Monthly Archives: August 2018

Blog: A Pit Stop in Donut County – 08/29/18

It’s the middle of the night and you’re 10 hours into your road trip, when up ahead you see a sign for the last rest stop for the next 50 miles. The sign tantalizes you with promises of a Starbucks and some sandwich shop you’ve never heard of. You’re dreaming of a bathtub full of espresso and a sandwich the size of a Prius. Upon entering however, the only thing that’s open is the Roy Rogers. Begrudgingly you eat it. You’re not mad, rather, you’re just disappointed cause it wasn’t what you expected. That’s been my experience with Donut County.

Donut County is a game where you play as a hole that’s sole purpose is to terrorize and devour an entire town and all of the people that inhabit it. That alone was enough of a selling point for me, but Donut County did their best infomercial impression and repeatedly said “But wait, there’s more!” by adding in things like an adorably charming graphical aesthetic, a super rad effects-driven folksy soundtrack, and mischievous raccoons. With all these great ingredients, how couldn’t I love Donut County?

For a game about being a hole, Donut County isn’t a very deep experience. I’m truly sorry for the bad wordplay, but it really is the best way to summarize my feelings on the game. The entire experience feels incredibly rigid and guided. There’s no room for any experimentation or improvisation to be had at all. The levels are segmented into usually 3 or 4 stages, and none of them are particularly big, nor dense with objects to consume.

There are some brief flashes of interesting puzzle solving mechanics, but they’re abandoned almost as quickly as they were introduced. Things like, using the hole as a soup bowl, or setting it on fire to ignite things that fall inside, are all neat ideas that never get any more complex as you progress. There isn’t any real puzzle solving in Donut County, which seems like a gigantic missed opportunity.

I really wish I liked Donut County more than I do. It isn’t a bad game, but it is a game that misses a lot of opportunities to do something more interesting than just have you be a hole that things fall into. Donut County is at its strongest when it’s taken as a narrative experience, but as a game, I found myself wanting more.

Inspiration vs. Plagiarism

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In the wake of the Filip Miucin saga that’s unfolded over the past few weeks, I’ve found myself thinking about the broader implications of what he’s done and the effect it has on everyone in and around the games coverage industry.

In case you missed it, Miucin was an editor at IGN who published a review for Dead Cells that was found to be almost entirely plagiarized from a YouTuber named Boomstick Gaming. In response, IGN acted swiftly and fired him as well as removed his review. After posting a now removed “apology” video on his personal YouTube channel, he essentially challenged people to try and find more examples of his plagiarism, confident that there was nothing more to uncover. Much to the surprise of nobody, the internet found plenty of it.

So here we are, a few weeks after the impact of this bombshell and there’s been no shortage of opinions about the incident itself. The majority of the response to it has been in agreement that IGN did the right thing and that Miucin deserved to be fired. While I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment, there is one thing that Miucin mentioned in his former “apology” video that still sits with me.

In essence, he asserted that all reviewers basically talk to each other about their opinions on the game they’re reviewing. Overwhelmingly I’ve heard reviewers say they don’t do that because it defeats the purpose of writing a review, which is to get the writer’s opinion on the product. They do their best to remove themselves from the conversations around a game so they can provide their own opinions on it, free from any external influences. A reviewer is supposed to relay their experience with the game to their audience in an effort to arm them with the information necessary to decide if a game is worth their time and money.

That kind of insight is great for consumers, but tough when you’re trying to build your own outlet that serves similar functions. I have to be conscious and make sure that what I’m writing is my opinion and not the one I heard on a podcast or in a video. Because if I’m just aping a review from someone else, then what’s the point of me doing this at all? It’s important to me to make sure that everything I write is in my own voice. Because if I want to show that I’m worth a damn as a writer, I have to be able to compartmentalize what the discourse around a game is and be honest about the experience that I’m having.

There is no excuse for plagiarism, but it’s easy for me to see how just following a reviewer or streamer can color your experience before you even have a chance to play the game. That isn’t what happened with Miucin and that isn’t an excuse to justify plagiarism. Instead, it’s a reminder to be more thoughtful about what you’re writing and being more aware of your actions.

Blog: 1 Year of The Bonus World – 08/22/18

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Technically, July would’ve been the one year anniversary of The Bonus World dot com existing, but it wasn’t until the following month that the website began to see regular updates, so I figure that’s more of a cause for celebration.

