Category Archives: Archive

E3 2018: Our Plans

This year I decided to do something different for covering E3. Normally I’d just sit on Twitter and make snarky comments about everything that’s shown, but why focus on Twitter when I have a website I could inundate with my words?

I’m going to try and highlight the things that I’m interested in or that are so glaringly bizarre that not writing something about them would be insane. So don’t expect comprehensive coverage, I don’t have the time nor the resources for that. And quite frankly, that’s boring, there are dozens of other places doing that.

So that’s the weird way we’re doing things here at The Bonus World.

Blog: The Skyrim Debacle – 06/06/18

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A few days ago I got it in my head that I wanted to play Skyrim again. I had this craving for some archery-based mayhem, and this seemed like a good way to quench that particular thirst. I had it in my mind that I was going to try and “get” Skyrim by picking a character archetype and role-play my way through the story as if I was an archer who had no patience for anybody’s bullshit. However the game instantly pushed back on my story with its own.

I thought I remembered how slow the opening of Skyrim was, but boy did I underestimate it. First you’ve gotta escape your questionable death sentence. Then you end up at Whiterun to talk to the Jarl, shortly followed by you getting that stupid golden claw and a tablet or something. Then it’s time to kill a dragon and eat its soul. All culminating in you climbing a godforsaken mountain to talk to these four hermits in hoods so they can teach you to run fast, then make you go find a horn or some shit. This is all made even more unbearable when you’re trying to be an archer, having to fight against the busted shooting system they have in place as well as health regenerating trolls.

Seriously, trying to hit anything more that 20 feet away is basically like playing the lottery. I’ll aim at a bear, put the cursor over its big dumb face and let my arrow fly. What I would expect is either to feed that bear this arrow, or have it fall slightly and hit his big bear feet. But how about the secret third option of, the arrow defies gravity and slowly aims itself up towards the sky. That’s what being an archer in Skyrim is like.

Initially I thought that maybe because I had a low archery skill, the game was doing some cool RPG math to throw things off. So I used the power of console commands to level that skill up and unlock everything on its skill tree. Weirdly enough, nothing changed. Here I was, expert archer with the power to paralyze dudes with a good enough shot, if only I could hit something.

Ultimately I decided that my character was comically near-sighted which is why he was such a terrible shot. Because of his crippling ailment, he would pull out a sword and shield to finish off bad guys who somehow managed to close the distance on me. I became the Mr. Magoo of Skyrim, bumbling my way through dungeons.

It’s shit like this that makes me wonder why the entire internet is so in love with Skyrim. Maybe the story is better than I remember, or maybe people just really like role-playing and Skyrim is a good enough sandbox for them to mess around in. But as someone trying to do just that, I felt like the introduction and lackluster combat mechanics kept me from ever really enjoying my dip back into the Skyrim pool.

Blog: The Big Bonza – 05/30/18

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I’ve always hated crossword puzzles. I was always much more of a word search guy myself. Which probably explains why I like the Bonza games so much, they’re basically combining the two puzzles into one.

BONZA

We start with the purest of all the games in the series, Bonza is all about the crosswords. You start off with some puzzle packs, each containing about 30 puzzles or so. Completing each puzzle as well as completing entire puzzle packs give you some in game currency. You use this currency to buy more packs but can also use real money to speed up the process if you need to. The economy here remains untouched for the majority of the series.

BONZA: NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

The Nat Geo version of Bonza is almost identical to the original game except for two very important distinctions. The Nat Geo version contains categories that focus on animals and locations and such, you know, National Geographic type stuff. But they also add in jigsaw puzzles too. “Here’s a picture of a tiger, it’s all jumbled up, fix his face.” As mundane as that addition may sound, it was totally a game changer that broke up the monotony of just doing crossword puzzles. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who felt that way either.

BONZA: JIGSAW

So they went ahead and made Bonza Jigsaw, a game that is all about the jigsaw puzzles. With added challenges like rotating pieces and blind images, it really adds a lot to the experience. The problem is, there is kind of a paywall in this one. As you complete puzzles you get experience. New levels grant you a new puzzle pack. Unfortunately you’ll find yourself just a few XP short once and a while. And for one 6 dollars you can unlock 4 more packs. I’ve spent 12 dollars already. I don’t feel bad about it either, I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment out these games and it seems fair that I kick them some cash for it. I just don’t like how in this one I hit the paywall twice already. But hey, it’s still a fun game.

So yeah, Bonza, it’s a series of really fun apps that are all technically free. I strongly recommend these games if you’re looking for a way to kill time.

Blog: Mundane? More Like Fun-Dane! – 05/23/18

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So here’s the thing, I like playing what could be perceived as mundane games. Games that make you play through something that resembles an actual job. These games are great for when I want to play something but not really have to pay attention to it. You could call them, “Games to Watch Movies To.” Here are some of my favorites.

