Lamp, broken circa 1988
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Posts posted by Lamp, broken circa 1988
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7 hours ago, Death From Above said:
Hollow Knight is an absolutely beautiful game with the most boring possible combat given the available tools, there is nothing interesting about the actual combat in Hollow Knight. Like, at all. I don't even have it in my top 10 modern Metroidvanias.
I was going to shitpost about metal album covers and mental illness or something, but I have an actual thing to say here: maybe the problem is that you're looking at Hollow Knight like it's a game about fighting when it's a game about platforming.
Think about the average Sonic The Hedgehog boss fight. Present a singular gimmick, it has three moves, learn when you can hit them, do it three-to-seven times. Not a lot happening there. In contrast, Hollow Knight- which is a platformer first- makes Platforming boss fights where the boss is treated as a platform that aggresses upon the player in ways that allows strategic thought and playstyle nuances in the platforming. If you look at it in terms of games where you have to stay rooted on the ground, then maybe Hollow Knight falls short. On the other hand, Hollow Knight solves the problem of Platformer Boss Fights in just spectacular fashion.
That's what's interesting about the combat. Not that it's a game with a deep Monster Hunter moveset, but rather a game with Highly Tuned Sports Car finesse in its movement options, and boss fights that rise to meet that movement style and challenge how well you've learned to move in this precision machine.
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DRAGON QUEST XI S [4]
I think one of my favorite parts of Dragon Quest is when you finally have your Setup and are just walking around demolishing everyone, because it both feels like you've broken the game and that it's the only actual way to get anything done. In old games, what I used to do was basically have two characters with Muster Strength (which takes a turn to charge a double damage hit) and then I have them alternate attacks and charges, and then my other two party members work to keep them alive. In this game, I have one person who swings for like 700 damage a turn at a high mana cost, two characters that keep feeding them mana, and then one character does cheap group heals the whole time. I would say that DQXI is probably the best one to start with because it's both accessible and high quality (I have it fourth on my all time list), and while it doesn't break into all time greats category of DQ games, that's not a fair metric. Strong recommend. Ready to move on to Yakuza Like a Dragon after an RPG break!HOLLOW KNIGHT - DID A WHOLE BUNCH OF STUFF
So idk if I stated this but I got pretty far in this game on Xbox, hit a boss that stomped the shit out of me, and decided "I need to play this without latency" and got it on PC. I am now further than where I was when I stopped, having done plenty of things I felt were impossible to do on console. This is still the best metroidvania, and maybe the best 2D game. In fact, impromptu, here's an off the top of my head list of the best games ever made that I've played from 1 to until I get to Hollow Knight.- Tetris 99
- Hyper Light Drifter
- Mother 3
- Quadrilateral Cowboy
- Kentucky Route Zero
- Hollow Knight
It's That Good.
RETRO BOWL ON SWITCH [4]
So I bought this wondering if it'd be harder to play this on pad than on phone, and actually it turns out that I'm just great at retro bowl lol. In my original save it took me like 9 seasons to make the Retro Bowl. On the switch it took 2. Then I went back to phone, started a new save, and got it in my first year. So, yeah. I think I'm just good at Retro Bowl.GEARS 5 - ACT 3
It's worth noting that, as I've played all these games co-op and we started playing them to get away from the idea of doing anything with an open world theme because I am officially sick of open world games (and yes, that does make me concerned about Elden Ring, but I'm hoping the mystery I'll have from not learning anything about it will make up the distance here), my friend has been driving in all the open world segments because I refuse to. So, with that in mind, I'm having a good time! It's also got this thing where all the side missions are HARD AS HELL and that makes them worth doing because the encounters are so fun, even if they're really really stressful a lot of the time. -
Checking back in with some more Indian wrestling greatness! To my mind the two best wrestlers in Khali's fed are Sardar Singh (their HHH/Jarrett stand in only he uses a goddamn rifle as his prop weapon) and Badshah Khan (who just turned face but is occasionally a sickening crowbar). Well, they just had a singles match and guess what: it's great.
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GAMING UPDATE!!
DRAGON QUEST XI S - GOD THE BOSSFIGHTS IN THESE GAMES SOMETIMES
I am currently at Octagonia in the second act of the game, and have failed to beat the bosses of this area three times, the third after spending multiple hours grinding. It wouldn't be so bad if they gave me a chance to heal at all between the boss fights. It's just an incredibly difficult pair of encounters and it's slowly draining my will to see this through before Elden Ring hits.STARTED UP DEMONS OF ASTEBORG AGAIN
I'm at a point where, now that pixel art has stopped attempting subversion and is just nostalgia, anything going for "JUST LIKE THE OLD DAY" rings like absolute bullshit to me. The reason this gets a pass with me is because it was designed to actually run on Genesis hardware, and that kind of commitment to invocation is more respectable than "we look like earthbound cuz you'll pay us." The game itself is fine.REPLAYING DISCO ELYSIUM ANYWAYS
Started watching a friend play it and was like "This counts for my playthrough!" then two days passed where they didn't and hey look I'm on day 2. This is still the best Actual RPG.I TRIED THREE INDIE GAMES AND DROPPED TWO AND THEN FINISHED ONE
Game Pass is great. The first game I tried was Death's Door, which I refunded last year because I knew it was going to be a Game Pass game, deep in my bones. I fought two bosses and then decided I didn't like it much for free either. The second game I tried was Unsighted, which has been discussed as "Like Hyper Light Drifter. It's a bit like telling someone to watch Palm Springs because it's "Like The Lighthouse." Fell off this at the first lore dump text log. Well maybe the game I finished was good? Let's see!UNPACKING [1]
I don't know how to explain why I hate this without either oversharing my mental illness or breaking the politics rule, so I will leave it at "I don't care about rich people."BEAT GEARS OF WAR 4 [3]
Current Gears of War rankings- Judgment. Best encounters, best shooting, tightest controls, best pace of storytelling, least amount of weird attempts at poignancy. Genuinely might be the best 360 game.
