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Time for my quarterly tumblr login.

Alan Wake 2 is good

Baldur's Gate 3 is great

Taskmaster series 16 is fantastic

see you all again in three months

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[ID: Three screencaps from Taskmaster. Sam Campbell says, "Can I ask questions?" Greg Davies replies, "You can ask me one." Sam asks, "Are you a child of divorce?" End ID.]

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I've been surprisingly enjoying Baldur's Gate 3, the second ever crpg I've liked. It helps that I'm familiar with 5e and generally don't mind crunchy combat if it's interesting. BG3 combat has been interesting, but also so buggy it feels like it's still early access.

Turn-based movement just straight up dropped, turns skipped, characters dying from things that I didn't see, actions not being available when they should. Only one character going into turn-based mode, meaning they get beaten to hell while enemies take their turns and the rest of the party stands around.

I actually rage quit a game for the first time since I quit playing Splatoon and it's all because of the Hag encounter.

It's so busted. When you hit her outside her lair, she goes invisible. Cool! I have see invisibility. Except she's nowhere to be seen. I try to look around anyway since we're in turn-based mode and the redcaps aren't here yet. Except they apparently don't obey the rules of the universe, so they just ran up in real time and joined the fight. Standing a level below a masked weirdo, Astarion's ranged sneak attack pathing keeps forcing him to try to move within ~10 feet of the enemy. Which would be bad enough but he doesn't even have enough movement to do it so he can't sneak attack them at all. Same with my character's eldritch blast. It keeps forcing me into melee range with its pathing. Regular ranged attacks worked fine though, i could shoot from where i was no problem. So it obviously isn't something in the way or bad placement. Tough luck losing two of your classes' core abilities.

It feels like playing with the worst dm you've ever had. "Oh, you have truesight? Actually, the hag didn't turn invisible, sorry. She used misty step. Oh, you want to sneak attack? You'll have to climb up that wall and get in their melee range. Which you can't do anyway because of the difficult terrain. Oh and the rest of you don't get a turn because you were standing 5 feet too far away. The spider will now attack you four times."

I love a lot about it but it is not easy and the instability of the whole things just makes it somewhat unbearable

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Sorry, I should clarify: I am Evil

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Now that I've been done with Tears of the Kingdom for like 2 weeks, my thoughts on it have solidified. Spoiler free thoughts: the major elements of the game (dungeons, bosses, main quest) are a lot better than Breath of the Wild, but its moment to moment gameplay leaves me wanting something more, or really something else.

Minor spoilers below.

The depths are neat but very underbaked. Without shrines or much scenery to explore, it felt like a gear dump. Like you go down there for gear, bombs, and zonaite and that's about it beyond the ocassional hideout. The sky islands are very cool, but there are too few of them, and the ones that are there are too samey. There are like 5 separate islands that are essentially copypasted. You know the ones: there's like a crooked x bit and a launcher in the middle, a gacha dispenser, and a "fetch the crystal" shrine. The low gravity areas were very cool, but only used rarely. I could live with repeats if they're at least reskinned. But the depths and the sky islands were all visually almost identical, so no areas really stand out: the gerudo sky and the akkala sky look exactly the same, and the areas underground are also indistinguishable. Caves are fine, only one really impressed me (the big lookout landing shelter hole that leads to hyrule castle was cool as hell). Again, they're all visually indistinct, and follow the same formula (other than the eldin ones that are spicy).

It feels incoherent in a way that Breath of the Wild didn't. It's like a lot of little ideas packed together that don't necessarily mix. The shrines felt a little better than BotW's, and I'm very glad the tests of strength were gone, but most feel a bit insubstantial, like a massive snack instead of a meal (a problem in BotW too, but given the time they had, it's a shame there wasn't more done with them).

Ultrahand is really the only new ability worth a damn. Fuse is just ultrahand, and quickly becomes a routine necessity instead of a fun bonus. Ascend is just a quality of life feature outside of maybe two overworld boss fights. Recall is useful for puzzles, but rarely any good outside of that. In contrast, I used bombs, ice, and stasis all the time. Magnesis was no good, ultrahand is a straight upgrade there. I just don't really care about the vehicles. It's not what I play zelda for, and it's not what I play games generally for.

I think it's really hurt by being so similar to BotW at its core. Breath felt like a big jump forward, something new and exciting for zelda and a high water mark for open world games. TotK feels incremental, a decent refinement in some ways, and a frustrating step back in others. If it came out 2-3 years after BotW instead, that might have helped. As it is now, i don't think it will stand the test of time in a way that Breath of the Wild has. I don't feel like going back and replaying it.

It's fine. Middle of the pack zelda. Fun bosses, great final boss fight, cool story, and a few good side quests like the yiga stuff. Unfortunately, everything in the middle is kind of goopy and undefined. It slipped out of my mind as soon as I was done. Very few of the locations stand out in my memory, unlike how they did originally in Breath of the Wild. I still remember climbing dueling peaks the first time, watching the sunset in lurelin, camping on a mountainside and waiting for a dragon to come by, jumping off the great plateau for the first time. In TotK, I remember the water, lightning, and wind temple, and the underground yiga hideout. I remember fiddling with car parts and glider angles and a hot air balloon not working quite right. I remember my gerudo gf (Calyban 💙 Link) that lived in front of a cooking pot and grinding for rupees and monster parts.

I liked the idea of rebuilding hyrule and forming connections, but it didn't really work in practice. The game is left in this awkward middle ground where it's not empty enough to feel intentionally lonely, and not deep and crowded enough to feel lively. It also feels weirdly discontinguous from BotW for a direct sequel. It feels more like a do-over or retcon, like how Deltarune remixed people and places from Undertale, but it shouldn't since it's the same world, the same canon. There's very little from your previous adventure that carries over or that anyone mentions, even though it's only been a few years. The timeline between the two is very messy as well, but that doesn't really matter. It just feels off.

There's a lot to be said about how a game feels, about what it evokes and how, beyond or in tandem with the mechanics. BotW felt almost like a semi-transcendental meditation, a lonely journey through the wilderness, a piece of art with Something To Say about games, the series, maybe even life. TotK feels like a video-game-ass video game, like a lego set. If the temples and bosses were lifted from Tears and put into Breath (and maaaybe the building stuff was added as like a big expansion to BotW) I don't think anything of great value would really be lost. Some of the character work was nice, but there's not enough of it.

I really wish they would make something smaller, more inventive, and more intentional next. I want less control, less stuff, more feeling. But given the sales and praise for TotK, I sincerely doubt that will happen. Instead, we'll wait 7 more years for "another one."

And where the hell is my big bird man Kass

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A collection of excellent DBZ screenshots

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I keep forgetting to post here. Hi. I bought Chainsaw Man volumes 1-8.

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Taskmaster AU (2023): Keep it Clean and Flowing.

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Only two episodes into Taskmaster Australia but I love Nina Oyama and her outfit

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This weekend, millions will be playing in the kingdom of Hyrule instead of praying for the kingdom of Heaven smh 😔😔

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going to get back into battlebots in a big way

ffffflip

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imagine not having a plex server

with all of OK K.O.! pirated on it. Not me, I'm watching it right now in fact

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From the FLCL Storyboard Collection

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twitter is so bad now, I'm done there except for occasional promo for my show, so I'm gonna try to post more here and on cohost. anyway here's my bow Herc looking good