I remember back around 2004 or 2005 a friend of mine managed to get me into Star Wars Galaxies, an incredibly popular MMO at the time that ran from about 2003 to 2011. This game was significant to me both because it was one of the first real games that my new friends and I could bond over, but also because it was the first and last game that I can remember religiously playing. Star Wars Galaxies was a daily event for us and was often times our congregation point as friends. Nowadays I see people playing things like World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, League of Legends and Destiny 2, all of which have these thriving communities around them that kind of leave me feeling wistful when I think about them even though I know I could never engage with games like that ever again.
We’ve seen a ton of games-as-service games release over the past few years, often boasting these long roadmaps of events, updates and content drops, all in service of cultivating a consistent and engaged player base. Some these games land while most of them do not, but regardless of how they perform I always feel that despite how alluring one of these games might be, I know that I’m no longer the kind of person who will play a singular game for years on end. Some people are just able to pick a handful of games to play throughout any given year and just stick with them until something else comes along, but for better or worse, I am not one of them.
What’s even happening in this Final Fantasy XIV screenshot? I don’t know, but it looks pretty fun.
I consider myself more of a video game tourist that drops by these video game landmarks, taking some photos, seeing the attractions, buying a souvenir and then moseying onward to the next thing. I don’t consider this to be a negative thing, but it does lead to a lot of instances of me not being able to engage with these overwhelmingly popular products in ways that others can. For instance, The Elder Scrolls Online looks pretty cool to me, but I know that I won’t stick with it long enough to see all of the rad new shit they’ve added to the game over the years. Sure the expansions seem really well done and positively received, but there’s no way my enthusiasm will propel me through the base game and onto an expansion.
Clearly I’m just a broken individual who can’t enjoy things, because just by looking at the Steam concurrent charts you can see that the top performers are by and large older games that have endured for years thanks to their thriving and possibly toxic communities. There isn’t one game in the top 10 of this chart that came out this century. The most recent game in that selection is 2019’s Apex Legends, which Steam lists as a 2020 release because that’s when it came to Steam itself. Yet here I am unable to fathom playing any of the games on that list that weren’t released in 2021 for some reason, one of which might be my weird desire to stay up to date on video games for the purpose of having things to write about on this site.
Maybe this is all just a big case of “the grass is always greener,” and I’m just looking at these games and manufacturing a feeling of longing, or maybe it’d just nice to be a part of a community once more especially after the forced isolation of 2020. Ultimately I’d like to be able to find games I can consistently resonate with that aren’t annualized sports franchises, but getting into a game like that seems like a lot of effort. Maybe the real thing that’s happening is that I’ve gotten so lazy that the idea of starting a new game is just something I don’t have the energy for anymore. Now that I say that out loud, I think I need to change some stuff in my life.
Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance isn’t a very good video game. Some might even go as far as to say that it’s a bad video game, a take that I don’t know that I fully disagree with if we’re being honest, but it does paint the game in an absolute and irredeemable light, which I don’t believe is the case here. Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance is a rough, buggy, clunky game that should have been better, but it misses the mark in so many ways, ranging from combat to its core structure that it will surely require some hefty patches to get it to a recommendable state.
Full transparency here: I was really looking forward to Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance, the spiritual successor the two very good Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance games from the PS2 era. This modernization is such a different product than its predecessors, that it ultimately feels like a massive injustice to the legacy of those previous titles. Whereas the originals were top-down, action-RPG games that walked the line between the dense RPG mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons proper, and some genuinely fun brawler combat. I’m sure plenty of folks out there would disagree with that statement but as a young man with no interest in the source material at the time, these games were able to keep me invested and engaged in a way that fantasy properties across all forms of media had failed to do. I was hoping that this new Dark Alliance would illicit some of those same feelings, but the D&D DNA on display in Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance seem like little more than set dressing thrown over a pretty bland cooperative action game.
One of the more puzzling aspects of Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance has to be the lack of a dedicated caster class. It’s kind of buck-wild to me that in a Dungeons & Dragons themed product, the use of magic is relegated to special abilities to be used in conjunction with martial fighting rather than have its own dedicated class. With so many different classes available to choose from in D&D proper, it’s a severe letdown to only be able to pick between two fighters, a ranger and a barbarian, all of which are martial combat focused. There’s an actual reason for this limited selection of classes however, because Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance is an adaption of the R.A. Salvatore novel The Crystal Shard which explains why the characters and classes are what they are.
Even if you’re able to look past the limited character options, the game itself does a pretty poor job of capturing the essence of Dungeon’s & Dragons. Not having the ability to create your own character regardless of story justifications, is just a big bummer in my eyes. Not being able to access your inventory mid-game also is a big misstep especially when you look at the original Dark Alliance games where you were always able to equip the stuff you found on the fly. Even weirder is that the loot you pick up inside levels are generic placeholders that get “identified” and usable when you return to the hub area. It reminds me a lot of early Destiny where you had to get the engrams you’d find identified before they turned into real and usable loot.
But Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance actually does attempt to incorporate some more D&D and RPG elements into the experience, by putting a pretty big focus on exploration and puzzle solving while you’re in levels. None of it is particularly hard or interesting, but about half of your time spent within the levels allow for some significant loot and resource hunting, which basically just means breaking everything you can see to reveal hidden paths, mining (smashing) crystal ore (upgrade currency), platforming challenges and what I’m very generously calling “puzzle solving.” These mostly come in the form of timing your movement to avoid spike and fire traps, finding an item to help unlock a door or elevator, or just running in the opposite direction of the horribly unclear objective markers on your map to find treasure chests and optional enemies.
There are also some optional objectives to tackle within levels, all of which seem to involve collecting things, killing bosses, or destroying things. There are also several different difficulty levels to choose from when selecting missions if that’s something you’d like to do, but I don’t know if it does anything aside from just giving enemies bigger health bars or letting them hit you harder.
One of the things I am mildly enjoying in the game is its upgrade system, which is admittedly very overwhelming at first. It’s nothing crazy or revolutionary, but you can essentially upgrade every piece of gear a couple of times by utilizing both the crystal ore you find throughout levels, as well as the gold you pick up along the way. There are 5 or so different rarities of crystals that allow you to upgrade rarer gear. So legendary crystals will allow you to upgrade legendary equipment, whereas common crystals wouldn’t allow for that. You can also transform common crystals into their more rare counterparts by using gold, which helps curb the reliance on random crystal drops.
