January 2019 = VR

Holy moley Angelina Jolie in a kimono no obi! I recently finished up Horizon: Zero Dawn, which required me to sprint through a ~5 hour main quest line on Ultra Hard New Game +. It was nice to get the story all at once instead of spacing it out over dozens of machine-hunting and sidequests.

Finishing a AAA title always gives me satisfaction and the most first world problem dilemma: what do I play next? This usually results in a week of avid tv or movie streaming while I mull over what game I'm going to complete next. This time while I do that, I get to spend time with my latest acquisition: PS VR. This system is better than I could have imagined. 

I'm gonna getcha!

Virtual Reality is one of those things where doing something mundane like throwing a tennis ball between your hands provides much more entertainment than the real thing. I usually think about the physics and programming involved to do these everyday things realistically and it sends my mind spinning. Growing up, we saw wireframes and random geometric objects that were usually supposed to convey hacking in 3d or a war simulator. Most recently, in Black Panther, that Vibranium-sand that opened the movie with a legend that turned out to be a real Wakandan invention. Err, I guess that was AR (augmented reality), but it was an interactive digital model, so nyah. Anyway, the real VR product is loads better. It's really hard to convey in words and 2d pictures the thrill of solving puzzles by physically moving your body to get a better vantage point, or dodging attacks or even tilting virtual objects and moving your face closer to see details. The gameplay doesn't need to be complex to be enjoyable in VR if you're like me and are wowed by the tech itself.

CoD: Jackal Assault doesn't even let you
do pilot controls...F MINUS

There are at least 200 PS VR titles of varying quality. I don't do horror, so that cuts out half of the selection, and that leaves puzzle games with almost no art direction. Low polygon count and tech specs don't necessarily mean the game has to look ugly; an art director coordinates that stuff. Then there are the must have VR titles: Astrobot: Rescue Mission, The Playroom and Beat Saber.

The Playroom VR is free to download and comes with a set of multiplayer games and even has a trophy list! In one of the titles, the VR headset player is a monster who is stomping through town (the player headbuts obstacles) while up to 4 controller players run for their lives across the city. The tables turn when they get to a platform and huck items at the monster's face. In another title, the VR player is supposed to aim their flashlight on ghosts to scare them away while whoever's looking at the TV can describe where the ghosts are. And that's another thing: all of the titles I've played have a TV display at the same time the VR person is in the headset, which enables multiplayer and gives observers more to watch than a fool with a glowing face.

Then we get to Astrobot: Rescue Mission, which sets the standard for VR. JapanStudio has created a family-friendly cute Mario alternative. This game plays like any of the 3d Mario games, except with VR enhancements like perspective puzzles and hidden items that will have to constantly looking around. The graphics are solid, the colors are bright, the music is good, and the game is stable. I haven't seen any glitches and the game is incredibly user-friendly. This game has really, REALLY cool boss fights and my wife and I are trying to space out our sessions so that we can savor the experience.

I bought this rig after playing Beat Saber, which is the other killer app for PSVR. In the headset, you are dodging walls and slicing boxes with dual light sabers to cool electronic beats. Anyone watching you will see that you're dancing, and it's quite amazing to see two genres that emerge from the same actions, depending on perspective. It's like a horror movie that's a comedy if narrated from a different character's perspective.


Other than VR, I wrapped up a few smaller developer title and started playing a game that's been missing for 10 years: Onrush. Onrush is the new Burnout. This is a car game that forgoes racing and instead encourages you to destroy other drivers to win. OnRush captures the sense of speed really well, and there is no racing in it: instead, there are objectives like hitting targets to prolong a countdown, keep speed inside a zone while fending off attackers, or knocking opponents into traffic and other wholesome ideas. Onrush was one of the free PS+ games in December 2018, and is fun as hell!

Thanksgaming + Winter controller break

Final Fantasy Type-0 HD was on sale for $10, and I have almost no experience with fringe FF games. It's definitely a relic of its time, with cutscenes upon cutscenes of emotionless dolls that pepper little bits of action. The game was originally a PSP title and is structured for short play sessions. I might be used to new games that tell you everything about where to go and what to do, but I keep getting lost in the middle of missions because I have a short attention span, and this game is just not sucking me in. There's a main cast of 13 characters, all named after poker cards, and you can swap them in and out in groups of three. I might eventually develop a taste for this, but there are more pressing games to complete.

My wife has been plugging away at the Kingdom Hearts: The Story So Far, which is a 9-game anthology. She's beaten two of nine so far: Kingdom Hearts and Chain of Memories, which has shuffled cards into the action RPG mechanics. Weird. She's now onto KH 2. This one has lots of Disney IP including Tron, Pirates of the Caribbean, and 1950's Mickey Mouse Land (or whatever you call it) . The characters have more variety to the sounds they make during combat, so hearing Wifey play while I do other things is a lot less annoying.

