Category Archives: Spotlight

The Spotlight – 14

Welcome back to The Spotlight, a monthly roundup of insights on games played, to articles worth checking out, and everything in-between. Sure it’s a few days late, but I’ve been miserably sick, so this is the best I could do. For the month of April, 2025, here’s what I’m shining The Spotlight on.

South of Midnight

South of Midnight feels like somewhat of a throwback to the single-player action games of yesteryear — things that one might find on the PS2 or in the early stages of the Xbox 360. I say that with a lot of reverence, even if those games were in some cases, deeply flawed, and South of Midnight is no different.

South of Midnight is a third-person action game that sees you battling your way through a Gothic fantasy inspired American Deep South. You play as Hazel, a young woman who is in search of her mother who was stuck in their home as it was swept away by a flood. One thing leads to another, and you gain magical powers that allow you to cleanse the areas you come across of the overwhelming negative emotions that have corrupted them. The game explains this a lot better than I am, but the idea is that the people in this world have experienced some pretty nasty stuff in their lives and more often than not, responded to it in an equally nasty fashion. That guilt and despair literally poisons the areas, and Hazel has to do some pretty unremarkable and repetitive combat in order to cleanse it.

To hearken back to my comparison to the era of PS2 games, South of Midnight is extremely repetitive. Outside of a handful of boss fights, you only fight about five or six different types of enemies throughout the 12 hour duration of the game. These fights take place in very obviously indicated arenas, and you have to do a set amount of them before you can cleanse the area and move onto the next area, all to do it over again there.

South of Midnight isn’t a bad game by any metric, it’s just an extremely mediocre one that happens to look very nice. The story is pretty interesting even if the ending doesn’t stick the landing, and for as repetitive as the combat is, it’s still serviceable. I wouldn’t pay full price of South of Midnight, but I fully endorse giving it shot when it’s on sale or if you have Xbox Game Pass.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered

I have never been a huge fan of the Bethesda RPG for a litany of reasons, but I’ve always respected them from a distance. The short version is that I find them unforgivably buggy, filled with more unremarkable quests than good ones, and generally have bad combat. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered has not changed my opinion of these games, but I am still having fun playing it anyway.

Considering the gameplay side of Bethesda RPGs has always been a sore spot for me, I tend to resort to using console commands pretty quickly in order to be able to power through that shit and see the breadth of the world-building and storytelling without worrying about soul gems or Nuka-Cola or whatever. Oblivion Remastered might be the fastest I’ve ever broken that seal, primarily so I could break out of the prison cell you start in and go beat the hell out of that guy across from you that talks shit to you when you first start the game. This has led to me becoming the god of gods in Tamriel.

I can punch a hole through a bear, I can leap over mountains, and I know all the spells. This is a much better way to play these games. Don’t need to worry about shitty level-scaling when you can fire death beams out of your fingertips.

I’m sure this is all horrific to hear about from the purists out there who get off on picking digital flowers in order to craft potions or whatever, but I don’t give a shit. As far as I’m concerned, I am playing the definitive version of this beloved RPG and having a fucking stellar time doing so. Even if all of the dungeons and caves are filled with jack shit, even if all of the NPCs look like high-definition nightmares, even if the world is suspiciously empty save for the same fucking broken down fort that’s been copied and pasted a hundred times, and even if there are an embarrassing amount of loading screens, I’m finally seeing what all the fuss is about. I do wish it ran better though.

Crime Scene Cleaner

I’ve talked about Crime Scene Cleaner before, so I won’t belabor the point here. It recently came out on Game Pass, giving me the perfect excuse for playing it again. I can’t speak to the PC version, but the console version is highly compromised and buggy in a way that might impede progress. I had to repeat the final mission 2 times because objectives would just vanish or I could no longer interact with anything. I still managed to finish it and had fun doing so, but this version is rough.

Half Sword

Now this is what I’m fucking talking about. Half Sword is a physics driven medieval fighting game that’s easily the most gruesome thing I’ve played. Sure it looks hysterical with its bumbling characters tripping over one another and getting their weapons stuck between their legs, but when you land a good hit, you feel that impact. Blunt weapons discombobulate your opponents and leave hideous bruises, while the blades cleave off body parts with shocking ease. Describing and recommending this game feels borderline psychotic, but damn, it’s really fun and extremely satisfying.

Technically this is just the demo that I’m talking about, as it’s freely available on their Steam page. It’s expected to launch into early access eventually, which I can promise you I will be buying into the moment I can. I think you should try it and fool around a bit with the demo to see if it’s something you’d enjoy or if I’m just a weirdo.

Nextlander

I lamented the departure of the original Giant Bomb crew when that whole thing went down a few years back, and it left me feeling pretty cold on the whole concept of video game coverage. I’ve never really jived with a lot of the modern offerings out there, so I kind of had no place to go even if I wanted to participate in that stuff again. There was a certain charm and earnestness to the coverage from Giant Bomb, and I really appreciated how they produced and presented their video content. Early Giant Bomb was effectively how I wanted The Bonus World to be, but that never panned out for a whole host of reasons.

This is all set dressing for me to sing the praises of Nextlander. Nextlander is the continuation of the Giant Bomb I loved, run by the people who made Giant Bomb what it was — well, most of them at least.

When it comes to games coverage and entertainment, I always endorse the idea that you follow people over publications, or in this case, organizations. That’s what I’m doing with Nextlander. I trust these people’s opinions on games and their critical eye’s, as well as enjoy their sense of humor. It was a no-brainer supporting them on Patreon and I wholly recommend that if you, like me, are off-put by the over-the-top Twitch overlays, YouTube thumbnails and Tik Tok clips of people freaking out over video games, I suggest checking out Nextlander. Nextlander is like the retirement home of video game coverage, and I’m loving it.

News

Bethesda and Zenimax union authorize a strike

The mesmerizingly stupid saga of tariffs and the Nintendo Switch 2

Mario Kart World is 80 damn dollars

Shenmue is the most influential game ever according to a terrible BAFTA community poll

Nintendo has learned nothing from their Joy-Con debacle

Nintendo Welcome Tour is another example of Nintendo trying to squeeze as much money out of you as possible

Tariffs threaten tabletop industry, because of course they do

Baldurs Gate 3: Act Two Expansion looks incredible

Ubisoft argues that you never owned that copy of The Crew and they were totally fine to yank it from personal libraries

Another brilliant move from Nintendo, charging $90 for the complete version of an 8-year old game

Sony hikes console prices in certain territories

Ubisoft does something cool for a change and releases open source tool to help devs tailor games for colorblind players

Steam tool reveals how much money you’ve spent on their platform

Thanks for checking out The Spotlight this month. I’ll be back at the end of May with another installment. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

The Spotlight – 13

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Welcome back to The Spotlight, a monthly roundup of insights on games played, to articles worth checking out, and everything in-between. For the month of March, 2025, here’s what I’m shining The Spotlight on.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows

I really enjoy the act of playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows, but I’m finding its scale and progression to be daunting and overwhelming. The good news is that the ninja stuff in Assassin’s Creed Shadows is absolutely on point. They’ve seemingly nailed the power fantasy of being a dope, back-flipping, katana-swinging, kunai-hurling ninja with a kick ass grappling hook. It also looks absolutely stunning, save for some of the modeled clay faces that some of the NPCs have.

