Category Archives: archive blog

Blog: Whoa-vember – 11/18/20

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.

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.

Blog: Nothing – 11/04/20

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I don’t think I actually have a ton to say about anything right now, especially not video games. As an American, things haven been… challenging in the past 24 hours, and will continue to be that way for a while. I’ve gone through the whole range of emotions over the last day and I don’t even know what to think anymore. Things are still very much in the air right now because of how close this election is, but they shouldn’t have been. Especially not after everything that’s gone on over the past four years. That being said, this is kind of all I can muster for a blog today. Please take care of yourselves and be kind to each other.

Blog: Distraction – 10/28/20

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Okay, so next week is going to be a wild one for us Americans with the whole election thing going on. I’m not going to lie to you, I’m genuinely terrified for what is going to happen regardless of who wins the thing, but I need to not think about it exclusively for the next few days or I’m sure my head will explode. What I’m trying to do is to look forward to other things that might actually bring me joy instead the giant clusterfuck that is bound to be November 3rd. So here’s a hard pivot into video games.

Did you know that video games were happening this week? Well they are. Personally, I’m pretty jazzed about Teardown entering early access. For those of you who don’t know, Teardown is part destruction sandbox and part heist game. You start a level by looking for these hidden switches hidden throughout the map, then you need to set up an efficient route to get to each of them within a short time window because when you decide to flip that first switch, the cops are alerted and come hunting you.

That part of the game seems okay from what I’ve seen of it, but the real star of the show is the destructibility of everything. See, you can just blast holes in walls and objects all willy nilly if you want, and I definitely do want to do that. I’m just excited for a fun physics-based destruct-a-thon in a pretty voxel-based world. I want to destroy shit and watch it explode into tiny, GPU-burning pieces, and Teardown seems like the perfect way to accomplish that.

Teardown – Tuxedo Labs

There’s also Watch Dogs Legion, a game that I’m fully expecting to both enjoy and recoil at for how either spot on or tone-deaf it comes across. I’ve been yearning for a good action game for a while and based off of my enjoyment of Watch Dogs 2, this sequel seems like the way to go. I also went ahead and signed up for a month of Ubisoft’s Uplay+ service so I could avoid paying full price for yet another video game, especially when you consider that within the next month a new Assassin’s Creed is coming out too. It seemed like the most fiscally responsible way to play these games which is a new look for me.

But to perfectly counteract that small, fleeting glimpse of financial responsibility, I’ve been eyeing a bunch of computer parts that I want… that I need. See, I’ve reached something of a ceiling on how good my computer can be, mostly because I cheaped out when I initially built the thing. My motherboard doesn’t support newer CPU’s, so I need a new one of those to support the new CPU I need because I’m being throttled to hell and back. And also, I’d like a freaking SSD too, so that’s added into the equation. I also would like a new case for my computer that isn’t a third of my height.

“What what about the graphics card?” I hear you ask. Well, even if I got a new 3000 series card, it wouldn’t matter because my CPU is still basically a hamster with a calculator, so he would probably make it difficult to see much of a performance increase. I want to ultimately build a new computer and set my terrible hamster-based CPU free, but money isn’t something I have a ton of right now. And now I’m thinking about why I’m broke, and I’m worried about next week once again.

Fuck.

Well, hopefully by this time next week you’ll be reading a blog with a much happier tone, but like I said up top, regardless of the outcome on the 3rd, it’s gonna be a shit show. Please for the love of god, vote for Joe Biden and free us from this hell we’ve been living in for the past four years.

Blog: Divine Intervention – 10/21/20

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Change is good, isn’t it? Like, exhibiting personal growth and being able to look back and recognize that maybe you were a little too harsh on something just because you didn’t know any better and changing your opinion because of it is something to celebrate, right? That’s where I’m at with Divinity: Original Sin II, and I honestly couldn’t be happier to be wrong.

I don’t think I ever really hated Divinity: Original Sin II, rather, I would just write it off as a game that people other than me could actually enjoy. Hearing the rave reviews from critics and friends alike made it painfully obvious to me that the game was excellent, but it just always seemed like an experience that just wouldn’t resonate with me. Then Baldur’s Gate III entered early access, and everything changed.

I’m not going to reexplain everything I’ve mentioned in my previous articles about Baldur’s Gate III, so you can read those on your own if you’re so inclined. Instead, I’m just going to say that because Baldur’s Gate III managed to sink its claws into me, I was able to easily make the transition to Divinity: Original Sin II. Let’s be clear though, I want to play more of Baldur’s Gate III far more than any other game I own at the moment, but it’s so early and janky that I’d rather wait and play a similar, yet structurally sound game for now.

