#that's kinda why remaking it is also weird in the first place? make your own song about recent history

[britneyshakespeare]

i listened to the fall out boy version of we didn’t start the first (listing 1989-2023 world events) and can i just say. first of all the original song is silly and not that deep in its commentary but at least it was like an original idea. there’s a reason your 11th grade history teacher played it in your class in the cold war unit, right? it sets a scene and a mood without even having to do anything but listing a bunch of pop culture and political iconography. but there’s also like, a sequence of events. fob’s really just throws events and names of things together sloppily in no particular order other than if they kinda rhyme. it has a lot less impact when thinking about the recent historical or present moment bc it’s just like “thing you remember, other thing you remember, other thing you remember” but from one object to the next they have no particular connection to each other in space or time. it’s poorly associated. 

[buckcluckhater]

Controversial Video Game Opinion: Resident Evil 3 (2020)

So this title was released right after the Resident Evil 2 Remake and as a bundle with Project: REsistance for $60, effectively a $30 game on its own. Looking at it from that perspective, I can at least somewhat justify the shorter length. Having no Clocktower segment and just having Jill get knocked out until the next scene with her is pretty blatantly just a cheap scene transition and a way to shift the control to Carlos.

The criticisms towards Jill Valentine's character in this game especially rub me the wrong way. The writers clearly from the outset wanted to incorporate her past experiences and the trauma that comes with them, having to watch people you know die and facing death yourself does a lot to warp someone's personality and make just the day to day experience of living much more difficult. That and not wearing a tube top is apparently a crime.

Having said that, it sucks how her apartment is this beautifully designed space with tons of personality and some really cool details, but your only interaction with it is walking around until the Trash Man comes to cave your head in.

On that note, Nemesis. I have no issues with his design or story appearances. What I do have a problem with is his gameplay. Unlike Mr. X, who was mostly free to roam the playable space on his own, creating a really organic enemy, Nemesis in this game mostly sticks to scripted encounters and often travels by teleporting out of the map (not before doing his own Spider-Man Pose) so that he can ambush the player by respawning closer to them. It makes sense why they do this, Jill is just so much faster than Leon/Claire in the previous game, and it helps Nemesis avoid falling too far behind, something Mr. X did a lot.

My issue is just how obvious it is that he does this. There are a lot of areas in Downtown Raccoon City where you can easily bait this movement and wait for him to slowly load into the correct spot before he attacks you. It's really inorganic and feels like a cheap rug-pull for experienced players who have a sense of how the game operates.

The Boss Fights are all way better than RE2-R tbh. I love that game to bits, but G-2 Birkin can go straight back to hell with his tiny arena and multiple charging attacks. Meanwhile the only Nemesis fight that kinda sucks is unfortunately his final encounter. On lower difficulties it's a joke, you only die if you forget how to play or panic and take too long. On higher difficulties the game literally makes enemies perform their animations faster in order to be more aggressive. This gives Nemesis an instakill combo if you have to get caught by one attack in the chain. Impressively unfair feature for an otherwise boring enemy.

Oh and the last part, the game's best feature is its Item Shop. Normally these things sucks because they're just a place to load up on consumables and be harassed with price tags. In RE3-R, you're awarded currency based on achievements and can spend them on whatever you want, like an Arcade Counter. This is great for accessibility too, since even mediocre players can probably grab the Infinite Ammo AR and use it to make the rest of the game much easier for themselves. Compare this to RE2-R, where only specific achievements unlocked specific items and most were things like Concept Art or Viewable Models.

This game also has viewable Models, but the controls are kinda weird and the game's small size indirectly makes it a less interesting place to browse since there's way less to look at. Alternate Model poses and booba physics were also added to iterate from the RE2-R version.

Lastly, the actual gameplay. I personally feel like it's one of the more difficult games I've played, and a large part of that is needing to depend on reaction time much more than prior titles. Dodge rolls and QTE grabs are the emphasis over Consumables, which definitely threw players off when they first got grabbed and the Knife did nothing to stop them from being bitten. It's lame how Zombies were mechanically downgraded for performance issues. Not only do they go completely stiff upon death, this actually ruins their 'ambush' behavior by making it instantly possible to tell if they're still alive based on whether or not their body shudders when attacked. In RE2-R they always moved when hit, so sometimes they could fake death by just not reacting more than that. You know, like a Zombie.

To cap this off, I actually love Resident Evil 3 (2020). It's amazing on the first playthrough and remains a fun game to Speedrun, or played for the challenge. I feel like it was mostly disliked for the changes it made from the original, and for clearly being an underfunded title, which is much worse considering how good Capcom and Resident Evil were doing in terms of sales. They did not need to rush this game, but what's done is done.

Also Project Resistance still sucks. Play Dead by Daylight, or don't, maybe go on a walk or talk to your friends.

[vortexbeyondthestars]

decided to post some of my ideas for a ninjago/atla au besties. tell me whatcha think

under read more cus its kinda long lmao

some background first…

here, the first spinjitzu master is smth that doesn’t actually exist in avatar bc i couldn’t for the life of me figure out what to make him so now he’s like… he’s basically the child of all the original benders: the badgermoles, the sky bison, the dragons, and the moon spirit combined. he was born of their powers, and he was the first avatar, kinda like this au’s version of raava i guess?? so this au’s version of vaatu is the overlord, and like in ninjago, they have this never-ending rivalry. and the overlord is an avatar, too, but more of a dark one. it only cares about corruption and evil.

the first bending master, as he’s called in this au, manages to banish the overlord into the spirit realm, but he knew that one day, it would return. so he creates a land called ninjago and fills it with people of all kinds, each corner of the world having one type of bending. he gave the humans bending, but only one type for each person.

he didn’t want a repeat of the overlord.

so then he has two sons: wu and garmadon. he hemmed and hawed over what elements to give to them, but eventually he chose. wu gets airbending, the element of life and serene and calm. garmadon gets firebending, rough and harsh and the element of destruction. his fire is violet and incredibly hot.

everything goes fine, and the first bending master manages to keep balance of the world as its avatar. except the overlord does indeed return.

garmadon gets corrupted by its spirit and is bitten by the great devourer. he becomes obsessed with power and wanted to be the avatar more than anything in life. he believes that his father was holding his powers back because he didn’t trust him. and he believes that his father was going to hand over his power to wu after he died. and he couldn’t have that.

wu notices his downward spiral and suggests that he take a trip to visit the mortals. maybe that would help him realize that there is reason for their father being the only avatar in the world.

so garmadon goes down into the mortal plane. and meets fire lord chen and his second in command clouse.

fire lord chen is quite interested in an old legend of what is called the serpentine: ancient tribes of snake people said to have been born from the hatred and despair of the overlord, led by the toughest and the greatest, the great devourer. chen wants to bring these serpentine back, and at first garmadon agrees to help him, if only to get revenge on his father.

but he snaps out of it, because he realizes that its the great devourer’s fault in the first place that he’s like this. he betrays chen and clouse and warns wu of their plan, but without telling him whose plan it is. together, the brothers manage to gather together an alliance of the greatest bending masters in the world. garmadon wants their father to help, but wu gives some unfortunate news.

the first bending master is near his deathbed. he is very, very ill, and he is thousands of years old at this point. he wants rest.

so, naturally, garmadon is conflicted about this. he’s ecstatic bc he thinks that he can gain the powers of the avatar once his father passes, but also he’s sad, because, well, thats still his dad after all.

but anyway, the bending alliance manages to defeat the serpentine and seal them away in the spirit realm, like the first bending master had done to the overlord. this… turns out to be a bad idea.

fire lord chen and clouse both manage to shift the blame away from them, and since garmy was the only one who knew they caused the plan, he lets it happen. because he still is a bit evil.

something happens that gives him hope, though: he meets misako, who might be the love of his life. (also in this au that weird love triangle shit don’t happen) they get married, and for a while, garmadon seems perfectly sane. but.

the first bending master dies.

lloyd is born almost right after.

no one makes the connection, though, thankfully, but it is enough for garmadon to lose whatever sanity he had left. he completely goes insane.

he races back to their family monastery believing that he can and will gain the powers of the avatar, somehow, but he doesn’t. and that is too much for him to take. all of this… all of this… waiting… for nothing?

garmadon stares at himself in the mirror. he looks down at his hand, at the bite mark blemishing his skin, and grabs a ceremonial knife. he laughs to himself and places his hand on the mirror, slowly raising his knife towards it… he thinks he can stop all this pain in one easy swoop.

garmadon, sneering at himself: maybe… maybe this will fix it… if i just cut off the damn thing…

first bending master, in the mirror: i would not recommend it, son.

garmadon, face falling: why are you here?

first bending master: i came to speak with you. and to try and help you.

garmadon, snarling: don’t pretend like you care about me! i know what you really think. you think i’m a monster.

first bending master: i think you’re conflicted. the part of you that wants to be the avatar so badly you are willing to kill for it… that part of you clashes with the real you. the one that wants everyone you care about to be safe. your brother, your friends, your wife… your son.

garmadon: *laughs and turns around* why should i care about them, father? they don’t care about me! not my brother, not my wife, not my so-called friends, and certainly not you! the only one who does care about me is my son, and thats only because he doesn’t know any better. he’ll leave one day too.

first bending master, solemnly: you are wrong. i do care about you. i always did. i love you, garmadon. i do.

garmadon shakes, his hand gripping the knife tighter. his mouths trembles, and eventually turns into a scowl. he whirls around to face the mirror and slams his knife into it, shattering it into pieces.

he gets worse from there on. he begins to attack people left and right, villages and cities, even going so far as to consider breaking the serpentine free. he doesn’t get that far, though, because his brother interrupts him.

wu is very concerned, bc, well, garmy was a bit weird but never straight up insane like he is now. so he heads over to his family’s old monastery. there, he finds garmadon, seething and stewing. garmadon doesn’t take his arrival well.

garmadon: ugh! for once, can’t you just leave me alone?!

wu: no, i cannot. this isn’t you, brother! you must snap out of it!

garmadon: this is me! this has been me for my entire life, wu! i can’t change it now, and i can’t even be the avatar. what’s the point?

wu: the point is that father trusted us to take care of ninjago once he passed on. we have a duty.

garmadon: father was a fool, and father was selfish! i am remaking the world in my own image, an image that won’t let anyone have the kind of power that he did, except for those who are worthy!

wu: that’s crazy! you can’t just pick and choose who gets to be the most powerful bender in the world!

garmadon: isn’t that what father did, though, when he died? who is the new avatar, wu?! tell me!!

wu: i don’t know. and neither will you, if you keep this up.

garmadon: *laughs* are you threatening me?

wu: i am.

garmadon: fine. you want to take control of ninjago over me? fine. fine. fine. i challenge you to an agni kai! the battle that was always meant to be.

wu: very well.

garmadon: for the record… i’m sorry it had to end this way, brother.

wu, sadly: no. you aren’t.

cue final agni kai type fight, light vs darkness. fire vs air. obviously, wu wins, and manages to chain garmadon up so he can’t attack anymore. garmadon then has a complete psychotic breakdown like azula, complete with the spitting fire and sobbing hysterically while wu watches sadly.

wu banishes garmadon to the spirit realm, because he doesn’t think there’s anything else he can do.

ninjago is saved.

or so he thinks.

see, chen and clouse are still around. as are the serpentine, biding their time in the spirit realm. they meet garmy and decide that they should work together. garmadon, so torn up by hatred and despair, agrees to help them, if he gets to destroy his brother.

meanwhile, everything is going good.

lloyd is the avatar, obviously, but he’s only like. thirteen when he finds out. he’s an airbender avatar and lived with koko (bc its my au and i get to pick the mom i use) in one of the air temples (idk which one tho). he’s raised believing that he’s just a random kid who happens to serve the avatar, kinda like kyoshi.

that avatar he believes he serves is none other than morro, the adopted son of airbender sage wu. morro is four years older than lloyd, and he was just revealed to be the airbending avatar. morro, of course, is thrilled. but he also gets an incredibly big ego over it, believing that he is better than other people bc he is the avatar. the reason he was thought to be the avatar was because he appeared to waterbend at one point, but it is later revealed to have been simple airbending that pushed the water.

but morro doesn’t realize or know this until its too late. and when he does… its a shitshow.

basically, lloyd and morro are sent to meet with fire lord chen and his daughter skylor, along with wu, koko, and some of the other air sages. skylor is a chi blocker, an incredibly talented one who has mastered all of the different bending fighting styles even tho she herself is a nonbender.

ok so clouse is obviously there. he recognizes lloyd via koko and is fucking pissed. he’s like my ex-boyfriend rival’s son is here?? what the hell?? so he keeps a close on eye on lloyd bc he doesn’t like him. morro, meanwhile, is treated like a king at the palace bc chen wants to get into the avatar’s good graces.

and uh. well, as it turns out, morro isn’t the avatar…

they’re attacked by the serpentine, bitter at the bending masters for having locked them underground. morro is excellent at fighting, but lloyd has more adrenaline.

and lloyd firebends.

cue shock and horror and anger from all sides.

wu is the most horrified of all. the son of his brother… the man he banished… is the avatar?

so yeah thats the background AT LEAST. i dont really know what happens after that but lloyd runs away or something. i will write more i promise!!!

[bowies-thighs]

i'll bite, tell us this theory

IM SO GLAD YOU ASKED BECAUSE I MADE A WHOLE ESSAY ABOUT IT.

Jigsaw to Willy Wonka to Labyrinth pipeline

(disclaimer there are some spoilers to each movie, minor ones but still.)

Saw, both Chocolate Factory movies, and Labyrinth, all vastly different movies, or are they?. When you truly think about it, the main antagonists of these films- Jigsaw, Wonka, and Jareth- appear to have more in common than we know.

Willy Wonka is Jigsaw

Now, before you start calling me weird for making this comparison, hear me out. Jigsaw’s whole schtick is to bring retribution and punish those who have sinned, he does this by creating elaborate traps specifically designed for his victims in vague correlation to their “crimes” (aside from a few outliers). Who else can we think of that has brought about specific punishments for specific sins? Willy Wonka.

In the 2005 remake of the Chocolate Factory film, each ticket holder gets 'eliminated’ and punished in very unique and alarmingly specific ways, i.e. Agustus and the chocolate river, Violet and the bubble gum, Veruca and the squirrels, and Mike with the television. Each event pertains to them specifically, almost as if Wonka knew who the lucky winners were and planned the tour around their punishments, targeting them. The oompa loompas even had songs for the punishments that were unique to each child as if they knew and rehearsed ahead of time. Wonka spent time planning this tour specifically for these children in order to teach them lessons, similar to the way Jigsaw will carefully observe and study his victims so he can put them in their traps accordingly.

Now, you may be thinking “yeah okay that is kinda similar but I don’t see how that connects Wonka to Jigsaw in any way?”. Well I’ve got your answer: Motive. They each have a goal for their victims and a reason for why they’re doing what they do. They both share the motive of teaching people a lesson, and also testing to see who is the most ‘worthy’ of survival. Jigsaw’s goal was to make people appreciate the life they have, given his own newfound appreciation for life after a failed suicide attempt. He didn't consider himself to be in the wrong, similar to Wonka, whose ultimate goal was to find an heir for the factory, which is why he set up the golden ticket hunt in the first place, as he explained to Charlie later in the film. This is just in the Chocolate Factory remake though, so what about the original? Is Gene Wilder’s eccentric chocolatier deranged enough to be comparable to Jigsaw?

OG WONKA VS NEW WONKA

So, we know that Depp’s Wonka needed an heir to the factory, and set up tests and punishments for contestants who were 'unworthy’ of the position, but what about in the original film? There didn't seem to be any driving motive that led to Wonka to put together the tour, or eliminate anyone. He had no lesson to teach and no need to fulfill throughout the film, how come?

Because he didn’t need any reasons or explanation for his actions. He didn't carefully plan and cultivate punishments for the children, he didn't take them to places in the factory as a way to target anyone. He didn't do anything with the intention of eliminating contestants. He did this all just because he wanted to and could. The fizzy lifting drink? he didn't set that up as a trap for Charlie, he just had it because he wanted it. He created a drink that would make you float into the air, and seemed unalarmed when Charlie and his grandpa almost died from it, not because he planned it or was expecting it, but because he knew it could happen and didn't think much of it.

