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somethingwittyandweird · 2 years ago

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What's your favorite game you played this year?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I love all of these games.

It's a fine time to be alive.

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

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catherineparrish · 6 years ago

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SAFIA @ Metropolis Fremantle, Perth, Western Australia 30/08/2019

Photo by Linda Dunjey

SAFIA are a three-artist band always aiming for the stars. The cosmic pop trio from Canberra released their second album Story’s Start or End earlier this month and fans have not been left disappointed.

What is described by the band in SMH as a “sonic journey … that is representative of each member’s experience over the past two years”, this album is the perfect follow-up to debut Internal in 2016. It is ethereal sounding, almost inter-galactic. It has themes of love, longing and ambition, but also an underlining darkness, delivered in a way that can be danced or relaxed to.

Vocalist Ben Woolner admits struggling with writer’s block and anxiety while writing this album, but is now celebrated in a headline “Starlight” tour across the country. Accompanied by two Unearthed artists Boo Seeka (a dynamic duo from Newcastle) and Eilish Gilligan (a solo indie-pop queen from Melbourne), it’s the perfect homage to SAFIA’s triple J roots which have blossomed the dreamy, psychedelic hypnotic journey that is Story’s Start or End.

So, the record is great. But are they any good live? Absolutely.

It’s hard to fathom the levels of SAFIA’s music when there are only three people on stage. Each are forced to carry their own; there is nothing to hide behind, not even smoke and lasers and a mesmerising animated backdrop (it does add to the show) can mask the talent that each musician must have to deliver such quality. Woolner is completely in his element in front of a crowd, whether he’s dancing with the front row or singing to the roof through a megaphone. His angelic range is showcased without flaw, only drowned out by the crowd twice during Listen to Soul, Listen to Blues and Embracing Me. He humbly thanked the audience at every interval.

A mini cover of Britney Spears Oops… I Did it Again with the piano and 95 minutes of seamless, flowing melodies and strange, eerie undertones gives fans both old and new a taste of what is currently Australia’s most original and underrated three-piece. With almost every song from the new album appears on the setlist, SAFIA are keeping their shows fresh with their same unique one-of-a-kind genre that captivates anyone who is exposed to it.

Review by Catherine Parrish. Originally published for amnplify.com.au

#SAFIA #live music #live review #music review #perth concerts #metropolis fremantle #ben woolner #boo seeka #eilish gillian #catherine parrish

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tuesdaynightmusicclub · 4 months ago

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Every year, in the last week of February, I pay tribute to Daft Punk, my favourite music act, who broke up on the 22nd of this month in 2021.

When a beloved band or artist of mine dies or disbands, what I always try to keep in mind is this: don't be sad it's over, be glad it happened. Of course, I'm always sad anyway, but remembering the work and joy they leave us is a tried and tested balm for public loss. For a time we are united in our condolences and tributes, and as parasocial as it is, there is a bittersweet beauty in this. As much as I wish we shared that regard more while the figure is still active or alive, I suppose it's the sentiment that counts. I still recall the shock, dismay, remembrances, memes, and above all adoration that flooded social media when those two weird robots announced their retirement.

Daft Punk are firmly planted in my consciousness as my fave music act, almost without question. But just why is this? Well, if I have to explain such self-evident truths, let me count the ways. At its best, their music unites painstaking studio nerdery with perfect pop. Starting in indie rock before converting to dance music, they took inspiration from American house and contemporary big beat, and infused those with funk, electro and their own magpie tendencies. They used sampling as an instrument in and of itself, alongside vintage equipment whose look and sounds appealed to their love of old school sci-fi aesthetics, further displayed later with their famous robots suits. Their songs are delightfully retro-futurist musical collages, plucking sounds and hooks from myriad sources to reshape into impressively cohesive wholes. Growing from the boisterous club sounds of Homework, they absorbed disco and R&B for Discovery, added stripped down rock to Human After All, and drew from cinematic greats like Wendy Carlos and Philip Glass for their soundtrack to Tron: Legacy.

Their last full length effort, which is my favourite out of all of them and where today's pick comes from, is Random Access Memories, where the skills they spent years developing had matured into assured AOR-flavoured songwriting, scarce on sampling for the first time. RAM is the best representation of everything I love about Daft Punk. It's beautifully indulgent, referencing idols like Michael Jackson in the album art and featuring the voices of Paul Williams and Giorgio Moroder on its songs. The music, meanwhile, featured contributions from session heroes like Paul Jackson Jr., Chris Caswell and John "JR" Robinson. The resulting fruit mixes immaculate neo-disco and West Coast 70s slickness with stretched-out proggy epics, and serves almost as a tribute to everything they've learned in their artistic careers. 'Give Life Back to Music' is an ideal introduction to such a project, combining many of these aspects for an ostentatious opener. It's a deservedly confidant gesture to name the album's debut song that, and also typically tongue-in-cheek.

Usually taking years on projects (Human After All was the exception, and you can tell lol), the duo of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo took approaches meticulous even by crate digger standards. This crafting time is reflected in their recorded output: 4 studio albums, 1 motion picture soundtrack, and 2 live albums. Not a whole lot for 28 years together, but the quality of the music created more than justifies it. They took their work seriously, but never forgot the need for play, humour, and the sheer fun of making it. Their oeuvre is a journey from childhood fascinations to finding their calling to adult artistry, always trying something new, never wanting to repeat themselves. Every step homages their passions: 80s post-disco pop, 70s synth weirdness, crusty pre-digital science fiction, the baroque movie musical Phantom of the Paradise, imported anime like Galaxy Express 999, P-Funk, 90s hip hop, Chicago house, Detroit techno, odd studio gizmos and electronica. All this was fueled by a genuine love for music of all kinds, and an eccentric need to funnel that adoration into their own contributions to that world. Un brin de folie égaye la vie, non? Merci beaucoup, robots éstranges.

Tuesday Night Music Club No. 71 - 'Give Life Back To Music' by Daft Punk

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#tuesday night music club #i dont think i was able to get across my feeling for these guys...#there will be more februarys though... c'est la vie

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bananaofswifts · 5 years ago

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BY: JILLIAN MAPES JUL 27 2020

POP/R&B

Made from afar, primarily with the National’s Aaron Dessner, Swift’s eighth album is a sweater-weather record filled with cinematic love songs and rich fictional details.

The phantom pang of missing someone before you ever meet them is an emotion worthy of its own word. That fated feeling of love and the passage of time is the theme that runs between Carly Rae Jepsen’s smash hit “Call Me Maybe” and the National’s antisocial romance “Slow Show”; it’s also the kind of thing Taylor Swift might write about. One of the loveliest tracks on folklore, the surprise album the singer-songwriter made primarily with the National’s guitarist Aaron Dessner, stands out for a strangely similar reason: a thread connecting two strangers that exists long before either realizes it’s there. “And isn’t it just so pretty to think/All along there was some/Invisible string/Tying you to me,” she sings on the delightfully plucky “invisible string,” simultaneously recalling famous lines from Jane Eyre and The Sun Also Rises.

folklore will forever be known as Taylor Swift’s “indie” album, a sweater-weather record released on a whim in the blue heat of this lonely summer, filled with cinematic love songs in search of a film soundtrack. There are those who already dislike folklore on principle, who assume it’s another calculated attempt on Swift’s part to position her career as just so (how dare she); meanwhile, fans will hold it up as tangible proof that their leader can do just about anything (also a stretch). While it’s true that folklore pushes the limits of Swift’s sound in a particular, perhaps unexpected direction, her reference points feel more like mainstream “indie” homage than innovation, taking cues from her collaborators’ work and bits of nostalgia.

At its best, folklore asserts something that has been true from the start of Swift’s career: Her biggest strength is her storytelling, her well-honed songwriting craft meeting the vivid whimsy of her imagination; the music these stories are set to is subject to change, so long as it can be rooted in these traditions. You can tell that this is what drives Swift by the way she molds her songs: cramming specific details into curious cadences, bending the lines to her will. It’s especially apparent on folklore, where the production—mostly by Dessner, with Jack Antonoff’s pop flair occasionally in the mix—is more minimal than she typically goes for. Her words rise above the sparse pianos, moody guitars, and sweeping orchestration, as quotable as ever.

After years as pop’s most reliable first-person essayist, Swift channels her distinct style into what are essentially works of fiction and autofiction, finding compelling protagonists in a rebellious heiress and a classic teenage love triangle. In “the last great american dynasty,” she tells the story of eccentric debutante Rebekah Harkness, who married into the Standard Oil family and once lived in Swift’s Rhode Island mansion, as a way to celebrate women who “have a marvelous time ruining everything.” Filled with historical details and Americana imagery, you can see the song play out in your mind like a storybook, but it also effectively makes a point about society’s treatment of brash women. Swift cleverly draws a line between Harkness and herself at the end, an idea she fleshes out in a more literal sequel, “mad woman.” Out of all the songs on folklore, “the last great american dynasty” is the all-timer, the instant classic. It sounds like the latter-day National/Taylor mashup you never knew you needed—textural and tastefully majestic, with Fitzgerald-esque lines about filling the pool with champagne instead of drinking all the wine.

With folklore’s teen heartbreak trilogy, Swift circles the same affair from each party’s differing view. “betty” is the story of 17-year-old James trying to win back his girlfriend after cheating, a familiar crime rendered new by the narrator’s genuine remorse and belief in a love regained. It has the youthful hope of a song like “Wide Open Spaces,” yet is noticeably wiser (and queerer) than the high school romances Swift wrote as an actual teenager. First single “cardigan” is told by Betty, whose disillusionment with James results in a sad, sensuous sound reminiscent of Lana Del Rey, down to the vocal style and casual lyrical quotation of another pop song. But the songs’ overlapping details and central framing device—of a cardigan forgotten and found without a second thought—are pure Swift, an instant memory portal not unlike the scarf in Red’s “All Too Well.” (The cutesy marketing angle for “cardigan” is reliably Swiftian as well.) And even though “august” is considered to be the third in the trilogy, the record’s most tender, saccharine love story plays out during “illicit affairs.” “You taught me a secret language I can’t speak with anyone else,” she sings. “And you know damn well for you I would ruin myself.” The scenes and perspectives evoked by these songs alone speak volumes about Swift’s evolution as a songwriter.

The theme of folklore is a very different way of acknowledging that people will talk, an idea that animated 2017’s trap-tinged work of minor villainy, Reputation. Swift knows her own mythology like a model knows her angles, and that’s part of what makes folklore fascinating if you maintain an open mind: a kind of reverse-engineered “mindie” project, it sonically situates her closest to Lana and chamber-pop belter Florence Welch, but may also occasionally remind you of Triple-A radio, Sufjan Stevens if he killed his more ambitious tendencies, or Big Red Machine, Dessner’s duo with Justin Vernon (see: the sparse and soulful “peace”). The album’s actual duet with Vernon, “exile,” is a little like a Bon Iver take on “Falling Slowly,” the centerpiece of the 2007 folk musical Once: awkwardly dragging until the clouds slowly part to allow something beautiful to build. Swift is playing the long game here, and while there are no wild missteps, the album could use some selective pruning (see: “seven,” “hoax”).

It’s worth pointing out that folklore isn’t a total outlier in Swift’s catalog either, or even her recent work. The tracks with Antonoff shift away from the ’80s electro-pop of 1989 and onward, but they lean into the Mazzy Star swoon of Lover’s title track, Swift’s ongoing fascination with Imogen Heap, and a twinge of the Cranberries. There are interesting images, indelible hooks, and real signs of maturity. In the dreamy “mirrorball,” Swift likens the relatability trap of fame to a disco ball, singing of fluttering on tiptoes and trying hard to make it look effortless. “august” is a great, lusty Swift summer anthem about forbidden love, where the up-close, white-hot heat of songs like “Style” or “Getaway Car” is traded for wistful reflection in the rearview. Like the rest of us, Taylor Swift knows she’s had better summers before and she’ll have better summers again. At least she’s made thoughtful use of this one.

