Lamp, broken circa 1988
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Posts posted by Lamp, broken circa 1988
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On 5/2/2025 at 12:51 PM, supremebve said:
We really are at the point where discourse about anything on the internet is almost impossible. The number of outlets that actually discuss video games without having to parse through internet trollery is incredibly small. Dragon Age Veilguard is a flawed game, but I don't know if I ever read or heard a single review of the game that discussed the game's flaws in an honest way. Literally everyone took a side and discussed that side. It's either the single best game ever made or the single worst game ever made and it's nowhere close to either. So, we just have to guess whether or not we'll like a game, or a movie, or a TV show, because no one will ever actually talk about the merits of the game, movie, or show. I generally don't discuss video games, Star Wars, hip-hop, wrestling, or about 384 other things online, because it's near impossible to find people who discuss any of these things in good faith. I just want to discuss things I enjoy for better or worse, with people who actually want to talk about those things. So, I'm with Craig H with this one, it sucks that we'll have one fewer outlet where people talk about games because they genuinely enjoy games.
i know it's not your main point but if you're looking to hear someone speak to veilguard Noah Caldwell Gervais does really great (but also extremely long) video essays, and his most recent one is about playing through the entire Dragon Age series including the Veilguard, and it's the most even-handed take of the game I've heard, so, here:
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I have an inversion on "eddie kingston should have beat miro," which is "miro should never have lost the tnt championship in the ring at all"
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hi, ufo 50 rules and all, and I'm sorry to be this guy, but I gotta clarify this cuz I've seen a lot of people say this and it's wrong: the Ojiro Fumoto game in UFO50 is not Velgress (aka "the reverse downwell"). His game on the collection is Seaside Drive.
However, If you have a Netflix account, a smartphone and want to play Reverse Downwell made by the Downwell guy, go into the Netflix Games part of the phone app and you'll find the game you're looking for. It's called Poinpy and it's genuinely one of the best phone games I've ever played.
anyways UFO 50 is very good and my #2 game of the year behind Devil Blade Reboot. Favorite games are Valbrace, Party House, Pilot Quest, Planet Zoldarth & Seaside Drive, and my least favorites are the ones that play on my phobias and all the Campanellas.
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Time to dust this old guy off!
Hey something you use today is probably going to be some kind of broken, and it's probably got to do with this! So be patient!
https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/19/24201717/windows-bsod-crowdstrike-outage-issuecan't remember the last time a busted patch grounded three airlines, but the world wasn't as
interconnected as it is now.
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hey if that's appealing you might want to check out Moonring . It's a completely free passion project from a co-creator of Fable, Dene Carter.
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DEVIL BLADE REBOOT [4]
Shootemups were a genre that earned a parody as scornful as bullet hell games. As the genre wore on, they became less games about shooting things and more games about collecting things, be they lives, powerups, medals, or whatever else. There was ambiguity about how to push the genre forward which left everything primed for Cave to come in and do what they did, making the shooting part of shootemups ancillary to tracing lines with a pen through prismatic fields of dots. And now, sitting at the opposite end of 20 years of that shit, we've come to a fork in the road. One side of the fork is Vampire Survivors and it's ilk: the full lobotomic removal of the agency of play, replaced by the stockpiling of slot machine assets to take you to deeper Nevada brigs. Devil Blade Reboot shines gloriously on the road less travelled.
I'm not going to claim Devil Blade is the best example of what directions are left to push shootemups. That is ZeroRanger. What Devil Blade is, is a punk rock volume reminder of The Point. It asks, "Do you know what's fun about flying a ship full of bullets and bombs on a progressive metal suicide mission?" And it answers before anyone can think of a joke or a denial: "EVERYTHING."
The fixation on The Point informs the whole task. The ship is called The Shining. No model number. No time for revisions. All that counts is that it kills, and there are kills to be done. The enemy talks back to you in terms of a God's punishment. You are to play the role of Resilience, the role you should've been playing this whole time. The ship is loaded with two guns, and describes them only by function: Narrow and Wide. You have bombs. You can also get shields. Bombs do what it sounds like: kill everything on screen. Shields do what they sound like: Protect you, once. Bombs also have the benefit of giving you a shield when you use them. All that matters is that everything dies, and Resilience demands they die first. If you kill absolutely everything in a stage, you get a bonus, because That Is The Point.
In wisdom, the developer understands that rewards stacked on top of rewards are amplified, and in desire of removing the baubles of old, the player increases the score simply by playing like a fucking lunatic. The closer The Shining is to its prey, the higher the multiplier, from 2x to 4x. And every #x adds up to a meter, shown as a raw digit. Once that digit crosses 100, a beast snarls and the word "BERSERK" lights up. Those 2x kills become 10x, the 3x become 15x, the 4x become 20x. A small white bar begins emptying, but once the bar empties, it doesnt end berserk mode: it simply takes 100 off the value. So, if you can push the value above 200, when the timer ticks over, surprise! It's still Berserk time. And the way you do that is to Kill, Recklessly, Constantly. That Is The Point.
