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innuendostudios · 3 years

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Thoughts on... some funny games

[no spoilers to speak of]

Thoughts on Lair of the Clockwork God

The wisdom of the gaming cognoscenti insists that comedy is hard to do in video games. Having grown up with Monkey Island and Zork, I've never found this convincing. But one true thing is this: it's hard to write about comedic games. The ineffability of humor is hard enough to describe in less-interactive media; I can't even explain to my partner why Gretchen saying "I met January Jones once!" on You're the Worst busted me up, and they were sitting right next to me when she said it. Throw in the "you had to be there" nature of the player's active participation and I lose myself in a cornfield. The thing I found hilarious might come a beat to early for you, or not at all, or not be funny in text like it is in gameplay.

Why did I like Lair of the Clockwork God? It made me laugh.

The premise and particulars are a lot of "that could go either way." Ben and Dan - stars of Ben There, Dan That and Time Gentleman, Please! - have returned. Ben is still an adventure game star, but Dan has adopted platforming mechanics in an attempt to get with the times. So playing the game involves switching back and forth between a character who can leap across canyons but can't pick up items or talk to people, and one who can combine inventory but can't climb over a 3-pixel rock.

Does that sound potentially funny? Potentially grating? Yes to both!

The plot centers around our heroes trying to save the world from several simultaneous apocalypses and having to teach human emotions to a supercomputer in order to do so. (Don't ask.) These means, rather like Ben There, Dan That, traipsing through a number of fantasy worlds (read: computer simulations) until the correct emotion is provoked. This requires cross-genre cooperation: finding ways to get Ben to areas only Dan can access, getting Dan new power ups by combining objects in Ben's inventory (an act Dan insists on calling "crafting").

The best bits are at these intersections, when Dan's platforming is the puzzliest and Ben's puzzles take advantage of Dan's skills. Periodically the game gives you a Dan-centric platforming gauntlet the controls are NOT precise nor pleasant enough for, or a Ben-only moon logic puzzle that leaves you googling the walkthrough.

But I liked it! A lot. The genre-hopping seems to have invigorated the developers, Ben Ward and Dan Marshall. I discussed my favorite joke in Ben There, Dan That (in what is probably the least popular video I've ever made that wasn't asking for money), but was also dismayed that the game was never that clever again. But this one is, several times over! Progression here involves cheating your way to a better respawn zone, goofing around in game menus, exploiting "glitches," exiting out and loading up entirely other games. There is a lot of poking and prodding at what a game of this nature can or should be.

But, honestly? The only real selling point is... it was funny. The humor is as anarchic and metatextual as in previous titles, but it feels good-natured in a way BT,DT didn't. And there are, here and there, little bits of meat on its bones - the characters wondering if, as a couple thirtysomething white guys, the world hasn't left them behind, no longer comfortable with the juvenile humor of their youth but not really understanding the youth of today, but having not yet fully escaped the mentalities they used to hold. (There's an unspoken humor to Dan's idea of "modern" gameplay being 2D platforming mechanics, especially at a time when adventure games are significantly more popular than on his last outing; this is a good joke whether or not it's intentional.)

Also: this game contains the most poignant urinating-on-a-grave puzzle in gaming history, and you may quote me on that.

Having finished it months ago, I can't even remember what all the gags were that tickled me at the time. Comedy fades from memory faster than drama or frustration. Mostly I just remember having a good time.

Thoughts on The Darkside Detective

Here's a hook: sometime after the mayhem ends in Ghostbusters, The Exorcist, Evil Dead 2, or some other paranormal blockbuster that you watched over and over in the 90's until the VHS wore out, some overworked detective has to come into your town and piece together what the hell happened.

This is his story.

It's a good gag, and the devs wring every drop from it. Existing in a world where these things are commonplace and you have to fit them into some notion of "police procedure" is just funny. Like, it's one thing to have a running gag where you keep observing the moon in outdoor scenes, commenting, with increasing hostility, that its behavior is suspicious (it has been present at multiple crime scenes); it's a slightly different thing when, given the things you've encountered, the moon being the Big Bad is actually somewhat possible.

