Pointed Reviews: 2022
The following is a collection of reviews I wrote in 2022 that I consider to be “pointed” pieces of criticism. These are reviews that tend to operate with a specific thesis or angle in their critique. I have also not included any reviews that were posted on this Medium page independently. Some of them may have been edited slightly. I’ve chosen not to include my star ratings, as I don’t think they’re generally particularly relevant. These were posted on several journalling websites. I‘ve written plenty of other reviews (some more comedic) not collected here on these sites; if you want to see other reviews or follow me, you can go to these links to Backloggd, Letterboxd, and RateYourMusic.
If you want to see last year’s reviews, click here for games, movies, and albums.
Rear Window (1954)
“The husband’s pathological fear that his wife is cheating on him is still pathological, even if he’s right.”
I think it was either Jung or Zizek who said that. In the case of Rear Window, the pathological obsession of L.B. Jeffries is a voyeuristic one. He cannot stop himself from looking into his neighbors’ homes. Even when his house guests are speaking to him, he constantly stares out his window, analyzing and scrutinizing the actions of his neighbors. It all started with his injury. Isolation often leads to strange and specific fixations. He even manages to rope his friends and loved ones into his theory-crafting. Sound familiar?
There is a brief moment where Jeff actually starts to address this obsession. “Is this ethical?”, he asks. In this moment, he’s forced to ask whether or not he has broken some code through a constant and almost systematic invasion of privacy. But that guilt doesn’t last long. In a matter of moments, he’s vindicated once again, more sure than ever that he’s doing the right thing.
Of course, in the end, he’s right. It really was murder, it had to be murder. L.B. Jeffries constructs his own little panopticon, out of a sense of duty to his neighbors. But no matter how right he ended up being, there’s no denying his obsession was pathological.
Farm Machine (2015) — Steve’n’Seagulls
Novelty is often deployed as a smear. It implies that there is a lack of depth, that it gets old quickly, that it doesn’t take itself seriously, and that it really should. Steve ’N’ Seagulls are essentially a novelty group, covering classic hard rock and metal songs in bluegrass instrumentation. If that pitch sounds awful to you, it’s unlikely that you’ll find anything on this album to change your mind. But who said novelty is a bad thing? Novelty is designed for entertainment. It doesn’t need to be a long-lasting classic. It’s a fun record; that’s all that matters. They’re doing the thing they do, and they’re doing it well.
Below (2018)
“Worries go down better with soup than without it.” This is a Yiddish proverb. I am told, at least; my relationship with Jewish culture is a little messy. But I think of this saying often. Soup holds a kind of venerated position in Ashkenazi cuisine. Kreplach, matzo balls, mushroom barley, all that. It’s a staple. My dad, who provides my Jewish half, ironically, doesn’t enjoy soup much. He finds it boring. But the simplicity of a good soup is often it’s appeal. When we say “soup”, what do you think of? There are cold gazpachos and hot and sours, of course, but I think most of the time we think of hot, salty broth. The soup is clear but heavy, simple but filling. Soup is a potent food when it comes to meaning; it immediately conjures care, home, nourishment, warmth. Soup is hot, soothing, healing. Bad times with soup are better than bad times without soup.
In Below, knowing how to make a good soup is essential. After all, it is a game filled with worries. Soup will save your life. Each time you make it to a campfire, you get the chance make more soup, something that will carry you further into the depths. I won’t go as far as to say that the campfire feels like home. It, like your own little character’s life, is fleeting, and trapped in a dungeon. You constantly grow hungrier, thirstier, colder; you are creature of temperature and appetite, and you must abide by your bodily needs. That decay is a constant that defines Below. While you may know where the next campfire lies, you never know what lies between you and it. You have to be weary of each step and prepared for each sword swing. But for a moment, when you’re next to the fire, you can stop, breathe and nourish yourself. The campfire is an opportunity to replenish your supplies. To take a breather. To warm your bones. To make more soup.
There is a tragedy to Below’s legacy. Generally, folks have seemed to be either underwhelmed and annoyed with it. It had been in development for over 5 years, announced during the bright and hot summer at E3 2013, and it was released in the cold winter nights of 2018. As it lead up to release, I got the creeping sensation that it was going to flop. And I think I was right. In an interview with Newsweek, Kris Piotrowski (Creative Director at Capybara Games) said “It’s very important for there to be some people who make something very specific. And maybe you’re not going to like this. But somebody else will fucking love it.” I think it is pretty clear that it will be divisive from it’s first moments: the first thing you see in the game is a long, slow zoom on a single little ship in the ocean, for several minutes. For me, I adored every moment of this crawl, but I think others will immediately shut the game off.
