flawed... masterpiece? maybe not quite that, but this is a mess of trashy iconoclasm, campy pastiche in the form of action rpg. "rough around the edges" barely says it, as the game is clearly unfinished and a bit rushed in the late game, and some of its most compelling aspects are left only mostly realized. this isn't necessarily a bad thing, however.
i played as a tremere - a vampire clan devoted to thaumaturgy. blood mages, essentially. frustratingly, the sanguine magicks afforded to you aren't really given the time to shine, with guns and bare fists being better suited to most encounters (and the open use of thaumaturgy being a risk to the masquerade). at least blood shield is useful throughout, and looks fucking cool... though of course any mortal who sees a human-shaped mass of blood will run screaming through the streets. with a few more sections enabling creative use of stealth and vampiric abilities, this playthrough could've been extremely satisfying. in fairness, that's only one of the seven clans, and each of them offers a distinct style of play, philosophy, dialogue, and in at least one case experience of reality. so there's quite a bit of depth here. and to be clear, i absolutely did have a great time with abilities like blood boil, which lifts an enemy struggling helplessly into the air before they explode into chunks and obliterate any other enemies within range. combining that with the ability to entrance solo opponents and drain their blood (their blood is your mana), several areas were exhilarating to storm through. i really want to go through the game again as a sneaky nosferatu hacker, a brawling brujah liberator, and perhaps once more as a malkavian weirdo. may or may not look into the unofficial plus patch for those, which mods in some cut content along with a handful of other liberties taken.
what's present and adequately fleshed out here is mostly very good. santa monica, downtown los angeles, and hollywood are all great (downtown being my favorite), while chinatown is a pretty major letdown on a few levels. worst of all, the pastiche descends into really gross racial caricature in a few instances (along with the presence of some really shitty dialogue choices). it's a stain on an otherwise very special and unique game, so i'm inclined to forgive it somewhat, but this stuff absolutely has to be called out. it does help that it's not all othering crassness: there's a gentle beauty and melancholy to the vibes - the sounds of wind chimes and mourning doves fill the air. there's a distinct feeling that you're haunting these spaces, a living apparition... and something about that is both cathartic and serene.
i did have a really good time navigating the politics of the plotting and power struggles between sects - namely, the corpo-fascist camarilla and the anarchic... anarchs. tremere are treated with mistrust, since their 'pyramid' social structure is a selfish and clandestine lot, and they're known to aid the camarilla in service of their own interests. being me, however, i wanted to lend my plasmatic sorcery to the anarchs. how am i not gonna pick the team smiling jack (voiced by jake the dog) is on?! that is my guy. this presented an interesting conundrum or two, and ultimately i felt i was able to carve out the path i wanted to. (also, this is kinda neither here nor there but i wanted to point out that there are some pretty decent mods available, like this skin i used for my vamp's appearance. i love how mean she looks.)
a minor spoiler: one of my favorite moments was when someone runs up to you, recognizing you from before your embrace, and you have a choice: let her call a friend to say you've been found and risk losing stature in the masquerade, or kill her. or...! find a solution that results in neither a loss of humanity nor a strike against the masquerade. what i did was admit to being her lost friend, and then before she could make the call, placed her in a trance and mind-wiped her, leaving her standing there in a daze. vampire life is cold. but it was the most merciful thing i could do.
not unlike morrowind, it took me a long time to find my way into this game after bouncing off it more than once. obviously, it has its issues. what really matters to me is, again, there's just nothing else quite like this. i sincerely hope to see bloodlines 2 one day emerge from development purgatory. i do hope, as well, that if it sees the light of day (rather, the moon) it's reflective of white wolf's nowadays more openly progressive stance on representation, while maintaining that distinctively ragged edge of sordid night life.