#taylor swift #folklore #review

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aion-rsa · 5 years ago

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The Best Games of 2020

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Despite how almost every other aspect of the year went, 2020 was a landmark year for video games. Not only did it see the release of highly-anticipated titles like The Last of Us Part II, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Ghost of Tsushima, and Cyberpunk 2077, but 2020 also marked the beginning of a new generation of console and PC gaming with the release of the Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and new GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD. We even got a new Half-Life game this year!

What would’ve made the gaming year ever better? Big-name video game companies could have done more to eliminate development crunch and be more transparent about their business practices with customers and the press. And we definitely could have all been nicer to each other.

But video games also helped keep us connected when we couldn’t see our friends and loved ones in person. They helped us travel to new and interesting places when we couldn’t leave our homes. Most importantly, all 20 games on our best-of-the-year list made us feel excited about this medium at a time when it was so difficult to enjoy anything else.

To that affect, Den of Geek is celebrating 20 video games our contributors and critics, as well as our community of readers, voted as the very best of 2020.

20. Star Wars: Squadrons

For the last decade or so, most Star Wars games have focused on the power fantasy of being a lightsaber-swinging, Force-wielding Jedi. That’s all well and good, but for a long time it seemed like everyone forgot that some of the most beloved Star Wars games of all time were actually space shooters like X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and Rogue Squadron. In many ways, Star Wars: Squadrons is a throwback to those games, both in terms of gameplay and design. Controls are a pitch perfect mix of arcade simplicity and strategy, requiring quick thinking about whether to focus your ship’s power on attacking or defending.

Squadrons is also much more tightly focused than other recent games from large publishers, with a breezy yet enjoyable single-player campaign, and a multiplayer mode that, while light on modes, eschews the more annoying modern conventions of the online PvP like invasive microtransactions. But Squadrons is not stuck in its old school ways.

If you have the hardware for it on PC or PS4, you can jump into the cockpit of any of the playable ships for one one of the most immersive VR modes around. Similar to how The Mandalorian has rejuvenated the live-action side of the Star Wars media empire, Squadrons is a perfect mix of all of the best things we’ve always loved about Star Wars video games, and everything we want them to be going forward. – CF

19. Journey to the Savage Planet

Science fiction writers have long held on to this idea that, if and when humankind eventually colonizes the universe, it will do so as some sort of united, utopian entity, like Starfleet. But that future seems less and less likely every day. If and when humanity spreads across the stars, it will likely be messy, absurd, and profit-motivated. Journey to the Savage Planet wallows in that type of future. As an unnamed human (or dog, if you choose), you’re dropped onto the planet AR-Y26 by Kindred, the fourth biggest intergalactic exploration company with the simple goal of collecting as many resources as possible and leaving.

The Metroidvania gameplay loop of crafting equipment to access new areas is compelling, a rarity for 3D games in the genre. And it offers plenty of surprises too. You’ll start off with the typical blaster and scanner before eventually unlocking a grappling hook that lets you swing around levels like Spider-Man. But it’s style that ultimately lifts Journey to the Savage Planet above so many other games released in 2020. For one thing, the world and the fauna you’ll encounter are incredibly unique, and well, alien. And the regular live-action updates from Kindred beamed directly to your ship are among some of the funniest and most bizarre cinematics out this year in any game, providing plenty of motivation to see this journey through to its end. – CF

18. Half-Life: Alyx

As VR gaming continues to evolve, it’s becoming clear that the technology is more than just one truly great game away from widespread adoption. If that were all it took, then Half-Life: Alyx would have put a VR set under a lot of Christmas trees.

It’s truly wild to think that we got a new Half-Life game this year and that it sometimes feels like the game’s release was barely a blip on the cultural radar. While its somewhat muted debut can be attributed to its VR exclusivity (and the fact it launched at the onset of a global health crisis), Half-Life: Alyx surpassed all possible hype by offering a truly incredibly narrative-driven adventure bolstered by some of the cleverest uses of VR technology that we’ve ever seen.

Half-Life: Alyx isn’t the first great VR game, but Valve’s glorious return to form does shows how VR can advance fundamental elements of gameplay and storytelling rather than just show familiar games from a new perspective. – MB

17. Carrion

The indie game space is where you typically see the most experimentation, and this year proved no different when the gruesome and morbid Carrion released back in July. Highly inspired by the likes of John Carpenter’s The Thing, Alien, and other cult classic horror films known for their excellent use of practical SFX, this platformer cleverly flips the script, putting you in the role of the monster to dispatch helpless scientists in the claustrophobic depths of an underground lab as an ever-growing amorphous blob creature. What follows is a brief but effective 2D platformer that is fast paced and delectably gory.

The controls could have made controlling the creature a real pain, but Phobia Game Studio recognized that the key here was letting you move swiftly through the levels. As such, gliding through vents to take down scientists from above or underneath quickly becomes second nature. Encounters still pose a good degree of challenge, however, thanks to the heavily armed soldiers that show up later in the game, but this never stops Carrion from fulfilling every horror aficionado’s devilish fantasy of being the bloodthirsty monster. – AP

16. Kentucky Route Zero

Calling Kentucky Route Zero an homage to classic point-and-click adventure games is technically correct, but it doesn’t come close to doing the experience justice. Kentucky Route Zero is more like a poem or fable in video game form. It’s a feeling, a distillation of what it’s like to come of age in the Great Recession and its fallout over the last decade. Kentucky Route Zero is an epithet for rural America told through a fever dream, an examination of a version of rural Appalachia where talking skeletons and robotic musicians live alongside gas station attendants and truck drivers.

Nothing about Kentucky Route Zero fits the typical confines of what we expect from a video game, and that includes its release. Developed by a team of only three, the first episode of the five-episode experience was released in 2013, but the final product was only realized in early 2020. That lengthy development cycle meant that the game’s scope and story could grow to only better encapsulate this moment in time, and the final product stands out as one of best games of the year. To say more is to spoil its excellent story. – CF

15. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2

Though it’s been a hot minute since skateboarding games dominated the console space, Vicarious Visions’ excellent remake collection of the first two Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater titles was a reminder of how the entire series captured a whole generation of players in the late ’90s and early ’00s. Whether it’s grinding down rails, performing kickflips, or landing the gravity-defying 1080 on a vert ramp, everything in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 feels and looks exactly as you remember it but touched up with modern flare. That’s the mark of any great remake, and why this game in particular was the best example of the practice this year.

Classic skating locations like Warehouse, School and Downtown have all been faithfully remade from the ground up for a 21st century audience, effortlessly delivering the same thrills and balanced challenge as they did before. The fact that select mechanical features like reverts, which wouldn’t arrive until later entries, have been retroactively added is also a nice touch, instantly making Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 the definitive way to experience these skateboarding classics. – AP

14. Ori and the Will of the Wisps

The fact that Ori and the Will of the Wisps managed to usurp the critically acclaimed 2015 original in most design aspects speaks to just how well Moon Studios has mastered the art of the Metroidvania. Whisking players off on another tight 10-hour journey set within a mystical forest full of secrets to discover, this 2D adventure gives off a fantastical vibe in a way few others do. It’s an expert blend between smart combat mechanics, highly polished platforming, and emotional storytelling. That it runs at a silky 60 fps both on Nintendo Switch and Xbox is the cherry on top.

The major improvements Will of the Wisps makes over Blind Forest relate to saving and combat. Whereas previously it was the responsibility of players to lay down specific checkpoints, progress is now more in line with other 2D platformers and less punishing. Combat, meanwhile, has been completely revamped with the inclusion of special charms and upgradeable skills, most of which result in more flexible enemy encounters. These tweaks are implemented without ever compromising on Ori’s core hook of magical exploration and challenging platforming, instantly making it one of the best Metroidvanias out there. – AP

13. Call of Duty: Warzone

Call of Duty: Warzone was a natural and perhaps even necessary evolution for the long-running shooter franchise, carving out a space for it in the ever-crowding battle royale genre. While it’s largely derivative of battle royale titles that came before, the staggering 150-player count, always excellent CoD controls, top-notch presentation, and flexible cash system have made it eminently popular and fun for casual players and series vets alike. The CoD fan base feels vibrant again after years of stagnation in the shadow of breakout titles like PUBG and Fortnite, and that’s without going into how Warzone has revitalized the franchise’s presence in the streaming space.

One of the best facets of the game’s design is that the large player count all but ensures that, even if a player is new to the genre or series, the chances of them being the absolute worst player in the field is very low. Better still, the “Gulag” respawn mechanic opens up the possibility for ultimate revenge should you earn your way back into the match, which is a nice way to up engagement for those who suffer disappointing deaths.

The game doesn’t feel quite as dynamic or high-stakes as some of its competitors on the market, but it’s definitely one of the easiest to pick up and play. It’s no wonder Warzone has expanded CoD’s already enormous audience over the course of 2020. – BB

12. Astro’s Playroom

With launch lineups mostly filled with graphically enhanced releases of last-gen games, the release of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X has been more than a little underwhelming. The one bright spot is Astro’s Playroom, a little first-party Sony game that received virtually no pre-release hype and comes pre-installed on every PS5.

While at first glance a typical 3D platformer, Astro’s Playroom soon reveals itself to be a fantastic showcase of what’s possible with the new DualSense controller. In one level, you’re feeling the resistance from the controller’s adaptive triggers as you spring jump through obstacles dressed as a frog. In another, you’re expertly moving the controller back and forth to climb walls in a robotic monkey suit. Even just standing in the rain causes the controller to pulse ever so slightly with each drop. And all of this takes place across worlds celebrating the entire history of PlayStation, where you collect classic consoles and accessories, culminating in an unexpected boss battle throwback to an original PSX tech demo.

Astro’s Playroom may be short, but it’s an oh so sweet and exciting taste of what’s possible with the power of next-gen consoles. – CF

11. Doom Eternal

It would have been easy for Doom Eternal to be more of the same. After all, 2016’s Doom became the surprising gold-standard for single-player FPS games by virtue of its clever writing and gameplay that blended the best of classic and modern design concepts. Yet, Doom Eternal proved to be something much more than “the same but bigger.”

With its arena-like levels and resource management mechanics, Doom Eternal sometimes feels like a puzzle game set in the Doom universe. While the transition to this new style can be jarring, you soon find that Doom Eternal is speaking the same language in a different dialect. The brutal brilliance of a classic Doom game remains but it’s presented in the form of a kind of FPS dance that puts you in a state of pure zen once you figure out how to make that perfect run through a room full of demonic baddies.

Four years after Doom showed this old franchise could pull off new tricks, Doom Eternal proves that this series is at the forefront of FPS innovation once more. – MB

10. Demon’s Souls

Although initially released in 2009 for the PlayStation 3, Demon’s Souls would help define the next generation of gaming by establishing the Soulslike genre, which has influenced everything from recent Star Wars games to The Legend of Zelda. The “problem” is that the legacy of Demon’s Souls has been sort of eclipsed by the accomplishments of its successors.

That’s the beauty of the remake for the PS5. Aided by the power of the console’s next-gen hardware, developer Bluepoint Games pays homage to one of the most historically significant games of the last 15 years while wisely updating it in ways that show that the foundation of FromSoftware’s breakthrough hit remains arguably the best entry in a genre that isn’t exactly lacking in modern classics.

