Lamp, broken circa 1988

yeah uh i am adoring death stranding so far but that's so unsurprising coming for me that this is probably the most I'll ever say about it on here, for fear of appearing predictable

A day late, but, we're here. By the way, for this thread, I'm gonna put a reaction on your post when I've posted your specific review. I heard Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts” for the first time in 2018, and thought it was a fun song and was pretty sure at some point she’d be a star. Unfortunately, the first time I’ve ever mentioned that thought anywhere was right now, so it looks like I’m pulling some “I KNEW LIZZO BEFORE EVERYONE KNEW LIZZO, BUNCHA BANDWAGONERS” type of thing. I’m conflicted on Lizzo, and not because of any like plagarism thing (fuck the marvin gaye estate for making this litigious hell songwriters are now at risk of, but also fuck robin thicke in general (especially for that record about his ex-wife, holy shit that thing’s gross)). There’s like multiple facets to the conflict here. I have a lot of misgivings with the body positivity movement because while there are people who mean it and are coming from the right place with it, the arrival of body positivity in pop culture has come along with a lot of capitalist recoup and I feel tense about the marketing aspect. I also feel like it’s a thing I don’t get to claim for myself. Before I say anything further on that, let me assure you that I’m super aware of the hell that the pursuit of thinness puts on young women and the literal harm it can cause. I understand that my needs aren’t first in line. I’m still in that same line. I’m a self-conscious fat man who has seen on more than one occasion someone be radically body positive and supportive towards women and then degrading towards fat men. I also am suspicious of body positive art. Again, it’s meant from a lovely, well meaning place, but like… okay, for every style of human suffering and vice and problem, there’s art about that state of being. With the exception of, like, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, the only art I know of that has anything to say about how hard and painful fatness can be is mine. I’m sure there’s others out there. They don’t get elevated in the same way that like records about addiction do. And all of this is kind of moot when it comes to Lizzo, because the “BODY POSITIVE ARTIST” thing is a thing that’s forced onto her. She’s not out here being a deliberate radical activist. She writes catchy love songs, but because she’s larger than what society dictates is an acceptable person to make songs like that it becomes a radical act. All of that is to say I’ve heard Juice and Truth Hurts and never checked out the record until now because the conversation around it when it came out was mind-numbing. Here we go! As always, one paragraph per song.

Death Stranding review embargo is up. None of the perfect scores are from websites I've ever heard of. The Giant Bomb coverage so far is scorching, especially the Beastcast. EDIT: this post originally said "none of the perfect scores are from websites about it" and I just want to note for the record I have no idea what that was supposed to mean either.

DEPIXTION [3] Picross but a 12x12 grid and you're solving Red, Yellow, and Blue layers to make a full colored image. This sounds amazing. It's... okay. Here's the problem. Sometimes you solve "what is that supposed to be" before you're done with all three color layers, and so it makes it feel like busy work to finish it. Also, it never does the colors in an order aside from Red, Yellow and Blue, which lends to a general sameness in the execution of everything, which I know is a hell of a thing to say about a Picross game but it's true. There's some fucking jams on the soundtrack though, so, if you want to play a weird Picross variant and love overly computerized funk, this is a good time. DISCO ELYSIUM [4] This might be the game of the year, but I wont know until I finish it some time next year. It's got so much going for it. Like... okay, I'm at a point where I want a game to be something for me other than power fantasy. I've done a lot of power fantasy in my life. I want more varied experiences. Disco Elysium is doing that for me. Premise-wise, it's starting in a standard place. You have amnesia. You have been Up To Some Shit. You need to figure out what, and what to do about what you're expected to do next. It plays like the old Infinity Engine stuff, but with absolutely no combat. Everything is ten layers of speech and dexterity checks. But it's not just speech and dexterity. You have 24 different traits that you're in constant struggle with, old ways of thinking from an old life. Some of them are persuasive. Some are creative. Some are invasive. Depending on how you're doing managing these internal mechanisms, you'll end up performing differently in the world. Dialogue options change, options open up, even perception transforms itself if you do well enough. If I went on too long about this system it would seem like i am trying to sell you something. Suffice it to say, a roleplaying game where you have no real experience with your past aside from wrestling with these old tightly woven thought patterns and habits counts as "a more varied experience." The game also has a brilliant way of letting you solve some problems. In addition to the world around you, you have a mechanism that allows your character's brain to process some thoughts in the background, and then hours later you can confront that experience and move forward. This is an ingenous way of letting you try every solution to a problem before going back to another more obvious answer. Also all of the writing in the game is good so far, and it seems to be About Something. I recommend this game very strongly, and I hope it doesn't get lost in the shuffle because it released a week before The Outer Worlds. If Moral Grey Area CRPGs are your thing, Get This.

