Borderlands 3 Review: Problematic Fav

There's a an obvious tell bad comedians have when trying to compensate for material that they either haven't thought through enough or don't even understand. They talk too loud and hit the punchline too hard. The vast majority of those guys wind up on morning commute radio. This is the tenor of the game and it's an albatross that hangs heavy over nearly every minute of it. It's not the worst written game I've ever played, that crown belongs to the ultimate flavor experience. But it has fallen hard since Bl2 and the prequel.

Borderlands 2, to me at least, was written by folks with a decent sense of humor. I love that game to death and it's with a heavy heart I condemn the entire crew of BL3 to comedy jail. Because they just don't get it and their desperation is exhausting. If you don't get the joke the first time they will beat you over the head with it again and again. I will totally understand people who play the first couple hours and walk away for good. That's a shame.

To be faiiiiiiiir, there are some rock solid side quests out there. Childhood's End in particular.

That's a shame because mechanically and visually this is everything I wanted and more. The last week has flown by in a glorious blur of gun fire and loot'splosions. The shooting has never been tighter. The weapons have never been more useful and varied. The skill trees have never been more clear and immediately impactful. This is Borderlands perfected and I god damn love it. If you never got on the Borderlands train in the past this definitely won't change your mind. What this game does best is a laundry list of tiny tweaks and improvements that slowly, but inevitably, bowled me over.

Your class mods now share the icons of the skills they affect so you don't have to remember all their  convoluted names. The map lets you know when a quest icon is above or below you by making them obviously bigger or smaller. Like, when you're right under a marker it will take up a third of the mini map. It's great. You can fast travel at any time to any FT station or to your vehicle which, on pc at least, is near instantaneous.

There's more I want to say about it's magnificent end game grind, but you should find that out on your own. The single best improvement to me is the loosening of the loot drop purse strings. In Borderlands 1 through the pre-sequel you would go hours without seeing anything purple and nearly entire campaigns without seeing anything legendary. It was an insultingly brutal grind meant, I think, to encourage co op play. What happened instead was that people cheated like hell. Strangers would vomit waterfalls of legendaries at you just so you could keep up with them. So I learned to cheat too. The loot tables for 3 are more generous than even I ever wanted them to be and it works. It works because you need to read closer to what weapons you actually like rather than the color. There may be blue sniper rifles more suited to your needs than gold smgs and it never stops being fun to experiment. Mostly because there are so many GD gunz.

A rifle most dashing.

That assault rifle may not look like much from it's bare stats but if I never gave it a spin I wouldn't have discovered it's cryogenic rocket alt-fire. Being able to switch on the fly between 2 different elements on a maliwan pistol was a godsend. Flipping a sniper barrel and turning it into a shotgun gave me so many ideas I cackled out loud. A revolver with homing bullets that lets you see invisible loot crates in it's scope was the only mission based weapon I've ever been sad to see whisked from my backpack. I haven't stopped being surprised for 30 hours and I probably won't for a year or 2.

And to finally throw the writers a bone, they made a damn good campaign. The story beats work, a handful of new characters hit (frikkin' loved Clay), the base idea behind most of the levels are fantastic. I also appreciated how the endgame discussions on how to save the universe were between 3 women. If you decided to play as Amara or Moze, it would be between 4 women. That was pretty neat. I'm not happy the entire ending of the pre-sequel was retconed out of existence but I did like fighting my favorite vault hunter to the death. I always thought she'd make a hell of a boss and I love being right.

All that and bunch of other showstopping fights save Bl3 from it's obvious shortcomings. But Anthony Burch should have still been there, David Eddings should still be claptrap, and Randy Pitchford should have stepped down. Pitchford is a pox on an otherwise talented studio. Eddings did damn good work on clappy for 7 years, for free apparently, and was let go when he wanted actor's scale. His replacement is insultingly sub par. Burch was a fun writer who gave the series it's best villain and if his sister Ashley's vanishingly small cameo as Tina is any indication; the parting was not amicable.What kind of self destructive jerk is responsible? The same genius who picks a legal fight with his own accountant.

I love this game but it cut off it's nose to spite it's face in the service of one man's ego. That's a tragedy and it infuriates me to think about what kind of good work we lost because of it. If you love this series, you're gonna get your money's worth, lord knows I'll be playing this sucker well into 2021. The galaxy map is suspiciously empty and I look forward to what this team comes up with even if they don't tighten up the dialogue. But seriously... they need to.

Never met a photo mode I didn't like.

Fix your Borderlands 3 framerate problems with this one weird trick.

This one time on Eden-6...

That title started out as a click bait joke but I think it may be, in fact, click bait. Either way, a frick ton of PC players are having framerate issues with a game that reeeeeeeally shouldn't have any. When you knock a game down to PS3 fidelity and you still can't get through a firefight without any chugging, it's not you, it's the code. But I fixed it. It wasn't because of nvidia tweaks, it wasn't because I turned off core 0, or any of the other of the arcane hoops message boards have you jump through. Though ending the Epic client did help a fair bit... curious, that.

I activated directX 12 and waited 12 minutes for the damn thing to boot up.

See I like most people assumed after 10 minutes that dx12 just didn't work. It does! But it's in beta, covered in warning signs, and yes it's the same wait to get back in every time. BUT IT WORKS. Buttery smooth 60 fps with high settings. That's all I wanted and I can finally look down a scope without my target escaping through dropped frames. That was driving me absolutely apesh*t.

After 15 years in hell, Terry Pratchett's The Watch, is finally getting casted.

Hi! How are you? I've drifted away from the blog pretty consistently for a year now and I'm sorry. I have no explanations, only excuses. I thought I'd make a fresh start with some good news. For the first time since his death we're getting another stab at the adaptation of Pratchett's best work: The Watch series. We've gotten the odd BBC film here and there (none of which I'm particularly fond of) Going Postal was actually not terrible and it was even casted pretty brilliantly in places. Ingrid Berdal was a damn good Sgt. Angua and they need to give Charles Dance whatever he wants to be the Patrician again.

