Lamp, broken circa 1988

The penultimate! "When I Get Home" by Solange "Purple Mountains" by Purple Mountains "The Baneful Choir" by Teitanblood "Animated Violence Mild" by Blanck Mass "Cuz I Love You" by Lizzo "Deceiver" by DIIV" "i,i" by Bon Iver "Bible Songs 1" by The Austerity Program "Jade Bird" by Jade Bird I know Blanck Mass, kind of. I definitely listened to their prior record a single time. I know they're built out of some other act I should know about. I'm doing my googles... okay it's one of the Fuck Buttons guys. Alright. Anyways, I tried that record because I'm a Sacred Bones Record fanboy and thought it was OK and didn't keep it or buy it. I remember the intro of it very well because it starts with just a big loud sound blast, but past that, nothing. And now, the second Blanck Mass record (that i've heard, there may be more records of this and i dont know about em).

Oh, the skate franchise is a must. Skate 2 is an answer I'd accept for Best Game Of That Generation

Two left! "When I Get Home" by Solange "Purple Mountains" by Purple Mountains "The Baneful Choir" by Teitanblood "Cuz I Love You" by Lizzo "Deceiver" by DIIV" "i,i" by Bon Iver "Bible Songs 1" by The Austerity Program "Jade Bird" by Jade Bird I know who Bon Iver is. I'll keep this brief: I liked For Emma, I hated the self-titled at first, I LOVED 22 A Million so much that I went back to the self-titled and ended up liking it, and I've already listened to this record once and ended up feeling like it was the middle point between the self-titled and 22 A Million, and maybe if they'd come out in that order people would be less mad at 22 A Million, but maybe that would've been a less exciting record in general. So! Time for listen #2.

I think I was supposed to put this up yesterday? Eh, it'll be fine. "When I Get Home" by Solange "Purple Mountains" by Purple Mountains "The Baneful Choir" by Teitanblood "Cuz I Love You" by Lizzo "Deceiver" by DIIV" "Bible Songs 1" by The Austerity Program "Jade Bird" by Jade Bird My googles of Teitanblood have only caused me to learn one thing: I am not sure I know what “extreme metal” signifies. My hope is that it’s metal but more extreme. My fear is that it’s metal but for people who drink energy drinks and use “tite” in their texts. I’m pretty sure it’s the first one. This week I’ve been listening to pretty much exclusively banda and dark industrial, so I think I’m in a good enough mindset. Here we go!

the obvious series that are still missing are Fight Night and the Backyard Sports games oh and Sensible Soccer I'd also put a vote up for Virtua Tennis for the Dreamcast A better question is, does the Mario stuff count? And also relatedly, Hot Shots/Everybody's Golf?

Alright so I'm gonna try to bust out the rest of these in the next week because i'm gonna be busy starting on the 20th. Something like one every other day is the plan. 1. "When I Get Home" by Solange 2. "Purple Mountains" by Purple Mountains 3. "Cuz I Love You" by Lizzo 4. "Deceiver" by DIIV" 5. "Bible Songs 1" by The Austerity Program 6. "Jade Bird" by Jade Bird Okay, so, I remember the existence of the band DIIV, because they were in the pitchfork news cycle a LOT, and I remember there was some kind of controversy around them a few years ago. I listened to their first album, I dont remember anything on it, positive or negative. Although, to be fair, if I thought something positive about it then it would probably be in my music library, and it isn’t. Regardless, that was almost a decade ago, so lets see how I feel about DIIV in 2020.

New record on Valentine's Day (the same day my other front runner for Album of the Year is out, Cindy Lee's "What's Tonight To Eternity")

Kentucky Route Zero TV Edition appears to be on its way to release. They have a hotline you can call (1-858-WHEN-KRZ) that for the past few months has only had a single option on the menu, to let you hear a cute message saying that it's in development and you can call whenever you want to be assured it's still in development. That message changed this weekend: now when you hit that option on the menu, you're put on hold for thousands of minutes that add up to Tuesday 1PM EST. There's no way to know if that's an announcement of a release date or a sudden release of the game, but either way, I am vibrating with anticipation, and my personal Game of the Year campaign is already done.

