Welcome to a special Game Club episode of The Gamesline Podcast! Crystal, Lily, and John discuss ACE Team’s debut game Zeno Clash, a 2009 PC first-person brawler with brisk pacing, frenetic combat, and a uniquely grotesque art style.

Please note that this is a full-spoilers episode. If you’d like to play Zeno Clash before listening, it’s inexpensive and only 5 hours long!

Click here to read the Zeno Clash postmortem that Lily references!

If you like this Game Club format, let us know! You can voice your feedback and suggestions at our our Discord channel thegamezone.zone or our email podcast@gamesline.net!

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Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Edited by Crystal

The post The Gamesline Podcast Episode 101: Zeno Clash appeared first on Gamesline.

Over the past few generations of video gaming, I have noticed a trend, a fascination which started as a conscious or unconscious desire for more. Games grow bigger, wider, deeper, and yet satiation never seems to come. People dream of infinity; a world that is worlds.

This desire, which I have seen in myself, in others, and in the profit-minded industry, leads to a hunt, a chase for a fleeting, impossible creature. Artists and audience, industry and media, all seem to be hunting for one thing: the Omnigame—a game which encompasses everything.

Lying, in Hope a Truth Falls Out

To better articulate a term I just pulled, in its entirety, from my ass, let me articulate a phenomenon I’ve noticed. Let’s talk about the fantasy of VR.

As Virtual Worlds came to embed themselves in our lives—and in some cases even before—humanity has imagined the departure of the mind to places elsewhere. Immersive VR—Virtual Reality which fully tricks the mind into believing it exists elsewhere, often called full-dive VR—has been an ambition among nerds for a long while now. When VR headsets first hit consumer markets, nerds worldwide rejoiced.

“Finally, an escape from this intractable shithole,” they cheered.

“You can even be a catgirl with RGB light-up ears,” said another demographic.

“I’m going to make a virtual Kmart,” said a third.

Yet, the ambition, the promises of these headsets, didn’t match up with what was experienced—which in most cases was a lot of forehead sweat and motion sickness. But this never stopped anyone from dreaming.

Human beings are creatures of stories, I’ve found. The realms of fiction can be utilized to explore trauma, fears, hopes, and dreams. Speculative fiction can be a way of expressing anxiety about how the world could be. Post-apocalyptic fiction and cyberpunk are all expressions of fear, but they are just as often conduits for hope. Lots of people simmer with excitement and fear both for the promise of something like full-dive VR and the inherent transhumanism lying beyond. In some cases, the initial fear or anxiety expressed in those original stories is expunged all together.

For example, The Matrix, in its original iterations, expressed a terrifying world; a world where you could be completely unaware of the powers that be and their ability to fully control everything. Jacks installed into the body with cables stabbing into the brainstem, sending dreaming humanity to a world which usurps reality. It imagines a setting where one can generate infinite creations, indistinguishable from the real thing. Across several decades, we have seen many dozens of parodies to a point where it has entered a sort of cultural undercurrent of memetics. The Matrix has become bullet-time, black trench coats with designer sunglasses, and the bridge between real and virtual worlds.

The anime .hack//sign similarly features a story where a person is immersed in fantasy, trapped in a virtual world and divested of identity. It is less intrusive, only requiring a headset, but the result is similarly difficult. The main character is reduced to an avatar, forgetting themselves completely. In all their fear and isolation, they are both literally and metaphorically lost in the dissociation of an MMO. 

It is far more common in the modern day to see permutations of the .hack formula. There are dozens of manga and anime which borrow a central conceit of being trapped in an MMO while removing the teeth of the premise for the purposes of comedy, farce, or simple wish fulfillment. Even where there aren’t direct analogues, there are many cases where pieces of media directly borrow the concepts of an MMO or single-player RPG while ascribing it as another world altogether–the Isekai. The video gamey nature is now, at heart, a baked-in part of the fantasy.

Now, many years later, games like Crosscode emerge. Your protagonist, Lea, is trapped in a virtual world, but one decidedly much friendlier than either The Matrix or .hack//sign. It offers a vision of a world where something like a completely immersive MMO can exist and be as banal as a smartphone today. An entire planet is treated as a theme park in the setting, and people log into it through remote-controlled bodies just as easily as World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV. Though Lea’s life is complicated by her imprisonment in this technology, it still presents this world in a way which comes across as desirable. If your name is not Lea, within the world of Crosscode, you get to live an impossibly lush fantasy life on an alien planet cultivated to construct your wishes. 

Over the years, many such stories have come to exist. Stories about games, and frequently games about games. Games have become commonplace enough that we can write fantasies about what indulgences they may be in the future, surpassing the scope of what would be possible in our version of reality. We imagine a world like The Matrix but with all the worst parts removed; we imagine a world like .hack//sign but without interpersonal politics and identity loss. The gamer takeaway, despite everything negative in the original stories, is ultimately how cool it would be to be part of something quite so large, so immersive, containing so much, or at least in potential. In a sense, such stories are told in an attempt to one day inspire the creation of their subject.

We have lived through a time where the ambition of capital has attempted to generate such dreams. The embarrassing stumbling steps of something like the Metaverse—a name even evoking its origin point in cyberpunk fiction—were handwaved with promises of what it would eventually become. That is, provided everyone forgets that the origin of cyberpunk is terror at the control of oligarchic corporations.

The dream of the virtual world is, as I described at the onset, the dream of an omnigame. An usurpation of reality, traded for something more favourable. A video game where you can do everything you can imagine and where the limits are basically nonexistent. Genre becomes a thing of the past because the game is a world in of itself; a monolithic effort which, within itself, contains multitudes.

Yet, virtual reality is not the only thing affected by this fantasy. Yes, nerds will continue to dream about the promise of immersive technologies, but I think I’m also fascinated with the underlying thoughts which cause such obsessions. It isn’t truly enough for VR to be immersive or for worlds to be as lush as the real thing. I think, digging deeper, people are obsessed with dreams of “more.” This, I will admit, is an obsession I have also seen within myself.

Ultraviolet Recursive

Once more I must talk about myself, because despite wide sweeping statements about “people” in the abstract, I cannot truly know their hearts. I am not a sociologist; all my notations are anecdotal. Just the same, I can’t help but be fascinated with the trends I see, which at heart are born from obsessions similar to my own. I know this because the fact such media exists to flatter such fancies shows that other people carry the same affliction. 

The affliction in this case is an obsession with expansiveness and depth. As a person with many difficulties, it’s very easy for me to shrug at the material realities of the world around me and slumber in another one for a while. My love for Final Fantasy XIV has been mentioned before but, in so doing, I buffed out the worst of the rough edges. Let me express some of those uncomfortable serrations now.

As I’ve mentioned before, my first experiences playing XIV were coupled with immediate distaste. My disdain here was particularly performative because it was so tightly associated with Final Fantasy, a franchise which has won countless hours of my life. When I finally began to appreciate Final Fantasy XIV, it was because of the unfortunate shape my life had contorted into. Life was awful and I wanted something with uncountable hours of capital C Content to steal my time away.

When it started hitting, it hit hard. I played through every expansion, and every bit of side material I could get my hands on. Final Fantasy XIV came to be the medium through which I experienced life itself. I grinded out relics; I conquered raids; I made zero friends at all. Just the same, I was utterly captivated by the yawning abyss of the world in front of me. One land gave way to the next; one story read after another. Moving from biome to biome, I felt like I had traveled vast stretches of time and space, without physically moving at all. The scope of the project in front of me made it all the more immersive and, without a life of my own, it superseded reality. Yet, as I approached what I knew to be the finite end, I grew frightened. The appropriately named Endwalker was the open palm demanding my attention. The true bounds of the game, and its world, would not allow me to proceed.

“Stop,” it said. “You have reached the limits of creation.”

It was a command I did not have the ability to deny. So, I stopped. This realization, that the world I imagined as infinite was all too finite, was painful in a way I don’t know how to articulate. Drinking from an unending cup only to one day find it empty, makes your throat burn all the drier.

With eyes still bloodshot and an appetite unsatiated, I turned my eyes to greener pastures.

