Gears 4 is a direct sequel to 2011’s Gears of War 3, wherein the series spanning enemy The Locust were finally eradicated and some sort of peace established for those who survived. In Gears 4 this peace has dissolved into a battle against a totalitarian government and those still fighting for their freedom. It’s a civil war of ideologies rather than one between species, but what is a stake for many remains the same: the right to their own life. Gears has always had a hazy antiestablishment sentiment, but traditionally that has materialized as little more than a middle finger to the closest person in charge before going AWOL. In that respect, Gears 4 is considerably more nuanced, with the motivations of each side being foundational to the game’s plot and setting, while also simply requiring more consideration than past games made room for. The COG (a military unit now mostly responsible for keeping the peace) is stuffy and bureaucratic, but it is also safe and established, unlike the resistance which allows for individual freedom but may simply be leading the dwindling population into the wilderness to die.

It is unfortunate that Gears 4 doesn’t spend much time after the first few hours considering the positions of its two factions, but at the very least it serves to establish a dichotomy which informs the entire game: old vs. new, freedom vs. safety, family vs. self. That last one is the most important, as more than politics and philosophy, Gears 4 is about family. Like everything Gears has ever attempted, Gears 4 isn’t subtle about its symbolism, positioning every plot point around saving a family member or finding an old friend while reinforcing this through team-driven design and a need to rely on each other to have any chance of making it through. Again, it is not subtle, but in the context of Gears 4’s relentless barrage of explosions and gore it comes across as unexpectedly intimate.

Past Gears games have focused on the connection between squadmates, but wherein Gears 1-3 were an ode to brothers in arms, Gears 4 is bluntly subdued. The people you are fighting with are not only your family, they are all that is left of humanity. You will fight through thousands of robots and alien abominations, but a human face is a rarity to be treasured, and when someone is lost that loss becomes a weight that must be carried. That you will often be literally picked up off the ground by teammates is both a gameplay convenience, but also reinforces the weight that each character carries with them. Everyone has to survive or the mission is a failure regardless of outcome, preventing would-be lone wolfs from abandoning their squad to try to go it alone. You cannot afford to lose anyone else, not even for a second.

Some have speculated that this is the era of pop culture dads, to which Gears 4 contributes a greying, even more disenfranchised Marcus Fenix, father of paper-thin protagonist JD Fenix and owner of many, many guns. Marcus has been the series’ impersonal, no-nonsense face since game one, which makes it all the more surprising to find him now retired, broken, and empty and alone as his late wife’s mansion where he remains, waiting to die. He is still a massive wall of muscle with the voice of a drill-sergeant chain smoker, but he is also just a man, something he has never been or been allowed to be in past games. He is tired of war, of the COG, or the circles everyone is running in hoping that they’ll be the ones to finally break out. And it’s hard to blame him. Three games deep and Gears is feeling a bit crusty around the edges. The spectacle is fading, the path is well trodden, and the heroes a little dimmer than they were last time we saw them. Had Gears 4 attempted to simply repeat the achievements of past games, it would have been as lifeless as the realization that Gears, like every modern videogame franchise, will continue on indefinitely whether it ought to or not until, inevitably, it fails to produce and is unceremoniously taken behind the shed to be forgotten.

Gears 4’s achievements are in its intimacy and understanding of its history. Much of the game finds you in cramped, isolated corridors, fighting things you don’t understand for reasons you haven’t had time to process. It’s not a war so much as an attempt to crawl out of an abyss, alive for one more day. Gears has never felt as hopeless and frightening as Gears 4, nor has it ever recognized its characters’ mortality as effectively. It is one thing to watch a hundred grey soldiers die. It is another to see a son holding his father, beating his chest, screaming for him to come back. Gears 4 is the story of individuals, not armies, who are given both the space to breathe and cause for you to want them to. I can’t say Gears 4’s cast is exceedingly well developed beyond being simply very likable, but when so much is on the line that turns out to be just about enough.

Gears 4’s last few acts, unfortunately, try far too hard to repeat and surpass the bombast of prior games, replacing tight spaces and terrifying encounters with giant battlefields and absurd setpieces as it ramps up to the least climactic conclusion of any game in the series. The road to get there is also paved in some of the worst boss fights of the last few years – big, overly produced throwbacks to 2005 era game design with a hideous reliance on quick-time events. Gears has always had bad boss fights, but that Gears 4 inherited all of the problems of past games despite a new developer comes as doubly disappointing.

It is probably worth recognizing somewhere the difficulty The Coalition would have had as new developers of one of last generation’s most beloved series, but I’m not sure here is the place to do it. They’ve done a masterful job bringing the series into the present, and the changes in tone and narrative structure are more than just welcome – they were absolutely necessary. At the same time, few of the problems plaguing Gears since the beginning have been fixed, and now seem even more embedded in a cannon of otherwise exceptional games. That the end of Gears 4 so explicitly doubts the series’ new direction is as disappointing for how it affects this game as it is for the future of the series. At some point, The Coalition will have to step out of the shadow of its predecessors, and when they do I hope they trust that explosions can only go so far.

///

My first exposure to Guitar Hero was as a Christmas gift to my older step-sister. Her generous grandmother had bought her a Guitar Hero 2 set after my sister fell in love with the game at a friend’s house. This was 2006, when Guitar Hero hype was at its peak and finding it in stores was only slightly easier than nabbing a Nintendo Wii (a hunt that would take us several more years to complete). But here it was, in our backroom, two guitars and a box on which two guitarists struck impossible and impossibly cool poses.

I became obsessed.

I spent days cramped up in that back room with my sister, tearing through track after track, congratulating one another with each new unlock and marveling that music this good existed. At one point my mother remarked at how I was looking skinnier, and to this day considers standing with a plastic guitar highly effective exercise.