But out of all the films they've never dared give Samuel Vimes the disservice of a one off cameo. He's the most lovably sardonic character of one of the most lovably sardonic writers who ever lived. Now he'll finally have a face. Richard Dormer's face. Or the guy with 9 lives from Game of Thrones. He had a flaming sword? You remember. This is not a bad plan and I'm on my knees praying this is, in return, not a bad show. I still believe Disworld needs to be a Groening level animated series to really click but there's no reason it can't get to Dr. Who levels of recognition. Right? Anywho, here's the rest of the cast so far.

Lodge 49 Season 1 Review: Shell Game of the Gods

It takes talent to make a brutally honest point without talking down to anyone. Lodge 49 is like a low level LSD trip at your own intervention. I can't remember anything in print or film skewering my life choices as deftly as this. The kicker is it does all that while never being a total downer. It's a tight, intense, hug of a show. But you gotta jump in with both feet and roll with it.

The death of his father and the demise of the pool shop they ran together puts Dudley in a state of denial. His sister isn't any better off emotionally what with her hooters-esque waitress job and her dad's crushing debt. This sounds like it should be either boring or depressing but there's just something about the characterization and the way every scene flows that keeps you hooked. Plus once Dud stumbles into the lodge The gears shift into the rest of the season's comfy and occasionally terrifying groove.

The series branches off into two distinct halves. One with Dud and Ernie (plumbing salesman and Luminous Knight of the Order of the Lynx) trying to keep the place afloat in the wake of a leadership vacuum. The other is Liz's soul flaying journey of self destruction. This show is clearly written by service industry veterans and it all hit so close to home I jumped ahead more than once out of sheer PTSD. Dreaming I was at work was my last straw too.

Her story didn't arc the way I expected it to. Nothing arced the way I expected it to. Each story thread ends like a shaggy dog only for a new thread to pop up to make you forget about the other one. Then, If you really pay attention, answers you had for questions 3 episodes ago seep through almost like background gags.The Lodge's restraint from ever going full Twin Peaks is awe inspiring. It's got some fun mythology but it knows everybody is showing up for the character drama. A scene involving someone telling their mom that they hate her is the most brutal 2 minutes of acting I've seen all year.

 

The Lodge might be too weird for you and that's ok. There's a lot of purposely weird and dreamlike dialogue. I get that some people need to be in the right kind of mood for that. Or at least the right kind of inebriation. Do it. Fill that tumbler to the brim and ponder the eternal with Dud and the gang. You're gonna see some weird, messed up sh*t, man. Then you're gonna see those characters go straight back to work the next day. I frikkin' love it and hope you give it a shot.

Hey guys! I'm still here.

I've just shifted toward learning code and taking care of a bird. Also trying to figure out something new to say about gaming. That's been hard. I'm almost done with Lodge 49 and folks... I'm gonna have some sh*t to say about that. It's Twin Peaks meets Terriers. Whad'ya mean "what's Terriers?!" Educate yourself. Thankfully the Lodge isn't a one season wonder. It's so goofy and deep, you guys. That rarely mixes well.

Tales from the Borderlands is off the market

"What's that sign say?"  "Dunno, something about anime."- Tales from the Borderlands

I have played the borderlands series for an absolutely disgusting amount of time, even before the 6 months I spent recovering from abdominal surgery. I love these games and appreciate their consistency in keeping up with their own lore. I mean, it looks like they've retconned the pre-sequel's end with their new DLC and that would bother me if it wasn't the only time in 10 years they've course corrected.

Instead "Lilith's fight for sanctuary" leans hard into two characters from Tales, welcoming them warmly into RPG side of the franchise. For everyone that got on board when critics were calling Tales the best borderlands game ever made, this is nice. For anyone who was into Borderlands 2 and checked out for 7 years... I got some bad news. As of June 13th Tell Tale game's bankruptcy really starts to sting because their best work is no longer available online. You could find a physical copy on ebay but that's absurd.

Could you just watch it all on youtube? That's a cynical way to look at interactive narratives but yeah, that's about 70% of the experience. This deserves to be played. I bet a ton of old fans will want to know how and when scooter died and there will be barely any legal means to find out. I hope this is just temporary. THQ nordic or something will snatch up the rights and put it back on the Internet. I hope that happens before BL3 launches because a lot more people should have played this in the first place.

Do it for Gortys.

Pillars 2 Deadfire Review: Melancholy Green Giant.

Fallout: New Vegas was the first video game consistently well written enough for me to appreciate like a good book. Every little nook and cranny told a story and it's still the best game I ever played. I've never forgotten that feeling of playing a game that both respects my intelligence while challenging my moral compass. Mostly because scant few since 2010 have even come close. To say that Deadfire is as good as Obsidian's apocalyptic western opus is pushing it... but its not pushing it far.

As someone who bounced hard off of the first pillars not once but 4 times, it took a lot of convincing to get me to think this would be any different. I'm pathologically allergic to crpgs and needed way more hand holding through the active combat than that game was willing to give. I'd blink and half my party would be dead. It wasn't a good time. But then came Deadfire's turn based mode which was so good my old roommate wouldn't let me look away. It was the purest distillation of dungeons and dragons into a single player experience to him. He said not only would I love it but I might give D&D another glance in the bargain. I don't know about that last part, but he was dead right about Pillars 2.

Now no character on the battlefield moves until I tell them what to do. There are no nasty surprises and if someone gets hit by a cheap shot I know exactly where it came from. That's all I needed to get into it, just a broad knowledge of which skills work and which don't. Pretty soon, 20-30 minute encounters breezed by on the strength of its mechanics. I'm told Original Sin 2 blows it out of the water but I had a damn good time all the same.

Every ship in the deadfire has their own flag. "Had" in the case of these.

Now that the game's dense lore has a chance to breathe and change things up the series comes alive. By trading the bog standard Tolkien fantasy setting for a pirate-y archipelago, pillars starts to really say something. Not that the last game's big reveal over how all the gods were just formally human rich pricks wasn't a bad turn... it just took 20 hours for that to be interesting. Pillars 2 takes that premise and wonders what those gods would do if they had to bargain with a pirate to kill one of their own.

