i was talking with a friend recently about a couple of different megaten games, and DDS:MT came up at some point. i think it was just an offhanded mention, but it reminded me, "oh yeah, i played that game before!" and as such, it's been on my mind lately. now, listen. i can tolerate old, clunky RPGs to a degree. i've beaten SMT1, i got most of the way through Phantasy Star on Master System, hell, my favorite game of all time is Mother for the Famicom. but if there's one RPG series thats early entries are known for being especially old and clunky, it's gotta be Megami Tensei. i said i beat SMT1 a few sentences ago, but that came at the cost of so much mental stress. and yet, i still found myself inexplicably drawn to the other early entries since despite their shortcomings in terms of gameplay, i find the atmosphere, the stories, the locales, the themes to all be interesting enough to warrant pushing through that slow gameplay.

now, i'm not gonna act like i didn't know what i was getting myself into when i started DDS:MT. i've watched the MarshSMT videos, i know how painful it gets later, but i've built up a tolerance to games like this, so i figured it couldn't be that bad. and like... it kind of wasn't? to be fair, i never got to the truly heinous parts of the game, but i had a surprisingly enjoyable time through what i did play.

before i explain what it was i saw in DDS:MT and why my relationship with it is so complicated, i feel that i need to give some context as to what exactly it is. Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei is a 1987 RPG based on the novels of the same name, written by Aya Nishitani. that's right, all of megaten exists because of a licensed Famicom game based on some random ass books. you play as Akemi Nakajima, a high school student who is... one hell of a character study, going by his actions in the novels, and you're accompanied by his girlfriend(?) Yumiko Shirasagi. your final goal is to defeat Loki, who Nakajima summoned in a fit of rage when trying to get back at his school bullies, and is now trying to destroy the Earth, i think. just like the first two SMT games, DDS:MT is a first person dungeon crawler RPG, though instead of exploring an apocalyptic Japan, you're instead exploring an underground temple(?), which then branches off into many deeper areas.

what was surprising to me going into DDS:MT was just how much of its DNA persisted throughout the rest of the megaten series. like i said, it started the first person dungeon crawler thing, but it goes deeper than that. core mechanics for the series such as negotiation, recruiting demons and even demon fusion is here and accounted for. the next thing that surprised me is, wow! this may be THE dustiest, crustiest RPG i've ever played in my life! there's what can loosely be considered an inventory system, though it's really more just an option in your menu that you can use depending on if you have a Jewel or not, and if you do, you can use it to fully heal yourself. that's it. Jewels are the only item in the game. and while demon recruitment is here, it's not as universal as the later games. you can really only recruit a handful of demons throughout the whole game, it's very picky on who you can or can't. there's also exactly one save point in the game, and it's located in the first area. that's it. you can't save anywhere else. and hey, speaking of saving, that brings me to maybe the most heinous thing i've ever seen in any RPG: there are no save files! that's right, instead of a bettery backup, you have to deal with the dreaded PASSWORD SYSTEM. jesus man, i didn't know Atlus was willing to throw out the Geneva conventions here.

now, after all of this, you might be wondering what the hell i even liked about this game. well, to explain that, i'll have to talk about RetroAchievements. it's a feature implemented into a lot of modern emulators (as well as most RetroArch cores) that adds achievements to a lot of retro games, which are tracked on one central website. it adds a ton of replay value to games i've already played or would have never considered playing otherwise, it's what got me to check out 20Q on PSP, which is a game not a single person has thought about until around 15 words ago. (final verdict on 20Q for PSP: it's a really weird and quirky 20Q simulator and i recommend it for the faces the AI makes alone) one of the key things about RetroAchievements is Hardcore mode, where certain emulator functions like save states or rewind are disabled, meaning you have to experience the game as originally intended. (fast forward is legal though (thank fuck)) DDS:MT happens to have a set on RA. i'm sure you can see where i'm headed with this. i challenged myself to beat DDS:MT on hardcore mode, which meant no save scumming, no mistakes, no leighway, just me, the game, and fast forward to keep me sane. as a bonus challenge, i also wanted to beat the game without using a walkthrough or any outside maps, just to go that extra mile of pain.

and honestly? i think that's what made the game for me. in a day and age where every single piece of information about every single game ever is available at your fingertips, it's hard to experience these retro games the way that people back in the 80s did. usually that is for the better, but you can't deny that it makes for a totally unique experience. case in point: taking notes! i decided to go the extra mile for DDS:MT and write any and all information i wanted to keep out on paper with pencil. i drew my own maps, jotted down each password, wrote notes on where i'd already been and what things to say to certain monsters, what fusions gave what demons, i did it all. it made for a slow experience, yes, but a somewhat meditative one, carefully trodding through dungeons, adding each wall, door and item to my map as i went along. when i found a secret without looking up a guide, it felt magical seeing something completely new in these areas i'd walked through so many times. it really did channel that feeling of what it must have been like to play this game when it released, and that really stuck with me.

(click on an image to view it in full quality!)

so that begs the question. is DDS:MT a good game, in that case? no. no! not at all! it's a pretty miserable slog at times, and just beating Minotaur took me like, 8 hours of playtime! now, to be fair, i do think that death isn't nearly as punishing as other RPGs of the time. you are healed back to full HP, and you're sent back to the top of Daedalus Tower, which is a town where you can recooperate your losses, save, fuse demons, all the essentials. it almost reminds me of how Hylics handles death, it's more like a fast travel back to the safe area than a punishment, and i like that a lot. but good lord, some of the shit they put you through here is ruthless. remember how i said the only item in the game is Jewels, which heal you to full? well guess what, they only heal HP. they don't recover your MP, and they especially don't get rid of statuses, so if you get poisoned or stoned, you're pretty much fucked until you get back to town. the area where Medusa is the boss was absolutely the worst with this, there's all these Medusa clones that appear at set points in the area, and they respawn whenever you die, so if you want to be healthy going into the real Medusa fight, you gotta hope and pray the decoys don't wear you down too much. speaking of Medusa, after i beat her is when i stopped playing the game. i'd gotten my fill, and the game had started to feel a lot more draining by that point. so no, i didn't finish DDS:MT, sorry to say. that being said, i'm glad that i played what i did, it was a really unique experience that i've never gotten with any other game before. having to be my own cartographer, having to slowly punch in a password every time i started a new play session, it was slow of course, but it was also weirdly fun, if only for the novelty of it all. in the end, i think i recommend playing DDS:MT?? if you're a fan of the series and want to see just how far we've come, give it a quick look. if you're a little more dedicated, maybe give the RetroAchievements set a shot, or even try getting out the graph paper to make those maps. it's definitely worth giving a chance, if only for a little bit.

continuing the trend of the last two reviews, here's another entry in the wipeout review series. you know the drill, this is a continuation of my wipeout reviews from cohost, if you haven't read those, here's links to my backloggd for you to catch up with. once you're done with the required reading, come back so you can continue.

1. wipE'out"
2. Wipeout XL
3. wipE'out" 64
4. wipEout 3
5. wipEout Fusion

well hey, we're nearing the end of this series. we've only got two more (real) wipeout games to go, and here's the second to last, Wipeout HD. weird name, but i guess this was the first ever wipeout on an HD system. and oh man, does it look the part. for a PS3 game, i think you could easily pass WOHD as a modern game at this point, it looks excellent even to this day, and especially considering the system it was stuck to. the PS3 was infamously VERY difficult to develop for, so i applaud Studio Liverpool for making this work as well as it does! not to mention, when in single player the game runs at a consistent 60 FPS, which is a rarity among PS3 games, especially ones that look this good. i know i'm focusing on the graphics a lot right now, but that's for a good reason, they deserve the spotlight. every time i boot up WOHD, i always forget just how good it looks, and it consistently blows me away.

but you know what they say, graphics ain't everything. how's the videogame part of this videogame? i'd say it's pretty good, overall. this is the first wipeout to play on a console with analog triggers, funnily enough, so we now have analog airbrakes as a new feature. have i ever utilized them? well... no. wipeout's a little too fast for me to warrant using something as technical as analog airbrakes, so i just don't even bother. still, i have some friends who say it's impossible to go back to the older games because they don't have it, so i guess it makes enough of a difference for some people to notice. the grid setup from Pulse returns as well, and i think it works excellent here as it did there. now that i think about it, a lot of the music from Pulse returns as well. not that that's a bad thing of course, i've gone on record saying Pulse has my favorite OST in the series, so i take no issue with this. once you hop into the racing mode, however, you notice that reusing old stuff is a bit of a theme with HD. every track in the game is a rehash of tracks from both PSP entries, and that's... a little lame. not to say that it's lazy, they remade all these tracks from the ground up and they look excellent! it's just that... coming directly off of playing both Pure and Pulse, i was kinda ready for something new. that said, the revamped visuals do almost make them feel like new tracks. it's like going from playing Cheese Land in Mario Kart Super Circuit to playing it in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. they're definitely the same tracks layout wise, but the new coat of visual paint makes it feel very fresh all the same. the only thing i wish they did was branch out a little further than just the PSP games, i think getting remasters of even older tracks would have been awesome, like Mega Mall from WO3 or Qoron IV from WO64.

and hey, good news! unlike the last two entries, i was able to get the DLC working this time! i'm improving! :D Wipeout HD Fury is an expansion pack for HD that adds 8 new (returning) tracks, 13 new ship models, 3 new game modes, 6 new music tracks, and a new and fresh HUD that goes for a 2012 Droid phone commercial look, as opposed to HD's normal blue-and-white color combo. on top of all that, Fury also adds a big ol' set of new grid challenges, which i'm always happy to see. funnily enough, the only physical release of WOHD was a version of the game that came prepackaged with Fury on the disc, but it was only released in Europe unfortunately. in terms of new stuff, those new game modes are actually fairly unique. Eliminator returns from WO3 and i still don't like it all that much, but there's two modes completely exclusive to HD Fury, those being Zone Battle and Detonator. Zone Battle is pretty much just competitive Zone, try to outspeed your opponents and see who survives the longest. Detonator is also Zone adjacent, but your speed increases each lap, not each zone. instead of survival, you're going for high score, and this requires you to hit targets on the track to gain points. it's pretty fun from what i played, and is probably my favorite of the three modes.

um, hm... i'm having a hard time thinking of stuff to discuss here, since... i kinda already went over a lot of things in HD, since they're mostly taken from Pure and Pulse. the soundtrack is excellent, the tracks are pretty great, i like the grid, uhhh... the game's pretty- agh, wait i already said that. Wipeout HD is exactly what it says on the tin, it's Wipeout... in HD. it's an excellent rendition of everything that it's trying to remake, but there's not much in terms of original content here. that said, i think HD is the definitive way to experience all of the content from Pulse, because now it's in a game that actually controls, and it looks pretty on top of that. if you were thinking about checking out the PSP games and happen to have a PS3, i'd say give HD a shot, it's a great sampler of what those two had to offer.

yo! one more time in case you didn't see the Pure review, this is a continuation of my wipeout review series i started on my Cohost over the summer. if you didn't get the chance to read those before Cohost shut down, (rest in peace, sweet prince) i've got you covered. listed below are links to reuploads of each review on my backloggd, and if you want a better idea of what's going on, i recommend you go ahead and catch up. don't worry, i'll still be here when you get back. go do some required reading.

1. wipE'out"
2. Wipeout XL
3. wipE'out" 64
4. wipEout 3
5. wipEout Fusion

folks, i've got great news. we've finally arrived at my favorite entry in the whole series, and my introduction to the Wipeout games as a whole. this was the second and last PSP entry, and it's astonishingly good for what it is. if Pure was a stepping stone to something great, Pulse is the other side of the lake you arrive at. it takes everything Pure did and expands on it tenfold.

alright, technically Pulse isn't a PSP exclusive. it came out on the PS2 as well, but only in Europe for some reason. actually, its launch order is pretty weird. it came out first in Australia, of all places, then in Europe a day later, and then finally in North America about two months later. no Japanese release this time, strangely enough. i've never played the PS2 version, but due to the PSP's heavy focus on things like online play and DLC, i'd imagine the console port is not the way to go this time. apparently it does include all the DLC, but because it was exclusive to Europe, it's locked to 50hz. not to mention, blowing up PSP games to run on the TV doesn't usually look all that great. they're meant to run on the smaller screen, and putting them on the big screen just makes their flaws stand out more. that's not to say Pulse is a bad looking game, far from it. it's one of the best looking games on the system, and runs at a very respectable framerate for the PSP. it chunks out a little here and there, but for the most part it looks great. back to the PS2 version, it's also missing the custom soundtrack feature, and overall i've just heard it's a sloppy port. you know the drill, poor optimization, input delay, and apparently it's even got a save data glitch that can corrupt your file. all that is to say, just play the PSP version, it's way better.

in terms of gameplay, Pulse takes everything Pure tried to do and does it way, WAY better. instead of the single race medal setup WO3 and Pure had, we now have the Grid. the Grid contains a set of trials you must complete to earn medals, and these can be anything from Single Races, Time Trials, Speed Laps, Eliminator matches, and even Zone endurance challenges. just like before, you can get Gold, Silver and Bronze, and it's super satisfying to work your way through every mission, and seeing the grid slowly fill in with gold medals. there's also difficulty settings in case you're struggling, which is greatly appreciated. i think this is the best single player the series has done so far, and isn't rivaled until we reach the final stop on our world tour. (2048) and while there are only 12 tracks in the base game, they really get a lot of mileage out of these. first of all, the track design here is excellent. Pure's tracks felt rather boring, due to the pretty flat layouts and sluggish controls. Pulse, on the other hand, introduces one new thing that really blows the track design possibilities wide open: Mag-Strips. these are certain sections of the track that make the driver "stick" to the track, allowing for unique setups such as racing on walls, going through loop-de-loops, 90 degree hills, and much more. if Pure was Mario Kart 7, Pulse is more like Mario Kart 8. they seem very similar on the surface, but after playing each for a bit, it's plain to see that one is much more fleshed out than the other. not to mention, all of my issues regarding the physics with Pure have been smoothed out here, ships feel way more responsive and easy to control, and i'm no longer slamming my face into walls every couple of turns.

