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#the 3ds was really my gateway into art

howlingday · 6 months

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My idea for a potential DEATH BATTLE! #5

2023, October 18, 19, 20, 27

Link to the fourth post: https://www.tumblr.com/donotmindme1/731349657571278848/my-idea-for-a-potential-death-battle-4-2023?source=share

Master list: https://www.tumblr.com/donotmindme1/731003687600881664/mind-what-you-do?source=share

Korra vs Delsin Rowe (Avatar vs inFamous)

They're the second legends in line!

Fighter 1: Korra, the continuing spirit of the Avatar cycle.

Fighter 2: Delsin Rowe, the accomplishing Akomish Second Son.

Wiz: Many of us aspire to live up and uphold the legacies of our predecessors.

*insert clips of Miles Morales & Peter Parker, Deku & All Might, Ruby Rose & Summer Rose, Batman & his Robins*

Boomstick: However, just because they're tough acts to follow up shouldn't discourage you from making your own path. He's Wiz and I'm Boomstick.

Wiz: And it's our job to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find out who would win... a Death Battle.

PREFACE: I am wasting my time writing this. I should be working on an important project. I wanted to write an idea that suits the chilly weather of autumn to serve as a nice gateway into other MUs. I played inFamous Second Son during the last three months of 2021 and I fell in love with the gameplay. Being able to scale the buildings of Seattle with Conduit powers, doing drug busts, and saving innocent people really gave me a sense of power. I am sure I am not the only one who was disappointed when Season 8 announced Korra vs Storm due to how unbalanced the powers are between the two (however, I enjoyed the episode, mainly Storm doing the Moses and Wheather the Elements). So, now that Cole made his debut on the show, we can finally let Delsin have his time in the spotlight. Besides, I think that Korra vs Delsin is a more fitting MU, and you'll see why later on. Also, I will mainly be using True Hero Delsin (Good Karma) as it is the canon ending. I'll consider Infamous Delsin (Bad Karma) separately as it does affect the fight.

WHY:

Connections:

1. Both carry on the legacy of a famous protagonist who was able to control multiple forms of matter (Aang and Cole McGrath).

2. Both are capable of manipulating at least 4 different forms of matter (Korra has Earth, Fire, Air, and Water; Delsin has Smoke, Neon, Video, and Concrete) due to a physiological trait (Korra has the spirit of the Avatar, allowing her chi to pass through all of her body better than the rest and manipulate the elements; Delsin has a Conduit gene that lets him obtain the abilities of other Conduits upon extensive contact and draining Core Relays).

3. Both started their journeys being childish and/or immature but through their actions and strife, rose above and became better people and consequently, better idols and saviors.

Personal reasons: I wanted this to be Korra's MU during Season 8, but alas, it was not to be. More than anything, I want them to react to each other's powers. Delsin would ask Korra if her conduit gene is like his but better since she doesn't need to absorb matter to change her powers and Korea asks about how the heck is he manipulating light and becoming invisible. After all, conduit powers and bending are different in their manifestation, how they manipulate the environment, and more importantly, how they interact with each other.

THE FIGHT:

Art and animation: The animation will most likely be 2D like all Avatar fights, but the dream is to have it be a 3D battle with fluid movement and lots of different camera angles. The animation from Korra vs Storm is good for Korra, so reusing it would benefit her, but Delsin tends to fight from afar using his projectiles. While he does have dashes, his chain, Comet Drop, and some support abilities, Delsin is mainly a ranged fighter, and the 3D team works best with characters that have a wide assortment of abilities, especially ones used in midair or while running. However, to be able to get the most out of both worlds, the fight is best in 2D, and it's not like Cole was limited to ranged combat in his fight. It could really go either way and still be great regardless, and that's honestly the best part. I really want this fight to be a finale so it could be a long fight with lots of pretty stuff to gawk at, especially since Spiritbending, Neon, and Video allow for flashy maneuvers.

Possible setup:

In a metropolitan area, the Second Son is doing stencil art dedicated to his dear brother. "Man, I miss you, Reggie."

"Hey! You can't paint the walls of this city!" Delsin sighs. He misses his brother, but not his overly bureaucratic attitude. As he turns around and puts down the spray paint, he sees Korra who is looking a little stern. "Hey, there. Isn't art a form of self-expression? I'm building a masterpiece here, and it'll be my gift to the world."

"That's fair, but you're painting on public property. Unless you have a permit to do so, step away from graffiti." Korra was a little miffed. The graffiti looked cool, and it looked to be a dedication to a departed soul, but duty calls. Besides, it's just graffiti, not a murder or kidnapping. If he refuses, however, she can have her way.

"Who are you, the fun police? I'm not hurting anyone." It's like dear Reggie was still with him: being a pain and not letting him have his fun.

Korra smirked. "Fun? Oh, I'll show you fun." She got into a fighting stance. Hey, if you're having fun on the job, good for you, right? It's been a boring day of patrolling, so she's itching for entertainment.

"Oh."

FIGHT! :

1. As it turns out, she was nothing like Reggie. Korra firebends at Deals and catches him off guard. However, Delsin absorbs the smoke, unharmed. This causes Korra to look puzzled. "Wait, how did he- He barely moved." She then attempts to earthbend, summoning rising pillars, but Delsin smoke dashes away. "How did you do that?" Korra had never seen someone turn into smoke before. Maybe she should ask him how to do that.

2. "I'm a conduit. I mean, aren't you one?" Delsin starts to use Smoke Shot as he moves around, but they're easily dodged and dispersed with more earthbending. "I'm the Avatar, master of all the elements." "Is that right?" Delsin uses a smoke dash to sneak up on Korra from behind and tosses a Sulfur Bomb.

3. The Sulfur Bomb explodes, but Korra just rolls up to Delsin and engages him directly. Delsin tries to punch her and use his smoke-imbued chain, but all his attacks are evaded or blocked. Korra roughs up Delsin, punching him in the face, kneeing him in the stomach, etc. Delsin drops another Sulfur Bomb that leaves Korra coughing, and attempts to subdue her.

4. Korra bends away the ash and sulfur and launches Delsin into a building using waterbending. Delsin is able to recover and takes the high ground through a smoke vent. On the roof, he shoots a Cinder Missile. Korra is able to notice and puts out the Missile before it hits. "Wait, she didn't drain water." Come to think of it, she was able to use fire and then the cement beneath. Is her Conduit gene better than his? Korra starts to airbend projectiles and Delsins fires Smoke Shots (like Might Guy's Morning Peacock vs All Might's air punches). Korra then firebends her way to Delsin and delivers a powerful kick, sending him flying.

5. Delsin crashes onto another building, but drains the neon from the nearby signs. Noticing some injured civilians, Delsin starts to heal them, earning him Good Karma. As Korra rushes in, Delsin rushes her first due to his Neon Dash. "Wait, are you a Spiritbender!?" She's good up close, but it doesn't matter if she can't hit him. He strikes her with his chain, but Korra grabs it and uses a powerful earthbending punch on him. Delsin Neon Dashes away. "Oh, no you don't!" She knows that he has powerful ranged attacks, so she needs to be close to him. She gets on an air scooter and chases after him as she shoots air at him, chasing him to near a spirit portal.

6. Delsin is able to outrun Korra and fires a stasis bubble. Korra uses a firebending soccer kick on the bubble, punting it away. Delsin runs before he's hit with his own bubble (he doesn't seem to be affected by it in-game, however). He then rushes up to Korra who attempts to strike him, but he instead rushes past her and fires a phosphor beam, successfully hitting her and knocking her off balance, and successfully uses a stasis bubble. He attempts to obtain more powers, but he feels nothing. "What..? Then how..? You must not be a Prime Conduit." Korra gets back up in fiery fashion and Delsin employs hit-and-run tactics, firing phosphor and neon beam, but Korra is able to block with her bending. She then does Zuko's "breakdance" and catches Delsin off-guard.

7. Delsin quickly heals by absorbing video from a nearby TV. He then uses Video Torrent. Korra simply dodges and attempts to get in close, but Delsin strikes using his longsword, damaging Korra a fair amount. He then uses Bloodthirsty Blades. Korra dashes away, but is unable to avoid the blades, so she destroys one with a fireball, another by raising a stone wall, and the last one by creating an ice structure. Korra is then attacked by a... Is that a spirit!? Whatever it is, it has wings, metal plating, and is currently shooting a laser. Korra dodges and bends water and freezes the spirit, but it... Disappears into wisps of light... These are not like the spirits she knows, but she is then pushed and pinned to the ground by smaller swords. Delsin appears out of thin air. "How did you do that!?" "A friend lent me his powers, you could say." Ok, that is NOT how bending works. Using a combination of earth, wind, and fire, Korra frees herself by creating a crater underneath her, enters the Avatar State, and then bends the concrete around Delsin, encasing him in a shell, and bends him to her. He's a fire bender and a spirit bender, but he is not the Avatar.

8. Delsin absorbs the concrete before being fully encapsulated and does his boulder dash. He starts to engage Korra, but she is nimble enough to dodge. Korra then gets an idea and starts to make her way to the spirit portal. Delsin starts to climb on top of a building and does a Comet Drop, doing his pose on the Second Son cover art, and he starts to fire concrete shrapnel and a concrete barrage, but Korra instead redirects them. However, Korra gets a leg up and is able to use bending to get Delsin into the Spirit World and she enters.

9. In the Spirit World, Delsin is taken aback due to the colors and... weird animal things... He doesn't get to gawk for long as Korra makes her bombastic entrance. However, she firebends at Delsin who promptly absorbs the smoke, but he's starting to struggle and to get hurt so he smoke dashes away

10. Korra wins by overwhelming and overpowering Delsin. Since they are in the Spirit World, Korra becomes stronger, and in the Avatar State, she is in no need to wait for Delsin to exhaust himself. Even as he tries to distance himself and use his sulfur bombs and sulfur headshots, the Avatar is easily able to bend them away. She then is able to unleash a powerful bending attack that overwhelms Delsin and he blacks out, thinking of Reggie. After Korra finishes the job, she exits the Avatar State. "That was fun, but I'm sorry. I hope you find you and your departed family can reunite here". She then bows to her opponent. She's fiery and hotheaded, but she's still empathetic.

11. Delsin wins by being able to stall Korra and connect a successful attack. The fire is hurting him, but if he keeps his distance, all it serves is to fuel and heal him. He gets in a good sulfur headshot, briefly stunning Korra and leaving her coughing again. He then tosses another sulfur bomb, leaving Korra coughing more. He then does his Orbital Drop, but as he reaches the apex, Korra bends away the smoke and then launches herself, attempting one last attack. They meet halfway, and after a noticeable explosion, both are left on the ground, Delsin tired, and Korra dead. Korra, in her last moments, apologizes to her friends and family for being able to say goodbye. Delsin recollects himself, and upon returning to the Human World, finishes his graffiti of Reggie. However, we see him painting another mural, and he says "Say hi to my brother for me". He then turns to leave, and we see a mural of Korra, reading "Dedicated to the Avatar."

RESULT:

Strengths and weaknesses:

Korra:

+ Physically stronger and more durable.

+ More experienced.

+ Has superior training.

+ Easier access to her elemental manipulation.

= Firebending and Earthbending fuel Delsin, but Smoke and Concreted are easily negated.

- Energybending cannot negate the Conduit Gene.

- Energybending cannot manipulate Video or Neon.

- Is vulnerable to suffocation. When she was poisoned as she was. suffocating, the Avatar State only held off the poison and not the suffocation.

- Can be immobilized via the stasis.

Delsin Rowe:

+ Can heal from firebending and earthbending.

+ Has a healing factor.

+ Is likely faster with Neon.

+ Neon allows for fast attacks, and the stasis bubbles are immobilizing.

+ Infamous Delsin has easy access to instant kill options.

= Firebending and Earthbending fuel him, but Smoke and Concrete attacks are negated.

- Untrained in physical combat.

- Physically far weaker and faster. Is also slower without Neon or Video.

- Is not immune to fire when using smoke or to earth when using concrete.

- Cannot access all his elements at will.

- Draining a power source leaves him vulnerable.

- There's no evidence to say that he can resist being immobilized by being surrounded/encased in concrete like he did to Augustine.

- Cannot obtain bending powers as they are spiritual and not genetic. Even then, he'd need Core Relays and blast shards to be able to get any use of his newfound abilities and to be able to absorb any other element.

Ending puns:

"The Avatar's victory was elemental."

"Delsin got a concrete victory."

MUSIC:

Name: "Four Infamous Elements"

The title makes reference to both combatants' abilities to manipulate four elements or states of matter as well as the inFamous game series' name. Brandon Yates used Second Legends for his commissioned track, so I cannot use it.

Art: The art would depict Delsin's chain forming a circle imbued with Raava. One half would have Korra's elements spiraling outwards. The other half would have Delsin's elements spiraling inward, forming a Yin Yang. The center of the circle would have a gene symbol like that of the Second Son power skill tree on the side of Korra's elements and the symbol of Raava on the side of Delsin's elements.

Sound: the start of the music is that of the Second Son main theme and it plays during the initial confrontation. The music is kicked up a notch when Korra first attacks, where the sound shifts to be more Avatar-centered, but with some hip-hop elements, and even has parts and bits that sound like Second Legends as a callback, much like Final Formersr referenced Deceptive Tyrants. As the battle gets closer to its climax, the sound is that of the main theme of Avatar, but with a mix of Asian instruments and rock instrumentation.

Holy cow, I love doing this one! Especially imagining the track and its art due to the possibilities of symbolism.

THANK YOU AND I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS!

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

Ooh, another interesting match-up! Although, to be honest, I already have my doubts as to how this plays out. Great fight idea, though!

URBAN SPRAWL

Honestly, the Avatar fights have been kinda meh in Death Battle, usually because they've all been so one-sided (except for the first, Toph v Gaara).

I really like the premise of the fight and how it plays out. Unfortunately, I gotta give it to Korra here for one reason; resource. Korra can bend anything from anywhere with little limit on where. Delsin, however, has very specific sources from which he can draw his power, such as his concrete abilities can only be drawn from conduit enforcers gifted with the same powers.

Still, though, it would be a pretty neat fight.

#submission #death battle #ideas #legend of korra #avatar korra #delsin rowe #infamous delsin #infamous second son #korra #tlok korra #my submissions #infamous #the legend of korra #my thoughts

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scottuminga · 1 year

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Hello to my Fans, Family, Friends, Followers and Fellow Artists.

I appreciate that you all are still with me. Though my social media has been quieter than usual. I hope that you'll be able to still see inspirations, stories and aspirations in my past and upcoming works. This year’s best is sort of a mix. Some of the works was made in 2021, middle of 2022 and maybe just a few days before this post. In past years I made a piece each month to sort of summarize how that month felt. But since I didn’t really document what I did this year, I have mixed feelings. I think I did a lot. Though many days I wish I did more.

On the bright side there were definitely notable moments. I found interest in family, that have creative endeavors which very much surprised me. And I hope this comes into fruition as another outlet for me to create things.

I got a little bit into 3D and particle effects, and it was weirdly second nature to get back into it again after so many years of not doing it. You’ll probably see more pieces with some of these nuances coming 2023. And with so many changes regarding art this year especially with AI art, NFT’s and the change of subscription based licenses. I find myself a little at odds. So I’m going to be moving at my own pace, and I hope to stay true to what feels right to me and that my art resonates with all of you.

Importantly a highlight for me was working with NSG and its art and narrative teams. And partaking with the Netrunner community both on socials and in person at Toronto Worlds 2022. I truly was feeling super stressed and anxious during that time, but overall excited for things to be more tangible this year. Even right now with the release of Parhelion, that excitement still feels the same when System Gateway came out. And it feels really relieving to have the art finally come out.

I say I’m going to be a bit adamant in making more things for 2023. But remember to go at your own pace and it’s ok to take breaks and do something new.

Always sending you all positive vibes and mellow moments <3 Scott Uminga

#scottuminga #netrunner #cyberspace #cyberpunk

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radellama · 1 year

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Games I played in 2022

Well… what a year. Pleased to announce that I actually played some good games this year! And some terrible ones too! And also… I made a game! And graduated! Everything happened all at once, but I at least had the foresight to write down the games I played so I don’t have to stand and look at my bookshelf while trying to remember which games I actually played this year. Some of the games I played are repeat entries from previous years, however I feel that my experience with the games is different enough to warrant writing about them again, and you’ll see why. It would be nice to replay a few games and do comparative analysis/reviews based on what I’ve said in previous years, but I can only really do that with one game I played this year, so I’ll tackle re-reviews another time.

As with the others, I’ll try not to completely spoil stuff, but I do want to go in depth with some things- so you have been warned.

Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer

I don’t know why I forgot to put this in previous year’s entries, as I usually replay it every summer in Dec/Jan. Safe to say, I adore this game.

I think it was at the start of this year that I played a private stream in discord with a few friends, it was super fun just chatting on the virtual couch and showing friends how charming the game is. I’m certainly not opposed to streaming on twitch for my next playthrough of this either :P

Spyro 2 is the best in the og trilogy- it builds upon the foundations laid in the first game, but is an overall tighter and more focused play than the third game. There’s classic characters with incredible (campy/bad) voice acting that is just iconic at this point, a simple but effective story, and charming places to visit on your journey to gather all the talismans and complete the collectathon. I’ve loved this game since I was a kid, so I know this game almost inside and out, and I could hum pretty much the entire soundtrack from memory. I also really love the low poly ps1 era look if I’m being honest, to me it is just as charming as that 16-32 bit pixel art style and deserves to be appreciated in all of its janky glory!

Game starts with Spyro wanting to take a holiday to get away from the doom and gloom of bad weather, but The Professor intercepts you while you are travelling through a portal and asks you to help. See, Ripto has recently taken over the place, and the people need your help to kick his butt! They promise that they’ll help you get to Dragon Shores to enjoy your holiday if you help them by collecting enough Talismans and orbs to fight Ripto. There’s three hub worlds to travel through, all with a variety of levels, a speedway and secret orbs to collect. Each level you play through has a main mission, which is usually very simple and consists of going from point A to point B in order to unlock the exit portal and get the Talisman- but each level also has a side quest or two that provide an opportunity to collect orbs. Sidequest might be the wrong term for it, as they’re mostly minigame-esque - things like lighting up gem lamps, feeding fish to idols, semi-elaborate fetch quests, stopping a crazed penguin chef from cooking baby turtles, helping children terrorists, playing hockey with some monks, that kind of thing. Each level and hub world also has a set amount of gems littering the place, and you can collect them all easily with the help of your dragonfly buddy, Sparx. Sparx is a real g, he takes hits for you and changes colour to indicate your health, and not only helps to collect nearby gems as you walk around, but holding the L1+R1 buttons will make him face the direction of the closest gems. Really helpful for when you’re trying to 100% an area and there’s one pesky gem hidden in a corner that you missed.

The main gameplay for this game is simple 3D platforming, and you have the ability to charge into a run, breathe fire and glide to assist you. Most enemies are really basic, and can be killed with either fire or a charge attack. Small enemies can usually be taken down with either, but bigger enemies can deflect your charge attacks and enemies with metal can absorb your flame attacks. Super simple stuff, you don’t need to think too hard about the enemies in most levels and instead spend most of your time exploring levels and seeing what they have to offer.

