My top ten list for just the worst year

Eugh. I shouldn't have waited to do this. My instinct with these top ten lists is always to hold off until the year's over, just in case any worthy contenders slip in at the last minute. But now 2020 is over and I'm forcing myself to think about the worst year of pretty much all of our lives for just a bit longer. I guess I can comfort myself with the knowledge that 2021 hasn't been a whole lot better so far. (Literally minutes after I typed that, Trump got permanently banned from Twitter, so I may have to retract.)

But the games were good! Some of them, anyway! I became quite a bit disillusioned with the AAA industry over the past year – both the games themselves and the culture surrounding their development – but anyone with both eyes open should have found plenty with which to distract themselves. And now, more than ever, we need distractions.

There were so many worthwhile contenders that, as always, I had trouble narrowing it down to ten. So here are a few honorable mentions, why I love them, and why they didn't quite make it:

• Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch). Frustrating in how incomplete it feels and how slow the rollout of (largely underwhelming) updates has been, but it's hard to argue that this wasn't exactly the game that many of us needed at the precise moment that it arrived.

• Carrion (PC). A visceral and guilt-free delight featuring one of the most exquisitely animated creatures in the 2D space. Just desperately could've used a map.

• Microsoft Flight Simulator (PC). I've never played a flight sim before. Is this a good one? I don't know. I have nothing to compare it against. But it's one of the few genuinely singular experiences I've had in recent memory, in addition to being an obviously towering technical accomplishment.

• Star Wars Squadrons (PSVR). For most people, this was a solid but unremarkable dogfighter. For those of us lucky enough to experience it in VR, it was a Star Wars fan's dream come true. Campaign was a snore, but the multiplayer was exquisite.

• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 (PS4). While it's not inherently new enough to quite justify a place on my list of 2020's most remarkable games, boy was it a pleasure to be reminded of just how fine-tuned and elemental the Tony Hawk series was right out of the gate.

10. Iris and the Giant (Switch)

It was a strong year for roguelikes, and while I suppose it was inevitable that they'd all be overshadowed by Hades (and not unjustifiably so), it's a bit criminal just how few people seem to have even heard of the lovely Iris and the Giant. It adequately scratches that Slay the Spire deckbuilding itch, and while it's not as deep, its simplicity is ultimately its greatest weapon. Part of that is in the perfectly readable visuals (which limit the number of colors and shapes to make every character design immediately distinct), and part of it is the focus on small numbers, where most attacks do only one point of damage and it's all about enemy positioning and prioritization. There's an almost chess-like quality to the gap between the number of things the player needs to learn versus the number of options they have at any given time. The extra campaigns are a bit overly harsh for my liking, but the central story feels perfectly weighted and more than stands on its own two feet.

9. Ghostrunner (PC)

The game of 2020 with the greatest disparity between the amount that I personally enjoyed it and the number of people I would recommend it to. That's backed up by numbers, as well – when I first announced on Twitter that I'd begun playing Ghostrunner, numerous people warned me that I'd hate it before long. This thankfully didn't wind up being the case, though the game's extremely demanding brand of cyborg ninja action – which requires players to clear entire rooms without taking any damage, Katana Zero-style – will undoubtedly turn many people off (particularly if they're playing with a controller). And it took a clear toll on me, given that my hand was in literal physical pain by the time the credits rolled. Yet even considering that, I was still sad to see it end, which should speak to how satisfying I found it to draw those perfect lines through each chamber. A new hardcore difficulty was recently patched in, and I may just double-dip. (Review.)

8. Ori and the Will of the Wisps (PC)

At the start of the year, Moon Studios were responsible for the best Metroidvania of the last generation, and now they're responsible for both of the best Metroidvanias of the past generation. Much of what makes the Ori games special is right there on the surface – the gorgeous visuals that so seamlessly blend 2D and 3D that it's difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins, and a score by Gareth Coker that somehow tops his work on the original. But it's also about the fluid movement systems, which are such a joy to engage in that even the obligatory underwater level is wonderful. Some people find the Ori games cloying, and I can't say I necessarily blame them – this series paints broad strokes with the thickest possible brush, pitting tiny, adorable creatures against massive, hideous monstrosities. It's straightforward and it's not inherently about anything, but I can't argue with the results, particularly when it comes to Will of the Wisps' absolute gut punch of an ending. The developers, now two-for-two, have hinted that they'd like to move on to something else for their next project, and I can't imagine them leaving this series on a higher note. (Review.)

7. Mortal Shell (PC)

I play virtually every major soulslike to see a release, and none have come closer to replicating From Software's secret recipe than Mortal Shell. It comes from a small studio that purportedly consists of AAA veterans, and they wisely elected not to spread themselves too thin, narrowing the scope to a mere four levels. The result is a relatively brief campaign that nevertheless has the polish and extravagant visuals of a more prolific product. The "story" feels more like a tone piece, examining the curse of immortality in the form of a nameless parasite forced to attach himself to others whose lives had purpose. It's a neat premise, but the real star is the weighty and satisfying combat itself. Removing the Estus flask from a Souls game and making parrying your primary means of recovering health would be disastrous without perfectly tuned controls and collision, and Mortal Shell thankfully falls on the fair side of the challenge line. Those overwhelming opening hours soon fade away in comparison to the immense satisfaction of discovering and mastering these systems. (Review.)

6. The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners (Vive)

Here's the game that achieved the impossible and made me fall in love with the zombie survival genre. The most obvious factor is the VR implementation, which manages to combine motion controls with melee combat in such a way that feels like witchcraft. It shouldn't work. I swing a bat at a zombie, and while the in-game bat connects with my target, my real-life arms, which aren't actually holding a bat, should continue moving through the air, meeting zero resistance. Yet Saints & Sinners finds some sort of miraculous middle ground, making zombies an actual joy to fight (a rarity in videogames, if you ask me) and advancing VR in ways not even Valve attempted this year. And while I won't say that they cut zero corners, particularly on the technical side of things, this is still an uncommonly meaty and fully-featured single-player campaign in the VR market, with a satisfying loop and an unexpected immersive sim bent that leaves ample room for player expression. It was a strong year for VR, and were it not for that one other game, this would sit at the top of the pile. (Review.)

5. Streets of Rage 4 (PC)

I'm in a bit of a weird position here. For the entirety of my adult life, I've taken pride in my ability to illuminate in writing what makes a game succeed or fail, and yet I can't adequately explain why I adore Streets of Rage 4 so much. Admittedly, I'm something of a stranger to the beat-'em-up genre. I only tried this because it was on Game Pass, and I initially didn't understand it. (There's no dodge or block? Then how do I defend?!) But once I got myself on its wavelength, not only did I recognize Streets of Rage 4 as a marvelously elegant title that doesn't overshoot in any particular area, but I wound up appreciating how little it dumbed itself down for a new generation that might have been less receptive to it. This catered to the established fanbase first and foremost, and counted on positive word-of-mouth from those people to inspire the rest of us to hop aboard. And it worked on me, as I'm now actively on the lookout for other beat-'em-ups to carry the torch. But I won't be surprised if none of the competition feel quite as refined in every aspect as this thing does.