this brings us to the wifi functionality of the game, which i would love to say has been thoroughly expanded upon, except... y'know, i can't really access that stuff anymore. that being said, i CAN research what it was originally like, and give you the basic gist of it. originally, you'd be able to access the wipeout-game.com website from the psp, and download some extras. you could get new tracks, some globally tracked stats, and the coolest thing to me: create and download custom ship skins, which you could then utilize in game. really creative stuff here, i wish it still worked. aside from the website itself, there was of course the DLC packs and online play. for the DLC packs, we have the Mirage, Icaras, Harimau and Auricom packs, each containing two tracks and a ship. just like Pure, though, i couldn't get these to work, and this time it's not due to my incompetence. for whatever reason, the DLC for Pulse only ever released in Europe, and i have the North American version of the game. so even if i could figure out PSP DLC, it wouldn't matter, because my copy of the game doesn't support it anyways. if you ask me though, the base game's content is pretty beefy as is, so i really don't mind this. one more thing about wireless is that Pulse actually supports game sharing! yes, the very rarely used Download Play feature the PSP had actually gets to shine here, you can send other PSP users who don't have the game a small demo that can be used to play single-copy multiplayer. i recall one time in 9th grade i got to play this with my friend Bailey at lunch, and i remember it working surprisingly well. you know, i've actually just now realized that custom content is a huge part of Pulse. you can import your own soundtracks, unlock different ship skins by racking up loyalty points (or just make your own), create a custom campaign in the form of the grid editor, it's a weirdly prevalent aspect that permeates the whole game, and i kind of love that.
and finally, this brings us to everyone's favorite segment: Mot talks about the soundtrack! and listen, i think this might be the best lineup yet. DJ Fresh's X-Project is a perfect high energy main theme for Wipeout, and gets you pumped up to get into the game. Aphex Twin returns with Fenux Funk 5, which is somehow both invigorating and melancholy at the same time, it's pure focus distilled into a 3 minute song and it's earned its spot as one of my favorite electronic tracks ever. Move Ya! and Steve Lavers team up to create Chemical, a track with an uncertain funk to it that's full of springy synths and beeps, and i simply can't get enough of it. DJ Mason's Exceeder had me convinced it was Daft Punk for a second with its disco flavored undertones and digitized vocal flairs, and it's just excellent in that regard. an excellent lineup that works perfectly for Wipeout's usual flavor of electronic, and it's my favorite tracklist in the series so far.

Pulse is a great package and a perfect starting point for anyone wanting to get into the modern Wipeouts. there's tons to do, an amazing soundtrack, tons of customization options, and some of the best feeling gameplay thus far. it's an excellent starting point, and i can't recommend it enough. my only issue is that it didn't get as much support as Pure did, and if you're going in with the DLC, Pure has it beat in that regard. but the base tracks of Pulse are so much fun that i honestly don't even mind.

hey there! word of advice, this review is part of a series of reviews where i took a look at every game in the wipE'out" series of racing games. they used to all be hosted on my cohost, but ever since... y'know, cohost got shut down, they haven't had a real home. instead, i'll point you in the direction of my backloggd to get caught up. here's a list of the links to each review:

1. wipE'out"
2. Wipeout XL
3. wipE'out" 64
4. wipEout 3
5. wipEout Fusion

aha, here's my home turf. when i first got into wipeout, it was via the PSP, and as such i have a bit of a soft spot for the portable entries in the series. a bit of foreshadowing, but one of the two PSP games is my favorite game in the series.

this is not that one. wipeout pure (or, stylized as wipE'out purE) was the first of the portable wipeouts, and was actually a launch title for the PSP in north america. there's a lot of new features that Pure introduced to the series, which i can respect at least. it's the first of the "modern" wipeouts to me, which i thought was going to be fusion. what separates classic and modern wipeout to me is that the classic games (fusion and below) feel a lot looser and floatier, while the modern games (pure and above) are a lot heavier and more realistic. you could do some seriously messed up stuff in the old wipeouts, jump over whole corners, do sick flips, but nothing like that in the newer games. it's all about pure (heh) movement and optimization. i think each has their place in the series, but Pure's physics definitely didn't sell me on the new setup unfortunately. i dunno, i get wanting to feel realistic, but Pure feels a little TOO sluggish. turning is a nightmare on the higher speed classes, even when running Feisar (the best turning ships in the series) like i usually do. the later modern games definitely improved on this, but Pure's execution just didn't do it for me. on top of the new physics, there's a few new gameplay differences. no more pit lane for recovering shield energy, instead you can now absorb weapon pickups to recover instead, and that's your only option. there's also a few new movement options, such as double-tapping an airbrake to do a sideshift, or tapping left-right-left (or right-left-right) in midair to perform a barrel roll, giving the player a significant speed boost in return for some shield energy.

well, besides the new physics, another new addition is DLC. sure, the PS2 could connect to the internet using the broadband adapter, but that's like saying you can connect a cereal box to the internet. you can try all you want, but in the end nothing is really gonna support it. the PSP and DS were where the online revolution really began in gaming, at least in my opinion, because those were the first consoles to do it outside of the dialup era. now, players could simply connect their systems to wifi, which simplified things a ton. not to mention, this was also the start of internal storage. (again, i know, technically the PS2 and OG Xbox did this, but again, cereal box analogy.) the PSP really was revolutionary in the portable sphere in a lot of ways, and while i will say that the DS definitely had it beat in terms of exclusive, hard hitting games, i still appreciate the PSP a ton for what it was able to do at the time. tangent aside, the DLC was a huge part of this game's identity, and is the most commonly praised aspect of it from what ive seen. 12 new tracks, 8 new ships, and tons of unique skins were added over the course of 4 different DLC packs, and there were a lot of other extra DLC packs added for other reigons. unfortunately, in this day and age, a lot of internet stuff doesn't work on the PSP anymore, and there are no fanservers as far as i know. there's definitely ways to get the DLC content through modding, but i haven't dipped my toes into that, since for some reason i always struggle to get DLC working with CFW on PSP specifically. i remember back when i first got my PSP, i tried downloading the DLC for LittleBigPlanet, but i could never get it to work. with all that said, DLC wasn't all the wifi was good for, because the future was here, and the future was online play! that's right, Pure was the first wipeout to have online play, with up to 8 people over wifi! except, as i already said, the future-future is here now, and the servers are no longer functional, so i didn't get to experience this aspect unfortunately. i mean, multiplayer has never really been wipeout's forte, so i don't feel like i'm missing out all that much, but it's still sad to see it gone. im sure this was tons of fun back in the day though, and i'd love to see it up and running again sometime.

it's time to talk gamemodes. what's in play here? well, there's the classics of course, Single Race, which acts like it did in WO3. do a race and depending on your final position, you'll potentially get a medal for your efforts. Gold for first, Silver for second, and bronze for third. getting gold medals nets you new ships, tracks, and other unlocks which are used to progress in the game. but while i really enjoyed WO3's campaign, Pure just didn't sit with me quite the same way. again, i think its due to the gameplay, it just doesn't hit the way WO3 did, and i got pretty bored of it after playing for a while. speed classes are back after being absent from Fusion at least, and like... maybe i just suck ass, but the higher speed classes feel impossible to control. i couldn't get anything done above Vector here, sorry folks. Tournament is pretty much the AG League mode from Fusion, and it sucks. you play through a set of four tracks in a row, and that's it. Time Trial is my bread and butter, and it's alright here, since you can't really mess up Time Trials in a racing game. Zone returns from Fusion, and it finally gets to spread its wings in a good game. i think this is a very good iteration of Zone, it's fast-paced, focused, and is a fun endurance-based challenge. and finally there's Freeplay, which is pretty much just "race for as long as you like by yourself". it's good for practicing new tracks or going for fast lap times, and i think it's a good addition. and... that's it. that's all the modes in the game. on top of only having 16 tracks included in the base game (8 all new tracks, 4 returning and 4 zone) there's really not all that much content to go through with pure. again, i know there's DLC, but i'm not bothering with that right now. this lead to me feeling like Pure was kind of... underwhelming in terms of content.

this brings us to our final stop with pure, as always with these reviews, the soundtrack. returning for the first time since... geez, Wipeout 1, is Cold Storage, along with new faces such as Drumattic Twins and Aphex Twin, the latter of which would become a series staple from there on out. CS and AT only get one track each, (Naks Acid and Onyx respectively) which is unfortunate, but they're both great tracks nonetheless. along with the base game tracks, however, there's also a large portion of DLC additions to the OST, a lot of which focused on specific reigons of Europe. this is a pretty cool idea, but i didn't have a spare 4 hours to listen to the gargantuan amount of DLC music there is. the base OST has 21 tracks, technically 24 if you count the album only tracks. how many DLC songs are there? THIRTY-FIVE. yeah, well over double the base lineup. maybe i'll listen to all of them eventually, but there simply isn't enough time in the day. hey, if there's anything we can always count on with Wipeout, it's that the soundtracks are always homeruns.

while i can appreciate a lot of the new additions Pure brings to the table, it simply didn't hit any of the right nerves in the way i like Wipeout to do. while being a very impressive game graphically (especially as a launch PSP game! the PSP can produce some pretty muddy looking games at times but Pure totally rocks it in this department) i simply just didn't find any of the content in the game to be all that interesting, especially compared to the heights of Wipeout 3. at the very least, i can give Pure a point for being a departure from the lows of Wipeout Fusion and bringing the series back to what its meant to be: true, pure racing.

and here's the other Keanu Reeves movie i watched recently. two movies in a row?! i hear you shout, mot, what is this blasphemy?! i thought you didn't like movies! well yeah, i don't, but these are two movies i REALLY wanted to watch. i don't just do this for anyone, you know. what spurred me to finally watch this one was that i found a DVD of the first Matrix at a Goodwill for a cool $2.92, and couldn't resist. yeah sure it's one of the most critically acclaimed movies of all time, but not only that, it has a Propellerheads song in it! if there's anything even tangentially related to Propellerheads in this world, i need to know about it. it's a universal constant of life, and that's just the way it is. all jokes aside, the soundtrack is definitely what got me in the door. i mean, Prodigy, Propellerheads, Rage Against The Machine, even if the movie sucked (which it didn't) i'd still have some banger songs to listen to to keep me entertained. so while i came for the music, i definitely stayed for the incredible fight scenes, excellent storytelling, entertaining and fascinating characters, and incredible art direction. so why don't we get started?

here's a plot synopsis for those out there who are in the same situation i was about 24 hours ago and don't know anything about The Matrix, and who don't plan on watching the movie for some reason. some spoilers are abound, but i'm sure it's nothing you don't already know. Thomas Anderson, who goes under the hacker alias "Neo," is asleep in his apartment one day when he gets a message on his computer out of nowhere. he's told that he's The One, and must "follow the White Rabbit." turns out, the whole world is a lie, and mankind has just been living in a simulation under the control of robots, who keep them in little pods in farms to be used as batteries. while in the simulation, The Matrix, everyone thinks its 1999, in the real world, it's actually somewhere closer to 2199, and everything's fucked, with one exception. there's exactly one human city left, Zion, and the Resistance is doing everything they can to protect it, no matter the cost. Neo, after learning that his entire life he's lived up to that point is entirely fake and hasn't meant anything, is understandably pretty rattled, but slowly comes to terms with this fact and does his best to help protect Zion and keep humanity going. this was extremely compelling to me, i love that Neo is pretty much just some fucking Guy. take away the long, black coat and shades, and he's a computer nerd who's simultaneously terrified of the truth, while also being the only one who can save humanity at this point. i feel like whenever i saw something parody the Matrix as a kid, they always portrayed their Neo-like guy as some badass who always knows what's going on and what to do in every situation, but in the movie itself, Neo's imperfect. he fails to escape the secret service and gets taken in for questioning, he freaks out when he's told what the Matrix really is and can't accept it at first, he gets bugged (if you know you know) and is mortified when he finds out that it's real and it gets taken out of him. (more on that in a second) if you can't tell, Neo was my favorite character, closely followed by Morpheus, and then Tank. and hey, on the topic of Neo, let's address the elephant in the room: the Matrix is one bigass transgender allegory. you know, taking the red pill being a metaphor for taking estrogen (which, back then, was a red pill instead of the blue one we have today) escaping the Matrix being a parallel to coming out of the closet and the initially terrifying, herculean task that can be when you've been told to be one way all your life, hell, Neo even gets upset with Agent Smith for calling him Mr. Anderson, pretty much deadnaming him. what, you think i'm stretching? well say that to the Wachowskis, the main directors of the Matrix trilogy, who are both trans women. it's pretty blatant when you know what to look for. and honestly? based.

alright, there's your story recap, plus some bonus topics along the way. let's talk characters. i already went over Neo in detail, so let's get to the rest of the resistance. Morpheus is so cool, man. the guy knows how to keep his cool but also puts up a fight, and i love how wise he is. Lawrence Fishburne portrays him perfectly, i can't imagine anyone else playing him. Trinity i found to be kinda... whatever. i dunno, she's cool don't get me wrong, but like... she's kinda boring? i just never found myself all that interested in her, she's not crazy enough man. Tank and Dozer were always really fun to watch, they're the only two fully human members, no plugs to be found on them. i found Tank's positivity to be really infectious, especially on that first day of training. Mouse, while not getting a lot of screen time, was very entertaining every time i saw him. i guess he's the closest you'd get to a comic relief character? but i feel like the moment with everyone eating at the table and Mouse talking about Tastee Wheat just feels so real, and i really loved that. Apoc barely got any screen time but was alright, i liked Switch in the scene where they're in the car, and her fits were always 100% on point. Cypher was a really interesting twist antagonist, he feels like what Neo would have turned out like if he never truly accepted his fate as The One and i really like that. all in all, a great lineup here, i love em all.

