May 19th

Welcome back readers.

It’s technically a holiday weekend here, but I’ve never had a ton of deference to *checks notes* British monarchy. At any rate, I’m back and recharged from a week visiting family, and here with another fifteen picks for your reading pleasure!

This Week in Videogame Blogging is a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.

1000xResist

In a recent slate of very good indie releases, this one looks more and more like the one most strongly positioned to linger in critical discussions. Here are two of this week’s highlights.

• 1000xResist’s Magnificent Operatic Heterotopia | PopMatters
  Luis Aguasvivas highlights not just 1000xResist‘s deft execution of theme, but also the confidence and pedigree of its craft.
• 1000xRESIST is a game for a post-2019 Hong Kong protest generation of diaspora children that doesn’t exist yet | cohost
  Kastel thinks about how future generations of Chinese diaspora will receive a difficult, remarkable game.

“I think for Chinese diasporas, we want to be loved, understood, and accepted by the people who gave us birth. The desire to return to our homelands is understandable, but it should not be not at the expense of the children who will replace us.”

“Where is all the good writing about. . .?”

Now let’s talk about some of the problems that impact games criticism and media criticism more widely.

• Media Literacy Died For A Cheap Laugh | Press E For Everything
  Elijah Beahm unpacks the flattening effect of comedy in engagement-driven media criticism.
• Essay Anthology Critical Hits Is a Dull Rehash that Fails to Engage with Games Criticism | Paste Magazine
  Grace Benfell uses a disappointing volume to reflect on the problems that affect games criticism generally.

“It is frustrating to feel unrecognized. However, Critical Hits’ fundamental problem is not that it doesn’t show deference, but that it doesn’t learn lessons from game criticism’s checkered past. It recreates its numerous failures and foibles.”

Thought Cabinet

Here’s two more picks from the compilation of Disco Elysium essays I started reading last week. Challenging, worthwhile work!

• DISCO-ORIENTED HAUNTOLOGY | Post45
  Saad Maqbool investigates the construction and deconstruction of affective realities via interface in Disco Elysium.
• Further and Further Away | Post45
  Emily Price maps the ragged boundaries between alienation and community in Disco Elysium.

“Disco Elysium never promises a transcendental connection across class, profession, or species, but it does present the possibility for connection through a shared space. Martinaise is defined by post-revolutionary pessimism in which every possible future has receded into a mediocre present, where everything is always already falling apart and failing to materialize. Rather than being a place of wonder you are excluded from by your emotions or your personality, it’s a place where wonder has to be built, piece by piece, from the wreckage of previous possibilities, by you and the game simultaneously.”

Critical Path

Next up, old favourites, new hits, and lesser-known highlights come together in a series of new critical explorations.

• Dread Delusion’s 1.0 Release Was Worth The Wait | Kotaku
  Willa Rowe gets lost in a weird and wonderful world.
• Final Fantasy 8 Is The Perfect Follow-Up To FF7 | Kotaku
  Claire Jackson recommends–hear her out–the sequel to Final Fantasy VII.
• For Dogma Sickos Only: What’s up with the Pathfinder, huh? | No Escape
  Kaile Hultner unspools some thoughts on Dragon’s Dogma (II), several endings deep (curator’s note: Kaile works for CD).
• No Case Should Remain Unsolved finds truth in distorted memories | Eurogamer.net
  Lottie Lynn reflects on the unreliability of memory while playing a captivating detective game.

“We’ve all forgotten something. We’ve all returned to an event in our minds over and over again. Yet we never know whether these glimmers of the past have been twisted into new forms. In No Case Should Remain Unsolved, you see how Gyeong’s reignited memories have constructed a new truth, and it grants us the chance to do the impossible – attempt faithful restoration.”

Games-as-Service

Our next two selections focus on service games, or, well, former service games! One’s been taken offline, while the other has enjoyed an afterlife of sorts–a good one, by the sounds of it.

• Sometimes Failure is Good – Chocobo GP | Pixpen
  Sam Howitt explores life after gacha, revisiting Chocobo GP with the monetization patched out.
• Kim Kardashian: Hollywood has a lasting video game legacy | Polygon
  Nicole Carpenter talks to the developers who built ten years of digital Kim.

“The team working on KKH was small at the start, because the “blueprint” of the game — the Stardom series — was already there, Dan said. The team wasn’t necessarily invested in Kardashian’s show or life; many of them said that after starting on the project, they began watching a lot of Keeping Up with the Kardashians to learn about her world. Though not everyone expressed fondness for the development period in interviews with Polygon, lots of people did. Sure, the game was based on a person who could be polarizing, but it was a legitimately good game.”

Studying the Blade

Ubisoft unveiled a new Assassin’s Creed set in Japan with a Black protagonist, and heads exploded! Here are two articles reflecting on the bad-faith nature of that particular discourse.

• Stop Trying To Defeat Racism With Logic | Aftermath
  Gita Jackson tires of the bad-faith discourse swirling around an Assassin’s Creed game announced mere days ago.
• Let’s Not Pretend We’re Mad the New Assassin’s Creed Shadows Samurai Isn’t Asian | IGN
  Matt Kim calls bullshit when discourse about authentic Asian representation only ramps up when a Black samurai headlines an Assassin’s Creed.

“When I push for greater diversity in games it’s not so that the next AAA samurai game will star an Asian protagonist, it’s so that the next Naughty Dog game, or the next Hideo Kojima game, or hell, even a Final Fantasy game, could imagine an Asian hero.”

Critical Chaser

This week we close out with a healthy measure of bittersweet memory.

• The GameBoy Advance SP: Rooted in Grief and Nostalgia | Sidequest
  Amy Eastland situates her favourite handheld in its proper time and place.

“When I did eventually return to playing my beloved SP, it was painful. But it brought waves of nostalgia and joy along with the pain as I remembered all those nights I lay awake next to my Nan, the sound on low and the screen dimmed to ensure I didn’t wake her up. I remembered times when she couldn’t sleep herself and would ask me questions about my game, and I remembered how many times she told me, “I’m so glad you have something to keep you company while you’re here.” A phrase I heard often.”