Or, you can convert one of those bombs, rare and precious as they are, into a Boost by holding it. I like to believe I'm shoving the bomb into my fucking mouth and eating force. It shoves the meter to 500%, increases your damage, and puts a giant countdown clock around your ship that you couldn't ignore if you tried. You want to gamble? Here you go. Don't waste it. Waste THEM. THAT'S THE POINT.
A lot of interactive entertainment and digital toys are going to come out this year. Devil Blade Reboot is a Fucking Video Game. Maybe as those markets start crashlanding, love-fueled little ships like this will start launching their own suicide missions into hearts obsessed with the grotesque parodies of unloved gods. There is a point to being alive, and it's to Be Alive. -
usually i upload reviews straight up over here in the format I've been doing, but I've played enough games from this year that I have opinions on that I'm gonna go out of order and then cannibalize them over there. And to start, reverse cannibalism!
PENNY'S BIG BREAKAWAY [3]
These sick fucks. All the trailers for this game were about how it's the Sonic Mania team and how it's this big fun platform adventure that's a throwback to like what if the sega saturn had more going on. They didn't tell anyone they made Gimmick 3D! Who the fuck would be cruel enough to sell Gimmick 3D to kids?!TEKKEN 8 [2]
Gift of the Magi'd myself. Got this game to support a friend going through a tough time only to learn they thought I bought it for myself, and the tough time might prevent them from being able to play this. My fault! There have never been two good Tekkens in a row, and, well, behold. I'm definitely not just bitter because I became a Ganryu main at the end of Tekken 7 and will almost 100% never get to play my beautiful boy again.PIZZA TOWER: THE NOISE UPDATE [4]
Last year, my personal GOTY was tied between Void Stranger and Pizza Tower. I eventually decided to get behind Void Stranger because it was more important to me to tell people to play it and how fuckin impossible great it is. Pure mechanics though? Pizza Tower in a walk. This year, Pizza Tower is threatening to do it a-fucking-gain with a free update that adds a new playable character that plays so differently that all these stages look and act differently now. They also added a secret third mode that I think could possibly get someone killed! What a great game!UNICORN OVERLORD [4]
Decided to go outside of my comfort zone and hit the jackpot. Time devouring tactics, which I'm fortunate enough to be able to use while on an exercise bike. It also has a story, I hear.POCKET CARD JOCKEY: RIDE ON! [4]
In my review of the original, I wrote this: "One day they'll put that iOS one on the Switch and I'll scream to death, come back to life, and play the shit out of it, much like my homie the Pocket Card Jockey does." They did. I did. It's a port of a perfect game on a system more people have. Go fuckin play it. -
I can't get the screenshot I took to embed for whatever reason, so here's a transcript on the most auspicious appearance of Corporate Officer No. 1. On page 48, Paragraph 242 states the following:
"For instance, in or around March 2021, Ms. Grant introduced herself to WWE Corporate Officer No. 1 when they passed one another in the hallway. WWE Corporate Officer No. 1 responded by telling Ms. Grant that WWE Corporate Officer No. 1 knew exactly who she was."
So that's not good.-
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sure!
Top 10 Games I played this year
- Void Stranger
- Pizza Tower
- Street Fighter 6
- Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
- Moonring
- Alan Wake II
- My House
- Super Mario Bros Wonder
- Cocoon
- Chants of Sennaar
Other games I liked this year
- Retro Bowl College
- F-Zero 99
- My Friendly Neighborhood
- YEAH YOU WANT THOSE GAMES RIGHT? SO HERE YOU GO! NOW LETS SEE YOU CLEAR THEM!
- Terra Nil
- Battlebit Remastered before they fucked it up
- A bunch of stuff through the Netflix Games program
- the Fortnite Racing Game
- Age of Empires 4 on Xbox
- Metroid Prime Remastered
- Pocket City 2
- Quake 2 Rerelease
Old games I played this year
- Landstalker
- Paper Mario
- Grindstone
- Final Fantasy XII
- SO MUCH TETRIS
- Castlevania Legends
- Anodyne
- DNF Duel
Games I didn't like, old or new
- Battlebit Remastered after they fucked it up
- Redfall
- Trepang2
- Hi-Fi Rush
- Fuga: Melodies of Steel
- Maquette
- Starfield
- Lies of P
- Paradise Killer
- A bunch of stuff through the Netflix Games program
Games I Wanted To Play And Didnt
- Exoprimal (couldn't get people together)
- The Tartarus Key (might do that tomorrow but maybe not)
- El Paso Elsewhere (need more space between Alan Wake and this)
- Weird West (it's $10 on steam rn but my save is on xbox)
- Alien Hominid HD (waiting for people to come hang out)
- Metal Gear Solid 1 re-release (reviews aint great)
- 24 Killers (didn't seem like the right time (vulnerable))
- Wo Long Fallen Dynasty (didn't seem like the right time (infuriating))
I have also cleared 500 written reviews on Backloggd, which can be found here.
