I’d like to apologize for my absence, but this time it’s not my fault. I’ve been sick, and am in fact still ill. All my plans and workouts fell flat as soon as the weather turned truly cold, and I had to drop a paying editing job in the middle of a week because I had an MS-related relapse. Right as I was recovering from that junk, I got a good old-fashioned cold, the kind that likes to stick around for two weeks and come in waves. It’s like every time I get up and say, “Oh, I might be better,” the cold shows up an hour later to go, “Psyche! Gotcha, bitch!”

While I don’t feel the need to apologize for being sick, I do want to say how sorry I am that I won’t be finishing Wizard of Legend. Every time I think to play it, I also think of a dozen other things I could do that would be better ways to spend my time. Like doing laundry, for instance. When a game is so tedious that I would prefer to do laundry instead, you know there’s a problem.

But, as I can’t finish it, this is not a review. I will cover what I liked about the parts I played, and then I’ll cover what I hated. (Hate is a strong word, but it totally applies in this instance, believe me.) But I will not give a score, so then it’s not a real, really real review.

What I liked can be summed up pretty fast, so first, let’s go over the story. In the modern era of the game’s world, your character is a young wizard visiting the museum of the Chaos Trials, where people admire all the many feats and spells of wizards of legend. It’s basically a tutorial area before an artifact sucks you back in time and into your very own Chaos Trial. You, yes YOU, are now being tested to become A WIZARD OF LEGEND! Wooohooo! Yaaay!

The premise is decent, the graphics are lovely, and the music is nice. Once you have enough funds to buy spells and find a mix that works for you, the visual flair of said spells can look quite spectacular as well. Aaaaand that’s everything I liked. *Deep breath* Continue reading

I actually planned to do a different review this week for Wizard of Legend, but despite feeling like I’ve played it for ages, Steam swears I’ve only been at it 13 hours. So I figure I’ll give it a bit more time before breaking out the gas and matches to burn it to the ground. On the other hand, only being ten hours into the free to play Magic: The Gathering: Arena (A name with way too many colons for my liking), I already know enough to tell you what you need to know about this game. Really, it’s Magic, but in a digital form. If you’ve played Magic anytime in its entire history, you already know what this means, and have already decided if you’re going to go in on this or not. This, then, is the review for the people who somehow missed out on the game for the last 20-some-odd years.

Before I get into it, I should cover some history explaining why I was originally hesitant to play this and explain why I was kind of right to be wary. I got into Magic: The Gathering at the ground floor with the first generation of cards thanks to my roommate Andy. Andy gave me the “first free hit” that pushed me to start buying booster packs, and after a few weeks of trying to make monster decks of ridiculous sizes, I began to instead create smaller 40 card decks comprised of one or two mana colors and with lots of land and low cost spells and creatures. While most of my friends used mega-decks with high cost cards, I could pull up an army while they were still laying out land to pay for their first summons, and I destroyed them most of the time unless I just had a really bad shuffle.

But I reached the point where I was spending all my free money on booster decks. No, I reached the point where food and bills got shuffled to the side to pay for more cards, and recognizing I had an obsession bordering on addiction, I quit the game and gave away all my cards. Five years later, a random co-worker asked if I played Magic, and I said I used to, but couldn’t afford it. So he gave me a deck to play with, and before you can say obsessive compulsive disorder, I was looking at dwindling finances and a binder full of duplicate cards again. So yeah, even in a digital form, I worried that this game might once again bring out the worst in me. To a smaller extent, I can already feel that tug to spend some real cash to get crystals so I can buy booster packs faster. In this way, Magic can be dangerous even if it’s loads of fun. Continue reading

Mark of the Ninja dropped a newly remastered edition along with their debut on the Nintendo Switch, (a device I lusted after, but feel less attracted to now that the paid online features have been implemented) and I had vague memories of not liking it. But, my reason then for not liking it was the sales pitch that you could do a fully pacifist run and even get rewarded for it. But in reality, it’s only possible to do said pacifist run in New Game+, and so much of my review on that older version was griping about what I saw as a bait and switch ad. So I thought, “I know I have to kill everything on the first run anyway, so why not buy it again and see it through to the end?”

How does that old saying go? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I’m a complete dumbass who got what I deserved. Because of that, I shall temper my temper and avoid my usual rage filled f-bombing. I did it to myself, knowing what would happen. But I suffered through this, for you. In the words of Courage the Cowardly Dog: “The things I do for love!”

