Tag: Supernatural

A Thousand Words: Heading Out

On By coilerxiiIn A Thousand Words, Review1 Comment

Heading Out

I saw “road trip” themed games and got Heading Out on a lark. I want to say that it was a worthwhile playthrough simply because of the feelings it generated and how at the very least it was interesting. But to be honest, this is a game where the messaging actually felt insulting to me.

So the gameplay itself is moderate roguelike resource management between driving set-pieces that control like a second-rate arcade racer from the mid 90s. I think it says something about its interest that I turned the difficulty down at the first chance. Beyond that, the best strategy is to frequently cut off road, which doesn’t feel right. Which unfortunately meant I had to experience the plot. Oh boy, the plot.

You’re a faceless figure on a trip of reckless driving in the 1970s USA. Through a series of not-exactly difficult deductions, it’s revealed the player is stuck in a Groundhog Day loop after being tricked into a deal with the devil. Is it real or metaphorical? I know it’s pretentious. As they go west to face the “world’s greatest driver” (an instant obvious hallucination), they develop a reputation as the “Interstate Jackalope” and various people comment on them (and other things) over the radio. This is the worst part of the game. The music itself ranges from serviceable to very good, with a lot of guitars and early 1970s electronics (think electric organs).

The “talk radio” is not. It is what happened if someone took the anti-American axe-grindiness of Grand Theft Auto at its worst but with none of the goofiness, and (even?) worse quality all around. It’s honestly one of the most mean-spirited pieces of fiction I’ve seen. Like the overwhelming theme is of some bitter underemployed elitist screeching at everything and everyone. You have the screaming right-wing host who is designed both to be completely wrong about everything while also being sanded down to the point where he can’t be as vile as a real George Wallace-era figure of that time and place would be. There’s a ripoff of the movie Network desperate host broadcasting and two liberal women who are supposed to be better than Mr. Right Wrong but who you’re also supposed to sneer at (see what I meant?), and the literal (drug?) devil who’s providing social commentary that is still supposed to be profound but ends up being the ramblings of someone who just read A Peoples History of the United States while listening to turn of the millennium whine-rock.

Also the story scenes/adventure book style choices you encounter are variations of: “I don’t really care because this is all a time loop/crazy drug-induced hallucination anyway” – “the same bitter nihilistic things you had to listen to now you have to read and watch” and, in my least favorite scene, treating immigrants who are sincerely in awe of America’s wealth with barely concealed subtext of them being naive fools and not, you know, people who actually have firsthand knowledge of what real poverty and oppression is like.

Anyway, I spited the game by ramming into as many things on the road as I could while giving my character the least sympathetic backstory in the choices allowed. (He was an adulterer who was driven to despair and rampages out of boredom).

…Whoa, never thought the plot of a rougelike would invoke this much reaction in me.

A Thousand Words: Nip For Speed

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Nip For Speed

One rarely encounters a work of fiction, much less a video game as deep and enlightening as Nip For Speed. It is a point and click adventure game where you, sitting in the front seat, have to help a cat drive a car. The game is very short but I had a hugely fun time laughing my head off at it.

Make of this what you will, be it a game on materialism, a lecture on the beauty and stress of travel, or just a silly surreal game where you help a cat drive a car.

A New Crossover Concept

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See, Buckshot Roulette is one of the most crossover-friendly setttings imaginable. All you need to do is put the crossover character into the game. Since it’s implied to be some kind of supernatural dream anyway (at least in one mode, it’s a long story), you can go into their psychology as they face off against a floating head and heads and repeatedly shoot themselves in the head for a mid-six figure paycheck.

A Thousand Words: Wario Land 3

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Wario Land 3

Wario Land 4 is one of my favorite games of all time. Wario Land 3, coming out on the preceding Game Boy Color not long before, is not. This is one of those games that you could tell the developers really just needed more power and focus and it would click. With the GBA and a clearer focus, it worked. Here it didn’t.

This is less linear than Wario Land 4 and has the gimmick in that Wario can’t actually get killed (but can get knocked back and cost the player time that way). The problem with losing time instead of losing health is obvious, especially since WL4 didn’t have any absolute game overs. In fact, this game can be described as slow, slowly moving and slowly backtracking in the semi-open world. A lot of this is probably due to the 8 bit GBC’s limitations, but that only makes it dated.

Thankfully, the graphics are very good for the hardware limitations and do not feel dated, and the chiptune soundtrack is beautifully quirky and excellent. The game just doesn’t really gel and has the “misfortune” of being followed up by a classic.

On Star Wars

On By coilerxiiIn Essay1 Comment

Now I want to say that I’ve liked a lot of Star Wars stuff. I don’t mind the setting, I’ve seen 2/3s of the official movies. Like any big setting it has its ups and downs. But I definitely don’t hate this.

However, I feel obligated to say one thing about Star Wars that I believe. It is the most overrated work of modern fiction, and this overrating has made it impossible to judge. What you have is first a trio of fun sci-fi pulp movies that get treated as if they were more than fun sci-fi pulp movies, because they were a breath of fresh air in the pretentious dark tone of 1970s science fiction. Then you have a giant franchise.

