Today’s deck is the Yuletide Tarot.
This is one of those decks that isn’t just “The High Priestess with a santa hat”, instead the High Priestess is the Mari Lwyd, the Gray Mare whose name can also translate into Holy Mary. A Horse that can travel to the underworld in Celtic mythology.
Today’s reading (Four of Gifts is Four of Pentacles, the guy holding a coin balancing one in his head and standing on two) feels like it’s succintly saying “Be stingy at your own risk”.
As much as I wish I was able to tell you I did something particularly fancy today, I just spent it at home. I do wanna talk about this game I played called 潜入!疑惑の洗脳SEXカルト宗教.
It’s about a reporter that infiltrates acult that’s supposedly a sex cult and is trying to get high ranking politicians into their pocket.
This game is art, this game has vision. While the adjectives might not necessarily apply to emotional depth, I mean it in the sense that it set out to say something. Even if the message is as blunt as it comes it is out there throwing those bricks in everyones’ faces and I respect that.
What do I mean? Well, the cult is very Aum Shinrikyo-esque, not just in the image of its oversized leader but in its indoctrination as saviors (where the game bluntly adds “it’s bad because the youth doesn’t remember the Sarin attacks”).
They have a lab where they’re preparing a “Neo Corona Virus” (no, I shit you not), they indoctrinate suicide bombers, and just in case the message wasn’t driven home just yet, the whole premise hinges on a tip that a politician from the Liberal Democratic Party is being seduced by the cult.
For those not aware: The LDP is the Shinzo Abe party, the guy that got shot by a guy whose life was ruined by the cults he endorsed and that prompted the whole country to go “do not condone violence but there’s a point with the cults stuff tho”.
The most commendable thing about it all, honestly, is the fact that the game mainly uses stock assets, but the author has such a sense of visuals and style that you kinda forget how many reused models are all over the place. Hell, between cult members being uniformed and the cult’s “priestesses” being aspirants that undergo heavy surgery to look like cookie cutter bombshells, it ADDS to it all.
My one complaint… or set of complaints, is technical. The game is kinda clumsy in gameplay. It’s supposed to be a top-down stealth game with third person options, but it opens up in a very blurry behind the back way, which primes you to think it’s going to be the sort of game where you can move the camera around… except the camera is fixed. You CAN get into a stationary first person mode for photos and screenshots but it’s more of an exception instead of the norm.
The sprint button is the same button with which you drop traps (it’s a sorta kinda stealth game by the way) but held instead of pressed, which results in you losing traps (porn mags) by accident. The button to interact is also the button with which you open the first person mode.
Oh also, a button to return to the main menu is RIGHT BESIDES the button for your inventory. I couldn’t confirm how it all played out with a controller, but I was losing hair with mouse and keyboard.
And yet, the game had a style and story going on that kept me going through it. In fact, one other complaint is that I played it when a bug was present that literally halted progress resetting some flags whenever you continued, but I didn’t suspect there was an error until so long after the fact from the whole experience being mesmerizing that I’m completely happy overlooking it.
Not that much to talk about otherwise, honestly.
Actually, I guess the one novelty is the reason for today’s title. Talking for a bit with L, I was able to pinpoint that the weird “Holiday Purples” that I’ve been feeling is basically the eternal clash of the longing to be loved against the ordeal of being perceived.
I feel lonely, I wished there was a significant other to alleviate that, but being aware that one doesn’t just magically skip all the steps into that point, I’m relieved that I don’t have to deal with the stress and anxieties of socialization, let alone of “being aware someone’s really into you”, there’s a relief in being alone.
In other words brain’s a bitch that cannot make up its mind.