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Alright! That's it! I feel like when I next attempt this I'll be ready to do it at a more regular clip. Thanks again to everyone who still participates in this.
- "Diaspora Problems" by Soul Glo
- "Sometimes, Forever" by Soccer Mommy
- "Krüller" by Author & Punisher
- "The Endgame" by Treat
- "Autofiction" by Suede
I do not know anything about Treat. I look at this album cover and figure it's a metal band, as it looks like one. I now do a google search. Well, they're not the kind of metal band I thought they were! And, weirdly, old metal bands have tended to do better in this whole thing than younger ones have (sleep not withstanding (i still occasionally just sit back and remember how much that record bored me (cuz I know other metalheads who like sleep))). Before I hit play it finally occurs to me that cover is sperm approaching a speaker cone. 10-4.
SpoilerIt strikes me how funny the evolution of the drummer has been in metal over my lifetime. You think about this era of metal drummer, how it's largely the same beat over and over, this big 1-2-1-2 thing. Thrash hits and they go like a little bit faster doing the same thing, like the other punk kids. Cut to modern day and I dont think I've heard a new metal band have a drummer anything short of a doublebass technical prog rock freak. Are they still making metal bands where the drummer could lose an arm and the catalog doesn't change? Anyways this is extremely standard stuff. I do like the vocal harmony a lot, it makes a meal out of the word "Freudian" which is a neat trick. Wouldn't expect that to be punchy, you know?
i now evoke my rock lyricism clause. It's a good thing that this is the genuine article of a band from this era, because otherwise I would find this a pretty comical Bon Jovi reprisal. This is one of the reasons I google these bands before I listen to the records, because the context does make a difference. They lived through this and it's still their get down (and also probably still their way to make a living making music because they already have fans of This). At the same time, I can just smell the ending ballad coming. I figure we'll get one in the next two tracks as well.
I do appreciate the change in the pacing of verse patterns in these first three songs. The first was a lot of sung melody with the band, and the second had the whole drop the music thing. Important to pace things like this. I love the bridge and chorus on this song, they're choosing really good chords for the theming. Sad sounds, but in an "it's ok to cry" voicing. Very tasteful. Favorite song so far.
lmao I got faked out so hard. When the piano came in I was like "I KNEW IT. I KNEW IT WAS FUCKING BALLAD TIME." They got me. This sounds very subtly autotuned vocally which is really funny to think about glam bands having a bunch of auto tune. They've already got keyboards, just go do the Bon Iver 22 A Million Voice Machine for a whole metal record. Anyways this is a song I guess. There's nothing in it's construction that really strikes me other than the intro.
I guess I hadn't considered the kinds of songs old glam bands would write. It's also funny in the wake of my completion of the video game Alan Wake 2 this month, which I will not explain why that's relevant as it's spoilerish. Anyways I get how a song that amounts to "holy shit I'm gonna die but I'm gonna keep doing this" would come about, I just hadn't considered a glam-inspired band getting any sort of conscience like that outside of bland ambition.
Ok, Radio Country was not the format of ballad I saw coming, especially since they announced a few songs ago that they do have a grand piano and they will be using it. You could play this at hundreds of weddings across the US and they'd have no idea it was a hair metal band. The only giveaway would be the vocalist being an octave up from your Morgans Wallen and your Zacks Brown and such. Ok the Na Na Na part would also be a giveaway.
lmao "THESE KIDS AND THEIR TEXTING" is a hilarious followup to a ballad about being brave because of a relationship. This record is getting older as it's happening, which is kind of how time works I guess.
Return of the vocal drop! It's kind of impossible to read how they're meaning the sudden jesus arrival in the context of the record, if it's supposed to be some kind of influencer takedown or aspiration to be Jesus That Kicks Ass Bro or something. It's also one of the most stock standard songs on here.
ah yes here's the threatened piano ballad. At least the whole band is involved. I started rubbing my temple during the chorus. THEY ARE USING AUTO TUNE THATS AMAZING.
this is the funniest rock song I've heard in years. writing about a hot pepper like you want to fuck it is fantastic work. Innuendo You Can Hire A Music Video Model To. The Lighthouse of Sepulveda. This sucks, gloriously. Great work.
For as much as I've talked trash about how by-the-numbers this is, it is paced very well and doesn't do anything too jolting from song to song. For example, the Dark Love Song (if you traffic in that) should be a good distance away from the positive one, and there's enough space between them here. There's a kind of craft to that, even if this music doesn't resonate with me.
"Ending Power Ballad" beats "Ending Ballad", but only slightly.