At the end of each hub world, there is a boss to fight- working your way up from Ripto’s henchmen, Crush and Gulp, until you can fight the villain himself. Upon defeating Ripto in a boss battle that (mostly) tests your skill and understanding of the game mechanics in a final showdown, you’re treated to playing through Dragon Shores!

I love when there’s a bit of fun content after the main plot, it’s hard to say no to a nice reward! There’s a handful of nice carnival games to play, like a dunk tank, whack a mole type game, a love boat ride, and my personal favourite, the rollercoaster. If you collect every collectable in the game, there’s also a permanent powerup you can access that allows you to blast through levels. I do remember the powerup being active when I restarted a save on the reignited trilogy, and I had to toggle it off to play normally- but I can’t recall if that’s the case in the og one. Either way, it is pretty fun to have a supercharged power up as a reward for completing everything, as is mucking around in dragon shores.

To close, I really love this game haha. Although I enjoyed the reignited trilogy, I found that there were too many nitpicky changes that were made for my nostalgic tastes- making me always want to return to the og. It’s tiny things, like the monks in colossus doing their ‘waiyayaiyaiyum’ chanting being changed to a cliche ‘ooohhmmmm’ that sucks, adjusting/taking out some of the cutscenes at the start and end of levels to omit the implications of casual murder, changing the voice actor for the Romeo+Juliet mission to a female and male voice actor when it used to be two males… nitpicky stuff that if you hadn’t played the og’s and don’t care (as I so clearly do) you probably wouldn’t notice. It’s not a perfect game by any means, but it is in my heart. Love you Spyro 2 <3

Gateway to Glimmer Forest - https://youtu.be/PEM-pYocKnI

Colossus - https://youtu.be/-AiVIRplYSs

Zephyr - https://youtu.be/xVKYvtzhZP8

~~~

Donkey Kong Country 2

Ahh, a childhood classic. I was feeling nostalgic this year - something you’ll note in a lot of my games as you go down the list - and it was nice playing this again. I also found out that I never finished the game as a kid! There were still like two whole worlds I had never seen before, I have no clue how I missed them but! Yeah! I got a two for one, revisiting an old fave AND new content lmao.

The game still feels tight; I like the way it controls, especially in the later levels where it really pushes your skill level and mastery of its system. Diddy and Dixie are both great to play as, and throughout various stages you get animal companions to either ride or play as. Not all animal companions are created equally, though, as some are really frustrating to play as. Looking at you, Rattly.

I didn’t 100% this, I’ve decided to put it down and call it a wrap for the year with just the bonus world left. It’s really hard, and I like that about this game, but I need to call it at some stage so I can write these! I might continue playing over new years just for my personal satisfaction, but I’m already fine with having gone through the whole thing again and bashing K. Rool (with only one time that I looked up a walkthrough, muscle memory and perseverance through the rest!)

I’m not too sure what else to say if I’m being honest- this was more of a quick playthrough for nostalgia and stress relief while I was in my last weeks of uni. It still holds up to my nostalgic views, the visuals and music are still banging, and I had fun. There are tiny nitpicks I have, like some of the levels near the end not feeling all that coherent with the rest of the game, and the coins don’t seem to save when you close and reopen the game- grinding to get lives and having like 30-something banana coins when I save turning into 0 when I load my file sucked a bit when I wanted to save or hang out with Cranky :/ But I got over it, and I’ll definitely play this again in future lol.

Stickerbrush Symphony - https://youtu.be/mdPlcKg-qFs

Fonky the Main Monkey - https://youtu.be/CUsb2LvSmfM

Snakey Chantey - https://youtu.be/Mr2cFY_3PT0

~~~

Donkey Kong Country 3

Another childhood classic! This one I know for a fact that I completed as a kid, multiple times in fact. And I completed it again early this year! Fully too, like all the bonus world and all the banana birds and shit. Good fun.

This game is interesting, it is so different to the previous two while still being very much a dkc game. Going from having two light and snappy characters (Dixie and Diddy) in 2 to now having one heavy character (Kiddy) is a bit odd at first, but I have to admit, the level design and character movement felt like the best iteration of the three dkc games. I don’t usually care if sequels have nice refinements, that’s a given in most cases and doesn’t- or shouldn’t- affect my opinion on the game. But for this game? I dunno, it really just feels good when you master it, and I think after playing some form of dkc for most of this year, I enjoyed the levels here the most. Maybe that is childhood nostalgia, maybe it’s a more objective look during this playthrough- who knows.

What I do know is that this game is super fun, and I felt a much stronger connection to the world as I traversed through it. I think this is in part due to the overworld being more interactive, having a boat to traverse between each section- but I also think the connection with NPCs and the addition of ‘sidequests’ really helped the game feel uniquely like home. I use the term sidequest loosely here, as its more fetch quests and gathering collectibles that you’ll probably collect anyway, but it’s fun going around and meeting all the bears and talking with them. I also really enjoyed the bosses in this game- they truly feel like the final evolution of what the previous two games were establishing. The levels and bosses feel so stand out and memorable to me, and I really enjoyed all the extra little things like the bonus barrels and the circus tent with cranky. Even smaller details, like each level displaying a flag once you’ve completed it, and it being colour coded to tell you which monkey completed the level and if you got all the bonus content- that's so cool.

This is just gushing, but I can’t help it. I like this game, and it feels so cozy. I like going through all the worlds and feeling such a clear sense of progression, I like chatting with all the bears and helping/pissing them off, I like the unique bosses, I like seeing Wrinkly Kong chilling in her little cave and seeing it fill up with all the banana birds I rescue, and I LOVE revealing the ‘secret’ on the overworld. The story and stakes might not have been as drastic as the previous iterations, but there’s just something so appealing about this game. I can’t really articulate it much more than this, but I did see a really interesting video essay about this game a couple of months after I finished it - highly recommend checking it out as it brings up some interesting points in regards to how unique this game is.

As far as nitpicks go, again I feel some of the later levels near the end game feel a bit out of place (and I do NOT like the rocket level at the end >:( ), I can’t remember if it saved lives and coins between saving and reopening or not- if it didn’t that still sucks! But overall, the changes made here feel fine- it’s a unique game and a nice way to round off the trilogy.

I’ll leave it at that, with the final note of how this game has one really important core memory for me. When I was around 6-8, I remember struggling to get past the bees to enter the bonus barrel in the first rat warehouse level, and my dad introduced me to the concept of patience. It’s so simple, but it blew my tiny mind that I could do things differently if I stopped and waited for a moment, and that it might be the best way to do what I want. To this day, when I’m feeling really impatient and am able to catch myself, I call myself out by mentally replaying that section of the game, and making my way past the bees to get to the bonus barrel. This game means a lot to me lmao

Swanky’s Sideshow - https://youtu.be/Es4yf387pmM

Mill Fever - https://youtu.be/OWmd5dGN5Ns

Water World - https://youtu.be/N3aTwCvbbaQ

~~~

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Guess what? MORE NOSTALGIA! I played a couple of minutes of New Horizons with my sibling here and there at the start of the year when they were staying with me, and I just found myself missing older entries in the series. I stuck with Wild World for a good couple of months, and didn’t time travel or anything. Just playing raw Animal Crossing Wild World. The graphics looked a bit crunchier than I remembered on the ds, but they still have a certain charm that I like.

As soon as I booted up the game for the first time, and heard the title music, a huge wave of nostalgia washed over me- so it’s safe to say this is a really biased look back. I went with my tradition of naming my town Cessabit, and after exiting my taxi and landing in my new home, I got to work. I actually really like the early stage where you’re working for Nook, and I will NOT tolerate any slander towards him. He is an earnest and kind tanuki who helps you get your bearings with no time limits, you all wish you had someone like that in your life!

After completing the Nook tutorial, I was off on my own, and began doing what I could to earn enough and start living that animal crossing life. I got all my tools, worked towards filling out my encyclopedia and donating everything to the museum, and started breeding lovely flowers to decorate my neighbours houses. I was very glad that Chief was in my town- he’s one of my favourite villagers, so I’d hang out and make sure to chat with him every day.

One thing I noticed, that was refreshing to see after the sour taste left by NH, was the variety and types of holidays in Wild World. There’s standard ones like the fishing and bug tourney, where you have to try and get the biggest catch of the town by the end of the day- but there are also things like the flower festival, the acorn festival, and other little ones like la-di-day. I also loved when it was time for the flea market, I’d set up my house like a little shop of second hand furniture ready to go and enjoy selling the stuff I didn’t want so I could afford to buy some stuff from my neighbours. Little things like these were so much fun when I was a kid, and I had so much fun reliving them this time around. I appreciated the effort the developers went to in making the holidays not culturally or regionally specific, so as not to alienate anyone who isn’t immediately familiar with the celebrations. You as the player get to understand the holidays while the townsfolk share the festivities, it felt nice.

The only thing I couldn’t do to complete this experience was play with others in multiplayer. When I was younger, my sister and I would stay up late and play under the covers together from our bedrooms, giving each other gifts and mucking around in each other’s towns. It was extra fun when we got to see our cousin, as he also had a copy and it was really fun to make self imposed challenges for fishing and bug catching and hide and seek, pooling together to give the winner a prize. I also used to be a bit of a shit and dig holes to make mazes across town and force my sister and cousin to play through a certain set of events before I let them free- this was also something I did when I was younger on my own, I’d trap villagers into little spaces I’d dug and push them together so I could see their conversations/piss them off and watch them stomp in a tiny area. It was hours worth of effort to dig that much, for such a small ‘reward,’ - but that’s kinda the spirit of animal crossing. You accumulate hours playing in small chunks to only have mundane rewards, but it’s nice.

I stopped playing when I missed two days in a row of playing due to uni work and I opened up to see that Chief had left me, and I was so sad. That’s another integral part of the animal crossing experience - the villagers you wanted to stay would always be trying to leave, and the annoying ugly bitch ass fuckers would never leave!

Overall, I really enjoyed this revisit of animal crossing- the term I was going through at the time was the absolute worst one in my entire bachelor's, so playing during class and just before bed was really helping me keep sane. There’s a whole stack of things that make the game mildly miserable to play, like having to donate each item individually to Blathers in the museum and hearing the whole info dump every time, along with not having any indication that you’ve already donated something… just to name one.

As much as I love this game, I wouldn’t recommend it to newcomers unless I knew for sure they’d be able to understand and appreciate the context of the game. I have so many childhood memories attached to this game, and just recounting a small handful of the ones that I hold dearly would be a whole separate post that wouldn’t mean much to the rest of you, cause they’re MY nostalgic memories, not yours lmao. I loved playing again, but did find myself yearning for the few quality of life updates that were added in future instalments. Overall though, for the second game in the franchise, and the first handheld instalment- great fun!

Plus it has the best soundtrack + the movie is based loosely on this game and is really cute >:)

Title Screen - https://youtu.be/xllH3Zrcbz0

The Roost - https://youtu.be/DDRKhw6fhyY

6pm - https://youtu.be/X9G6gBCt6T0

~~~

Animal Crossing: New Leaf

I don’t have as strong a nostalgia for NL if I’m being honest, but damn what a nice animal crossing game. I remember the first time I played as a teen and having reservations about the changes, especially in the soundtrack and certain game mechanics, but overall it is such a nice animal crossing game. THIS is the one I would recommend as an entry point to the series if you’ve never played and want to check it out. The mechanics have been refined, and everything is generally very pleasant to play- it has really boiled down the exact animal crossing formula and added a new look and feel to it while still being familiar.

I love the additions to this game as well, though it took me a while to warm up to them as a teen, they really just make the game extra nice. I like that you can stack fruit in your pockets, and that there’s more furniture and clothing to collect, and cycling between tools by pressing the dpad is amazing! There’s new npc’s to fall in love with, and having control of the town via mayoral duties is really nice. It’s super fun curating the town to look the way you want- I have so much fun putting down tiles and creating nice pathways that lead to nicely placed buildings and bridges. Autism heaven. The only things I really wanna nitpick here are the fact that there’s less pocket space and that new villagers just plop their houses WHEREVER THEY WANT.

Back in the day, I spent real life WEEKS trying to breed blue roses, and finally got one! One single blue rose! And I was trying to breed it to make more so I could start mass breeding blue ones and add them to my rainbow of roses! ALL FOR THAT BITCH ASS CLOWN PIETRO TO PLONK HIS HOUSE DIRECTLY ON THE ONLY FUCKING BLUE ROSE IN TOWN WHICH DESTROYED IT FOR GOOD AND I HAD TO START BREEDING FROM FUCKING SCRATCH. I HATE THAT FUCKING CLOWN SOOOOO MUCH. Flower breeding is probably the only other real gripe I have- I do not give a flying fuck about flower genetics and needing some arbitrary system that seems as much down to rng as it is to genetics just to get a nice colour. I want to make a gay town with rainbow roses bordering all my footpaths, just let me have the colours. It only gets worse in NH… I spent actual real life MONTHS slowly trying to breed blue roses as I played... Wild world had it right- just put a black and purple rose together and you’re sure to get blue eventually! It used to be about colour combos, I think in WW it was 3 base colours and 5 hybrid colours for roses, that’s epic! And they made some kind of sense, not this bullshit where you need to have bred the roses from particular flowers over a long system to get a colour… fuck you.

Anyway, back to NL. As a 3DS game the graphics held up really well in my opinion. Everything is so cute and having a better depth perception in general is nice (and that’s without the 3D enabled, it’s cool but hurts my eyes so I never really used it). The big changes for this game are that you are the mayor and have more direct control over the town, that most of the shops are now in a main street above the town, and the addition of the island. I already touched on the mayor thing, and if you know NH you know the general deal for it here. The main street is an interesting choice, but it was one of the changes I didn’t immediately turn my nose at when I first played as a teen. That’s because it’s really cool to see your progress as you open more shops and the place gets more lively. In WW, you only really upgraded Nook’s as you progressed, but now you can upgrade Nook’s AND unlock a whole strip of places to shop at and hang out in. The museum is really nice too, they really stepped up in making it an even nicer place to visit. And, with the expanded encyclopedia, there’s plenty to collect and donate. Unlocking the shops all felt pretty natural and related- there were standard things like ‘when you’ve shopped a certain amount at Nooks, it’ll expand,’ and ‘if you get your fortune enough times, Katrina will open up shop,’ - but there are other things like getting to know Dr Shrunk and having to get villagers to sign a petition to open up a nightclub, and having certain shops opened via fundraising. It really helped create that community feel that’s important in an animal crossing game, a feeling that I think peaked here and was unfortunately lost in NH. Here, while you are in charge of major decisions for the layout and look of town, and the villagers contribute jack shit to the fundraisers as always, it felt like you were making a town FOR the town. In NH, having more control is super nice, especially when you want to get creative with it, but due to it having less interaction with the villagers in this manner, it feels disconnected and more like it’s for your benefit only, not the town/island’s. Plus, the main street being accessible right at the top of your town, only a short walk across the train tracks away is good. A huge improvement to the shopping district in Let’s Go To The City on Wii, which requires you to catch the bus every time you visit :/

The last big addition to this game is the island. I believe there was an earlier iteration of this idea with the gamecube -> gameboy linking thingy, but I didn’t experience the gamecube era so it was funky fresh to me. When you unlock it, there’s new fruits and bugs and flowers and fish- even a new tool/ability, diving! It’s super cool to see things expanded upon this way, and you get an island as a secondary place to curate the way you want. I would always take out all the flowers and shrubs, leaving only the banana trees and placing bananas over every single tile on the island so that it could guarantee a higher spawn rate for bugs and beetles that were mad expensive.

At night on the island, big bugs and sharks can spawn, and defacing the island in the manner I just described makes it so that those bugs are pretty much the only things to spawn, apart from one or two other bugs that are super common and spawn regardless. Spending an hour or so catching bugs and filling up the max inventory to take home, paired with the bell boom ordinance, means that you can get a solid 200-400 bells per trip. Also, the music on the island at night is just gorgeous, so it was really nice to just unwind before bed and hear that calming music while catching bugs and sharks before returning home and saving for the night. When I babysat as a teen, once the kids were in bed I’d stay up late for the parents and grind on the island like that while chatting with friends online- it was super nice.

ANOTHER thing the island added- yes, there’s more -is the inclusion of mini games! You can play them by yourself or with friends via local/online play. You can do games that are effectively fishing and bug tourneys- but with special rules, mazes where you have to collect certain fruits, a whack a mole type of thing, balloon shooters, hide and seek - so much to play! When you do well, you get a currency that’s only used on the island and the chance to unlock intermediate and expert versions of the same games, higher stakes for higher rewards! The inclusion of these were super awesome, as when you played with friends, you weren’t limited to making up your own games with your friend until you ran out of things to do- as there are literally games to play on the island! I didn’t play much online back in the day, and I didn’t at all on this replay, but that was a fun thing from its time.

The last major thing I want to mention, was that this game had a MASSIVE FREE UPDATE, adding the ‘welcome amiibo’ subtitle to the game. I remember when this came out back in the day, it was an unexpected but very pleasant surprise, and expanded on the already large amount of content in the game. You could use amiibo things to do amiibo stuff - I didn’t really play this shit cause I only have a pixel mario amiibo lol. But when you summon someone, they appear in a little camper van in Harv’s camp, alongside non-villager npcs with unique furniture you can order. They added another set of in-game currency, used in the shop and campervans at Harv’s, and you can earn currency by doing ‘dailies’ that you were probably already doing. This was nice, as it was an optional incentive to do things each day/week when you’re feeling a little directionless after having pretty much completed your town aesthetic. Things like picking weeds, sending letters, talking to villagers- the Nook Phone shit from NH originated here! I can’t remember if there was anything else major with this update- apart from the addition of BEING ABLE TO SIT ON ROCKS AND STUMPS!!! That was a BIG FUCKEN DEAL back in the day ahah.

Playing again reminded me of why I loved playing AC to begin with, and made my gripes towards NH even stronger. There was just so much missing from the base of NH when it came out, and pairing that with the annoyingly drip fed updates, content that was removed and having to pay for the DLC… Yeowch. I loved playing NH, but only for a short while. Playing NL, I loved it the whole time. I haven’t checked my NH game in months, but to my understanding, there are STILL things that were present in the base of this 3DS game that are absent in NH- which is very strange considering that game is about living on an island.

