{"id":4065,"date":"2024-11-22T15:00:27","date_gmt":"2024-11-22T22:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=4065"},"modified":"2024-09-24T21:32:07","modified_gmt":"2024-09-25T03:32:07","slug":"video-game-love-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/22\/video-game-love-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"VIDEO GAME: LOVE (2019)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/thumb\/1\/15\/LOVEByFredWoodInfoboxImage.jpg\/220px-LOVEByFredWoodInfoboxImage.jpg\" alt=\"LOVE\" width=\"220\" height=\"123\" \/>LOVE<br \/><\/u><\/strong>Year: 2019<br \/>Rating: E<br \/>Time Played: ~1 hour<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to retro-inspired video games, most seem to pull their influences from the 8-bit or 16-bit systems like the Nintendo Entertainment System or Sega Genesis. Rarely have I seen something that seems to take their cues from further back in the video game pantheon. For all their limitations, Atari or Commodore 64 games still had a distinctive style that made them stand out prior to the boon in the home gaming space dominated by Nintendo and Sega. <em>LOVE<\/em> feels like an extremely polished Atari game\u2014which is both a good and bad thing.<\/p>\n<p>Platformers have always been a simple game to make on limited hardware. All you need is a few pixels that the player can move around on the screen and a variety of platforms to jump onto. <em>LOVE<\/em> takes this common idea and puts it into a mostly monochromatic, heavily pixelated space that could have been pulled straight from the home video game market of the early 1980s. The aesthetic is on point, even if it&#8217;s much more refined than I think any computer of the time could replicate. These levels are gorgeous, which is fortunate for how often you&#8217;ll be dying in them.<\/p>\n<p>Another facet of retro games is how brutally hard they are. <em>LOVE<\/em> takes this in stride and provides a challenge that&#8217;s just frustrating enough to keep you playing but not too frustrating that you&#8217;d give up. With 100 lives, you&#8217;re meant to conquer the dozen-or-so levels. Since there&#8217;s a lot of iterative learning, it&#8217;s not difficult to get a handle on the game and work through all it has to offer in about an hour. The short length and insane difficulty is also a hallmark of retro games, which isn&#8217;t necessary in today&#8217;s gaming landscape.<\/p>\n<p>A much older retro-inspired platformer, I give <em>LOVE<\/em> 3.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/> 1\/2<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/bmw-the-critic\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"820\" height=\"312\" src=\"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/BMW-the-Critic-v2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2968\" srcset=\"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/BMW-the-Critic-v2.jpg 820w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/BMW-the-Critic-v2-300x114.jpg 300w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/BMW-the-Critic-v2-768x292.jpg 768w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/BMW-the-Critic-v2-640x244.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LOVEYear: 2019Rating: ETime Played: ~1 hour When it comes to retro-inspired video games, most seem to pull their influences from the 8-bit or 16-bit systems like the Nintendo Entertainment System or Sega Genesis. Rarely have I seen something that seems to take their cues from further back in the video game pantheon. For all their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,1900],"tags":[1576,3886,3887,3888,3885,1903,2246,8,906],"class_list":["post-4065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-5-stars","category-video-game","tag-1576","tag-atari","tag-commodore-64","tag-inspired","tag-love","tag-platformer","tag-retro","tag-review","tag-video-game"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4065"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4070,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065\/revisions\/4070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}