Mid-March update

Well that dispute is settled.

I had Jones to be rewarded with violence for stringing together some button presses, and the PSN had Moral Kombat XL on sale. I remember getting grossed out by this game a few years back, but maybe my recent playthrough of Doom hardened my resolve. Either way, the developer has spent the last 3 titles building a legitimately good fighting system. In addition to the animators and modelers who have PhDs in anatomy, the jumpy battles are komplete with quick flips, snappy kombos, and kcertain moves have a great sense of impact. To hear the kreator Ed Boon talk in his Midwestern accent and witness friendly demeanor, you'd be hard pressed to imagine a guy like that signing off on Jax's fatality where he shoves your extended arms into your body, rips your head in half and ashes his cigar on your tongue. The roster is huge, and the horror franchise guest stars Predator, Leatherface, Jason Voorhees, and the Xenomorph from Alien feel right at home in this expanded title.

I started Broken Age, a strange point-and-click adventure about two characters whose destinies intertwine. I started as Vella, who is the only girl with any sense in a village that sacrifices maidens to appease some obscure god. During the first part when you're trying to escape the ritual, Vella makes quips and komm--err, not talking about Mortal Kombat anymore--comments about complacency with ridiculous and unfair traditions. In short: Vella is woke.

The other half of the story is Shay, who despite being at least a teenager, is stuck aboard a space ship where all his comforts are met, but everything on the ship panders to him as if he were a toddler. For example, you're wandering space in your ship, "rescuing lost aliens" in what turns out to be a crane grabber machine that's collecting stuffed animals. It's all pretty dang cute, but the point is to break the fantasy and get woke.

Milking people out of money for
mobile games is a business chra-di-shin!

I am also playing Frozen Free Fall, a gem-matching mobile game that was ported to consoles. There are 400 levels, and you get 5-8 lives at a time before you have to wait 15 minutes to get more lives. There is one repetitive music track, and this game has no shame about coming from the awful business practices that are associated with mobile games. Frugal me, of course is simply planning on getting all the trophies over the next 6 months - year instead of ponying up the dough. That'll teach em!

I've been making progress through Final Fantasy 6, which spends at least 50% of the story focused on Terra, an magic using demi-goddess. Now that I'm playing it this month, I think it qualifies as a female-lead game, despite the multiple narratives and story branching. I'm about 20 hours into the game, and the world as I know it is about to be destroyed. If any of you remember the Floating Continent, you'll remember that the battles jump significantly in difficulty. You may also recall the music there, too. If not, Youtube it!

Finally, I started Nex Machina. This is a twin stick shooter by the dev team Housemarque, the folks who made Super Stardust HD and Resogun. That means dope electronic music, flashy effects and hard-but-fun boss fights. Nex Machina is a little different in standard twin stick shooter level design. It features a bunch of smaller maps that you navigate through instead of the usual area that you're bound inside of as wave after wave chases you. I'd better make up the rest of March with more girl games, cause this certainly doesn't have anything there. It's still dope and addictive, dho.

Still Cheap in March

K-Mart Jimmy Smits reacting to Loudmouth 45
(mercurynews.com)

For those of you in warmer climates, Seattle is still scooching along with 40F/4C degree days that are deceptively sunny. For those of you who recently invested, you might have gotten a recent shock when our illustrious president flapped his mouth about the economy and trade deals, and confused his Koreas. The news, as usual, blew the falling stock market out of proportion, and, while the cowards panicked and withdrew, the steadfast survived the...week that it took to recover. The more opportune took that window of vulnerability to buy some stock at a discount! Then everyone woke up and realized that when it comes to Wall Street quakes, people like us who don't need their investments until decades later should completely ignore the newsfolk who speculate on a hiccup in the market. I'm not calling it fake news, mind you. All of that shit is irrelevant until you need to draw on your investments.

Weakness!

My man here has the right idea
(ngopulse.org)

How have I stayed frugal lately? Same old story: keeping on top of subscriptions, knowing good alternative brands, cooking for myself, making my own coffee, and inviting friends over instead of going out. Same old story, right? Well, I've been putting in more time with friends and driving more as well as changing snacking habits to nuts, which are much more expensive than sugary stuff from the overstock grocery store. I also went hog-wild with the latest PSN sale, spending a whopping $60 on games to stock my Women's Games Months (Jan and March). All of this is overshadowed by $100 heating bills for the last 5 months, and that can shake the faith in frugality a bit.

