My Review: The Last Jed

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there were an insufficient amount of Jeds.

10/10

My Review: Covid

 While I am not personally a fan, in order to be properly objective and serious about it we need to judge it not by how we personally experience it, but as itself within the genre it exists it. It would be unfair, for example, to judge the classic movie Casablanca by the same standards that we judge the word Casablanca -- we need to judge them both by their own standards, their own goals. If a movie is to be judged for its cinematography, its acting, the way it makes the audience feel, and a word is judged by its memorability,  ease of spelling, awkwardness of saying it -- by what standards do we judge a virus? 

Infectability? Survivability? Symptoms? Ability to encourage workplaces to let employees work from home? 

Quite infectious. A multitude of symptoms, both immediate and lingering. The most profound shift towards people being able to work from home since the development of the internet. 

Most of the effects from it are bad, of course, because it is a virus and not a lasagna or a classic movie or a time-limited seasonal milkshake. It is not an area where good things are expected or welcomed. But the bad things a virus is supposed to do? It does them very, very well. Too well, some would argue, but does anyone argue that Casablanca is TOO good of a movie? Is that at thing people are arguing about these days? 

I mean, are they? I haven't checked. Have we adopted the Jason Mendoza scale? Am I going to have to start judging things in the areas of coolness, dopeness, freshness and smart-brained?

I can only hope so. 

In conclusion: 

Casablanca the movie: 10/10 even if there's no reason they couldn't have all gone on the plane at the end, it's like shooting your way into a bank, gunning down the guards, blasting open the safe, and then only taking the $209.43 you had in your savings account. 

Casablanca the word: 10/10, good use of assonance, good mouth feel. 

Covid: a begrudging 10/10, have you considered putting your talents to work in an area OTHER than being a virus? You have a drive and go-getting attitude that could take you far if you could just let go of this whole "making people sick" thing. 

Jason Mendoza: 8/13

My SPOILER FREE Review: Returnal

 Again the discourse has waxed and waned and I'm back providing the most Serious, Objective and Review reviews. This time the game is Returnal, which shares a major flaw with most games, which is that the developers have not paid me any money to review their game. Thankfully, this makes it easier to follow through with my Spoiler Free policy, which is to say, I have not played the game nor watched it played. I did see a trailer at some point, I think, and also I read someone else's reviews, but then I looked at the price tag (large) and at the stack of games I want to play but haven't (larger) and my stack of free time (tiny) and decided that it was not good enough for me. 

This is the tragedy of loving 100 hour long games. 

So, Returnal is a game about someone who doesn't enjoy being shot, a highly relatable trait that makes me entirely believe in the protagonist, as I also do not enjoy being shot. Unlike me, but like a vast many other game protagonists, the character gets a do-over whenever they get shot. Well. I say unlike me, but I have not been shot so perhaps I would enjoy it? And also I fully intend to yell "DO-OVER" while I'm dying in the hopes that that will give me another play through of life. So perhaps Returnal is based on my life? Yes, that sounds right. 

So in this game about a serious objective reviewer who takes exceedingly long lunch breaks (I think this last one was 2.5 years?), you get shot at a lot, because it's a bullet hell game; and you have to start over again on a random map, because it's a roguelike; and some stuff you do carries over, because it's a roguelite; and it loads really fast if you're playing it on an SSD, which is ... how SSDs work? It's allegedly pretty and allegedly creepy and I would love to play a demo of it or some such, because I'm not spending that many dollars on a game that I don't have time to master. 

However, did I mention how pretty it is? 10/10. 

My Review: Semblance

Semblance as a game has one major fault: The developers didn't pay me anything to review it. They didn't even give me a free download code, or a foot rub, or a diamond-studded laptop to write my review on. I would have to say that in general, the game community has been incredibly bad at offering bribes to my most-awesome blog, which was rated 10/10 as the most serious, most objective, and most review blog that ever existed.

But this didn't bother them, so they made a game where you play as a little blob thing that tries to collect things, in a two-dimensional puzzle platformer, with an interesting gimmick where when you smash your head against stuff (you're essentially just a head, so that's pretty easy) instead of your head --

Wait, I think I have an opportunity for ... well.

Ahem.

In America, smashing head against wall moves head. In Soviet Russia, smashing head against wall moves wall!

I will now pause for laughter.

...

So you can bounce platforms up higher if you need higher platforms, or lower if you need to go through something, or side to side if you need to climb a wall, and there are lasers that are TOTALLY not out of place on an otherwise foresty/organic world design, along with deadly fireflies that carry light-sabres that cause the world to reset, and bits of america so when you smash against them you get taller, just like in real life.

I must also credit the game, that when I was thinking "Well, they've about entirely explored this possibility space" the game started its final sequence, that did a few slightly different things and then ended. It's nice to have a game not overstay its welcome.

Also, I got to make a Yakov Smirnoff-style joke which clearly was hilarious and not dated at all. 10/10 to both the game and the joke format. What a country!

My Review: A Hat In Time

In an effort to review games in a more timely manner and also occasionally update this blog, I picked up a copy of A Hat in Time, which I got for essentially free because it was part of Humble Bundle Monthly, and while I consciously know that I'm paying for it every month I don't actively hand money over when I get the games, and thus it feels like I'm getting the games for free which is good because usually I either own all the games already or don't own them for reasons.

But I didn't own A Hat in Time, and now I have played it. I have technically beaten it, in the sense that I got the credits to roll and not in the sense that I exhausted the available content.

