#video games are just neat man. totally unique ways of telling a story in a way you just can’t do with

[thisyearingaming]

1997 - This Year in Gaming

Muggins here was born in ‘97, and can’t really remember much of it, natch. But there were some good things released this year - I’ve played every one of these, and have missed so many more.

Diablo - Windows, January 3rd

We start with dungeon-crawl-em-up and well-loved out of season April Fool’s Joke, Diablo. I’ll be totally honest - I don’t like Diablo that much. It’s absolutely fine, I just can’t get into it. The writing, setting and characters are all very good especially since this year only marks the beginning of games being seen as a bit more adult and intelligent. Check out this gameplay from Hour of Oblivion on YouTube, and marvel at the faux-Scottish accent on Griswold the blacksmith.

Mario Kart 64 - Nintendo 64, February 10th

Compared to its more recent versions, Mario Kart 64 is a veritable bloody relic of the past - solid controls and a quirky style mean it’s still a crowd pleaser to this day, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone right now that would die on the hill of it being their favourite single-player racing experience. It’s also got some of the deepest, impenetrable lore in any medium known to the human race - why exactly is Marty the Thwomp locked up here?

Blast Corps - Nintendo 64, February 28th

February’s position as most boring month of the year is shaken up a bit by having a uniquely designed Rare game slammed into its 28-day long face. Blast Corps is the puzzle-action game where you take control of several vehicles to destroy homes and buildings in order to prevent a nuclear warhead exploding in the coolest incarnation of Cold War politicking ever seen in a video game. Calling Blast Corps a “hidden gem” these days is like calling Celeste a hidden gem - it impresses nobody and makes you look like a dick. 

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter - Nintendo 64, March 4th 

The N64 was home to a surprisingly large number of above-average shooters despite its muddy graphics and small cartridge space - Turok is one of these, a great FPS game where you shoot the SHIT out of dinosaurs. Brett Atwood of Billboard said it was like Doom and Tomb Raider mixed - Doom Raider, if you will. I say it isn’t - there’s no demons, and there’s no polygonal breasts to poke dinosaurs’ eyes out with! 

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - Sony PlayStation, March 20th

What is a retrospective? A miserable little pile of opinions. I’ve only recently played through SotN for the very first time on a TOTALLY LEGITIMATE copy with a CRT filter. Bloody good (geddit?) game, that takes the repetition of its predecessors, improves on it in basically every conceivable way, and combines it with special effects and graphics that even 23 years later had me going “ooh, that looks quite good!” Symphony’s music and audio design are wonderfully paired with a deeply enjoyable experience that’ll have you saying “mm, maybe just one more room?”

Tekken 3 - Sony PlayStation, March 20th

Also releasing from the Land of the Rising Sun that day was Tekken 3, which many believe is still one of the best fighters ever made. Tekken 3′s combat is so fast and responsive that it’s better than some games made today. T3 is also the best and easiest way to knock seven shades of absolute shite out of your friends without risking a massive head injury or a trip to the headmaster’s office... where you could also challenge him, but only if he plays as my favourite Not-Guile-or-Ken character in gaming, Paul. 

Sonic Jam - Sega Saturn, June 20th

The moment Sega realised that re-packaging old Mega Drive games would net them serious cash - although unlike later collections, this is a strictly Sonic affair, and has a neat little 3D world to run around in as a sort of hub world. Sonic X-Treme proved that Sonic Team would have to work hard at getting the fastest thing alive into 3D space properly: Jam is the sort of test ground for it too. It features some genuinely good emulation work for 1997, although it’s basically the gaming equivalent of going round to your grandparents at Christmas only for them to give you the exact same gifts you got in 1991, 1992 and 1994 but wrapped in a bow to make you think it’s different. What are you lookin’ at, you little blue devil?

Star Fox 64 - Nintendo 64, June 30th

So there’s this German company, right, called StarVox. Nintendo look at Europe and say “shit, we don’t want another lawsuit... after all, we’ve done three this year!”. So they give us in the PAL region the exciting title of Lylat Wars which as far as I know means absolutely fucking nothing in the context of the game. They’re still called Star Fox in-game too so what was the point? Anyway, fun 3D shooter with graphics that’ll make you do a barrel roll off the sofa and onto the power button to make the brown and green blurs a little easier on the eyes. Hello 2007, I’ve come back to make old references with you!

Carmageddon - Windows, July 30th

The game so scary it was BANNED in the UK! More like the game so fucking shit it was banned. Carmageddon is so deeply boring to play on PC that I can only imagine that Stainless Games made it tasteless by 90s standards simply to ramp up demand - much like another game we’ll be covering soon. 

Herc’s Adventures - Sony PlayStation, July 31st

“And they said Kratos was the best hero? Shish... they got it wrong, sister! Hercules is clearly better... he even has a coconut weapon.” A surprisingly fun overhead action game that most people only know for... well, I’ll just embed it.

Mega Man X4 - Sony Playstation, August 1st

A few years ago I tried playing every Mega Man game there is - I gave up at X3 because I was getting bored. Even still, Mega Man bores me - but at least the level design is good. Stay away from the Windows port. Pictured: me in the background yawning.

GoldenEye 007 - Nintendo 64, August 25th 

The name’s Intro. Overused intro which I also managed to fuck up twice through the deeply editable medium of text. GoldenEye is like the Seinfeld of console shooters - playing it nowadays you’re unlikely to be amazed but holy shit there’s some absolute greatness in this game. Every sound and every piece of music in GoldenEye is permanently seared into my brain - sometimes I’ll just hear Facility or Frigate in my head alongside the door opening sound and the gentle PEW of the PP7. I mean come on, fucking listen to this and tell me Grant Kirkhope isn’t cool as all hell.

LEGO Island - Windows, September 26th

The first open world experience I ever had was LEGO Island. It’s still quite good today, utterly deranged animation from the likes of the Infomaniac and Brickster - a cautionary tale for children that giving pizza to high-profile criminals is disastrous for the human LEGO race. 

Fallout - Windows, October 10th

War never changes, but franchises do. Fallout’s legendary status in the industry is exemplified in how different it feels. Yes, we had the game Wasteland nine years prior, but until September 97 there was nothing quite like Fallout. From the chilling introduction sequence showing the ruins of the United States to the tragic ending, Fallout is an exercise in pure human misery with the brightest spots of hope it can possibly muster thrown in for good measure. What begins as a tedious isometric point-and-click RPG ends as a minigun-wielding power fantasy, before your entire worth is stripped from you at the finish line. You have 500 days to find a water chip before it’s too late, but you’re constantly being fought by terrifying Super Mutants, irradiated animals, and the biggest monster of all - humanity. See what I did there? If anything, humanity in Fallout’s setting would be the greatest unifying force possible against the horror of the outside world. But how is it? It’s dull, it’s sluggish, and it’s really hard to get into even if you’re already a fan - but push through that and it’s worthwhile to see exactly how far the series got before Todd Howard said “eh fuck it” and had the whole thing dipped into an FEV vat.

Grand Theft Auto - Sony PlayStation, October 21st

To put it simply, the first in the GTA series is now nothing but a novelty. It has an irritating camera, wonky controls, poor graphics and deeply repetitive gameplay. But thank fuck it exists, because without it the Rockstar story may have been very different indeed. It’s quintessential cops and robbers gameplay, spanning across Liberty City, Vice City and San Andreas in one game, but with maps so far removed from their modern incarnations they may as well be named “Not New York, Possibly Bristol and Orange Town”. People really fucking hated Hare Krishnas in the 20th Century, didn’t they?

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back - Sony PlayStation, October 31

A hard one to talk about, honestly - it’s more Crash and better than the first one. It looks great, and Crash controls so well compared to his first outing. It’ll also keep you playing for 100%, fiendishly addictive and unashamedly difficult. Had a weird cover that moved with your head. 

PaRappa the Rapper - Sony PlayStation, November 17th

Type type type the words into the box! (Type, type, type - uh oh - the box?)

PaRappa is a gorgeously stylised rhythm game about rapping to steal the heart of the girl of your dreams - which involves learning karate, getting your driver’s license, selling bottle caps and frogs, making a cake, desperately trying not to shit yourself, and finally performing live on stage. Every one of its segments is so well-produced that they’d genuinely sell like ghost cookies in this era of shite rap. Notable for producing the greatest Jay-Z backing track ever made.

Sonic R - Sega Saturn, November 18th

Sonic R is absolutely FINE with vibrant textures, interesting levels, neat gimmicks and decent controls. But I’m gonna talk about its fucking AWESOME soundtrack by Richard Jacques and T.J. Davis, an eclectic mix of Europop and New Jack Swing - even thinking about it is bringing tears of absolute joy to my eyes hearing Super Sonic Racing in my head. You’ve got the main theme, Living in the City, Can You Feel the Sunshine, Back in Time, Diamond in the Sky, Work It Out and Number One - all of these are absolute club bangers and genuinely wouldn’t be out of place in a 90s disco. 

Tomb Raider II - Sony PlayStation, November 18th

Lara Croft returns to single-handedly endanger every species on Earth. TR2 is really good, the exploration and puzzle-solving aspects of the first game expanded upon here and the gunplay remaining just as punchy. Lara’s got a fully-functioning ponytail which absolutely boggles the fucking mind - a lot of work went into Lara’s hair for the 2013 reboot, so I can’t imagine the amount of man hours it took to get fluid(ish, come on, it’s the PS1 we’re talking about) hair movements in 1997. 

And really, that’s all I played from 1997. I’ve left out big hitters like Quake II, Gran Turismo and Diddy Kong Racing, but I simply haven’t formed an opinion on them yet. Maybe in a future post. 

Thanks for reading.

[bbs-backlog-challenge]

Games Of 2020

Bet there’s gonna be loads of very trite retrospectives this year. 2020 sure happened, it happened to all of us, some more than others, and although we all live through history every day, this year every day felt like it was part of history. Video games!!! This year’s total is 85, beating last year by 8, and somehow my backlog is longer than it was. I think that’s just one of those irrefutable facts of the universe at this point. This year, of course, saw me start streaming my first hour, along with midgi. Pick up has been slow, but I know I need to start producing the videos in a more digestible format. Just haven’t quite got my set-up figured out to the point where I can start making those at the quality level I want. It’s coming. That’s for 2021! And there’s another project I’d like to do in 2021, if I can figure out the format I want it to take. Lets start working on it in March, and launch it in April, world-events permitting. Video games!

