I'd say it's about on par with The Dark Descent, although I just got Soma earlier today and have only played through the prologue and then did some moderate exploring in the rest of the game. Considering the higher system requirements (if you're playing it on PC, obviously) and the fact that the enclosed spaces in Som…
Corey
avclub-e7a4012739e3665c560ad8026e4913f5--disqus
The only thing that frustrated me about Dear Esther was the quality of the writing of some of the narration, which I thought took itself too seriously and which I began to dread whenever it would kick in. Even though A Machine For Pig's writing was similarly overwrought, it seemed more self-aware; I laughed out loud…
I didn't play A Machine For Pigs until over a year after I bought it, even though I was a huge fan of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, because the reviews I'd read made it seem like less of a horror game and more some sort of steampunk "Myst by way of Upton Sinclair, with easy puzzles" (which is not necessarily a bad…
I think Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs was unfairly compared to Dear Esther, which was created by the same studio, The Chinese Room. Dear Esther is gorgeous, but the lack of interactivity does tend to make it feel like a "walking simulator." The same could be said for Gone Home, which I believe came out around the same…
Wow, that lighting is doing Harry Shearer no favors. He looks like he's actually becoming Mr. Burns.
Everyone seems to miss that the dirt bike is the one from Pumpkinhead.
I'm not planning on reading this new book, but from what I've read about it, the framing device featuring Simmons as a character mentions The Terror, so I doubt the actual narrative overtly nods to it as well.
"The snitch leads them straight down, straight down into certain doom. Yes, they're going to crash, but Harry loves death, he says 'bring it on.' Harry is like a demon long-dead with nothing else to lose."
"Wizard People, Dear Reader" has become one of my favorite home-viewing comfort-food equivalents. When I'm feeling down or sick or bored or in need of a wine-out-of-nowhere spell, I put in a burned copy of Sorcerer's Stone with Neely's audio, and it makes me feel better (or at least distracts me from whatever…
"There I was, whippin' out fliff like a sultan. Buying everyone whatever the fuck they desired. Even Trevor."
FUCK AND SHIT.
I doubt Eric Clapton is truly racist, but feel free to look up his fondness for Enoch Powell. As for cultural appropriation in his playing the blues, it's an admittedly subjective opinion on my part, since I'm not a Clapton fan regardless. And as for his right to play the blues, that's not for me to say, but it's…
I guess a more succinct way of putting it is that deliberately offensive provocation is easier to defend/understand when it's satire. But when it's a matter of being intentionally obnoxious to bring a private argument to a "You can't top this" conclusion, and then your words are made public, it's awfully hard to…
What I find interesting about the incident is how inherently impossible it was to explain and to apologize for. It was easiest to report it as a "drunken rant," and that the n-word was used thoughtlessly and in poor, drunk judgment, but Costello was using it very deliberately in an intentional effort to be as…
You're a model of hope in these dark times.
I love this song, but I'm sort of baffled by the interpretation of "unrestrained joy." If there's any New Year glorification going on in the song, I think it's meant to be ironic. This song (and much of the Walkmen's pre-Heaven material) calls to mind the depressing shittiness of New Year's Eve, with all its false…
Same here. I've always interpreted the song as being miserably ironic, with the band and Leithauser getting more and more forceful like a boot-heel grinding the faux-optimism of the lyrics into the ground (I love the line "My sisters are married to all of my friends"). In other words, it's the perfect New Year's…