GH2 rarely left my PS2 until the system finally gave up the ghost and I was forced to bury my third console. It wouldn’t be until sometime later when my family splurged on the massive full set of Rock Band (2007) that I would be reintroduced to the joy of plastic instruments and colored notes. Rock Band and its many sequels became the centerpiece of my family’s entertainment diet. Together we put hundreds of hours into each game, devoured an upsetting amount of DLC, and rebought the lot three times over as games stopped being released for the PS2 and then the Wii. It was a fixture of our house now, a shrine of polycarbonate to the rock gods I could never hope to summon with real strings.

As rhythm games began to die it became harder to gather my family for a living room concert, and eventually the shrine was dismantled and carted away into a closet where it remained as a reminder of fun nobody cared to have again. At times I would bring out a guitar and play a few songs to try to recreate what I felt when I first plugged in my and my sister’s guitars so many years prior. But without bandmates to back me up, the shows always fell flat.

///

Guitar Hero Live’s conceit is that all its concerts are fully filmed and performed. There are no outrageous characters but real bands playing through each set of a fictional music festival. The bands are split up by musical style and range from spunky girl-groups to uncomfortable metal-heads whose outfits could double as cheese graters. The performances are universally amusing (although the quality varies wildly) primarily due to how clear it is the fake bands are having a great time.

Live also introduces a new guitar which splits buttons into upper and lower groups, adding an extra twist to the familiar five button setups but losing a lot of that model’s accessibility (discerning white and black notes on a flashing highway is a lot harder than picking red from blue). Ultimately, this is Guitar Hero and it still plays like Guitar Hero. Nobody is going to be won back, and those who missed the series will find it easy to slip back in.

But that surface experience – the guitar, the tracklist, even the new live-action visuals – all misses what matters most in a Guitar Hero game, the thing that made it a household name and caused people to erupt with excitement at the sight of a plastic guitar in the corner: Guitar Hero has always been, and is at its very best as a social experience. Playing plastic instruments by yourself fluctuates between being as worthwhile as any other videogame to a sad reminder you are only pantomiming a song and not actually learning the Free Bird solos. Playing with a group, however, can at times border on the euphoric. There is nothing like getting a full Rock Band group together for a night, and every music game since has been chasing that feeling.

Live approaches social play from the same angle it approaches revitalizing the overall tone of the series. Rather than sell you a set of instruments, Live hands you a guitar and provides the rest of the band on the disc. There they are, right now, sitting down at the drums and hyping up the crowd. Don’t worry about your real friends, you’ve got a band (for a set) and then we’ll hook you up with someone else.

To those who only ever played Guitar Hero as a solo game, nothing will feel amiss in Live. But for anyone who’s experienced a full Rock Band setup or played tug-of-war in Guitar Hero, there is an immediate gap in the fantasy Live is trying to invite you into. What few multiplayer options exist are hollow echoes of previous games, either having two players inhabit the same first-person perspective or overlaying music videos in the background. Gone are heated character wars or trademark band lineups. The player is a ghost, drifting from booth to booth, playing a few tracks, and drifting off to find someone else to possess.

It sounds hyperbolic, but the amount of personality that has been stripped out of Live combined with the loss of developed multiplayer becomes increasingly depressing with each set. The crowds get bigger but the initial novelty fades and what remains is a stage full of people you don’t know. The crowd cheers and boos in time with your missed notes, oscillating back and forth as your vision blurs like some sort of rockstar purgatory where everyone comes prepared with “you suck” signs, just in case. Imaginary tweets sale by the bottom of the screen with hashtags I can’t make out on my TV. The announcers repeatedly mention the guitarist separate from the rest of the band, just a stand-in for a dozen groups that don’t exist. I don’t get a name, not even a fake one.

///

As I prepare to walk on stage for the final set, my hands are shaking. This is a big deal, as I understand it. A crew member asks if I’m ok. I huddle with the band and walk on stage. The set passes, fireworks explode, the band hugs. Credits.

I turn the game off. The excitement was lost on me. Or perhaps it’s just hard to be that excited when you can’t share it with anyone. Perhaps I should celebrate with my TV. Or I could invite friends over and play something else.

Let’s play something else.

…

Guitar Hero Live was developed by Freestyle Games and is available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Wii U, PlayStation 3, and iOS.

This post was made possible through the generosity of my wonderful Patreon peeps. If you like my work, consider spreading the word or buying me a coffee :)

Though I had been exposed to dancing games in the past through my younger siblings’ love of Just Dance (2014) on the Wii, what compelled me about Dance Central was that it was a full body experience. I couldn’t just wave my hand and come away with a perfect score. To succeed I was going to need to get out of my comfort zone – way out of my comfort zone – but by the time it became clear what exactly I’d gotten myself into, it was too late to go back. 

I’d purchased Dance Central with the intention of it being a relationship experience with S. and I, but my apprehension at looking like an absolute fool led me to try it first in the safety of my empty dorm room. I stood before the Kinect’s all-seeing-eye and flailed my way through the menu into my first song: Van McKoy’s “The Hustle.” 

I wish I could say it was a seamless experience, that I suddenly awakened a dancing queen inside of me I had always known was there but couldn’t get to, but it wasn’t. I stumbled over myself, trying to match the moves on screen in so uncoordinated a fashion as to cause passersby to think I was having a seizure. By the time the song ended I had already worked up a sweat (intensified by a feeling of mortification when a maintenance man knocked on my door a minute later and I scrambled to turn the game off). But despite all my reservations and embarrassments, I noticed something after that first track: I still couldn’t dance, but maybe that was OK after all. 

