Lamp, broken circa 1988

These are probably the last New Games I am playing this year. NIGHT IN THE WOODS [4] - Just awesome. It is a game that is very much written by people in my age group, and I see familiar faces in everyone I see in that game. It's starting to take a Second Act Turn in a different direction, but the writing is the thing pulling me along. This is not a gameplay heavy game- in fact, the parts where it slows down and makes you platform are the parts I'm enjoying least- but damnit I have to see what happens. FIRE EMBLEM WARRIORS [3] - This is how managing expectations works in your benefit. I went into this game clinically. I have long been fascinated with the Warriors games, because I think if someone put their whole heart into one they could make something truly awe inspiring. I was interested in seeing what a Warriors game with permadeath looked like, because I think it's one of the steps in the way of making The Perfect Warriors Game: actual stakes for ignoring the battlefield at large. I am, so far, getting exactly what I wanted. Nothing more, nothing less. I don't think I'd recommend this game, but I think there's some things happening inside it that are cool as shit. And with that, I can now present my Top Ten Games of 2017. Two important caveats- First, early access games count as being "out." They existed in a real moment in this year. I don't draw a line there. Second, and despite the first, I am not including Fire Pro World. On my scorin' database on glitchwave, I have it rated as 5 out of 5. I have the 5 out of 5 rating labeled as "A Dream Come True." Nothing else will ever be rated that. Like, seriously, I ran the math, and I probably put around 12,000 hours into Fire Pro in my whole life. Fire Pro Returns was 2/3rds of that. I am already at 300 hours in Fire Pro World. I need Fire Pro for my psyche's health. The thing that happens between me and Fire Pro cannot be quantified as "my favorite game of the year" any more than therapy can be "my favorite game of the year." THE LIST! With a short review of every game. Join me next year when I rate a bunch of games and then give the #1 to Kentucky Route Zero by default because Act 5 will be out in the spring and Kentucky Route Zero Deserves Better Than The Video Game Industry. See you then!

HELLBLADE: SENUA'S SACRIFICE [3] - If there's one theme with games this year, it's "a great story with really divisive combat." Nier is Japan's contribution to this, Wolfenstein is the EU representative, and from the UK there's Hellblade. There's so much about this game that's first class. The sound design is amazing, the character model for Senua is haunting, they have the best use of FMV a game could possibly have... the presentation is a stunner. The moment to moment of playing it is not fantastic. There's a lot of environmental puzzles that are about finding symbols in the environment, which is supposed to feel like a puzzle game and ends up feeling like a photo hunt. The combat is serviceable, but they tell you everything you can do in the first like two fights and if you forget something like parrying, good fuckin' luck. The combat encounters also start becoming terribly overlong near the end of the game. There's multiple sections where it feels like the round you've just completed should be the end of the encounter, and then two more waves of enemies will spawn in. I burned out on playing it but if you want to see a good horror story that isn't about asylums or jump scares, you really can't go wrong. I STARTED REPLAYING DRAGON QUEST V BECAUSE I DIDN'T HAVE THE MONEY TO GO GET VI YET - So this is the DS remake, but you can still tell the immediate doubling down in thematic content that comes from the jump from NES to Super Nintendo. DQ5 is a game that has a world that's changing over time, and a story of real heft, told both in their gameplay and in their world. I still think 7 is the best in the series, but returning to 5 has been just totally delightful.

I definitely know Converge. In my intolerable teenage years, I listened to a lot of shit because I thought complicated = better. Devin Townsend, Mr. Bungle, Nile, Dillinger Escape Plan, all that shit. I blame it on trying to find an identity. Then I found Constantines, and lots of shit changed. In the middle of all of that though I did find Converge, around whenever You Fail Me came out. I know that because had an embarrassing conversation with a cute Tower Records employee about them because I had confused them with Neurosis. Being a teenager is terrible. I remember liking the last Converge record. Let’s go.

I don't know how I figured out a way to be both Opinionated and Liked on here, but shit, I'm not dumb enough to question it. Here's the new list! Write up posted tomorrow. 1. "The Order Of Time" by Valerie June 2. "The Dusk In Us" by Converge 3. “So You Wannabe An Outlaw” by Steve Earle 4. “Life Is Good” by Flogging Molly By the way, if you're reading this and you're not sure if "registration is closed" or whatever, there's no deadline. Go ahead and post stuff!

: | here, i'll give you this one for free: if someone doesn't want to be with you, you don't want to be with them. now would you please try to not generalize? One person can be an asshole without making everyone like them an asshole.

I dunno he got some good reactions during the GHC run, just not on message boards

Lars Sullivan does Muso for a finish, and as earth's last Takeshi Rikio fan I just want to let it be known that I appreciate that.

Just as an update, this'll resume next monday/tuesday. Very busy all weekend. Thanks for your patience.

Aww, thanks y'all! Anyways, I don’t know Valerie June at all, and was thrilled to discover there would be at least one non-white guy artist in this whole process. The wikipedia description leaves something to be desired- it’s basically like “she plays all the guitar genres plus churchy things.” So I have only like a vague idea of what to expect going in.

I finished Dragon Quest IV. It's alright. So far in my rankings, it is in the exact middle, because that's what it is- the middle of the road. Everything above it is great. Everything below it is not. It's just totally fine. I'm short on cash so I think I might split my time between replaying V and playing through VIII until christmas.

