Next Week's Plans, plus a Auditory Trip in Text—Ink for April 29th, 2023

I thought it would be best just to shift the Sunday post to today instead so that I can do another read-through of Jaz Jazalyn's vVilRuUsS and take additional notes for the review. I wrote a small post yesterday on what to expect with the blog reviews—350 to 650 words, favorite poems highlighted, and a focus on the narrative over the poetry itself excluding the noted favorites. 

In hindsight, it might have been best just to edit that in elsewhere or even drop the criteria here. I partly feel like I rushed myself as I was doing the Goodreads brief for the first book. Either way, I feel better knowing how to tackle them with the first full dropping sometime next week. I'm going to aim for Thursday or Friday as I did with the Axiom Verge double bill. 

Without further ado, let's start the weekend link blog with one of my favorite YouTubers with a musical number... 

I've mentioned MsMadLemon a couple times here on the blog, while boosting her YouTube uploads over on Twitter and Mastodon—where I also did a little promo for her blog and channel. I don't think words could proper cover the attention she gives to her work whether its in photography, video, microcomputers, music, and art!

Weirdly, my first introduction to MsMadLemon was through a video where she talked about her treatment within the retro community, but then I decided to view some of her other videos and...well, I've been a fan ever since!

Both her videos and music have been a huge help in recent years, allowing me to soldier through some of the most stressful moments without succumbing to them. If I'm not listening to CheapShow, Kermode and Mayo's Take, or Stone Age Gamer while I'm writing, I'll usually have one of her albums on repeat.  

If you watched any of her videos, you may recognize some of the tunes she composed and Zaman is no exception. It's the namesake track from her latest album that has its roots right on YouTube thanks to some sampling from a Yamaha Reface CS.  

If you any interest in learning about the Amiga, retro computers, electronics, tea, or just want to enjoy a good vlog, do check out her channel and her website! You will be in for an amazing time! 

Other Things I Listen to When I Write...

• Austra has been on repeat with the new work-in-progress—more or less all four of their (and her) albums as seen on Bandcamp
• The Axiom Verge 2 soundtrack for some of the newer blog posts, although I don't think I had it on during the review 
• The GameGrooves Uncovered podcast (usually) hosted by Prog Metal artist, Ro Panuganti, where he interviews musicians and artists in the video game music scene with an emphasis on covers, is another good source of background noise. That's not criticism in the slightest—I think it's a good pod—but having familiar voices keeps me calm and helps me focus on just typing the words out    

What Else I've been listening to...

There was this little gem of an album I discovered last weekend while I was browsing through Bandcamp...

I initially logged into Bandcamp just to download my copy the recently released album from GameGrooves—a Ska tribute to Final Fantasy VII in collaboration with Ska Punk International. Below the download links were other artist recommendations from GameGrooves and Lacey Johnson was the first name on there with her latest album of Metroid covers.

So, as I'm listening to one of the tracks, I notice the above album in her discography so I go and check it out. In short, the first track was amazing enough that I decided to buy it then and there alongside Banjo Guy Ollie's latest original composition.       

I've mentioned playing the Persona games in passing, but in short, I love playing them! I think they a good blend of story, atmosphere, and gameplay—especially Persona 5 Royal!

This cover album, focusing on Persona 4, does that games soundtrack justice. The rock and pop fusion that permeates the game is turned up to eleven in the best way possible with the way Johnson brings out the essence of each track. If you loved Persona 4 and its soundtrack, I'd buy this album! 

I should also mention that Pocket Vinyl also released their latest album in February titled You Never Say Goodbye When You Leave, that you can purchase over on their Bandcamp page, or you could stream it on your preferred streaming service. Below is a music video for the track "Strange Images"...  

I still need to give this album a proper listen and maybe I'll do a review for the blog down the line...

