Tonight Stray cracked open LIMBO, and after about eighteen minutes of giant spiders, hanging corpses, and hair-trigger beartraps, it most definitely pays off everything planted in this trailer. It’s creepy, smart, and vicious. The simplicity is deceptive – nothing is what it seems, and no punches are pulled when mistakes are made. The haunting graytone landscapes, the eerie soundtrack, the only guidance: Keep Going Right. I cannot WAIT to see where it goes.
Right as I’m typing this, I’m watching the intro for Prototype. Zombies! New York! Copious amounts of blood! This one’s looking pretty good, too
Epiphany from last weekend over sushi and plum wine and 8-bit reminiscing and oh my gods I’ve always wanted to see all the fatalities from Mortal Kombat TO THE YOUTUBES!!
I’m skipping right to 3 because 1) they’re a little more imaginative than the first two, and 2) Sindel, the skunk-haired dervish who can scream the flesh right off an opponent’s skeleton, is in it. I also dig the chick whose kiss turns into a projectile spew of bones. Very tame compared to the gore in today’s games, but back then, it was the height of awesome to boot your enemy facefirst into a ceiling of spikes.
I forgot how much fun the atmospheres were. The cathedral with the candles, the graveyard, and those floating monks who epitomize the era so well. I miss Enigma!! There was a time when I couldn’t hear their music without thinking of yogurt commercials, but I think it’s safely past now. Until downtempo beats and chanting get picked up for erectile dysfunction ads and the 90’s revival will officially be underway then for sure.
So Hey Baby is currently making its rounds through the feminist blogosphere. In short: it’s a first person shooter where you play a woman walking down the street, and as catacallers come up to say all kinds of obnoxious shit to you, you gun them down. Little tombstones pop up with their pickup lines. How cute! Of course I had to go check it out, I’ve been dreaming of a game like this for ages.
Two reactions, the socially conscious one and the gaming one:
1) Socially conscious: Taking the House of the Dead-style zombie mobs and turning them into the everyday assholes that block your path, that *is* kind of what it feels like – when I pass a guy on the sidewalk, highschooler, old guy, doesn’t matter, all kinds do it – and not knowing if he’s going to mutter something to me or if he’ll let me pass by in silence. (That Scrodinger’s Rapist post from a while back was right on the money.) There’s no way to know which one has a verbal machete hidden behind his back. Countless blog posts have tried to explain this, and they’re always overrun by whiners who demand women’s attention while thinking nothing of their safety. (And that’s another bone to pick – dude, do you really think you’re the only special snowflake on the sidewalk? That there haven’t been a bunch of guys before you trying the same thing? Seriously, get a new game. Yours obviously sucks when you need to coerce another person into playing it.) A picture’s worth a thousand words, a video game definitely looks like a better medium to get the message across. It’s already worked in one instance.
2) Gaming: not very good, unfortunately. The world wasn’t very realized, the lines repeated themselves, but the big problem is that this is all that happens – there are no other obstacles to surmount. I haven’t played that much GTA so pardon any mistaken assumptions on how the game is structured, but I think it would be fantastic to drop a character/challenge into the game where this is one more extra-cuz-you’re-female hassle to deal with on the way to whatever other mission you’re trying to accomplish. Hey, just like real life! That, and it would be deliciously subversive: running over street hookers, women that society considers worthless and deserving of whatever punishments they get, is too close to real life to be any kind of shocking. But smashing into assholes swaggeringly upholding the power structure would be a lot more fun to play – what a great cathartic sandbox trope. I bet more than a few dudes would be into it, too.
But, big thanks to the game’s creator for making the idea reality. It’s a good one.
One of my favorite Brooklyn spots is a little slice of happiness called Barcade. As someone who spent the early 80’s standing on top of a milk crate to reach the game controls, the booze is a pretty thrilling addition. A jack & coke + whacking the eggs out of everything in Joust = happy times.
“Satan’s Hollow” is one of the games they’ve got, and I love the batwings embracing those menacing capital letters. Enough with the Care Bears, I’d love to see the fake vintage retro-80’s craze bring back the demonic stuff, I want this emblazoned across the chest of a babydoll t-shirt. (and then half the time people would ask if it was a band. No, just an OK video game that didn’t get nearly as popular as Space Invaders.)
However…
…this graphic, which flanks the screen, totally called to mind something I’d seen on Etsy.
I doubt the owner of 3 Rexes had luciferian gaming in mind when designing these earrings – more like Celtic art – but they’re so close. True, the pink gem isn’t as menacing as the game’s eyeball, but swapping in some blood-red stones would jack up the ferocity a tad.
And I would be totally unable to resist clicking through the wares of an Etsy store naming itself “Satan’s Hollow.” Like, “hi, I’m Satan, eternally evil but making crafty little things here in my hollow! Tempt, tempt!”