Aside from upgrading your gear you can also pick from different color options for just about every piece of gear for the paltry price of just 50 gold pieces, which for context is basically nothing. You can upgrade your core stats via attribute points which can be earned through exploring levels, but are primarily earned through leveling up where you can also unlock feats, new moves, and inventory upgrades. Unfortunately, nothing you can unlock is capable of washing away the myriad of gameplay specific issues within Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance.
Playing Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance can feel like an exercise in futility, because all manner of issues can hamper your experience at any time. One of the more notable issues I noticed was that the enemy AI just doesn’t work. I could stand right outside of an area where enemies are hanging out and just kill them from a distance without them ever reacting to being peppered with arrows. It was ridiculously easy to cheese my way through parts of this game because the enemies never really put up a fight or acknowledged my presence if I stood far enough away from them. I’m sure the game gets hard enough to the point that cheesing it or playing solo won’t be viable, but in the early goings I never felt overwhelmed or outgunned.
Even when I decided to leap into the fray and not just annoy my enemies from afar, I found that the combat was mushy and unresponsive, which led to a lot of moments where I was trying to charge up an attack but the game just straight up ignored my inputs. It was as if I was trying to play faster than the game would allow for, which seemed like a weird additional way of keeping me from spamming attacks considering there’s a stamina meter in the game that still doesn’t fully make sense to me. Some attacks I did would just lower the maximum amount of stamina I could have at any given time, without ever really providing a clear way to fix that issue. You’d think that taking a short rest would remove that cap from the stamina meter, but sometimes it just doesn’t work. In fact, sometimes it will just randomly fix itself without any explanation, which is infinitely more maddening to me.
By default both light and heavy attacks are assigned to the right bumper and trigger respectively both of which are supposed to combo together seamlessly, but the controls are just so muddy and unresponsive that combos happen more by accident than anything else. There are also some special abilities that are on a cool-down, as well as an ultimate move I could activate whenever the ultimate meter finally decided to fill up. Aside from that, the game has fairly standard brawling mechanics that include blocks, parries, launchers and so on.
Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance is a painfully buggy experience, of which my favorite bug has to be when I killed something and its lifeless body is launched into the stratosphere, never to be seen again. I hope this is never “fixed,” because there’s nothing to fix in my eyes, so we can just go ahead and hand-wave the issue away by saying that goblins naturally fly away when they die. But not all of the bugs are as funny as that one, because a lot of revolve around performance and online desynchronization issues. It’s never fun to hit an enemy and have them vanish only to appear behind me and pummel me to death, and that happens with alarming regularity when playing online. Online connectivity is a prevalent problem too, because after every chapter in a mission when my group would try to return to the hub world together we’d all be disconnected without fail.
To put it kindly, Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance is a flawed game that’s in dire need of some patches to not just address bugs, but to smooth out some of the rougher edges of the non-gameplay experience. From connectivity issues and desynchronization issues to loot management, these things need to get sorted out before any sort of community can really develop around the game. I’m hopeful that the bigger issues like bugs and combat functionality will be fixed and adjusted as time goes on, but those little nuisances are the pain points that will eventually kill an online game if unaddressed for too long.
Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance didn’t turn out the way I had hoped it would but I have to believe that it can only get better from here. Like most games, it’s an infinitely more enjoyable experience with friends, but that isn’t a phenomenon that’s exclusive to Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance. In its current state it’s not a good game to play, but it is a great thing to laugh at with your buddies thanks to its shoddy B-movie qualities. I’d love to be able to both enjoy the campy aspects of the game in addition to a great gameplay experience, but it just isn’t there yet.
Dang, it happened again. Another weirdly specific “simulator” game has come into my life and completely dominated my free time. Of course I’m talking about the current front-runner for Game of the Year, PowerWash Simulator, a game that’s irrefutable evidence of the fact that we have jumped the shark when it comes to simulator ideas. But despite how objectively ridiculous it is that this game exists at all, I’m so grateful that it does.
There’s no hidden mechanics here or secrets to uncover (or are there?) in PowerWash Simulator, instead you’re literally just going from building to building and blasting the gunk off of everything that’s been gunk-ified. You earn cash for completing jobs, which you can spend on upgrading your power washer via different models of washer, attachments and cleaning solutions. From there, you load into the map of a structure and methodically blast the dirt and grime off of everything, and then (pardon the wordplay) rinse and repeat until there aren’t anymore jobs available.
Like most of these simulator games, there’s a fair bit of jank involved that really gets annoying when you’re pixel-hunting for the last speck of dirt on a surface. You can hit the TAB key and bring up your “dirt-vision” or whatever they’re calling it, but that doesn’t really help when the dirt is completely out of sight. A lot of grime is underneath things like ledges and windowsills, which can result in these moments where there dirt is lower than your character can physically get. Suddenly you’re trying to do trick shots with your hose to blast water off of surfaces you can’t fully see, and that’s really a momentum killer in PowerWash Simulator, a game I’m using to try and achieve a zen-like state of peace and calm.
I know I talk about these kinds of games fairly regularly, and I do so proudly because I genuinely enjoy some of these games and their representations of seemingly mundane occupations. I don’t know what part of my brain lights up when I start organizing or cleaning things in video games, but that part of my brain must be fairly dominant because I spent maybe six hours straight the other playing this game. PowerWash Simulator is an early access game that provides a soothing experience about blasting dirt into another dimension, and I absolutely adore it.
When I first started running games my gut instinct was to try and make my sessions all be well rounded, providing drama, comedy, excitement and so on and so forth, all at once. The idea was that one person would have a funny quest for players while another would have a more dour objective for them. That’s how it kind of works in video games, so why wouldn’t it work here? Well it wasn’t that it couldn’t work here, it was more that it sometimes led to a sense of emotional whiplash. The party would go from joking with a bartender while breaking the fourth wall, to talking to a grieving widow who is desperate to uncover the culprit for her partner’s murder. It was tonally inconsistent in a way that was very noticeable. More to the point, it made keeping my players engaged and role-playing, incredibly difficult.
Going from joking about a funny looking cow or whatever, to talking about the vast political corruption in the city might work in the real world because we’re all emotionally broken, but in game I’ve found that tonal consistency is valued more than it is in our world. Now, that isn’t to say that I’m forbidding jokes when we’re having a serious conversation, but the way you address that kind of thing is important.
