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Game of the Year 2020: 5 Games I Considered Playing, But Didn’t

Despite finding myself at home and with an influx of free time this year, for a multitude of reasons I ended up missing out on a lot of big and well regarded games. All of these entries go beyond the obvious, “lack of money and time” argument that might usually pollute a list like this, so I figured I’d shed some light on why there were such glaring gaps in what big titles I played. There are certainly more than 5 games I considered playing this year but didn’t, but I feel as if these were the biggest ones in the bunch. But hey, even if I did want to play every big release, there’s no way I could possibly make time for all of them, let alone afford that many games, so I guess money and time is a factor after all.

FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE

There are certain gaps in my gaming history that for one reason or another, I know will never be filled. Even now, with nearly infinite access to a near infinite amount of games, both past and present, I know I will not ever go and revisit some of these titles. I don’t think there is a series that exemplifies that for me quite like the Final Fantasy series. I recall playing one of them on my NES, but that’s pretty much where that series started and ended for me. Oh, I suppose I did play the demo for Final Fantasy XV, which is surprisingly important for this particular blurb.

That’s my history with the Final Fantasy series of games in a nutshell. When Final Fantasy VII Remake released earlier this year, I figured maybe this was my chance to see what all the fuss was about. Finally, I too could hang out with beloved characters like Big Sword Boy, Gun Arms, and Punch Lady. But seeing how this remake used the same combat as Final Fantasy XV, I hesitated. I didn’t enjoy what I played of the FFXV demo, and the idea of paying for a game with mechanics I don’t like and for a piece of a story I already knew the major beats of, just didn’t seem like a great use of my time and resources.

I’ve heard some pretty conflicting reports about the remake anyway, with most people usually conceding that they enjoyed it but not without first complaining about bad side quests or something. I think I just have to accept that Final Fantasy as a concept is just something that will never jive with me, and that’s okay.

SPELUNKY 2

You can’t see it right now, but on my computer’s desktop exists a little icon of a golden bug with a gem on its back. I have no idea what it is specifically referencing, but thanks to the words below it I know that this is how I can start playing the video game Spelunky 2. Yes, I indeed purchased Spelunky 2 when it was released earlier this year, a fact that might make some of you wonder why it’s on this list. Well since its release at the end of September, that icon has sat there completely unused and gathering virtual dust. It’s a testament and constant reminder that I am terrible with my video game purchasing decisions and need to be stopped.

I thought that Spelunky 2 would be one of the games capable of making me “get” the whole rogue-like genre, something that it might still be able to do, although to find that out would require me starting it. This game has just kind of sat here for months, waiting for me to dedicate some time to playing it, but the truth of the matter is I probably won’t ever launch this game. That isn’t because I think it’s a bad game or anything, because I literally have no way of knowing that. No, I just won’t launch it because whenever I do have some time to boot up a game, I usually end up weighing my options for long enough to the point where I no longer have time to play games, and that’s something both Spelunky 2 and I have to come to terms with.

ROGUE LEGACY 2

Honestly you could just kind of look back at the Spelunky 2 post and it would be the same story. Rogue Legacy 2 is the sequel to Rogue Legacy, a game that I actually enjoyed when it came out a few years back. Without retreading what I literally just said a paragraph earlier, I think the main reason I never booted this game up had to do with it being an early access release. I knew what I had paid for, but the general consensus around the game was that you should wait until it was fully released. I also thought that would be a good idea considering I’m not a fan of the genre as is, and I have a tendency to burn out on games I enjoy by playing them incessantly. Now, unlike Spelunky 2, I do actually intend on playing this game once it sees its full release. Now that I think about it, I have no idea when that might be. It might be out right now for all I know.

THE LAST OF US PART II

Back when The Last of Us Part II released, I wrote a blog post about how I really didn’t have any desire to play it whatsoever. Something about a deadly virus that swept the globe and turned people into hideous monsters, leaving the few survivors to fend for themselves and be exceedingly shitty to one another, just didn’t sit well with me at the time. It turns out, I still don’t want to play The Last of Us Part II for the same reasons.

It’s a real shame too considering I really enjoyed The Last of Us and thought it was a wonderfully crafted game. Hell, I even called it one of my favorite games of the 2010’s. I still think the weakest part of that game was anything that involved zombies, but even with that caveat it was still a veritable masterpiece. It was gritty and raw, providing many emotional gut-punches along the way that still occupy a place in my memory to this day. While I wasn’t immediately dismissive of a sequel, I wasn’t necessarily excited for one either. Like I said, I thought the story stood up on its own just fine and didn’t need another chapter.

Once The Last of Us Part II did release though, I found myself in a pretty dark place myself as my world had essentially crumbled around me thanks to a certain pandemic. I didn’t need to play a game that was going to double down on the misery angle, because I was already pretty miserable myself. Even now I have no desire to play The Last of Us Part II, not because I think it’s a bad game or anything, but because I just don’t need that kind of negativity in my life right now. I don’t know if I’ll ever play it honestly, and I’m okay with that.

CRUSADER KINGS III

Okay, so full disclosure, I did in fact play about 15 minutes of Crusader Kings III, but it still has a home on this list. After it was released I found myself captivated by the sheer absurdity of the images and stories people were sharing on social media about this game, so much so in fact that I had to jump in on the fun. Sure it’s a genre of game I actively dislike, but I play D&D, surely I could handle a complex video game that might make me discover a newfound passion for a different kind of game. Also it was on Xbox Game Pass for the PC, so I had no real reason not to try it.