easily the most striking aspect of the Matrix is its art design. nevermind the insane apocalypic sci-fi environments and mechanisms that litter the whole movie, or the costume designs that SCREAM late 90's/early 2000's "coolness." no, what drew my attention the most is just how much body horror is in this movie, which, for the record, is a lot for something so mainstream! Neo's mouth being removed and replaced with solid flesh, a robotic bug crawling into his body, that bug being removed in EXTREMELY uncomfortable detail, plugs lining most characters' bodies, which are then used to jack into the Matrix, it was enough to make my stomach turn for almost the whole movie. but while usually my squeamish ass would turn off the movie after the bug scene and call it quits, i actually found this aspect of the art design to be really fascinating?? it's been living in my head in the whole day it's been since i watched the movie, and i can't stop thinking about it. it somehow wraps around to being really cool?? again, i usually hate this kinda stuff, but... i dunno. speaking of which, the CGI is nothing short of fascinating. it's got that late 90s stank to it, but i'd be lying if i said i didn't absolutely love it. shoutouts to the scene with the mirror, makes me think i'm gonna be headed to Hazy Maze Cave.

overall, yeah, The Matrix absolutely lived up to everything i've heard about it my whole life. it's such an interesting movie and i'd say it might even earn a spot in my top three movies, right next to Napoleon Dynamite and Coraline. just today i found DVD copies of both The Matrix Reloaded and Ressurections at a different Goodwill, bringing my Matrix tax up to around 9 whole dollars now. i definitely plan on watching those two at some point, and i might even check out The Animatrix after that... and then i'll finally get around to playing that copy of Enter The Matrix i got for my birthday one year from a friend who knew i was getting a PS2 and gave me a bunch of random PS2 games they didn't play anymore! soon, Vinny, i'll finally play that, Full Metal Alchemist: The Broken Angel, and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time after a long 6 years of never touching them.

i watched two movies in the last day where Keanu Reeves played a person seeking more in life than just what's dealt to him and goes on a journey of gargantuan proportions, which climaxes in him needing to break someone out of captivity to prevent the world from certain peril. one of them was The Matrix, and the other was Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. i will be reviewing both today, because i loved both to death and think they each deserve a spotlight.

the basic premise is as follows: Bill S. Preston (Esquire) and Ted "Theodore" Logan are two rock-brained high schoolers who care about two things: rock music, and slackin' off. because of this, they've barely done any work all school year, and are going to flunk the grade if they don't ace their final report. worse yet, if Ted fails, his dad is going to send him off to military school in Alaska, which is the last thing anyone would consider excellent. after trying to study together and getting absolutely nowhere, the two are visited by a time traveller from the future named Rufus. he tells them that, in layman's terms, if they don't get their report done, the future might as well not exist, and that they have to do anything in their power to not let that happen. they're given a time machine and are told to go wild, and the two go on a journey through history, gathering up important historical figures from throughout time, all in an effort to absolutely kill it with their book report. hijinks ensue, you take Beethoven and put him in modern day, he's gonna kill it on the keyboard, you put Genghis Khan in a sports shop, he's gonna take a bat and smack a mannequin with it. it's a concept that sounds pretty generic on paper and has been done to death by now by every kid's cartoon on Nickelodeon, but i'm pretty sure Bill & Ted are the ones who made these tropes in the first place. they also do a lot of cool ideas with the time travel gimmick, like how Ted manifests his dad's keys by saying he'll put them somewhere specific in the future. like, yes, that's absolutely not how that would work, but come on, don't be such a killjoy, that's fun!

being a comedy movie from the late eighties, not every joke is gonna land. but i personally have a soft spot for the dumb as bricks surfer dude archetype, and i find literally every line that comes out of their mouths to be funny. Ted especially, anytime he's thinking it's like you can hear the cogs turning in his head while he tries to sort out something to say. "something most unusual is taking place at the Circle K" is such a mundane line, but the delivery totally sells it. there's also a lot of jokes about "oh Sigmund Freud has a corndog and is using a vacuum, get it" but like... maybe it's because i don't watch a ton of movies, but it didn't really get on my nerves that much. i really love how you can tell the two's vocabulary is slowly rubbing off on all the historical figures they're stealing because they just start randomly saying "dude" and "excellent". there doesn't need to be a scene where Bill is all like "okay, in the FUTURE, we call people "dude," get with the program", because 1.) it isn't necessary and would waste time they could be spending making better jokes, and 2.) Bill is probably too stupid (said affectionately) to even think to explain that. one of the scenes that made me laugh the hardest was when the two get to the medieval era and tell Billy the Kid to keep Socrates (who they have been calling So-Crates, which rubs off on Billy the Kid, and is hilarious) entertained while they scope the place out. in the next scene, while the two are looking up at the castle, you can see Billy teaching Socrates to play catch with a red football he found, no words or a character drawing attention to it, it's just a background gag and it had me cackling like a witch. i actually liked Billy the Kid a lot, though my love for cowboys might have me biased. the guy just instantly is okay with time travel and accepts it with no further questions, which only makes it funnier when Socrates starts freaking out over it. and oh my god, while not every one of his scenes hit, Napoleon had a few scenes that absolutely killed me. him telling his soldiers to blow Bill and Ted up was perfect, and the scene with him at the waterpark dressed up like a 50s swimmer, pushing people out of line to get to ride the water slides over and over again is spot on to what he'd probably actually do in that situation.

before we wrap up i wanna have a section for any assorted extras i wanna touch on. i absolutely love the main duo's fits, ESPECIALLY Ted, with the smiley patch on his pants and his red coat he wears around his waist, i love it. weird to think he was played by Mr. Thomas "Neo" Anderson himself. i also really liked whoever played Joan of Arc, all i can say is trans goals tbh. i wonder what else she did, actually? lemme check... oh my god, she's played by Jane Wiedlin?? member of the Go-Gos??? she also apparently played a Hex Girl in Scooby Doo, so i guess playing characters who are trans goals is a running theme for her, huh? the special effects for the phone booth are so of the time, but that's kind of what i love about em. speaking of movie magic, the scene of Napoleon going down the waterslide is pretty impressive for the time. i ain't no camera expert, but i'm pretty sure GoPros wouldn't be a thing for another 20 years or so, which means they probably had to take their bulky, expensive film cameras and take em down a water slide. now THAT'S dedication.

is Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure a masterpiece that's forever gonna stand the test of time? no, absolutely not, it's pure, distilled 80's wrapped up in a time-travel flavored tortilla, and carries all the weird aftertaste that comes with said tortilla. but that's part of what made it so funny and entertaining to me, and i'm glad i finally got around to watching it. i'm probably gonna watch that Bill & Ted cartoon next, since i've seen a couple of clips from it and thought it was pretty entertaining. there was also apparently some reboot recently? i dunno if that's any good, probably not, but who knows really.

i only started playing Disc Room a few nights ago on Halloween, and by the 1 hour mark i already knew i had to write about it on this site. it's a game that's been on my radar for about two years now, ever since it was mentioned at the end of the Action Button review of Pac-Man. listen, if anyone can sell me on a game, it's Tim Rogers. he got me to maybe potentially consider playing Final Fantasy VII, and i don't do that for just anyone! Disc Room definitely caught my attention a lot more than FFVII, though. i've always had a passing interest in the bullet hell subgenre of games, i've played your Touhous and your Ikarugas and your Mushihimesamas, but i've never been all that great at em. i'd usually play a few stages in, get walled hard by one obstacle and just give up. i dunno, i can handle dodging bullets, i can handle pumping damage into enemies and bosses, but when you force me to focus on both at once is when i start to lose my cool. not to mention, the arcade setup most of them have of "there goes all your lives, guess you gotta start all over!" made it really hard to learn more about those bottleneck points and prepare accordingly. that's where Disc Room stands out to me, and is probably why i got more into it than other bullet hells. but i think i'm getting ahead of myself, let's start small first.

you might have seen that developer list in the info section and gotten a little overwhelmed. four different specific devs listed seems a bit excessive, what's up with them? well, this ain't this group's first rodeo in gamedev. Terri and Dose are probably most well known for being the creators of shitty-city simulator Sludge Life, as well as the classic Nerf Gun dungeon crawler Heavy Bullets. on the other hand, Kitty and JW are the creators of the 60-seconds at a time action-adventure game Minit, another pretty well known indie darling. these four put their heads together to create Disc Room, and their experience really shows.

Disc Room takes place on a disc located near Jupiter. you, a member of an exploration team sent to learn more about the anomalous disc, find yourself face to face with dozens and dozens of sharp razor blades ready to chop you to pieces the moment you come into contact with them. you must explore the area, avoid discs (for the most part, we'll get to that) and find out just what this base is for. the game is split up into rooms (as you can imagine) each with its own disc patterns, set of goals for you to complete, which unlock new rooms upon completion, and occasionally even secrets. one thing i really love about Disc Room is that it doesn't fall into the trap a lot of games this nature tend to do. take Super Hexagon for example, the classic Terry Cavanaugh special. that game is unrelenting, arcade action, all about endurance and high scores, which is fun in its own right. but at a certain point, i start to feel bottlenecked, just like with the arcade shooters i was talking about earlier. i know there's tons of people who live for games like that, but it doesn't tickle my personal fancy. Disc Room, on the other hand, has more traditional progression, while also having that high score system for people who want that. each room has a timer and a high score leaderboard keeping track of your longest runs. it's the best of both worlds, and i actually had a ton of fun both when focusing on the main game and beating my friends' best times. but with all that said, all it takes to end that long lasting run is a single touch of a disc. that sounds punishing, and it definitely is in some parts, but i was able to get through the base game (nearly) 100% in only a little under 5 hours, and only had a ton of trouble on one boss and the final sector. Disc Room isn't gonna hold your hand, but it won't spit in it either.

let's talk abilities. your primary verb in Disc Room is "move," but you do get 6 extra abilities over the course of the game, and you can only use one at a time. the most universally useful one is the Dash, a single tap of the X key lets you dash forwards, making you invincible for that small moment. it's not very fast, so you won't be outrunning any discs by using it. instead, this is moreso for passing through oncoming discs, and it's extremely helpful in that regard. the next one is Slow, which slows down everything (including yourself) for a moment. it's pretty typical of bullet hells to have a "focus" ability like this, but i didn't find this one all that useful, at least not for its intended purpose. instead, i ended up using Slow for its secondary ability: lighting up dark rooms! there's a sector to the east on the map that focuses entirely on dark rooms and removing your ability to see, but the circle that forms around you with the slow ability cuts right through that, and it's super helpful. then there's the most unique ability of the 6 in my opinion, Clone. as you can imagine, this one lets you duplicate yourself, at the cost of some of your time. yeah, each ability actually has a downside, Dash and Slow stop the timer for as long as they're active, but Clone straight up subtracts some time from your total. this can be pretty rough when going for those endurance goals, since it's setting you back instead of just holding you in place. even still, i think some of the ways they use Clone for puzzles is awesome. yeah, Disc Room isn't entirely execution, there's actually a lot of puzzles to solve here. i won't spoil any of them, since they are pretty fun to figure out naturally, but i think a lot of the puzzles are super cool and make you think your head. our fourth ability is probably the most situational of the bunch, and that's Absorb. this lets you take one disc from the playfield and hold onto it, allowing you to redeploy it again at any time. this isn't super useful in general gameplay, but does have a lot of super unique puzzle uses. again, no spoilers, but some of the stuff they do with Absorb is really sick. and even in gameplay, i think there's a couple rooms where it actually outshines a lot of the other abilities. take Jupiter Ascending for example, a lategame room that's only got a few discs total, but they're all extremely speedy and hard to avoid. being able to remove one of the two discs here from the equation is actually pretty handy, and it's how i ended up completing it. next up is Blast, an ability that lets you charge up a shockwave, then release it, pushing away any discs around you. i thought this would be my go to ability when i first unlocked it, but i actually used it a lot less than i thought i would. even so, it does have some pretty cool gameplay uses, like a level where you can't move, and you have to blast away any discs that come near you. and finally, our last ability is Mirror, allowing you to teleport to the exact opposite side of the map from where you are at any time. i'll admit, i think this might be the most underwhelming one. whenever i'd try to use this one, i'd just end up reverse-telefragging myself. as always, however, this one has some unique puzzle applications that i like. overall, i'd say you'll be using Dash the most, followed up by Blast and Slow. the balancing is a little offset, but i think each ability is still pretty damn cool.

the presentation of Disc Room is top notch. props to the artists, they did a phenomenal job with the graphical style. it looks like a graphic novel i would have read in middle school or something, and i mean that in a strictly positive way. hell, the story beats are even told in the form of comics after beating each boss, it's awesome. and the whole idea of your character getting repeatedly chopped up by the discs, if done incorrectly, could have easily been stomach-churning and turned me off to the game. however, i think it was pulled off very elegantly, and makes it much easier to stomach the amount of dismemberment present here. special mention to the western sector here, they could have easily just made it a sandy desert area and called it a day, but no, each room is a living, breathing mass of viscera and life, and they totally pulled off the look without going too overboard. and oh man, the music, THE MUSIC, it's- mwah, chef's kiss. it's spot on, the pulsating, harsh, electric beats are perfect for keeping you in the zone. it's almost reminiscent of the wipE'out" games and their soundtracks, and if you know me, you know that's high praise. i also love that when you get really close to a disc, the music distorts, as if the composer is sitting on the edge of their seat, watching as you graze by near death, augh it's such a good detail. even if this game hasn't sounded all that interesting to you so far, if you like electronic, i implore you to go listen to this OST, it's killer.