Social plans fell through so I got through another album. I don't know how interesting the writing will be since my notes kind of harp on the same point over and over, but they can't all be winners. At least I won't have to use the emoticon. Anyways, here's the new list. 1. "The Order Of Time" by Valerie June 2. “So You Wannabe An Outlaw” by Steve Earle 3. “Life Is Good” by Flogging Molly btw feel free to let me know if anyone is actually appreciating this because I don't have like any read on that

This is exactly right. One of the things Giant Bomb did years ago is they would have live streams during GDC where they would invite developers in and talk to them in a mixture of Industry Q&A and Horrible Drunken Catastrophe (the Giant Bomb Way). They had Ed Boon on and they asked him about what he had seen there that had stuck with him. He talked about a panel for Puzzle & Dragons, where he said that in 2013 they had made $100 million a month. A MONTH. And that was a long time before they had actually nailed down the behaviorist aspects of lootbox reward tables and the rest of that dark math. The time to get mad and surprised at this shit was a long, long time ago, and if people didn't have the blind spots towards phone games or facebook games (which are admittedly no long As Much A Thing as they were) we maybe could have done something. I remember around then when my attitude was "WE NEED TO" whatever I thought the answer was, and now I'm just screaming "CHOKE ON IT" like Day of the Dead.

Overwatch catching the blame for like fifteen different mobile games and also Dota 2 is adorable. At least in Overwatch you get the same chest whether it's through playing or paying.

you bum me out

Unfamiliar with Steve Earle too, but the google image search suggests that dude has been around for a while and been through some shit. Like, look at this row of images. I want an album that addresses this. I kind of wish I had been writing secret songs in a diary fashion so when I got to be an old fart I could put together the songs that would resemble that for me. Anyways, here we go. Again, each paragraph is for each track.

PSSH. Show me your album of the year, not your most agreeable record. I can take anything once. I just wrapped up listening to and writing about Steve Earle by the way, and I'm gonna sleep on it again so I can go over it the next day. What I am gonna do though is that since this is eventually going to become an ordered list, I will start putting up where it goes on the list before I put up the writing. Here's a list of two albums! 1. “So You Wannabe An Outlaw” by Steve Earle 2. “Life Is Good” by Flogging Molly

That's on me for not making that clear: The throughline for Gang Green in that context is that they were one of the like five openers or whatever for that Dropkick Murphys show. also I totally understand the desire to make troll picks- and to troll me specifically- but I am genuinely trying to come out of this with pleasant surprises

you haven't played sunshine recently enough

when i suggested the bold thing I figured it'd be because people would take a second to explain why something was their favorite album, so now I feel weird but that's on me

So I’m gonna make track by track notes and that way you’ll know where I am in the record after this paragraph. I wasn’t sure who Flogging Molly was even though I had heard the name, so I went to the internet. The first thing I saw was a four leaf clover. The second thing I saw was (I assume) them in full suits. The next like thousand words are going to be in the spoiler tags so people don’t open this thread and get ambushed by it.

I HAVE COME TO THE END OF MY TIME WITH SUPER MARIO ODYSSEY - My friend begged me to get to the Very Last Level. I did. I saw what they asked me to do. I said "nah, I'm okay, I had a good time with this and I don't need to complete it." Good ass game. Best 3D Mario since 64. I MIGHT HAVE COME TO THE END OF MY TIME WITH DESTINY 2 - yo fuck leviathan what the fuck what form did I fill out wrong that made you guys think that dog forest shit is fun it's like you made a game entirely out of games I don't want to play MONUMENT VALLEY 2 [4] - Also, they aren't kidding about "Play This With Headphones." THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD [4] - Earlier this year, I made mention of a list I keep in my head. I do it every year. The list is Answers I Would Accept to the Question "What is the Game Of The Year". The four answers this year have been Nier Automata, Breath of the Wild, PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS, and "I am not willing to jump through the hoops to play any of those." Pressed for an answer, my Game of the Year is still Nier, because it's About Something, it's About Something Critically Important, and I could talk about What Nier Is About for the next ten years. Zelda was on that list only because of the advocacy from my friends, which was unanimous and sustained. Now it's there because I've played it and they're all right. The craftsmanship is romantic. It exists in a hole in time. I don't know a way to describe it without awe. Like many Nintendo games, it doesn't have an explicit statement to make about the world, but that detriment is a necessary achilles heel in a game that could end all games if it had the bravery to talk about something while it was doing all this other stuff.

I have listened to the Flogging Molly album, and will sleep on what I wrote before I post it tomorrow. Be ready for a LOT of divergences and not a lot of talking about the record explicitly.

I WILL ALSO WRITE WHAT I THINK ABOUT IT AND ORDER IT INTO A LIST. RULES 1: First come first serve. 2: Give me like ten days per record max. 3: No Guarantees that I'll write a positive thing about it. 4: ONE ALBUM ONLY. If you try to show me two, I'll listen to zero. 5: this one's more of a guideline but Put The Album In Bold. i.e. "Album" by Band (that way you can talk about the album if you want, but either way I'll see the name of it for sure) SHOW ME PAST LISTS LIVE HERE

I know I am late to Breath of the Wild talk in general but I just wanted to give these first two impressions here while I'm working through it. 1) I cannot imagine playing this game in handheld. I want to play this on the biggest craziest TV possible. 2) It feels just as nostalgic for Other Zelda Games as it does for memories of childhood invincibility. Like, the first thing I did outside of the very first chamber was I climbed a tree. With my hands and feet. I cannot think of the last time a video game just like let me climb a tree that wasn't designated as The Designated Climbin' Tree. I'm gonna put a lot of time into this.

I'm aware, and I'm ready for it. It's pretty good. I just needed to be able to say "I saw boris" before it's not possible anymore. I let too many bands like that go by me without seeing them