Within minutes I felt like I was drowning in a sea of menus, tutorial messages and windows displaying words I had never seen before. I was so out of my element and Crusader Kings III knew it. A message popped up, “Oh hey Ari, I see you want to get to the funny stuff that you saw on the internet, but before that you need to read this textbook on feudal class systems in Europe first.” I was out of my depth with Crusader Kings III, and eventually had to ALT+F4 my way out of the game before my brain melted. I was never a great history student in retrospect, and this game seemed like it was made by all of my past history teachers in attempt to get me to turn in some long lost homework or something.

For the people who managed to spend the time with it and really give it a fair shot, it seems like they came away with great experiences and stories that were capable of luring in a rube like myself. But maybe that’s where it started and stopped for me. Maybe the stories were all I really wanted from the game itself, and the mechanics just got in the way of that. Or maybe I just don’t have the patience for a game like Crusader Kings III.

This has been day 1 of The Bonus World’s Game of the Year 2020 coverage. Check back tomorrow for another list about video games from this year.

Blog: CyberFunk – 12/16/20

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With the holiday season in full swing, I’ve found myself falling behind when it comes to completing previously planned projects. In addition to gift shopping, updating this site, planning for D&D sessions, and the general things I need to do to stay alive, it just feels like my free time is become more and more scarce. This is all a long way of saying that it’s going to be pretty quiet around here until the end of the month when the Game of the Year stuff starts dropping. But in what little free time I was able to scrounge together, I did manage to spend some time with Cyberpunk 2077.

Usually I’d do a Gut Check piece about a game like Cyberpunk 2077, but my aforementioned time crunch combined with my overall feelings about the game, a blog feels appropriate. I’m about six hours into Cyberpunk 2077, and I’ve got to say that I’m not crazy about it. And this might sound like another one of those, “Ari just hates video games” things, but the game has some pretty bad problems and I’m not the only one that holds that opinion. All of this fails to mention the constant crunch the team at CD Projekt Red had to endure just to get this game out the door is shitty. It isn’t just CD Projekt Red however, this is a change that needs to sweep through the entirety of the game industry.

Aside from miserable business practices that encourage the exploration of developers, the game itself is riddled with bugs and glitches across all of its ports, but I expect that in time those will all be sorted out. That isn’t me absolving them for launching a busted game, but if you’re kind of person who doesn’t play games in their launch window, the bugs might be a moot point. I’ve only played a handful of hours so far and I’ve already encountered bugs ranged from hilarious to game-breaking, but buggy launches seem to just be the norm these days.

My main issues really lay in the poor performance as well as the sheer content & story of the game itself. The performance isn’t great, but it’s held up for me and my aging computer surprisingly well. I’m also playing it on low settings, which I mention because the game looks surprisingly okay despite my inferior computer components. But like I said before, performance and technical issues will certainly be resolved in the future. From what little I’ve played thus far, I don’t think performance patches can solve the design issues of Cyberpunk 2077.

I just haven’t really resonated with the story or the characters as much as I would have hoped for. The game itself throws a lot at you early on which makes understanding not only the story, but the mechanics of Cyberpunk 2077 incredibly daunting as well. From the jump, everyone is speaking what might as well be another language as they bloviate about “net-runners,” “corpos,” and other cyberpunk jargon that sounds like nonsense. There’s a sequence early on where you’re introduced to the concept of “brain-dancing,” which is this weird form of hacking a specific sequence in time. The tutorial that’s used allows you to live through a convenience store robbery gone wrong. You basically float around this 45 second vignette of a dude robbing a store, and you can bounce around through different camera feeds and perspectives to essentially uncover every aspect of that scene. The concept itself is already hard to wrap your head around, and then they start introducing an editing timeline along with audio and thermal layers to swap between to uncover certain clues about the scenario.

*Look at this map, gang. I feel like I have a panic attack every time I open this thing*

If that all sounds confusing, that’s because it fucking is. For as much bullshit exists on screen at any given moment in Cyberpunk 2077, the game does a pretty bad job of explaining some core concepts to you. For instance, there was a fight early on where a meter kept filling up that said “overheating,” and when it filled I would catch fire momentarily. Why this was happening, I had no clue. It wasn’t till a friend of mine told me that enemy hackers had that ability, that the mystery was solved. Even navigating the menus is a weirdly complex task. There are so many sub-menus in Cyberpunk 2077, that I genuinely missed about 6 different upgrade trees because all of the menus are a mess.

It’s such a shame too because the setting of Night City seems genuinely cool and is a place I’d like to explore, but I don’t really have the desire to do much more than that. Apparently the main story doesn’t actually start until about 8 hours into the game, which to me seems like a massive hurdle to overcome. I basically have to endure a full work day to get to the part where the story happens. It’s this situation where I have to ask myself, if this game was in a technically perfect state, would I enjoy it? And I don’t really know the answer to that. In theory I’d like to play an action RPG in a cyberpunk universe, but even with Cyberpunk 2077 right in front of me, I still find myself wanting something else.

I could prattle on about Cyberpunk 2077, but the summary here is that I don’t think I like that game very much. It seems fine and I’m glad there are some people that are enjoying it, but I just don’t think I have the time to commit to a game that I’m not smitten with. I need to spend that free time getting our annual Game of the Year stuff in order anyway. For reference, Game of the Year articles should be going up during the week of the 28th. There will be a blog next week (UPDATE: there was not a blog next week) but like I said, otherwise it’ll be quite until GOTY week. So yeah, see you all next week.