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HOUSE FLIPPER

This one is pretty new and I’m kind of in love with it. The premise is that you’re a contractor who is tasked with fixing all the shit wrong with a house. Painting walls, cleaning the garbage out, refurnishing, patching holes in the wall, etc. You do this until you can afford to buy some rundown dumpster homes, and make it a house worth selling. Rinse and repeat. The game is kind of broken and has some quality of life issues that need to be addressed, but I still think it’s great.

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CAR MECHANIC SIMULATOR

Now, I’ve only played Car Mechanic Simulator 2015, but I’m fairly certain I can recommend the others in the series safely. There’s something oddly satisfying about buying a rusted out shitbox of a car for pennies on the dollar, fixing that baby up and selling it for five times what I paid for it. That and it was kind of cool to get an inside look at the engine of a car.

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AMERICAN TRUCK SIMULATOR

This one is awesome. You drive a big ol’ truck across a vague representation of the west coast of America, delivering various sorts of cargo. It’s a good game to listen to a podcast to. My only hangup with American Truck Simulator is that I don’t have a racing wheel, which would make that experience so much better.

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VISCERA CLEANUP DETAIL

This one has been around for a while and is probably the easiest way to waste a few hours. The concept is pretty stellar. You play as a janitor who is cleaning up a level after the protagonist of a shooter got done with it. That means cleaning all the blood and guts out of the level. It’s super repetitive and can even be mind numbing to an extent, but still oddly satisfying when you finally finish cleaning everything.

Finding Joy in the Mundane

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Over the past few days I’ve really made a concerted effort to make my way through God of War. I genuinely do love that game but have found the toughest part about continuing my play-through of it to be just motivating myself to turn my PS4 on and dive back in. It’s a game that demands your undivided attention, but sometimes I just don’t have it in me to give it that. Sometimes I’d rather put on a TV show in one monitor and a more relaxing game in the other. A game that I barely have to pay attention to and go at my own pace.

This isn’t anything new for me though. I’ve spent almost 200 hours playing Cities: Skylines, and never once have I played without unlimited money. In the case of Cities: Skylines, it’s cathartic for me to just watch something I’ve made grow autonomously. I can glance over at it every few minutes and buy a new hospital or fix a traffic jam and then resume watching something else.

That’s not pollution, these are just thunderstorm factories

I remember doing this kind of thing a lot back when I played Star Wars Galaxies. There was a lot of grinding in that game, and trying to pay 100% attention to it was a sure fire way to get me to lose focus and fall asleep. I have friends who have done the same thing with World of Warcraft and other MMO games in the past and currently do it with games like Hearthstone.

It’s nice to be able to play something without having to be absorbed by it. Not so long ago I was using Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 for this very purpose. There was something satisfying about fixing customers’ busted up cars. It got even better when I had enough money to start buying rusted out husks of cars, repairing them, and selling them for an insane profit. I was putting the best parts on my cars, and using the limited customization options to put a unique spin on them. It was fun for a while until the lack of diversity in the cars and scenarios eventually got to me and I moved on.

With this Swiffer, I will conquer this room

More recently I’ve found a newly released game called House Flipper to fill the same void. In two days, I managed to blow through all of the built in scenarios and move on to the actual flipping of houses portion of the game. To preface, this is a game in which you are a handyman who is contracted to clean out abandoned houses, paint walls, install toilets and so on and so forth. You basically rebuild houses for people until you have enough cash to buy some gross homes, fix everything wrong with it, and sell it.

After 15 hours or so with it, I don’t think it is a very good game. It has some really bad performance issues, a ton of “jank” to it, and it’s missing some really core functionality. I should be able to see the information for the job I’m doing while at the house I’m working on. I should also be able to designate a room as a bathroom or a living room so a potential buyer doesn’t cryptically criticize my work while also being the highest bidder on the home. But despite all of these shortcomings, I really am enjoying the game and am eager to see what changes the developers make to it along the way.

Who says you need to move furniture to do construction?

I’ve had people ask me why I bother playing games like this when all they do is recreate a job I could actually do in the real world. It’s a valid point, I get that some people wouldn’t find any fun in playing these kinds of games when they could or actually do perform these tasks in real life. But I don’t think I would actually ever want to flip houses for a living or fix cars for that matter. I don’t actually have the talent or the tools to get those jobs done either. In House Flipper, they started me off with a home, some cash, clients, tools and most importantly the ability to paint walls by just clicking on them for 3 seconds. It’s the simplification and gamification of these tasks that really holds the allure for me.

These kinds of games aren’t for everyone, I get that. Some people get their fix from grinding levels in Destiny or by building up stats in The Sims. Sometimes you’re looking for something to really sink your teeth into, while other times you just want to play a more passive role. That’s what these games are for me, fun ways to waste time and still get a sense of satisfaction out of it.

