Tag: video games

The Tale of a Needy Streamer [Overload]

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My opinions on VNs rear their ugly head again

A few weeks before my second attempt to Army, I wrote about my opinions on visual novels, with the overall consensus being lukewarm above all else. A good VN can stay as long as it wants, but I don’t actively make a beeline to find them all, no matter how great the art style may be. For the topic of this post, I had bought another VN during my time in AIT on sale, and one of my roommates (who’s an even bigger weeb than myself, he’ll talk you to death about Konosuba or Hatsune Miku), had recommended the video game Needy Streamer Overload.

I placated him by “promising” and dismissing future playthroughs and I couldn’t see myself continuing forward for several reasons. Not limited to my play style as I have expressed some VNs do go on to have great legacies like Fate, Clannad, or Steins;Gate. This one specifically carried darker undertones, which I’m not against, but it varies depending on certain things. Maybe I’m just being arbitrary but the juxtaposition of cute and creepy in this one makes me a little uneasy. It’s a bit like the talking pie from that one episode of Regular Show. Like a doll possessed by the spirit of some little girl that drowned.

Now, watching and keeping up with thriller series Mysterious Disappearances would make you think I have no problem with scary stories like this, but with a series written around urban legends and folktales, some of which are plausible but not guaranteed, only a fool would try to take those seriously.

But what turned me off of Necessity Streamer Maximum would be because how real the concept is. It’s basically about a depressed, near-suicidal adolescent girl putting on a show for a legion of faceless fans across the globe, acting in an erratic and unpredictable manner as part of her schtick.

Yes, I know, I practically slandered VTubers, but in another post I assure you that I have no real problem with VTubers, following a few myself when the time allows for it. That said, my description in the above paragraph shows the types of VTubers I have a preference for. Sus-commentary is fine, everyone says weird s[8-bit soundbite]t from time to time, though only a few of us have the courage [read: foolishness] to monetize it. Personalities are also fine, look up any celebrity’s on-screen vs off-screen behavior and you may be shocked at what you found, like Marilyn Monroe being an intellectual cursed by the Hollywood cretins to play the blonde bimbo.

Screaming one’s lungs out certainly has an audience and I was among those, but in the years’ since, I can’t go back to that. There’s a meme of a guy tearfully gunning down something he loved because it grew increasingly annoying, and it sounds like I’m phrasing it that way, but it’s more the process of growing up. Some things you just outgrow and can’t really enjoy anymore. It stopped being entertainment by the time I was 19 and my 26th birthday is at the end of next month. So specifically with entertainment, while I don’t see myself outgrowing the analytical like, for instance, documentaries, the random humor that emerged in the late 2000s and 2010s especially on YouTube isn’t for me anymore. And personally, I had trouble watching Pipkin Pippa. Someone will try to convince me that she has less intense content, and I appreciate the body of water you’re allowing me to drink from, but the horse isn’t guaranteed to even take a sip.

This meme is the point of this post, the crux in the custard, the proof in the pudding, the facts in the fondue (hungry yet?). I know people who stuck it out with unstable people and got severely burned as a result, not to mention the numerous stories I’ve read of how bad things have gotten for some people and hypotheticals of how much worse it could get, so sorry if I’m a bit suspicious about what can and does happen in real life. You know how you view a piece of media and the antagonist is memorable because of how they can mirror some actual people past and present? It’s a bit like that.

Now I’m fully aware that this isn’t 100%, though the potential is what keeps me at arms length at times. This part is gonna get slightly personal; everyone has their problems that they’re trying to work out or live with and it’s something I commend, but my opinion changes for those who swear to whomever they call god that there’s not one thing wrong with how they live, even more so if they’re highly reactive. These types of people are easy to avoid on the street or whatever, but what about if you work with them? Or live with them? You don’t need me to say that life with a person who dwells in misery and is overly generous with their suffering is zero fun.

