#This is an instance in which i think the fact that nintendo is afraid to commit to certain aspects of Link's character is more harmful

[prosebushpatch]

Listen, i don’t care if it’s romantic/platonic/barely put up with, but in totk, Link and Zelda share that bed. I didn’t spend all those rupees so Link could sleep on the floor, Nintendo. You couldn’t even give him a bed under the stairs? WHERE’S THE SIGN THAT SAYS “LINK’S HOUSE” NINTENDO. COMMIT TO THE SHIP OR AT LEAST PUT TWO FRICKING BEDS IN THE HOUSE THIS IS MALARKEY

[daydreaming-scheming-demon]

i hate mainstream appeal, or at least an extreme and intentional amount of it. actually, hate isnt a strong enough word. despise. absolutely fucking despise.

so many companies just do not care for experimentation, and whenever they do the experimentation is barely anything. i see this in so much stuff, in how cgi and specifically certain styles of cgi has taken over cinema to the point where the few 2d animated films, especially the western 2d animated films, just dont do as well, even when they're popular IPs, because cgi has become standard. it aint an animated film if it aint cgi.

and not just cgi, but a very specific style of cgi. you see it in everything. it started with toy story, when toy story did it, it was great. it was original. it was actually trying something new. but then they kept doing it, and then every studio joined in when they realized it was cheaper. not just cgi but a specific style of cgi, not necessarily even the cheapest style, just a very mainstream one. i see it in encanto, in turning red, in inside out. dont get me wrong, i dont think this style is bad or that these movies dont still have unique aspects of their style, but you cant deny the similarities, and more importantly, the reason for those similarities, that being a need to appeal to the mainstream.

and it's annoying, and it bleeds into the story too, into the characters. they never pass a certain boundary, trying to stay firmly away from controversy, within the confines of family friendliness and a mainstream understanding of concepts. and this is restricting in some serious ways. to clarify, i do not want them to swear, i do not even want them to show blood or a whole lot that would get labelled as too mature for children. i just want them to not shy away from vaguely controversial things, to not be afraid of issues beyond a mainstream understanding, and to not cater to such a simplistic and common worldview so dramatically.

one of the things that makes stories, and media in general, so special to me, is their unique perspectives. i see this a lot in indie projects, and the contrast between them and big budget hollywood films is startling. i get a feel for such unique individual perspectives in indie projects, even the bad ones, and i guess that's what happens when the team is smaller or it's mostly only one person working on the project, because we're all unique, im sure even the individuals who make up the mainstream audience have unique perspectives, but that just doesn't come across in these larger films, or games, or anything really. anything disney, or nintendo.

and sure, you could say this is just because it's a smaller team. and im sure that's a contributing reason, no doubt. but the thing is, the contrast in worldviews between some of the more personalized large projects and the things curated to the tastes of the masses. take gravity falls for instance, a disney IP, but not one considered enough to bother curating at the time, just a show, not a film at the cinema. the style of cringe comedy it has, the way it tells stories and reveals mysteries, the absurdist view on the world it has, sure, it has a lot of people behind it, but a unique perspective on the world comes across well. the same with something like spiderverse, which is a big budget film, but damn did they know what they were doing.

and the unique perspectives disney films have on the world? well, they're there. there is kind of a difference, but it's barely as drastic. you can tell it was kept within tight confines, unwilling to present anything that the mainstream wouldnt easily comprehend, agree with, or find appealing.

and that's just so infuriatingly limiting. you can say it makes sense because the kind of person this is appealing to is like, the most common kind of person. that fact probably even plays a part in why these movies and other things are like this to begin with, though certainly not the only reason.

but do you not think the common person deserves more? deserves to be presented with things outside of their understanding? or comfort? i dont just interact with media that fits my own beliefs and perspective, yknow. because i think it's quite a good thing to do that.

i just, ughhhh. the mainstream bugs me so much. i dont even think a lot of these things are necessarily bad. encanto had good songs, inside out 2 dealt with issues of anxiety well within the limitations of mass appeal, turning red actually mentioned periods which was a small and good step outside the usual boundaries. but they just, they rub me the wrong way, yknow. they all do. most of the big live action hollywood movies too. same with many kinds of games, especially nintendo games. i just hate it, it's so limiting on our media, it's why i mostly just go with independent stuff, because that way i can see more unique individual styles, ideas, etc.

and yknow what? i do actually think they should maybe show a bit of blood on screen for these movies sometimes. and go beyond the concept of family friendliness. because all that stuff is a load of rubbish in my eyes. beliefs that got too out of hand and have so much wrong with them. yeah, i think we should pass those boundaries for big media meant for the mainstream. not with everything, but definitely with a lot of things.

this was just a random rant about something i hate that i wrote in one take, dont nitpick with any details you think im not 100% correct on please. this isn't supposed to be a perfect critique of mainstream media, this is just me venting. okay?

[relaxedmouse]

Magic, Control, Emotion, and Random Destruction: some thoughts

With “Frozen 2” releasing later this month, and stores near me selling Frozen-themed dolls and candy and picture books, I’ve been thinking back to Frozen 1. What I remember most from that movie (other than “LET IT GOOOOO”) is Elsa’s ice magic. Specifically, that one scene near the end where she says, “Love. Of course. Love!” And then she’s suddenly able to remove the eternal winter that drove the conflict of the movie. That scene has always bothered me, but I’ve had a surprisingly tough time articulating why.

For a long time, I figured the issue with that scene was the suddenness of it. The movie lacks explanation for how Elsa’s powers work, and in the end, it relies on us (the audience) to accept that shouting the word “love” in a revelatory manner is enough to solve everything.

To be honest, this is an issue that many stories (not just Frozen) have when it comes to depicting magic. Having magic isn’t something that real-life people can relate to. “My powers are out of control!” is a common fantasy plot, and its resolution of course involves the person learning to control their powers. But how do they do that? We usually don’t understand much of it.

We may get told that a character put long hours into magical study, but this accomplishment is diminished by the fact that we have no idea what kind of work goes into mastering magic. Sometimes it involves a mentor babbling about “learning to believe in yourself” or other vague concepts. Often, we have to rely on simply being told that the character is out of control one moment, then in control the next.

This is pretty much what happened in Frozen, when Elsa is able to reverse the huge blizzard one moment after she’s reminded that her sister loves her. I’m not mocking you if you found that moment to be touching. But I do think it reinforces the point that it’s hard for us non-magical viewers to predict what causes one’s powers to slip into or out of control. So, when a plot relies on that happening, it can be difficult to follow the progression of events.

Anyway, I still consider the resolution of Frozen to be abrupt, but in thinking about it more, perhaps it’s not as poorly-explained as I figured. If I want to be generous, I can see there’s a coherent storyline there. Elsa’s powers fly out of control when she’s scared and go back under control when she’s happy. Therefore, seeing an act of love from Anna is enough for her to gain control of the eternal winter. Okay. Maybe not the best execution, but I’m willing to accept that’s how it works.

You see, I’ve often read and watched stories that had only a vague explanation for how magic operates, and still enjoyed them. And I’ve never been one of those people to speculate as to how Elsa got magic powers in the first place; I’ve always accepted that she simply has them, as the premise of the story. So why did that one scene near the end of the movie bug me so much?

In the end, I think my main problem is that I simply don’t like it when a magic system is fueled by emotion. Especially when that leads to accidental destruction. And yes, of course that’s a completely personal opinion.

If magic is linked to emotion, it means that some poor kid who has a tantrum could wind up accidentally blowing up their house. In Elsa’s case, she gets so upset that she unleashes a blizzard that covers all of Arendelle. Later, when she’s told that she caused this deep snow, she again gets upset, so much so that she nearly kills her own sister with an accidentally-thrown ice shard.

Was an entire country put in danger because just one woman got upset? It’s not that I have trouble believing it. It’s more like . . . this level of destruction feels weirdly “unnecessary” to me. Or maybe "arbitrary" is a better word.

I just never seem to like it when magic is set up this way (as a dangerous force that must be controlled, or else it will spiral out of control). I get that it leaves plenty of room for conflict. Making a character accidentally harm their loved ones is a super-fast way to pull out all sorts of angst, yeah? Even so, this approach always seems to leave me with too many questions.

A funny thing about fantasy worlds is they frequently treat magic like it’s a force of nature that will occur on its own when the magic-wielder gets angry or distressed – but it’s also a skill that must be studied. That’s why many settings feature magic schools and magic tutors. Now, I know that Frozen didn’t have any magical schools (that we know of). But there are plenty of other stories that center on a character receiving tutoring in order to learn how to control their innate magical abilities, which had previously been causing all sorts of unplanned havoc.

I find this puzzling. When people get upset, they might cry or yell, but they probably won’t be taking out a pencil and paper and solving calculus problems. When people are extremely emotional, it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to do a task that requires calm thinking. And that’s my issue with many depictions of magic. Magic is treated like a skill to be learned, but it’s also something that you can do while you’re in the middle of crying hysterically?

Okay, I guess these two ideas aren’t totally incompatible. Some stories run with the notion that getting emotional will make the magic act out on its own, while calming down and concentrating will let you control what it does. And there definitely have been awesome moments in stories where the hero, fueled by the power of friendship or the need to avenge a fallen friend, draws out amazing power and gives the villain a satisfying beat-down, the likes of which they’d never managed before.

Still, even though there are great depictions of emotion-fueled magic, I find that I tend not to get into it. This goes for cases where it’s played for drama, but it’s especially true in cases where it’s played for comedy.

For instance, I played Fire Emblem: Fates (video game for the Nintendo 3DS). This game had a pair of twin sisters from the vaguely-named Ice Tribe. Flora and Felicia’s ice powers really didn’t do anything in the plot, but sometimes they would show up in their support conversations with other characters. Felicia creates a snowstorm when Saizo insults her and she gets angry. Flora makes one too when Corrin proposes to her and she gets flustered. The former might’ve been an intentional attack on Felicia’s part (though that’s a bit unclear), but the latter is definitely unintentional. And it seems like we’re meant to laugh when Corrin says the winds are so strong and cold that he can’t see anything, but he’s so happy that he doesn’t care. (M-Maybe you should care about that, buddy.)

