Pouring one out for battleborn...

You had really really really REALLY bad timing. But you were fun, funny, and well designed. You deserved a place in the sun and it's a damn shame you never got out of Overwatch's shade. A fine game that I do concede is technically "better." I wish there was room for both. Or that there were active lobbies even 4 months after launch. 

Here's a Chance inspired fan art dump!

And you Isic... I'll miss you most of all.

C&C Episode 94: Thanks Chamberlain!

This week we talk about Chamberlain's early Christmas gift. I disagree with Chance on cuphead and couldn't agree with him more on Battle Chasers. I also out myself as a shameless true crime dork. People like BTK can't be "underrated" I realize that now...

Two out of three ain't bad

 

Mindhunter Review: How's your mom?

Mindhunter isn't the exactly the best police procedural I've ever seen. It isn't even the best new show this year ( The Keepers). But nevertheless I INHALED it. Horked it all down in less than 48 hours. Would you have enjoyed David Fincher's Zodiac if it was 10 hours long? Because that's exactly what it is even though it covers several more killers.

This is a meatball sub. You know what's in it but that doesn't mean it can't surprise you. The bread is a garlic baguette made fresh that morning, the meatballs are grass fed beef, and the red sauce is a Sicilian family secret centuries old. Nothing here is going to win any awards but I could watch this show once a week for the rest of my life. You know... if there was a new one each week.


This is meant to be a deep dive into the dawn of behavioral science in law enforcement but it shines as a nickel tour of American serial killers time forgot. Ed Kemper, Jerry Brudos, and even Monte Rissell get... justice doesn't feel like the right word. Great performances at any rate. If you love true crime like I do, you're gonna get a kick out of the many interview segments that break up the character drama. Which is sadly the weakest link.

It's not a deal breaker but it does feel like filler compared to how electric the procedural elements end up being. Holden Ford ( the hundredth character based on John E. Douglas) is a teacher at Quantico who is deeply frustrated by why motiveless spree killings keep happening. He teams up with the older Bill Tench as they go on the road teaching various police stations about "sequence killing" by day and interviewing a murderer's row of... murderers by night.

Their personal relationships needed more work. Johnathan Groff just isn't as talented as his girlfriend Hannah Gross. She kinda acts circles around him and you wonder why she keeps putting up with his stodgy self centered BS. Not that Groff is "bad" he really shines during interrogations. But during the relationship scenes he is just so devastatingly charmless.

Anna Torv eventually gets on board as the basement crew's psychologist/M. and I'm stunned why she doesn't get more work. She's perfect for film noire and Fincher's low key baroque style is a wonderful fit. It's honestly a shame we don't see more of Tench's and her personal life. I found his adoptive parent situation and her dilemma of leaving her professorship to start over much more interesting than Ford's flailing attempts at romance.

To be fair their relationship arc is pretty great.

But ultimately it's the meatballs that make or break this sandwich and the mystery vignettes are spectacular. One is a hunt, the other a he said/she said clusterf*&k that tears a small town apart and one more involving a elementary school principle that is something that should win a writing Emmy. It won't but I'd vote for it. They hammer home just how radical this method of getting into killers heads, empathizing with them, and predicting what they'll do next seemed to people at the time. Killers were born killers. Nothing you could do about it.

There's a great running gag with a beat cop who waits for the road school to be over and comes up to them before they leave and says "so there's this one guy..." There were always one or two cops that saw truly horrific killers slip through the cracks in their methods. Without guys like that, Douglas's research may never have been proven right and so many more killers may have gotten away with  higher body counts. Mindhunters shows how effective cooperation can be and never talks down to the locals.

Lastly, my favorite point the show makes is something I've noticed over the past year or so devouring true crime podcasts and reading The Man with the Candy. It's that scant few serial killers are actually "born" that way. Most suffered incredible kinds of abuse physical or otherwise. Most had absent parents or were never listened to when they cried for help in their own way. They aren't Hannibal Lector, in fact most are fairly dim. Sympathy is a strong word for what Mindhunter says they deserve but it makes a fine point in saying that most people haven't been through what they have and they are far more pathetic than popular fiction would have you believe.

The dialogue may be overwrought at times and it's relationships a little soapy. Yet I found this show impeccably researched and refreshingly honest. The only huge knock I have against it is the foreshadowing of BTK. He's teased in 8 of the episodes, mostly before the opening credits for only 10 seconds. They treat him like the season's big bad but he doesn't get caught until 2005. If they did some day in the life stuff with him, great. But there's barely any of that. So there you go. An occasionally gripping true crime drama with a sub plot involving a creepy home security installer that goes nowhere. Enjoy!