That would be you. Only if you wanted to be a pirate, anyway. I decided to be the exact opposite of my usual taste and rolled a stoic, true believer, monk. If any developer was going to take this do gooder and put him through the politically grey ringer, it was Obsidian. I wasn't disappointed. The pirate factions weren't a fan of how unprofitable my charitable nature was and that locked me out of a ton of negotiation potential. Many a time I would have been able to flash a captain's seal and side step unnecessary violence.

This chart knows exactly how many times you've been a dick for no reason.

But I also understood them better than they did themselves. With high enough insight I was able to curb the wrath of politicians, pirates, and trading companies alike. You want bloody economics and colonialism with your high fantasy fare? That's a trick question. This is the second best branching narrative I've ever played. Its so good I can almost forgive the ending. It yadda yadda's over the final dungeon, describing it in excruciatingly intricate detail, only to dump you out in front of... well... the end. It's a total wet fart of a finale even if it involves a decent debate on whether humanity needs gods or an afterlife. I should have been more disappointed in it but the journey there was so interesting and poignant I didn't care. As much. They totally ran out of money, though.

This is a book as much as it is a game. Most of the time you will read about what's happening rather than see it. That's the most d&d thing about it. You'll play text adventure mini games about crossing rocky ravines or sneaking past lizard men. In the latter case the rogue in my party was able to gain the lizard's trust by doing fancy coin tricks. They ended up giving me food instead of killing us. You can finesse your way out of some truly stunning stuff including most major boss battles. I wanted to fight a krakken on my first run only to realize I'd already talked myself out of it.

This is how the game talks. If you can get into it... there's some pretty sick pithy burns in it for you.

Navel combat itself is a bit of a text adventure but it's commendable how much fun they can squeeze out of what is essentially just radar and text prompts. Your first couple bouts will end in failure but you'll soon be jibing with the best of them. You'll spend a decent amount of time sailing with your crew which brings me to my favorite inventory management thingy ever: feeding your crew.

The better food and drink you feed your crew, the more morale they gain. The more morale they have the more exp they get per ship encounter. But morale is expensive and maintaining the high 80's is harder than it seems; because rum in bulk is not something you can easily afford but better food isn't. Basically as long as you've got a ton of yummy +1 food with water (-1 morale) you'll be set. The single best loot drop for me personally, more than any weapon, was a +10 cake. My crew had just been through the sh*t and they really needed the break from watered down ale. Sailing is so engaging I didn't mind the lack of fast travel. I'll let you figure out why for yourself, there's a lot more to do than just raiding ships.

Who wants some evocative ass imagery?! Seriously, you're going to have to love it if you're going to finish this game.

Greed, politics, colonialism, warring gods, and the tragic impossibility of peace in the face of all of that is why you need to play this game. If you've ever prized story telling in your games, if you ever had a passing affair with the mid 90's crpg boom, and if you're a sucker for a good cast of bickering party members you need to play this game. It might teach you something about your politics that you didn't know. Long story short, their east India company equivalent made one too many good points for their survival over the opulent and internally racist native Queen. It really got to me. Which is Obsidian at their very best.

Deadwood Review: Hello. Goodbye.

There were two things that jumped out at me on my Deadwood re-watch ahead of its miracle of a finale. One, I can see how the cursing turned my dad off it. I had got him the box set for Christmas years ago and well... he handed it back after the 14th c**ksucker. Which is to say around episode 3. The script did come off as network tv writers who were a bit too giddy to say bad words as often as they liked. But 2? This is motherf**king Shakespeare.

Even the most "simple" characters in Deadwood get flowing and revealing soliloquies that make it like nothing else that's ever aired on TV. Before I knew it, I blew through every episode and now I got to see how it all ended. I almost didn't want to. Deadwood was an intimate soap opera. Most of the show was about checking in on peoples lives. How do you "end" that without killing everybody?

The answer is by playing off it's biggest bad: George Hearst. He's the primordial stage of the corporate agenda. He's perfectly affable as long as he gets everything he wants. Maybe he didn't cut off saloon owner's fingers himself... but dollars to donuts the real Hearst ordered much worse. In the show's final act Hearst is one plot of land away from setting up telephone polls in Deadwood. Standing in his way is Charlie Utter. I have no problems spoiling the film because, heck, if you cared about those you had a decade and a half to do something about it.

Utter can't stand up to Hearst's grinning barbarism and it isn't long before a couple men show up to execute the 73 year old coot. After which the town is a bit disgruntled. As they should be. Hearst pulls the same tired lines every powerful man says after getting caught red handed. In other words "civil justice for me but not for thee."

This culminates in a lynching of Hearst that I enjoyed a bit too much. The way its shot, the way the horror music chimes in, the tenor is there is no such thing as a heroic mob. As much as deadwood reveled in its lawlessness, it saved it's harshest criticisms for the mob. As fun as it was to see this murdering old bastard to get whats coming to him it poses a sobering question. Why not be better than him? Why not beat him at his crooked game instead of punching him in the mud?

In either case, the frontier wins and Hearst goes back to California, tail between his legs. That's pretty much it for conflict which is maybe only a quarter of the 2 hour run time. The rest is spent reminding you how much you love these characters, the ones still with us anyway. Jonie and Jane get a delightful mid life crisis romance, Sol and Trixie get hitched, and Al's dying. I'm still convinced Ian Mcshane passing a kidney stone is the single best example of agony in acting history. All the fans needed to see was his soiled bed sheets to get it. He was always a softie when his reputation wasn't on the line and while his end doesn't redeem the bastard, its as happy as he deserved. Bottom line, he does right by Trixie.

It was a good story and I'm glad it got to end but there was barely any c**k suckin' Al Swarengen in it! Still though... Hoopleheads did somethin' right fur'a change. There's enough "oh sh*t he came back?!" moments to cover up any major criticisms. Basically, if that cast member is still alive there's a 90% he or she is in this. They saved a handful for the last minute just to needle you. Even one of the dead ones.

It's just a bit sad to leave them all forever now. Which means they did a great job.

Chernobyl Review: You didn't see anything.

When writers I like on twitter all start talking about a show at the same time with the same tenor of "holysh*twatchthis* enthusiasm I usually balk. I've been burned many a time, often by HBO itself. I still can't believe I made it all the way through The Brink. But a reunion between Terror alums Jared Harris and that show's magnificent mutineer Adam Nagaitis meant I wasn't going to stay away forever. Even though I missed the first month I'm still kicking myself for not being there day one. I was expecting a boardroom drama about corrupt party officials unfairly punishing workers who did everything they could to keep a death trap of a reactor running decades after it should have been shut down.

