White knuckle is a good game about climbing.

One thing that becomes really apparent is how much inspiration the game takes from half life, the tram from the intro of half life is literally in the game and one of the creatures is literally called a barnacle and functions near identical to a barnacle from half life.

The game also takes some notes from portal. Massive facility and all, its kind of like your climbing up the bottomless pit from the long fall section of Portal 2. This is especially parallel in the Silos, the first section of the game where most levels are relatively straight upwards

Speaking of which, one of my favorite things about this game is its simplicity. The game deeply benefits from and uses the benefit of having an extremely straightforward direction to go at all times.

Where do i go?

Up.

If i had to compare the aesthetics of the game its deeply reminiscent of some of Mike Klubnika’s (buckshot roulette guy) artstyles. The thing that really made me draw the comparison was this old industrial and classic technology aesthetic that his games have being seen with the floppy drives and radios that are scattered throughout the game. The beginning of the 3rd area especially draws this out with all of the protruding spikes creating this hostile and dangerous feeling going into the only real dark section of the game. The spikes looking almost identical to the spikes in the death ending of Buckshot Roulette.

The gameplay of White Knuckle is amazing. Finding unconventional holds and trying to save gear, better yet, using a piece of gear to find an optimization to get around an annoying section. Conquering sections of the game that you used to struggle on with ease. Only supported by gaining records which are triumphantly displayed in red text over your screen telling you that yes, that section you struggled with before? You just climbed it 3x faster than 2 days ago.

The upgrades are also really fun. Some of them are simple, making you climb and run faster, others more complex like adding an additional jump or providing you good items. Although in my eyes there’s rarely any good reason to choose a timed upgrade over a far worse upgrade that will stick with you.

The items. The items are rather fun. Each having their own purpose with upgrades and only occasional overlap.

Theres the standard piton, the most abundant tool youll find in the substructure that using the hammer, you place the piton into the wall, then hammer it 3 times to secure it and youve created your own hold. But even in this simple interaction theres a fair amount of depth. If your confident, you only really need to hammer the piton once, created a less secure hold but its much faster than hammering 3 times. Especially if the piton is out of reach and you gotta jump up to reach it, but its very rare you can use a piton without hammering it at all. An unhammered piton only holds for a second if not less and then immediately drops and turns back into a regular item. But even a second is enough time if you immediately jump which can be neat for scaling walls that are only slightly too short.

Surprised i havent mentioned this yet but just to get it out of the way but the main game mechanic is the climbing stamina, your hands turn more red the less stamina you have, jumping takes a big hit to stamina. Stamina is per hand so jumping with one hand only impacts one hand. You can also mantle things by holding forward and looking up. The movement in this game is heavily dependent on where your looking more than what key your pressing, it also has a certain element of precision with climbing holds NOT being generous at all and you definitely can just miss a hold due to shit aim and die.

Building on that, white knuckle is not forgiving, compared to my best climbing game comparison Jusant. If jusant is animal crossing white knuckle is doom eternal. The flood building below you rises with time so if your too slow, you get caught, so in a weird way, being fast is more forgiving as if your too slow the flood will catch up, not giving you enough space to fail. In addition to this the game plays a certain menacing music when the flood gets close.

The games music in general is pretty minimal to chill with the most notable pieces of music being the radios scattered in the silos that play an almost soothing melody. Music likely plays greater relevance but to my ears most of it was atmospheric and not integral to the game experience.

Anyway circling back to the items. Going in order that your likely to find them.

The rod, the rod basically the long distance piton with you being able to sling it long distances to set up holds, useful for, setting up holds over long distances, usually good for crossing gaps where its both faster, more convenient and in some situations more achievable than crossing the same gap with pitons. The only downside is that when being thrown in the air you get launched backwards. Rods also serve as a long distance weapon being useful for dispatching annoying barnacles over distance. Although some barnacles actually end up helping more than hurting as they can get you to higher spots without requiring and climbing.

Rope rod, every use of the rod but also places a rope at the impact location. Useful for crossing gaps where the ceiling is still available but its usefulness falls off in certain sections, but is defacto better than the rod as it has all the same properties just also including a rope. The main use i found for the rope was for climbing up to high areas where the conventional route is rather annoying and or slow.

The Auto piton provides all the same benifits as the piton but instead of requiring to be hammered it automatically drills itself into the surface allowing for the hold to be ready faster and fully secure. Amazing for situations where you dont have stamina to spare. Semi rare but can be found in multiple levels hidden away in corners. Better than pitons by default.

Drugs!/Syringe, to my understanding the syringe boosts the speed of climbing and running, making it far faster to vault and mount a variety of surfaces way faster. But it only lasts for a little while. It can be found on the map in a few spots. Usually best to just use on the spot

Pill bottle, no stamina usage for a bit, insanely useful but when you get good enough at the game you rarely need it. I tend to forget about it but im sure in more difficult modes it would be of better use.

Grub, really cool but only lasts 10 seconds, lets you climb on anything. Not much to say

Food, it replenishes stamina, very useful, allows you to surmount bigger stints or jump more frequently. Its rather useful to have in your preferred quick slot as it allows easy access in a panic

There are 2 quick slots bound to q and e by default. Q for left hand, e for right hand

I always assign the hammer to Q for easy access and typically food, the flashlight or the flaregun to E depending on the situation.

Going back to the different sections of the game. The game is mostly broken up into 3 sections, each with randomly shuffled elements and/or levels. First is Silos, then second is Pipeworks and third is Habitation.

If i had to be real pipeworks is probably my least favorite of the sections as its kind of the ugly middle child between the mixup that the final section provides and the simplicity and robust design of silos.

