That Time I Ranted About "The Goldbergs" on Twitter

I just really want to revisit and cherish this moment where I got so fed up with the mere existence of ABC sitcom The Goldbergs that I wrote a blog post's worth of tweets about it AND made a Twitter moment out of it later!

https://twitter.com/i/moments/1010906460761608197

For those who don't use Twitter, I am going to post this below:
(I am going to write it all out below that too because the Twitter screenshots don't translate well on all monitors)

"I'm making this so I don't rant about it that often. Probably still will.

"There are much more pressing and repulsive things going on now but I have nothing to add to the discussion so:

"The Goldbergs is still running and it is written like a fucking toothpaste commercial now. It was awful before but now it won't even stick to its gimmick. Scratch that. I think at one point when I was a kid there was a toothpaste commercial line with a sentient set of human teeth. That's a funny idea on paper. The Goldbergs is not even a funny concept on paper. I'm probably just overwhelmed with my week and am taking it out on a beloved ABC sitcom. I can tell because I have always hated that show and it's such a hollow show that it's an easy target.

"You're allowed to like The Goldbergs and enjoy it if you want. I can't take that away from you. Don't want to. At the same time, you're blind if you complain about TV becoming shit. If you tune into that show, you're part of the problem and should be aware enough to see that. I kind of want to do a video on that show but that means I would have to sit through more episodes than I already have to make fair points and I don't know if that's worth it."

"If you pirate The Goldbergs... then... fuck, you're just a masochist, and I completed Sonic 3D Blast just to do a shitty video on YouTube about it, so that's really saying something. To each their own. If I was going to make a video on The Goldbergs, I would probably make easy comparisons to other shows that run around the same time on the same channel. The Middle and Modern Family. They are not perfect shows but they do what they do way fucking better than The Goldbergs.

"I'm not a big fan of The Middle but the writers, directors, producers, and probably casting agents knew that their kids would not be kids forever. Their characters grow from the past and it isn't ham-fisted. The audience can see it and feel like they were a part of that. Modern Family does the same things except every character grows, even the adults. The fucking grandpa has to learn shit about his gay son and it doesn't just work because it's topical, it's because the main cast of Modern Family is awesome. The cast makes that show. The Goldbergs is on Season 5 and things are slowly progressing but nothing important is changing because there was never anything important to begin with. By trying to make the show relatable to everyone, they created 5 alien characters that no one cares about. You can't.

"The guy that the story is allegedly based on, based on the home movie stuff at the end of each episode, probably has a creative mind. He's probably got some real mindfuck ideas in there but the show is such a corporate ABC dollhouse asylum that it doesn't matter. Even then, when something momentous or "important" happens in an episode, they usually ruin it by trying their damnedest to throw in an homage to 80's pop culture and it's so fucking distracting. Even if they almost hit it, they shoot themselves in the foot everytime. There was an episode where the plot was almost a complete abridged rip-off of A Christmas Story. I'm not exaggerating. I'm hyped on caffeine and kind of angry and tired and overwhelmed with a lot of stuff to do. So fuck The Goldbergs. If you don't know what it is, good."

Just wanted to point that out because whenever I remember that this is something I spent energy to do, it always gives me a laugh. I think this is mostly because I pretty much don't make any jokes or anything in this thread/moment. I'm not trying to be funny here and I think that unintentionally makes it way funnier. I hope you enjoyed that, I did.

Being an Entitled Baby on deh webbernet (Update Blog)

I haven't been posting a terrible amount of anything recently. It has been 6 months since my last main video and 5 months since my last video on my channel in general. My music channel (Lexi Karma) might as well not exist. I posted a blog saying how exhausted and miserable I was a few months ago. I think that it is probably fair to update that. As it stands now, I have squirrels constantly invading the attic of my apartment and the management and pest control people are not doing a whole lot to fix that. Naturally, if I do something to fix that, it breaks lease. So I'm up at 8 in the morning ready to procrastinate and write about my life anyway (the fucker is skittering around up there storing food as we speak).

I'm going to put brief synopses at the end of this post for those who don't want to read a book about where my head is at with all this.

So:

General Life/ Mental Health

I am surprisingly much better. I am in a mental homeostasis sort of thing that I don't know how to define... other than "mental homeostasis". I recognize that my life is a fucking joke but considering the efforts I am putting in daily to make it a little less idiotic, things are not so bad. I don't feel like I'm tricking myself into seeing the positives in my life. I'm not rich. I'm not constantly surrounded by trusting friends. I'm being woken up by rodents at least one week out of every month. But I am making progress. Typing this out now, I realize this sounds way more depressing than what it is. I guess I just realize that no matter where I am in life, there are going to be things that I want to change. Where I am at now is, in many ways, flawed but compared to where I was even three years ago, I'm doing pretty damn great. I am growing new mental health issues but they are sustainable. The most dangerous ones that have plagued me since I was really young are certainly at bay. They have their spikes but are otherwise barely there.

UNFORTUNATELY THOUGH, since they are not completely gone and I have had some recent insurance issues, I now have to do more grinding for money that has nothing to do with anything creative so I can continue to do creative things so I can afford drugs so I don't kill myself. It's a ride. I already had to balance school, shit job, music, writing, video editing, and some weird semblance of a social life. Now I have to do more school and more shit job, leaving less time to do or even enjoy the other things. Drawing things, for example, has become a rare occurrence for me over the past few months. But I'm also moving into another place soon so I can't just take a vacation or something. Welcome to being an artistic person in your 20's in America, I guess.

School

School can kiss my ass but I'm almost done. The sad thing is that this far into the major, I am actually starting to take classes I am interested in that can directly help my future and they are being stifled by other classes. Juggling the class I care about (a screenwriting workshop) with the class I know I don't care about at all (an elective) instantly makes me care less about the class I should be caring about. It's making my grades in the cool classes slide slightly below perfect. Ohhhhh godddd!!!!

In any case, I graduate sometime in Spring 2020. Some days that is my only motivation to keep going with this workload.

Randomrings Channel

I want to keep doing Randomrings Channel but focus less on being analytical and more about being silly/ writing stuff that I hope people will find interesting. It just isn't in the cards right now. I want to do more stuff like that Pokemon Battle Revolution review even though I have said repeatedly that I never want to do another video like that again. A more cartoonish video makes the video inherently more Newgrounds-friendly. I want to make things I pour a lot of effort into go on a site that isn't festering with dead body-filming vloggers, pedophiles, Fortnite, more Fortnite, and 30-minute video essays about how that game you like is actually bad. So from now on, if I ever upload videos ever again, I would expect the video to be one of three things:

Gumflap:

Gumflap is mostly game reviews and I guess from now on I would like to keep it in the style of the Pokemon Battle Revolution video. These would be short, goofy videos where I talk about my general thoughts on a video game and why that might matter on some grander scale. Honestly, as long as I keep the scripts under 10 minutes, it probably won't take any longer than a video like the "Hat in Time" one. In some cases, it might not take as long at all.

Late to the Party:

I don't know why, but writing tiny movie reviews has been something I have been growing attached to recently. I started doing this here on this blog but I might do more of it in video form. They won't all be 40 minutes long like the MCU video I made. At this point, I have written a large handful of these, including more MCU movies (Ant-Man and the Wasp and Avengers: Infinity War with plans to cover Avengers: Endgame after I finally see it... you can spoil it, I already know a lot of the stuff that happens).

Whatever else I want:

I need more practice writing. After I graduate college, I just might do more original stuff that isn't tied to #epicg@m3r content.

I don't have any plans on abandoning or shutting down Randomrings Channel. This is more of a "not enough hours in the day" situation.

Lexi Karma

When I have time off and no one is available to watch me scream at Sonic in my own apartment, I have actually been pecking away at some music. Unfortunately, I have been running into a lot of technical issues over the past year or so. I planned to release the 2nd Lexi Karma project around Summer or Fall of last year and now it is the Summer of 2019 and it isn't even done. At least it's written out and synths and stuff are assigned. I want to redo a lot of the singing and there is a lot more mixing to be done. I have worked on stuff I want to release after all that too. I shouldn't be, it's sinful that I'm even considering it, but I'm doing it.

Webcomic

Believe it or not, I'm still trying to work on this too. I have drawn pretty much nothing but concept sketches. My main focus on this is the writing though. I am much more talented and passionate when it comes to writing than drawing. I come up with ideas for it almost every day. Sometimes I just genuinely exhaust myself to the point where I can't give it the focus the story deserves. More details on this in the distant future.

Okay well, that's it.

Summary:

General Life/ Mental Health - I have a bigger workload now than ever and my current living situation is stressful but measures are being taken to fix or cope with all of this and I'm doing just fine.

School - It is driving me bonkers and leaving me with no true days off but I graduate in Spring 2020.

Randomrings Channel - Clearly, I don't have much time to do these things but stay tuned anyway. I haven't given up on this. I write new ideas for "Gumflap" and "Late to the Party" pretty often.