Overall, playing this again was so fucking lovely. Even though I don’t have as strong a nostalgia for this game, I still love it nostalgically and even more after this replay - it is The Quintessential Animal Crossing Experience™ in my opinion. Although I stand by the fact that the WW soundtrack is better (:P) there are so many lovely songs here, and the general vibe is so uniquely New Leaf- I struggled picking songs so you get 4, with the recommendation of checking out the rest of the ost if you are so inclined >:)

Tortimer Island (Night) - https://youtu.be/oikomQB2Hac

11am - https://youtu.be/8MHC3Q7LQ20

1pm - https://youtu.be/8g54wrI5mNU

7pm - https://youtu.be/dqSn-tJRbhc

~~~

Miitopia (DS)

What a strange and funny game. It’s a weird RPG-lite style game centred around your Miis, and I had a good time. I do think that a massive part of why I enjoyed this was due to having brain rot for chrono, so all my characters were chrono ones+my oc harland as my main mii man. And all extra npc types were star trek characters. Lol.

If you haven’t got funny ideas for friends or blorbos to put in this game, I think a huge part of the charm is lost- however, if you get a kick out of seeing your Miis travelling and fighting monsters and getting to know each other every night when they sleep at the inns- you’re sure to have a great time.

One thing I am surprised by is just how long this game is. I’ve been playing for most of the year on and off, and I’m STILL not at the end. It feels like an endless game lmao, but that is in part due to me replaying each level over and over until each path has been taken. I could say it was for the completionist in me, but it was actually about getting more chances for my Miis to get closer at night the more I travelled. Completing the maps was just a nice excuse >:)

The story is very simple. The big baddie (Matt, from Wii Sports in my case) stole a bunch of people’s faces, and you agree to traverse the land, gain party members, and retrieve everyone’s faces! I think it’s actually a pretty clever way to make the plot revolve around the Miis, and there’s a certain wit and charm to this game that made it super fun. I loved a lot of the cheeky dialogue, and the little ‘random thoughts’ the party members will have while you’re running across the levels. It was very funny when it was something that a particular character would not say, but even funnier when they totally would say that. My best example is Magus saying he ‘needs kitty cuddles’ while on a very long adventure, he both would and would not say that. I love it.

As far as gameplay goes, it's super simple, hence why I’d say it's RPG-lite. Classic RPG turn based battle system, it’s very simple and hard to mess up, but it also has an autoplay feature. I just left the autoplay on during every battle, as I just didn’t feel inspired enough by the simple choices to actually make calculated decisions. It was more fun for me to autoplay and speed it up, paying more attention to the things the Miis were saying and how they were reacting to each other getting hit. This made it a semi-idle experience for me, not the worst thing in the world, but it meant that I’d only be paying partial attention while playing at work or while watching youtube essays in the evenings to unwind.

Because it’s so simple, I don’t have much more to say. It has a certain wit, one that vaguely reminded me of things I liked about Paper Mario, and it was really funny playing with blorbos in this virtual-dollhouse-rpg game. If this sounds fun, and you have some Mii characters in mind, I’d say check it out! Just keep in mind that it goes on for a really long time, and you’ll have like 10 party members towards the end + a plethora of npc Miis to make/use. I feel the experience is a bit wasted if you haven’t got some Miis in mind, but it’s still a good time regardless. I may or may not see it to the end, but for now I’m fine with calling it done while I’m at the ‘final missions from townsfolk’ stage. Surely I’m just a quest or two away from the real ending, but whatever. I had fun while it lasted.

Getting Changed - https://youtu.be/VNFG451FY_U

In That Holiday Mood - https://youtu.be/4BaNOx_-azA

Title: Greenhorne - https://youtu.be/37Oq7Rb_m10

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Aragami 2

Whoo boy. Um, I have a lot to say about this game. I’m also going to go pretty heavy into spoilers for this one cause. I need to talk about this.

As you may or may not remember from a previous goty thingy, I talked about how much I LOVED the first Aragami. This sequel… I knew it was going to be different, but damn it sucks so much… And I completed the whole thing…

So, where to begin…

Lets start with looks. This one has a more ‘realistic’ look, forgoing the stylisation found in the first game. They made the main Aragami that you play as looks really buff and shit, and they look solid. As in, solid and not wispy or smokey or shadowy, despite being a vengeful shadow spirit. They look like a generic buff assassin dude but with grey skin. I don’t really like it. The hub world that you can muck around in between missions is pretty I guess, but the levels themselves felt kinda empty and amateurish to me. While some of the later levels were quite elaborate with large city structures to leap across and mining caves and the like- a lot of levels just have an infinite plane of water as far as the horizon. To me, that took away so much of the atmosphere and made it feel like an ameture attempt at making a level. Both this and the first Aragami were made in Unity, but this game REALLY felt like it was made in Unity, but in a bad way. The new direction just felt so odd, it barely held onto any of the choices or aesthetics that made the first game feel so charming to me in the first place- scrapping it for more ‘realism’ at the expense of character within the environment and models. It makes it look like every other 3D game ever, and makes me disconnect from it.

Another place they lost me was with the level design itself. I mentioned a hub world earlier, and I hate the hub world if I’m being honest. It’s just huge and feels empty and when you have to talk with NPCs you need to leap and run across the whole area and it just feels crap. There’s nothing to really do, just visit a shop or dojo and talk with NPCs. There are notable ones, who actually have something more than the other copy-pasted background ones have to say- but even they aren’t memorable at all. You’d think having like a million bland Aragami walking around and wailing at how sad and shit it is to be one would make unique characters stand out. But no, it all just felt to me as though the developers went ‘oh, this worked in [insert almost any other 3D game], let’s do it here’ and fell into all the cliches instead of actually doing what might work better for this game. Every time you do a mission, you need to go to the mission board and enter the level, and when you complete it you’re spat back out into the hub world to chat with the NPCs and unlock the next mission. Being spat back and forth between levels and hub world like this just made me feel even more disconnected from the game and general plot. Not to mention, you revisit the same levels over and over, just with different mission parameters - so everything just feels the same! Because it literally is!

The general plot was confusing and not very good as well. The first game’s plot was VERY simple, but there was a clear understanding of where you needed to go, what you needed to do and why during most of the game. In this one? I had no clue what was going on for too much of the beginning, and then when I thought I had kinda wrapped my head around it, more convoluted shit started happening and it kept losing me. I don’t really know what happened or why in Aragami 2, and I played the whole thing. It was more bland and confusing than RE6, and that sucks…

Though in general the plot was shit, there were a few stand out moments that made me really wish there was a better director handling the narrative elements. As in the previous game, the objective is to be stealthy and traverse through the level, and you can choose whether you aim to be noticed by no one, kill no one, or kill everyone. It gives flexibility, and a fun incentive to try different playstyles for those looking to master the game. Here, due to the levels being separate missions, you had objectives like killing certain people, smuggling supplies, doing some recon and gathering specific items ect ect. The way most players will go through the levels won’t be a kill everyone route- at least not on the first playthrough -due to you being one hit killed if you get attacked. One addition to this game is the ability to defend yourself and parry attacks if you play correctly, A- I disagree on this design choice as it makes it too much of an action game and destroys the stakes in the stealth and B- parrying attacks barely works! I know for a fact I hit the buttons it wanted me to, but it’d behave so poorly and I’d die anyway! Anyway, you’re not going to be killing everyone, it’s a long and tedious task in most levels, and some have something like 80-100 enemies in the level. This made one moment really stand out, it was the highlight of the game for me, and it makes me so frustrated that this wasn’t played upon more!

So, you’re a shadow spirit or something, (and you can’t really rely on your knowledge of Aragami from the previous game’s lore, because it’s different) and you’re part of a whole race of Aragami shadow spirits. There’s some Aragami stuck as slaves and prisoners for the enemy, and there’s some plot I couldn’t follow or understand about a rival? Or something? Point being, you go on missions to various places across the valley, and most of your missions involve getting info on the enemies planned attacks, smuggling or sabotaging supplies and whatever other efforts are needed to help your fellow shadow spirit people. There’s some kind of crystal that can trap an Aragami’s soul and make the wearer of the crystal control them (I think?) and there’s a level where you try to sneak into the mines where the enemy are mining for the crystal. When you get deep into the caves, you come across a bunch of Aragami frozen like statues and it’s pretty unsettling. When you exit that area, you find every enemy in the level has died. If you were like me, you might have killed one or two enemies, but tried to hide them if they were in obvious areas - so to see EVERYONE laying DEAD out in the OPEN was REALLY UNNERVING. You’re one of the only people that’s known to be strong and skilled enough to wipe out an entire map like this, and even then- it’s fucking hard to do so! You have to walk out of the mines and back out into the village area while wading through fallen enemies, until a cutscene plays of the people who killed everyone. I think they were looking for you as well, but you’re just left on that creepy note and report back to the village chief at home. I was so lost on the game up till that point, and it had me ready to put everything aside and genuinely interested to see what was going to happen next- all for it to go right back to the same, boring, disconnected routine of hubworld to mission! LIKE COME ONNNN THAT WAS EERIE AS HELL AND I LIKED IT! MADE THE THREAT FEEL SO REAL AND I WAS WORRIED ABOUT WHAT I HAD TO DO TO GET OUT ALIVE, ALL FOR IT TO JUST PLONK ME BACK INTO THE HUBWORLD AND HAVE A SHIT DUMP OF A CONVERSATION.

There was another moment, there was this young girl Aragami that you have to rescue and I think she was the girl you chat to in the hubworld a lot. Rescuing her was shit and boring and her mum was losing her mind over the grief and just didn’t mentally recover even when her daughter was returned. The game if shoving all of that at me without really setting up anything more than just telling me that stuff, so I really didn’t give a fuck about them cause they just kept talking at me. But, one moment that could’ve been impactful was when the mother decided to perform a suicide ceremony where she takes off her mask and jumps into an endless pit because she just couldn’t handle her fractured mind anymore. I got back from a mission and saw everyone lined up while she walked towards the pit and we just stood there watching. IF some better narrative steps had been taken to actually make me care, that could’ve been SO MUCH MORE IMPACTFUL. BUT because it is SOOOO DISCONNECTED from the missions I’m playing and she just says the same repetitive shit, I didn’t care! If I’m remembering correctly, the mission you play just before the mum jumps is a request from the girl. She asks you to prove you’re trustworthy by going through a level without being seen and without killing anyone. Which. Girl. I literally plucked you from your slave life and brought you home, and you’ve been chatting with me and watching me go off on dangerous missions and coming back, what the fuck do you mean I need to prove shit to you?? ANyway, you go through the level and have to climb to the top of some scaffolding and look over the blandest fucking plane of water sunset and find ‘inner peace.’ One weird thing I noticed was that some subtitles just appeared even though no one was talking. In the game, up till that point, every subtitle was used when you were listening in on what guards were saying. But this? No one was talking, and the language swapped between first and third person and it was a confusing mess. It was something like 'looking out over the view, I feel my soul at peace. But something unsettling rests in your soul. Time to go back' Like. Ugh. You do that shit ass mission and then get back to mum killing herself and then you go back to more missions. THIS GAME IS ASS!

There were so many things that COULD’VE been COOL, but they fell FLAT!!!!! There’s these weird necromancer priest enemies, who are connected to their Aragami soldiers mentally, and will freak out and alert others if you kill/knock out one of the soldiers connected to them. This could’ve been a cool mini boss of sorts, making it nearly impossible to brute force your way through their web of soldiers until you defeat them, and maybe defeating that priest would make every linked soldier drop dead too, making it a worthwhile challenge for certain areas of the map. But no, they’re just some dude that looks and fights a bit different, and they’re weak af too. I’d just hit them with a dart and then go slaughter everyone nearby quickly. It sucked. Another thing was this strange underground lab that really made me feel like it turned into Resident Evil, there were bones and shit in the floors and so many signs pointing to the fact that something bad had happened there, but it’s just set dressing! One of the only times they do something interesting with the set dressing and it’s barely relevant! AUGH

I have so much more to say but it’s becoming hard to recall everything. What I do remember very clearly was how glitchy and crap the game was. There were so many times where I wasn’t even trying to and I’d glitch through the level and get stuck in a wall or something and enemies wouldn’t behave properly and shit like that. Here's an example I recorded, this shit suckssss!!!!

In the first Aragami, I played through it 4 times before I found a glitch. And I only found that glitch because I was zooming through the level and went too fast, shadow leaping into an area that hadn’t fully loaded cause I covered so much distance, and didn’t have time to render in the door to block me so I fell through it and got stuck in the back room of the game. It was pretty cool tbh, and although I couldn’t find a way back into the level and needed to restart, it was kinda cool.

This game though? I glitched out so much that it was game breaking, and I needed to restart levels when I was ALMOST FINISHED cause something broke and I just couldn’t progress. Which brings me to loading times. Fu Ckin G LoADING TIMES. Most games you can be generous and give it anywhere near 30 seconds to load between levels and still be patient. I like to think I’m generally pretty patient, I play RE and kinda like the door loading screens for fucks sake. This game had loading times of over a minute. EVERY TIME. I don’t usually care about this sort of thing, but this was most of the experience. Every damn time I needed to be spat into a level it was just a black screen that said ‘Aragami 2’ and it took a little over 30 seconds just for the music to load in. I’m sittingß there with effectively a blank screen in silence for half a minute before some music comes in, and even then there’s still anywhere between another 30-60+ seconds to go before I can actually play. And even for when I needed to reload a level I was already in? I’d assume that because all the assets are already loaded it’d take less time cause it’s just a reset, right? WRONG! Full 60-90+ seconds to reload the whole thing again! I know a minute or two isn’t really that long, but man. It is fucking forever in this context. Makes all the unnecessary shit in botw to unlock a shrine, descend into the shrine, and start the shrine feel like speed running…

On a more positive note, Two Feathers are back again with the music and have provided some absolutely gorgeous songs for this game. I really liked the main theme overture, its equal parts nostalgic and hype with its rearrangement for this game. This reflects how the rest of the soundtrack, and game in general, is for the experience. Bigger, and more. While the soundtrack is an undeniable highlight for the game, I did find myself missing the more ambient and atmospheric tracks of the first game, as having a constant track playing got repetitive and annoying. It’s a real shame, cause songs like the Kakurega Village theme are very nice, but hearing the same song for it over and over cause I keep having to be in the hub world makes it annoying! That’s the thing with stealth games, though I’m fairly new to the genre, having big bombastic tracks all the time really deflates the stealthy atmosphere, and ambient tracks (and even silence!) can be utilised to get more out of those select few tracks that do have more going on. I found myself missing the quieter tone of the first game, there was something a little somber about it all, and it really helped me get into the headspace of the game and its story. Here, while the songs are good, they just didn’t help set the atmosphere for sneaking around and killing from the shadows. It really highlights the action elements that were introduced to the game, but it just feels off track for what I personally think the game should be. That’s not to say there aren’t quieter and more ambient tracks at all, just that in general the ratio leans more towards these more elaborate songs- which I feel makes the entire soundtrack feel larger and louder if you get what I mean.

I’ve already talked for such a long time on this, and I feel like I have so much more to say, but it’s difficult to articulate everything the way I want… I wanted to enjoy this game so badly, but there were so many things that were gamebreaking and straight up not what I wanted from a sequel. It really makes me wonder what was going on during development for this game- despite my feelings for this game being rather sour, I did have moments where I genuinely enjoyed it, they were just few and far between. To my understanding, the first Aragami game was a 7 person team, and they got 3 more people on during development to make it a 10 person team. For Aragami 2, they doubled their team, having around 20 people working on this. Knowing that it was such a small team that made a game I loved so much and have played over and over is really fascinating to me, and it’s a shame they couldn’t capture me with their sequel despite the larger team. I wonder if there was a situation where it was too many cooks, or if someone new took the game in this new direction. I guess I’m just struggling to understand why they made such drastically different choices in ways that feel like they’re trying to separate themselves from their first game- it was a lovely game that was really creative and fun! Why distance yourself? Maybe there’s an element here that has gone right over my head, but I would like to know some behind the scenes info for why certain choices were made and what the development process was like.

This game is somewhat of a morbid fascination for me, in the sense that it is kinda painful to think about all the lost and wasted potential, and even more painful to think about replaying. There’s not much online that I could find for this game, not even a fan wiki to help summarise the plot. I was really hoping there would be some kind of summary or explanation somewhere, because I really want to know what the hell was going on, and to see if a different method of telling, or a recap of the story might help me to better understand. But no, there’s nothing. At least nothing of substance I could find.

I think I’ll leave it at that. It has been ages since I played, so my memory is a bit hazy- but I think it speaks volumes that I played both Aragami and Aragami 2 around April/May this year, and can remember more about Aragami than it’s sequel. I don’t think I’ll replay this game any time soon, but I’m not going to shut myself off from it. I did pay for the game after all, I want to get as much as I can out of it. Maybe it could be something fun to stream for a replay, and maybe a second look while knowing what to expect may help me piece together the plot a little easier. Who knows?

Aragami Overture - https://youtu.be/UhSuiYMAXkw

Lone Mountain - https://youtu.be/QxZYGPea8eQ

The Great Threat - https://youtu.be/3W2Jf9TFcBE

~~~

Aragami

So, I have already reviewed this, and I didn’t play in the mindset to construct a real counter critique/look back while playing- it was more of a palette cleanser to play before and after it’s sequel. So this will be brief /cue 10 paragraphs

I love this game, that’s no secret. While I did praise it’s simple story- that’s what I’d like to talk about for this quick look back. I played my fifth playthrough of Aragami this year, and in all those playthroughs, I missed that there were lore scrolls hidden away in the menu that detail more of the story and history. Reading through these, I was able to reframe my understanding of the events and in game history leading up to the events I played through. They were nice little stories- it took me a couple of scrolls for it to really click and for me to understand what was going on, but when I did… Wow. I won’t say much about what they detail, as there’s a lot of names and places and things that happen that I can’t do justice in a recount; but I feel that they’ve really enhanced my understanding and experience of the game and it’s a shame they’re hidden away and so easily missed. It almost makes me want to replay 2 and see if there are any lore notes hidden in menus I didn’t see… almost. I might wait a while before tackling that again.

