Silicon Sasquatch

GOTY 2023: Nick Remembers Some Games

[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/582cd816414fb523e7e035e7/398f9b6f-4435-4818-94b8-e771807aec44/20231005211311_1.jpg?format=1000w] A big ol’ N for little ol’ me As 2022 drew to a close, I was possessed by the spirit of unrealized desires. I set a new goal for myself: I would watch 50 movies in a single year. I’ve always been good at delaying gratification, so much so that I often put off culturally and intellectually enriching activities just because I’m worried I’ll enjoy them too much — that I’ll, god forbid, burn through all the good things before I’m even remotely close to death. It’s a foolish instinct that’s rooted in perfectionism, which in turn is rooted in, well, all kinds of harmful nonsense. Anyway, I achieved my target. In fact, I doubled it [https://letterboxd.com/whymog/films/diary/for/2023/]. I saw plenty of contemporary movies [https://letterboxd.com/whymog/list/top-10-movies-of-2023/], and I also delved deep into a wide range of old classics and forgotten gems [https://letterboxd.com/whymog/list/my-top-20-movies-not-from-2023-that-i-saw/]. I enjoyed my time watching exactly 98% of them — that’s pretty good! And I can now say I’ve properly kickstarted a new habit: I’m goin’ to the movies again, folks. It sounds so, I dunno, painfully normal to say this, but I’ve gotta be honest: setting goals really works. And goals are really important! It’s surprisingly easy to fall prey to distractions and pointless routine in their absence. But when I declare to myself that I’m really gonna do something, and I go through the requisite motions — write it on a piece of paper and tape it to my wall, or tell enough friends that I’ll feel guilty if I don’t follow through, or whatever — more often than not, I achieve what I set out to do. Which leads to my current problem. Fresh off the rejuvenating and enriching results of my film journey, I spent the end of December wondering what worthwhile goals I could set for myself in 2024. I first thought of other media: had I been neglecting books? (A little bit — I only finished 17 books in 2023, barely over half of my goal.)  What about music? Yeah, I’m kind of out of the loop these days; I’ll see what I can glean from Stereogum and whatever remains of Bandcamp’s editorial team [https://www.kqed.org/arts/13936509/idiotic-and-cruel-musicians-slam-layoffs-at-bandcamp]. But goals for either medium didn’t feel very compelling to me; I’d rather just set an intention and see where that leads me.  Okay, so…what about video games? Well, [https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/582cd816414fb523e7e035e7/cfd2e1de-551c-40ab-88df-bdd056315e10/20231012144735_1.jpg?format=1000w] PART 1: I DON’T LIKE PLAYING VIDEO GAMES VERY MUCH RIGHT NOW But we have to talk about them. So: Here’s a list of pretty much everything I played last year, sorted in alphabetical order. In the interest of brevity and scannability, I’ll be using my own proprietary emoji system to describe these games: 🏆 — A great game 🙂 — Hey, I had fun! 🤠 — Yeehaw! (Cowboy friendly) 🌲 — I often thought that I’d rather be outside instead of playing this 💔 — A letdown 😲 — A big ol’ surprise! 🧠 — This one got me to thinkin’ 📝 — In this game you will take Notes 🥲 — Ah, just to feel something once again 🚮 — Do better And here’s the list: 1. Alan Wake 2 🏆🙂🌲🧠🥲 2. Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon 🙂🤠 3. BABBDI 🙂🤠😲 4. Baldur’s Gate 3 🙂💔 5. Castlevania: Rondo of Blood 🏆😲 6. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 🏆 7. Castlevania: Circle of the Moon 🌲 8. Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance 🤠🌲🚮 9. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow 🙂 10. Cocoon 🌲🚮 11. Counter-Strike 2 12. Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty 🤠🥲🧠 (I spent some time thinking about this game in more detail here [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2023/11/8/finding-love-in-the-landfill-on-cyberpunk-2077s-20-update]) 13. Diablo IV 🌲💔🚮 14. Final Fantasy VII Remake: Intermission 🙂 15. Final Fantasy XVI 🌲💔🚮 (read my review of this very bad game here [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2023/8/8/review-final-fantasy-xvi]) 16. F-Zero 99 🙂😲 17. God of War: Ragnarök 🙂🥲 18. Hi-Fi Rush 💔🚮 19. Humanity 🙂🧠 20. Jusant 🌲💔 21. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom 🏆🙂🤠🥲🧠 22. Lies of P 🚮 23. Marvel Snap 🙂🧠 24. Marvel's Spider-man: Miles Morales 🚮 25. Metroid Prime Remastered 🙂🌲 26. Octopath Traveler 2 🙂 27. Pseudoregalia 🌲 28. Quake II: Enhanced Edition 🙂🤠 29. Resident Evil 4 🙂 30. The Roottrees Are Dead 🧠📝 31. Sea of Stars 🌲💔🚮 32. Starfield 🤠🌲 33. Strawberry Jam (Celeste mod) 🙂😲 34. Street Fighter 6 35. Super Mario Bros. Wonder 🏆🥲😲 36. Super Mario RPG (2023) 🙂 37. Theatrhythm Final Bar Line 🙂 38. Thirsty Suitors 💔 39. Void Stranger 🏆🙂🥲😲🧠📝 40. Yakuza Zero 🏆🙂🥲 41. Yakuza Kiwami 🙂 42. Yakuza Kiwami 2 🙂🥲 (I also reviewed [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2023/3/13/review-yakuza-kiwami-2] this one!) 43. Yakuza 3 🙂🥲😲 44. Yakuza 4 🙂 45. ZeroRanger 🏆🙂😲 Here’s my personal top 10 list for games that released in 2023: 10. The Roottrees are Dead 9. Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon 8. Quake II: Enhanced Edition 7. Baldur’s Gate 3 6. Super Mario RPG 5. Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty 4. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom 3. Alan Wake 2 2. Super Mario Bros. Wonder Game of the Year: Void Stranger Man, I’m bored. Are you bored? Well, forget this. Let’s talk about something else. [https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/582cd816414fb523e7e035e7/9e54fb6d-2b6c-437b-a75a-e23da12667b6/20231005212355_1.jpg?format=1000w] PART 2: CONTROLLED DEMOLITION I have successfully blown up my life, or had it blown up for me, a handful of times now. I regret to inform you that it’s not the kind of thing you get better at. I lived in another country for most of 2023. I’m now back in the United States. Although I’d hoped for a smooth re-entry, things have instead been slow, frustrating, and confusing. I had to give up a lot to move overseas in the first place, and I left just about everything else behind on my way back here. I’m still coming to terms with what that means. One thing I heard before moving abroad is that you’ll never feel completely at home wherever you end up, nor will returning to your home country ever feel completely like “home” again. In my experience, that’s the truth. I landed back here on unsure footing, teetering on the edge of what’s commonly called “middle age.” Being middle-aged doesn’t mean I can’t do anything; it just means that everything I try feels even more important. The skewed way my brain interprets the world these days is: if I mess up now, that mistake has a multiplying effect on how the rest of my life will go. Each failure is more devastating now than it used to be, each success more vital. Do I want to be able to retire? When I was younger I would tell myself that I don’t care about retirement, that I want to find fulfilling work instead. But I was young and didn’t yet realize I was taking my health for granted. And now, frankly, I don’t think fulfillment is necessarily on the table any longer: I think I equivocated too much, waited too long for perfection, and sold myself short too many times. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about all the paths I wanted to take when I was younger — paths that led organically from my strengths and deepest passions. Playing music was a huge part of the first half of my life, and then I all but abandoned it. Writing, too; I had so much promise as a writer, if many of my teachers and friends are to be believed. (Though I’ll admit I’m a bit afraid of what you’re thinking right now as you read this.) But I let both atrophy out of fear, and, I admit, a certain grounded pragmatism. The world doesn’t pay writers and musicians well, and in this country, not getting paid well almost always means living a more precarious life — one where your health and future are poker chips on the table. Anyone who works for a living exists in a sort of limbo state: usually lacking fulfillment or stability in one or more key areas of their life, but unable to make the puzzle pieces fit just right and achieve homeostasis. I want to always appreciate the many things I’m fortunate to have right now, even as the things I don’t have loom large in the background. I believe it’s important to set goals, but the hardest part isn’t deciding what they are; it’s waking up every day and choosing to work toward them, all the while fully aware that you don’t have, and may never have, the things they point toward. A big part of me still wants to make games. In fact, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past few months. But the work I’ve found, creatively and intellectually rewarding as it is, has been inconsistent and unsustainable (someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this [https://twitter.com/dril/status/384408932061417472?lang=en]). I can’t keep this up forever. But what can you do? It’s hard out here [https://www.polygon.com/gaming/24074767/video-game-industry-layoffs-explainer]. [https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/582cd816414fb523e7e035e7/1495f0ca-257b-4d80-b70e-b117e0091445/20231014005125_1.jpg?format=1000w] PART 3: PLACE YOUR FAITH AND EMBRACE THE VOID The best game I played all year — the one and only game I deeply connected with — is Void Stranger. It is an experience that not many people I know shared with me, though they did their best to give it a fair shake. It’s been an important lesson for me, one that gets all tangled up in the ancient parts of my understanding of myself: I can like things that other people don’t like. I would love nothing more than to write or speak for hours about how wonderful this game is, but I