If you want to nitpick, The Bonus World as a brand came into existence sometime in early 2015 when it was just a podcast that we did with some of our YouTuber friends. It only lasted about ten episodes before scheduling became an issue, but it was a blast.

Since the end of that podcast, the whole brand kind of laid dormant while I continued to focus my attention on another, more successful YouTube channel I had. When that ultimately exploded, I made plans to bring back The Bonus World in a real way. The problem was I just kept doing the same stuff as my previous channels. It was fun, but it wasn’t fulfilling.

Fast-forward to July of 2017 when I decided to double-down on my writing efforts and build a website to house it all. Soon after in August we started streaming, which took me longer to figure out than I care to admit, but it also marked the beginning of regular content from us. That’s when I believe The Bonus World genuinely started.

Now here we are a whole year later, and I’m incredibly proud of everything The Bonus World has become. There’s still a ton of room for improvement and I know that, but I’m pretty content with the way things are right now. I’d like to see the return of more video content, but I’m taking my time before I dive into anything right away. Till then, the weekly blogs are still going to happen, as well as the light dusting of articles. Looking forward, I’m brainstorming new and interesting things we can do. There’s nothing set in stone yet, but I have a couple of ideas that I’d like to get off the ground by the end of the year.

All that being said, thanks for supporting us over this past year. And thank you to my friends who have supported me and joined me in this endeavor. This entire thing has been so creatively fulfilling for me, and continues to be one of my favorite projects to keep tinkering away at.

Here’s to another year of The Bonus World.

Blog: My Kind of Party – 08/15/18

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So there I was, sinking into one of the couches surrounding the television in my friend’s home, desperately trying not to fall asleep while watching whatever garbage was currently playing. It was then that I decided to take control of the situation and put something slightly more interesting on. I reached into my “Bag of Too Many Games” and pulled out some of the best party games I could find in an attempt to entertain the soon to be slumbering group of people. Behold, the some of the party games I think are pretty rad.

GANG BEASTS

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned my love for physics-based mayhem before, but it’s a big part of why Gang Beasts is so appealing to me. It’s this wonderful mix of sloppy combat and physics wackiness that makes it so fun to play with other people. Once everyone gets their mind around the way things work in this vibrant battleground, it immediately turns into a situation of who can break the game in their favor fastest. The concept of just knocking your opponent out, picking them up and hurling them off a moving truck is incredibly appealing to me, and it definitely has won over several of the people I’ve shown it to.

DUCK GAME

Imagine a nightmarish scenario in which you’re surrounded on all sides by bizarre costumed ducks with a fondness for the Second Amendment. While it would definitely be among the worst real world situations you could find yourself in, it makes for a really fun party game. The controls aren’t too complex which makes the entire thing a little more accessible to new players. Also there’s a quack button.

THE JACKBOX GAMES

The Jackbox games might secretly be the best party games currently available. The decision to not rely on controllers and use a browser-based solution instead was brilliant. Showing people who never play games this “magic trick” is a high point for me as well because the entire game becomes so much more intriguing to new players when they don’t have to use a controller to interact. Aside from that, the games are mostly fun. There are some stinkers in each pack, but for the most part they’re all good candidates for a fun time with friends. A good way to start would be with Fibbage, which I’m pretty sure is represented in most of the packages.

THE YAWHG

This one is a little more divisive than the others on the list. I think you need a very specific kind of group of people to really enjoy The Yawhg. The way the game works is that up to four people pick a character to control for six turns. You’ll do stuff like get wasted or fight crime or learn magic, all of which grant you skills and gold in return. Once the six turns are up, a destructive force called “The Yawhg” swoops in and destroys the whole city. Depending on what actions you took before and after the incident, your story plays out differently. It’s a multiplayer “choose your own adventure” book that has awesome art and only takes like twenty minutes to play. It’s one of my favorites.

LETHAL LEAGUE

You know what’s great about Lethal League? Everything. It’s this super hectic, fast paced game about hitting a ball so fast it kills your opponents. It’s this mix between racquetball, dodge ball and anime that makes it so fun. While there are some other modes, the main crux of what you’re doing is volleying the ball back and forth with your opponents until it reaches a speed that one of you can’t react to fast enough. I have to emphasize that when I say it’s hectic, I mean it. It can be overwhelming if you’re not expecting it.

GENITAL JOUSTING

Okay, look… I don’t know how the scoring works, or what kind of other multiplayer modes there are in it, but what I do know is that Genital Jousting gets the attention of every person in the room without fail. There’s no good way to describe what you do in this game, but it involves doing penis like actions to other penises. The game itself is fine, but if you’re looking for a showstopper, Genital Jousting is that game.

