Recent reviews by whoisbma

Spatialized synth dreamland <3

Sticky! hohoho
Thumbs up.

Confounding, contradictory, introspective, accusatory, honest, misleading, affecting. Self-consciousness and meta-self-absorption expanding/collapsing to a multi-dimensional singularity. (???) Self reflection inverting inside itself. (?????????)

Best Metroid that is not Metroid!

Playing Broken Age reminded me how few games I play now that have soundtracks performed by live symphony orchestras and Hollywood actors voicing minor characters - even without these elements the game is so, so pro. The art is gorgeous - the sprite lighting tricks and the nuances of the animation are perfect - and the writing is just what you'd expect. Playing this made me feel like a kid again. An attempted reconciliation with some of the inherent issues with this genre has resulted in perhaps some overall simplicity but the character of the game is so satisfying. Its just that Act 1 feels tragically short, and ends on such a tease of a cliffhanger.

Excellence in Audio IGF award last year was well deserved. This is a well-crafted and minimalist work, almost to a fault. It feels a little too honed down - there isn't really any room for any exploration or expressiveness outside of what comes from trial and error. The sound is incredible though, and everything is super stylish.

Frankly most of the nostalgic 90s teen romance/drama is lost on me, but Gone Home is still compelling. In some ways it is a culmination/deconstruction of the "story delivery by audio pick-ups" model - all there is is stuff to manipulate, scrutinize, or take, the environmental storytelling (in this case largely a ton of red herrings plus text), and the audio itself. The story is endearing in a sort of simple and youthful way, much like the context of the teenagers' lives you're basically examining under a microscope - first love, identity definition, family strife, new school, new house - though not quite resonant enough as a coming of age experience for me. In any case I enjoyed taking the time to inhabit this place.

Dripping with irony. Moments of elegance, charm, hilarity, lunacy, and genius - but above all deeply cynical, approaching nihilism.

Spelunky will go down in history as one of the most classic and well designed video games ever.

Contra meets physics. Its Flash roots are noticeable, and had some mixed feelings about the checkpoint system and some wonky physical bugs, but it did add to the charm. Incredible boss fights were definitely the highlight - I have never seen stuff quite like that in a 2D action platformer before. The game wasn't afraid to ham it up a bit either; great sense of humor - I'll never forget the plane with arms or disco ball lasers.