I know Ale×is Kenπedy was pretty involved with Failbetter especially during the Fallen London/Echo Bazaar period and has since been ostracized for good reasons. No idea if he was involved in writing that text in particular, but Failbetter as an institution handled the situation as well as I could hope.
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thinking about where they dug up the extremely listless sounding british man who introduces all the radio tracks in roommania 203
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Haunted Castle strut
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Having just watched Kong: Skull Island recently I admit I would’ve seen it sooner had it been for anyone pointing-out after MHW Iceborne’s release that it featured Banboros
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smt tim cook
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my videogame thing i think about a lot is how every consecutive person in the world drank mind-control potion and decided that Celeste was a great game when it is in fact a mediocre platformer and i have nowhere to even bitch about it because the developer is non-binary and the game has soft aesthetics, and it’s about depression and it has good accessibility options (which is supposed to make a mediocre platformer less mediocre) which means i can never be mean about it in any public way without being accused of hurting their feelings which i’m supposed to care about because i’m supposed to have a collective stake in the success of other random indie scene people i’ve never met. that is all.
p.s. Journey is also terrible and is something i actually don’t feel comfortable talking about in public because i actually know devs from it, but i know a lot more people who agree with me on that one.
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definitely the worst thing from maddy’s entire career lol
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i have never felt more like i’m existing on another planet from other humans who must be experiencing some vastly different version of reality than i am and i am stuck in this alternate dimension forever than when i see people talk about that game. i questioned my own impressions of the game over and over, and even purchased it and played it for a couple hours and my impression never changed. like holy lord. the only thing that approaches that feeling for me is how much people love Shovel Knight… and even i sort of understand the appeal of that game.
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smdh that they named their studio “yacht club” and didn’t even force vampire weekend to write chiptunes under penalty of ball tickling
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i don’t even have anything against the dev! it’s not like someone like Jenova Chen, who i think is actively a harmful force in videogames. i’m sure they’re a fine person. i don’t know much of anything about them and i kinda like TowerFall. just think it’s a mediocre platformer and its massive acclaim when so many pretty good platformers get totally ignored is just… mystifying to me.
Celeste? More like “sell less” of this game… To me… (BC even one is too much)
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lmao. for me it’s much more “please stop putting it on your ‘best platformers of all-time’ list and actually play some more platformers” lol.
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I mean…coming from another direction… thought celeste was pretty great personally. I think it’s making more interesting statements about depression than most depression games do and the tough platforming matched really well with what it was trying to say. It creates a friction that supports the narrative.
The combination with the intense trans feelings permeating throughout it ends up adding a nuance to the depression narrative that feels more personal and specific than most, and the music and aesthetics are top notch.
Usually all the stuff it does annoys me in other contexts but I was really surprised how effective it was for me. The accessibility meant that when I got legit stuck late in the game I could still work around it.
I wouldn’t necessarily call if the best platformer of all time, but it has a focus and purpose that most similar games don’t. Like, I didn’t stick with super meat boy or N to the end for example. I did with Celeste.
I kinda get it is what I’m saying? Part of me thinks I should hate it but it’s so much more functional an artistic statement than a lot of similar games I’ve played, and genuinely feels less cynical to me too that I forgave it for a lot,
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Shovel Knight though, I hated that one. One of the most unbelievably overrated games I’ve ever played. I don’t know how a game can have so many good ideas on paper and just be so completely…lifeless and dead in practice.
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yeah, Shovel Knight had this weird uncanny valley thing going on, where it ALMOST felt like something that could have been a end-of-life NES title a la Gimmick!, but something about it was off just enough to create a sort of cognitive dissonance effect about it all.
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on the other hand, it’s a good platformer, who cares about the story, going from room to room and overcoming platforming challenges is good.
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Shovel Knight’s chief sin is that fighting its Iron Knuckle equivalents is aggravating rather than thrilling. The actively make the game worse in every screen they show up.
Plague Knight and Spectre Knight don’t have the sames issues against those enemies, so they’re pretty much better games by default tbqhimho
i think for me it’s that a) i find the aesthetics pretty bland and not something that is particularly inspiring or unique or distinctive to me, b) i think the narrative themes, while they don’t feel cynical… feel overly broad and kind of one-dimensional, and a little heavy-handed (based on what i’ve seen) and c) i just don’t find it very interesting from a mechanical perspective at all. not that all platformers have to be unique mechanically, but the design just struck me as “2010 indie platformer” in the realm of…not bad, but not great either. i think that sense of 2010 deja vu is a big reason why i feel so alienated by Celeste. it’s like no one remembers games like Redder or Knytt Stories or even VVVVVV or whatever and this has just replaced all cultural memory of t hat.
but yeah i agree about Shovel Knight. while i don’t really like Celeste much at all, i don’t think it’s a cynical game… and i do think Shovel Knight absolutely is.
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