I’ll call it an unsung masterpiece for a specific reason: there are underrated masterpieces out there that I love a lot, but Below doesn’t even really have a ride-or-die fanbase. It released to tepid praise and hasn’t had a second wind. Part of the issue is that Below lacks a lot of character. That’s not to say it is not impressive. It is visually stunning to look at: the tilt shifted camera, the muted tones, the geometric geography and architecture. And the sound design is some of the best I’ve encountered in I think maybe any game. No, the issue isn’t a lack of presentation, but a lack of flair. There are so few discernable qualities. There aren’t any memorable characters, no flashy boss battles, no unique settings. Even mechanically, there is little that stands out about Below. I can give you the high-level pitch, of course: it’s a procedural death labyrinth with survival elements. But will that pitch actually sell anyone on the game? I doubt it.
Which is a shame, because despite that lack of character, Below is expertly crafted and pretty beautiful.
If I had to use one word to describe Below, it would be “dread”. Every single surface of this game is covered in dread. Each sound, each inch of dirt is both beautiful and eerie in the same breath. Below’s environment is incredibly dark, often necessitating the use of a torch or the lantern. The game is set to a distance from your player character that dwarfs them; there’s this tilt-shift effect that makes everything seem minuscule. I found myself hunching over (more than usual) to squint at the darkness surrounding me. Shadows cast against the floor, the glowing eyes of beasts, prey in your periphery. The soundtrack by Jim Guthrie often sounds less like music and more like the groans of the earth itself. And if it’s not an ominous hum, it’s a somber, thoughtful ambiance, the wind brushing through the grass and the waves crashing on the shore. Sounds echo through the caves, scrapes of stones and trickles of water, the chitters and growls of something hunting you. You crawl into dark, terrible and ancient sepulchers, lined with death and sorrow. The distant scrapes and dark corridors become a canvas on which to paint your deepest fears.
Every time you die, you hear this sound. It’s a strange, sinister bellow, a deathly horn. And when you respawn, a new wanderer drifting onto that same rainy shore? That same haunting bellow sounds. As if to say, “This will happen again.”
Below is a difficult game. At times to a fault; there are a few death traps in there that are genuinely cruel. You’ll die a lot, and it’s a big part of the experience. You play not as a single adventurer, but dozens of them. Each death is final, and you play as a successor to the poor doomed soul who met their end in the caverns below. Below is an incredibly slow kind of difficulty. Combat is a deliberate, punishing affair. Sprinting through a room will often lead to a swift death. Your inventory space, too, is incredibly limited. You have sixteen slots for food and sixteen for materials. Personally, I am an inventory hoarder. I will maximize the use of every pound I can carry. But Below, in its limitations, has liberated me from this curse by forcing me to get rid of anything I truly don’t need. Any slot with an unneeded stick or stone is taking up space that could be taken by arrows or bandages. Be careful what you pack. Often you may die because you didn’t have enough materials on hand. Many deaths are deaths by attrition. Many players, I imagine, are going to feel these deaths are overly punishing. I certainly did, at times. But I also recognized that it was core to what the game was doing. It is an easy mistake, I think, to assume Below would be better if it wasn’t a Roguelite. There are lots of games like that nowadays, where the proc-gen structure seems more to be a mechanic on a dart board rather than a deliberate choice. But Below, really, can only be a Roguelite. Because structurally, it isn’t about beating the game. Having to delve even deeper with each death just to make progress can be intimidating. You’ll often lose a lot of materials, too. You can find your body with its wares still on it, now only a dry skeleton. How long has it been? Months? Years? I couldn’t say. But only take what you need.
At its most tense, Below’s dungeon crawling is either a desperate sprint or desperate struggle. On certain floors, you’ll sprint like your life depends on it, because it quite literally does. At the same time, you’ll have to be careful to dodge attacks or not to trigger any traps. So these marathons begin to ebb and flow from trepidation to a frantic sprint. At other times, Below puts you up against the wall. You feel surrounded, outmatched, overwhelmed. I wanted to flail in retaliation like a wild animal had leaped up against me, please, God, anything to get this thing away from me. But you have to be patient. Put up your shield. Wait to parry. Dodge their attacks. At these times, you need to be careful and patient, but also keep moving. Your hunger and thirst aren’t going to slow down. No matter which of these modes you end up playing in at a given time, Below’s most suspenseful moments are at the middle of a tug of war between a need to rush and a need to be as careful as possible. There is a specific area in the game (Floor 14 onwards, for those who know the game) that is genuinely one of the most dreadful levels in any game I’ve ever played; every single time I step foot in that place, my heart starts pounding, a frantic and desperate crawl through the darkness, pulled between the tension of needing to go slowly but needing to go faster. It’s dreadful. But I persevere. I make it through. Eventually.