I have slowed down a bit on my favorite smaller-developer game of the year: Dead Cells. I'm not sure yet if the hardest trophy is the no-hit boss trophies, or beating the game on the hardest difficulty. I'm trying to do as many as I can because the game is about to have an overhaul patch that will make profound changes to gameplay. UPDATE: you can quit out in the middle of boss fights and the game will save, so I cheesed 3 of the 4 no-hit boss kills. I can definitely say that the harder difficulties are the harder trophies.

Dead Cells also came to the Switch, along with no other original titles. I think I'm mostly underwhelmed by the Switch because I have the Wii U and PS4. I think someone who missed out on the last 5 years of games has every reason in the world to get one. Me? Call me when Metroid Prime 4 rears it's gorgeous blonde head. No, really. I emailed a distress beacon to Samus Aran. One of my coworkers brought her Switch and Smash Bros Ultimate to the holiday party, and it was off the chain, so there's that!

Moving on, I started Gravity Rush 2, which has quite an amazing color palette. I don't know what to call it, but it uses magenta as its reference point and it's gorgeous. The game's maps used to feature several connected cities that you could fly/fall through, and in this sequel, they've added another axis. The result is that cities are now in different levels of the atmosphere, and it makes exploration vertical and horizontal.

Yall couldna added a brotha in this?

December was pretty much the month of Dragon Quest XI, which is the epitome of a JRPG. Silent protagonist to save the world plot, eventually ending up at a boss in space that takes up more than the whole screen? Check. Overcoming battles via brute force grinding? Darkness as the protagonist without explaining what's so bad about darkness? No black characters? Triple check.

JRPG/anime tropes aside, the game delivered on everything I wanted with one exception: the music is sub par. Instead of recorded orchestra with a proper punch and full range, you're treated to some corny synthesized trumpets and boring percussion that all has a childish feel to it, and it's all super repetitive over this 100-hour journey. Most games have the decency to have a few regular battle themes, a sub-boss theme and a boss theme, at the very least. This game has that count, but it's also almost three times as long as your average, and the boss music is bad.

Even nuns gotta get loose in Lonalulu

There's some variety in the towns, which are each based on a real-world culture. The beachtown, Lonalulu, has a kahuna and NPCs greet you with mahalo. Hotto, at the foot of Mt Huji, has citizens that all speak in haiku. Citizens of Gondolia all speak broken English that is peppered with ma bella, ciao and bene. Also, characters drink and are drunk, including nuns, and there are some side stories of loss and grief that are well done.

Visually, DQ XI is playing in a living, breathing anime world designed and colored by Akira Toriyama. It is absolutely gorgeous, and both this and Dragon Ball Fighterz are two strong entries for best art direction of 2018, both from the same original artist. Toriyama likes to put characters' eyes close together, and I'm not sure what the intended effect is, but it's hard to take the game's more mature plots seriously. All the men look like their names are Cody, and I'm sorry but a cross-eyed dragon isn't scary. The women in this game, however, are all ridiculously hot. Like, problematically gorgeous. There's something in the water in the world of Erdrea. There's a subquest to 'get puff-puff' in every town from a beautiful woman, and one of your characters gets multiple suits of questionably-effective bikini-style armor. I think the cherry on top was that to get the game's true ending, you beat a dungeon and are granted a choice of boons, one of which is to marry your best friend. Like...a genie has to make that happen?

Krystalinda, cast your spell on me!

To its credit, DQ XI doesn't waste your time with clumsy romance, and there are at least as many...dudesels...as there are damsels in distress. Also, the two top damage dealers in your party are women, so there's that.

Games Since October

One of the free November games is called Burly Men At Sea, which features a branching story with 4 major choices that can be be completed in about 20 minutes per cycle. There isn't really much to do besides read how the story changes. I'm guessing it's based on Nordic folktales, but the presentation is minimal, unique and overall pleasant. Even the audio effects are some dude making sounds into the mic. 3-hour Platinum GET!

While we're outside my usual genres, I got my hands on an old favorite: Lumines Remastered. In this game you match tiles to the rhythm of a flow of levels. Each level has its own music and rhythm of the sweep that clears your blocks. It's visually and aurally amazing, and one of those games where the music will put you in a trance and muscle memory and quick reactions will keep your sessions longer than you might have planned.

Picture Mode was fun!

Next up was a rental of my second favorite Uncharted after the second game: The Lost Legacy. This episode features Chloe Frazer and Nadine Ross, one treasure hunter and mercenary who kick ass and take names. The game has your signature Uncharted stuff: gorgeous scenery, lifelike characters, ridiculous climbing physics, and some anthropology and history along the way. You meet Chloe in the second Uncharted game, a good bad good thief who works her charms on Nathan Drake, and this game flushes her character out as a physically capable badass. You get to find out that she's mixed Indian and English, and that ends up playing into the storyline, as the antagonist makes a point about the prized artifact being for 'pure' bloods only. This of course blows up in his face cause racism sucks, but Chloe wasn't gonna let him get away with that shit anyway!