- Gears of War 2. Horde Mode would win if it was a separate entry. The campaign is fine, weighed down by the late 2000s obsession with "Can a game make you cry?!". Deeply improved gunplay puts it over...
- Gears of War 1. While 2 gets the edge for the massive wall of quality of life improvements (You can't run and reload in this! That is wild!), the encounter design is still absolutely razor sharp, and the attempt at poignancy is not some heart strings shit but a cold, icy threat. Your cool commander gets extremely fucking executed and then the killer looks at you before you run for your lives, and that's how you meet the final boss. Great, heavy, propulsive.
- Gears of War 4. What's good about this mainly exists to talk about what's bad about Gears of War 3. So let me do some positives and then I will dump. What this game does mechanically in the gap between 3 and 4 is put a lot of attention to moving in cover. This is a great starting point for a studio looking to get their hands on a franchise and make it Their Own. After pretty awful first & second acts, the pace of the game hits its sweet spot in the middle as you start dealing with The Actual Enemy instead of boring fascist robots asking you to please obey while they shoot you. Why are we still doing that. Anyways, once the game advances into dealing with freaks instead of robots, that emphasis on movement shines and turns this game into an excellent horror action game in the same vein as like the recent Resident Evil games. It's not going to actively disturb anyone, and it has nothing to say outside of Parent Power Fantasy stuff, but it's an extremely fun, gross Uncharted with bodysnatchers and hell weather. Pleasant surprise. This being second from the bottom is because it has to be here, as there's a WIDE quality gulf between this and...
- Gears of War 3, which is actively bad. Where Gears 4 is made by people who love Uncharted 2, Gears 3 is a game made by active competitors who were scared shitless by it. It leaks confidence everywhere, from UI design to "humanization," and this culminates in the encounters and the truly mentally tapped attempts to make those encounters more varied. Gears 4 is excellent as a game where you shoot fucked up monsters who don't have to take cover. Gears 3 croaks every time it moves away from Locust encounters and towards floating monsters and shit with weird tentacles that makes cover not count, or the attempts to make big monster fights happen. It is a drag, and I would have done exactly what Epic did with the franchise if we got put under pressure and stayed coal. Oh, hey, fun fact, coal actually has nothing to do with the creation of diamonds. Went to look up how that actually works, and it doesn't.
On to Gears 5, the 6th Gears of War game!
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Who's got a game update? I've got a game update.
DARK SOULS 2 SCHOLAR OF THE FIRST SIN - DRANGLEIC CASTLE, HOWEVER...
...I might be done with this game. Not because of anything they did, but because a Remote Code Execution glitch was found, and they shut off the servers, and I'm not confident I'm going to beat this before Elden Ring anymore because I bet they're fixing Elden Ring first and then maaaaaybe they'll patch the old games, and I like the messages and bloodstains too much to consider playing it offline. So, I might be done. It's up to them.DRAGON QUEST XI S - I HAVE ALL THE MAGIC DOODADS
This last weekend has been The Shits, and to offset it I spent a lot of time with my switch reassuring myself I wasn't having an actual heart attack by staring at Dragon Quest and doing a bunch of shit in it. I think I put 12 hours into this game this weekend? It's good, but it's Dragon Quest, so you probably know if you want to play this, and if you're not sure, go get a 3DS and the remake of Dragon Quest VII, which I think might be the best game in the series.GEARS OF WAR 4 - WEIRDLY CONFLICTED?
So I just got done with Judgment, which if you missed that, here's my review: Judgment rips. This game has, majority, not ripped. The robot enemies are hideously boring, like a focus test group learning about the Vex and seeing if they can make Extremely Boring FIghts work in their game too. They cannot. And yet I have reached the point of the game where there's a bunch of monsters everywhere? Which was my biggest gripe about Gears 3? Well turns out that was just the fault of the people who did Gears 3, because so far all the monster killing shit in 4 has been great fun. The zone is actually spooky, the setup is disturbing but urgent, and the combat encounters shift from close to far range and it introduces a bunch of mechanics that both make cover strategically destructable and punishes you for either relying too heavily on that cover, or not prioritizing that cover the right way. Basically, all the cover that can explode can also turn into an enemy if the wrong enemy gets hit but not killed. And it'll do that for the entire room. So if you can't find him, you have to pick between reducing the cover before he gets set off, or finding him and hopefully having an easier fight with more options. This is Good Stuff. This is the thing Gears 4 is doing best. I hear in Gears 5 they make JD a villain and this is also an extremely good idea.WINDJAMMERS 2 [4]
Gorgeous! And not, like, visually. Visually I think it's kind of a mess and I think the usual dotemu style of comic drawing does this game dirty because the lines make the characters look bad at certain angles. Mechanically, though! This thing fuckin Goes. It took a two button game to a four button game, and made those other two buttons such seizmic changes to the pace of the game that I just love it. There's actual mixups! The mixups that previously existed have another layer to them! There's incentives to reading player behavior! They added a bar, and it does both Offensive and Defensive stuff, and both options are HUGE comeback mechanics, but only if you know how to use them! Just a delightful action game.-
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already got enough for another LIST UPDATE
DARK SOULS 2: SCHOLAR OF THE FIRST SIN- IRON KEEP
In my last session I encountered two of the most powerful feelings souls games can offer you. On the upswing, I defeated The Duke's Dear Freja- a boss that has a long and arduous trek to withstand on the way there- on my first try. I felt fuckin' so sick and strong. Then I went to the last of area of the first half of the game, the Iron Keep, and have so far died to one mandatory phantom 25 times. This may take a while.GEARS OF WAR JUDGMENT- FINISHED
I left the campaign my friend and I started last year to beat all the Gears games off my list cuz I haven't been counting multiplayer games. Judgment is the best game in the series and it isn't even close. It's the gameplay peak, it's got big stupid action movie pacing, and only really stumbles with the final boss, which has been the problem of every Gears game aside from Gears 1. Strongest possible recommendation.