i played as a tremere - a vampire clan devoted to thaumaturgy. blood mages, essentially. frustratingly, the sanguine magicks afforded to you aren't really given the time to shine, with guns and bare fists being better suited to most encounters (and the open use of thaumaturgy being a risk to the masquerade). at least blood shield is useful throughout, and looks fucking cool... though of course any mortal who sees a human-shaped mass of blood will run screaming through the streets. with a few more sections enabling creative use of stealth and vampiric abilities, this playthrough could've been extremely satisfying. in fairness, that's only one of the seven clans, and each of them offers a distinct style of play, philosophy, dialogue, and in at least one case experience of reality. so there's quite a bit of depth here. and to be clear, i absolutely did have a great time with abilities like blood boil, which lifts an enemy struggling helplessly into the air before they explode into chunks and obliterate any other enemies within range. combining that with the ability to entrance solo opponents and drain their blood (their blood is your mana), several areas were exhilarating to storm through. i really want to go through the game again as a sneaky nosferatu hacker, a brawling brujah liberator, and perhaps once more as a malkavian weirdo. may or may not look into the unofficial plus patch for those, which mods in some cut content along with a handful of other liberties taken.
what's present and adequately fleshed out here is mostly very good. santa monica, downtown los angeles, and hollywood are all great (downtown being my favorite), while chinatown is a pretty major letdown on a few levels. worst of all, the pastiche descends into really gross racial caricature in a few instances (along with the presence of some really shitty dialogue choices). it's a stain on an otherwise very special and unique game, so i'm inclined to forgive it somewhat, but this stuff absolutely has to be called out. it does help that it's not all othering crassness: there's a gentle beauty and melancholy to the vibes - the sounds of wind chimes and mourning doves fill the air. there's a distinct feeling that you're haunting these spaces, a living apparition... and something about that is both cathartic and serene.
i did have a really good time navigating the politics of the plotting and power struggles between sects - namely, the corpo-fascist camarilla and the anarchic... anarchs. tremere are treated with mistrust, since their 'pyramid' social structure is a selfish and clandestine lot, and they're known to aid the camarilla in service of their own interests. being me, however, i wanted to lend my plasmatic sorcery to the anarchs. how am i not gonna pick the team smiling jack (voiced by jake the dog) is on?! that is my guy. this presented an interesting conundrum or two, and ultimately i felt i was able to carve out the path i wanted to. (also, this is kinda neither here nor there but i wanted to point out that there are some pretty decent mods available, like this skin i used for my vamp's appearance. i love how mean she looks.)
a minor spoiler: one of my favorite moments was when someone runs up to you, recognizing you from before your embrace, and you have a choice: let her call a friend to say you've been found and risk losing stature in the masquerade, or kill her. or...! find a solution that results in neither a loss of humanity nor a strike against the masquerade. what i did was admit to being her lost friend, and then before she could make the call, placed her in a trance and mind-wiped her, leaving her standing there in a daze. vampire life is cold. but it was the most merciful thing i could do.
not unlike morrowind, it took me a long time to find my way into this game after bouncing off it more than once. obviously, it has its issues. what really matters to me is, again, there's just nothing else quite like this. i sincerely hope to see bloodlines 2 one day emerge from development purgatory. i do hope, as well, that if it sees the light of day (rather, the moon) it's reflective of white wolf's nowadays more openly progressive stance on representation, while maintaining that distinctively ragged edge of sordid night life.
2020
the whole uproar about its premature release aside, i would say that (both collectively speaking and for myself) the primary grief with cyberpunk 2077 is its familiarity. there is—understandably, i think—a sort of unspoken and paradoxical desire for cyberpunk to simultaneously push boundaries and somehow return to what most would see as its conceptual roots: neuromancer, blade runner, and other works which set forth the feel and iconography of future worlds run by tech and overwhelming corporate power and corruption, as well as a profound posthuman interest. all of these ideas are well beyond familiar, now. this doesn't mean there aren't new frontiers for the genre... it just means that cd projekt red opted for nostalgia and pastiche. this isn't entirely a bad thing. (even those recent shadowrun games were very character-driven, nestled comfortably in their established and frankly derivative universe. and they're great!) it's a perfectly serviceable backdrop for character-driven stories, and for better or for worse, 2077 is abundant in this realm. for the most part, i think it's all really good! i mean, i really like some of these characters and enjoyed spending time with them unreservedly. to the point that... well, the culmination of my time with some of them almost left me feeling a bit empty, knowing there would be little left to look forward to outside my own imagination. (sux 2 b lonesome... heh heh.) maybe there is something "cyberpunk" about playing a game that makes one feel so forlorn in this era of everyone being so terminally online, connected by tech, yet no closer for it... seriously, i fuckin dream every night of finding someone who loves me and... uh, i kind of love those dreams despite the bittersweet aftermath of awakening.