Silos is good because it has an abundance of interesting holds which allow for alot of different routing opportunities which is always fun. In addition it provides ample opportunities to use gear to optimize, or to not use any gear and save up. It also includes the breakroom which gives you your first perk. Its a little more cramped but that works to its benefit most of the time.

Pipeworks is just kinda meh. It has more creature variety and its far more organic feeling than silos especially with the plant infested rooms. But those steam pipes fucking pissed me off in pipe organ and whoevers idea it was for them to knock you off your hold was a jackass. Lotta pain early game. Overall the whole game is solid but Pipeworks in particular had a tendency to grind my gears more than the rest. Its also the most departed from the primary industrial feeling of the game but not so bad its like its wrong. Its more just a statement to how good the beginning and end are.

Habitation is peak. The elevator shaft was a good whiplash with its panic to climb the shaft and get away from the monster, using the flairgun to scare it away, it creates and interesting stamina dance if you cant find many places to stand. Having to switch between food to recharge, flair gun to scare away the monster and either the flashlight to see or possibly pitons to take the easy way out on finding a higher up hold. That whole section really is just incredibly interesting and extremely refreshing.

The elevator shaft immediately teas up the docks. (Technically called haunted pier but im going with my name dockyard) My favorite section of the game as it takes the urban scaling to a whole new level, and theres a sick ass crane you can move. It was another moment of absolute awe. Being stuck in the cramped corridors of silos set up for the absolutely massive reveal of Dockyard where you open this uninspiring garage door only to be slapped in the face with what almost looks like the surface. A massive opening with almost typical buildings just sitting there, waiting to be climbed. Its my favorite just because of how different and fun it was, along with the sense of scale. Really bringing home that portal 2 feeling. Almost feeling like seeing the bottom of the pit for the first time again.(iykyk)

The ending habitation is hard to analyze as its mostly a home stretch to the end. The turrets they introduce are nearly identical to the ones from half life though. Just thought that was noteworthy.

Theres definitely a story to white knuckle but the only thing that really resonated with me was the artwork through the levels and the fact that there are pitons and rebar pre-placed throughout some of the levels hinting at the idea that there are others like you who took the same climb. Its interesting to note that im rather certain these holds get less frequent as the game progresses. It just gives this feeling that there were people before you and people after.

(What would’ve been really cool was if occasionally they left equipment from previous runs in levels for you to use)

Anyway thats the long and short of my feelings towards this game.

Its really cool, i heavily recommend it, always get the good job perk its op

Threshold is a really hard game to pin down, I feel like there’s a lot I could and want to say on it. Spoilers btw

If I have to start anywhere I’ll start by just saying that I truly enjoyed the game and I think its one of the few games I’ve ever played that after it ended I truly was left wanting more. Its why even after my first playthrough I came back to try and see all of the potential endings and dialogue choices. I went through the effort of trying to see everything the game has to offer because what it does have to offer is good.

Threshold is a game that takes place in a weird almost dystopia where you play as a train maintenance worker who works atop a mountain. taking over the previous “Yellow Watch” who died on the job just a few hours ago.

One of the things I disagree with about how people view Threshold is that its really not a “Phycological Horror”. Its barely a horror game to begin with, there only being 1 moment that actually have fair opportunity to scare you. The first time you stare at the “observatory” and get jump scared by the image of the previous Yellow Watchman Ni hanging upside down. Everything else about the game is just… creepy, off-putting. But scarcely horror.

Threshold is such an interesting name for the game as playing the game, It makes it feel like you came into the job at the exact wrong moment, the moment right before disaster in hindsight. Its almost hilarious that you take over MO’s shift who had been working for 16 hours straight before you came in. Just for everything to fall apart in the 1–2 hours that you spend in your first playthrough, MO prolly hates us as the player because we fuck things up so quickly *and* bother him like 8 times just after he got off his 16 hour shift where he had to bury his own friend.

anyway,
In Threshold there are 2 primary mechanics that the game will fall back on.
- The Trains Pace
- Oxygen Level

Your goal as the Yellow Watch is to keep the train on pace. All that requires is that you blow your whistle by the train-horn that amplifies the whistle to make the train speed up whenever its below the speed expectations. Those gaps being created either by the train gradually slowing down over time or the expected pace increasing.

The train is infinite and each car that passes punches a ticket that eventually after enough cars pass can be taken and used to get additional air-cans that replenish your oxygen level. These are essential as the air at the top of the mountain is thin. So much so that you never actually hear MO or our character speak for the entire game to reserve oxygen. MO rights everything down to communicate and We can only communicate with him via pointing at things we are curious about.
Its kinda curious that MO doesn’t lend you his paper to communicate but that’s neither here nor there.

While there is a core game loop, collect tickets, spend them to get air-cans that you use to recover from blowing the whistle.

The game shines with all the ways you can spend your time when there isn’t anything to do. Primarily being collecting lore!

THE LOREEE

Basically throughout the map there are things you can look at that your character will remark on then remember as a question to ask later.
There’s also things around the map you can click inspect on and your character will remark that they should ask MO about it.

In terms of MO’s interactables. Most of them have something to do with his previous partner Ni and what happened to him.

Those questions you remember can be brung to building 1 via blowing the whistle to a “calling pipe” next to a featureless door that will open and bring you into a large oddly orb like room that MO describes as a “direct line to Berlin”(this is just because I chose Germany as my country, I imagine that for other countries it would be like Moscow or Washington) so you can directly ask the government questions.
They seem to know quite a lot but it appears like some of the things they know are only anecdotal evidence from MO. Given that he appears to report to them often it doesn’t seem unrealistic that they only know what they do about the border due to MO’s reports.
Regardless they are able to answer questions like, why are we on a mountain, what happened to Ni, and details about the job and the wall.
I believe its only through them that you confirm that the burial site is really Ni which MO had to bury only hours ago.

