#this game is genuinely amazing (even with its flaws that make it difficult to get into) and I love it so much

[amegeddon]

HOLY FUCKING SHIT

I WAS NOT READY FOR THE WAR WITHIN QUESTLINE

I HEARD DE COOKED BUT I DIDN'T REALISE IT WAS GONNA BE A GOURMET FEAST HOLY HELL THAT WAS AMAZING???

I have also heard the story gets EVEN BETTER from this point on so oh my god I'm very hyped for that. Just a shame mhwilds is out in a few days since it's 100% going to eat my attention lol

[aion-rsa]

15 Worst NES Games of All-Time

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The worst NES games of all time are a truly special breed of bad video games. Say what you will about the downsides of the modern video game industry (and there is certainly a lot to say), but there is, in most cases, a baseline standard of quality ensured by better, cheaper technology, experience, and more controlled distribution channels. You may get the occasional indie game that is basically a scam, but when it comes to major releases…well, even Cyberpunk 2077 was pretty good in a lot of ways.

That wasn’t the case during the NES era. At a time when console gaming was basically the digital wild west, it was incredibly difficult to tell good games from bad ones, and developers often exploited that fact to get us to buy titles that refuse to leave the deepest, darkest parts of our nostalgia all these years later.

That’s the thing about these games. Are they among the worst NES titles ever? Absolutely, but years later, there’s something about remembering the pain of playing them and sharing those memories with others that is strangely enjoyable. 

15. Tag Team Wrestling

Even with all of the other bad wrestling games for the NES (and there were many), Tag Team Wrestling manages to stand apart largely by virtue of being fundamentally unplayable in nearly every way you can imagine.

In a dream world where you manage to overcome this game’s all-time bad animations and unresponsive controls, you still have to deal with the fact that there are times when the opponent A.I. difficulty is raised to such a degree that it becomes quite literally impossible to win. If it weren’t for the fact that this game eventually inspired Homestar Runner’s Strong Bad character, it would be entirely worthless.

14. Friday the 13th

There are some who will credit Friday the 13th for being unique and ambitious. We shall not speak their name in this house of truth where we recognize that the Friday the 13th franchise was never scarier than the moment you tried to play this game as a child.

This game’s bewildering map and unforgivable controls were practically designed to eliminate the possibility of fun. It’s easy to love Jason’s weirdly stylish purple jumpsuit in this 8-bit nightmare, but much like Patrick Bateman, no amount of style can hide the monster beneath.

13. Super Pitfall

There’s no shortage of NES games that are difficult to the point of being fundamentally unenjoyable, but Super Pitfall may just be the king of that particular trash heap.

Super Pitfall‘s developers seemed to believe that the reason people love video games is that they offer the chance to listen to repetitive music while dying all the time to obstacles you have little to no chance to avoid. Just in case that level of abuse wasn’t enough to make you love their project, the developers decided to just go ahead and fill their game with essentially invisible items that no sane person would ever find organically despite the fact that they’re required to progress. To it’s credit, this game does recreate the sensation of being trapped in a dank underground cave.

12. Operation Secret Storm

While it almost feels too easy to pick on developer Color Dreams (the studio responsible for many terrible unlicensed NES games, many of which were based on the Bible), Operation Secret Storm is really on another level in terms of all-time bad games.

Even if we can put aside the often blatant racism and bizarre Gulf War storyline, we’re left with a game where control commands are more of a polite suggestion and hit detection is a bug, not a feature. From top-to-bottom, this may be the “best” example of just how bad those old-school unlicensed NES games could be.

11. Where’s Waldo?

You know, it’s pretty amazing that Where’s Waldo? the video game can’t offer an experience comparable to the Where’s Waldo? books considering that the books weren’t exactly the great American novels.

Beating this game will either take you five minutes or 50 years. It really all depends on your ability to determine which of the blurred on-screen figures the game is trying to pretend is supposed to be Waldo. It’s truly impressive that this game manages to botch a concept this simple, but that’s the magic of the NES era. 

10. Back to the Future Part II and III

The first Back to the Future game for NES was bad, but at least it followed basic video game logic in terms of its level structure. Back to the Future Part II and III, meanwhile, somehow beats Primer for the title of “most confusing use of time travel in entertainment history.”

To be honest, I still don’t know what this game expects from me. It’s supposed to offer a time travel adventure that spans the scope of the last two Back to the Future films, but I dare you to play this for more than 20 minutes without feeling tears in your eyes and the words “What do you want me to do?!?!” escape your lungs. If it’s not the most unintuitive bit of 8-bit game design, it’s certainly one of the most unenjoyable.

9. The Adventures Of Gilligan’s Island

There are two things worth remembering about Gilligan’s Island: the theme song and how annoying Gilligan was. To its credit, this game nails both of those elements.

This game is basically the result of escort quests and bad comedy games forming an unholy union. Imagine being dropped into a hedge maze and being forced to endure the constant jeers of the dumbest man you’ve ever met while trying to figure out where to go. Also, your legs are tied together. That’s basically the Adventures of Gilligan’s Island experience. 

8. Bad Street Brawler

It’s tempting to overlook the golden age of beat ‘em ups for their seeming simplicity, but as Bad Street Brawler shows, it’s very much possible for those kinds of games to go incredibly wrong.

Bad Street Brawler was designed to be used with the NES Power Glove, which should probably tell you everything that you really need to know about what it’s like to try to “play” this game. Manage to master its nearly unplayable controls, and you’re left with a beat ’em up with bewildering visuals and fundamentally unsatisfying gameplay that leave you wondering how the industry lasted this long.

Read more

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7. Mario is Missing

Look, there are a lot of bad video games on the NES, but there’s something especially insulting about a terrible Mario game on NES that passes itself off as an educational experience.

This game feels like it was made by a dentist who wanted to give young patients a way to pass the time in the waiting room while also making them less afraid of the impending pain. Nothing in this game makes sense, and the fact it fooled young gamers into thinking it was an actual Mario game makes it that much more infuriating.

6. Ghostbusters

You know, it really shouldn’t have been that difficult to make a respectable Ghostbusters game. Honestly, the only way to go wrong is to pass up the more obvious genre opportunities and try to do something weird and stupid that nobody ever asked for.

As you probably guessed, that’s exactly what we have here. Ghostbusters has the audacity to try to be this strange combination of various gameplay concepts when the fundamentals of controls, visuals, and logical progression so clearly elude it. It’s genuinely hard to believe someone had the chance to make a Ghostbusters video game and came up with this.

5. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

There are some who say that you really need to learn to play this game before you can judge it. The fundamental flaw of that premise is that it assumes that there’s a game here that’s worth playing in the first place.

I genuinely can’t imagine what Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’s developers were going for when they concocted this unintuitive blend of confusing mechanics, overwhelming (yet unimpressive) enemies, and controls that only seem to work seconds before you convince yourself to give up on the game entirely. You can read every guide about this game that’s ever been written to try to understand how its needlessly complicated mechanics work, and they still wouldn’t answer the one question everyone has about this title, “Why are you like this?”

4. Action 52

It almost feels bad to pick on Action 52 considering that it is an unlicensed collection of 52 small games that were clearly made by underfunded and inexperienced programmers working on a project that legally probably shouldn’t have been “released.” Then again, that’s perhaps all the more reason to make fun of it.

Against all odds, not one of Action 52’s 52 games manages to be even remotely playable. These games would have been embarrassing even if they were released for the Atari 2600, but in the age of the NES, they offered young gamers the chance to quickly realize that the world is full of scammers and they will try anything to part you with your money.

3. Deadly Towers

Every NES gamer has that one game they just couldn’t beat and never seemed to understand no matter how hard they tried. Well, Deadly Towers is all of those games of your respective childhoods rolled into one.

There is not a single aspect of this game that makes any kind of sense that I’m familiar with. Imagine you’re trapped in the maze from the movie Labyrinth, but instead of getting to meet sexy David Bowie at the end, you have to listen to Eric Clapton tell you what’s wrong with your generation. That’s about what’s it like to play Deadly Towers. Even if you bother to learn the game’s structure, you quickly find you don’t want anything to do with the “rewards” that follow. 

2. Dragon’s Lair

How do you take a game like Dragon’s Lair (an innovative arcade experience that combined FMV visuals with QTE gameplay) and port it to the humble NES? Well, if this port is any indication, you…don’t.

I don’t know if there’s ever been another game that inflicts so much pain on its first screen. I’m willing to bet that 90% of Dragon’s Lair players never figured out how to cross that first bridge and actually enter the castle. That’s probably because the solution to that “puzzle”makes no sense and is fundamentally unenjoyable to execute. Those 90% will be happy to know that the game only gets worse from there. 

1. The Uncanny X-Men

Imagine how easy it would have been to make a decent X-Men game for NES. Just take Batman, Mega Man, Castlevania, or any number of the other great NES games, throw some X-Men designs on the whole thing, and you have a game most of us would probably fondly remember to this day.

Infamous NES developer LJN decided to go a different route, though. They decided to make a top-down action game where hit detection is basically non-existent, the music constantly assaults your ears, half of the characters are essentially useless, the graphics are so bad that you quite literally can’t tell where you are or what you’re supposed to be doing, and the AI is useless to the point that I”m pretty sure the in-game characters have become aware of the game they’re forced to exist in and are doing everything in their power to get out.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

There’s no shortage of bad NES games (clearly), but when it comes to wasted potential, this is truly the worst of the worst. 

The post 15 Worst NES Games of All-Time appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[takerfoxx]

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Season 5, Episode 13, “The Heart, Part 2,” First Impressions!

I am going to miss this show, I really am.

Well. Here we are. The final episode of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, an almost three decade later reboot of a show I’ve never seen, which in turn was a spin-off of a show I’ve never seen, and yet somehow became one of my favorite shows of all time.

Now, when this show was first announced, there was a lot of pushback. You had the usual murder’s row of so-called anti-SJW troglodytes who like to swoop in on anything that looks like it wasn’t designed with straight white guys in mind (and speaking as a straight white guy, these guys are just. So. Tiresome!), as well as fans of the original who didn’t care for the new character designs, direction, or lack of connection to Masters of the Universe. Which, okay, I get it, and to be honest the little to no He-Man business still strikes me as weird, but come on guys. It’s been almost thirty years! Times have changed, audiences have changed, and the targeted audience of kids’ shows today are very different from what they were in the eighties. 

But despite all that nontroversy, She-Ra rose above and established itself as a genuinely great show in it’s own right, becoming both a critical and commercial success. Like, okay, it wasn’t Avatar the Last Airbender or Steven Universe-level big, but it definitely established a real niche for itself and gathered a sizeable fanbase. The excellent writing, incredibly on-point comedic timing, superb voice acting, casual diversity, oodles of complex and likeable characters, tight-plotting, mature handling of difficult topics, and immaculate direction made it out to be an amazing children’s show from a decade that has had no shortage of amazing children’s shows, and expectations were insane for the final season, with the climatic final episode being under incredible scrutiny. 

I mean, it makes sense, right? For once, given the huge LGBTQ fanbase the show has, and given how many times the LGBTQ community have been burned at the last second, there is little wonder that they would be wary. And while some shows like the aforementioned Avatar the Last Airbender and Breaking Bad have remained of high quality throughout its run and delivered with an excellent finale (or so I’m told, still working my way through), others like Voltron Legendary Defender and Game of Thrones have become notorious for shitting the bed in their latter halves, and other shows like Steven Universe have had more mixed receptions. So how would She-Ra turn out? Would it end up flopping at the end, or would it stick the landing and enter the pantheon of shows that actually completed their entire story arcs and are fondly remembered?

Yes. Yes, it did. 

The final season was spectacular. It started off all right, but from the third episode on immediately turned into pure brilliance, one that seemed to constantly top itself with wonderful character development, emotional payoffs, scenes of gripping tension, ballsy writing, and fantastic action. And any finale that makes me cry gets a thumb’s up from me.

Now, obviously I have a lot of gushing to do, but before it do, I should point out that I don’t think the finale is 100% perfect. There are things that kind of bugged me, and a few others that I felt really could have done better. Of course none of them were deal breakers, only little flaws that I feel could have stood to either have had more focus or different execution. And I might as well get the negative things out of the way.

And for me, the biggest problem is Shadow Weaver’s exit. 

And to be clear, I don’t have a problem whatsoever with Shadow Weaver dying. I wanted her to die. I’m glad she died. Nor do I have a problem for her dying to save the two girls she’s spent two decades abusing. And nor do I have a problem with them mourning her death, given that they never actually forgave her, and it only made sense that they would have complicated feelings toward her. All of those are fine!

What I have a problem with is how that moment was framed and directed. It was framed like a heroic sacrifice, from the dramatic final stand moment to Shadow Weaver being suddenly acting selfless to her telling Catra how proud she was of her and finally showing her face. 

Everything about that moment was exceptionally well done, yes, but the problem I have is that it doesn’t feel earned. That’s the sort of end you give a morally complex character that has been struggling with their negative qualities throughout a long character arc. And I’m sorry, but while Shadow Weaver is a pretty great and complicated character in her own right, she as never even tried to redeem herself until that moment. With Catra, we still saw how much her actions haunted and tormented her, even when she was at her worst. We saw her wrestling with her ingrained toxic behaviors and her conscience, so that when she finally makes the decision to do something right and, as far as she knew, sacrificed her life to rescue Glimmer and save Adora, it felt all kinds of earned!

But even after defecting to the Princess Rebellion, Shadow Weaver showed no signs of wanting to change. She showed no signs of regretting her mistreatment of Adora and Catra, and still continued to demean, undercut, and gaslight them whenever she was with them, and whenever she was called out on it, she would just brush it off and/or roll her eyes. Even when she was “helping” and “praising” her golden child Adora, she still continued to try to twist her head and mold her into what she wanted Adora would be. And her treatment of Catra didn’t change at all.

So I’m sorry, but that moment just didn’t work for me. Yes, I know Noelle has said that her sacrifice was still selfishly motivated, and I believe it, but it still felt off, especially with her finally telling Catra that she was proud of her, when she was AGAIN demeaning her earlier in that same episode! It carries the unintentional implication that Catra needed Shadow Weaver’s validation in order to move on. I honestly would have preferred that she never got it but realized that she didn’t need it to begin with. And that “You’re welcome,” which is incredibly condescending, was framed as a badass final line. There’s a disconnect between her character arc and its payoff that feels off. I wish something had been handled differently. 

The second issue I had was just how rushed a lot of the character payoffs felt at the end. Yes, I know Noelle said that she doesn’t want to do an epilogue and would like us to decide for ourselves how things turned out, and that’s fine. But one day later wouldn’t hurt. Wrong Hordak was shown a couple times cowering next to Swift Wind in group shots and then straight up disappeared. And given their complicated history together, Scorpia and Catra deserved so much more than just a hi and a hug. Chipped Micah was given more time to harm and demean Glimmer than real Micah was given to love her. The Entrapdak thing got more focus and despite what I said about Hordak needing to either die or lose his memories, I’m not too upset that he didn’t do either, but instead simply broke free and got a happy ending, and Mermista’s line of, “So, are we like okay with this?” was great, but it feels like there should have been more. And I know they never had their own character arc and did all they needed to do last season, but if you’re going to bring Double Trouble back, then give us more than just one episode and a two-second cameo at the end. 

Like, just give us some kind of montage of the rebuilding stage. Show us Wrong Hordak leading his scared and confused brothers in becoming individuals. Have him meet the real Hordak and show us how they would respond to one another! Give us a proper Catra/Scorpia reconciliation! Do more with Double Trouble or don’t bring them back at all. Hell, pair them up with Wrong Hordak partway through the season so they could bounce off each other, because that would be comedy GOLD! And while I’m glad that we at least got to see Lonnie, Kyle, and Rogelio (and they adopted Imp!), it sucks that that was their only scene this season, and it didn’t even have any lines. I’m not so upset about Huntara, because I know her voice actress is hard to get ahold of, so I’m okay with her just getting a wordless scene, but the others kind of bug.

I understand that time was a factor, but surely something could have been done.

All right, now I got all those out my system, let the gushing BEGIN!

Catra and Adora. Oh man. Oh man oh man oh man oh man. Now, I know I said that Catra needs to leave in order for her redemption to work, but even though she didn’t and got pretty much forgiven and accepted by everyone she hurt, I’m still very happy with how her redemption arc went down. Because she made the switch early in the season, showed genuine regret for what she did, made real attempts to apologize to those she hurt without expecting forgiveness, was shown wrestling with her bad traits, sometimes falling back into them, sometimes almost succumbing to bad habits, but was also shown finally making the right decisions and rising above them. She was the best-written character in the show with the most complex character arc, and they fucking NAILED the landing. 

And that is because of her love of Adora. 

Catra and Adora, two white-hot messes of weirdly compatible issues. Catra is so afraid of abandonment that she instinctively pushes those she loves away or runs away herself rather than let them leave her, and Adora only knows how to place others before herself, to be selfless to a fault, take all the blame for everything, and not let herself be the one who’s loved and protected. The two needed each other in order to overcome their issues, to put aside the damage Shadow Weaver instilled in them.

And they finally did.

Catra came back for Adora. She stayed by her side, refused to leave, and refused to let Adora give up. And Adora rose above her feelings of failure, allowed herself to be loved by another, and became whole. 

