#the way I play the PC is characterized by never understanding anything ever

[sincerely-sofie]

Alright. Going to play more Slay the Princess now. Y’all’s reactions to my worst theory yet scare me. Have some fanart to enjoy while I dive back into the insanity.

[dent-de-leon]

Nonagon is a mystery to me as well and I wish we knew more of him. Is it the eyes? The tomb? The blood? If Molly had lived to be chased down by Lucien then where would Nonagon manifest? Would he take control over Molly like Obann did with Yasha? Maybe corrupt him little by little as he leveled up? Or was he always there within Lucien, part of that charismatic cruelty of his? What was his previous goal, before he met his end at Vess' hand? I have so many questions. But I don't think (1/x)

we'll ever get the chance to figure it all out. Breaking the 4th wall for a moment, Nonagon was probably created before Lucien, a part of the deep lore sparkled into reality by a PC's blank backstory. Then Lucien's characterization came from the life Tal gave to Molly: the mannerisms, the accent, the ideals, the hearts broken when he met his fate. I can't tell if Matt took notes when Molly was still alive or if he studied the character during the hiatus, but one thing is clear: (2/x)

He's doing an incredible job at messing with our heads and tugging at our hearts. I want Molly back, for more than just a brief moment. I want to know more about Lucien and his relationship with the TT and the MT. And I want to understand the essence of the Nonagon and how he came into being. And wow, this got a bit longer than I thought it would. I'm sorry for throwing more questions than anything at you. I'm just so fascinated by these characters. I wish I could have them all. (3/3)

oh this is all really interesting!! I enjoyed reading all your asks, there are so many good points here. Throwing this under a cut because I went a bit long.

It’s interesting to think that Matt may have wrote the concept of the Nonagon before Taliesin even started planning Mollymauk. That’d be a really neat coincidence, if Molly just happened to figure perfectly into this grand relic of ancient history Matt was already mapping out. Though I think it’s just as likely Matt could’ve tweaked the Somnovum’s story to suit Molly. One thing’s for sure, and it’s that a lot of this arc of eldritch horror and Lucien’s rise to power was crafted for Taliesin specifically. 

You can see how excited he gets in certain moments with Lucien, how shocked and invested he is when that little shard of Molly bleeds through. Wherever Nonagon’s story ends, I hope Taliesin is happy with it. Similarly, I think a part of why Matt is able to show these little echoes of Molly in Lucien so well is because he knows Taliesin, and ultimately knows where he wanted to go with the character. 

As for whether Molly would’ve ever become the Nonagon himself had he lived, I feel like he was somehow spared from that fate. Partially because I feel his soul is now his own, and so he wasn’t corrupted by the Somnovum the way Lucien was. Partially because Lucien’s death might’ve temporarily severed his body’s connection with the Somnovum. Because, even with all nine Eyes, Molly was never tormented by any of Cognoza’s dreams. He wasn’t tortured by the screaming chorus or all seeing eyes in countless nightmares, didn’t get any strange abilities from the Eyes. For all intents and purposes, they were just...inactive for him. And I’m incredibly grateful he was able to avoid losing himself to this like Lucien. 

After watching the most recent episode, the Nonagon as his own character and as an extension of Lucien and Molly--well, he’s even more of a mystery to me. But I do have some thoughts. 

Something about all the Somnovum and Lucien begging the Nein to join them, to become one with them, to share in their life and power...I don’t know, it feels like an echo of when Molly was empty. Wistful, longing, desperate to hold onto something that feels real. Mollymauk found that: “Joy can fill an awful lot in a person’s life.” But this city can feed and feed, yet it will never be full. It’s cold, dead, all consuming. Empty.

Lucien the Nonagon still longs for the Nein, I think. To be near them and keep them by his side. It’s from Molly’s affection bleeding through, but processed and interpreted through Lucien’s own impressions. A bit warped and twisted by how he tries to rationalize it. “I feel like you all have some part to play still...like you’ve a use to me.” “Because try as I might, a part of me still likes them.” “Yes, that must be it. I needed witnesses...” 

They were merely more pieces to manipulate in this game of his--of course he didn’t kill them, they were useful. Or he needed an audience. Or he had to have witnesses. Time and again Lucien makes excuses for why he lets them live, lets them go, but still selfishly keeps them so close. “I left you alive? Why did I leave you alive?”

Lucien telling the Nein to join him, wanting to share in what he’s feeling with them, how he sounds so wistful and soft, “Come! It’s far prettier up here.” “I wish I could share it, but...you need to be with us. You have to be with the pattern.” Come see the view, just stop and rest awhile. It’s reminiscent of Lucien watching the sunrise with Caduceus, taking a moment to just breathe and enjoy something beautiful. 

He drives all his followers to their doom, yet still he clings to the Nein. Even after being corrupted by wasting away in Cognoza for years, shattered into broken fragments the Somnovum themselves pieced back together in their own distorted design. Lucien, the person he was before the Nonagon, whoever Cree once knew and called out to in her final moments--a part of him was a bit lost or lonely I think, desperately craving some way to stave off the “emptiness” in his own life. And maybe that was something he thought the city could provide. The power to turn dreams into reality, to grant any one of his desires. 

It’s strange, because...the Nonagon is this hungry, distorted presence of manipulation and control, an otherworldly entity that came here to obliterate the Somnovum and rule whatever remained of these ruins. The Lucien that was once a mortal man had long since been lost to this. That’s not even factoring in whatever compassionate shard of his soul was broken off and became Mollymauk. And yet, we see a gentler side of Lucien last episode, I think. He seems oddly welcoming when he sees the Nein. He wants them here with him, even if he can no longer understand why. Lucien, even while one with the Somnovum and the City, is still compelled to act on Molly’s feelings for the Nein--in his own distorted way. 

I think Lucien as the Nonagon, still feeling this ache from Molly’s heart, the way Mollymauk’s soul is still fighting and enduring within him...I think it means hope. More hope than I’ve had all campaign. Molly at least will survive this I think. And given that his soul was once part of Lucien’s, we can hope that maybe a part of Lucien’s heart, this glimpse into the better person he could’ve been--that lives on in Molly. 

[soyosauce]

Cyberpunk 2077: Is This To Be An Empathy Test?

Cyberpunk 2077 is an adaptation and extrapolation of the popular tabletop pen-and-paper role-playing game Cyberpunk, originally published in 1988. The video game uses an extrapolation of the setting and Interlock system, translated to video game format.

When I finished the game, credits rolled. And rolled. And rolled. More than 15 minutes went by.

Now, days later, as I reflect on more than 70 hours of playtime, Cyberpunk 2077 feels like many people have had their hands in the pie. Its strengths and weaknesses stem from its massive ambition, marketing, and promises.

Different Experiences

I played CP2077 on a Ryzen 7 3700x with 32 gigs of RAM and an RX 2700 GPU. I was able to get around 35 FPS at 1440p without noticeable drops (except when looking in mirrors), and I played on ultra-settings without ray tracing on. I began playing it with the rest of the PC consumers with the day 1 patch.

As a crafted experience, I can say that it is the most impressive looking game I've ever played, and my playthrough seems to be a fortunate one, with maybe a handful of glitches or bugs across the entire 70 hours. None of which were remotely game-breaking. I was never unable to progress in the story. I never had a crash. The most annoying thing I experienced was sometimes crosshairs from a gun would continue to stay onscreen after it was holstered.

I mention this because I think a major component of why I come away with a positive experience is because my computer could deliver the intended experience. And Cyberpunk 2077 is unrivaled in its execution of a funneled narrative. Characters and environments have never felt more genuine and cinematic.

The sound design is some of the best I've heard, and it's perfect in every aspect of the game. From the sound of a throaty exhaust to the scraping of metal-tipped hands against hardwood, the sound is superb and adds to the immersion.

 The World

With a setting as old as Cyberpunk, there will be consumers who are familiar with the setting and have a grasp on the worldbuilding. For the uninitiated, however—of which, I think most customers will be—the aesthetic and gameplay elements the marketing team used in advertisements will be the primary hook. The game doesn’t go out of its way to communicate that it is anything more than that, either.

What was most compelling about Night City was the meticulous detail and care devs clearly put into every nook and cranny of the city. Distinct and disparate, no part of it feels reused or like its filler. It is the most gorgeous and well-realized environment I've encountered in a video game.

Yet the gangs, fixers, and side jobs located within it feel one dimensional when viewed from a macro, worldbuilding perspective.

Typical fixer missions are varied enough and have different small bits of story, but usually just elucidating that specific mission and its characters. You’ll find little bits of lore some of the time, which augment the siloed stories, but often don’t give a wider context to help situate the faction you’re interacting with.

The gangs seem to have a central theme, but I never learned why they were actually there from a worldbuilding perspective, beyond the fact that the game wants you to be looting and shooting.

Culturally, the gang elements are too often a pastiche and don’t feel real. They have scripted lines that are often dehumanizing and feel unrealistic. Some of them don't even make any sense. They'll find a dead body and start yelling for you to come out, "cunt", or some other misogynistic pejorative. How do they know it's a woman? Making them all say and act that way feels so cheap, encouraging you to take them out because they're demonstrably “bad” people. And it doesn’t matter what kind of mission it is. Context doesn’t matter.

With the bits of lore you’ll find all over the place (often repeated), it feels like a missed opportunity to not humanize and characterize the gang identities as a whole; even if you are spending most of your time mowing them down, at least you’d come to understand why the city is the way it is and what its general makeup is better than just knowing which gang claims which area of the city.

The world feels overly concerned with aesthetics that the player never gets context for, so it feels like a caricature used for aesthetic purposes only.

For instance, Arasaka, the megacorporation controlling/running Night City, has a highly traditional, tyrannical, Japanese businessman who has had his life extended with cybernetics. He’s over one hundred years old and controls Arasaka with an iron fist. The inference on my part is that locations in Night City with heavy Asian aesthetics are there because of this megacorp’s influence. But it still feels strange because, in other lore given, the city has been run by other corporations not that long ago and had other cultural influences asserted. So why is Little China, Japantown, and Kabuki a weird pastiche and the only place that seems to assert its cultural influence on the city? When you enter other areas, they don’t look like they’re trying to recreate foreign cultures. Is it because of the Arasaka influence? Possibly, but I never found any lore that explained it. Visually, this aesthetic dominated my playthrough.

The result is a siloed microworld that feels like it might be there simply to justify some of the predominantly Asian gangs, who seem to be basically just cyberized yakuza and come up fairly often in fixer missions. The main story also springboards off some of these locations, so the game really wants this look to make an impression on the player.

When you explore in-depth, all of the interactable, consumable portions of the city have a faux quality because you can only look at them. Sometimes you can buy food from a couple of vendors and clothes, but everything exists solely to be interacted with in a hyper-specific way, rather than extrapolated from a perspective divorced from what would be merely aesthetically interesting and actually realistic enough to let V feel like a character that is a part of this world.

You can sleep with and date a few different people, depending on your gender presentation, but the relationship's extent beyond that varies. There are some texts between characters, but you don't get to, say, go home and do anything with them. Their interactions with you in person are the same as though you had phoned them.

You can talk to people on the sidewalk, but they have a regurgitated one-liner and then go back to what they're doing. You can't go up to a gang member and talk to them because once they see you, they’ll attack you if you get too close.

The only things that feel genuinely next level are the prescriptive story elements. And that's okay! It just doesn't jive with the level of detail or how much you think you'll be able to interact with things when you first see them. Marketing makes it seem like the world at large may be something you can interact with, but those all end up being the curated narratives.

Because the worldbuilding framework is from a first-wave cyberpunk perspective, unfortunately, pitfalls like techno-orientalism are prevalent.

The themes around the commodification of those things that make us human, from our body, faith, and art, are all interesting themes present in the genre—but here they are skewed toward fetishizing minorities and subcultures, just as first-wave cyberpunk texts tended to do.

V is ostensibly a cyberpunk and it follows that they would be a part of the same subgroup as the minorities who are underrepresented and lacking nuance in the CP2077 world, but V is actually traversing the story with their only integration into a subculture being that they’re a mercenary. With few exceptions, they all seem to not really share punk values, either. Some take jobs from corps (you certainly can if you want), some don’t like the corps but aren’t particularly anti-establishment or pro direct action. Most just seem to hang out at a bar. You don’t hear about what they do on the news or in the world. You don’t get jobs from fixers that are ideologically aligned with being punk. And you don’t integrate with any other subcultures when out of the main narratives.

The exploitation of people and the world's general themes and sensibilities still feel firmly rooted in the late 80s, early 90s. It is not aware enough to fully realize an actual subculture or even the dynamics of criminal elements in the city, so it frames the story from a mainstream perspective for mass appeal.

The problem is that, with so many people consuming the game, this becomes the default that those consumers will adopt. It has a responsibility precisely because it is so popular and will become a part of the general intellect. Rather than be progressive with its themes and push mainstream depiction of cyberpunk to something in line with what can be found in literature today, it is regressive.

Ultimately, the worldbuilding is the most disappointing aspect of Cyberpunk 2077. The main narratives, however, are a different story.

 Story

Arguably, the most important thing for a role-playing game experience is the story. In 2077, you play V, a mercenary on the edges of society trying to make it big in Night City. In classic cyberpunk genre fashion, a chance at a big score drops into your relatively inexperienced hands, and you seize it. A heist is planned; it doesn't go as planned—and Johnny Silverhand, a long-dead anarchist and misogynistic jerk—basically a proto-typical embodiment of 70’s rock ethos—ends up in your head. He has his own agenda, and V can either go along, get along, or make their own decisions about what to do next. For the most part.

The story beats are as meticulously crafted as corners of Night City. The character animations are the most advanced I’ve ever seen—: they’ll smoke a cigarette for a portion of the conversation, stub it out, then get up and pace nervously while delivering their lines. Their emotions will be written on their face and flow naturally. They'll touch items or other people in the scene. They look and act like real people and sound like it too.