Nadine is from Uncharted 4, where she beats the snot out of Nate in a few fistfights before Sully buddies everyone up. The path to platinum is a little more than half as long as a usual Uncharted game, but I thought that was a good thing. As the 5th game in the series, I was ready for something short but sweet, since they're not about to drastically change the gameplay.

Also, shoutout to Naughty Dog (developer) for the accessibility options in this game. I'm a fan of turning button presses to hold for the quick-time events.

 Last but not least is a game that was gnawing at me for the last few weeks since I'd returned the rental: Dead Cells. The longing got the best of me and I ended up buying it. It's one of those games with procedurally-generated levels and progress is made by unlocking access to certain items spawning and certain permanent abilities unlocking each run. One life can last a few minutes, or if you git gud, one life can take you through to the end boss in about an hour. But you will die. So. Much. The gameplay is fast-paced, and you can strategize your approach: throughout the levels you find scrolls that upgrade 1 of 3 stats that affect: melee damage, ranged damage, or defense. The level of each stat makes that weapon do more damage, and you get a % of health with each scroll found, but the enemies also get more difficult. There are a few no-damage trophies as well as beating this game on the hardest difficulty, which would make this game probably a 9 or 10/10 for difficulty, but it's so fun to try.

Also, until Thanksgiving is a quietly huge sale on most of Square Enix's titles from the last 5 years on the Platstation Store. If you like RPGs, head over and get you some! The sale is for everyone, not just PS+ members.

October opus: Sonic Mania Plus...

Sonic the Hedgehog is 28 years old this year but has lived more than half his life in shitty games. Our blue friend had a home in 5 great speedy platform games in the early 90s. Then, some bigger changes in technology and some really terrible direction lead SEGA to produce poop for the next 20-odd years. Nintendo has always taken new tech in stride and implemented it in the titles quite well. Think of each system's new Mario or Zelda game and how well it uses its console's gimmick: Mario's movement in Super Mario 64, Z-targeting in Ocarina of Time, Link's Master Sword moving 1:1 in Skyward Sword via the Wiimote Accelerometer, and more recently, using the Wii U's touchpad to sketch blocks in New Super Mario Bros - nTh iteration.

And still better with the 2d D-pad.

Sonic...hasn't received the same treatment. The SEGA Saturn title used an isometric view and analog controller for Sonic 3d Blast to go with the new CD-quality audio. The music worked; the rest was awkward. Then while Mario was messing around on Sunshine Island (Gamecube), SEGA decided Sonic needed vocals and we were treated to unskippable, poorly-acted, awkwardly paced and stupidly long cutscenes in a game with only a good first level. This trend of underwhelming Sonic games with only good first levels repeated for years. But even with the music, there's been a prominence of guitar-heavy rock music with lyrics in most of the titles since Sonic Adventure that were hit and miss.

THEN, a few years ago, a fan updated/remade a few Genesis-era Sonic games. This all culminated into Sonic Mania, a return to roots with a blend of the only 5 Sonic games that matter: Sonic 1-3, & Knuckles, and Sonic CD. Sonic Mania blends these so thoroughly into a great shiny package and hits on almost everything great about the series. For example, two desert levels Oil Ocean (S2) and Sandopolis (S3) have been conceptually blended. In the original Sandopolis, you were inside of a pyramid that consistently got darker until you activated light switches throughout the level. In Sonic Mania, you're running through an oil extraction site that gets hazy until you activate fans to blog away the smog. The blends manifest themselves in the music, aesthetics and functions like the haze mechanic I mentioned. There are so many stages that Eggman Dr. Robotnik has gone the way of Bowser and recruited the Hard-boiled Heavies to harangue the heroes in different boss forms.

The devs balanced speed and running really really well. The levels are loaded with springs and sequences that don't screw up momentum with obstacles. There are even those parts in the game where you're running so fast that Sonic almost moves out of the frame, and they're used sparingly enough for you to really appreciate them. Past titles have suffered from poor camera controls, camera tracking, or the simple fact that touching the controls during the speed sequences could kill Sonic. A lot of the titles may have only had one of these sins, but Sonic Mania doesn't commit any.

Sonic Mania is the most fun I've had in a while. The game is gorgeously colorful, the remixed soundtrack is amazing, and I'm considering buying it for the appeal of a playable soundtrack. Have any of you played a game again for its soundtrack?

Hang on, Geddy! Ohh wait-shoot em!

