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It Couldn’t Happen to Me…
It was May 2020. I was taking one of my daily walks around the neighborhood, lost in the existential fog of those early Pandemic days. I was listening to an episode of Retronauts on Etrian Odyssey, Atlus’s series of dual-screen (mostly) dungeon crawlers. Jeremy Parrish, longtime evangelist of the series, was opening up about how Continue reading
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Kojima x Anno
I’m surprised there hasn’t—to my knowledge—ever been an promotional interview between Hideo Kojima and Hideaki Anno.* Fans love ascribing the label ‘auteur’ to these two, and boy, do they share a lot in common. Maybe it was growing up in an increasingly bureaucratized Japan cast in the shadow of military defeat. Whatever the case, there Continue reading
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Mid-90s Thirst
Front Mission asks the questions; Snatcher provides the answers. Continue reading
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Kojima-esque
Kojima’s name has become synonymous with cinema. His love of film is well-documented—both in and out of his games. Not only does he routinely upload movie theater selfies to his Twitter, but he’s made a habit of casting well-known actors (Kiefer Sutherland, Norman Reedus, Léa Seydoux, etc.) in his games. But for his Hollywood bluster, Continue reading
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Jersey Shore
Apologies for the lack of updates—the Hero daughters were sick this past week, thus derailing my extracurricular activities. Anyway, back to Silent Hill! *cue ominous Yamaoka track* Building on my previous post, in addition to structuring Silent Hill around various school hubs, I’ve always thought that a shore town in the off-season would be a Continue reading
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Back to School
The trivia that Team Silent modeled Midwich Elementary after the school in Kindergarten Cop (1990) is repeated so often that it’s reaching Viggo-Mortenson-broke-toe-kicking-Uruk-hai-helmet levels. Instead, why don’t people question why an ELEMENTARY SCHOOL HAS A CHEMISTRY LAB!? On a more serious note, I feel that schools are such an appropriate setting for Silent Hill games. Continue reading
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Needle in a Haystack
Since I’m committed to playing a lot of fifth-gen games, I’ve got to get used to abstractions of early polygonal graphics. I spent 45 minutes last night trying to find the Library Reserve Key after having scoured every corner of that hellish school. Little did I know but I missed a prompt, obscured by limitations Continue reading
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A Sense of Place
In “The Philosophy of Composition,” (1846) Edgar Allan Poe argues that the short story is the ideal literary form on the grounds that it can be read in a single sitting. If the writer properly calibrates the atmosphere and mood of their story, the effect—especially re: horror—can be spectacular, as an emotional response can build Continue reading
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Sad Dad Game—The First?
“Numerous names of notorious figures from the past-flashed through Harry’s mind, their sinister images superimposed on his daughter. Those were the monsters that lurked in society, criminals that were preying on innocent children. What if Cheryl, a little girl alone and lost in an unfamiliar town, encountered one of them by pure chances?” (Silent Hill Continue reading
S.E.E.S. 