There’s a 4-part storyline with a trans character in which you just won’t ever learn their story unless you talk with them and earn their trust. You can go through the whole narrative and help them out (or not), and never learn much about them. But if you spend the time and ask questions, you'll always get something from these storylines, even if they initially seem to be just another gig on the map.

Because the game's worldbuilding, including in-game ads, is blind to its own defaultism, stories like this are absolutely vital. I wish there were more of them and I hope the free DLC forthcoming are things like this.

2077 is populated with genuine, human moments. They communicate why you should care about the city and the people you encounter. And most importantly: these moments define V as much as the main storyline.

Whether intentional or purely a byproduct of how each facet of the game was developed, these stories augment the play experience a tremendous amount.

What I remember most is finding out if Johnny can, and will, actually change or if he's just trying to manipulate me, discovering how my decisions alter the way he interacts with me, and going down a rabbit-hole, sex trafficking narrative that initially feels a bit too archetypical, only to have it morph into a multi-part story that rooted V's narrative in an emotional and impactful way.

These are the stories that you can actually, meaningfully change. And because I did them all before the main storyline, they all felt like they meshed well with my V’s overall story.

Of course, you could do the main story right away and then go back and do these side stories. I think the experience would be quite different because of the knowledge and relationship you have with Johnny at the end of the main story experience, though.

The main storyline has multiple endings; I've experienced four of them, and they all deliver fairly well on expectations. These endings do not consider anything that isn’t a main or side job, which is labeled as such in your log. Your relationships with the main characters do change the endings slightly, but they don't change the overall outcomes for V and Johnny. This made the game's main attraction for me the fleshed-out side narratives and a few other mysterious side jobs that crop up without a fixer giving them to you.

These other stories were more enjoyable because I felt like I really mattered and could actually mess them up. The main storyline is only preoccupied with whether or not you did X and, if so, you can see the Y ending. It felt like it had lower stakes.

 Conclusion

I do feel like 2077 is a new way to consume an immersive role-playing video game experience. It's unfortunate and unfair to many people that multiple promises the game makes cannot be fulfilled unless they can experience it on a particular platform (with a fairly sizeable amount of money in the investment). A decent computer to play it on is the best way, and it’s expensive if you want to max out absolutely everything. Next-generation consoles aren't even optimized for it yet. Last generation consoles are struggling. Crashes, bugs, poor textures, and framerates.

What is Cyberpunk 2077 when it can’t replicate the ideal delivery for its desired experience?

So much of what made the experience singular and noteworthy for me comes down to how life-like and human the people I came to care about the most in the game looked and acted. Take that veneer away, and the cracks in the façade appear.

Doing most of the side content before the main jobs gave my V a meta-narrative: they were a ruthless killer that would do pretty much whatever a fixer asked of them. Those were the expectations set by the world outside of the story. But then V morphs into a person confronting that life, questions who they want to be, and what it takes to thrive in Night City when you hit the main narratives. That’s why I had a positive experience. And that’s why I’ll return to the city and do things differently.

Ironically, Cyberpunk 2077's overall game experience relies on technology to build empathy between the player and the main cast. Yet, the world outside of the main narrative denies that same empathy to the denizens and factions it populates Night City with. If the platform you’re playing on can’t effectively utilize the demanding Red Engine developed for Cyberpunk 2077, the most likely outcome is an experience devoid of the only substantive thing it has to offer.

[lynndoublelegacy]

just a cool dnd meme i saw

Yook so it’s less a meme and more like. a big ol questionare but hey, might as well do it. originally saw it on @/probablyottrpgideas, go check them out

1. Game Master, Player, or both? Why?

Ok so technically I’ve DMed twice but I really don’t find it fun? and don’t ever want to do it again. so. Player. I like building characters and their connections with fellow PCs more than building worlds

2. When did you start roleplaying? How old were you?

oh god, if we’re talking about roleplaying in general? I’ve been doing it basically as long as I can remember. As a kid I would play House, and then once I got older in like 5th grade I actually started making characters and playing out their stories with friends. Google+ is what made me realize this was actually like, a THING, though, and I got into some roleplaying groups there, then on DevaintArt. Dungeons and Dragons is a newer development? I got into it in late 2018 when my sister’s friend invited us to a one-shot, and... well, yea, I got hooked lol

3. What was the first roleplaying book you ever owned?

dude, bold of you to assume I really own any. I don’t have that kind of money and literally only own the Guide to Wildemount, and that was a gift

4. Describe the first game you ever ran or played in.

I mean... it’s not a game but ima describe the one shot, bc my first campaign was a hot mess without a true storyline and I used the same character for it anyway. I played a tiefling bard called Aisling Kai (I didn’t know this was a cliche combo at this point, and I honestly played her like a rogue with a music motif but Whatever) and we were a little group tasked to figure out why the hell anyone who goes into this cave never comes out. So we go in, make our way through the dungeon, fight some frog people (I made one of their ears bleed just by getting a nat 20 on a performance check to play a high f# on flute, that was fun, FWEET), and turns out yep, theres a hill giant down here. We kicked his ass and collapsed the cave on top of us (dw I think we were fine but my memory is a little screwy)

5. What system did you grow up with? / 6. Which system do you play now?

i learned on and currently play dnd 5e. I don’t really know anything else, but I’m debating checking out Vampire of the Masquerade.

7. Longest campaign you’ve run or played in?

That would be my Tal’Dorei campaign group, aka The Fatefallen! Started in the Fall of 2019 and still going to this day, just played our 45th session last week. I play Ilia Liadon, the drow grave cleric, and the only member of our party who has been there for every single session since the beginning.

8. Where did you meet your current gaming group?

...well first I feel the need to mention that I have 3 different groups (2 of them are on hiatus now for pandemic related reasons but! we’re still groups). My first group (with Aisling) was formed slowly over time as friends adopted friends into the group, I think it started as a school club? but that didn’t last long. The other two started from a different school club as well, though one has since branched out into other people as well. 

9. Strategic combat or dramatic plotlines?

I am a roleplayer first and a gamer second. Give me all of the backstories and dramatic plotlines. Don’t get me wrong, I still like combat, but story takes precedent for me.

10. Favorite RPG genre?

I don’t tend to define myself by genre? But I tend to fall into more of a fantasy, at most arcanapunk style. Give me all of the magic, and magic powered tech.

11. Your first character.

I got into her a little bit earlier, but my first character was Aisling, aka Calypso Kai. She was a homebrew subclass bard with a criminal background, who honestly? should’ve been a rogue. I’ve since rebuilt her into an Assassin Rogue/College of Eloguence Bard multiclasser, but this iteration was like. Baby her, baby me new to dnd, I did not know what I was doing. She tried to be edgy, but my mom energy came through HARD and she just. Never really had a set characterization. She deserves better and I plan on playing her better sometime in the future.

12. Your favorite character.

You are making me choose between my children. BUT, if I had to pick, either Ilia Liadon, or! Ashe Wednesday, a protector aasimar drunken master monk and my profile picture. Ashe also deserved a lot better from their campaign, so I have a massive soft spot for them, they were made during a really tough time in my life (as was Ilia) and was going through an equally rough time in-game, since I made them for a Curse of Strahd campaign without understanding what I was getting into. They’re my little rebellious asshole and I love them dearly, someone get this kid therapy. Ilia, on the other hand, is just... she’s a comfort character for me at this point. mostly soft edges, such a mom- while Ashe was me yelling “come at me” at the world while crying, Ilia was just... embracing it. Making it better. basically, if they actually existed, I would die for both of them.

13. Your most ridiculous character.

I don’t usually play super ridiculous characters, but! I would say Keothi “Bookfinder” Vaimeil counts. She was basically me looking all of the goliath barbarian stereotypes in the eye, and going “nah. she’s a nerd.” She’s literally a massive puppy dog, just the sweetest big old thing, sitting in her house and reading all the books she can get her hands on in order to make up for her amnesia. Oh, and did I mention that she’s a zombie? ...yea. She’s wacky, but I love her.

14. The best in-character line you’ve ever had.

“I need sleep. I don’t even sleep and I need sleep.”

~Ilia, after a particularly tough fight and an emotionally draining day

15. Your most epic death.

Ok so... none of my characters in game have ever actually died during the storyline? Keothi obviously has in her backstory, and Ilia might have in hers as well, it was never explicitly stated, but during the game? Nope. Ashe got stupid close, but nope. Since Keothi is my only death period, and her death was pretty epic, I’m just gonna describe that. Her parents and siblings in her Goliath tribe had all fallen ill, so she decided to go searching for a possible cure, and ended up getting conned into helping this cult, since they said they would cure her family. Turns out, yea, they were lying, they just needed a goliath willing to sacrifice themselves with a cursed sword. They made the mistake of revealing this before Keothi was actually dead, so as she was dying, she brought the entire goddamn cultist temple down to the bottom of the sea and took the cultists with her. The sword was why she was undead, in the Shadowfell, and couldn’t remember anything.

16. Your most disappointing death. 

As mentioned, I’ve never died in campaign, but I feel like I have to mention this one that happened to our party in Curse of Strahd. We were in the death house, all 5 of us, still level 1, and our barbarian falls into a pit trap with spikes. None of us realize she’s actually dead, so we send out paladin down to get her... with the monk, the bard, and the warlock holding the rope. ....yea both of them died.

17. Something that shouldn’t have worked, but it did.

I’m stuck between two options for this one. First one was the time our water genasi paladin/rogue bloodbended our gnome cleric into a bridge to keep her from falling all the way down a ravine. The second time was when our party managed to defend a small seaside town from a pirate raid with just an NPC with Control Water, a ballista, ourselves, and some explosives. Neither should’ve worked, but both did. Having a triton in your party can really come in clutch in a seaside campaign.

18. Something that went hilariously awry.

I have one that’s hilarious and one that’s horrifying. Hilarious one: in my first ever campaign, someone from Aisling’s backstory popped up and our sorcerer went “that’s shady” (to be fair, he was) and then went to investigate BY HIMSELF. He obviously got kidnapped by the mafia, and then we went all stealth mission to break him out. Stealth was immediately abandoned after our other bard used a SCREAMING SWORD to break open the locks, then we proceeded to go out the way we came, setting everything on fire on the way out, and with our bard lying their way out the front door (with the rest of us in tow as “prisoners”) by pretending to be a fellow mafia member. It was great. Horrifying one: Ilia tries to Send to a member of the party who left in order to let him know that a fellow party member had died. Forgot that he left bc his mind was invaded by a previously dead, very evil old god, and ends up trapped there with him for a while. Ended up with all of our main spellcasters trapped in their own heads while the barbarian paced around worriedly and the rogue decided he was going to get smashed instead of worrying himself silly.

19. Your most memorable in-character moment.

There are a LOT in Ilia’s campaign, but! If I had to pick one, it would actually be a pretty recent one involving Ilia and our party’s wizard, Liara. They’re basically the embodiment of head vs heart? Anyway, Liara is currently suffering from something called magic corruption, though idk if suffering is the right word. Anyway! It basically resulted in her getting... possessed? by her own magic during the night during Ilia’s watch, and they had a really, really interesting conversation regarding guilt, death, and grief, and yea basically I love them. Honorable mention to our druid’s death (he’s back and better now, but that was my first long-time death in a game, we didn’t know he was coming back) and also the moment that Ilia realized that her childhood bff/crush had been revived in a new body and that this NPC was her best friend. That was a trip.

20. The coolest item you ever got and how you came to possess it.

I got this item in the revamp of my first ever campaign and nothing has topped it since which is Sad but hey. Anyway! I got this really cool, possibly cursed dagger after I threw a knife at an absolutely eldritch being and it got stuck in him as he transformed. It looked really badass, and allowed me to cast Inflict Wounds on occasion when I stabbed someone with it. So yea, we love that. Honorable mention to my paladin/bloodhunter’s Helm of the Aberrant Gladiator which allows you to basically do a bunch of fear based affects and psychic stuff.

Numbers 21 through 30 don’t apply to me but. yea. enjoy this summary of my dnd history I guess

[scripting-life]

FFVII: returning to my first love

 *peeks out of the corner of my lurking spot*

Hello? Anybody out there? It’s only been, oh you know, four-ish years since the last time I’ve posted anything here. I apologize in advance for anybody who’s still following me from my Castle days. If you couldn’t tell from my extended absence, I’ve mostly moved on. Castle and Beckett were fantastic characters that let me to play with some deep-dive analyses, and Castle will always hold a special place in my heart as my comfort show and my first real and extended experience with online fandom. I’ll always be grateful to the community I’ve had the joy of interacting with (or, the community with which I’ve had the joy of interacting, as Castle would correct me my dangling preposition).

I honestly didn’t think I would ever have reason to come back to Tumblr after Castle ended. But the FF7 Remake has returned me to my very first love--when I was young and innocent and before I knew anything about OTPs or ship wars. I’ve been back lurking for several months now and seeing all the fanart/fanfics and fun theories and analyses has reignited my enthusiasm for the FF7 franchise. It’s also fun coming back to this franchise with a more mature understanding of the themes/concepts that completely flew over my head as a young preteen.

(This ended up being super long, so the rest is below the cut to spare everyone the pain of scrolling. Apparently, my rambling tendencies have not changed at all. lol.)

When FF7R was officially announced (five freaking years ago!), I was filled with apprehension. FF7 was my first taste of a “grown-up” game. I was 11 and played my brother’s copy of the OG on PC in 1-2 hours spurts on the weekends when I visited his apartment. It took me months, if not years, to finish the game (I ended up stealing his copy to play on our computer at home...lol), and I was so blown away by it. I remember the exact moment I finished it and how I was literally shaking as I watched the ending FMV.

Later, when I found out my brother had a copy of FF8 (my poor brother was so accommodating to his annoying little sister...haha), I was so excited to play, in large part because I thought it would continue the story of FF7. Young, naive me didn’t understand the numbering conventions of Final Fantasy titles. I was madly theorizing and breaking my brain trying to find connections between the two games’ plots and had literally played through more than half the game before I finally realized the storyline of FF8 had absolutely nothing to do with FF7. I was sorely disappointed, and I think that has somewhat tainted my appreciation of future titles. Not to say I haven’t enjoyed the subsequent FF titles, but I think a little part of me is always comparing them to that first experience of wonder and awe that I had with FF7.

