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somethingwittyandweird · 6 months

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What's your favorite game you played this year?

You've activated my “review of my year in gaming” trap card! I was already going to make this post in some form or another, you've just given me the perfect launching point. So, the first thing you should know about asking me for favorites: I never give just one. How could I, when it's been such a banger year of games? (Heads up, this one's going to go long.)

I loved Tears of the Kingdom to death, and it took home my most hours played on Switch. It is a shining example of what devs can do with an extra few months to polish a game. There were so many remarkable moments that testified to how much care and ideas the devs were able to put in. I loved how it used the time since the first game to develop familiar places and characters, adding depth (no pun intended) and also making sure every familiar location had some new twist. The story was a much stronger followup to BotW, and I think this overall has my new favorite ending sequence of anything in the series (I'd love to make a full post sometime about how the final Ganondorf battles just keep getting more spectacular with each new title). I am so, so, so, so normal about this incarnation of Princess Zelda.

Also in my favorites this year is Fire Emblem Engage, which hit at just the right time to scratch my strategy itch. As a long time FE fan it’s not a surprise I enjoyed this one- though it lost the political intrigue of its predecessor in favor of a more traditional/tropey story, I still had a lot of fun with all its gimmicks and gameplay innovations. Also it is hands-down the most visually appealing game in the franchise, a title previously held by the series’ GBA entries which are masterworks from the peak era of beautiful sprite art. From the incredible crit animations to the spectacle of super attacks to the battle maps which are so beautifully detailed that the game lets you free roam around them after a battle just to appreciate them better.

I finished the Link’s Awakening remake this year! It was a charming trip back to an older era of Zelda design philosophy and I found it fascinating to compare the ways where the classic puzzles and challenges differ from what the game would be like if it were made today, as well as the places where modern technology allowed for better QoL changes that weren’t in the original. I really enjoyed the music as well, which I find to be a standout among the series still.

Here at the end of the year, I have to give a shout out to Sea of Stars. It has everything you want in an indie darling- very pretty pixel art, very nice music, turn-based battles with timed hits I joke, but Sea of Stars does a great job balancing evoking/paying homage to icons like Chrono Trigger and bringing new gameplay to the JRPG formula. I like its pared-down take on JRPG combat which revamps skills/mana into a much more dynamic resource that’s constantly being spent and regenerated, and I’m a known sucker for character combo attacks which this game has in spades. The later parts of its story are told with a lot of heart, and again I am a known sucker for certain character archetypes. Surprisingly also, I think the movement and exploration is absolutely a standout- not something that’s typically emphasized in the genre. But this game constantly has you hopping across stepping stones, balancing on tightropes, climbing walls and ledges… the emphasis on interesting traversal and verticality is a strength few games like it can boast.

Before my final pick, I’m including a special section for all the games I didn't play myself but watched my friends play and still want to praise: Hi-Fi Rush, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, Mario Bros Wonder, Pizza Tower, the Minish Cap Switch rerelease, and more all came out this year and all of them have brought killer music, excellent gameplay, and stunning visuals that I’ve enjoyed to no end. Anyone considering to pick up any of them would find a quality product without a doubt.

With all that said: I think ultimately it has to be Tunic in the end. Underneath its premise of a Zelda/Souls-like adventure game there is a wealth of secrets that goes as far down as you have the courage to delve. It’s a game built to evoke nostalgia for games that you didn’t understand yet, posing as a game that you watched an older sibling play or a game you could only find a poorly-translated foreign copy of. It obscures everything and teaches you its secrets through context, exploration, and discovering in-game pages of the manual (remember manuals?). It’s a game made for lovers of secrets and puzzles, full of hidden paths and trophies that reward inquisitiveness and observation (and taking paper notes). It was when I saw that it not only has a conlang, but that it gives you the hints you need to fully translate it, that I knew I had to get it myself. It spurred me to screenshot every in-game piece of menu text, then spend evenings cross-referencing it to identify phonemes and construct a key.

The rush I got on completing that key is one of two moments I knew this game was absolutely special. The second standout moment is when the game teaches you its hugest secret, and then invites you to prove your mastery of it by presenting you a huge, multi-part puzzle. But, Tunic does the same thing that one of my other all-time favorites, Outer Wilds, does so well: powerups via knowledge, “unlocking” abilities that you always had, you just didn’t know that you did. The pieces to this puzzle are hidden in plain sight; it’s only when the game tells you what you’re looking for that your understanding shifts, everything clicks, and your eyes are opened to the path you have to follow. I don’t say it lightly, but I consider Tunic to be a one-of-a-kind title, and one that delivers completely on its unique vision.

In case that brick of text doesn’t make it clear, I love this game.

I love all of these games.

It's a fine time to be alive.

#i talk a lot tag #skysometric #loz #totk #sea of stars #fire emblem #fe17 #link's awakening #thank you so so much for giving me this space to make this post #sorry-not-sorry about the wall of text jumpscare #i mean everything i said sincerely and honestly still have more to say about some of these #that i'll save for another time #long post

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shidiand · 1 year

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2022 shidi’s review

Best of media

- Umineko no Naku Koro ni

I started Umineko by manga in 2016 and made it to Ep 6, picked up the LP archive version ~1-2 years ago and made it to Ep 3, but this November I finally finished Umineko from beginning to end in its proper visual novel form. It may well be the longest thing I've ever read, and yet the remarkable thing about Umineko is that I believe it hardly squanders a single moment of its immense 1.1 million word count; it by and large fully justifies every use of its tremendous length. I feel that very few works of such length do. There are still things I want to resolve about it; I want to reread it again one day and solve them myself. There are still more things I'll probably carry with me into things I create from here on out. Is there any visual novel with better soundtrack or voice acting? I've become an Umineko Guy, and I will wear this mark with pride.

- Hellsinker.

I first played Hellsinker in 2020, and I delved into about ~75% of the game at that time, but it wasn't until March this year that I finally pushed myself to finish it, and let myself see everything about the game. It's still one of my favourite games ever. One of my favourite experiences ever. A wholly, solitarily unique game uncompromising in its vision; it grants you a glimpse of it and its author's insanity, and I did my best to interpret it. You might bounce off of it, such a game it is. But highly specific games, that can only appeal to certain people, have their charm too. I was a Dead Liar main from beginning to end. I will continue to recommend this game to others until the day I die.

- Defunctland's Disney Channel Theme: A History Mystery A documentary of modest length, but a lovely one. Surely one of my favourite Defunctland videos ever (not that I have watched much of his work), and possibly for a very long time to come.

- action button reviews boku no natsuyasumi A longer documentary, but a remarkable one in how it weaves a deep analysis of the game and Tim Roger's personal stories and reflections into a potent emotional core. Beautifully told.

- Secret Base's Captain Ahab: The Story of Dave Stieb Another long documentary, this time one covering the more cut-and-dry story of Dave Stieb's baseball career, but it wrung much emotion out of me all the same. I'm glad I was able to learn about this single little story of sports history, one episode at a time.

- Nuclear Throne

I also started NT in 2016 and reached a resolution with it that year, but in the depths of my unemployment malaise, on a whim of coincidence (seeing Rami Ismail retweet a video essay about it by @dookasx), I decided to pick it up again this year, and it soon became my fidget game for killing 20-30 minutes of time. It was not long until I decided to push myself to achieve 100% unlocks to fill a newfound need for closure. Then the madness began. This challenge ran from about April to August. My understanding of the game and how to best build and play to unlock each crowns changed significantly from my 2016 understanding, and I surely improved quite a bit over the course of the challenge, but the Rogue (has weak passive and active abilities) and Melting (has 2 HP instead of 8) runs tested my patience and sanity towards the very end. I can say I have explored this completed game to a very deep degree, and that I would not recommend this challenge to others. There are probably better things I could have done with that time. However, the game is pretty fun.

- Alice to Zouroku

I didn't read or watch Alice to Zouroku for the first time in 2022, but I did do a rewatch of the anime in February, and on that revisit it went quite a ways up my ranking of anime and fiction in general. Something about viewing Sana's experiences through the lens of autism made me just a bit more fond of it, I've been thinking about it from time to time throughout the year. It's a very tender story. The soundtrack of the anime wrings emotions out of me. I didn't actually know that the manga continued after chapter 21 because the scans stop there (ahaha...), and it was such a strange yet not bad place to have an "ending", I respected that. Don't mind that. I recommend it.

- Berserk

I read all of Berserk for the first time this year. I am certain that if I had read this earlier in my life, it would have had a great and lasting influence on me, both in storytelling and art; however, I think works like Vagabond and Tenco's Story had already taken that spot for me years ago, so it was not to be. Yet I was still swept up in awe at this story quite literally larger than the life of its author, of epic confrontations, and pain, and healing. Miura's ability to depict portraits of scale was unmatched. The weight of Guts' legacy, looking back at the web of influence from Guts to every dragonslayer derived from him, is tremendous. Another epic-length story that I feel deserves to be as long as it is.

- Bocchi the Rock

There has been no shortage of effusive praise for the Bocchi the Rock anime, so I will exempt myself from writing much of my own, but it was a very enjoyable experience to watch and share in with the many positive bocchiposters on my Twitter and Tumblr feeds. The music was great, the musical performances blew the bandori scenes I'd been accustomed to out of the water, and it was genuinely quite funny and emotionally cogent. It's got a small cast of characters who simply give off so much personality, it would be hard not to love them.

- Healer Girl

This was a 2022 seasonal that I watched on my own, as I like to do, and it was a delight. A fine mix of lightness and seriousness in its storytelling, charming characters, presented with a musical coating. If that sounds like Bocchi the Rock... yeah, I guess it does. It might not be as insane and radical as BTR, but I think it holds up. You've all heard the good word about BTR. I would recommend giving Healer Girl a try.

- The First 12 Episodes of G Gundam

Okay, this probably doesn't deserve to be on here, not without having finished it first, but G Gundam is such stupid fun. It's just good to go back and watch some shit from a completely different time period and take in the differences. I really liked the orchestra-based soundtrack and stingers. And this Domon Kasshu fella. What a guy. What a classic burning-hearted coolguy.

- Kindred Spirits on the Rooftop

Another late-to-the-party media for me to experience in 2022. Though not without tangible flaws, it managed to tell a charming high-school story from beginning to end. It was a little longer than I expected due to wading through the latter, bonus half of the content that was more often than not an exercise in clicking through scene reruns rearranged for a different character's perspective (but there were enough new scenes that I could tolerate it.) I had no interest in the sex scenes, which were mostly just okay, and ended up zoning out while clicking past them. Even so, the ending made me feel something when it was all over, and perhaps that was enough to push me to faithfully 100% every scene, the seiyuu comments, the drama CDs, the translations on Tumblr of lead writer tweet-comments, whichever AO3 fics interested me enough to read them, the VN podcasters' episodes about it... so, not nothing. Not bad at all. Not an unconditional recommendation, but it was good, to me.

- Urasekai Picnic (vol 5 - 7 and fanfics)

I'd been reading Urapi since 2021, but I got around to reading the latest volumes this year, and the story has continued to develop in ways that bolstered my confidence in the series from "fun, episodical horror encounters with lesbian investigators" to "now we're really getting somewhere with these characters and this plot". The teasers for the upcoming volume 8 are giving me yet more bits of confidence that Urapi might just round out to a properly closed narrative. I also read @rabbiteclair's excellent Urapi fanfics this year, which is a notable side point to this item; all quite excellent and capable of making me hallucinate that I read an additional volume or two of Urapi this year at times when I am not fully awake.

Things I did

- Wrote https://shidiand.tumblr.com/intro2touhou. I don't know if it's good. But it's something.

- Wrote some other things. I think this was one of the few times I'd properly finished a major project on my own. It was a catharsis. If you took the time to read it, thank you.

- Drew a few things, not very seriously. I made my friends and my favourite artist smile by drawing their OCs, so I'm happy.

https://akiraita.tumblr.com/post/684828588797837312/as-veil-enjoyer-193-i-like-hina-a-lot-so-here-she

https://twitter.com/shidiand/status/1518375294268104705

https://twitter.com/shidiand/status/1572331492923310081

- Stopped watching vtubers. I took a step back from the excitement of keeping up with streams. I'll be alright.

- Helped archive the N-tone x Dust_Box_49 10th Anniversary collection on Youtube. I was conflicted over doing this permissionless upload. But this music is very important to me.

- Participated in TTRPG with friends. It didn't pan out for me but I was glad I gave it a try. Sometimes exhausting. Always quite engrossing. It was probably the most social I was all year. Thank you to my GM and fellow players.

- Started learning Japanese again. I'm plateauing a bit, and I've only been working on my reading, but I managed to get into a good spot for grammar.

- Started exercising regularly again. Have to take care of this body.

- Got my driver's license. Driving gives me anxiety but it's a little step of responsibility.

- Did not go insane during the long year of unemployment. I regained the will to find a job again by the end of the year.

I'll keep at it going into 2023. I think I can get a job, I'll keep thinking about some original stories. No promises about drawing. Let's become a human once more.

#bulb #long time no textpost hows everyone doing

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monsterfucker-sex-ed · 2 years

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Hello. We are a cosmic entity {we prefer to be addressed with neutral or masculine pronouns in this tongue} and are not entirely used to communicating in this format, so forgive us if we misuse it technically or do not fully comprehend the intent of this space. We have acquired a very charming little celestial being {he likes to be addressed with masculine pronouns in this tongue} as a husband, and we have avoided imbibing the contents of his mind over the course of our entire relationship out of respect. However, recently, we examined a corner of his internal being in an attempt to discover what physical form he would find the most visually appealing for us to manifest as, and we learned that he has a very strong attraction to demonic and devilish entities. We are not entirely certain how to gently discuss this with him and explain that we wish to manifest this way to make him happy, as we believe he may feel some sort of shame or other form of distress at his interest in the infernal being acknowledged since he is celestial in nature. We do not wish to explore his mind any more than we already have to determine the best course of action and were hoping perhaps a being with more experience in worldly matters of communication would have advice for us. We apologize if this is not the correct use of your space and hope that the twenty four hour period after you receive this is pleasant.

Down here on the material planes we have the concept of "spicing things up in the bedroom". It is very common for couples to attempt to do this. What it basically means is that you wish to enhance the experience of sex and/or play. In this situation however, it seems that you want to keep an infernal appearance as your norm, if I understand correctly. I still think that you could learn some things from the "spicing up things in the bedroom" talk, and apply it to this.