Success in Below is not overcoming a mountain. It is about going deep down. There is no dragon in Below. No corrupt king, no great sea serpent, no devils or demons. There is nothing here for you to conquer. There are maybe one or two things I would call “boss battles”, but the biggest obstacles in Below are impossible to even scathe. Below is not a game about accomplishment. It’s a game about mastery. The game teaches you almost nothing about how to play; most mechanics have to be discovered by the players. And if you make it far enough, you begin to realize the goal is not descent, but the collection of these items called shards you discover with your lantern. And suddenly, it clicks into place. Succeeding in Below does not come from a single fell swoop, but a series of knicks. It comes from a series of successive runs. You stand on the shoulders of a thousand dead wanderers who you will join soon enough. By the later hours of Below, your player character(s) will not become any stronger. But you have learned so much. You know where to find the materials to make bombs, or how to make bandages, or how to get to the deepest pits of the island in only a few minutes. You begin to realize that you actually don’t lose much with each death. Sure, you might lose a hefty sum of crystals, or a stockpile of arrows and bandages, or a piece of gear you were saving, but there are ample ways to farm materials, and you can always find that gear again. Your goal is not to descend deeper, but to collect these shards with your lantern. And acquiring those shards is far less about slaughtering and spelunking, and more about knowing and understanding the cave systems of this island. You gain mastery, gain an understanding, of the world of Below. You find comfort in the little rituals you develop, of going and gathering picking supplies and hunting for materials, of making soup. It is a game about, despite all the insurmountable dread, finding a way forward anyway.
Again, there’s little I can say that will sell you on Below. There’s no big twist or hook to pull you in. It is just a nearly-perfectly designed game. Like a good soup, Below doesn’t look like much on the outside. But it’s a product of profound craftsmanship. It’s a stew of mechanics which complement each other precisely, a perfectly balanced concoction. And maybe once you’ve taken a spoonful, you’ll find that you think it’s a little boring. But give it time, pay close attention to it, understand its balance, and you might find that it grows on you, and you can recognize it as a rich and masterfully made experience.
Antecrypt (2021)
Composed of a million little frustrations. Wanna control where you shoot? Nope, the crosshair bounces around the screen like a DVD player logo. Well, maybe that’d be okay if your gun had some spread, but nope, it’s a laser that shoots straight on ahead. It would be nice if it could kill enemies in one hit, but nah, it’s actually kind of weak and you need a few seconds of sustained damage to kill anything. At least you can spray and pray- oh what’s that? Nope, you have limited ammo and you have to recharge it by standing in the area around the bouncing crosshair. At least you can upgrade ammo and damage and stuff. Well, sometimes the game lets you. You only ever get the choice to upgrade one of two stats. What’s that? You want a bomb that’ll save you? That’s cute; anyway, here’s a bomb that covers a pitiful area and only goes where your crosshair goes. But at least the enemies are pushovers. Just kidding! Nope, they’re annoying and confusing, shoot bullets, and even some will pester you by slowing you down and yanking you around. But there are powerups to help you. Except, you only get to use them once. Ever. Use them once and then never again. Good luck with those boss battles who spawn ads!
Honestly, every single part of this game is infuriating, but I don’t even hate it. I plan on giving it up, sure, but it’s an exercise in design ethos. I find it kind of fascinating how uncompromising and inconvenient it is. Bennett Foddy would be proud. Now, I need to delete this from my drive before I get a migraine.
Immortality (2022)
There’s a story I heard from an excerpt of Béla Balázs’ Theory of the Film. The story goes that a Moscovian’s cousin was visiting from Siberia. It was the early days of cinema, and she had never seen a film before. They had taken her to the cinema to watch a burlesque movie.
The Siberian cousin came home pale and grim. ‘Well, how did you like the film?’ the cousins asked her. She could scarcely be induced to answer, so overwhelmed was she by the sights she had seen. ‘Oh, it was horrible, horrible!! I can’t understand why they allow such dreadful things to be shown here in Moscow!’
‘What what was so horrible then?’
‘Human beings were torn to pieces and the heads thrown one way and the bodies the other and the hands somewhere else again.’
She had never seen a montage before. The hand, the head, the bosom, disjointed by time in the image, the Siberian girl had seen them as disembodied. The ability to mentally situate the montage and its subjects in time and space is not an innate skill. To understand a montage, you have to learn to reassemble a body.
We are privy to something similar in Immortality. We reassemble a body of work, that of Marissa Marcel. We must do it through an understanding of the movements of cinema. The central movement in the game is the match cut, and it’s story is unveiled through the process of navigating a complex web of them. A cup, a stool, a cross, a kiss, a rose, wings, water, windows. Move through them. In a sense, the player becomes the editor, but without real control over it. These images are broadened, too. A cup may also be a bathtub, smoke may also be static. A similar thing is done in Sam Barlow’s other recent games. The Her Story system does something a lot like this, but with language. Enter a word into the search bar, it shows you five videos with that word, no matter the context. In a sense, these games are about understanding the relationship between context and sign. In Immortality, however, we navigate through the image. This is why the game is made of match cuts.
