And then I played What Remains of Edith Finch and I sincerely loved it and felt like my enthusiasm for the medium got renewed a bit this morning. 
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If you liked that, you might enjoy Jenny LeClue. Someone else described it as āLemony Snicket wrote Nancy Drew.ā
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Iāve been in an inactive funk lately so the two games Iāve played recently are Apex Legends and New York Times Crossword Puzzles.
This is the first year Iāve tried Apex Legends and itās actually great? The level design is incredible with so many unique and memorable areas. Iām slowly peeling away the loot aspect of the game and honing my technique there. Itās been fun to play with a different group of three people and feel the change in dynamics. I donāt even feel like I have to be good at shooting games to enjoy it.
NYT Crossword has been a crutch for me whenever I want to obliterate time. NYT is substantially better at selecting crosswords than any other publication. The meta-puzzles are really great sometimes! Two days ago, I paid for a subscription so now I have as many crosswords as I want. This is a bad thing.
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Nintendo recently updated Mario 3D All-Stars to allow inverted camera controls, and I am an inverted y-axis devout. I was getting along with Marios 64 and Galaxy before the update because you rarely have vertical control of the camera, but I found Sunshine to be unplayable.
Now that I can invert my y-axis, Iāve been playing Sunshine. This is my first time playing the game. It seems surprisingly obtuse for a Mario game. I find Mario is really fiddly to control; Iām often unsure how to engage with the environment or enemies; and despite obvious signposting, Iām often unsure what to do next or why.
I recently beat a boss in one level, and then Peach was whisked away to a volcano. But all the toads say Peach is still in the previous level, and nothing new has opened up. So I collect more shines in the levels I can access but still nothing new opens up. Anyhow, Iām like 20 shines into the game but losing interest and lacking much enjoyment. Probably gonna put this one down.
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Yeah, I guess this isnāt technically No More Heroes 3 anymore. 
According to a review, Travis Touches Down or whatever the fuck is pretty much just a GCCX-like, and I think Iāll just go and re-play that again at some point because I still think about it occasionally but I havenāt touched it since it came out.
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just remembered how great that trailer was for the actual no more heroes 3
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Thereās a very real possibility that I only enjoy that game because I already internalized its rules in my childhood.
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Collector was the only class I used most of the time. I used a striker for some bosses, though.
I might have spent more time with that game than I should have, but I have great memories of it and I donāt think it would be the same experience without the grinding (which somehow never felt too tedious).
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it might have changed since i last played it, but once you figure out how youāre āsupposedā to do things, the grind in let it die becomes significantly less onerous.
itās like they didnāt even care about ever making you hitting the paywall!
also this, i must have played over a hundred hours of it, but the gameās atmosphere and aesthetic was so good, i donāt regret any of it.
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Alright here is is, I have a minute to write so hereās Grandpaās Semiannual Assassinās Creed thoughts.
I think this new oneā¦is good. As much as I loved the character of Kassandra, a lot of Odyssey felt kindaā¦off? Maybe a step back, in ways? I dunno, for all the excesses of the gigantic map and 200 hours of gameplay and whatnot, there was a certain something to it that felt missing from Odyssey coming from Origins, and is back with Valhalla.
Which is to say - good level design?
More specifically, not just the design of the areas you go into (which feel like they have more routes and approaches you can take and use to do things stealthily), but your interaction with them. Origins had a lot of instances of using your torch to burn through walls, floors or ceilings - Odyssey kind of simplified this to a few very obvious breakable walls, and never did much with them.
Valhalla builds on what Origins started in a huge way. Using explosives, busting cranes to smash through floors, very carefully angling your posting to look through a window to shoot a lock open. Hell, just being able to quietly (well, as one can do such a thing quietly) smash through a stained glass window to gain entry to a fortified churchā¦itās good stuff! I missed this kind of thing!
Part of that comes with nerfing your flying friend. I, uh, forget the ravenās name, but itās no Senu or Ikaros - itās good for scouting the lay of the land, but it canāt go full on drone mode like in the last two games, marking every single enemy and treasure chest for easy access. Thereās still a sort of detective vision pulse that will tag enemies within range, and give vague indications of where treasure or locks are, but it means you gotta get a lot closer and more at risk to find things than before.
Combat, as mentioned earlier, feels a lot more engaging. Theyāve added a bunch of new enemy types, so itās not just ābig brute guy, shield guy, spear guy.ā I mean, theyāre still there, but they come along with a lot more types, some with some real nasty and unexpected moves (I didnāt expect the guy who kicked dirt in my face to run up, grab me to face his club wielding buddy, and stab me in the side a few times as that guy took a swing, but!).
Equipment still feels like a lot, and I think the system they replaced the Origins and Odyssey Diablo-style loot system with may have its own issues down the line (namely, it takes so many resources to upgrade gear that there seems to be little incentive to vary from the gear youāve already been using and upgrading). That said, itās still nice not to have to sift through several hundred same-y pieces of armor and weapons (and if youāre neurotic like me, worrying about which ones were quest rewards from side quests I barely remember anyway but want to hold onto forā¦sentimental reasons? For shit Iāll never use?).
Oh, speaking of! While I found the writing and stories for the side quests in Origins and Odyssey pretty great, if not often more enjoyable than the main story, they were too goddamn long even for the best of 'em. Valhalla pares down most of the side quests to maybe about ten minutes, tops. So far theyāve been, uh, fairly scatalogical as humor goes, but! Even if theyāre bad, they go by quickly! Appreciated!