Communication is very important in a relationship, and when used to reading minds, can be a difficult thing to learn. Instead of getting answers, you have to form questions to coax them out of your partner. Your partner may or may not be 100% honest depending on the levels of shame he feels. Unless he's pretty conservative, he most likely just worries that mentioning anything about your appearance may imply that he doesn't like you the way you are!

Ask your husband to sit down and have a talk some time when he feels he's ready. When the talk begins, state the basic premise of what you want to do. Ask him what kind of appearance you can take on he would like the most, and make sure that he knows that you can look however he wants and that you want to please him as much as you can. This may feel awkward for him, and if he avoids answering, you could suggest looking at pictures of material beings together, and he could point out the ones he thinks are attractive. It can be a fun activity without any shape-altering, just looking at pretty beings and gushing about how pretty they are! Finally, ask him if it's okay for you to change your appearance to something you think he would like. Even though it seems like an obvious thing, it can be difficult for some beings to accept change without having a say in it! Asking for permission is a good way to brace him for a big change.

I hope this clears some things up!

The Night Queen

#ask #shapeshifting

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ladyloveandjustice · 3 years

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Anime Overview: Winter 2021 Quick Takes

I may be a season late, but Wonder Egg Priority isn’t the ONLY Winter 2021 anime I’m reviewing! I’ve also decided to give my quick takes on these shows. In the case of one of them, the lateness of this review means I can go into the full thing, at least, so there’s that.

Otherside Picnic

Quickest summary: 12 episodes. (Slowburn) yuri adventure-horror show about two college girls (Sorawo and Toriko) who explore a mysterious world they dub ‘Otherside’, populated by scary beings who take the form of various Japanese urban legends.

I basically want to say “yeah just read the novels” for this one, but if you’re not up for that, it’s not like the anime is bad or anything. It’s fine! The novels are just really good and the anime has very lackluster presentation, mostly due to lacking production values. The anime also has an issue of skipping/rearranging some things and not bothering to cover up the plotholes this causes (for instance, if you’re wondering why, in the anime, Toriko and Sorawo have a jarringly tone shifting FUN BEACH PARTY after having to leave some people to a rather horrifying fate, then they forget about those people for several episodes before finally following up on it- I assure you in the novels they DID very quickly discuss and follow up on these people and then had their fun beach party). The anime chose to rush some parts as well...then it ended on a not-super-exciting-note that left the whole thing feeling kind of mediocre.

The books are atmospheric horror adventure stories with a slowly developing romance as a big thread, and the show pretty much fails to capture the atmospheric horror due to having so little budget it relies on cringeworthy CGI and lacking visuals. There’s not much you can say about that. The show also suffers a bit from not including enough of Sorawo’s distinct, acerbic narrative voice (and the hilarious amount of times she’ll wax poetic on how hot Toriko is).

And finally, Toriko and Sorawo’s relationship is a slow-burn one, so this anime only covering the first two novels also means we don’t get to the explicit stuff that starts happening in volume three. If the anime leaves you feeling baited, I promise, this IS a genuine yuri/wlw romance, it just takes its time building up to it.

I think the stuff the anime did do very well with were the Akari episodes- the ninja cats episodes was almost as amusing as it was in the novel and the followup episode was extremely cute.

The Otherside Picnic novels are a quirky horror-romance-adventure blend I whole heartedly recommend. The books have a lot of appeal, including that they touch on the effects of trauma and abuse and the journey of healing in a subtle and moving way.

But, if you’re absolutely not up for reading the novels (or the manga, when it finally comes out), then I say definitely watch the anime- despite it’s limitations, it’s a fun time overall and the chemistry of the leads comes through. It’s such a rarity to have an enjoyable fantasy/sci-fi yuri anime about adult women out there. I’m sad it couldn’t get made with a better budget/direction, but I’m glad it was made at all. But if you come out of it feeling something is missing, I promise the source material is solid, great stuff that will leave you much more satisfied.

So I’m a Spider, So What?

Quickest summary: 24 episodes. After a mysterious event that kills her entire class, a high school girl is reincarnated as a spider monster in a video-game-like dungeon and has to fight other monsters to level up and survive...meanwhile, the rest of her class has also reincarnated but are mostly living as humans elsewhere.

My quick take is the spider girl is very charming and Aoi Yuki’s frenetic performance carries the show. It’s when we get deep into isekai bullshit and get dragged down by production issues that things gets a little dicey. The show does some interesting things with the video-game-like world premise (for instance, there’s an entire cult worshipping the “you’ve leveled up your stats”! voice everyone gets in their heads as a god, which is incredible, I love that! There’s also hints that some of the characters are clinging desperately to the roles they had in their old lives in detriment of their new ones, which is interesting and a premise I actually see rarely explored in isekai! Unfortunately said characters are so painfully bland I can’t really care about that dilemma). But despite those interesting ideas, we spend a good chunk of the narrative with Spider-girl’s classmates, who are all such bland modern isekai archetypes that it makes it hard to care about them and the time we have with them generally a slog. Even spider-girl’s side of the story gets repetitive and predictable in some ways after a while. There’s like...way too much stats stuff going on here. The story also flips between two timelines that are fifteen years apart, which is an interesting conceit, but also means the entire season ends on a confrontation we never get to see resolved (AND ACCORDING TO THE ANN FORUMS, IN THE NOVELS YOU DON’T GET TO SEE IT FOLLOWED UP ON FOR SIX MORE VOLUMES OR SOMETHING??? WOW).

But probably the biggest issue that drags the whole thing down is the production values (and visual direction) running into huge trouble. The CGI was always a little shaky, but it takes a horrible nosedive in the back half, and the fights (and even some basic conversations!) become painful to follow or downright comically terrible looking. There’s some interesting kernels of fun ideas in this story, and a charming narrator in spider-girl, but the overall show just left me feeling empty. And considering I couldn’t get through the first novel since it cared WAY too much about listing out stat changes for my taste (I COULD JUST PLAY A VIDEO GAME YOU KNOW) (that part’s easier for me to take anime from when I can just zone out for a few seconds and watch the fights at least), I guess that’ll be it for me and this story!

Heaven’s Design Team

Quickest Summary: 13 episodes. This comedy edutainment show runs on the premise that God got tired of creating animals so he outsourced it to a design team of angels. It follows the quirky cast as they struggle to create animals that suit the clients bizarre specifications while still being functional.

This ended up being my favorite of the season (After Wonder Egg began to spoil, anyway). It’s just very cute, genuinely relaxing and funny, wholesome and educational. It has a really loveable cast- they weren’t super deep but their quirks made this really fun to interact. We’ve got a little girl obsessed with poison and gross things, a burly guy who wants to make cute animals. a fiery mechanic lady...they’re a good mix. And, notably, a positive portrayal of a transgender woman! Venus is a lovable character and probably my favorite in the show (cemented when she went through tremendous effort to drag a couch out of the closet just so she could collapse dramatically on it and lament her boss’s demands- MOOD) and everyone on the show respects her, uses the proper pronouns, and she’s shown hanging out with the other ladies in the women’s bath. She’s just completely accepted without comment, which shouldn’t be a huge notable thing, but it unfortunately still is. I think this is the first time in show clearly aimed at young children I’ve seen an explicit trans woman casually a part of the cast and treated with complete acceptance and respect? The only issue to note is she is voiced by a cis man, so I hope if a dub ever comes out they get a trans woman on that. There’s a good article on anifem for more infromation!

The show was just really nice and comforting watch. The humor of this show deals with weird, gross and surprising animal facts presented in a quirky way- I LOVE animals and how weird they are so that was great for me. There’s also a lot of shade thrown at how God is a Troublesome Boss who is always making whimsical demands of his beleaguered design team, which is done well and something any freelancer can relate to. I also appreciated how it had our Loveable Edgy Emo Demons from Hell making design requests for bizarre fantasy animals and coming up with weird explanations for those- they were some of the best gags.

Yeah, overall this was just a lovely, chill watch that I plan to put on whenever I’m feeling blue and want to revel in wholesome buds, gentle humor and bizarre animal facts. I really enjoyed it and have no reservations recommending it.

Jujutsu Kaisen (Part 2)

Quickest Summary: 24 eps, but only covering the second half with this review. After getting possessed by a demon, Junpei goes to a school to fight curses and meet other curse-fighting kids and do shonen stuff.

oh wait I forgot I finished this in winter! It was fine, a fun second half with a lot of pretty fights and good animation. The pacing on this show is still super weird, I can’t believe it took us 23 episodes to see what was ostensibly the main trio actually work together. BUT HEY, NOBARA FINALLY GOT TO BE REALLY COOL AND SCARY AND AWESOME AND WIN A BIG FIGHT (see the above pic). It was literally the last episode, but I loved seeing her be an unhinged terrifying murdergirl kicking ass and that she’s has a different (ie less guilt-ridden) philosophy/approach to killing than Junpei and discussed it with him was a thoughtful touch that developed her character and their dyanmic.

The other girls also got a good showing in the tournament arc (sans Miwa). It’s a little weird that the pairings ended up being divided by gender so ALL the girls conveniently fought each other and ALL the boys conveniently fought each other but, hey, the episode where the girls fought WAS really epic and Maki and her sister’s backstory and relationship developed nicely and was pretty interesting, and Maki did at least get to help fight the nature demon. I like Maki! It’s pretty decent treatment as far as battle shonen goes, none of the girls are ever oversexualized or harrassed and they all feel like characters for the most part. That’s such a low bar, but so few battle shonen clear it.

As far as the actual plot, still not anything too interesting to me, but the show makes for good eye candy and is a fun action extravaganza and sometimes that’s enough!

#otherside picnic #urasekai picnic #so i'm a spider so what #kumo desu ga nani ka #heaven's design team #winter 2021 anime #anime overview #reviews #my reviews #long post #jujutsu kaisen

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carriagelamp · 4 years

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Book Review - Summer Summary 2020

I didn’t get around to doing an individual post for the books I read in June/July/August, so I decided to choose a dozen that I read over the summer... I’d separate the wheat from the chaff for you so to speak. Though like you’re about to find out, that doesn’t necessarily mean they were all good by any means...

Crave

My girlfriend got this for me to “tide me over until Midnight Sun”. Between you and me, I think she was taking the piss. Anyway, Crave is very... standard fare paranormal YA school romance with the added flare of being written by an adult erotica writer, meaning the rhythm and tone of this novel is fucking bonkers. If you want to read the novel without reading the novel, just take Twilight and the entire Vampire Academy series, shove them in a blend, and force down the sludge you get from that. Normal Average Girl Goes To Secret School In Alaska For Vampire, Werewolves and Dragons. That’s this book. It is so big and so so so bad. I finished it out of spite, please don’t do that to yourself. Unless you are really craving (hurr hurr) some top tier trashy paranormal romance, in which case... no judgment.

The Last Firehawk

The Last Firehawk is a Scholastic “Branches” series, written for beginning readers (grade 1-3ish, depending on the child’s reading level). It has short stories, big text, and awesome pictures on every page. Guys. I unironically am adoring this series. It’s simple and is introducing children to a number of classic elements in the fantasy quest genre, but it is so charming. Friends Tag and Skyla discover a firehawk egg, and species that is supposed to have disappeared long ago. When Blaze hatches from it, the three are tasked with going out and finding the magical ember stone which was hidden long ago by the firehawks and which could be used to defeat the evil vulture Thorn and his dark magic... I read the first two books to second graders who ate it up and read the next four books because I personally wanted to continue the series. If you have young readers in your life (or just want a fun kid adventure) then please try these they’re the literary equivalent of nibbling on a chocolate chip cookie.

Lupin III: World’s Most Wanted #3

All the kind people that still follow my tumblr and haven’t tried to murder me because of my Lupin obsession are not going to be surprised by this one. I finally read one of the manga for this series and honestly I’m delighted. Somehow even hornier than the show, but hilariously funny. I felt like I was reading a more adult version of Spy Vs Spy. It’s a bunch of short, individual bits/adventures with lots of visual gags and an artstyle that is really different and delightful.

River of Teeth / Taste of Marrow (American Hippo series)

I’ve talked about River of Teeth before, but I finally finished the American Hippo duology and need to sing its praise. This is an alternate history series composed of two novellas that explore the question What would have happened if the States had decided to import hippos as livestock...? Anyways, my pitch for you: queer hippo cowboys. That’s all it took for me to read it. You have a gay gunslinger who loves his hippo to death, a nonbinary explosives-expert / poisoner who is the main love interest, a fat con artist who spoils her hippo and is the only voice of reason in this entire series, and a latina mother-to-be who is the scariest assassin in the entire series and is obviously scheming. The four of them are brought together on a job to deal with the Mississippi’s feral hippo problem.

IT’S A QUEER HIPPO COWBOY HEIST NOVEL GUYS I DON’T KNOW WHY I’M STILL TALKING AND YOU HAVEN’T JUST GONE TO READ THIS YET.

Petals to the Metal (The Adventure Zone series)

The graphic novel adaptation to the McElroy family’s DND podcast The Adventure Zone. Most of you are probably aware of this? It’s a great adaptation, it hits all the important beats, shows off the characters really well, and still gets lots of good gags in even while condensing entire arcs into single book stories. This one is probably my favourite so far just because Petals to the Metal was one of my favourite arcs in the show... but you can also see how the art has improved and the chaos of the race is fun to see drawn out.

If you like The Adventure Zone but haven’t tried the graphic novels yet -- would recommend! If you’ve always wanted to listen to The Adventure Zone but don’t have time for such a long series or struggle to focus on podcasts then pick up the first book of this series (Here There Be Gerblins) and try reading it! It really is an enjoyable adaptation.

Pony to the Rescue (Pony Pals series)

I continued my April/May theme of reading old-school chapter book series to combat Covid Brain Fry, so I picked up a few Pony Pals books. I read these as a kid and always enjoy them -- there’s just something so appealing to a child about having a horse. It gives your child characters a level of independence and ability to explore that you wouldn’t get otherwise. These books definitely read young, but they were nostalgic to revisit.