2017
well, i can see that saying nice things about fortnite ain't gonna do much of anything for my credibility on this site, but i started playing it with my nephew last friday (at his urging) and found myself totally loving it. a friend described it as a "billion dollar shitpost" and, i mean, yeah: you can see a terminator dancing to gangnam style or a corn cob making kitty claws... and on and on. all that's just flavor, though, and the core battle royale game is really very good.
i gather the island map and its features are regularly changed—right now its theme is 'chrome', which introduces strange liquid metal to the landscape, allowing players to phase through chromed walls or to become chromed themselves, enabling a speedy metal slime form immune to fall damage. and that's just on top of the systems that apparently already exist... it's just a huge playground lending itself to all kinds of wild combat scenarios. and uhhh i haven't really got a handle on the building aspect yet, which seems important to a higher level of play, but there's so much you can do in terms of mobility, cover, etc even without that.
at the beginning of december there's some sort of cataclysmic event happening (titled fracture; there are currently mysterious cracks in the sky), and in online multiplayer games that is the shit i live for. evidently big changes are coming. i'm feeling the ache of having missed out on some cool stuff, but i'm also glad i jumped in at this point. besides, i'm stoked to have a game to share with my nephew.
i gather the island map and its features are regularly changed—right now its theme is 'chrome', which introduces strange liquid metal to the landscape, allowing players to phase through chromed walls or to become chromed themselves, enabling a speedy metal slime form immune to fall damage. and that's just on top of the systems that apparently already exist... it's just a huge playground lending itself to all kinds of wild combat scenarios. and uhhh i haven't really got a handle on the building aspect yet, which seems important to a higher level of play, but there's so much you can do in terms of mobility, cover, etc even without that.
at the beginning of december there's some sort of cataclysmic event happening (titled fracture; there are currently mysterious cracks in the sky), and in online multiplayer games that is the shit i live for. evidently big changes are coming. i'm feeling the ache of having missed out on some cool stuff, but i'm also glad i jumped in at this point. besides, i'm stoked to have a game to share with my nephew.
2022
a lunatic liminality; a total eclipse. a surge of cosmic kismet. a shadow realm illuminated. heaving earth. fromsoft shifting the landscape yet again.
2020
it's not another no man's sky
it's another vampire: the masquerade - bloodlines
it's another vampire: the masquerade - bloodlines
2015
replaying this is after playing ~45 hours of it in 2015, never getting very far in the shameful main story, but... this is one of the greatest failures of storytelling bethesda have ever mustered. it requires nothing short of the total suspension of disbelief every second of playing it to give a shit about anything you're doing. to its... uh, credit? i enjoy a big open world game i can explore, and this one feels pretty good to move around in, but every single line of dialogue fills me with a mirthful disgust. nothing else presumed to be a "role playing" game makes me want to be an asshole like this one does. i cackle with delight when some npc spouts bullshit and an experience gain is triggered, activating my "idiot savant" perk and a dumb giggle from my character. i don't care about this world. i don't care about the must-find-babby plot. i almost want to see it through to its end just to hate it and shit on it in every way i can. my rating doesn't really reflect as much because i have my own fun with the game—i like to wander a big place and creep around in the smaller parts of it—but i think fallout 4 is an embarrassment and that bethesda should be shamed into making a better game next time around. i can only hope that's why they're taking so long...
2023
it took me ENTIRELY TOO LONG to understand that this is a quintessential video game. my past attempts at plumbing its depths have failed—it felt cramped and clunky compared to super metroid or even the nes original. every so often i would make another failed attempt and come away with the impression that it was one of those "you had to be there" experiences and i had simply missed the boat forever... (i scarcely even knew of it until after i had played SUPER metroid, despite my age (i turned 11 in june of 1991, setting na release dates aside)) which sort of reinforced my uncertainty about its whole appeal, because, i mean, i HAD a game boy and i love and cherish the handheld mario and zelda games of the same era. what was i missing?