The seeds of all that have been planted but that's not what the first episode is. It is a sci fi body horror masterpiece. There is a humongous beam of sunlight blasting skyward from a smoking crater and everyone in a 5 mile radius is going to die. Anyone who dares say the core is "gone" is labeled hysterical and rushed out of the room. Everything is fine. They did "everything right." They just need to pull down the control rods and keep pumping water. But the core exploded. It's gone and nobody is mentally prepared for what that means. The plant director can't even attempt to reassure the board without vomiting. His replacement is sent to survey the damage, nothing more than a fire, he's told. He returns 15 minutes later with a full body sunburn.

This sh*t is terrifying. I had every intention to watch for 20 minutes to get the gist and finish the rest over breakfast. I couldn't shut it off. Folks just started bleeding through their clothes and somehow I found the energy to keep watching.

But seriously, America needs to talk about Russia. About how sh*tty politicians can make a horrible situation dire through suppression and spin. If the government lies to you about the little things they will lie to you about the life threatening things. You've got to wonder if this current administration would hobble an evacuation to avoid a bad news cycle.

I didn't get much sleep after all.

Roommate Update:

Panchito could have been a lot of different birds. He could have just eaten my food while tolerating my presence. He is instead a relentless beam of sunshine. He has his fits but it’s hard to stay mad at something that wants to stay on your shoulder and preen your beard all day so badly. Everyone needs someone in their life that appreciates a sunrise as much as he does.

Get caught in the Rain

Risk of Rain hit a soft spot of mine back in 2013. One of those games you'll never beat but you still have fun seeing how far you can get each time. It captured that arcade feel without eating any of quarters. But I did actually beat it. Once. I swear.

Risk of Rain 2 was announced a few years ago and while I admired the jump to 3d I had my doubts it could somehow be more fun and not bewildering getting devoured on all sides by 30 monsters at once. Then BAM, it showed up in early access this week and then POOF my wallet was $20 lighter. I ate those first impressions last afternoon. 2 hours went by in a flash. It's just shootin' and lootin' in a gorgeous minimalist cell shaded zen garden of death. Shout out to the animation as well, it's all terrific. This sits along side darkest dungeon as an early access game that's meaty enough to stand on it's own. Co op or solo this ain't sitting on top of steam for no reason.

Sick of shooting? Play as Virgil from DMC3 instead.

Boundary Break: Simpsons Hit and Run.

Boundary Break is a fun little youtube series where games are freed from their camera perspectives and you get to see how the proverbial sausage gets made. Yesterday he did a video on Simpsons hit and run and I was all "Oh... YEAH! That was damn good game." So now I get to talk about that!

There was a time in my mid teens where I had no taste and would still routinely fall for licensed cash ins. This was a double edged sword as there were some real gems in the bargain basement. Hype, a medieval play mobile game with way more going on with it's story than it ever deserved, is still the most affecting time travel story I've seen in a video game. For real. You meet your Merlin equivalent when he's still an apprentice and keep checking in on him as you try to get back to the future. He's dead in your time and his scene in old age lamenting not being able to help you when you need it most was damn good stuff.

But there were loads of let downs and they all stung. I wasn't made of money at 12 and neither was I  blown away with the Simpsons crazy taxi game, but Simpsons GTA seemed like a good time. It was. The Simpsons hit and run is unequivocally the best Simpsons game. As dubious an honor as that is. All the actors are doing their best and there are some legitimately good lines that hold up. Sure, they used the same 3 free roaming areas at least 2 times each. But it all ends in a Halloween special makeover so loving it made the entire journey worth it. I have no idea where to find this thing. GOG? Nope, looks like ebay for a pc copy is your best bet. Only Simpsons diehards need apply if you've missed the nostalgia boat. Anywho, here's boundary break:

Got a new roommate

I work upwards of 8 hours 6 days a week. I don't have the time or space a dog deserves. I've seen what an apartment with lethargic owners does to a pit bull. It makes it a neurotic shadow of the rambunctious cuddlebug I know they can be. It's awful. I'd never want a pet that couldn't live a good life without me in it 50% of the time. But what could?

A green cheek conure. Quiet, friendly, they eat all the fresh fruits and veggies you should be eating, and they live at least 20 years. A little under $400 later and I got Panchito. He's as quiet as his reputation. Still a bit bitey, but he's comfortable in his cage, plays with all his toys, and likes it when I read to him. This was a great decision. This is an A+ birb. 

Patrick O'Brian does that to me too...

Peace in Andromeda.

It's taken 2 years and the heat death of Bioware's talent pool for me to take a deep breath and say.... "Andromeda was a deep, rock solid, single player RPG with some script/story problems." If anyone else besides Bioware made that game I would have given it a 9. Though some of the bigger worlds reek of asset scuttling in that it's just a bunch of finished locations vomited out on a bland canvas. Had I never played Inquisition and appreciated how all those areas felt like real places I never would have been as harsh.

But there's the game's biggest issue: lack of imagination. It takes place in a whole new universe yet the most interesting aliens came with you. There's only 2 new talking species and about a 3rd of the way through you figure out... there is only one species. This game needed to get Weird with a capital W but settled for doing a good job keeping the original trilogy's lore in tact. Krogan are still prickly battle toads, Salarians are still overly polite, arrogant, geckos. While I like Jaal, the angaran ambassador, his race is just kinda there. I can't sum them up like I can everyone else. Their "thing" is hiding from the Kett. That's pretty much it. It's a humongous wasted opportunity.

But the story itself, your reason for questing, is pretty solid. Your people are starving and need a colony to work. That's your gig, use your shmancy AI powers to make a home. Sometimes for your people, sometimes not. For a game that's mostly about shooting things there's a refreshingly constructive bent to it's narrative. You may choose not to be in Andromeda to make friends... but you probably should be.

Movie night on the Tempest.