honestly don’t know that I’m up to the task lately. Thankfully, game composer and designer Lena Raine already did a stellar job [https://cohost.org/kuraine/post/3715198-we-have-no-hope-and] of that. Meanwhile, I did my best in our Game of the Year post [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2024/1/21/the-2023-silicon-sasquatch-game-of-the-year-awards], but as I was writing I realized this isn’t a game I can be very objective about. It found me and provided what I needed at just the right moment. Even its faults, which I’d be happy to enumerate, are at least interesting to me. It’s like when you go on a promising few dates with someone and realize they’re not just someone you like but something far more significant than that. That’s what Void Stranger is to me: significant. [https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/582cd816414fb523e7e035e7/6f644898-6dfd-44f2-81fc-3bb8c7cec2b5/vs-longing.png?format=1000w] Void Stranger is a game about navigating a labyrinth. It’s also about a bunch of other things, many of which would be a shame to disclose up-front. But I can at least note that it’s heavily inspired by, if not outright allegorical to, Dante’s Divine Comedy. The above screenshot is a quote from Inferno, when Dante Alighieri and Virgil are wandering through the first circle of Hell, Limbo. This is — according to Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy#Inferno], because it’s been a million years since I read it — where the virtuous pagans resided. They were good, righteous people, but they were not Christian. Into the bin they went. To be good but to not be deemed correct is maybe the root of all tragedy. I lived abroad in a good place, but it didn’t feel correct. I came back to a place that used to feel correct, but it no longer does. I’m working in a field I’ve always harbored a deep passion for, but it’s highly unlikely I’ll be able to sustain myself in this field. I’ve applied to grad school with a vague but genuine desire to do something completely different with my life, but my doubts grow as each day passes since I submitted my application. I’m most employable in an industry controlled by petulant would-be god-kings and a cabal of impossibly wealthy investors, most of whom have recently chosen to deprive hundreds of thousands of their workers of a livelihood [https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/21/tech-layoffs-2023-list/] in order to spike their share prices to stratospheric new heights. I mention these things not as an attempt to garner woe-is-me sympathy but to illustrate several of the many dimensions that this condition of being separated from the building blocks of a fulfilling life can take. We have no hope and yet we live in longing. Each of us dreams of certain things. Most of our dreams aren’t particularly outlandish. For me, it’s simple: deep, genuine, nourishing connections with different people; a lifestyle that grounds me in my body, my community, and my bioregion [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioregionalism]; and the means to find meaningful work and revitalizing play in the days ahead. I’ve had some of these things at various points in my life, yet I remained unfulfilled. Eventually, I found myself in a place where it seemed impossible that I would ever have them again. And so I deemed my life good but not correct. [https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/582cd816414fb523e7e035e7/706ff831-b574-4f95-8ba8-434f1d100da3/20231215221348_1.jpg?format=1000w] When we get stuck, and when our dreams feel endangered, we can either sit tight and hope things get better or we can make the difficult decision to try something else. I haven’t enjoyed playing video games because there’s a massive lack of resolution in my life right now, and games feel like a distraction at best. Many cornerstones of my life remain up in the air. And I recently came to understand that it’s not because they fly with their own wings but because I’m juggling them. So I find myself in this bizarre situation where I love games — I care deeply about them, and I’m compelled to keep expressing myself in this medium — but I cannot find hope in them right now. I may need to look elsewhere. One of the things I loved about my movie journey last year was how bountiful things felt. After so many years removed from this medium I loved, I had literally hundreds of films waiting for me that I was thrilled to finally see. The games will be there whenever and however I’m ready to come back to them. But there’s a whole life out there that I want to bring shape and definition to, and it’s not going to happen unless I make it happen. I don’t know where I’ll be writing next year’s update from or what I’ll be spending my days doing. But I know that, no matter how it looks or even feels sometimes, I’m not stuck anymore. The work is already happening. I’m already doing it. [https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/582cd816414fb523e7e035e7/0b98a38a-18b4-4020-aba3-1a50b14e38ba/20231012200114_1.jpg?format=1000w]

