A MANIFESTO FOR ANIMALS 2K22: GAMES OF A YEAR
It’s currently mid December as I’m writing this. The cold chills of reflection bellow out while I look back at every game I played this year.
Since 2020 I have ended each passing year with a collection of reviews of things.
Sun bears, videogames, sports, the list goes on..for a bit and then stops.
While the first Manifesto was a short ten layer burrito of blurbs about the latest happenings, the second manifesto contained a short blurb for literally every new-to-me game I played in the given year. This was only possible due to strict cataloging measures on my part during the beginning of 2021. This year started out about the same, but due to some personal issues cataloging…anything became an issue. The first and really only game I actively took notes on this year was The Alliance Alive. That was my first new purchase for the year, at a modest $20. Cut to about a month later and I found myself in the presence of an Xbox Series S at my local Best Buy. I didn’t have any way of playing Elden Ring at the time so I picked the console up and proceeded to make my way through the lands between on Microsoft’s tiny little game pass machine.
Let’s talk about Game Pass for a bit.
I am in absolutely no way against subscription services. In fact I currently have both game pass and Playstation Catalog. They almost remind me of the now gone days of rental stores. Personally I would probably spend about $20-$30 per month on rentals, and (without adjusting for inflation) that just about equals how much I spend on game services today. My only issue is more of a personal quarrel. I love to download games on Playstation and Xbox and either
not play them
or play them, acknowledge that I like them, then proceed to purchase them on steam so I can play on my PC/ steam deck.
This doesn’t quite apply to everything however, my laptop is almost always connected to my television on top of a loud fan, which whirls around at 5000RPM while I play games. It keeps my CPU at a mellow 60 degrees Celsius, but at the cost of essentially grounding my laptop. Playing ghostwire tokyo at 60fps at medium settings will have my CPU literally hot enough to cook an egg, let alone the skin of my legs if the laptop sits on my…lap.
Steam Deck is fine, but it’s not optimal for capturing footage for potential YouTube content. I could purchase an HDMI dock for the system, but i’ll never hit the graphics settings I want for any given game. Ghostwire for instance runs on low settings at 30fps on a good day. Not ideal.
If I want a smooth, high framerate experience on a system that doesn’t have a giant fan under it I usually go for my PS5 first. Xbox Series S is now dead last unfortunately due to just…having everything else.
So why do I have Gamepass and Catalog? I guess to just try stuff out. Another reason I prefer to just purchase games instead of essentially renting them is FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out. Titles leave game pass all the time, and if i’m playing something i’m always left with the option to just purchase the game on Xbox- whether it be the console or the storefront on PC, but I just prefer steam or PS5. Plus I can just use my backbone to play PS5 or Steam games as well.
Gosh I own a lot of handheld devices. There’s a reason for that….
I got covid back in august, and it knocked me the fuck out. Now I have Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, and I don’t know if that’ll ever really go away.
What’s that you ask? Well in layman’s terms I get super fatigued from standing/ sitting so I spend a good chunk of my time at home laid up in my bed. Real blanky mode shit. That’s the main reason I got a steam deck in the first place. Maybe 4 hours a day I have enough energy to just sit on my couch and game it up. I use that time wisely, and record nearly everything I play. I’m actually in the middle of recording something that is probably going to take a while, and I’m dreading it.
It’s 2 in the morning and i’m rambling, so let’s get on with it.
We’ve already talked about how the big list of games was essentially phased out into the ether this year, so what about a more traditional top ten? Well….
It’s been done for about a week as of writing.
This here is a list of games that specifically came out this year, but what about games that were simply new to me? I can’t quite talk about all of them due to them potentially being the subjects for new reviews, but I can definitely talk the games below.
PACHINKO SEXY REACTION
I can explain.
Due to unforeseen circumstances I found myself in Austin, Texas on February 13th, 2022. It was a strange time to put it lightly. The world felt different, yet completely the same. My friend Bateman and I traveled 2 hours back to his place and ate gyros while cackling at “How to with John Wilson”. It was a scary time, but for a moment it felt right. His brother tells me that he heard about my father’s sudden passing and wants to help, so in addition to a hefty donation to my father’s gofundme he gifts me a fightstick. But not just any fightstick. This one has a raspberry pi in it with several hundred arcade titles from across the world. One particular game piqued my interest once I finally made it back home a few days later.
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs.
Bateman’s brother has a special interest in dinosaurs. It’s his thing. It’s always been his thing. It’ll never not be his thing. When I booted the raspberry pi up in my apartment literally every game he had recently played had to do with dinosaurs. Laughing through it all I scrolled down and found Pachinko Sexy Reaction, not on his recently played but by just scrolling alphabetically. I had to try it out. The game is comprised of three pillars. The Pachinko, The Sexy, and The Reaction.