Also, I just wanna boast a little- I completed every level of Aragami on normal difficulty, every play style. I did a kill everyone route (which is best attempted after your first playthrough so you can take advantage of all your shadow techniques) and a kill no one and never detected playthrough. To challenge myself, I paired the kill no one and not detected and managed to complete all but 2 levels that way. It was really fun going through and feeling how much I had to change my way of thinking and strategizing depending on what style of gameplay I wanted to tackle, this game both introduced me to and made me really enjoy these kinds of stealth/sneaking games. Hell yeah!

~~~

Another Eden

I previously spoke about this game, and that the whole reason I started playing was to see the Chrono Cross event- and I didn’t even talk about it lmao. I’m going to talk about it a little, and then this is effectively a pt2 because I played the pt2 of the main story.

So, Chrono Cross event. I’ve almost 100%ed everything there is to do with the event, just some branching dialogue paths and a Starky fight to do (and Starky is so OP it’s not funny) so I haven’t attempted to brute force my way through any more of it until I can level up more of my faves. Overall, this was a really nice little cross(ha)over event, it had a good amount of story to play through with different routes to take, and the world of Another Eden ties into it so believably that it was a great fit to cross over with. I only really cared about Kid and Serge, so I did their routes (good and neutral) as thoroughly as possible. In classic Kato fashion, I didn’t exactly vibe with the whole story, but it was fun while it lasted and now I get to keep Kid and Serge in my party permanently. I’ve maxed them both out as well, radical dreamer style >:) Now, they stay in my main party group of faves because they are really strong, and due to all my grinding and the way the event works, they both have heaps of light points so they’re awesome when I grind through dungeons. That’s all I really care to say about the event, it’s nothing too deep and I finished my grinding sessions on it closer to the start of the year, so it’s a little hazy and I don’t want to recall things incorrectly.

Now, onto the next main story chunk for AE. Full disclosure, while I enjoyed the most of the main campaign for part one, I found it too closely mirroring jrpg tropes (and in particular feeling overly familiar to ct without coming close to scratching the itch) so I wasn’t fully engaged the entire time. I also thought the ending to that section was convoluted bogus, like just eye-rollingly so. I understand they did that to keep adding campaigns, however ESPECIALLY after playing this section… yeah I still think it's bogus lol. This part 2 of the main story focuses on the ogre wars, and it went into the backstory of my favourite character. Turns out, he’s got a pretty tragic backstory! Trust me to latch onto that before it was even revealed lmao. (The fave in question is Dunarith btw, I like most those beast dudes, and they’re all decent fighters)

Cause this game also has timey-wimey bullshit paired with dimensional fuckery, that’s what leads most of the plot for this section. The ogres that fought themselves to extinction are somehow back, they kidnap the Beast King’s sister, and our main party resolves to put aside their differences and join the beasts to recover the Beast Princess. It was nice to see more of the beast culture (trust me to love the boring world building shit) and it was nice to see even more expansions on the map with more places and sidequests to visit. Snake Bone Island was without a doubt the highlight for me. A secluded little island (bet you’ll never guess what it’s built on!) with a bunch of really nice scenery and great music that has that palpable Mitsuda insp. My favourite part was definitely all of the quests that related to Dunarith, as he had so much more going on in his backstory than I initially thought. I was genuinely invested, and looked forward to playing during quiet moments at work and fitting in a quick half hour or so before bed. I don’t know if I should spoil what goes on in his quests, in case anyone reading would like to play and experience for themselves first, so I won’t say anything. One thing though, during the climax of the story mission regarding Dunarith, I was a bit :/// at how quickly the ‘issue’ was ‘resolved,’ it was really showing the lite in jrpg-lite to just whip out the tragedy and not let it sink in or breathe because the plot needs to be resolved by the end of the mission so the subsequent ones can follow through. If you can figure out this attempt at crypticness; it felt like it was trying to set up an event similar to ct’s most memorable moment, but without any of the time left for it to feel real, so the impact was lost. I’m just going to pretend in my mind that the impact was there, because honestly that’s my only main gripe with it, and I recognise that it’s very much an issue born from the fact that this is a lite game designed for mobile/ios. For the most part, it really felt like the developers of this game really refined things (at least narratively) from the first part, and crafted a plot that I was consistently more interested in! That in and of itself is a feat, as this has just turned into a very casual and almost idle game that I leave to auto play sidequests with minimal input from myself so I can grind and unlock the quests I’m actually interested in. To have a main story mission that was so consistent and interesting to follow, at least for myself, has me appreciating this game more than I did for prior chunks.

However, there is one thing I want to bring up that’s really left a sour taste on all that goodness. Right now, I’m soft locked out of progressing in not one but two quests I REALLY want to see through. The first is the main quest, I believe it’s the part that will wrap up/link to/start part 3 of the main story- so to be soft locked fucking sucks! There was never any indication that you’d need to upgrade certain party members via tomes (magic bs thingies you have to grind for that are rng drops in the End of Time rip off) and I had been grinding idly for MONTHS trying to get a tome for one character that I never use anymore cause she’s annoying and is not powerful enough to compare with my mains. I just couldn’t progress the story until a character I’ve outgrown was levelled up, and it wasn’t even clear to me how to get the tome in the first place. And let me tell you, the wiki’s are confusing and the reddit help threads aren’t all that helpful either lol. And all that grinding… to only get through like 3 chapters and find out I have to grind more for another character who is even more annoying that I dropped near the start of the game. Like!? This is a gatcha game, I’ve got like 50+ party members to choose from, and I have like 10 that are really powerful that I swap out, with my main 6 staying very consistent cause they’re so strong. Why do I give a fuck about some old one that I didn’t even like, and why do I have to grind forever while the game consistently refuses to give me the one tome I need. I have everything else I need to upgrade the shit robot girl. JUST NOT HER TOME. Sighhhhhhhhhhhh

I’m currently trying to blast through some major side missions/other crossover type thingies (?) because apparently you get a better chance for the tome through that. Fingers crossed, cause idgaf about the really long side mission I’m currently on lmao.

That brings me to the second thing I’m soft locked out of currently- which is this one wild side mission that I at first didn’t care about, but then came to get fairly invested. I didn’t care at first because it was about a bunch of religious missionaries from a church who vary in mild to moderate levels of being annoying, and I mainly picked up the quest because it was a great way to get heaps of the in-game currency I was trying to save up. As I played, there was a guy who fell from the sky, landed with amnesia, and then through some events you find that there’s a cultish group behind the straying church morals, and they try to get rid of the religious missionary figures that I mentioned earlier. In a panic, the guy who fell from the sky somehow uses crazy magical powers through his instinct/muscle memory, and it ends up rewinding time. He uses this to his advantage to save them, and then some stuff happened that I kinda forgot and they go to ‘heaven’ for a bit where they meet the angels who I’m pretty sure wrote the religious texts the missionaries based their faith on. Like, it was pretty cool, I'm a bit of a sucker for fantasy religion vs cult stuff. And I can’t remember most of it because I played it mid last year and got soft locked out right as it was getting to new heights of interesting because I haven’t progressed far enough in the main game. The main game that I can’t progress cause I haven’t upgraded a character I don’t give two shits about. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I was going to just play to max out Kid and Serge (and a few other faves like Dunarith) to see their stories to the end and hopefully have a bit of idle fun before putting it down for good, but I found myself pleasantly surprised and drawn in by a few stand out moments, and I look forward to seeing if there’s anything more like that. I at least want to see the end of that religious mission, but what sucks is that it’s been so long and I’ve done so many other quests and missions that I’m hazy and forgetting so much of it, and it’s REALLY hard to find lore recaps for this game lol. Sucks. I hope I can at least replay the mission when I’ve finished it, cause I want to pick up on the details now that I know it’s worth slogging through the stuff I didn’t care about in the beginning. Also, the music and art is consistently really nice, so yee haw. The game may not be perfectly aligned to all my tastes and preferences, and I often find myself uninterested or eye rolling at some classic Kato choices for story, but the sheer amount of content put into this mobile game is really something! I haven’t paid a cent and there’s been a good couple hours of genuinely fun and enjoyable moments for me- well worth it!

Conyum - https://youtu.be/6O3FefCeQRk?t=642

Serpent’s Neck Igoma - https://youtu.be/6O3FefCeQRk?t=1056

Palace of the Sea Goddess - https://youtu.be/6O3FefCeQRk?t=3385

~~~

Radical Dreamers HD

Wow! The first Chrono game to make the list since I started doing these!!

In all honesty, I want to play through the chrono games with these lists in mind and make an attempt of actually articulating what I love (and don’t love) about them in a more in depth manner, similar to my resi branches.

I also only played one full go of RD when it came to switch, so I feel I can’t fully talk about it anyway. So, this will be a shallow gush instead :P

So! Chrono Cross HD with the first official Eng translation of Radical Dreamers! That was unexpected and very surprising! I never thought we’d be getting new Chrono content after all these years, especially not an official crossover in Another Eden (that had great voice acting for Serge and Kid btw!) and a HD game! I’m full autism for Chrono Trigger, then Radical Dreamers (and I guess Cross… it makes me a bit cranky but now that there’s this shiny new HD release I can dust off my switch and play with the most neutral-to-positive stance I can manage!) So let me tell you, it was soooooo nice to play RD in my bed! It was winter and I had just moved house a month or two prior and even though uni was really hectic, I played over 2-3 nights to complete the first playthrough. It was so cosy to play, all wrapped up in bed with a hot chocolate and the nostalgia I had for this game being awakened.

There’s a specific vibe to RD that I really enjoy, it’s just kind of eerie and unsettling, but so full of charm and wit and I fucking adore it. Although there are honestly a lot of plot points and references and what have you that allude to implications that absolutely butcher ct, it is a little easier for me to overlook them in favour of enjoying what this game has to offer. (I find it much harder to overlook these kinds of narrative choices in CC, because, well… reasons. I’ll go in depth another time) I love the trio dynamic, Kid is a sassy bogan, Serge is such a loveable denim dumbass and quintessential Boy™, and Magil is the reluctant adult supervision who barely supervises. Joking aside, I genuinely do enjoy the way the trio bounce off each other, and it’s great to have it framed through Serge’s pov. It makes me so sad that due to the experimental nature of this game, and how short it is, that Kato tried to distance himself and overcorrect things that weren’t necessarily issues and went overboard with CC. There is a certain magic here that captivated me, and despite it definitely not being the sequel I wanted, it’s better than the sequel we ‘got’ (in my opinion) and I’d highly recommend people interested by either CT or CC give this a fair go. And go more in depth and try to complete the multiple endings too, I haven’t finished all of them but there are some classic things that happen and gahhh this game is really fun in spite of and because of it’s weirdness and divergence from CT.

Day of Summer - https://youtu.be/iIHDQ0FONik

Gale - https://youtu.be/G7687ikwhao

Final Confrontation - https://youtu.be/Eo1r_BapDP8

~~~

Solitaire

I just have so many hours on this that it deserves a special mention. Shout out to Solitaire!

No music recs, cause there isn’t a soundtrack… so……. Go listen to your favourite Jazzy album! And if you don’t have one, listen to this or this >:)

~~~

Tetris 3DS

What is there to say? It’s tetris, but on the 3DS. I think the one I play is something weird like Tetris Ultimate 3D something, but my DS is in my room and I’m not getting up from my computer to go check lol.

Controls are refined, it’s nice to be able to slam down the tetrominoes quickly, and holding one in reserves is fun and changes the way you strategise. I don’t really strategise tho, I just play this the way I play solitaire. Brain off, I’m tryna relaxxxxx

I bet you could hum the tetris theme from memory, so go ahead and sing that to yourself as my music rec. Totally not cause I play the game muted while I’m watching youtube or something. Of course not.

~~~

Star Realms (Mobile)

I played the mobile version of this quite a bit this year, mainly when my dad or sibling are in town. We usually play for a few days online after they’ve gone back home too, but I got busy with uni so I didn’t play much on my own.

There are campaigns to learn and master the various decks, so it’s interesting trying out the decks I don’t have to see what they’re all about. I still have no idea how to use the deck my dad likes to play with, but my favourite deck is Colony Wars, and I have a physical copy of it and no one to play with :’’’’(

No music rec for this either cause I play muted… so uhhhhh… listen to the nearest sci-fi sound to you!

~~~

Bug Fables

Ahh Bug Fables. I’ve heard about this game and had it very far in my periphery for years- it’s constantly touted as The Game To Play if you’re a Paper Mario fan who yearns for the style of the earlier entries. And well, I saw it on sale on my PS4 and said fuck it. Why not?

Now, I wanna say upfront- I’m a huge fan of the Paper Mario series (despite not having played all the entries…) and I miss playing PM64, so to constantly hear this game as ‘oh yeah it’s got all the good thing of 64/ttyd and then does it better!’ made it have a lot to live up to for me. Now, I did try to go into this game as neutrally as possible, but due to hearing years of this game being built up that way, I did feel a bit disappointed that it didn’t really scratch that PM itch. Overall this was a lovely game and I enjoyed myself and will definitely replay in the future, but I found the lines between inspiration and imitation being blurred a little too frequently for my liking, and there was a certain (subjective) lack of polish that ultimately made me resent the fact that it is so closely tied to the PM games.

The visuals are nice, the animations are good- but I don’t really care about bugs so there wasn’t really anything that charmed me the same way seeing Mario characters in the 2D paper style did. The music is generally pretty good, with a few stand out tracks I’ll be linking, but there’s a lot of tracks that sounded annoying and.. Kinda bad.. At least to me. I don’t wanna shit on the composer, because in general this is a really high quality soundtrack and I really do like a lot of the songs! But when the first two or three songs I heard in the game were annoying or sounded discordant in a bad way, I was really hesitant to push through. That, paired with little nitpicky things and the admittedly unfair comparison to PM64 had me feeling glad that I didn’t pay full price. The look and soundtrack are also HEAVILY reminiscent of the 64 style and sound, and there were some things that I felt could’ve been changed to better suit the direction they were going to make this an even more unique experience that is undeniably ‘Bug Fables.’ Little things like the xp symbol being pretty much the same as the xp in 64, but there’s a leaf in it instead of a star… Things like that, things that felt too heavily lifted from the game it’s inspired by but choosing to leave it at an imitation because hey, it worked for them!

This game was a chance to take inspiration, learn from, refine upon and build something new from the things we learn with the PM franchise. My biggest gripe with this game is that, while they do have some improvements made from systems they pinched from those games- like the side quest board allowing you to just take every open quest and attack them at your leisure instead of ttyd’s way of only letting you do one at a time -I feel a bit burned by the fact that it relies on PM so much. I really wonder if this game would be half as fun to people who have never played a PM game, and if they’d understand the mechanics and gameplay and such for this game on its own. I often found myself thinking 'is this really the best decision for this game, or are they banking on my nostalgia for a different game to make me like this game more?' I also didn’t know how small the studio was that made this game, so while I recognise that there are limits and that a more indie studio can’t compare to the same level of polish and character as a AAA like Nintendo; I do wanna end my feeling of gripes on something like… Yeah, you made a great game! But! Did you really do all you could to cultivate the unique feeling you wanted for your game, or were you relying on my knowledge and experience of PM to charm me into enjoying this?

I know that’s kind of mean and a very harsh critique, but I wanted to get that out of the way so I could gush about what I genuinely enjoyed. Cause this game is great, I just feel it wasn’t the next step for me as a fan of PM, and that it has linked itself too closely with it.

So, onto the nicer stuff. This game was really fun! I enjoyed that fact that the main party is a trio, and it just stays as that trio for the whole game. It made it so tight in character development and really allowed me to get to know these characters and enjoy their dynamic. I loved hearing their thoughts on each area, I loved the moments that revolved around one of the characters and showed how the other two supported them through those points in the story. I also liked seeing the way they interacted with the NPCs you see frequently, the world does have a charm all of it’s own (just not one that I resonated with/felt too deeply)

The party consists of Kabbu, the green one, Vi, the yellow one, and Lief, the blue one. Ok, there is more to them than just their colours- Kabbu is a classic kind hearted and honourable type, Vi is hot headed and has that ego that rebellious young kids/tweens have, and Lief is a little more reserved, but witty and cheeky in his own way. The point of the game is to journey across the land and gather artifacts for Queen Elizant to reveal the Everlasting Sapling. There are a lot of different bug kingdoms, and a nice amount of side quests to help flesh out said kingdoms. The more you play, the more you gain an understanding of the politics between the kingdoms, and to what lengths various leaders will go to for the sapling. Lots of stuff happens, I don’t want to go in depth here because I think the way the game reveals certain plot points was generally paced well, and if you haven’t played this game for yourself, I’d recommend going in as blind as you can. If you’re hesitant, let me just say, that even though I was battling my own snooty bias towards PM, I really loved getting to know all 3 characters as they all have interesting backstories that intertwine with the overall narrative, and the more you dig around and try to find out about the world, the stranger/more fascinating some things seem.

I can totally understand why this game has such high ratings, it is a great game and not too difficult, so I do feel that even if you’re not as familiar with this style of game, you’re sure to get something out of it and look back on it fondly. I know I’ll be having fun thinking about certain quests and plot points, and I’ve periodically come back just to play the card game tournaments because they’re simple and fun once you wrap your head around them!

I would just say… I think it was done dirty by comparing/imitating so closely to PM, and that the strong connection to it did deflate some of the experience for me. Maybe thats a personal thing, due to my love for PM and huge nostalgia for PM64 in particular, but that’s something I’d like other potential players to keep in mind.

It’s a great game, and cause I was pretty harsh, I’m adding twice the song recs >:)

The One Left Behind (Leif's Theme) - https://youtu.be/BtrNUi4b7o0

His Friends Call Him Spuder (Don't Call Him Spuder) - https://youtu.be/Ivv-F-q81tA