Alright, we're locked in now. Thanks again to everyone that contributes to this, I appreciate having the chance to talk about records at length because it helps me refine my own songwriting process. Entertaining y'all makes me better at my passion. It's a blessing to have this. "well maybe if you wrote good songs you'd entertain people" alright jeff ross, cool it. 1. "When I Get Home" by Solange 2. "Purple Mountains" by Purple Mountains 3. "Cuz I Love You" by Lizzo 4. "Bible Songs 1" by The Austerity Program 5. "Jade Bird" by Jade Bird I’m going to keep this one short: I have little exposure to David Berman’s catalog, and this record was the soundtrack to some of the most horrifying shit I’d ever went through. I don’t mind listening to it a second time, but, I’m not sure what all I’m going to be able to say about it. I’m definitely not going to talk about the lyrics at length because David Berman is known for his lyrics and rightly so- they’re all amazing on this record.

I LOVE IT A LOT. It's lovely to play a murder mystery game that's free of condemning people over laws or anything. High recommendation.

fwiw the exclusivity is up, it's just not going to be on consoles until it's out of Early Access

HADES [4] While my memory isn't good enough to say how far back this statement would have to cover to be true, I will say that Hades is the best action game I can remember having played for quite some time. It's an isometric rougelike from the Bastion & Transistor team and that's enough to know how good it it is, because it's got all their hallmarks: it plays great, the concept is great, the art is great, the music is great, and the writing is great. It's in early access right now though, so that's the only strike against it- it does not have all of the things they're going to put in it. Otherwise, fabulous. GTFO [4] Speaking of Great Early Access Games with Some Severe Caveats, GTFO! Basically, the original Payday devs made a heist game that replaces all the Heat references with Aliens references. The conceit is, the players are assuming the role of convicts who have been conscripted of retrieving technology from a space mine where the corporation Dug Too Deep. It is exactly as gritty and tense as that sounds. The MAJOR, MAJOR problem is that there is currently no matchmaking in the game whatsoever. You have to either have a Premade 4, or, go onto the GTFO Discord and find people looking to play. So, more than Hades, wait on this one. I'm lucky enough to have four friends equally interested in the game. If you don't, give it a year or so before you pay for it, or go for it if you absolutely have to play Steal The Stuff From The Freaks.

LAST CALL TODAY IS THE LAST DAY FOR SUBMISSIONS

homie i make noise rock

I shall remind ye a final time on New Year's Day, but, the cutoff date for submissions is New Year's Day. also because I've already heard the purple mountains record a few times and I'm not listening to that until a few days after New Year's, when partying no longer feels appropriate. 1. "When I Get Home" by Solange 2. "Cuz I Love You" by Lizzo 3. "Bible Songs 1" by The Austerity Program 4. "Jade Bird" by Jade Bird I do not know anything about The Austerity Program. My requisite googles told me they’re a two piece noise rock band formed in the 90s, and two of my favorite bands are exactly that set up (Lightning Bolt & The Body). So, odds are decent I enjoy this. That’s as much as I cared to look up. Appropriately short intro for short album. Here we go!

Don't have a review up yet but I just thought I'd come in here and remind y'all that the cutoff date for submissions is New Year's Day.

https://www.spike-chunsoft.com/news/fire-pro-wrestling-world-2020-roadmap/ Fire Pro Wrestling World's 2020 Development Roadmap. tl;dr: Takayama Charity DLC #2 in January (TAKAYAMANIA rings, logos, edit parts) Additional Wrestler DLC also in January (no details offered) Suda 51 Scenario in February Part Creator and Move Creator in Spring So this looks like the end of active development for Fire Pro World, but jesus, what a thing to end with.

@SturmCRF Hey homie, you’re on the clock. I wont start on yours until thursday at the soonest, but after that it could go up at pretty much any second. If you want me to hold off until you’re absolutely sure, now would be the time to let me know and I’ll go on to the next record in line. @Curt McGirt Stop trying to hit me and hit me. ? If that's your album of the year, that's fine, I'll listen to it. It doesn't gotta be so hard. Okay! 1. "When I Get Home" by Solange 2. "Cuz I Love You" by Lizzo 3. "Jade Bird" by Jade Bird I have no idea who Jade Bird is. I assumed folk, and like a jade-ish album cover. I got the cover wrong, obviously, but the first sentence of the wikipedia article says “Jade Elizabeth Bird is an English singer, songwriter, musician, and former Stage School pupil.” Given the crushing existential dread that accompanies every experience I’ve ever had looking up anything about the English school system, I’m not going to go learn what “Stage School” means. That said, singer/songwriter sure leads me to think that we’re going folky. Let’s see how long I can get into this record before I start ranting about how much I hate British music production techniques. Uh, post-script, this is just a reminder that I make no promises that what I write about a given record is gonna be positive.