Small Spaces

A really cool middle grade horror novel I picked up. Maybe it’s because I live around a lot of corn fields, but farm/scarecrow themed horror absolutely does it for me. One evening, after seeing a woman try to destroy a strange, old book, eleven year old Ollie doesn’t stop to think, instead stealing the book and running. That’s how she becomes wrapped up in the strange, sinister story of a cursed family and creature called the Smiling Man that seems to live out in the foggy fields. While unsettling, Ollie tries to remind herself that it’s just a story... but this becomes more challenging when her school bus breaks down one day out their own set of fields, and a fog is rolling in...

“Avoid large spaces. Stick to small.”

Snot Girl #1 - #2

A Canadian graphic novel series by the creator of the Scott Pilgrim series! I love his work so I decided to give Snotgirl a try, even though it’s not generally my genre. I’m glad I did! First book took a while for me to get into, but by the time I hit the second I was really wrapped up in the mystery and character development. Snotgirl is about Lottie, a self-consumed fashion blogger whose biggest struggles are dealing with her allergies, frustration with her fellow-blogger friends, and how entirely her self-esteem is tied to her “beauty” and how people view her. But everything shifts in strange and horrifying ways when Lottie starts taking a new allergy medication, meets a new friend... and then witnesses that girl’s death. Or does she?

Seriously, or does she? I have no idea, I need to read the third book. This book is full of intrigue, complicated relationships, murder (or not?), and a healthy dose of magical realism to keep you guessing. If you like slice-of-life, crime, and abstract reality then this series is world a try. Plus the art is gorgeous.

Summer Wars #1 - #2

I recently rewatched Summer Wars (still one of my favourite movies) and decided to read the two-book manga adaptation. It was a really neat little adaptation. The creator of the movie gave the writer free range to tweak things to fit better in a manga format, which means some movie elements were allowed to fade into the background, whereas other aspects were fulled into the forefront and fleshed out to a greater degree. It was very cool, it kept the same story but gave you new things to think about which I wasn’t expecting. Reading this as a stand alone works just fine, but honestly if you’ve never watched the movie Summer Wars you should give it a try! It’s a great mix of slice-of-life, sprawling family dynamics that I relate to a little too well, cyber adventures, and fantasy. Super feel good.

This One Summer

Okay, last graphic novel, I swear. This One Summer was... weird and intense. It’s a coming-of-age Canadian graphic novel that follows a pair of pre-teens who meet up like they do every year at their family’s summer cottages. You see them both in the awkward phases between childhood and growing up to become teenagers, as they’re confronted with things like maturity, friendship, self-esteem, family problems, and sexuality. A beautiful read, but probably the heaviest out of all the books on my list.

Wild Thornberrys Novelization

I rewatched The Wild Thornberrys movie with my girlfriend earlier this year, and decided I wanted to hunt down the chapter book novelization because I’m kind of a sucker for novelizations. Honestly, this was about what you would expect from the era. 90s/00s novelizations, especially young novelizations, are generally just a transcript of the movie without much thought or effort put into them to make them anything but. That’s what this was. It was fine, and it really let me revisualize the entire movie, but honestly you’re probably better off just rewatching the movie unless you also really deeply love The Wild Thornberrys.

The Willoughbys

I saw that Netflix had done a funky looking adaptation of The Willoughbys and I decided I needed to read the book first before watching the movie. This was a little bizarre, I’m still not sure how I feel about it. Over all, I think it was a net-positive experience. It’s an obvious satire on classic children’s novels, especially the likes of Mary Poppins (real Mary Poppins, not the Disney version) and while a little heavy-handed, it does a Series of Unfortunate Events vibe that redeems it. The story is about a group of horrible children (The Ruthless Willoughbys) who decide they are sick of their parents and would rather become Worth Orphans... and to do that, they’re going to have to dispose of their inconvenient parents, obviously. Conveniently their parents are also sick of having children and decide to do away with them as well. The Willoughbys sets up three (or four?) different subplots that are gradually woven together through a series of schemes and exploits. It’s definitely more ruthless (hurr hurr) than the Netflix version, which tried to make the children more sympathetic, and in some ways I think that’s a definite point in the novel’s favour. I’m not sure I would go out of my way to recommend it, but it was a fun romp if you want something short and off the wall (and a lot more fleshed out than the Netflix version).

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maybe-homestuck-now-or-something · 3 years

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I wanna connect the ideas in this post with the ideas in this post because they seem relevant to each other.

to give a basic idea of what's in each one, the first is a post that talks about how homestuck is notable as a creative work that effectively uses the language and format of the internet, in a way that resonates well with people who grew up online. my addition extrapolates to talk about how this quality also made homestuck's style of content creation appealing for others to use, and spawned a lot of creativity from the fans. basically, homestuck is a collage, not just of images, but of methods for delivering information to the audience. it uses a broad variety of experimental techniques, but the purpose of them is to make storytelling accessible. in order to convey an idea, you can use any method you want... whatever suits your purposes. by constantly varying the type of art, writing, and formatting that the story uses, it keeps the story from getting boring for the author and the audience. varying the quality and style of the visual art also implicitly accepts and encourages any kind of artwork, at any level of skill or effort, from fans. and at the same time, the story pioneers new techniques that I legitimately haven't seen used before. at some points it even leverages the design of the web page itself to service the story... it's awesome. this gets people thinking about how to tell stories in non-traditional ways, and further encourages the act of being experimental with your storytelling methods, and having fun exploring your chosen medium.

the second link is mostly just me talking about the merits of homestuck's early acts, and at one point I put a particular focus on the idea of science in homestuck. specifically, I was talking about how homestuck handles science in a way that feels very childlike, which is a positive remark. when you're learning about science in school as a kid, efforts are made to present the material in a way that is fun and interesting... and you're given a lot of tools for exploration within the context of science classes, which a lot of people don't really experience having outside of a school setting, if they aren't going into some branch of science for their career. I was observing that homestuck's aesthetic kind of calls to mind the feel of learning about science as a kid... something about the stark readability of the objects and characters, and the bright color coding of things that are important.

the connection I want to make between these two posts is that homestuck hinges a lot of its interest on the concepts of exploration, and creation. it holistically includes a lot of different themes and ideas, and it does it in such a way where the characters don't have to make it explicit... more often than not, you'll end up thinking of it yourself. homestuck simply introduces elements, and lets you form your own ideas. it puts a lot of stuff out there, and links it all together in this messy web of interconnectivity.

for example, check out this post where I added some commentary about the punch card alchemy system, and how it links the concepts of technology and philosophy. the idea is that captchas determine your humanity... but unlike real captchas, which do this by making you read something that a computer can't read, it instead makes you think in a way that a computer can't think. in order to give you access to items, this crafting system requires philosophical justification for the creation of said items. grist isn't just made up currency that exists to make you work for what you make... the amount of it that it takes to make something is only high if you think that the object you're making should be too powerful or important to be gotten for cheap. you prove your humanity by having a psychology that can assign the object meaning, and thus, value.

or what about the broader themes of biology and mythology in homestuck? there are many mentions of genetics... the goal of the game is to produce a universe via breeding, and there are the origins of each of the kids, or the fact that the chess pieces that fight on Skaia's battlefield are made in test tubes in the labs in the furthest ring... etc. but this theme also exists symbolically in the players of each session. they are people who bring their identity with them into the process of making a new universe. each player is given their own planet, which is responsive to the person it's meant for, and features a personal quest for them. and once the new universe is made, the players will preside over it as deities, and help define its culture with their values, interests, and personalities. in this way, homestuck blends the concepts of biology and mythology. in a biological sense, the kids provide the universe with traits. if they are strong/adaptable/resourceful enough to win their game, they get to pass on their influence to a universe of their own. this is why it is relevant that all the players' chumhandle initials are some combination of A, C, T, and G, which are the letters denoting nucleotide bases in DNA. but this concept also applies to heroes going through trials or completing quests to prove themselves worthy of being known as heroes. SBURB's lore automatically mythologizes the players in the role of legendary heroes to the consorts and carapacians, which pushes them to step up to the task of earning their title, and in doing so, complete the game's objectives... and the game gives them the tools to do it.

really, science, mythology, and religion all wrap into each other here in terms of the way things are named and explained. the punch card system and the frog breeding are both referred to as "alchemy" at various points, which indicates both magical and scientific roots. and the highest title that the players aspire to obtain in the game is "god tier" which implies a sort of religious connection between the players and the game's native characters who know them as legends. the magical abilities that the characters display are ambiguous as to whether they are magical, divine, or something else entirely. a lot of them are defined heavily by a character's personality and identity. the malleability of the different elements that homestuck juggles works entirely in its favor... and all of it is geared towards this sense of growth and creativity.

in homestuck, these things exist on micro and macro levels. the growth of one kid into a slightly different person as they get older, vs. the growth of an entity that will encapsulate the universe. the creation of a piece of music, a drawing, a story, a machine, a person, a plan, a planet... it all just keeps escalating, but it's all rooted in specific characters doing specific things, so we don't get lost in it all. the characters bring it all back around, letting us focus on their smaller actions while the bigger plot remains in motion. and all of this exists at the same time as all the surface level reasons to enjoy homestuck. the comic is funny, and charming, and made to be enjoyable as that. but the fact that the broader elements color the tone of it all, leaves you with the impression that there is a lot of potential in every situation. potential places for the characters to go, or things for them to do, or people for them to talk to, or things for them to make, or even ways to grow and change themselves.

and there's potential for you too. you could throw your ideas at the wall to see what sticks in this exact same way. part of reading homestuck is feeling a sense of recognition and identification with the characters. many of them are based broadly on the kinds of people who make up homestuck's audience. with interests in things like music, art, writing, RPing, programming, playing games, watching movies... they're meant to represent you, in part as parody, but in part as a way to make you feel seen and included in this narrative. as lofty as some of these concepts may seem, the people who engage with them in the text are a bunch of dumb awkward teens. you are at least as accepted as they are, and people love these characters a lot, often in spite of/because of a lot of cringey qualities or major character flaws. homestuck is here to tell you not to be self conscious. play around with your world. make your art. write your story. think your thoughts. be funny and laugh at stuff. don't be afraid of doing it badly.

this is what an accessible creative process looks like.

#homestuck #my rant

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fyexo · 4 years

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191220 K-Pop Stars EXO Reflect on How Far They've Come — and How Far They'll Go

As Chen tells Teen Vogue, this year has been “a time for EXO to reflect” on their past, present, and future.

Chances are, even if you didn’t know it at the time, you’ve seen the members of the legendary K-Pop group EXO before. Their musical prowess speaks for itself, but even beyond that, their careers have taken over TV, fashion, celebrity culture, and more in the past year.

Maybe you've seen rapper and multi-instrumentalist Chanyeol, 27, shaking hands with Zendaya at Paris Fashion Week. Or perhaps it was breathtaking dancer and rapper Kai, 25, cracking 7th place on British GQ’s Best-Dressed Men of 2020 list. Or singer and composer Lay, 28, becoming Calvin Klein’s first-ever Chinese global ambassador. You might’ve watched rapper and youngest member Sehun, 25, on Netflix’s detective program Busted, or glimpsed leader and vocalist Suho, 28, waving from the red carpet as an honorary ambassador of the International Film Festival & Awards Macao. These are just a few of the places and memories that stamp the proverbial passport of EXO’s lives this year.

It’s been an equally powerful year musically for EXO too. With two members — Xiumin, 29, and D.O., 26, — currently completing their mandatory military enlistment and Lay promoting in China, the remaining six members of EXO have explored their own individual musical identities in 2019. Power vocalist Chen, 27, released two solo albums that chronicled love and heartbreak through mature, heart-warming ballads, while Baekhyun’s groovy solo album, City Lights, broke the highest monthly sales record for a solo artist in South Korean chart history with over 500,000 copies sold. Sehun and Chanyeol teamed up this summer for the debut of EXO-SC, EXO’s hip-hop sub-unit, while Baekhyun and Kai joined forces to “jump and pop” in SM supergroup SuperM.

As Chen tells Teen Vogue, this year has been “a time for EXO to reflect” on their past, present, and future as they reunite to promote their sixth album Obsession.

It’s December 4th, 2019, and the six members are dressed in thick, woollen, neutral-toned sweaters and trenchcoats to protect themselves from the arctic winds billowing throughout Seoul. There’s a warm camaraderie to their interactions as they laugh amongst themselves and take sips of their iced coffees. The atmosphere feels comfortable and familial, born from an understanding of each other’s mindsets and quirks that has been learned organically over the group’s career.

“It’s been seven years since we debuted and we’ll be hitting eight years next year; that’s a long period of time,” Chen says. His humble, calm demeanor is a balm for the rest of the group who cling to his introspective thoughts. “We reflected on our past journey and tried to make improvements in this new album. It’s been a grateful and fun time.”

This desire to continuously push boundaries both musically and creatively has been at the crux of EXO’s identity since their debut in 2012. Originally split into two groups, EXO-K and EXO-M, EXO performed their shared discography in both Korean and Mandarin in an effort to appeal to two major music markets simultaneously. The groups came together in 2013 to release their debut album, XOXO, and the album’s repackage released later in the year saw EXO’s popularity hit a fever pitch with the funky, dance-pop single “Growl.” Since then, each of EXO’s last five albums have sold over a million copies in South Korea alone, earning them the title “quintuple million sellers.”

The group is not only a staple in South Korea but across the globe too. From performing in front of the world at the closing ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics to becoming the first K-Pop group to have their faces projected on the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, EXO has stamped their name in the annals of pop history with their devotion toward their music, fans (called EXO-L), and each other. As they’ve matured over the years, that dedication hasn’t wavered.

“In our early years we just played together, whereas now we’ve grown up and matured,” Baekhyun replies. The singer’s personality is brighter than his shining white hair, and he thrives on the reactions to the jokes he makes throughout our chat. “We share a lot about where we’re headed in life, what we want to do for the upcoming album, and discuss how we can come together closer as a team to improve our teamwork.”

That tight-knit teamwork manifested itself in multiple ways throughout this year. From congratulating each other on Instagram like Lay did for Baekhyun’s solo debut to Xiumin and Sehun emceeing Chen’s solo album press conferences, the members have made it a point to support one another with every milestone they achieve, both individually and as a group. It also took center stage as the group embarked on their fifth world tour, Exo Planet #5 – The EXplOration, this July.