That’s when Elden Ring came out.

Elden Ring is, at this point, a famously capacious game. The first time I was teleported far from where I expected to be by one of the game’s many traps, it was too late. Elden Ring fully had its hooks in me. The map zoomed further and further out, revealing a world so much larger than I could have anticipated. Many others have experienced the same. That moment will be in my memory forever. Provided I don’t have yet another memory-effacing incident. 

Nearing the end of my binge of Final Fantasy XIV, I somehow also made time for a full-time Elden Ring addiction. I played Elden Ring for so long many of my friends began to speculate if my sudden positive mood boost was not, in fact, a bout of mania. Without sleeping, I played Elden Ring for thirty-two uninterrupted hours, stopped only by my eyes’ refusal to focus or unfocus. 

Even after thirty-two hours of consecutive gameplay, I still held onto the experience which had begun in XIV. A world big enough to feel like something real, something I could not hold in my head all at once. I would exit the game world, and people online would speak on the things they had seen and the detail of the world, and I would yet still be shocked they were seeing things I had not yet.

However, at the same time, I was disgusted with this game I desperately wanted to insert myself into. The world seemed to push me into a set of “video gamey” behaviors. What was supposed to be an open world turned into a series of velocities to the same copy-pasted cave to get an item for a build I didn’t give a shit about. The enjoyment has trickled out even further over time. What felt like an impossibly detailed world turned into an arena for violence and backtracking. I saw the borders of a virtual world and recoiled in terror. There was detail, but the depth I was looking for was not there. I dug, even when the realization was too harsh to deny.

I don’t like this game very much. It’s fine if you do, but after 200 hours this shit kinda ass. 

There is a lot to be said about my behavior here. While this is obviously a hyperbolic example born out of abysmal mental health, I still have never forgotten the feeling this period of my life left me with. When I was at my worst, spinning out and unable to control myself, the taste of artificiality lingered on my lips, and I was disgusted. I stood at the borders of two worlds and felt myself wanting for more. Even after everything I have just said, I do not believe this was simply the product of a diseased, consumerist mindset. I think the reason I grind my teeth against the imposed limitations of virtual worlds is because in many ways it reminds me of my own limitations in the real one. There are many limits—either by my own body, society, or elsewhere—imposed upon me. Contrary to observations made of me, I cannot do a full 720 front flip while wielding an ultra greatsword (I’d probably go for a more lithe and elegant weapon, like a scythe or some kind of claw thing.)

TTRPGs called to me for a similar reason. I wanted a world powered by the limitless fields of imagination, a world which imposed no boundaries. If I could imagine it, I could make new worlds, new peoples, new ideas. A play session could go as far away as the ends of the universe, or as close as the nearby room; the depths of either would be whatever I cared to describe. Speaking even more candidly, it was the reason I got into writing fiction in the first place: I just wanted to make something, a story beautiful to someone like me. Everything I wanted, and nothing I didn’t.

When we were younger, based on the memories I can piece together, we were fully smitten by the allure of a multi-disk epic. It wasn’t exactly the length or the sophistication of the mechanics which captured my heart. It was a world with more than I had the avarice to ask for. A place where I could unfocus my eyes a bit and be there. The people contained within the story were those you could walk alongside for many hours, and as they lived beside me, they would begin to become real. The craving I felt—and sometimes still feel now—is the same hunger people have for this “omnigame,” a game which denies them nothing. 

I know how compelling this was, even as an illusion; how bad it was for me to indulge in excess. One should not run through their life utterly addicted to a desire for more. Pleasure is fine, but it should not infringe on your ability to feel future pleasure later; my way of acting was an utter abandonment of the future to glut on the now. 

A Limitless Astroturf Lawn

It’s not just by our own wishes that we think about bigger and better games. It’s the part of the essay where we talk once more about the undue influences of corporations and marketing on preferences. 

As people come to desire more from games, having higher demands of their substance, corporations come with promises of impossible things. It was at this point a readily quoted joke, memetic from the moment of its conception, was spoken:

“If you can see that mountain, you can most certainly climb it.”

While those things have certainly become truer with the advancement of technology, it does not change the fact that corporations benefit from telling lies about the nature of the worlds they produce to better make a sale. Further, they benefit from the inclusion of greater amounts of material in their product. A game packed with hours of content keeps a consumer captivated and justifies the labor that went into making it—especially when such time can provoke post-purchase sales.

In a world where games are expected to make an exponential amount more money than the price of making them, it is—to the financially invested—ideal to have a product which can keep as many eyes captive for as long as possible. Thus, we see a development cycle where expansions to the base material is an expectation. I’ve shit talked Destiny 2 in the past, and this is the reason why; a game which is, on paper, a wonderfully fun time, became a content mill which kicked you off the ride if you ceased to purchase and guzzle down Content. Season passes, character DLC, expansion packs, features added as quality of life or just fan expectation. Yes! You CAN pet the dog; $90 please. The disinterested gacha woman pet raising game can now also be an extraction shooter, tower defense, rhythm game, in-depth mahjong sim roguelike VN.

These additions, while being good for the lifeblood of the game on paper, shape fan expectation. A game must generate a certain amount of Content over time to coerce continuous play from your community, or the game, by the most vocal parts of the fandom, is considered “dead.” It is never that the game simply had a set and met expectation of scope; the game must “live” to placate a fanbase perpetually starved for new content and who stand desperately at the boundaries of the world wanting to push them ever outward. Eventually, with mandatory growth, this creates a game which must be everything to everyone. Keeping players in a world is obviously beneficial to the company who owns the devs who make the game, and on and on the content-production cycle goes, until the game stops making money or the people who own the studio realize they can save 100 percent of their money by just firing everyone.

Even though it is a cynical sentiment, I think it bears articulation because, ultimately, a problem needs to be made visible for a person to see it as a problem. The corporate influence of what a “gamer” desires, ends up influencing and impacting what culture demands. Obviously, there still remains a subset of tightly designed, specific games, but often in the most traditionally marketed and visible works, we see a push for homogenization and broadness. As a game’s scope widens to let everything in, they become infinite in the most capitalistically craven way. A digital Golden Corral—everything for everyone.

As expectations grow, certain demographics get frustrated when a game has a narrowed, intentional focus. They cry out when they feel their needs aren’t being met, fair or not. Such demand most negatively impacts the developers who can least afford to balloon their game’s scope, which says nothing of artists who have something specific and precise they wish to articulate. You can look in the discussion section of just about any indie game–bad idea, never do this–and see people begging for things completely out of scope with what the game even promises. Or complaining about “woke,” either or. Even if I have expressed distaste for something like The Witcher 3 or Elden Ring, neither of those games would benefit from arbitrarily including a farming minigame, gacha system, or seasonal engagement trap.

Of course, this isn’t a new phenomenon; people have asked for things they shouldn’t have for as long as speech has existed. The newer change is the massive amount of interconnection between audience and art. An artist can make something they believe in with all their heart, and instantly get feedback, alongside numerous points of comparison of other artists and pieces of art. It is possible to talk about a game entirely in passing, untagged, and somehow the creators will still have it foisted upon them. The industry, as it is, is better equipped than ever to impose a sort of self-regulating state of permanent expectation and discontentment. You can be compared to peers, and people you have literally never met, before your project even so much as has a name.

I don’t want to believe that people are so easily seduced by the machinations of industry, but just the same, I see a rising lack of engagement with art itself, replaced with a cicada-like urge to stripmine a game for content. As long as satiation is prioritized over satisfaction, we will see a trend of expansion without end continuing to proliferate. The content consumption mindset is here, and we’ve all seen the way it insidiously snakes around even our language, until all things are rendered into generic infinite grist.

And the Snake Swallows the Snake

People will always wish for more. Despite everything I’ve just said, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Wishing for something more than is possible, or wishing for something to be easier, or for something never done before, is how we push the limits of what we think is possible.