one thing i really loved about Disc Room is that each world has a central mechanic they focus on. the south sector is no frills survival to start you out, but once you get past that, you get to the central sector, where to make the timer go up you need to stand in the circle in the center of the room, or the western sector where there's a worm constantly trying to grab you from beneath. you know, walk with rhythm, all that jazz. each sector has a boss, and instead of the timer incrementing normally, it instead only increments when you pick up these golden orbs around the arena. it makes you get out of your comfort zone and take risks, and i totally fuck with that. the final sector even expands on this, each room has a grid of tiles on the floor, and the only way to increment the timer is to step on a tile. the only sector i take umbridge with is the eastern sector, aka the dark rooms. here, the lights pulsate and flicker on and off, and one level even has you in total pitch-black darkness. i don't actually take issue with that part, i think it works surprisingly well and leads to a lot of unique gameplay scenarios that were really fun to overcome. plus, it gave the Slow ability some time to shine (haha) in my playthrough, due to its secondary effect i touched on earlier. no, the issue i have with the eastern sector is that... it kinda gives me a headache? i'm not photosensitive, but blinking lights specifically going straight from dark to light makes my head hurt. another example is the flickering lights in Doom, they have a very similar effect. again, i'm pretty sure im not photosensitive, i can see rapidly changing colors and be perfectly fine, it's specifically the dark to light thing that gets me. on top of that, the monochromatic red palette from the sirens is pretty rough on the eyes, and in the end i had to take breaks between levels in this sector, which made me feel like an old lady. but hey, the more puzzle focused rooms definitely made up for that. again, no spoilers here, so don't worry if you haven't played the game and want to solve em for yourself, i just wanna touch on these. there's these golden rooms you come across every so often, and each one has a puzzle in it that makes you really think about your abilities in super cool and unique ways. there's even some puzzles outside of the golden rooms, and those are cool as always. however, the eastern sector had one room in particular that had me totally stumped, and if you've played Disc Room you probably know the one i'm talking about. i dunno, i liked the idea of it and figured out the code pretty fast, it was just finding exactly what to do with the code that gave me trouble. i gave in and looked up what i was supposed to do, and i had the right idea, i just wasn't doing it the exact way the game wanted to, and it felt kind of unsatisfying to find that out. other than that one, however, i loved all the puzzles Disc Room had to offer!

alright, i think it's about time i wrap things up with this review, so let's go over some smaller stuff i couldn't fit in anywhere else. one, this game works surprisingly well on keyboard. Disc Room looks like the kind of game that would only be viable on controller, but no, the keyboard setup is extremely workable, and i love that. two, i like the collection aspect of the game, dying to each disc to catalog it in your research notes, but it sort of bugs me how you have to die to both the normal version of the guardian discs AND the broken version after you defeat them. i struggled hard on the western sector's guardian disc and only beat it on a whim, but then i forgot to die to the broken version and had to sit there and grind out another victory for like, 30 minutes. that boss in particular was kind of a difficulty spike, you have to collect 60 golden orbs instead of the normal 10 a boss requires of you, and that was super rough for me for some reason. i also think the fast discs in the northern sector were pretty brutal, and the Slow ability isn't as much of a counter to them as you'd think. three, hard mode! as of writing this, i still haven't beaten the newgame+ that Disc Room provides, but so far it's pretty fun, if basic. it seems to just be running through each of the rooms in reverse order with more discs to avoid and all the goals are some form of "survive for xx amount of seconds," and that's fine enough. you also have someone that follows you around in hard mode, and i was so scared that the challenge was gonna be that you have to keep them alive, but thankfully they did not pull that on me, they're just for decoration. and on top of hard mode, there's actually a set of 8 bonus challenges you can do on any new game you start. these can range from beating the game in 15 minutes, to beating it with less than 30 deaths, to even stuff like beating the entire game on 200% speed. these seem absolutely devilish, and i don't see myself beating any of them anytime soon, but it's awesome that they're here for those real thrillseekers.

overall, Disc Room is an excellent package with an extremely fun base game, loads of content, an excellent art style and soundtrack, and leaderboards for your competitive side to grind away at. it's addicting, intense, and will provide a challenge. i can't recommend Disc Room enough.

oh Goodwill, what a magical place you are. there's nothing like a Goodwill, you've got the endless sea of clothing in the center, the corner reserved for heaps of cheap, plastic children's toys, the CD bin where all the cases are either empty or replaced with something other than what's on the cover, the shelf of religious cassette tapes, and the electronics section full of shitty keyboards and cables for things you didn't know existed. Wikipedia may call it a thrift store, but i like to think of it more as a refined dump. unlike normal thrift stores, Goodwill gets their stock through donations. that's putting it nicely though, it's pretty much where everything people don't want anymore goes to rot. stock always pretty hit or miss, sometimes it's all just total junk you couldn't pay me to take, and other times you find a 24-inch CRT in working condition for 5 bucks.

yes, that's a true story, and yes, it's my most prized possession to this very day. honestly, best deal i've ever gotten at Goodwill, hands down. but that's an outlier, usually Goodwill is a super mixed bag. case in point, the CD section. this is ually the part of the store i'm most drawn to. as the proud owner of a 2001 Subaru Outback, my car only has two methods of playing music: a CD player and a tape player. as such, i've kind of been forced into collecting CDs if i want to listen to any music in the car, and YES, i KNOW, i can just get a tape adapter. in fact, i've already got one. but my phone doesn't have a headphone jack, and i refuse to buy a second adapter just for that. so CDs it is! pretty much every time i go to a thrift store, or any store for that matter, i always look to see what their CD collection is like. Goodwill is a weird case though, since people aren't trying to sell the CDs that end up here, they're trying to get rid of them, so most of the CDs are whatever that person didn't want anymore. even so, sometimes you can find some alright stuff. if you've taken a look at the Music tab on this site, you'll know my taste in music is pretty varied, so i'm not super picky in terms of what i consider "alright." some albums i've picked up from Goodwill include Sugar Ray's Floored, Aqua's Aquarium, Beastie Boys' Licensed To Ill, Nada Surf's High/Low, and Suzanne Vega's 99.9F. actually, scratch that last one. yeah, when i got to the car and opened the case to 99.9F, it was empty. that's the issue with Goodwill's media section, because nothing's stopping people from just... opening the cases and nabbing the CDs. hell, nothing's stopping people from donating empty cases in the first place. that also applies to videogames, because yes, every so often you find the fabeled videogame at Goodwill.

unlike the music CDs, the kind of games that end up at Goodwill are generally total junk. you know the type, old EA Sports games, Wii and Kinect shovelware, old PC games that don't work on modern machines... to be fair, i have bought my fair share of old PC games from Goodwill. i found complete-in-box copies of both MDK and The Sims Deluxe Edition and scooped those up for a cool 2.52 each, but that was mainly for collection purposes. i still haven't figured out a way to get these working on my computer, unfortunately. i know i could probably set up a virtual machine, but ever since VMWare got bought out i just don't even wanna bother. the only other Goodwill game i got was Namco Museum 1 for PS2 all the way back in 2018, and that was only because i had just gotten my PS2 and wanted anything to play on it.

i made a big point about Goodwill in the opening paragraph having a lot of clothes for sale, and i think that's my biggest problem with it. i think thrifting for clothes is cool and extremely valid, don't get me wrong, but it's also not what i'm interested in looking at 90% of the time i'm at a thrift store. i'm usually looking for videogames or CDs or other stupid tech like that. even so, i occasionally do find some cool stuff in terms of clothes. one of my favorite goodwill finds ever is a skull print button up short sleeve shirt, it's kind of tacky but also kinda cool, i love it to death. Goodwill is also a good hotspot for jorts, if you're a jorts appreciator such as myself. otherwise, that huge sea of clothing racks is basically worthless to me.

where Goodwill really shines, however, is the tech section. if you're a colossal nerd like me, Goodwill is a haven of cheap, random tech. there is the previously mentioned 5 dollar CRT, but my roommate (who frequents Goodwills with me) found a set of powerline network adapters (pretty much ethernet that travels through your wall sockets) that usually go for around a hundred dollars, and she only had to pay 10! another great find was an 8TB external Seagate hard drive for only 10 bucks or so. i've also bought male-to-male AV cables there for less than a dollar, random power cables i've needed, HDMI cords, the works. hell, if you ever need a keyboard, Goodwill's always got you covered. the tech section is where it's at.

in conclusion, is Goodwill a good place for thrifting? if you ask me, it really depends on what you're looking for. clothes? go for it, the world is your oyster. music? make sure you double check the cases to make sure they're not empty, but sometimes you'll find something. videogames? good fuckin' luck pal. even with that said, it's still always kind of exciting to visit a new goodwill and see what random junk you can find. it's like being able to look through a garbage dump, most of it isn't gonna be anything special, but every so often you find that cool diamond in the rough.

an arc i didn't expect myself to go through within the last year is my Quake arc. i didn't know a thing about Quake prior to March of 2024, i might've seen the Shambler once or twice, and i knew Speed Demos Archive was related to it somehow, but that was about the extent of my knowledge. then i was gifted Quake 1 by a friend, and i almost instantly fell in love. i'd say the first Quake ranks in my top favorite games of all time now, and i don't even like shooters all that much. after finishing Quake 1 for the first time, i immediately hungered for more, and decided to buy the entire Quake series on Steam. i was soon hit with the harsh reality that each of the four Quake games are completely different from each other in a lot of ways, and i didn't like any of them at first. Quake 2 felt super generic, Quake 3 didn't have a real singleplayer mode, Quake 4 looked like Call of Duty. where were the Shamblers? the weird castles? the Nine Inch Nails music? the ATMOSPHERE? i played each of the other three mainline Quakes for all of 10 minutes before heading back to replay Quake 1 for the 10th time, and didn't even give Quake Live or Quake Champions the time of day.

since then, i've become a lot more open to each of the Quake entries and what they have to offer. Quake 2, while still having a really boring setting and ugly enemy designs, has some of the most satisfting, fast-paced, electrifying gameplay in any shooter i've ever played, at least in singleplayer. Quake 4 looks absolutely insane for a game released in 2005, and that's all thanks to it running on id Tech 4, which also powered games like Doom 3, Prey and Wolfenstein (2009). i have nothing nice to say about Quake Champions. but what about Quake 3? that was easily the one i bounced off of the most. i mean, no singleplayer? what the hell kind of a joke is that? as i said in my Solitaire review, i'm not really one for competitive head-to-head games, and things like deathmatch or capture the flag never really clicked for me. i mean, for crying out loud, nearly 80% of my 730 hours in TF2 were spent in either Mann vs Machine or playing Surf maps. so what could Quake 3 Arena possibly do to get someone like me to not only play it, but now consider it tied with Quake 1 for my favorite in the series?

it's simple. you make an engine with some of the most fun and complex movement in any FPS i've ever played, expand on the already extremely fun to use arsenal of weapons previously established in the series to create the best lineup yet, have a dedicated fanbase hellbent on keeping the community alive with custom maps, mods and servers, and make the game look so distinctly late-90's-FPS that i can't possibly hate it. yeah, my opinions on Q3A have done quite the u-turn since March, and i just need to talk about this game to anybody who will listen.

so, let's address the main thing. do i enjoy deathmatch here? surprisingly, yeah. i'm not super great at it, and it usually devolved into a chaotic mess when the server has too many people in it, but i think that makes it more enjoyable to me. the chaos makes me feel inclined to not take it as seriously. sure, i'm dying every couple of seconds, but so is everyone else. plus, competitive games these days always feel the need to have a leaderboard or a battle pass or EXP or whatever. (i'm looking at you Quake Champions, and not in a nice way.) it makes me feel like i NEED to be good at the game to enjoy it. but Q3A is the purest extract of online deathmatch, no extra bells or whistles, and it makes laughing off stupid deaths or spawn camping much easier, since it doesn't matter.

now, there's something important to address when it comes to online games like this. most of the people playing Q3A online these days probably aren't playing as lax as i am, and there's gonna be assholes. but i kind of love observing the kind of people you meet in online games like this. it's like sitting on the bus and listening to all the random conversations people have, just taking in all of this activity going on in the world. it's a hard thing to explain, but if you've played online games like this you'll probably know what i'm talking about.

so, the deathmatch feels less serious and more enjoyable and approachable because of that, but what about the gameplay itself? i mentioned a couple paragraphs ago that this game has some insane movement tech, so let's finally go into detail about that. the first three Quake games pretty famously have some very interesting physics quirks that let you move in very unique ways. i mean, it's the series that invented bunnyhopping and rocket-jumping. Quake 1's movement was so interesting in fact that it kickstarted the entire subcommunity of speedrunning. (i mean, technically Doom started that, but SDA was made for Quake so i'm giving the point to Quake here.) Q3A continues that legacy by not only having very fun and fast paced movement, but also making those techniques relatively accessible, at least compared to other games like Quake 1 or Half-Life. in Q1, you have to let go of the forward key to gain speed while b-hopping, which is REALLY hard to unlearn when you've been playing games as long as me, and in HL b-hops are frame perfect and you have to rebind your scrollwheel or whatever. Q3A makes things relatively simple to learn, yet has a skill ceiling so high that people are still discovering new techniques to this day. strafejumping is the name of the game here, and it's what makes Q3A for me. to strafejump, all you gotta do is hold forward, jump, hold a strafe key, then slowly move your mouse in the direction you're strafing. by zig-zagging your strafejumps and chaining jumps together, you can gain loads of speed in the matter of seconds. and that's just one of the many, MANY different techniques people have discovered and perfected, i can't even begin to get into the complexities of circle jumping, plasma-climbing, rocket-jumping, surfing, and the other crazy stuff in just Q3A alone.

but with that said, there's probably something that doesn't sit quite right with you. sure, there's all this cool movement stuff you can use in multiplayer, but there's no singleplayer to speedrun or optimize with it. isn't that kind of lame? and to that i say, first of all, i never said Q3A doesn't have singleplayer, i said it doesn't have a real singleplayer. come on, pay attention. second of all, i'm glad you brought this up because it leads me directly into the next thing i wanted to talk about: DeFRaG. some Q3A players were so over the moon with the delectable movement systems at play in this entry that they made an entire mod and gamemode dedicated to said movement systems. did you really think Mot "I'm Not All That Into Shooters" McGee spent all her time playing deathmatch? DeFRaG takes out all the combat and fragging (hense, de-frag) in return for one main goal: go fast. REALLY fast. the mod is entirely geared towards race maps, or maps with the sole purpose of being traversed as quickly as possible, usually in stylish fashion. if you've ever seen Surf in CounterStrike or TF2, this is Q3A's equivalent to that. there's leaderboards that automatically track your best times on each map, tons of community servers for players all over the world, and a fairly active community of dedicated players, most of which are super chill and will gladly teach you new techniques to help you with your runs. if you couldn't already guess, this is the mode i've sunk the most time into. i'm a speedrunner at heart after all, and this is my bread and butter. what can i say? the self-improvement of DeFRaG speaks to me in a way deathmatch never has. i want to do a full review of DeFRaG on its own at some point, so i'll save all my thoughts on this mod for another time. just know that DeFRaG is sick, and you should at least go watch some replays people have uploaded.

