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-…

I liked the audacity of it, I just wished I had a better grasp on how the scene related to the rest of the game. Tbf my early reaction was one of being moved, it's a fair emotional kick and it's got surprise on its side. But after 30 seconds or so I realized it would be as oblique as the rest of the game so far, no clarity in sight, no relief, just the firm knowledge that you're navigating through pain. The first…

So Void Stranger threw a musical number at me? I feel like I was supposed to be moved, but the oblique narration keeps me from feeling much anything for the character/story/whatever. There's been a strange light giving me a hint about perfection, huh? okay then. I got a free infinity sigil but couldn't make it work (tried inputting it 2 times, nothing happened as far as I could see). Tried inputting the first tablet…

I wish I'd liked it more, eh. The gameplay is quite original, it revolves around mapping out the highlands from peak to peak, to reach the sea eventually. There's also items you may connect/activate with bits and pieces of lore. There's also rhythm sections somehow? Anyway, while I praise the care for building a game anchored in one place, focused on its culture and its physicality, ultimately it's too much for me t…

Well, I'm giving up on Talos Principle after 13 hours or so. On the whole I found it Not Good. A few puzzles were stimulating, but the majority felt redundant and stuffed with time-consuming dull detours. I gathered 10 stars to check what I imagined were the most challenging ones, but it was more of the same. Tetromino puzzles were a bore, I cannot understand why they got into the game except for adding cheap …

I completed Chants of Sennaar yesterday, and it was a bit of a letdown. I didn't buy into the mythical story the way I became enthralled with Heaven's Vault sci-fi/adventure. As to the puzzle part, it was okay, it flowed without too much effort, but I wish there were more challenges. Instead, the game seemed to make sure we could make out all the glyphs. It felt a bit like a cultural power fantasy... Otherwise, hey,…

The hand-drawn art is catchy, and the puzzles are just as original. The game slowly introduces path-finding creatures who interfere with your attempts to clean up the garden levels. As their number grows, expect to feel a sense of chaos. It makes for a very strong, unusual flavor of puzzle mechanics. To be honest, it took me quite some time to like it —it's so frustrating to have woodsmen or miners messing up your p…