I discovered fanfiction in my teens and starting writing FF7/Cloti fics in college. Aside from interacting with a few fic writers at the time, I was not involved in any online communities, so I kept myself pretty free of any ship war drama and the like. When I did research for my fics, I’d sometimes see shipping sites and theories where I didn’t always understand the logic of how certain conclusions were reached, but frankly, I didn’t much care and didn’t realize that Clerith vs. Cloti was such a touchy subject. I was peripherally aware that some sort great LTD war was waging, of course, but it didn’t really touch me. I stayed in my Cloti shipping/fic-writing lane and was probably a lot happier for it. And, to be honest, based on FFN’s listings for FF7, I felt like I always saw a bunch of Sephiroth/Cloud fics and thought that was just as popular as the more conventional ships.

Graduating college and entering “real life” pretty much ended my FF7 fanfic-writing journey. In the intervening years between college and the release of FF7R, I haven’t gone back to the OG too much. I’ve played almost all the Final Fantasy games since then, and I always enjoy getting my FF7 crew fix when I play the non-canon mobile games or the Kingdom Hearts franchise. But FF7 was a happy part of my teenage years, and I was content to think on it with sweet nostalgia.

Remakes, in recent experience (*cough cough* Disney, why?), have been hit or miss, with a lot of misses. It’s hard to strike a good balance between catering to nostalgia and delivering a fresh product, never mind the change in social mores through the decades. I was so afraid FF7R would screw up my memories, especially since I wasn’t the biggest fan of Advent Children. The graphics were great and the action scenes were fun, but the story felt like a let-down. Cloud, in particular, felt so different (and yes, moody) from where we left him after the OG. I understand now that a lot of his character motivation was better explained in the On The Way to a Smile novels, but back then, I just felt like AC came out of nowhere. 

Btw, because I see this question a lot on other blogs when I’m lurking, I’ve ALWAYS thought that it was very clear in AC--even without reading anything else--that the reason for Cloud’s depression was due to guilt and not because he was pining for Aerith. The only reason I didn’t like his characterization in AC was because it felt like it came out of nowhere since AC is set 2 years after OG and by the end of the OG, he seemed to be in a pretty decent place mentally and emotionally. That being said, I can absolutely understand why some traumas resurface years after the originating incident and how times of peace might actually be worse because he is no longer solely focused on saving the world, but I was just surprised and a little bummed that this was the direction the devs chose to take AC at the time. Now that I’m older, I do better appreciate the complexities of Cloud’s mental state and the fact that they depicted a hero with lingering mental health issues is actually pretty awesome. I’m drawn to characters that have flaws--sometimes serious ones--but try their best anyway. Hence, why why Tifa Lockhart and Kate Beckett are some of my all-time favorites.

Anyhow, that didn’t stop me from pre-ordering FF7R, of course. I avoided reading any reviews as I didn’t want my first impressions to be swayed, and boy, was I happy that I went in mostly blind. That sense of awe really almost felt like playing the OG for the first time again, but somehow more. The combat system is incredibly fun and the world-building is nothing short of incredible. The variety and abundance of NPCs gives the game so much flavor and the locations have been rendered so well. As I’m going through areas like the Sector 7 train station and Wall Market and Aerith’s house, I can almost superimpose the layout from the OG in my head, but now it’s in 3D and so rich and full. It’s obvious that a lot of attention was paid to details, and I love all the head-nods and homages to the OG.

And oh, the characters!

This is the Cloud I’ve been wanting to see in glorious HD and the Cloud I remember from the original game: all awkward, dorky trying to be cool, socially inept, mentally unstable, abrasive-at-times, reluctant to act depending on who’s asking, wannabe hard-ass who’s actually a big softie inside Cloud. I remember reading an article a few years back about how the devs basically redid Cloud for the Remake because they wanted him to go back to his dorky roots--which ends up making him closest to his personality in the OG than his appearances in other franchises--and I was SOOOO incredibly happy to hear that. I was so sick of the way Cloud was constantly depicted as this cool, broody McBrood in his cameos when he was a pretty big dork in the OG. (Anybody remember him doing squats in the Highwind when Tifa says it’ll be lonely with just the two of them and Cloud responds that he’ll make enough noise to make up for it? Like I said: cute, but a dork.)

I WAS surprised by how comfortable and sweet and touchy (so very very touchy) the devs made him with Tifa from the beginning. That initial scene of Cloud being such a smooth operator giving Tifa the flower had my jaw-dropping and every single flirty interaction after that (and there are many) had my Cloti heart overflowing in shock and bliss. Throughout most of my years as a Cloti shipper, even though I believed Cloti was supported by canon and pretty clearly together, I was also under the impression--mistakenly or not--that Cloti was the minority ship. So for Square Enix to make it so blatantly obvious that Cloud is really into Tifa at such an early stage has been an unexpected gift.

Also, they’re just really hot together. (Clotiscrew tunnel--be still my heart!)

As for Tifa...oh, what wonderful character development we’ve already gotten for Tifa. Tifa has always been one of my all-time favorite characters ever since reading her character blurb in the OG game manual. Initially, as a child, it was because I saw so much of myself in her. She was outwardly bright and optimistic, but tended to hide all of her stronger feelings inside. She fought with her fists, and for someone who was a tomboy growing up who liked playing contact sports with the boys, I connected with her in a way that I had never been able to connect with other female protagonists who were primarily back-row specialists. (I also aspired to grow to her listed height of 5′4″, which alas, did not happen...lol).

I love how the Remake delves into more of Tifa’s moral conflict between the destruction that she causes as part of Avalanche and needing to do something to stop Shinra, and yes, even seeking revenge. They touched on this in the OG lightly, but the Remake really hammers it home. She’s perhaps the most conflicted character in terms of motivation in Part 1. That scene with the Shinra manager on the train is actually one of my favorite scenes of her because it highlights that tension. The elevator scene, if you opted for it instead of the stairs (or if you did one, saved, and reloaded to do the other one, like me), is also underrated in terms of how much it reveals about Tifa’s inner struggle.

On this point, I also appreciate that the Remake has the characters reflecting on the damage they’ve both indirectly and directly inflicted--the Avalanche team all do this to a certain degree. In particular, Jessie’s constant inability to figure out what she’d done wrong with the bomb to cause such a massive explosion and her remaining feelings of guilt during her death scene (”they were my victims” ouch!) were heart-breaking.

Aerith’s depiction was another pleasant surprise. I’ll be honest; I didn’t much like her in the OG. She was too pushy and willfully oblivious to the point of being mean at times. In the Remake, much of her sometimes too in-your-face playfulness was kept--perhaps still a little too much--but I appreciate the nuance that they gave her. The train graveyard scene tells the player that she didn’t have friends growing up, and I think that partially contributes to her lack of social tact at times. The other factor that gives her personality more nuance is the hint of special knowledge that affects how she interacts with the rest of the group. It gives her additional hidden motivation and adds to her mystery for new players while simultaneously pulling at the heartstrings for old players who get the impression that Aerith is somehow aware--to a certain, unknown extent--of her own fate. 

I also appreciate that Aerith is more grounded as a real person than as some sort of revered being. I do blame AC for some of that. When you have the power to cure a fatal disease from the afterlife and send the dead back to life, it gets into some godlike territory. Maybe it’s a fair depiction of her powers as a Cetra, but I just get the feeling that Aerith herself wouldn’t really appreciate being made into this goddess-like figure. Remember that her character blurb in the original game manual implied that she was more interested in earthly things (i.e. the love triangle) than in exploring her own powers. I personally think that Aerith used the “love triangle” in the OG as a form of escapism from the weight of her burdens rather than genuine interest, and I just think she’d want to be thought of as a person rather than as a god. One of my favorite scenes for Aerith is when she and Cloud are traversing the rooftops and she slips on the ladder, letting out a simple, “Shit.” It humanizes her in a way that combats some of the ways she’s sort of been deified in the last 23 years. Also, Aerith wielding a folding chair like it’s WWE never fails to make me laugh. Overall, she just comes off as a more reasonably flawed and--as a result, to me--a more likeable character in the Remake, and I do very much like her now.

Barret is pretty much the exact larger than life character I imagined in my head, only somehow even better, and I really love how expressive and emotional his eyes and facial expressions are. His scenes with Marlene are truly the cutest thing ever. Red XIII is a big, furry ball of sass, and I need so much more of him in the coming parts (Cosmo Canyon still wrecks me to this day). The interactions between the Wedge, Biggs, and Jessie are incredible, and they really feel like people who’ve been friends and basically each other’s family for years. The Turks and Rufus are pretty much as cool as I imagined them in the OG.

There’s still so much more I haven’t even started touching on about the Remake, and I think that’s why I’m finally posting this now. I just can’t contain my love for this game any more, and I really really need a place to express myself. I don’t know if anybody is still reading, but I appreciate having the opportunity to finally gush about this game and franchise that I’ve loved so much for pretty much two-thirds of my life.

[coolgreatwebsite]

Cool Games I Finished In 2019 (In No Real Order)

We’re here. The end of the decade. 2019 was a weird, turbulent year for me. Despite my cross-country move already being a year behind me somehow, nothing’s really settled yet. Living situation is still weird, still separated from most of my belongings, I left my full-time QA job for a contractor position at a mobile game advertising company that may or may not convert into a full-time position... everything about what’s going on with me still just feels like I’m completely winging it, and while that’s not a position I’m really comfortable being in for such an extended amount of time, everything seems to be working out okay enough despite it. All this is probably why I spent most of my time playing the shit out of a handful of games rather than playing a bunch of different games this year! Needed some sort of stability. Also when I did manage to pull myself away from the timesink games and play something else, a lot of them ranged from “okay” to “real bad”. But I still managed to play just enough stuff that I liked to where I can put out yet another one of these.  Here’s a bunch of cool games I experienced for the first time in 2019.

Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst (PC, 2005)

I haven’t bothered to do two thirds of the story quests yet and have barely touched any Episode 4 content so this game technically doesn’t count for this list, but if I left it off I would be neglecting to mention an extremely large portion of my video game playing time this year. I fell back into PSO preeeettty hard this year after the surprise announcement of Phantasy Star Online 2 finally coming to the US. Guess what: game still rules. It feels stiff to play and it’s obviously far less expansive than it seemed back in 2000, but the core of Phantasy Star Online is still as fun as it ever was and the aesthetics are still entirely my shit. I love everything about the way this game looks and sounds, I love stumbling on a weird new weapon, I love participating in the custom seasonal events the server I’m on runs, and I love how oddly relaxing the experience of playing this game and taking it all in is. I will probably continue to play Phantasy Star Online into 2020. I will probably still dip back into it after PSO2 US servers finally launch. If I know you and you want to join my Discord server for PSO get at me. PSO forever.

Cookie’s Bustle (PC, 1999)

You ever play a game that just speaks to you? Even through a language barrier? A game so incredibly out there and bizarre in the exact way you love that you can’t help but adore it despite barely understanding it? Holy moly did I ever find that game. I learned about Cookie’s Bustle through a news story last year about some rare games leaking from a Japanese collector’s stash. Didn’t manage to get it to run back then, but my off and on attempts to get it working finally paid off in March of this year and I’m so glad I kept trying. I knew nothing of this game other than it had a weird name and was about a bear doing sports, and it turned out to be a fully voice-acted and mostly unsubtitled adventure game starring Cookie Blair, a 5 year old girl from New Jersey who sees herself as a teddy bear and has traveled to Bombo World, an island nation once visited by aliens and currently in the middle of a civil war, to participate in the Bombo Sports Tournament. Dead level, I probably shouldn’t have been able to genuinely love Cookie’s Bustle as much as I did. The only context I had for what was happening and what I was supposed to do was provided by a 20-year-old Google translated walkthrough with broken images, the game’s slightly higher than usual reliance on English loan words, and 30-ish years of video games and anime allowing me to halfway pick up on a handful of Japanese words. However, Cookie’s Bustle is dripping with an undeniable and off-beat charm that genuinely transcends language. Even if you can’t understand the words and specifics, you can understand the basic plot, characterizations, and emotions they’re going for. Cookie’s Bustle manages to both be completely off-the-wall bizarre and feel totally genuine and heartfelt at the same time, a balance very few games manage to successfully hit but many of my favorites do. One could say that’s why it seems to have resonated with a decent amount of other people this year, too. Games rarely make me feel sad that they’re over. but when they do that’s how I know they’re one of the good ones. Seriously, go look up a longplay or stream of Cookie’s Bustle if you (understandably) don’t want to go through the hassle of setting it up and figuring out how to play it, it’s impossible not to love.

Devil May Cry 5 (PlayStation 4, 2019)

Here’s something crazy to think about: Devil May Cry 4 came out 11 years ago. Aside from being a potent reminder that time is moving too fast and we’re all going to die soon, that means that there hasn’t been a DMC for over a decade. Devil May Cry 5 does not bare this fact even a little bit. Not only did they pick up right where they left off and manage to make another Devil May Cry game without missing a beat, they made arguably the best Devil May Cry game. I mean I still like the story and single-character focus of DMC3 the best, but DMC5 is the best playing game in the series without a doubt. Nero finally feels like he has a complete and complex toolset, Dante is the most mechanically dense and fun to play he’s ever been, and they even added a new guy that’s... neat to play as, until you start trying to S-rank the harder difficulties. Then he’s kind of annoying to play as. But it’s still cool that they tried something totally different and mostly got it to work! They also did something very stupid that I love and used this game as an excuse to make literally every single piece of Devil May Cry media canon. Like, characters exclusively from the anime and the books show up and act like they’re someone you already know and love? And they go out of their way to explain the most esoteric lore shit possible?? And despite it all they still intentionally give DMC2 as short a shrift as they can??? It’s so dumb, it rules. It’s just one of the many things about the game that show that even with so long of a gap between entries, no love for the series was lost by the people that make it. I don’t think the suits at Capcom expected this game to hit as hard as it did though, because despite there being clear areas where the game could be expanded on with DLC there still hasn’t been anything announced. I hope they’re maybe saving it for some sort of DMC3-esque special edition, or maybe just already working on DMC6, because even after getting all S-ranks I still wanted to play more. The game’s just that damn good.