It felt more like he put the kids into these positions because he could, no other reason. No intention of teaching them, he just wanted to see what would happen since he had the power to do so. This makes him unpredictable and capable of anything he can imagine, so in comparison to ‘05 Wonka and Jigsaw, he’s way more horrifying. He’s the type of guy who would just run into traffic with you because he had no regards for safety and laugh when you ended up getting hit by a car and dying since that was a possibility anyway, New Wonka would plan ahead, take you to a specific crosswalk and wait until the very last second so he could push you in front of an oncoming bus and watch you die.

Does this comparison make you think of anyone else?

The Baby Stealers

Yep, that’s right! Good ol’ Jareth and his predecessor The Owl King!

(Now, if you haven't read the labyrinth coronation comics I highly recommend and suggest them otherwise you’ll be very lost and also this may spoil both the movie and the comics for you so.. fair warning.)

ANYWAYS. The Owl King and J.D’s Wonka both have the exact same motive. They both want an heir since they’re old bitches. The Owl King just goes about getting his heir in a different manner (kidnapping babies instead of murdering- i mean testing and eliminating- children) Jareth on the other hand? he didn't need an heir, he’s a spry young fellow, 1300 years isn't old in the underground i guess. The only reason he takes Toby is because Sarah asked him to, which meant that he could since he had permission. He could've taken Toby and went “no backsies'’ and then left but he decided to give Sarah the challenge of beating his labyrinth, why?

Because he can! Because he wanted to see what would happen, the only time he ever comes up with plans to stop Sarah is when he knows that she’s close to beating him and he doesn't like it. He’s just doing all that stuff for shits and giggles since he knows he has power over everyone else. Also he’s a creep

SO THERE YOU HAVE IT, FOLKS! I CANNOT BELIEVE I PUT EFFORT INTO THIS.

[hermannsthumb]

Could you do #40 cancelled holiday party? Thank you!

40. i just found out that a friend of a friend of a friend isn’t hosting their annual holiday party this year, so now how am i going to have my annual run in with you?

from winter writing prompts here

happy xmas eve, if you celebrate it!

-------------------

Newt doesn’t really have many friends, and certainly not enough to warrant a flood of party invitations come December, but for the past few years he’s been able to rely pretty consistently on at least one. Back when the band was still together, his drummer had a pretty cool girlfriend who would sometimes let them tag along as the entertainment for parties around town, and her brother (who was almost as cool as her) ended up liking the way they sounded so much he invited them back to his own parties a couple times. Then he dated Newt’s guitarist, and then he broke up with Newt’s guitarist, and then he dated Newt, and then he broke up with Newt, and it sort of fell apart from there (and so did the band), but the breakup was actually pretty amicable, and he’s never failed to extend the invitation to Newt for his annual holiday bash as a courtesy. And Newt’s never failed to make an appearance. What’s there not to like, you know? It’s free booze, free food, and the chance to not feel like a total loser loner for once. Plus…well. Another reason.

But this year isn’t looking too good for Newt.

“Sick?” Newt says. “What do you mean he’s sick?”

“I mean,” Newt’s ex-drummer says, irritably, “he’s sick. Caught the flu or something. I don’t know, Jackie just wanted me to call and tell you, she didn’t give me any details.”

“Couldn’t he have called me himself?” Newt says.

“No,” Newt’s ex-drummer says, “I told you, he has the flu, he’s totally out of it, man. Party’s off this year. Hey, did you get our Christmas card?”

“What? Oh. Yeah,” Newt sighs. He tacked it up on his fridge: the two women with their arms around each other, one pink-haired, one blue-haired, holding up their cat in the middle like it was their son or something. Clever. Quirky. Newt just makes a generic Tweet mid-December wishing everyone a happy holiday season and calls it a success—less effort. “Yeah, it was cute. It’s definitely cancelled? He can’t just, I don’t know, take some Advil or something and—”

“Newt,” she says.

“Yeah, okay, fine,” Newt says. “Tell Jackie to tell him to—get well soon? Soon enough for New Year’s, maybe? Because it would be great if—”

She hangs up on him. Newt probably deserved it.

He stalks Jackie’s brother’s Facebook for a bit after the phone call to make sure he’s not just lying about the flu to get out of inviting Newt to the holiday bash he’s definitely having. It becomes clear pretty quick it’s pretty legit—he’s made exactly one post in the last few days, and it’s a selfie of him looking absolutely horrid in his bed, advising everyone to not be like him and get their flu shots. Not lying, then. Damn it. There’s not even going to be anything for Newt to crash.

“Damn it,” Newt groans, and slams his laptop shut.

In all honesty, Newt’s not pissed about missing the party itself. He’s pissed about missing the party guests. How else is he going to have his annual spat at the snack table with his mortal enemy, Dr. Bitchy, British, Badly-Dressed Gottlieb?

Mortal enemy is too strong. Rival, maybe? Though certainly not a friendly one. He’s fond of Dr. Gottlieb, really, in some insane, backwards kinda way, like he’s a specimen Newt would love nothing more than to cram under a microscope and study up close. What makes him tick? What makes him scowl like that, yell at Newt—more or less a stranger—like that, attend the same party year after year like that only to stand in the darkest corner like a vampire and avoid every single other person? The first time they met was at the party three years ago, when Dr. Gottlieb loudly accused Newt of deliberately snagging the last cucumber finger sandwich because he somehow knew Dr. Gottlieb was eyeing it up, too, and only did it to annoy him, and it’s only gone downhill from there. Or maybe uphill. He fascinates Newt.

He’s also insanely attractive to Newt. Bitchy, British, Badly-Dressed, but, my God, what a set of cheekbones, what a set of eyes, what a big ‘ole mouth that Newt can only assume would be awesome for kissing. And only a few inches of height on Newt, too; he wouldn’t even need to stretch up that far to test out his hypothesis.

Since Newt has Facebook open, he does another search for Dr. Gottlieb—Dr. Hermann Gottlieb, technically, though he’s furious whenever Newt tries to call him anything other than his full title. If Newt was normal, he’d just shoot the guy a friend request or something. A simple message. He just stalks his page instead, which makes him feel the sting of the cancelled party even more keenly: Dr. Gottlieb doesn’t post, like, any pictures of himself, but the ones he’s been tagged in by his company and someone who appears to be his brother make it very clear very fast that he kinda just got even hotter over the year. He’s started wearing his oversized glasses on a librarian chain, and his haircut—which had always been a severe sort of undercut—has grown out up top to be adorably poofy. Tragic.

He shoots his ex-drummer a text later. Can you ask Jackie to ask about that Gottlieb guy that’s there every year? Like, what’s his deal?

The reply comes later, while Newt is reheating some leftover Chinese takeout for dinner. they’re friends w gottlieb’s younger bro. mostly invite him to be nice.

“Figures,” Newt mutters.

Well, if there won’t be a party at which to have their annual run-in, Newt is simply going to have to orchestrate a run-in himself. The first step is finding out where Gottlieb works.

Newt picks a miserable day to set his plan into action. A snowstorm swept through the city a few days prior, and before the sidewalks were even finished dethawing, a sleet storm followed and turned them into eighty-percent sheets of ice. And then more snow comes. Newt slips and slides all the way to the cafe across from Gottlieb’s humble little robotics research facility, cursing himself for not having invested in proper winter boots yet. Docs are practical and cool, but they could be warmer, and Newt’s are so old the treads are basically nonexistent. He orders himself the most expensive coffee on the menu as a reward for his troubles and claims a chair near the large shop window in front, underneath a hanging fern. He would simply wait and watch for Gottlieb to walk out. The man had to walk out eventually. Lunch break, or coffee break, or even just clocking out for the day. He had to.

“Would you like to see our sandwich menu, sir?” a waitress asks Newt. “We have a new—"

“Nah, no thanks,” Newt says. He doesn’t tear his eyes away from the window. “You don’t have to call me sir, by the way. It makes me feel old. Does a Dr. Gottlieb ever come here?”

The waitress snorts involuntarily; she flushes a second later. “Sorry,” she says. “It’s just that—yes, Dr. Gottlieb comes in a lot, and he’s kind of…”

“Awful?” Newt grins.

“Particular,” the waitress says. “He has us remake his coffee if it’s not perfect enough for him. And we have to write out the whole thing, Dr. Gottlieb, on his cup, every time. He tips really well, though, so we don’t really mind.”

“Has he come in today yet?” Newt says.

She opens her mouth as if to answer the question, but then furrows her eyebrows. “Why do you want to know, anyway? Are you guys friends?”

“Not really,” Newt says. Deciding it’s not worth the effort to explain the complex homoeroticism of his dynamic with Gottlieb, and to random waitress who probably doesn’t give a shit at that, he amends “I mean, yes. Good friends. I’ll see that sandwich menu, actually.”

Newt has a nice breakfast of avocado and egg on a bagel, and pretends to do work on his laptop for a few hours, but—to his disappointment—Dr. Gottlieb doesn’t come in for a coffee. Newt doesn’t catch sight of any familiar dark-haired, scowling men walking in or out of the institute, either. Gottlieb must have off today. Maybe it’s for the best, anyway; Newt’s not totally sure what he would’ve done if he ran into the guy on the street, or how he would have even explained why he’s there to Gottlieb if he did. He was just sort of operating under the assumption he’d figure it out in the heat of the moment. He calls it quits around three in the afternoon, not wanting to walk home in the dark after sunset. “Happy holidays,” he tells the baristas gloomily, and steps out into the snow with one last cardboard cup of coffee.

He mulls it all over in his head as he avoids ice patches and passersby on the way home. Should he ask for Dr. Gottlieb’s number? Is it weird to ask your ex, or even his sister, for the number of a guy you’re sorta-interested in? Newt supposes it’s weird to invite your ex to a holiday party in the first place, but he really wasn’t lying about it being amicable. Maybe he wouldn’t care. He could always just send that fucking Facebook friend request. Or he could just wait until next year. It’s just a year.

He’s so distracted that he doesn’t notice the patch of ice directly in front of his apartment until he’s already stepping on it, and his stomach flips in a way that lets Newt knows he’s just fucked up; his worn-out boot loses traction, his arms pinwheel, his coffee goes flying, and he lands—

In someone’s arms?

Well, even that’s not totally right. He lands mostly in someone’s arms, but he hears a little oof, an exclamation of surprise, and then they both topple over and into a snowbank. The coffee lands somewhere next to Newt’s head. “Bugger,” a familiar voice groans.

Newt sits up. Dr. Gottlieb is laying on his back next to him, wrapped in a green parka and about three scarves. To Newt’s relief, he doesn’t look angry. More embarrassed than anything else. “Apologies,” he says. “You were heavier than I’d anticipated. Or perhaps I was not as strong as I anticipated.”

“I appreciate it anyway, dude,” Newt says.

He gets to his feet, locates Gottlieb’s cane from where it’s somehow landed on the other side of the sidewalk, then tugs Gottlieb to his feet as well. Gottlieb makes a face as he rights himself. “You ought to watch yourself, and be more careful,” he says. “You could break your neck next time.”

“Worried about me?” Newt says. He dusts some snow off Gottlieb’s shoulders. “What are you doing outside my apartment, dude?”

“Er,” Gottlieb says.

He goes a strange shade of pink, and clears his throat. “I fancied…a walk. In the snow. Fresh air. And I just happened to be—er—” He clears his throat again. “I happened to discover you lived here, and my walk happened to take me by. I wasn’t looking for you, if that’s what you’re implying. Or waiting for you. I have better things to do with myself.”

“Really?” Newt says. “’Cause I was looking for you.”

“Oh,” Gottlieb says.

He really is cute right now, with his red-tipped ears, his dumb coat, his dumb scarves, the snow sticking to his back and his poofy hair. Sticking to his long eyelashes. It’s the first time Newt’s ever seen the guy not, like, at least mildly annoyed at him; it’s doing something funny to his heart. “Hey, you wanna come in for a coffee or something?” he says. “Mine kinda spilled, and I could go for another.”

“I couldn’t possibly,” Gottlieb says.

Newt grins. “Come on, I know you want to. It’s cold as shit out and you’ve clearly been out here for a while. We can order a pizza or something, too.”

“Well,” Gottlieb says, and he ducks his head as he finally smiles back. It’s worth the wait, because my God, is it cute, all broad and crooked. Newt has the feeling not too many people get to witness it. “Perhaps for a bit. I was hoping to discuss your latest article with you, you know, and was very put out when I learned I wouldn’t be seeing you at the party this year.”

“Oh?” Newt says. He holds out his hand, and Gottlieb startles visibly a moment before taking it. Newt can feel how cold Gottlieb is even through his thick red mitten—he could use a little warming up. Newt can light a fire in the fireplace he rarely uses…maybe break out some wine…it’ll be nice and romantic… “Did you like it?”

“Not in the slightest,” Gottlieb says cheerily.

“Just what I was hoping,” Newt says. “After you, Doctor.”

[annebrontesrequiem]

CLAMP Timeline BS: How xxxHolic and CCS are Connected

Major spoilers for xxxHolic, TRC, and minor-ish spoilers for Cardcaptor Sakura and Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card

Also it long

Backstory

Cardcaptor Sakura run: 1996-2000

xxxHolic run: 2003-2011

Clear Card run: 2016-present

What I have read: The entirety of xxxHolic

What I have watched: The entirety of Cardcaptor Sakura, the entirety of Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card, xxxHolic season 1

 Crackpot Theory Time

So I got the idea for this after seeing some post somewhere (I’ll try to look for the post later) something along the lines of “maybe Sakura in Clear Card will be so powerful she’ll be able to influence the TRC universe/help the members of the CLAMP universe.” Then I started thinking about how, though there have been many posts on the TRC/xxxHolic timeline, I haven’t seen an xxxHolic/CCS timeline. I’m sure it exists somewhere, but since I’ve got my own theories I’m not writing one myself.

This is less of a timeline and more of a “how are they connected”, basically I’m going to be going back through the anime and the manga and saying whether I think CCS and xxxHolic take place in the same universe, and whether or not they’re taking place at the same time.

Let’s start with the most stuff (and apologies the manga scans are ones I made myself so if they’re kinda wonky that’s why)

Also one day I’ll update this when I actually read TRC (lol)s.

Also some of these are a bit crazy.

 Plot Points

Since xxxHolic came second it’s unsurprising that the majority of the things I’m going to be discussing comes from this series. So I’m going to start by framing this around xxxHolic, dipping inThis is going to be a bit all over the place but since I’m focusing on a specific chapter it shouldn’t be too confusing.

1.      In Chapter 2 of xxxHolic we see the most references to Cardcaptor Sakura. Namely Watanuki and Yuuko have an argument about the plastic replica of the Clow Key that Yuuko owns.

2.      Now the version that Yuuko has is the first iteration of the key. That means that when Yuuko acquired it (whenever she did) it was most likely during the first part of Cardcaptor Sakura (although yes I understand in meta it’s because it’s the most iconic iteration). Then again the key has been around for a long time, as it’s the original iteration. It’s possible that Yuuko got a copy of it from Clow, or some point before Sakura got hold of it. Although that’d most likely have to be before Kero fell asleep for 30 years, and before the cards got into the Kinomoto house.

3.      Another thing to note is that Yuuko only has a prop version. Although you might use this to say CCS is a show in this version, it’s pretty obvious that this is just for a gag. Considering the fact Watanuki doesn’t recognize it, there’s little chance that CCS is a beloved kid’s show in the xxxHolic universe.

4.      This is further proven by Yuuko’s words: “…The one who owns the original now is the creep’s [Clow’s] blood relation, a cute young girl.” This is probably the best indicator that CCS is taking place at the same time of xxxHolic. Although it’s possible that CCS takes place in an alternate world/universe, that also seems unlikely. Although Yuuko never seems tied to the shop in the way Watanuki is in the latter half, there’s also (in xxxHolic) no proof that she’s jumping around worlds. Besides, it seems unlikely she’d bring it up to Watanuki in the present-tense if that were the case. Thus we can pretty safely say that Sakura is both alive and still a little kid in the xxxHolic world.

5.      Now the most confusing part in regards to the CCS/xxxHolic timeline is Watanuki’s existence himself. In Chapter 11 Watanuki and Yuuko go to see a fortune teller. During said interaction the fortune teller explicitly states: “Your parents have safely passed into the afterlife” after noting that they died in an accident. Now this could cause some issues, as we know not only that Watanuki’s parents are Sakura and Syaoran (from what I know it’s specifically their clone versions but again I haven’t read TRC so I could be wrong). This could point to two things, either A. This is just a lie or something that CLAMP retconned later, or B. Sakura and Syaoran are dead. Assuming that this isn’t just a retcon or a sort of lie (since Sakura and Syaoran clone’s weren’t actually dead at this point, I’m pretty sure in TRC they don’t even know about Tsubasa Li yet) we could explain this via Eriol. Eriol is confirmed to be the reincarnation of Clow Reed. As of such if we assume that there was another Sakura and Syaoran running around in this world (plz god no), then the accident which caused their death doesn’t actually mean that CCS happened way earlier. It just means that they might’ve reincarnated.