When a film makes a match cut, there is typically something meant. Something is always meant with a cut, but the match cut often has its own specific meaning. With this magic trick, we signify a relation between the object and it’s corollary. In Immortality, these cuts are dense and the correlation is often superficial. A cup may be a bathtub because they both hold water, but not because “cup” means the same thing as “bathtub”. It is direct, and that is felt. You can line up every single picture of a rose, every single picture of a microphone, every single crucifix. Unmoored from context, grafted into the network of images. Metaphor melts away; through the network of cuts emerges a symbolic différance, crude and indistinct denotation. Meaning is transfigured and debased. Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
A more defensive approach would view this as decay in the visual language of cinema, but it is a strength of Immortality. A character in the game briefly speaks of cubism, saying that he finds it a shame to reduce a beautiful woman’s body to a bunch of squares. Immortality is sort of a cubism of the cinema, splaying out its forms. The absence of the typical cinematographic structure, both in editing and in image, challenges the immediate response we have to the image. I’m not so sure the game is fully up to embrace that project, but maybe that’s more appropriate, since I don’t know how many people will take up that challenge. The narrative and the image of these games are dismembered like the burlesque show. There is a story here about many things. There are lots of things I could have written about instead of this: masks, religion, the frequent primacy of sex in cinema, lost media fascinations, the archetype of the Wandering Jew, the purpose of storytelling. Other stuff, I’m sure. That in and of itself will be a challenge, and now, anchored to the network of match cuts, we are challenged in the same way. You cannot avoid being a structuralist. Both in image and in text, Immortality asks you to engage meaningfully and directly with the act of making meaning. The Siberian girl must learn how to watch a montage, and then she must learn how to make one.
Elden Ring (2022)
I am called to revere Elden Ring out of spite. I once heard someone I no longer speak to for various reasons say, upon seeing a then new trailer, that they wish FromSoft would making something interesting like King’s Field again instead of this. Now, I was playing the King’s Field games for the first time when they said that, and I happen to love those games a lot, and I certainly want them to make another one or something like it, even though they never will because the games industry is full of cowards. But I also happened to know that this person had never played King’s Field, and were probably only saying it out of a smug sense of superiority. And this made me angry.
Yes, yes, the familiar gang is here. Yet another lowly warrior usurps the eternal cycle. The fallen order, the god-kings, corruption, the moon, the flame. Invasions, summons, messages, bloodstains. Tragic sidequests, Patches is there, and multiple endings. Magic is blue, holiness is yellow. You can parry and backstab enemies. You upgrade your weapons to scale with your stats. You dodge roll and stagger. These are familiar. They are played out, to a degree. And yes, they are not exciting in that old way. But I don’t really care, because I’m a “fan of the genre”. I am enthusiastic about the new things that come from this company, and the genre they’ve inadvertently spawned, and I’m always ready for innovation. But that doesn’t preclude me from finding joy in the familiar. Because it was never the uniqueness that mattered most.
There’s this kind of jealousy surrounding the Souls series. The fans (myself included) view them as special, unique, and precious gems. When something besmirches their name, it is a disgrace, because there is something transcendent about these games that we hold sacred. But as the series has become a prototype, a whole genre sprouting from its seedbed, the things that made a game like Dark Souls special have become no longer so special. How many games can we find that are trying to be exactly like it? Those qualities, whether it be difficulty, inscrutability, atmosphere, even specific mechanics, they’re not special anymore. How quaint does Super Metroid feel now? How cliche is The Shining now? Are The Beatles run of the mill? Is Seinfeld funny anymore? It’s like the old joke: “I don’t get the appeal of Hamlet. It’s just a bunch of famous saying strung together.”
It becomes difficult to vindicate why these games are good. So, we get jealous. We get protective. “No, you see, these games are special. How else could I love them so much if they weren’t? They are doing something different. They are beautiful in a way only I can understand.” Everyone thinks they are the sole prophet of Dark Souls liking, and that everyone else is some misguided mystic. I do, too. But I know I’m fooling myself. I know these games are mortal.
See, I’m not sure these games were ever that special to begin with. I remember, years ago, sitting on a couch playing Demon’s Souls, and wondering out loud how they made this game, how they reached something so specific. And he said to me that “it had to have come from someone with a vision”. As years go on, I find that statement less and less true. They were and are unique, sure. But they didn’t come from nowhere, sprouting from Miyazaki’s forehead like Athena. They were made by people in a company making a software product. Elden Ring was building off of Dark Souls, which was building off of Demon’s Souls, which was building off of King’s Field, which was probably building off of Ultima Underworld or something, and yadda yadda. Iteration is underrated. I think what ends up getting underrecognized, ironically, is that these are good video games. It’s not because they’re special. They haven’t unlocked a secret to games that no one else can know. These games don’t have to be special to be good. They can just be good. Which they are.