FringeDivision4Life.

My Cuphead runneth over.

My podcasting buddy Chamberlain asked Chance and I for our steam ID's today. Maybe he's in the market for a gaming pc, I hoped against hope, but no. It was so he could give us both an early Christmas present, two copies of Cuphead. It is from the bottom of my heart that I say...

Thanks dude. For realz.

A Belated Birthday Gift.

Mmmmmm... fluffy.

When my older sis gets presents she never repeats herself. Whether it's a cutting tool to turn beer bottles into drinking glasses or a vice grip for those sticky jar lids; it's always weirdly useful left field stuff. This year she's outdone herself. Mugs with recipes written all over them that can be made in the mug. I just whisked myself a fine portabello and red pepper omelette in less than 4 minutes. Its just dawned on me that I've no frying pan and spatula to clean.

This changes f*%iking everything.

Civ VI's new update notes bury the lede.

You'll hurt yourself craning your neck like that.

New UI tweaks... nice, I get it. The flood of updates telling you what all the players were building each turn was drowning the screen, that's neat. The AI will now build navies, I had noticed they never seemed to. Weird. Oh and uhhhhhhhh, warrior monks. F*%ING warrior monks. Finally your late game stock pile of faith can pull your ass out of a war. That's awesome, Civ VI. Never stop gradually becoming the best in the series. You're definitely my favorite.

War of the Chosen Review: The Glorious Cause.

Firaxis has a habit of making near perfect games. Then they have a habit of making old school, honest to god, expansion packs that crawl closer to perfection than you thought possible. No game is "perfect" but no one has the art of striving for it down harder than this company. Civ V started out disappointing but eventually came into it's own. Xcom 2 started out great and is now... well, now its f$%ing amazing.

To be fair $40 is a huge asking price and unless you know exactly what you want out of this dlc you could get burned. Do you want more maps and mission types? How about more soldier classes? An espionage mini game? If all that sounds good to you then this is money well spent. But did you try, and despise, the alien hunters DLC like I did? Then this becomes a harder sell.

Because this massive content pack is centered around a trio of sumptuously well animated alien assassins. If you are not a fan of enemies with health bars a mile long popping out of nowhere and ruining your mission strategy, you are not going to like them. WOC is designed to break you. It sees you turtling up and using overwatch like you have a million times before. It sees you and it laughs. New enemies and one of the chosen are straight up immune to overwatch. A massive chink in my strategic armor that humbled me to the point of having to crawl to easy mode. I'd never touched it in XCOM 2, I wasn't particularly jazzed about it. But it was for the best.



WOC has changed the game to the point where you have to re-learn it. It is absolutely worth putting weapons research on hold to focus on the resistance ring, the new espionage feature, which is also the only way to put the Chosen down for good. I love it. It took some time, but the main series has finally taken up the best idea from The Bureau. In that game you could send your raw recruits on off screen away missions and train them up without having to deal with their freshman bullsh*t. There are tons of different stuff you can make them do. Whether you need supplies, weapon upgrades, contacts in other countries, even knocking a few notches off the doomsday clock. Whatever direction you need to go in the resistance ring will put your lowly squaddies to good use. It's magnificent.

If there's one thing I didn't really enjoy after about 2 playthroughs (one easy one normal) is that the game can spam an obnoxious amount of enemies while also throwing a chosen at you. Once I had a mission where there were 7 turns before a bomb went off. It would take 4 turns to disarm it and it was surrounded by 2 captains and 6 faceless.

Six. Six of these muthers.

Often XCOM is frustrating and sometimes the only way out involves losing a good soldier... but that mission was goddamn impossible. It wasn't the only time I ran up against that crap either. It was super rare but I knew that eventually the game could decide to stop playing fair and that was a super sh*ty feeling.

Other than all THAT though, I found the new soldier classes fun at worst and indispensable at best. The skirmishers, advent hybrids who have defected and have grappling hook attacks, are a fun compliment to the rangers. If they get a little too stab happy and are pinned down at the end of their turn, your skirmisher can hook an enemy up to their high ground. They'll get a melee attack in and even knock them out for a few turns. The codexes can't clone themselves after a grapple attack... food for thought.

