Siskel and Ebert review Mask of the Phantasm.

If you listened to the podcast last week, this post makes a lot more sense. It's also just fun on it's own watching these two be all "Has the animated series been better then the movies this whole time?!"

Yes, gentlemen. Paul Dini kicked even Burton's butt.

Wasteland Survival Guide Vol. II: Smelling Roses.

It took a fair bit of mod tweaking, but I've finally come around on Survival mode. The necessity for food and water feeds into the necessity for maintaining multiple settlements. Which means I've had to dive into the half of Fallout 4 I cared for the least. I'm not a builder. I would have much rather have 3 more cites like Good Neighbor than have that minecraft chaff in the game at all. But now I've got all the food I can eat, tons of clean water to sell, and a flourishing chain of surgical clinics. I've got supply chains running all up and down Boston. There's an island off to west whose shoreline glistens with ballistic turrets, automated rocket launchers, and a civilian militia 20 women strong.

I liked settlement building so much I turned Spectacle Island into Themyscira.

I see what I've been missing, it's been a lot. Did you know there were legendary settlers you can recruit? The vault tec salesman's one, except he's a ghoul now. I always felt sorry for that bastard. I did not see Survival mode giving me a fleeting sense of closure. That was damn sneaky of you, Survival mode. Cut that crap out.

This guy thought he could come into MY town...

...mess with MY people.

You all right there, Piper?

Even he knows the ponytail isn't helping...

Whoever did these magazine covers isn't getting paid enough

Seriously Piper... what's going on?

Wasteland Survival Guide Vol. I: "I'm THIRSTY."

The starch... is an absolute good. The starch is life.

Survival mode is not what I expected. After 6 hours with it I'm both delighted and frustrated. There are great ideas mixed in with punitive nonsense. It's like a 10 course meal and you can't stand 4 of them. Clearly a lot of effort went into it, like it was a pet project of someone high up in Bethesda. If you're the kind of person who wants all games to be a little bit like the long dark, this is certainly that.

I adored New Vegas's hardcore mode. Ammo weight becoming a thing, eating, drinking, and sleeping being necessary. It made the game just involved enough to be more interesting rather than irritating. Fallout 4 has all that and oh, so much more. In New Vegas sleep, thirst, and hunger, would only effect you if they ran out. You would die. Now those things have four depths each taking about 5% off your action points like radiation on your health bar. Oh, and the second levels start deducting SPECIAL points. One time my strength got cut by 4 and I was literally too tired to move.

You can't walk for more than 5 minutes with being sleepy or peckish, or parched. So you find yourself devouring all the cram,  mac'n'cheese, and dirty water in your pack to stave off the crippling consequences. In the process I took out a third of my health bar in RADs and... well let's just say radaway now behaves a lot more like actual chemotherapy now.

It's all really, REALLY, annoying. At least at first, because then I decided I needed to play differently. The lead belly perk, something I'd never conceive of choosing normally, made my crop of mutfruit magically RAD free! The industrial water purifiers used to be something I'd make just because I could. Now that stimpaks dehydrate you, the 30+ bottles of the stuff I make a day are vitally necessary. I also noticed that melons hit both hunger and thirst at once making it worth it's weight in friggin' platinum. I found smart ways to game the new systems and now... well I still think I get too thirsty too fast but I'm still truckin' along.

I could go into how emotionally devastating it can be to loose 45 minutes of progress to one legendary radioactive mole rat who came out of absolutely f**kin nowhere... but I'll save that for Vol. 2.

Raise your hand if you've actually had one of these. Not bad, right?

Fallout 4: Deathmatch.

The steam sale this year was kind of a bust, it's my fault for being able to afford the things I want when they're first available. Damn you, reasonable income! But I'm nearly done with my 100% Bloodborne run and I need something... different. I've never liked playing the modern fallouts at high difficulty because outside of VATS the combat ain't nothing special. Sad to say.

But I do like the sound of survival mode.* Only being able to save while resting sounds devastating. That's going to change the entire way I approach the game. Each enemy has the ability to erase hours of progress; the cruelest possible fate in any Bethesda game. It wasn't a bug that ate your save file this time, it was your own damn incompetence!