I actually started the month with a title called Owlboy, which is heavily inspired by Kid Icarus from the original NES. The game has a neat aesthetic and in true sci-fi nature takes its world of sentient owls, stick bugs, penguins and spiders as established; there's no irony there. The story has to deal with capture and pirates and stuff...and I was just playing the game to experience vertical platforming. I really liked the music and artwork. Even towards the end of my 14-hour journey to the platinum, I forgot controls occasionally since they were just a bit awkward.

Ohh my! Yes, yes. Quite riveting!

After Owlboy, I was waiting for Sonic Mania to arrive in the mail and discovered just how awesome one of the previous free PS+ games was. The game is called Foul Play, and the title card is a theatre curtain. I figured it would be some murder mystery or otherwise dialogue-heavy slow-paced game. It turns out that this is a beat-em-up game where you play actors in a series of Vaudeville plays, beating the snot out of baddies for the audience's enjoyment. Get combos, dodge, pop the fist-fodder into the air, whack, sock, evade and chuck enemies into stage objects to applause and a great soundtrack. One fact is that October has seen three fast and fun titles with great music and unique aesthetics.

Katamari Forever: a profile

I am one of those people that uses the word perfect subjectively. I think something is perfect if it does what it's intended to do and nails all the details along the way. I abhor smoking but can tell you cigarettes are a perfect product. The addictive factor has been refined through decades of testing despite the obvious signs of damage to health. Cigarettes are so good that skipping 5-10 minutes of work every hour or two is socially acceptable, as long as you're harming your health. Try that shit with a 5-10 minute break to read a book or blend some smoothies in the break room and report back to me. Anyhoo, cigarettes are a perfect product to me, and the Katamari Damacy series is also perfect.

This guy is hilarious, annoying, the most important entity
in the Katamari universe...and that bulge is amazing!

If you haven't heard of Katamari Damacy [~Clump Soul], the story goes that your father, The King of Cosmos, [got drunk one night and] accidentally destroyed the planets, and it's your job to roll up enough items to form new ones. This story is told through surreal 10-second animations which were just as random in original Japanese. Also, to reach back to the title, it doesn't make sense in Japanese either, and the creator said it randomly popped into his head. This is a relief to me, as there are some really stupid anime titles that had to have been conceived similarly. Bubblegum Crisis and Cowboy Bebop come to mind, but I digress. Anyway, the bizarre opening sets the tone for the whole experience.

The game has a bright, cartoony palette and features everyday objects that the Prince of the Cosmos collects into a ball as he rolls through living rooms, backyards, train stations, and eventually the Solar System. This can be explained with a picture. What can't be explained is how the game sounds.

Each game features a peppy, poppy and eclectic soundtrack that stands well on its own. The music is good and the composer knows it. The PS3 title that I'm currently playing, Katamari Forever, is a blend of the first and second title, with a story to link all the chaos. The entire soundtrack is a remix of these two games as well. From the Katamari Wiki: "Miyake employed the help of over 20 other Japanese artists and remixers to help the soundtrack, which was designed to act as part of a "musical trilogy" with the soundtrack to Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari. This was accomplished by choosing tracks from those games that were either fan or staff favorites and having them remixed by both Japanese and non-Japanese artists, though Miyake notes that the majority of the artists were Japanese as he did not know many non-Japanese musicians, the same problem that kept non-Japanese artists out of the first two soundtracks of the "trilogy".

I'd argue the most popular song of the series is not the main theme, but Lonely Rolling Star. The first gets its own version in each game, and the second gets a dubstep remix in the PSP title. One of my favorite tracks from the first game, Cherry Blossom Color Season, is a very poignant track about a summer memory with school kids doing vocals while a boy takes the lead. In Katamari Forever, it's done by a peppy 80s soft rock female vocalist. Both versions nail the sense of nostalgia, even without knowing what the lyrics mean. The remix that most blew me away in the same game was the second game's J-POPpiest song Everlasting Love being both mashed up with You Are Smart and translated to English (Everlasting Love + You).

For sound effects, objects are picked up with a plop or plunk that gets deeper with larger things. You start out picking up thumbtacks and batteries and once you get to animals and people, they let out screams and other strange noises.

The aesthetic, sounds and music combine to create an amazing experience, and the controls fit perfectly. Your rolling is controlled by both thumbsticks and little vibrations tell you when you pick stuff up. Although titles in the series are on other platforms, the controls make the most sense on the Dualshock controllers, as the sticks are side by side. The latest titles are on Android and iOS which makes me wonder what they did to the controls. There's a remake of the first Katamari Damacy coming to the Switch at the end of the year, which fits the theme of the Switch being a GREATEST PORTS platform with almost no original titles. Either way, the Katamari Damacy series is highly recommended and you should give it a roll!

Where the hell have I been?

It turns out working full time, wrapping up a graduate degree, owning a house and doing marriage paperwork takes a lot of time.