maybe first and foremost—and i am certainly not saying anything new or revelatory, here—that cramped screen space is a boon to the claustrophobic atmosphere of this thing, definitively setting it apart from other games in the series. you especially begin to feel this when you've made some progress and begin to hurt for a map, or some indication of where precisely the metroids you've yet to find and defeat may be lurking. the sheer empty darkness of these chasms is both smothering and informative of the barely fathomable scope of the world around you. this rules! metroid 2 is a HORROR game. its music often being sparse gothic dirges, all discordant 4-bit harpsichord, pulse wave doom and skittering alien noises, the vibe is relentlessly eerie. an even spookier precursor to the dank jams of castlevania: harmony of dissonance. it takes you back to a time when nintendo weren't afraid to experiment and make strange, almost avant garde art with their games. this is just about a masterpiece of exemplifying the beauty of technological limitations.
i won't get deep into the storytelling aspects, but one of the more impressive things to me, here, is the fine balance of streamlined, almost arcade game like flow to things (read: yes, it can feel a bit repetitive (though i DO feel this has been overstated, as the quake and lava-lowering that marks its gated progression is actually pretty satisfying when you've been hunting for a while...)) and environmental, cinematic (dialogue-free) storytelling. the events of super metroid resound in my mind now that i have my own experience with the oddly bleak return of samus in there, too.
(note: i played this in retroarch with one of those game boy color shaders that represents the handheld's screen as a frame around the game itself and i 100% recommend this.)
(extra side note: if metroid was inspired by alien, metroid 2 would seem to be obviously inspired by aliens in that it is primarily a mission of extermination... but it also presages the ideas of prometheus—specifically with regard to the fate of the chozo and the engineers and their role in the existence of each's lethal cosmic progeny—in some pretty interesting ways. makes u think.)
maybe first and foremost—and i am certainly not saying anything new or revelatory, here—that cramped screen space is a boon to the claustrophobic atmosphere of this thing, definitively setting it apart from other games in the series. you especially begin to feel this when you've made some progress and begin to hurt for a map, or some indication of where precisely the metroids you've yet to find and defeat may be lurking. the sheer empty darkness of these chasms is both smothering and informative of the barely fathomable scope of the world around you. this rules! metroid 2 is a HORROR game. its music often being sparse gothic dirges, all discordant 4-bit harpsichord, pulse wave doom and skittering alien noises, the vibe is relentlessly eerie. an even spookier precursor to the dank jams of castlevania: harmony of dissonance. it takes you back to a time when nintendo weren't afraid to experiment and make strange, almost avant garde art with their games. this is just about a masterpiece of exemplifying the beauty of technological limitations.
i won't get deep into the storytelling aspects, but one of the more impressive things to me, here, is the fine balance of streamlined, almost arcade game like flow to things (read: yes, it can feel a bit repetitive (though i DO feel this has been overstated, as the quake and lava-lowering that marks its gated progression is actually pretty satisfying when you've been hunting for a while...)) and environmental, cinematic (dialogue-free) storytelling. the events of super metroid resound in my mind now that i have my own experience with the oddly bleak return of samus in there, too.
(note: i played this in retroarch with one of those game boy color shaders that represents the handheld's screen as a frame around the game itself and i 100% recommend this.)
(extra side note: if metroid was inspired by alien, metroid 2 would seem to be obviously inspired by aliens in that it is primarily a mission of extermination... but it also presages the ideas of prometheus—specifically with regard to the fate of the chozo and the engineers and their role in the existence of each's lethal cosmic progeny—in some pretty interesting ways. makes u think.)
2020
some films that came to mind while playing this: spring, summer, fall, winter... and spring (temple of isolation and cycles), little shop of horrors (elder god audrey 2 creation myth), flight of the navigator (quarantine, unidentified floating object), vivarium (suburban alienation)...
there's more, of course, and i'm not suggesting that any of these were necessarily intentional references; rather, it's more likely these are things i'm inferring because the game, short and small as it is, is littered with these little archetypal bits of things both mythical and mundane. i think it's a mistake to take fatum betula as a simple mess of dream logic. it has things to say, and it's up to you to do the experimenting required to discover what these things are. in the end, whichever ending(s) you get, you'll most likely come away with something to think about for a while. the kind of person you want to be, perhaps.
there's more, of course, and i'm not suggesting that any of these were necessarily intentional references; rather, it's more likely these are things i'm inferring because the game, short and small as it is, is littered with these little archetypal bits of things both mythical and mundane. i think it's a mistake to take fatum betula as a simple mess of dream logic. it has things to say, and it's up to you to do the experimenting required to discover what these things are. in the end, whichever ending(s) you get, you'll most likely come away with something to think about for a while. the kind of person you want to be, perhaps.