For as long as I can remember I have harbored a sort of fantasy that one day something will click and I will be able to dance with style and no inhibitions. Perhaps that fantasy includes taking swing lessons with a partner or getting unceremoniously thrown onto the dancefloor and having to let loose, but the result is the same: I learn to dance without having to embarrass myself in the process. Dance Central made it immediately clear that this was, and always had been, a pipedream. 

Dancing is tough. Moving with any kind of grace or rhythm takes an immense amount of practice and a deep understanding of your body. I wasn’t going to develop that overnight and now that reality was quantified in front of me by a miserably low score. And yet, I was happy. For once, I felt like I had experienced the sort of joy that I could see in others when they danced: the freedom and self-expression of moving to the beat of a song. The outer world faded away and it was only me and my body left in the room. 

The next step was dancing with another person in the room, an initially terrifying prospect made easier by S. being both incredibly encouraging and a less than accomplished dancer herself (though still miles beyond me, it should be said). We cleared the furniture away and donned our workout wear, ready to take on whatever the game would throw at us. An hour later we collapsed in a sweaty heap, giddy with laughter. We couldn’t dance. That much was clear. But it didn’t matter. With Dance Central we had found a means to experience the joy of dancing free from the anxieties of clubbing or dance circles. The scores didn’t matter. The difficulty didn’t matter. What was important is we were having fun with something that previously had only brought embarrassment. It was alarmingly freeing. 

I don’t think any of this is accidental. Where other dance games I’ve tried seem to universally position themselves as means to live out a fantasy as a world class pop star, Dance Central is more intimate. A silly storyline takes the game to some ridiculous places, but the dancing itself is always grounded and humble. It’s a game designed to be enjoyed not mastered, and as such the barrier to entry is low and the stakes even lower. No matter how bad my dancing became I never saw a Game Over screen or felt as if the game was mocking me. In fact, often, Dance Central hardly felt like a game at all. It was a platform with which to release my inhibitions, and maybe learn some moves in the process. 

Dance Central might not have taught me to dance, but it definitely taught me how to enjoy dancing. As it turns out, all I had to do was let go and try.

…

Dance Central was developed by Harmonix and is available exclusively for Xbox 360.

This post was made possible through the generosity of my wonderful Patreon peeps. If you like my work, consider spreading the word or buying me a coffee :)

S. and I are preparing to embark on what will undoubtedly test not only our skills as pilots but the strength of our relationship itself. Though the Gumball Zero has been modified to accommodate four crew members, part of me feels it is better that it will be only the two of us aboard. It is likely that we will fail, and that failure may mean death, but, if nothing else, at least we will have each other.

N.

///

Before I tell you about what Asteroid Base’s Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (2015) is, I’m going to tell you a bit about who I played it with. The reason for this is because Lovers, more than almost any game I’ve played – even co-op focused ones – relies on the relationship between the two (or, after a recent update, three or four) people playing it. It is not a game to be endured solo, even if it is technically possible to play with an A.I. companion. The crux of the game, from its name to its themes of camaraderie and cooperation, revolves around working together with another human to get through what quickly becomes a shockingly difficult juggling act as the two of you hop between roles in an effort to keep your spaceship intact.

But I am getting ahead of myself. I would never have played Lovers if I hadn’t been assured that my girlfriend, S., would join me. S. is a twenty-one-year-old writing major attending the same college as me, and if it wasn’t for her tan brown skin and dark hair it is possible we’d be mistaken for the same person. S. loves games but only with the right company. Where I spent my childhood and teenage years thirsty for any kind of gaming partner, S. found eager companions but was made to feel inadequate for her lack of familiarity with games and how to play them well. She took refuge in Mario Kart but largely left games behind, resolving that they were just not for her and she would never be good enough to play them with other people.

I bring up all of this to say that playing Lovers with S. was more than just a chance to play together, it required trust. Trust that I would not make her feel bad if she wasn’t good enough. Trust that I actually wanted to play with her and wasn’t just looking for a chance to sit on the couch and avoid other responsibilities. As someone who has longed for a co-op partner as long as I’ve been playing games, this was my chance to help repair the frustration S. had experienced in the past and showcase a different side of games that were inviting and cute and that we could experience together.

///

Dear Space Diary,

The Space Bunnies have given way to Space Foxes and S. and I are stretched to our breaking point. These new ships help, but they can only do so much without a good crew. All that said, I wouldn’t change anything. S. has become incredibly good at using our shield not only to protect the hull but to take out more enemies than I could manage with even a proper weapon. As a result, I’ve taken up position behind the wheel and find I enjoy navigating far more than shooting. Perhaps it’s the pacifist in me, or maybe I just like watching S. behind those guns. She’s so attractive when she’s aggressive, I need to be careful to keep my eyes on where I’m going.

N.

///

Lovers plays as a mix between the cave-diving of PixelJunk Shooter (2009) and the spaceship management of FTL (2012). Two players scurry around a ship moving between gun stations, navigation, and shield management in order to maneuver their ship through enemies and space junk to rescue cosmic bunnies and frogs. It is distressingly cute, but hidden beneath the neon colors and chipper soundtrack is a game which demands immense tactical coordination and planning. Any episode of Star Trek can attest to the fact that running a spaceship is hard enough with a full crew, let alone two people, and Lovers doesn’t use this as an excuse to go easy on you. Stop working together and you are toast. Furthermore, the game stops being any fun.

With a name like Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, it is evident that Asteroid Base wanted the game to be played with couples, or at least good friends. What I didn’t expect, however, was just how effectively it modeled the sort of challenges real people face when their relationship is strained by trying times. Few of us will likely ever be tasked with surviving in space with only our partner for support, but everyone has moments when they have to put their trust in someone else to get them through a difficult moment or need to work together to solve a larger task. This isn’t news to anyone who has been in a relationship of any kind, but rarely do games actually facilitate the sort of give and take that makes a relationship work. Which is why the person you play Lovers with is as important as the game itself.