4. Yakuza: Like a Dragon (PC)

I know this one's been getting praised everywhere, but it still feels odd to place it so high on my list. It's Yakuza, and I've never quite been able to get into the series despite years of my friends trying to convince me that it's incredible. It's also a JRPG, and I traditionally don't like those. Plus, I still haven't even finished it, and I hate to give anything my highest recommendation until I've seen it through to the end. But that just underlines how enamored I currently am with Ryu Ga Gotoku's characteristically wacky (yet also surprisingly sympathetic) look at impoverished street life through the eyes of the world's most optimistic and undeterred man. Dropping the baggage of the mainline series' seven-game story arc provides someone like me with the perfect entry point, and the turn-based overhaul to the combat is such a substantial improvement that, if anything, I'm even less interested than ever in diving back into the entries that aren't like this. I guess it remains to be seen if Like a Dragon can maintain its hot streak all the way to the credits, but until then, I'll be spending all of my time either playing it or fantasizing about returning to it.

3. Hades (Switch)

The splash it made this year was so vast, and the positive consensus so universal, that it almost feels like I'm wasting my time at this point by reiterating that, yes, Hades really is as good as everyone says it is. Supergiant's previous three releases all contained the individual ingredients to create an all-timer between them, but I don't believe the studio has ever quite been firing on all cylinders the way they are here. By incorporating repeated escape attempts and subsequent deaths into its narrative structure and enhancing it all with a frankly confounding amount of charismatically voiced dialogue, Hades has forever expanded our perception of what roguelikes are capable of, and its simple core combat serves as the perfect foundation for the seemingly endless build combinations that keep runs fresh and exciting after dozens of hours. Even the genre's detractors were forced to admit that, yeah, this thing is a masterpiece. (Review.)

2. Umurangi Generation (PC)

Umurangi Generation probably got the most potent emotional response from me of any game released this year, and the fact that it did so without a single cutscene or line of dialogue is a testament to the method in which it quietly sets the pieces and tells a story. On the surface, it's a photography game in which we search relatively small levels for bounties. But in the grander scheme of things, it's about finding and preserving beauty and humanity in the face of terrifying circumstances that are beyond our control, and goddamn if "terrifying circumstances beyond our control" wasn't the running theme of 2020. Umurangi's outlandish future is hardly a one-to-one model of our own reality, but anyone with even a moderately vested interest in where our society is headed will relate to the disaffected youth at this campaign's heart, who can only blast music and tag walls to distract themselves from the grim world that their parents built for them. (Review.)

1. Half-Life: Alyx (Vive)

I think it goes without saying at this point that Half-Life: Alyx is VR's uncontested killer app, cleverly sidestepping many of the issues that have plagued those that came before it (those gravity gloves are a work of genius) and giving us a glimpse at what it would look like if AAA developers truly embraced VR as a path forward for the medium as a whole. But that almost buries the even bigger lede here. For thirteen years, we've been begging for Half-Life to return. This year, it finally did. No, it's not Half-Life 3, but it perfectly recaptures everything that made its predecessors classics, and it advances the established lore in spite of its position as a prequel. This was perhaps the worst possible year to try to sell people on an expensive piece of experimental hardware, but for the precious few longtime Half-Life fans who were able to experience it, Alyx was a godsend – a stunning return to form for a developer that's been out of the single-player scene for ages, a worthy comeback for one of the industry's most storied franchises, and one of the best games I've ever played. (Review.)

Most overrated: Ghost of Tsushima / The Last of Us Part II (tie)

Most underrated: Mortal Shell
Most overlooked: Iris and the Giant
Best-looking: Ghost of Tsushima

Most visually striking: Paper Beast
Best original soundtrack: Streets of Rage 4
Best story: In Other Waters
Best writing: Wide Ocean Big Jacket
Best character: Ichiban Kasuga (Yakuza: Like a Dragon)
Best performance: Ashley Johnson (The Last of Us Part II)
Funniest game: Paper Mario: The Origami King
Biggest surprise: Streets of Rage 4
Biggest disappointment: Doom Eternal
Comeback of the year: Half-Life: Alyx
Best multiplayer game: Star Wars Squadrons
Most enjoyable bad game: Fight Crab
Least enjoyable good game: Paradise Killer
Best free game: Genshin Impact
Game that I spent the most time with: Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Game that I spent the least time with before dismissing: MetaChampions
Game that I most wanted to play, but didn't: Astro's Playroom
Game I literally own that I most wanted to play, but still haven't: Crusader Kings III
Best game that I still haven't finished: Yakuza: Like a Dragon
All-out worst game that I played: Battletoads
Best non-2020 game that I first played in 2020: Hitman 2
Best remake/re-release: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2
Most anticipated game this coming year: Hitman 3

The Last of Us Part II is a muddled, senseless cacophony of unearned misery [SPOILERS]

Christ, I don't even know where to start.

I guess I can start by saying that it all makes sense now. I have friends who played The Last of Us Part II pre-release and were embargoed from discussing anything plot-related even though said plot was leaked in its entirety a month or so prior. Sony is notoriously protective of their first-party games, to the point that (if a writer on my Twitter timeline is to be believed) critics weren't even allowed to mention that Dr. Octavius was in Insomniac's Spider-Man even though he first shows up, like, within the first twenty minutes.

The fuss surrounding TLOU2's story isn't overblown, though. The game is legitimately full of shocks and turns, aided by a deliberately misleading marketing campaign that paints Joel as having a much different role in the game than he does. And while a great deal of the outcry has unfortunately been centered on the game's politics and diverse representation, I'm worried that the ideological debates will drown out the real reasons that this plot doesn't work.

The weekend prior to TLOU2's release, I replayed the original for the first time since its release. Not only do I still love it, but I was struck as much as ever by its maturity, particularly from the same studio responsible for the enjoyable but lightweight and silly Uncharted series. The game is remarkably light on flashy set pieces and witty one-liners, opting instead to portray a serious, intimate human drama -- something incredibly rare in the AAA space.

What's equally rare for this industry is that TLOU had a perfect ending, in which the player character makes the decision to essentially doom humanity to save the life of a single person. On a material level, it renders the whole journey meaningless, yet in a game that is entirely about the burgeoning relationship between two characters, this one action underlines just how far they've come.

And then the game exercises the restraint to just cut to credits almost immediately afterward and let us write the rest of the story in our minds from there. Could Joel face repercussions for what he did? Does he have regrets? Does Ellie believe his story? How would she react if she found out the truth? These are all interesting questions that Naughty Dog was wise to leave hanging, because they're all secondary to the progress Joel has made as a character. Agree with his actions or not, at least you understand why he made them.

