Radiohead’s digital Kid A Mnesia Exhibition is no game—it’s an experience
This immersive, enthralling adventure in modern art sends you hurtling through Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke's creations
Games Features Radiohead
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A thought occurs more than once while exploring Kid A Mnesia Exhibition. You’ll turn a corner or open a door in the sprawling, multi-level compound where the exhibition is set, and suddenly the laws of physics disappear, or your presence triggers the ghostly emergence of elliptical text slowly illuminating some murky hallway. From here, the idea emerges, unbidden: Damn. I really need to do this again when I’m high.
I’m not entirely sure what I expected from this new digital art installation project from Radiohead and the band’s longtime collaborator/artist-in-residence, Stanley Donwood. But whatever conjectures I had, they were clearly insufficient. From the moment I entered a darkened corridor and followed the spectral glow of illumination peeking through a distant entryway, this multimedia extravaganza kept surprising me, to the point where, during one mid-song experience, I wasn’t even sure if I was still in the exhibition or if I had fallen into some beautifully impossible glitch. (I hadn’t.)
A little background: Radiohead and Donwood—whose artwork and prose provocations (made in tandem with Yorke) have adorned all the band’s releases, press materials, and merchandise since the My Iron Lung EP way back in 1994—had intended to make a physical art installation to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Kid A and Amnesiac. It was to be a massive, brutalist steel carapace made of shipping containers that could travel the world, a rolling display of the artwork and imagery they had birthed two decades prior.
Unfortunately, COVID happened—and a project already facing significant practical obstacles (it turned out the original blueprints for the exhibit at Victoria & Albert Museum in London would have collapsed parts of the building) suddenly looked DOA. But as Yorke and Donwood explain in a press release accompanying this new project, being freed from the confines of, well, reality may have been a blessing. Or, as they put it, “Our dream was dead. Until we realised… It would be way better if it didn’t actually exist.”
Cut to now, after two years’ worth of work with longtime producer Nigel Godrich, along with a director, set designer, and a host of game designers, and the results seem better, indeed, than what any physical installation could have delivered. When you’re floating in an infinite chamber, watching an unceasing parade of little creatures slowly rising from the inky depths and ascending heavenward, it’s hard to imagine any real-life version of this exhibit improving upon the experience. Whatever is lost in you-are-there immediacy is more than made up for by the imaginative leaps made by this digital art installation.
Let’s be clear: This is not a game. There are no buttons you push inside this world—no handles to pull, no mini-puzzles requiring you to do certain actions in the correct order to make something happen. (You will still try; despite being clearly told this, both by the advance press materials I received and the opening text intro to the exhibition itself, I repeatedly walked up to levers and assorted machines in the space, my video-game brain convinced that, surely, they didn’t mean no game elements.) No, you simply wander around, guided by nothing more than your own curiosity—and the occasional helpful museum-style arrows informing you of the way toward various installations.
And what a wander you get. There are a couple dozen installations throughout the exhibit—each paired to one or more songs from the two albums, often engagingly fractured or broken down into component parts, sometimes with video footage. But even prowling the hallways between the big set pieces offers plentiful riches, as the sheer amount of art produced by Donwood during that era means virtually all of the walls are covered with drawings, paintings, doodles, fragments of philosophical musings, and more. Yorke and Donwood insist that they had so much art made during that period, they didn’t need anything new for the exhibition. You wonder how they found time to sleep.
Trying to describe it can be a bit futile. Yes, you’re walking around looking at art, but you also encounter unsettling beings who fix their gaze upon you and follow you around the room, or suddenly pass through an artwork into a netherworld beyond, or burrow underneath a black-and-white forest until you rise from the ground, little devils skittering beneath your feet. At one point I walked right off a narrow path and fell into seeming nothingness, only to suddenly land on an identical walkway, surrounded by even more impassive stick-figure men, somehow eyeing me despite being faceless.
And no, you don’t need to be a Radiohead fan to admire the immersive artistry that went into this experience. It probably deepens your appreciation to be intimately familiar with the music, but when I pulled my non-Radiohead-fan significant other into the room to experience it with me, within three minutes they were entranced. “This is fucking cool,” they said. I know. It really is. I can’t wait to recommend this excellent new art gallery—one that just so happens to bend the rules of time and space.
Kid A Mnesia Exhibition is available as a free download on PlayStation 5, PC, and Mac.
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Had an unusually tricky time trying to set up a tournament in Fire Pro Wrestling World. I wanted to do a big AEW title fight, so I had to download a bunch of guys to round out the roster. And the trouble with this is nowadays the guys uploading wrestlers are all making extensive use of user-crafted parts and moves, which you have to download separately. Now some of them list the parts you need, some don’t, and so you find out on downloading that you also need to get these parts. Except, in the PS4 version at least, it only shows you so many missing parts at a time, up to 6, so it can take multiple tries.Long story short I had a Malakai Black edit with 83 custom parts. It took a while. And when I started the tournament I found they’d made him stupidly overpowered with the ability to Critical off random strikes (a Critical instantly K.O.s the opponent.) I had to tweak the edit and restart the entire thing. And even then he seems kinda OP and some of the custom moves take way too long compared to how the game normally flows. Obviously the devs could have streamlined the whole downloading/custom part process but it’s also just a problem of it being hard to find good versions of wrestlers. This is why I have more fun running either edits I’ve made or my goofball promotion which includes Ganondorf, Eric Andre, the Kool Aid Man, and a gorilla with a space helmet named Ro-Man Reigns.
“gorilla with a space helmet named Ro-Man Reigns”This is very good.
I didn’t even know the Kid A Mnesiac Exhibition existed until reading a list of upcoming releases on Kotaku a month ago, thought it was a console-only release, and then tonight I saw it on the Epic store for free. While I’ve been grabbing a lot of the free games off of Epic all year, this was the first one I downloaded and had immediate plans to load up.I’m a big fan of Radiohead. Saw them in concert about 20 years ago and again about 10 years ago, and I really think getting into them in my freshman year of college gave me something to help me process, or at least distract myself from, the loneliness of not fitting in with the substance abuse-heavy Chico State dorm life, the sudden uncertainty about any of the plans I’d had for my life, and the background of newly post-9/11 America. Amid all of that fucking me up, there was a pair of headphones and “Pyramid Song.”Not sure if I’m going to dive into it this weekend or wait until Wednesday next week and pair it with an edible to lead into a lazy 4 day weekend. Trying to skim just enough of reviews to confirm that people are digging it without really giving me any specific expectations.Whether or not I pick this weekend to experience it, I’ve got some Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity to go through. I’ve largely just been soloing everything with Link and getting him way overleveled, but that involved a lot of long runs between objectives… until I realized there was just a button to flip between party members who were potentially stationed closer to the enemies I needed to kill to proceed. That might help improve the pacing of missions.I just finished chapter 2, so I’ve got a nice big pool of heroes to choose from, assuming it doesn’t automatically select my heroes for me now that I’m through the recruiting phase of the game. It’s an interesting mix of watered-down Breath of the Wild and less strategic Dynasty Warriors. Could be that they wanted to keep the difficulty reasonable while they handed me new character play styles every single mission. Maybe it gets hard the moment I pick it up again. But I’ve played enough BotW and Dynasty Warriors that I’m expecting playing on “normal” to just be a quick and light romp through a prequel story.We’ll see if I’ve got the motivation to complete all the side quests on the map when I’m done with the main story, which I guess I’m already a third of the way through. The whole experience feels pretty inessential and forgettable, but still plenty fun. But then… that’s my review of every Dynasty Warriors.
I’m assuming it works like the previous Hyrule Warriors, which means on your map screen you can also select one of your characters you are not using and order them to head to a specific location. They are fairly useless under AI control so they aren’t going to clear anything more than a minor outpost on their own, but its really about positioning them so when you switch to that character they are where you need to be. There are missions in the first HW that I think would have been legit impossible (or at least very frustrating) if not for this, where the amount of time I had was not enough to just run from one objective to another or to a character/unit that needed to be protected before it died. That’s another suggestion, if you have outposts/characters/units that will cause a Loss condition if they are defeated then keep one of your characters you can switch to near them in case of emergency.
Yeah, it kept prompting me to hit + to give orders to my teammates, and I didn’t bother because they barely did any work under AI control. It makes a lot more sense now that I know I can hop between them.
So, Bowieworld, but without all the Bowie.
I’ve been juggling the Animal Crossing DLC, Hades, and dawdling through the last part of Gnosia (I only have two or three more character details to unlock before I beat the game. Been a great ride, though, so I’ll be sad to take it off of my daily list!).
I’ve never been a huge Radiohead fan, but for the price of “free,” of course I’ll be checking out KID A MNESIA Exhibition. I love the idea of a virtual museum that doesn’t need to obey the laws of physics.I plan to finish up Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy this weekend. I think I just have two chapters left. It’s been a pretty great ride, with some stunning art direction and impressive voice work. I really hope this gets a sequel, perhaps with a few more nonlinear, RPG elements.Also on the docket for this weekend: finishing Unpacking. I know I shouldn’t be surprised that playing a game called “Unpacking” feels like a chore, but… yeah, it feels like a chore. There are some really neat narrative tricks in this minimalist puzzle game, including a couple that exploit the mechanics in interesting ways ([SPOILER] forcing you to hide your university diploma away when you move in with your boyfriend is a really inspired touch). But I’d liken this game to Night in the Woods in that the mechanics just aren’t engaging or meaningful enough to work on this scale: it’s 15 minutes’ worth of gameplay stretched out into a 3-hour experience.Finally, I hope to make some progress in Tales of Arise. I’m getting to the point where the enemies regularly outlevel me, which wouldn’t be so bad, except you gain XP really slowly in this game; it can be really demoralizing to beat a major sidequest boss and have none of your six characters gain a level. In any case, I’ve heard that I’m at the point where the game gets weird (Mahag Saar), so I’m excited.
It doesn’t look like this is available in VR, which is unfortunate. Sounds like it would be perfect for it. I’ll definitely still download it on my PS5, but feels like a missed opportunity.I’ll be continuing my first ever playthrough of Final Fantasy II, thanks to the pixel remaster. I’m attempting to play/replay every mainline Final Fantasy game and create a video based on my experiences and thoughts. I’ve already completed the first video, which I’m kind of proud of, even though I know it could be improved in places. Not sure if I’m allowed to link it here, though, but if you’re interested let me know.Anyway, II has surprised me already, only a few hours in. It seems like they already had grander ambitions for story in only the second entry. It’s nothing earth-shattering or anything, but I always assumed the major change from I-II was the annoying levelling system. And of course that’s part of it, but it also seems like they wanted to tell an actual story, not just a bunch of reasons to go to the next dungeon.About that levelling system, I’m still early on, so I haven’t reached anything yet that’s given me too much trouble (though the invisible line in the early world map that delineates between early game enemies and late game enemies was pretty close to the starting area, and I found myself getting killed handily less than an hour in). I don’t know if Square-Enix tweaked the levelling a little bit for the pixel remasters or if I just haven’t reached an area yet where that matters, but I’m fully prepared to employ some cheat codes if that’s what it takes. I’d rather do that than start all over, and the story is actually something I want to see through to the end.
Yeah, VR was the first thing I looked for. Bummer.
In VR terms, Radiohead reminds me the most of Tetris Effect sans-Tetris. On a 4k OLED, it’s stunning in a way the far cheaper screens of modern VR devices couldn’t compete. Still, the option to do both would be nice. Perhaps on PS VR 2.
Ain’t no strokin’ like Radiohead strokin’, eh Pitchfork?
Ok, I need a Quest edition.
I am really hoping they add VR support to this at some point, because damn, this software was an unforgettable experience, and it’s one I feel would benefit tremendously from VR.
sounds worthwhile—a new Switch Lite Convert its BOTW for me…. holy cow what a game.