Gut Check: Immortals: Fenyx Rising

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When talking about Immortals: Fenyx Rising, it’s impossible not to bring up 2017’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, an excellent game that was bound to inspire other developers to build upon its success. Enter Immortals: Fenyx Rising, a game that’s so clearly inspired by Breath of the Wild that at times it feels like plagiarism. However, for better and worse, Ubisoft did not make a carbon copy of Breath of the Wild, because that would be an insult to one of the best Zelda games out there. What we have on our hands is a louder, less subtle, yet still solid facsimile of a modern classic.

Immortals: Fenyx Rising is an action-adventure game that is exactly what you would expect Breath of the Wild to look like if Ubisoft had made it. What I mean is that Immortals: Fenyx Rising tries to copy the sense of exploration and expansiveness that Breath of the Wild had, while pumping the game full of checklists and side activities. The outcome is a fundamentally solid game that seems so conflicted in what it’s trying to do that it ultimately feels exceptionally average in almost every way. It lacks the elegance and charm of its inspirator, which makes sense because Ubisoft made it.

One of the things that Immortals: Fenyx Rising gets right and also happens to be one of my favorite aspects of the game is the breadth and scope of the world. It’s this sizeable landmass that’s beautifully rendered in a lower detailed, watercolor graphical style that’s extremely reminiscent of Breath of the Wild. That classic, “If you see it, you can go to it,” design philosophy is well realized in Immortals: Fenyx Rising, and its art style, world design and the power it leverages from being on consoles other than the Nintendo Switch really make this world worth exploring. The world doesn’t appear to be overwhelmingly large, instead opting for a smaller and more handcrafted experience. While I’m still early on, the world seems to be taking a quality over quantity approach, something I’d take any day over a large, procedurally generated bland landmass… a blandmass if you will.

As you explore you’ll be collecting various resources for crafting potions, upgrading your armor and weapons, and so on and so forth. It sounds more daunting than it is though because resource management isn’t really a thing you have to worry about outside of carrying capacity for certain items. You’ll also come across all sorts of hidden puzzles, friendly animals and corrupted beasts, the latter of which makes Immortals: Fenyx Rising really feel like its own game.

I really enjoy the overall combat experience in Immortals: Fenyx Rising, but the best thing that it does, or specifically doesn’t do, is make you endure weapon degradation. That’s right, Immortals: Fenyx Rising fixed the worst part about Breath of the Wild and needs to be celebrated for that. Within the first hour of the game you’ll become familiar with light and heavy attacks, your bow, one magic ability that allows you to pick up rocks and stuff, a dodge, and a parry that I always forget about. Combat is fast is rewarding, and every last enemy you vanquish is hurled into space as they dissolve into ash which is a really satisfying touch. Immortals: Fenyx Rising also does the Breath of the Wild thing where if you parry or dodge at the right moment, everything slows down for you to get this flurry of blows in that deals extra damage. You’ll unlock additional abilities as you explore more of the world, collect more resources, and progress through the story, which might be the only nice thing I can say about the story.

The story in Immortals: Fenyx Rising is bad. Well, that’s not entirely fair, maybe the story is fine, but the way it’s presented is miserable. Evil dragon/god/demon-thing Typhon, who is basically the Ganondorf of this game, has corrupted the land and has turned 4 of the remaining heroes of the gods into his agents of chaos. If this sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because this is almost the exact story in Breath of the Wild. That’s where you, Fenyx, come into play. A terrible shipwreck has you washed up on shore and you come to find that you’re basically the chosen one or whatever and only you can save the world. Sounds fine so far, right?

Immortals: Fenyx Rising is told through an active narration, wherein Prometheus is telling the story of the game to Zeus. This narration tries so desperately to be funny with both narrators cracking wise at each other, usually ending with a joke about how shitty Zeus was. It’s all so brutally unfunny and actively detracts from the good moments in Immortals: Fenyx Rising. And it isn’t just those two dopes that bring the experience down. Every single NPC I’ve met thus far is terrible and actively unfunny. From Hermes being this snark-filled kleptomaniac who is written to be this lovable scamp despite the fact that he isn’t, to an oracle who doesn’t know he’s an oracle because he’s sooooo highhhh, it’s all just so poorly executed.

It’s sad to say, but lately Ubisoft has been churning out nothing but bland and badly written games, and this is no exception. It’s like they saw Breath of the Wild and felt compelled to pump it full of classic open world bullshit. When I think back to Breath of the Wild, I remember a quiet game about exploration and discovery that didn’t hold your hand and was designed with a simple ethos of “the journey should be just as interesting as the destination.” And Immortals: Fenyx Rising is perfectly capable of providing those moments of quiet discovery, but it’s constantly undermined by the chattering old men who crow at you at random times, and the unnecessary amount of cut-scenes that you have to endure. There’s a point where you’re introduced to your hub area where you come to level up and craft and so on, and there are about 6 specific stations to learn about. Each one of them comes with a cut-scene where Hermes comes and snarkily explains these stations to you. Instead of just some text that didn’t have bad jokes in it, I had to listen to that dingus to learn how to upgrade my stuff.