Part of the decision to go on tour, according to Suho, is because it makes the fans “happy,” which in turn makes EXO happy; this treasured time spent with fans also one of the reasons why the group worked tirelessly to release their new record in between their jam-packed personal schedules.

“Since the year EXO debuted, we’ve released an album every year. We’ve never skipped a single year,” Suho answers. With attention-grabbing ruby red hair, the leader holds himself with a quiet confidence and classic charm. “Even though it wasn’t a formal promise we made, it’s been a tradition to release an album each year, even if that means we have to make the promotion period short. Everyone’s been having hectic schedules, but it’s very meaningful for us to spend the end of the year with the fans.”

Heavily rooted in the group’s constant state of reinvention, the concept for Obsession sees EXO face off against their evil, superpowered doppelgängers X-EXO. Superpowers have been a common thread that has tied EXO’s music video multiverse together since their debut single “MAMA”, with each member utilizing their own signature power ranging from Chanyeol’s pyrokinesis to Kai’s teleportation abilities. When X-EXO arrives ready to destroy the planet in the group’s music video, the result is an explosive, superhero-style brawl between good and evil that leaves viewers enthralled.

In the lead up to shooting the music video, EXO emphasized the importance for both of their characters to have their own distinct, contrasting identity. While EXO dressed in weathered, straight laced black cargo pants and berets as if ready to march into war, X-EXO celebrated their eccentricities with jewel toned hair colors, white eyelashes, and uniquely cut clothing that bridged the gap between menacing and seductive.

“Our main focus was to draw a big contrast. All of us thoroughly discussed with our makeup and hair artists to bring that contrast, almost to the point of exaggeration,” Chanyeol says. He’s as jovial as his bubblegum pink hair and is openly expressive with his emotions, which light up his face whenever he speaks. “We tried to make X-EXO look very dark. EXO, on the other hand, was the good, righteous EXO like what fans have seen in the past. They came easy and naturally.”

“Like Chanyeol said, we discussed thoroughly with the makeup, hair, and costume team so that you could see the contrast right away,” Kai continues. Conscientious and thoughtful, Kai surveys the older members before answering so he doesn’t interrupt them. “Our attitudes also play a key role because they add to the strong visuals. Since it was a video, we all tried to make our performances convincing. X-EXO showed something that EXO had never done before — something mischievous.”

Amongst the members, X-EXO wins in a landslide over the team they liked the most.

“X-EXO had a stronger visual impact,” Baekhyun explains. “Personally, I wish that we made the plain EXO look cooler. That would have been right, because EXO was supposed to be the revolutionary army against X-EXO! I feel like they were visually weaker; I wish we had expressed more passion as EXO.”

With every album, EXO releases a bold title track that shatters the current K-pop paradigm, like the sinister “Obsession” or the reggae, EDM hybrid track “Ko Ko Bop." The remainder of the tracks on the albums typically allow EXO to explore new genres and make them their own, which range from hip-hop dance tracks like “Ya Ya Ya”, which samples ‘90s vocal trio SWV’s “You’re The One”, to heart-fluttering ballads like “Butterfly Effect."

Kai’s favorite track on the album is “Jekyll," which he loved from the first listen. “It starts off like a sweet R&B song, but the chorus suddenly changes into this shouting, which I think is in line with the duality expressed in the album,” he says. “I immediately thought that we could show a very different type of performance for this song — I can’t wait to perform this on stage and show the fans.”

“I like “Obsession” the most,” Sehun answers. Although under the weather, he makes a point to attend the interview to support his older members. “It was good enough to make the title track, so it’s my favorite.”

Chen picks the dreamy “Groove” because: “I love all the other tracks, but this song made me wonder if I could pull it off when I first heard it because it was such a different genre. It was challenging while recording it, but I love the result. It’s one of the songs that I feel most attached to.”

Chanyeol also fell in love with “Jekyll”, but is also partial to the similarly haunting reggae track “Trouble”. “The song came out to be great; I think we pulled it off pretty well,” he says happily.

“‘Day After Day’ for me,” says Baekhyun. While the other members have been discussing their favorites, he’s been silently exchanging silver rings with Suho. He nicks Chanyeol’s wire-rimmed glasses and puts them up his face backwards, reveling in the laughter he receives. “The song reminds me of a certain type of weather. I like songs that remind me of something — a song with a theme or story. ‘Day After Day’ does that for me.”

“I was going to say the same,” Suho says, shocked. A mischievous grin spreads on Baekhyun’s face. “Stop it,” he teases.

The room is whipped into uncontrollable laughter as Suho jokingly grasps the collar of Baekhyun’s sweater, as if he’s about to wrestle the other singer mid-interview. Suho’s faux fury only makes Baekhyun’s smile grow wider and he lets out a loud ahh, ahh! before Suho lets go.

“It reminds me of rain!” Suho complains, but a smile is working its way across his face too. “That’s because the lyrics have the word ‘rain’ in them,” Baekhyun dryly quips. “Choose something other than ‘Day After Day’,” Kai urges in between laughs. “Day after tomorrow? Two days after tomorrow?” The laughter doubles.

In the end, Suho chooses “Baby You Are." “The song uses band sounds and I really like the sound of the guitar,” he answers, before replying in English: “The intro is the best!” He flashes an assured smile and gives a thumbs up to further prove his point.

“The intro is your part!” Chen lovingly chides. “It’s because you sang that part!”

The most emotional track on the album is “Butterfly Effect," which is a direct callback to the group’s 2013 song “Don’t Go” (which literally translates to “Butterfly Girl”). The song, according to Chanyeol, was selected as a way to thank fans for their unwavering support over the last seven years.

“After viewing the different universes portrayed in EXO’s albums, you’ll be able to see a connection between Obsession and our previous records,” Chanyeol says. “In songs like ‘Don't Go’ and ‘Butterfly Effect’, there are butterflies that resist the Red Force [the canonical evil force mentioned throughout EXO’s music videos] and protect EXO. To us, these butterflies represent our fans, who are always beside us no matter what. They are why and how we exist.”

He continues: “Because of our fans — through their love and support — we are able to overcome any difficulties [we face as a group]. This is probably one of the biggest messages that we wanted to share on this album.”

Prior to their debut seven years ago, the members’ goals for the future were heavily built upon their dream to debut together. Chanyeol recalls that, before they were ever officially called EXO, each member was bonded together by a “common goal to create good music as one” as well as their frequent discussions while training to “work together for a very long time."

“At the time of our debut, we had achieved nothing and everything was up in the air. We talked about working together for a long time, hitting number one on the chart, winning awards, and more,” Kai replies, tone contemplative as he leans closer. “Personally speaking, when we eventually achieved all those goals, I realized, yes, winning awards and being successful is important, but more importantly being able to perform happily as an artist is what mattered the most. There were times when I obsessed over our sales record, stages, and something tangible, but now my goal and dream is to be a happy artist, being satisfied with what I do.”

At the end of Kai’s answer, EXO breaks out into a hearty round of applause. Kai bashfully shines on the encouragement with a soft grin. “He’s like a supervisor,” Baekhyun teases. Chanyeol concurs, “He’s like a CEO!”

Looking ahead, EXO’s goals for the upcoming year aren’t the grandiose, tangible achievements of their youth, but rather to keep the promise they made to each other all those years ago: to make music together for a really long time. “I’m wishing all the members’ health and happiness [in the future],” Chen says.

“Being able to perform for a long time as one, being able to meet the fans for a long time…” Kai reflects. “That’s the most important.”

source: emlyn travis @ Teen Vogue

#exo #suho #baekhyun #chen #chanyeol #kai #sehun #t: info

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dailyexo · 4 years

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[INTERVIEW] EXO - 191220 Teen Vogue: K-Pop Stars EXO Reflect on How Far They've Come — and How Far They'll Go

"As Chen tells Teen Vogue, this year has been “a time for EXO to reflect” on their past, present, and future.

As Chen tells Teen Vogue, this year has been “a time for EXO to reflect” on their past, present, and future as they reunite to promote their sixth album Obsession.

Amongst the members, X-EXO wins in a landslide over the team they liked the most.

“I was going to say the same,” Suho says, shocked. A mischievous grin spreads on Baekhyun’s face. “Stop it,” he teases.

“The intro is your part!” Chen lovingly chides. “It’s because you sang that part!”

“Being able to perform for a long time as one, being able to meet the fans for a long time…” Kai reflects. “That’s the most important.”"

Photo links: 1, 2, 3

Credit: Teen Vogue.

#EXO #EXO K #EXO M #191220 #exo im #exo k im #exo m im #p:news #t:news #fs:teen vogue #comeback:Obsession

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warsofasoiaf · 4 years

Note

Have you played Fallout 4? What did you think of it?

Joseph Anderson had a phenomenal video on Fallout 4. Although it is enormous, so be careful. Overall, there were things to like and things not to like about Fallout 4. I’ll start with what I liked first. Throwing a cut in here because it’s long.

Combat in the first-person Fallout games has always been clunky, and enemy AI relatively largely consisted of straight charging or shooting from as maximum range as possible. Difficulty came primarily from enemy quantity, high damage output, or incredibly enemy hitpoints. The last of these has been a particular Bethesda problem in their games, with enemies being incredible damage sponges, making late-game fights a boring slog as you slowly whittle down their health while being impossible to damage in any meaningful capacity. While enemy variations aren’t nearly as high as the game’s fans would have you believe if you conceive of them as AI patterns, the AI activity did have some nice variations. Human enemies used cover, ghouls bobbed and weaved as you shot them, mole rats tried to ambush you. It’s got nothing on games with fully realized combat system, but it does make the combat that you do engage in much more enjoyable.

All of the random crap you can pick up in a Bethesda game having a purpose is another positive. It is a true nuisance to find out when playing a game that I hit my encumbrance limit only to find out it’s because I’ve picked up a bunch of brooms, bowls, and other garbage accidentally while grabbing coin and other worthwhile treasures. Actually having these things mean an object is worthy mechanically, aside from level design; typewriters are useful as items as opposed to something that shows you that the ruined building you’re in was formerly a newspaper. As crafting is a big portion of the game, having these things provide component parts that you use for crafting on their own creates more utility in these elements of clutter which still require modeling, rendering, placement, etc. Now if you need aluminum, you’ll try to raid something like a cannery because it will have aluminum cans, which is an excellent way to create player-generated initiative. It also reinforces one of the primary themes of the game which is crafting and design, where even the trailers of the game suggest building as a key idea of the game. Certainly sensible for a post-apocalyptic game to focus on building a new society upon the ruins of the older one, and given what the game was trying to do with their four factions mechanic, it’s clear that this was their intent, and good job for trying to ensure that things factor back into their principal intent.

Deathclaws look properly scary, the animations with Vault Boy were funny, there’s some pretty window dressing. The voice work wasn’t bad, the notable standout being Nick Valentine. The Brotherhood airship was an impressive visual. I had a little fun creating some basic settlements, particularly in Hangman’s Alley where I tried to create a network of suspended buildings and Spectacle Island where I had room to grant every prospective settler a shack. Bethesda clearly looked to create a game with mass market appeal, and I believe the metrics bears out that they succeeded in that regard. The robots in the USS Constitution quest were very funny, the writers were able to make the absolute ridiculousness of the situation work (curse you Weatherby Savings and Loan!) and framed it well as a comedic sidequest, with a final impressive visual if you side with the bots and the ship takes flight.

Now that this is out of the way, I think that a lot of what Fallout 4 did was not the right move.

The quest design was particularly atrocious in this regard. Most of the radiant quests boiled them down to a simple formula - go to the dungeon, get to the final room where you need to either kill the boss or get an item from the boss chest, return. In this game though, the main story quests often were boiled down to just this simple formula. You need to find a doodad from a Courser to complete your teleporter? Go to the dungeon, kill the boss, recover the item. The Railroad needs you to help an escaped synth! Do it by going to the dungeon and getting to the final room. This really hampers the enjoyment of games because the expressiveness of the setting and elements of an RPG is often explored through quests. Quests are meant to get you out into the world and give you an objective, but they are also meant to connect you to the people that you’re dealing with. If every quest is boiled down to the same procedure, that hurts the immersion, but the bigger sin is that when you return you have another quest waiting for you. That robs the player of the sense of accomplishment because there is no permanent solution to problems, even for a minute. There is no different end-state for the player to see the transition from one to the other and feel accomplished that they were the ones who did it. Other RPG’s always understood this - a D&D game might have a party save a town investigate an illness dealing with a town, take out an evil druid who has charmed the wildlife into attacking supply and trade shipments, slay goblins who are raiding cattle, there are a lot of possibilities that might even feel samey: if you’re killing charmed dire wolves or goblin cattle thieves, you’re still going to the dungeon and fighting the boss, the usual flair and variation came from encounter design. After you’d do that though, the NPC’s might say “Hey, Mom is feeling better after you cured that disease, she’s starting to walk again,” “Hey, we were able to send a shipment of wine from the vineyards out to the capital, here’s some coin for the shipment as reward for your service,” or even just a simple “Hey, thanks for taking out those cattle thieves.” There’s a sense of accomplishment even if it’s a fleeting “we did a cool thing.” Computer RPG’s are tougher in this regard, part of the sense of accomplishment in tabletop gaming is also with your friends, it’s a shared activity, but usually in that the reward was some experience and character growth and going to new content. There isn’t new content here in Fallout 4 though, because of the samey quest design and lack of progression.

The conversational depth was also ruined, with so much of the voice choices mangled by the system of conversation they designed. By demanding a four-choice system, they limited themselves to always requiring four options which completely mangled interactivity. The previous menu design allowed for as many lines as you wanted, even if the choices were usually beads on a string. The depth and variation, however, are even lower than what could be found in games like Mass Effect 3, and the small word descriptions were often so inaccurate that it created a massive disconnect between myself the player and the Sole Survivor, because they weren’t saying what I thought they would be saying. That prevented me from feeling immersed, because a “Sarcastic” option could be a witty joke or a threat that sounds like it should come out of a bouncer. The character options were already limited, with Nate being a veteran and Nora being a lawyer, but this lack of depth prevents me from feeling the character even moreso than a scripted backstory. You get those in games, but being unable to predict how I’m reacting is something that kills character.

