One of the few Rockstar products nearly banned in the U.S.
Banning and heavily scrutinizing entertainment products has been a time-honored tradition ever since Mortal Kombat, Night Trap, and Doom were released in the early 1990s. Violence, gore, and in Night Trap’s case, violence against women. All of these follow on a legacy of learning too late that being devil may care about the contents of an entertainment product can lead to controversy and public outcry. Not all of these can be accurately predicted, but if I didn’t do my research on Jaws or Gremlins before taking my kids there, I’d really have only myself to blame if the kids have nightmares.
Never mind the boat, you’re gonna need to explain to the misses why Timmy doesn’t like sharks all of a sudden before sleeping on the couch tonight.
Although not present for the 1993-4 hearings, DMA Design, now Rockstar North (because no true Scotsman would associate themselves with England anything) released a successful series of video games alluding to the act of motor vehicle theft but not necessarily exclusive to such an act. Yes, I am referencing the Grand Theft Auto series and as noteworthy as the attempts to bury this series over the years are, a different Rockstar property was almost the victim of a successful attempt on its life.
For all the flak GTA got against it for its “realistic violence” {let’s be charitable, 2002 graphics were considered realistic at the time), this game originally got what it might as well have been asking for.
The content within was made for the dark web
Released on November 18, 2003 for PS2 and then the other then-current platforms the following April, Manhunt gave the audience very little to the imagination regarding its content. Roughly every object that can cause pain in the real world is itself an equippable weapon, but the weapons themselves weren’t on trial here. Or rather, it wasn’t just the weapons getting a heavier look this time around.
But we’ll get around to that soon. The story is as follows: Carcer City, death row inmate James Earl Cash is put to death by lethal injection in public. Privately, he was merely knocked out by presumably less harmful drugs than what costs millions to pump into an actual live person in the most remote parts of the country. Afterwards, a voice, referring to itself as “The Director” leads Cash around by the nose, whispering into his ears the different functions.
There’s the Hoods, who can best be described as a very loose confederation of low-level blue collar criminals from thieves to murderers to rapists to dealers. This amalgamation of crime and villainy is enough to even get crooked cops on the take. Next to that is the Skinz, a white power skinhead group that, if you know anything about how the Rust Belt came to be, makes for a really depressing state of the region. As for why these neo-Nazi larpers would be after Cash’s head when he’s both white and shaven-headed, well the answer to that has long chain in British and American colonial, citizenship, and race laws on the whole, but the short version deals with perception. Purity, or “join or die” mentality for those who fit the mold on paper, and it’s not like the Nazis were s[nein]t-talkers about that either.
Putting the Skinz on the cover of the game’s box art works for shock value if you ask me
After these yo-yos, it’s the Wardogs, a paramilitary group made up of veterans, survivalists, and mercenaries. Pulling from real-world examples, outside of foreign volunteers and conscripts who choose or are forced to fight respectively, mercenaries have never come cheap and paramilitaries typically fight for themselves or the highest bidder, though sometimes they have an ideological goal in mind. Real world paramilitaries include the historical SS and select conscripts fighting for Imperial Japan, and in more recent history there’s the American militia movement from the early 1990s, the Tamil Tigers from the Sri Lankan Civil War, paramilitaries based in the British Isles during the Troubles, some ethnic-based groups from Southeast Asia, notably the Philippines, and numerous others. And I bring up these examples to suggest that the Dir
Following the doomsday preppers are the Innocentz whose name is an apt and disturbing perversion of their patterns of behavior. It should be kept in mind that all criminal organizations are secret societies, but not all secret societies are criminal organizations. In this case, the Innocentz work in tiers each more terrifying than the last from the trademark gangbanger to the thanatistic cult faction to the mentally deficient pedophilic faction, thereby making them the most disturbing enemy in the gang.
And the last round of nasties you fight are the Smileyz, a gang of escaped mental patients who are bizarrely the most vaguely explained faction. They’re not strictly anything, not gangbangers, or white supremacists, or pedophilic cultists; the Wiki makes them out to be the grayest blur in the game.
All things considered, this era of games was churning out edgy and thematically dark games left and right. GTA III and Vice City, Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, Max Payne 3 and this. The more emboldened developers felt to release edgier video games, the harder the backlash and the more highly praised the games were to the audience no matter the reviews. A not insignificant portion of these fell victim to cult classic status, neither hurting nor helping the sales of the PS2, but certainly adding to that platform’s library all things considered.
Credit: r/gaming, u/veterinarygamer
And the PS2 clearly had an expansive library!
I highly doubt that Midway Games cared very much about their public image since their revenue came mostly from the arcades, but DMA/Rockstar was taking home the lion’s share of the media’s attention. The fact that their philosophy was too downright tease their critics was nothing short of genius. These days, I know better than to engage with trolls and ragebait, but the savviest of creators can farm their critics for karma, and successfully. This is the philosophy of Rev Says Desu, or more historically, circus freak shows.
The IJA’s 7th Division was a circus all its own
Aside from nanny state countries that historically coddle their populace and refuse their people the right to decide for themselves what they do and don’t like, the US of A damn near banned it thanks to the graphic violence. Mortal Kombat would’ve reasonably been written off as fantasy with all the ninjas, sorcerers, soul-stealing wizards (Farewell Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), upright lizards, and whatnot, if it wasn’t for the use of digitized actors and inclusion of blood and finishing moves. For Manhunt and Grand Theft Auto, the fact that these are plausible and can be readily seen by ordinary people away from a computer or TV screen adds to the controversy. No one’s ever seen a fire-summoning ninja throw a grappling hook from his hand, but thanks to the news everyone’s heard of cartels, bank robbers, gangs, and prison escapees.
But even these are classic horror movie tropes. Most of the time, the criminal knows the victim, and most of the time criminals target members of their own communities. The 1 in 10 percent that the media likes to fearmonger over are all rarities. They do still happen but not to the extent that you’d believe.
RNGesus really needs to hate your existence if a guy like this spawns in front of you in the midnight hours.
It’s not like Manhunt is lost on me, the dark atmosphere and easter eggs make it something of a neo-gothic treat, like that time I watched The Addams Family movies and Beetlejuice. But putting it with its contemporaries just makes it a product of the era. As for the gameplay, it’s as strict a stealth game can be, rewarding creativity in sneaking up and killing and punishing any player averse to this gimmick. Not for nothing, it shows that as much of a monster that the Director tries to make Cash out to be (and he’s definitely up there, death row is spared for the worst outside of wrongful convictions), he’s certainly a crafty bastard if you think about it. When there’s 20 of the Skinz or the Innocentz or the Smileys and only one of Cash to go around, your options are limited and outright combat is a last resort.
It certainly demands patience, but can sometimes test your patience. If you’re not careful, the enemy can sense you about to slit them up with a broken piece of glass. Or they can gang up on you with bats or nail guns while all you have are the Kanye West Supreme Brick, your fists, and Philip J. Fry’s lucky seven-leaf clover. Fortunately, the game predates the Ubisoft Assassin’s Creed tailing missions, so there isn’t any worry about having to tail an enemy to a certain location, nor is there a requirement to slice everyone up into lamb chops outside of designated spaces, so you could only cut up a few guys, sneak past the others, get to the goal, rinse and repeat. It might bring down your slasher/snuff film score at the end, but rigid grading systems like this aren’t worth s[grenade]ting your organs out over.
One notable enemy in the game goes by the name of Piggsy. I haven’t reached him yet, but the Director’s use of him as an enforcer when he looks like this:
Definitely harkens to horror movie directors like Wes Craven and Tom Six.
The game and its sequel (which was initially banned in the U.S.) are both available for purchase on Steam, but the game being as old as it is requires some mods to get it working, even if you pirate it from SteamUnlocked. If you’d like to play yourself, consider this guide on the Steam forums if you run into issues like I did.
Circling back to a post from earlier this month about lost media (yes, I’m still on this train, just follow along here), I humbly direct ye all to the world of the Flash game.
Complete games were made with this ancient software
Also known as browser games, entire websites and browser game series owe their entire library to this software. Andkon, Stickpage, Miniclip, Y8; there’s a chance that if you were a kid or adolescent in the 2000s to mid-2010s, you might have visited at least one of these sites. For me, it was around the time I was nine years old during summer day camp, which would be around 2008. A friend of mine introduced me to a humble little browser series called Sift Heads.
Oh the memories.
One of the few Flash game series I had followed well into my adolescence, it was nice to see it become something of a franchise of sorts with an MMORPG and mobile game entry about a decade later. Older readers may see that and draw negative comparisons to the JibJab brothers and see warning signs at that, but AFAIK the original devs who cobbled this together in 2006 are still working on the game after nearly 20 years.
The main gist of these games is fancily dressed stick figure Vinnie (read: the only one wearing aviators) makes a living installing lead projectile implants into people’s heads, typically with a cigarette in his mouth. For a stick figure creation born from Adobe products, the devs put a lot of thought into the lore. Not so much that it looks like a DnD entry, but enough to make him seem endearing. The short version: born in Italy, mafioso father gets gunned down when he’s two and the widowed mother takes Vinnie to Chicago where all the mobsters end up when New York is too crowded. The prequel game Sift Heads 0 goes through the man’s comedic exaggerated youth as a natural born assassin, and going by the written historicity, while he did a few odd jobs for the Mafia as well, he didn’t start professionally killing people until around 1998 it seems.
A good writer of anything always keeps notes, so I like to think few things were changed. Added onto, but not significantly changed.
I’m pretty sure these days that Sift Heads has achieved “Can it run DOOM?” levels of legendary for being a niche little series about a stick figure who’s better at assassinating things than Lee Harvey Oswald. They’ve remade at least one of the games to my knowledge before support for Flash went kaput and for a time was one of the legendary Stickpage games. Next to this were the bevy of pointy-clicky action games: Andre’s Adventure, Creative Kill Chamber, Johnny Rocketfingers, and several others.