The 15th Anniversarycast

[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/582cd816414fb523e7e035e7/c28d69e4-6cc5-4eda-9022-687783c3c0c6/SSQ+15th+Anniversary+Header.png?format=1000w] Might be time for a design refresh, methinks. Here we are: 15 years to the day since our first post [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2016/11/16/3id5ogefcojgt0opaad3qzup4mawn7]. In traditional marriage anniversary terms, we’ve celebrated our wood [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2013/12/20/the-5th-anniversarycast-silicon-sasquatch-podcast-episode-32], tin [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2018/12/19/happy-10th-anniversary-us], and now our crystal milestones. And, oh boy, isn’t marriage quite the allegory for a collaborative partnership lasting 1.5 decades? We’ve fought, we’ve triumphed, and we keep coming back for more because we love doing this, and, frankly, love each other. It’s a lucky thing to work on a project with your friends for this long. Five years ago [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2018/12/19/happy-10th-anniversary-us], our very sanguine post highlighted our greatest hits. Since then, not a lot has changed and so very much has changed. This site has experienced some of its longest periods of post drought. Meanwhile, most of our group focused on our family lives: marriages, moves, and, most significantly, children! Yes, we’ve procreated and we’re sorry for that. Let me quote myself from that last anniversary post: > Since that first post, we: wrote a book [http://www.blurb.com/b/1792816-silicon-sasquatch-the-first-year-or-so]; launched three podcasts [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/podcasts/]; hosted several [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2013/12/29/being-escorted-in-a-videogame-heres-how-not-to-die] talented [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2017/12/20/guest-list-charlene-putneys-top-games-of-2017] contributors [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2016/12/19/goty-2016-guest-list-dan-phipps-top-10-games-of-2016], interviewed some of our favorite [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2016/11/23/interview-dan-teasdale-and-heather-wilson-of-harmonix-music-systems] game [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2014/09/30/chatting-with-samantha-kalman-and-solon-scott] developers [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2013/09/25/interview-steve-gaynor-of-the-fullbright-company?rq=interview]; wrestled back control of our WordPress installation from (presumably) Russian hackers [http://siliconsasquatch.tumblr.com/post/23097738233/lets-talk-about-what-happened-to-the-blog-part-3]; ceased publication not once [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2011/07/24/sorry], not twice [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2012/11/05/a-year-of-disruption], but thrice [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2015/04/27/so-long]; and, perhaps most notably, posted nine Game of the Year features [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/goty/] comprising hundreds of hours of unpaid work entirely fueled by our love of the medium and a dark desire to yell at each other. Since our 10th anniversary, well, we’ve sweated over another five Game of the Year [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/goty] features, experimented [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2020/6/2/the-animal-crossing-new-horizons-exit-survey] with post formats [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2019/9/29/its-not-the-gooses-fault], podcasted [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2021/1/14/ssp-63-the-silicon-sasquatch-podcast-episode-63] when we could, and over the past two years had quite the renaissance of new content thanks to Nick’s output [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog?author=50b288cfe4b091e2d1b4f285] as he’s fallen back in love with critique [https://www.siliconsasquatch.com/blog/2022/4/14/lets-talk-about-shame-so-we-can-talk-about-something-more-interesting-next-time]. And unlike last time, there’s no grand promise for the future. Which is a great place to be. For once, I’m not worrying about defining what’s next or making pained, hedging bets on whether or not this year will be the last year. If having two children and approaching 40 has cemented anything in me as we celebrate 15 years of Silicon Sasquatch, it’s that this site and its heritage are worth preserving as they are. We intend to keep the lights on for the next 15 years, if only for the incredulity of the experiment, if only for the amazing time capsule we’re creating. And, at the risk of speaking for Nick, Doug, Spencer, and Tyler: I can picture them happily joining me for the 30th Anniversarycast in 2038. Imagine that.

