Adam Jensen's apartment proves he's a vain dick

The Deus Ex series is often lauded for its conspiracy-laden plot and the wealth of options to approach its gameplay, and rightfully so, but it also deserves praise for an oft-overlooked aspect: its fantastic world-design. Some of the best moments in any of the DX games, including the unjustly-maligned Invisible War, happen while idly exploring their various hub locations, finding secrets and stumbling on side-missions.

Most of the things you'll find during exploration are helpful, but not terribly important - an extra item here, a conversation fleshing out the setting there. Every now and then, though, something truly brilliant will happen. The first game is probably still the best in this regard: a thorough exploration of the New York City sewers nets some mind-blowing foreshadowing, and arriving at a well-traversed location from a new direction in a way that makes perfect sense while still being completely unexpected provides the sort of mind-blowing "aha!" moment that the Soulsborne games have become famous for.

Having put around 10 hours into Mankind Divided, I feel like it has built incredibly well on this proud tradition, with areas larger than ever before and spaces that feel even more detailed and lived-in than those of Human Revolution. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the game is freaking beautiful, with some furnishings detailed to the point of photo-realism.

However, none of these locations and spaces are more important than the apartment of beefy protagonist Adam Jensen, not because of the amount of time players will spend in it, but because of what it reveals about our hero: namely, that he is a shallow, vain man, obsessed with his image and with proving his significance to everyone around him.

Our journey into the self-important mind of Adam Jensen begins inauspiciously enough. Like all of us, Adam keeps something to read in bed, as well as a box of tissues for when you gotta have that morning wank. Or night-time wank. Or mid-day wank. Everybody wanks, is what I'm saying, even dour hunks like our man Jensen.

Actually, how does Jensen wank? I know it's gauche to ask about the intimate habits of oppressed people, but I really gotta wonder. Even us naturals have all bruised our intimate parts at some point just by rubbing it too hard, and I've seen Jensen punch through concrete walls like they were made out of cardboard. Even if you get around the problem of bruising your johnson by getting it caught between your mechanical hand's moving parts, you still have to contend with the fact that climaxing could see you popping your ding dong's head right off like it was one of those squeeze toys. Choking the bishop, indeed.

But this is where it all goes off the rails.

Oh, you're reading Let It Go: A Book About Learning, are ya, Jensen? Oh, you're so intellectual! Look at Adam Jensen, everybody! Look how smart he is, learning to learn as he does! And are those... are those fucking candles and letters in 2029? Trying to look like a big romantic, are you, Adam my boy? Oh, we're all so impressed. We're all so impressed with the candles and letters that you definitely use.

And yes, of course Adam Jensen has a mirror in his room. He couldn't go a moment without looking at his own abs, reaffirming to himself how attractive he is. Joke's on you, though, Adam - Eidos forgot to program a reflection for you to look at! Have fun flexing in your bedroom now, you dick.

This is another great example of the attention to detail in this game. Not only does the table look great, the CPU here is so detailed and realistic that I could mistake it for a picture of an actual card. I have no idea why Jensen is tinkering with it, but he's probably just trying to make us think he's so smart and good with his hands that he just leaves stuff like this lying around.

What? Don't you write down Maxwell's equations on post-it notes and hang them around your room? Well, you're clearly not as smart as Adam Jensen! And yes, Adam, I know this is one of Maxwell's equations, but at least I'm not being an arrogant cock about it. Jeez.

I take some comfort in knowing that even a badass android cop needs to make meaningless, stupid graphs that'll just end up in a trash can as part of his job. This is the real Adam Jensen here, folks: a boring guy who makes boring graphs. What a stooge.

Hey, I'm Adam Jensen! Look at all my books! I've read "Life and Regrets" and "Orpheus Slain"! I'm so complicated! But I'm also fun - just look at this one book I've read called "General Tao: the Man Behind the Chicken"! That's not a serious book! Ha ha ha! HA HA HA! HA HA HA!

Well tell me this, Jensen. If you're really such an avid reader -

If you really care so much about books, tell me -

WHY THE FUCK DO YOU HAVE TWO COPIES OF SO MANY BOOKS?

