(PS2/PSP) Rhythm games never quite caught on without gimmicks. I mean, I love them, but unless you have a floor mat (DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION) or guitar (GUITAR HERO) or drums (ROCK STAR) good fucking luck selling your game. Even the progenitor of the genre — PARAPPA THE RAPPER — couldn’t sell their sequel.
That said: I’m a sucker for every weirdo rhythm game, and this is a rhythm game I absolutely cherish. It perhaps had one of the best rhythm game control schemes of all time, and it managed to craft an emotional narrative as well. Best of both worlds.
Let me rewind a bit:
GITAROO MAN is a pretty basic ‘boy meets girl, girl meets boy, the world needs saving and can only be done through music’ story, but it pulls it off through its charismatic visual design and charming soundtrack. (I even imported the OST waaaay back in the day!) It’s a game that I’d always wished would get a proper re-release or, dare I even say, a remaster? However, it seems doomed to live in the shadows.
I recently wrote about HAVEN, one of those rare games that genuinely moved me as a romantic work, but this one did as well, twenty years prior. There’s one ‘stage’ you play, when you’re just playing a lullaby and the person you’re with feels safe and tired and lays their head on your shoulder, and the ‘stage’ ends.
It’s an extremely sweet and tender moment that you actually interact with, instead of just watch.
I will note that the opening dialogue is clumsy, and the way the game leans on the ‘life bar’ is kind of creepy in a conquest way, as is the ‘OH YEAH!’ at the end. I chalk all of that up to reusing code because this was clearly not a big-budget game, but uh, yeah. Try not to think about any of that too much and enjoy the tune.
Sadly, the game is practically impossible to get ahold of now unless you’re willing to pay waaaaaay too much, so I shouldn’t even be recommending it and definitely don’t ask me if you can borrow my copy, but we can all enjoy the videos, can’t we?
This show contains depictions of domestic and animal abuse and familial death.
(Apple TV+) BAD SISTERS has a very simple premise: five orphaned sisters, held together by the eldest, realize that the husband of the second eldest is actively trying to undermine their sisterhood, and they take action to try to get her back into the fold.
Under the surface, it’s a fraught story of power, age, and personality dynamics. Apart from EVIL, I haven’t seen another show tackle the disparity of so many interpersonal sibling personas with such tact. There’s a well-worn cadence between all of them — a familiarity but also distancing at times — that feels so incredibly authentic while they’re basically trying to erase this avenging angel of a man — John Paul Williams (the ever tall Claes Bang) — from splintering them.
As standard with ensemble pieces like this, casting needs to be perfect, and thankfully the show is masterminded by the terrific multi-faceted Sharon Horgan (CATASTROPHE), who also leads in it, alongside her sisters who are a litany of faces you’ve seen if you’ve watched any European TV in the past ten years: Eve Hewson (THE KNICK), Sarah Greene (NORMAL PEOPLE, DUBLIN MURDERS), Anne-Marie Duff (THE MAGDALENE SISTERS) as John’s unfortunate wife, and more.
It’s also extremely Irish, all lush greens and cliffs and inflections, with brilliant sweeping camera work, and one moment that reminds me of THE DROWNING GIRLS, but I might reading a bit too much into that.
It has been renewed for a second season, but whether that materializes is questionable.
Lastly, make sure to watch the very cleverly constructed title sequence, as it deftly utilizes a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Who By Fire” in a manner that absolutely recalls ELEMENTARY‘s title sequence (although ELEMENTARY is a bit more overt about its MOUSETRAP origins, but BAD SISTERS is doing something a bit different here):
I’ve been working in tech for years and years. I grew up around IBM engineers. The first and most brutal lesson I learned was: don’t try to hide shit. You’ll always be found out, plus higher-ups are normally understanding about a lapsed deadline or missed feature, as long as you explain matters. (If they aren’t, you don’t want to work for them.)
This is a lesson Elizabeth Holmes never learned when she shepherded the doomed health tech company Theranos into the world, and ultimately was found guilty of fraud, will have to pay a whopping $425 million to victims, and will be heading to jail for at least 11 years.