Blog: Distraction Ball Z – 05/16/18

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eat it bitch

If you’re a regular follower of The Bonus World, you might have noticed that its been kind of quiet lately. It isn’t a sign of some major dysfunction or anything, in fact we’ve been doing some planning on the back end in terms of site navigation and show planning. The real issue has been Dragon Ball Z.

I’m not kidding either, instead of actually streaming something right now, I’m writing this while watching yet another episode. It’s been like this since I figured out a way to watch the series again. All of this was spurred on by the release of Dragon Ball Fighter Z earlier this year and compounded by the folks over at Giant Bomb watching the series for the first time and chronicling it in their podcast “All Systems Goku.”

I’ve never considered myself a huge fan Dragon Ball or anime in general, but all of these exterior forces encouraged me to revisit a series that was an after school staple back when it aired on Toonami. I’m about 80 episodes into the series at the time of writing this and I’m super enjoying it so far.

There’s a lot I could say about DBZ, I could write for days about it. But I’ll keep this short and just hit you with some of my general notes thus far:

Goku is an absolute moron. He has good heart, but he’s a complete dope.
Vegeta is cool, but can also be a colossal doofus.
Yamcha is the worst.
Krillin isn’t as bad as I remember.
Trunks is in this way more than I recalled.
Chi Chi sucks.
King Kai is actually the best character on the show.

But yeah, I guess the point I’m really trying to drive home is that Dragon Ball Z Kai has been a problem for me. I need to break myself of this “one more episode” syndrome that I’ve come down with, but sometimes those cliffhangers are really good and I need to see what the next episode of “Let’s Stall Till Goku Shows Up” goes.

Blog: Slump – 05/09/18

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For the past few days I’ve been racking my brain about what to write for today. Usually something will jump out at me or I’ll be able to conjure up some topic to discuss. This week has been a little tougher though.

It’s weird, the past few weeks I’ve slowed down a little on gaming and I’m not exactly sure why that is. Sure the obvious answers could be things like there hasn’t been much I’ve wanted to play, or time constraints have really been at an all time high. While those things are factors for sure, it still feels like something more is at play.

Maybe it’s the fact that I have 500+ games on my Steam library at my disposal, and instead of choosing to actually play anything, I end up choosing nothing. Maybe as the weather gets nicer I just don’t want to spend all my time inside. Who can say really?

When I do end up playing something, it usually tends to be something that doesn’t command a lot of my time or attention for too long. For instance, I still play Cities Skylines cause I barely have to pay attention to it while I’m watching Netflix or whatever. The same goes for Dragon Ball Fighter Z because a match only occupies minutes of my attention at a time.

And it isn’t like I don’t have a backlog worth digging into. I’ve still got Far Cry 5, God of War and Yakuza 6 waiting in the wings for me. Then I stupidly decided to start replaying Watch_Dogs 2 cause I thoroughly enjoyed that game when it came out. I think I need like a week off to really dig into these experiences, but even if I had the time there’s no guarantee I wouldn’t just do nothing instead.

Blog: Anyone Wanna VR? – 05/02/18

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For the past few months I’ve had the privilege of having open access to an optimal virtual reality environment. There’s a big studio space with a beefy computer and an HTC Vive connected to it. In theory it’s awesome, but I’ve found my desire to take advantage of it waned more and more over time.

For context, I was part of an internship program at my college to investigate whether VR was a viable technology to bring into the classroom. I’d weigh all factors, be it gaming, education or whatever. If it was a unique VR experience, I was supposed to look at it and make a value judgement against it. It was a really broad concept that didn’t really have much in the ways of boundaries, which is probably a factor in why my interest in VR has plummeted.

Let me clarify here, I don’t hate VR. In fact, if anything I’m more excited about VR as a technology than ever before. It really is what all the gaming outlets described it as, where you need to try it to understand it. But that’s well worn territory.

What really fell out of favor for me was just getting myself excited to use it. Here we had this optimal set up, the sensors were set up almost all the time, and the space was clear. Essentially, all I had to do was put on the helmet and go. But I rarely wanted to.

Maybe it was a lack of software that killed my drive for it. We had some things like Job Simulator and Duck Season, even SUPERHOT VR at the ready. Those experiences were fun for sure, but not something I’d want to do for extended periods of play. We found some fun and interesting free applications as well which helped add variety to the mix, but it never really clicked for me. I had fun with these games and experiences, but after the first few times in them, the fun for me really boiled down to showing it to other people and getting their reactions.

There was a sound design class that rolled into the studio that got to play around with Sound Stage, the now unsupported music creation software. It’s a super robust and intuitive beat maker to say the least. If you have a Vive, I would recommend it, especially considering the developers dumped the files online for free. But that was probably the high point in my demonstrations. Being able to see a class look at this technology and have it instantly click how cool it is was an awesome feeling.

