Congrats to Paul, who is now a father. Again. I’m at the age where I’m nostalgic about those hectic early years of child-rearing. Heather and I are unquestionably done having kids, but once in a while we stop and smile at someone else’s toddler and say to each other, “Man, it would be great to be able to do that one more time.”
Link (YouTube) |
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #369: Risk of Dyson Sphere”
This game continually throws me off-balance because it keeps shifting between styles of storytelling. Sometimes we’re doing the Serious Worldbuilding For Grownups, and sometimes we’re in lighthearted cartoon action-adventure mode.
I am fine with either of these, but I really needed the storyteller to pick one and stick with it. Which brings me to the “prison break” that The Rocketeer talked about this week…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “FF12 Sightseeing Tour Part 2: The Live-Action Cartoon”
While knocked out in the clink, Vaan has a dream of his brother Reks, apparently in some sort of hospital. Despite the prologue of the game making it seem like Reks bit the dust within moments, Vaan’s memory of him seems to indicate he was in a vegetative state for some time before expiring. As future events show, that will really strain the delicate continuity, but more on that in a moment…
Our new digs from now on, Nalbina Dungeon, is actually just the fortress from the prologue, repurposed as a hole to throw unsavories into. Seems Amalia wasn’t taken here; Vaan awakens next to Balthier, while Fran is already off casing the joint. Nalbina being more of the “Gitmo” type of prison than the “Shawshank” type, the cast languish in wasting obscurity for the rest of their days, because FFXII is a bold work, unafraid to buck cliché.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “A Travelog of Ivalice, Part 2: The Worst Plot Ever”
Before we talk about the games I’m playing, let’s talk about what I’m going to be playing: Last week Chris and I wrapped up our series on Batman: Arkham Origins. In that final entry, I put up a poll asking people what we should cover next. Here are the results:
Resident Evil 5 (2009) – 331 (Winner)
A Way Out (2018) – 351
Halo 2 (2004) – 389
Gears of War: Ultimate Edition (2006) – 436
How it worked: Everyone was able to give a score to each game, from 1 to 4. 1 indicates high interest, 4 indicates lack of interest. So lower numbers are better. Each score was independent of the others, so you were free to vote however you like. You could rank the four games, or you could bomb a game you hated by giving everything else a 1. Or you could give 1 to the game you cared about and give everything else a 4. It’s fine.
This was interesting because it was basically a race between A Way Out and Resident Evil 5. Those games pulled away from the others very early in the process, but were always within 2 points of each other when I checked the scores on the first day.
Then sometime in day 2, RE5 began to pull ahead. I don’t know why, but there you go.
My only worry here is that I’m sort of infamously incompatible with Capcom’s particular style of B movie-horror-comedy-action-spy-thriller-farce-adventure-shooter. The Batman series was already pretty negative, and I don’t want these streams to be defined by unrelenting negativity. I’m going to try to go in with an upbeat attitude and make sure we have a good time. If it doesn’t work, I’ll blame all of you for voting for it.
I love democracy.
Anyway, I think we’re going to launch the series next week on January 25th. Keep an eye on Chris’ Twitch channel for more.
Now here’s what I’ve been playing…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “This Week I Played… (January 2022)”
And so we begin the new year with a bit of positivity and a whole lot of mailbag questions. Also, we got at least four different emails asking me to comment on Walmart’s proposed virtual mall. Given my history, do I have anything new to say as this idea re-appears after vanishing for 20 years?
I don’t know. I might make a video about it.
Link (YouTube) |
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #368: Same Old New Classics”
I’ve spent a lot of time pointing out when game writers break the rules of storytelling. Sometimes I feel like the storytelling police: A dull prescriptivist that endlessly harangues writers with a list of simple Do’s and Don’ts lifted from Creative Writing 101.
But look. Storytelling rules are more guidelines than laws, and I’m willing to admit that the resulting cake is more important than the ingredients that go into it. If you think a rule is getting in the way of telling your story, then you should break the rule rather than the story.
Having said that, Final Fantasy 12 breaks an amazing number of rules in its introduction.
The Rocketeer touched on this in his entry this week when he said:
The game starts out with a ton of backstory and exposition that goes on way, way too long and drops too many proper nouns.
So let’s talk about this opening…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “FF12 Sightseeing Tour Part 1: Revenge of the Narrator”
THIS FUCKING GAME.
The game starts out with a ton of backstory and exposition that goes on way, way too long and drops too many proper nouns. But it all boils down this: the big, evil empire from up north, Archadia, stomped its way south and took over its next-door neighbor, Landis. Then it took over your country’s next door neighbor, Nabradia.
Your country, Dalmasca, just married off its princess, Ashe, to Nabradia’s Prince Rasler, who runs off to fight them and gets his shit wrecked along with most of Dalmasca’s army. The Dalmascan King Raminas heads off to strike a surrender and keep a little bit of autonomy in exchange for not everyone getting killed.
That’s when Basch, a Dalmascan Knight Captain,A captain to us Yankee folk; in the original Japanese version, Basch is a general. and some nobody footsoldier named Reks, are marching down the road when they get word that the surrender is all a setup and the king is walking into a deathtrap. Whatever forces they can scrape together haul ass back to the negotiations at Nalbina Fortress to try and rescue him.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “A Travelog of Ivalice, Part 1: A Long Time Ago, in a Dynasty Far, Far Away…”
Everyone hates Black Friday sales. Even retailers! So why does it exist?
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A long-form analysis on one of the greatest horror games ever made.
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What makes the gameplay of Borderlands so addictive for some, and what does that have to do with slot machines?
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From the company that brought us Fallout 76 comes a storefront / Steam competitor. It's a work of perfect awfulness. This is a monument to un-usability and anti-features.
T w e n t y S i d e d