Bethesda needs to end the “find (x) loved one” as a means to get people motivated to do a quest, or if they don’t want to rid themselves of that tool in their toolbox, they need to do a better job getting me to like them. More linear games can get away with this, but open world games encourage the sort of idle dicking around that doesn’t make any sense for a person who is attempting to find a family member. Morrowind did this much better, where your main task was to be an Imperial agent, and you were encouraged to join other factions and do quests as a means to establish a cover identity and get more acquainted with combat. Folks who didn’t usually ended up going to Hasphat Antabolius and getting their face kicked in by Snowy Granius. Here though, what sort of parent am I if instead of pursuing a lead to find my infant son I’m wandering over east because I saw what looked like a cool ruin, and I need XP to get my next perk (another gripe, perks that are simple percentage increases because they slow down advancement and make combat a slog if you don’t take them, depressing what should be a sense of accomplishment). By making us try to feel close with a character but by refusing to give us the players time with them, there is no sense of bonding. I felt more connection to James in Fallout 3 than I did for Sean, but even then, I felt more connection to him because he was voiced by Liam Neeson than because of any sense of fatherly affection. The same goes for the spouse and baby Sean, I feel little for them because I see them only a little. I know that I should care more, but I also know that I the player don’t because all that I was given is “you should care about them.” You need time to get to know characters in game, along with good writing and voicework. I like Nick because he quoted “The Raven” when seeing the Brotherhood airship and I thought that was excellent writing, I didn’t have any experiences with Sean to give me that same sense of bonding.

They’ve also ruined the worldbuilding. The first-person Fallout games have always had a problem with this, with Fallout 3 recycling Super Mutants, the Brotherhood of Steel, and other iconic Fallout things into Washington D.C. Part of this is almost certainly the same reason that The Force Awakens was such a dull rehash of the plot of A New Hope, they wanted to establish some sort of continuity with a new director to not frighten off old fans who they relied on to provide a significant majority of the sales. The problem of course, is that this runs into significant continuity problems, now needing Vault 87 to have a strain of FEV and having a joint Vault-Tec/US Government experiment program there on the East Coast, so we can have Super Mutants. Jackson’s chameleon isn’t native to Washington D.C., but we need to have Deathclaws because they’re the iconic scary Fallout enemy, as opposed to creating something new with the local fauna, which is only made worse because they did do that with the yao guai formed from the American black bear (the black bear doesn’t typically range in the Chesapeake Basin near DC these days, but it’s close enough and given the loss of humans to force them back they could easily return to their old pre-human rangings). Some creatures are functions of the overall setting and can be global, ghouls are the big one here since radiation would be a global thing and fitting considering Fallout is a post-apocalypse specifically destroyed by nuclear war. Others though, are clearly mutated creatures and so they would be more localized. Centaurs and floaters were designed by FEV experiments and collared by Super Mutants, they should really only be around Super Mutants. Radscorpions shouldn’t be around, there would probably be instead be mutated spiders. Making things worse are that the monster designers do develop some excellent enemies when they think about it. Far Harbor has a mutant hermit crab that uses a truck as a shell (a lobster restaurant truck, which is passable enough for a visual joke even if it falls apart when you think about other trucks that they might use) and a monster that uses an angler lure that resembles a crafting component - these are good ideas but the developers needed to awkwardly shoehorn in iconic Fallout things that have no place there. This isn’t to say that I’m in love with a lot of Fallout’s worldbuilding, a lot of the stuff in Fallout 2 I found to be kind of dumb particularly the talking deathclaws, but as the series went on it took objects without meaning. The G.E.C.K in Fallout 3 was pretty much a magic recombinator which makes no sense as a technology in a world devastated by resource collapse, something similar can be said about the Sierra Madre vending machines.

Fallout 4 though, had a lot of worldbuilding inconsistencies that really took an axe to the setting. The boy in the fridge outlasts the entire Great War, but apparently never needed to eat or drink water. This is, of course, stupid, because ghouls have always been shown to need to eat and drink - Fallout 1′s Necropolis section has a Water Chip but if you take it without finding an alternate source of clean water, the ghouls will die. Ghoul settler NPC’s that flock to your player-crafted towns require food and water. The entire thing was ruined from a complete lack of care, to build a quest where you reunite a lost boy with his still-alive ghoulified parents. I think this one bothers me not simply because of the egregious worldbuilding which isn’t even consistent in the very game it’s written it, but it’s done so frivolously for a boring escort quest. It feels scattershot, and that’s the problem I think with a lot of Fallout 4′s quests. They feel disconnected, like every writer worked in a cubicle without talking to any of the other writers. Same with things like the Lady in the Fog.

Are we done with that? Good, because now we’re going into the parts that I really dislike - the main quest and the factions. These are just awful. The developers took what folks really liked when it came to Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas (Fallout 1 did have interesting factions but they were largely self-contained, more towns than anything else) and completely botched it. New Vegas was the clear inspiration for these factions, with the four faction model of NCR, Legion, House, and Indepenedent meaning that there were four different ways to go forward into the future, so we get three factions that fight each other and a fourth more player friendly faction that roughly resembles the Independent Vegas where you can pick and choose which factions you bring in with you and which you get rid of. Thematically, this fits in with the core of the game, crafting is a big portion of what you do and so crafting what sort of world the Commonwealth would be is simply a logical extension of it. The factions aren’t presented well though. The Railroad are impossibly naive and don’t demonstrate any rougher edges like denying supplies to humans in order to fuel their synth effort, even though such a thing should be evident if the post-apocalypse of the Commonwealth is to be believed. The Institute are sinister murderers and replacers without bringing any of the advanced technology that could provide some benefit such as the gigantic orange gourd that can grow. So much of their kill-and-replace mentality seems to be done for no great overarching purpose. The Minutemen are basically blank, pretty much just a catch-all for the player-built settlements, though the player as the leader of the Minutemen ends up getting bossed around by Preston to the point of the faction rejecting your commands to proceed with the main quest, a significant problem with Bethesda factions where you are the leader but never get any actual sense of leadership. There doesn’t appear to be any addressing of the failures of the previous Minutemen whether that be the previous summit, or new problems such as settlements feuding with each other requiring the general to intervene and mediate. The Brotherhood come the closest to a real faction with advantages and drawbacks if you squint, they are feudal overlords with the firepower to fight Super Mutants and other mutated nasties, but also violently reject ghouls and synths as part of their violent dogma except for seemingly not caring when you bring a companion around or killing ghoul settlers in settlements they control. But even then, we don’t really see the Brotherhood providing protection to the settlements that they demand for food, the typical radiant quest to destroy a pack of feral ghouls or super mutants is directed from a Brotherhood quest giver to a randomly determined location, hardly a good way to illustrate whether or not the Brotherhood is actually protecting settlements that they administer. We see little change in the way of the Commonwealth save that certain factions are alive or not because the game needs to stay active in order to perform radiant quests, so not even the signature ending slideshows can give us the illusion of effects building off of our actions. This is contrary to the theme of building a better world in the Commonwealth because there is no building.

Special notice must be given to the Nuka-World raiders because they show the big problems with the factions. You can be a Raider in Nuka-World but only after becoming the Overboss, which is fair enough. But you’re already a Minuteman, but the Minutemen don’t activate any kill-on-sight order and Preston still helps you out. The game is so terrified of people losing out on content that they make permanent consequences rare, and when you do something like order an attack, it can be rescinded automatically if one of your companions is there. As an Overboss, you do grunt work in the Commonwealth, and the factions get mad and pissy if you don’t give them things despite even if you only give one section of the park to one of the factions, that’s more than they got from Colter. It’s like they don’t exist until the player shows up, which is exactly how a lot of modern Bethesda character and faction building seems to be. While in most computer games a sort of uneasy status quo is the desired beginning state because it gives the protagonist the chance to make ripples while justifying the existence of a status that allows the player to change it, it has to be applied consistently.

The main quest itself is silly. There’s a decent twist with Sean becoming Father that sort of works, which would have worked much better if we had actually gotten a chance to bond with him, although the continuity of everything gets wiggy quick. When he said that he looked over the world and saw nothing but despair, I was wondering if they were going to actually bring a big question up and a debate between Father and the Player, the idea of what worth the people on the surface have, but it goes nowhere, it’s a missed opportunity. The main quest is just a means to meet all four factions and it’s a barebones skeleton at best. There are some interesting concepts they try, but what they do often falls flat. They try to establish some sort of empathy for Kellogg in the memory den, but it’s lazy and cheap because he kidnaps a baby and wastes your spouse, a wasted effort of empathy only made worse when you get criticized for not showing any sympathy. Kellogg then shows up in Nick’s memory for one second and then that little story nugget is ignored. The half-baked nature of the story keeps being brought back up, which is a pity because we actually saw them do a competent job in Far Harbor. The Followers of Atom are crazy and they really aren’t sympathetic in any way, but some of the folks inside the sub aren’t so bad that it might prevent you from wanting to detonate the sub, or at least you might think enough that you look for another solution. DiMA did some monstrous things, and if you bring him to justice, the game actually takes the time to evaluate whether or not you helped out Far Harbor, with meaningful consequences being taken if you took the time to do the sidequests which imparts far more meaning to them.

While there’s a lot of problems that show up in terms of binary completion, the question of whether to replace Tektus and turn the Children of Atom to a more moderate path is a good question, it actually gives a lot more merit to the Institute if they were ever to have been shown to enact the same level of care. That only makes the Fallout problems stand out more, because it shows that they were capable of it but didn’t. This isn’t the only missed opportunity, synths themselves become a big problem. The goal was to create a very paranoid feeling but it was so sorely under-utilized that I never grew suspicious of folks because the game never gave me enough incentive to be suspicious of them. I didn’t think that Bethesda made synths that would give you false information or ambush you because that would have been potentially missed content. The idea of whether you are a synth or not is clearly an attempt to give the game more depth than it is presenting. You’re not a synth, Father’s actions make no sense if you are one, and DiMA attempting to make you think you are is silly because you know you aren’t one.

I think the game would have been much better if they had dropped the notion of Fallout entirely. If they had instead looked to create an open-world post-apocalyptic game focusing on crafting and building towns, perhaps with an eventual goal state of building many towns, establishing transportation networks, and rebuilding a junkyard society as a decent place (or going full Mad Max Bartertown complete with a Thunderdome for players looking for an evil and over-the-top option). That might have been an interesting game for Bethesda to potentially develop a new IP, even contracting with smaller studios for those who wish to tell story-heavy games in the setting. Instead, they applied Fallout like a bad paint job, cobbling together weak RP elements and story that made the game feel like a hydra that couldn’t recognize it was one being with multiple heads, constantly tearing the other parts of itself to ribbons.

If I wanted to further improve it, I think I would have instead made the spouse a synth. It would require some serious reworking, but I would have made it so that Sean did believe that synths were people, or that they were real enough that the difference was negligible, they had free will. During the initial grab, the Institute took the entire cryopod where Sean was, baby and parent both. They used Sean to create the next generation of synths, but something happened with the parent, and they died during defrost. Sean hates the Institute for what they did, but what happened was truly a medical complication, not malicious in any way. When he learns that the player character is active, he creates a synth programmed to believe they are the spouse. He believes that exposing who he really is to the surviving parent would be traumatic, and as he hears that the player character is thriving, he wants to give them a chance at a normal life, and to alleviate the loss that he had in his life with the loss of his own parents. So the spouse is sent to you, and for a long time, you and the spouse have no idea. You adventure together, you build settlements together, the game encourages you to have a good relationship. It doesn’t have to be hunky dory, and I’d argue it’s actually better if it’s not. Have the spouse be programmed with some rough experiences in the Wasteland, so they’re nervous, skittish, maybe even a little resentful that the player character snoozed their way through everything, but slowly rebuild the relationship. That way, when the quest eventually comes where you find the truth, the player character has to confront that reality. Then when you confront Sean, Sean explains himself and the player is given the choice to forgive him, be understanding but still angry, or be hugely pissed at the manipulation. That’s drama that uses the core theme of what synths are about with the whole kill-and-replace motif the Institute does. There’s a plot twist that batters the player, there’s one that’s just messy and gross and tough to reconcile. There’s one where the conclusion the player comes to is valid because it’s the player themselves deciding what the meaning of it is.

So overall, I see Fallout 4 as a bunch of missed opportunities and clumsy writing wrapped up in the popular shallow open-worlds that triple-A games end up having.

Thanks for the question, Jackie.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

#fallout 4 #fallout #video game reviews

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tearasshouse · 3 years

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Vidya ramblings pt 3B

Previous list here.

Onwards and upwards to the B-tier games. I guess its a good sign that we have so much to play, and that the general bar for quality has risen so much year on year, such that B-tier games would easily slot into my A-tier list in a slower year, or C-tier games slotting into B-tier for that matter. I have to deliberately go looking for chaff these days, is what I’m saying. “B-tier games” sound worse than what they actually mean on my list: those I had very few qualms about, or their strengths were enough to compensate for their shortcomings and I generally looked forward to firing them up instead of doing so out of my completionist’s sick, demented obligation. So! Pat yourselves on the back, game devs.

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (N3DS)

I’m not an FE mark by any means, but when I’m looking for something to play on a Nintendo platform (3DS is the only one I own), FE games are invariably among the scant handful of their franchises I turn towards. Awakening was my first FE, so as a latter day entrant I have to judge all future games by that metric. I wouldn’t outright call Echoes the better game, although it is a better game in many aspects. The “feet on the ground” dungeon exploration is a nice addition; the art is absolutely gorgeous, the soundtrack is stellar, and despite not having the romances or pair-up feature, the combat was solid, even if the maps and objectives are very rote and frankly dull. The cast was very enjoyable, and plot well, it’s typical dragons and destiny and royalty will save the day, blah blah vanilla FE storytelling. It was a nice distraction in the early months of the pandemic, but I might have to give the edge to Awakening here. I am looking forward to playing all 3 routes of Fates sometime this year or the next though.