Much like Watch Dogs: Legion and to a lesser extent, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Immortals: Fenyx Rising has it’s fair share of performance issues. I swear, each one of these titles has fucked up in a different way, that it’s starting to feel intentional at this point. Watch Dogs: Legion couldn’t maintain a framerate to save its life, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla loved to hang at loading screens, and Immortals: Fenyx Rising just will decide arbitrarily that you can no longer play the game. Every 15 to 30 minutes or so, Immortals: Fenyx Rising will just freeze up and hang there. I haven’t found any rhyme or reason to any of it, and it’s been the sole reason why my play sessions are cut short. Maybe it’s my PC, but the fact that all three of these Ubisoft titles have broken in three distinct and separate ways is wild.

The worst part about all of this is that if the game would let me, I’d sink a lot of time into Immortals: Fenyx Rising. It’s not a perfect game by any means, but there’s a lot to like about it. The combat, world design, and sense of exploration all seem great, but the story and performance issues really undercut the entire experience. I like Immortals: Fenyx Rising, but it just isn’t as refined or as cohesive of a package as Breath of the Wild was. I know it’s unfair to compare a flagship Nintendo title to a Ubisoft title that’s been pushed out in December as an afterthought, but when you wear your inspiration so blatantly on your sleeve like Immortals: Fenyx Rising does, you can’t help but point out its shortcomings.

Blog: Boba Fett – 12/09/20

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This post contains spoilers for season 2 of The Mandalorian

So I’m just gonna rip the bandage off and say it — I think Boba Fett is a shitty character. You might be wondering where this is all coming from and to answer that I’d point you towards the hit Disney+ exclusive show, The Mandalorian for this particular blog. You can also thank my friends for the part they played in this blog, specifically how every conversation we’ve had since the latest episode went live have included some sore of Boba Fett themed joke. They know I hate this dude, and I’d like to explain why.

When I was younger, my mother introduced me to the world of Star Wars through the lens of the original trilogy. Back then they were the only Star Wars movies, so heaping praise on them and calling them “classics” was an easy thing to do. Yet even as a kid, there was one scene in particular that always made me chuckle. It was that scene where Darth Vader is meeting with all of the bounty hunters he’s hired, and feels compelled to specifically call out Boba Fett with the line, “No disintegrations.” As a kid, I saw this lineup of characters and thought they all looked absolutely absurd. Aside from Boba Fett, you’ve got Dengar desperately trying to look cool while standing next to the very “topple-able” IG-88, along with Bossk, 4-LOM and Zuckuss standing over to the right in the “who gives a shit?” section of the lineup. All of them are perfectly placed to highlight the man himself, Boba Fett, who according to Darth Vader and only Darth Vader, is very infamous for disintegrating folks.

One could argue that back in 1980 these guys looked imposing, but seeing this “rogue’s gallery” as a kid just made me snicker and laugh more than anything. None of these guys registered as threatening to me, especially not when compared to the guy hiring them, Darth motherfucking Vader. But that was kind of it as far as me thinking about Boba Fett until I watched Return of the Jedi and saw him basically get killed in what could be described as a comedy of errors. The dude gets shot in the jet-pack, launched into the sky, and immediately loses any semblance of being cool as he slams into Jabba’s ship and falls right into the mouth of a Sarlacc Pit. As a kid, that was the height of comedy for me.

But when I got older and noticed that the Star Wars fans around me were sincerely into Boba Fett and the things he could do, I was genuinely confused. They were talking about the same guy who flailed in the air, crashed into a wall and fell in a hole to be digested for centuries? This guy was cool? Why? Well the answers I’d usually get involved some books or expanded lore that did nothing but desperately try to paint this joke as a cool guy. That and his equipment was neat.

Tracking the official canon of Star Wars is tricky and to be completely honest, I don’t care enough to it. But my understanding is that all of the cool shit Boba Fett allegedly did in those books and comics are no longer canon now. I don’t know if that’s still the case or if some books are still legit or whatever, but the fact remains that I still don’t care. The official canon in my mind is that Boba Fett shows up in The Empire Strikes Back, has some unearned accolades thrown at him (i.e. “no disintegrations”), and promptly falls into a hole where he is munched on for an eternity. That’s it. I guess he also has a nice lunch with Darth Vader in the Cloud City, but that’s about it.

Then there’s his “cool stuff.” First, the helmet is cool. It’s always been cool and I will never take that away from the Mandalorians as a people. But aside from the helmet, Boba Fett looks like a kid trying on his dad’s clothes and pretending to be cool… oh wait, that’s exactly what it fucking is. He’s got these dumpy sweatpants, piss colored cape, big dumb orange lifting belt, and the stupidest looking knee-pads on, all of which paint the picture of a man who is desperately trying to look cool. The dude looks like he just rolled out of bed and hastily slapped something together that might look imposing. Eventually however, I was able to stop thinking about Boba Fett and Star Wars all together.

Then The Mandalorian came out, and I was genuinely scared that they’d try to redeem the eternally shitty, yet somehow beloved character of Boba Fett. The first season came and went without him rearing his stupid face, but the second season decided it was time to justify this character’s unearned fandom. As if Disney had been listening to my complaints for years, they sought to make an episode in which Boba Fett did a bunch of dope shit. They even went so far as to make his stupid fucking knee-pads shoot missiles, which I took personally.

The entire episode felt like a ret-con of everything I had specifically called Boba Fett out on for years, and I think that’s what’s pissing me off the most. Like, they went out of their way to do this knee-pad bullshit. But if I’m being completely honest, seeing Boba Fett actually do something effective for once was pretty cool. It was a good action sequence that really seemed to do right by the expanded lore of the character, and that’s fine in my book. Don’t get me wrong, I still think the titular Mandalorian is a much better character than the Fett-man, but I’ll give credit where it’s due. But nothing that Grandpa-Fett can do will make me forget the time he was bested by a blind man and his big dog which resulted in him residing at the bottom of a living hole for a couple of centuries. But I’m sure they’ll ret-con that too.