one aspect i've yet to touch on in regards to Q3A is its presentation. both Quake 1 and Quake 2 had very defined and focused art styles, prioritizing fantasy and sci-fi respectively. Quake 1 was dingy, soaked in John Romero's vision of a dark fantasy shooter with eldrich beasts and a forboding atmosphere. Quake 2's sci-fi setting is pretty boring to me, but i can at least appreciate the ideas at play there, what with the unnerving imagery of the Stroggs, an alien race that harvests their opponents' body parts to be used to create more of their kind. so, what's Quake 3 Arena got going on? surprisingly, kind of a mish-mash of both? the story is extremely basic and borderline non-existent, a race called the Vadrigar steal the universe's greatest warriors and force them to fight each other for their own amusement. as such, i guess the combination of Q1 and Q2's art directions kind of makes sense. you have these huge castles and cathedrals, giant machines and factories out in space, and everything in between. then you get to the lineup of playable characters, and all sense of unity goes out the window. it seems normal at first, you've got Ranger and Bitterman, the main characters of Q1 and Q2 respectively, the Doomguy, Tank Jr. from Q2, but then there's the new guys. some standouts to me are Anarki, a sugar junkie who rides a hoverboard, Sorlag, a reptilian alien that's referred to by the game itself as a "scumbag of the first order" (and who is also probably transfem? based) and my personal favorite, Orbb. Orbb is the best character in any videogame. it's an eyeball with legs! sure, the character roster is kind of all over the place, i mean for christ's sake you can play as some of the developers. but i kinda love that, it's got this chaotic energy that you really don't get with modern games. now, does Q3A look good these days? objectively, no, not really. but fuck man, i can't help but love the look of this game. it absolutely reeks of late 90's FPS, what with its bold menus, oversized font, blocky maps and playermodels, and i eat every last bit of it up. it makes the game almost feel like it's some random indie project, despite the fact that Q3A was made by id god-damn Software, was insanely popular at the time and is commonly regarded as one of the best multiplayer shooters ever. again, i know i said it before but you really ain't gonna get something that has the same look and feel as Q3A in modern day, and it's super unique in that regard.

okay, i really gotta wrap things up here, so let's go over a couple of smaller topics to round off this review. one, singleplayer. i said Q3A doesn't have a real singleplayer, but that implies it at least has something, right? well, it's nothing huge. it's literally just a set of deathmatches against bots that progressively get harder and harder, it's super lame. two, Quake Live. Quake Live was a sort of rerelease of Q3A that came out in 2010. it let you play a souped up version of Q3A in your browser and was free to play, until 2014 where that version got shut down and was replaced with a Steam version you had to buy. one cool thing about Quake Live is that its equivalent of DeFRaG is Race Mode, which is built directly into the game, no need for mods. i actually got into QLRace before playing Q3A or DeFRaG, and it's what set that seed in me to begin with. it's a little more beginner friendly, since instead of needing to time your b-hops, you autojump by holding down the spacebar. if you want to get into DeFRaG, i suggest starting with QLRace. three, Quake 3 Team Arena. Q3TA is an expansion for Q3A that adds team focused gamemodes like Capture the Flag, Harvester and Overload. it also added some classic weapons like the Nailgun, Chaingun and even the Proximity Launcher from an expansion pack for Quake 1 called Scourge of Armagon. deep cut, but that's pretty cool. i'll be honest, i don't know that much about Team Arena since the community for it is borderline non-existent, and i can't find anyone to play it with. i think a lot of Q3TA's ideas got recycled and reimplemented into Quake Live, so that's good at least. fourth, OpenArena. OpenArena is a free, open source, fully customizable alternative to Q3A that (at least as far as i can tell) perfectly recreates the physics and feel. it's got a much cleaner look compared to Q3A, but it looks shitty in more of an early 2000's way. i think it was Japanese developed as well, which also contributes to its distinct vibe. the community is also, surprisingly enough, still pretty active, despite the fact that the official site hasn't been updated since 2015. it also gets bonus points for carrying on the original spirit of Quake Live by having a version you can play in your browser called OpenArena Live, so that's pretty neat. and finally, fifth, the console ports. Q3A got ported to three consoles, Dreamcast, PS2 and Xbox 360. i don't have a way to play the 360 version, so i'll only be talking about the other two. the PS2 version was called Quake 3 Revolution, and despite online play being commonly supported on the PS2, Q3R didn't for whatever reason. really weird choice for a game that's entire focus is the multiplayer, and they didn't even give it a real singleplayer to make up for that. not to mention, no mouse and keyboard support, which the PS2 was capable of doing. Q3R objectively kinda sucks, but i'd be lying if i said i didn't at least somewhat like it. i always find console ports of janky PC games to be really interesting, since they usually have to clean them up a bit to get them approved for the console. the PC scene is a lot more accepting of jank, but console users? not so much. as such, a lot of console ports of PC games have completely unique menus or a different presentation, like Half-Life on PS2 or The Sims on GameCube. the Dreamcast port fares a lot better, it supports both online play AND mouse + keyboard. there's even fan servers for the online, so you can still experience it to this day! it runs a little choppier and has some more compressed sound effects compared to Q3R, but it's still Q3 and plays great. trust me though, you're gonna want to get that mouse and keyboard setup, because all it takes is one look at the Dreamcast controller to know what the main sticking point of this port is. literally. without a right analog stick on the Dreamcast controller, you've got two options. one, play with tank controls, or two, move with ABXY and look around with the stick. simply swapping the sides of these two actions is enough to completely fry my brain for some reason, i just can never get used to it. if you've ever played that unreleased Dreamcast port of Half-Life, it's the same control scheme, and it's just as dreadful here as it is there.

as you can probably tell by this point, i've got a lot to say about Quake 3 Arena. it went from being the most throwaway game in the series for me to being my second favorite, potentially even first favorite depending on the day you ask me on. not only is it an extremely fascinating piece of gaming history, but it's also got a dedicated community, a visual style i love, and tight gameplay that still holds up to this day. Quake 3 Arena is one of the greats, and it should never be forgotten.

i love the PSP to pieces. it's probably my favorite handheld, if not console, ever, despite its shortcomings. while Nintendo's offerings in terms of handhelds had a harder-hitting lineup of exclusives and features, i find the enginuity of the PSP to be something incredible. the original DS wouldn't let you go into the settings on the menu without needing a restart, and you're telling me the PSP has a full-blown XMB? it plays MP3s, movies, lets you use Skype, download little indie titles and original PS1 games- oh, and speaking of which! the PSP is a great machine for playing PS1 games on the go, because it runs every single one of them pretty damn flawlessly. (unless it needs the Dualshock, then you gotta upgrade to the Vita, another console i wanna talk about at some point...) i also love how instead of cartridges or something normal like that, the PSP uses optical disks. that's right, the UMD! an itty-bitty disk in this cute little plastic caddy, so overengineered, but so cool.

"alright mot," you say, "we get it, you like the PSP. why are you telling us this shit?" hold your horses, i'm getting there! the primary issue i have with the PSP is its lack of truly exclusive games. it's great for playing PS1 games and ports of older console games, but when it comes to games that are exclusive (and that fit my tastes) it's a little on the light side. so when searching for things to play, i had to sort of... dig deep. and when you're forced to dig deep, you end up playing stuff you probably wouldn't otherwise. which brings us to our main course...

work time fun!

i think the first time i saw this thing was in a Vinesauce Vinny video back in the day, and i retained pretty much nothing about it. then, in 2019 when i got my PSP, i was searching for games to... legally buy and play on my new system, when i saw it again. i downloaded it, played it, and said to myself, "wow, this is... not very fun. i'm going back to Patapon." yeah, i wasn't in on the WTF train yet. took me until about two years later when i picked it up again on my Vita, and it started to really click for me.

work time fun is a minigame collection where you do jobs to earn money to use on vending machines to unlock more jobs and little trinkets. it's pretty clear from the get-go that WTF is trying to comment on capitalism and all that, with its dry and bleak sense of humor. a lot of people draw comparisons between work time fun and the WarioWare series, but i don't think that's entirely accurate. i think a closer comparison in terms of gameplay would be something like Bishi Bashi Special, WTF's minigames are a lot longer and more involved than something like the microgames of WarioWare. and while WarioWare is trying to be weird and goofy, i think WTF's tone is a little more uncomfortable and satirical, which is cool in its own way, at least to me. the jobs in WTF can range from things as monotonous and simple as putting caps onto pens or sorting chicks, to more bizarre jobs like catching baseballs for the grim reaper (who happens to be a baseball player) or doing a chicken race where you have to stop as close to the edge of a cliff as possible without driving off.

now, are these minigames as fun as something like WarioWare, or even Bishi Bashi Special? well... no, not really. they feel more like work than anything. but like, that's kind of the point. i dunno, i can respect a game like this sacrificing most of its fun factor in favor of dedicating itself to its themes and atmosphere, i think that's super bold and out there. plus, i think the atmosphere that it creates is super unique and interesting. there's a feature in the game where you get emails from random people that you can't respond to, and it's kind of interesting to keep up with all these weirdos and what they're up to. i especially like the photorealistic images that are attached to each sender, you gotta wonder who these people are or what they're up to these days. there's also this huge collection of trinkets you can get from the vending machines that serve zero practical purpose, but each and every one has a little sprite and flavor text to go with it, which is like... so completely unnecessary, but i love that it's here.

keep in mind, WTF is a first-party Sony game. this isn't some random game that was just pumped out and left at that, this was something Sony themselves put together, and i find that endlessly interesting. it totally feels like some random B-game made by just a couple of guys that somehow got approved to be on a console, yet it's made by the top of the top, and its style and vibe is so unlike anything else i've ever played, not just on the PSP but on any major console really.

so, here's the bottom line. is work time fun... fun? no, not particularly. but i still love it for its completely out there ideas and just how of-the-era it is. it embodies that early 2000's weirdness that i'm so addicted to, and for that it's absolutely worth checking out. (plus, i can say from experience that it is a surprisingly good time-waster when you're actually at work.) give work time fun a shot if you haven't already, it's really something else.

hey, it's a movie! i'm not one to watch movies all that often, i just get super fidgety and lose focus, due to neurodivergent reasons. (due to that, i don't really know how to talk about movies all that well, so you'll have to excuse me if this review is a little shoddy) but i've always had a passing interest in James Bond, if only for the fact that i knew a lot of people liked Goldeneye on N64. and so, when my roommate recently showed me the From Russia With Love PS2 game, i decided to bite the bullet and force myself to sit down and watch the movie, so i could understand what's going on in the game. so, how did i like it? well, for being only the second movie in the series, i think it holds up pretty well.

now i don't know that much about 007, but one of the few things i knew going into this is that Bond has been played by a ton of people over the years. i grew up seeing bits and pieces of Daniel Craig's Bond on TV, so that's who i always associate with the character. but in FRWL, Bond is played by Sean Connery, and i think his carefully crafted sentences and suave demeanor are perfect for the spy. i mean, i guess that makes sense, he was the first guy to play him. but still, like... you get what i mean.

the plot is as follows. the Russians have a LEKTOR decoder, and they send a proposal to England to let them have it, as a deal. Bond's boss, M, wants him to get it, despite the fact that Bond has already figured out that the setup is clearly a trap. any chance they have to get a machine as powerful as the LEKTOR is a chance they're willing to take. Bond is sent to Istanbul, and the movie follows his adventures as he tries to locate the machine and its owner, as well as fighting off the Russians that are trying to get the LEKTOR out of his reach at all costs. that might not be the exact plot, but it's what i remember from when i watched it. like i said, i tend to zone out during movies, so i may have missed some details.

of course, Bond is the star of the show here, but we've got a couple of supporting characters as well. Romanova serves as the love interest here, and she's like... alright, i suppose. i dunno, she doesn't really have much of a personality outside of being just... the love interest. Kerim Bey was alright as well, and definitely had more flair to his character. Moneypenny has some pretty cute banter and is overall a fun character to see on screen, but she doesn't have that much screentime unfortunately. in terms of villains, there's Klebb, who i personally think is my favorite. she's cold, mean, and is gonna do anything in her power to stop Bond, and you really pick up on that near the end of the movie. i really liked Kronsteen's introduction where he's playing chess, it portrays him as a cold, calculated schemer and i like that archetype. but... the dude barely gets any screentime. he shows up in his introduction, the scene where Klebb is introduced, and the he just fuckin' dies and is replaced with Morzeny, who ALSO immediately dies. but this is all to say, none of them compare to Grant. one of my favorite things i noticed while watching is that Grant never says a word for the first chunk of the movie, and the first time you hear him talk, he's putting on a facade as he's disguised as Nash. it paints him as completely stonefaced, only focusing on the mission at hand, not bothering with any snappy oneliners or small talk. he's a genuine threat, and that doesn't stop once he's revealed his true colors. that scene where he and Bond fight on the train is super intense, and i really appreciate the lack of music here. instead of telling you how to feel, the movie makes natural tension by putting nothing between the viewer and the action. i think that's super cool, and is something a lot of modern media still gets wrong.

i think From Russia With Love is a pretty cool movie. it certainly isn't perfect, sometimes for night scenes they do this thing where they just darken shots they took during the day, and it doesn't look good... at all. but hey, that's the 60s for you. (and there's a couple other things in this movie that could also prompt that statement...) but it's fun, it keeps the action up the whole time, the performances are pretty entertaining, and again, this was only the second Bond movie ever. pretty good stuff! i actually watched the first Bond movie, Dr. No, directly after this one, so maybe i'll do a review of that one too.

let's try something new for this review. i've been doing a lot of games lately, and i wanna try out a different, more focused examiniation this time. so let's take a very close look at an environment! i think that the locales of a game are often overlooked, and should be appreciated more. so let's start off strong with one of the most visually stunning games of all time, Street Fighter III. (specifically its third version, 3rd Strike.) now, there were a lot of locations for me to choose from here. 3rd Strike has so many iconic and beautiful stages, but i think my favorite has to go to Yun & Yang's stage, the Crowded Street.

