this is a special game. after slimes ate my companions in a cave, I happened upon a mage being ambushed by wolves. I saved him, then we took down two cyclopes and a troll. then I died hopping off a ledge. fairly perfect

who even has time for survival

I made a joke in my main Discord server about DOOM E1M1 being in a major key and @abigbagofkeys.sickonedude.com actually made it. Jesus fucking Christ listen to this hahahaha

week's not over!!!

if you're arguing about the quality of AI's output, you've already conceded too much. the problem is not that voices sound weird and hands have seven fingers. it's the theft, destruction, soullessness, greed. no result could possibly redeem it

well, I guess we’re going nightreigning again

getting older has only increased my appreciation of the JRPG ethos of “older than 30? go ahead and hop into this coffin”

also extremely funny to reply to a dumb post about books from 1870-1930 with the Iliad

“albeit without evidence” is wild work

HARMA appears to have been cooked in a lab to hypnotize me youtu.be/96qa870vwhQ?...

stumbled upon the Dragon's Dogma 2 dap

if you tell me to play the prequel first, I’m done with you

speaking of cool mustache guys, Cyan remains a top-five FF guy

reading a printing of The Dispossessed that refers to an eight-year-old as an eighty-year-old. spent about 30 pages flipping back to it, thinking, “sci-fi!” all-timer confusing typo

was not aware that Control is a Soulslike (has you descend into a hole by dropping onto a series of ledges and beams)

colons you can FEEL:

have not yet watched the new season of The Witcher, but I maintain that they should have had Hemsworth grow a beard for it. a clear, self-aware acknowledgment that something is different and that that's okay. (maybe it's not okay -- haven't watched.) it doesn't hurt that he wears beards very nicely!

it's kind of amazing: with each post, they dig deeper the gulf between how cool they think they are and how embarrassing and pathetic they actually are. the goal is so clear and the failure even clearer

I'm about 45 minutes into Control and it absolutely rips

thegamingbrit's video on silent hill 2 remake got him a lot of shit but he was 100% right when he said that constantly remaking classic games by destroying them completely to make them "look modern" is the creative impulse that leads to replacing everything with ai slop. same thing different degrees

a constant presence in my ever-shifting top three

BALL x PIT hasn't quite gotten its hooks into me, whereas Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch...the jank's got some juice

working on a theory that Yakuza is both the perfect precursor and the perfect chaser to any game. it is in conversation with everything. it both enriches and is enriched by everything

Time to go to work in the shit factory!

not the main point, but he always looks so cool

at long last, rolled credits on Tactics Ogre: Reborn. after alternating periods of burning out on it and getting pulled back in, I was totally rapt for its last few hours. brilliant, firmamental stuff

I maintain that one of the more important elements of FFT and games like it is the auto-generated names that characters get. immediate idiosyncrasy, personhood, and attachment

people think that art is complicated, but it's not. just have Dotemu, Lizardcube, and Guard Crush Games make a side-scrolling Yakuza spinoff

digging into this -- it's wonderful -- and got to this caption under a collage of Ico imagery. perfect!

seconding this, big time. it does so much so well, but is worth it for the music alone. Coker doesn’t miss

“That's 40 *cents*. Cents are a form of currency one hundred times smaller than the reál. I'm not even going to take this. Come back when you have 130 reál.” Isn't it... evil? The order of magnitude between what is asked of a person -- and what they have?

I revisit this piece -- on Doom 2016, by @materialistjew.bsky.social -- at least once a year. it has become bedrock, and only more relevant lareviewofbooks.org/article/doom...

“What, you've never seen a man getting a panic attack before?” (Try to keep breathing.)

Final Fantasy XVII

if we're talking lyricists, we're talking Neil Young like, come on --

adding on this, I think often about Peter Schjeldahl's "The Art of Dying." if you like or love something, champion it; if you don't like or love it, be generous in your consideration of it (thoughtful and curious, not obsequious, deferential, or afraid) www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

Again respectfully, I’d say no. If you really like it, argue that it’s good. Make the case for your experience. Critics, stop saying “some of my favorite games are 7/10s” and give THOSE games 9s or 10s. Stop deferring to notions of faux-objectivity and champion the things you actually really like.

Chris is, as always, an incisive and delightful read

reviewed the remaster of Final Fantasy Tactics, which remains an exceptional study of how history is constructed, revised, and weaponized. (even the choice to require the fast-forward button to be held down is a political one) www.slantmagazine.com/games/final-...

reviewed the remaster of Final Fantasy Tactics, which remains an exceptional study of how history is constructed, revised, and weaponized. (even the choice to require the fast-forward button to be held down is a political one) www.slantmagazine.com/games/final-...

[ludonarrative dissonance take] new God of War often gets brought up as an example of this, but I don't think that's totally fair. sometimes parenthood feels like, and maybe even is, chopping things up with an axe (and foraging and crafting and unlocking new skills and raging)

Okay I'll bite a little, you're not upset about there being too many games, you're upset that there are a selection of games that the industry has insisted you Must Play and everything is a time investment plus all your time is mentally drained by the modern internet and you're old

reviewed Hades II, whose roguelite structure evokes the oral tradition of Greek myth, and whose tone shifts away from the first game's soapiness and into tragedy www.slantmagazine.com/games/hades-...

reviewed Hades II, whose roguelite structure evokes the oral tradition of Greek myth, and whose tone shifts away from the first game's soapiness and into tragedy www.slantmagazine.com/games/hades-...

thinking about Disco Elysium again

not sure I've read a Lewis lede I didn't love

Folks, Baby Steps is an easy 5 stars. Experimental performance art meets heartfelt ode to walking (think the ambulatory odysseys of nature writer Robert Macfarlane). And it has this gonzo stoner comedy vibe, too. Exquisite stuff TBQH. Words over @financialtimes.com. www.ft.com/content/dbe5...

this essay is as good and maddening as you’ve heard bidoun.org/articles/hou...

dropping a foundational, all-timer critic to save a few dollars. truly baffling stuff. awaiting the news that they're cutting the print magazine to avoid spending money on paper and ink