Oh No! WASPS!! - https://youtu.be/vnguaxxXUbc

Kut It Up! - https://youtu.be/xoTFge7b1v0

The Sacred Hills - https://youtu.be/b_OSyr3IwAU

Termite Capitol - https://youtu.be/oILKKd80Hyg

~~~

Hitman Trilogy PS4 (2016-2022)

Zayum, I love dress up games!

Haha, for real, this was an unexpected favourite of the year for me. I have had so much fun the past month and a half bingeing this trilogy, and you’d think it being so recent would make it easier to talk about, right? Here’s hoping…

I had never really heard about Hitman until my friend told me about it, saying that she wanted to watch me play and that she thought I’d really enjoy it. She was right, I’ve had a blast. As I understand, this is a soft reboot for the series, but still has some lore/plot points that build off previous entries in the series. As someone who was freshly dropped into the world of Hitman through this trilogy, I was only mildly confused in the beginning, but once I started playing the campaign missions, it was relatively self contained and easy to follow along. Any info from previous entries seems to just be nods and references to things I can’t pick up on, which didn’t affect my ability to enjoy what was on offer.

And man, there’s so much here. There’s an overarching plot across the three game’s campaigns, and I was so pleasantly surprised that not only did the main plot have rippling effects across all the missions- but things like NPC gossip too! It was fun to sneak around and gather intel or complete the story missions that help to set up opportunities to assassinate your target; I often found myself enjoying the chance to be a nosey cunt and eavesdrop on conversations and follow certain NPCs as they went about their business. The attention to detail really helped to make this world feel large and lived in, and some of the best levels have some really interesting NPC tangents that have absolutely nothing to do with the hit, but are just as memorable- if not more. Things like this guy desperately trying to assemble a desk chair at the Swedish Embassy, https://youtu.be/NayAsm80RHM some nosey party guests snooping around and conspiring as to how the occupants are able to afford all their cool stuff, and a lady with a small cupcake business who is hiding murderous tendencies https://youtu.be/0mqkRo8AKz8 - just to name a few!

In general, the main plot and methods of killing in each level are good fun, and it was interesting to follow along and get to the bottom of everything in each game. I will say, I think it’s better to look at this as a trilogy (and this was the way I was playing) as some progressions in the ‘self contained’ game chunk may feel rushed or unexpected if you try to look at it on it’s own. There were even some points when playing that I found some plot points happened or developed very quickly, and I felt a bit lost because they weren’t given enough build up or time in my opinion. A large part of what lost my ability to hold onto the plot and comprehend it was the discrepancy in the cutscenes across all 3 games. I looked into it briefly, cause halfway through 2 I thought ‘surely it can’t be this bad without reason,’ and sure enough, there was a reason! Hitman 1 was produced with Square Enix’s support, but due to the original release dropping campaign maps once every few months, it really impacted player’s ability to enjoy it to the fullest. Square pulled out and IOI [who own’s the Hitman IP] now had to make Hitman 2 with reduced staff and budget, so the nice cinematic cutscenes from 1 were now stills with slight motion graphics animation. Like… Netflix screensaver animation. I understand that lack of budget and manpower lead to this choice, but it made it incredibly difficult to feel invested or even understand what was going on half the time with the still images - ESPECIALLY when there were more than 2 people talking. There was just no easy way to set that up with the limitation they imposed on themselves for the cutscenes, which is a shame because a lot of important developments happen in them. IOI did not drip feed the campaign for 2, and when 3 came around they brought back actual cutscenes, just using the in game engine to do so. I really wish that they just used the in game engine for all of the cutscenes, because they are very short but often complex and dramatic so it’s really important to see the acting and body language they want to give the characters. Obviously they wouldn’t have had the foresight to know Square would drop them and they’d have to continue making a AAA game as an independent studio/look for other publishers, but it just is such a shame that the plot of 2 was quite important but ultimately feels like a black hole to me because I struggled to understand the cutscenes. As I understand, there were also issues when 3 launched that made it difficult to link the levels for 1&2 into 3, where they intended for 3 to be the main hub to access the entire trilogy. Shit move, and I won’t really talk about it cause I wasn’t there to experience it, but I suggest looking into it more if you’re so inclined because it is sadly interesting to see what a mess it was. What I did experience from this mess was that, when the trilogy pack was on sale on the PS4, I decided to buy it and was so filled with dread to only see Hitman 3 downloading, thinking I clicked the wrong thing or got scammed (cause there are like a bajillion hitman expansions/access passes in the store, it’s so confusing!) BUT LUCKILY Hitman 1&2 are treated like access passes and in the game.

(Also there was no where nice to squeeze this in BUT even in the big budget cutscenes from 1, there were discrepancies in audio that I noticed. Maybe this is just because I'm a recently graduated film bro™ so I'm primed to keep an ear out, but just listen to the last cutscene in Hitman 1. The two voice actors were recorded in different studios and the quality gap is noticeable! Dianna sounds nice and crisp as always, but the constant sounds like he recorded in a make shift booth or was in his wardrobe and the mixers forgot to do dynamics processing!)

Another point of contention, and one that almost made me annoyed enough to not have a good time, is the fact that it requires me to be online. For anything to count, that is. There are offline options for main campaigns, but so much of the peripheral content to play has online as mandatory to even load it - and if you play through a main mission offline, any skills/missions/achievements ect you unlocked DO NOT COUNT and are not saved. Meaning that you effectively played for nothing. WHAT THE HELL. This is a single player game, I am alone on my couch playing by myself, and I still need to be consistently online in order to actually play. It is really fun seeing the end screen after a mission where you are greeted with a whole screen full of achievements and story missions to aim for, and when you’re offline you don’t get that because your progress didn’t count. THIS is one of the EXACT things that’s made me feel incredibly disillusioned and pretty much loathe the current gaming landscape. Sure, I’ve had my fun with some modern titles, and I really have been enjoying my PS4 these past couple of years, but come onnnnnnnnnn. Do you remember when you’d get a game, and just put it in? And you could start playing? Stick that cartridge in the console and you’ve got an experience waiting for you? Even moving to bigger games, the most you’re waiting before you can play is just for creating save data so you can record your progress. Modern games requiring you to install a bunch of shit and wait around for sometimes hours to be able to open it and actually start playing, only to then find that the servers are having a tantrum and don’t want to host your game… Makes me regret being a gamer in all honesty. And it feels like the biggest slap to the face when I encounter this kind of thing in a SINGLE PLAYER GAME with MINIMAL TO NO ONLINE ELEMENTS. If I didn’t have such a great time while playing the Hitman trilogy, this would’ve been a massive deal breaker to me. And I only seemed to drop from servers when I’d left the game paused for too long, so the servers are more stable than they seemed to be at launch. That makes me glad that I generally play behind the curve lmao.

Anyway, those big gripes aside, the actual gameplay of Hitman was fun enough that I was able to put aside what would otherwise be deal breakers for me. The stealth and spy aspects of this game were incredible, and felt rewarding and open enough that it truly felt at times that I could do anything. It wasn’t often that I felt lost or unsure of what to do, because even when I was lost, I could usually just wander around the level and eavesdrop until I heard something useful (or entertaining) or saw a new method of getting to where I wanted to go. It felt like a sandbox, a miniature open world for me to do whatever I wanted to; as long as I completed my mission. As I’ve only really played one other stealth game, and was largely unfamiliar with the style of gameplay, I played through the whole game on the casual mode- however now that I am more than familiar with how the game plays and starting to challenge my understanding of the mechanics with the escalation contracts, I look forward to the increased difficulty of professional and master mode.

Some of these worlds felt so elaborate and alive, and it scratches a particular kind of itch to go through the entire level and find new shortcuts and paths to places as I get intimate with the area. Levels like Sapienza, Whittlehorn Creek, Isle of Sgail and Dartmoor were personal favourites, though I enjoyed the majority of maps. Wandering around the city as various types of people, seeing where I could fit in and go unnoticed and seeing current events based on previous hits I did was fun as fuck. The Dartmoor level, which I suspect is a fan favourite, was a great shake up on the formula as it provides an opportunity for you to disguise yourself as a PI and investigate a murder mystery- interviewing suspects, inspecting crime scenes and suspects’ private rooms, and framing who you want as the culprit was super fun! So much of this game was just fun! As serious as some missions are, with eerie tones that really add an unsettling and sometimes downright disturbing implication, there are almost always silly things to do as well for when you just want to have some fun! Agent 47 didn't really talk much in the first game, but in the second and third he talks a lot more and it was interesting seeing just how seriously he takes his job… sometimes getting way too into it. Like, dancing in the flamingo mascot costume, stealing the clothes off the lead model and getting your makeup done so you can walk the runway, and giving some of the funniest and strangest dialogue when he is undercover as a real estate agent or giving a tour of a winery. The possibilities really feel endless, and I'm constantly impressed with the way the developers managed to balance everything for various gameplay styles.

There were, however, some maps that weren’t as fun for me- mainly military heavy ones. I know that a great deal of what I’ve said I enjoyed about this game is the fact that you can sneak around and snoop, but the sneaking and snooping in military levels (and ones that, while not explicitly military, feel like it with the sheer amount of security guards and their ranks) straight up sucks! When I was playing, I was often replaying the same level over and over to see all the main story missions, and sometimes just wander around the levels and try to see everything I could. When I first got to a military level, I found myself so bored by it that I did not replay it, and I stopped replaying levels over and over and just played once through to see the story to the end. I have completed the trilogy, but I feel much closer to 1 at this stage cause I am most familiar with those levels. It’s a shame the military levels affected me in that way, but I’m going to hope that based on my experience enjoying the early levels in 1 the more I played them, that I’ll have just as much fun getting to know the other levels while I keep playing over new years.

Another nitpick I think is worth mentioning, is that sometimes the game glitched out and made certain story missions unplayable for me, which was a shame. There were multiple times where things just wouldn’t register, or the NPCs would break and just stand still somewhere, or loop in their actions and not give me an opportunity to do what the game wanted me to do. It really sucked having to try reload saves or even having to restart levels because of glitches like that, but due to the nature of this game having multiple routes to achieve your goals, it wasn’t so bad. Oh and while I'm nitpicking - while it was great to be able to adjust the UI so that I could actually see the button prompts in game, I couldn't adjust the font size for the mission briefings while I was planning the missions. You'd think I could read the text on the tv while my couch isn't even that far away from it, but I constantly had to sit up and scootch to the edge of my seat to read, and even then the text was so small and had barely any spacing between words that I struggled to read anyway. Makes it apparent that it was made with PC in mind first, as that wouldn't be such an issue when the screen is centimetres away from your face, but zayum I came here to play dress ups and kill people, not strain my eyes :(

Another thing I haven't even touched on yet is the music! While there's plenty of diegetic music, the soundtrack itself is pretty great. The drawn out sounds of the strings really builds up that slinky mood, and are quite iconic sounding. A lot of the classical sounds feels like an homage to classic spy movies too, and that's hard to miss when there's a few heavy handed visual allusions drawn as well haha. One thing I really love in the soundtrack is the choir, the addition of vocals like that makes it sound almost religious at times, which is very dramatic, especially paired with the strings! It's quite a beautiful soundtrack, and it feels very cohesive across the trilogy without it taking attention away from the gameplay- which is quite impressive to me that it was pulled off this way! A stealth game by design requires you to focus more on your mission, and a poor or even mediocre choice in music can ruin the mood and experience, so to have such a classical and dramatic soundtrack NOT feel intrusive to my gameplay was awesome.

I’m finding it really difficult to articulate much more about this trilogy, because I’m still in the high of hyperfixation that’s bringing a lot of subjectivity to this look back (more than I aim for :P) I enjoyed the plot being connected and overarching even though it wasn't that deep, and there were some absolutely stand out levels that were so interesting in both a gameplay and worldbuilding manner that I enjoyed myself immensely. I don’t think I can really expand much more on the plot or gameplay as everything is a jumbled mess in my brain while I’m riding this high- so perhaps after I’ve put this down and come back in a year or two, I can write something better after having some space and this to compare my future thoughts to.

If you’re into stealth games, being a nosey cunt, or being bald- I highly recommend checking this trilogy out. A great draw to this is that, even if you simply watch a handful of different people playing, you’re sure to have a different experience every time due to the sheer amount of possibilities there are! I had a great time, and if you choose to look into this game more or play yourself, I hope you have a great time too. I think I just need to wait a while and have some distance from this game before I can say anything more in depth- as if this isn’t already paragraphs long :P

Showstopper https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBw4Kh30pOc&t=178s

Approaching Storm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBw4Kh30pOc&t=6445s

Severing Strings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBw4Kh30pOc&t=10301s

Invitation to Dance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBw4Kh30pOc&t=10749s

#rads reviews #goty #not tagging each game individually as usual but tee hee #played some good games this year so it's at least a better read than last years

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donotmindme1 · 5 months

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My idea for a potential DEATH BATTLE! #5

2023, October 18, 19, 20, 27

FOURTH POST

MASTER LIST

Korra vs Delsin Rowe (Avatar vs inFamous)

They're the second legends in line!

Fighter 1: Korra, the continuing spirit of the Avatar cycle.

Fighter 2: Delsin Rowe, the accomplishing Akomish Second Son.

Wiz: Many of us aspire to live up and uphold the legacies of our predecessors.

*insert clips of Miles Morales & Peter Parker, Deku & All Might, Ruby Rose & Summer Rose, Batman & his Robins*

Boomstick: However, just because they're tough acts to follow up shouldn't discourage you from making your own path. He's Wiz and I'm Boomstick.

Wiz: And it's our job to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find out who would win... a Death Battle.

WHY:

Connections:

1. Both carry on the legacy of a famous protagonist who was able to control multiple forms of matter (Aang and Cole McGrath).

3. Both started their journeys being childish and/or immature but through their actions and strife, rose above and became better people and consequently, better idols and saviors.

THE FIGHT:

Possible setup:

In a metropolitan area, the Second Son is doing stencil art dedicated to his dear brother. "Man, I miss you, Reggie."

"Who are you, the fun police? I'm not hurting anyone." It's like dear Reggie was still with him: being a pain and not letting him have his fun.

"Oh."

FIGHT! :

RESULT:

Strengths and weaknesses:

Korra:

+ Physically stronger and more durable.

+ More experienced.

+ Has superior training.

+ Easier access to her elemental manipulation.

= Firebending and Earthbending fuel Delsin, but Smoke and Concreted are easily negated.

- Energybending cannot negate the Conduit Gene.

- Energybending cannot manipulate Video or Neon.

- Is vulnerable to suffocation. When she was poisoned as she was. suffocating, the Avatar State only held off the poison and not the suffocation.

- Can be immobilized via the stasis.

Delsin Rowe:

+ Can heal from firebending and earthbending.

+ Has a healing factor.

+ Is likely faster with Neon.

+ Neon allows for fast attacks, and the stasis bubbles are immobilizing.

+ Infamous Delsin has easy access to instant kill options.

= Firebending and Earthbending fuel him, but Smoke and Concrete attacks are negated.

- Untrained in physical combat.

- Physically far weaker and faster. Is also slower without Neon or Video.

- Is not immune to fire when using smoke or to earth when using concrete.

- Cannot access all his elements at will.

- Draining a power source leaves him vulnerable.

- There's no evidence to say that he can resist being immobilized by being surrounded/encased in concrete like he did to Augustine.

Ending puns:

"The Avatar's victory was elemental."

"Delsin got a concrete victory."

MUSIC:

Name: "Four Infamous Elements"

Holy cow, I love doing this one! Especially imagining the track and its art due to the possibilities of symbolism.

THANK YOU AND I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS!

#death battle #ideas #youtube #tlok korra #korra #avatar korra #legend of korra #delsin rowe #infamous delsin #infamous #infamous second son #second son

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eilab1kcreativewriting · 1 year

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Technically, a design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product or a process.

For me, designing is a broad term in association with art. I’ve always a love for drawing and paintings and doing something creative in an artistic field.

Let’s get back in time, from a young age, most probably from when I was just 5 or 7 years old, my father being an artist, started teaching me certain basic things in drawing like – drawing a circle or any shape and then coloring, also showed me a few techniques to draw human figure and village sceneries. But after a certain point of time I stopped drawing because I felt it so intimidating and boring, as it takes a lot of patience to do. Years passed and I was in 8th standard when suddenly something got triggered in my mind after watching a YouTube video showing ‘how to draw a realistic eye’, I got so inspired seeing the drawing and tried doing the same thing with a few materials I had but miserably failed. The eye that I drew back then looked like someone had squeezed the eye. But I didn’t gave up, I moved on to different references and tried to draw a few of them but never got satisfied. I still remember, I became so disappointed and annoyed seeing zero progress for my drawing that I almost cried. Time went by and with same kind of inspiration I tried drawing stuffs like, Indian village scene, woman figures, human eye, 3D art and so on. And finally I saw my progress, my works getting better and better. I gave countless hours of practice on drawings until I got a bit satisfied but never fully and hence, I became a self taught in drawing. My interest grew more on realistic drawings which looks alive. I drew plenty of realistic drawings since when I got the hack of it. I looked back and was glad to see my progress and how far I’d came. This led me to explore and enter into some other field of art or subjects related to it and that’s when I got to know about designing – Graphic designing. Designing is a whole new world in itself, it’s vast and have plenty of future opportunities. On my sophomore year, I decided to pursue designing as my career and further study because it is blended with my favorite subject – art. I started creating random edits in Photoshop for example, did a few poster designs, learnt manipulative design, did some random photo editing stuffs and started taking awesome inspirations from different designers and websites.

Me before my finals I decided to get a college specified in designing because I was determined to enter in the world of art and design and explore it. I love creative stuffs and designing for me is a gateway to various creative opportunities as well as creative works. Now I chose design and I’m a designing student, doing my undergraduate course, under one of the famous college in Kolkata. Learnt some really cool ideas, new techniques and great creative processes in my college about designing and yet more to come.

As a sum up, designing for me is everything. My future is with designing and I’m glad that I chose my career with no confusion because somehow I knew that this course is best for me!

#ayush #what got me into design

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mikkjournal · 2 years

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I guess to start, I'm going to list out the programs I like to use. I'm going to put half this post under the cut to spare your dashboards.

For 2D art, I use Clip Studio Paint EX. I probably didn't need to upgrade to EX (since I don't use any of the animation tools nor do I utilize the 3D functions), but I'm not exactly upset about that; I bought CSP back when it was still Manga Studio and upgrading when it was on sale wasn't too costly.

I used to use Paint Tool Sai, and I switched because Sai just wasn't beefy enough for me (I used obscenely large canvases back then; now I restrict myself to canvases 4096 pixels wide). I also found myself hopping into Photoshop to play with adjustment layers, which CSP has. I swear by it, at least for computer artists; I'm not sure how the mobile/tablet versions compare.

I mainly use brushes from Frenden's gigantic brush pack; particularly the Graph-FIGHT pencils for sketching and lining, and the equine recline brush for rendering (though I will use the oil and comfort food sets from the pack on occasion). I've also got a plethora of free brushes from the Clip Studio assets store, though I hardly use them; my art style isn't super demanding when it comes to what brushes I need.

When it comes to 3D art, I use:

Daz Studio (forgive the horrid fucking NFT banner at the top; unfortunately they're shills, but the program itself is very useful). It's free, but the catch is a lot of the addons you'll want are paid products. If you know what you want/are internet savvy/can make your own assets, then you can get away without spending much money. It's got a learning curve, but when it comes to 3D art, it's very beginner friendly and most products for it are designed to work out of the box. It's been my gateway into 3D art.

I use Daz to make models of the characters I draw, and to create reference images so I don't have to fiddle with sketching out anatomy or composition over and over again from scratch. I'll be sharing some of the renders I take on this blog as part of my process documentation. When I started out, I wanted to spend as little time in Daz as possible, but now I spend just as much time in Daz as I do in Clip Studio; it's quite fun to work with, especially once you learn how to use all the features.

ZBrush is the program I use to make/edit my own morphs for Daz, using the GoZ plugin to make my life easier. It's got one hell of a learning curve, and as a beginner to 3D I found the interface really unintuitive, but like Daz, it's a lot of fun to work with once you have an idea what you're doing. I plan on using Zbrush as part of my workflow once I start making more 3D art and my own Daz assets in earnest.

(Also no I did not pay full price for this, I'm too poor for that LMAO)

