By the way, “pull the plug” an odd phrase. You’re supposed to pull the plug after a nice, relaxing bath, not when there’s a gloved hand with long, sharp blades coming up from beneath the water. So, yeah, I mean it a nice way.
There are many reasons for this:
no one reads it;
the fun for me is in the design, but when you have plenty of content, you’re understandably limited in what you can do;
it seems like every piece of software I use for making it is tainted in one way or another;
since I pursue minimalism, uninstalling a bunch of software would be nice regardless;
the structure — writing at least one post every month — is good, but can be stressful;
it overlaps with my Mastodon;
there’s probably something else I’m forgetting.
The plan is…
to keep this up until the end of the year or so;
figure out a better place for a mirror (probably on Codeberg);
use Mastodon to post most of the content that would have been posted to this blog, while deciding where to publish longer pieces.
My Mastodon and Codeberg accounts are the places to get updates. I am definitely not going to do it here.
I don’t remember if I finished Diablo back in the day or if I learned the rest of it through cultural osmosis. I certainly did now. Regardless, I had forgotten how many genre staples were already present.
It’s not just procedural generation, two vessels for health and mana, clicky combat, etc. There are fully voiced quests, a reasonably robust loot system, spells and scrolls, and many other features that have become standard not just for this type of action RPG, but for most games nowadays. Yes, a lot of games are Diablo-clones now.
What sets Z.A.R. apart from other shooters is its open levels and voxel engine. Are these features enough to make it a hidden gem? Not really. It’s not a bad game and is still enjoyable, just not very remarkable.
I can’t help but think that Babylon 5: The Road Home wasn’t created because someone wanted to tell a story. Perhaps they just wanted to revisit some aspects of the TV show. Perhaps they wanted to gauge interest in an old, dormant franchise. It feels like a postcard — a way to remember something. But it’s certainly a nice postcard.
Avalon is beautiful, in that drab sort of way. Even the CGI, which often ages first, looks interesting because of its style. The story has been done before, though. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; there’s no reason to expect everything to be unique. It’s just that Mamoru Oshii keeps playing with similar ideas, and this is not his best work.
I don’t want to overuse the word “beautiful”, so I’ll only say it once: Kena: Bridge of Spirits is beautiful. The story, art style, music. I have some complaints about the combat, but the exploration and puzzles are very good. It’s a dark fairy tale, but there’s nothing particularly worth warning about.
Someone described Adaca as a game similar to S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and I can see that. However, the main campaign is more or less Half-Life 2. It’s a reasonably straightforward, linear shooter with a gravity gun from the get go. It’s solid.
Also, as far as I can tell, this is the first game with an explicitly non-binary character, which is great.
Can a character escape his past? Can a game series?
God of War started as a series based on the ideas of what is cool from “a teenager’s notebook”. Now, it wants to do better. It’s great to have all the new progressive titles, but I have to admit that it’s also valuable for an old and popular franchise to pull something like this off.
Does it? Norse era games — God of War and God of War Ragnarök — are far from ideal, but they’ve come a long way from their questionable roots. They would have been extremely progressive if released 20 years ago. Today? Even without spoilers, I can point out a couple of things where someone should have raised their hand and asked, “are we sure we want to do this?”
Overall, I enjoyed playing them, despite some minor gripes. I mostly didn’t care about combat, which might be my issue. I liked the combat in Doom: The Dark Ages quite a lot, but I haven’t liked the combat in any game since then. For me, running around in a not-so-open world, solving puzzles, and listening to NPCs was way more enjoyable. Thank goodness for a modern approach to difficulty that lets you breeze through encounters and most boss fights if you so desire.
Speaking of combat I didn’t care about… South of Midnight is a great game! It’s a dark fairy tale. Emphasis on dark: expect serious subjects to be brought up. It’s also going to get political, for sure! But it also has plenty of whimsy, have interesting characters and stories, looks great, and is an outright musical, with lyrics that help tell the story.
Speaking of musicals… Mayor May Knott is a horror-themed game in which you rebuild a small town, and has a lot of original parody songs. To be fair, most of the game consists of busywork and light puzzles, and its performance is dreadful on any machine I have. However, the theme, quirky characters, and overall feel-good-ness, that I liked since I played the demo, pulled me through. You’re giving people homes, c’mon! No regrets!