Anyway. I liked Elden Ring. I thought it was fun. I thought it was cool. I liked exploring its world. I liked crawling through its dungeons. I liked fighting bosses. That’s enough for me. And so you might ask, “Is Elden Ring even that special?” And I’m going to say, “Who cares?”
Gradius V (2004)
Permit me a formalist critique: Gradius as a series starts making more sense when you realize it’s a game where you can have up to seven hit points. That’s at least when it started making sense to me, and it started finally clicking here at Gradius V. You start to realize that collecting those capsules is less like grabbing power-ups and more like discrete meter management. Many games give you bombs as a last resort, but Gradius gives you something a lot more dynamic. Upon collecting enough to unlock a force field, which absorbs three hits, you can collect a few more and hover your meter over the force field slot, and then activate it again when you lose your shield, thus giving you a grand total of 7 hits before you need to collect more capsules. The result of this, when it works, is this beautiful little tension of trying to evade enough bullets until you can manage to fill your meter. It’s wonderfully tense.
Gradius has always had this cool little power-up system, and it’s evolved and changed a lot over the years. You can opt for different configurations and weapons, and even replace that force field with other things, like shrinking or a bomb. Powering up is a series of choices. Now, there are some issues with this design. When you eventually die (which will almost certainly happen), you lose all your power-ups (though here you can recollect your allied options) and start at square one. This can lead to a pretty immediate spiral of repeated deaths, and can be really frustrating. But even if it didn’t it would still commit the cardinal action game sin of punishing players with a bad time. You move so slow at the start and it really just feels bad until you get a few speed upgrades. Those choices can feel less like exciting crossroads and more like burdensome obligations. This also has the issue of severely punishing players who are struggling, resulting in a feedback loop of demises. And with a game as difficult as this, that’s going to push people away.
Gradius as a series has also always had this strange penchant for unpredictable and chaotic level design, as well as claustrophobic spaces, and this is definitely the case with Gradius V. This is not really in vogue for modern shmup design. I think modern shmups tend to lean towards a ballet of evasion. Gradius has a bit of that, but it also has these wacky maze elements of navigating corridors. It feels very old school, but I don’t think this is a bad thing. In fact, there are a few moments here where I think it works beautifully. (There’s this weird walker boss near the end of the game that I think is genuinely sublime.) The options function as a way of extending your attack range without endangering your ship, and their different configurations provide different ways doing so with very different advantages. Something is working here. At the same time, there are some moments in Gradius V where I felt like the game expected me to be psychic. While these obstacles can require snappy responses, some obstacles are just too unpredictable to feel fair. Weirder still, the game often feels like it expects you to memorize its levels due to obstacles that are unavoidable if you don’t know when and where they’re going to appear. It’s a weird combo that doesn’t always work. But sometimes it works. Sometimes scraping through its challenges is as thrilling as it is frantic. And that power-up system, and the 7 hit points, enable these levels to feel like gauntlets. I just wish there were less moments where failure felt inevitable.
I’ve always liked Gradius and Parodius, but I’ve never really been sure why. I could never beat the first level of the first game (those volcanoes suck!) and the theming is generally pretty dull (well, not Parodius). It might just be a nostalgia for having played some of them in junior high. Who could say? But now, coming back to them and addressing them critically, there is a unique approach to shmupcraft here. When these games work, they can be exciting and tense, not in spite of their corridors and chaotic obstacles, but because of them, as they work in tandem with the upgrade system that defined Gradius from the get-go. If only it were easier to slip into those moments.
Freedom Planet 2 (2022)
Permit me another formalist critique. When I was talking about this game with others, the subject of Sonic inevitably came up. Now, I have nostalgia for those 16-bit Sonic games, but many people, myself included, feel frustration with those old 2D Sonic games because they “don’t let you go fast”. They throw spike traps in your way, they make you bump into walls, they make you do annoying sliding block puzzles. And it doesn’t help then that getting back up to speed feels incredibly slow sans spindash. But a 2D Sonic Defender dissented. There are people who insist that Sonic was never about going fast, and I find this patently absurd. Speed was a heavy aspect of Sonic’s marketing and it’s incredibly hard to ignore. However, the 2D Sonic Defender changed the angle a bit: it’s not a matter of speed, but of momentum. This seems like a fine distinction, but it’s one that’s worth taking up. Because momentum, rather than speed, doesn’t prioritize the rate at which things happen, but rather the duration and weight of player agency. Momentum is not just speed, but also slowness, and the way we move between them. When a Sonic game throws road spikes in your way as you’re trying to move through a level, and then you have to rev up again, the game robs you of your momentum. At its worst moments, Sonic does not respect your inertia.
