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unproductive-software-blog · 3 years

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No More Heroes III is My Game of the Year For 2021

“If you’re not trying to elevate the scene, take your time and find a better way to spend it.”

Whether those are the actual lyrics, or just what I happen to hear when listening to that ridiculously fun, surprisingly long and lyrical video game shop theme, matters not. The song says it by sheer means of what it is: a collaboration between multiple rappers of obvious talent as the themesong for a menu in a video game you can easily go without ever using (unless you’re playing on the game’s harder difficulty settings).

It’s also what No More Heroes III on a whole says loud and clear simply by being, like the afformentioned song, so overtly expectation disrespectingly itself. No More Heroes III is an open letter from Grasshopper Manufacture and Suda 51 to the rest of the modern games industry which reads clearly and simply:

“G e t O n M y L e v e l.”

The game reviewed reletively poorly. I don’t typically partake in reviews (unless they’re Action Button reviews), because I feel often let down by the reviewers. People just can’t seem to have a sense of humor and open up to what this game is doing. In this post I will address four common critiques of the game and attempt turn them upside-down. Before that, however…

TLDRFAQS:

Is the game good?

It’s about as good as Kirby’s Adventure on the NES. If you’re an adult looking for a game that will make you feel the same thrill and wonder as Kirby made you feel as a child, you’ll probably like this game. Kirby can be anything, and so can No More Heroes III, and so can video games.

You’re just being contrarian, aren’t you?

That’s the idea. I’m still being completely genuine to my personal experience though. I’m honestly not impressed by any of the games nominated for Geoff Keighley’s game of the year award (though I do intend to play Inscryption, and I’m sure Psychonauts 2 is great for what it is).

Any other games you enjoyed this year?

Yes! I’ve listed and breifly reviewed them here.

CRITIQUE NUMBER ONE:

“Don’t worry, we ‘get’ No More Heroes, and this just isn’t that”

The original No More Heroes came out over 10 years ago. It was created in response to the state of the games industry at that time and feels timeless as a snapshot of everything wrong and right with gaming in 2007. It was beautifully, disgustingly, stupidly, brilliantly violent. It was “padded” in a way that actually fleshed out the life of the main character, rather than disregard his humanity for the sake of endless checklists. It had an overworld that conveyed the mundanity and joylessness of an actual realistic city, without the over-the-top antics of more “realistic” sandbox games. It features characters who worry if their personal lives and traumatic backstories, as told through cutscenes, will bore the gamers. It starred an otaku gamer assasin who uses anime and pro-wrestling special moves to commit spree-killings in schools, sports stadiums, public transit vehicles, and places of business. Why? Because he just wants to be #1.

Look around people, it’s 2021, and the scene has changed. Video game violence is no longer a hot button issue. The type of people legitimately concerned about it 20 years ago are probably too busy playing mobile games, or madden, or at least checking instagram to care anymore. Grand Theft Auto and its most overt of copycats have largely become lost in the sea of AAA open world games wherein supposed heroes navigate fantasy worlds. At the same time, the industry has actively been trying to appeal more to women and slowly but surely doing so by sanding off some of the more overtly distasteful marketing gimmicks and character designs. The Last of Us proved once and for all that “cinematic” games were not just a fad, and let’s be honest, those who truly hate cutscenes have long-since abandoned the mainstream to play Osu, Uniel, The Binding of Isaac, or one of the billion other endless-cum indie games. Speaking of Indie games, the indie revolution has lead to a deluge of interactive experiences, many of which freely explore their creators personal traumas, religious views, daily lives, psychological conditions, or political views. No matter how you slice it, video games are everywhere and cover everything. Video games are the current mainstream. Owning a switch in 2021 doesn’t make you feel like a sex pervert the way waggling a wii-remote as a 40-something gamer failing to recapture their love of gaming with Big Brain Academy might have in 2007. Most regrettably of all, around 2013 everyone decided that binging on Netflix made them a “nerd” and that being a “nerd” was somehow “sexy”. For crying out loud, the first listed catagory on Tiktok is ANIME!

Do you see what I’m getting at here? The original No More Heroes would utterly fail as a critique of the culture surrounding games in 2021 (it’s still an excellent work of art). It might even come across to some people as a “throwback” to the testosterone-fueled “good old days” of gaming.

What, then, does a successful No More Heroes game look like in 2021? In 2019 it looked like an earnest celebration of indie games, from the days of DOS text adventures made by a husband and wife duo, to the individually unique yet somehow cohesive collection of modern action games published by Devolver Digital. In 2021, where video games are mainstream media like any other, Suda and Grasshopper have decided to take on all of pop culture, from Call of Duty, to Tokusastu, to the Avengers films, to Musical Chairs. It’s the series finale, EVERYTHING MUST GO!

In being so broadly varied, reference-heavy, and devil-may-care with it’s content from episode to episode, No More Heroes III is making a big and scattered yet crystal clear statement to all of pop culture, and to all the gamers out there: “It’s just entertainment, we can do whatever we want, let’s have some fun already”.

And, as everyone in our culture of systematic overstimulation and desensitization already knows, there are no concrete rules for what can or can’t be considered entertainment. For anyone who doesn’t believe me I have a little thought excercise for you. For anyone not wanting the better part of their day ruined, just skip the following paragraph.

Ok, now close your eyes and remember the worst thing you’ve ever seen… was it a video on the internet? If so, hey! There you go. If not, just imagine someone filmed whatever you did imagine and put it on the internet. Trust me, if you search for it, it’s there. In the “postmodern” information apocalypse, it’s ALL CONTENT, BABY.

Anyway, now that I’m done waxing sadistic, let’s discuss the game… Nah, who am I kidding, let’s talk about censorship! A lot of people online want to trick you into thinking censorship is everywhere in the modern day. The truth is that censorship is at an all time low. Even Twitter and Reddit run rampant with child abuse material, to say nothing of the billions of websites your grandparents haven’t heard of. The truth is, you really don’t have much of a leg to stand on complaining about censorship unless you’re living under a regime like China’s or North Korea’s. Problem is, China’s just too big and too emerging of a market to pass up, so companies like Blizzard and the NBA bend over backwards to appease their draconian government. So too, does Disney, producing about 50% of the films any of your extended family seems to know about, and sanding them down to the safest and most pandering mess possible. The people eat it up because it’s popular. It’s popular because it’s heavily marketed, and because 50% of these films share a title with some wholely unrelated film or comic book franchise that someone you know with enough money to afford two movie tickets (or nowadays, a relative with Disney+ and time to kill) cares about enough to justify watching this new film even if “just to see how bad they mess it up”.