For Neediest VTuber Maximum Overdrive, it reminds me a lot of what I want to see less of in my future. Not by a giant margin, though it would get a bit depressing for me if the background art was a physically broken home. Then there’s the main character herself. It’s been a while so I don’t remember what her real name was supposed to be, but the alias she puts on is “OMGkawaiiAngel” or just K-Angel for short. The game’s Steam page describes her as a girl with an unsatisfiable lust for attention, which brings me to something else I want to see less of as I age. I’m always happy to help wherever and however I can, but I can’t stomach habitual linecrossing. Kindness is no weakness, but we often find ourselves sharing that philosophy with those who think otherwise.

Back on topic: Notice Me Senpai Simulator is perhaps a comprehensive look into mental illness that most internet forums like to meme away. A look I’m definitely not qualified to discuss in length, so here’s a video I found that explains the “I Can Fix Her” situation.

Credit: BoolioGalaxy

What is it exactly? A look at one of entertainment’s dark sides? An analysis of monetizing what’s left of one’s conscience? An extreme example of things going wrong? A combination of any one of these? Or none of the above because it’s just a game? I honestly wish I could break from this streak of cop-out answers, but if it’s any consolation, it looks like there’s a bunch of nuanced answers to Feed My Attention-Seeking Behavior, Nimrod.

Subscribers will remember the time from when I recommended the darkly comical episodic series The Casket of Drew and Ash and might be confused or call tu quoque for recommending that series and being uneasy about this one. But to reiterate and emphasize, that game had comedic elements of a classic black comedy. It elicits multiple emotions as you go along, whereas Hey, All You People, Won’t You Listen to Me? is darkly comical if you cross out -ly comical.

Rather than subscribe to the stereotypical dark atmosphere that accompanied horror movies of old, the disturbing part about this is that not only could it happen in real life, it probably is and few may even realize it, or they do and it feeds into the appeal of the yandere in anime.

Everyone likes a well-written archetype, but I found that Why Haven’t You Called Me Mommy Yet? does its job a bit too well. I’m no stranger to these sorts of things, I admit I’ve had dreams before where an unstable woman loves me unconditionally (so long as I keep my eyes on her and not any other owner of a second X-chromosome) but thank Rias it was just a dream. Joker isn’t crazy enough to fight the IRS and I’m 95% sure that I’m not mad enough to live this life:

Credit: kukuri ito

On a final note, if you’re keeping in the back of your head that this game was recommended by my roommate back in AIT, then congrats on your impeccable memory, have a trophy and some cheese popcorn. You’ve earned it. He was honest with me about his life and all things considered, it makes sense that this would be more his speed than mine. Don’t worry though, we’re all living our best lives. I’ve always wanted to see even a part of Texas, and that guy is currently living it up in the Hotel California Germany.

I have a recommendation this week, it’s Gattsu

https://www.youtube.com/@Gattsu

A Georgian YouTuber, his early work specialized in analyzing music, but nowadays he looks in-depth at the world, namely the western world, Russia, and the Caucasus region. If you’re sick to death of criticism of America and Britain in the west, let this guy’s honorary American card masquerading as a video convince you that he’s worth the watch. The man does his research in a variety of topics, which shows proficiency I say. Gotta know what you’re talking about before you take the piss out of it, am I right?

When Psychotic Siblings Follow Their Most Intrusive Thoughts

Tiberius1 Comment

“Dysfunctional” implies that there was a solid function to begin with.

Before we start, I wanna say that I had planned originally on comparing and contrasting the Black Mass novel with its movie adaptation, but I couldn’t. Too much time had passed since I read the book or watched the movie, and assuming my memories aren’t that crooked and misshapen, there weren’t many comparisons to make between them. The book mentioned horseracing and bookmaking, but not Whitey Bulger’s son, Douglas while the movie did mention his son whilst omitting the horseracing aspect, though both did mention the Winter Hill Gang’s involvement in the assassination of World Jai Alai owner Roger Wheeler in 1981. Maybe I do have a comparison to make, but then again, I’d have to reread the book (or go over the footnotes) or watch the movie again.

So instead, I’m going to write about a point-and-click mental horror game about a pair of siblings and the dark world they call home.

Brought to us by the minds at Nemlei and Kit9 Studio, it’s an episodic psychological horror game that takes us into the minds and lives of the Graves siblings, Andrew and Ashley. They’re essentially trapped in a condemned building with a few other people who are all monitored by very uncharitable wardens who feign kindness for the cameras, but are content letting them starve for months on end. As of writing, there’s only two episodes with a third and fourth one coming out later this year and sometime in 2025 respectively.