The templars are a melee based psyonic class which you can snag real early in the game if you get the ring up and running. Their sub-machine guns are less than useless. But their armor ignoring gauntlets coupled with being able to block the first attack on the next turn are NOT.

The reapers stole my heart. Stealth was never something you could rely on in the vanilla game. You could build a ranger around it but even then it wasn't a card you could play more than twice a mission. If you're careful, the reapers can LIVE in stealth, just as long as they always get the kill shot. With a reaper my odds of a flawless mission went up 30% and they made that irritating UFO ambush mission a breeze. With a reaper and a few snipers I could take out entire squads without ever alerting them. The skirmishers are fun, the templars are fantastic, but the reapers changed the entire way I approached the game.

As someone who really enjoyed XCOM 2 and WOC even more so... I can still see people balking at the price tag. If you were bored of what the original game demanded of you but still want to dive back in, this is for you. If you haven't touched XCOM 2 and see a 25% deal for it some time down the road prepare to watch the next 2 weeks of your life evaporate. It may not technically be perfect, what in this world is? But it's as close as this series has ever gotten.

Good luck, Commander.

Hopscotch Purgatory.

Sometimes games grab you and don't let go for a week or two. But all good things must end and eventually you have to find something else to do. I usually wind up jumping from game to game from my shame pile trying to re bottle that magic. Suffice it to say, The Long Dark is no War of the Chosen.

Maybe some of you out there enjoy waiting 30 seconds to see if your digital fire catches but I'm still not on board with games that sit you in front of timers more than anything else. So now what? Civ VI? Maybe. After a game and a half I usually drop it for a couple weeks.

What to do...

The Good Place is, in actuality, the best place.

Here be spoilers.

Mike Schur is a genius. I'm sure I've brought this up before. Parks and Rec will forever and always be my chicken soup show. But I've struggled to pin down what I care about most in what he does/what he encourages out of his crew. I think I've figured it out, because it's what's kept me from loving most other comedies. I wanted to get into Big Mouth more than I did, it was funny as hell, had a killer premise, and 5 or 6 brilliant sketches about puberty/relationships. But there was something missing. Story structure.

Scenes would stop the instant the funny ran dry whether it made sense or not. In Rec even the smallest scenes always had a beginning, middle, and end. Or at least a punchline. In Rec, characters like Donna and Jerry evolved slowly from joke machines into fascinating people in their own right. Their absence would be felt. Whereas Big Mouth's most ubiquitous punching bag, the upbeat/crushingly lonely PE teacher, could  have died off camera by next season and I would be just a teensie bit relieved.

Strip out everything that's funny about Schur's shows and you still have a brutally honest look at small town America and it's politics. In this case, a lighthearted but cutting twilight zone epic about the bureaucracy of hell. Sorry if that's a spoiler. It's been on Netflix for a month and a half. What I love most about the Good Place isn't just that its giving philosophy majors everything they deserve... it's outplaying Lost.

In the first 60 minutes this year we have blown through an entire season of plot development. I thought I was so damn clever in thinking that there would be some sort of truce between the torturers and the torurteries. But, like, in 10 more episodes. I have absoulty no clue where they can go from here and I f**king love it. I'd watch Kristen Bell in a version of The Good Place half as compelling as this (lord knows I've seen the 3rd season of Veronica Mars), but this is one of the most intricately plotted shows on the air. Period. It may become the victim of it's own hubris but not yet. Right now, in the pantheon of great American comedy, Schur is competing with himself.

And winning.

As the world map turns.

That hoodie must be really top heavy.

I had planned on writing the War of the Chosen review 3 days a go. Just as soooooon as I finished a run on normal. It's not that I don't care about you, Crackpot it's just that WOC understands my needs more. It gets me. I need more time to figure things out. I love you Crackpot... don't be weird about this.

The craziest thing about Netflix's Big Mouth.

The ghosts of Duke Ellington, Freddy Mercury, and Socrates, respectively.

I was really looking forward to Big Mouth and... it's... good. It's good! It pushes the boundaries of what Netflix can show and does amazing things with it. There are multiple, I'll say it, highbrow sketches based around nudity and sexuality. One where Kristen Wiig plays the female lead's hyper positive vagina had me on the floor.

