SP games, especially indies, are over here like “don’t call it a comeback, we’ve been here for years.”

When I say I’m looking for a convincing simulation, I’m talking about AI players understanding ball spacing, help defense, reacting correctly to a shot going up, not gambling for steals like it’s still 2001, avoiding dribbling into midrange jump shots (no self-respecting NBA coach does that on offense anymore),…

I’d be willing to put up with stylistic differences between a video game and NBA basketball if it weren’t, y’know, a licensed NBA basketball game.

Dear gods, that is so far from absolutely anything of note that any thought of “what a fun little story, might be a fun road trip...” is instantly dissolved in “that is so far away from anything worth discussing and the road to it so soul-crushing that it makes the world of The Stand look like pre-pandemic midtown…

Stoker? I hardly even know her!

Women in bikinis in hot tubs at a public pool don’t generally solicit ‘donations’ from gawkers passing by.

Transylvanian woman, you make me so Hungary and I wanna Dacia. Ain’t no cure for my Romania.

I’m thinking a lot of those girls don’t like their thirsty viewers, but they still turn them on.

The problem I have with NBA 2K these days isn’t the incessant cash grabs, since if you don’t play multiplayer, that stuff can all be ignored with no effect on the experience in any way.

If Twitch wants to be softcore Onlyfans, that’s great...as long as they’re up front about it.

As with every Friday, getting the bleeding obvious out of the way is the first step. Got 32 games left in the season in Super Mega Baseball 3 and am still getting used to the higher difficulty level I’ve set for myself (from 50 to 53), which is having a noticeable effect on how little the game wants me to be able to…

As Bill James pointed out, when you’re a player-manager, if you know which games you’re going to bet on your team to win, you can save the bullpen or give your guys rest days or otherwise basically throw a prior game in order to give yourself the best chance to win the ones you’ve bet on, so it’s not just ‘confidence…

“insert shocking and meaningful baseball metaphor here.”

Sadly, where I went to school, the stupid people in classrooms had their own collective noun:

I just got an email from the Washington state Department of Health that I’m now eligible to get the vaccine, so now it’s just down to me making the appointment(s) and otherwise trying to not get dead before the protection kicks in.

A sound chip as legit terrible as the Mega Drive/Genesis sound chip has no business putting out music that good. (seriously, imagine Mega Man composers trying to use that chip and making it sound like anything other than total crap. Or—barf—Aria di Mezzo Carattere from FFVI on the Genesis chip.)

Unless something is so utterly borked as to be beyond all hope of redemption, there’s always going to be someone who has a good experience with it.

Nintendo’s inability to play well with others is how the PlayStation became a thing. They’re kind of historically bad at it.

Gran Turismo 4 remains my favorite console racing game to this day, and I’d love to be able to play it on modern hardware. There was some great stuff on PS2. Hell, NFL 2K5 is still better than any of the last 16 editions of Madden.

At some point the Library of Congress is going to have to create a video game version of the National Film Preservation Board and its companion National Film Registry, to preserve (in the film board’s words) games that are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”