So here’s how Freedom Planet 2 takes numerous steps to maintain, respect, and foster your momentum. If nothing else, I think it should be remembered as a game that did this. The first game, Freedom Planet, felt like a serious attempt to turn the elements of those early Sonic games into a game that felt good for players who weren’t prepared to master Sonic’s weird physics and memorize its sometimes uncompromising level design. I think it succeeded at that pretty well, and enjoyed it. But Freedom Planet 2 feels like a step above, creating a new echelon that every game in this lineage is going to have to reckon with. And while I’m a bit of an outsider (I like Sonic but I’m not one of the gremlin crew) as I’ve not been completely dedicated to all those games and their fan projects or things that take it as inspiration, I feel very confident in saying that this game did a better job of allowing me to have fun with inertia than any of the ones I’ve played. Freedom Planet 2 empowers players to harness and control their momentum, and I think it blows every game that inspired it out of the water.
Now, the game does this in a number of ways, with a lot of level design affordances to keep you speedy. (Even the puzzle sections here are snappy and fast.) In fact, almost every other new level mechanic the game springs on you is a way of playing with and transforming inertia. And I could get into specifics there, but I think it would be both tedious to write and read descriptions of levels. So I think the most prominent and immediately understandable way that Freedom Planet 2 powers up your momentum is through its player character design. There’s one thing that every character has that, if it were alone added to a game like this, would be great: the player has a guard button they can simply tap to evade damage. The guard has a marginal impact on your speed, and lets you dodge the knockback and slowdown you’d receive if got hit. So even in the event that you are moving too fast, aren’t prepared, and careen into a laser blast, if you’re quick to dodge (or turn on the auto-guard option in the assist menu!) you won’t suffer that consequence, and your momentum is maintained.
But there’s more! Every character also has a moveset that enables them to quickly gain speed, so even from the get-go, and even if you do get hit, it won’t be long before you’re back to zooming. I played through the game with each character (this is not normal for me, I just think this game is very good) and here is a rundown of how that works
Lilac: Water dragon protagonist. The most straightforward in this sense, Lilac has a super dash that does damage as she rockets off in a straight line, and even bounces off wall in that mode. It reminds me a bit of Epsilon Eagle’s dash. She also has a dive kick, and a spin attack double jump. But a lot of Lilac’s speed comes from that dash and using it right.
Carol: Bad bitch catgirl. Carol’s special throws a disk attack that she can zip to. She also has a little dash she can perform after jumping, but if performed close to the ground before landing, will give her a real boost. Holding down as she runs will also turn her into a little ball of fury and deal damage to whatever she rolls through. She can also snag a motorcycle power-up that boosts her speed by a lot, and actually acts as her jump disc!
Milla: Green magic dog scientist. Milla is weird but that weirdness makes her really cool. At first, she doesn’t seem to have a lot of speed options. Her jump ability is a flutter jump. Her special is a projectile/shield and her melee attacks don't move her forward. However, when you guard, Milla gains a floating green cube beside her which powers up her projectiles and also completely transforms her melee. Now, her melee unleashes a big column of green energy which does a ton of damage, but more importantly blasts her back. Newton’s third law, fucker. Utilizing this lets you jump higher and move faster. Building speed with Milla is probably best done by summoning a cube, jumping just a little bit, and then blasting behind you to propel yourself forward. Done repeatedly, you can really start zooming, and combined with the flutter, the air time Milla can get is unbelievable.
Neera: Icy nationalist panda knight. Neera works the least for me. She has the tools but they never feel quite right to me. Neera can enter a “Frost Art” mode, where she can freeze enemies, and one of her abilities spawns a bunch of frost spires that she can bounce off of. The main way Neera gains momentum though is by attacking twice. When you attack the second time, in the air or on the ground, Neera gets a boost. This works and you can get some major speed, but feels like her only tool for momentum. Also, she has a spear, but you can’t even pogo with it, which is frankly a crime. Unfortunately, this ends my little list on a down note. The irony is that in most other games Neera would feel like a standout, but in Freedom Planet 2, where all the other girls feel dynamic and snappy, Neera feels a little incomplete.
The result is a game that feels invested and supportive of player inertia, enabling you to zoom around and have fun in its environments. It’s a triumph, and not just for that. There are a lot of reasons this game owns bones beyond this: the soundtrack is full of bops, the spritework is beautiful, it’s got a million cool boss battles, the story gets really serious about colonialism, and also there’s lesbians, too. There’s a reason it’s a GOTY contender. Treasure-tier shit. I’m not even a furry. I just think it rules.
Anyway, please consider playing Freedom Planet 2. It’s very fun and I liked it.
Over-Nite Sensation (1973) — Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention
All too often with Frank Zappa, my appreciation of his compositional spirit is always at war with my disdain with the worst elements of his attitude. There are typically three possibilities: I am able to ignore it entirely, the silliness is at the very least trivial and inoffensive, or it is so obnoxious as for me to want to turn the music off. There are times, like songs like “Oh No” or “Inca Roads”, when there is a brief moment where I both appreciate the lyrics and the music. But they are rare.
