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Effortless beauty, meaningless confusion.
Exhilarating yet tedious, beautiful in a construction paper sort of way, and most of all both ingenious and boring, Secrets of Raetikon is a perfect example of the general state of indie games – inspired, but poorly crafted. I went into this work with no expectations, and no clue what it was, and for the most part, I was impressed and thrilled with what I played. But it’s a far from perfect game, with a pretty crappy ending, and play that can be both really fun and totally infuriating.
Sparkle and fade.
Child of Light is the video game equivalent of a children’s bedtime storybook. It’s full of beautiful artwork and whimsical characters. It lights a spark and captures your imagination. Then it starts to put you to sleep.
Where we talk about stuff. And things.
We're a man down this time, so listen to Julian and Patrick talk about a bunch of stuff that nerds who do not wear pants would talk about. What are those things? Good question?
“Sacred geometry.”
Every so often, I am lucky enough to play a game so delightful, so perfectly engineered for its platform, and so inspiring that I have to take a step back, stunned. While other arts such as literature and painting seem long in the tooth these days, clutching to cynicism and nihilism like a terminal patient clinging to the sheets in his bed, great games seem imbued with a sort of impossible optimism and generosity towards the human condition. Monument Valley, a game about redemption through sacred geometry, is one of those games.
“Amnesia? Again?!?”
There’s a special place in hell for JRPG fans. Their sin? Playing the same game with the same story over and over without complaining once. I suppose there are worse crimes than this, but there is a sort of masochistic glee in which JRPG fans partake in their vice. Perhaps we love grinding and crafting so much that we don’t really care about the story too much – despite our claims that we play these games for the tales they tell. Perhaps it’s the newness of the dungeons or the shiny equipment that makes the tedium of saving the world over and over remain novel. But, despite these tropes, this genre seems to continue on, and sometimes even with some of the most loathed archetypes and clichés, JRPGs can rise to heights other genres can’t.
My clone has more aspiration than this game
Have you ever played a game that was such a blatant clone, you literally had the urge to punch digitized ones and zeros in hopes of transforming it into something better? Have you ever felt the desire to quit purely because you could predict what was coming? I wanted to with Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death, which feels like it’s been done so many times before. What initially began as a promising journey through the depths of life and death, love, and betrayal fell shorter than a pass from Tim Tebow.
