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.
For the month of March, 2024, here’s what I’m shining the spotlight on.
Games
Minecraft
Yeah, I’m confused about this one too. Earlier this month, my friends and I were looking for something we could all play together when someone jokingly mentioned Minecraft. Pushing past the joke, a few of us actually committed and rented a persistent server that we could just log into whenever we liked. It all happened so fast.
Admittedly, I didn’t play as much as my friends do, so it was a nice way to play something together without holding them back from progressing in any meaningful way. While they were laser-focused on hollowing out the earth and invading other planes of existence, I played the role of a wandering cartographer.
It was really nice to have a sort of asymmetrical, communal game in my back pocket that weirdly hearkened back to my MMO days nearly two decades ago. Typing that last bit hurt me a lot, but my point still stands: Minecraft was a fun, sometimes infuriating, sometimes emotionally challenging experience that I was able to share with my friends. And if I happened to leave a bunch of signs all around the world calling any potential readers a jabroni, then so be it.
The staying power of Minecraft however, wasn’t really there for me. You can only do so much exploring in that game before you actually have to hit the mines and collect a bunch of resources so you can defend yourself from the seemingly endless amount of enemies that want to kill you. So eventually I played less and less of Minecraft until I didn’t play anymore. It was a short yet fun experience, but I’ve gotten my fill of Minecraft for the time being.
Super Mario World
It’s been a long time since I’ve actually played Super Mario World, but for some reason the spirit moved me this month and compelled me to dive back into this 30+ year old game. Turns out that Super Mario World is still an incredible platformer that has way more puzzle solving in it than I remember, although it’s not surprising considering I’ve never technically beaten the game.
In reality it was my big sister was the one who beat Bowser’s ass into a bloody pulp back in the 90s, and she was kind enough to bring me along for the ride. Since then I’ve played Super Mario World plenty of times but always bounced off of it during the Forest of Illusion set of levels. For the uninitiated, those levels all have secret exits but only one of them will actually let you progress in the game (I think). Knowing that, I was able to make pretty short work of this world that would routinely stop my progress in its tracks. Once that hurdle was cleared, it was a straight shot to Bowser’s house where I could whoop his ass in the same way I did with his children.
And that’s exactly what happened. I stomped all of his children’s collective asses and then stomped his too. It was the first time I had ever personally beaten Super Mario World, and it was absolutely worth the 3 or 4 hours it took. Playing it on the Switch was a nice bonus too because I was able to make use of save states and the rewind feature a few times. Put an asterisk next to my accomplishment if you need to, but I could not care less. I beat Super Mario World and killed Bowser and his whole family. I am a hero.
Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen
In anticipation of the impending sequel, I decided to dip my toes into Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen to see what all the fuss was about. I had tried the original Dragon’s Dogma around the time of its initial release but was pretty immediately rebuffed by it. While I can’t say that I spent drastically more time with Dark Arisen this time around, I did finally understand what all the hubbub was about. More importantly, it cemented my desire to try out Dragon’s Dogma 2.
My biggest hurdle with Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen was just how poorly it aged. Coming to the game in 2024, it isn’t a great game to look at or even interact with. Although to be fair, I don’t think many of the games from the 360/PS3 era particularly aged well. From it’s drab looking color palette comprised exclusively of browns and grays, which was the style at the time, to its incredibly archaic and unfriendly menus, Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen is undeniably a product of its time.
Looking beyond aesthetics, archaic menus, and unfriendly mechanics, there’s a really fascinating action-RPG to engage with in Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen. I played a few hours of it before I decided to save my RPG bandwidth for when Dragon’s Dogma 2 releases — and if the previews are any indication, then I’ve made the right choice.
PowerWash Simulator
I’m fairly certain I’ve spoken about PowerWash Simulator before, extolling its meditative and mindless gameplay. Every so often I’ll check back in with the game when some significant piece of DLC is released, and this time around it was some Warhammer themed DLC that got me back into the cleaning spirit.
To be clear, I have never played Warhammer in any of its forms but I am aware of its existence and the many memes around it, so clearly I was the target audience for this piece of DLC. Turns out there’s a lot of gunk in the Warhammer universe, and it’s just as fun to blast that brand of gunk with my water gun as much as any other kind of gunk.
There’s some mechs, tanks and other vehicles of destruction that need a good rinse, and while it’s all just as fun as any of the other levels in the game, there seemed to be a lot more nooks and crannies that required more effort to clean than I was expecting. But yeah, if you’re into Warhammer and PowerWash Simulator, this is a home-run.
Immortals of Aveum
I’ll be honest with you, I only picked up Immortals of Aveum because it was 8 dollars and I wanted to play an FPS. Now, I could have sworn that there would be guns in this particular game, but it turns out that in this shooter you’re mostly firing off spells instead of a more conventional form of ammunition.
