Great review. And I know what you mean, and you kind of touched on it, but accessibility advocates tend to bristle a bit at the way you’ve used “accessibility” throughout the piece. I think “approachability” is the preferred term for what you’re describing, since a game that is more forgiving to play but still does…

Odd to call him a Gary Sue of a character, since the game doesn’t exactly hide that he’s an unreliable narrator and frequently full of shit.

loads of people did! look at the steam stats! the storyline is SO URGENT that it practically shoves you through it, and there’s no way of knowing at the time that you won’t be able to endgame stuff like you could in TW3 (the warning you get could be better worded). 

As someone who worked on it... I’m happy you finally gave it a real chance and got some enjoyment out of it. :)

I don’t know if I’ve ever been on a journey like this in video games, or ever will again.

The US would never admit that it might be their own equipment that caused these issues...US Embassies are PACKED with electronics equipment.

Interesting comments. I appreciate your thoughts and wanted to share some observations.

Caution: Tesla may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds.

Yeah, having watched Don Wong, I think I’d probably rather my spouse praise me publicly and do a quick bounce than release an hour special about how unfuckable I am before the divorce. 

>receiving far more backlash for her divorce compared to male comedians (read: John Mulaney)

That’s what I’ve always assumed it has to be. Otherwise you’re assuming there was a conversation like “Great news Mr. Castro! That top secret weapon you wanted that we can hide in the walls and makes people feel kind of bad for a little bit is finally ready!”

Jez published like a dozen articles either partially or fully dedicated to dragging Mulaney. Which, fair enough, it is in fact shitty to quick ditch someone who seems to have stood by you during multiple relapse/recovery cycles.

Legionnaires Disease.

Drinking too much on the job. Hangover syndrome, amirite?

There’s a whole book about this. It was literally hungover personnel and loud ass crickets.

If anything, I saw waaaay more backlash to his divorce. I’ve barely seen any about hers. There also seemed to be a lot of backlash because Mulaney talked so well about his wife until the divorce (blindsided!), which uh... certainly isn’t the case for Wong!

LOL, that John Mulaney didn’t receive backlash after his divorce. I didn’t know about Ali Wong’s divorce so I don’t know what the chatter has been about, but there is no way people didn’t consider Mulaney’s divorce “problematic” too... whatever that means.

Uh, John Mulaney’s divorce was insanely criticized all over the place.  This is some revisionist history to act like he didn’t get a ton of heat for it.

It’s interesting as a litmus test just because there’s a much more expansive take than the binary “he’s a hero/he’s a villain”, and that’s that he can both be sympathetic for facing issues everyone does and sometimes wishes they could rail against, while also being an example of someone going off the deep end in a way…

The movie manages to be simultaneously anchored to the exact time it was made (DFENS being a defense contractor who just lost his job due to the end of the Cold War) and more relevant than ever (pathetic middle-aged white guy snapping and going on an increasingly violent rampage).