For those reasons, I was apprehensive about the announcement of a sequel, and I'm sad to report that my fears were well-founded. Let's go through it, but be warned: SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT.

Let's start with the main event: Joel's death. This was the one thing I'd had spoiled for me ahead of time, but I was still caught off guard by how early it happens. It is, in fact, the instigating event that sets the greater plot in motion. Trailers made it clear that TLOU2 is a revenge story, and strongly hinted that Ellie's girlfriend Dina was the victim. In actuality, Dina survives the entire game and it's Joel who gets killed off during the game's prologue, when a newcomer named Abby bashes his skull in with a golf club while Ellie watches.

Now, I don't actually have a problem with Joel dying. Many people seem to think it's done purely for shock value, which I disagree with. Although it's not immediately spelled out who Abby and her friends are or why they've come to Jackson to kill Joel (and only Joel; crucially, Ellie and Tommy are in the room as well but are spared), anyone's first assumption should be that it's payback for Joel's choice at the end of the first TLOU. Regardless of how you feel about Joel and whether or not he made the right call, there's no denying that his choice to potentially rob humanity of a cure to the zombie infection leaves him vulnerable to this sort of retaliation.

The more interesting question is whether Sony and Naughty Dog were being shady in their choice to mis-market TLOU2 as featuring Joel more prominently than it actually does, as there are scenes in the trailers that don't appear in the final game. I see both sides of the argument. On one hand, if fans pick up on the facts that (a) this is a revenge story and (b) Joel doesn't seem to be anywhere in sight, they may prematurely guess the twist. On the other hand, those who wanted Joel to have a greater presence have a sound argument in being misled. It's a fascinating debate, but one that's somewhat irrelevant to the quality of the game in and of itself.

Plenty of people also just... don't want Joel to die, and it kicks off the running theme that TLOU2 wants you to suffer, to feel the pain of the characters within its narrative. And hey, we're much more on Ellie's side in her quest for vengeance than if it had been Dina, a character we've just met.

So both Ellie and Tommy want revenge. Based on the patches that Abby's group were wearing, they believe that the perpetrators belong to the Washington Liberation Front (WLF) out of Seattle. Tommy heads off by himself, hoping to avoid putting Ellie in danger, but she naturally follows close behind, with Dina accompanying her. We smash cut to Seattle and the game properly begins.

The first half of the game is relatively straightforward from there. Ellie and Dina chase various leads, encountering and killing numerous members of Abby's group in pursuit of the top dog. The couple take shelter in an abandoned movie theater and share some sweet moments. Dina believes herself to be pregnant by her ex-boyfriend, Jesse, who has followed them to Seattle and aids them in their quest to kill Abby and bring Tommy home.

As all of this is happening, various pieces are being set in the background. The WLF, or "Wolves," are engaged in a turf war with a religious cult called the Seraphites (or "Scars") who believe that pre-infection technology is sinful. We also catch snippets of conversations hinting that there's some sort of internal drama with the Wolves and that Abby isn't in great standing with her own people. Interspersed with the present-day stuff, we get a few flashbacks centered on the relationship between Joel and Ellie in the years between the two games, with the latter expressing remorse that her immunity couldn't be used to save people, and beginning to express doubt with Joel's story.

Ellie eventually beats a woman named Nora for information on Abby's whereabouts. In the process, Nora comes very close to revealing why they killed Joel, but Ellie isn't interested. Although we're initially meant to believe that she's simply single-mindedly focused on bringing Joel's killers to justice, a flashback soon drops the game's first major bombshell: that a couple of years prior, Ellie forced Joel to reveal the truth about what happened in Salt Lake City. We'd been operating on the assumption that Ellie had been unaware of Joel's choice and would uncover the grim truth at some point in her journey, when in actuality she's known about it the whole time and is determined to find Joel's killers anyway.

Complicating things further, Ellie's reaction when Joel reveals the truth is, understandably, one of horror and disgust. Although she stays in Jackson, she makes it clear that she wants nothing to do with Joel ever again. Which raises the question of why she embarked on this journey, though Naughty Dog leaves that thread hanging for a while.

On Nora's tip, Ellie travels to an aquarium where she encounters two more members of Abby's group, a couple named Owen and Mel, though things turn violent and both die before Ellie can extract any information from them. (Ellie realizes afterwards that Mel was pregnant, which horrifies her.) She then finally rendezvouses with Tommy, but having exhausted all leads, the four agree to pack up and head home.

As they're about to leave, though, Abby shows up at the theater, killing Jesse and badly wounding Tommy. She's clearly very cross with the group for killing all of her friends, particularly after she consciously spared Ellie and Tommy back in Jackson. And then TLOU2 drops its second major bombshell: that players control Abby for almost the entire second half of the campaign, as we rewind the clock and experience the events of the last three days from her perspective.

This is the root of much of the (and I am already so sick of this word) discourse surrounding TLOU2. Not only is Joel killed off within the first two hours by a character we've never seen before, but the game then attempts to make us sympathize with her by shifting the focus away from Ellie for most of the second half. There are so many possible motivations on Naughty Dog's part for doing this, and nearly as many reasons why the choice has been met with hostility since the plot leaked a month or two ago.

The bulk of the conversation seems to have centered on the fact that Abby is possibly trans. I say "possibly" because it's never blatantly spelled out. She goes by female pronouns but is unusually butch in appearance, and that's almost the extent of it. Later, however, she befriends a Scar boy named Lev who does explicitly identify as trans, and who's being persecuted by the cult for coming out. Abby protects Lev for the remainder of the game, even from fellow Wolves, and when Lev asserts that Abby is killing her own people, she counters, "You're my people."

So there's definitely a gender identity thing going on, and while it's not really the focus of the plot, it's enough to make the transphobic gamers among us uncomfortable, particularly when Abby and Owen have a sex scene midway through this portion of the story. And hey, I'm glad they're uncomfortable, and I hope they stay uncomfortable. But in case you're wondering why TLOU2 has been so widely labeled "SJW propaganda," there's your answer.

[Edit: The more I read about this, the less convinced I am that this interpretation of Abby is correct. But it's still worth bringing up because it's the conclusion that a lot of gaming's less desirable folks have been jumping to, and judging the game for.]

Anyway, Abby's motivation for killing Joel, it turns out, was exactly what I'd predicted in my mind. Not only was Abby a Firefly stationed in Salt Lake City when Joel massacred the group, but her father was the surgeon who was going to operate on Ellie. So both of our protagonists have set out to avenge the deaths of their fathers or father figures. These are what we call parallels, children.

In the present day, Owen has gone AWOL because he's exhausted by all of the violence. He hopes to repair an old sailboat he found out by the aquarium and chase a rumor that the Fireflies have regrouped in Santa Barbara. He and Abby used to date years ago, and even though he recently impregnated Mel, their feelings for each other prompt Abby to abandon her post. After rescuing Lev just as a major battle between the Wolves and Scars erupts, Abby returns to the aquarium only to find Owen and Mel lying cold and dead in a pool of blood, just as the group were about to set off for a better life.

