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  This post contains spoilers. I once read that knowing spoilers going in makes experiencing a work of fiction more enjoyable. I think that’s bullshit.    The first time you experience something should be marked by unknowing, by eagerness and anticipation and uncertainty. Directors, writers and designers plan around this - not always in the best or most enjoyable ways, but then everyone's a critic. I don’t think we should be spoiling things for ourselves. In fact, I'd say that leans in to the predigested, preapproved way many of us consume media, both fictional and non-fictional. It’s unrewarding and even unhealthy at times. But I've spoiled things for myself a lot.   When I was younger, I read a lot of TVTropes. Most classics, hell, most media beyond children's books, came to me predigested. Almost every story that I encounter nowadays comes to me as a known quantity, not through deliberate exposure but rather osmosis. Rare is the time I choose to exper...

We’re basically done with the week or two of not-E3 that we’ve been given this year. Announcements have sputtered out of showcases, showcases that don’t have the same draw for me as they used to. Part of that is getting older, having less time to waste and less tolerance for marketing. But most of my disillusionment is in the form that marketing takes. Most games at this year’s showcases were shown off with short trailers, split between CGI and “in-engine” cutscenes. If we’re lucky, there’s a bit of highly disguised “gameplay” in them. The experience is mind-numbing in totality. Unlike movie trailers, these can’t convey a full sense of the product. Part of that is on the marketing departments. These trailers just aren’t that great at building excitement. But it’s also due to the nature of the medium. There’s so much more work you need to do to define a game. Most films are audiovisual experiences in the one to three hour range. Games have so much more variance; in length, in scope, in ...

GRID Legends touts a nemesis system (unfortunately no relation to Shadow of Mordor ’s), one which feels like a massive missed opportunity. When you annoy other drivers too much, they become rivals… and that’s about all that happens. As far as I could tell, these organic “rivalries” never lasted beyond a single event. They only developed from contact, not any less aggressive transgression. There was little I could do to influence the system. When I hit them they got mad. When they were mad they hit me back. Not much else to it. If this was more similar to the ongoing Nemesis system exploited by Talion and Celebrimbor, there would be something here, a real sense of engagement with these other drivers. As superficial as it was, it left me focussed on its empty promise. I don’t know why this concept was in the game - certainly not so prominently - if all they really do is detract from the final product. The conceit of the story mode is something similar to a sports documentary series. In ...

 I’ve dipped my toes into two licensed games recently, Middle-earth: Shadow of War and Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun . They exist in a similar space to me, competently made games with awkward or painful elements, moments that feel far too jerky and unrefined. Fun enough, but unremarkable on the whole (yes, even the vaunted Nemesis system does not rise to the level of “remarked” - it’s fine, a point of interest, not as special as you might like, shouldn’t be patented). What particularly stands out, to me, is the way the license layers on top of these games, altering my personal reception of them in odd ways.   Licensed games are nothing new, although I feel I’ve played relatively few. A few Star Wars ones, like most gamers, some big names like Fist of the North Star , alongside smaller IP like Battle Chasers . By and large, though, the games I play come from video game franchises. Video games are my primary entertainment medium, and I’m generally disinterested in the compromis...

I have barely any interest in e-sports. I’m not really interested in discussing whether they - or chess, or similar - should count as sports. For the record, I don’t count them as such and I don’t approach them the same way as a viewer but I’m not gonna hate on them. Really, professional video game players are roughly equivalent to high level athletes, but with much lower profiles. I certainly remember comparable behavioural complaints in the FGC to recent NBA scandals, for example. No heroes no idols, etc. I’ve only really engaged with e-sports in two forms. Quite a while ago, maybe eight to ten years or so, I got casually interested in DOTA 2 , both playing (very, very badly) and watching (very, very ignorantly). Both before and after this period, I watched a lot of FGC tournaments, across most of the big games. This included Street Fighter IV and V , Guilty Gear Xrd , Under-Night , a little bit of Tekken and Mortal Kombat , a nice big range. I haven’t watched much in the last few ye...

  9 Monkeys of Shaolin was released in 2020 by Sobaka Studio. I believe it was their second game. Although many would describe it as a beat-em-up, it eschews some of the hallmarks of the genre in favour of an experience that courts more mainstream attention. With a level-based (rather than arcade) campaign, skill trees and item unlocks, and a focus on story sections, I would consider it more broadly in the 2D action genre, refuting the more specific descriptor. I enjoyed my time with it, although it was not particularly ground-breaking and in the end broke itself.   9 Monkeys most obvious departure from the beat-em-up formula is the prominence of its story. Not every mission is heavy on the story, but the opening prologue includes a forced loss which leads to protagonist Wei Cheng’s recovery and training in the care of Buddhist monks. Wei Cheng ultimately masters their techniques and takes a new name as he joins them, achieving first revenge and then overcoming a threat o...

Embarrassingly late into my development as an amateur philosophist, I decided that I believed that the most important question one could ask is why. All actions worth making and statements worth stating must surely be purposeful, and interrogating the purpose which drives actions and speech is surely the key to greater understanding, or so I once reasoned. Nioh 2 had me asking two why questions. Each why was a killer of my enjoyment. The first is of potential players: why would you play this? What would attract one into the Nioh 2 experience, and what would carry them through it? Unfortunately, the two main selling points of the game fail to mesh, instead undermining each other. You could be sold on it as a technical, demanding action game from the developers that made Ninja Gaiden 2 (or whichever entry of the series you claim to be the best), or you could be sold on it as a Diablo -esque loot game where enemies die in explosions of loot. There’s a market for both experiences, and on p...

Discussions about video game genres can often get a little stupid. There’s a number of problems going on. It’s a little more complex than film genre, in part because similar genres can be applied to the traditional stories, whereas the actual genres are named for mechanics and structure. In 2014, SuperBunnyHop commented on the ubiquity of certain controls and mechanics throughout the AAA space – twin stick controls (for both first- and third-person), upgrades, light stealth . Generic elements blurred genres together, and even as mechanics like stealth became pervasive, the stealth genre itself faded from relevance as its stalwarts stalled out. Games, especially bigger games, could incorporate so many elements that genre became hard to distill. Additionally, the complexity of developments and people’s histories with the medium cause them to view game genres with different perspectives. Most games can be described with a combination of three or four genres, and even multiple entirely sep...