What's less great are it's half assed musical numbers whose joke hardly ever evolve beyond "It's a song about tampons!" One in which John Mulanney's character thinks he might be gay is musically pretty strong, but it's just built around easy rhymes for gay. It's saved beacause it's a solid Queen imitation and the guy playing the ghost of Freddie Mercury is SCARY good. I assumed it was Broadway's Andrew Rannells (who's characters use as a one note joke machine instead of, you know, a character) deserves it's own post.

But no. It's Jordan Peele. He's been sitting on the best Mercury impression I've ever heard. I bet you money he's been hustling karaoke night with Someone to Love for years. That's something you can hustle, right? My point is Peele may be one of the most interesting people who's ever lived.

The most glorious Xcom operation name in the whole darned world

One of the little things that makes Xcom so special is how surprisingly good it's randomly generated operation names are.

Wind Tongue, Hammer Slap, Witch Queen, God Walker, Storm Wheel, and Hellborn Sleep being gems I've found in just my last play through. But this time... this time I've found something truly special. It's like a randomly generated time release bomb. The first word makes sense, the second doesn't, but together they make magic:

...well I thought it was funny.

In 2 to 3 weeks!

I just know this picture is going to be used against me one day... but how?

...3 months and 4 phone calls later I finally got my refund for being double billed by Spectrum. I'm not even mad anymore I'm just super happy I got my money back. Plus the fact I'm no longer being charged $10 rent for my modem every month is pretty sweet. It's nice when the only half decent internet company in NC needs good will. I brace for the day they start burning it.

Channel Zero Season 2 Review: Muuuuuuuuch better.

Horror is a hard genre to love. It is so difficult to get right and what little that glitters is drowned in a sea of half-assed embarrassments. I gave the first season of SCY FY's Channel Zero a try and I stuck with it for what seemed like an eternity. Some shows can make 13 episodes vanish in a couple hours, Channel Zero made 4 feel like a prison sentence. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that season did that wasn't profoundly outdone by the IT mini series. And that hasn't aged well AT. ALL. Tim Curry aside, of course.

But there's the thing, that show was anchored by Curry as a driving force, Channel Zero had a tooth monster that nibbled the hero's fingers when he slept. It was dull, aimless, choking on awful dialogue  and trying to force performances out of child actors I wouldn't ask Gary Oldman to tackle.

But now we have season 2. A fresh start, a better cast, and what I assume is a bigger budget. If you can give John Carrol Lynch a good character to chew on I am there. After watching the first episode and letting it rattle around in my head for a few days... yeah! It's trying much harder this year. Maybe not B+ material, but I definitely have a "most improved show" ribbon for it.

We have 2 female leads, which is pretty refreshing. One is coming home to the burbs after a semester of college while the other took a gap year after her dad died from a freak allergic reaction. Sure, they mine guilt for her out of it, but I love how boring the most dramatic thing that's ever happened to her is. That's not a knock, suburban horror must find a way to weaponize boredom and they've pulled it off here.

It's not all rosey, there are still dialogue problems (people pointing out painfully obvious things, characters clumsily spouting exposition about themselves, etc.) and the opening scene involving a panicked woman trying to escape a never ending housing development is a smidge too "community theater" for me. But this is a haunted house story and this haunted house is f**king awesome.

It's actually more an art installation/escape room and I loved it. It was the best kind of world building. Unsettling, but poetic enough so it sends a message. Not everything works, of course. There's this one dude who has to creepy laugh all the time. He's terrible. But the rest of the rooms balance it out. That's the word for this show. Balanced. 

There's nothing it did wrong that's bad enough to keep me from finishing it like last year. I like the actors, I like where it's going, it knows most of David Lynch's best tricks, and I can't wait to see JCL be a scary motherf**ker eventually. Because there's no way he won't.

XCOM has turned me into an amateur propagandist

So happy togethuuuuuuuur...

I've finally got my hands on war of the chosen, I like what I see so far, even if all it is are a few new mission types and a bevy of new maps. I thought X2 was the sh*t as is but it's nice to see my $40 filter through the entire experience even though most of it is saved for the mid-game. Where it was sorely needed.

I had heard about "bonds" your squad mates can become buddies giving them an extra turn when they team up, but they're tasked with winning hearts and minds too. You make propaganda posters out of their bro-mance. I love it. I can't wait to hear my squeak of rage when one of them dies and I can't save scum out of it. That'll be fun.

C&C 90: Don't be Afraid.

One of these things is not like the other...

Don't be Afraid.

 

Hollow Knight's Halloween Special:

Wait... is Halloween a thing in Australia? Neat.