Everyone in every adventuring party wants to crack a joke that’s going to make everyone at the table erupt into laughter, which is fine, but if they’re talking to that poor widow from the example earlier, that widow is gonna call them out. It isn’t about whether I, the DM am calling them out or not, it’s about if the NPC they’re practicing their standup routine on is willing to put up with their shit. There’s no use in me as the DM breaking the flow of the game to tell my players to get serious about our game where dragons and goblins are kicking it with raptors and dwarves or whatever, cause that would be a fun new take on ludo-narrative dissonance.
I guess my point ultimately is that while you as the DM have the power to do whatever you want, wielding that power and using it is a bit trickier. Aside from lambasting my players as the NPCs they interact with, I’ve found that splitting my sessions into arcs has been really helpful for establishing tones. For instance, we’ve had sessions that were very mission focused and others that were just nebulous, allowing the players to go off and do what they want and suffer the consequences in classic D&D fashion. I treat the tone in our games like a pendulum, where some of them are gonna be goof-fests, while others are going to have the characters make tough choices. Trying to keep the pendulum stuck in one direction for too long will almost certainly lead to a harsh swing in the other direction, so it’s a good idea to make sure that you’re not sticking with one theme or tone for too long.
Ironically, that very reason was why we all ultimately decided to stop playing through the Rime of the Frostmaiden module that came out late last year. It was so overly drab and depressing, with an insistence on being dour and bleak throughout the vast majority of the adventure. It sucked and was a colossal downer, so we pivoted. Consider that a lesson learned on my end though, because from here on out, I’m making sure that any game I run has both highs and lows without lingering too much on either.
I recognize that this entire concept of a malleable and shifting tone might be something I value more than a lot of other game masters and players, but I’ve found a lot of success in using this mentality. I allow my players to joke and goof till their heart’s content, but I also know that in a few sessions I’m going to hit one of them with a tough choice that’s going to make their character grow. In a long term campaign, I think these situations and encounters are absolutely necessary to keep both the story interesting and your players engaged. While this post is about adjusting the tone to match the content of the session, all of this stuff is, in my opinion, extremely important to another very instrumental part of campaigns, which is allowing the characters to grow.
Every campaign I’ve run starts with at least one person trying to make a joke character, which is fine. But I always tell them that making a joke character and giving them a goofy name is really going to bite them in the ass further down the line. When the king of the land comes to you, hat in hand, and begs your party for help in finding his missing wife, it’s really going to undercut the whole mood of the campaign when he has to say, “I come to seek the aid of the noble knight, Fart Garfunkel. I shall pay a king’s bounty for the retrieval of my missing beloved wife.” Like, that whole scene is going to suck on so many levels. Maybe the first time it happens, it’ll be hilarious. The second, third, hell, maybe even the tenth time it happens it’ll still be a gut-buster. But doing that puts this artificial ceiling on how much your character can grow because they’ll never be taken seriously by anyone in your party, let alone the actual human beings at the table.
Every party, campaign, player, and character are so different, so maybe my advice doesn’t apply to your current situation. But I truly believe through extensive trial and error, that being able to set a tone from session to session is extremely important to allowing the players to experience a great story. While they might not remember the name of the big bad guy or whatever, they’ll remember the ebbs and flow of a campaign that tonally mimics the real life experience. Some days are good, some days are sad, and it’s okay to have your player-characters experience that too. Otherwise, they’re nothing more than a series of stats on a page with a name like Fart Garfunkel.
It’s hard to tell where Summer Game Fest began and E3 ended but some combination of those events took place over the past few days, so instead of trying to make heads or tails of the schedule I just figured I’d plop all of my miscellaneous conference highlights here. Sure we had big presentations from Microsoft and Nintendo, but a couple of smaller events bolstered the show by just announcing a deluge of games.
These announcements are only a small slice of the things that were shown in their respective digital events, which is my way of saying that this isn’t in any way a comprehensive list. I’ve broken the announcements down by which conference they were a part of, and not in any sort of ranked order. Enough caveats though, let’s dive in.
The first “conference” that I’m going to highlight games from is the Wholesome Direct, where chill vibes and good feelings were prioritized over the likes of guns and boobs or whatever. These titles are all very relaxed or peaceful, so consider that as we look at some games that are cozy as hell…heck.
A LITTLE TO THE LEFT
Described as a “cozy puzzle game” about organization, A Little to the Left is supremely the kind of shit that I’m into. It’s colorful and charming, and seems incredibly chill. Also, it scratches that “mundane activity game” itch that I apparently always have, so that’s good. It’s planned to release on October 21st of this year.
BEHIND THE FRAME
I thoroughly enjoy the idea of using art to solve puzzles, and Behind the Frame looks like a game that will do just that. One could easily look at this game and call it a voyeurism simulator which in all fairness, it might be. I’m digging the art style and the general conceit of the game, but whether it all comes together in a cohesive fashion while telling a good story remains to be seen. It’s scheduled for a September 2021 release.
LAKE
Lake feels like one of those games that’s going to try and shatter me on an emotional level. Sure it may just look like a game about being a woman who returns to her hometown to take a break from her fast-paced city life, but I bet there’s going to be a lot of coming to terms with life in said small town that’s going to make me get real introspective. Those messages really resonate with me regardless of the medium of storytelling, so I’m fully expecting this to either destroy me, or literally miss the mark entirely. While no firm date is given, Lake will apparently release this year.
BUTTON CITY
Look at this game and soak in its borderline offensive levels of adorableness. I’m in love with the art style and music that’s on display in Button City, but I genuinely have no clue what the actual game is like. I’m guessing it’s an adventure game with some arcade-inspired mini-games, and that is very exciting to me. I look forward to trying it when it releases on September 12th of this year.
THE GECKO GODS
A puzzle-platformer where I play as a gecko? You can go ahead and add that to the list of things I never thought I’d say let alone want to play, until now that is. The Gecko Gods looks incredibly rad from top to bottom, although my only concern is how good it actually feels to move around and interact with the world as a gecko, but only time will tell if that concern is valid or not. It’s planned to release sometime in 2022.
PASSPARTOUT 2: THE LOST ARTIST
While not the deepest game I’ve ever played, Passpartout was an incredibly neat idea for a game that had it had a little more meat on its bones, I probably would’ve championed more when it came out. But apparently a sequel is on its way, and I’m more than willing to give this next installment a shot. I look forward to selling my shitty artwork to people who would rather call me avant-garde than actually critique my work. I just wish that I was able to pull off this exact scam in real life. I couldn’t find a release window for this game, but it’ll get here when it gets here.