School: I'm currently in a class about how to choose, create and make the most of materials for ESL learners. Basically, true/false and multiple-choice questions are dogshit for actually learning language, but garbage sells. It's a lot easier to sell shit that's easy to grade to the non-teachers who are in charge of curriculum and budgets, so inefficient and superficial language learning prevails!

Even Abe is sad I can't buy stock...

House: mid-August to now has been me coming home from work with some kind of project to address: replacing the kitchen faucet, garbage disposal, installing the bidet, making a noise-and-temperature window insert, and exploring my new neighborhood. Traffic is pretty loud and I still hate motorcyclists. What are they revving their engines for in a 30 mph zone, anyway? My new neighbors, on the other hand, understand the concept of not being noisy at night, parking where they should park, and training their animals not to be douchebags. This is a massive improvement to my quality of life for an amount I can afford with some concessions...LIKE INVESTING *dramatic crying*. No more monthly deposits into Vanguard for the time being. It sucks, but building equity is like investing...just gotta cut through that thick block of interest first.

Spoiler: not the last time. This is at the beginning of the game

With all that, it's not like I wasn't gaming at all. Septemper PS+ owners got God of War 3, a game where you play as a complete asshole. Like, wow. Kratos spares nobody. In terms of trophy hunting, this game is pretty quick and easy. This game still keeps the fluid and responsive fight controls, though platforming requiring double jumping and gliding sucks. This game has your signature smooth combat with lots of blood, a protagonist who doesn't have a whole lot of motivation in this title, and the occasional boob!



Before that, I had the express pleasure of Cosmic Star Heroine, a 16-bit-ish action RPG that is heavily inspired by Chrono Trigger. You can see and avoid battles, there are battle abilities that resemble single / dual techs, and the soundtrack is quite awesome. Also, the game is hilarious and has some personality. Even if the plot is so-so, the characters are pretty entertaining, and the NPCs even more so. I scooped it up on sale for <$10 and it was a sweet playthrough and worth it! Go, small developers!

Other than these two Platinums, I have been logging the other half of playtime plugging away at Overwatch, Star Wars Battlefront 2, and Guitar Hero Live. I just shacked up with Gamefly for their $10 promotion for a single disc rental for 2 months and my first crack will be OwlBoy.

Gaming in August 2018

Hey Folks, nothin much going on but the rent. PSYCH! I got married on the first of August and started a mortgage two weeks later. So, 'ain't nothin going on but the mortgage.' Now begins the paperwork to get a work permit for my beautiful wife. Once we let her loose on the American work force, she's going to be the breadwinner by far. I'd like to think that this means I'll have more time to play video games, but that'll likely mean more housework!

The death music in this game still triggers me

Speaking of video games and my wife, while between quarters and waiting the on paperwork, she found herself with an abundance of free time. Earlier this year, I'd gotten an SNES Mini and the game she chose to start with was Super Mario World. Now, I've had 30 years of experience with the franchise, which has barely changed its controls. Folks, I watched her walk right into enemies or right off of pits over and over and realized that I am a really terrible backseat gamer. At least there are short cords on the controllers, meaning her ability to rightfully huck the controller at me is limited. Turns out SMW is a pretty hard choice to be your break-in to game. Progress is slow, but man is she persistent!

This fight took a couple attempts

In June, she started Chrono Trigger after seeing how excited I was to add the ROM to the system. She absolutely loved CT and saw at least 3 endings. Next was Final Fantasy IV. It was pretty awesome to hear the soundtrack as I did whatever I do around the house that isn't playing video games while she hauled arse. In August, she completed A Link to the Past. Her biggest challenge was a room in the final dungeon with a collapsing floor and 4 torches to light. It came down to the coordination of an action button + a direction. I don't know if she should burn through all the classics or start getting into some of the less-polished games. She's not a fan of current-gen controllers with 20+ buttons, so we'll likely stick to the SNES mini.

Pissed off bantha

It has been great seeing her enjoy something she used to just think was for 'boys.' Since she mostly plays when I'm asleep or at work, I get to hear her new experiences of games I've known well. I don't think she'll be playing Overwatch and cursing Hanzo alongside me any time soon, but in 2018, she's played 4 of the best games ever made and doesn't show any signs of slowing down--now she's playing Final Fantasy VI.

Fireworks on muh screen!

How was your 4th, folks? I got to hang out with friends and watch The Rock's San Andreas and the new Tomb Raider. The former was a neutered "action" film that unraveled the moment you thought about how callous it is to make a movie with hundreds of thousands of people dying on and off screen while following a divorced couple's rekindled relationship. Ohh, and screw you, new husband, for making this divorcee happy! Tomb Raider was kinda boring but had some cool sound effects, and properly beat the shit out of Lara Croft, per mandate of the new game series.

Hell yeah she is!