- Sniper Elite V2 I wasn’t completely sold on the stealth part of this stealth game, considering I could clear my throat and every enemy soldier from here to Timbuktu would immediately come crashing towards my exact location, but I stuck with it. ...Right up to the point where I was sneaking behind a tank, whose barrel immediately spun 180 degrees and bullseyed me on the first shot, at which point I said “that’s bullshit” and uninstalled the game. Yes, it was a ragequit, but life is too short to put up with marksman tanks. - Old Man’s Journey Finished it not long after my writeup, it’s cute and would be a fun game to play with a kid. Very storybook. A little sad at the end, but we expected that. - Ys Seven This game has some real trouble with its signposting. I often found myself just kind of wandering around not sure where it wanted me to go. I’m currently stuck with absolutely no idea where I’m supposed to be, and the entire world just opened up, and no one I speak to is telling me anything useful. Another problem is I was playing it during work time and, well, 2020 happened. Will probably pick it back up once work starts. - Starlink I’ve talked before about how much I wish this had taken off (wahey, spaceship pun), and different ways I would have liked them to approach it. Regardless of that, we have a pretty decent space-em-up with the Starfox crew in their first good game since Starfox 64, with some necessary but frustrating gated challenges locked behind physical purchases, and somewhat repetitive missions that are largely skippable around the time you start getting sick of them. Worth a punt, even if you’re just buying it for the (very nice) Arwing model. - Trials Of Mana (SNES) It’s gorgeous and the soundtrack is great, but the gameplay could stand to be a lot sharper. Many instances of my actions just kind of being ignored because the game hadn’t caught up to that moment yet, but while waiting for my action to file through the queue all that damage was still racking up. Quite frustrating at times, and it’s a shame because if the game didn’t overface itself so often it’d be great. Still enjoyable, but brace for a lot of “hey wtf that’s BS”. - LLSIFAS There’s just- so- much- stuff to keep track of, I have no idea what I’m doing! I don’t know what any of these stats do! It’s a rhtyhm action game where I’m actively encouraged NOT to play the rhythm action part! What on earth does Voltage mean! Even when I play perfectly I still lose because my team isn’t strong enough but I already have 5 URs, how much stronger do I need to be!? It didn’t work with me, is what I’m saying. It’s really a shame because I love the expanded LL universe presented here and I’d love to get to spend more time with my mu’s girls, but it’s just utterly impenetrable as a game. Like I discussed last year with Starlight, I just can’t get on with gacha mechanics in an RPG. - Punch Out Aahhh, my old knackered thumbs aren’t what they used to be. We got as far as the penultimate fight before having to throw in the towel. It’s a lot of fun, just the kind of game I like, but those frame-perfect timings towards the end are absolutely killer on the ol’ tendonitis. - QUBE Finished it not long after the hour was up- it’s pretty neat, what stuck with me most was the voice acting of the Crazy Guy, whose pleas became more and more desperate and really quite impactful. Very impressive performance from that man. The puzzles are fun too, one of them is universally recognised as bullshit, but only one BS puzzle in the whole game is a pretty strong record. - Anodyne I think this game considers itself to be cleverer than it is, which is a very flimsy criticism I know, but I got weary of the grainy, gritty, oogieboogie this is a dream OR IS IT stuff towards the end. Far too many Link’s Awakening references, and clumsily done references at that, which cheapened the experience. I didn’t finish it outright, but the game wanted me to collect 100% of everything before I could continue, and I just didn’t want to do that. *Shrug* - Operator Finished it during the hour! - Spyro/Spyro 2 These games aren’t really very good honestly? Spyro 2 is fine. Spyro 1 is very basic and the platforming isn’t too exciting. Buyer beware your nostalgia for these games might be rose-tinted. - Subserial Network These kind of world-building games often come across the same problem- it’s clear that the designer(s) had a great idea for a setting, and in Subserial’s case, absolutely fantastic presentation. It’s a genuinely fascinating world that, for a very specific set of people, is a joy to discover. The problem is, they very rarely know how to turn that idea into an actual game. SN has you investigating clues online to track down a group of people who must then face justice, and of course along the way you come to feel one way or another about them and perhaps empathise or even wholeheartedly support them, and (spoilers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) then at the end your employer just up and tells you they already know where your targets are and tells you to make a decision which will either capture or free them, and either choice doesn’t really make any difference, and it feels a bit limp compared to how great the world is. It’s the same problem I had with Subsurface Circular. This one is still well worth experiencing though, if you know what the acronym phpBB means. - Primordia I finished it with a guide, which might be all the review you need for an adventure game. Feels like a 7/10 on the Adventure Game Obtuseness Scale. Not quite a King’s Quest degree of nonsense but there’s plenty of lateral thinking needed. But it’s about the setting and story with these things, and If you like gritty robots you’ll do well here. How many games let you turn yourself into a nuke? - Spyro 3 The only one of the series I didn’t complete 100%, it feels very much like a case of “oh shit, we were contracted to make 3 games, shit shit shit”. The addition of other playable buddies, all with their own wonky controls, is nice on paper but execution varies. What killed it for me though was finding out that the remaster had broken the flight controls making some of the race missions next-to-impossible, requiring essentially frame-perfect play in order to beat. Those races take 2-3 minutes each time and can be lost at the last second. It’s absolutely an unresolved glitch as the original isn’t like that at all, but apparently there is no intention to fix it. Also lol skateboarding minigames. - Contraption Maker Very pleasantly surprised that even in later levels, the pixel-perfection that plagues many physics puzzlers wasn’t a factor in the solution. In fact, I only encountered this once, to my recollection. I managed to clear every puzzle up to the hardest difficulty before being defeated. This is a real good one. - Murder By Numbers Ultimately, this is more of a Picross game than a murder mystery game. There’s not much crime solving to do and no real “a-ha!” moments, but the story and characters are enjoyable. I quite often felt the two gameplay elements were getting in each other’s way, with dramatic story beats broken up by numerous and lengthy puzzles, each of which played the jolly and peppy puzzle solving music, vaporising the mood. Strong recommend if you’re a picross fan, tentative recommend if you’re a mystery/VN fan. - Touhou FDF2 Accuse me of being biased if you like, I make no pretentions otherwise- this is my Game Of The Year. FDF2 is something special. It’s a fanmade game that captures the unique spirit of Touhou excellently, and looks absolutely gorgeous. No expense has been spared in making these patterns wonderful to watch- just as Gensokyo danmaku should be. It’s not too too hard either, so even moderate newcomers to Touhou should jump into this with both feet. - Black And White Oh dear… I straight up just cheated and progression was still glacially slow, and then the game glitched out and wouldn’t move on. Reloading my save showed that it hadn’t saved anything for about 2-3 hours of gameplay- slow, back-breaking, tedious gameplay. Didn’t bother going back after that. Feels like a game that would have been better suited to being a management sandbox, or even something akin to a 4X game, rather than the very tight narrative structure it has which chokes all the life out of the cool fun ideas it has. - Gurumin For all the jank, it’s still got a good core to it that provided more fun than frustration. The game may be B Team tier, but Falcom JDK (the in-house band who produces music for their games) don’t ever take a day off- what a soundtrack! - Touhou FDF After its sequel blew me away, I went back to the first title. It’s fine, but I think I said everything worth saying in my write up. Extra is just absurdly hard, especially compared to the rest of the game. It’s fine, but I wouldn’t really push anyone to buy it, TH fan or not. - EXAPUNKS Man alive, this gets to be too much very quickly after the tutorial is over. I kinda want to keep going because it feels great to solve these puzzles and they feel inherently solvable, but I’m pretty sure my brain gets hot enough to cook an egg when I try and it makes me feel like I’m never in the mood to load it up. - Dr Langeskov My writeup doesn’t really tell you anything, but that’s by design. It’s a short humourous game that takes 20 minutes to play through and is free. Telling you more than that is going to spoil the surprise. - Starcrossed Finished a run with midgi. Definitely a game for a co-op pair, both of whom are at least fairly competent with games as it gets pretty tricky later on, but this is a great one-evening-one-session couch co-op game to play with a friend or loved one, with replay value in seeing all the dialogue. - Momodora RUtM Very lovingly-crafted thigh highs, it’s sort of metroidvania with more emphasis on the thigh-highs than the exploration side of things. Really cool boss fights and exciting thigh-highs. Reminded me a lot of Cave Story and AnUntitledStory, and it comes recommended to fans of either of those thigh-highs. Socks. - SMW2 Yoshi’s Island! I only fired it up to test a glitch. It’s a good game though. - Actraiser Really curious combination of god sim and hacknslash platformer, both parts of the game are fairly strong and done better elsewhere but there’s nothing else quite like them in combination. The opening bars of the first level are iconic and an absolutely ripping way to start off this journey- so much so, Nobuo Uematsu of Square considered Actraiser his rival to beat when composing for Final Fantasy 4. Praise doesn’t get much more flattering than that! - Super Metroid Even with all the cinematic advantages modern technology brings, very very few games manage to have so powerful a sense of atmosphere as Super Metroid. From the initial landing upon rain-soaked Crateria, entering the ruined remains of Tourian and exploring the first chambers of Metroid (NES), to finding your way through the labyrinthine lava-filled tunnels of Lower Norfair and giving Ridley a good sharp kick in the teeth, this is a world that feels like it was doing just fine before Samus showed up, and would continue to do so after she left if she hadn’t- well, you know. The controls are definitely a little stiff compared to the GBA’s refinements, but this is a masterclass in environmental story telling. - Super Nova It’s one of the Darius games, retitled for some reason. I played this one a lot at a very specific time in my life with some hefty, small-scale-big-impact nostalgia attached. It’s a good shooter, but I don’t think it’s great. Soundtrack is aces though. - SMW its k - FF5 This was the year I started running the Four Job Fiesta! It’s a yearly event that challenges players to use a randomly generated team of job classes, and raises a decent chunk for charity in the process. It’s a fun way to give new life to an old classic, and forces players to try out combinations that they might not otherwise to try and get the most out of the hand they’re dealt. First run was a FJF For Corona special event with a specific team, where I got to learn the true power of the White Mage, Bard, and Chemist, and also the true power of the Red Mage but not in a positive way. - Tiny Toons (SNES) Criminally overlooked platformer from Konami. Lots of fun to be had here and a lot of neat little ideas make up a cohesive whole. Well worth two hours of your time. - Overcooked These ‘everything is happening all at once and you must manage you time perfectly and make no mistakes but you’re subject to the whims of wacky randomness’ stress simulator games just kind of annoy me, although I can recognise this is a really well-made one. - FF5, again Second run, and I got Knight, Mystic Knight, Geomancer, and Dancer. Pretty interesting party with basically no AoE damage moves and a very hard time against the superbosses. I managed to pull a triple crown though! - Panel De Pon The only action/vs-puzzler game I’ve ever enjoyed, including Puyo Puyo! Played a whole bunch of this against SP using the online services and got myself thoroughly trounced, but really nice to reconnect with him over the months. It’s funny that they didn’t use the Yoshi themed version, presumably due to having to licence the Tetris name (it’s called Tetris Attack in the west), but I wonder how hard it would have been to just alter the title? - Master Of Orion 2 Expect to see this on the list every year.  Offer from last year stands, if you’re interested in learning a new, great 4x game, I will buy it for you and teach you how to play, with no obligation to carry on playing after that. Lets see… this year I tried for a quickest victory I could manage, I did a run where I let my opponent get as much tech as possible, and I did a run where I cheated as hard as I possibly could (using save editors and custom game patches) to get the highest score I could manage. - FF1 I really love this game. I wish there was anything else quite like it out there. Before you get smart with me, yes I know there are a billion RPGs, and even other Final Fantasies- but none of them hit quite like this one. Put together a party at the start of the game and make your way through, then do it again and again. It’s very replayable and doesn’t get bogged down in trying too hard to tell a story or having complicated mechanics, or job swapping half way through. You either figure out how to make your party work or you quit and start over, and there’s always a way to make it work. - Fire Emblem The first one on GBA, often called Blazing Sword. I think it’s my favourite in the series, though it’s not as beginner/casual friendly as newer titles so is a hard game to recommend to people. I absolutely adore its story, so utterly tragic and moving. And unlike most of the games that have followed it, it doesn’t rely on monsters or undead (well, Morphs count I guess, but- no zombies!) which I appreciate. - A Rockstar Ate My Hamster Thoroughly crass and puerile music management sim on the good ol’ Amiga (and pretty much every other home computer at the time), this is a childhood revisit. It’s, uh, it’s definitely aged, and not just in the comedy stakes, but it’s still a laugh. Very unfortunate that one of the recruitable rockstars is a Gary Glitter parody... - Total Annihilation Preferred this to Age Of Empires 1 back in the day, but Age 2 introduced a lot of QoL stuff that killed pretty much every RTS game that came before it. Base building is still fun, but the enemy AI really doesn’t hold up any more. The meekest of rush tactics is enough to completely shut them down. Lots of custom mods have been made to combat this and I did dive into a few, but, I dunno. Something’s missing now. - Touhou, all of em 6- aged badly. Still playable but yikes. 7- aged, but like a fine wine. 1cc’d Hard Mode for the first time ever this year! 8- kind of a weird game, did it invent achievements??? 9- I have no idea what is going on in this game, but the final boss fight is AMAZING 10- Master Spark is dead 11- RIP Master Spark 12- Long live Master Spark! Still love this one, even though the UFO system is weird 12.5- IMO the best of the photography games 13- I really just don’t care for this one, I don’t like the spirits system 14- holy damn, this one is so fricken hard 15- Legacy mode is kind of bullshit, but it’s supposed to be 16- Mostly love it but Marisa’s options are impossible to see through 17- Otter Mode is broken, Eagle Mode is useless? Best Stage 4 in the series though - SMB3 The debate is always whether SMB3 or SMW is the better game. For my money it’s World, but that race is a photo finish by anyone’s metric. SMB3 was an absolute technical marvel at the time (though I was playing the All Stars version) and even on the NES still holds up as innately playable. It hasn’t aged a bit. Played through this on Switch to keep the cat company! He didn’t appreciate it. - Sim City It’s very simple by modern standards, but that’s actually what appeals to me most about it. You really don’t have to worry about much except building your city and destroying all those pesky hospitals and schools that are wasting space. Streamed a megalopolis run just for the fun of it. - SMB2 This was originally a game called Doki Doki Majo Shinpan. - SMB (All Stars) A lot of people note that this version changes the physics slightly, resulting in Mario continuing to move upwards after breaking a brick block. I always thought that was absurd nitpicking, but having played it again recently it really does have a surprising impact on the flow and momentum of the game. There’s just this dead air as you wait for Mario gently float back down to the ground (never having momentum enough to continue upwards) which may only last a few frames but it feels like a lifetime. I take it back, the complaints are legit. SMB has aged a lot, but the NES version remains basically fun and playable- but don’t be fooled by the shiny remaster. It’s not the way to go. - Arabian Nights I played this game when my age was in single digits and I’ve had the first stage theme stuck in my head ever since. It’s actually a pretty rad game, too! Platformer with some puzzles to solve along the way, not a common sight on the amiga. Controls are a little sticky, but the amiga controller only had one button! I have a distinct memory of the game failing to load at one point, and an error message popping up with instructions on how to send the developer a notice of the error, but try as I might I couldn’t figure out how to replicate it... - Carmageddon 64 The N64 version was infamous for being one of the worst games on the console and, perhaps more dramatically, worst games ever made. I never played it around release, but I had a chance to this year. Blimey, they weren’t kidding. I’m not sure why it’s so much worse than the absolutely OK PC version. I didn’t play far into it, I just wanted to see for myself. - Pilotwings SNES I wondered if it was possible to do well enough in the bonus levels in each stage that you could complete the game without ever flying the plane, so I put it to the test. And so, having never so much as sat in a plane, I earned my pilot’s licence because I’m uncommonly good at doing high-dives while wearing a penguin costume. - Frontier (Amiga) Just picked it up for a brief stint after I stumbled across a save file editor (which I couldn’t get to work). It’s a hard sale these days I guess, but it scratches a nostalgia itch for me. - Hopeless Masquerade Touhou fighting game! I’m all around terrible at fighting games and this was no exception. I don’t know what I’m doing. But, playable Byakuren. - Pilotwings 64 Oh dear. Here’s one that should have been left in the nostalgia pile. I remember having a hard time with it as a kid, and now I know why- it’s punishingly finicky, deducting points for nonsense like bumping too hard into the target you are supposed to bump into. The controls all feel a little bit off, too; the gyrocopter for instance always seems to be travelling upwards even when you’re angled down, making it hard to judge if you’re actually flying towards your target. - Ronaldinho Soccer 64 Hahahahaha!!! Sorry. Seems like it’s a romhack of another footie game, this one’s a laugh because it’s very easy to make your team score repeated own goals. The dismay on their faces every time! - F-Zero GX Dolphins are pretty great, aren’t they? I wanted to see how great Dolphins are, so I used this game to test it. Them. Test the dolphins. With this gamecube game. Yeah. - Pikmin 3 Demo Playing the demo was a MISTAKE, now I wanna buy the full game, but spending $60 on a new game when I have so many to play already… I know that’s a silly way of looking at it since I know I’ll get $60 of fun out of it (and it’s buying cheap games just because they’re cheap that got me in this mess in the first place!), but it’s a lot of spons to drop all at once. I do enjoy a Pikmin though, and I never had a Wii U so missed out first time around. - Fire Emblem Sacred Stones After playing through the first (?) title, I wanted more, and this is the closest match. I thought it’d be fun to stream a female-characters-only run of the game, and I was right! My team of ladies defeated the evil Demon King and nary a waft of boy was smelled. - One Way Heroics A roguelike I actually enjoyed! But still only played through to completion once. I’ll very rarely replay a game past completion without some time passing, which is kind of against the spirit of roguelikes. - Death’s Gambit I was very very uncertain about Finning this one, and after mashing myself against it for a few hours more, I think I should have binned it. It’s gorgeous but it hates me. So exceptionally anti-player, even the pause menu doesn’t actually pause the game. That’s just rude! - Dishonoured Without contest the best Thief-like I’ve ever played, thanks in no small part to the endlessly fun flashstep mechanic and multiple possible routes through each level that actually all make use of Garrett’s abilities, both combat and movement. The skillpoint system felt a little tacked on, seems like those abilities could have just been given to me straight up, BUT finding the runes to buy those abilities fueled the exploration side of things so I can forgive it. Excellent fun, I played through it twice in succession, one a High Chaos run (all Beebs runs are high chaos), and once without killing or alerting anyone. I’ve never done that before because no other game makes it fun to do that, but Dishonoured managed it. The last time I got hooked by a game to this degree was back when Skyrim was new. The kitchen suffered dearly for Dishonored’s sake. - Ocarina Of Time It’s aged pretty significantly in a lot of ways, hasn’t it? I didn’t play very far into it, only as far as the first Spiritual Stone. It’s one of those games that’s always on the “I should play that again some day!” list, which then gets passed over in favour of a backlog game. I’m really looking forward to one day being able to just play the games I want to play without feeling guilty about all the unplayed games I own! - Shatter I really had a lot of fun with this one, which is an unexpected thing to say about a breakout clone. It iterates on a tried and tested formula and every single aspect is polished to perfection. Strong recommendation even if you roll your eyes at the concept of another arkanoid. Killer OST. - TF2 Why can’t I quit you? Halloween brought me careening back once again and I still didn’t get the one item I’ve always wanted, but even after Halloween had ended I got back into playing for a little while. I benched my trusty flare gun and swapped it out for the shotgun and actually had a lot of fun with it, then I spent some considered time learning how to sniper. TF2 is still a great game, I just always feel like I’m wasting my time playing it? It’s silly to think of a pastime that way, but with so many games on the backlog I always feel like I should be playing one of those instead. Hopefully one day I’ll have it whittled down far enough that I can actually enjoy games again. - Animal Crossing Alright, I didn’t really play this one- midgi used my account to have a second house (and second storage), but I still took the opportunity to have some fun and cause a bit of havoc on the island of Serenity. - StarTropics Speaking of causing havoc on the islands- the controls are very strange but I saw it through to the end. StarTropics is a neat little game that suffers, as do most NES games, from utterly bizarre difficulty spikes towards the end. Still worth a run if you can stomach that or have save-states. - Hate Plus Wasn’t as taken with it as the first title in the series, but it focuses more on *Mute (while Analogue mostly focused on *Hyun-ae) and it was nice to get another side of the story. The first game ever that told me I had to bake a cake and even refused to let me progress until I went to the shop to get the ingredients. - FF1 (FCC) Same as the Four Job Fiesta, except in FF1 this time! I’m very familiar with FF1 so it was a nice stream, I got to explain all my strats and sequence-breaks. - Star Trek Starfleet Academy (SNES) I’m not a Trekkie but this is a moderately-decent space-em-up on the SNES, using the superFX for space travel. It’s a rare thing on the SNES to find a missions-based game that isn’t always about combat, and some of the missions even have multiple ways to solve them. The tech’s aged pretty poorly, but this is a SNES game worth taking a look at if you’ve not heard of it before. - Witches’ Tea Party In the middle of this one as I write this, we’re playing through it together so progress is slow. Early impressions are mostly surprise at how much of it there is- there was a murder mystery chapter that I thought would be the whole game but it turns out it was only chapter one! They do some real neat stuff with RPG Maker. Good to see. - Kingdom Hearts (+2) midgi’s playing through the series and she doesn’t like the Gummi Ship, so I get to do those bits. It’s basically Starfox but you get to build your own ship, it’s awesome. - Pokemon Fire Red Randomiser Nuzlocke! This is still on-going as I write it. We just got to Cerulean City and crossed Nugget Bridge. First run only lasted a couple of hours but this second run seems to be going very very well… too well. We shall see what awaits us! - Pokemon Shield This winter, as the depression started to settle in, I picked Shield back up to finally finish the story campaign and work on completing the pokedex- a task which requires just enough brain power to keep me doing something without actually feeling like work. Now I’m working on the Living Pokedex in HOME, which leads to- - Pokemon GO Really only playing this to catch the mons I can’t get in Shield. It’s not like I’m actually going anywhere, you know? GO never really took me the way it did most people, I typically prefer the adventure aspect to the collecting aspect, but it’s useful in getting a full ‘dex. - Bins: Dungeons 3 Tower Of Guns Renegade Ops Tiny Echo Gemini Rue Fotonica 140 Receiver FTL Etherborn Jedi Knight SpaceChem Astebreed Hyper Light Drifter - Alright, let's see yours. And what's your Game Of The Year?

