energy (especially heightened by the game's seamlessly directed lack of cuts and cutscenes). isaac's whole existence is to work. he gets no time to chill until the end, and even then, spoilers, not really. the stress and the demons don't just melt away. you get a few minutes to yourself and then plunge right back into the meat grinder.

this one made me appreciate dead space 2 less because this feels like a purer distillation of its core concepts and ideas. would like to play the third one now though, mostly to see if its running theme of women as betrayers is broken, even if I feel dead space'd out and didn't like the combat in the hour of 3 that i played a year ago.

the cool game time forgot. feels a little undercooked. kind of makes the case that video games are a way cooler medium than prestige TV, possibly by accident but still.

just some basic pros and cons.

pro:
- the shooting in this game is sick and the time powers, once you learn how fully operate in their rhythms, are really fun

con:
- there weren't enough shootouts, and on normal the game is not challenging at all. they could have really experimented more or even implemented some wackier set-pieces (imagine a tenet style reverse shootout or something)

pro and con:
- the above could apply to the platforming too. there's not enough, most of it is cool in concept and while the execution is fine it's mostly too easy and it coulda been way cooler (the part on the bridge was cool)

pro:
- beth wilder rules

con:
- the story doesn't really pick up, imo, until it unveils her reality but by then the game is practically ending and the sudden rush to get to the stop the big, save the world stuff means the game offers her no resolution and by the extension the game itself. it ends on this transparent hook for a sequel that's probably never gonna happen, just feels cheap for anyone playing it way after release.

pro:
- at least remedy made control next, cast courtney hope (beth) again as jesse and gave her a whole game that's mostly more sick af combat. we may never get a quantum break sequel, a more refined version, but at least remedy kind of learned the lessons from here and gave us control.

Very linear. Very basic. Lot of flicking of switching. Does not stretch your mind or anything at all.

But. As a vibe, man, slithering around as a giant Thing-like monster just chomping on screaming, fleeing human beings is extremely satisfying. There's nothing to the game more than that. I'm feeling like shit, so, honestly, the power fantasy of being the bad guy who is not just free but encouraged to devour people really hit the spot. It's kind of like an extended version of the end of a certain 2016 triple-I indie game. Carrion made me appreciate that game way more. But also I'd rather play this because it's all desert.

was a bit of a letdown to play after the excellent mafia iii - a game that had a lot to say about its time and place.

in comparison, mafia is all empty calories. striking to look at (the reflections in those puddles? marone!) and just as much of a ball to play (i will never tire of shooting people in these games, they drop with a real dramatic purposefulness, and some of the set piece gunfights are a blast, especially the art museum).

but tommy angelo is a bland nothing. he's portrayed as both an empty psycho and a morally conscience gangster. i really got no sense of who he was or what he was pursuing. very much a PS2 era character. and as for his pals? annoying(ly voiced), walking cliches. his wife? as empty a character as her husband. his boss? just some guy, basically.

it's supposed to be a game about family but there are about five characters in the whole game who speak, and the whole game is just various riffs on the godfather with none of heft. the final level is called 'the death of art', and all i could think is that for a game this boring that kind of titling is a bit too on the nose.

i enjoyed the linear structure of the game. i think more open world games should be structured like this, chapter-by-chapter with an open world as a backdrop. shame the driving kind of sucked ass. but the world in the game is gorgeous. it really tickled my fancy for early 20th century life. i just wish the game had something to say about it (beyond, i don't know, that the suits and signs back then were stylish).

it took me 51 runs over 9 months to escape just once.

it was my most monumental gaming accomplishment since defeating Isshin in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

that's enough for me for the moment. i'd love to see out more of the story. every character in this game is hot and interesting. sucks huge amounts of shit that i, a massive gaming loser, have to navigate a roguelike to experience it all though. it reminds me of the one big shitty thing about all games: they'll never be as accessible as a book or a movie. want to fast forward to your fave part? sorry loser, fuck off. this is games, baby. 😑😑😑

butts.

the first mental note i made playing until dawn was "nice butt". game has some nice butts.

I sort of love the appeal, the concept, of these photorealistic story adventure games. like in theory they're the exact kind of game i'd like to make. perhaps because i'm lame and unimaginative and i need a "serious" game with a "serious" story to look "serious" and therefore real. this is maybe the first non-quantic dream one i've played though. i was partially lead to believe it was the antidote to david cage's ham-fisted narcissism. "it's a campy 80s thriller that doesn't take itself too seriously". but no, not really. it's almost a straight up, lame mid-2000s horror movie; a saw-like torture porn clone with an extra layer of unnecessary meta cheese on top.

i loathed, loathed the first half of this. mechanically clunky and banal to play. almost nothing to actually do or see. the characters all seemed like utterly awful human beings to be around too. smug, mean bullies. the game starts you off blind, as these teens play a prank on a girl that has almost no context behind it, and is not even a prank either really. like, make it a Carrie styled pig's blood act of absolute malevolence or make it a normal romantic rebuff gone awry or something small. it's a weird thing to get hung up on but it was just such a lame way to kick things off. the characters are made worse, too, by how the facial capture technology makes just about every one of their performances look like this in any given moment:
https://frinkiac.com/img/S06E06/379328.jpg

there's whole meta interstitial therapist gimmick in here too that's grating. I could kind of tell immediately which character is in the therapist chair as well. the game has no clever fake outs. it telegraphs every "twist" each step of the way for you. i kept feeling smart for clueing in as to what's going down but only because the game hangs each story beat on a giant glowing hook for you to discover.