Blog: One Last Rant – 12/02/20

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I know I’ve repeatedly complained about my inability to secure a PlayStation 5, but I promise you that this is the last bespoke article you’ll have to endure unless something truly buck-wild happens. The majority of issues that are plaguing the launch of both the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 can be summed up with “not enough stock,” or “scalpers.” It’s truly been an exhausting and underwhelming experience that’s made me question why I’m fighting so hard for the chance to spend $500.

What started as the casual perusing of digital store shelves eventually devolved into obsessive behavior and a complete monopolization of my spare brain capacity. I started simply by following a Twitter account known for alerting people of sales and other announcements surrounding video games. With Black Friday coming up, why wouldn’t I follow someone who had their finger on the pulse of deals in a way I did not? I enabled notifications and went on my merry way.

“Wal Mart is restocking at 9pm ET” one tweet read. “Cool,” I thought to myself, I’ll load up the page on my computer as well as my phone just as an additional precaution. This is a hotly sought after item after all. 9pm arrives, I abuse the F5 key to reload my webpage after every instance of the “error adding item to cart” message I’d receive. No worries, I’ll just keep doing this until it… oh, it’s completely sold out and it’s not even 9:01pm yet. This is where things took a turn.

Every major retailer’s PS5 page, both physical and digital editions of the console secured a prominent display on one of my monitors. Several tabs dedicated to both editions across various retailers are left open on my screen, occasionally receiving a refresh just in case one of the 4 PS5 stock notifying Twitter accounts I follow, just happen to slip up. I think we can all agree that I was being very sensible and not at all crazy.

And with this idea in my head that these Twitter accounts could fail me, I found some websites that track the stock of items in several retail stores. Even better was that they refresh automatically and even have alarms for when something comes back in stock. With alarms and notifications in place, one could reasonably assume that I could just go on with my life until I was alerted of something changing. That was the intention at least.

No, it turns out that I’ve been unable to find joy in literally anything else for fear that I might miss out on my one chance to buy this stupid looking console. It also doesn’t help to see that the only consistent “in-stock” options are eBay and a site called StockX, both boasting nothing but scalpers selling their wares at extremely reasonable prices. $1200 for a console that retails for $500? Sounds like an excellent deal to me. There were several listings for PS5s in the range of $30,000, but shout-out to the person listing a PS5 for 1 million fucking dollars. Thankfully shipping is included in the $1,000,000 price tag, unlike some of the other ones that were charging 500 bucks for shipping on top of a $28,000 price tag.

It’s been so infuriating to follow all of this, but this is exactly what so many others predicted would happen in a world where manufacturing and shipping lines had been disrupted by a deadly virus. It’s the reality of the situation, and until we can get to a place where the stock can meet the demand this is how it’s going to be for a lot of people. I desperately want one of these stupid boxes so I can play modern games without them either looking or performing like garbage, and getting a PS5 just happens to be the cheapest way I can do that. It’s that or spend at least a grand on upgrading my computer.

What bothered and continues to bother me the most is how unwilling any retailers or even Sony themselves seem to be about offering people a better shot at buying these consoles. Sites like Wal Mart and others put as little in the way of obstacles as they can to prevent you from buying something. That means there’s no verification process for an automated script to bump up against when trying to secure a dozen new consoles for resale. Meanwhile Sony has a queue system in place that isn’t perfect, but at least gave me the passing impression that I might be able to buy a PS5.

*These are the prices for just the boxes!*

I guess the ultimate question is “why do I want this thing so badly?” It’s an extremely valid question that took me a bit to come up with an actual answer that wasn’t just, “cause I waaaaaaaannnntttt one.” The way I see it is, there are some really big games coming out soon that I really want to try, things like Cyberpunk 2077 and Ubisoft’s terribly named Immortals: Fenyx Rising. My base PS4 isn’t going to do a great job with either of those games, and my PC is showing its age in a way that makes me certain that the clock is ticking. But in reality I could definitely hold off until next year to buy a PS5 and I’m well aware of that fact.

They always say that you shouldn’t buy the first iteration of any electronic product because it’ll inevitably be flawed in some way. There are reports of failing USB ports, incompatibilities with external drives and plenty of user interface issues that seem to be affecting people, all of which are great reasons to wait for a firmware patch or a new iteration. But in a year that’s been fundamentally broken and busted, why shouldn’t my new $500 console be a complete representation of the year 2020? Ultimately, I just want the new shiny thing and got really obsessive about it to the point where I’d get genuinely upset when I couldn’t purchase one online. It was at that point I decided to close out all of my tracking tabs and just try my luck at finding one in a store, which considering that I live in a fairly small town, might actually be my best option.

Gut Check: Fuser

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Somewhere between my first and fiftieth Smash Mouth and Carly Rae Jepsen mashup, the comedic flair that initially attracted me to Fuser faded into the background and was replaced with a genuine desire to make a song that actually sounded good. While Fuser isn’t much of a “game,” it is a pretty powerful and accessible piece of software that’s capable of generating some genuine ear-worms of songs in an easy and accessible way.

Just like previous Harmonix titles such as the Rock Band series or the early Guitar Hero games, the fun doesn’t necessarily stem from making your way through the career modes, but rather in the simple act of playing the game is the real draw. Just like those games, Fuser has a story mode that grants you different unlocks as you progress, but in reality it’s more of a tutorial than anything else. During the course of a set you’ll get some requests for certain instruments and genres as well as some objectives that usually revolve around you utilizing a technique you just learned.

The idea is that you’re an amateur DJ who like anyone at this event, is just allowed to hop on stage and mix it up at what must be the weirdest music festival in the universe. There’s no logic to it, but there doesn’t really need to be considering that no one is actually coming to a music game for its story. The career is split into several sets of levels spread across a few different uniquely themed stages where you’ll be taught something new. The first stage is about the basics of timing, whereas later on you’re taught about soloing certain tracks, queuing up new sets, and adjusting tempos.

It’s incredibly helpful and provides you with a decent amount of cosmetic and song unlocks depending how well you score in a level, but Fuser isn’t really good about giving you feedback which isn’t great if you’re trying to improve. I rarely understood why I got three stars on a level versus four or five, because the game only seems to show you what you did right without offering anything in the way of criticism. It wouldn’t be such a bummer if it wasn’t for the fact that songs and song currency are usually unlocked when you reach a five star score.

But once you complete a few stages and learn some of the advanced techniques for mixing, I’d suggest you just leap into the freeplay mode and never look back. That’s what I’ve done, and I’m truly having a great time just mixing up songs for half hour sets at a time. Without the pressure of having to keep the crowd happy or worrying about the various objectives that might pop up during a set, freeplay is the actual mode you’ll be spending the majority of your time with .

You start any session by picking your crate of 30 songs to bring on stage with you. There are a lot of songs from different genres and eras, all of which have been broken into up to four tracks: vocals, bass, drums and guitar. Sometimes the guitar and bass will be synths, pianos or horns, but the idea is that you have four pieces of a song to play with. That means you can use Smash Mouth’s “All Star” vocals, with A-ha’s “Take on me” drums, and some other stuff that shouldn’t ever be in the same song, and make them be in the same song.

Fuser will force these songs to work together under any circumstance, even if that means ruining the very concept of music for you. This will manifest in the form of incredibly sad sounding pop songs that are in a minor key and played really slowly, or the exact opposite where “Linger” by The Cranberries suddenly becomes a high octane pop song. It’s wild and shouldn’t be capable of producing anything other than ear poison, but it all manages to hold together while producing decent sounding music

It probably took me a total of ten minutes in freeplay to create something I actually would listen to in my car. That realization was both comforting and horrifying because none of this should be working, but yet I still find myself nodding my head along to the music I create. I truly have loved my time with Fuser but I do fear that it might not have the legs that Rock Band did. It seems like a fun thing to show your friends that might ultimately not have the longest lasting appeal, but for a time it can be a genuinely good time.

Blog: A Big Bloated Blog – 11/25/20

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It’s almost Thanksgiving here in America, which traditionally meant that we all had an excuse to break any diets we were clinging to, were subject to horribly racist and misguided “conversation” with distant relatives, and would ultimately result with hiding in a bathroom to avoid your family. Luckily you don’t have to engage with any of that shit this year and that’s fucking great. Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to have eaten a traditional Thanksgiving dinner this year but between the whole pandemic thing and the election thing, I’m super good with just staying home.

And you should be too, quite frankly. I don’t know if you’ve checked recently, but that COVID-19 thing that our nincompoop of a president and his deluge of moronic followers consistently bellow is a “hoax,” much to the surprise of nobody turned out to be real. But people are going to travel out of spite and ignorance regardless of how much that “liberal science” keeps pleading for them to stay home. So do yourself a favor and stay the fuck home if you can. I know that not everyone is in a situation where they can do that, but for those who can make that choice, pick the option where you don’t endanger the lives of everyone around you.

Yeah, stay home and distract yourselves by maybe watching some movies or reading a book. Definitely don’t refresh certain retailer websites in the hopes that a certain stupid looking console might suddenly become available. If everyone could just ignore the internet for a short period of time, that would be so ideal. I must have signed up for so many notifications for when the PlayStation 5 is back in stock that I’m certain my phone will explode when retailers make the console available again.

What else is going on? Oh, the president is still trying to undermine our democracy and erode the foundation that our country is built upon with frivolous and baseless lawsuits, but what else is new? It’s kind of like when you see a kid throw a tantrum in Target or something, it’s loud, annoying, and inescapable unless you just leave the store altogether. That’s basically what these past few weeks have been like, except it’s a grown man with a bad spray tan that’s doing it in front of the entire world. Hopefully this all comes to pass without too much more damage.

I don’t have a great segue to pivot off of that, so I’ll just say that I’ve been playing some Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and boy howdy is it unremarkable. On the plus side, it runs on my computer at a stable frame rate and looks gorgeous while doing it, unlike another Ubisoft release from a month ago. But on the flip side of that coin, it’s just kind of boring. Admittedly I haven’t played too much of it, but I haven’t found the story, characters or mechanics to be all that interesting. Honestly, it just seems kind of bland.

Remember when Assassin’s Creed started pumping out sequels that were basically the same game crammed into a new setting? That’s what Assassin’s Creed Valhalla feels like. It isn’t a bad game at all however, it’s just unremarkable. Not every game needs to be revolutionary or anything like that, but Assassin’s Creed Valhalla just kind of feels like another solid entry in the series and nothing more.

Also, I couldn’t play it for the first day because I kept running into an infinite loading screen that stopped me from actually ever starting the game. I tried a bunch of different options and tweaks to try and get on the other side of this blank void of a loading screen, but nothing sufficed. But for the first time in history, I have to say that a game streaming service saved the day.