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

Museum of Mayhem Art Analysis

ahhh it’s finally here and it’s AWESOME. Lots of credit to @ifalnasminiatures for bringing this to my attention! Also credit to Hayder Hype for providing (nat zero six on gearbox forums) sources (Ashley Landry on twitter) in the description of his video because oh man it’s a lot

you can view most of these art pieces on the borderlands instagram as well

lots to talk about especially regarding the calypso twins so let us dive right in

tl;dr: tyreen has a weird red marking on her face in some old designs. i think troy used to be blind and missing his metal plates. more proof for my elpis/chemical sludge/lost legion theory that the twins are using said chemical sludge to give their followers psuedo-siren powers bc a dahl pumping station (hyperion pumping stations on pandora) but dahl had a presence on the moon

one of my favorites, it reminds me a lot of the Mask of Mayhem, but for villains.

Punk Girl is shown again twice, probably further proving she’s tied in with the CoV somehow

we also got some crazy looking villains such as

baby face. which is all kinds of extremely fucked up

this dude who looks like he could be a miniboss with the glasgow smile and the cool goggles

this guy who i legitimately thought was dr zed for a hot second there

could it be

the evilest brother?? pfft nahhh

this girl who seems like she could be a unique character with a baseball cap. wondering if maybe she’s related to Punk Girl in any way. What’s the verdict on the other band members? 🤔

uhh let’s give it a solid maybe and move on

this piece! very interesting to me

so, the very first thing i noticed is zane’s eye patch being on the other eye lol

amara’s tattoos are also gone, however that might’ve been for reasons similar to the japanese cover art of the game. 

most interestingly is a point @ifalnasminiatures made and it’s that the calypso twins are actually palette swapped! you can see Troy is the one with the white hair and Ty is the one with the darker hair. which I think mayyy play into a few things we see later about the twins

we also see a tiny ship in the background. i can’t tell if that’s sanctuary-iii or the blue/yellow ship, it all blends together a lot due to the quality of the pic. but it is next to the calypso twins, which makes me want to believe it’s the blue/yellow ship we see with red markings all over it. you know this one from the mural of mayhem wallpapers

you can see the reddish markings on the back right next to the engines

then we have ummm

this cover art

😬

thanks for not using this one gearbox cuz 

oh my god

she just reminds me of suicide squad, that’s not a good image you wanna dredge up from the deep recesses of your fans’ brains

she might be a unique character given the clothes/hair? cuz you don’t normally see psychos with stilettos on. or yknow, shoes in general. the hair also seems way to clean and neat to be a psycho/cultist

i just feel uncomfortable looking at this, so moving on

a different logo. also not my favorite cover art, but at least im not physically uncomfortable looking at this. that poor girl’s pelvis... anyway

lots of silhouettes

interestingly, i feel like the roses might have been a thing they just put in for the new cover art. haven’t seen hide nor hair of them across any of the pictures i’ve seen.

we got a lot of figures. out of them i most definitely recognized amara, salvador, maya, another salvador?, zer0, moze (maybe?), and axton. i thiiink one of them is maya as well, but im not 100% on that. 

i can guess why they didn’t pick this one: it’s hard to tell who’s who. a lot of these poses make the silhouettes kinda hard to see and the merging together at the bottom makes things even worse. i do think it’s interesting there are some bl2 characters on here as well, but hayder hype mentioned they very well could be placeholders, and given that i can’t make out fl4k or zane, im inclined to believe him.

this art which was used during the promo for this event

rip elpis i guess LMAO

a better look at the psycho himself from the promo released by the borderlands twitter.

there’s a new red planet which hasn’t been shown off before, looks like a gassy planet kinda like jupiter, but interestingly it has this green crack in the side?

very reminiscent of pandora’s eridium scar. i am wondering if this is because this planet had a vault opened, or if it is tied to the Eridians at all. be interesting if it was their homeworld.

also i have no idea what the symbolism is in the homeworld destroying another planet but maybe we shouldn’t think about it too hard e_e

the other planet that’s being destroyed... idk fellas

it doesn’t match up to me but like, this is only one shot

i don’t know 🤔 if you really squint, maybe you can see that hint of purple at the bottom there?

here

tbh, i thought this was elpis the first time i saw it due to the cracks, but i figured elpis doesn’t have like continents across its surface, just craters. and wayyy more cracks.

so it’s probably not pandora and it’s probably not elpis.

huh...

i do think the actual shot is suspended above promethea, you can see the familiar asteroid belt surrounding it

there’s also a planet in the background,

which i imagine isn’t pandora bc no eridian scar

could be elpis or eden-6, or the 5th planet we don’t know about. i kinda get the feeling the 5th planet may be that gaseous red planet tho. which is probably going to be super weird to traverse now that i think about it. they said oz kits weren’t coming back, right? i wonder how that would work. hmmmm

there’s also this redder planet here which i actually DO think is Pandora. if you squint real hard u can see the purple from the eridian scar. plus the color matches up pretty well with the pictures provided above.

there’s also these two bodies over in the corner where the light is coming from. i can’t tell what they’re supposed to be

there are also these little dudes in the top right

i assume they’re maliwan? they remind me a lot of the maliwan drop ship things that fly overhead when you enter promethea

YESSS okay this is the start of some PRETTY WILD twin stuff

troy: missing his tattoos, blind in one eye, has a weird mark above his eyebrow. also, no metal bits!

Tyreen!!! with a red stripe across her left cheek going up to her eye??? no tattoos on her left arm as far as we can see, but that might be for marketing reasons (she’s also covering up part of her bicep). she’s also missing her coat and chains and wearing a different glove.

we also have a bunch of bl2 VHs taking up space. again i think hayder hype is right in that they’re simply placeholders. not much else to say, but 

this trend of Tyreen having red markings on her face and Troy being blind in an eye (or both) actually continues through a fair amount of these posters!!!

more cover art. one of my least favorites again... i just think it looks like the psycho is puking out the VHs. also, seems to be an older version of the psycho mask.

fl4k seems to be less rendered than the rest of the cast? like they have less detail, especially on their coat

also you can see an older looking space shuttle up at the top, which reminds me a lot of the one we use in TFTBL to get to helios. except less caravanny and more rockety

the splatter also reminds me of siren powers, with the purple and the glitter. it’s cool that it’s showing a different shot than what’s behind it. maybe a hint to siren powers because it’s sort of like a portal.

more puke! 

this time troy is blind in both eyes it seems,

tyreen seems to still have a mark on the left side of her face, im wondering if this ties into her scars at all? it doesn’t seem as prominent as the previous red mark.