No More Heroes III utterly rejects this. How? By having you, as Travis Touchdown, murder dozens of literally mass produced superheroes and the factory owner who uses foreign blood money to fund their production in hopes of taking over the world (and that’s just one of 10 hilariously varied episodes). The character in question is Destroyman, a run of the mill dirtbag who groan-inducingly reappears in each numbered installment of the series just to prank Travis with the same old joke. He, gullible otaku consumer that he is, falls for it every time.

“So what?” You might be thinking, “What’s so great about a game saying what any pseudo-intellectual with a Twitter account has been saying for the last 9 years?”.

The difference is that the ensuing battle uses the most exhilarating combat mechanics and presentation I’ve ever experienced in a video game, and I’m an emotionless 24-year-old who literally had to rack his own brain to determine how old he is, and decided a year ago that not just gaming, but all art, is essentially a meaningless distraction from reality. Even being a jaded former game developer who quit the industry because “who cares about this stuff anyway”, who got the director of a game to admit face-to-face that I was overqualified to work on his game, and still got denied the position for lack of caring about the product, AND as someone who has beaten Sin & Punishment Star Successor on the hardest difficulty multiple times just to kill two seperate Saturdays entirely alone in my room, this game literally gets my heart racing like no other.

I am someone who blows off close friends in order to work on things I barely care about more than I need to, and yet, I still spent whole days just playing this game. Not only that, I spent whole days playing this game just to play this game. Literally making no story progress, I spent hours upon hours fighting bosses on the hardest difficulty setting over and over again, just to feel the thrill of it.

Please skip the following 6 paragraphs if you are willing to wholeheartedly take my word for it that this game has the best video game combat of all time.

Playing No More Heroes III on “Death” difficulty takes serious skill. Nearly any hit will instantly kill you, which is insane for a game wherein levels of over-the-top anime destruction beyond that of even Kingdom Hearts 2 rain down upon you with shocking irregularity. Those who have played and especially those who have beaten the original No More Heroes will understand what I’m talking about; It’s essentially the same system, with a handful of extra tools and oodles of polish in its gamefeel and special effects. For those who haven’t played these games, please do so.

Also, allow me to explain: while No More Heroes III takes skill, it is the element of luck which makes the game so thrilling. Racking up a hearty combo means playing with a level of aggression likely to get you killed if executed with even a slight lapse of judgement. A combo filled with enough oomph will prevent most opponents from acting. You will need to take advantageof this in order to sufficiently limit the number of times you are actually in any danger. Learning exactly how much an opponent can withstand and recover from is key to not getting annihilated mid-combo. Certain gaps in your relentless attack will be taken advantage of, but you can also dodge seemingly mid-attack if you transfer from mashing (which the game literally requires to pull off certain moves) to dodging quickly enough. Essentially, it queues inputs the opposite of how Dark Souls does, with your most recent input overwritting whatever you were just about to do. Dark Souls is punishing but fair. No More Heroes wants to be exploited, and we love exploiting it. Rack up a sufficient combo and your opponent may get dizzy, leaving them totally helpless even if you stop attacking. This gives you time to shake the controller violently to recharge your katana (which will do no damage and leave you wide open if out of battery). However, a better way to recharge is to go in for a suplex, which dizzy enemies are vulnerable to. These moves provide a moment of catharsis, and leave your opponent knocked down and getting up. From this state you can probably get a quick combo in, but they will almost inevitably attack immediately upon getting up.

This is where your skills come in. Bust your downed opponent with heavy attacks, then, just before they get up, send them flying with your anti-gravity death-force (a skill with a cooldown expertly timed to refresh a little over once per suplex opportunity if you’re going all-out, occasionally forcing you to run and dodge like heck), then literally teleport to their location and knock them down again using your screw-crusher-death kick, then use your death-melt-shower to rain tiny progectiles on them while they’re helpless and keep them helpless using your spin-death-slow which slows down enemies in a radius around wherever you used it. Beat on them for the exact ammount of time you have learned you can while this slow is active and silently pray for it to make them dizzy, and if it doesn’t either RUN and wait for your skills to recharge, creating an opening (your opponent won’t give you one) or if it’s to late to run… dodge.

A successful dodge (at the highest level) will put Travis in “Mustang Mode” which slows down everyone and speeds up Travis. Abusing this window in conjunction with an eauipable death chip (you get three slots to give yourself a wide array of passive buffs) to boost its duration 50% will nearly always yeild a dizzy enemy. You can attack the dizzy enemy in the hopes of getting a killing blow on them (only lethal on regular enemies), but be careful, as you can also knock an enemy’s senses back into them, ending their dizziness and getting yourself killed. You also are likely to waste your battery this way. Landing a killing blow or suplex at high tension (a state you will either be in or be dead at this difficulty) rolls a slot machine. This is where things get interesting. In addition to doing nothing, the slot machine can yeild a super-powerful attack that downs an enemy, a breif state of invincibility, a breif state of “full-green mode” wherein you fight as a mech with overpowered attacks, the afformentioned mustang mode (which you can leverage into another slot roll), or my favorite, the ability to suplex non-dizzy enemies for a breif time. EACH OF THESE SUPLEXES YEILDS YET ANOTHER SLOT ROLL. You can consume sushi to breifly boost your odds at the slots. If you are like me, you consume this sushi WHILE comboing the boss for the first time (after downing them with all your death-glove skills), get a solid slot roll, eat all your remaining sushi (except the recharge one), granting you extra power, tension, and lower cooldowns WHILE exploiting the boss with your slot power, use the slot power to get ANOTHER roll, hope that one goes well, and if it doesn’t… 75% chance you die.

