John's Newsletter of Nonograms #29
A possibly weekly email about what's been going on in my brain
5 - 18 June 2023
This is going to be like when a serialized TV show has a clips episode in terms of effort because I'm just going to ramble about various media I've guzzled up in the past few weeks.
Video games
Since I got my new computer I've been playing through a lot of the games that I slept on as I didn't want to experience them at low fidelity; I did that with Deathloop, and don't get me wrong is still fantastic, but there was that creeping sense that I'm not fully experiencing the intended artistic vision.
Resident Evil 4 Remake
If you asked me, I wouldn't say that I was a Resident Evil fan, but then I tot up the ones I've played: 1, 2, 2 Remake, 3 Remake, 4, 5, 6, 8, and now 4 Remake and I guess with that history I am? That kind of snuck up on me. I played 4 originally when it released on PS2; I remember enjoying it but little else. This remake is very good which at this point is to be expected after the well received 2 and 3 remakes (one theory as to why) and how well established the RE engine is. It's slickly put together, feels great to play, and keeps things interesting all the way through to the end.
Dead Space Remake
I replayed the original Dead Space a couple of years ago, and once the fan-made mouse and keyboard improvements are installed, the game plays just as well as it did on release. This remake learns a lot from what Capcom has done with the Resident Evil remakes: filing away the rough edges but keeping a lot in tact, implicitly proving that good game design doesn't age. The body-horror is gruesomely arresting in high definition but apart from a couple of good spooks, doesn't really get more than skin deep. The shooting mechanics, especially the plasma cutter, are still great and the game's tweak from "clicking heads" to "clicking limbs" keeps things fun.
Returnal
One of the game's quieter scenes
My current obsession, Returnal released as a PS5 exclusive near before eventually being ported to PC shortly after I left for Japan. I watched people play it then and loved the fiction and the discontinuous story, but at its heart this is a twitch arcade shooter with tight controls and a nails-hard difficulty. There is definitely a wall at the start of the game where, with its rogue-like structure, you aren't getting enough permanent upgrades to carry you through a challenging boss fight, a text-book definition of "get good". I am currently bashing my head against the final few areas, waiting for the right constellation of weapons and upgrades to carry me through, because surely it can't be a skill deficit holding me back right?
Returnal's science fiction treats the "try-die-try again" video game format as the bones of its story, and what I like most about it is that it treats aliens and space exploration as fundamentally horrifying. Not in a solely beyond-human-comprehension way that the cosmic horror genre is best known for, more the lethal indifference and capacity for otherness that space enables. Think of some of the best ideas that something like Red Dwarf had (and it had a lot), then take away the humour. Returnal does still do great "big" sci-fi though: grand temples and machinery built to an entirely different scale than that of humans. And I do love big science fiction. Starships and laser guns are fine, but tell me about your generation ship and that's an endeavour, describe the destructive power of your stellar bomb and that's power, bring me to an alien hyperstructure and that's fear.
Books
Fine Structure by qntm
Speaking of big sci-fi, I was looking forward to starting another of qntm's books after I enjoyed There Is No Antimemetics Division so much. The synopsis reads like catnip for me: a Rosetta Stone for physics is found but when new methods are tested, the science mysteriously stops working. For the most part the story is supremely satisfying with supernova cascades, higher dimensional scuffles, and one point when the entire solar system is cordoned off... In amongst all that though are threads on gods and superhumans that rub uncomfortably against the exotic science elsewhere, and the piecemeal storytelling that jumps between points of view, time periods, and style feels needlessly hyperactive. It's still a brisk, fun read but when it started talking about anitmemetic weapons, it felt like an athelete showing you their old medals.