I noticed an ad on Uplay+ that alluded to a glut of Ubisoft games, including Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, were currently available on Amazon Luna. Amazon Luna is Amazon’s (surprise, right?) game streaming service. It works fine, but is not the way I’d ever play these games. That is unless they offered cross-save functionality that would allow me to get through a busted loading screen and then take that new save back to the version I had installed on my computer. But what are the odds of tha… oh wait.

Yeah, for the first time in my life I’m thankful I had access to a game streaming service. Oh, and for those of you worried about my finances, I have no intention of keeping the service after the free trial is up. But hey, maybe before the trial is up I’ll try to whip up an article or something about it.

Also, with the holidays coming up and the end of the year approaching it’s time for me to start thinking about Game of the Year type stuff again. I’ve got some ideas and loose plans for things, but we’ll see if they pan out the way I want them to.

I think that’s about it for me this week. Hey, thanks for stopping in and reading this rambling mess. I appreciate your support. Be safe, be smart, and enjoy Thanksgiving if you can, and you’re an American. To everyone else, enjoy your week and ignore all retailer websites for a few days so I can get the funny looking console. Thanks!

Blog: Whoa-vember – 11/18/20

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I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but it’s gotten really weird and bad out there recently. Like, shit is so bizarre that it’s genuinely hard to keep track of anything anymore even when it isn’t whatever horrible thing is happening in the news. But let’s try and take a fun little sojourn in the opposite direction of the grimness of our world, and instead discuss some video games for a change. That should be fun, right?

Earlier this week I published my review of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, a game I truly loved despite it boasting some truly god awful technical performance. Aside from just being a mostly superb game, it also made that urge to upgrade to a PlayStation 5 feel more urgent and necessary than ever before. To be clear, I know that none of those things are true but I just really want one, and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales just was that last push I needed to confirm that.

I know there aren’t any real games for it at the moment unless you’re into Demon’s Souls, which I am not, but I guess like a lot of people out there I’m captivated by the shiny new thing that’s on the market. I know that launch hardware is notoriously suspect and bound for a refresh that doesn’t make it look like a penguin with a popped collar, but it still doesn’t change the fact that I want the damn thing now.

I want to get my hands on that controller and see what it’s all about. I want to play the pre-installed Astro’s Playroom, a game that people have been championing since the console released. Yet none of this would be an issue if I could literally find anywhere that was selling one. You’d probably be reading articles on this very site about the PlayStation 5 and all the stuff it brings to the table. The reality is that I’ll eventually get a hold of one, I just would prefer it to be sooner rather than later.

Other than playing Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and pining for a new console, I dipped into a little bit of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and boy howdy is it just another one of those games. It isn’t bad or anything, it just doesn’t feel especially outstanding thus far. To its credit, it at least runs on my computer at a decent frame rate unlike the previous Ubisoft release, Watch Dogs Legion, so that’s a plus. I’m going to put more time into it though because I’ve had this desire to play a big action/adventure game recently and was really hoping that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla would do the trick.

I’ve been looking for a game to really sink my teeth into lately, and aside from Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, nothing has really done the trick. Even games I was really into like Baldur’s Gate III and Solasta: Crown of the Magister seemed like perfect candidates, but they’re both early enough that I ultimately decided to back away from them until they receive some more updates.

I don’t know, maybe all the shit going on in the world right now is eating away at my ability to truly engross myself in a game or something, but it’s been kind of underwhelming for me on the gaming front lately. I think more than anything I think I’m just tired. Everything is so fucking exhausting these days, and I just need it to stop for a bit. I feel like I’ve aged twenty years in the past 4, and these next few months might put me into an old folk’s home if the past few weeks have been any indication.

Review: Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

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Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a game that not only builds on the incredible foundation that was Marvel’s Spider-Man with a new protagonist and mechanics, but cuts out a lot of the bloat that plagued its predecessor. The refinements overall result in a tremendously well-paced experience that every Spider-Man fan should check out as long as they aren’t using a launch PlayStation 4.

In Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, you play as the titular Miles Morales who has been tag-teaming New York City alongside his mentor and OG Spider-Man, Peter Parker. The main conceit of the story is that Peter and Mary Jane have gone on something of a working vacation in Europe, leaving Miles to be the sole protector of New York City for the next three weeks. Peter, having never been able to take a break from protecting the city gets a much needed respite from it, while Miles finally has his chance to prove that he’s just as legitimate a Spider-Man as Peter is.

That chance comes when Miles uncovers a new gang that’s risen from the ashes of the defeated criminal enterprises from 2018’s Marvel’s Spider-Man, along with a corporation doing unsurprisingly unscrupulous things. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales doesn’t waste much time before thrusting you into the heart of this ~10 hour experience, keeping the story and the intrigue moving at an enjoyable brisk pace. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales also cuts out all of those dreadful stealth missions where you played as “not-Spider-Man,” which is an overwhelmingly good decision.

What I love about Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is that not only in its storytelling does it respect your time, but the missions and side activities have been tuned in such a way to keep things fresh and engaging without bogging you down with an enormous activities checklist. To be clear, the game does have mildly repetitive challenges and side activities within it, but their volume has been greatly reduced. While random crimes are still recycled ad-nauseam, the bigger side missions are all unique in their structure. It’s one of the few times I’ve been able to look at a follow-up to a game and see a developer actually respond to the criticisms they’ve received.