In a year where finding a next-gen console proved to be more difficult than any Soulslike game, Demon’s Souls remains the best reason to battle the bots at online stores in the hopes of joining gaming’s next generation as soon as possible. – MB

9. Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

There were multiple times this year where couped-up players relied heavily on “bean” games to help maintain a human connection. Before Among Us dominated the Twitch streams, it was Mediatonic’s intentionally clumsy and hilarious Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout that had us competitively raging with our friends. It did so by merging the wildly popular battle royale genre with the inflatable-fueled antics of early ’90s game shows, where dodging swinging hammers and battling giant fruit against 59 others became the norm for a few weeks – all in the pursuit of winning a highly coveted crown.

Needless to say, making Fall Guys free to PS Plus subscribers for a month turned out to be a genius marketing move, urging everyone to hop into the game’s inventive gamut of levels and make a fool of themselves. Much of what sets it apart from other battle royale attempts is its low-skill barrier to entry, and thanks to frequent seasonal updates, new unlockable outfits and fresh mini-games always being added, bumbling to the top of the pack as a colorful bean remains consistent fun. – AP

8. Animal Crossing: New Horizons

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Animal Crossing: New Horizons should be included in history books about the Covid-19 pandemic. Releasing just as lockdowns were being instituted across the globe, New Horizons provided the escapism we so desperately needed while quarantining, attracting not just the usual Nintendo fanbase, but even those who had never played games in the past but were now looking for something to occupy their time at home. Whether we played it with friends or alone, New Horizons provided the routine and distraction that so many of us needed in a world suddenly thrown into chaos.

Of course, it helped that New Horizons is the best Animal Crossing game to date, with tons of new ways to customize your island (and yourself). And as Covid-19 restrictions have stretched much longer than many of us anticipated, New Horizons has kept pace, with Nintendo releasing a steady stream of new fish to catch, fruits to harvest, and events to participate in throughout the year. It may not be the game that everyone wanted, but New Horizons is the game that 2020 needed. – CF

7. Cyberpunk 2077

When Cyberpunk 2077’s legacy is written, there’s no doubt that the opening chapter is going to focus on the bugs, technical shortcomings, and empty promises that have turned what looked to be one of 2020’s guaranteed hits into one of modern gaming’s most debated debuts.

Yet, the reason that this game’s initial issues will likely not ultimately define it is that Cyberpunk 2077 reveals itself to be a special experience whenever you’re able to play it without crashes or bugs ruining your experience. From its stunning side quests that revive one of The Witcher 3’s best elements to its shockingly human narrative, Cyberpunk 2077 regularly showcases the undeniable talent of the individuals who battled internal and external factors to deliver their vision.

Cyberpunk 2077’s technical problems wouldn’t hurt as much as they do if there wasn’t a truly great game at the heart of them that people are begging to be able to play as intended. – MB

6. Final Fantasy VII Remake

The pressure was on for Square Enix from the moment it announced Final Fantasy VII Remake back in 2015. For those who obsessed over the original back in 1997, the prospect of a remake was the stuff dreams were made of, and this year we finally got to relive Cloud, Aerith, Barret, and Tifa’s grand adventure (the first act of it, at least) with fully updated, well, everything. Astonishingly, the remake actually lived up to expectations and delivered not just a faithful update to the original game but a modern RPG that stands as one of its generation’s best regardless of nostalgia.

The key to Square Enix’s success was its approach, which aimed not to duplicate the experience of the original game, but to capture the essence and spirit of it while using modern game design to deliver the story in a way that doesn’t feel retro or rehashed at all. The game looks dazzling by 2020 standards (Midgar never looked better) but doesn’t compromise the integrity of the original designs, and the real-time combat—arguably the biggest departure from the original—is a blast to play.

Time will tell how exactly Square Enix will follow through with the rest of the remake as we enter a new console generation, but in the meantime, they studio has left us with a terrific reimagining of the most celebrated title in the studio’s expansive oeuvre. – BB

5. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

Ubisoft deserves credit for keeping a franchise like Assassin’s Creed, which is 13 years old at this point, thriving in an industry that is flooded with more open world games now than it ever has been. The series is always competitive in the genre, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla proves why: it’s as refined as any of its predecessors and delivers a balanced experience with a rich world to explore, tons of strange stories to uncover, and a mash-up milieu that combines the eerie atmosphere of 5th-century England with the otherworldly spectacle of Norse mythology.

No open world game is perfect, and Valhalla certainly has a handful of shortcomings. But it’s a bloody good time to play, and there’s so much to do that there’s no question that you get your money’s worth. Eivor’s quest for glory and domination is also arguably the most cinematic story in the entire AC catalog, with some truly breathtaking cutscenes that rival those found in more linear games that can’t sniff Valhalla’s scope. Some of the more otherworldly moments in the back half of the game are pure, unadulterated, nonsensical fun, and overall, this is one of the best entries in the series. – BB

4. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

Insomniac is one of those studios that you can always rely on to deliver fun, polished games that shine in every category, and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales only adds to the team’s sterling reputation. Building on the already brilliant formula the studio created with the original Marvel’s Spider-Man, Miles’s story is one of loss, friendship, identity, and the strength of the Black and Hispanic communities of Harlem.

The side-quel is also one of the best launch titles arguably ever. While it is a cross-gen game, the PS5 version is currently the best showcase of what next-gen gaming is capable of from a visual and performance standpoint. You won’t find a better-looking New York City in any other video game, period, and Insomniac’s outstanding animation work looks insanely good when bolstered by the PS5’s considerable horsepower. Miles plays differently than Peter Parker did in the original game as well, with his Venom Powers giving enemy encounters a new feel and rhythm.

Insomniac outdid itself with an excellent follow-up that would’ve been a forgettable DLC expansion in the hands of a less ambitious studio. But Miles Morales is one of the best modern-day superhero characters ever created, and it’s only right that he get a game that lives up to his greatness. – BB

3. Hades

The popularity of roguelikes has been calmly bubbling up for years now, yet only in 2020 did it truly become mainstream thanks to an ideal balance between gameplay and story as demonstrated by Hades. Players who previously took umbrage with the genre’s nature to wipe out all progress at each run’s end suddenly had a reason to jump back in, now inspired by Zagreus’ various tries to escape hell and overthrow his eponymous father. This alone sees Hades tower over most of its peers in terms of balance, further backed up by rewarding gameplay and a gorgeous comic book art style that makes the well-worn mythological Greek milieu feel fresh.

Developer Supergiant Games proved its penchant for creating flexible mechanical loops in prior titles, and in many ways, Hades feels like a culmination of all those ideas distilled in one neat package. It’s a great example of semi-randomized systems layering perfectly on top of other systems, until players eventually find themselves completing runs using distinct weapons, upgrading persistent abilities and slowly discovering which of the god’s many boons gel best with one another. Hades is always a hellishly good time. – AP

2. Ghost of Tsushima

The concept of honor has never been explored in a game as lyrically and philosophically as it is in Ghost of Tsushima, Sucker Punch’s story-driven samurai epic. Jin Sakai’s grand adventure is both brutal and beautiful, stretching across the grasslands and snowy peaks of the titular island, as he pushes the oppressive Mongol army out of his homeland, all the while wrestling internally with the kind of man, warrior, and leader he ultimately wants to be.

This game is outstanding on so many fronts that it’s difficult to list them all here. Visually, it looks so stunning that anyone who walks past your TV as you play is all but guaranteed to stop and stare for a while. The combat is fast and challenging, the stealth mechanic is on-point, the score is sweeping and sentimental, the character models are incredibly realistic, the online multiplayer mode “Legends” is actually a blast to play…and the list goes on. This poetic, pitch-perfect modern masterpiece is emblematic of the soulful, cinematic storytelling PlayStation Studios is known for, and it’s a wonderful way to send the PS4 off into the sunset. – BB

1. The Last of Us Part II (Also Reader’s Choice)

You can’t even say the name of our 2020 game of the year without sparking numerous debates that often make it nearly impossible to have a productive conversation about the game itself. That makes it that much more tempting to somehow find a kind of middle-ground that will “justify” the game’s lofty position to everyone regardless of where they stand.

The thing about The Last of Us Part 2,though, is that its divisiveness is very much part of the experience. Naughty Dog’s follow-up to arguably its greatest game is a bold attempt to live up to the franchise’s legacy by furthering what came before while trying to find its own way. Much like Ellie herself, The Last of Us Part 2 doesn’t always make the right decisions. Yet, at a time when bigger budgets are seen as an excuse to play it safe, The Last of Us Part 2 impresses through its willingness to present a big, bold, and personal adventure that is often anything but what was expected.

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Anyone can generate a little controversy by saying something stupid, offensive, or hurtful. The beauty of The Last of Us Part 2’s controversy is that it stems from a heartfelt attempt to advance the conversation through indie-like passion and big budget production. – MB

The post The Best Games of 2020 appeared first on Den of Geek.

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jorrmungandr · 5 years ago

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2019 was a good year for games.

Lots of interesting new ideas in the space, and some refinements of old ones. Here’s a list of my personal favorite games of this year, in no particular order. Making an ordered list can be fun, but it’s ultimately pretty pointless.

Video games are such a diverse medium at this point that it’s really like comparing apples and oranges. How does Baba Is You stack up against Dragon Quest XI S? They have almost nothing in common, and their aims are so different that it makes no sense to compare them directly.

Speaking of….

Baba Is You

There are a lot of indie puzzle games out there. Making a little mind-bending puzzle is something that’s easy to do on a relatively small budget. There are also a lot of games that mimic old pixel art aesthetics of earlier game systems, to greater and lesser success. Making a truly great puzzle game, though, is a true accomplishment. Something that combines a wildly different array of elements in interesting ways, but maintains a simple readability that allows you to return to puzzles after months away and instantly recognize what’s going on.

Baba Is You is a game that accomplishes this and more. It operates on very simple, basic rules, but the way they escalate over time and require you to think outside more and more boxes with every single puzzle is simple astounding. A lot of puzzle games escalate their difficulty so quickly that it’s easy to get discouraged, put off by the impossible tasks you’re being asked to perform. Where Baba shines is that it gives you a perfect runway, teaching you things slowly but surely through a series of challenges.

This is a game where you will instantly go from feeling like the world’s greatest super-genius to a complete and utter fool in a matter of moments, from finishing one stage to starting the next. Over and over again, for dozens and dozens of levels. No game has ever better demonstrated the value of brain rest, stepping away from a problem and letting your subconscious work on it for a while. Every time I came back to a puzzle after a couple hours, I would suddenly see some option I never saw before.

One final note, the graphics are actually a perfect fit for this game. A lot of times, pixel art feels like a gimmick, something to do when you don’t have a good idea, or just mindless nostalgia-baiting. But here, it serves a gameplay purpose, giving you an absolutely clean view of the elements in play at a glance, and also serves as an homage to the simple-yet-challenging puzzle games of those older eras.

Code Vein

And now, for something completely different: An extremely anime-styled souls-like. I remember hearing about this game years and years ago, and thinking that it looked kinda… bad. But, in the meantime they really brought it all together into something fun, if not very innovative.

Code Vein is exactly the sort of thing I look for in a souls-like: it takes the basic formula and adds some new mechanics to it, and has an identity of its own. Instead of a medieval fantasy world, it’s a post-apocalyptic modern city crawling with vampires and zombies. It takes inspiration from stylish, gothic anime of the past couple decades: Code Geass, Blood+, Tokyo Ghoul, etc. The character creator is extremely detailed, but mostly when it comes to clothes and accessories.

The gameplay is… fine. It’s balanced around always having an AI companion, so they can throw bigger groups of enemies at you. It doesn’t require the same sort of intense caution of the Souls series, but that makes it more of a fun, casual experience. At least until you’re fighting a boss, then it suddenly requires you to really be on your game with dodging. If I have one complaint, it’s that the difficulty is incredibly bumpy, some areas are a cake walk and others have you struggling through every encounter.