Now, Over-Nite Sensation is a good encapsulation of this tension. Songs like “Dinah-Moe Humm” are juvenile, unfunny, and annoying, and “I’m The Slime” is condescending. Then take “Montana”, which, while the lyrics are just silly, is not offensive, at least, and maybe even funny. But during all of this, high and low, every song is full of virtuosic playing and ingenious little melodies. This was one of the best line-ups the Mothers ever had, and Tina Turner and the Ikettes are even singing back-up! But the attitude is so overbearing at times. I often wish more of his music had no lyrics at all. Oh well, no one’s perfect.
My Dinner with Andre (1981)
Vacillations at the end of history. Of its time, but in a meaningful way. I think it would be easy to pick one of the two hands of this film as the intellectual greater, as the victor in a dialectic, typically Andre, but I think in reality we see a persistent imbalance, two human perspectives on the uneasiness of modernity. I don’t think it’s a simple case of the “get off your phone” sort of thing. Both characters have ignorance they must address. Wallace Shawn apparently wrote that his character in this script is one who is completely motivated by fear. I think on a careful reading, we can see that Andre, too, is motivated by fear. Andre is motivated by a fear that he is not truly alive, and Wally is motivated by the fear that he ought to be. What do we do with that fear? Why do we have it? And what’s next?
Bayonetta (2009)
Platinum fans are the Jojos fans of games, and I say this with as much derision as possible. Really, what fandom would be complete without hoards of incessant blabbermouths, who appear out of nowhere to tell you how much you’re missing out? I am certain it is a vocal minority, but it’s hard not to notice. There is a certain brand of fan that wants to make it very clear to you at every chance they can that the thing they like is both wacky and good. It’s a brand of fan I greatly dislike.
But the more I meditate on all this, the less I am able to convince myself that any of this is a bad thing. Why is people being excited about a thing, even incessantly, a bad thing? Logically, I know that being annoying is, well, annoying, but I’m not sure that the annoyance is the only thing that’s annoying me. I dislike that brand of fan, but I worry it’s pettier than that. I think I might resent them simply for being so enthusiastic. Why should I resent someone for being passionate about something they enjoy?
Through the later years of high school, I basically only had one friend. I had switched schools, and most of my human contact disappeared with it. It was an extremely dark time. That one friend really liked fighting games, (part of my apprehension around fighters starts here, too) and in that vein, really liked Platinum games. He eventually felt obligated and did dive into Jojos, too. Once, I asked if he could lend me his copy of Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2 for the Wii U. But he declined, saying, “I treasure them too much” or something of that ilk. That friendship ended quite ugly. They completely stopped talking to me one day. I would occasionally bump into them at college, but they didn’t seem to want to talk to me. One day they reached out to me, asked if I wanted to meet up for some food or something. I didn’t really know how to follow up. I sort of regret not doing anything about that.
Anyway, I started playing Bayonetta, and all I could think about were the annoying Platinum fans. I try to ignore them, but it just keeps nagging at me, this blight of contrarian twinges. I write a tweet.
Platinum game fans: yeah i love Platinum games, every game they make is great! oh except that one is bad, it sucked. oh and i heard that one was trash, i didn’t even play it. oh and —
This post had been in my head for a long time, months actually, and I finally just let myself post it. And you know, it’s true, it’s a pretty good goof, but I also know it was fueled a bit by spite. I hate that about me. It was a good post, but I hate that. It got a hair of attention, including from known Platinum enjoyers, so at the very least some of them took it in good sport. But what I found was that, after I had finally let the sass out, I was able to enjoy Bayonetta a lot more.
Why? Is this small act of pettiness really enough to relieve the anxiety? Is that really a healthy relationship with discourse and art? Should I vent my spite for my own good? I try to avoid being sassy and rude online. I don’t try to target people for their taste, and I try not to dunk on anything. Every time I do, I usually feel bad. I spend so much energy repressing it. I have no shortage of snark and spite inside me. But I bottle them up like pickles, let them lactoferment in my gyri. Does that make me seem all snooty and holier-than-thou? I dunno, I just feel like I ought not. The scruples are stuck in my teeth. Do I deserve to be a little snarky? I don’t know.
I would say its similar to my response to hype, which it is, and hype has ruined so many things for me, but this has its own dimension, too. For example, it even goes backwards. I had played Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance a long time ago, and I had enjoyed it. I had fun with it. But as time passed, and I was exposed to more and more of that certain breed of fan, I began to resent the game. How dumb is that? I liked the game, now I feel worse about it because other people I don’t like also liked it. Is that really healthy?