Where it kind of falls apart for me, however, is the lame progression system, the stupid loot, and the imposing size of the whole game. The progression is weird because you have to upgrade your tier of available unlocks before you can spend skill points, which means you have to seek out certain side activities in the world in order to actually make your character more capable. It’s an extra road block that felt unnecessary. That pairs well with the classic Ubisoft loot problem where you’re just inundated with marginally better items that clog up your inventory.

But the game itself is just so fucking big. I’ve spent like 6 hours with the game so far and only now have killed one of eleven targets. It paints a pretty laborious picture of what my gameplay experience is going to be like for the next fifty hours. It isn’t helped by the milquetoast story that could be much better if it didn’t need to be stretched out over the entirety of Assassin’s Creed Shadows‘ bloated runtime.

I want to play more of it because it’s a lot of fun, but I already feel my will to boot it up starting to dwindle. It also doesn’t help that there’s a ton of other things out there I could be playing instead.

Split Fiction

My biggest complaint with Split Fiction is that I haven’t played nearly as much of it as I want to. The reason for that is because Split Fiction is a much more mechanically demanding experience than its predecessor, It Takes Two, so my partner has been more sparing about when they’re willing to play.

But when we do jump back into the game, we’re having an absolute blast. The constant change in mechanics keeps things fresh and interesting, and the generous respawn mechanics and frequent checkpoints make failure far less punishing than other games we’ve attempted.

I really like Split Fiction and very much want to be playing it more.

Cities: Skylines I&II

I enjoy the Cities: Skylines games a whole lot, or more specifically, I like the first one a lot and wish the second one actually worked well enough for me to devote more play time to. But there’s still a lot of joy in starting a city up and then eventually abandoning it because I fucked up the traffic pattern at the very beginning and fixing it is more daunting of a task than just scuttling the city and starting anew. I’ve basically created and abandoned about 6 cities this month alone.

While Waiting

While Waiting is a game about life and the many times we find ourselves waiting to do things in it. It’s also a truly strange point-and-click adventure game where you can do a bunch of weird stuff while waiting, if you’re quick enough and smart enough. I have been neither of those things, so a lot of these bonus objectives are lost on me. So the experience hasn’t been overly exciting, but it is a nifty little way to kill some time.

The Simpsons

I am now twenty-three seasons into The Simpsons. I’m not sure when it exactly happened, but at some point this went from a show I was engaging with to pure background noise. Sure there will be an occasional goof or even an entire episode that’s really funny, but by and large the show feels kind of soulless.

I don’t know that I’d even call it “bad” at this point though, which is weird because all I’ve ever heard about these seasons were awful things. Twenty-three seasons in, and all I can really say is that The Simpsons got boring. Despite increasingly zany story lines, a glut of guest stars, and the much anticipated shift to HD, none of it really made the case for why the show needed to keep going.

Personally, it’s hard to maintain interest in a show that’s been going for so long and refuses to make any significant changes. Knowing from the start of every episode that nothing I’m going to experience in the next 20 minutes actually matters really sours the experience after so many seasons. You would think after this many seasons and the worsening reception that someone would have suggested the groundbreaking concept of something actually changing.

It’s especially maddening considering that these episodes have run alongside the heyday of Futurama, a show that leaned into having evolving story lines and eventually ended (until it didn’t) on such a wonderful note. Hell, at least let the characters update their wardrobe so they don’t look so out of place in comparison to every other character that strolls into Springfield.

I’m ranting. I’ll continue to watch The Simpsons and get mad about it. It’s just that I really like the old run of the show, and wish that it would either do something fresh for a change, or just end. I don’t know that anyone out there is still holding onto the purity of The Simpsons formula anymore, so why not shake it up a little? Please.

News

Activision uses terrible AI art to promote a Guitar Hero game that might not even exist

A candle still burns for Scalebound

Acclaim is born again for some reason

No release date in sight for Cities: Skylines 2 console ports

Jackbox games to come to televisions in free-to-play app

Next Xbox targets 2027, handheld device on track for this year

Skate gets microtransactions before it actually comes out

CWA builds an industry-wide union

Game Informer rises from the ashes

Ark expansion trailer is full on AI garbage

Thanks for checking out The Spotlight this month. I’ll be back at the end of April with another installment. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

The Spotlight – 12

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It’s the one year anniversary of the Spotlight! Time really is — something, but it doesn’t necessarily feel like I’ve been running this feature for a year. The Spotlight has really helped make running The Bonus World feel manageable. So happy first birthday, Spotlight.

From insights on games played, to articles worth checking out, and even cool stories from tabletop role-playing games, here’s what I’m shining the Spotlight on for the month of February, 2025.

Path to Menzoberranzan

I’m probably going to mention this every month, but I’ve been working with a team that’s making a huge Baldur’s Gate 3 mod. It’s a whole new campaign set in the city of coin, Athkatla. The project is highly ambitious, boasting all new companions, a new set of worlds to explore, full voice acting and more.

I’ve been lucky enough to be brought on as a writer and have actually completed my first quest for the project, which is super exciting. The whole team is filled with super talented and passionate people who are happily volunteering their time and effort to make this project come to life.

You can follow the development on social media or on YouTube. There’s also a Discord to join if that’s more your thing. Check it out!

Sniper Elite: Resistance

Sniper Elite: Resistance is another one of those games. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel or do anything that you haven’t seen before in the series. It’s just another tried and true entry in a long running series of Nazi-sniping simulators for you and a friend.

Aside from level design, I really don’t think anything has changed since Sniper Elite 5, which is usually a pretty damming thing to say about a sequel or spinoff, but I have never once come to the Sniper Elite series for anything beyond shooting the bad guys. If you’re coming to Sniper Elite: Resistance for innovations in gameplay, you’ll be very disappointed. But if you just want to play a competent stealth-action game with a buddy, then you can’t go wrong with Sniper Elite: Resistance.

Clone Hero & the PDP Riffmaster

When I really think about it, the whole Guitar Hero and Rock Band milieu are responsible for some of my favorite gaming experiences ever. It’s why Clone Hero has become one of my most played games over the past few years, save for 2024 where my treasured Guitar Hero III, Les Paul guitar finally kicked the bucket. Luckily, the PDP Riffmaster was birthed into existence, allowing those of us stuck in the glory days of rhythm gaming a chance at another encore.

I love Clone Hero, this is already known. So what about this fancy new PDP Riffmaster guitar? While it’s nice to have a modern plastic guitar, I’ve found that the PDP Riffmaster is not my preferred type of rhythm game guitar. I feel like there are two main camps of plastic guitars: the Rock Band style ones with the mushy strum bar and buttons flush with the neck, and the Guitar Hero styled ones that have a clicky strum bar, and raised buttons off of the neck. I really like the latter, but the PDP Riffmaster is the former, so there’s an inherent difficulty in adjusting for me.

I often find myself overshooting buttons or mashing more than I need at any given time because there’s no tactile break between them. This issue only compounds on itself when you play harder songs. Also, I can’t tell if it’s me or not, but I swear that sometimes this thing isn’t reading my upward strokes (heh) properly, leading me to miss basic rhythm riffs that I can play on tempo in real life. I shouldn’t be missing as many notes as I am.