things clicked a little more for me in the second half though, mostly because it vaguely cohered into the game i utterly wished it was: like a gossip girl/OC teen romance sim. okay, it never coheres into that, but this game gives the game's central bitch character, Emily, the line "understand the palm of my hand, bitch", and i was just like where has this attitude been all game, i could really use more of this. you isolate all these horny, mean teens in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, i was hoping in between the Scooby Doo of it all that they'd be more personal dynamics and capital-d Drama at play. but despite that being the game's biggest appeal, it winds up more of a dream or promise because the characters are separated for most of the game - first in pairs, and then the central three (Sam, Mike and Emily) by themselves.

some of these isolated sequences i liked quite a bit though. i can't deny i really dug Mike - the big dumb typical video game himbo, just kinda stumbling his way through various cliched horror setups. he gets a wolf companion at one point and i liked that level of unashamed pandering.

Emily, who until her sequence, spent most of the game shitting on others, stumbles her own way alone through a lame direct-to-DVD Descent movie, which i also have to admit i liked. it's shallow characterisation, the tortured femme who has to fight her solitary way though adversity, like the story is her trial. but i think that stuff works the same way bread and butter work as a snack.

and there's sam who spends 20 or 30 mins running through the lodge in only a towel, the closest to what my expectations for this game here were. i must confess i do find playing as female characters in games maybe the most freeing, so i'd be lying if i said i didn't enjoy playing as Sam in a towel 😔.

i think back to my initial mental note: butts. and i think part of the appeal of photorealistic graphics for me is the allure of equally realistic scenarios. but, until dawn, like all of quantic dreams' games, still couches itself in fantasy and video game make believe nonsense. these characters look real, they may even behave realistically and give the illusion of having real emotions but their still written into a set of very limiting video game constraints.

until dawn, for instance, is a game that has some of the most realistic, foul-looking gore but god forbid any of these characters get down and do something more common and real and bone. i am might not saying i necessarily want an awkward QTE sex scene or a gratuitous boob shot but i think it's a shame games are still more afraid of sex than violence (kind of funny for a game that's using a slasher motif that normally demonises sex) and that they don't/can't use these kinds of graphics to explore more, equally realistic acts of humanity.

i mean, it's a bit of tease to get behind the steering wheel and take control of some of the most realistic digital human avatars and instead of being able to explore what that means and feels like in any depth, you're stuck in a bad slasher movie.

anyway. i think on what games that look like until dawn could be versus what they actually are leaves a lot to be desired. i'd take even a proper catty drama, confines that these characters work well within. i am not even mentioning the breadth of choices games like this could present you with that could go beyond that of "save x or y or none".

i know john milius was involved but it feels like red dawn - and subsequently michael bay's the rock for some reason - was an influence but only after it was filtered through from the references modern warfare 2 made to the material two years prior. everything about this feels like modern warfare 2 but traced over. or like modern warfare 2 gave the homefront kid its homework to copy and said but make it look like your own. homefront was like sure and then forgot.

definitely going to give this game points for trying. there are real world references to banal American institutes such as White Castle and Hooters. the game openly references hillary clinton and kim jong il (and kim jong un). i think it's neat considering how out of their way games go to make up their own in-universe parallels so it's refreshing to see a game trying to actually "be real".

not worth a lot by the end though. game is very shallow and its premise is like every american conservative's victimisation wet dream. "finally, we're being oppressed and have a reason to fight back". give me a break. maybe more interesting if it were set in canada or australia.

nice shooting though.

it's got some nice deserts. the game never really takes you there though. it's almost afraid to guide you across its map, an issue Odyssey and Valhalla wouldn't have. feels like a huge waste of space.

i can see how the game wanted you to explore because you it really requires you to grind up enough levels to actually complete it. this is a non-issue if you wind up with an XP boost, however, which I ended up using because I found the combat so tedious and utterly unrewarding. of course this also winds up turning the game into a sluggish equally unrewarding linear experience. so like, even though this only took me 20 hours to finish, it was spread out over two years and i had maybe 2 hours of fun with the whole thing. not a great sign when I am left yearning for Valhalla's endlessness.

Bayek and Aya make an interesting couple, maybe one of gaming's most compelling, realistic romances. very rare i think to find a couple in a game who genuinely feel like friends. theirs is a strained relationship. they reminded me of my parent in a weird way: two people, who've known each other since childhood, destined to have been together on one hand, but also destined to be separated. it's a shame their relationship takes a massive backseat to an Assassin's Creed plot and the game rarely if ever finds a way to actually intertwine the two in a gameplay in meaningful ways.

i guess what's most interesting about AC Origins is still its setting. the whole series is built on iconography that's practically begging for pyramids and tombs. the whole Isu stuff feels particularly Egyptian. I remember when one of the games ended with a CGI scene of ancient Adam and Eve escaping some area and the whole thing felt like a hype trailer for an inevitable Egypt game down the road. that this is their ancient Egypt game feels like a downer to me, though. like that's it? i guess. it's cool to get a AAA game completely set in Africa though. i remember being disappointed that there was no Ancient Rome AC game but I guess i appreciate ubisoft's one run at being less Eurocentric for once and taking Egypt over Rome (even if maybe you get the sense it's just because the Egyptian mythology is more of a standout than Roman mythology esp considering the Greek pantheon was coming right after). wish they just did more with Egypt: the politics, the people, the land. it's all just AC window dressing and the whole game feels like a test run for Odyssey (which in comparison is the more well--rounded experience).


the best thing this game accomplishes is making me want to pick up a history textbook.