You’re actually playing pachislot- a cronenbergian mesh of pachinko and slots. Tiny balls fill the screen while a slot machine endlessly spins without end. It’s attacking your eyes with every corner of the screen. A pretty lady stands next to the slots and cries out every time you win at the slot machine. Every so often a large image of said lady will splash onto the screen, and at the end of it all if you scored enough points the game will cut to a short cutscene of your special lady changing into a revealing outfit. That’s probably not the main component of the show she puts on, because in between scenes she takes her panties and top off, revealing her buttocks and exposed breasts- if only for a moment. There’s no full frontal nudity here so it’s safe to play around grandpa, but the flashing lights and sounds might cause someone to swallow their tongue. Be on the lookout for that. The final phase of the game is the reaction. How do you react at a busty anime girl flashing her tits at you? Do you chuckle? Do you blush? Do you proceed to unbuckle your jeans? That last option most likely would never be viable due to this game originally being played not in private, but in a loud, dark, cigarette smoke-stained Japanese arcade. A salaryman walks into a SEGA arcade one night in 1999. He’s a little drunk from conbini beer. He sits down and spends a few hundred yen on Pachinko Sexy Reaction. Maybe this time he’ll be able to see the blue haired lady in the latex suit again. That’s his favorite. After a few rounds of the game he’ll come home, and maybe even pleasure himself while his wife is sleeping. He’ll think of the blue haired lady tonight.
What is the reaction in this case? Is it the smirk he makes when playing the game? Or is it the scrunched up lemon-eating face he makes right as he finishes into the tissue paper? What if it’s both? What if it’s neither? What if the reaction in this case is a 30 year old writer trying to pull something profound out of a game where girls flash their breasts at you. One important thing to note here is that when the girls are showing off their new clothes they want you to see it, but when they take their bra off it’s only so they can fit into the outfit. They don’t want you to see their exposed breasts. They make this very clear. The game developers know this but they know what people like. People like to have things that they can’t have in real life.
It’s not just about the breasts. It’s about the escapism. That’s videogames for you. It’s all just Pachinko Sexy Reaction packaged up into different forms.
This is where I talk about Vampire Survivors.
In vampire survivors you kill monsters, get different weapons and powerups, and try to survive for as long as you can. While playing you can perform various actions to unlock new actions for your next run. The object of the game is to essentially unlock everything, and then after that it turns into a game of “how long can I play this” or “how long can it play itself”. In this case the pachinko is delivered mostly (for me at least) through audio. Each kill of an enemy is signified by a pleasing pop sound, and by the end of your run you’ll be hearing what almost sounds like popcorn being made in the microwave. Each time you take damage you’ll hear what almost sounds like an alarm, telling the player “hey you should probably move away from whatever is about to kill you”. The next big sound is the clink of the experience points being collected as you walk over them. Vampire Survivors also becomes Pachislot with the edition of….slot machines. For every big bad you defeat you either receive additional EXP or a treasure chest, the latter will include either one or three skills or weapons for your player. Especially lucky players will receive 5 items instead, but it’s worth repeating that this is quite rare. The “Sexy” part of VS is sheer craziness of it all. What initially starts as quick 5 or 6 minute runs turn into nearly half an hour of pure chaos. At some points throughout the game you may not even be able to see your character on screen.
The reaction for VS is easily the internet as a whole. People simply wouldn’t stop talking about this game all through the year, and for good reason. It rules. Vampire Survivors is nearly the perfect game, and at the same time it’s almost both a critique of gaming and a parody of it. It’s something special. I’ll play for about an hour at a time, whittling away at bonuses and characters to unlock. My only complaint is that the gameloop is almost too good. I like my games to have a bit of everything. Good narrative, mechanics, visuals, music, etc. Vampire Survivors rests purely on the game and not much else. That isn’t to say that the music or sprites are sub par. They’re just not for me. I want more out of a game, but I usually settle for less anyway so maybe this is my brain telling me to take a short break and survive these vampires.
Let’s dial it back to pretty ladies with giant breasts. I’m not a prude. I can appreciate a woman’s body, even as a gay (I suppose pan perhaps) masc-presenting person. My gender and sexuality aren’t relevant here, nor are they relevant ever. Boobs are boobs. That day I spent about an hour playing Pachinko Sexy Reaction, pumping credits as I needed them. I finished the game in around 40 minutes, then spent the remaining 20 seeing if there was anything I missed.
I didn’t miss anything.
