Full Archive
A complete archive of every post, unsorted.
Chris and Steve discuss The Mandalorian and how it has single-handedly saved Star Wars.
Every so often you need to step back and remember what made your hobby fun in the first place.
A heavy weight of guilt hung from my heart as the sun began its descent yesterday afternoon. Though I had taken the day off precisely so I might recover from the immense energy expenditure that is MAGFest weekend, I still felt as if I had owed something of productivity. I felt compelled to pluck at the thoughts swimming about my mind hazily, sculpting them into something more recognizable as an idea to present in essay form. To sit down and try to edit my next video together.
Instead, my eyelids drooped heavily over my eyes as sleep threatened to overtake me. I forgot for a moment that I had put my clothing into the laundry machine. Basic sentences required effort to string together. Aside from a brief sojourn into Pokémon Shield that morning, I could not even muster the energy required to power up a system and think about objectives, inventories, or tactics.
I finally succumbed to my body’s need to rest and laid down, watching way too many recorded episodes of AEW to catch up on. I probably should have gone to bed earlier, or taken a nap in the afternoon. I needed to recuperate from the late nights, long walks, extended conversations, energetic singing, and hollering. Instead, I went to bed trying to fight off this deep sense of wasted time.
I learned a lot of things at MAGFest this year, but what I really needed was a reminder.
Chris and Steve conclude the year by just talking about... stuff
Blogger and occasional Escapist contributor Shamus Young joins Chris and Steve to gripe about Control.
I have finally learned to love the grind as Steve and I discuss our return to Destiny 2 and its new Shadowkeep expansion.
Finding my own fun in Bungie's spaghetti mess of systems.
Going forward, Destiny 2’s post-launch game systems, features, and updates are being designed specifically to focus on and support players who want Destiny to be their hobby – the game they return to, and a game where friendships are made.
Luke Smith & Chris Barrett, Nov. 29th 2017 Bungie.net Community Update
Now we’re opening the door and saying, come on in, take a look around, if you like this place and want to make it your hobby, there’s a community here who’ll take you on new adventures.
David “Deej” Dague, Aug. 23rd 2019 interview with Eurogamer.net
If you’ve been reading this blog and following me for the past several years now, then you might recall my first critique of the original Destiny. My assertion at the time was that Bungie had built the experience as a culmination of all of their game modes and philosophies they’d developed into the Halo franchise. It guided the player from a basic and linear difficulty mode towards the more challenging content that tests the player’s quick-thinking and twitch-reflexes. The only thing I couldn’t wrap my head around was the grind.
As the years have progressed, I’ve felt an increasingly antagonistic relationship with the Destiny franchise due to the grind’s intentions clashing with what I want out of this hobby vaguely defined as “gaming”. My relation with this medium as an enthusiast drives me to play a variety of titles, to experience them repeatedly when possible, and to study the many genres that appeal to me.
Bungie wants you to play their game every week, several days of the week. They don’t care about other games. They want Destiny to be your hobby, not “gaming”.
Examining the news that the Switch port of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE will retain its Western changes even in Japan.
One of my favorite pieces written for GamersWithJobs was Idol Fantasy. It is a critique of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE and its adherence to the often damaging fantasy that the pop idol lives altruistically for the fans. Shy and conservative Tsubasa is frequently stripped down into more sexy outfits despite the innocent naivety of her personality being a selling point. More and more the different producers, photographers, and directors of the show insist that who she is isn’t good enough, fighting tooth and claw to transform her into an entirely different identity.
She is a contrast to Kiria, the experienced pop idol that is dedicated to the image of “cool” that her fans and the industry expect of her. As a result, she is embarrassed to express any of her love of “cute” things for fear of damaging this constructed and maintained image. Each singer is, in some way, representative of a cultural pressure cooker where these girls must deny themselves for the sake of a fandom. An audience that doesn’t want them, but a superimposed idealization of who they ought to be in their eyes.
The game does not challenge its audience. It instead feeds into the fantasy these carefully crafted careers are trying to feed. Nevertheless, this isn’t about the game’s thematic potential or shortcomings. It is about the game’s modifications for the West and the mixed feelings I have of said “censorship”. I supported some of the changes for the manner in which they actually strengthened the narrative. I simultaneously decried other changes for reducing the intended impact. These conflicted feelings are now rising to the surface once more as the Switch port of Tokyo Mirage Sessions will include all the Western adjustments and censorship, even in Japan.
How far does your support of freedom go?
Hearthstone tournament winner Blitzchung wore a mask and goggles during the entire competition. He has not said it, but the visual makes it clear that he is in support of Hong Kong’s liberation. These items have been banned in the city due to their use by protestors to fight back against the authorities.
Clearly aware of the statements Blitzchung wants to make, the announcers – “casters”, as they tend to be called – decide to conclude the interview by offering the victor his chance to make his statement. Blitzchung begins to pull his mask from his mouth. The casters giggle to themselves, perhaps out of nervousness, perhaps out of excitement for enabling the young competitor. One ducks his head immediately, reaching his hand over to encourage his companion to follow suit. Mask lowered, Blitzchung calls out his political message.
“Abortion is murder!”
The stream is immediately cut.
The culmination of PlatinumGames' past work.
Astral Chain feels like the culmination of every major PlatinumGames action title that came before. It is not somehow larger in scale or more epic – its final boss is certainly a reversal of scale of Bayonetta’s escalation – but it implements small lessons and bits from just about every major entry prior.