In a much more efficient use of media funding, Gravity Rush has stolen my heart. I've wanted to play this PS4 remaster since even before January 2018, my Ladies' Month, and spent 30 disorienting minutes figuring out the (thankfully) simplified controls. The game involves a spunky heroine named Kat whose cat can decide which surfaces are up and down. You do this by floating, aiming at the surface you wish to stand on, and flying into it. This is all done with one button, and the camera will help you out most of the time. I'm having a blast playing this game, and I hope the story is brisk enough that the gameplay doesn't wear out its welcome.

Update: Since starting this post a week ago, I've gotten the platinum. I probably put 16 hours into the base game and all expansions, and was excited to play the whole time. The most challenging mission in the game has a perfect run of 3min30sec and took me about 20 minutes overall to ace through research and repeated attempts.

Overwatch. I've been playing the new Symmetra and a great deal of FFA deathmatch. After 2.5 years of naively trusting strangers to group up in balanced teams, there is now a create-a-group feature where you can assign roles. While it takes an extra minute to fill up, you can finally avoid the K:D ratio bros that will fill your last team slot with Genji (instead of a needed healer or tank). The problem is that the system isn't quite intuitive, and there is no usual info box with an explanation. How...cantankerous!

More like "Turn-it-up!" Ah...that was lame.

I started Rayman Legends, which is a really huge game. This Ubisoft platformer series has a great aesthetic that reminds me of Nickelodeon cartoons and certainly doesn't take itself seriously. It's one of those games with slightly floaty controls, but the levels mercifully aren't designed for precision. Rayman was a franchise I overlooked pretty much since the first game in 1995. Legends is pretty fun and not frustratingly challenging so far. I dig it!

Gaming and Graduation

Holy moly, folks! 2018 is hummin along, with my most recent viewing of a seizure-beckoning Incredibles 2, and a significant reduction in gaming time. I just finished up a graduate-level grammar class and Washington heated up a bit, educating me on just how much warmer a TV makes the room. Back to Incredibles 2, the movie was quite awesome save for the one poor choice of a scene involving a really intense strobe light. I don't have photo-sensitivity, but I closed my eyes for sure. Don't let that keep you from seeing it, though I can't really say that it's a big screen movie, since the action is really well directed and you pretty much always know what's going on.

It def gets dicey in this game

Games! I finally platinumed Children of the Zodiarcs, which is an entertaining and beautifully drawn tactics RPG. You're a bunch of orphans making your way through seedy neighborhoods, killing those who need to be killed. My only complaint is that the soundtrack is very minimal, so about half of my gameplay was without sound. If you want a play style that feels like a board game but has the convenience of digital interaction, this game is for you. Also, plus points for having a black female lead.

Art direction +1 Lookit dem colors!

Also finished up everything in God of War. My biggest shame for being frugal is that really good games like God of War that have a shorter path to platinum usually end up getting borrowed, and the dev never sees my money. At the same time, I gotta look after Number One, and I can't be spending emotions on businesses either.

I spent a good deal of time playing Overwatch during the anniversary event, where they unlocked all the skins and even game modes for almost all of June. The game that keeps on giving.

Omae ga mattaku shinisoudaze!

In game-related news, E3's finally shown me more than a buncha zombie survival games, and Ghost of Tsushima is one title I'm very excited for. Sony musta bribed the devil with all the great exclusives coming to the PS4. Assassin's Creed Odyssey looks great, though I haven't played any titles since AC II. Cyberpunk 2077 might be the most compelling of the batch, and I'll know not to rush into it. I screwed up my Witcher experience (same developer) by starting my first play on HARD. I gave up on that playthrough, but might give the game another go before Cyberpunk comes out.

What got you most pumped at E3?

Grow up...sheesh

Salad bowl brain blast incoming! I am a pretty negative person, and that may not always come through in my posts, here. That's the benefit of writing over saying something: you have time to control your ideas. Any jackass who tweets jackass things probably doesn't realize that tweeting is writing, and those people have the boon of time to...maybe not say racist things and lose a bunch of work for a bunch of people *cough Roseanne cough*. So, without further ado, it is TIME TO RANT.

Gaming trends

Fallout 4. Ark. Daylight. Fortnite. PUBG. Terraria. Breath of the Wild. State of Decay 2.
What do all of these have in common? Crafting and survival. Trends have the potential for creators to take familiar routes and hopefully break left when everyone else broke right and make something new. Developers usually rest that divergence on narrative, characters and/or aesthetics. However, if you're like me and really don't value the resources-and-survival genre, it's easy to feel like there's no new content. I personally feel like the developer stopped making the game and left me purchasing their full-priced dev kit. Minecraft looks like LEGO and gets credit for being a big deal early on (though I'm not sure if it was the first.) But the fact that so much of modern releases are now these glorified physics engines is getting obnoxious. Oddly enough, I highly favor RTS games, which have a lot in common with this list of games I started with. Maybe the player perspective is what I don't like about these?