It might have something to do with the fact that, despite it saying on the box that it’s for the Xbox and PC, the PDP Riffmaster does not natively connect to the PC. It’s truly wild that I had to download a piece of third-party software just to connect this thing to my computer.

Lastly, while this isn’t a major issue, the PDP Riffmaster is very eager to tell you about how it folds in half for easy storage, which is a great idea on paper. The guitar folds at the neck, which is longer than the body itself, thus creating an impossible to store shaped object you now have to contend with. I can’t sit it up cause it’ll be resting on the headstock and will teeter over. I can’t lay it on its back because now the fret buttons are there. And I can’t lay it on the front because there’s a fucking whammy bar there. It’s easier to store when not folded, which defeats the purpose of it being foldable at all!

I like rhythm games enough to put up with the PDP Riffmaster. It’s not a terrible device, but it just has enough pain points that I don’t think I could recommend it to someone who didn’t already prefer the Rock Band style of guitar. I will continue to use it, complaining about it the whole time.

Update: As of publishing this, Gibson just announced a Les Paul-styled guitar. So that’s unfortunate timing for me.

Balatro

I get it now. I finally get it. Balatro shadow-dropped onto GamePass recently prompting me to give it a fair shake, and I fucking understand now. I don’t gamble, nor do I like card games, be they physical or digital. But man, Balatro has broken through and really made me a believer.

There’s some weird dopamine high that kicks in when you play a simple pair and get a x200 multiplier to your points because you’ve built such behemoth of a deck. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a game appeal to my desire to watch the numbers get bigger quite like Balatro has, save for maybe some idle games. But this? This? This is a fantastic game that is all I want to be playing at any given moment.

Avowed

Avowed is perfectly fine. It’s a very pretty looking game with incredibly fun combat and fun exploration, that’s completely mired by a story I feel like I already know the ending to. Maybe I’m being too harsh. Hell, I know I’m being too harsh. But I just haven’t felt compelled to return to Avowed since I’ve started it, and I really can’t put my finger on why that is.

Like I said, Avowed is excellent by most metrics, but it just hasn’t gotten its claws into me yet. So I think I’ll give it a few more hours and see where I’m at with it then.

The Simpsons

I’m well into the fourteenth season of The Simpsons, and I’m actually quite surprised at how long it took before the cracks actually started to show. In my mind, The Simpsons began their steep decline around season 11, but that isn’t the case. The episodes are a lot more uneven in quality than they were in previous seasons, but it’s still a good watch at this point.

It does feel like a storm is slowly rolling in, however. I know this is going to get rough, but I don’t know if the decline is gradual enough that I won’t realize until it’s too late that I’m in the decline, or if it’ll be painfully obvious. The far-fetched and overly contrived plot lines and frequent celebrity cameos are ramping up in an unwelcome way, but I think what’s really bugging me is Homer Simpson, himself.

Homer isn’t a character. Sure, he likes to drink, works at a power plant, and is generally an ignoramus, but outside of that he really isn’t anything, is he? Homer seems to just take on the worst position in every episode. He’s always the asshole who has to learn the lesson. Sometimes it’s handled well and Homer isn’t too abrasive, but often times he’s just the worst human being in the world. He’s Facebook incarnate, chock-full of the worst takes and opinions you’ll ever see.

If The Simpsons ever starts to redeem itself still remains to be seen, but I’m fairly certain this is going to get worse before it gets better. I’m going to do my best to stick this out. Wish me luck.

News

Nintendo Ditches Vouchers and Gold Points

Noted Asshole, Bobby Kotick, Alleges All Bad Press was Fake

Workers Tell Bobby Kotick to Suck a Fat One

Unity Slashes Jobs via a 5am Email

ESA Screams into the Trump Void About Tariffs

Warner Bros. Closes Monolith & More, Cancels Wonder Woman

Thanks for checking out The Spotlight. In lieu of doing game of the year stuff, we’ll be back at the end of March with another installment. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

The Spotlight – 11

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The Spotlight is usually a monthly summary that encapsulates some of the more notable media experiences I’ve had over the past thirty days, but I took last month off to focus on Game of the Year stuff. I was certain that I would have more stuff to write about here, but I must have really not done very much in the past 2 months.

From insights on games played, to articles worth checking out, and even cool stories from tabletop role-playing games, it all has a place in the Spotlight.

Games

Paper Mario

Having recently gained access to the Nintendo Switch Online’s even more premium Expansion Pass-thing that comes with N64 and Gameboy Advance games, I’ve slowly been working my way through some of the games from my youth. The one that really resonated with me was Paper Mario, a game I often rented but never owned. I think this game is great, even if it’s a little rough around the edges in places. It’s charming, it’s decently paced, and the combat is a lot of fun even if I know it gets better in the sequel.

TCG Card Shop Simulator

Man, TCG Card Shop Simulator really sunk its teeth into me over the past few months to the extent that it even managed to crack my game of the year list. It’s rough, it’s repetitive, but it has this very manageable and satisfying gameplay loop that’s perfect for melting the hours away. Since December, the updates have slowed a bit and so has my engagement with it, but the moment something new gets added, I’ll be back.

Dead Island 2

Dead Island 2 isn’t a very good game. It’s not bad either. It’s fine. But it does have some pretty satisfying melee combat and the ability to experience said melee combat with a friend. That’s been the only reason a buddy of mine and I keep returning to this unremarkable game filled with unlikable characters. There’s just something about hacking and slashing our way through the zombie apocalypse with a friend that brings me such joy.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

I never really got the opportunity to talk extensively about Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, nor will I use this venue to do so, but I do want to sing its praises for a moment. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a fantastic experience that seemingly came out of nowhere and took me by surprise. I wasn’t expecting too much when it was announced several years ago, but I am pleased to say that this game is truly phenomenal. It takes all the things I enjoyed about the modern Hitman games, added some really satisfying melee combat, and encouraged me to beat the hell out of dimwitted fascists. It’s excellent!

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

I started Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth recently and was pretty charmed by the characters and the writing, which added a lot of clarity to why it was so lauded last year by critics. My only issue is that I’ve played for a few hours already and have barely done anything. I know a lot of people like the pacing and stories of these games, but sometimes I just want to get to the good parts without having to sit through three hours of well-made backstory. Like, I haven’t even gotten to the main part of the game yet. I’m three hours in and I’ve yet to complete the prologue. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is arguably the most engaged I’ve ever been with a Yakuza game, but man, it takes its sweet time to get going.

Watch List

The Simpsons

Every year or so I make the vain attempt to get back into watching The Simpsons. The golden era of The Simpsons still remains as some of my favorite television, ever, but I always fall off around the same time. Once the teenage seasons roll around, the show starts to lose its soul a bit, focusing more on trying to keep up with its satirical contemporaries, like South Park, while cramming as many celebrity cameos into an episode as possible. I want to experience this dip for myself and see how bad it really gets. But I also want to see what’s on the other side of that because I hear good things about the modern Simpsons that I’m really curious about.

