HORIZON: FORBIDDEN WEST (2021)

My gaming comfort food during the pandemic — stupidly, I’m literally someone known for writing about comfort food games — have been open-world games; almost exclusively ASSASSIN’S CREED games. Their doling of bite-sized, mostly frictionless, quests have been a balm while trapped inside.

It’s been a while since I’ve played HORIZON: ZERO DAWN, but I recall it as being a rather concise, smaller open-world game, one that doubled-down on plot and character rather than scenery and scale, and I greatly appreciated it for that.

HORIZON: FORBIDDEN DAWN is the polar opposite: it’s absolutely overwhelming and mind-bogglingly grandiose. When I think of the hours spent to make this, I feel a bit sick. While I think it could have reeled in its scope, I did find it notable in a number of other ways.

UNRULY HAIR

Aloy is one of the most fascinating triple-A leading videogame characters of recent times. A clone of one of the most influential scientific women of the game’s fictional history, she steps up and fills her shoes, although she does so while also being petulant and impulsive, all while still missing her ‘mother’ (her search for her was arguably the focal point of her introductory game, HORIZON: ZERO DAWN).

She also has some of the most dynamic, radiant red hair in videogames. Hair is a touchy subject when it comes to tech, as it’s often a point of programmatic pride, rarely born of character motivation. While it’s a film and not a videogame, look no further than Pixar’s BRAVE for a quintessential example, which was explicitly created as a way for them to show off their hair rendering tech (and similarly features a vibrant redhead).

As someone who has had long, wavy hair for far longer than I have not, and as someone who often thinks about hair and identity and representation, seeing anyone with unruly hair (or as Guerrilla Games labels it: tousled hair) in media has become oddly strange to see, as production models for entertainment have skewed closer to generic hairstyles to maintain continuity and production costs. While Aloy’s hair isn’t exactly curly, it is remarkably distinct and, in real life, would require significant management, something most folks don’t often think about. Long hair moves, it gets in the way; it’s something you are always aware of. It’s either in your vision or in your mouth or getting caught on something or in somewhere, and how Aloy’s hair is animated — always in motion, always cascading around her — reflects that same sort of bodily self-awareness. Even if some folks seem to think the hair animation is a bug, I see it as a feature.

It’s also worth noting that, apparently, a number of people don’t realize that women have hair elsewhere.

THE FUTURE IS FEMALE

One of the most amazing things about HORIZON: FORBIDDEN WEST is that it’s all about women repairing the damage that men have wrought. Almost all of the men alive and dead are villains or sidekicks, and the game is more than fine with that, but never explicitly calls attention to it which, for a triple-A videogame meant for worldwide consumption, seems wild, which is a sad remark on the state of blockbuster videogames.

SHAPES AND SIZES

One other brilliant facet of HORIZON: FORBIDDEN WEST is its variety of character models. The world consists of people of all sorts of shapes, sizes, and hues; it’s not your standard post-apocalypse of wafer-thin white people, and the game doesn’t commit the standard narrative sin of playing someone’s girth for laughs or pratfalls. They’re just people trying to survive in a world that is constantly trying to kill them.

TALKING TO ONE’S SELF DURING THE END OF THE WORLD

HORIZON: FORBIDDEN WEST features an absolutely astounding and exhausting amount of dialogue. I can’t even begin to fathom the script, but it consists of reams and reams of lore, meant to flesh out the world that was sketched out in the first game. However, a good portion of the game features Aloy simply talking to herself. While most of that dialogue is meant to prod the player towards goals, quite a bit of it is purely observational. Aloy is depicted as a singularly individual person, one used to being alone, one used to supplying her own entertainment, of comforting herself in her own way because who else would? Who could?

A NEW MODERN

All of this culminates into a game that comes across as remarkably fresh, as opposed to the hoary male-led misery porn of most modern big budget games. HORIZON: FORBIDDEN WEST feels like a new frontier for gaming, at least with its command of characters and scenarios, even as it leans on the old model of open-world gaming, of FAR CRY-ish puzzle towers and checking off map-centric quests. It’s a world that one can luxuriate in and explore to your heart’s content, and not hate yourself for doing so.