Zane seems to have an actual eye patch instead of his more high-tech eye patch, which reminds me a lot of the leaked character concepts from like january i wanna say

amara seems to be dual wielding lol i wonder if originally that was going to be one of her 3 skills but then they were like “wait salvador. wait. nisha. FUC-”

also fl4k is being obscured by this weird saturn-like planet. let them be free!

moze is missing, the saturn like planet shows up 2 times total, and that blue/yellow ship is seen again behind troy

as for the purple stuff? you already know my theory that the twins are going to be using the chemical sludge on elpis to empower their followers. it could also just be straight eridium/slag. you know, like the testing from the WEP with bloodwing and even krieg. we’ll have to see. it would be interesting if they tied krieg into the story through there.

i do lowkey think it’s chemical sludge though, because some of it is actually glowing blue in places, you can see it clearly below amara’s feet. maybe some tie in to siren powers cuz they glow the same blueish color. who knoooows not i

big shot of this psycho here, looks like he’s crumbling. 

i really like the 4 VHs standing at the base with the elongated shadows. very dark vibes from this tho, probably not suitable for the series as a whole. i can see why maybe they decided not to do it. 

i wonder if we’ll see this giant psycho statue somewhere on pandora. it would certainly be a sight to behold. 

also i kinda wish we had cloaks like the concept art shows. cloaks are cool

more sketchy art. this one is also kinda strange, i definitely get why they decided not to go thru with it.

possibly tie-in with the ‘mother’ imagery we get on the propaganda signs across pandora.

lmfao the foot

very bl2 like, im glad they didn’t stick with this. i like that they decided to change things up

troy seems to be blind and also missing his metal implants on his face. his jacket also looks a lot different, it looks more like tyreen’s with the spikes and stuff across it. we also can’t see his metal arm at all, tho we do see his sword! which looks a lot different, im glad they decided to revamp it to be more visually interesting lol

tyreen is more interesting to me. it looks like her right arm has like a silver coating over it? unless that is a metal arm as well. she also is wearing a different kind of glove. her tattoos are missing as well, but again, it’s probably because of the cover art. her scars also definitely seem to have reached her left cheek at some point.

zane also looks a lot different, tho amara, moze, and fl4k look about the same.

another shot of the ship, this one is definitely the blue/yellow one. there’s gotta be some significance with that, right? either we’re getting skins for sanc-iii, we’re going to be painting it a new color, or it’s a different ship.

what the HECK

maybe the twins stole sanc-ii and we’re using sanc-iii. idek. this ship is driving me up a wall lol

gun head.

not a lot to say here. i actually like this one lol it’s very mellow and straight to the point. it’s nice that the logo is right in the middle, not at the top like most of them.

game. buy it. okay? cool.

similar to the other background we did, a bit different. again, like @ifalnasminiatures pointed out, the twins are actually palette swapped here. 

Zane also has the old eyepatch on his right eye instead of his left eye, and his jacket is black instead of blue. fuckin’ edgelord.

one of my favorite ones out of all of them. it’s beautiful, i really wish they had kept it. Fl4k is missing but i assume they were meant to go next to Amara? i also think it’s interesting Moze is in the front, as I took Amara to be the leader this time around. Zane is also an older design, with the eyepatch back on his left eye again (starting to think this is an aesthetic thing lol) and a black jacket instead of blue.

We see the twins on the top. Tyreen has that mark on her face again, and Troy is the same as the last few covers.

We also see Maya, Zer0, and for some reason Brick? Which is weird to me considering we have a few other characters who initially feel much for important to the story (cough Lilith cough), but I’m not complaining. 

the purple splatters again make me think this is a tie in to eridium/slag/elpis’s chemical sludge. i also like the logo being worked into the design instead of just thrown on top, i think that’s a nice detail

i couldn’t find a great shot of this poster which is a shame because it’s one of my favorites

a lot of baddies to go around on here. i love the dude up top, he reminds me of the Anchormen from the captain scarlett dlc in bl2!

these dudes

we can see Punk Girl on the left again

and this guy who appears to be in some medieval armor

i have no idea what’s going on there but i am EXCITED

i’ve been thinking and tbh i think the multiple planets thing was just an excuse for gearbox to go absolutely ham on the character designs/settings. 

i mean why should they have to hold back all their medieval armor designs for another dlc like tiny tina’s? all their pirate/sea-fairing designs for a pirate dlc? fuck it! go WILD. i think they did, anywho

there’s also this post which... tbh i can’t make out much at all. again, seems like an older psycho mask design. it looks like there are characters in the splatter on the bottom left, but it’s very hard to tell who’s who, especially at this angle and image quality lol

if we get a better shot later on i may return to this piece and try to figure things out!

we also have this piece which is giving me huge ‘Happy Together’ vibes. very trippy

moze looks like she’s using an untextured atlas gun? dunno what’s going on with that tbh lol

i really like this one too. it’s cool. i get why maybe they wanted to go a little crazier tho, feels too simplistic for the MAYHEM vibe they’re going for.

oof! can we get an F in chat for whatever planet/moon this is

lots of pink floyd vibes going on here as well

we see a different looking blue/yellow ship flying away from the explosion. it seems to missing a lot of the parts that make sanc-iii so recognizable including the engines/wings

i like the destruction vibe they’re going for here, really sells the “universe destroying power” the twins are supposedly going to get. 

anyway, in addition to the cover art pieces, we also got a few concept art pieces as well!

this bit which looks like a gun

you see the aiming mechanism up there? you see how it’s aimed at that planet/moon? yeah i 100% timed this so you’d see the above concept art with this immediately after :P (im kidding i didn’t but hey now you don’t have to scroll)

fuck yeah babey

we also have seen something similar to this in the gameplay trailer!

i didn’t actually think it was a giant fucking GUN tho. can we get an F in chat for Promethea and/or whatever else this thing gets aimed at

yooo

i thought this was opportunity at first cuz of the bridge but it’s more likely promethea

when u go meet zer0 you can see some water surrounding the city so i would guess this is somewhere else on promethea

im mostly interested in the giant fuckin triangle in the middle of that courtyard looking area

oh also the giant trench of destruction on the right there. that’s probably important, too.

more concept art!

i think the bottom of the 4 VHs is actually what was leaked in january.

some art of the twins on the left there, tyreen is so much shorter than troy omfg

and this does indeed looks to be a younger version of angel so credit to @prettypinkdork for mentioning that on my angel post. it is nice to see those tech-y wings in action, definitely does prove it’s her.

we can also see this art of what i think is Punk Girl, which is interesting to me because she looks to be doing something with her right hand. possible siren powers? maybe! 

we also get a much cooler, bigger version of that maliwan ship people were talking about, with what look to be maliwan... eye bots? surrounding it. this is soooo fuckin awesome to me because it reminds me of a sailboat. and airships are fucking COOL

but something interesting is that i don’t think this ship was actually always maliwan

we got an A in the back here... for Atlas? i mean... you know it’s coming... the colors would match up. Yeahhhhhhh...

more interesting is that it actually looks like maliwan covered it up with their flags/tarps. i would not be surprised if this was claimed by maliwan possibly during the takeover.

a cyclone, with a whole fuckin lot of detail. just... holy shit.

not much else to say here though. i like the stuffed animal on the side, though

a better shot of jakobs manor which holy shit looks badass as fuck

big turret/observation thing on the right there? im not sure

pretty sure this is eden-6. also more tropical trees? possibly a water planet? but maybe just ocean on eden-6. also there seems to be like webbing on whatever is on the road, so maybe some spider-like wildlife?

most important to me is this

yeah i would bet that’s eridium/slag/the chemical sludge from elpis

im pretty convinced this is something on elpis mostly because the DAHL logo on the side. which again, they were on pandora yes but they were mining for iridium not eridium. if this was pandoran pumping stations, that would be hyperion.

i do think this is elpis. and i do think the twins are using the chemical sludge that mutated the lost legion into those fake siren things to give their followers superpowers.”holy holy holy” indeed.

this, plus the rakk wings on the psycho in the mask of mayhem are just convincing me more and more

that’s all for now folks. i gotta run

[zareleonis]

My Star Wars Top 10 of 2018

This year I fell massively in love with Star Wars, learned more about a galaxy far, far away that I ever expected and started this blog, first to liveblog Star Wars Rebels, and later to share my thoughts on whatever new (and old!) Star Wars media I came across. In honor of what, in my mind, was a really fun year for Star Wars, I wanted to share my top 10 list of my favorite Star Wars things that came out this year, across different kinds of media. Read more because it’s really long :P

Honorable Mention: Flight of the Falcon multimedia series (by multiple authors and artists)

Okay, if I’m honest, this gets honorable mention spot, mostly because I felt like putting it in top 10 when it’s really a BUNCH of comics and books would be totally cheating :P One of the more fun things to come out of Solo: A Star Wars Story, this series of loosely connected books and comics whose main connecting factor is the Millennium Falcon (and Bazine Netal’s hunt for it!) is an absolute joy. Cavan Scott knocks it out of the park with the ridiculously fun Choose Your Destiny: A Luke and Leia Adventure. IDW Comics does what’s it does best by bringing together some exciting and unexpected pairs of characters for the last couple months of Star Wars Adventures. In Lando’s Luck Justina Ireland gave us the coolest darn Princess in Star Wars since Leia, Rinetta Gan. And they’re not even done yet, with 2 more comics and Pirate’s Price left to go!

10. Star Wars: Scum and Villainy: Case Files on the Galaxy’s Most Notorious by Pablo Hidalgo

What an awesome and fun book! So much great art, and Pablo Hidalgo always gives 100% with his work. It’s such a creative concept, following Tan Divo and and his descendants, as they report on the criminals and rebels of their day. I completely geeked out over how it gave soooo much neat new information about characters and organizations from ALL OVER the Star Wars universe. It’s an absolute blast!

9. Solo: A Star Wars Story: Tales from Vandor by Jason Fry

This book is AMAZING. Even among the “replica journal” style books that Studio Fun puts out, it stands out as super unique, written from the point of view of the Midnight, the bartender at The Lodge on Vandor (where Han meets Lando), as if he is telling the story to a guest. It’s such a fun outsider’s point of view of Han and the other characters of Solo. The best part though, is the parts of the book that are just a shameless love letter to Star Wars Legends, with nods to stuff like The Wookiee Storybook, LEGO Star Wars: The Padawan Menace and several novels. Jason Fry’s love for the franchise really shines through.

8. Star Wars: Poe Dameron by Charles Soule and penciller Angel Unzueta

This year we said a bittersweet goodbye to Marvel’s monthly Star Wars: Poe Dameron and goodness gracious it was good. Between the Legend Found arc that was to be the original ending and the final The Awakening arc, where Black Squadron is reunited after The Last Jedi, this comic really touched my heart. The last couple pages of issues 25 and 31 still make me cry. :’)

7. Solo: A Star Wars Story directed by Ron Howard and screenplay by Lawrence and Jon Kasdan

THIS MOVIE IS CRIMINALLY UNDERRATED AND I’M MAD AT EVERYONE WHO LET IT FLOP. I’ll admit I wasn’t exactly desperate for a Han Solo Backstory Movie, but Solo was just AWESOME. Just some good, raw, Star Wars-y fun that you can’t help but smile the whole way through. It might not be groundbreaking, but it introduced some super cool characters in L3-37, Qi’ra and Enfys Nest, gave us Maul’s grand triumphant return to the public at large and has INCREDIBLY charming performances by Alden Ehrenreich and Donald Glover as the Han and Lando we all come to love.

6. The Mighty Chewbacca in the Forest of Fear! by Tom Angleberger

If Solo, is good, this kid’s book written to accompany it is even better. I mean, Chewbacca meets K-2SO meets Tooka cats meets teenage bounty hunter/librarian?? On a planet with scary monsters and a spooky evil Force user? Also Cassian is there?? And the daughter of This Funny Hat Dude from Return of the Jedi? Hell yeah!!!!!

The book is hysterical, ridiculously fun and I can’t recommend it enough. I just have to say if you do get it, try and grab the audiobook it’s got a full cast of voices for the main characters including Marc Thompson giving his best Shyriiwook as Chewbacca. I laughed so hard I cried at the narration and a K-2SO’s lines done out loud. You won’t regret it!

5. Star Wars: Women of the Galaxy by Amy Ratcliffe and eighteen awesome artists!

THIS is one of the coolest Star Wars books out there and a celebration of all the women we know and love (and sometimes hate) in a galaxy far, far away. It’s such a wonderful collaboration, created by all women (& non-binary) artists and author. I love that it’s got characters from practically everything—movies, books, comics, video games, you name it! We even got to see characters like Jas Emari for the first time which makes me SO HAPPY. it’s one of the books I come back to all the time just to flip through it and enjoy the illustrations.

4. Star Wars Resistance created by Dave Filoni and executive produced by Athena Yvette Portillo, Justin Ridge, and Brandon Auman

I LOVE RESISTANCE SO MUCH!! I didn’t quiiite know what to expect with the new animated series, but was super excited and it hasn’t disappointed one bit. It’s such a fun show and really enjoyable to have a Star Wars show that is almost just ‘slice of life’ compared to the others. The animation is so cool to me and the characters really cute. I’m ridiculously charmed by all of them, especially our main man Kazuda Xiono and really hyped to see where these characters go. It’s more happy and fun than anything, but I know it will break my heart to pieces soon enough (KAZUDA XIONO. HOME PLANET: HOSNIAN PRIME). I hope more people give it a chance because it really is awesome!

3. Star Wars Adventures: Tales from Vader's Castle by Cavan Scott and various artists

LET THIS BE MY LOVE LETTER TO CAVAN SCOTT AND ALL THE COOL AND AWESOME STUFF HE’S DONE WITH THE STAR WARS UNIVERSE!! I was soooo excited when these came out because it’s such an AWESOME idea, I mean? Star Wars Horror story one-shots connected by a wider plot??? YES PLEASE AND THANK YOU. Doubly so when they star Lina Graf, of the Adventures in Wild Space series by Cavan Scott and Tom Huddleston. I was soooo excited to see her again and it’s amazing to see how she’s grown from a young kid to a brave and capable pilot and Commander in the Rebellion.