By the way, it’s a coincidence that both my examples involve people with ice powers. Search more through the world of fiction and you’ll find people who strike down trees with lightning when they’re angry, people who accidentally burn their lovers with fire when they’re passionate, people who blast a hole in the wall when they’re afraid . . .

Man, I just can't stand it. Even if that hole in the wall is later repaired with cartoonish ease, I get stuck on the fact that the hole existed at all.

I'm the type of reader/viewer who's usually content to roll with a story no matter where it goes. I'll accept weird premises, I'll accept ambiguous endings - but for some reason, I just can't stand random acts of destruction. There's something about that exact combination of violence, suddenness, and the fact that these dangers aren't caused by the intentions of a character, but rather a thing that can occur at any time.

Of course, good writing can make a good story out of anything. It’s definitely possible for someone to write a fascinating story that explores the implications of a person (especially a child) having tremendous, out-of-control powers. And, since this trope keeps appearing, I’m left to assume that people like it and find it interesting.

However, even if these types of plots are well-written, I typically find myself turning away from them. In the face of arbitrary destruction, I get caught thinking of how all that horror could’ve easily been avoided by the writer simply choosing to make the magic work differently in their world.

[watchingspn-blog]

spn rewatch | wendigo

I’m gonna be real upfront right now. This episode scared the piss out of me when I first saw it. I’m sorry but a crazy fast, perfect hunter who can move faster than you can blink and eats human flesh to survive and can mimic a person’s voice to lure you to them?! I WAS TERRIFIED! It didn’t help that I had just moved into our new house, which is on five acres of land with about four of those acres being nothing but woods. But, for real, I know some of the effects aren’t as good as they could be by today’s standards but I actually loved and was terrified of this episode the first time I saw it, which kind of amped up the scary factor from the pilot for me. 

Okay, here we go. 

So as if we needed to further cement that this is taking place in glorious 2005, you’ve got two guys playing games on their Nintendo DS’s (RIP pre-Glee Cory Monteith, the only person who could’ve competed with Jared vertically) and then Tommy recording a video on his Blackberry, somehow magically having it perfectly level with his face despite not being able to see the screen as he records. Like seriously that’s the supernatural activity they should be investigating.

Okay but so some of the wendio effects later in the episode are not so great but in this first scene, I think they made some pretty solid choices of just relying on the whole concept of “less is more” and giving mostly scary sounds and rustling trees and making you more afraid of what could be in the forest than creating a scary visual to throw at you right off the bat. Solid scary intro scene. 

The cemetery scene. Totally classic shoutout to Carrie. I had just gotten into Stephen King when I started watching Supernatural (honestly I was delving into all kinds of horror themed things at the time) and I’d seen Carrie for the first time not too long before this. Which means not only was I super scared by the jump scare (because I’m still jumpy as fuck to this day), I was also SUPER proud of myself for knowing what they were trying to reference there. I definitely thought I was cool for getting that one. Now, not so much. But the scene still makes me jump. 

I really do like the ways they’re kind of trying to establish how the brothers care for each other. Like you know right off the bat in the pilot that their relationship is rough at best and that there’s some pretty obvious toxic masculinity on Dean’s part at least but like you can still see that Dean’s concerned. He’s got his own way of showing it but he’s worried about his little brother. 

Side note: just remember that they both had a seriously messed up childhood and the fact that either of them are as close to normal as they are is impressive. Like I think all things considered, they’re pretty well adjusted. Kind of. 

This episode is kind of outside the norm compared to future episodes with how Sam and Dean both handle the case when they first get to town. The fact that Sam just wants to go straight to the coordinates John left them while Dean’s the one saying “maybe we should do a little research first” is bizarro. But it also kind of helps show just where Sam’s mind is at at this point. He’s not coming to this as a hunter taking on a case, he’s a man with a vendetta and the next step he needs to take is finding John. He’s fueled by anger and grief and guilt and that kind of reflects when he seems less concerned about what’s going on in the woods and more interested in just getting out there ASAP.

Okay, just like they couldn’t pass as US Marshals, the guys seriously do not look like park rangers at all. Like you guys aren’t even trying come on. And good on Haley for being suspicious even if she did seem to buy into their story for a bit. 

BABY HAN SOLO! 

I totally did not realize that was Alden Ehrenreich playing Ben until I saw his name on screen at the beginning of the episode. He looks so so so young in this ohmygod. Also think I’ll need to keep a list of like all the crazy celeb cameos of people who got famous after being on the show. Or were already famous but I totally forgot popped up. 

For our next super underrated guest star scene of the series, Shaw - the old man who’s parents were taken by a “grizzly” back when he was a kiddo in 1959. 

Like seriously, it’s one scene but Donnelly Rhodes (RIP) does an amazing job with the scene and like it kind of leaves me with chills whenever he says that whatever it was didn’t break down the door but unlocked it. Like that’s still hella spooky to me. Also, I still don’t totally understand why the wendigo left him behind. Like you’d think for a monster that is going to have a big ass meal before hibernation would want as much meat as possible. Like yeah a little kid wouldn’t much but he’d be something right?

Also that’s a gnarly scar like how did he survive that.

So Dean talks about it being possibly a skinwalker or a black dog but like looking into what those both actually are I honestly don’t understand why he would think that based on what they know about the attacks. Like black dogs are death omens and skinwalkers wouldn’t be able to do the kind of damage that’s being done considering everyone’s just like “oh it’s a grizzly”. So like I dunno, I guess this might’ve been the writers tossing out references to other creatures to make it sound like Dean knows a bunch but like neither of those would be my first guesses for this case.

Kind of just like “early installment weirdness” but whatever. It’s not a big deal, just me nitpicking.

Okay so Roy is kind of a jackass but like he knows what he’s doing for the most part and he totally doesn’t buy the guys story about beng park rangers for one minute. So like I can respect that. And like if it would’ve been an actual animal attacking people, he might’ve survived but oh well. 

I do like that Haley just goes ahead and calls bullshit on the park rangers story before they even go on their adventure but Dean’s whole “it's probably the most honest I've ever been with a woman...ever.” is just kind of cringey. 

So all the traipsing through the woods and the “I’m smarter than you” staredown between Roy and Sam is not super interesting but I do like that 1 - we get to see Sam being angry and being emotional in a more volatile way because that’s not often the case as the show goes on - and 2 - we get our iconic line of “saving people, hunting things, the family business” and the whole idea that they’re not supposed to meet up with John but do the jobs he doesn’t have time for while he’s hunting for the demon that killed Mary. 

I don’t think I really realized why John would leave them coordinates and the journal when he didn’t plan on actually meeting up with them when I watched this as a kid. I just kind of shrugged it off as like a necessary plot device for the show to progress, didn’t really see it as anything with a deeper meaning. And I think it’s fair that you can’t read too much into after an episode and a half because there’s so much that we don’t know yet about the boys and John and their story and all of that. But like looking at it with the knowledge of their lives and everything, it’s a lot heavier moment to me. Maybe I’m just reading too much into it. 

Okay so the rest of the episode is just encounter monster, piss off monster, get kidnapped by monster, track monster, kill monster. Kind of standard, not super exciting like there’s not a lot to talk about. Dean with his molotov cocktails is kind of fantastic. 

The trail of M&Ms is fun and yes better than breadcrumbs. Sam immediately becoming invested in killing the monster once Dean’s been taken gives me all kinds of feels because I love when these two go into protective brother mode. And Dean all banged up with bruises and cuts and dirt is a look I probably shouldn’t like as much as I do but that’s a conversation for another day. 

The wendigo does look a little cheesy when you get better glimpses of it because early 00s special effects so it’s definitely for the best they keep things pretty shadowy for the end of the episode. Not the worst looking monster of season one and still scary enough, to me at least. 

So this is the episode that seems to start the trend that if there’s a girl involved and her life gets saved by the Winchesters, one of them is going to flirt with her and get some kind of physical affection before they leave town. It doesn’t happen every episode but it happens enough that 26 year old me is rolling my eyes. 14 year old me had no issues with Sam and Dean getting smooches because look at them. But now I’m kind of like this seems a little unnecessary but whatever. It’s not the worst instance and all in all, I actually really liked Haley. I liked the whole Collins family. They were some solid guest characters and I feel like the scenes where Sam and Dean are interacting with them individually does a good job of kind of fleshing out their characters a bit more. It gives a chance for some necessary exposition without feeling too forced. 

All in all, solid episode. Scary monster, intensified my fear of the woods, gave some good scenes, iconic lines. Does it have some cheesy moments? Yes. Is it the best episode of the series? No. Does it still scare me when I watch it? 100%.

BODY COUNT: 3 humans (Brad, Gary, Roy); 1 wendigo (our first corporeal monster - also like I’m curious about who the wendigo was before it changed, like how long has it been in the wilderness, how did it wind up at Blackwater Ridge, how it wound up this far west)

RATING: 7.5/10 - yep, I’ll say it. I think this episode is better than the pilot. Not by much but the characters feel a little closer to who they become throughout season one and I feel like you get a better feel for them than we did in the pilot. Also the wendigo scares me more than Sarah Shahi in a sexy nightgown I’m just saying.  

[theartofmedia]

Kotaku and the Art of Game Leaks

(Full disclosure: this piece was commissioned by a friend. The topic has changed from the initial pitch, but still. I don’t know how that may or may not affect your view on this piece, but I still feel it’s important for me to be transparent about this.) On May 30th, 2019, Laura Kate Dale announced her departure from Kotaku UK. Dale is a controversial figure among the games journalist community for... multiple reasons (please note the latter link lacks any actual evidence and how she apparently didn’t report this Uber driver for ‘nearly kidnapping her’ despite posting it publicly on Twitter, hence the controversy around it), but that’s not what we’re talking about today. What we’re going to be discussing is what she is known for the most: video game leaks.

