Double Fine - Tumblr Posts
get PSYCHED
after weeks and weeks of completely hating my own art it felt good to do something in a very different style and I am really excited for Psychonauts 2
I’ve become obsessed with a game by double fine called the cave and I’m constantly sad I don’t own console to it on so I will forever pray that it come to the Nintendo switch one day I hope. And as you can tell the hillbilly is my favourite character out of the cast.
Brütal Legend: An uncomfortable revisit
I'm replaying Brütal Legend for the first time in years and it is a game that deserved to be much better than it ended up being. There's so much to praise about it: it's got that patented Double Fine look that makes characters feel unique and expressive, it occupies a world that's been given so much love and attention, it's genuinely hilarious (Jack Black must have been on a shortlist of one to play Eddie Riggs - I can't imagine anyone else doing it), and it's a deeply earnest and knowing love letter to heavy metal and all the things that make it ridiculous and brilliant. The problem is that the actual "game" part of it is not that great.
It tries to be two things at once - a hack & slash, and a real-time strategy - and it doesn't stick the landing on either of them. The controls are sluggish, combat feels janky and repetitive, and the RTS sections are slow, confusing, and unfulfilling, and represent an infuriating roadblock in your journey through the game on many occasions.
The strange fate of Brütal Legend is that it's a game ultimately hamstrung by the very insistence on thematic relevance that makes it so great in other aspects. Using guitar solos as attacks is a great concept and fits perfectly with the ethos, but in practice they're incredibly clunky and jarring, breaking what little flow to combat there is. Having to bust one out just to summon your car, additionally, at a time when even contemporary games had embraced single-button mapping for such things, is extremely tiresome.
But there's another aspect to the game that has disappointed me on this playthrough that I had never thought about before:
Where are the people of colour?
We meet a lot of characters in this game, all of them satires or parodies of differing rock and metal cliques; the headbangers, the emos, the glam rockers, the [checks notes] girls, and unless I'm very much mistaken every single one of them is white. It points to a very uncomfortable truth about the prevailing image of fans of alternative music in the minds of the devs.
I understand 2008 is far enough back in time in terms of video games and the culture around them as to practically be ancient history, but it makes me realise this is what the right-wing, "culture war" bores in gaming pine for: games where no-one, either behind the screen or in front of it, has to question their own biases even for a second.
This is a game best remembered fondly, seldom if ever revisited.
"But now, we dance this grim fandango,
and will four years until we rest."
DoubleFine twitter making Sonic AND Snapcube references was not something I thought I’d see today, but here we are.
"It shone, pale as bone As I stood there alone And I thought to myself how the moon, That night, cast its light On my heart’s true delight, And the reef where her body was strewn."
Just a bit of Grim Fandango fan art for you all.
How time flies with this beloved franchise…hope the wait won’t be too long for a third game in the franchise.
A Happy Psychic Lad