P.S. One facet of the game that is missing is any semblance of sexuality whatsoever, so I’d like to boost this piece.

P.P.S. Even I as a very white, prior New Englander felt that a number of character designs and attributes were not what they could have been. I’m definitely not qualified to critique this game’s Orientalism, so I’ll leave this here.

PSYCHONAUTS 2 (2021)

(PC/macOS/PS4/Xboxes) A bit of backstory: the initial PSYCHONAUTS (2005) was the first game from the fledgling studio Double Fine, founded by ex-LucasArts adventure game designer Tim Schafer, and not only was it not an adventure game as one would expect, but a platformer, but it was a very troubled production. Microsoft started off as publisher for the game but, halfway through development, dropped out, leaving Double Fine in the lurch. They eventually found a publisher via now-storied Majesco, and the game was finally released after a — for the time — lengthy development time of four and a half years.

PSYCHONAUTS has a lot of the hallmarks of a great Schafer work: a terrifically realized world, a unique and striking look, laugh-out-loud dialogue, and empathy for its characters. Unfortunately, it was also often a frustrating platformer, with fussy controls and level design that felt obvious to them, but not to the players. In case you are not familiar: it’s about a kid named Raz (short for Rasputin) who has psychic abilities, but who comes from an extremely physical family circus troupe. He is fascinated with a group of other psychically-gifted folks who try to help people by sorting out their mental mysteries, whose tales are told through a series of comic books, but then gets his chance to enlist via a summer camp.

Twenty years later, PSYCHONAUTS 2 has been released through a similarly complex development period. Long story short, like with PSYCHONAUTS, it took far longer to fund and actually shape the game.

My initially impressions of PSYCHONAUTS 2 were, I will say, unpleasant, perhaps because they expected players to be more familiar with the game’s systems and blend of platforming. Also, perhaps my platforming skills are rusty. However, I haven’t played PSYCHONAUTS in many, many moons, and PSYCHONAUTS 2 throws -a lot- at you in the first few hours. I traditionally play games at normal difficulty, occasionally raising it to hard or extraordinarily difficult upon a very rare replay (e.g. games like VIEWTIFUL JOE or BAYONETTA), but this time I added all of the control assists because I’m too old for this shit.

After the first few hours, I started settling in and really started enjoying it, but kept the control assists (which were much appreciated) the same. While the game spent far more time in development than Schafer expected, the effort shows as it’s an extraordinarily detailed and epic game, while still first-and-foremost being about family and mindful about mental health. However, unlike the first game, PSYCHONAUTS 2 is more about be a mental examination of the prior Psychonauts and the trauma they’ve been living with. So, yeah, not exactly a soothing balm for these COVID times, but definitely in TED LASSO territory.

Sadly, the level design does not meet the heights of PSYCHONAUT’s Milkman level, but it also doesn’t hit the frustrating lows of the Meat Circus. (I vividly remember swearing so much during that level that my partner-now-wife asked me if I was okay.) That said, it doesn’t have to, at least in these times. The single-mindedness and pure-pleasure of 100%ing a game right now is so very appealing to me — I’ve done so for a few ASSASSINS CREED games, and will likely do so for PSYCHONAUTS 2 — as a way to simply numb myself from a lot of the bullshit of the current world. Also appealing: I can drop-in and drop-out of the game as necessary.

15+ years later, is PSYCHONAUTS 2 the sequel I wanted? (I can’t count the VR game because I don’t have any VR tech.) Yes and no. It leans far more on spectacle and less on cognitive/character visual motifs than I would have liked. It’s certainly not as idiosyncratic as the first game. However, it — again, like TED LASSO SEASON TWO — does such a great job at detailing how flawed we can be, but how we can learn to be better with some help, and how we need to accept each other on these journeys.

DETENTION (2017)

I have to admit that, prior to finding out about a film screening of an adaptation of this videogame, I had never heard of DETENTION.

DETENTION is a very SILENT HILL 2-esque guilt-centric 2D horror point-and-click Taiwanese game that takes place during the White Terror which dovetailed with the U.S.’ Communist witch-hunts, except that instead of being blacklisted, you were abducted and killed.