LKD is most known for leaking video game information prior to their release, from information about Dark Souls Remastered, to unboxing a PS4 Slim before Sony itself even announced its existence, to Switch software. It got to the point where LKD was blacklisted by Nintendo UK, most likely for leaking so much information.

Now as I was researching LKD, there was something I noticed. A lot of people supported LKD’s leaks, calling it “real journalism,” and commending her for doing her job so well. As shown by the link above, many people mocked Nintendo UK for blacklisting her for “doing her job too well.” People are always scrambling for new leaks, new information, though in many cases, this can lead to fake leaks, misinformation, and confusion among players.

And it got me to think: how do leaks really affect both the devs and the consumers of games?

The conclusion I’ve come to about it is: it does more harm than good on both sides, but especially to the devs.

Here we will be defining four categories of leaks (three of which are explained here by Griffin Vacheron of Game Revolution), though our main focus will be on two.

Accidental leaks are just like they sound: they’re accidents. Something happened, something went wrong, and people got a hold of information before they were supposed to. Like when Capcom put all the pictures of the roster of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 on their website when a good portion of the roster hadn’t yet been announced, and the unannounced characters could be found via a small URL change. Or when Walmart’s Canadian site revealed around 40 unannounced titles due to a(n alleged) glitch in their system just weeks before E3 2018. Or when Bethesda accidentally streamed their E3 2015 rehearsal which ended up confirming the existence of Dishonored 2. Yeah.

The main component of accidental leaks is just that--accidental. Someone did something wrong, something in a system went wrong, someone didn’t think through the consequences of what probably seemed like a good idea at the time--it happens! Nothing is perfect, people included, and shit happens. But the key part is that it’s not intentional. Someone may (or, really, will) be reprimanded, punished, or even fired depending on the leak, but there was never any intention to reveal this information.

Company leaks are... not entirely proven, from my research. This is the idea that the developers themselves leak information in order to draw attention to their game and hype it up. Often, this will be the other determination of certain leaks--was it an accident, or a PR stunt? There’s no real definitive proof and seems to simply be rumor, but the possibility still exists, as there’s no real way to disprove it, either.

Ethic leaks are generally the exception, not the rule. These are leaks of working conditions, such as an employee from NetherRealm talking about the toxic work environment, or Rockstar employees opening up about how they were mistreated and underpaid and burned to ashes, or Blizzard’s layoff of 800 employees. (Further reading here on the abuse of game devs, as well as what can be done about it.) These are things that need to be talked about, because these relate to the treatment of actual, real people. These aren’t issues then of game content or development, it’s an issue of ethics in the workplace. Same with the leak of this document that details how AI can be used to encourage microtransactions, though that is an issue related to the consumer rather than the workers. Shady tactics and the maltreatment of workers is something that needs to be shown and discussed and talked about, because these things affect the actual workers, as well as the quality of a product and the company’s integrity in relation to the consumer. (Basically, if you intentionally make your game in such a way that players have to use microtransactions to make any significant progress, you’ve ruined your integrity as a company by trying to drain your player base of more money, regardless of the base price they paid for the game anyway. It’s a scummy business practice, and that kind of thing should be revealed to the public that you’re going to try to bleed dry.)

Intentional leaks are just as they sound: they’re the intentional leak of information. This is when people outside the company hack in and reveal secrets, or when people inside the company reveal information (whether directly or indirectly via being sources for journalists) before they are to be officially announced. The information given is given with the knowledge that yes, someone is going to reveal it to the public.

So let’s talk about the ramifications of intentional leaks on game devs.

Remember Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle? The cover image had been leaked before the team had a chance to actually showcase the game. Nobody knew anything about the game other than the cover, and universal reception at the time was: “This is going to be terrible.” Because of a leaked image, the public already had a strong negative opinion about it. However, the showcase that showed off actual gameplay was well-received, and the Metacritic score is 85. So the game itself was pretty damn good, according to the critics. An unlikely crossover turned out well! But the initial reaction was incredibly demoralizing to the team. It’s one thing to have criticism given to a game based on a trailer or gameplay showcase; it’s another to get criticism based on a single image and the concept alone with no other information given. As the director and music composer explain, the dev team was very worried and stressed not just about the game reception but about the showcase, as they were afraid that the reception to the showcase was going to be bad due to the already-negative opinion on the game.

Let’s also talk about how CD Projekt Red had demo gameplay and audio of Cyberpunk 2077 leaked by a journalist (who later complained about not being credited, about how his relationship with CD Projekt Red and the PR person he was friends with) after being asked not to. The company had their trust in the journalists--someone who they had a fifteen year relationship with--used and abused, leading to secrets being leaked. The devs had politely asked the journalists not to do so, but one did, and apparently saw nothing wrong with leaking private information and posting it to the public.

Or let’s talk about how, way back in the day, the entire source code for Half-Life 2 was revealed to the public and Valve (allegedly) lost $250 million dollars. The article actually states some of the effects of the leaked source code: “Meanwhile, the team at Valve, which had been in crunch mode for months, was left reeling by the leak. The game was costing the company $1 million a month to build and the end was still far from sight. The leak had not only caused financial damage but had demotivated a tired team. One young designer asked Newell, "Is this going to destroy the company?" (found under the heading “A Red Letter Day”).

Or we can talk about the Sm4sh leaks back in 2014 and how it led to an employee (allegedly) being fired and sued due to leaking this information. Now, this can very easily be viewed as justice being served to the leaker, and I would agree. But what is the issue here can be summed up by PlatinumGames producer JP Kellams:

The people working for years and years on a project suddenly have parts of their project--that they wanted to surprise players with, this particular instance being the Sm4sh roster--given out to the public before they wanted it to be. Imagine working for years on your life on a project, and then having someone reveal your work to the internet without your knowledge or permission. I know I would feel dejected, exhausted, hopeless, hurt, regardless of any positive reception to what was revealed. You, as someone who has worked so incredibly hard--and, in many cases in the game industry, been thoroughly abused--apparently don’t have the right to reveal the thing you’ve been working on the way you want.

I want to make this clear: I am not talking about “the Big Corporation” here. I don’t care about the higher-ups who put the pressure on the workers. I care about the workers, the little people that are being trampled on and forced to work in abusive, toxic conditions in order to meet a deadline and the outrageous demands of the higher-ups. They are the ones suffering.

Case in point: the Blufever leaks for Final Fantasy XIV. The details are a bit murky, as is with most leaks, but the story as I understand it is: user Blufever is/was an employee at Square Enix who leaked massive amounts of information on upcoming expansions/patches for FFXIV. Then, their account went dark, as they apparently feared for being found out by Square Enix. Vergeben, a known reputable leaker within the Smash community, had this to say about the situation:

Now, of course, there is no way to truly verify these claims. However, due to Vergeben’s reputation as an accurate leaker (and the fact that he was right about one of the upcoming DLC characters being from Square Enix) leads me to believe him. Assuming that his claims are true, someone leaking all of this information to the public put a lot of innocent people in the line of fire--and it’s very possible that these

So, what does this have to do with Kotaku?

Here’s something interesting.

When known E3 leaker WabiSabi was given a cease & desist warning from Nintendo for leaking information, take a look at some of the top replies. (Note that a lot of them are ninja gifs, here’s a sample so I don’t have to do it for every one.)

Not all of the replies are against WabiSabi, however, though a majority seem to be:

(About the above: I can’t really find anything suggesting that LKD was leaking things for “customer advocacy,” other than confirming that the next gen console (now known as the Switch) was not using the Wii branding like its predecessor did, thus easing some fears because of the bombing of the Wii U. Other tweets about that are here, but don’t really sway me in terms of “consumer advocacy.”)

As shown, the replies seem to be pretty divisive on whether or not it was a good or bad thing that WabiSabi got hit with a cease & desist.

However, let’s have a look at some of the replies to LKD’s tweet about how she was blacklisted by Nintendo.

And again, not all are supportive of her:

I actually had to look quite a bit to find any negative comments. Many were supportive of her.

(I would like to take this moment to get unprofessional for a second and unleash my full opinion of this: NO FUCKING SHIT YOU GOT BLACKLISTED, SHERLOCK. THEY TRUST YOU WITH THEIR SECRETS AND THEN YOU DISRESPECT THEM BY REVEALING THEM BEFORE THEY DID. I DO NOT FUCKING UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE WOULD SAY IT’S A COMPANY BEING “SHADY” WHEN IT’S JUST INFORMATION ABOUT UPCOMING PRODUCTS. NOTHING ABOUT ETHICS OR CONSUMER TRUST OR PRODUCT QUALITY. anyway,)

Now, you can say, “But Sakra! That’s a three-year difference!” And I rebuke with: people still support her to this day in spite of this. Kotaku UK kept her on though all of this and then some. It wasn’t until a kerfuffle happened in April with the “Persona 5 OST Has A Disability Slur” thing happened, and soon after, LKD left. It seems that the immense backlash with that was what fully pushed her off. (Now whether she was forced to resign or legitimately wanted to leave, that’s something only Kotaku UK and she know for sure.) The point is, her departure from Kotaku UK seems to have been completely unrelated to her leaks.

And why would it when Kotaku themselves--not just the UK chapter--are clearly very supportive of video game leaks of this nature?

Just have a look at their recent posts. All I did was put “leaks” in the search box. You may say “they’re just reporting the news of leaks!” But they put some of the leaked information IN the articles. The one on Watch Dogs Legion even confirmed the leaks. “Kotaku can confirm that this one’s real, as we’ve heard the name from several sources plugged into the company.”

Oh, and let’s not forget this lovely fucking article from 2015 where a Kotaku writer apparently speaks for the site and basically victimizes themselves for being blacklisted by Ubisoft and Bethesda. In fact, we’re going to dissect it, just because there is so much bullshit in here from the author, who is clearly speaking for Kotaku as a whole!

Buckle up, kids, your local Sakra is about to get fucking pissed.