Random Exposition

I’m just going to be talking about technology and geography here

1.      Firstly I had to go back and check and unfortunately the name of Watanuki’s school doesn’t match with the name of Sakura’s school (or rather her brother’s old school). Cross Private School has nothing to do with Tomoeda. Although that could actually further point to them existing in the same timeline, since if they lived in the same place it’d be weird if they never ran into one another.

2.      Tomoeda is said to be close to Tokyo. In fact in the second season we see Sakura and the gang taking the train to Tokyo. Watanuki obviously lives in a city, or a very dense suburb, and in Chapter 5 he mentions that Ginza would take hours to walk to. Having lived in a very dense city myself once (Paris I miss you baby) I know that walking from one side of the other could theoretically take hours. Though I’m not sure how large Tokyo is and I have no real sense of distance, I’d guess that Watanuki lives either in some made up part of Tokyo, or in the suburbs directly connected to the city. As famous landmarks are never mentioned, it could be either or. He could even be from a neighboring city theoretically, although then it’d prolly take much longer to walk to Ginza.

3.      Lastly I want to talk about technology. In Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card we can clearly see that this is meant to take place in modern times, as Sakura has upgraded to an iphone, in keeping with the time. This definitely disproves CCS coming before xxxHolic, as nothing in xxxHolic suggests it takes place in the future. I also think that there’s no way xxxHolic comes before CCS for any real period of time, after all in Volume 1 there are many chapters dedicated to the woman who cannot stop using the internet. This too points to me that xxxHolic and CCS are running in conjunction to one another, or are at least only a few years off.

Conclusion

So this is all very crackpot and weird, but I do think it’s interesting to ponder. As that forum post said Clear Card definitely seems to be upping the scale of Cardcaptor Sakura, the magic is greater, the stakes seem higher, and characters such as Yuna D. Kaito point towards a storyline that seems more tonally in tandem with the greater CLAMP extended universe, as really ratcheted up by xxxHolic and TRC.

You could make the argument that CCS and xxxHolic are from different universes, though considering what I’ve written and read I don’t think you can argue that they’re utterly disconnected. Overall I’m still missing a huge piece of the puzzle, that being TRC as well as the rest of the Clear Card chapters. One day I’ll prolly remake this post, but until then I hope you enjoyed!

[shadlad24]

More Funny Little Moments #1: Season 1, Episodes 1-12

So, I decided to do this post after all. Halp. LOL Because I apparently LOVE giving myself a bunch of unnecessary work, I decided to choose two to three extra moments, per episode! SUPER halp! X’D Anyway, these are moments that didn’t make the cut for my FFLM series because: my sense of humor is a little weird, they were gonna be too much work (LOL/Siiigh), I like to highlight patterns, and I don’t like a lot of repetition. [Links to each FFLM along the bottom of the post. :)]

Let’s start with something I originally agreed with other fans on but have since changed my mind. A lot of people didn’t like this part of “Chariots of War” because it seems so ludicrous that Xena would forget her chakram anywhere. Well, let me tell you! This lady has left her weapons behind most episodes thus far. I didn’t note it every time here (and especially didn’t bother with her whip) because that’d really overrun the post buuuuut… You’ll see. XD

1.01 Sins of the Past

Xena’s shift being so much dirtier than the little boy’s clothes though she’s high up off the ground, and he lives in smoked-out rubble.

Yup. Xena forgot her sword (and later, her main saddlebag) at her mother’s tavern. Pft.

Sorry these were kinda lame, but I didn’t want to re-use any more of the original fifteen points I made about this episode... Ah well. Moving on! (heh)

1.02 Chariots of War

Xena loses her sword after the chariot crash, taking up and discarding Sphaerus’s but walking off without her own. (See her front and back and both of Argo’s sides.)

Gabrielle chewing Xena out, Xena being bummed about it, and Argo being surprised. X’D

1.03 Dreamworker

This got me good. Gabrielle does Xena’s war cry so well here that I really thought it was Xena for a few seconds. Realizing it was GabbyWabs only made me chuckle more because she apparently can’t do it when it really counts in “The Greater Good.”

Argo NOT being on Team Gabrielle. XD (Their feud is a little funny to me.)

1.04 Cradle of Hope

Xena tossing aside her sword after killing Nemos. Extras even dance and celebrate right on top of it! Wut thuh?

I decided to avoid mentioning Hope in the FFLM because Xena’s quote here is more ironic than comedic, and Gabrielle’s little face is just so sad, but I didn’t want to let it pass by entirely unremarked upon. At least GW gets to show off her oracle skills again? :’)

1.05 The Path Not Taken

So, Xena and Gabrielle walk into a bar… Heh. No, but really, they enter this tavern for the first time ever, yet the bartender not only knows what they want, he knows that they’re coming and has their drinks waiting for them too. All Xena has to do is knock on the counter and nod to get her fire-breath alcohol/oil, and Gabrielle barely has the word “cider” out of her mouth before the guy hands it to her. Xena, like me, is duly amazed.

Lucy, through Xena, making another timely anti-peanut statement. I just didn’t want to do the same thing twice back-to-back in the FFLM. X)

1.06 The Reckoning

Gabrielle thinking along the same lines Xena and I did about this poor excuse for a judge.

Me not being well-versed in ancient Greek heroes and picturing the fool who Draco killed so handily in the first episode. heh

1.07 The Titans

I’ll let Xena explain this one. …Mostly. I can’t believe Gabrielle not only sassed the Titans such that she unashamedly put Xena and Phyleus in danger too, but also kinda got this (admittedly awful) town demolished and didn’t lift a finger to actually help anyone in the temple. Tsk tsk. XP

So… Hyperion here can smash homes and businesses that were probably well-built and reinforced and all, but he can’t get his hand out of a stocks-cuff that was made in a single evening with scraps from those destroyed buildings. He also, inexplicably, has no use of his left hand or the power-breath that he used to knock Gabrielle over. Okie. XD

1.08 Prometheus

Is this really a thing? I was giggling quite a bit in disbelief that severed windpipes can heal. Like, perforated is one thing; completely bisected? Yeah, I don’t think so.

Gabrielle being incredulous upon learning that Xena has other friends, realizing what the warrior princess means, and then wondering if that could be her one day. 

   1.09 Death in Chains

Gabrielle enjoying watching Xena kill someone for the first time, then quickly realizing that fact. Whoops.

I found this moment really odd and then kind of hilarious. This poor dying old woman begs for water and goes ignored not only by the hospice workers, but also Talus and Gabrielle. Then Talus decides to be helpful. Gabrielle goes to the woman and lets her talk a lot (undoubtedly drying her mouth and throat even more), hears that Xena might be in danger, and then just… leaves. Talus goes with her, not having gotten water from the well after all. What a couple of jerks! XD

1.10 Hooves & Harlots

I really don’t know why Gabrielle kept making this face as Terreis died, but it tickled my funny bone too. So, I provided alternate subs to go with it. [Did you notice how she kind of cringes when Terreis tries to hold her hand and then just lets the Amazon flop once she’s died, flinging her hand aside like, “Ew, get it off me!”? What was that all about? X”) Hm… maybe she has an aversion to dying people, and that’s why she abandoned the old lady last episode?]

Gabrielle being a smart aleck, just like me, because Phantes’s complaint here is so ludicrous. But then you see the close-up of little hoofies in cuffs too, and, if you’re anything like me too, kinda just topple over laughing. The poor actual horse they did this to, though, man! What even?

Gosh, this episode was chockfull of hilarity, eh? Why did this happen? Gabby, take it away!

1.11 The Black Wolf

I laughed at this too. But now I wonder. Is Xerxes related to Caesar and/or connected to Rome or something? Because Xena does this twice around them too. In “When in Rome,” she jokes that the two guards lost playing tag with her, and in “A Good Day” she informs Pompey that if there were more guards hiding around their meeting space, then she would have had more helmets. heh Oh, Xenie. I think I know why Gabrielle’s turning out to be such a little punk ...or vice versa? Is Gabrielle actually a bit of a bad influence on Xena? XP

So, this fight just struck me as really odd. Xena passes her sword to Flora though she (Xena) needs to battle the big boss of the episode, and… actually, is totally right. The king throws a single wide-ass punch, waits while Xena kicks the guy behind her a few times, lets himself get kicked in the face a couple of times, and then comes at her with a little piece of chain, presumably from the restraints that were intended to keep Flora in place during her execution. Sir, you have a sword! A giant sword, right there on your hip! What are you doing? Then, when Xena kicks him a final time and sends him flying, his (supposed-to-be) metal armor is no match for the splintered wood of the axe she broke earlier. …Okie. XD XD XD   *gif below*

Xena once again leaves her chakram somewhere. …And I am now imagining this being part of Gabrielle’s maid duties: the poor kid has to go find Xena’s weapons each night and bring them back to her. I’m especially imaging the fluffball hilariously, adorably struggling to get the chakram out of things like this wall, as she did with Xena’s sword in the tree stump in “Dreamworker,” but more parallel to the floor. Cuuuute! XD

This plus this 

*pic + GIF below*:

1.12 Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts

This scene too really made me wonder, though amused as well. Why is Gabrielle so surprised that the only city nearby, that they were headed to, is the one they find? Is she really being that loud? Is Xena goofing around with the bootlaces question? Why startle Gabrielle and then yank her into enemy territory screaming, when what you want is quiet? What’s with the trapdoor-spider soldiers? Xena’s pose throwing the chakram. XD Gabrielle mostly featherlight dance-y moves through the battlefield. XD XD XD Why is it that when Xena tells Gabrielle to stick right behind her, Gabrielle disappears? And what was with the bucket-sitting soldier? Gabrielle is like, “Oh; no, thank you!” when she sees him and turns tail. Then Xena ...follows her. “We’re goin’ this way! Now we’re goin’ that way!” But they still end up dead-ahead from where they burst out of the bushes. XD That was ridiculous and nonsensical, and I’m very confused but had lots of fun. heheheh  *gif below* [ETA: Darn! The original file was too big, so I had to remake the GIF and cut quite a few things out. :( Sorry]

Xena’s outta-nowhere crusade to emasculate Deiphobus coming full-circle. What was that all about?

Welp, I hope you had as much fun as I originally and then later did. Not so much in the middle with the collage-and-GIF-making and editing and redoing, but; y’know. XD Wouldn’t trade it for …Hm… Nevermind. LOL

If you missed any of the FFLMs, then please click on the corresponding number-links below. :D

#1  #2  #3  #4  #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12

[madame-fouquet]

2020 Anime Retrospective

With the end of the year here, and all the anime that came with it now behind us, I feel like looking back and reminiscing on it. So, following the style of ANN's own yearly retrospectives, may I present my 2020 anime in review! Enjoy.

Best of the year: Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken

    This is actually not the first time Yuasa and his crew of, let's be honest, visionaries have rolled something special out right at the beginning of the year in some weird power move against everything else that has to follow it. They did it back in 2018 with Devilman Crybaby, and then they hit us this year with Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken.     You ever have one of those shows where you're just constantly in awe of everything it does? Where you never found yourself chasing merch or hunting after content based off it online, but you consistently find yourself thinking about it? Yeah, that's what Eizouken did to my brain after I watched it. It was such an earnest love letter to anime and anime production, to animation in general, that I couldn't help but get sucked into its imagination and enthusiasm. The way it was able to so perfectly illustrate that pure, boundless, childlike joy that one can derive from the simple act of creating, I'd be lying if I didn't say that it had a powerful effect on my own desire to continue creating. (Corny as that sounds, it's true.) The sheer amount of love it contains, and the equal amount it puts out into the world make it so I know I am going to be thinking about it again and again for a long long time.

Runner-up: Akudama Drive

    I don't know if it's really quite a matter of my two favorites being opposites, but there are definitely some pretty sharp stylistic and tonal differences between my two top shows this year. Akudama Drive's cocaine-fueled bender of an intro episode made it very clear what it's intentions were and what it wanted us to be prepared for. That doesn't mean I had ANY idea of where it was headed narratively, but I did know I was in for one hell of a ride. And it delivered is spades on that promise.     The twists and turns, no matter how insane, illogical, or steeped in tropes they were, were all such a colorful energetic spectacle that it would be hard to hold anything against the series. Every character was such a force that I didn't really consider any of them a weak point. Yeah, some of them were more or less cardboard cut-outs of antagonistic elements, but when the cardboard cutout looks REALLY FREAKING COOL, it's hard to get too torn up over the details. It's a show that oozes style and knew EXACTLY what it wanted to do and be, and I have to respect that.

Runner-up-up: Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun

    The next few entries aren't really in any sort of order, I actually found it near impossible to sort anything below my top two. Hanako-kun however does hold a bit of a special place for me though because, at least from a stylistic standpoint, it hits so many of my buttons. Just visually this show is the exact kind of thing my younger self would have latched onto immediately, even before knowing anything about the actual content. I suppose not much has really changed though.     I'm absolutely in love with the animation style of Hanako-kun, and I got really lucky that there is an interesting story and delightful cast of characters underneath that visual splendor. Along with the sharp lines, intense colors, and soft characters, I'm also a sucker for contemporary supernatural mysteries. That's a fancy way of saying one of my favorite shows as a kid was The X-files, but both make the point pretty well. The world of Hanako-kun has a lot to offer, and I can only hope it gets a second season so we can continue to delve into it's beautiful and terrifying mysteries.

Runner-up-up: Kaguya-sama: Love is War Season 2

    I know a lot of people will be talking about this one when it comes to “Best of” lists. I know a lot of people were talking about the first season when it reminded us just how funny anime can be back in 2018. Absurd high school comedies (Is that a genre?) could definitely be considered my favorite. Hell, of my top five favorite anime of all time, THREE of them fall under that category. So believe me when I say Kaguya-sama absolutely deserves the deluge of praise it receives. For what describing something as “laugh out loud” is worth, this show had me constantly needing to pause it just so I could finish laughing at whatever ludicrously funny misfortune had just befallen it's cast of lovable morons.     The thing is though, Kaguya-sama understands that you can't just earn love and goodwill on laughs alone, there needs to be a beating heart at the center of all the shenanigans. And when this season had me actually cheering on and feeling sorry for Ishigami of all people, I knew that beating heart was present and accounted for. Look, the cast are all self-centered idiots, but I'll be damned if they aren't also my dear children who I delight in watching slowly grow and become slightly less self-centered idiots.

Runner-up-up: Dorohedoro

    When the Dorohedoro anime was first announced, a lot of my experience was watching a group of people online scream about how they were so pumped that it was finally getting an anime. I had never heard of it before, but the excitement was very real and tangible. And I gotta say, sometimes you need to believe the hype.     I've never been one to shirk a series just because it was CG animation, (Watch ID-0 dammit!) but Dorohedoro makes a strong case for why people shouldn't sleep on something based solely on it's animation. The dirty, grease-encrusted world of Hole is brought to life with plenty of flair and style that, I feel, the CG didn't hold back at all. What I had seen said was that for a long time Dorohedoro was kinda considered “unanimateable” but I think MAPPA did the iconic manga a fair amount of justice. Even if pulpy ultra-violence isn't normally your thing, I still highly recommend giving Dorohedoro a look, it might just end up being a hole worth going down.

Honorable Mention: Show By Rock!! Mashumairesh!!

    I know what you're thinking, but hear me out. The first Show By Rock!! was definitely an indulgence for me. While not something I considered a high level series by any stretch: messy plotting, shallow characters, a weird isekai angle, a lackluster finale, and an even MORE lackluster second season, it still got is hooks into me with its sheer energy and fluffy charm. So despite the, as mentioned, rough second season, I was more than happy to check out the new series in the franchise. And boy was I glad I did.     Mashumairesh!! takes all the heart and sweetness that worked for the first series and dials it up. It then took a hard look at a lot of what DIDN'T work in the first series, and manages to fix most of the issues. Removing the isekai angle and the whole existential threat thing, and just letting the series be a “slice-of-life but in an electric animal filled music world” did wonders for the direction and consistency. Add to that more properly fleshed out characters, and you get a series that is far stronger than it's progenitor.     The next series, Show By Rock!! Stars!!, will be adding back the cast from the first series, and that could very well be a sign that it will be falling back into its old habits, but the presence of the Mahumairesh!! girls gives me hope that it might have a chance of staying the new, far better course.

Worst of the Year: Digimon Adventure:

    This one really hurts to say. What hurt more was how quickly I knew what show I'd be electing for this position. One thing to clarify is that I would not nominate a series that I'd only watched one or two episodes of, that's just not fair. So the award was bound to go to something I had at least dedicated a decent amount of my time too. And in any other year this may have gone to something that was more my “least favorite” or had an ending that disappointed me. But unfortunately I have to be honest and sit here and tell you that the newest entry in the Digimon franchise was easily the worst thing I watched this year.      I have been a long time Digimon fan. Ever since I was but a wee lass watching the original Digimon Adventure premiere on Fox Kids at a family reunion, I have always considered the franchise a sort of cornerstone of my anime fandom. So please understand the excitement I had felt when I found out they were doing a full on remake of that flagship series. Imagine how absolutely pumped I was when the bombastic movie-like premiere of Digimon Adventure: wowed us with everything it delivered, and all the promises of what was to come. And then imagine my disappointment, my despair as the show devolved until it showed us what it really was during the finale of the Fake Tokyo arc.     I would call it a production meltdown, but considering the precedent that got set back in episode 10 during the already shaky Ultimate Evolution arc, has been so clearly informing everything up to the current episodes in the early 30s, I have to be honest with myself and admit: this is what we were going to get all along from day one.     All of the heart that had made the original series so endearing, despite its own flaws, just isn't present here. What you get here is just a non-stop (and I mean non-stop) string of barely related fights with poorly-defined stakes, or sometimes no real stakes at all. It's just one ugly set piece fight after another as the children chase after vaguely implied evils. I think the most damning thing is how much more I could say about just how much this series has let me down. Like I said, this one hurts.

Best Theme-Song of the Year: Night Running (BNA)

     My opinion of BNA as a series is complex. But my opinion of its ED, Night Running, is simple: Its a god-damned bop! I could spend this whole section talking about the artistry of the ED animation itself, its fun and creative use of color, the slight variations for certain episodes, the focus on character, or the fact that it was done by an American animation team. I could even talk about the song's importance to the series as a whole and its place in the narrative. I won't though. The fact of the matter is that even without all that, I STILL probably would've picked Night Running as my best of the year because as a song it is just that much my jam. This is the kind of shit I could listen to on repeat for hours, days, weeks, and still keep coming back to it. Don't get me wrong, Ready To is a damn powerful and catchy tune that goes hard, but at the end of the day, I'm a sucker for a soulful pop tune like Night Running. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWTFfEnMCCc

Best Character: Sayaka Kanamori

    This was actually probably the hardest category for me to decide on. It was stuck hard between Eizoken's Kanamori and Akudama Drive's Doctor. I know those are a powerfully different pair in basically every way, but it was specifically for their startling differences that both characters stuck out to me so much. In the end though, it was the poignant rounding out of, and emotional hooks of Kanamori's character that let her triumph over her delightfully two-dimensional opposition.     Kanamori already had me from episode one. In a show that I wasn't really worried about the usual diversions of anime ingestion like picking a favorite character, Kanamori sealed herself as “Best-girl” from the word go. I have mad respect for a girl who knows what she wants, and has a clear idea of how she's going to go about getting it (See also: Doctor.) But Kanamori was more than a driving desire for success and money. Underneath her unstoppable ambition there was a very real, very relatable driving impetus. She stood apart, and yet still believably vulnerable and invested in the people she associated with. It was always a blast watching her suffer as the only thing keeping the more creative minds on track, and yet she was never reduced to a simple task master; her love and respect for her friends was always clearly visible. I could go on and on about how Kanamori is a nearly perfect character, but I hope I've said enough already without having to resort to senseless rambling.

Best Moment: Howan confesses her feeling to Himeko (Show By Rock!! Mashumairesh!!)

    By the time episode six rolled around, Mashumairesh!! had already shown marked improvements over its progenitor in basically every area. Not only was the story in a better place by focusing on what had worked in the original series, (Ya know the BAND part of this show about bands) but the cast was also doing a good job of standing out from their seniors and feeling more equally rounded out. Where the original series had just kinda been the Cyan show with guest stars, I felt like I had an actual grip on all four of the main girls now.     There were however the usual issues that come with a cute-girls-doing-cute-things series, chief among them the “ambiguously gay member of the group who constantly reacts with clear romantic interest towards the main protagonist but the writing will never actually do anything with those feelings” trope. Retoree had spent the better part of the first two seasons fawning over Cyan only for nothing to come of it and, despite the increased focus on all of the girls this time around, it looked like we were going to get the same old song and dance with Himeko's feelings towards Howan.     But then the climax of episode six hit and, midst a really intense subplot about Himeko's abandonment complex, Howan comes out with a straight up love confession. And I kept waiting for the usual dead-ends these moments always seem to have. The “I love you! I love the girls too! I love the band!” Or a “I love being with you.” and the dreaded, “I love having you as my most precious friend.” But none of that happened. It was a full on heart-felt, “I love you, Himeko. I want to stay with you forever!” I'm just not used to getting that sort of straightforwardness from my silly little band shows, so I was shocked, but also completely overjoyed. And frankly the series just kept getting better from there.     The evolution of their relationship built off that moment, no dreaded resetting of the status quo. I daresay it was on the power of this moment alone that I wanted to include this series in my top five at all. If there was anything I would want other anime to take from Mashumairesh!! it's that it's okay to introduce radical changes to character relationships partway through a season, and it's okay to let characters unequivocally state their feelings for each other. People will respond positively to that earnestness, I promise.

[coolgreatwebsite]

Cool Games I Finished In 2020 (In No Real Order)

Oh, hey! Right! I have a website! I’m like a week late on writing this, but what’s a week on top of an entire year of not writing, right? 2020 was... well, we all know what 2020 was. For me personally, it was simultaneously the best and worst year of my life. The worst in both ways you can probably assume and ways you definitely can’t (neither of which I’ll be getting into), and the best in ways I absolutely never would have guessed. That uncertain job I mentioned last year got very suddenly much more certain, at a much bigger company, for a much larger amount of money. That allowed me to get my own place, making my weird living situation much less weird. Still haven’t gotten the majority of my belongings off of the east coast, but if the entire world wasn’t currently fucked up by a global pandemic I’d have sorted all that out too. What I’m saying is that, for the third year in a row, my life has been a complete whirlwind that has left me very little time to get comfortable with any aspect of it. But I did manage to play more video games than I did last year! Which is perfect, because it’s once again time for another one of these. Here’s a bunch of cool games I experienced for the first time in 2020.

Astro’s Playroom (PlayStation 5, 2020)

My one word description of Astro's Playroom is "delightful". It's just an absolute goddamn delight. A total surprise too! Included with every PlayStation 5, Astro's Playroom is, in my opinion, one of the best pack-in games of all time.

First off, it's an incredible tech demo for the PS5's new DualSense controller. It was easy to brush off Sony's talk about the controller's haptic feedback and triggers as some Nintendo-style HD Rumble bullshit, but it really is incredibly cool once you get your hands on it. The game is obviously more than a tech demo though, or else it wouldn't be on here. It also just so happens to be an extremely solid and fun platformer on top of that. Astro controls exceptionally well and the levels are all well-designed and fun, even the gimmick vehicle ones designed to show off different features of the controller. It also has an oddly compelling speedrun mode, made all the more compelling by the PS5 notifying you when your friends beat your times and the ability to load into it within two seconds from anywhere on the console. But the biggest thing for me and, call me a mark, because I am, is that the game is an honestly incredible love letter to PlayStation history.

For the first time ever, Sony has pulled off a nostalgia piece without it ending up as embarrassing garbage in the vein of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. There's a Nintendo-like joyful reverence for all things PlayStation oozing out of every single corner of this game. There are so many nods and references and gags for literally every PlayStation thing of note throughout the the last 25 years, and then on top of that there's a whole heap more for the things that AREN'T of note that only hyperdorks like me would get! A sly reference to the ill-fated boomerang controller? Yep. A goof on the fat PS3's Spider-Man font? You betcha. A trophy you can earn by repeatedly punching a Sony Interactive Entertainment sign until it breaks and reveals the Sony Computer Entertainment sign it was slapped on top of? Yeah buddy. It's deep cuts all the way down, even up until the final boss which had me grinning like a total dipshit the entire time. The game is endlessly, effortlessly charming.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo Switch, 2020)

Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the perfect game at the perfect time. That doesn't mean it's a perfect game, I actually have some issues with it, but it could not have released at a better time than when it did. It came out at the very very beginning of everyone going into lockdown due to the pandemic, and it was the biggest game in the world for a couple of months as a result. I played like 300 hours and that pales in comparison to the amount of time many others put into it.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the most different Animal Crossing game there's ever been, and I'm of two minds on it. Like, I loved the game, I played a ton of it, but it's lacking so much of the stuff that made me love Animal Crossing in the first place. The series has been slowly trending in this direction for a bit now, but it's not really a game that happens around you anymore. It's all about total player control. You select where everything goes, you customize every detail of everything to your liking, hell, you can even terraform the landmass to be exactly what you want. Your neighbors take a backseat in focus and end up as little more than decorations with limited dialogue and next to no quests associated with them. Series staples like Gyroids are missing in action. Facilities and services that have been around since Wild World aren't implemented. It's similar to past Animal Crossing games in a lot of ways, but on the whole it feels like a different thing.

But like I said, two minds. New Horizons strays from what I truly want from an Animal Crossing game, but I can't deny that the game as it is is a hell of a lot of fun. There's SO much you can do and SO many options, it's super addictive. Plus it implemented my long-requested feature of letting you effortlessly send mail to friends online! Too bad the actual online play is as cumbersome as ever.

In conclusion, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a land of contrasts. I'm kidding. It's good, but definitely missing something in a way where I can understand some people being disappointed in it. I had a ton of fun though, and I'm probably going to get back into it later in 2021.

Trials of Mana (Nintendo Switch, 2019)

Late in 2019, with the physical release of Collection of Mana for the Switch, I decided I was going to play through each game on it for the first time and finally find out what this whole Mana thing was about. I went into Final Fantasy Adventure (the first game in the Mana series, because every RPG had to be Final Fantasy back then) with zero expectations and found a totally serviceable little Zelda-like with light RPG elements. I enjoyed my time with it. I went into Secret of Mana with the expectation of it being a beloved classic and found the worst game I beat that year, hands down. That game fucking sucks. I get why it made an impression on people at the time, but it's just so so SO awful to play. Needless to say I was pretty disappointed. Honestly, I would have been disappointed even if I hadn't heard it was one of "the best games" for so long. It would have been a disappointing follow-up to Final Fantasy Adventure, a game that in and of itself isn't anything incredible. Secret of Mana is just that rotten.

I braced myself for more disappointment when (after a much needed vacation from the series) I started up Trials of Mana. This game had a reputation too, as a long-lost classic that never made it stateside. One of the best games on the Super Nintendo, criminally never released for western audiences! Like Secret of Mana before it, I'd heard nothing but effusive praise. Unlike Secret of Mana, however, I was very pleased to find out that Trials of Mana mostly lives up to the hype. From a gameplay standpoint, Trials is an improvement on Secret in almost every single way. It's not perfect. The menus are still kinda clunky, animations for things like magic and items are still frequently disruptive. But the main thing is it actually plays like a sensible video game designed by humans with brains. Attacking is responsive! Hitboxes aren't complete nonsense! You don't constantly get stunlocked to death! There are more answers to combat than casting the same spell for five straight minutes to kill your enemies before they get a chance to move! It's great!

On top of being an enjoyable video game to actually play, the presentation is top notch. Secret of Mana could be a pretty game with decent music in some spots, but Trials is consistently gorgeous and the soundtrack is across the board great instead of randomly having songs that sound like clown vomit. And while Trials of Mana doesn't have the deepest story in the world, it manages to avoid being completely paper-thin like Secret. The story actually kind of has a reason for being a bit straightforward, and the reason is that it has a really cool system where you pick your three playable characters from a pool of six. Each character has their own goals and storyline, some of which line up with other potential party members, some of which don't, and you'll even run into the characters you didn't choose as NPCs along the way. This and the relatively brisk pace of the game make it highly replayable.

I'm really glad that Trials of Mana made it over here in an official capacity, even if it was like 25 years late. It's as good as I expected Secret of Mana to be and singlehandedly saved my interest in seeing any more of the series. I'm aware the quality of what came after is very spotty, but I'll get to the rest eventually!

Final Fantasy VII Remake (PlayStation 4, 2020)

They (almost) did it. They (basically) pulled it off. They remade (a chunk of) Final Fantasy VII and (for the most part) didn't fuck it up. Ok, funny parentheticals aside, Final Fantasy VII Remake is astoundingly good coming off of over two decades of just absolutely dreadful post-FF7 sequels, side games, and movies.

Final Fantasy VII has been historically misremembered as this kind of miserable, angsty, brooding thing, both by fans and by the company that made it. FF7-branded media after FF7 itself is a minefield of changed personalities, embarrassing original characters, and monumentally lame stories. Final Fantasy VII Remake is the first post-FF7 anything that actually remembers the characters, setting, and plot of Final Fantasy VII and what made them memorable and special to people in the first place. Which isn't to say it's a slavish recreation! There's a ton of changes and additions, and I actually like almost all of them! Except for some really big stuff I'll touch on in a bit!

The combat in Final Fantasy VII Remake is great. I was super skeptical about it when the game was first announced, but they actually managed to make the blend of real-time action and turn-based RPG menuing fun and engaging. The characters all play super differently from each other too, which is a huge and welcome difference from the original game. The Materia system fits like a glove in this revamped combat system as well. The remixed music is good as hell, and the visuals are beautiful (outside of a couple of very specific spots that I'm kinda of surprised they haven't fixed in a patch yet). It's a well-executed package all around.

But alas, as always, there are negatives. For starters, this is only part one of the overall Final Fantasy VII Remake project. It goes up to the party leaving Midgar which, as you may or may not recall, is the first six hours of the original game. They compensated for this by fleshing the hell out of the Midgar section the game, ballooning the overall playtime to total of about 30-ish hours. The game feeling padded is a common complaint but for what it's worth, I didn't really feel it until the unnecessarily long final dungeon, There's also the previously mentioned and funny parenthetical'd changes and additions I don't like.

This is big time spoilers for this game so if you don't want that jump ahead to the next game on the list. The Whispers suck ass. Final Fantasy VII Remake should have been brave enough to be different without having to constantly derail everything in the most ham-fisted and intrusive way possible. You can have Jessie twist her ankle without making a spooky plot ghost trip her. I don't want to fight the physical manifestation of the game everyone thought they were getting as an end boss. If you're not doing a straight remake, that's fine, but have the fucking guts to stand by your artistic decisions without feeling the need to invent the lamest deus ex machina I've ever fucking seen. The last couple of hours of this game are 100% about the Whispers and are awful for it. It's a true testament to the strength of the rest of Final Fantasy VII Remake that this aspect didn't completely sour me on it. I can only hope that they stay dead and gone for good in the games yet to come and the remake can be different while standing on its own two feet.

I truly cannot wait for the next entry in the Final Fantasy VII Remake project. I'm excited for Final Fantasy VII in a way I haven't been since the late 90s. I have a bit of trepidation that they could royally screw it up. I mean, they already got kinda close, as I said in my last paragraph. But they got so much right in this entry that, for the first time in decades, I'm willing to believe in Square Enix when it comes to Final Fantasy VII.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (PlayStation 4, 2020)

My one word description of 13 Sentinels is "fucking crazy". I realize that's two words, but shut up. A bizarre hybrid of visual novel, adventure game, and strategy RPG, 13 Sentinels not only makes that work, but makes it work incredibly well. 

The story is fucking bonkers. It's told entirely non-linearly and is purposefully dense and confusing, but it does an amazing job of hooking you with a cast of likable characters and some impressively well-paced twists, made all the more impressive by the fact that you can tackle the story in basically whatever order you want. I'll say it again for those in the back, the story is Fucking Bonkers. Wherever you think it's going, it's not going. Where it is going is PLACES. Seriously, if you want a wild goddamn ride, this is the game for you. The presentation is also stunning. It's a drop dead gorgeous game with a really nice soundtrack. Easily Vanillaware's best looking game, which is saying something seeing as looking good is Vanillaware's whole deal.

If I had to levy one criticism against the game, it's that the strategy RPG portion is just kind of ok. It's enjoyable enough, it doesn't get in the way and there's not too much of it, but once it starts introducing armored versions of previous enemy types it's kind of done doing anything different. It is really good at getting people to out themselves as having no idea what tower defense is as a genre though!

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition (Nintendo Switch, 2018)

I haven't really historically been a "Musou Guy". Not to say I've actively disliked them, they're just not something I've seeked out very often or played very much of. Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition kinda turned me into a "Musou Guy" a little bit? It's good, surprisingly-less-mindless-than-you'd-think fun.

I actually super don't care about the Zelda branding. I think all the fanservice stuff is meh at best. What I do care about is that there's a ton of character variety and a metric shitload of content. There's so many different characters and weapons for those characters that all play differently from one another and SOOOOOO many levels to play. Like the story mode is, again, kinda meh, the real meat of the game is the Adventure mode and there's a ton of it. It's 8 different world maps, each based off a different Zelda game, with each square of the map containing a little mini-scenario with unique objectives and rewards. There has to be at least 1000 scenarios between all the maps. There's so much. And that's not even getting into some of the other side stuff like the challenge modes and the fairy raising. It's a crazy amount of game in this game.

And again, it's not as mindless as it'd seem. It's not really a game ABOUT destroying 5000 guys, it's an area control and resource management game where the 5000 guys are one of those resources. Knowing who to send where and when to fight who is way more important than pressing the XXX YYY XXX YYY on the more than one million troops.

I'd say that if you're even cursorily potentially maybe interested in a musou game, this is the one to try. And if you like it, it could literally be your forever game. A sequel came out recently too, and I'm looking forward to trying that out soon.

Phantasy Star Online 2 (Xbox One, 2020)

Phantasy Star Online 2 finally came stateside in the year 2020, eight years after its initial Japanese release and initial American cancellation. It's no Phantasy Star Online 1, but it is a really fun game in its own right provided you can find the willpower to break through its clunkiness and eight years of confusing poorly tutorialized free-to-play MMO cruft.

The main thing going for PSO2, and this is a major improvement from PSO1, is that the act of engaging in its combat is fun. The combat is just feels really really good. There's a bunch of different weapon types and classes, and once you find the ones that really click with you you're in for a good time, whether you're izuna dropping dudes with wire claws or literally doing air juggles and rainstorm from Devil May Cry with the dual machine guns.

The other stuff around that combat is weird. I generally like it, but it's weird. The story mode is one of the most bizarrely presented things I've ever seen. It apparently used to be something you'd seek out in the levels themselves, but presently it's just a list of scenes you pick from a menu and watch with next to no context until it makes you fight a boss sometimes. There's some weird moments in there that MIGHT have been cool if it were presented in literally any other way?

The systems and presentation are also way more... I dunno, pinball? Pachislot? In very stark contrast to how chill original Phantasy Star Online was, everything in PSO2 is designed in a way to maximize that flashy light bing bing wahoo you got ~*~RARE DROP CHANCE UP~*~  feeling. Which isn't to say I don't like flashy light bing bing wahoo, but it's a weird different thing.

Was it worth the wait? Yeah, sure! For me! This is another one that I played like 300 hours of! I haven't even seen half of it, I fell off right before Episode 4 released because it coincided with my move! I'm gonna go back and see all that shit! PSO2's fun! A different flavor of fun than the original, sure, but fun all the same. Another one that I'm glad finally made it over here.

Riichi Mahjong (A Table, 1924)

Holy shit I fucking did it I finally learned how to play Mahjong and it rules.

It started when I picked up Clubhouse Games for the Switch. I saw that it had Riichi Mahjong and something in my brain snapped. For whatever reason, I decided that this was the time I was going to rip the band-aid off and figure this shit out. It wasn't too dissimilar to the first time I decided to try eggs, but that's a different and much stupider story for a different time. I did the tutorial in Clubhouse Games, looked up some more basics and advice because the tutorial wasn't super amazing, and I kept playing while being aided by the game's nice helper features like the button that pulls up recommended hands. I kept playing and... sorta got it. I learned the basic rules, but none of the strategy. And then I stopped playing for a few months.

In that few months, for whatever reason, a decent amount of people I know had their brains snap the same way? Like a more-than-two amount of people I'm either friends with or following online also decided to learn Mahjong. I decided to get back on the horse and downloaded Mahjong Soul and I don't know whether it was perseverance or the power of anime babes, but this time I got it. I still refer to a sheet with all the hands and whether they work open or closed, and I'm by no means a master player, but I actually honest to god understand what I'm doing and it's an incredible feeling.

Mahjong has such a huge amount of what I like to call "Get That Ass" energy. It is the energy you feel when you get someone's ass. In Mahjong you are either constantly getting someone's ass or getting your ass gotten. Someone puts down the wrong tile and you fucking GET THEIR ASS DUDE! They're got!! They're a fucking idiot that put down the wrong thing and now you have their points!!! Or you draw what you need yourself and you're a brain genius all according to plan and everyone gives you points because you're so wise!!!! It's great!!!!!

Mahjong has long been one of those games where I'd say "I'll learn this someday" and never reeeeally actually try to learn, and I'm so glad I finally took the effort to because it's good as hell. And, truth be told, it wasn't THAT hard to learn? Like you can get to the point where I was where I didn't know the strategy fairly easily in my opinion, and once you do that It's just a matter of continuing to play to understand the rest. I highly recommended that you also go out and learn it if you similarly revel in getting that ass, it's so satisfying once you do.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon (PlayStation 4, 2020)

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio took a big gamble with Yakuza: Like a Dragon. After seven games (more if you take spinoffs and remakes into consideration) they decided to focus on a new main character and, even more unexpectedly, they decided to change things up by turning the series into a turn-based JRPG. Their gamble paid off in spades. This is easily in my top 3 favorite Yakuza games.

The JRPG gameplay is surprisingly solid. There's definite room for improvement, but they nailed a bunch of it right out of the gate. Some mechanics are a little janky and I wish the job system was more fleshed out or just worked more like Final Fantasy V's, but they nailed one of the most important things and made the battles brisk and fun. It's a great foundation, especially for a team that's never attempted anything like this, and it's way more fun than the combat's been in any of the previous Dragon Engine games. I can't wait to see them iterate on it.

Everything else is top fuckin' notch. The music is great, the side content is fully fleshed out in a way it hasn't been since before they switched to the Dragon Engine, and I love the characters and story so much. Yakuza has a new main character in Ichiban Kasuga, and he's my son and I love him. Kiryu was great, and I love him too, but he was a bit of a passive protagonist. Stuff happened around him and he mostly just stoically reacted to it. Ichi is a much more active lead and it's great. He's a big lovable dope, and his tendency to keep an upbeat attitude and eagerness to leap into action is such a breath of fresh air. And it's not only Ichiban, since this is an RPG you have a whole party of characters and they're all great! Having them with you at all times bantering with each other and reacting to things is another great change of narrative pace, too. 

Yakuza: Like a Dragon just straight up rules. As someone who has historically not been too much of a fan of the Dragon Engine games, it's simultaneously a refreshing new take on the series and a fantastic return to form. I can't wait for what comes next. Wherever Ichiban goes, I go.

Moon: Remix RPG Adventure (Nintendo Switch, 2020)

After 23 years of Japanese PS1 exclusivity, Moon: Remix RPG Adventure finally got an English release this year for Nintendo Switch. I'm glad it did, because Moon isn't just the very definition of A Sebmal Game. It's the Sebmal Game missing link. In addition to being just a great video game, it helped me make a mental throughline for a bunch of games I love and a large part of my taste in video games.

To keep a long story short (seriously, I have a much much longer version of this saved in my drafts that I'll maybe finish someday), Moon turned out to be not the JRPG I assumed it was, given the title and basic story pitch, but a secret prequel to a game I love named Chulip. Moon's developer, Love-de-Lic, was formed by a handful of ex-Squaresoft employees, many of which worked on an extremely formative game I love named Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Love-de-Lic broke up in the year 2000 and its staff went on to form a bunch of different studios that ended up making a BUNCH of different games I love like Chibi-Robo, Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, Dandy Dungeon, and the aforementioned Chulip. These games, when you make the connection and line them up, all have a very distinct weirdness in common that makes perfect sense once you've realized many of the same people worked on them. Figuring this all out felt like snapping a piece of my brain back in place, and it was really crazy to come to understand exactly how much this studio that formed and disbanded decades before I'd even heard of them had impacted my tastes and, hell, my life.

So what is Moon, for those who don't innately understand what I mean by "a secret prequel to Chulip"? Moon is an adventure game where you explore a world with a day/night cycle, learn about that world's inhabitants, and eventually solve their problems. Think of it kind of like The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, but if the sidequests were the entirety of the focus with no Groundhog Day time reset mechanic and none of the Zelda stuff like combat and dungeons. You play as a young boy who, after a late night JRPG binge session, is sucked into the world of the game he was just playing. Everything is off from the way it was portrayed while the boy was playing the game, though. The hero he had previously controlled is actually a silent menace, raiding peoples' houses for treasure and slaughtering every innocent animal that crosses his path in an endless quest for EXP. The townspeople seem more concerned with problems in their day-to-day lives than the supposed world threatening crisis outlined in the game's intro. It's up to you as the boy to investigate this world's mysteries, help the townsfolk, mend the damage the hero has done, and eventually restore love to a loveless world.

Speaking of love, I fucking loved Moon. I loved the story, I loved the characters, I loved the music, I loved the way it looks (even though the Switch port is a little crusty in that basic emulator-y kinda way), I loved how constantly bizarre and surprising and funny it was. Like I said earlier, it's the very definition of a game made for me. It was essentially the progenitor of a long line of games made for me, and of games potentially made for me but I don't know yet because I haven't played them due to not understanding Japanese (UFO: A Day in the Life translation next please? Anyone from Onion Games reading this??). For as similar as Moon and Chulip are in their systems and pacing, I think I might actually like Moon better despite it coming earlier? It's not as full force maximum impact absurd as Chulip is, but it is a lot more playable and less obtuse once you get a grip on the time limit mechanic. You don't need a full strategy guide included in the instruction manual for Moon, and you don't need to exchange business cards with every single character to get information vital to finishing the game either.

I truly cannot recommend Moon enough if your taste in games ventures anywhere off the beaten path. Maybe this is a little conceited of me, but I assume if you're reading this article, let alone this far down into it, you relate to my video game opinions at least a little bit? You should play Moon. Everyone reading this sentence should play Moon. Moon: Remix RPG Adventure is my game of the year for the year 2020.

These games were also cool, I just had less to say about them:

Death Stranding (PlayStation 4, 2019): Death Stranding, much like Metal Gear Solid V, was a game I enjoyed for the gameplay and not much else. The story, characters, and writing were a huge disappointment for me, but man if I didn't enjoy lugging those boxes around and setting up my hellish cross-continental goon summer camp lookin' zipline network. Mr. Driller Drill Land (Nintendo Switch, 2020): I am a known Mr. Driller Enjoyer, and I enjoyed this Mr. Driller. Originally released for the Gamecube, Mr. Driller Drill Land is another long-time Japanese exclusive that finally came stateside this year and it's packed with new and novel twists on the Mr. Driller format. It looks super sharp, the music's great (also the credits music is the most impossibly out of place and extra as hell shit in the world and it's hilarious), and it's just a good ass time. The main campaign is pretty damn short, but if you're a post-game content kinda guy it has that and it's all super hard. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 (PlayStation 4, 2020): They finally made another good new Tony Hawk game, and all it took was perfectly remaking two of the best old Tony Hawk games! Plays exactly like you remember it with the added benefit of the best mechanics from up to THUG1, looks great, packed full of content, even has most of the music alongside some mostly crappy new stuff. It's the full package as is, but I do hope they end up adding THPS3 to it eventually. Mad Rat Dead (Nintendo Switch, 2020): Mad Rat Dead was a pleasant surprise that I only picked up because I saw a couple of people on my Twitter timeline constantly talking about it. A fun and inventive platformer where all your actions need to be on beat with the music. The gameplay feels great (aside from some not so great performance issues on Switch), the soundtrack is fun, and it's got a real good style to it. Demon's Souls (PlayStation 5, 2020): I love Demon's Souls and this is Demon's Souls. It plays exactly the same with some minor quality of life changes. I don't agree with many of the artistic changes, but there's no denying it looks incredible on a technical level. If you want to play Demon's Souls again or for the first time, this is a perfectly valid and fun way to do so. Groove Coaster: Wai Wai Party!!!! (Nintendo Switch, 2019): Groove Coaster is one of my favorite rhythm games, and they finally made an acceptable at-home version with Wai Wai Party. It's not a perfect replication of the arcade game control-wise, I have some issues with the song choices, and the pricing is frankly fucking ridiculous if you're not a Groove Coaster maniac like I am, but the same ultra satisfying gameplay is all there. You can even play it vertically in handheld mode! Flip Griiiiiiiip!

And we're done! Phew! Honestly didn't realize I played that many good games until I typed all this out. Thanks as always for reading this far. I'm gonna try and get back to regularly posting Breviews this year at the very least. Honestly don't know if I'll get anything else up on here, but we'll see. Here's to hoping 2021 is a little bit less of a nightmare!

[thefloatingstone]

We’ve gone from Self-Isolation to Quarantine and in some places to gradual relaxation phases, but that doesn’t stop the need for more nonsense you can watch on youtube while you wait for things to get back to normal. And recommending things and making lists are some of my favourite things to do but I have not yet figured out how to start or structure a video myself, you guys get another rambling tumblr post of things you can watch on youtube.

This time I’m once again just gonna recommend individual videos rather than full channels like I did in part 2.

Part 1

Part 2

In no particular order; 

LOCAL58: The Broadcast Station that Manipulates You

I recently started watching the Nexpo channel when I went on a binge of creepy youtube videos. Most of his videos are really good although the ones where he himself goes into theory crafting can be a little asinine. However, this video is REALLY good. And before you get nervous, LOCAL58 is not a real TV station. LOCAL58 is a youtube channel created by the same guy behind the Candle Cove creepypasta. This video by Nexpo covers the various episodes of LOCAL58 and discusses them. Just be aware going in that this is abstract horror, and will probably get under your skin regardless if you’re unaffected by certain topics or not. although cw for suicide mention.

I also recommend most of the rest of this channel, although be careful where you tread. I don’t recommend his series “Disturbing things from around the internet” as it can sometimes include real life crime, abuse and such caught on security cameras. Everything else is really good tho. (although I was really annoyed by his 2 videos on KrainaGrzybowTV)

The Search for D.B. Cooper

LEMMiNO has a new video out covering one of the most unexplained crimes in the past century of the US. LEMMiNO is the guy I’ve recommended before who did videos on the Universal S. He is very down to earth and not someone prone to conspiracy or even really that fanciful of thinking. (He’s like the one person I feel covered the Dyaltov Pass incident and was confused by why this was even a mystery because if you read the Russian Autopsy reports and documents associated with the case it’s all pretty logical and easily explained)

D.B. Cooper is the name given to a man who, in 1971, hijacked an airplane with a bomb, asked for a large sum of money, and after receiving it, parachuted from the plane and was never seen or heard from again.

The Austrian Wine Poisoning | Down the Rabbit Hole

Down the Rabbit Hole also has a new video out, this time covering the Austrian Wine Poisoning event from 1985. A scandal that involved literally the entire country of Austria, affected multiple countries, and forever changed the way wine was made world wide. As someone who is generally pretty allergic to most artificial substances this one made me personally very angry. But luckily, it has a happy ending and a better world for us all... if I could drink wine which I can’t do anyway.

The Turbulent Tale of Yandere Dev - A Six Year Struggle

The Right Opinion is another channel I only recently subbed to after watching his cover on Onion Boy. I put off subbing to him simply because of his channel name and I thought it meant he would come across as smug and elitist. Luckily this seems to merely be one of those “I chose a bad channel name and now I’m stuck with it” type of situations. (IHE has a similar problem).

Anyway, I have a weird interest in bizarre internet personalities, so I’ve been enjoying his channel as he simply discusses and presents a timeline of events of certain individuals. In this video, he covers the developer behind the much maligned Yandere Simulator. It’s a tale of hubris, arrogance, immaturity, and an unwillingness to accept your own shortcomings due to ego.

Oh and there’s a meme game about Japanese school girls with anime tiddies in there as well.

The Most Relaxing Anime Ever Made | Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō

Kenny Lauderdale is a youtube channel which is slowly becoming bigger which I’m very happy to see. He exclusively covers anime and live action Japanese television no younger than the mid 90s (as is the case with YYK) and which usually never saw a release outside of Japanese Laserdisc. I do wish his videos were a little longer, but if nothing else his videos serve as an excellent starting to point to find some older and underappreciated shows... or hot garbage fires. In this episode he talks about the 2 OVA episodes made based on one of my favourite manga, Yokohama Shopping Log. A Post apocalyptic anime about an android who runs a coffee shop outside of her house, and the quiet solitude of living in a world of declining human population, brief encounters with travelers and other people, and just... existing. The anime was never released outside of Japan and is only available on Japanese VHS and laserdisc.... but hey guess what!! Somebody uploaded both episodes, subbed, to Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2HCVOH6DtA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqSTwfkobME

YMS’ slow descent into madness as he uncovers just how bullshit the Kimba Conspiracy is

I’m linking a full playlist for this one.

YMS is busy planning his review on the “live action” Lion King remake as the original 1994 movie is probably his favourite movie all time (and also self declared what made him a furry). As part of the 2 hour review, he decided to what all 2000 hours of Kimba the White Lion just to mention how The Lion King potentially stole the idea. ....until he actually watched all 2000 hours of Kimba and realised that if you actually WATCH Kimba, it has VERY little to do with the Lion King at all apart from having the same animals in them because AFRICA. Watch as one man slowly loses his mind as he realises just how stupid this conspiracy theory is, just HOW DECEITFUL and straight up LYING people can be. People who write BOOKS. People who teach LAW AT UNIVERSITIES. Because NOBODY bothered to actually watch the entire show and just parroted the “Disney stole this” lie which got started by like 2 salty fans on the internet.

The man set out to just mention how Disney stole an idea, and uncovered one of the most infuriating rabbit holes on the internet. Screaming for SOMEONE to provide him with sources or evidence.

YMS will be publishing his full Kimba documentary this month which he has said is around 2 hours long before he continues to work on the Lion King one.

Science Stories: Loch Ness eDNA results, Poop Knives, and Skeleton Lovers

TREY the Explainer has a video giving us some updates in Archeology from 2019. In this video he discusses the findings of the eDNA results conducted on the Loch Ness to see what animal DNA the lake contains which will tell us what living animals currently inhabit the lake, ancient knives made of poop and if this is a real thing that could have existed, and a skeleton couple found buried together which were at first thought to be lovers, then revealed to be both male, and then how in this instance we cannot let our modern sensibilities dictate what we WANT this burial find to be, but to look at the evidence as presented to us and place in context finds of this nature. The worst thing an archaeologist can do is look for proof to a theory they already have.

The Bizarre Modern Reality of Sonic the Hedgehog

Super Eyepatch Wolf is back and he’s here to talk to us about the very very strange existence of Sonic. a 90s rebellious “too cool for School” answer to Mario, a lost idea as the world of video games changes and culture shifted, a meme and punching bag amplified by a unique fanbase and poor quality games, a transcendence into a horrific warped  idea of what he once was, and modern day and where Sonic and his fans are now. As usual Super Eyepatch Wolf knocks it out of the park.

Kokoro Wish and the Birth of a Multiverse: A Lecture on the Work of Jennifer Diane Reitz

I don’t even sub to this channel as I’m not entirely sure what Ben’s usual content is about. But every now and then he has a “101″ class, where he explains to a room full of his friends in a classroom setting (complete with Whiteboard) an internet artist and oddity, the timeline, and what it is they have created. (wait... didn’t I say this already?). Unlike TRO however, the 101 classrooms are not a dark look into disturbed individuals (although the CWC 101 is debatable) nor is it a “lol look at this weirdo” dragging. Instead, of the 3 he’s done so far, it’s usually a rather sympathetic look at some of the strange artists on the internet who through some way or another, left a very big cultural impact on the internet space through their art. Sometimes they may not be the best people, but their work is so outside of what we’re used to seeing that just listening to him run you through these people’s internet history is fascinating.

In this episode he talks about Jennifer Diane Reitz. And although it is titled Kokoro Wish, the lecture is more about Jennifer’s larger work back in the early internet when being a weeb was unheard of, how being trans influenced her stories and characters, and her world building that is so rich and in-depth with it’s own ASTRO PHYSICS it puts any modern fictional world found in games or movies to shame.

Jennifer is not exactly a nice person... and in many ways can be seen as dangerously irresponsible, but she created something truly unique in a way that you kinda struggle figuring out if it’s terrible or a work of genius.

Anyway I think that’s enough for now

[animal-moon-harvest-crossing]

Magical Melody Remake - A Wishlist

Based off my post from yesterday that I wrote!

MM generally gets a bad rap, I think, from the fandom overall. Which is fair, in all honesty! And as a kid, it was frustrating to play! But now as an adult, I treat playing MM as a challenge to overcome, and once you get past the clunky controls, it’s actually a very fun game to play!

So, if I were in charge of remaking MM for the Switch, here’s some of the changes I would implement, or like to see.

The controls are the first, obviously. MM is so notoriously slow, with how it takes a few seconds to get your character moving into a run, the menus, pretty much...Everything. And there was no real reason to have it like that, so I would hope that would be the first thing to get fixed lol.

Proper volume control!!! I dunno how I put up with it as a kid, but now as an adult, I can’t stand hearing all the little “beeps” and “boops” when I’m going through all the menus. I now turn the volume of my tv way down, or just off when I’m playing the game because there’s no option to turn the SFXs off. I have the same issue with basically...All older HM games. But that’s probably just a me thing :’D

So I actually am a fan of the layout of Flowderbud Village 2.0! MM’s unique gimmick is that you start off with 1 of 3 properties to build on, then start buying up more and more as you progress, to the point where you can basically own more land than the town itself! I really enjoy this system, and I feel it makes the farming experience much more unique being able to have your “main hub” kinda anywhere on the map. 

So of course we gotta talk about the character models- Most people have an issue with everyone looking like weird chibi baby things. I personally was never too bothered, but I wouldn’t mind them getting “updated” either. Not like the models that are in the current FoMT game, but something that just doesn’t make everyone look like...that lol. I wouldn’t mind it as much if they were also given portraits as well when you talk to them.

And not just updated models, but also updated designs as well! So the cast of MM is a mix between characters that appeared in SNES AND in Save the Homeland/Hero of Leaf Valley. The SNES characters did get some updated looks, as they’re not those EXACT same characters, but I would love to see everyone get a wardrobe update that set them apart as brand new characters, or as the decendents of who they’re based off of. 

Interesting to note though, that some of the characters who share a name and likeness to SNES...Are actually their grandkids! Or, most of them are! Eve will mention that she’s named after her grandmother, who she looks very similar to. The implication is that Eve from SNES is her grandmother! I think she’s the only one who mentions it, but other SNES bachelorettes are also clearly based off those counterparts. MM!Ellen works on the ranch, but she loves to bake, and your rival for her is Carl, a patissiuer. Ann is an aspiring inventor, just like her SNES counterpart. Maria, the Mayor’s daughter, was also his daughter in SNES and also worked at the library. Nina looks basically the same, and also works on the farm that sells seeds, and still loves flowers! There’s a lot of hidden lore for these characters that you can only learn about if you happen to catch them at the right places (usually at home, try it out sometime!)

I would...Totally get rid of their “voices”. Some of them sound okay, but others...Ahheehhhh. May as well just dump ‘em altogether lol.

Let! Us! Continue! Playing! The! Game! If! We! Marry! Jaime!! In the original Japanese version, Jaime was just like all the other bachelors/ettes, and in that same version, there were rival marriages! Both these features were removed for the North American version. I’m not sure if they were put back in for the Wii re-release, but I doubt they were.

Which speaking of marriage...Of course the chance to romance both bachelors and bachelorettes!! But also, keep Jaime androgynous! The original (English) player booklet for the GCN mentions only one that Jaime will “always be the opposite sex” of your character. But even then, Jaime is never referred to with pronouns or gendered language in the English version of the game. I know something similar happened with Inari in Trio of Towns, so I just hope xSeed would continue it!

The child growing up into an actual, well, child! Back in the day, your son (and yes it was usually always a son) would learn to walk at most, and then that would be it! He’d be stuck in diapers and his little mouse hat forever! I would love for the child to now wear clothes, take off the hat (or maybe wear a baseball cap??), and be able to talk to you and participate in events around town.  As for the look of your child, I’ve always been a sucker for “your child physically resembles who you married but dresses like you”. 

Make training the horse freeaaaaaking easier!!! I’ve never won a Horse Race because I couldn’t figure out beforehand how to properly train my horse. It’s based off hearts but also star level?? But getting the horse in and out of the barn is so tedious that I just...Don’t bother half the time. Sorry horsey!!

And speaking of the barn, and the coop for that matter, an actual, proper bell that you can use from the outside. Also, maybe not use up stamina when using the makers?? I don’t know why that was a thing to begin with, but it’d be real annoying to waste stamina on that first BEFORE getting to water your crops. Luckily, this was back in the day when crops only needed to be watered once a day but still.

The whole stamina system would need a re-do. I hate that just about EVERYTHING cost stamina to do, requiring you to basically stop playing for that day or to go out of your way to get food to restore it. This is especially annoying in your first spring before the inn and the bar are built, and money is harder to come by.

Keeping the tools separate from the inventory? I really hated how this became a thing moving onwards, where tools would take up precious item slots in your tiny rucksack. And since the basket didn’t really make a reappearance in this game in particular, it was extremely difficult trying to explore and forage in the early game with all your tools taking up space. I make a routine of running in and out of my house and keeping the tool box right by the front door to swap them in and out, and...I shouldn’t have to but that’s the best system I have. So it’d be nice to Not have to do that again!

Music Notes; I can take ‘em or leave ‘em. I don’t mind the challenge of them being there, and it feels kinda nice to always have something to work towards. I know they’re a part of the plot, but it’s still so exciting to even now unlock them at random.

That’s all I can think of for now! Did you think of something different? What are you feelings on Magical Melody as a whole, and what would you like to change about it?

[latin-dr-robotnik]

Hey man, I don't know if it's too early to ask, but would you recommend me some games from this SAGE 2020? I kinda want to try new fangames, I have only downloaded Sonic GT (but I haven't tried it yet)

Nah, don’t worry! It’s not too early, I’m getting ready to wrap up my own coverage and move on (I played over 12 different fangames and wrote about almost 10 of them in less than a week on my own, I’m so tired, I wanna forget SAGE exists and go back to play Fall Guys or F1 idk), and I’m thinking about doing a personal ranking with the games I liked the most... so you’re pretty much helping me gather my thoughts for a big tl;dr after this weekend :P

So far from what I’ve seen/played:

Sonic and the Mayhem Master keeps getting better, and I’m starting to feel pretty optimistic about the game finally picking up some steam instead of just playing the same parts of the first chapter over and over again. I’m no RPG aficionado, but I’m intrigued by the whole setup of the game (Steampunk Sonic loses his speed and becomes a detective alongside Amy and some OCs.) The game itself is pretty hard too, I keep dying from not being able to do that much multitasking haha

In the same RPG vain there’s Sonic the Hedgehog RPG, which is basically SatAM but as an old-school RPG. I played this one last year (I’m yet to check out this year’s update) and it plays pretty much how I expected it. It certainly covers part of the RPG void left by Sonic Chronicles.

Sonic Triple Trouble 16 bit, this one alongside the Sonic Chaos Remake (which I think hasn’t been updated since SAGE 2018) are the two main efforts to remake the 8 bit titles. What’s most interesting about Triple Trouble is that it’s set up as a direct sequel to S3K.

Sonic Galactic. This one is my personal favorite (besides Sonic GT, of course.) It’s short, but I played the same level with the 5 characters available and it’s always such a joy to play <3

Sonic 2 SMS Remake. Last year I played the S1 SMS Remake and was left pretty impressed (it’s the definitive way to play that game), and oh my goodness this year’s S2 Remake comes so PACKED FULL of stuff! Seriously, these remakes are the bomb, and the fact you can also play it from your phone makes the whole deal a lot sweeter.

Sonic Advance 4 Advanced. This one left me scratching my head in some places, since it wants to get both Advance and Rush formula fans together and it does it in a pretty weird way... but still, it’s that type of 2D Sonic everyone loves a lot but me, lol.

Sonic 3D in 2D. 3D Blast but good, basically. Also, being 2D makes it a tiny less interesting overall... but on the other hand it has sooooo many playable characters (like, wtf), and in the end it’s still a neat conversion.

Not really Sonic, but... Mega Man Perfect Blue. I saw Somecallmejohnny playing this one the other day while I was studying, and just the way he was shredding enemies with a ROLL THAT PLAYS LIKE ZERO made me fall in love with this one. I’m prioritizing Sonic fangames for SHP this year, but I’ll surely play the couple or so Mega Man fangames available as well :P

Not really a fangame, but an actual indie demo. I played Starbuster last year and I’m intending on doing it again this year. From what I can gather, it’s based on the Mega Man Zero/ZX series and it seemed promising. Also, I believe the music is composed by Leila Wilson (that one version of Sonic Megamix with my all time favorite track; Freedom Planet 1 & 2) so that’s a plus in my book.

As for me, I’m currently writing on both Sonic Freedom and Quantum Collision. They are pretty short demos and you’re probably better off watching YouTube videos of them, so that’s why I’m not listing them here. For more info you can always stalk SHP :P

[burned-gucci]

(Your) Friendship Reaction: Friday Night With The Girls!

A fairly casual Friday night sleepover with your best friend(s)

Karina:

She had asked you to come over tonight to play games, eat, drink, sleep. Maybe some scary movies. However, the plan seemingly changed when showed up to her place and found her in the bathroom bleaching her hair with a box of burgundy hair dye on the sink in front of her.

Karina definitely isn't shy about dying her hair, she changes hair colors like one would change out a load of laundry. It feels like every time you see you she has a new hair color, so this really isn't new. It's also not new for her to switch plans last minute cause truth be told, she never knows what she wants to do until that moment hits and an idea springs into her mind.

As she continued bleeching her hair, you hoped up on the sink counter and watched her while you talked. She said you could use her nail polish, mess with her makeup, do whatever you wanted. Play whatever music you wanted. If you liked, she even offered to dye your hair as well since she has plenty. It was up to you!

You guys ended up talking about a number of things. Discussing the latest episode of your favorite tv series and guessing what would happen next using logic from what has happened thus far. She laughed at random jokes and lines you repeated from the show, knowing exactly what scene you were refering to as she commented back with the next line. Afterwards y'all talked music videos, celebrities you both like and dislike maybe. Filled each other in on the news (celebrity or politics). Once the bleach was in and her hair was held up in a plastic bag, she went to grab her keys so you could both go grab some food, she let you choose the place.

It was always kinda weird how shameless she is but at the same time, her confidence about it is inspiring and one of her best qualities. Anywho, hoping in her broken apart damaged black car that no-one knows how it's still running, Karina drove you guys to the restraunt and put in your order picking up the food and driving back JUST in time for her to wash out her hair.

You ate as she washed her hair and attempted to eat little bites of her food as she applied the hair coloring, not wanting to waste time in between. As you low-key called her gross and made jokes you still helped her eat while feeding her little bites of food, teasing her sometimes and making her chase the fork/spoon/iteam. Overall, the eating process was full of laughing and her threatening to dump the hair dye on you just for you to threaten dipping her food in the hair color changing soup in return.

As her hair dye had to sit in for 45 minutes, the two of you watched music videos and played kids monopoly, or jenga. As they're the only games she currently owns! Karina being the not-so-well-focused girl that she is, ended up losing for silly reasons. In jenga she lost because she didn't realise 2/3 of the blocks in the middle row had already been pulled out, since she was eyes glued on the video, and she ended up pulling the last block and knocking the whole tower over in the process. During monopoly she simply had bad luck of sitting in jail throughout half of the game, allowing you to buy the majority of the properties. The other half the game she was paying you and the bank causing her to go bankrupt with only one or two properties being owned by her.

After the game you end up helping her wash out and dry her hair upon her endless begging you to just for her in the end to decide she isn't sure how she feels about this color. After spending about 4 hours total on her hair, she kinda wishes it was still black but she decides to leave it anyways. Insisting she'll clean up the bathroom mess tomorrow (she won't) she pulls you back to the living room and puts on your favorite movie for you guys to watch in the backround while sharing random stories back and forth.

