A Psychological Tour de France.
A long time ago I was a more optimistic view of the medium of video games. I used to believe that games were the next great art medium and that we were all beautiful children of God that were about experience a new golden age of art and entertainment. The past five or six years of scummy business practices and political polarization within games has left me jaded on the medium. Thankfully Team Sneed's breakout hit 'Cuckhold Simulator' has changed all of that. I once again have confidence that gaming can touch people the same way books, movies, and music can.
Much like how Jacob Riis and Upton Sinclair pulled back the curtain on life as a lower class city dweller during the American industrial revolution, Team Sneed gives us a disturbing and eye-opening look into the life of a F95 moderator as well as commentary on the human condition. The main character, named 'Cuckhold', is an everyman protagonist who struggles through our modern world. He is in a state of socio-sexual termoil as he fights multiple battles on multiple fronts. He epitomizes the average workers struggle under the globalist, capitalist, neo-liberal system while working for the shadowy Globalcorp. At home, he struggles to cross the ethnic and generational divides that separate him from his wife's son, Deshawn. Meanwhile, his wife's other son is lost; adrift in the world without an anchor. This is partially because the devs clearly meant for him to represent the struggles faced by generation alpha as the current social order breaks down and partially because I left the door open and forgot about him.
The gameplay puts triple A classics like Call of Duty and Dark Souls to shame. When you open the game, the devs (in their infinite humility) apologize for the long wait times and claim that they aren't good at optimization. Personally, I think the real problem is that chip manufacturers were unprepared for this Team Sneed's revolutionary software and will just have to make their next generation of GPUs and CPUs with it in mind. Anyways, once the game is loaded, you will find a complete lack of ludo-narrative dissonance. In fact, I will say this is a great example of ludo-narrative agreement. The gameplay serves as a metaphor for Cuckhold's struggle to live in modern society, just as I struggle to move his character around without hitting every wall in the map.
One final word about the sound design. The developers have embraced an experimental sound design philosophy that involves all of the sound sometimes going to one ear of your headphones. Personally, I find it to be extremely immersive and greatly beneficial to the experience.
Final Score:
100/10
Game of the Decade