It’s more than a little bit of a stretch to refer to a critic doing his job as bullying. I feel the same way as him about the difficulty gatekeeping and appreciate it being mentioned in the review. Obviously it’s the developers’ prerogative, but that doesn’t mean that players have to like it.

Or “the developers of this game felt the need to make fun of me because of how I choose to play it.” It’s not a war crime or anything, but it’s a subtle push against new players, and it’s a frequent pet peeve of mine.

I’m very intrigued by this, even as a person firmly in the ‘does not enjoy FPS games’ camp. It’s really inspiring to see developers really starting to get experimental with their shooter games after such a long period of boring mainstream success; I think the idea of having a gameplay element connected to the…

There are a billion ways to pay homage to the series’ history without calling players who prefer lower difficulties babies. Throw in a Dopefish or something, instead.

It’s very much an explicit sequel, so anybody who was alive at the end of New Order is still up and kicking here (including Brian Bloom as Blazkowicz, still tossing off those surprisingly poignant internal monologues.) You even get to choose at the start whether you’re in the Wyatt or Fergus timeline.

There are a lot…

I’m not sure what you mean by uber-masculine; Blazkowicz isn’t, say, Duke Nukem, and if the game codes toward traditional “male” values, it’s more in a “a man does right by his family and his country” manner than sheer “Come get some, you fucking Nazi pussies” machismo. I’m just disinterested in games offering up…

“The New Colossus is as subtle in its approach to politics as a punch to white supremacist Richard Spencer’s idiotic, asshole face; you’ll overhear two stormtroopers debating their right to be Nazis without getting similarly decked (right before shifting to their hopes of being placed on a Death Squad together), and…

Thanks so much for getting this Review in Progress out today - I’m beyond hyped for this game and reading about it will help me make it through to the end of my shift tomorrow, when I can jump right into it after work.

Drunk Facetaco used to occasionally order things and have them gift wrapped so it would be a very nice surprise for Sober Facetaco when I got them. Given that I was in the Navy at the time and shipping could sometimes take up to 6 months, it was often entirely unexpected.

Last night, I had a nightmare that Nintendo had made Super Mario Odyssey into a “map game” like Assassin’s Creed or Dragon Age: Inquisition. I had Mario chasing after markers on his radar, which led him to tedious micro-challenges. “I wanted an open-world Mario game,” I thought to myself, “but not like this!”

There exists a small insect monster which the game spawns underground in clusters during world creation, in the same way it places veins of coal or iron. It lives in innocuous-looking stone blocks, only emerging once you break that block. And then the rest of the hive crawls out of the goddamn walls. They’re not…

I did! So did the perennial complainers in the LATAM PS+ Blog, suddenly very satisfied.

They get mad if you don’t close the coop or barn doors, they get mad if you don’t pet them every day. They get mad if you don’t have a heater or fodder in the winter when they don’t go out.

I had no idea they got mad if you stayed out too late, though.

I like the idea that your animals take exception to your reckless lifestyle.

I wish I could recall what I’m referencing a bit more clearly, but it kind of reminds me of a YouTube video (I want to say Mark Brown or Super Bunnyhop) where one of the aspects of game design was creating scenarios where everything behaved predictably. Maybe it was Brown’s essay about good AI. In essence, the idea…

Stardew Valley Subsidy Expansion: You have to continue playing the game, but you’re penalized if you grow any crops.

Well now my next project has to be a Stardew nightmare mod. Townspeople randomly get sick and die. Farm animals too. Even your pet. You start to develop respiratory problems from your time in the mine. If you don’t spend enough money at Pierre’s, he goes bankrupt and shoots himself.

EmperorNortinI made me smile in the best way, the emotional equivalent of what makes blood orange such a delicious flavor. It’s true, it’s a little bitter, and it’s rich in the right way.

Yes, I did. I suppose that’s as much closure as we’ll get, but it’s pretty thin gruel nevertheless (and not much different from my own imaginings). No information about gameplay at all, notably. In my head, there was a first level in which Alyx is piloting the helicopter to the Borealis and Gordon is acting as…

I’m going to keep coming here to comment on Fridays, and other days, because we have to put the effort in if we want our community space to belong to us, and feel like a nice place to be.