Here I can sympathize with Adam. I dig the hell out of Absinthe, and any fellow member of the wormwood fan club will have experienced that moment where you've had a bit too much and found yourself hugging the kitchen trash can.

Thing is, Adam, you don't need to be so pretentious to get people interested. Just show us some of DAT ASS, man!

Oh boy, I bet we're going to see his bits and pieces!

Ah, you fucking tease.

So as you can see, I was very cross with Adam. Unlike most people, I actually really like both the character of Adam Jensen as well as Elias Toufexis' portrayal of him. For all the criticism of his growly, monotone voice, I find the gruff and terse delivery to fit the character perfectly, and it makes the occasional moment of wit or genuine humanity that much more effective. Serious as he is, Adam Jensen has made me laugh quite a bit - a lot more than characters in other games that were supposed to be funny or charming.

No one is as cruel as a lover scorned, and looking at his apartment, I felt personally - PERSONALLY - singled out and scorned by Jensen. Until I saw this:

Yes, Adam Jensen had a doggie dog, and no dog owner can be that bad a guy. Maybe he can be redeemed. Maybe I can still fix him. So, Adam, if your'e reading this, here's some tips on what you can do to make sure your apartment does not reflect poorly on you.

For example, how about a singing fish? They're cute. They're fun. They say, "hey, look at me, I can be a fun guy. I don't just walk around punching people doing an impression of Christian Bale all the time". (This particular singing fish, sadly, does not actually sing.)

Also, how about folding towels into swans? It sends the message that you're a clean boy, but also good with your hands and possessed of a softer side.

Finally, I know I said I like Absinthe, but having it out in the open does make you come off like a bit of a junkie. How about some Amaretto instead? It's tasty, sophisticated, and if you mix it equal parts with coke, you get an alcoholic Dr Pepper. For real!

Of course, there are some things to avoid.

First of all, elaborate modern art with a name trying to sound poignant just makes you look pompous. No thanks.

Also, avoid using these outdated internet memes. Portal came out 22 years ago, for fuck's sake. And no, it's not funny to say you used to be something until you took an arrow to the knee, either.

Well, that's it for now. We took quite an emotional journey, from loving Mankind Divided, to thinking Adam Jensen is a dick, to thinking maybe we could change him. Only time will tell if opening our hearts and taking a chance will pay off. In the mean time, we can all enjoy playing the game, which is what I could have been doing instead of writing this stupid post.

Hold on, though, is that...

... is that on Xbox?

Yep, definitely an Xbox.

ספיישל ט"ו באב: 5 המשחקים הרומנטיים ביותר לגיימרים אמיתיים

היי, אוהבות ואוהבים!

כולנו מכירים את הסיטואציה הזאת: הדייט הולך נפלא, יש ביניכם קליק מהרגע הראשון, אתם צוחקים, אתם נפתחים, אתם מתרגשים. אחרי כמה דרינקים, אתם עולים אליו לדירה, והוא סוף-סוף שואל את השאלה שחיכית לשמוע כל הערב:

"מה את רוצה לשחק בפלייסטיישן?"

בשלב הזה את לפחות רגועה שלא בזבזת את הזמן שלך על שחקן אקס-בוקס, אבל עכשיו מגיע רגע האמת: באיזה משחק תבחרי? אם תגידי שאת רוצה לשחק במריו, זה עלול לשלוח את המסר שאת לא מעוניינת בקשר רציני (וגם אין מריו לפלייסטיישן, אז תיסגרי על עצמך בבקשה). אם תגידי שאת רוצה לשחק ב-Call of Duty, חס וחלילה, הוא עלול לחשוב שאת קז'ואלית מטונפת ולאבד עניין. 

אך אל דאגה! כמומחה גם במשחקי וידאו וגם בענייני הלב, אני כאן כדי להמליץ לכם על 5 משחקים שיבטיחו שהוא לא ילך לחפש את הנסיכה שלו בטירה אחרת.