You just had the most heart-pounding, frantic, button-mashing, multi-tasking, perfectly orchestrated frenzy of attacks and sushi eating only to have it instantly cut-off and the game to slowly ask “YOU DEAD?”. It’s so addictive. You just wanna get back to that high of wailing on your oppont and feeling awesome. Meanwhile Travis says one of his seemingly countless recorded takes of “Sylvia, I’m… sorry.” Or “I see the stars…” or, if you die a TON, a funny mixture if the two “Sylvia, I’m… Stars?”. This tiny feature makes dying something you can laugh about and not get too angry, just because the line feels a little different each time, often in a way that is kind of silly. Travis also says things like “Don’t let me down, dude.”, which makes you feel a weird sense of gamer comraderie, like the older gamer brother you never had.

And that’s the combat. Its use of luck means you can never be totally perfect, you have to think and act on the fly, but only to get yourself into a position where you know what you’re doing as quickly as possible. It creates this excellent build-up of tension as you ecstatically yet desperately attack as relentlessly as you can, each epic special-move and trance-like memorized combo bringing you one step closer to the inevitable yet unpredictable moment where it all abruptly ends and you need to completely switch paradigms to a panicked defense. They go to town on you too, creating clones, bullet-hell patterns, denying you any real opening for seemingly up to 30 seconds, it’s crazy. To top it all off, most of what I just told you is strategy I developed myself by playing the game and finding what worked and what didn’t. The process of getting to that point of mathematical precision in execution of combat is half the fun of the game, as is tweaking it for each of the game’s ridiculously varied bosses. And of course, it’s all sold excellently by the explosively percussive soundtrack (you can tell it was composed by a drummer, and a good one too) and the insanely overstimulating visuals, though you only need to watch clean footage of the game to see that.

A quick aside: this game got me sweaty it also hurt my arm. While i think it’s relevant to note this is the result of 10-hour sessions of nothing but death-mode boss fights, I do understand some people might see this as a legitimate accessibility issue. The non-death difficulties should be plenty possible without such strain, and the motion controls are optional but HIGHLY recommended. They are unobtrusive, and also, let’s not kid ourselves, you don’t have to be a jock to admit that endorphins and adrenaline feel great. They’re excellent drug hits that I almost always hope to get from a new action game. Dopamine is overrated in comparison.

So finally bringing it back to the game’s in-your face punk ethos, the game earns its aggressive attitude towards bad art (one ongoing side-quest literally has you destroying “fake-art” proliferated by the alien superheroes) by being both so creative and so highly polished at doing what it actually cares about doing.

Playing this game makes me realize how overrated “cohesion” is in modern games discourse. Life isn’t cohesive. Genres are defined by taking one small part of the human experience and fetishistically focusing on it to the exclusion of the big picture. No More Heroes III defies genre. It shows our characters’ daily lives, both heroes and villains. It has heart, it’s fun, it’s sick, it’s gross, it’s awesome, it’s weird, it’s silly, and it even brings in a few disturbing or sad moments, often immediately subverting them with Travis’s hilariously tone-deaf attitude (but every now and then, he actually says somethjng really thought-provoking and it’s shockingly poignant). It makes each cutscene something to look forward to because you never know what you’ll get, even in terms of visual style. It pulls off this massive ambition by having a solid ethos and perfect core mechanics underlying and tying together all the dissperate elements.

It’s really very fun.

And for every work the game pokes fun at, it also recommends 3 better works of more obscure art. If you’re unconvinced of No More Heroes III’s stance on safe vs. playful media, try watching some of the movies, or tv shows its characters enjoy, it might just turn you on to a whole new world of great art, and expand your horizons.

It proves art can be better than the content many of us have come to accept. It does so by being better than what we’ve come to expect. It encourages you to dig deeper and support better art.

In an era of stiff oscar-bait-esque games that take themselves too seriously, and flimsy blockbusters that avoid genuine fun and smart humor with quippy sarcasm, it’s fitting for No More Heroes III to use fun, imagination, and playfulness to do what the original did with darkness and irony.

CRITIQUE NUMBER TWO:

“The game is buggy.”

The game is not buggy. In my 48 hours with No More Heroes III I experienced only one or two actual bugs, neither of which was game-breaking.

Most importantly, the game’s combat is polished to a shine and feels excellent.

The problem here is that most games journalists and enthusiasts do not actually know what a bug is, because they do not actually program software, like I do. I believe what most people are actually commenting on when they bring this up is the real-time loading of textures which occurs all over this game’s overworld segments. These are not bugs, they constitute a deliberate design choice. Shorter load screens and a smoother framerate have been favored by the team over gargantuan load screens which mask the loading of every relevent texture in the area. No More Heroes III simply values your time more than it does showing you high resolution textures, and the presence of actively loading assets are resultant from said respect.

It is ultimately up to the player to determine what they value, long load times and imperfect frame rates to present realistic visuals your brain will tune out after the first play session, or a game full of unique areas which are perhaps less immersive, but all the more functional and, in my opinion, interesting for it.

That’s right, maybe no other series could pull this off, but I like seeing Travis’s perfectly photorealistic lamp in front of his extremely low-resolution anime poster. It’s funny. Seriously, it’s just a video game, guys. Do you really mind being reminded of that so long as your play isn’t interrupted? Is “immersion” such a memetically powerful buzzword that it’s overshadowed our actual desire to have fun? How badly do we hate reality that we want to play a game so realistic and un-gamey that we can trick ourselves into, for 1-20 hours at a time, see it as our actual life? Believe me, I’ve been there. It’s even easier on drugs. But trust me, as a lifelong game addict, when I say there is absolutely no value to be found in deluding onesself into seeing your television as anything but a television, and the images it shows as anything other than an interesting diversion.

Seriously, “no more than 10 hours of gaming a day”, people. That’s a mantra repeated throughout the game. It’s an ironic take on the “maybe you should take a break” messages from the nintendo 3ds, but also earnest advice. We don’t care if you “game hardcore” or whatever, but seriously, more than 10 hours and you’re seriously not doing yourself any favors (my longest game session is 17 hours of Final Fantasy on the NES while injesting many rounds of edibles; I think it gave me literal brain damage (I do not use drugs anymore)). More than actually caring about your mental health however, No More Heroes III is a game that begs you not to take it, or any game, so seriously that you forget to actually be having fun in real life while playing it.