Ciara:

Ciara isn't entirely sure why she invited you over at night knowing well enough she isn't a night time person. She's usually asleep before 11pm. However, she's really missed hanging out with you lately and your presence alone gives her so much energy and makes her happy.

When you arrived, she was eating a bowl of cheerios and drinking some gatorade while scrolling through instagram looking at denim skirts. The first thing she said to you as you walked inside the house was 'what do you think of this?' As she held her phone up to show you a light blue denim knee length skirt with a yellow sunshine on the bottom right side. You gave your opinion on it as you sat across from her at the table. "You're welcome to the kitchen. I don't care what you eat as long as I don't have to make it." She pointed towards the kitchen as she continued to scroll. Almost dropping the phone in her bowl of milk, as you made your choice on what to do, Ciara ended up slapping the phone back at herself and hitting herself in the face with it. Laughing and half crying, she placed the phone on the table and held her nose. "Maybe I should put that down for now!" She stated fairly loudly before getting back to her food.

After eating and placing the dishes in the sink for her to wash later, Ciara headed to her room with you close behind. Forgetting she had washed her sheets earlier, Ciara had to now make her bed. She asked you for help putting the bottom sheet on, let you choose your own blanket from the closet, she made the rest of the bed half efforted. Wrinkles covered the sheets and the pillows were simply thrown at the top of the bed but she didn't care much since you guys were both going to be laying in it immediately anyways!

Crawling into bed to lay on the side closest to the window, Ciara situated herself before tapping the bed beside her for you to lay down. Knowing you well enough, she handed you a book you love/turned the tv onto your favorite channel and let you do your own things as she scrolled through instagram once again occasionally asking for your opinion on certain clothing iteams.

If you have any to share, she listened to you share your thoughts, about whatever was on your mind. She gave her advice and shared her honest opinions in return. If you just wanted to lay there and watch your show/read your book she was fine with that too. She just wanted to be with you and hang together. Not necessarily do something together, that's what tomorrow is for!

At some point, your unsure of when, she managed to fall asleep facing the wall using her arm as a pillow, her actual pillow tossed to the foot of the bed. She was curled up halfway in a ball half stretched out, taking up half the bed space. She looked peaceful, almost dead she was so still and quiet, but peaceful.

Monse:

She had everything planned out! Dinner: Taco Bar! She made different kinds of main fillings based on your tastes and hers. Included little things she knows you love and she set the table up in a very aesthetic and neat way. Drinks: at the store she made sure to buy a few of your favorite drinks as well as a case of water. She also made homemade punch using sherbet ice cream and 7up/Sprite. Outfits: She had your guys matching Marvel/DC robes ans pj sets pulled out and on her bed. Hers was a Nebula/Poison ivy (depending on which one you prefer) set while yours was Gamora/Harley Quinn (dending).

Once you got there, you guys would eat then change. As you ate, she asked all about your day, let you rant and get everything off your cheat if need be. She told you what you wanted to hear and what you needed to hear as you guys discissed several topics. After eating she let you use the bedroom/bathroom to get ready first while she cleaned up the mess before going to change her own clothes and get ready for bed.

Afterwards, she set up the table with posterboard, construction paper, assorted art supplies, ect because tonight you guys will be making your own board game! Whether it be a toally made up game based on shared thoughts between you two or a remake of an already owned and made game. EX.: Marvel/DC based monopoly. Twister using memes. Your own version of battle ship or LIFE. Whatever it may be!

As you both divided up the jobs of who does what parts and as you agreed upon one main idea for the game/gave ideas for the game, Monse played your guys 'Alien Dreamz' playlist AKA the music playlist you guys made last time you spent the night. The whole time y'all were making the game she kept making really bad puns. As she was measuring the cardboard she came up with 'whos the King of school supplies? The RULER!' Before laughing at her own joke. She asked: 'Whats a frogs favorite art supply? Ribbon-t, Ribbon-t' and actually sounding like a frog as she cut ribbon for decoration. The list is endless honestly.

While working on your guys project, between her bad jokes, she complimented you on random things that she genuinely adores about you. Like how pretty/handsom/cute you look when you're focused. Or how she loves the way your hands look as you use a pair of scissors. How soft your eyelashes look. How much she loves your laugh/singing voice. Ect. If you compliment her back, she'll blush and giggle feeling shy but so happy under the surface.

Eventually, she gets really tired and asks if your ready to go to bed saying y'all can finish the game in the morning. You end up laying on the bed she made on the floor out of twelve dozens blankets and pillows, stuffed animals and sheets. While you lay together you share a bowl of popcorn/snack of your choice while watching the Simpsons or any tv show you want if you don't like the Simpsons. She tries so hard to wait for you to fall asleep first so you won't feel lonely but she was so tired she ended up falling asleep a few minutes before you do.

Question of the Day:

Can you/do you stay up late or fall asleep at a decent/early hour?

My Answer:

Depends on the day! Some nights I'm asleep at 7pm some times I can stay up for 80+ hours. It just depends!

[slade-neko]

My Thoughts on Super Smash Bros

Just something I wanted to write up since Smash Bros is one of my favorite game series and kinda got me into video games.  (WARNING: Its fairly long...)

Super Smash Bros. (N64 & Melee)

Super Smash Bros. was my first 3D game. Got it one year for Christmas when I was a little kid with a Nintendo 64. That game introduced me to video games. Before that I had only played Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt on my parents’ NES console. I wasn’t hooked on video games until I got my hands on a Nintendo 64. “Whoa! The graphics are so 3D!” It also introduced me to so many major Nintendo characters I did not know about like Link, Samus, Fox, and Kirby. It was the best gateway a kid could ask for to “get into” video games. Inevitably I ended up getting a Gamecube with Super Smash Bros. Melee as my first game on it too. Melee was great just like reliving that original feeling all over again. What made these games even more special was unlocking the characters. In a time before internet, you had no clue who was in the game and how to unlock them. The excitement of seeing that “Challenger Approaching” screen was like nothing else. A lot of your information came from questionable  sources of kids at school. Rumors with no real answers (until you get an official guide book.) No internet leaks or spoilers. Those were good times! 

One word I would use to describe the overall feel I got from Smash 64 and Melee would be Classic!

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Years later, Super Smash Bros. Brawl came out. I’m not sure why, but I really got into that game. It was probably due to the timing and circumstances. The longest wait between Smash games being Melee to Brawl was 7 years and that brought a lot of desire for a new Smash game for me. Also the memories of being a kid playing this with my friends after school on weekends, big sleepovers, using the game’s crappy wi-fi connection, good times! I also did not understand the game’s mechanics as a kid and why people hated them, so I couldn’t complain about that. The art style of the game wasn’t necessarily my favorite, but it worked well for that game. It went from the bright vivid colors of Melee to a more dull, colorless, gritty style. Best example is Ocarina of Time Link being swapped over to Twilight Princess. Oh, and the game really picked up as a lot of fun when I began modding it. Turns out Wii’s were very easy to Homebrew and Brawl was fairly easy to mod. That brought out a HUGE replay value of installing new mods, making my own mods, and all sorts of endless possibilities with the game. Getting Project M (a fan mod for Brawl that reworked the entire game more competitively) really opened my eyes to the competitive side of Smash and showed me why normal Brawl was so bad.

One word I would use to describe the overall feel I got from Brawl from its art style, orchestrated full choir theme, to its fantastic Subspace Emissary cutscenes would be Epic!

Super Smash Bros. 4 

Smash eventually died down for another 6 years until Super Smash Bros. 4 came out. Man, Smash 4 was exciting because “Hey, new Smash game!”, but seeing it in full... it was honestly very weird. The 3DS version launching first felt like a big demo... at 240 pixels... wow. (I hated 3DS for taking wonderful games like Smash, Monster Hunter, the N64 Zelda remakes and dragging them into a low resolution, portable Hell!) That aside, I forcibly played the 3DS version until the Wii U one came out. Then the true game began and well it still wasn’t the Smash I was hoping for. It was fun, some cool new characters, but some more cuts too. Questionable new game mechanics among other things that made gameplay pretty un-fun. Hearing about how the 3DS version dragged down the Wii U version was quite disheartening too like Ice Climbers getting cut because they simply would not work on 3DS and the two games just HAD to be the same was stupid. The 3DS was a horrible anchor weighing down the game. Oh, and I don’t think they had a very clear direction with the art style of this game... The Zelda characters are still Twilight Princess designs, but are now bright and vivid? It just looks weird and out of place for them. Ganondorf looks exceptionally ugly because of that. 

One word I would use to describe the overall feel I got from Smash 4 from its theme music and the whole game’s aesthetic feels very Sporty. 

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Not long after and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate came out of the dark to save the day. Ultimate is really amazing. They took the crappy Smash 4 and cut its chains from the 3DS so it could soar above and beyond. A lot of it is Smash 4 assets ported over from the Wii U to a better console, the Switch. They somehow got EVERY single character back with a ton of new ones, almost every stage, so much amazing music, and well it truly is deserving of the Ultimate title in terms of content! 

So the game is pretty great and has A LOT of content, but its still not without issues (at least for me.) This is me being overly critical with the game and my MELEE FANBOY BULLSH*T opinions coming through, but there are quite a few things I don’t like about this game. The theme music (albeit catchy) is super sappy anime bullcrap music. I don’t mean that in a negative way, despite how I worded it, IT is very sappy anime music about the forces of good fighting evil together. The World of Light mode isn’t a lot of fun at least for me it wasn’t. It wasn’t Subspace Emissary, which I know its wasn’t meant to replace it. I had the most fun with Adventure mode in Melee and would’ve preferred to have a little mode similar to that instead. Spirits are seriously just the stickers from Brawl. I frequently call them that unintentionally when playing the game. Doing Spirit Board battles is nowhere near as fun as doing nicely planned out battles like Melee’s Event Matches (nothing can top Event Match 51!) Spirit Battles are typically just jokes that can be beaten in less than a minute. Also no trophies... I understand why they chose not to because of how much work they require, but it still doesn’t mean I can’t miss them. The gameplay is definitely an improvement over Smash 4, but I still crave that fast paced action Melee/ Project M had. Heavier gravity, harder to recover, quicker to KO, L-Canceling, hit-stun and proper combo potential are all things that made faster, higher speed action. I’m not super big into the competitive scene, but even I think the faster pace of Melee-style gameplay is far more fun to play and watch. 

Then there’s issues created because the devs are pushing too much into the competitive side of the game such as picking stages first then characters second, not having the game remember my character when returning from a match, having to make new rulesets just to change a few options. I’m pretty sure these are all things competitive people want that help out in tourney situations and stuff, but I don’t like them for normal matches. These are small issues in the long run, but I am bothered by them every time I play and I don’t see them ever changing that. All they need is a few new options to fix this. Toggle an option for stage select or character select first, a quick customizable ruleset option and have saved rulesets separately, and the option to remember your fighter. Heck they could even go a step further have it remember your preferred color to each character saved to your name data like how Smash 4 3DS did (that was a cool feature!)

The one word I would use to describe Smash Ultimate is HYPE! Nothing builds hype like a Smash Ultimate trailer. Every single trailer builds more hype for this game. From the original reveal trailer with the Inklings, Ridley, King K. Rool, and now Sephiroth?! Seeing those trailers, I can’t help, but smile and get hyped up and excited! Despite my nitpicky issues I have with the game, I can still say its a pretty darn good Smash game! I applaud Sakurai, the dev team, and Nintendo for going big with this game and putting so much effort into it and I can still enjoy it even if its not quite at the exact level I want.

[recurring-polynya]

Bollywood Review Time!

Today, I am going to talk about Om Shanty Om, a very good movie that was Not For Me.

Let me back up. People recommend stuff to me a lot and I try to watch it and talk about it, and I always feel bad when I don’t like it. This one was recommended to me by my friend @serene-faerie​ I want to make it very clear that you, reader, may like this film very much! It was a strange perfect storm of Things I Don’t Care For, and I actually rather enjoyed the experience of picking apart what I didn’t like about from what I did, because honestly, I am always interested in the ways stories are told and what stories say about themselves.

Cut for spoilers and also length

First off the bat-- this is not a film for the Bollywood beginner. It’s sort of a meta-narrative, with a ton of cameos from famous stars and jokes about Bollywood tropes and directors and such. There’s a ten-minute dance number in the middle that’s just famous people showing up to get down and everybody cheers every time someone new rolls in. I have only actually seen a handful of Bollywood films, mostly made after this one (it was made in 2007), and I could tell that there were a ton of gags and references that flew over my head. I got the sense, both from watching it, and from reading reviews, that this was all very well done and funny, I just didn’t have the proper frame of reference to appreciate it.

The main character, Om, is played by Shah Rukh Khan, an incredibly famous Bollywood star whom I had never heard of before watching this film. In the beginning, Om is a somewhat-bumbling movie extra, dreaming of stardom, flipping his hair, and falling in love with a beautiful starlet on a billboard. I… was not taken in by his charms. I feel like I really missed out by not knowing who Shah Rukh Khan was ahead of time. That was sort of an interesting thought to me-- that a famous actor brings the good will of all his previous roles to a movie with him, and that it was very interesting to me to watch a film stripped of that context. I was literally shocked when halfway through the film, he rips off his shirt and had killer abs, I was absolutely not expecting it.

The deal of the movie is that, through a series of coincidences, Om meets Shanti, the actress of his dreams (from the billboard). She is played by Deepika Padukone, who I fell for immediately. She is gorgeous and had a ton of charisma. This movie seems like it’s going to be a love story, but it really isn’t. Shanti is charmed by Om’s sweetness, but she’s already in a doomed secret marriage with a scumbag director, Mukesh, who ends up murdering her when she wants him to publicly acknowledge her, which is kinda time sensitive, because she is pregnant. Mukesh had planned to have her star in a lavish movie spectacle called Om Shanti Om, but when she forces his hand, he burns the set down with her locked inside. Om witnesses all this; he tries to save her and dies in the process.

Om happens to die in the same hospital where a famous director’s child is being born, and he is reincarnated as the baby, and grows up to have the life he always wanted-- that of a Bollywood superstar. His name is still Om, but his nickname is O.K., so I am going to call him that to distinguish between 1977 Om and 2007 Om. He meets Mukesh again who is now a super-successful Hollywood producer. O.K. gets all the memories of his past life back, and decides to Get Revenge by proposing to do a remake of Om Shanti Om. He finds a wanna-be actress, Sandy, who looks exactly like Shanti, and has her haunt the set in order to make Mukesh think he is going crazy (and maybe also confess? It’s not a terribly clear-cut plan). You might think that Sandy is the reincarnation of Shanti, but Shanti’s ghost shows up in the grand finale of the film, so I guess she wasn’t?? You also might expect O.K. and Sandy to have some romantic feelings, but they really don’t, and in fact, O.K. is actually pretty mean to Sandy, even though she is extremely sweet and I don’t see how anyone could possibly be mean to her.

The movie is lush. The costumes are elaborate, the sets are lavish, the dance numbers are many and long. There is not a single scene without an off-screen fan to dramatically tousle the actors’ hair. I actually rather liked the last act of the movie where they were gaslighting Mukesh and it was over-the-top, scenery-chewing, Hamlet--play-with-in-a-play madness. A chandelier falls on someone. A lot of the end doesn’t even make a lot of sense or exist in any sort of linear time, cutting between the film-within-a-film and dance numbers and what’s “really happening” and I really had no problem with any of this. I actually really liked the amount of meta that was happening and the breakdown of boundaries, and I found the end to be reasonably satisfying.

So what didn’t I like about it?

The entire film relies on you being charmed by Om and I did not care for him. We all have this set of trope personality types that we enjoy and fall for, and “young person who dreams of making it big on the stage/screen” is a huge swipe left for me. Give me a stolid second-in-command who has been stationed at an ice wall for 30 years to protect his homeland. A incredibly tired dude muttering “fuck” as he wades into a swamp to fight a bog zombie, because who else is gonna? My dude turn-ons include duty and self-sacrifice and really good posture. I couldn’t watch Naruto because everyone spouted off about “their dreams” too much, and I thought Om should have cut his losses and gotten a real job. I am who I am.

There’s a weird fine line between “meta,” that is, stories about storytelling and presentation and media, and movies about being in love with making movies. I like the former a lot and I do not care for the latter one bit. I did stage crew for a high school production of 42nd Street and I have a very distinct memory of thinking “this is a play about putting on a play. Why on earth would anyone who is not an actor want to watch this?” I also hate books where the main character is a writer (yes, Stephen King, this is a call-out). I also hate biopics about musicians and actors. I honestly do not care about the craft, and the “magic of cinema” has never been a thing I have found remotely compelling. 