In Immortals of Aveum, you play as a guy who is swept up into this magic war because the bad guys killed his friends and/or family. He was going to die too but in a moment of desperation discovered that his magic was better than the magic a layman could cast, which led to a whole “chosen one” thing that wasn’t particularly exciting. I did think that the setting was kind of cool, especially the opening settlement which consisted of massive, tiered, interconnected city blocks that were built onto the support pillars of a gigantic bridge.
Aside from some cool designs though, I haven’t really felt compelled to press on with the game. The shooting is fine on its own but it’s in service of a loot system that feels kind of bolted onto the experience that I never felt emboldened to understand, let alone engage with. Immortals of Aveum also didn’t run that great on the Xbox Series X which was a turn-off. The frame rate was hit or miss when things started popping off and the textures looked kind of grimy and popped-in a bit too much for my taste.
I’m sure this game has its fans, but Immortals of Aveum just wasn’t for me.
Dragon’s Dogma 2
Earlier in the month I took a chance and dabbled with Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen and found it to be an engaging, albeit obtuse game that someone with a lot more patience than I had could enjoy. It served as a nice table setting for the sequel, and I decided not to burn all of my RPG bandwidth for the month on a game that was nearly 15 years old. Stupidly, I thought that Dragon’s Dogma 2 would be a more modernized entry in this long dormant series, ironing out some of the rough edges of its predecessor while retaining its obscure charm. I was incorrect.
I won’t belabor the point: Dragon’s Dogma 2 is too punishing for me. It isn’t punishing like a Dark Souls game is punishing, rather, there’s just a lot of weirdly archaic decisions being made that make it feel more like busy work than a rewarding gameplay experience. Fast travel is by design a chore, there’s no enemy lock on or dodge mechanic to speak of, just about everything in the open world wants to kill you, making those fast-travel-less treks across the landscape even more tedious, the early quests are mostly uninteresting and repetitive, and there’s not one accessibility or difficulty setting to speak of that might alleviate some of my frustrations.
I think the big issue for me with Dragon’s Dogma 2 comes down to an ideological difference with what I want from games I play and what this game is. Dragon’s Dogma 2 wants its world to feel treacherous and make you feel like you’re surviving in a hostile environment where every interaction is dynamic and chaotic. By all accounts, it absolutely nails what it’s going for. I mean this is the most positive way I can, but everything in Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a hassle, and some people will read that and be stoked about playing this challenging and meandering game, while others like myself will just not have the patience for it.
I just want to feel powerful in this fantastical world without having to struggle my way through it. Often times it feels like Dragon’s Dogma 2 is so singularly focused on maintaining immersion, that any sort of modern game accessibility or comfort that is counter that immersive vision is cast to the side. This game is very much about the journey rather than the destination, but the fact that the journey is so arduous makes for a game I don’t want to play.
The best way to convey how divisive this game will be, is probably with a story that will either infuriate you or excite you. Early on, there’s a mission to travel around the map and clear out some monster encampments in the vicinity of the first city you visit, which is standard fantasy quest stuff. I loaded up, gathered my crew and proudly marched out the city at dawn’s light, expecting some resistance here and there, but nothing I couldn’t handle.
I made it maybe 500 feet outside of the walls of the city when I spotted a gang of goblins who were fighting some roving wolves. Shockingly, they all turned their focus towards my party and I and charged at me. But it was just wolves and goblins, “not a problem,” I thought. During the skirmish, I noticed a lot of my party members were going down for some reason, which is when I quickly discovered that a fucking griffon decided to swoop down and join in the fracas. On one hand it was really cool to see how dynamically Dragon’s Dogma 2 handled all of this, but on the other hand it was my first time setting out into the open world by myself and I nearly got one-shot by this angry bird in full view of some city guards who did nothing to help. I ultimately had to beat feet and hoof it back into the city with my main pawn on my shoulder. The ones that I summoned in from the internet — they’re in a better place now — or the griffon’s stomach to be more accurate.
It’s nice that Dragon’s Dogma 2 is being hailed as a big success among fans of series and masochism in general, but would it have been too much to ask for just a difficulty slider or a mode called, “I’m old and don’t have patience for this but very much want to experience some of your very pretty looking RPG.” I’m bellyaching and I realize that. I don’t even think that I’d say Dragon’s Dogma 2 is too difficult for me, but it’s a little too hardcore for me. Honestly, I really like a lot of what Dragon’s Dogma 2 is doing on paper, I just wish it was a little more welcoming.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection
The Halo franchise holds a very special place in my heart. For many people my age, they were the go-to console multiplayer games for all of my friends whether we were in person or online. While the franchise may have fallen of the tracks at some point, the newer games haven’t undone my affection for the original trilogy and its spinoffs. That’s why it was easy to agree to a coop campaign through Halo: The Master Chief Collection with a friend of mine.