Whether this pans out how I hope or not remains to be seen, but at the very least, I can always watch those same ten seasons over and over and still be entertained.

Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butthead

Speaking of 90’s television, there’s a new Beavis and Butthead and it’s kind of decent. I mean, the main caveat being that you thought the show was funny back in the day. If you hated it then, you’re definitely not going to enjoy it now. But it’s still a fun show to dip into when I want to turn my brain off and see some of the dumbest entertainment ever. It’s weird seeing Beavis and Butthead riff over viral videos and weird influencer shit, but it quickly feels natural. Although not even their commentary is enough to overpower my desire to not watch some of these videos.

Disenchantment

I can’t believe it took me so long to get into Disenchantment. I remember trying this show out when it first launched, but eventually fell off of it because I was expecting the fantasy version of Futurama and got something else. It’s not a perfect show by any stretch, but it’s still very funny and well written. It felt like a big, dumb, D&D campaign where the story kind of made sense, but the adventure and goofily-voiced NPCs were the main draw. I like Disenchantment now, and I like that it ended and wrapped up its story.

Mario Party Party

Whenever I want to kill 4 hours of my life, I turn to the classic Giant Bomb archives and watch three grown men grouse their way through every mainline Mario Party game for 50 turns, while a fourth grown man eggs them, gleefully singing the praises of the franchise the whole way. Some videos are better than others, but for my money, the live one they did at a PAX was the best.

Listening Party

I-E-A-I-A-I-O – System of a Down

Alleviate – Moving Mountains

Most of what Dankmus Produced

The Rest

Path to Menzoberranzan

So this is a cool thing I’m working on. Last month I joined the team that’s working on a full new campaign for Baldur’s Gate 3 as a writer. It’s been a ton of work and has eaten up a lot of my time, but it’s been a blast. Seeing the project come together has been really inspiring and I can’t wait for it to come together in 2030, when I assume it will be finished.

It probably won’t take that long, but you can follow the development on social media or on YouTube. There’s also a Discord to join if that’s more your thing. Check it out!

News

An Article About the Mod I’m Working on!

The Switch 2

McDonald’s is Trying to Kill You with a $20 Jug of McRib Sauce

Developer Behind Mediocre Game Says DEI, Cause of Course They Do

A New Guitar Hero Controller is Coming out for the Wii, and Not for the PC for Some Reason

Celeste Dev’s Next Game is Cancelled

Some Madman Installed Every WoW Add-On They Could

Googly Eyes Bandit Keeps Swapping Out Switch Games for Silly Craft Pieces

DnD-Themed Pinball Machine has a Wild Voice Cast

Thanks for checking out The Spotlight. In lieu of doing game of the year stuff, we’ll be back at the end of February with another installment. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

The Spotlight – 10

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The Spotlight is a monthly summary that encapsulates some of the more notable media experiences I’ve had over the past thirty days. From insights on games played, to articles worth checking out, and even cool stories from tabletop role-playing games, it all has a place in the Spotlight.

It’s another light month, unfortunately. But now that we’re in December, work can begin on Game of the Year stuff. So that’s exciting.

For the month of November, 2024, here’s what I’m shining the spotlight on.

Games

Dragon Age : The Veilguard

I wrote a whole thing about Dragon Age: The Veilguard that you can read right here, but the short version is that I felt the whole game was really underwhelming. It’s a game that plays it too safely and ultimately fails to establish any real identity of its own.

The Rise of the Golden Idol

Sadly, I’ve only played a handful of levels of The Rise of the Golden Idol, not because I don’t think it’s excellent, but because I want to be able to dedicate my full attention to it and haven’t found that opportunity. For the uninitiated, the Golden Idol games play pretty much identically, and involve you peering into a moment in time, collecting and deciphering clues and then ultimately putting it all together in a cohesive way.

It’s a game about deduction and paying extremely close attention to every clue, no matter how benign they may seem at first. I’ve been playing it on the Xbox, which has been a more fiddly experience than I was hoping for, but I knew what I was getting myself into when buying a game like this on a console. If you’re unsure about if you’d like The Rise of the Golden Idol, its predecessor, The Case of the Golden Idol, is available on Gamepass right now. Like I said, they play identically, so you’ll know pretty quickly if it’s your thing or not.

Super Mario Party Jamboree

I’ve never known any games that were as hateful as the Mario Party series, but that has not stopped my partner and I from playing a truly upsetting amount of the latest entry in the series, Super Mario Party Jamboree. In something of a return to form, Jamboree reminds me a lot of the Nintendo 64 entries in the series, primarily because they’re the only ones I’ve played before, and this one is filled with just as much, if not more, horeshit than ever before.

I assume we all know how this nightmare is played, with the dice, the board, the bad mini-games, the complete random bullshit? Jamboree takes this classic formula and adds a fun new wrinkle in the form of “Jamboree Buddies,” which is a feature you cannot turn off and is completely game breaking unless you’re me and have the luck of someone who’s spent their whole life breaking mirrors and walking under ladders.

See, sometimes some asshole like Waluigi will plop his ass on the board somewhere and wait for someone to come and talk to him. Should you do that, you then compete with everyone else for a chance to have him tag along with you for a few turns. You play his terrible mini-game, and whoever wins gets the “honor” of having him in their retinue. These buddies all have abilities that can either give you better rolls, better prices on items, extra coins and whatnot, but more importantly they act as a second player for you to control. So if you go to a shop to buy an item, you can now buy two. You buy a star, now you can buy two. You land on a Bowser spot, well that’s two beat downs for you. It can make the whole game get out of control really quick and I wish you could toggle this feature off.

The only thing pulling me through these games is my love for my partner, and the fact that I get to play as Monty Mole, the best character in the whole thing.

Watch List

Clone High

Look man, in 2002 or whatever, Clone High was the peak of comedy among my friends and I. Here in 2024 though, it hasn’t aged particularly well. The original series still has its charms despite some questionable subject matter and the fact that the entire licensed soundtrack of indie rock of the era has been ripped out and replaced by way worse music, so that’s something.

In stark contrast is the new continuation of the series that continues the story. It’s really bad. It has none of the aforementioned charm and seems to not understand what made the original run so entertaining in the first place.

Ultimately I think Clone High should have remained a relic of its time, forever leaving us wondering about how its cliffhanger ending could have been resolved.

Upload

What if Facebook owned the afterlife? That’s the core conceit of Upload, a show that sometimes gets a little too real for me to laugh at. Without going too much into story specifics, Upload touches on a lot of topics that I worry will eventually stop being in the realm of science fiction within my lifetime. Questions about who actually owns your digital consciousness when you die are the ones that particularly make me uncomfortable. It’s also a pretty good show too, so you should watch it.

Listening Party

Booster Seat – Spacey Jane

Less Than – Nine Inch Nails

The Remedy – Abandoned Pools

The Rest

Rough Month

For a variety of reasons, November has been a particularly challenging month that hasn’t afforded me a ton a free game time. Hell, even if I had that time, I don’t know that I’ve had the stomach to actually start a new game or get invested in something. I am so tired these days.

News

Nintendo Switch Online Services to be Discontinued in China

Inside the fall of GAME

McDonald’s is Trying to Kill You with a $20 Jug of McRib Sauce

Valve Discusses Half-Life 2 Episode 3 and More!