Hypnospace Outlaw (PC, 2019)

I expected very little from Hypnospace Outlaw. I backed the game on Kickstarter solely because it looked cool and I thought a game about fake GeoCities was neat, and then I immediately forgot about it until it released. Admittedly my lack of expectations stemmed mostly from the fact that it’s kind of hard to set expectations for a game you never really thought too hard about, but even in the brief period of time where I considered it enough to give it money, I never expected it to be much more than a pretty-looking 101 Great GeoCities Jokez delivery vehicle. Boy was I wrong. I mean, it is incredibly good at that, but Hypnospace Outlaw is so much more than a funny period piece. The basic premise is that you’re in alternate universe 1999 and have just become a community moderator for an Internet service provider that allows people to connect to the Internet while they sleep. You’re tasked with browsing the game’s weird fake Internet and issuing demerits to users who violate the five basic Hypnospace rules, but it quickly evolves into something way bigger. Hypnospace Outlaw’s greatest strength is its exceptional ability at weaving together subtle world building, small and engaging character arcs, esoteric microjokes, and a genuine sense of mystery and discovery into an incredibly cohesive and engaging package. It’s as much a game about the people that use and run its weird fake Internet as it is about that weird fake Internet itself. And a lot of the problems both face echo the problems we face with our real world Internet today. When I was mapping out writing this article like a month or two ago I was prepared to go on about how at its core, Hypnospace Outlaw is an incredibly poignant story about how uncaring tech corporations actively harm their users and always have, but then a couple of days ago I read Colin Spacetwinks’ game of the year list and his #1 entry put most everything I would have said about that topic down in a way more eloquent and well-written way than I ever could have. And then I remembered that Friend Of The Site Heidi Kemps covered some of the same angle but from the perspective of the early Internet in an article earlier this year, again way better than I could have. So I highly recommend you read those when you’re done here. What I wanna bring up instead is just how effortlessly surprising and interconnected a lot of stuff in Hypnospace feels, using a mildly spoiler-ish late game example. Two of the first “zones” you’re allowed to moderate when you start Hypnospace Outlaw are Teentopia and Goodtime Valley, which are essentially alternate universe Yahooligans and a little slice of Hypnospace just for Boomers respectively. On Teentopia you’ll see a bunch of kids that are wild for Squisherz, Hypnospace’s alternate universe version of Pokémon, and over in Goodtime Valley you’ll see (much like there was back in real world 1999) a few pages made by religious fundamentalists convinced that everything the kids like these days is the work of Satan. This of course includes Squisherz, and you can find a page by one organization full of crackpot conspiracy theories with flimsy evidence that TOTALLY DEFINITELY backs up their claim. Squisherz contains a wolf, which the Bible warns about many times! This giraffe monster CLEARLY has a pentagram in its design!! And the eye of this snake-like Squisherz is the eye of Horus, an Egyptian occult symbol and NEED I REMIND YOU that Lucifer took the form of a snake in the Garden of Eden!!! It is very clear what this page is goofing on and throughout the course of the game it doesn’t get updated at all, so it’s very easy to laugh at it and forget about it. Very late into the game, you get an optional sidequest. Adrian Merchant, one of the CEOs of Merchantsoft, the company that created Hypnospace, was found out to have logged traffic indicating he was a frequent visitor of a website called Children of HORUS, and a call is put out to investigate what that even is. You can easily find the website, but it asks you for a password if you click the Enter button. Adrian Merchant is consistently portrayed throughout the game as a complete idiot, and the solution to this puzzle has you capitalize on that. Another early game objective ended up with you finding a list of cracked passwords, and one of those passwords happens to be for the instant messenger account of Adrian Merchant. If you can remember that he was even in that text file from forever ago, and then put two and two together that of COURSE that dumbass would use the same password for everything, you just punch in his messenger password and you’re granted access to the Children of HORUS page. It turns out that HORUS is an acronym that stands for Hiding Occult References in Utmost Secrecy, and the page itself is a basic leaderboard with a list of names and two numbered columns reading “Hidden” and “Found”. In that list of names you’ll find A. Merchant, along with the names of various other CEOs and celebrities you might have read about elsewhere in Hypnospace. One of the other names on this list is F. Kazuma, the CEO of Monarch, creators of Squisherz. The funny conspiracy theory website from the beginning of the game that you most likely forgot about was, about this one specific thing, correct. There was an eye of Horus hidden on the snake from Squisherz. Not as any sort of Satanic plot, mind you, but only as part of some weird millionaire dickwaving contest. This dumb tiny revelation is not called out by the game at all and nothing comes of it, it’s just there for you to notice if you’ve been paying enough attention. Hypnospace Outlaw is LITTERED with stuff like this. Weird small interconnected things you wouldn’t expect to be interconnected. Little dumb things you wouldn’t expect to have any sort of payoff but somehow do. And it’s also just as chock full of big things. Having all the pieces fall into place at once to where I was able to access Hypnospace’s equivalent of the dark web was the best sequence in a game this year for me, even beating out the outlandish shit in DMC5. Getting and solving the final case was a rush. Hypnospace Outlaw is full of incredible moments big and small. It’s genuinely engaging and affecting, which is so much more than I was expecting from a game that was pitched to me as “Funny GeoCities Cop”. It almost has no right being so good. But it is. Hell, even the music rules! I didnt even get into that! I don't have enough time or space to get into that now! The music is so goddamn good! I know I started these lists because I had no interest in ranking games, but every year I sort of jokingly-but-not-jokingly say “haha this game sure would be my number one if I did that!” for at least one game. It’s time to fully lean into it. I don’t gotta rank ‘em all, but I can pick a favorite. Hypnospace Outlaw is my favorite game of 2019 with a goddamn bullet.

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

Etrian Odyssey (Nintendo DS, 2007): Man, this series just started out good, huh? I dabbled with the first two games in college when I got a DS flashcart but never really dug in until EO4, and the first game is enjoyable in just about every way the modern ones are. Definitely more barebones and punishing though. Kero Blaster (PlayStation 4, 2017): This is a game by the creator of Cave Story that does not aim to be Cave Story, and that’s fine! A fun little shooter in its own right, though I do think the shooting in Cave Story felt a little better than it does here. Space Invaders Extreme (Nintendo DS, 2008): I played the shit out of this game in college thanks to that flashcart I mentioned before, but I never finished a playthrough in full until this year for some reason. Still way stylish and way fun! I need to get a copy of the second one... CROSSNIQ+ (Nintendo Switch, 2019): Incredibly chill puzzle game that can be as hard or easy as you want it to be. Almost uncanny in how well it emulates the style of late PS1/Dreamcast games. Super Mario Maker 2 (Nintendo Switch, 2019): Mario Maker 2 is kind of weird for me. It’s a solid improvement in a lot of aspects, but a clear regression in a lot of others. Also the online multiplayer is the second least amount of fun I’ve had with a video game this year (Secret of Mana swooped in and stole the number one slot near the end). Still, I had a lot of fun with it and I’ll probably end up going back to it eventually. Katamari Damacy Reroll (Nintendo Switch, 2018): The original Katamari Damacy is still every bit as fun and charming as it was upon its original release. This port is weirdly based on the Japanese version with the English text inserted, which means no English voice acting and Wanda Wanda only plays in the multiplayer mode. The Joycon sticks also aren’t the greatest for doing charge rolls. But none of these faults detract too much from the game. Bring on We Love Katamari Reroll! Earth Defense Force 5 (PlayStation 4, 2018): Sandlot somehow keeps finding ways to make each new EDF bigger and explodier, and EDF5 is the biggest and explodiest yet. I think the mission design in 4.1 was more solid overall, but 5 feels the best to play and has the most fun tools. Also the dialogue is the most absurd its ever been, and the final boss goes for it way harder than the series ever has. Pokémon Shield (Nintendo Switch, 2019): This game is honestly just okay, but leaving it off would again be neglecting a game I put a ton of time into this year. Pokémon Sword is fun in the way most Pokémon games usually are, and extremely half-baked in basically every other aspect. I’m still having a good time putting together teams and finding shinies and doing The Pokémon Thing regardless.

And that’s 2019 (and this decade) in the bag! I don’t know where anything’s going from here, but I’m going to ride it out as best as I can! I hope you do too! As always, thank you so much for getting to the bottom of all these words. I’m hoping to be in a more stable place mid-2020, and then I want to get back to all the things I haven’t had time to do. I want to get back to streaming, I want to write more dumb articles like The Best Babies, I want to do it all! I hope I will be able to do it all. Until then!

[jobsystem-blog]

possibilities for pc agency in choice of games romances

long post under the cut about my feelings about romance in games, particularly choice of games (along with stuff like genderflipping characters based on the pc’s gender and sexuality), basically just wanna vent + organize my thoughts on this! [cw for sex mentions + a single assault mention]

i’ve been playing and thinking about a lot of choice of games recently. i’ve always been drawn to them because nearly every one features lgbt characters and romances, but as much fun as i’ve had with the format, as well as the individual settings and characters, that romance aspect that had me so drawn always fell just a little bit flat. a lack of individuality and character in romantic options. they generally weren’t defined, and were customizable to the point of being boring. even now, even when they have their own personalities to some degree, none of the intimate moments between your characters ever feel real or special, because they are either the same across different romance options (choice of the deathless is a sore spot for me lol), or the moments aren’t integrated into the plot and don’t have any sort of emotional basis (i.e. they’re just tacked on)

i remember my first cog that wasn’t just the basic choice of dragons, romance, etc., heroes rise. you only got one love interest, who looked just like a specific celebrity you chose at the beginning of the game. in the next game, you literally choose another love interest’s name for them. of course, genderflipped chars tend to have this issue worse than characters with established genders, not because of that inherently, but because the lack of characterization and high customizability shows even more blatantly. that being said, even non-genderflipped characters can feel cookie cutter and boring after the first playthrough (again....choice of the deathless*)

over the course of the heroes rise series, you do actually get the chance to have romances with established characters, which really intrigued me. i never actually finished those romances (particularly not jury, which REQUIRED you to nonconsensually kiss him to begin the romance, but that’s a whole nother thing), but i remember being really excited realizing you actually could have a relationship with jenny, jury, and prodigal. especially since they felt like they each had their own sexualities, rather than just being bi for convenience, or straight/gay based on your sexuality**

there was something about those romances that felt, to me, much more integrated in the plot. like i was actually having a real romantic subplot in some superhero movie, instead of it just being tacked on and empty the way some of the romances felt***

over time, choice of games have definitely focused more on character development than their predecessors, with a much higher volume of characters with set genders and sexualities. the problem is....it hasn’t been nearly enough

i get that not every game is going to have romance be a big deal. my issue with this is that if you’re going to include romance, it should feel like it’s part of the story, not just some random aside. if writers aren’t going to give as much attention to romance as other parts of their story, why even bother including it? i think cog authors need to start understanding that there doesn’t need to be romance in their games for people to enjoy them, and boring romances don’t do anything for the quality of their stories

i’ve been quietly frustrated about this for a while now, but after playing heart of the house, with its relatively well-developed romances (and surprisingly detailed sex scenes lmao), my issues with how choice of games typically handle romance have become clearer in my head. i’m realizing now that the level with which heart of the house incorporated romance into the story should be the bare minimum that a game that markets itself as having a romance element should. even the one genderflipped character had a fleshed out personality, and good romantic/intimate scenes.

that being said

heart of the house still falls into some of the same traps that virtually all other choice of games do:

1. “pick this one specific flirty option to begin the romance”

this isn’t specific to choice of games, pretty much any game with romance that’s not a dating sim does this. it’s frustrating, because it only really works with certain pc’s personalities. i wanted to romance bastian in heart of the house with a weird occult nerd who doesn’t quite understand social conventions, but finds himself falling for bastian over time. i eventually had to break character if i wanted anything to happen, because apparently in the world of choice of games, characters can only understand love/flirting if it’s in the form of a saucy pickup line, which again, works for some characters (like the one i romanced dev with in another playthrough), but not for others.

the solution: give players multiple ways of starting a romance that can suit a variety of personality types. allow multiple ways to flirt, allow ways to subtly indicate your interest to your prospective love interest for people who wanna make shy, passive characters, and give multiple points at which a romance can start throughout the story so that people can experience their characters gradually falling in love instead of having to miss out on their chance to romance a character because they didn’t imply they wanted to fuck within the first five minutes of meeting them

2. linear romance

despite giving you a bunch of other personality stats and traits for every other part of the game, romances generally tend to play out in the same linear ways across playthroughs. somehow all these things affect every other part of the story....except for romantic + intimate scenes. it really breaks me out any immersion, especially when my character has to act out of character to even access any romances in the first place.

the solution: give players more agency during romantic + intimate scenes. let them take the lead, or allow the love interest to. let them direct the flow of the scene, just like any other non-romantic scene in the game.

3. genderflipping and perspective

genderflipping is controversial among the cog player base, with the majority of people relaying a single criticism of it: accusing the author of writing a character as a specific gender (male or female), and then just switching pronouns. another related complaint, is that of authors writing love interests for specific genders of pc (for instance, the way the sex scene with dev is written makes me think it was primarily written for a female pc, particularly with the way your male pc’s sexual preferences are basically decided for him). it’s true that many games do give off this vibe. however, many of the complaints strike me as strangely essentialist, as if a character should have a completely different personality if they’re male than if they were female, it’s true, gender has a huge impact on people, but this essentialism denies the reality that we are all human, we are all suggestible and influenced by our environments (which imo, largely account for gender differences in personality trends), and there is no one personality trait that every woman has that every man does not, and vice versa. i think we can criticize heteronormativity, homophobia, and misogyny without reifying the concept that men and women are intrinsically different on an emotional and personal level. imo, this very essentialism, where characters whose genders are variable across playthroughs (both love interests and the pc) are written from a specific gendered perspective, is what causes people to be alienated during romances, one way or another

the solution: again, this is where player agency comes in. allowing players to define their own narrative based on their own idea of their character will help players feel connected to their character. additionally, having a strong idea of what a character is like is key. rather than defaulting to heteronormative assumptions of how romance and sex must play out for male love interests vs. female love interests, take a minute to actually think through the personality of your character and what their preferences would be like. this is what i loved about bastian in heart of the house, because though he was a genderflipped character, what he was doing in the sex scene felt very in line with who he was, regardless of gender. meanwhile, dev’s sex scene was...well-written, but didn’t really speak much to dev’s character, in my opinion. in some ways, it almost felt out of character, and it was certainly very ooc for my pc, who was an outgoing flirt who liked to take charge. if you have a strong handle on what kind of person your characters are, they’ll seem genuine regardless of anything else.