Any New Pods in the Queue? (Past and Present)  

• The Dollop, in which comedians David Anthony and Gareth Reynolds tell obscure stories from American history, mixing it in with a good amount of improv (1st personal episode was #579 where they tell the story of John Alexander Downie)
• All Fantasy Everything where American comedians, including Ian Karmel and Sean Jordan) draft pop culture phenomena and ephemera, which feels like a little bit of CheapShow mixed in with Stone Age Gamer's May-Mania tradition (1st personal episode was in February where they drafted Little Debbie snacks with another notable one being their 2022 US pop culture draft...which is useful if you're like me and don't usually follow what's trending)    
• This Week in Retro—a current events podcast in which Neil (RMC—the Cave), Chris (005 AMIGA), and Dave talk about what's going on with vintage tech.
• Aut-Hour hosted by comedy writer Sara Gibbs where she interviews authors on the autistic spectrum (I don't remember my first personal episode with this one, but Lizzie Huxley-Jones who edited Stim: An Autistic Anthology was on it)
• Threedom, in which Scott Aukerman, Lauren Lapkus, Paul F Tompkins hang out, tell stories, and do improv (1st personal episodes were #159 and #159.5) 

Two of them were recommended to me personally while one was mentioned by Paul Gannon in an interview with We Are Cult. These were more or less the highlights though, but I gave Twitter shout-outs to other pods on International Podcast Day including Mystery on the Rocks and the Amigos Podcast. If Twitter's still around by September 30th, you can probably expect to see the these pods show up in my yearly thread.

If this blog post were a cassette, we've reached the end of Side A! See you next week for Side B, where I review the first of three poetry novels!      

One Book Down and Figuring out how to Review Them

I finished my first read-through of Jaz Jazalyn's vVilrRuUsS: I Never Forget and, as I was typing out a small write-up for Goodreads, I feel like I have a format figured out. 

So here's what I'm thinking...

• Each individual review will be around 350-650 words.
• I'll highlight my favorite poems and what makes them stand out from the rest—of course, without spoiling the text.
• I'm not going to go (super) in-depth with the poetry analysis, considering that they're also fiction pieces. 

I feel like this should help with providing thorough reviews while keeping me from stressing out too much or overthinking things. That, and it'll probably be better than just slapping a huge post with three reviews, giving me a little more time to pace them evenly.

I'm still poised to do a weekly post for Sunday, so do look forward to that! Hope you all have a great weekend! 

How Sunday (Almost) Wins Every Time, Along with More Book Talk—Ink for April 26th, 2023

I want to get into a habit of at least writing out one post for Sunday, like the one I did before doing the Axiom Verge review. So I started writing out the previous post on Sunday with the idea that I would do a little link list like last time—with this one being slightly more audio oriented than the other one with both new pods and music.

I think between laundry day, assembling a new hamper in between loads, and not brewing a tumbler of caffeinated tea after work (either Yerba Mate, or Twinnings English/Irish Breakfast), I didn't realize that I ran out of energy. I got to the point of trying to explain RoadQuest before drawing a complete blank and calling it a night. 

The next day, when I did get around to writing Monday's post, I thought that the new direction it headed was better than what I initially outlined mentally. 

I think for now I'll stay on the literary train and keep it brief for now. Here's a video I watched a few months back from Rebecca Watson's second YouTube channel (Rebecca Vs. Life), in which she reviews William Gibson's Neuromancer...

Admittedly some of the best cyberpunk work I've experienced outside of reading Cory Doctorow is via different mediums. The original Ghost in the Shell film from 1995 was technically my first introduction to the science fiction sub-genre around my junior year of high school. Then, when I discovered Doctorow via a former co-worker, that was also when I watched a playthrough of a game called Snatcher that was part-thriller and part-mystery. Post-college, it was the film Akira along with playthroughs of Read-Only-Memories and VA-11 Hall-A, then the film Blade Runner, and eventually reading Neuromancer.

I'm with Watson on this, and I find that dense, technical prose is what makes cyberpunk a bit of a hard digest. The issue isn't just restricted to Neuromancer since I got the same vibe from Read-Only-Memories at times and I enjoyed that game for the setting and characters alone, and some of Doctorow's own books read similarly.  

A lot of the titles mentioned that are easier to comprehend usually lean towards thrillers, which isn't a bad thing, but some of them lean into old action movie tropes—or the closest facsimile to them anyway. It's far from a deal breaker for me, but it makes them harder to suggest to anyone who is curious about this little niche of sci-fi. 

Me? I might be biased in my recommendations, but Cory Doctorow is definitely a good cyberpunk author to start out with—Makers was the book that got me hooked on his work and Little Brother is excellent for those into Young Adult Literature.   