GEARS OF WAR 4- PLAYED ACT 1
A great first twenty minute flashback that's so far been followed with a pretty annoying game. So the main observation I took from Gears 3 is that is from a group of devs that shat their pants at Uncharted 2. The main observation so far in 4, a game from a studio that was founded to keep making Gears games, is that it is made by people who respect the Uncharted games so much, they made their main character half-an-uncharted. The title screen is literally just his face. The dev effort went into making moving feel better, and every part of it does. However, since Judgment is the black sheep, every single improvement Judgment made to the gameplay is now gone. I feel a great sense of dread about finishing this.THE ANACRUSIS- HOLY SHIT IT'S A CATASTROPHE
Tried through the gamepass free trial thing. I know it's a game preview, but like... is this going to help? Is there any chance this helps this game? It is performance wise a mess, but it's worse to play and it's grating to boot. Like ok, Shatner Star Trek Left4Dead sounds great, but when it's just people talking in those outfits and then you are playing the grossest feeling action game? It's not going to do enough to cover the gap there. I hope there's so much ground covered between now and release, because the state it's in on consoles is completely unacceptable.DRAGON QUEST XI S - I'M PLAYING IT RIGHT NOW
It's proven: the best way to play any Dragon Quest game is before bed. Just play until you reach the next save point! -
LIST UPDATE
CRUELTY SQUAD- FINISHED
I opted for the first ending here as the process towards the true ending- which a friend already showed me anyways- requires me to go headlong against a major phobia and maybe some day but not right now! This is still the unquestionable 2021 Game of the Year and any conversation that doesn't include it isn't worth hearing out! Play Cruelty Squad!DARK SOULS 2: SCHOLAR OF THE FIRST SIN- BRIGHTSTONE COVE TSELDORA
Running a Cleric Miracle build, Primary is the Blacksmith Hammer +4 (it's fun), offhand is the Disc Chime, aspiring to get Sunlight Weapon. I've done two of the four great souls (or whatever they're called?) and it's honestly the furthest I've ever been in a souls game. I'm aspiring to beat this before Elden Ring comes out, especially now that I know Kirby is out a fuckin Month Later. I've made it to the Iron Keep, but there's an invader by the front door that is just kicking my fuckin ass so I'm doing everything else I have available. I'm skipping a lot of optional bosses, and just trying to get down the main line as fast as possible.DRAGON QUEST XI S- JUST GOT TO GONDOLIA
This is a major landmark for me, as my first playthrough ended shortly after here on account of my primary PS4 had this cool thing where it would spit discs out all the time. So I'm almost done dragging my feet through stuff I've already done! I imagine the pace will pick up much faster after I'm done here.
HOLLOW KNIGHT- DRAGGING MY FEET
The Soul Master is my next obvious boss, and I don't want to do it, so I made progress in all these other games instead lol -
Alright, time to stop running.
- "Ultrapop" by The Armed
- "The Powers That Be" by Pharoah
- "Jubilee" by Japanese Breakfast
- "Inside (The Songs)" by Bo Burnham
I am not known as a great appreciator of stand-up comedy, or musical comedy, or musical theater, or pianos. I know who Bo Burnham is. I had no intention of watching Inside. So, my approach here is going to be kind of academic: can I get the same thing out of just engaging with the soundtrack? Whether I want to do this or not, I'm a man of my word, so it's time to find out.
SpoilerThis is extremely basic new wave, which I suspect is going to be a major theme of this record, which is that the musical complexity is going to move aside for the delivery of punchlines. Oh it's done lol
The laugh track on the piano reminds me of Father John Misty, which is usually bad news, but the song it reminds me is Bored In The USA which I find to be one of his better songs. I do like the pitch shift on the bridge. I am attempting to offer no commentary on the lyrics for the duration of the record. Thumper's rule. I will say that the vocal template being used for the singing is really clearly Weird Al, which is not a diss. Weird Al is a kind of underappreciated singer, by design. Worse things to emulate.
I like the synths at the start here, first with really pronounced then subdued attack. I prediced that'd come up later in this song but I was wrong, so that's a nice surprise. This is a nice interstitial bit.
yep, this is piano-led musical theater. I have one thing I want to say about the lyrics, which is that "liminal" is one of those words which makes it really hard to take the rest of anyone's argument seriously.
This is all musically sound. Sonically tasteful and restrained to emphasize paying attention to the lyrics, which is the point. As for the lyrics, I am really hanging onto how serious it is to me to be a man of my word.
ok.
The transition between these last four is non-existent going by the record alone, which makes me think there's a lot of things that happen between them. It did briefly make me think about of a friend of mine that works for Amazon now. They've been so busy I literally thought they died. Next song!
I like the chords here too, though I maybe would have dropped the drums down a little here. The drive of the rhythm section here implies night-driving to me, or something with similar momentum.
Ok I have a thing I want to say about the lyrics, which is not about like prose or anything of the sort, just that I suspect I'm way better at being alone with my thoughts than a large number of people.
I wonder if the excessive drive of the music is meant as a direct counterpoint to the emotional experience of isolation? Like some kind of farcical exaggeration. The other songs imply the range that would imply he's capable of writing other things, but I suppose the question comes to the intentionality of it.
I don't have a lot to say about this one. I found it exceptionally fatiguing.