The author describes how the Bethesda blackout came after “we reported insiders’ accounts of the troubled development of the still unreleased fourth major Doom game. In May of that year, we reported that Arkane Austin, the Bethesda-owned studio behind Dishonored, would be working on a new version of the long missing-in-action Prey 2 and that some at the studio were not pleased about that. When top people at Bethesda started making statements casting doubt on our reporting, we published a leaked internal e-mail confirming that those statements had misled gamers and that Arkane had indeed been working on a version of Prey 2.”

However, Kotaku at that time had also posted “our December 2013 report detailing the existence of the then-secret Fallout 4.” Reporting on troubled development isn’t an issue. Leaking emails just to confirm a game when Bethesda was desperately trying to preserve their secrecy that you had broken (probably not first, but Kotaku has a lot of mainstream reach) is an issue. I don’t like Bethesda, don’t get me wrong, but they were trying to salvage the secrecy of a project. Do I think trying to lie to the audience in order to keep the existence of a project secret is okay? No, not really. But I understand what they were trying to do. And whether you agree with their choices or not--no shit you would be blacklisted, especially if you have insiders as described here! You can’t go crying victim and martyr yourselves when you do this kind of shit. Especially if you were reporting on Fallout 4, a major fucking entry in a popular franchise!

As for the Ubisoft blackout...

“The current Ubisoft blackout is actually the second in as many years. The company tried a similar approach in the spring of 2014 after we published early images of the then-unannounced Assassin’s Creed Unity—images that had been leaked to us by an independent source. That article confirmed news about the company’s extraordinary plans to release two entirely different AC games in the fall of that year, one for new consoles and one for old. Ubisoft had warmed back to Kotaku by the summer of 2014, several months after the Unity report, but has cold-shouldered us since the Victory story one year ago. It’s possible other articles angered them, too. But that Victory piece is a safe bet.”

Ubisoft actually gave Kotaku another chance after leaking Unity, and the Victory (now Syndicate) story was, guess what, more leaks. You broke Ubisoft’s trust once, then you broke it again. Frankly, it’s fucking disgusting, knowing about how these leaks really affect devs, that Kotaku would dare to turn itself into a “journalism martyr,” as it were, because they were ignored by the devs whose trust they broke.

Now, you can say that maybe they didn’t know the information of how it affects devs--but a) the Sm4sh leaks and the fallout had already happened by then (it was 2014) and the Half-Life 2 source code fiasco had happened in the previous decade. Also, if they had insiders, wouldn’t they know just how serious leaking this information was and how it puts their sources and other devs at risk? Maybe Ubisoft and Bethesda aren’t as strict on their leak policies as Square Enix and Nintendo are--we don’t know. But I can’t imagine that they like it at all.

“I’m sure some people will sympathize with Bethesda and Ubisoft. Some will cheer these companies and hope others follow suit. They will see this kind of reporting as upsetting, as ruining surprises and frustrating creative people. They will claim we are “hurting video games,” and, as so many do, mistake the job of entertainment reporting for the mandate to hype entertainment products.

“We serve our readers, not game companies, and will always do so to the best of our ability, no matter who in the gaming world is or isn’t angry with us at the moment. In some ways, the blacklist has even been instructive—cut off from press access and pre-release review copies, we have doubled down on our post-release “embedding” approach to games coverage. We’ve experienced some of the year’s biggest games from street level, at the same time and in the same way as our readers.”

No.

It isn’t just about “spoilers” and “ruining the surprise.” In some cases, yes, a lot of people don’t like or actively avoid leaks because they do want to be surprised. But that’s not the only thing.

By “serving your readers” and trying to dig for this information, you’re putting devs at risk. You’re putting your “sources” at risk. Now, if you were reporting on development or shady tactics or awful work environments or specific negative incidents behind the scenes or things that should be talked about, I would absolutely agree with you that you should continue digging deeper. But that’s not it. The companies trust you not to reveal something until a certain time, and you go and do it anyway.

By claiming victim and demonizing the “big bad corporation” for blacklisting you, you minimize the actual stress and hardships it put on the smaller guys in the company that the entire company is built on. You completely brush it aside and paint the entire company as irrational. You completely neglect the plight of the actual people working on it, and disrespect them by revealing their information before they do, when they have worked for SO LONG on whatever project it is. Like JP Kellams said, devs earn the right to talk about their product because they worked on it for so long. You haven’t.

And then... this paragraph.

“Too many big game publishers cling to an irrational expectation of secrecy and are rankled when the press shows them how unrealistic they’re being. There will always be a clash between independent reporters and those seek to control information, but many of these companies appear to believe that it is actually possible in 2015 for hundreds of people to work dozens of months on a video game and for no information about the project to seep out. They appear to believe that the general public will not find out about these games until their marketing plans say it’s time. They operate with the assumption that the press will not upend these plans, and should the press defy their assumption, they bring down the hammer. We make our own judgments about what information best serves the news value of a story, and what our readers would prefer not to know—which is why, for example, we omitted key plot details from the Fallout 4 scripts that were leaked to us. We keep covering these companies’ games, of course. Readers expect that. Millions of people still read our stories about them. The companies just leave themselves a little more out of the equation.”

I never thought I’d see the day when video game companies were being victim-blamed.

Frankly, by leaking information, it ruins the relationship between the companies and the journalist, because then the company will start to make generalizations about journalists and not trust them, thinking that they will reveal whatever information they give them, which makes journalists like this press harder for information, and can you see where I’m going with this? It’s a cycle of mistrust, perpetuated by journalists like these who go against the wishes of a company that just wants to keep something a surprise until a certain date.

And then this motherfucker has the audacity to frame companies blacklisting reporters that leak information as bad! “They operate with the assumption that the press will not upend these plans, and should the press defy their assumption, they bring down the hammer.” Why are companies wrong for trusting journalists? Are you implying that all games journalists are untrustworthy, because they won’t respect the wishes of a company that gives them the information in good faith that they won’t leak it? You do say that “it is nearly unfathomable to me that a reporter would sit on true information about what’s really happening in gaming, that we would refrain from telling our readers something because it would mess with a company’s marketing plan,” so I don’t know, maybe you DO think that all games journalists should immediately report on confidential information that the game companies are going to eventually reveal anyway and while only really receiving clout in return. Oh, whoops, got a little bitter there.

“They appear to believe that the general public will not find out about these games until their marketing plans say it’s time.”

Maybe because people like YOU are the ones who leak it! You can just as easily, you know, not fucking do that! This feels more like an excuse to not accept responsibility/deflect criticism, because ‘the companies shouldn’t have expected us to stay quiet!!!’ This is just straight-up victim blaming. Like it’s actually kind of scary.

It’s this ideology that Kotaku seems to stand by, as LKD once stated that higher-ups look over the written articles to approve them, and to my knowledge, Kotaku hasn’t redacted any of these statements, so I’m assuming that they still stand by it. Them spreading this ideology is what perpetuates the idea of game leaks (of the non-accidental, non-ethics-related kind) being “good journalism,” and with how much reach Kotaku has, it has the power to be legitimately damaging.

“They have done so in apparent retaliation for the fact that we did our jobs as reporters and as critics. We told the truth about their games, sometimes in ways that disrupted a marketing plan, other times in ways that shone an unflattering light on their products and company practices. Both publishers’ actions demonstrate contempt for us and, by extension, the whole of the gaming press. They would hamper independent reporting in pursuit of a status quo in which video game journalists are little more than malleable, servile arms of a corporate sales apparatus. It is a state of affairs that we reject.”

And here it is: Kotaku was just the humble, underdog reporter just doing their job, and the publishers show off contempt for the entire industry (rather than just Kotaku itself, I guess blacklisting one site means you hate all of games journalism) for Kotaku simply doing their jobs!

No, you ignorant twat, you broke their trust, so they don’t want to talk to you anymore. You don’t get to play victim when YOU were the one who blew the whistle.

Now, I cannot stress this enough: I am only talking about leaks related to game announcements, content details, etc. that are deliberately leaked to the public from an inside source. I am not talking about leaks related to ethical violations or troubled development or other negative things within companies. Those are things that should be reported on. But that kind of thing isn’t primarily what Kotaku is talking about and promoting; they are promoting the reveal of information because it’s “just good journalism.”

Except, as shown above, it has some very dire, very real consequences for the people you don’t see, and maybe that’s why Kotaku is so adamant about defending themselves in this regard. Maybe they don’t see the living, breathing people who get affected by their leaks, and so they think they’re fighting against the Big Bad Corporation when, in reality, it’s much more complicated than that. It doesn’t feel real to them. Or, maybe they do and they just don’t care. I genuinely cannot say so one way or the other.

I really, truly hope that by reading this, you the reader have a new perspective on how leaks of that kind affect the industry, and the little people whose backs the companies are built on.

As for the article and Kotaku as a whole...

“Kotaku readers always deserve the truth. You deserve our best work. It doesn’t matter which company is mad at us today, or which companies get mad at us in the future. You’ll continue to get it.”

Fuck yourselves.

[redphienix]

homurat replied to your post “Like, beating a dead horse here, the fact that some devs think let’s...”

lol alot of capitalist business owners hate the idea of not having complete control over game advertisement. theyre afraid lets players might say something bad about their game (which wouldnt be an issue if they were proud of their games lol)

The issue is presented like that a lot, but silencing critique isn’t exactly something they have authority over and isn’t the sole reason so many of them crack down on LPs and the like.

I’d argue like 60% of it is them being assholes trying to silence critique by crying wolf about copyright, which is unjust and an abuse of copyright meaning it’s something they outright CAN’T admit or else THEY would get in trouble.

The other 40% is more in line with how companies like Nintendo seem to be doing things (still stupid, dumb, bad, and backwards) and that would be the company fearing opinions/bad words/talking points etc that aren’t in line with their image might become associated with their product, which is just fucking stupid.

It’s like saying someone can’t hold a dvd while holding a coke branded product because the movie featured pepsi- that’s not in your control, that shouldn’t be in your control, and no one in their right mind would ever think the person is someone speaking for the movie.

And I’d be the first to admit that the free advertisement argument isn’t 100% accurate strictly because advertisements today are inaccurate lies blatantly false advertising games because it’s 2018 and no one cracks down or enforces those laws anymore APPARENTLY (okay maybe that bits irrelevant and I just wanted to say things) and because advertisements are by nature controlled by the company who owns the product (that bit is more related to the topic at hand)- but the concept of free advertising isn’t game exclusive and has existed for fuckin’ ages.

MERCH is free advertising- hell it’s PAID advertising where a fan buys your stuff and then walks around wearing and showing off your stuff.

Huh, why’s that sound familiar?

hmm...

A fan... buying your game.... and showing off your game..... hmmm.....

Nah, ridiculous.

Now of course that’s just the positive stuff, the neutral and negative stuff is critique (something they legally can’t censor but hey legally positive is critique as well so huh whatdya know) but whatever.

It’s more blurry than I put it. Obviously what constitutes critique and what constitutes, well, not critique is blurry in today’s age- for instance most LPs wouldn’t ever call their work critique they would call it transformative which is FUCKING IS WHICH ALSO MAKES IT UNTOUCHABLE EAT A FART COMPANIES.

Bleh, it’s a topic talked to death and I haven’t added a thing to the conversation beyond expressing my unending annoyance and occasional rage at the end of game publishers thinking someone sharing their experience with a product (such as an LP or review or clip or screenshot) is worth dedicating tons of man hours and money towards stomping out and preventing, the asshats. Literally any sale prevented by these videos was a sale you weren’t going to get in the first place because

A: The person was never planning on getting the game and was just wanting to SEE the game.

B: The person is savvy enough to seek out information before a purchase so if this video didn’t exist they still wouldn’t purchase until a source of trustworthy information arose which in itself would have convinced them to not buy.

lol. Every other instance was someone enjoying the product in their own way so just fuck off. (directed to the metaphorical publisher/dev not you, none of this was negative to you, I’m borderline asleep as I type this so I really hope I didn’t stumble and start making the tone messy towards you fuck no that ain’t the goal here lol)

[4colorrebellion]

4cr Plays - Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet (Switch)

Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet follows the titular heroine, would-be pirate and adventurer Nelly Cootalot, as she discovers a plot by the villainous Baron Widebeard. The Baron plans to kidnap a fleet of birds and use them for villainous ends. What ends? Well, I’d probably just have them pelt my enemies with... You know... Nevermind. Probably best that I’m not in charge of the birds. 

In any case, Baron Widebeard has nasty plans for those birds, and Nelly is unable to sit back and let those poor guys suffer. She follows after the Baron, sneaking her way on board a ship sailing the South Seas. The journey will take you through a pastiche of piratey nautical locations, from sunny beaches to caves full of racing aristocrats to ice-covered northern isles. 

Ready for a adventure, me mateys? Read on for my impressions of the newly-released Switch version of The Fowl Fleet.

The Fowl Fleet is a “point and click” adventure game - one that owes more than a little to LucasArts’ Monkey Island series. For those who never played one of these games, the rough idea is that these games are narrative-focused adventures, where progress is made by solving environmental puzzles. Rather than directly steering the characters, you can move a cursor around the screen, clicking on objects to examine or interact with them. 

Clicking on a space will direct Nelly to move towards the location you clicked on. If you click on an item, you can either attempt to “use” it, or just examine it. Examining gives you a basic description. Using an item will either directly impact the environment - think hitting a light switch or turning a dial - or add it to your inventory. Items in you inventory can be used on each other, or on objects in the environment. In some cases, using an item on another item will combine them into a new item - adding glue to some hair to make a toupee, for instance. 

That’s the basic idea. The two core focuses of the adventure genre are the narrative and the puzzles, and the best adventure games use each to advance the other. Great adventure games present puzzles that fit the narrative, that aren’t just there as filler. They also use the puzzles to tell stories, by giving you a reason to examine each object, and hunt through the environment for more information about the world.

Let’s bring this back to Nelly Cootalot. The Fowl Fleet does a good job of presenting both of the focuses of the genre. The writing in the game is pretty charming. The core creative force behind the game, Alasdair Beckett-King, is a stand-up comedian when not directing video games, and you can see that in the writing. I wouldn’t say that the game will leave you on the floor laughing, but the dialogue and descriptions are snappy and clever. There is a nice dry wit to it that is pretty enjoyable. The world presented in the game is also well-realized in both the writing and the puzzles. Rather than just embodying a collection of pirate genre stereotypes, The Fowl Fleet takes those stereotypes and creates a fun and funny journey out of them. 

The complexity of the adventure genre comes from the puzzles, which are often insidious. Difficulty is something that is important to discuss when talking about these games. There is a right balance point when crafting these games, between so hard that it becomes alienating, and so easy that you get bored. The Fowl Fleet does a decent job with this balance. None of the puzzles are too easy. A few left me fairly confused - I must be getting old, I’m getting sloppy with my adventure puzzles - but stopping for a minute to think usually did the trick. 

I hesitate to name examples, for fear of spoiling too much, but one basic tip I’d give is something that becomes apparent when trying to solve the very first real puzzle of the game. You need to remember to both examine AND interact with items, not just interact with them. The examination gives you the information you need to get out of that first room. Again, I know I’m being a little vague, but remember to use every tool at your disposal - examining items, combining items, and so on. Think about all the options at your disposal, and don’t be afraid to try weird things, like combining items in new ways. 

One interesting inclusion on the Switch version of The Fowl Fleet is built-in commentary from Beckett-King on the development of the game. I have really loved this feature in games like Gone Home, and it’s a welcome addition here. I would recommend saving the commentary for a second playthrough, since it spoils a lot about the puzzle design process. That said, it can also serve as an effective hint system if you get too stuck. I actually used the commentary a couple of times to figure out how to move forward. 

Adventure games are designed to work with a pointer, generally a mouse, and have had a spotty history on consoles when it comes to controls. On the Switch, you have two interaction options. There are both physical controls, and the touchscreen. I tend to not love touchscreen controls, but here I would absolutely recommend them. I started with the button controls, and found them absolutely frustrating to use. They felt utterly unresponsive. The touchscreen controls, on the other hand, are completely fine. Save yourself some frustration here, and just skip straight to the touchscreen. 

The Fowl Fleet is also quite nice in terms of presentation. The world is presented in a 2D cartoon style that is colorful, and full of personality. The characters are detailed and have some memorable designs. It’s a nice looking game, especially on the Switch tablet screen, where the colors really pop nicely. The voice acting is fairly well done as well. The creators of the game has really been advertising the fact that the cast includes Tom Baker, of Doctor Who fame. That’s reasonable and all, but the entire voice cast does a good job. 

Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet is a charming, funny, and well-crafted adventure game. While neither control option quite matches the natural feel of using a mouse to navigate, the touch screen controls work well enough to recommend giving the game a look if you want a fun adventure on the go. At about six or so hours long, Fowl Fleet doesn’t overstay its welcome, and is the perfect kind of game for a great weekend distraction. 

This review is based on a code provided by the developers.

Official Website

Nintendo eShop

[fallen029]

Magic

Just more original work for those of you who are interested.

The static was cutting in and out on the television and it was making it hard to tell what was really a ball and what could be construed as a strike, but it didn’t stop my uncle grumbling, on the other half of the couch, every time someone got rung up. A beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, he was most comfortable berating umpires he’d never have to see face to face with his belt undone and gorging on food that would only make it harder to get the belt buckled once more when my aunt got home.

It was such a normal summertime memory for me that I’m sure a lot of different instances are bleeding together right now, as I consider the final time I experienced this. I had lived with he and my aunt for three years at that point. Which, as the season consists of 162 games, was a lot of baseball to differentiate between. Not that the game on screen mattered, as it would be many years before sports interested me in any factions, nor were the words he was muttering significant, considering he was never truly angry at the game, just attempting to make himself believe he was.

That particular summer and that actual day, on my part, I can remember. It was the summer following the coolest teacher I’d ever had up to that point, and maybe ever did, when I think about it. From the way he had songs and stories to match every bit of grade school curriculum we were taught to the funny shirts with the popular cartoon characters he’d wear that certainly went against the teacher dress code, I’m sure, but somehow, he pulled it off.

Mostly though, the thing that intrigued me most by him, was his magic.

He knew card tricks. Every day we’d start with one and every day we’d end with one. Then, sprinkled throughout the rest of the eight hours that I don’t believe the state government realized was so hard for a single teacher to fill for a class of twenty or more, with only recesses and lunch to break it up, he’d dazzle us with coin tricks and other sleight of hand things.

To class of eight-year-olds, this was astounding. Of course, there were the kids that didn’t care much for it and then the kids that were so into it that they’d spend their recesses being taught card tricks by the man.

Then, there was me.

I thought the world of Mr. Latch’s abilities, but also was a bit...shy around authority figures. Everyone, really, other than the few other kids that befriended me. I really wanted to learn magic, just like the mostly boys that hung around during prime tag and swing time did, but at the same time, was too fearful to.

Not gonna lie, I was a pretty nervous kid.

My uncle though, we were pretty close. He didn’t have any kids and, like I said, that was the third year that I was living with him and my aunt, so they were practically raising me at that point. When I sorta explained my predicament to him, he went out and bought me a magic kit! Which was the coolest thing ever, when you were eight and didn’t really have that many friends. I spent a ton of time hitting things with my little wand, trying to shove the frogs I would find hopping in the backyard after a rain storm into the little black hat that came with the set, so that I could then attempt to make them disappear.

I didn’t great or anything, but was very interesting to me and kept me out of my aunt’s hair when she was busy and my uncle was working.

Not that I ever brought it up to Mr. Latch or anything. I kinda had this childish fantasy, where I’d, you know, become so great at magic that some grand wizard would discover me and one day, Mr. Latch would be watching the news and there I’d be, turning milk into flowers with the use of a newspaper and he’d think, ‘Wow. Look at her.’

When the school year ended and this didn’t occur, I wasn’t the least bit concerned. Clearly, I would master these skills over the summer, maybe make my uncle buy me some more complex kits, and the wham!

Front page news.

Kid from small town in Texas becomes the best magician to ever live, hands down, no questions asked.

A working title.

I convinced my uncle that, nine by then, the summer would require him to purchase some new magic equipment. I even did a big show for him, my aunt, and the woman across the street one day in the front yard, where I only screwed up once when the card I was hiding up my sleeve fell out.

But no matter. He got me an even more expensive one, once I promised not to be a pain during the summer, which I definitely wanted to believe I never was. This one came with this huge book with a bunch of words that a child my age struggled with, so I probably actually was a bit of a nuisance, constantly asking he and my aunt what each word meant, but it did come with an awesome cape that I think they were pretty pleased to see me wear around the house constantly.

At least I was pleased with it.

That what I was doing that day, when my uncle was cursing under his breath in Spanish at the television and I was pretending not to hear, for fear that he’d make me go to my room like my aunt would, when they were using what she would call ‘adult language’. My uncle was pretty cool when we were home alone; if I didn’t make a big deal about it, he didn’t make a big deal about it.

This line of thinking was how come I ended up a massive Scarface fan at a massively too young of age.

In case it’s not obvious, I really liked my uncle. I was bit afraid of him, the first tie we met. Coming out of the situation I was, I’d imagine most kids would be. But that first day my aunt brought me to their modest house, he took me out for ice cream and bought me this stuffed tiger that I had for years, even after what happened. I actually probably still have it, somewhere, lost in all my stuff.

We were cool from that point on. He was my mother’s sister’s second husband, but I felt closer to him than his wife for the duration of the three years I was there. IT wasn’t that she was a bad caretaker, not at all, and now, after what’s happened, I can’t say my memory’s not distorted by the events, but I just…

He was just the only person that didn’t treat me like a kid. At five, he’d let me stay up late and watch TV with him and didn’t make a big deal if I asked to tag along with him when he was going out to see a friend. His sidekick is what he always called me and he’d been pretty shunned by his family, so I was kinda the first kid he, as grown person, had that special ‘I’mma look out for you always’ bond with. As far as he was concerned, I was gonna be living with them until my parents got their shit worked out, which they never would, and that made us family.

My aunt, however, was just had a different type of personality is all. She wasn’t really a kid person, as she put it, that last time I saw my mother. I was at the house I’d lived in for as far back as I could remember, just a little five year old with my bag my mother had packed. I can’t even recall her face anymore, my mother’s, not truly, and what I do recall is tainted by the memories of the nasty purple bruises my father would, more than once, gladly leave on her face.

But my aunt had to be a kid person, my mother insisted, because I couldn’t stay anymore. I was crying a lot and she hadn’t even ever signed me up for school and I was just a burden.

I was a pretty bad one.

My father was gonna come back around, my mother assured my aunt, and it wouldn’t be pretty, if I was still there. She didn’t want me there. Not because of safety reasons, but mostly because my father wasn’t too fond of me.

Or of anyone, really.

But my aunt, she had a nice job and nice marriage and couldn’t she just take me back to Texas with her? Please? Wasn’t that what she came down there for?

I didn’t wanna go. I threw a fit and it about got me left, but somehow, she pushed through her revulsion at the idea and, at the very least, tried to care for me. My aunt and mother hadn’t had nice upbringings either, I’m sure, and neither were too equipped for me, and looking back, it kinda showed.

I think if my uncle hadn’t been there, my aunt would have never taken me.

But she did. And she’d buy me things. She liked to put me in dresses, despite the fact I hated them, and show me off when they’d have parties. She’d comb out my way too tangled hair (every morning, it was an impossibly matted; that’s why I cut it so short these days, as it still would be) before she jetted off to work, only swatting me with the brush if I really deserved it.

Not that I ever felt that I really deserved it and frequently dreamed of one day smacking her with it, but I think most kids feel that way.

She was kinda the boss, you know, in the house? And my uncle, my cool uncle that was of no blood to me, he was my playmate and I was his excuse to be in his early thirties and still addicted to Nintendo.

That specific day, as he was cursing and yelling at the shoddy cable we had, I was beside him, where I always was, looking over my magic book. I can’t recall the word I got stuck on in that moment, but I was just starting to try and sound it out before asking him for help when my aunt came in.

As bad as it sounds, for as important as it is, I can’t for the life of me recall what they were fighting about. If she came in mad or if it was his dirty feet on the coffee table. Maybe the fact I’d been fed a lunch of Cheeto puffs and soda or that the house was still completely destroyed from the massive fort we’d built that afternoon. It could have even been my uncle started it, working himself up over the game and in turn getting upset with her. Over the fact that she was late or that she hadn’t done the dishes and he’d had to. Could have just been stress on his part, about how he’d have to leave in two hours, to go work a graveyard security shift in a shitty part of town for the rundown department store, that was very taxing on him.

They’d fighting a lot, actually, about things either identical or very similar to those listed above. A mixture. Just in those past few months. When I was older, I pieced together a bit of my memories, recalling that other uncle I’d met, once or twice, when my real uncle wasn’t home and I’d gotten up late at night to find him there. Who I was never introduced to, but informed by my aunt the following mornings that he was, “Just another uncle, baby, don’t worry about it.”

So I didn’t.

I don’t think my uncle knew about it. I mean, duh, but I think he was getting suspicious. It was rifts, maybe, and the cracks were staring to show. I dunno. I didn’t get a chance to know. And really…

It wasn’t that bad. Their arguing. That’s what I kept trying to tell the officers, when nice lady that questioned me with that officer down at the station, when they were trying to get me to open up about what happened. What they did? My aunt and uncle? Their little back and forths? They were never that serious or bad or scary. I didn’t like them, of course, because they were raised voices, but compared to the stuff that I’d been through, it was just arguing.

Nothing serious.

Until that day.

Like I said, I can’t for the life of me remember what they were fighting over or what caused it to progress the way that it did. I recall my uncle getting to his feet and he was yelling and she was yelling, and I just tried really hard to focus on my book.

When I first came to live with my aunt and uncle, I thought that they were perfect. Really great people. They had me my own room and new clothes and even introduced me to the wonders of school. My uncle would play games with me, like board games or hide and seek, anything really, while my aunt, though she wasn’t so into that, was certainly always there if I had a question on my homework. Church sporadically and always plenty of food.

They weren’t evil. Especially not my uncle. I can’t…justify what he did, but I know that he wasn’t himself when he did it. And any other given night, he wouldn’t have done it.

But she stormed off, my aunt did, which was usually the end to most their fights, but it had been a rather bad day for baseball and my uncle had grumbled his way through three beers and he wasn’t going to let her get away that easily.

So he followed.

But I didn’t. I stayed on the couch, still muttering the complex word under my breath, using it more as crutch to keep out of the argument than anything else. They were still yelling and I could still hear them and I remember this, because the nice woman with the detective asked me it multiple times down at the station, so I can say with a lotta certainty that I heard my uncle rave something along the lines of, “The fuck did you hit me for?”

And it just spiraled from there.

She did that sometimes, my aunt did. Not in a...abusive way, but when my uncle was being a bit of an asshole around company, she’d tap his cheek gently with her hand and he’d grin and she’d grin and…

It wasn’t like that though, that night. I heard it, when she slapped him. It was hard. I think she was just as done and fed up with their relationship as she was their current. I’m not excusing. Just like I don’t wanna sound like I’m excusing what happened next, but…

I still love my uncle. And he was never a violent drunk before. Which is the crazy thing, looking back on it, to me. All the TV shows I watch and the movies and stuff, the guy is always super abusive before he...he… But my uncle wasn’t! He took care of my aunt. He loved her. He loved her so much.

I’ve read all the news stories I could find on it. Wasn’t too big of a case outside of our town. I’m sure that has influenced my recollection of the events as they happened, but I can’t help it. Reading them puts me in this weird ease where I feel like it’s just another story that I’ve heard, not one that I lived. Experienced. Just another one of those cases that flash by on the news in the evening and you think, ‘What a dam shame,’ with a shake of your head and flick of your remote to catch the start of Jeopardy.

It did happen to me, though, and when I press like I am now, I can remember more and more. After she slapped him the first time, I think she did it again, and fuck, I don’t know why he didn’t walk away, but I also kinda get it because we can say someone should as many times as we want, but we’ve also built it into people that that’s cowardice and my uncle was no coward.

I’m not excusing, again, I feel the need to make that clear, as domestic violence is never the answer, but…

They were only two people, one not even blood and the other wishing she wasn’t, that I only knew for a very early three years of my life, and have very little bearing on what’s happened since. But...I’d thought that I was gonna stay there. Forever. With them. Even when I became that grand wizard and was front page news, my aunt and uncle were right there with me.

Now they’ve both been gone from my life longer than they were in it, but they rarely aren’t in the back of my mind. That night frequently keeping me up during current ones, claiming its place in the forefront to keep me thoroughly restless.

He hit her back. That’s what the news stories say. I think I kinda knew this too, as she was yelling after that second slap and he was growling at her, not in the funny way he would when we were playing with our toys and he was the villainous action figure, but in a way that scared me, even as I was slipping off the couch and just standing there, staring down the hall, where they were behind their closed bedroom door.

They had a gun in there. I’d seen it before. My aunt kept it in her night stand and once, when I first came to live there and went to get some gum outta it, I found it. She was in the room with me and, when she saw me start to pull it out, she scolded me so heavily that I never touched it again. A few weeks later, I’d learn the Gun Safety Song that our elementary school shoved down our throats so many times that I was actually a bit disappointed when the new school I went to, after what happened, has their own safety song and new nothing of the one I spoke.

In the news stories, it says that it’s unclear who pulled the gun and I really don’t know either. I loved my uncle more, if I’m being honestly, than my mother’s sister, so I like to think she did and that he took it and then…

But…

I dunno. It’s not important.

What is important is that when he had it, it went off, and it struck her, in the stomach. Then he had to fire it again, purposely, as she was struck a second time in the chest and I can’t explain that one away.

Believe me, I’ve sat up at night trying.

I was frozen then, at the entrance to the long hall that led to my bedroom, the bathroom, the closet, and, at the end of it, their master bedroom. I could hear her in there, after the sound of those loud bangs, screaming for her help and he sounded like he was sobbing or something and I was so afraid. Especially when my uncle threw open the door at the end of the closet and was standing there, eyes crazy, face red, just...looking at me. But...almost through me. I hadn’t coward around hi after that first week at their house, but I was scared then, of everything around me, as I was so unsure of just what was happening. When he passed me, his mouth was open and he might have said something, but all I can remember is looking into his eyes and that the little hand gun was still dangling from his right hand.

Time seems frozen then, when I think on it, and I can still picture him. Can’t see my mother anymore, and my aunt is forever tainted by the imagine of her lying there on that bedroom floor, dying, but my uncle’s face, staring so deeply into mine, is burned into my memory. I feel like a minute passed, but it could only have been a second or so, as he was running then and I was rushing into the room to check on my aunt and she was…

I don’t like to think about. I can still see it, when I think hard. Her lying there with her eyes glassy and that nasty, sticky blood oozing, and….

They had a house phone that sat on his night stand with the alarm clock and I rushed to it, when it suddenly clicked in my mind that this was one of those moments. One of those 911, you better know your address moments that they’d prepped us for at school since the start.

My aunt was dead before they got there. The lady on the other end of the phone stayed on with me until they arrived and had told me to go hide, in case my uncle came back, but I just sat there on my knees, next to my aunt and I swear, one moment, she was breathing and then the next, all I did was blink or look away or something, and her eyes were just blankly staring up at me and I didn’t have a big concept of death, but I knew.

I knew.

They would give me a little badge, later, down at the station, where I was completely alone and they wouldn’t tell me anything about Uncle Ricky and the nice woman just kept smoothing back my hair and complimenting me on it and how much of a big girl I had been. It was there that I cried for the first time in that entire day.

I didn’t when they were fighting.

I didn’t went I saw her dying.

And I didn’t even when the officers ushered me out of the room and the woman from across the street who thought my magic show was pretty nifty broke through the slight crowd of neighbors to hold me, even though I was way too old for that.

But for some reason, I think, when they finished questioning me and gave me that little badge and this little stuffed animal that I think they give to kids like me, to get me to open up, I started bawling. I don’t think I knew just yet what had really happened or anything, butt I did have a pretty good inkling that I wasn’t going back home and the way that they were talking about my uncle made it pretty clear I wasn’t going anywhere with him and…

I wanted my magic book. That’s what I told them. That it was still on the couch, at home, and then I stood up from the chair I was sitting in and showed off my cape, which I was still wearing and they’d end up taking from me, as it had blood on the hem at the bottom and therefore was evidence. I was gonna be a magician, I said, and asked if they had a deck of cards so I could show them, but they didn’t and I sniffled up the rest of my tears for the time being, as they wanted to know then just what I’d seen.

He didn’t get a life sentence, my uncle didn’t, but he might as well have. He was in his thirties and serving the max on voluntary manslaughter, so he wouldn’t be out until he was in his late fifties. And that’s assuming he kept nose clean.

I like did. Or is. Or whatever.

I wouldn’t know. I went into this horrible thing called the system for two years as they tried to find me some family members and then, eventually, I was taken back to Florida, where my father’s mother was willing to take me.

And let me tell you, if I wasn’t a big fan of what I could recall of my mother, she was even less of one.

But that’s beside the point, other than to say, no, she wasn’t too broken up by my aunt, who she didn’t know, dying and certainly didn’t care anything about the uncle I still remembered so fondly being locked up, never to be heard from again.

I’ve thought a few times of writing him, now that I’m grown. He should be nearing the halfway mark of his sentence and maybe he’s been on his best behavior, so it’s even less. I’ve even thought about going to see him, if I could, and that we could talk and that...that…

Maybe it would help me, just to hear him explain it to me. Or hear him at all.

But…

Barring the fact that I’m still stuck in Florida, working a pretty menial job that would never grant me the chance to make it all the way back to Texas, I also come up with the same blank when I think about writing him.

What I would I say? Hey, it’s that kid you knew for three years, remember? The one that probably stressed you and the wife that you loved so dearly the fuck out and caused you to kill her? How’s going?

And...I remember him, in very vague ways, but what if he doesn’t me? Or he does me and the nostalgia I have over the entire thing has clouded my memory? What if we weren’t so happy, all the time? What if they hadn’t thought that I would be with them for the rest of forever?

Was I just as much a burden to them as I was to my mother?

I always put it off. That I’ll write him when I’m less busy. Maybe around Christmas time. Or something. And it’ll a nice surprise for him.

But...the the holidays roll around and all I can think of is my aunt’s glassy eyes as she stared up at me, as if questioning now if II was planning on betraying her by speaking to her murderer.

So I did nothing.

I’ll probably always do nothing.

I never became a very good magician, just in case you’re wondering. I was allowed to go back and get my magic kits and my book, but I lost them somewhere in the shuffle and that was fine, because looking at them made my stomach twist and the dream died, like most children’s do I guess, but mine in the most bitter way possible.

Which is why I’m thinking on this, as I’m sitting here, on my grandmother’s couch, having just stopped by after work only to inundated with the request to stay by one of my little cousins (because coming back down here wasn’t all bad; I had a whole family that I wouldn’t have met otherwise) to watch their stupid little magic show that he and his brother were gonna put on for Granny in, like, really just ten minutes, if I could just stay, please?

But I can’t. I don’t want to. And I’mma tell him, when he finishes his long explanation about how great he is at card tricks and he wants to show someone other than Granny, that I have somewhere to be, even though I don’t, and that maybe they can show me next time, even though I’m hoping they won’t.

There’s no magic. Everything’s a sham. And life’s a cruel reality that nothing ever really goes right.

If the worst thing that ever happens to him is that I don’t care enough to watch his dumb card tricks and stupid attempts to pull quarters from our ears, then he’s already better off than me.

[operationrainfall]

Title The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince Developer Nippon Ichi Software Publisher Nippon Ichi Software Release Date February 12th, 2019 Genre Puzzle platformer Platform PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Vita Age Rating E for Everyone 10+ – Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood Official Website

As the game industry grows and grows, the most challenging thing is finding something new. While I wouldn’t call myself completely jaded, I definitely throw most games that I play into one familiar category or another. Platformer, RPG, retro, modern, there’s a lot of them. Which is why The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince is such a pleasant surprise. This isn’t a game looking to set the world on fire. Instead, it’s a small and intimate adventure with a ton of heart. It tells a story that wouldn’t be out of place in a Brothers Grimm tale, of an unusual love story between a wolf and a young prince. The question then is, does Liar Princess deliver a fulfilling tale? Or was it a rough draft?

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The story starts with our protagonist, a wild female wolf, singing a beautiful song. Sure, most wolves aren’t thought of as singers, but I think this is just the first instance of how the game uses metaphors. Wolves do howl, after all, which may be what NISA is implying here. However, as the story continues, we find there are some aspects of the animals in the game that defy common expectations. Because, while you can assume the wolf’s song is her howling, this young wolf has many other traits. For one, she enjoys an audience. The titular prince is enchanted by the wolf, and comes to listen to her song from afar night after night. Eventually, he musters the courage to scale the peak where the wolf is situated and see who is singing the song, only for the wolf to freak out and accidentally swipe at him, blinding him. The prince crashes down to the earth, and though he survives, his royal parents view him as a disgrace, and lock him away. The wolf goes to find him, and when she comes upon his cell, she discovers his dire state.

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Here is where the story takes a turn for the supernatural. The wolf (as well as most every animal in the game, from goats to moles) is somehow able to converse with the prince like a human, and he recognizes her voice as the same one that sang the enchanting song. Due to his blindness, he can’t put the facts together, and is unaware that he is talking with the selfsame creature that horribly wounded him. Feeling responsible, the wolf sets out to visit the powerful witch who rules her forest, and ask for a way to help the prince. The witch agrees to heal the prince if the wolf brings him to her. In the bargain, the wolf is given the ability to transform into a human princess, but loses her singing voice in the process. Nods to The Little Mermaid aside, this is a great way to start the tale, and from here on the gameplay truly begins.

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If you don’t like reading in games, then you’ll be very frustrated by the Liar Princess, but everyone else will love the writing. The game is broken up into narrative segments that read like pages from a book, narrated in Japanese. It’s a bittersweet tale that is occasionally uplifted by surprising bouts of humor and heart. These segments frame the gameplay elements, driving the momentum and keeping you eager to see what happens next. As for the gameplay itself, it’s primarily a puzzle platformer. You alternate between human and wolf forms at will with a press of the X button. While a wolf, you can fight dangerous beasts and break obstacles in your path. The only downsides are that you’re large and a bit unwieldy. As a human, you’re able to grab the prince by his hand and lead him about. He’ll pretty much follow your example, walking after you and jumping when you do. Later on, you’ll be able to give him commands from a distance, such as telling him to walk to certain points or picking up or depositing items.

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For the most part, the gameplay is pretty enjoyable and intuitive. I only really got stuck in one section about midway through the game. To be fair, this could be due to my own failings, since I’m much better at platforming than math puzzles. All the math puzzles happen in the same part of the game, and require to you translate confusing hints in order to solve them. To put it plainly, I hated these puzzles, as they slowed my momentum to a halt and forced me to find solutions online. There’s even one completely optional section that looked to be full of even more abstract number puzzles, which I gladly avoided. Other than that, I rather enjoyed the puzzle platforming in the game. It gradually gets more and more complex, introducing elements like darkness that can be dispelled by lantern light, flowers that spit seeds to trigger switches and more. While you’re invincible in wolf form, the prince is not, and if he dies (or if you do in human form), you’re forced to restart from the last save. Though that’s not too much of a hurdle, it can be frustrating when you’re stuck on a particularly challenging area. Perhaps the hardest ones are those that require you to lead the prince through dens of wild beasts safely while transforming into a wolf to fend them off.