Final Fantasy VII Remake (PS4)

Finally, I hear you groan, an actual 2020 release. Certainly the most lavish remake I’ve played since... RE2? I should have more nostalgia for this game, as the OG was technically my first JRPG and I’d spent an entire summer on it, with my friend’s PSX copy and his strategy guide laid out in front of me. But, I went into this with hype in check and nostalgia completely dulled, maybe because I actually am just a dried up, withered out old fart with a prune for a heart? Anyway, game is pretty good, there isn’t much to say about it that others haven’t already gushed over or criticized to death. I will say though that it’s been a while since a game’s difficulty tuning and mechanics absolutely kicked my ass. You need to learn the combat system in this or you won’t get very far, certainly not on Hard Mode anyway. I’m a bit wary about the 2nd and 3rd (possibly 4th?) entries in this project. Just how will they re-interpret the world map? How are they possibly going to tie everything up? How much of the OG game will be cut or reconfigured, and how much will be filler? Will we have to sit through more of those interminable “slide through narrow crevices to mask our shit loading times” sections? Will the environment textures actually load up properly?

Hades (EGS)

Yeah, it’s a Supergiant joint, and I’m a mark for Greek mythology, what more do you need? The only reason it’s on a lower rung here, and it’s not a fault of the game so much as what I look for in games. I’m just not much of an arcade-style, score attacker or rogue/rogue-lite player. If I wanted creative re-use of assets with super high replayability, I’ll go for a MP shooter, or an immersive sim. All that is to say that the game is rather short and repetitive (by design), and the drip-feed of story, character development, unlocks or trying out new builds and personal challenges just doesn’t do it for me. What is here is quality, through and through without a doubt and the whole 31 hours it took me to do my first clear (again, one and done - that’s all for me) were just good old fashion gaming fun.

Death Mark (PS Vita)

Vita means life! This game gets the dubious distinction of being the last physical Vita game I’ll ever buy (I was as surprised as you you must be, mhm!). The only reason it’s on the B-tier list and not the lower rung is a testament to its successfully creeping me out from beginning to end. Which is saying something, because it’s a typical horror story of urban legends manifest as hauntings and curses, done as a very low budget VN fashion. If you’re used to VNs with more QoL features like in ye olde Steins;Gates or some such, well, you’ll be quite disappointed here. No text logs, no touch controls, extreme reuse of very limited assets, etc. I understand that the dev, Experience are uhm, experienced DRPG makers, and that influence is certainly felt in the “boss battles” here, though they are somewhat clunky and use adventure game logic, which is to say not very logical or poorly explained. This is also on Steam, Switch and PS4 so... go forth and acquire.

Gravity Rush Remastered (PS4)

Unlike Tearaway Unfolded, I will say that the PS4 version is the way to go with superior controls, performance, visual fidelity, etc. You lose nothing by going to the big screen. Still one of the most charming things Sony has put out, and like it’s successor, it’s still a somewhat underbaked game. The definition of a cult classic or a B-tier perennial, simply swimming in well-earned 7s. This would rate higher (while still within the B-tier) had it not been my 3rd time going through this, but newcomers will be treated to something fresh and special. Anytime I get to shill for Gravity Rush is an opportunity I will gladly take.

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (PS4)

The very definition of a B-tier game in my books! Well crafted and big budgeted enough by the task masters, technicians and actors at Naughty Dog to garner a guaranteed spot here. Again, I don’t mean to sound backhanded, but it’s really hard to truly love something this big, with this much broad appeal and craftsmanship. It really is everything that’s right (and wrong) with Sony’s (Western) first party output this past generation. I was slackjawed during the Madagascar car chase, touched during the dramatic moments between Nate and crew, the flashback sequences with Young Nathan were done really well (again, walking sim sections one and all), and UC4 reminded us about why pirate adventures are awesome (themes of obsession and seeking treasure at your own peril be damned). Crushing Mode in this one is truly diabolical (in the not satisfying, simply die-lots way), while the MP is... okay? Forgettable for the whole hour I devoted to it.

SOMA (Steam)

A downer of a sci-fi tale about post-humanism (or transhumanism?), deceptively snuck within a fairly spooky horror thriller. It’s made by the Swedes behind the Amnesia games, partly set in a curious recreation of my hometown of Toronto, about an average dude going through some pretty extraordinary circumstances, and none of it is treated with extraordinariness. It’s definitely a muted affair, and contributes to that grounded, depressing tone. Yeah the human race is long dead and the few consciousnesses left alive are going to live out the rest of their existences in virtual reality until the batteries run out, so what? Get to it, Simon. Smart and logical spatial puzzles underpin the walking sim aspect of the game, and though there’s the slight survival horror/stealth element, I played on Safe Mode cos I could only imagine how frustrating it would be to die to those things. Check it out, it’s great, but it’s not for everyone and in a pinch I wouldn’t want to play something like this, which is why it ends up here in the B-tier.

#2020 in review #vidya #gaming #tech #videogames #tl;dr #long post

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joecial-distancing · 4 years

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2019 in review in review:

A few years ago I started tracking yearly goals, books read, movies watched etc in a year, along with overview blurbs, in private posts. End of 2019/beginning of 2020 I was really frazzled/burned out about a lot of stuff and just never finished up making the thing. 8 months later, got the urge to read back what I’d got done, then figured I’d maybe go ahead and see about finishing.

Media tracking below the break. thoughts/blurbs written in 2020 italicized, 2019 not.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_____________________________~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Didn’t do so hot on explicit personal goals, but had a lot of stuff go ok around them this year.

School’s been fine/better than fine.

Job’s probably the biggest failing. Still with same job, haven’t made the firm moves to jump off, dragging my feet too much on exploring stuff w/ Columbia/NASA GISS.

Did not get better with covid, lol

Dating life still non-existent, but I’ve registered on apps, gotten more comfortable with selfies, improved general social life dramatically, been flirted with, updated my wardrobe, and generally started to get comfortable accepting that I’m a hot person.

Somehow got extremely better during covid.

Books

Grant (finished)

We stan a taurus legend

Guy was good at exactly one job, and was fortunate enough to have been in the right place/right time to get to do it.

Mort (discworld)

Definitely best discworld I’ve gotten to so far.

Don Quixote p. II

Really entertaining in a way that part 1 wasn’t; I was shocked how much the meta element landed for me.

Consider the Lobster (DFW collection)

had zero context on who DFW is/was when I read, and still don’t exactly tbh. Wanted to wait for a pause in The Discourse before diving into more of him, but dunno if I’m ever going to get that.

Crime and Punishment (revisited)

Weirdly didn’t get much more out of this than I did the first time I’d read it

Better Than Sex (HST Gonzo papers)

Xerox/widespread fax accessibility opening citizen access to mass media in a manner really reminiscent of what social media would go on to do at a much larger scale. Has a much more deliberate narrative arc than the other gonzo papers collections, also has that excellent HST richard nixon eulogy

The Brothers Karamazov

SPQR

Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Didion collection)

Pet Sematary

Not my favorite King, but not bad

Sourcery (discworld)

still funny/charming, but Mort really made clear/reminded me how much the hapless sadsack Rincewind mold of protagonist wears on me after a while.

The Devil's Teeth

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Liked it a lot more once I realized it was doing a Fear and Loathing thing.

Homage to Catalonia

This should be the Orwell that gets taught in schools. Make it a followup to All Quiet on the Western Front or something, jeez.

Lyndon Johnson I

Having now finished all of them, this one’s probably the least-interesting but sets up a bunch of important context that the others still then feel the need to retread.

The Razor's Edge

Recommended to me as a “white guy discovers eastern mysticism” book, but also is more interesting in its treatment of that than I’d expected (helps it was written in the 40s).

Cat's Cradle

There’s a part in this where Vonnegut’s making fun of people who try to bond with strangers over being Hoosiers, and my dumbass immediate thought was “ooh, Vonnegut’s a hoosier? Me too!”

Lyndon Johnson II

Robert Caro felt compelled to apologize for spending so much words lionizing Coke Stevens, segregationist opponent to Johnson’s senate run. His goal was pretty clearly to show lbj’s lack of campaign charisma by contrast, definitely definitely overcommitted in his own narrativising.

Libra

I want to go back to this after reading some more De Lillo.

Gravity's Rainbow

This book absolutely kicked my ass

Overstuffed and referential in a specific way that really keeps me hooked in instead of put off. When I learn about some piece of cultural context that I retroactively recognize as being referenced in this, I want to go back and reread the entire thing.

From Caligari to Hitler

Kind of fails both as film criticism and cultural analysis, but absolutely made me want to run for the hills when considering current relationship between mainstream movies and demands of pop culture.

I took a class on Weimar cinema in undergrad that I now realize was probably biting pretty heavily from this and never once referenced it.

Movies

Venom

Movie itself is not as fun as the Tom Hardy hype coverage. PG13 was the absolute worst space to aim for, PG- or R- versions of this could have been a blast.

Harryhauser Argonauts

Was tripping when I put this on, and it was all kinds of fun.

2001: a Space Oddyssey

First time seeing this, all-time classic for a reason!

A Good American (the NSA doc)

Dr. Strangelove

Mel Brooks History of the World p. I

Not my favorite Brooks, best joke was at the beginning.

In Bruges

Had been a while since I saw a proper dark comedy.

Spiderverse

Fukkin awesome!

Visually great, and extremely better than usual superhero stuff for being aimed at PG instead of PG-13.

You Only Live Twice

Highlander (Revisited)

I watched The Old Guard on netflix recently and it mostly just made me wish I was watching Highlander instead, because at least Highlander knows exactly how goofy it is

Moonraker

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Much like The Shining, I though this would have been 100% spoiled for me by cultural osmosis, but turns out it wasn’t, and even the scenes I had seen *totally landed* in-context still.

Kung Fu Hustle

Ichi the Killer

Really gross, really fun

Matrix Reloaded (watched thru highway scene) (Revisited)

The highway scene was not nearly as cool as I remembered it being.

John Wick 3*

Probably dumbest plot of all of them, best choreography. I like how every single fight had its own distinct flavor. “Knife museum fight” “horse fight” “halle berry dogs fight”

Akira

A classic

Pet Sematary * (ugh, bad)

Why can’t john lithgow be in good movies anymore

The Revenant

MCU Spiderman

Fuck this was awful.

MCU Spiderman 2*

Really weird, complete Rorschach Test of a movie: it’d be totally valid to read into this that global warming is Fake News, for instance.

Lmao this was completely awful

Rites

Dredd (non-stallone)

oh hey Lena Headey’s in this

For All Mankind!

Watched in honor of moon landing anniversary

Lion King *

Watched it way too stoned, was like dark side of the moon + wizard of oz except instead it’s a lion king script reading + nature footage edited for lip syncing.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood *

Many scenes of very long setups for really stupid shaggy dog jokes, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. I do kinda want to rewatch now knowing more about manson, which I knew pretty much nothing about beforehand

Blowout

A good john lithgow movie

also I think I like travolta in things.

Lord of War

A Good cage movie

I like when Eamon Walker shows up in stuff.

Taxi Driver

A classic

Snowpiercer

Watched in a bar with only one speaker working, which is the correct way to watch. Weirder and funnier than I thought it was going to be, which still doesn’t make it good, but,

dbz big green dub

Exorcist III

Brad Dourif just tearing it apart

Deep Red (argento)

Suspiria (1977)

Watched the remake in 2020, which was ok, but nothing tops the Goblin score.

Elf Bowling

Thanks, Gnome

Parasite *

Interesting to me that this one seems poised to hang around people’s good esteem for a while

FMA: B

Rick & Morty

Saw some episodes, generally pretty funny, some misanthropy that’s probably appealing to a certain type of teen al a something like House, but ultimately I don’t totally Get the intensity of discourse about it.

Leterkenny

Mob Psycho 100

One Punch Man

Deadwood

Watchmen

Only watched like half of it. Was playing around with a lot of hefty imagery/thematics, but didn’t really seem ready to rise above playing (tho also I feel like it’s weird on some level to *expect* them to rise above that in the first place)

Music

New Avantasia

HEALTH/ show

lol remember concerts

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard/ show

Just learned about King Gizz in 2019 and got completely obsessed with them. I don’t tend to expand my music selection very readily, and a lot of what I currently *do* know is old/inactive stuff, so it was/is incredibly exciting to have an active group with good momentum just immediately win me over like that.

Mistimed the edibles and ended up with a really good finale and a really long subway ride home.

New Yeasayer

Sad they split up

Steve Wilson Tull remixes

Aqualung’s a good album and the sound mixing’s kinda bad, so I liked this project.

Stonefield

Opened for Gizzard. Really good as studying music

Video Games

Civ VI: Gathering Storm

Hades

Turns out Supergiant’s design proclivities all work *extremely well* on a roguelike

Baba is You

Untitled Goose Game

Cute, if maybe a bit overhyped

finally fucking finished Pillars of Eternity

Had fun with it, but too long, and really dour for how long it is.

Pillars II

Kinda drifted off it eventually, but I do genuinely like that the flavor of the fantasy is colonial era rather than medieval.

There’s a Balancing Bastard Factions element where it’s like the writers are just being smartasses after a while. Having to go extremely out of their way to make siding with colonizers seem like a competitive option.

Pokemon shield

Cuphead

pisses me off, which was a nice outlet when I was stranded by flight cancellations during thanksgiving

Celeste

Also very difficult, but really easy to stay patient with, which is nice.

Disco Elysium

None of the discourse made me want to play this, but people talking about the mechanical stuff it did got me extremely interested. Mostly Delivered IMO.

Breath of the Wild

You can approach the nodes of the main quest in the order you choose, and the second one I chose made ninjas start fucking spawning everywhere when I’m just trying to explore, and there’s no way to make it stop. May go back to it one day.

Podcasts

Relentless Picnic Patreon feed

The treats really helped me start distinguishing individual personalities, compared to the regular eps.

Picnic Discord!

FatT Counterweight

Fun, but also I think Mechs are not my shit.

FatT Spring in Hieron/ end of that particular world

8 months since I’ve last tuned into FatT. ah well.

Law School

He’s in everythiiiing!

You Must Remember This: Manson family

*There’s* the context

Misc.

Kindle train guy

Times Square sleeping guy + kids taking selfies w/ him

toddler singing along after Psycho killer (a, ya, ya ya, ya)

drunk and dragged to a drag show

Central park football family

Soft Steel Drum Subway Busker

Weird old lady going to grand central for oysters

2018 in review (cards):

MySelf (CC)

Self: Tower

Blocked: 10 Cups

Ethereal/subconscious: 8 Swords

Material: 3 Swords

Past: Justice

Future: Page Wands

Attitude: Sun

External: King Swords

Hopes/Fears: 5 Coins

Trajectory: High Priestess

Also Self:

Hierophant

7 Cups

7 Coins

Blind Spot:

(self & others): 5 cups || (others not self): High Priestess

(self not others): Moon || (nobody): 3 Cups

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lunamanar · 4 years

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Off-the-Cuff First-impressions Review: Trials of Mana

I got Seiken Densetsu 3/Trials of Mana in the mail today and am surprised by just how excited I am about it. After the admittedly predictable letdowns of the Secret of Mana “remake” and the FFVIII “remaster,” not to mention the iOS revision of the former, you’d think I’d be jaded at this point.

