My video review of Portal Stories: Mel, a superb Portal 2 mod. As originally seen on Unknown Hosts!
Category: Reviews
Reviews of Movies, TV, and Games
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Her Story Review
Her Story isn’t like other games. Hell, it’s hard to even classify it as a game, really. As soon as you begin, you’re shown a 90s-era CRT monitor with a search engine open for the word “MURDER.” Some notes on the desktop indicate that you can search other terms and find videos (actual taped videos, like the infamous 90s-era FMV games) from a police database regarding a murder case.. This experience makes up the entirety of the game: you watch videos of the same actress testifying in the case, take note of potential keywords, search for them, watch “new” videos, and try to put together what happened for yourself. As you dig deeper, it becomes clear that the murder itself is just a jumping off point for a much more complicated story about this woman’s past.
The thing that is going to make or break the game for a lot of people is whether or not this non-linear player-guided storytelling approach is enough to warrant the experience. In a way, there is no real goal or ending here. After watching a certain percentage of the in-game videos, a text-chat window will pop up asking if you’ve seen enough to know what happened. If you answer yes and quit out, the credits roll, but it’s largely arbitrary. I had a pretty complete concept of what happened long before the chat prompt, and players are free to keep searching for more videos long after the game “ends.” The story (which is quite interesting, albeit far-fetched) is definitely the draw here, not the gameplay itself or the satisfaction of completion.
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It Follows Review
Horror is often dismissed by “serious” filmgoers as a base genre, full of cliches and rarely engaging with the audience beyond making them jump. However, like with any film genre, a movie is only as low brow as its creators decide to make it. When a filmmaker wants to say more with their work, genre constraints are simply a small hurdle to overcome. In some cases, genre conventions can even be strengths, ways to further explore a particular topic. The latter is very much true in recent indie horror film It Follows, which uses an 80s horror framework to examine the subject of sexual promiscuity.
The look and feel of the movie places us right at home within this genre. Many scenes take place within a suburban neighborhood, not unlike slasher film classics like Halloween, while the synth-heavy score tells us exactly what to expect. The central premise too, regarding an entity that follows victims based on sexual activity, is taking the subtext of the slasher genre and making it text.
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Hannibal Season 3 Pt 1 Review
(The following review contains spoilers for the first half of Hannibal’s third season. It also contains some very grotesque descriptions of events)
I know that I’ve written about Hannibal a number of times lately, but there’s been a good reason for it. There is not a more beautiful or more grotesque show anywhere on television, and Hannibal’s growing apathy for traditional storytelling and “relatable” characters sets it apart from anything that may otherwise approach its visual prowess. And somehow, at least through the end of the current season, Hannibal airs on network television.
Even if Hannibal’s ratings weren’t in the toilet, it would be easy to see why NBC finally threw in the towel this year. While previous seasons at least pretended to follow a procedural arc, with a number of case-of-the-week murders, the first half of season three completely dropped any pretenses and became a manhunt for Hannibal Lecter. It also threw any concerns about character relatability to the curb. No longer are Hannibal and the weekly killers the lone madmen in a world ruled by the normal. This year, every single character, from Will to Hannibal to the Vergers to Bedalia to Alana to Chiyo, is insane. Hell, even Jack Crawford, the rock that typically holds everything together, eventually meets up with Will Graham and assists in a completely off-record pursuit of Lecter.
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Trainwreck Review
Just last week I had a conversation with my friend Jason (of Jay and Ross Talk Shit) about the “chick flick” genre. My argument was that it was the only genre actually defined by being “bad.” If a film involves a female protagonist finding the man of her dreams, almost losing him, and winning him over at the end, but the characters are awful, it’s a “chick flick.” But if you make the same movie with interesting, funny, and relatable characters, then it’s a “romantic comedy,” but not a “chick flick.”
Case in point: Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer’s new film, Trainwreck. Despite Schumer’s reputation for progressive and ground-breaking comedy sketches, Trainwreck absolutely follows a standard romantic comedy arc. However, because Schumer’s script always takes care to treat its characters as actual human beings with understandable worldviews, and because it is frequently hilarious, nobody would dare slap it with the dreaded “chick flick” label.