I’m sure it is entirely possible to enjoy Lovers playing with just a casual gaming buddy, but there is a certain intimacy created while playing it that seems designed expressly with couples in mind. The ships are small and everyone has to play multiple roles to succeed, and while no character is better or worse than another I found that S. and I naturally settled into our preferred positions on the ship, which isn’t all that different from how I prefer to cook and she tends to do the laundry. Roles need to be filled and sometimes you have to play one that is less comfortable than you’d like, but at the end what’s important is that you are supporting each other. Lovers fosters this dynamic in a way that showcases how fulfilling it is when you allow someone else to support you, rather than try to pull yourself through all on your own. It asks you to let go because someone else will catch you, and when you open your eyes and they’re holding you the feeling is unlike anything else.

///

Dear Space Diary,

We have made it through the third galaxy but not without casualties. Our ship has suffered intense damage due to a poor call on my part. During a rescue mission, we happened upon a star preparing to go supernova. There were only seconds before it would explode, but despite S.’s pleading for us to leave I refused to listen and steered the ship towards the last two castaways. I couldn’t leave them behind, but before we were able to save them the star erupted and it was only through a last minute escape that we did not go with it. By ignoring S. I put not only us in danger but everyone we had worked so hard to save. It is never easy leaving people behind, but S. knew we couldn’t save everyone and was prepared to make that choice. I should have listened.

N.

///

S. and I still haven’t managed to beat the final boss in Lovers, but it was never about finishing the game, at least not to me. We’ve tried other co-op games since retiring Lovers for a bit (the difficulty spike was too intense) but none have created the same feeling of closeness, or given me as much to think about in regard to how I interact with S. both inside and outside the game. I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say Lovers is responsible for making our relationship stronger, but it holds a special position in my mind as something that could only exist with S.

Like Lovers, relationships are not merely the portions where you are drifting peacefully through space. They are the times when you are dodging supernovas; when it is 3AM and the bed feels too big because she isn’t in it with you and all you want is for her to pick up the phone so you can hear her voice again. Lovers forces you to cooperate and demonstrates that compromise doesn’t have to mean giving something up, but rather is about understanding and empathy. About caring enough about someone to surrender parts of yourself to them because you know they’re the ones who will get you both out alive.

The game is great, sure. It’s beautiful and clever and has cosmic bunny doctors. But it’s the experience that will stick with me. The close shaves as we hurried to rescue the last critter before jumping through the warp gates, or the times I neglected to listen to S.’s advice and we blew up. Lovers brought out a side of me that other games never even told me was there. It made me listen, to learn how to play together, not just at the same time, and it showed me how much more fun it is to do something with the person you love. Especially when that thing involves rescuing frogs from laser shooting space wasps.

Space wasps. I’m in love.

…

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime was developed by Asteroid Base. It was played on PC and is also available on Xbox One and PS4.

This post was made possible through the generosity of my wonderful Patreon peeps. If you like my work, consider spreading the word or buying me a coffee :)

It requires little in the way of a prologue: a getaway driver prodigy gets in with the wrong crowd, falls for a waitress, and then must choose between a life of crime or a life of love. Easy, fast, crowd-pleasing summer blockbuster material, or at least it would be at the hands of almost any other director. If Wright loves anything more than Simon Pegg and Queen, it’s taking the most exhausted formulas in Hollywood – the zombie outbreak, buddy-cop flick, superhero rom-com (??)  – and showing everyone that these formulas aren’t bad, we’re just looking at them the wrong way. So it goes with Baby Driver, Wright’s answer to the Transporters and Fast and Furiouses of the world which come around each summer with the regularity of an inconvenient oil-change, while being just about as surprising .

Baby Driver does not try overly hard to differentiate itself from its genre stalwarts, largely because it doesn’t have to. Wright’s directing is unmistakable no matter which blockbuster he chooses to dress it up in, personified throughout all his films by a love of music, physical comedy, and a tone which exists in a nebulous gray area between self-seriousness and playful absurdity. Wright has a lot of fun with his films and he wants the audience to have fun too, but he, unlike many of his peers, does not see fun and high-concept filmmaking as being mutually exclusive. In this regard Baby Driver is, surprisingly, one of his least intensely orchestrated works (certainly nowhere close to the unrelenting Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)), but saying that is like comparing an Aston Martin to a Porsche while everyone else is driving Fords. Even at his most restrained Wright is one of the most inventive filmmakers working today, pushing style over safety like a highspeed chase in a Suburu Impreza. Baby Driver is gorgeous, but approachable; easy to watch and understated but no less engaging for it.

While Wright pulls back on visual flair, the film’s audio becomes a character onto itself. After a childhood car accident leaves him with a permanent hum in his ears, Baby (Ansel Elgort) relies on his carefully curated series of iPods to drown out the noise while providing the film with a perfect conceit to keep the soundtrack at full bars the whole way through. Where blockbuster peer Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 attempted to discover how to give a Marvel movie a soundtrack people would remember, only to decide on the same dozen or so 70s and 80s hits that have been passed around from blockbuster to blockbuster like a group of teenagers sharing the last hit of a dying joint, Baby Driver populates its soundtrack with obscure deep cuts and B-Sides that will now be permanently married to the film in my mind. Upon leaving the theatre I immediately pulled up the playlist and embarked on a drive to nowhere in particular with my girlfriend for the sole purpose of hearing the songs we missed over the revving engines and gunshots. Somehow, however, the tracks seemed naked without Wright’s directing, highlighting how a great soundtrack isn’t just the songs you pick but how you use them.