However you may feel about Abby's portion of the campaign, there's no denying that it's a bold move on Naughty Dog's part. To kill off one of gaming's most beloved characters and then force us to spend half of the game in the shoes of the one who did the deed, and attempt to make us sympathize with her? That takes balls, and as it was unfolding, my mind was racing over the possibilities of where Neil Druckmann and company were taking this.

Unfortunately, as much as I want to like Abby given all of the bigoted nonsense that's been slung her way, and simple truth is that whatever magic Naughty Dog cast to create two of gaming's most convincingly human characters in the first TLOU seems to have been drained when they got around to writing the sequel. Actress Laura Bailey does fine work in the role, but Abby is cold, stern and distant, even in scenes that are meant to be tender and lighthearted. While the plot had me intrigued just out of its sheer audacity to flip the tables like this, in practice, the back half of the Seattle portion bored me to tears because I didn't care about anyone involved.

Of course, during this stretch, I was assuming that Naughty Dog's endgame was to underline that the hero of one story is the villain of another, and vice versa. This is further reinforced when we finally catch up to the standoff in the theater and we, still in control of Abby, are forced into a boss fight against Ellie. This is the point when the story takes a particularly ugly turn, as whatever state of mind Naughty Dog wanted me to be in by the time I had to start beating the sweet, spunky girl from TLOU into a bloody pulp, I wasn't. At least I'm invested in Ellie's particular side of the story, even if I don't yet know how I'm supposed to feel about her motivations.

Abby wins and nearly kills Ellie. Dina intervenes, but Abby overcomes her as well and is about to slit her throat. Ellie exclaims that Dina is pregnant, to which Abby replies "good" and very nearly goes through with it, until Lev runs in and gets all weepy-eyed about it. Abby then decides on a whim to let it go, and warns Ellie that she never wants to see her again. Everyone leaves Seattle and the credits roll.

Just kidding. Though TLOU2 has already run the length of at least two games by this point, we still have an epilogue to get through, and this is where the plot goes completely off the rails.

Some time later, Ellie and Dina are living on a farm with the latter's baby. They get a visit from Tommy, who I swear to god I saw get shot in the head by Abby earlier, but I guess he survived that, as you do. Anyway, he shares a tip that Abby has possibly been spotted in Santa Barbara. Dina interjects that they've left that life behind, which is the smart answer, but Ellie still has PTSD about Joel's death and tries to sneak out in the middle of the night to hunt Abby. Dina catches her and promises that if Ellie leaves, their relationship is over. Ellie leaves anyway.

Cut to Santa Barbara. Abby and Lev manage to get in contact with the reformed Fireflies via radio, but on the way to the rendezvous, they're capturing by the Rattlers. Who are the Rattlers, you ask? I have no idea. I think maybe they're slavers? They have a bunch of people imprisoned at their compound, and they also have some zombies chained up for their amusement. It's possible that there's some rape going on. Maybe I was just filling in the blanks by this point. They're bad dudes, in any case.

Anyway, Ellie arrives on the coast a few months later and nearly gets captured by a couple of Rattlers herself. The encounter leaves her with a grisly injury that serves no purpose in the story, and this was around the time that the game's violence started to come across as a bit depraved to me. She finds out that Abby is imprisoned at a nearby compound, and realizing that she's currently suffering a worse fate than Ellie could ever inflict on her, she finally lets it go and heads back to her comfortable life.

Just kidding. She infiltrates the compound with the apparent intention of... rescuing Abby? She liberates the camp's prisoners, who tell her that Abby attempted to escape not long ago, and that she's been taken to "the pillars," where she's likely already dead. The pillars are out on the beach, and they're where misbehaving prisoners get hung up to slowly die of exposure. She finds Abby there, who's barely clinging to life, and realizing that Abby is definitively about to die, she finally, at long last, gives up on this empty quest and returns home.

One more time: JUST KIDDING. She cuts Abby down, and Abby rescues Lev, who's also been tied up. The three then head to the water where they intend to escape on some boats that have been hitched up, but of course Ellie announces her intention to finally exact revenge.

And here's the part where TLOU2, in its final moments, fully lost me. Ellie throws her to the ground, but Abby exclaims that she refuses to fight back. That's not good enough for Ellie. She needs Abby to fight back, for reasons I cannot begin to fathom. And to make her fight back, Ellie, who earlier panicked over unknowingly killing a pregnant woman, pulls out her knife and holds it to Lev's neck, threatening to kill him -- an innocent child -- if Abby doesn't consent to a mandatory final boss.

So a fistfight ensues between two characters who are inexplicably still able to throw punches despite one of them having been spiked in the abdomen and another having been hung out for god knows how long to die of hunger and thirst. Abby bites a couple of Ellie's fingers off, but Ellie gets the upper hand, pins Abby down in some shallow water, and begins to drown her.

And then she just... stops. Despite having given up everything and killed countless people to pursue a quest of vengeance that she's seconds away from fulfilling, she just stops. She releases Abby, who rides off with Lev, and that's it. After everything she's done, after all of the ways in which she's shed her humanity, she chose this moment to get the memo that Violence Is Bad, Actually.

I imagine the entire plot of TLOU2 is colored by each individual player's opinion on whether Joel's death was justified. But I'm convinced that no matter which side of the fence you fall on, this ending doesn't work. If you want Joel avenged and create hundreds of fresh corpses on a mission to do so, it's a little silly to be stopped at the last minute because Ellie had a momentary vision of Joel, when visions of Joel were what prompted her to go on this killing spree in the first place.

And if, like me, you at least understand why Joel had a target on his back, well, what the hell was the point of all of this? To underline that revenge is a vicious cycle, that violence begets violence? We know that, Naughty Dog. We know that from the countless other forms of fiction that have made the same point.

But I'm not even convinced that that was the point, despite it being the most obvious read of the climactic scene. Because if the whole message is that it takes one side to break the cycle rather than perpetuate it, then the game would have ended when Abby did that in the theater, letting Ellie go a second time despite it clearly being in her best interest to end it right then and there. That decision muddled whatever point Naughty Dog was trying to make with this mess. Violence begets violence, but walking away also begets violence, apparently? So just do whatever you want and hope that it works out?

We get one more flashback about how Joel and Ellie kinda-sorta reconciled about the Salt Lake City incident the night before Joel was killed. She's upset that he took away her agency, her chance to make a difference. Although he's clearly remorseful about hurting her, he also firmly states that if given a second chance, he'd make the same decision. She responds that she can't forgive him for that, but would like to try, and the scene ends with a glimmer of hope that maybe their relationship can be salvaged.

Is it a big enough glimmer to justify Ellie's transformation into a cold-blooded murderer who would threaten to slit an innocent child's throat? I would most definitely argue that it isn't. But in isolation, it's a wonderfully subtle scene. In fact, the flashbacks between Joel and Ellie are TLOU2's one unqualified high point, because they build on what made the first game so good. These scenes have no misguided delusions to being profound. They simply depict an organic relationship between two of the most shockingly well-realized characters in interactive fiction.