now, there's actually two different variations of this location, depending on who you're playing as. if you choose Yang, you'll go to the rainy version seen above. if you choose Yun, however, you'll go to this yellow, non-rainy variant instead. i think both of these are great, no doubt, but if i had to choose one i'd say my favorite is the non-rainy version. i dunno, i think i just like the yellow a little more, it feels more evocative of a nighttime city to me. now if you take a close look at the ground, you'll see we're not actually standing on the street itself. instead, our fighters are on top of what appears to be either a stage or some sort of building, and this is further reinforced by the circular figures in the background, which are most likely supposed to be the heads of onlooking passerbys. i think the idea of fighting in front of a huge crowd like this makes for a sick backdrop for a game like Street Fighter, and especially 3rd Strike. the game was made near the end of Capcom's run making sprite-based arcade games and was the last mainline Street Fighter before they moves to fully 3D environments. and you can really tell they had mastered the craft by this point, because every single animation in this game is absolutely gorgeous. not only that, but for certain things. they actually took the Donkey Kong Country route and digitized images of 3D models, and it makes for a super cool effect. sure, plenty of other games have done this, but in 3rd Strike's case it could display way more frames of animation, and it sells the effect a lot better because of that. Crowded Street utilizes this technique heavily for the parts that are further in the background, and it looks gorgeous. it almost reminds me of Myst's more industrial, mechanical areas, (which is a game i'm absolutely gonna talk about the locales of at some point) while also utilizing hand-drawn spritework for certain things such as the ground.

but the visuals aren't everything. we may be talking about a location, but there's more factors at play here than just them grafix.

and like... dude, this track perfectly encapsulates the entire vibe of this stage. in the first round it sounds shady, has this sense of tension and danger, which not only fits for the ensuing ruckus that's about to be caused, but also fits gameplay wise, since you're most likely trying to figure out your opponent's playstyle and find an opening. then, the percussion kicks in for the second round, and this is where it gets going. you've seen how your opponent plays, and the game is on. finally, in the third round, the two parts of the song mix together in the culmination of everything the round has lead up to, and both you and your foe are fighting for your life. tension is at an alltime high, and you both know it's winner takes all. 3rd Strike's soundtrack does this all the time, but i think this is by far my favorite implementation of it. Crowded Street rocks, and it's definitely my favorite stage in the game.

Brain Age is something everyone ended up playing, or at least knowing about, in the age of the DS. it was EVERYWHERE. if you didn't know what Brain Age was, you probably were either lying or didn't exist. it was peak casual DS game, and they even made a sequel to it on the same console. but come the launch of the DS' successor, the 3DS, and there's no Brain Age to be found. i guess Nintendo wanted to focus on a more core audience for the launch of this system. (i mean, that's what i thought, and then i remembered Nintendogs + Cats was a launch title, so oops i guess) and yet, only a year later in 2012, we got a surprise in the form of Brain Age: Concentration Training.

yeah yeah, i know, i used the European boxart and title for the review, even though i played the North American version. listen, which looks more interesting?

exactly. i swear, the american marketing team for every videogame knows the scientific formula to make the worst boxart of all time. actually, what's interesting is that despite the game releasing in North America in 2012, it took all the way until July of 2017 for both Europe and Australia to get it. let me repeat that, JULY OF 2017. that was well after the release of the Nintendo Switch!! i would say this is like a Pikmin 2 New Play Control situation, but at least that was only three years! did they really have to ponder on the viability of releasing Brain Age on 3DS in Europe and Australia for five whole years? anyways, you might be asking, "hey Mot, why is that handsome devil Dr. Ryuta Kawashima looking awfully devilish in that European boxart? did he make some Faustian deal to gain infinite wisdom about the brain and how it functions? good question! unfortunately, that isn't the case, though i wouldn't doubt it for this guy. no, this is to show that this game is gonna challenge your brain a lot more than the original Brain Age did. so much so, in fact, some might even say that the training in this game is... Devilish.

now, i should mention, i've never actually played the DS Brain Age games. i want to, but i just haven't gotten around to it yet. so this is my first ever Brain Age experience first hand. and how did it go? well, like i said in that last paragraph, BACT is way harder than the originals. in those, you'd solve math problems, do some brain teasers, things like that. in BACT, the very first thing you do in the game is a little something called Devilish Calculations.

Devilish Calculations goes like this. you're given a math problem, and you must remember the solution to that problem. then, you're given a second math problem, and you have to write the answer you memorized for the first one. it's all about memorization, and that's just for 1-Back. after that you get into 2-Back, which is the same except you have to write the answer for the problem two questions back. this was quite the wakeup call for me, i'm pretty good at math, but i usually have a piece of paper to write my thought process down on. as soon as i get into mental math, it's way more of a struggle for me. keeping numbers in my head is just really hard personally, and the way Devilish Calculations asked me to do that was just... REALLY hard. the furthest i could ever get was Fast 2-Back, because as soon as i got into 3-Back i'd just fumble over and over again. for 2-Back, however, i was able to keep myself in a rhythm pretty well. it's just that as soon as i got out of that rhythm, everything fell apart and i'd have to skip a few questions to get back in the groove. with all that said, Devilish Calculations is a great introduction to the way that BACT makes you think, and while it's tough as nails, it really pushes you to your limits.

before we get into the next training exercise, i wanna talk about the man himself, Ryuta Kawashima. i don't know about the original Brain Ages, but at least in this one the dude's really charming. i think this is the first time he's ever been voice acted in-game, and while they had to get a different guy to voice him for the English version, i think Gary Christianson's performance really sells his attitude and personality. the guy really does care about knowledge, and the softspoken tone of Christianson perfectly showcases that. i found myself listening really intently to whatever he had to say, or saying "sorry, Dr. K..." whenever i went down a level. i know that's like, kinda dumb, but whatever.

the next Devilish Exercise is Devilish Pairs, and... this is admittedly kind of a downgrade from Devilish Calculations. it's just memory. flip over a card, memorize the number, and match all the pairs without making a mistake. the higher the level, the more cards are introduced. i found this one a little boring honestly, it wasn't nearly as engaging as DCs for me. after that, however, is Devilish Mice, and this is another good one. you're given a 4x3 grid of squares, and several mice are placed randomly inside. the rest are cats. the squares are then hidden, and the contents are shuffled around. you have to keep track of where the mouse is moved to, then uncover it. it's pretty simple, but i liked this one a lot. as the levels get higher, the amount of mice increases, and i thought this would make it easier. i mean, the less cats there are, the higher chance you'll have to pick a mouse, right? but then i realized that you have to actually keep track of the mice, because if you miss just one, you lose the whole problem. no partial credit here. this one's tough, but i like it.

for our next intermission, i wanna talk about Dr. K's Brain Seminars. these are a really cute addition, and it's just a little cutscene where Dr. K explains some of how his training works, what it trains, and what it helps you work on. i really like all of the cute extra animations they put into this, he's always doing something fun. according to what i've seen of the DS Brain Ages, BACT has a little more personality put into it, and i really like that. there's also Brain News, and for this one Dr. K gets a little suit- er, collar and tie. i like these two additions, and while i do have the option to skip them, i never do. they're too cute and charming.

Devilish Reading is our next exercise, and this one's weird. you have to read a paragraph outloud, memorize certain underlined words, and then you're asked to write them out at the end. yeah, notice how i said "read outloud." the 3DS actually picks up your voice for this one, and i'm not really sure how it works. what i do know is that i don't like Devilish Reading very much. not because it's boring or uninteresting, i just don't really like the aspect of having to read the sentences outloud. you also have to write the words out instead of picking from a multiple choice set or typing them with a keyboard, which leads to some situations where the game picks up a letter i didn't mean to write, and counts it as incorrect even though i knew the answer. that's another thing with Brain Age, the writing system. it makes you write out pretty much all your answers to anything, which is pretty cool and works fine for the most part, but sometimes it's a little touchy. (we'll talk more about this later, trust me.)

next up is Devilish Shapes, and it's fairly similar to Devilish Calculations. it's the same concept, except instead of memorizing answers to math problems, you're instead memorizing shapes. i'm a little better at this one than most others, just because i'm a super visual person and can keep images in my headspace a lot better than numbers or words. i've gotten pretty alright at this one, though similar to DCs once you get to those higher levels you'll need to get into a rhythm, otherwise you're just gonna fumble hard.

Devilish Blocks is interesting. you're shown a set of blocks, and one is singled out. you need to memorize it, and select it when prompted. as the levels get higher, you have to do more sets at a time, and i didn't really like it at first. they'd put blocks really close to each other to trip you up, and i couldn't figure out how to get around that. then, at a certain point, i tried to think of a way to get myself to single out the exact block i needed to in my mind, and came up with this. if there were a group of blocks that were really close together, i'd call them a "clump" in my head. if none of the blocks in the clump were singled out, i'd memorize the set by just saying where the block was. (left, right, center, bottom, top, etc) but if a block in the clump was singled out, i'd memorize it by saying "clump," then the direction it was at in the clump. (clump left, clump right, clump top, etc) i know this is a really longwinded explanation, but it's to demonstrate that these exercises challenge you to think in new and different ways, and i really like that about BACT.

the next thing i wanna talk about is Relaxation Mode. now, as of right now i haven't unlocked everything in BACT. i know, reviewing a game before doing everything there is to do is kind of taboo, but i just... REALLY wanna talk about this game. it's been on my mind for a couple weeks and i just don't have the patience to do everything yet. (maybe i'll come back and revise this review once i do get everything...) but that's besides the point. all of this is to say, i only have the first mode in Relaxation Mode unlocked, and that's Blob Blast. but here's the thing, when i started Blob Blast up, i instantly had one thought.

"hey, this is just Wario's Woods but with a touchscreen!!

that's right, i'm a Wario's Woods nut. i got hooked on the game through Animal Crossing's NES games, and it's probably one of my favorite puzzle games, besides Wetrix or Puyo. it's a ton of fun, and Scott The Woz just doesn't know what he's talking about. and like i said, Blob Blast is pretty much just Wario's Woods, except you're using a touchscreen instead of manually moving pieces around with Toad. the music is even a remix of the Wario's Woods theme, which made me SO happy when i realized that. it's always really cool to see one of my favorite NES games acknowledged, and it's in such a weird spot too! WW finally gets some recognition, in Brain Age Concentration Training of all places!

the last Devilish Training mode i have unlocked as of right now is Devilish Cups, and it's... alright. it's your classic shell game, except instead of just needing to memorize the location of one cup, instead you need to keep track of all the cups and select them in a particular order. each cup has a numbered ball under it, and after they get shuffled around you need to pick them in numerical order. simple as that. i dunno, i've never been great at keeping track of multiple things like this, which is probably why i had such a hard time with both this game and Devilish Mice. now, i still don't know what the last mode in Devilish Training is, so maybe once i unlock it i'll make a revision to this review.

alright, we're almost done. to wrap things up, i wanna go over Supplemental Training and Brain Training. ST is, as far as i can tell, most of the game modes from the first Brain Age. there's Calculations x20, Word Attack, By The Numbers, etc. of the ones i've unlocked so far, Word Attack is my favorite and definitely the one i'm the best at. you're shown a word on screen for a brief moment, then you're asked to write it out. i think i'm pretty good at spelling, so i have a fun time with this one. the main challenge is getting the recognition system to pick up the actual letter you want to write. sometimes i'll write lowercase "e" and it'll pick it up as an o, so i have to erase it and write a full uppercase E instead. but once you get into the rhythm of writing out the letters, it's fun to blast through the word as fast as you can. Brain Training, on the other hand, is more of your classic brain games, stuff like Solitaire. so far i only have the first three modes unlocked, and i've got something to say about all three. first up is Block Head, a really fun and creative puzzle game where your main goal is to outsmart an AI. it's really engaging, the way it makes you predict what the AI is gonna do, since its programming is set in hard rules instead of determining things randomly. i would absolutely play a standalone game that's just Block Head puzzles. second is Solitaire, and i think i've already said enough words about that game for one lifetime. the last mode i have unlocked for now is Piano Player, and this one's weird. it's like... almost a rhythm game? there's some scrolling sheet music on the top screen, and you have to play the notes as you're prompted with the keys on the bottom screen. it's kind of hard since the keys are so thin and you have to look down to see the letter you're tapping, but i've never been all that great musically so maybe that's just a me problem.

so that's Brain Age: Concentration Training. i'll admit, going into this game i didn't expect to get that much out of it. i just remembered seeing the devilish form of Dr. K as a kid and i wanted to know the context behind it. and now, only two weeks later, i've made doing my brain training part of my daily routine. the game's surprisingly fun, devilishly challenging, and packed with both content and personality. it holds up astonishingly well for being one of those "casual" DS games, and i absolutely recommend you at least check it out for a little bit.

here's another backloggd review i was proud of. this is probably the longest review i've posted on the site thus far, i remember really getting into this one when i wrote it.

for a long time i said that this was my favorite kirby game, but in reality i'd never gotten much further than like... the first boss. id always beat king golem, and then have zero clue where to go. i was... a KATAM poser. (dramatic sting)

well! at long last, i decided to buckle down and finally finish this game, and like... DAMN this game rocks. i was right in saying this is my favorite kirby, because it's awesome. i also made sure to go through the game in multiplayer since that's this game's main focus, and i did so with my wonderful roommate. (thanks tori!)

the main draw of KATAM, besides the multiplayer, is the unique progression and structure. instead of being a level-by-level platformer like other kirby games, KATAM instead goes for a more open-ended approach, giving you a huge, interconnected map for you to explore. this might be a weird comparison, but it almost kinda felt like how Yume Nikki is with its map design, starting you off in a nexus of different entrances and letting you choose where you wanna go, what you want to explore, and what order you wanna do stuff in. it's a really fun and unique take on kirby, and makes this game stand out in a series that, while great and fun in its own right, can often feel a little samey from game to game.