Oh, also the area aping Anor Londo from Dark Souls. Not because it’s derivative, that’s totally fine, but because it’s a maze where everything looks the same and it’s a real pain to get through. Souls games are at their best when areas have good landmarks and make a kind of logical sense. Earlier in the game you pass through a big parking garage, and it’s perfect, just the sort of thing that translates well to this kind of game. But this cathedral-ish area… it just sucks.

It really is quite shameless.

Overally, it’s just a solid souls-like. I enjoyed the crunchy RPG elements, switching classes and balancing your weapons and armor to get good mobility and damage. The ability to just equip cool-looking attack moves as skills you can use, like spells in Souls games, is something I’d really like to see in more games in this sub-genre.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I was kind of skeptical about this game before it came out. Mostly because it was bringing back weapon durability, a mechanic I’ve always hated in these games, but that ended up being a non-issue. Also the school setting made me a bit wary, thinking it was just gonna end up being some Persona-esque thing where you spend tons of time on mundane nonsense while an actual war is going on.

That was all baseless, it turns out. They balance the idea of a military academy with a traditional Fire Emblem structure remarkably well, giving you a lot of freedom around what you want to do when you play the game. You can run around the monastery talking to students, managing your relationships, or you can just do a ton of tactical battles if you want.

The storytelling was remarkably good, though I feel like it was harmed a bit by the weird way it handled multiple routes with different big mysteries. Some routes ended up completely ignoring or just not getting around to some pretty major mysteries. I’m a person who likes long games, but expecting someone to go through all four routes to figure out what’s going on is a bit much.

But more than that, the way it holds back certain reveals hurts the writing in other ways. The actual revelations can’t really have any effect on the characters and their relationships because it all happens at the very end of the game. It keeps the world feeling a bit flat, without any reactions. The mysteries feel extraneous to the plot, in a weird way, when they are so important to certain characters’ identities and the core conflicts that drive the second half of the game.

The gameplay is okay, though a few of the maps are way too big. The portable Fire Emblem games reigned in the map sizes from the old NES and SNES ones, which was a great thing. But now we’re back to moving a whole army one unit at a time for multiple turns just to get to the next group of enemies. The class system was fun to engage with, balancing learning different skills to open up new opportunities, but the gender-limited classes were a real disappointment. Why can’t men ride pegasi? Why can’t women punch good? It’s bizarre, and honestly felt like it had some stuff left over from early drafts, like the pointless dark mage classes.

This has been a lot of complaining about a game I played for close to a hundred hours. Why is this game even on my list? Because the characters are fucking fantastic, and on a basic level the tactical battles are a lot of fun. It offers a paternalistic form of power fantasy, fostering and guiding your children-warriors and then seeing them destroy your enemies. It is just incredibly satisfying to play. And for all that the mysteries end up a bit frustrating, they are intriguing, and do a good job of motivating you to get through a very lengthy game.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Ah, love a good IGAvania.

This was a year where I really reached for comfort food games a lot, and this is maybe the king of that category. It’s just an old style of game that doesn’t get made anymore, done extremely well by the guy who used to make ’em all the time. Nothing super different or innovative, just the same old thing with a couple new tweaks.

It’s an easy game, but that’s entirely by design. It’s about running around this castle killin’ monsters, collecting new abilities, just exploring and poking around the corners. It’s a game that is, ultimately, designed to be comfortable. And in a time of such strife in the world around us, what could be better?

Disco Elysium

There’s already been a lot written about this game, tons of praise heaped on its writing and its interesting, hauntological world that is so similar to our own, and yet so different. Frankly, I’m really glad I got turned into this before it even came out, if I heard all that overblown praise I’d never have ended up actually sitting down and playing it.

Here’s what I’ll say: This game is a look at an ugly world, and it gives you a lot to think about, but it actually doesn’t take itself too seriously. There are a ton of extremely funny moments, a lot of straight-up goofy-ass jokes. This is not medicine that you have to suffer through, just take it as it comes and it’s a good time. This is what allows its writing to really land, it’s not lecturing you from on high, it’s engaging on a lower, more personable level.

It’s also not some super serious text that you have to pore over and consider extremely closely at every moment. It’s a game, you can save scum and try to exploit mechanics and look up answers to mysteries. Much like Souls games, people come up with all sorts of weird rules about the “proper” way to play games like this, but in the end your experience is up to you.

One final note: the game does start off with a kind of off-putting ironic tone. Some people try to downplay this, but it’s there. I can only say this: if you give this game a chance, you’ll be rewarded. It is worth getting through a few sarcastic jabs to get to the good stuff later on. It’s not some perfect audio-visual experience that will entrance you from the opening moments to the credits, it’s just a video game.

Dragon Quest XI S

I first played Dragon Quest XI last year on PC, and I enjoyed it a lot! But I didn’t actually finish that version, not really. I put a lot of time into, but ultimately burned out on the grind towards the very end.

The form that games come in is very important to how they are experienced. Dragon Quest games work best as portable games, I truly believe. It also helps that this version on the switch added the ability to speed up regular battles, so you don’t have to sit through some long attack animations over and over. The more important aspect, though, is simply the ability to pick it up and put it down more easily.

Sitting down at my PC, plugging in my controller, and pulling up a game is a subtly labor-intensive thing. It means I’m devoting a lot of attention to a game, and it has to do something to earn that on a moment-to-moment basis. The ability to just push a single button on the switch and get back into means that I’m willing to forgive a lot more down time.

Anyway, the game itself: this is not just a very good Dragon Quest game, it is the ultimate Dragon Quest game. It truly shows the value in iteration over pure innovation, taking all sorts of different mechanics and ideas from past games in the series and bringing them all together in one big package. But it doesn’t feel overstuffed, it’s just doing the same thing these games have always done, just really, really well.

Dragon Quest XI successfully pays tribute to the older games in the series while also telling a new story with entertaining twists and turns, and fun and interesting characters. It’s beautiful, everything runs smoothly, the writing is charming and light. It’s not on the same level as Disco Elysium, but it’s not aiming for that sort of thing. It’s a fairy tale, a fable, a reflection of the world in a different sense.

A lot of game critics missed this game because it’s long. And that is absolutely fair, it’s hard to fit a 100-hour game into a review schedule in this day and age. But it’s an absolute gem, a truly wonderful experience from beginning to end. I’d recommend it to anyone who just wants a game to relax with at the end of the day.

Monolith: Relics of the Past

Like some sort of Christmas miracle, there was an expansion pack released for one of my favorite roguelikes on Christmas day, just last week.

Monolith is the best twin-stick shooter roguelike, I will make no bones about it. Forget your Gungeons and your Bindings of Isaac, this is a classic NES-styled game with an absolutely pitch-perfect aesthetic and sense of humor. It serves both the twin-stick shooting and the roguelike parts of its genre perfectly, giving you a strong basic weapon to rely on, and also a guarantee of something more interesting but random in every run.

Man, there are games that I enjoy more, but I really, truly feel that this is one of the best-crafted games of the past few years. And this expansion only made it better: fixing up the UI and tooltips to make things more clear, rebalancing the weapons so that they are all useful, adding more variety to runs.

I’m not the best at Monolith, it took me quite a while to get a full win, but that doesn’t make it any less fun to play. In my youth, I was really quite good at bullet-hell games, but nowadays those reflexes aren’t there. It’s a game designed for people who can dodge endless bullet curtains, and also, now more than ever, for those who struggle with it.

It’s truly inspiring to see something that takes from the past and the present and fuses it together into something so wonderful. There are other games that really capture the NES aesthetic and sensibility, like Odallus or The Messenger, but this one really gets the spirit of that whole era of games. It is at once light and airy, and also punishingly difficult. It offers tricks and outs, but also remains utterly mysterious and intimidating.

And that’s it. There are more games I enjoyed this year, like the remake of Link’s Awakening, but these are the big ones that stick out in my mind.

There are a lot of big narrative-heavy games I never got around to finishing, or even starting. It just doesn’t really fit with how I play games these days, listening to podcasts and aiming to relax, not engage with something on a deep level.

That’s okay, though. I’ll get around to ’em in the fullness of time.

Games of the Year 2019 2019 was a good year for games. Lots of interesting new ideas in the space, and some refinements of old ones.

#baba is you #Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night #code vein #Disco Elysium #Dragon Quest #Dragon Quest XI S #fire emblem three houses #goty #Monolith #video games

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bravoprint · 2 years ago

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Artwork Printing Melbourne | Bravo Print

Artwork Printing Melbourne offers the latest giclee fine art printing technology. This process ensures that brush strokes and pencil renderings are delivered with perfect clarity.

James Eagle looks just how you’d expect an indie Melbourne artist to look: relaxed, friendly and cool in a totally accidental way. His screen-printing business is a side hustle that he’s slowly dragging back into the mainstream.

Bravo Print

The intricate and delicate work of Bravo Print needs to be seen to be believed. He uses a watercolour palette that’s almost translucent, with delicate strokes and pencil renderings that capture the essence of each animal perfectly.

He’s also a writer and has been published in Meanjin and Overland Literary Journal. He has a Research Masters in Creative Art and his thesis examined children’s art production, narrative and play.

Minna Leunig is an Australian artist who creates monochromatic scenes of animal life. Her limited colour palettes take viewers into the primal world of animals, with each species displaying their unique personalities and charisma. Leunig’s limited-colour landscapes are guaranteed to add a touch of whimsy and sophistication to any home.

Bravo Print

Bravo Print is a Kaanju, Kuku Ya’u, and Girramay woman from Far North Queensland who has always known she wanted to be an artist. From drawing on walls as a toddler to practising techniques passed down by her family, she has developed her own unique style of art. Emma’s work pays homage to her culture and heritage in bright and vibrant colours.

She is also a self-run businesswoman with her own art store called Mulganai. Her ally-friendly colouring book features 45 rad artworks that celebrate Indigenous Australia and the places she grew up in.

Another favourite is the Melbourne-based artist Mable Tan who creates surface design and illustrations that are whimsical, fun, and joyful. Her beautiful designs will add a splash of colour to any room in your home.

In the heart of inner-city Fitzroy is Australian Print Workshop, an award-winning centre of excellence for traditional printmaking and multidisciplinary studios. The refurbished building is a marvel of modern technology, and the team is able to offer print services that are at the forefront of international best practice.

They are a short taxi ride from the city and can be easily reached on the tram line that stops metres away. The team can also provide consultation and training for groups and individuals wanting to get started in printmaking.

Bravo Print

As a print studio, Creffield specialise in giclee printing – using high-resolution professional inkjet printers to ensure brush strokes, pencil renderings and colours are reproduced crystal-clear. They’re the go-to Melbourne printing company for artists who require perfection in their work and want to be sure that their prints are a true representation of the original idea they had in mind.

Sydney-based husband and wife duo The Adventures of produce a bold and colourful selection of greeting card and art prints that would brighten up any blank wall. Their slogan prints are perfect for daily motivation while their abstract, geometric and cut-out compositions are a bit like the work of a modern day Matisse.

If you’re looking for a more food-themed addition to your home, check out Melbourne artist Alice Oehr’s scrummy-looking illustrations. Hang one of her tomato or orange prints in your kitchen for a visual Vitamin C boost, or frame a strawberry print to remind you to pick some up from the market. Her artwork is also a great way to decorate your space without breaking the bank.

Bravo Print

When you want perfection for your artworks and photographs, Bravo Print is the place to go. Their giclee printing services are designed to capture brush strokes, pencil renderings and colours with a clarity that is often not possible with consumer-grade printers. They also have an extensive range of canvas frames to fit your needs.