Ok this got an actual laugh out of me based on how much I disliked the last song, to follow that immediately with "are you bored" is really great timing. So that last song was worth it because it made this one work, even if it's a song that's mostly joking about how not great this is.
I do like the choir in the "oh shit" part and the tiny chords in that part.
I feel like this whole record could be this song.
Somehow this song is the first time I sighed. It reminds me that the last time I heard someone speak glowingly about this, it was Dan Le Batard, and while I love the Dan Le Batard Show I generally avoid film recommendations from anyone on that show, and that's probably how I resolved to avoid this. This all feels extremely obvious and surface level to me, and like we've been rehashing large numbers of these points all my life, and nothing has changed. Did this work? I'm not sure.
Youtube linked a 1 hour loop of the bezos song as the next video I should listen to.
My brother often asks unpleasant "would you rather" questions for some kind of sick entertainment, like it's fun to imagine unpleasant scenarios. My mind built one of these around the idea of Father John Misty or this record. If someone suggested this was a longform spoof of Father John Misty, I would absolutely believe it.
I just want to take a moment to make it clear that I appreciate being forced out of my comfort zone, because it helps me understand what I think and what I like and want from art and life better. That part usually doesn't come through negative reviews like this. This song is sonically the best of them, and from a brief google I did about the show just now it's apparently the narrative ending of the show. I can see that working.
This reads like credit music to me so that works out too. I want to talk about another experience that scarred me that's very musical theater related because I've gotten the same vibes from this, several times. One time when I went to hang out with my friends, after the release of Fallout 76, when I entered the house they were listening to some big musical theater parody song about the situation called It Just Works. I think the video had flash animated puppets? I just remember feeling like an invader in their house. Oh, uh, continued.
So far the majority of the points brought up on the record have given me, instead of comfort, a worse feeling of alienation and helplessness, like being in a church or a backseat and having no way out.
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So, the experiment didn't work. From the songs I got no actual sense of what this show is about other than vague themes of confronting reality or mental illness from isolation. Alternatively, the show is entirely surface level like this listen has been, and I totally got it. I have no value judgment over which one is better. This is going to be at the bottom of the list now, but only because it's my list, and not because of an indictment of the thing it is. I'm sure the people who would love it would have engaged it way before I said anything.
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Here is my 2022 Gaming Resolution. I have a list of games I wanted to beat last year that I didn't get around to, and honestly there's not a lot of games coming out this year I'm expecting to hold my attention. So! Here is the list of games I am aspiring to finish in the year 2022.
- Cruelty Squad (at a point I stopped playing it and started watching it, so now I'm going back to it to actually complete it)
- Dark Souls II Scholar of the First Sin
- Demons of Asteborg
- Disco Elysium (second full playthrough, physical build)
- Dragon Quest XI S
- Final Fantasy 7 (started a playthrough because there's been a lot of AI Upres procedures done on the prerendered maps and I want to see that)
- The rest of the Gears of War franchise (currently playing Judgment. short: best game in the series)
- Hollow Knight (started over on PC with a less latent display)
- Hitman 3
- L.A. Noire (timed with the Action Button review)
- One full game of Old World
- Tres-Bashers
- ULTRAKILL (this one is the one that worries me)
- Yakuza Like A Dragon
Now, I'm allowing myself leeway because there are some new games I am 100% getting (Elden Ring, Kirby, probably Splatoon?) and some indie games that are in various states of "when it's done" that if they say When I'm running full speed to (Radio The Universe, UFO 50, Skin Deep, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, and Dread Delusion most notably). So for most of the year when I post a review of something, if I reviewed it once before, I'm going to specify that I just beat it and these are my final thoughts with it.
WIsh me luck lol
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7 hours ago, Craig H said:
I know it's received a lot of love elsewhere, but I tend to trust you all more than others - is Disco Elysium worth purchasing, what style of game is it, and would it be appropriate for an 11 year old? From what I've seen or read, it's a RPG, but it also looks like it's something of a throwback to Fallout 1 and 2? I didn't dive into what the story is to not spoil myself if I did buy it.
Disco Elysium works like Fallout in that it's a point and click RPG, but there is absolutely no combat. As simply as possible, it's a large variety of different skill checks and dialog. However, it's exceptionally well thought out (dialog decisions can play into other dialog down the line, and your character build makes completely different avenues of the story available) and it's all exceptionally written dialog. I think it is the best work of fiction available in games, and there is no close contender. Strongest possible recommendation.
That being said, DO NOT SHOW DISCO ELYSIUM TO A CHILD. It is, subject matter wise, EXTREMELY intense.
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A reminder that submissions close on New Year's day!
- "Ultrapop" by The Armed
- "The Powers That Be" by Pharoah
- "Jubilee" by Japanese Breakfast
I have heard of Japanese Breakfast but couldn't name a song. A cursory google search reveals that they're not Japanese, but instead Korean. I also think they did the soundtrack for the video game Sable? What a great sentence for anyone from the 90s. "The Sable game has a soundtrack by Japanese Breakfast." The wikipedia genre pile lists "indie rock" and what are basically five synonyms. I think that's about as much as I can get out of this part of the review.
SpoilerThe instrumentation and sound is modern but the structure definitely shows a draw from 90s alt rock, which makes sense why that was included on the synonym pile. The lyrics seem to be about making music, which is a personal hangup, but it's not as classless as that can get. Talking about the emotional content of creation is always better than discussing the elements of the song you're listening to.