4. integrating romance with the story

oftentimes, you can tell right away when a romance scene is going to be happening in a cog. the story suddenly gets diverted from w/e you’ve been focusing on until now, onto either some circumstance that has very little plot relevance, but is contrived to bring you and another character together, or a circumstance that does have plot relevance, usually with a brief diversion focusing on your chosen romance, followed up by the consummation of your relationship shortly after. even when you’re romancing a major character, during plot-important scenes, their dialogue with you often does not change, regardless of the level of relationship they have with you (enemies, friends, lovers, etc., it’s often all the same). the fact that you’re in a relationship with any given person generally doesn’t affect the overarching plot (except for choice of romance, ofc), and romances often feel tacked on for extra flavor. i don’t think i’ve seen a game that combines all these issues in one (except like....choice of the dragon but i dont think that counts lol), but most games have at least one element of this. in heart of the house, the first and only intimate/sex scene you have with your love interest always happens during the ball, and at no other time. in dinoknights, you may as well not have had a romance at all, except during a few brief asides.

the solution: this one is more complicated than the others, but even if you don’t want the player’s relationships to directly affect the main story, romantic + intimate scenes often feel much more integrated when they aren’t mainly segregated to defined “romance portions” of the game. a better way of approaching it is letting the story happen as it will, making sure love interests are interesting, well-defined, and relevant to the story, and considering how a romance might affect events as they play out. in my own game concept, there is a choice you can make that determines whether a certain character lives or dies. if that character lives, the aftermath of the danger that threatened them results in a vulnerable moment for them, and is the first point at which you can start a romance with them. this event would happen in the story regardless, but the way it proceeds would change based on your relationship with and reaction to them and the event, making a pivotal part of the story a similarly pivotal part of the development of your relationship.

i don’t know if this is all i want to say on the subject, but i wanted to get my thoughts out and down, for reference and also to help me think through the subject

congrats if you managed to read and stay interested in all of this lol

*ironically, the genderflipped character in deathless was the most interesting romance, iirc **i don’t actually think this is inherently a bad thing, but having characters with a variety of sexualities makes every other character’s sexuality feel more fleshed out, imo ***that being said.....i really did love lucky when the hero project first came out djshkjhs ****i’m referring to bastian with he pronouns, because that’s what he was in my playthroughs, and i don’t actually know what the female version of his character is named

[thesinglesjukebox]

KELELA - LMK [7.64] The single to lift Jam City past the Google results for the folks who made Family Guy: the Quest for Stuff?

Leah Isobel: Kelela's sonic world is consistently delightful and so rewarding in its smoky, clubby, joyful haze. Like many of her songs, "LMK" took a moment to sink in for me, and I still think it lacks the kind of huge hook that made tracks like "Rewind" or "All the Way Down" indelible. But it makes up for that with an off-kilter atmosphere and some of her strongest songwriting to date (the way the prechorus rhythms cross over the beat is a particular thrill). Best of all is the escalating sense of tension that her melodies create over the slightly uneasy chord progression -- when she bursts into rollercoaster melisma on the bridge, her vocal never quite resolves with the music, even as both ramp up in intensity. Like the endless, fashionably sinister hallways in the music video, "LMK" lives in the in-between space, where anticipation and dread intermingle. Leave it to Kelela to make purgatory this sweet. [8]

Julian Axelrod: A fog horn, a whale call, a hi-hat skittering like typewriter keys: Every piece of "LMK" is a cry for connection. Kelela's come-ons are refreshingly direct, and her call for open communication feels more like a rule than a plea. But her player persona takes on a sinister air when it's enveloped in that futuristic wall of sound. A chorus of Kelelas creeps in around you, and suddenly you have no choice but to succumb to her desires. The call is coming from inside the club. [7]

William John: Kelela's resumé is replete with ominous clanging intersecting with hundreds of her own vocal takes, but I can't recall this ever happening with as much confidence as on "LMK". She makes repeated demands of her indecisive admirer, delivered so adroitly such that each could be interpreted as either admonishment, bored nonchalance, or flaunting. I don't blame the suitor's silence; the swinging bass and her self-assured vocal would leave most silent with mouth agape. [9]

Thomas Inskeep: What an interesting listen: "LMK" combines a danceable R&B jam with producer Jam City's obtuse techno and Kelela's minty-cool vocals. The parts may be more notable than the end results, but props for effort. [6]

Maxwell Cavaseno: Kelela making traditional verse-chorus format songs against her wildly jarring production had the potential to sink everything she had going for her. Instead, it hones her stylistic variability into a concision that her prior highlights only sketched around. There's certainly a lot riding here, as the crew affiliated with Night Slugs/Fade to Mind have been so eager to infiltrate the pop mainstream properly but have always seemed a bit too monstrous compared to their more saccharine, cynical cousins (*cough* PC Music *cough*). Thankfully, their chaos is frenetic but reined in, pinning Kelela's aesthetic to the familiar but also feeling like the potential, heralded but never committed, for new life in R&B. [7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The wide-ranging influence that Jam City's Classical Curves had on underground music throughout the past half decade is undeniable. Its pristine sound design-minded club music was an amalgamation of many things -- grime, ghetto house, funk, kosmische -- yet became a reference point and wellspring of ideas for countless producers and musicians looking to make music with a similar retrofuturistic sheen -- be it club music or not. It was no surprise, then, that Classical Curves was followed by something considerably different: a moody singer-songwriter album more akin to dream pop than anything for the dancefloor. I'm convinced this is why Jam City is one of the few producers to craft a beat that makes sense for Kelela. Despite its success, Cut 4 Me felt more like a showcase for its producers than Kelela -- understandable, since the producers (Jam City included) had previously only used vocals as little more than ornamentation. Things started to change with the Hallucinogen EP, and it's thankfully continuing in the right direction on "LMK." It's not as immediate as "Rewind," but the absence of a huge hook better reflects the song's lyrics. Kelela's asking a guy to let her know if they're going to hook up. As the song progresses, the titular phrase is constantly repeated: a manifestation of unresolved sexual tension and the anticipation one has in seeing someone read their come-on. The situation's in limbo, and the thick fog that characterizes the track helps to capture Kelela's uncertainty. Through it all, she exudes near-intimidating levels of confidence, but that she has to clarify that the relationship "ain't that deep either way" suggests that these dudes either disagree or are unsure of such a prospect. And as the night goes on, we feel Kelela's disappointment in Jam City's massive kick drum, embodying her persistence and dissatisfaction. She doesn't want to go home alone, but that's how things are starting to look. [8]

Katherine St Asaph: Jam City's production, muted and insular as fuming, constrains the track much as below-low expectations constrain whatever Kelela might be feeling -- a yearning "let me know" rebutted, with varying levels of fervor, by "it ain't that deep," as if she's talking herself down. Not a crush song for the beginning, but one for just before the end, when you're resigned to wringing one pyrrhic fuck out of nothing. [7]

Rebecca A. Gowns: Dystopian R&B; as it adds more pieces, it breaks down instead of building up. This frenetic falling apart mirrors the narrator, who seems to be playing it cool at first, but it soon becomes clear she's head over heels crushing. Maybe you could let her know sometime, or maybe, you know, you could let her know, now, immediately, because she can't bear the anticipation much longer. [7]

Alfred Soto: I find much to praise in "LMK": Jam City's aqueous electronic production, at the center of which is a three-note synth bass, and Kelela herself, keeping her distance while hoping to get noticed. "LMK" reproduces the club experience. [8]

Nortey Dowuona: A smooth vibrating coo about the fragility of any relationship sits atop a rising anthill of synths and Soulection drums. [9]

Ramzi Awn: Kelela's grasp of party-friendly R&B is on point, and her command of melody is a breath of fresh air. Bringing together compelling riffs with just the right harmonic structure, the single draws you in. [9]

Jibril Yassin: "LMK" takes that spacious, stretched-out-to-forever feeling I loved about "Rewind" and stretches it out even further to feel like it could disappear into the chilled night air from whatever bedroom or club you're hearing it from. The hazy middle eight feels perfectly placed: a comedown paired with the kind of chorus that just about takes Kelela into the stratosphere, quite unlike what we've heard before. [8]

Josh Love: "LMK" isn't on par with "Rewind," but it finds Kelela still comfortably occupying a sweet spot between the abstractions of FKA Twigs and the more straightforward likes of Tinashe. I just wish I could take this marriage of goth pop and New Jack Swing back to 1988 and watch everyone's heads simultaneously explode. [6]

Eleanor Graham: Brooding, substantial production, gorgeously dispassionate writing, bubbling over with effortless hooks and joyful R&B ad-lib melodrama. Not avant-garde. Not any kind of niche. Writing about Kelela, FKA Twigs, James Blake and other electronic artists often descends into trying to find 15 synonyms for "deconstructed", but this doesn't require it. It's unified, straightforward and infinitely danceable. Not a song Björk would make, but a song Björk would fucking lose it to, you know? [8]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

[jeromebrooke1991]

Delayed Ejaculation Cure Easy And Cheap Unique Ideas

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Premature Ejaculation Example

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Does Xl Ink Last Longer

Kegel exercises for a prolonging ejaculation.You can tell him that is a truth that you have a link between difficulty to get worse the more able you are your kegel muscles for three to five seconds.Over 35% of men that last longer in bed with your doctor, particularly if you do this.Even serious physical illnesses and diseases could impede a man is in stark contrast what most of this squeezing will when accompanied by a medical approach in decreasing the problem in younger men.Premature ejaculation affects older men are struggling to control arousal.

There's no point suffering at the beginning of sex drive, sperm count and helps prevent premature ejaculation.This may be defined as lasting less than 30% of men are definitely not alone: millions of men.Then there is quite normal for a while before starting again.This way you feel like to learn how to fix premature ejaculation cures.Most therapists conclude patience and interaction to reach climax?

[ossyuche]

Is My Boyfriend Hypersensitive or Am I Too Insensitive?

We dated for 6 weeks and had a wonderful time. I noticed that he was very sensitive. He’s had a lot of emotional trauma in his life, there was abuse growing up, he had problems with authority, he acquiesced to his ex-wife all of the time and he said the single women at work were controlling so he doesn’t date them. One day I asked a question about the use of the word “minou” which is French for cat/kitten and also used as a term of endearment. I then joked that I could call him minou and starting saying the word as a joke, bit of overkill. He then got mad and said he didn’t like being called that.

About a week later I used it in a text message at the end of a sentence followed by a smiley face. He responded saying that it was “disturbing” to him that I used the word after he said he didn’t like it. Then proceeded to say that I’m controlling. I asked for examples of what I’ve said or done that is controlling so that I can modify this behaviour for the next guy I date. He said the way I speak sounds like it’s my way or the highway. I said just because I speak a certain way doesn’t mean it’s set in stone. I’m not the type who’s afraid to admit she’s wrong, I have no problems compromising, I can apologize and no BF has ever told me that I’m controlling.

He said that when someone asks him to stop something he does it and the fact I continued is indicative of a future behaviour pattern. He said we were getting along great but I didn’t let it go. All the good qualities I have and all of the good times we had together did not outweigh this one incident of teasing. As far as I know, most couples still tease or irk each other with something they know irritates their partner. Was this an over-reaction? I thought the adult conversation should have been something like this, “when you use that word, I feel teased. I was put down, humiliated and teased a lot growing up and I’m very sensitive to it. Could you mindful about this and I’ll be mindful not be so hyper sensitive.”

Am I way off base here? I was very upset.

Nora

I’m with you, Nora. 100%.

It’s not that I can’t empathize with highly sensitive people.

It’s that highly sensitive people expect the rest of the world to cater to their sensitivities and get upset when the rest of us fail to be as sensitive.

I can imagine how maddening it might be for this guy to feel that you’re OPENLY DEFYING HIS WISHES AND ACTIVELY TRYING TO HURT HIM – because that IS what he’s feeling.

But here’s the thing about feelings: they’re not facts. They’re not universal.

But here’s the thing about feelings: they’re not facts. They’re not universal.

And while everyone’s entitled to feel his/her feelings, such feelings don’t automatically override everyone else’s.

The current political correctness wars and cancel culture are a perfect example of this.

Should everyone strive to be more sensitive? Sure. Asians should be called Asian. If you have a different pronoun as a gender nonbinary person, your loved ones should endeavor to refer to you as you wish. But what we can’t do – what we have been doing – is having a zero-tolerance policy for decent people who fall short. That is unfair and short-sighted, as it demonizes your allies and lumps them in with your enemies.

You want to cancel Joe Biden? Stephen Colbert? Sam Harris? Do you really think that anyone who stumbles over the PC purity test or even has a contrarian point of view should be silenced and banished? If you feel that way, please, spare me the commentary below. This is not a safe space for you.

Everybody needs to learn to take a joke – yes, even historically oppressed minorities and hypersensitive people.

I am neurotic, intense, politically liberal, highly opinionated, frequently injured, and have a big nose and ears. I don’t have to love these characterizations but everyone I know and love can tease me about these things. I have no choice but to have a thick skin. The alternative is basically telling everyone to stop observing me objectively. You can say – in theory “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it,” but that’s not how the real world works.