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I had a good time listening to this, even if it's not my speed or style of metal/rock/guitar punching. It's very professional and confident, so for anyone that finds something in this sound I totally get why they'd say it's their favorite of the year, given that they do try to address headier stuff than you usually get out of this sound.
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Hi. I'm back again. Things got worse again for a second but that's good now too.
This has been on my mind because I said I'd finish it, but I didn't want to say anything until it was all done lest I get anyone else's hopes up. Well, I have. Tomorrow I'll post the last review and maybe in January I'll do some kind of "in 2024 i'll listen to 2023's album of the year" thing. Either way, thanks for your patience.
- "Diaspora Problems" by Soul Glo
- "Sometimes, Forever" by Soccer Mommy
- "Krüller" by Author & Punisher
- "Autofiction" by Suede
I'm vaguely aware of Soul Glo. This is how vaguely: A younger friend of mine that keeps me up to date with music (and in return calls me "unc" lol) who only really rarely likes rock music attempted to put me up on this last winter, but December was when The Problems started so I didn't get around to it. Happy to do so now!
SpoilerLol I would tell them I feel typecasted but no this is pretty immediately my shit. I had a big awakening towards Drive Like Jehu in 2022 and a reminder that post-hardcore is where my love of music as something More came from. I've also been begging for rock to do something interesting for YEARS and holy shit if they keep this I'm gonna lose my shit. This is the American answer to Sleaford Mods (and I fucking LOVE Sleaford Mods).
The smile on my face during this, man. Holy shit. I guess to explain the post-hardcore thing for a second, the first time I heard a song and understood what power those feelings had was turning on MTV2 one day and hearing "One Armed Scissor" by At The Drive-In. MAN I could've used this record pretty much all year this year.
hell yeah
lmao it is gonna be so hard to not just type "hell yeah" over and over again. I'm having a good time and like idk meeting hardcore at the "yeah these chords work" level is often not the point.
Which is not to say that this is work that should be taken for granted, they're fuckin nailing everything they're doing.
lmfao man it was prescient to invoke Sleaford Mods earlier because this is Extremely American Sleaford Mods. like i've been begging for rock to start pushing in these kinds of directions because it just seemed so fucking obvious to me and hearing it come true is the goddamn best.
Oh man I was making my peace with the inevitable ballad and then hearing it get shoved out of the way did my heart good.
I'm wondering how long it's been since I've heard myself in a punk record. It's been a fucking while, that's for sure.
"No one's left blind by eye for an eye unless you make the same mistake twice" is incredible
Yeah it's hard to write about this record other than just "FINALLY". This is the best song on the album by the way.
yeah this is also pretty much the shape of The Problem, though different in a bunch of ways. MAN I wish I had this earlier in the year lmao
I knew the ending ballad was gonna be a fakeout, and I guess in its way it's a ballad, but either way it's a completely perfect ending to this record.
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That's #1.This is the kind of record I get from these exercises that justifies me continuing to do it, even if shit got so fucked up this year that I didn't want to make memories for most of it. Thank you for putting this in front of me.
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hey i have some indie games to come in here and yell about because toddland 2023 came out so I feel the need to make sure people see these things and that they are not hidden
So one of these games is from 2018, and the other released 2023.
The 2018 game is called ZeroRanger, and it is the best shootemup of the last ten years. I can't embed links today so you can find that here:https://store.steampowered.com/app/809020/ZeroRanger/
It looks and sounds roughly like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSO3jV0Gz_0
It's great! Even if you don't like shootemups you should look at this thing, because it's the best solution to "how do you make these games matter when you can't insert coins?" that I have ever seen. On top of that, at the upper threshhold of learning how to play it, it manages to blend demanding requirements with satisfying rewards that's a bit like if Ghouls & Ghosts was also good to play. I cannot stress how much I recommend ZeroRanger, and if that's all that comes of me posting this stuff, it's worth doing it.
So the same team released a new game September 1st and it's a puzzle game with more dedicated storytelling moments in it, and if I'm being honest it's all I've done this evening. It's making a run at having the best style and narrative delivery in a game that I've seen definitely this year, and as far as pixel art goes maybe since Hyper Light Drifter? Which idk if y'all played that but Hyper Light Drifter is one of the games that's made me most satisfied I ever took this hobby up in the first place. So I'm not invoking it lightly.
Anyways, it's called Void Stranger, and it's right here! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2121980/Void_Stranger/EDIT: Actually, here's a little of the old cross promotion! I've uploaded a bunch of new reviews on Backloggd, and the most effusive (and I think longest?) review I have on that website is for Hyper Light Drifter, so, here's that review, and if you click on the user name you can see all the new reviews I posted
https://www.backloggd.com/u/appstore/review/704015/ -
- "Sometimes, Forever" by Soccer Mommy
- "Autofiction" by Suede
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"Krüller" by Author & Punisher*
*pending relisten
I am vaguely aware of Suede. My biggest memory of them is at one point I was sitting around with my best friend while we were drinking beers and playing songs, and they have one song where the vocalist goes "lulla-ba-by" and I asked "did they just say lulla-ba-by" and she said no. Then the chorus looped around again, and they did it again, and I pointed right at the speakers while staring at her while she laughed and hid her face. I couldn't tell you what they sounded like.