The rhythm immediately reminds me of The Weeknd's "I Can't Feel My Face" which is a positive comparison. I think it's the high hat and dusting of funk instrumentation. I do have to say that the return of funk tone to pop music over the last few years is something I feel kind of mixed about, because it co-incided with me doing a deep dive of actual funk and a lot of the time I find that the modern stuff is lacking something. I think it's in the nature of the software production, the lack of human error in the playing reduces the sound from a living thing to a pastiche. Also the American Bandstand ending blows, but I understand it's purpose in the industry.
This is more of the thing I expected Japanese Breakfast to sound like. This is perfectly functional balladry with instrumental depth. It's nice. I don't have a lot to say.
This is also functional pop writing. It's weird to see the little splashes of Tame Impala around the outside of the sound. It gets hard to see when a sound is a response or a natural conclusion, and I don't know the catalog enough to say for sure but it feels just detached enough that I suspect it's the former. This song's lyrics are good but the chorus is kind of odd?
I like this song's lyrics a lot. It's a good topic, about the positions of companionship among hardship and how much bigger those pitfalls and mismatches can feel when things are bad elsewhere. The music is kind of simplistic with some clattering instrument over the second verse that is exceptionally Passion Pit and kind of invasive. I really dislike how all these songs are ending so far. Some Pause for Applause shit.
These are some good chords at the start, and I like the lyrics. She's very good at writing about weird tensions of love, putting kind of uncomfortable topics into words. This is my favorite song on the record by far.
I love the intro here, it's this awful coccoon ripping apart. Cool sound. The lyrics in the first verse are great, but the chorus is... I'm gonna get off on a tangent here. I feel like because political art has lessened in importance in America through the 2000s and 2010s, snuffed out by people afraid of rocking the boat in the middle of the Iraq War & Obama administration, a lot of recent political stuff is still in this weird 90s "THESE CLOWNS IN CONGRESS" tenor, where things are just awful obvious and oh the song ended fuck lol
This is a return to the awful nuances of love as a subject and it's clear which topic is more of a strength. This is a really good song that also ends too soon and kind of abruptly, which actually considering the topic and content of verse two works pretty well.
Even when this album moves to ballads they get it absolutely right by keeping the instrumental complexity up. The band is playing tenderly, not boringly. It's a difficult balance and none of this album's ballads have worn on me in the way that ballads usually do.
OOPS SPOKE TOO SOON. Well I was warned. The band kicking back in with the same weird symphony patches from the beginning of the record is a nice touch. This is a nice jam, and I appreciate the intention here to try to end on something tonally meaningful instead of lyrically, but I dont know that it works here, especially since it ends with tonal resolution and still somehow feels like it ends too soon.
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This is a fine record that occasionally brushes against greatness. I can see how it would be someone's album of the year, but I can't say it did a whole lot for me personally. It will end low but it is by absolutely no means bad.-
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Some reviews, starting with a re-score!
SOLAR ASH [2]
I quit it when it introduced a mechanic I had no interest in dealing with, in a section where I hated the narrative angle and experienced the second most frustrating dialog exchange in the game. I'm beginning to feel like the narrative direction is the fault of the publisher, because Annapurna's brand is like NPR Devolver Digital and it cant just put out a cool action game. So between this, 12 Minutes, and Last Exit, Annapurna has burned all its good will and has nothing really to show for it. I used to take note of games they were putting out and now it's going to be an uphill battle to get me to check out anything they release.GEARS OF WAR [3]
GEARS OF WAR 2 [4]
GEARS OF WAR 3 [2]
A friend of mine have been replaying the Gears of War series kinda just to do it. Well, not "kinda just to do it." I've hit this crisis point with game design where I am finished with more genres than not. I don't want to aim down sights anymore, I don't like open world games, I don't like battle royales, I don't want to compare numbers on items, and I don't want anything runbased or procedural. You may notice that's 90% of video games now! Yeah! I'm in trouble! I just want to play a game with some levels in it! Levels were cool! So from that we talked each other into playing all the Gears games.-Gears 1 in my mind was A Classic but there's so many quality of life things they added in 2 that I forgot were not in 1 that I can't regard it the same way anymore. At the same time, Gears 1 is also the game that gave us the camera for Every Modern Video Game. From Sony Prestige Games to those awful Batman games, to Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Gears of War is the fundamental building block. How it swings its camera when your in control to point out the next spectacle is how every single game works now. It's easy to shit on Gears for being monochromatic, but remember that among the people singing the praises of Gears' camera usage was Hironobu Sakaguchi, which he adopted for Lost Odyssey to showcase how to map that dynamic camera usage onto a JRPG. Gears of War is phenominally important to every extant video game, but it's not the easiest thing to go back to.
-Gears 2 is a for real action game masterpiece. It doesn't push anything forward with camera usage or anything (which will bite it in the ass later) but what it does do is fix up the engine of the actual gameplay. It is a gameplay focused sequel. Plus, Horde Mode. I would suggest Gears 2 Horde Mode, if standalone, is the unquestionable best game of that whole decade.
-Gears 3 is bad. When we started playing it my friend and I kept remarking "wow I remember none of this but I remember beating it!" It turns out that if you make two cool games about firefights in heavy cover, and then make game 3 a game where you run around and fight monsters in open areas all the time, it's kind of a drag! It's like you got this sports car and use it mainly to go get groceries. It's also weirdly prescient of the direction games were going in. In the intervening time between Gears 2 and 3, Uncharted 2 happened. Uncharted 2 ate Gears' lunch as a spectacle delivery system and started touching on the idea of using Gears' camera tech to play at dramatic gravitas. As a result, Gears 3 tries to go for dramatic moments and uncomfortable moments more heavily. It fails. It fails really hard. All the time. It fails so bad that Epic ends up going "well shit, maybe we can compete with minecraft" and stops making single player games.