There’s a New DK Rap and it’s Fine

Man Throws Baby Against Wall In Anger While Playing NBA 2K, Charged With Two Felonies

Thanks for checking out The Spotlight. In lieu of doing game of the year stuff, we’ll be back at the end of January with another installment. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

The Spotlight – 09

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Following in the footsteps of September, October has been just as hectic, which didn’t leave me with a ton of free time for video games. Slim pickings once again, but next month will hopefully calm down a bit.

For the month of October, 2024, here’s what I’m shining the spotlight on.

Games

The Case of the Golden Idol

I absolutely am in love with The Case of the Golden Idol and its brand of puzzle solving and storytelling. I haven’t beat it yet, but I’m super into everything it’s doing from its unsettling art style to its puzzle design.

The story follows the titular Golden Idol, a little statuette of immense arcane power. You follow the location of the idol and those who have held onto to it through the years, charting not only its owners, but the consequences of its usage.

It isn’t clear who or what you play as in The Case of the Golden Idol, but you inhabit some sort of third party spectator who arrives at the moment of, or shortly after a grizzly murder has taken place. Through a point-and-click interface, you explore each heinous tableau, rooting around pockets, cupboards, and trashcans for pieces of information that can steer you towards identifying who people are, who was present, and what motives existed. At the end of each level you input your assumptions into a Mad-Libs-styled notepad, filling out the story with its key figures, items and whatever other relevant information is needed.

I do wish there was an easy way for me to catch up on the story so far, considering every time I do manage to play the game, I found that I’ve forgotten a lot of key information I would have retained had I just blasted through in a sitting or two.

Regardless, I’m absolutely smitten by The Case of the Golden Idol and am eager to wrap it up before its sequel, The Rise of the Golden Idol releases in just a few short weeks.

Kind Words 2

Sometimes you just need someone to listen to you and tell you that you aren’t alone and your feelings are valid. That’s the promise of Kind Words 2, a game that’s made me tear up on more than one occasion.

In Kind Words 2, people from all over the world will toss their concerns and issues out into the void, a handful of which sail right onto your desk. With little more than a letter indicating who wrote what, you can read and respond to any of the notes that come your way, offering wisdom, solidarity, or just support to a random human being.

People are kind and thoughtful, bearing their souls to random people on the internet. I’ve sent some stuff out and gotten some truly wonderful responses back. It’s a lovely little application that’s all about promoting good vibes while listening to dope lo-fi beats.

It is worth mentioning that the responses you get might not be what you hope them to be. For instance, did you know that there’s a highly contentious election going on in America right now between someone who wants to not destroy our democracy and someone who actively courts Nazis? I may have expressed my general anxiety to the void at one point, only to be returned with some great answers like, “you don’t have to vote” and, “both candidates are just as bad as one-another.” These kind of sage nuggets of wisdom weren’t overly comforting, as you can imagine.

But that’s hardly the fault of Kind Words 2. Aside from that miserable example, the community is largely supportive and kind, and when it came to other things I sent out, they were much more endearing and helpful.

Escape From Mystwood Mansion

Escape From Mystwood Mansion isn’t a particularly long or difficult game, but it is the exact level of complexity I needed from puzzle game this month. Escape From Mystwood Mansion is a first-person escape room styled game, where you’re quite literally escaping from the titular mansion and its many rooms. There honestly isn’t a ton to say about it beyond that I enjoyed my time with it, and if you need a mildly challenging puzzle game, Escape From Mystwood Mansion is a pretty good choice.

Watch List

Over the Garden Wall

In about 100 minutes or so, Over the Garden Wall manages to not only build out an impressive fantastical world with interesting lore while balancing humor and tension effortlessly, but it does all that while also having Elijah Wood and Christopher Lloyd in the cast. Over the Garden Wall is my annual Halloween tradition and I think it should be yours too.

Listening Party

Counting Sheep – Anxious

On Melancholy Hill – Gorillaz

L.S.F – Kasabian

The Rest

Still Unpacking

Why do we own so much stuff? Fuck.

News

Of Course the Cops Would Blow Money on a Cybertruck

A Pokemon Leak Sounds Yucky But it Isn’t

Chick-fil-A is Launching a Streaming App With Original Content… For Real.

Capitalism is Alive and Well as Microsoft CEO Gets Huge Pay Bump in Spite of Massive Layoffs

Concord is Dead and its Developer is Dissolved

The Day Before Studio is Undefeated in Thinking it Has Community Support, Hosts Unpaid Design “Contest“

Thanks for checking out The Spotlight. We’ll be back at the end of November with another installment. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

The Spotlight – 08

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Fair word of warning: this month has been very hectic and most of my time has been spent coordinating and executing a move to a different apartment. So this may not be the most comprehensive Spotlight we’ve had.

For the month of September, 2024, here’s what I’m shining the spotlight on.

Games

Astro Bot

An absolute delight from top to bottom. Looks amazing, feels great to move around and use all of the powers. Soundtrack is great. Excellent fan service. Not terribly challenging. Pretty forgiving checkpoints. No real penalty or lose state.

I’ve never really considered myself overly attached to the legacy of the PlayStation brand for a number of reasons, but I’ve grown up alongside of this brand and its characters and can absolutely appreciate aspects of its history. Astro Bot isn’t just one of the best 3D platformers I’ve played, but it’s also a love letter to (and possibly the greatest advertising vehicle for) the PlayStation, its games, hardware, and the many characters associated with its consoles.

I don’t want to belabor the point here, but Astro Bot is an absolute delight to play even if you’re not necessarily nostalgic for the PlayStation brand itself. The platforming is excellent, the soundtrack is great, it’s beautiful to look at, and the levels and boss fights are all fantastic.

It all gets even better if you have an affinity for the PlayStation brand itself. The story of Astro Bot is that you and hundreds of other bots decked out in popular PlayStation character outfits, are flying through space in their spaceship, which is a PS5, when they are attacked by a real nasty alien who knocks them out of the sky and scatters the characters and PS5 components throughout the galaxy. You are literally tasked with saving PlayStation characters and rebuilding a PlayStation 5 in Astro Bot, and while you could look at that as a shameless and gross advertisement you’re paying to experience, I would urge you to look at it like I see it, which is a wonderful celebration of the PlayStation brand.

Star Wars Outlaws

I really want to like Star Wars Outlaws, and I feel like in a few months I’ll be able to do that. As it is right now though, the game is far too buggy for me to want to spend anymore time with. While I’m curious about the story and enjoy the simplistic, if at times uninspired, gameplay loop, the entire experience feels rocky at best.

I’ve encountered a lot of bugs and weird glitches that have hampered my progress, but I also think the stealth system in general is just kind of busted at the moment. You get spotted through walls and cover elements too often to feel confident in the moves you have to make, and more frustratingly, even when you do manage to be completely stealthy about something, you’re still liable to be punished for it as if you were caught.

Star Wars Outlaws is big on its faction system, but it doesn’t feel great when you manage to stealthily double cross a gang without ever being detected, only to still lose reputation with them when you complete the mission. If no one saw me during that whole mission, then why am I still suffering the consequences? As it is, the system de-incentivizes being stealthy, and pushes you to be more willing to blast your way through everything cause it doesn’t matter.

