The Visual Cat

Around ten years ago I encountered J. G. Ballard's Crash for the first time. And I was disgusted within a matter of a few pages. The incessant and grating descriptions of car crashes and sexual climaxes seemed pointless, not to mention repulsive. I was also disappointed to find the author of such visionary fictions such as The Drowned World, amount to nothing but a cheap, sensationalist pornographer. Fast forward to today, when in a caffeine haze I galloped through the first 50 pages again. The book seems completely changed now. It is, if anything, honest in it's decision to stick to it's theme of marrying technology with sexuality. There is no cheap moralizing, nothing but a razor sharp introspection into the twisted psychology behind explosions and car crashes. In the aftermath of the Vegas shooting, Ballard is more relevant than ever before. The context may be gun violence, but the appeal remains the same. Incidents come and go, but our acceptance of them betrays a perv...

Cuphead is an instant classic. Everything about the game points to a kind of polish that few game developers can even hope to achieve. From the animation to the music to the level design, every aspect of Cuphead comes together to deliver an action platforming experience that will take its place in the history books before long. Cuphead makes use of a cartoon style that should be instantly recognizable by anyone who grew up in India during the 80s or 90s. Endless reruns of Max Fleischer, Tex Avery and MGM cartoons have thoroughly ingrained that manic, zany energy and grainy aesthetic in our collective memory. Add to that the fact that for any kid growing up around that time, platformers were possibly the most favorite gaming genre. Cuphead is an amalgam of that kind of retroplatforming and hand drawn animation, but it is not stuck in the past. Every aspect of gameplay has been refined till it plays out almost flawlessly. The controls feel responsive like very few 2D games before i...