Steam sale time! Pillars of Eternity I & II are the finest CRPGs of this generation. Together, they are 20 bucks and they will allow you to a. learn how to live with an insufferable piece of shit, b. vibe with the piece of shit-ness of history writ large.

I spent half an hour with the Industria 2 playtest tonight and I felt more tension in that time than during the entirety of Silent Hill F. That game is doing something very right.

I swore I was done with superheroes but I watched Mask of the Phantasm, one of too many Batmans in a world that never gets tired of Batman origin stories. Not only does Phantasm share the same fate, it also buys into a secondary trend of Bat-fiction: explanations for why Batman is still single.

Alien: Earth was supposed to be so much smarter. In the end, it's the same old TV, the glimmer in its eye fading away as its early touches of brilliance and character take it nowhere. Even its visual language gets stale. Prometheus with a delayed fuse.

I played Metal Eden, (came for the similarities to Metroid, stayed for the music), and found a game that plays much like Doom 2016, replete with tactically switching between your many guns, plus wallrunning. Fights take place in small arenas, the story gets told to you by guys on the radio.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans sounds like a game published by Don't Nod, but it's actually a masterpiece of the 20s, and, I learned this from Wikipedia, one of the earliest silent pictures to feature sound effects. It's a gorgeous melodrama that is already speaking our cinematic language.

Whatever fealty Silksong earns from me, it swiftly claws back with some truly dishonorable design. There was joy in the struggle, but now I'm starting to regret my time.

I watched S'en Fout La Mort, Claire Denis' second feature. It's a cramped, Mean Streets-y picture with a gritty look and unromantic colors. We always look over someone else's shoulder as black migrants Dah and Jocelyn set up a cock fighting ring for a shady -- you know how it goes. Not Denis' best.

I waited too long, but at last, I've read Wuthering Heights. I'll note only this: over the decades, many women have longed for a love like Heathcliff's, and some were cursed to have their wish fulfilled. May they abide in peace, if they can.

The web spent the summer godding up Ryan Coogler's Sinners. I found the movie so bogged down in convention that it is not so much invented as picked out of the catalogue of the collective imagination.

The Wandering Village: spent blissful hours on this compelling city builder set on the back of a giant, traveling dinosaur. I'd say, diplomatically, that the game draws a lot from Ghibli's Nausicaa, and leaves somewhat to be desired in the character department.

Beau Travail inspired me to go through Claire Denis's filmography. First up: Chocolat. It's astounding how good the movie looks. The composition, color, provide such details that give a life, force, and personality to each shot. Impeccable blocking and mis-en-scene of course.

I watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles last night and caught myself thinking of "classic Hollywood" not meaning pre-1960 but pre-2000. When you could count on a movie like the above mentioned to look decent and showcase some great blocking.

I love Pyre. If you give it the power to beat you, it becomes a real journey of success and defeat that moreover sits outside the Souls paradigm. This is a precious thing.

well shit, the social media vulture looked away for a bit and you got us from 69 to SEVENTY EIGHT out of the 100 new Unwinnable Monthly subscribers we need to unlock a Final Fantasy and politics issue! help us get the remaining 22: unwinnable.com/subscribe/

Fate decided to combine different levels of grind in Final Fantasy XV and I decided to elucidate how that touches something real. Thanks to Artemis for having me, and thanks to @smashvillain.etheirys.social for the pics.

Asura is Hirokazu Koreeda's latest project, a series for Netflix about four sisters who learn that their father is cheating on their mother. The angle is humorous, but there's something very un-Koreeda about the soapy script and direction. Still, it makes for a frank look at older gender dynamics.

“Of all the ways AI has killed us in fiction, the reality is the meanest and stupidest.“ @letominor.bsky.social reminds us that, if current events are to be considered, Grok will be a greater threat to civilization than any SHODAN apocalypse fantasy. lifebarmag.com/praise-the-m...

Treme', by David Simon and Eric Overmyer, is a soulful yet sobering journey. Full of as much (musical and culinary) joy, and yet tinged with such disappointment and anger as anything I've seen on TV. Enough to make a man fall in love with a place he'll never see.

28 Years Later: part Attack on Titan, part I Am Legend, part Lord of the Flies. Not to suggest that it's derivative, but the cross-pollination is notable in Alex Garland's script, which doesn't necessarily play to expectations. *Will* we build Jerusalem in Britain's green and pleasant land?

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Cléo from 5 to 7 was what I expected from a pioneering nouvelle vague flick but it also managed to surprise me with its homage to silent movies, not to mention cameos from Anna Karina, Jean-Luc Goddard and Eddie Constantine. I continue to learn.

I'm in here with this piece on System Shock 2, in which I state that "image trained replication may only come across as the surface imitation of a pathetically limited toy managed by minds too small to understand the smallness of the machine that they built." lifebarmag.com/praise-the-m...

ITS TIME!!!!! Come see what we cooked up for Issue 004!