So yeah, I like seeing textures pop in while I play. It’s hilarious. I like it the same way I like how all the npc are one of two models. I like how easy it feels to completely disregard the set dressing in order to get to the gameplay, as much as I like staring at a low-res advertisement in Santa Destroy, curiously waiting to see what it will turn into once fully loaded. Some of those posters are actually kind of clever.

CRITIQUE NUMBER THREE:

“The Overworld is boring, again”

Firstly let me start by saying this is one of the most annoying things to hear about the original No More Heroes. These games have never been trying to copy Grand Theft Auto, only parody it. It is simply not so that No More Heroes “misses the mark” in its urban overworld, but “miraculously succeeds” in its boss encounters. No More Heroes was always about juxtaposing larger than life personalities against a realistically stifling and oppressively mundane video game San Bernadino. Working at condescending odd-jobs in order to unlock high-paying assasination missions was the game’s way of commenting on why people like Travis Touchdown play video games in the first place: for many of us who aspire to greatness, the real world is simply unsatisfying and seemingly devoid of meaning in comparison to the fantasies presented to us by… fantasy.

No More Heroes III takes this in a slightly different direction as our protagonist has matured along with games culture and, hopefully, ourselves. No longer an angry deadbeat biding his time as a gas station attendant while longing to commit mass murder, Travis has learned to love great art without being an insane monster in real life. He has also managed to amass enough wealth through assassination to buy and trick out the motel he used to crash in one room of.

So money is basically a total non-issue in this game. I never once found myself wanting to do something and needing extra cash for it (see, when Grasshopper responds to criticism, which they’re by no means above doing, they do so in a way that seemlessly fits the scenario and reinforces the new game’s themes).

Instead of odd jobs, you can volunteer to plant trees, pick up garbage, etc. These mostly take the form of minigames, and vary greatly in their play style and ridiculousness (you can volunteer to shoot down giant aligators for the coast guard). Many of these are legitimately very fun, and remind us of the many game genres that were condemned to the indie space after the fall of the arcade. I think they’re here to show character growth and promote the idea of giving back to your community as opposed to endless consumption (a very important imessage to the modern gamer), but they ALSO serve to remind us of how much fun more arcade-y styles of game can be. Obviously none of these minigames constitute GOTY material on their own, but like Danganronpa V3’s arcade games, they add a bit of texture and surprise to the experience of going from one battle to the next. The fact that they manage to be as enjoyable as they are with such a small budget allotment makes me wonder why more games aren’t incorporating one-off mechanics to sell certain scenes or scenarios outside the ordinary. I much prefer a series of gamey games put together with an overworld, than one set of mechanics designed to entertain me for hours. Call me old-fashioned, but I think I’m just tired of sandboxes (Valheim seems cool though). I no longer find video game physics engines any more funny or interesting than paper plates, they’re just mass-produced garbage created to deliver something greasy, yet satisfying (actual game design).

So yeah, I think people have confused the concepts of “overworld” and “open-world” in modern games discourse. Overworlds are spaces you move through on your way to the next bit of gamey game design, and open worlds are large spaces full of things you can do in any order (or not) using the same set of mechanics. The ubiquity of the latter has eclipsed the utility of the former. No More Heroes III goes against the grain in this way, because No More Heroes III is a game about the value of going against the grain.

As an overworld it gets the job done better than most, but the game’s budget has definitely been put toward the sections you can actually win or lose. I like it that way, but it shows pretty hard toward the end of the game (Neo-Brazil underdelivers hard in my opinion, though I actually like that the middle two cities you explore have largely been bombed out; it colors the emotional experience and adds a little more weight to what would otherwise feel like a pretty silly and beezy experience).

Unfortunately games are made with limited time and funds, and every game must either value some aspects more than others, or severely limit what they attempt to do. While not in style, i like the idea of a game world largely sold by its music, not intended to BE the game, but to provide time to breathe and think in between the “fun parts” (though i also find mastering the bike controls pretty fun too).

…

I’m not even mad, I just think sometimes these reviewers at the big publications are probably really busy, kind of stressed, and maybe not even the target audience for the game they’re reviewing. I think some take the easy way out and point out the “flaws” that are the most apparent, without really assessing how much they really matter in the face of everything else the game is doing, or maybe they don’t even care what the game is “saying”. Maybe they don’t even care if it’s fun, they just need to come up with bullet points that accurately reflect wbat the game literally is, but it’s all about the experience. I took long breaks between play sessions of this game because it takes a lot out of you. I like that, but I’d hate to have to beat and review it before launch day. Hell, just writting this review is taking like a month of doing it when it’s actually fun for me. It’s not that I pity them, but I understand looking at this overworld and calling it trash because it looks, feels, and likely is literally incomplete. I just don’t care, as a player, because I think they did a good job making something fun and varied with the restraints they had.

I also think many reviewers don’t try to shape people’s tastes as much as they attempt to asses whether or not any given player is likely to enjoy the product. Perhaps it’s foolish of me, but I really do believe that the people writing on games in mainstream publications have the ability to emperors-new-clothes us into changing our schemas regarding metrics of video game quality. Not entirely, but certainly to some extent.

AHEM, back to “talking about the game”.

All great (non-indie) games begin as an excercise in good budgeting and planning.

If we really want more unique and varied experiences, we have to be willing to accept when they don’t come out completely perfect. Hell, even the AAA titles people like are often tedious because they try to do it all.

Man, game development is hard…

You think it’s really even worth it?

Hell, I don’t even like this game THAT much, and it’s my game of the year!

Who even cares what my game of the year is!

Who even cares if a game is fun, if it only appeals to adults who could be doing so much more with their time?! I should be out there planting trees and making the world a better place like Travis, not writing some manifesto only a few people will ever read!

Also, sometimes you find Visual novel cutscenes randomly in the overworld. That’s like the coolest most fun thing ever.

CRITIQUE NUMBER FOUR:

“There’s no real story”

There IS a real story.

