HROT

One thing I'm surprised I didn't question as I was playing it was "What the fuck does Hrot even mean" and apparently its Czech for "point" or "spike".  Thanks Google

HROT is a first person shooter that came out in 2023 although looking at I wouldn't blame you for thinking it came out 1996.  Its a fast paced boomer shooter thats wearing its Quake influence so hard that the developer may as well be kicking down your down with a giant "I FUCKING LOVE QUAKE" neon sign draped around his neck while he plays a Nine Inch Nails album at full volume directly into your eardrums.  That's not a bad thing though, its not like iD are making oldschool Quake games anymore so its nice to get some fresh nostalgia bombs from time to time.  Another game that it reminds me of is Chasm: The Rift, but I've not played that so I'm not sure if it actually resembles that game in any significant way outside of the visuals.  I've just seen a review of it via a Civvie11 video on YouTube.  What is obvious is that it's made by people who are passionate about boomshoot history so either way if you're craving some real old-school style shit, HROT is a good place to go.  

HROT has 3 episodes and 24 maps (plus some secret ones) where you shoot your way through what I think is 1980s Czechoslovakia.  Despite the "realistic" setting of the game, the actual presentation is quite fantastical.  The first few enemies are dudes in gasmasks with guns and grenade launchers but quickly turns into you fighting floating heads, zombies, weird newt looking things and those statues from Dr Who.  Bosses also include things such as gorilla ornaments on carnival rides that come to life, sentient pommel horses and the floating heads of politicians.  If you were worried the grey brown environments were going to be devoid of any personality then you'd be quite wrong.  The art direction is following the Quake brown style but you're never sure what weird thing is waiting around the next corner.  One minute you're in a sewer shooting dudes with shotguns, next minute you're in a courtyard desperately hopping away from a horse in a gas mask while zombies in wheel chairs obliterate your HP.  There are also a ton of funny little interactables in a few of the stages which includes the standard FPS mounted turrets but also fully functional keyboards and little LCD games.

One thing that annoys me about the general presentation of HROT is that I felt a lot of it went over my head.  There are nods and winks to all this Czech art and literature scattered throughout the game, I think, and because I'm not privvy to basically any of it as a nerdy British man who grew up in the 90s, some of the charm is lost on a player like me.  For example there's a level in episode 3, the first one, that feels like it comes right out of left field.  It's called War with the Newts and it seems maybe a bit lol so randum to an ignorant player like myself but it turns out to be based on famous novel of the same name that I've never heard of but now want to read.  I forget how I even stumbled on this information after playing, maybe in the wiki or something.  It's not a huge knock against the game though, it's just I have no idea where to even begin educating myself with Czech history in order to get all the little details the game has to over.   

One other fun thing the game does is that upon completion of each chapter the game gives you an actual cooking recipe to try.  The first one you get for the completion of Episode 1 is Beef Stroganoff which I actually tried making.  It turned out pretty well, was good for a couple of dinners

 The second recipe is for Cauliflower Brains which I'm not going to bother trying and the third is for "eggs in aspic" and honestly it sounds like something that makes me want to vom.  Regardless of my picky tastes though, its cool that such a feature is included.  

HROT is great and you should play it.  A fantastic Quake-like that shouldn't be missed by anyone even remotely interested in FPS's.  Shoot some guys, repel the invasion, learn to cook, simulate a clock when you're finished.  What's not to love?

You Aren't Deep, You're An Idiot

 

A long ass time ago I bought a huge bundle of games from Itch.io that was to support charity efforts for that thing that happened with George Floyed all those years ago.  It was called the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality which is a good and noble cause to fight for but I'll be honest with you chief, I just wanted the cheap copy of Celeste because the Switch version fucking sucks thanks to Joycons being awful.  Still, if Nintendo making shit controllers put some coins in the pocket of a worthy cause, I suppose thats a net positive to the world at large.  Aside from Celeste though, this pack came with hundreds of other little indie games and I have recently taken it upon myself to beat or at least try all of them.  Not a huge undertaking in actuality because the majority of the games are tiny indie experiences but some of the things in this bundle are so bad that despite getting them for nearly 0 currency I feel ripped off 

KIDS simply describes itself as "a game of crowds" on its Steam page but it's being sneaky there because KIDS isn't a game at all.  It's a weird non-game, and I'm refusing to call it an art piece or an experience either, that seems to be designed purely to inflict boredom on whoevers playing it.  The Itch page is a little more honest with its content referring to it as an "interactive animation" which is certainly more accurate.  It's the kind of thing that you might see playing in a dusty corner of an unpopular art exhibition where people might saunter by, click the mouse on the kiosk once or twice, go "what the fuck is this crap?" and then move on.  

The program involves a bunch of humanoid figures running around, falling into holes and being pushed either up or down the screen by a sphincter along with a few more things but those are the big ones.  The "game" part of this whole thing is that you have to either click or run your mouse along the humanoid figures in order to make the little animations happen.  It runs through these scenes are few times and then it ends.  There's nothing really to get about this title, you just watch the little animation play out for 30 minutes and then leave unsatisfied and wondering why you bothered.  

I'm not completely against the idea of weird art games with very little "game" in them like this one.  An example of one I think is good is The Stanley Parable which isn't much of a game by itself but its still making a funny point about games thats interesting to play through.  I know a lot of people use the term "walking simulator" as a derogatory genre tag for interactive fiction with an almost 100% focus on story and visuals but I don't vibe with the idea of that being a bad thing on base principles.  Kids on the other hand is the worst of the worst in this genre because its visuals are dogwater and its not absolutely nothing to say about anything.  

My first thought when playing was that it was trying to make some kind of point about the harms of blindly following the status quo but as the animation went on and it proceeded to repeat itself numerous times that interpretation melted away and instead I was left with "oh its just low rate shit made by an asshole tricking idiots out of 3.39 GPB"  The kind of game that a pseudo intellectual will tell you is some kind of profound experience but will then struggle to tell you anything about it when pressed.  

If you have played KIDS and you somehow got something out of it other than boredom and frustration I would love to hear from you either in a comment on in my stream chat or something.  I'm fully convinced that there is no way to enjoy this thing unless you're about 15 years old and you think vague blobs that represent children falling into a black hole is saying something valuable about society or something. I hate this thing, I want my time back and I want my nearly 0 dollars for buying it as part of a huge bundle back.  My knowledge of its existance makes my standard of living noticably worse