Meanwhile, in the dour present, Ellie returns to the farmhouse to find it abandoned, Dina having made good on her promise to leave. She picks up Joel's guitar, the one reminder she has of the man whose death inspired this rampage, but is unable to play it because she's missing two of her fingers. She's lost everything in her pursuit of vengeance, chief among them the audience's affinity for her. She then sets off to an uncertain future, and I could not care less where she ends up.

Subverting expectations, killing your darlings, making audiences question what they held dear... these are all things that I can support in theory. But it needs to be in service of believable character growth and consistent underlying themes. TLOU2 is a story in which a bunch of unlikable assholes make stupid, irrational decisions and suffer endlessly for them. And crucially, that's all that it is, despite the game's cadence of being high art.

There's been a lot of talk about the violence in TLOU2 and the way that the game tries to make players feel guilty for the deeds they're forced to carry out. Honestly, it's nothing I haven't seen in other titles. But I can dismiss the sleaziness of, say, the rebooted Tomb Raider trilogy because I was never emotionally invested in Lara Croft to begin with.

But Naughty Dog is better than this. Neil Druckmann is better than this. I know, because in the original TLOU, they found beauty and humanity in unspeakable ugliness. TLOU2 does the inverse: it takes that beauty and drowns it in a bloated, prolonged cacophony of unearned misery. And try as I may to hold the first TLOU in the same high regard that I did a week ago, it's difficult to think back on the extraordinary character dynamic at the heart of that game without being reminded of the senseless queasiness that followed. And that's crueler than any lone act of simulated violence could ever be.

I suppose these are my Oscar predictions

Best Picture: 1917
Best Director: Sam Mendes (1917)
Best Actor: Joaquin Phoenix (Joker)
Best Actress: Renée Zellweger (Judy)
Best Supporting Actor: Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood)
Best Supporting Actress: Laura Dern (Marriage Story)
Best Original Screenplay: Parasite
Best Adapted Screenplay: Jojo Rabbit
Best Animated Feature: Toy Story 4
Best Documentary Feature: American Factory
Best International Feature: Parasite
Best Cinematography: 1917
Best Costume Design: Little Women
Best Documentary Short Subject: Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl)
Best Film Editing: Ford v Ferrari
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Bombshell
Best Original Score: Joker
Best Original Song: "(I'm Gonna) Love Me Again" (Rocketman)
Best Production Design: Parasite
Best Animated Short Film: Hair Love
Best Live-Action Short Film: Brotherhood
Best Sound Editing: 1917
Best Sound Mixing: 1917
Best Visual Effects: The Irishman

And just for fun, here are my preferred winners for categories in which I predicted something else, i.e. I hope I'm wrong about these:

Best Picture: Parasite
Best Director: Bong Joon-ho (Parasite)
Best Supporting Actress: Florence Pugh (Little Women)
Best Original Screenplay: Knives Out
Best Adapted Screenplay: The Irishman
Best Cinematography: The Lighthouse
Best Film Editing: Parasite
Best Live-Action Short: A Sister
Best Sound Mixing: Ford v Ferrari

My top ten for 2019 or whatever

Hey! I don't have much to say. It was an okay year. Here are some honorable mentions:

• Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (PS4). The already sizable campaign is needlessly lengthened by a brutal checkpoint system, but the combat itself slaps, and the VR missions are magnificent.

• Apex Legends (PC). I don't know if another damn battle royale game is a suitable replacement for Titanfall 3, but this is arguably the best of its kind, and ate a lot of my hours this year.

• Luigi's Mansion 3 (Switch). I missed the second one, and the leap in quality from the original is astounding. Just wish there was more to do with all of this damn money.

• Resident Evil 2 (PC). I'm only allowing one remake on my top ten list, but let's not overlook the fact that I played through this, like, seven times.

• Untitled Goose Game (Switch). The memes were good.

10. Amid Evil (PC)

The overwhelming success of 2016's Doom reboot signaled a thirst for the sort of retro-style first-person shooter where there's no reloading and the main character moves at the approximate speed of a cheetah. While the mainstream scene has yet to catch on, the indie market offers plenty of options, and some of the same collaborators responsible for last year's joyfully overviolent Dusk delivered again in 2019 with Amid Evil, a medieval (GET IT?) homage to classic magic-themed shooters Heretic and Hexen. Enemy and environmental variety is strong throughout given the range of settings (from gothic to futuristic), and the visuals somehow look old and new at the same time, mixing limited polygon counts and pixelated textures with gorgeous lighting and reflections. (The game is supposedly getting a ray-tracing update soon.) Most importantly, one of the weapons is a staff that flings miniature exploding planets. Play this.

9. Blasphemous (Switch)

Although plenty of games have emulated the mechanics of the Souls series - the bonfires, the bloodstains, the stamina meter - a much trickier task is recreating the intrigue, and the slow drip of concrete answers that follows. The Game Kitchen, a developer from Spain, gets off to a good start by pulling imagery from their home country, resulting in a recognizably Western setting that nevertheless doesn't quite slot to grid, and overwhelms you in the misery of Christian self-flagellation, the belief that humanity is inherently unclean. In terms of play, it's a bit closer to classic Castlevania, with the one-on-one duels making for some of the most memorable combat encounters of the year. The platforming is way too harsh, and the developers themselves have acknowledged that they went overboard with the abundance of instant-death spike traps. But then in a game where the major theme is inflicting horrific self-harm, maybe that's appropriate? (Review.)

8. Ape Out (Switch)

A case of style-over-substance where, damn, this game sure has a lot of style. Although Ape Out does find amusing ways to switch up its combat scenarios - the power outage sequences, in particular, are wonderful - what you see in the first few minutes of the campaign is essentially what you'll be seeing for the rest of it, playing as a runaway primate who pops his oppressors like water balloons. But it's the game's unique audiovisual flair that makes it - the one-point perspective, the bright colors that turn the carnage into something resembling a Jackson Pollock painting, and the simple fact that all of the sound effects are actually percussive instruments, morphing the mayhem into freestyle jazz. It's possibly the most violent game of the year by simple virtue of what's happening on screen, but it feels more akin to creating beautiful art. I don't know if that's less or more perverse than if the same acts had been depicted realistically, but either way, Ape Out is damn satisfying. (Review.)

7. Slay the Spire (Switch)

A roguelike that fits comfortably next to Darkest Dungeon and Into the Breach among the best that the genre has to offer, though it's a slightly tougher sell due to the sheer simplicity of its premise. It's a deck-building game with no real story that consists entirely of turn-based battles arranged on a branching path, and it'll be quite a few runs until you get a sense of the game's depth, after you've expanded on the number of cards that can be unlocked mid-game. The three characters are wildly different and increasingly complex - the starting knight hits hard and heals frequently, the rogue focuses on stacking poison damage, and the robot summons little drones that unleash passive effects each turn. It deftly passes the "just one more run" test, and while success takes a lot of planning and more than a little luck, landing on a winning strategy has the sort of energizing effect that makes you want to dance around the room and tell everyone who know who's also playing Slay the Spire how you managed to reach the end.

6. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (PC)

We FromSoft fans love to be given new challenges. In Bloodborne, they took away our shields, and now in Sekiro, the only path to victory is countering. What used to be a neat little party trick in Dark Souls to separate the masters from the peasants (and I say this as one of said peasants) is now mandatory. This direction sparked a fierce debate about difficulty settings and accessibility, and I can't fault anyone for finding Sekiro unbearably frustrating or even literally unplayable. But speaking as one of Hidetaka Miyazaki's playthings, it hurts so good. The Souls sequels got progressively easier as they offered nothing new to conquer, so it's a pleasure to be forced to learn something, and that process is the closest I'll likely come to feeling like I'm punching through the original Dark Souls for the first time again. I didn't connect with Sekiro's lore the way I usually do with these games (likely down to personal preference due to a setting that I feel has been done to death), but goddamn is this some of the tightest, most rewarding combat ever conceived. (Review.)

5. Reventure (Switch)

I avoided this for much of the year because I'm a shallow person and screenshots make it look so painfully mundane. It turns out that's the point, because Reventure is all about turning expectations for a generic action-adventure on their heads. Although not a roguelike, it is run-based, the hook being that it sports a hundred endings, and almost every single one pokes fun at a nonsensical gaming convention that we've been trained to take for granted. Reventure is the sort of game that constantly has you asking, "But will this work? Did they think of that?" And the answer is yes, time and time again, a fact afforded by the developers' smart decision to keep the scope limited, lest their vision exceed their reach. The funniest game of the year, and more challenging than it sounds, albeit not in the way you'd think, since the inventory weight system adds a neat little puzzle bent to navigating the world and getting the right tools to the right places. (Review.)

4. Super Mario Maker 2 (Switch)

I never played the first Mario Maker, because I just couldn't muster the enthusiasm to spend hours putting together my own levels and then share them with the three or four other Wii U owners. Oddly enough, Mario Maker 2, despite being released on a far more popular console, never really became a social fixture like the original did, but speaking as someone to whom this was all new, I had a blast. Nintendo suckered me in with an actual single-player campaign this time (one that's not only terrific, but showcases all of the crazy things you can do with the creation engine), but the act of pouring countless hours into levels and then actually getting feedback wasn't just rewarding - it was new to me. Hell, I even got a couple of my levels played on a stream, and not only did the guy enjoy them, but one of the commenters even complimented me. While there were better games released this year, Mario Maker 2 was perhaps the only one to give me an experience I'd never had before.

3. Pathologic 2 (PC)

It's lovely that my three favorite games this year all do incredibly interesting things with interactive storytelling. Pathologic 2 misses out on a higher ranking by virtue of being a remake (albeit a confusingly titled one), but speaking as someone who'd only dipped his toes in the original, I was steadily gripped by Ice-Pick Lodge's relentlessly bleak take on the survival genre, set over twelve days in which society slowly collapses following the outbreak of a deadly plague. Pathologic 2 forgoes the sort of polish that would be demanded of higher-profile titles, immersing you not through production values, but rather reliable systems. The effect is a nonstop sensation of impending doom so overwhelming that to simply hit a dead end, a no-win scenario, almost feels like a canonical ending in and of itself. Miserable from start to finish, yet haunting and profound in ways that cheerier games couldn't be, Pathologic 2 may not sound appealing, but it's one of the year's most captivating releases for those brave enough to face it. (Review.)

2. Death Stranding (PS4)

Had any other person's name been attached to Death Stranding, labeling this the bravest AAA game of the year might have been accurate. Surely the "brave" move for someone with as outsized an ego and as reliable a following as Hideo Kojima would be to acknowledge his flaws and limit his scope. Thank god he didn't, or we wouldn't have been blessed with this crazy, overblown experiment in social gaming. Although I can't go into details about why the traditional story elements worked for me (and I seem to be in the minority there), the more important matter is the way Kojima integrates Death Stranding's themes into its play, in which the process of running long, drawn-out deliveries is made easier by structures left by other players. One of the year's greatest satisfactions was the constant reminder, in the bottom-left corner of the screen, that the paths I'd laid down were used and appreciated by others. These are difficult times, and they're easier to bear together. (Review.)

1. Disco Elysium (PC)

This was a difficult call. Death Stranding was the most important game of the year, the biggest conversation-changer. But I didn't treasure every single moment of it the way I did with Disco Elysium. Two decades ago, Planescape: Torment set a new standard for writing in video games that has still only been matched by a select few, but it didn't quite have the courage to focus entirely on that, with cumbersome combat occasionally getting in the way. Although its unofficial follow-up, Torment: Tides of Numenera, wisely made the combat optional, Disco Elysium (which throws a "special thanks" to the legendary Chris Avellone in the credits) removes it altogether, leaving us with an entirely dialogue-driven RPG that recognizes how strong its writing, characterization and world-building are, and doesn't let anything else stand in the way. Hilarious, poignant, absorbing, and unafraid to preach politics, Disco Elysium has a lot to say, and says it in the best way. (Review is in the pipes!)

Most overrated: Sayonara Wild Hearts
Most underrated: Rage 2
Most overlooked: The Stillness of the Wind
Most visually striking: Control
All-out best-looking game: Death Stranding
Best story: Pathologic 2
Best writing: Disco Elysium
Best character: Kim Kitsuragi (Disco Elysium)
Best performance: Norman Reedus (Death Stranding)
Funniest game: Reventure
Best original soundtrack: Outer Wilds
Best licensed soundtrack: Death Stranding
Biggest surprise: Tetris 99
Biggest disappointment: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
Comeback of the year: Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair
Best multiplayer game: Apex Legends
Most enjoyable bad game: Shenmue III
Least enjoyable good game: Outer Wilds
Best free game: Apex Legends
Game that I spent the most time with: Death Stranding
Game that I spent the least time with before dismissing: Dawn of Survivors
Game that I most wanted to play, but didn't: Devotion
Game I literally own that I most wanted to play, but still haven't: John Wick Hex
Best game that I still haven't finished: Astral Chain
All-out worst game that I played: Where the Bees Make Honey
Best non-2019 game that I first played in 2019: Frostpunk
Best remake/re-release: Resident Evil 2
Most anticipated game this coming year: Half-Life: Alyx

How Joker's best scene renders the rest of the movie pointless [SPOILERS]

Hi! I didn't like Joker very much. And while I was initially content not to extend my takes beyond this brief tweet lest I contribute to The Discourse, I must confess that the movie has remained in my mind for the last couple of days. Not for the reasons I'm sure director Todd Phillips wants it to be, granted, but rather because it's such a fascinating failure, a quote-unquote "real movie snuck into the studio system under the guise of a comic book film" that ends up feeling considerably more shallow and less sure of itself than at least the recent upper tier of the genre it tries so hard to stand above. Maybe it's just because the only film to attempt something similar is Logan, and that one was, y'know, good?