For those of you interested in only the hot take, that’s all folks! Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time. Continue reading

You probably expected this review to come out sooner, and to be honest, I did too. I’d purchased Dead Cells when it was still in early access. If you know me on Twitter, you know from my rants that I hate early access and refuse to pay to beta test for most companies. But after watching multiple Let’s Play videos and seeing how smooth the game play was, I decided to take a risk and pick the game up early. Before I even get to the proper review, I would like to offer kudos to the developer for releasing an early access product that was fantastically stable. In the thirty hours I played before moving to the full release, I never once had a crash or any kind of glitch. You can’t even see that in many triple A games after their obligatory day one patch.

Once the game went gold, I got a notification in-game that I should start a new game to experience “the full story,” and I did so with much trepidation for reasons I will explain later. From that point forward, I put another seventy-seven hours into the game, for a grand total of 107. So, know this review is coming after much kicking of the virtual tires, and that despite what I’m going to say, I will continue playing the game for a long time after this is published.

So….Dead Cells is a game I’d really like to hate. I can’t because it’s stable, it’s got gorgeous graphics, and fantastic music and sound effects. But I want to hate it because of the controls and because of the absolute pain it was to gather the main tools of movement within the game, runes. I want to hate it because much like Binding of Isaac, success or failure often comes down to the tools randomly doled out to me in the course of a run. I want to hate it because much like Binding of Isaac, so much of my time is spent groaning over bullshit created by RNGesus that it dilutes the times where I am actually enjoying the game.

Don’t get me wrong, on a good run with fun weapons and skills, this is mostly a joy to play. But a bad run will often be followed by another, and another, and given that a run to the last boss takes me around an hour and thirty minutes, those bad runs can often make me feel like I’ve wasted my time for nothing. (Y’all speed runners are probably snickering over my run time, and y’all can bite me.) Continue reading

All right, first let me apologize for the lack of content in forever. I’ve started and given up on three books, two of which were sequels from first books that I loved. We’re still flat broke, so aside from a few indie games that I’m not ready to review yet, I’ve only been playing old games over and over. But as you can probably guess from the title, one of those old games is technically new again.

When Dark Souls Remastered was announced, I restarted the Prepare to Die edition because I was certain a lot of older players would be dusting off their copies to get back in for some practice. I totally called that, for the first time being able to play with a world full of invasions and summon signs. I also got to see once again the WORST parts of the PC port, even with DSFix installed. For me, the single biggest problem was the game hanging in certain places like Quelaag’s Domain. There, I might have the screen freeze for up to five seconds. But the absolute worst place for hanging is the Firesage Demon boss fight, where if I don’t move to the far end of the arena, the game will hang for five to six seconds at a time every ten seconds or so. There are other examples I could give, but these were the most extreme.

I want to address the controversy around the price versus what you get in the remaster, and I want to start by saying that with me already owning the PC port, I got the remaster for half price. To me, all the new version had to do was fix those extreme moments of hang ups and it would be worth twenty euros. Part of this is because I got the PtD version on sale for ten euros. So with the two versions combined, I’m still not up to the forty euro asking price for newcomers or folks converting from a console version. But if you’re among the folks who looked at the new features and fixes and said “This is just DSFix and some minor graphics upgrades for an insane asking price,” I want to say…you’re not wrong. In fact I’ll go so far as to say your anger is justified. This is a lazy, lazy port, so lazy that FromSoftware couldn’t be bothered to do it themselves. Continue reading

Long time no see, right? The move from Milan to Pavia took a lot out of me, and my method of recovery was mostly lounging on the couch playing Bloodborne because it was free with PS Plus, and I figured why not give it another try? And by the way, the new internet connection is so slow that downloading Bloodborne took FOUR DAYS. Obviously, streaming games is going to be out of the question, and that means no PS4 games at all unless I can sort out how to record and upload them. As it is, recording and uploading PC games will have to be limited to around half hour sessions because that tiny ass file will take all day to upload to YouTube and Twitch. *Le Sigh*

(A side note: I apologize to anyone waiting on the remaining episodes of me playing Dark Souls II. I go to upload one, walk away to do other stuff, and come back a few hours later to see Twitch has once again fucked up the upload, so I have to start over…and have it fuck up again. My internet woes are truly terrible right now, let me tell ya.)

My opinion of Bloodborne hasn’t changed with additional runs, by the way. It’s got good bosses and the chalice dungeons are fun, but the vast majority of the game is boring to the point that I can fall asleep while playing it. Of all the FromSoftware games I’ve played, it’s the one I like the least. But hey, I played through all the chalice dungeons with a bloodtinge build, and while it took forever to build up a gun to the point of being actually useful, the end result was a dungeon run that was a literal blast to play. So it’s the same as my review, yeah? A decent time, if you can stomach the grind.