But that was it for me really. Showing the technology got to be more interesting than actually using it myself. At first, I’d get multiple people asking me for demos and opportunities to play around, but lately no one really seems interested. Somehow virtual reality got mundane for everyone involved.

Still, in the end VR is still a super exciting concept to me. Maybe the reason for it waning in popularity in our space is on me. Maybe people just don’t quite grasp the concept of it until I forcibly strap this helmet to their heads. Or maybe virtual reality isn’t the thing that gets people excited after all. Maybe mixed reality or augmented reality are the ones that will catch on. But for now, the desire to “get virtual” just isn’t there for most people, myself included.

Blog: Ya-Ya-Yakuza – 04/25/18

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Video games, I play them from time to time. This past week I indulged in this hobby of mine and played a few video games.

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YAKUZA 6: THE SONG OF LIFE

There I was, investigating the scene of a hit & run, carefully observing my surroundings when I notice a man in the distance filming me. He’s been following me for a while. This can’t be good. But before I go any further with that, a different man is going to introduce me to the internet by putting me in a live-chat with a real woman who strips on camera. Then I think I’ll go and beat the shit out of someone by swinging a bicycle at them. But before any of that, I think I’ll go to the arcade and play a round of Virtua Fighter.

This is Yakuza 6, a game about tonal inconsistencies that sway from intensely serious to over the top hilarious. The main quest line is your dark and gritty crime movie, while most of the side quests are complete batshit insanity. For instance, I just watched two people fall down the stairs and then pretend they had a Freaky Friday body swapping scenario happen. This game is lunacy and I love it. I only wish the combat was a little better and less mashy, but it still manages to be fun and exciting despite that.

GOD OF WAR

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In stark contrast to Yakuza 6 there is God of War, the reboot/sequel I never knew I wanted. I’ve only put in a few hours with Kratos n’ son, but I can tell that I’m going to have a blast with it. The game is gorgeous, and heartfelt and plays phenomenally. It’s brutal in the way that God of War should be while also reinventing itself in a meaningful way.

The most damming thing I can say about God of War is that it is an incredibly daunting and draining experience. It has a tone and sticks to it almost always. The little bits of levity that are there are more than welcome, but I just found it hard to play it for hours on end without needing a break. That’s what Yakuza 6 does so well that GoW doesn’t (thus far). While I totally respect the story it’s telling, I don’t think I personally am able to spend large stretches of time with it. That’s why I’m going to finish up Yakuza before I dive back into God of War.

STREET FIGHTER II TURBO: HYPER FIGHTING

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So I bought a Super Nintendo Classic, it’s wonderful and I love it. I’ve touched a couple of games in it so far, but spent the most time with Street Fighter II. I bounce between this and Dragon Ball Fighter Z pretty consistently when I need a fighting game fix. There’s something pure about doing sweet uppercuts and launching sonic booms into Sagats mouth, that still holds up.

So that’s more or less what games have been in my rotation. Video games, it turns out, are still pretty fun.

Blog: Cover Letter – 04/18/18

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What you’re about to read was something a potential employer asked of its applicants. The prompt was simple and straightforward. I liked what I wrote a lot and figured it was worth sharing. So here it is:

“Please include your resume and a cover letter telling us what excites you about video games.”

These were the words used when asking for applicants for the [redacted] position you have available. From virtual reality, to the emergence of the battle royale genre, to tiny versions of classic consoles, there are dozens of things that are exciting me about games right now. But just like motion controls, these things rise and fall in the social consciousness and ultimately only make up one side of what is exciting about the games industry.

To me there is no other medium around that can deliver the kinds of experiences that games can. It can be as obvious as a fully realized world to explore, dense with the tiniest details that flesh out the setting you’re in. Or maybe it’s nailing that tangible feeling of wielding a weapon as you battle your way through another power fantasy. While I love these aspects of games there is something that is so much more rare, that when it happens it’s almost like a revelation.

Last year a game was released call Night in The Woods. On its surface, it was an adventure game that had a unique art style and featured anthropomorphic animals. I did not expect this game to be the one that would make me tear up and leave me emotionally exhausted. It was a game about trying to recapture the memories you had when you were younger and ultimately realizing that it isn’t possible. It’s about growing up and moving on, leaving the old behind and forging ahead into the unknown no matter how terrifying it seems because there is no other option. It’s a game about loss, acceptance and harsh realizations about yourself as well as the world around you.

Or maybe it’s just a game about some animals in their early twenties whining and complaining about their problems and being annoying.

But it can be both of those things, because games can be a million different things to a million different people. This game made me feel something that no book, movie or album ever did and resonated with me in a way that I hadn’t felt before. That is what’s most exciting to me about games. They are versatile and everyone is going to walk away from them with a different experience that is uniquely theirs.