The game is divided into six main cases and three bonus DLC missions (which come included in the base game now, and the third of which is the proper ending/setup for the sequel). You are the cop tasked to deal with The Other Side - and, when The Other Side bleeds into our own world, its cops have to deal with you. You have a sidekick with a mental maturity of about 6, which I guess makes you the straight man. (You have to grade on a curve to find a straight man in this game.) And you solve tasks like rounding up escaped gremlins or finding an AWOL lake monster all juxtaposed with mundane problems like inter-office squabbles and having not bought your Christmas presents early enough. It's (pleasantly) lo-res and sparsely isolated, so the dialogue and premise do most of the work, but they are ably up to the task.

The gameplay... not so much. I'm an adventure game lifer, so I can put up with a lot of nonsense. It's mostly straightforward inventory puzzles and occasional minigames. Most of the puzzles are fine enough. As the cases progress, things get more involved, and the DLCs especially involve some awful moon logic. And the minigames are not above using that same jumping peg puzzle you've solved in a dozen other games already. So gameplay ranges from serviceable to irritating, but it mostly exists to string together funny lines and silly images. (Christmas mall elves being secretly in service to Krampus - that's the kind of thing we're talking about here.) You won't feel much guilt for opening up a walkthrough; the puzzles aren't why you're here.

The sequel has just been released, and both games are cheap, so check them out if you feel like smiling.

Thoughts on The Procession to Calvary

It's rare for a game to be hilarious to look at.

The Procession to Calvary takes its name from the Bruegel painting. It also takes all it's graphics from Renaissance oil paintings, and the designer delights in making famously rendered heroes and religious icons steal, stab, fart, and swear.

A strong Terry-Gilliam-with-After-Effects vibe is what we're describing.

You play as a lady knight from a war that's just ended, which sucks for you because, in this age of peace, you're no longer authorized to kill. And killing's, like, you're whole thing. But the one person your new, pacifist king wouldn't stop you from killing is the warlord you just deposed, who fled to the South. So you embark on a nonsensical journey to seek out the one human on Earth you are authorized to kill, because killing is just The. Best. Ever.

Of the three games we're discussing, this is the most overtly cheeky, and, at times, the most scatological. I could've done with a bit less scatology, if I'm being honest, but the cheekiness is very winning. As with Lair of the Clockwork God, a lot of jokes could go either way - a field of people being tortured and a woman on a blanket selling commemorative torture merch could be painfully try-hard. But something about the victims being seemingly everyone ever crucified or broken on the wheel in a famous painting, and having them writhe on their crosses in a way that is both gruesome and goofy, and having a cacophonous soundtrack of their screams and moans that you will now imagine every time you look at one of those elegantly elegiac paintings from now on... it works. That the music score is being played by an extremely jaunty piper who dances behind you just out of sword's reach as you traverse the field pushes it over the top.

Oh, and the puzzles, while never hair-pullingly obtuse, will leave you stumped at times. Push past that to get the proper ending, but, if you're sick of trying, you can, at any point, just start stabbing your way through problems. Which, again: it takes a very deft touch to make "protagonist resorts to violence" actually funny rather than lazy and obvious. And maybe, in another game, the perfect timing of every animation, the clever quips, the careful contrast of cathedrals and high-society music halls with gleeful sword-swinging wouldn't be enough. But something about it being frickin' Renaissance paintings carries it the last mile.

This is probably the basest game of the three, but it's also the one that made me giggle the most. Having a BFA that required several art history classes may have something to do with it. But check this thing out.

#capsule review #darkside detective #lair of the clockwork god #procession to calvary

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godlydolans · 4 years

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Something Borrowed {e.d.}

Summary: Y/N Y/L/N was the woman Ethan Dolan cheated on his wife with and between the wife and the mistress, the wife always wins. Well, three years later, the wife is no longer alive and Ethan has recently found out he has a son with the woman he had left.

Warning: Angst and a confusing plot.