UNPACKING
Hell yes, add it to the pile. Unpacking is another super chill looking organization-based puzzle game that I’m so here for. The music and the art seem to work in wonderful concert, all in service of providing the chillest vibes imaginable, and lord knows I could use more chill vibes these days. It’s planned to release at some point this year.
SOUP POT
I do love me a good cooking game, but since Cooking Mama decided to go the way of the dodo it’s been up to games like Soup Pot to fill the void. I’m excited for the chill vibes and all, but I’m also excited to check out a bunch of recipes from plenty of regions that I’ve never encountered before. Also, there aren’t any fail states in this game, so I don’t have to worry about burning my apartment down while making these recipes which is always a welcome bonus. Slated for August of 2021, I won’t have to wait much longer to play Soup Pot.
MOONGLOW BAY
There’s a voxel raccoon in this trailer which makes me incredibly happy to see because there just isn’t enough of that in games these days. But I guess Moonglow Bay has other stuff going on with it too. You are the bravest fisher in all of the titular bay and are tasked with reinvigorating the economy through fishing and cooking, while everyone else ostensibly cowers in fear of the monsters that occupy local legend. Seems cool and all, but that raccoon is mostly why I’m playing. It’s probably the main character too. I’ll get to chill with that raccoon at some point this year too.
PUPPERAZZI
The game is fucking called Pupperazzi, like what else do you want to know? It’s Pokemon Snap if it was about taking pictures of dogs, which I cannot believe doesn’t exist yet. Thank goodness that this game is coming soon because I need this exact sort of heat in my life, especially after bouncing off of the kind of underwhelming New Pokemon Snap. On Steam, the release date is listed as “woof bark bark,” so that might mean it’s coming soon, but I’m not as fluent in dog as I’d like to admit
VENBA
Family drama and cooking? I’m all about Venba and whatever it’s setting out to do. I don’t know anything about the game outside of what’s in the trailer but from what I can glean from it, it is absolutely the kind of game I would play. There sure are a lot of games that have great art styles, seemingly poignant stories, and some sort of cooking mini-games in them, aren’t there? Oh well, I’m game for Venba when it comes out this November.
Below is everything I found that was particularly interesting from the Guerrilla Collective Day 2 presentation. Please note that this Guerrilla is not affiliated with the Guerrilla Games studio behind games like Horizon: Zero Dawn and the Killzone franchise, which is something I had to look up to confirm. It makes sense, right? How would that even make sense? Anyway, here’s some more cool looking games.
AKATORI
Not only am I drawn to Akatori because of its great stylistic choices, but the combat itself looks fast and frenetic in a way that I’m drawn to. I feel as if it’s pretty hard for a pixelated 2D game to stand out these days thanks to the sheer number of them, but Akatori is speaking to me in a way that very few of these games do. Akatori is slated to release at some point in 2022.
ARCADE PARADISE
Arcade Mania looks like the kind of management game I can get into. While the term “management games” can illicit a certain sort of image in your mind, this one seems a lot more hands on and systems light in a way that I can get into. I really like the core gameplay loop on display here along with the general theme of the game itself. Setting high scores in order to wring more cash out of score-chasing consumers sounds like a blast. Arcade Paradise is allegedly releasing at some point this year.
FIREGIRL
There aren’t enough firefighting games out there which says to me that the gaming industry at large is fucking up quite severely. Luckily it looks like Firegirl is gonna do me up right and let me put out fires and save civilians in the most ridiculous and over the top way possible. There’s a part of me that really enjoys the farfetched nature of the game, but there’s also a weird part of me that wouldn’t have minded a slightly more realistic take on firefighting. It’s hard to judge from the trailer though, hopefully the final product will strike the right balance for me, when it releases sometime this fall.
ROBODUNK
You look at this trailer and tell me that I’m wrong for thinking it looks dope as hell. You can’t because Robodunk looks objectively cool. I’m into this wild robotic take on NBA JAM and hope to high hell that it actually plays as well as it presents itself. I also hope it’s the kind of game that can stand on its own without the need for other players, but that one might be a bigger ask. With no concrete release date or window to speak of, there’s no telling when I’ll be able to play Robodunk.
Why yes, I would love to hover-board my way through a climate change stricken Venice in the not so distant future. Thanks for asking. I’m all about these hopeful takes on dire situations, because while we will fuck this planet to the core via climate change, it’s very optimistic to believe that we’ll have hover-boards. I think Venice 2089 looks rad and is trying to tell a story that I personally haven’t seen in a video game before, all of which makes me very eager to try this one out. With no release date however, who knows when I’ll actually get to play it.
WHITE SHADOWS
In the trailer above, one of the designers of White Shadows describes it as less of a puzzle-platformer and more of a trip through a black and white dystopic city. That description is actually a pretty big relief to me because this game could have easily been a spooky game that I wouldn’t want to play, but instead I get to marvel at the ultra stylistic art without worrying if some monstrosity is going to try and make me piss myself. I look forward to not pissing myself on September 10th this year, when White Shadows releases.
And finally we arrive at the Future Games Show, the last of the conferences that I dug through to find games worth mentioning. This show may have been the lightest of the three in terms of games that resonated with me, but hey, not everything is made for my sensibilities and that’s okay… for now.
ESPORTS BOXING CLUB
Boxing is back, baby! Unfortunately it’s coming in with a pretty miserable name like Esports Boxing Club, but I can look past that if the game itself holds up. I feel like no one is making boxing games these days which is a damn shame, because those Fight Night games back in the day were really fun to play, even if you were like me and knew nothing about boxing. Here in 2021 however, I still know nothing about boxing, so everything is the same except I’m older now. Anyway, the boxing game looks cool and I wanna see the men fall down a bunch. Allegedly this game is planned to release into early access at some point this summer.
HAROLD HALIBUT
Look at this beautiful game. Really soak it in. Harold Halibut looks like a really interesting adventure game with some clever little mini-games sprinkled throughout that I would very much like to play as soon as possible. I think the world seems like a really interesting place I want to get know and explore, while the characters look pretty diverse and hopefully are backed by a quality script that does them justice. The weirdest part about looking this game up however, is Google is convinced that it came out in 2019, which I don’t think is the case. I have no idea when it’s coming out for real however.