POLYBIUS [4]
From the Steam Page: "The inspiration for POLYBIUS was an old urban legend about a strange, abstract, psychedelic arcade game that was supposedly released for a brief time in the 1980s. According to the legend people who played the game experienced strange and rather unpleasant psychological reactions after becoming addicted to it. There was talk of the CIA and Men in Black. Of course the legendary game has never actually been found but - especially with the advent of VR - we thought it might be fun to make a game inspired by the old legend. Our version is intended only to have positive effects on the minds of its users though!"It works. It's also not for people with epilepsy. It's also from the Space Giraffe guy.
TETR.IO [4]
This is one of those experiences where it really puts into perspective how far behind 90% of the game industry is with the internet and how to use it. This is a Browser Based Tetris, with amazing netcode, unlimited size player lobbies, multiple leaderboards for either Ranked Competitive, 40 Line sprints, or High Score runs, and easily accessible replays for everything where all you have to do is copy a link and look at it. Setting up a lobby lets you customize everything from how the pieces are randomly seeded (there's like six different algorithms) to exact decimal points on how gravity accelerates over time. It also has serverwide events that you can watch unfold on their official twitch account if you don't think you're a big enough tetris badass to compete. This is all by one person. Oh and the music's great. Like literally everything about this package is one of the best games I've ever seen in my life, and it's a free browserbased game by one person. Lord, they're running behind.= = =
btw just a reminder but Play Cruelty Squad. I am watching a lot of game of the year stuff come up where Cruelty Squad isn't even being mentioned and its starting to drive me insane because the gap between it and every other video game released in the last few years runs the risk of endangering the entire industry.
I could scream about it for another five hours here but I will stop and just say Play Cruelty Squad, It's The Real Game of the Year.
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Well. 0-day serverside java exploit that allows easy remote code execution. Entirely serverside, no way to fix it on your end, no way to even know what you might be using that uses it. This is the Big One.
I want to scream, but not in like an angry or stressed way? It's like finding out a river was actually an Old God, and your town is about to undergo the most incredible changes. Your foolish need for water has scarred thy DNA, and when the agents come all they have to do is hum a little tune and your flesh and bones will stretch and cancer, and open a little hatch to your mind. It is about that bad of an exploit.
Good luck, and get baked goods for your IT people because they're gonna have a rotten December.
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3 hours ago, Gordberg said:
https://barbend.com/devon-larratt-arm-wrestle-adam-scherr-braun-strowman/
Adam Scherr (Braun) vs legendary Canadian arm-wrestler Devon Larrett.
Scherr does not exactly come across as a likable fellow in the video.
at the same time that is devon larratt and it's frankly a miracle more people haven't swung on him
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Artist Lingua Ignota has released a detailed timeline of her abuse at the hands of Daughters lead singer Alexis Marshall from 2019-2021. I'm posting this here because I know there's a few fans of Daughters around these parts and I figured they would want to know.
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I wrote some big reviews and then deleted them like a dope so you get tiny ones.
SOLAR ASH [3]
Love playing it, writing is bad enough to make me struggle to recommend it, hope you like hams saying hammy sci-fi shitMONCAGE [4]
Clever, somewhere between Gorogoa and The Room (in puzzle construction only, not a horror game)PANZER DRAGOON ON SWITCH [2]
My fault, didn't notice a Performance Mode until after I beat itARREST OF A STONE BUDDHA [3]
Genuinely not sure how you're supposed to play this on normal difficulty. Good moody sad gritty action-adventure gameDARK SOULS 2 SCHOLAR OF THE FIRST SIN [4]
I'm sickalso just a reminder in the run up to the game awards and people thinking about their game of the year; you all need to play Cruelty Squad. I would buy copies if I weren't so broke, that's how serious I am.
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I need a distraction! 4AM reviews!
- "Ultrapop" by The Armed
- "The Powers That Be" by Pharoah
So! The Armed! This'll be my fifth time listening to this this year I think? After the first time I listened to it I was kind of bothered by the cover for reasons that aren't worth getting into, and then I went and talked to some friends of mine and heard theories and evidence of things that this band might actually be- namely the idea that this is all the brainchild of Kurt Ballou, Converge guitarist and probably the best rock producer alive. However we got there, I like a bunch of songs on here already, but this'll be the first time I sit down and do nothing but listen to it. That'll be fun! Oh uh it's good workout music btw, that is what I mean by that.
SpoilerI do adore how the record starts by doing two hits of Inception noise and then just pours into choral, and once that's settled in there's just more harsh noise. The tone profile and engineering of this record are pretty incredible. I think the other part I like about the positioning of Ultrapop as the theme is that it allows transfiguration of Rock Lyricism here that has to be beholden to modern genre trends (i.e. pop, hyperpop, etc), of a different vocabulary of opaque feeling paint.
The chorus chords here fuckin incredible, and this song also brings up the other thing I know I can say for sure about this record from my other times listening to it: everyone playing drums on this record is a fuckin Nut. This song also makes good use of the feeling paint lyricism, even acknowledging it with "it's meaningful if nothing's meant / may be a race to nowhere but I still hope that I win"
Hardcore screams of "I get smitten" rule lol. This song handles the transition well, just driving up the anxiety and energy from the two songs before. Don't have a lot else to say! Fun tune with sad words!
I love how the song after that feels like mallpunk with everything gained up way too far. It helps with the pacing without letting the steam off too much. Lots of rock records, even records I love, make that mistake, downshifting too far too fast.
yeah uh an iteration fucking rips especially the way it axe kicks like ten thousand different bands. It's also a killer showcase for basically all the playing on the record at the same time.
This is again great for the pacing, as An Iteration was fast but less tense than other songs on the record. Here we've slowed down but doubled up on the anxiety and feeling. All these fuckin chords are food for me.