But! FFVII remake is Actually Good, and so far it looks like Trials of Mana is, while certainly lower budget, also Actually Good. The voice acting is kinda meh, but not bad enough to detract from the game in my opinion, and considering they are working with SNES-era scripts (the dialogue is 99% word-for-word the same as the more recent translation of the original SD3 game, so it’s going to be a bit stilted anyway) it’s really not bad at all.

Besides, the actual meat of the game--the world, character and monster design, and the gameplay--is extremely solid and I have had very little trouble acclimating to it. It’s fun to play, it feels good to run around and explore the world and the battles are both very simplistic in a way that is familiar to an old fart like me and very satisfying in the way they function. One of the biggest weaknesses the original game had was absolutely horrendous input lag in some areas due to 1. the sheer size of the loaded map section, such as Rolante/Laurant, 2. The number of on-screen instructions the SNES had to process during battles, particularly during fights where you had massive sprites taking up the entire screen (the awful awful wall-guardian “Genova” [harhar] is probably the single hardest boss in the game purely due to input lag/drops; when you attack an enemy, even assuming your weapon swings when you tell it to, and that’s a big ‘if,’ the monster you are attacking is actually in a state which is several frames ahead of whatever state it visually appears to be in on-screen, making it extremely difficult to time your attacks properly to both defend and do optimal damage to what should have been a relatively minor “miniboss” fight). Trials of Mana, on the other hand, has none of those problems, simply thanks to more modern technology. So far every fight I’ve engaged in has been smooth and responsive as well as very visually appealing.

And wow is this game pretty. It’s not the most amazing example of the best graphical advances in gaming history, to be sure, but I genuinely don’t think that matters, as it’s still beautifully detailed and really does look like they took the original graphics and magicked them into more modern models. The re-imaginings of each area and monster are very faithful to both the aesthetic and the layout of the original design while at the same creatively expanding on them; I've had no trouble finding my way around familiar maps or identifying the bestiary, but I have found a lot of added depth to them, such as the ability to jump down on rooftops and find hidden nooks that were just static backdrops or otherwise out of sight in the original. The areas are more layered and interactive, but very importantly, nothing is missing. Not even the dogs and cats, who still bark and meow at you if you talk to them. I feel like I’m being allowed to see and explore the original maps from angles I didn’t have access to in the past. It really makes the 16-year-old in me unbelievably happy, to be able to finally, actually see and do these things I could only wish for back then. For people who have never played it, it’s probably a very pretty, if otherwise unremarkable experience, but for me it’s the granting of a wish I’ve had for a long time, but never expected to happen.

Similarly, I think a lot of people will look at the plot for this game and go, “...what?” Because it really doesn’t seem to have been changed at all from the SNES version, aside from a few little tweaks to the dialogue here and there to ease the transition between some sections or correct for differences in game mechanics (of which there are only a few; again, this is definitely a remake--it remains the same game with the same mechanics at its core). This can lead to some pretty awkward interactions between characters, and at times it seems pretty clear that the voice actors weren’t given a lot of direction about the context of their lines. It’s not a bad story, but it’s a very simply told one, and feels more like it’s targeting 12~16 year-olds (which it probably is, to be fair) who might not care so much about nitpicking the semantics of the plot and character motivations. Which is to say, most of the characters who are not main protagonists or villains are painfully cardboard-flat. They do what they do and say what they say because it advances the plot for them to do and say those things. Elliot falls for a “trick” that I’m pretty sure most 4-year-olds would see through. The Bad Guys are 1-dimensionally evil, wanting to either destroy or take over the world, with the possible exception of Lugar and Koren who have slightly more complicated “I’m your rival” reasons. That leaves the complexity up to the protagonists to shoulder, and while I haven’t played that far into the game yet, thus far is is beat-for-beat and shot-for-shot the same as the original, so I expect that character-building will be left largely up to the player to mentally write in, especially since the game features light/dark class-changes as a feature of its progression. (I do kiiiind of hope that your choice in class changes has a more material effect on the ending’s outcome, but I think that might be asking a bit too much from a remake of this sort.) But the somewhat archaic plot and character arcs are not surprising and for me don’t take away any of the game’s charm. Nikita is still the best, the shop owners still dance inexplicably, the fact you can play a werewolf is badass, rabites are still cute, Don Perignon is still kind of a jerk. I’m very nervous/excited to get Busukaboo and Flammie and hope they’ll be as much fun now as they were then. And the whole world is so damn pretty, I’m just glad to be there.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the music. I’m not sure how much of a hand Hiroki Kikuta actually had in this remake, but the synth-orchestral arrangements of his originals are excellent so far. They’re both accessible/adaptable to the game’s sudden scene transitions (”Nuclear Fusion” starts and ends just as cleanly) while being a richer version of the themes, keeping close to the original sound while making better use of all the instruments that the SNES just wasn’t capable of emulating well. It blends very well with the rest of the game and I hope that continues to be true.

I do have nitpicks; while I know it’s a popular mechanic, I don’t like the “shift-lock” sort of dash using the left analog stick as both directional and a button. I think the camera controls are solid, but I do wish there wan a toggle-option to have the camera just follow over your shoulder wherever you run until you either run into a battle or turn it off. The character models don’t seem especially affected by anything except the most intense/pervasive lighting and sometimes feel oddly out of place, like I’m watching one of those old movies where an animated character comes into the Real World. Some of the monster designs seem cute-ified more than I’d like. And I can’t help but think that if the game can be this nice as a third-tier title for SE, what could it have been if they’d but the resources behind it that they obviously did with FF7? I understand why they didn’t, but it’s hard not to wonder what it could have been if they had. Seiken Densetsu is one of the most fraught series in the history of home video games and the fact that it’s even still around is something of a miracle, in my opinion. After the last...four?...titles following Legend of Mana, and the disappointment that was SD2′s (second!) remake, I really didn’t go into Trials of Mana with high hopes. I have been really, honestly pleasantly surprised. Even if you’re a diehard old-schooler who really doesn’t like modern JRPGs, if you have any nostalgia left for this series, you should give this one a go. I think it translated really well to 3D models, and what little it loses in the switch, it makes up for in playability. It’s not hard to pick up, it’s easy on the eyes and ears, it’s less grind-y than the original, and it doesn’t try to be more than what it is. I’ll probably always prefer the original, of course; there are too many memories attached to it for me, too many things that were groundbreaking at the time that are now old news or completely obsolete nowadays, and the new game certainly doesn’t push any modern boundaries. But it’s worth checking out, and especially if you’ve spent 20 years feeling let down by the Mana series, this might actually be the game you were hoping for, albeit maybe a decade late.

#other games #seiken densetsu #seiken densetsu 3 #sd3 #trials of mana #sd3 remake #long post #i have not proof read this at all #wysiwyg #opinion

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comic-panels · 5 years

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September 2019 Movie Round Up

Trying a new thing where I just shout out some of the neat (and less neat) new movies I’ve seen recently that I haven’t written about yet.

Good Boys

It’s live action South Park without the smug sense of self satisfaction that can make South Park insufferable. But it also doesn’t do anything to distinguish itself. It’s a comedy that succeeds at being funny. Good enough boys.

Crawl

Just solid. A family drama about a young woman and her estranged dad where also a bunch of people get eaten by alligators. Also there’s a hurricane. Uses it’s space well as the water levels rise and our heroes climb up their house. The kind of polished B-movie everyone bemoans us not getting anymore. Quite fun.

Tigers are Not Afraid

Gritty fairy tale magical realism applied to kids orphaned by the drug war. Doesn’t execute on that premise well enough for me to embrace it but it’s a interesting enough watch. I think it needed to either go farther with its fantasy or make it more ambiguous about if the magic was even real.

The Nightingale

A very well made movie that I do not love. This is a movie that is actively unpleasant (there are a string of rape scenes early on) but that’s not necessarily a deal breaker for me. What’s a bigger issue is that movie falls into a bunch of bad tropes. Despite its great performances and moments it’s still a story where two characters overcome their racism by traveling together. For all it’s ambition, this is still just another movie with a magical black man. It could have been much worse and it’s certainly better than The Revenant. I’ve got other nitpicks, such as what characters get to do what. But I don’t know that you could tell this kind of story that much better, it’s just not the kind of story I want.

Also I prefer revenge stories where catharsis is possible. I just like fun fantasy hyper violence, more than grim and empty realistic violence. There’s way more onus on movies that do the latter to justify themselves.

I will say that it executes on nightmare ghosts much better than Tigers are Not Afraid.

Dora and the Lost City of Gold

Totally delightful. It’s the kids version of The Last Crusade but I’m fine with that. Honestly this movie plays the fairy tale realism with kids card better because while it presents Dora’s past adventures as a childhood fantasy, there is also a cartoon fox in a mask who is a basically a Looney Toon.

I have no particular affection for Dora the Explorer as I’m too old for it. I actually did have enough interest in the form and curiosity to check it out, but the long silences where kids are supposed to yell at the screen made it unwatchable for me in a way that Blue’s Clues was not. But I was immediately down for a movie Dora has to become a normal high school student. That kind of premise just inherently appeals to me.

Also Dora sings a song about digging a poo hole. 10/10

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino is officially an old man filmmaker.

That doesn’t make Once Upon a Time in Hollywood bad per say, but it does mean that I’m inherently less a fan of it than his previous work.

Ok, but also what do I mean by that?

Mostly I mean that this movie lacks the fiery purposeful rage of his previous movies, which is really what made the historical revisionism of his last 3 movies really work for me. There’s still an element of the historical revenge fantasy present here; he is still reimagining the Manson murders. But instead of rage at a broken world, we have sentimentality and nostalgia. This is Tarantino just doing a bunch of shit he’s wanted to do for a while and also a movie happens. Eventually.

Like Django Unchained or Death Proof, this movie is kind of structured where there is one entire movie and then another movie follow up after that. Only there’s basically no story to the first movie this time. There’s setup and world building, but also just a lot of time spent on little indulgences.

The prime example is that there is a part of this movie where Tarantino inserts Leonardo DiCaprio into The Great Escape as the Steve McQueen’s character. This is not even a thing that actually happens to the character in the movie. It’s just a pure visual indulgence.

And really just nothing happens. Well, until the timeskip; but again that kinda feels like another movie.

For an old man movie where nothing happens I was at least engaged the whole time. The talent involved carries the film despite the nothing plot.

It’s bottom tier Tarantino, but at least he doesn’t act in this one.

Ready or Not

At face value This seems like another White Get Out. A plot contrivance to make a white person oppressed and trapped. But Ready or Not overcomes that by just being so much goddamn fun.

The better comparison is to call this Satanic Cult Die Hard. One Woman trapped in a house with a family that’s made a deal with the devil trying to kill her. The extra wrinkle is that they’re not actually experienced at this and are pretty bad at it.

By the time Samara Weaving was crawling out of a corpse pit I was fully in.

Satanic Panic

Another Satanic cult movie, although this one is more traditional in that it really is just low budget exploitation schlock. I liked it a lot. It’s not as good as Ready or Not but I still found it super charming and fun.

Has a killer bedsheet. 10/10

Luce

Ok, I fucking hate this movie.

The thing that made Luce an insufferable movie to watch for me was the way it felt the need to hammer its themes directly, over and over. It’s the perfect kind of movie for people who leave to go to the bathroom or take a few naps during a movie.

As someone who pays attention I found that incredibly tedious.

Add on top of that unlivable and unsympathetic characters, the nuanced understanding of race in America that one would expect from a standard Oscar Contender and basically no understanding about how the legal system works. There are some good performances if you’re into good acting in a bad movie.

I had a bad time. But at least now I know how bad this movie is. That’s something I guess.

Don’t Let Go

So this movie is kind of the Blumhouse Tilt version of Your Name. There are big differences: there’s no body swap, it’s about an Uncle and his niece and it’s standard drama instead of anime. But it is a story about two characters talking across time where the stakes are the character in the past is dead in the present.

It’s not amazing, the characters are kinda dull, but once the gimmick kicks in it’s fun enough. It’s really just that high concept premise that elevates this movie though, other than that this is just an episode of a Cop show that doesn’t exist.

It Chapter Two

The epic conclusion of a series even though this is just a sequel. Born out of the success of the previous film we get a three hour sequel that is both a sequel to that other movie but also is kind of just the full blooded adaptation of the book, with the cutting back and forth from the adults to the kids.

Chapter 1 was a more streamlined movie, pulling out a singular arc from the kids’ experiences with It. Chapter Two is more episodic, winding and bloated. It feels more like a book in that way. Every character has to face their trauma separately and obtain an item from their past. And all of them do, meaning that we get 5 scenes in a row that are pretty much the same. It’s the kind of thing that’s crazy for a movie to do but works fine in a novel, but I do also think it works in an epic finale to a series.

This is the Avengers: Endgame of It movies.

It’s the kind of movie that will make you ask “Can a Horror movie have too high a budget?” as Bill Hader runs away from a giant Paul Bunyan statue (Something that was Stephen King’s idea apparently).

For a three hour horror movie that’s not scary I really needed one thing from this: good character banter. And It Chapter Two delivered. I had a good time.

Thank you for your time.

