The Brad Cave

but now I’m in a discord channel talking about why Gundam can qualify as hard sci-fi

Cuphead! Fantastic, from start to finish. Felt like I finished it in a couple quick sittings. It was actually a half dozen sittings of grueling uphill battles that left me off at about 10 hours of gametime and wishing it was a hundred. I think there’s something to be said about the emergence of cohesive aesthetics in video games over the past decade or so - there was stylish stuff since way back in the day, but the indie boom has meant so many more diverse looks, so many distinct themes, so much more adherence to singular visions across a wider spectrum than Ye Olde AAAs really managed. Of course, there’s more to Cuphead than its looks - they’re what brought me in, but what had me stay through a few dozen repetitions before I could topple its more difficult foes was a perfect, fair difficulty, a push for me to execute the way the game knew I could. And I did! And every time, I whooped with delight, and I moved hurriedly on to feast my eyes on the next boss that would spend an hour grinding me into dust.

Ruiner is a similar-but-different thing, in that it has a Look, but it likes pissing me off and having nothing much to do with its Look. Was a time I pined for cyberpunk to have more of a presence in games, now I find myself wishing there was less of it. Too many games with not enough allegiance to what cyberpunk is past neon, silly haircuts, and 1980s fashion. Ruiner has plenty of neon and mohawks, not nearly enough of anything else that makes up the genre’s secret sauce. And it’s one of those games that revels in difficulty, even though its difficulty is less interesting than just looking at the thing and performing its squelchy, bright red super-violence.

A Hat In Time got touted as a Better Yooka-Laylee for awhile, which I absolutely resented because I loved Yooka-Laylee, I know Yooka-Laylee, and you, hat, are no Rare spiritual successor. The game is, however, the best Mario Sunshine follow-up out there, after its rough first impression - the good kind of bright, colorful, mission-based hop’n’jump’n’grab-a-MacGuffin. The comparison to Yooka-Laylee irks me the same way the comparison between Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie irks me - similar games playing with similar parts, but the former is focused in on giving you one challenge at a time to solve, whereas the latter is about whole worlds of Stuff and the tools needed to collect it all. Still prefer the latter, and excited that Mario Odyssey looks to be a Nu-Nintendo (NuTendo? You heard it here first) take on a more Rare-inclined design.

The best part of October is horror. The worst part of October, as a horror fan, is having already gotten to all the good stuff and wanting so much more. So bless The Evil Within 2 for being a New Horrifying Thing in October. Loved the first game, much more than everyone else, so expected the praise lavished on this sequel meant I’d go crazy over it. Haven’t quite, not yet, though it’s v. good. I have to confess some disappointment, though, that its introduction wasn’t more reflective of the game to come. Blatant Lynch references, fantastic visual design somewhere between Tarsem Singh and Guillermo del Toro at their best, an aesthete psychopath of Hannibal proportions out the gate...this, I thought, would be a kind of horror we rarely see in games. Giallo-infused perhaps, a little Argento in its vividness and hysteria. Then I ended up shooting monsters a bunch in concrete corridors and that dream evaporated, though the game touches on it here and there. Suspect I’ll have more to say.

Mostly I’m doing this ‘cause I haven’t played through it since I was 14ish, and despite the high esteem it’s held in, my memories of it are less than stellar. Like, overall I recall it being okay, but in specific I could only remember the oddball moments - crossdressing to infiltrate a skeevy dude’s skeevy mansion, dressing a dog up like a soldier, snowboarding, riding a gondola on a romantic date with Barrett The Mister T Pastiche, breeding chocobos for hours on end, etc. In my mind, FFVII is a hodge podge of really weird setpieces against a strange story of assumed identities and One Bad Dude who wants to ride a dead planet like a great big spaceship for Reasons.

Turns out I was super wrong! Despite all the weird bits, it’s a cohesive whole. The weird stuff is indeed just bits, like the goofy little episodes in an otherwise serious anime, and everything else is actually a fairly well-spun, super interesting story with a lot of unique snippets of narrative emerging from its familiar tropes. Despite its frequent forays into absurdity, it may be the most well put together tale of the entire series.

Also, gosh, it’s a real pretty game even today. The moppety little polygonal models don’t hold up to the weight of the game’s world and story, but the pre-rendered scenes they occupy ooze with fantastic style and their cinematic staging is admirable even as they look like a bunch of dolls scooting around. There’s a lot of really neat effects accomplished for flashbacks , where scenes segue smoothly into each other as they cross time.

Not yet! Super excited to, though. The only thing stopping me is that it released in August, when the room my computer is in turns into an intolerable sauna for days at a stretch. As soon as the temperature breaks, I’ll play it all in one sitting.