A Hat in Time is a game about Hat Girl and her efforts to help or hinder Moustache Girl in her crusade against the mafia men of Mafia Town, plus get some magic trinkets that give magic powers to basically everyone EXCEPT Hat Girl. There is also a haunted forest, a potentially-haunted mountain range, and a movie studio where no one ever discusses whether it's haunted or not. You have the ability to double jump, which is a standard feature of collect-the-stuff games even though I've only been able to do it twice in real life. You can also change what hat you're wearing, or what pins you have attached to the hat, and you can get a hookshot because any game with a hookshot is BY DEFAULT better than any other game. (I don't make the rules, the Hookshot Marketing board makes the rules)

Basically, if you want a game that plays like Super Mario Odyssey on a budget but by funnier people, this is probably the game you want. Plus, mods, which I haven't actually looked at but like all PC-owners nodded in satisfaction when I found out that they existed.

In conclusion, the boss fights were really fun and generally adapted as you played them so after you mastered a stage of the fight, it'd skip past it quicker so you could get to the next stage faster. 10/10

My Review: Black Panther

I have seen the movie, so I unfortunately will not be able to promise a 100% spoiler free review, but fortunately that means I got to see the movie already. However, in an effort to please the clamouring Spoiler-Free Review crowd, I will offer this simple, shorter review, guaranteed spoiler free by a team of scienticians who have been working day and night on it since I finished seeing the movie about 10 hours ago:

BEGIN SPOILER FREE REVIEW.

As you are currently reading this review, it is clear that you are not currently watching this movie. Or you are reading on your phone during a movie at a theatre. Both of these mean you are making bad life choices, as you could be both seeing the movie AND not being a horribly inconsiderate person, AT THE SAME TIME. Rectify this! See the movie, with your phone, tablet, laptop, desktop-on-a-trolley properly stowed and deactivated!

END SPOILER FREE REVIEW

BEGIN SPOILER-LADEN REVIEW

Luke, the son of Darth Vader (who doesn't like sand) and sister to Leia, knew that the protagonist had been dead all along, so he picked up Rosebud -- a sled of some import -- and watched as Snape killed...

END SPOILER-LADEN REVIEW

BEGIN BLACK PANTHER REVIEW

So, Black Panther is a movie about a man who is also a black panther. He never turns into a black panther, although his father turns BACK from being a black panther, in the Wakandan afterlife that as far as we can tell is only for those who have royal blood. Sorry, non-royals! Your afterlife is uncertain! At least during this movie!

Tragically, the majority of the movie is not an in depth exploration into the nuances of the Wakandan afterlife. We never see a comparative religious study that would indicate how the beliefs of the  various peoples of Wakanda mingle, whether there are different practices amongst the different tribes, or any exploration into the intricate social structure that potentially provable religious practices might cause. In retrospect, I believe the movie was not actually a documentary but a blockbuster about superheroes that may have advertently included enough worldbuilding that the afrofuturist, uncolonized Wakanda seems a more nuanced setting than other movies set in wild, unbelievable locations like New Jersey.

If nothing else, this movie has proven that prophetic naming is still alive in the Marvel Universe, as the man with an artificial arm's name is pronounced Claw, and the guy who kills lots of people is named Killmonger. I'm no nameologist, but I assume T'challa is a language-I-don't-know for "Panther, black" and Everett K. Ross means "Guy who played Bilbo" (insert Tolkien Minority joke here).

END BLACK PANTHER REVIEW

BEGIN REVIEW SUMMARY AWARDING 10/10:

In conclusion, sand-like nanites make for a surprisingly good display system. 10/10 will watch again.

END REVIEW SUMMARY AWARDING 10/10:

My Review: Finding Paradise (and also kind of To The Moon?)

I almost passed on doing a review for this game, as watching it caused a swell of emotions in me -- or a case of "the feels" as "the kids" are calling it these "the days". Emotion, as everyone knows, is antithetical to objectivity, and clearly no one wants to base purchasing decisions on subjective things like "fun", "catharsis", or "enjoyment" when there are pure objective measures like framerate and the number of triangles in each moving object.

Nevertheless, I have chosen to provide a review with this stern advisement, so anyone reading will be aware:

WARNING: The reviewer enjoyed this game and thus their objectivity might be only 98% rather than the 100% expected. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.

So, Finding Paradise is a sequel to To The Moon, a game about a pair of memory technicians who enter the dreams of a dying person in order to build new memories, so they can die ensconced in a web of lies about their life. This is viewed as a Good Thing.

And it is?

In To The Moon, the dying wish was a simple one: he wanted to (spoilers) go to the moon. In Finding Paradise, the dying wish was less spoiled by the title. Both contained complications. Only one let you change your socks.

These games are arguably in the genre of Walking Simulator; you play by exploring the world, finding the Plot Breadcrumbs (in this case, almost literally), and then when enough plotpoints have been acquired roll credits. You cannot lose except by quitting, which is not altogether different from a movie, book, or other piece of non-interactive medium. (We will, for the purposes of this review, not consider "page turning" or "the pause button" as "interactivity.)

Nevertheless, the interactivity DOES add to the essential feel of the story. Aside from semi-frequent cutscenes, interacting with the story in the method you do -- as explorers seeking it out, trying to determine how each memory affects the dying wish -- makes for a completely different feel than just being told the story, or watching it would. I've argued that the strongest part of an interactive story is that it changes the pronoun from "they did" to "I did". Captain Swordguy didn't defeat the ninja mercenaries; *I* did, using Captain Swordguy as my pawn/avatar.

Also, the game has a retro-RPG style that will never get old ever it just won't la la la I can't hear you. 10/10.