#Good Boys #It #It Chapter Two #It Chapter 2 #Ready or Not #Satanic Panic #Don't Let Go #Tigers are Not afraid #Luce #The Nightingale #dora and the lost city of gold #dora the explorer #Once Upon a Time in Hollywood #quentin tarantino #Bill Hader #Stephen King #Blumhouse #Blumhouse Tilt

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fuse2dx · 4 years

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June '20

Trials of Mana

Maybe not the highest profile remake Square-Enix have put out in recent memory, but one that was pretty exciting for me. I played a fan translation of the Super Famicom original some 20 years ago, so while it's not particularly fresh in my head, there's just enough there to enjoy some infrequent little pangs of nostalgia. The move to 3D has made for some welcome changes to to combat - jumping adds a vertical element to combat that wasn't present before, and enemy specials being clearly telegraphed and avoidable puts a little more control in your hands. There's still a good amount of 16 bit jank though - combo timing feels unreliable, the camera's often a pain, there's plenty of questionable hit detection, and you definitely wouldn't want to leave your fate solely in the hands of your party's AI. Willing to put most of this aside, what actually mattered more to me was that it still had the kind of playful, breezy nature, it looks and plays nicely, and that it progresses at a nice clip. Party selection will change the way you fight moment-to-moment, but only provides minor and very brief deviance from the main storyline, most of which is the kind of schlocky cartoon villainy that will have you looking for a skip button before it would illicit any kind of emotional response. But you know what? Overall, I still enjoyed it a lot.

So while it may not be revolutionising the action RPG, what it does show is that Square-Enix is capable of acknowledging their history of previously untranslated works, and that they also now have a pretty good template for getting a B-tier remake of such titles out in a reasonable timeframe. Where do I send my wish list in to, team?

Sayonara Wild Hearts

As a one-liner found on the back of the box, 'A pop album video game' is about as on-the-nose as it gets. The old "it's not for everyone" adage is definitely applicable, and its defiance of traditional video game metrics is not in any way subtle. How sophisticated is the gameplay? Not particularly. How long is it? Not very. But how does it make you feel? Now you're talking. It presents a simple but deeply relatable story of a broken heart, and leads from there with a catchy tune into a fast and colourful onslaught of new ideas, perspectives, and concepts. That is to say: it has the potential to make you feel all kinds of things.

One especially celebratory note was how well the game is structured to fit into the album structure it boasts about. Stages flow quickly into one another, and while shorter, more compounding numbers are often about introducing new ideas and themes, moving on to the next is a few simple button presses and a brief, well-hidden loading window away. Inevitably there are more standout stages, those that feel like the hit singles; the longer, verse-chorus-verse type joints that grant the space for more fleshed out visual story telling, and that smartly synchronise their percussive hits, soaring vocals and the like to appropriate beats of play. A lot of the gameplay can easily (and cynically) be reduced to "it's an endless runner", but to liken this to a cheap re-skin of a confirmed hit-maker is to wilfully dismiss so much of what it does better and so much beside. You can play it on damn near everything, and for the time it takes, it's well worth doing.

Twinkle Star Sprites

I've meant to play this countless times before. I've almost certainly passed it by while strolling through arcades, the Saturn version has never been hoovered up into my collection, and the PS2 collection this particular version belongs to - ADK Damashii - is no longer a cheap addition to anyone's library. The digital version of it for PS4 however was however recently on sale at a point that saw me receive change from a fiver. David Dickinson would be proud.

Having now credit-fed my way through the game's brief arcade mode, there's no doubt in my mind that the nuance of its systems are going to be glossed over in this rather ham-fisted appraisal. At least at face value, there's plenty of character and charm to appreciate in its colourful and cutesy style. As a two-player, vertically split-screen title, its a pretty clean break from a lot of a shooter's typical characteristics - rather than 6(ish) stages of hell, its a series of one on one battles - and all the better suited to 2 players for it. As enemy waves come at you, taking them out in chains can generate attacks to the other player; however if these attacks are too small then it's entirely possible they'll be killed off again, and an even bigger attack will come straight back at you. Think of a bit like competitive Tetris, but with shooting rather than puzzling. It's a neat and curious little game, that's likely best experienced properly, with a friend on the other side of the sofa to hurl abuse at.

Blasphemous

Let's get the lazy-but-effective description out of the way: it's a 2D MetroidVania Souls-like. You've got "that" type of map, definitely-not-bonfires and definitely-not-Estus Flasks. You are encouraged to return to your body upon death, the combat system is very reliant on parries and dodge-rolls, and there's even a dedicated "lore" button to use on every item you pick up.

While this likely sounds dismissive, it's more about addressing the elephant in the room. To give some context, these are both types of games that I love, and the end product here has done a pretty good job of bringing them together. The exploration is pleasantly open - gatekeeping is typically done less by specific items and abilities, and more by just which areas you're brave enough to poke your head into. It's a little bit of a shame that most of the new abilities have to be switched out for others rather than adding to a core arsenal of moves, but at the same time its base setup gives you plenty of ways to deal with any number of combat scenarios. This is of course best demonstrated by the boss encounters, which are wonderful affairs - big, gruesome, thoughtful variations on approaches to combat, which drop in at a nice pace to keep you from ever getting too cocky. The theming in general is wonderful, and the name is certainly appropriate - there's a lot of deep catholic inspiration in its gorgeous backdrops and environments, but then layered on top are some chilling elements of religious iconography, along with a cast of disturbing devotees and martyrs to sufficiently unsettle you. It's arguably a small intersection of the gaming population that it'll appeal to, but if you're in there, it's a real treat.

Death Come True

The first thing you see upon starting is the game's central character breaking right through the fourth wall to tell you directly not to stream the game or to share anything that might spoil the story. The first rule of Death Come True, and so on. I consider myself fairly well versed in such etiquette, so to then have the screenshot function entirely disabled for the whole game felt a little like being given a slap on the wrists for a crime I had no intention of committing. I don't envy the team trying to market it, that's for sure.

The reasoning behind this is clear at least - it's a game that is in total service of its plot. Consider a mash-up of a 'Choose your own adventure' book and a series of full-motion videos, and you're mostly there. Unless you were to walk away from the controller or perhaps fall asleep, there seems very little chance that your play time will deviate from the 3 hour estimate - which will certainly put some people off, but is understandable given the production values, and personally, quite welcome in the first place. In terms of replay value, there are branching paths that a single route will obviously skip: as an example of this, in looking up a screenshot to use in lieu of taking my own, I found a promotional image of the central cast, only to not recognise one of them at all. One thing that such a short run-time does ensure though, is that minute-for-minute, there's plenty of action; without wanting to speak about the story itself (rather than in fear of reprise for doing so, I might add), it kicks off with plenty of intrigue, shortly thereafter switching to full-on action, and then strikes a pretty fine balancing act between the two for its run time. It doesn't get quite as deep or as complex as I would've hoped given the team's pedigree, but I do like it, and think it'd actually be a pretty fun title to play with folks who normally don't concern themselves with games. By the same token, it's probably not for the 'hardcore' types looking for something to string out over dozens of hours.

Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight

After the generous main course that was Persona 5 Royal, I figured that I'd follow up with dessert. I did however wait until a weekend where I knew my girlfriend would be away, so as not to trigger any unpleasant flashbacks to looped battle themes, and the chirpy, indecipherable voices of Japanese schoolkids that made it so painful to endure as a non-gaming cohabitant.

Immediately, it's clear that very little has changed since Persona 4's take on the rhythm action genre. The core game, while still functional and fairly enjoyable, hasn't changed a lick. Perhaps the most notable improvement to the package as a whole is in scaling back on a dedicated story mode, and instead just having a series of uninspired but far less time-consuming set of social link scenes that pad things out. The biggest flaw is repeated wholesale though, in that trying to stretch out noteworthy tracks from a single game's playlist into a dedicated music game leads to repetition - and there is a much less prolific gathering of artists involved in remixes this time. I'd be willing to wager that it's a very similar story once again with Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight, but I'm not about to ruin a perfectly good dinner to start with the sweet just to find out, if you'll excuse a second outing of the metaphor. Still, again compare these to Theatrhythm though - where Square-Enix plundered the Final Fantasy series in its entirety, along with spin-offs and other standalone titles to put together a library of music worthy for the one single game. Cobble the tunes from Personas 3-5 together into one game, and you're still coming up very short by comparison.

#trials of mana #seiken densetsu 3 #sayonara wild hearts #twinkle star sprites #blasphemous #death come true #persona 5 dancing in starlight

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paizleyrayz · 4 years

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SCORPIO WOMAN: OVERVIEW & PERSONALITY TRAITS

Scorpio is the eighth sign of the zodiac, and the Eighth House is all about sex, death, and the cycle of regeneration. With their penchant for all things spooky and magical, female Scorpios are natural Queens of the Underworld, and thus usually not ones to shy away from the more intense or heavy characteristics of life.

This sign gets a bad rap from most astrologers for being “too much,” overly dark, or even downright evil. This stems more from modern western culture’s inherent discomfort with discomfort with discussing the Pluto-ruled subjects of sex and death (typically not your general everyday dinner-table conversation). Reviled as a Scorpion woman can be, not many can deny her magnetic personality and the aura of mystery, magic, and sensuality that she wears around her like a cloak. This is not a woman who tolerates surface-level interactions easily. She prefers to give her attention to those willing to go deep with her. With a Scorpio’s electric gaze powerfully focused on you, it’s easy to feel like a bug pinned under glass, examined by a curious scientist determined to learn everything there is to know.

One of the most sensitive signs in the zodiac, Scorpio women feel their emotions intensely, though they may not always express them overtly. A water-ruled sign, Scorpio is symbolized by the submerged depths, like the pure waters flowing through an underground cave. But you may not see the currents or waves rippling through her facial expressions – much of what a Scorpio woman feels, she won’t always express overtly.

Scorpios rule over the occult sciences, and the true meaning of the word “occult” is “hidden” – hence, the Scorpionic tendency toward secrecy and inscrutability. Only the most determined (and respectful) will be granted permission to explore the secret caverns within the heart of a Scorpio woman.

Scorpio women are universally known as the sex goddesses of the zodiac, renowned for their passion, their strong libidos, and their exceptional prowess as lovers. Sex is extremely important to these women, and sharing a sexual connection with their deeply-bonded lover is a necessity for them to feel completely fulfilled in life. That being said, Scorpios don’t really love to sleep around, nor do they take sex casually. So until they find their soul match, a Scorpio can feel a little adrift without a partner to frolic and share intimacy with. Dating and lackadaisical flirting for fun’s sake or just as something to pass the time rarely appeals to focused, intense Scorpion women. They tend to have consuming romances that take up a lot of their time and emotional energy. Sexless unions or relationships of convenience will never work for this libidinous sign, nor will an excess of flash-in-the-pan one-night stands. In general, a Scorpio woman will hold out until she finds just what she’s looking for in a partner. Once she commits, she tends to mate for life.

With Scorpio’s widely known reputation for powerful jealous streaks, her possessive personality may also be a bit misunderstood. This kind of jealousy doesn’t stem from insecurity – in fact, most Scorpio women are extremely confident (particularly about the strength of their charms). But once this woman stakes her claim on you, she has a hard time letting go. She won’t take easily to relinquishing her mate into another’s arms without a battle.

Ever walk past those basement apartments in the city and wonder about who might dwell down there? It very well might be the lair of the Queen of the Underworld, lounging on a chaise and grinning up at the hustling and bustling feet of passersby with amusement. The word “lair” is a truly fitting way to describe this sign’s home. She makes her living space an insular, private domain where only her closest friends and lovers are invited. Decor-wise, Scorpio babes tend to adore textiles, draperies, and elaborate hanging lamps. Her living room might resemble an exotic bazaar, stuffed with the all the spoils of the souks that she’s visited on her travels. But everything here is arranged tastefully, and nothing is overdone or feels sloppy. Scorpios tend to be fairly tidy and can even tend toward the minimal, which makes their love for gloriously embellished details really pop rather than get lost in the visual shuffle.

A Scorpio mom is a protective creature, strong and quiet, who usually has a powerful psychic link with her beloved children. She’s the envy of other mothers, as her kids can usually be disciplined with nothing more than an intense look from their Scorpio mama.

Scorpio women work hard and are exceedingly goal-focused. They set their sights on long-term objectives, and work steadily and quietly toward making their dreams realities. They often get pegged as loners in the workplace, and tend to intimidate their co-workers, often without meaning to. Scorpios don’t tend to enjoy being subordinate – they would much rather just be the boss, free to make their own decisions, especially around aesthetics and design.

Scorpio women usually have a very clear idea of how they think things should go, and will only share power or control with other signs whose vision they innately respect. They work well with other signs who are similarly quietly powerful, but generally have no time for bombast or showboating – especially if the person with lots of opinions makes no real effort to back any of their talk up with actual results. Scorpios have a serious reputation for getting inside people’s heads, and due to their love of psychology, can easily manipulate others to get what they want. This isn’t always used for sinister purposes – in fact, Scorpio women can often excel in sales positions, because they will use their intuitive traits to determine what their customers really want and how to make them feel most at ease. But should you ever stand in the way of something a Scorpio truly wants, prepare to get steadily worn down over time – because these women are completely relentless when it comes to achieving their personal missions.

Once they set an intention, they will do whatever it takes to reach that goal, regardless of the desires of others around them. These women do what they say they’re going to do and have a way of making it all look easy – always carrying themselves through even the most difficult and trying workdays with panache and grace.

When shopping for a Scorpio woman, remember always that though her tastes might be a bit unusual or spooky, she won’t appreciate anything tatty or cheap. You might choose for her something truly bizarre, like a beautiful skull or vintage taxidermy – though make sure it’s something she would actually display in her home. Framed butterflies or moths make a perfect gift for this sign that rules over the cycles of death and rebirth, transformation, and the metamorphosis of the soul, which butterflies symbolize. All the better if you can find a framed set that includes a scorpion, her symbol. Snakes and serpents are another Scorpio symbol, and also bring to mind death and rebirth with their shedding of skin.

While snakeskin printed items may not appeal, jewelry depicting snakes usually will – especially if extremely realistic, or ethnic/geometric. Exotic items from other countries, particularly textiles or costume elements, will usually delight your Scorpio woman. Think unusual hats, headdresses, caftans, or flowing robes. Perfumes and body oils in spicy, heavy scents, and resinous fragrances will often appeal, as well as hard-to-find herbs and spices for her cooking. Anything related to the occult, human psychology, diverse cultures, and sexuality will definitely interest her – especially vintage books on these subjects. Exquisite underthings and fancy lingerie will please your Scorpio woman, who may be dressed in relatively simple head-to-toe black (always a safe bet when purchasing outerwear for her), but choose bras, undies, and lacy bodysuits in shades like heliotrope, cerise, electric chartreuse, and vermilion.

―SCORPIO WOMAN: PERSONALITY TRAITS, LOVE & MORE

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