But those are all walking sticks with giant shootable/brain-able heads there, Tiberius. Surely, you played more than that as a lad, right? I did, indeed. To include a certified hood classic, I shall humbly direct you to: Bloxorz!
This game is so old, you’d be hard-pressed to find still shots in HD at minimum.
I don’t know about you, but in middle school, because of the way my education plan was crafted, I wasn’t able to join the rest of my class in the traditional gym class, having a private teacher to gear me up for the Special Olympics until her retirement and I aged out of it by the end of 7th grade. In the meantime at school, and once again during day camp until I aged out of it in 2011, Coolmath Games had (and still has) Bloxorz as one of its most iconic games. I’m not privy to the details of this, with most Flash games being sent to an unmarked, commoners’ grave, Flash may not have had as much of a base within that game’s code, meaning the devs used a different platform to get it up. Nice.
In a time where mobile gaming is near-par with console and PC gaming, it’s nice to see it’s humble first steps circa 2005, when colorful polygons brought us Oscar- and BAFTA-worthy projects like this:
Rest assured, dear reader, my research on the Evangelion fandom will come in time. A bit longer than Shinji will, IYKYK.
Reminiscing here, abandonware there, s[slap]tposting Eva games everywhere; this lookthrough of museum piece browser games isn’t a continuation of mourning what I consider lost media per se, it’s more a look of “that thing on your phone is a remake, I have access to the original.” And many people the world over had prepared for the death of Flash on New Years’ Eve 2020, so in preparation, a not insignificant amount of these games had been archived either by way of the Internet Archive and this website I found called Flashpoint Project. So whenever I feel it, I can search up something I played yonks ago and see if the muscle memory had worn off.
So far, no, but then again loads of these games are simple pointy-clicky games. Very few require the use of a keyboard, and even for more than just typing something. Obviously the more complex games that can be found on Steam or GOG or Epic Games do a lot more to wear down the keys on your keyboard, but I have yet to recall any other browser games that used more than just the mouse. Nevertheless, Flash has had a storied history bringing kids, tweens, teens, and probably that one 22-year-old baby-faced office worker at most 10 minutes of joy on his lunch break before he goes back to the grind.
Especially if this asswipe was his supervisor
Now, the games featured here aren’t an exclusively exhaustive list, and I could’ve put more on here, but to write about them more intimately past the introductory “this game existed, have a look” would necessitate it’s own post, and I’m only about a quarter through the desired topics for 2026. We’re not yet done with 2025. Take a look for yourself at the archives, not all of them are lost.
Before I piss off for the evening, I’m posting this on my birthday.
Hmmm, how colorless
Three years strong and this is the first post on my birthday. I’m 27 now. All that’s left is to become famous and join Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Johnson and Jim Morrison. IYKYK Part 2: Dark Boogaloo.
A promise was made a few weeks ago to make a post about corruption in three action/adventure games released on 2012. This will be that post. As for what I have on the schedule, expect a review about a gender-role flipped isekai manga over the weekend.
Max Payne 3, Sleeping Dogs, and Spec Ops: The Line are a trio of 2012 video games that all deal with corruption and were in several ways criminally underrated by gamers at the time. Three pretty niche series, even despite the graphical showing with something to say about each of their own themes plot-wise. We’re going to look over the plots of all three and what I believe are the reasons they were all overlooked even now.
For the first of these three: Max Payne 3
Aventura Brasileira
The nine-year difference between the unraveling of the second game sets this installment apart from the rest of the series by sending titular Max Payne to Sao Paulo instead of keeping him in the NYC tri-state area. And the game explains why he’s voluntarily exiled from the city. In flashback scenes, Max isn’t exactly done mulling over the plot of the previous two games, walking in on his family dying in the first game and seeing people he regarded as friends double-cross him in the second game. To be fair, none of them were expected to keep specific loyalties to him. His alliance with people like Alfred Woden and Vladimir Lem, as well as a love affair with assassin, Mona Sax, were all out of convenience.
They each answered to their own bosses, though the corruption angle was relatively muted in the first game. The only corrupt figure in the first game was fellow DEA Agent B.B., who was not only on the Aesir Corporation‘s payroll, but had also helped orchestrate the murder of DEA Agent Alex Balder. Which explains how this was an inside job, though this part seems more like an afterthought, all things considered. I’ve been trying to wrap my head around B.B.’s role, but I haven’t been able to reach any significant conclusions.
The face of a… winner?
For Max Payne 2, the interconnected web of conspiracies concerning Max himself unravel in the second half of the game, but are present from the beginning. Woden, being part of the Inner Circle, initially used Max’s services to remove the connections between Woden himself and Aesir’s president and CEO, Nicole Horne. For Woden, only he and Max were privy to the relationship and for Max, she ordered the death of Max’s wife and child, so the vendetta was fulfilled and everyone “won” in the end. As it turns out, Woden wasn’t the only one with a tentacle in another pie. Vlad had an affair with another detective, Valerie Winterson, who’d been ordered by Vlad to remove Mona Sax from the picture, further complicated by Mona’s relationship with Max. Imprisoning a contract killer is one thing, but when she’s dating your junior, it’s easy to see how things get complicated with this intricate test of allegiances. Needless to say, everyone failed. Winterson was gunned down by Max in an ultimatum, Woden, dying of cancer anyway, died trying to stop Vlad, and Vlad shot Mona in the back and later paid for it, thanks to Max.
Yet, none of that was why Max was in Sao Paulo in 2012. In the flashbacks, an altercation with a mob brat who fit right in on Jersey Shore led to the brat’s death and the comeuppance from his father. Max dealt with the mob before, going after key figures in the Punchinello Family, but the father of the brat Max killed in the bar necessitated a six-figure hit on Max. He could spend the rest of his life dodging mobsters or leave. Conveniently, a fellow beat cop who was in private security for the rich and famous in distinct parts of the world — including Brazil — entices him with an opportunity. The first one was to protect a divorced socialite onboard her yacht while traversing the Panama Canal–except that went to s[pill-popping]t when a far-right Colombian paramilitary stormed the yacht and massacred all the inhabitants. It’s worth noting that the pirates were tipped off about the incoming yacht in a plot to frame Max for the violence and plant dirty money onboard. Max can’t escape these inside job affairs, can he?
Fast-forward to the plot of the third game and lo and behold, the Mother of All Conspiracies puts Max and partner, Raul Passos, at the center of it all. Private security once again for the rich and famous of Sao Paulo, a trio of brothers of the Branco family, businessman Rodrigo Branco, politician Victor, and airhead socialite Marcelo, pay the duo to protect them and their family including Rodrigo’s trophy wife Fabiana. Things go wrong when armed gangsters from the Comando Sombra gang storm the penthouse and take Fabiana hostage. This is resolved quickly and to celebrate, these idiots helicopter into a nightclub in Sao Paulo. That time, Fabiana is taken and held for ransom. Most of the family is recovered, but the ultimate mission from Rodrigo is to get his wife back. The first lead takes them to a football stadium in Sao Paulo where the duo bring three million reais to the CS, only to be interrupted by a right-wing paramilitary group known as the Cracha Preto (Black Badge).
Three million short and no closer to finding Fabiana, the next lead takes Max and Passos several kilometers up the Tiete River. A seafaring compound for drug smuggling operations by the CS, they were merely holding the woman in transport until the pair gun their way through the CS, but let her slip through their fingers again. At this point, come the next performance review, Senhor Branco was speaking with the commander of the 55th Battalion of the “elite” Special Forces Unit (Unidade de Forcas Especiais) of the Brazilian Military Police. Passos and Max convince Rodrigo to let them continue their efforts, but the Cracha Preto crashes into the offices of the Fabricas Branco and shoots everything from the office chairs up. Once again, Max is confronted by a painful failure. He was able to secure the building but not fast enough to keep Rodrigo from danger where he was assassinated in the chaos on the main floor. Complicating things further, a bomb is planted in the office to erase the evidence of the murder of a specific individual. Not that Max walks away from the wreckage empty-handed, with a dying paramilitary confessing that they were said to be after Max and that Fabiana was taken to the Nova Esperança favela.
The Max we all know and love
Max upgrades to his baldheaded beardy look and investigates personally running into trouble not five minutes into his impromptu investigation. Another cop from Sao Paulo PD, named Wilson da Silva, is also on the case and conveniently bumps into Max, giving him the details on the people holding Fabiana in custody. This heavily armed slum gives Max a proper Brazilian welcome with lead trinkets which he does in typical fashion reciprocating in kind. By the time he makes his way up to the Emperor’s Palace, the man he’d been chasing since the penthouse crash, Serrano, has not just Fabiana, but her sister, Giovanna, and Marcelo in custody. Clearly, they weren’t happy that Max was a grade-A f[gunshots]k up in a world of f[rocket launcher]k downs and sought to buy Fabiana’s safety personally. This effort goes nowhere, and Serrano kills Fabiana in cold blood. Another tense negotiation ended with an antagonist’s bullet broken up by a bigger dog barking and slobbering into enemy territory. The UFE make the rounds in a trademark raid on the favela looking for fresh meat to sell on the black market.
This isn’t an exaggeration either—the police in Brazil do carry out raids at the heart of the favelas to curtail organized crime, usually in a bloody and performative manner, though of course not all of them are this corrupt. The instance shown in the game sees the UFE pull out all the stops and fearing that he might be next, Serrano and the CS abandon ship. Giovanna and Marcelo are escorted elsewhere to be killed, and Max is left to fight through these makeshift infantrymen to the ground level. It’d be one thing if the UFE were there to arrest only the gang members, but innocent civilians are being carted off and handed to, you guessed it, the Cracha Preto for a hefty sum of money.
Max eventually finds Giovanna and Marcelo in time to save only Giovanna as Marcelo had been set on fire in a tower of tires, known as a “microwave oven.” He avenges Marcelo and has to escort Giovanna to safety through a public bus stop. Actually successful for once, but Max is essentially left behind while Passos, who was phoned up beforehand, helicopters the mother of his love child out of there. Da Silva returns to inform Max that he’d been a plaything from pretty much the beginning—not just by the Brancos but also allegedly from the Panama job.