This does not turn the game into something derivative, however. Whereas a licensed “Work-for-Hire” title like Transformers: Devastation felt like it was a barely modified variant of Bayonetta, Astral Chain feels unlike any other game out there. Of course, such a statement typically comes with hyperbole, as if to suggest that it’s going to blow your mind with how unique and revolutionary the game is. This statement is obviously untrue if it somehow carries influence from several other games from the studio.
The best way I can describe it is that Astral Chain certainly feels like an action game as you’d expect it to, but if you were to try and make direct correlations to any other big name in the genre – be they from PlatinumGames, Capcom, or one of the myriad smaller studios dabbling in the genre – you’d fail to find that one-to-one similarity. It is in this fashion that it feels unlike any other game, despite drawing from so many others.
What makes a Godzilla movie a good Godzilla movie? I look at three of the greatest pillars of the franchise to figure out what made the series first stand out and how they should be measured in comparison.
While watching the final rendered version of this video, I realized that I really ought to have done more research into the development of Shin Godzilla. I had tried to read up on the subjects of Wa, Honne, and Tatemae, and even spoke with a Japanese immigrant and her daughter at my Church to see if I was on the right track. I put some time into confirming the inspirations for all three films. Yet I establish a lot of theories about Hideaki Anno’s intentions without having read any interviews to even confirm if they might be true.
Live and learn.
I’m still proud of this video. Even if someone comes in and says “you’re wrong about Anno’s intentions, here’s the source”, I at least provoked some thought and encouraged discussion. That is what I’ve determined my channel is for at this point. I need to update the cover art and some of the about information to make this clear, but I no longer view the channel as a place for me to “teach” or “educate” others. That is a position of hubris and one in which I will constantly feel self-conscious about every decision. If I actively aim to come forward to simply communicate – to discuss my thoughts and feelings regarding the things that I love – as opposed to assuming a position of knowledgeable authority, then I will have far more fun with this channel than I had in the past.
Chris and Steve gather together to discuss the union of cop and creature, bound by a chain with which they can kick some mighty butt as a team.
Is a game made worse once you have seen through the formula of its gameplay loop?
I had devoted twenty-five hours of my life to Fire Emblem: Three Houses in fewer than five days, placing the temporal sacrifice upon the altar of simulated professorship and abstracted warfare. For those days I had felt a deep desire to dive back into the game, interacting with the different students across the artificial monastery and commanding young adults to battle. When I wasn’t playing Three Houses, I was thinking about it. It was like a hunger that no meal could adequately satisfy.
Then, a little over a week later, my stomach quieted. I wasn’t done with the game, but I certainly wasn’t enamored like I had been just days ago. “Ah, I’ll be doing this again,” I said to myself, beginning a new month where I once more chose to explore the monastery. Complete quests, interact with students and fellow faculty, then progress through each week’s instructions before launching into optional battles that further developed the game’s many characters. At month’s end I’d have a mandatory mission that would push the story forward. Combat was no longer challenging.
I felt as if, from a mechanical perspective, I’d seen all there was to see. The loop had become clear. I became aware of my status as the wagon wheel following the rut laid before me, plunging forward into a pre-established path rather than forging a new one.
Potentially the first of a series in which I embrace old age and yammer on about childhood memories that are useful to no one.
For a long time I’ve felt the pressure to write nothing but thought-provoking essays on this little nook of the Internet I’ve laid claim to. Predictably, this desire to be insightful often charged head first into the immense chasm where my self-esteem ought to be, crying in confusion and fear as it plummeted into the void of darkness. The result has often taken the form of stacks of incomplete and abandoned drafts and a mouth over-stuffed with lo mein, Cheez-Its, macaroni and cheese, pizza, or whatever other comfort food can be desperately poured into that confidence-shaped canyon in my soul.
Some people have Ben & Jerry’s. I have the Wendy’s Baconator.
A conversation with an acquaintance on Discord recently pried open my skull, poring over the nostalgic memories filed away of select game acquisitions of my childhood. It was odd at first, to have so many memories of a game’s purchase filed away alongside the experience of playing it. What was the last game I could recall driving out to buy? Only a handful of titles in College, such as Gears of War and the night my gaming club wound through the halls of the mall in single file to obtain our brand new Nintendo Wii. Not only has the purchase of a new game become a far more common purchase, it has lost all the scenery and circumstance that would embed its apprehending as a memorized event. Sit on couch or bed, click buttons, confirm purchase, begin download. Click “add to cart” on website, punch in confirmation password, wait for package to arrive on doorstep.
I could go on a curmudgeonly rant about how there’s no magic to purchasing a game anymore – or how the new game smell just doesn’t seem so potent without a freshly printed instruction manual packed tightly into the jewel case or shrink-wrapped cardboard box – but I’d rather just reminisce about some of these acquisitions as an old grandfather may tell his grandkids about how he met their grandmother, some crazy antics he’d gotten into with his now deceased sibling, or a childhood memory of his mother’s cooking and lectures.
Will it be insightful? Will your mind be thoroughly provoked into thinking? Doubtful, but passing on memory in such a fashion is, I believe, a necessary part of the human experience. It allows us to touch into a former part of ourselves, to confirm that our experiences were real, to better understand that which has constructed our modern selves through the memories that linger in our minds, and to pass this piece of ourselves onto our families or friends to create a more vivid picture of this world. As such, here are two separate games whose purchase meant as much to me as the experiences they provided during play.
Between Control, Astral Chain, Crystar, Ys VIII, and many more, there's just no shortage of games to be playing... and there's still more to come.
Marching Band, Spidey's split from the MCU, brief diversions in Wolfenstein... just a lot of casual conversation on this week's Eh! Steve!