One of Wright’s favorite tricks is synchronizing mundane actions with the soundtrack so even something as ordinary as setting a table seems meticulously orchestrated. Baby Driver is effectively Wright’s attempt to turn this trick into an entire film and on paper that is equal parts exciting and distressing. A joke told thrice is only a third as funny as the first time you heard it, after all. Baby Driver sidesteps this issue, however, by never having the music be the joke. Instead, it conducts. There are very few scenes in the film when the music stops and all of them are intentionally jarring. It becomes immediately clear that the music is not just there for flare, it’s setting the pace. Once that pace is broken it seems impossible that the film could ever carry on without it, but thankfully the next perfect track is only ever a clickwheel away.

Baby Driver makes a tremendous argument that anything and everything is better with music. Had you told me a month ago that this year’s blockbusters would include a musical where all the dancers are cars, I would have laughed and wondered which Pixar intern had just got promoted. But had you told me that film would be from Edgard Wright, I’d have paused, taken a moment to consider what exactly that meant, given up, and replied with, “sure, why not?” Wright might be every film-buffs wet dream with a cult-following that can’t decide if he’s a genius or an idiot, but nobody takes bad ideas and makes them sexy quite like Wright. And believe me when I say, Baby Driver is fucking sexy.

…

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As is the case with any media which deals with politically sensitive topics, there is a degree of distance with which I engaged with A Normal Lost Phone. Not being trans myself, I feel underprepared to entirely deconstruct how successfully the game handles those elements. Having a narrative about trans identity at all is rare, but it is dangerous to view the mere presence of LGBTQ elements as progressive without considering the way they are used. A Normal Lost Phone requires you to dig deep into another person’s life, uncovering their deepest secrets and in some cases even impersonating them for the sake of progressing through the game. This is rote territory for adventure games, but to apply it to the life of a trans person – one who is clearly not ready to come out as trans and for whom it would be dangerous to do so – feels violating in a way snooping through emails in Deus Ex doesn’t. As Kotaku’s Heather Alexandra who writes “[A Normal Lost Phone] is exploitative, fetishizing a deeply personal struggle and turning it into emotional tourism.”

What A Normal Lost Phone also demonstrates, apart from its messy handling of LGBTQ themes, is how banal most text messages are. Games such as Gone Home work because the diary entries used to tell its story are at once convincing and engaging to read. As we transition into digital forms of communication, however, the ease at which information is shared causes each individual message to become less and less significant. In attempting to accurately emulate text messages and emails, Accidental Queens have run into the issue of how to turn the meaningless, ordinary messages we send and receive by the dozen each day into something resembling a compelling story. Without an initial reason to care about the phone’s owner, it is difficult to find interest in the dates of their father’s birthday or the accompanying pictures saved to their gallery. It’s just another ordinary person going about their life, a person whose secrets you take upon yourself to divulge despite the extensive measures taken to hide them. Maybe next time, just turn the phone in.

A Normal Lost Phone was developed by Accidental Queens. It was reviewed on Android using a copy provided by the developer, and is also available on iOS, PC, Mac, and Linux.

Back when the original Nintendo DS was released in (dear god) 2004, touchscreens were still a small wonder. Hundreds, possibly thousands of games were thus released focused around little more than exploring just how many ways could be found to utilize this new form of interaction. I am sure I’m not alone in having spent hours tapping around the DS’s menu, the sheer fact that I could interact with a screen with nothing but my finger providing me with an almost infinite amount of entertainment. Eventually the iPhone would be released and touchscreens would become ubiquitous across coffee-tables and supermarket checkouts. Like color TV and Bluetooth headsets, they became ordinary and just a little boring.

Which is why yellow is such a small pleasure. By effectively stripping away years of mobile game conventions – three star scoring systems, in-app purchases, an endless carrot-on-a-stick approach to progression – and hyper-focusing on a single type of gameplay, yellow recaptures a bit of the fun I felt when I first picked up a DS (and later an iPod Touch). It isn’t that yellow is revolutionary, in fact it’s the opposite. All yellow wants to be is a mildly stimulating experiment in how much can be done by restricting a game’s design to a single input and color (depending on if you count the black background or not). This might all seem like backhanded praise or attempts to talk up what is an exceedingly basic game at heart, but positioned on the App Store alongside a veritable swampland of exploitative F2P clones and ad platforms, I now consider “simple fun” rather high praise.

…

yellow was developed by Bart Bronte and is available on iOS and Android.

The itch.io grab bag is a recurring feature intended to showcase tiny, curious, and otherwise intriguing games available on the titular digital platform. I am in no way affiliated with itch.io, but I consider it an exceptional platform for indie games and one that doesn’t receive as much attention as it ought to. Hence this post, a snapshot of delightful little gems made by cool people with a lot of heart. You can find them all, and a cornucopia of others, at itch.io, and be sure to check back soon for future grab bags!

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Secrets Agent by Joni Kittaka (Browser – Free) 

One of the biggest reasons candid videogame commentary videos have become so popular is because they break down the barrier that has existed for so long between the gaming press and its audience. When you hear someone talking to you not an anonymous consumer but as a deliberate supporter, a friend even, it makes you feel connected. You’re no longer just a reader, you’re part of the conversation.

Joni Kittaka’s Secrets Agent is, in basic terms, about sneaking into a mansion and stealing back a gemstone. But really, it’s about the way we communicate with each other; how the way we see ourselves contrasts with how others view us, and how difficult it is to get away from people’s expectations and assumptions. As you wander through Secrets Agent’s crayon drawn world, Kittaka narrates and directs you through the game, cluing you in to puzzle solutions and occasionally digging in to their own insecurities.

The experience is a bit like a friend helping you through a game they love, and learning along the way that what they love is not so much how the game plays but how it made them feel. I felt a lot of things playing Secrets Agent, but mostly I walked away feeling warm and comforted. At only 5-10 minutes long, that seems a fair trade for your time.