A/N: Guys, I am so sorry for this mess of a fic. I've been building this universe in my head for almost a year but I seriously can't write so please enjoy whatever abomination I've written down and do feel free to ask me any questions you may have about the plot, characters, etc. I know I haven't done a good job explaining everything in this fic.

At 9 o’clock on Christmas night, Y/N found herself in Elijah’s room, somehow squeezing her form into his bed with him tucked into her left side while Irina was laying her head on Y/N’s right side. Y/N couldn’t quite fit into the bed which was meant for her three year old little boy, but she still managed. Her legs dangled over the edge and she basically had to lay Irina on top of her in order to fit all three of them together but she really didn’t mind.

“And finally, they got Cinderella to try on the shoe.” Her son didn’t like to go to bed without hearing a story from her. Elijah was very much like her in that aspect, he loved hearing stories just as much as he loved telling them. When Y/N was young, her grandma was the person who’d tell her all these exotic tales before she’d go to sleep. Since her son didn’t have a grandma until recently, Y/N took on the role of the storyteller, reading baby books to him ever since he was in her womb. Usually, Elijah didn’t ask to hear princessy tales because he had already heard lol of them so Y/N always did her research on new stories so she could deliver her son with stories he’d never heard before. But since his beloved sister was spending the night for the first time and it was her wish to hear Cinderella’s story, Y/N launched right into it. “And guess what?”

Irina’s little head popped up from Y/N’s arm and she gasped, her blue eyes wide in wonder. “The shoe fit her?!”

“Yes!” She answered with equal enthusiasm. “The shoe fit her perfectly because it was made especially for her by her fairy godmother, you know?”

“And so the Prince married her?” Asked Elijah, making Y/N turn her head to look at her son. He had heard the tale many times but the smile he wore on his face at this part of the story always made her heart happy. Her precious boy always beamed with joy when poor Cinderella finally got her happy ending. Elijah was a sucker for happy endings.

Much like she used to be when she was his age.

“Yeah babe, the Prince was informed by his soldiers that they found his Cinderella and he came to her house in his white horse, took her to his Palace and made her his Queen.” Y/N smiled, pulling Elijah closer to her. The temperature outside had dropped below freezing. Snow could be seen falling from the sky, through the glass window the curtains of which were not drawn completely.

“And she lives happily ever after?” Irina grinned, hope laced into every word.

“And she lived happily ever after.” Y/N confirmed with a smile on her own face.

“The Prince was handsome, Y/N?” Was Irina’s next question.

“He was very handsome, babe. And he was very kind-hearted. He loved Cinderella and he never let anyone hurt her ever again.”

“He was handsomer than my daddy?” Irina stared up at y/n with wide, inquisitive eyes and Y/N’s heart sank.

Was he 'handsomer' than her daddy? Y/N looked at the curly hair on top of Irina’s head and immediately got reminded of the times she spent with Irina’s daddy’s head on her bosom while she lazily ran her fingers through his curls. She looked at Elijah and the hazel eyes he fixed on her made her remember all those nights she spent talking to his daddy about anything and everything, wrapped up in her white sheets and his strong arms. Her son looked heartbreakingly similar to his father. Irina had bits and pieces of her mother’s features in her, but Elijah almost didn’t possess any physical features from Y/N.

It was something that had made her cry overwhelmed tears when she’d first held him in her arms after bringing him into the world. Ethan was etched into every feature of her son. That fact just made pushing his memories out of her head that much more difficult. She still managed to do it though and she is proud of that fact.

“He was handsome like your daddy, sweetheart.” Y/N settled for the simple answer. She didn’t want to tell Irina that the Prince was more handsome than her father. That might have started an argument if she’d have gotten offended. Also, Y/N didn’t want to say yes to a question like that because if she was being honest with herself, there really could be no one more handsome than Ethan. Yes, there could be people just as handsome as him, but not more handsome than him.

