tbh very surprising. was worried going into this one bc from what i've played of similar games like bayonetta and lollipop chainsaw i don't fuck w them. both seemingly coast by on sex appeal and mindless gameplay rather than do anything actually interesting w thematics or level design. idk lots of the character action games seem a little too coombrained for me and my specific aesthetic preferences. this is rlly interesting though and honestly not that male gaze-y/cumbrained like yeahh it def still is a bit but mostly she's just an interestingly enough designed character. not too sexually provocative ig is what i'm trying to say, and i don't mean to sound like a prude and i don't think i am, i just think the aforementioned two games are a little bit too porn sick in their designs of the main characters. bayonetta is like mean mommy british tall woman w librarian glasses and juliet(?) is like bimbo jail bait core, idk maybe none of this makes sense and maybe no one will agree w this but i personally find both designs a bit gross in terms of what they mean societally. but idk bullet witch is just some foid, it's like they came up with the name for the project and the gameplay mechanics first and then designed a mildly attractive player character. idk i like her and i like the cavia text on the back of one of the alt outfits, that's fucking cute. she has a tiny mole under her eye it's a good design i like it.

that opening cinematic is so fucking dark and weird and kind of upsetting??? it's doing that thing where it's the future and a bunch of horrible events are all happening at once and i think it does that remarkably well. there's a moment in that opening where it says something like "2011. DEATHS: UNCOUNTABLE" which is like such a scary and ominous phrase. this is like a very small game probably made by a pretty small team for a small budget so there's not much of a story or world present here but i think it does get across its central themes well and def seems to be coming from a place of extreme paranoia for and about the future. the cutscenes are shot like a war movie and the majority of enemies are just demons in army fatigues, def some stuff here about governments turning civilians into killing machines w propaganda esp once the actual npc characters start turning into weirdo j horror monsters and you have to turn your gun on them. very cool and creepy designs. something very powerful and striking seeing military men gun down innocents caught up in gunfire while they cower in fear. there's this documentary on youtube called hypernormalisation and there's this one segment i've thought about at least once a month since i saw it when it first came out and bullet witch reminds me sm of that.
https://youtu.be/vlxGtKw2KAA?si=z5tedUZ01pLwzaCN
there's lots of images in this game that are def influenced by what was happening in the world back in '06 and plenty of stuff here that's honestly really prescient. bombed out abandoned malls are turned into large scale battles as civilians run away in fear and ultimately get turned into monsters themselves. there's big sprawling cities with large bridges and you have to realize that yeah people lived here and you being there is only adding to the destruction. in that city there's this big toy store at the end of a block in the middle of all this destruction but still somehow standing and when you return in the last chapter it's been reduced to nothing but rubble. mostly very impressed with the fact this is able to show lots of dark and dreary and honestly kind of sad images and landscapes while still being a very fun AND funny game. it's not trying to be anything immersive but it somehow manages to be consistently. idk it's funny and quirky while still sometimes taking itself seriously and manages to be very politically charged even though there's not much of a story here just because the environmental storytelling is just so good.

you just have to imagine how many ppl got like into some kind of armpit or tickling kink bc of that one mini game lmaooo

cute stuff I like it a whole lot more than the gba one. presentation here is sooo cute and reminds me of tamagotchi party on which was a big childhood fave for me. I like that every time u complete a characters’ levels they then go hang out in that little bar and you can see them wandering around the level select screen bumping into each other, similar vibes to the wiiu menu screen. tbh the ‘pathetic’ soundbite from this should be used as frequently as the shake shake one from mischief makers. love the usage of multimedia stuff for the animals, real cute

huge bmx xxx fan excited to play it for the first time. no but fr this game has lived inside my brain since i was like 13 bc some youtubers i was into at the time played it. that video introduced me to taking back sunday bc cute without the e is in this games soundtrack and i think that's ruined my brain permanently bc 70 percent of everything i listen to is some flavor of shitty emo music.

anyhow this is like rlly good and rlly fun but also so incredibly cruel and nasty in a way that i understand anyone turned off by this. but idk i grew up on like jackass and stuff like that and i think what captured my eye even as a child watching shows like that is seeing smth similar to the town i grew up in on the television screen in a pre youtube getting rlly big type of world. and bc i grew up on stuff like that i'm naturally very into the aesthetics and vibe this game is going for. but it's like genuinely such a mean fucking game, like the soundtrack is rlly rlly good and i'm big into most of the songs on it but they're such small minded and petty AND misogynistic ass songs. even the stuff that's a little bit more fun and not emo/alt metal are like rude songs, that sublime song is actually so gross. there's a weird system at play here that i haven't seen in similar games, this completely ditches the time limit type restrictions in favor of a real health system, when ur health goes all the way down by failing a trick u get kicked out of the level. reminds me of like the fascination america had on young people getting hurt, this was present in news at the time of course but it's also how mtv and similar channels managed to stay afloat for the better part of a decade.

