YouTube Obsession

I originally started watching Battlemode to get an understanding of the complicated fan-made and free suite of software for playing Battletech on PC: MegaMek. I quickly fell into a fascination with his videos of Shadow Empire, a game with absurdly deep 4x mechanics.

That’s an hour long video on just the set-up. I love it.

Watching

If 2025 was “Year of the Movie” this year is going to be ‘Year of the Classic Movie.” I’m making a conscious decision to watch more classic movies to expand my filmic knowledge. So be sure to follow me on Letterboxd for all the reviews.

MM

While watching Night of the Hunter from 1955, it’s easy to see how its dreamlike visuals effected film makers like Lynch and Cronenberg.

An American parable, acts of the western expansion, a fairytale of manifest destiny, a folk religion gospel. God exists and he rewards the innocent, the hard working and the faithful. Though con men and devils may leap about thee, God will lift you up lest you dash your foot on a switchblade.

MM

Another folktale of the more literal kind, Son of the White Mare from Marcell Jankovics in 1981, absolutely blew me away. I am convinced I will never see a movie of its like again.

It may surprise some readers but during the brief moment I was in college I planned to go into religious studies focusing on Myth and Folklore. I rarely talk about it because it was so brief but I bring it up now because it should be known that I love folklore and mythologies. I was especially reminded of the Norse Saga of the Volsungs and while I can’t recall if I read this myth exactly, it certainly follows the “rule of 3” so prevalent in those myths.

Son of the White Mare is the perfect translation of tale to the visual medium. Beautiful ethereal, elemental and horny af. Not a screen goes by that does not have a abstracted vagina or fallace. It rules.

Reading

Gonna put this here because I really don’t have another spot for it but…

Polymarket is fucking wild.

Bet on anything: The latest spasm in America’s late-stage capitalism death throws. I am definitely not the first person to talk about this, hell, I talked about how sport betting is ruining sports awhile back, so I have heard of Polymarket before but I had never actually gone to look at the site. And Jesus, if you are a person with any shred of humanity, nothing can prepare you for the absurd cruelty on display.

I was curious to take a look after seeing a tweet that went viral following Maduro’s kidnapping by American forces.

What the fuck is happening? Especially after learning that journalists, aware of the kidnapping operation before it was carried out refused to report on it out of safety concerns. So while reading this dark shit I stumbled across this gem…

And part of me was like…Should I?

I hate this place.

Playing

Before I get into my main points with Insomniac Games’ Spiderman 2 from 2023, I’ll give it its flowers.

The problem with most open worlds like Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTAV is that the map is huge and it’s made larger by how slow and cantankerous it is to traverse the map. Games like MGSV and Sleeping Dogs make their maps smaller but give them detail to make them feel dense. Spiderman 2, comes at it from a different direction, it makes the act getting from one side of its huge NYC map to the other fun and fast. Swinging around as Spiderman should be a main draw of a Spiderman game after all.

This game looks amazing. Many times I would be left thinking, “How did they do this?” Especially when close to a building and seeing people in the windows. Every building. I’m sure it’s a simple trick but it is very effective and goes a long way in making a believable NYC.

I enjoy the combat. It’s a little too complicated, at least in comparison to the first game. Made even more bloated by having to manage 3 skill upgrade trees. But not adding mechanics to the fighting system would anger more people.

However, by far the most common complaint I heard before playing Spiderman 2 was that it’s writing was terrible. Particularly, that the story doesn’t feel urgent and that most people have no sense to rush through the main quest. And herein lies the fundamental flaw of telling stories in open-world video games. How am I supposed to believe the urgency of the story when everything in the gameplay is telling me to do 6 EMF Science Experiments, collect 5 sand crystals and clear prowler hideouts first?

This is a problem that plagues open world design. However there have been a few games to overcome this cognitive dissonance. Watchdogs 2’s solution was to eschew any narrative urgency. Sure, there were mysteries that I, as the player wanted to solve but there weren’t any world ending symbiotes trying to kill everyone. Elden Ring does something similar because the player is told absolutely nothing and must explore the world to even find the story.

Hideo Kojima always attempts to combine narrative and gameplay. In Metal Gear Solid V, the player is the head of a mercenary band of soldiers stuck in “Just another day in a war without end.” So it makes sense for the player to continually taking side missions, over and over, making money just to go out an another mission. In Death Stranding the very act of exploring and completing side quests is essential to the narrative of the game.

Perhaps my favorite subversion of this open world problem is in Far Cry 3. The main character is the player. He is thrust into a savior position, practically worshiped as a deity, local women screw him, he gets rad(?) tribal tattoos and is essentially invincible, why would he ever want to conclude this story by getting off the island? Great stuff.

ANYWAY, I liked Spiderman 2. If you enjoyed Spiderman 1 and Miles Morales, you will probably enjoy it too.

Other Notables

** Japan isn’t a quirky outlier – it’s simply a society that started its capitalist decay earlier. And that decay looks surreal.

** Our priority with this newsletter is to share criticism that is unpredictable, readily objectionable, and sporadically enlightening…

** Cantankerous old computer nerd over-engineers outdated tech and complains about it the entire time? Cinema.