As we wish for more, it’s only natural that games become larger to encompass the size of the dreams people have. The resultant obsession with the capaciousness of games is an expected byproduct. Just the same, I think the size of a game, in the sense of the things it contains, is on some level an expression of love. Having something be more is justification for the time you spend in something destined to be fleeting and ephemeral. The whim to remove your memory of something, to experience it again, to once more become an audience fascinated and unbothered by the prescribed limits of a game world, is commonplace. I can’t judge them for this, even if it sometimes results in negative outcomes.

It is bad actors who exploit this wanting in us, and resultantly cause people to spend exorbitant amounts of money for a dream. These dreams have monetary and labor ramifications which impact the entire industry, and only play further into the hands of a capitalistic system wanting to turn an art medium into a grocery store decision. From a commercialistic perspective, a family-sized package is the expectation—it costs the most. It’s something to be mindful of.

This is the contradiction born of extremes. At heart, wishing for something bigger, deeper, more expansive, more expressive, more immersive, is how we got to a point where we could start making the technologies we see today. Just the same, it is capitalizing on that desire which creates an industry that cares about content over people. It is capitalism’s greatest strength: to steal people’s desires and sell them back for profit.

Despite the dangers of exploitation, I think people should dream for more. It is where inspiration is born. You see something, something big and beautiful, and even when it satisfies your desires, it sticks with you; it lingers and against even your own interest, you hunger for more. Though you can choose to simply reindulge with diminishing returns, or turn to the AI slop engine which gives you a version of Skyrim that infinitely generates quests for you, I think the dream of more can also be something which inspires new creatives, new creations. The cycle of inspiration and creation is as an ouroboros, continuing so long as people have a desire to make art about the things they care about, and the capacity to be dissatisfied by what has already come.

You can’t truly make a game containing everything without immense cost or compromise. That’s the beauty of creation: you can’t have the whole world, so you must pick and choose what you want as your craving hands leave behind something else, falling from your grasp like grains of sand.

I don’t think we can truly ever capture infinity. But, there’s still nothing wrong with trying.

_{The header image was acquired from Wikimedia Commons, and remixed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Author: Yukterez (Simon Tyran, Vienna). Source material for the Milky way background (also available on Commons): ESO/S.Brunier. Code for the relativistic raytracer and other angles: Yukterez.net/}

_{The video was originally sourced, unedited, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyNQGOo0hsc}

The post Ouroboros: The Game and Everything, Forever appeared first on Gamesline.

Sometimes you want to play something short and sweet; sometimes, you just want to shoot a high-powered, double-barrel shotgun. Sweet relief washed over me as I received the notification I had been hoping for: The Steam Summer Sale.

I acquired a few things and, unfortunately for my future self, that also included yet more games too long for my own good(it’s probably fine, she and I haven’t been on speaking terms lately), but for the most part, I did what I set out to do. I purchased a mercifully short game which had caught my eye: Captain Wayne – Vacation Desperation.

Yet again, I found myself drawn into a GZDoom-powered first person shooter.

My first impression was positive. Compared to the literal mountain of demon-killing Doomlikes, it instead goes for an aesthetic which I can only describe as early 2000’s flash animation pirates. Typically, the aesthetic of the humble buccaneer is not something I enjoy; forgive me, I’ve never been much of a pirate person. Having said that, there is an immense amount of charm in the art style. I’ve seen quite a few GZDoom games utilizing the painterly, latex-model-like sprites of classic Doom, so it’s refreshing to see something so cartoony. The enemy sprites, for instance, provide a great amount of visual interest while also being readable and contrast well with the polygonal environments. 

Presentation is one of Captain Wayne’s strongest points, between its eclectic, overdriven music, art direction, and general bawdy tone. You’re not picking up health kits; you’re munching on fish guts and doing shots of rye whiskey. Electric guitars blare as the good Captain blasts a double barrel into—in his own words—a “dumb motherfucker.”

Captain Wayne isn’t exactly trying for something perfectly refined and, for me, such a thing oozes personality and intention. Cutscenes often have an intentionally rough look with limited animation, voice actors often have varying qualities to their microphones, their acting is delightfully strange in a way only something trying to be so intentionally goofy can be. You got me the moment you introduced a detective doing literally every single detective stereotype at once.

Much like a cartoon, the comedy centers around a lot of intentional farce, silly characters, and visual gags. One standout example is pushing a switch which, most of the time, opens a door; instead, it explodes, pushing you backward and leaving a perfectly Captain Wayne shaped hole in the wall. Wonderful, very silly.

On the gameplay front, this is a standard Doom-like. In a world where Hedon and Selaco exist, this may sound like an insult, but Doom is still Doom; we all know that Doom is good. You hunt for keys, you clear rooms, what is here is still good even if it doesn’t break new ground doing it.

Even the weapon selection is standard in this respect, albeit tied to Captain Wayne’s mechanical arm. Instead of holding a shotgun, your arm is a shotgun, minigun, lighter, plasma gun, immersion blender, etc. Even if it’s only on a technicality, we can throw him in the limited pantheon of left-handed shooters. The weapons are all satisfying to use, with handy alt-fires, but you’ve seen this loadout before in many games.

What makes your kit shine is the level design. Every stage is an interesting pirate-themed romp which avoids many of the more tired genre trappings, or at least freshens them up enough that you won’t be bothered. Sure, there are ancient ruins, but it’s also doing a fun non-Euclidean infinite stair trick with Eldritch nightmare monsters. Unique terrain, varying levels of elevation, cover, set pieces; it’s all very wonderful. It’s also worth noting the game’s smooth sense of pacing and guidance. I never got lost, and always had a clear idea of where I should be moving. It’s easy to forget design intent is a cultivated skill and the devs had a deft hand at making it seem effortless.

Enemies are also a big standout. I have seen games with four times this length with half as many enemies. You have your standard grunts, Mike Tyson-esque boxers, seagulls with grenades strapped to them, shoggoths, sentient oil barrels, and more. Each one mixes up the engagements and multiplies complexity. This cast, within the game’s eight levels and nine wave-based horde maps, are a recipe for a diverse set of experiences

The only thing I have to give a non-committal shrug to is the story. Captain Wayne himself is an archetypal shooter protagonist of the early 90s; someone stole his things, he would rather them not do that, there are several homicides about it, The End. I can’t stress enough though that this is hardly worth mentioning. In a genre where many games barely even articulate this much, it’s not bad. It’s the barest conceit to have an action game happen. That’s fine! More than fine even, I’m glad the story is completely out of my way for the most part.

Captain Wayne is the vacation I needed in a sea of lengthy games. I know that’s a bit like complaining that my meal is too rich and decadent, but I’m a simple woman. The gameplay is not breaking new ground but more than anything, I cannot stress enough the level of craft on display. I have to give a hat tip to any game willing to give multiple reload animations to a double barrel depending on how many shells are in it. Captain Wayne’s own hat is visible on screen at all moments of gameplay! That’s hilarious! I can easily love something where the creators clearly had as good a time making it as I had playing it.

Admittedly, it is on the easy side for a boomer shooter—ignoring the fact I’m a freak doing nothing but playing Ultrakill’s Cybergrind all day. However, I do think Captain Wayne is great for people who want an introduction into the genre with a fun presentation. Here is a game, lovingly crafted, brief, and will give you every tool you need to succeed. An easy recommendation.

Now, I fall back into an abyss of RPGs and games meant to break my spirit and hurt my heart.

The post Fistful of Fishblood — Captain Wayne – Vacation Desperation Review appeared first on Gamesline.

My memory condition is not as open and shut as I made it out to be, however. Yes, 2014 is the cutoff date for what I remember for the most part. However, it’s more accurate to say that the memories before that time are like sun-bleached photos. Their backgrounds are destroyed; only certain subjects remain; I can only assume the context. Some are more destroyed than others and it is difficult to find out which is which until I examine them. Whenever I tell stories about the past, I’m left in a position where it seems like I’m being disingenuous about my condition. I can remember certain details, but it’s like telling a story about a dead world. I have a memory of visiting our grandparents’ house at some point, but everything outside the door has been scrubbed from existence. I don’t know what I looked like, what age I was. I don’t know that girl, I just know a body visited a room with wood-lacquered walls and crosses on every surface.