Sand and Stars by Dave Makes (Windows, Mac – Free)

The western is personified by the idea of the legend. In the wake of seemingly endless plains where the law has no hopes to reach, westerns thrive on the powerful image of the people who rose up, known to towns all across the land for their incredible exploits and godlike presence. As a genre, westerns have fallen out of fashion for being played out, but another reason I see for their fall in popularity is that people have become disenchanted with simple stories of people carving their name in history. It’s too selfish, too idealistic, and too detached from reality for modern tastes.

Sand and Stars from Dave Makes turns the western inside out by recognizing that most people will simply be forgotten. Sand and Stars’ world is small and its walls are imposing. People and crows and cacti have stories to tell, but soon they run out of anecdotes and everyday wisdom and send your poncho wearing traveler off to make their own destiny as best they can. The game’s most potent moment comes when you wander up on a cliff to look at the stars, and the person you meet remarks that “a man lives, a man dies. What happens in between is…well. Just stories now.”

Sand and Stars is a lonely, contemplative game, but one which I think speaks to our collective desire to make something of ourselves and the difficulty in doing so. We all want to be someone, but there comes a point where we must all recognize that we are only ever going to be ourselves. I am not sure that Sand and Stars provides any answers for the sort of questions this line of thinking brings up, but it’s a mental nugget to chew on as we all dissolve into existential angst.

Losing Control by Lisa Janssens (Windows, Mac, Linux – Free)

Two things stand out about my freshman year of college: bad food, and nights spent sitting in trees crying over everything and nothing. I have been fully aware that I suffer from severe depression for a long time, but it was not until I left home and was on my own that it became borderline debilitating. I would miss classes, subject myself to cold nights outside just so I would feel something, and loiter in the cafeteria all day because I was too scared of being alone and what I might do to myself. Even as I found friends, it was difficult for me to accept them, and more than once I found myself cutting everyone out of my life because I was too scared they would do the same. It wouldn’t be until halfway through my sophomore year that I would finally get on medication and begin seeing a counselor fulltime, both of which have caused me to finally begin to crawl out of the hole I had dug myself a long time ago.

Throughout this process I have come to appreciate the time I spent sad, pouring my heart out to friends, wandering aimlessly hoping I might stumble upon the right path. It was miserable, to be sure, but it taught me a lot about myself, and I feel I have come out a better more empathetic person for having been depressed so long. Losing Control by Lisa Janssens cycles through many of these same thoughts, attempting to showcase that negative emotions matter as much as positive ones.

As you wander in circles through a snowstorm, the game slowly unravels your character’s emotions, beginning in a place of deep self-hatred and loneliness and ending on a path towards happiness and healing. It is a torturous experience, slowly navigating through a blinding blizzard while toxic thoughts pop up from the environment, but it is a deliberate process which mirrors the often-recursive nature of depression. You go through the same feelings again and again, slowly climbing a spiral staircase until you can see things more clearly. Sometimes, as in Losing Control, that path is difficult or impossible to discern, but what matters is that you keep climbing. Eventually, you’ll get there.

SYZYGY by Emma Lugo (Windows, Mac, Linux – $5)

It would be a gross deception to say that I can entirely identify with the internal conflict at the center of Emma Lugo’s SYZYGY. I have lived most of my life as a masculine presenting, straight white man, and have only recently begun to truly delve into my own identity politics to discern if that identity is who I want to be. But while I have never struggled under the weight of being queer, I know what it feels like to be young and to think you are the only one who truly gets what you’re going through.

For most of my teenage years I was leaning over the edge of suicide. To this day I feel anxious when I see hairdryers, toxic chemicals, and exposed knives, because part of me still fears what I may do to myself if given the chance. I have been much better recently than I can remember ever being, but healing is a process and not necessarily a definitive point you ever truly reach. I believe that is what left me tearing up as I traversed SYZYGY’s monochromatic forest, picking through relics of someone who used to be there.

I lost one of my closest friends this year, not by suicide but he is gone all the same. You learn quickly when someone leaves how little you have left of them to hold onto. Maybe a photo or something of theirs to hold onto. Ultimately, though, they are just fragments. Incomplete reminders of a hole that will not and cannot be filled. I do not know if SYZYGY is about someone Lugo lost, or if its anonymity is meant to allow it to stand in for the thousands lost to suicide whose stories are often all too similar. I think it will mean different things for everyone who plays it, but it will always be about loss. Loss of self or a friend or a lover. Loss of innocence or identity. Loss of the blissful ignorance so many feel towards death until it touches someone they love. SYZYGY is short and hollow, but it is in its gaps that its truths are most felt. Don’t wait to tell someone what they mean to you, or you might not get the chance.

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Have a game that has captured your heart lately? Send your grab bag suggestions to contact@kritiqal.com, or Tweet me @MrNinjaSquirrel!

While by far the most notable viral epidemic in recent memory, Ebola is only one point in a history of life-threatening diseases as old as humanity itself. It is difficult to date many diseases before the rise of recorded history, but even within such a short period exists a lineup of outbreaks which cause Ebola to look positively harmless in comparison. The Black Death alone – a plague which erupted along the Silk Road in 1343 – holds a death count of 75-100 million, to say nothing of more “minor” plagues such as those of Antonine (165 AD) and Justinian (541 AD) which destroyed 30-40% of their respective populations. With how persistent and devastating disease has been throughout history, it’s a wonder anyone survived to count the bodies.

It wasn’t until modern medicine began to develop in the 19^th century that humanity started to have any means to combat diseases short of chucking the infected out of the city and locking the door. That didn’t stop the 1918 flu pandemic from taking some 75 million lives, roughly twice the number of deaths caused by the first World War taking place alongside the outbreak, but as we moved into the 21^st century there seemed to be a general feeling that science had figured things out. Cancer was an ongoing issue, but the plague was gone, hand-sanitizer could be found in every home, and vaccines existed for many of the remaining viral dangers. At least within the developed world, viruses were rendered an occasional weekend in bed and day absent from work, rarely threatening the lives of anyone but the elderly and severely malnourished.

