Pop Culture Recap: Malice, The Menu, Twelve Minutes, Kentucky Zero Route, and more

Late late post drafted in 2023 and now just decided to fuck it. Let's just post it.

This recap will be the first of many more to come (hopefully). 

Maybe you, or anyone who stumbles across this little blog, are asking why? Why should I create this personal recap? Why do my feelings and thoughts need to be poured into a semi-long irrelevant essay, and on top of that, on a monthly basis?

Well, I used to think that I don't have any desire or greed to be remembered. Unlike a certain person, who always feared being forgotten, but ironically whose identity I couldn't clearly recall. He once said (or wrote) that it is such a scary idea, to think that no one will ever remember him at some point in our withstanding civilizations. At one point, the last person who remembers you died and that's just it, the last person that knows you once exists in this universe, now all have been erased from the universe (except if you're a pretty significant person in history of course). And that's what drove him to write, to let his thoughts be read by many more youngsters to be born into the world. 

I always thought that was such a selfish perspective, not knowing that I too am engulfed in selfish intentions (sometimes) when I write. Maybe a small legacy to help my future kids (if I have one) understand me better. But rather than for these selfish intentions, my writings are more ... narcissistic. These games, movies, and books are not mine in any way, I didn't even contribute as in being a member of any of the teams behind them. But I still think that my thoughts and feelings, my perceptions as a spectator - or rather a prosumer - might help a little bit in the development of pop culture, or at least for other spectators with expectations or questions to answer.

Not So Gamer Thoughts

Twelve Minutes

Having a Netflix account with access to countless movies and shows to watch didn't stop me from having no idea of what to do. As I was scrolling mindlessly through endless genres and subsections the platform showed me, Twelve Minutes just struck out like a sore thumb. An interesting game with an interesting name, plus the implication that it had short gameplay sold me off right away.

Oh how I couldn't be more wrong, I finished playing this game after two days, playing after working hours. Yes, it was just a twelve-minute plot but who would've guessed it'd trap me in an endless time loop? I LOVE how the story unraveled and how I really need to grind my gears (I'm not a gamer after all, more like a gamer's watcher). Though, there are some parts that didn't make sense, like what kind of relationship are you having? The fact that you have the option to keep it in the family (literally and metaphorically) was just sick. What in the sweet home Alabama? Other than that, I don't really like the plot twist, yes it was a shock, but that's disgusting as well. I'd rather have gore rather than sibling stuff, could be just me though.

I have to give two thumbs up to the game design, the idea of being able to see everything from an omniscient's point of view is just brilliant! It's as if we're God, not to mention that we can control the characters, and shifts the time as well. Sike, I just have this thing for games with unique designs and illustrations. 

We're not going to end this review without mentioning the voice actors! Willem Dafoe? James McAvoy? Daisy Riddles? Star Wars, Spiderman, X-Men? The only franchise I watched was X Men lol, but you get the idea, they're such great actors), such big pop culture icons!

Post-playing Twelve Minutes, I surprisingly felt quite empty and was craving, craving for more good games to play...

Kentucky Zero Route

Oxenfree

When The Past was Around

This is a True Story

Thoughts on the Paper

Malice

Just gonna copy-paste real quick from my Goodreads review:

☆☆☆☆

4/5

Quite charming, but not his best work for sure.

It was an interesting experience, letting the readers to unravel a mystery by reading the suspect's reports and the convicted's diary. Often found in mystery books, the perspective and plot caters to one specific character, laying out the good one and the bad one from the start (with all the twists in the end). But not with this one, readers were showed many different kinds of perspectives: tampered and least tampered. I was honestly quite shocked when it all unraveled.

Though I have to say, there were some inconsistencies that irks me. At the beginning, the book uses first person pov for both the detective and suspect, but in the blink of an eye it shifts to reports and other "documentary" texts until the very end. The reports didn't quite feel like a report as well, it's as if someone's writing a diary to be kept by oneself, in a casual manner rather than professional one. I don't think detective should do that, at least to my knowledge.