OLLIOLLI WORLD
The first two OlliOlli games were these very stylish and fun 2D skateboarding games, that were fun little diversions in my mind. I was never head over heels for the series, but I maintain that they are supremely fun in their own right and deserve to be celebrated. That being said, OlliOlli World looks to build upon just about everything from the originals, 3D-ify them, and let them loose in an open world. That all sounds great to me quite honestly, and I am very much looking forward to do many McTwists in the future when OlliOlli World releases later this year.
TWO POINT CAMPUS
The follow up to 2018’s Two Point Hospital comes in the form of Two Point Campus, a very silly university management game in vein of the Theme games from the 90’s, like Theme Hospital and Theme Park. From just a thematic stance, I think I’ll enjoy running a goofy school much more than running a goofy hospital thanks to the trauma of still paying off a medical bill from 2016, but I’m willing to be that people with student loans probably will have a similar reaction to Two Point Campus when it comes out in 2022.
CONWAY: DISAPPEARANCE AT DAHLIA VIEW
And for our final game we have Conway: Disappearance at Dahlia View, a gritty-looking detective thriller set in England during the 1950s. Despite the painfully long and difficult to remember name of the game, I feel like there’s an excellent story lurking somewhere in there, and I am eager to experience it. Hopefully the gameplay side of things holds up its end of the bargain, but I guess I’ll find out later this year when it releases.
Wow gang, that was a lot of games that I had to barely write anything about and I’m already exhausted. I hope there was something in this article you came away with a newfound interest in, but regardless of if you did or didn’t, you should really look into all the games announced across both Game Fest and E3. because there’s a lot I did not include here.
With the world trying to get back up to speed with everything after last year, one thing was extremely evident: While AAA studios suffered big losses in terms of planned products slipping past their release dates, indie development seemed mostly unaffected. It makes sense that these smaller teams were seemingly less impacted by having to work at home and collaborate with their teams virtually than their AAA counterparts, because they’ve probably been developing games under these conditions the entire time. Indies really made the show and in a lot of cases, upstaged the bigger studios who didn’t know how to handle the transition, so a well deserved kudos to them.
Anyway, that’s going to do it for The Bonus World’s E3 2021 “coverage.” I know it was pretty light this year, but I think this struck a good balance for me in terms of my work load and just life in general. Thanks for the constant support, and thanks for taking the time to check out our handful of articles.
Even though it’s been a few days since E3 2021 actually wrapped up and our collective consciousness is rapidly moving away from the event itself, there’s still a lot to say about what we saw on display. Today’s subject is none other than the purveyors of the plumber, the masters of the mustache, Nintendo.
It sure feels like every year people have their long lists of Nintendo “dream announcements” that never actually get fulfilled, and this year didn’t do much to allay that perception. Notably Nintendo didn’t talk about their long rumored new Switch model, nor did they talk about long awaited games like Bayonetta 3, Metroid Prime 4, or even games they announced last year such as Splatoon 3. Nintendo remains an enigma to me, but there was still some stuff they touched on that I’d love to highlight.
One thing I want to mention upfront is how weird it was to see literally nothing in the way of Animal Crossing: New Horizons content. I feel like the player base of that game, myself included, have been clamoring for something new or interesting to come along so that we can have a reason to return to our, undoubtedly overgrown islands. But it’s starting to feel more and more like Nintendo had no real plan in place for supporting Animal Crossing beyond its first year, so I hope y’all like Bunny Day, cause that’s all we’re gonna get apparently.
SUPER MONKEY BALL BANANA MANIA
It has been way too long since we’ve gotten a proper Monkey Ball game, and while we’re not actually getting a new one, we are getting this pack of the first three console games in the series: Super Monkey Ball, Super Monkey Ball 2, and Super Monkey Ball Deluxe. Now I have very little experience with the series because I never actually owned a Gamecube, but Super Monkey Ball was definitely one of the few games I saw on that console that made me really want that little purple lunchbox with the terrible controller.
I’m glad to see Monkey Ball return in some fashion though. Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania comes out this year on October 5th and according to some retailers, the package is listed at $39.99 which is probably the most I’d consider paying for this collection if we’re being honest. I’m actually surprised it isn’t more, but considering it is a SEGA property maybe that’s why the price is more palatable. We literally saw Nintendo do this not too long ago with the Super Mario 3D All-Stars bundle, where they charged full price for a collection of ports of “classic” 3D Mario titles. Speaking of Nintendo severely overvaluing their products…
MARIO PARTY SUPERSTARS
I really don’t actually give a damn about Mario Party or any of its many iterations, but Mario Party Superstars is probably the smartest move they could make with this miserable series. With remastered “classic” maps and mini-games, along with online play right out of the box, I think this is the way to properly capitalize on the misguided nostalgia people have for this series. Curiously however, there’s also online matchmaking which sounds like a good idea in theory, but man, I already don’t want to play Mario Party to begin with, but doing it with random strangers seems even worse somehow.
Incredibly, Nintendo is going to be charging the full sixty bucks for this one when it drops on October 29th of this year.
METROID DREAD
I’ve never been the biggest Metroid fan, but I’ve enjoyed a couple of the iterations that have come out over the years. I’ve never messed with the Prime trilogy, but I’ve dabbled with the original Metroid, Super Metroid and I think maybe I played a bit of Metroid Fusion, but I might just be imagining that last one. My point is that I’m way more onboard for a new 2D Metroid game than I am for Metroid Prime 4, a game that might never come out.
I suppose my biggest question is what genre of game we attribute Metroid Dread to, because it seems silly to classify a Metroid game as a Metroidvania, but like, it’s right there in the title. See these are the big questions I’m willing to waste a paragraph on as well as your precious attention span.
It has been a while though since I’ve actually strapped on my Varia suit and rolled up into a little bomb-dropping ball, but I think I can get my sea legs back in time for Metroid Dread‘s release later this year on October 8th. Damn Nintendo, you’re really stacking releases in October, huh?
WARIOWARE GET IT TOGETHER
Hell yes, now we’re talking. The last time I played a WarioWare game was when I was still in high school when the Wii was out there conquering the world, and WarioWare Smooth Moves had just come out. I don’t know if it was a goodWarioWare game or not, but I do remember enjoying it quite thoroughly. It’s unfortunate though because the series mostly lived on handhelds, which is just not how I play video games. So the series mostly passed me by, but that dry spell ends this year.