SpoilerOh, ok, they sound like a band that started in the 90s, as they are. The two stage explosion into the soaring chorus is nice! Usually there's not as much put into the build into a chorus if that's the way you're writing. Good, solid, formula stuff. I do not use formula as a negative here, though I'll admit if this is "minimal" then what have they been up to?
I feel like spoken word segments in rock songs are falling out of favor, which I am pretty sure is a good thing? It's nice that they occasionally go by The London Suede, because then I don't have to go confirm this is British as it sounds British as fuck. Granted, given that it's the genuine article, it doesn't sound as out of place as it would for a young band to be writing like this? I dont know how to explain it other than like "this sounds like it's written for a Glastonbury set".
Lol I wish my age 15 was about like love and stuff. I can't connect with nostalgia stuff like this because I hated being young so much. Musically, it's keeping itself seperate from the other songs by shifting gears very quickly, avoiding the slow build nature of the past two songs. I get the feeling we're approaching balladtown.
intro be like hey yall hear of the smiths???? I really like the chords in the chorus a lot. I wonder if this is what goes for a ballad for them, because it's more calm than others. Either way this is my favorite song on here so far just because of my chord fixation. Every time that second chord in the chorus hits and the band lowers while the singer rises, 1) it helps make the point of the bitter toxicity outlined in the lyrics, and 2) it makes my ears real happy
This, too, is extremely fucking british rock music. They get credits for having four chords in the chorus, cuz I was totally ready for it to be the same two chords over and over. Oh it's over. I didn't have anything else to say I guess
OH BOY PIANO BALLADS ARE AN OPTION. Every time you hear me grousing about balladry, you'll be able to hear it here. You know there's ways to break up the pace that don't include slapping a piano to a metronome like it's more sad than any other instrument. This now means that an ending ballad is an option, which would be REALLY DISAPPOINTING to hear out of a song called "Turn Off Your Brain And Yell." It is vital that I am wrong about that being a ballad.
This is not a great way to pull out of balladtown. We're only really gonna have one more fast song aren't we? At least it's brief.
Well here's the thing that should have been the first thing out of balladtown. It even starts with synthy/stringy held notes, and it picks the pace up after slowing it down. I liked this alright, and I imagine this'd be my best friend's favorite song on here.
Lol ok spoke too soon it'd be this one, this is goth as shit. This is also a very british chorus methodology, of the erupting major key strings. Feels very Pulp to me. You know, David Thomas of Pere Ubu once said that the thing he wants most out of his guitarists is to move their fingers as little as possible. This is the pop version of that impulse. There's frankly not very much happening in the way of playing, which I guess might be where that minimalism comment comes from. It's all very stock standard for this sound, but it's hitting the requirements of that sound so like yeah, if this is your thing it rules.
Ok if we're doing the ballad now so we can set off the fireworks at the end of the record, fine, great. I think the thing that causes me to think rock ballads are so terrible and then not mind, say, Weyes Blood, is that it feels like rock ballads are them playing at being sophisticated and articulate, which feels too often like a put-on. That idea makes me want to write some things, which is at least a point in favor of the song, or maybe more accurately a point in favor of doing this whole exercise in the first place.
Ok, well, we're not ending on a ballad, so that's cool. This feels like a set ender, or at least a first-set-before-the-encore ender. Oh ok I looked up their recent setlists and this is actually how they're opening sets and that works too! I like the gesture of like "You've heard the record and it stops like this, so we're gonna pick up from where the record leaves off." Plenty of opportunities to yell "CITY NAME! HOW ARE WE TONIGHT!" etc. Purpose built rock.
= = =
I have no soft spot for British rock mass production stuff, but this was fine all told. If you already have a relationship with the band, I get how it'd be album of the year. Coming in cold, with no great appreciation for the british music industry, it's fine.-
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I played four hours of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk today and here's my first impressions:
Holy fuck they really did it. It's a new Jet Set Radio game. -
Hi! I haven't posted any reviews all year because December to July was pretty much All Horror, but during that period I was writing reviews and publishing them somewhere no one could find them. Well, I've decided to make that public, and will point you to my account on Backloggd, where I've written over 450 reviews this year. So, if you've ever looked at a review of mine and gone "heh," you can see many, many more over there.
EDIT: I should explain my methodology for writing those reviews. I have a random year generator give me eight years from 1990 to 2023 (I've exhausted everything I have to say about games from the 80s) and pick games I have something to say about. So it's not that this week I literally played those eight games, just that when perusing the years I got handed and seeing the games I found, there was a memory or experience with those games close enough to the surface that I felt like sharing it. Also, on that site, I do use a 5 score that I don't use on here, but I only use that to mark what I think the best game of that year is.