this rlly wants to be a satire of corporate greed in a post 9/11 world and tbh often i was charmed by how heightened everything felt, like a less biting gta but still way more than like the underground tony hawk games. occasionally there's rlly smart stuff here, the ramps made out of rockets w american flags painted on them is a nice little touch. the world the game inhabits is very often cold and hostile and i think that makes a lot of sense for where the culture was at the moment and where it would end up going. npcs are like fucking mean in this, everyone hates u and maybe they should lol. often though the game is kind of just racist and sexist and filled w gross out humor which yeah it is a shame.

levels feel rlly wide and expansive and every ramp and rail connects in a way that's kind of rhythmic? but mostly i'm just rlly impressed by the locales they picked. usually in stuff like this you get major metropolitan cities or fake ones loosely based on one that don't rlly have any thematic tissue, but this goes for either smaller cities like syracuse or tourist trap cities like vegas. and they all have their own visual identity even the skate parks or vague ideas of places like a dam. when i was a teenager and i watched the video of this game i always thought the layout of the bronx level looked similar to my hometown, i didn't live anywhere close to ny but the feeling of it rang true. it looked like my city and that resonated w me and i do think stuff like that is rlly important.

so cute AND quirky in a very real and genuine way. reminded me a lot of three separate times in my life. being like 9 and playing the genesis sonic games in my father's room w him. being like 15 and working under the table for this video game/dvd/music store where i mostly just priced items, it was dirty and dusty and the pay was basically nonexistent, the owner was like hella sexist and racist but to my 15 yo brain that just wanted to learn about everything in regards to media it didn't matter in the moment bc i just got to gawk at rlly rare stuff every couple weeks. and then like playing automata near its release date and it was the first new game i picked up since like 2013 and just being so amazed at what games could actually be when made w passion and love and not just for profits/to be consumed. all rlly important moments in my life when it comes to actually understanding what matters to me in terms of art. literal perfect length for a game like this too. usually i get sooo bored of 2d side scroller stuff bc it just never rlly ends and it's all just variations/reskins of the same layout, this is like different and special. it never gets the chance to be boring or to outstay its welcome bc it uses its time in such a smart way. and all the worlds are so cute and colorful and lively and most importantly diff from each other. there's like a weirdo carnival stage and a jungle stage and haunted castle one, one of the stages ends w a boss fight in front of a drive in theater, it's so gorgeous. and there's so many interesting characters, ice skating faeries and the flatwoods monster and frankenstein, so much life and detail is happening in the backgrounds of scenes that u go through so fast, love this <3

-tbh found the way this game understands when to be quiet and sullen and reflexive rlly compelling. like epi2 has a lot of these just silent moments and it rlly builds off of how loud and aggressive that first ep is
-love the way this game handles language if that makes sense. like it’s def it’s own world w it’s own vocab which makes it feel all the more abstract and diff from our own world. like I rlly liked that although the game is about religious fanatics and church organizations there’s a very pointed spelling of christmas as xmas and w that comes its own implications for the characters and the world. there’s also a ton of typos here which could mean anything from the fact that most dialogue is said by children or the idea that most religious fanatics and zealots are commonly seen as less educated but tbh I don’t think that’s the case and rlly hope it isn’t as that’s kind of rooted in classism. or idk maybe it’s a deliberate choice to make the world feel more alien and less like our own or that the writer just accidentally put it through w some typos
-think the wordplay w nb nonbeliever enby is genuinely rlly smart cheeky commentary. all of the writing is rlly clever in regards to how it handles both gender and sexuality and it’s mostly esp subtle which is rlly nice bc I feel like the worst thing about queer art is how much it feels like it’s beating u over the head. this never does except in one moment where the camera focuses in on the word GAY in a paper written about twigs, even that I find ridiculously charming and almost funny. rlly nails down the way that adults speculate on childrens’ orientations and gender expression in a rlly gross way and how that can make ppl feel, enough of the game is about how from the moment ppl see u they’re drawing their own conclusions and perceptions about/around u.
-love the animation here, middle ground between mid 90s early cgi shorts from animation studios that would become established in the coming decades and the video art horror boom of the early 2010s. equal parts cutesy and comfy and creepy. rlly amazed w the cutscenes in epi 2 and how well they’re directed and overall in terms of staging and shooting the scenes and what a step up that is. there’s like a zoom in on the main characters faces in the opening segment of that episode that’s actually so cool and pretty. got the style of like rando mtv oddities frl. the live action moments r so beautiful…
-think it’s cool what and who they do and don’t show. like it’s very much so a point to never show the parents or grandmother, same w the fathers friend during the poker game segment. reminds me a lot of how adults are shown in peanuts, almost like non entities, npc’s if u will. the fact that the only adults we see are the lovecorp employees who look and behave alien and otherworldly but also mostly completely ageless and ethereal.
-one of the only pieces of media to rlly get down the feeling of disassociation. idk spent basically the entirety of my teenage years disassociated and disconnected from my conversations and interactions w other ppl. like Ik I had friends and I talked w them and occasionally talked to my family but I can’t rlly remember what we talked about or what we did bc I was so checked out back then. not even bc I was necessarily uncomfortable w myself but more so bc I was uncomfortable around others and w how my life was panning out. love the scenes of twigs driving w her mother and how checked out she is in those conversations. I one day won’t be able to remember conversations at all or even how ppl that were once kinda close to me looked but I’ll always remember how the roads looked.
-the bonnie coded marcie coded girls r doing yuri/yaoi again