Christopher Larkin is still killing it with the gothic organ sh*t.

This is free, people. Though I'd happily drop $30 bucks on a season pass for this $15 gem. You thought I'd cool off my GOTY rants about this game? No. This is still a stupendously special game and you should all buy it. Right the hell now.

C&C 89: It's a Cult.

Things get both sad and racial this week. They don't have to be mutually exclusive.

It's a Cult.

 

Back in the habit.

Now that I've thrown down $25 for PS-Plus I might as well give Overwatch anouther shot, right? It's funny how a 7 month gap can give you the distance to figure out what you really want out of a game that used to confuse the crap out of you. For one, I'm way better at Macree for some reason, I won a 8 on 8 death match with 76 handily, and I am KILLING it as Zenyatta.

There's almost never a wrong situation for this guy. My score cards are bursting with golds and silvers. As long as I can hide between the legs of a tank I can heal and mark for death all day long. I think... I think I'm finally super into Overwatch.

Destiny 2 is... well... s'ok.

You save this entire game, Nathan Fillion. Look at me, seriously, DUDE... the entire game.

 What do you what in a shooter? Do you want something that's really easy to pick up and nigh impossible to master? Bungie's got you here. Every gun, every enemy, and every head shot feels like it belongs in the billion dollar plus venture Destiny is. I'm running around with two different pistols. If this were Borderlands I'd be screwed, but in Destiny if I just breathe deep and concentrate I'm never more than 4 headshots away from moping up entire mobs.

I was ready to lay into D2 a lot harder than I'm going to because you know what? There is something really special about Bungie's games. I can't quite describe it, but nothing is ever too hard or too easy. If you just pay attention/run away screaming at the right time you can make it though any firefight. I really can see myself poping in and out every few weeks or so to snag loot and do public events. The gameplay is truly a cut above and the gear is uniformly interesting. I also thought I'd hate the controller based cursor menu but it's lovely! It's way snappier and intuitive than it should be. So you get an 8 Destiny 2. A rock solid 8.

But I'm not that happy with it. It's not just because you can blow through the entire campaign in a day and a half. No, you sold me on this game with that trailer of Nathan Fillion's character being a fun nut. He may very well be that and he was absolutely the highlight of the game. But here's the thing,  no one else is. The script is awful. Flunk creative writing 101, awful. I know I gave Andromeda a lot of crap for it's dull as sand dialogue but guys, it's 12th Night compared to this drivel.

Video game writing has a long way to go but it's been years since I heard a villain say "we're not so different, you and I." Austin Powers had an entire sketch on that line 20 years ago. Don't even get me started on their crushingly unfunny attempt at GLADOS. Just be prepared for it. Oh, and Lance Reddik  pauses... for dramatic effect... all the time. I just don't understand how someone looked at the script, saw Reddik's character doing 3 Horatio glasses removal lines in a row and though that was ok. It's tragic.

So in summation, super fun shooter, really pretty and well designed levels, spectacular guns, endlessly fun to shoot enemies, and one whopper of a script. Stick around for Zoe and Mal. You have my permission to skip everything else. If Dinklidge and North can't make Ghost work, no one can.

6... hours... later.

This beats waiting until October 24th for destiny 2 but my internet ain't supposed to be this slow. Goddamn.

F**k it. I'm bored.

Good news and bad news. Good news is I've got a job with one of my all time favorite managers at his new restaurant if I want it. Bad news is those full time, paid vacation, heath care, and 401k having leasing assistant jobs are gonna leave me twisting in the wind for a week and a half before they cut me loose. Also my technical writing course was canceled from lack of interest... BUT I got my $2000 back!

So now what? Destiny 2 seems to be getting decent reviews and lord knows I'd take an even mediocre looter/shooter right now. The PC version comes out in.... OCTOBER?!  Fine. 30 fps PS4 version it is. For the record, when you google Destiny 2 PC release date it says the 6th. Get on that, Bungie.

Bojack Horseman Season 4 Review: "just a big waste of time."

No matter how much you like a show, no matter how long it manages to be exceptional, gravity exists in the creative world and it always catches up. Thrones was fun this year but it just seems so exhausted now. Kimmy Schmidt was on auto pilot half the season. It took me 2 months to bother finishing it when I had devoured it's first season twice by that time. The Defenders was a administrative decision in dire search for a reason to exist. Deathnote is just... awful. I don't know the first thing about the anime but I know that a production that refuses to fire a embarrassingly amateur lead actor should never been given that kind of budget.