5) על המשמר

על המשמר הוא משחק של שיתוף-פעולה, שיאפשר לכם לבחון את חוזק היחסים ביניכם. בין אם המיי שֵׁלְךָ תחסום את כל האולטים של המקרי שֵׁלָךְ, או אם האנה שֵׁלְךָ תפספס את הטרייסר שֵׁלָךְ בכל פעם שצריך לרפא אותה, אתם תגלו עד סוף הערב אם הקשר שלכם חזק מספיק בשביל להזיז את המטע"ד ולהגן על הנקודה.

4) פסאז'

פסאז' הוא משחק מהפכני בו על הגיבור לעבור מרחק גדול ככל האפשר מצד שמאל לצד ימין לפני מותו בסופה של ספירה לאחור. בדרך הוא יכול לאסוף חפצים, ואף לפגוש בבת-זוג שתעזור לו לאסוף עוד יותר חפצים, אך תגרום לצעידה ימינה להיות איטית יותר. זה הלקח שאנחנו יכולים ללמוד מפסאז': הזוגיות גורמת לנו למות מוקדם יותר, אבל עם יותר רכוש. אהבה - אין כמוה!

3) זיז מתכת מוצק

זיז מתכת מוצק מספר את סיפורו של נחש מוצק (אז כבר סקסי), חייל עשוי ללא חת שצריך להציל את העולם ממתקפה גרעינית. לנחש אין זמן לשטויות כמו אהבה, אך כל זה משתנה כשהוא פוגש את מרי-אל, טירונית נחושה שרוצה להוכיח את עצמה בשדה הקרב, אותה נחש מזהה לפי תנועות הישבן שלה (אני רציני לגמרי). גלו אם יש לכם את הכוח להציל את נפשכם התאומה על-ידי זה שתלחצו על איקס ממש מהר, אם אהבה יכולה לפרוח בשדה הקרב, ואם יש אסטרטגיה אמיתית בשביל לנצח את וולקן רייבן החרא שימות אלף פעם בייסורים אמן.

2) הלך הבית

הלך הבית הוא משחק שבו לא ממש עושים משהו, או אפילו רואים משהו. יש "עלילה" שאפשר לגלות לקרוא, אבל סיפור האהבה האמיתי כאן הוא האהבה שלנו - קהילת הגיימינג - לעצמנו. הנה משחק שמדבר על דמויות להט"ב, ובכל זאת אנחנו ממש, ממש אוהבים אותו. זה לא משנה אם הוא באמת מהווה דוגמה טובה לסוג הייצוג שקהילת הלהט"ב ראויה לקבל - מה שחשוב הוא שאנחנו מרוצים מהייצוג הזה. וזה בדיוק המסר שהמבקרים שהיללו את המשחק שלחו לקהילת הלהט"ב: זה הכי טוב שמגיע לכם. כל הכבוד לנו!

1) גבעת הַס 2

גבעת הס 2 הוא סיפורו של דונלד סאת'רלנד, אדם שקיבל מכתב מאשתו המתה המפציר בו להגיע לעיירה גבעת הס, בה בילו את ירח הדבש שלהם. במהלך הביקור בעיירה, הוא פוגש באישה בשם מרים שנראית בדיוק כמו אשתו, אבל עם יותר איפור, ועליו להחליט אם להתעלם ממנה לגמרי ולהשאיר אותה למות או לשכוח את אשתו לגמרי ולהביע עניין רק במרים, בלי שום אפשרות באמצע כי משחקי וידאו לא יודעים מה זה מתינות. בין לבין, עליו להתמודד גם עם ראש משולש, החתיך שמשיג את כל הבנות ולא מפסיק להציק לו. גבעס הס 2 ילמד אתכם על יחסים שבינו ובינה, על יחסי הורים וילדים, על מיניות, ומעל הכל - על עצמכם. 

מקווה שזה עזר! עכשיו אם תסלחו, אני הולך לבלות את שאר הערב עם הגבר שאני אוהב.

הנה, Dark Souls חושב שאני בחור טוב.

Back In 1995 - Review In Pictures

It's Silent Hill, only terrible!