As for Ryder him/herself I got a big ol' "meh." Ryder doesn't hurt but he doesn't help. Coming off of Shepard, the greatest speaking RPG protagonist ever, this is a criticism that still holds. I've seen worse but that doesn't keep him from getting a solemn C-. Though I will give the male Ryder the edge because the Nolan North impression he's going for is SCARY good sometimes. But the rest of the crew? Pretty good! Your salarian pilot gives a lively performance. Drak is an endearingly sarcastic Krogan grandpa and almost edges out Wrex on the incidental dialogue front. Liam sucks but that's mostly because his actor can't read a script to save his life. Helping him move a 600 year old cryo sealed couch is a hell of a scene-let. Natalie Dormer knows she's slumming it as your medic but she's still such a pro shes a highlight.

But the planets themselves are hit and miss. What's more, the 2nd and 3rd are easily the worst. The late game picks up with a desert Krogan colony and a space pirate paradise but I wouldn't blame anyone for bailing out before then. It's a 10 hour sprint to those places including a plodding trip to the angaran hideout that walk-locks you for 12 minutes. I know running NPC's make no sense but neither do pop up windows or inventory screens. Let me run!

If there was just one more Kadara (space pirate) planet in the mix I could have called this a good game at the time. But I digress. This game was built by mass effect 3's multiplayer team and while they may not have the strongest sense of place They. Get. Combat. The gun play is sublime and the gear crafting almost more so. You can make any type of weapon at any time. You just need the right materials. If you want stronger versions of that gear you need to research stuff. You need to finish quests for that. To keep your favorite weapons on the bleeding edge you need to do a bit of everything. This makes it the single greatest in-game economy I've ever seen. I haven't tried the new game plus but you would need that kind of time to level up different weapons and that's a pretty good excuse to keep grinding.

In light of Anthem, AKA Bioware's funeral pyre, I'm ready to make nice with my laundry list of Andromeda based quibbles. This is a fine 8/10. They did a good job. As long as you have it running on a solid state drive the load times are minimal and the patch jobs they did since launch let me run the best textures at 60 frames. If this is to be their last classic Bioware game... well it's certainly a better place to leave it than ME3.

We'll always have pirate planet...

Dead Space 2 is absolutely perfect.

It's taken 9 years and god knows how many playthroughs but I'm calling it. The first was larger but plodding, the third had the highest peaks (spaaaaaace!) and the deepest valleys (the other 2/3's of it). But the second is survival horror polished to a mirror sheen. I'm not used to playing a 9 year old game and saying it's head and shoulders above one that came out a month ago.

To be fair, Resident Evil 2 is a remake of an even older game but they share almost the exact same gun play. Cutting off limbs is just much more interesting than shooting a zombie upwards of 6 times in the face. It's weird how much fun DS2 is even though I've practically memorized it. I am trying a slightly different approach. The store is littered in free dlc weapons and armor that I will resist the temptation to use on zealot. Ammo is scarce, health packs a fleeting memory, and a half second hesitation in the face of a charging leaper is certain death. Isaac dies some pretty great deaths, here!

The game play loop of strategic ammo consumption with frantic shooting that turns to sedate loot scrounging is flawless. I'm not sure how it stacks up to it's granddaddy Resident Evil 4 because LORD has it been a while since I've been down that road. It's got to be close. Photo finish close. So yeah, re-download this gem and give it a whirl.


Also, PC folks! remember to disable v-sync in game and force it in the nvidia pannel. You're welcome!

Civ VI Gathering Storm Review: Prince of Tides.

I have a tendency to hate games I’m bad at for obvious reasons. Could never get the hang of any fighting game. Couldn’t get into multiplayer shooters either.  Not even when my buddy chance gave me one of the best gaming compliments of my life in overwatch by calling me a “scary zen.” But I still suck at them to the point where I don’t have any real fun. Then there’s civilization. Where I can’t play any difficulty over prince. Which is medium, I guess. No one who plays civ anywhere near the amount that I do would deign to start a game under deity. Which is an experience akin to making a souffle while dodging mortar fire.

But I still love civ because I can never fully understand it. Every time a trusted friend steals 5 turns worth of gold from me I’m shocked. Every time I knock down a jumped up warmonger I cackle. Every decent game makes me lose hours at a time. Even when I have one foot out the door or my coffee has finished brewing I can lose 20 minutes setting up the perfect starting map. It's a great bedtime game too as long as you can put it down before the sun comes up. But all that was true about vanilla Civ VI what does your $40 get you this year? You get the UN and floods!

When you try to settle cities now you'll get fun new icons on tiles that can be affected by tsunamis, floods, and volcanoes. When those hit, your farms will be out of commission for at least 8 turns. That's no death sentence but it will scuttle your expansion plans for a good while. The up shot is flood plain and volcanic soil becomes more fertile after the fact. Permanently. There's other stuff like drought and tornadoes that are less constructive but add to the natural disaster motif. I mean, it'd be weird if they weren't there, you know?

Close your eyes and try spell it.

Then there's the world congress which starts in the Renaissance era because mechanically it needs to. You now have political capital points which you generate 2 or 3 per turn at the start. It's not much but you can use them to trade for stuff you actually need before the world congress begins. Other players will trade their points with you too. Often in lieu of anything else. But once you get a pot of 100 or more you can get some really neat stuff done. Sure you can host Olympic games and world fairs but you what really want to do is ban a rival's critical luxuries, hamstring their citizen's happiness, and start them down the path of revolt! In Civ V all banning luxuries did was slow people down but add rise and fall to the mix and you can start flipping cities to you!

It's just that much sharper than V's WC so it doesn't seem like a copy paste but the 2 year wait to get it back was a but much. I'm not sure why it couldn't have launched with a lesser version, honestly. Aside from that there are smaller improvements and that's where GS really shines for me. They are small but they are legion. Natural resources have been balanced in a clever way. In 2016 if you wanted iron to turn your clubs into swords and you weren't lucky enough to find some yourself you had to sell the family jewels to trade for it. Now each deposit gives you 2 iron points per turn. You only need to build a mine if you want to double it to 4 points. It's also much easier to trade for it now so you never need to worry about your military upgrades.