I tell you all of this to explain the strange way the following anecdote is conveyed. This is a story about video stores. This shall be both exposition and education; a story, and a demonstration of what memory is like for me.

At a certain point in ████, in ████, I visited a humble chain of video stores, once known as Blockbuster. I was visiting with my friend, ████, and their family. A faint smell of cheap theater popcorn lingered amid aisles of plastic cases. This friend, excited at their acquisition of a PlayStation 2, was eager to acquire a game with which to test out their new purchase. █ █████ ██ ███ ███████ █████ █████ ███ ███████ ████ ████ █ █████ █████████. I was ██, and from what I can surmise from context clues, easily impressed.

From other stories I’ve been told about myself, I know I was sheltered, almost entirely reliant on my uncles for any sense of taste. They, being teenage boys, were more than willing to corrupt the mind of an impressionable girl by making her listen to metal, play violent video games, and say swears at people knowing it would create amusing consequences—for them at least. █ █████ ████████ ███ █████ ██████ ████ ██ █████ █ █████ ████████ █████ ██████ █ █████ ████ ██ ████ █████ ████████ ███ ██ █████ ██ ███ █████ ██████ ████.

Being told by a █████ █████ that I could pick out any game I wanted was something akin to being given a blank check for an uncountable sum of money. I wandered down the aisles with ████ and saw a case. Upon the box was a black and red cover; a sword-wielding anime man sitting in a pose of indescribable despondence/ennui. Overtop, in stylish, curving handwriting were the words Devil May Cry. Some previously unexpressed sense of aesthetic called out to me; I absolutely needed to know what happened inside that svelte, black-jacketed case.

“Oh,” said ████’s mother, “are you sure?” She eyed the incredibly prominent mature rating on the box.

“█ ████ ███████ ███████ ██████ ████,” I said.

It seemed she accepted this as an answer as we left the store with our newfound acquisition. We went out into ████ ████ ████ ███ ███████ ███ ████ ████████ █ █████ ████ █████ ██ ████ ██████████ █ █████ ████ ███ ███ ██ █████ ██████ █████ █ █████ ████████ ███ ██ ████ ████████ ██ ████ █ █████ ████████ ████ █ ████ █ ████ ██████ ███ ██████████ █████ █ ████ ████ █ ██ ███████ █████ ██ ██ █████ █ █████ ████████ ████ ██ ███████ ███████ █████ █████ ████ ███████ █████ ██ ████ █████ ██████. Even so, I have loved the franchise ever since.

If trying to read all that gives you a headache, imagine the headache that still pounds in my head trying to remember it and we can call it even.

Resurrecting My Dead Self

Staring back at the person I never was, I am jealous. Without realizing it, I’ve escaped the purity of that feeling: of finding something, resonating, and simply choosing to be curious, damn the consequences. Crumbling memory makes it even harder to get back into this state. I have a somewhat unique experience of being “born” an adult.

Adulthood means an essentially unlimited ability to pursue the things I like. My aesthetic sense is more developed than ever, but I still struggle to choose art based on what I like. I mistrust my ability to identify what is and isn’t worth my time. I tend to try to “hear things out” even when it is apparent my time is being deliberately wasted. The opinions of others often convince me into or out of things, further confusing my ability to self-select.

I talked previously about the oppressive burden of enduring other people’s thoughts. You open social media; you are told something you like is overrated. A fond recollection of a childhood favorite film revisited tells you it was never good; 45% on Rotten Tomatoes. Media piracy websites will feature prominent reviews, and star ratings aggregated from places like Metacritic—what the fuck is that about?

With free time being more limited than ever, there is an impulse to min-max. There have been moments where I have spent longer stretches researching a good time than actually having one. The Trails franchise, for instance, was one I put off for years because I operated from an oppressive point of view: I believed I could get something better, more polished, more refined, elsewhere, where a “mostly positive” was not enough.

It gets even worse when you must consider the politics of the things involved. I cannot begin to count the number of times I have been ecstatic for a new game release only to realize several of its prominent developers are scum of the earth. For my own sanity, I have avoided things seemingly developed in a lab for me, because the lead dev espoused a hateful ideology. Research becomes necessary and it is much harder to simply consider “the fun of the game” when such actors are publicly available and their words are a matter of record. Our purchases become signals to others about what we value, what we endorse, and so we endlessly submit ourselves to a panopticon of our own making.

Art has always been political. I’m not trying to assert there was some ideologically pure time where a person could just consume art without thought. Often, we imagine such a period, but it is just that: the product of imagination. Most people simply just had a time where they were sheltered from the political ramifications of the things they engaged with. I think we have a responsibility to others and ourselves to find beautiful things without giving up on what we believe in. There is a balance to be struck between cold logic and idealistic passions.

With all this in mind, I engaged in a thought experiment. I would attempt to revisit the mindset of this long dead person. I would play a selection of PlayStation 2 games, chosen entirely from the information I could glean from the box. I gave myself permission to drop whatever I felt like, and permission to be repulsed by what I found inside: The aesthetic need not be defended if the contents were vile.

I permitted no review scores, no research, and no gameplay footage. All I had, in some cases, was faint recollections of what others might have said or interest which came from a contextless fancy in the things associated with the game (soundtracks, keyart, ect.).

My Beautiful, Blue-Bottomed Disks

Bloodrayne

I’ll admit to being a bit on a mid-2000s vampire kick for this one to have fruited into anything. Bloodrayne’s box art was less enticing to me than █ ████████ █████ ██ █ ██████████ ██████ ██ ████ ███████████ ██████ █████████. Whatever effect of intelligence I may have completely crumbles in the face of a hot lady surrounded by dead bodies—I’ll admit to that being a me problem.

I have fond memories of ██ ███████ ██████ ██ ████ and being a passing vampire enjoyer, having an excuse to play a game predominantly about one seemed like a good enough time to me. Bloodrayne surprised me then, by being one of the games I played for the longest. A big part of that was the presentation; I am a sucker for any game which allows me to blast my way through a gothy, gravitas-filled world.

I was also quite taken with the gore in this game, as concerning as that sentiment might be for any psychologists present. Gore in Bloodrayne is fascinating because unlike many other games in the murdering genre, it lends itself a sense of permanency. Dismembered limbs, bloodstains, and corpses lay strewn about like the boomer shooters of old. By comparison, with the interest in increased visual fidelity and the need to regain system resources as quickly as possible, bodies in modern games often dematerialize as if the world’s most efficient black-bag service is following you around. I have played modern AAA shooters where the bullet holes disappear before the magazine is half empty, and here is Bloodrayne leaving corpses strewn around lobbies until I kindly choose to get on with the plot.

Compared to some others on this selection, I will likely play Bloodrayne to completion. The gameplay required little adjustment for someone spoiled on polished, modern control schemes. There was an even split in the game’s attention between showing me Rayne being cool and showing me her ass but, anthropologically speaking, it could have been much worse given the era it was produced. That said, I’m willing to do anything for a goth lady.

Evergrace

Of the games I chose, Evergrace was the one with the most prior baggage attached. Evergrace’s soundtrack by Kota Hoshino has ensured my productivity in writing about as much as having a keyboard. █ ████ ██████ ███ ████████ ██ ████ █ ██████ ██ ████ ██████ █ █████ ██ ███ ████ ██████ ███ ████ █████ █ █████ ████████ ████ ████████ █ ██████ ████ █████ I had not seen a second of the game, however, and the boxart itself had always intrigued me; it seemed, if not actually, spiritually in conversation with my beloved Devil May Cry. A white-haired anime swordsman sitting upon a rock and staring at an unseen point, carrying some emotional burden. What can I say, I have a type.

Considering FromSoftware’s current position as the Dark Souls factory, Evergrace was surreal. The control scheme was completely different from the one which has gradually crystallized into a soft necessity in action RPGs for nearly two decades. The ambience was consistently surreal and dreamlike in a way I haven’t experienced outside of indie games. And of course, it was great to finally hear my beloved soundtrack in its rightful place. That title screen experience was immaculate.