I’m halfway done with the second episode, but I’ve seen enough Coffin of Andy and Leyley memes online to see where the story ends up.

It’s probably been spoiled to death since release, but I’ll be light on the details about the two episodes. The first one has the two going to drastic measures first to feed themselves (understandable, all things considered; months without food is hell), and then to get out alive. The second one involves them going on the run and taking their revenge against their parents for what they did to them. It’s an interesting carnival of horrors that feels like it’d fit with any given horror film franchise. You can pick your favorites, I’m going with Halloween… coupled the original The Hills Have Eyes.

As far as characters go, the attractive quality of the game’s writing leads me to believe that some of the characters are loosely based on real people. Focusing only on the titular characters this time (because I don’t want online discourse regarding their parents to color my own observations), Andrew and Ashley Graves are an interesting pair.

Yeah, let’s take the kid gloves off for this one. They’re a very disturbed pair of individuals in a world so black, Deimos retired and gave the position of God of Terror to someone else. As noted by the screenshot above, Ashley is marketed as the more disturbed of the two with her wicked and unorthodox ideas. Based on my observations, this is definitely in line and an accurate description of her character.

Most of her ideas she writes off as mischief and childish whimsy, but her callousness is reflected in her devil-may-care attitude and her lack of concern for the consequences of her actions. She knows she’s doing wrong, but she does it anyway, and the flashback scenes show that she hasn’t changed at all. As a matter of fact, her manipulative personality is why her brother is hopelessly attached to her, yet she doesn’t have absolute control over the guy. To pull from a box of nerdy, lines on maps enjoyer things to say, the power dynamic they share makes me think of the Investiture Controversy, where medieval German nobility kept attempting to buy favors for themselves in the Catholic Church, the papacy included. If that interests you, look to this video for a few more (oversimplified) details:

Channel: Oversimplified

Basically, what I’m saying is that there’s an illusion of power between them. Both of them think they’re stuck with each other, but honestly, they don’t have to be with each other… or rather, they wouldn’t have to be if Ashley wasn’t so clingy. Does that mean Andrew is a better person? Nope.

Also in reference to the screenshot from above, he’s subject to his sister throwing her weight around. Canonically, he has no problem talking to girls, having had romantic interests in other women and even an ex-girlfriends in both high school and college, but the more I think about his past relationships the more evident it becomes that he’s using them to hide from his sister. Not that there’s no genuine romance between Andrew and his lovers, and while not saying it’s not normal to cycle through dates in your lifetime, but the armchair therapist in me sees a MIGHTY NEED to be away from Ashley, even slightly.

Thinking about it even more, the two may share the same problem Zuko and Azula from Avatar have. Andrew doesn’t want to cause anyone any trouble, but Ashley couldn’t care less. Observe this meme from r/TheLastAirbender

It may be a joke, but look at all the scenes in the show that display or mention them and this becomes disturbingly closer to the truth than you’d like to admit, though in regards to the game, it’s worse since everyone has issues.

Having said all that, it’s not all doom, gloom and things go boom. One of the tags listed on Steam for the game is dark comedy. This part also shines in the game as the dark elements are campy. Dark and probable as it may be, it doesn’t really stop the game from being ridiculous at times. When I say you can compare it to some aspect of an old horror movie, I was not exaggerating. Michael Myers shrugging off six bullets is ridiculous; Jason Voorhees bouncing back up from life-threatening injury is very ridiculous; and the antics the siblings find themselves in is absurdly comical at times, you can’t help but wonder sometimes. The writers put a lot of care into making the game what it is and seem to be hard at work still drafting up the script of the final two episodes.

Obviously, a property this popular has its naysayers and harassers, neither of which deserve even a sliver of my attention, but on the “positive” attention the game has received, online forums, especially the game’s associated subreddit. Due to a scene in the second episode, the fanbase has run wild with fanart of the siblings in action. Again, being light on the details because I recommend this game and think going in blind is a sound approach, but IYKYK.

