The Beauty of Berserk

Berserk is a beautifully designed game. You are a gorgeous, perfectly rendered human, your legs scrambling for purchase - Looney Tunes style - as you walk away from droids with rotating heads. The game is about shooting these guys, and not getting shot by them. And it's ideal.

As I'm always saying about Atari 2600 games, the best ones perfect the simplest concepts. Here, we are confronted with a room full of enemies, and we simply need to get them before they get us, and then move on to the next room. It's easy to understand, and it offers a structure and a level of animation that feels polished and thoughtful. Those walls are electrified, so if you or an enemy walk into them, you witness the horrible buzz and flicker of a body surging with deadly electricity. It looks convincing. I am assured that this death is far from painless.

It's also really cute and good that your enemies, after dying and flickering away, display a split-second smiley face. In that tiny moment, the game introduces a little bit of humour to the gruesome task of killing. Perhaps they are released into their deaths joyfully, or perhaps it means nothing because they are robots, perhaps they are whisked away into the mainframe to be reborn on the next screen.

It's amazing what little design elements can do for enriching an almost featureless world. This smiley face, as it turns out, is a hint at something sinister lurking within. For now, I must simply keep shooting.

***

P. S. I have been added to a catalogue for gaming blogs called Warp Point. Check it out if you're looking for more blog posts about games! 

Iron Lung (2026) is Bad

Hello beautiful readers. I've been thinking about Markiplier's Iron Lung, released earlier this year. It occupies a fascinating spot in the YouTuber movie canon by virture of being, in some ways, the most true YouTuber movie. You see, Markiplier is a capital Y YouTuber, and so this thing is so distinct from Obsession (a movie by, really, a filmmaker with a YouTube channel), and Backrooms (I still haven't seen this), and certainly The Amazing Digital Circus Movie (again, this is just a show that happened to be posted on YouTube, a thing made by a person posting that very specific sort of thing to their YouTube channel).

Iron Lung is closer to Logan Paul's The Thinning, which I have seen and I won't talk about at length. That movie is a sloppy interpretation of the sort of YA Dystopia that was highly popular at the time of its release, and this movie is a sloppy interpretation of a horror game coming out at a time when horror movies are seeing a bit of a boom. Although, it's also worth stating that horror movies are enduring and eternal. They occupy that exciting position of amateur-friendliness that makes them so appealing to new directors.

And it's a funny movie, in some sense - Markiplier is both directing and starring in it, which is a horrible decision, but I salute him. Do it all, I say. Be the guy. Sure. It's just not a good sign, and the movie is quite stinky. Markiplier is not an actor, but he does do a lot of dramatic crying and swearing. He spits out every single one of his "fuck"s like its the pit of an olive. And that, I have to admit, did make me chuckle.

But he's always coming back to attempt a #serious emotional moment. He's crying because he's a prisoner or whatever, sure, I get it. That seems sad. I'd probably cry too. I have to admit the truth, I probably would cry if I was imprisoned in a little submarine and sent to the bottom of an ocean of blood to do tasks. I'm just being real with you. Fortunately, this is not happening to me, but it's also very much not happening to Markimoo. He doesn't make it believable at all. 

I was ready to like him in this movie. I'd heard good things, inexplicably. I very much liked the game this movie was adapting. But man, they really took a subtle, slow, expertly built up narrative that teased out its environment carefully and beautifully, and they slam dunked 79,000 gallons of fake blood on that thing. Let's get Markiplier's hair all wet with blood, they said. And great, sure, I love that. Get your blood! By all means. But why replace such charming alien fish fantasy and the semi-obscured cosmic horror elements that encroach just the right amount on an interesting political post-apocalypse disgusting moon narrative with Markiplier doing army crawls towards a black box to do a heroic info transfer that we don't even get to see the fruits of? While he gets big time exploded by the gush of a WORLD RECORD BREAKING amount of movie blood?

It's very stupid. I wish Pewdiepie was in it.

One blood explosion out of five.

★☆☆☆☆

Paris, Shot on 3DS

It's been a second since I've shared beautiful images from my 3DS, so here is a selection of lovely gifs of the city's details, shuddering and swaying as they must.

Here are some people chilling at a café. I love all that outdoor seating, although it is somewhat ruined by the prevalence of smoking. I don't want to sit there if I'm guaranteed a big waft of cigarette smoke. Because I'm crazy.

Here I am, smiling because I'm out of reach of the smokers. Blissfully sucking in some normal air. Mmm... tastes good.

This is a beautiful sausage dog adorning the ground. It looks as if its butt has worn away. We've all been there.

Some sort of office guy walks down a narrow pavement.

The top of a building, drinking up sunlight.

Me again. I'm still breathing yummy air. That's why I look so healthy.

And finally, a nice empty street. I like the way this one jostles unnaturally. It looks as if might split apart. It probably will.