Blender is another program I like, though I don't use it nearly as much as Zbrush—and unlike Zbrush, it's completely free and open source. It can be used to make morphs for Daz, but I found using Zbrush with the GoZ plugin to be a lot more intuitive. I use Blender when I want to create something from scratch, like the first iteration of Soap's sword from Call of Honor (which I really, really need to update).

#gotta come up with a tag list #I don't really care for visibility on this account; only organization

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zippers · 3 years

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i think it's so weird that online art discussion and consumption is so centered on digital art... i always see posts about digital art tips and stuff, sometimes on traditional 2D art, and never on 3D art. i have never seen a ceramics tutorial on tumblr and I've been here for a decade (though i guess that means I should make some?). I am the only ceramicist I know of in my online spaces, and part of that is because 3D art is not really compatible with the quick creation/consumption and recognizable iconography of fanart, which is primarily digital art and I think is a lot of people's gateway into digital art. I mean I have definitely created sculptures that are inspired by fandom (shameless plug for my show Life Cycle of a Man-Made Anime Girl that'll be up in the fall) but they aren't recognizably, like, tied to any specific character or fandom. Fabric arts and things like doll customization do get some notice in fandom but I think that is considered more as merch that people buy than art that people look at and reblog (which of course is a whole different problem)... there really just seems to be no room for contemporary ceramics in general or fandom online spaces.

if you are a ceramicist/sculptor/potter/3D artist please share your work with me, I would looove to see it!!! let's be friends!!!!!

also if anyone wants to, idk, commission a sculpture from me or something hmu <3

#ok to rb.. in fact encouraged!#i know there is a lot of ceramicists on instagram but i am not on instagram #and this isnt even getting into the way 2D art is and historically has been treated as superior to ceramics and sculpture but i #dont have the energy to deal with that rn #though i do think it is related to how 3D art is treated as an after thought #artists on tumblr #art #fanart #ceramics

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slade-neko · 3 years

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My Thoughts on Super Smash Bros

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

Super Smash Bros. (N64 & Melee)

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

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

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

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

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

Super Smash Bros. 4

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

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

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

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

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

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

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

#my thoughts #Super Smash Bros #personal

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bahinscute · 4 years

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American McGee’s Alice

I’d be underselling it if I said the visage of a morose, brunette Alice Liddel stained in blood and wielding a knife wasn’t something of a creature comfort for me. It brings me back to a time of unabashed edge and calling yourself -*twisted*- on MySpace. I never played either of American McGee’s Alice games when I was younger, but Madness Returns always intrigued me. A 3D platformer that seemed to conform to my every niche. It wasn’t until last year when I actually picked it up; and with it, the first game.

I don’t want to dwell too much in the history of the game, much less it’s titular auteur. I’ve watched a few reviews of the series in preparation and, much to my interest, many of them go into lengthy detail into the admittedly tragic life of American McGee. His mother was criminally neglectful in his early life, and in his later life he would come to bare the kidnapping and certain death of his sister, along with the cruel taunting that ensued by what we only can assume was his sister’s captor. It’s no wonder then, that the very first game he helmed featured such dark themes. Themes of survivor’s guilt and the utter destruction and reconstruction of a mind proceeding tragedy.

Here’s the short of it. The game takes place after Lewis Carroll’s novels and functions as a sequel more or less. Sound familiar? That’s the premise of Tim Burton’s live-action adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, but this time with a much less confusing execution. There’s no arranged marriages or trading companies for Alice to inherit. Instead, she’s been institutionalised in the wake of a house-fire of which she was the only survivor. This entire premise is exposited during the intro cinematic, so if you weren’t paying attention then too bad. These events are barely revisited again. This might sound like a critique on my part, but I appreciate this threadbare style of storytelling. The rest of what you need to know is laid out for you subtly, it paints a story for you through the subtext of the environment. Yes, you’re in a weird school, then a garden where even the ants tower over you, then a smothering claustrophobic cave filled with water. These seem innocuous enough (with maybe the exception of the Skool) but keep in mind, these events take place inside the players mind!!

Apparently, the manual which shipped with the game included a journal of Alice’s Ward as he tried his best to treat her mental state. I didn’t read this, partly because I don’t actually own the manual, but mostly because I think this is bullshit. Everything you need to know about Alice’s emotional journey is within the game itself, and a “real world” account only exists to muddle the game’s themes.

You could draw parallels to the player’s conquering of the game, the stages and the enemies, as Alice conquering her own trauma and retaking control of her own mind. Your arsenal grows as Alice discovers more tools with which to resolve the blame she assigns herself. Obviously this is all conjecture, what sort of game would it be without enemies and weapons and etc., but that’s art for you. It’s not entirely unfounded, of course. The Jabberwock fight is markedly a poignant fight for Alice, and the themes are much more opaque. The Jabberwock openly mocks Alice for letting her family die in a fire, and its death certainly represents a forgiveness she allows herself. It’s no mistake that this fight takes place in the Land of Fire and Brimstone. This is a running theme in American McGee’s Alice series, of bosses representing some part of Alice’s struggle. The Mad Hatter owns an asylum and dedicates his life to hurting his infirms. The Red Queen represents a fear of the real world and a complacency in fantasy. She urges Alice to stay where she is, doomed to face the consequences of losing herself to her own escapism. The Queen’s face peels back to reveal to Alice who she’s really speaking to, herself. And that’s an interesting thing to keep in mind in a story like this, essentially every dialogue Alice has is in fact a monologue.

If there’s one thing I’ve always admired in these late 90s-2000 PC games, it’s the amazing moods they always manage to create. They suck me in like one of those sucky things in a pool would suck at your leg. Most dev teams couldn’t or wouldn’t hire some writer to hi-jack their video game, so to compensate artists could inject the project with an incredible atmosphere you’d be hard pressed to find in any modern game. This game manages both and passes with flying colours.

The dialogue and tone, beyond the edge and grit, is unrelentingly Wonderland, short just of the copious Oxford educated maths jokes. Alice speaks with a sophisticated wit and approaches her own strange world with a seemingly innocent curiosity. Despite her broken psyche in the waking world, she’s comfortable in her fantasy, no matter how depraved it’s gotten. I’m sure I’m not the only one who can relate with this idea.

The majority of the locales are viciously memorable. The source material demands imagination and the game, with the exception of a few stages, certainly delivers. The first real location is the Skool, looking like a miniature from the set of Nightmare Before Christmas. The floorboards giving way to a hypnotizing infinite, where titanic stacks of books threaten to topple over and phantoms infiltrate the walls. The battlefield beneath the grass where insect troopers threaten Alice with bayoneted rifles, and the only refuge from the battle is down below the earth, in the treacherous ice caves. The Hatter’s Domain with it’s daunting amount of mirrors and ticking clocks, where enemies can be waiting around each corner, behind each wall. The Pale Realm, with it’s perplexing geometry and chequered stylings, where Alice must traverse as a Rook, Knight or Bishop. It’s just all so endearing.

The gameplay might be the one aspect of the game I’m still not entirely sold on. Unlike their first-person counterparts, third-person games developed on the id-Tech engine have aged like bread. See also: Heretic 2. The game requires a lock-on mechanic for you to ever hope to hit your attacks and it features a jumping reticle of all thing. Stand close enough to a platform and you’ll see a spinning imprint of Alice’s boots projected onto it. They seem like very rudamentary solutions to issues that console devs strived in solving. This game was released four years after Crash Bandicoot and Mario 64, and two years after Banjo Kazooie and Sonic Adventure. Even for its time, the gameplay was awkward.

Alice in Wonderland is one of those rare stories whose mythos inspires creators more directly than even what you might consider the most influential of art. Storytellers make allusions to Carroll’s work as much as they might Greek legend, which is a monumental claim to fame. The Jabberwock is referenced in the same tone as Hercules’ Hydra, the White Rabbit which leads Alice down it’s spiraling gateway has been used to symbolise psychedelics, More recently, Arkane’s Prey has borrowed an Alice title for it’s iconic in-universe Looking-Glass technology. McGee has made his very own impact in this legacy, instilling a grit and twistedness to the world which can still be seen today. I doubt that Tim Burton would have wound up directing a Wonderland movie without American McGee’s input.

I do hope McGee gets another shot at game direction. He’s a talented level designer, his life has been harsh and his Alice series holds a special, extremely biased place in my heart. That said, maybe he could give the series a break, maybe work on that Oz idea he had. Madness Returns left a bittersweet taste in my mouth, and his track record of video game direction slants slightly more to bad than good. I mean, google Bad Day LA.

#alice in wonderland #essay #review #american mcgee's alice #editorial

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sweetfatale · 5 years

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timeline events and shenanigans

This is more for my reference (since I got a few dates wrong sorry) but here’s a sort of timeline of relevant events and details in the No More Heroes/Sudaverse that Bad Girl may reference. I’ll be adding to it as time goes on and my girlfriend and I find more details and info. Note that I’ve played NMH1 and 2, but for everything else I’m baby and watched videos or read about them so I might be missing stuff. I’m also always up to discuss this or plot with these in mind! (ask and IMs are always open)

No More Heroes 1

Takes place in 2007.

Santa Destroy is an anarchy in southern California with its own currency (LB$), military (L.B. Army), and flag.

The UAA is founded by Sylvia Christel, started as a con job.

K-Entertainment is an assassination agency with an advertising agency as its front, where only high ranking assassins can get high paying assassination gigs.

In Badman Strikes Back, Badman gets Greco to reveal to him that he kidnapped and tortured Bad Girl to near death with an electric chair sometime before the events of NMH1, attempting to mold her into a powerful killer, which Badman had a similar experience with, without “messing up her pretty face.” She came out of it traumatized (obviously), but with a need to kill and hurt others with her newfound power. According to him, it was her idea to join the UAA.

Sylvia and Bad Girl are implied to have a sexual relationship (at the very least) with official art where they are hugging, near kissing and lounging around in their underwear together. If not that, they’ve at least met before.

Bad Girl has a “secret base” in the Santa Destroy baseball stadium’s basement, complete with a chiller7 brand mini-fridge, an old TV, sitting area and a liquor cabinet. There’s also a conveyor belt that leads cloned men (likely criminals) strapped in leather from a cloning machine for her batting practice, and a pit of bodies right underneath it.

Makes sense she has her base there, her father having been on their baseball team way back when.

Travis had to pay 500,000 LB$ to fight her as part of the stipulation fee, but she picked the stadium. Members of the Santa Destroy Warriors baseball team (or clones who are dressed in their uniforms) fight him on the upper level, before he is allowed to enter the basement.

She fights Travis, who ultimately forfeits their fight. Travis wins by default, Bad Girl bleeding out and dying due to being impaled by his beam katana.

Bad Girl has had her manager, Greco, record all her fights and assassinations and send them to her father, seeking his approval. Badman watches the videos and is aware she’s involved in the assassination world, but never attempts to contact or find her.

Later in TSA, it’s revealed that Greco recorded her death and sent it to her father (apparently at her request) which sparks his want of revenge.

No More Heroes 2

Takes place in 2010, 3 years after NMH1.

The UAA evolves into a legit agency, taking over K-Entertainment basically, and the assassin ranks go public.

Assassins are all regarded as celebrities and their deaths are entertainment. They even have branding deals and sponsorships, and their contracts are now similar to modeling and acting agencies’.

Akashic Points are explained as portals/intradimensional gates/supernatural gateways leading to “isolated regions”, such as a Prison Island, Graveyard (a forest/graveyard area that’s basically a horror film setting), Housing Complex (a city in eternal sunset/twilight), and the Forest of Bewilderment.

Travis Strikes Again/TSA

Takes place in 2017.

With TSA’s Japan being so damaged in some areas, it’s implied the k7 ending where World War 3 happens is a reality. It would have happened in 2013.

Confirmed that assassinations and assassin battles were streamed via pay per view and dark web red rooms even after the UAA is dismantled in NMH2.

Aliens, superheroes, demons, psychic vampires, and Dracula are all confirmed to be real.

Superheroes apparently have their own rankings and are able to find crime to fight via an app(?), the Villain Autosearch System.

Found by Dan Smith (part of the Smith syndicate in killer7) after selling him out, Badman is given a chance to avenge his daughter with Travis’ location and a Death Ball to start him out with, after which he’ll likely be killed.

Badman finds Travis in a trailer in the Texan wilderness, intent on carrying out his 10 year long revenge plot (thanks dad). He’s come to kill Travis and to resurrect his daughter with the Death Drive MK-II video game console, which is said to grant any wish if you beat all its games. While fighting, they’re both sucked into the console and forced to start playing.

The US government has repurposed cloning technology to create a sort of 3D printer with the Death Drive MK-II and a “mother” machine (Death Drive AAA) to create copies of soldiers, weapons and anything else. Dr Juvenile planted bugs in its programming, preventing it from working. Her lover, Klark, warns Travis of clearing the games on the Death Drive MK-II, since it will reset the mother machine and clear it of bugs.

As said by Klark, “The controllers for the DDMKII are loaded with a horrible gimmick. They read the player’s personal data at the DNA level, and create clones with increased abilities and power, for the purpose of creating powerful clone soldiers. These clone soldiers are installed with a special AI, turning them into murderous weapons. If the hardware could be sold all over the world, then data can also be gathered from around the globe.” So far, Travis, Shinobu, Badman and Bad Girl have all played the Death Drive and have contributed their DNA unknowingly.

Travis and Badman clear all the games and the Death Drive AAA is reawakened and ready to be used. While Travis has the chance to destroy the mother machine at CIA headquarters when he travels there with an experimental Death Ball, he instead takes a detour and is able to talk to Jacket (Hotline Miami) and his mask personas, as well as Beard. Nothing really comes of this besides a connection with Jacket, and the Death Drive AAA is still operational post TSA and ready to create murderous clones.

After beating the six games, the Death Balls are all gathered and summon a tiger god. Travis (being the protag) gets to make the wish, and wishes for Bad Girl to be resurrected. One of the Death Balls are found out to be a fake during the wish and she comes back as a dog.

Badman is determined to bring her back as a human, though admits he likes having her alive at least and her being a dog reminds him of when she was a baby. In the Bubblegum Fatale DLC the real Death Ball is found, fulfilling the wish and turning Bad Girl into a human.

Bad Girl fights all the Death Drive game bosses (besides Juvenile), being able to talk to some one on one. Silver Face, a pro football star who killed all his girlfriends and went on the lamb, is unfortunately who she talks to the most and tries to relate to her before being killed. Ultimately, she rejects his attempts at “bonding.”

Between games, Travis, Shinobu, Badman and Bad Girl all hang around the campsite and trailer. Bad Girl drinks Travis’ beer and sits in his chair and calls him a fuckface.

Misc (other games in the same universe that are canon in NMH)

Shadows of the Damned, Lollipop Chainsaw, killer7, Killer is Dead, Let it Die, The Silver Case, Flower, Sun and Rain, etc. happen around the same timeline. Hotline Miami is also in the same universe, but it’s unclear on the exact timeline.

San Romero (Lollipop Chainsaw) is upstate of Santa Destroy.

In Killer is Dead, the moon is inhabited (with royalty even), and in TSA mars is starting to be inhabited by clones. With two pretty major celestial bodies being inhabited (so far), space travel and exploration is possible as well as colonization. Also there are aliens already, so.

“In killer7’s alternate take on the 21st century, all the nations of the world have signed a peace treaty disarming all nuclear weapons, banning international flight and perhaps worst of all, shutting down the internet. While much of the world is at peace, a violent terrorist group appears between the fracturing relationship between the United States and Japan, pulling the strings of some of Japan’s world leaders.” It’s reasonable to deduce that Santa Destroy became an anarchy as a result of the treaty and the encroaching WWIII.

#chugging a save | (save)#the daily grind | (ooc)#death tw #torture tw #( it's a looot )#prospect | (musings)#( lol idk what to tag this as )

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lonesomealley · 5 years

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The Beginner’s Guide as a Proper Beginner’s Guide SCRIPT

Why The Beginner’s Guide is a proper beginner’s guide.

By Count_

Spoiler Warning / Opening

Warning, this is the obligatory spoiler warning, if you have not played The Beginner’s Guide I fully recommend that you purchase it for full price and play it. Although if you do not have money, I would recommend that you then go and watch a YouTube let’s play of the experience because you can effectively get the same experience from both despite what some people say. In the description below is a link to a silent let’s play that I recorded which is what was used as the footage for parts of this video. Please watch or play this experience and then come back and watch this video, it won’t be going anywhere. Also, just in case you may want to listen to this video purely through audio, you may miss out on many of the examples that I’ll be flashing up in the backgrounds of my commentary. Spoiler warning over in 3… 2… 1...

The Beginner’s Guide is a narrative experience created by the brilliant mind of Davey Wreden. What ensues is a hybrid of a first and second person narrative where the player walks about the small -death of the author like- 3D environment projects created by an ominous character named Coda. And over time the player begins to learn that the narrator, Davey Wreden himself, isn’t to be entirely trusted. Keeping details of the game emitted until Coda them self leaves a message explaining why they aren’t around anymore.

My overview of this information is so simple because the experience itself is not what the video’s about. The video you’re watching is a case study into how the player can use The Beginner’s Guide as a valuable resource when working on their own passion projects. Since i have played The Beginner's Guide over ten times now, I can say with certainty that there is a lot more here than just an interesting drama. The name “The Beginner’s Guide” not only reflects genius work but is also a dive into the basics of how to make art, media, writing, etc. I’m led to believe that the topics I’m about to discuss hasn’t been considered all too much either, because when looking into the idea there doesn’t appear to be any documentation on these concepts. So what I’m going to talk about are ways that I feel the medium of passion work can be pushed to the absolute limits. Here are some timestamps on screen and they will be in the description if you wish to click past the parts that don’t seem interesting to you.

Case 1: Build with a Purpose

It’s arguable to say that the levels in The Beginner’s Guide are somewhat poorly constructed at times and even amateur. Which is interesting when you take into account that Wreden is taking us on a journey through a collection of amateur environment-story telling projects. And in turn this property makes these levels believable, the player actually feels like they are going through levels produced by someone who isn’t getting paid for their work. Now some people will say that this argument simply exists to dodge criticism but hear me out. Would the experience really be strengthened by having highly polished and professional levels that give the idea that these levels were created by a professional while talking about a single character who simply created these games for them self? No, no it wouldn’t. Wreden even uses this as a plot device when talking about the house level, where he states: [VIDEO CLIP WHERE DAVEY CALLS OUT THE INCREASING QUALITY]. Obviously something to consider when paying attention to the release dates of Coda’s works.

This may seem obvious to some, but those who are just starting off in design should make sure that everything they create has a purpose. I especially find myself in a loop of not really knowing what I want to do because I don’t have a grasp on what is important to developing the world I am trying to show off. What’s the solution? You can build the essentials of a project piece and then add the meaningless details later. Just make sure those meaningless details don’t ruin the overall purpose you are trying to give your work. Although that is no reason for the developers to become lazy with their work; that’s not what is being advertised here. What’s trying to be said is to make everything believable because immersion is one of the preeminent, vital ‘organs’ of passion design. Just like mentioned above, Wreden intentionally made everything appear amateur not to ease his workload, but to convince they player these games were truly made by someone else in their spare time. And from here, the player is given a gateway into the convincing mind of an imaginary character.

A few examples come to mind, such as the environment changing as you move through it to imply the player is in a dreamlike state. Or the player is experiencing the world through the eyes of a grumpy old man who is dying and dissatisfied with his life, so you show the world around in him a different light to reflect this: Dirty textures, things dying underneath the character as he walks around the environment. How about a character that suffers from PTSD triggered from symbolistic objects, and so the developer may make those symbols stand out from the environment, something as simple as making the object colorless in a colorful environment. All of these ideas are relatively simple, yet their impact should not underestimated when it comes to storytelling.

Another thought to maintain as well, keep things simple yet use complexity to your advantage. The literal language that I am speaking right now is based on using simplistic words and sounds to communicate ideas to each other. It’s when one starts applying complexity to an idea and object that it makes such stand out from all of the other ideas and objects. If you’re writing a story for example, you won’t describe every single object in the story unless it provides a gateway to deeper plot devices and storytelling. I can say, “The child tiptoed across the floor.” in a scenario where nothing