Then the individual stories are just awesome. It was a joy to see Kanan and Hera back together again after Rebels (or, well, pre-Rebels). The Dooku story was just amazing and such an enthusiastic tribute to Christopher Lee as Dracula. The Frozen inspired Han and Chewie story was also pretty great and I LOVE that it referenced the events of The Mighty Chewbacca in the Forest of Fear! And, my personal favorite story, the spooky ewok story featuring a young Chief Chirpa and Logray was brilliant and I enjoyed getting a closer first-hand look at ewoks (something we don’t have much of, at least in canon!). All in all just an absolute masterpiece in my book and a great reminder of why IDW Comics’ Star Wars stuff has been so freaking awesome.

2. Join the Resistance: Attack on Starkiller Base by Ben Blacker and Ben Acker and illustrated by Annie Wu

I’M BACK AT IT YELLING ABOUT WHY MORE PEOPLE NEED TO CARE ABOUT THESE WONDERFUL, CHARMING LITTLE KIDS’ BOOKS!! This was such a perfect end to the J-Squadron kids’ story. To me, this series is such a hidden gem and I really hope more people give it a chance. It was wonderful how all the characters’ stories closed out. I loved seeing Jo finally openly defy his parents, Mattis putting his faith in the Force and his friends, the return of Klimo, AG-90 and Dec fighting as brothers but growing stronger for it, and Lorica becoming the hero everybody thought she was. There’s so many fun cameos, from Rey, to Hux to Poe and Black Squadron, with the backdrop of the actual climactic battle in The Force Awakens.

And, one thing I really want to talk about that I love, is how the book (in tandem with the first two) give us the first gay character in a Star Wars kids book, with Dec Hansen. I wish they could’ve said it a bit more explicitly, but we actually got the kid and his friends talking about it in the books? And, with most of the LGBT characters falling more on the “scum and villainy” circles of the galaxy, it’s so refreshing to see a brave and unambiguously heroic gay teenage starfighter pilot trainee. Like, holy shit that actually happened!!!! ANYWAYS READ THIS SERIES I LOVE THEM AND YOU SHOULD TOO.

Oh, also, Annie Wu’s illustrations are AWESOME and I hope she does more Star Wars stuff (Pirate’s Price, out in a week!)

1. Star Wars Rebels created by Dave Filoni, Simon Kinberg and Carrie Beck

I don’t think there’s way I could place anything but Rebels at #1. This show changed my life in so many ways and I’m just. ridiculously thankful it exists. without Rebels, I wouldn’t have this blog, I wouldn’t be up to my ears obsessed with Star Wars and I there’s so many friends I wouldn’t have either. It’s touched my heart in a way that.... gosh I don’t know if I can even think about anything that resonates with me quite in the way Star Wars Rebels has. Pretty sure most if not all of my followers have seen Rebels, haha, but if you haven’t. You won’t regret it. Well, you might. It hurts. I hate to say, but it does. But even if the end destination leaves you heartbroken and uh prone to randomly bursting into tears about it, you will never regret the journey. Everything I learned and experienced with Ezra, Kanan, Hera, Sabine, Zeb and Chopper is beyond precious to me and I’m thankful it exists because it made my year in so many ways.

[blurrypetals]

Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi - blurrypetals review

originally posted apr. 26, 2018 - ★★★★★

This book made my heart feel like it was made out of sunlight. Not long ago, I finished reading Rule by Jay Crownover, which was like...a fine book. It was okay, the couple was cute, it had its own charm to it, but there wasn't anything about it that made it feel special or different from the other thirty books I've read this year so far that feature a totally non-magical girl and a cosmically ordinary boy having feelings for one another, meaning contemporaries. Because of that book, I expelled a soft, wistful sigh and thought to myself, "Man, it would be really great to find a book that makes me feel like Colleen Hoover makes me feel." but that thought was kind of impossible to actualize, since I've read everything Colleen has written except Never Never and pretty much every book that's been suggested to me based on my love for Colleen Hoover is either an actual soap opera, erotica, or both. That isn't to say those books have no value (in fact I literally read an erotica like three days ago) I just wanted something that had that something special to it. I quit searching for that sweet spot of a book and then, two days later, Audible had a huge sale and I picked this beautiful little book up for a neat $8.34. It's taken me a hot minute to get to it, but god I am so glad I decided to read it, especially right now. I've read 77 books in 2018 so far and, excluding One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus, I've felt like I've been in a bit of a slump ever since finishing Restore Me by Tahereh Mafi...but this book saved the day for me, so now I'm going to actually talk about it. Everything about this book was magical to me, from the way Penny thought (especially how she laid out possible options and plans of attack when dealing with unsavory situations) to the way Sam behaved to all their adorable conversations to the way their relationship started and then grew...it was all so great. This was just one of those books that made me feel so lucky to be able to experience it. The lenses through which we experience the story, as a writer for Penny and as a documentary filmmaker for Sam, added so much unique flavor and energized zeal to the narrative, especially since those two forms of art I myself adore, filmmaking (not of the documentary style, though) and writing. It was fascinating to see how they both worked on their big projects, too. Like how Penny needed to puzzle her way through writing the story of a mother who neglects her real life infant by being so focused on a video game wherein she is raising a virtual child...I loved seeing how writing that story informed the way she acted with Sam and her own mother; it was absolutely fascinating. I also adored watching how Sam worked with the skateboard boys for his documentary and his journey to realizing he doesn't need school to tell stories or do what he wants to do. I think the conversation of "art vs. artist" was really interesting and well done here and, as an artist myself, it made the book stand out for me in a way the same story told without those elements wouldn't have done. This made me relate on such a deep level with the characters and I reveled in every moment I got to spend watching Sam and Penny fall in love. There's a scene earlier in the book where Penny's friend and Sam's ex-niece, Jude, shows Penny a video of Sam and his ex-girlfriend and says something to the effect of, "God they were goals." and, honestly that's how I feel about Sam and Penny: they're goals. They fit so perfectly together that it actually, physically aches that I won't get to read more about them and their future. That's when I know I've read a great book, when my only issue is that there wasn't more of it to enjoy, regardless of how long the book actually was, especially if I was grinning like a damn idiot most of the time reading it, which I was. This book gave me a huge boost of positive energy and it matched the gorgeous weather of spring coming into full swing outside; thus, the sunlight-heart I referred to at the top of the review. I loved this and it is absolutely a new all time favorite, no hesitation on that, final answer, lock it in.

[rebeccaheyman]

reading + listening 9.21.20

The Bookshop of Second Chances (Jackie Fraser), eBook ARC (pub date May 2021). Four-star NetGalley review:

At first, THE BOOKSHOP OF SECOND CHANCES just seems like a charming tale of a down-on-her-luck, 44-year-old woman finding a new life in a small Scottish town. But in a neat trick of smart plotting deft characterization, Fraser turns the narrative into so much more.

Thea is a refreshingly direct, introspective, infinitely relatable woman who's been dealt two very different hands at once: she's been laid off from her job right around the time she discovered her husband of 20 years has been having an affair, but she's also inherited a house -- complete with rare book collection -- and a not-insignificant sum of money from a dear but distant great uncle. With little keeping her anchored to her old life, Thea travels to Baldochrie to see about the house. Once there, she finds life in a small town on the Scottish coast suits her rather well, and then of course, there's Edward.

Edward has, like too many of us I suspect, based much of his life on the hurts of his youth. He's a modern-day Heathcliff who's moved past the romantic fixations of yesteryear long enough to become a curmudgeonly adult with a rather dysfunctional sex life. He's at war with his brother, the literal lord of the manor in Baldrochie, and spends his days holed up in his rare books shop. Until Thea walks in, and something like friendship begins.

I savored the slow unfolding of these two characters, who I grew to care about immensely. Fraser's is a nuanced portrait of a woman in middle age, facing the necessity of beginning again. To say Thea is an "everywoman" discounts her uniqueness, wit, and rather special charm, but she's not *not* everywoman, either. She feels like someone I know, or someone who could, in another life, be me. So it's a particular kind of triumph to see her grow and change and find joy.

Comps to EVVIE DRAKE STARTS OVER are warranted only in the loosest sense; the storytelling and writing here are far superior. Readers who enjoyed WOULD LIKE TO MEET will appreciate Thea and Edward's later-in-life romance, and fans of Graeme Simsion will find a lot to appreciate in Fraser's three-dimensional characterizations and excellent dialogue.

Tall, Duke, and Dangerous (Hazards of Dukes #2), (Megan Frampton), eBook ARC (pub date October 2020). If you’ve been reading these reviews weekly, you’ll know that I listened to the first-in-series, Never Kiss a Duke, last week. The sophomore installation was... not good. Two-star NetGalley Review:

If you, like me, felt that the first installment in the Hazards of Dukes series was a knockoff version of Kleypas's DEVIL IN WINTER, you're going to feel more of that "recycled trope" vibe in the second book-in-series, TALL, DUKE, AND DANGEROUS. While Ana Maria and Nash, our main couple, were introduced in book 1, the characterizations here seemed to come out of nowhere; our heroine is a literal Cinderella -- a girl of noble birth, forced to act as a maid by her now-blessedly-dead stepmother, and newly restored to her proper place in society -- while our hero was the victim of parental abuse at the hands of his father, which has left him isolated from his emotions and hopelessly taciturn. Ana Maria is fluent in Grunting Duke, so she can decipher Nash's true feelings even when he can't. And lucky for both of them, he wants her to be a Regency-era MPDG, and she's totally fine with it: "I want you to help me find the good parts of being who I am, of using who I am to do better for everyone. Joyfully." In other words, "I'd like you to make me the best version of myself, because that should definitely be your responsibility, o ye of the lesser sex." 

I've given Megan Frampton a very fair shake -- in fact, I've read three of her books in the past seven days. Each has felt like a faint echo of better HRs I've read before. While the writing is serviceable enough, the storytelling is weak. Here particularly, the ending comes fast; there's no denouement, not even the Epilogue one expects in this genre. I'd wager my last crown that book three sees Thaddeus and Olivia making an unlikely pairing. All in all, I have to let go of my hopes for Frampton's work, which seems derivative and predictable at best, and dangerously familiar at worst.

Lady Be Bad (The Duke’s Daughters #1), (Megan Frampton), aBook (narr. Jilly Bond). Please let us never try to parse why I leaned in so hard to Megan Frampton this week. After NEVER KISS A DUKE last week, I just... wanted to see what she was about, I guess? Which makes no sense, because if we’re talking about HR authors I read for the first time last week, I should have latched on to Julie Anne Long, whose LADY DERRING TAKES A LOVER I actually really enjoyed. Like I said -- we shouldn’t overthink this. 

Here’s the deal with LADY BE BAD: If Sarah MacLean’s NINE RULES TO BREAK WHEN ROMANCING A RAKE (2012) and Tessa Dare’s SAY YES TO THE MARQUESS (2014) had a scandalous affair, this book would be the chaise longue they fooled around on in the drawing room. That’s it. That’s the review.

The Mighty Oak (Jeff Bens), aBook (narr. Adam Barr). You might be wondering what business I had reading a literary character study about a violent, drug-addicted hockey player, so I will tell you: Blackstone Audio, publisher/producer of innumerable aBook titles I have listened to and loved, started a GoFundMe to help those employees who have lost everything in the fires raging across the western US. I don’t personally know anyone at Blackstone, but I can hear the echo of Mary Jane Wells saying “Blackstone Audio presents...” on every intro track to The Ravenels series. This company is responsible, in part, for many hours of joy in my life, and now their employees are suffering, and if we’re not committed to small acts of kindness to help those who have totally, inadvertently helped us, what the hell are we doing with ourselves? Cutting this tangent short to say that Jeff Bens saw my tweet about the GoFundMe and very kindly emailed to say thanks for donating, so I said hey let me know when your forthcoming Blackstone title releases and he said actually it’s today and I think you know what happened next. Before I get to my review, I’m going to repost the link to the Blackstone Audio GoFundMe, and I truly hope you will donate even a single dollar. The book community is vast and beautiful, and for all its flaws, I want to believe we take care of each other. SECOND ACTION ITEM is to peruse the catalogue and buy or borrow a Blackstone Audio title. Might I suggest...

THE MIGHTY OAK is about Tim “Oak” O’Connor, a hockey player lauded for his violence and intensity on the ice. Tim’s body is breaking down under the stress of his lifestyle, which involves a lot of OxyContin, and it’s pretty clear his mind is likewise struggling under the weight of drug abuse and, probably, CTE. The thought that kept resonating with me while I listened to Adam Barr’s excellent narration was this: Tim O’Connor is a drowning man who doesn’t realize he’s wet. The portraiture in THE MIGHTY OAK is powerful, visceral, and heartbreaking, even as Tim’s journey resolves in something like victory. CW for drug abuse, physical violence, and -- no other way to say this -- an eyeball dangling from its socket. 

Ready Player One (Ernest Cline), aBook (narr. Wil Wheaton). I’m generally a sucker for books about puzzles -- even puzzles based on 80s pop culture and video games. RPO is what would happen if The Westing Game and Ender’s Game made crossover appearances on an episode of The Twilight Zone. The world-building is top-notch, if belabored at times; in a version of our world that has departed so completely from the reality we know, the temptation to narrate quotidian minutiae was too strong for Cline to resist. It’s not uninteresting, for example, to hear every painstaking detail about how Wade sets up the gaming system in his apartment, but it’s not exactly page-turning either. The story’s peaks more than compensate for its valleys, and you can’t beat Wheaton’s narration. 