Everything you do in this game connects to and makes up the story, even the insane parts are saying something and are something. Yeah, nobody cries (audibly), it’s not that kind of game. Yeah, it’s not dark like the first two games in the series, but why does every game have to be about suffering and ruin or the developer’s mental health problems to be praised for its story? What about a fun story that casually throws morals and ideas at you without being preachy (like i am)? I feel like this is part of why Dating Sims are such a niche thing in the States, we want games to either have no story, or a crushing and epic story (and world building), and ideally, both (dark souls, breath of the wild).

*sigh* tone-wise this game more closely resembles Kirby’s Adventure than the original No More Heroes. I totally understand that being a let down to fans. Legitimately, I do. It was a pretty big downer for me too, until I started getting into the game’s more interesting episodes.

MY OWN REVIEW OF THE GAME, NOT JUST CONTRARIANISM:

…

That soundtrack is great.

You know, I’ve been pretty stupid making this review all about hating on “bad art”. That’s NOT what this game is about. This game is really a very pure and innocent celebration of what makes art great! It’s a collaboration between people who have dedicated their lives to bringing more joy and intrigue into ours! These people don’t care about criticizing internet dwellers for their taste in video games! They certainly don’t care about childish arguments over what game was better than your favorite game of 2021. This game isn’t about dunking on the haters, it’s about letting your “freak flag fly” and loving what you love in culture!

…So I really hope this doesn’t come across as hating on games journalists. Like I don’t trust Gamespot reviews, but I still use their “everything published this month” lists. Gamespot isn’t even a journalist, just some weird relic of a bygone era. A company that “owns journalists”. I seriously doubt today’s kids even read what they say; everyone relies on the youtubers nowadays, right? If I really cared about changing hearts and minds, I’d record myself reading these scripts, set it to speedrun footage, and upload it there, but I don’t care about “being part of the conversation” nearly as much as I care about not contributing any more fossile-fueled filth to that company.

It’s all just distractions anyway.

I don’t even care what games you like; I just, like anyone worth their platform writing about games, hope you take away something actually meaningful about life in the tangents of my opinion peice on some anime brain-cum software.

The only video games that are actually “good” are developmental software for kids that promote critical thinking and good morals while also providing an escape from the 16-year hell (or disempowerment fantasy for you nostalgic freaks out there) that is childhood. So yeah, hate to break it to ya, but the best game of all time already exists and it’s minecraft, which is all of legos, kiwico, The Elder Scrolls, How Stuff Gets Made, computer science 101, a lesson on man’s conquest against nature, an infinite supply of jump scares, a self-critical commentary on how video game culture can distance people from reality (the end), and a public park with all your friends no matter where in the world they are from the comfort and safety of your own home (Runner up is Pokémon Platinum, which loses points for turning a generation of children into hunchbacks who will spend the rest of their lives looking down at a DS that doesn’t exist in order to avoid eye-contact with others).

Compared to that No More Heroes III is a strange santanic sex toy for maladjusted social rejects.

…

That said, I still exist. I may be a man now, but I still have feelings, even if I’ll probably never cry again for the rest of my life (EDIT: I cried a few days after writing this while watching West Side Story, fuck!), even though I’ve sworn off physical and romantic intimacy in the name of staying focussed on my goals for the future, even if I sold my game collection to raise thousands of dollars to fight cambodian sex trafficking, even if I only eat beans and rice because money is power and who cares about superficial things like flavor anyway (and fuck factory farming), even if I quit alcohol, THC, cocaine, and psilocybin, EVEN THEN there are SOME hours in the day that I simply can’t think of a better use for than taking a break and playing a video game, and DURING THOSE HOURS I want to play a game that makes me have the kind of unadulterated fun I had playing Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland on my Gameboy Advance on my 6th birthday.

The kind of fun that comes from being completely at the mercy of a well-meaning development team’s creativity.

For that reason I hope this work, rather than getting buried for not fitting in with the times, goes on to inspire more games in the future. It just wants to be loved, even if you hate it.

#SoundCloud #no more heroes #no more heroes iii #grasshopper manufacture #suda51 #goichi suda #goty 2021 #goty #game of the year 2021 #game of the year #nintendo switch #nintendo #video game #video games #game analysis #review

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 4 years

Text

Humans Are Space Orcs, “Black Hole.”

I was walking, I tended to do that when I had to think, and today was a thinking kind of day. I’m not exactly a thinking kind of guy if I am being honest. Most of the time the inside of my head is a wasteland of song lyrics, movie clips, and microwave noises, but right now I had to try and figure some things out.

First and foremost I had been thinking about the spiderlings a lot lately. It hurt e all over to think the things I was thinking now, but it had to be done.

The spiderlings, when it came right down to it, were just kids like toddlers. They were still learning how to interact with people, they were still growing up, and admittedly, I wasn’t doing a very good job at parenting. First and foremost, however, was the fact that they shouldn’t even be on the ship in the first place. Children weren’t allowed on UNSC ships unless there was rescue mission going on, or they were being transported for some reason.

No one else on the ship would be allowed to take their kids with them, so why should I. It sort of wasn’t fair if you thought on it for a little bit.

Number two, it wasn’t exactly fair to the spiderlings either. They needed some sort of education if they wanted to live in this universe as it was, and right now I didn’t have time to sit them down and teach them anything. I honestly couldn’t really do anything for them at all know that I thought about it. I was horrible at discipline and even worse at teaching them the things they should know.

They needed a preschool or something where they could learn how to read and write, though I had no real idea where to do that.

I had been thinking about this a lot lately based on some of the things I had come to realize while I was gone on leave, the number one being that I took too much on my shoulders. N o one here except for me was expected to father and run a ship at the same time.

If anything I was doing the spiderlings a disservice by keeping them here.

It hurt me to say all of that because the aggressive controlling part of me doesn’t want to admit that I can’t do all of it all by myself.

But I can’t.

However, I do know someone who potentially could if she was going to do what she said she was going to do.

A part of my, however, didn’t want to contact Eris.

We hardly knew each other and to ask for favors would be a bit much. Arguably the adaptids were older than she was, meaning that choosing her to help me in this endeavour wasn’t fair to her either, but who else was I going to get to take care of them.

One thing is for sure, they needed a lot of things that I just couldn’t provide, and that meant I was going to ave to let go.

Made me sick to my stomach but there you had it.