else is important except that the child tiptoed across the floor. To add complexity onto this sentence, I can apply details like, “The child tiptoed across the floor in the darkest hours of night.” Now what we have is a situation where a child is probably sneaking around somewhere to avoid something. Finally I can add detailing about the floor, “The child tiptoed across the wooden, creaky flooring at the darkest hours of night.” Now what we have is a sentence that implies a form of danger and performance. It can be important that the child tiptoes across the creaky floor to avoid his parents hearing them, or possibly that they’re trying to escape a monster. There’s even an example of this in the material, you notice these characters? All of them have a distinct box on their head that indicates what role they have in the story. Except for this one. Why? Because it can be inferred that this is a representation of a person from the real world, and that these are prop characters used for a story, whether it be Coda or just a random character used to pull off this idea.

How The Beginner’s Guide pulls off this technique is very subtle, yet when the player looks past the melancholy story and strange environments, they can find how perfectly everything fits into the grand scale of Wreden’s creation. This idea can be applied to most other reputable games as well. If you don't believe me, try looking at your favorite video game, movie, or story, and look at how perfectly the world is crafted simply because everything was created with a purpose.

Case 2: Every POV’s a Screenshot

This next topic drops off the storytelling side of passion design for a little bit, and is more purely about visual design such as video games, painting, and even photography, sprinkled in with some audio design, yet primarily video games since they enact interactivity. If you’re looking for tips on how to do storytelling and are not interested in anything else, you can skip to the next case in the video. Although I would recommend sticking around for this part if you are looking to give your audience a unique mental image to remember your work.

Imagine being placed into a plain, grey, room. No doors, no windows, just you and your mind, starved of entertainment Then all of a sudden, the wall transforms into this bizarre rainbow tunnel or the wall starts getting really trippy. Which one looks better? This, or this [of course showing examples]. If a photographer were to take a picture of either room, which do you think will sell better to an audience? Here is an example from the level Mobius, the player is in a spaceship with a giant door hurdling itself at the ship. Look at this screenshot, everything feels crafted in a way that looks like a work of art, with the main focus being the large colliding space door. Think of abnormalities like this and start applying them everywhere. Except in this scenario, the abnormality only exist because of a painfully plain existence within a controlled environment. Sometimes the abnormalities are subtle enough that it resonates with the observer and becomes something of beauty. Then there are large collections of these abnormalities, which interact with each other to create environments, paintings, defining words scrawled out onto a page. At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re wondering “what I am talking about.”

To actually understand the insanity of the first paragraph I need to explain the idea of abnormalities, because believe it or not, our entire reality is made up of those abnormalities. When walking outside everyday, the average person may not take notice of everything around them because they are familiar with the area. Now think of someone who has never been in that environment before, such as a tourist who missed their flight and are stranded in that same environment. Everything feels very strange to them, and they will be wary of their surroundings, keeping an eye out for threats as well as useful places like hotels and fast food joints. What may be a boring town for one person could be seen as mysterious by another. The world is abnormal when you think about it, because all of our standards are different from each other. Google’s definition of abnormal is: “Deviating from what is normal or usual, typically in a way that is undesirable or worrying.” Now then you have to ask the question, “What is normal?” which isn’t an easy or even consistent question to ask on a methodical level. Things that are normal are those that ‘conform to a standard,’ yet now there is another problem, what is the standard? Everyone has different standards, though most of us agree that certain topics are normal and others are not, such as murder, rape, mass genocide, war. But there is always a niche, and in an established society those niches are serial killers, people who are deemed mentally unstable, nazis, and savages. And while I could rant all day about these people, they do exist, and they find such normal offenses such as rape and murder to be normal. Normality is completely subjective from person to person, and is only the result of previous experience and morals. The world is a set of abnormalities that creates ultimately what is normal, and this correlates strongly with video games.

The idea pushed here is to make your environments interesting; worthy of having photos taken. I can go through several screenshots that are beautiful, weird, and enlightening about what meaning the author is pushing forward from their work. And don’t forget that we are working with full 3D environments that allow for movement, sound, and a lot of visual freedom. Rooms with unassuming visuals may be bolstered in-game by a memorable soundtrack or symbolic meaning. Before you ask, yes I am clearly stating that you should also encourage players to take audio screenshots, A.K.A. making memorable music. Especially since it’s often said that audio is 51% when making videos [POINT TO CITATION], and that applies here [POINT BACK TO VIDEO GAME] where the landscape never comes across as empty, but rather rewards the player for looking around and listening in. Simply turning around in some of the levels is enough to give off an entirely different feel. And most of the time that feeling in The Beginner’s Guide is reflection, a need to look back on what you just experienced. Although in your own medium, this feeling can be anything: surprise, shock, confusion, even confidence if you play the cards right.

One critique I’ve seen commonly used against Wreden’s works is that they’re pretentious, sometimes saying that these interactive experiences are just glorified movies. I’m not going to go at destroying this criticism, I was just trying to be clever with my topic transitions, but I will provide why this is relevant soon. So we shouldn’t forget that emotions and feelings are purely mental, along with instincts and logic. Abusing the whims of the human brain can lead to player attachment, interest, immersion, and practices with logical thinking. If the designer places a bunch of strange figures in a room in a certain manner, the player may ask themselves, “Why have they done this?” or think to themselves “Why does this seem to have so much importance even though I don’t immediately understand it?” From here the player will begin to develop their own understanding of the world and what your creations mean to them. The player often becomes the played when going through passion work, because it is expected that the player feels certain emotions and thinks about certain objects in the environment. Though that said, it should be pointed out that a good creator should never need to force a meaning toward it’s players *unless again it is for a pivotal reason within the work, again comparable to Wreden’s narration.* Okay now that this information has been told: what does any of this have to do with pretension? Because while there is no need for The Beginner’s Guide to be interactive, that doesn’t mean there’s no benefit received from this interactivity. The case can be argued that being able to control your own camera in these environments allows the player to further bond with whatever they are faced with. Does the player really need to pay $10 for interactivity? Well if this were a movie instead, the player would still need to pay money in order to watch the movie.

Having a great understanding of the world and what can and cannot be by reality is a strong starting point for anyone who wants to make interesting worlds out of their works. Especially today where the lands of drama and sadness in passion really only cover the basis of love and money, there is a lot of room for unique creativity. So use this knowledge in order to direct your audience toward a place that might just allow them to ponder your creativity and spread it far. *Just a side note: I kind of went on a rant here but I hope that you were able to tap into my mind there and pick up all of what I was trying to explain.*

Case 3: Place Your 4th Wall Somewhere Else

Funnily enough, the entire reason that this part exist in the first place is due to another video created by Ian Danskin (aka Innuendo Studios) titled, “The Artist is Absent, Davey Wreden and The Beginner’s Guide”. In this video essay Danskin states the following: [VIDEO CLIP]. And I know later he goes back on this statement but bear with me. While I watched, I had an epiphany: “ isn’t Davey just a disembodied character who really doesn’t have much to do with the environments in The Beginner’s Guide?” I mean, he does have an impactful role on the environment, but not intentionally. Is it possible that the fourth wall isn’t between Davey and the audience, for which he is constantly breaking, or rather is the fourth wall behind Davey [Shitty Drawing]. So by this logic, the game actually does have a fourth wall, which mind you still does get broken, but it gets broken in a unique way.

The entire story between Coda, Wreden, and these environments is kind of like a crumbling wall, thousands of years old. Coda tries his hardest to renew the wall and build it back up to glory, yet Wreden keeps attacking it and tearing down progress. At the end of it all, Coda gets tired of trying to fight for a lost cause and opts to knock the wall down himself. The Beginner’s Guide has a very obvious beginning, middle, and end much like how the story of the castle wall I described does in the sense of a tragedy. In the beginning, the world is fine and perfect and these little projects are just beautiful. In the middle, things start getting weird and more mental and the questions start to come up. And in the end, everything is going to hell and it’s a mental breakdown of both Coda and Wreden. Except that the story gets so meta that it literally begins to destroy it’s own fourth wall as the process keeps going. Because it is established within the story that Wreden is an unreliable narrator, ironic considering he is our only narrator and the person that is immediately bonded with and trusted.

By the logic that we have setup, where Wreden isn’t a part of the story but rather he’s a part of the audience just like the player, then there becomes this strange scenario where the audience itself actually breaks down the fourth wall as the story continues. Immediately is can be assumed that these projects are for no one, they exist purely to satisfy Coda. When you start the game, Wreden even references this: [VIDEO CLIP]. Which continues to get referenced as the experience unfolds. Speaking of unfolding, at a certain point within the player’s adventure, Wreden takes notice of a lamppost at the end of a segment, and of course this is later to be blamed on Wreden for meddling with

Coda’s work. The earliest example of this act is the stairs level where Davey writes a script that allows the players to bypass an intended mechanic by the creator. If Wreden is part of the audience, but has managed to add content to these works, then surely this is some weird reverse wall where the audience is working with the story. And what is now left is a story where it’s a creator versus their audience, and sure this sounds like a common story, but it has quite the unexpected twist. The audience is not intended out of Coda’s work. Coda makes this point abundantly obvious at the end of The Beginner’s Guide when he states towards Wreden, “Would you stop taking my games and showing them to people against my wishes?” There are a lot of unique qualities about The Beginner’s Guide that make up a lot of possibilities for one to begin creating their own work. I find this experience to be a good reference point for kinds of creative works that I want to create. And I believe that there is a far land of unmarked territory that creative works could step into to; a call to become stronger than the media of today.

I imagine a story where another story is being told from the perspective of a child who is reading that story. And there are moments when the story abruptly stops for moments of time because something comes up, like the kid gets hungry or possibly his mother comes in and takes the book away from him. There can be multiple levels of fourth wall it feels like, maybe at one point there is a letter in the story that’s from the son’s father and it tells him of a tragic world where nothing matters. And from there the child talks to the reader telling them to go out and enjoy their life. Or in the case of video games, have the player personally be the protagonist, not like those games where you simply put in your name and nothing else matters but possibly you could be adding things to the game. A game where the player needs to cross a pit, but the only way to do that is to open the game’s map file and manually add in a bridge of their own. At the end of it all though it could just be said, “Well the wall always rests between the player and what’s inside of the experience.” I simply don’t agree, the fourth wall should be a rather subjective thing because it allows for an expansive idea for how to write a narrative. Everything about creative work is subjective really, and while we refer to our ancestors, times change, and to keep up with the changing times, there should be a change in the possibilities of reality, or as I’m talking here: original works.

This case is much more about opportunity rather than it is logic, or standards of writing. Being capable of shifting the mechanics of how a innovative work can operate allows for much more expansion for how new, high quality work is even produced and what that entails. To begin shifting those mechanics, one must understand the basics of how to communicate and produce, which conveniently rolls back around to Ian Danskin’s video about The Beginner’s Guide, which much like mine isn’t purely about The Beginner’s Guide but heavily relies on the material for sake of topic. The video covers the fundamentals of storytelling, authorship, and communication, which has a vast amount of research dumped into the discussion. Just hold out with me a little bit longer, and then I’ll provide an annotation to this video if you’re curious.

Rephrase / Closing

No matter how many times I play The Beginner’s Guide, I will never quite get the true idea of what the story is trying to tell me. It can be inferred what the game wants me to know, but it never truly feels right to make such a concise opinion about a game that wants to be so vague about itself. It’s a piece of work that much like some of the environments in Coda’s work, appears so closed off and distant from any form of distinguishable character. Wreden has created a scenario where you can never truly know what is trying to be said, yet sprinkles enough information so that you can get pretty close. And I think this is what most stories should strive, such open ended-ness that the player or reader can come to their own conclusion of what to take away.

In my personal opinion, Wreden has created some of the most inspiring works that I have come by. It’s always the bizarre ways that a story will attempt to present itself that gets to me the most, such as the methodical lectures from Alan Watts that tells the universe in a very new but interesting way. Except I’m not talking just stories here, I’m talking art, audio, environments, our language, and the interactivity of video games. The area of passion work is currently in a weird spell where works will have tenuous story beats that allude to being more complex than what is presented simply because it’s the hip and cool thing of today. Yet none of those projects are talked about for very long, they all seem to get the cop out card for not being capable of creating anything more intriguing. Those that seek out a method of having that illusory mean something other than, “Isn’t it funny that you’re currently thinking of how weird this game is?” will often find their works to last longer than the ones that fall into this trap.

The Beginner’s Guide is a stand up in the ring of modern storytelling that I feel needs to be remembered. I mean, this video only exists because I find Davey Wreden to be a genius: [VIDEO CLIP OF THIS VIDEO IN META WAY THING]. If you haven’t picked up on this already, this entire essay is heavily biased, most of what I have talked about here stem from my own head; they aren’t based on facts. The purpose here is to inform myself and any others who are possibly lost in the crossroads of passion design, with what I hope to be a unique perspective. For anyone that is interesting in creating passion work for themselves, or believes that they can do something with the information I have provided, I highly recommend you give another play through of The Beginner’s Guide. Because as Ian Danskin says, The Beginner’s Guide is “a strange meta textual monster of an indie game”. [END]

#the beginner's guide #tbg #lonesome alley #original #video essay #video scripts

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snarktheater · 6 years

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Ready Player One — Level Two (Chapters 26-27)

“I figured it out later that night, a few hours after Shoto left my stronghold.”

See, when I said that Wade making a mistake in the search for the Jade Key didn’t prove the book understands character flaw, I didn’t think the book would literally have Wade go back to having a random, convenient epiphany for the next step in the Easter Egg hunt. This book is the gift that keeps on giving, in that I rarely have to go very far to elaborate on my arguments: usually, all I need to do is turn the page.

The epiphany, by the way, happened because Wade was randomly folding the wrapper the Jade Key came in, and suddenly remember there’s a scene with a unicorn origami in Blade Runner.

The moment I said the word “unicorn” aloud, the wrapper began to fold on its own, there in the palm of my hand.

…Okay, sure. That’s nice, I guess.

From this, Wade decides that the “test” mentioned on the Jade Key must be the Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner. The book also exposits to us what that is, and what Blade Runner is. And while the book does mention the movie’s based on a Phillip K. Dick novel, I’m not getting the impression that Wade has read it. I mean, it doesn’t even mention at any point (in this chapter or anywhere in the book) the phrase “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”

Anyway. There’s a convenient re-creation of the Tyrell Building from Blade Runner as part of the OASIS standard planet-building kit, meaning that building (and the Voight-Kampff test located in it) can be found on any number of planet. Do I really still need to call attention to the fact that the planet-building tool apparently contains hundreds of other assets similarly taken from existing properties, or have I made my point clear enough about the death of originality in this book yet?

So, Wade goes to the closest planet that features one such replica, Axrenox. It doesn’t matter what that planet is. Actually, not much of anything matters. I mean, the book spends a whole paragraph telling us about how Wade hopes nobody will steal his ship while it’s parked on Axrenox, but—spoiler alert—nobody will. I’m calling attention to it because it’s the second time Wade has expressed worry that someone would steal his transportation method, and the second time nothing comes of it. At some point you have to ask if someone’s not projecting a little too much. And I don’t mean the fictional character here.

Speaking of things that don’t matter: writing a good action scene as Wade goes through the replicants that guard the place. Because, yes, the planet-building kit includes guards in the building too.

The next ten minutes played out like the climax of a John Woo movie. One of the ones starring Chow Yun Fat, like Hard Boiled or The Killer.

Shitty writing aside, I want to point out that the book really shows how much it understands Blade Runner’s theme and central message by…treating the replicants as disposable mooks in a John Woo movie. Like, sure, they’re constructs in a video game, but still. Good job.

Speaking of not understanding the point, remember how the clue was like “take the test”? Yeah, if you know what the Voight-Kampff test is, you might have gotten a little enthusiastic there, since that test is meant to ascertain the ability to empathize with others. Which would be hilarious to see Wade Watts take. Sadly, no, the test only acts as a gateway to a 3D recreation of a video game that Wade has already mastered.

I honestly feel like it’d be insulting to you if I were to recap what happens next in detail. It’s a game. Halliday dropped a hint at it in his will video, which is mentioned to justify Wade being a master at the game. There’s another case of the book using romaji to transcribe the title of the game in Japanese, even though, again, that name is just English words written with Japanese characters and phonotactics. There’s still no tension; I mean, we literally go from Wade explaining the rules of the simulation and how he can’t leave to…

I managed to clear all eight levels of the game in just under three hours.

Oh, sure, after that he tells us how he got close to dying at one point. Like…thanks for telling me I should have been worried in the time you skipped.

At the end of the trial, he gets to choose a giant robot from fiction from a list (some of which already crossed out due to being picked by the Sixers).

I stopped cold when I saw Leopardon, the giant transforming robot used by Supaidaman, the incarnation of Spider-Man who appeared on Japanese TV in the late 1970s. I’d discovered Supaidaman during the course of my research and had become somewhat obsessed with the show. So I didn’t care if Leopardon was the most powerful robot available. I had to have him, regardless.

Okay, so, I just rambled about the romaji, so I won’t do it again here, though you should know it still annoys me. But I will say I’m pleasantly surprised that Wade actually made a decision derived from passion for something. I was starting to wonder if that would ever happen.

Anyway. Wade gets a toy replica of the Leopardon, and with that, he’s now cleared the Second Gate, and receives a hint to the Crystal Key’s location, in the form of a logo of a star inside a circle. This sounds like a pretty generic symbol, but Wade recognizes it. Probably because, if you look it up, it is actually distinct enough:

It just so happens the book describes it really poorly:

Then a symbol slowly appeared in the center of the screen: a glowing red circle with a five-pointed star inside it. The points of the star extended just beyond the outer edge of the circle.

The book skips over Wade leaving the Tyrell building, by the way. I guess the guards only prevent you from entering? I don’t know, because the book won’t tell me. Once he’s back on his ship…wait, I’ve gotta point this out:

And thanks be to Crom, the Vonnegut was still parked right where I’d left it, its cloaking device still engaged.

I already mentioned the ship would not in fact get stolen, but…“thanks be to Crom”? This isn’t even something he’s done until now. It’s just a random reference out of the blue.

Back to the plot. The red star and the image I just showed you are from a music album, 2112 by the band Rush. I don’t know anything about them, but the album is apparently about…

a time when creativity and self-expression have been outlawed.

So…like this book’s world, then?

Wade somehow knows exactly which lyrics on the album are relevant to finding the Crystal Key: a passage about the “Priests of the Temple of Syrinx”, because there’s a planet Syrinx somewhere in the OASIS with a temple in it. And by “a temple” I mean 1024 copies of the city described in the album’s supplemental material. Because copy-paste is an excellent substitute for good ideas. You know, between this, the planet with hundreds of copies of Halliday’s hometown, the planet with hundreds of copies of that text adventure game, and oh, the fact that the game’s planet-building tool contains hundreds of licensed assets. I mean, you can make the technology to run a lifelike VR simulation, but procedural generation and original art assets are both out of reach?

No, I will never stop being angry about this. It’s lazy writing and lazy in-universe, and it heavily undermines the idea that the OASIS somehow dominated the market. I mean, think about it: right now, the videogame market’s latest trend is Battle Royale games. The first game that managed to put the genre where it is is Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, but because it lacked any original assets—and was frankly shoddily made because it was rushed into early release in order to be the first out—it was easily outdone by Fortnite, a game with a more competent team and actually creative people working on it, specifically because the concept alone isn’t going to make a game win on the market (and it also makes for very weak ground to sue people for copyright infringement once they beat you, Bluehole).