I would also consider the game, Hypnospace Outlaw, to be cyberpunk in part due to its setting and presentation. At the same time, it's partly a parody of the late 1990s Internet and Microsoft along with being an alternate history game, making everything click together gracefully without having to piece together strings of technical and philosophical code.

Of course, Read-Only-Memories also has my seal of approval and, without spoiling anything, references Neuromancer. 

I also believe, that Jaz Jazalyn's poetry novel, vVilrRuUsS, would fit into the definition of cyberpunk. That's currently the vibe I get as I'm reading it.

Watson did a follow-up video with a review of another Gibson novel, Virtual Light, which sounds promising. I feel like its another book to add to my to-read list, and possibly put Gibson into my list of favorite cyberpunk (and sci-fi) authors.

 

That's it for now! Hope you all are having a good week!

A Slow Journey Back into Literature—Ink for April 24th, 2023

There are two other books I've been juggling both pre-and-post Little Book of Sound Chips—Suzanne LeBlanc's Cassiar: A Jewel in the Wilderness and Richard Moss's Shareware Heroes. The former of which I started reading about a year ago when I did a search for Cassiar, British Columbia on the web. This was a little bit after I watched the above episode from LoadingReadyRun's Road Quest—a show in which some members from the LoadingReadyRun crew take a cross-province trip from Victoria to Dawson City, Yukon, partly inspired by the grand-scale trips from UK's TopGear. (...and The Grand Tour by proxy.)  

Frequent readers will already know of my love for this comedy troupe turned video-production house and the impact they had on me personally throughout the years. This RoadQuest episode, where they make a brief detour to where Cassiar used to be, would be no different and then some.

It's an episode that has inspired me to start out a new writing project, shortly after my new laptop arrived in the post. So I thought that it would be best to try and find more information about the abandoned mining town myself to ensure that it gets accurately represented. Or in the case of a science fiction comedy novel, accurately represented and properly honored.

Of course, getting back into video games hasn't helped my reading much, if not at all. Even if it lead me to my first paid writing piece, it's hard to focus on other things as I noted in the Little Book of Sound Chips review. In short, it has to be all about the console or computer and the game one decides to play. Although with the Nintendo Switch, I can sometimes get away with putting a podcast on in the background with games like Stardew Valley or Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild where the music, sound-effects, and even some voice acting* can be a little too repetitive at times. 

Last summer, when I started walking to the restaurant, Puffins, for lunch, I would usually take a couple books with me. One of those books was Cassiar: A Jewel in the Wilderness and I remember belting through a few chapters...at least one per outing before my food showed up. I may do a brief, travel blog-like entry on the place since the food and company are both great. The organization that runs Puffins, Seabird Enterprises, helps those with physical and developmental handicaps find and maintain employment so the money does go towards a good cause.   

But I digress, and when last fall arrived along with Persona 5 Royal I would completely forget about finishing the foray into Canadian history. Weirdly enough, I started reading through a couple of manga books shortly after beating the game—mostly JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (Part 4) and Fist of the North Star. It was that brief binge, alongside going back to Mastodon, which prompted me to add the Little Book of Sound Chips to last year's poll. With the book being the winner, I thought that I could use this book review as the first step to get myself back into reading proper.

Slowly, but surely, it is. I think that Jazalyn's three books will also aid this immensely. 

Audiobook-wise, I'm listening to Chokepoint Capitalism by Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin. It is a book which deals with how artists, musicians, and content creators at large inherently have become dependent on Big Tech, like Spotify and Amazon, alongside how those very same companies mistreat said creators. I'm almost at the point in which both Doctorow and Giblin outline solutions to mitigate the companies "flywheels" as they call them to ensure that content creators get their proper share of royalties while also making the creative market more competitive. I'm excited to see what they propose!

I have to admit that audiobooks have also helped in aiding this road back to literature between new reads, like Lindsay Ellis's Axiom's End and putting on a couple of Douglas Adams's books when rough work days happen. I've had them in the background during some gaming sessions as well.  

Either way, you could call it a "Book Quest" from gaming's Mememtos to literature's Ursa Minor Beta!

*This isn't true for Breath of the Wild, which is perfectly playable without a pod or audiobook for the game's serene atmosphere and minimalist score. Sometimes, Persona 3 & 4 do fit that bill of repetition though.