#Advertising Printing Australia #dvertising Printing Services

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 7 years ago

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Michael After Midnight: Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You?

So here’s a neat little bit of trivia: back in the 80s, my grandmother actually had her own video store. Obviously a little indie video store wasn’t gonna survive competition from something like Blockbuster or all the other options that began popping up around the time, so she ended up closing it, and my parents ended up with a lot of the VHS tapes, which of course I ended up watching. A lot of my favorite films and movies I’m really nostalgic for came from those VHS tapes, such as Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer, InHumanoids: The Movie, and Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend - all great candidates for reviews. Frankly, not sure why I haven’t reviewed InHumanoids already… but I digress. I bring this all up because there is one specific VHS I want to talk about.

But first, let’s talk about Dr. Seuss.

Dr. Seuss, as you may know, is one of the greatest children’s authors of all time. The guy churned out classic after classic, creating timeless works featuring wondrous landscapes, fantastical locales, and colorful characters like the Lorax, the Grinch, and the Cat in the Hat. He’s also known for having extremely crappy films based off of his books, but that wasn’t always the case; back in the day, Seuss worked on animated specials based on his stuff, working with everyone from Chuck Jones to Ralph Bakshi. Dr. Seuss was truly a creative genius whose works have stood the test of time.

[Except this one]

Tonight’s work is one that is actually not based on any sort of preexisting book, and was one of those bizarre VHS tapes I watched over and over as a child. And tonight’s work is one that I’m not going to review in the traditional sense; oh no, this one is getting something special. Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You? is akin to Freddie as F.R.0.7. in my mind as something it is far more fun to just explain than to truly dissect, so instead of a true review, I am going to do a sort of recap of the plot before giving you a verdict on whether this insane special is worth your time.

So, let’s get right into this:

Pontoffel Pock, our titular hero, has a job at a pickle factory, and he has the simplest job you could possibly imagine: he pushes the lever “Pushum” and pulls on the chain “Pullum” and the pickles go into the jar (as the song helpfully informs us. Oh yeah, this is a musical. That’s somewhat important). So with such a simple job, it would be pretty inconceivable to fuck it up, right? Well, that’s because you are most likely not a colossal failure on the level of Pontoffel Pock, who SOMEHOW confuses the Pushum and Pullum and ends up destroying the entire factory, which leads to him getting fired. Did I mention this was his first day and immediately before fucking up he was explained what his job was?

[You had ONE fucking job, Pontoffel Pock]

Dejected and alone, Pock goes home and plays basketball on his roof as an homage to Clerks. Please ignore that this animation came out nearly two decades before Clerks. I would like to take a moment to point out that Pock’s house is exactly as weird and impractical a homestead as any you might see in a Seuss work - and the fact it’s a dilapidated mess because Pock can’t hold down a job only makes it even more odd. In his misery and sorrow, Pock wishes he could get away from it all… and he gets his chance, because the Amalgamated Do-Gooding Fairies come down from the heavens and grant him a magical flying piano that will take him anywhere in the world if he plays the proper notes (C, C, C, D, D#, E, for those wondering).

Gifted with this incredible magical gift, and with the entire world at his disposal, Pontoffel Pock does what any normal human being would do: he shows off and acts like a douchebag. Teleporting to Groogen, a sort of German-Switzerland mashup country, Pock freaks the locals out with his flying piano, and gets shot down by their paint cannon known as the Goomy Gun, because nothing in a Dr. Seuss work can have a normal name. Pock returns home, and naturally McGillicuddy, the head fairy, is pissed as fuck at Pock for being a douchey show-off and nearly wrecking the piano right off the bat.

[Dunno what he expected from the moron who wrecked a pickle factory]

Thankfully, McGillicuddy is a kind and merciful fairy, a bit more Seelie than Unseelie. He gives Pock one more chance, so the question now becomes: How can Pock fuck this up? Well let’s find out as he travels to Casbahmopolis, the Seuss version of the Middle East. Considering what a colossal moron Pock is, it should surprise absolutely no one that he falls in love with the first scantily clad belly dancer woman he sees; that girl is Neefa Feefa, who contrary to the previous sentence is NOT a belly dancer, but rather an… eyeball dancer. No, she doesn’t dance on eyeballs, she’s just dressed in an outfit that covers everything but her eyes. It’s kind of an amusing parody of belly dancers.

[Behold, the greatest waifu of all time]

Lucky for Pock, Neefa Feefa is the only woman in the world as stupid as him, and she immediately falls for him as well. Unfortunately, she’s stuck fucking dancing for the king, a job she hates, and she wishes she could get away from it all. To her credit, she actually has a real, genuine reason to want to get out of her current position, unlike Pontoffel “First World Problems” Pock. Pock seems to realize this, and in one of his exceedingly rare moments of badassery, singlehandedly infiltrates the palace of the king to save this girl he barely knows. Sure, it’s stupid and cliche, but so far Pock has been nothing but be a showboating weenie; here he goes Solid Snaking his way through a palace full of armed guards to save a woman, that takes some pretty big balls.

Of course, this is Pontoffel Pock we’re talking about; he manages to fuck things up somehow. The guards manage to bust the Homing Pigeon Switch of his piano, which would allow him to zap right back to the dump he calls a house, and when he tries to go somewhere else Neefa Feefa slips into the clutches of the guards and the piano goes on the fritz, leading Pock to desperately try any keys he can in an attempt to get back. At this time, the fairies are getting worried, seeing as they haven’t heard from Pock in ages, and so set out on a massive manhunt to find him, singing “Pontoffel Pock, Where the Fuck Heck Are You?” This is the part where our hero finally triumphs. Pock suddenly out of the blue remembers the proper switch and zaps back to save his imprisoned beloved, so of course… he crashes the piano into the tower.

[Pictured: A man who can do literally nothing right]

Neefa Feefa sends out a prayer, and thankfully it is heard by the fairies, who descend from the heavens and save everyone’s ass. Pontoffel Pock’s quest to get some poon seemingly impresses the boss at the pickle factory, because not only is Pock rehired, but Neefa Feefa gets hired there too, and apparently the dress codes are extremely lax there as she gets to wear her eyeball dancer outfit to work. Pock manages to get away scot free despite fucking everything up and manages to get a hot girl and a stable job, so I guess the moral of the story is “Going to great lengths to get pussy will make up for all of your constant fuckups.”

[Huh. I guess The Lorax was right]

So that was Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You? and I think it goes without saying this is one weird, quirky, and unique animated story. It’s not very long and is a bit corny and cliche, and the shortness doesn’t do much favors to the story as it leads to things feeling a bit rushed, but quite frankly it all adds to the silly, Seussy charm. The animation, the designs, and just all the wacky creativity on display here is Seuss at his best, and frankly it’s hard to hate a story of a man who fucks up his pickle factory job and gets a magical flying piano from fairies so that he can score with a belly dancer.

I really wish this was more well-known than it is. God knows this deserves it. It’s just so charmingly weird. If you like weird and silly animated things or the work of Dr. Seuss, this is something to check out, though if you’re a huge fan of the latter you may already know this. I don’t think this is really something that deserves to be held up alongside the greats like The Grinch or The Lorax, but I think it deserves an honorable 3rd place alongside those two; this is an underrated obscure gem if there ever was one.

Now I’m going to sit back and pray that this review becomes popular enough to get people to draw Neefa Feefa porn.

[Real talk: This is the only reason I wrote this review]

#Michael After Midnight #Review #animation review #Dr. Seuss #Pontoffel Pock #Pontoffel Pock Where Are You #Neefa Feefa #animation #animated special #obscure

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futuretiimecat-blog · 7 years ago

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Using gifs, and without using titles, list your top ten favorite games of all time.

They don’t have to be in any particular order.

Tag however many people you like.

Repost! Do not reblog!

Tagged by: @robocatandboy Tagging: Tbh I don’t know how many of my Mutuals are into games so whoever wants to do it can just steal it from me.

HAMU(N). Instead of just leaving the .gifs there I’ll add a couple bullet points each to explain why do I like these games or whatever clarifications I need to do. Sometimes I like one only game and sometimes I like the entire series so there’s also that to clarify.

Also I’m not much into games anymore so don’t expect anything special from this list, neither for it to be a “ten games of all time” thing, that’s asking me for a lot.

While I like both games in the series, yes, I like the sequel a little bit more over the original, people can fight me over it.

Both games are good in their own ways, and also pretty flawed in their own ways, but this game has got what the prequel didn’t give me and also got me into making fan-content again so there’s that.

Also those two boys are my favorite superheroes in the game, I just can’t get enough of them.

Underrated series (this is going to happen a lot here) with a very passionate (yet unstable) fanbase that has been working on developing content for this games up to this day, honestly. The amount of OSTs and fangames (even if 75% of them have been cancelled/dropped by now) is very impressive for such a tiny community.

Although I must admit that the two (considered canon) fangames are my favorites when it comes to this series. I love listening to the OST of all of them, though, I’m doing it as we speak.

This (dead) series deserves way better than it ever got. The entire series is good, I played all the games I could get my hands on, yet the treatment it got from the company behind it should be considered to be a bloody sin, smh.

Also Shiftylook did a great work reviving this series a bit with the webcomic they made, but I will never get over the fact that the website closed and left the whole thing on a cliffhanger, you just can’t live happily if you are a fan of this series.

FunFact: My FC technically comes from this series, but he’s not a playable character in any of the games or even in the webcomic from Shiftylook (yes, they also made this one). He’s the protagonist of a crossover dating sim also made by Shiftylook, and also the representative of this series despite being an original character.

Play this games and/or check the webcomic tho’, they’re all very fun to play and pretty wacky story/lore-wise.

I suck at fighting games, a lot, I cannot even play this game properly, but even them I have owned this game and an arcade controller for it (if only my dinosaur of a computer could fully run it, I gave up on it a long while ago). The lore and story mode of each playable character is what got me into it and kept me coming back to it every time an update would come out.

I value this game soleily for its animation quality (each and every sprite of this game is hand-drawn, the backgrounds and background elements too) and character quality (the cast is small but they’re all very charismatic and different from each other.

This gem of here got me into the point-and-click genre. It’s another midly-underrated series outside it’s original german fanbase though.

If you people can stand black comedy and its morally-grey protagonist I would reccommend playing or watchign walkthough of this games, especially since the series is already complete and closed.

FunFact: The forth game was made soleily to make the fanbase understand why the third game ends the way it ends. People are still not satisfied up to this day.png

The game that inspired the creation of this fangame is a classic and cult-classic in the indie and RPGMaker community, but at least I was cable of completing that one.

This beast tho’, this game is so hecking huge I never managed to complete it without guides, another piece of proof of how certain game communities are so passionate they can create fangames as quality as the games that inspired them to do so.

Although I honestly like the main game and first two main fangames, it was hard picking between the three of them.

5th Gen is my favorite Gen, that’s all I can say, fight me for not even having 1st Gen in my top five if you wanna.

I know, I know, it’s not the second game of the sub-series, burn me at the stake, but this game has an amazing story too, and music, and pays homage to the previous games very nicely. If this turned out to be the last game of the series I would not complain knowing how did this game go down.

The hell was that plot twist tho’, I never got over that plot twist.

There’s legit no material related to this game on this website so I can only show a screenshot of it. Hell, here’s a video from the official Twitter too.

Hell, I’m going to break the rules of this Tag soleily for this game because it’s so criminally underrated outside its japanese fanbase it deserves more love than it gets.

You can play it on Android and iOS, give it a try, it’s cute, wholesome and sad, and it looks great for a puzzle game, also I cry tears of joy every single time I see somethign about it.

#•|| ⏰ (About!Hamster.)

