Who Am I?

I am a huge video game fan. In fact, for a while I thought I was going to go into video game concept art as a career. That was before I had a little bit of a mental breakdown, so now I’m 24 and live with my mom and have a minimum wage retail job. No man, no diver’s license, no house, but I do have some PS2 games I paid too much for.

I got into video games the same way a lot of kids my age did, playing flash games on the family desktop computer. But I started playing console games when I was in middle school.

I think what really got me thinking about how games can be pieces of really beautiful expression and art was when I got the Bioshock Collection. I feel like that’s such a cliche, Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite making you realize games are art. I guess I’m just a sheep. Baa baa. Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite became my favorite games. I loved their artstyle and the environments so much. I would get so annoyed when enemies would attack me, because I just wanted to stare at every little detail in the world. I swear, I have collectively spent hours just in the intro of Bioshock Infinite, walking around and admiring Columbia. I loved the way the lighting changed so dramatically when you would enter an indoor area from outside, how intentional it all was to create such a specific mood, and curate this beautiful aesthetic.

The next really pivotal game I played was in late high school/ early college. Or I guess games. I bought the Silent Hill HD Collection. Now I know online it’s pretty infamous for being bad quality, but it still is probably the most accessible legal way to play the original Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3. And it had a massive impact on me. So maybe the comic sans was worth it if you think about it.

The way those games use horror metaphorically, narratively, ludonarratively, and visually, really struck me. They just wormed their way into my brain and never left. I loved it. I wanted to play more games like Silent Hill 2 and 3, and I looked more into the survival horror genre. This is when I learned about the game which remains my favorite to this day. That I’m not sure will ever be dethroned. And that is Rule of Rose.

I feel like it’s almost hard to voice exactly what I love about this game or how much it’s impacted me, because it just means so much to me. I don’t even know where to start. Sometimes you experience media that you feel like was made for you, that hits so many of your specific interests and sensibilities, it seems like it was designed with you in mind. I’ve always loved that early to mid century aesthetic, especially in a kind of warped, horror setting– it’s part of the reason why I was so drawn to the Bioshock games back when I was 14. I love psychological horror. I love horror about girlhood. I love the way Rule of Rose examines why people do horrible things, the cyclical nature of abuse, and how even the main character is not exempt from perpetuating this cycle. I don’t even mind the not-so-great gameplay and the long loading times.

It’s absolutely not for everyone. It’s definitely a very intense story, and I can see it being pretty unpalatable for a lot of people. But I think sometimes when something isn’t for everyone, it makes it even more special when you resonate so deeply with it.

Rule of Rose obviously sent me further down the retro survival horror rabbit hole. I also learned how to emulate games on my computer, so I was able to play even more survival horror games for myself. I only had a years old macbook though, so the most advanced games I could play were Gamecube, and that was really pushing it. Some of my favorites have to be Silent Hill 1, Echo Night (1 and 2), Galerians, Parasite Eve (1 and kind of 2).

Clock Tower: The First Fear is another favorite of mine. I just love the environment and the art. What an incredible mood and atmosphere they were able to create within the limitations of the Super Famicom. I love the room with the mannequins and the bedroom with the evil doll. And how the rooms have some randomization, so you get a bit of variety and different layouts with every playthrough. You can never get too comfortable or familiar with the spaces you’re navigating which keeps up the tension, especially in a game where chases and finding hiding spots is so important. Also I love how the main character is visually modeled after the main character in Dario Argento’s Phenomena. That movie is great. I really love spooky and surreal point and click adventures. And I really appreciate how Clock Tower: The First Fear, takes that point and click adventure game framework and adds on this stalker system. I still feel like it’s pretty unique in its gameplay in the point and click genre even though it came out over 30 years ago.

But I think my current favorite dark and surreal point and click game outside of Clock Tower: The First Fear has to be Garage: Bad Dream Adventure. Have I finished it? No. Do I understand it? Not exactly, but I love the atmosphere, I love the world. I love the prerendered assets. I love the works of David Lynch, and Garage: Bad Dream Adventure feels to me so spiritually similar to Eraserhead as well as a lot of his paintings.

