I just want to start things off with a simple hello. Last post I wrote about Beacon Pines for my first entry on Substack. If you follow my writing on Tilt Magazine or through Rotten Tomatoes, you’ll know I wrote a review for the incredibly slick French action film Lost Bullet 2. It rules, and if you have Netflix you should go check it out as well as the previous film (as I mention in the review, it’s highly advised you watch the first but don’t worry, the action is great in that as well). Even critically Lost Bullet 2 needs some attention as it is currently sitting on Rotten Tomatoes with a total of 6 reviews - all of which are positive. Meanwhile, Action Twitter is all over it in the most endearing of ways.
Currently, I’m working on some more reviews but mostly diving into my backlog for video games. Since Beacon Pines, I’ve dipped my toes into quite a few games that thankfully have mostly been noteworthy. The only one I haven’t really been able to latch onto is Horizon: Forbidden West - a problem that I had with the first one until earlier this year when I finally restarted it and beat it in a few sittings. It’s not that it’s bad; it just doesn’t seem particularly exciting. Definitely one of those franchises that feel well-polished but I can’t quite put my finger on what about it is so uninteresting to me. Maybe it’s just the premise that’s so, just…whatever?
Anyways, maybe someday I’ll be able to articulate what it is about Horizon or many of the other games where I start them and bounce off. I did finish some games though! For starters, I saw credits on the new Sam Barlow game, Immortality. I say “saw credits” instead of beat because I then dove back into the game to uncover more secrets hiding behind the clips and to finish piecing together the films included. Seeing credits in that game feels more like a reward to make you more intrigued than it is a recognition that the game is over. It’s not like the rest of the stuff you uncover afterward doesn’t matter.
An enjoyable enough experience if you’re fascinated by the initial conceit and can accept that the gameplay is mostly just a play on a pixel hunt-style game dressed in FMV clothing. The acting is pretty good for that kind of experience, but Barlow has been doing a great job in that regard for a long time. It’s also easy to just click through and assemble clips without actually engaging with the narrative within the clips themselves but you really do miss out on the engrossing elements of it all - how the three films come together and get strung along by the continuity found with actors, directors, and crew. Even props and motifs become overlapping in some respects. It’s a fascinating experiment that I don’t think is ever amazing but is always promising to be more than it appears. It’s on Game Pass so there’s not really an excuse not to just give it a shot unless you already have strong feelings against Barlow’s previous works.
Before that, I played through and beat Stray. Only took two sittings because usually what happens with my gaming time is I play a game while my wife does something else like read a book or watch Love is Blind on her laptop. Now she has begun playing the new Pokemon while I figure out whether I want to play games/watch movies on the devices closer to her or on the PS5 and Xbox Series X that are connected to the 4K TV in the living room. I probably wouldn’t have finished Stray if my wife hadn’t dropped everything she was doing just to watch me play the cat game. If only every game had a cat as the main character so I could get that kind of attention in all my gaming experiences.
Another game that was made available thanks to a subscription service, Stray is currently on PlayStation Plus Extra if you’re a part of that tier or Premium. I’m the sucker that bought a Premium subscription thinking there’d be a bunch of classic games to play but outside of Syphon Filter, Ape Escape, and Wild Arms, the rest that interests me are dependent on exclusively streaming, or were already available on the PlayStation 4. Again, another topic for another day.
So Stray is compelling from a few different perspectives. It has this big city that makes the idea of playing as a cat a little frightening. In order to mitigate that it sections the city into smaller, more discrete levels and creates the single objective that it really can to pad out the length of it: fetch quests. You’re basically running around a dilapidated urban sprawl hunting down items that certain people need in order to get the item you need or path unlocked. It’s simple, but in a way that is befitting its protagonist. Less about power fantasy and more about feeling like you can play a role within this world.
That is probably the most interesting part of Stray: the world. As a cat that has strayed from its pack, gone is the lush greenery as you tumble down into a world left behind. Part of the allure is that you’re learning about this world alongside the main character (who again, is an adorable cat that is animated accurately and wonderfully). Inhabited by robots with CRT monitors and other video screens as heads, they’re a worried bunch and essentially trapped in a dark world where no life can really thrive - with the exception of some creepy bugs that are basically cockroach-and-rat-analogs that are the only threat to your character’s life.
