Thursday, November 8, 2018

This queer horror game forces you to literally tear yourself apart

Early on in The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories, the heroine dies. For video games, this isn’t that unusual. What is unusual is what happens afterward: she picks herself up, snaps her bones back into place, and keeps going. J.J., a college student with flowing blonde hair, has a missing friend to find, and if she has to tear her body apart to get where she’s going, she will.

The Missing is not the game it appears to be. The sidescrolling platformer initially seems like the sort of quirky, inventive, and slightly clumsy game we’ve come to expect from its lauded Japanese writer and director, Swery. In reality, The Missing is a stunning queer narrative about the brutality of trying to become who you are, and an argument...

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