Some things have to be seen to be believed, and Back In 1995, the latest game to try and exploit nostalgia to sell a shoddy piece of shit recapture the atmosphere of old-school horror games - most notably, Silent Hill - is one of those things. I could go on and on about everything that the game does wrong and everything the developers misunderstand about the appeal of the games they're trying to ape, and to some extent I will, but trying to offer a reasoned analysis of Back In 1995 seems like trying to do an autopsy on a Lovecraftian being: a sure recipe for insanity and mad ramblings.

So this time around, I decided to go for something a little different and just show you some of the highlights from the game. As such, be wary that unlike most reviews, this one is very spoiler heavy. And while this game is certainly in running for worst game I've played all year, I... kinda recommend it, actually. It's not cheap, especially for what it is, but if you have 12$ and two hours of your life to burn, it is one of the most uniquely bad gaming experiences you'll have in life. Ideally, I'd picture people playing this and then coming back to this review so we could all laugh about it together, like you would do with The Room or any other movie of that caliber. If you just want a sample of the wrongness that is Back In 1995, though - please proceed.

Also, since I feel like this might come off as nit-picking, I would like to stress that this is all I'm giving you here - a sample. The entire game is nothing short of a disaster, and it had me with my jaw open the entire time barely managing to wrap my head around the last stupid thing that happened just as another stupid thing came to take its place. I was honestly holding back, and I still had my finger on the screenshot key for almost my entire playthrough.

Having said all that, let's get right into this shit. Literally.

The turd monsters were the first thing people noticed about Back In 1995's trailer, and the most obvious sign that there was no hope for this game. Of course, a good horror game relies mostly on atmosphere and a feeling of uncertainty to inspire dread in the player, but it's rare for survival-horror to work without a tangible threat that could be lurking around every corner. Once you realize your main baddie in the game is the most laughable thing you could possibly be fighting, it's hard to maintain any fear or suspense. Especially when you realize said baddie can be stun locked and killed in three melee strikes, and that, incredibly, you can sometimes kill it by hitting it through the goddamn wall.

Brilliant.

To say the game is badly written is a massive understatement. As you will see below, it's not a language issue, because the developer is capable of expressing himself in English quite competently. It just seems like everything about the game and the setting has been an afterthought.

Yes, I'd imagine having a key to a door would help you open it.

I communicate with my co-workers this way all the time. But hey, at least it's better than the puzzle where you have a 3-digit padlock and you need to figure out the combination and uh... oh.

That's not the only time the game treats like an idiot, either.

An item in a video game that needs to be... used? You have to use it... somewhere? 

Mind. Blown.

Very often, it seems like the developer didn't even bother to make sure that the text actually describes what is shown on screen. Quality assurance? What's that?

Actually, that's... on the chair.

Nope, that's just a hole in the floor. Pretty sure you could jump right past it, too.

I have no words.

After going through a few rooms, you find the other main enemy in the game - a weird pink bird-looking monster. 

This one takes all of four melee hits to go down, and is stun-locked just as easily. In fact, the only monster that can't be stun-locked with melee is the third and final monster, which serves as a boss of sorts, and which - embarrassingly - actually managed to startle me, mostly due to having a semi-competent reveal in the midst of a lot of dumb shit. 

However, that effective moment is wasted as soon as the cutscene ends and the monster starts... walking in the opposite direction from you.

This thing has absolutely no interest in me.

Almost every narrative-based game has to force you to visit specific locations in a certain order to get the effect the developer was aiming for, but few games are as transparent about it as Back In 1995. At one point in the game, a character called GP sends you to retrieve some documents for him, at which point you get the following dialogue:

What... you gave me back the documents? Why didn't you just tell me to take the documents to the other building in the first place, you ass? 

When you do get to the next building, you're supposed to be startled by a guy calling out to you, which would have been far more effective if you couldn't just... see him on the roof right there well before it happens.