On the flip side powering your cities fuels climate change so the more oil you use the more danger your coastal tiles are in. I haven't played a game yet where climate change bothered me much; but I hear of some folks who consciously hunker down in land locked areas and belch fire to drown their coastal enemies. You also don't have to make a beeline for neighborhoods to fix your cramped cities anymore. Dams become available during the renaissance that give you more space while blocking the damage of floods. New upgrades are available for scouts and horsemen so you don't wait forever for their industrial variants.

Gathering Storm makes every game of civ 20% more interesting. That will be true 5 years from now. I can't say I'm over the moon about it but I can't imagine going back. It takes a couple games to help you appreciate all the little quality of life changes (I actually despise the new flash java-esque main menu if I'm being honest) but this is totally worth the price in the end. I haven't even tried the new Maori civ. they start in the ocean and gain bonuses based on how much they land they discover before settling. That pulls everyone's first 50 turn strategy inside out and I am all about that! As much as I would love to see more expansions in the future, Firaxis's history says this is the last. In my heart of hearts I say this is a damn good place to leave my favorite epoch of Civilization.

This is Kupe. He's the sh*t.

Cruel Calculus

At an earnings call last week Activision-Blizzard posted record profits and a round of historical layoffs. 800 people lost their jobs because one of the biggest entertainment companies on earth didn't plan growth properly. That's sh*ty and it won't stop until a video entertainment union worth a damn sprouts up out of nowhere. That could take years, maybe more. What worries me most is what happened during the rest of the earnings call.

COO Coddy Johnson drew a line between what he believes were two halves of the company. One half were artists and programmers (development)  the other marketing and customer support (non developers) This was mostly for investors but a message was sent loud and clear to the peanut gallery. "We just sent 800 of your colleges packing. Don't ask any questions about Bobby Kotick's stock options and get in your designated box."

A-B has chosen to rule by fear. There's nothing illegal about it. Not even investigation worthy. Everything that company did was above board. That's what bothers me. We live in a world where your boss can make you petrified about your job security and if that person can prove it boosted sales that person gets promoted. Or gets a bonus bigger than most earn in a lifetime.

I ask you, reader, shouldn't that be a crime?

My Cherry Valentine.

And I didn't get you guys anything...

Hollow Knight is a masterpiece and Team Cherry is the indie dev team to beat. Even kotaku's intrepid investigative reporter Jason Scheier agrees. These guys are goddamn magicians. The 3 of them and a genius composer spent the last year giving HK free DLC while toiling away in secret on a sequel. They said Hornet was going to get a stand alone chapter and I'm so jazzed they changed their minds over how big that "chapter" might be.

Behold:

Hornet looks to be more of an engineer than the knight's black mage loadout. I see her launching buzz saw traps and bombs. I also see huge intricately animated bosses that they couldn't afford the last go round. This looks amazing. I could totally wait another year for it but I hope it's only a few months out. It's good to know that Activision and EA could burn to the ground tomorrow and Team Cherry would still be merrily plugging away at what will most likely be my favorite game of the year. I mean ya'll... this sh*t looks finished.

Hell of a Game

Lemme set the mood:

I am constantly falling in and out of love with Civilization. I loved V and remain impressed by VI but Civ unlike any other piece of entertainment can absolutely wreck my day. There’s a feeling you get when you’re 4 hours into a game (about renaissance era) that you’re completely effed. Your army survived your protectorate war but was it worth blowing half your troops saving a city state that only nets you 17 gold? It wasn’t and now you can’t afford a settler to find oil and aluminum so you’re about to be shut out of the late game too. You put Civ down emotionally and intellectually defeated.

It sucks.

But then there’s the other side of the coin. When you out think and outplay everyone on earth. Civilization is the only game that can make me feel like an evil genius. Such a game was one I played last weekend with Gorgo. A military terror early on (love them hoplites) her greatest strength is her late game capacity for culture. Her theater squares become acropolises which can be built in half the time of everyone else. Thanks to one of the governors from the rise and fall expansion I can make it so I have a near monopoly of all great writers and artists.

This is how I can make pure diplomacy work. Usually when you make too many libraries and museums the less civil leaders tend to sniff around your weakest links and pounce out of nowhere. But if you can buy them off with a piece of literature or two and make them dependent on your spices and dyes you can come out on top with a profit. In this run I was trying to see how many alliances I could forge at one time. I managed to max them out, you can only have 5, and went on to have the most blissfully peaceful game of civilization I can remember. I was everybody's friend and if anyone picked on me or my buddies they were bombed into the stone age.

He shouldn't have laughed at me... he shouldn't have laughed!!!

I made a point to cross the sea before everyone else and cornered the market on aluminum. Which meant that I’m the only one with an air force worth a damn and since I’m everybody's “friend” no one thought to put up air defenses. The last kerfuffle with my cranky roman neighbor was as brief as it was hilarious.

Near the end the tension kind of went out of the game. I had built a massive empire over three continents making 700 gold a turn. Money was no object and I had everything lined up for a science victory. Two cities with two launchpads makes it so I’m 50-ish turns away. But then came the sabotage. My fair weather friends had been biding their time and making spies. Suddenly parking my own spies on launch pads and neighborhoods wasn’t enough to keep my victory projects from resetting and mini boss quality tanks (spy made partisans) from popping up in the middle of my capital.

If I was in any actual space race I would have lost… but the beauty of the culture victory is that I sometimes forget I’ve already got it made. Within 20 turns I was the tourist capital of the world and I posted my best score in Civ since 2014. Hell of a game. I don't get a whole lot of self respect out this hobby so when it does happen I need to document it!

Oh and does the gathering storm come out tomorrow? ...I hadn’t realized.

Russian Doll Review: Stop Hitting Yourself.

I’m jealous of groundhog day. I can’t be the only one who is. It's a unique concept executed perfectly. If you try to drink from the fountain of Bill Murray’s best movie (come at me) you best have a damn decent show in mind. Thankfully, Russian Doll does. It is both darker than it wants you to think it is as well as more complicated. Groundhog day was essentially a sardonic morality play. Boiling down to the message of “Hey! Don’t be an asshole.” Russian Doll has a bit more on its mind.