All of this only served to make the Ebola virus all the more terrifying. It reminded the world that disease is not a set problem that can be solved, but an unknown opponent we are scrambling to outrun. The costs of failing to do so, Ebola demonstrated, would be immense. Furthermore, it invited a voice into the back of many people’s heads, that if nature could come up with viruses as deadly as this all on its own what would happen if we wanted to build our own? Would we have as much faith in medicine if we knew it was being used for more than helping people?

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Potential spoilers for Alien, Prometheus, and Alien: Covenant follow.

Watching Alien (1979) and Prometheus (2012) in quick succession, it becomes clear that the two films are separated by more than just years. The original Alien remains a horror classic, as claustrophobic and visually astounding today as it was on release. Though comparatively light on plot compared to the films which would follow,  it nevertheless succeeds at establishing a captivating retro-futuristic world steeped in the dangers of sexual assault and corporate greed. That even now, nearly four-decades since its release, we are still finding more to say about Alien speaks to its craftsmanship and timelessness. For every following Alien film to be compared  to the original almost seems cruel.

Prometheus, a prequel of sorts to Alien, is a very different sort of film. Where Alien was concerned primarily with saving the lives of the Nostromo’s crew in the face of capitalism gone amok, Prometheus had far heavier and intangible objectives to resolve: why are we here, who created us, and why did they change their mind and now want us gone? Though many panned the film for moving away from action-movie bombast to intimate philosophical pondering – asking questions that it couldn’t hope to answer and feeling in large part like only the first half of a larger work (more on that later) – Prometheus remains a remarkably ambitious and contemplative film which will almost certainly be remembered more fondly than it was initially received. In fact, this is already beginning to happen as people shift their attention towards Alien: Covenant (2017), criticizing it for many of the same reasons as Prometheus but determining that they liked Covenant’s themes more five years ago. Funny how everything begins to look better in hindsight.

Covenant opens with a young (30-40 something) Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) of Weyland Industries talking to his ultimate creation: the synthetic human David (Michael Fassbender). David, Weyland informs him, has been created for the express purpose of helping answer the question that has troubled Weyland all his life: who created us, and why? At this, David inquires as to the nature of creation, and, furthermore, why Weyland made him. It is in this seemingly arbitrary scene that we see David rapidly develop his view towards humanity. We live, we create, and then we die while David, a machine, lives on possibly forever. The scene seems to wish to convey a sense of David’s early antagonism towards humanity, but what it succeeds more at is showcasing his early sense of isolation and intense loneliness. David is not human. He will never be human. He will only ever be different.

From this point the movie shifts to the ship Covenant, journeying to find a new world with 2,000 colonists on board. After a freak electrical storm which results in the death of the ship’s captain, the crew intercepts a beacon from a nearby planet – one seemingly even more ideal for colonization than their original destination – and decide to investigate. It is at this point where everything, predictably, goes to shit.

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There was likely a point where fear of technological progress could be written off as superstitious or an unwillingness or inability to change. The benefits of technology are undeniable and scarcely need be delved into. Where would we be, after all, without the wheel? What would modern society look like if we never learned to fly? How would we wait out the time until the void inevitably consumes us without the internet and its infinite quantity of funny cat videos? But for as remarkable as the things technology has given us are, and how exciting the future looks, a concern has begun to creep up on us: what will happen when we have created technology which is not only as capable as humans, but better? How far off is this point, really? A lifetime, maybe two? What will humanity do when it has rendered itself obsolete?

As Ryan Avent writes for The Guardian, “the most difficult challenge posed by an economic revolution is not how to come up with the magical new technologies in the first place; it is how to reshape society so that the technologies can be put to good use while also keeping the great mass of workers satisfied with their lot in life.” The idea of a world operated and run by technology is simultaneously appealing and terrifying. Will we all be living happily alongside our robotic overlords, fat and happy in our lounge chairs as WALL-E attempts to remind us of the beauty of farming? Or will our future be closer to the war-torn landscapes of Terminator, where humanity is fighting just to hang on as our creations turn against us? Nobody can say for sure, but with much of the developed world increasing its military budget – just this May, Trump proposed a $54 billion military increase, and both Russia and North Korea have recently conducted displays of military might – dreams of robot-run human utopias are looking more and more like only that: dreams.

This encroaching anxiety around the development of new technology parallels many of the feelings felt in the immediate aftermath of World War II. With the leveling of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, a coldness settled over the world. That such immense power existed and had been exercised possibly without due cause or necessity was more than alarming. WWII had incited a technological race as each country worked to out-engineer their opponents. Nothing incites human ingenuity and produces the means to turn that ingenuity into a reality like war, and no technology left as much of a mark as the atomic bomb. After Hiroshima, however, the general public seemed to finally understand just what their governments were working with. These were not mere explosives, but could theoretically end humanity altogether should opposing countries come into possession with atomic weapons and decide to use them. That the subsequent Cold War ended with neither side nuking the other did little to lessen this tension, largely because the weapons never went away. Nobody really knows what to do with the nuclear weapons we have developed, but that hasn’t stopped them from developing more. At some point it seems worth asking who we are really protecting ourselves from, and if we are not merely encouraging our own destruction.