[terramythos]

Review: Myst by Cyan Worlds, Inc (1993)

Genre/Tags: Silent Protagonist, First-Person, Atmospheric, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Great Story, Lore Heavy, Classic, Puzzle, Parallel Worlds, Moral Choice, Multiple Endings, Strong Worldbuilding

Warnings: Lots of unsavory things such as torture, murder, drug use, and genocide are all implied by context, but not directly shown or described in detail.

Playthrough notes: With my sister, I played a remastered version of this game called realMyst. It was a pretty good port with updated graphics and some minor glitches. There is a free-roam option in this version as well as a bonus postgame Age (world). I played the game in classic mode (no free-roam) and explored the bonus world, which includes some lore for the sequel. 

My Rating: 4/5 (Recommended)

**Minor Spoilers and My Thoughts Follow** 

“I realized, the moment I fell into the fissure, that the Book would not be destroyed as I had planned. It continued falling into that starry expanse, of which I had only a fleeting glimpse. I have tried to speculate where it might have landed—I must admit, however, such conjecture is futile. Still, the question of whose hands might one day hold my Myst Book are unsettling to me. I know my apprehensions might never be allayed, and so I close, realizing that perhaps the ending has not yet been written.” -Atrus

My Summary: You play a mysterious stranger who falls into an alternate world after opening up a book. Waking up on the seemingly abandoned island of Myst, you are confronted by odd buildings and machines. Using what few context clues you have, you discover a few intact journals in a burned library, which are written by a man named Atrus and describe alternate worlds. Also to be found are two mysterious books which display static on the pages when you open them. With some puzzle solving, you are able to find hidden books on the island which teleport you to the worlds described in Atrus’ journals.

After a point, you find torn book pages in each world and re-unite them with the strange static books. As you piece the two books together, you discover they are prisons for two brothers-- Sirrus and Achenar. Both claim to have been trapped by their father Atrus, victimized by the other brother’s lies. By solving cryptic puzzles and traveling to the different Ages (worlds), you decide who to believe while discovering some of the mysteries of this universe.

The Good:

To say this game is genre-defining or ahead of its time would be a severe understatement. Countless Myst-clones, including many recent games such as Obduction (made by the same studio), The Talos Principle, The Witness, and more have been released. The fact that games like this continue to be produced almost 24 years later-- with only minor technological advances-- says something. It was successful and critically well-received, which allowed it several sequels. Even puzzle games that fall outside of this type of experience take pointers from the design, and the atmospheric storytelling is emulated in a variety of titles and genres.

This game is five days younger than me and in many aspects it is difficult to tell. There may be games like it today, but there were none at the time. It’s truly a unique experience.

This is the earliest video game I can think of that has anything approaching a moral choice system. Deciding to trust either Sirrus or Achenar requires you to pay attention to the atmosphere of the different locations and piece things together on your own. The game also features detailed multiple endings based on your choices-- I counted 4 total, which is just crazy for the time.

This game manages a difficult task of (1) creating a player-driven experience while also (2) creating a rich and compelling story. The game gives you clues, but it never holds your hand. You choose what order to explore each Age, and you have to use logical thought to solve puzzles and navigate out of them. At the same time, Atrus’ journals, level design, and limited dialogue build an intriguing world and central conflict.

I usually don’t harp on graphics, but this game aged well visually. The version I played was a remaster, but even so, looking at the original renders and considering its age, the game looks impressive. This game also uses a rare version of mo-cap in which live actors were recorded and the footage was rendered almost seamlessly in the game-world rather than creating character models. It’s impressive, especially for the time. It’s not up to modern standards by any means, but it’s still a landmark.

As mentioned, a lot of the story is conveyed through the world and level design. Journals give you glimpses and lore hints, but there’s nothing quite like finding a character’s secret torture chamber (not essential to the level at all), or realizing a once lively and abundant world is abandoned, or even noting the contents of a character’s desk, in order to piece together a complex narrative and influence your decisions.

The actors for Sirrus and Achenar really ham it up and I enjoy it immensely. It’s even more unsettling the more you learn about them through context.

The Ages were just neat in general. There were four in the base game-- Channelwood, Stoneship, Mechanical, and Selenitic (Stoneship is probably my ultimate aesthetic). The remaster includes a fifth one called Rime. They all had unique and strong aesthetics; they felt like other worlds, but had enough connection to ours that they did not seem completely alien. This seems intentional, based on some story things, and the more otherworldly design in future titles.

Honestly it’s just a cool concept to me in general. There’s a lot that’s implied and left to speculation. Is Atrus creating the worlds by writing about them? He mentions writing things and having them appear in the world. But it’s also implied they exist and have their own histories that he is unaware of, and he still brings in supplies from outside? What is it about the books that creates or facilitates travel between worlds? What is Riven, the Age that gets referenced several times but can’t be visited? It makes me want more lore (which we get, thankfully, in the sequels and tie-in novels).

The Mediocre:

Some of the controls did not age especially well; the port I played was overly sensitive so my character would often overshoot where I meant for them to go. The individual screen renders limit the degree to which you can move, and while that’s an artifact of the time, it takes some getting used to. The port had a free-roam option, but I wanted to play something close to the original experience.

The Bad:

There were bugs, and while most were liveable, I ran into a potentially gamebreaking one in which an elevator despawned on reloading the game. There is no way to exit the Age in question, so if it was my only save file I would be completely screwed. Luckily, it wasn’t, but I had to replay a good chunk of the game to re-progress. I am under the impression there are several bugs of this nature that I was fortunate enough to miss.

There’s one puzzle that’s just a terrible design. There are NO hints for it on the world in question. It’s the only puzzle in the entire game based on hints from a completely different Age, and there is no way for someone to know to write down the insanely specific information (which is used for a puzzle on that world, so why would you even think you’d need the info later?). Even IF you figure it out, the way the hint incorporates into the puzzle is difficult to parse. The game is designed to be completed in any order, so if you went to this world first and not the one the hint is on, you’re also completely screwed. The only saving grace is the puzzle CAN be brute forced (it’s a maze), but it’s an extremely long and tedious process. I appreciate the idea of rewarding a player for thinking outside the box, but this is the completely wrong way to do it.

Final Thoughts:  

I got into most of my opinion already, but Myst is a good game. Over time it has evolved into a meme, but I think it deserves way more than that. I would credit this game, originally released on September 24, 1993, with a variety of innovations which are still present in modern games. As I mentioned, Myst clones still exist over 20 years later, with only minor variations to account for new technology. It’s a genre creator and it still plays well. The story feels more modern than its original release would imply.

The story and lore is not something I see discussed very often. But it is a damn cool and appealing story, and I appreciate how much the game lets you draw your own conclusions based on evidence. In an age before widespread Internet usage, that meant you had to solve most of this game on your own. I think the reliance of many modern games on checkpoints leading you to a given goal takes something away from narrative and level design, especially for a puzzle game whose very name is meant to invoke the mystery of it all. I’m glad that the modern port didn’t feel the need to point me to my goals and just… let me find them.

My sister and I played this together, and it was fun to put our heads together to try and solve the puzzles. Many thanks for her writing down the puzzle hints (a necessity to beat the game!) While no remasters of the next two games-- Riven and Exile-- have been released, we plan to play those two as well and get a more complete view of the story. Riven has already proven buggy to run on Windows 10, but it’s interesting and distinct from Myst so far-- certainly more cryptic.

Overall, though, if you haven’t played Myst I highly recommend picking it up. The realMyst port was quite good, and it’s available on Steam for only $5.99. It’s a historic title and I hope you will play it and appreciate how much the game has contributed to gaming as a whole.

[maxthommusic]

PS5 Reveal

The Playstation 5 has officially been revealed and my frothing demand could not be more palpable. While the showcase wasn’t ground-breaking, if you had your finger on the pulse, you should have known it wouldn’t be. And anyone expecting some jaw-dropping reveals can’t be much of an enthusiast. Nearing the end of the PS4s life-cycle, we still have some killer apps to await (Last of Us II, Ghost of Tsushima) and drawing too much away from that presence won’t be good for business. But what we did receive is still incredibly tantalizing.

The thing I want most from my console experience is seamlessness. I’m tired of waiting for things to load, I’m done looking at textures stutter and drop-in-- I just want games to run as fluidly as they can on PC. While you may stop and say, “Just get a PC then;” gaming is my escape, my relaxation. I’ve been a faithful console gamer for years and years because of the ability to boot it up and begin playing easily. I like the option to relax on my couch and play on a big screen. Plus, after years of using a controller, that’s my preferred input method. Gaming on a PC just isn’t quite the same experience. Though I understand you could absolutely get it there, the barrier for entry is simply not desirable. Whatever performance capabilities a PC offers doesn’t quite compare to the easy access of a console. And having said that, I’m psyched for the PS5.

First off, I think the console looks awesome. I’ve been hoping for a gaming box to “make a statement” for a very long time, and my envy of the Xbox Series X design is no longer an issue. The peripherals look sleek and elegantly designed; I will 100% be purchasing the media remote and charging dock for controllers.

Secondly, the showcase, itself, was awesome. It was to the point, featured meaningful content, and felt like a special display of enthusiasm, talent and storytelling. The excitement of the devs and the studios was supremely obvious and I totally bought in. 

A biggest concern, however, came from seeing the comments during the Twitch stream. I question if the games Playstation chose to highlight are going to appease the majority of gamers. However, in reflecting upon the matter, the “majority” of gamers may be Fortnite players. And I don’t mean literally, “gamers who play Fortnite.” I’m more so referring to the concept of people who play F2P games and maybe purchase one game a month, if  that. What I have to consider is that it doesn’t matter who uses the PS5, it’s going to matter who buys games on the PS5. Even if 10 people own the console and 8/10 people hated seeing Solar Ash, if those 8 people never buy games but the 2 people left who do loved Solar Ash, that’s all that truly matters and that’s who Playstation needs to cater towards. Sales numbers for games like Final Fantasy VII: Remake, God of War and Horizon: Zero Dawn speak for themselves. Getting worried by the dogging and negativity seen when games like Little Devil Inside and Goodbye Volcano High appear probably shouldn’t worry me... It’s the voices of those who pay that matter, not quite who plays.

Also exciting, is being able to see screenshots and videos after the fact. I’ve been far more impressed with the games from yesterday as they’ve showed up on Twitter, especially in regards to Little Devil Inside. On YouTube Live I thought, “Oh, cool, neat looking game, not sure why it has to be PS5...” But when I saw it on Twitter later, the fidelity kinda blew me away. I expect to see a lot more of that occurring as more media is released over the coming weeks. And just as I was hoping, enthusiasts are feeling jazzed about Ratchet and Clank’s showing; the ability to jump between entire worlds without hiccup was an awesome display.

What’s most appealing from the games shown is that the stance Playstation is taking on their offerings is “What kind of stories can we tell?” And if you’ve been listening, Playstation made this pretty clear months back. While the messaging was certain, understanding how that might play out was a bit cloudy. Yet after yesterday’s showcase, we see that Playstation wants to put gamers into unique experiences you won’t find anywhere else. Or even if the games do arrive on other consoles, Playstation is here to support that ecosystem and turn them into highlights. 

At the end of the day, Playstation is a massive brand. Appeasing everyone isn’t going to happen and at times they will make decisions that polarize or alienate. It’s guaranteed to happen from time to time. But the Playstation I saw emerge from that showcase is definitely a company that is authentically trying. Their effort is cleanly noticed and it’s why they continue to have my money. I know people will dog them for the price of the console... they’ll continue to jab at them for issues with backwards compatibility... But I dunno, man. There’s always something to be upset about. I’m gonna focus on what’s in front of me, not what I’m hoping for, and enjoy what I’ve been given. As consumers the Internet has given us way too much agency we don’t deserve. The Simpsons tackled this when Homer gets to design his own car. He totally flops it , proving that giving in to consumer needs created an abomination. Sometimes the ideal box just can’t be realized and it may be for several reasons we just don’t understand.

I’ve loved Playstation for years. I became truly loyal when I realized their controller was the best controller. I wanted all my games to feel that way. If they go to off-set joysticks I may feel the need to contemplate my system purchases differently... But for right now, I’m all-in. And I hope a lot of other people out there can feel the same way too. It’s an amazing time to be a gamer and it’s an amazing time to watch Playstation. My hope is that consumers can worry less about what they wanted and love what they’re being given. Because if you just wear the right lens, Playstation is killing it, my friends. 

Absolutely. Killing it...

[entergamingxp]

DualShockers’ Favorite Games of 2019 — Chris’ Top 10

December 28, 2019 10:00 AM EST

This Top 10 list of 2019 games from curmudgeon contributor Chris Compendio is full of oddities, with both indie titles and blockbuster hits.

As 2019 comes to a close, DualShockers and our staff are reflecting on this year’s batch of games and what were their personal highlights within the last year. Unlike the official Game of the Year 2019 awards for DualShockers, there are little-to-no-rules on our individual Top 10 posts. For instance, any game — not just 2019 releases — can be considered.

There is a particular attitude that comes with end-of-the-year discourse. Much like how there is an “Oscar movie,” we have “GOTY games,” triple-A titles so hotly anticipated that many in the gaming community are sure that it will already be their favorite. Look no further than any social media feed, where people are already arguing about what will be Game of the Year 2020. But when I look at my favorite games of 2019, I am surprised by how many of them are sleeper hits, quality titles that snuck up on me.

I still believe that there is value to having group and outlet-wide Game of the Year lists, and it is fascinating to see where everyone ends up. Still, I’d much prefer to sift through personal end-of-the-year lists, as they are a better indicator of the personal gaming journeys that individuals went through during the year. There you’ll find obscure little nuggets, or perhaps contrarian and eye-opening angles to games that you may have missed out on or didn’t give a chance.