2006
i'm not oblivious to the irony of my feelings about this trash. when i was in my teens, magazines like egm and gamefan loved to report on joseph lieberman's campaign against violence in video games. he and his fellow senators didn't really get it, and even as kids we knew better. better than them, better for ourselves. mortal kombat was and always has been looney tunes, but these crusty old politicians took it seriously - at least enough to raise funds from clueless conservative parents. this whole era tilled the soil from which gamergate would sprout a couple of decades later. censorship was the enemy, no matter what considerations might motivate the direction of art or changes to it.
(a couple of side notes: howard lincoln, president of nintendo america in 1993, said that year that night trap would never appear on a nintendo system. well, he was wrong about that. also, it's pretty interesting to see these guys wring their hands about konami's justifier lightgun "teaching children that any problem can be solved with a gun" when we consider the world we live in - at least in the us - today. lightguns are pretty much a thing of the past, and i feel like it's a safe bet that kids who played lethal enforcers didn't all go on to become cops. but if they did, well, then i don't imagine lieberman has anything negative to say about them. i'm quite sure he's not thinking about what a tragedy it is that some old video games "justified" them becoming the violent foot soldiers of the white supremacist state. and how would we ever know if even a single cop in 2022 ever played lethal enforcers, anyway? what the fuck am i even talking about?)
here i am, well into my adulthood and reading articles about a fascist recruitment campaign which happened in roblox, thinking i'd like to make it my mission to get my nephews away from this junk. initially i frowned upon learning that the elder of my nephews was playing lots of this because, well, it's fucking devoid of any sort of aesthetic quality. funko pop shit. and, in fairness, my nephews are still young and easily distracted and who the fuck am i anyway, i'm literally talking in irc in between paragraphs here about cruelty squad and the worldview of its developer, who is supposedly anti-capitalist, though he also collaborated with the brigador devs not long after they were exposed as something awful forum posters into white nationalism and holocaust denial or whatever, and i find the whole situation frankly fucking bewildering and idk if i want to play this game (cruelty squad) which otherwise seems to be, incidentally, the exact inverse of a game like roblox... but is it really? jfc i really am an idiot. sometimes nothing makes sense. it's not like i'm afraid of some level of depravity... i mean, have you seen the movies and music i'm into? but i mean, despite my depression and the world i'm not a doomer or a nihilist. the red pill is a metaphor in the matrix, a movie that whips ass, not the hateful bullshit some 4chan nerds equate with being "based." all of this is so much weirder and more unsettling to me than mortal goddamn kombat ever even came close to being.
look, i mean... i don't want to approach my nephews as a lieberman, as some arbiter of content safe for consumption with a stick up their ass. still, one thing i do know: roblox is shit and the kids could do better. play a fucking dragon quest. discover culture, idk. maybe even go outside, learn how to be alone.
(a couple of side notes: howard lincoln, president of nintendo america in 1993, said that year that night trap would never appear on a nintendo system. well, he was wrong about that. also, it's pretty interesting to see these guys wring their hands about konami's justifier lightgun "teaching children that any problem can be solved with a gun" when we consider the world we live in - at least in the us - today. lightguns are pretty much a thing of the past, and i feel like it's a safe bet that kids who played lethal enforcers didn't all go on to become cops. but if they did, well, then i don't imagine lieberman has anything negative to say about them. i'm quite sure he's not thinking about what a tragedy it is that some old video games "justified" them becoming the violent foot soldiers of the white supremacist state. and how would we ever know if even a single cop in 2022 ever played lethal enforcers, anyway? what the fuck am i even talking about?)