Next you have the prequels, which are basically what happens when a Dunning-Krugered director gets free reign to run amuck. People nowadays are swinging towards defending the prequels in a dose of inevitable “defend midsize sedan cars the minute they stop being popular” hipsterism. Although I don’t blame them, because…

Then George Lucas cashed out and the Mouse Machine made the sequel trilogy. Now I had little desire to see them in full personally, and everything I saw and heard reinforced that desire. When I finally, recently looked at them in more depth, I was even gladder. At least the first six were works of genuine artistic imagination. These are just rehashed play it too safe mush piles that don’t understand the feel of their setting.

(Not so small side note: Devereaux’s excellent blog has the point in a review of fellow cash grab Rings of Power that authors are obsessed with winning battles via an unrealistic One Neat Trick. That plus “why didn’t they fly in on the eagles” ”’rationalism”’ leads to the infamous hyperspace ram.)

A Thousand Words: Noita Conjurer

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One of several things responsible for my slowdown in reading, writing and blogging has been the Conjurer mod for Noita (previously reviewed here). The problem with Noita was that it had excellent and complex interactions, an incredibly customizable magic system, and more… thrown into a punishing roguelike. Even respawning mods didn’t really solve the latter problem for me, as it just still felt like luck and brute force.

Enter Conjurer, which turns the entire game into a silly sandbox. It’s great for getting the hang of wand mechanics… and just seeing what happens when you pour lava on things. For me it turns Noita from one fun game into two.

My Take On The Female Astartes

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So time for one of the biggest internet controversies surrounding the Warhammer 40k fandom. Note that I said “internet controversies”, not “controversies”. This post therefore might be controversial itself. Oh well.

This has to do with Female Space Marines. In-game, for basically all of 40ks solidified existence, the gene-seed that produces the super-space-knights who serve as the mascots of the setting only works with men. Games Workshop has been extremely strict and clear with this. Some online advocates have opposed this and wanted a change.

I’m pretty firmly in the the “no female space marines” category, and not just because my Imperial Guard doesn’t have this problem in the slightest.

“No female repre”-I’m sorry, she can’t hear you over the sound of her supertank’s engine.

I think one of my reasons is because a Space Marine has become a very specific thing. I would even argue that if you asked a layperson unfamiliar with the setting to describe one, you’d end up with either a Sister of Battle or a female Tempestus Scion (neither of which has any issue). Those can and do exist without any issue. Female techpriestesses can and do exist without issue, if you like someone so covered in augumentations that their initial number of chromosomes becomes irrelevant. Female Eldar and Tau can and do exist…

In fact, this is the diversity argument I have. If female space marines were adopted, they’d actually make the setting significantly less diverse. It means (even) more of the already pushed setting mascots and (even) less of the factions where this isn’t an issue.

(As for diversity in the setting overall, I have three big takes:

  • It’s still a pulpy sci-fantasy kitchen sink. Like Catachans are not anthropologist-approved examples of life in an inhumanly harsh jungle, they’re 80s action stars en masse. This is the least hard sci-fi setting imaginable.
  • Diversity means something a lot different in 41st millennium terms than it does in 2nd millennium ones.
  • SISTERS DO NOT JUST HAVE WHITE HAIR AND BLACK ARMOR, THEY HAVE AN ENTIRE RAINBOW OF COLORS IN THEIR MANY ORDERS, GW PLEASE REMEMBER THIS. )

A Thousand Words: Groundhog Day

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Groundhog Day

It’s Groundhog Day, and the holiday brings two famous events to my mind. One is the time that then-New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, in an event that symbolized his less than stellar mayoralty, fatally dropped a groundhog during a ceremony. The second is of course the Bill Murray movie that is the subject of this post.

The film has a simple time loop premise, to the point where, when describing any other work of fiction with such a cycle, you can just say “like Groundhog Day” and people will understand. Main character Phil Connors goes on a loathed news assignment to Punxsutawney, finds himself snowed in, and then finds it’s the same day again and again and again and again.

What makes it a classic is that it works as both a silly and profound movie. You get both spiritual self-reflection and a man stealing a groundhog before driving off a cliff. The cast of Bill Murray and Andie Macdowell is excellent, and the whole thing is probably one of the greatest holiday films ever.

Review: The Soul Drinkers Omnibus

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The Soul Drinkers Omnibus

Since I’ve just gotten (and am enjoying) the new Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader game, I figured I’d review a book (series) from that setting. An old set of Space Marine novels, the Soul Drinkers Omnibus covers the titular chapter. Is it good? Uh… not really.

The biggest problem is the characterization. It’s not that they’re one-dimensional bolter shooters. No, it’s that they’re worse. Namely, that these ancient super-warriors come across as ridiculously dumb and naive for people in their position. The plot involving the Soul Drinkers and their fall from grace involves a lot of contrivances and bad judgement to the point where I frankly felt they deserved to get wiped out.

There’s better 40k books around, so I don’t recommend these.