But as much as I'd love to rail on Phillips for being a smug, insufferable toolbox on top of being a mediocre director, let's just focus on the "mediocre director" part. See, I do happen to think that there's one genuinely magnificent scene in Joker, and while it's a perfect microcosm of what Phillips is trying to do, the success of this scene only underlines how the film as a whole fails to justify its existence. This involves getting into specifics, but you're all adults and you saw the spoiler warning in the header, so let's get into this.

Arthur has just been (rightly) fired from his job at a rent-a-clown agency for bringing a loaded gun into a children's hospital. He's taking the subway home late at night, still in his outfit and makeup, when a couple of Wall Street douchebags on the train start pulling the "give us a smile" routine on a woman who clearly wants to be left alone. Suddenly, Arthur begins launching into one of his uncontrollable laughing frenzies, and the men turn their attention to him, because they think he's laughing at them, and if there's one thing that rich, white, smug, insecure bullies hate, it's being laughed at.

So they attack him. And eventually Arthur decides to use that gun that just lost him his job. The scene isn't shocking because of the violence; I've seen guys get shot in movies before. It's for how suddenly the tables turn. One moment, this asshole is stomping on a helpless Arthur. Only a couple of frames later, his brains are all over the window.

In that moment, we think we're seeing the beginning of a familiar character arc: Our lead is introduced to violence through necessity, but as they grows more comfortable with it, their acts become increasingly less justified. The obvious comparison is Taxi Driver, while the "I can't believe you actually remember The Brave One" comparison is the 2007 Jodie Foster vehicle The Brave One. Arthur Fleck is on a sled, and he's just been given his first push, and he's only going to pick up speed as the slope steepens.

But then the scene takes an unexpected turn. Two of Arthur's assailants are dead, while the third is whimpering and stumbling away with a bullet in his leg. Arthur has emerged victorious. But instead of letting it go, he chases the final attacker off the train and executes him in cold blood on the subway platform with a distinct look of satisfaction on his face. And there it is. There's no slow boil, no gradual escalation. Arthur gets his first taste of the upper hand and he loves it.

If Phillips wanted to make a standalone examination of the Joker's psyche, this five-minute stretch of the film would have made a terrific short, because the character completes his entire arc within this single scene. At the start, he's at the lowest moment of his life, a figurative and literal clown who's been punched constantly and never punched back. By the end, he emerges a murderous vigilante. As a different interpretation of this character once said, all it takes is a little push.

The problem is that this scene occurs before the film's halfway point, and now that Phillips has told us everything we need to know about his Joker, there's nowhere else for him to go. From that moment forward, Joker becomes predictable. Once we know that Arthur has no remorse about killing, everyone who wrongs him is marked for death. When Arthur pockets a pair of scissors before meeting with the coworker who ratted him out, there's zero question that the scissors are gonna end up in that guy's skull. When Arthur fantasizes about shooting himself on the talk show, we know for certain that he will instead turn the gun on the host who invited him on just to mock him.

Even if Joker's story beats all play out exactly as I'd anticipated, I could still give the movie a passing grade if it had a point, but Phillips is too cowardly a filmmaker to take a stand on anything. He makes his main character an unambiguous villain, but ensures that said villain's only victims are people who "deserve" it. He notes the unfair stigma of the mentally ill, but paints them exclusively as murderers and domestic abusers. He portrays a society cheated by the 1%, but depicts the remaining 99% as a bloodthirsty mob spurred on by one random homicide. He brings up countless political issues but then just has the Joker proclaim that he "doesn't believe in anything."

Maybe Joker's muddy politics are the point. After all, some of the best portrayals of this character have dismissed the idea of his lust for chaos being some sort of quantifiable force. He's evil incarnate, and the fact that there's often so little motivation for his behavior is what makes him so scary (and such a fitting nemesis to Batman). But if the only explanation is that there is no explanation, why make a two-hour movie? What is the point of any of this?

I think it's pretty simple, honestly - a hack director, previously most famous for having Ken Jeong leap out of a trunk naked, got the idea that he'd become "respectable" if he'd just surround himself with a talented cast and crew and mix-and-match the plot threads from a couple of Scorsese movies. And given that it won the grand prize at the Venice International Film Festival - an honor previously awarded to Roma and The Shape of Water - his approach clearly seems to have worked for some people. But I walked away feeling like I'd just seen a very pretty, very well-acted waste of time.

Maybe a film that causes this much ruckus for this little reason is as fitting a tribute to the Joker as there could be. But that doesn't make it good.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice review, plus some trendy discussion on difficulty

Sekiro released two weeks ago, and it has since consumed every second of my life that wasn't spent doing things that must be done as a person who is alive and intends to continue being alive. I get like this with FromSoft games. Initially, it's to beat the spoilers, to be among the first to discover the new world that this developer has laid out. Then it's to master everything. A FromSoft game, for me, isn't finished when the credits have rolled. It's finished when there are no challenges left to conquer. With nearly a hundred hours logged and every achievement unlocked, as of today, that's finally happened.

I say this for two reasons. The first is to underline that Sekiro is pretty much everything I want and expect out of a FromSoft game. The second is so nobody can throw variants of the old "git gud" argument at me when I say that I think every Souls game should ship with an easy mode.

The thing about Sekiro is that it's tough even by the standards of a company known for this sort of thing. Dark Souls, for better or worse, is universally recognized as the poster boy of hardcore challenge, yet FromSoft seems to have invested its time since in demonstrating just how good we had it back then, by stripping away failsafe options we once took for granted. Bloodborne took away our shields, and now in Sekiro, it's counters only, plus you can't summon, and dying gives every other character in the game the goddamn plague.

And look, I love it. Going from loathing the original Dark Souls to including it within my top three favorite games of all time is the sort of learning curve and reward you just don't get from any other developer. But when I imagine a game like Sekiro including an easy mode, the effects are only positive. It means more people get to love a thing that I love, because they can enjoy it on their own terms. It means that those who physically can't play Sekiro as-is -- because they're disabled or else just lack the motor reflex skills -- won't be walled off.

I understand some of the arguments to the contrary. This isn't generally a discussion we have with other mediums, and in fact, broadening the appeal of, say, a movie is generally frowned upon. Whenever a studio mandates that a film's content be toned down to secure a PG-13 rating, it's rightly viewed as the compromising of an artistic vision. And if the question was whether FromSoft should lighten the load for everyone, I'd object. These are obviously games designed for a specific type of player, and at some point we need to acknowledge that not everything is for everybody. I get that.