But that’s all a moot point as there are more pressing matters to attend to. Max learned and da Silva knew that the 55th was in bed with the Cracha Preto, but the level of corruption wasn’t well understood. Countries with troubled histories like Brazil can easily have their corruption written off as a legacy of authoritarianism or its military junta. But neither realized that they were involved in the organ trade until Max was set out to raid the condemned Imperial Palace Hotel. The paramilitaries were witnessed burning the dead in trash bags, the civilians carted off earlier were found and as we learn, Serrano was among those rounded up by the UFE. The movie Elite Squad (Portuguese: Tropa de Elite) shows how aggressive the Military Police can be in matters of gang crackdowns, but doesn’t accuse the BOPE of being corrupt themselves. Max Payne 3 does show the UFE’s corruption inside and out. The hotel was the belly of the beast that Max dealt with before moving onto the UFE HQ itself. Unveiling himself as the mastermind behind the grand conspiracy to rule Sao Paulo with an iron fist is none other than Victor himself.
If he’d been elected Mayor of Sao Paulo, he would’ve made things much worse
Remember when I said this was the Mother of All Conspiracies? No lies or hyperbole detected. The game ends with Victor facing a trial and being found hanged in his cell, either through suicide or through mob retaliation, seeing as he walking around the general prison population. For all its faults, this may be the one time lack of oversight or corruption did some good. I’m certain here in the U.S., an imprisoned government official would be placed in solitary for their own protection. In Mafia III, the Faster Baby DLC reveals at the end that white supremacist Sinclair Parish Sheriff William “Slim” Beaumontwas put in solitary for a 15-year stint, serving 12 before he was shot dead on his front porch in 1989 under mysterious circumstances. The black community had reason enough to hate him, but I think he was killed by fellow white supremacists for turning on them. Officer Tenpenny said it best: “Homies for life? Street loyalty? That’s all bullshit, Carl.” It really do be your own people.
Takes a traitor to know a traitor
Now, why do I think MP3 was overlooked? If you look at the cutscenes of this game and put them side-by-side with those of the first two games, it’s a major departure from the graphic novel neo-noir style it worked with. It would’ve been welcomed by fans to see it ape a modern comic book style, but RockStar spearheading the game’s development, absent of Sam Lake and Remedy Entertainment made it look and feel less like Max Payne and more of a spiritual successor. The first game was released in July 2001 on a shoe-string budget and had to do so much with so little. The last game was released in late May 2012 and cost RockStar some hundred million dollars to produce with a swanky new engine that showed how aged and disheveled Max looked after two games playing shootdodge in New York and New Jersey. The assumption was that beautiful-looking games sold like hot cakes, but MP3 was more like Hydrox cookies. The progenitor of the sandwich cookie overshadowed by the more successful Oreo.
Still Max got his proper send off and with the passing of his voice actor James McCaffrey in 2023, the only thing in the series’ future is a remake of the first two games at an as-of-yet unannounced release date. I’d welcome a spiritual successor, though, instead of a half-baked Max Payne 4. And on that note:
Sleeping Dogs – 九龍嘅遺產
歡迎嚟到香港
A spiritual successor to the True Crime series, Sleeping Dogs follows Hong Kong-born San Francisco cop, Wei Shen, and his transfer to the Hong Kong Police Force. The British legacy of colonization comes through in this game with nearly every Hongkonger in the game having a very western/English given name. Jackie, Winston, Vincent, Peggy, Sonny—you might know people with these names IRL. Goes to show that in recent history, Hong Kong and its territories were more British than they were Chinese. Speaking of British, the superintendent of the HKPF, Thomas Pendrew, is one of the only white people to be seen for miles.
Snoozing Mutts begins with Wei and his informant partner, Naz Singh, making a deal with the Triads. After a cop walks in on the deal, one of the Triads cleaves him up, Wei and Naz parkour their way out of Dodge, but are cornered by the police. At this opportunity, HK Police conduct an AAR on Wei and reveal that he’s being placed as the newest member of the Hong Kong-based Sun On Yee, this world’s stand-in for the real-world Triad group, Sun Yee On. His mission is to get close to key figures and unveil their main boss, starting at the bottom.
After this brief, Wei is put into a cell where he runs into a childhood friend from the Old Prosperity Projects, Jackie Ma. A budding gangster and soon-to-be Triad himself, Jackie gets Wei close to Red Pole (read: Lieutenant) Winston Chu, a foulmouthed, tattooed gangster operating out of his mother’s restaurant. Like their western counterparts, East Asian organized crime groups also make use of slice of life crimes from extortion to protection rackets to money laundering, but unlike their western counterparts, they like to present themselves as protectors of their neighborhoods, more so the Yakuza do this than the Triads as I’ve noticed in most crime media from this part of the world, so Winston’s operations being in the back of his mother’s restaurant is not unheard of at all.
Per the initiation, Wei survives getting surrounded by Sun On Yee, before Winston’s rival Sammy “Dogeyes” Lin shows up to antagonize Winston’s faction, the Water Street Boys. I know better than to walk into a new place like I own it, but Dogeyes pulls up wheeling his giant balls onto Winston’s coffee table. How offended was Winston at this? He went to a local fair to turn the vendors over to Winston’s side. Small, but noticeable losses that smack Dogeyes in the income. But the real prize here lies in a ketamine dealer, Ming, whom Wei tries and fails to get into police custody. In front of an interrogation table for the second time, Wei’s cover holds up well enough for Pendrew to reveal to the interrogating officer that Wei’s no ordinary thug, but one of their own. And I see why Wei wouldn’t initially want the Inspector Teng on the case either. He’s already got one mouthbreather, Raymond Mak, on his shoulder, he doesn’t want another one, but the powers that be have Teng as a secondary to Raymond.
One of Hong Kong’s finest
For the police side of things, Ming is nothing but a middleman. The true prize for the Sun On Yee is distributor Popstar. To get to him takes some more class-A acting that sees Wei catch him in the middle of a handoff that ends with a killing. Once that goes to the HKPF, Popstar goes to prison and soon after Winston shows that there’s a brain directing the brawn. Is it really a coincidence that Popstar goes down right as this new guy shows up? Though Winston didn’t think this up in a vacuum with enforcers like Conroy Wu giving him the idea simply because Wei failed a vibe check at his introduction. Thankfully for Wei and the plot he’s a seasoned thespian who was able to spin Popstar’s incarceration as an opportunity for Ming to eventually double-cross Winston and the Water Street Boys… had Ming not just taken a brand new ventilation system to the cranium. And you don’t need an undercover cop to learn how cutthroat organized crime is. Nor even the drug trade, at least if you’ve been anywhere near a TV to see the failures of the opioid epidemic and the war on drugs in real time.
So, Wei’s spared death and continues to get closer and closer to key figures in the Sun On Yee, even suggesting brilliant ideas for Winston and co. And once Wei actually meets the Dragon Head of the Sun On Yee, David Wa-Lin “Uncle” Po, rather than admit that most of the ideas were his, he hands off credit to Winston. This is a glimpse into face culture in East Asia. Even if you, the underling, are competent and capable of wiggling your way out of danger, the boss a.k.a. your superior, is the most important representative of your group, clan, guild, etc. So, by showing Winston to be the most competent and an infallible genius, Uncle Po grants him his favor. Better yet for his mission, Wei has seen the Dragon Head, a key figure in the Triads for his undercover mission.
山主的新义安
That said, undercover police work alongside plain old policing doesn’t get Wei a lot of love from his handlers, at least not Raymond. With a growing history in the triads, Raymond may be the one who most wants Wei off the mission during certain checkpoints. Ratting, snitching, internal security risks; whatever you wanna call it, there’s tons of checkpoints where it can go wrong for Wei and yet, only once has it been shown that his position was close to compromise, and that was resolved rather quickly in the beginning, but Raymond isn’t convinced and wants to leave this to whatever specialized organized crime unit HKPF can muster. Unfortunately for Raymond and fortunately for a time, for Wei, this is shot down each time by Superintendent Pendrew even after Winston and his bride, Peggy Li, are gunned down at their own wedding.
This removes an obstacle and puts Wei in Winston’s seat in the Sun On Yee, however, I look back on this mission and can’t see it as nothing but an inside job itself. In the mission, Winston asks Wei to bring the chairman his favorite wine. On his way back, gunshots go off inside, and the enemy isn’t dressed like a typical Triad gangster this time. The caterers are the ones who initiate the attack on the wedding, and they don’t discriminate. Once Winston and Peggy are dead, it’s free game. Uncle Po is wounded and recovering in the hospital on life support, and right after this, you go after the two people responsible for the hit: Johnny Ratface and Dogeyes, both of whom get their vengeance from Mrs. Chu, Winston’s mother.
Never mess with a mother’s babies
Now, I say it’s an inside job because of how it’s all set up. The Wiki says that Dogeyes orchestrated it and with Triad resources that’s easy to see, though if I’m allowed to put out a feeler for a bit, I question whether this was thought up independently or whether it came from another source. I’ll touch on this later, but for now, Winston’s death puts Wei in his shoes and Raymond’s lost faith in this entire endeavor. Pendrew still allows him to operate with carte-blanche but runs into conflict with Wei himself when he suggests that he should abandon the people who got him to his position in the first place. He doesn’t and Pendrew winds up double-crossing him at multiple points, notably at Uncle Po’s funeral. And it’s not like things get easier with Dogeyes turned into char siu. The next obstacle comes in the form of Big Smile Lee. He’d been trying to become the next chairman with Uncle Po incapacitated but another, Two Chin Tsao, so called because he could eat all of mainland China and still die of starvation, is suggested by Red Pole Broken Nose Jiang. A risk for the whole of the Sun On Yee? Sure, but it was Jiang’s suggestion that Two Guts Two Chin take the helm, though his past as a heroin addict has weakened his resolve to the point where most other Triads think him unfit to rule, even Jiang who might’ve simply made him a placeholder/seat-warmer of sorts. You later reaffirm his tetraphobia in his own house with a fellow Triad called Old Salty Crab.
