The Substatic Monthly: November

This is now a Swann Arlaud fansite

November comes to a close, and as I desperately try to kick back the encroaching wall of Christmas festivities that threatens to approach even October, I have engaged with a hell of a lot of media in the past 30 days. Here is but a brief summary of some of the stuff I’ve been up to.

GAMES

Mineko’s Night Market

Went into this eager to see what the cutesy 2D-3D slice of life sim had to offer and unfortuantely I found my excitement waning the more I played. An incredibly solid game with a great art style that ultimately reveals itself to be a bit shallow and uninteresting once you’ve experienced everything it has to offer.

Which is long before the credits roll.

I think it’s a symptom of the game apeing a lot of the design sensibilities of the Animal Crossing series while not really reconciling with the fact that those games are meant to be played in small chunks over large stretches of time. Condensed here, you end up experiencing the worst version of this idea. A real shame, I had high hopes for this game.

Jusant

Unfortunately I had to abandon a script about this game because it wasn’t really working, but I absolutely loved playing Jusant. A brilliant execution of a great idea. A pristine, streamlined, smooth as silk approximation of the experience of bouldering for those of us with no upper body strength and a deeply ingrained fear of heights.

Sophisticated in its simplicity, what’s really fascinating about this game is that it seems way more interested in the internal lives of the people who once lived here than showing you cool vistas. The climbing is integral to an extremely condensed and focussed narrative that’s an absolute joy to unwrap. Undoubtedly one of the games of the year, and by a wide margin DontNod’s best work to date.

Forspoken

I cannot in good faith stand here and tell you that Forspoken is a good game. It’s just fine, in execution and ideas. It’s story is fine. It’s gameplay is fine. It looks nice. But what I really appreciated about this game is that it’s one of very few ‘Open World’ games I’ve played that uses it’s size to elevate its mechanics.

The magic parkour thing it’s doing is extremely tactile and fun, and the distances you travel shows off how well this game engine handles such lightning fast speeds. It’s also remarkably short for an open world game, I was done in less than 10 hours and I think the game is much, much better for that. If you see it on sale anywhere it’s definitely worth a shot.

Thirsty Suitors

Another contender as one of the games of the year, this weird and wonderful sort of anti-dating sim/Persona-esque RPG/Tony Hawks Pro Skater-like/ Cooking sim melds many genres together, resulting in an experience that, while mechanically quite rudimentary, is deeply compelling. One of its great strengths is how culturally specific it is, exploring an aspect of society we don’t often see, especially in such a stark and occasionally unflattering light.

Thirsty Suitors could so easily have been a memed-to-the-gills crowdpleasing dating sim but instead it asks you to reconcile with the complicated messiness of relationships young, old and intergenerational. I also appreciate being able to experience an explicitly queer narrative that isn’t just completely saccharin nonsense. Us LGBTQA+ folk are just as capable of being disaster artists as anyone else!

Astro’s Playroom

Nothing to say about this one. It’s rad. It’s the right length. It’s the perfect game for anyone who likes to rotate 3D objects in their mind.

FILMS

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3

I didn’t love this as much as other people do. What is there is often really compelling but it feels very much like James Gunn knew he probably isn’t going to make another one of these so he fit every single idea he possibly had into one film.

The result is one very compelling and complete narrative thread pulled every which way the wind blows by a score of other less interesting ones. The Starlord-Gamora thing needed it’s own space, and Adam Warlock in particular was wickedly underused considering how funny Will Poulter is in that role. I liked it well enough.

The Killer

Will have a post up about some of the more interesting facets of David Fincher’s latest dark comedy thriller later on, but for now let’s just say I really enjoyed this. It’s a gorgeous looking film, and incredibly funny.

Michael Fassbender as a buffoonish hitman who doesn’t realise how bad he is at his job is an immediately endearing concept, and beyond anything else it’s a wonderfully mechanical film, perhaps the best adaptation of the Hitman games we’ll ever get. Really good.

Ballerina

A lot to love about this slick Korean action flick. Loads of colourful, textured sets, great camera work, full of quirky moments but also a quietly beautiful central relationship that starts in tragedy and only gets more sorrowful from there.

Unfortunately, even though it’s a tight-90, the film has what I consider horrible pacing issues, where a lot of scenes go on for 1-2 minutes too long and the big set pieces often feel a bit directionless. Still would reccomend watching it, if nothing else for a great flamethrower scene.

The Mirror

I think at some point I’m going to have to admit that I’m just not a Tarkovsky guy. Obviously a good film, but a bit too esoteric and poetic for what my brain wants from cinema at the moment. It’s cool that it’s just up on YouTube for anyone to see though.

A Haunting in Venice

Kenneth Branagh is really coming into his own with these Poirot adaptations. This one arguably the best of the three, but also not as flashy, feels more like a really polished version of a feature length TV episode but in a good way. A great Sunday night kind of flick.

Anatomy of a Fall

Likely my personal film of the year, Anatomy of a Fall is a stunning, brilliantly written courtroom drama masquerading as a whodunnit. What it does instead of the obvious allows it to breathe new life into a very tired genre, with a slew of absolutely incredible performances including some of the best Dog acting i’ve ever seen. Its a film I will probably think about for the rest of my life.

MUSIC

Risk of Rain Returns - Chris Christodolou

A remaster of the original soundtrack to the cult roguelike classic. This is probably the best videogame soundtrack of all time. An absolute onslaught of bangers that sounds way bigger and way more expensive than it probably is. Touches of Tubular Bells and a big taste of far out sci fi rock anthems. I could listen to this forever.

This Heathen Land - Green Lung

Metal for folk who don’t really like metal but like Ghost. Great album. That kind of folksy moss ridden anachronistic rennaisance faire kind of vibe. I really dig it.

Unofficial Wii Sports Soundtrack - Gabriel Gundacker

The most talented Vine orphan made an incredibly convincing fake soundtrack of Wii Sports tunes that are all just very cute and fun. It’s not quite ‘you are my daaaad! You’re my dad! Boogie woogie woogie’, but not far off.

Titanic Rising - Weyes Blood

Beautiful, kind of old soul Carpenters X Burt Bacharach X Lana Del Ray kind of thing going on here. Really lovely album from a singer I really didn’t know anything about until the song Andromeda popped up on my discover weekly.

That’s it for this month! See you in December for some more curios and oddities from yours truly. All the best! xx