Review: Final Fantasy XVI

[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/582cd816414fb523e7e035e7/4d807f90-5e0e-4712-84b3-57789738e279/FINAL+FANTASY+XVI_20230717150831_1.jpg?format=1000w] This is the first Final Fantasy where they can say “fuck,” and they’re very proud of that Listen to this article below, including additional commentary on the nature of game criticism from the author. Want to get every podcast and article reading sent straight to your device? Subscribe to the Silicon Sasquatch Podcast on iTunes [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/silicon-sasquatch/id325324857], Overcast [https://overcast.fm/itunes325324857/silicon-sasquatch], or your favorite podcast app. Throughout the 52 hours I spent wringing every ounce of content out of Final Fantasy XVI, I was all but certain I didn’t want to write about it. My reasoning is that the game didn’t surprise, delight, or infuriate me; it didn’t provoke an emotional reaction at all, really. It’s the first game in the series to fail that crucial test. And that probably says everything you need to know, doesn’t it? But I’ve been coming back to this draft over the past few months because I feel I ought to say something. I want to warn readers, to help set the record straight. Final Fantasy XVI coasted right into an 88 review-score average on OpenCritic [https://opencritic.com/game/14516/final-fantasy-xvi] and an 87 on Metacritic [https://www.metacritic.com/game/final-fantasy-xvi/], and you’d be forgiven for thinking that’s a good thing instead of a red flag. (I could go on for a long time about how games that score in the high 80s on these sites are often the games you have to be the most cautious about approaching — in short, they’re often kitchen-sink, triple-A schlock that costs a lot of money, takes no risks, and checks all the right boxes to pass muster among the throngs of half-baked game criticism sites out there — but I’ll save that for another time. Let’s just focus on how they missed the mark with this specific game.) The whole reason I sought out and completed every little scrap of the game’s abundant, dreary, and bland capital-c Content is that I kept hoping that, somewhere in there, I’d finally unearth the game’s beating heart. I was certain that, buried in some dark recess or another, the game’s intact soul was waiting to be excavated, desperate to be witnessed by the series’s most dedicated fans. I regret to say that I emerged empty-handed. For the first time in series history, we received a Final Fantasy game lacking a soul. So, just to set the scene: Final Fantasy XVI is a breakout critical success. As someone who has liked every single other game in the series, many of which also take massive risks and departures from previous entries, I despised it. What happened? ---------------------------------------- [https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/582cd816414fb523e7e035e7/8cff3fb0-98a3-404c-8a0b-1e1167126b2b/FINAL+FANTASY+XVI_20230718185750.jpg?format=1000w] The game is brimming with name-drops and references back to previous Final Fantasy games. In a better game, and in smaller quantities, they’d feel like reverential nods to series regulars. Instead, it just feels exploitative. First, just to restate my credentials: I’m thirty-seven years old. Final Fantasy IV helped teach me how to read. I’ve played through every single-player main-series game to completion at least once, and many several times through. I know this series intimately. I care about it. What I love about Final Fantasy — besides the great music, beautiful worlds, richly imagined characters, and barely-disguised goofball spirit — is that it’s constantly reinventing itself. Battle systems get fundamentally re-imagined from game to game; storytelling techniques often vary significantly; themes and core concepts are distinct and often resonant. Having grown up in a world where the media industry started out risk-averse and has only grown increasingly paranoid, Final Fantasy is the rare exception: the one mass-market game series that must reinvent itself. To its credit, Final Fantasy XVI is a major reinvention. It forgoes party-oriented, turn-based combat for real-time control of a single character in what most resembles the “character action [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_game]” subgenre. It deals extensively with heavy topics like slavery and sexual violence, neither of which has been explored in much depth in previous games. They say “fuck” in this one. And it’s by far the most depressed-feeling game in the series. That’s new, too. The problem is that the game absolutely cannot bring any of its new tent-pole