While at its core it remains a relationship drama it also sits a nifty science fiction puzzle in front of your nose and gives you 6 episodes to figure it out. I did not. For once I got a bit more than timey-wimey hand waving and was disappointed I didn’t piece together the rotting fruit bit earlier. That’s just one piece. You get your first real clue after the initial death. You’d have to pause a lot and take notes but you could do it.

That is how you get your cake and eat it too. Do you have a good relationship story? Maybe about how turning your terminal self loathing into a lifestyle is a sh*t idea? Then maybe sprinkle in some time travel shenanigans to prove that it would take divine intervention to get some people to notice. Basically it only uses time travel to tell a better relationship story and that’s what I respect most. You can be as story driven as you want but if your characters and their choices don’t make sense episode to episode (SHERLOCK) I’m not going to be happy enough with you to bother with a write up.

"Sweet birthday baby" is the new "Ned Ryerson"

I’m dancing around the story because I don’t want you to know anything going in. Are you a self loathing introvert or extrovert? This show is gonna say some things that might hit you in the gut. Stuff that’s quite a bit more heady than simply hating yourself is wrong. It’s also the rare netflix show feels exactly as long as it needs to be. The first few were so dense and delicious I wasn’t sure if they were 50 minutes or not. Not a second over 30 it turned out.

The best thing I can say about the writing is that every character has a point. Everyone. The jerks, the homeless, even a philandering jackhole has a point. Except the 3 minute scene where Nadia shows up to her programming day job. That was just a bad scene. A noticeably RARE bad scene, but there it is. It’s just nice to see a show about depression and self destruction where everybody's pain matters. Even the villain’s.

I can’t say you’re going to love Russian Doll. I sure as hell did, but it might get a bit dark for some and if you’ve never dealt seriously with depression it might be too navel gazy. But it’s got a good puzzle worth solving and if you start I’m confident you’ll finish it. You also may not like how it ends but again, I sure as hell did.

Out of Boredom

I’m bored. I’m so bored I’m doing that thing I do every 2 years where I try to get into an MMO. It almost never works. I’m not a fan of the theme park vibe and I only put up with it in Destiny because the actual gameplay was sublime. Not so in Final Fantasy 14. It’s funny how much it has in common with 12 what with the arrow that spews out of enemies that target you and the floating blue dots denoting the edge of an area. I just wish it had 12’s art direction. Or 12’s score…

I’m an archer. I’m not sure if I’m in an area for archers specifically or if all the newbies wind up in this forest. The music is a lazy synth hodgepodge of Newman’s Shire stuff. I’m not impressed. But it IS pretty and I’m not not enjoying it. Runs like a dream too. Not that a game made in 2014 that's also on a PS4 is going to knock my socks off but its still impressively crisp.

I’ll stick with it for a month. I had to jump through enough free trial hoops to get this far. You bet your butt I’m gonna get my un-money’s worth. Hey, maybe I like it so much I feel compelled to pay $12 a month for it. Maybe in the same month I find the one and we get engaged after winning the lottery. In an infinite universe many things are possible.

February Doldrums.

Chamberlain had the perfect word for the last week: “doldrums.” I hadn’t realized how long I had been stuck in it until he brought it up. It was time to start asking myself certain questions. Questions such as “do I like this?” and "am I actually having fun?" I don’t ask myself that nearly enough about what I’m playing. My screen time these days are more vanishingly small than ever and I feel like I’m stuck in a rut. A loot rut.

If I’m not playing Destiny 2 I’m playing Diablo. If I’m not playing Diablo I might be in Borderlands 2. There’s a few slay the spire runs in between those but suffice it to say I haven't seen any games I feel like playing that are coming out in the next 6 months. Well that’s not true. I see you over there Civ VI. Can’t wait to have the United Nations back in a week or so. But still I can’t say I’m ITCHING to play it. Sure The Outer Worlds and Psychonauts 2 are coming but neither have nailed down a date and I sincerely doubt both come out in November, let alone this year. Tim Schafer scares easy, is what I’m saying.

So I shuffle off to my digital casinos. That’s what it’s starting to feel like. That I’m no longer an active participant but just stuck in front of a video poker machine for 2 hours a night. Am I having fun? ...Yes. Yes with an asterisk. There is still way more skill involved in staying alive in all 3 games then I’m giving them credit for. Sure these games might share some aspects with mindless gambling but I’m not exactly just sitting there. Though I’ve played them each so many times it is starting to feel that way.

It’s not like I don’t have a pile of shame to deal with. I could give monster hunter world another shot. There’s got to be something about that game I keep missing. Far too many people like it way too much for it to only be the exercise in frustration I thought it was. I got options, I guess. I’m sure the winds will pick up eventually.

The Terror Review: Save our Souls

Do you ever get the feeling when you’re watching, listening to, or reading something and think that this might be your favorite thing? I thought that a lot watching The Terror. It also scared me off writing a full on review. I liked it too much. It had so many things I loved in one place. Great English actors on sailing ships, 19th century exploration, paranoia thriller plotting, and a solid idea for a cgi monster with the budget to make it happen. This review will not be objective. This is the only box set I’ve bought in a decade. I’ve watched it more than 3 times all the way through. I love this show and hope some of that wafts off me in your direction.


Your experience may hinge on how much you enjoy watching English people in uniforms arguing life or death stakes. Can you deal with hours of that? Can you put up with that for fleeting jaws-like glimpses of a demonic polar bear? If you were sold on this by the formula of Ridley Scott + arctic + cgi monster = Victorian Alien, I have some bad news. This is way more about the hubris of Sir John Franklin (Ciaran Hines) and the infuriatingly optimistic way he gets every man in his service killed.

Slowly.

Over 3 years.

His doomsaying second officer (Jared Harris) is driven deep as he can go into the bottle after pleading for The Erebus and The Terror to take a slower, steadier, route away from the ice pack. Instead they press on, becoming part of it, never to be rescued. That's just the first episode. This is just how it all starts.




It’s the kind of thing you don’t see much of outside of HBO. A real cast of thousands. 10 episodes is a lot of time from the right perspective. This is another ingredient to the secret sauce. It’s a movie not a series. These are 5 acts in 10 parts. This was originally planned as a multiple season series and it shows. Every episode makes significant changes to the status quo. There almost never is a “status quo.” Instead there is faltering leadership, starvation, madness, and mutinous designs.