As a phillies fan who hated Disney McNike before he became a Phil, did I say the Nats? I meant how much I hate baseball and earth and stuff.

In a little while, I will remember how much I hate the scum-sucking Nats. Right now, I'm happy Max Scherzer is happy.

I'll start on this the weekend after Halloween btw, and submissions are open from right now until January 1st. Come on. I know one of you is going to make me listen to that Tool record. Just do it already.

Last year, some people said that they didn't notice this was happening again in the same thread and ended up submitting records late. BEHOLD, A NEW THREAD. NOW I COMMAND YOU TO SUBMIT (to this thread). YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE. Rules: First Come First Serve If you nominate two, I'll listen to zero No guarantees that my review will be positive. If you want to talk about a bunch of records, that's cool, but please bold the one you want me to listen to. For example, I liked a lot of records this year! Like Lightning Bolt's "Sonic Citadel," or Black Milk's "DIVE" EP (which low key might be better than FEVER, and I thought FEVER was amazing). For a while my album of the year was Tyler The Creator's "IGOR" because I was so happy that he was making good on the promise of Flower Boy's strongest moments by making a huge sprawling genre-mess pop record about love and queerness, AND that the album hit #1 in the US in it's first week. Ultimately though, my favorite album of the year was "Guns" by Quelle Chris. The shortest explanation I can give for why is this: it addressed an idea I had for a symphony so well that I threw out the symphony because I didn't think I could express it better than Quelle Chris could. also i put out a record that i thought was really good but i've talked about that a lot already Your turn!

I was trying to give like the briefest possible overview because the best possible outcome of putting it out there is someone goes "oh hey maybe I'll play this WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON"

DESTINY 2 SHADOWKEEP [4] After angrily quitting Destiny in the wake of how much shit Warmind sucked, and refusing to give Activision any money for any Destiny stuff for fear of getting Surprise Travelers Tales'd again, my guild is back in on Shadowkeep. It's good. You're already playing it if you're going to play it. ANODYNE [3] I'm probably done playing this. I didn't beat it. It was sold on switch for a dollar, and marketed as "an alternative to links awakening." This alternative takes a brief trip through Someone Describing Yume Nikki To Someone Else And They Heard Every Third Word And Made A Game About It. if you don't know what Yume Nikki is, do not play this game. I am not responsible for you looking up Yume Nikki. I HAVE BEEN PLAYING A LOT OF RANDOM ARCADE GAMES BECAUSE I ACCIDENTIALLY OBTAINED THE COMPLETE FBA SET. HERE ARE SOME GOOD ONES: The Mahou Daisakusen Series (US Names: Sorcer Striker, Kingdom Grandprix, & Dimahoo. Play them in order for maximum effect.) Deroon DeroDero (Puyo Puyo but every time you hit a combo all the pieces reach across the well and try to link up for new combos) Metamoqester (Beatemup that kind of plays like you playing Street Fighter against giant monsters. See also: Dadandarn, Warzard) Boogie Wings (Shmup where when your plane gets blown up you can run around on the ground and continue fucking shit up and either earn a new plane or just ride horses/robots/pogo sticks) Waku Waku 7 (fighting game, total delight, I main Mauru)

Control is already on sale. This implies that it is not doing very well sales wise. The good news is, whatever deal they struck with Epic paid back the development costs immediately so they at least broke even. But, uh, if this game bombs, I will be sad forever, so please do your part to prevent that.

Neil Druckmann sez: " We began working on this game over five years ago. It’s hard to describe the immense pressure of following up the first game. We know how much you love this world and its characters — especially Ellie and Joel. Believe me, we’re fans as well. We love them. Which is why we spent years crafting a game that we feel will do them justice, telling a nuanced story that deals with the core question: how far would you go to exact justice against the people that hurt the ones you love? It’s a highly emotional story with complex themes that befit the world of The Last of Us. What we realized pretty early on is that we were putting together Naughty Dog’s most ambitious and longest game in our 35 year history. To tell this kind of story the game needed to be massive. Without spoiling too much, at the top of this post you can watch the brand-new trailer that we debuted earlier today on State of Play, which just scratches the surface of what the game has in store." I sez: "noooooooooooooooooooo" (context: i got a copy of TLoU remastered when I got a PS4, I convinced a friend to play it while I watched, we HATED it, and when the sequel was announced the make-good we decided on was that if he pays for it, I will play this one. so it being The Longest Naughty Dog Ever feels like cosmic punishment.)