Just as a note its made pretty clear that the job MO and the Yellow Watch does is EXTREMELY vital to the health and survival of whatever country they are in.
- The previous Yellow Watchman died just hours ago and you already replaced him
- The workers are given very good benefits like dental which given the state of affairs, might actually be extremely special privileges
- They pretty directly indicate that the water is essential for the country
The Air-Can dispensary also stops working when the train isn’t aligned on pace which raises certain questions and theories.
- Does the dispenser not work because it simply doesn’t function without the train working properly?
- Does the presumably mostly underground settlement rely on the water to be processed into oxygen?
- If the train stops moving, does everyone suffocate?

Later on as your doing your job the train temporarily halts, the capital calls you in, comments on it, tells you about the chamber if you haven’t been inside yet, tells you to get the train running again and that they will compensate for the stop by increasing the speed of the train.

And just as a little note of either intentional or happy accident game design. Because the train starts off really slow its somewhat incentivized to go down to clean the drain to get a ticket as the punch card runs so much slower. going down you will then find the first fish which is extremely odd to your character. You can bring it up to the Capitol and they lie straight to your face and say its because the water might be connected to a larger body of water, even though we know it comes from the recycling center. More likely than not the fish might actually be the first cracks forming of the plant as with all the animals going through maybe some of them aren’t being processed properly and the fish was one of the first ones to get through.
That’s one of the things I like so much about the game. Even with a direct “Answers room” there’s still so much that is left somewhat to your imagination and interpretation.

anyway the train starts getting faster and faster but the border post is also losing some of its stability, this eventually causes a blocked off piece of destroyed scaffolding to become more apparent. it leads to the observatory which we were jump scared over before. You ask MO about it and he says that normally clerks have to wait a year before they can go up to the observatory. Stating that Ni, your predecessor, took shortcuts and went up early, and that in the process he fell and died. MO says that if he catches you up there, he will report you.

Comically the game immediately shows an outline that tells you that you can build a bridge to get back up to the observatory with all the wood MO made you conveniently stockpile. So obviously you build the bridge and climb up.

Over the course of the game, its natural that in downtime youll end up poking around.
In building 2; the building you get your oxygen cans from, you can jump over one of the boxes to find a message that says “THERE IS ANOTHER ONE” written in blood with a Air-Can sitting nearby
If you poke around the outhouse you’ll find that there’s another message in blood written on the roof, “I WILL HIDE IT SOMEWHERE SAFE”
Coming back to the observatory

You climb up the rickety bridge you made, making it to the platform where you can look and now see the tops of the trains. A small cutscene plays and you discover that the infinite train which, by this point in the game is running at blistering speed, is full of animal corpses to the brim. An endless stream of animal corpses, waste. You turn around to see the final blood message “IN MY MOUTH”. Putting all the messages together, “THERE IS ANOTHER ONE, I WILL HIDE IT SOMEWHERE SAFE, IN MY MOUTH”

Its pretty easy to figure out already that the previous clerk Ni is who wrote the messages in blood given the fact that MO has made it pretty clear he was unstable.

When you start to decend the platform you will see MO staring at you. He said he would report you when he catches you, and he just caught you. He quickly destroys the bridge and runs away. You hear a whistle and the sound que of the capitol chamber opening, if your quick you will see MO go inside. In the midst of the chaos you hear the train slow down, the stream of water that got stronger and stronger as the train progressed, is now turning into a river of blood.
Instinctually you run to the train horn to get it back on pace. But as the train speeds up you watch the sign that usually informs you of the trains pace and it falls.
The Capitol chamber calls to you, its white light and oppressive noise blaring. You go inside and find MO suspended in the air.
The Capitol strips you of all but one of your air-cans and tickets each as punishment for disobeying a direct order from MO.
They ask if, now that you know the contents of the train, do you want to resign or know everything.

If you ask to be told everything, the Capitol explains that the animals come in, get processed in the recycling plant, and get turned into water. They say that as a clerk, your hands are clean, you didn’t kill those animals, your job is essential and it allows your family and so many others to survive. After being given the explanation you can chose again if you think what’s happening is okay and you want to continue, or if you resign.

choosing to continue working. You leave the chamber, the capitol pleased. Once you leave the game highlights all of the messages you found from earlier in your characters internal dialogue “THERE IS ANOTHER ONE, I WILL HIDE IT SOMEWHERE SAFE, IN MY MOUTH”, if Ni wrote the message, whatever hes talking about must be in his mouth. You go over to the Grave to find a black heavy whistle. Finding the whistle in Ni’s grave confirms that he wrote the messages.

figuring that you just got robbed of all your Air-cans, naturally you go to get a few extra. in the process you hear a wet PLAP on the ground. A fish just fell. You look up, waiting to see what happened only to find that the wall is starting to flood with animals. Chickens start to fall. more fish, In a hurry you start to recycle a few to get tickets to gain a bit more *breathing room* ;)

You make your way to the train horn to try and see what the black whistle does.
You blow it and it belts out a low bull-horn noise that is a far cry from the high pitched whistle you’ve been blowing into the train horn.

The Train, upon being fed the black whistle, starts to slow down. You blow again, and again. using air cans so you don’t suffocate.
The Trains slows down more and more, the stray chickens and fish that were falling from the wall start to pour down as cracks in the wall form. Soon, cows and bulls start to fall aswell making for heaps of dead carcasses littering the border post.
In the distance the imposing recycling center explodes, bringing with it a blood rain that starts to taint the ground crimson.
After blowing the Black Whistle, Ni’s Whistle, a few more times, the train stops, and your character begs the question. One more time?

