EARTHBOUND HALLOWEEN HACK (2008)

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while the initial transition from peaceful twoson or threebie or whatever number named town to whatever number named town's sewers is jarring in an intentional, well paid off way, its inability to stay committed to that changed voice is a huge point of failure that makes playing through the middle chunk of toby fox's halloween hack a tonally confusing slog. or in other words... it's silly, then it's dead fucking serious, then it's silly whoopsie grunty repeatus whacky hijinkal eat shit faggots megalovania immediately starts playing. experiencing this game's like you've got two tabs of a serious thriller and lighthearted comedy running and you're sort of just flicking back and forth between them arbitrarily. there are definitely ways to synthesize comedy and drama with more fluidity like contemporaries barkley, shut up and jam: gaiden or saints row 2 execute well themselves. or, lol, undertale itself--demonstrable proof of the value of putting yourself out there, accepting criticism, and then really sharpening up your work and concepts into something that reflects the ability you've since honed. you can see all these undertale-lite themes and ideas weaving in and out of the hack, so it sort of functions as an interesting capsule and demonstration of fox's writing level at this time. it also functions as a gore demonstration. like, he gets real visceral with how you kill enemies. the descriptions are so vivid that you don't even notice they're not animated.

this sort of writing is valuable--it's childish and immature in many aspects, but there's such undeniable potential for charm. it's written not like a voice that's putting in minimum effort or mechanically writing like a robot--it's a voice that's speaking because it's desperate to speak. and it's also apologizing for making the game so fucking tedious and overly difficult.

yeah... just flip on a level 99 and infinite health hack.