Solution: give me a narrative!

Playstation Network

Speaking of gaming trends: smaller developers have been my lifeblood, especially in the last year. It's incredibly frustrating how rudimentary marketing tactics prevent games that aren't trendy from seeing more money. I'm going to pick on SONY for having a poorly-executed Playstation marketplace for more than a decade. A better system helps everyone! If you're a AAA title, you get your own page: the 5000 people who weren't already going to buy Destiny 2 were treated to a menu option in the store with a huge banner and a neat little video. However, maybe you want to play a game that isn't a shooter or maybe you've grown sick of Bethesda games and want to try one of the thousands of games that don't fit these two overdone categories of games.

I usually go to the sale pages, and filter GAMES out of the ADD-ON, BUNDLE, (dashboard) THEMES or DEMOS. There's a GENRE filter as well, but not on the main storefront page. You have to know what you're looking for: the browsing is so limited, and there's no way to know just how many games are available on the PSN. Also, searching is atrocious. You search, one letter at a time, from a shrinking choice of options. You can't just search by keyword. The ratings should be more robust than a star system. Perhaps with more detailed feedback options, gamers might be willing to spend more money. They could stick with the 5-star system and break it down into categories: Gameplay, Difficulty, Controls, Visuals/Audio and Pace. I'm sure someone who works for the company and gets paid for ideas could come up with something better than me, but the store they've had since even the PS3 days has been garbage. A better system helps everyone. Also, on a technical note, the store crashes all the time from not being able to keep up with loading preview media of games. Also, the video still plays despite skipping over it and trying to go to pictures. This has gone on since the PS4's launch. The volume of movie clips is so much louder than whatever you're playing that it's quite jarring, and I just don't watch their stupid previews unless the remote is within reach. A better system helps everyone: fix your shit, SONY.

Movies

When Avengers: Infinity Wars came out, I was still winding down from Black Panther being the big deal it was, with it's showcasing Black Excellence, compelling villain and strong women. Then, Avengers kicked my ass all over the place with Thanos being THE ultimate badass. And now, some idiot or collection of idiots decided to release a Star Wars movie barely after Avengers, and half a year after The Last Jedi. I really liked Solo. It had my favorite musical score of the movies, other than a few choice tracks from the saga, of course. The movie was really enjoyable and the dude who played Han was as much of a rascal as he should have been. I did my best to ignore the secondhand warnings I got from people who read and value professional critics' declarations of disapproval and saw the movie in a reserved-seating theater with reclining chairs. That is my first gripe with this movie: the critics got to see the movie first and ruined it with their crappy opinions. I realize the irony of this, considering that I primarily review games on this blog. But seriously, between unimpressed critics who only revere old movies and "fans" who were still burned from The Last Jedi not perpetuating some outdated elitist belief that every advantage is hereditary, this movie didn't get a fair chance to shoot first...Also, the idiot studio not waiting until December to release it lost that movie millions of dollars of revenue. These things are external as hell, but they still did affect the experience of seeing Solo. My only gripe with the movie is the trope of absolutely needing to unmask characters that wear masks. Screw that, keep the mask: retain the mystery.

Math

Yeah! I'm on a roll, here. So far I've talked about entertainment stuff, which is easy to argue that I should let it go because we're lucky enough to have access to it in the first place. Grab your Maslov Pyramid for a moment, cause I'm gonna rant on something that has REAL WORLD FUNCTION!
At some point in my early education, I was two years ahead in math. This means that I took algebra and geometry in middle school, and I can see the value of basic formulas and measuring space as life skills. However, high school further explored Algebra and then I studied Calculus, which was completely useless to me, who became an ESL teacher. Calculus is useful in the world, and probably to scientists who don't have calculators or internet connections.

Solution:
However, finances, debt management and credit should be priorities in (middle and) high school. Every. Single. Person. Uses. Money. My point here is that the Math Directive needs to teach students about money and credit before rates and advanced formulas.

Republican Party economics

There isn't one person who is both competent and not evil in that group. How can you possibly believe that Republicans "create jobs" when they slash funding for social programs that...help people work? Planned Parenthood helps people decide whether or not to have kids and...work! Slashing that funding means a bunch of social workers lose their jobs, as well as the parents who were on the fence about working now have to either balance baby life and work life. Whether working more or less, the result is a family that suffers quality of time and life. Same thing for healthcare, except now you've got sick and dead people's debts. Who do they expect to pay for this?

Then there's this nonsense about economic trickle down. Squash. That. Noise. I live outside of Seattle but work downtown. I don't work at Amazon; their AI decided my resume didn't have enough keywords and boom, no job. That's fine, but the only evidence of trickle down with Amazon that I see is that it's now okay for salads to cost $14, and a 400 sq ft studio is $1600 per month. The surrounding neighborhoods are super gentrified and homelessness has skyrocketed. Go trickle-down!