This is one of the times on here where I most feel the whole "this is a Kurt Ballou secret side project" the most, because this is a rhythm that would mainly come from doing metalcore for like twenty years. Btw I don't know if I mentioned this but I like Converge a fuckin lot, so please don't take the invocations of them as a reference as some like "FINALLY HE'S SURPASSED CONVERGE" or whatever. I listened the shit out of You Fail Me and All We Love We Leave Behind. I'm not sure I get the thing the lyrics are going for at the moment, but maybe one day! This interview quote on the genius page suggests it's about the abuse of actresses in Hollywood.
While this one starts up I want to say this album is exhausting in the best way. It feels like it's been going for 40 minutes right now because it's all so dense and stimulating, also playing into the ultrapop thing. I love the outro more than the rest of the song here, which is not to say the song is bad, just that I got occupied thinking about how I was feeling while the rest of the song was happening and I forgot to write. I think I've figured out the thing this record actually reminds me of which is about to be some kind of hot take: this band is like if Future Of The Left had a budget and swapped the bitterness with romanticism.
And this starts happening as if to be like "you figured me out, this is just Interscope's Future Of The Left record!" Also not a diss, love Future of the Left, and sincerely wish they got the kind of support these people did to be able to afford the production here. This is also a good pace reduction tool! I keep bringing up the pacing cuz I'm working on music of my own and that tension and release element of pacing songs is really tricky.
Ok the anime lyrics here made me roll my eyes super hard but the song itself is good and I'm finding myself having increasingly less to say about the album's extremely good playing and sound. It's just aces all throughout.
I snatched a fruitfly out of the air as soon as this song started and that felt pretty cool. This is another one of the more approachable songs on here. I almost qualified that with like "but it's good!" but really there's nothing wrong with approachable and I'm wondering if that's something that's become inherent with the word approachable these days. This is also the big stress release after the rest of the record, though it can't even last the whole song without ratcheting back up, setting the stage for the last track.
I appreciate the tone of the ending here, using the same chords from Ultrapop and using harsher noise in the chorus. It feels like a real reiteration of a theme, of this content machine that churns out feeling paint and leaves ruined people out the other end.
= = =
yeh its still real good
This is actually a really hard choice to make. I had a better time listening to Pharoah but this is a record that never dips. I have to put it higher despite that joy gap. Just seems wrong to do it the other way, no matter how much I may want to.
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8 hours ago, Octopus said:
Any of you guys have a Top 10 (or whatever number) wrestler GOAT list? It’s always fun to see people’s personal taste.
El Hijo Del Santo
Akira Hokuto
Stan Hansen
Eddie Guerrero
The Destroyer
Shin'ya Hashimoto
Yumiko Hotta
Jushin Thunder Liger
Bryan Danielson
Fit Finlay
it fucking kills me to not be able to put any battlarts people on here but I can't justify putting Ishikawa over anyone here.
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One of my friends released an album that got a glowing 8.0 review on Pitchfork today that it absolutely deserves. You can find it here however you'd like to find it: https://dearlaika.nnatapes.com/pluperfect-mind
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I posted this in the Wrestling Machine thread because I had that open but meant to put it here! Oops!
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So first, let's explain how I found this.
A friend of mine asks a quasi-joke question, where they ask who's the best wrestler from Italy. I then realize I dont know anything about Italian wrestling. So I go on wikipedia to look up italian wrestlers, and the name Ted Boy Marino catches my eye. Turns out he is Italian, but he was a big star in Brazil in the 60s and 70s. And from that Wikipedia, I learn the name for wrestling shows in Brazil, which is Telecatch. I was waiting until I found a match I thought had majority good things about it before I shared this discovery of Brazilian Wrestling, and here it is.
This youtube account has a lot of videos from the personal archive of one of the participants, Renato Dias (the beanpole in yellow). Belo is the man in the incredible screenshot. Please also take note of the canvas and apron of this show, which is called Gigantes do Ringue, which I will be digging through for the rest of the year.
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EDIT: LOL WRONG THREAD. Check over in the Wrestling Not From Now Thread
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Well, uh, I guess I'll get started and maybe that'll lead people to start submitting things?
I know nothing about Pharoah. You, you are surprised. A cursory google leads me to a wikipedia page that says this is rooted in European Power Metal. I'm hoping that's just a copywriter from a long time ago doing a reductive job. also it says this is the first album from this band in like 9 years, so that's cool! Here we go!
SpoilerAlright just get started hell yeah. Fuck an intro sometimes. Once the verse started I kind of lost track of the rhythm which is a hallmark of a brute forced tempo change, which informs me a lot about where this is going. As the rhythm smooths back out I've gotten more into it. I dont have a deep well of metal references to pull from here so I'll avoid comparisons. Lyricwise it's rock lyrics but I appreciate that the album called The Powers That Be is starting with the track The Powers That Be about the concept of The Powers That be. Intro as thesis statement. A lot of highminded concept/metal stuff waits until way later into the record to address why this is happening. I love the chords in the "Who would think it" bridge, and could see myself just listening to that part on loop for like 10 minutes and having a great time. Pretty good intro!
OK WAY INTO THIS ONE. The intro is really good and once the song starts jogging I feel it like sweeping me into the speed of it. I guess it's worth pointing out here that of the "classic" metal bands I've always been way more partial to Judas Priest than Black Sabbath because it feels like they're pushing their limits all the time as far as speed vs. coherence. Not as much about heavy atmosphere as it is heavy sound. So with that in mind, I'm having a great time with this song.
Ok it's power ballad time but they get credit for pushing it tempo wise as well. I got exposed to some band that did exclusively powerballads just recently, and I forgot their name (lol) and I think the tempo is a thing that sinks power ballads for me a lot of the time. This has the opposite of that problem. I know it's probably going to speed up into a full song soon but honestly they could run a full ballad at this speed and I'd love that shit. There's also some good chords in here too, so that's fun. Yeah cool that was the full ballad! That is probably the best ballad I've listened to for any of these records over the years I've done this! I'm not gonna go listen to the others to find out how true that is!
