#i play a lot more now and also higher difficulty maps too!

[orbdog]

just inch resting to see

#snarf #we dont look at my old art tho ❤️ #i havent touched my old account since 2018...? maybe #since 2019 at the latest bc i played the rockafeller street map bc tiktok LOL #rockefeller. im not retyping that whole tag #anyway i thought i played a lot more osu in high school #felt like i did #only got back into it last month and ive already played more than i did my entire senior year i guess #first gold SS too hehe #i had more S rankings on my old one bc i would play a lot less maps #and just get really cracked at them LMAO #i play a lot more now and also higher difficulty maps too! #hence the longer streaks bc longer maps #idk i think he would be proud

[subspaceskater]

Do you have any celeste mod recs? My friend finished Farewell a while back and I feel like she'd enjoy chewing on some more fun level designs.

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay i love questions. i'm gonna go through some basic stuff before i get into my personal recs.

so if she hasn't done any modding at all then the first step is installing the modloader. it has all the information you'll need on now to do that https://everestapi.github.io/

don't worry about downloading dependencies when you get the mods, when you launch the game through the modloader it'll go through and download all the dependencies you're missing.

then go here to find map mods. there's all kinds of other mods on the site but those are to be applied per taste so i shan't recommend them. https://gamebanana.com/mods/cats/6800?

what i did at first was just kind of sort it by most downloaded or most liked and then just read the descriptions for the top ones and downloaded whatever i liked the sound of. there's a lot of good mods out there and the scene is just getting bigger and bigger!

there's also the celeste modding central youtube which has trailers for things and is a good way to find mods that maybe came out recently https://www.youtube.com/@CelesteModdingCentral

another thing to do is just like pay attention to difficulty levels on the mods.

beginner levels are usually a-side to early b-side difficulty

intermediate are late b-side, most c-sides, and some of farewell

advanced are around or higher than the difficulty of the hardest farewell and c-side maps and will often introduce mechanics that arent in the vanilla game but aren't too difficult to perform if you've already cleared farewell

expert is above all vanilla difficulty and will introduce mechanics that are hard to do! lots of scary shit here. but very cool looking maps. i havent really finished any expert mods but i've been able to clear a few rooms in the ones i've tried/the ones in collabs.

grandmaster is above everything else. this is where you go when you're bored of expert or really wanna do sicko shit. it's cool.

however it's also important i think to play maps that are below the difficulty level you can complete. because a lot of them are fun! and cute! and just because you can clear it in one try with no deaths doesnt mean you won't enjoy the experience. a lot of them have really cute custom art or music or custom mechanics and they're completely worth it.

now i'll put my actual recs under a cut

of course i'll just start by saying the 2020 spring collab is maybe the most well known mod because it is so fucking good. this is a great place to start and a great place to just have a big mod with a bunch of maps in it that you can complete without digging for a ton of things.

the strawberry jam collab, secret santa 2022, and secret santa 2023 are also all really good. the second two have lots of in jokes between modders that i dont really get because i only really play mods without being involved with the scene but that doesn't detract from them being fun to play.

i will say that my biggest gripe with collab packs is that sometimes there will just be a level in one that i hate. never like a bad level but just something that is antithetical to what I enjoy in a map! and it feels a little bad to be like "no i'm not fucking doing this" and just ignore one map in a floor and then not be able to do the big combination map at the end. but it's fine. maybe you aren't as whiny of a bitch as i am.

glyph is a huge one that a lot of people love. it has a bunch of really cool stuff. cannot recommend glyph enough. it has its own b-sides.

into the jungle is a custom campaign the ramps up in difficulty starting from where 7-A was.

rupture is really good. short intermediate mod with 16 rooms.

lucy's summit is a fun beginner difficulty summit remix. (a kind of mod that just sticks to vanilla level theming.)

cosmic sands is a short intermediate map with some fun mechanics i enjoyed a lot

sentimental is a 10 room intermediate map with some cool secrets

and nutty noon :) kirby.

that's probably enough recommendations.

#asks

[seventeendeer]

I still haven't gotten into rain world, I played it for an hour or so but it was a bit too slow paced to really grab me at the time. I really wanted to like it but I haven't touched it since. can you convince me?

I will convince you AND anyone else reading this who might be interested in rain world !! >:3c or at least try to lol

quick summary for anyone unfamiliar: Rain World is an indie sidescroller where you play as a little animal trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. the player characters, 'slugcats', must eat enough food during the short dry seasons to be able to hibernate through the deadly torrential rain seasons - without getting eaten by bigger animals. as you venture deeper into the game, you learn more about the long-gone civilization whose ruins you're now traversing.

reasons to play Rain World and stick with it despite the frankly harrowing difficulty:

the atmosphere! the nature-is-reclaiming-but-boy-is-it-harsh atmosphere is my personal favorite part of the game. the world only becomes stranger the further you delve into the game. old ruins, old worlds, old religions, old mistakes, old ghosts ... all in a world that feels lush and new and alive despite.

music is used sparingly, but it's gorgeous when it's there, especially during cutscenes

speaking of which, the cutscenes are essentially beautiful digitally painted slideshows. again, full of atmosphere and feeling

the game itself has a deliberately coarse, almost brutalist look, which I think fits the vibe extremely well. unusually for these types of games, all character animation is generated in real time, with each part of a character's body being affected by physics. this creates some very fluid, realistic animation and some ... frankly very janky gameplay, that nonetheless feels very satisfying when you get the hang of it. the learning curve is steep, but once you get really good at movement, you can zoom around the map at much-higher speed!

it may not look like it on the surface, but this game got crazy good AI. it's more or less a fully functioning, procedurally generated ecosystem. every individual enemy lives its own life, including off-screen. each type of enemy has its own unique personality (members of sapient species even have unique personalities generated for each individual!), and almost every being in the game is programmed to try to feed and find shelter before the rain returns, just like the player. the vast majority of beings in the game also develop a relationship to the player that changes depending on how you behave around them - you can actually tame enemy animals and make friends with sapient species! or you can kill enough of a species to destabilize the ecosystem, causing invasive species to appear, among other things. the AI is super intricate and complex, and I highly recommend looking up how it works, just so you can fully understand what you're experiencing in-game. a lot of things that seem random are decidedly not. it's deeply fascinating!!

while it's light on story and there's very little dialogue, what is there is strange, abstract and very poignant. it's a "glass half full" type of story at best, but the almost ... tender(?) way the bleak story is handled really made it stick with me personally. I highly recommend seeing the story through, if nothing else by watching someone else's playthrough. it goes some truly mysterious places that I at least in no way predicted.

as much as I personally love this game, I do also have to disclaim that it's not ... perfect. it's a niche game (I think?) for a reason. the fans love it for the same reasons critics hate it - it's hard, it's weird, it consciously refuses to conform to a lot of the traditional principles of what makes a "good game", and its near-total lack of in-game tutorials makes it almost hostile to new players. it frequently leaps back and forth between "hard, but worth it" and "I will give you 2 dollars if you climb that telephone pole 47 times!" type difficulty, and all you can really do to combat it is to pick and choose which challenges are enjoyable to you and which to leave alone.

I personally gave up on the hard mode campaign completely because I wasn't having fun - the standard campaign was already difficult for me. I also looked up a lot of the lore that is technically available in-game because I found the way to obtain it to be a boring grind at my current skill level.

Rain World is difficult and not in a balanced, fair way, like Dark Souls or Hollow Knight. it will fuck you over at the drop of a hat, for no reason, with no way to recover. it will render the last two hours of gameplay moot if you screw up in the last five minutes. it is not always, strictly speaking, a "well-designed game."

but it is a beautiful game, an immersive game, brimming with emotion right under the steely surface, and if you enjoy simply being in the world and you want to learn more about it, I highly recommend sticking with it in whatever capacity is fun for you.

and then look up all the lore you missed by being a rational person + watch some video essays on youtube about how that insane AI works because understanding what's going under the hood of this game is going to make the slow-paced parts SO much more exciting

everyone who likes fucked up animal stories and getting their shit dismantled by RNG ad nauseum go play rain world right NOW it's FANTASTIC and I LOVE IT SO MUCHH IT'S SO SPECIAL DESPITE THE. THE ALL THAT. THE PAIN

#asktheherd #deertalksrw

[novel-sugar]

So it’s been roughly a week since I finished all the currently available chapters of Dark Deception, and I felt like leaving my thoughts! Gonna be going in chronological order so let’s begin with:

Monkey Business

This level was definitely a strong start for the game. I remember back when the original demo in 2014 came out, so it felt really cool to see the hotel and the Murder Monkeys now in a higher quality. It serves as a good introduction to the main gist of the gameplay: you collect shards and avoid monsters. The difficulty isn’t too bad even without the insane powers you’ll get later on, but it certainly isn’t easy neither. Overall great way to begin this twisted tale!

Elementary Evil

Coupled with Monkey Business, this level also serves as a great introduction, but this time to the gimmick of powers and Malak as an active threat. This level was definitely a lot easier than the first, probably since Agatha is the only real threat for most of it. Fuck that semifinal chase though. Agatha as a whole is adorable in a weird way, found her gremlin shenanigans very fun. Really gotta give props to Kat Cressida for such an energetic performance!

Deadly Decadence

Fuck this level. Plain and simple. Another “tutorial level” (and one of my least favorites). This one introduces stage hazards and hoo boy they couldn’t have picked a more annoying scenario to place them in. The hedge maze in Zone 1 isn’t the worst and can be done easily as long as you’re not careless, but Zone 2 is just frustrating to say the least and Teleportation just didn’t feel like the right power up to introduce here. All in all not impossible, but it took me forever first time I played. The difficulty spike was like slamming into a brick wall during a joyride.

Stranger Sewers

Fuck this level but to a much lesser degree than Deadly Decadence. The last of the “tutorials”, here we’re introduced to enemies that can stun with the Dread Duckies. Needless to say, teleportation really showed it’s worth here due to the sewer water slowing you down in certain areas. Still had my fair share of deaths (many of which were frustrating) but compared to the previous level not nearly as infuriating. The final chase sequence with Doom Ducky was definitely the highlight of this level and really cool, overall this level was ok just wish it was more interesting aesthetically.

Crazy Carnevil

This is where the game really picked up for me, I was already enjoying myself for the most part but the introduction of the Primal Fear ability was a godsend. On top of that, the areas introduced in this level were much more colorful and diverse than in Stranger Sewers so it felt super refreshing. The Clown Gremlins weren’t the hardest enemy to deal with but still not to be underestimated, especially once you get to the Funhouse.  All in all a good level, not my favorite but a nice breath of fresh air from the chaos of Levels 3 and 4.

Torment Therapy

This level was pretty short and to compensate, they had a LOT of shards to collect. Telepathy and Primal Fear really had their work cut out for them whenever the Reaper Nurses were cloaked. The Reaper Nurses themselves have cool designs and it felt surreal hearing Tara Strong in an indie horror game (something I’d get use to for the rest of the game) Overall this level was alright but it could get a little grating at times, the overall map design was alright but nothing too special but I did love the foreshadowing for certain details we learn in the next level. The Matron boss fight was pretty cool but felt very slow paced compared to the previous bosses, a lot of waiting around for the Reaper Nurses to climb up and stun. If there’s one major gripe I’ve had while trying to S rank this level, the beginning goes on for way too long and after several attempts it just gets annoying. Really hope they can add a way to skip ahead to the actual gameplay in a future patch.

Mascot Mayhem

This level was actually the reason I got interested in the game in the first place. Ever since I began, I had been anticipating this level right from the get go, biding my time waiting until I could play it and by God did it deliver. The Joy Joy Gang were such fun characters (especially Penny) and could be a real bitch to deal with at certain points. I only wish that the other zones just had us unlocking different areas of the park instead of just going inside an office building and a factory, felt like a big missed opportunity. Zone 2 was definitely annoying with 2 of Hangry roaming around, especially when Vanish didn’t feel like working. Joykill was pretty alright, not the most interesting design wise but a tough boss nonetheless. The true highlights of this level for me were Best Girl ™️ Penny, Tara Strong must’ve had a field day voicing her, so hyperactive sweet and bloodthirsty all at the same time! Also the story revelations at the end of the level (after a delightful beating from the JJG).

Bearly Buried

Holy hell this level is good. Absolutely one of my favorites for a multitude of reasons: 1) The first area mixing it up by taking our powers away after getting so used to having them by this point. 2) The general vibe and area design are all so good especially Zones 1 & 3. 3) EVERYTHING ABOUT MAMA BEAR. She’s so cute yet so menacing! Once again Tara Strong brings some impeccable VO work, giving her this nice balance of monotone and motherly. Also her themes are honestly some of if not the absolute creepiest in the entire soundtrack so far. Abso-fucking-lutely on par with Penny for being my favorite character. Like with Joy Joy Land, I kinda wish they got a little more creative with the later zones but that’s just a nitpick. Out of all the boss encounters, I actually think the final confrontation with Mama was the most difficult for me, but trial and error is an effective teacher. All in all a fun time that leaves me thirsty for more.