Should I keep going? Spoil the breakout stars, the mid season twists, and the tuunbaq’s song? I kinda want to. But seeing everything and everyone in it fresh is one of the best viewing experiences I’ve ever had. Just know that there is a through line for every story from the first episode to the last. I’ve looked for them. The Terror is so dense that there are some characters I forgot about the first go round that I made a point to focus on the second time.

Everybody gets a beginning, middle, and end. Some certainly more than others, but everyone gets at least a little spotlight. Even the guy who becomes comatose after being mauled by a demon bear. Know that Henry Goodsir is the BEST sir. You can’t finish it without loving that sonofabitch. Paul Ready knows how to perfect the goody two shoes character so that you not only like him but actively root for him. That’s as spoilery as I feel like getting. 

The Terror got effing robbed at the emmys. A year out and it seems everyone forgot about it. There’s a new series in the works set in the California Japanese internment camps which sounds neat. But this season was a miracle of horror film making and more people need to see it. I bet it pops up on nexflix or something before the new season but the $25 I paid is more than enough for a show that captures an absolutely brutal feeling of dread and sustains it effortlessly over 10 hours.


$17 at wal-mart. Just. sayin’.

The world didn't deserve you Mr/Dr. Goodsir.

Slay the Spire Review: Three Aces

Thanks justaschema!

Card games. In all the many circles of nerdity in my brain none of them contain any of the card games that have popped up in recent years. Couldn’t even get into gwent even though I tore The Witcher 3 to shreds. Certainly couldn’t care less about Hearthstone and I’ve actively avoided Magic. Why?

No idea. It just isn’t my thing. Fighting games aren't my thing, card games aren't my thing. Which brings me to Slay the Spire. I played it months ago, got pretty into it too. But I didn’t love it and almost completely forgot about it. The art style was drab and uninspired. Also I was pretty sh*t at it. To the point where the game’s greeter (who appears to be an undead whale for some reason) was bemoaning the fact I couldn't even reach the first boss. Thanks Mr. Whale, I’ll try harder next time.

But then it got released for real and I thought to give it another shot. Maybe try out the other 2 characters and see how they feel. Well I tried out the rogue and came away a believer. For those in the dark as to what Slay the Spire actually is, it’s a card game. Kinda. Combat on the enemy's side acts as a classic turn based RPG. The player has a hand of cards. The biggest problem for me was trying to play it as another rpg instead of embracing it’s… cardiness?

In a word I was fighting too much. Leaving myself too open too often and dying halfway. I needed to embrace defense and let fights drag on a little longer so I could survive the bosses. I imagine this is where most of the press was won over. The boss fights are a showcase of game design where all the unspoken rules of combat are thrown out. Made it to the end with full health? You could easily be dead in 2 turns if you don’t keep your head on a swivel. You don’t need to read faq’s to figure them out, you just have to learn how to break a few rules of your own.

I give you my poison turtle deck. The silent character is able to pull hands of 6 cards or more with free cards that can help you shuffle in more useful ones should RNGsus forsake you. The trick to her is causing a lot of damage in one turn while biding your time behind shielding. She also has some interesting poison skills I've grown quite fond of. Say you have a card that can give a boss 6 ticks of poison over 3 hits. Say you have a relic that adds an extra tick for each hit. Then maybe you find another card that doubles that poison. Then you can just turtle up while the boss’s health bleeds away in 4 turns.

That ended up being my best run to date and the start of a beautiful friendship. Like the best rogue likes out there, you can’t guarantee success. But you can hold your own for a while when your luck turns just off of strategy. The only thing keeping me back are the relics. I have no idea how best to use the more common ones. Most of them have sentence long descriptions and seem too niche to be useful “the first time you lose hp in combat, draw 3 cards” great! I just pulled 3 cards I can’t use for the 4th time in a row. Thanks.

But I’ll get better. Most importantly I want to get better. I can finally parse its depths and find myself choosing it over most of my old favorites after work. I mean I liked it before but I get it now. I want to have a poison turtle equivalent for the other 2 characters and I won’t stop playing until I do.

Indeed it is, Mr. Whale.

Spider-verse Review: Miles Ahead.

This shouldn’t work. You can’t fit 5 main characters with 6 villains into one movie and expect it to make sense, let alone be coherent, and certainly not exceptional. There are countless examples of movies being watered down into sludge with too many plot lines. The best I can think of is the 3rd spider-man flick itself . And yet Into the Spider-verse is the most rapturously enjoyable movie I’ve seen this year.

One aspect of it that needs to be addressed out of the gate is its animation style. It’s a lot. Sometimes it moves at a traditional 25 frames a second, often a mere 12 frames. It may bug you at first but I stopped noticing around 15 minutes in. If it bothers you I suggest focusing on the film's finer details, which are scrumptious. The dot painting fluttering around the edges of everything, the onamonapia when appropriate, and the individual animation style for each universe. Spider-verse is a film I would jump at the chance to see again. On mute.

This is still essentially a coming of age story for one kid about how intimidating greatness can be. Miles is enrolled at a boarding school for the rich and “gifted” only to drown in the unfamiliar sea that is his homework. He resents his dad for throwing him into the deep end and not letting him go to his more comfortable (and mediocre) public school.

Subtler emotional stakes than I expected from a movie with a talking pig-spider. What’s more is that his arc perfectly captures that agonizing feeling that comes from when a group of people collectively decide you’re just not “good enough.”

As character driven as it is, this is still an action movie. No fight ever devolves into a blur. Everything is crisply choreographed from web swinging, to dodging punches, to chuck jonesian mallet smashes. Credit is also due to each character design. The sinister 6 especially has been rebuilt from the ground up to take advantage of being animated. Norman Osborn has scarcely ever been this… cave trolly. Toss in a few earned character deaths and a eye melting art show caliber climax and you’ve got a film they’ll say was robbed of best picture down the line.

I sh*t thee not. Movies that are this fun, this dark, and this honest almost never get made let alone gross over $300 million. Good job America! Feels good to say that. If you choose not to see this in theaters you may well regret it. I’ll certainly respect you less. Just let go of that $12 wad in your pocket and I promise you’ll have a good time.