And then we got it. We finally got the moment we’ve all been waiting for, all been praying for, all wanted so goddamned desperately. 

We got the Big Goddamn Kiss.

The love each other. They’re lovers. They’re soulmates. After everything, how could they be anything else? It’s pure, 100% romantic love, a full, no ambiguity friends-to-rivals-to-enemies-to-allies-to-lovers storyline. Not subtext, no reading between the lines. It’s real, it’s canon, it’s between the two main leaders, and it happened right on the screen and saved the goddamned world.

Catra finally reached out to someone and showed love, and Adora finally allowed herself to be brought up and loved. And it’s that love that overcame Horde Prime’s virus and destroyed the Heart of Etheria. It’s that love that freed the magic, released She-Ra, and allowed her to vanquish Horde Prime once and for all. 

And hey, two girls kissing, turning into a rainbow, and annihilating the influence of a controlling religious cult and the symbol of exploitative colonizers? Hmmm, subtle!

I love it. 

Look, after everyone talking about how much the finale made them cry, and after already sobbing my eyes out when Angella sacrificed herself in season 3, I was worried that I wouldn’t feel the same, that everything had already been spoiled for me so it wouldn’t have the same emotional impact. Hell, the kiss itself had been spoiled for me! So if I knew it was coming, how could it affect me like it did others.

I was wrong. I was so wrong. When Catra screamed at Adora that she loved her and always had, the tears came gushing out. And when they finally did kiss, it made me happier than I had been for a long time. It was such a beautiful moment, and it was so wonderful to see all the magic unleashed, turning Etheria back into the paradise it was meant to be, and the Spire into a giant floating sprig of broccoli!

The Horde was finally defeat, and Horde Prime ripped out of his Wi-Fi network and destroyed once and for all. He will not rise again. His corrupted vision of purity is finally eradicated once and for all, and the galaxy is free again.

It was wonderful.

Other moments I want to highlight! Beginning with Bow! 

Oh Bow. I haven’t talked as much about you as I did at the start of the show, but you really are wonderful. After similar unpowered male goofball sidekicks like Xander and Sokka being big balls of toxic masculinity and ingrained misogyny caused by insecurities that they had to overcome, we get an unpowered male goofball sidekick who is a shining example of positive masculinity, someone who knows who he is and is comfortable with it, someone who more than holds his own in battle, constantly makes himself useful, and stands proud with his superpowered friends. And even then, he still feels like real person, one that gets frustrated, feels down, and gets angry at both himself and his friends, but still continues on, because he’s a soldier and that’s what he does. 

So it was wonderful that he got the Rise Up and Fight speech, because he deserved it, and oh it felt so good, seeing all those instances of people throwing off Horde Prime’s control while his words were playing. Bow really is wonderful.

And Hordak! Look, I know what I said about wanting more from his ending, but my God, that moment when he threw off Horde Prime’s control and shot Horde Prime in the back to save Entrapta and reclaim his identity was so! Fucking! Cool! I was cheering in my car when that happened! So good! 

And hey, give it up for Glimmer for not listening to Chipped Micah and refusing to back down. She overcame a brilliant sorcerer wielding dark magic through the power of sheer stubbornness! Chef kiss, beautiful!

Though I really do think she got most of her stubbornness from her mom. Miss yah, Angie. 

And Scorpia and Perfuma? Why, I think I like that quite a lot! Why yes, give Perfuma a big, strong girlfriend with a huge heart! Give Scorpia tiny, cute hippie girlfriend who will take no shit from anyone. Yes, I like this very much.

So...yeah. This really was wonderful. The world is saved, the Best Friend Squad is about to go on a space romp, and it feels good. And from there? Well, Noelle told us to come with that ourselves, so yeah, I’m sure Etheria was able to fully rebuild following the Horde’s destruction. I’m sure that Wrong Hordak became some kind of benevolent leader to his lost brothers and helped them come to grips with their individuality. I’m sure that Scorpia rebuilt the Scorpion Kingdom from the Fright Zone’s ruins and made it a haven to the lost Horde soldiers. I’m sure that Sea Hawk and Mermista burned down a boat together. I’m sure that Glimmer and Bow were married and became king and queen of Brightmoon and had a long and loving reign with lots of babies. I’m sure that Entrapta was given all the discarded Horde and First Ones tech to crack and find good uses for and remained as happy as a clam, especially considering the Hordak harem she’s built. I’m sure that Adora and Catra continued to build each other up, helped and supported one another to keep themselves from falling into bad habits, and Melog was always there as a faithful therapy magi-cat. I’m sure that Perfuma helped Catra along with meditative exercises and Catra never had the heart to tell her that she was just napping. I’m sure that Frosta grew up to be a strong and powerful queen who also founded her own iceball league. I’m sure that everyone started going to Netossa and Spinnerella’s game nights and just decided to put up with Netossa when she got like...that, because at that point she deserved to. I’m sure that Swift Wind finally did emancipate the horses and taught them to form their own weird society, but still made time to visit Madam Razz. I’m sure that Kyle and Rogelio became proud adopted fathers of little Imp, and one day while chilling at the local pub, Lonnie caught the eye of a big, strong purple woman. 

I’m sure they were all very happy from there on.

I am going to miss this show. It was a wonderful experience, one that’s given me so much. It made me laugh,it made me cry, it made me cheer, it made me shiver, it made me bite my nails, but most of all, it made me happy. 

So thank you Noelle and Molly. Thank you Chuck and Mary Elizabeth. Thank you Sunna and Aaliyah. Thank you Aimee, AJ, Karen, Marcus, Keston, Reshma, Lorraine, Christine, Adam, Genesis, Vella, Merit, Gina, and Jordan. Thank you to all the writers, animators, and directors. Thank you to everyone who worked on this show. Thank you all.

And a very special thank you to @smxmuffinpeddling​ for filling my dash with She-Ra content, which convinced me to check this show out in the first place!

[purewebsite]

Buy Cannabis Online : Things to Remember

In all honesty, we genuinely love 2021. Of course, the world has been somewhat wretched since the beginning of 2020, yet we're owning positive light sparkle in numerous viewpoints.

In the United States where emergency clinics were once stressed to stay aware of new patients, we're seeing a sharp slope in the accessibility of clinic beds as the populace keeps on inoculating. Economies all throughout the planet are firing up as shoppers and laborers venture once again into the commercial center. Lines are opening up across the world as global travel takes off by and by.

While we're eager to perceive what some may call a 'get back to routineness', we're likewise excited about what's going on today. Step back a couple of years, certainly before 2020, and the possibility of legitimately purchasing weed online was practically inconceivable. Presently, for the present designs, we're including our gifts as the main 10 best brands to arrange weed from on the web.

Is Buying Weed Online in 2021 Legal, Safe, and Secure?

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Truth be told, the entirety of our main 10 best brands to purchase weed from online offer clear shipment strategies with secured installment alternatives. That is as a glaring difference to the some time ago pervasive bootleg market after which came the main directed dispensaries, which could typically just arrangement in real money.

Assuming you need to purchase weed online in 2021, here's an example perspective on our main 10 best brands to buy from.

Who Are the Top 10 Best Brands to Buy Weed From Online? A Quick List

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How We Decided the Top 10 Best Brands to Order Weed From When Buying Online

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When purchasing weed on the web, there's nothing more significant than the actual weed. You can cite us on that.

Any organization can set up sparkling insights with enchanting item depictions to sell their weed. There's not a beneficial cannabis business on Earth that couldn't pay individuals to compose the tko carts counterfeit surveys about their items while putting all their cash in PR crusades and gaudy sites. Notwithstanding, what we're really searching for when we're purchasing weed online is the genuine wellspring of the item.

A few organizations will cloud this data, others will disclose to us forthright where their weed comes from on the grounds that they're so glad for it. We accept that the best eventual outcome will come from the best unique source.

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Since the first wellspring of weed is by all accounts top caliber, there are times when things can turn out badly:

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And that's only the tip of the iceberg

Since so numerous things can conceivably turn out badly in the developing and assembling of cannabis items, we love to see completely point by point lab reports. We need to realize how solid the item is as indicated by a trustworthy and autonomous lab. We likewise prefer to see gives an account of pesticides and herbicides, weighty metals, and any expected poisons in the item.

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Only one out of every odd brand that you can purchase weed from online in 2021 has its own site to buy it. A large number of them utilize your neighborhood dispensaries to get their items out to you. Fortunately, the way toward purchasing weed web based utilizing applications like Weedmaps has gotten staggeringly simple.

Nonetheless, we love to discover organizations that are selling their weed on the web. We love it considerably more in the event that they have a perfect site, an enlightening FAQ, and a simple to-utilize retail facade. In the event that we discover an organization selling the best weed on the web yet their site is moderate, inconvenient, and we can only with significant effort explore our direction through the heap of connections and pages they have, then, at that point they're not making it onto this rundown.

Installment Options

We don't know whether we need to pay with Bitcoin. Not on the grounds that we don't cherish the choice of paying for our weed online with crypto, but since we don't know whether Bitcoin will tumble to nothing or leap to 1,000,000. In any case, we love choices. The choice of paying for our weed online with things like crypto is a pleasant reward. The evasion of paying with cash even assists us with our spending plan.

Talking about planning, we've seen organizations significantly offer sans interest installment plans when purchasing their weed on the web. More organizations ought to do that assuming they need to be on our main 10 rundown of best brands to purchase weed online from.

Delivery and Returns

There are numerous things that can be distressing about internet shopping:

The presence of tricks and fake sites

The chance of things being lost in shipment

Managing an organization's non-existent online tko carts client care

Furthermore, substantially more

In case you're pondering purchasing your weed on the web, these issues could be exacerbated by the way that you're attempting to purchase an item that actually faces a great deal of demonization. The mental blows this can bargain are handily mellowed when cannabis organizations offer clear and legitimate delivery and bring data back.

We prefer not to top off our trucks with delectable looking cannabis items just to take them to look at and track down an enormous transportation charge. That makes us leave our trucks, and we'd very much want to keep looking for our weed on the web.

That is the reason we search for organizations that let us realize immediately how delivery functions and how much it will be. Also, in the event that we get a flawed item or one that is harmed through the mail, we need to realize how that will be dealt with before we purchase our weed on the web.

Taste

Accepting we've discovered great weed to purchase on the web and encountered an excellent encounter to get it in our grasp, there's as yet the subject of how delicious an item is. All great gourmet experts realize taste begins with show. A revolting item doesn't motivate our taste buds to awaken and get every one of the complexities they may experience.

On the off chance that an item looks delightful as we open it up, we'll get its smell. A critical piece of taste, the smell of an item can reveal to us a great deal about how well it was developed, how solid it is, and what terpenes it might contain. Loads of cannabis shoppers can tell just by the smell of their weed in case they will appreciate it or not. That is on the grounds that our smell is intensely connected to our feeling of taste.

When the item hits our tongue, we search for the underlying flavor, what soaks in, and what's abandoned. The more delicious the items accessible, the more probable an organization is to make our rundown of the main 10 best brands to purchase weed on the web.

Brand Reputation

We will not put everything on brand notoriety, since we know there are a lot of obscure whizzes just as exaggerated garbage sacks. Be that as it may, on the off chance that we see an organization consistently satisfies the local area throughout an all-inclusive timeframe, we do offer assurance to their tirelessness and manageability.

Client assistance

We like to converse with genuine individuals, or robots with truly smart responses prior to conversing with a genuine individual. What we don't care for is the point at which an organization makes it difficult to get in touch with them rapidly. The simpler it is to contact an organization the better. That goes twofold for how well and how rapidly they react to any requests.

Straightforwardness

When purchasing weed on the web, it can feel like you're strolling into some shadowy corners of the web. With dark organizations hiding everywhere, we need to realize what they're truly up to in the background. Giving us access with itemized lab reports, genuine about pages, or visits via web-based media of their preparing plants is an incredible method to tell us they're doing the right things away from plain view.

Do They Give Back?

Past showing us what they're up to when we're not looking, we love to see organizations exceeding everyone's expectations to offer in return. Some decide to give to good cause they find helpful, others lift up individuals from their own burdened local area, and there are some weed organizations who offer back by offering free data consistently.

Regardless of whether they're helping lift minorities out of neediness, advance proficiency, or assist individuals with getting cannabis and its advantages, we genuinely like organizations that offer back somehow.

[championfrita]

Pokémon Sword and Shield Review

So...I've taken some time to fully play Pokémon Shield. Now, I know this is pretty delayed, and I got the double pack so I wanted to play Sword first to see if how I felt was really accurate or if I was being too harsh. That said, let's talk about my experience with the Galar Region.

Initial Impressions

Overall, I was excited to play Shield at first. Everything was bright and exciting and the characters were easy to recognize and not overly generic.

The first few hours of this game, well it's a slow burn. And I do mean SLOW. Even with the text set to Fast and me taking things at my own pace it took me at least a good couple hours to reach the Wild Area. Furthermore, this game has an infernal amount of handholding, even when given the option to say "I know all this already" it still gives a brief explaination for almost anything and STILL makes you sit ALL THE WAY THROUGH the catch tutorial.

It's 2019 and older players still don't get the option to skip this. Come on GameFreak.

That said, the longer I played the more I began to notice...how should I put this? Blatant laziness?

The Wild Area

Now, the CONCEPT of the Wild Area in theory is amazing. It's still not too bad as is, but there are definitely flaws. For starters, the same tree has been copy pasted all over the place to make up 90% of the foliage.

More than that, though, despite the Wild Area having a good selection of Pokémon and a fairly varietied environment (desert, lakes, forest) it feels oddly...empty. There are no real secrets to speak of, no hidden areas, no easily missed items. Everything is all right out there to see and spread pretty far apart. I don't know if it's a lack of Trainers or the fact that I don't have an Online membership so I played alone, but the Wild Area feels like it just needs something MORE.

Dynamax Raid Battles, even when done alone, are fairly fun and sometimes challenging with the turn limit. Radiant AI Trainers spawn in to assist you if you're playing alone so there's no worries about having to take one on with just one Pokémon.

Camping, which can be done anywhere but is introduced to the player here, is an absolute treat. Have YOU played fetch with a unicorn? I have, and I love it. The wide variety of curries you can make with different ingredients is nice, and your Pokémon even get EXP boosts if you play with and feed them while camping.

The Pokémon

Honestly, I'm really not impressed. The Galar Dex of new Pokémon feels painfully small, so much so that playing Pokémon GO and catching a few Unova Pokémon made me yearn for the days when we used to get regions completely FULL of new Pokémon. Remember when you had to wait until AFTER the main game to start catching Pokémon from past gens? I...well, this might be an unpopular opinion, but I LIKED that.

That said, using a sparse selection of Galar Pokémon and Galar Regional Variants on my team definitely made the Gym Challenge more difficult. I picked Scorbunny, because Fire Types, and honestly didn't really care for it or its evolutions at first. Cinderace has really grown on me though and I like Pyro Ball as a move. It's flashy and powerful and that suits me just fine. Most of the new Pokémon's DESIGNS were good and I liked them, there just really weren't ENOUGH of them.

I'm fairly pleased with the regional variants as well. It was difficult to adjust to Ponyta and Rapidash being Psychic Type, but I really liked having them on my team. At the same time...Meowth not evolving into a Persian doesn't really sit right with me.

I'm all for branch evolutions, but Perrserker honestly just looks more like a giant Galar Meowth than anything. I played this with only the info given in the few scattered trailers I'd seen, so I was genuinely excited to see what a Galarian Persian would look like only to end up with Perrserker. The Typing is phenominal, and I think it's great to see a Steel Type Meowth for a change, but I just don't like where they went with it. Eh. Ces't la vie, moving on.

The Story

It's weak. Straight up, the story in this game is poor. There were so many directions they could have gone. I really liked the idea of Rose being this charismatic chairman hype man for the League and being the bad guy. I saw it coming, but it was a nice change to see just based on his personality. Still, it feels rushed. His motivations are really one dimensional and glossed over. Like, "Oh, here's the bad guy. Go get him." It worked in Gen 1 because Giovanni was a MOBSTER. He was MEANT to be a bad guy straight to the core in general, but Rose just doesn't have that vibe.

Not only that, but the "Bad League Members" are kinda meh. That feels REALLY lazy. They didn't even really get a decent uniform change when they started taking on the name Macro Cosmos in Rose Tower. They got black glasses. That's it. Just that. The fight with Eternatus feels painfully rushed and shoehorned in too, almost like they thought "Oh no, we need to give them a big nasty boss to fight! Let's just throw a random monster at them and say Rose summoned it. Seems like a solid plan."

I DID like the after story with Piers though. It really solidifies that older brother sort of nature with him, even if he tries to hide it most of the time.

The Characters

I liked Hop. As a character he's really fun and I like how they gave him this over excited very grand gestured sort of personality. He's really just happy to be ANYWHERE as long as it's with his Pokémon and you. His admiration for his big bro might come off strong and make him seem a little flat at first, but he's overall portrayed as a good kid and I like him.

Leon on the other hand...well I hated him for most of the game. His design is great and he looks fabulous, but he just has the most cocky, obnoxious, pandering personality 90% of the time. Still, I have to give credit where credit is due and recognize that he IS actually a multifaceted character. He showboats not just because he's too confident but also to give the crowd a show and put people at ease in times of danger. Not only that, but his recognition of his little brother's accomplishments and his graceful acceptance of defeat when you beat him reveals a really well written character.

