I never played Kula World, but I'd heard about it several times and I thought Axyz would be a fun way to discover what this puzzle classic was like. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy the 20 or so levels I played. I wish there'd been a demo to help me realize this wasn't what I expected. The level hazards (including spikes that switch back and forth in real time) and the limited attempts per level create a tension that…

on a vu l'odyssée ce soir avec nico, par désœuvrement, ou besoin de sortir, ou curiosité de cinéphile ; sans trop de surprise, j'ai pas du tout aimé le trailer est fidèle au film, qui vide l'odyssée de sa magie et de son drame pour en faire une histoire désaturée, pompeuse, sombre — du nolan-slop cinématographie sans aucune inventivité (sabotée sans doute par l'encombrement des caméras imax) et montage non-lin…

This is what I wrote about the "OST Volume 2" DLC: This DLC includes way fewer tracks than the base game, so it feels questionable to market it as a "Volume 2". It certainly did not match my initial expectations. That being said, out of the 6 tracks here, 4 of them are fantastic in both music and charting, and imo they make it well worth buying the complete pack. These new charts are tricky, they're catchy, th…

Amazing precision platformer with elaborate physics and nuanced movement. Learning to control the egg is a tough, occasionally frustrating, but ultimately rewarding journey. The atmosphere is chill and contemplative, just the right kind of immersive for reading the environments and executing tricky jumps. And workshop support means you can continue to explore the intricacies of rolling and hopping in a number of gre…

sinon pardon de moisir l'ambiance, mais Anora : spectaculaire fraude puante ?? svp arrêtons les films prétendument éthiques quand l'objectif premier, c'est juste de filmer des culs et des femmes nues il y a aucune autre raison, aucune excuse possible au fait que ton premier plan, c'est un cul anonyme qui remue puis les premières minutes, du cul du cul du cul on nous vend un énième personnage de femme for…

Scream 7 was such a lazy movie, with fan service that's more sad than fun. The first movie was a clever twist on the slasher genre, but obviously the original screenwriter (who has both screenwriting and directing credits on 7) never got over his success 30 years ago and has shamelessly ignored everything that's been done in horror in recent times (movies from A24, Blumhouse, Jordan Peele, Zach Cregger, etc.) At …

Je partage ici des notes prises en parallèle de la lecture de ce livre, qui m'avait inspiré quelques réflexions vis-à-vis du phénomène des transidentités. Cette année-là, j'avais aussi lu Transfuges de sexe, Gender Trouble, et des articles d'Alexandre Baril. Je n'ai jamais pris la peine de structurer ces notes, je n'ai pas terminé ma série d'articles sur le handicap trans, j'ai quitté le discord de Fransgenre sans m…

désolée d'avance de pas prendre de pincettes, mais c'était terriblement mauvais c'était moche, boursouflé d'effets de mise en scène qui n'ont rien à dire (mais il y a de l'argent à griller en haut de la chaîne de production ciné sud-coréenne manifestement) post-prod et recolorisations criardes et pas du tout harmonisées, cadrages qui ne tiennent jamais en place, persos qui ne savent pas dans quel registre joue…

(copied over from the thinky games discord) I completed Taiji (normal ending) in two sittings. I could write down a long list of nitpicks, but it's a solid puzzle game. So far I've preferred The Witness or Cipher Zero to it, but it's still well worth playing. One thing I have to complain about though, is that the game has a terrible palette for its puzzles. The colors are straight up painful to make out from a…

Many levels also feature a time station from which you can freeze the orbs. This means you can not only let an orb sit on a bridge while you activate receivers with another orb and change the state of the level, but you can also remove the bridge if you need to, and still keep that first orb in position. It will stay in mid-air for as long as you want, until you decide to move it to somewhere else. [...]

The testing rooms you have to complete are presented in typical 2D top-down sokoban view. However the mechanics are less conventional, since you can not only push the crates on the grid, but also pull them, drag them sideways, and climb on them. Additionally, each side of the crates can be altered by color-coded charges from laser guns, and you can only grab the sides that match your own charge. [...]

My partner and I stopped Spiritfarer after 8 hours or so. It's a cozy resource management game set on a sailing boat, with cute art and satisfying animations. We came to the genre in good faith but it was all too grindy for us in the end (and we were only 20% in). Also the characters and the writing almost never clicked with us, which for a game about grief was rather embarrassing. Still, it was nice to experience i…

I got to the end of Temple of Snek. That was a gruelling affair. The game is clearly a work of love and there are many things I liked about it (the open-world aspect felt great for one half of the story; the rooms are lively and with many details; the adaptive music is excellent), but also a lot of things which eventually felt really irritating, and for no good reason I could think of (the late game felt impossible …

[spoilers] Having dealt with the contemporary art world, I could very much feel the appeal of Renzo to Lorelei, with his bigger-than-life projects, his sentiments-driven view of reality, his constant hinting at something beyond the daily affairs of the world. But then the collaboration goes sour, culminating with a horrific breakdown from Renzo—and it's hard not to blame yourself for it, when you wanted so hard to b…

Some thoughts on the remastered Braid. The puzzles and the overall system hold up really well, I enjoyed rediscovering it 15 years later. David Hellman did an incredible job repainting most of the game, you've got brushes of paint drawn in real time all over the place, it's trippy and it's great. The sound design was also heavily improved (it was mostly a programmer's clunky job back in the old version), I like m…

Par curiosité un peu morbide, j'ai pris un roman de Musso dans une boîte à livres, et j'avance quand j'ai un peu de temps à tuer (merci la SRS). J'ai été surprise et amusée de découvrir toute une dimension soft propagande de droite, en particulier : glorification des services de police, critique de toute émeute, piques répétées contre la mairie de Paris. Souvent aussi du « c'était mieux avant, toutes les valeur…

A force de le voir cité dans plein d'articles, j'ai fini par lire Trouble dans le genre / Gender Trouble, de Judith Butler. C'était très moyen. Il y a trois parties, inégales, et la première était la plus intéressante. C'était une proposition d'analyse des constructions de concepts de genre, de sexe, de corps. L'approche et le thème m'ont beaucoup rappelé Foucault, en bien. La deuxième partie fait un full vir…

I'm signing off on Void Stranger after 20 hours or so. Pieces of advice for those who consider playing it: It is unique. This much is true. It is harsh. Forget about all QoL features from the past 15 years. No undo, no skipping levels (mostly), no tutorialization, no knowledge check, etc. No joyful feedback from your hard wins, just the next gray sokoban room. If you want to dive deeper, you'll have to deal wi…

I did eventually get the murals to bring me to the 3 burdens + more arcane stuff, and I got to activate the authorized brands on run start. Got the alphabet code too. I'm halfway into Lillie's run. Wondering if there'll be an incentive to do the rooms without the burdens, since most of them feel broken with wings or sword. There's Void lore in outrageously random rocks. And the high fantasy story turned into mother-…