Closing Thoughts: Overall a good game! It’s definitely not for everyone but I feel like a lot of people can get some enjoyment out of it. One thing I haven’t mentioned that I feel should be addressed is the amount of bugs that are currently present in this game (especially in the last 3 levels), but that’s a whole other conversation and I still managed to have fun regardless. If you have $20, a weekend without plans and the slightest interest, I’d say give this game a go! As for me? Now begins the agonizing wait for Chapter 5 and the epic conclusion it’ll bring.

#dark deception #Ramblin' about vidya games

[fridge-reviews]

Shadow Warrior 2

Developer: Flying Wild Hog Publisher: Devolver Digital Rrp: £34.99 (Gog.com, Humblebundle and Steam) Released: 13th October 2016 Available on: Gog.com, Humblebundle and Steam Played Using: Mouse and keyboard Approximate game length: 10 Hours

“Who wants some Wang!” May as well start with that, if you can't handle a dick joke or twenty you may not get on with this game, of course there are other reasons too but I'll get into those in due course. Despite how that opening paragraph might sound I actually don't dislike this game. It's immature and stupid and... it was exactly what I wanted, or rather in part it was. There are aspects of this game where I feel the developers tried to expand on some features that appeared in the last game and then WAY over shot the mark. You play as Lo Wang (I told you there are a lot of dick jokes) a mercenary for hire who also is a master martial artist and apparently chi user who has had things go horribly wrong while on a job.

When you go to start the game you are given the choice of four difficulty levels, though that's not actually true. The 'Insane' difficulty starts at one and goes up to seven. I played the game on the normal difficulty setting since I tend to think of that as the default, though on further playthroughs I did go for harder difficulties. The difference between these difficulties isn't merely that your enemies have more health but they also hit harder and that more enemies have elemental resistances. On top of that the higher the difficulty is the harsher the penalty for dying gets. When you die you get instantly respawned back the last checkpoint you passed but as I just mentioned there is penalty that is incurred. Part of this penalty (regardless of difficulty) is that all your enemies are restored to full health but you also lose some money and all the karma you had gained since your last level up.

“What is karma?” You may be asking, karma is what you gain when you kill enemies and complete missions, after a while this karma will cause you to increase in level and grant you a skill point to spend in the skills window. Along with providing karma enemies you kill will sometimes drop gems that can be used to improve your weapons or in some cases equipped by Lo Wang himself on the upgrade screen. Now, this is where I hit upon my major criticism for the game, as much as I love being able to customise my playstyle I think this game takes it too far. The sheer amount of stats and upgrades available really slows this game down, the Shadow Warrior games have always been about running and gunning and having to dive into menus and spend a lot of time comparing upgrade stats is kind of the opposite of that. Sure, in the last game you also could upgrade your weapons but that was a liniar progression, you didn't have to consider the DPS and damage vulnerability etc etc etc. Here's the thing, I know it sounds like I hate that kind of system but I really don't, I just don't feel it works in this game.

Between missions you will return to Dragon Mountain which is a central hub where you can pick up other missions (such as side missions and bounties), improve your weapons, buy ammo and sell unused gems. Later in the game a set of trails will become available in Dragon Mountain that will allow you to infuse a weapon, this means to improve it by increasing certain stats. You can also embed another gem slot or improve a gem. Doing all of these costs orbs of masmune which are gained by defeating bosses or can be attained in new game plus where you would be awarded a power or new weapon. Due to some free content updates there's a bevvy of additional missions to play. However, what I found was that these additions caused the game to feel like it over stayed its welcome somewhat. Levels randomly generated, using pre-created sections of map, this allows each playthrough to have a unique map while keeping the theming consistent and allows the maps to make sense. Exploration of these maps is often rewarded with more ammo, an upgrade, lore or in some cases a hidden boss enemy that will net you an achievement if you kill it.

Throughout each of the maps there are various shrines that you will find each of which serve one of three functions dependant on the colour. Blue refills your chi, green regenerates health and purple refills ammunition. Simply walking close to a shrine will activate it and once used it becomes drained for the rest of the mission. I've mentioned chi a few times now so I really should explain what it is and does. Chi is a resource that you can use to regenerate your health or perform special attacks. Certain skills will cause your chi to slowly regenerate but sometimes enemies will drop chi in a crystalised form, and of course you could always try and find an appropriate shrine to replenish it.

Combat in this game is hectic, fast paced and now with the addition of elemental strengths and weakness, somewhat tactical. Some creatures are even just immune to a specific type of damage, forcing you to change weapons and tactics. To me this was when the game really shone, there are few things more satisfying than bisecting a demon that is several times larger than you. All in all, this game is pretty good but is bogged down by the sheer amount of upgrades and weapons available to you. Personally I tended to do all my gem swapping and weapon comparisons between missions at Dragon Mountain. But if your up for some fun ultra violence you really can't go wrong with this game.

----

If you’d like to support me I've recently made a Ko-fi, the reviews will continue to be posted donation or not.

#shadow warrior 2 #flying wild hog #devolver digital #video games #video game #video gaming #videogaming #game reviews #video game review #game review #games review #games reviews #video games reviews #first person shooter

[semi-imaginary-place]

gamplay thoughts from reddit

the optimal classes are 15 wyvern lords and 2 warpers lol. By the point that players have accumulated enough resources to do whatever they wants, most aren't building for "optimal" builds. Its hard to say whether the process of playing 999+ hours changes a person or if it just weeds out the people who care about optimal builds but by that point most of the people I've met care more about interesting builds, and treat each play through as a way to explore another aspect of the game. Anyways all hail mortal savant Marianne, and make Dedue your only magic user.

The thing is with NG+ you can always choose not to buy skill levels. Professor rank and skill levels aren't automatically there at the start of the playthough you have to choose to buy them back with renown. If you don't buy skill levels the units have the same skill levels they always do and will have to level up the same way as a NG playthrough. If you unlocked the saint statues you do get to keep those automatically unlocked in NG+. Besides the real fun with NG+ is doing goofy builds like war monk Sylvain.

If I can run Petra as a warlock on maddening and turn Lysithea into a fortress knight you can run anyone with any stats in any class. Lysithea and Marianne are generally pretty stat foolproof its Ignatz and Lorenz that the rng can do wild things to.

I do like how in this game there often isn't 1 best path for each of the units like for example Ferdinand can be run as either an enemy phase dodge tank with his decent speed, personal ability, avo+, and a healing item, or you can run him as a player phase swiftstrikes user. (or you can do neither or you can take a hit to optimization for more versatility and do something in-between). Or Marianne has best utility as a bishop, best mobility as a holy knight, but I've had her be most offensively useful as a mortal savant/dancer magic swords dodge tank.

Optimization can come in many other forms too like right now I'm playing with the idea of tactical nuke striking the final boss of Verdant Wind with one hit which involves a lot of setup and stacking up every additional point of damage I can get onto Lysithea. Her base atk is like 46 or something and I need to get it to 109 which is very achievable I did the math and the lowest I needed was like 31, but its a lot of very careful arrangement so I might ditch this plan and do the map the conventional way.

I also like filling out skills and trying out all the classes, I think I've played all the classes on Byleth. I think all the classes are fun to play but I also think its fun to choose really bad classes. For Byleth outside of Wyvern Lord, Swordmaster with wo dao+ or thunderbrand is very good, Sniper Byleth is also powerful especially on higher difficulties, Falcon Knight (female only) is fun a little weaker but speedier than Wyvern Lord, War Master or Grappler is good if you go for a fist build, DLC War monk/cleric for some white magic.

I've only done Byleth and lords duo and solo runs but I only play on maddening. Tons of people do solo runs or "solo" because everyone uses different rules you can check out youtube or the forum site to see people talking about them. I also go classic and kill everyone off in ch1. For my rules everyone else must be killed in ch1 or as soon as possible and cannot deal damage ever (unequip and die). No recruits. No adjuncts. No nothing. If maining a normal student Byleth/lord cannot interact with an enemy or have anything equipped (weapon, battalion, ect.), they cannot take any action except to move out of attack range, if they are attacked by an enemy unit divine pulse or reset. Silver Snow is probably the best true solo route with Byleth since there is no other required character in part 2.

Byleth is super strong in part 1 but tends to fall off in part 2, Byleth never becomes bad but by the end they usually aren't one of my best units (they're like #3-5 depending on the playthrough). All the students are padded against bad rng level ups but not so the church units, I've had both Shamir and Manuela give me 0 stat increase levels before. I played my first run of Silver Snow with only church recruits and no Black Eagles students and that was fun.

for byleth classes i play most are wyvern lord, sniper if im feeling lazy. These days I pretty much only play on maddening and sword classes aren't well balanced for maddening. Valkyrie is a poor man's dark knight and lacks the growths and spell usages of warlock and especially bishop.

#fe3h

[girinma]

round 1 import rhythm game round-up (in no particular order)

disclaimer: im not a huge rhythm game fanatic, i dont play any of the little gacha apps or online games. i just play them in arcades and i am not good at them.

!!! Flashing Light Warning on the Vids !!!

WACCA Reverse

tragically offline now, wacca is as easy to pick up as people say it is. different movements are obvious so there is not a complex symbol language to learn, and theres no buttons. menus use lots of english loan words in katakana which make it easier to use than other untranslated games, but is a barrier to entry versus translated games. songs are very limited now that its offline, but i still enjoyed it.

CRONO CIRCLE

gimmick haters begone. yes you have to manage the touch screen and buttons and the spinning ring. maybe it becomes too much at higher difficulties but for a medium player like myself the diversity of inputs is fun. the spinning is so good. the touch screen is definitely the weakest aspect of the game though and im really just here for the spinning. it has some k-pop included in the song list as well as the typical.

TETOTE X CONNECT

i did make fun of this before playing it but its so cute and fun. the first time it was offline and was cute but not something i would play again, but online! bops in the songs available and actual ability to save progress. the fact that you and the character are supposed to press the screen at the same time and its mapped to the choreography is also really helpful to predict what it wants you to do. is it just big ipad rhythm game? yes. but is that not enough? dorothy is my friend :)

GROOVE COASTER

best song list out of any of the games at the arcade, and though there are home versions i think they joystick is a lot of the fun. that being said, im not sure how youre supposed to hold it? i always end up with my hand hurting after three songs. i also cannot remember what the different inputs are supposed to be for the life of me. more fun to watch than to play for me.

PROJECT DIVA

i dont think the arcade cabinet is giving us anything the console versions arent already. i was really excited for it last year but its priced the same as the other games despite having such simple controls and being untranslated. just play it at home.

#i also played sound voltex but the japanese was even harder for me to understand than project diva and the controls were a little off so i #cant really judge the gameplay. the sexualization is too far for me to actually want to play tho.... #in conclusion i wish there was a round1 or another import arcade closer to me than fucking atlanta

[tittabang]

Gemcraft labyrinth swarm

Not spending skill points is exactly how you hit a wall in the mid game (generally after getting the true colors skill) because you don't have enough strength to deal with the later waves of battles since your strength is too focussed on the start of the battle. So the skills that lowers the amount of mana you need for level up and increases the mana gain, as well as the skill that lowers the cost for the gems. Originally posted by neonsilver:Maybe I'm at an earlier point in the game, but so far in terms of skills I fared pretty well by focusing most skill points into my mana. I also have a lot of skill points unused and several talisman fragments to increase my starting mana (I think currently I'm starting always at level 3), the starting mana alone is a great help during journey mode. Since there is a diminishing return with the gem special effect, it's likely that you will get more if you add more traps instead of upgrading the gems, but since the more traps you have the more expensive it is to build more, you have to find the right balance. The poison will usually take a big chunk out of the monsters health and is likely to kill swarmlings. I have unlocked the poison and armor tearing gem skill, so I have those always available in endurance mode and they are best in traps. So the skills that lowers the amount of mana you need for level up and increases the mana gain, as well as the skill that lowers the cost for the gems.Īdditionally I have some points in damage increase and in traps. Maybe I'm at an earlier point in the game, but so far in terms of skills I fared pretty well by focusing most skill points into my mana. I can keep most of the monsters on the map in these 2 debuffs by spacing a couple of these guys around in traps I also use "least affected by gem" for red and blue gems. It's actually kind of obnoxious how much that is the case. But even without the battle trait many maps have an excess of swarmling waves anyway. I'm early enough that I don't yet have tools like the beam spell or poison gem skill, but the swarmling battle trait is unlocked early and it seems to be among the more palatable ones (the one that gives every monster layers of shield is just unusable until probably extreme late game). Originally posted by Quizer:I'm also not a huge fan of the swarmling meta. It's nice to find out that it's pretty much tailor-made for poison trap use, so thanks for the tip!īTW, does the "+?% bonus damage against swarmlings" talisman bonus even magnify poison damage? I was wondering how exactly the "least affected by gem specials" priority works. On maps where you don't, you have to spam like 6-8 towers with level 3 gems so you can handle swarmling waves without too many leaks. On maps where you have poison gems and traps, that seems to be the best strategy anyway for grinding XP, and it deals with swarmlings just fine. However, it's possible to get used to it. I'm also not a huge fan of the swarmling meta. which sucks since i've been a huge gemcraft for ~7ish years now. Idk if its a sudden leap in power for swarmlings ~wave 50 or the lack of solid skill point farming early on, but whatever it is has seriously tainted this game for me with a sudden huge wall to progression. I cant unlock new battle tactics to get more xp since theyre locked behind levels with yet again more bs swarmlings. "Just grind for 12 hours on your eariler levels and git gud lol" and this is still early game so I dont have many skill points to spare. They reguire a big investment on the skill tree and a few on the field with high grades to keep up with the wave progression. I went through about a third of the game before having to switch to chilling, at first I just thought the difficulty was higher than past games (I played the crap out of chasing shadows and labyrinth back on armorgames).īut after a few strategy changes I noticed the one wave that would screw me over was always some rando swarmling wave that always somehow managed to overwhelm my defenses and mess up the whole level for me.Ī bunch of towers with lower gems means I cant take down the swarmlings of higher waves with the same numbers that are already problematic.