The point? Just like cheat days on diets being necessary to go longer, you're going to have periods where you feel like you're hemorrhaging money. If you're already pretty good at saving, don't feel too bad; just try and limit it. I was raving all about triple-paycheck months, and these are definitely the best times to have a little fun. This might run a bit contradictory to a previous post, but the point here is that you should also have fun adding some of that "extra" cash to your investments, too. Just don't blow the whole check on silly shit.

Fill your belly in the house and heat that home!

Gaming Marches on...

Whoosh! In the last few days of Black History February, I ran across an article that mentioned March being Women's History Month. That fact had whooshed right by me for all my time on this planet! This comes as a relief because I spent most of February reading and whittling away at trophies on games I'd already started. Luckily, there are quire a few games with leading femmes left in my library that I never got to. While there are certainly a list of reasons to play these titles independent of playing as an underrepresented badass, it's just the perfect month to repeat January's theme! This time, I'll do my best to start Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice and Broken Age. Finishing 2016's Doom for the second time also reminded me how much I need to play Metroid Prime, which is also on my plate in March.

I'm also taking a single graduate-level course that is more homework than I've ever had, so let me just hide behind that as my recent drain on free time. It's for the better, as is calling attention to games with girls! Play on!

Game tropes

There are just some things that pop up all the time in games. While tropes might be defined as writing-related and not really mechanical, I'm going to use this as a blanket term for certain recurring elements that I see and happen to like.

Top dog, under dog, super dog

You might start the game as an all-powerful badass, but then you hit the wall, meet the boss, get sent back in time, or experience some other kind of trauma that makes you lose everything. The majority of the story is spent getting back to your beginning state, just to surpass it and get (overpowered) vengeance. This trope rules because you get a whiff of your character's potential, and it really maps out your skill progression. Super Metroid is a great example of this.

The Endgame choir

After losing an important character/city and spending hours catching up with the final boss, the time has come for you to face the greatest challenge of all (hopefully). The reckoning is usually accompanied by a unique music track, and how much better is it when there's a choir involved? Bonus points if there's another boss stage/form with more intense music. Final Fantasy games do all of this amazingly.

Press X to keep from dying

People diss quick-time events, but shame on you for putting the controller down in a God of War game! Sure, Heavy Rain has ridiculous moments like shaking the controller back and forth to shake your shaving cream, and then taking broad strokes with motion control to shave. However, dodging the titan's fist, running up his arm to stab him in the eye--if you get the timing correct--adds extra satisfaction when you could otherwise passively watch a cinematic. I just ask that the games be consistent and not have sporadic QTEs in a game that has none.

Dem gainz

I don't have a fantastic body, but if I'm already in the fantasy of playing someone who can jump two stories high, hold a rocket launcher with one hand, and shrug off a bullet like a cold breeze, then I don't mind being a mega-babe or hunk. Sure, body image is a thing, and there are just as many 8-pack-wielding men with perfect asses as there are zero-sag DD-cup leading ladies. Get over it and onto kicking perfectly-sculpted ass! Though that does remind me that while the DOA games overdid it with tit physics, apparently none of the graphical designers have ever seen a nice female butt before. People talk about Miranda's butt from Mass Effect, but it doesn't even look very good, nor has any physics to it. The part of me that's an ass-man has always been offended that such talented game designers are missing such an important feature of the physique!

Black bars

Barn door opening for levels, black bars at the top
and bottom inside buildings. Games were cinematic 30 years ago!

When I play old games, I like to think about what the gaming climate was like when they were released and how relevant the titles used to be. Gears of War was a big deal because you could smoothly stick yourself down behind a wall, pop out and gun down your unfortunate adversaries. Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time were both amazing transitions from 2d to 3d and the latter title had a really cinematic feel to it. Remember at the end of the first dungeon in the Deku Tree when the cinematic black bars lock your controls, the door behind Link gets barred, and the camera pans over to Gohma? Regardless of if there are too many cutscenes or not, the black bars drawing your focus as if you're a squinting observer are an awesome addition to games. Kudos if you noticed this in the original Legend of Zelda on the NES!

Saving Private AI

AI teammates are the shit. Usually invincible and full of indispensable quips and banter, they provide a great distraction for the bad guys. In the case of Elena Fisher from the Uncharted series, they can also be deadly and quite smart. Also related is your squadron radio chatter, especially with over-acted dying pilots and soldiers screaming, "RPG!" Star Wars Battlefront and Call of Duty games feature this.

What are your favorite and least favorite tropes in games?