But let's say, for a moment, that Sekiro shipped with an optional assisted mode, given that such an choice hasn't stopped, say, the Bayonetta games from being regarded as hardcore character action magnum opuses. Let's also say that it wouldn't be possible to switch difficulties mid-game, putting to rest the popular argument that players overwhelmed with frustration would be tempted to bump it down in the heat of the moment rather than soldiering through. I still get the experience I want, and more people get the experience that they want.

To say that's not a good thing reeks of gatekeeping to me, especially now that so much of this discussion is being rightly framed as an accessibility issue. Not a lot of people argue that subtitles, colorblind modes, or rebindable controls compromise a developer's vision. No reason this should, either. And besides, I have a strange hunch that the same people panicking over the prospect of FromSoft losing its artistic license also boycotted Battlefield V for featuring a female lead, so I'll continue to point the finger at rush of being part of an exclusive "club" as the driving issue here.

Of course, the reason this argument has sprung up is because Sekiro is far and away the most difficult game FromSoft has ever released, enough so that even a number of longtime Souls fans seem to have been turned off by it. Even as someone who loves the game, I'll admit that it goes a bit too far in places. The final boss in particular is a four-phase marathon against a guy with a goddamn submachine gun where the most effective strategy is to just spend most of the fight running away and luring him into using a jump attack that leaves him vulnerable for a few quick strikes from behind. For as replayable as FromSoft's titles are, they have yet to make a game where I'm not dreading at least one segment upon revisit, whether it's the Bed of Chaos, Yahar'gul or (the newest entry) Snake Eyes Shirahagi.

For the most part, though, Sekiro worked like a charm on me, precisely because its relentless difficulty forces me to master new tricks. Countering is something I rarely bothered with in previous Souls games -- it was always just a showy move where the risks outweighed the rewards -- but here, it's mandatory.

See, while Sekiro is still very recognizably a Souls game on a number of levels -- from the way its world is laid out to the familiar mechanics it transplants from Hidetaka Miyazaki's past work -- the combat has received a massive overhaul to the point that even FromSoft vets will run smack into a wall for the opening hours. Stamina has long been the backbone of Souls combat, but here, it's called "poise" and it only applies to blocking, meaning that both you and your enemies can attack endlessly. So remaining on the defensive until your enemies inevitably need to recharge is no longer an option. They'll wail on you without relent until your guard is broken.

That's where countering comes in. It's a simple act of hitting the block button right when an attack lands, and doing so successfully will drain the enemy's poise rather than yours. Simply standing there, holding the block button and absorbing hits, will eventually break your guard and leave you vulnerable. Instead, the way to win is to redirect that poise damage back at your assailant. Breaking an enemy's guard opens them up to a finisher. It's possible to kill any enemy in the game -- including bosses -- without entirely draining its health meter. While it's a tricky system to learn (as it involves memorizing attack patterns to the point that you can successfully deflect long combos), nailing it is one of the most empowering experiences in any video game I've ever played. It feels absolutely incredible.

I mentioned that FromSoft has been slowly stripping away our options in combat, and it's evidenced in Sekiro's total lack of character builds. Not only are we playing as a named protagonist this time (with spoken dialog and everything!), but we only have one primary weapon and no real leeway over our attributes. Grinding isn't even really a thing anymore, since the means to improve both our attack power and defense come in the form of finite resources. You can slightly customize your play style with a skill tree and a set of limited-use attachments for your robot arm -- oh yeah, your character has a robot arm, by the way -- but for the most part, there's only one way to fight.

Where Sekiro opens up, and where it continues to diverge from its Souls brethren, is in the way players move about levels, and the number of options they have in approaching tough situations. The main character is a shinobi, and as such, you're given the option to jump, hang, wall-run, and otherwise just navigate levels in a more three-dimensional sense than we're used to in Miyazaki's games. There's even an Arkham Asylum-esque grappling hook that you can use to quickly sling yourself from various points around the impressively open levels.

The result is the introduction of stealth into a series that previously barely featured it. Sekiro was originally intended to be a Tenchu game. I've never played one of those, so I can't speak to the similarities, but I'm led to believe that there are clear parallels in the ways you can sidestep traditional combat by one-shotting wandering enemies from the shadows.

It's an important balance for a game as frequently rage-inducing as Sekiro often is, where the big climactic boss encounters funnel you into a very specific method of play. I don't think a game as brutal as Sekiro would survive as a straight-up boss rush, where we spend hours making dents in a seemingly insurmountable foe only to start the process all over again immediately for the next battle, but it's the moments of exploration and wonder that keep the Souls games from becoming exhausting, and Sekiro's stealth-centric main levels compensate for the increased challenge of its title fights.

Speaking of which, how does Sekiro stand up to the other Souls games from a world-building perspective? Well, it's a bit of a mixed bag for me, though much of it comes down to preference. FromSoft's usual style of indirect storytelling is in full force, rewarding players who read between the lines and giving important contexts to areas that would be throwaway transitional levels in a game by any other developer.

On the other hand, Sekiro's feudal Japan setting is extremely genre, and it's a genre that I just don't find as inherently fascinating as the entropic fantasy of Dark Souls and the Lovecraftian horror of Bloodborne. Again, it's all just personal taste, but the warring clans and blood of dragons feel like well-tread territory among Japanese games, and so many characters in this game speak in the same solemn grumble that I found myself wishing the subtitles would label the speaker. The opening hours of the game also have the Nioh problem of repetitive, indistinguishable environments (pagodas for days), though Sekiro's second half is a massive improvement in this regard, with the gorgeous vistas of Mount Kongo and the Sunken Valley providing some memorably colorful sights.

But my general indifference to Sekiro's lore is pretty much the only reason I don't quite regard this game with the same awe that I reserve for masterpieces like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, because not only is it at least as tight and satisfying as those games, but with a revised combat system and a Tenchu-esque focus on stealth, it carves out a unique identity for itself even as it shares many recognizable qualities of Miyazaki's previous work. But having said all of that, know that this debate over accessibility hasn't sprung up for no reason. Sekiro wasn't my breaking point, but it left me wondering what will be.

I've never cared less about the Oscars than this year, but here are my predictions anyway

Best Picture: Roma
Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón (Roma)
Best Actor: Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody)
Best Actress: Glenn Close (The Wife)
Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali (Green Book)
Best Supporting Actress: Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk)
Best Original Screenplay: The Favourite
Best Adapted Screenplay: BlacKkKlansman
Best Animated Feature: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Best Documentary Feature: RBG
Best Foreign Language Film: Roma
Best Cinematography: Roma
Best Costume Design: Black Panther
Best Documentary Short Subject: Period. End of Sentence.
Best Film Editing: Vice
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Vice
Best Original Score: If Beale Street Could Talk
Best Original Song: "Shallow" (A Star Is Born)
Best Production Design: The Favourite
Best Animated Short Film: Bao
Best Live-Action Short Film: Marguerite
Best Sound Editing: First Man
Best Sound Mixing: Bohemian Rhapsody
Best Visual Effects: Avengers: Infinity War

14/24

My predictions last year.