As for this year, I think this has been a really phenomenal year so far. I'll go ahead and post my reviews of the 2023 games I've played, starting with what I think is the absolute, impossible, unstoppable front runner for Game of the Year, and if you have a PC and haven't played it, you have no excuse. You play video games. It's an expensive hobby. You have $20. I know you do. Go and get...
PIZZA TOWER [4]
When imagining what games would be like in the future when I was a child, I saw this and not 20,000 more pixelated platformers. It is as explosive and hellish as the best games of this era, the Mario Bros to Cruelty Squad's Duke Nukem.
METROID PRIME REMASTERED [3]
This might be unfair since (at time of writing I had) a sore throat, a recently broken fever, an ominous rash on both of my hands, a pulled muscle in my foot, and a union of blisters on my feet, but playing this is making me like Hollow Knight even more than I thought I did.
MY HOUSE [4]
This is a Doom WAD. If you play Doom WADs, go find this thing, DO NOT READ UP ABOUT IT FIRST, and play it. You'll want the pk3. If you have played it, here's my review.SpoilerGood luck to all the Cacowards people who are going to have to find WADs to post alongside this fucking thing at the end of the year. Also, this is the better 2023 game with Literal Backrooms in it. Suck it, Trepang2.
REDFALL [3]
Or, "Squirrels Sell... but Who's Buying?"This is an important reminder that my 3 means that I do not regret playing this. It does not mean I recommend playing it. I think here I actively kind of don't, unless you really enjoy the idea of a ghost town and can tune out gear comparison. I'm in the first party, I am not in the second party, and upon learning that if a computer crashes a player cannot rejoin your session, I called it a day.
STREET FIGHTER 6 [4]
It's neat to see Capcom release a Street Fighter that is good, immediately, and with no major pitfalls other than "I'm not sure the battle pass is worth $5." Also, the Evo Top 6 was the best fighting game tournament I've ever seen.
BATTLEBIT REMASTERED [4]
There's that meme image with Sonic in it, that says "I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I'm not kidding," and this game feels like we are all trying to make that a reality.-
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Things are, finally, not so bad. I don't want to talk about it. I want to talk about these records. By the way, if anyone else wants to submit stuff even though the "deadline" is closed, I don't mind. I will say that I'm probably going to relisten to Author & Punisher at some point during this process given that it's been six months since I heard it.
- "Sometimes, Forever" by Soccer Mommy
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"Krüller" by Author & Punisher*
*pending relisten
While it's neat that there's a pseudo-indie rock revival and that it is mostly centered around women, I would be lying if I said the discourse around it has not acted like a hellish barrier keeping me from ever thinking about Phoebe Bridgers without thinking about a culture war for dumbasses over a television show performance. I will do my best to not let that inform me listening to this record.
SpoilerI remember hearing this big rant about how you should never open rock records with guitars and I feel like that's some conditional advice ever that gets passed around as conventional wisdom. It ruined what could have been the best rock record of the 2010s (load up "Attack On Memory" by Cloud Nothings and put No Future No Past last instead of first and tell me that's not an intergalactic banger). I really like the outro hanging on chords and moving against the movement of the rest of the song. It makes it feel like the song is about the past and now that the words are done it's arriving at the moment of the feeling those memories made.
The big arpeggio coming out of Chord Vamp City is a fantastic way to signal that it's a new song. It's at this point I notice that this is produced by Daniel Lopatin, about a few years after I would have sought this out exclusively because it was produced by Daniel Lopatin. It's some pretty standard Loud Quiet Loud stuff, though the piano buried in the mix of the quiet parts is doing something for me. It makes it sound like it's part of the bass guitar, so when it sits on the note a chord sounds out down the hall. On the other hand, I don't really love the vocal mix and performance? It's very lyrical music and it's hard to make out what's being said. Like she's not a bad singer, but somewhere in the recording process, annunciation is being lost.
Ok if we're just gonna keep making sure every song sounds this different from the last this is gonna go a long way for me on this record. Even from the records of this school of indie rock that I like a lot (Hop Along comes to mind here) there can be a bit of "wait which song is this?" happening over a long record. This song rules, even if it's basically "i can have a little abuse of power, as a treat."
The intro to every small scene's joy division wannabe's first song made me smile. I don't really appreciate the soar here not bringing some of the tonality back into the verse. I mean I've definitely had mixer presets that I've slowly merged from one to the other for the chorus of a song, so like hey I can't say I haven't done it. I think the song suffers from going too harshly Verse Chorus in the sound of it. I get why you'd feel the need to do that after getting super weird on the last track, I just think it feels like an overcorrection.
oh boy, ballad time. Funny enough, my favorite record from 2023 is like a lot of ballads, so maybe something's changed. This is one of the parts where the Lopatin is the loudest. For as much as he plays at sophistication and acts like doing arena tours with NIN and being The Weeknd's best buddy are huge departures, he was built for big theatrical moments. This is fine but it's not moving me. This is also a nice point to remind of my general policy of not commenting on rock lyrics because I feel like most of the time it's not worth commenting on.