But so…where was I? Right, the review. Before we moved, I got a Kindle Fire tablet to use as a second screen while streaming…and another side note: the Twitch App for android is bjorked and won’t show viewer’s comments or the current stream, so I had to download Firefox for Android to get to the Twitch site. That in itself required a whole other series of workarounds because Amazon tried to lock me out of the Google Play store, and despite Firefox being the defacto browser for most folks on PC, they don’t have it in their store. Can you say oy vey? Because I sure can.

So, Gems of War. I’d heard good stuff about this spiritual successor to Puzzle Quest, and I of course had many good times with Puzzle Quest and Puzzle Quest 2. This would seem like a perfect fit for me, and in small, short doses, it’s not all that bad. But…I don’t like it. I mean, I don’t hate it, either, but the free to play mechanics make any session over an hour into a kind of slow torture, like getting teeth cleaned. At first, it doesn’t seem so bad, but the longer it drags on, the more irritating it becomes. Continue reading

I know it’s been a while since my last post, but we’re in the process of moving to another town, Pavia, and we also got a new dog. (Well, newish, as he’s four years old.) (Side note to self: I’m gonna have to update all my bios to reflect the change of location and the addition of a new furbaby.) Anyway, it’s high time that I post a new review, and while I haven’t quite finished everything Dragonball Xenoverse 2 has to offer, I’ve seen the end of the story and played all the stages of the newest addition, Hero Colosseum. I’ve played enough to issue a verdict, and also talk about why the end game content is kind of a let down for me. But most of the rest of the review is positive fluffy fluffiness…most of it.

I wanted to get both Xenoverse and Xenoverse 2 earlier, but most reviews that I saw were pretty unkind to them. Steam had a sale on Xenoverse 2, and I figured “Hey, reviews have often failed to take my quirky tastes into account.” So I downloaded it and started with an Earthling who I named Retasu in the spirit of the show’s naming conventions. I also opted to go with a build consisting mostly of melee supers because all the builds I saw on YouTube seemed to go all in on ki blast supers, and I wanted to be different. I’m a rebel, yo. The character creator won’t quite let you get totally crazy, but if you want to make a thic tall chica with purple skin and red eyes, you can do that. It’s certainly got more options than some recent role play games that shall go unnamed.

Depending on your chosen race (earthling, saiyan, majin, namekian, or freiza) you will start the game with a slightly different cut scene, and there are certain quest lines made for your race to unlock their ultimate forms. (Spoiler: earthlings and majin both kinda get fucked on the ultimate form, and of course the saiyans have the bestest forms evah. The frieza golden transformation is pretty good, but I prefer “potential unleashed,” an ultimate transformation open to all races by completing advancement classes with a Z rank.) Within most story or parallel quests, you will even hear dialogue acknowledging your race, which is a nice touch.

But most of the plot is the same regardless of who you fight with. Evil demon scientist Towa has resurrected her ultimate champion Mira, and she’s once again plotting to corrupt the whole history of the Dragonball multiverse. In each era, she’s changed a key fight with a villain, leading to a win for the villain. This somehow releases a bunch of extra energy that Towa collects with the intention of merging the demon dimension with the normal multiverse. (I’m not entirely sure how the collection process works, but given how much energy is spent on the average Dragonball fight, I can get behind the premise that someone wants to harness the leftovers for Eeeeeeeevil.) Continue reading

You might be forgiven for mistaking this post for a review, given that there will be discussions of a game and what I did and didn’t like about it. However, this cannot be considered a review for several reasons, with the first being that I did not complete the game, nor do I plan on doing it. (Nor do I plan on watching the rest on YouTube.) I will not be issuing a score or suggesting whether you buy it or not. I won’t even be going all that in depth with the various game elements. These are just my thoughts after playing for a few days, and I’d like to share them with you so you have something new to read from me.

I got Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain for free as part of the PS+ collection, so that tempers my reaction to it quite a bit. I went in with low expectations for many reasons, the biggest of which was that the last few times I played any Metal Gear games (for reference I played the remasters of 2 and 3 on the PS Vita) I was bored to tears by the game play and annoyed endlessly by the interruptions for ten, twenty, and even thirty minute sessions of “plot”. In my opinion, Hideo Kojima is probably one of the most overrated game makers out there because it often seems to me that he doesn’t want to write for a game. He wants to write a visual novel or even a movie, with minimal interaction on the part of the audience.

The opening of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain certainly seemed to back that up, inviting me to touch the controls once every five minutes or so before playing out yet another lengthy (and often stupid) cut scene. (No, seriously, like my character would watch a nurse being garotted and not so much as point to warn the doctor? FUCKING STUPID.) However, once I got into the actual game, the cut scenes were greatly reduced, and while I really didn’t like the controls, I could at least work with them. Further, some of the missions were, gasp, actually fun to play. Continue reading