I don’t know how I feel about the main conceit of controlling a little avatar that goes on screen and interacts with the micro-games using their unique abilities, but WarioWare was a series that always had a new hook from game to game, so I’m not surprised they went with a new gimmick this time around. It’s not surprising they went this angle however, considering they wanted to make a cooperative focused game that utilizes the unique aspects of the Nintendo Switch, namely, two people controlling the game simultaneously with a Joy-Con apiece. Hopefully it lives up to the legacy of the series, but we won’t know for sure until it drops later this year on September 9th.
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD 2
I’ll admit that when Nintendo went to conclude their Direct by showing off Hyrule Warriors DLC, I turned the thing off entirely and moved on with my life. Little did I know, Link and his cool new hair were gonna be on display shortly after that deflating announcement. Now look, I loved the first Breath of the Wild, it was one of my favorite games of 2017 after all. I just hope that this sequel builds on the right aspects of its predecessor while ditching the shittier parts of the original. Namely, if they could maybe get rid of weapon degradation, that would just be so cool.
I know that weapon degradation is kind of a low-hanging fruit when it comes to criticism about Breath of the Wild, but in what I might consider the best Zelda game of all time, it really stuck out as an unnecessary pressure point. I’m not here to backseat develop, but that part of the game is what genuinely keeps me from wanting to revisit it.
While the trailer showed off some new powers, weapons and Link’s cool new hairdo, it was only a tease of what we might see later in the year or whenever they decide to show off more of the game. I personally would like to see a little more life out of the world this time around, like cities and such, along with some actual dungeons as opposed to the lackluster ones we saw in Breath of the Wild. Who knows what the final product will actually be like, but the fact that they’re building off of Breath of the Wild fills me with a lot of confidence that at the very least, I’ll get another game that’s at least as good as the original. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 will get a real name at some point that we’ll learn before it releases sometime in 2022.
I feel like every year the same conversation happens around the Nintendo Switch and its lineup. At the beginning of the year we lament the lack of confirmed releases for the holiday season, and then E3 happens and we all get put in our collective places. I’m pretty relieved that there wasn’t a new Switch model announced as well because Nintendo is terrible when it comes to utilizing their new hardware iterations, like that 3DS that came with the little nubbin’ second analog stick that I think like 2 games utilized. I also just don’t trust Nintendo to properly support two consoles at the same time, considering that even in 2021 we’re still out here using friend codes and trying to do voice chat in the most convoluted way possible.
But yeah, that’s what I saw from the Nintendo Direct that resonated with me in some fashion. I usually don’t have to worry too much about the quality of Nintendo games, but there’s always the chance that these games could turn out to be real stinkers. Here’s hoping that isn’t the case though.
We should begin by laying out some facts right off the bat and acknowledge a few truths about the current situation as it applies to the video game industry, but more specifically E3 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic really hampered so much development by forcing it out of the collaborative spaces of offices and into peoples homes. It also severely disrupted supply lines and manufacturing pipelines to such a degree that every electronics company is grappling with component shortages. Also worth considering is the fact that E3 is a show that’s been desperately searching for an identity for quite some time now, only to really feel the pressure after not having a conference at all last year. Knowing all of that led me to believe that I should temper my expectations for this year, but despite the middling status of E3 as a show, some of the presenters brought some really interesting stuff that I’m actually pretty excited for.
Keep in mind, I don’t really have much of a structure or rule set in mind for how I’m picking these, but I’m going to try and focus on games that were more than a cinematic trailer. No offense to cinematic trailers, but there isn’t really much to talk about with those when compared to games that showed off some actual gameplay footage. So don’t get weird about it when I don’t mention Starfield or whatever. But anyway, here’s what I saw at the Microsoft press conference (are we still calling them that?) from E3 2021 that really piqued my interest.
BATTLEFIELD 2042
It’s been a while since I’ve actually enjoyed a Battlefield game, with Battlefield 3 being the last one that really resonated with me. But before my decline in interest with the series really took hold, I thoroughly enjoyed games like Battlefied 2, Battlefield 2142, and even Battlefield 1943, which doesn’t even mention my fondness for the Bad Company spin-offs. But here we are, staring down the barrel of the Battlefield gun once again, and while I don’t recall anything demonstrably new or revolutionary about this latest entry, I’m intrigued by the footage that seemed to focus in on map hazards like snowstorms, dust storms, and tornadoes. It looks like it could be a cool inclusion in these massive battles, granted it doesn’t become overly tedious after encountering these events a couple of times.
I don’t really know what to expect from Battlefield 2042 except for the fact that there will not be a single player component, which might make it a tricky sell for some folks. Hopefully this Battlefield entry is more welcoming to new and lapsed players, and not just be a cool training exercise for snipers who want to see how quickly they can snipe me after I spawn.
PSYCHONAUTS 2
Man, I loved the original Psychonauts and have been so very excited for the follow up to finally come out. Luckily, I won’t have to wait much longer because it’s coming out at the end of August this year, and will be on Xbox Game Pass. Judging solely off of the trailer shown at the briefing it doesn’t look like Psychonauts 2 is straying too far from the path, vis-à-vis the things that made the original so successful and beloved. The humor seems on point, the art looks just as weird and flamboyant as I remember, and the gameplay looks just as good as I remember the original did (hopefully it’s less cumbersome this time though). The only real difference that I could see was that the levels look a bit larger and more mechanically diverse than in the original, which is a welcome change.
I don’t know what you’re supposed to do to revitalize a long dormant franchise of a cult classic to make it appeal to modern gamers, but I do know that I’m totally on the hook for this psychedelic platformer. And hey, it’s only been like 16 years since the original released, so I’m sure it’ll live up to everyone’s totally reasonable expectations and no one will be upset about anything.
PARTY ANIMALS
Man, I don’t know who’s out there developing games with me explicitly in mind, but I want to thank them so much. Party Animals looks like one of my favorite multiplayer games of all time, Gang Beasts, but like, if Gang Beasts was a bit more polished than it is. I don’t know what else to really say that can entice you more than the trailer can, but if you like silly ragdoll-centric mayhem where everyone is dressed as (or is?) an adorable animal, then we have nothing more to discuss. It’s just a shame that Party Animals isn’t going to be with us until sometime in 2022.
HALO INFINITE
Maybe I’m a fool, but I still want a good Halo game to come out. I’ve enjoyed parts of the past two Halo games, namely some of the single player campaign from 4, and most of the multiplayer from 5, but I would just love to see Halo be the tour de force it used to be once more. Despite the misguided story stuff from 5 though, I’m still kind of invested in these characters and this story that’s spanned more than half of my life at this point.