features to fruition. The combat is dull, repetitive, and dreary; the characters, especially the game’s women, are woefully under-defined, lacking in strong motivations or any plausible representation of agency. The music is awful, too! I don’t mean to be too harsh here, so let me clarify: there are Final Fantasy games with scores I don’t particularly care for, like Final Fantasy XII. I still think that game has a really fantastic score; I just don’t really like it. On the other hand, Final Fantasy XVI sounds like a run-of-the-mill TV show. It’s uninspired and bereft of heart: all pomp and no circumstance. There’s no winning with this game. If you main-line the core story missions, you’re grinding through a lengthy chain of action battles chopped up with ponderous and expensive-looking cutscenes until you finally reach its ambiguous (but not in a particularly meaningful or “earned” way) conclusion. If you dip into the game’s plentiful and tedious side quests, you feel like you’re stuck in an MMORPG where everyone else had the good sense to log off and do something better with their time. There is very little of value to be found in those side missions in terms of character development or worldbuilding; the only motivating factors are “to get the best weapons” and “to feel like I accomplished something with all this time I wasted.” They are regressive and they reflect a dangerous misunderstanding of the game developer’s covenant with their players. ---------------------------------------- [https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/582cd816414fb523e7e035e7/bf9dfbd8-8434-4580-aed7-a990b9a5c29a/FINAL+FANTASY+XVI_20230727150451.jpg?format=1000w] Jesus. Playing a game with nothing to say is like wandering into a bookstore and accidentally picking up a stack of Hallmark cards instead of a novel. Final Fantasy XVI has pretty vistas and good actors and fancy menus and all the trappings you might look for in a polished, expensive game, but it just…it just sucks to play. Like, okay. Let me drop the highfalutin prose for a bit here. Let’s just talk, person-to-person. As a critic, I don’t think it’s productive to label games as “good” or “bad.” Those words mean nothing without the full context of who’s playing, where they’re coming from, and what they’re hoping to get out of their experience. I’m a lifelong Final Fantasy enjoyer who’s been playing these games since I could barely read. I love this series the way people love Star Trek or Harry Potter. Despite its faults, it’s a cornerstone of how I relate to the world of human culture. It’s a big deal to me. Now that I’ve completed every single-player game in the Final Fantasy series, I can say this with certainty: Final Fantasy XVI is the worst one. Yes, even in a modern context; I’d rather replay Final Fantasy II than even a third of Final Fantasy XVI. Of course, you may feel differently, and you’re welcome to! But you’re reading this because you want my perspective, I assume. So why did I write all this? Just to bag on a game I don’t like? Nah; I mean, sure, it helps to get this off my chest, but that’s not why I wrote this review. I wrote it because I’m concerned about its critical reception. There is nothing about this game that suggests a B-plus grade is justified here. It is the worst game I’ve finished all year, and I finished Starfield. (Okay, no, I didn’t; I dropped it about six hours in. Almost all of my criticism about Final Fantasy XVI applies to that game, too, though.) And I think this game’s critical success points to a fundamental problem with the state of games criticism: it has been largely co-opted by major publishers to help them sell their big-budget games and ensure a strong ROI at the cost of providing any meaningful criticism or advocacy for artistic, creative, or progressive achievement in design and execution. We’ve never issued review scores at Silicon Sasquatch because, even back in 2008, we saw how review scores were inherently reductive and didn’t end up serving the public in any meaningful way. The benefit of a snapshot score means nothing when the full review is ignored. The way we experience media — and life, for that matter — is messy, complicated, inconsistent, and often joyful. Reducing those experiences to measurable scores is nonsensical. If I gave review scores out, Final Fantasy XVI would get a failing grade. It fails to honor the series’ fundamental values; it fails to tell a meaningful story with skill or grace; it fails to fulfill its contracts with the player to offer an enjoyable, deep combat system or a rich, vibrant world to explore. It is an empty, vapid, depressing experience, and I don’t wish it on anyone.

