That Horrible Pen

HEAVY SPOILERS BELOW, AS WELL AS DISCUSSION OF THE VIDEO GAME’S MACABRE IMAGERY, PLOT, AND THEMES. ALSO, BRIEF BITS THAT ARE LIKELY INAPPROPRIATE FOR THE READER’S PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT. One thing I like about REANIMAL is how well the box cover conveys the game’s emphasis on scale with this complex front-facing image—The main characters wouldn’t even be discernible if it wasn’t for the edgy, sketchy, red (read: bloody-like) advertisement for “INCLUDES SEASON PASS + PRE-ORDER DLC” that features their likenesses, and the image instead highlights the titanic dual presences of the environment and certain animals, which gets at the heart of the experience you’re buying. It’s a visual that feels unique to me in gaming, where boxes typically highlight the player’s surrogate and often (I feel) little else these days. There are some “issues,” like how this image, like the pre-release footage, spoils the twisted sheep from the end of the game. Furthermore, I think having the sheep and spider in s...

Before revisiting Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland (2020), I had two distinct left-over impressions from my first viewing years ago: One was a memory of the scene where the protagonist, Fern, with a grumbling stomach hurries to grossly use her bucket toilet inside the van where she lives. As someone with both a sensitive stomach and sensitive skin, I found the… hygienic implications of this nomad lifestyle to be a low-frequency background source of agitation while watching the movie. But I mention it because I think it serves as a pathos-shaped hook for more than just me—that the people who watched this movie overwhelmingly did so from inside an air-conditioned, insulated building with running water (running through conventional toilets). While the bathroom situation is explicitly dealt with, I also spent a lot of time watching Fern’s close-shorn hair, trying to decide if it looked like it had been washed recently or not. These more minor concerns still reinforce the bleakness of the situation a...

Lovey-Dovey The irony of me posting this little impressions piece about solo developer Moonless Formless’ demo for the upcoming action-horror RPG Withering Realms is that I don’t think you should read it—at least not without playing at least the demo, if not the previous game ( Withering Rooms , from 2022/2024), for yourself. Withering Rooms belongs to two exceedingly short lists of videogames, for me: favorite games I’ve played on my big, fat PlayStation 5 (see also: this console generation) and games I wish I could re-experience again for the first time. I first played Withering Rooms back in 2024, and I made the critical (connotation: positive) choice to start it in the very early morning on a summer night with headphones on. I am deeply possessive of the experience—but not the game since that would be weird—to the point that I have barely watched anyone else play it, because I didn’t want to override the… texture of my feelings about the game with anyone else’s. I think it’s ...

My personal relationship with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles brand is a weird one: On the one hand, I closely associate them with my childhood thanks to the 2003 animated series, which felt/feels like a staple of my Saturday morning TV-watching—and I more routinely than one might think remember an episode that I hope actually exists where the Turtles employed meditation while adrift in space to prevent themselves from using up their oxygen—but, on the other hand, I don’t think I could call myself a fan given my overall lack of contact/interest, despite the fact that I was one of the eight or so people who enjoyed the 2016 Mutants in Manhattan video game (and played the shell out of it). (And give or take the 2007 TMNT film and the video game based on it.) The 2023 Mutant Mayhem caught my attention when I saw a clip of Splinter’s solo fight from late in the movie posted on Twitter . Although somewhat visually reminiscent of the influential Spider-Verse movies (2018/2023), which I have...