Halloween special: Amnesia unmasked? you'll never believe?

In the lead up to to the winter months a litany of new titles are released for the gaming masses to purchase with annual titles like: that one you’re sick to death of but which promises to be different this year, to that one you never got into and don’t really see the appeal of. There might even be something new in the mix, though i’d not count on that possibility too strongly. This season of releases ought to be worth covering in depth with a series of systematic and well informed analyses that tell you nothing you didn’t already know and feed into whatever opinion you already had. Unfortunately for those in “THAT” camp, there is a bigger and far more important date that falls soon… the eve of all saints day!

Grease is the word, another set of words is the systematic use of non disclosure agreements to silence witnesses in cases of sexual and racial harassment but that’s neither here nor there what is here is a discussion of the merits of a game i’ve barely played and not for many years. Amnesia, a game i’ve not played for many years: amnesia, game i’ve… amnesia. Wasn’t that amusing, almost as amusing as a legal system allowing individuals to use their wealth and connections to hide behaviour that is unacceptable in modern society.

I’m not trying to make a point here but i keep forgetting that, guess i have a nasty case of… forgetfulness, and also using a framework to protect the personal lives of public figures from journalistic overreach as a means to side step potential legal action. Amnesia is a very tense game, long periods of wandering solving le puzzles about are woven seamlessly with the encroachment of vicious and terrifying monsters that abuse and prey on the silenced and defenceless protagonist… using non disclosure agreements.

The environment warps and twists in unsettling and bizarre ways, often concealing the lurking terrors at a distance in patches of dark. This is placed against and limited ability to illuminate ones surrounding, that game itself is trying to keep you in the dark as a way to make it’s monsters more threatening, which adds to the horror of the experience. I honestly can’t think of any parallels i could draw, even subtextually; so i’ll move on.

I’d never use my powerful peerage as a objective writer of moral rights, a wrighter if you will, to preach to my audience, there’s only about ten of you anyway. I stick to my topics and with laser focus never straying a hair's width away from the raw, crinkle cut, mixed metaphorical truth! That being said i do wish to share my current suggestions for improving the law of this land, in a totally objective and factually way, this isn’t an opinion and if you think otherwise you’re probably quite thick: it should be illegal to die whilst ‘staying alive, by the beegees,’ is playing in the same room, doing so should carry a life sentence.

Instead of byzantine legal protections the wealthy should be forced to build giant mecha suits and go battle over the cities in a glorious display of steel on steel, rampaging around as walking skyscrapers. Turning back the tide of gentrification using their electrified chain swords and flamethrowers. A bare bones darwinistic law of the jungle will emerge where only those with the grit to use their untamed steel behemoths will be able to prosper in battles of untold spectacle and carnage. The hot bellowing fumes of machines drinking city worth's of fuel every second, impacts that’ll drown out those fucking lawnmowers and ground shaking beneath our feet as though being shelled by artillery fire will become a fact of life. All the while everyone else can go on drinking tea and nibbling on scones without having to worry about cases of sexual misconduct. It’ll all be that simple, problem solved!

In summary: amnesia , not a game for the faint hearted.
In summary: amnesia , not a game for the faint hearted.
In summary: amnesia , not a game for the faint hearted.
In summary: amnesia , not a game for the faint hearted.
In summary: amnesia , not a game for the faint hearted.

Cakes and videogames: a tenuous connection poorly thought out to meet an deadline?

When attempting humour on method is to play out the absurdity of taking an extreme position for comic effect. You may want an example to help illustrate my point but i assure you none is necessary, you see the idea is fucking awful! There’s nothing absurd about believing extreme things because thing i saw once on an anonymous comment thread said something about as obscene; I was only looking up the recipe for a cake.

“Bad comics often attempt to dissect the very nature of comedy as their opening gambit. Not only is this an bold but also abstract introduction to a set that is unwilling to anchor itself in an established norm. The true weight of thing becomes felt in the second stroke which leaves the comic with no obvious springboard to move off from and no norm to bring the audience back to.” - anon on the cake comments.
Why this was written on a baking forum is beyond me.

Cake is an opulent food. Marie Antoinette is purported to have remarked upon the revolting french peasantry “let them eat cake,” unfortunately for her their cheat day wasn’t until next Sunday. Following the strands of unjust aristocrats, confectioneries and opulence leads us to mario 64, where the titular character luigi is invited over for “cake,” while many have speculated on the true meaning of this, one hacker who broke into the game files found a .TXT file that clearly explained that “cake” was a euphemism for the systematic exploitation of the lower classes by the wealthy. This was then posted, not to a Nintendo forum but to a Cake forum which explains why it isn’t more widely known.

The video game equivalent of the cubism movement: minecraft, also has Cake as one of it’s items. It being one of the more complex items to craft in game as a symbol of it’s opulence. The player needs: wheat, sugar, eggs, neuroatypical tendencies and milk. No prizes for guess where i picked up that little tidbit.

Later on we’ll discuss the Cake in Portal but first i’d like to mention the function of cake in modern society. You see i didn’t find the recipe for my cake on the baking forums at all but on an mmorpg. You see outside the framework provided, that being the game, much of the ingredients lack any worth. Which is fine it’s a game after all, but it is one that keeps people engaging in menial activity for a reward contingent on their continued investment in a system which would leave them better off, in a monetary and temporal sense, were they to question and then abandon that structure. They are the filling in the cake.

Subtext is open to interpretation, like the layers of jam between two sandwiches of sponge there are many acceptable ways to go about it, there are also some which are clearly mad, nutella for instance. To give an equivalent with subtext, the use of cake as a metaphor or euphemism bakes in a certain assumptions that obfuscate the meaning like a layer marzipan.

In this Cake case for instant it would fall apart when i removed the bottom because the nutella is made equivalent to marzipan as part of the madness, which is demonstratively false because while it is possible to have too much marzipan, any amount of nutella is about as necessary as denying trying to sprinkle social criticism and progressive sentiments in your ramble about cake and then giving up because your having much more fun talking about marzipan. i guess you can’t have your Cake and eat it.

This is quite the challenging dichotomy regarding cake, on the one hand i seem to like the cake because i am emotionally invested in its existence, on the other hand i am hungry and want a larger slice. I guess i can echo the words of Marie Antoinette when i say “let them eat “cake”,”