Elijah was slowly dozing off beside Y/N and Irina had yawned twice since the story ended. They had had a long day today. It was Christmas, after all. Elijah had been the happiest little munchkin the whole day, spending his first Christmas with his father and his family. A happy Elijah meant a hyper Elijah. He had been so hyper the whole day, the poor boy had exhausted himself by the time dinner rolled around.

“Y/N?” Irina whispered, her hand came up to Y/N’s cheek and she turned the older woman’s face to look down at her. Y/N raised an eyebrow and smiled at Irina’s cute gesture. Y/N hadn’t known the little girl that long, but she noticed how Irina liked to hold people’s faces while talking to them. It was like she didn’t want the eye contact to break. She didn’t like it when people looked elsewhere while talking to her. “You are very pretty.”

Y/N’s eyes widened at those words.

“Like a princess. And I like your voice.” The little girl was smiling with her eyes and she looked exactly like her mother when she smiled. Y/N’s heart squeezed painfully at the resemblance. This little girl was adorable and she liked Y/N. If only she knew how much her mother had hated Y/N, she wouldn’t be smiling up at her with twinkling eyes.

Irina would hate her too.

Y/N was no princess.

Blinking back the tears that were slowly gathering into her eyes, Y/N cleared her throat and managed to push out a small smile. Hers wasn’t as genuine as Irina’s. Then again, she wasn’t an innocent little girl like Irina.

“Thank you, Irina. You are really pretty too.” Y/N brushed her curly hair back and kissed her forehead. “And it’s time to sleep now, okay?” Irina nodded. “If you need anything, come to my room.”

Giving a sleeping Elijah a kiss good night, Y/N slipped out of bed and covered the little kids with Elijah’s blanket. Turning the lights off, she turned for the door but halted when she found Ethan leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed at his chest and a small smile on his lips. Y/N blushed to the root of her hair. “Ethan?”

He pushed himself off the doorframe and began walking toward her. “Just wanted to say good night to the kiddos.”

Y/N nodded, stepping aside so he could get to Irina. She watched silently as he leaned down and kissed the side of Irina’s head, causing her to smile and kiss his cheek in return.

“Good night, princess.”

“Good night, Daddy!”

Ethan then walked over to Elijah’s side and gave his forehead a kiss. Y/N curled her arms around herself, the tears coming back up. She had never thought her baby boy would ever get to experience a father’s love. She didn’t think he would even get to meet Ethan. Watching Ethan with Elijah never failed to make her eyes water. Ethan was smiling down at his children, watching Irina turn to her side and throw her arm around Elijah as she closed her eyes. He thought he would break down in tears right then and there.

“I love you two.”

Feeling like an outsider watching Ethan interact with his children, Y/N quietly exited the room and decided to distract herself with cleaning up the table and doing the dishes. It worked for some time before Ethan decoded to join her there too. She didn’t even have to turn and look to know he was in the kitchen. She could sense his presence, feel his molten honey gaze on her back. Closing her eyes, she sighed.

She had spent three long years mastering the art of blocking off each and every thought of Ethan’s from her mind. When he had left her, it had felt like her whole world had stopped. She hadn’t been the woman she used to be before Ethan and she certainly was not the woman she was with Ethan. He had left and he had forever changed a part of her. It felt like he’d almost flipped the switch of emotions in her when he’d left her. The only person she loved from that day till today, was her son.

Yet, she still managed to sense his presence whenever he entered a room. She didn’t like that one bit.

Without lifting her gaze from the bowl she was cleaning, Y/N said, “Thank you.”

“For?” Ethan inquired. She had put her hair up in a bun which made her slender neck look longer from the back. Y/N had always been stunning but she somehow got even more beautiful in all these years she spent away from Ethan.

“You know what for.” Y/N turned just enough to flash him a barely there smile. It took him by surprise because although it was barely a smile, her lips had still tipped up and that was the most he had gotten from her recently. Y/N Y/L/N didn’t smile. Not at Ethan, she didn’t. Ethan dared to walk closer to her until he was standing beside her. “You didn’t have to bring Elijah back but you did.”

