• Ain't getting it!

    A new exploration of the space and the body,
    a reinterpretation of the existence in a space
    but
    difficulty isn't equal to meaningful or interesting, really.
    Check Black Room or the most recent Desert Mothers instead,
    where every movement counts,
    your very existence is inconfortable because it points to something beyond your eyes,
    Something you have to both interpret and be interpreted by, something that requires you to
    actually break,
    it requires empathy; it attacks that which Foddy talks about but can't really see.

    Foddy's game requires the very kind of mentality he criticizes,
    only the time to process is slowed down, for days, weeks or years, it doesn't matter: your relation to it
    will always be mechanic.
    Foddy's game is a encapsuled version of Dark Souls story as a franchise,
    A game that misunderstood difficulty as depth,
    a game that misinterpreted itself, is it possible?
    Apparently, it is.

    A bald guy without a hammer.


    ...
    ...

    Hold up, I feel the need to explain and also: wtf Foddy, difficulty is like, the status quo right now, and it doesn't seem to break out of
    the gamer mentality: see Super Hexagon (which I fucking love), or VVVVV (which I fucking love),
    or your Hotline Miamsis or your SOULs like games.
    Their difficulty doesn't change the fact that they will be "trash culture".
    The beauty of Getting over it is in seeing the very movement of the avatar in space as a source for
    expressiveness and re-interpretation, as rocket league did with the sports.
    Escaping the all too worn out abstractions we re so used to (wasd movement, press x to do y...).
    Not in it's edgy difficulty. Which, again, has no edge at all.
    Maybe if it learned to shut up and be humble.

    A bald guy without a hammer.

  • STEEP

    Steep speaks Super Hexagon's language better than any other game I've ever played of this nature.
    The game works despite its desire for realism and simulation (brands, names, realistic graphics), and more in its obsession to navigate a space, gliding on a ski or snowboard is a communion a dance with the mountain (fuck if they even talk occasionally, literally).
    A dance in which, depending on the day, the hills become infinite possibilities of combinations of tricks, and other signatures of your presence; others, in possible detours that will mark a new route. The missions serve to restrict and concentrate these two visions, but once you begin to exist in the displacement of your avatar exercised by the mountain, Traced routes are no longer necessary, all the routes open before you. The sled, which should be included in the basic game because of the great opening it means, contrasts sharply with snowboarding or skiing: In these a straight line means letting the ground push you, in the sled is the most difficult position to have, even standing still is a fight against the mountain and its terrain. It lacks the sick tricks and the lightness of snowboarding or skiing, but this is because the sled focuses on the detail, on the small descents, on the texture of the stones and how it affects your body, depending on your position, while skiing and snowboarding, on the other hand, are a more general vision, of the whole mountain and more, of starting at one point and getting lost until you encounter a frozen river.
    To this you add a landscape rich in details, where each mountain has its own personality, and exploring takes on a new value, not to unlock more missions and content (as the game seems to assume), but to find new ways to zurcate the space, share them with your friends, look for that perfect hill that you know they'll love, and then run it over and over, to find and commentate multiple ways of understanding the path; or maybe not, maybe it just takes you somewhere else, somewhere that wasn't in your plans.
    Playing sports games with friends has always seemed strange to me, there is always a kind of disconnection, especially in racing, as if each one were in their own car, their own world, but in Steep, maybe because we are constantly adapting to that terrain, that curve in which we both die , but then another takes a different path and, ah, there it comes, all over again. Maybe because Steep opens you everywhere at all times, something like VVVVVV does with the platform: You still have that very risky jump into the void that you don't know where it will take you, but that it is necessary to take, because only then will you access the true beauty of the mountain.
    Steep works despite many things, its dlc, the segmentation of its missions (although having to discover the mountains was a right guess), and if you hurry me, maybe even their preciousness. Without its AAA vulgarity, nor its extra content, nor its fear of making you wait for the good, always wanting to put new challenges, instant teleportation, levels that almost only serve to show off to others and with an XP system that treats you with an insufferable condescension (not the tricks or time punctuation); under all that, a game is hidden that drinks from the best of Tony Hawk and Super Hexagon, and with that vitalist slowness of Proteus; Maybe in its most refined version Steep would only be composed of rides created by users, nothing more: alternative routes, always.