haven’t seen skinamarink but I assume it’s just like this tbh.
rlly uncomfortable and disconcerning.. the fact this runs so badly and barely functions as designed makes it more disturbing. very fascinated by its usage of overlaying different animations and scenes over one other, reminds me a lot of various experimental video work and short films I’ve seen and it’s not smth usually present in games. the scenes where ur navigating the house are so like disorienting and nauseating. def unique and probably very novel in 09 but now seems quaint and well intentioned but still problematic. like idk I think gameifying assault and abuse is incredibly fucking iffy, I don’t mean like making a game out of these concept but including more arcade-y elements of game design like collectibles and ranks I find a bit gross. of course drakengard 3 and rule of rose are very game-like games w big boss fights and similar themes and both were trying to be marketable but also both are so dense in terms of both written text and implied text. and this simply isn’t, it’s incredibly visual which I do like but sometimes the shocking image is just that, it’s just shocking and a little toothless, they can be powerful images but still seemingly only there to push boundaries of accepted good taste.

also pls listen to the ost it’s seriously so beautiful
will prob draw some fanart of the girls bc in love w their designs

-tbh got to the final night and kind of stopped bc don’t have the patience or reflexes to completely finish it lmao. but it’s a real good time and genuinely kind of expertly made, lots of cool stuff done w the audio cues and the animatronics glitching. mise en scene is genuinely rlly captivating and makes this rlly feel like an actual run down and half abandoned arcade which is a very cool vibe. mostly I just think it’s a little undercooked(??) like the phone calls are all so good and wonderfully acted and tense but they’re so short and then the rest of the night is listening to the same audio cues for like ten minutes which is kind of boring when ur bad at time management AND reflexes. wish there was more in terms of audio logs/voicemails as it’s the best stuff here.
-didn’t rlly grow up w this franchise but also I did as did anyone under a specific age. like my sister in law is not someone who plays any games and she’s like five years younger than me but also is one of my favorite ppl on this planet and we have a v similar sense of humor. she knows all about the characters and lore of the series despite never playing or watching any of these just through like sheer cultural osmosis. i’m very into the connective tissue between generations and I’m an older zoomer where as she’s a core zoomer and yet even though neither of us have ever played any of these we have referenced various memes and tiktok audios relating to the series since we’ve been friends. I just find stuff like that rlly interesting.
-played this mostly bc I was very excited for the movie and it’s rlly great. more slow paced and slow moving than most other modern horror films? even slower than the more prestige and artsy fare, which is kind of crazy. but the trade off is actually learning about and growing to care about these characters. like I thought all we would get between mike and abby is the first twenty minutes, vague characterization and background stories so that we ultimately feel bad when someone is in danger. but that doesn’t happen instead the entire movie is the relationship this family has which is kind of crazy that a movie who’s sole selling point is scary animatronics ends up having some of the better writing I’ve seen in movies lately. lots of cool stuff about the actual physical space that is the pizzeria too like how it’s just left to rot and decay like plenty of places are in the real world and the game series seemingly ends up being more about the disregard ppl have to the places and environments that surround them as time goes on and the decay and rot settle in. also I like that bc the animatronics are so iconic in the real world as cutesy stuffed animals sold in mall kiosks or like feddy images or markiplier sound bites that there’s not much horror u can get out of them and I thought it was rlly interesting what they used as scares to get around the fact that a decade in the spotlight has made these characters lose any scares they might have. worst part of the movie is during a rlly well done emotional monologue josh hutcherson says theory but earlier they had matpat say theory and it took me out. idk there’s a scene where the little girl is drawing these creepy images while talking to mike and that scene is so fucking overwhelming, think it’s genuinely rlly impressive that they didn’t lean into campiness and comedy when that had to be the easier option and instead made smth rlly tense and uncomfortable. josh hutcherson still looks like way too good and matthew lillard ate!
-went to a few diff chuck e cheeses during the pandemic and they had this very specific run down and half blocked off vibe that both this game and the movie rlly do well. like idk seeing like just a few kids running around this rlly bright and rlly obnoxious place that exists just as a time/money sink while underpaid workers have to work during a global pandemic is an image that has stuck w me a lot. as has a photo I got of one of my best friends peering into some rando non-chain arcade when we went on vacation like two years ago. her hand pressed up against a dirty streaked window as she looks into this sparse and neon blue lit arcade. it’s a definite vibe and look all it’s own that’s more gross and sad than it is like scary.

