Summary for December 2024

Picturesque

Sophie is sitting on some stones on a grassy hill. We only see her back, wearing a cloak and a straw hat. She is looking into the distance where there is a river with trees covering the bank, green fields and rolling hills separated by rows of trees. Far away, closer to snow-covered mountains under a blue sky with some fluffy clouds, is a city – only small dots of buildings.

I didn’t like Howl’s Moving Castle that much. While Kiki is more or less the same, Nausicaä is a clear expansion, the story of the book and the movie are very different, in a way that reading the book first made watching the movie very confusing for me. What they have in common is that I don’t think they sold the romance that well, if at all. The characters were… eh. I wasn’t on board with the themes.

There is a valid criticism of Miyazaki’s handling of war that I won’t go into here, and Howl’s is a great example for that discussion.

Ponyo on the other hand is simply adorable. In a way, it is a return to My Neighbor Totoro, in a slightly bigger way. And that’s alone is enough for me.

Humanoid hands holding a sword, the hilt of the witch is a large circle, inside it is another smaller circle with a plate that looks like Pac-Man: “pie” with a triangle piece missing.
[The dark and gritty Pac-Man reboot.]

I don’t think I had a choice not to see Secret Level. So I did. The best episodes are the ones where the story has to deal with a game mechanic, so it is very disappointing that most of them chose the same one: respawn. The others just chose to tell the story in a world of a game, and for 10 minute episodes, sometimes even less, they were fine stories. Ultimately, not a disappointment, not by a long shot, but overall just not a memorable anthology.

Summary for November 2024

Resistance is not futile

Star Trek, the MCU before the MCU. Superheroes. Characters jumping between shows. A bunch of actor appearances where you go “that one too?”. Endgame.

Closeups of the crew, from left: Seven of Nine, white Borg/human blonde woman with a metallic implant above her eye; Tuvac, dark-haired dark-skinned Vilkan; Kes, white blonde Ocampa woman; Kathryn Janeway, brown-haired white woman; Neelix, Talaxian man with a mixture of cat-like and lizard-like features: leathery skin, spots around his face, fur-like hair and sideburns; Harry Kim, dark-haired Asian man; Chakotay, dark-haired indigenous man from Central America.
[Part of the Voyager crew.]

My ovearll view on all the old Star Trek shows – at this point I’ve watched The Original Series with movies, The Animated Series, The Next Generation with movies, Deep Space Nine and now finished Voyager, – is that they are important as a cultural step, but also still mostly relevant.

Which is kind of sad, when you think about it: surely we should have fixed a lot of the problems those shows explored by now, right? Nope, some of them are just coming up now, sometimes in eerily familiar ways.

Also, all of these shows, and Voyager is no exception, have an annoying tendency to take two steps forward and one step back. Which, admittedly, still makes them progressive, and, as I mentioned, to this day – there are shows that came after that were worse.

I’m not sure what is worth mentioning about Voyager specifically. It did some cool things: the first woman captain, another interesting take on the human condition via holograms and the Borg, etc. But I can’t really say something like “if you want to explore this particular take on a theme by a Star Trek show and you can only watch one, watch Voyager”. It’s not that unique in my mind. As good all the others.

Small Parisian square with a fountain, surrounded by two and three story buildings. There is a pure black sky with the Eiffel Tower in the background. It is a first-person view with a hand of the protagonist holding a gun, a compass and a health circle in the upper left corner and an ammunition counter in the upper right corner.
[The first level, set in Paris.]

Sometimes you just want to shoot some Nazis. It’s hard to mistake Medal of Honor: Underground for a modern game, mainly because of the visuals, but it is interesting how it is pretty much a modern military shooter in every other way. From the controls (twin-stick and even aiming down sights, kinda), to the cut-scenes, from the mission objectives, to the variety of those missions (they even had a turret section). And while there are rough edges, it still pretty enjoyable experience!

Summary for October 2024

Divine Beasts

Two scelettons, holding spiked clubs from which hang pieces of colethes, face each other in a torch-lit dingeon. There is a dialogue box on the screen where one of the sceletons says “Best not to think about it. I don’t want to fall to bits ‘cos of excess existential thought. Nasty…”.

Divine Divinity is a game from the era when attitude was a valid substitute for humor, message, or even story. So it is a bit surprising that it is very restrained. Not without its eyebrow raising moments, but nothing worth calling out, I think.