Chilling Effect by Valeria Valdes
Firefly has an awful lot to answer for seeing as it's defined an awful lot of science fiction that's come out since. The now familiar format of a creaky spaceship crewed by a band of misfits performing jobs of dubious legality wasn't new with that series but I've no doubt pushed it to the forefront of many author's minds. Here there is Eva Innocente captaining the La Sirena Negra, she gets involved with The Fridge, things explode, Spanish is spoken, aliens are smooched (and then some). As a change from military sci-fi this is a light, easy-going tale and when compared with The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, the Firefly comparisons aren't quite so obvious. An awful lot happens but none of it feels particularly consequential, with characters leaving and allegiences changing with little emotional weight behind them. I'll likely continue the series (because of course its a series) at a later point as it'll be easy to pick up the story and characters months or years down the line.
Films
Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania: the Marvel mediocrity train keeps on chugging. Artistically phenomenal but narratively vacant, I'm not even sure why I'm keeping up with this cinematic universe anymore.
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: really good fun, absolutely nails the feel of a slightly unhinged D&D campaign with great characters and spot on humour.
John Wick: Chapter 4: the first film was tight and brutal, then every chapter in the (urgh) "Wickiverse" since then has been consistently worse. The action is still sharp, but the baggage around it just drags it down.
Evil Dead Rise: I went in expecting an Evil Dead 2 style schlocky and silly horror film, this definitely has the gore (as well as several different colours of vomit) but is disappointingly serious. Over in a scant 90 minutes though which I fully appreciate.
Anime
I wasn't exactly charging through anime series before I left for Japan, and since my return I seem to have had a reflexive aversion to it. I have watched eight episodes of Nier: Automata Ver1.1a (trailer) fully expecting it to be an inferior adaptation of one of my favourite games. Instead it retains the weirdness and the poignancy without sacrificing action, it chucks in everything from the game, as well as its predecessors Nier and Drakengard, as well as ancillary media like the stage play. Unfortunately the anime has been blighted by production issues and at the time of writing the series stands unfinished.
The only other series I've finished since returning is Tomo-chan is a Girl! (trailer) which is the story of a tomboy who wants her childhood friend to see her as a girl and love interest. It's goofy and gets a little self-serious towards the end, but the characters (Carol especially) keep this lighthearted and barrelling along.
I am currently watching both Skip and Loafer (trailer) and Gundam: The Witch From Mercury (trailer). The former I saw GIFs of and figured I'd give it a shot - so far I haven't been disappointed. A country girl attends a Tokyo prep school and experiences city life for the first time. It feels genuine despite the pastel coloured Emotions tm surging around, with the way its heading I'm interested to see how it'll round itself out. The latter is, admittedly, a continuation from last year and though I'm not a Gundam fan, the series' writer Ichirou Oukouchi is an absolute powerhouse. At the moment the series is very much "bad things happening to nice people" so I need to be in the right headspace to watch it, but it is hugely compelling.
Paraphernalia
- Jamiroquai's Virtual Insanity as a Musicless Music Video - take a music video, remove all the sound, then add foley (via the venerable Kottke)
- Nimona trailer - from writer ND Stevenson whom I've followed on Twitter for an age, this looks heaps of fun
- Quake's Lightning Gun bug and How Speedrunner's Uncovered Quake's Strangest Bug - geometry is hard
- The Enshittification of TikTok - an insightful and broad ranging essay by Cory Doctorow on how platforms rot and die, covering Google, Amazon, Facebook and Tiktok, especially prescient with the shenanigans happening with Reddit
- Squirrel With A Gun trailer - the concept here is absolute class, the implementation looks turbo janky but hell, as long as it doesn't outstay its welcome I am absolutely down to try this
- Star Wars: Outlaws trailer - is this... optimism I'm feeling for a licensed, Ubisoft game?! Unexpected, but could possibly, maybe, potentially be good
- Ocarina of Time: A Masterclass of Subtext - a sharp video essay on some of the themes running through OoT
- Bullets Hitting in Slow Motion - so this is what actual engineering discipline looks like, and on YouTube as well!
- A Table Made From Denim - it's the epoxy table guy!
- Good Omens Season 2 trailer - season 1 was phenomenal and this looks just as good
- The Poggendorf Triangles - an optical illusion from the "Best Illusionist of the Year Contest", see also Platform 9 3/4s
This was hand-crafted by John.