An Unexpected Opportunity

I know the titles are a little pixelated and somewhat hard to read, but it was the best way to get all three of them on-screen. That and admittedly, I like getting a coffee mug or tumblr in shot. —Taken on an iPhone 8

So I started the week off by saying that I was going to buckle down and write out the Axiom Verge 1 & 2 review, which I did and much earlier than I expected too. Part of that reason was because, on Monday morning, I received an e-mail from an indie author who wanted me to review her poetry novels.

To which, I replied, "Yes!" I also did mention the review I was working on, more or less to ensure that I could dedicate my time to giving these books the proper treatment. A little over an hour after I posted the Axiom Verge review, she sent them over...

So Who is the Author?

Jaz Jazalyn is a writer who specializes in both fiction and poetry. The three works in the photo above are hybrid novels which combine the two—with the each poem driving the narrative forward. 

What books did she write? 

vVilrRuUsS: INever Forget—a dark science fiction novel in which viruses wreak havoc on humanity, causing some to become criminals or even mess with their memories. 

Rose: Future Heart—a dark fantasy, romance in which a rose, personified, attempts to overcome her own past to forge a promising future.  

Hollow: A Love Like A Life—a supernatural romance in which two spirits, one from a "light" universe and the other from a "dark", are infatuated with one another but cannot be together due to (presumably) the laws that govern said universes. So they figure out ways around those restrictions.

(I should note that each of these brief synopses are a paraphrased combination of the briefs she sent in her e-mail plus the blurbs on Goodreads.)

So how will the reviews work?

They'll be similar to how I did the one for the Little Book of Sound Chips: Volume 2—admittedly, I still need to update my Goodreads and StoryGraph entries for that one. 

Unlike that book, these reviews will be shorter but I'm not sure yet as to what the minimum word count might be. I may combine them all into one huge blog post while doing each book individually for the literary socials.

Which means that I'll have an order in which I can complete them in, starting with vVilrRuUsS since sci-fi is definitely within my comfort zone. I'm not sure about the other two yet. I may follow the above list or I might just do Hollow first, but we'll see once I finish the first book.

What I can say for certain is that I plan on reviewing these all within the month of May! Keep your eyes peeled and thanks again to Jaz Jazalyn for the opportunity!        

Axiom Verge 1 & 2: Nostalgic Patterns Diverted and Conceived Anew

What Led Me to Axiom Verge, Plus the Physical Edition's Second Cover. The First One Being 8-Bit Trace and Indra I Posted to Social Media. —Taken with an iPhone 8

I grew up on science fiction—more or less thanks to my Dad who loved the Dune books to death, so falling in love with the Metroid in Medroidvanias seemed like a no-brainer. That was what happened with Metroid Prime in 2002—a game which twelve-year old me thought would be more like a zombie shooter than an in-depth exhibition on an almost uncharted planet. One kiosk session later, I was proven wrong in the best way possible and, with my Dad already being interested in the game, purchased it about a month later. Samus’s adventure on Tallon IV would bring me down a sort-of Metroidvania rabbit hole from Fusion to Zero Mission, eventually leading me to the NES and Super Nintendo titles respectively by means of the Wii’s Virtual Console. 

Fast-forward a decade and I dive back into that same niche, but with a wider variety of games—Hollow Knight, La Mulana, Horace (for a few chapters), A Robot Named Fight, and more recently Islets—but the one that I shelled out money for first was Axiom Verge. I was no stranger to that game since, much like with Shin Megami III: Nocturne, I discovered it through a stream from LoadingReadyRun and made it another game on the “to play someday” list in my head. It was to the point where I actually bought the soundtrack on iTunes long before I would finally play it, falling in love with the rough synths and the warbling theremins. The moment I downloaded the game proper to my Switch was when I could finally cross that game off the list…and cross it off once again.

One of my better action screenshots from the first game, in which Trace employs the address disruptor to scramble a mantis-like creature —Captured on Switch (Docked Mode)

Developed by Thomas Happ, Axiom Verge is a metroidvania that looks like 8-bit Metroid and somewhat acts like it too once Trace Eschenbrenner wakes up after an experiment goes awry. As he explores the planet Sudra, picking up a few new weapons for his Axiom Disruptor, the game starts to stand on its own in a similar way to how Prime did for twelve-year old me. The Disruptor upgrades are only the beginning as Trace discovers ways in which the world can be corrupted like a game cartridge to help him traverse chasms or even outwit fast enemies. There is also a lab coat that allows him to phase through walls and a spider drone that acts as a tribute to Metroid’s Morph Ball while emphasizing its own unique spin by mining through bits of rock.

