iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Niv M. Sultan @nivmsultan.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

when you see the you-of-another-tab in the shared doc

Link fighting Dark Link in Ocarina of Time (elf-like person with a sword and shield swings a sword at their dark mirror image atop a pool of shallow water)

Niv M. Sultan @nivmsultan.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I am overloaded, thoroughly burnt out, and lacking free time, so, naturally, I ordered Zero Company

Niv M. Sultan @nivmsultan.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

been really missing David Lynch lately. not in a parasocial way, just mourning the fact that we’ll never see him make something again. (thus has the Roadhouse set list been on repeat)

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Niv M. Sultan @nivmsultan.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

beyond anything else, the viral JG article makes the extremely odd choice to be absolutely loaded with photos of him. who does that serve?

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Niv M. Sultan @nivmsultan.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

the problem with pursuing a public career after having done potentially catastrophic harm to someone is less in the obfuscation of it all than in your acceptance of the likelihood that the person you harmed may see your face, and hear about you, and see people praise you, again and again and again

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Niv M. Sultan @nivmsultan.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

that's what the scaffolding's there for!

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played my wife the main theme from FF Resonance and she asked if we were at graduation. fucking roasted (and soon to be divorced)

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have to tune in to one of these at some point (mostly imagining you as Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind)

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the solution might just be to have a coffee and some pie in front of me

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Lake has me thinking of Dale Cooper which has me thinking about how I just want to be as happy as that man when he has a coffee and some pie in front of him

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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

this stuff kills me. I look at games I played in the first few months of the year and think, I was so young when I played you

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Reposted by Niv M. Sultan

A great deal happened today. But nothing more important than this. SCOTUS allows Trump Administration to continue sending detained migrants to third countries with which the migrants have no prior connection. Just appalling.

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Niv M. Sultan @nivmsultan.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

as a former Dota player (like, 20+ years of it), I greatly fear what Deadlock may one day do to me

gita “the formalist” jackson @xoxogossipgita.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Reposted by Niv M. Sultan

Journalism in general is terrible for women and people of color and games journalism is all the same shit but in a pressure cooker

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Niv M. Sultan @nivmsultan.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

played it earlier this year and adored it much more than I expected to after my first few hours. eagerly looking forward to having the time to play Second Chapter

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realizing I really like games where you run really quickly (Control Resonant, Saros) but have never played a Sonic

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not sure where the random encounter convo is stemming from, but my two cents is that random encounters are good and that sometimes you just need to get your shit blown up out of nowhere

I hope to neither squander your trust nor lose to you in the marketplace of ideas (the cool thing is that I usually get to decide when I've lost there)

Niv M. Sultan @nivmsultan.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

sharing this one more time — on the distinctive and inventive world Control Resonant creates. (trying to free myself from the need to discuss every single element, plus, and minus of a game when reviewing; how liberating)

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a thing that rocks and didn’t make it in: in a level set in a factory, the Patterning makes industrial pipes resemble organ pipes, and the boss music adds organ to the mix. game’s full of artful touches

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Niv M. Sultan @nivmsultan.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

my review of Control Resonant, which remarkably maps Dylan's inner life onto an open world, reckons with COVID, and all but bursts with spectacle and emotive heft www.slantmagazine.com/games/contro...

Text: Traversal is far more compelling, as Control Resonant remarkably maps Dylan’s inner life onto his movement through the open world. Though Dylan’s capacity to levitate carries a sense of liberation—from the inconveniences of urban planning, from the F.B.C.’s unshakable grip on him—so, too, does it communicate his ostracization. Rather than walking among the F.B.C., whose agents hush their conversations or berate Dylan when he approaches, he soars above them, a pariah tolerated solely as a weapon. All the while, he floats across chasms with the same relaxed, Peter Pan-esque bearing as Jesse, underscoring her absence and his loneliness.

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Niv M. Sultan @nivmsultan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Control Resonant DLC gonna go crazy

Niv M. Sultan @nivmsultan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I think it's very good! I haven't read reviews yet (since I'm working on mine), but I think it both: 1. makes plenty of bad choices, and 2. when making choices that could be read as cheap/of the mode/formulaic, does lots of rather interesting things with them

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Niv M. Sultan @nivmsultan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

with Ace Combat 8 reviews out, can people care about Control for a few more days (until my review of Resonant goes up)?

Niv M. Sultan @nivmsultan.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Control (Remedy Entertainment, 2019)

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Niv M. Sultan @nivmsultan.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I've only spent a bit of time with this one so far, but it's very compelling, nice emergent storytelling and characterization

Wout, how exclusive is this media list of yours 👀

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I both do and don't know what the three skulls mean, but I definitely know they're an appropriate reaction

Scare-o-lyn Petit @carolynmichelle.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Reposted by Niv M. Sultan

Stoked to have a review of Control Resonant by the always thought-provoking Cole Kronman on Kotaku today. kotaku.com/control-reso...

You’ve seen it in trailers: there is another, more opaque antagonistic force afoot in Control Resonant, one that effectively warps spaces and objects into fluctuating, kaleidoscopic recursion art. The game calls this force “The Pattern,” and it’s the basis for the vast majority of its most inventive aesthetic and ludic ideas. From Control onward, Remedy has fully embraced the notion of video games as interactive art exhibits, designing environments under the guiding principle that 3D art and 3D level geometry can be the exact same thing. Resonant represents what is perhaps the most compelling implementation of this ethos yet: The Pattern is a visual and technical marvel, and it’s also an impetus for players to rethink their relationship with spaces that regularly twist and fold back on themselves. There is nothing else that plays quite like this because there is nothing else that looks quite like this—the case for Remedy, once again, is that they understand on a bone-deep level what makes this medium interesting, and pursue their vision with a fervor begotten of generosity. They made Resonant because they want us to understand, too.

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Control? I'm too busy Controlling the urge to play Fire Emblem

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(this is the result of just never having tried one!)

I am very lucky (unlucky) to...[deep breath]...not be a Silent Hill guy

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(my steak is too juicy, my lobster is too buttery, etc.)

summoning the willpower required to finish Onimusha before starting Fire Emblem

Hasbro's quest to release countless D&D games can never change the fact that they didn't create the best D&D games (Dragon's Dogma 1 and 2)

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classic editor move (taking a dumb paragraph and extracting a kernel of truth)

rapidly approaching "one guard always lies and one always tells the truth" territory

the whole thing was always doomed

conversations about videogames make a lot more sense when you realize that everyone's wrong, all the time. someone disagrees with you? they're wrong. someone agrees with you? they're wrong. does that mean you're wrong? yes, always

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looking ahead to end of year with at least three big JRPG/SRPGs to go 😅