We Literally Live in a Society

CW: Transphobia, Death

...And Justice for All (1979) begins with a black, trans-coded character, named Ralph Agee, being escorted into a holding cell block at the local police station wherein she is subjected to all manners of humiliating and degrading practices.

The cops force Ralph to strip naked right in front of a cheering crowd of inmates, who stand a few centimetres away from where she is, the jail bars being the only thing keeping them at bay. The entire scene is deliberately framed as horribly dehumanizing.

I Played Every "BioShock" Game in One Month, And I Must Scream!

On January 2nd 2023, I made the sporadic, partially ill-begotten decision to buy all three BioShock videogames. Up to that point, I had never experienced these titles directly save only through cultural osmosis, the occasional meme and, naturally, The Discourse!

I would spend the following lunar cycle playing them, writing down my thoughts and posting them on Twitter dot com. Today, after enough time passed for my heightened feelings to reset, I have collected those floating brain bubbles and transliterated them into some manner of structured essay for your reading pleasure - or utter lack thereof.

Did I have anything meaningful to add to the conversation on one of the most dissected and dissertated franchises in the history of the art form? You may be the judge of that.

It begins.

Brok the InvestiGator - Embracing the Flaws of Unrestrained Artistic Expression

I wish to express my ponderance over Brok the InvestiGator, a truly wondrous videoludic experience. A many-faced entity upon which I cannot stop gawking in bewilderment.

This reptilian bonanza is the second game developed by French Auteur Fabrice 'COWCAT' Breton after Demetrios: The Big Cynical Adventure. On paper, it's about a croco-gator (actual species unknown) who's an investigator, as the title suggests. He solves mysteries, beats up the bad guys, makes a few wisecracks and all that jazz. He's got a nerdy sidekick, a teenage son and a dark past. You would be forgiven to marinate in the false belief that anything about such a vague premise would imply any level of conventionality... but do not be fooled! Beyond its approachable yet unassuming Disney Afternoon aesthetics lies a much deeper truth.

This is Not a Review of "In Stars and Time"

Let us set the stage.

An entity known as The King has cast a horrible curse upon the land, freezing people in time. It’s up to the Chosen One and her friends to save the day. After a long journey, the party arrives at the final town right before the final battle with the final boss. He awaits the heroes at the final castle which was once the house of worship to Change Themselves.

Master Recs: The "N64" Trilogy

• Pseudoregalia

Let us muse over a very small, three-dimensional Metroidvania game stylistically fashioned after the Nintendo 64 era of graphical fidelity. It stars a deliciously polygonal rabbit-y, goat-y, cat-like girl.

Now, I am playing this on the fabled Steam Deck. It runs and controls smoothly on the platform but you might require to fiddle with the video settings as the default configuration is slightly blurry due to a very specific and fascinating reason.
It turns out Pseudoregalia vaunts a certain level of depth in its technical customization, one that's surprisingly fun to manipulate. There's an option to toggle on or off a retro graphical scale and character movement rate, which graciously emulate the old school console experience. You can also manually reduce or augment the maximum framerate for the whole game. You could theoretically play something that looks like a 30 fps 3D Platformer from 1997 or the most HD upscaled version thereof at 144 fps, or everything in between! The default, blurry configuration comes as a result of the aforementioned retro scaling clashing with the 4K resolution in full screen mode.
This is the first and last time in recorded human history that I will ever be this enamoured with "specs talk."

The point is, we have a darling gem with a cultivated aesthetic, a good level of polish: it will look "right" regardless of your favoured settings. I'm impressed by the extra layer of work placed in the subtle use of limited framerates for the character's movement.
Pseudoregalia captures the idea, the abstract concept and low-poly charm of a N64 title with a gameplay that recalls your memory of it, rather than the unwieldy reality. I say this as someone who doesn't have nostalgia for early 3D graphics: the game makes them look spiffy.
I shall be honest, this is normally not the sort of title I would enjoy playing, as precise platforming and traversal puzzles are my nemesis. I mentioned afore the level of polish, which is generally consistent, but some of the movement upgrades you get (such as the jump/wall kick) can be rather finicky to master. In that sense, be wary that the game does not openly provide you with tutorials for the moves that require more finesse, choosing instead to hide an additional set of instructions in the inventory descriptions. It's "old school", you see.
Older versions were bereft of maps thus making exploration a burden for those like me who are directionally challenged - both in games and in real life.
Regardless, I kept getting drawn by its world, its somber atmosphere, its tight gameplay and especially its protagonist, Sybil.

An appealing design for your avatars goes a long way in ensuring an emotional connection to them and Sybil just so happens to have one of the most striking and instantly recognizable appearances I can fathom. It's a pleasure to look at her go! Furthermore, I would posit that she has a lot in common with my precious videogame fluffy boy, Klonoa - and I do I mean, a lot. I will not elaborate. If you get it, you get it.
In conclusion, Pseudoregalia is an impressively put together jam. It's easy to pick up yet punishing to handle, it's fun and fascinating in spite of its more irritating aspects. The best overall critique I can give it is that it made me want to keep trying, and trying, and trying, until I eventually became good enough to complete it several times and even beat the insanely hard Time Attacks.
In short: game is good. Play it.

The Familiar Yet Unfamiliar Horror of The "Milk" Games

 

CONTENT WARNING: Mental Illness, Trauma

This is Milk Inside a Bag of Milk Inside a Bag Milk... and its sequel, Milk Outside a Bag of Milk Outside a Bag of Milk... and the sound of an electrical short-circuit you're hearing right now is my anxiety sensors flaring off uncontrollably.

A Non-Committal, Short Review of the "Barbie" Film

 

After many tribulations, I finally managed to watch the Barbie film, in an arena with annexed bar, atop a small hill, above the bustling of a small lake town. It's probably the second best environment for the showing right after a loudly coloured vacation villa. Life in Plastic is Fantastic and all that.