Exploring Sudra does feel slightly linear, in which your lack of upgrades drives you to almost going in one direction. Yet, the exploration still feels natural. You are able to figure out where you can go and what you need to go elsewhere without a supercomputer’s authorization—unlike Adam in Metroid Fusion. Pickups, ranging from your health and power nodes to lore, do take some additional exploration to find and the payoff is usually worth the trek. 

The game’s story is deceptively larger than it initially leads you to believe as Trace navigates Sudra and assists the Rusalki supercomputers. Without spoiling much, the pixelated mess scattered across the lower caverns and planet’s surface is part of a much large phenomenon called “the Breach” and some guy named Athetos allegedly wants Trace dead. Trace, of course, wants to find his way back home to Earth, but as the story progresses, everything seems to blend together. This is far from a criticism of the story and the twists show Happ’s strength in character-driven storytelling alongside solid world-building. At the same time, those revelations may make things a little confusing on a first playthrough, even if the lore helps in patching some events together.

One of the many challenges with the sequel's emphasis on melee combat. Like in fencing, a smaller target usually has the advantage —Captured on Switch (Handheld Mode)

What Happ made here was a package for those crave Metroidvania exploration with a story that is surprisingly deep for its length. Six years later, he would do it again with Axiom Verge 2 by keeping that sense of wonder intact with changes in gameplay and a story that works in tandem to subvert the player’s expectations.

This new chapter stars Indra Chaudhari, CEO of Globe 3, who decides to investigate a research station in Jones Station, Antartica after receiving a message on a microcomputer she received from her acquisition of Hammond Corp. This communique orders her to go there for her daughter’s sake, but what she finds at Jones Station is not just a desolate facility, but a portal to another universe. 

From stepping out of the freight elevator, Indra’s life begins to change completely and that is where those changes to gameplay step fully into the limelight. Gone is the Swiss-army-knife-for-a-gun that was the Axiom Disruptor in place of melee combat by means of axes, daggers, swords, and boomerangs. There is even an augmentation that allows you to hack machines and enemies in order to gain a tactical advantage, open doors, or just navigate up a mountain. These augmentations, or Arms, allow Indra to fully transverse this new alternate universe called Kiengir, and let Axiom Verge 2 shine as its own game. 

Using some of these Arms, to hack or cause shockwaves, cost nano-machines (nano points) and the new in-game pickups help make up for these new challenges. There are still health nodes from the first game, but now there are flasks you can break to gain skill points for stat building. Luckily, the stat trees are not overwhelming and you can easily break enough flasks in order to survive by the means that best suit your play-style.

A mish-mash of pixel-art, chiptunes, and callbacks. The Breach that binds the games together —Captured on Switch (Handheld Mode) 

With all these gameplay alterations, one would think that Axiom Verge 2 would be almost indistinguishable from its predecessor as a difficult, ambitious flop. That is far from the case. The music score makes this evident from the second area onward, where the acoustics and vocals from Mayssa Karaa, make Kiengir feel like a comfortable hike on the trail or teatime on a quiet day in. The unashamedly stereotypical, science fiction ambience created by Axiom Verge 1’s soundtrack has not been fully discarded either, but instead gracefully blends in with the sequel’s calming atmosphere…at least, when you are outside the Breach.

That same pixelated hot mess that caused chaos on Sudra can now be traversed in brief by Indra as a spider drone once she meets the respective Arm. What is within is not a hotbed for a digitized apocalypse, but a sort-of pocket universe with a chiptune soundtrack full of amplitude, which manages to work almost  in parallel with the rest of Kiengir. It is an added dimension which adds depth to an already well-rounded world and mastering them both is key to fully figuring out the mysteries behind Kiengir, Hammond Corp, and what happened to Indra’s daughter, Samara.

Without spoiling too much, the drone itself plays a huge role in the story—both the Arm that allows it to manifest and with Indra herself. Players familiar with the first Axiom Verge will find themselves subverted by their expectations more so, considering what the drone could do prior. Is it just the melee combat? That is a question best answered by playing the game itself.