Let me be clear and upfront: more often than not, I can’t stand true crime or even true crime docudramas, even if they’re focused on con-artist women. (It is worth underscoring that the justice system definitely did set Holmes up as an example, partially because she was a woman, because wealthy tech men rarely face those sort of repercussions.)
These works are traditionally about empathizing with a sociopath. Are the actual biographical facts of these people enormously complex? Of course. However, writers explicitly finesse what they see as characters. They want you to feel for the protagonist, to understand why they did what they did, which means making them sympathetic individuals, even if the protagonist robbed folks of billions of dollars for what was a terribly-idealized medical invention and did so solely for adulation and glory. Writers are always willing to do that because it makes for more resonant drama.
“Machines make mistakes. Especially when humans operate them.”
To rewind a bit:
This is a stunning drama. Amanda Seyfried is one hell of an Elizabeth; she’s Elizabeth amplified, for better or for worse. The rest of the cast is astounding: Naveen Andrews (LOST) as Elizabeth’s somewhat controlling boyfriend; Sam Waterston as an investor, Stephen Fry as a Theranos employee, plus William H. Macy, Bill Irwin, Laurie Metcalf and more. It’s all expertly overseen by Elizabeth Meriwether, who wrote the underrated film NO STRINGS ATTACHED, and more than a few episodes are directed by Michael Showater (STELLA).
The production design is so on-point — just watch the progression of Seyfried’s hair throughout the show, the unwinding of her braids. Note all of the early naughts bits of tech, all of the idiosyncratic candy-coated Apple devices that facilitated their revival.
However, I think it’d be better a better show if it were further removed from Elizabeth Holmes.
I know people like this exist because I’ve obviously dealt with and interacted with them and I know people exploit others without feeling any repercussions. (A tale as old as time.) I’m (mostly) fine with fictionalized folks who are like this. (See: BETTER CALL SAUL, for example.)
I do not like to be reminded that these folks exist in real life, that these stories are (mostly) true.
“We delete outliers. That’s what we do.”
Dramatic fiction is usually a cautionary tale, warning you against the ills of the world and others. True crime shows you the face of the worst of humanity, then — more often than not — tries to make you feel for them, that they aren’t terrible people, but they have bad impulses, and others get wrapped up in them.
Well, yes, but their protagonist still acted on those impulses.
“This is an inspiring step forward. This is an inspiring step forward.”
There’s a moment in the first episode of THE DROPOUT where such an impulse happens. It’s heavily implied that 19-year-old Elizabeth has been raped. There’s one exchange where a roommate asks another roommate whether they believe her. Obviously, when it comes to abuse, belief is a big issue, and that’s the crux of Holmes’ narrative; you never know whether to believe her, or whether you should believe in her. She’s fundamentally an unreliable narrator. (I’ll also note: this is obviously a terrible way of using that narrative device to explore her persona because the last thing those who have been sexually abused is to be disbelieved, but we’ll set that aside since that whole subplot is mostly ignored after being brought up.)
I’ll reiterate that, despite that, this is a finely-crafted show. In the third episode, you see when Elizabeth becomes who the world would know as the face of Theranos, and it’s such a startling BREAKING BAD-ish moment where she literally drinks the juice and pitches her voice down to sound like the Elizabeth Holmes we’re familiar with. That said, it still makes me feel dirty for watching it, which I did mostly because Holmes is back in the news because of a recent interview.
“You don’t have feelings! You aren’t a person, you’re a ghost, you’re nothing, you’re not real!”
Granted, I was able to push through the true crime facets and ‘enjoy’ the show based on its own merits, but like I said: I felt like a worse person for doing so, but sometimes consuming media will make you feel like a monster, and with good reason.
This post includes links to, and discussion of, severe depictions of violence.
(PC/PS4/PS5/Xbox) I’ve never loved the faux-noir of MAX PAYNE or its sequel. (Don’t even get me started about the film adaptation.) Those games felt terribly adolescent, which isn’t the vibe you want from noir or neo-noir. Even BRICK, directed by Rian Johnson — an entire neo-noir film about adolescents — feels far more mature than the first two Max Payne games.
