Category Archives: archive blog

Blog: Absolute Terror – 04/29/20

Being in the house as much as I’ve been lately has been rough enough as is, but a recent event reminded me of how fragile my situation really is. These days I’m pretty much exclusively relying on my PC to do everything for me. It’s my media center, my social platform, my gaming station and the place where I do my homework. A few days ago the power went out for a moment and took my computer down with it, leading me to have a minor crisis that I eventually emerged from.

After the computer booted back up, I noticed that only one of my monitors was being utilized, and at a low resolution as well. I immediately jumped to the worst case scenario of, “everything is gone, my GPU is fried, I’m going to fail my class…” and so on and so forth. It was this moment of terror that reminded me just how dependent I am on my computer these days.

After re-seating the GPU, unplugging and plugging everything in, and doing a wee bit of cable management that I’m not proud of, my computer came to life. The GPU was working again, and I was able to breathe a sigh of relief. Except that one of my monitors was still not working, an issue that was soon to be revealed as, “you didn’t plug the HDMI cable in all the way” syndrome.

This may sound like a big fuss over what turned out to be nothing, but it was genuinely terrifying to be confronted with the reality that this one thing in my home is my only outlet. Sure I have a phone, but it’s hardly the same experience and it’s incapable of doing certain things I need to do, like doing online assignments.

I guess it was just another reminder that if something goes bad in my home, I have no way of fixing that situation right now. I would literally be stranded without anything to help me get through these miserable days. It’s all small potatoes in comparison to what’s really going on in the world, but it’s the thing that’s enabling me to stay home and stay safe while the people who are actually holding the world together right now, can keep us afloat.

Blog: Late Celebration – 04/22/20

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Has it really been two years since I launched the blog on this website? No, it hasn’t been actually. We reached that milestone over a month ago, specifically on March 13th, but only really remembered it just now thanks to the whirlwind nightmare that’s been 2020 thus far. But let’s not dwell on that for a moment, because I want to thank you all for sticking with me for this long.

Sure this is only the anniversary of a particular feature on this website, but the blog is actually wildly important to The Bonus World, because it was the first reoccurring feature I launched on the site. It made me write a few paragraphs a week which was monumentally impactful on where I’d end up going with my writing.

Because of the blog, my love and passion for writing was reignited and it paved the way for every other written feature you see on the site. I’m extraordinarily proud of the blog as well as The Bonus World as a whole, and it’s largely because of how well it’s all been received by you guys. So thank you.

I don’t know what’s next for the blog itself, let alone the entire site, but I know that I’m having a fantastic time writing these features and articles for you all to enjoy. I also believe it’s been the one year or so anniversary of me saying that video content is in the works? Yeah… coming up with video ideas worth executing on has been challenging to say the least. So maybe don’t hold your breath on that stuff just yet.

Regardless, thank you for reading the blog along with everything else on the site. Your support means more to me than you could ever know. I know things suck right now and we’re all looking for an outlet from the nightmare that is our everyday lives, and I’m happy that I can help distract you all, at least momentarily. Thank you again.

– Ari

Blog: Truck Yeah – 04/15/20

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One of the things I’ve missed the most during this tumultuous period we’re living through, is just going outside and driving places. Nowadays, the only driving I really do is going to the supermarket to brave the hordes. I miss miss driving places, so that’s why I’ve taken the next logical step and started playing more driving games. Particularly, I’ve been playing American Truck Simulator, a game that reminds me of my trucking days that definitely existed and aren’t just a false memory implanted in my mind thanks to weeks of isolation.

American Truck Simulator is exactly what you’d guess it is based off of the title alone. It’s a game about being a trucker and driving those long and lonesome roads, ensuring your cargo gets to its destination safely. Every ounce of the mundanity of driving on the highway is represented from lane closures, construction, accidents and more. You also have to balance some more personal needs like sleeping and stopping for gas. It’s a pretty uninteresting pitch that manages to work, especially against the backdrop of the global pandemic we find ourselves in.

I’ve always enjoyed these meditative experiences that replicate the more mundane aspects of life, but especially now I find myself yearning for these kinds of games. Along with just replicating the trucking experience, it’s also another perfect fit in the cavalcade of games I play in one monitor while watching something in the other. With everyone streaming from home these days, I’ve got no shortage of companionship during my long journeys.

While I wish I had some sort of steering wheel and pedal setup to properly compliment my American Truck Simulator experience, I’m still having a good enough time just using a controller. I think games like this are bound to thrive more during this global crisis, but even divorced from the situation, it’s still a fun enough game that doesn’t require too much of your mental capacity to play. It’s certainly helped scratched my driving itch for now, but I still miss the real thing.