I don't DISlike Sonia, and I have no problem with Prof. Magnolia sitting on the sidelines, but she can be a little...irritating at times with the way she speaks about and to people. The Gym Leaders, aside from Piers, feel a little...light.

I mean, most Gym Leaders don't have detailed backstories, but these ones feel paper thin personality wise as well. I had to look at the official GUIDE just to be sure what the relationship between Melony and Gordie even WAS because you only seem him in her Special League Card in Shield and that tells you nothing about him. The only real leaders that stood out to me were Piers and Raihan, and while I was iffy about his design at first I LOVE Raihan. He has so much more personality and ferocity than any of the other leaders. And the social commentary about him needing to constantly take and post a selfie, even after losing, is a nice touch.

The Galar Region

Is very linear. Like, VERY linear. Even when you take a branching path it either loops back around or gives you a free ride to wherever you have to backtrack to. I hope you like Hammerlocke, cuz you're gonna be visiting there several times.

I know that the region is based off the UK, and maybe my Americanized idea of cities is different (idk, I've never been to the UK), but a lot of the towns in this game feel really small. Like, almost smaller than some of the towns in Hoenn small. Maybe it's a lack of significant interactable buildings, but despite many of them having multiple floors you typically can only access one and that's kind of a disappointment. The hotel in Wyndon won't even let you get in the elevator, and while I get that Alola also did that, it's kind of jarring when the hotel in Motostoke WILL let you see other floors.

That said, I kind of expected more than ONE Wild Area. The one we DID get is fine, and I appreciate what it is and lets us do, but I honestly thought there would be multiple places to really explore outside the standard straight lines. Pokémon has never been a franchise to shy away from puzzles before so I expected this to not be any different. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

Moreover, many of the environment pieces are just UGLY. A lot of the ground textures are reused 3DS assets, and those copy pasted trees I mentioned earlier? Also 3DS assets. How do I know? They're pentagonal instead of round. In other words, they have five sides. Why? Because the 3DS hardware couldn't handle complex environmental shapes that well so they could get away with it, but now that we have nice round berry trees the contrast becomes painful. The Wild Area is so ugly the first time you see it is at NIGHT. They were so aware of what they did they hoped making it darker would hide the lazy flop instead of showing off how bad it was.

It isn't like they COULDN'T fix it either. Look at Ballonlea and Glimwood Tangle. They're absolutely beautiful and very well done. The modeling with them is fantastic and I love the glowing effects. They absolutely could've made the poorly done areas look amazing, but for some reason they didn't and the game suffers some as a result.

Other Thoughts

The Gym Challenges...they were not fun. Like, honestly some were ok. Herding Wooloo was easy, but they really didn't feel like anything I would expect from a Gym. The water puzzle in Nessa's Gym was fine, and I personally liked the spinning cup ride, but the rest just felt like agonizingly long padding because they couldn't come up with anything. Look at Circhester's challenge. It's a dowsing rod gauntlet where you have to avoid falling in pits in an artificial blizzard. It. is. SO. SLOW. That said, Spikemuth having just a Trainer gauntlet instead was kind of awkward. I reached the end and asked myself "Was that it? Is this it? Is this all there is to Spikemuth? Just one giant alleyway and a Pokémon Center?"

Raihan's three trials of worthiness challenge? It was more difficult than the battle AGAINST RAIHAN. Speaking of, I beat Hop, Marnie, Bede, all the Gym Leaders, Rose, Oleana, and Leon on my first try every time. While it was more difficult with my specific Pokémon choices, it really wasn't much. And can I just say that the Gym Badges are kinda lame? I get what they were going for, but the designs of each piece could've been really unique and intricate and instead we got glorified stamps.

I liked a lot of the general features of the game. Camping, clothing shops, League Cards. I love designing League Cards, even if I'm the only one who's ever gonna see em. That said, the clothing choices were really narrow based on what we got in Sun and Moon. The variety of different items was pretty small, though I loved all the punk leather stuff but WOW IS IT EXPENSIVE. Like Lumiose Boutique expensive. AND WHY IS THERE NEVER A REDHEAD HAIR COLOR THAT ISN'T JUST AUBURN RED? There are actually A LOT of redheads with LIGHT RED hair (that's more a personal gripe than anything, I know).

A lot of the music felt almost like rehashes of older BGMs. Like, Postwick, Route 1, and Wedgehurst all sound like they have remixed Hoenn music. A lot of the other music tracks just don't feel fitting for the areas or for Pokémon games in general. I like parts of the Slumbering Weald music and I like the Gym Music, but the opening of Slumbering Weald feels awkward and like it doesn't fit a mysterious forest we're not allowed to be in.

I know I've complained a lot, but there were some things I genuinely liked. A lot of the Pokémon designs, place names, and other radiant decor and parts of the region are actually subtle and not so subtle references to cultural points of the UK. Skwovet and its evolution for example are a gray and red squirrel respectively and are a nod to invasive species, which is neat.

In Conclusion

Is Pokémon Sword and Shield amazing? No. Is it bad? No. Sword and Shield fall into that mediocre middle ground of being ok but nothing to write home about. Could I have done without them? Sure, they aren't some world ending imperitive must play. They're ok, and they make for a fine jumping on point and a fine little adventure if you have spare time. Have other mainline games done it better? Heck yeah, but that doesn't mean Sword and Shield haven't done a few good things too.

Overall, it sort of feels like GameFreak bit off more than they could chew, or were afraid to make changes because of unfamiliarity with the Switch's hardware and software limitations. Pokémon Let's Go had a lot more effort, but it also was much safer and had a much easier to work with art style to everything. Chibi proportions are a lot easier to fake than a more realistic counterpart. Things can be not perfect and it's less noticable than with more realistic proportions, and I think they were afraid to push back the deadline any further for the inevitable backlash despite that being what they likely needed. The DLC may change my mind, but as it stands, just the fact that they feel they can JUSTIFY their laziness with DLC packs really upsets me.

I give Pokémon Sword and Shield a 5/10.

It's just, OK.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael After Midnight: Duke Nukem Forever

I like to kick off each new year with a truly magical review. Remember when I kicked off 2018 by reviewing a Jesus porno? Let’s be real, I peaked with that one. I’m not even gonna try to top it. What I will do, however, is talk about something I’ve wanted to discuss for a long time: Duke Nukem Forever.

This game almost needs no introduction; its stay in development hell and its tumultuous development is the stuff of legends, second only to Half-Life 3 in infamy among gaming vaporware. And it somehow managed to stay in infamy because despite releasing, UNLIKE Half-Life 3, most people who bought it really wished that it hadn’t. It turned out Duke was in the oven a bit too long, and the game we got was a mediocre shooter that was already out of date by several years when it finally released, not helped by its potshots at better series and use of extremely dated memes (Leeroy Jenkins? Really?). 

Thankfully, I was divorced from this decade-spanning drama, being barely aware of the game until a few years back. Being a fan of Duke as a character - he is a loving spoof of the kind of action heroes I enjoy after all - and curious about the game after reading the fascinating history behind its development, I ended up playing it and… I thought it was okay. Yeah, I was expecting a lot more from this game in either direction, but it ended up being a rather middling, decent experience.

So let’s talk about what’s unironically good first: the interactivity. There are a LOT of little things Duke can interact with around the world, from a whiteboard you can doodle on to a functional pinball machine. None of this is groundbreaking by any means, but there is a certain childish thrill from picking up a turd from a toilet and flinging it around or from smacking some alien wall titties. There’s even an enjoyable dream sequence where Dukeis at a club that has tons of interactive elements in it! The fact that a lot of these interactive elements can lead to increases in Duke’s health is an added incentive to spend time doing them.

I actually enjoy some of the level design in the first half of the game, in particular the segments where Duke is shrunk down. I don’t know about you guys, but there’s something I really find charming about hopping over fryers and climbing through conveniently placed holes in the walls of a shitty fast food joint. It’s the sort of stuff I imagine when I’m bored at work. If the whole game had been as creative and fun as these parts and had expanded on the interactivity more, I think this would have been worth the wait a bit more… but unfortunately there’s more to this game.

After the first couple of segments, the level design plummets. The portions where Duke has to drive through the desert are especially jarring as they are incredibly barren with little to do or discover. This is then taken to the opposite extreme when you get to the final area, the dam, which is downright labyrinthine at parts and absurdly difficult. You will likely not die any place more than in this level due to the ridiculous number of enemies they cram into the tight corridors and underwater sections. It makes you wonder if this area was made so difficult to hide how short the game is - things wrap up after the dam level ends, with one ridiculously easy final boss left once you escape.

Then again, you may be thanking your lucky stars this game is mercifully short, because Duke and the world he inhabits are pretty intolerable. The entire world has become a monument to Duke’s ego, with just about everything revolving around him. Duke is like a Mary Sue escapist fantasy - a huge macho man who kicks ass, takes names, gets blowjobs from twins and his genderbent counterpart (apparently it is Bombshell’s model behind the glory hole in Duke’s dream, so he can literally go fuck himself), and is adored by literally everyone. And yeah, Duke was always kind of like this… but somewhere along the game’s journey somebody forgot that the tongue of the writers is supposed to be firmly planted in their cheek. The issue here is that the game is taking everything about Duke DEAD SERIOUS. We’re supposed to see Duke as the supreme god-tier badass who makes Master Chief and Gordon Freeman look like pussies, but it’s hard to buy into that idea when we are only told this while playing as him is just an unfun chore.

And maybe this would be better if they had polished up Duke’s character a bit, but he’s really inconsistent. Jon St. John is still absolutely fantastic with the voice and the delivery, there’s no denying that, but he unfortunately is portraying a really lame iteration of this beloved character. I think the point where I lost faith in this Duke is when, after finding the blowjob twins trapped in alien cocoons and begging him for help, Duke’s response is to just tell them they’re fucked. This is in stark contrast to him going apeshit when the aliens stole his babes, and is yet another sign the writers just didn’t GET Duke. Duke is an overly-macho chauvinist, yes, but he DOES care about babes. He’s more Johnny Bravo, less conservative pro-life blogger. Here though? This is just an uncharacteristically misogynistic response, and it is never commented on again. It’s just so jarring and bad that it kind of hampered my enjoyment of the game.

Still though, there is something halfway charming buried under the garbage. There are flashes of fun here and there that show promise of a better game, but they are always ultimately crushed. I feel if this game had come out in a more timely fashion with the innovations it does have, it would be considered revolutionary, but alas, we don’t live in that world. Half-Life 2, Halo, BioShock, and countless other franchises came and redefined what an FPS could be while this game was floundering between studios, leaving it so that when this game finally dropped, there really wasn’t anything special about it save for its protagonist, who himself felt like a relic from a bygone age who had become in earnest the very thing he once parodied so effectively. 

It’s hard to really recommend this game; even among first-person shooters, which tend to age like milk, this game has aged very poorly. If you’re curious about it like I was, well, there are worse things to pull out of a bargain bin; the game is dirt cheap on most consoles. Generally speaking though I’d say just get the equally cheap yet infinitely better Duke Nukem 3D; it’s frankly amazing how much better that game has aged despite it being a game released in the wake of the original Doom. 

What the future holds for Duke is rather unclear; at the end of this game he says he’s gonna run for President, but I dunno, the idea of an overly macho, violent, misogynistic celebrity becoming president is pretty far-fetched, riiiiiiiiiiight? Let’s not end this on a depressing note that reminds us of the bottomless stupidity of American politics, though. Let me tell you the one genuinely good thing this game brought to the world:

I brought the cover insert of the game to be signed by Jon St. John at a convention, and when I presented it he said in a tone that clearly was used to being dunked on for the game “Be honest, what did you think of the game?” And I told him, “There were a couple parts I didn’t like, but overall I thought it was fun,” and the guy just lit up. It just made me really happy that someone liking this dumb game brightened his day like that, and honestly? It wasn't a lie. I did have fun with this game, despite its flaws, and if it let me brighten the game’s star’s day by saying I enjoyed it even a little, I’m glad it exists.

[official-brennivin]

Until Dawn review

I’ve recently finished my full playthrough of Until Dawn and after going through the main story of the game multiple times and experimenting, I’ve compiled my thoughts! This action-visual novel was extremely interesting to play.

Firstly, the game is marvellous in terms of atmosphere. The sound design, acting and music all create a very strong mental image of the cold environment and the intensity of the action sequences. This game has hit the nail on the head in terms of tone and setting. The environments are crafted wonderfully, and a lot of the gameplay segments feel relatively realistic. When a character pulls off a feat, it’s never unfeasible or totally impossible in real life. When a character is hurt or feels the cold, they react in a pretty normal way. The choice of a ski lodge during winter as a setting really enhances the tension of the story, and even with occasional slivers of dark humour the tone is very much under control. I never felt like my immersion was broken because the game became “too ridiculous” and this can happen with action-VN games. From the moment the opening theme started and that intense and overpowering “Oh Death” started playing, I was hooked. It was amazingly put together.

The decision to use the wendigo as the antagonistic species was a bold move. It’s not often that we see the wendigo adapted to games or films, and I think the decision to use them instead of werewolves or some other cryptid was extremely creative. I already have an interest in wendigo from playing RPGs and reading myths about them, so seeing them in media always makes me happy. The wendigo were also animated in an extremely masterful way. They’re absolutely terrifying. The gory deaths they cause are extremely creative and intense, and they pose a very real threat. One wrong move and the wendigo can easily be the end of you. Those that know me through this blog are aware of my penchant for creative and unique gore, so naturally this made the game very captivating.

Onto the game design, I thought that even though there were a lot of playable characters it was handled quite well. No matter who I was playing as I never felt like I switched control too quickly, or like it was jarring. Each segment was introduced with care and getting into each character felt organic. I do wish that the game was not divided into arbitrary chapters, though. The reason I say this is that whenever I wanted to collect an item I’d missed I had to replay an entire section of the game right from the beginning. Other Action-VNs and even regular VNs either allow you to skip segments of dialogue you’ve already been through or to jump into different sections of a chapter to get to specific points more quickly. Having to play through an entire chapter again just to get a totem that is right at the end of the chapter is very tedious. This did make the game frustrating at times, as the gameplay is so unforgiving and precise that it’s very easy to make mistakes and miss the item you’re looking for. That means starting the whole chapter again and again.

The game is difficult, and I like that about it. It doesn’t hold your hand and doesn’t give you arbitrary button presses all the time. The quick-time inputs feel natural because the button that you will have to use often corresponds to a direction. (for example, if you’re climbing then triangle will be used while launching yourself upward whilst X and square will be used to control your legs) Sometimes, the best thing to do is also nothing - not acting on a quick time event can save your life, if the action is too dangerous. This was also very well-implemented.

My absolute favourite game mechanic is the “stay still” mechanic. Wendigo can not see you if you stand still, so the game requires you to hold your controller very still to avoid detection. Not only is this a very unique way to use motion controls, but it’s also very well-tied into the lore. This is an example of an innovation that pleasantly surprised me. The tension it creates is unparalleled by any other horror game mechanic I’ve seen. The first time I encountered it while facing a wendigo, my heart raced. I genuinely felt fully immersed in the fear of the situation. This was an amazing choice that ultimately made the game for me.

I also loved how the game adapted to me as a player. During the “therapy” segments of the game, while you’re being psychoanalysed by Dr. Hill, the decisions you make influence the game you’re playing. The fears that you express towards Dr. Hill will impact the scares used in the game. This is really interesting and I was really pleasantly surprised by it as well. Games that adapt to your psychology are far and few between, but I think analysing the fears you have and changing the content accordingly makes for a really unique experience for each player. I loved this personal touch.

The characters in this game are fantastic. They’re all very balanced and unique. Not one of them is an all-round likeable person. They all feel like very real young adults with flaws and their own motivations. The way they react to certain interactions is very natural and organic, and I’m really impressed by how well they are characterised and developed. Throughout the story their emotions and experiences feel very relatable and human. Their personalities are all so unique and fun that I found myself quickly latching onto certain characters such as Chris, Josh and Jessica. I really cared about what happened to them, and the way they were written influenced the way I played quite a lot.

My feelings about the dialogue are complicated. On one hand, I love that it was written as a homage to corny 80s horror films. That was a great touch. However, some lines felt off. Sometimes characters would say things that didn’t feel natural. For example, I don’t think it would be typical for an 18-year-old boy to call his girlfriend “hon”. I also didn’t like Mike’s little “oh hell yeah” catchphrase whenever something suggestive happened. Talk about cringeworthy. The dialogue corresponded quite nicely to the characters’ personalities and was believable for American suburban teenagers, but there were points where it felt a bit jarring. Another thing that stood out to me as irritating is that Mike makes a pretty tasteless homophobic joke at one point and it’s not addressed as bigoted - the other characters just kind of let it happen. It’s only one short moment, but I hated it. Whilst the dialogue is quite flawed and I can see a lot of players finding its corniness annoying, it had its charms.