DETENTION takes place in the mid-60s, in a Taiwanese high school and is relatively straight-forward, as adventure games gome. I’d love to discuss some of the specifics, but sadly, spoilers.

Yes, the translation work is not great — it’s extremely clumsy — but the original dialogue may have been overwrought from the get-go. Yes, the artwork is a bit flat, and the animation is stilted. Sure, it often feels like a student game.

Nonetheless, it’s an amazing piece, buoyed by it being a love letter to the political and cultural shifts with Taiwan. It’s utterly earnest and enlightening and engaging, and uses horror motifs and self-reflection in a way that few games do. It’s a bold piece, and one that doesn’t demand much of your time — you can finish it in under four hours — and it’s well-worth that time.

HEALTH MUSIC VIDEOS (2009+)

HEALTH is a surprisingly popular electronic band that has a sound and aesthetic more suited for dark late-90s/early naughts clubs than, well, Spotify. They double down on that idiosyncratic nature with a number of their videos, which are firmly ensconced in both the horror genre and art film worlds.

DIE SLOW (2009):

While the video for DIE SLOW fully leans into sensationalism, given that it depicts a bloodletting frenzy, visually its use of framing and reframing (and more reframing) reminds me more of Peter Greenaway’s PROSPERO’S BOOKS, and its editing is extraordinarily taut.

WE ARE WATER (2009):


Immaculately produced, but a bit squicky — if you’re familiar with SLEEPAWAY CAMP, you know what I’m talking about.

STONEFIST (2015):

A relatively surface-level commentary on musicians and cosmetic surgery, but they take it so far over the top, especially with the glamour framing and lighting, that I can’t help but revel in it.

NEW COKE (2015):

HEALTH loves to villainize their drummer.

(Warning: this video features very disgusting slo-mo vomit — some self-induced — so you might want to bail before 1m45s.)

STRANGE DAYS 1999 (2019):

No, really, HEALTH loves to villainize their drummer. Also, this is an absolutely brilliant riff on late 90s ‘true crime’ motifs.

I’ll note that I’ve never called any of their numbers, but I’ve been very tempted to.

SPIDER-MAN: MILES MORALES (2020)

Oh, I loved this. I wrung every bit of web-slinging joy from Insomniac’s prior Spider-Man game, but never quite loved the story, given that Peter Parker was basically re-enforcing a New York City police state.

SPIDER-MAN: MILES MORALES takes everything that’s great about Insomniac’s prior SPIDER-MAN game and improves on almost every facet of it. The mechanics are just as silky-smooth, if not better, than the prior game. However, what really makes the game shine is the writing which, for a triple A blockbuster superhero game is a minor miracle.

(I’ll quickly note that I’m not at all familiar with Miles Morales apart from INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE. I’ve read zero of the Marvel Ultimate comics.)

Miles (now a younger Spider-Man) and his childhood friend Phin are teenage nerds. Not contemporary nerds, but old-school smart nerds who get excited about science and space and tinker on projects together! They’re still struggling with finding their space in the world — as teens do — but they’re not too terribly awkward, and they have a very tight brother/sister dynamic. But really, these two are unapologetic brilliant nerds, it’s the springboard for the game’s arc, and I love it.

There’s also an earnestness and idealism that I adore about the game. Yeah, there’s a lot of overwrought conflict that wouldn’t feel out-of-place in a J.J. Abrams work, you have to suspend disbelief for the sheer amount of tech created within such a short period of time, and I’m a bit shocked at how some of Miles’ moves would -definitely- induce death — for example: you can turn human bodies into bombs — but overall it’s an extremely playable game about biological and adopted family and the love for your original and adopted boroughs.

Did I mention that the game is goddamn gorgeous?! Insomniac also lets you tweak what you prefer from your visuals. Want high-end visual fidelity? You’ve got it, locked at 30fps! You demand 60fps? You can have it with a few downgrades you’ll never notice! Want it to look like INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE? No problem, just make sure to bank some activity tokens first.

If there’s one flaw, it’s that Miles’ powers seem far too powerful, and the game occasionally tries to course-correct this with power-negating guns and/or throwing waves and waves of criminals at you, invoking occasional frustration, but that doesn’t last long. Eventually you’ll suss the proper rhythm.