One final blow and the train starts to go backwards, without any help it starts to accelerate, getting faster and faster, you watch as it goes back, getting to max speed.

The front end of the train comes out half destroyed, cleaved, half digested in appearance, when it passes you, the camera watches it and the inside is revealed, full to the brim with gore and blood.

Title Card
**THRESHOLD**

…so what the fuck just happened?

Before I get into my thoughts and more personal feelings on the game ill touch on how each ending works and give details on each ending.

After the title card, each ending will provide a little piece of back and forth between (From what I’ve gathered) the disposal administration that appears to be in charge of the border post and the leader of the country you’ve chosen. It only varies slightly between between endings but most talk about how the border post is now buried in sea of corpses with MO stuck inside building one.

The Main ending that I discussed they talk about how the bond has been broken, with every ending the administration is fuzzy on the details and they talk about the “intense friction activity” that caused many issues. Aswell as telling the leader how long the last shift, your shift was.
Both serving as a way to tell the player how long their playthrough was, but also being rather funny as MO’s shift was over 16 hours but in most playthroughs everything in the post is left in a disaster in less than 2–3 hours.

Just as a little side note, the game felt extremely short, which honestly does serve to its benefit as it makes it much more encouraging to go and figure everything out over multiple playthroughs.

Anyway,
Alternate Endings!
- Resignation
- Hemorrhage
- Escape
_________________________________________________________________
The Resignation ending is achieved when if you to the capitol chamber, you chose to resign, either before or after learning the true nature of the train, the capitol says they understand and will allow you to leave on the elevator you came in on. Once you leave the chamber the carcasses start falling at full rate almost immediately. The dam starts to break, you quickly run to the elevator but after it starts descending, it starts malfunctioning, it falls and as you fall to your death you see the title card.

The call is pretty similar
- MO’s strapped
- border post is buried
Only difference is that now they detail how in a tragedy, Yellow Clerk, you, fell in an elevator failure and died
_________________________________________________________________
Hemorrhage is the name of the achievement you get for completion of the ending, you achieve the ending when you run out of air, which a believe can happen weather you resign or keep working, or if you get buried in the mountain or corpses falling from the wall. The weird detail is that if you run out of air, the small report they give you at the ending of the game still says you were buried in corpses.

Again, similar call, this time they say that they lost contact with the border Post, with it filling up with corpses, they assume that you died.
_________________________________________________________________
The Escape ending can be achieved when after the meeting with the capitol, if you wait, soon the border post will fall apart, this includes a tree falling onto building 1, which you can step over corpses so climb onto, then from the roof you can climb the rocks and when you get far enough, a cutscene will trigger, You look around at the border post as its falling apart. At the wall. Title Card.

The call is pretty similar to Hemorrhage with the only detail that’s different being that they lost track of Yellow Clerk instead of assuming he’s dead.
_________________________________________________________________

One small detail that’s really hard to pin down is that in the call and the little report card they give you, they give 2 numbers, one smaller, one bigger. In the ending report they detail the smaller number as KILLED, for me playing in Germany it hovered around 260,000, and it gave a fallen statistic being a certain number out of that 260,000. Such as 5,000/260,000. I can only assume killed is how many animals were processed and fallen is how many animals fell from the wall during the ending. The larger number for me always was around 5 million I believe. Its purposely a little vague I think.

Now that I’ve covered all the endings. What did just happen?

Basically, the Yellow Clerk before you, Ni, after only a few days on the watch started to question things. He wanted to cut corners, he wanted to know more.
One of the things he did was try to climb the wall, tearing apart one of the fabricated trees and building scaffolding. While the exact sequence of events is unclear. I assume that Ni found out the true nature of the train, traumatized he left handwritten notes in blood. He made or found the black whistle. I think he took his life at the observatory after writing his final note and MO had to take him down and bury him.
I dont think MO was made to kill him, but it raises alot of questions as to why Ni didnt stop the train himself.
Theres actually, alot of questions that the game doesnt answer.
One of the blood writings is also in the elevator, i only noticed it much later. It says “THE WATER GOES NOWHERE”
which again raises, even more fucking questions.

Here is a short list of all of the questions that go unanswered as far as I know
- Did Ni kill himself?
- How did Ni get the Black Whistle?
- Who was the yellow Clerk before Ni? What happened to him?
- When you ask the capitol, they say the wall has been there, who built it?
- If the water goes nowhere, what’s the real purpose of it?
- Does everyone live underground?
- Why does the game take place in 2021 specifically?

What is Threshold trying to say?

its intended message is prolly related to the meat industry, given that the true ending is about stopping the train full of animal carcasses.
Its almost like its trying to give you a sense of scale or even trying to throw off your sense of scale, a never ending train full of animal viscera in every single car.
Its impossible to wrap your head around.

Looking at https://animalclock.org I actually think the theme becomes a bit more solid.

The vast majority of the animals that fall from the wall are actually chickens and looking at the clock, chickens are by far the most slaughtered (other than shellfish).

I feel like the intention of the game is to get you to reflect on the meat industry.
but there are other games that achieve similar effects or at least have a more gripping way of presenting the theme.

My first thought goes to Scorn, a game that I didnt play but watched [this video](https://youtu.be/O70tIzQNcCo) on it. I think the game does a little bit of a better job of maybe trying to inspire a bit more horror in the practices of the meat industry. This is mostly done through the confusion and torture that is present throughout the game where you are treated like cattle, taking part in a process that you do not understand. That truth is even more present in the barely human homunculi that you torture to progress throughout the game that while they are clearly less intelligent, feel pain and confusion.

