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Blog: A Game of Chicken – 05/05/21

There are moments in life when you’re absolutely positive that one thing will happen, yet against all odds, something entirely unexpected occurs. That’s basically the story of how I ended up purchasing an Xbox Series S in a nutshell. I recall months of following various Twitter accounts to clue me into stock drops at various retailers, only to see the “Out of Stock” message appear within seconds of clicking the link. I would have never expected to be able to purchase a next-generation console on a whim, but here we are, $325 later, and a new Xbox is on its way to me…

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Blog: The Clack Track – 04/28/21

The year is 2005 and I’m sitting in a darkened basement with my friends, huddled around the television with a PlayStation 2 hooked up to it. A bad cover of […]

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Blog: TaleSpire’d – 04/21/21

After a few years of getting increasingly obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons along with the entire concept of TTRPGs in general, one thing I’ve always wanted was a comprehensive tool or piece of software that could house my campaign in its entirety. Ideally I wanted a video game styled, easy to use virtual tabletop that could do everything from making maps to just playing a session within it. Most of these programs manage to excel at one thing while fumbling other elements of playing a TTRPG, but that won’t deter me from checking out a new one when it comes along. Enter TaleSpire…

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Gut Check: Core

No one is quite sure how video games are actually made, with many scientists believing them to be the result of some sort of dark magic or inter-planar phenomenon, but I’m here to present my latest findings on the matter. All of my evidence suggests that people make video games on their computers, utilizing software like Unity or the Unreal Engine to accomplish the laborious task of crafting a game from nothing but bits and bytes. Then there are the people who are using Core to make bad versions of much better and more popular games, except these versions are loaded with micro-transactions and terrible controls. Sounds fun, right?

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Blog: Back in the Ring – 04/14/21

Like most folks, I’ve played a lot of really hard games throughout my life that I might even call punishing or unfair, but none of them have challenged me anywhere near as much as Ring Fit Adventures does. While Ring Fit Adventures isn’t going to throw endless hordes of bloodthirsty enemies at me or require pixel perfect platforming and reaction times, it does do something more sinister than any other video game I’ve ever played before: it puts my in physical pain…

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Blog: Crowdfunder – 03/31/21

Crowdfunding can be a beautiful thing that allows people to directly support the ideas and products they believe in, giving folks the chance to truly vote with their wallets. Aside from the dystopian nightmare of people crowdfunding their medical and legal bills through services like GoFundMe, as well as the vaporware projects that either never make it to market or are just flat out scams, crowdfunding is a great concept. It’s also a really good way to get me to spend even more money on tabletop role-playing game systems and paraphernalia than I already do. So here are some of the money-pits that I’ve recently tossed my cash into that luckily for you and your wallet, are either finished or about to finish up their funding campaigns. You’re welcome…

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Review: Adios

I don’t know if I’ve ever actually experienced anything quite like what I did when I played through Adios. I don’t mean to imply that I was awestruck by it by any means, because I genuinely found it to be an incredibly underwhelming game to play. Yet despite its numerous mechanical shortcomings, this narrative-focused, first-person adventure game delivered a really impactful story that left me feeling pretty raw emotionally…

By Ari Posted on

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Blog: A Game of Chicken – 05/05/21

There are moments in life when you’re absolutely positive that one thing will happen, yet against all odds, something entirely unexpected occurs. That’s basically the story of how I ended up purchasing an Xbox Series S in a nutshell. I recall months of following various Twitter accounts to clue me into stock drops at various retailers, only to see the “Out of Stock” message appear within seconds of clicking the link. I would have never expected to be able to purchase a next-generation console on a whim, but here we are, $325 later, and a new Xbox is on its way to me…

By Ari Posted on

Blog 4

Blog: TaleSpire’d – 04/21/21

After a few years of getting increasingly obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons along with the entire concept of TTRPGs in general, one thing I’ve always wanted was a comprehensive tool or piece of software that could house my campaign in its entirety. Ideally I wanted a video game styled, easy to use virtual tabletop that could do everything from making maps to just playing a session within it. Most of these programs manage to excel at one thing while fumbling other elements of playing a TTRPG, but that won’t deter me from checking out a new one when it comes along. Enter TaleSpire…

By Ari Posted on

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Gut Check: Core

No one is quite sure how video games are actually made, with many scientists believing them to be the result of some sort of dark magic or inter-planar phenomenon, but I’m here to present my latest findings on the matter. All of my evidence suggests that people make video games on their computers, utilizing software like Unity or the Unreal Engine to accomplish the laborious task of crafting a game from nothing but bits and bytes. Then there are the people who are using Core to make bad versions of much better and more popular games, except these versions are loaded with micro-transactions and terrible controls. Sounds fun, right?