here i am, well into my adulthood and reading articles about a fascist recruitment campaign which happened in roblox, thinking i'd like to make it my mission to get my nephews away from this junk. initially i frowned upon learning that the elder of my nephews was playing lots of this because, well, it's fucking devoid of any sort of aesthetic quality. funko pop shit. and, in fairness, my nephews are still young and easily distracted and who the fuck am i anyway, i'm literally talking in irc in between paragraphs here about cruelty squad and the worldview of its developer, who is supposedly anti-capitalist, though he also collaborated with the brigador devs not long after they were exposed as something awful forum posters into white nationalism and holocaust denial or whatever, and i find the whole situation frankly fucking bewildering and idk if i want to play this game (cruelty squad) which otherwise seems to be, incidentally, the exact inverse of a game like roblox... but is it really? jfc i really am an idiot. sometimes nothing makes sense. it's not like i'm afraid of some level of depravity... i mean, have you seen the movies and music i'm into? but i mean, despite my depression and the world i'm not a doomer or a nihilist. the red pill is a metaphor in the matrix, a movie that whips ass, not the hateful bullshit some 4chan nerds equate with being "based." all of this is so much weirder and more unsettling to me than mortal goddamn kombat ever even came close to being.
look, i mean... i don't want to approach my nephews as a lieberman, as some arbiter of content safe for consumption with a stick up their ass. still, one thing i do know: roblox is shit and the kids could do better. play a fucking dragon quest. discover culture, idk. maybe even go outside, learn how to be alone.
2009
not sure if crpg fatigue has just set in for the moment, but as much as i appreciate seeing how this is an evolution in presentation and interface from baldur's gate, neverwinter nights, and kotor, i am finding myself bored to tears by its writing. more hampered by the limitations of its switch to full 3d than it is empowered, there has (as of several hours deep) been nothing approaching the wonderful depth and complexity of exploring athkatla in bg2 and i just feel like i'm being pushed from place to unremarkable place by a bog-standard fantasy campaign... and, uh, i'm sure that i'll enjoy that plenty some other time. perhaps i'll revisit later in the year. for now, moving on.
2002
this might be the perfect introduction to kawazu and his wild approach to the often more simplified rpg style of other jrpgs we all know. beside the romancing saga and saga frontier series it's more easily and immediately grasped, almost bite-sized. choose a starting character, and then enlist 3 more: human, esper, or monster. humans need to chug potions purchased from merchants to increase stats; espers have stat growth something like that of final fantasy 2 and randomly learn, replace, and relearn spells as they battle; monsters eat the flesh of other monsters to evolve and change form. weapons (swords, axes, etc) for the humans and espers have 'charges' like in a vancian magic system, which is a bit odd, but it works. your first quest soon becomes clear: collect 3 items needed from different castles to proceed. this is quickly achieved, a gateway into other worlds is opened, and thus your legend unfolds before you.
i won't spoil the rest. final fantasy may be known for its adventurous nature, but this trend started with ff2 and then kawazu began work on a long series of games one might describe as final fantasy's weirder sister series. many of the saga games feel a bit soberer than this one—saga 1 is a wild journey and it is all kinds of fun. that this began life on the game boy in 1989... it's almost like a poem, simple and elegant, offering a little dream-window into a surprisingly expansive world of weird and wonderful things. and far more so than something like the first dragon quest, another game i feel achieves much through charming minimalism: this game literally goes places.
ascend the tower!
i won't spoil the rest. final fantasy may be known for its adventurous nature, but this trend started with ff2 and then kawazu began work on a long series of games one might describe as final fantasy's weirder sister series. many of the saga games feel a bit soberer than this one—saga 1 is a wild journey and it is all kinds of fun. that this began life on the game boy in 1989... it's almost like a poem, simple and elegant, offering a little dream-window into a surprisingly expansive world of weird and wonderful things. and far more so than something like the first dragon quest, another game i feel achieves much through charming minimalism: this game literally goes places.
ascend the tower!