Starting with the good, it makes me more interested in what else Larian has done (I’ve already dipped my toes into some of their games, but no more than that). There’s also the bad: it’s a bit junky and its difficulty is uneven, to say the least: I only finished it by cheating my ass off. Do I regret playing it? No. Can I recommend it? Eh-h-h…

Princess Zelda, blonde elf in a blue shirt, dark pants and shoes, and a Tablet PC-like magical device called the Sheikah Slate on her belt. She uses a power of Magnesis, which looks like a big magnet in her hands, to smash a huge metal crate into a bunch of bokoblins (pig-like humanoids) and lizalfos (bipedal chameleons). There are a lot of them around, waiting for a fight.

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is in its own subgenre, but it’s basically a beat-them-up. It can be repetitive, but on easy is at least not demanding. It tells the alternative history version of the backstory of Breath of the Wild, and manages to tour through it’s world, bringing most of the notable characters (with some very surprising choices along the way. Fan service-y? Sure, but still easy-going fun and a good excuse to revisit this world for the third time.

Summary for September 2024

A whole wide witchy world

A very small figure of April Ryan, a short-haired brunette, stands on a country road. There are some small wooded buildings, probably a house and a barn, off to her left, with huge sunflower-like flowers behind a small fence. To her right, there is a small herd of animals that looks like an elephant-bull hybrid. Further out, lush green mountains, stretching far into a bluish haze under fluffy white clouds. There are also two huge statues of humanoids blowing into horns.

I don’t need a “it’s a game from a quarter of a century ago” qualifier to say that The Longest Journey is a great game. Because there is not much to qualify. Sure, it’s not perfect, nothing is. But the story is good, the puzzles are logical, it’s still pretty and very charming. Quite progressive in places, too.

Like many fairy tales, Tchia is a bit dark. It’s also a bit junky in that indie way. But overall, a very good game! A sort of Breath of the Wild and The Wind Waker hybrid. Plenty to do, collect, discover and customise.

Girl with short red hair, wearing a white jacket, dark pants and boots, glides on a zip line towards a concrete tower. Below her is a sandy desert, to her right is a large concrete building, and to her left are some white tube-shaped missile debris. On the horizon is an ominous red storm with white clouds swirling around it.

A significant element of both Caravan SandWitch and Mika and the Witch’s Mountain stories is how capitalism is ruining it for all of us. In both games you traverse a decently sized open world. You help the community, collect things and find secrets. There are non-humanoid people around, and they both have witches. The same game?

I’m kidding, but there are surprisingly many similarities, apart from the obvious: in Caravan you drive a van, but in Mika you fly on a broom. By the way, this is more platforming with gliding, less actual flying. I know, I was worried too: the ghost of Superman 64 is always looming.

They did it. They did it again. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is fantastic!

Princess Zelda, a blonde lady with pointed ears, wearing a white dress with blue trim, stands on the edge of a sunlit world. There are mountains in the distance. In front of her is a river with clear water, then a forest with some roads in it. In the middle of it all is a town, surrounded by a moat, with a castle in it. Everything is somewhat blocky and cartoony.

OK, the elephant in the room: developers, and Nintendo is no exception, have a tendency to say shit and then either the game doesn’t even have that as a problem, or it goes beyond that and is actually good, progressive, if you like. This is more or less the case here. Well, I wouldn’t call Echoes of Wisdom woke or anything, but as far as I can tell, it never makes a misstep and delivers a complete The Legend of Zelda game with Zelda as the protagonist.

And it is complete, to the point where I can’t even think of what was in BotW/TotK that isn’t here. From dungeons to shrines, from quests to secrets, from horse riding to imaginative and fun world manipulation (“hey, can I do that?… oh wow, I totally can!”).

Obviously, it has its own thing going on with the echoes mechanic, and there’s been some tweaking to make it work in flat-ish style of the Link’s Awakening remake, but it’s all there! And the game is long, too. There are also a few firsts that I won’t spoil. And cats. So many cats!

I think I mentioned somewhere that the Zelda games from Nintendo are my “problematic faves”, and I stand by that: problems ranging from questionable game elements to the firing of a harassed employee. But I think if they keep going in this direction with games (even with ridiculous claims that there needs to be a justification for these changes) and fix other shit, I won’t have to say it so often.

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.