Another adventure game I couldn't go without talking a bit about is Echo Night. It’s another game that has so many elements which just appeal to me so specifically. A retro horror game set in the early 20th century dripping in atmosphere where you walk around incredibly slowly and are therefore forced to take all of the beautiful and uncanny environments in– this is what I live for. I swear, Echo Night facilitated one of my most horrifying and vivid dreams which involved wandering a surreal early 20th century ocean liner where I had the ability to temporarily teleport myself to other places.

I love the portions of Echo Night where you’re outdoors and supposed to be night time and there’s basically no attempt to create a sky. I think the nature of it being on the PS1 and therefore not being able to have a lot of detail in its environments adds to its surreal nature and atmosphere. If this same game had been made in a later console generation, it just would not hit the same. The pretty clunky first person controls and the slow walk and turn speed are another symptom of it being of its era, but that also contributes to the mood and atmosphere.

Honestly, a lot of my favorite games are kind of known for having pretty bad gameplay or controls. If there’s one thing about me, I am a janky gameplay defender. Or at least a game not having the most amazing gameplay will not be as big a problem for me as it may for other people who play video games. The visuals and the overall tone and mood definitely take precedence for me, and I am not only willing to overlook questionable gameplay, but sometimes I feel like it can actually add to a certain mood or tone a game has.

Speaking of flawed games with kind of bad gameplay, Drakengard, am I right? Well yes, unsurprisingly for a game in my favorite games section, some of the Drakengard staples are janky, unoptimised gameplay and a surreal and dark story.

In the first Drakengard game, there are some sections where you’re outside, and you’re very close to enemies, but the draw distance is extremely low, so you don’t see any of them until you’re right up against them. It gives that feeling again of traversing a void. You’re just running around some empty medieval ruins.

But the game I’m really here to talk about is not Drakengard. Because there are sequels. And Drakengard 1 was just the gateway for me. The game I really love is Drakengard 3. My problematic fave. Maybe it is a little bit of the delusion, but I feel like I’m kind of Drakengard 3’s biggest fan, and I am also Drakengard 3’s biggest hater.

I would say it is a terrible game. I can admit that. But at the same time, at a point in my life where I was so depressed that I lost interest in everything, even my beloved psychological survival horror games, because I was in such a dark place I simply could not stomach them, Drakengard 3 was one of the only things I really latched onto. It reignited a creativity and a drive I had not had in a while.

The game has a lot of lore, characterization, and details that just go unremarked on and unexplained in the main story, to the point that it’s actually very confusing and frustrating. But if you have the level of insanity and dedication to where you’ve read the novellas, and the weapon descriptions and if you’ve played all DLCs and bought the setting materials guide and went page by page google translating it by image, you can get a much better idea of what’s going on, and it’s actually kind of interesting. Or at least it is to me.

Something that stuck with me from the setting materials guide was this interview with some of the writers. They talk about how they wish they had explained some things better in the main game, but they also compared the game to NieR Replicant (Automota had not been released at this point). They said everything in NeiR Replicant has an explanation, any question you have has an answer, buried somewhere in the lore. That’s not the case with Drakengard 3. There are things left intentionally vague. Now, is this just them saving face? Maybe. But, clearly I like trying to look at what may be mistakes or shortcomings of games in different ways, and thinking about how unintentional things can still be kind of explained and worked into the game in a way that you could see as being narratively or thematically cohesive. So I’m here for this. Also, I can just imagine the story and characters being better than the final product, and according to the writers, that’s valid.

I have more games I like that I haven’t directly rambled about here, but this is already super long and this is this section after I edited it down dramatically, so you can look at the pictures on the side for more games I like. And I guess you’ll just have to imagine the reasons why I like them.

Movies. My favorite movies. What are they? Who's to say? This is placeholder text.

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