Think of him as your mischievous uncle
The last leg of the game is where Big Smile Lee’s faction takes center stage as the main antagonists. His personal enforcer Mr. Tong kills Jackie and tries to kill Wei after Lee learns that Wei was undercover. A fierce final mission and battle sees Lee’s enforcers, Tong and Ponytail, dead and Lee himself thrown into an ice chipper face first. For all that he’s done, he should’ve gotten in feet first, but carrying an enemy into a deadly trap seems more like Like a Dragon shenanigans if Kazuma or Ichiban were different people.
Feels a bit useless though, knowing that Pendrew’s “hard work” is gonna get him promoted to Interpol. By this point, both Wei and Raymond know of Pendrew’s corruption but can’t touch him due to his status until Jiang, who also knows Wei is a cop, delivers a USB with video evidence of Pendrew murdering Uncle Po. Furthermore, the discussion between the two reveals that his corruption goes back decades with the two collaborating to reach their respective positions. The course of the game was where dispute erupted between them and Uncle Po gets one last callout before his funeral gets arranged. This is the evidence Wei uses to lock Pendrew up in the same prison housing most of the Triads put away by Wei. Most likely, general population where, like Victor Branco in Max Payne 3, he won’t get any protection. It doesn’t look like Hong Kong’s penal system is as draconian as its mainland counterparts, but with this many Triads inside, it’s gonna hurt.
So let’s look at why Sleeping Dogs is underrated. This review by Yahtzee Croshaw of Zero Punctuation/Fully Ramblomatic fame should get the point across, but to get it down to brass tacks: it was left to cult status. Praise for the star cast, voice acting, game design, world-building, and set pieces. Even Cantonese speakers who’ve played it could tell that a lot of care was put into the game’s use of English, Cantonese, and Honglish. A bit better than Zenless Zone Zero’s use of Cantonese during the Waifei Peninsula arc, which is a fictionalized stand-in for Hong Kong. It was still a cool easter egg though…
But to go back to the ZP review of Sleeping Dogs, setting aside the accusations of GTA clone, the main crux of the game is that Wei is supposed to be caught between two loyalties. Too much of a Triad for the HKPF and too much of a cop for the Triads, but he maintains his loyalty beginning to end. Not really atypical, real-life undercover police stick with their law enforcement agencies of employment even after the mission is completed, and continue to work for the police until eventual retirement, assuming that’s not their last case. This is a time-honored tradition IRL and in media. Off the top of my head, there’s two examples, real and fictional, of an undercover cop leaving the force.
In the co-op game, A Way Out, Vincent Moretti, is revealed to actually be an FBI agent who spearheads an elaborate operation to take down a drug dealer who’s since made a home in Mexico. After he’s killed, in his ending, he reveals himself to partner, Leo Caruso, and attempts to arrest him, but Leo dies after a gun battle. The ending sees him with his wife and infant daughter (whom they’ve been struggling to conceive for years) as he announces his retirement from law enforcement altogether. In real life, British cop Neil Woods spent 14 years undercover, rubbing elbows with the worst of the worst Britain ever had to offer. The experience took him to dark places and motivated him to write two books criticizing the heavy-handed approach to the war on drugs in Britain and America.
The real culprit for Sleeping Dogs’ status has to do with poor sales. The game cost the developers at United Front Games $30 million and when pushed out the door by Square Enix, they expected a better sales goal and a potential franchise, but with Sleeping Dogs being a spiritual successor to the True Crime series, this claim is one I have to call into question. Not to mention bigger releases from established franchises were releasing that year and the following year from the Tomb Raider reboot to Halo 4 to the announcement of Grand Theft Auto V to be released in September 2013. It still did well enough to earn its place as a great selling game in Britain and America, but not enough for Square whose real crown jewel was the Final Fantasy franchise. Thankfully, the Definitive Edition was released in 2014 complete with all the DLC and expansion packs, showing that even after United Front’s closure in 2016, the publisher still had faith in the game, which is more than can be said of the last game we’re looking at.
Spec Ops: The Line – Still a Hero, Son?
A real hero wouldn’t do even an eighth of what goes on in this game
Delisted and buried, Spec Ops: The Line may qualify for lost media if it wasn’t for all the gameplay videos released, the video analyses, and the ROMs that remain the only way to access the game these days. Even that’s difficult without a stable internet connection. While drafting up this post, I’ve had it quit on me multiple times until I did it through a mobile hotspot on my phone. Side note: it may be due to the location, but I’m positive that if my rig was in a bigger city with more traffic and therefore more customers on a livelier server, it would take considerably less time to download. RPCS3 is a bit finicky in some areas, but if it works well enough to let me play Mortal Kombat 9, flaws notwithstanding, then anything is possible.
Spec Ops: The Line follows on a time-honored tradition of adapting Joseph Konrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness. A fictional tale of a sailor’s journey through Leopold II’s Congo Free State, it’s a harsh criticism of the Belgian king’s personal territory on the journey to find Kurtz, an ivory trader who’s taken a godlike role among the unsuspecting native tribes. Something that was given a glimpse of in, interestingly, Red Dead Redemption.
Trusting Dutch was a ruinous decision, but not the worst fate to befall American Indians, all things considered.
The tale ends with Kurtz meeting his end at the unnamed protagonist’s hands, something that’s consistent across nearly all media depicting the story, such as 1979’s Apocalypse Now where Captain Willard navigates the Mekong River with a Navy PT boat on a mission to find and kill rogue Special Forces Colonel Kurtz. Being in the Army now, this falls out of line with real-world military protocol. That high up and last assigned to a specialized unit, Kurtz would’ve been arrested and interrogated and likely would’ve faced a court-martial for desertion and treason, seeing as, like the character he’s based on, he also became a madman calling himself God among the native Vietnamese. He also meets his end by the protagonist’s hands.
Come Spec Ops: The Line time and the story beats are the same as Francis Ford Coppola’s troubled movie, but this time it’s a small squad of Delta Force operatives on a mission to find and apprehend Lieutenant Colonel John Konrad, which is consistent with protocol. Kudos. Col. Konrad’s mission was to provide relief to the citizens of Dubai in the wake of a sandstorm but tragedy strikes in the form of another sandstorm and the situation looks like post-Katrina New Orleans but worse… and sandy. The colonel takes matters into his own hands and worsens an already bad situation.
Delta Force operatives Capt. Walker, Lt. Adams, and Sgt. Lugo go in to relieve the situation. Thing is, Konrad is clearly not alone, seeing as the 33rd Battalion known as the Damned Thirty-Third is still in the city, and it’s on Walker’s assumption that the whole unit is rogue and therefore, free game. They’re in the way of the mission and as fellow soldiers, they put up a fierce resistance on the way to Konrad. The course of the game sees Walker make difficult decision after difficult decision culminating in a prosecutable war crime. The white phosphorus weapon system is a controversial weapon used by the U.S. military during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It’s chemical compounds leave horrific burns on all parts of the body that it meets. Despite Lugo’s objections, Walker greenlights its use on a compound that was actually housing civilians.
It’s common for trauma victims to retreat to a fantasy of their own design
This salient point is both a turning point for the group and a stark critique of military operations in the region at the time that led to the Iraq War’s inconclusive outcome the year prior in 2011 and Afghanistan’s failure a decade later. I remember watching gameplay of the game ages ago and the shock and awe of the results of this weapon… f[military drums]k everyone who says that these games glorify war; this is a perfect argument against that. The rest of the game gets considerably more nightmarish.
Even the loading screen tips get progressively more hostile, with messages advising the player that continuing forward is the worst choice to make. I wouldn’t be surprised if halfway through someone booted up a different game or simply put the controller down and had a walk. The last half and final leg of the game sees Walker get to Kurtz’s compound where plot-twist, he was dead the entire time. The herculean task of saving and rebuilding Dubai from scratch was too much for the man. Tragedies, unhappy civilians, dwindling resources, unpredictable outcomes; what sets Kurtz apart from the movie and book was that he didn’t try to make himself King of the Emiratis. Maybe doing so would’ve seen the game marked for banishment from the region, especially at a time when Middle Eastern-American relations were being put to the test in Baghdad and Kabul, as part of the reason Six Days in Fallujah couldn’t release in 2007, so the corruption angle isn’t so much rogue field-grade officer sells out his men for a golden AK. More on the point of rogue battalion-sized element overstays their welcome with good intentions. Or, in layman’s terms, why the U.S. hasn’t been very good at building democratic nations abroad in recent memory. The only success stories come from Germany and Japan post-WWII. Everywhere else has been a bag of trail mix.
Walker and co. also go in with the best of intentions but well after the gut-punch of using a chemical weapon on civilians, his sanity takes such a heavy hit that the pieces that used to be his brain warp his surroundings substantially. All that time he thought Konrad was mocking him from comms, it was all in his head. Moral choices were even corrupted by his gradually disintegrating psyche as a means of rationalizing the hell he’s in, lying to himself that he’s doing good when he’s another evil come to molest what’s left of the city.
Side note: for all the good that not just the U.S. military achieves, leaders can make or break an experience and looking at Walker as a soldier myself, there’s multiple instances where further harm could’ve been prevented had he simply called the mission a failure and gone home. Hell, Adams is another officer with him, he could’ve done it too. But let’s not ignore the human element. The game is designed as a critical satire, sans laughter, of the modern military video game at the time and military operations back then. I have the luxury of criticizing Walker with all that’s been made available from the game and real life. I won’t say too much about my leadership in the Army yet, but the working strategy is to simply learn from leadership good and bad. Retired and current servicemembers definitely have similar stories if you spend some time in the appropriate spaces. See r/Army and r/USMC among others for more details.