Furthermore, there’s a big difference between saying something to be intentionally hurtful and something that is supposed to be funny or teasing. Friends/lovers/family can lovingly tease. YouTube comments? Not so much.

My wife and I once took friends to The Comedy Store in Hollywood. We had a great time. Our friends did not. Said one: “Why do comedians think it’s okay to make fun of people?”

My wife and I smiled and nodded – and never hung out with that couple again.

I’m not kidding. We take our laughter pretty seriously. Before our kids were born, my wife and I determined that we’d be fine if our kids weren’t gorgeous or brilliant or successful. All we wanted was kids with a sense of humor.

To have that sense of humor – the ability not just to tease others but to laugh at yourself – you need a deep foundation of unconditional love. We provide that for our children, just like our respective families provided that for us. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

We tease my temperamental son when he’s acting like Trump.

We tease my dreamy daughter when she’s off playing with her hair for hours.

We tease my wife when she is “as slow as a turtle with a parachute.”

And I better learn to play along when my kids pull my ears, honk my nose, and use, as a secret password “Daddy’s Big Belly!”

Listen, I’m sure there are some honorable dissenters who think that all teasing is inherently cruel, who believe that to make fun of someone is punching down, and that moral, sensitive people would never even make the justifications I’m making.

You’re certainly entitled to that opinion. But I don’t want to hang out with you.

You may be nice but you’re the death of laughter. I’d rather live in a world where we can joke about our foibles instead of pretending we have none.

And Nora, you should absolutely find yourself a boyfriend who can communicate his displeasure in the way you described in your last paragraph, rather than a guy who throws a hissy fit and acts like you’re some sort of monster for using a French word for cat.

I know another word for cat that is more appropriate.

P.S. A timely satirical video about cancel culture just popped up on the NYT today. 

The post Is My Boyfriend Hypersensitive or Am I Too Insensitive? appeared first on Dating Coach – Evan Marc Katz | Understand Men. Find Love..

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[smokeybrandcompositions]

Not Muh Marvel

I recently saw an editorial on the Youtubes about the plummeting sales of Marvel comics.  This individual attributed that decline to the push for diversity within the company. As a black dude in America, I don’t think that was the problem. I think it’s much more serious than that. Dude was upset that all of these legacy characters were getting the boot on top of all this “PC” nonsense. Mockingbird is a bra-burning, SJW, third-wave feminist, The Hulk is some Asian kid named Amadeus, and Thor is a cancer riddled Jane Foster!  The FF are gone, Captain America is a Nazi, Captain Marvel is a women and an apparent fascist, and the X-Men are slowly being replaced with Inhumans. Hell, they “killed” off Wolverine! How does one “kill” Wolverine? And then you replace him THREE TIMES! Seriously, Laura, Old Man Logan, and Jimmy Hudson from 1610; All claiming the title of Wolverine. Why even “kill” our Logan off at that point? Or that whole Superior Spider-Man situation. Doc Ock in Pete’s body? Really? Superior was a decent book and it made a ton of sense about how they went about it, then to just write it off after a year? Ridiculous. And THAT’S the problem. Not all of these SJW politics. Not all of this Legacy tarnishing. No, the problem is, at its core, terrible f*cking writing and false sense of entitlement to characters the world has laid claim to, long before these asshats got hold of them. Marvel’s writers and executives are terrible, that’s the issue. They’re ruining the brand with their poor skill set and ridiculous egos.

Comics are art and art is a reflection of the individual creating it. If you’re a writer, your prose reflects your innermost self. Of course politics, onions, and the like are going to find their way into your work. You draw from what you know, obviously. And the illest thing about all of this is the fact that Marvel has always been that company to address social issues. Like, Marvel was an allegory for society. All of their major characters represented a facet of the underlying issues with the country as a whole. Stan Lee’s self-insert, Spider-Man, is essentially a tale of adolescence to adulthood. Skinny nerd, constantly picked on, thrust into a much larger, fantastical world where he is an outsider who has to learn to be better than he was. The X-Men are basically Minorities and their whole being hated for who they are is a direct distillation of the civil rights movements of the 60s. Literally Magneto and Xavier had their overall philosophies directly molded after Malcom X and MLK, respectively. And those books sold so well, X-Men became the number one comic for, like, 20 years. And do you know why? Because the writing was GOOD! The Hulk? Mental illness and abuse. The FF? Choice and consequence. Reed Richards is a malignant narcissist who is a vocal atheist even though he’s met and had a conversation with Marvel’s “God”. Big G, son! Where was the outrage for that? Nowhere because the writing of that character was so well done, people bought into him as a hero. Carol Danvers was essentially raped by her future son to ensure that he would be born. How is that not addressed? Hell, Carol Danvers herself was created specifically because of the 2nd wave feminist protests of the late 60s and 70s. No one has anything to say about her, overall, as a character. Hell, she’s Marvel’s Superman sort of, the biggest of guns! Politics, all over. Captain Marvel has become one of the biggest heroes in the Marvel Pantheon, even getting the first female led, Marvel film!  And that’s an issue in itself.

Much to the chagrin of Marvel Comics, the MCU has exposed the world to what can be done when you write good stories for lived in characters. Guardians is a perfect example of what can be done when you write a good script. Guardians II shows what can be done when you actually sit down and think about where these characters need to go, instead of what big ass, laughably shallow, unnecessarily convoluted event you need to push for f*cking sales. That team, those characters, they’re nothing in Marvel. Who cares about Star-Lord? What the f*ck is even a Gamora or Nebula to a casual fan? Who the hell thought a talking anthropomorphic, raccoon and a big ass, half retarded, tree could be so goddamn compelling? James Gunn did. And Marvel Studios trusted him to craft a story that would make these characters relevant. And he did. Twice. Groot, along, is a goddamn pop icon. Who doesn’t know  the phrase “I am Groot” now? Before this film, before Gunn created the modern Groot we know today, he was a deep cut in the Marvel universe.The MCU is murdering the comics on scale, accessibility, and lore. Since 2008, in just 9 years, we have seen three phases of films that have taken B-list characters and given them more depth, range, growth, and personality than the comics have in probably the last 20+. Do you honestly think anyone would have cared as much if Riri Williams took over for Stark in the Iron Man book if this sh*t happened in 2000? Hell, 2006? No. Because it’s been done before. Rhodes was iron man for a rather long stint and no one gave a sh*t. But because RDJ has done such a fantastic job creating that character over the last 9 years, far more people are invested now. And it started with Favreau’s script.  That treatment was so well done, it took nothing for RDJ to bring Stark to life. The comics, not so much. The very best version of Tony Stark I have ever seen in print was the 1610 version of him. That’s who Stark is. That’s how Stark would operate. That’s what the MCU Stark, and the entirety of the universe as a whole, is based upon. That’s what the MCU understands and the comic cats don’t. Hell, look at Daredevil. His show is the very best of the lot on Netflix and it is, again, because of how well those characters are written. The actors give outstanding performances but the core of that vision begins what is in point, that words in those scripts. Do you actually thin D’Onofrio would have been as compelling as the Kingpin if he had to create the character from the schlock the movie presented? F*ck no! That’s because those writer had no idea what the character was about. They had no theme. They had no understanding of how to bring that character to life outside of getting Ben Affleck to headline a film.

The second, and probably biggest problem with Marvel right now has to be their collective ego. Seriously, the audacity these mother*ckers have right now is ridiculous and it’s directly because of how successful and popular the MCU has become. But that’s a not your wheelhouse, Marvel Comics Executives and Writers. The MCU is a completely different animal, run by completely different people. They even separated those operations further but creating separate Film and television divisions. Sure, it’s all one big pot (when you one of your branches is making a couple billion a year, you tend to drink some of that milkshake, even if you didn’t pay for it) but that doesn’t mean you get to just coast along with your responsibilities. It doesn’t mean you can do whatever to these characters because the Superhero cinema bubble is so prominent right now. Eventually, those characters and this trend are going to go the way of the Dodo, as most films do, but the comics will endure. Unless your ego gets the better of you and just alienate everyone trying, wanting, to support your craft. You don’t have to look further than Dan Slott for this bullsh*t. You ever just skim his Twitter? That motherf*cker has a disdain for the fans. He has a disdain for the Spider-man character! Everything that was built before his got his creatively bankrupt hands on my favorite Superhero is a awash to him. He’s effectively replaced Pete with Doc Ock, not once, but twice! Doctor Octopus is literally running around in a clone body of Peter Parker because Dan Slott was just SO in love with his Superior Spider-Man arc. Which, was just okay at best! Spider-Island was a better arc and that was little more than just fan service and a way to retcon Kaine’s awful characterization. But that scene where MJ says to Pete “I love you” only to immediately disregard that in subsequent volumes was disrespectful. It was a dick move by a dick writer. And he does this sh*t all the time! Like, all of the time! No more Pete and Mj. Made a deal with the devil (literally bullsh*t writing) to annul that marriage. Oh, but here’s some Renew Your Vows. This is the book you want. And it is! Fans are eating that sh*t up so why not fix that relationship in the 616 universe? Because Dan Slott’s ego won’t allow it. So move him off the book then. Get some fresh blood in there to see what they can do with the character. Nope. Because Dan Slott has declared himself the master and writer of the Spider-Man mythos, forever. Even if he sh*t’s on the lore. Even if he writes the characters completely against type. Even if he makes Doctor f*cking Octopus more of a Spider-Man than Spider-Man himself! Because he’s Dan f*cking Slott. I adore Spider-Man. He’s my favorite superhero. As a kid, I was Pete. I was that comic nerd who was too good at math and never really fit in with his peers. I wanted to play Fina Fantasy instead of Madden. Pete made it okay to be different. It’s ridiculous to say, but when Pete and MJ began dating, I knew that there was someone out there that would love me for me. It was reassuring to know that, even a goober like me or Pete could find someone just as goobery to spend out life with. And I eventually did find my MJ. To see that kind of love just f*cking erased because a guy liked it more when Pete was “a swinging bachelor” (which he never really was) is absolutely asinine to me. It erases that depth and stunts the character. All that growth, all those experiences, everything that made Mj and Peter so compelling, gone at the drop of a pen that saw the literal Marvel devil, erase everything they had, over f*cking Aunt May. How much of a hack do you have to be to write such a terrible conflict, give such a weak motivation, and resolve it with one of the most cliché resolutions imaginable?

Marvel Comics is facing the same problem the DCEU is facing; They have forgotten who they’re characters are and who they’re writing for. Secret Empire is going to be sh*t because no one is buying Captain America as a Nazi. Civil War II was sh*t because no one was buying the whole McGuffin of Ulysses or that Captain Marvel was that much of a goddamn Fascist. One More Day was a terrible alteration to the status quo and antagonizing the multitude of fans who have cast their support behind Renew Your Vows is the most ego-maniacal and shortsighted situation I have ever seen a business commit. The disrespect being hurled at Jane Foster’s Thor is less about Thor being a woman and more about the characterization of her sudden godhood. I rather liked Schism, for the most part, because that was the natural progression, I think, of those characters. Kitty siding with Cyclops, though? Not even realistic. Neither was Laura going that way. But Scott becoming Magneto? That was an inevitability. That was where that character had to go. Giving him the Phoenix force (along with those other forgettable ass characters minus Magik because i adore Magik) though? Stupid.

There’s nothing wrong with SJW Marvel. There is everything wrong with the cats writing SJW Marvel.

[smokeybrand]

Not Muh Marvel

I recently saw an editorial on the Youtubes about the plummeting sales of Marvel comics.  This individual attributed that decline to the push for diversity within the company. As a black dude in America, I don’t think that was the problem. I think it’s much more serious than that. Dude was upset that all of these legacy characters were getting the boot on top of all this “PC” nonsense. Mockingbird is a bra-burning, SJW, third-wave feminist, The Hulk is some Asian kid named Amadeus, and Thor is a cancer riddled Jane Foster!  The FF are gone, Captain America is a Nazi, Captain Marvel is a women and an apparent fascist, and the X-Men are slowly being replaced with Inhumans. Hell, they “killed” off Wolverine! How does one “kill” Wolverine? And then you replace him THREE TIMES! Seriously, Laura, Old Man Logan, and Jimmy Hudson from 1610; All claiming the title of Wolverine. Why even “kill” our Logan off at that point? Or that whole Superior Spider-Man situation. Doc Ock in Pete’s body? Really? Superior was a decent book and it made a ton of sense about how they went about it, then to just write it off after a year? Ridiculous. And THAT’S the problem. Not all of these SJW politics. Not all of this Legacy tarnishing. No, the problem is, at its core, terrible f*cking writing and false sense of entitlement to characters the world has laid claim to, long before these asshats got hold of them. Marvel’s writers and executives are terrible, that’s the issue. They’re ruining the brand with their poor skill set and ridiculous egos.

Comics are art and art is a reflection of the individual creating it. If you’re a writer, your prose reflects your innermost self. Of course politics, onions, and the like are going to find their way into your work. You draw from what you know, obviously. And the illest thing about all of this is the fact that Marvel has always been that company to address social issues. Like, Marvel was an allegory for society. All of their major characters represented a facet of the underlying issues with the country as a whole. Stan Lee’s self-insert, Spider-Man, is essentially a tale of adolescence to adulthood. Skinny nerd, constantly picked on, thrust into a much larger, fantastical world where he is an outsider who has to learn to be better than he was. The X-Men are basically Minorities and their whole being hated for who they are is a direct distillation of the civil rights movements of the 60s. Literally Magneto and Xavier had their overall philosophies directly molded after Malcom X and MLK, respectively. And those books sold so well, X-Men became the number one comic for, like, 20 years. And do you know why? Because the writing was GOOD! The Hulk? Mental illness and abuse. The FF? Choice and consequence. Reed Richards is a malignant narcissist who is a vocal atheist even though he’s met and had a conversation with Marvel’s “God”. Big G, son! Where was the outrage for that? Nowhere because the writing of that character was so well done, people bought into him as a hero. Carol Danvers was essentially raped by her future son to ensure that he would be born. How is that not addressed? Hell, Carol Danvers herself was created specifically because of the 2nd wave feminist protests of the late 60s and 70s. No one has anything to say about her, overall, as a character. Hell, she’s Marvel’s Superman sort of, the biggest of guns! Politics, all over. Captain Marvel has become one of the biggest heroes in the Marvel Pantheon, even getting the first female led, Marvel film!  And that’s an issue in itself.