I love that this picked up from a similar tempo and just started barreling forwards. Currently I'm in one of those zones where I don't have a bunch to say because I'm just genuinely enjoying my time with it and all that I have to write is like "aw yeah" in so many ways.
Ok this intro is veering Yes-wardly and the sooner we start jogging the better. I'm not loving this one. The drum fills break up the pace too much, and it's hard to get anything to hold on before the chorus. I think we've talked about this, but in my mind the ideal form of a rock song is to sound like the open road. This is a bumpy goddamn road. It's like theoretically impressive and takes a high level of musicianship but the design keeps me from enjoying it.
I was about to talk about power ballad 2 and how it's cool that it has the same pace and then the song I kept waiting to explode out of the first power ballad pops out here. Having the restraint to do that on that song makes it feel that much better on this song. That's a great move. The chorus has some chords I really like in here too, as does the bed under the bridge. Always appreciate letting the bassist have a lick, even if it's right before the solo. Good tune!
I've said this a lot of times so far but I really appreciate how often the songs just fuckin Get Going and start as fast as they can. This chorus is SUPER cheesy, but in a heart-on-sleeve kind of way, and as someone who has listened to and recommended multiple records from A Silver Mt. Zion, I'm not allowed to complain about music being especially heart-on-sleeve. This is the first song on here that's felt particularly rote to me, and is the first time I've been able to predict chord progressions at all on the record (usually a bad sign). It's OK. It means well.
Power Ballad #3, and it's the longest song on the record, and it's starting at a slower tempo than the others OH OK NEVERMIND LOL. The way they keep faking me out about the power ballads is like surgical towards my own misgivings about the form and I'm enjoying that. I keep waiting for 4 minutes of slow acoustic guitar playing with lots of "soulfulness" and every time they pose like that's what's coming the rest of the band is like "HEY IS THIS A SONG I KNOW A SONG" like excitable dogs. The bridge is good, especially with the vocal harmonies. I haven't said a lot about the vocals, so I'll do that now that we're in the breakdown. I think they're probably the part of the playing that's the most beholden to genre standards, but the rest of the band keeps pushing the tempo and the vocals are completely capable of keeping up and fitting in. So, not my favorite sound or style, but I can tell it's done very well. This is a good tune. I bet this is how the live sets end.
YAY NO ENDING BALLAD! Okay the way the drums kick in on the verse without the bass or the other guitars sounds really cool and it's wild to me that I dont hear that more often. This song feels like it's about to be a shredding explosion, judging by how in depth the bridges are. The actual chorus is really good, and yep sure enough the solo is cranking harder than the rest of the solos on the record, going back into that extremely complicated bridge section.
= = =
Wow! I gotta say, all the trepidation I felt when "european power metal" came up was completely unwarranted. A few misgivings aside, this is record is a great time. I can see how this would be a personal inspiration to someone, and even without that layer I can see how they're using their musicianship to make something Good instead of making something for Musicians. Full credit, good time, thanks for suggesting this to me.
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TRES-BASHERS [3]
Adorable NES styled platformer where you are a tiny rat hunting freaky cryptids and trying to recover all your cool cryptid notes and save your partner in cryptid-hunting from the head of the Cryptid gang, Sasquatch. Usually don't go for pixel retro stuff anymore but this one's got such a powerful premise that I dont regret checking it out at all.
CROSSCODE [3]
I was having a good time- not a great time- until in one of the dungeons all of the enemies just suddenly started not following the rules of the rest of the game. After failing that encounter ten times and nearly throwing a controller (which I literally haven't done since Super Mario Galaxy) I went into the difficulty options and cranked down the enemy damage to the absolute bottom to keep going. It's fine, but it's uneven. I want to see where the story is going.
SUPER AUTO PETS [3]
It's free and it's a super paired down Auto Chess, and a few years ago I attempted to explain Auto Chess in here so just read that and then imagine it's like 1/5th as much complicated.
METROID DREAD [2]
Here's a variety of snippy things I have said about this game to other people.- If you would have asked me on saturday night I would have told you this is the most disappointed I've been in a game.
- congratulations to Cruelty Squad for winning Game of the Year in a fuckin walk
- i've been wondering who this game is for and I'm starting to think the answer is "the developers"
- at least the speed runs will look nuts
Five hours in and I've been having a miserable time. I was looking for an eerie adventure, and instead have recieved hyper-repetitive platinum action with PG horror elements. If you played Doom Eternal and disliked The Marauder, imagine there's Three Different Kinds of Marauder and you'll have a sense of what you're in for. The combat is repetitive, the animation is so fast that it looks like ads for mobile games, the one-hit-kills from the EMMI aren't even like exciting when they happen because Nintendo wont show anything graphic, but they also won't relent with how fucked up they are to deal with so you'll see the same three death animations over and over... Not having fun! Regret buying this! Wouldn't recommend!
EDIT: srsly tho Cruelty Squad is the game of the year, the snippy part is emphasizing just how much better it is than everything else that's happened this year -
yeah i asked for a picture of a handstand and also got a person
Upcoming Video Game Releases (2022 & Beyond)
in COMPUTERS & GAMES & TECH
Posted
So for people not in the loop, Street Fighter 6 got rebooted a few years ago after some kind of disastrous internal showing that cost the head of the entire fighting game department their job. So that teaser being a big nothingburger with a cheap logo is also representative of how direly on fire that game appears to be. I wish them the best, but honestly Capcom's been on such a winning streak that they're about due for something to fall on its face.