When you start Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, you’re already way more capable than Peter Parker was in Marvel’s Spider-Man. Allowing you to have access to advanced swinging mechanics and combat abilities right from the jump makes the game much less of a grind, while also making narrative sense as well considering there would be no reason for Peter not to teach Miles all he’s learned in the course of his adventure.

From top to bottom, I had an excellent time with Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales both from a narrative standpoint and its new gameplay mechanics. Miles has access to electrically powered attacks, dubbed “venom strikes,” as well as an inherent cloaking ability that I probably didn’t use as much as I should have. Miles doesn’t have the same amount of gadgetry and tech that Peter had in his game, but these abilities more than make up for it. Besides, there was only like one or two suit modifications and gadgets worth using in Marvel’s Spider-Man.

My only real issue with Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales comes with its technical performance. Being that this is a cross-generation game appearing on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, the game felt half-baked on my launch PS4 in a way that Marvel’s Spider-Man did not. At the beginning of the game it both ran well and looked incredible, but as time went on, the cracks started to show. My running theory is that as time progresses in the game, the time of day and weather also change with it. When nightfall would hit or snow would fall, the game would run heinously in a way that I imagine newer hardware could handle with ease.

I experienced a ton of frame rate hitches and even had the game just lock up in certain places for a few seconds, but to its credit the game never crashed or made me lose progress. But it really made the best part about these games, which is to say the swinging around, feel like a chore. Having to battle the frame rate every time I dared to take to the skies truly detracted from an otherwise outstanding game. Even aside from that though, the version I played was plagued with other technical errors like dialogue just not playing in cut-scenes, cut-scenes just freezing completely, and my least favorite of all, the game playing two music tracks on top of each other. That last one was something that literally ended up giving me a headache until I rebooted both the game and console.

It’s a shame that the technical quality of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales wasn’t up to snuff, because the rest of the game was so good that it made me power through these issues just to see the end. Hell, I still want to hop back in and sweep up all the stuff I missed, but I’ll have to wait until I can get my hands on a PS5 before I attempt it. If you’ve got a system capable of running it properly as well as a love for Spider-Man as a concept, I cannot recommend Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales enough.

Blog: Unbelievable – 11/11/20

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It has been approximately 35 years since the 2020 American presidential election began, and despite the fact that Joe Biden won the damn thing, it sure doesn’t feel that way. But we all knew that this would happen. We all knew that the overgrown man-child in the White House wouldn’t concede any defeat regardless of how definitive the results might have been, but knowing that never filled me with any sort of comfort. See, I’m genuinely horrified for what the next few months have in store for my country, and as of now there doesn’t seem to be any reprieve from the stress.

There’s no need to recap what’s been happening in America, because I’m pretty sure everyone on planet Earth is aware of the elderly man and his latest bout of temper tantrums. It’s shameful to say the least, but I wouldn’t expect anything less from the spray-tanned hobgoblin that’s routinely eroded our democracy for his personal gain.

But he isn’t the only problem. It’s the people around him, his cabinet, his employees and his supporters that continue to enable and encourage his behavior that scare me the most. These people, regardless of if Trump is dragged out of the White House or not, will still be around and in some cases remain in power. His supporters, the 70+ million people who voted for him, will still be around and eager to do whatever the president might decree via his daily deluge of Twitter vomit. This schmuck basically has an army of trigger-happy sycophants who will jump the second he gives the word, and that alone is nightmare inducing.

I fear that one of these days I’m going to wake up to the news that a legal way to stay in power has been utilized, ultimately burying the last vestigial bits of our democracy. This repugnant shit-stain is going to kick and scream as loudly as he can, and no one is going to actually stop him.

See, a lot of folks view inauguration day (January 20th) as an end point to all of this madness, but I don’t see it that way. To me, that day looks to be the apex of this clusterfuck, where Donnie and his supporters stand with their many guns outside of the White House ready for war with whomever dares to try and enter. It sounds absolutely fucking insane that this is a legitimate fear you can have, and not just a plot from a bad action movie.

I don’t know what happens next. I’ve been reassured by friends that are more politically minded than myself that nothing will come of the big baby’s tantrums, but I genuinely don’t have faith in that. For the longest time Americans lived in a shared reality, where those pesky numbers and facts actually meant something. But here in 2020, there are two realities that exist that either political party subscribes to. The democrats, for the most part, are still here on Earth where facts and evidence exist, while a lot of the Republicans and conservatives live in a magical world where they can shape reality into whatever they want like some sort of shitty version of Thanos.

The worst part of it all is that there’s nothing anyone can do to merge these two realities, solely because one side refuses to believe anything that their president doesn’t agree with. I truly hate that I’ve had to dedicate yet another blog post to this absolute nightmare that is American politics, but it’s genuinely hard to focus on anything else. We’re watching our democracy vanish before our eyes because of this buffoon. We’re letting our country be destroyed by a sexist, morally bankrupt, racist, charity defrauding, philandering, pedophiliac, draft-dodging, pandemic-denying, tax-evading piece of shit named Donald Trump.

If you’re a big Trump person, kindly go fuck yourself because I genuinely don’t know how you an call yourself an American anymore. You openly endorse this piece of shit and condone his heinous acts claiming he speaks for the little guy. The only little guy Trump has ever and will ever care about is his fuzzy little cheese doodle of a dick and it’s quite frankly surprising that you haven’t caught on to that yet.

Anywho, thanks for letting me get that off of my chest. Now if someone could help me figure out where I can buy a goddamned PlayStation 5, that would be appreciated.