So thank the sweet lord in heaven Bojack's back. The darkest, weirdest, most devastating, and delightful show I've ever seen came back swinging. The first two episodes this season are perfect compliments of each half of it's dueling personality.

First there's Mr. Peanut Butter's random as heck run for Governor of California. Which for a distressingly long time seems to point to a more realistic downturn for a character who has managed to simply stumble into fame and fortune at every turn. It takes the show's most lovable character and basically uses him to illustrate America's issues with blind populism. While turning the gubernatorial race into a skiing competition may sound like Bojack's more fanciful outings; it's brutally honest about the mockery of the democratic process that would have to happen to make that a reality. It's horrifically plausible to boot and I look forward to what I hope is a villainous turn for PB. Paul F. would murder it.

The second almost lost me as the "fixing a house/fixing your life" metaphor is tired stuff even if it involves anthropomorphized alcoholic horses. Bo's gone to his grandmother's summer lake house which is identical to the one in his fantasy of the life he wished he'd lived with Charlotte... located in the town of "Harper." The depth of Bojack's continuity continues to impress. But again, fixing up a house filled with flashbacks to the 40's (solid casual sexism and polio jokes aside) goes exactly where you expect it to. Bojack's abusive mother had one all her own and it takes almost the entire episode for it to pay off. Good goddamn does it pay off, though. I didn't realize Bo's grandma was Jane Krakowski because I've never heard her act her ass off like this before.

4 years later it amazes me that a show can have characters with names like Governor Woodchuck Couldchuck Berkowitz and still manage to haunt me. I thought I might sip and savor this season. Cut back to two a day... make it last... yeah, no. I've been waiting 14 months for this.

Big Mouth. Looks. Amazing.

An murderer's row of comedy talent, a lavish animation budget, and a maddeningly untapped well of brutally honest puberty jokes. I just watched the teasers an hour ago and now I am all about this. Pre-teens are sick, sick, muthers and it's high time we made brutally honest fun of them to the caliber of 90's Simpsons. Because that's how funny these trailers look:





And if that's not enough, Jordan Peele's credit is for the "ghost of Duke Ellington." You know you wanna see that.

Well... Damn.

Just had a hell of a week hanging out with a friend's extended family. It was fantastic. But you know what's not fantastic? Coming back from a 7 1/2 hour drive thinking about the burrito you want for dinner and seeing a flat instead. On Labor day so... nothing to be done about it as I'm fresh out of spares. I don't think someone slashed it, there's plenty of parking. But if that was the case, it's good to know they think I'll call their bluff for a few days before doing anything about it.

Off to Ohio.

Chef buddy of mine has a family reunion in Ohio on Friday and asked if I wanted to drive up with him. He said my liver would fear for it's safety and I said "hell yes it should." I'll be back on the 4th!

So Hollow Knight's finale is a beast...

kartaZene!

 ...And maybe the prevailing wisdom on the ideal charm loadout isn't panning out for you. The idea you can have a huge health pool and spam magic seems reasonable but I got my ass kicked at least 14 times. That wasn't me. I needed to be able to heal, but how do you do that when 90% of the screen is full of angry magic knives?*

This really did the trick for me (thanks reddit):

Double heal, mixed with rapid heal, the shape of Unn so you turn into a 'lil' mobile slug when you heal, and Grubsong. Because you should never EVER unequip Grubsong. Took down the bastard in 2 tries after that.



*spoiler?

Hollow Knight Review: Death Wears a Mask

 It's been months since I started Hollow Knight. It's taken me 30 hours to reach 95%. That was time which has flown by in the way only my favorite games can manage. I've just tracked down the last charm on my list. It turns my dodge move into an attack. That's not an upgrade or even a variation on the other charms. It is wholly unique and I can see myself spending an hour mix and matching my loadout to get it to fit.

The charms are only a small part of this "metroidvania" but like every other part, it's a tiny miracle. There are no "bad" or "cheap" builds. Every combination can work if you know how to use it. They are never about getting better, or stronger, or faster... well not just about that. They are puzzle pieces that will eventually come together to create the perfect way you choose to play the game. There are multiple clever loadouts for exploration, for bosses, and for the maddening platform challenges near the end. Basically if you're stuck you only have your lack of imagination to blame.

...did it though?