The problem with trying to do Radiohead or Portishead if you're not from a country with a huge hard-on for class lines is that it'll sound like the spooky song on a disney soundtrack. That about covers all I have to say here.
Going from the obvious Radiohead Song to the obvious Wilco song is hilarious, and luckily these days I'm in way more of a Wilco mood. "oh but those pedals could make it shoegaze!" yeah but the drum mixing is Glenn Kotche holding a knife to the EQ engineer's neck like "you will make my fills audible or so help me..." I'm enjoying this one as a breath of fresh air tonally.
Ballad #2! It's at least more interesting than the first one, as I'm actively trying to parse what's being sung about right now and that didn't happen on the first one. Alas, I can smell the ending ballad coming.
Radioportishead Attempt The 2nd. Women tend to have a few really clear advantages in rock and roll construction, and one of them is definitely on display here: they can play low end on a guitar without worrying about where the frequencies of that part of the guitar and their vocals will overlap. There's a reason high pitched singers are valuable in music, and it's because it gives the midrange a lot of room to roam comparatively. This song is more successful at the sound profile than the first radiohead song.
I'm gonna check if this was a single real quick. No it wasn't, and I think that's a wasted opportunity because I think it'd be hilarious to put this on the radio and then suprise attack people with the other stuff, but I am "a fucker" as it's known, so of course I'd like that. I've spent a lot of time listening to country music in my back yard both thanks to my neighbors and my friend who insisted on playing some the last time they came by, and if I had this handy then I would've played it.
ENDING BALLAD.
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If you would have known the amount of records I have like this, you wouldn't have assumed I'd hated this. And for the record, I do not. I think there's some genuinely good songs on here, and there's nothing actively offensive for the length of it, even if I went in hard on the Haunted Mansion tune. It's OK!-
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hey, quick update. I have had a string of terrible happenings to a degree that's kind of hard to parse and I'm still recovering. I will get to this, because I gave my word that I would and I stick to my word, but I don't know when because I don't want to make new memories while things are so bad.
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Alright! Let's get started!
I know Author & Punisher cuz he's from my city! I listened to this album once last year, around when it came out, and went "this is neat" but I didn't retain more of it. I'm more than happy to give it another shot under any circumstances, and these circumstances will do nicely.
Spoiler"drone carrying dread" is how you know this is someone from San Diego. Did you know San Diego makes all the Predator Drones? Neat little fact to tuck away with all the "we have the biggest zoo! we have comiccon!" stuff. These are some big fukin chords so you know I'm having a good time. The other Author & Punisher stuff is less melodic than this so it's neat seeing him expand. It's very Deftones adjacent, though with a slower beat. I love this opener just in general, of just being thrown into the deepend of what this record is gonna sound like.
And there's that A&P sound that I know! I'm brought back to thinking about Deftones here, which I need to specify is a good thing because the Deftones fuckin rule. It's at this point that I realized that this record has guitars and that's probably what's creating the bridge between A&P and Deftones for me right now.
Still having a great time! Though I gotta say this one maybe feels more cheesy than the others? The drama isn't as natural through the sound and the pacing, but the instruments are attempting to convey it as such and it's not really working so much. I see this track has a Tool man on it so I'm gonna blame him lol
Major key just feels fucking weird on an A&P record, though I do appreciate how it's using the sliding notes to put dissonance into the song to make it uneasy. Without that, it would just feel like a bro-y Beach House song, or like The War on Drugs discovered power electronics. It's a neat tune and a good counterpoint after the last one.
Ok this also feels really weird and also has a tool man on it so that's 2 for 2 on Tool Man Songs not working for me. It's weird hearing him write around someone else's rhythm section, especially when the drummer is very consciously trying to play in their style. At points it feels like an A&P cover.
It was a few minutes before I realized this was a Portishead cover, and it's doing the right thing where they're keeping all of the lyrics intact instead of being like "I am man portishead, I change all lyrics to man," though I won't lie and say it didn't throw me for a loop at first.
Third collaboration, and I think this one works the best of them because what Vytear is contributing is a different tonality on top of what A&P does. See, the rest of his sound is HEAVY bass and and drums, so working with a bassist and a drummer doesn't do as much for him as working with someone who's in a totally different part of the EQ band like Vytear spends their time. In turn, this becomes the most exhilarating song on the record, because of the ways in which it is dense in a contrasting way from the rest of the record. Good shit.
Not an ending ballad, but I wasn't expecting one here. I thought at first it wasn't a great ending to the record but then the bridge hit and I got it better. This track does have that dramatic pacing and movement he strove for earlier on the record, where the tension isn't raw dissonance but in how it's progressing and expanding. I like how it melts down as well.