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Where the game truly shines is in the aesthetic design. I honestly love the art in the game, from the 2D models for the prince and princess to the lovely storybook pages. The use of color is especially smart, as they utilize it to signify important objects, while also showcasing the bittersweet aspect of the tale with black and white. The design for the wild creatures of the forest is also inspired. All of them, including the wolf herself, look like deranged Dali-esque interpretations of regular animals. They are all bursting with creativity and personality, from the enormous boar beasts to winged frogs. What I really enjoyed were the subtle touches, such as how the prince will look afraid when you’re not touching his hand, and then smiling the moment you grab it. Likewise, the music was wonderful, with lots of orchestral notes to complement the story. It’s rare that I appreciate the art and music more than the gameplay, but I’d say that’s the case here. Which isn’t to say the gameplay is horrible, just that it feels occasionally more flat than the rest of the game.

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For the most part, I’d say I enjoyed The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince. Sure, the gameplay is a bit stilted when compared to the wonderful art and music, but overall, it meshes pretty well. My biggest complaint is how short the game is, as I managed to beat it in 3 and a half hours, only skipping that one section. However, there is some replay value. You get achievements as you play the game and there are also hidden flower petals. By collecting all of them, you can actually unlock a side story where you play as the witch. It’s split into multiple parts and delves into the witch’s personality and motivations. While I didn’t get to experience it myself, since I didn’t find all the petals, it is a good reason to pick the game up again. For $19.99, you get a unique tale that is like nothing else on the Nintendo Switch. If that doesn’t sound appealing, then this isn’t for you. But if you like charming games that are short and sweet, then Liar Princess is an easy recommendation.

Nuff said

[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3.5″]

Review Copy Provided by Publisher

REVIEW: The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince Title The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince

[blackrectangle]

No ads

Farhad Manjoo over at The New York Times, of all places, actually got something extremely right. Advertising is killing the web. Under the weight of online advertising, sites are polluted not only with ugly design, but bad information. There is a lot to not like about the web, and advertising itself is the cause. It's such a core feature of the web that I think we've forgotten how fast and elegant sites can be when they aren't trying to load a dumpster's-worth of advertising code in the background.

Even well-designed sites are bad. Look at the Outline. Every article has a weird animated slideshow thing in the middle of it. And that's on a site that is pretty restrained. Don't even bother with regional news websites.

I think one of the more baffling instances of advertising making things worse online are twitter promoted tweets. Not only is this a tweet (99% it's an ad) that is forced into the users' timelines, but if the tweet has an attached video, the video will have a pre-roll ad for it. What winds up happening when you're scrolling through your feed is you'll see a split-second image of something and then it jumps to the same annoying pre-roll ad you're always used to seeing. It's a little silly and frustrating. I can't understand why anyone pays to promote tweets...

Which is why I'll also take this moment to reaffirm my interest in a truly open web where people can just post what they want to have their own spaces, apart from overt corporate control, to communicate with the world. I know almost no one reads this. I don't care. I'm still going to keep doing this.

Anyway, give the piece a read.

There's "retro gaming" and then there's "historical gaming"

It's kind of a clunky term, but I think that "historical gaming" is a more accurate way to describe high end enthusiast vintage gaming. The kind of people that insist on using CRTs and original hardware whenever possible.

Over at the Verge there's a piece about the Analogue Super NT. In the ephemeral world of retro gaming, emulation is widespread. Many emulators recreate the hardware architecture of the game system in software. The Super NT, however, uses hardware to recreate hardware and because of this, it is able to create a more faithful emulation of the Super Nintendo as it was in the early 1990s. In fact, it probably runs games slightly better than the Super Nintendo.

The article refers to the creators of the project as having an almost hi-fi like obsession with accuracy in the design and performance of the hardware, and I can certainly respect that. It's also apparent that this may be part of the key to archiving and keeping the past alive. If there weren't companies out there making analog hardware like tape decks and turntables, we would have lost even more analog music than we've already lost through the digital migration.

This also made me wonder, at what point does "retro gaming" turn into some new form of historical reenactment?

How valuable do you feel?

The Atlantic has an article on the company WeWork. In it, the company is revealed to be less valuable than its venture capital goals, but at the same time, the basic logic of the piece is that WeWork (and other startups in this bizarre world) are really only as valuable as investors "feel."

In the show Silicon Valley, one of the lines that stuck out to me in the first season was when one character was lamenting the lack of revenue. Another character said that this was a good thing, since when you don't have income, your estimated value can't really be determined. You could be worth billions. And now we're to the point that even with income, if a company is clever enough and slick enough, we can pretend like that doesn't matter and that they'll soon be worth billions.

This reminds me of a point that John Oliver (and a few other nightly joke shows) brought up: That Donald Trump's wealth fluctuates with how he feels. While that notion was derided at the time (rightly) that's exactly how startup investing works on a certain level. There are plenty of people at VC firms to crunch numbers but at the end of the day "how it feels" is really what moves the needle.

Physical Goods

I moved in the past month, and now that i have an even more stable living arrangment, I've found myself being less afraid of owning physical goods. I don't think I'll ever go back to the cluttered life I lived when I had many hundreds of DVDs on my shelves, but I bought a CD for the first time in probably a decade. That CD was Thundercat's 2017 album "Drunk."

It's an amazing album and benefits from the higher fidelity of CD, plus I wanted to be able to listen to this CD when the internet goes down or in some dark time when all of the music streaming services go offline. Ownership, at some point, does have its advantages.

By the way, a remix album of "Drunk" is coming out this year. "Drank" is a wild re-envisioning of Drunk slowed down and chopped. It's extremely disoriented in the best way possible.

[camryndaytona]

I did quite a bit of gaming this year because I find it relaxing and an easy escape from everything around me. I also (finally) upgraded my gaming system and stepped out of just Nintendo. Before now I’ve only ever played Nintendo games (except for a few computer games), being faithfully addicted to The Legend of Zelda, Pokemon, and Professor Layton.

Because so many of these games are available on multiple platforms, I’ve also included which system I used to play the game.

Breath of the Wild

Wii U

Although this list isn’t in any specific order, Breath of the Wild definitely tops the list as my favorite game of the year. I’m honestly more than a bit obsessed with the Legend of Zelda (the first game I ever played was Link’s Awakening, which I stole from my half-brother (still haven’t returned it)). I even named my two leopard geckoes Link and Zelda.

Link and Zelda are my precious babies. . . . . #legendofzelda #thelegendofzelda #leopardgecko #gecko #leopardgeckoofinstagram #lizard #link #zelda #pets #petstagram

A post shared by Camryn (@camryn.daytona) on Jul 4, 2017 at 3:54pm PDT

Not only does Breath of the Wild have a huge open world and stunning graphics, it also has a compelling storyline (although I’m still not sure how it fits into the Zelda timeline). And this Zelda game has by far my favorite version of Princess Zelda (I swear I’m going to cosplay her one day), whom I love despite thinking her voice actor sounds like she was trying really hard to do a Hermione Granger impression (no hate though, just a note). Here’s a funny story I found about her voice actor.

https://twitter.com/CamrynDaytona/status/754483420403798016

I haven’t gotten the expansion pack yet, but I definitely plan on getting it soon.

I played this on Wii U, because I’ve yet to upgrade to the Switch, but my friend who has a Switch says it plays perfectly. And I’m still impatiently waiting for any updates on Netflix’s Legend of Zelda series. Which might have moved to Amazon. Or not be happening at all. Seriously, I NEED UPDATES.

https://twitter.com/CamrynDaytona/status/754480522433273856

Another honorable mention is Hyrule Warriors, which helped fill the void while I was waiting for Breath of the Wild. If you’re considering getting it, I would suggest getting it on Wii U, not DS, as it really benefits from a larger screen.

The Elder Scrolls

PS4

This year I played both Skyrim and Elder Scrolls Online, and I have a hard time picking a favorite. While there were definitely parts of Skyrim which I preferred, ESO had the advantage of a bigger world. And so much more to do! I’m still not even a fraction of the way through all of it. It’s the first online multiplayer game I’ve played since my Lord of the Rings Online phase a few years ago (I finally gave up on that because the graphics were so bad), and I was surprised by how little I minded having other random players running around. Other than one instance in which a guy added me to a multiplayer just to flirt with me, the other people have more or less left me alone to kill people in peace.

Shadow of Mordor

PS4

I’m once again using this broadly to mean both Shadow of Mordor and the recently released Shadow of War. I played both of them for the first time this year, and they played no small part in my decision to finally get a PS4. I was really hesitant going into this game because I knew it included both Celebrimbor and Annatar, as well as a lot of other references to Middle Earth History. As a huge Tolkien Nerd, I was afraid they wouldn’t do the characters justice. Despite the fact that they gave Celebrimbor a wife and child seemly for no other purpose than to kill off (and so that he could say Sauron “seduced” him without sounding gay), I didn’t mind the changes to canon at all.

https://twitter.com/CamrynDaytona/status/942814193924919296

Shadow of War takes the changes even farther (and seems to contradict their own canon at times), but I still don’t mind. It’s a great game and even though I really wish there was more Celebrimbor and less Talion, it’s still enjoyable. Shelob still worries me though.

The Sims 4

Mac

I currently have a Lord of the Rings inspired world (90% of which is just me creating characters, making them befriend Elrond, killing them, and making them haunt him), one with a bunch of characters from Doctor Strange (for some reason The Ancient One wants to marry Karl Mordo), and then a world with random sims with funny names. I never really got into the Sims when I was younger, but I have been enjoying playing it more recently.

Nancy Drew

Mac & PC

I’ve been playing the Nancy Drew Computer Games by Her Interactive for years, but this year I got really addicted to working my way through them (over the summer, when I had meant to be working through Zelda).

https://twitter.com/CamrynDaytona/status/863634946736496640

Any fellow gamers out there?

Feel free to add me on platforms so we can play together!!! And let me know what games you enjoyed this year!!

Origin: SunflowerSupreme

Playstation: SunflowerSupreme

Steam: CamrynDaytona

Games I Loved in 2017 I did quite a bit of gaming this year because I find it relaxing and an easy escape from everything around me.