Hell, while we're at it, lemmie try out this savant build. This is the kind of madness I need in my life right now. The fun kind that that doesn't end with radioactive ash hanging in the air. Apropos of nothing, my travel plans won't include Japan or Korea for a very long time. Everything's going to be fine!


*I'm modding fast travel back in because f*ck. THAT. 

Back to Bloodborne.

The Souls games were the greatest thing to come out of the last generation. At least to me. They were truly something new. An action RPG that relies on reflexes as much as arcane statistics. Where the level design is as striking and tragic as it's monsters. It's a series that is going to be copied again and again for years to come.

I've ripped each game apart except for one. One I appreciated, but not as much. It was a distant admiration. Bloodborne may have hit higher highs than the Souls trilogy, but at the cost of it's endless replay-ability. In BB you have half as many weapon and armor choices, the levels are more linear, the yharnam architecture gets copied and pasted a bit too much, and the chalice dungeons were kind of a waste of time.

At least that's what I thought at launch. Years later a handful of patches sweetened the pot a bit. For one, the loot has been vastly improved. The blood gems (weapon mods) have more depth and variety to them. I don't remember ever being able to slap some electric damage on my sword cane or shave off some of it's stamina cost. They get even deeper n' weirder in the late game. The loot situation is so good... it made me want to finish the chalice dungeons.

This is an area that tried to be great. It almost got there. The act of a chalice ritual (setting the odds of good loot drops for a dungeon) is brilliant. You can make some crazy ass dungeons if you want. With tight corridors choked with obnoxiously over leveled enemies with ridiculous amounts of health who happen to drop the best loot in the game. Grinding is a problem in souls games, you can never really blow past a boss because you got over leveled. I'd get stuck on a boss and put the game down for a while. In Bloodborne you can make a dungeon way past your level, suicide run it for blood stones (damage upgrades) and kick the shadow of yharnam's ass. They keep you from running into the same proverbial walls and I like the idea.

I get why they're there, but the appeal of souls is lost when the level design goes to sh*t. Once you spend an hour or two down there you know exactly what the layouts are like. After 4, you've seen every room it can generate. I'm at the deepest level and I'll tell you I am sick to death of these rooms. I mean, god help you if you find the courtyard area, you will get lost for at least 10 minutes. Different enemies can shake things up but even the treasure rooms don't surprise me anymore. I know exactly where they can show up.

That being said, this is my longest run by far and I am loving this combination rapier-pistol thing I found. I can shoot and stun an enemy while smacking him around. The enemy AI thinks "melee combat= no bullet stun" but not with this. I trick them into a fight they can't win. I am a goddamn matador. BB on it's own is a 9 out of 10. The chalice dungeons on thier own is a 7 at best. But together, now that I see them as a main quest vacation/loot slot machine I'd say BB is now my second favorite game Hidetaka Miyazaki has made. I'm really glad I gave it a thorough second chance.

Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta go get my ass kicked:

[Bloodborne] [Spoilers] [GIF] Chalice Dungeon Bosses are no joke.

F**k this guy.

I don't understand what's going on.

It's been an amazing summer so far. Mild, breezy, and rain enough to keep things green. I should be loving this, but my hollow need of politics has kept me pretty glum. We are in uncharted historical territory, at least for America. I don't want to fly off on a crazy 25th amendment rant because neither of us have time for that. But come on guys, the people at the Nixon library are really enjoying themselves lately. I think we all know why.

I don't understand what's going on behind the scenes and off the cameras. But I think I know why the President is acting out his dizzy pile-driving fantasies on twitter. In The Wire, when Carcetti becomes mayor, he gets a blistering speech about the reality of politics. The job has it's perks and the decor is fancy... but you gotta eat sh*t and like it. Every. Day.

It takes a certain kind of person to be a politician in charge. Not everyone is cut out for it. A man who has spent 40 years hiding behind lawyers instead of grappling with his failures may not be cut out for it. Just a thought.