Cattle doesn’t understand why its suffering, it just does.

Coming back to Threshold, I was curious on how well the train cars represent the amount of meat that is used to feed people. I used estimates from America even though I played in Germany, but regardless.

Using some estimates, with 8,127,632,113 chickens killed each year. you divide by 365 to get per day, then 24 to get per hour and it comes out to 927,811 chickens killed per hour. I got an estimate on the volume of the average chicken (3 liters) to get 2783435.65514 liters of chicken per hour. I converted it and it means that 98296.2 cubic feet of chicken is killed each hour

Estimating the Size of the train car by placing the duck near a-

Over the course of an hour I got nowhere close to estimating the size of the train car-

another half an hour later I have likely the worst estimate by the train car appears to carry between 7500–8500 cubic feet of material. The number I actually got was 8390.91~ cubic feet not accounting for the walls. given the innumerable errors and cut corners its likely a high estimate.

Regardless if we divide the 98296.2 cubic feet of chicken slaughtered each hour by the area of the train car. We would need approximately… 12~ train cars per hour just to support the amount of chickens slaughtered. Which is. So much less than I thought it would be, but this is only for the chickens and god willing I do not have the fucking energy to make this better.

Trying to get, even somewhat back on track

Threshold is a game that is genuinely incredibly interesting and worth playing and replaying to fully understand to discover everything that there is to discover.

One thing that I’m realizing is that playing Threshold has actually made me do some degree of research into the amount of animal slaughter, which if it was the creators intention to make me curious about some of those things, he did an absolutely crazy job.

my personal feelings on the game are that I genuinely feel like its very well made, it makes for a rather engaging experience with a game design philosophy that I’ve always loved, that being the philosophy of merely laying all of the pieces of the puzzle out and letting the player put them together. The biggest time the game betrays that philosophy is that at the ending your character will have pretty direct instructions as to where to find the black whistle. Something I do like is that on replays you can grab the whistle before going into the capitol chamber. If you do so, then enter the capitol chamber — you have the option to blow the black whistle inside which severs the connection to the capitol, unlocking a secret achievement in the process.
Everything else though is left entirely up to the player to discover and solve.

The last thing I’ll talk about is Ducky,
Ducky is one of the unique things you can find when exploring the game. Near the destroyed bridge to the observatory is a little tunnel, within is an extremely fucking disgruntling statue
MO actually makes a note of the tunnel in the demo, stating people used it way before the elevators and that the statue is to honor the original workers. The tunnel is supported by 2 pieces of wood. If you look at the statue for long enough, the world will go quiet, preparing you for a jump scare as you stare down the creepy statue. but instead a random little duck pops out.

Which is extremely strange given the fact that there’s barely enough oxygen to breathe. You can interact with him several times and eventually you are allowed to name him. I named my duck Cheese.

“Sup Cheese”
*Quack*
“Hell yeah man”

MO will comment on the duck saying it should be reported. After you interact with the Duck enough times you can pick it up. If you bring it into the capitol building and take it out the capitol will be surprised and go “What the hell is that”.

In every(?) ending if you procure ducky you will get a 1/1 for animals saved at the ending report.

some other miscellaneous thoughts and observations

Its pretty funny how dental care is brought up multiple times because your gums will bleed after taking enough air-cans. Actually, before your shift, there’s another door other than the one to the Border. If you look at the signs they are pointing through the door to a dentist and a pneumonologist.
There’s clearly a cost to the job, with your lungs and teeth having to be checked up on constantly. On the bright side the company does cover it, which is interesting as it plays into another point which is that. The Capitol isn’t really… Evil.

Threshold is a game that doesn’t really have enemies, at least in my eyes. Obviously there’s a morally grey aspect to the endless train of meat that gets processed. but that’s all it is. Grey. Its not like they are treating the workers badly, the conditions are rough but the job is important and they are well compensated according to the capitol. The specifics aren’t available but given MO has worked the job for years and the great dental care, I firmly believe the capitol is not embellishing.
Also, in the world of threshold, from what we can tell the work does.. appear to be essential. It does seem like the train does have a connection to the availability of oxygen. The water is apparently processed into something but Ni’s elevator note appears to say the water doesn’t actually do anything.

Again, Threshold does an amazing job of leaving you with just enough questions to keep you thinking about it.

Anyway this is the longest review I’ve ever written for a game, which is weird considering that it was so short. Maybe that’s part of the reason why, because the impact and length have such a disparity.
I also think its just because Ive been going through alot so this was a pretty good outlet.
It does suck that they continue to be so long because now I cant actually leave them on steam like bruh.

The Pathless

I think that The Pathless is an amazing game, but I feel like depending on how you play it, the experience you have with it, and the feeling it could leave you with varies wildly. While I personally was left rather exhausted and ended up playing this game on and off for about a month, I think its because of how I played it, and I blame myself as a player more than I blame the developers.
My issue with Pathless is the completionism anxiety. To put it simply, when playing the game I gathered every single one of the light stones in each area before progressing into the next, and I would constantly use the spirit vision to see from afar what areas I should go to next. On paper it sounds like a great idea for guiding the player and in the lore it gives a natural explanation for the mechanic. Its never directly explained but honestly it didnt need to be and finding out all the features of spirit vision on my own, was interesting.
Again thats whats so frustrating about how The Pathless made me feel, everything on paper sounds so cool and interesting, but in practice the spirit vision gradually became a self inflicted hinderence, when the game gives you a perfect way to find everything you could ever want, that becomes the only way to play the game “right”.
If it wasnt for the spirit vision giving you massive unavoidable landmarkers for most points of interest, the game couldve had so much more organic exploration, but filtering the exploration through some fucking goggles that tell you exactly where to go makes it feel like your just going from one point to another. Its so frustrating because in the first few hours of the game, i didnt notice all of the capabilites of the spirit goggles, and instead just wandered around from place to place, following the landscape and looking for structures, but when using the spirit vision you dont need to actually look at the landscape because it just gives you massive red clouds, you dont need to remember if youve already been somewhere because everywhere youve already been is highlighted in blue.
Through all of that though, I still loved this game, I just got really burned out quickly because I would be anxious about if I was going to an area too early, or be frustrated with myself because I dont want to use the spirit vision but its so useful for finding everything that I end up using it anyway. If i was to reccomend this game to a friend, I would almost want to lie to them and say that spirit vision is only a tool for puzzles and secret doors.
There is alot of good about The Pathless, the rewarding movement, the dopamine hit for landing skill shots, the way they switch up the movement with the new eye crystal thingys. The lore and world building was incredibly captivating at all times, each stone and final words, it was really cool.
One really weird thing is that the game kept reminding me of breath of the wild, its weird because the games seem so different. Just to make a short list of similarities, The Spirit towers remind me of the Sheikah towers, the flap upgrade crystal puzzles reminded me alot of korok seed puzzles, the eagle is like the paraglider, the Updrafts in both games. You get the point.
Also kinda reminded me of Shadow of the Colossus
Theres likely alot more I could say about this game but just for final thoughts and TLDR:
Spirit Vision is too helpful
OST was good
Movement was peak
Puzzles were fun
Lore was cool
Bird was cute
Completionism Anxiety

Posted May 26, 2025.

I Am Your Beast

I Am Your Beast is a game that is really hard to compare to other games, it has the level structure and rank system of a game like Ultrakill, it has the somewhat improvisational nature of using the environment against your enemies, and the feeling of mastery over a level coming essentially knowing where everything is of the Hitman games, it has amazing music, the cutscenes are admittedly pretty forgettable overall but that story really is just the perfect cherry on top. Harding is an interesting character and hearing the way he talks about wanting to be left to the forest is honestly extremely nice.

Most of the levels are extremely well made with the only real exception to my taste being the final level that kind of just throws every item in the game at you in abundance and tells you to have fun. while it is quite fun its a little underwhelming in terms of difficulty.

Overall the game has this extremely gratifying process of getting S rank on all the levels while you build a route and try to perfect it as best you can, its always extremely rewarding finding little off paths to save time or shortcuts that get you between objectives faster. Its similar in feeling to that of P — ranking Ultrakill in that feeling of gaining mastery of a level and with it a deeper understanding of the games mechanics as a whole

Raw mechanically I do think that I am your Beast is honestly one of the most unique games ive ever played. its system of scavenging weapons between enemies with limited ammo, going for more interesting kills or making decisions on the fly to save a little time. I am your Beast feels like a game made for speedrunning and that feeling of small improvements is absolutely tremendous. If I could only ask for one thing i really would like to have the ability to beat the times set by the authors of the levels themselves kind of like track-mania in a way, i think it could be a very interesting challenge for those wanting to grind a little harder.

Other than that, the enemy AI is equivalent to that of a toaster but it ultimately doesn’t matter, the music is some of the best in a game Ive ever heard, PLEASE GOD DONT MAKE ME STOP SPRINTING AFTER KICKING ITS SO SLUGGISH FEELING AND INTERRUPTS THE ENTIRE FEELING OF FLOW THE GAME IS BUILT ON EITHER MAKE IT NOT STOP MY SPRINT AT ALL OR MAKE IT SO THAT REPRESSING THE KEY WILL ALSO MAKE IT INSTANTLY START AGAIN PLEASE.

Other than that the game really is amazing and one of a kind, fast paced while also being grounded, it can require quick thinking and reflexes but sometimes you can use your head a bit more and discover new routes and paths possible. Replay-ability and skill expression at its best

Posted September 16, 2024.

Pacific Drive

Pacific drive is an beautiful, intriguing, quirky masterpiece of a game.

(I don’t know how long this review is gonna be but I wanna really pick apart why I loved this game so much as-well as what could be fixed and improved at the time of writing. Also SPOILERS!!!!)

Pacific drive is another one of those “Exclusion zone” type games as i call them personally, a wonderful example of this kind of game is “Into the Radius”. In ITR you have a home base that you store loot and gear up in, and every time you want to explore you have to leave that area to venture out into the morphed landscape that was altered by some incomprehensible disaster that defys the laws of physics. Areas are in large segments joined by a loading screen and you end up entering the same handful of levels with them changing a little with each run.

That’s where most of the similarities end but the point being that I loved that game and Pacific Drive takes all of that and adds WAYYY more content, MORE LORE, MORE THINGS TO ADAPT TO, MORE TOOLS. AND A CAR.

Pacific drive has a unique art style that has strong reminiscence of games like fire watch, having strong elements of realism but adds a cartoony aesthetic that allows the more fantastical and beautiful elements of the zone to blend seemlessly into the game. Everything down to the subtle ways the fog and haze creeps over the neon lights of those life saving gas stations, up to the colossal level elements like Cappy in Sierram or the mix of organic and machine horror that is the well. The way the Exit Gateway slams this aggressive yet comforting yellow glow over the landscape is just, Chefs kiss. When it comes to how this game looks, Pacific drive is almost on par with dishonored.

