Happy Birthday! It definitely seems to be a popular time of year: Between April 16 and May 8, there are four birthdays in my family and at least four within this community! The comically large pretzel sounds amazing right now, and it’s my new belated birthday wish (mine was Tuesday)...

Congratulations again, and Happy Birthday again, too! That Chess analogy is a good one for Into the Breach - it’s a good way to consider the procedural nature of each game as a new Chess match you’re trying to win, and each playthrough is a different game (as opposed to each map, which is more like a subset of a game).

This is my last free weekend for the Year of May begins at work; other than Mother’s Day, I think I’ll be working for the next 30+ days straight starting Monday, and this weekend I’ll be playing some Rocket League in an effort to get Silver Season Ranking before it ends May 14th. I earned my Bronze Goal Explosion, so…

Holding a button and watching an animation is half QTE and half what most video game playing is about. The differences are the length of each: Make it short, and it’s Mario jumping into a question block; make it long and it’s Press X to Pay Respects, but it’s turtles all the way down...

This weekend, I’m flying to a…

I did enjoy the simplicity of the early system simulators; I think the last one I played in earnest was Anno 1701 on the DS (I also have SimCityDS, but honestly, it interrupted things too much with advice and unskippable year-end reviews. I have a bit more patience now, so maybe it could work for me if I started it…

Detective Pikachu translates what the Pokemon say for you, so suddenly you get attitude and charm from them and they are far more real. You'll probably get all that when you take your kid to the movie, but if you want to see it in game form, it's almost worth it for that, and they easily set up a sequel...

Wellll, isn’t this serendipitous! I just came over to talk about the game I finished this last week, Detective Pikachu! More interactive novel than spicy sleuthing, it not only prepared me for the upcoming movie, but has given me a personal interest in these things called Pokemon for the first time.

The original came…

DMC V really just makes me want to play Bayonetta, Castlevania, or even Doom 2016 or the original on my PS2, because I already own them and I can get my fix on the theme without having to invest in something new. Sounds terrible, but at the same time it at least means I’m happy with what I have in that arena.

Yeah it has Armored Core seeping through its pores! I loved that I could retrieve a new right arm from the battlefield and add it to my unit, but make that arm a completely different color scheme and style so it feels like I really got it from somewhere else.

Urge to buy PS4 and VR...growing...

I’ve been on the fence for years about getting Link’s Awakening DX on the 3DS, and I finally bit the bullet thanks to the impending remake. It’s jumped ahead of Kingdom Hearts 3D for the time being, and other than one little hiccup on not seeing that some stones are, in fact, moveable in the early game, it’s going…

This description of Kingdom Hearts is exactly why I kept pushing through Codename STEAM earlier this month: the idea that these tales of both cultural legend and fiction eventually CAN escape into the public domain and used by anyone for any reason. I want to support that creativity.

Happy Australia Day! Good to see you here! Still love your Hitman videos!

I can tell you what I’m finished with this week - Codename STEAM. The final turn-based boss in that game is a strategic impossibility - your only way of defeating it is to hammer through attempt after attempt, hoping to stumble upon a combination that falls together into a Pyrric victory of attrition.

Once I got over some of the trope-y stuff, I really started to embrace the charm and silliness of it, and I really like the use of Public Domain characters. It’s experimental in so many ways, we’ll never see anything quite like it again, and that also keeps me going; it’s a small piece of video game history.

No joke, I’m seriously back in Codename S.T.E.A.M. and finally hitting a pace of play.


Things I like: No RPG-like elements of experience. I don’t like having certain characters buffed simply because they’d done more missions than others, then being forced through stronger enemies to either grind new characters in…

“...I discourage easily.” For me, it’s not only in gameplay, but also in theme. I need to go back to Hollow Knight and try for a third time, but the difficulty combined with the melancholy (there’s whimsy there, but not enough to overcome the general lack of joy) doesn’t really inspire me to return, especially when…

Thanks for the description, and if things can work out financially in the next year or so, I might just invest in a Vive kit - my wife and I had the idea of throwing a “VR Party”, clearing out space in the living room and inviting over friends, family, and neighbors to try out different experiences (including Elite:…

I think that’s what I liked most about Breath of the Wild - the Castle was waiting for you to be ready psychologically rather than for you to be ready by some Boolean variable in the code...I prepared myself over 100 hours before I went in, and accidentally swam straight to Ganon’s lair...but finished it my first…

I envy you playing Elite: Dangerous on a Vive! It would make long-haul flying much easier, I think, so I’m excited to hear how it goes for you! Enjoy, and can’t wait to hear how much exploration cash you make, and what it’s going to do to your reputation if you sell it in one place.