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lovejustforaday · 4 years ago

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Favourite Albums Review - Seventh Tree by Goldfrapp

Seventh Tree - Goldfrapp

Main Genres: Folktronica, Indie Pop, Art Pop

A decent sampling of: Dream Pop, Chamber Folk, Neo-Psychedelia, Baroque Pop

“木漏れ日”, or “Komorebi”, is a word that only exists in Japanese. It describes the mystifying visual phenomenon that occurs when sunlight passes through a canopy of trees. Light filters through the leaves and changes slightly in hue according to the colour of the leaves.

At its core, Seventh Tree feels like a musical interpretation of the komorebi phenomenon. Shimmering in a haze of green and golden light, Goldfrapp’s fourth and greatest LP is a lush, fleeting, and pastoral record. With airy sound production and a prevailing sense of the ephemeral, the album pairs beautifully with the transition from Summer to Autumn. Likewise, I make sure to revisit it every year during the month of September, and every time I am once again completely floored by just how any group of artists could ever achieve and maintain such a perfect sound.

Goldfrapp’s debut was undoubtedly a hard act to follow. The British duo of Will Gregory and Alison Goldfrapp came on to the scene with Felt Mountain, an unexpected masterpiece marked by atmospheric alien worlds achieved via surreal studio sounds, filtered through film noir and golden age Hollywood aesthetics. The album went Gold in the U.K. and was even shortlisted for a Mercury Prize.

But where to go from there? Goldfrapp’s initial response to their immediate success, as well as their initial approach in attempting to exceed the heights of their debut, was to amp up the fun factor of their music tenfold.

Thus, the follow-up records Black Cherry and Supernature were mostly sassy electroclash romps chock-full of sexual innuendo (especially Black Cherry) and sing-along pop hooks (especially Supernature). Very solid records in their own right, yielding some excellent singles like “Twist” and “Ooh La La”, but ultimately lacking the consistency and grandeur of Felt Mountain.

But then something great happened.

Alison and Will had long been inspired by nature and especially animals as symbolic motifs throughout their career. But for their fourth record, Goldfrapp decided for the first time to make an album that actually sounded like it came from the natural world. They allowed their trademark electronic inventions to take on a more supportive role, blending into the background seamlessly with gentle acoustic instruments, creating a uniquely harmonious folktronica sound.

The lyrics also take on a much more prominent role than on their previous records, delving deep into themes of innocence, tragedy, superficiality, and the ever-changing state of nature. Revealing both elements of poetic sadness and dark humour inherent to the many unfortunate conditions of human behaviour, Alison is found pondering over topics such as plastic surgery (”Clowns”) and cults (”Happiness”) throughout the course of the album.

The title Seventh Tree itself came to Alison in a cryptic dream. Visually and musically, the duo became particularly inspired by woodland imagery, as well as the symbol of the harlequin, a free-spirited and whimsical character found in traditional Italian theatre. These influences translate to an atmosphere on the album that feels elusive, wispy, and at times even day drunk.

“Clowns” introduces the sensory world of Seventh Tree with the record’s purest, most delicate folk song. Accompanied by faint swells of chamber strings over a steady and serene acoustic guitar riff, Alison Goldfrapp just barely enunciates her way through slurred, childlike speech, with similes about fake breast implants and clown balloons. The narrator here is almost certainly a little girl, failing to understand the reasons why an older woman would want to undergo surgery just in order to gain bigger breasts, thus emphasizing the blissful naivety of childhood that can never truly be recovered by an adult. More than any other track on the record, “Clowns” embodies the very essence of Seventh Tree, presenting a sylvan vignette that captures a very simple moment of human vulnerability.

The following track “Little Bird” introduces synthesized elements, starting off soft and sweet before blooming into a rippling display of psychedelic folktronica, with words inspired by the surrealist poetry of English artist Edward Lear.

“Happiness” is a carnival world of sunshine baroque pop appearing almost too picturesque, with stomping parades of dizzying horns and synths. The entire song presents a brilliantly perverse and whimsical satire of the ways in which cults advertise themselves in order to prey on lost and impressionable people. Alison’s promises of everlasting happiness are soft and enticing, but ultimately betrayed by the sinister undertones of her phrasing; you can practically visualize her forced smile and a morphine injection needle being clenched in the fist that she hides behind her back.

“Eat Yourself” sees Alison revisiting the vocal stylings of “Clowns” with a sauntering folk tune that reverberates like the footsteps of a gentle forest giant. Touching on feelings of loss, the title refers to one of the song’s only decipherable lines (without the use of liner notes), offering a particularly grim sentiment: “If you don’t eat yourself no doubt the pain will instead”.

Seventh Tree’s most sober undertaking is “Some People”, an indie pop carol that gradually forms a chiming ecosystem of sounds around a series of golden piano chords. It also serves as the definitive representation of the record’s central themes, listing off human vices and eccentricities with a listless, breezy attitude, as if the duo are accepting all of the good, the bad, and the strange things in the world.

And then, with all the stillness of an early morning mist, “A&E” merges with the listener’s imagination. A sentimental love song on its surface, this piece actually tells the story of a miserable, heartbroken woman who wakes up in a hospital bed, slowly remembering the details of the night before when she had attempted to overdose on pills and kill herself. It alll feels incredibly real and tangible, the way it so vividly captures the state of having a mental “reset” in the flow of the mind's stream of consciousness.

Precious few moments in music have ever struck me so profoundly as did the moment when I realized what kind of story Alison had been weaving on this track. With the brilliant execution of its concept in marriage with some the most crystal clear and subtly detailed production I have ever heard, this track earns the title of being my favourite Goldfrapp song. Altogether, “A&E” is a dreamy and sweetly cruel ballad that manages to embody the very zenith of story-telling through songwriting.

Things take a lighter turn for the last three tracks. “Cologne Cerrone Houdini” is an ornate psychedelic trip that pays musical homage to the sound of 60s hippie culture and the summer of love (as do many tracks here, to varying degrees).

Penultimate track “Caravan Girl” is a great big pop song celebrating wanderlust, with an insanely euphoric grand finale of exhilarating snare drums and a wave of soaring crisp bit-pop synthesizers, like 8bit butterflies flying across a 4k blue sky. Keyword for the production on that last part of the song is “orgasmic”.

Things are wrapped up quite nicely with “Monster Love”, an all-too-tender, folky dream pop serenade of mixed feelings that Alison Goldfrapp dedicates to her time on tour as an artist, particularly reflecting on her time in the glamorous but shallow world of Hollywood. It’s a very fitting ending; the song ties together the lyrical commentary and the musical spirit of Seventh Tree, retreating back into the ether with its closing lines “Everything comes around / Bringing us back again / Here is where we start / And where we end”.

Seventh Tree is my personal gold standard for an album listening experience. The record is its own masterclass in creating a diverse but cohesive sonic world, with songs that are varied but thematically linked, and with textural motifs that are revisited in many different ways over the course of the album. Will Gregory is a stellar lead producer; the man is clearly a master of detailed perfectionism, and this record in particular still sounds fucking immaculate 13 years later. Alison Goldfrapp herself proves that she is a wise and contemplative spirit with the beautiful voice of an immortal forest faerie.

On some days, this is my favourite record ever (the days when it isn’t that other one). Give this a listen if you haven’t already. Allow yourself to be cast in the verdant light and the mystifying shade of the towering Seventh Tree.

10/10

highlights: “A&E”, “Clowns”, “Happiness”, “Eat Yourself”, “Caravan Girl”, “Little Bird”, “Some People”, “Cologne Cerrone Houdini”, “Monster Love”, “Road To Somewhere” i.e. everything

#goldfrapp #alison goldfrapp #will gregory #seventh tree #folktronica #indie pop #art pop #favourite music #album review #music review #favourite albums #best music #2008 #komorebi

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aaronmaurer · 4 years ago

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Movies I Liked in 2020

Every year I reflect on the pop culture I enjoyed and put it in some sort of order.

Discussing film in 2020 is almost nonsensical. Theatres were shut down in most places for most of the year, shuffling release schedules and availability of titles in various markets, further fracturing an already-fragmented landscape. I personally love the movie-going experience – the darkened atmosphere, the massive screen, the ability to escape the outside world for a couple hours in the company of a room of strangers. Man, do I miss all of that. Yet I am exceedingly grateful to the creators and media conglomerates that decided to release some of their projects to streaming services and “virtual cinemas” during this unprecedented year. (Despite Wonder Woman 1984’s flaws, wow, was it nice to have a new action blockbuster to watch over the holidays.)

I toyed with breaking out stage/theatre projects separately, but at the end of the day, had those played on the big screen they would have still been considered, so I decided to keep everything together. This year more than ever I make no claims to comprehensiveness, and it seems even more futile than usual to rank these films, so here are 15 of my favorite films of 2020 listed in alphabetical order. How I wish I could have experienced these all on the big screen.

American Utopia (available on HBO)

Spike Lee’s film of the Broadway engagement of David Byrne’s American Utopia is right up there with Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense, the gold standard of concert films (and I’m not even much of a Talking Heads/Byrne fan!). The brilliance of this tour-turned-Broadway show is the elimination of any stationary equipment – Byrne and his band, utilizing mobile instruments, perform choreographed movement to the songs (a mix of Byrne solo material and Talking Heads classics) on an otherwise bare stage. The arrangements of the songs themselves are warm and life-affirming, something we all needed more of in 2020.

An American Pickle (available on HBOMax)

This quirky comedy from writer Simon Rich stars Seth Rogan in dual roles as an immigrant in the early 1900s transplanted to modern day New York and his last remaining descendant. I wasn’t expecting much from the premise but found it to be a surprisingly resonant story about family and legacy with salient observations about modern conveniences and appreciating small pleasures. Rogan himself is really great in this, creating two very distinct and believable characters that in an alternate reality might be up for awards consideration.

Black Is King (available on Disney+)

Beyonce’s latest visual album has its origins in her Lion King role, but the material transcends that misbegotten remake (despite the occasional out-of-place audio clips sprinkled throughout). The visuals here are stunning, from the costumes and makeup to the set design and choreography, all in celebration of Black excellence and beauty.

Emma. (available on HBO, VOD and Blu-ray)

One of the last films I saw in theatres this spring was the latest treatment of Jane Austen’s Emma from director Autumn de Wilde. Similar to Little Women last year, I had no prior experience with the source material, never having read the novel or seen any prior adaptations (outside of Clueless, if you count that), but I found it absolutely delightful. The cast is terrific, including Anya Taylor-Joy in a role completely different than her other big turn this year in The Queen’s Gambit, and the production design & direction are impeccably sumptuous, creating the type of escapism that came to mean all-the-more as the year wore on.

First Cow (available on Showtime, VOD and Blu-ray)

Kelly Reichardt’s latest film is a moving meditation on unexpected friendship, ideas of masculinity and economic inequality set against the backdrop of 1800s Oregon Country. Poetic but not ponderous, First Cow is one of the most humane and empathetic portraits of man and nature I experienced in 2020.

Hamilton (available on Disney+)

Already a big of Lin Manual-Miranda’s race-bent musical about founding father Alexander Hamilton, I was still awed by this document of the original Broadway production. Director Tommy Kail adeptly films his own stage direction while capturing intimate moments through closeups and vantages that are unavailable to the live audience. And while I personally may have preferred Lin to sing more than sob through some of his Act II songs, the whole cast is phenomenal, especially Leslie Odom Jr, Renée Elise Goldsberry and MVP Daveed Diggs whose energy and charisma are palpable in his dual role as Lafayette/Jefferson.