*exhales* Shin Megami Tensei V.My expectations were tempered – I like the 4 duology but it suffers greatly from a lack of singular vision, and while I enjoy the Persona 5 stuff, Royal has perhaps the least engaging gameplay Atlus has ever done – but holy hell have they delivered so far. I’m 20 hours in and all I can think about is SMTV.The atmosphere is great. This game feels like an HD PS2 game in the best way – it has certain coldness, a grain, grit to it stylization and celshading reminiscent of that era of SMT, while feeling fresh and its own thing. Persona 5 is stylish, but SMTV is cool. It wears boys’ underwear, smokes behind the cafeteria, pushes bullies into lockers and kisses other people’s boyfriends. There’s a slick efortlessness to everything in this thing, especially the soundtrack.The soundtrack didn’t invent jazz like P5’s, but it’s probably the best one of the year, ex aequo with NEO: TWEWY’s. It doesn’t sound like any other jRPG. The “standard” battle theme is a drone metal track that sounds like something from Boris’ repertoire, which follows through to many overworld themes, giving the game a distinct western vibe that was last time seen in Digital Devil Saga (possibly the most unique game Atlus has ever done). Sometimes you get trippy city pop and ambient soundscapes. Other times you get stoner rock bangers (again reminiscent of DDS) or the game will double down on the drones.Even the fucking level up menu goes hard with the fat, distorted bass that sounds like a Hotline Miami intermission. I cannot stress how beautiful this soundtrack is. It fucks so damn hard. SMTV and NEO: TWEWY have absolutely obliterated the competition this year when it comes to the aesthetic and atmospheric department – they sound and look like something that comes once every two decades. Also play NEO: TWEWY. It should be on sale right now on some platform. Square Enix absolutely fucked that game with its awful marketing and it makes me so angry, because it’s one of the best things they’ve ever done and we’ll probably have to wait another 13 damn years to get another one. Anyway, back to SMTV.Perhaps the most visible thing is that SMTV forgoes the typical dungeon-based design of its predecessor by giving you a more “open field” exploration. Fools will call this Breath of the Wild because every open world is BotW now, but nah, if anything this feels very much like Xenoblade Chronicles (another GOAT candidate, another banger soundtrack). The world of Da’at looks hella cool and while it takes a while to open up, surfing on dunes and Naruto running for secrets is great. You get demons in the overworld instead of random battles, which helps sell some of the bigger threats – running past a gigantic demon is terrifying – and organize gameplay a lot better. Exploring Da’at and fighting demons feels like you’re embarking on a hunting trip and it’s something jRPGs rarely make me feel anymore: you choose your battles and the lack of auto save means that you’re a lot more careful about how far you can stretch yourself (which was a problem with 4, where the liberal revival system really made it so you could bang your head at a problem without much thought), without feeling like cheap difficulty.And then there’s the combat. The Press Turn system is probably the greatest jRPG combat framework ever made. Exploiting weaknesses is a classic in the genre, but unlike other games where hitting those elemental spells is all about staggering the enemy, here everything is built around buying yourself time. You don’t get a cool all out attack, you don’t stun a fool – you just get 4 extra turns, which means you plan your buffs and assaults carefully around maximizing that potential. It makes every hit count and forces to utilize your arsenal – even a level 1 spell or item is useful if it allows you to prolong your round and get in a clutch heal or boost. Some of the most exhilarating battles will regularly wipe out your active team – and few jRPG franchises let you pull of a more badass “I am not left-handed” moment than when you pull out a group of even more vicious fuckers to finish the job. Or when you barely scrape out a victory with the underleveled fusion fodder, just because you took your time to look at your options.SMTV doesn’t really do anything radical with the formula because why the fuck would you try to fix perfection? Instead, it opts for a few smaller changes that make the combat puzzle that is Press Turn perhaps the best iteration of it to date – and that’s hard praise, because many thought SMTIV: Apocalypse was the apex.First of all it changes the way you manage party order. Stats no longer determine who goes first – you just set an initiative order from left to right when setting up your party. This sounds minor, but in practice opens up the gameplay wildly. Your demons no longer have