This review contains spoilers
still playing this (got a late start thanks to a tornado knocking out power and internet for a bit, plus i'm still playing bg3 as well)... just wanted to make a few comments, having only tried a handful of past armored core releases, on this game's tone. previously, the one i'd spent the most time with was armored core 5, which i came away from not really liking despite enjoying its aesthetic and the feel of wall-jumping off of buildings and so forth. it was held back by its completely disconnected narrative and its emphasis on multiplayer features that never really felt like they worked due to a low player count in the us.
ac6 has a coldly impersonal feel to it as well, with its interface and narrative interactions all happening on a static hangar screen or in your ac itself, every voice you hear disembodied... but it (as of having only just cleared the first chapter) also seems to have a sort of progression to it, even if only with the dawning realization that you are the corporate dog your opponents say you are, and the sinister pitch of this mindset steadily intensifying. you are (at least at the start) a fucking demon in ac6, seemingly devoid of emotion (perhaps as a result of your augmentation?), not simply destroying your targets but also overwhelming them with despair. you are just too powerful, and you crush their hopes beneath your heel. and not only their hopes of surviving the encounter, but of succeeding on their mission to free their people from endless corporate oppression and murder.
it, uh, feels awesome. i normally don't particularly go for being evil in video games, particularly when they're more personal, and i imagine that there will be some twists with walter and the liberation front and so forth, but my impression as of now is that you're nothing but a mercenary. an extremely adept one, though essentially inhuman. a monster chasing power above all else. and i've leaned into this, crafting the fiercest and most agile and aggressive death machine i can. one that should make its enemies afraid.
on the same token, i look forward to finding out whether there's anything to be awakened within the heart of augmented human 621.
last thing for now: the fucking music. hoshino's best work, maybe. a far cry from the jubilant discordance of evergrace, this will be likened to 'synthwave' by some, but it's so much more than that — droning, buzzing, constantly intensifying its mood of absolute menace.
what a game.
ac6 has a coldly impersonal feel to it as well, with its interface and narrative interactions all happening on a static hangar screen or in your ac itself, every voice you hear disembodied... but it (as of having only just cleared the first chapter) also seems to have a sort of progression to it, even if only with the dawning realization that you are the corporate dog your opponents say you are, and the sinister pitch of this mindset steadily intensifying. you are (at least at the start) a fucking demon in ac6, seemingly devoid of emotion (perhaps as a result of your augmentation?), not simply destroying your targets but also overwhelming them with despair. you are just too powerful, and you crush their hopes beneath your heel. and not only their hopes of surviving the encounter, but of succeeding on their mission to free their people from endless corporate oppression and murder.
it, uh, feels awesome. i normally don't particularly go for being evil in video games, particularly when they're more personal, and i imagine that there will be some twists with walter and the liberation front and so forth, but my impression as of now is that you're nothing but a mercenary. an extremely adept one, though essentially inhuman. a monster chasing power above all else. and i've leaned into this, crafting the fiercest and most agile and aggressive death machine i can. one that should make its enemies afraid.
on the same token, i look forward to finding out whether there's anything to be awakened within the heart of augmented human 621.
last thing for now: the fucking music. hoshino's best work, maybe. a far cry from the jubilant discordance of evergrace, this will be likened to 'synthwave' by some, but it's so much more than that — droning, buzzing, constantly intensifying its mood of absolute menace.
what a game.
2011
don't give nicalis money. don't support publishers who deceive and fuck over the actual artists and creators. just find the free original version (which can be modded for full/widescreen, etc.)
wow. genuinely no idea how to rate this thing. it appears to be a dungeon crawler (and not even one with automap, but with the map already visible) with a bunch of mid-'90s cgi video and stop-motion elements. you explore until an encounter, where you — to the best of my understanding — use the directional buttons to highlight a section of musculature on your chosen bioform's caked-up humanoid diagram (?!)... and, whether you are successful or not (who can say), you switch to some kind of killer instinct lookin side-on view where one monster hits the other. beyond that... i couldn't tell you.
in my total befuddlement i looked for a longplay on youtube and found a video where the guy looked up someone else's playthru and determined they had no better idea of how to play than he did. so it would seem nobody on earth knows how to play this thing. ok! well, it looks fucking cool, anyway...!
in my total befuddlement i looked for a longplay on youtube and found a video where the guy looked up someone else's playthru and determined they had no better idea of how to play than he did. so it would seem nobody on earth knows how to play this thing. ok! well, it looks fucking cool, anyway...!