The acting in this game is phenomenal, and it’s clear that the actors had a great time working on it. Everybody on the cast of this game loved being in it, and believed in the project’s creative vision. The facial and physical acting is extremely well-performed. The voice acting is spot on, and they portray their young and naive characters very well. Rami Malek did an especially good job at portraying Joshua Washington, as the role had a lot of emotional range to it and I can only imagine how much work he put into that performance. I also want to mention Peter Stormare’s portrayal of Dr. Hill, which was mindblowingly intense and extremely intimidating. He is a phenomenal actor and the way he pulled off the character’s mystery and powerful aura was amazing.

Overall, while there are times that the game feels corny or unappealing in its dialogue or slightly tedious to replay, it’s very worth playing for those that enjoy horror and/or action-VNs. The very first playthrough is always an intense experience. Even my partner, who normally hates action-VNs enjoyed it purely because the horror was that effective. This game was a really unique experience, and one of the better action-VNs I’ve played. If you haven’t played it and you’re interested in experiencing a creative and wild horror plot with very interesting execution, go ahead! I highly recommend it.

[yasuda-yoshiya]

They don't seem to get much coverage, discussion and popularity in Fata Morgana AFAIK, but what do you think of Nellie, Pauline and Maria on their own, or even their relationships with the other characters? I personally liked the lonely nuance behind Nellie's 'rambunctious' behavior and Maria's bluntness while still having the capacity to care those around her, but also capable of being vindictive, and it kind of saddened me when someone dismissed Nellie as 'whiny' and Maria as 'evil bitch'.

Hm, this got a little long, sorry! At some point I just totally lost the ability to write quick responses to these things apparently.

Oh, I really like Nellie! She’s definitely my favourite Fata character outside of the main four, no contest. It actually makes me really sad that that one scene at the end of door 1 (you know the one) is so horribly cheap and tacky and impossible to take seriously, because the basic core of the emotions behind her arc and her characterisation in general honestly always felt heartbreakingly real and relatable to me. Underneath the very tropey surface layer, I think she’s a surprisingly good portrayal of a really lonely and miserable person desperately clinging on to the only person who actually seemed to care about her, even as it becomes increasingly obvious that he doesn’t actually care that much any more, because her memories of him are the only source of happiness she has. It honestly really hurts for me to read a lot of the scenes in door 1 where she’s just incessantly badgering Mell to give her any kind of compliment or recognition or validation, because it feels like something I can uncomfortably relate to and recognise in myself, especially when I was younger. I appreciate that the game really allows her to be actively bratty and spiteful and self-absorbed in a genuinely ugly ways - she doesn’t hesitate to use gross classist insults against the WHG, and her constant demanding clinginess absolutely comes across as something that would be difficult for anyone to deal with - but is still ultimately very sympathetic to her as a person and to the ways she’s been wronged on the whole, especially in door 8.

I feel like her characterisation acknowledges something important in the sense that, yes, she can be a brat, but that kind of self-centered bratty behaviour can often partly be a reaction to genuinely bad circumstances and have legitimate grievances behind it (being forced into marriage at that age would be absolutely horrific), and that there can be sympathetic reasons for people being that way - especially people like Nellie who is literally still just a child. It feels important to me to be able to say that Nellie genuinely can be a brat but is just as genuinely a victim who absolutely did not deserve to be in the awful and lonely situation that she is, and absolutely deserving of sympathy and help all the same; she’s definitely a very self-absorbed person who doesn’t really give much real thought or consideration to the people around her, but I also feel like she kind of has a right to be that way since none of the people around her ever paid any real attention to her either. She’s honestly a character I feel really defensive of in that sense.

And yeah, it seriously makes me legit angry when people dismiss her as just being whiny or overly dramatic about her problems, because it feels a lot like the same thing Mell did - off-handedly dismissing her as just a petulant child because of the WAY she expresses herself, rather than actually paying attention to WHAT she’s expressing and why (because the pain of her situation is honestly something he’d be perfectly capable of understanding and relating to if he actually tried putting himself in her shoes for five seconds, but he doesn’t). I do think it’s genuinely important for children not to be dismissed for expressing themselves in childish ways, even legitimately problematic ones (which Nellie’s absolutely can be, for sure). So I think the way the game sets up Nellie’s arc in terms of putting most of the emphasis on her surface “spoiled brat who’s just way too clingy with her brother” persona in door 1, and then totally peeling that back in door 8 to emphasise that she’s ultimately just a very lonely kid who just needs affection and understanding, really worked for me. I think both versions of her character really complement and enrich each other in that way. (And her friendship with Michel is just totally darling, awwwwww!! Their interactions made me really really happy for both of them. I really think those two actually have a lot in common with each other when you look beneath the surface.)

I like Maria a lot too! Like you said, I think they did a good job of portraying her being super blunt and pragmatic while also absolutely caring a lot and being fiercely protective of the people she sees as her “family”. She really does strike me as a very cool and admirable person! I think I had trouble really connecting with her initial portrayal in door 3, personally - her actively delighting in her cruelty even to an innocent victim like the WHG sort of pushed her a bit too much into over-the-top villain territory for me - but I thought she was absolutely fantastic in door 8 and Requiem. (I’m sort of interested in going back to door 3 with that added context, though, because I feel like there’s probably some more nuance to that which I’d be able to better pick up on with a fuller perspective of the character; I can certainly see a sort of dislike and resentment for the WHG’s optimism and naivete actually making some sense in retrospect, and Maria sliding totally into anger and bitterness as a result of her family being killed does feel like something I could see as a legit darker take on the character.)

I generally appreciate the portrayal of her blunt, cynical attitude actually translating into being aware and attentive to people’s human flaws and weaknesses in important ways; her being the only one to really see Michel as a regular person rather than a saint in door 8 and trying to persuade him to stop pushing himself so hard was really nice, and it made me sad to see that she was the only one to immediately predict that Jacopo becoming the lord would totally ruin him too. It’s a kind of skepticism and realism about how much her friends are really capable of that honestly makes her a much better friend than all the people just taking for granted that Jacopo and Michel are amazing heroes that can totally do anything, in a lot of ways. It generally makes me really happy that Nellie and Maria were pretty much Michel’s strongest allies and friends in door 8, in contrast to how they both had such explicitly “antagonistic” roles in their original stories; I think they definitely both deserved it! I’m really glad that they’re pretty much the only two people in door 8 that Michel doesn’t hate, hahaha. Excellent judgment, Michel.

Pauline is, uh…I have a hard time caring about her, let’s put it that way! I kind of forget she exists a lot of the time. Her arc in door 8 about her suppressed desire for a “normal life” and trying to overcompensate through charity was decent enough, but I didn’t really feel like it really connected much to her portrayal in door 2 in any meaningful way (maybe I missed something?). And her main character traits of being overly trusting and blindly believing in people, while perfectly well portrayed and addressed in the text, didn’t really feel like they had enough individual nuances or exploration for me to really get invested in her on a personal level. I think, for a character trait as common and familiar as that, I’d really need some more in-depth exploration on how she rationalises that sort of blind faith to herself and where it comes from and what she gets out of it for me to really invest in it, but I didn’t feel like much of that was there. Her relationship with Yukimasa doesn’t really do anything for me, either; it feels very shallow and superficial to me, and that’s sort of okay when the game actually emphasises that and focuses on Pauline’s reasons for wanting to latch on to a relationship like that despite its superficiality (which it does a little in door 8), but when it’s played straight as something we’re supposed to actually feel invested in (like in door 2) I just sort of fall asleep. She’s just not a very interesting character to me, sorry!

[the-desolated-quill]

Heavy Rain - Video Game blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t played this game yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Do you remember the amount of hype that was building around this game at the time? Heavy Rain had caught the attention of multiple mainstream news sites with the promise that this was going to be the next big thing in games. A totally immersive, grown up drama that would bridge the gap between video games and films. Was it? Well... no. Eight years later, David Cage’s ��interactive drama’ has been largely forgotten and while narratives in games did start to become more sophisticated in the 2010s, I’d argue that Heavy Rain didn’t really play that big a part as David Cage would like to think.

Heavy Rain is a murder mystery/psychological thriller. The Origami Killer kidnaps kids, drowns them in rainwater and leaves an origami figure in their hands and an orchid on their chests. The latest kid to get kidnapped is Shaun Mars and it’s a race against time to for the four main protagonists to save him before he dies. Like with David Cage’s previous game Fahrenheit, there is a good solid premise behind Heavy Rain. And to Quantic Dream’s credit, they have taken great strides to improve the gameplay. Instead of the stupid Simon Says system we got in Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain uses traditional QTEs and it works a lot better. It doesn’t distract you from what’s happening on screen and there are times where the game threatens to live up to its promise of being ‘immersive.’ For example when Ethan is having a panic attack in the train station and you have to physically move the wireless controller up and down to get him to walk or when Madison is picking a lock and you hold the L1 and R1 buttons down and tilt the controller to open the door. That’s good game design and it marries up quite nicely with what’s happening on screen. One thing I’m less keen on however is holding R2 to move the character. It feels so clunky and awkward, like you’re driving a car rather than moving a person. Nope. Don’t like that at all. Totally immersion breaking.

One gameplay mechanic I think had potential and wish was better handled is the ability to listen to a character’s thoughts by pressing the L2 button. That I thought was a legitimately clever concept and could have helped give the player an insight into the characters during pivotal moments. Like someone showing bravado only to listen to their thoughts and realise they’re actually terrified and just putting on an act. That could have been great. Instead the thoughts are either utterly mundane or are just there to give you tips when you’re stuck on how to progress. It feels like such a waste of potential.

I suppose I should quickly talk about the graphics considering they were a huge selling point at the time. The most realistic human faces ever, motion capture, blah blah blah. Except Heavy Rain wasn’t really the first game to use motion capture. The Uncharted games had used it for cutscenes and stuff. And honestly, I didn’t think the graphics were all that impressive even at the time. It’s the uncanny valley effect. There’s a reason why Pixar and Dreamworks make their human characters cartoony looking. It’s because rendering realistic looking humans on a computer is incredibly fucking difficult and people can instantly tell when it’s off. The characters in Heavy Rain look more like plastic action figures to me rather than actual people. Their movements and facial expressions just felt incredibly stilted and wooden to me, particularly during kissing and sex scenes where everything becomes really awkward and uncomfortable.

But never mind all of that. What about the writing? How does it compare to the insane laugh-a-thon that was Fahrenheit? Well if you’re after Tommy Wiseau-esque unintentional hilarity, you’re going to be slightly disappointed. Yes the writing is bad, but it’s not so bad it’s good like Fahrenheit was. It’s cliched, lacklustre and extremely limiting. The game boasts branching storylines and that all your choices matter, but in reality the story changes very little regardless of what you do. Yes there are loads of different endings, but what ending you get depends more on what happens in the final level than the rest of the game. As for characters dying at any time, that’s partially true. It’s impossible for Ethan and Scott to die before the end and when a character does die, all the game does is fence off certain levels.

In order to properly criticise and analyse the writing, let’s explore this character by character.

Ethan Mars

Out of all the characters, Ethan’s story is probably the most consistent and most satisfying to play. He’s the father of Shaun, the Origami Killer’s latest victim, and has to go through several Saw style trials in order to find him. I have to say, while the opening is extremely slow and tedious, forcing you to do all these mundane tasks like cooking and brushing your teeth and all this shit, as the game goes on, Ethan’s story comes the closest to delivering on the emotional and immersive experience David Cage promised. Pascal Langdale gives a pretty good performance for the most part and there were times where I did feel genuinely sorry for Ethan and his predicament. I’m not talking about the big set piece moments like when Jason dies at the beginning of the game. It’s the smaller scenes like Shaun doing his homework and Ethan looking on sadly at him or him sitting alone in his dusty office and reminiscing over his previous life before things went so wrong. That’s where the game really comes into its own. The trials too I thought were well written and designed for the most part. There’s some genuine tension in driving down the wrong side of the motorway or having to hack one of your own fingers off and it’s one of the rare occasions where the writing, acting and direction really come together and work as a cohesive whole.

That being said, there are still a litany of problems with Ethan’s story. The most glaring of which is the execution. While there are some legitimately powerful moments in Ethan’s story, they’re often ruined by David Cage’s overegging of the pudding. For example when Ethan has his panic attack in the train station, the motion controls and Langdale’s performance would have been enough to convey the pain and anxiety of the character. But then Cage takes it one step further with a stupid hallucination sequence with his dead kid Jason running round the station and people flopping over like ragdolls. Like... we get it. Ethan is depressed about his kid and that’s what has caused his fear of crowds. Even some of the mundane activities at the beginning of the game like making sure Shaun eats his dinner and does his homework on time could have been impactful if Cage didn’t drag it on for fucking hours and bore us into a coma as a result. In visual media, less is more. But the problem is David Cage seems so insecure about his own writing ability that he ends up overcompensating and bludgeoning the player over the head with these gaudy and over the top moments instead of just letting the performances of the actors convey the emotions and allowing the scene to speak for itself.

And then there are the moments and plot points that are just plain weird. So after his first son Jason dies in a car accident, Ethan starts experiencing blackouts. Not a bad idea, but the way they’re implemented is beyond incompetent. For starters Ethan has only two blackouts in the whole game and then it’s never mentioned or brought up again. Not even at the end when Shaun is all safe and sound (assuming you made all the right choices). Are we meant to assume that Ethan is magically cured after all this? And what exactly does Ethan get up to during the blackouts? When he regains consciousness, he’s always near Carnaby Square holding an origami figure. The significance of Carnaby Square is explained later on, but not how or why Ethan goes there during his blackouts. The only reason this is here is to plant the red herring that Ethan is the killer, except that’s utter bollocks. If Ethan was the killer, why would he kidnap a bunch of kids before his own? Were they just practice? What would be his motive? How did he learn to do origami? Where would he get the resources to create all these trials? What about the trials that involve him doing something in front of the camera or taking a photo as proof? If he’s responsible for these trials, who the hell is verifying this stuff? It’s utterly nonsensical and thus a complete waste of time. Apparently Ethan was supposed to share a psychic connection with the killer in the original script, but this was cut for time. The blackouts and stuff should have been cut too because it just doesn’t make sense with the current plot.

While there are a lot of flaws, I honestly would have been okay with Heavy Rain if the focus was just on Ethan. It wouldn’t have been a great game by any means, but it would have been decent enough. Unfortunately we’ve got three other characters to contend with, starting with...

Madison Paige

Let us turn our attention from the best character to the worst. I was amazed by the number of critics and gamers praising Madison for her strong characterisation because she has got to be one of the worst examples of video game sexism I’ve ever seen. The way David Cage writes and presents her is frankly despicable. She exists solely to be exploited. Cage’s obsession with her body is utterly disturbing. All characters, male and female, get shower scenes, but Madison is the only one that appears fully nude and the cameras pans across her entire body so you can see every inch of it. It’s really pervy and uncomfortable to watch. Worse still, every threat against her life is always sexual in nature. It’s not enough to have a cliched mad doctor who butchers people. We’ve got to have a scene where he tries to stick a drill up her vagina. There’s even a scene where a nightclub owner forces her to perform a striptease at gunpoint. You have the option to knock him out with a lamp before you get too naked, but the game seems to actively encourage you to strip off. And no, the intention clearly wasn’t to disturb the audience. The way it’s shot and choreographed is similar to the shower scene, clearly intended for a male gaze. And even if the scene was intended to be disturbing, there are ways of creeping out the player without sexually objectifying or demeaning women. It’s absolutely revolting. If you want further proof that Madison is intended solely to be exploited, please note that she’s only character in the game who has a separate person doing the voice while another person, glamour model Jacqui Ainsley, provides the body and face because presumably Judi Beecher isn’t sexy enough for David Cage. I rest my case.

But it’s not just that. It’s the way she’s implemented into the story too. All the other characters have their plots and vices set up immediately. Madison never does. We find out she has insomnia, but it’s never followed up on. We don’t know what caused it or whether she recovers. In fact we never learn a single solitary thing about her character. Her main role (apart from being sexually exploited) is to prop up the male hero Ethan. Even when it doesn’t make sense to do so. She treats his injuries and even helps him escape from the police, becoming a fugitive, despite not knowing a single thing about Ethan’s predicament. Also I couldn’t help but get the strongest sense of deja vu when Madison suddenly started to try and snog Ethan’s face off. It’s exactly like the bullshit romance from Fahrenheit. It comes right the fuck out of nowhere and is handled with all the grace and subtlety of a glow in the dark rhino. At least Heavy Rain gives you the option to decline. I tell you I couldn’t slam the ‘Don’t Kiss’ button fast enough.

Madison really does feel like a pointless inclusion to the game. She brings nothing new to the story and is basically used as a get out of jail free card. If Ethan or Norman fail to find the location of Shaun, Madison can just phone either of them up and tell them, even though she never meets or interacts with Norman at any point in the game, thus rendering the progress in their stories completely pointless. They could have sat in the corner dribbling for the entire game and it would have led to the same conclusion providing Madison survives the fire. (and speaking of plot holes and bad writing, why did she act shocked when Ann Sheppard told her the killer’s name. She never interacts with Scott at any point in the game. How does she know who he is? Did nobody proof read this shit?).

Norman Jayden

Here’s an idea to make playing this game more fun. When you get to the levels where you play as Norman Jayden, pretend he’s an alien from outer space. It would explain the daft VR sunglasses and Leon Ockenden’s terrible performance. I swear I’ve heard some bad American accents in my time, but this takes the fucking cake. I’m particularly amused by how camp Norman suddenly turns whenever he says the word ‘bastard.’