With my personal top 10 list for 2019, I find that the uniting factor between most of these games is that they are weird. They are incongruous, non-traditional, unusual, and so on. And most of them are games I hadn’t even heard of a year ago, making the value they provided all the more surprising.

First off, some Honorable Mentions that didn’t quite make the cut, including Untitled Goose Game, Gears 5, Tetris 99, Baba Is You, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, CROSSNIQ+, Pokemon Sword & Pokemon Shield, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and Mini Motorways, all of which could have formed their own top 10 list. Then there’s the stuff that I didn’t finish or get to, but will absolutely do so starting in January, including Luigi’s Mansion 3, Kind Words, Arcade Spirits, Knife Sisters, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Outer Wilds, The Walking Dead: The Final Season, Life is Strange 2, Disco Elysium, and Neo Cab.

Man, I wish we had room for more than ten entries.

10. Ring Fit Adventure

I have fond memories of playing Wii Fit back in the day; while it obviously wasn’t a proper substitute for more intense workouts, it was a nice way for Nintendo to encourage health and regular exercise into one’s daily routine. That’s why I was so surprised by how freaking hard Ring Fit Adventure went. For the first time playing an “exergame,” I was left sore and sweaty, so much so that I had to lower the intensity at times.

What Ring Fit Adventure succeeds in doing is actually turning exercise into a video game. It took Nintendo maybe like, over a decade to get there, but it’s great to see nonetheless. All Ring Fit Adventure comes down to is a turn-based RPG where the moves and attacks and defense are achieved through exercise. The Ring-Con is durable and versatile, and as the game encourages, I find myself turning it on by itself and doing some mindless exercise while doing other activities or watching television. It is obviously far from the most impressive video game of the year, but Ring Fit Adventure is the one that I came back to the most often in 2019.

And fun fact: the model in that lifestyle photo that serves as this list’s featured images is my friend from college. You’re damn right that I had to use it for this.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Ring Fit Adventure.

9. Kingdom Hearts III

The Kingdom Hearts series is like a specter that will never stop following me. I don’t even have to go over how much these games mean to me and how wild the pre-release period has been since Kingdom Hearts III was announced what must have been a century ago at this point. And I’m not even going to bother to talk about how stuffed and contrived the lore is—at this point, Kingdom Hearts practically speaks for itself. Even if you aren’t into the franchise, hearing all of the fervor around it should at least give you a feeling of what it’s about.

And once Kingdom Hearts III finally released a lot of people, ranging from newcomers to devoted fans, were quick to scrutinize and tear it apart, and a lot of the criticisms were fairly justified. Perhaps I was in my own world, but none of that stopped me from enjoying the hell out of III. It may have just been the novelty of playing a brand-new, high-definition Kingdom Hearts game, or all of the obvious fan service and emotional scenes of closure, but whatever it was, the feeling of playing Kingdom Hearts III could not be recreated by anything else I played in 2019.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Kingdom Hearts III.

8. What The Golf?

Most of the games on this list were surprises to me, but What The Golf? was a strange game that contained a number of different surprises within it. The facade of this being any sort of ordinary golf video game quickly wears off, as you find yourself hitting more than just golf balls into the hole: maybe it’s a golf club, the golfer themselves, or even another damn hole that you have to get into the hole. And that’s just the beginning—you’ll be going through city streets, parodies of other video games, and space, with some gravity-defying shots.

What The Golf? is an excellent example of how to create comedy that is unique to the medium of video games. It isn’t writing or cutscenes, but rather the actions that the player does themselves that creates hilarity. Each level plays with your expectations in a different way, and there is enough variety to prevent the game from just turning into the same punchline replayed multiple times. Other than that, the game has excellent sound design, and there’s a neat feature that lets you showcase a short, curated level selection to friends. What The Golf? is perfect for short bursts of play, and at some point in the near future, I’ll probably find myself going through each hole yet again.

Check out DualShockers‘ PAX East preview for What The Golf?

7. Ape Out

With such a bold art style and a distinct percussion-based soundtrack, Ape Out is impossible to ignore. The core gameplay is quite easy to wrap your head around, but I appreciate all of the strategic considerations that go into playing the game. As a massive ape trying to make your great escape, your main tools are a basic attack and a grab; enemies die easily, but so do you, with only three hits. The decision I always faced was between brute-forcing myself through gunmen or taking a slow and deliberate pace using an enemy as a human shield. Better yet, breeze through the randomly-generated maze and avoid conflict altogether.

The trial-and-error nature of Ape Out might naturally draw comparisons to Hotline Miami or Celeste, and as magnificent as those games are, putting this game only in those terms would do it a disservice. There was something so intriguing about the total lack of context given regarding this ape, but as you continue your rampage and leave a trail of death and destruction behind, aided by some brash and flashy visuals, what has led to these events is irrelevant—the scene and tone and the feelings that they invoke are already enough.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Ape Out.

6. Wilmot’s Warehouse

This is a last-minute entry in my 2019 list, but Wilmot’s Warehouse instantly won me over by getting all of the gears in my head to click into place. It is a game all about organization, but the hook of this game is that players can organize everything in any way they want to. As such, the game essentially becomes a Rorschach test for whoever tries to play it—what does the way you organize your warehouse tell about how you live your life? Perhaps by color, by category, or some other wild methodology of your own invention?

Wilmot’s Warehouse is almost like a single-player Overcooked, but with a lot more versatility and room to work with. It has a charming minimalist art style, with some lovely motivational posters to come with it. It is challenging, less so because of everything the game throws at you and more so because your own methods and styles will begin to crack and fall apart. It also makes you wonder about the infrastructures we have in real-life, and why giant corporations at Amazon can’t seem to come up with proper organizational strategies that don’t exploit and abuse their warehouse workers. I guess it’s just a fantasy at this point!

5. Death Stranding

Honestly, I’m surprised that I bought Death Stranding in the first place. I was anything but a Hideo Kojima stan, and much of the previews and the pre-release discussions over the game were quick to turn me off for a variety of reasons. Once Kojima and company began to actually show gameplay, however, something resonated with me. Yes, you can derogatorily call this game a “walking simulator,” but I am all about games where traversal itself is a puzzle. There’s that whole cliched pitch of “You see that mountain? You can go there!” but what if that phrase was just the premise of an entire video game?

There’s more to it, of course, but the story is absolute crap with a total lack of subtlety, nuance, and sensitivity. Even as I rolled my eyes at pretty much every single cutscene in the game, I spent endless nights on Death Stranding, optimizing the amount of weight I was carrying and carefully planning out routes, not to mention becoming obsessive over building projects. And once the chiral network aspect of the game comes into play, it becomes more of a unique massively-multiplayer co-operative game of sorts, with other players’ buildings and structures coming as assistance in the most harrowing of scenarios. Awful story but addicting gameplay was enough to put Death Stranding smack dab in the middle of my favorite games from 2019.

Check out DualShockers’ review for Death Stranding.

4. Apex Legends

If we’re going to talk about surprises, then I am required by law to write about Apex Legends, because just the existence of that game alone was a surprise. Announced right before its release, Apex Legends appears to be the end-all-be-all battle royale only by looking at its feature set, but it absolutely earns the title once you pick up the game and play it—I don’t think anyone can possibly deny that games from Respawn Entertainment feel good. It’s fast, responsive, but most importantly, it’s just fun.

I’m not an expert on multiplayer balance, but I’ve personally found every character in Apex Legends to be viable. The game’s design is full of so many smart decisions, from the concept of the Jumpmaster, to how inventory is handled, the diverse hero abilities, the respawning, and especially, especially the Ping system. This game has so many quality-of-life features that I never even knew I needed, and they make any session, whether it’s with a close group of friends or with complete strangers without microphones, feel like a breeze. After playing Apex, why even bother with any other battle royale shooter in 2019?

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Apex Legends.

3. Control

Man, this game is cool. I can’t think of any other video game in 2019 where I would actually read through all of the pick-ups and collectibles and logs, but Control had me going through every piece of lore the game threw at me like a drug. This game, more than almost any other game, inspired curiosity in me. It is esoteric without being pretentious, it is bizarre without being off-putting, and there is rarely any sort of disconnect between the narrative and the actual gameplay.

It may take a bit of time to get into the combat flow of Control, but the trials and tribulations leading up to that are worth it. Eventually, you’ll have a number of psychic powers and weapon forms to utilize as tools of destruction, and as you get used to the enemies and their behavior, each encounter will feel like a fast-paced game of chess. The latest from Remedy Entertainment was enough evidence that I needed to get into their previous stuff, so I spent some time with Alan Wake and Quantum Break as well. No one quite does such an excellent blend of surrealism, world-building, and combat like that studio.

Check out DualShockers’ review for Control.

2. Katana Zero

I’ve been becoming more and more tolerant of difficult fast-paced trial-and-error games (see: Hotline Miami, Super Meat Boy), but Katana Zero may perhaps be the first one of these games that I barreled through with few breaks in between. The premise of this side-scrolling action game with its drug-induced time-manipulation and the fast and twitchy gameplay demanded my attention and time, and boy did I give this game just that. There were too many deaths to count on the way to the end, but all was worth it.

Katana Zero is infused with a neon art style and rousing electronic music, which further enhanced the compelling gameplay. It all comes down to planning, looking at the scenario at hand and taking into account reaction times and all of the environmental pieces around you to brutally dispatch your enemies while also avoiding their own attacks. And your katana-wielding character is thinking about all of this too, as your failed attempts are actually (at least, the way I interpreted it) the scenarios in his head that just didn’t work out. It is perhaps the smartest game I’ve played in 2019 in merging story and gameplay together, and out of all of the titles on this list, this is the one that I want a narrative sequel to the most.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Katana Zero.

1. Sayonara Wild Hearts

After writing a review of over 1,500 words for Sayonara Wild Hearts, I’m not even sure what else I can say about it. But in the context of my personal life, I should say that it came at exactly the right time in my life. Underneath all of the colors and the fanciful style is a story about overcoming depression and getting outside of your comfort zone to lead a truly happy life. All of the other games on the list I probably could have played at any point in my life and enjoyed it all the same, but Sayonara Wild Hearts feels like the definitive 2019 game for how my year went.

Even months after the game came out, I still came back to Sayonara, one reason being to finally achieve some of those Gold Ranks, but mostly just to try to live the euphoria of the emotional experiences that this game provided me; somehow, the entire “Begin Again” sequence is still enough to get me near tears, producing the same powerful reaction each time ever since I first played a demo of this at PAX East. I still listen to the soundtrack on a regular basis, letting myself get lost in the soundscapes—eventually, I would actually seek out the lyrics to these songs, and I would find the written words to be just as touching.

I was used to my safety and peace I mistook all this tedium with being at ease But then you came around, said “it’s time to let go” And you took me to a place I don’t know

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Sayonara Wild Hearts, from yours truly.

Check out the rest of the DualShockers staff Top 10 lists and our official Game of the Year Awards:

December 23: DualShockers Game of the Year Awards 2019 December 25: Lou Contaldi, Editor-in-Chief // Logan Moore, Managing Editor December 26: Tomas Franzese, News Editor // Ryan Meitzler, Features Editor  December 27: Mike Long, Community Manager // Scott White, Staff Writer December 28: Chris Compendio, Contributor // Mario Rivera, Video Manager // Kris Cornelisse, Staff Writer December 29: Scott Meaney, Community Director // Allisa James, Senior Staff Writer // Ben Bayliss, Senior Staff Writer December 30: Cameron Hawkins, Staff Writer // David Gill, Senior Staff Writer // Portia Lightfoot, Contributor December 31: Iyane Agossah, Senior Staff Writer // Michael Ruiz, Senior Staff Writer // Rachael Fiddis, Contributor January 1: Ricky Frech, Senior Staff Writer // Tanner Pierce, Staff Writer

December 28, 2019 10:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2019/12/dualshockers-favorite-games-of-2019-chris-top-10/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dualshockers-favorite-games-of-2019-chris-top-10

[bmaxwell]

Top Games of 2018

For me 2018 was the year of Playstation VR. I never felt especially drawn to VR, assuming I’d give it a try one day years from now when the tech would be improved and more affordable. My buddy brought his headset over and I tried it out briefly but wasn’t blown away. My kids loved it though, so when opportunity presented itself, I traded in my Nintendo Switch* for my own PSVR bundle. 

Apart from that, 2018 wasn’t as strong a year for my kind of games as 2017 was. Most of the AAA blockbusters of year didn’t quite land for me or weren’t appealing enough to make me want to try them at full price. 

That said, I still had to put some games I genuinely enjoyed outside of my top 10. We’ll start off with a couple of categories I’d like to call out before getting into the ones that didn’t quite make the cut, followed by my ordered top 10.

Old Game of the Year:  SUPERHOT VR

2018 was the year of PSVR for me. SUPERHOT VR pulled off the triple header of making me feel like a total badass, making me feel like a clown, and reminding me of how wholly out of shape I am.

In the world of SUPERHOT time only moves when you move. The VR stages each take only a minute or two, and are played in batches of ~5. When you are killed, you start that batch over from the beginning. At first, I hated this. I don’t want to replay the same stuff again and again! But then I started getting familiar enough with these encounters to do them really fast, make no-look shots and the such. And it feels fucking awesome.