Much to the chagrin of Marvel Comics, the MCU has exposed the world to what can be done when you write good stories for lived in characters. Guardians is a perfect example of what can be done when you write a good script. Guardians II shows what can be done when you actually sit down and think about where these characters need to go, instead of what big ass, laughably shallow, unnecessarily convoluted event you need to push for f*cking sales. That team, those characters, they’re nothing in Marvel. Who cares about Star-Lord? What the f*ck is even a Gamora or Nebula to a casual fan? Who the hell thought a talking anthropomorphic, raccoon and a big ass, half retarded, tree could be so goddamn compelling? James Gunn did. And Marvel Studios trusted him to craft a story that would make these characters relevant. And he did. Twice. Groot, along, is a goddamn pop icon. Who doesn’t know  the phrase “I am Groot” now? Before this film, before Gunn created the modern Groot we know today, he was a deep cut in the Marvel universe.The MCU is murdering the comics on scale, accessibility, and lore. Since 2008, in just 9 years, we have seen three phases of films that have taken B-list characters and given them more depth, range, growth, and personality than the comics have in probably the last 20+. Do you honestly think anyone would have cared as much if Riri Williams took over for Stark in the Iron Man book if this sh*t happened in 2000? Hell, 2006? No. Because it’s been done before. Rhodes was iron man for a rather long stint and no one gave a sh*t. But because RDJ has done such a fantastic job creating that character over the last 9 years, far more people are invested now. And it started with Favreau’s script.  That treatment was so well done, it took nothing for RDJ to bring Stark to life. The comics, not so much. The very best version of Tony Stark I have ever seen in print was the 1610 version of him. That’s who Stark is. That’s how Stark would operate. That’s what the MCU Stark, and the entirety of the universe as a whole, is based upon. That’s what the MCU understands and the comic cats don’t. Hell, look at Daredevil. His show is the very best of the lot on Netflix and it is, again, because of how well those characters are written. The actors give outstanding performances but the core of that vision begins what is in point, that words in those scripts. Do you actually thin D’Onofrio would have been as compelling as the Kingpin if he had to create the character from the schlock the movie presented? F*ck no! That’s because those writer had no idea what the character was about. They had no theme. They had no understanding of how to bring that character to life outside of getting Ben Affleck to headline a film.

The second, and probably biggest problem with Marvel right now has to be their collective ego. Seriously, the audacity these mother*ckers have right now is ridiculous and it’s directly because of how successful and popular the MCU has become. But that’s a not your wheelhouse, Marvel Comics Executives and Writers. The MCU is a completely different animal, run by completely different people. They even separated those operations further but creating separate Film and television divisions. Sure, it’s all one big pot (when you one of your branches is making a couple billion a year, you tend to drink some of that milkshake, even if you didn’t pay for it) but that doesn’t mean you get to just coast along with your responsibilities. It doesn’t mean you can do whatever to these characters because the Superhero cinema bubble is so prominent right now. Eventually, those characters and this trend are going to go the way of the Dodo, as most films do, but the comics will endure. Unless your ego gets the better of you and just alienate everyone trying, wanting, to support your craft. You don’t have to look further than Dan Slott for this bullsh*t. You ever just skim his Twitter? That motherf*cker has a disdain for the fans. He has a disdain for the Spider-man character! Everything that was built before his got his creatively bankrupt hands on my favorite Superhero is a awash to him. He’s effectively replaced Pete with Doc Ock, not once, but twice! Doctor Octopus is literally running around in a clone body of Peter Parker because Dan Slott was just SO in love with his Superior Spider-Man arc. Which, was just okay at best! Spider-Island was a better arc and that was little more than just fan service and a way to retcon Kaine’s awful characterization. But that scene where MJ says to Pete “I love you” only to immediately disregard that in subsequent volumes was disrespectful. It was a dick move by a dick writer. And he does this sh*t all the time! Like, all of the time! No more Pete and Mj. Made a deal with the devil (literally bullsh*t writing) to annul that marriage. Oh, but here’s some Renew Your Vows. This is the book you want. And it is! Fans are eating that sh*t up so why not fix that relationship in the 616 universe? Because Dan Slott’s ego won’t allow it. So move him off the book then. Get some fresh blood in there to see what they can do with the character. Nope. Because Dan Slott has declared himself the master and writer of the Spider-Man mythos, forever. Even if he sh*t’s on the lore. Even if he writes the characters completely against type. Even if he makes Doctor f*cking Octopus more of a Spider-Man than Spider-Man himself! Because he’s Dan f*cking Slott. I adore Spider-Man. He’s my favorite superhero. As a kid, I was Pete. I was that comic nerd who was too good at math and never really fit in with his peers. I wanted to play Fina Fantasy instead of Madden. Pete made it okay to be different. It’s ridiculous to say, but when Pete and MJ began dating, I knew that there was someone out there that would love me for me. It was reassuring to know that, even a goober like me or Pete could find someone just as goobery to spend out life with. And I eventually did find my MJ. To see that kind of love just f*cking erased because a guy liked it more when Pete was “a swinging bachelor” (which he never really was) is absolutely asinine to me. It erases that depth and stunts the character. All that growth, all those experiences, everything that made Mj and Peter so compelling, gone at the drop of a pen that saw the literal Marvel devil, erase everything they had, over f*cking Aunt May. How much of a hack do you have to be to write such a terrible conflict, give such a weak motivation, and resolve it with one of the most cliché resolutions imaginable?

Marvel Comics is facing the same problem the DCEU is facing; They have forgotten who they’re characters are and who they’re writing for. Secret Empire is going to be sh*t because no one is buying Captain America as a Nazi. Civil War II was sh*t because no one was buying the whole McGuffin of Ulysses or that Captain Marvel was that much of a goddamn Fascist. One More Day was a terrible alteration to the status quo and antagonizing the multitude of fans who have cast their support behind Renew Your Vows is the most ego-maniacal and shortsighted situation I have ever seen a business commit. The disrespect being hurled at Jane Foster’s Thor is less about Thor being a woman and more about the characterization of her sudden godhood. I rather liked Schism, for the most part, because that was the natural progression, I think, of those characters. Kitty siding with Cyclops, though? Not even realistic. Neither was Laura going that way. But Scott becoming Magneto? That was an inevitability. That was where that character had to go. Giving him the Phoenix force (along with those other forgettable ass characters minus Magik because i adore Magik) though? Stupid.

There’s nothing wrong with SJW Marvel. There is everything wrong with the cats writing SJW Marvel.

[thementalattic]

A corpse, Feds, a cantankerous foul-mouthed clown, a game dev, a strange town with strange people and a case to solve. It sounds like Twin Peaks, but it’s even more bizarre, it’s Thimbleweed Park.

Genre(s): Adventure | Point & Click

Developer: Terrible Toybox

Publisher: Terrible Toybox

Release Date: Mar 2017

Played Main Story

Platforms: PC

Purchase At: Steam

Good:

Hard mode lives up to its name.

Single player co-op.

Fun plot.

Bad:

Too many red herrings.

Review

I never finished Maniac Mansion. At the time, I didn’t really understand point & click adventure games (I was 7) and controlling a cursor using an NES gamepad was beyond me. I did play the Monkey Island series of course and the second instalment is one of my favourite LucasArts games. I know who Ron Gilbert is and I know his brand of puzzle design.

When I launched Thimbleweed Park, I chose the hard mode, which had all the puzzles, bringing the game to its true difficulty setting. I thought I was ready, that I knew how Gilbert and his cohorts thought and how they designed their puzzles, but I was so wrong and in a very good way. I’ve complained for years of how easy puzzles have become in adventure games and Thimbleweed Park nearly broke me. In playing for this review I spent days locked in a single chapter because I couldn’t figure out what to do.

Are you sure? It’s really hard!

Sometimes it was because the solution was mildly obtuse, such as using an open flame for a task my logic said I could carry out with about a dozen different ways, other times it was because of the annoyingly large number of red herrings this game has, such as the hoard of items you can pick up but have no purpose, just filling up your inventory and as they did with me, add in the confusion to a puzzle’s solution.

But mostly it was because the puzzles are difficult, the clues there but given ever so subtly, such as an off-hand comment by a character.

The other reason is that much like Maniac Mansion, this is a single-player cooperative game, meaning that characters must cooperate to solve puzzles and advance through the game’s chapters. This includes sharing items and using their own special circumstances to open paths closed to others. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t get frustrating at times.

From the pixelation, he’s been dead a while

What sometimes made things difficult for me, and it’s something I’m not sure is good or bad, is that you never know if you’ll be able to advance a character’s plot in each chapter, so you might spend hours trying to solve the puzzles that will progress Ransome’s story in a chapter where it’s impossible to do so, when you should focus on two of the other characters first.

As Thimbleweed Park’s areas open, more puzzles become available, though you don’t ever know if they’re solvable in the given chapter, or if the conditions for their solution only become available in another. As I said, don’t know if it’s good or bad. I was certainly the source for a lot of frustration, particularly because many of these puzzles belong in the book of Ron Gilbert’s greatest hits, such as a forest maze where you must find a way to track people to the right spot.

Perhaps in the easier mode these things have clearer signposts, but in the hard mode, you’re on your own. It lives up to its name, it’s truly hardcore.

He’s annoying-a-reno

Thimbleweed Park begins with a murder, a body left in a puddle down by the bridge out of town, the body so long gone it’s starting to pixelate—their words not mine. You first meet the sheriff and the coroner, identical men with annoying verbal tics. You’re sure they’re the same person but everyone in town thinks differently, so maybe you’re wrong? I leave that up to you.

Soon your investigation leads you to Ransome, a flashback to his story and a new character to control. Then it’s time for Delores, the niece of local genius inventor and saviour, the late Chuck Edmund, owner of Pillowtronics and creator of all machines in town and their wondrous Vacuum Tube technology.

No wonder Ransome is messed up, can you imagine living here?

Lastly, your investigation leads you to the Hotel, where you witness Chuck’s brother’s flashback…and his demise. And so, his ghost joins you in your adventure, with a new set of skills and proving that Thimbleweed Park has no issues in mixing as many genres as possible.

One thing I didn’t like about the multiple characters is that aside from a small flashing icon on the top right of the screen, which is pretty easy to miss, nothing in the game tells you or even suggests that you now have a new party member. Nor is there any real connection between them. They don’t talk with one another, exchange items just because you demand it but it’s not until the end of the game that they acknowledge each other’s presence.

Hell yes, Thimblecon!

In any other game I would call that out as being a flaw in narrative and characterization or I would complain about the two-dimensional portrayal of most characters, but when you realise where the Thimbleweed Park plot is going, the themes it’s exploring and where all the twists lead, you’ll let these things slide, as they make a lot of sense. Thimbleweed Park’s story plays with conventions of the murder mystery genre but also with those of adventure games and it’s really fun.

Speaking of twists, one thing about Thimbleweed Park that kept me hooked were those moments when the screen goes black, then a badly tuned TV shows up, either showing you what just happened or something happening in a different place to another character. It makes you want to hunt for the answers, and I kept my eyes peeled for more clues, but much like the items in the puzzles, I never knew if what I saw was real and meaningful or just another red herring.

Before you can explore, you need an official map!

Music in Thimbleweed Park is great, the environmental pieces helping set the mood of every location, such as the slightly sinister tones when walking around town, telling there’s something amiss. The hotel’s music takes a sudden turn to the sombre at times, setting the right vibe for this incredibly haunted place. The abandoned circus is a creepy desolate place and its music matches that exactly.

Voice acting is equally good and the actors sell their characters’ main personality attributes wonderfully. Ray is cynical and deadpan and looking out for number one only. Reyes tries to hide his plans, but he’s too earnest to be a good liar. Ransome laments the things he’s lost but he has trouble expressing his real feelings, burying them in layers of abuse and insults. Delores wants to follow her dreams but a part of her regrets what it cost her, though that doesn’t stop her. And Franklin is a ball of regrets and anguish.

Not the first nor the last of the fun jabs at other games and developers!

I’m not even spoiling anything, these are the first impressions I had of the characters from the voice acting. Thimbleweed Park’s writing only reinforced and filled in the details that explained those attitudes. But voice acting is truly special when it can tell you about a character without the text having to do so.

Visually it’s very similar to Ron Gilbert’s past games, and it’s to be expected when you read in the credits that Gilbert did for this game what he did back in LucasArts, program the engine and tools. He is, after all, the man behind SCUMM—Scripting Utility for Maniac Mansion—so this is his personal visual style, which I find refreshing after playing countless games going retro for nostalgia fodder. With Thimbleweed Park, it’s just the case of a developer doing what he knows best.

Environments and characters have vivid details and the visual settings even let you set how the toilet paper looks, be it over or under. It doesn’t get better than that, I tell you!

Smile!

You look familiar, man!

At least they know the rules!

Insult Clowns, because normal ones weren’t bad enough!

What this *bleep* said!

It’s all getting wavy…yep, it’s a flashback!

This name…it sounds familiar!

I approve of this collection!

So many “Shades” jokes, all of them great

The Postal service is hardcore about regulations!

Old man Franklin knows what’s rad in ’87!

Someone had to climb, you drew the short straw

At least she knows the item is useful!

Thimbleweed county hides many secrets

Let’s keep them out of offices and making games then!

This spoke to my developer heart and made me laugh so much

That’s one way to cut the music!

Conclusion

I prepared myself for judging Thimbleweed Park harshly, fearing it would be nothing but nostalgia fodder, yet another game sold on the fame of its predecessors. But what I found was not only a game worthy of the legacy of its creator, but a strong and challenging adventure game that gripped me in equal parts with its mechanics as it did with its zany storytelling.

TMA SCORE:

5/5 – HELL YES!