but this openness in the design is probably why the game has such a heavy focus on multiplayer, you and your friends can split up and explore separately from each other, which makes the game a LOT more fun with others. KATAM is built off of the engine that was used for the GBA remake of Kirby's Adventure, that being Nightmare in Dreamland. NiDL had a similar multiplayer mode, though it's not quite as fun since everyone has to stay on the same screen and wait for everyone to be together before going through doors and all that. it makes sense for things to be that way of course, NiDL is a much more linear game after all, but that doesn't change the fact that it still just isn't as engaging. on the other hand, in KATAM it's fun to have everyone going their own ways and finding new stuff, and it makes that colossal world map a lot less daunting than at first glance. there's only one issue with the multiplayer in the game, at least to me, and it's that when one person pauses, it pauses the game for everyone. this was probably because it'd be hard to have the pause menu open AND keep the game running at the same time on the hardware, while also keeping everyone in sync, so i understand why they did it, but it brings the pace of the game down to a slog when everyone is out and about, trying to navigate an area and constantly opening and closing the map. though, to be fair, this really only applies whenever you're going for something like 100% and are just trying to fill out the map, which is only gonna be near or after the end of the game. either that, or you're trying to get back to a place that you died at, and they sort of made up for that by including the phone feature. every kirby has their own phone, which acts as a semi fast-travel mechanic. holding down L will take you back to the nexus, and holding down R will call every other kirby, allowing them to teleport directly to you. this is a super useful feature when confronting bosses, hitting an obstacle that requires more than one kirby, or just joining up with someone you wanna explore with. it's a really good idea, and is executed perfectly ingame.

another thing you'll notice is that KATAM is HARD. at least, in comparison to other kirby games, which are normally known for being pretty chill and relaxed in terms of difficulty. that's probably because this wasn't a solo HAL labs project, this time a branch of Capcom known as Flagship worked on development, as well as good ol' DIMPS, most well known for their um... wonderful little classic known as Sonic 4. Flagship developed stuff like Resident Evil 2, Dino Crisis 2, the Zelda Oracle games, and... hey, would you look at that, they also made Four Swords! something tells me they have a knack for making GBA games with a focus on four-player co-op. and also survival horror. but their work on development definitely rubs off on the difficulty, because this game is gonna kick your ass. the environments are a lot tighter and more cramped than other kirby games, meaning that enemies can gang up on you and melt your health bar, and the bosses are no slouch either. again, this is probably because the game expects you to be playing with multiple people, and the difficulty is adjusted to account for that, but even then we still struggled pretty hard at certain points. though i'd be lying if i said that it wasn't funny to peek over at someone else's screen, only to see them getting steamrolled by some evil enemy placements. (i swear, they went totally overboard with the Roly-Poly placements, those things are satan incarnate. they seem like they wouldn't be a big deal, but their movement is so wonky and unpredictable, and they like to jump right in the way of you at just the wrong times...)

while exploring the Mirror Dimension, you may come across a few chests. these chests can contain collectibles such as area maps, spray paints, health upgrades, sheet music, or just plain ol' recovery items. i always got excited whenever i walked into a room and saw a chest sitting nearby, wondering what was in it, how i was gonna get to it, if it was even gonna be worth it... i dunno, maybe that's weird, but it was always a little treat to see one to go after. not to mention, chests are a main thing that count towards completion percentage, so getting one also made that funny number go up, which my brain ALWAYS likes. i really like the spraypaints, they let you change the color of your kirby from the extras menu on the file select screen, and switching up your color is always a fun way to give your player character a little more flavor. my only issue with this is that you have to reset the game to actually change it, which is a little annoying when you're playing with others and get a new color you like, but it ain't that big of a deal. the health upgrades have a similar quirk actually, if you find one, it won't be given to other players until you reset the game, which is pretty weird. i also found that the big map chests were pretty well hidden and hard to find, which is a little counterintuitive. at least to me, getting the map in a new area is always my first priority, but sometimes we'd go a whole area without finding it. one especially bad case was in radish ruins, where the last thing we did in that area WAS getting the map. a little annoying, but i can let it slide.

one of the main draws of kirby is always the copy abilities, so how are they here? really good, actually! as previously stated, this game is built off of Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland, so a lot of the copy abilities are carried over from that game, as well as introducing some new ones here and there. in terms of new abilities introduced in KATAM, there's Cupid, Magic, Mini, Missile, and Smash Bros. Cupid lets you fly around in a much more controlled manner compared to Kirby's usual float, as well as allowing you to shoot arrows. Magic lets you spin a wheel once for a random effect, which is a little gimmicky but it's still a fun time no less and a neat little reward for beating a boss. Mini is a weird one, it feels almost more like a handicap that's used for some interesting challenges. it makes Kirby small and takes away your ability to float and inhale. it's usually used in very specific areas to let you pass through narrow gaps, which have a challenging room and a chest at the end as a reward. my favorite example of this is one room where you have to get Mini to enter a narrow gap, but then you have to move this heavy stone block using your inhale, which can only be done by getting rid of Mini and going back to normal Kirby. then, after the block, there's another narrow gap. so what the hell are you supposed to do? well, there's these enemies called Droppy that steal your ability and turn into the enemy that gives that power. in the room with the stone block, there's a Droppy, so you have to let it steal Mini from you, move the heavy block, then inhale the Droppy to get your power back and get through the narrow gap. stuff like this is really cool, and shows the creativity of those people over at Flagship. there's also Missile, which lets you turn into (you guessed it) a missile, which can be navigated in any direction using the D-Pad and explodes on contact with any wall or enemy. it's a fun idea, though the required contact with the enemy and lack of i-frames after impact often just leads to you eating shit after landing a hit, especially on bosses. finally, we have Smash Bros. this gives Kirby his moveset from, well, Super Smash Bros., and MAN this is such a cool idea. of course they'd do this! it makes so much sense! each of his moves are already moves from other copy abilities anyways, so it doesn't take too much work to implement. not only that, a lot of these moves are used for interacting with obstacles like hard blocks, ropes, and hammer stakes, so it's super versatile for exploration. not to mention, the Smash counterparts of each move do increased damage, ESPECIALLY the hammer, which doubles the power of the highest damaging copy ability in the game. i always thought that Smash Kirby originated from the New Challenge Stages from Kirby's Dream Collection on Wii, so i was pretty surprised to see it here of all places. and of course, the cherry on top is that you get the ability from defeating Master Hand. nice.

alright, i'm gonna put everything i couldn't find a spot to talk about in a little section at the end here. first, one thing that kept annoying me a little throughout the game is that there's these enemies that wrap around some doors, and will run away and take the door with them if you run near them or attack them, and won't come back until you leave the room and come back. i couldn't figure these guys out at first, and it took me a while to realize that you had to float, then spit out a gust at them point blank to get them every time. though, even when you know that, it's still pretty tedious and gets annoying when they start putting them in rooms with one way doors on both sides. another thing i wanna talk about is netplay! you might be thinking, "i wanna play this game with multiplayer, but i don't have the necessary hardware to do so. i'll just emulate it and do netplay!" and to you i say, good luck. setting up GBA link cable stuff is already pretty weird to do on emulator when you're just doing it locally on one computer. getting it setup to do it over the internet was a nightmare to figure out for me, and i just gave up and did a weird, roundabout solution that i knew would work instead. i'd like to think im pretty tech savvy, but anytime something asks me to port forward for any reason, i just give up, it's too much for me. if you were wondering what my weird roundabout solution was, it was to get the link stuff setup on one computer using multiple instances of Visual Boy Advance M, then having my friends download Parsec and connect to my computer using that. then each person would set up their own controller for each instance of VBAM, and it'd be good to go. i know this is like, the worst possible way to do GBA netplay, but im stupid and after about an hour and a half of trying different things with a friend i just gave up and did what i knew would work. the last thing i'll talk about in this segment is the sub games. while i prefer KATAM in almost every way over NiDL, i think NiDL takes the trophy when it comes to sub games. which, to be fair, is probably just because of nostalgia, but i just couldn't get into KATAM's sub games. it also doesn't have Meta Knightmare or Extra mode, though that might be for the best, since im pretty sure making someone beat KATAM with no continues or only 3 HP is considered a war crime in some countries.

overall, Kirby & the Amazing Mirror is everything i hyped it up to be in my 8 year old mind and so much more. the metroidvania type structure is super unique and engaging, the multiplayer adds a lot to an already great game, it's got a kick to it that'll challenge you all the way through, and it's just plain fun. if you want a new and interesting take on Kirby that's gonna really test your skills, check out Amazing Mirror for sure, it's awesome.

as an important note, this review was lifted directly from my backloggd, which is where most of my reviews for games specifically end up going. the Mr. Bones review was lifted from there too, so if you wanna go check that page out, click here. and now that that's been addressed, no more stalling, here's me talking about Persona 1 for way too damn long.

alright ive got a LOT to say about this one. persona 1 was a fuckin baller game, im so glad i finally played this and i had a great time overall. it's got its problems, yes, but i can excuse them for what it brings to the table in terms of story, atmosphere, characters and an awesome negotiation system that i personally think is a lot more interesting than mainline smt or the later personas.

(before we begin, i must clarify that i ended up on the SEBEC route for this playthrough. i also played revelations: persona before the psp version, although i only got up to about the end of the SEBEC building there.)

first, i wanna begin with what i loved about this game. the first two personas (first three if you count both the games in the persona 2 duology as their own separate entities) are a lot closer to SMT than the modern personas, those being p3 and onward, and i like that format a lot more. they feel like more traditional rpgs, and i just mesh with that way more than the social sim thing the modern personas have going on. i also think this game's presentation is impeccable, the spritework on display here is super clean and good looking, and i've always really liked the first person dungeon crawler thing that early smt has going on, although i acknowledge that it isn't for everyone. each enemy has loads of unique animations for specific moves, and i really like a lot of the persona designs, mokosh and gozu-tennoh are some ones that come to mind. the protagonists were great, i got super attached to em, especially nanjo and brown. nanjo's arc with yamaoka was really captivating to me, and i liked brown's character development, it's a pretty silly concept (if you know you know) but it didn't dive too deep into that silliness and kept things pretty grounded in the end. i also think that the story and setting have this really surreal and unique atmosphere that's super reminiscent of something like SMT if... which makes sense, considering that if... is usually associated with being somewhat of a proto-persona. i think that being inside a character's mind made for an undeniably unique atmosphere that had a lot of pretty wild moments, with stuff like the harem queen, tesso's fight, and alaya cavern's scene where the protagonist literally talks to himself, it's got this sort of creepy vibe to it that i can't get enough of. i also like that this game wasn't afraid to get freaky with it at times, pandora's first form comes to mind, that shit was NUTS to see for the first time. i also didn't find myself needing a guide all that often, the game does a good job of letting you know where to go which i was not expecting. i only ever used a guide to figure out where to go when i hadn't played for a couple days and couldn't remember what the last story beat was, which is pretty impressive for an rpg from 1996. and like i said in my preamble, i think the negotiation system here is super fucking good, it's a lot more intuitive than mainline smt and feels a lot less reliant on luck. if you know your enemy's personality types well enough, you can somewhat intuit what the best things to say would be to get what you want, whether that be a card, a certain status effect, taking an enemy out of the battle or getting a certain item,and it feels like it's a lot more intertwined with the combat than something like mainline smt, where negotiation and combat feel VERY isolated from each other. unfortunately, with that said, this leads me into one of the things i like the least about persona 1, and just persona in general.

let's get into my issues with this game now. issue one, i really don't like the fusion mechanics at play here, and that kind of applies to all the personas, from what ive seen of them. unlike mainline smt, you dont directly recruit and fuse demons, instead you get their card, which you then fuse to create personas, which are what you equip in battle. personas determine what skills you have, your stat distribution, and even stuff like your weaknesses and resistances. if you've played smt3, think of personas sort of like magatamas from that game. i think that that part of this system is pretty cool, and i dont really have any issues with that. my main problem comes from the fact that once you create a persona, you're stuck with it, and you cant use it to fuse another persona or anything like that. that, along with the lack of a compendium, makes creating the exact persona you want a REALLY frustrating task at times, because for every persona you make, you have to go out and find the demon you want the card of, negotiate with them to get it, and that's not even accounting for if youre the right level to get the card in the first place. it just makes things needlessly tedious, and on top of that, certain personas require you to get a special totem to fuse them, some of which can only be gotten by maxing out the rank of another persona, then returning them to get the item they turn into. ranking up personas takes EONS here, and it's what made my endgame grind take so damn long. speaking of that endgame grind, during that i found out that being able to summon personas isn't determined by your character's level, its determined by their persona level. i went 141 hours in this game without fully understanding this mechanic, and it doesn't feel intuitive or necessary at all. in normal smt, the demons you can summon are just determined by your main characters level, which makes perfect sense. here, they feel like it's necessary to split them up into two separate levels, which just feels dumb. i also didn't really vibe with the battle system, it seems cool in concept, having to take your party's locations into account in order to be able to attack enemies with certain attacks, but in practice it just felt like more of a hassle than anything. this leads me directly into my next section, stuff that they changed in the psp version from the ps1 version!