We've reached 67 out of 100 new Unwinnable Monthly subscribers in our drive to release a Final Fantasy/politics issue, and we are dangerously close to the nice number. Make the issue and the nice happen by subscribing for $5: unwinnable.com/subscribe/

🚨 LIFEBAR ISSUE 004: SUMMER 2025 IMMINENT🚨 With contributions from: @tierknee.com @letominor.bsky.social @amisma.bsky.social @jdharlock.bsky.social @dontfeedthecharlie.bsky.social + MORE AUGUST 1ST!

Monster is Koreeda's latest, wonderful feature, a drama about the pain of appearances and how they make one less than human. This equivocation can take place during a brief encounter, or through a film camera. That camera may linger a moment longer and suddenly reality twists. Who is the monster?

Years ago I put over 200 very brisk hours into FFXIV. It struck me as a self referential spiral of fan appeasement which consistently dodges opportunities to be great, and never questions why its elements are chosen or why they are thus arranged. Tropey, boring, overlong.

Played The Drifter over a couple nights. It's nice to see the point & click puzzler still going strong.

No essay for Stop Caring this month, but I am releasing this triple threat of personal updates/a call for pitches/a request for donations If you are interested in writing for Stop Caring, please read this. I only have 4 spots available for the year, so the time to pitch is now/in the near future.

Time to back up the car. Help us get to 100 new Unwinnable Monthly subscribers, and we'll get to work on a Final Fantasy and politics issue: unwinnable.com/subscribe/

🚨 LIFEBAR ISSUE 004: SUMMER 2025 IMMINENT🚨 With contributions from: @tierknee.com @letominor.bsky.social @amisma.bsky.social @jdharlock.bsky.social @dontfeedthecharlie.bsky.social + MORE AUGUST 1ST!

Beau Travail is my first Claire Denis, but certainly not my last. The juxtaposition between the harsh desert flats and half naked bodies in their submission to training, especially as Denis and her DP Godard shoot them, brings a kind of unstated homeric eroticism to the fore. But also it captures...

Watched Hirokazu Koreeda's Broker, probably his best looking movie. I suspect cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo has something to do with that. Song Kang-ho does the part that Lily Franky normally gets in Koreeda's oeuvre. Onto Monster soon.

The anti-war story doesn't exist as an object. It can only be a method, a vision of a humanity that never organized its violence. And I think games like Many Nights a Whisper are part of an ever growing alliance that embodies this principle.

King's Field 3 employs many ideas that would make Demon's Souls a hit. Some were already part of the action adventure DNA, while others are From's homegrown flourishes, motifs, and themes. This is where Dark Souls starts, and I hope 90s FromSoftware gets a long due reappraisal.

I played the wonderful Dread Delusion a couple weeks ago, and I wish there were more games like it. It has the quality of not stretching into long rpg territory, yet using its time and space so effectively that, in the end, we can't feel a lack of scope.

watching Jeanne Dielman for the first time and it is giving me an uncanny sense of how videogame like its frames are. the physical space isn't transient. it's brutally structured into "places" which are always depicted the same way, and thus symbolize the same thing every time.

Koreeda's The Truth is down there with Air Doll in his filmography but of course you can't call it bad. Both movies employ a level of artifice that gets in the way of the director's usual style.

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust truly embodies the phrase "Every Frame a Painting." Loosing volley after volley of gorgeous background, the movie invites you to luxuriate in its tale of cursed love and barely whispered despair.

Thief II has been with us for a quarter century. Many have died younger! I've written about the way the game represents our addiction to technology as a stranglehold of the ultra rich who are its true masters. sidequest.zone/2025/05/19/t...

I don't really like how it goes about it, but I must respect Final Fantasy VI for showing that a possible outcome of fascist rule is takeover by nihilist clown. That, and that a significant portion of the game takes place in the fallout.

Skin Deep is a fabulously rare thing: a videogame that is actually funny on purpose. As a bonus, it's an immersive sim that looks great, sounds great, and plays great. It riffs off a lot of faves but not in a way that makes you wish you were enjoying *those* instead.

Watched Vampire Hunter D.

Shinichi Sakamoto's #DRCL has only four volumes in english but they are gorgeous. Surely, Sakamoto must have found a way to draw directly on air as these four volumes seem to be made up of a glassy mist, not paper. Amazing.

Spent some times with Chants of Sennaar. Neat.

Caught Alex Garland's Civil War. Garland tries to be coy about the politics, which are not really the main thrust of the movie anyway, but let's face it, in America there's only one group that would shoot journalists on sight. And they are currently seeking a third term for their president.

I didn't think Frostpunk 2 would instill the meme of "I love democracy" in me, but it happened.

I wrote about A Man for All Seasons in this one, delivering this piece at a time when it was clear bad days were ahead, but without certainty of what form they would take. While you don't need to be Thomas More to be bummed out by the landscape, I think we could all use some of his steadfastness.