Blog: All the Time in the World – 04/08/20

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So here we are, week 46 of social distancing, with nothing but time on our hands to finally do all of those things we so desperately wanted to do but never had the opportunity. Yet even with all of this time to pursue passion projects, I can’t seem to find the motivation to start anything, and end up sinking into a more comfortable, time-killing routine.

I’ve had so many “projects” stocked up in my mind for years that I always cast aside because I didn’t have the “time” for them. Well, here I am with all the time in the world, doing none of them. From trying new games, to rearranging my apartment, to bolstering my portfolio, and even finally getting around to making that album I’ve wanted to for over a decade.

I suppose the initial and somewhat factual reaction to all of this is that even with all the time in the world, I just don’t want to do anything. This quarantining period seemed like the perfect opportunity to work on all of these creative projects I had swirling around in my mind, but I just have no motivation to do anything at all.

It’s a depressing reality we’re all in, and doing anything to keep our minds and eyes away from the miserable reality that is the world seems like a good idea for our collective mental health. I don’t want to detract from the seriousness of of the situation we all find ourselves in by talking about how much free time I have or anything, especially knowing that people our out there fighting and risking their asses to keep the world going. That all being said though, I can’t speak to their struggles and would never attempt to say I know what they’re going through. I can’t and won’t, but I will thank them all profusely for everything they do.

But with the best thing that I can do in this situation being to just stay home, I’m finding that my usual waterfall of ideas has dried up just as quickly as my motivation has. I think the combination of the current situation mixed with the lack of any deadline has really made it easy to procrastinate and stagnate.

It’s always been great for me to have firm deadlines to work within and I find that I do my best work when I have a time limit. Now, without any limits or deadlines however, tomorrow is always the day I plan on doing something. I’m always pushing the goal posts back because there’s no end in sight for the sequestering. Hell, I’ve even found it hard to keep up with this website despite having literally nothing else to do.

I’m sure that there are plenty of creative types out there who are flourishing right now and getting so much stuff done. I’m also certain that there are plenty of people out there in the same boat as I am. No one knows how long this whole thing is going to last, so I’m sure that I have time to find my footing and get going on any sort of project. It’s just that starting them is the first and hardest part, and I’m still trying to adjust to this new life a lot of us are leading.

Blog: The Doctor is In – 04/01/20

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There are some games that are just evergreen and remain a part of your life well after you’re done playing them. For my generation, games like Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Earthbound, and so on and so forth, usually occupy a spot on their list. While those games are all well and good, I’d like to talk about a certain game that’s managed to weasel its way back into my life in a major way.

Since there’s no natural segue that I can think of, I’ll just go ahead and say it’s the NES version of Dr. Mario that’s infiltrated my life once more. To clarify, I’ve always liked Dr. Mario. It’s been one of my favorite puzzle games of all time, even beating out Tetris in my mind. It’s easy to understand, it’s a load of fun, and has some killer music in it. But even with all that being true, the odds of me ever playing it again were slim.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CB1fFeb1n8

That’s where the Nintendo Entertainment Online System came into play. Maybe you’re more familiar with it as, “the virtual console on the Switch.” On this brilliantly titled application, you’ve got instant access to a bunch of classic (and not-so-classic) games of yesteryear. I’m pretty sure I booted this service up 3 or 4 times in total since signing up for Nintendo’s online service.

Now, my partner never really played video games as a child, only really getting into games with the Gamecube as their first system. They had missed out on a lot of the games that our generation grew up on, something that this service we both had for the Switch, could rectify. We booted up both the NES and SNES online systems, and poked around for a few hours. Standouts like Kirby Superstar, Super Tennis, and a few others were engaging and fun for us, but it was Dr. Mario himself that really did the trick.

Side note, there were about a hundred doctor and medicine-based puns I could of made in that last paragraph but didn’t. You’re welcome.

My partner was hooked, playing Dr. Mario for the remainder of our session, and even going home and powering through it on their own. I’d get screen shots of victory screens for passing level milestones along with some gentle gloating about their skill. It was genuinely nice to see how engaged they were with this 30 year old game I hadn’t thought about since the early nineties.

With this version of Dr. Mario being online enabled too, we would just end up playing it once or twice a week for an hour or two. These games usually pan out poorly for me, but they’re having fun and that’s all that really matters. I never would have suspected that this “doctor” would be the guy who’d help us stay connected, and without charging us thousands of dollars as is customary for the American healthcare system.

Blog: Perpetual Motion – 03/25/20

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There’s this particular cadence and pace of game releases that’s only increased over the years that’s made covering games a more selective and less complete experience. Covering everything is a fruitless endeavor that only leads to a jaded outlook on games along with a healthy does of burnout. I bring this up only because I noticed a handful of the games I missed out on last year were on sale, but I had no desire to dip into them now.