If in fact, you do know, then you also already know about the millions of other copy-pasted fan art of different sibling characters in the art style. This kinda leaves me divided, on the one hand, I commend the talent; but on the other hand,

And this is coming from a guy who has seen both Shimoneta and Highschool DxD yonks ago, both of which I plan on writing about in a future double bill. It was a certain aspect that kept me from playing it for the longest, but for curiosity’s sake (and to snub the naysayers and doombringers) I bit the bullet and I recommend a play through of your own.

For this YouTube recommendation, I present an up and coming Canadian YouTuber known as Art Chad.

https://www.youtube.com/@artchad/videos

At over 82,000 subscribers and counting, Art Chad is a channel run by a young man who asks a lot of important questions about modern topics and issues in our society and attempts to answer them from as broad and unbiased a viewpoint as he can. Often with the tone of one who wishes to make a better world for this generation and its succeeding ones a la Superman, or in a gradual yet noticeable approach instead of the ad hoc, hasty changes we’ve grown accustomed to. The link to his channel is up above.

The Mafia Series: A Three-Part Saga

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Induction, Made-Man and Destroyer in that order

Here, reader, I bring you a tale of a video game series known only as Mafia. 2K Games released three installments between 2002 and 2016: Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven; Mafia II; and Mafia III. Depending on how you view the series, it’s either another welcome addition into the open-world genre, or yet another GTA clone, especially in era when that was all too common. And like the series, it may or may not be accused of ripping off along with other video games, the Mafia series draws from the inspiration of mobster media from Godfather to Goodfellas, but what sets it apart from GTA is that the satirical take on American society is nonexistent and the controversy that lingers over the GTA series like a noxious cloud is also nonexistent.

The focus in the games is based strictly on the Mafia and all the mobsters within, so while some characters may be inspired by someone like Bob Hope or Lauren Bacall or Tippi Hedren, the most you’ll get are throwaway lines of dialogue or even cinema boards advertising popular films from the era… which I count as a worldbuilding plus as it captures part of the atmosphere in the games, but I’ll explore that aspect later.

Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven (2002)

Set in the city of Lost Heaven, an amalgamation of several major midwestern cities (especially where the Purple Gang and Al Capone were based in), during the interwar period and Prohibition, cab driver Tommy Angelo is coerced into aiding and abetting mobsters Sam and Paulie into helping them escape a rival family. Already mafia material; on the way back to their territory, these members of the Salieri Family compensate him for the damages and buy his silence, which considering how corrupt law enforcement was at the time, may not have been necessary, then again, not everyone was eating bribes like beans on toast at the time.

Being given time to think about becoming a Salieri gangster himself, Tommy initially declines until the rival Morello gangsters wreck his car again, and attempt to break his legs. Now it’s a matter of survival; those f[aah!]kers were gonna eat him alive. Over the course of the rest of the ’30s, Tommy continues his work with the Mafia and learns firsthand how complicated things could get: enemies with connections, friends who want out, strict adherence to the laws of the Mafia, and even betrayal.

Compared to other open-world games, Mafia’s strength comes in its more grounded and serious portrayal as opposed to simply being a video game. It gets to be cinematic at times with Scorsese/Tarantino-esque set pieces and dialogue. The influence is strong enough that it can feel like any one of the movies it draws inspiration from. Lost Heaven’s setting was reflective of the time period. When the government passed the 21st Amendment in repeal of the 18th, they moved onto other profitable avenues of illicit activity. Hollywood had to get those drugs somehow…

Such a waste…

Incidentally, this won’t be the last time drugs make their way into the Mafia series. Lost Heaven seemingly ends on a high note, but just because Tommy’s tale is done doesn’t mean the consequences don’t find him later. Such as the case with real-life mobsters Abe Reles or Albert Anastasia. And where does he face these consequences?

Mafia II (2010):

In this game where the next protagonist, Sicilian immigrant, Vito Scaletta, takes the helm in the fictional Empire Bay, which may or may not be an amalgamation of a certain northeastern megalopolis. In all seriousness, the name immediately makes me think of New York, accents and all, but if I was a bit more well-traveled, I could probably make the case that Baltimore, Boston, and Dover are equally referenced too.