#Gemcraft labyrinth swarm

[uesp]

This is why I can't play Morrowind rip

I don’t blame you. There’s a lot of games I can’t play, even some I used to, for reasons like Morrowind’s navigation issues. A thought that enters my mind a lot for games with those issues is “this game does not respect my time”. Whenever I think that, I’m just done with it now. I tend to find I’m happier for it.

To be clear I don’t dislike Morrowind, I do in fact like it quite a bit. I also understand that it is a product of its time, popular concepts in game design evolve with time, with a lot of what I would consider bad ideas falling to the wayside with time (along with some game design ideas that should really be given more tries, although that’s super tangential).

At the same time I’m willing to admit to things I dislike about the game. Morrowind is not sacred, it can be criticized. I don’t like running into unjustified difficulty walls (without taking advantage of exploits). If a game encourages you to explore, and exploring the world is arguably what Morrowind MOST encourages you to do, getting cut off by enemies who are arbitrarily too powerful is terrible design. That’s not to say I dislike a game expecting you to get more powerful to expand what areas you can explore, far from it. But it should be a fairly natural process of discovery. It should be clear that I’m heading into danger.

One good example of this is Red Mountain. Red Mountain in its entirety is gated off by a giant glowing and ominous wall with only one easy entrance. As you approach it the weather becomes increasingly grim, before the entire world turns a sinister shade of red. That sets the tone. It tells me, without necessarily saying anything (although NPCs also warn you), that what’s in there is going to be much more dangerous, and that I shouldn’t go that way unless I’m sure I’m ready.

A random human living in a cave being considerably more powerful than a different random human living in a similar cave is comparatively bad. Sadly, I feel that this is much more common than the warnings with Red Mountain.

To change topics, the Dark Brotherhood NPCs constantly attacking you whenever you rest if you have the Tribunal expansion (which most people will have at this point, as most copies of the game you can easily acquire come with it by default now) is absolutely awful design of the highest level. If you aren’t familiar, when you start a new game or load a save after enabling the Tribunal expansion, there will be persistent, respawning enemies that attack you when you rest until you go to a higher level area to put a stop to their attacks. They start spawning immediately, and they become increasingly dangerous if you just try to put up with the attacks.

What were they thinking? In my opinion, the implementation of these Dark Brotherhood assassins to get you to start Tribunal is a solid contender for the single worst developer decision in any Elder Scrolls game. I’m sure there have been worst design choices in games overall, but I think it might be an honorable mention on a list of all-time worst game design decisions. I have actually tested this with a group of people who have never played Morrowind before, and the DB attacks were consistently a wall they couldn’t get past. I don’t think a person can pick up Morrowind today without either having a game guide (like the UESP), using mods to fix this, or just dropping the difficulty down (a feature hidden in the menu). That’s really, really bad.

I know we’ve been talking about this in other posts, but while talking about things from Morrowind that make it harder for me to get into now, I would be remiss to not go more in-depth with my problems with it (especially since that was the anonymous message’s primary gripe). As Morrowind does not have quest markers, you are reliant on directions NPCs give you. Directions like this...

"The burial caverns lie to the south-southeast of the camp, a north-facing door in a little hill halfway between us and the slopes of Red Mountain. Go north from the camp to the water, then turn east. At a rock cairn on the beach, turn and head straight south until you find the door. The spirits of our ancestors guard the caverns. They will attack, and will kill you if they can. Force your way past them, or evade them, get the bow, and return to prove your worthiness."

Those are actual directions you get during part of the main quest.

Honestly, I can often remember where to go or just instinctively pull up our interactive map if I need it, but if I didn’t have foreknowledge of Morrowind locations, this would bother me immensely. I don’t have unlimited free time, I would like to do the parts of the game that are fun and rewarding, not search mindlessly through Morrowind’s ash and fog-covered countryside for a gray door on the side of a gray rock. When a game doesn’t respect that, I have a hard time playing it. TES has a special place in my life, but I can absolutely understand how things like this are deal breakers for people.

But to change tracks, and to end this post, I would like to leave you with something I absolutely love about Morrowind. A lot of games play with the trope of you having to prove you are “worthy”. Morrowind absolutely does, you interact with a ton of characters who outright despise you, and barely tolerate you enough to send you to complete some task to prove your worth, before sending you off on a dozen more missions to continue to prove yourself, before sending you to other groups who you then have to prove yourself to. However, Morrowind lets you throw up your hands at their demands and snide comments and go “You are all garbage people, and I dislike you all immensely. I don’t need you or your perfunctory approval or your stupid artifacts. Now I’m going to go kill the monsters none of you could because I am AMAZING and HARDCORE and YOU ARE NOT. And I’m going to do it all while FLYING because I am too good to walk on the same dirt you all are confined to.”

And honestly, every game should let you do that.

#UESP #Lore #The Elder Scrolls #Morrowind

[radramblog]

Halo Through its Guns: Halo CE

I think this is a bit of an experiment, but one I intend to see all the way through. I’ve been thinking a lot about this series recently, not to mention playing a lot of it, so I’ve wanted to find a way to properly discuss it. Perhaps even analyse it.

If there’s one thing people gravitate towards talking about in a first person shooter game, especially a series so long-running as Halo, it’s going to be the guns. They’re taking up a significant portion of the screen a lot of the time, and a lot of development time is going to be spent making sure they all look and sound good and are satisfying to use. As a result, I think the weapons in Halo are a good lens through which to view each entry in the series.

So, I’m going to be using one gun per game as a means to discuss each one. At this point, I’ve lined most of my picks up already (and hoping to have actually played 5 by the time I get to it), so I’m confident most of them are going to provide an interesting discussion.

Therefore, this is: Halo: Combat Evolved, through its iconic gun. No, it’s not the Magnum, it’s the Plasma Pistol.

It’s kind of hard to talk about Halo: CE without talking about all of gaming of the era, because it was kind of a huge shift in the landscape as far as FPS games went. Unfortunately, I’m too young to have actually lived through all this, but the game is kind of to 2000s shooters as Doom was to 90s shooters, and kind of as Seinfeld is to sitcoms. That is, it defined them so utterly that all the future iterations of this kind of gameplay make Combat Evolved feel a little antiquated. I suppose being a 20-year-old game doesn’t help at this point.

Something Halo: CE owes to those 90s games is the concept of the weapon sandbox. It’s the multiplayer style that I believe pretty much just Halo (and Battle Royale games, kind of) has kept going with, where you start with a couple of default, standard equipment choices and have to scrounge together the rest on the map. The majority of engagements are still going to take place using those default pieces of equipment, but either map knowledge or luck can help give you more options and turn the tide in your favour, letting you pull a more powerful weapon out of your pocket as needed.

Part of Halo’s innovation on this design is, ironically, the limitation. Specifically, only carrying two guns at a time means you can’t just run around and grab everything you see- every gun is different, and choosing to pick one up means losing the benefits of one of your others. In Team games, it pays to have different people grab different weapons, such that you’re more versatile depending on game type or what direction and distance your enemies approach from.

The important thing that Halo: CE got right, and that many future entries would struggle with, is that every single weapon in it has a unique niche. There’s only one Sniper Rifle for extreme range, only one Shotgun for unparalleled close-range lethality. The Assault Rifle is a solid medium/close range bullet hose that’s effective against both shields and unshielded players, and the Magnum is, while maybe a little too good, perfect for picking off damaged enemies at medium to long range. And also, close range, because it’s a bit much.

But of course, this is all from the perspective of Multiplayer, and Halo: CE obviously has a Campaign as well. And with the Campaign comes weapons you need to design for your enemies to wield, which brings us to the Plasma Pistol. The most common weapon in the hands of the Covenant’s Grunts and Jackals (and later Drones and Skirmishers), and one of (I believe) only 5 guns to appear in every entry in the series. (The others being the Shotgun, Sniper Rifle, Rocket Launcher, and Needler. I guess you could count the FRG but it’s only kind of in CE, and also the grenades).

A deliberate part of the design for Halo: CE’s Campaign and Multiplayer was an emphasis on player movement. This is kind of interesting, because the Chief actually moves pretty slowly compared to previous Shoot Men, but part of the idea was that every Covenant weapon would shoot visible, slower moving projectiles such that the player would potentially be able to predict and dodge them, allowing for a higher skill cap at higher difficulties. This also helps add a consistent flavour to Covenant weaponry, as bright glowing colours are both easy to distinguish and substantially different enough from the gunmetal of the UNSC equipment to feel alien. There will never be a point where you confuse a Grunt holding a Plasma Pistol from one holding a Needler, or an Elite with an Energy Sword from one with a Plasma Rifle.

The Plasma Pistol is the bread and butter of Halo’s enemy engagement design. Most of the time in enemies’ hands it’s effectively a peashooter, bright and distracting, but not dealing too much damage, just enough to be annoying, and to supplement more dangerous weapons carried by other enemies. It does, however, have the Overcharge mode, which ensures that every one of these little Grunts and Jackals remains a threat, with the ability to entirely strip your shields (or deal significant damage to your health bar) if they wise up and go for it. An Overcharging Plasma Pistol is extremely obvious, though, with a big green glow and an iconic noise making the enemy most threatening you easy to find. It means the enemy fights are never quite the same, and adds a sense of urgency to them as well, especially on early difficulties.

The overcharge is also the core of how the Plasma Pistol functions in Multiplayer as well, as well as taking full advantage of other innovations in Halo’s game design. In Multiplayer, the Plasma Pistol is easily best known for its inclusion in the “noob combo”- that is, Overcharge the shields, kill them with the Magnum. This is a highlight of the specialisation in weapons in Halo: CE- the Plasma Pistol is great against the first half of their health, in the form of the Shields, but it’s practically useless against the actual, well, Health. Because of this, the Plasma Pistol is not a default weapon in Multiplayer like it is in Campaign, it’s niche necessitates a role as a pickup weapon. You’re never going to want it if you already have, say, a Shotgun or Sniper Rifle, since those are such similarly specific weapons that your backup being a Plasma Pistol is not a good idea.

But of course, guns are not your only combat option in Halo. One of the most innovative points of design in this game is the constant access to three attack options at a time. In previous FPS games, the options for Grenades and Melee were usually in the form of separate weapon slots, whereas in Halo you have access to all three at the same time on different buttons. This gives the whole game a more fluid feel, and there’s a reason it’s pretty much now the default for games of this style- it looks cool, it’s less awkward, and it feels slick as hell. The Plasma Pistol gets to lean into this versatility nicely as well, as Melee damage or either Grenade type at close enough range will kill next to an overcharge. You’re never left with no way of hitting people’s health after you dunk their shields, especially since the Pistol works best at close range.

In summation. Halo: Combat Evolved was genre-defining as a first-person shooter, capturing what would become the default for gaming to come for a while. The Plasma Pistol is an excellent example of this, leaning into all the innovations of the overall game’s design and producing an iconic piece of video game firepower. It’s slick, it’s effective, and it looks and sounds extremely cool.

The rest of the series would never quite capture the exact same balance as Halo: CE, but as the games changed and technology improved, so too did the guns. Join me next time, when everything gets a bit more Two.

#ramble #halo #halo combat evolved #plasma pistol #video games

[bramblemantle]

Would you mind dropping a little pitch for rainworld? I've been looking for a new game to play

Oh I’d be happy to! It’s one of my favourite games :)

So what originally attracted me to the game was the lore, which I won’t go too far into in case you would rather discover that yourself, but even knowing mostly everything about the game I’ve still had a blast playing it!

So the premise of Rain World is that you play a little creature called a slugcat in an environment that is very hostile to you. Most things are gonna want to eat you, but since they’re all ai animals they can be outsmarted and outmaneuvered and sometimes even befriended! A main selling point of the game is that you can play how you want to. You can play as an animal simply trying to survive and potentially never engage with the game’s story or stumble into the ending on your own. Or you could go hunting down information, and explore the wide and beautiful map for secrets and just for fun ! The lore is a bit hidden, but there are some good resources outside of the game for getting into it, such as the rain world wiki & two good lore analysis videos up on YouTube

It has a reputation of being a harder game, with a very low percentage on steam at least of people teaching even the main achievements. Some regions of the game are tougher than others but I’ve found it’s not too harsh. It’s very easy to die, but the consequences are just setting you back to the last ‘savepoint’, as well as a mechanic called Karma where higher levels may be required to travel between regions, and you’ll lose a level upon death (levels are regained upon successfully reaching ‘savepoints’)

In my current playthrough I’m just going around exploring! I do the ‘main plot’ stuff and have visited the game’s two existing npcs (both characters I really like) and now I’m just honing my skills and going through areas I haven’t travelled yet ! There is a hard mode unlocked after completing normal mode that ups the difficulty in several neat ways that I am nowhere near ready to tackle, so I’m trying to get better at movement and combat as I go. I’m not incredible at video games but I still have a good time playing and it feels real good to pull off some tough moves. My favourite part (besides the lore n characters) is probably the creatures themselves, I love the animation of all the critters in this game! They really feel like real animals rather than stock video game enemies! Also I will mention the soundtrack slaps, the atmosphere of the game is real fun. The setting is all like abandoned industry and such !