By Ari Posted on

Blog 0

Blog: Back in the Ring – 04/14/21

Like most folks, I’ve played a lot of really hard games throughout my life that I might even call punishing or unfair, but none of them have challenged me anywhere near as much as Ring Fit Adventures does. While Ring Fit Adventures isn’t going to throw endless hordes of bloodthirsty enemies at me or require pixel perfect platforming and reaction times, it does do something more sinister than any other video game I’ve ever played before: it puts my in physical pain…

By Ari Posted on

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Blog: Vaccination Station – 04/07/21

At the beginning of March I managed to get myself the first dosage of the two-shot Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, followed up by the second dose I received yesterday. Since the moment I made my first appointment right on through to today, I’ve felt a genuinely high amount of anxiety about the whole situation. I fully believe in the efficacy of vaccines and think everyone should be rushing to get their own COVID vaccination scheduled and administered, but there’s just a gravitas to this whole situation that was and continues to be intimidating to me…

By Ari Posted on

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Blog: Crowdfunder – 03/31/21

Crowdfunding can be a beautiful thing that allows people to directly support the ideas and products they believe in, giving folks the chance to truly vote with their wallets. Aside from the dystopian nightmare of people crowdfunding their medical and legal bills through services like GoFundMe, as well as the vaporware projects that either never make it to market or are just flat out scams, crowdfunding is a great concept. It’s also a really good way to get me to spend even more money on tabletop role-playing game systems and paraphernalia than I already do. So here are some of the money-pits that I’ve recently tossed my cash into that luckily for you and your wallet, are either finished or about to finish up their funding campaigns. You’re welcome…

By Ari Posted on

Articles 0

Review: Adios

I don’t know if I’ve ever actually experienced anything quite like what I did when I played through Adios. I don’t mean to imply that I was awestruck by it by any means, because I genuinely found it to be an incredibly underwhelming game to play. Yet despite its numerous mechanical shortcomings, this narrative-focused, first-person adventure game delivered a really impactful story that left me feeling pretty raw emotionally…

By Ari Posted on

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Blog: Poor Planning – 03/24/21

Over the past month or two, I’ve purchased a handful of video games that I’ve been dying to play for one reason or another. Often these are games that I just never had the time to get around to when they released but decided with this lull in the release calendar (at least in my eyes), I could finally see what all the fuss was about. The problem is, despite how much I enjoyed any single game that I purchased, I eventually bounced off of each of them and returned to doing nothing instead…

By Ari Posted on

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Blog: St. Drizzt’s Day – 03/17/21

Well it’s Saint Patrick’s Day already, which means it’s time to go out to the pub with the lads and knock back a couple of brews and eat your body weight in bar nachos. Oh wait, it’s a pandemic still, don’t do that. I can’t say I’ve ever really celebrated St. Patrick’s day in any real capacity at any point in my life, and this year doesn’t seem like the best time to start. So instead I’ll just sit here and talk about an upcoming game that has nothing to do with Ireland or even the color green at all. We’re talking about the upcoming cooperative action game, Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance…

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Blog: 3 Years Strong – 03/10/21

Almost three years ago to the day I launched this silly little blog, unaware that it would go on for as long as it has. When I launched the blog itself, it was mostly a way to just get some consistent content up on the main page to supplement the glut of videos we made. Oh how hard the pendulum has swung in the other direction however, with several different features and articles existing in stark contrast to the zero amount of videos we make. While having to write something every week for the past 3 years might sound like a burden, it’s actually been exactly what I needed to keep me going creatively…

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The Master of Disaster: Alternative Thinking – 19

One of the best things about tabletop role-playing games is just how much versatility a player has in any given situation. Any good GM should be able to accommodate any reasonable request from their players, but the real fun come in when a player completely sideswipes you with some genuine shenanigans. Having to adjust and improvise on-the-fly is an absolute thrill that really tests my abilities to honor the request of the player while adhering to the rules and story. It’s a tough thing to develop, but it’s a necessary skill to have when running a game…

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Blog: Please Make This – 03/03/21

They say there’s a product for everything, right? If that’s the case, then where the hell is the asynchronous Dungeons & Dragons game that I’ve been imagining in my head for the past few years? Surely I can’t be expected to go out and develop a video game on my own, so I’ll do the only thing I know how to do decently and write an article complaining about it. So let’s talk about the D&D game that should exist by now, but miraculously doesn’t…

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Gut Check: Outriders Demo

Recently a demo for the upcoming Square Enix game, Outriders, was released to the public in what I can only assume was to get people like myself to finally stop asking, “what the hell is Outriders?” Seriously, I had no idea what this game was or when it was announced or who was making it, but ads for started cropping up everywhere so I figured I’d just try the demo and seek out the answer for myself…

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Blog: Lemon Days – 02/24/21

Sometimes you can just buy and thing, rip it out of the box, plug it in and just go without any problems, whereas other times you might buy a thing, turn it on once, later learning that it would be the last time it would ever turn on again. That plug and play appeal has been a big selling point for a lot of products like gaming consoles and at one point, Apple devices just to name a few. But no product is immune to defects, something we all have to learn at some point in our lives. For some of us, we learn this lesson every few months thanks to our superhuman-like powers of bad luck…

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Gut Check: Tastemaker

I recently spent some time playing a little restaurant management game that I found thanks to a post on Reddit by the creator themselves. Normally I don’t take game recommendations from the infinite void that is Reddit, but it was interesting and cheap enough for me to take the chance on this early access title. It’s called Tastemaker and it needs a lot of work, but there’s definitely something there that’s got me hopeful enough to keep an eye on its progress…

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