so like i said in that little note near the beginning, i started out playing the ps1 version of this game back in like february or something, and played the game for about 40 hours and only got up to around the end of the sebec building. the ps1 version, while being a really fascinating creature that i'd love to delve into at some point, felt crazy archaic and slow at times. one thing that especially confused me was the battle system, sometimes i'd go to attack and it'd say things were out of range and give no further explanation. in the psp version, they added markers on the ground to show your attack ranges, which is a great addition that really helped me to understand things more. the psp version is also a lot faster in general, ESPECIALLY in battle. the battles in the ps1 version drove me nuts, every animation, while being pretty cool and full of character and great sprite work, were pretty lengthy and slow, and just made every encounter feel like a slog. the psp version speeds things up by giving an option to skip battle animations, which is greatly appreciated. of course, the most well known thing about the ps1 version is all of its crazy localization changes, which i find endlessly fascinating. they changed so many character designs, names, and even took out an entire route for some reason. the script translation was also pretty rough, and a lot of dialog just doesn't hit the same. that being said, i think the ps1 version's attempts to "westernize" persona are really interesting, especially with the name changes. if you ever get the chance, go look at the cutting room floor page for persona 1, it's a great read. with all that said, the psp version de-localizes the game, keeping things pretty much entirely intact from the original japanese ps1 version. the script is a lot better and sounds more natural, the characters retain their names and designs, and the story is fully intact. but... i dunno, i kinda like how shitty the ps1 version is. it doesn't help that the psp version has a completely different (and, in my opinion, lamer) soundtrack that's meant to be more in line with the later persona games. (although it definitely grew on me as i played, especially Bloody Destiny, that song fuckin rocks) they also changed a lot of the menus that i thought were pretty cool looking in the original, but even i can admit that they're just a lot more practical in the psp version. but like... i dunno, i kinda liked how shitty and weird the ps1 version was. i'll never not call nanjo "nate", or brown "brad", those names just sorta stuck with me more. they also added all these 3D prerendered cutscenes in the psp version that just... don't look all that great to me. to be fair, the ps1 version also has a handful of 3D prerendered cutscenes with philemon, but like those are kinda cute and charming with how jank they look. in the famous words of MarshSMT, the psp version's cutscenes look like a canadian cartoon show from the 2000s. also, this is a SUPER minor nitpick from me, but they changed some of the battle cry sound effects in the psp version, and maki no longer says "you're dead!" when she summons her persona for a spell, and i dont like that :(

overall, persona 1, while flawed in a few areas, is ABSOLUTELY worth your time, and really struck a chord with me that not many of the other personas really did. if you're willing to put up with some weird mechanics and look up a few resources (specifically the persona 1 wikidot, that thing was essential in my playthough) you're sure to get a lot out of this game. i know it looks like i had a lot more bad to say than good about p1 but that's just cuz i went a bit more in depth with those points, and honestly, a lot of those are just my personal preferences. if you like modern persona, you've got to at least give this game a shot, it has a lot of merit and can still be enjoyed today.

you know, i've never really been one for direct, head-to-head competiton. and with a deck of cards, pretty much every game you can think of is some sort of contest between multiple people. but while you guys are challenging each other and "socializing," i've been sitting over here playing the BEST card game, Solitaire. with it's earliest recorded sightings being somewhere in the late 1700's, Solitaire is easy to call a certified classic, it's also easy to call it by its other names, like "Klondike" or "Patience," if you're some kind of weirdo. it's the easiest card game to get into, since you don't need friends to play it. instead of being about bluffing or luck or whatever, Solitaire is pure planning and skill, and that's why i like it. except for when you get dealt a bad card setup. but like, for the MOST part it's all skill.

now, the classic Solitaire experience is best enjoyed with a deck of cards and a good idea of the rules, but there's plenty of different e-Solitaires in the world to check out. some that come to mind are the classic Windows version, the one in Last Call BBS, the version in Brain Age: Concentration Training (which is another game i want to cover in this section... some other time, though) and Polyrhythm Mania's Built To Scale Solitaire. for today's review however, i'll be talking about the classic version everyone knows and loves, so let's delve right in.

Solitaire is played like this. the part outlined in red is your foundation piles, and is your win condition for the game. you must stack each card into the foundation piles in order of number, so you'd go Ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., and they all must be of the same suit in each pile. so in the example photo, you could move the Ace of Spades to the foundation piles to start the Aces foundation. the part outlined in green is the tableau, and is where most of the action happens. you see, to access the cards you want to put into your foundation, you'll have to find them in the tableau first, and make sure they aren't beneath any other cards. so in the example photo, you would only be able to move the cards that are on the top of the stack in the tableau. but where can you move them? good question! you can only move cards in the tableau to be on top of cards of the opposite color, and in descending order. so in the example photo, you would be able to put the red 4 on top of the black 5. but you couldn't put the black 5 on top of the black 6, since they're not opposite colors. you could put the black 5 on top of the red 6, however. but let's say you can't make anymore moves in the tableau. what then? well that's where the stock pile comes in, which is outlined in yellow. you take a card from the top of the stock and place it in the blue outline, or the waste pile. you can then move the card at the top of the waste pile as if it were in the tableau, accounting for any of the rules that enforces. the game of Solitaire concludes when every card has been put in its proper foundation. it's definitely a lot to remember, but once you've played a few games, it really does begin to click. if you're having trouble remembering the rules, my suggestion is to play a couple rounds of e-Solitaire where the rules are strictly enforced.

Solitaire is best enjoyed when you've got nothing else to do. it's kinda like Minesweeper, in that sense. but i don't mean that in a bad way towards either of them, believe me. moreso i mean, it's something that's simple to start up, get into, and drop in an instant if you need to do something else. but it's addicting enough that if you're trying to pass a long amount of time, you aren't gonna get super bored of it. it's some really good stuff. you feel so unbelievably smart when you're struggling to see where you could go next with a game, only to finally figure out a solution and finish up each foundation after that. Solitaire is a classic for a reason.

everyone has their favorite source of caffine. reasonable people go with coffee, gamers say Red Bull is the best (because their sponsors would kill them if they didn't) and the disgusting monsters of the world say... well, Monster. but you know me, i can't say anything NORMAL is my favorite. i've gotta go with something WEIRD. that's right, we got the easy things to review out the way first. sure, i copy-pasted a review of Mr. Bones from my Backloggd and wrote a halfbaked review of an album i've been addicted to for my first two reviews, but now we're reviewing FOOD. because today, we'll be talking about my favorite energy drink, the V8+ Sparkling Energy drinks. specifically the Orange Pineapple flavor.

so i know i made a big deal out of this being weird and all, but realistically i didn't pick this as my favorite just cuz it's not popular or whatever. back in 2020, my mom picked these up for me one time on a whim, and i sort of... got super attached to them. i like my fruity juice, ok? Coffee is wicked bitter, Red Bull tastes like pure, concentrated sugar (which, big surprise, is not something i enjoy tasting NOR the idea of putting into my body) and Monster probably has some sort of actual monster in it that'll burst out of my organs if i drink any of it. the V8 Sparkling Energy drinks, however, feel a lot more mellow. i mean, no energy drink is ever going to be explicitly good for you, there's no denying that. but it feels like it's the perfect balance of palatable and least likely to take years off my life. now, that really only applies to the carbonated variants. when you just have the pure, no-carbonation V8 Energy drinks, that's where things get kinda rocky. they leave this really grody aftertaste that i just... do NOT like. the carbonation serves an important role in my enjoyment of this drink, because not only does it cover up that kinda grody aftertaste, it blends with the flavor in a very harmonious way that makes it so much more enjoyable than it would be otherwise. i mean... i'll be honest, i've never really been a huge fan of other V8 drinks. they all tend to have that same gross, bitter aftertaste that i really don't mesh with. but for some reason, adding carbonation to it changes the entire experience for me.

i mentioned my favorite flavor of the drink is the Orange Pineapple flavor, but there's a few other variants too. there's Strawberry Kiwi and Blueberry Pomegranate which are both quite good, but my favorite besides Orange Pineapple has to be Black Cherry. that shit rocks, anything black cherry flavored is always good. i mean... it kind of treads into that territory of "this tastes great, but i think i should fear for my life if i continue to consume this." and unfortunately, it seems to me that this flavor is also discontinued as of now. i seem to recall there also being a mango flavor at some point, but that may have also been discontinued. as of right now, the only flavors i can find of V8 Sparkling Energy are Orange Pineapple, Strawberry Kiwi, and the occasional box of Blueberry Pomegranate, and i can only ever find them at Kroger. any time i'm on vacation or go on a road trip, i can NEVER find these things anywhere, so i'm tempted to say they may only be limited to local Krogers as well. besides that, you can also find them quite often at QuikTrip gas stations, though they're only sold individually there. which brings me to an unfortunate point... the price. these guys are gonna run you a pretty penny if you keep on getting them, which is unfortunate to say the least. a box of 4 at Kroger goes for around 6 bucks a box, which is definitely better than other energy drinks (Monster is around 9 bucks for a 4 pack and RedBull is... jesus, 10 bucks for 4?! i mean, i know that's for 12 fl oz cans, but even for the 8.4 fl oz boxes that's still 8.50!) but you can get a 9.6 oz tub of Folger's coffee grounds for around 6.40, which will most likely last you the month. if you drink one can of V8 a day like i do, each box is only gonna last you around 4 days, and that's if your roommate doesn't steal one without telling you (>:[) and if you're after fruit juice more than anything, you can get a 10 pack of Capri Suns for like... 3.49. which is pretty much nothing. your best bet is to do what i do, and only get the V8s when they're on sale, or you have a coupon. but with the state of things... well...

you may have already been able to piece it together, but V8 Sparkling Energy is probably on the verge of getting discontinued. at both QT and Kroger, the selection has been getting smaller and smaller, and i know i'm the only one buying them because each time i go they look practically untouched. not to mention, they changed the designs of the cans to be a lot worse and less interesting to look at, which probably means they're trying to appeal to a wider audience out of desperation. i mean, look at the image above. this is the current can design. it looks boring as hell and if i wasn't already a fan of these, i sure as hell wouldn't bat an eye at it with the can looking like this. now look at the old can designs.



now look at these guys. they look awesome! and this image proves that there even used to be another flavor, Lemon Lime! i'm sure it's still in circulation, but i haven't even seen it at any stores i've ever been to. of course, you can always order them online, but like... who the hell wants to order food online? you don't know where it's been! i'd rather buy it from a grocery store, where it's... probably been touched by several peoples' greasy hands. okay bad example but still. apparently Walmart sells the Lemon Lime flavor, but they jacked up the prices so high its comparable to the obscene RedBull prices i listed earlier. so yeah, my point is, i'm probably gonna either have to find a new energy drink to tolerate, or just drop caffine altogether. and honestly, i think i might just go with the latter. i've been a lot more conscious about my caffine intake as of late, and i'm really looking to cut back on that. but i'll always love V8+ Sparkling Energy, and it'll always hold a special place in my heart.

...what i WON'T miss is that god-awful name. good lord, what kind of name is "V8+ Sparkling Energy," huh?! no wonder these things are going extinct, you have a naming convention to rival the likes of "Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE"! what purpose does the "+" serve here?! i mean, maybe it's to indicate that it's got caffine in it? but i think putting "Energy" at the end would serve that purpose just fine! come ON V8, you can clearly think of better names than that, you have another beverage called "Splash!" that's a catchy name, you couldn't do your energy drinks any justice? good grief!

a while ago i was browsing through the comments on an upload of the soundtrack for Mario Artist: Polygon Studio and i saw someone compare one of the songs to an album called Autoditacker by Mouse on Mars. i'm personally very fond of the Polygon Studio soundtrack and i was kind of craving something else like it at the time, so i decided to give it a shot. and man, i was totally blown away by this. i've really opened myself up to a lot of different types of electronic as of the past year or so, and this instantly clicked for me. the sort of soft, pulsing beats of its opening track, Sui Shop, instantly captured me, and the atmosphere of tracks like Juju kept me hungry for more. Twift Shoeblade has these really punchy drums throughout the whole track, and its sort of crunchy lead synth is something i simply cannot get enough of, it sounds sort of like something a futuristic skateboarder would listen to and i'm all for it. Tamagnocchi has this bouncing synth sound that i always bob my head to each time it comes up in the song, and it also has a lot of soft, plucky guitars in it that work really well for the vibe its going for. Dark fx is the first really different track, having more of a focus on strange vocal samples, and that's something i always really dig in my electronic. there's this sort of humming sound that comes in around 1:13 that i really enjoy, and it works super well as a backing track. Scat is a really bouncy track that sorta makes you wanna get up and move around, and i often listen to it when i'm doing housework or other such chores. Tux & Damask has more of those punchy drums i talked about in Twift Shoeblade, as well as some panning synths that sort of juxtapose them. Sehnsud is the most atmospheric track on the album by far, and for me personally it paints a picture of an electronic swamp or something. X flies, besides being a really funny name for a song, also has more of those humming, groaning synths, as well as some tappy drums that i really like. Schnick Schnack Melt Made has more weird vocal samples like Dark fx did, as well as more of that "electronic swamp" feeling i got from Sehnsud. and for the last track, Maggots hell wings, the drums come in at full force and are now more typical break samples that work well with the warbling electronic synths. overall, definitely one of my favorite electronic albums ive ever heard. thanks, random youtube comment, for introducing me to this, cuz it rocks.

dude mr bones fucking rocked. i will admit, yes, there were some rough points. almost all of the levels in disc 2 were kinda whatever, and some levels (namely icy lake and shadow monster) were pretty unintuitive and frustrating, but like... just because a game has some bad levels doesnt make it completely worthless.the music here is phenomenal, and i really like the psychedelic theming they go for in a lot of the visuals. the fact that pretty much everything except your player character is prerendered makes for an undeniably unique and striking look that i simply can't get enough of. i genuinely love how the environments here look, theyre really good. and like... damn dude, glass shards and bigbones are my favorite levels in the game. glass shards is this really challenging platforming stage thath as this super chill psych rock song in it, and the narration in this song just makes me feel some kinda way. bigbones is another level with immaculate vibes, i really love the visual of it zooming out whenever you get another piece of your body, that shit is so raw.

i found it interesting how this game handled its levels. going into it, you expect it to just be another shitty 2D platformer from the 90s, but it doesn't really focus on that for more than a few levels. after the bat levels, the only platforming focused level is glass shards, and after that its all unique stuff. is all of that unique stuff good? not exactly, but its still interesting to see, and like... i dunno, it was a little more tolerable for me. maybe that's just cuz i'm more resilient when it comes to games like this, but it was definitely not as bad as a lot of people make it out to be. and like, i think the bonetism mechanic is kinda cool, or at the very least it's unique.

enough about the gameplay though. i feel like a lot of people just focus entirely on that and forget to talk about all the charm this game has in its other aspects. i genuinely love the way mr. bones' voice actor talks, he's so chill and cool, you KNOW he'd be an awesome guy to hang out with. i also find all of the cutscenes in the game to be fun and entertaining, and even in some cases kinda beautiful. (namely, the one after bigbones)

man. i think something a lot of people dont get is that you can like a bad game. it's okay to like bad games, you dont need to say you like it for ironic reasons or "its so bad its good" just say you like it. thats okay. my point is mr bones is one of my favorite games ive played this year