Instead of playing them in order of the stories, we just dove into Halo: Combat Evolved and figured we’d get to Halo: Reach at some point. We’ve made alarmingly little progress through that game for a handful of reasons, chief among them being how little direction you’re given. If I’m being honest with myself, I don’t think Halo: CE aged particularly well. Sure the pistol is a lot of fun, but every level we’ve played so far has been a meandering nightmare filled with identical hallways and repetitive encounters. I forgot just how much of that game was about clearing enemies out in an area and waiting for the story to happen at you. I guess that’s a reductive way of describing most shooters, but in Halo: CE, most of the time we’d be wondering what our next objective was, only to have to track down an alien that was caught on some geometry in the distance before we’d get any guidance on our next steps.
But shit, it’s still Halo, and Halo is still really good. I’m excited to dive back into the campaign and possibly dabble in some classic multiplayer. Halo is a very special series, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection is a phenomenal trip down memory lane.
Gato Roboto
Gato Roboto is a challenging, bite-sized, pixelly search-action game where you play as a cat that’s piloting mech suit. I had a lot of fun with this game even if there were more than a few instances where I felt under powered or like the game was being a bit unfair, but it was nothing that stopped me in my tracks. I would offer this advice to potential players of Gato Roboto: don’t just skip through the dialogue like I did. Doing that led to me wandering around aimlessly for a good hour or so in search of my next objective because there’s no good way to get that exposition again. Otherwise, I had a really nice time with Gato Roboto, and I think fans of search-action games with a heavier emphasis on the ‘action’ part will enjoy it too.
Trombone Champ
There isn’t much to say about Trombone Champ except that it’s one of the most delightfully stupid games I’ve played this year. At its core, Trombone Champ is basically Guitar Hero but with a trombone, except that no matter how good you actually are at the game, the songs will always sound ridiculous. It’s a hilarious goof that’s executed perfectly.
Watch List
The Bear
The Bear is an extremely intense show that did its best to push my partner and I away with its first few episodes. It’s a chaotic glimpse into the life of a world-class chef who returns home to run his late brother’s greasy spoon of a restaurant. The employees are resistant to change and stymie his every effort to turn his money pit into something worth a damn.
Luckily, The Bear did not push us away and we were treated to some of the best television I’ve watched in quite some time. Watching the characters grow and regress in equal measure, being won over by seemingly irredeemable figures, and feeling my own heart rate accelerate as shouting voices overlapped one-another in what I can only describe as some of the most authentic dialogue ever written or delivered, all made for an unforgettable viewing experience.
I didn’t think I enjoyed The Bear as much as I did, but when I sat down to write this, nothing but positive thoughts came to mind. It has maybe one or two episodes that missed the mark for me, but overall I cannot recommend The Bear enough.
American Ninja Warrior
I was surprised to find that I enjoyed watching American Ninja Warrior as much as I did, especially considering that when I used to watch old Ninja Warrior episodes on G4TV back in the day, it was always a signal to change the channel because the video game stuff was over. But shit, American Ninja Warrior is kind of a blast to watch.
You get to see all of these people in peak physical condition and terrible gimmicks, tackle an obstacle course devised by what I can only describe as a very hateful person. The leaping, climbing, jumping and everything else in between is just crazy to watch. I’ll admit that it doesn’t feel great to watch American Ninja Warrior, and hear things like, “they just don’t have the core strength needed for that one,” come out of my mouth while I’m balancing a pizza on my stomach cause the table is too far away, but that’s a me problem.
I will say that I found it really weird that a large portion of the contestants seem to be outwardly religious folks. There must be a page in the bible or some Mormon proverb that says something like, “and lo’ my child, get a shredded core so thou might overcome the most righteous set of obstacles in Las Vegas, Nevada for a shot at one million dollars,” but apparently a lot of other people did and they’re competing in American Ninja Warrior.
Game Changers
I’ve had a Dropout subscription for years exclusively because of my love for Dimension 20, one of the best TTRPG actual play shows around. Only recently, spurred on from a series of random comments on the internet extolling the value and quality of the content on the service, did I actually try and watch something not RPG related. That’s where Game Changer comes in.
Game Changer is a game show where the game is different from episode to episode and the players have to figure out what the game and its rules are in order to win it. As the host, Sam Reich says at the beginning of every episode, “the only way to learn is by playing, the only way to win is by learning, and the only way to begin is by beginning.” Whether it’s mimicking increasingly more absurd noises, being trapped in an escape room, playing a knock-off version of survivor or engaging in the most brutal version of Simon Says ever, just about every episode of Game Changer is gold.