This is blockbuster gaming done right and I hope other studios learn from it, and I’m very happy that I waited for a PS5 to play it. In fact, I’m still playing it, because I love the bodega cat costume so much, which is only available after starting New Game+.

BRING IT ON: THE MUSICAL ‘It’s All Happening’ (2012)

(YouTube) For whatever reason, people have seemingly collectively forgotten about this musical, which was quite well-received at the time (or so I’ve read). The music for the work was partially provided by Lin-Manuel Miranda — penned in-between IN THE HEIGHTS and HAMILTON — and you can definitely tell. There’s a part in the middle of “It’s All Happening” that feels lifted from IN THE HEIGHTS and one near the end that is -very- evocative of a certain HAMILTON number.

I’ve never seen a proper production of the show, but I have the original Broadway cast recording, and I do endlessly rewatch their Tony Awards performance. It is very much a standard Broadway adaptation of a beloved film, but the buildup and energy really thrills me.

SLEATER-KINNEY -Hurry on Home- (2019)

(YouTube) Miranda July (ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW, KAJILLIONAIRE) directing a SLEATER-KINNEY video about trying to woo Carrie Brownstein back? Yeah, that fits squarely in my wheelhouse, but what I really love about this video are the fingertaps and ambient sounds. There’s a tactility to this ‘lyric video’ that’s rarely seen — err, heard — that I absolutely love (not to mention the ingenious use of autocorrect) and it conveniently complements the audible breathlessness that closes the song.

“You got me used to loving you You got me used to loving you You got me used to loving you You got me used to loving you You got me used to loving you You got me used to loving you”

It’s worth noting that SLEATER-KINNER just announced their latest album, -Path of Wellness- and released the first single –Worry With You– and, while I had this recommendation slated for later on this month, today’s as good a day as any!

I’LL CRY TOMORROW (1955)

(VOD) Admittedly, I’LL CRY TOMORROW is not a great film; it’s high camp masquerading as a cautionary tale about addiction with the sizzle of a true life autobiography. Lead actor Susan Hayward chews up the scenery with her drinking and her D.T.s, and the film vastly overstays its welcome. (It’s worth noting that Hayward would be knowingly cast in another camp/addiction adaptation: THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS.) However, I’LL CRY TOMORROW does pre-date the fictitious but similarly overwrought DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES, and it’s a damn good looking film; its Oscar nomination for cinematography was well-deserved. Additionally, it certainly helped to educate folks about Alcoholics Anonymous so it’s not totally without merit.

None of that’s why I’m mentioning I’LL CRY TOMORROW, though. MY LIFE WITH THE THRILL KILL KULT are an electro-industrial band that specialize in sampling camp films and performances, one I grew up listening to and, while there are sample databases out there, I always glean so much more pleasure from accidentally stumbling over a sample source rather than actively seeking them out. That’s exactly what occurred while lounging on the couch, half-listening to TCM play I’LL CRY TOMORROW a few days ago.

The moment I heard and recognized someone say “Honey, sing us a song,” I knew it’d be a rich vein for MY LIFE WITH THE THRILL KILL KULT to mine, and they drilled deep for -The Devil Does Drugs- and the reworked version -…And This Is What The Devil Does-, as well as -A Girl Doesn’t Get Killed by a Make-Believe Killer… ‘Cuz It’s Hot- and -Kooler Than Jesus-. There’s one scene about two-thirds through the film between Lillian Roth (Susan Hayward) and her mother (Jo Van Fleet) that they practically sampled in its entirety, including the following bits of dialogue:

“Oh, look what you did! And you did it on purpose!”

“You’re still trying to make me do what you want, to be what you want! I can’t be anything except what I am!”

“What are you trying to do, drive me crazy?!”

“GET IT NOW!”

“All right. All right! EVERYTHING!”

“Look at me. I said look at me! Don’t turn your face away! I’m the looking glass you created to see yourself in.”

They sampled those lines over thirty years ago, and now one more sample source mystery from my youth has been solved.