Back to the game: Walker at last gets to Konrad whose corpse was under heavy watch presumably since the start of the game. He then has a mind battle with who he thought Konrad was supposed to be, facing criticism after criticism after heavy criticism. Max always felt worthless in Max Payne 2 and 3, but he knew what kind of guy he was in those games. Walker could be shown a mirror and not realize Satan was in it in his own uniform. And here the game has multiple endings.
A destroyer in a cape is just another aura farmer
In both pre-endings, Konrad picks up his gun and aims it at Walker. In one ending, Walker, also aiming his weapon, can shoot back to unlock the post-ending. In the other, he can accept his fate and let Konrad shoot him, which is meant to be interpreted as a suicide. The final shot is the city in ruins as the screen goes black. The post endings have three paths. Soldiers are sent to retrieve the now broken Walker and here you get a last response. One ending, Walker shoots the soldiers dead. He grabs a radio from one and repeats the same line that he uses in the beginning, “Gentlemen, welcome to Dubai,” seemingly living the last of his days among the wreckage. Another ending, open fire on the soldiers and accept this upscale suicide by soldiers. His last moments are an audible flashback to one of his prior missions within Delta Force. Credits roll. Third and arguably the most haunting ending, surrender your weapon and return to base or more likely the U.S. to face a trial for treason and, going back to white phosphorus, crimes against humanity, though the political landscape of the time would likely see that charge ignored if brought up at all. The driver of the Humvee asks how he got through this hell, to which Walker replies, “Who says I did?” and whether this ending is canon or not, a close look at the background shows that it repeats, a sign that with all that goes on in the game, the nightmare is only starting for Walker.
Now the corruption claim I make here depends on definition. It gets muddier in this game. On the one hand, none of the characters collaborated with any enemy forces, sold soldiers down river, or anything of the sort. On the other hand, no one is really innocent of anything. On the surface, there’s the Damned Thirty-Third occupying the city and Walker’s group firing on fellow soldiers, but scraping a layer back, Dubai getting slapped with apocalyptic conditions shows the destruction of the social order. Mob justice was dished out to perpetrators of otherwise slice of life crimes like theft and of egregious sins like full on rape and murder. There wasn’t a gray area when applying mob law. Killing a man’s family was on the same level as stealing drinking water. Konrad was a fool to think his unit could put its best foot forward here and restore order and Walker was a fool to keep his faith in his mission. There’s an option to fire on civilians after they beat Lugo to death, though at that point I don’t think acting or abstaining makes much of a difference anymore. The gates of hell were coming to you, not the other way around.
Some may see Spec Ops: The Line and question why this instead of something like L.A. Noire which has corruption pretty much from the first case, as The Professional has a lore video on how deep-seated the corruption is:
Channel: The Professional
I omitted that as I thought it was too easy to make a case for L.A. Noire. It’s hidden for a lot of players in the beginning and doesn’t show its face once you get to insurance inspector Jack Kelso. Cole Phelps is a good protagonist on his own and Extra Credits critiqued him and his world. Sings the praises of enforcing the law with an even hand yet several cases show how uneven the long arm of the law is applied. A white kid gets off with having weed in the glove compartment of his car; a child molester, one of two, reports his car vandalized by the very brat he tried to rape, with another child molester being let go because he wasn’t guilty of murdering a woman – the police have more on the husband in that case and could probably get a warrant for both him and the rapist, the former for domestic violence and the latter for obvious reasons. Even Phelps and his partner on the ad vice desk, Roy Earle, accept a tip from a shady looking guy for a price, and the head of the whole weed distribution ring isn’t even personally charged with much. And some of this is well before Kelso gets a more important role. A look at the corruption of the LAPD in L.A. Noire would necessitate its own blog post. So look at Spec Ops: The Line as having a different kind of corruption, borne from good intentions with complicated answers to difficult issues. No one was gonna walk away from that blood-free.
Becoming the villain while still believing you’re a hero
Why was Spec Ops: The Line overlooked? Deliberate design choices played a role in its underperformance. Some critics couldn’t get through the stiff gameplay or are even critical of its story. The heavy themes are enough to turn off a casual and a far cry from seasoned CoD and BF veterans of the time. It deliberately made itself look ugly to tell players that the modern military craze had to stop at some point, though that point doesn’t really come across until CoD’s 2013 release of Ghosts. That game was hated for the way its campaign ended and come Infinite Warfare time, the sci-fi babble was a f[gun cock]k load of bulls[bang!]t. Battlefield 1 emphasizing the oft-ignored World War I was a step in the right direction, while CoD’s 2017 release went to World War II, its roots, and gave us a rare instance of the Holocaust in an interactive medium.
That said, the criticism, while wanted by the game’s designers, overlooks the message it was meant to convey. Modern military shooters were overrated by 2012, and even then, DICE and the combined developers of Sledgehammer, Infinity Ward, and Treyarch weren’t doing themselves any favors back then or even now with Black Ops 7 releasing later this year and Battlefield 6 releasing while I was drafting this post. But whatever, a series that fell asleep in 2002 came back a decade later to slap some sense into the gaming industry and died with the industry walking those slaps off with pride instead of shame.
Well, there you have it: Three games, all released in 2012, all overlooked back then and in some cases even now whether it broke off from a prior entry, it couldn’t make back its money, or its entire point was glossed over by a fickle crowd of gamers wanting the engagement they were used to. However, I’m not ascribing blame for looking these games over. For all the reviews and peeks I make on this blog, I can treasure my favorite pieces of media and lament that some of them don’t have as much audience love, but I still appreciate that they were given something of a green light and a chance to shine when they did, and no matter what happens to these games decades down the line, they’re all worth to committing to memory no matter what.
Last week, I brought up the subject of some video games acquiring the same label that has forever gripped early films: lost media. Where, in some capacity, surviving copies of the original, plus the original, have been destroyed deliberately or accidentally. This time there’s video games that have surviving copies but aren’t made available the world over. In many ways, the gamers are not only innocent, but tend to be victims of arbitrary laws. In places like Brazil, Venezuela, or Argentina, video games are released at ridiculous prices. If an American or British or Australian player can get the same video game for 60 locally, their South American counterparts are paying many times that in reais, pesos, or bolivars (provided that currency hasn’t collapsed again).
This is true of much of the developing world. I’m a proud piracy advocate, as regular readers know, and this extends not just to animanga, but also of video games, movies, and TV. And I still do so despite having the income able to afford multiple subscriptions. Why? Well, circling back to those posts about my history with emulation, as much as I like modern gaming, some classics can’t be beat. And they’re either hard to find or hard to acquire through traditional means.
Tell me, who the f[THX sfx]k still has this in 2025? Does it still run? Name the Top 5 Best-Selling PS1 games from memory!!
This is proof in my pudding. Granted, there is a museum dedicated to the history of video games — several, in fact — and I don’t need to take this matter on myself. But I want to. There’s too many godly classics getting shunted to the dustbins and not enough efforts at preservation, nor are there many developers or publishers or even CEOs who care about this matter.
Silence would’ve been better to hear from you, Jimmy boy.
What about the devs, publishers, and other video game heads who do care? Well, the problem that trips them up can come down to the intricacies of development. Never mind the ludicrous projects that are bringing us the likes of Grand Theft Auto VI in 2026 after 13 years in Los Santos, nor the dire straits that kept Duke Nukem Forever cooking for 12 years or Beyond Good and Evil 2 in limbo for longer than that; say a game enters development one year, is announced with trailers and gameplay footage in the next year or year-and-a-half, and finally the full product is delivered after 2.5 to 3 years. If there was trouble, at most it’ll be upwards of five or more years. What kind of trouble could such a game face? Many.
If it covers a touchy subject especially under concurrent politics, it may not see a wide release, if at all. There’ve been efforts to better educate the gaming population about subjects like the Transatlantic slave trade, the Holocaust, and other such concepts, but because of how weighted these subjects are critics have fired back at the idea of using a video game to discuss it when the time-honored tradition of boring the students with the dullest teacher has always been seen as the least controversial, failing to understand that that may not be the most effective means to go about it.
A more dynamic teaching style can mitigate this outcome if the lesson is on Philippine-American reconcentrados.
Creative developers can skirt past this by hiding the lesson in a different narrative, and not even in a completely digital format. It’s possible that there’s a board game or DND campaign whose inner lore includes such a plot point. Several anime I’ve seen touch on the subject with the oppressed being some other humanoid or human-like species.
As for video game series that have adapted other media, the series itself may not be under trouble or has a countermeasure of some kind if the game is unceremoniously canceled for whatever reason. Game can’t release? Reboot the franchise but on more platforms, it’s been done before.
My best example of this.
For the Ultimate Ninja series, I thought for the longest time that there wasn’t a 5th game. There was, but it never got to North America due to timing and dubbing issues, which is why we now have the more successful Ultimate Ninja Storm series. More arcs, better tech, more new moves from the series, and on more platforms than the originals.
Then there’s instances where developer-side things are perfect, but politically things are not. As I mentioned in last week’s post, region-locking/coding can keep you from accessing a product. For instance, the Senran Kagura games are mostly available outside Japan, but not all of them are; the iDOLM@STER series has overseas fans, but the games are largely Japan exclusive. How did it travel the world? Probably a con, or an otaku from Nagoya visited Houston once. Who knows? Then there’s Kantai Collection or KanColle (Japanese: 艦これ) that despite not being accessible to the wider world, has attracted fans outside Japan as well.
Did I mention this is a browser game?
At the part of the politic-side of things, licensing and import restrictions can make things interesting. Oft-times though, politics and laws don’t impede the wider release of a product, but human error within the dev studio keeps it from gaining an overseas audience. Or worse, some type of greed or hesitancy motivates the studio to keep it locally available despite pressure from the wider audience.
Fans have translated and dubbed this in the years since, Nintendo. What f[Mario coins]ing gives!?
Realistically, there won’t always be an opportunity to keep this from happening, and as time marches on, new technology will create new problems, but I’m not gonna stop forgetting what games and wider media used to look like and how patchy our earliest endeavors were at the beginning, and I think it’d be a crime if anyone else did either.