I admired it.

I Can’t do it.

I turned the corner onto the bridge my mind made up. I would have to Call Eris when we were out of warp and see if she would take another couple of hybrids.

I made myself feel a little better by promising I would call and visit as often as I could, though it hurt me to think how the spiderlings might respond to me just up and leaving them.

I tried to remind myself that I wasn’t up and leaving them, I was doing what any other father in the UNSC would have to do and that was find them a place to stay and learn and grow and all of those other things, but a part of me still felt horrible.

To take my mind off of that decision, I turned my head towards one of the bridge crew members, “Grab a tablet and follow me.”

They did as told, bot up and followed.

It honestly still surprises me when people follow my orders. Like I expect to have to explain or justify my reasoning to them, but instead they sort of just get up and walk over like that was supposed to be how it worked.

I wasn’t totally convinced.

I motioned them to follow and together we walked down the hall.

I took my first stop in the medical bay where Krill and Katie working quietly to deep clean the med bay while there were no patients to work on.

Krill looked up and his antennae buzzed slightly when he saw me. A frown crossed his face as he looked me over, expecting some sort of injury. I have him a smile and almost winked but then remembered that when you have one eye winking just looks like blinking.

Katie straightened up, “Good morning Commander.” She said with a wide smile.”

That would always surprise me to, when your friends call you by a title.

“Morning Doctor.” I responded in kind walking over with my assistant at my heels.

Krill seemed to relax, “how may we help you this morning, commander.”

I took a seat on the edge of one of the beds and bounced my foot up and down a bit as i thought, “I was just thinking about the ship and how it’s run.”

They looked at each other.

I held up a hand, “Don’t worry it’s nothing like that. I just realized the other day that I don’t really know how things work on my own ship despite trying to control everything all the time, so I am going to go around to all of the departments get and idea of how they work, and what they do, and how they might need my help if anything.” I motioned back towards my assistant, “Lt. McKinnon is going to take notes for me, and then later on I am going to meet with the Jedi council, and we are going to decide how best to delegate and meet the needs of the ship more effectively.”

Katie raised an eyebrow, “The Jedi council?”

“Yeah, that’s what I am calling it, and you can’t make me decide otherwise.”

She rolled her eyes but smiled and I smiled back.

If they thought my idea was dumb, they at least humored me.

As far as my involvement, there really was none, though I had to make sure that everyone was up to date on their medical evals and vaccinations, which was probably a job I could delegate to someone else, or at least give Katie and Krill the power to do, so I would have to look into that later.

I stood from there and together me and my assistant moved to the other departments before slowly coming around to the rec hall where I knew I might find a particular grou pf of people.

Cannon was there as I expected he would be playing pool with a group of other Drev.

Cannon was a good shot while the others were a couple seconds away from poking each other in the eye with the cues, but they were laughing and talking rapid fire in drev, fast eough that I was having trouble understanding just exactly what they were saying.

Cannon leaned over the table and took a shot sending one of the balls into a corner pocket with a satisfying clatter.

The other Drev groaned and he raised his fist in triumph.

I approached once Cannon won the game, and the big guy saw me coming raising the pool cue in greeting like he might raise a spear. The other Drev did the same

“Zhad tsak Hajee lasan jirhaat.”

I raised my hand and returned the greeting.

May your spear be sharp or something similar.

I kept the conversation mostly in Drev for the sake of the clan, “Cannon how are you this morning?”

He lifted his head to me, “Won seven duels and tested some of Chalan’s new weapons.”

I smiled, “Ben busy than I see.”

“I always try to keep it that way.”

Cannon was the defacto clan leader. Technically it was either sunny or I, but Sunny wasn’t reall the clan leading type and I had everything else to run so that gave Cannon most command over the Drev, which is why I was here.

“Just coming in to make sure you guys have everything you need and see if there is anything that you guys need done. Cannon obviouly you are on the jedi council, so you’ll figure this out later, but I want to make sure eveyrthing is running smoothly. Is there anything your clan needs to discuss.”

Cannon tapped his fingers agaisnt his carapace beore pulling me aside by the arm.

“Tatazan is…. Pregnant so, what should I do about that?”

A ton of bricks for Commander Adam Vir.

I blinked blindsides by that afformentioned rockslide, “I uh…. Hmm that is complicated.”

I turned to look at the floor. I suppose it should ahve occured to me that when we took on an entire Drev clan that we were also taking on mated pares. Now the UNSC guidelines about being in relationships didn’t cover the Drev considering that their battle partners were always thir significant other so hiring a Drev would be impossible if the rule was followed.

But I had failed to recognize the ‘mated’ part of a mated pair.

“Well shit.” I muttered

“This isn’t exactly ideal.”

Cannon nodded, “I think it might be best if the child is raised off the ship on Anin.”

“I tend to agree with you there.” I leaned in a bit, “I have been thinking about the same things for the spiderlings.”

He nodded knowingly.

“A ship is no place to grow up.”

I agreed no matter how much child me would have disagreed.

“We can discuss that in meeting tonight, though as clan leader you have the most say in this.”

He nodded his large head, “Where is my sister?” He wondered looking around for where she might be.

“I sent her off to play with making new weapons.”

“Sent her off?” Cannon chuckled in amusement

“Yeah, I think she worries about leaving me on my own, like I am going to set something on fire or something.”

“Have you set anything on fire/” He wondered wryly.

I smirked, “No but I’ve been thinking.”

“For you, that is actually worse than setting things on fire.”

The two of us laughed and I patted him on the arm as I returned him to the pool table and a second round of him kicking everyone’s ass.

Cannon was a good clan leader and had thrown himself into the work wholeheartedly. They respected him, and he got along with them. Not a day went by that you didn’t see him leading the Drev in some new sort of activity to broaden their horizons. I sortof wished Sunny would join them more often. I think it would be good for her to speak her own language and have friends er own species, but I get why she tended to distance herself.

These Drev were from the same clan that mistreated her entire life, and memories lie that were difficult to forgive at times. Still, they had to be better than me, and I worried about her.

Sure spending her time being beautiful and nobley aloof all the time gave her an heir of…. Hmmm how shall I say…. Excitement and intrigue, but still…. I wanted her to be happy.