Some years ago, on a forum, we were discussing Astral Chain. This was before it was out, during an E3. I commented that I was weary about the theming of cops. But a Platinum fan dissuaded me. Surely, Platinum, the beloved studio, would not screw this up! I said I wasn’t optimistic, given their other games. Another Platinum fan, who from now on we will call “The Vigilante”, rode in. “Um, actually, you see, Platinum games are actually the most progressive and leftist. Actually, the trailer makes it look like the cops are the bad guys. And actually, it is your ignorance on display here.” I’m of course paraphrasing, editorializing, and reading into it. But the condescension was palpable. I recognized The Vigilante as a poster who tended to roll into threads, tell people they’re wrong and dumb, and then leave. Later on in that thread, someone shared an interview with the director who said “maybe people will come away from this game with a better perspective on the police.” But The Vigilante was gone, a shadow in the night, their duty to condescend fulfilled.
Now, Astral Chain has come out, and of course I was fucking right. The game was not some scalding critique of the cops. And all I’m really able to feel is a smug sense of satisfaction at The Vigilante being full of shit. Why are they even on my mind? The Vigilante is the same reason I couldn’t stomach to enjoy any of Utena, along with, well, trying to watch it in the presence of someone much similar to them. I was told with insistence that Utena is simply the best, and to not recognize it as such is, of course, my failing. It’s the best, most queer, most philosophical, and most best anime that there ever was. And that’s all I was ever able to think about the entire time. Trying to figure out where I’m wrong, or they are. Trying to figure out if they were right to cast judgment.
You know, I literally have to excuse myself from conversations about Jojos these days. I find myself increasingly exasperated every time it comes up. And of course it will always come up, Jojo fans love letting you know that they like Jojo, that it’s so wacky and good, and that you should really understand their references. But why should I fucking care? Seeing a thousand comments on prog rock videos will things to a person, I guess. But it’s probably more likely that it’s this… weird impulse I can’t shake, that I want to rid myself of but it just clings on me like a deer tick. The sad thing is that I’d probably like Jojos if I had gotten to it before I met the fans. It seems extremely stupid and sort of bad, but I like things that are stupid and bad. But I have sworn off it to spite… I don’t know who. The incessant fans? My old friend? Maybe. I don’t know.
Have you noticed I haven’t said a word about Bayonetta? About the game this is ostensibly about? Probably. It’s because I cannot rid myself of the infection of spite.
As for the game, I mostly like Bayonetta. There’s not a lot to say in one way or the other that probably hasn’t been said. There’s almost no point in me saying anything, but whatever. I thought the combat loop was slick. I enjoyed hammering out flashy combos. I think Bayonetta is a fun character. I think she’s a bit much and very obviously one man’s fetish doll, but I’m also not above admiring her sass and her ass. I legitimately enjoy this game. I probably like it more than I’m letting on. Of course, there are things I don’t like, too. I don’t like its shitty motorcycle sections, or its shitty shmup section, either. I don’t like that it asks me to dodge attacks I can’t predict right out of a cutscene. I don’t like Luka. I don’t like its shitty quicktime events. And I dont like its awkward camera either. But all this is relatively small, right? I’ve loved games despite worse. And when I think about what I don’t like about Bayonetta (or Revengeance, for that matter), the first things that come into my head are people like The Vigilante. Nothing to do with the game itself. Just things about discourse, people talking about how superior it is, about how the game is secretly feminist, how it’s secretly queer, how everyone says its simply the best combat in the universe, how Platinum fans are convinced these are some obscure niche kino, and… well, you get it.
These things aren’t that complicated. Sometimes the thing you like is not so transcendental. So much stuff has been pitched to me as the best, and I wish people would just tell me what it is without the effusive hyperbole. I don’t want hype, I don’t want to be told that “you cannot predict what will happen” or that “you cannot oversell this”. You can, and you will. Maybe it’s my fault for taking people at their word, or my fault for getting so obsessive. I’m sure I’ve done the same. But fuck, man. Just let them be the things they are, whether they’re corny magical girl anime or sunshine pop or a wacky martial arts movie or a campy and horny hack’n’slash. Sometimes that’s all they are, and that is why they’re good. Platinum games are dumb action games, and that’s why they’re fun. It’s not complicated. I just wish people told me this stuff.
It’s so dumb. I know it’s dumb, but it just won’t go away. I felt judged, and I want to judge back. But I hate judging people. It makes me feel sick. So instead I just have this festering mass in my noggin, glowering down. I have so many examples of things like this in my life. Is this what people think about me when I talk about the things I love? Is that why I’m so afraid to do it? Is it because I can find so little in my life to enjoy enthusiastically that I feel envious? Or am I just being a snob? Am I really so petty? Am I so contrarian? Am I still upset about my old friend? Am I envious of the fans? Why do I have to obsess over what The Vigilante and other jerks think? Why do I let things be ruined by people I don’t respect? And why do I care so much about what they think about me?
There’s no moral to this. I just wish my brain wasn’t like this.
