Review of David Lynch's "Inland Empire"

What accounts for my absence?

Something about the basement. It's actually larger than the house itself. It extends underneath the sidewalk for a few feet. Usually this isn't very disorienting because the basement is just piles of assorted junk and it's possible to see over all the piles to the other side of the basement.

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For Halloween, I rearranged the junk to form walls in to a sort of a maze. I took the piles of boards and panels and propped them up against pillars, I rigged abandoned mattresses and doors in to floor to ceiling walls. It was no longer possible to see the walls of the basement besides the one that the participant was closest to. The walls created dark areas and obscured two of the basement's meager ceiling lights. It was a fairly simple maze, an L inside of a D.
I drank a deuce and was drinking some scotch while I replaced the lingering white bulbs with red and purple bulbs. In a dark corner I screwed a bulb into an empty socket, unlike some other sockets in the basement, this one worked and illuminated a long unnoticed recessed corner. In the corner was a mound of objects covered in a clear dropcloth made opaque by filth. Curious, I pulled the dropcloth off, spilling dust that clouded the air.
There was an overwhelming petroleum miasma. I stumbled backward into a magazine rack full of fake flowers leaning against a rusty file cabinet. The plastic barrier had been covering two gardern tillers which were mounted to a white iron tub standing on lion paws. Black oil leaked out of the engines into the tub coating rat skeletons embedded in excrement. A porcelain sink basin was mounted on top, obscured by layers of rotting insulation and newspaper that hung like flesh over the tiller's blades.

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I shuffled around a boxspring wall into a dark corner and leaned on the outer wall of the basement, underneath the sidewalk, rolled a cigarette and flicked my lighter to see if there was any explosive vapor in the air. Satisfied that there wasn't I lit my cigarette. The smoke hung lifelessly in the air with the dust and gasoline odor. The atmosphere was oppressive and my scotch was out of reach on a rusty file cabinet. The tobacco smoke and lung damage made the basement tolerable enough that I retrieved my drink and took a closer look at the machine. It was connected to the pipes running above my head; a racoon-sized rat rushed from behind the contraption and into the makeshift barricades, finding it's path obscured and difficult, it squealed and scratched as if it had gotten trapped. Something shifted in the thickness, there was small knock, tiny scratches flew across the basement.
Bemused, I sipped my drink and noticed a thin film on the surface as I lowered the glass from my face. I walked through the dark corner on my way out of the basement and bumped into a bookshelf in the darkness. I took a left, and then another, and found myself completely disoriented. I downed the scotch and set the glass down on the cracked and undulating floor. I never saw that particular glass again. I twisted on an LED candle and walked along the outside wall until a wall made out of stacked drawers and bed slats wedged against the ceiling forced me away. An array of mutilated bicycled bound together by nooses further blocked my route. I turned around was confounded by more corners and featureless passages of pasteboard and water damage made noteworthy only because of the grime and oppressive vapors.
I found a brick outer wall, covered in flaking white paint with a graffiti tag: SY0A0YZ

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I heard people stepped on the iron basement door, somewhere out of sight. The sound of a subway train was near. It grew and there was slight vibration, followed by the muffled screech of brakes, the computer voice of the train passed through concrete, the earthen roar of the departing train. Farther down the hallway, a sliver of red light came from a thin opening. A green door hung in the tunnel, slightly open. The doorknob was missing and the hole was covered in black tape. I gripped at the edge of the door frame with my fingernails and pulled it open.

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The castle is big and sprawling. Each of the castle's different areas are fairly monotonous by themselves, but they all have their own distinct feel. The different rooms in each area may be similar, or in some cases all the same, but they are distinct in design from the repetitive rooms of other areas. Traversing the castle is made easier by satanic warp zones, but the variety of enemies and combat tactics are enjoyable enough that the warp zones are not necessary.
Truely, a video I found on the internet is worth a million words, so here is a video from that delightful website, letsplayarchive.com. Two awkward Somethingawful.com forum goons play this game, hopefully giving the reader some idea of the great gameplay:



They did a great job playing the game and describing the exciting things encountered in the game play. Sadly, they also experienced, as will all who play this game, a bit of the story. Fortunately, there is very little story in the game, unfortunately, it gave me permanent brain damage. Let's give a hand to the people who made this video and allowed me to be lazy with my description.
Though some say they left to find the inland empire, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow is a most worthy successor to the 2D Metroid games. I would even say that the added RPG elements and creative monsters make this installment better than any 2D metroid game. The random acquisition of powers gives the game some replayability. I'm looking forward to checking out the bonus disk and perhaps brewing some coffee.