Lamp, broken circa 1988

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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. https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-lifestyle-software-apple-inc-aed3cc628fc602079b100757974c8f01 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.

at the same time that is devon larratt and it's frankly a miracle more people haven't swung on him

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.

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 shit MONCAGE [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 it ARREST OF A STONE BUDDHA [3] Genuinely not sure how you're supposed to play this on normal difficulty. Good moody sad gritty action-adventure game DARK SOULS 2 SCHOLAR OF THE FIRST SIN [4] I'm sick also 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.

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.

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.

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

I posted this in the Wrestling Machine thread because I had that open but meant to put it here! Oops! ==== 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.

EDIT: LOL WRONG THREAD. Check over in the Wrestling Not From Now Thread

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!

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

And hopefully in Actual 2021! This year has seen a LOT of records that I've adored so I'm interested to see what else came out that didn't land on my radar. 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. My personal album of the year was "The Apple Drop" by Liars, which came out on the same day as my runner up, Lingua Ignota's "Sinner Get Ready." I've been a huge Liars fan for years and years and this very well may be their best record. The thing I love about Liars is how different they sound and how much they challenge their outer boundaries of what they can do as musicians, always learning and expanding. This time, now that Liars is just Angus Andrew, the way that he chose to expand is using professional musicians and a writing partner. The result is an enormous, eerie, fun, great rock record. I'll also post my full top 10 at the end of this process for anyone who's curious. And yes I realize there's three months left in the year, so if you want to wait that's totally fine. Submissions close on New Year's Eve. Now, please to be share yon records!

Alright! That's a wrap for 2020 there! Sorry that took so long to get done y'all. I do intend to do this again this year but I'm not going to open that up for another few weeks. "Fetch The Bolt Cutters" by Fiona Apple "Forever Black" by Cirith Ungol "Show Pony" by Orville Peck "All Hands Around The Moment" by Richard Youngs and Raül Refree "Wake of a Nation" by Zeal and Ardor "The End of Everything" by Noah Cyrus "Eons" by Neptunian Maximalism I know nothing about Zeal & Ardor. A cursory set of googles leads me to two discoveries I don't know how to reconcile. First is, their website has the subtitle "Blues, Gospel and Soul meet harsher music." The second is that the wikipedia about the band invokes 4chan as how they found their sound. It's time to listen before deciding how I feel about those two things!

you did the Stop/Spot thing bro admittedly that tweet is GameSpot reporting on GameStop so I understand how it happened but yeah

So here's what I've pieced together: -The lady is Divya, the ring announcer who also insists that she is the Queen of CWE. I think she's demanding to still do ring announcing stuff but as queen has an entourage for protection and fanning. -Badshah Khan (who I've decided his gimmick is Man Who Cannot Control His Emotions) hates this dude named Avnish for some reason that's not clear. He tried to jump him, and, well... And then Badshah sees someone watching some video he thinks is Avnish and chases him with the Cookie Sheet of Wrath, and, well... By the way, Sardar Singh just posted a promo where him and his goons hang a man so I am pretty sure CWE is my new favorite company.

Today I learned that Great Khali's wrestling school is uploading matches. This has one of the most unique setup gimmicks I've ever seen, looking like a comedy caper at the end of a movie about an underground fighting ring. The match itself is ecstatic shades of green. Straight up might be one of the most fun matches I've seen all year.

@Casey since they put out two consecutive albums about vampires and werewolves @username It's entirely your call. My position is I gave my word that I'd listen to it so I intend to, but if you want to change albums that's totally in your prerogative. If it helps with your decision, the short version of that clipping review is that I liked midcity & CLPPNG, didn't like the sci-fi one, believe that spirit > technique, and that losing mystique is a hard thing for anyone to overcome. Favorite song was Run For Your Life, least favorite was Story 7.

ok here's a news update: I listened to clipping's album "There Existed An Addiction To Blood," had an unbelievably miserable time, and then realized that wasn't even the right clipping horrorcore album. I wrote the review and everything. So I'm going to give it some time before i listen to the correct clipping record and finish this process, to wash that whole record out of my head and give the right one a fair chance.

Who knows, maybe that "metal musician yearns to make a genre of music that's not full of white guys (yet)" is a San Diego thing, but I've run into that dude so often. The one I wont forget is the virtue signaling groper idiot cop caller grindcore guitarist/drummer who was overheard yearning to be in an afrobeat band. Hard to forget a thing like that. "Fetch The Bolt Cutters" by Fiona Apple "Forever Black" by Cirith Ungol "Show Pony" by Orville Peck "All Hands Around The Moment" by Richard Youngs and Raül Refree "The End of Everything" by Noah Cyrus "Eons" by Neptunian Maximalism As an alt-country liker, I've definitely heard about Orville Peck and just haven't gotten around to listening to their music, though I did hear one song that a friend sent me but it was so long ago that I don't remember which it was. Genuinely looking forward to this!