It’s weird, right? For one reason or another (usually price), I ended up skipping out on a lot of games that I probably would’ve enjoyed from last year, but I genuinely have no desire to even try them out now. I think the reasons for this are twofold.

My first impulse is to blame my apathy for older games on the fact that I run this website. That isn’t to say that I see this site as some sort of news aggregate like a lot of the bigger gaming sites out there, but I’d like to be able to talk about more recent releases as opposed to older stuff. I gotta think about SEO just a little bit from time to time, but also I just kind of want to always try the newest thing.

This leads me to my second and probably more accurate reason for not looking back at games, and it’s because I really want to try the newest and shiniest thing out. Sure I could go back and finish The Outer Wilds, but I’d rather play the newest Animal Crossing instead.

It’s incredibly rare for me to find a game I stick with for a long time in general. These days my gaming comfort food are the NBA 2K games, and once upon a time it was Overwatch and so on and so forth. But those games only come around every so often, and I’m okay with that.

Some people become intimately familiar with a game and stick with it as it grows and develops over time. That’s great for those players and the developers as well, but it just isn’t something that I’ve ever really done. I like to sample as many games as I can, like some sort of gaming tapas, and move on to the next thing.

Blog: Quarantine – 03/18/20

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Who could have imagined things were going to turn out the way they have? From social distancing to quarantines, curfews and event cancellations, I can safely say I did not see this coming when I celebrated the New Year a little over 3 months ago. So here I am, doing my part to distance myself from everyone else, bored out of my mind and desperately trying to not succumb to cabin fever. But let me make it clear that my gripes and boredom are far from actual problems. I know there are people out there suffering and worse off than I am.

Like most of you out there, COVID-19 has led to the closing of my job with procedures in place to work from home for certain employees. I unfortunately am not one of those employees and thus, I’m out on my ass without any income for the foreseeable future, because who the fuck is hiring right now? I’m also technically on an extended spring break, which means I don’t have any homework to worry about for the next two weeks.

Why am I telling you all of this? Well it’s because I need to illustrate just how empty and devoid of anything my schedule is. I have nothing to do aside from play video games and write about them. Although I do get this chance to watch all of the movies and shows I groused about not having time for in the past, so there’s that.

It’s like we all were collectively complaining about not having time to enjoy things, so the universe, being the bro that it is, decided to give us all plenty of time to stay home and enjoy ourselves. Except I’m only one day into this quarantine and I’m losing my mind and want to go back to work.

Writing this along with some of the other things I’m working on, are helpful distractions to help get me through this nebulous break. I’m basically having production meetings with myself about what I want to accomplish over the next few weeks. I’m giving myself deadlines and working hours in an effort to maintain some normalcy.

While trying to cling to normalcy though, it’s important to realize that this situation is anything but. This isn’t normal. The entire world has essentially stopped and no one is sure of when it will start going again. But it will start going again, and we all have to recognize that. It will be a long and difficult journey for sure, but the way it is now won’t be the way it is forever. I have to believe that. But until we return to some modicum of normalcy, please stay indoors, avoid public gatherings, wash your fucking hands, and buy all the toilet paper you can because the good folks at Charmin hid the vaccine in several rolls. It’s like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in a sense, except it’s nothing like that and the people doing it are assholes.

Blog: Chase Your Bliss – 03/11/20

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For various reasons, a few weeks back I found myself putting some time into what might be one of the longest running live games, World of Warcraft. The quick and dirty is that I was looking for a way to engage with my friends who fell down a WoW hole, and I hoped I could brave those depths with them. It did not work out.

Just to get this out in the open, there is no love lost between us because of this whole situation, it was a long shot and we all knew it. World of Warcraft has always been the culmination of things I don’t enjoy that much, from its game mechanics down to its fantasy setting, it just was always something I looked at and sneered. In my eyes, World of Warcraft is just in insanely boring, tedious and cumbersome experience, but my feelings are my own and I realize that.

I’m sure in my youth I would have been phenomenally shittier about playing the game, thus thoroughly ripping it apart for not checking all of my boxes. But I’m not that idiot anymore, and I know that World of Warcraft brings people a lot of joy and satisfaction and that’s great.

For instance, the friend that I started playing World of Warcraft in a effort to reconnect with and I had a conversation about me bowing out of the game. I expressed that it just wasn’t my thing and I appreciated him extending the olive branch. We went on to talk about the guild he had built up and how proud of it he was. With somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 members that engaged in multiple raid nights per week, he was able to look at this organization he started with pride. He equated it to the satisfaction I felt from leading our Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

I understood exactly how he felt in that moment. It’s no surprise that people are proud of their creative endeavors especially if they’re successful, but when he equated it to what I do, it clicked in a way that it hadn’t before.