Last week, I talked about different anime series that have crossed my radar. Popular series that everyone but me has seen. Some of them I was avoiding due to the reputation of their fandoms or a disinterest in the content of the show.
I don’t know if the person who posted this is the same person who made the meme format. Exaggerated or not, I never had an interest in idol culture. I find it too poisonous an industry to support or even look into. No industry is perfect (and anime and video games both have their controversies), but East Asian idol culture (Japan and Korea especially) is the only industry I’ve heard of where the idol has been lambasted for having a normal life or worse driven to suicide or been the victim of assault, deadly or sexually. I admit, these are cherry-picked but my point still stands.
Back to gaming, I’ve been around long enough to recall gaming’s most pivotal moments. The release of GTA: San Andreas 20 years ago (if you didn’t feel old already, here you go); Sonic steadily one-upping the Hindenburg as a 3D series; Lara Croft’s second return in a more grounded approach (as grounded as a series about a British archaeologist can get when thrown against the supernatural); and the first of two Mortal Kombat reboots where smashing together the first three arcade games worked surprisingly well.
But there’s still a few gaps in my library that I haven’t filled yet. Gaps I’ll be sharing in this post. Like last time, the list is not exhaustive; and there are more I’d like to talk about, but won’t be able to for brevity’s sake.
A series of reputations, one negative one that it managed to break, thanks in no small part to the Netflix series, but another one that it traded in return through no fault of its own. If Konami was in the hands of better people, the series would either have a better send-off or at least a more recent reboot that honors its legacy while roping in new players… like MK9.
My exposure to the series comes from Castlevania: Lords of Shadow on the PS3 and a pirated version of Aria of Sorrow for the PAL region on a bootleg PSP. That’s it, so far. Based on my observations, there’s an old love for the 2D games compared to 3D. Yahtzee Croshaw and the Angry Video Game Nerd both tackled Castlevania games with both wondering what went wrong with the series. Aria of Sorrow and Symphony of the Night get praise compared to something as ridiculous as Castlevania 64, and at least by that time we had over 15 years to iron out good games from bad.
To give credit to Castlevania’s 3D/HD ventures, it’s not like all of them are bad. Enough can be said about the 2D games, but from what I recall of Lords of Shadow, it’s a solid 6/10 game. To pull from Yahtzee Croshaw’s 2010 review of the game, it combines elements of God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, and Dante’s Inferno from weapons to enemies to character design. Hell, it starts off with the main character Gabriel Belmont, a holy knight in the 11th century, who goes on a journey to rid the world of all evil in search of a way to return his wife to the land of the living. Servant of a god fights monsters with a chained weapon as penance for the death of loved ones — God of War comparison made. Some of the bosses are huge hulking monsters you have to climb on whilst pecking away at glowing weakspots — Shadow of the Colossus. And Satan’s appearance draws comparison to his appearance in the Dante’s Inferno games.
Channel: The Escapist
But the main draw of the series back in the 1980s was Dracula as well as open-ended level designs and exploration encouraging multiple runs of the same levels and therefore birthing the concept of the Metroidvania (more on that later). As such, my desire to look into the Castlevania series will have to go to the older games. Symphony of the Night may get all the praise for being one of the best games of all time, but to this end, I’d rather judge it by itself than where it stands in the series or with its contemporaries.
Another historic series getting f[bombs]ked by its Konami Overlords because pachinko and claw machines make a lot of money, as a certain Welsh monkey can attest.
Playlist by: Kim Kalliope, Videos by: CDawgVA, ConnorDawg
Still, Metal Gear is still releasing games to this day with another entry set for release later this year, tarnished as the series may be, thanks to Konami. A strategic stealth game that lampoons the s[blyat]t out of the Cold War, long after the joke died. Though, considering Metal Gear is still doing that, is the joke really dead or is it just on life support?
The best excuse I have for why I never played Metal Gear would probably be due to lack of interest. Sort of like what kept me away from Yu-Gi-Oh! or Pokémon for so many years. What ties these three together for me is that there wasn’t anything physically keeping me from collecting a few of the games. Metal Gear Solid was on the PS2, which I had; Pokémon Red or Green were on the GameBoy, of which I had several (they were fragile or we kept losing them amongst our other stuff in the house); and Yu-Gi-Oh! is a card game. Cards are inexpensive, and they have been for years. But leave it to me to stand out and not get lost in the shuffle back then. Average oddball behavior.
But of course, Metal Gear is neither Pokémon nor Yu-Gi-Oh! It didn’t begin with collectible cards (but might have them as part of a collector’s edition of sorts) and I didn’t know a lot of people playing the games growing up, though I wouldn’t be surprised if I was friends with a long time Metal Gear fan but didn’t know it at the time. Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! were just more visible at school by the nature of the games. With my experiences in games like Outlast, or Sekiro, or the hackneyed stealth sections in numerous action-games, I want to say that it’s in my corner, but I know different games do stealth differently. Sekiro’s stealth isn’t Outlasts and neither compare to the sometimes stealth of Max Payne 3. Metal Gear is a legacy series ripe for the emulating; PCSX2 still works for me and I’ve been getting remarkably lucky with the likes of RPCS3 on another machine that I own (though I’ve still got a bit to learn about extracting games on it).
RPGs and JRPGs
As far as genres go, I have a decent amount of exposure to some RPGs and JRPGs, more so the latter, but largely due to some western games having semi-RPG elements in them. GTA: San Andreas has more of it with the ability to let CJ’s waist expand or shrink; same thing with his muscles which was the approach I took the last time I played it two years ago. It’s more muted in GTA V, but still there even in GTA Online. JRPGs, on the other hand, are another blind spot I hope to fill. How I achieve that will need to be more finely detailed, but for the most part a look through of time-honored series as well as more recent releases can help me out. Octopath Traveler, for instance, is one that’s currently on my radar.
During Army AIT, a few of my classmates played around a bit in a Final Fantasy 14 RPG (and stopped after making a dedicated Minecraft server). I played some of the Naruto turn-based RPGs as a kid as well as a Dragon Ball-themed one. Fun fact, my exposure to Dragon Ball started with the PS2 games. The anime (specifically the Kai dub) came way later. And I feel like I’m selling myself short experience-wise without more JRPGs to call from. I’m starting to rectify this by way of some of the Souls’ games, which are developed by a Japanese studio, but Japan liking medieval Europe for a fantasy setting undercuts the experience aesthetics-wise. Dark Souls is still enjoyable, I’ll never debate that, but I don’t think it’s enough to fill the void. I’d like more to experience, Soulslike or not be damned.
The first-half of the Metroidvania genre, the fact that major elements from both Metroid and Castlevania combined to form a new genre is remarkable. It was a groundbreaking game when it debuted in the mid-1980s, and is still going strong with its star character, the tall, beautiful, kick-ass Samus Aran.
Practically, Ellen Ripley’s disciple, both women are space adventurers blasting away at evil aliens. Couple that concept with a Mega Man-esque arm-blaster, the core of Metroid has been a blend of its contemporaries with a few things to make it stand out. Early example of female video game character (though probably not the grandmother of female protagonists in games), sci-fi setting, nonlinear game structure and retraversable levels, different weapons; it’s a great game series that I have limited exposure to.
All my knowledge comes from Wikipedia and I’d rather not have to go to a third party for my education. My s[splash]tbag college days allowed for this absolutely, but I’m not in college anymore. I may not be guaranteed more time to do it, but whatever excuse there is to keep avoiding it is no longer valid. Emulators for the older games (because no one is crazy enough to track down a still working NES/Famicom in 2025) and I can get a Nintendo Switch or wait for the Switch 2 to release and hook it up to my monitor, if that’s allowed.
Interestingly, I’m hard at work fixing this gap with a series of Adults Only roguelike Metroidvanias made possible through Steam. Especially one I’ve discovered with permadeath elements in it. But before I cross it off the list, I do still have more to say about these types of games. I really love my narrative driven Max Paynes, Mafias, Spec Ops, CoDs, etc., etc., BUT! A huge but.
Sometimes, I just want to push buttons and make the enemy collapse into a puff of smoke. You don’t need to convince me to boot up a game of Kirby; that itself is the oil. Need I any reason to play it? If it can be accessed by any means necessary, there’s no need for me to avoid it. As for Metroidvanias themselves, never mind games that make you think through their narrative; games that make you think through their gameplay are another favorite of mine. Puzzle games used to get lambasted for being “girl games,” but I still like them as well as physical jigsaw puzzles for helping to prepare me for visual puzzles. Nonlinear gameplay structures meanwhile have their place and depending on the Metroidvania in question, the puzzle elements and level design can be really innovative and creative or boring and uninspired. Or worse, convoluted. But I’ve seen a separate category of randomly generated levels with each separate run. Sometimes this leads to perpetual recycling, but it can still feel fresh if the enemies themselves are varied, especially within the level itself.
Well, now that I’m rereading this before publishing, I think this could apply to any old adventure puzzle platformer, but the distinction between those and Metroidvanias relates to going back with new abilities to get more items, powerful items especially. So while your first run will be predictably terrible (unless you’re a based Metroidvania titan), a few more runs and experience points later, you should be able to get through to the final boss largely unassisted, like a true gamer.
That’s an admittedly short list of all the games and game types I’d like to get into more in the future. Not exhaustive, certainly and not the end, as there are more games I could mention, some of which are on my Steam library for example but I haven’t touched yet (I’m a damn hoarder). The Senran Kagura games, more of the Yakuza series (GOATed series by the way), unconventional shooters (The Suffering is a start even though its a hybrid), horror games, Resident Evil, and even more to follow. F[slurp]k me, my Discord description is too profound when I said my anime and gaming list was an expanding castle…
I might make another list about those games in the future. I filled up the list in my notes for half of this year, but not the rest so I have a backlog of free space to fill. Maybe I’ll bring back the YouTube channel recs, but I’ve been watching mostly Vtubers and I don’t want to only recommend those.