Havenāt said much of the story or Eivor because honestly both are kinda boring at the point Iām at. The gameās very quick to say āhey check it out here are some assassins, hmm that guy sure seems to be talking about order, probably a bad guy, alright go hog wild and do viking stuff.ā Eivor is just kinda raspy and grumbly. She talks to herself a lot when she eats mushrooms. I can confirm that Eivor fucks, more than Bayek (fucks only for story purposes) but less than Kassandra (who can and will fuck everything that moves, if the game allows).
So, uh, so far I like it. Weāll see in time. Hopefully not 200 hours. But, yāknow.
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You wrote this in a minute?
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Speaking of extremely long games that are open world and kind of like an RPG, I tried to pick up my 5 years in the process long save file of Witcher 3 where I was in the middle of Hearts of Stone. I was amid a wedding, really enjoying what was happening, but then it crashed without any error in the middle of a dance. I donāt know if I will ever finish these DLCsā¦
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Neon genesis fanfic elements? Got a specific example? I canāt think of anything that isnāt just from the same pop cultural stew that both Anno and Kojima developed their tastes from. They have a lot of really similar influences.
Played the Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm and Exercise demo. Iām probably gonna get the full game since Iām now getting into fitness games mainly so I can take a little break from an entire year of playing Ring Fit. FBās premise is cool and is kinda to rhythm games what Ring Fit is to JRPG. They both have weirdly exuberant coaches although the ones here feel like their voice-acting is probably synthesised? They have a real uncanny vibe.
The coolest but also most annoying feature so far is that you have to sway like a metronome while playing to keep proper form and to make it a more engaging rhythm game. The game explains well enough that you need to keep a rhythm but doesnāt really have a way of measuring whether youāre on front foot or back which actually matters a lot. It also doesnāt highlight this enough. Thereās a decent icon for keeping track of which foot you should be on on which beat but, without explaining it, the game will make you pause on your back foot for an extra beat after a combo. The idea is that you pause on your front foot while delivering a combo but to then move to back foot and delay the whole sequence by a beat is really unintuitive when youāre encouraged to constantly sway back and forth when doing any single hit.
I think I can probably get over it with some practice.
Will probably post more once Iāve progressed further. I actually worked up a proper sweat and I think itās exercising some stuff that Ring Fit doesnāt even really cover. I can at least have a break from Ringās enthusiasm.
For what itās worth I think it really captures the feeling of going through the back catalogue of a developer that never really made anything good despite how hard they worked. The games themselves are often kinda crap but the collecting, reading about and contextualising often makes up the focus of that experience. Iām not trying to make a āitās meant to be shitā or āwhat genius commentaryā argument but I really connected with what I think the idea they were going for is. Frustrated ambitions and flawed concepts being dug up and appreciated despite all the ugliness. A return to the reason why some of us play games in the first place.
Also, if you didnāt like the first level thereās some real shit in the later parts.
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Might have been a few more than one.
I forgot to mention how buckwild some of the side quests are.
Hearing the echoing voice of an old woman croak āEggs! Eggs! Bring me eggs!ā from within a sewer is one thing. What happens once you actually do, well. Jesus. This game goes some places when it wants to.
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i started this yesterday after also going through the first two games this month. iāve done 3 āgamesā so far, so half way ish i guess.
a bit torn on it atm, but there is something here. like this game seems to be designed in a way that represents what my ~depression gaming~ feels like, but that being an active decision on the designers side actually makes it far less depressing for me than compulsively playing through nmh2 and hating every moment was.
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The Elevators in death stranding look a lot like Aircraft carrier elevators to me.
The elevators from Eva turn up a lot of places prior to it including Thunderbirds:
I think theyāre based on actual elevators used in some military bases in the 50s and 60s? Iām less well versed on my actual military history, but Iām pretty sure the diagonal elevator in a military base is a real thing, or at least, was intended to be a real thing by futurists in the 50s and 60s.
Weird post apocalypse stuff is really common everywhere. For example, the couriers and their travels through the surface world have a lot of similarities to Stalkers from, well, Stalker. Roadside Picnicās influence onā¦everything canāt be overstated.
Likeā¦Anno and Kojima started their careers at extremely similar times, both hit it really big at very similar times, and both of them are obsessed with the same pop-cultural stuff. Theyāre going to have a lot of similar elements becauseā¦theyāre into the same stuff. I donāt think Kojima doesnāt like Evangelion, and I donāt think thereās no influence, but it really does seem like the case of two guys with a similar background making similar works to me.
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Played one of those āexploring a long abandoned spaceshipā videogames earlier today, despite taking place inā¦ sometime in the Twenty-third century the voiced characters still make random 90s references including a āWell excuse me, princess!ā where the other character knew what was being referenced. That may be the most legitimately terrifying version of the future Iāve ever seen.
There was also a bit where you flash back to an older spaceship (about 90 years older, believe the date was 2123 or so) where to show the age not only did the computers on said ship have displays that feel decades out of date compared to now, but said ship also had a plentiful supply of basic calculators (the kind a grade school kid would have in pre-smartphone days) all over the place.
I understand that it is very hard to try and predict what life and conversations would even be like a couple hundred years in the future in space, but games please at least try a little bit with it.
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