Listening Party
Albums & Artists
Instead of writing a whole thing for each artist or album I’m listening to, here’s just an unorganized list of notable albums I’ve been jamming on.
- I Am The Avalanche – I Am The Avalanche
- Mean Everything to Nothing – Manchester Orchestra
- Reconstruction Site – The Weakerthans
- Enema of the State – Blink 182
The Rest
The Songs We Sang
I wrote a whole thing about the band Brand New that I’m pretty proud of. It’s an article about a band that heavily influenced me at one point, but no longer holds that same place of reverence for one reason or another. It was a pretty emotional write up and I encourage you to check it out.
Piranesi
I finished up Piranesi this month and I’m delighted to report that it’s a very good book that managed to catch me off-guard with its ending. Without spoiling anything, there is a moment in Piranesi where it got really captivating and held my attention for the next 100 or so pages, right up until the ending.
Piranesi isn’t a flawless book by any means though. I found the second chapter to be a really long slog that was essential in hindsight, but was very slow in comparison to the pace and events that immediately follow it. I also thought the ending was a little underwhelming primarily because of how rushed the final chapters felt. The climax of the story doesn’t really get a ton of breathing room before you’re ushered into the epilogue, but it’s still a very enjoyable read nonetheless.
Fantasticland
Described as a “modern take on Lord of the Flies meets Battle Royale,” Fantasticland tells the story of the titular imaginary Florida-based theme park and the harrowing events that occurred within its walls after a massive hurricane cut it off from the rest of the world. Told through several interviews with the survivors, Fantasticland chronicles the series of events and communications breakdowns that explain how a theme park filled with roughly 300 employees devolved into absolute chaos
I like Fantasticland, but I did find some of the leaps in logic to justify the descent into madness that occurred a bit too farfetched at times. It’s entertaining in that it’s both thrilling and horrifying in places, but it is very much a work of fiction that embraces a fantastical kind of anarchy very early on and runs with it.
Regardless of how believable the premise is or not, it’s still an entertaining read. I found myself pretty engrossed in the escalation of events, partially because they were intriguing, and also partially because each interview effectively hypes up the same event for half of the book. It eventually got to the point where I got sick of hearing characters mention how impactful this one event was, without actually describing any of the things that happened until much later in the book. Despite all of that, I ultimately found Fantasticland to be an entertaining read.
News
Turns out Marty O’Donnell Sucks and Wants to be a Congressman
Who’s that finishing the fight against woke culture and rampant immigration issues? Well it’s former Halo and Destiny composer, Marty O’Donnell. Running on a platform of, you guessed it, “traditional family values” and securing the border from the “millions of people coming in,” Mr. O’Donnell will be trying to get that coveted congress seat in Nevada’s Third Congressional District. So why do I think Mr. O’Donnell sucks? Well there’s a line at the bottom of that article that says, “Whether he wins or not, O’Donnell said that he’ll vote for former president Donald Trump in November.” So, like, that’s a red flag.
Gamers Fear Diversity
That’s right, yet again gamers are all up in a tizzy over the perceived notion that a narrative design company, Sweet Baby Inc., is “ruining” games with forced diversity and identity politics. Unsurprisingly, they’re complete idiots and just want to be angry about something.
The reality here is that Sweet Baby Inc. helps make sense of narrative beats within a story as they relate to the characters and world. It’s not about injecting diversity into a project, but ensuring that if there’s a character who is part of a marginalized community, they are granted a level of authenticity and handled with the level of care you would expect.
I feel like we get one of these stories every month or so, and it’s never not exhausting. Representation and inclusivity are good things.
The Battlefront Collection Lands in the Sarlacc Pit
What an absolute bummer it is to hear that the Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection is a heaping pile of poorly optimized garbage that’s missing core features and content. What should have been a home run, feel-good moment for the series and the Star Wars license at large, turned out to be a tremendous letdown.
Larian is Done With Baldur’s Gate
While it’s sad that Baldur’s Gate 3 won’t be getting any Larian-made DLC or sequels, it doesn’t necessarily mean that some other studio won’t step in and try to release an expansion for the game. Maybe that’s wishful thinking, but Wizards of the Coast would be insane to not get someone to support this beloved game any further. I’ve personally never been so offended to see a company not try to milk more money out of me.
But consider the possibility of Larian making something else and what it would look like. In my heart of hearts, I’d like them to try making a Witcher-esque game that maintains the RPG bona-fides the studio is known for, with a type of combat I enjoy. Imagine what the Larian equivalent of Skyrim or Mass Effect could look like. It’s probably not what they’re going to do, but I can dream.
Thanks for checking out The Spotlight. We’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.
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