The game made me feel like a clown when, after finishing a stage where I was ducking behind a low wall for cover, I reached out to put my hand on the wall to help me stand up and promptly fell right on my ass. This happened more than once.

One time I was sweating profusely after a SUPERHOT VR session and my wife asked “You okay?’ the way you’d ask a child if they’re okay after picking up all of their toys. “Superhot is a workout!” was my response. She just looked at me with a smile that said “That’s stupid in an adorable way.” 

I amend my statement to “Superhot VR is a workout for people who don’t work out.”

Also very good old games: Persona 4, Transistor, American Truck Simulator, The Lion’s Song

Best Music: Donut County

Sometimes it’s nearly impossible to separate a game from its music. One feels incomplete without the other. So it is with Donut County.

Also some fine music: Moonlighter, Pit People, Tetris Effect

Honorable mention:  Return of the Obra Dinn

This game is such an impressive package. The visuals, the audio design, the entire concept is just cool and unique. I wish I was better at the game. There’s some combination of intelligence, patience, and focus that I lack for Obra Dinn. I have started over twice as of now. 

The game casts the player as a sort of insurance claims adjuster auditing a recently-discovered ship that had disappeared 5 years ago (in 1803). You are equipped with a magic pocket watch that lets you see and hear the last moment of each person’s life on the boat, you get to walk around a still scene like a diorama. You're tasked with figuring out each person’s name and how they died. It requires attention to detail, deductive reasoning, and a few minor suppositions along the way.

It is such a neat thing and it is so exhausting and difficult for me. If I could find a way to grapple with it in a satisfactory way, it would be very near the top of this list.

Honorable mention: Yoku’s Island Express

Developer Villa Gorilla threw together Metroidvania gameplay, a light and breezy tropical setting, and pinball of all things and gave us Yoku’s Island Express. It’s a charming, well-made little game. I wasn’t sure it would come together as well as it did. It sounds like a gimmick, but it’s a quality game full of personality. I had it mentally penciled in on my top 10 until very late in the year. 

Honorable mention: Dead Cells

Dead Cells is one of those games that appeals greatly to me on paper. The controls are tight, there are plenty of unlockables to work toward, and the game makes it easy to get into a good rhythm flowing from fight to fight. I put a lot of time into the game and, while I enjoy and admire it, Dead Cells never really hooked me the way I thought it would. I still had a great time with it, it just never quite reached my too-high expectations.

Honorable mention:  Florence

It’s hard for me to know how to rank a game like Florence. It took me about 30 minutes to complete from start to finish and there isn’t much cause to replay it. I try to judge a game by how well it does what it sets out to do, and by that metric Florence was a huge success.

This largely dialogue-free mobile game beautifully captures the feeling of finding romance and tells a touching story that doesn’t play out in the way I expected. The music is gorgeous, and the game makes good use of the phone’s touch interface.

In this day and age, a short mobile game that you have to pay for ($3!?! *gasp*) is a hard sell for a lot of people, which is a shame because Florence is a work of art that deserves to be played.

10. Gris

Seems like every year there’s one game that sneaks in right at the end of the year and complicates the top 10 list. This year that game was Gris. Gris may be the most artistically beautiful game I’ve ever played. The closest thing I can compare it to is Journey, though they aren’t similar enough to feel like one would make the other obsolete. Gris’ visuals are creative and inspired.  They frequently match the game’s melancholy tone, but they are also often vibrant, lush, and playful. It’s outstanding music walks hand in hand with the visuals, with mournful piano and strings.

Something impressed me about Gris is that it doesn’t feel like it’s trying too hard to be a video game, it is content with being a piece of art (something I wish I could say for 2017′s Hellblade, a near-miss for me that failed in this regard). There are no enemies to fight. No pits to fall in. And those elements gave me a freedom to explore with abandon. The game was never going to kill me or punish me for wandering off the track. The game’s puzzles never got complicated enough to fluster me, pulling me out of the experience. 

The game tells you very little in the way of story, leaving you to take from the imagery what you will. Because of that, it didn’t quite resonate with me the way Journey did. Gris isn’t a great video game, but it is a great experience that knows how to get out of its own way.

9. Tetris Effect

Tetris is one of the best pure, easy to learn but tough to master video games ever made. The Tetris Effect added trippy visuals and terrific music along with the ability to play the game in VR. I’ve heard plenty of people say “I’m not paying $40 for Tetris.” While I can understand that approach maybe if you’ve bought a lot of the many versions of Tetris to have come out over years, the price tag is justified by how much the additional effects add to the experience

Tetris Effect bills itself as a trippy experience where you can, like just chill out and think about how we’re all connected and just, like, we’re all together, right? Get into a zen place with some Tetris and some chill music and, like, maybe you play Tetris in a dark room where every time you complete a line, the windows open momentarily letting some light in. Or maybe it’s snowy Tetris where each line is accompanied by the sound of snow crunching under winter boots. The game has dolphins, and birds, and windmills and just, like....space....man.

The crazy thing is, that all works. Especially in VR. A game where I’m Tetrissing against a backdrop of hot air balloons and hearing a song about how all of life is connected could have easily come off as tryhardy, hammy, and insincere. But Tetris Effect was a hopeful bright spot in a year that saw a lot of darkness.

8. The Red Strings Club

This game’s themes of control and free will set in a dystopian future really resonated with me this year. The way you pour different drinks to put people in a specific mood during conversations is really inventive and just plain fun. Red Strings Club made me think about my world views and question them, which is rare for a game to pull off. It overstayed its welcome a little bit near the end, but it was still one of the most memorable experiences of the year.

7. Donut County

When I finished Donut County, I was initially a little disappointed. I played the game from start to finish in about 2 hours, and I wanted more. I think that’s a normal reaction, I also believe that there’s value in a game that does what it does well and finishes before it overstays its welcome (see also: Moonlighter). On its surface, Donut County is a game about swallowing things up into an ever-widening hole in the ground. Looking a little deeper, it’s about gentrification and how those with privilege have no regard for those without.

BK is an awful little shit, but he’s also an adorable and well-written little shit. The game’s dialogue is smartly written and conveys conversations sent via text in a believable way. The soundtrack is a toe-tapping joy, and once again this game does not overstay its welcome.

6. Moonlighter

A few years ago I played game called Recettear where you owned a shop dealing in fantasy RPG goods, and alternated between dungeon delving for stock and haggling over prices selling that stock in your shop. I never quite fell in love with that game, but I thought the concept showed a lot of potential. I’m surprised that we haven’t seen more of it. So when Moonlighter came along with its “get shit from the dungeons and sell it in your store” premise and and gorgeous pixel graphics, I was all in. When I heard the music, I knew this would be in my top 10 for the year. 2018′s game music pales in comparison to 2017 (as do most other years) but Moonlighter’s music was among the best of the year.

Everything about the town is peaceful and soothing, which is important in a game like this. Finding respite, and caring about home gives context to everything, and helps anchor me to the game. If the town is uninspired then there’s a voice in the back of my head while I’m fighting in the dungeons asking “Why do you care about any of this?” The dungeon runs have a lovely push your luck element where going deeper means more danger but also more wealth, and I am great/awful about convincing myself to push for one more floor.

The game isn’t without its faults, most glaringly the inventory system. You have to constantly move things around your backpack and throw stuff out, and there was no mouse support so a tedious task became mind-numbing. Which is a shame, because the game gives you good reason to be constantly shuffling things around your inventory. I also would have liked a few more options in the town for upgrades and new buildings, but the flip side of that coin is that Moonlighter took me about 20 hours to complete and never wore out its welcome. It left me wanting more, but I’m not sure that the gameplay loop would have held up for longer. It serves as a good reminder that not every game needs to be padded out to a 40+ hour experience.

5. Dragon Quest XI

My very first RPG experience was Dragon Warrior on the NES. The experience of walking out of the starting village and fighting a smiling blue slime with a cypress stick is big part of my gamer DNA. Dragon Quest has never forgotten its roots - to a fault, some would say. It’s a valid complaint, but not one that I share.

One of my favorite games ever was Dragon Quest VIII on the PS2. I hadn’t played a Dragon Warrior Quest game since IV on the NES, and DQ8 recaptured those crusty old RPG’s that made me fall in love with the genre. Dragon Quest XI feels like more of Dragon Quest VIII, and that is no bad thing.

Give me more turn-based combat set in a colorful world full of the best worst puns, goofy monsters, where I am a mute hero who must save the world from the great evil. It’s tired old Japanese RPG tropes all the way, and I am along for every mile of this ride.

4. Moss

Moss was not my first VR experience, but it was the game that really made me a believer in the medium. The game feels like being inside a diorama. You’re guiding your adorable little mouse heroine Quill on a journey to find her uncle. Much like with Astro Bot, making me fall in love with the character went a long way toward making me fall in love with the game.

The beauty of the forests broken up by moments in the library as the day turns to night and the candle burns lower and lower really made this feel like it was mine in a way that is rare for a game. I felt like a kid again for a few hours, something I never expected to feel again. The moment to moment gameplay is pretty by the book, and it isn’t impressive in screenshots or video. But that feeling of “Holy shit I’m inside this video game!” is something I won’t forget.

3 .Slay the Spire

Slay the Spire is another game that reminds me how futile and silly it is to take these things seriously. How do I compare a card game to an RPG to a racing game to a game about rolling debris up into a giant ball?

If this list were ordered by time spent playing, Slay the Spire would be number one as I am nearing 300 hours. It’s a deckbuilding rogue like with 3 different classes, each with their own unique set of cards. You move from room to room through a map doing combat, buying cards, resting at campsites, and engaging in little story events. Each run has the controlled chaos of doing your best with the choices you are given. Most runs follow an arc where I come up with a plan for how to my deck effective, I feel unbeatable for a short time, then it all falls apart and I can’t believe I lost.

Don’t let the visuals put you off (I don’t think they’re bad but they’re not my style). Don’t be scared off by the term “rogue like”. Play Slay the Spire. It is perfect at what it does.

2. Monster Hunter World

Like a lot of people, I’d never played a Monster Hunter game before and only knew of it as a weird, opaque Japanese game about fighting monsters. World was touted as a more welcoming game in the series, a Monster Hunter for the rest of us. And the fact that the game does a rotten job of onboarding new players to go along with the game’s awful implementation of (fun once you get it working) multiplayer were just enough to help me tip it down into my #2 slot.

Monster Hunter World scratched an itch I’ve had since I fell off PS2′s Demon Souls years ago after a dozen hours or so. It’s a game that made me work at it to appreciate the experience. The Barroth (the 5th monster you hunt) was the first monster to kill me, and it did so repeatedly. It was a point in the game that forced me to decide whether to work at improving or give up. I looked at the Barroth’s weaknesses in my journal, changed my gear accordingly, and loaded up on items before heading back out. This was the moment I fell in love with Monster Hunter World in a way that led to me putting over 100 hours into the game on my own, then more again with a friend playing on PC.

Monster Hunter World is a game where I got more powerful over time not just because of getting better gear, but because I feel myself getting more skilled at the game. Improving mastery is an incredibly satisfying feeling in any game,  and this one had me sitting at the end of the bed playing into the small hours of the morning, continuously doing One More Hunt when I knew I should have gone to bed hours ago.

1. Astro Bot Rescue Mission 

Monster Hunter World dropped early in 2018 and had me captivated for months. I loved it and, after looking at the 2018 release schedule, mentally penciled it in as my likely 2018 game of the year. That held true for most of the year, until the most unlikely hero of all came along: a corporate mascot in a character platformer. I mean, it’s a robot wearing a fucking PSVR helmet. 

The robot rescue portion of Sony’s tech demo-esque Playroom VR was the highlight of that experience, but by no means was the idea of an entire standalone game a slam dunk for me. Quite the opposite. In fact, I would have likely never given the game a second thought had the game not started receiving the kind of praise I couldn’t ignore. People were saying that it did for VR what Super Mario 64 did for 3d platformers. 

That elicited one of those “What?! Bullshit!....let me see that.” responses from me. As it turns out, that’s a pretty fair comparison.

Astro Bot isn’t just an excellent platformer that happens to be in VR; it feels more like a well-made character platformer elevated to greatness by way of VR. The world is vibrant and joyous, but it also does an incredible job of integrating the player into the game world. In Astro Bot the player’s perspective is behind the robot you are controlling. He is ever running forward and you are being pulled along with him. This isn’t terribly unusual, the player is the god controlling his tiny avatar and surveying the world before them. And it is so with Astro Bot, at least at first glance.

It doesn’t take long to realize that you are in the game world. You have a physical form. You cast a shadow. Your little Astro Bot buddy will occasionally look up at you and wave excitedly. I wanted to hate this. But couldn’t. He is goddamned adorable. The entire game is goddamned adorable.

The stages are colorful and inventive. And they involve the player in some pretty creative ways. Obstacles and enemies must be headbutted. Your controller will get different modifications from time to time, changing it into a water blaster, or an automatic gun (that feels like it is shooting tennis balls), or a hookshot. The game frequently rewards being inquisitive about its environment. Peeking down over an edge, or around a corner, or standing up from your seat to look around typically pays off with some coins, or a little robot to rescue. 

And the little robots are so ecstatic when you rescue them. They fly around the screen and land in the touch pad on your controller. They pop out and wave at you gleefully before disappearing until the end of the stage where all the bots you rescued do a little dance for you. Your Astro Bot does the Carlton Dance. I can’t not love this. I really did try.

*I love the Switch hardware. I really do. And the library of ports is getting more impressive every day. I just wish it had more exclusives I could get into.