MAX PAYNE 3 is a completely different beast. It’s neo-noir by way of Michael Mann in COLLATERAL mode, all hedonism and nihilism and neon-soaked coastal digital backdrops with rude black drop-offs, letting you know you’re just so close to falling off the precipice.
MAX PAYNE 3 came out around the time of KANE & LYNCH 2 which, while KANE & LYNCH 2 is an extraordinarily remarkable visual triumph, it is also a terribly unplayable game (and I actually enjoyed the first one despite the fact that it was one of the first games to cause a major rift in games criticism), and both share a very stylized, very heightened but also very surveillance look to them. (Also, both clearly owe a debt to the missed action director Tony Scott.)
Are you playing as an irredeemable shitheel? Yes, yes you certainly are. Is there any fun to be found in this personal hell that you’re playing through? No, not really — you’re barely an anti-hero — however, there is one fucking amazing set-piece scored by electro artists HEALTH featuring a looped version of “Tears” that I will never, ever forget. I play a lot of games and, while I am normally prone to hyperbole, this moment is absolutely in my top 10 gaming moments of all-time.
There’s a specific melancholy to it while, yes, it has a lot to do with HEALTH’s initial “Tears” video which is definitely NSFW and features a lot of dystopian zombie toddler stuff, but the devs finessed it slowing down and back up and looping, and the level is designed in a certain way that is emotionally evocative.
You can go long stretches without seeing anyone. You simply feel beaten down, like you’re on your last legs, but you still have to circle around the airport. There is no hope for Max here, but he’s trying to do the right thing, get to the exit, and the brutality of trudging through the endless folks in the airport is a testament to that.
(Again, I will note that this excerpt is very violent.)
(macOS/PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox) UNPACKING is an adorably short but impactful indie game from developers Witch Beam that is basically an isometric interior design game. All you do is age and move from place-to-place, from apartment to apartment and so on. It’s one of the few games I’ve played that, while I imagine some 20-somethings might understand, really, it’s all about proper adulthood. The kind that requires a mortgage or, at least, striving to get to a point in which a bank will allot a mortgage to you.
This is a game about aging and compromising and figuring out what works for both you and your partner, and also just enjoying the space you’ll spend the bulk of your time in.
I realize that sounds heavy, but Witch Beam lightens the load for you. You can think about all of that, or you can just mindlessly open boxes and try to find where every object should live, because that is the entire game, and it’s supremely satisfying to do so. The narrative is just the icing on the cake.
The game leans on a lot of 16-bit era tropes, from the pixelated visuals, the isometric viewpoint, as well as the soundtrack, but that works in its favor — at least for me. It comes across as simple and endearing in a soft way, although the audio and sound design? Way better than the days of the SEGA Genesis. Goddamn, I am not one for ASMR, but this is a balm for your ears.
Again, this is a very short — but very fulfilling — game. Is it for everyone? Well, no, particularly if you’re consistently seeking videogame thrills. However, it is very sweet and cozy and amazingly designed and something I think most folks would enjoy.
(If you watch the trailer, pay attention to the pig. That’s all I’ll say.)
(PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xboxes) I’ve been seeking out cozy console gaming for some time as I’m fucking sick of mindless violence, even if it hits my lizard brain in the right places. Yes, there are a lot of cozy indie games available for PC — and when I mean cozy gaming, I mean small-stakes games that coddle you and actively try not to re-invoke any prior lived trauma — but I still don’t have a Steam Deck because holy hell they are expensive, and I don’t really do desktop Windows gaming as I like to keep my office to work-things, which means that space is off-limits for gaming. So, until I rectify that or receive my long-awaited Playdate, I’m at the mercy of the Switch and PlayStation Stores.
I downloaded HAVEN on a whim, shortly after having upgraded my PS+ account to Sony’s version of the Xbox Game Pass. I expected very little but a light experience, as it looked like JOURNEY meets ENTWINED (which may or may not be currently available?).
I didn’t expect HAVEN to be so romantic.
Historically videogames have not prioritized romance and — even when they have — it’s often offered as something secondary. (Unpopular opinion, but while that has changed quite a bit recently with games like DREAM DADDY and BOYFRIEND DUNGEON and even THE LAST OF US: LEFT BEHIND, more often than not games still focus on gunplay instead of folks navigating love.)
HAVEN puts romance forward, first and foremost, and it’s amazingly handled. Out of the gate, you know these two love each other. (Yes, you can queer the romance — thanks to a recent-ish update — although it does default otherwise. I’ll give you two guesses as to which I picked, and the first doesn’t count.)
Let me rewind a bit:
HAVEN features a couple, Yu (by default the woman in the relationship) and Kay (by default the man in the relationship), who have escaped a planet that features a ‘Matchmaker’ that forces coupling based on an algorithm. The two of them fall in love apart from the ones they’re assigned and they finagle a way off the planet on a rickety spaceship not meant for the sort of travel they’re embarking on, and they crash on a slightly unforgiving planet, having to use their skills to combat the creatures that inhabit the planet while also salvaging parts for their ship.
It’s hands-down the best depiction of a young relationship I’ve encountered in a videogame. It’s messy, it’s physical, but also endearing and earnest and honest. They cook together. They sleep together. They get high together. Yu sprawls over the bed, her arm laying across Kay halfway through the night. There’s even a bit where they try to change bedroom sides because of — well, moisture — and it ends terribly, but if you’ve been there, you’ve been there! They lounge around with their guard let down, mouths agape as they feel their own exhaustion. They change into comfy clothes when they’re in their ’Nest’ (the spaceship they’re trying to repair). They occasionally quip horny remarks to each other, but it never feels pornographic, it feels sweet, which — again — is rare for a videogame, but isn’t rare for real-life.
Also, both protagonists are super-smart and accommodate each other in ways the other cannot. It’s a literal coupling of minds, and I can’t get enough of it. Just watch how they nuzzle each other!
Hell, even the idle animations! Yu will passionately throw herself against Kay, and they both will heal that way. Occasionally there’ll be a chaste kiss. When they ‘flow’ across bridges (they have anti-gravity boots that allow them to float around the planet) they often hold hands. It is adorable, and I just glow and want nothing bad to happen to them.
This is one of the few games that realizes: you don’t have to put your protagonists through hell simply for narrative escalation. Is there conflict? Yes. Are there goals to be met? Yes. Do Yu and Kay occasionally bicker? Yes (depending on the dialogue choices you make). However, it’s a loving, non-toxic relationship, and goddamn, we need more of that in gaming. If anything, it reminds me of the simple tranquility of ICO, even just due to occasional downtime. (In fact, if you wait long enough in a certain spot, both Kay and Yu will sit down and a bird will nest in Kay’s hair. It’s so cute.)
I’ll note that Polygon underscores the use of HAVEN’s loading screens, and I cannot deny that they are fabulous. They do a great job of unfurling them as you progress through the game, and they also become quite tastefully tantalizing.
Also: watch for the tactility. Kay & Yu are physical in a very comfortable way that also looks natural, which is odd for a video game, and something worth applauding. You can practically feel the drool from Yu’s mouth as she’s asleep. It may sound simple, but it’s an astounding accomplishment.
I don’t have enough superlatives for this game. While it has issues — especially with exploring, an impenetrable interface and a cumbersome fast-navigation system — I grinned and glowed 90% of the time while playing it. I just want more of this, all of this, all about intertwining. So many games suck at this, at character-forward romances with action-centric design but HAVEN absolutely nails it; it’s a gorgeous experience in every which way.
Also, the opening title sequence is amazingly opulent and kinetic with explosions of color and unfurling of watercolor emotions and I’d be lying if I said that I haven’t watched it more than a few times:
I’d also like to suggest the soundtrack video via DANGER, which is like DAFT PUNK meets HEALTH. It’s absolutely delightful while also being incredibly soft.
Goddamn, I just love to see them coupled together out in a field, nothing to bother them, just letting the sun soak in. If you’ve never done this with a loved one? Make a point to do so, even if someone calls the cops on you. (I’m not not saying that happened to me.)
(Also, I love how the seasons progress and times change in the OST as they stay stationary. So idyllic, at least until the last moment right before the very end which, oddly reminds me of the cult-favorite rhythm game GITAROO MAN, one of the few other games to nail peaceful, romantic tranquility.)
I’m astounded that this game didn’t initially launch with the feature to have a queer couple, as it feels so natural, especially considering that one of the primary themes of the game is indoctrination. This is a game that needed all sorts of different people and voices, and they managed to eventually find a way.
I cannot recommend this game enough. I feel like I’ve been overly enthusiastic about the recent works I’ve been imbibing and — yeah, I’m prone to gushing — but this is the real deal. I’m not sure it’ll have the influence of LIFE IS STRANGE, but it deserves it.
“Love stories always end badly.” “Ours doesn’t!” “No, not ours, but ours isn’t a story: it’s even better. It’s real life.”
Goddamn, I love 90s chick-lit, even though I fucking hate the term chick-lit, but really: there is no better way of describing works like THE CIGARETTE GIRL. Carol Wolper’s novel is something singular, something special; it’s all about a woman trying to make her way as a action screenwriter in L.A. and she’s super horny.
Seriously. She can barely go five pages without mentioning a blowjob.
This is quintessential 90s feminism. The cover is a woman, smoke-stained, enveloped in bras from head-to-toe. It’s meant to be lethal, but is it? Really?
Nonetheless, it is a hell of a novel, one that doesn’t pull its punches. While it’s horny, it has a purpose and that is to be taken seriously and I love every bit of it.
As a fan of Linda Holmes — a mainstay of the delightful media discourse NPR series POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR — I’d been meaning to get around to reading her first novel EVVIE DRAKE STARTS OVER and her latest novel FLYING SOLO.
It wasn’t until I saw Linda Holmes reply to a tweet extolling her description of a library as a church, a spacious place to worship words, that I felt the need to immediately prioritize FLYING SOLO.
In my youth, I lived close enough to our local library that it was a five-minute walk. I’m not exaggerating: it would’ve taken longer to drive there than to walk.
For many years, it consisted of a small cottage house, wall-to-wall shelves with books crammed up to the ceiling. It was comfortably cramped, and it was overseen by a woman named Susan Overfield, who was the exact image of what you’d expect her to look like: short in stature, unkempt salt-and-pepper hair, but so passionate about books and knowledge and she knew exactly where everything was and would always give you recommendations for texts you never knew you needed. Essex, Vermont’s patron saint of libraries.
I’d walk out with an arm full of books and come back a week later to return them and repeat the process.
Time passed and it was suggested that the library had outgrown the cottage, so they decided to move to a more spacious building. I fretted when I heard the news, worried that they would move as far as possible from my home, fearful that it’d disrupt my weekly pilgrimage.
Instead, they moved into an abandoned church, on the same corner as the old cottage and, as Holmes alluded to: if you believe in a higher being, books get you there. If you don’t, well, consider it a temple to unbound delights.
(I’ve since learned that libraries moving into churches is pretty common in New England, so it’s nothing exclusive to my town.)
This is a very long-winded way of saying: I feel very seen by Holmes. Not only did I prioritize FLYING SOLO because of the library :: church bit, but also because, well, it’s right there in the name: flying solo. While, yes, I’ve spent more of my life entangled with people than not, I’m a loner at heart. I love solo walks and I love reading by myself and watching films by myself and I absolutely love traveling alone.
Again, all of that is rather antithetical for someone who has been partnered up with folks for longer than not, but it’s true. Introversion and anxiety is a hell of a bad combination, not to mention a delicate balancing act, and I see that all over the protagonist of FLYING SOLO: Laurie, the sole daughter who grew up among three brothers.
FLYING SOLO centers around Laurie, 39-going-on-40 (yes, actually — it’s not an ‘I’m always 39!’ joke), whom is tasked with returning to the small New England hometown she left for the Pacific Northwest to sort through her dead great aunt Dot’s house and clean it out. She stumbles over two objects of note: 1) a wood-carved duck carefully preserved and hidden amongst Dot’s belongings and 2) the sweet ex she broke up with because she knew she wanted a life elsewhere and he did not.
While I thought FLYING SOLO would mostly focus on the will-they/won’t-they of the latter facet, it leans hard into the first. It turns out that the duck may have been crafted by a famous artists, and Laurie unknowingly offloads it before realizing that it may be worth quite a bit. What follows is essentially very soft heist, the softest, but it’s still quite fun and beguiling, and then matters unfurl.
I’ll note: this is a very specific book, despite straddling a number of genres. It’s all about the nerds and weirdos and misfits. It’s not a traditional romantic novel — Holmes draws that line in the sand very quickly — but it traffics in all of the comforts of everything from rom-coms to melodrama to thrillers to action — however on a much smaller scale.
It’s a fun and substantive ride, and the end payoff with Dot and the duck is expertly handled. If you are one who keeps people at an arm’s length in a warm way, this is for you.
This was it, this was the song. The first dance at our wedding, but also one of the first songs I danced to my with my future wife. I convinced a DJ friend of mine at the club, while I was with my girlfriend/future betrothed frequented to play it, despite it being a total floor-killer. We slow-danced, entangled together. I felt we were alone, luxuriating in the club’s limelight.
It was magical.
You can’t ask for a better moment than that.
(Yes, I realize that we were dancing to a nihilistic anti-capitalism song in a queer club that didn’t prioritize cleanliness, and that was perfect for us.)
“Old Atlantis” — via the album Third Mall From the Sun — is absolute bittersweet melancholy with amazing vivid imagery. The build is incredible; it’s an intensely emotional song. I’ve never heard anything quite like it, and I doubt I ever will again. It’s a singular work, something that works with the cadence of a quintessential prom song but also feels like it shoulders the weight of the outside world.
I cannot emphasize how much this song means to me or the feelings it evokes in me. The aural punctuation — the fire — in the latter third of the song devastates me every time. You’re encircled in an audio attack while the two of you are holding each other tightly, protecting each other through the aural maelstrom. It’s exhilarating, and then the clocks descend and the house lights flicker awake, and you can let loose your breath.
For as sensitive as this song is, Thrussell himself? Not so sensitive when initially dealing with fans. SNOG performed at a tiny-ass club just a stone throw away from us in Chicago many years later, and while buying merch, my wife and I gushed to him as to how much “Old Atlantis” meant to us, how much we loved the song, how we knew immediately that it would be our first dance for our wedding, and how formative his work was for us. He essentially hand-waved us away, which hurt, but we rolled with it because we knew this kind of shit can be tiring when you’re on the road! One of these days I’ll recount our times as bookies.
However, his partner later elbowed him into seeking us out before the show and he did apologize and thanked us for our kind words, which meant the world to us. Also, he is a consummate performer, and the show was incredible.
It’s not often you get to meet the artists who move you, who create indelible life moments, much less get to personally interact with them and, while that experience was a bit of a rollercoaster, it’s a memory I’ll always cherish, although not as much as our first dance.
“Let’s do it. You and me. Let’s do it. Together. Let’s. Burn it. All. Down. Again.”
I’ll close this out by noting that one of the most often exclamations I hear from folks are: “You used to be a DJ?!” I don’t know why, because hasn’t everyone considered themselves a DJ at some point in their life? (That said, unlike most, I was paid for the privilege.) Anyway, every time I’m like, just wait until you find out my wife and I had our own club night for years, and that we both helped to set up a collective to book underrated electronic bands. We’ve done a lot! We spent our twenties exactly how you should: by throwing around money you don’t have and shouldn’t be spending on efforts that very few folks will appreciate but will be extraordinarily memorable for those who do attend!
I’d be lying if I didn’t say that SNOG wasn’t a major impetus for that; I wasn’t exaggerating when I said SNOG was a formative work for us. We earnestly and honestly wanted to bring the same feeling we had with “Old Atlantis” to others, and we did all that we could to do so.