Of course, if you try to take the documents to the next building without going back to GP, you get this message:

Whoa whoa, relax, player. This isn't a world we've built for you to explore and interact with. You do what we tell you, when we tell you. This is a game where a door you need to go through remains locked until you read all the data logs lying around - which are, as we all know, the best story-telling device you can have in a video game.

Insultingly, this game actually forces you to wait a few seconds before you can skip a page of text, as if it's really important that you read through its sad attempt at a story.

It's become all too common for developers to have this strange pride in their work that is in no way reflected in actual game design or technical attention to detail. I don't expect ground-breaking visuals from indie games, but you can often see the love and effort poured into the better ones. Then there's Back In 1995, which takes forever to change camera angels even when you move through an entire area where you can't see your character:

Or this actual camera angle from the game:

Or this door that you can only open if you're not right next to it:

But hey, at least there aren't really obvious bugs, like clipping through large objects in a very limited space, right?

Awesome.

But is there any merit to that story that the game is so desperate to tell you? You may be surprised to find out that no, not really. It's extremely predictable, and it doesn't help that very early on, you come across this painting marked as being from 2013:

Gee I wonder if there will be a twist where we find out it's not 1995

Well who could see that coming? But it's all building to a really important point, people:

SYMBOLISM!!!11

After a fake ending, the game returns you to the first area, where you find a flashlight that, once turned on, causes all the lights in the game to go out. It's another surprisingly powerful moment, threatened and scared than anything in the game leading up to it.

At least it would be, if the game didn't crash after the fake ending, and if a bug didn't prevent the lights from going out at the right moment. Again, the game wants to ape the great survival-horror titles of the 90s, but without the willingness to put in the hard work they did to make their brilliance shine through despite their technical limitations. 

As a result, nothing about Back In 1995 feels genuine. As the developer himself says in the post-ending commentary that ensues:

And that could be said about practically anything in Back In 1995: it's all a gimmick. Resident Evil had turret controls because the first PlayStation didn't have dual analog sticks. Silent Hill had fog because the PlayStation wasn't powerful enough to render the large environments Team Silent wanted to use. Why does Back In 1995 do anything that it does? Just because. Just to make you think of the old horror games you liked, in the hopes that maybe you'd like it by-proxy.

In fact, this seems almost conscious:

As far as the developer is concerned, Back In 1995 isn't supposed to be a piece of art or even entertainment. It's pure escapism, without merit in and of itself. But that's not what its inspirations were. People are still playing RE and SH to this day, but the vapid power fantasies of yesteryear have long been forgotten by all but the very nostalgic, just like the vapid power fantasies churned out today by the likes of Ubisoft and modern Square-Enix are destined to be. Escapism is shallow; media that invokes something genuine in the audience is timeless.

The developer goes on to express concern about the way games today are made and consumed. To me, this is the most troubling part of the commentary. Yes, there's a lot of garbage coming out nowadays. But as far as I'm concerned, we're living in a golden age of gaming - a time where there are more games appealing to more people than ever before. The gatekeeping, privileged attitude that games are being destroyed because they are not exactly like what they were in the 1990s has led to some pretty terrible stuff over the last few years, and Back In 1995 has hardly earned the right to claim to represent a superior attitude to gaming.

But the developer still seems satisfied:

Fair enough. If the developer's job was to make me thing about games old and new, he certainly succeeded.

I'd think that a game developer's job is to make good games.

But what do I know, right?

Ugh, I should've known DarkSydePhil had something to do with this.

Score Calculation: Well, it has two good moments, so that's a

Final Score: 2/10

Verdict: Turret controls, polygon graphics, clunky melee - I already left you, and you're better off left behind. I mean, If we're already doing out-of-context 90s references...

New Song - Besofo Shel Davar (In the End)

I'm a big fan of blues, and even though it's not my usual style, I have a lot of fun with putting lots of bluesy touches in my metal. Besofo Shel Davar is the bluesiest I've ever gotten, and is one of my shortest and simplest song, and yet I love this one. It's very straightforward and it kicks plenty of ass as a result. Check it out!

Also, this song is in Hebrew. Yes I am Israeli, but I assure you, I'm one of the good ones.