The gameplay is more interesting to talk about than to play, unfortunately. There is a combinatorial smattering of durability management, ability selection, and enemies being weak to certain types of damage which all persist even into later games, but it is far more crude here. I am not the most patient person in the world, but the cumbersome slowness which pervades every system, from combat to just getting around the place, is more aggravating than pensive. It reminds me of ██ ███████ ██ ██ █████████ █ █████ ████████ ████ █ ████ ███████ █████ ██ ██ █████ █████ ████ ████ ██ ████ ███ ██████ ██ ███████ ██ ██ █ ████ █ ████ Threads of Fate or Dewprism in Japan █████ ██████ ████ ██ █████ ██ █████████████ ███ ████ ██ █████ █ ████████ █████ ████ ██ █████████ █████ ███ ██ ██████ ██ ██████ ██ ██████.

Though I did not personally enjoy what the game was going for, the sense of aesthetic was wonderful. The sights and sounds on display really inspired me, and it was intriguing seeing the chrysalis of a beloved game studio before they become what would define them.

Shadow Hearts

I love Legend of Dragoon; it’s an imperfect game, but one I know was acquired in a similar fashion to the earlier anecdote. A small girl saw a game with a word similar to ‘dragon’ in the title and ███████ ██ ███ ████████ █ ██████ ████ █████. ██ ███ ███████████ ██ ██ ██ ███████ █ █████ █████████ ██ ██████ █████ ██████████ ██ ██████ ███. Shadow Hearts has been often recommended to me because of said appreciation. its timing-based combat being a major point of similarity. I never went out of my way to seek it out and as time passed it was always in a “someday” category.

Now fully immersed in this experiment and only burdened with hearsay, I decided to give it a try. Immediately the box art presents an interesting aesthetic and it always makes me laugh to see a damsel in distress psychically menaced by the world’s most normal looking man.

Shadow Hearts, in the first hour or so, disappointed me. It wasn’t the gameplay or aesthetics which bothered me, it was the writing. I don’t know how many games would exist in this category, but Shadow Hearts earns a shiny “homophobic caricature in the first hour” sticker. This was the year 2001 we’re talking about; there have certainly been bigger label bad influences to take umbrage with, but that on top of the protagonist’s flippant desire to sexually assault the woman he’s travelling with made me immediately feel the need for a shower.

All that considered, my sense of aesthetic did not let me down. There is an interesting world here, there are interesting points raised. The negative first impression did not diminish my desire to see the story further, simply because of the strength of the game’s mechanics and the interest I had in the setting. The promise of a dark world is still here, even if it is a little greasier than I would like.

Dark Cloud 2

Dark Cloud 2 was interesting because I was not intrigued by its cover but by the back of the box. The in-game screenshots displayed an art style I now see frequently replicated in the modern day. Cel shading is now common, but I still felt compelled by what the game was showing me. Within moments, it captivated me with its first areas. I ██████ ███ █████ ████ ████ █ ███ ████████ █ █████ ████ ███ █ ████ █████ ███ █ ████ ██ ████ ██ █████ ██ ████ ██ █████ ██████ █ █████ ███████ ███ ███ ██ ██ ███ ████████ ███.

I’ve always been a sucker for an RPG town. Show me a space which allows me to linger and feel a sense of time and place, and I will love it no matter how mediocre your game is. The first town of Dark Cloud 2 being a combination clown zoo and steampunk menagerie was so interesting that I felt compelled to continue playing just to see what else the game had in store.

The absolute breadth of the voice acting talent on display here was incredible. Paul Eiding, Michael Bell, Cam Clarke, Mark Hamill, and Scott Menville all made these fun and strange characters come to life. It was so stacked a cast I felt compelled part way through my first play session to double-check what I was hearing; a moment of offense at the fact that none of these professionals are apparently credited in the game.

The first forays into the gameplay loop of Dark Cloud 2 show an interesting gamut of interlocking systems so diverse that it made my head spin. You have dungeon crawling, weapon growth management, invention photography, mech building, world building; each tightly clustered within the first 2 hours. It was so much variety that I genuinely forgot for a few moments the first dungeon they put me in was a sewer.

Dungeon crawling has never been my first choice for a core gameplay loop. I first learned to hate dungeons when █ █████ ████████ ██ █████ ██ ████ ████ ██ ████. It takes a lot of convincing for a big dungeon central premise to hook me. Dark Cloud 2, in the time I played, couched the need to enter the dungeon in human necessity. The protagonist needs to leave the city and can only do it through a sewer. This is naturally because of the evil clowns extorting the local politicians—just like real life.

I’m not certain if I will play to the end, but I am more than curious enough to see where the story is going. Dungeon crawling will always be a less-than-ideal conduit for my personal investment but I’m willing to see it out, which is more than I can say for some other games in the genre.

Living Dead Girl

After finishing my little experiment, I had a long period of reflection.

I thought about the girl I once shared this body with and wondered if I did her justice. Passion is something I have in large quantities, but it’s often the part of myself I trust the least. Learning to trust my sense of aesthetics was freeing, in a way. I didn’t need to burden myself with the many details I would often find floating around my mind. Length, whether I would engage with the microsystems of the game, if I can justify whatever price the game is presently going for, what my clique of friends have come to believe.

In a world where games have become synonymous with the commercialism that constructs them, it’s easy to submit to the desire to research. It’s easier than ever to find several thousand games with which to indulge in; we can’t just settle on “middling.” At least, so we tell ourselves. If one spends a dozen hours finding the exact, optimal game you are desiring at the moment, you won’t have wasted any time! Except all the time you spent researching instead of doing. I don’t mean to imply a person can’t enjoy researching games for fun, but I, myself, have felt the dissatisfaction of trying to find something ideal, and ending up not doing anything with my time.

All the same, a sense of emptiness pervades me from doing this. The story at the beginning was not just a somber anecdote; I showed you what memory is like for me, but it was also an attempt to convey something I feel I’ve lost. As time has inevitably gotten away from me, I think often about the experiences other people have and feel jealous. Intellectualization has rarely been helpful for me to express the parts of myself I hold dear; yet, trying to get in touch with parts suppressed—or in truth never existed much to begin with—still requires conscious effort.

Nostalgia and I have never gotten along. When people talk about the experience of loving something, potentially for what they feel are childish, or stupid reasons, I feel pangs of envy. I have said I am immune to the cloying, choking fingers of the past because my history is so foreshortened; I think today, I realize it isn’t true. The nostalgic recollections of others compelled me to behave in this way in a desperate attempt to capture something I cannot hold.

No matter how hard I try, I can never be this backspaced person. I am her living dead recollections reincarnated as an echo. She deserves peace and she deserves it from me.

This experience has not been without value. I can appreciate the newly built trust in my sense of aesthetic, even if my reason for seeking it is unattainable. Research will not be completely abandoned, but I will permit myself more forays into the unknown. This kind of thing needs to exist on a spectrum: intellectualization and passion.

Opening myself up to novel experiences has always been worthwhile. It hasn’t always shown me some hidden version of gaming perfectly tailored for me, but it has given me more tools to hone my critical faculty. More so, I also think giving myself a lens to find things aesthetically appealing while also being bad gives me the most important thing an artist can have—spite. The times I’ve seen something beautiful, only to see it not executed in an appealing way, gives me an infinite amount of energy to construct something from its pieces.

Give yourself permission to love something imperfect. Find the things which speak to you, and if they don’t exist, you can make them. At any point, you can become the person you most need yourself to be. Video games might be a silly hobby meant for people who enjoy the tactility of virtual experiences interfacing with mortal flesh, but I think such things are best enjoyed when you’re the one holding the controller. Give yourself permission to love something only you can love.

✶✶✶

It has been one year since I joined Gamesline. Even when it has made me curse or miss out on sleep as I try to stick to my self-imposed deadlines, I wouldn’t trade it. I’m glad I got to be here.

Thank you for reading.

The post The Video Store in My Mind appeared first on Gamesline.