There are a bunch of other games that I’m failing to mention for various reasons, but if there was an honorable mentions part of this blog, things like Overcooked, Towerfall, Crawl, and Ultimate Chicken Horse would be on there for sure. One last thing – don’t make people play Mario Party, that’s just mean.

Blog: Get Dunked – 08/08/18

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I can’t remember the exact year but it had to be around 1998 that my father took me to see the New Jersey Nets get utterly outplayed by Michael Jordan and the rest of the invading Chicago Bulls. On its own it was an absolute spectacle to see my favorite team get picked apart by the best player in the league, but for my family and I, it was one of our favorite pastimes to enjoy together. Some families are really into football or baseball or whatever, but mine was all about basketball, especially the Knicks and the Nets. I also was really into video games, which was good because it turns out they made a lot of basketball games.

While I don’t follow the NBA much these days, I’ll still pick up an NBA 2K once every few years in an attempt to scratch that lingering basketball itch. A few weeks ago NBA 2K18 was on sale for twenty bucks and I decided to pull the trigger on it and try to finally win the Nets a championship considering that’s basically what I do every time I’ve picked up one of these games in the past. But before I purchased it, I was greeted with the super accurate and never abused user review aggregate score of Mostly Negative.

That doesn’t seem great

As it had been in previous years, NBA 2K18 was filthy with microtransactions and plenty of reasons to engage with them. Using NBA 2K17 as an example, I’ll give you the real quick and dirty explanation of the economy. You’ll create a player to bring into the career mode and some of the various online modes, and depending on how well you do in games and practices you’ll receive a certain amount of in-game currency that you can spend on more skills and cosmetic items.

The problem is that you accrue an abysmal amount of the currency just through regular play and everything worth buying is ridiculously expensive. In an average game, you might earn anywhere from five-hundred to one-thousand dollars of in-game currency, whereas certain skills, like three-point shooting, can cost several thousand in-game dollars to level up just once. That’s also the same currency for making your character wear arm bands or cool sleeves as well as simple stuff like just getting a new haircut. From everything I was reading, it seemed like NBA 2K18 had doubled-down on these crappy business practices, and people weren’t too pleased about it.

BRRAP BRRAP!

Now, my point for writing this isn’t to dunk on NBA 2K18 and its terrible business model, but rather to illustrate how little that means to me. Because for as many bad reviews as I saw I also read that if you don’t engage with that stuff, the core gameplay is really good. Considering all I ever do in these games is play the franchise modes that allow you to pick a team and run them for decades, I was happy to buy the game and do just that. Twenty hours later, I’m very happy with my purchase. It’s become my go-to game for when I want to watch a movie or listen to a podcast, and outside of a few performance issues and the rare invisible player, I think the game is pretty great.

I don’t support the crappy business model that’s implemented in NBA 2K18, I think that it’s gross and exploitative that it encourages people to pay if they want to be competitive in two of their largest game modes. But the game itself is still really good, and it reminds me of all of the great memories I had from when I was a kid and was actively following the sport. And honestly, that’s kind of all that matters to me at this point.

The Space Billionaire of No Man’s Sky

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Recently I documented my early yet harrowing return to No Man’s Sky, but ultimately came away realizing I wasn’t far enough into the game to formulate any real opinions on the experience as a whole. Just as I was when it initially launched, I was overwhelmed and ill-prepared for the latest chapter in my space chronicles. Beset by barren planets, space cops, and hostile environments, I was just about ready to accept that No Man’s Sky was just not the game for me. That was until I met The Space Billionaire.

After the debacle that was my first attempt at exploring the universe, I decided to re-roll my character and get a fresh set of planets to explore. I still started off on a planet that hated me, but this one was a little bit more forgiving than the toxic wasteland that I initially started on. Luckily I spawned in right next to an outpost, which meant I’d be able to find a reprieve from the sweltering heat outside. As I set off to go find and repair my spaceship I received the notification that a player was joining my game.

This mystery player landed their ship right in front of me and I was fully prepared for them to try to blast me into smithereens repeatedly until I quit the game. Once they exited their ship, we stared at each other for a few seconds before I decided to play nice and wave to them. They waved back. I gave a thumbs up and headed over to the clearing where my broken-down ship was sitting. I’d survived the first contact.

