for the little things you might have missed
Something I've always enjoyed in my time writing critically on media are weird comparisons — taking two pieces of media that otherwise would never be placed alongside each other and seeing how hard I have to smash them together to generate something interesting. In that vein, I recently finished binging Dexter, and made a joke with a friend who also loves Disco Elysium about whether Dexter Morgan had access to Shivers. Then I thought about it a little too long... and this happened.
Strap in for my tiered ranking of every Metroid game — from the ones I struggled to make it through to the ones I wish I could experience for the first time over and over again.
Rain World has a certain reputation in the gaming sphere: a hellishly difficult 2D platformer largely panned by critics at release, but that found a second life via a relatively small and deeply dedicated community of fans. I had tried to play it several times over the past few years, emboldened each time by various accomplishments in other "difficult" games — and each time I found myself unable to make it past the first few levels. This time, I broke through with the help and advice of some friends on the Waypoint forums, and behind that initial wall I found a piece of art that, especially in its "remixed" form, has more to say about that idea of video game difficulty than any other game I've played.
As we all slowly drift away from the media landscape of the 2010s, I've found myself obsessed with what might be its most unwavering aesthetic pillar. From the Marvel Universe's cinematic sprawl, to our final great shared cultural object in the form of Game of Thrones, to the explosion of reality TV, to a set of Best Picture winners that includes films like Argo, Spotlight, and Birdman — our last decade of popular culture was defined by a specific and enduring strain of cynicism. Film and television, particularly American film and television, particularly American film and television that might be seen by anyone outside of tiny arthouse theaters or tight-packed city centers, had to guard itself against the charge of taking itself too seriously. This was the decade that American film and television became afraid of its own potential, and I think a lot of people never want to leave that comfort zone behind.
At its core, Disco Elysium is a game about the "post-" in words like postcolonial, postrevolutionary, posthistorical, postmodern; it is about living in the nebulous after, in the shadow of a happening much larger than whatever small piece of the world we can identify ourselves. And so, its version of a new way forward becomes almost unrecogniable — like a creature blending with the reeds.
Metroid wants to disorient you, to leave you confused and scared and wondering wait, have I been here before as you backtrack through its labyrinthine world, and the result is an environment that feels like its own kind of enemy. And its lack of a visual map — a design choice almost unheard of in decades since — is essential to that feeling; all you have to rely on is your notes and your memory, and both are set up to let you down.
After almost two decades in limbo, a game called Metroid Dread will be coming to the Nintendo Switch in early October. In the meantime, join me for a deep dive into why that matters — not just for longtime fans of a seminal series, but for anyone interested in the way video games developed as an art form and storytelling medium. So, over the next three months, I will be playing through the entirety of the Metroid and Metroid Prime series. Welcome to my 2021 Metroid Rewind.
In the end, Black Mesa draws power from that limitation; it clarifies and rewires Half-Life's undercooked tale of invasion and colonization — one that continues with humanity itself colonized by an unimaginable cosmic empire. In that sense, Gordon arriving to Xen with his arsenal of weapons feels fitting; in a year like 2020, it should be clearer than ever that the mistakes, evils, and constraints of the past always ripple forward into the present and future.
And after hours and hours of moving those bodies around these chessboard grids, leveling mountains and razing forests with powers of the kind usually attributed to gods, the game's subtext begins to emerge. For all its smoke and flames, Into the Breach isn't really a game about cataclysm itself — it's about what led us there, and the increasingly invasive, disastrous measures needed to prevent a final slide into extinction.
If that title sounds like a lot, don't worry—this is a two-part list, and if you're pressed for time, either half should be an enjoyable respite from the apocalyptic rain of acid and flames that, if anything, should bring 2018 to a close. In the grand tradition of Mario Kart's Nitro and Retro halves (well, since Mario Kart DS at least), I'll be listing the best games I've played this year in two halves—first, games released in 2018; second, games released elsewhere (well, mainly in the past) that I first played this year. And maybe the sum of the two will be a bit long, but hey, there's a really awful pun near the end of this one (can you spot it?), and you can go grab some popcorn at the intermission.
Sunset Over Ithaca 