It’s a full house again this week as John, Lily, Crystal, and Nikolas sit down to talk about the Nintendo Direct and the games they’ve been playing. John’s been playing Resident Evil 4 Remake, Marathon, Boltgun, and the Parasite Mutant demo. Lily’s been stuck in PS2 purgatory with Bloodrayne, Shadow Hearts, Mercenaries, Dark Cloud 2, and Evergrace. She’s also been playing Alabaster Dawn‘s early access version and Sekitori. Crystal is in Final Fantasy hell with Final Fantasy XII and watching Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children while Nikolas dug into Etrian Odyssey.

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on social media @gamesline.net, John, Lily, Crystal, and Nikolas

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and tell a friend about the show!

If you want to send in questions, send them to our email podcast@gamesline.net!

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Edited by Lorelai

The post The Gamesline Podcast Episode 94: Rayman’s Giant Hog appeared first on Gamesline.

There hasn’t been much innovation in the format of these tactile interactions in quite some time. The Wii came out twenty years ago and what innovations have been made in the realm of VR haven’t quite filled living rooms in the same way the white monolith did. The Steam Controller managed to attract my attention because, regardless of how small, it has attempted to recapture a feeling of innovation.

I am pretty particular about controllers and interfaces at the end of the day. I love a well-lubricated machine honed down into something hyperspecific and intended for one use. I’m a freak who predominantly writes with fountain pens, types on mechanical keyboards, and uses a DAP—a digital audio player—to contain my music. I love a mechanical switch.

This comes, without going into too much detail, from a chronic condition which heavily limits the amount of sensation coming from my hands and arms. Touch screens and non-tactile inputs are my enemy. So, yes, me ruining your Discord call with mechanical clicking noises is due to a very sensitive medical condition. This, in addition to my chronic baby hands disease, means I care a lot about the ergonomics of my interfacing technology.

Such interfacing has been structurally homogenized over the years as games have less and less incentive to be truly exclusive to one platform. Nintendo, Sony, and the other one have found a shape that works and stuck with it; you don’t truly get a ball controller to play Half-Life 2 and Portal with that vibrates and throws all your shit off your desk anymore.

So, this new contender, back again from Valve’s prior experiment in 2015, is having another hack at it. How’d they do?

Others Have Prevented me from Calling It the Puck

Just about everything with the Steam controller at first blush was pleasant, down to opening its minimalistic packaging. A single cardboard box contained within another cardboard box and a pull tab was all that kept me from my new plastic son. Its contents: a cable, a manual, and the charger/dongle (my partner requires me to type chongle at least once in this review, you are welcome, it is now your turn to make dinner.)

Holding it in my hands, I could appreciate the subtle intricacies of its curves, weight, and shape. A single twirl of both of its joysticks told me all I needed to know: this controller feels pretty good. It lacked its predecessor’s airy weightlessness and disconcertion that it could be twisted in half by a sufficiently determined newborn. This impression held water after the immediate four hour breaking-in period, subsequent, equal length breaking-in periods, and a Twitch stream; anything to procrastinate from actually writing about it.

After a brief updating period for both the controller and the chongle (two dinners, keep up), I finally got to the software side of things. The sheer number of windows, menus, submenus, could kill the elderly; but I think this is a good thing. In the case of electronics with so much modularity, having the ability to actually get in deep and play with everything really makes the controller what it is—a tool to create a futzer’s paradise.

Playing through Blood, a classic boomer shooter, was eye opening. Seeing the detail with which the community offered control solutions for a game never intended to handle this way was amazing. Input layers for maps, rotating sub menus designed to sort through the myriad weapon choices of a classic FPS, and quick-save and quick-load were all bound with enough intuitiveness to easily grasp in less than a level or two.

With so many optional buttons—some not even apparent if you count the grip sensor as an input—you can make a controller the weight of a plush toy into a helicopter cockpit. It isn’t technically praise owed to the Steam controller in particular, as you can utilize the various bits of customizability inherent to Steam itself on any controller, but the way it integrates and interacts with such modability immediately makes you feel like you can tailor the play experience to whatever you want.

The tiny innovation the controller has, in the form of the twin touchpads, makes for an immediate interest point. The haptic purr of the pads feels pleasant and, once the sensitivity is properly dialed, shockingly accurate. From a person who could pen several strongly worded letters to the creator of the laptop trackpad, I am just as shocked to be saying it. Both on stream and on my own, navigating around games typically associated with mouse and keyboard control never stopped feeling strangely novel. I am probably never going to be a professional 4X or RTS player on them, but it made the games feel immediately more comfortable and approachable.

Ultimately, the ergonomics of simply holding the controller are pleasant. My particular issues aside, I didn’t ever feel fatigued or like the controller was anything other than lovely to use. A small detail I felt pleasantly about was the detailed haptic vibrations; once tuned correctly, I could feel them appropriately, something I often feel left out on with games, as silly as it sounds. The amount of times I’ve put down a controller during an important scene, only to scare the absolute piss out of myself upon realizing it was vibrating the whole time, is too many to name. It’s a minute detail for most, but it’s nice to be included.

Overall the controller is great, and offers new ways to engage with games I previously thought I had “solved.”

Where I feel the problems start are things entirely independent of the controller. Namely, Steam itself. Without the connection to Steam, the controller is basically useless. Steam Support suggests adding any non-Steam game to Steam as a means to ameliorate this problem.

Now, it may seem petty, stupid, insipid, etc, to mention that a controller called the Steam controller requires Steam to function, but the fact that it is practically a brick while not working through their frontend sticks in my craw. The PC game space is cross-pollinated by many game front ends and avenues for playing games. The limitation of these means, even if rectified with a minute of effort, feels wrong. I’m sure if the controller has any actual staying power, someone, someday, will mod in general use; for now however, it makes me uncomfortable.

My biggest problem with the Steam controller admittedly comes from a personal place—the actual price. At $100, it is far from the most inexpensive controller on the market. $100, to me, is a large amount of money; that’s nearly 50 asset-flip hentai games! That’s too many hentai games for anyone to own.

Economics, Plastic Baubles, and Joy

Once again, I risk being a little foolish, standing on a soap box to say something that has bothered me since acquiring this lump of plastic and circuitry. When the Steam controller’s price was made public, my immediate gut reaction was that it was simply too much to spend on something like this, on me. There are so many other things $100 could go to. My personal guilt complexes about receiving any amount of money aside, there are reasons I bring this up.

I generally avoid talking about pricing or any kind of economic value in my reviews. I don’t like games being reduced from the art I see them as to something I need to justify; the same way I need to justify a fourth gas station energy drink run in a single week. A controller is not necessarily immune, despite the different kind of art that goes into crafting it. I am sometimes struck with awe: any given object on my desk is the product of thousands of people’s efforts to deliver me a piece of plastic that I am annoyed by owning.

I am not a particularly insightful voice here. I cannot tell you why the Steam controller is $100. I am not a R&D specialist, logistics specialist, or even single-celled businessmen determining what the ideal bottom line for a product is. What amounts to a “fair” amount of compensation for such a product is not something I feel comfortable stating. I do not know how many sleepless nights and arguments went into making this controller.

I don’t imagine that pricing is congruent with quality, in truth. Many many material factors construct a reality where basically everyone I know has experienced some kind of stick drift or catastrophic failure of an integral piece of technology; I can only tell you that they happen, and no price point has ever seemed to stop it from happening.

I can spend $20, $100, $300 on a desk chair and I will still find myself collapsed on the ground wondering why my chair decided the middle of Marathon’s Cryo Archive was a good time to explode into Ikea shrapnel(småbitar, if you prefer). The price of what constitutes a good, well-made product always seems to be approaching a vanishing horizon.

“Oh, $300 isn’t what a desk chair costs; at minimum you need to spend around $1500, get like a Herman Miller or something.” It seems like hyperbole, but it’s a repeated sentiment with a changing price point and a changing noun depending on the particular hobby or need; yet it always seems to be far more expensive than one would prefer to pay. Ultimately, it is a willingness to pay the price point which determines what the price point shall be. I am one of the rubes who will.