If you're not from here, the recent politics are that the City of Seattle wanted to charge a special tax to large corporations and use it to address homelessness. Obviously they pushed back and said the City should get better at financial planning (true) and the spineless council caved. I personally think that if Amazon left, smaller businesses would have more of a fighting chance, rent would go down, and so would the ridiculous cost of eating. Also, smaller businesses will likely pay taxes instead of keeping their money in Ireland. Amazon is both online and global, so it's not like I can't use their business if they move away from here. I really don't feel like there's any trickle down besides those gorgeous globes they built in the middle of the city.

Solution: Never, ever believe in trickle down. It forces you to pay taxes that corporations should be paying.

May Gaming: Dad of War

This game is awesome, Boy.

Whaddup, Nahmi.

Deadpool is going to have to wait, folks. The lead up to this weekend involved an indie (Cardboard Utopia, Canadian) title called Children of the Zodiarcs, which is a tactics RPG with dice-rolling to remind you that RNG reigns supreme in these kinds of games. Between battles, there is deck building and dice crafting, and Children brings all the best parts of a combat-based tabletop game without the feeling of being locked into a 6-hour game that just. Won't. End...*cough*. The battles last from 5-20 minutes and that's all you need to commit. Mechanics aside, the playable characters are brown in majority, and the dialogue is funny and mercifully skippable if you have to replay a level because your character died :). The music is not a strength, and you might need to grind to your own soundtrack, but the game was also $10, so I can't complain. The aesthetic is neat, the drawn portraits are beautiful, and the change of pace to tactical RPG combat is a relief to balance the shooters I'm playing.

Ohh snap! We in trouble!

Speaking of shooters, I started Wolfenstein 2 and got a solid 2 hours in before I got hopelessly lost, losing my interest in the game, too. There is a map in this game with mission objectives and everything, so it's hilarious that I spent 30 minutes walking in circles, but I just wasn't connecting the dots. Ohh well, I'll try again later! There are priorities...

My friend Aaron broke some wonderful news to me that he'd completed God of War and was ready to loan it to me. After 6 other titles of revenge-driven, violent hatred of those-who-are-bigger-and-meaner, this game's director took a slower pace. I remember God of War 3 ended with a minigame where you repeatedly mash a button to mash Zeus's face, bloodying up the screen until you could only hear the meaty bashing. Don't get me wrong, Zeus was an asshole, and the multi-stage boss battle is pretty engaging and a raging climax for the angry series.

The new God of War follows an old gruff Kratos, who becomes a widower left with his somewhat-estranged son, Boy Atreus. The game starts with the two going about the death rituals of Kratos' wife Faye, and the last thing they need to do is place her ashes at the top of a mountain. On the first mission of training Atreus how to hunt, Kratos is terse with his son as they feel out each others' combat prowess and personalities. Assuming that the other God of War titles are canon, it's understandable that he's not the warmest father figure. He was tricked into killing his wife and daughter long ago, got his revenge, and then again on the dubious gods as the situation was escalated. Between God of War 3 and this one, Kratos settled down again, just to lose his new wife. I am only a few hours into the story, so I'm not sure if the previous titles are canon, nor how exactly Faye died.

That looks...painful.

Either way, as you go about trying to place her ashes on the top of a mountain, the seemingly bleak father-son banter of the excited youth being reminded to control his feelings and mind his surroundings gives way to the characters sharing their grief and eventually bonding. There are plenty of stories that start at a low or sad point that provides the catalyst for plot to get moving, and God of War is no exception. The narrative succeeds by having the memory of a character act as a passive third character who shapes the story every bit as much as the main two characters who are alive.

Gently down the stream, Boy.

The game feels a lot like a cross between Last of Us and Uncharted in terms of gameplay and production design. There is not one cheap texture in the game, all the characters look solid, Atreus' AI is intelligent enough to feel like a real partner. It's also obvious that the characters' relationship takes over the plot in the same way that Naughty Dog games do so often and so well. There is also some researched lore on Norse Mythology that amounts to more than everyone is naked and the gods are selfish that previous titles featured. While exploring, the characters tell stories to each other that are interrupted as soon as you get to an action point, and continued when things calm down. I first saw this in Uncharted 4 and it's a great way to enrich the mundane parts of the game. The combat is a little slower and quieter than the previous God of War games, but has a lot more variance to the attacks and is still really fun. So far, the violence is less visceral than ripping a (demi-)god's head off through a quicktime event as the music pounds.

The newest God of War is such a good experience. While there's no shortage of games powered on male fantasy, the grieving demigod hacking and slashing his way through realms to save the world is augmented by bonding with his son and being a protective father. It's an exciting, immersive experience and this major change to the series is as good as it gets.