It’s unfortunate, but hopefully Ubisoft will do what they do and fix their busted games further down the line. That’s when I’ll check back in.

NBA 2K25

There is a dark secret to The Bonus World that I think you should know now: Every single one of these articles should include whatever the newest version of the NBA 2K series is out, in them. This series, and now NBA 2K25, are by and large my most played games. They are my comfort food. They’re the thing I do when I’m watching a TV show in another monitor or listening to a podcast. NBA 2K25 is no different.

This is a basketball game like every one of them that came before. It feels really good to play and looks great. It’s also chock full of modes that are filled with some of the most predatory micro-transactions I’ve ever seen. The game throws pop-up ads for in-game currency up on its main screen, and uses the same button for selecting a game mode to buy whatever is on the pop-up. It’s so slimy and evil. I don’t play those modes and I don’t give this game more money than I need to. But I play hundreds of hours of the franchise modes, which more than justifies the base purchase price for me.

The Plucky Squire

The Plucky Squire is a visually stunning game with some truly cool ideas that’s unfortunately marred by tons of technical issues and downright baffling game design. You play as the titular squire as they run through an adventure they’ve completed many times in the past, because The Plucky Squire is actually a children’s book. As things come to a crescendo in the expected adventure, the main villain reveals his disdain with always failing and being defeated, and then launching your ass straight out of the book and into the physical world.

From there, you’ll split your time between the “real” world, and the newly written version of the book where the villain wins, spanning the world and helping its inhabitants. Between slashing goblins with your sword, you’ll occasionally come across larger areas that can’t be traversed in their current state. Written on the ground are passages from the very book you’re inside of, that you can remove words from and swap them with other words from other passages.

For instance, an early puzzle had a large boulder blocking the exit and a passage beside it that more or less said the same thing. Elsewhere on the map, there was a passage about a small frog that I could remove the “small” descriptor from, and replace the “large” in the boulder description with to instantly shrink the size of the boulder, allowing me passage to the next screen.

Unfortunately, The Plucky Squire has zero faith in you as a player to figure out any puzzle solution on your own, let alone even remember the plot of the game from screen to screen. The Plucky Squire frequently over-explains itself to the point of being pandering. Just as any gameplay momentum is built up, you are quite literally frozen in place to listen to some dialogue from the narrator, or your traveling companions, or some random NPC, or just to be shown a sweeping shot of the entire map so you can really appreciate it. I wouldn’t even call it excessive hand-holding, rather, it’s more like The Plucky Squire jammed its fingers in my nose and is pulling me through every aspect of the game so I don’t have to think about anything for too long.

Oh, and the cherry on top of it all is that the game is so buggy and broken that I’ve repeatedly lost progress from having to reload saves because a puzzle suddenly just stopped working. I’ve also encountered several crashes, each of which cost me more time, and one that, as of writing this, still prohibits me from finishing the game. Without spoiling anything, I died in the final boss battle which caused the game to crash, and whenever I open the game and try to continue, the game crashes instead.

The Plucky Squire is such a bummer and I really wish it was better. But it is an inherently flawed game that even bug fixes and patches can’t truly repair. There is no real reason to play this game, and I hate that I’m saying that.

UFO 50

I have been waiting for UFO 50 to come out for what feels like an eternity. It’s a collection of 50 games made by a fictional game company in the mid to late 80s, that was actually made by a handful of indie developers over the course of nearly a decade. I still haven’t played all of the games yet, but what I can say is that old games were infuriatingly obtuse and I’m not as good as I once was at them. That being said, I absolutely adore this game and everything it’s doing, and I hope I find at least one game that truly hooks me.

I’ll have more to say about UFO 50 next month… hopefully.

Watch List

The Good Place

Wonderful show that manages to hit both comedic and dramatic highs. I was severely skeptical of the end of season 1, and I’m still kind of angry about it. Kind of made the first season feel like a waste of time, even though they make good on it in the later seasons. It’s a very good show from top to bottom, despite the few issues I had with how they were telling their story.

New Girl

I’ve never watched New Girl before, and if it weren’t for the prodding from my partner, I probably would have bailed after the first 3 episodes. I found the characters to all be generally unlikable and I did not care about any of them.

By the end of the first season, however, I get what everyone sees in this show. Now in the third season, I still have some serious concerns about the writing and the character’s motivations, but I’m hopeful that things turn around soon.

Listening Party

Sastanàqqàm – Tinariwen (+IO:I)

Just – Radiohead

Money for Nothing – Dire Straits

The Rest

Moving

Seriously, fuck moving. I’m so exhausted and worn down.

News

Concord Gets Pruned

Days Gone Director is a Baby

“Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps” Says ex-Sony President

Sony Reveals a Console for Rich People

An Entire Game Studio Quits

Baldur’s Gate 3 Modder Shows Off Custom Maps, and Surprisingly No Sex Mods

“Not Enough Ads Yet” – Says Sony, as Ads are Dynamically Inserted Into PS5 Home Screen

Thanks for checking out The Spotlight. We’ll be back at the end of October with another installment. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

The Spotlight – 07

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For the month of June, 2024, here’s what I’m shining the spotlight on.

Games

Thank Goodness You’re Here!

Funny, genuinely gut-busting games are a rarity in the gaming sphere, but Thank Goodness You’re Here! manages to be just enough of a game to be included among those ranks. Despite being armed with a jump and a punch, you aren’t really doing much of anything in Thank Goodness You’re Here! aside from prompting new bits of dialogue. You don’t have an inventory or any choices to make, and I don’t think there’s even a fail state in the game.

Thank Goodness You’re Here! is more of a lightly interactive cartoon than a game. Were it not for its excellent writing, voice acting and truly bonkers story lines, I definitely wouldn’t be lauding the game as much as I am. Sitting somewhere between a point-and-click adventure game and something you’d watch on TV, Thank Goodness You’re Here! is a delightful experience that’s worth checking out.

Lawn Mowing Simulator

Honestly what do you really need me to tell you about Lawn Mowing Simulator that you can’t glean from its highly descriptive title already? You mow lawns and get money for doing it. You hire more people and buy more mowers to help you do the jobs you don’t feel like doing. Lawn Mowing Simulator is what it says it is, and nothing more. It’s supremely relaxing and puts me in this zen-like state that’s been so calming, I may have fallen asleep at my desk more times than I’d like to admit.

Submerged: Hidden Depths

Speaking of zen-like experiences, Submerged: Hidden Depths, is a game about exploring a half-submerged city in a rusted jalopy of a boat. There’s a bunch of corrupted vine overgrowth that you clear out by climbing various structures like hotels and hospitals and solving some very easy puzzles. It is not a challenging game by any stretch of the imagination, but it was soothing and had a decent enough gameplay loop to keep me engaged enough to complete it.

Mafia: Definitive Edition

I don’t think I’ve played the original Mafia game since its initial release back on the OG-Xbox and PS2, so playing through Mafia: Definitive Edition has kind of been a real treat for me. The story is what you’d expect from a mafia movie, where your character gets wrapped up in the world of crime by happenstance, but that’s not a bad thing by any stretch. I’ve always felt that the Mafia games were pretty hit-or-miss in terms of quality, but this remake is easily the best version of this classic game.