-the use of comedy in parun’s work I find to both be rlly fascinating and disorienting. in both this and rekinder there will be very long monologue scenes that are disgustingly raw in their emotion, some of the best written stuff I’ve ever seen tbh and it’s almost always followed up by a punchline. I’m very into finding the connective tissue between diff generations and I think for zoomers and millennials it’s these attempts at kind of manipulative shows of emotion followed up by jokes to downplay their own emotional truths. everything is ironic and everything is a joke, it’s all one big performance for the person they’re trauma dumping on, you the audience. I don’t rlly feel like content warning this so I won’t go into specifics but I’ve had friends and loved ones tell me and show me fucked up shit and then play it off like they’re not hurting. I’m not saying any of this in a critical way, I do it, you do it and so did parun in all his work.
-the first creative effort my bf ever showed me was about a gay teenager and his relationship w his single dad and how bc the teenager didn’t feel at all connected or loved by his father he would do things to make his father hit him. it’s a fictional story but it was the first impression I ever had of my father in law, in the story the man was presented as cold and aloof, quiet but aggressive at a moments notice. the fictional description of this man ended up being pretty similar to the real life guy. and he’s a guy who’s been very sweet to me and who in his later life tried being closer to his family, a family which he’s readily welcomed me into when he didn’t need to, but we all end up paying for mistakes no matter how long ago we made them. him being kind of a shitty father long ago has followed him his whole life, it was the first thing I ever knew about the guy and no matter how close I am to him or how sweet he can be my mind always goes back to the story my bf showed me like six years ago.
-lots of interesting stuff here about how children grow up to be like their fathers and I think it largely rings true. think by the ending the themes of the story are just hammered in a bit too much, some stuff is a little too repetitive and unsubtle in a way that I never felt w rekinder. also I think this is like way more pessimistic and hateful in comp to rekinder, that game seemed hopeful that future generations will correct the mistakes of the past and lead better lives, it’s a very strange final game to make. in contrast this is very bleak and negative and seem to suggest future generations will actually make the exact same mistakes and go down the exact same routes. it’s two totally different explorations of the same themes. both r rlly good :-))
-gay in way that’s incredibly hard to describe?? gay in the way an image of a kid picking flowers during the baseball game is but also gay in the same way an image of like jeffrey dahmer or john wayne gacey is. idk if that makes complete sense tbh but what I’m trying to get at is how parun is often battling himself and conversing w himself here? presenting what seems like two totally different versions of who I can only assume is his self insert. how one version feeds into the other and how the other version is always present under the pretense? rlly genuinely hard to describe I’m sorry lmaoo
-think the usage of multimedia is genuinely fucking beautiful and funny and also disorienting and scary. idk any zoom in on the convenience store is kind of all of those at once. need more stuff that’s as experimental in form and medium as this is tbh so if anyone has any goods recs across all forms of media I would love to hear. have seen most of anno’s work and most of it does what I’m describing but specifically his and her circumstances and ritual, gemusetto’s first season does it. uhh twelve oz mouse too kind of
-literally was shocked at bit at the end w the spirits. rlly well done and I think what confirmed it to me as like a masterpiece.