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Good time! Huge chords! San Diego represent!
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18 hours ago, SturmCRF said:
I liked the Chat Pile album a lot, and it's in my top 20 for sure, but I think I still carry a torch for noise rock where horrible deviants sing about being horrible deviants.
After the Alexis Marshall allegations from Kristin Hayter I had to cash out on that entirely, but I can't navigate that conflict for anyone but myself.
I was surprised to see a reply to this (I say "a reply" because I have lawful on ignore) and honestly the timing blows because there is A LOT OF UPHEAVAL happening in my life right now so I will get started on this in January when I'm more in the mood for new things. So, if anyone else wants to participate, go for it! Submission is open late this time!
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On 11/26/2022 at 3:45 PM, Lamp, broken circa 1988 said:
three games in my top 5 for 2022 came from Game Pass (and that's true whether Pentiment ends up in my top 5 or not)
PENTIMENT [4]
A biggish budget Disco Elysium-like with a heavy emphasis on charm and art history headed by the person behind Fallout New Vegas, but also an EXTREMELY deft hand in how it reveals how your build effects what you see. Disco has the bold idea to show you options you can roll on even if your stats won't clear them, to plant more specific seeds about the kind of player you might like to try next time. Pentiment instead at no point reveals what's available for different builds, and those different builds can change on six different factors (so far! I'm only in act 2!). I am in constant awe of what they've done here. High marks, strong recommendation, probably #3 on my top 5 but I could see it passing SIGNALIS.-
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Speaking of Game Pass, I figured something out yesterday. I went through all the games I played this year through Game Pass and what I scored them at. I've been subscribed all year and have played 32 games (and possibly 34 by the end of the year). I've liked 15 of them. I have the Game Pass Ultimate so I'm paying $15 a month, or $180 a year. To play all the games I played/intend to play this year without game pass, it would have cost me $855. And again, I only liked about half of them, so something like $400-440 would have been on stuff I regretted paying for or actively disliked.
EDIT: Another way to look at it is, three games in my top 5 for 2022 came from Game Pass (and that's true whether Pentiment ends up in my top 5 or not) Proof:1. Elden Ring
2. SIGNALIS (game pass)
3. Splatoon 3
4. As Dusk Falls (game pass)
5. Weird West (game pass)-
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A hard drive with all my art and videos and music and record masters and everything died this week, so in my next step of my Infinite Plan To Avoid Thinking About That, here's some game reviews.
SURVIVOR.IO [2]
VAMPIRE SUVIVORS [2]
So when a new genre-thing emerges from the muck I feel a misplaced responsibility to give it a shot, and I don't feel like that's paid off less than it has with these two. It doesn't help that both developers are pretty open about how they're designed to be addictive and exploitative, though at least the Vampire Survivors guy only wants to eat your time. It's unsettling to me, on top of it being basically a simulated action game. Whatever. I'm not the audience, and I worry that they don't respect their audience, but I feel divested from trying to talk about that.
SIGNALIS [4]
In a year where Elden Ring doesn't come out, this is the game of the year. It's an instant classic survival horror game that's moved me to awe, wonder, and a little bit of the old existential dread. Fabulous, clever, confident. I do not want to talk about what happens in it. I want people to play it. Highest recommendation.I have four additional games I intend to play this year: Pentiment (just got past class creation, it's super charming), Warhammer Darktide (cuz friends), Hardship Spacebreaker (might not get to this one) and the graphical release of Dwarf Fortress (cuz if I can't get in once they have a tutorial and graphics then I'm not gonna get into it).
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I didn't forget! There's like no chance I'll listen to them all in 2022 this year! Woohoo!
Rules:- First Come, First Serve.
- If you nominate two, I'll listen to zero.
- No guarantees that my review will be positive.
- If someone suggests your album I'll ask the both of you if you have another album you'd rather I review. First Come First Serve still applies.
This year, I haven't been listening to a lot of new music because I've been trying to close up loose ends as I prepare for a real big transition next year. So I didn't listen to a lot of the big stuff this year, and I have a big list of stuff I meant to hear from this year. However, in lieu of knowing for sure, the new album I've listened to the most is "God's Country" by Chat Pile. Over the last two years I've had my eternal fill of noise rock where the vocalists just tell you they suck over and over like it's profound soul-searching, only to later just be telling on themselves. Fool me once, etc. Chat Pile hits those same veins of dark atmosphere and tension, but through just looking at the world around them and not just roleplaying as a guy who pretends he sucks. On top of that, I feel they're the best in class of the Jesus Lizard lineage, a style of rock band that mostly annoys me.
Show me what you got! Please. Please show me what you got.
For the BLOOD SUCKING FREAKS~!
in The PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING
Posted
y'all on that Russian Backyard Wrestling? cuz it's pretty fuckin sick
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHlMvqFhyaE