review

game review: subnautica

“marine salvage for gamers.” i did not finish subnautica. i try my best to finish every game i review, but i felt that after twelve hours of having a merely okay time, i had gotten the essential experience. subnautica is a underwater-themed survival crafting game released in 2018 and developed by unknown worlds entertainment, previously known primarily for natural selection 2. at the time of this writing, it enjoys “overwhelmingly positive” reviews on steam.

game review: norco

“pushes the boundaries.” in 1988, konami released snatcher, written and directed by hideo kojima. snatcher was a curious game, both in its era and now. graphic adventure games had made their way to japan from the US with the portopia serial murder case. snatcher was an evolutionary step towards the adventure game’s most uniquely japanese form: the visual novel. snatcher featured very limited action gameplay, restricted to a handful of shooting segments.

game review: ghost trick: phantom detective

“travels back in time to undo the death of the adventure game.” ghost trick is a 2010 nintendo ds adventure game developed by capcom and directed by shu takumi, the director of the first three ace attorney games. this was actually part of the reason i’d avoided playing it. i had heard very little about it, and assumed that was because it failed to live up to the quality of the ace attorney games.

game review: vampire survivors

“not a roguelike, just an amusement park ride.” ten years ago i started watching the youtube videos of a let’s player (remember when we called them “let’s plays?”) named northernlion. he was most well known at that time as an avid player of a game called the binding of isaac. at that time, words like “roguelike” and “procedural generation” were still relatively unknown. they’d been coming into vogue in some circles via the rise of minecraft, as well as more niche games like dwarf fortress and the original verison of spelunky.

album review: ants from up there by black country, new road

“maximalist indie rock is back baby. it’s good again. awoouu (wolf howl)” black country, new road are a british post-punk/post-rock band from london. they are, or were, fronted by isaac wood, whose expressive vocals and neurotic lyrics were what drew me to the band through singles like athens, france and sunglasses. their first album, 2021’s for the first time took a while to grow on me, but it eventually became one of my favorite albums of the year.