Y/N wasn’t close with her parents and she had no siblings so she and Elijah only had each other to celebrate Christmas with. Her baby boy never had any family besides herself in all the three years of his life because his father had left her before she even knew she was pregnant with his child. She had tried to tell Ethan about her pregnancy after she had found out but he had never picked up her calls. After giving birth to Elijah all alone, no one there to sit with her and hold her hand as she went through the worst pain of her life, Y/N had given Ethan one last call.

That one had been picked up but not by Ethan. It had been his wife on the line. The same wife he had cheated on, with her. Y/N had never called his phone ever again.

Three years later, life so cruelly brought Ethan back to her doorstep and he found out he had another child besides his precious daughter. Y/N let Ethan into her sons life because he was his father, he had the right to know his son. She didn’t want to take away Elijah’s chance of knowing his father either, so with Ethan came his extended family and Elijah finally had a big family.

He adored his uncle and aunt and, oh lord, did he love his grammy Lisa with all his heart. Today was the first Christmas Elijah was to spend with Ethan and his family and Y/N had allowed Ethan to keep him for the day.

There was no chance of Y/N tagging along for the celebrations because none of Ethan’s family liked her. Why would they? She had been the other woman in Ethan’s marriage.

The thought made her wince.

Y/N had been totally prepared to spend Christmas alone but late in the afternoon, the doorbell had rung and she had opened the door to a very hyper Elijah, a smiling Irina and Ethan wishing you a merry Christmas.

He had brought Elijah back for her but when he and Irina began to leave, Elijah started crying. He had been so happy all day, Y/N didn’t want to be the reason for his tears so she asked Ethan to stay.

And now here they were.

“I couldn’t take away your son from you on Christmas day.”

“Thank you.” She didn’t know what else to say.

Her eyes came up to his for a split second before she looked back down. Ethan wanted to take both her hands in his and place a kiss on each hand. He wanted to take her face in his hands and make her look into his eyes. He wanted to lean in and kiss her rosy lips until she smiled.

She always used to smile when he used to kiss her. Ever since she came back into his life, Ethan had barely seen her smile if she wasn’t directing it at her son. It pained him to see how hollow her eyes always looked when she wasn’t looking at her son.

He had broken something in her when he’d told her he couldn’t continue to see her because he’d gotten his wife pregnant, three years ago. He had seen the colour drain from her face that day when he’d told her he was going to mend his marriage and the first step in that direction was breaking things off with her. She hadn’t said anything then, just like she doesn’t say anything now.

Ethan wished she would let him mend her. He wanted to fix what he had broken all those years ago. He desperately wanted back the Y/N who had mended him when his strained relationship with his wife had broken him.

It’s ironic how Y/N came into his life when he was at his lowest and she helped him feel again. She offered him a shoulder to lean on when he desperately needed one, she offered him her beautiful kind smiles, her welcoming arms, her encouraging words, her heart.

It’s funny how Iris never did.

And it’s sad how he threw it all in her face and left.

“Y/N,” Ethan reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a blue velvet box. She frowned at him when he extended it to her. “Merry Christmas.”

Y/N was looking at him with confusion swimming in her eyes. It was like she couldn’t fathom why he’d get her something for Christmas. God, what had he done to her? She questioned every little thing people did for her, like she could simply not stomach the fact that people could still offer her things without asking her for something in return.

“You didn’t have to do this.” She spoke barely above a whisper and her hands remained at her sides. She didn’t once try to take the present from Ethan.

“I wanted to.” He admitted, adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed in nervousness. His cheeks were feeling hot.

“I didn’t get you anything.”

“You have given me Elijah. What gift can be more precious than that?” Ethan genuinely didn’t deserve to slide into her and Elijah’s life as easily as she let him. He had honestly thought Y/N would be difficult about him spending time with her son. She had single handedly raised him thus far, Ethan had never even known he had a child apart from Irina and it wasn’t Y/N’s fault he hadn’t known. It had been him who had ignored all her calls when she’d tried to tell him. He had thought she would just ask him to see her again, that if he got back in contact with her, she would somehow convince him to fall back into her and he couldn’t let that happen. He had promised Iris that Y/N had been a mistake and that he would never do anything to jeopardise the relationship he had with her again.