I didn’t have any way to capture footage at the time so I have no record of this, but rest assured you can believe me when I say I spent an hour looking at breasts and buttocks. What did I gain from this? Not a whole lot. As a matter of fact as of writing these ramblings I nearly forgot about the game. I’ll never forget pachislot as a whole though, mainly because it bleeds into nearly every game that comes out these days.
I can’t say for sure when the game first burrowed into the industry but there’s no better example of “pachislot gone mainstream” quite like 2007’s Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. The 2022 remaster/retooling shown above was one of the final games I played this year, and it was a riot. Nothing quite says pachislot than a literal slot machine constantly playing during combat. You tap buttons on your controller to attack, defend, dodge, and use spells and items, but the real meat of the game is the Dimension Mind Wave on the top left of the screen. Different combinations of characters will result in different bonuses. Maybe it’s 0MP costs for spells, or perhaps a defense boost. These little treats don’t last long however, and you’ll soon see the slots go again and again as you tap at the buttons. In a way we’re no different than the elderly folk at vegas that spend their retirement money on slot machines with willy wonka on them. Sometimes the arcade experience truly comes home in the form of free to play gameloops that quickly encourage purchasing gems or coins with real currency. Thankfully Crisis Core is $50 MSRP and nothing more, unless you want to spend extra for some overpowered spells. Your call. Having said that this doesn’t excuse Square Enix from public shaming.
Enter: Symbiogenesis
At this point I don’t think I need to explain what part of Crisis Core is the pachinko, the sexy or the reaction. With my teachings you can discover what games fit into your lifestyle. Sticking with Square for a moment I can say with my chest that the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV is simply not for me anymore. One day that may change. I hope it does change, I need to finish Endwalker.
Keeping with the general theme of “acquiring what we cannot have” I played in virtual reality for the first time this year. What did I learn?
“I can be literally whoever I want”
I bought a Meta Quest 2 nearly a week before the company announced that they were upping the price of their product. That’s the luck kicking in I suppose. The device’s killer app is none other than the game that refuses to stop releasing…Resident Evil 4. This is the 6th time I have purchased the game, and thanks to next year’s big remake I can’t even say it’ll be the last. I’m a sucker for this game, and playing in VR is about as close to perfection this side of the Wii port from 2007. The headset is built with safety and accessibility in mind, with a bevy of seated and standing options hard-coded into the software. If you choose to play standing the device makes you draw a circle on the ground using one of the controllers. This is affectionately called the “Guardian”. Step outside of the guardian and the headset switches from whatever you were enjoying- be it gaming, youtube, porn, etc and instead displays a black and white feed of your surroundings thanks to the cameras built into the front of the visor. You can then adjust yourself and step back into the action. You can activate this feed at any moment by simply tapping the side of your headset. It’s a great way to regain your bearings when knee-deep in the “metaverse”.
What’s the metaverse? It’s definitely not what the news says it is. The metaverse is Meta’s proprietary digital ecosystem where people can gather and pretend like they’re not in a commercial.
I’m not going to mince words here. This sucks.
This cost Meta over 15 capital B illion dollars to develop. This isn’t what the people want. This is:
This is VR chat. Specifically this is a near scale replica of KMart in VR chat. This is what dreams are made of. I spent several hours walking through digital aisles reliving past experiences. The KMart closest to home closed down in 2003, and I haven’t seen one since. I’ll never forget that place. House of The Dead with the broken player 2 gun. The pungent smell of perfume and mold. The employee telling my father to “just walk out with it man” when he asked him how much a particular pair of jeans cost whilst we made our way through the store’s final blue light special. It was haunted without the presence of a ghost. It was haunted by itself. VR chat Kmart is haunted in a different way. There is supposedly a crew of players that role play as Kmart employees, but in the ten non consecutive hours I never met one. Only a few rogue players here and there, hurling slurs at each other through the game’s proximity chat. Here is where I discovered the existence of different stores, restaurants and establishments. I sat down at the local VR Starbucks with three young adults with unique avatars while I (in my Konata avatar) asked them a series of questions. Nothing profound came out of it. One of the players talked about her budding twitch career. She was a Vtuber with a small but faithful audience. The other two were students at a community college that picked up VR as a hobby. They were honest but most of all kind.
I never saw them ever again.
EPILOGUE
I’m peeking through the keyhole that is 2023. I’m excited for the future, but not in a fun way. I’m more excited in how a cat gets excited before it decides to pounce at someone’s ankle. It aims to deal damage whether it knows it or not. I’m going to damage 2023. With my words. I’m grateful that I can have a special place to place different flavors of sentences. Written essays, bitesized content for tiktok and the like, and longer form videos for youtube. It’s going to interesting… if not a bit scary.
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