Okokok. At risk of rambling about this game for too long I’ll stop here, but I’d like to share this playlist of cool animations people have made for the game 👀! There are spoilers for some of the background lore and some of the key points of the game, but removed from the context it might just be another push to check it out :) ! It’s just a good game man I love it so much I’m sorry I have gone on for so long I just like it a lot

Edit as an addendum, I forgot to mention there’s a really cool modding community if you play on PC, most notable is this one huge mod of a whole extra game mode/story that kind of serves as an unofficial prequel? Most of the game’s lore happens prior to the story so the mod takes those tidbits and runs with it. I haven’t played that mod yet but I’ve seen a bit of it and it’s neat, even more cool content!

#rain world #bramble rambles #I am sorry I am simply excited !!! #good game. real good game #very pretty game with very neat lore #feels real good to move as slugcat all the animations are *chefs kiss* #upon reflection I’m not sure how coherent this is but I tried

[bigfrozenfan-fanfics]

Chapter 11 - Kolgrimr

Links: Chapter overview, Character list, Map, Glossar Rating: M over all Publishing cycle: each Friday at 6:00 pm CEST dst/UTC +2:00 on (link)

Remarks: all my chapters contain carefully selected music tracks. It’s your own decision if you want to use them or not while reading. The purpose is to musically support the respective mood of the plot. If you can please use a browser for reading (not the Tumblr app) due to the text formatting and music.

It was an idyllic place. The rays of the midday sun glittered on the calm sea and fine water droplets enveloped them as they came closer to the rushing waterfall. Colorful flowers blossomed everywhere and a few butterflies rose up, circling around them curiously. Elsa watched their wild fluttering with fascination and tried to catch one of them, but without success.

“This place is beautiful, Anna. Thank you for showing it to me.”

“You're welcome, Elsa.”

Elsa stepped to the side of the waterfall and held her hand into the tumbling currents. Drops of water splashed in her face and she smiled.

Anna watched her sister and rejoiced with her. She seemed so different now in her new life here in the North than in her past days when she was a ruler in her home, especially now, in her Northuldra attire. She looked happier and more relaxed. Nothing seemed to bother her anymore. No bad memories from the past distracted her and she obviously enjoyed life. It seemed leastways.  

“Is it just as beautiful in Arendelle?” Elsa asked aloud to drown out the sound of the waterfall. She looked at Anna with a dreamy smile and came closer again.

“Well, it's different. There is more going on there, many more people live in Arendelle and there are many big houses. But we also have a waterfall, even if it doesn't look as stunning as this one. Our home is beautiful in other ways. You'll love it.” Anna was about to say 'and if you remember everything, then ...', but didn't say it after all. She didn't want to destroy this moment.

“Well, I will see soon and I already look forward to it.” Elsa hesitated briefly, stepped up to Anna and then asked, “Which of us is actually the older one?”

“That's you, Elsa, five years older than me. You're almost twenty-five years old now.”

Elsa nodded and quietly repeated that number. “How far is Arendelle from here? How long does it take to get to there?”

“About a good day's journey by wagon, a little faster on the horse,” Anna said and almost wanted to add that Elsa was much faster on the water while she was riding Nokk, but let it go. “Why do you ask?”

“From your letters it's clear that I had an important task here and because of that you missed me very much. I had the impression that we both got along very well with each other. But why did I stay here and not ride from Arendelle to do this from time to time? Apparently I hadn't been with you for many weeks, so what could have been so important about it?”

Anna felt the tears rise up inside her. If only Elsa had thought so at that time. “It was your own decision, and I had the feeling that you felt happy about it. I didn't want to be selfish, but you had found yourself and your destiny here. I didn't want to stand in the way of that, and besides, we both had this task together, just in different places.”

“But you are the queen of Arendelle, and surely you have a lot of other duties, I can imagine. So what kind of task was that?”

Anna hesitated. Would Elsa understand if she explained what she was until recently? But at some point she had to find out anyway, and if her memories came back one day, it would become clear to her all by itself, just all of it. They had sworn years ago never to hide anything from each other again, and it was she who made Elsa that promise. It was now up to her not to break it and to tell Elsa the truth.

“Um ... so at the risk of you doubting me, but believe me, I'm telling you the truth. The short version is this. We both are, or rather were the bridge between man and nature, between the nature spirits and our two peoples. We are both half Northuldra. You were the fifth spirit who, together with the other four nature spirits up here in the north, kept the balance and were the interface to their magic. You should have seen yourself at the end, in your bright white new outfit, when we saw each other again just on this beach. After you had found out the truth about our past, me having destroyed the dam with the help of the earth giants, and the forest as well as the Northuldra finally being freed again. You died in the process, and later came back to life.” Anna paused briefly and then quietly added, “You can't imagine how I felt when Olaf dissolved in my arms and I believed at that moment that I had lost you forever.” She lowered her head and a single tear rolled down her cheek.

Elsa looked at her with open mouth in disbelief and fell into silence for several long moments. One could clearly see that she was torn between doubt, amazement and anger that she could remember absolutely nothing of it.

“So not only can I magically build a living snowman, but you mean to say that I am a higher being beyond that?”

Anna took a deep breath and raised her eyebrows. “Um ... well, actually ...,” she didn't know what to say.

“I don't want to be that. I want to be normal like you, like any human being. Everything's all right here, isn't it? The plants are growing and thriving and everything is so beautiful in this place,” Elsa made a sweeping gesture with her arm, “The Northuldra are doing very well too. Everything is already in a balance that could not be much better.”

Anna couldn't believe how her sister suddenly thought about all this and just looked at her speechlessly and smiled.

“How was I back then, before everything you said about me, and what did I do in Arendelle ... except for building a living snowman? Do we have any brothers or sisters? Do any of our parents still live?” Elsa asked and could hardly contain her curiosity.

The moment Elsa mentioned her parents, Anna's good mood vanished in an instant. Tears began to collect in her eyelids. “It's a long story, Elsa, which I'd better not tell you until we get to Arendelle. But we have no other brothers or sisters, and our parents, they are ...” Anna's voice broke and she began to sob softly, “Unfortunately, they are no longer alive.”

“So we have only the two of us and you are all alone in Arendelle,” Elsa said sadly. She took a step towards her sister and pulled her into a deep and long hug. “I owe you an apology. I promise never to leave you alone again. Nothing holds me here anymore, Anna. I'll come back to you to Arendelle and stay there.”

Anna could no longer hold back her tears and sobbed unrestrainedly again into Elsa's shoulder. But this time they were tears of joy and Elsa felt a deep understanding for her sister and regret that she had not been there for her for a long time.

~~~

Gyda worked on her kota, stuffing some of the largest holes between the wooden boards with moss and tufts of grass. It was very warm and the work was exhausting for her. She wiped the sweat from her forehead and was just getting up from her wooden stool when a familiar voice behind her asked, “Can I help you? It's a shame nobody's building you a new cabin.”

She drove around. “Kolgrimr! Are you mad showing your face here during the day?”

“Hello mother, nice to see you too, and as for your question, it soon won't make any difference. Tonight I will put my plan into motion and avenge my father.”

Gyda took a step towards him and stood in front of him with a reproachful expression. She had to look up to him because he was more than a head taller than her, taller even than most Northuldra men.

“Do you want to jeopardize everything just by wandering around so carelessly? You could be seen ... and next warn the others. Come on, get in my kota quickly.” Gyda pulled him behind her by the hand and he willingly let her.

Once inside, she turned to him and asked, “What are you planning to do?”

He passed along her with a grin while she did not let him out of her sight, sat down on one of the furs on the floor and put his long birch stick beside him. “Can you spare some food, Mother? I'm starving.”

She blew out the air and asked sarcastically, “Anything else, son?”

But, of course, she couldn't refuse her son anything and went to a low table with a little basket on top. She fished out two strips of smoked reindeer meat and gave it to him. He took a big bite of it and chewed it with relish. He still had that crazy grin on his face.

“As of this morning, everyone's looking for me anyway. I could read it in their heads. That Yelana is indeed a smart one. I just wonder how she knows about me.” He looked at her knowingly and bit off another big piece of meat.

She wandered broodingly through the room while his amused look followed her. Then she stopped and turned to him. “From me. But she had already known it somehow. She is indeed very clever.”

“Does she also know that I visit you regularly in the evening?”

“Don't play with me, Kolgrimr! You already know the answer.”

“I'm sorry. You're right, of course. There is hardly anyone with whom I have difficulty reading his mind. You're not one of them.”

“We never got along very well, Yelana and I, and if it hadn't been for this thing of the angry nature spirits and that fog, I might be the leader of our tribe now. But she took advantage of the situation, and everyone accepted her immediately.”

“Maybe you shouldn't have retreated there and gone for an open confrontation with her.”

“Perhaps. However, I certainly wouldn't have been as understanding to the rest of the men from Arendelle as she was. Questionable if more of our brave men and women would then have perished in the wake of my decisions. What's worse is that you couldn't succeed your father, to be the fifth spirit. This would have changed everything for both of us. Instead, the nature spirits and Ahtohallan itself chose a person outside of our people, on top of that a descendant of that damned king.”

“Yes, and I still don't understand it. I could feel it and I even saw it in Ahtohallan itself, as you know. Back then, until a few years ago, it was even easier for me to enter the glacier, even if only for a very short time. But the cold inside became more and more unbearable for me over time and I was sure that Ahtohallan didn't want me there anymore without having to kill me. I must have become unworthy and should stay away of my own free will.” Kolgrimr laughed gloatingly and then clenched his hands into a fist. “But I managed to wrest a few secrets from Ahtohallan before it denied everyone access. Once there was a bridge behind the ice tunnel and it was easy to enter the great hall. But one day Ahtohallan destroyed that bridge and I just made it out before it fell into the depths behind me.”

“But it was of no use and who could have guessed that the new fifth spirit would master ice magic and create a new access for herself. At least that's what I heard later. I guess she proudly told everyone in the camp and bragged about how great it is inside Ahtohallan and how easily and naturally she can go in and out there.” Gyda pointed her index finger at him and looked at him vengefully, “And that's another reason that bitch has to vanish. She has robbed you of your inheritance and blocked your path forever. She must die.”

He sighed, “Tonight I will simply walk into the camp and destroy this brood from Arendelle before they can leave as planned. The fact that even their new queen is with them is very convenient. So my revenge will taste even sweeter. Then I'll see.” He scratched his chin and thought for a moment. “Maybe I should take this opportunity to make sure that someone finally builds you a new kota. You deserve better than that.”

He reached into a side pocket of his cape and pulled out two spearheads and a grindstone. The tips were flattened on one side to form a curved edge. He began to sharpen them slowly and deliberately, one by one. Finally he reached for his battlestaff and mounted the finished tips on both ends. His mother had been watching him the whole time with a thoughtful look.

“You wouldn't want to hurt any Northuldra, would you? These are old hunting spikes and deadly in battle,” Gyda complained and looked at him worried.

“Don't worry, mother, none of our people will be seriously hurt. But whoever gets in my way should realize immediately that this is no joke and in that I'm serious. At least I hope nobody is stupid enough to take the chance.”

Then he reached under his cape and pulled out a long, richly decorated knife behind his back. He held it out to his mother with both hands. “Remember this?”

Gyda nodded without a word. She would recognize it among thousands. The handle had been carved from one piece of reindeer antler and polished smooth according to old traditional craftsmanship. It was his father's knife.

“This one is intended for the royal siblings.” He laid it down gently and his crazy grin returned to his face as he looked at it.

“They will be at dinner, and they will all be sitting together. They have no chance, any more than Father had a chance. He would be proud of me.”

~~~

---

I hope you have enjoyed this chapter! Please leave a comment if you liked the story, I would be pleased to read your opinions, even criticisms. If you want to be tagged as soon I publish the next chapter please let me know, except you are already tagged :-)

Credits : Many thanks to HARU (@ xlayers) for the commissioned fantastic fanart! It’s so beautiful, and to see scenes of my story come alive in this way makes me so happy. There will be many more from this outstanding artist in the coming chapters! 

Remarks: Don't be confused that Anna still wears her Frozen II outfit in this fanart. HARU haven’t created the outfit with her new jacket yet and i hope we'll see this one day. But Anna’s wearing it in my story.

Tagging: @karma26 @whether-near-to-me-or-far @annaofthenorthernlights @igotelsapregnanthelp

#frozen #frozen2 #frozen3 #fanfic #epic novel #the broken bridge #chapter 11 #end of the first part #bigfrozenfan

[zeta-in-de-walls]

My thoughts on the MCC games

So my mind is still dwelling on MCC. Damn, I loved it. 

I thought I’d share my thoughts about each game! (Note: I always watch Tommy for MCC.)