With all the major changes, the game maintains a reasonable length in which I could finish it between six to eight hours—more so if I wanted to collect everything. It never feels like it overstays its welcome nor does it abruptly end and leave you wanting more. Every part of the game and the storyline fulfills its role without delay, which can also be said of the first Axiom Verge. 

It's hard to tell, but sometimes, the most important items in a Randomizer run can easily be overlooked —Captured on Switch (Handheld Mode)

Which reminds me, that update in early 2021 which included the Randomizer mode is phenomenal! If Axiom Verge 2’s story made me further appreciate the narrative from the first game, this new gameplay experience gives this debut title an extra dollop of spice. What it does is in its namesake—move around all of the items, make a path based on your inventory, and defeat the final boss. If you want to up the challenge, there are two more advanced difficulties that add in more of the lore items and even move vital items to almost unreachable places. Hardcore players may get more enjoyment out of those options, but the basic level is perfect for another journey through Sudra. 

Technically a secret, but one that is best found out while playing. Not a major one, but its worth the trek. —Captured on Switch (Docked Mode) 

No matter where you start your journey, Axiom Verge 1 & 2 are adventures with nostalgic roots that branch out into their own interplanetary (and inter-universal) niches. Thomas Happ’s passion for his craft shows in every detail, from the story to the exploration elements and combat. Nothing on Sudra or Kiengir gets overlooked, even when corrupted by the Breach. 

Whether the Breach clears up or not, the Axiom Verge series is one case where the creation of a new universe was both a good and wise move.   

As mentioned previously, I'm not giving these two games a numerical rating—they would hover at an almost perfect 10. However, if you asked me which game I prefer excluding the Randomizer update, I would go with Axiom Verge 2 partly for the story, but also because of how ambitious the game was overall. 

That and the soundtrack!

This has been an almost constant earworm since I first listened to it and, for some reason, it reminds me of Amiga MODs blended with some synthwave. Admittedly, I'll sometimes have this on repeat as well...

A Quick Entry With (Slightly) More of a Listicle Feel— Ink for April 16, 2023

I don't think there's enough happening onscreen to use this screenshot in the review proper, but this is from my favorite area in the second game. —Captured on Switch (Handheld Mode)

I'm going to buckle down and (finally) begin work on the Axiom Verge 1 & 2 review this week so I thought I'd do a quick entry. 

There are a few things that will make this review slightly different than the ones I wrote previously with the major one being that I'm not going to give them scores. These games have been out for awhile—with Axiom Verge 2 being a little over a year old—so I don't think it would be fair to tack points on. At this point, it's also a bit silly.

There's also a risk that the reviews might enter spoiler territory this time, but like with all the other reviews, I'll do my best to keep the combined review spoiler free. I'm aiming between 1250-1500 words for the complete review since they're both very similar, but also very different.      

That's what to expect, but here are some fun little deviations that have captured my attention recently. We begin with a vlog from one of my favorite YouTubers I discovered recently... 

Vic, or Pixel Vixen, is a YouTuber I discovered while watching Neil's (of RMC—The Cave) restoration series for the Amiga 600—a Amiga model that was not his personal favorite, but grows to respect it by the end. She does a few videos centered around the Amiga including pixel art, exploring the Amiga OS, and her ongoing series where she ranks the Amiga models from worst to best.

Some of my favorite videos from her are the vlogs: Like the one above where she tours Iwate, briefly documenting the impact the 2011 tsunami had on the city while showcasing her major pickup (spoiler alert: it's a van).  

If you've ever been interested in Japan and either considered moving or visiting the country, Pixel Vixen has documented her own journey in a few other vlogs like this one. With the retro gaming content, she doesn't restrict herself to the Amiga either as she also collects for both the Gameboy and Super Famicom. This Japanese lesson below combines the best of both worlds...

I would definitely check out her YouTube channel and give it a sub! If you like what she does—and I did forget to mention the drawing videos—you should go and read her manga, Future Saviors, which is about a skateboarder from Iwate whose life changes after the 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami.

Other videos I watched...