But beautiful any game can be, how is the gameplay of Pacific drive? To be completely honest, when first starting out the game can be quite overstimulating. Menu after menu, a crafting system full of materials you barley know how to get, a car to maintain and parts to take off and theres menu element after menu element and it just keeps coming and everytime i scan something theres this logbook entry thats 5 minutes long. Its all a little too much, granted after a run or 2 you start to get used to it and you just have to learn to roll with the punches until your able to understand. (it doesn’t help that most of the ingame tutorial screenshots have outdated screenshots). But once you get used to it you get a loot rythm that can be quite satisfying. Chopping tires is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ annoying and they should scrap faster, but other than that the system overall is quite good.

The way they tie together exploration and progression is extremely cool. The scanning and the logbook entries are just impeccably good, reading scared scientists studying the zone, fearful of its questionable intelligence. Or the funny entries with goofy interactions between the military, scientists and the anomalies of the zone. Speaking of which, I just LOVE and ADORE the Frequency file show hosted by Chiaki, the way in injects so many questions that at least personally i never really thought to be skeptical of, its so cool to see an outside perspective on the events of the game (Im considering going back into the game just to find the remaining entries). The radio was very cool, the songs were good and the way they handled the radio controls kinda was a lil upsetting cuz i couldn’t go back to a song i liked efficiently, but thats completely made up by the survivor/breacher/zone inhabitant frequencies that randomly come up while playing. The scanning and the logbook entries are just impeccably good, reading scared scientists studying the zone, fearful of its questionable intelligence. Or the funny entries with goofy interactions between the military, scientists and the anomalies of the zone. Speaking of which, I just LOVE and ADORE the Frequency file show hosted by Chiaki, the way in injects so many questions that at least personally i never really thought to be skeptical of, its so cool to see an outside perspective on the events of the game (Im considering going back into the game just to find the remaining entries). The radio was very cool, the songs were good and the way they handled the radio controls kinda was a lil upsetting cuz i couldn’t go back to a song i liked efficiently, but thats completely made up by the survivor/breacher/zone inhabitant frequencies that randomly come up while playing.

I have more i could say but this review is so long im tired, i might finish it at a later date. Just play the game

Posted March 28, 2024.

BoneLab

I tried writing a review for this when i first played it but it made my blood pressure to high so i deleted it. I’m gonna summarize it really quickly in pin points

Story:
Where is ford. why does ford have no relevance. didnt he become a god? i was waiting an entire game for him to actually be our mentor but hes not. there is no story. its just mini games. its a glorified tech demo.

level design:
Most of the levels felt like they were just the same thing as boneworks just slightly worse. the only segment that i actually liked (that was in the main “story”) was the beginning of the cultist area. the blood effects on the walls and stuff were really good and i genuinely really liked it.
Hidden Areas:
♥♥♥♥ you Stress Level Zero. I loved that whole segment in boneworks where they had the little sandbox area that had multiple layers that you decended that then went into the handgun range which had the really ♥♥♥♥♥ cool shooting gallery section i loved. When you beat the level you got access to another called Tuscany. its a 3 level deep chain that has nothing to do with the core story! I loved it alot and didnt have to look super hard for it. Whats could i find in bonelab after giving a little effort?
One Room. I found the Secret Room through the vent in the the one gun trial. its was a bathroom. kinda symbolic of the thing as a whole..

Enemies:
What the ♥♥♥♥ did they do to the null body? What the actual ♥♥♥♥. they stripped my boy of his high res detailed model that really gave the impression he was almost a prop that could move.
HE LOOKS LIKE A MINECRAFT ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ LAVA TEXTURE.
NO.
I DONT CARE THAT HE HAS SHADERS.
♥♥♥♥ OFF.
MINECRAFT LAVA.

The shotguns are pretty cool. not having to take the Item Orbs dont have to be taken to the end anymore, so you dont have to drop weapons in order to carry Gym_wall_04. But has the downside of being less rewarding.

my blood pressure is done for now.

still get the game tho. Its still the best physics engine in existance and will make every other vr game feel even worse. but compared to boneworks? Unacceptable

Posted February 24, 2023.

Disco Elysium

The best written game I’ve ever played, always was thinking about what other possibilities there were, it was like being inside of one of the best books Ill ever read, but i can interact with it and the outlook i can have changes massively. I will 100% be revisiting this game to see how different it can truly be.

Posted September 29, 2023.

Fallout New Vegas

Theres some kind of feeling that fallout new vegas gives me. some deep feeling in my soul thats hard to really put into words.
Its that feeling of looking out at the desert and hearing the wind.
The feeling of walking near cottonwood cove.
The desert cliffs
The old buildings with dated textures and trash on the ground.
Trash that repeats every 4 steps you take with old cans you cant pickup
prewar newspapers you cant read in white
old yellow papers
some strange kind of gray mass that encapsulates the video gamey look of garbage perfectly.
its the intercoms that dont work
the bathroom stalls that open to show nothing inside
the coffee cups you pick up by accident
the geckos that just appear randomly only to get shot with end game weapons and die instantly
purple geckos, golden geckos
some breathe fire some just bite
deathclaw valley and the tactical assassination of their native population with a 50 calliber sniper
talking mad shit for someone made out of material.
the caves full of little stories, corpes strewn about with nightstalkers huddled around piles of meat
its the unique items and the absolute pain in the ass that getting them is
its chugging all of the drugs in your inventory and going on a rampage with a 40MM automatic grenade launcher until there is nothing left
its doing a shitty unmarked quest just to have sex with some character you wont remember
the variety
the scenery
its the quiet bits, the parts that arent as pretty or put together.
the strip is beautiful but theres a certain charm to the muffled moans through bland wallpaper in Gamorrah, moans that cant exist because you can open all the doors on that floor and find nothing there.
its strange because one of the most special parts about new vegas is the amazing dialouge, and the voice acting is very good. the lore is detailed and deep. nooks and crannys full of small details and little anecdotes.
but what sticks with me more in new vegas has always been the things that feel like i got there on my own, places and areas that i just stumbled apon and did my own adventure without any guidance meeting my own goals.
its likely the same reason i got so much joy from tears of the kingdom playing the way i did.
What I mean by this feels more noticeable with the DLCs
Randall Clark and his story is one of the most beautiful things ive ever had unfold in a game for me.
Seeing his skeleton and hearing his guidance for the beginnings of the tribes of new cannan was so emotional for me. Ive talked lengths about it so i wont go on here but its those side stories and little moments that really complete the game for me, although maybe my fear of that progression feeling i get in open world games sometimes plays a part in it.
Big MT aswell with its bite sized little adventures in the diffrent labs was extremely satisfying to go through, and getting more details for the “meta-narritive” with the deaf chick, the other corrier and the obsessed BOS elder was also a gratifying string through all the DLCs. although if i remember correctly the link through honest hearts wasnt nearly as strong.
I think thats most of my thoughts for now but if i ever have the urge to continue i will.

Drafted November 4, 2024.

Fallout New Vegas: Dead Money DLC

Amazing characters and ideas planted in a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ slog.

Dog/God’s Multi personality disorder is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ interesting and hearing the 2 fight over the same body in the end is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cool

Finding out more about Dean and seeking my outlook of him go from being a somewhat posh ghoul to a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ego driven psychopath that had 200 years to forgive a dead man and chose to instead take that time to take even more away from others and the guy THAT IS ALREADY DEAD,

Christine was incredibly interesting and the hints of some romantic tension between her and the corrier was just unbearably sweet. Discovering what the hell happened to her and why was quite a large twist but that plays into why dean is so interesting. Hearing her voice is so cool but knowing its the voice of a woman whose been dead for 200 years is something both haunting and again just incredibly cool. and even before that trying to decipher what Christine is trying to illustrate using descriptions of facial expressions and hand motions was such a cool departure from what i was used to seeing and was honestly an amazing breath of fresh air.

The bad:

took away all my ♥♥♥♥ and then planted me with sponge enemies that the optimal approach to dealing with them is literally walking past them and ignoring them. Having the melee them after “death” so they stay dead is a cool concept though that i do appreciate.

taking away my ♥♥♥♥ on its own isnt an awful concept, I usally like when games do it, but giving sponge ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ aswell? that’s just cruel

Most of the entries about the history of the Sierra Madre were incredibly boring and repetitive and my brain would just read the word “Sinclair” 5 times in one paragraph and then just give up

Encountered a handful of really annoying ass bugs like in the end with Elijah sometimes just never walking out unless i trigger the force fields early

some areas have super poor direction if your eyes aren’t ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ glued to your compass, and sometimes your eyes can be glued to your compass and you still have no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ idea where to go. One really really bad example is when your told to go to the bell tower and the compass tells you to go to the wrong entrance to the north district and leads you into a dead end unless you defy the almighty compass gods and find a different way. Another thing is how the entire villa area looks the exact ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ same so its impossible to tell where you are at any given moment and the map is quite misleading sometimes so i both have no idea where im going so im constantly checking the map which is already a problem for obvious reasons. Then even when i am checking the map its barley any ♥♥♥♥♥ help because some areas just up and decide not to be mapped properly making it impossible to know where to go based solely on the map, which wouldn’t be an issue if the game had a good natural guidance which we’ve already gone over it not having.

oh and ♥♥♥♥ the bomb collar exploding when you go to close to a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ radio or something, most annoying ♥♥♥♥ ever, same thing with the stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ holograms, why cant my “holorifle” shoot them. Youd think from the name its unique trait would be the ability to shoot holograms. nope

Overall I think that its worth playing to experience the characters but if you have really really ♥♥♥♥ patience and just want the gold. just go to the strip you greedy suckers

Posted April 24, 2024.

Killer Frequency

Killer Frequency is awesome, figuring out the story of why the killings are happening, making crucial decisions under stress and hearing the terror of the people your trying to save makes this game genuinely so interesting and a little scary too. Few games of made me cling onto a fire extinguisher for safety and actually made a comment on it when I did. Forrest’s constant radio voice was also hilarious

Posted April 2, 2024.

Into the Radius

LET ME CHAMBER LOAD.

Edit: Im editing this review because i wanted to share an experience i had with this game that was so memorable that even a year ago i still remember it.

I had just cleared an outpost of sorts from enemies and it was getting quite dark so I decided I was too scared to go outside and hunkered down. I found some mags and ammo and in the darkness I sat inside with only a small light to comfort me. I organized my backpack trying to see what I could scavenge while listening out for any danger, but only able to hear the stray pulsing anomalies off in the distance. I stood in their for several minutes waiting for sunrise, scanning the outside with a flashlight, looking off at the distant floating trains and catching the occasional spawn crawling across the ground. It felt like I was really there, managing my actual physical ammo and checking for danger. It was amazing.

(no ones gonna see this but I was remembering experiences with this game, Im gonna finish it one day)

Posted May 6, 2023. Last edited April 2, 2024.

The Long Dark

The most immersive game I’ve ever laid my hands on. Episode 1 & 2 felt magical, Episode 3 was emotional(The carrying survivors part was a pain but it felt necessary), Episode 4 was exciting(Though I got a lot of bugs in the last chapter/finale) . 9/10 cant wait for Episode 5

Posted August 13, 2022.