Big Sales at Build Mart. It’s alright. I think it’s good as an early game - I enjoyed that it was first this MCC, allowing the teams to get used to each other and it didn’t matter too much in points. Whereas I kinda dislike it late game - it’s not one I want to be high pressure. In some respects its a lot more chill as you’re less directly competing against others and more working together to build something. It still feels tense and as a viewing experience its alright but painful to see streamers making mistakes which they inevitably do as its so high pressure. The changes of getting rid of the boats was so, so good. Losing Buildmart before was often because you failed a turn and lose so much progress which was way too devastating. much easier to navigate now too. (I didn’t like how in one build Tommy couldn’t see a block properly under glass, but usually the builds are very nice. 

Hole in the wall - this one I’ve always really enjoyed watching. It’s a fun game with a great level of difficulty. Tommy’s pretty good at this one too and I like that he has a real habit of messing around in it. This game is the one where Wilbur lost his voice in MC11 after too much shouting. In MCC13 it was singing christmas songs. Something about it just makes everyone want to mess around. I like how although its mostly a solo game, team communication is useful ust shouting out colours and shouting out warnings. I saw Vikkstar being warned about approaching walls before they killed him a couple times by his teammates for instance and I like that. (Contrast ace race where its so hard to give much meaningful advice.) That said, the game is extremely glitchy! Hbomb demonstrated it this round but people have always been sliding through walls plus players with higher ping get an advantage. I would understand if they wanted to shelf it. I think it’d be hard to fix - 40 players in one area with moving slime walls will be so hard to handle. I wonder if they could have 10 separate maps instead or something to make it more feasible to play as I’ll be sad if it has to go.

Skybattle - really really fun from Tommy’s perspective! You can tell he loves it so I love it too. Rounds kinda have a tendency to all end the same way with little bridges towards the centre, might be cool if there was some existing narrow walkways to the middle as well and maybe new maps though I do like the current map as well! Hah, but yeah I love it! It’d probably be too much played too late but its the absolute perfect mid round game and every MCC there’s always really cool exciting plays. Its really fast-paced which sets it apart.

Survival Games - it’s a classic. probably a little frustrating points wise as its a single round meaning an early death is so costly. survival points in this one are worth so much. I seriously enjoy it though it is not one you want too late in the tournament. Also a good opener as its not too intense from the start, even if it gets pretty intense as the map shrinks. The maps for these games are always awesome and well-designed. (I think puffy might have fallen in an inescapable hole though? She was getting attacked at the time so maybe it was escapable but yeah - careful playtesting is important to make sure no spots like those exist. Which is hopefully the case!)

Ace race - I greatly enjoy this game. Tommy’s generally surprisingly good at it which helps. It just seems like a really fun minigame to play. Obviously this MCC the map had some errors and was maybe too confusing. The map was long and every moment had something new to process, a chiller section or two where you can observe and take it in a bit more would have been nice. It is a little fiddly with a lot of different mechanics leading to glitches. Tridents are just annoying! But its one thats a good time. I only dislike how its so much a solo experience - you can try and give advice to your team but its so hard to give useful input unless you’re right by your teammate. I quite enjoy this one being fairly late game as its exciting but not so harsh as the elimination games.

Battle Box: very cool game assuming the map’s fun! (Some MCCs had ones I didn’t care for.) And they remember to never ever give any players TNT ever again. There’s a bunch of tactics to employ, custom items, flanking. It’s just a really nice strategic mini-game. I like how its lots of ranged combat and there’s enough rounds that you don’t feel too bad about a mistake. It’s good anywhere in the tournament. Glad it got added to the practice server as its a lot of fun to watch streamers just play. Though they don’t ever practise the wool rushing tactics on there. xD Shame Tommy’s not built for this game though.

TGTTOS: I love this game! Lots of fun to watch and its kinda solo but also you can help your team and work together with some effort. Hmmm... though some of the individual maps for this game can be very hit-or-miss. I think generally you want like at least 80% of players to complete the map. A few of them have been too long and hard. Lots of punching goes on in this game and I kinda don’t mind. The one with the wool targets was probably a little too confusing. I like most of the original maps for this game aside form the cliffside punching one though I understand the same maps every time would be bad. Rocket jumping seems kinda finicky so I’m not a fan. Tridents, elytras, ice, and bridging are all great fun though and I do enjoy the variety. Again its good anywhere in the tournament! 

Parkour Tag - Not a fan. I like it in concept I guess but aah the scoring is annoying. It gives you points for survival which is so dependent on the person hunting you and it feels like there’s strategy about choosing the hunter for each opponent but in reality there’s not. I kinda wish the same person could be the hunter every round just so one person has that role. The maps have never felt that fun as it generally feels like scrambling around. Also this game rarely shifts the scores much at all, the ways points are awarded is just too strange. Maybe a bigger map and longer rounds? I don’t know though. This game is terrible as an end game and I guess its okay earlier. Yeah, I really wish there was a good parkour type game but this one isn’t it for me. (this is still much better than Parkour warrior mind!)

Rocket Spleef - Alright. I feel like this is one that’s hard on new players as rocket jumping is odd - getting kills in this game is also not easy. Hopefully they practice the mechanics on the practice server. That said I do enjoy this one quite a bit, it’s fun to watch. The deal breaker is the map. Some maps are just way better than others. I think by the end of a round the maps should be pretty much destroyed and I think it’d be awesome if rounds ended with only one or two people left alive. As long as its got a good map though it’s plenty of fun! It’s exciting without being really intense or high pressure and three rounds is a good amount. Good anywhere in the tournament.

Bingo But Fast - I don’t know how I feel about this one. Please don’t do it the nether again, that was too much. xD I think this game is too intense for me - it’s really fast-paced as completions start happening right away and earlier ones are worth more points. Also it’s another that is stressful to watch the streamer play non-optimally. That said it is an interesting game and I think its cool to have a mode like survival minecraft - generally I like how many games highlight different fun activities in minecraft. It’s such a varied tournament! Again I like this one best mid-tournament, not too late or too early. Maybe I’d like it a bit more without the locking out. like after the first five completions, the remaining completions of it still get a few points - a fixed amount. This is an interesting game but it’s also a really hard game! 

Sands of Time - This one is pretty awesome. A lot of fun to watch even if its so so painful for a streamer to lose.  Nice dungeon crawler feel, with cool maps and exciting traps. The vaults matter a lot to points. I like how less confident players can do safer stuff and its a very team-oriented game in the best possible way. As you don’t know how the other teams are doing it gets pretty intense and works well as a last game. Some traps are a bit annoying and I think ones requiring a second player are cool in concept but a bit too demanding. Also please please never make it out of snow again. People kept missing the snow! That was painful. Tommy’s interesting to watch and has successfully solved some risky traps even if he sometimes makes poor decisions xD 

Damn this turned out long! Listen, I love this event. All the games are delightfully unique and challenging and fun to watch. These are just my personal opinions. This is such a well-made and impressive tournament with such a great variety of games testing different things. 

Feel free to argue with me about any of these. Sorry parkour tags fans. xD

#mcc #analysis #thoughts #tommyinnit #long post #i would have ncluded the legacy games too but eh #footrace was fun but ace race is better #parkour warrior was alright at first before practicing and was more than due to retire #it did not fit in with the tournament #its too much an individual skill thing #and so frustrating to watch #lockout bingo also existed i guess #bingo but fast was an improvement i suppose #no strong opinions

[true-blue-sonic]

Potential spoilers for Sonic 2022/Sonic Rangers and lots of rambles and ideas about how I think the game might work under the cut!

So with the news of Sonic Rangers getting me quite excited indeed, I’ve been mulling over some things, namely: how would an open-world Sonic game actually work? It’s something I’ve seen fans ask for for ages, so it’s great to see that it might get realised! Obligatory side-note: the only true open-world game I have ever played is Breath of the Wild, so all my experience with the genre is based on that game alone.

To get right to the point: from what I know, the main focus of open-world games is being able to explore, explore, explore! Next to beautiful scenery and challenging terrains the world map is littered with sidequests and collectables so you actually have something to travel to, as well. Although Sonic has experience with hub worlds, he’s never had a true open world to play through that wasn’t split up in Zones and Acts. That allows for lots of opportunities, but there are also some things I am very curious about regarding how this will be tackled!

So, the first ‘problem’ of sorts I can come up with is Sonic’s speed. This dude can run at the speed of sound, which for me can cause two potential issues related to his moving speed and world size. We want Sonic to be fast, but we also want a large world, and I can foresee some difficulties there. As such I quickly came up with two scenarios to describe solutions to both: 

In the first scenario, Sonic is… basically Not Fast, in order to be able to keep the world size to more manageable levels. He’ll be kind of like a Lost World!Sonic, where he wasn’t particularly fast either. While it would certainly help the development team with creating the map, since there is less to render and program, I feel like it would be somewhat unsatisfactory to play around in such a limited space with a slow hedgie.

In the second scenario, Sonic can run at Boost-level speeds, but in order for exploring and gameplay to be satisfying the would the world will have to be massive for it to feel like an actual place. If you can run from one edge to the other in minutes at best it’ll likely stifle the sense of immersion and desire to explore that open-world games (should) instil, and just like in the first scenario this wouldn’t feel very rewarding and fun to me either. This scenario will certainly be more of a challenge to realise for the development team, though I do hope they’re taking this route; the more places there are to travel around in, the better!

A second problem I can think of is how Sonic’s speed will influence gameplay. Going by the second scenario where Sonic can run pretty quickly, I fear that it’ll make gameplay, especially the puzzle and platforming sections, quite difficult. No-one likes flinging themselves off a cliff accidentally when trying to go just a bit faster during a puzzle or platforming section, after all! I’d say this is luckily solved easily enough by implementing the controls they had in Lost World (a run button… sorry everyone) combined with the boost mechanics; it would make Sonic able to walk, run at a controllable pace, and boost at high speeds at the same time. Especially with the current consoles it should be possible to give each an individual button, so you don’t go flying off the map when you just want to run slowly instead! And it would make the world more fun too: you can go fast if you so desire, or you can take it more easy and look around if you want while still going at a decent pace.

I was also thinking about what the world itself could look like. One of the problems in ‘06 is its massive hub worlds... with absolutely nothing in them to make them even remotely interesting, nor a way to travel around through them quickly. I do believe this is solved in Rangers by packing the game with puzzles and platforming sections, which would imply that there’s plenty of things to do! That’s assuring, at least for me.

Also, in BotW, one of the main features of exploring is Link’s ability to climb just about anything if the weather is nice. Now, I must say that I really don’t see Sonic as a climber, someone who can realistically scale mountains and high buildings at ease. The leak does say that platforming is involved, though that is not exactly the same as climbing. Maybe we’ll get something parkour-like like we got in Lost World, with Sonic being able to run against walls and thus reaching higher places that wat? It would certainly allow for more opportunities to traverse over the map, while also adding something more original to the genre.  

I have tons of questions too. The main one as of now is if we will be able to play with other characters, e.g. with each having a special power that allows them to explore the world differently? (E.g. Sonic’s faster speed, Tails’ flight, Knuckles’ digging, and Amy’s hammer, to name a few). I’d love that, though I’m not getting my hopes up. Perhaps it is preferable that the development team focuses on Sonic exclusively and give him a solid moveset, instead of needing to program a dozen characters while risking only one or two actually play satisfactory. I’m sure we’ll get more details about that and the alleged human ghost girl soon enough, though! I can’t wait ^-^

This is just my thoughts and what I think might happen in the game! I’m very much looking forward to learning more about it!

#sonic rangers #again this is just my own thoughts and opinions #but I'm very curious what it will become! #sonic the hedgehog

[baphomet-media]

Getting Psyched - A The World Ends With You Retro Review

Genre: Adventure Subgenre: JRPG Developer: Square Enix, Jupiter Publisher: Square Enix Platform(s): DS Release Date: July 27th, 2007 Hours Played: 42 hours this playthrough

You’ve almost certainly heard of this game, especially if you’re into JRPGs. When a game advertises itself as being “from the team that made Kingdom Hearts,” I was sold instantly as a kid. One look at the game’s box art confirms that Tetsuya Nomura had a hand at this game with his distinctive bold art style. But the game itself was something that nobody at the time had predicted. The game has an urban fantasy story unlike much that had been told at the time. Furthermore, the game was made to push the DS to its limits and create a battle system that could only work on the DS’s two screens. Does this cult classic live up to the hype, or is it just a janky mess? Let’s find out.

Story

TWEWY opens by introducing our protagonist, an antisocial teen named Neku Sakuraba. Neku unexpectedly awakens in the iconic scramble crossing of Shibuya, Tokyo. To his surprise, the crowds seem to walk right through him, and a strange pin appears in his hand that allows him to read the thoughts of passersby. Neku quickly learns that he has been thrust into the Reapers’ Game, a seven-day death game where the Players are the recently deceased that must partner up to fight the Noise, hostile part-animal-part-tribal-graffiti creatures that seek to erase the Players. What’s more, each day Players must complete missions given to them by the Reapers within strict time limits while avoiding the reapers themselves. If they can make it to the end of the week, they might just be able to return to life.