So. Norman. An FBI agent with a crippling drug problem... I think. He carries a tube of blue powder called triptocaine and sniffs it occasionally whenever he gets the shakes, but there’s a chance that this is actually caused by the VR sunglasses. There are several moments where a butler warns you not to overindulge in ‘you know what’ due to how dangerous it is. At first you think he’s referring to the triptocaine, but later it becomes clear he means the VR. So... what’s the point of the triptocaine then? Is he addicted to it or not? What’s he suffering withdrawal from? It’s all very unclear and poorly defined. And what exactly is the problem with the VR sunglasses? Why are they dangerous? How are they affecting him? We later see blood come out of his eyes, but how does that work? Not that any of this matters because it never actually links into the plot in any meaningful way. You can choose to either take the triptocaine or abstain and, aside from one level, the story carries on as normal regardless of your choice.

The thing is Norman Jayden’s story could have benefitted the most from the ‘your choice matters’ model. Imagine if the game actually gave you the freedom to investigate at your own pace. Allowed you to choose which suspects you question, which lead you follow, and have whether you find the killer or not all rely on the player’s own investigative abilities. Let the player find the clues and put together the solution themselves. Instead the game just yanks you from one false lead to the next and hands you solutions on a plate. This is a recurring problem throughout this game. Your choices simply don’t matter for the most part. David Cage merely wants to give the illusion of choice whilst forcing you down the path he wants you to take. There’s no real freedom or player choice. Actions very rarely have consequences and it all feels incredibly disappointing.

But the most excruciating thing about Norman Jayden isn’t even Norman Jayden. It’s the psychotic twat he has to hang around with. Lieutenant Carter Blake, police detective and arsehole. Throughout the game, Blake constantly butts heads with Norman and there never seems to be a good reason for it other than he’s a prick. Not just that, he often misuses his power, violently beating suspects for confessions and not only does Norman never report this, there’s also never a strong narrative reason for it. At first I thought Blake was just desperate to find the killer, but as it goes on you realise that’s not the case at all. He just enjoys being a violent dick. Why? I don’t know. And then there’s this whole witch hunt against Ethan. Ex wife Grace comes into the precinct to tell Blake about how Ethan dreams of drowning bodies and from then on Blake goes on a personal vendetta against Ethan, convinced he’s the Origami Killer. Except it doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. For one thing, Ethan has an alibi. He was in a coma when the killings first started. Plus Grace says this happened in the spring and it’s been established that the Origami Killer only drowns his victims in the fall. There’s no concrete evidence tying Ethan to the crime. Just a vague, contradictory story from his ex wife. And yet Blake blindly goes along with it. Worse still, Norman never calls him out on it. It’s monumentally stupid writing. Did you know David Cage won a BAFTA for this game? How? Fucking how?!

Scott Shelby

Finally we come to Scott Shelby, a private detective who has been hired by the families of the victims of the Origami Killer to investigate. I have mixed feelings about this story. The Scott levels are often very dull and repetitive with each level mostly playing out the same. Scott questions someone about the Origami Killer, they refuse to talk, Scott leaves, someone threatens the witness, Scott saves them, witness gives information. Wash, rinse, repeat. It gets very boring after a while, especially considering the information you learn is basically the same as what Norman learns. The whole thing just feels like a massive waste of time. 

Scott suspects someone called Gordi Kramer to be the killer and has to contend with Gordi’s father Charles, but from the moment you meet Gordi, you know he can’t possibly be the killer and yet the game constantly focuses on the Kramers. Another issue I have is his relationship with Lauren Winter, the mother of one of the killer’s victims who tags along. Not only does she contribute nothing to the narrative other than making sad eyes every five minutes, the two also randomly kiss each other near the end despite sharing no hint of romantic chemistry. (seriously has David Cage ever been on a date with a human being before?).

But despite all of this, I found myself quite liking Scott. Sam Douglas gives the strongest performance of the four leads and the character comes off as warm and affectionate. Despite the tedium of the levels he’s in, it’s often his charm and likability that gets you through. Which is what makes the reveal that he’s in fact the Origami Killer all the more shocking.

Now when I first played this in 2010, I honestly thought it was a good twist. Scott pretended to be a private detective in order to find and dispose of evidence connecting to him. His obsession with Gordi Kramer was because he was insulted that there was another person killing children without a ‘good’ reason. I even liked the little detail that it was seeing Ethan throw himself in front of a car in an attempt to save Jason that sparked off the idea of the Origami Killer. It falls into that classic trope of heroes creating their own villains and it’s fairly well executed. However there is a little bit of cheating going on here. The timing of certain scenes doesn’t quite add up and some of the thoughts Scott has just doesn’t make sense when you know he’s the killer. Also this revelation opens up a ton of plot holes. Where did he get the money to buy all this stuff? The cars. The abandoned factory. The warehouse. The phones. The secret room in his apartment where he grows the orchids. He used to be a cop. There’s no way he could have had that much money in his retirement fund for all of this. Why did he subscribe to an origami magazine? Isn’t that a bit of a giveaway? Why did he buy the warehouse where he drowns his victims using his own name when he used his dead brother’s name for all of his other transactions? And what happened to his asthma? David Cage puts a lot of emphasis on his asthma in the early levels, but there’s never any payoff in the later levels. In fact it’s largely forgotten about. Scott gets into fist fights and even an over the top gunfight through a mansion and yet never gets an asthma attack when before he seemed to get them at the drop of a hat.

But the biggest question I have is this. Why Ethan? The Origami Killer kidnaps kids in order to test the fathers. To see how far they’d go to save their sons. As I said before, it was Ethan’s selflessness that inspired Scott to start the killings, to find a father that could do what his couldn’t. So why does he pick Ethan? He already knows that Ethan is prepared to sacrifice himself for his son. Why put him through all these tests? It just seems pointless. It gets even weirder at the end when Scott tries to kill Ethan. Again, the whole point of these murders is to test the fathers. Ethan succeeded. Why does he need to die? It completely goes against his modus operandi. And why use a gun to kill him? The final trial involves Ethan drinking poison, but then it’s revealed that the poison isn’t real. If Scott intended to kill Ethan, why not just use real poison? David Cage clearly hasn’t thought this through very thoroughly and this is a problem that extends throughout the entire game.

I applaud David Cage for wanting to tell different kinds of stories using the video game medium, but the fact of the matter is he’s simply not good at it. Yes video games are going through something of a renaissance right now, but I’d argue that it’s in spite of Heavy Rain rather than because of it. We have seen some truly incredible games over the past decade. Games that have redefined what you can do with the medium and told really engaging stories. Telltale’s The Walking Dead, The Last Of Us, The Stanley Parable, BioShock, the Mass Effect trilogy, Horizon Zero Dawn, Life Is Strange and many more. These games have truly innovated and expanded the medium. Heavy Rain however does the opposite. David Cage talks about innovating games, but if you look at what inspires him as a writer and how Heavy Rain is designed and structured, you’d think that Cage was embarrassed by video games. He’s trying so hard to make Heavy Rain more cinematic, but it doesn’t work because it’s not a film. It’s a video game. In fact if this was a film, it would be laughed out of every film festival. It’s cliched, boring, insulting and just plain stupid. Yes it’s unique, but unique doesn’t necessarily equate to good.

Five years later, Supermassive Games would adopt this style of storytelling for the truly brilliant Until Dawn and it works so much better because there is effort to actually tell a compelling story with relatable characters and to give your choices actual meaning and impact. Heavy Rain however just gets bogged down in its own pretentiousness, pouring scorn over the medium being used to tell the story without offering anything of substance to replace it. There’s a reason why people don’t talk about Heavy Rain anymore and it’s not because it’s a BAFTA award winning ‘game changer’.

[lil-miss-methodical]

Black Panther Review Articles 3

                                               May contain spoilers

“Just because something works, doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.”

Shuri: Young, vibrant and intelligent -> the Carefree One Shuri is easily a favorite. Every character had a part to play and Shuri’s the one of untampered youth. She wasn’t naive, or even childish. Know the world, it’s history and being responsible for the technological aspects of her people’s livelihood kinda pushes those concepts away. But her brother has been able to keep her shelter from danger, from the harshness of life as much as possible and so while she has great capabilities and task she remains this breath of freshness. She’s a jokester, choosing her brother as her victim whenever possible. It’s her easy excitable nature that makes her so enjoyable- she just as intelligent if not more so than Tony Stark but has nothing of his flaws of grandeur. Her skills are amazing and she knows it but she never comes with a vibe of I’m better than you because I’m more intelligent. In fact get her to talking about her tech and she because more alive. In the film she’s allowed this carefree vibe that allows the production to present black youth as it is in social standings - you get amazing lines from her like the ‘what are those’ throwback.

“I am loyal to the throne, no matter who sits on it.”

Okoye: Controlled, powerful and responsible -> the Resilient One A lot of people claim to hate the strong black woman trope - toting dangers to nature forgetting that that trope actually was born from the many women who had to become resilient to their circumstances. The danger is not a strong black woman but the world that expects her to only just. Okoye is defined as strong not because she’s capable of maintaining her own in battle, but because she’s of conviction. She vows to do and so she does. Strength is sometimes simply being and or doing even when you don’t want to. A woman can be strong without being a stone wall of impenetrableness and the film never intended to write her as such. Easily on we’re introduced to her other sides, the teasing side, the side that considers her King a friend despite the boundaries that would normal eliminate such feelings. The soft edges of love. Although you bet your ass I’m here for the concept of her standing for her values no matter what and man literally dropping to his knees before her in repentance.

“It was my duty to fight for what I love.”

Nakia: Stubborn, determined and self confident -> the Willful one Nakia was everything weak people complain about (def men) - stubborn, opinionated, knowing of her own worth, determined and focused on her own desires and goals. These traits that black women are often faulted for having were not at all considered bad in Nakia. In fact they were her strengths and the exact thing that saved not only T'Challa but Wakanda itself.  She the so call elusive woman, unpredictable and free but they don’t pull a pin up on her. They don’t make her overly sexual or seductive. They don’t overwhelm her presence with feminine whiles. She’s not there to be served on a platter to the Black Panther. Instead their chemistry is genuine. Old relations where the flame hasn’t died. She’s his confidant and his voice of reasons many times.

The ladies of Wakanda are beautiful and important because they are the reason Wakanda stands. Through the intelligence of technology, the strength of presence and the nature of determination. It’s Shuri’s creative mind that Wakanda’s foundation resides upon - the same technology they all depend on even in battle. Okoye leads the Dora in protection of the throne, its her single audacity to stand for that throne despite her own heart that stops the battle on the field. Nakia is a spy that has to adapt to every situation she’s placed in - and we see that strength constantly.  It’s Nakia’s voice of reason that brings the white guy back that later stopped all their weapons from leaving. It’s her sense of right and determination that gets Shuri and the Queen from the hall - Erik would’ve killed them just because their loyalty is to T'Challa. It’s Nakia’s daring nature that puts T'Challa back in the power of the Black Panther. Wakanda would not still be standing as is without these brave women.

The film doesn’t tell you that these women are outstanding…they show you.

People say the women stole the show but that’s because they don’t understand the women were the show. T'Challa may be the King but they weren’t afraid to represent everyone else. They weren’t afraid to shine on those around him. I think people should understand this push of - all our people are important. The writers intention of show all sides of black people as we’ve never been shown. They showed you who all the characters were - that’s rare. Only the main leads get that treatment in most projects. But we know for us - black Panther was a chance to here about us and they took that opportunity. These black women - the carefree, the resilient, willful ones - they’re often bad mouth in real life, people ability to see only their flaws knows no bounds and yet the movie presents you with only their best.

These women were different from one another, they all surround the King for one reason or another but none stand within his shadow. They’re their own people and bring their own skills to the table.

Fashion and other important elements when it comes to women: The fashion was so on point with these ladies and it was not about the greedy eyes of men, it was not about the female form being sexualized. These women were not here to be anyone’s eye candy. They were beautiful just because they were. One of my favorite moments is in the beginning when Okoye tells T'Challa not to freeze when he sees Nakia and you automatically expect her to be decked out looking made up but when we actually get the first shot of her she’s in regular garb and has a head wrap on and yet T'Challa is still floored. It was a nice way to lead with the messgae that a black woman in her normal state is still beautiful. We were all pleased that they cast a dark skinned woman in such a role. They let her hair out and kept her in the wear. The clothing of the female guards are not fleshy and pretentious - in fact - when they tell Nakia to put on the outfit the words that were used was - its armor.

Danai is someone we’ve seen in this kind of role. Her work in The Walking Dead has exposed us all to seeing her in this kind of form - but, the difference with Black Panther is we get to celebrate her type of beauty. You have these women who walk around bald and they’re proud of it, they prefer it. I’ve said once that all women should cut their hair off at least once - because the experience of walking around in a world they thinks they get to decide what your hair should be and taking that away from them in every aspect is a powerful thing and has the ability to shoot your confidence sky high (trust I’ve done it twice). There’s nothing wrong with a woman without hair. She was more beautiful when she took off the wig and threw it at her opponent. We get to see Danai in this gorgeous flowing red dress that just looks like vengeance as she jumps from the upper floor.

My favorite wear came from Shuri though! Such diversity in her wear and yet none overly topping who her character was supposed to be. She rocked the braids but they showed just how fucking changeable that hair is. She rocked the solo bun, the double buns, the half up ponytail, the cropped back with the design - and it was a nice one too! She had the all white with the dress and sneaks, the belly design top, and then she had the nerve to be all decked out for battle! Y'all know she had that already prepped on the low rih? She just knew they were gonna need her on the battle field on day. She had her own weapons prepped and with accessories. It’s difficult to come better than Shuri - she was smart, funny, brave, and a fashionista all in her own right.

The film didn’t balk on showing these women’s greatness while not using it as a peepshow.

Woman can be deadly in anything. They can be gorgeous in any state. And more importantly they hold the autonomy to their own being.

Casting:

I love this whole cast - I’ve said it since the casting list was released. Letitia Wright was a new face for me. I’ve only seen her in one other production and that was Black Mirror - and I was super hyped afterwards because she is so phenomenal. She def the breakout queen, the love people have for her after Shuri will hopefully propel her career because she’s got it. seeing her and Chadwick play ff one another as siblings was one of the best elements to the entire movie. Shuri is one of the best things in the entire movie if we’re to be frank. She meshed into this character, slid into them shoes as though they were her own. 

It has def felt like Lupita has been killing the game recently and she deserves it. She just brings so much light and fun with her. I think a lot of us look up to her confidence and her nature to not back down in this world thats hardly ready for a woman like her. I felt like she had been waiting to play this role. Like I said before - its imperative for women like her to be presented with roles such as these. Its only then that you can see theres no difference and we can deliver just like everybody else.

Danai has been my love since she first walked onto the screen In The Walking Dead. Seeing her kickass, seeing her being emotional, seeing her being so predominate in fandom was just exciting. So when I heard she was getting cast for this I was ecstatic. You cannot go wrong with this woman. I feel like she does so well because even with cast mates its not a competition for her, its not about outshining or outdoing. She just has this presence and she brings that to her characters. 

I’m happy they went with these women. If they make a part 2 I demand they bring them all back! 

[tyrantisterror]

Well Made Futility: Infinity War Thoughts

I saw Infinity War for a second time and have some thoughts.  SPOILERish thoughts, so, y’know, a cut here for the sake of those who care about such things.

I mean, I actually think this movie is better if you know what you’re in for going in, but I’m weird so what do I know.