But then, here I am, too, on the opposite side of the spectrum. My old controller, the GameSir Tegenaria Lite, casts gloomy stares upon my new acquisition. It is grey, sturdy, and cost me $12. It has comfortable sticks, chunky triggers, and reminds me of my beloved Playstation 1. I plug it into my computer, and it controls games. I love it.

For the low price of $12, you can have 80 percent of the Steam controller’s features. If you are so inclined, you can do the exact same amount of fiddling and futzing in Steam’s menus and create an elaborate chain of controller commands, making a twelve to fifteen button controller the equivalent to a Steel Battalion command console.

The adage “you get what you pay for” feels less true in matters such as this. I have had $600 pieces of tech explode upon coming free of their packaging; a $5 nameless knock-off bauble has lasted me nearly a decade. I am unsure if a $100 controller is worth it, no matter how nice, attractive, and scream-filled it is.

The key thrust of my argument here is not that the Steam controller is somehow a moral problem, an economic problem, or even a problem most people should even care about; my consideration is personal. How much controller do you actually need? Is any new gadgetry enough to fill a hole of materialistic deficiency? Did I get exactly $100 worth of joy out of this new piece of plastic obscuring yet more surface area on my desk? I think your answers will determine if the controller is right for you.

So, in the attempt to reassert this is a review and not yet another anti-capitalistic spiel: is the Steam controller worth your money? It depends on your needs and use cases, as many things are!

Will it change the face of gaming as we know it and take us to a new golden age of controller interfaces yet unheard? Probably not, but that gyro is pretty neat.

Should I buy it from a scalper for $200 not including shipping and handling? You should absolutely never do this, for this controller or any item.

Should I buy approximately 50 hentai games on Steam? Sister, you are the master of your own destiny.

The post Holding Hands with Plastic — Steam Controller Review appeared first on Gamesline.

This was streamed live on our Twitch at http://twitch.tv/gameslinetv! Go follow and subscribe to it so you get notified of future streams!

The post Lily Tests the Steam Controller! appeared first on Gamesline.

Yup, it’s a Girls Night. Lorelai and Lily team up to tackle the pod this week with to talk People of Note, Dawntrail, Marathon, Nioh 2, Knights of the Old Republic, and Final Fantasy XIV Fanfest speculation. On account of it didn’t happen yet when this was recorded. But it did happen now that it was posted. Let’s have smun with it.

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on social media @gamesline.net, Lorelai at judgementscythe.bsky.social, and Lilith at gallowlessdatura.bsky.social.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and tell a friend about the show!

If you want to send in questions, send them to our email podcast@gamesline.net!

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Edited by Scott B

The post The Gamesline Podcast Episode 88: Marsupalami Hoobaventure appeared first on Gamesline.

Out of the many FPS released in the past decade, Cruelty Squad is the game which had the most impact on me. It’s made me ponder my own writing, my relationship with the genre, and my personal relationship with aesthetics and what they say about the art you make. It is also just a rollicking good time. Naturally, this is high praise coming from someone such as myself who spends a lot of time being drafted into first person shooter engagements at the behest of numerous people. I could wax poetic but, in this instance, I think I will simply show you.

This is what an early run of Cruelty Squad—a 2021 first-person shooter and organ commerce simulator made by Consumer Softproducts—might look like.

And here is what a late game playthrough of the same level looks like.

Understandably, your first reaction to those two clips will likely be “what the fuck?”, but I assure you I will endeavor to unravel the tangled ball of nonsense I just plopped in front of you. Cruelty Squad is one of my favorite games, dominating my thoughts and resonating with my own anxieties and pessimism surrounding the world I occupy.

I will abstain from indulging in my first instinct, which would be to prattle on about the natural beauty and rhythm of the gameplay mechanics. Instead, I will engage with what an immediate first impression would be, and the reactionary negative response therein. So, in my urge to give the best possible impression of this game which has captured my heart, I have an obligation to disabuse some notions.

Let’s talk about why Cruelty Squad looks like that.

Visions of a Puke-Choked World

Immediate responses to Cruelty Squad’s aesthetic sensibility can be described as “divisive.” The presentation of Cruelty Squad, from its menus to the first combats, feels like an audio-visual attack. Many responses to the game ultimately culminate in saying the game is good despite what it looks like, or reveling in its appearance as a sort of in-joke—a game which refuses those not capable of seeing past its surface level. I don’t particularly identify with either of these ideologies. The aesthetics are not aiming for a refined peer-reviewed art style or sound. It can be summed up in a single word: ugly. Yet, this is not the condemnation it sounds like; intention is the difference.

My enjoyment of the putridity of the presentation of Cruelty Squad feels like the manifestation of a contention within myself. I enjoy dark, frightening, abrasive things. Often, this results in interrogation from other people.

“What is there to be gained from enjoying something like this?”

“Why do you do this to yourself?”

Then, from there, it becomes assertions.

“You are lying if you say you enjoy something like this.”

“You only enjoy this for attention; it isn’t possible to enjoy something like this.”

All comes to a spoken or unspoken conclusion.

“There is something wrong with you for liking art like this.”

People who appreciate such art often spend many dozens of words publicly performing self-awareness; a ritual of showing they too are aware of the grisly, unsettling, or unsightly nature of the media they partake of. Perhaps it isn’t immediately inaccurate: as someone who dumps all her music into one gigantic “liked songs” granfalloon, shuffling from rebarbative death metal to insensate baby music for evil gay people, there are probably more than a few things wrong with me.

Despite saying that, I refuse to deliver an insult upon an art style I genuinely find compelling just to have the appearance of being “in on the joke.” Yes, admittedly, there is an enjoyable teenage-boy-showing-a-classmate-a-particularly-gross-bug factor to repulsing others with art you enjoy. Just so often though, it is isolating. Around the third time someone asked me if my mental state was okay upon streaming this game publicly, I stopped being amused and started thinking those people were incurious at best, and fucking dumb at worst.

No matter how many times I’ve written and rewritten this passage, some level of acrimoniousness creeps into my words. The college professor who lives in my mind is presently shaking their head and reminding me that insults to the audience are generally not convincing; and they’re right, I know that. I have no obligation to defend this game from other people because of the strength of my own convictions—yet I seem to over and over. Even within the words of this supposed “review” I find myself treading the same path I walked in my review of Beyond Citadel and even my more personal works. But such defensiveness feels necessary, months have passed and I still see thumbnails, articles, reviews, all asserting derangement from the art I love. Once more I feel compelled to articulate what seems obvious to me: an inability to understand art does not make it incorrect, “psychotic,” or the spontaneous generation of an intoxicated artist.

Then, I won’t pretend and I will simply say, now many paragraphs in, Cruelty Squad’s aesthetic is both hideous and flawless. Art has no obligation to show you only beautiful things, and the world of Cruelty Squad with its unchecked capitalistic transactions and violence is far from beautiful. Contending with a stock market which runs on human organs as easily as it runs on business acquisitions would not work if the world looked like Cyberpunk 2077. Cruelty Squad’s world is adorned in noisome beiges, nightmare gradients wielding the word PUNISHMENT like a sword; the mall of Cruelty Squad is just as likely to have a zombie-infested meat crypt as a Gamestop containing no games and only selling funkopops.

The music is just as dissonant and frictive as the visuals yet enjoyable enough that I’ve carried it out of the game, much to the chagrin of anyone in proximity to me and an aux cable. The tracks are noisy, unpleasant, and immaculate, from the pulse-pounding “Combat Cocktail” to the menacing yet serene “Divinity of the Office”.

In all the aesthetic presentation of Cruelty Squad there is violence. The rejections of normalcy, of representation of life turned off kilter, is a reconstruction of what is; You are then forced to see what you took for granted from a new perspective. Contained within are sights which I cannot claim to have seen anywhere else. Novelty can be powerful—I have certainly never seen a swamp-themed casino run by a screen contorting cognitohazard—but I also think there is a loudness to the way it rejects normalcy. Some aesthetics, like that of extreme horror, are loud as to be unignorable. The aesthetics of satanic metal are loud; the aesthetics of Cruelty Squad are loud; and so too are the aesthetics of violence.