Along the way, Neku will meet a chaotic cast of characters including Shiki, the headstrong seamstress who is eventually able to get Neku out of his angsty shell, Beat and Rhyme, a pair of street-smart siblings with heavy 2000’s skater vibes, Joshua, an abrasive, sarcastic, literal Christ figure who’s somehow a good guy? Or maybe he’s a bad guy? Or… maybe he’s a good guy again? On top of that, the Reapers themselves vary wildly from the contrasting duo of the laid-back Kariya and the high-strung Uzuki to the lone radical Minamimoto. The game does a good job of having a full roster of characters without overloading the player. Furthermore, while most characters seem wacky at first, they all have motivations and layers behind them that become clearer as you progress through the story.

Without spoiling anything, nothing is as it seems in the Reaper’s game, and multiple parties are vying for control for different reasons, meaning the whole thing feels like one big political intrigue story on top of an urban JRPG. Even on my most recent replay after having played the game countless times over the years, I was hungry to put the pieces together. While the main storyline mostly follows Neku’s perspective and doesn’t explain a lot of the behind-the-scenes interactions and motivations of the secondary characters, the game fortunately has a Secret Reports feature, which are written by a certain character who seems to know way more than they let on. These Secret Reports are near essential to understanding the game’s true story, and reveal whole layers to the plot and world that the main story doesn’t even touch on.

Needless to say, I loved the story of TWEWY. Everything feels perfectly crafted, leaving no loose ends, while still leaving the player wanting more. If anything I wanted to see more of Neku and his friends after the game’s conclusion just hanging out in real life.

Gameplay

TWEWY is a JRPG, but in the loosest sense possible. In the overworld, the player controls Neku, guiding him around the various streets of Shibuya on the touch screen or with the face buttons. Unlike in traditional RPGs, outside of story events the player must deliberately initiate combat with the Noise. By scanning their environment they can read the surface thoughts of passersby, but also reveal noise symbols in the environment. By tapping on these symbols, the player can queue up battles with the noise, and can even chain multiple battles together for back-to-back fights that multiply your drop rate.

In battle, Neku and his partner are sent to separate Zones, with Neku on the touch screen and his partner on the top screen. Neku fights the noise by activating the abilities of pins he has equipped, called Psychs. Each psych has its own activation method, from swiping on an enemy to tapping empty space, to scratching on the screen, to shouting into the microphone, and more. It’s up to the player to equip Neku with the best pins, though pins level up as they are used, becoming more powerful and sometimes evolving into even stronger pins.

On the top screen, Neku’s partner fights the noise by using the DS’s face buttons to move through a combo map and select certain finishers. By selecting the right finishers, you can charge your Sync gauge to perform a powerful special attack. Both characters share an HP gauge, damage to each character subtracting from each side. If you’re following along, that means the game expects you to control both Neku and his partner at the same time. This can be tricky for new players, but you quickly get used to it. Additionally, you can have your partner auto-fight with a customizable delay, meaning you technically don’t have to control your partner at all. However, if you really want to deal major damage and wipe the floor with the Noise on higher difficulties, you’ll want to master battling with both characters at once. When I first played the game in 2007, I found the parner battling to be too difficult to keep up with, but now that I’m older and more experienced, I find the combat to be incredibly deep and rewarding. Additionally, the game rewards back-and-forth control of Neku and his partner with the Light Puck mechanic. Essentially, when one character performs a combo finisher, the light puck is passed to the other character, and passed back when that character does a finisher. In this way, you can build up a damage multiplier based on how quickly you rally the light puck. This creates a natural back-and-forth flow of using Neku until his psychs discharge, then getting a few hits in with his partner, and so on.

My only complaint about battles is that in later fights on higher difficulty the Noise will attack so frequently on the partner’s zone that it’s difficult to get attacks off with them at all. Your partner has a limited block/dodge, but it only does so much and there’s often tons of Noise attacking at once. It’s not insurmountable, but it can be frustrating at times.

Outside of battle, the player must constantly keep up with a few things, food, swag, and difficulty. Both Neku and his partner can eat food and wear clothing purchased from many shops around Shibuya. Food offers an up-front bonus as well as a permanent stat increase once the food is digested by completing battles. However, you can only digest so many times per real-time day, meaning you have to prioritize high-calorie foods before smaller snacks. I found the digestion limit to be a bit too limiting. It can be removed in the post-game, but it still makes food hard to deal with for someone that is effectively bingeing the game.

Swag are articles of clothing that offer flat stat increases, but also have abilities that are unlocked by showing it to the right store clerk. Each clerk can unlock the abilities of specific clothing, and you can unlock more by buying enough stuff from them to fill up their Friendship Gauge. I thought it was fun to slowly make friends with each store clerk, and I felt bad that I couldn’t hang out with them or reciprocate some of their obvious advances, though I’m sure it’s assumed that Neku cherishes his friendships with them after the game’s conclusion. However, you can’t just equip any old piece of clothing to any character. Neku can’t just pull off a dress and cargo shorts right off the bat. Each piece of clothing has a Bravery rating, with characters whose bravery is below that rating being unable to wear the clothing. Fortunately, bravery increases as you level up, and can also be increased by eating food. By the end of the game, you’ll be able to have Neku and company wearing whatever clothing you want.

Lastly there’s Difficulty. The game has four main difficulty levels, being Easy, Normal, Hard, and Ultimate. You begin the game in Normal, but once you unlock a difficulty, you can change it on the fly from the pause menu. On easier difficulty enemies have less HP and deal less damage, but you get fewer XP and worse pins. The reverse is true on higher difficulties, with some of the best pins in the game being available exclusively as drops on Ultimate difficulty. To aid you in this, you can also change your level at any time. Unlike in a standard RPG where your level is immutable to the player aside from leveling up, in TWEWY you can freely choose your level from one to the highest level you have achieved. For each level below your max that you set your level, you get a multiplier for drops. This can be combined with the battle chaining multiplier to get ultra rare drops, some of which have less than 1% and even less than 0.1% drop chances normally. This gives the player an incentive to level up aside from just stat bonuses, and rewards players who go out of their way to engage in battles. As above, battles are largely optional, but it heavily behooves the player to battle as much as they can, not only because you get drops and experience, but increasing your level gives you more wiggle room for harder fights such as bosses.

There are tons more smaller features, but these are the main ones. I thoroughly enjoyed the vast depths of the game’s mechanics and found the difficulty settings to be really engaging and a novel approach to RPG player advancement while still affording accessibility. I was enthralled for multiple hours as I struggled to get the best gear, feed my team the best food, and equip the best pins to get as strong as possible. Until the very end of the postgame, it never felt like mindless grinding, as you can just breeze through the story on Easy if you really want to, but where would be the fun in that?

Presentation

TWEWY is probably best known for its vibrant and bold incredibly urban street-art-themed style, which shows in not only the art, but the UI, music, and writing. The character art is that hard-outlined and overdressed Nomura art style that fans of Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts have come to love, and the backgrounds are all vibrant and stylized to fit. The pixel art of the character sprites and Noise are all incredibly expressive, with Neku’s idle animation as he jams out to tunes on his headphones being one of my favorites.

The game’s music is unabashedly lyrical, covering a vast array of genres including JPop, Punk, and Hip-Hop, with many different styles of each. I loved almost every song in the game, though I found one of the overworld themes to be a bit grating at times. Other than that, the music is pretty great, and what’s even better is you can buy CDs of each of the game’s songs in the game to have your own personal sound test right from the menu, even going as far as to allow you to set the background music on the menu itself.

The game even has voice acting, though it’s limited mostly to battle quips and wordless expressions for cutscenes. I actually really enjoyed the voice acting and thought they nailed each character. I was honestly surprised at the audio quality the developers were able to pack into this game. The music was a very slight bit tinny through the DS’s audio chip as is to be expected, but barring that the vocals and voice overs were super clear and the instrumentation of the songs were well mixed.

Overall, the game’s presentation is about as good as it gets on the DS, giving even home console games a huge run for their money.

Conclusion

Honestly it’s hard to say anything bad at all about TWEWY. The game was a bit hard to approach at the time, but it’s aged magnificently. These days, I wouldn’t hesitate to say that it’s the best (at least non-Pokémon) game on the DS. Honestly though some might be turned off by the game’s quirks, I think TWEWY is a masterpiece that everyone with a DS should pick up and play. I can’t wait to see how the newly-released sequel stands up, but honestly the original is a tough act to follow.

Score: 10 / 10

#gaming #article #review #retro review #twewy #the world ends with you #square enix #jupiter

[ronnytherandom]

I started Writing My Thoughts On Things Again, I'm Sorry

15/8/2021:

Mass Effect Legendary Edition (Whole trilogy w/ all dlcs, Adept Class, Hardcore difficulty, 68 Hours):

Still brilliant! I adore this series. The first Mass Effect was one of the first games I ever played back in 2010 and Mass Effect 2 is one of the games I’ve played the most accruing several hundred hours over multiple playthrough from 2010 onwards, while Mass Effect 3 is a game I greatly appreciated but have more mixed feelings towards. Retrospectively as much as I liked the first Mass Effect, I did not nearly appreciate it enough back in the day. For a first entry in a new IP it is incredibly fleshed out with interesting Lore, an intriguing story and a cool galaxy to explore. I appreciate its combat far more now than I did back then but would still argue it is relatively weak in comparison to more modern titles and its own successors. Though the VA is rough in some places it is excellent where it matters, especially in the case of Sovereign whose iconic dialogue on Virmire is etched into my brain. A key element of the first mass effect I felt was sorely missing from the later entries was its exploration. While the galaxy grew routinely larger no game after the first had a drivable Mako, a vehicle I adore, and further lacked the opportunity to land on and explore the terrain of alien worlds for resources and side missions which I feel lends a lot to the atmosphere of the setting and could be made even more compelling using updated technology and a larger selection of assets and interiors which might have emerged from the higher budget successors. As it is I appreciate its inclusion in the first game. Mass Effect was also my first encounter with impactful choices in a video game and this is certainly something I appreciate but leads me to a major criticism specifically targeting the dialogue wheel layout as it is strange to me how you can puzzle out all of these possible dialogue outcomes but put exactly all of the positive outcomes behind the Upper Left dialogue option. While this is less pronounced in the First entry as the Renegade dialogue fills roughly the same purpose while sounding more badass, it becomes truer throughout the series as renegade options routinely just become nasty and exclusionary.

Mass Effect 2 innovates in some key ways which I have grown to appreciate more in the past 20 hours of play than I did when it launched. Primarily, its focus on characters and your relationships to them. Barring a couple of notable exceptions I found myself greatly invested in every single member of the Normandy crew and I think it’s a remarkable feat that each crewmate could be written to be so sympathetic, relatable and interesting in a world so full of appreciable elements. I would go into specific examples but id end up listing every character except Miranda and Jacob. This of course plays well into the Suicide Mission narrative which is perhaps my favourite overarching plot within the trilogy as it incorporates not just all of these incredible characters and plays upon your investment in them but also relies on the threat of both the Reapers and Collectors which are two excellently designed enemies which I find significantly more compelling than Saren and the Geth or Cerberus and the Reaper Husk Armies. Mass Effect 2 has a powerful horror element composed of the Collectors phobic horror and the reapers cosmic horror and it does wonders for the game’s atmosphere. I remember at this moment the Collector soundtrack which, like the rest of the soundtrack is absolutely excellent. Inasmuch as I would criticise it from a purely musical perspective for being simple at times and perhaps overly repetitive it perfectly fits the camp space opera that is mass effect. Galaxy Map and Suicide Mission are absolute bangers. I would hesitate to call the combat great. Playing the game as a weapon heavy class is superior, I’d argue as even with an armour build dedicated to decreasing ability cooldown it is too long to adequately utilise the powers of ability heavy classes like the adept. Additionally, ability play feels far more limited than in the game’s predecessor due to the limitation of this games skill tree elements which are frankly a step too far in simplifying the interface. It doesn’t massively affect enjoyment of the game but I couldn’t help but note every time I visited the abilities menu how much I missed Mass Effects abilities menu. So while I would say Mass Effect maintains a very well balanced game with regards to combat, roleplay and story, Mass Effect 2 eschews combat and mechanical roleplay in favour of an excellent story. Additionally while lacking an exploration aspect the more structured side-missions found by scanning planets throughout the galaxy create a lot of fun moments and interesting gameplay, emblematic of the fact that mission design vastly improves between this game and its predecessor.