    Nabucodonosor 560 BC

  • Gossamer

    Gossamer (by presolace) is a pretty straight forward experience to me, and that's actually real good.
    Walking simulators sometimes tend to be overly grandiose, famous ones, like The Beginners Guide or even Gone Home (that I otherwise really like) never know when to shut up; there's been good, honest games out there like Proteus or Walking Simulator a Month that coincidentally have a very close relationship with music (maybe because both forms of art do not require narrative to express themselves? or maybe because of Kanaga's idea of games as musical isntruments, as toys). Gossamer like these two great games relies in the interrogation of the player expressed by silence ("In the art of not signifying without falling in insignificance" I once wrote, somewhere).

    You appear, somewhere and you ought to move; where do I go? what will I do when my path reaches an end? The questions never reach a definitive answer. However, the ingenuity of Gossamer comes from the isometric perspective, reminding me of the few old games I've played and of RTS games. But the beauty isn't in the nostalgia or the raprochement this game has with those genres, but in how it fundamentally changes the walking simulator feel.
    You see, most of Walking Simulator a Month, and Proteus, relies on what you can glimpse at a distance, not about the beauty of the objects themselves, but rather you looking at something far away and wondering what will it look like up close, and how you're gonna turn back once you're there and look at the place you started: it's more about space and the movement of your character in it, traversing these ruins, these worlds, than the beauty of the objects themselves. Gossamer completely changes this; by changing the perspective there is no "far away" to look at, no path you can follow (even if it is you that made it), sure, you can decide to move all up west, but that isn't because of the world, because a real belief, just because... well you gotta do something right?

    Gossamer reminds me of that moment in the Library of Babel when the maincharacter decides to just constantly move in one direction to prove that the library is not infinite, instead of searching for truth, as we understand it, written in letters, they find truth in their traversing of the library, be it physical or spiritual. Even if that truth is the finitude of knowledge

    Gossamer doesn't let you habitate its fragmented world, you cannot construct a full image of its world and find meaning in it, and by changing the movement keys, from the typical wasd set to point and click, every step you take is a hassle, even if its a straight forward line. And it also plays with that special relationship with music, by making it so that every step is a little sound that perturbes the otherwise dreamlike, sometimes almost religious (but still fragmented) music.
    I give it a Lemon out of Peach.

    What is it about cypresses that is so appealing? I just don't get it. December 2019

  • SUPER HEXAGON

    In super hexagon we become part of a larger body, where the central hexagon's beats become the heart of all.
    Everything in the game revolves around this hexagon, even the player, it marks the rhythm of life, with every mutation the whole universe changes.
    When did a game strip away the player of the arrogance they're so comfortable in?
    There is only one circle in super hexagon, everything is made of angles, this circle is drawn by the player's movements, that incessantly dances around the circle, as a planet in orbit. Yes, it is an entrancing experience, in a way, and that comes with dangers, but it is one that goes against the zeitgeist of empowering the player, of making them come over and over again. Super hexagon has no time for lies, no time for you, it is an entity that lives on its own and you can try to be part of it for a brief time, and when it works, when you are in tune to this larger than life being, even if it's a second, you successfully are inhabiting a place, becoming something else.
    "To become something else" is such a well-known idea in videogames by now, it seems: become spider man, become Link, become this or the other; but no game explores the idea like super hexagon, and no game shows that becoming something else, while still being yourself, is not exactly something that you can achieve with the pulse of a button, but only temporarily and, shit, almost painfully.

    The hard-edged critic, December 2019

  • Brownie Cove cancelled.

    It makes you really feel like in an airport would be the easy thing to say and see in Brownie Cove cancelled; In reality, "press E to pass time" points towards something higher, after all, we all knew what would happen when we started playing; nobody really felt any angst while playing the game, because nobody had anywhere to go, but that's exactly where Brownie Cove cancelled becomes interesting.
    The distorded rooms and objects, the mechanisation of waiting in lines as the only possible interaction with anything in the game, not for a final goal, but just to do something, it draws a really cruel picture of our culture, the airport is everywhere.
    The best part is when you read the -literally-spacey dialogues of the people, so eagerly giving their consumer reviews, thinking they still have any sort of dignity as individuals.

    "I'm a pacient boy, I wait, I wait, I wait" Johns, December 2019