-…And This Is What The Devil Does- video:

-Kooler Than Jesus- video:

-A Girl Doesn’t Get Killed by a Make-Believe Killer… ‘Cuz It’s Hot-:

-The Devil Does Drugs-:

I’LL CRY TOMORROW trailer:

PARADISE KILLER (2020)

It took a while, but I just wrapped up PARADISE KILLER, an extremely stylish, absolutely bonkers murder mystery game for Switch/PC. It’s so bonkers that, when my wife asked why it was named PARADISE KILLER, I had to think for a bit and then responded: “It’d take me at least five minutes to detail why, and I don’t have the energy for that right now.”

That said, I do love a challenge, so here it goes: humanity has been visited by gods and, in a way to appeal to the gods’ sensibilities, a faction of semi-immortals (who go by the moniker The Syndicate) have been building ideal islands — this may or may not be a riff on Gaunilo’s ‘Lost Island’ argument, who knows? — by kidnapping mortal humans to build said islands. Unfortunately, each of the prior 24 islands have been corrupted by demonic influence, causing them to self-destruct the island and move on to a new, more perfect island. The immortals get to ascend to the new island, whereas the mortals are ceremoniously slaughtered. Island 25, dubbed Perfect 25, has been built and The Syndicate are transferring over, but halfway through the migration the leaders of The Syndicate are murdered. To solve the mystery, Syndicate investigator Lady Love Dies is brought out of her multi-million year exile. (She’d previously been tricked by a demon to help undermine an island.) The game itself has you navigate Lady Loves Dies throughout the mostly empty vaporware aesthetic of Island 24 to interrogate the remaining Syndicate members, gather evidence, and then dole out sweet bullet justice.

Phew. See? Absolutely bonkers, and I didn’t even go into the blood crystals, reality drive, or lingering ghosts.

Now, please don’t take this post as an ecstatic recommendation. This game is practically tailor-made for me, thanks to its high-concept pitch, exceedingly idiosyncratic dialogue, non-sensical item collection, low-anxiety stakes, absolutely infectious soundtrack and casual romancing, but it’s not exactly a ‘good game’. Most of the time you’re roaming around the island for hours to find someone to talk to, all while getting distracted by the numerous items that litter Island 24. You can purchase a few power-ups, which consist solely of ways to allow you to explore more of the island, slightly faster, which you’ll appreciate because you will get lost, a lot. It’s an open world game, but lacks the hallmarks of what one expects from open world design, such as sensible urban layouts or proper landmarks, or even easy fast travel. (You can fast travel, but it’ll cost you.)

Also, the end is more than slightly underwhelming. It’s worth noting that, while it’s a murder mystery, you can accuse anyone you want, regardless of evidence. Even after the trials are over, you can dole out justice haphazardly by executing or exiling anyone left on the island.

That said, it was a perfect game for me at this time, as it helped me through the tail end of winter and eased me into spring. I desperately need to pick up a copy of the soundtrack.

FINDLAY – ELECTRIC BONES (2015)

[Findlay] (YouTube) Back in November, I recommended a show called GOOD BEHAVIOR. One facet I didn’t touch on was how amazing the music supervision on the show was*: both seasons were perfectly programmed and introduced me to a litany of acts I’d never heard before, including solo electronic artist Findlay.

The music video for Findlay’s ELECTRIC BONES — directed by Sasha Rainbow — is a vibrant, peculiar POV piece that follows the artist singing through the streets of Paris, selectively pixelating anything that — presumptuously — is considered offensive from the POV, while also incorporating other forms of compression artifacts/glitch art as transitionary devices.

I’m not going to say this video was revolutionary — the practically unplayable video game KANE & LYNCH 2 utilized a similar technique by assuming the POV was a player with a terrible digicam, and anything too violent/sexual often was reduced to a spray of pixelation — but whereas that was stylistic, meant to bend the rules, the abstraction here takes on a more multi-faceted meaning. At first, the pixelation simply blurs out explicit sex, license plates, strangers’ faces. By the end, it’s practically taken over the entire frame, including the bulk of any image that women are a part of.

[NSFW, seriously — yes, it’s pixelated but it hides very little.]

  • This is one area where Spotify truly excels at, as it allows music supervisors to post a proper playlist of songs used for an entire season of TV, unencumbered by licenses and the like, as opposed to trying to hunt and peck through reddit for source lists.

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