Blasphemous
Apr. 19th, 2022 07:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingBlasphemous is currently $6 on the Nintendo Switch store, do I decided to give it a shot.
It's basically a 2D Metroidvania Dark Souls with pixel graphics that really lean in to medieval Christian iconography. The monster designs are hellish but also literally what you see in medieval manuscripts, and the grotesque animations are lovingly rendered. The action is ultraviolent, and there's a lot of blood. The game describes itself as "punishingly difficult," but it's actually not that bad. (At least not during the first hour?)
I have an insatiable thirst for variety at the moment. I've been allowing myself to play a game for as long as it amuses me before moving on, but I think I'll probably come back to Blasphemous. It's not as clever and visually appealing as Hollow Knight, but few things are, and I'm here for the swords and monsters.
If nothing else, the game makes me curious about Catholicism. Which is a difficult thing to be curious about, as it can be tricky to separate the culture from the religious aspects, especially since many people who write about Catholicism are religious themselves and see the distribution of information as a form of preaching. And then there's the whole thing about misogyny and homophobia being baked into contemporary practice. Also they've got a not-insignificant number of people sainted for doing really shitty things to actual human beings, and they seem to think the Jesuits are good people? It's awkward.
So true story, I had a friend from college who became Catholic a few months after I met him. (I mean, I guess he was always Catholic, but you know what I'm saying.) In his senior year of college, he took a class with Anthea Butler, and he was so offended by the idea that African-American Christians have their own religious culture that he literally got a PhD and joined a Catholic think tank at Princeton Theological Seminary in order to provide material to lobbyist groups that advocate against diversity in the curriculum of higher education. And I know - I know! - that not all Catholics are like this, but also the Catholic Church is openly evil, and not in a fun way.
Blasphemous is about the Catholic Church being evil in a fun way, and I appreciate that.
It's basically a 2D Metroidvania Dark Souls with pixel graphics that really lean in to medieval Christian iconography. The monster designs are hellish but also literally what you see in medieval manuscripts, and the grotesque animations are lovingly rendered. The action is ultraviolent, and there's a lot of blood. The game describes itself as "punishingly difficult," but it's actually not that bad. (At least not during the first hour?)
I have an insatiable thirst for variety at the moment. I've been allowing myself to play a game for as long as it amuses me before moving on, but I think I'll probably come back to Blasphemous. It's not as clever and visually appealing as Hollow Knight, but few things are, and I'm here for the swords and monsters.
If nothing else, the game makes me curious about Catholicism. Which is a difficult thing to be curious about, as it can be tricky to separate the culture from the religious aspects, especially since many people who write about Catholicism are religious themselves and see the distribution of information as a form of preaching. And then there's the whole thing about misogyny and homophobia being baked into contemporary practice. Also they've got a not-insignificant number of people sainted for doing really shitty things to actual human beings, and they seem to think the Jesuits are good people? It's awkward.
So true story, I had a friend from college who became Catholic a few months after I met him. (I mean, I guess he was always Catholic, but you know what I'm saying.) In his senior year of college, he took a class with Anthea Butler, and he was so offended by the idea that African-American Christians have their own religious culture that he literally got a PhD and joined a Catholic think tank at Princeton Theological Seminary in order to provide material to lobbyist groups that advocate against diversity in the curriculum of higher education. And I know - I know! - that not all Catholics are like this, but also the Catholic Church is openly evil, and not in a fun way.
Blasphemous is about the Catholic Church being evil in a fun way, and I appreciate that.