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In one of Covenant’s most intense scenes, we witness the death of a civilization at the hands of their own creation: a biological weapon engineered off planet is brought back and unleashed upon a populace that never anticipated what may happen if their weapon was turned against them. They set out to play god, but in the process forgot that they were but men and that all men one day die. Watching a society crumble, a mighty people suddenly made small and helpless, is uncomfortable but not nauseating. At this point we have seen many far more gruesome deaths, and have little reason to sympathize with this distant race. It is distressingly easy, it turns out, to find death bearable when it is someone who doesn’t look like us. That Covenant spends so much time talking of difference and prejudice and then explicitly showcases its effects doesn’t feel like an accident. Whether the echoes of Hiroshima heard in the destruction of this alien race were intentional or not seems beside the point.

This scene is almost certainly the most important during the entirety of Covenant’s 123-minute runtime. It represents the end of a circle which stretches from Prometheus through the entire Alien saga, while simultaneously upending almost everything we thought we knew about the franchise. But, beyond the film, this scene also encapsulates Covenant’s largest thematic questions (or perhaps they are better interpreted as warnings). It is a badly kept secret that many countries (including the US) have failed to uphold agreements made in the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) which attempted to outlaw the development, stockpiling, and use of biological weapons. In just 2013, sarin gas was fired into Damascus suburbs in Syria, killing anywhere from 281-1729 people and injuring thousands more. Most suspect the Syrian military as firing the gas, but it is the existence of such weapons and the readiness with which they were used that is most alarming. Humanity’s capability to destroy itself is fast approaching its epoch, and this is reflected in Covenant’s intense despair and ceaseless casualties.

Covenant is meant as a prequel to Alien but in most ways, it is much more of a sequel to Prometheus, tackling many of the same thematic questions while providing closure to many of that film’s unresolved plotlines. What is remarkable about both films is their pertinence to, and awareness (whether accidental or otherwise) of the many anxieties facing the world today. Biological warfare, technology usurping humanity, and a crippling fear that perhaps we really are alone in this universe, are not only discussed at length but make up the near entirety of Covenant’s plot.

Though it connects directly with the larger Alien universe, Covenant is ultimately David’s movie. He is the driving force behind not only the film’s largest thematic questions, but is also almost solely responsible for the calamity that befalls the crew once they set down. More than merely an intensely compelling villain, however, David functions as a catalyst for humanity’s fears, both within and outside the context of the film. His nature as a synthetic and clear disdain for humanity align with present fears that one day technology will outpace us, even as we continue to engineer better and better means of destroying one another. The horror at the root of Covenant is not if the ship’s motley (and, it should be said, thoroughly likeable and well developed) crew will survive, but if this could mean the end of humanity altogether. Previous Alien films have toyed with the horror of what would happen if a Xenomorph made its way to Earth, but it has always been a far-off concern; a reason to propel characters forward but not a danger that ever feels especially, well, dangerous. Covenant changes this by making humanity’s survival the crux of the third act, weaving in plotlines from both Prometheus and Alien without ever feeling self-indulgent or self-serious.

Covenant does not joke around with its themes, but neither does it treat them as mere philosophical fodder. The concerns of David and the crew of the Covenant are concerns that can be mapped and felt all around us, and that causes the stakes to feel that much higher. There are only so many times you can see a Xenomorph devour a human before it starts to lose its bite. What that Xenomorph represents, however – isolation, the inability of either science or faith to save us from ourselves, how utterly helpless we are in the face of forces as anonymous and powerful as disease and technology, the seeming meaningless of life in the presence of an endless cycle of creation and destruction – that is a horror that lingers and only grows as it becomes clear that Covenant is not prepared to answer any of the questions which are so integral to its plot.

That might seem cheap or frustrating to some, perhaps even cause to write Covenant off as a failure outright, but it feels necessary. Because to give us answers no matter how improbable, to give us a happy ending of any variety – it would undo the carefully orchestrated dread that causes Covenant to be so unsettling. We can kill the alien, destroy the nest, leave the accursed necropolis behind entirely – but we cannot escape ourselves; our ambition and desire to learn more even as we dislike the answers we find; our habit of engineering weapons simply because we can, and so we must; our refusal to accept that we may be alone out here in the universe. These are concerns which stretch far beyond a simple movie or franchise, and perhaps Covenant takes on more than it can handle, but the mere fact that it is taking it on at all ought to give us pause for thought. Covenant does not want to be merely an expertly orchestrated action-horror movie, it wants to leave us with something to chew on and keep us up at night. Whether it succeeds on that front likely determines heavily on your internal philosophies, but it has been days since I saw the film and I have been unable to think of much else. Covenant left me cold, and somehow that feels like the highest compliment I can pay it.

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This week we discuss some of our favorite video game tracks, from Hotline Miami fever dreams to the smooth vocals of K.K. Slider. If you enjoy this episode and would like to see more, let us know in the comment. Also, tell us about some of your favorite game tracks!

All music copyrights belong to their respective owners.

Songs Featured

• Masashi Hamauzu & Keiji Kawamori – Wandering Flame (Final Fantasy X)
• Toby Fox – Bonetrousle (Undertale)
• Kazumi Totaka – K.K. Soul (Animal Crossing: City Folk)
• Disasterpeace – Adventure (FEZ)
• MONACA feat. Emi Evans – Empty Tone (DRAG-ON DRAGOON 3)
• Sun Araw – Horse Steppin (Hotline Miami)
• Koji Kondo – Lon Lon Ranch (The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time)
• Concerned Ape – Nocturne of Ice (Stardew Valley)
• Darren Korb feat. Ashley Barrett – Paper Boats (Transistor)

You can follow me, Nate Kiernan, on Twitter and most places @MrNinjaSquirrel. You can follow Rhiannon on Instagram @ChocolateBhanBhan. You can find Liz in your local library. Ven is probably camping out in a comics store.

Our intro and outro music is by Ben Prunty off his Chromatic T-Rex EP. You can find his work on benprunty.com and on Bandcamp.

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