DEREK EX MACHINA, created by author and editor Derek L.H., is a blog dedicated to exploring the effect that video games and film have on people.
All tagged Analysis
The theme of trusting your spirit to understand how you want to live your life is an idea that transcends age, gender, nationality, and walk of life. We all have a lot to learn from our spirit, but doing so isn’t an inherently easy thing to do. This is precisely what makes Kiki’s Delivery Service a timeless classic.
Exhibiting Forgiveness is an emotional adventure that smartly and gracefully investigates how the broken relationships of the past can inform the new relationships we build in the future. This film excellently reveals information to its audience in a way that humanizes the very real pain experienced and brought about by its characters in honest, profound way.
Look Back is a tender, heartfelt exploration of how much can change in what feels like a short amount of time. So many aspects of our lives shift throughout time. Look Back is an excellent, bittersweet exploration of these shifts and how they inform the person we become.
Despite all the darkness currently surrounding the industry, games like Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Astro Bot prove to be a beacon of light that remind us that there is still always hope for the future of games. Games that embrace fun, creativity, style, developer expression, and consumer-friendly release models still exist and they’re still thriving.
Through intelligent framing and using the audiences familiarity with the film’s genre against them, Strange Darling subverts and weaponizes audience expectations, making them just as much of a victim as the many characters who get bested in the film.
Dìdi is a special film thanks to its dedication to authenticity. [The film] authentically captures the struggle of becoming emotionally intelligent in a way that everyone can understand - especially those that also grew up in an era where technology and the internet grew alongside us.
Final Fantasy VII Remake turned Final Fantasy VII into a game that I like into something that I am actively looking forward to seeing more of. It’s a special game that gives me a new degree of optimism and hope for the future of Final Fantasy - which is perhaps that greatest thing that Final Fantasy VII Remake could have possibly given me.
Breath of the Wild offers an unprecedented amount of adventure to the player - so much so that, even after four years, there are still many more adventures that the game invites players to embark upon. Breath of the Wild is ruthless in its devotion to keep players coming back to learn more and make more discoveries about it. That, above all, is what makes the game so unique and so magical, no matter how much time passes.
There is no one-size-fits-all strategy to announcing a project, nor is there a one-size-fits-all strategy for promoting a game pre-release. However, the differences in CD Projekt Red and Square Enix’s approach to marketing their biggest titles of 2020 do highlight that some strategies are more healthy and responsible than others. In an age where hype culture is so prevalent in the realm of gaming and in a year where two games suffered significantly different fates in large part due to how they were hyped and presented to the public, the term “hype responsibly” rings ever true.
There’s very much a strong core to Yakuza 3. There’s nothing explicitly bad or unenjoyable at the game - it just feels like a victim of a series that naturally improved its execution of its ideas over time. Later games refining what Yakuza 3 brings to the table isn’t the fault of Yakuza 3, but it does highlight how unpolished and unrefined Yakuza 3 is as a result.
Link’s Awakening is but one example of how smaller-scale design can nevertheless make a world feel as believable and immersive as it is tightly constructed and uninterested in wasting the player’s time. Through its tight design and consideration for making an experience that provides a consistent feeling of progression and gradually expanding sense of freedom and exploration, Link’s Awakening ended up provides an adventure that I recall very fondly - an assessment that is in large thanks to the title’s size.
Through its dark humor and brilliantly realized characters, The Art of Self-Defense manages to say a lot about violence and masculinity without every coming across as full of itself or preachy. Self-Defense is a film that very much understands what it is and the kind of story it’s trying to tell, and doesn’t attempt to be anything that it isn’t. What results is a film that is tightly focused, funny, and intelligent.
