A Slight Break for the Kingdom (And More Importantly Myself)

"The Machine Rises Once Again. Welcome to Turrican, Link!" —Taken with an iPhone 8

So the past few weeks have been surprisingly busy on the blog between finally deciding to write out a long overdue review, and having the opportunity to critique someone else's books. The latter being one of those out-of-the-blue moments that I'll always appreciate and, again, I'd like to thank Jaz Jazalyn for giving me the chance to read and review them for the blog. It was a good challenge and a nice change of pace for what I usually read.    

Thing is, I'm having some burnout from all the blogging so the rest of May will be more relaxed. I already dedicated some hours over the weekend to the recently released Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. which is both a therapeutic and challenging game. Of course, the figurine of Bren McGuire or the Turrican dude in the photo is from an order that, three years later, has finally made its way to my home. More on Tears and Turrican later...

I'll still do an entry around Sunday and possibly sneak in a blog post on Puffins near the end of the month. In the meantime, I'm going to be running two separate polls on both Twitter and Mastodon as to what I should review next. One will be for video games and the other will be for books so expect two long-form critiques in June*. So here's what on each poll:

Video Games

• Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom—The sequel to Breath of the Wild and the second open-world Zelda game in which the sky is the limit and then some 
• Turrican Anthology—The personally long-awaited set of games developed by Factor 5 and published by Strictly Limited that bring titles from the Amiga, Genesis/Mega Drive, and the Super Nintendo, to modern consoles
• Islets—A metroidvania from Kyle Thompson, in which an explorer traverses sky islands, looking for ways to reunite them
• Heaven Dust Collection—Two survival horror games from Indienova where you must escape either an isometric mansion or research institute

Note: For the Turrican review, I will do a brief look at the items in the Ultra Collectors Edition alongside the games themselves. 

Books

• The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane by Kelly Harms—A rom-com (of sorts) in which two women, similarly named, believe they won a house up in Maine 
• Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow—a cyberpunk thriller that focuses on cryptocurrency and global finance
• In Other Words edited by Mainspring Arts—an anthology of stories from writers across the autistic spectrum
• Goldeneye 007: The Making of an N64 Classic by Alyse Knorr—one of the latest books from Boss Fight Games that takes a deep dive into a well-known 1990s video game tie-in

If you have any suggestions, feel free to comment below!  

I hope you all are having a wonderful week! 

*Or one in June and the other in July depending on which game wins the poll.