Well, Iris was now buried in St. Jude’s Cemetery and Y/N ?

It seemed like he had killed a part of the woman he had fallen in love with all those years ago.

Right now, she was staring at him with an expression he couldn’t comprehend. She looked pretty indifferent still, but those eyes held a spark in them. And then she spoke what was on her mind and Ethan’s heart shattered. “Are you giving me this as a payment for having Elijah and and raising hi-“

Ethan’s eyes widened and he instantly dropped his hand back to his side. “What?! Y/N, is this how low you think of me? I would never-I just wanted to give you a Christmas present, that was it.”

“Why though? I’m not your family? I’m not your friend? I’m basically a stranger to yo-“ There it was. That flicker of emotion in her eyes. She didn’t look indifferent anymore. She looked angry.

“A stranger?” Ethan whispered in disbelief, every word that came out of her mouth slicing a gaping wound into his heart. “After everything we’ve had-“

Ethan noticed how Y/N locked her jaw at his words and crossed her arms across her chest. A defensive stance, a brace to protect her heart.

“What have we had, Ethan? Huh?”

“Y/N.”

“I’ll tell you. We were nothing but fuck buddies.”

Ethan winced, bile rising to his throat. His fist tightened around the velvet box exactly how Y/N’s words tightened an invisible fist around his heart.

“We fucked and you used me to numb the pain your alcoholic wife caused you and when you didn’t need me anymore after her recovery, you left. Simple as that.” Y/N’s throat felt chocked up, revisiting the darkness that had started in her heart and slowly spread everywhere, both inside and out. She gave him everything she had, went against everything she had taught herself about self preservation, brought all her walls down so he could enter and ruin her. He did exactly that. “I was the other woman and women like us get exactly what I got. I got you for a few months and I dared to forget that you would always belong to your wife. You did the right thing, going back to her. You did the right thing by not leaving the woman you married for the whore you cheated on her with.”

“Stop!” Ethan saw red when she called herself a whore. She didn’t even flinch, didn’t even blink. She just stared at him with the same indifferent look in her eyes that haunted him in his dreams. Those eyes held the entire universe once. Now, there wasn’t even a flicker of light in them.

What had he done? Had he really made her feel like she deserved what she got? Did she really think herself to be a whore? Ethan couldn’t even bare to think of the word and there she was, saying it like it meant nothing.

“Ethan. You don’t have to do all this for me.” Y/N pointed to the present he’d bought her. She didn’t even see what the box held inside it, she didn’t want to. “When you said you wanted to be in Elijah’s life, I understood we’d have to see each other sometimes. I’m his mother, you’re his father, that’s the only relationship we have. You don’t have to build another one.”

Ethan just stood there, stunned into silence while Y/N just turned right back to the sync and began loading up the dishes into the dishwasher. He couldn’t believe this was the same woman who was telling bedtime stories to his kids just a few minutes ago. She was a different person around Elijah, even Irina. It was like she only turned on her emotions for the kids and the rest of the world got her ice cold glare.

He didn’t realise he had been standing beside her, looking at her like he was trying to look for traces of the old her, but he got snapped out of his train of thoughts when she cut him a cold look and announced, “I’ve prepared the guest room for you. There are blankets and pillows and two water bottles. Ask me if you need anything else, I’ll be in my room.”

In direct words, she meant to say, “Leave me the fuck alone.” So he did just that. With a heavy heart, Ethan pocketed the necklace he had bought her, feeling hurt beyond measure that she didn’t even open the box and see it. Then again, what did he expect from a woman he screwed over so bad? He stole one last glance at her, hoping to find her looking at him but she was still very much engrossed in the dishes. Ethan pressed his lips together and made his way into the guest bed room.

That’s what he was in her house. A guest.

What had he done?

#ethan dolan imagines #grayson dolan imagines #something borrowed #forgive me for this abomination #🙉

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