to have “empty” turns – with the proper setup, you can create a deathball that will maximize damage from turn 1. You can even move the protag around – and considering his malleability, it opens up several exciting possibilities for how you can build the main character. It’s the first time in a looong time when positioning mattered, and it’s a nice balance between the classic formula of the series and some of the front-back row shenanigans of older FF7 or games like Devil Summoner.Secondly, buffs and debuffs are in Persona mode – instead of stacking indefinitely, you get up to 3 ranks for 3 turns and you need spells with the ma- suffix to mass buff/debuff. This was controversial, but it helps liven up the combat flow. SMT4’s lack of a defense stat and general tempo meant that relatively early on, you just began to buff and debuff to oblivion the first few turns just so survive. Here, the various -kajas and -kundas are worth their weigh in gold. Additionally, the value of many attacks skills which debuff or stick an ailment to the enemy raises expotentially. Early game is filled with so many fun combos just because you can’t default to raising and lowering numbers willy nilly.Thirdly, the Magatsuhi system creates even more opportunities. Every time you attack or eat damage, you raise a bar. Once that bar is full, you get a special skill that you can expend it for. It can be a support spell (like letting you fail negotiations safely), a massive damage attack or just the basic one you have: every attack you do crits, including the magic ones. This lets you buy yourself time to figure out weaknesses, bounce back from a beatdown or setup a finisher. Jury’s out on how great this system is since the early game Magatsuhi build up is relatively slow, which means a lot of the more out there skills get the shaft in favor of Free Turns, but even if it was just the Free Turns I’d say I love it. It’s a power boost that doesn’t feel cheap or formulaic. It’s a tool in your arsenal that you need to work for, one that will never win battles for you, just help you realize a strategy.Lastly, the way you learn skills opens up a lot of things. Instead of buying skills for points, equipping items or getting them “whispered” to you (in 4 demons would share their skills with you once they exhausted their upgrade pipeline), you get one “Essence” per demon. Essence lets you inject a demon’s affinities into you, meaning you can prep the main character for a, say, Dark-casting boss; or you can just steal their skills or put them on other demons. It gives you tons of flexibility regardless of build and makes it so that if you’re in a fusing lull, you can get your demons in order. Need a healing bot but you skipped on a few skills? No worries, you can do one immediately.A lot of it sounds very minor, but it does a lot to inject a visibly different rhythm to a tried, perfect system. This could have been Nocturne 2 and nobody would have complained that much, but it’s so much more and every battle is a fucking thrill. People scared of the difficulty can rest easy – there’s actually very little grinding involved. Fuse demons on the regular, just fight some on the way, do a sidequest and you’ll be fine with the challenges thrown your way. Normal will be perfect for most players – it’s not overtly punishing as the game largely avoids throwing instant KOs at you for shits and giggles, while boss battles will make you feel like a fucking tactical mastermind.SMTV is great. The “Persona 5 without the heart” crowd can eat my ass, because this game has more heart than is the legal limit.
I got the Radiohead game on my PS5 and just finished playing about an hour’s worth on my huge ass projector with like all lights turned off and the good sound system. I was high as hell!This “game” is fucking cool. I’m a huge Radiohead fan and I know both Kid A and Amnesiac by heart. Playing through all the exhibits and just like… cruising to all the different songs and sounds and whatnot was truly mesmerizing, I am not even joking. You can play through the whole thing in an hour probably but there are a bunch of different choices to make about what you’re going to look at next/where you’re going to go, so you could definitely take your time and stretch it out to much longer (or replay it and have a different experience multiple times). Think I’ve done just about everything now and I’ve gotta wonder how this is gonna be remembered. It is awesome! Also I just found a secret room where you can watch Thom Yorke pissing through a tiny hole in the wall! Not really, but I did find a secret room kinda place and you can watch footage of an old Radiohead concert (which I’m doing right now). Definitely recommend this game.
There absolutely ARE things you can interact with, but you don’t press a button to do so, you simply walk up to/onto/into.