Seizing the Iron with Your Own Hands

Violence is Cruelty Squad but not in the sense one would traditionally expect of a first-person shooter. Violence pervades every system, the world building, and the architecture of the story itself. The first cutscene prior to picking a mission consists of your protagonist dispassionately watching a mass shooting outside their apartment window before being headhunted into some violence of their own—a gig economy of assassination. 

The repulsiveness of the aesthetics immediately becomes apparent within the mechanics themselves. Instead of the traditional push-button reload, a staple of the FPS for decades, you are asked to hold down the right mouse button and sharply pull the mouse backward and then back up again. This realization and the subsequent clumsiness will likely result in your first death; after which the game will politely inform you that you are a flesh automaton animated by neurotransmitters. You resurrect from the inconvenience of death at a flat rate and then go at it again.

All missions follow the same structure: you have a target—wallhackingly displayed at all times—which you must murder to progress. Most of the time, they aren’t even aggressive; you can strike up a friendly chat about their world views and then discharge a firearm into their head which sounds like it was remixed by Merzbow. 

Hitman, this is not. There is no particular reward for precision, no complaints for misapplicated bullets. Nameless victims get in your way and the only real impact on gameplay is a minor annoyance, bodies blocking bullets meant for more relevant targets. Often this results in their meaty and hyperbolic explosions into viscera, bone, and organs—a monetary windfall to be sold on the stock market.

This is what I alluded to before. Violence is Cruelty Squad in ways beyond the dispensation of firearms. The business of killing is a transaction and so too is the aftermath: to kill someone is to gain the net worth of their organs, and the rest is someone else’s concern. The stock market can be opened, traded on, and manipulated in real time. One can intentionally manipulate the market by watching the targets line up with businesses in game, then flooding the stocks once they react to your murders. One mission, requiring you to kill a political figure, causes the stock market to rapidly inflate with no upper bound. Leaving the game on while this occurs nets you an essentially infinite amount of money and renders the game’s monetary progression meaningless. Wealthy players can purchase everything they want, acquire all resources, and then never need to think of money as anything other than a high score.  

This is both exploit and commentary. The paltry death-inflicted sums of $500 mean nothing when you can generate infinite wealth from someone’s spinal cord. The only real punishment from death is in the form of irritation from your handler; they turn you into some kind of flesh-eating slime beast which lowers your difficulty setting. The cheapness of resurrection, and of life, is also the canonical explanation for mission replayability: the wealthy resurrect and your duty is to cause them to suffer the repeatable inconvenience of death.

Much like the real world, the rich live sheltered lives; they build themselves in cocoons of lavish, unimaginable wealth, sheltered away from the suffering of lesser people. Death, too, is rendered meaningless in the infinite avarice of the high wealth individual.

Meat Grinder God

The story of Cruelty Squad is completely unobtrusive if you allow it to be. On a mission-to-mission basis, you are given a context-establishing text crawl. The missions themselves often provide context-building dialogue either from targets or random NPCs wandering around the location. Generally however, the plot, the reason for your actions, is intentionally obscured and distorted, whether it be through multiple layers of intentional deception or just the way people talk in this universe.

This is not an obstruction to the actual gameplay in any way. You can plunge deep into the gore of Cruelty Squad and not once pay a single thought to the why of it all. With the previously established target-seeking wallhacks you have, a person uninvested can ultimately play through the entire game gathering nothing but the essentials and still see an ending. You can speedrun death until it is as transactional as the stock market ticking away in the background. 

Cruelty Squad is a game where its mechanics tell the story. The mechanics tell you of a world where someone can endlessly resurrect, have a menagerie of firearms and organ-replacing biomods, and murder people in a way which only meaningfully affects stock prices; this is storytelling of a variety where nobody needs to explain how the world works. What lore messages there are tell you of weapons meant to cope with this reality, firearms which scramble DNA to make resurrection harder or other technologies. You live in this world and shoulder the discomfort as a person not made for it; when you see a cruise ship powered by engines made of flesh or a rich neighborhood configured in the shape of a pentagram, it is the player who must understand, not the character.  

That isn’t to say there isn’t a story to dissect. The endings in particular have intrigued me since I 100%’d the game for the first time. There are three; each ending is a response to the world at large. The first one is the most immediately obvious: you simply take the easiest path, free, liberated from context and just following orders. Walk ever forward on the leash your handler tugs, pull your triggers, and then go home. Second, is the hateful path: climb this pile of undying bodies, stand atop it, and feel pride in yourself for being one of the few who makes it. There are thousands beneath you, but this is beyond your concern: you won the game, the economy is yours. Last, you can take the hard path, doing what nobody else can. Where many others roll down this endless hill, you stand up and end it. You break the system nobody thought was breakable. Like a god, you make a new world and everyone else is forced to live in it; through divine idiocy, you bend the world to your individualistic whims.

Thank goodness; finally, after all this time, the first nonpolitical video game.

This is a breathtakingly stupid video game if allowed to be. It is exactly the blind violence aging parents of numerous generations have declared video games to be. Violence for entertainment, pointless and therefore—to many—harmless. This is a viciously cynical video game if allowed to be. A nihilistic story where the world is without death, endlessly wasting its time on banal amusements to no end. A story where nothing matters; make the number go up because skinner boxes have replaced actual value and the stock market ticker is the only thing still moving. In the world of Cruelty Squad, Death, like a transaction, is value. A deathless world is one where life becomes meaningless, an expectation, forever for the sake of forever. Thus, I can find hope in a bleak message. To restore death is to give life weight and have the finite life mean something.  

Gutter Cruiser

I have been critical of the genre of cyberpunk for a long time. Once something with teeth, a prophetic critique of the terror of untamed capital, now just empty aesthetic. Neon tubes, rain on city streets, the distant sounds of firearms popping, and corporations which rule everything. This is no longer fantasy, or even a prediction of the future—it is just reality.

I was shocked by Cruelty Squad’s ascendance of the Cyberpunk aesthetic. It made a world I would absolutely on no level want to live in, yet I must acknowledge its similarities to our own. It eschews paths which would have made for an easier story to tell, an easier pill to swallow. The mechanics are intentionally rough, the story opaque. Its aesthetics are abrasive and avoid the comprehensibility of much more “put-together” games.

I initially played Cruelty Squad at a time when the capitalistic pressures of the world were utterly suffocating me. Healthcare and its bureaucracy were grinding me to nothing while I watched people with more net worth than I can ever dream of pay to avoid the lethality of the world. The bodies piled in the streets, and I found this game, harshly cynical and putridly honest; it resonated. When I first saw the trailer, with its aggressive grinding music and despair-inducing messages, I felt something. It was not positive, nor negative, just a fragment of my soul echoing. Just then, the trailer gave a message, like it was just for me.

“Does this even make you feel something?”

I can answer now, in full honesty, that it does.

I felt the crushing despair of capitalistic grinding teeth. I felt the hollow joys of a power fantasy: perhaps if there are a thousand evil people with guns, one good person with a gun could solve some problems; the same delusion which has ruled American media for centuries. I felt a quaking shadow of a future where one can choose to accept falling down the mountainside, letting the machinations of others define your life trajectory. And I have felt Cruelty Squad.  

The post An Incision Tracing the Stock Market Curve — Cruelty Squad Review appeared first on Gamesline.

After a brief stop, the Gamesline Podcast returns as John, Lily, Lorelai, and Rose sit down to talk about what they’ve been playing. John’s been big into RetroAchievements with games like Community Pom, Hatsune Miku Bomb Squad, and Azure Dreams while also digging deep into Pokopia, Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, and the new Umamusume scenario. Lorelai’s also been in that one when she’s not playing Monster Hunter Stories 3 or Nioh 3. Rose has been digging into Vital Shell, Resident Evil 9, and Crimson Desert when she’s not Playing Marathon with Lily whose been getting up to shenanigans in the Final Fantasy XIV Occult Crescent and Trails to Azure.

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on social media @gamesline.net, John, Rose, Lilith, and Lorelai.

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Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Edited and Produced by Lorelai

The post The Gamesline Podcast Episode 85: The Tale of Kliff McDuff appeared first on Gamesline.