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[kaile-hultner]

Boycott Microsoft. I am no longer asking

Hey y’all, I am deep in the weeds putting together No Escape‘s first major retrospective right now, a book I’m calling Escape Velocity, so I haven’t really been playing many video games or writing about much here except for some errant thoughts I needed to clear out (see the post about Maximalist Hardcore from last month, or the one about the now much bigger porn ban from before that). But I…

[kaile-hultner]

The Aesthesis of Ugliness: on the Horrible Beauty of Maximalist Hardcore

Throughout the decades hardcore punk has been defined mostly by its simplicity, even compared to punk rock proper. Four chords and a shout became three chords and even, in some instances, two or less. Subgenres like grindcore, fastcore and powerviolence push the absolute lowest limits on how short and fast a hardcore song can be while still maintaining its essential qualities. When you look at…

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Banning porn is one of Valve's dumbest decisions yet

According to RockPaperShotgun, Valve, owner of the Steam storefront, has changed its developer-side rules to “prohibit games that ‘may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers.'” RPS’s Edwin Evans-Thirlwell confirmed this to be on the onboarding website for new devs and “verified that it was recently…

[kaile-hultner]

Summer Geoff Fest #5: Too Many Slices

Oh boy. Okay. Folks, there were seven showcases yesterday, five of which I thought were pretty good, one of which… whew, we’ll get to it, and one of them, the Future Games Show: Summer Showcase, was simply too long for my addled brain to handle. In total, I spent nine full hours yesterday watching video game trailers. I honestly wish to never see another video game trailer again as long as I live…

[kaile-hultner]

Summer Geoff Fest #3: Go Watch These Showcases, Ya Dinguses

Look, there was only one showcase yesterday, and it was actually really fucking rad to the point where I don’t think me summarizing it’s gonna go do it justice. It was the Unearthed Treasure Room hosted by Melos Han-Tani (Anodyne, Sephonie, Angeline Era) and Liz Ryerson (unmatched critic, artist/author, musician), it was about 45 minutes long, and it features other game critics and designers…

[kaile-hultner]

Smiling Through the Pain

So last week I sort of mused aloud on Bluesky about the efficacy of doing daily roundup-style posts of Summer Geoff Fest, given the particularly bad time I’ve had with attempting coverage of the week in the past. It’s no surprise or shock to anyone that No Escape is a one-person band, and I’ve otherwise gone to great lengths to try to stay separate from “games journalism” as a specific…

[kaile-hultner]

Summer Geoff Fest #2: State of Played Out

We had two events on Wednesday: The Shacknews E4 Indie Showcase and Sony’s summer State of Play. I think both went more or less how everyone expected they would, but I still came away from each presentation feeling kinda odd. The E4 Indie Showcase hosted by Shacknews lasted less than an hour and showed off just 23 games, which feels positively subdued compared to some of the other trailer dumps…

[kaile-hultner]

Summer Geoff Fest #1: Unreal MIX

I think out of all of the trailer dumps and showcase days, Tuesday might end up being the strangest. That’s mostly because one of the big events of the day was neither a trailer dump nor a showcase – instead we could liken it to a WWDC-style keynote where the main thing being shown off was geared more towards game developers than anyone else. The State of Unreal event took place pretty early on…

[kaile-hultner]

THE SPECTACULAR LEVIATHAN PART II

So I want to be extremely clear and careful as I write this: I am absolutely not shitting on any individual critic or creator who does the thing I’m going to be talking about in this rant. This isn’t even one of those “if you think this applies to you, heehee, I guess the shoe fits” things. There are many, many people who are right this second doing the thing I’m going to be criticizing whose…

[kaile-hultner]

Am I actually playing Final Fantasy or what?

Okay, so a couple years ago Square Enix released some games. There are six of them, and they’re available on mobile, PC and the console of your choice either altogether for the price of one (1) modern Triple-A title or separately for the price of six reasonably priced indies. These games are simultaneously chockfull of history, going back to the roots of console RPGs, and filled with modern…

[kaile-hultner]

THE SPECTACULAR LEVIATHAN

ed sheeran doesn’t need music critics Rolling Stone published an article of cut content from a recent Ed Sheeran feature, in which the pop musician said, “Why do you need to read a review? Listen to it. It’s freely available! Make up your own mind. I would never read an album review and go, ‘I’m not gonna listen to that now.'” And to some degree, Sheeran is right. Streaming services make music…

[kaile-hultner]

Despelote review: an ode to a dream

Kicking in Despelote feels good. It’s a quick flick of the right stick for a light pass, but if you want to send the ball (or bottle or balloon) flying, you need to pull the stick all the way back, like priming a catapult, and then snap it forward. There’s a good _thunk_ on the hit. Kicking isn’t accurate, at least it wasn’t for me. I spent the better part of half an hour trying to knock a pile…

[kaile-hultner]

Cyrodiil Can Wait

If you follow games with any regularity, you already know that as of today Bethesda has announced and released an Unreal Engine 5 remake of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Hell, if you follow TES with any regularity, you probably knew about this months ago, since the remake has been a pretty poorly kept secret even by the standards of the notoriously leaky games industry. It’s on multiple…

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Part 1.5: Let's back up a bit – Final Fantasy VII first impressions

Over the weekend I decided to put my FFVII Rebirth playthrough on pause and finally commit to making my way through the original Final Fantasy VII for the first time. I’ve just completed the Midgar section, and it’s left me with some thoughts now that I have a point of comparison with which to judge FFVII Remake Intergrade. The most obvious observation is that I finished Midgar in a fraction of…

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I'm in deep financial shit again. So I'm writing a book and asking for your support! Read on for more details.

[kaile-hultner]

"Boycotting Microsoft by canceling your Xbox Game Pass subscription will only hurt the devs"

Okay, it’s been roughly a day since the BDS National Committee announced a boycott of Microsoft via their Xbox console and subscription services, as well as the major studios that sit under Microsoft control. There has been a lot of discourse about who this boycott will hurt, what it will or will not accomplish, etc., and I think we need to talk about it. Despite occasionally being thought of as…