It’s a place of vulnerability and despite being armed with tools, death is still possible. Stray is definitely easy, but the tension is still there when you’re running through a chase sequence that involves quickly ensuring a few pieces of the puzzle get solved to avoid your demise. That fragility makes the stakes very real even if the game is very easy: you don’t want to see this cat die, even if death is just a roadblock. While this could have been applied to other animals, the game has built a vertical world with nooks and crannies that a cat would be more likely to explore and climb than many other animals. Especially domesticated ones where the player might be able to form an attachment.
The attention to detail in the way a cat behaves and even to the extent of what a cat might do in the situation presented is also a big selling point for Stray. There are places to nap, doors to scratch (it’s in fact how you open some doors), and precarious fixtures to walk on. Navigation is a lot of fun in the game and that is why the chase sequences are probably the highlight outside of simply exploring the world.
It’s when the game leans more on the few mechanics it has that it starts becoming a bit of a bore. With repetitive game design and areas that aren’t really as engaging as they could be, Stray seems like a weird title to be as popular as it is. It’s currently nominated for Game of the Year at The Game Awards as well as Best Indie which makes it look like a lock for winning Best Indie at that point. It’s a fine game and one where its inclusion in Best Game Direction and Best Art Direction I can understand. But Game of the Year? When there are more exciting indies like Tunic, Immortality, and my personal favourite, Vampire Survivors, it seems the main reason Stray has garnered so much attention is that you play as a cat. The rest is solid, with aspects that are closer to remarkable, but really? Game of the Year?
So I guess I stand by what I said: every game should have a cat as its main character.
I’m currently plugging away at a bunch of other games including the previously mentioned Vampire Survivors which always sucks my time away in far greater chunks than I expect. It’s just a simple game design made addicting through movement and power-ups as a constant risk/reward situation in the pursuit of the greatest build ever. Of course, the secret is that almost every build rules and you’ll very quickly realize that the gameplay loop isn’t about “Can you survive constant waves of enemies?” but rather, “How will you spend your time surviving the waves of enemies?”.
Then there’s NorCo which rules in its own unique way. Narrative-heavy adventure game within a dystopian cyberpunk future in the south, it’s the kind of world you don’t want to live in but you want to hear all the grimy details. I find every interaction fascinating and the writing is transfixing and immersive. It also has gorgeous art design in a rusty-CRT-technogrime kind of way.
There are a few older games I’m playing as well including Dragon Quest XI and Celeste, but they’re my “I just don’t want to do the stuff I have to do” games right now. And I’m nearing the end of Celeste so I’ll need to replace that soon. Mostly it’s just been procrastinating on watching the last few movies I feel like I need to see before doing my year-end list. Right now, the list includes:
Tár
Triangle of Sadness
Aftersun
Pearl
Ambulance
Those are kind of the big ones, but I also don’t really have high expectations for the last couple. I finally caught up with X and thought it was good, but not great. I’m not at all regretting my decision to skip Pearl at TIFF, even though a Midnight Madness crowd would have been a lot of fun. Oh, and I guess I should watch Avatar finally before seeing Avatar: The Way of Water. Wouldn’t want to be left out of the James Cameron discourse.
I wanted to make a new Substack post sooner but life really got in the way again. Had a huge opportunity slip by me that would have drastically improved my well-being, but I’ve somewhat accepted the loss. Went to Vancouver immediately after and saw Katatonia and The Ocean Collective at The Rickshaw Theatre. Discovered a fantastic bar near one of the breweries I usually stop by on the way to the concert. I’ve had a lot more negative experiences in my life since moving away from Toronto and so I’ve tried a new coping mechanism: celebrating the little wins. So yeah, maybe I didn’t get the dream gig, but at least I got the opportunity to try for it. So one beer for me, please.
With that in mind, today I received confirmation of my press accreditation for the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. This is the third year now covering it remotely, and I’m excited for the chance to see some great films from exciting new voices. This year’s festival featured some of my top movies of the year including God’s Country, The Territory, and After Yang, as well as some really good films that didn’t quite make my list including Master, Nanny, and Navalny.
If all else fails though and the bad news keeps rolling in, I have two beer advent calendars going right now.