So like... Infinity War is fucking difficult to evaluate.  It’s a movie that does something completely unprecedented in film - while we all enjoyed joking about it, no single movie crossover has attempted to weave this many VERY different stories, characters, and (especially) tones into one coherent narrative before.  It is a crossover unlike any other in film.  And it’s mostly successful!

but

I know we all like to dunk on Marvel’s films because they’re popular and make a lot of money, and all of us have an inner hipster who hates things that are successful regardless of their actual quality or content, because fuck that man we’re not normies we only like things BEFORE they’re cool.  But as a person who loves “genre” fiction - i.e. Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror, anything that isn’t set in standard reality - the Marvel movies have been kind of revolutionary.  Genre films had gotten so LIMITED before Iron Man, and it was stupidly limited at that.  We could accept that a billionaire fury who punches criminals could walk into a police department without making everyone burst into laughter, but we couldn’t accept that a strange chemical bath would permanently bleach a clown-turned-criminal’s skin.  We could accept a guy getting powers from a spider OR a guy being really good at science but not both. We could accept a guy growing claws out of his hands, but god help you if that man also wears something other than black skintight leather.  Everything had to be “grounded” and “real”, and I put quotations marks around those words because what they REALLY meant in the context of Hollywood was “boring.”

but

And then Marvel slowly chipped away at that.  Not at first - Iron Man and The Hulk were about as restrained as the superhero movies that preceded them, but slowly the movies conditioned us to accept weird shit.  Thor brought in Norse mythology and a certain kind of magic, although they dressed it up as “advanced science”, because we were in a transition and that was a concession they could make.  Captain America took us out of modern day - a risky idea, period piece action movies are never a sure thing - and also introduced the idea of a serum that can turn you into either the ULTIMATE BEEFCAKE or a red skinned skeleton man depending on your moral compass, which is PRETTY FUCKING WEIRD when you think about it.

but

Then The Avengers happened.  Before that movie came out, every conventional Hollywood line of thinking told us it would fail.  Movies with multiple heroes don’t succeed.  That’s why Batman and Robin sucked, right - too many heroes?  And Batman and Robin, why, that’s the worst film ever!  Spiderman 3 had too many villains!  You can’t have more than two super powered guys in a movie - that’s just movie law!  Having more than two super power guys is box office poison.

but

But The Avengers wasn’t.  Maybe most of you don’t remember it because we’ve had 10 years of these Marvel movies and their success seems like an inescapable fact now, but The Avengers defied expectations by being both good AND a box office success - a ridiculously lucrative one at that!  The Avengers took a huge fucking risk and it paid off.

but

Then it happened again.  People assumed The Avengers was as weird as you could go.  Critics were CERTAIN these movies would peter out eventually, that they couldn’t keep doing the impossible.  One of these risks had to doom them.  And a lot of critics looked at one movie on the post The Avengers slate - Guardians of the Galaxy - and said, “That’s the one - that’s gonna be the turd.  A movie about a talking raccoon and a tree monster - two RIDICULOUS character concepts that sound more like jokes than something a studio would actually put in their action movie - along with some d-listers no one but hardcore nerds care about, all directed by a guy best known for gore-filled low budget b movies?  That’s going to kill Marvel.  There is no way that film can be good, much less a financial success.”

but

Guardians of the Galaxy was not just good, but it’s the best series within the franchise.   Yeah, fuckin’ fight me on it nerds.  (no actually don’t I’m voicing a subjective opinion in this paragraph I don’t actually give a shit about ranking movies like this)

but

Even when their movies weren’t game changers, they were still solid and fun.  Whether or not they’re your cup of tea, Marvel’s superhero movies are never worse than “good.”  Some of them are “great.”  Some, like The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Black Panther, are arguably transformatively great.  At the very least, these films taken as a collective whole have changed the way we approach Genre Films.  They have redefined what is possible - they reminded Hollywood that suspension of disbelief is a malleable thing, even if some studios haven’t quite grasped the concept yet.

but

Which brings me back to Infinity War.  Like The Avengers before it, Infinity War brings different characters from many different stories with many different tones and styles and, to an extent, genres/subgenres, and blends them into a coherent and emotionally resonate whole.  It requires you to have seen at least the majority of the previous DECADES worth of movies to work, but that’s not a flaw - no more than, say, the twentieth chapter of a novel requiring you to read the previous 19 at any rate.  Infinity War needs those previous films to function, and to its credit, it not only uses what they built, but does so in genuinely surprising ways.  You didn’t think you needed a Rocket Raccoon/Thor team up in your life, but this movie proves you did.  You also didn’t think you’d see Rocket Raccoon genuinely reach out to Thor (who, to him, is a relative stranger) and try to help him through his grief, but it happens, and it’s a legitimately interesting moment that movies both characters forward in their respective arcs.  This movie is more than just taking a bunch of toys out of a toybox and smashing them together (though yes, there are parts of it that are very much that - these are action adventure movies, after all).  Characters develop and bounce off each other in glorious and meaningful ways.  There is a weight to everything beyond the obvious, mercenary Hollywood mandate to make as much money as possible by getting fans of all these different franchises into one theater.

but

The movie even tries to rectifies some of the franchise’s most notable flaws, in particular their lack of decent villains.  You could count the number of actually compelling and interesting villains from the previous 18 films on one hand.  Thanos, the big bad of this film, finally gets us to the other palm.  His motives are understandable but NOT justified - that is to say, you can understand why a person may believe what he believes, but at the end of the film you know for a fact he’s wrong.  Thanos is a bad guy whose evil plan will destroy countless lives, but he manages not to be the cartoonish caricature of a villain whose over the top “destroy the world” motivation makes no sense.  It’s nuanced, is my point.  I don’t think he’s the best Marvel has offered us - he wouldn’t crack my top three just yet - but he’s miles above most of the competition.

BUT

So here’s the crux of my review.  When I got to the ending of the movie - an ending that, admittedly, I spoiled for myself ahead of time, because I do that for most movies ever since I got majorly burned by Jurassic Park III when I was a teen - I couldn’t stop thinking about it, because it’s... it’s a paradox.  Not just the ending, either, but the whole movie.  This is a film that both does and doesn’t work.  It is both an amazing feat and... and fundamentally broken.

And it all has to do with those 18 films before it.

Ok, so: if taken as its own story, that is to say, as just it’s own thing, not the part of a greater whole... then the ending of Infinity War is exactly the ending this story needed.  This is Thanos’s story more than anyone else’s, when you get right down to it, and from the perspective that this movie is meant to tell his story and his story alone, the ending is the only one that would fit.  Thanos gets everything he wants, at the cost of everything that mattered to him.  His crazed vision finally comes true, and the audience feels the full weight of how horrible that is. That ending - that maddening, confounding ending, where almost every hero we’ve come to love over 18 goddamn films is killed with the snap of his fingers - shows us exactly why we can’t let monsters like Thanos come to power, and how even the monsters like Thanos himself are destroyed by following those mad dreams through (a point reinforced by the cameo of a long forgotten past villain, Red Skull).

However, as I said before, you really CAN’T take this movie on its own.  Structurally it DEPENDS on you seeing those previous films.  You have to have seen them just for this movie to make sense, and to be emotionally affected by it you must also have cared about those movies and their characters.  This movie is a sum of those parts.

And as a followup to those 18 films - as a part of their greater whole - it fails.  So many characters we followed and love - Black Panther, Spider-Man, every fucking guardian of the galaxy except Rocket and maybe Nebula if we count her, just to name a few - is killed off in a literal instant.  With the exception of Loki, each of these deaths kind of renders their preceding journey pointless.  Peter Parker was just starting his journey in his preceding film - so was Black Panther, so was Dr. Strange, so were many of the others.  Imagine if Hamlet was killed in act 1 of his play - everything about him would be unresolved, and all of his supporting cast would have no anchor to the plot since the conflict they’re involved in is removed with Hamlet’s death.  You’d have to start over.  Other characters are farther along, but with rare exception, none of them had what could be called a satisfactory end.  If the deaths in this movie actually hold true, then most of the preceding 18 movies have been broken.  They are wastes of time.

Of course, a savvy person would note that literally every character killed in this movie has been cast in the next Avengers film, due out next year.  Spider-Man and the Guardians have announced movies with release dates after that one, too.  Black Panther’s sequel has been announced although the release date has not.  These deaths are highly unlikely to stick.

BUT if that’s the case, well... then this movie’s broken again, because now that ending has no weight.  Now that ending is pointless - in fact, this whole movie is, because it’s all just going to be undone by the next.  Either this film was a narrative waste of time, or the preceding 18 were.  There’s no other option.

...but...

There is, I suppose, a possibility.  A faint one, admittedly - I have no idea if they can achieve it.  There’s a possibility the fourth Avengers film could find a way to make this movie’s weight hold while still putting all those dead characters’ stories back on track.  Infinity War was conceived as a two part film story, after all, even if they dropped the “Part 1″ label come release.  No matter how much this film wants you to think otherwise, it is just part of whole - and maybe, just maybe, the second one will make the first work WITHIN that whole.

I don’t see how it can, but then, I didn’t see how they could make me care about fuckin’ Rocket Raccoon.  And Guardians of the Galaxy is, as I said, the best one.

If I were a betting man, I’d bet on this movie ultimately being a narrative cul de sac - a very well made, but ultimately pointless entry that is invalidated by what comes after it.  If that ends up being the case, then that��s kind of sad - but there’s a chance they may make it work after all, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s not to bet against Marvel.

[aion-rsa]

15 Most Underrated Games of 2021

https://ift.tt/3IeEAtd

While I understand why some have called 2021 a “slow” year for video games (the challenges of developing during the Covid-19 pandemic delayed numerous games and clearly impacted the quality of others), a quick look at the sheer number of underrated games that managed to sneak under the radar this year reveals how deep the modern gaming industry really is.

While it’s understanable that the average gamer doesn’t have nearly enough time or money to play every game they might enjoy even during a “slow” year, there’s alawys been something sad about the idea that there are games out there that you might absolutely fall in love with but may never even hear about simply becasue there is only so much time in the day.

There are dozens of such games that deserve a bigger share of the spotlight than they ultimately got, but these are 15 of the most noteworthy titles that I feel went ciriminally overlooked this year.

15. The Medium

The Medium is one of those modern horror games that is arguably a little too ambitious for its own good and will likely be remembered as much for its flaws (like its uneven story and diminishing central premise) as its greatness.

But there is certainly greatness in The Medium. This psychedelic reimagining of classic survival horror games is beautiful, surprising, and often genuinely scary. Horror fans who didn’t get enough from this year’s biggest genre releases should give this one another look.

14. The Ascent

I had hoped that The Ascent’s day one availability on Xbox Game Pass would help this ARPG reach a slightly larger audience, but it feels like this one is just destined to become a bit of a cult classic.

The Ascent manages to translate the basic Diablo ARPG formula into a more than solid isometric shooter experience that is amplified by a surprisingly compelling universe and storyline. It’s definitely a little rough around the edges, but it gets the better parts of this genre right. 

13. Steel Assault

We’re going to be highlighting a couple of throwback action games on this list, and while I think the other game we’ll get to in a little bit is slightly better, Steel Assault deserves a lot of credit for feeling like a tribute to an era of retro action game rather than a license-free recreation of a specific experience. 

Steel Assault is a relentless 16-bit action title that features incredible set pieces, an amazing soundtrack, and a surprising number of little innovations that really turn this otherwise retro experience into something that is so much more than a nod to a different time. It’s also incredibly difficult in the absolute best way possible. 

12. Cozy Grove

As a game about a lone camper exploring a haunted island, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Cozy Grove is some kind of slightly ironic horror game. However, this strange blend of Don’t Starve, Animal Crossing, and Stardew Valley is actually one of the most charming games of the year. 

While Cozy Grove doesn’t quite reach the heights of some of the titles it was clearly inspired by, this real-time experience is surprisingly relaxing and undeniably lovely. It’s also designed to be played for months, so those who fall under its spell will certainly get a lot out of it. 

11. No More Heroes 3 

The No More Heroes series has always been easy to recommend to fans of fundamentally weird games, and No More Heroes 3 certainly carries on that particular tradition. It’s a magnificently strange game. 

In a way, though, I’d also argue that some of No More Heroes 3’s gameplay refinements make it the most accessible entry in this franchise. No More Heroes 3 doesn’t quite land all of its new ideas, but this is truly one of the most fascinating and unique creative visions of the year. 

10. TOEM

While New Pokémon Snap ended up being one of the year’s most surprisingly good games, TOEM is undoubtedly 2021’s best game about photography and possibly the best example of that strange subgenre ever made.

This puzzle game’s hand-drawn graphics will certainly lure you in, but it’s TOEM’s photo-based brain teasers and wonderful cast of characters that make this one of the most uplifting and surprisingly deep games of the year. 

9. Tormented Souls

Given how often I hear people cry out for classic survival horror experiences, I’m shocked that Tormented Souls generated almost no real buzz this year despite being the most glowing love letter to Resident Evil, Alone in the Dark, and Silent Hill that you will ever have the privilege of playing. 

Tormented Souls may wear its inspirations on its sleeve, but it’s the ways this game incorporates modern visuals and intelligent gameplay refinements that help it stand tall next to some of the horror genre’s most memorable entries. 

8. Oddworld: Soulstorm

Look, I’d be lying if I told you that Soulstorm is the best Oddworld game ever or even a game that regularly reaches the heights of its best predecessors. Honestly, it might only appeal to those who already love this franchise and are willing to put up with some of this title’s wrinkles in order to experience some already niche gameplay. 

However, anyone who loves truly difficult puzzle experiences that require you to think well outside of the box owes it to themselves to give this game a chance. It’s always been amazing that an idea this weird became a franchise in the first place, and Soulstorm will remind you why gaming is better with the Oddworld series in it.

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7. Astalon: Tears of the Earth

I’ve heard some fans argue that Astalon is actually 2021’s best Metroidvania game, and while I don’t know if I’m willing to go quite that far given some of the competition in that particular category this year (which includes an actual Metroid game), I will say that Astalon is a simply brilliant example of the versatility of this genre. 

Astalon is a Metroidvania game with roguelike elements and a character-swapping mechanic that offers a surprising amount of gameplay variety. Don’t be thrown off by the retro graphics; Astalon is a brilliant evolution of the Metroidvania concept that will appeal to hardcore genre fans and dedicated newcomers alike. 

6. Dodgeball Academia

As a sports RPG about dodgeball, I have to admit that it feels like Dodgeball Academia may have been made to appeal to fascinations that even I didn’t know I seemingly had until I played this game. 

While Dodgeball Academia isn’t as tight of a sports RPG experience as Golf Story, there is an undeniable charm to this game that makes it easy to overlook its rough gameplay edges. Anyone vaguely interested in the sports RPG genre will almost certainly fall in love with this game. 

5. The Artful Escape

The Artful Escape deserves more love than it has gotten so far on the basis of its cast alone (where else can you find Lena Headey, Jason Schwartzman, Mark Strong, and Carl Weathers working together?), but this really might be the best platformer adventure game of the year. 

While The Artful Escape’s apparent disinterest in its own gameplay will almost certainly alienate many potential fans, the quality of this title’s visuals, story, music, and characters is impossible to deny. It’s just a beautiful all-around game that you have to experience for yourself. 

4. Overboard

Overboard casts you as a young woman who has just killed her husband aboard a 1930s luxury ship and must now find a way to cover her tracks long enough to make it to New York City. It’s basically a “Whodunnit?” in reverse, and it’s absolutely as brilliant as that description makes it sound. 

Overboard‘s visual novel-esque gameplay certainly won’t be for everyone, but this game’s clever premise and the ways that its various twists and turns afford you a surprising amount of freedom in such a seemingly “small” game deserve to be celebrated.

3. Bonfire Peaks

While I tend to love puzzle-based adventure games that turn entire worlds into elaborate brain teasers, I will admit that there are times when even some of the best games in that genre tend to be a bit too clever for their own good. It’s hard to get into a game when you have no idea what you’re supposed to do the moment you start it.

That’s why Bonfire Peaks is so brilliant. It’s certainly challenging, but there’s a joy to just existing in this game’s world and slowly discovering its secrets that helps ensure that you’re rarely so frustrated that you’re not willing to beat your head against the wall one more time to find that solution that has eluded you so far. 

2. Cyber Shadow

It’s easy to look at Cyber Shadow and see yet another indie tribute to old-school, 8-bit action games like Castlevania and Ninja Gaiden. Truth be told, that’s pretty much what it is. 

However, Cyber Shadow manages to nail the feel of those games in a way that so many other 8-bit tributes simply fail to do. This is a devious and clever little game that (much like the 2016 reboot of Doom) somehow taps into the purity of this genre while offering an experience that feels fascinatingly modern in the best ways. 

1. Mundaun

Mundaun had me at “hand-penciled folk horror game,” but believe me when I say that this stunning take on the survival horror/adventure genre defies any simple descriptions. 

This is a pure horror game that forces you to use your wits to overcome some impressive challenges. While it sometimes reminds me of some of the great point and click adventure games of the late ’90s and early 2000s, this title manages to remain very much its own thing even as elements of it invoke certain classic experienes.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Mundaun is too weird, too complicated, and, admittedly, occasionally too janky to ever be a massive hit, but it’s the many ways this game confidentally manages to be so different that ultimately make it truly underrated.

The post 15 Most Underrated Games of 2021 appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[sometipsygnostalgic]

tipsy’s top shows of 2017

hi! since homestuck’s over i’ve been exploring a lot of stuff, old and new, and ho boy there’s LOTS to talk about so, with what in some areas was very difficult ranking, here’s a list of my favourite cartoons! er, some of them arent actually from 2017, i just watched them this year.

1. adventure time. it’s adventure time, it was already amazing, but this year marks its comeback into my heart. what surprised me is how... honest it became since the start of season 8. like, characters would actually have meaningful emotional scenes with buildup instead of just shrugging it off  to be Fake Deep like before. and the thing is that when you have sincere moments, it makes the comedy that much better. Best episode: Three Buckets, the funniest and most tragic episode of the year.

2. Pokemon: sun and moon. now i’m not going to pretend the pokemon cartoon is great. i’m not even going to pretend it’s good. but sun and moon... there’s just something about this show that snuck into my heart. the wacky expressions, the nice animation, the actually friendly school environment where they got to do cool things and there are no bullies thank god. and while i initially watched waiting for it to do something cool like the games, i grew to appreciate it for what it is. Best Episode: Lillie, take good care of Pikachu! (ENG: The Ol’ Raise and Switch!), a really cute concept turned into a genuinely emotional development. 3. OK, K.O.! cartoon network’s newest big IP. i’m not straight up addicted to it like adventure time but it puts a smile on my face nearly every time, with its visual humor and unique art style. it helps that K.O. was originally voiced by Stephanie Naldony, who is Son Goku and Son Gohan in the original Dragonball dubs. i think the main trio of this series works well, their personalities clashing nicely, and their mentor relationship with mr gar is just.... i love it, okay? the big flaw here though is when they try to do an ep without K.O. in, it just seems to fall flat. anyway it’s hard to decide but Best Episode: Second First Date, cutesy flashbacks with a realistic and sweet modern development.