Divinity: Original Sin II isn’t a perfect game, nor is it scratching the exact itch that Baldur’s Gate III was, but it’s still a good time. I’ve been told numerous times that Divinity: Original Sin II has something of a difficulty spike towards the end of the campaign, but that’s why easy mode was invented.

Not only did I make the decision to not only play on the easiest difficulty, but I also opted to load the game up with mods to make it a more “interesting” experience. I’ve got custom classes and unique weapons falling out of my ass at this point with all the shit I’ve injected into the game, and I’m enjoying this play-through much more than my initial, mod-less one. And I can already hear the cries of, “aren’t you going to play the game normally?” to which I say, “no.”

I’m playing Divinity: Original Sin II in a way that’s enjoyable for me, and I have no interest in looking up optimal builds or guides that will basically tell me how to play the game step by step. I’d rather just wade into the game on my own terms along with the ability to summon any item in the game whenever I damn well please. Sure it isn’t the “intended experience” or whatever, but I’m happy with the version of the game that I’ve created called, “Divinity: Original Sin II: Ari’s Bastardized Edition.

Blog: Recap – 10/14/20

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This week has and continues to be surprisingly busy for me, which hasn’t left me a ton of time to play the games I’ve wanted to. Alongside that, I’ve been neck deep in preparing and running my D&D campaign, which requires an alarming amount of time and dedication. I genuinely don’t know how people could balance that workload along with leading a normal, pre-pandemic life. But anyway, let’s recap the week.

First and foremost, Baldur’s Gate III was released into early access which was both exciting and extremely disappointing. While the game shows incredible promise, but in its current state it just isn’t the solo D&D experience I’m looking for. It did make me excited about a CRPG for the first time in my life. I suspected at one point that Baldur’s Gate III might be the game to do that, but I’m glad to see that “prophecy” fulfilled. I have no doubt that with time many, if not all of my issues with the game will be addressed in some way, but right now I’m taking it easy and letting the game marinate.

Aside from that, I tried out some demos from the Steam Game Festival over the weekend, and while some of them were okay, nothing really blew me away. That is with the exception of a game called SuchArt!. SuchArt! puts you in the position of one of the only, if not the only remaining human artist alive, which I think is because the robots that rule this universe are incapable of making good art or something. Robots will send you requests for art pieces that you need to fulfill to the best of your abilities.

What I really enjoy about SuchArt! is how despite its goofy premise, the tools at your disposal to make the art are surprisingly robust. There are several types of brushes, canvases, stencils and other art adjacent tools that may or may not actually be used in art such as hair dryers and Nerf guns that fire paint. It’s extremely goofy, but also very therapeutic and calming to play.

Outside of those two, I’ve played some more NBA 2K21. I enjoy it. It’s fine.

And yeah, it’s just been a lot of D&D prep work on top of all of that. We’re running the latest adventure module, Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, which is okay. I’m not a supremely experienced DM by any means, but there are some things in the book, and specifically more that’s missing from the book, that make the whole story feel disjointed and bolted together. There’s been a lot of tweaking I’ve had to do in order to make the story feel cohesive, which might just be a thing that DM’s have to do with these bigger campaigns, but I’m just uncovering that.

Oh, also, I voted. You should vote too. Oh, and wear a fucking mask.

Blog: Who Among Us? – 10/07/20

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Maybe you’ve heard already, but the latest craze sweeping the internet comes in the form of an indie game that was released almost 2 years ago. It’s called Among Us and it’s a fun little party game about… well it’s about lying. It’s a game about subterfuge and social engineering that forces you and your friends to figure who is the saboteur aboard a spaceship while the others perform menial tasks to maintain the ship. It’s fun and all, but it’s also kind of grim when you realize that to win the game you have to be a good liar.

I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s parade here or anything because I’m almost certain I’m overthinking this whole thing, but I don’t know that I want to prove to my friends that I’m really good at lying to them. Like, nobody wins in that scenario right? I don’t want anyone to come away from a session of playing with me and think, “boy, Ari sure is a great liar.” But hey, like I said I’m certain I’m overthinking the hell out of this thing.

The big thing that really got to me while playing Among Us was just how tense it can get. There were moments where I genuinely felt uncomfortable as the imposter, both because I felt bad for lying and getting away with it, as well as the fact that I literally had no idea what I was doing.

When you die or get “spaced” in Among Us, you get to be a ghost that haunts the ship and can still sabotage some stuff in the process. What you can sabotage and why I don’t know, but I definitely kept draining the oxygen almost immediately as the round began when I was deceased. What happened next was I got to watch a parade of players march to the life support systems, disable it, then call a meeting in which they all accused each other fervently. I had way more fun being this invisible agent of chaos than I did just straight up wandering the map and playing mindless mini-games to restore power or whatever.