So later this year we’ll see if all of the complaints and delays really made Halo Infinite a better product than its initial reveal led us to believe. The most exciting developments from the trailer this year easily include the versatility of the grappling hook, which allows you hook onto not only surfaces, but you can pick up weapons and equipment with it and jack vehicles as well. The story bits in the trailer were also real intriguing, with this fake-ass non-Cortana hanging out with my good buddy, Master Chief, as well as the usual haunting occasional narration from Cortana herself. I haven’t checked in on the multiplayer presentation as of writing this, but apparently it is going to be free-to-play, which seems like a smart move to me.
We’ll see if it lives up to expectations when it drops on Game Pass and in retail this holiday season. Because of course they didn’t give it a firm date.
SHREDDERS
Despite having arguably one of the stupidest names for a game, Shredders looks like an extremely chill snowboarding game that I might be into. I’m not a big snowboarder or even a big fan of the outdoors in general, but even I can admit that Shredders looks super fun in a low stakes kind of way. Whereas something like Steep was a little too annoying in that classic Ubisoft way, where like, everyone was making terrible jokes and quipping at you constantly, Shredders seems like it’s going for a more relaxed vibe, trading out chatty NPCs with abject silence, while focusing on a more realistic representation of what it’s like to “shred that gnar.”
Like most of what was shown at the Microsoft event, it too will be coming to Game Pass when it releases later this year on December 12th, just in time for me to be utterly sick of the snow.
REPLACED
I don’t quite know what happened to The Last Night, but if it never comes out which is looking more and more to be the case, at least we can look forward to something like Replaced which might actually come out. Listen, I’m always gonna be here for a cyberpunk-themed side-scroller, but man am I excited for this one. First and foremost, it just looks fucking incredible which would be reason alone for me to try it out, but from what little combat and platforming that was shown, it looks like it won’t just be all flash and no substance.
There isn’t much else to really glean from the trailer itself, but that hasn’t done anything to dampen my excitement or anticipation. And like I said, considering Replaced is slated for release next year and is a day one Game Pass game, I think I can more safely assume it might actually come out. So that’s something.
XBOX GAME PASS
Out of the 30 or so games that were announced and discussed at the Microsoft presentation, I think only like 4 of them aren’t going to be on the Game Pass service, which is really quite impressive. I don’t know that anyone who owns an Xbox would have a tough time justifying signing up for Game Pass before this presentation, but after what was shown, it kind of seems essential to the whole Xbox ecosystem. Obviously that’s the point of what Microsoft has been doing, but they really made a strong case for it the other day. With games like the new Dark Alliance dropping day one later this month, to Microsoft Flight Simulator dropping in July, Psychonauts 2 in August, and plenty of other big name titles headlining each month for the remainder of 2021, I just don’t know how you can resist hopping onboard the Game Pass train.
Microsoft did a big dump of games, and while not everything resonated with me, I was genuinely impressed with how stacked their lineup is, especially considering the kind of year the developers making these games had to endure. Consider me impressed Microsoft. Now if only you could provide some sort of expandable memory for the Xbox Series consoles that didn’t cost $220, that would be just delightful.
I feel like I just got slapped in the face with video games, which as well know can only mean that E3 has taken place once again. But don’t confuse that with Game Fest, a thing that I think started before E3 and is lasting long after it. We’ve got like a dozen game-focused events popping off all summer, so this whole thing is a lot clumsier than it normally is. It’s a mess that’s only gotten messier thanks to a certain pandemic, and will only get worse as E3 flails around trying to grasp at those precious last breaths of relevance. But until that day comes, I guess I’m gonna just keep looking at headlines and trailers and regurgitating that stuff back onto this site with that patented “Ari Spice,” which sounds grosser than I wanted it to, but oh well.
The oddest part about this whole clusterfuck of game announcements is that I’ve barely watched any of it. I don’t think as a hobbyist I can dedicate full days to sitting and watching press events about video games anymore, because it’s exhausting and unnecessary if we’re being honest with ourselves. Like, I didn’t need to watch whatever the hell Square Enix was doing this year, because I usually don’t tend to get grabbed by most of the games they make. I checked out that trailer for the Final Fantasy action game, Stranger of ParadiseI believe is the subtitle to that one, and boy howdy did it look real dumb. They just kinda made the most generic looking protagonist who seems like he was pulled out of some middling 3rd person action game from the early 2000s, and said “good enough!” It truly reminds me of that terrible Shadow the Hedgehog game from the mid-2000s with how unnecessarily edgy it’s trying to be.
But whatever, maybe it’ll be great and I’ll be jealous of all the fun that everyone is having playing it. All I know for sure is that I’m really glad I didn’t have to sit through a press conference to see that, I’ve literally missed out on nothing by watching the trailer on YouTube a few days later with the exception of whatever tragedies were taking place in the live chat.
That’s kind of the beautiful side-effect of not checking or engaging with social media as much anymore, because I don’t feel this pressure to be on the cutting edge of what’s being announced or anything. The Bonus World isn’t a news site, and working my ass off to put up articles recapping conferences immediately after they end, doesn’t do anything for me or this site. So I’m just not bothering with it.
As far as actual E3 content goes, there will be some stuff that hits this week, but it’s not going to be anywhere near as comprehensive as it’s been in the past. I’m allowing myself to ease off the gas pedal a bit here, because I know that nobody is coming to The Bonus World for up to the minute game news. If that were the case, you’d be woefully out of touch with what the industry is up to and only know about weird simulator games I’m into at the moment. But that’s okay. I like the little slice of the internet that this site occupies, and I’m not going to overwork myself for literally no benefit.
So yeah, E3 is happening or already happened, I’m not sure anymore. And quite frankly, I’m happier this way.
Existing in stark contrast to how I felt about games merely a few weeks ago, I’ve suddenly found myself with an overwhelming amount of games I want to play but haven’t made much time for just yet. Even worse is the fact that they didn’t miraculously appear on my various hard drives because I distinctly remember spending money on them, so I really should at least launch these games at some point. With that said, here are some of the games that are currently squatting on my hard drive, that I should probably address.
BIOMUTANT
I’ll just go ahead and just break the thesis of this blog immediately by saying that I’ve actually played some Biomutant already, a few hours worth if memory serves. I didn’t hate what I’ve played but I wasn’t necessarily blown away by it either. Although to be fair I did mostly just play through the terribly long and uninteresting tutorial, something that was apparently such a pain in the ass that the developers decided to address it, along with the overly mouthy narrator, in a patch.