Man, it's hard to talk about this game because I want to gush about it all. There's almost nothing it does I haven't either appreciated or even loved. I don't want to come on too strong, but I've waited for a game like this for so long. Something that not only approaches Symphony of the Night but damn near bests it.

SOTN is still damn good but it has a kitchen sink approach to design I've never really respected. If there's a remotely Gothic monster you've heard of its in that game without rhyme or reason. It's not a knock against it, but if a game came along that tried harder... that created a fascinating yet cohesive bestiary... and was about a society of high fantasy insects... I should cool it with the ellipses and get to the point.

When I was a 3rd of the way through I was pretty sure it was one of the best games I played this year. When I had mapped out the entire world I was certain it was my game of the year. When I turned it upside down and shook out every last drop of equipment to help me take down the showstopping motherf**ker that is the secret final boss I knew someone was getting knocked off my top 5. Of all time. Don't give me that look, I do not 100% games for no reason. My steam profile says I only reach the end of 33% of those I own and I am a CHEAP Scotch Irish mofo. I get my money's worth.

 The combat is tight and endlessly malleable. There are strength builds and mage builds. Builds that focus on evasion and healing. Builds that disable healing in exchange for a massive health pool. There's a lot to work with and I'll give you an example. There's a charm you can come across fairly early in the game that, after you finish healing a health notch, makes a cloud of spores that damages enemies over time. That charm never stops being amazing because so many other charms effect how you heal. There are tons of situations where that cloud is more useful than actually healing. Mostly in the Arena of Fools, a place that could take up it's own paragraph if I was feeling super spoilery. Basically, it's a part of the game that's so good it could have been $10 DLC and it would have been worth it. Seriously.

Butterflies!

You ever find a book, or a film, or a work of art that feels like it was made just for you? That you feel lucky to have stumbled across and the world feels just a teensie bit more magical because of it? It's a difficult feeling to describe without coming off as... manic and it's important to explain the different ways that happened to me. So here we go:

First it's a metriodvania at heart and that will always make my ears prick up. The world is a maze that slowly unfolds around you as you explore it and then gain new powers that help you find even more powers. That loop can keep me hooked for weeks and it's way harder than it sounds to get this genre right. HK stands on the shoulders of literally hundreds of pale imitations. Castlevania itself tried and failed for 15 years to bottle SOTN's lightning again. It's also learned all the right lessons from Dark Souls. Another series I love that invented it's own genre. Tough, but fair, combat in a desolate world beyond saving. It's lore doled out in disjointed, but tantalizing, tidbits while it lets its stunning environmental design speak for itself.

       Imagine a Studio Ghibli film that starts off cute, becomes melancholy, then ends up silently screaming in agony for the final 20 minutes.

 Hollow Knight is not just the perfect synthesis of both those genres. It's hand drawn style and wonderfully written characters give the world a personality and sense of humor that I find lacking in the vast majority of video games. This could have been an animated series if it wanted to and it would have been excellent. A darker, funnier, Secret of Nimh.  Each episode would have followed the knight as it runs into different members of the cast as they both explore the Hallownest. Quirrel would be the supportive best friend, Zote, a jealous old coot, Hornet, the combative rival... I could go on.

And I will. They would see what they want to see in the knight's hollow eyes, never really knowing what it's up to or what it's been through... or what it is. Yep. I've enjoyed my time with Hollow Knight so much I'm fan fic-ing. That's a first. I don't know what's gotten into me.

I'm getting preachy again, so now is the perfect time to get brutally honest. The first 3rd is a little too easy and a little too straightforward. I put it down for almost 2 months because I disastrously underestimated how awesome it's mid-to-end game content is. There are frayed strands at the secret edges of the map that could use some tightening. The super meat boy-esque platforming at the end will drive tons of players away and I don't have a lot to say to prove them wrong. The White Palace is a HARSH mistress, but I felt like a badass for finishing it and only looking up youtube solutions once.

It's rare to come across true labors of love. Even rarer to find labors of love that are this... dare I say "masterful?" I don't want to get anyone's expectations out of whack but the fire hot intensity of my fandom ain't nothing. I haven't had this much fun breathlessly exploring a game since either the original Dark Souls or Rapture. You want to tell me this isn't one of the best games of the last 8 years, fine. There are sound reviews out there that are 7/10. But the Hallownest is one of the most romantic and interesting places gaming has ever produced. Period. Your opinion will rest on how much you can get caught up in this doomed world of talking bugs. I'm pretty sure you can guess where I stand.

Dream on, Team Cherry.

