May 10th

Welcome back readers.

We’ve got fifteen picks for you this week. I’m so relieved that none of the games being written about below has elicited any kind of rancid discourse on social media or anything! On a completely unrelated note, don’t forget to give the Patreon a look if you want to help us out in our mission to preserve longer-form, longer-lasting conversations on videogames.

This Week in Videogame Blogging is a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.

A-Sides

Two up top for Mixtape this week. Kaile tackles the what, Cam ponders the why.

• Review: Mixtape | No Escape
  Kaile Hultner sizes up the setlist, the characters, the foci of Mixtape, and has some Questions.
• On Mixtape (2026) | a question of machines
  Cameron Kunzelman scrutinizes the Nostalgia Machine that precedes and precludes any single outcome like Mixtape (Further Reading: Davy R. Howard on the ClassicsOfGame YouTube channel).

“Nostalgia was a name for something being done to us, and perhaps Grafton Tanner’s retrobait might be the word to explain what in Mixtape is being done to us. Mixtape‘s collapse of history into comforting vibes should make us question why that comfort works so easily, and more importantly, why the assumption exists that it would.”

More-athon

There are going to be so many Marathon pieces at the end of the year aren’t there.

• the runner’s guide to marathon — part 1: couch to 5k | one more run
  Grayson Morley meditates on fomo, measures of progress, getting on the horse, staying on the horse.
• Task Management | Bullet Points Monthly
  Gareth Damian Martin considers the stories told in the mins and maxes of videogames.

“That’s a good story. A story that emerges from the numbers, live and exciting. A story you want to tell someone the next day. Someone at Bungie must have realized that, because Marathon loves that kind of story, it is willing to do anything to make it happen. It is willing to frustrate you, to block you, to halt efficiency, to stymie progress, to ruin the numbers, and their eternal climb upwards, just to tell you a good story. A story where you lose, and you enjoy it.”

Cop-Out

These next three picks span a loose continuum interrogating policing and sci-fi storytelling in games.

• The Paragade Paradox | Unwinnable
  J.M. Henson meditates on the tensions between playing to a character and playing to the system in Mass Effect.
• Sitting With Violence in Resident Evil | The Punished Backlog
  Clint Morrison, Jr. charts an increasingly copagandistic trajectory across the Resident Evil series (Further Reading: Skeleton on zombies, women, and zombie women in Resident Evil).
• God The Federation Sucks | Bloomed Wings Blog
  Cindy diagnoses Metroid‘s–the series at large and Prime 4 in particular–worldbuilding as alternately nonsensical and vile (Further Reading: Will Butler on Officer Samus).

“In previous Prime games, the main mechanics were exploration. Scanning to understand what tools you use to get from place to place, and also to understand what you’re even fighting for. It rewarded careful and close examination. Prime 4 has scanning, it has bomb slots and spider rails to get around and open doors, but it is mostly about fighting. Often side-by-side with a soldier. When Samus meets Tokabi, it is after a forced failure, where you slowly have your health whittled down by endless wolves before Tokabi scares them away with a laser gatling gun. The Great Mines are a linear slog of watching the Federation’s back. It’s all escort missions and shooting galleries. Surrounded by the frame of interventionalism. What a crummy payoff.”

Patch Notes

Thoughts on new games that aren’t Mixtape (Or Pragmata? Am I counting Marathon as old now…?).

• Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth – A New God for Triflers | startmenu
  Luis Aguasvivas clicks with the messaging in the newest Moomin adaptation (Further Reading: Maddi Chilton on Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley).
• Titanium Court – A Midspring Day’s Reverie | startmenu
  Artemis Octavio marvels at an (anti?)roguelike with a lot of heart, even when maybe it’s a little too much heart (Further Reading: Wallace Truesdale on the semiotics of the Court).
• Amberspire review – this eco city-builder from the dev behind one of 2023’s best games is a grower | Eurogamer
  Alexis Ong is not quite equal parts frustrated and compelled by an ecocritical management sim on a haunted moon (Further Reading: Dia Lacina on The Banished Vault).

“It took a while for Amberspire to grow on me, and I continue to return – I’m on my seventh city now – because I remain enchanted by its ideas even when they feel like they’re unfinished. I do love that these games can be played and finished in normal, reasonable sittings – I enjoy seeing what the procgen gods give me with each new file, and if the dice cooperate I can “complete” a game in one intense, lengthy sitting. It is a beautiful, but incomplete exploration of a genre mostly defined by extraction and expansion. A board game built for one that encourages measured reflection on the dichotomy between the wants of a city and the needs of its surroundings. I simultaneously wanted more from the world it offered, which feels pulled in two ways: Amberspire is a renaissance-shaped fever dream that runs on an active imagination to fill in the blanks, but the game is so overwhelmingly dependent on luck (and honestly, sometimes that’s just how it is) in ways that don’t always save it from stagnation.”

Shooting Game

I’m astonished I didn’t already have a tag for “shmup” in the database. I thought I knew what I was.

• Ozma Wars (SNK, 1979) | exp.
  Mathew Kumar contemplates SNK’s oldest shmup and their increasingly-checkered legacy.
• Spiral Wave: Getting genres in a twist | Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster
  Kimimi tucks into a scruffy, difficult-to-classify space adventure on the PC Engine (Further Reading: Kimimi’s previous writing on Star Trader).

“The game definitely has its issues, and most of them stem from the fact that there are far too many shooting segments to slog through, especially considering how aggressively OK the action is. The starter ship, and many of its expensive replacements (all of which are the exact same sprite in a different colour) shouldn’t have no shields at all, meaning another very long and entirely checkpoint-free segment can be completely undone by one unlucky hit. But having said that, it is clearly trying very hard to create something strange and new, and as the credits rolled I found myself wondering if I had anything else made by Media Rings lying around here, and if it was half as intriguing as this unusual, if ultimately not especially effective, mix of styles is.”

Stories in the World

Bringing together old and new here, with Terranigma and Pragmata.

• Joy Despite it All | Inner Spiral
  Alli rolls up her sleeves and creates the world.
• Power and vulnerability are at play in Pragmata | AV Club
  Grace Benfell sees Pragmata in thematic dialogue with an older kind of Dad Game–the Ico kind (Further Reading: Sam Martinelli on Pragmata).

“It is right to be cynical about Pragmata’s cloying sweetness, about the fact that Diana’s only peer, Eight, is a sympathetic villain who must regrettably die, about how neatly it slots into a certain kind of “cinematic” action-adventure. Still, in the hour of her most desperate need, Hugh asks Diana what she wants. And in the end she takes it, with or without him.”

Critical Chaser

Winking emoji.

• Minotaurs, Role-Playing, and the Link Between Games and Kink | This Week In Videogames
  Maddie Agne talks to the experts about why games are making the Minotaur hotter (Further Reading: Em Reed on why Horny is not sufficient).

“Grey’s points about the crossover between the videogame and kink worlds and the otherness of kink identities stand as solid answers to my original question: Why do players want videogame characters to be hotter, sexier, or more fuckable? Whether or not these emerging desires really share any true characteristics with the intricate worlds of kink and BDSM is still up for some debate, but until we get some solid research on that, there’s no shame in asking for a hotter Minotaur.”