Mass Effect 3 goes some way to resolve its predecessor’s imbalance as the majority of the game possesses enhanced combat, a much better abilities mechanic and an excellent story. First the addition of more mobility, loadout and engagement options benefits the combat greatly, while the addition of more complex enemy types than previous games pushes you to fully utilise these new options. A massive reduction in ability cooldown combined with liberal cooldown reduction bonuses in the skill tree means that abilities are very useful and versatile and you generally feel very powerful. Sometimes too powerful if you’re thinking from a balancing standpoint but given it’s a single player game this criticism is much diminished and being powerful is fun regardless. The skill tree system in this game forms a synthesis between its predecessors’ systems and comes out the better for combining a regular sense of empowerment with interesting choices within your own character build. All of this contributes to a much-improved combat experience, especially over Mass Effect 2. This also lends itself to the old multiplayer system which I honestly enjoyed when it launched (who cannot love a playable biotic Volus?) and feel is sorely lacking from this legendary edition. I would argue the only real problem with the multiplayer was requiring a player to engage with it in order to achieve the best story outcome; the actual multiplayer gameplay was thoroughly enjoyable and it gave players the opportunity to experience combat as an STG agent or a Krogan Warlord which were both fulfilling experiences from my memory. The aforementioned story is truly excellent and successfully builds off events in previous games but primarily succeeds due to Biowares exceptional character writing which persists from Mass Effect 2. Even in the case of its worst side mission content but especially in its primary missions the stakes and outcome of events are thoroughly compelling and the involvement of beloved Normandy crewmates is bound to incite intense emotions. This is possibly the only game that makes me cry multiple times throughout a normal playthrough. Unfortunately my goodwill often runs out when it comes to consider the ultimate ending of this series which I do not approve of. I admit there are mitigating factors: you should not play the mass effect series for the culmination of its plot. This series lives and dies with its characters and all of the major character arcs reach satisfactory endings before the final moments of Mass Effect 3, so the final moments have no real meaning as the thematic purpose of the series is achieved by galvanising the galaxy and uniting all these disparate races into a single force to fight the Reapers. Thematically the game is a success but the extent to which it utilises the choices the player has made, upon which the series builds its reputation, is limited in scope. This can likely be laid at the feet of the leaks of the original story ahead of the games launch which pushed the developers to create a new ending to avoid spoilers, but the quality of that ending is poor as it boils all the choices made throughout the series down to selecting the colour of a space laser. To make an odd comparison, this is why I think Game of Thrones’ and Mass Effect’s endings are different kinds of bad. Mass Effect reaches a fully satisfying conclusion in the moments immediately after launching the final mission, whereas Game of Thrones built its whole series asking the question “Who Will Sit The Iron Throne” With the final answer being “Actually, no one” after slogging through multiple series which did not live up to the quality of the first. Mass Effect answers its dramatic question of “Can Shepard Unite The Galaxy Against The Reapers” satisfactorily following sixty hours of excellent content and the colour of the space laser doesn’t actually matter. It just hurts to think that the finale could’ve been so much grander and more interesting. I would recommend the games, the disappointment of the finale doesn’t even come close to outweighing the grandeur that is the rest of the experience of Mass Effect 3, let alone the whole series.

There are only a few pieces of content I had not encountered prior to this Legendary edition playthrough. The Mass Effect DLC Bring Down The Sky is fun in that it adds an interesting combat experience with incredible stakes and immerses you in a stellar scale event, but the experience is very short. As part of the legendary edition I recommend it but having to pay extra for it at its time of launch I would have found it disappointing. Mass Effect 2s Overlord DLC is very good, introducing fun combat encounters, an opportunity to operate the fairly fun Hammerhead vehicle (even if it doesn’t live up to the Glory of the Mako) and explore a nice open environment with a truly haunting ending which is a kind of non-choice but it is gratifying to make that choice anyway. Additionally the visuals in the final station when interacting with the VI elements are very nice. The Arrival DLC is also quite fun, with a pseudo stealth section to open it, something which I believe occurs nowhere else in the series. The general element of operating solo is quite novel for mass effect as I believe outside of this moment, the opening of the Citadel DLC and the final moments of Mass Effect 3 there is no point where you fight alone. The indoctrinated nature of the project team does not come as a shock but regardless the dlc is enjoyable as a combat experience and the scale of destruction shown necessary to even slightly inconvenience the reapers lends a lot to the scale of their threat. I do not believe I played any DLCs in Mass Effect 3 before, insofar as I did not consider From Ashes DLC content as it was already on the disk and all buying the day one dlc did was activate it. Leviathan is very interesting from a lore perspective and does interesting things with its investigative process but I find it to be a relatively passive and uninteresting experience for the most part. Omega was more my style with a lot of good combat and interesting new enemies and a bit of bombast besides but still left me largely unmoved. Citadel was excellent but mostly for its “endgame” content rather than its story content. Despite featuring many hilarious moments throughout the actual plot it failed to interest me but I was definitely there for all of the fun character moments and the party is absolutely hilarious.

Ultimately a hearty recommendation but with tempered expectations for the finale.

Deaths Door (True Ending, 13.7 hours):

A Delight. Deaths Door is a charming little game about a bird that stabs things and I love it. It is incredibly impressive that this was made by a team composed of two people. The gameplay is fun in all regards. Navigation is a good time especially when all of the environments are lovely and full of personality. Obstacles come mainly in the form of puzzles and these are at a sweet spot between ease and frustration without being at all complex. Combat could’ve used a bit more work, primarily to create more meaningful distinctions between weapons or add a little depth, but it is still engaging and good fun. While the main bosses are challenging and satisfying to defeat, I worry over the side bosses; perhaps something could’ve been done to make them more distinct from one another? But a small gripe. I like the world, the aforementioned environments are well realised, the general aesthetic is artful and distinct and the story is good if slightly sparse. One notable element is the dialogue which is very good with a quick wit. The finale of the main game has the right amount of spectacle and weight while the endgame is cool and fantastical, with an ample supply of secrets and collectibles to find. Over all the music is incredible, soundtrack full of absolute bangers. I really enjoyed completing this game and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s into action adventure and souls-like games.

The Bad Batch (season 1):

This was Allright. To open I cannot overstate how good the animation and art of this series is. It is routinely beautiful and well-choreographed. Visually there are no complaints. The problems begin with the opening episode which I feel overpromised on a relatively dark take on the Star Wars universe by immediately dropping us into an Order 66 plot full of death, danger, brainwashing and the threat of an emergent empire. Now granted this series never explicitly promises that all of this would continue but I enjoyed these elements of the first episode and I was dissatisfied by their limited usage throughout the rest of the show. This is not to say I disliked the show, I did enjoy the characters who are all good fun, and most of the plots were good. This series I felt had a lot of filler episodes, which I’d simply describe as episodes I enjoyed less due to underwhelming plot or conflict, but they were still enjoyable despite what id perceive as a lesser quality. The show also “suffers” from what I’d called Star Wars Syndrome of Filonitis which is how Everything Must Be Interconnected, with regular cameos from extended universe characters which I feel is beginning to get a bit much. These features feel to me more often like nostalgia grabs rather than organically featuring a character in service of the plot and development. For example, I appreciate the Captain Rex feature as that served to highlight the inhibitor chip problem and drive the characters to seek a solution, however I appreciated Rafa and Trace’s feature less both because I’m less attached to those characters (especially Rafa) but also because the episode didn’t serve any particular purpose or create any particular set piece which couldn’t have been achieved without those characters. This is a similar issue I have with The Mandalorian, I adored season one as it was relatively self-contained and only featured vague or subtler references to the wider canon: to contrast season two is full of cameos from the wider universe sometimes for no reason other than to have a cameo when those roles could easily have been filled with new and creative content which doesn’t rely upon nostalgia to make something interesting. Ultimately Bad Batch is worth watching for the characters and the good episodes, it is fun and entertaining, it just has its issues.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 1: The Phantom Blood:

Its uh, its not good. Now that’s a very broad statement, as to assess this show critically at all is to take it far more seriously than you should, but to be more even handed the show certainly has a bunch of fun elements. Only from a story perspective, there isn’t really that much there; and from a pacing perspective it needs to be seen to be believed. I’m certain that if you condensed the show down to a reasonable size for the amount of content it has, you’d probably have a movie with a two-hour runtime at most which would be quite enjoyable but on a whole this first part wastes about 80% of its time on overlong drawn-out internal monologues and the dilated timeframes of the show’s fights. It also has an annoying habit of overemphasizing the weight of a moment or the genius of a characters unexpected action usually with no less than three people commenting on any slight manoeuvre which ruins the pacing beyond belief. Now I understand this is a staple of the Jojo series, only part 1 handles it very poorly in comparison to later parts. The fighting is especially hindered by this as most actual combat usually involves only four or five punches but they tend to take twenty minutes getting to each one. Additionally, Johnathan Joestar is pretty boring as a character with no notable qualities aside from being good both morally and at fighting. The intrigue of the stone mask is cool but this part deals in that very little. Like I say though, Part 1 is still fun to watch if you can disengage your brain and admire the potent meme quality of the series. It is not “good” from a critical perspective but it is incredibly amusing and the campness gives it a degree of charm. If you just want to watch a bunch of beefy men shout at each other and perform magic punches this is a good time. Speedwagon, despite being the worst offender of the “Explain Everything Twice and Ruin the Pacing” category, is still entertaining for the awful accent and endearing character. He’s also definitely in love with Johnathan and I will not be taking questions on that. Baron Zeppeli has a cool hat. Theres a lot of fun to be had as the show embraces the weirdness of everything that’s going on. So, check it out, it might just be a So-Bad-Its-Good Masterpiece.

300 (film):

This film was not so great in my eyes. I think there was one particular shot of the landscapes around Sparta which I felt was visually cool but everything else about the film lacked quality for me, barring practical effects which have aged significantly better than the graphical effects. The visuals are largely uninspiring, the washed-out colour pallet doesn’t help. Perhaps the dialogue was amusing at release but for me it’s all been memed to death. I can’t say any of the performances are particularly compelling, nice to see Magneto and Faramir though. The action could’ve been good and there are certainly moments where it has impact, but the constant application of slow motion I feel reduces the sense of power that should be there, like watching people fight on the moon. Ultimately, I can’t stomach it for two primary reasons: Historical inaccuracy and Racism, which feed into each other. The values of the Spartans do not accurately reflect ideas that historical Spartans held to and I must ask why? Historical accuracy is the default state, so to usurp those ideas in favour of others means the author of the graphic novel Frank Miller and director Zach Snyder replaced those ideas with purpose, in order to make the film more appealing to a mass audience or to express their own ideas perhaps? And the values they chose for the Spartans were freedom, justice and democracy which were things the slaving and monarchical Spartans did not believe in at least in the modern sense. This reeks of an imposition of the propagandised values of western nations on a historical society. This in itself would not be so much of an issue without the demonisation and perversion of the Achaemenid empire and the peoples therein. To establish the primary conflict as one of Civilised white westerners against barbarous non-white easterners, when historically the conflict was between two nations of a broadly similar heritage both possessing facets of good and evil, in the early 2000s? It feels as though some reactionary interpretations of the War on Terror have simply been recreated here with classical history as window dressing. Add to that reactionary attachment to the battle of Thermopylae as a representation of the western world’s struggle against the eastern world, in addition to other more problematic interpretations, and this film plays straight into extreme right-wing ideas of race. Cannot recommend, there’s a lot more better things you could be watching.

18/08/2021: Darth Vader (2015) comic (incl. Vader Down event):

This was really cool. The first comic I’ve ever actually read so I don’t have much frame of reference but I certainly enjoyed this. It was compelling, I’ve blitzed through this whole run in a single day. I think it serves a valuable purpose of demonstrating Vader’s potential and development between Episodes IV and V, as well as the nature of internal conflicts within the Empire. A side note, it is amusing that Palpatine identifies infighting as a factor in the fall of the Sith Empire and yet encourages it for his own political purposes anyway.  I felt that the art and style was very good and fit well with the Star Wars aesthetic, though I couldn’t say if it is truly excellent or just standard: it certainly wasn’t bad, though I think a few designs such as Dr Aphra’s ship were hard to read as it were. Speaking of, I think characters new and old were well portrayed. The titular Vader is unmistakably the same character as appears in the classic trilogy, similarly for Han, Luke and Leia etc. And it was a pleasure to see Chewbacca absolutely destroy someone. The aforementioned Aphra I thought was fine but she lacks distinction to my mind, the real star was Triple Zero and by extension Beetee who I thought were excellent comic relief in addition to being a genuine threat, something I can’t necessarily say I felt with regard to the antagonists. This latter part doesn’t matter overmuch, I think the purpose of these antagonists was more to present Vader with pressure to fulfil his personal goals rather than actually oppose him and they work well in that regard, but are unmemorable beyond their basic attributes. What I think this comic does particularly well is create a kind of puzzle narrative and its almost thrilling at moments when Vader’s plots might be discovered. As a result of this I am looking forward to reading more comics in future.

The Suicide Squad (2021): Highly enjoyable! A big step up for the suicide squad as a franchise and a lot more fun, playing into a brighter and more humorous genre than its predecessor to good effect; This time with good editing, soundtrack, direction… well good everything in comparison. I enjoyed all of the characters and their acting particularly the rivalry between Peacemaker and Bloodsport and Margot Robbie is still fantastic as Harley. They all pale before King however, who is endearing beyond belief and a lot of fun to boot. The “villain” if that term is applicable is very interesting and actually threatening, no mere beam of light into the sky! And the willingness to engage in more mature elements such as gore and character morality is of immense benefit, serving to distinguish it from generally more childish superhero media and reach towards more interesting themes around colonisation, foreign intervention, America and such. Only a reach towards however as I don’t think it ultimately says anything beyond “This thing, kinda bad and dumb”. As I saw noted, it observes the theme but doesn’t comment on it which is a shame as that would bring it all together quite neatly. I feel it can drag a little at times and sometimes the dialogue and specifically its humour don’t hit right but the rest is of such quality that it hardly matters. It looks good, sounds good and offers a chance to engage in a little mindless and bloody violence. I hope Harley keeps the javelin.