death stranding but for the ds…
which is cool!! more games should go about emulating the ds/3ds and psp/vita rather than another game that looks like if u squint it could be on the n64 or ps1. love how abstract and hostile this games world is, everything wants to kill u and more importantly everyone wants to kill each other. while exploring the world you’ll find randos shooting each other, too caught up in their own drama too care about someone as small as you are unless you care enough to shoot them first. it’s smart and it makes the world feel so much more lively despite the fact that it’s past death. it’s post the post-apocalypse. gameplay v clever despite how it’s barely a thing, lots of cool and tense stuff in terms of time management, makes it actually feel like some weird obscure ds survival horror game that never was. also yas just rlly love how brutally harsh and sudden the changes from day to night and back again are and how well that kind of fits the tone the game is going for.

grew up w this series :-)) but only the later games so wanted to come back and play the early titles. skating and skate culture was literally such a big piece of my life for so long like basically the entirety of my teenage years. was cute to play this and see how the series started and how it always was just so fucking good. not much in this world has a feeling as freeing as skating and consistently so impressed w how well this series manages that tone and vibe.

hard to explain if you haven’t seen any but skate videos of the mid - late 90s just have this v specific look and vibe and it’s genuinely rlly beautiful. very hard to describe but very beautiful. original thps isn’t like as fun or freeing as later entries but it feels the most like being in a skate video if that makes sense. like it definitely has to do somewhat w how locked that camera is which unintentionally (??) recreates lots of similar shots and angles from vids of the era. idk for a couple weeks in ‘21 I was recording lots of footage from american wasteland/underground 2 and the end goal there was to edit together a music video of it set to haunted - laura les lmaoo

anyhow neversoft were cooking even in the first entry. lots of rlly sexy level design here, mall level stands the fuck out w how empty and sparse it is, very eerie in the same way rando urbex videos on youtube are. the Minneapolis level def the best in terms of how the level is constructed to best get tricks that u would see in skate videos.

cool stuff in less interesting levels too like the skate bowl w the neversoft eye inside of it or how the light blinds the camera at the very beginning of the downhill jam level when ur going up on the damn. played the remaster from the early 2010s on steam around when it originally released and didn’t like it at the time but after playing how it’s actually supposed to play and feel like I like it a lot less lmaoo. I hate being negative but damn that thing sucked sm and playing these levels was like a weird distortion of a memory. the music videos that play in select levels look so good too, big into when live action footage seeps into games actually when it’s as compressed as this. also I just spent a good while looking at some of the real life skate footage of each skater on the main menu

good soundtrack :-)) unsane is here but also jerry was a race car driver

music is like music to my ears :-))

lowk shocked by the amount of low ratings this has. def doesn’t do anything crazy or that new but it’s rlly cute and a nice little vibe piece. like maybe if I fully committed my time and attention to this I wouldn’t like it quite as much but idk was just watching hbo and hanging out w my bf while exploring in this game. I also just rlly like things that are this calm and still and relaxed, definite vibe, esp considering how little interactivity there is in this, perfect for just chilling out and having on to fuck around w while exploring. wish more games that def took inspiration from this (chibi robo/gregory horror show) were more loose and free with their aspirations and mechanics. just lots of fun to explore smth this creative and see cute polygonal creatures and worlds.

that poster is sex also

reminds me heavily of Iain Reid’s novels, of which everything I’ve read from him I rlly love. distinct normalcy in both of these creators works where they’ve made these worlds that seem so mundane and average just w a few sci-fi elements thrown into worlds that are otherwise just like our own and then by the end delving fully into horror/sci-fi. idk I’ve said how much I dislike lynch’s work on here before and for plenty of reasons but def one of the things I hate most about his work is how obvious it is that his worlds and characters are off and off or strange in a way that isn’t rlly believable at all and so for me both the horror and social commentary of his work falls flat for me every single time.
was stunned by this, mostly by its art direction it’s rlly beautiful and so tonally and visually it’s own thing, fucking obtuse and a little bit annoying as a game though but I think that’s okay :-))

so let’s meet up in uncanny valley <33

reminded me a lot of we met in virtual reality which was one of my fave movies from last year, if u haven’t seen it I think it’s def worth a watch bc rlly did interesting things within the medium of film.

loved this even though it is a bit lame, think it’s rlly interesting how critical it is of the fictional playerbase. idk been thinking a lot lately about how ppl engage w video games almost mindlessly(??) like no critical thinking skills present at all. like recently I heard at my job two moids in a breakroom discuss dark souls/elden ring and it like disgusted me genuinely. like those are definitely accomplished works even if they don’t appeal to me but they were just talking about best ways to defeat a boss. idk ig I just have problem w men who are engaging w art in the same way they engaged w mario as a child. these are men who still live w their parents, like genuinely do, and are in their mid thirties and are engaging w art in the way a child might. idk smth about men who have no control in their lives seeking control in fictional worlds is fucking scary and dystopian lol!!