This would’ve come out on Friday, but I had to pack my two bookbags for the holidays. Thought I was gonna look a gift of two weeks* of holiday leave in the mouth? (Actually, 11 days, but I also have a 4-day pass.)
Veteran weebs know what the image above means. ‘Tis the season to be jolly, and everything else Christmas-y. The holidays are a lot of things: great, awful, a mixed bag, an empty bag, and a bunch of other stuff. While this post is gonna be a happy holidays to all, it’s also gonna be a setup for a New Year’s reflection of this blog as well as a look back at the content I’ve written for this year and the content that was released, continued, suspended, or discontinued. Hitting the ground in 2025 with memories and goals. Knowing me, I may entertain theories with plausibility or significant evidence, but for most things I tend to stick with the facts. You’ll almost never hear or see me make a genuine guarantee unless it’s in my notes or I have evidence and research.
Now I do have plans in my notes to review my content for 2024, but that’s a January thing, and seeing as it’s a day before I return to duty, it’ll either be delayed or published ahead of schedule. Preferably the latter so I can focus on packing up, and New Year’s Eve or Day would be perfect ideally. For a look into the future though, of all the animanga I’ve viewed or games I’ve played, a fair few favorites stand out that have wide fanfare, but I’ve either admired out of respect for the reputation or not directly engaged in myself. Others I plan on writing about after a thorough amount of time. For example, I have a decent amount of time on my emulator with the original Yakuza game, though most fans would implore newcomers to try the Kiwami updates instead.
Still, a plus for Yakuza/Ryu ga Gotoku is that it’s generally easy to get into and the number of games released since 2005 gives newcomers a backlog to play catch-ups should they choose. And I do choose that method, real life responsibilities and desires would be damned, but being a responsible adult comes first.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are series I’ve encountered through osmosis. Memes, lore dumps, wikis, explorations; individual fans have tried to explain and recommend their own series, but from the outside looking in, I feel about it the same I feel about the Dune series, best explained with this meme.
Credit: u/netotz, r/dunememes
The series’ in question that I’m referring to are Senran Kagura, Fate, and Idolmaster. Each of these has a large following, both foreign and domestic, but my previous attempts to jump into the deeper lore and find a starting point has been met with mixed results. From easiest to hardest to understand, it’s SK, Idolmaster, and Fate. And I’ll start with SK.
The series’ Wikipedia page describes it as a multimedia franchise spearheaded by none other than Kenichiro Takaki, launched in Japan in 2011 with developers Tamsoft and Marvelous. The first game in the series released domestically is translated with the subtitle “Portrait of Girls” and was ported in 2013 with the subtitle Burst. So that’s simple, boot up an emulator or track down a still working 3DS or similar handheld and get some gameplay in, right? Wrong…
Opening up a can of worms called backwards compatibility and legalese, there’s a myriad of reasons why that’s not the most feasible way to do it for most. Of course, any potato computer can run a 3DS emulator–I did it myself to play Kirby: Planet Robobot and Triple Deluxe for old times’ sake–but the difference between eastern and western developers shows in the pudding. Eastern game devs will gladly re-release and remake old games for new hardware, such as the aforementioned Kiwami remakes of the old Yakuza PS2 games, whereas western devs can’t or won’t re-release remakes. Unless it’s Naughty Dog patting themselves too hard on the back with The Last of Us.
Narcissism is calling a PS4 port a remaster, when it was only a one-year release difference.
What I’ve noticed with eastern and specifically Japanese creators is that they’re accommodating enough to make their products available to all, though from what I’ve seen it can get hectic sometimes. If done poorly, a series can have numerous remakes or remasters or be disappeared and reintroduced, such was the case with JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Domestically, there weren’t many problems with manga releases, but western distributors either got a bad hand or dealt a bad hand with all the bravado and overconfidence that killed Macbeth. Long ago and today, it was considered sinful by the fandom to skip parts and lo and behold Viz Media was the one to ruin it in the mid-1990s. The approach was sound, but the execution necessitated the cancellation and re-release of a western release. To play devil’s advocate, Araki’s playlist disguised as a manga makes things difficult for copyright reasons, but it’s a miracle it was able to work so well, even if it took a quarter century to reach this goal.
25 years, people, 25 years. That’s how long it took for the first volume of Phantom Blood to get a successful anime adaptation. And the series had been through OVAs and a lost movie. If it was released contemporarily, we’d be halfway through a JoJolion adaptation with rumors of a JoJoLands adaptation getting a greenlight for Q3 2026.
For Senran Kagura, the source of confusion can come from the names they have, especially overseas. This itself isn’t a new concept, going back decades with international releases of Japanese anything, games notably; sorta like how Earthbound outside of Japan is known as Mother (which is its own wormhole of naming and releases). Couple SK with a limited anime adaptation in 2018, an OVA, and several spinoff games and it can seem like a lot to catch up to. I’m only one mission into Shinovi Versus thus far and I have an extended topic discussion lined up for February. This time, I’m going to try my best to get through Shinovi Versus and at least start another game in the series. So, does SK have a tricky starting point? Yes, but personally I found it easier than the next one I’ve been trying to find a starting point for: Idolmaster.
What makes this one trickier is that it didn’t start off with a console release, but with an arcade release in 2005, later ported in 2007 to the Xbox 360 in Japan. Clearly, it was successful to get a franchise of its own, but from what I’ve heard, Xbox and Microsoft don’t enjoy wide popularity in the Land of the Rising Sun. Sony and Panasonic have a wider reach on their native soil, but this series’ Wikipedia claims Xbox Live had better hardware. Who else but a computer company to push the limits, right?
So much for Sony, I suppose? The Wikipedia also suggests that that was just a test with subsequent releases getting PlayStation or mobile releases. Though over the course of 11 years, there’s been many releases. Again, spinoffs are no issue, but the volume of them in games like these makes finding the origin point tougher than it needs to be, especially when they’re neither conventionally named nor released in the right order for an international audience. Circling back to the Earthbound series, even if it’s true that the fanbase isn’t big enough to warrant a wide release, the small headcount was dedicated enough to translate the series themselves.
But the blame for that can’t always fall on the devs; copyright law is no joke no matter what part of the world you’re in. It’s part of the reason JoJo’s was so hard to introduce to the west. Let’s award the Benefit of Doubt in general cases and say that if it wasn’t for the corps of copyright and lawsuits, more players would play more games, no matter how obscure they are to the general populace. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s a monolith of a series that has one hell of a reputation. Starting as a visual novel, getting two separate anime adaptations (the latter made to correct the former’s mistakes), and spawning a franchise with more twists and turns than M. Night Shyamalan and Christopher Nolan could think of. Pretzels look at the timeline and think, “Holy knots, guy! The f[crunch]k am I lookin’ at?!” Of course, I’m talking about the Fate franchise.
The emperor of long and convoluted timelines, and the source of upwards of 35 to 40% of all anime-based memes, it started with a visual novel in 2004 and hasn’t stopped running. Even if you messed up the train tracks ahead, the Fate Express continues on through the power of fandom and fanservice. This passage from the associated Wikipedia page says as much:
I’ve wanted to get into Fate for a few years now, but its reputation has held me back from taking the plunge. Also being a seasoned weeb myself, I know how hideous fandoms can get (see the My Hero Academia fanbase for more details, and cleanse yourself afterwards. IYKYK). Thankfully, there’s not much in the way of ugliness for the Fate series, but to quote a Welsh monke, “if Dragon Ball fans are the ghetto, Fate fans are the crack dealers.” Some of the more vocally dedicated types will stop at damn near nothing until every newcomer lives and dies by Fate and has immersed themselves in all the VNs, anime, movies, games, and other merch that a franchise this influential can spawn.
Channel: Trash Taste Highlights
With just this video, I don’t really need to elaborate further. Someone will tell me that Fate is easier to get into than I fear, and I guess I can take their word on that being blinder than Kenshi from Mortal Kombat or Toph Beifong in this regard, but what would help is if there was someone out there who will meet normies and newcomers with some interest at the halfway point instead of leaving us to fight off a pack of wolves with a stick and a book of pressed 4- and 5-leaf clovers. You can expect to see more in-depth opinions about all of these in a post about s[horse neighing] not (yet) reviewed after the New Year.
Going through my notes whilst finishing this up, I realize some stuff should’ve been up at least a week before I thought they’d be (this post included), but life and work had gotten in the way. The holidays aren’t gonna make that any easier for the last few topics, but I’ve been beating the odds for as long as I can remember and come hell or high water, I’m gonna make this work. Figuring it all out will have to come later.
Before I part, why don’t I give you a channel recommendation for the Holidays? Behold, Geopold!
Not dissimilar from Gattsu, Geopold is another YouTube channel that introduces different parts of the world by way of the power of internet memes. Describing himself as “Birmingham’s Travel Agent,” going off of that alone, he’s confident that that he’s well-traveled enough to give an unbiased opinion about the places he’s– okay, I’m joking, he’s gonna meme these places off the map, and keep mememing them. Now that travel agent thing may be a joke, and if that’s what you’re looking for than stop where you are, have a drink of your choosing (Kirin or Asahi for me) and watch him grossly oversimplify white people… or the state of Florida…
The next topic (fingers crossed, it’ll be out by Friday or Saturday night) will be an out of season third-person shooter game that only eight people remember.
If you’re at all curious about the plot, here’s a small hint: the Maryland prison system has been better, all things considered.
I chose the topics for the year many months ago. In the case of visual novels, I didn’t think I’d have a lot to say about them, but when I got one for free this summer on Steam, it initially got me thinking about how I feel about them… for a bit. Then I stopped largely due to my play style. I do get absorbed in video game narratives — I felt compelled by MK: Shaolin Monks enough to try to fix the narrative like a weekly anime a la Dragon Ball — but my play style successfully blends dialogue with button pressing. Mortal Kombat, God of War, Call of Duty, the Naruto games, Midnight Club, Need for Speed; indicting myself here, the action is the selling point.
