May 3rd

Welcome back readers.

Before I get into the weekly proper, I’ve got a couple important updates from around the site.

First, Kaile has put together a special issue of choice picks from Paste Magazine over the years, in light of the recent news that the outlet has effectively been shuttered. Paste is one of my first stops every week when I put together the weeklies. Putting out an issue of TWIVGB without checking in there first feels wrong. Losing the outlet sucks, but the writers, and the writing, remain. We’ve collected some of our favourites of the latter, and hope you’ll follow the former wherever and whenever they reappear.

So that’s one update, but that’s not all. Kaile has been working way harder than me this week, and has also just published our latest Patreon-exclusive monthly recap. This is as good a place as any for me to point out that Patreon support makes this work possible, so please give that some consideration if you’ve got the means!

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

Recency Virus

Let’s start things off this week with a variety of writeups on new and recent games.

• Esoteric Ebb review – camp and cutting political comedy in a D&D Disco Elysium wrapper | Eurogamer.net
  Alexis Ong mostly enjoys gadding about colourful, attentively-written Tolstead, with a couple of glaring exceptions.
• Pragmata Is a “Fun Uncle” Game | The Punished Backlog
  Sam Martinelli breaks down why Pragmata isn’t like the sad dad games of yesteryear (Further Reading: Dia Lacina on Wine Aunts).
• ITCHY 4 TASTY | DEEP-HELL
  Skeleton catches the T-Virus and ruminates on zombies, women, and zombie women across the Resident Evil series (Further Reading: Grace Benfell on RE9).

“In November of 2021, I started taking recreational drugs. Raised on years of posts where I correctly identified the tell-tale signs of Testosterone poisoning I began to rapidly dose myself with a suite of chemicals designed to change my body. The old skin went away and was replaced by something softer but my teeth are calcium bones meant to bite. I’m hungry. I’m so goddamned itchy and I want to sing. Videogames only happen on screen. The dead woman can’t talk to me outside of black plastic borders.”

All Those Who Wander

These next two weave in a bit more personal reflection into the mix.

• the spider-man complex – one more letter | ashley schofield writes
  Ashley Schofield and Micaela Deitz debrief on the narrative aftermath of Spider-Man 2.
• Wanderstop, Celeste, and the Power of Radical Self-Acceptance | Medium
  Kat connects the dots between Madeline, Alta, and Carl Rogers (Further Reading: Esther Rosenfield on Wanderstop).

“These divergent player experiences reflect the distinct thematic focus of each game. Celeste is about growth through adversity. Wanderstop is about what happens when you spend so long overcoming adversity it becomes all you are. Celeste says, don’t quit, you can do this. Wanderstop says, actually, it’s OK to quit. Those might seem like contradictory messages, but I think they’re quite complimentary. Both of these skills are essential — we need to know how to push ourselves to achieve important goals while also knowing how to stop and breathe along the way. Depending on where you’re at in life, one or the other of those messages might be the one you really need to hear.”

No (More) Kings

International Workers’ Day was this past week, so here’s a section bringing together thoughts on class, labour, and revolutionary politics.

• The Good Cop is a Heretic | Unwinnable
  Taylor Hidalgo unspools the heresy of class consciousness in Final Fantasy Tactics (Further Reading: Harper Jay MacIntyre on FFT).
• chop it, bag it, stash it, stack it. get in, get out. | i am david brothers (dot com)
  David Brothers muses on the fungibility of labourers and runners (Further Reading: Madeline Blondeau on Marathon).
• Retro spotlight: Red Faction: Guerrilla | Retro XP
  Marc Normandin highlights the revolutionary politics of one the Xbox 360 greats.
• Post Punk Sympathy | Stop Caring
  Artemis Octavio dwells on the desperate struggle of conditional sympathy on both sides of the screen (Further Reading: De’Angelo Epps on No More Heroes).

“My sympathy has limits, stretching far but stopping at fascists, money-hungry CEOs, and corrupt politicians. Violence is so commonplace in both Santa Destroy and our world it has become banal. The rich and powerful have developed a system that makes it so certain lives are less valuable than others, discrimination traced along lines of race, class, and gender. It’s not that I am incapable of feeling sympathy, it’s that I don’t believe it should be extended to those who make life materially difficult for the oppressed. If I were to sympathize with those who want me dead, I would have no emotional reserves left for those who need it. And God knows whenever a fascist dies and I celebrate, I am told by the laws of modicum and the tenets of respectability politics that celebrating said death is an immoral venture, no matter how horrible the person was in life. If Travis were consistent with his sympathy, we would have no videogame, no fun or reason to engage in the hyper-stylized massacre fueled by his revenge. Desperate Struggle reminds us that sympathy is conditional and having limits to it is necessary, but, if it’s not elastic enough, people who deserve compassion will get hurt.”

Molymarket

These aren’t all strictly interviews, but here is where I’ve gathered the more conversation-shaped reads for the week.

• Meet the players who lost big money on Peter Molyneux’s failed Legacy | Ars Technica
  Kyle Orland assembles an oral history of Molyneux’s crypto arc (Further Reading: Khee Hoon Chan on the games industry’s NFT fling).
• Is Child Safety in Gaming Just a Hot Topic? | This Week in Videogames
  Maddie Agne comes away from the Games for Change Summit in London more sure of child safety’s topicality in games and less certain of its substance (Further Reading: Holly Boson on that time Eminem was in Fortnite).
• Inscryption’s bespoke, two-player board game is a fusion of aesthetics and adaptation | Rascal
  Khee Hoon Chan chats with designer Nathan Hockridge about the challenges of adapting Inscryption for tabletop.

““It’s designed asymmetrically where Leshy has the advantage, and you almost have to break the game to win,” Hockridge explained. “That doesn’t work in a two player game.” Maintaining this sense of outwitting a more advantaged player, but still keeping the game playable and fair for everyone, proved a significant hurdle.”

Critical Chaser

Ending things on a high note this week. I could promise to stop Doing That, but you wouldn’t believe me, and frankly neither would I.

• I tested the MSI Cyborg 14 gaming laptop by carrying it for 105 miles through the mountains of Wales | Rock Paper Shotgun
  Edwin Evans-Thirlwell elevates the consumer hardware review to new heights.

“After walking 105 miles with it, my hottest take on the MSI Cyborg 14 remains that it’s light and compact, which I’m not sure I needed to walk 105 miles to demonstrate. Beyond that, it’s just another box that makes pictures.”