Just Mercy (available on HBO, VOD and Blu-ray)

Although technically a 2019 film, Just Mercy didn’t receive wide release until 2020 so I’m including it here. The adaptation of lawyer Bryan Stevenson’s memoir about his fight for death row inmates is a powerful story of the ongoing fight for justice and rarely falls into “based on a true story”/biopic clichés. Michael Jordan brings dignity and righteousness to the role of Stephenson and Jamie Foxx is excellent as the wrongfully incarcerated Walter McMillian.

Kajillionaire (available on VOD)

The story of an insular family of grifters, Kajillionaire explores what it’s like to exist in a bubble and reconcile that with a growing understanding of the wider world. Evan Rachel Wood engenders immense empathy with her portrayal of the family’s daughter who has been raised without any real physical affection or affirmation and Gina Rodriguez exudes light and charisma as a woman who comes into their orbit and changes everything.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (available on Netflix)

Adapted from August Wilson’s play of the same name, this film contains a powerhouse performance from Viola Davis as the titular blues singer but belongs to the magnetic Chadwick Boseman in his final role. As Levee, a brash young songwriter and musician, Boseman fully realizes a portrait of a talented and demeaned Black man in America, trapped by circumstance and his own feelings of helplessness. It’s beautiful and gut-wrenching to behold, and makes his passing all the more tragic as we can only imagine the great performances that we’ll never get to see.

Mank (available on Netflix)

Mank, a biopic about Golden Age Hollywood screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, may be director David Fincher’s most conventional film yet, however that takes nothing away from the charm of its engaging storytelling and performances. As “Mank” works – or rather drunkenly procrastinates – on the screenplay for Citizen Kane, we get flashbacks of his relationships with William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies, which will provide the basis for his script’s thinly veiled characters.

Small Axe (available on Amazon Prime)

A series of five separate films from director Steve McQueen, the Small Axe series is linked by its exploration of the West Indian community in London. Exploring topics including the justice system, educational disparity and the unifying & life-affirming power of music, these films are each powerful and moving on their own but add up to a rich and beautiful tapestry of the complexities of immigrant life.

Soul (available on Disney+)

Soul is in many ways a spiritual successor (pun intended) to Inside Out, my all-time favorite Pixar film, envisioning life after death (or is that life before life?) as a strange and delightfully stylized realm where new souls prepare to be born. The audience surrogate to this world is a frustrated jazz musician who finds himself incapacitated the day of his big break. The stunningly rendered film is another example of the studio – and co-director Pete Docter – at its heart-rending best with lovely observations about passion, mentorship and being present to life’s small pleasures.

The Vast of Night (available on Amazon Prime)

An indie sci-fi flick set in 1950s New Mexico from first-time director Andrew Patterson, The Vast of Night pays homage to the likes of The Twilight Zone better than the current reboot of that show does. This surprisingly compelling movie creates a tangible sense of time and place and utilizes innovative shots and blocking to deliver something unique and artful, while still delivering on its genre promises.

What the Constitution Means to Me (available on Amazon Prime)

The final live communal event I attended before everything locked down last spring was the touring production of this Heidi Schreck play, and boy, was it a moving way to say a temporary goodbye to live theatre (even if I didn’t quite know it at the time). Later in the year, Amazon gifted us with a record of Schreck’s Broadway run, which loses nothing of its impact or immediacy. Using her personal history of debate contests at American Legion Halls as an entry point, Schreck explores how the Constitution has been used (and not used) to impact the rights of women (and other marginalized groups) throughout America’s history. Brilliant, heart-breaking and inspiring art.

Wolfwalkers (available on AppleTV+)

The latest wonder from director Tomm Moore (The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea) completes his trilogy of films inspired by Irish mythology. The topics this time are the Wolfwalkers, an Irish variation of the Werewolf legend, and the clash of urbanization with the natural world. Vividly rendered in gorgeous traditional animation, this is one of the most visually splendid things I saw all year.

Bonus! Honorable Mentions:

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (Netflix)

Feels Good Man (VOD)

Palm Springs (hulu)

Sound of Metal (Amazon Prime)

Tenet (VOD, Blu-ray)

#film

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anotherdyingartform · 5 years ago

Audio

Best Albums of the 2010s: #3

Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold (2013)

Also released in the 2010s: Tally All the Things You Broke EP (2013), Sunbathing Animal (2014), Content Nausea EP (2014), Monastic Living (2015), Human Performance (2016), Wide Awake! (2018)

Originally released in a limited fashion in 2012, the first album from Parquet Courts was birthed from the fresh ashes of Austin-based weirdos Fergus & Geronimo. Light Up Gold was immediate in its impression not only by the distinction of its content, but from the continual strains from its musical references. Any listener well versed in the history of indie-alternative-garage-new wave-punk rock will seize onto something familiar, as this debut feels as practiced and pondered as revisionist history can. Some staid purists may criticize such conspicuous comparisons, but where the obvious resemblance to past rock bands ends grows fertile inspiration and invention. With that framework, Light Up Gold becomes an tended field full of blossoming homages without the stink of ponderous imitation.

To unravel this chronicle, a great place to start is the music’s assured, yet unassuming rhythm. Each song has a metronomic energy that propels Light Up Gold to intriguing and memorable places. The swift taps on opener “Master of My Craft” set the scene for this wild ride, as the loose fretwork labors to keep adequate pace. The words spill over like beat poetry that refuses to take itself seriously. “You should see the wall of ambivalence I’m building” is delivered among the random rants on blunt consumerism, unnoticed next to winning phrases like “Socrates died in the fuckin’ gutter!” The vocal rambling is fleeting yet articulate as this college paper treatise is given to showcase the overeducated and underwhelmed. It means everything and nothing as the song ends cold, but immediately moves on to the next without reflection.

With nearly half of the songs clocking under two minutes, Parquet Courts makes an imperative to devise little curios throughout Light Up Gold rather than litter the album with discount filler. The odd musings and observations on these shorties evolve into a compelling exercise in eccentric chords and creative riffs. “Donuts Only” takes a sideways look at the stark difference between Texas and Brooklyn, tying it neatly to the influence of a community’s predominant religion on culture. The themes on “Careers in Combat” connect to their middle America roots as well, as the dire sales pitch for military service rolls monotone over the repetitive riff. They still manage to wax esoteric on “Caster of Worthless Spells”, ruminating on war, philosophy, and hell as feedback curdles the entire song’s structure. Despite their brevity, these tracks add detail and interest on Gold, branding some witty poetry inside the unique punk vocabulary.

In their intentionally sloppy riffs, smart-ass delivery, and laconic production, Parquet Courts get saddled with the “slacker” label by critics without flinching. The endeavor given on each song for Gold is palpable, as it takes plenty of consideration and prep work to project the persona of halfhearted underachievers. Being so effortlessly performed and immediately enjoyable, the finer details of “Stoned and Starving” are easy to overlook. The band takes a tight beat and drawled chords for this album’s centerpiece and stretches it into an elastic exercise, complete with a wailing twin guitar coda. Through the five minutes, the song manages to reference Wire, The Strokes, The Feelies, Meat Puppets, and Pavement without directly sounding like any one of the above. Read up on the reviews Parquet Courts receive and all these infamous bands as well as Modern Lovers, Sonic Youth, Dead Kennedys, Silkworm, The Fall, The Minutemen and more, get tagged to them by their enthusiastic arbiters. Still, the true accomplishment on Light Up Gold is not simply tracing the lineage of rock & roll’s storied underground, but finding their singular voice out of that wilderness to strike their own identity in an auspicious and truly original beginning.

Read the 2012 ADA piece on Light Up Gold.

Spotify | YouTube | Buy Light Up Gold on Bandcamp via What’s Your Rupture?

youtube

#best albums of the decade #best albums of the 2010s #best of the decade #best of the 2010s #best of 2010s #parquet courts

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xb-squaredx · 6 years ago

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B-Squared’s Top Games of 2018!

2018 had a lotta games in it, and while I didn’t get a chance to play ALL of what gaming had to offer this year, I was able to narrow down a list of five great games that I’d highly recommend this year. The list is rather loose, and while they all might have a flaw here or there, they’re all real “Game of the Year” contenders. Without any further ado, let’s go!

I’ve had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Monster Hunter games. While a fan of some aspects of them, other aspects would frustrate me. It was a franchise that needed quite an overhaul, and World is just that. A great modernization of the games, World not only makes a more involved, seamless world to explore and do battle in, it looks amazing in HD and is a great place for beginners to start. Being able to play this on a controller automatically makes things so much better, but in general all the weapons are really fun to mess with this time around. I love the slinger and all the ways to interact with the environment, though honestly some areas in the game are a little TOO big and complex for their own good.

The game falls a bit short for me when it comes to post-game content and its implementation of online play, though. But considering this is on a totally new engine and they’re essentially starting from scratch after years on handhelds, I can understand that it’ll take them quite a bit of time to get a handle on things, but World is a great foundation for the series going forward.

There have been a TON of Dragon Ball games over the decades, and honestly, a lot of the fighters aren’t all that good. They’re good spectacle and decent “DBZ Simulators” but lack any real competitive merit. This all changes with FighterZ, a gorgeous, streamlined ArcSys game that pays loving homage to the series, there’s so much to love here. While many past Dragon Ball games have looked pretty good and faithful, Arc System Work’s graphical magic that started with the latest Guilty Gear helps take things to the next level. The game is just really dang pretty and in many cases matches up directly with manga panels or as great recreations of iconic anime moments. Tons of visual fanservice there.

The gameplay is fast, aggressive and has just about everything you’d expect in a game starring Goku and friends, but also manages to be a huge crowd pleaser for more competitive fans. I love how each character is designed in such a way to emulate how they operate in the series itself. Yamcha is weak, but incredibly fast and good at setting things up for stronger characters on the team. Krillin is great support with Senzu Beans as an assist, or overall tricky moves that keep the opponent guessing, while Tien can do TONS of damage at the cost of his life, just to name a few. While I feel the roster has some…odd picks (like Base Goku and Vegeta) and if I played it more competitively I’d surely run into more issues, it’s a lot of fun and I actually went and double-dipped to get it on my PS4 and Switch. Can’t say I do that too often.

There are plenty of great indie titles out there this year, but for me, Celeste is a real standout. On one hand, it’s a brutally tough pixel-based platformer that honestly doesn’t seem like it should be that notable, but as you play, you discover a very intimate, cathartic game based around dealing with mental illness. Our hero Madeline attempts to climb a mountain while dealing with inner turmoil, and that’s represented to the player by throwing them into a super tough game that constantly knocks you down. Depression isn’t something you can just “get over;” you will have setbacks and times when all seems lost. Multiple times through Celeste I was ready to give up, but felt compelled to give it one more try, and with that I finally saw the horizon from atop Mt. Celeste, and I think that’ll stay with me for a long time.

It’s rare to play a game that teaches me something about myself, but with Celeste it forced me to confront how I view failure, both in games and in life. It wasn’t a pleasant thing to have to confront, but I did it anyway, and going forward I’m trying to view failure as something that isn’t always a bad thing, something that’s just part of the journey. Celeste tries to frame deaths in a level as a badge of honor. So what if you died over 100 times on this level? That just means you got up 101 times and beat it. You didn’t give up, and that counts for a lot. So yeah, this game definitely stands out to me for making be all introspective and junk.

Spider-Man is one of my favorite super heroes, and he’s had no shortage of great games, but for too long it feels like we’ve held the game based on the second Sam Raimi movie to such a high standard, and it was time for a new game to raise the bar. So if I’m even talking about Insomniac’s take on the wall-crawler, then it’s a pretty safe bet that they did it. I’ll be honest here; Spider-Man isn’t exactly groundbreaking for an open-world title. It has all the hallmarks of a standard open-world experience: enemy bases, towers to climb, collectibles scattered all over the map, and all manner of repetitive challenges and side content. But here’s the thing…all of that stuff is made about 1000% more fun when you’re controlling Spider-Man. Movement is fluid, effortless and fun all by itself. Combat and stealth has this interesting flow as you zip around the battlefield, using web gadgets and good ol’ fisticuffs in perfect tandem. It’s just a pure blast to play and I absolutely devoured this game when it came out.