LETS GET BACK TO IT 1. Solange – When I Get Home 2. Lizzo – Cuz I Love You I mean, okay, “yes I know who solange is” isn’t interesting because of the nature of her family. If you follow music in America you’ve probably at least heard the name and who her sister is. As for past experiences, I liked A Seat At The Table though it has a lot of slow stuff on it, and we’ve talked about the hole in my head for ballad adjacent music in these threads for long enough to be worth meditating on it again. I heard this album once earlier this year and I’d marked a few songs on it for mix material, but this’ll be my first time just sitting with it with no distractions on my good speakers. I usually do one paragraph per track, but since there’s a lot of interludes and things around 30 seconds, those wont get mentions. It’s not because they’re not important to the tone of the record. It’s strictly about time management and where I think I’ll be spending most of my energy writing. Here we go!

as someone that does enjoy high level tekken, and likes learning about all that hit box/frame data stuff: Leroy is from hell. It'd be one thing if he had a really counter heavy play style, because then the parry stance would make more sense. The problem is that his moveset is largely extremely safe and his damage is FUCKING INSANE, so he can be played as either the best defensive character in the game or the best offensive character in the game, with basically no execution requirement to make those playstyles work. Usually when a character has that many tools they have some kind of significant deficit. For example, Wang was soul crushing defensively, but, his range wasn't exactly amazing, so he had to either get in real close or let people come to him before he could do anything. Leroy doesn't have that problem at all. on one hand, it's nice to know that The Character From Hell is an original character for Tekken, and it's not Akuma anymore. On the other hand, god damn I do not want to face Leroy ever.

Hm. I hadn't considered if I should do something special in case of two people naming the same album. I'll think on that and have an answer if I do this next year.

I'll get back to this next week, i'll be less busy then

WHAT THE GOLF [2] So on the last page, I mentioned that a 2 can mean I think the game is good but I had a bad time with it. Here's an example: This game is basically Golf Warioware (admittedly with a more grating aesthetic) but on PC, it has this nasty problem. See, in "Exclusive Fullscreen" it doesn't stop the mouse from leaving the screen. It's a game that requires a mouse cursor. I, however, have a dual monitor setup, so I can easily click something on the other screen while I'm playing. This would not be the end of the world usually, but what it does when the mouse clicks off the game is it minimizes the game and doesn't pause it. This is uninstallingly frustrating considering how quickly the puzzles go from "haha a mechanic" to "Mouse Action Puzzle Game With A Loud Whining Crowd Whenever You Fail." So, if you have two monitors, do not buy this game on PC. Otherwise it seems neat. KILLER INSTINCT [4, provisionally] My main Steam Sale pickup (other than KOF 13), and at the moment I'm in love with it. After spending a solid year grinding in Tekken, playing a game that is less demanding on execution is a god-send, especially since the game finds other ways to be fun like making you actively think during combos. I'm still in the phase where I'm getting my ass kicked with great regularity, but I have a character (Kim Wu) and I'm fascinated to learn more about how this game works. Extremely satisfied with my time so far. KING OF FIGHTERS XIII [4] look i'm an old KOF fan even though I am TRASH at the game so like idk man it's got the good sprites and my team's in here (Iori/Maxima/Andy). I'm good.

So my 4 point scale means an extremely specific thing 1 = I hate this game 2 = I regret playing this game 3 = I don't regret playing this game 4 = I love this game So, while Pokemon Sword is pretty objectively bad, the circumstances in which I've got it and the person I'm sharing the time with make up for that deficit. Put another way, one can play a bad game and have a good time. That's a 3 on my scale. one can play a good game and have a bad time. That'd be a 2 for me.

DEATH STRANDING [4] hiking to episodes of the world's worst fiction podcast that has the most expensive fan animation possible. i'll probably 100% it. POKEMON SWORD [3] Let's be perfectly clear: I think this game is bad. The circumstances I have received it under (sent to me by someone who is going through A Lot to have something to talk to them about) mean that I'm glad to have it and glad to play it, but holy shit man. I don't know what you'd call the uncanny valley in terms of architecture and world design, but it's in here. The inside of every building feels wrong. Impossible. It's deeply unsettling. Also, the game is significantly easier than the last pokemon game I played (Moon) but with no charm, just perverted towers and an online mode that lets you see other people at the cost of around 40FPS. A Mess. KILLER QUEEN BLACK [4] An amazing game piled to the top with smart ideas. It launched on PC and Switch, and it immediately had both Crossplay and the ability to play all four players of a team on one system. The game has a spectate mode, and the spectate mode latches onto one game at a time so when you want to take a break but still watch the game to learn about it, you and your friends are watching the same game to learn from it. It's got two buttons (Jump and Action), three win conditions, ways to counter all of them, and a bunch of maps played in random orders. It's just fantastic.