And as much as the greedy part of me wanted my friend all to myself I recognized that probably wasn’t a good thing.

I’d talk to her later about it I decided.

“Commander Vir to the bridge, commander Vir to the bridge.”

I motioned my note taker to follow, and we hurried back to the bridge taking our seats. The captain’s chair was familiar at this point, but I still couldn’t shake off that tiny moment of thrill as I sat down.

“Report.”

“Warp ends in five minutes, commander.”

My heart pounded nervously in my chest. This was it, this was the big moment scientists had been waiting for forever. A real live real time picture of a black hole. Now it was important to keep away from the edge or risk time dilation, spegetiffication, and instant death.

The kid in me was about to pee himself in excitement, but the Commander in me was intent on not letting everyone die.

I picked up the com on the rest of the ship inviting them to prepare for warp exit, and then told them to get their asses up to the observation deck to see something awesome.

When I put the mic down I was back in commander mode ordering the crew to ready themselves for this moment.

My eyes were fixed straight ahead.

This was going to be insane.

If we came out of this wrong, we could be caught in the event horizon and be….

Goners.

“Exiting warp in ten.”

I prepared to take manual control of the ship breath held trying not to imagine what would happen if we appeared at the edge of the event horizon sailing on a dust cloud of light as we plunged towards our death, a black pit of nothingness.

“One”

The warp drie disengaged, and we jolted violently as the air warped around us.

I slammed back in my seat taking immediate control of the ship waiting for any warning bells to go off signaling extreme gravity,

I took a relieved sigh when there was none and lifted my head to the viewing window.

‘“Ho-ly shit.” I muttered

The rest of the crew gasped.

It was…. Well it was wow.

IIf you guys have ever seen interstellar, I would go so far as to say that was pretty accurate.

From this distance the thing didn’t look so big, but the very marrow of my bones knew what it meant. The massive disk of light and dust that surrounded it slowly spiraling inward towards a pit of nothingness.

The halo ring of light that surrounded it glowed upward as unbelievable gravity refracted the back of the black hole towards the front.

It was like a dark eye in the middle of space staring outward at us unblinkingly as it lurked in the darkness...

This

Was the center

Of the Milky Way.

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theshortwavemystery · 4 years

Text

NOTES FROM WATCHING THE FIRST EPISODE OF “RIVERDALE”

1. Riverdale is a bizarre town that seems cut off from everywhere else, temporally straddled between an eternal 1950’s—more accurately a 1950’s stuck in an endless repetitive loop. But it takes place in the late 2010’s. Even so, the decor in the town is vintage, and the characters recognize this. The activities of the kids are vintage. the internet and cell phones exists, millennials are named, but it doesn’t seem to matter. something is very weird here, as if all these people are ghosts. all the stock scenarios and characters are here, which is to be expected for a teen drama, but there’s an exactness, a literalism, that is too perfect to be unintentional. 2. what is this world? it seems to be a staging of a certain inertia in american culture, which changes in superficial ways—technology, new TV shows, music new taboos—but all if this somehow serves to reinforce, or justify a return to the “leave it to beaver” universe. 3. any reminder that these are modern kids—their frequent references to contemporary TV shows like Mad Men for instance—only serve to increase the spooky vibe. everyone in this town seems to be low key crazy, making the show feel like twin peaks but written by what’s left of your local shopping mall. 4. the show’s script is constantly making fun of itself to the point that we seem directed by it to avoid taking the drama seriously—it is perhaps a smoke screen, like the haze of the presumably northwestern woods that seem to surround the town (it is filmed in Vancouver). the gay best friend is named as the gay best friend, establishing him as a living archaism—i felt bad for him after this. 5. plot points are shown to be cliche—the fake lesbian kiss, once scandalous in the 2000’s, is brushed off as false and an erasure of real lesbians. the script fools us, indicating it means to aim for more intelligent territory. and yet, veronica’s confrontation with cheryl, her tough girl speech, where she reveals her vulnerability as a rich girl fallen from grace but also stands up for betty—this goes without an ironic comment, even thought it is also a cliche, but a more contemporary oneq—the “mic drop” moment. so we see how the naming of particular cliches, employed ironically, serves to hide others the show is earnestly employing. 6. veronica says she needs to be redeemed for her father’s crimes, how is that fair. 7. archie’s desire to make music seems like a stand-in for a recognition that he’s gay. they cover this up by making his character straight but i don’t buy it. because his music itself clearly doesn’t matter. this is similar to the dead poets society where the kid kills himself obviously because he’s gay and he’s afraid his dad will disown him. why? nobody kills themselves merely because their dad shames them for doing theater. the reason is simple: theater is already such a humiliating and abject thing to love that you have to be totally shameless to even start doing it. once you become a theater kid your dad has lost you. in the second episode, the gay friend of betty reveals that he agrees with me here. 8. archie is the decentered center of the show, not a particularly interesting character so much as a holding container for female desire/fantasy. he’s dumb, cute boy who’s kind of artistic and kind of jockish, but the complex psychology belongs to betty, veronica, cheryl so far—all plotting, calculating characters, whereas archie just wants to enjoy himself and be liked—and to be fair, these shallow needs get him in plenty of trouble, but they’re simple needs. but this is always what archie was, even as a comic book character. he’s kicked around like a football like a more jocular charlie brown. 9. archie’s problem is identiied as the problem of "all millenial men", who need to be told what they want—but this is really everyone’s problem. what makes the girls/women different is that they don’t care that they don’t know what they want—they just act on feelings, and try to make the world match up with the feelings. archie thinks he ought to know what he wants, and then do it. but the women, whose desires as women are not even encouraged from day one, are free from this tedious problem. this is why archie is the one who has to be the moral authority regarding his mutual witness to the murder with the hot teacher, while the hot teacher is only afraid people will find out she fucked a student. veronica brushes off archie’s identity crisis as a false dilemma, critiqueing the categories of “jock” and “artist” and insisting he can be both, and anyway who gives a fuck? but this whimsy and indifference toward boundaries can get devious with veronica, who is betty’s friend one second and hooking up with archie the next. 10. although women are still often denied full subjectivity in literature, in real life it’s always been the opposite—men tend to forego personality development in favor of power or the illusion of power, and end up more shallow, rigid and fragile, more prone to the whims of their entourage. they never really have to become anything in particular--masculinity functions like a hive mind. if male relationships superficially appear to have less friction, it is only because men are brutally conformist and end up with little personal to argue about, usually coalescing around some common interest and not prone to discussing their respective inner lives--except, occasionally to defensively deny their existence. so-called "sensitive" men only do this in more devious ways--it's obvious that jughead is the most devious character we've met so far. women, in contrast, are each a hive mind unto themselves, compelled to construct an array of selves, carefully deploying them to get by in a world structured by the male gaze and booby-trapped by the machinations of other women. this complexity is of course terrifying to men who either submit to it as a fetish or suppress it— and one way of accomplishing that suppression in literature is to create stories where the men are supposedly complex and the women supposedly shallow and dependent wholly on men--the typical gaslight job of the mediocre male writer. this is clearly a show that, whatever its other blindnesses, is not going to let that happen. 11. we are told through veronica that archie is more dangerous than he looks. why doesn’t the show want us to figure this out ourselves? this feels ironic on the writers' parts, another winking use of cliche. 12. everyone’s problem is a cliche—archie’s father pressures him to do sports to get into college, he wants to do something else. betty’s mom is controlling and betty is a people pleaser who already in the first episode explodes about how perfect she has to be all the time and can’t she just do something for herself for once? 13. the music is annoying and cloying but it also grounds the contemporary nature of the show, because of its peculiar sense of melodrama, which is endemic to this time period, and the neoliberal overvaluing of the self. 14. the video on this show seems filtered into oblivion, or photoshopped or otherwise conspicuously treated. just like the self-awareness of the script, it contributes to the sense of unreality. 15. more self-aware cliches: archie and betty grew up next door to each other—they’re stuck in a feedback loop of being the ____ next door. cheryl describes herself as the queen on stage at the dance. 16. classic literature is referenced oddly—betty loves toni morrison, even though by the end of the episode, we have been introduced to zero black main characters. is this self-aware critique of white fetishization of blackness? and there's also thornton wilder’s “our town”… veronica suggests that the high school is part of the lost epilogue from “our town”—wilder also presented a transparently fake and timeless town to stage his existentialist story in, one in which horrifyingly, dead people remain in a liminal space between death and life, vainly trying to communicate with the living they can still see. 17. every celebrity/media reference is bizarre. a thin veneer draped over an unchanging reality. "Riverdale" seems not so much about the dark underbelly of suburbia, but about the idea of suburbia is the dark underbelly itself. a murder has to happen because someone has to bring death here, lest everyone become paralyzed by their immortality. 18. archie’s “making a deal” with the hot teacher is way more erotic than anything he’ll do with b or v… why is this happening at the Dance lol, unless we are to read it this way? they have shared the most precious thing in this town, death... why does archie love the teacher and toy with his peers? because they can't give him death. clearly archie is blackmailing the hot teacher into continuing the relationship, but he does so seemingly unaware of his own motives. he lives in the age of youtube tutorials, he doesn't need music instruction. and here is another paradox of the modern gender binary--men think they don't know what they want, but unconsciously they know what they want--they receive their instructions from the Borg Queen of masculinity and pursue it ruthlessly, whereas women end up thinking they know exactly what they want, but unconsciously they don't, because it's fractured amongst their afformentioned hive of selves. This is why both traditonally-socialized genders are completely right in saying the other is full of shit. 19. “we have no past” goes the song josie sings—and maybe this is america’s problem—the past is empty, the past of ordinary suburbia, interrupted only occasionally by wars perhaps but untouched by cultural progress—and because we have no past we can have no present, only an empty recycling of the same void, the same problems, the same catharses—new episodes of the same show. we live forever at the cost of never changing. is riverdale a socially critical prestige drama LARPing in the ironic costume of a CW teen soap??? 20. all the characters are trapped in a carnival haunted house ride. the theme: adolescence. 21. cheryl’s party—brett kavanaugh could have been at this party 22. jughead is the narrator, and i like the idea that this is all in jughead’s head, which is why it’s so unstuck in time aesthetically, so stylized and knowing. and it's no wonder he's the most popular character, because he represents the writers themselves, and fandom is to have an illusion of a privileged relationship not so much with the characters, but with the property's creators--and to be hyperinvested and, if necessary, hypercritical of their choices. 23. the gay hookup is interrupted by the presence of a corpse—a classic trope in teen horror but it’s interesting to see it with a gay pair. it’s as if in the clash between the perpetual 1950’s aura and the contemporary references and morality, a gruesome surplus appears, the specter of homophobia. which, incidentally is a corpse of a man guilty of a sexual act that is still considered taboo—incest. a corpse symbolizes the death of innocence for a hetero couple, but for a queer couple it can’t just be that—it also must evoke the threat of actual murder. which makes this a very different moment. 24. jughead says riverdale has changed—but it has only been revealed to be what it always was—"full of shadows and secrets", as jughead puts it. he must be putting us on—this place is way creepier than Sunnydale, and that place had actual demons… but this is often what a change amounts to—not the addition of a new trait, but the acceptance of one that was already there. 25. jason blossom is a ginger like archie and he therefore seems tied to archie in a unique way. he dies on july 4th, given some fuel to my reading as a show with something to say about america’s self-image. 26. all the parents are single parents or in strained, unhappy marriages in this town. this us realistic, but that should tip us off: what in the show has been realistic so far? debuting in january 2017, "Riverdale" seems retrospectively shaped by the trump era-a teen drama not about the undead, as buffy was, but a teen drama which is itself undead, fitting for a president who also wished to raise the dead, and also what had never lived. riverdale’s preservation of the old “great” america is superficial—indoors, a very contemporary isolation and alienation reign, in contrast even to the desperation of actual 50’s suburbia. 27. is everyone dead already in this show? is riverdale purgatory? is that what explains its being unstuck in time and drenched in fog? but i’ve been to small towns in the northwest that look like riverdale—nothing has been updated since 1954. in order to seem fake, riverdale has to be even faker that real life, even more uncanny—and that’s a tall order.

#riverdale

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