I would hope that the patch also works on making the game look better when running on an Xbox Series S because at the time of writing this, it looks real rough. Honestly, if it wasn’t for how grimy the game looks on my particular console of choice, I’d probably be playing a lot more of Biomutant. Despite it not being a graphical powerhouse, Biomutant seems super interesting to me and is definitely something I’d like to spend more time with.
AN AIRPORT FOR ALIENS CURRENTLY RUN BY DOGS
Once again, I’ve already played a little bit of An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs so far and I can’t stop thinking about it. I don’t know if that’s a good thing necessarily, because I’m not eager to play it because of how “good” it is, but I feel as if I owe to myself to play the entirety of any game with a title like An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs.
From what I’ve played of it, it’s absolutely fucking bonkers and I love that about it. What I think I love most about the game is the fact that the airport is indeed run by dogs, but not in the way you’re thinking probably. Sure dogs are working the various information stalls, ticket booths and concession stands, but it’s literally just a bunch of high resolution JPEGs of dogs that stare at you constantly as if they were enemies out of the original Duke Nukem or something. It’s so good and so weird and I need to play more of it.
There’s a story going on, but to be completely honest, that trailer above does a much better job at telling a story than the game has thus far. So maybe I just need to play way more of it to get those good story beats.
THE MAGNIFICENT TRUFFLEPIGS
Described as a “first-person, romantic, metal-detecting game,” there was no reality in which The Magnificent Trufflepigs didn’t find its way into my Steam library somehow. I haven’t launched this game yet, but I’m so intrigued to find out what it’s all about. Are these pigs truly magnificent? Are they good at finding truffles or are they some sort of pig, truffle hybrid monstrosity that’s going to be hunting me down throughout the game? Can I pet a trufflepig? These are the questions I need to answer to maintain my journalistic integrity… probably.
But it heavily reminds me of one of my favorite narrative-focused games, Firewatch, which did a fantastic job of telling a compelling and gripping story with the backdrop of doing a mundane job. I guess I really like the concept of the ordinary being thrust into positions of the extraordinary, and hopefully this ridiculously titled game can deliver on that.
Raccoon detective. RACCOON. DETECTIVE. What else do you want me to say about Backbone, the game about a raccoon detective? The trailer looks dope as hell, boasting a pretty spectacularly detailed pixel art style and a lot of other humanoid animals beating the shit out of the raccoon detective. I’m not crazy about that last detail because of my love for the colloquially titled, trash-pandas, but it probably makes sense in the context of the story. I bet it ends with the raccoon detective finding their utopia somewhere in a landfill or something though. Also, it’s on Gamepass, so I have no reason to not play it.
Yeah, so that’s pretty much what’s on the plate at this particular moment. I really wanna get through some of this stuff because I’m anticipating playing a lot of Dark Alliance when it comes out later this month, and I’d like to have less things to juggle by then. Maybe this time I’ll actually play these games instead of turn around in two months and wonder why they’re still on my hard drive, then delete them as unceremoniously as possible, just like I did with Outriders.
There was a period of time, specifically before 2016 when I built my gaming computer, that I was deeply invested in the concept of Gamerscore and the achievement hunting that came along with it. I primarily played on Xbox and the Pavlovian response of hearing that delightful chime and getting a functionally useless reward that indicated I had unlocked an achievement was very exciting and fulfilling for me. But once I gravitated away from consoles and onto PC, I had to shake that particular monkey off of my back. Unfortunately for me and my sanity, I now own a modern Xbox console and have their subscription service which essentially just blasts me with new games every few weeks to play, keeping me planted squarely back on the achievement treadmill whether I like it or not.
My strategy at the time was to just play as many games as possible and just get whatever achievements I could without too much effort or time sunk into any single particular game. I didn’t approach achievement hunting from that angle nor would I actually ever call myself an achievement hunter, because I just like to bounce from game to game and that’s how I racked up several thousand points without actually trying that hard. That approach probably still would work, but I’m just a hair more discerning about how I spend my money these days and won’t just buy every game that stumbles onto the storefront. Besides, I gotta save that money to invest in more TTRPGs that I won’t ever play.
But now that I have an Xbox again and have set it up in a way that makes it easier and more accessible to use than launching a game through Steam, I’ve found that my achievement itches are starting back up. My current setup involves two different HDMI switches that gather all of my various console inputs into one output, and have that go through another switch that indicates which monitor it’ll display on. While I’m fairly certain that neither of these switches will pass through a 4K signal, making my television functionally useless, the convenience of being able to just hit a button on my second monitor and be instantly at my Xbox dashboard has really been the catalyst for why I’m primarily playing on console these days.
Even better is how inclusive the Xbox ecosystem has become, providing seamless integration between console and PC players which has meant that I’ve been able to play a lot more multiplayer games with people, regardless of where they’re actually playing. I’ve taken to testing that cross-play system a lot too by expressly playing on console while my friends are on PC, and I gotta give it up to Xbox for making the process as painless as possible. I’m certain that it’s only that easy because we’re all still utilizing parts of the Xbox ecosystem, something that undoubtedly has made things smoother than if I was trying to play with someone from a PS5 or something.
Regardless of the ease of use it really has been a lot of fun to casually chase achievements again, although I don’t appreciate how Xbox likes to rub it in your face about how much better your friends are at achievement hunting than you are. It makes me want to be way more competitive than I actually am, which is usually always cancelled out by my inherent laziness. But aside from the stupid achievement rat race, I’m surprisingly really enjoying playing on a console again for reasons that I don’t quite fully understand.
While we’re on the topic of laziness, I want to mention the lack of diverse content on the site recently. It’s kind of just been blogs for the past few weeks, and I’m sorry for that. Honestly, I’ve just kind of found it hard to be motivated to do anything, let alone this site, but I’m trying to get back into the swing of things. I have some ideas for new Master of Disasters and Gut Checks, so those should be materializing soon enough.
But as for things like my annual coverage of E3 or whatever the fuck is going on this summer, I do not know what it’s going to look like this year or even if something will come to fruition in terms of coverage. Much like last year, it’s still very weird out there, and the concept of covering E3 is both an exciting and confusing challenge to me. We’ll see what comes of it all, but I’ve got the wheels in the ol’ noggin spinning in the hopes something actionable and interesting will come out. That rarely works out for me, but maybe this time it’ll be different. Only time will tell.
The Bonus World 