A concept can be replicated—don’t ever believe the myth of the indispensable lone genius, i.e. Halliday in this case, there’s always someone else, or a group of people, who can replicate your idea and probably improve on it while they’re at it. So I cannot for even a minute believe that there isn’t someone who couldn’t make the OASIS, except, you know, better. Hell, that’s what IOI should do, instead of investing loads of money into a contest to take over the OASIS with a very low chance of success.

Ahem. I’m getting off-topic, aren’t I? Well, that’s okay, because the actual action is as stilted as usual. Wade lands on the planet, and I guess IOI didn’t attempt to leave people to guard it or anything so he’s all alone. He finds the temple mentioned in the song, and figures he has to make an offering at the altar. Luckily, he instantly knows what other lyrics of the album are relevant, and they lead him to a secret cave behind a waterfall. If you think I’m rushing through the scene…barely. It takes him a paragraph to search the cave, for instance. The book’s as uninterested in this as I am. Which…you know, it shouldn’t be.

What does he find in the secret room in the secret cave, you ask? An electric guitar. It’s another reference to the album, but also, it’s stuck in a stone.

I grinned at the absurd Arthurian image of the guitar in the stone. Like every gunter, I’d seen John Boorman’s film Excalibur many times, so it seemed obvious what I should do next.

Yes, really. Apparently Arthurian legends are no longer widely known and the only reference Wade has is a specific movie adaptation of the mythos. Because that makes sense.

So Wade gets the special guitar, and it turns out he knows how to play it (in the OASIS, that is), and he’s randomly inspired to play the song 2112, even though there isn’t really anything prompting him to do. But it’s lucky, because it makes another clue show up:

The first was ringed in red metal The second, in green stone The third is clearest crystal and cannot be unlocked alone

Had the Sixers played the song and discovered this message? I seriously doubted it. They would have pulled the guitar from the stone and immediately returned it to the temple.

Yeah, so, because Wade played the guitar for no clear reason, Wade now has an advantage over the Sixers. Thanks, author puppetmaster! It’s not like giving characters a clear motivation to do what they do is difficult or useful to reinforce the book’s verisimilitude!

I mean, for real. Would it really be so hard to say Wade just…felt like playing the special guitar before he offered it at the altar in the table? It’s really not that hard.

Also, what the fuck is up with that hint? No, really. Now Halliday wants to encourage cooperation in his contest? Don’t you think it’s a little too late? Also, why do that at the last stage? Does that mean multiple people will get the egg at the same time…by design? That’s not gonna backfire at all.

Anyway, Wade returns the guitar to the temple, and when he puts it on the altar, it turns into the Crystal Key as planned.

my score on the Scoreboard increased by 25,000 points. When added to the 200,000 I’d received for clearing the Second Gate, that brought my total score up to 353,000 points, one thousand points more than Sorrento. I was back in first place.

As a hint for the location of the Third Gate, Wade only gets a stylized A. It’s actually the symbol of Halliday’s avatar Anorak—and of his castle. Because of course he has a castle in the OASIS.

the castle was impregnable and always had been. No avatar but Anorak himself had ever been able to pass through its entrance. But now I knew there must be a way to enter Castle Anorak. Because the Third Gate was hidden somewhere inside.

You know, Halliday making his own impregnable location inside of his own game explains a lot about why the OASIS is so permissive towards griefers. It was made by one.

Speaking of griefers, now that someone else has found the Crystal Key, guess who made an impenetrable dome around Castle Anorak? Yep, it’s the Sixers! And yes, there’s an artefact that lets you create a literally impenetrable barrier around a location in the OASIS. Again, who designs this?

The news of this soon reaches the gunter and clans, who all converge on the planet Chthonia, even though, you know, they don’t have the Crystal Key yet. But in spite of being in a really bad spot, Wade decides not to give up this time. I mean, it’s not like the Sixers having the exact same advantage (exclusive access to the Third Gate) didn’t make him fantasize about committing suicide three chapters ago or anything. That’s character consistency right there.

Yes, I’m still bitter that the book went there.

I began to formulate a plan. A bold, outrageous plan that would require epic amounts of luck to pull off.

Well considering how the rest of the book has gone, I’m not exactly on the edge of my seat here.

So Wade emails Artemis, Aech and Shoto the location of the Second Gate and the Crystal Key, and prepares to put the rest of his plan in motion, while the book attempts to end “Level Two” on a cliffhanger.

Once I was sure all three of them had received my message, I initiated the next phase of my plan. This was the part that terrified me, because I knew there was a good chance it was going to end up getting me killed. But at this point, I no longer cared. I was going to reach the Third Gate, or die trying.

I did say “attempts to”. I mean, this is the first time Wade actually has a plan, and the “reach it or die trying” has sort of been his MO so far. But hey. Nice attempt.

#ready player one #ernest cline #book reviews #ya books #young adult #books #young adult books #ya #reviews #book #book review #review #st: ready player one

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parsleybabe · 6 years

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The Unpopular Opinion Book Questionaire

Before I start, credit where credit is due: I copied the questions and format of this post from @resist-the-fear’s post and this wordpress post, because I couldn’t figure out how to add my answers into the original post without messing up all formatting. And I’m really sorry if this upsets anybody, but the idea is cool and it’d be a shame not to continue it on tumblr.

So, here we go...

1. A Popular Book or series that you didn’t like.

1) Feels like the Twilight Saga would be the obvious answer (and it IS), but I’m gonna go for pretty much all of Dan Bown’s novels and I’m gonna explain my dislike with The DaVinci Code

This novel actually angered me so much that I wrote my master’s thesis on how Brown deliberately mislead the majority of his readers into mistaking his fiction for actual facts in order to sell more books.

The gist is, any and all art historic descriptions and information given within the book are fully fictional. That includes a page of “facts” (labeled as such) preceding the novel itself (which doesn’t contain any actual facts at all) and a note underneath stating that all descriptions of paitings were accurate. Spoiler alert: They’re not. I majored art history in school and did a lot of research, but, honestly, anybody who’s interested in art history and knows the very very basics about the renaissance and other time periods can easily disprove all of the novel’s supposedly accurate art descriptions.

And, to be truthful, I have to admit that Brown is really fucking good at fiction. He’s also really good at writing his fiction around and over existing art historic knowledge and twisting it without making it too obvious for careless readers. That’s kinda cool. And I get that disguising fiction as fact isn’t a new trend. I mean... Defoe did when he falsely claimed that Robinson Cruseo was a factual report of a true event, because the readership of his time period wasn’t familiar with adventure fiction. But what really annoyed me was 1) how many readers actually believed Brown to have uncovered some genuine conspiracy and 2) that Brown kept feeding into the delusion of those fans again and again through comments in interviews and webpages, even though he fully knew it’s all fiction, because he himself made it up.

2) And then there’s the Wanderhure series, written by a German writing couple under the pseudonym Iny Lorentz. I’m not sure if this has been translated into English, but it’s been highly popular in Germany and several other countries (won some awards and was made into a series of TV movies and whatnot). It is, quite honestly THE WORST BOOK I HAVE EVER READ IN MY WHOLE LIFE.

The first novel was recommended to me by relatives because parts of it take place in a city that I have lived in for quite some time, and it’s a historical fiction based on a medieval poem. The premiss of the novel is great: during the middle ages, a young and respected girl gets accused to have sinned by some townspeople and nobody believes her to be innocent, as she is just a girl. She gets cast out of her city and home, left with no other choice than to become a traveling whore if she wants to survive. She ends up becoming quite successful in her profession (in the sense that she has many high ranking clients from both church and state who pay her with lots of money and other favors) and returns to the city that cast her out long ago to have a huge effect on politics and religion.

The story was quite intriguing to me, both due to the interesting plotline as well as the reference to the city I live in. HOWEVER, it is horribly written. All characters, especially the protagonist, are unbelievably flat. There is no character development whatsoever, even though the story offers plenty of chances to find it. I read through the book because of the locations... houses that actually still exist, that I have been in, Gateways that i’ve walked through, roads that I’ve travelled on. Those are very well described. It’s easy to figure out each and every step the characters take on a map and that’s really cool. But the plotline was destroyed by less than mediocre characterization and simple, unimpressive language. Every time a character is supposed to feel something, the sentence literally goes, “She felt xyz” - and that’s as descriptive as it gets. There’s no atmosphere created and not an ounce of fluidity in the sentence structure. The whole narration is as dry as brick and the story reads like a two dimensional still drawing of a 3D rollercoaster ride.

2. A Popular Book or series that every one else seems to hate but you love.

I honestly don’t think that there’s any book series that EVERYBODY hates. And I do think that all the books I love, are actually pretty popular. Buuuuut...

I’ve seen the Mortal Instruments series getting a lot of hate on tumblr. And I fully understand why Cassandra Clare isn’t everybody’s favorite author. I don’t like her methods and procedure at all either. But, I have to say that I do like the basic plotline of the Mortal Instruments. I’ve only read the first three novels, and I have no clue what happens afterwards. And there’s a lot to be criticized, be it Clare “copying” existing dialogues, or some really flat and ... well, just plain naive characters. BUT the plot itself is cool. So, I felt positively entertained and liked it. Love would be a bit of a strong term, though, I think.

3. A Love Triangle where the main character ended up with the person you did NOT want them to end up with (warn ppl for spoilers) OR an OTP that you don’t like.

Not giving any spoilers, but the Demon’s Lexicon Trilogy. I really, really disliked the reveal of an actual pairing in the third novel. It didn’t make sense to me, and I wasn’t reading for romance to begin with. It kind of cheapened the story because the love interest side story suddenly got A LOT of attention that it didn’t before and that shifted the focal point of the overall plotline. (Loved the first book, really liked the second, couldn’t care less for the third, tbh)

4. A popular book Genre that you hardly reach for.

It’s either crime fiction or esoteric non-fiction.

I’m actually into a lot of different genres: almost all types of fiction (YA, dystopian, sci-fi, political, thriller, mystery, adventure, horror, fantasy etc.), also children’s books, travel books, hobby and craft books, satires, other humorous books, biographies/autobiographies, educational books, historical books both fiction and non-fiction...

Doesn’t matter, but crime fiction (as long as it doesn’t contain anything else) is just so boring to me. Also, it feels to me as if most crime fiction heroes solve those crimes with A LOT more lucky coincidences than I would hope actual crime fighters depend on.

And esoteric books are just completely outside my personal interests. Either the stuff described in those books feels like fiction to me while being sold as non-fiction, or it’s stuff that I feel should not be aquired through books but personal encounters and explorations.

5. A popular or beloved character that you do not like.

Definitely Clary Fray from the Mortal Instruments. Man, she is soooooo slow on the uptake and so naive in so many ways. And she’s also kind of a horrible Mary Sue, not just because of her name... (I mean, really? Clary, Ms Clare? 😔) But also because of how she is so awesomely good at everything and how she always thinks of the perfect solutions for everything when nobody else does. Kinda... very little room for character development. But, then again, who needs that, right?

6. A popular author that you can’t seem to get into.

Aside from Dan Brown? Here’s my unholy trinity...

1) Stephenie Meyer (yeah, the Twilight one) - I was actually sent an e-book copy of Twilight right before it became such a huge success. I started reading it, because my friend recommended it and praised it so highly. But, I couldn’t make it past a couple dozen pages. The writing style is just so bad, I couldn’t continue. The characters were so flat, I lost any and all interest in what was going to happen. And the story wasn’t all that intriguing either, especially because it was loaded with antiquated world views, especially Bella’s character and what was deemed right for her to do was just... WOW, it was just so unbelievably bad, lol. I was so surprised that it actually ended up being successful.

2) E.L.James (the 50 Shades one) - For years, I genuinely believed that it was impossible to write worse than Meyer. Boy, was I wrong. I tried several times to read more than ten pages of 50 Shades of Grey, and I failed every single time. It’s not just a bad story, I’ve seen children’s books for toddlers that have a more interesting sentence structure than what she comes up with for an adult audience. Her language is so dull and non-descriptive that even the supposedly racy sexy bits read like a phone book to me. Honestly, I DON’T GET WHY anybody ever had any interest in this book series. The language is unspeakably poor, the plot takes all the wrong turns it could possibly take, the “research” done before writing the book... I don’t even know where that load of complete misinformation could possibly come from.

3) Iny Lorentz (the writing couple I mentioned above: Elmar Wohlrath and Iny Klocke) - Just bad, bad, bad writing. No concept of character development, fiction asthetically written like non-fiction, no use of language to create atmosphere or convey emotions. They write neutral snoozefests. And... I can’t bring myself to write any more on them.

7. A popular book trope that you’re tired of seeing. (examples “lost princess”, corrupt ruler, love triangles, etc.)

Mary Sues and Gary Stues. But Love Triangles are a very hot contender.

8. A popular series that you have no interest in reading.

All the different Shades, lol.

9. The saying goes “The book is always better than the movie”, but what movie or T.V. show adaptation do you prefer more than the book?

Definitely Stand By Me which is Stephen King’s The Body. That movie is about as great as that story could have possibly been when put onto the screen. The actors were so perfectly cast, the cinematography, costumes and set design really captured the time period, atmosphere and geography, and the facial expressions portrayed all the right emotions beautifully.

Also, I have to say, out of all of King’s movie adaptations, and while neither The Body nor Stand By Me are categorized as horror, the scene where you can see the dead boy’s face is one of the scariest, most horrific moments I can think of in a film ever. It gave me nightmares when I first saw it, and still, to this day, I have to close my eyes when that scene comes up. And the cool thing is, it’s not meant to be specifically horrifying, or gory or scary. But the simplicity of the sudden glimpse into dead eyes, to me, is scarier than any monster I could imagine and does King’s reputation more than justice.

#books #personal #unpopular opinion

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linespider-blog · 3 years

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Optimal Flow State Narration

I've been wanting to write more on comics/my comics process for a while now, but the challenge has been really having something to say in a way that would be substantial and worth the time it would take to write it out, which I'm trying right now.

Currently I'm processing two different comics in wildly different mediums: Megg, Mogg and Owl by Simon Hanselmann and Rain Like Hammers by Brandon Graham.

MMOG is not easy to explain, but it's very dark, humorous, and bleak, and depicts the dysfunctional misadventures of a witch, her cat familiar, a werewolf, and a humanoid owl named Owl, and their toxic codependency on each other and substance abuse, while navigating what it more or less apartment living in a mundane but also disgusting city. It's been a weird ride, and the story is ongoing, an is an examination of the long-term effects of the characters' addictions, their inability to move on in their lives, and the effects of their actions upon one another.

I got invested in this comic over the beginning of the Pandemic last year, as the creator already had a long-running series of books but began posting new storylines set in the Pandemic that were, on the whole, significantly more farcical, and considered not part of the ongoing plotline in the books. I ended up buying the most recent book, Bad Gateway, mostly in an attempt to better understand what I was seeing, and to better determine if I enjoyed it or was disgusted by it. Honestly it's a bit of both.

Since completing the Pandemic book, Hanselmann has been posting earlier stuff in his Instagram, as the collected book, titled Crisis Zone, has now won an Eisner and likely has grown his career a great deal. It's now come around to the point where I find myself reading the updates from Bad Gateway, on Instagram-the very book I've owned for over a year now that sits on my shelf. Part of the interest in this point is that the updates on Instagram are not merely shots from the book itself-they are carefully taken images from the original physical art, creating the strange effect of looking on my phone at artwork that is better than the actual physical pages of the work-you can see the texture of the paper, the use of whiteout, and so on. And yet I was doing this even before it dawned on me that the Instagram version was of the original images and not just the book online.

Hanselmann manages a 3x4 grid of squares on most of his pages in book form, which coincidentally allows the individual frames to work quite well on Instagram. There is really something to seeing such dedication and resolutely maintaining this form. The composition in each frame works, it's immediately easy to understand, easy to read, big obvious strengths. I like it, but I don't know if I could do it myself. I don't know how I would, right now, but I definitely see its advantages.

Rain Like Hammers by Brandon Graham is a far-flung future science fiction story. It was made by Graham during a time of deep depression in response to events in his career and his personal life that are hard for me to get enough of a read on to document here, but they certainly influenced this book. It is a strange book, and even though I have read it three times now, I'm still struggling with its story.

Graham's style is a lot more free-form, and has strong manga influences, often peppering his images with small notes, explanations of devices, or even tiny dialogue balloons expressing a single sidelong thought, and there's clear Moebius and Herge influences going on with his depictions of the fantastic (Moebius) in a simplified, clean art style (Herge). There's a character that clearly represents the author himself, and the story attempts to say some things about the transitional nature of identity, public ridicule, and the ways societies can normalize some behaviors while ostracizing others. It is, quite honestly, a very difficult read for me, and I have been familiar with his past works, but something else is going on here I still haven't unlocked.

I honestly want to write more on Rain Like Hammers but I'm still trying to understand it-for one, I still don't even know why it was given that title it has. It feels less like an explicit story, even if it attempts to present itself as such, and more like something...not necessarily dreamlike, but as a sketchbook that over time came to life and began asserting relationships between the separate ideas happening on each page. It floats. I can't tell if it works or not, it's just quite simply very unfamiliar feeling, in a way that makes it hard to translate its strengths. It's going to be a puzzle for a long time, I think.

Which is all to get at my own work, and my own thoughts on my work. I haven't used my iPad in a considerable amount of time now, in fact I have it turned off, as once every month or so I suddenly notice it's almost out of power and recharge it for a night and then do nothing with it, again. I'll no doubt bring it out when Procreate introduces its next major update, which appears to hint at some kind of 3D modeling aspect that is probably not quite what I am hoping for but time will tell...

A major reason I fell off the iPad was my realization on the importance of physical drawing on physical paper with a physical tool. The importance of leaving evidence, an object that can be considered and no just disappeared in another object. I also realized an odd feeling that...and this is hard to explain adequately, but...

When I draw on paper, I'm drawing on my brain. All the senses, the tactility of the page and the pencil, all of that travels up my arm and is written on my brain as I do it. With a stylus I get maybe 1% of that sensory information. Obviously I am not against digital art...but this difference is why I struggle so greatly to produce something digitally without realizing it on a page.

The other thing I want to write down here, is that...when working on comics, the drawing is the writing. I've been having a very hard time with Leonardo Da Vinci, which I won't get into here, but as an example, I knew I needed to really work out his role and presence in the story, as he's crucial and yet also...well, again, mainly it's important that I have him somewhere to serve the purposes he's meant to serve, as well as tie up some loose ends involving the armillary sphere that only he can deal with.

So I've brought him back to the barn on the castle grounds to work on that, and then I realized I wanted to bring the Penguin into the scene, so I had the Penguin climb through a window and greet Leonardo through the window. I'm still struggling with this frame, but, I had the Penguin standing in the window, holding one wing out to Leonardo pantomiming a greeting. Which leads to the next page, where Leonardo is standing up from his work bench, away from his projects...and I didn't know what to do there.

So I had Leonardo standing there, and behind him, the Penguin standing on the workbench, looking at Leonardo, both facing the reader. And I didn't know what to do. I kept circling back.

And then I realized that in the prior page the Penguin could, instead of waving to Leonardo, but holding a little scroll out to him, to add reason for his appearance, and enhance the interaction, so I added in the scroll.

Cut back to that next page, I have Leonardo unfurling the scroll to look at it, but the Penguin is still standing behind him, passively. I redo it again, and I realize the Penguin can be peering over Leonardo's shoulder to be looking at the contents of the scroll as Leonardo is reading it (for the record, the Penguin probably can't read, but he'd still be curious to know what's happening), so now we have the two figures interacting again and responding to this bit of news.

And like that I have rewritten this moment at least five times, reshaping the event forwards and backwards. To be honest, I still don't know what's in the scroll I've given the Penguin to deliver to Leonardo, and I have a lot to work out there. The biggest challenge with comics is that I find I'm usually try to think about at least five things at once:

-Story

-Composition (the interior of the frame itself and what it depicted therein)

-Character Performance/Interaction

-Set Design

-Layout (the composition of the various frames on the page and how they relate to eachother)

These five different things compete for my attention and often influence eachother. Surprisingly, the story is often the most passive participant...because so much, moment-to-moment, comes out of what is going immediately.

Anyway, I have much to do, and may day has only gotten started, and there will be groceries to take care of before work.

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