This week I’ve been playing Lies of P. I was unsure about the game due to my only experience with Souls-likes was the first Dark Souls and it didn’t go very well, I think I’m having an easier time due to the game being more linear and with more quality of life stuff of a modern game. Other than that I also played some Raft, which I’m going back to after writing this.
What are you guys playing?
Unless you are a particular fan of the minutiae of “the Golden Era” of giant monster movies, Toho’s production of King Kong vs. Godzilla from 1962 can be a confusing watch. In many ways, it fails, despite its accomplishments, in exactly the same way Legendary’s 2021 release of Godzilla vs. Kong fails. That is, whatever your doubts about the previous movies were, the combination of big-name monsters and a decade of FX improvements would SURELY produce *something* of worth. And I mean, it DOES…just generally not in a way people expected or wanted. At least, looking back we see that. But at the time, and here’s the other truly ASTOUNDING fact that causes so much modern consternation: King Kong vs. Godzilla is the most successful Godzilla movie ever in Japan, even today. Of course, that’s only from a certain point-of-view; this placement is based solely on theater attendance. Theater attendance fell steadily throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s, but the numbers still roughly correlate to both profit and general popularity with the Japanese public. KKvG is followed by the original Gojira and the sequel, Godzilla Raids Again; and the mid-60’s movies that quickly followed King Kong vs. Godzilla. The only later movies to intrude on the upper echelons are 2016’s Shin Godzilla and 2023’s Godzilla Minus One. But as usual, we need to look at the factors that led to one of the most popular Godzilla movies ever.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “A Confusing Second Volume”
I am back from the hospital after spending the better half of a week being poked and prodded. They listened to my lungs a lot, and asked if I was a smoker every ten seconds. I am not a smoker, and have never been a smoker, so I’m a little offended I seem to have the effects of smoking without the edgy vice out of it. If I’d known this was going to happen I obviously would have been sucking cancer sticks down like boba just for the hell of it, but noooo, I had to go the old fashioned genetic way. What was it that landed me in the hospital?
Covid? Flu? Some new allergy? Nope.
A cold. I got the old fashioned cold and now I’m glued to a nebulizer like regular air has gone out of style. I didn’t realize I needed to go get me an old Victorian nightgown and candle to go with my historical ailments. Please sir, may I have some porridge, the poorhouses frown upon my cough, sir, but I do my best, sir.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Thoughts of the Almost-Healthy”
This week I played A Little to the Left. A delightful cozy puzzle game which consists of tidying up with a cat making occasional appearances. It’s not always clear what about the objects you are trying to organize by, But the nice music and cute style make up for it. I also played Exit the Gungeon, it’s fine, the jump to 2D from top-down isn’t really appealing to me as I had hoped, the enemies attacks seem to be simplified and slower due to the smaller level size, but other than that it’s more or less the same game.
What are you guys playing?
I have posited Gojira as the culmination, and arguably the pinnacle, of the giant monster movie genre for decades. While arguments can be made for various titles in the Twentieth Century, you really have to wait for the new millennium to see movies that credibly achieved the same effect as Gojira, but also upped the level of achievement or quality in some substantive way. And yet, there were dozens, if not hundreds of monster and giant monster movies through the 1950’s and 1960’s, even into the 1970’s. The movie that set the pattern for many of these, at least in America, was
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Years of Infamy”
An unhinged rant where I maybe slightly over-reacted to the water torture of Souls evangelism.
What is "Domino Worldbuilding" and how did it help to make Mass Effect one of the most interesting settings in modern RPGs?
A game I love. It has a solid main story and a couple of really obnoxious, cringy, incoherent side-plots in it. What happened here?
Here is a 13 part series where I talk about programming games, programming languages, and programming problems.
People were so worried about the boring gameplay of The Old Republic they overlooked just how boring and amateur the art is.
WAY back in 2005, I wrote about a D&D campaign I was running. The campaign is still there, in the bottom-most strata of the archives.
What lessons can we learn from the abrupt demise of this once-impressive games studio?
Crysis 2 has basically the same plot as Half-Life 2. So why is one a classic and the other simply obnoxious and tiresome?
I write a program to simulate different strategies in Starcraft 2, to see how they compare.
It's not a good movie, but it was made with good intentions and if you look closely you can find a few interesting ideas.
T w e n t y S i d e d