We will never see eye to eye on World of Warcraft or our gaming tastes in general, and that’s okay. The important part isn’t that we’ve found a game we can actively play, cause while that would be nice, it would probably require us just developing our own game from scratch. No, the important thing is that we keep trying to reach out to the other. We want to play games together and we’re going to keep trying to to find that thing that hooks us both, which I can definitively say is not and never will be World of Warcraft.

Blog: Exit the Apple Arcade – 03/04/20

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Last year I, like many others, took advantage of the free trial of Apple Arcade and played a lot of what was offered and enjoyed my time with it for the most part. Earlier this year however, I cancelled the service without much deliberation.

For those who aren’t aware, Apple Arcade is a curated list of games you get access to for only five dollars a month. It’s a really good deal if you manage to find a few games worth sticking with. That’s what I failed to do and why I ended up ditching the service only a few months later.

While I was really impressed with the service (and still kind of am), I found that there were two major sticking points for me that led to this cancellation.

The first was the games themselves. A lot of the games that people liked on the service ended up being either card based games, strategy games, or puzzle games, all of which are perfect fits for a phone game. But two out three of those genres don’t really do anything for me, and the games I did stick with eventually wore out their welcome.

Take Grindstone for instance. Grindstone is a highly popular and perhaps the standout from the launch lineup of the service, but I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone who actually completed it. Grindstone got notoriously difficult and required a lot of (ironically) grinding to survive some of the later levels, to the point where I stopped playing it.

Then there are games like Oceanhorn 2 that are interesting games, but on a platform I don’t want to play them on. Sure I can tether a controller to my phone, but it still doesn’t change the fact that I have to hunch over my phone to play this massive adventure game. It’s worth mentioning that I’m sure people using and iPad or an Apple TV are having a different experience with these games, but for someone using exclusively a phone, it isn’t a great way to engage with these games.

The other big issue with the service ended up being the release of new games. In the weeks after launch, you could get 4 to 5 new games a week on the service. Not all of them were things I enjoyed, but there were occasionally one or two I stuck with. As time went on the addition of new games slowed down to the point where you might get one new game a week, and usually it was something that I didn’t want to play on a phone, or just in general.

It’s unreasonable to expect a constant trickle of quality games tailored to my tastes to come out every week, but eventually the offerings just stopped appealing to me enough for me to question why I had the service anymore. I had stopped playing the games I already had downloaded and didn’t really feel the desire to download more.

I still think Apple Arcade is a great deal if the games on the service are things you’re interested in, but I just don’t think a lot of the games Apple promotes on the service are great fits for a phone. I also find myself playing less and less phone games these days in general, making the concept of paying five bucks a month for them a big ask. Maybe one day there will be a game that makes me come back, but till then I’m fine leaving Apple Arcade behind.

Blog: Which Way to the Zero? – 02/26/20

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Back in the year 2013, an episodic adventure game by the name of Kentucky Route Zero released its first of five episodes. A mere seven years later, the final episode of the story is out and available for public consumption. Was the wait worth it? I don’t know just yet because the last time I played Kentucky Route Zero was when it initially released and I can’t be expected to remember something from that long ago, so I just replayed the first episode instead.

Kentucky Route Zero is a beautiful and mysterious experience that hovers somewhere between a point-and-click adventure game and a visual novel, never veering too far into either of those territories. Most, if not all of what you do involves you selecting different dialogue choices, some of which are for gathering information while others seem to be more about you changing the story.

For instance, at some point in the first episode your character is caught in a cave-in at a mine. The dialogue you could choose from was either saying that you were fine, or expressing that your leg was caught under some rubble. I went with the latter option, which ultimately led to my character walking around with a limp for the rest of the episode. Now, it’s entirely possible that either choice would’ve resulted in this, but it felt like my choice had immediate gameplay ramifications. But then again, it could very well just be the illusion of choice.

Kentucky Route Zero is phenomenally visually crafted, with everything from locations, character designs and even menus, working in unison to achieve a cohesive atmosphere and tone that’s genuinely enrapturing. It’s so eerie and oppressive while also being just downright weird in some places. Even if you just watch a play-through of it on YouTube or something, you can appreciate the cohesive visual style that’s on display.

I’ve only played through the first episode thus far, but it’s left me wanting more, and luckily, there’s 4 more episodes along with interstitial episodes as well for me to sink my teeth into. There’s so much more I could say about the first episode alone, but I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone who hasn’t tried it yet. But if dissociative, trippy, mysterious nightmares are your thing, I strongly suggest trying Kentucky Route Zero.