What I love about reincarnation storylines is the period where the characters recognize the feelings and memories that are tied to their previous lives-- where they see someone and can feel their old emotions for this person, but without knowing why. This is where I live. I eat this with a spoon. I want this to prolong the emotional burn, because the characters don't know what are their own feelings and what comes from their past lives, and that there are conflicts that must be resolved for both lifetimes. Alternatively, you can also use a reincarnation storyline to skip the emotional burn entirely, by just having the character “get all their memories back in one fell swoop.” This is… the opposite of what I want. This is what Om Shanty Om does. I felt deeply cheated.

Relatedly, the entire theme of the movie was "When you want something badly, the whole universe conspires to give to you", a sentiment I wholeheartedly disagree with. I love stories about the conflict between agency and destiny, I think this is a really meaty subject, but once again, the movie used it as an excuse to let the characters sit back and do nothing and have a solution to their problems drop into their laps. I am sure you could make an argument for the charm of this viewpoint, but it is not for me.

I like dance numbers all right, but they are not why I watch Bollywood films. This movie is over two hours long and a lot of it was dance numbers. I was very tired of dance numbers by the end. That being said, the titular song was a bop and I had it stuck in my head for days. “Disco of Distress” was my second favorite.

I do not really feel a lot of nostalgia for the late 1970s, which is when the first half of the film takes place. If noisy patterns and kitsch and big winks and goofy hair is your period aesthetic, you will enjoy this part a lot!

Here’s what I did like!

Sunglasses. There were so many good sunnies in this film. So many. A parade of excellent shades.

Deepika Padukone. She is so adorable, for one, and she charmed me in every way that Shah Rukh Khan did not. I loved her both as the melancholy starlet Shanti and the doofy, gum-chewing Sandy, and also the Angry Revenge Ghost at the end. I would say this movie is 75% Om and 25% Shanti, and I would have liked it a lot better if it were the other way around. Sandy had basically no agency whatsoever; the second half of the plot was basically about O.K. getting revenge on Mukush... mostly for himself? I liked that the first half of the movie didn’t make Shanti fall in love with the puppy-like Om just because he was devoted to her, but it would have been a nice reversal if the jaded O.K. had softened toward Sandy more in the second act, and that there had been a bit of a love story to temper the revenge plot.

The idea of the plot. The plot described in words is very cool to me, and there was a period of about 3 minutes in the film when O.K. recognizes Om’s mother when I got real excited about where this was going, and then I realized it wasn’t going where I wanted and was sad again. I think I might have liked it better if the movie started out with O.K. and revealed Om’s story slowly, through flashback, but nothing about this movie catered to my narrative aesthetic, so I eventually gave up with ways of trying to fix it.

Anyway, as I said, I can definitely see how someone could love this movie! If you are a big Bollywood buff and you love dance numbers and silliness and Shah Rukh Khan, I would recommend it in a second! It was strangely almost tailor-made to hit some of my pet peeves, and I was mad because I wanted to like it more than I did.

That’s my review! @serene-faerie​ I hope you still love me even though I didn’t like your movie. I am always trying to expand my movie knowledge and I learned a lot watching this one, and I don’t regret watching it, even though it wasn’t my fave.

[theirrationalzone]

My Top Ten Games of 2020

Let’s just address the giant elephant in the room from the offset: 2020 has been one giant mess of a year. Every event, every major moment this year just felt like the worst case scenario every time.

For a lot of us though, there was one saving grace: video games.

2020 has been a damn fine year for video games. From the return of certain classic franchises to some amazing new entries and experiences. Gaming really managed to thrive in a year where other entertainment mediums such as films and television struggled.

Let’s dive in and take a look at some of the games that made this year a lot more bearable:

10: Watch Dogs Legion

I’ve had a soft spot for Ubisoft’s hack ‘em up franchise for quite a while. I didn’t think the original was as disappointing as it was made out to be and I thought the second one was an underrated gem. When Legion was first announced, I liked a lot of what the game was setting out to do but I wasn’t ready to pull the trigger on getting it. I decided to give the game a chance in the end and I’m glad I did.

Legion might suffer from the same pitfalls that have plagued other Ubisoft enterprises, but the recruitment mechanic is one of the coolest systems I have seen in any game ever. The fact that you can recruit any NPC that you see on the streets of London and use their unique talents to complete your objectives is just an awesome thing in and of itself. Its depiction of London is also incredibly fun to explore and cause mayhem in. While I found the writing to be pretty subpar, the game quite buggy and the whole PS5 upgrade fiasco a farce, I still found Legion to be a fun open world experience overall.

9: Resident Evil 3

Resident Evil has been on a real hot streak as of late, hasn’t it? Ever since Capcom made a promise to its fans that the Resident Evil series would go back to what made it so popular in the first place, the series has gone from strength to strength. Last year saw the release of the RE2 Remake which was absolutely excellent in that it kept the spirit of the original while also taking a few liberties of its own. It was only a matter of time before RE3 got the same treatment and well... it did.

I’m just going to spit this out. It’s not as good as the RE2 Remake. It didn’t need to be though. I still think this is a good game that provides a satisfying and fun survival horror experience. It carries over a lot of the elements that made the RE2 Remake such an excellent game and in certain areas (especially the writing) it makes a few improvements. Plus the game looks absolutely stunning thanks to the RE Engine. It is quite short. It is missing quite a bit of content from the original game. It definitely isn’t as replayable as the RE2 Remake. I still had a blast with it though overall. If this really is a blip for the Resident Evil series, then it must be in a really good place right now.

8: Tell Me Why

Dontnod Entertainment have fast become one of my favourite developers in the industry right now. When I first played Life is Strange back in 2015, it felt like a revelation. It weaved a fantastic story with characters you genuinely cared for and took you to a place you never wanted to leave. I’ve enjoyed all of their other ventures since then such as the underrated (if quite janky) Vampyr and Life is Strange 2.

Tell Me Why is another venture that fits the Dontnod MO: A grounded emotional story with slight supernatural elements, a degree of player choice and a setting that makes your jaw drop. The major difference here is the game’s attempt to portray a transgender character. That’s nothing new in and of itself. It’s more the fact that it attempts to accurately portray a transgender male character which is a bit of a rarity in all forms of media. Transgender portrayals (from what I’ve seen) tend to focus on male to female rather than female to male.

I’m in no position to comment on whether the portrayal is accurate or not, but I got the impression that Dontnod really went out of their way to get this right. Their FAQ explains that they worked with GLAAD and the voice actor to get it as right as they could. That alone deserves huge praise, but I also loved the Ronan Twins’ story as they dealt with their harsh past and the uncertain future. The game was a delight from beginning to end and it just looks absolutely gorgeous to boot. Dontnod have done it again.

7: Bugsnax

One of the early delights of the last generation was a little ditty known as Octodad: Dadliest Catch. It was a fun little physics based affair which cast you as a octopus masquerading as a human. The game had a terrific sense of humour and it was just bloody fun to play. Young Horses (the developer of the game) kinda went dark after that. They only really resurfaced to release two bonus levels for that game and then they just disappeared again. Now we know why that was the case...

Bugsnax retains some of the qualities that made Octodad such as a memorable game. A great sense of humour and a unique gameplay hook. You play as a reporter sent to the mysterious Snaktooth Island to interview an explorer called Elizabert Megafig who has discovered these unusual creatures known as Bugsnax. After crash landing onto the island, you discover that Elizabert and her significant other have gone missing. It’s up to you to find out what happened while also documenting and capturing Bugsnax for yourself. Capturing the Bugsnax is a big part of what makes this game such a delight to play. As you unlock more tools to play around with, you can come up with different strategies and methods to capture these weird snack based creatures. It’s pretty awesome. Throw in a lovable set of characters to interact with and a beautiful environment to explore, and you’ve got one of the most lovable games released this year.

6: Mafia: Definitive Edition

The last few years haven’t been too kind to the Mafia franchise in my eyes. I really wanted to like Mafia III when it came out back in 2016. It was a sequel I waited years for and it did have some good qualities such as an excellent story that dealt with some pretty heavy topics, solid gameplay mechanics and an amazing licensed soundtrack. Unfortunately the game had one of the most tedious and boring gameplay loops I think I’ve ever seen in an open world game. It just got so dull after the first couple of hours.

This year saw the announcement of the Mafia Trilogy which was to be a celebration of the entire franchise with a remake of the first game, a remaster of the second and a re-release of the third. Half of this was botched with the remaster of II being poorly put together and the re-release of III receiving a broken patch. Things were looking grim for the remake...

As you can see by it being in this list, we were proven wrong. Mafia: DE is a fantastic remake that pays good lip service to the original while also expanding on certain elements. The story which follows the rise and fall of cab driver turned wiseguy Tommy Angelo is more fleshed out with new sequences and character moments that weren’t in the original. Gameplay still retains the solid shooting and cover mechanics of Mafia III and the driving feels absolutely excellent especially when you put it in simulation mode. Lost Heaven is just gorgeous to behold as well with its bustling neighbourhoods and beautiful countryside. I hope this is the beginning of a redemption arc for Hangar 13 and the Mafia franchise. There is a lot of promise to build upon from here.

5: Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise

Anyone who knows me personally or has followed me on social media for a while knows that I’m a big fan of Deadly Premonition. The 2010 cult survival horror hit pretty much encapsulates why I love video games with its lovable hero, an eccentric cast of characters and surprisingly solid mechanics considering the budget it was made for. It was definitely more than the sum of its parts.

When I found out that a sequel was being made exclusively for the Nintendo Switch, my jaw hit the floor pretty hard. I thought any hopes for a sequel were dashed when SWERY left Access Games (the original dev), and yet here we are. A Blessing in Disguise is a brilliant sequel to the zany original. It captures everything that I loved about the original game to a T while also improving in certain aspects. The story is more ambitious this time with it being both prequel and sequel. A lot of the gameplay elements have been improved. The combat benefits from better aiming controls and an upgrade system for both York and his weapon. Getting from A to B is less wonky (and more fun) thanks to the addition of a skateboard rather than a car.

While I do still think the original is better due to the more creative side quests, the more challenging difficulty and the fact that it functions better from a technical perspective, I’m still a big fan of DP2 and it deserves your attention. Here’s hoping that it makes its way to other platforms in the future.

4: Ghost of Tsushima

This last generation has been good for Sony and its Worldwide Studios. In the last five years, they’ve managed to produce hit after hit after hit. A definite far cry from the first year of the PS4 where they produced some dire exclusives. Infamous Second Son was one of these. Sucker Punch’s first effort on the console was very pretty and a good technical showpiece for the console, but as a game, it was boring and dull. I couldn’t even muster the strength to finish it. The standalone expansion First Light was a huge improvement in my eyes. It cut out a lot of the fluff from Second Son. I knew then that Sucker Punch would eventually give us something amazing. They certainly did in the end...

Ghost of Tsushima is honestly one of the best exclusives that Sony has ever produced. Giving us a brutal tale in the vein of a Kurosawa flick where samurai Jin Sakai is forced to betray his code in order to drive out the Mongol force that has enslaved his homeland; we have a story that is genuinely gripping from beginning to end with an incredibly powerful final duel to boot. The combat is incredibly fun with a brilliant combat system that is easy to pick up but challenging to master. Duels especially show the combat system at its finest. Upgrading your abilities genuinely makes you feel incredibly powerful as you begin to decimate enemies left, right and center. Stealth is solid giving you plenty of tools at your disposal and certainly changes up the gameplay a fair bit. Did I mention that Tsushima Island is one of the most aesthetically pleasing locales in any game to date? Well I’m saying it now. It is one of the most beautiful locales in any game to date.

I’m very excited to see where this new IP goes in the future because this first entry is just incredible. A must buy if you own or plan on owning a PlayStation 4 or 5 in the near future.

3: Astro’s Playroom

Memorable pack-in exclusives are a bit of a rarity nowadays. The last one that sticks in my mind is Wii Sports, and that was a long time ago.

Astro’s Playroom serves as the pack-in title for the PlayStation 5 as it is pre-installed on all units. It’s also my favourite exclusive for the console so far. The main reason for this is that Astro’s Playroom evolves past being just a tech demo for the console and its fancy new controller. It actually is a fun little platformer in its own right. It offers something different with every level. In one level you can transform into a giant ball and attempt to navigate some pretty tight platforms, and in the next, you take control of a rocket ship and navigate through corridors while also avoiding bombs. There is great variety here and to be fair, it shows off the potential of the new DualSense controller fantastically.

Plus the game is just one giant love letter to the PlayStation brand and the games that made it what it is today. You’ll see references to obscure PlayStation paraphernalia such as the Multitap and UMD discs, and also games like Final Fantasy VII and Silent Hill. The final boss of the game in particular is one giant callback to something you might remember if you got a PlayStation 1 back in the day. I won’t say any more, but it made me yelp in joy when I saw it. If you plan on getting a PlayStation 5 in the future, make this the first game you play. You won’t regret it.

2: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2

Activision have been on a roll in the last few years with the revitalisation of some of their classic franchises. Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon for example have enjoyed newfound success thanks to the excellent N Sane Trilogy and Reignited Trilogy. When it was revealed earlier this year that Vicarious Visions and Beenox would be resurrecting the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater franchise with a remake of Pro Skater 1 and 2, my heart skipped a good few beats.

The Pro Skater franchise means a lot to me personally as I have very fond memories of putting hours into 1 and 2 when I was a kid. Going through the Career mode with each skater, learning the gaps and getting used to doing manuals when they were introduced in 2, it’s all ingrained into me. I’m happy to say that this is probably the best remake I have ever played. It perfectly captures what made those first two entries so special. Each level is beautifully recreated with a ton of new details that serve to enhance these levels. The soundtrack includes all of your old favourites like Goldfinger’s Superman and Rage Against the Machine’s Guerilla Radio along with some fantastic new tracks like Less Than Jake’s Bomb Drop.

The gameplay definitely taps more into Pro Skater 3 and 4 territory with Reverts and Flatland tricks included. These tricks don’t feel out of place and the game does give you the option to play it legacy style if you want. It feels magnificent overall though. The physics are pitch perfect. Creating lines and large combos is still as addicting and rewarding as ever. Online leaderboards certainly tempt you to reach for the stars if you’ve got the ability. Career mode isn’t particularly long, but the pretty robust Create-a-Park editor and solid multiplayer suite should keep you coming back for more. I’ve already put dozens of hours into this and I have no intention of stopping anytime soon.

If my number 1 entry on this list didn’t exist, this would be my Game of the Year. As it stands though, this is a very close second.

1: Doom Eternal

How do you follow up one of the best first person shooters in recent memory? Basically turn everything up to eleven and then some. Doom (2016) was such an eye opener when it launched. It gave everything we could have ever wanted from a new Doom game: a whole planet full of demons to kill and some big guns to help them back to where they belong. It was awesome and an easy choice for my GOTY back in 2016.

I anticipated Doom Eternal with bated breath. The excitement was building but the nerves were building with it. How could it live up to the previous one? What if it makes the same mistakes as Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus? Thankfully my worries were unfounded as soon as I loaded up the game and was thrown straight into the fold with a Combat Shotgun and some entry level demons to destroy with it.

Doom Eternal is the FPS genre at its absolute finest. The levels are much bigger with more secrets to find and loads of demons to kill. Said demons are much more plentiful in their ranks and they move faster too. Fortunately enough, you have a huge arsenal to deal death to these demonic denizens from the depths of Hell such as the starter Combat Shotgun, the Plasma Rifle, the Ballista and even a giant sword known as the Crucible. Enemies now have weak points to exploit as well which can turn the tide of battle and it rewards accuracy. Before you know it, you’ll be entangled in a ballet of bullets, beams, blood and guts (HUGE guts mind you.) This game makes you feel like a hero at the end of every fight. It’s so satisfying.

Toss in a soundtrack that will get your blood pumping and your goosebumps raising along with environments that will make your TV or monitor look like a window to a scorched earth, and you have my Game of the Year for 2020. Well deserved for sure. I really need to get on that DLC.

To those of you who actually took the time to read all that, you have my heartfelt thanks. I really appreciate you reading this and I hope my choices made sense.

To those of you who just glanced at each entry and skimmed through the text, I don’t blame you for doing that. I still appreciate you taking a look anyway.

All that’s left for me to say is that I hope each and every one of you has a safe holiday season and I hope that the New Year will be better for all of us.

I’ll see you all in 2021. Stay safe and well, folks.