I don’t know that I’d ever pick Among Us as my “go-to” multiplayer game, but it’s certainly a fun way to kill an hour or so with friends. Although within my first hour of playing the game I had to bail out of the session thanks to a massive headache that I can only attribute to the tension the game imparted on me. Regardless of my ability to handle said tension, I certainly applaud Among Us for being able to provide an experience capable of physically incapacitating me. So that’s fun.

Blog: Torn – 09/30/20

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I think my brain might be busted in a major way because all I can think about is wanting to buy games that I know I’m not going to be into, and in some cases on a platform I know I don’t play that often. I feel stupid because I literally have to have an internal argument with myself every time I see someone praise Hades or Spelunky 2. The problem is that I know exactly how this ends, and it involves me just throwing about $50 into the garbage.

I’ve gone over my distaste for the rogue-like genre of games in the past and for a while it was easy for me to look at something like The Binding of Isaac and think, “Not only is this game visually unsettling, but I can just tell that playing it won’t be a great experience for me.” But here I am staring right at Hades and Spelunky 2, and I’m actively feeling my resolve start to falter.

Just look at Hades and tell me that it doesn’t at least look visually appealing. Every screenshot and clip I see of the damn game makes me load up the store page for it and hover my cursor delicately over the “gimme the cash” button. But it isn’t just a delight for the eyes apparently, because people are raving about every aspect of Hades to the extent where I think the mechanics, visuals and story might be able to outweigh my dislike of its run-based nature. Hell, Dead Cells was a rogue-like and I fucking loved the time I spent with it.

What’s really fucking with me is the desire to buy it on my Nintendo Switch, a console I play so little that whenever I do decide to check on my Animal Crossing town, I have to wipe the dust off of the screen first. So why in the world am I looking into buying Hades on a console I don’t really play that much? My running theory is that Hades is the perfect kind of game for the Switch, and apparently I’m planning on doing some gaming on the go in the midst of this pandemic or something. It’s stupid and I’m pretty sure I’ve talked myself out of buying it on the Switch.

The other game I’ve been contending with is Spelunky 2, a sequel to a game I actively didn’t enjoy but everyone on the internet apparently is wild for. Spelunky as a series are some of the only games where I feel like a genuine weirdo for not enjoying, and while I can’t make specific criticisms about a game i played back in 2008, I just remember hating its overly ambiguous approach to items and objectives as well as its cumbersome controls.

By all accounts, Spelunky 2 is just more Spelunky with fluid dynamics involved, a combination that a lot of people are really enjoying. Maybe with 12 years of wisdom and experience under my belt since the last release I can finally appreciate Spelunky for its true brilliance. Maybe Hades will make me a believer in the rogue-like genre. Or maybe, just maybe, I’ll waste my money on two games I’ll play just a handful of times.

UPDATE: I have bought both games. Somebody please help me.

Blog: More Than Games – 09/23/20

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Welcome to another fantastic edition of this blog where I sometimes talk about video games. Boy howdy are there a ton of video games I want to talk about this week, I’m basically swimming in rewarding gameplay experiences that I’m eager to discuss. It’s hard to convey sarcasm through a written piece, but that was all a big fib. I did a lie. No, this week has mostly been about me reading a book, hearing about how people are enjoying games I know aren’t for me, and watching the slow and steady erosion of our democracy continue unabated. So hell yeah, video game blog time!

Honestly it’s been a week of just reading through the latest Dungeons & Dragons module, Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, and preparing to run that for my group. You can read more about what that process has been like in September’s Master of Disaster feature on “prepping,” but to quickly summarize, it’s been a lot of work and a lot of fun. It’s consuming most of my time these days but I’m enjoying the process of it all.

*Rime of the Frostmaiden – Wizard’s of the Coast (Image Published on IGN)*

Otherwise I’m just kind of watching people lose their collective minds over the release of Hades and Spelunky 2, two rouge-like games that I know aren’t for me. But seeing all of this praise being dumped on these games is making me feel like I owe it to myself to at least give them a shot. I’m really in a holding pattern until next week when Baldur’s Gate III enters early access and the desire to play other games will leave my body.

Oh, and there’s that clusterfuck of a “pre-order” situation that Sony and Microsoft both waded into unwittingly that’s been interesting to watch. For those who don’t know what happened, both Sony and Microsoft had some pretty rough pre-order snafus, with people even ordering the wrong Xbox in some cases. It was bad, and even though I literally just wrote about my wanting both Sony and Microsoft to delay their consoles, I still keep trying to get a PS5 anyway. Like, there’s barely anything to play on launch day as is, but I just want the new shiny thing! I can’t buy a 3000 series graphics card because I’d literally have to upgrade everything else in my computer to accommodate it so I want the funny looking PlayStation instead!