4. Mob Psycho 100! Mob! Mob! What do you want? Mob! Mob! What do you want? Mob! Mob! What do you want? Move, move JUST LIKE MOB!  anyway i loved this because it’s one of the few shows where the protagonist is actually the best character. if you’ve seen MP100, you’ll understand the timebomb scenario where Mob has a mental breakdown when he reaches 100 and unleashes an unpredictable psychic storm... but ANYTHING can happen... and the season finale blew me out of the water. nice characters, nice developments, best anime. Favourite episode: Mob and Reigen, the greatest payoff to a running gag I’ve ever seen. 

5. My Hero Academia. this one I finished watching just this weekend, so it’s all new to me, but... while season 1 turned me off because of deku’s constant whinging and pathetically unsympathetic backstory, season 2 with is focus on the other classmates made for an exciting story. there’s some cast members who are always going to make your life hell (cough grapehead cough) but i no longer feel like taking the piss out of it for being melodramatic. Best Episode:  Hero Killer: Stain vs U.A. Students, which was really nice buildup to the following ep suitably named “climax”, and showed off just how more skilled the characters are getting.

6. Kill La Kill. i don’t... remember if i actually watched it this year (probably watched it last year since i was making jokes about lusamine being a toned down ragyo?), but i’m listing it here anyway. what i disliked about KLK was how lewd it was, and i was made quite uncomfortable by the fucking pedophilia in episode 16, but this action romp is a blast with plenty of comedy and an interesting story that makes you think about the relationships we have both to each other and to social conventions like clothing. Anyway, pure adrenaline. Best episode: the one where ryuko and satsuki fight in the huge school war, i cant remember what its called. 

7. Steven Universe. it’s... not that SU is bad by any counts, this just has been a terrible year for the show. i’d argue SU has grown staler now than season 6 of AT was back in 2015, which is sad cos SU only started airing in late 2013. back in 2015 during the AT slump SU would have easily topped this list!!! anyway it continues to be a very charming show with WONDERFUL music, but it’s wasting away its characters and constantly stalling, and since nothing interesting or particularly funny happens, nobody tunes in. SU needs to develop more emotional range rather than banging in the same plot points again and again. Best Episode: The Trial, a refreshing, humorous, and mysterious change of pace after constant stagnation.

8. One Punch Man. yeah this show aired a few years ago. it marks the bottom of my 2015 shows list because, outside of its silly fun... there’s nothing to OPM? it’s just silly fun with a bit of nudity or whatever, and the same running gag. I’m going to be honest, i got really bored and wanted to leave the stream about halfway through. i do enjoy the action though especially when OPM flips. but i thik Mob Psycho 100 is a superior alternative that uses the same premise far more flexibly, and therefore more entertainingly. OPM is pretty generic. Best Episode: any ep with the biker guy in. he is the best character

EDIIIIT: Honorable Mention: Star vs the Forces of Evil! i... forgot that i watched this show. i’d rank it 6th, barely above KLK. while i can’t point out any outstanding quality about Star, it’s a cute and entertaining show. i haven’t watched any of season 3 though and have heard Mixed Reviews which is why i can’t place it any higher. best episode: ludo vs the eagle and spider

anyway that’s it for now! i’m not keeping up on any other shows.

[kalico-to-the-letter]

The LOVE for NARUTO in 2017

I’ve not been overly enthralled by 2017′s offering to anime. At first glance, it appears that studios are reverting to formulae I would have appreciated four years ago, but just seem tired now. There are a number of big name productions which seem unique and fun, but my concern is with the productions that make up the rest of the field; the shows which get a season of 12 episodes, maybe an OVA, and are never heard from again. That is where I think standards have either plateaued or dipped. And if you are like me, someone who doesn’t watch a lot of big-name anime, you rely on these kinds of shows to carry the bulk of the season. I really don’t think we’ve had much of that this year, and when that happens, we turn to rewatching shows of old.

Naruto is the only “big-name” anime I’ve ever been able to stand. Bleach? No. One Piece, Yu-G-Oh!? No. Fairy Tale has never interested me. I recently tried to rewatch Dragon Ball, because I liked that franchise when I was a kid and wanted to know if it stood the test of time, and oh girl, it does not.

I first started watching Naruto when I was 11 years old. I would come home every day after school and watch the “latest” episode, in English dub, on our cartoon channel. And I had been watching Dragon Ball and Z up until that point as well, but I never developed a connection to the DB franchise as deeply and quickly as I did with Naruto. 

I must say that that first arc, the prologue/Mission in the Land of Waves, is one of the best arcs of storytelling I’ve ever seen. Is it the most sophisticated thing ever? No. It’s not even the deepest Naruto arc of all time. But it is so good at establishing everything. From the early episodes of learning who the Konoha kids are, through to the deaths of Haku and Zabuza, the arc is so damn effective at setting up what the show would become. We learn quickly about what drives the characters and the world. And the story of this arc, particularly as far as Haku and Zabuza are concerned, manifests into the key personal motivation of the most important character in the show. It is the lives and deaths of these two that fully cements Naruto’s desire to live according to his own nindo, and take a bold step away from the traditional ideals of the shinobi, that these two tragic figures represented. This belief in a new, more hopeful way drives everything that follows in this story; his interactions with other characters and how they grow as a result of coming into contact with him. Even his overarching conflict with Sasuke.

In 2017, we can see the end result of this, in the Boruto series (which I’m also enjoying). Naruto’s influence has driven the shinobi world into an uncharted territory of cooperation and peace.

Considering how many characters there are, it is amazing that I find only a handful of them truly unbearable (Kiba, I’m looking at you).

The concept is genuinely cool for my sensibilities, and the fact that the show is able to turn it into the believable base and foundation of a dramatic story says a lot to me. It would have been so easy for this to be a show about how cool it is to be a shinobi and perform all these different techniques. Instead, the show starts with that before turning it on its head and saying, “No, this is going to be a serious story. Get ready to see the consequences of this life.”

Does Naruto have its holes? Of course. Watching the series after its airing run has finished has given me the benefit of not being too bothered by fillers, especially where I’m at right now, which is more than 300 episodes into Shippuden. And when I say I’m watching everything, I mean everything. I watched all 220 episodes of the original series as well. I’m not watching the movies (aside from The Last), just because they’re even less canon than the filler arcs. But I can imagine that having the canon start and stop on a weekly basis must have been difficult for those of you who actually watched it that way. It’s just my personal circumstance that allows me to take them in stride. And the fillers themselves are good, more often than not. When they shine lights on characters who aren’t heavily featured in the canon, it’s particularly brilliant.

The War arc has a big case of power creep, and mainly for the purpose of spotlighting the most important characters involved. One issue I have is with the involvement of Kaguya Otsutsuki – her threat seemed something of an afterthought, especially after all the work Kishimoto put into making Madara look like the biggest beast possible.

And Kishimoto can be accused of losing direction, which might be a fair accusation. The war represented a big opportunity to rewrite a number of the world’s established rules for the sake of preparing his conclusion, which he took in regard to past events and exposition.

As is often the case with my personal tastes, though, the issues with the show don’t do anything to diminish my love for this show.

And I think having love for creative works is important. Naruto isn’t the only show I have this with. There is just something to be said for loving something, regardless of its flaws. Be it shows, games, films, books, or even music – I have a lot of works in these media categories that I can connect wholly to. And maybe I’ll put together a list of these someday.

But I could genuinely talk to you about Naruto for hours. I can gush over how smart it was to have Sasuke beat Naruto in their first Valley of the End fight. I can complain about how the show used Sakura for much of the original series before redeeming her in Shippuden. I can lament the sheer tragedy of characters like Itachi and Obito.

I credit this show for properly introducing me to anime; there is every chance that I would not have become an anime fan without it. In fact, I originally stopped watching because English dubs hadn’t caught up. I believe that I had seen all of the original series in English, and Shippuden dubs hadn’t even started. And because I didn’t know what anime was, I had no familiarity whatsoever with its Japanese version. Over the years I still kept up with the story, as I learned more about the show and about anime in general, but I never actually got around to watching Shippuden, until this year. It’s nice to think back about how full circle my connection to anime has come.

At the moment, I’m on pace to finish this show by the end of February or early March, and I probably won’t be in the mood to write about it by then, so I just wanted to air some feelings while I’m in the thick of it. 

I’m curious: Which anime introduced you to the medium, when you were young? Or older? Was it one of these big shounen series like Naruto or Dragon Ball? Or was it something obscure? Was it an anime movie like Akira? What anime do you love, regardless of their flaws?

Anyway, that’s all this post is, just some thoughts and feelings on a show I’ve rediscovered and renewed my love for, and has somehow come to define my 2017 in the anime genre.

P.S. There is a peculiar kind of rush I get from watching Shippuden and also following Boruto week to week.

#SaradaFor8thHokage

– Kallie

[vladynews]

just how to look after a dachshund

I have actually been keeping the dachshund for 25 years, so the type's features will certainly be prejudiced. I love these sausages with all my heart. And also not just me. In one Germany currently lives more than a million dachshunds. At the exact same time, their popularity is steady. It does not depend upon the variations of fashion - and also lots of types can flaunt the same?

Dachshund is one-of-a-kind. Little dimension and unpretentiousness in treatment make it a popular friend for residents. At the exact same time, the language does not resort to call the breed ornamental. Dachshunds stay "genuine", serious dogs.

The look of the dachshund

Taxi is one of the most well-known breed worldwide. A long and also short sausage pet dog just looks ridiculous prima facie. Cabs have effective paws and huge breasts. They are not large, yet extremely solid pets - their muscles are well developed. Strong constitution and endurance are a tradition of the centuries-old searching past.

A lengthy head with a smooth transition from temple to muzzle is decorated with huge ears. Brownish eyes always look with interest, in them you can see a remarkable intelligence.

What are the dachshunds

Inside one breed, there is a division by the type of wool and size. Because of this, there is a big variety of tex.

There are 3 dimension groups:

* Rabbit dachshund - weight 3-3.5 kg * Small (small, dwarf) dachshund - weight 4-5,5 kg * Standard dachshund - weight 8-9 kg

By the sort of woollen are additionally distinguished by three ranges:

* Smooth wool; * Long-haired; * Hard woollen.

Nowadays, hard-coat dachshunds preferred as functioning hunting canines: they do not freeze as their smooth congeners. The layer is not confused or unclean, as in the case of lengthy layer dachshunds. Sticker labels have their very own shade, which is called "boar".

Long-haired dachshunds swiftly ended up being ornamental canines due to their amazing appearance. Smooth hairs are just as suitable for searching as well as for home life.

The most typical shades of tex:

* Black-floor; * Red (from dark to intense orange as well as sandy);. * Coffee (chocolate);. * Marble (tricolor).

There are cream, tiger colors.

Character of the dachshund: 7 character features.

Even bunny dachshund is not a decorative "girls'" type. The smallest dachshunds were reproduced particularly for rabbit hunting. With a typical dachshund hunting not just on the burrowing monster (fox, badger) however also any kind of various other video game.

Individuals.

There are a number of kinds of searching dogs (sweetheart, dog, cop, and also others). Most of them work in pairs with a man, waiting on a group from the hunter. But not a dachshund. Regular pet dogs should discover the beast themselves and also get it. Struggle in a slim dark burrow is individually. A person there is no helper to the pet dog.

The first high quality of a dachshund is wilfulness. Dachshund groups are very easy to find out, but every time they assume concerning whether to execute.

Interested.

Once in the brand-new space, the dog will not relax till he examines every corner. A stroll for a dachshund is a real vacation since there is a feast of smells exterior.

Energetic as well as playful.

Brief curves of the legs can deceive the ignorant. Dachshund owners recognize that these pets have incredible endurance. If a dachshund is in great physical form, it prepares to cover a few kilometers on a daily walk.

Dachshunds must be permitted to spray out energy. They happily carry the ball, play with congeners, and also amuse the proprietors with their grimaces. Do not presume that due to the brief legs of the dachshund runs slowly. If wanted, it becomes an actual torpedo!

Tender

Like several hunting pets, dachshunds can completely ignore the owner on a stroll, with the rapture to hurry around the countryside as well as discover their own activities. But what they are really caring! Drinking on your back to scrape a stubborn belly, sticking your nose under your arm, as well as reaching lick your nose is all right.

Those that say "pleased not to buy" have not yet acquired a pup dachshund!

If you win a dachshund, you will not find a more caring pet. Dachshunds love to iron as well as cuddle with the owner in your rest.

Gambler

A lot of dachshunds do not recognize the anxiety - they hurry strongly at the adversary a lot bigger than themselves. If the dachshund wakes up hunting exhilaration, it ends up being deaf to your commands, feels neither discomfort neither tiredness, focusing on the target. Dachshund is exactly the dog that can bark for hrs on a rescued feline from a tree.

Smart

Dachshunds do not join agility and also will certainly not amount to in obedience to pets' official types, but no one will question their knowledge. It is the intellect that provides a dachshund a special appeal and slyness. They are damn ingenious in their tricks, after which they request for mercy so artistically that it becomes difficult to vow, just chuckle.

Vitality enthusiasts.

Dachshunds are not sad, are not annoyed, as well as do not hover with guilt. Searching - with excitement. For me, a dachshund is an endorphin canine!

Even if a pet's back legs fall short, dachshund proprietors usually do not also consider mercy killing. Due to the fact that their dog continues to enjoy life. Caring dachshund assists them leave any kind of condition, billing with positive outlook everyone around.

Dark side of dachshund: 6 unfavorable top qualities.

Since I'm a big lover of a dachshund, any flaws of these dogs seem to me simply cute attributes. If you are not yet struck by taxonomy, pay focus to them to assume about the repercussions before your very first dachshund.

Mania of greatness.

Any kind of dachshund, also a small one, will believe greater than as soon as regarding the question - isn't it the main one in this residence? For this insolent long-nosed pet dog to follow your orders, you will have to inform from the very first days. All your life proves that the owner is the main resource of food, enjoyment, and also enjoyment.

Which you can alter the dachshund, even if you have no time for it now/lazy/you are really worn out/ when can. If you provide the slack, your point of view will certainly no longer be taken into consideration by the dachshund when making decisions.

Arbitrariness, stubbornness, and a propensity to control make a dachshund inappropriate for elderly people or beginners to pet reproduction. Owners who can not place the dachshund in position develop a despot as well as a beast with their own hands.

Loud voice

For seekers, it was very crucial to hear the dachshund providing a voice while in a deep opening. On the other hand - if an animal is not appropriately raised, the dachshund can turn into a bastard.

A separate issue emerges if the dachshund groans and also barks, being left alone. Pets robbed of job do not get either physical or psychological stress and anxiety.

propensity to bite

Numerous individuals take into consideration dachshunds hostile. Typically, dachshunds attack their own proprietors as well as household members - if they consider themselves leaders.

The second reason for bites - if the dachshund safeguards itself, it hesitates. It is not permitted to beat the pet in the process of education or shed. This will not end well, particularly if the dachshund has a remarkable memory. A pet dog can toss on a particular odor, as an example, on drinks.

The 3rd reason is territorial aggressiveness. When I first brought a dachshund to my dacha, it bit my neighbor's leg with blood. She did not bark, just turned up and also barked on the back. It took place when an old lady pertained to our residence. The dog had actually never ever seen her in the past as well as chose that she was an unfamiliar person. It was not simple to describe with a bitten canine! Bite the dachshund as well as neighbor's kids if they were running around our website with squeals and noise.

Zoo aggressiveness.

Dachshund can get along well with cats in the residence - and also selflessly go after strange cats on the road. They need to realize their hunting impulse.

The amount of times I have actually seen the sobbing owners who chose that the hamster in the cage is not endangered with anything. The village dachshund can choke bunnies or hens, so the animal can not be release on a self-guided walk.

Contrary to fears, dachshunds can quickly quadrate pet cats in the same house. If you take a dachshund to a grown-up pet cat, they will certainly end up being buddies forever.

Without timely socialization, dachshunds barely interact with congeners, especially bigger than themselves. Greater than as soon as, I viewed a tiny "sausage" flick its teeth a centimeter away from the face of a puzzled Labrador or a sheepdog. It only stays to advise maintaining the dachshund on a leash due to the fact that fearlessness will certainly not help her avoid injuries in a battle with a pet dog a number of times bigger than herself.

Gluttony.

When the dachshund is awake, either states is looking for food or consuming. Dachshunds are the masters of pleading, as well as their begging look bumps out the most relentless. Never before have I seen a dachshund hug a lot that she would quit a delicious item.

On the one hand, a dog-leaver is okay, since it makes training simpler. On the various other hand, for a lot of the walk, you will make certain that the family pet does not vacuum from the ground.

Dachshunds are not just begging yet additionally swiping. My rascal as soon as chewed a bag of food, which I thoughtlessly left in the hallway. The dog looked like a globe yet was not mosting likely to pass away.

If you take a puppy to your home, you need to learn to order. You require to hide not just the food however all the potentially hazardous things: dachshunds might discover it edible what you can not think of - lipstick, lotion, made use of baby diaper.

Devastating propensities.

