Magic the Gathering’s newest set is a Universes Beyond release based around Avatar: The Last Airbender. Prior to the full retail release of a new set in Magic there’s events called “prereleases” that allow you to play with the new cards early. My wife, myself, Bay, and Izzy will be heading out to a local event tonight.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “MTG Prerelease Outing”
More Slay the Spire this week.
I’ve been slowly getting better at playing as the Watcher. My main roadblock has been that the only runs that make it anywhere near the end are usually focused on blocking. They have such little damage that it takes 20 turns to fight a regular monster, let alone a boss. Surely if I just do the same thing again I’ll get a different result.
What’s everyone else up too?
Last week we talked about the origin of the “Big Three” slasher movie franchises: Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. All three of the original movies were created as stand-alone films, although as noted A Nightmare on Elm Street had a sequel approved right at the end of filming, causing a final scene to be added that essentially negated the conclusion (and arguably the message) of the movie. All three franchises would eventually re-write their long-lasting villains into different concepts, but not necessarily immediately.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Slasher Movie Evolution: In the Case of Halloween and Halloween II”
Achievements and trophies have been a contentious addition to the gaming space since their initial releases. The majority of people mostly ignore them. Some find it mildly annoying to have their immersion or momentum broken up by a HUD element obscuring the action. Some really hate them, viewing them as trivializing and undermining the individual game’s enjoyment or message for the sake of short-term dopamine. Certain dopamine deprived monkeys, like myself, love them. And for the sake of this article I will refer to them all collectively as trophies, as the PSN system is my area of focus.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Trophies and Achievements Are Fine. Good Even.”
This week was once again, uneventful.
I played more Slay the Spire, and pretty much spent the whole week trying to beat the game with the Defect. Yesterday I did it with great effort and luck. And now I’m going to try to beat it as the Watcher.
I did also play a few rounds of R.E.P.O. since the monster update came out. I’ve only seen a few of the new monsters, but they have definitely spiced things up.
How’s everyone else doing this week?
Finally, the age-old debate has been settled.
Here's how this site grew from short essays to novel-length quasi-analytical retrospectives.
This is a horrible narrative that undermines the hobby through crass stereotypes. The hobby is vast, gamers come from all walks of life, and you shouldn't judge ANY group by its worst members.
I scoured the Steam database to figure out what words were the most commonly used in game titles.
Denuvo videogame DRM didn't actually kill piracy, but it did stop it for several months. Here's what we learned from that.
A breakdown of how this game faltered when the franchise was given to a different studio.
Back in 1999, I rode the dot-com bubble. Got rich. Worked hard. Went crazy. Turned poor. It was fun.
There's a new graphics API in town. What does that mean, and why do we need it?
Grand Theft Auto is a lousy, cheating jerk of a game.
When the source code for Doom 3 was released, we got a look at some of the style conventions used by the developers. Here I analyze this style and explain what it all means.
T w e n t y S i d e d
