Going to watch this in a block screening was me “getting it over with” as the trilogy had been questionable in execution thus far. I had already given up on it bearing the weight of the original trilogy’s legacy due to what the previous two films had established. I didn’t have expectations of a satisfying conclusion, but still have a mindset of wanting to enjoy it. What I got was a Star Wars film I somewhat liked, albeit with plenty of caveats.
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In some corners of the YouTube gaming space, where those who profess to more discerning tastes roam, there are videos about a game that recently got a good bit of attention. Pathologic is one of those Russian indie games, which could be its own genre—buggy, depressing, dreary, and Slav as fuck. It’s not a fun game to play—it’s like E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy without the cool armor and guns—but it’s quite interesting. (more…)
There’s something about first-person puzzle games that makes them compelling. I like puzzle games, but I like first-person ones even more as they require more careful and thorough observation to solve. The first-person perspective also paves way for more creative puzzle designs, which Superliminal does quite well. (more…)
Upon first seeing this game, it reminded me a bit of Jalopy with its appearance and tone. While there are quite a few experimental games out there that play with how interactive storytelling is done, Paratopic pushes it with its surrealism, non-linear narrative, jarring cuts in between segments, and inadequate clues to make more sense of what’s going on. (more…)
There are two games named Prey. There’s one from 2006 that had gravity walkways and astral projection as a gameplay mechanic. Then, there’s the new one in 2017 that had people jamming surgical devices into their eyes to learn new skills, which turned out to be made from aliens. I got to play the new Prey recently, and it gave me the same feeling I get from Deus Ex, the Resident Evil 2 remake, and BioShock combined. (more…)
Back in August 4, I had nothing else to do and I needed to test my DSLR as a vlogging rig. So, I just swung by Lucky Chinatown Mall, which is a 10-minute walk from my place, and filmed whatever I could in RetroCon 2019 at the lobby for just over an hour. The resulting vlog was interesting in a number of ways, and I’d like to talk about it here. (more…)
Overwatch is still a fairly important game to me, even if I tend to hurl verbal trash at it these days. I still play it with my friends whenever I can. Competitive play doesn’t really make me as salty as it does other people, but all the big changes it goes through over the years did make me uncomfortable. This planned change is perhaps the biggest one to date and it can change how the game is played, for better and for worse. (more…)
This is a personal gaming story from a long time ago, back in simpler times when Electronic Arts was slightly less deplorable than it is now. It was from the late 2000s to the early 2010s when EA actually started putting out original IPs and made gamers believe again, and one of those titles was Mirror’s Edge. I quite liked the parkour simulator for what it tried to do, as well as the clean and minimalistic visuals that almost became the basis for this blog’s web design. While that later was superseded by Deus Ex: Human Revolution, I still quite liked the look of this now decade-old game. (more…)
The suicide of Daniel Desmond Amofah, better known as Etika, has become a hot topic a few weeks ago. As his personal belongings, and then his body, were found along the East River, more information on his mental state and prior activities were brought to light, including his membership in an organization I first heard of in an infamous series of documentaries. (more…)
It took me a while to find a way to watch Canelo Alvarez vs. Daniel Jacobs, but my patience was rewarded as I got to watch a pretty high level fight with two world champions vying for middleweight supremacy. The story was mostly Daniel Jacobs trying to find a way to get through this brick wall known as Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. The solutions he tried to employ to do that were interesting, but to no avail. (more…)
Reviews on this blog seem like a farce now, or at least I think so. I try to make them as comprehensive and systematic as possible, but I also get lazy with writing each one and don’t do enough of them. When I think about a lot of the old reviews, I feel regret. In this blog post, I talk about rethinking my review process, wanting to change scores of past reviews, and coming to terms with being bad at this critique thing. (more…)
One of the most unique experiences I’ve had in a cinema was the end of Avengers: Infinity War. The palpable silence that followed, with everyone in the theater wondering if the movie was really over and the Avengers really lost was quite something. Unlike what I feel about whatever follows Star Wars: The Last Jedi, I was actually excited about this one. I had not been able to write a review on Avengers: Infinity War, so I’ll make up for it by doing this one. (more…)