For such a lap dog, the dachshund has exceptionally powerful jaws. As well as paws. And claws. In a word, you must not let such a family pet obtain bored, or you will have a developer repair work in your home. It is simple to dig a couch, playing in the red. It is simple to rip the wallpaper. Grind every little thing, left neglected - why not? The dacha location of the dachshund can destroy the grass, steaming holes in it.

Dachshunds cope with toys from the pet store in a matter of mins, as well as just deals with like deer horns, or rubber rounds can take them for a very long time.

Inquiries of treatment and upkeep of a dachshund.

The popularity of dachshunds was substantially added to their unpretentiousness in web content. They really feel equally confident both in the streets of the metropolis as well as in the town. Cabs willingly eat both healthy food and commercial feed. They do not need to wipe their ears or eyes. The care varies just depending upon the type of wool.

Dachshunds need to be cleaned every time after the walk: their breasts and stomach get dirty promptly. You can show your pet dog to use a water resistant one-piece suit. Clothing will additionally be useful in winter season - smooth wool dachshunds are really cold. They should a minimum of use a coat.

Dachshunds do not like to stroll in the rain. If they do not like the weather condition, the pet will quickly chrome or rest on his back. You will be cursed to drag the "unhappy" on a chain (do not poop in your home), gathering the condemnations of passers-by. When you transform to the residence, the victim will support up as well as rush on all four paws.

All the dachshunds, as well as the hardcore ones, too, like comfort and comfort.

Difficult woollen dachshund need to be cut (plucked undercoat) 2 times a year during the seasonal molting (springtime, fall). Long-haired - regularly combed and also bathed. Smooth haired dachshunds, deprived of undercoat, the most comfy in day-to-day life. They are easy to clean, dry promptly, and also the home's woollen will be couple of. Nonetheless, hard as needles, hairs can purposefully get stuck in bed linens.

All dachshunds expand claws very rapidly, especially on the front paws. They are needed to dig. If the pet dog does not search and also strolls little on the asphalt, the claws grow as well long. They are shortened with claw cutters once a month.

Conditions of dachshund.

The bright side is that the dachshunds describe long-term pet dogs. I personally dealt with a 19-year-old cab. The life expectancy of 15-17 years in these dogs is considered the norm.

intervertebral hernia.

Amongst the public, there is a deliberate point of view that issues with the back of the dachshunds are connected with a disproportionately long body. However this is not the situation. Many cases when the back legs of the taxa stop working are related to hereditary discopathy.

In this situation, the canine has an illness of cells regrowth of the intervertebral disks. They lose their elasticity, and by the age of 4 years, there is a risk of disc herniation (outcropping, tear).

When the disc is sticking out, there is pinching of nerves or spine. Depending upon the rupture's size, this is either uncomfortable or a photo of paralysis (the pet can not lean on his back legs, urination and also defecation are disturbed). Therapy can be both operative as well as conventional. To choose the ideal technique, you require to "see" the rupture - CT or MRI.

A pet older than 4-6 years can prompt a rupture by leaping from heights, injury during energetic games with various other pet dogs. The only avoidance is to maintain excellent physical shape and avoid weight problems.

Supposed chondroprotectors do not influence the procedure of disk devastation. They are not used either for treatment or to prevent discopathy in dachshunds. Genes plays a decisive role: dachshund can live a life without having issues with the back. Or it can for the first time "buckle" at the age of 4, and also with age, the assaults will be duplicated regularly.

Bust gland conditions.

Dachshunds are very caring mothers. Also after the very first birth, they take superb treatment of pups, can embrace other people's cubs, such as kittycats. This is because of the high hormone history. But if the bitch is not decontaminated and also does not bind, there are troubles.

After a leakage, dachshunds often have an incorrect pregnancy and after that an incorrect lactating, mastitis. At an older age, deadly lumps happen on the mammary glands.

Because of this, it is suggested to castrate the bitches that are not associated with breeding, ideally - also before the first leak.

Parodontosis.

Dachshunds, specifically dwarfs, often tend to create tartar. Preferably, a pet dog must be instructed to comb his teeth (brush + paste) from youth. Tartar leads to periodontal disease, bad odor from the mouth, and loss of teeth.

Heart failure.

Type illness tax - mitral heart shutoff failure. In older pets (usually after 6 years) its sashes begin to deform as well as can no much longer close firmly.

Just when the left atrium is currently greatly expanded, owners might see a regular cough, lack of breath, intolerance to physical activity. A senior dachshund needs unique care.

Suppose the dachshund is older than 4 years old. In any kind of case, after 6 years, it is better to inspect the heart frequently.

Verdict.

If you as soon as begin a dachshund, it is likely that from this particular day on, just dachshunds will certainly stay in your home. Despite just how remarkable the other breeds of pet dogs are, they are not dachshunds, which states all of it.

Let such a pet dog needs attention. The moment invested will repay a hundredfold. It is difficult to mope when there is an energised, crafty long-nosed pet.

Comments from dachshund owners.

Why did we pick a dachshund.

Fifteen years earlier, when my child was in elementary school (that is, currently ripe for a pet dog, upkeep as well as treatment), by now my kid had actually reviewed several publications about canines and also enjoyed lots of films on the same topic, and also consequently, there was a passionate wish to obtain a pet dog.

They began to choose a breed for an apartment. We do not have a summertime home. It was not feasible to take a huge dog to the areas. As well as right here, a good friend, who stayed in 2 dachshunds, used this type. In the beginning, I was hesitant. It appeared to me that she was such lengthened as well as brief legs. Yet in the long run, we took a puppy with a common long-haired dachshund.

So this is our initial experience of maintaining a pet. As you create in this short article, dachshunds are unreliable, clever, and also they will certainly follow your order if it coincides with her desires. Now our charm is 15 years of ages. Over the years, she has actually been so mischievous: stripped off wallpaper, ate shoes, telephone and television cable televisions, ate off two males's bags at her spouse, and so on. A great deal of other things. Yet she offered as well as remains to provide us so much positive that thanks to her, we have one more long-haired dachshund (miniature, it is currently 5 years old), and also many thanks to her, we fell in love with this breed.

Exactly how do you agree kids and pet cats? With children, it is terrific. The main thing is to let the dog know that this is our youngster, and you can't injure him. They are hardly ever wise, as well as sometimes it seems that she comprehends the significance of what you have actually claimed. With felines, obviously, they likewise get on quickly. I would like to discuss another such factor. It is a solitary type. There are many similarities. Yet they are so various. Every one is an individuality.

The initial meeting.

That's why we are still ahead of us, however my partner came back from work and also fell for her. Now we discover the very first attributes of her personality. Gina always attempts to visit bed with us if we don't let her begin yelling and barking. She is extremely active throughout the day and also enjoys to play with kids and also cats with whom she ended up being pals very quickly. Currently she is a full member of the family!

This love is for life.

For 12 years, we have actually been living with our preferred dachshund. We have actually started our charm absolutely casually - we searched for a lap dog in your house. There was already a huge canine in the yard, and our grandparents desired a "bell", so your home allows, and we needed a guard inside.

However we did not consider that the old people would certainly not have sufficient toughness to take care of this "battery". We took it to the apartment. Whatever that can be chewed up in the very first days was chewed up, whatever that could be excavated as well as excavated. Most of all, we got winter months shoes, made from real natural leather and also with natural fur - we pulled every little thing up.

I was the just one that went to bed with me. She was not interested in the reality that she can be stuck to her feet - she crept to the pillow during the night, and in the morning, I awakened from snoring and a dachshund muzzle on the cushion. When I had a kid - I did not need a child monitor - dachshund lived under the crib.

Now my boy is 5 years old, and our doggie is the ideal girlfriend in all leprosy. They rest together, as well as frequently the dog replaces the youngster's cushion.

[latina4rmbx]

Tomorrow isn’t Promised

I saw an ad for a game on Facebook.  A clip really.  There were couples staring at each other.  Some crying, some laughing nervously.  All I remember was this one profound question:  "If this were to be our last conversation, what is one thing you’d never want me to forget?”

A seed was born from the question.  I figured, I’d ask people.  At first, I asked the closest people to me, then I expanded the circle.  Needless to say, I freaked a whole bunch of people out.  Before I get to the responses I want you to know that a lot of these are deeply personal, so I will not include names.  Some people who follow me on here, MAY know some of the individuals, but not all. 

I am NOT sick.  I am totally ok.  I found the question so profound, I HAD to ask it.  I have no regrets.

If there was a way to share all of the screen shots, I swear I would but trust me, there were just so many.

Some people responded with just 1 thing.  Some people responded with long beautiful messages.  They are all appreciated and I will forever hold them dear to my heart.

All, but 4 people, received a response to the question from me.  I won’t divulge my responses because as soon as I pressed send, they no longer belonged solely to me.  Just know a good response for most was:  you made me cry.  

I’ll be typing the responses to the question.  Some people gave multiple responses so I may give both.  

I had a conversation with my confidante and she says that this is amazing.  Sort of like a living eulogy. She asked me if I knew these things the people were saying.  I explained to her that in truth, I never really thought about it.  In the end I learned 2 valuable lessons: 

Younger males mainly speak of themselves.

You never really know the profound impact you have had on another persons life.  You’ll see what I mean.

Without further ado, here are the responses, in no particular order:

To value your worth.  To never forget that I love you and the kids.  That you’re a great writer.  A great friend.  A great mother.  I can’t name just one.  Don’t forget to give your friends a blanket.

That I love you & I know I was difficult growing up but I always loved you even when it might’ve felt like I didn’t.  And that I forgive you.

That I greatly appreciate your genuine friendship and you will always hold a special place in my heart.  and that’s the truth.

That I love you

How much I love you

How genuine and good-hearted you’ve always been, no matter what life has thrown at you.  Your situation never changed your heart, in Janee’s words, you’ve stayed golden.

One thing?  That I love you.

That I love you.  Why are you talking like that?

That I am always here for you and that I have and have always had. nothing but love for you.

Sheesh, I don’t know if I interpreted this question correctly but:   If this is our last conversation because you are on your death bed I would say:  In life, it sometimes feels like the world was simply horrible.  Nothing was good and it was full of hate and anger.  Thank you for being someone that gave hope just by being her positive self.  I know that because you were my hope when the world seemed horrible with simple gestures.  May not have changed the world, but it saved me some days.  If it was because we fell off or some other shit:  You was always lit.  Stay golden.  Don’t change for nobody.  I wish you the best.

I’m your child.  No matter how much u deny me !!  and I love you!

I appreciate all the kindness and support you’ve always shown me.

I would want you to know how much I love you and how much you’ve impacted my life in such a positive manner.  How much I love that you’re not just my aunt but you’re like my best friend, and how I feel that you out of most people understand me on a different level.

You prob the funniest chick I know the pleasure of knowing.  There’s your one thing.

Omg don’t say that but I would say you are a beautiful person inside and out and the world is a better place because you are in it.  You have a beautiful family and friends that love you.

Id never want you to forget how much I GENUINELY appreciate our conversation.  How you were there for me and gave me so much words of wisdom when I was going thru the worst time of my life.  How you satisfied my craving of violets when I was pregnant with Mychael..and how much you make me laugh thru social media because you are so funny!

That you really will be missed and that I wish our friendship happened sooner so I’ll have more time with you!!!  You are greatly appreciated.

I love you with all of my heart.  You’re an inspiration to me.  Words could not describe what you are to me.  More than a cousin, more than a sister.  Awilda Lee was the brightest thing in our lives when she came along. Thank. you for her.  Thank you for having unconditional love for me that my Wela had.  I have very fond memories at 533.  You’re in almost all of them.  From music out the window to your word processor and all your CD’s. My love of music comes from you.

That I love you like MY blood sister!

Us when we was living with grandma on 139th street, while you play Richard Marx “i’ll be Right Here Waiting for You.”  Til this day when I hear that song I see you playing it. I love you.

That Jesus loves you so much He gave His life for you in order to offer you forgiveness for all the wrong you’ve done & a way for you to live with Him eternally in His presence & that its. never to late to give him a change because He’s always by you waiting.

That you are very loved.  Good morning honey.

Jesus loves you!

If this were my last conversation with you I would want you to never forget that you are an amazing person from the first time I met you as Dr. D secretary til now, the only thing that has changed is your hair color and your age lol.  I genuinely have love for you.  Your free spirit and outspokenness is always welcome in my world.  I know you said one thing but I had more than one thing lol.  Oh and you’re a bomb writer.  So when you publishing your 1st book?

That you were an amazing friend that honestly left an imprint in my life.

What an awesome job. you’ve done with Joaquin!!

Morning lol your smart mouth and trouble shooting skills.

I wouldn’t want you to forget how absolutely amazing I think you are.  You were there for me when I needed you most.  Helping me with my son and a shoulder to cry on.  For that, I will be forever grateful.

Fine.  I’d want you to never forget that not only do we have the same teeth, that we’re cousins on both sides of our family and that you’re first daughter looked exactly like me when she was younger.  And that although we don’t speak much, I love you more than anything.

My gap

That I love and you’re my favorite person in life and I am grateful that God put us together and I hope we together in the next life too.

How hard we laughed together.

How I never judged anyone.  Good morning. (I think they mean how u, meaning me, never judged anyone)

How much I love you.

How much I love and appreciated you.  

How valuable I feel our friendship is and how much your wisdom and guidance has helped me in very difficult times.  I appreciate and love you very much.

That I love you

That although growing up we were not close.  I still have a great deal of love for you and I absolutely enjoy every single lil time we share together.  and our sex talk at times (they meant we talk about it, not that we talk it to each other)

That I love you.  That you are special strong funny.

That you are love

That I love you unconditionally because you are extremely unique.

That you have a warm and tender heart and a fierce outer shell.  You are an incredibly strong and smart woman.

That you are an absolutely amazing human being & that you deserve all the happiness and love that this world has to offer.  Never stop smiling.

That I love you and everything about you.

You will forever be my favorite bookworm.  You’ve written your own book in my life.  “That loyal friend” by OV.  You speak my love language you always have and I am just as honored to have you in my corner.  I love you. my dear friend.  Sincerely, KR.

Everyday of my. younger life, all I wanted to do was find you guys!  Once I did, I felt I was becoming complete!  Meeting you guys when you y’all came to Cali was EVERYTHING I could have asked for and more!  You guys are ones I work for EVERYDAY!  Once I make this generational wealth, I got y’all!  I promise you that!

I know it’ll sound cliche but I don’t thin you will ever truly know and understand how truly and deeply I care and love you.  You helped pull me out of really dark place, you are an amazing soul.  You are one of the rare ppl that i actually think of when i think of love and friendship and i thank you for being a part of my life.

That you’re my Binobo (a species of monkey - look it up)

When I would nag you on the 1st of the month.

That you should never forget how much you are loved.  That your generosity of spirit and goodness far surpasses any flaws.  That you are sooooo much more worthy, than you think you are.  That I would never want you to settle for anyone who isn’t a really good person to you and the kids.  Most importantly, I would pass on something that my Great Aunt once told me to always remember...If it doesn’t bring you peace, then it isn’t from God.  In my experience, those words have always proven true.  You know in your heart and it your gut - there is a very definitive, distinct sense of peace, when things are right.  God only wants that sense of calm and joy, and He gave us the instinct to recognize the difference. (AMEN!)

I truly don’t like the tone of this question.  But it would be your honesty.  You’ve always been so open and honest about your story and it was a breath of fresh air for me.

Your humor and smile is always up lifting.

Awwwww.  You are my counselor.  You always have the best advice you are the sassiest glamma I know and the queen of essential oils lol.  you add a special something to the world that only you can.  A tell it like it is type of chick, who always keeps it 100%.  It’s been such a pleasure having you in my world.

If it’s a thought about you, it wold be that I thought were smarter, funnier and at least a little better looking than the average bear.  If it’s a memory, besides the short jokes and dancing, I would want you to remember, well it’s a toss up.  Remember the time I lied about cooking food I brought in lunch, that it was really Lydia who made it, and she busted me.

I’d say thank you for being the parents that you are and thank you for allowing me to influence your little treasure and for keeping in contact with me.

Don’t forget to put me in your will.  Lol just playing.  That I love you of course.

How much I love you and thank you for always being neutral even if you’re his coworker lol.

I’d want you to know...While there is a great physical distance between us, I feel close to you.  I love that you had a special relationship with my mom and hope that we can have our own.  Big hugs to you.

1.  That I love you.  2.  that I would like you to raise my kids if anything happened to me or my wife.

That my heart was pure whether they were good or bad to me.  To be honest I just want people to know that I’ve always been a good soul and did my best to be there for those who needed me, just a selfless individual.

You’re the best grandma Saniyah will have from marriage you love her like she’s really your daughters child and I love it.  wouldn’t want it any other way.

Nuestra amistad (TRANSLATION: our friendship)

I love you

Never forget that I love you and God is good.

I don’t want it to be our last conversation but one thing that i don’t want you to forget is that you called me Thunderbuddy.

That I love you.  That you’re an amazing person!  Wait that’s two things right?  LOL

Never forget who got you high.

1.  Don’t forget to brush your teeth (stephen’s voice) 2>. Don’t forget to keep being unapologetically yourself.

How cute and funny I am lol

I wouldn’t want you to forget the laughs we’ve shared.  Our birthday body suits.

Thank you for reading,

XOXO