Castaway

Castaway is a supremely short, top-down action-adventure game reminiscent of the classic Legend of Zelda games. Consisting of 3 micro-dungeons, each with their own bosses and puzzles, Castaway is a fun-sized Zelda adventure that does a pretty decent impression of its inspiration. I beat Castaway in under an hour, but once doing so I did unlock an endless mode that I haven’t touched yet, so there’s clearly more game there than I’ve seen. I think I paid like three dollars or so for Castaway, which feels like a reasonable price for what I got.

Crime Scene Cleaner

Hell yes, another increasingly niche simulation game has made it into the August Spotlight. Crime Scene Cleaner is, as you may have guessed, a game about cleaning up crime scenes for the mafia or something. I did not pay attention to the story because it could not have mattered less to me.

What did matter was the enjoyment I was getting out of disposing bodies, mopping up blood, and ensuring no evidence of wrongdoing was left behind. If you liked Viscera Cleanup Detail, you’ll enjoy Crime Scene Cleaner. It’s not as tedious as Viscera was, which honestly is a good thing. I inhaled this game at record speed and am more than eager for more levels to be added to the game in the near future.

Watch List

My Adventures with Superman

I’ve never been the biggest Superman fan, but My Adventures with Superman contains probably my favorite depiction of the Man of Steel that I’ve ever seen. It’s also a show whose title I consistently forgot, often times going with My Friend Superman, which is would be a great title for the Totoro, Superman, crossover event we’ve all been waiting for.

What I really like about My Adventures with Superman is that this is a Superman who isn’t invincible or infallible. He’s this kid who is trying to figure his shit out is bolstered by the support of his friends. It’s very anime in that sense. But it’s beautifully animated and has some great story lines for all of the characters. I really can’t praise this show enough.

Batman: The Animated Series

After My Pal Superman, I decided to go back in time and revisit a childhood favorite of mine in the form of Batman: The Animated Series. It was nice to see it was all available on HBO Max, but for anyone who feels like watching it, be warned that it is completely out of order and is technically 3 series mushed into one listing.

Despite that, Batman: The Animated Series is still a phenomenal show. That wonderful art style, the great plots, and the iconic and imposing voice of the late Kevin Conroy as Batman, are all things that have elevated this series to its legendary status. After years of different iterations of Batman, going back to this one is great, but it does highlight just how more powerful they’ve made Batman over the years. Seriously, Batman routinely gets his ass kicked by 2 or 3 nameless thugs who for some reason can tussle with the Dark Knight with any efficacy at all. But whatever. I love this show and am happy I returned to it.

Listening Party

Third Atlantic – Crime in Stereo

Sink – Dikembe

Nerve – The Story So Far

News

Indiana Jones And The Great Circle Goes Multiplatform

Gamescom Happened, Here’s Some Highlights

The ESRB Made a 30th Anniversary Music Video For Reasons I’ll Never Understand

Thanks for checking out The Spotlight. We’ll be back at the end of September with another installment. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

The Spotlight – 06

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For the month of July, 2024, here’s what I’m shining the spotlight on.

Games

Steamworld Dig 1 & 2

The Steamworld Dig titles are excellent and are representative of exactly the kind of gaming experiences I find myself searching out these days. They’re short, they’re direct, and there’s rarely any ambiguity to where you need to be going or what you need to be doing because the answer is usually, “dig deeper.” In the Steamworld Dig games you’re a little robot armed with a pick-axe that’s staring down an unfathomably deep mine-shaft. You mine downwards, collect gems, slice up enemies, and return to the surface to sell your bounty off and buy upgrades that make future delves just a little bit easier and more efficient.

While they’re technically games about digging downward, they aren’t solely about digging downwards. Whether it’s some blueprint for a new tool or ability you can craft, a puzzle or platforming challenge that rewards you with some upgrade, or even just a collectible from a time before every sentient being was a robot and humans roamed the earth, there’s always something precisely placed on the map to shift your focus to and keep you engaged. I really like these games and wish there were more of them, but I’m happy with what I have regardless.

This Bed We Made

It’s the 1950’s and I am a maid at the Clarington Hotel in Canada, and while I am good at my job I cannot help but stick my nose where it doesn’t belong and snoop through everyone’s shit whenever they aren’t around. Normally this isn’t a problem, but while snooping in room I found photographic evidence of me snooping in another room. Somehow that has launched me into a mystery that I, Ari, am not entirely sure how I got swept up in but whatever.

That’s the basic premise of This Bed We Made, a detective-styled mystery game in which I am piecing clues together and making decisions based off of them that influence the outcome of the story. The story itself is pretty decent, even if I did find myself getting a bit lost in character names and motivations from time to time, but that’s probably on me and not the game. The way that This Bed We Made makes good on all of your decisions, even the ones you didn’t know you were making, is pretty impressive. It tries to position itself as a game you need to play more than once to explore all of your choices and whatnot, but once I got to the end and kind of saw that mechanic play out, I more or less got what it was going for.

I very much enjoyed my time with This Bed We Made, but your mileage may vary.

House Flipper 2

At some point in the house-flipping process, I got sick of actually decorating the homes so much that I’d neglect to even put a dang toilet in the house. But these buyers are not deterred by my awful aesthetic choices or lack thereof because all they really care about is that the trash and dirt are gone from the property. As long as the place is spotless, these chumps will pay thousands over the asking price for an undersized beach bungalow.

That, in a nutshell, has been my House Flipper 2 experience. I absolutely adore this game just as much as I did its predecessor, and am very bummed out that I’ve exhausted all of the content included already. It’s games like this and PowerWash Simulator that sink their hooks into me so deeply that I’m unable to even fathom playing something else until I’ve blitzed through every bit of content included. I love this game, and in a way, I’m kind of glad I’m free from its thrall.

Dungeons of Hinterberg

Dungeons of Hinterberg is a game that I really enjoyed playing despite some of its obvious shortcomings, and probably would have enjoyed even more had it narrowed its focus just a bit. The game is broken up into three main pillars: the monster slaying action game part, the puzzle-solving adventure game part, and the third bit where you’re choosing how to spend your downtime and which villagers you want to engage with. That third one is important because it determines what upgrades and unlocks you have access to.

It all works together really well, but when you examine each element individually you notice how underdeveloped they are. The combat is janky and repetitive, and the social stuff is hit-or-miss depending on which characters you engage with. The puzzle solving was my favorite part, but even that wasn’t as deep or challenging as I would have liked.

The game is broken up into four main mission hubs that have entrances to higher level dungeons scattered about. In each of these mission hubs, you have access to two special powers that serve as your main puzzle solving mechanics for all the dungeons on that particular map. For instance, the first powers you get access to are the ability to throw a large steel ball on a chain and retract it, and also summon a massive bomb in front of you. The second world has two different powers, as well as the third and so on and so forth.

Honestly, if Dungeons of Hinterberg was solely a puzzle and social game, and those elements were really fleshed out, I think this would have been a much better game. As is, the combat feels like padding despite monster hunting and dungeon delving being the whole crux of the story. Despite all of that though, Dungeons of Hinterberg is still one of my favorite games I’ve played this year.