I'm so sorry Hollow Knight. Please take me back.

Thanks, Overheating!

The biggest mistake I've made this year, gaming wise vs. career wise, was inexplicably dropping Hollow Knight just before it really took off. I had thought I was 2/3s of the way through, hit a nasty boss I didn't feel like adapting to, and just... moved on. I forgot how charming it's world was, how deceptively deep it's combat could be, and underestimated how much more game there was. I was only actually halfway there. To say nothing about it's massive secret areas, it's free DLC, and the hours it will take to track down all the different charms.

After that boss everything starts to feed back into itself. The disparate levels connect, new charms enhanced my old favorites, and I can't believe I haven't written a review yet. I'm pretty damn sure this is going to be my game of the year. When was the last time a boss fight made you laugh out loud, not because of anything specifically funny he does, but through what I can only describe as... strength of character?  Dude's a dung beetle and holy cheese does he love his job. And I, him.

We could have been friends...

C&C Ep:85 Universal Disdain.

S'ok, Prey. I thought your ending was cool...

Chamberlain and Chance #85

Into the Darkwood.

I learned something today. I learned that there's a way to engineer stereo sound to make me think there's someone in my kitchen. This is a game that sneaks up on you. Sure, there's some jumps involving traps and roving bands of dogs but it reeeeaaaaaly takes it's time getting under your skin in other ways. Which, considering it's top down, sprite based, look I didn't know that was possible. How much drama or mystique can you create from a satellite's perspective?

Loads.

It's a survival game, so you've got errands to run in this otherworldly nightmare forest. Scavenge wood and fuel/assorted eldritch goodies, then board up your safe house to wait out the night. That's when the sound design truly shines. It goes for the obvious scares first. Heavy footfalls and shaking chains. Disembodied whispers and angry sounding shadow monsters. And then... just when you think you've got Darkwood's number...a polite, continuous, knock at your front door. Knock, knock, knock. Knock, knock, knock.

F**k you, Darkwood. You're amazing.

That feeling when $300 magically appears in your account...

Apparently I had been so well behaved, credit card wise, I got my deposit back. Ladies and gentlemen... I REALLY needed that.

We should all play Bioshock Infinite one more time.

*Politics Abound*

I once lost a debate when I used the factions of New Vegas as a metaphor for America. Mr. House was the cold, unfeeling, oligarchy. The New California Republic the beleaguered, but well intentioned, democracy. Caesar's Legion... the end game of the republican party. Back in 2011, I was essentially calling republicans proto-fascists and it did. NOT. GO. WELL.

My, how the worm has turned.

It's been a hell of a few weeks. I try my best to keep my political animal locked away from this blog but I just can't right now. I am appalled. No administration shakeup is going to restore any amount of  my faith in the executive branch because fish always rots from the head. But my mind keeps turning to why this has all happened and funnily enough, video games had the answer. Infinite was in production for too long and it's plot gets away from it in the end. But it did something truly special before becoming the Booker'n'Liz show. It saw the future.

Republicans aren't villains. Or rather, they didn't used to be. They were rural folk with different ideals. They wanted a hands off, low maintenance, approach to government. They wanted to vote for their team and go back to their lives. It would be wonderful if that's all it took to make a government by the people, for the people. Wouldn't it? But a wise man once said "The price of peace is eternal vigilance." So times changed. The tea party was swept into power and the only thing they had to do to get reelected was yell at the other guy.

The sad fact is, there are mountains of power to be gained by burning our republic down. When you only check into politics during election time you run the risk of begin taken in, not by civil servants, but by carnival barkers. People who fan the flames of prejudice with half truths and vicious lies just to get what they want. An iron coalition of the faithful.

When you close your eyes and just believe everything will work out, you wind up with dictators. People who abuse and starve their citizens because an attack on their tyranny is an attack on their ego. It has happened here and you bet your ass it was wrapped in the American flag. But back to Bioshock...

Colombia is a wonderful place until you peak around it's corners. Indentured servitude, a militant police force, toothless propaganda trussed up as news, and active repression of intellectual curiosity. What I always loved most about Infinite is that it only appears to be republican heaven from a distance. The soft focus and fantastical elements only obscure the real history tearing it's way out. A "better" time never existed. Not for all Americans, anyway.

So anyone who tries to tell you this current administration is making America any better, they don't want a representative democracy. They want a cruel, hollow, imitation with them back at the top. They want Colombia: