Summary for August 2024

Silent country

The look of the game is very pixelated and grainy. Dark-haired woman in a white short dress, black shorts and red gloves is standing in a medieval looking dungeon. There are cages, chains on the walls and bones on the floor. She stands in front of a 90’s looking computer on an office desk and says “I’m not good at computers”. There are two button prompts for the player: “(B) Leave it” and “(A) Try anyway”.

Crow Country is a good modern take on survival horror. It goes for the things that inspire it, but doesn’t forget to put its own spin on it, from aesthetics (kind of PS1 with a dash of Ečstatica) to puzzles (a pinch of Metroidvania thrown in).

Paratopic and The Sirena Expedition are nice, short, PlayStation One-looking, slightly creepy games.

Heather, a young woman with short blond hair, wearing a puffy vest and a denim skirt, stands in a dirty gray elevator. The shot is from the top back of the elevator and is very geometric.

Speaking of survival horrors, I finally finished Silent Hill 3. Obligatory: fuck Konami. Has it aged? Sure, but it still holds up pretty well. To be clear, I think the graphics still look amazing. But the animation, the camera, the acting, things like that, they don’t let you forget that you’re playing a PlayStation 2 game. But at this point, it’s all part of the charm, more than anything. It’s also a sequel to the first Silent Hill, which is the only other one I’ve ever played, and that’s probably going to remain the case with this important but problematic series.

Dot’s Home is a good story about a black family, community and gentrification. It’s point-and-click only in presentation, no puzzles to speak of, almost a walking simulator, really. And it’s free!

Two girls, a brunette in jeans and a blonde in a skirt, stand in a school courtyard at night with flashlights attached to handguns. The shot is from a dirty window on the second floor of a school building and makes it look like we are spying on them.

I was also pleasantly surprised by ObsCure. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not flawless (there are at least a couple of instances of sexist stuff that come to mind, for example), but overall it wasn’t as bad as I feared. It also goes for a very specific thing, a subgenre of horror that was popular at the time (The Faculty, anyone?), to the point that the characters look like 30 years old actors playing high school kids, which is brilliant! And even with the gameplay, it does some interesting things, from the light mechanic to the ability to just break glass doors.

I also tried the sequel, and that didn’t go so well. From awkward free camera to immediate sleaze through the roof, I decided not to finish it.

In the foreground are two girls sitting on the root of a tree near the edge of a forest. The girl on the right is basically a pile of red hair with leaves stuck in it. The girl on the left is blonde, wearing slightly dirty clothes, boots, and a cloak. She has a pet falcon at her side. Everything in the foreground is warm, soft, and squiggly. They are looking at a city in the background. It is behind a wall and very square. In the background everything is cold and geometric.

While Nimona is great, Wolfwalkers also has a few tricks up its sleeve. For example, the way it uses the art style to tell the story. It divides the world into a square, orderly human part and a squiggly, wild forest part. It also draws some things in that tapestry kind of way, where everything is seen from a birth-eye view, but facing the viewer. Not a bad story, nice characters, all in all a good movie.