At my ship, I went into my inventory to begin crafting the necessary components that would allow me to get off of this boiling planet and hopefully find one more welcoming. That’s when the stranger’s ship touched down next to me again, followed by four more. I genuinely thought this was going to be it for me, but I maintained my composure and went back to my inventory to craft more components. But there was a problem.

My inventory was filled with canisters of freighter fuel. Every available slot was packed with this mysterious item that I had absolutely no use for. The stranger then said to me, “you should sell those, they’re worth a lot of money.” It was then I learned that text chat was a thing and responded with the appropriate amount of gratitude for the gifts they’d bestowed upon me. “You should be able to buy a good class-A starship with that. Go and sell that stuff as soon as you can, and try not to die.” And just like that, they took off into the stars and vanished out of sight, and out of my game.

So there I was, a man with a busted ship and potentially millions of space-bucks to my name, slowly dying of heat exhaustion on this unexplored planet. I had no space in my inventory to craft anything that would help me survive, I just had tons of fuel for ships I didn’t own. I needed to get back to that outpost quickly and offload this stuff, not only for profit, but to literally save my life.

I arrived at the outpost, ready to begin my life as Rich Spaceman, the richest guy in this particular universe. That would’ve been the case were there actually a terminal for me to sell things at in this particular outpost. I had so much potential profit in my pockets, but no way to sell any of it. It was then I remembered that my ship had plenty of inventory space to put some of this stuff in, so I ran back to it only to discover that those were filled up too. These benevolent gifts were going to be the end of me.

But lo and behold, I had one space that wasn’t filled with fuel, but rather 2 pieces of salt that I’d picked up at some point. I obliterated that salt as quickly as possible, opening up a precious inventory slot that would allow me to craft the necessary components to escape this Twilight Zone-esque hell I was living in. With my ship repaired, I set off to the nearest space station to collect my not-at-all-hard-earned cash.

Now flush with way too much money, I made my way to the nearest planet which happened to be really darn nice. A lush landscape, overflowing with resources and devoid of any space cops. A place where the temperature is perfect 75 degrees all the time except for when the occasional boiling rainstorm comes through. This was the first time that I was able to really connect with No Man’s Sky and feel like I had some space to breathe and work at my own pace.

I haven’t actually spent any of my newfound millions yet and probably wont until I absolutely have to, but I’m more than grateful to The Space Billionaire and their philanthropy. Their generosity coupled with the luck of finding a peaceful planet so early have made me very excited to explore more of what No Man’s Sky has to offer. Although I do wonder what The Space Billionaire is up to now. I like to think they’re out there being an angel investor to somebody else in need, helping someone else trivialize a major portion of this game.

Thank you Space Billionaire. I’ll never forget you.

Blog: A Violent Chasm – 08/01/18

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Have you ever played a game that you desperately wanted to like but it actively pushed against you until you eventually walked away from it forever? I had this exact experience with Iconoclasts, a game that released earlier this year, and I felt it once again with the release of Chasm.

I’m sure there will be plenty of people who are going to jive with what Chasm is doing, but I’m finding some of the things I’m encountering early on to be really questionable.

For instance, in the first two hours of playing I’ve come across something like 12 to 15 unique enemies. That sounds great at first, until you realize that you never really have a chance to learn how to deal with an enemy and their attack pattern before they’re replaced with something else. In the span of an hour I went from fighting rats to a flying skeleton that shot fire out of its mouth. I never felt like I was winning encounters, rather it felt like I was just surviving them.

Adding to the frustration though, is the fact that whenever you reenter a room, all of the once defeated enemies will have reanimated. Considering this is a metroidvainia game where you’re going to be running into a lot of dead ends, having to face off against every enemy you just fought moments ago can get really exhausting, really quickly. Which I guess isn’t so bad considering everything gives you XP and helps you level up.

Except it doesn’t matter because you’re just running into more and more powerful enemies and never really get a chance to feel like you’ve powered up. You’re just constantly bombarded with a new group of assholes who want to kill you, who happen to be more capable and resilient than you. “What’s that? You’ve leveled up to the point where this enemy dies in one hit? That’s fantastic news because you’ll never see them again.”

The combat doesn’t feel great either. In the early stages of the game, you’re just too slow and vulnerable to ever feel like a competent fighter. You have a dodge move that will push you backwards, but that never felt responsive enough to get me out of tough situations. It was mostly a game of awkwardly jumping around my enemy because that was a more reliable way to dodge attacks.

All of these individual missteps that Chasm takes contribute to the feeling that this whole game just starts to feel a little too punishing a little too early without really rewarding or empowering the player along the way.