But I still decided to give that free VN a chance, specifically this one:
The goal of Find Love or Die Trying is to romance one of the five girls on a televised game show not dissimilar from The Bachelor/ette. If you fail to get even one of them to fall for you, you die. So specifically it’s a dating sim game. I recall tuning into DashieGames in the latter part of high school when he was playing that one dating sim puzzle match game HuniePop, where that game’s goal is to score with all the girls.
I know what visual novels are, and there’s a chance you’ve come across some yourself or even their most famous anime adaptations (Fate, Clannad, Danganronpa, etc.), and I was about to say that they’re not for me, but that’s just not true. I just forgot because I have way more memories of being very involved in other video games not limited to the ones listed above. The truth is more that I’m a bit torn on VNs somewhat. I’ve run into several in my childhood, especially on the practically defunct Stickpage, and while not VNs themselves, the Choose Your Own Adventure template of Telltale Games’ video game adaptations of popular properties as well as Don’t Nod Entertainment’s Life is Strange series served as something of an introduction to VNs or something close to a VN.
I still have my copies of Minecraft: Story Mode Seasons 1 and 2, I’ve watched gameplay of Life is Strange 1, Before the Storm, and 2, along with criticisms of each (for more information on LiS, see GCN, Dumbsville, or uricksaladbar on YouTube for more details), and if you’re familiar with games like these you might see the path I’m walking down here. Diet VNs or not, these tended to have more player involvement than something like Doki Doki Literature Club or literally Highschool Romance. Clearly, I’ve got a preference for one type of game over the other, but it’s not like I won’t give a VN the time of day. I did stick around Find Love long enough to reach at least one ending, and a few years ago I watched an old playthrough of The Anime Man playing Highschool Romance; I watched all the endings on his channel. This is what it looks like.
So why are VNs toward the middle of my tier list? Is the limited involvement that it comes with, prioritizing the reading and storytelling over the action? I doubt it… if that were the case I probably wouldn’t have seen the Telltale Games through to the end or bothered watching that Anime Man gameplay of it. I think it’s effort necessary to get through a VN. Don’t get me wrong, I think VNs can tell great stories with the right kind of writing, setup, and characters. The 4chan sponsored VN Katawa Shoujo about romancing girls with disabilities is said to be one such example of amazing storytelling, but I think part of what keeps me from exploring more further has to do with length.
This may sound weird for me since I’ve stuck around some long running anime and have several novels in my possession right now as well as a published novel out available for purchase, but part of the difference between a physical book or a graphic novel or even a webcomic would probably be the visible page count. With the exception of Choose Your Own Adventure, few books or other such media have branching paths. Sometimes what I do when looking at a book in Barnes and Noble or any other bookstore or even with books I own, I count the pages of the chapters. I don’t always have the time to just read for fun and in those instances I count how many pages a chapter has and whether there’s page breaks for me to stop on just in case I need to put it down and divert my attention elsewhere. They’ve become to me what most mobile games are for someone on public transit.
Visual novels on the other hand feel more deceptive. Because so many have branching paths and multiple choices affecting the narrative, a single run could theoretically take moments of your life away, especially if you plan on going back to unlock different endings. This might come from the side of me that wants to experience a lot of things at different moments or it might be something else, but seeing how long some VNs can be can get pretty daunting. I could do it, but seeing the progress bar move at the speed of sleep might motivate me to try another look for speedrun to watch on YouTube or try one myself to juxtapose.
More popular VNs like Fate also notoriously ridiculous launching points. Gigguk took the piss out of this a few years ago with his video on getting into Fate, but it touches on another problem with some VNs: starting point.
Channel: Gigguk
To be fair, I’ve heard from Fate fans that the memes of where to start getting into Fate take it overboard at times, and I like to believe there’s some truth to that, but other times VNs can run on for very long and seemingly have no clear path to walk on. From the outside looking in, they can look like they’re all over the place narratively. I don’t always like taking notes when I’m reading, but a labyrinthine writing style can make that look like a National Guard deployment to an approaching disaster.
I’ve called my own levels of patience into question before, but it looks like I draw the line at really long VNs, though more of a dotted line than a solid one. I could see myself getting into more VNs if I knew where to look for more, and ideally none that are years long or seconds short. The Highschool Romance dating sim gives me an idea and I may go back to Find Love in the future (especially since I started a second run and didn’t finish), but until then I’m probably gonna keep VNs towards the middle of my personal list. I recognize the appeal and I could see myself getting absorbed in them one day, but it’ll take a while for that to happen. For an in-depth look at what a visual novel is and what most of them consist of, see this video from Get in the Robot for more details:
Channel: Get in the Robot
This week’s channel recommendation is Company Man.
Company Man is a channel dedicated to exploring the businesses and markets that have since become household names in the U.S. and abroad. Restaurant chains, pizzerias, candy companies, grocers, and numerous others. Often in my writing, I’ll make obscure references to famous products or companies and whatnot and I like that Company Man offers a lot of insight on the history and success or sometimes failures of many of the brands we grew up with or heard about. It may not sound as ecstatic or exciting, but I think it’s interesting to explore these different brands.
Citizens of the internet will know that fake trailers make the rounds several years or so after a popular franchise entry is on the market. I recall looking at fake videos of what GTA V would look like shortly after announcement in the middle of 2012. Me and my friends were hyped for the latter half of that year and 2013 waiting for the game to come out and when it did, in a nutshell it broke records back to back.
A few weeks after initial release, GTA Online debuted and despite an initial hiccup for those who were there (I was one of them), Online alone probably counted for lifetime revenue for the game. The most expensive piece of media in history made back all of its money and then some. If Rockstar was feeling philanthropic, every employee could probably retire and have enough savings for their descendants.
Over the years, critics have popped up questioning Rockstar’s design philosophy and direction. GTA V was said to have a DLC that was functionally stolen by GTA Online, which has enough DLC on its own to be released as a standalone semi-RPG (an idea that Rockstar could capitalize on if done more honestly), and even after the release of the phenomenally made, if overdone Red Dead Redemption 2, players often defaulted to GTA. Answering to the money (read: gold) found in the criminal funhouse that GTA Online was and still is, Red Dead Online suffered as a result and some haven’t forgiven Rockstar for it.
Nevertheless, Rockstar’s reputation as a more patient company has paid off. Gone are the days where they were a small team of British programmers asset flipping successful titles with only a year in difference. Projects have gotten bigger and bigger since at least 2007 coming to fruition with the following year’s GTA IV.
I think I have a theory on why the games have taken a more contemporary approach as opposed to the older unnumbered titles like Vice City or Liberty City Stories, and that theory starts with “it’s easier to capture what is than thumb through records looking at what was.” Maybe there’ll come a day when I elaborate further, but today we’re talking about a very long, very awaited installment in the GTA franchise.
On December 1, Rockstar announced the trailer would release on December 5, at 9:00 AM but the full trailer was leaked 15 hours ahead of schedule, racking up a record breaking view-count in minutes.
Channel: Rockstar Games
The internet has been demanding a follow-up to GTA V for a number of reasons, the most popular of them being criticism over the gluttonous mass that is GTA Online. I can’t say with certainty if these are the same people who default to GTA Online, but if there is some of that overlap, then it’s true what they say about a view from a glasshouse.
So following up on GTAs IV and V, GTA VI is yet another entry into the contemporary setting of modern-day Miami/South Florida. After looking myself, commenters who are from or have been to Florida have applauded the downright authentic portrayal of life as a Florida man or woman. Exploration of the Everglades and Keys, run ins with alligators, regular folks putting bizarre twists on normal activities and other easter eggs to the unpredictable nature of Florida man. Here’s a fun game you can play: google your birthday and put Florida man in and see what comes up.
Unlike the portrayal of South Florida from Vice City, where it takes home the allegations of a copy of 1983’s Scarface with a few references to Miami Vice, this time the game incorporates pretty much any given report on life in Florida. Much of the in-game footage captured seems to be recorded on Rockstar’s as of yet released parody of TikTok. Allow me to repeat a similar soundbite when I say that the graphics have never looked so amazing. YongYea recorded a video on this the previous night speaking similarly about the graphics and there’s no hyperbole when I say that minor things like hair and clothing affected by the wind, or facial rendering right down to the muscles, or even the local wildlife all come alive in just the trailer.
As for the plot, I’m personally saving my viewing eyes for later trailers to follow in 2024 and ’25, but from what we’ve heard and seen, it’s heavily inspired by the 1930s outlaw pairing of Bonnie and Clyde.
Also a first for GTA is a female protagonist. Rather than make your own in Online (as I have), the female lead is named Lucia and the male lead is named Jason. Plot details are obviously scarce and I intend to keep myself surprised until release even though select details have leaked yonks ago. From what I can gather from the trailer, it begins not dissimilar from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean.
Think about it: young Florida woman begins in the prison system; Lucia herself most likely dodging worse versions of what Jolyne was forced to share a detention complex with during her own incarceration; a boyfriend with an equally sketchy history… and again without anymore information from that, I can’t say where else the story goes, but it clearly doesn’t take place in a prison, though the prison is likely to play a role in the story in some capacity. By the way, the initial comparisons weren’t lost on the JoJo community.
Credit: u/klydex210, r/ShitPostCrusaders
I honestly thought, as did others, that the release window would be, say, Q4 2024, but the trailer ends with a vague 2025 release window. As of writing this, in-depth analyses of the trailer are releasing on YouTube and more will follow with more trailers in 2024. All that time cooking up a five-course meal, so many people have been waiting for the main dish and it looks like whatever trailers are releasing next year and after until release will hold us all over as appetizers. I’m excited, but all throughout this post, I’ve been keeping a level and realistic outlook on this. As exciting as this reveal trailer was, I’ve learned from past mistakes and disappointments to wait for as much information to be made available. Remember Kratos’s words:
Credit: u/Shaho99, r/GodofWar
Open your mind to the possibilities and all that. Now have some analysis videos to hold you over until the next trailer.
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