Finding Love in the Landfill: on Cyberpunk 2077's 2.0 update

[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/582cd816414fb523e7e035e7/05a86ddd-9716-4735-a9b6-487413b40401/20211109144619_1.jpg?format=1000w] There was a moment in Cyberpunk 2077, probably about 20 hours into my first run through the game, where I thought I was playing a triple-A artifact that had dislodged itself in time and arrived on my doorstep years in advance. You might gather from this feeling that I waited to play the game until it had been out for about a year and thoroughly un-fucked itself through countless patches. You’re correct, and that waiting wound up proving quite prudent. I remembered the game I played being mostly pretty good, frequently quite intelligent; occasionally it even rendered me speechless in realizing the dramatic lengths of its ambition. I would have recommended it back then, but I wasn't recommending much of anything to anyone at the time. That was in 2021. Now it's 2023, and I've played through almost the entire game again a second time. So? Would I still recommend it? [https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/582cd816414fb523e7e035e7/f8ab03e8-08e6-430f-9f5a-c5beba02dc9d/20231106171243_1.jpg?format=1000w] Cyberpunk 2077 is not the game it launched as. It's been patched so many times now that it's even incremented to a second major version number, complete with an advertising campaign and plenty of incentives designed to woo skeptics and fans back into the fold. All of this was rolled out like a red carpet over a mountain of frayed and wine-stained old rugs just in time for its one expansion, Phantom Liberty, to step out of a Tesla Cybertruck and glitch its merry way down the runway. The Cyberpunk 2077 of 2023 is basically not broken. It's still got plenty of bizarre glitches (stroke-warning-sign lighting effects, with no tangible connection to the current environment, are constantly popping off), half-measures (character progression is better, but a talent tree feels repressive for a game that's otherwise all about a plug-and-play world), and performance compromises (why do cars almost always only show up on one side of the road? At least they're constantly running me the fuck over, firmly grounding me in the authentic SoCal setting) that look weird as hell, but you're not likely to notice them if you're new to this game. So: it's not broken, but it's still an open-world, triple-A game. It’s a beautiful depiction of a disgusting world, a monumental collaborative work of pop culture that's inexorably and perpetually burning itself to the ground. But you'd have to be pretty jaded to not find joy and wonder in watching a controlled burn. It’s mostly fun to play. Running, driving, dashing, air-dashing, dash-double-jump-air-dashing, and shooting/slicing people are your primary verbs, and they roll off the tongue. There’s a story system running under the hood that's always tossing fresh choices your way; you'll quickly realize that most of these are mere window dressing, but every now and then you'll dip your toe into an oil-contaminated puddle and discover it's disguising a seaweed-choked lake of rich narrative complexity. Because it's an open-world game with cars and guns, there are hundreds of opportunities to do reckless shit with both of them. Most of this stuff is not fun to engage with because, at best, it's meaningless and, at worst, it props a mirror up in front of you and exposes the sheer depravity of your actions as a player. Night City is full of all kinds of characters; many are blank caricatures who bark bizarre, Rockstar-adjacent quips at nobody in particular, and a few are fully-voiced, opinionated, autonomous androids you may even grow quite attached to. But the vast majority of the non-people populating this awful city amount to mere obstacles to avoid, lest you mow somebody down in view of the police, which means you've got to spend the next couple minutes playing hide-and-seek with some truly wretched adversary AI. But then there are the NPCs with arrows over their heads, and this is where the depraved, grinning rictus of the game's core design reveals itself. Some arrows are blue, and others are yellow. You are encouraged to kill these people because you'll get items and experience points for it. If you kill the blue ones, you get in trouble because they're the cops and, despite being at best a heartless criminal, your character has no motivation — and indeed, the game offers no real reward — for picking a fight with them. The yellow-arrow folks, however, are fair game, and hunting season never ends. During story missions, you associate yellow-arrow NPCs as enemies to be avoided, quietly dispatched, or brutally killed in a full-on violent assault. But out in the open world, you'll see tons of people with these arrows. Some of them are committing