But hey, all of that is small potatoes when stacked up against the deluge of bullshit that’s currently going on in the world. So do yourselves a favor, check your voter registration and make sure you vote on November 3rd. Seriously, it’s fucking grim out there and it’s getting worse every day.

Blog: Super Mario 3D All-Stars Feels Scummy – 09/16/20

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I’m almost certain this has been covered by other folks before, but as we creep closer to its release I find myself feeling worse and worse about Super Mario 3D All-Stars as a whole. You’d think that a package containing one of the best video games of all time would be a more exciting proposition, but there are so many little upsetting nuggets of information that keep cropping up that have effectively killed any enthusiasm I had for the collection.

For those who aren’t aware, Super Mario 3D All-Stars is an homage to the original Super Mario All-Stars on the Super Nintendo that contained the likes of Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels, and Super Mario Bros. 3. It was an incredible package that is still held in high regards today as one of the best deals in games. Super Mario 3D All-Stars does not seem like it will be anywhere near as revered as its predecessor.

*Super Mario 64 (the best game in the package.) – Nintendo*

The first issue comes down to the game selection itself. Super Mario 3D All-Stars contains Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy all for the “reasonable” price of $60. The exclusion of Super Mario Galaxy 2 is suspect to say the least, especially when you realize that one of the three games in this collection is a big ol’ stinker. That’s right folks, we’ve entered the portion of the blog where I dunk on Super Mario Sunshine.

Super Mario Sunshine is a game that doesn’t feel good to play, has some of the worst levels in Mario history in it, and steals the focus away from Mario and his cool jumps in favor of using a dumb water-gun jet-pack thing. It also inverted the camera controls on both the y and x axes which is an insane thing to do as is, but they took it a step further and disallowed the ability to un-invert it at all. You either had to reprogram your brain to play this bad video game, or do the smart thing and stop playing it altogether. Super Mario Sunshine is a bad game and shouldn’t be considered an “all-star” of anything.

But aside from suspect game choices, there isn’t any real work being done to these games. Both Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Sunshine are now presented in a modern 16:9 aspect ratio, but Super Mario 64 isn’t for some reason. None of the games are getting graphically retouched or injected with new content or accessibility features beyond the ability to mitigate some of the motion controls in Super Mario Galaxy. It just seems like a mediocre package meant to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Mario.

But the scummiest and grossest thing that Nintendo is doing with Super Mario 3D All-Stars is making it a limited release, both physically and digitally. I get limited physical releases, especially in this day and age where more and more of us are just buying things digitally, but to put an end date on when I can purchase this package digitally is wild. For reference, from the time it goes on sale at the end of this week you’ll have until the end of March 2021 to snag this overpriced collection of mostly good games.

At first the decision just seems like that classic “Nintendo is out of touch” thing, but the more you think about it the more your mind starts to craft these conspiracy theories and underhanded schemes that you could totally see Nintendo doing. My take on the situation is that Nintendo is trying to create a false scarcity for these revered games to boost their sales over the holiday season in lieu of having a big marquee game release. The artificial scarcity makes both physical and digital versions of the package seem like must have collector pieces, while also bolstering their fiscal 1st quarter earnings by guaranteeing that the sales can only hit during a specific period of time. Totally unrelated piece of information, the first fiscal quarter always ends on March 31st, just around the time when Super Mario 3D All-Stars will no longer be available for purchase.

But after you look at the blatant attempt to boost profits in a time period where a marquee game would normally come out, it’s important to remember that Nintendo has another incentive to cut off sales of Super Mario 3D All-Stars. There’s a reality in which Nintendo breaks the collection up and allows you to buy each game individually for a slightly inflated price. The collection itself feels like your chance to get the “best value” price before they break it up into 25 or 30 dollar chunks. But if I’m honest, it is Nintendo and they’ll probably try to make you pay full price for an untouched version of Super Mario 64.

*Super Mario Sunshine (a bad game) – Nintendo*

Super Mario 3D All-Stars would be a no-brainer for me if it was graphically retouched, or also offered the 3DS remake of Super Mario 64 on it. To me, I thought the bare minimum would be to just make these games run in 16:9, but Super Mario 3D All-Stars even falls short of that by only providing that “upgrade” to two-thirds of the games included. I think that Super Mario 3D All-Stars is bad package that Nintendo is trying coerce its fans into buying it by telling them it’s a limited time offer. The worst part however is that it’s totally going to work and Nintendo will make a boat load of money off of it. Or maybe the inclusion of Super Mario Sunshine is the worst part of this entire package? Who can say?