• LoadingReadyRun's Graham Stark gets back into vlogging with his Philadelphia Trip for MagicCon (The hyperlink leads to Day 2's vlog, or Part 3 of 5) 
• MsMadLemon does some Polyend Tracker Sampling for her Amiga
• A friend of mine introduced me to Taskmaster recently and recommended some good clips—there's quite a lot of them, but the cheating highlight reel was really good
• Mr. Biffo, Sanja, and Paul Gannon do a round of Play Your Carts Right for the latest Digitiser video
• Another LoadingReadyRun highlight is this Crapshots Sketch, in which another package arrives at the Moonbase
• John Rodgers takes a walk around Covent Garden and St. Giles  
• Veronica Explains 1990s Internet Guestbooks and decides to make one in 2023
• There is also a special (I think) from Sook-Yin Lee called Eyeball Theatre she produced for MuchMusic.
• I haven't watched this one yet, but Sook-Yin also did a couple of comedy sketches for MuchMusic

Other random links...

• Speaking of MsMadLemon, her website and her blog are back online
• MacLife and Maximum PC going digital-only marks an end of an era for US computer magazines
• Say Mistage updates her Doodle O'Clock archive to include both February and March doodles (Oh, and there's a Ko-Fi for Doodle O'Clock as well)
• Hannah Arendt on what it means to be an outsider via The Marginalian
• There's 40 more hours (at time of writing) to back Cory Doctorow's Kickstarter for his latest book, Red Team Blues

...and that about sums it up! 

Hope you all have a great week! 

There Would've Been a Top 10 Games List for 2021, but I Let it Woosh By...

My Game of the Year for 2021, plus an example of one of my better action screenshots. —Captured on Switch (Handheld Mode)

Note: There's early spoilers for Eastward in this post. This is a game I recommend playing blind if you're into a top-down, Zelda-like experience for the story alone. 

So last year, I had this idea of doing a personal top ten for my favorite new Switch games for 2021. Some of my own rules included that I couldn't places games on there that were already released on different platforms, meaning that Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne and Disco Elysium: The Final Cut would be honorable mentions. 

Here's what the top five would have been...

1. Eastward
2. Metroid Dread
3. Shin Megami Tensei V
4. Axiom Verge 2
5. Cotton Reboot!  

There's a nice combination of well-known franchises—one unexpected comeback and another with four years in the making—a full-on remake of a classic title, a sequel to an well-received indie title, and another indie game that blew me away.

Developed by the team at PixPil, Eastward was one of the options in my first poll to decide which game I'd review for the blog. It was a game that started gently, in which Potcrock Isle's resident miner, John, and his adopted daughter, Sam, lived an almost quiet life in an underground enclave. Fellow residents feared what wonders existed on the surface with an air of conspiracy, and would openly shun those associated with anyone who dared to set foot on the forbidden soil (whether by choice or not). Even worse, in John and Sam's case, wandering around an abandoned grocery store which coincidentally leads there is a one-way ticket on Charon.

Yes, Charon, but also not exactly. John and Sam are merely exiled into the rest of the world which has managed to make a niche for itself with boats substituting as dwellings and an entire city sitting on the side of a dam. The game's art direction does the game's world justice in a way that my brief descriptions never could—reminding me of both the old Mario & Luigi role-playing games alongside the Secret of Mana—and Joel Corelitz's soundtrack adds just enough spice (and 80's-sounding synths) to make that eastbound journey worthwhile.       

For me, Eastward, was a game that felt very character driven with John and Sam at the helm. Even the world-building integrated itself around the conceit. Having the entire setting almost play second-fiddle works in this game's favor, and I don't think that I can say that of many games. Not to my knowledge anyway. 

Part-Roguelike, Part-RPG, and slightly more significant than this screenshot leads on —Captured on Switch (Handheld Mode)  

What made this even better was one motif: Earthborn. A game that you could play in-between tasks. A in-game television show, which seemed to be the only thing on air anywhere—even on Potcrock Isle. A cultural phenomenon that is highly revered by the characters who grace Eastward, both major and minor.

It gave the game an extra layer of literary depth and without saying too much, they make it work spectacularly!

That, and it helped make Eastward into an ambitious package that managed to make everything work in an almost-perfect state of synchronicity.

Too early of a screenshot to be used in the review proper, but it works as a transition...sort of. —Captured on Switch (Handheld Mode) 

Enough rambling about Eastward though...

