From what I remember of Valkyria Chronicles that is essentially the optimal way of doing the missions due to their scoring system. Guess they ignored the degenerate case when creating the sequels.
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Yeah it doesnât reward good tactics at all, just speed, which seems to defeat the purpose of this kind of game. It also often feels like you are abusing exploits, except thatâs just how the game plays.
Iâve moved on to rubber bands. Donât say I never learn anything
I think I finally figured out why I donât like Hotline Miami thematically. It feels like itâs pointing to a lot of things, such as:
- The pointlessness of violence
- How violence is tied into toxic masculinity
- Using violence as the only solution to a problem
- How the grind of repetition can reduce violence to a simple habit
- The illusion that violence is even required (the phone calls are never explicitly about murdering people, so itâs uncomfortable for that to always be the solution)
- The flexibility of identity
etc.
but then the true ending feels like the typical internet trollâs response after being interrogated too far into their own philosophy
âlol i was only joking i canât believe you took that seriously, maybe youâre the idiot lolâ
I think playing Dog Days has made it clear (to me) that an interrogation of violence is necessarily uncomfortable and by explicitly berating the player for merely participating in this work that somebody created to be participated in, it destroys the message and turns into a âu madâ kind of troll.
Anyway
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looks like ghost recon wildlands tbh.
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Oh yeah, I was going to write you a response. I left a message open with
Bowieâs China Girl
for a week and had enough complicated things I wanted to say that I never finished it.
Hotline Miami makes sense to me in the guise of addiction stories, and those express a guilty need and often in the most toxic ways.
So Bowieâs version of China Girl (Iggyâs version is fine but this is aesthetically closer to Hotline Miami so it fits) is a good place to look:
Itâs a thin metaphor about Bowieâs drug addiction told through British myths about opium dens in China. It opens with stereotyped âchina musicâ, and if youâre not sure if thatâs meant to be read as offensive, he later gets into extremely threatening colonizing language. It bucks back and forth between a bad love song and these outright threats in order to externalize the ugly self-loathing. It doesnât have a statement, as such; the message is the form.
Hotline Miami is a game about violent media that talks in the language of addiction. It holds the contradictory views that violence in media is awesome, pleasurable, beautiful, and the consciousness that it reflects the ugliest parts of us. Presenting the violence in a seedy, sticky vibe doesnât convince us against it but only strengthens it.
So as an addiction narrative it steeps in the ugliness and revels in it. The simulated curb stomp is only better the worse it gets and its only answer is to say, Yes. I want more and I know itâs wrong so I should commensurately feel worse for that.
That jokey secret end? Itâs the end of bluster; after all this, work to make meaning, is it real, meaningful? Does violence in media matter next to drug addiction or real problems? Itâs just a game and thatâs the most shameful thing of all.
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My other, more personal aspect to this read wraps it with a personal, formative creative experience. In attempting to be personal and true, it ended up a repository of bile and uncertainty. I loathe it as much as I loved it but I couldnât stop making it or thinking about it.
If ugly feels true than it can be beautiful.
And it felt like that was all I needed to say. And yeah, itâs pretty embarrassing, but I knew it then and I couldnât break between being embarrassed of it and putting that contradiction in and strengthening the honest solipsism.
This was the first game I purchased with my own money. I was obsessed with it as a kid but the final dungeon was just too difficult for me.
How do emulated editions of the game handle the whole letter from dr. jones bit?
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all i can find is âthey simulate and digitize itâ so iâm not totally sure. that one really screwed me on a rental though.
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I wonder if they deliberately put it in there as some kind of elaborate copy protection or what. I remember it being a really cool immersive thing as a kid.
IIRC, it was to make it impossible to rent.
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That was my guess but I could see it going either way as just a cool immersive thing too. Eventually they put the code in Nintendo Power and iirc some rental places were cool enough to include a note about it with their copies.
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The VC versions have the letter as part of the digital manual, and have a button on the page to âdipâ the page in water.
The Switch version expects you to google the answer (read: it doesnât have the manual or the letter).
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This bums me out.
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I wonder if Kojima was conscious of having ripped it off given that the game was never released in Japan
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ahhh ok this is cute
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I love it wow
rude of them to omit that from the switch release
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Still canât believe Nintendo gives you a QR code on the NES mini rather than manual PDFs.
Started playing SNES Star Ocean on the blackberry.
Its beautiful and so far the plot keeps me wonderân but the battle âsystemâ seems kinda wacky / awful. But its soooo fân pretty I just want to keep playing. Nothing remarkable character wise but I really dig on the scifi trappings. Its Star Trek Boy in RPG Word.
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this is basically why the movie funny games is a crock of shit
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