This is all paired with probably one of the best Spider-Man stories out there. Yuri Lowenthal is a terrific Peter Parker and Spider-Man, and this is hands down my favorite interpretation of Doc Ock. I genuinely didn’t expect the story for this to be so good, written and acted with so much love for the source material. I was actually bawling at the ending, such a raw, bittersweet end to a wild ride of a game. All that helps elevate what could have been a bog-standard open-world game up several notches to not just a great Spider-Man game, but a great game in general and no-doubt the most fun I had with a single-player game this year. And yes, I’m still kinda salty that it didn’t win anything at The Game Awards.

And lastly, we come to something that’s kind of an easy shoe-in for Game of the Year for me. Honestly, there’s a power gap between Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and everything else on this list. Without a doubt, Smash Bros. is my favorite franchise in just about anything, and any time a new game is about to come out, it’s a real magical time. The speculation of just who is making the roster before release, the countless hours of playtime after it comes out, and now we’re in DLC speculation season so in some ways this hype train never stops.

Smash Ultimate seeks out to be the definitive Smash game and it largely lives up to that claim. An outrageously gigantic roster, tons of content to sift through, and containing so much love and reverence not just to Nintendo, not just to its third party guests, but to the franchise itself and how far it’s come. Nearly twenty years old, it’s crazy to think how this series has grown. What was once Masahiro Sakurai’s pet project has blossomed into this mega-franchise, and now we’re left with one question: where can you POSSIBLY go from here?

Sure, the online is kinda problematic in its matchmaking, and the World of Light adventure mode is a tad too bloated, but this is a game I’m going to probably sink hundreds of hours into with friends for years to come, and it’s been a joy to play so far. Released right at the tail-end of the year, it was a long wait, but Ultimate lived up to the hype for me, and really made 2018 end on a high note…which it kinda needed.

So that’s that! Plenty of other great titles came out in 2018 for sure, but honestly I haven’t gotten to them all yet, if I get to them at all. Indie stuff like Guacamelee 2, The Messenger and Dead Cells are something I’ll be looking into soon, and I have God of War waiting for me as well. I hear good things about Starlink too, but this is pretty much where I draw the line for honorable mentions. Anything else that came out this year was either OK, or not something I’d consider Game of Anything. So that’ll do. Here’s hoping 2019 can top this year!

Until next time,

-B

#xb-squaredx #blog #top 5 games #spider-man ps4 #celeste #smash ultimate #monster hunter world #dragon ball fighterz

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spicynbachili2 · 7 years ago

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Team Xbox Looks Back on Their Favorite ID@Xbox Memories

All of us right here on Staff Xbox are great followers of the expertise concerned within the creation of video games, particularly those who come into the ID@Xbox program. From cartoon platformers to journey video games to technique simulators, there’s a sturdy catalog of titles that ship numerous recollections from these gaming worlds. It’s nearly unfair that we are able to solely share just a few of these with you too, however we’ve taken a few of our most memorable moments and captured them right here on this function. Get pleasure from.

Chris Charla – Senior Director of ID@Xbox

Having been a part of ID@Xbox because the starting, it’s extraordinarily laborious to choose one second from the 1000’s of nice moments and video games and folks concerned with this program on each the Xbox and developer aspect. However for those who made me decide only one, it could be E3 2015, once I was onstage, at midnight, watching Chad and Jared Moldenhauer introduce Cuphead. I knew how laborious they have been working, and I knew that after the teaser the 12 months earlier than, folks have been anticipating quite a bit. I additionally understand how a lot that trailer was going to blow everybody away. That second when the StudioMDHR emblem got here up on stage, I received goosebumps like I by no means have earlier than, and I simply couldn’t get the foolish grin off my face watching that recreation personal the stage at E3. There have been tons and tons and tons of different unbelievable moments and video games during the last 5 years, however that second will all the time stick with me!

Phil Spencer – Head of Xbox

The sport that involves thoughts for me is Brothers. I’ve such a vivid reminiscence of the primary time I accomplished the sport as there’s a key second on the finish during which the sport mechanic is designed to strengthen the emotion I felt as a participant. When you haven’t performed it, Brothers is a cooperative, puzzle-based recreation the place every thumbstick controls one of many two brothers on display concurrently. Within the recreation, the brothers’ mom has died and their dad is sick and in want of drugs. The sport is in regards to the brothers’ quest to get drugs and by the top of the sport, the older brother dies as properly. Because the story attracts to an in depth, the youthful brother is alone, attempting to get again to his dad and to take action, he should swim throughout a stream. We be taught early within the recreation that the youthful brother doesn’t swim. Till this second within the recreation, he’s solely crossed water on the again of his older brother.

So there I used to be, attempting to complete the sport, pausing and dealing to resolve the puzzle of how one can get the youthful brother throughout the water with out his older brother. After which the reply simply got here to me and once I tried it and it labored – it was backbone tingling. I felt the loneliness and disappointment of the younger brother. I don’t suppose I’ve ever encountered a gameplay mechanic that evoked emotion in the way in which Brothers did for me and so many different gamers.

Ashley McKissick – Head of Xbox Recreation Go

4 years in the past, when my son was six-years-old, we spent our winter trip enjoying By no means Alone and exploring the Iñupiat tradition collectively. It was the right recreation to play with my infant. The co-op nature meant that we needed to work collectively, and the controls have been so intuitive and well-crafted. The truth that, whereas enjoying via the journey, we additionally received to find out about this particular Alaskan Native group, made it much more particular. I additionally simply completely cherished the artwork type in By no means Alone, particularly the environments, and I’m so glad that ID@Xbox enabled us to find this recreation. Taking part in this little gem will stay a fond vacation reminiscence for my son and I.

Craig Duncan – Studio Head, Uncommon Video games

I’ve loved many unbelievable ID@Xbox video games over time however my favourite second is sort of a latest one whereas shopping the what’s new in Xbox Recreation Go part there was a recreation known as Guide Samuel. I hadn’t heard of it however was drawn to the artwork of a cartoon loss of life holding a puppet after which spent the subsequent few hours being pulled out of my gaming consolation zone doing what seemed to be regular on a regular basis duties; with out spoiling the plot which everybody ought to expertise spoiler free it made me smile all through and snicker at among the dialog and the loopy moments that poor Samuel needed to navigate with applicable properly deserved achievements awarded all through together with in all probability the craziest driving achievement I’ve ever earned A very humorous, pleasing and distinctive little journey.

Katie Stone Perez – Principal Program Supervisor, Mixer

The timer ends, you see the outcomes, and my daughters leap up and cheer “We did it!” Now we have come collectively as a household and defeated the unbread. That’s my favourite ID@Xbox second. My household loves enjoying video games collectively and Overcooked 2 offers an excellent degree of problem however once we work collectively we are able to all the time achieve success. Every degree begins with us arising with a plan after which the chaos ensues. The sport has change into an nearly nightly ritual for us earlier than mattress and I really like that we are able to have that second of success that unites us as a household.

Jeff Rubenstein – Xbox Comms and Inside Xbox Host

I could not recall my daughter’s first phrase, or precisely when she took her first steps. Ought to we’ve got saved a lock of hair from her first haircut? But I vividly bear in mind her first Minecraft world, I confirmed her how one can document her first PotG in Overwatch, and was sitting proper subsequent to her throughout her first Fortnite Victory Royale – the fruits of a rigorously laid recreation schooling curriculum that started with… Chariot. Sure, Frima Video games’ platformer has gamers dragging a king’s coffin to a extra luxurious burial web site to placate his demanding spirit (who berates you in your journey), however it’s colourful, kid-friendly, and teaches the mechanics of platforming and cooperative play. Extra importantly, it sparked a love of gaming and a father-daughter bonding exercise that continues to at the present time. And that’s higher than a pair of bronzed child footwear any day.

Graeme Boyd – Xbox Stay’s AceyBongos and Inside Xbox Host

The day I received married is without doubt one of the biggest days of my life. I’m, after all, speaking about Stardew Valley. My actual marriage ceremony was fairly good too, I assume. However in Stardew Valley, getting married felt just like the fruits of months of laborious work and cautious relationship constructing as I carved out my new life on the farm. It felt like acceptance.

That’s the humorous factor about Stardew Valley – it begins out like a pleasant mash-up of Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing, and even Minecraft. However quickly sufficient the rhythms of it – tending your crops, promoting your items, making new mates, exploring the city, the seasons rolling out and in – they get inside you. You’re feeling a part of one thing particular. And for me, that have was one of the crucial enjoyable and fulfilling I’ve ever had in a online game. Stardew Valley grew to become my completely satisfied place (I nonetheless have a map of the city subsequent to my desk at work and I gaze longingly at it throughout hectic convention calls). Getting married made it even happier.

Oh, yeah. I received married to Leah. Clearly.

Will Tuttle – Editor in Chief of Xbox Wire

I’m a sucker for an excellent narrative and ID@Xbox has no scarcity of fantastic narrative-driven video games, from the haunting household drama of the superb What Stays of Edith Finch to the sci-fi horror of Soma. The most effective of those mix a compelling narrative with distinctive simple-but-complex gameplay. One among my favourite video games of this technology, Thomas Was Alone by Bithell Video games, is a pitch-perfect instance of that intoxicating mix. At first look, the sport seems like an easy, minimalistic platformer starring a gaggle of quadrilateral shapes, however it rapidly turns into clear that it’s rather more.

Due to top-notch writing and a few really fantastic narration by British humorist Danny Wallace (who received a BAFTA for his efficiency), these little blocks change into Thomas, Claire, Chris, John, and Laura. By combining these fantastically humanized shapes with some good old style puzzle platforming, Thomas Was Alone helped to push the medium ahead in unexpectedly new methods.

Larry Hryb – Xbox Stay’s Main Nelson and Inside Xbox Host

As a fan of movie, music and clearly video video games, I’ve lengthy had an appreciation for content material created and produced by unbiased studios. So, once I heard the ID@Xbox workforce was celebrating the discharge of their 1,000th indie title, I naturally thought-about a few of my favorites and it was unimaginable not to consider Cuphead.

Cuphead is an absolute gem, that includes fantastically crafted visuals paying homage to sound cartoons from the golden age of animation. The soundtrack is definitely among the finest music you’ll hear in a online game, composed utilizing stay musicians enjoying jazz, early large band, and ragtime music, a favourite style of mine. However Cuphead doesn’t simply look and sound nice, it performs nice too. My colleagues could heckle me a bit as I reward Cuphead’s gameplay since I’m admittedly “challenged” by among the ranges, however the recreation is simply a lot enjoyable to play.

As nice as Cuphead is although, the true magic of the sport is with the variety of refined references (some may even name them Easter Eggs) seamlessly interwoven into the sport. I heard point out of a Road Fighter reference if you battle the frogs Ribby and Croaks, and once I encountered that individual scene, it certainly seemed to be a transparent tribute to Road Fighter.

Positive, there are the extra apparent ones, like a constructing within the background named after the builders or the title of their studio showing in other places. However if you dig a little bit deeper, you’ll uncover a seemingly never-ending hyperlink to different cartoon characters, video video games and actual folks together with actors, musicians, artists, and cartoonists. It’s fascinating as you play the sport if you acknowledge one in every of these refined hyperlinks and much more fascinating to think about all of the hidden connections but to be found.

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