Cosign on Darius Gaiden. It was one one of the like ten Saturn games I owned and it's fucking amazing and I think about the opening stage of it at least once a month. It's just burned into my head in that high of a resolution.

CONTROL [4] I'm not sure what reputation I have around here, and what it's worth when I say things like this, but if my reputation is like good-ish or at least understood, this should have some weight: I just beat Control tonight. I adored it. I don't have a single complaint or criticism about that whole game.

Ruby Yacht crew album? Ruby Yacht crew album.

As someone who also has a torn ACL I can speak on why that is: ligaments like that aren't connected to the blood stream, so they don't heal without surgical intervention. They only get worse until they completely tear. (That's mine, it's so slack that it can like shift around inside my knee cap and get pinched by the bones. FUN!)

Yeah I'm on PC too, I only have it because of a friend giving it to me because they had a key for it with their video card and no intention of playing it. I've only heard rough stuff about the console performance, which is a damn shame because so far I think it's amazing. I literally haven't been able to stop thinking about it since I put it down last night, and I have no time to play it the rest of the weekend so it's gonna drive me up the wall.

i am only two hours in right now so I dont want to like for sure give a rating but yo; if you think you might like Control, go play Control

haha fuck this team

I'M GOING TO YELL ABOUT TEKKEN 7 SOME MORE [n/a] I want to say how this is probably the best fighting game released this decade, but I'm not sure if I can separate it's quality from my experience with it. Last week, I (Armor King) played a First to 5 match with a friend of mine (King) that I've personally taken under my wing, because homie's got deficits but wants to compete, so we've worked together and broken up all his bad habits and built new, good ones. I took the first four, easily, and then he ran it all the way back on me and beat me. When I turned to him, his face was in his hands because he was overcome with emotion. And like... I'm not a great player, at all, but I'm the 2nd best in my group and kind of this unofficial coach in this group of mine. So it was a huge win for him. Last night, I ended up playing with another friend of mine that's taken up the game. They kind of bottomed out with one of their characters, and so I threw out a wild guess for a character for him to switch to (Jack), based on how I saw him using his old character (Noctis (he liked FF15 and that was his way in)). In the spirit of fairness, I took up a character I've been wanting to learn (Lee (I played him in Tekken 2 & 4 back when I didn't know how the game worked)) and we played for about an hour and a half. When we stopped, the final score was 11-9, and in that period he leveled up considerably. I pointed out moves of his that I knew would patch the holes in his game I was exploiting, and sure enough, he took to it and found himself confident with the new character and set on him for the forseeable future. So what I'm saying is, if my Golden Age of Fighting Games was me buying an X-Arcade and wiring it into my PC to play an emulated copy of Garou: Mark of the Wolves, I am currently in my Silver Age of Fighting Games, and either way, Tekken 7 is very fucking good. FIRE EMBLEM THREE HOUSES [4] Short: this is an answer I would accept to the question "What was the best game that came out in 2019?" Long: I'm 20 hours in. It is basically Persona with tactics battles instead of dungeons. I have no idea where the plot is going but they're doing heavy foreshadowing. The translation is good enough that when characters say shit I react like they're saying the shit (sympathy at self-abusive cases, wanting to stranglemurder arrogant nobles, the whole deal). I don't know how much I will play it, but the thought has entered my mind at least once of potentially playing through it with each house. This would be, for me, a fucking herculean undertaking when it comes to a JRPG. so I'm enjoying it. is it my game of the year? Tetris 99 came out this February so, no. But I could see how someone would say it is.

I don't know if you know this, but my favorite thing about writing rock music is Huge Chords. So it makes me happy to know that one of the bands that's extremely good at that style of writing is back:

So if you've been in the "how's it going" thread you know I had a pretty fantastically shit July. The only comfort I drew in it was from his Purple Mountains record, because it was saying things I was feeling but wasn't strong enough to say or think. Sad I didn't even have the opportunity to see him or say thank you, but I'm grateful regardless.

My memory is suspect but I remember during the Dev streams back when the game was early access (and lord I miss those) they mentioned that Fire Pro Returns sold 3-1 in the US vs. Japan, so, I suspect that they too are not basing things off Japanese sales. I'm sure in Spike's view it's a passion project that just so happens to have a fanbase of raving fucking lunatics. which also would describe danganronpa now that I think about it