Lexi Karma - I have run into many technical difficulties but I'm still inching towards new music coming out as soon as I can get it to a point where it doesn't sound awful.

Whining About State of Play March 2019

Today, Sony released their first ever PlayStation "State of Play" livestream, which is supposed to be their equivalent of Nintendo's "Nintendo Direct". I think I found a list of all of the games touched on here and now I am going to talk about my thoughts on them similarly to my OGIGACA (Only Games I Give a Crap About) posts. I will probably add anything new and particularly interesting to the OGIGACA revisited post towards the end of the year or early 2020 depending on what happens. Fair warning: I do not have any VR peripherals and I am not really interested in the medium. I know firsthand that there is fun to be had with VR games but I have yet to see or play anything up my street. So I am pretty closed-minded when it comes to VR games, as you will soon see.

BLOOD AND TRUTH
excitement: 0/5

Blood and Truth is a game that wishes it was a James Bond movie.

VR FPS with mo-cap trying to do some James Bond stuff. Don't care. Next.

CONCRETE GENIE
excitement: 0/5

Concrete Genie is a very artsy game about an artist bringing a grim city back to life with a magic paintbrush.

There was not much in the trailer I saw that fully explained the gameplay. As visually impressive as the game looks and how it seems to be using those visuals to actually affect the gameplay and tell a coherent story, nothing seems engaging enough for me to care as a video-game enthusiast.

CRASH TEAM RACING: NITRO FUELED
excitement: 2/5

Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled is a PS4 remake of Crash Team Racing for the original PlayStation.

There were many things that pissed me off about the N. Sane Trilogy. One was that there was an unskippable opening to the game that featured an HD polygonal model of Crash that looked great and you have to watch him get skewered into a photo-realistic fursuit. Another thing that pissed me off was that they flubbed a lot more than they improved in terms of general gameplay and somehow menu design. One last thing: it reminded me that Activision still owns Crash Bandicoot. After the financial and commercial success of the N. Sane Trilogy, I figured they would do something else to pee on Crash Bandicoot's grave but I was not sure what. I will never side with Activision in the grand scheme of things but I am going to give Beenox the benefit of the doubt. Beenox is known for a lot of shovelware and some Skylanders stuff but the exact same was the case for Toys for Bob who developed the remakes of the original trilogies for Crash and Spyro. I also really like that they added polygonal models for Nitro Fueled because I really did not like the vast majority of the visual "upgrades" in N. Sane Trilogy. The realistic-but-not style is still in the game in a general sense but the option for the characters to not look like this is a really nice touch. I don't think what is publicly known about Nitro Fueled is enough to sell me on the game yet, especially because I don't like giving Activision money and I already have the original CTR on my PS3. If they do more with it that I find interesting, I may consider actually buying this one. On the other hand, I have literally already played this one since it is a remake of an already pretty well-made PS1 game. Time will tell.

DAYS GONE
excitement: 0/5

Days Gone seems to be another cinematic shooter.

Everyone is bored with these right? Aren't we all done with these? I couldn't find much on the gameplay and the story that the game is based on looks pretty fucking boring. More accurately, it's nothing I haven't seen before. The problem with making your video games more like movies with real people and motion capture is that you still have to do something that separates it from being a movie, otherwise you are just making a movie with physical, interactive rules. Maybe there is something I am missing but I highly doubt it.

EVERYBODY'S GOLF
excitement: 0/5

Everybody's Golf is what you think it is.

VR bores me almost as much as golf does. Next.

FALCON AGE
excitement: 0/5

Falcon Age is a game where you raise a bird.

VR and crafting. No thanks. Next.

FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S VR: HELP WANTED
excitement: FUCK OFF/5

Can we PLEASE be done with this?!?

I have no interest in FNAF and I CERTAINLY have no interest in a VR edition of that. If there is such a thing as negative interest that goes beyond general disdain or apprehension, that's what I have for this. NEXT!!!

IRON MAN VR
excitement: 0/5

Iron Man VR is a VR game where you play as Iron Man.

It looks like it is trying to cash in on the MCU rendition of Iron Man. A game where you control Iron Man and do Iron Man things should be fun by default but it doesn't look like anyone knows how to do it and make it fun, probably because every major attempt at this I can think of is either a game that is not an Iron Man game specifically and the MCU is still an unrelenting media success. The little gameplay shown looks pretty bland. There are games like this you can play on your phone for free with VR technology that don't interrupt themselves with one-liners and 360-degree cutscenes. Definitely skipping this one. Next.

JUPITER & MARS
excitement: 0/5

Jupiter & Mars seems to be a story-driven adventure game starring two dolphins named Jupiter and Mars.

Very, very pretty but nothing enticing beyond that. The thing with VR games is that a game might still sort of passively pique my interest with something more visual or story-reliant but in a VR game trying both, I don't see much room for focus enough to make it that interesting. But now I'm just bitching about VR. This definitely does not look bad, it just is not something I find particularly interesting.

MINI-MECH MAYHEM
excitement: 1/5

Mini-Mech Mayhem is a game where you play games. You design a player mech and then sit at a little table where you and a few other people can play some kind of strategy game together. It looks kind of like X-COM but instead of facing a wave of aliens, you face other players' soldiers.

This is one of the few VR games that I think would just be a cool idea without VR. The game within the game seems more complicated than I expected from a cutesy VR game called "Mini-Mech Mayhem". I'm not really stoked for it or anything but, and this is going to sound incredibly pessimistic, I'm interested to see if it flops or completely falls off the radar. I hope that's not the case for the developers' sakes. At the same time, I am not buying this day one unless something really thwaps me in the face. I am assuming you can play this without VR. If that's the case, I am somewhat interested in it but mostly just curious if it has more than what's on the surface in the final product. Otherwise, I would probably say excitement 0/5.

MORTAL KOMBAT 11
excitement: 0/5

Mortal Kombat 11 is a fighting game. I probably do not have to explain or introduce what this is.

It looks pretty crazy and silly. I gave it 0/5 excitement because I am not a huge fan of Mortal Kombat. I don't have a whole lot against it, just not a fan. I hope it fulfills whatever wishes fans of the series have for it. I'm sitting this one out. Again. As usual.

NO MAN'S SKY BEYOND
excitement: 0/5

No Man's Sky Beyond is a free update to No Man's Sky. It allegedly will have actual online multiplayer this time along with a lot of stuff I would have to care about No Man's Sky to give a shit about.

No Man's Sky has always been a huge disappointing trainwreck. A lot of people have been vouching for it after that giant update they did recently but I still just don't see it being any fun. The design of the game as a whole really did not change enough for me to justify ever buying it. Passive multiplayer is not going to sway my opinion on what is already a Frankenstein creation of a game.

OBSERVATION
excitement: 1/5

Observation is a game where you get to control a space station. Not as a character but directly. As normal games would have you controlling a character or controlling a character controlling the station, you as the player are personified in the game as the station itself.

That idea is pretty cool in its own right. I could not find very much gameplay at all but it reminds me of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I am curious to see what kind of game comes from such a concept and whether or not it will actually be fun. I'm probably not going to actively follow it every day or anything but I hope the idea is fleshed out enough to be as cool as it initially seems.

READYSET HEROES
excitement: 1/5

Readyset Heroes is Gauntlet for little kids. The twist that separates it from most top-down dungeon action-RPG's is that other co-op groups can be in the same dungeon as you. At the end of these dungeons, you can fight other groups. The faster you get to the end of the dungeon, the more powerful you will become against your opposing explorers.

I don't know what it is but something about the overall presentation of this game rubs me the wrong way. The character designs and their Fortnite-esque animations look really cheap to me. The game doesn't necessarily look like complete shit but nothing about the physics or visuals seem to be very exciting. The idea is cool but I think it would be better suited for something like actual Gauntlet or something like Divinity - Original Sin.

TABLE OF TALES: THE CROOKED CROWN
excitement: 0/5

Table of Tales: The Crooked Crown is another VR game where you play a game within a game. You control board pieces and they attack other pieces on a constantly morphing, enchanted game table.

Another game that looks like a decent enough idea but it is VR and it makes it instantly exponentially less interesting. Next.

TROVER SAVES THE UNIVERSE
excitement: 1/5

Trover Saves the Universe is a VR adventure game written, voiced, and directed by Justin Roiland. A creature with two eyeholes has stolen your two dogs and put them in his eyeholes to give him devastating power. The world is mad at you and your dogs. A smaller eyehole creature is hired to get you to save the universe from this eyehole monster.

I really like Justin Roiland's work and his personality really shines through in this game but I just don't care about VR as much as he does. It looks like a very entertaining and clever ride and I am glad it exists. It's still... just... VR.

VACATION SIMULATOR
excitement: 0/5

Vacation Simulator is almost exactly what it sounds like.

At least it looks stylized and has a silly backstory to what you are doing. I definitely do not want it but I respect it to a degree. I would say "next" but there were no more games touched on in the livestream to my knowledge.



Overall, I think the State of Play was just as serviceable as Nintendo Direct. The problem here is just that none of the titles were very enticing. Maybe some of it is just personal preference but most of what was shown looked outright bland and tasteless to me. I probably won't talk about all of these in OGIGACA Revisited this year because it would just be a waste of both my time and yours.

Only Games I Give a Crap About in 2019

Let's do this again!

Like last year, I am not going to have a lot of money to splurge on video games so don't expect me to fully dive into all of these games later but I think first impressions CAN be interesting. Hopefully, my impressions are. I'm more doing this to talk about things we all know about and offer a potentially fresh perspective as well as expose whoever is reading this to things they may not have known about. Doing these lists also forces me to look up stuff and discover things I would not have otherwise. So I'm going to look up all of the games currently announced for 2019 and talk about the ones that I find the most intriguing. And Kingdom Hearts III. But other games too. Probably. I'm still debating that upon typing.

[side note: the console I show in parenthesis next to the game's title are just the systems that I have and can play them on. Some of these are also available on other stuff I just don't bother mentioning them. Anything you see on here that you might like, check and see if it's on your X-Bone. It might be.]

KINGDOM HEARTS III (PS4)
excitement: 5/5

This is now the THIRD OGIGACA list in a row where Kingdom Hearts III has been on the list and I have been made into a colossal fool for thinking it wouldn't be delayed. But this time I have it pre-ordered damn it! It's becoming real! I have not been looking much into the recently released trailers or announcements because I want KH3 to be a brand new experience for me. Despite how repetitive the gameplay can be and how long-winded and nonsensical the plot is, this is still a game that I have been looking forward to for a very long time. The gameplay looks a lot more varied and improved based on what was brought to the table in Fragmentary Passage. As I have been saying since 2017: all Square Enix has to do is make a coherent experience likened to Fragmentary Passage with a conclusive plot and I will be more than content. The plot doesn't even have to be good. The ending doesn't even have to make sense. I'm just waiting on an actual ending. And another Kingdom Hearts game. Hopefully, one that doesn't make me feel guilty for playing it.

JUMP FORCE (PC, PS4)
excitement: 2/5

I might honestly not buy this one because I am not the biggest fan of most of Shonen Jump's library. I am not necessarily disapproving, just out of the loop. I did not grow up with Dragon Ball, Naruto, Bleach, Yu Yu Hakusho, etc, etc. I am interested in this game because it looks like everything I theoretically liked about the Jump crossover games but more like the recent Xenoverse games in terms of active gameplay. I'm still curious how they are going to pull Light Yagami and Ryuk from Death Note being in the game if nothing else. I have a similar concern that many people have with the game looking "gross". The visuals overall do feel weird but not in a way that benefits a game where cartoon pirates fight space monsters and Yu-Gi-Oh! shit. I'm not personally that concerned with it so long as you can see everything going on. At the same time, Smash Ultimate has me covered for ridiculous crossover games where people beat the snot out of each other so I might not make it to Jump Force this year.

SHOVEL KNIGHT: SHOWDOWN [and King of Cards???] (Wii U)
excitement: 5/5

Yeah, I know, the Wii U version. Shovel Knight: Showdown is more free Shovel Knight DLC that makes me feel guilty for owning the game because Yacht Club adds so much crazy stuff that I would gladly pay for. On top of this, I am pretty sure King of Cards is coming out sometime this year. That is a whole new campaign and supposedly the last one they are making, at least for a while. The original campaign (now called "Shovel Knight: Shovel of Hope") was fantastic. Plague of Shadows was not my favorite but wholly unique and commendable. Specter of Torment is one of my new favorite games of all time. So it goes without saying that I am just as excited for King of Cards as I am for Showdown. And now it goes with saying. Usually, I don't talk about DLC on these so much but as anyone who has played Shovel Knight after the release of Plague of Shadows already knows, each installment might as well be its own game.

I am curious how Showdown and King of Cards will play out on the Wii U versions of those installments. The Wii U version of Shovel Knight is my favorite version. This version allows you to switch between items and equipment in your inventory by tapping them on the screen as opposed to the Mega Man-like toggle system in the other versions. Another alternative is pausing and equipping an item in the inventory from there. Not to be the "immersion" guy but the feeling of quickly having to switch between items keeps me glued to the combat more. Toggling with the shoulder buttons can be irritating to me and stopping time with the pause button throws off the rhythm of the fight, which is important to how Shovel Knight's bosses and some puzzles are designed. Being able to switch weapons on the fly adds a bit of precision and timing to the combat that is not as prevalent in the other versions. I wonder if that will even be applicable to Showdown and am not sure how it is going to work with cards and card-based gameplay. Regardless, I am more than excited for another pixel-art game on a console no one plays anymore.

PS. If you haven't played Shovel Knight yet, you can play it on almost literally anything so go do that.

TEAM SONIC RACING (PC, PS4, Switch)
excitement: 2/5

I didn't buy into the All-Stars Racing games because they seemed like the same Mario Kart clone I have already seen a million times but with clunkier elements of more realistic racing games. The part-switching system in Transformed was interesting to me but not much else in the game really was or at least not enough for me to pay full price for it. Being realistic, I can't see myself pre-ordering Team Sonic Racing or anything but I have to at least applaud it for trying something different, if only on paper. Team Sonic Racing lets you race in a team of three people and they all have different types, like MOBAs or team-based shooters do. The idea here is that the racers in the back can actually catch up easier. People in the back can piggyback off of teammates closer to the front or send support stuff to screw with the opponents further up. I am curious to see if this chaos is actually fun in execution. In relation to the racing game genre, this slight deviation would be groundbreaking in relativity... if it isn't shit... because let's keep in mind that this is a Sonic game.

ANIMAL CROSSING (Switch)
excitement: 1/5

Animal Crossing is game franchise that I have always cared about but I never figured out why. Animal Crossing is a really simplistic, silly, and stylized life sim. The games have not really changed much since the first one other than adding new stuff to do that still just add to you paying off a mortgage and doing errands for anthropomorphic animals. There's the mobile thing too but I sincerely don't care. New Leaf is pretty much just the best installment for several reasons but mostly because of pure accessibility both in online play and local play. I cannot imagine a new installment doing much to top this without dramatically changing the game but if there is one game company that can pull something off in the weirdest way possible, it is Nintendo. I am not necessarily excited for a new installment of Animal Crossing as much as I am curious if they are actually going to do anything worth mentioning in it or if it is simply going to be Animal Crossing on Switch. Each installment has added enough to justify its original purchase. The Gamecube release was fairly necessary since the original was Japan exclusive and the Nintendo Disc Drive that the international release was planned for was canceled completely. Wild World for the DS does not provide anything that New Leaf doesn't but at the time it was a very worthy and engrossing sequel. If you like life sims. City Folk is the only installment I can say was almost completely pointless to fans of the series unless they had never played one of the other games and really wanted to play it on Wii for whatever reason. Anything you would want out of the previous games (except for the NES ROMs from the Gamecube one) is present and organized better in New Leaf. A lot of new Nintendo-exclusive games coming to Switch can at least be argued as great ideas for the portability alone but New Leaf is pretty much the best Animal Crossing and it was on 3DS. So again, I'm really just popping popcorn and seeing what happens rather than tattooing Isabelle on my chest.

BABYLON'S FALL (PC, PS4)
excitement: 2/5

Babylon's Fall is pretty much just a trailer at this point. The only reason it is on this list is because I liked the trailer and I liked Platinum Games. I have played at least 5 of their games (that I can think of). I hate one, am largely disappointed with another, very much appreciate one, and really liked the other two. There is not a whole lot more to say here. There are very few game companies that I really feel safe latching onto and Platinum is one that has given me at least an okay time with the exception of Revengeance. They are doing some fantasy shit and I want to see where that goes.

BAYONETTA 3 (Switch)
excitement: 4/5

I really like Bayonetta 1 and 2, so when I heard that Bayonetta 3 was going to be Switch-exclusive, I was pissed. Now that I have a Switch, I am less pissed. I still don't really know where they can go with the plot or gameplay of Bayonetta that will make it significantly different enough from 1 and 2 to justify full-price but I'm curious enough to consider it. That's just how much I enjoyed the first two games. Bayonetta 1, 2, and 3 are all made by Platinum so as I stated for Babylon's Fall, I'm more curious than anything. At least for Bayonetta 3, I can be excited for what might be over what we have already seen... which in the case of Bayonetta 3 is pretty much nothing.

CONTROL (PC, PS4)
excitement: 4/5

Not much has been shown (to my knowledge) of Control and no one I have talked to really knows what it is. It is being developed by some studio called Remedy. I don't know either. It's a third-person shooter with some sort of odd gravity-manipulation mechanic. In conjunction with this, a lot of the stylized visuals seem to showcase environments being constantly affected by gravity or a lack thereof. I am not the biggest fan of shooters, especially modern ones, and especially modern ones going for a creepy atmosphere but if the E3 2018 trailer is anything to go off of, Control seems to be doing all three aspects gracefully. It looks like a solid shooter with a vague yet functional gimmick that seems fun to use. Control also seems to have enough uniqueness to its graphics and mechanical concepts to be a fresh game and solid contender to those- eh- not so fresh. The game doesn't just look dark, it looks like a game that leaves you in an unfamiliar environment. The way things are shifting around in the said environment, sometimes rapidly and sometimes ominously, makes the situation seem daunting even with the power of gravity and whatever the weird sci-fi Lego gun in the trailer is. It is not often that a fairly unknown title leaves me more excited than the bigger franchises but Control has me incredibly intrigued and I recommend trying to Google it while it's still relevant because naming a video game "Control" is going to be a tragic mistake down the line.

DAEMON X MACHINA (Switch)
excitement: 3/5

Daemon X Machina is a Switch exclusive for whatever reason and is a game about mechs that I think looks cool. The combat looks like it has just the right amount of clunky movement to be a fun robot shooting game. It also has a material collection component that reminded me a bit of Custom Robo and that always has me interested, seeing as there has not been a Custom Robo game in over a decade. I also like its very polygonal art design that is not very common in the current age of pixel-art versus 4k high-res "realism". If you like the idea of blowing things up with a customizable robot then Daemon X Machina is worth checking out until something in the future convinces me that it sucks.

DIGIMON SURVIVE (PC, PS4, Switch)
excitement: 4/5

I just want to start this one out by saying I am genuinely surprised and in slight disbelief that I am talking about the new Digimon game for the third year in a row! Digimon is a pretty dumb franchise with a lot of inconsistencies and general qualitative mediocrity but I really like the concepts and art direction for most of it so I keep hoping they will make good games. Usually, they don't. Many people born in the 90's or early 2000's will probably argue the PS1 games but I have played them enough to know that they really aren't great and are indisputably flawed. Digimon World 2 was close, Digimon Rumble Arena 2 was fun (not great, but fun), and Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth was really solid. Of those three games, we have a dungeon crawler, a brawler, and a story-centric turn-based RPG. Digimon Survive is a tactical RPG with a lot of glorious 2D art. So far, I can't help but notice the fact that it is a little hard to read who is on what team on the map at first glance. You can tell on the HUD and it isn't necessarily difficult to find out but in comparison to tactical RPG titans like Disgaea, this seems like a strange oversight that could be easily fixed. I am also scared of the few minutes I have seen of the story because it looks like it has the potential to bog down a lot of the pacing. I am also pretty sure I saw a Telltale/Mass Effect-like choice being made as well, which almost always turns me off. The main gameplay seems fine enough and I am curious to try it out one day. The trailer and the game's music also seem to give off a somber tone. This is not to say that emotionally bittersweet moments never happen in the other games but making it so prominent in the trailer and during a video of actual combat leaves me to believe that the overall tone of the game will be bittersweet. That is either going to be a very unique take on the source material or unintentionally hilarious. I would not be entirely upset if it did what Digimon Story did. That is to say that Digimon Story had a much more haunting conflict at its core but laced with enough comedy and a solid enough strategy system to make the game consistently fun and not brooding or taking itself too seriously. The good thing about Digimon only having a small handful of well-crafted games means that my expectations for it are already neutral-to-low going in. I just hope it surprises me like Digimon Story did but I'm not betting on it.

FINAL FANTASY VII, IX, and XII: THE ZODIAC AGE (Switch)
excitement: 4/5

I have always liked the Final Fantasy games that I have played to some degree or another but never got around to VII or IX. I had a copy of the original version of XII on PS2 but neither that disc or my disc reader was ever really top-notch. Being able to play VII and/or IX wherever I go seems like a grand idea. For whatever reason, and this may just be me, playing Final Fantasy on a handheld is incredibly convenient. Two of the Final Fantasy games I have spent the most time on were Final Fantasy VI Advance and the Nintendo DS remake of Final Fantasy III. Being able to pick at it piece by piece and continue finishing off something to a save point when I get home is something I have always valued and will be even more convenient on the Switch. They will also be fairly inexpensive. I am mostly just glad they are porting these games to the Switch, I'm not sure if I will get around to any of them this year.

I didn't include Final Fantasy X and X-2 because I already have the PS3 remasters of those but those are coming to the Switch at the same time.

INDIVISIBLE (PC, PS4)
excitement: 5/5

Indivisible is an RPG with an active battle system and platforming elements. It already has many things I appreciate in 2D platformers and in RPGs. There are a lot of Paper-Mario-reminiscent mechanics in the game and many interesting ideas implemented for how to control your party. Guarding and countering enemy attacks is also consistently challenging and heavily reliant on timing, something not very common in RPGs. Indivisible is a crowdfunded game from the people who made Skullgirls, another game I really liked. I backed the game (technically twice) so I will be receiving a PS4 physical copy and a Steam key upon release. I am sure I will at least talk about the game on this blog, if not also on the channel.

THE LAST OF US PART 2 (PS4)
excitement: 4/5

I am not a big fan of cinematic games but Naughty Dog is a notorious developer of such games that I can at least salute. Naughty Dog created two of my favorite games of all time (Crash Bandicoot 2 and Crash Bandicoot: Warped) so if only for that, I still respect them. I played a lot of Uncharted in its heyday and who the fuck am I kidding, I played Uncharted 4 and liked it more than probably warranted. I'm saying I'm a giant hypocrite. The Last of Us was heavily story-based but its survival mechanics and more grounded movement made it feel more like a game than Uncharted. It is by no means perfect but no game is. The sequel has supposedly been in development for a very long time and gameplay has been shown. What was shown was a lot more linear and sticking to the story than most of The Last of Us has in its shootout waves but perhaps that was just to easier portray the game in trailer form. I am not completely enthralled with a new installment starring Joel and Ellie because I feel that it defeats some of the artistic purpose of the first game's ending but am still willing to give it a shot.

MEDIEVIL (PS4)
excitement: 3/5

I never played more than a demo of the original Medievil but of all the remakes cashing in on old games coming out these days, this one seems to be one of the most tasteful. A lot of the main things turning me off to trying the original version today seem to be repaired in the new version, such as draw distance and potential camera issues. I may try this one day but as you can see, the list of things I'm interested in this year is already quite large and I probably won't even have much time to touch those.

POKEMON (Switch)
excitement: 4/5

I don't know anything about what is going on here yet but Nintendo has been suggesting that it won't be like Pokemon Let's Go so I am certainly okay with that. Pokemon Let's Go doesn't look terrible or anything but I know there is a lot of shit they did to baby the players in a game that was already targetted towards 8-year olds. I'm not one of those competitive EV/IV training people either. I'm all for an enhanced casual Pokemon experience but I don't think making Pokemon easier is the same as enhancing it. Nintendo has been hinting at Pokemon on the Switch for a while and confirmed that this year they would release a mainline inclusion on the Switch. The most recent Pokemon game that I really enjoyed was Pokemon Omega Ruby. ORAS (Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire) did a lot of things that made certain aspects of the main formula easier but added so many other things to achieve and build on that streamlining those aspects made the game itself a better RPG. It wasn't just made easier to appeal to a younger crowd since most game developers making kid-friendly games these days just assume that kids are all mentally defective. Adversely, I really don't like X and Y, yet ORAS's use of that engine worked in its favor. This goes to show that turn-based RPG's are really easy to screw up. I think that this is mostly in part to how much the game rules rely on numbers. Billy Hatcher, for example, was an incredibly flawed game but one with a lot of unique mechanics that make it fun to mess around with. Turn-based RPG's naturally don't have similar mechanics in that regard so big design oversights can really hurt the final product, even Pokemon notwithstanding. There were a lot of things about Sun, Moon, Ultra Sun, and Ultra Moon that turned me off because of this ideology but also a lot of fun gimmicks that I applaud. I really don't know where they are going to go with this one. I expect nothing.

SEA OF SOLITUDE (PS4)
excitement: 2/5

Sea of Solitude looks very pretty but I fear that this might be all it has going for it. What little gameplay was shown has a lot of the character just moving forward and not doing a whole lot else. The unique art style is the only reason this is on this list and if I hear more about it being an actual game more than a visual experience then I will be exponentially more intrigued.

TOWN (Switch)
excitement: 4/5

Town is being made by the developers of Pokemon and it looks like a very quirky RPG. I can't even point out anything making it inherently groundbreaking but at the same time, it certainly does not look normal. I'm already psyched to see where it goes and whether or not it keeps its title. Town. Just Town.

Well that's it. In about 10-13 months I'll come back to this and see what happened okay thanks for reading bye have a good night and all that.

"Only Games I Give a Crap About in 2018" Revisited

I didn't play most of these games because money was slightly tighter this year and honestly, not even the premises of most games blew me away or even gave me very much excitement. Without further ado, here are the games I talked about before they came out and now I will add another two cents.

Here's my original post if you care but you don't really need to read it to understand what I'm putting in this post:
Randomrings Blog: Only Games I Give a Crap About in 2018

DIGIMON STORY: CYBER SLEUTH - HACKER'S MEMORY (PS4)

Verdict: Didn't play

My main fear of Hacker's Memory was that it looked like a rehash of a game that hadn't even been out for four years and it looks like I was right. I'm not refusing to play it per se but it really doesn't look different enough to justify supporting its development when there are so many more deserving games out there right now trying to do something original.

DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY NT (PS4)

Verdict: Didn't play

NT looks a lot more cash-grabby than I expected and I have heard from fans that the PSP version is still superior. By the time it came out, I lost quite a bit of interest, especially when the $60 version didn't even get the customer all of the base playable characters. As time went on, more games came to my attention, and funds dwindled, NT slipped farther and farther off of the fresh, wet blacktop that is my interest in modern games. Maybe I am missing something here and I am positive there is fun to be had here but I didn't deem it worth it and still don't. Maybe I will find it cheap one day and feel like a big old dummy for doubting it.

KIRBY STAR ALLIES (Switch)

Verdict: Played a demo of

I was fearful that the party mechanic would make the game way too easy. That is saying a lot for a Kirby game. Somehow Star Allies managed to make a Kirby game too easy. The art style has been kept intact since Triple Deluxe too. Triple Deluxe looked fine but almost every installment of Kirby before this game had a unique look to some degree. Star Allies just feels like "Kirby for Switch" and not much more. This was my main fear going into it and playing every part of the demo did not sway me at all. Even something about the controls felt a little off, which I did not think was possible in a Kirby game, yet here I am typing it out, being a big entitled baby about a free demo of a game. I'm sure there are moments where Star Allies shines more but for a full-price game, I don't care to see it. I would much rather just play Super Star, Nightmare in Dreamland, Crystal Shards, or Dream Land 3 again.

FORTNITE (PC)

Verdict: Quickly lost interest/ 10

Fortnite was Epic Games' attempt at stealing the spotlight from PUBG. I guess it worked because I probably don't need to explain what Fortnite is to anyone reading this. Fortnite is currently damn near everywhere. Usually, I don't condone rip-offs like this but the case of Fortnite versus Player Unknown's Battlegrounds is more interesting. PUBG was, and in many ways still is, a faulty game that was even less functional upon its full 1.0 release. Fortnite looks less like something replicated in SourceFilm Maker and has its own pleasant art direction. This just took a basic formula and expanded on it so I can respect it at least a little. Overall, I really love the environmental graphics and I love how it is one of the rare shooters that prioritizes clarity over realism. Unfortunately, Fortnite made me realize why a 100-player battle-royale system is inherently not up my street, aside from technical aspects. Fortnite feels like another survival shooter game where you need to get items because you start with basically nothing and have to shoot the other players. It feels like a lot of people simply have access to guns that I don't have and although I will admit I am not the best at most shooters, I don't think it's because I have bad aim. I don't have great aim but I distinctly remember shooting people several times before getting completely obliterated later. I also frequently play Overwatch, so I'm not the worst. I can only imagine it might be because I didn't pay to play Fortnite but they allow a free version so I don't see the point in punishing me for it, if that is the case anyway. The building system makes Fortnite unique from PUBG and one of the most unique shooters I have ever seen but that doesn't intrinsically make it fun. The game asks you to be creative with the way you use its crafting system, which is commendable but if someone gets the drop on you anyway or starts tearing down your shit with blunt objects and explosives, all that work you put in is for not. At the end of the day, it's another survival shooter, which we already have plenty of. I prefer something like Star Wars Battlefront II (2005), Star Fox Assault, Overwatch, or even Halo where you can play quick strings of deathmatch rounds or even quick matches rather than playing one long drawn out one. One of the things I hate about most modern shooters is that they make me watch a screen with not much going on instead of letting me actually play the damn game. Fortnite accidentally does this too. Granted I prefer spectating something I understand and just got shot out of rather than terribly boring dialogue, it doesn't change the fact that Fortnite only has gameplay relative to your skill level. It's hard to get a higher skill level or build the motivation to become more skilled at the game if you get instantly slaughtered in nearly every match along the way. Because of these things, I don't particularly recommend Fortnite but it is cross-platform and has a lot of cool ideas. If you really like playing shooters with your friends then I can almost guarantee more enjoyment for you than what I had with Fortnite.

KINGDOM HEARTS III (PS4)

Verdict: Didn't come out

Okay.

RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2 (PS4)

Verdict: Didn't play

It looks bloated as hell. Most of the universal praise I see for it is purely story-centric so I just don't give a fuck because even then the story-centric parts are bogged down with forced walking around. Red Dead Redemption 1 is one of my favorite Sandbox games and I'm not even that big of a fan of the way the story was handled in that. I shouldn't be so quick to judge a game I have not played but everything I have seen, heard, and read about Red Dead Redemption 2 leads me to believe that I will probably despise a lot more things about it than I will end up loving or even find entertaining. I'm not putting a snake in my own boot.

THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU -FINAL REMIX- (Switch)

Verdict: Didn't want to play because the original is better

In the original "Only Games I Give a Crap About In 2018" post, I pretty much just bitched about the existence of this remaster. I still haven't played it but now that more information is available than there was when I talked about it before, it looks like they did everything I feared. Before you read this and think I'm just being a whiny idiot, keep in mind that TWEWY is one of my favorite games of all time and seeing it drastically changed in some aspects while watered-down in others is scary to me because I don't want this version to be how future generations see this game. TWEWY is still a unique experience on its own but one of the things that made it incredibly unique from a game design standpoint was its combat system. This is such an important factor in what makes TWEWY what it is that the combat system giving the game unique design is an almost objective fact. If you take away the dual-screen functionality, it just becomes another quirky action-RPG, granted one that still has a great story, incredible art direction, and a lot of fun and experimental design choices, now you will be able to just hit buttons and win. On certain settings, you could totally do this with the original TWEWY on DS but the gameplay forced you to stay alert in every single situation, making even the most ridiculously hard fights in the game fun. I commend whoever's idea it was to bring such an understated game back to a more popular medium. Let's be honest: current-day Switch has a lot more static and people eating up that static than 2007-era Nintendo DS did. I just feel like the original point of the game was completely thrown out the window. If you have considered getting TWEWY, I highly recommend getting the original DS version. I would even recommend getting a 3DS just to play it because I know the DS and 3DS have a lot of awesome gems that make the Switch's current library look a little inferior. If you don't want to buy a new console just to play this game, that's understandable too. As much as I don't like what they did with it, the Switch version still has a lot of things that make the original memorable and unique and have added content that I'm sure is fine but not enough to justify me buying the game again right now. Just remember that you are missing out on the core thing that made TWEWY a different "game" over being a different "experience".

BAYONETTA 3 (Switch)

Verdict: Didn't come out

That's fine by me. However long they need to take to make Bayonetta 3 a more unique experience from two of the best hack-n-slashes I have ever played is more than fine by me.

THE LAST OF US PART 2 (PS4)

Verdict: Didn't come out

I don't know if I will get this one when it comes out but I am very curious to see what they improve on or butcher in this one.

These next two were not on the original OGIGACA 2018 list but I am going to talk about them on the revisited version. I did not play many newly released games but I did play these two enough to find them worthy of talking about.

ATTACK ON TITAN 2 (PC)

Verdict: Great anime game / *****

I started reading the Attack on Titan manga this year and my friend showed me the recent game adaptation around the same time. I enjoy the story of Attack on Titan but from what little I've seen of the gameplay and now being pretty far in the manga, the game is kind of an awful way to experience the story. However, for an anime-based game, Attack on Titan 2 should not be near as fun as it is. When I was a kid, the reason that games based on TV shows were always so disappointing was that the development studios didn't have time to care and the publishers had no reason to care. This is what makes a lot of anime-based games specifically trashy and cheap. Attack on Titan 2 is by no means the greatest game in the universe but it really captures almost everything that makes the story of Attack on Titan so exciting and entertaining... if you ignore the story. The gameplay is stellar and fully incorporates the excitement and actual flying by the seat of your pants that makes the original story consistently suspenseful. You can even use a lot of items from the story but you have to build forts mid-match to access more of them and recharge your other resources. These give a nice time-sacrifice system to the game and make pre-game customization seem more important to the player. Fighting bigger boss Titans is fun and consistently challenging from the few hours of the game my friend and I played together (my friend showed me this game because he is a big AoT fan and thought the game was pretty tight, with which I agree). There's even a D-pad function to command your fellow soldiers to certain targets that works way faster and more comfortably than in any game I have ever seen try to do something similar. This really makes you feel like part of a collective with your AI friendlies save for the fact that the AI can sometimes be pretty damn stupid and don't do a whole lot on their own. The story depiction was the most crippling flaw I noticed. I really only played up to where I was in the story at the time and everything was done with a strange amount of censorship. There was way less gore and it made the most dramatic scenes of the early manga and anime look far less dramatic and more silly. The pre-rendered cel-shading cutscenes look okay but really pass the minimum requirements for looking like the anime without adding anything new without making things worse. One of the major differences between Attack on Titan 2 and Attack on Titan 1 is that you can make your own soldier. This is a cool system but characters will interact with you in pre-rendered cutscenes and it's more awkward and funny than it is engaging. Outside of cutscenes, you can talk to different characters and build certain relationships with specific characters to get more things to upgrade. The upgrade system with your weapons, armor, and equipment are already awesome without this and are always very clear about what everything is going to give and take away. You don't have to spend 20 hours of gameplay for this system to be rewarding. All-in-all I was very impressed with Attack on Titan 2 but because of it's cheap story depiction, I wouldn't recommend paying $60 for it. I am waiting for it to go on sale on Steam. There seems to be a lot of multiplayer fun to be had with it if you can convince friends to play it with you. It's probably a blast, if not the single-player mode is still alright. With the multiplayer components and the fun of the game as a whole, I would pay $40 and not feel rip-offed in the slightest but $60 seems like a stretch to me. Price aside, Attack on Titan 2 is one of the best anime-based games I have ever played and I recommend checking it out, especially if you love the manga and/or anime. My friend is a bigger fan of it all than I am and he loves this game. I'm not the biggest fan of the manga but that's a rant for another time. I still recommend trying the game or at least looking up gameplay footage.

SUPER SMASH BROS. ULTIMATE (Switch)
Verdict: Everything I wanted

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is one of the few games that is ridiculously expansive yet is mostly expansive in a way that does not bog down the overall experience. All of the extraneous content is made to constantly freshen up the formula of the general gameplay as opposed to trying to show off how much the developers could fit on a disk... well... cartridge. The game is not perfect but the main flaws because of this are typically pretty avoidable. Any item you deem unfair can be turned off. Any stage hazard you find annoying can be turned off. Anything stale and boring can typically be enhanced or ignored unless you are going for 100% completion. The adventure mode, World of Light, was fairly disappointing. I still haven't beaten it yet but it is more like the event matches from the other games than it is like Subspace Emissary, which I'm pretty sure is what people were expecting. Imagine dough. If you stretch it, it starts to lose consistency and becomes increasingly thin and less useful. World of Light is dough not thin enough to just be burnt to a useless crisp but still just throws as many gimmicks in as possible. Don't get me wrong, it isn't trash or anything. There are some minor puzzles every once in a while to spice things up but most of the progression of the game relies on beating the crap out of people. It becomes a bit mindless until a more annoying challenge comes along. I say "annoying" over "worthy" because most of the more difficult fights can be won by eating the enemy with Kirby and spitting them out underneath the stage, or so I've found so far. The spirit system has a weird type advantage system that doesn't seem to matter all that much. I commend the idea to add RPG elements to Smash gameplay but the way it is organized and presented left a bit to be desired for me. The loading times also get in the way of that and the rest of the game, though they aren't any worse than that of Smash for Wii U or 3DS, so another minor complaint. The new characters all feel like fun, fresh inclusions with the obvious exceptions of Daisy, Chrom, and Ken. Inkling adds a new mechanic to the game that is engaging for the one playing as Inkling and the one fighting them. Ridley feels like controlling a video game boss while still fair enough to not feel or be overpowered. King K. Rool is just ridiculous. Isabelle is just different enough to not feel like a clone of Villager and I think I already like her a bit more. There are new items that are pretty fun. I'm not sure how I feel about the inclusion of certain items and moves that completely obliterate an opponent under certain conditions as opposed to just doing an obscene amount of knockback. The fact that good timing can 100% guarantee a kill reminds me of PlayStation All-Stars and kind of makes me feel like such attacks defeat the original purpose of Super Smash Bros as a not-quite-fighting-game. On the other hand, every time I have been suscept to such an attack or dealt it to someone else, it never felt unfair or wholly unavoidable. If I had to summarize Ultimate in a way other than this giant paragraph on it, I would say "it's everything I like about Melee merged with the accessibility of Smash for Wii U". The physics and more specifically the weight are a lot closer to Melee yet it has a lot more goofy and ridiculous stuff to mess around with whether alone or with friends. Overall, so far, I would say this game rivals Melee for me, which has always been my favorite in the series. I think this game is worth getting a Switch for not only because the game itself is awesome but just because the console is so convenient.

That's about all of the ramble I have built up in me from these recent games. The only other one I can think about is the Seal the Deal DLC for A Hat in Time. It's fucking great, it just doesn't count as a whole game. If you have A Hat in Time, you should definitely get the DLC because it adds so much more to the game than I have even dealt with yet myself. If you love that game, the new world and levels added are worth the price of the DLC anyway.

Okay, now that is all of the ramble I have. Thanks for reading and maybe I'll do the same thing for next year, maybe I won't, maybe I will. I usually write these around January or February if I remember correctly so I might do a 2019 one. So far, I just don't have that much interest in anything coming out except for Kingdom Hearts III because I am a child. So again, maybe. Thanks.

Late to the Party: Clerks

It has been exactly six months and one day since the last Late to the Party. This time, I'm 24 years late to the party...

Last night I watched Clerks. A lot of people have been flabbergasted that I had not seen Clerks.

There will be spoilers so beware. On the other hand, the way Clerks's story is organized, almost every scene after the first half hour is kind of a spoiler I guess.

Movie release: 1994
Interest in the movie: Everyone from friends to total strangers to family have been saying "you haven't seen Clerks?" for at least a decade now. Turns out, no shit I haven't seen Clerks. I wasn't even two years old when it came out. Peoples' descriptions of the movie and even reasons for watching it were pretty damn vague. That made me more interested in watching it.

Clerks felt very unsatisfying in many ways and very clever in others. It also seemed to fight my expectations without completely subverting them. Every time I felt like I was just watching another American-Pie-esque bro comedy, a philosophical argument between characters would show up or a character would do something fairly unpredictable. I guess we should start at the beginning since this isn't a review of Pulp Fiction.

Clerks starts off really slow for a comedy, or so I felt. Usually, something bombastic happens that grips a more general audience. That event shows off one or more main characters and many of their traits either during said event or immediately after. Clerks depicts Dante as a whiney twenty-something in the very first scene. That said, Dante is still, in many ways, a very relatable character in the beginning but Clerks is set in such a "real-world" scenario in the first act that it seems a bit easy. In Extract, another pretty dry comedy, Jason Bateman's character is another guy with a fairly high status at a grind job but I feel like it introduces more absurd characters that actually matter right away. Clerks takes about a half hour to set up that Dante works at a crappy convenience store, is typically accustomed to a horrible customer base, dates girls, and has a quirky best friend named Randal in a similar situation next door. Being in a normal situation does not make it bad but it feels a bit shoe-horned in when you give it that long to develop something that almost every Western-civilization human being has been through.

In fact, I noticed many scenes where things felt a bit more force-fed than the rest of the movie. Jay and Silent Bob's entire characters felt a little pointless to me. As much as Victoria's character introduction was sort of fun and serves a purpose to how she watches over Dante, the fire extinguisher seemed a bit much. Even if it wasn't over-the-top, the fire extinguisher is still on the wall during the scene where she uses it to scare off the mob. The mob scene was similarly over-the-top but I ultimately enjoyed it and thought it was a well-executed way to show that a lot of cartoonish characters come in and out of Dante's store. It really does set the tone for the rest of the movie and uses its slow joke build-up to its advantage.

Towards the middle, its sense of humor shines through a lot more. Personally, I still only got along well with a little more than half of it. Scenes where Randal is going Bugs Bunny on people and the one scene where Dante and Randal are exchanging stories about stupid customers were the ones that stick out the most for me and the ones I felt were the most cleverly-executed. A lot of scenes that even fans of the movie have recited to me just feel like characters ribbing each other a-la Uncharted. Snark versus snark works in scenarios where there is something bigger at play but this is a movie about two twenty-somethings selling people things.

Clerks's dramatic angle was one of my favorite parts of the movie, despite the fact that it's a comedy. At first, it feels forced in because Dante just shoves it into scenes that seem like they should have nothing to do with Caitlin, and they don't, but Dante is obsessed with the thought of days gone by. This works really well to show that Dante's shitty present is a byproduct of his fixation with the past. Caitlin is an obvious representation of that. In typical fashion of the relationship between Dante and Randal they don't talk about it for too long, and when they do, Randal tries to show Dante how toxic it is. This is even more potent when Caitlin finally appears in the flesh and immediately seems to hypnotize Dante. This leads me to one of my favorite and least-favorite things about the film though:

the ending.

Caitlin is shown to still be a toxic influence to Dante and loose cannon all-around. Dante still wants her to some extent and is trying to think of ways to make it work with Veronica. Dante realizes that Veronica is the girl he should be dating immediately after Caitlin becomes medically unavailable. Veronica comes out of damn near nowhere and Randal tells her that Dante has been talking to Caitlin for weeks behind her back. Despite that conversation not making much sense to me, the rest of it plays out well, to a point. Veronica's best scene is probably the one where she comes down on Dante and holds a proverbial mirror to his face. The fight scene between Dante and Randal was kind of fun but the low-budget really shows here. That was strange to me because the hockey scene and the wake scene made really good use of their limited camera capabilities. In the end, Randal tells Dante why he's so fucked up and that it's his fault for not trying to fix it himself. Dante looks at him wide-eyed in the realization that he might be right. They clean up the shop and are still friends at the end. The store closes and that's just the end of the movie. This ending isn't inherently bad. Actually, I found most of it to be entertaining to one degree or another. I just can't help but feel it was incredibly anti-climactic.

The store closing may have been a more fitting or conceptually necessary ending if the entire film took place in just the convenience store or just the convenience store, the video store, and the street that both of them are on. This isn't the case though and it makes it feel like one of those movies that is fairly competent but is also just a movie where things kind of just happen to no greater purpose. Maybe Jay and Silent Bob dance in that one scene as a metaphor to this. Is it that self-aware? In fact, the opening scene, though it sets up a personality for Dante before anything even happens, is only called back to when reminding the audience that Dante "wasn't even supposed to be here today". So what does the store closing being the end of the movie mean? Life is shitty and then it goes on? Dante is inexplicably satisfied with life despite it being mostly ruined within a day? All of the stuff that makes Clerks have a climax happens before the end of the movie. The ending may not have been pointless but I think it is unnecessarily abrupt. To be fair, there aren't too many other directions to go with the concept... despite a direct sequel and an animated series following...

Well, there are most of my points. I want to talk about some more stuff that is striking in the movie since I feel like I've been mostly shitting on it and I don't want to give off the wrong impression that Clerks totally sucks or anything. The title headers for certain segments didn't really do much for me. I have seen these done well in movies, especially Quentin Tarantino ones, but in this movie, I felt like they were just kind of there. Their titles also stopped making immediate sense halfway through the film. I also don't think the monochromatic color scheme adds anything to the movie but since most of Clerks's charm comes from its unique brand of dialogue anyways, it doesn't really take too much away either. I was waiting for there to be a reason for it being in black and white but a reason never came to me. I like pretty much every character except for Jay and Silent Bob. I don't necessarily hate Jay and Silent Bob but I felt from the very beginning that they would be annoying druggie character archetypes and they were to their very last scene. Putting in comic relief characters in a comedy where the main cast and minor characters already provide plenty of jokes just made Jay and Silent Bob annoying. Everyone else, even characters that don't have very much dialogue were all very effective in supporting both the dramatic and comedic stylings of the movie. Love it or hate it, Clerks never loses personality and it never gets too big for its britches. I don't know why I use that term. It makes me uncomfortable...

In conclusion: Clerks is a unique film in many ways and a college kid movie filled with low-brow humor and slapstick at others. I enjoy Clerks for what it is but I think it's a bit overrated... I think? Come to think of it, the weirdest thing about Clerks outside of the movie itself was that everyone who recommended it to me never said that it was amazing or anything. They would just quote it, act surprised that I didn't know what they were talking about, and then recommend it to me. It is a very low-budget film that, for the most part, makes you forget that it's low-budget without being overly pretentious. At least two-thirds of the movie are pretty entertaining. I would say that it is worth a watch, especially if you are going into film or writing. If you're looking for a gut-busting comedy, Clerks has solid delivery and may work better for you than it did for me but I think there are other pure epic lolzers movies out there that serve that purpose better than Clerks.

The Most Super-Dee-Duper Gamarinoes from 2017

I feel like 2017 was mostly shit for video games but the games that did grab me grabbed me hard. So hey, let's not be a negative dickhole and talk about games I actually liked!

Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue (PS4) - beaten

I'm a big Kingdom Hearts nut for some reason. I have already talked about this specific one on this blog before. 2.8 is a compilation of a boring movie, a 2-hour prequel game that might as well be a tech demo for Kingdom Hearts III, and a full HD-remaster of the 3DS installment, Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance. I did not expect myself to play much of DDD again but I did and I regret nothing. There are a few things that I think both versions do fundamentally worse and better than the other but they are both fine games that I enjoy. Fragmentary Passage was particularly impressive and has enough content to justify a $20 purchase, and it comes with a full-fledged whole other game on top of that. I'm not sure why this is one is still PS4 exclusive since DDD was on 3DS originally and there was no problem putting it on PS4, Kingdom Hearts III will be on Xbone, and the movie is a movie, but if you have a PS4 and you really like Kingdom Hearts, I think this one is more than worth your time.

My blog post talking about Kingdom Hearts 2.8 is here (opens in new window)

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (NS) - don't own

This is basically just saying "I still like Mario Kart 8". I don't own Deluxe but I have played it with friends a few times and still enjoy it. I don't think it is worth me throwing away all of my progress in the original Mario Kart 8 just to get stuff that I can mostly get via DLC but the extra stages are fun and there are many worthy additions. The battle mode alone is an enticing argument towards me upgrading. But also fuck Nintendo for punishing Wii U fans for no reason.

The End is Nigh (PC) - haven't beaten

I still have not made it to the end of this one because I have been pretty damn busy but The End is Nigh was a pleasant surprise. I really like the mix between puzzle and platformer game that most puzzle-platformers ironically miss a mechanical step or two on. The visuals, soundtrack, and physics all blend together for a very unique game in an underwhelming genre. If you like this kind of "impossible game" stuff, The End is Nigh is for you. If you don't like that kind of stuff: I don't either but this one is a lot more about having a lot of extra stuff than having overly hard main stuff. STUFF!!!

Sonic Mania (PC and PS4 versions) - beaten

Sonic Mania is easily one of the most fun platformers of the past 5 years and is one of the best Sonic games ever made. The amount of dedication to high points of the franchise is highlighted constantly throughout the entire game. Even the menus are tasteful callbacks to days gone by. Despite it being nostalgic as fuck, which is something I actually don't value in games at all, it manages to somehow retain an original flare with a lot of new ideas and pretty good difficulty curve for the few people playing the game that did not grow up playing Sonic games. I still recommend this one to people who usually don't like Sonic games because at this point, saying "I don't like many Sonic games" is like saying "I don't like stubbing my toe".

Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 (NS) - don't own

I am not a big Dragon Ball fan because I didn't really grow up with it and I am usually not that big into the games but Xenoverse 2's multiplayer was pretty fun. I don't know enough about the game to call it good or bad but I had a good time playing it with my friend on his Switch. It feels like Raging Blast but somehow better in ways I don't really know how to explain. It just feels less cheap and perhaps slightly better balanced but I didn't really study it or anything. It was fun.

A Hat in Time (PC) - beaten

A Hat in Time is one of my new favorite games. I love it. There are so many fun and beautifully stylized things to play around with in this game. I already did a video on this one as well. Just suffice it to say that this one is NOT good because it is heavily inspired by 3D platformers from the mid-90's to early 2000's. Do not underestimate this because it is an indie game. A Hat in Time controls more smoothly, looks more consistently pretty, and has a better sense of humor than at least 95% of the games I have played in the last decade. Now is a great time to get it because it will soon get some ridiculous DLC that includes two new chapters, local co-op, and some other nutso shit.

Right here is my video talking about why I think A Hat in Time is awesome, why I think Yooka-Laylee is kind of dumb, and why I hate the fact that they are now going to be compared to each other forever (opens in new window).

Super Mario Odyssey (NS) - beaten

Super Mario Odyssey is a game I have been bitching about since the teaser trailer and now that I happen to own it, I really don't hate it. In fact, I was go as far to say that I like it. I think it is flawed and I don't think it matches my appreciation for Galaxy 1 and 2, 64, and 64DS but it has a unique flair that no other 3D Mario has. On that same token, the game is massive and riddled with many challenges that don't offer much that hasn't been offered in similar titles (Galaxy, Galaxy 2, 3D Land, 3D World). Some of this one just feels like going through the motions. On top of this, as I kind of expected, there are some baby things that get in the way of the game reaching full potential, at least in my opinion. A and B do the same thing and X and Y do the same thing, making the dive move way harder to pull off than it was in Super Mario 64. There are many challenges that are made easier with the move but the move itself is unnecessarily difficult to pull off because its input and timing is so close to that of the ground pound. If you own a Switch, I guess I recommend Odyssey but I don't think it is worth $60. Just because it has a lot to do does not mean that it is all fun and games. Shame since it is supposed to be a game.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Wii U and Nintendo Switch versions) - don't own

Getting away from Odyssey, Breath of the Wild seems to exceed all of my expectations. Most of my time with it has been watching my friends play it so maybe one day I will give the game the time it deserves for myself.

Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment (Wii U) - beaten

Only one game from 2017 can come close to matching my excitement for A Hat in Time and it is Specter of Torment. And I got it for free because I guess Yacht Club games is just allergic to money. Specter of Torment is one of the closest things I have ever seen to perfect in a video game. Some parts, especially towards the end of the main campaign, I felt were a bit too easy since your character's main attack sort of homes in on enemies. Despite that, all of the replay value of this game really ties a ribbon on an already gripping, exciting, and tastefully challenging experience. I can't recommend Specter of Torment enough. If you don't have Shovel Knight yet, this is the place to start. Good timing too because they are working on a 4th Shovel Knight campaign now.


I'm sure there are games I forgot to mention but I just kind of googled 2017 games and these are the ones that struck me the most.

I have Hollow Knight. I know it exists. Unfortunately, I haven't got around to playing it yet.

Yooka-Laylee isn't on here because I'm done bitching about it. There are parts about it that I like but not enough to stick with these games.

Maybe I'll do another one of these in 2019 for the games in 2018 but probably not because I really don't know why I'm doing this one. I guess I just hate most modern games so I'm giving credit where it is very much due.

Thanks for reading.

Sonic Mania Plus Happened

There are only a few things to talk about with the "Encore Pack" so I am just going to talk about each aspect. I feel that making a whole video about this makes no sense because of how busy I am with other videos I want to make and the fact that there really is not much to talk about. Keep in mind that this is very "first impressions-y" as the DLC just came out this morning and I only played for a couple hours at most (probably not even an hour, I don't know).

Encore Mode

Encore Mode is an interesting idea. You start the game as Sonic and you save Mighty and Ray from a tank thing. You have to choose one or the other, whichever one you don't choose turns out to be that Mirage Saloon guy. Now that you have two characters, you can (sometimes) swap between the two with the Triangle button, or whatever it is on whatever you use. In the first stage, it gives you opportunities to get other characters, or rather, whichever one you did not save, Tails, and Knuckles. You can't swap between them though. You can only play as them if you hit an item box that has a weird swap logo on it or you die as your current character. Each character you have at your disposal is also basically a life. I know that sounds morbid but what I mean is that Encore Mode keeps going until you have lost all of your characters. You can get continues like in Mania Mode (the normal mode) but still, this is basically just a more interesting twist on having 5 lives.

This would make more sense in a game like Sonic Advance 3 where different character combinations actually mattered or the characters played significantly different from each other but in Sonic Mania, they all just have one move separating them, really. I could be wrong but I think Sonic is the only other character that has any additional benefits, those being barrier-specific moves. This idea is neat and I feel like most games, especially platformers, would not bother with DLC any further than bringing back two characters from the proverbial dead and a multiplayer bonus. It's just unfortunate because I think they wanted Encore Mode to be one of the main selling points to justify the DLC being $5 (or warranting buying a physical copy of the game) but to me, it feels more like a footnote. I'm not saying it is bad but it feels like more of the same shit as Mania Mode, which I have already played through enough times for Encore Mode to not feel significantly different. I didn't beat it yet so maybe it changes drastically later but I doubt it.

Mighty

Mighty is fucking awesome apparently. His move is really simple but very useful. He just does this quick ground pound kind of thing. This means that at any given moment, you can halt your momentum from midair pretty easily to either save yourself from harm, save yourself from a hazard on the ground, or kill a line of enemies beneath you in one swoop. Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles don't really have a combat-catered move or anything that's useful for taking out a lot of enemies at once, so this makes Mighty feel pretty badass. Is he alone worth $5? No but I would say that most of my justification of the purchase in retrospect was made up by the sheer fun of playing around with a new character. I'm kind of in the boat with the rest of the fanbase that want more characters, no matter how much they really don't belong. If they can find a balanced way to add in characters like Blaze and Shadow or even more off-the-wall ones like Fang, I would gladly pay the price of a fast food meal to see that.

Ray

Unless I'm missing something, which is very possible, fuck Ray. I think. Ray's move is the Super Mario World cape glide but I couldn't figure out how it works at first. You don't swoop with up and down, you swoop with left and right, which is really trippy in a game where you spend most of the time holding one direction or another. There also is not much advantage to doing this. The main thing I realized is that the other four characters have moves that are almost always useful. Sonic can always go fast after a set back with the Drop Dash even more than everyone can with the Spin Dash, not to mention again his barrier abilities. Tails can fucking fly. Knuckles can climb out of trickier situations and his glide can be used as an attack. Mighty can blast through a butt load of situations. Ray's ability is only useful in situations where you have already gone on a really high up route and have plenty of space to use Ray's ability. Towards the middle, not even the end, the middle of the game, this is borderline useless. I was already skeptical of them putting Ray back in since before the Sonic Mania Plus promo animations, Ray did not have much ability beyond what Sonic had, but now he has even less ability. If Mighty wasn't so badass, I would feel a bit ripped off. Again, I'm hopeful that they will add more DLC in the form of new stages or vastly different modes and maybe more characters... then I can forget about Ray like most fans secretly do all the fucking time.

The Pinball

Mania mode has a bunch of different bonus stages and that was one of the things I like about Sonic 3 & Knuckles. They expounded on that really hard in Mania and it made me excited to go into checkpoints with enough rings to access bonus areas that did not have to be as fun as they were. In Encore Mode, it always does this pinball thing. It isn't terrible but bare with me here: pinball is already a game. It makes you go through this long-ass pinball mode unless you opt-out by dying but by doing that you miss out on bonuses. That doesn't sound very important but let's go back to the main gimmick behind Encore Mode. In Encore Mode, the only way to survive, other than just being good at the game, is by freeing your friends and trying to keep all five of them on you as much as possible. After Green Hill, I did not see many opportunities other than in this pinball mode to do that. Hell, maybe I just wasn't paying attention and you can only grab them in the pinball mode, making this even worse. You can spend a lot of time in previous bonus stage iterations too but it felt like it was more rewarding if you did so and a real test of your skill. Pinball has a lot more luck to it and aiming the weird claw machine thing can be difficult to get used to.

If the claw machine to save your friends was made easier, this wouldn't really even make this concept work any better because then it would be too easy and getting there would be based on the luck of pinball and your reflexes of hitting a ball. So if making this harder would just make this ridiculous, the way it is now feels a bit monotonous, and making it easier would defeat its purpose, then maybe the pinball mode should have been thrown in the mix and not made to be the only bonus stage in Encore Mode.

Multiplayer

I don't have friends in my house right now so I can't tell you how 4-player multiplayer works but I'm excited to do that one day because I never understood why the Sonic Advance games and Sonic Rivals games were the only installments that let you race against three other people. I can't really see a downside to this for the player. I'm sure in development it is a different story but whatever now it's there and one of the main reasons I wanted the DLC so bad... just in case I have 2 or 3 friends over that just happen to say "let's play Sonic Mania". Yeesh, why did I buy this?

Conclusion

The new mode is a neat addition but I don't feel like it is a selling point so much as just an added bonus. Mighty is actually a lot more fun of an addition than I predicted. Ray was worse than I predicted. The pinball mode is kind of disappointing but I guess as far as Sonic goes, we all know there have been far worse mini-game segments in the series. So overall I think it is worth $5 IF:

A) You really like Sonic Mania. Maybe not speedrun bad but you do enjoy revisiting the game occasionally.

B) You play it with friends every once in a while or plan on it in the near future.

If only one of those things is true, maybe look into it a bit more honestly before you buy but I personally it is worth the $5 anyways, especially in relativity to what DLC has become over the past decade.

If both of those things are true then buy it right goddamn now.

If neither of those are true, honestly, don't bother with it. There isn't going to be enough to change your mind on Sonic Mania unless you desperately want a game where you can race in traditional Sonic gameplay with 4 people at once.

As far as the physical release thing, I wanted a physical copy really fucking bad but not enough to buy the crazy collector's edition. Like that thing is a big commitment, emphasis on big. If you don't already have Sonic Mania and you like having physical copies of games more than download then I say go for it, 100%. It should cost about the same. If you already have the game digitally and you are thinking about getting a physical copy, take it from someone who already had it digitally on Steam and PS4 just so they could play it on day one: ask yourself if that's really worth it. Is it really worth buying any game and buying it again just for something that is available for $5 via DLC? If you can refund it on Steam then maybe but otherwise you might be fucked there. I'm not sure why they did it this way, hence why I think $5 was a bit high but it would seem weird to make it $4 and I feel like $3 would be underselling everything the Encore Pack has.

For the most part, I would say it is worth the purchase, and Sonic Mania Plus as a whole is absolutely worth it if you don't already have a copy of the game. Now I guess I will just wait for the emo "Darkness Pack" where they put in Shadow and somehow a battle royale.