violent crimes when you find them. But the vast majority are not; they're petty thieves, drug users, or just guys being dudes. But the longer you play any game like this, the deeper-entrenched your neural pathways for deriving rewards from a Skinner box become. Yellow arrows equate to free guns, free money, and fast XP. And so you'll likely find yourself, at some point in your playthrough, mindlessly mowing them down, shooting them up, or hacking their brains until they literally catch fire and die in front of you. You won't even think twice about it. They're basically Super Mario coin blocks, requiring just as much mental effort and prompting just as much moral ambiguity in harvesting them. Except they're people; they have conversations with their buddies, they hang out, and — as the game takes great pains at times to reinforce — they're not uniformly "good" or "bad." Because, to its credit, this game is quite certain that nobody can be comprehensively described in binary terms. [https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/582cd816414fb523e7e035e7/27453cc0-792d-4e38-877f-0240370957c5/20211121205325_1.jpg?format=1000w] They aren’t real, of course. None of this is. But our lives are, and our time that we spend playing games is real time that can be spent in any number of other ways. At a certain point you may look around your room or see a pet or loved one walk by and realize you're doing something supremely fucked up, and you may have a moment of reckoning. For every sharp exchange of dialogue, wonderfully nuanced main character, and stunning viewpoint in Cyberpunk 2077 — and the game is truly overflowing with all of the above — there are at least a dozen moments of banal cruelty and mindless indulgence. Of course, the game makes it pretty obvious that its universe is all about banal cruelty and mindless indulgence, so one could broker the argument that this all amounts to intentional meta-commentary. But the longer I play, and the more boxes I check on V's virtually limitless to-do list, the more I feel the weight of the game's overstuffed void of meaningless, cruel bullshit diminishing the beauty of this painstakingly broken world. As with most big-budget open-world games, it can't quite decide upon the full range of choices it ought to present to the player, and it leans a bit too much on whatever's cheap and easy to scale. Gotta market these games somehow, I know, but I can't ignore how much all this junk food is spoiling what's otherwise an immaculate seven-course meal. The opposite of love really isn't hate; it's apathy. Now look at how long this review is. I love Cyberpunk, which is why I'm so down on it a lot of the time. I love it both in spite of, and maybe even because of, the things I find disappointing, awful, and distressing about it. I recommend it because I think sometimes it's good to let yourself feel like shit and to give yourself the opportunity to stop and ask yourself why that is. I think these uncomfortable, squished-in moments are where we learn and where we make decisions for ourselves. And any game that simultaneously inspires me with the heart-swelling richness of collaborative human artistic achievement while force-feeding me depraved and unlovable garbage is, if nothing else, the makings of an utterly fascinating experience.

"An American Illness: Gamergate and the Capitol Riot" — The Silicon Sasquatch Podcast: Episode 63

[https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/582cd816414fb523e7e035e7/1610599214459-DVIN6U2WV4OSEZICEXYS/image-asset.jpeg?format=1000w] Photo by Ted Eytan [https://flic.kr/p/21TQC5w] The details of the January 6th, 2021 insurrection attempt and attack on the United States Capitol grow more horrifying each day. Doug and I felt compelled to chat about what happened, both to grapple with the shock and for the sake of posterity. This episode asks a pointed question: Did Gamergate contribute to the riot in Washington D.C.? Were its proponents' online harassment campaigns a precursor to sedition? We also explore white privilege, conservative anger, and systemic racism. Heady stuff for our first numbered podcast in almost three years. Still, we felt it prudent to continue our mission of examining the intersection of games and culture during such uncertain times. Click on the link above or subscribe to the Silicon Sasquatch Podcast on iTunes [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/silicon-sasquatch/id325324857], Overcast [https://overcast.fm/itunes325324857/silicon-sasquatch], or Stitcher [https://www.stitcher.com/show/silicon-sasquatch-podcast-2]. ---------------------------------------- Questions for the Squatchcast crew? Send them to questions@siliconsasquatch.com [questions@siliconsasquatch.com?bcc=aaron%40siliconsasquatch.com] and we’ll answer the best ones on a future episode. Thanks for listening.