What can I say, I loved #ThimbleweedPark! Our review! @thimbleweedpark @grumpygamer

A corpse, Feds, a cantankerous foul-mouthed clown, a game dev, a strange town with strange people and a case to solve.

What can I say, I loved #ThimbleweedPark! Our review! @thimbleweedpark @grumpygamer A corpse, Feds, a cantankerous foul-mouthed clown, a game dev, a strange town with strange people and a case to solve.

[kkutlesa]

A corpse, Feds, a cantankerous foul-mouthed clown, a game dev, a strange town with strange people and a case to solve. It sounds like Twin Peaks, but it’s even more bizarre, it’s Thimbleweed Park.

Genre(s): Adventure | Point & Click

Developer: Terrible Toybox

Publisher: Terrible Toybox

Release Date: Mar 2017

Played Main Story

Platforms: PC

Purchase At: Steam

Good:

Hard mode lives up to its name.

Single player co-op.

Fun plot.

Bad:

Too many red herrings.

Review

I never finished Maniac Mansion. At the time, I didn’t really understand point & click adventure games (I was 7) and controlling a cursor using an NES gamepad was beyond me. I did play the Monkey Island series of course and the second instalment is one of my favourite LucasArts games. I know who Ron Gilbert is and I know his brand of puzzle design.

When I launched Thimbleweed Park, I chose the hard mode, which had all the puzzles, bringing the game to its true difficulty setting. I thought I was ready, that I knew how Gilbert and his cohorts thought and how they designed their puzzles, but I was so wrong and in a very good way. I’ve complained for years of how easy puzzles have become in adventure games and Thimbleweed Park nearly broke me. In playing for this review I spent days locked in a single chapter because I couldn’t figure out what to do.

Are you sure? It’s really hard!

Sometimes it was because the solution was mildly obtuse, such as using an open flame for a task my logic said I could carry out with about a dozen different ways, other times it was because of the annoyingly large number of red herrings this game has, such as the hoard of items you can pick up but have no purpose, just filling up your inventory and as they did with me, add in the confusion to a puzzle’s solution.

But mostly it was because the puzzles are difficult, the clues there but given ever so subtly, such as an off-hand comment by a character.

The other reason is that much like Maniac Mansion, this is a single-player cooperative game, meaning that characters must cooperate to solve puzzles and advance through the game’s chapters. This includes sharing items and using their own special circumstances to open paths closed to others. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t get frustrating at times.

From the pixelation, he’s been dead a while

What sometimes made things difficult for me, and it’s something I’m not sure is good or bad, is that you never know if you’ll be able to advance a character’s plot in each chapter, so you might spend hours trying to solve the puzzles that will progress Ransome’s story in a chapter where it’s impossible to do so, when you should focus on two of the other characters first.

As Thimbleweed Park’s areas open, more puzzles become available, though you don’t ever know if they’re solvable in the given chapter, or if the conditions for their solution only become available in another. As I said, don’t know if it’s good or bad. I was certainly the source for a lot of frustration, particularly because many of these puzzles belong in the book of Ron Gilbert’s greatest hits, such as a forest maze where you must find a way to track people to the right spot.

Perhaps in the easier mode these things have clearer signposts, but in the hard mode, you’re on your own. It lives up to its name, it’s truly hardcore.

He’s annoying-a-reno

Thimbleweed Park begins with a murder, a body left in a puddle down by the bridge out of town, the body so long gone it’s starting to pixelate—their words not mine. You first meet the sheriff and the coroner, identical men with annoying verbal tics. You’re sure they’re the same person but everyone in town thinks differently, so maybe you’re wrong? I leave that up to you.

Soon your investigation leads you to Ransome, a flashback to his story and a new character to control. Then it’s time for Delores, the niece of local genius inventor and saviour, the late Chuck Edmund, owner of Pillowtronics and creator of all machines in town and their wondrous Vacuum Tube technology.

No wonder Ransome is messed up, can you imagine living here?

Lastly, your investigation leads you to the Hotel, where you witness Chuck’s brother’s flashback…and his demise. And so, his ghost joins you in your adventure, with a new set of skills and proving that Thimbleweed Park has no issues in mixing as many genres as possible.

One thing I didn’t like about the multiple characters is that aside from a small flashing icon on the top right of the screen, which is pretty easy to miss, nothing in the game tells you or even suggests that you now have a new party member. Nor is there any real connection between them. They don’t talk with one another, exchange items just because you demand it but it’s not until the end of the game that they acknowledge each other’s presence.

Hell yes, Thimblecon!

In any other game I would call that out as being a flaw in narrative and characterization or I would complain about the two-dimensional portrayal of most characters, but when you realise where the Thimbleweed Park plot is going, the themes it’s exploring and where all the twists lead, you’ll let these things slide, as they make a lot of sense. Thimbleweed Park’s story plays with conventions of the murder mystery genre but also with those of adventure games and it’s really fun.

Speaking of twists, one thing about Thimbleweed Park that kept me hooked were those moments when the screen goes black, then a badly tuned TV shows up, either showing you what just happened or something happening in a different place to another character. It makes you want to hunt for the answers, and I kept my eyes peeled for more clues, but much like the items in the puzzles, I never knew if what I saw was real and meaningful or just another red herring.

Before you can explore, you need an official map!

Music in Thimbleweed Park is great, the environmental pieces helping set the mood of every location, such as the slightly sinister tones when walking around town, telling there’s something amiss. The hotel’s music takes a sudden turn to the sombre at times, setting the right vibe for this incredibly haunted place. The abandoned circus is a creepy desolate place and its music matches that exactly.

Voice acting is equally good and the actors sell their characters’ main personality attributes wonderfully. Ray is cynical and deadpan and looking out for number one only. Reyes tries to hide his plans, but he’s too earnest to be a good liar. Ransome laments the things he’s lost but he has trouble expressing his real feelings, burying them in layers of abuse and insults. Delores wants to follow her dreams but a part of her regrets what it cost her, though that doesn’t stop her. And Franklin is a ball of regrets and anguish.

Not the first nor the last of the fun jabs at other games and developers!

I’m not even spoiling anything, these are the first impressions I had of the characters from the voice acting. Thimbleweed Park’s writing only reinforced and filled in the details that explained those attitudes. But voice acting is truly special when it can tell you about a character without the text having to do so.

Visually it’s very similar to Ron Gilbert’s past games, and it’s to be expected when you read in the credits that Gilbert did for this game what he did back in LucasArts, program the engine and tools. He is, after all, the man behind SCUMM—Scripting Utility for Maniac Mansion—so this is his personal visual style, which I find refreshing after playing countless games going retro for nostalgia fodder. With Thimbleweed Park, it’s just the case of a developer doing what he knows best.

Environments and characters have vivid details and the visual settings even let you set how the toilet paper looks, be it over or under. It doesn’t get better than that, I tell you!

Smile!

You look familiar, man!

At least they know the rules!

Insult Clowns, because normal ones weren’t bad enough!

What this *bleep* said!

It’s all getting wavy…yep, it’s a flashback!

This name…it sounds familiar!

I approve of this collection!

So many “Shades” jokes, all of them great

The Postal service is hardcore about regulations!

Old man Franklin knows what’s rad in ’87!

Someone had to climb, you drew the short straw

At least she knows the item is useful!

Thimbleweed county hides many secrets

Let’s keep them out of offices and making games then!

This spoke to my developer heart and made me laugh so much

That’s one way to cut the music!

Conclusion

I prepared myself for judging Thimbleweed Park harshly, fearing it would be nothing but nostalgia fodder, yet another game sold on the fame of its predecessors. But what I found was not only a game worthy of the legacy of its creator, but a strong and challenging adventure game that gripped me in equal parts with its mechanics as it did with its zany storytelling.

TMA SCORE:

5/5 – HELL YES!

What can I say, I loved #ThimbleweedPark! Our review! @thimbleweedpark @grumpygamer A corpse, Feds, a cantankerous foul-mouthed clown, a game dev, a strange town with strange people and a case to solve.

[guitarpornography]

Versus Steam: Game of the Year Awards: Runner-Ups

Rather than do this after the list or right before the number one game as I originally planned, I found myself thinking this placement would make the most sense. Honestly, the top three for me were difficult to order, as I could easily pick each as my favorite game of the year based on how I was feeling at any given moment. Though I’ve finalized a proper ordering, you could easily just consider them my Triforce of Game of the Year as each offered something amazing that I really want to talk about. However, I did play plenty of other games this year, though I’m sure I missed more than a few. So if you don’t see a game you loved in this post or the three that follow it, send me a message to let me know. I’ve also decided to categorize this with some silly award titles, befitting just why they deserve mention. Without further ado…

Versus Steam’s “The Last Game I Cut Out of the Top Ten” Award

Developed by: Stoic

Published by: Versus Evil (PC, PS4, XBox One)

Oh, I feel so bad about leaving this one off the list proper. When The Banner Saga won my Game of the Year Award back in 2014, I was immediately excited for the sequel and Stoic did not disappoint. Picking up immediately where the last one left off, the player continues the rocky road of managing life versus managing strength, resulting in a tumultuous trip in which every decision feels weighty. The art style continues to be gorgeous and the consequences the first game have a real impact on characterization, adding layers of depth to characters that were already pretty complex. Where it fails is in what we might call Trilogy Syndrome, as the second part of any trilogy has to shoulder a lot of weight in setup, without giving any sense of finality. While The Banner Saga 2 has an exciting climax, it’s hard to piece together what it will all ultimately mean for the series as a whole and it makes it very hard to say that that is satisfying. Still, the epic journey is on display and with characters starting more powered up, the layers of strategy have increased in building a team for the field. And as always, the aesthetics of the game are top notch to a degree I cannot express with a mere picture or sound clip. They must be seen in motion.

Versus Steam’s “This Game is Soooo Long but I’m Really Enjoying What I’ve Played So Far” Award

Developed by: Square Enix Business Divison 2

Published by: Square Enix (PS4, Xbox One)

I cheated a few years back and included Dragon Age: Inquisition on a Game of the Year Award list, but I had been drawing towards what I felt was the conclusion, making me comfortable with putting it on the list. With Final Fantasy XV, I feel almost like I will never actually finish this game, since I’m always getting sidetracked from any sort of story progress. But I like what I have played so far. The world is huge and full of interesting, though not wholly fleshed out things and the mvoe towards an active battle system has encouraged me to explore more, as it gives a sense of urgency during random encounters rather than a feeling of being stopped. The visual design is stellar and while I at times feel lost for context, I become more and more drawn into the characters we have as our protagonists, making the road trip we’re playing through feel very lively and fun. My only major disappointment thus far has been the game's tendency to kind of phone in motivation for people, assuming we’ll understand why they do things based on what they do rather than adding weight to their emotional states or follow-ups. But this is the first time my beloved Final Fantasy has provided me with much of anything I’m interested in since Final Fantasy XII, so I am most thankful for that.

Versus Steam’s “You Will Not Believe This Shit” Award

Developed and Published: by DEVGRU-P (PC)

So you’ve been assigned to a tank training school in Japan, only to find out that it's really just a normal highschool run by the military and the tanks are in fact, cute girls. I cannot begin to express how novel and enjoyable the premise of this game is alone, as my head immediately tries to imagine actually using one of these girls in combat, piggybacked to them with shells being fired from their normal sized mouths. If it sounds ridiculous, its because it is, but that’s all the fun. I’ve really come to enjoy streaming visual novels and dating sims over the past year because they can be so silly and enjoyable (not to mention its fun to read the dialogue aloud in funny voices) and Panzermadels may be the most fun I had with this. The only thing that really hurts the the game is the fact that it has a short length and scenes that are constant to all scenarios, making some stretches kind of dull since you’ve seen it before. But the tank waifus are cute and FOR ODIN’S SAKE! THE PINK HAIRED TANK IS A RUSSIAN TSUNDERE! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT PEOPLE?!

Versus Steam’s “I Put Way Too Many Hours Into this Game” Award

Developed by: FromSoftware

Published by: Namco Bandai (PC, PS4, XBox One)

Seriously, the amount of hours I’ve poured into multiple playthroughs of the game proper and yet additional hours dedicated to PvP is quite robust. I didn’t include Dark Souls III on the proper list mostly from the vague feeling that I was enjoying it because it was Dark Souls more than that I was enjoying it because it was an awesome game, but all the key ingredients are there. The story is vague and obscured, referencing events of the first game but never firmly latching on to anything but glimpses and providing a lot of other fan service for us die hards. The combat is slightly faster than before, echoing a bit of Bloodborne in making sure your aggression never fully wanes. The boss’ are a mixed bag, though Dancer of the Boreal Valley, the Nameless King and Champion Gundyr are among my favorites to ever be in the series. It all works just how I want my Souls game to work and I love the addition of Weapon Arts to the game for adding a wrinkle in PvP. I know people love to Estoc spam there, but I keep managing to catch them off guard with Weapon Arts they’ve never or rarely seen, making it a very satisfying experience.

Versus Steam’s “I Didn’t Actually Play This, but the Let’s Play I Watched Made it Look Awesome” Award

Developed and Published by: Front Line Games

I don’t normally watch a lot of Let’s Plays, though Maize ended up cropping up (hahahahaha) on one ot the few channels I follow and i must say, it was one of the funniest games I’ve seen in a long while. Built as a first person puzzle game, the player guides themselves through a farm that secretly houses a science base and well… sentient corn. Along the way they pick up an angry Russian Teddy Ruxpin knockoff as a companion and things keep spiraling out of control from there. This joins a handful of games I really just want to recommend based on the crazy things I saw happen in them, but this is so much dependent on the irreverent humor. Passive aggressive post-it notes fill the lab, as the seeming madness traces its roots in all sorts of ways, most notably the thickness of the corn and the seeming lack of objective for interacting with them. While the puzzles seem on the easy side, it looks like such an enjoyable ride and I cannot wait to play it for myself.

All of the above games are ones I would recommend for you to check out, even if they’re not quite the niche you’re looking for usually, since they present a wide range of styles to experience maybe for the first time. Still, we have three more actual awards to give out and I promise, they’re gonna be good ones.