The idea ended up being forgotten, but in hindsight, I'm glad that it actually didn't come to fruition. Replaying through both Axiom Verge 2 and Shin Megami Tensei V (a little after I reviewed it) made me think that their placement on that list was wrong.

I feel like it could be explained better like this: I ranked Metroid Dread below Eastward because, while Dread was an action-packed tour-de-force, it was mostly familiar territory. In this case it's far from a bad thing because of the fact that the game felt exhilarating. That feeling helped in preserving the nostalgia I had for the series while giving it a newfound respect for the work put in by the developers.  

It of course helps that Dread had a solid story to reinforce the gameplay elements, but the same cannot be said of Shin Megami Tensei V. I noted that the game's allegorical story was very weak in the review, since it seemed to favor one side over the other. The battles, and the pseudo open-world gameplay held the game together, but on a new game where you can keep all of your old demons, the whole thing does not hold up the second time around. 

Axiom Verge 2 does, and I'll let the eventual review explain itself and why I now want to place it in my top three for 2021. 

Until then, I have two words: third playthrough. 

Back to Where I was Going, and this time, it will be Done...

It's an observatory, but not one operated solely by the microcomputer on the right. Also, Universes... —Captured on Switch (Handheld Mode)  

After months of putting it off and then deciding to deviate to a book review, I find myself back here again. A part of it is me finding solace in both games last weekend in a strange moment of serendipity casting aside my initial weekend plan of watching MsMadLemon review a Linux laptop, which I ended up watching on Monday instead, alongside someone else's playthrough of Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age. 

There's also the excuse that my physical copy of the game came in the post right before I headed up to Boston for my sister's commencement ceremony, but I'm not counting that coincidence for reasons that I feel go without saying. 

But I think it was when someone recently asked me about what makes me a perfectionist—or something along those lines—that I actually pulled back and took a look at what I was trying to do. 

I don't think I've ever wrote about my review-writing process at length, but here's what I do regarding video games:

1.  I transfer the screenshots from the Switch to my iPhone and ultimately AirDrop them on my computer.
2. I create a Scrivener file using the lecture template, drop my screenshots into the "Research", and summarize the review in the main body's sidebar.
3. Usually, because I'm not the best at intros, I'll jump straight into talking about the game—what it's about, what makes certain aspects compelling like the gameplay and story, and what's lacking (or what it could do better).
4. Then I work on the intro where I, currently, use my nostalgic ramblings or weave the game's themes into the review proper. That and the conclusion. 
5. Somewhere between Steps 2 and 3, I'll rename the files where I save the screenshots—said captions are more or less would be brief Alt-text describing the action onscreen with the occasional joke*. Here, I decide which ones will be featured on the blog.
6. Review gets pasted into Blogger, screenshots follow, and then there's the final read through with minor edits.
7. Hit Publish.        

Book reviews were, of course, a little bit different and usually much easier to write out since I did this sort of thing in undergrad academe for both classes and the student newspaper. In short, these reviews made up my comfort zone. 

The Little Book of Sound Chips: Volume 2 review occupied that strange space between the two since the book's major strength was in providing a way for readers to experience the music (almost) firsthand. I already started doing a similar writing process for this review and, after being asked about said perfectionism, I decided to tear what I was working on and wrote it anew...

...it might not be something that could be easily published elsewhere, mostly for word-count reasons (I think), but I thought it turned out pretty well.

With what I wanted to to for the Axiom Verge 1 & 2 was way too ambitious and probably the other reason why I put it off for so long. You would have had, technically, two reviews at around 1250-1750 words total with another post similar to the one I did for magazines after writing for Nintendo Force. 

In short: I would have been overwhelmed for no real reason and, considering that most (if not all) of my game reviews start with mini-nostalgia trips, there is a better way of writing this particular review.

So nothing's really changed since I wrote how I'd write the review out long ago, but the retrospective bit's getting condensed. I'm going to aim for the end of April into May to get the review out. The most challenging part is still the same though, so my action shots won't be super immaculate.  

I thank this person for prompting me to stand back, think things over I think, and to write a fresh** review. It's slightly difficult to convey in writing, but there are times in which I get ambitious about something only to put it off because of said drive to make something more. It's definitely something I should keep in mind moving forward...    

Have good weekend, everyone!