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27/08/2021: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 2: Battle Tendency: TW: Mention of Nazism, Discussion of Sexism

This is MUCH better. Part 2 covers most of the problems I had with Part 1. The Monologues are less egregious so the pacing is much improved; the lore is fully integrated into the story and creates a genuinely good narrative and Joseph is a much more compelling and interesting protagonist with a quirky and entertaining personality. The Pillar Men are excellent villains and the fights are fully engaging. Even when you know that Joseph will pull out a “And next you’ll say” twist at the end of a losing fight it’s still surprising simply by dint of the strange and wacky solutions he creates. And these adventures are even more bizarre, playing into the weird camp of the series which works so well. All in all, the quality is excellent here HOWEVER there are some highly problematic elements. The show being set in the 1930s is a neat part of the travelling through time factor of the series but when you’re globetrotting around Europe you need some solution to the problem of Nazis popping up everywhere and this show does not provide one, and fails so drastically to offer even a slightly critical perspective on the fascist characters. The noble sacrifice of Von Stroheim and his later resurrection and heroism serve to idolise a Patriotic German Nazi Officer, which is not good, and this unchallenged perspective on an Actual Nazi is troubling especially when the character himself is an unrepentant mass murderer. Additionally, the show has a horrible attitude towards women, who exist almost exclusively for sex appeal and romantic interest in this show. Lisa Lisa does demonstrate ability and character but when presented with genuine combat is relegated first as a bit of eye candy during the fight with Esidesi (notably eye candy for Her Own Son) and later as a Damsel in Distress during her fight with Kars. Women are frequently used as objects in this part; Caesar Zeppeli uses women as props by controlling them with his Hamon powers and Suzi Q exists only to be rescued from Esidesi and then to be romanced by Jojo. It’s pretty ridiculous to be honest. I am informed that this improves over the course of the series but as for this part in particular it is a lot of fun just so long as you can ignore some incredibly troubling portrayals.

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13/09/2021: Rick and Morty Season 4:

There is ultimately not much to say as Season 4 is simply more Rick and Morty and operates as such. It is good, even very good. It’s still very funny. Its voice acting is still the pinnacle of such work. It is still smart and has a lot of interesting ideas, only not to the extent of the copypasta fan boys. Its sci-fi universe is cool and its design and aesthetic are still excellent. I feel the show has passed a threshold however as there’s only so much time you can spend on the “dysfunctional family is dysfunctional theme”. I hope season 5 proves me wrong once I get to it, but season 4 is fun and I’d recommend it all the same, it’s just more Rick and Morty and I think that’s enough.

Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings: Spectacular! Very easily amongst the best if not The Best Superhero Movie (aside from Into the Spiderverse). To begin with complaints as they are limited, the colour grading was a bit dark in a couple of the fight scenes and in some moments of the climactic fight the CG effects are a little Too Much and distract from the central action of Shang-Chi, Xialing and a Dragon owning the shit out of a multiversal super spectre, which incidentally is fucking epic.  Additionally, the standard MCU comic relief dialogue is a little meh at times but what’s new there? They still need to get a handle on that, especially because this film was really strong when it was serious. As much as I love Ben Kingsley’s Trevor Slattery, he was just a tad much here. Aside from a few moments of weak dialogue however the rest of the film is excellent. Acting is good, effects are good, the film is quite beautiful primarily once Ta Lo is reached and the score is bangin. I appreciate most of all the fight sequences which to me look well-choreographed with interesting arenas which were always appropriate to demonstrate the characters abilities; the sequences serve to develop character and plot at key moments also. The way the camera is handled during the fights is also a big step up, with wide perspective and long shots rather than the snappy close shots of old which serve to really show off that choreography and don’t muddy your understanding of the flow of combat. There is a good thematic line throughout the film of reconciling the bad and the good of your familial and personal history, to understand yourself better and channel that into developing and achieving your ambitions and I adore how that ties in with Shang-Chi and Wenwu’s final confrontation due to the nature and treatment of the Ten Rings themselves. They are a very interesting fantastical element especially once Shang-Chi acquires them and the way that he utilises them create a very cool combat style I can’t wait to see more of, even considering that their full potential is yet to be unlocked. I additionally approve of how they have been differentiated from their comic counterparts which to my understanding are just slightly weaker infinity stones; thus, a one-to-one reproduction would’ve been a boring mistake to make. It’s a fantastic film, go see it.

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26/09/2021: Sable (20 hours, 99% complete) Sable has the makings of an absolutely fantastic game, it just has a few hiccups and hurdles to deal with. Thankfully most can probably be dealt with by patch as there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the game; but a game should never be released in a state where it needs a patch to function normally. This game is incredibly buggy. Probably one of the buggiest games I’ve ever played at launch, and I preordered Skyrim. Most of my complaints are with the menus, which simply do not work properly sometimes, but there are other documented issues with collision detection and weird bike movement among others including one annoying persistent issue with the soundtrack being replaced by random ‘bong’ noises. For these reasons I cannot recommend the game Right Now until it is patched or if it is on a significant sale. However, once the bugs are fixed this game will be a stunning achievement. The story is good and leads to powerful emotional moments, aided along by an excellent atmospheric soundtrack and beautiful visuals. The style and colour give this game an exceptional look, though diminished by a fairly rapid day/night cycle. I understand that this creates a visual contrast to make the daytime feel more vibrant and impressive, but I would also hold the sun still in the sky if that were an option. The world is well built, with interesting lore and cool design work. Varied environments show off a range of colourful landscape all with their own distinct atmospheres and landmarks which are good both for navigation and exploration, this being the bulk of the game. Exploring these environments is satisfying for curiosities sake but also offers collectible Chums that I adore and an intriguing backstory and world history to consider. Riding a hoverbike is cool and fun, and the customisability is nice though I would take issue with the “balancing” of bike parts as the best bike can be acquired only a few hours in and must be bought, where bike parts earned through long quest chains pale in comparison. This annoys me as I believe players should be rewarded more for great deeds than for acquiring currency, besides which the quest bikes look cooler. This is of little importance however as the game is a very casual and chill experience, keeping an excellent balance where it is not strictly challenging but does maintain your focus and attention. This world is full of strangeness and a little sci-fi magic; though I would argue it could use more of this I think that would threaten to overwhelm the player when even this world’s most mundane elements are still stunningly cool. I think a thick coat of bugs covers what is ultimately a magnificent game with many cool things to explore and even marred by its worst features I still had a great time playing it.

27/09/2021: The Matrix

Brilliant. A very cerebral action movie which definitely earns its place as an iconic work of cinema and its clear to see why its influence is so widespread. Fantastic action with a clear and open perspective which utilises the interesting and dynamic cinematography that runs throughout the movie. I particularly enjoy how over the top the fights are in terms of environmental destruction and gestures as a whole, with a great deal of emphasis added by practical effects which I enjoy. Cool characters, good dialogue and excellent performances across the cast. And, an interesting world well-built and designed. The robots particularly are quite intimidating and I like their arthropodal form. All of the design works well to create the feeling of a greasy industrial post apocalypse which contrasts sharply with the boring homogenous simulation, the latter having its own value as a setting due to its familiarity which would’ve been especially prevalent when this film first released. I love the soundtrack, especially the final feature of Rage, but most of all I love how deeply you can read into this film and its meaning. Having watched many videos about it I was primed on the trans allegory going in and it is very clearly a present part of the narrative before even considering the context around the Wachowski sisters and their own experience. It is a very interesting part of the story and plays well into other themes built around deconstructing the illusions pressed on us by our society, drawing strong parallels between the struggles of living as a trans person and fighting against an imperialist capitalist society. It is worth watching for any of its constituent parts but together they form a magnificent work of art.

28/09/2021: Star Wars: Visions

The series is a bit of a mixed bag. It definitely overpromises with its first episode which is of a remarkably distinct style, is incredibly cool and has great wacky moments in addition to tasteful call-backs to the wider Star Wars canon. I love the umbrella sabre, it’s a fantastic idea and there needs to be more of them. From there a few episodes are fantastic, The Elder and the final episode, and id rank the Ninth jedi just below them, but the rest of the series is definitely not to my taste. The wide variety of styles on show are all fantastic and the animation is universally very good, just some of the plots are more childish than I would appreciate and the rest are simply not engaging for me to the point that despite a great deal of spectacle occurring I would often be distracted. It’s worth a look if you’re into animation and unique takes on star wars but I find generally lacking.

Django Unchained (2nd Watch) TW: Discussion of Racism and Slavery

Red Flag: Tarantino Movie is good. Very good. Stellar performances from Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, Leo Di Caprio, Christoph Waltz and everyone else in the movie to be frank; a special note for the trivia about Leo Di Caprio’s cut up hand during the dining room scene, a lot of respect for a man who can keep working through that kind of injury. We can go through a Tarantino Checklist say the film is well shot with beautiful environments; has excellent and witty dialogue with good attention to detail and mannerism; and finally has great and gory action which does not flinch from terrible injury and really appeals to a perverse bloodlust that seems to crop up from time to time in normal people. Strangely enough however, I could not recall if Tarantino indulges in his predilection for feet here. This film does indulge in Tarantino’s other predilection however and that’s the N-word, but here I respect it. Unlike his non-period works, the use of the N-word is a facet of slavery just as chains, whips and plantations are and slavery is the subject of this film which seeks to be historically authentic. If anything, the absence of the N-word would be very wrong in this case despite being the project of a white man as without it the film would lack the context of a key form of oppression that still exists today. I think Django does an excellent job documenting and commenting on the institution as it existed in the pre-war period. Django experiences every level of status a black person would encounter in this setting: first a slave, then a freedman, a black slaver and finally a Liberator and the final message of the film is that slavery deserved to be destroyed and any argument made for its return is horseshit which is kind of a “Duh” statement but with the state of modern politics and the state of education in the US it’s something that needs reiterating. You can interpret this beyond the bounds of slavery itself in addition, by arguing that there are existing powers in this world which seek to discriminate based on skin colour amongst other factors and create oppressed minorities for the benefit of a wealthy few with power and should the systems that create this environment be completely destroyed it would be cause for celebration. Beyond this I particularly enjoyed the historical authenticity of the environments, of the very varied biomes of the wilder parts of the US at the time, and the contemporary outfits especially King Schultz’ coat which I desire more than any item of clothing I’ve ever seen. The film is good at building suspense both in the moment to moment and through longer story arcs, particularly the second act, but I do feel like the 2nd act lulls a little, perhaps spends slightly too long reaching its climax. This is a great spectacle of a film which looks and sounds fantastic, puts excellent performances on show, tells a great story and has quite a bit of meaning bundled into it.

29/09/2021: The Road to El Dorado (Unfinished)

Despite not finishing it I think this film is actually really good. It certainly has a few elements which don’t fully gel with me but I enjoyed my time with it; I only felt like I should really be doing something else and that I wasn’t fully engaged with it, potentially as I’m not keen on cons and high stakes acting as it feels like a form of vicarious embarrassment for me which makes me immensely uncomfortable. Personal hindrances aside most everything about this film is excellent, I loved the animation and the very colourful world. The characters were fun, the voice acting good, the constant horniness was a great bonus also. I take issue with the music, much as it’s not my right to criticise Elton John, I feel it would’ve been better fully incorporated into the film. I enjoy animated musicals more when said music is diegetic and I think them beginning to employ non-diegetic music is part of what led to their downfall, outside of market saturation. Additionally, I was not a fan of The Trail we Blaze, just not a song that worked for me. I also appreciate the integration of 3d and 2d animation here as I felt the styles were reconciled better here than in most movies, especially for the time. I might take issue with what seems to be a plot about two Spanish men of the colonial age coming to central America and “enlightening” its people through humanitarian acts and music as that would reflect some troubling attitudes but I hold out hope that by the end of the film they decide to come clean about the lie, return the gold and help defend El Dorado from Cortez and his troops. Its enjoyable, I don’t feel drawn to finishing it though.

 30/09/2021: Hunters Moon, Ghost

Here’s a new one, music reviews. This single is pretty good I enjoy it a lot. Opens slow and gentle and rapidly builds into some strong rock with a very 80s feel which scans with Ghosts whole historical rock and metal style they’ve always employed but have gone in extra hard on since Prequelle. The lead riff the track opens on is really nice and I would love to have seen it explored further, but the heavier style that ramps up progressively as the song continues is still great climaxing on the 9/4 post chorus riff which goes hard as fuck and I love that bit especially. It feels like it would be spectacular to witness it live. The bridge is a moment I’m not so keen on, the initial bass work is a little bare bone and overly repetitive but it definitely picks up once the guitar and vocals come in, even if just for the final moments. The final chorus leads into a good finale though I think it’ll serve better on an album version with a transition into another track, as I usually prefer to be fair. Technically I enjoy all of the different sounds and effects employed on all the instruments, especially in that leading riff, all of which are played well with good time. The vocals are great as usual. It’s a great track, I feel it was maybe a little short and could’ve explored some of its musical ideas or given them a bit more time to breathe; perhaps less time could have been given to overrepresented elements like the bridge and given over to work more into the very atmospheric leading riff but this is still a hard and heavy rock track and I enjoy it greatly.

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