Watch List

Monk

My partner is a big fan of certain crime procedurals and tends to gravitate towards them when the time comes to pick out a new show for us to watch. Shows like Psych and now Monk make their preferences a lot more tolerable because they’re infinitely less self-serious than others in the genre. It might be a little bit tougher to tolerate these days considering most of what I’ve seen of Monk so far is just people yelling at a man because of his “weird” mental illnesses. But beyond that there’s a genuinely fun show that’s very entertaining if you don’t look at it too closely.

Listening Party

Sodas in the Freezer – Flycatcher

tarot cards – saturdays at your place

Top Notch (Live) – Manchester Orchestra

News

Game Pass Hikes Prices Again

FTC Criticizes Game Pass Price Hike

Cities: Skylines 2 Indefinitely Delayed on Console

Thanks for checking out The Spotlight. We’ll be back at the end of August with another installment. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

The Spotlight – 05

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For the month of June, 2024, here’s what I’m shining the spotlight on.

Games

Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip

Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is a weird little game where you step into the sandals of the titular Terry who simply wants to drive a car into space. This is an extremely weird game with humor that you’ll either love or hate, and if the premise of driving a car into space doesn’t do anything for you, then Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip isn’t for you. But if you’re still onboard then you’ll find a delightfully charming little game that’s chock-full of weird characters, ridiculous mini-games, and goofy quests that all result in getting the very valuable upgrade currency that Terry needs to get his car into space.

Rolling Hills: Make Sushi, Make Friends

While the name, Rolling Hills: Make Sushi, Make Friends is an accurate description of the product, it’s a mouthful of a title that clumsily trips off the tongue. Regardless, in Rolling Hills you play as a little robot that runs a sushi shop in a comically small town. During the day you’ll roam around town and help the inhabitants of the town while also taking time to buy ingredients and furniture to upgrade your recipes and restaurant respectively. At night, you’ll activate your sushi machine and rush different plates of sushi to different tables depending on what each customer wants. In practice it’s just you bringing a pink plate to a person with a pink icon, a green to the person with a green icon, and so on and so forth. It’s very simplistic, isn’t very challenging, and is kind of a slog, but the loop was solid enough that I played the whole thing anyway, so there’s that.

Deliver Us Mars

Deliver Us Mars is an adventure game that tells a familiar story of humanity mucking up the Earth so bad that instead of fixing their problems they’d rather go get a fresh start on the ever-so-welcoming planet Mars. There’s more to it than that, but effectively the world government constructed three massive colony space ships called Arks that would transport folks to Mars and become hubs for colonizing the red planet.

In the story, your dad is this incredible scientist who more or less can save Earth with his impressive brain, but lost faith in the world governments and their ability to actually get something done. So depleted is his faith in humanity that he tried to smuggle you (his youngest daughter Kathy) onto one of the Arks and bail on Earth all together, but only he manages to make it onto the Ark. Years later, the government is running one last mission to recover the Arks, which happens to be headed up by Kathy’s sister, Claire, because there’s a chance the Arks could help save the environment of Earth.

What follows next is the story of the crew’s approach to Mars, exploration of the Arks, and the uncovering of the fate of the colonists who managed to escape Earth. While the story itself isn’t breaking new ground, it’s so wonderfully written and performed that I was captivated throughout my 8 hours of playtime.

The problem with Deliver Us Mars is that it isn’t a very good game. From mechanical issues like finicky controls, texture pop-in, and choppy frame rates, to core issues with its design like uninspired puzzles and bad graphics, Deliver Us Mars is kind of a slog to play and look at. Character models and animations are absolutely terrible, with several characters having hair and beards that clip through their skulls and hover off their scalps. It’s so unfortunately janky from top to bottom, which should really exemplify just how good the acting and writing are that I still marathoned the game. It’s just a shame that the graphical fidelity of this game actively undermines its brilliant acting performances.

Deliver Us Mars isn’t a good game, but it manages to tell an exceptionally engaging and effective story that is buoyed by the strength of its actors. I sincerely hope its upcoming sequel, Deliver Us Home sands down a lot of the rough edges because there’s something special about this series that could really flourish with some extra polish.

Beyond Good & Evil – 20th Anniversary Edition

Beyond Good & Evil – 20th Anniversary Edition is a fine remaster of a very good game that doesn’t deserve the notoriety that’s been foisted upon it, due exclusively to the unknown status of its eventual sequel. It’s also a misnomer because the original game launched in 2003, so this would technically be the 21st anniversary, but I won’t kibbutz about it.

For the uninitiated, Beyond Good & Evil – 20th Anniversary Edition is a very good game that follows in the footsteps of games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. It’s a third-person adventure game that sees you trekking around the world and completing various dungeons all in service of a plot that weirdly revolves around a government launching false-flag attacks on its people to tighten their control over the populous. Armed with a bow-staff and a camera, you’re out there bonking enemies to death, taking incriminating photos, and doing a weirdly high amount of sneaking around.

It’s a fun game that despite being remastered didn’t age super well. The combat is bad and the camera is miserable, retaining all the charm I remember from 3D adventure and platform games of the era. Beyond Good & Evil – 20th Anniversary Edition is probably less of a celebration of this very good game of yesteryear, and more of a way to gauge continued interest for Beyond Good & Evil 2, and if it’s worth continuing developing. That’s complete speculation obviously, but that’s my theory nonetheless. Regardless, Beyond Good & Evil – 20th Anniversary Edition is fairly priced at twenty bucks and a good way to play this classic game.

Watch List

The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel

This one required several viewing sessions, but getting such a detailed, first-hand account of a Disney World blunder is something I will always make time for. The blunder in question is the ill-fated Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser themed hotel, a promising concept with terrible, terrible execution. I had never heard of Jenny Nicholson up until this point, but if all of her content is as well-prepared, structured, and engaging as this video was, then I’ve got a lot in the queue.

Adventure Time

I had always heard people herald Adventure Time as an incredibly well-made and emotionally resonate show, but never really understood what they meant considering the first few seasons mostly adhere to fantastical fart jokes and rarely anything else. That’s not a bad thing on its face, but it was diametrically opposed to what I had heard about the show for so many years. Ready to uncover the truth for ourselves, my partner and I took the plunge and marathoned all 10 seasons of the show.

Ultimately, both views of Adventure Time are valid. The first few seasons occasionally peppered in impactful and lore-heavy episodes, but they were few and far between. It wasn’t until the end of the series that we’d get these multi-part episodes that expanded on the lore or just revealed an uncomfortable truth about the world. Eventually Adventure Time evolved into a show that we were so emotionally invested in. I really appreciated the stories it told and characters it developed while never sacrificing its sense of humor or whimsy. It’s a long series, but I’d gladly watch it all again.

Listening Party

Old Wives Tale – Young English

Arizona – Carter Vail

Call From You – Anxious

The Rest

The Best of the Summer Game Fest

Summer Game Fest was easily the biggest thing that happened this month, so I went ahead and wrote up a little list of some of the stuff that seemed interesting to me.

News

Since most of the news from this month comes from the Summer Game Fest, these headlines are very specifically not related to that event.