I haven’t seen any Silver or Golden Age films as of late, but one I do remember was 1933’s King Kong and all its primitive claymation ape suits, as well as 1932’s Scarface. Yeah, the 1983 one with Al Pacino is a remake of a classic. Bet you didn’t know that.

From what I remember of those films was the way the respective cities looked: the clothing, the buildings, the cars, the people and their accents, the outside world and its influence on the story–similarly, the case is felt in Mafia II. Vito says that his family moved when he was seven and he was born in 1925, which would mean he moved to the U.S. in 1932 before prohibition was repealed. He also claimed his father was an alcoholic who was probably also a frequent buyer of bootlegged booze until speakeasies were replaced by legitimate bars and taverns. Maybe some of the booze smuggled into the States made into his flask back east. Who knows?

Fast-forward to when Vito is 18, Japan had since roped the U.S. into a two-front war, and Vito’s gonna find himself on the frontlines after a robbery gone wrong. Drafted into the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment (Currahee!), Vito is specially chosen as a native Italian for the U.S. combined effort to invade Europe through Sicily, for which his unit convenes with the Italian resistance. After guest-starring in HBO’s Band of Brothers for about two years, Vito returns to Empire Bay where his best friend, Joe Barbaro, has made a name for himself amongst the cities’ wiseguys.

Joe helps Vito avoid a redeployment, probably to Germany, by forging his papers, and find more work for him to do with the wiseguys, leading to crimes of a federal degree for which Vito was initially sentenced to a decade. However, thanks to even more wiseguys already serving sentences, Vito’s time behind bars is cut short and he’s released just in time to experience the early ’50s; where the mob was still going strong and official corruption was being virulently ignored long after the prohibition days.

Vito continues riding with the Mafia, reaching made man status, and reaching his highest of highs until, like Tommy Angelo, his past catches up to him and relatively quickly as well, leading to the loss of nearly all of his fancy belongings. Unlike Tommy who was forced into the Mafia out of survival, Vito did so to get riches. He worked so hard to stave off the poverty he lived through in those tenement homes and circumstances put him back at square one.

Admittedly more self-fulfilling than Tommy who definitely had his own qualms with Mafia life, Vito takes a bunch of jobs, one of which just so happens to include (spoilers) an attempt on Tommy’s life. Mafia II starts impersonal and gradually becomes more and more about Vito. He’s clearly not the first Italian to leave Italy and join the Mob in the U.S., but all things considered, he tried to solve his lack of money problem while also clearing a standing debt with a loan shark by dashing between odd jobs, but even if he wasn’t in debt, I still see Vito mad dashing to get the dough for himself.

Mafia II is divided into chapters and the first half has a lot of time in between them. The last half of the game though is spread out through a few days, probably the longest stretch between them being at most a week or close to it, obviously for narrative purposes, signifying what’s at stake: his life. Vito’s loose ends are finally tied, but in the end, the wiseguys who helped him in prison only vouched for him, not Joe who was there by coincidence. We the audience are lead to believe that he didn’t make it, but surprisingly, he and Vito eventually make their way to the third game’s setting…

Mafia III (2016):

Now the setting is New Bordeaux, the game’s stand in for New Orleans, Louisiana and well within the civil rights era and counterculture movement of the late 1960s. This time the protagonist is an orphan named Lincoln Clay who by modern standards doesn’t meet the genealogical parameters to be considered black, having a Dominican mom and most likely Italian dad (whom fans theorized was Joe Barbaro himself), but going off face value (no pun intended), society put him into the black community who accepted him with open arms, even praying for his safety when he joined the Army and was sent to fight the Viet Cong.

His adoptive family is still there waiting for him, and he learns that they’re in trouble with a gang of Haitian descent while also being the “lapdogs” of the Italian Mafia in New Bordeaux. The antagonist, Sal Marcano, attempts to make an irrefusable offer which then gets refused and after one last job, Lincoln and his family are left for dead, setting him on a revenge quest. Continuing the theme of a living environment, the developers this time being Hangar 13 did well to capture the feeling of being non-white in the Deep South. Segregation ended federally in 1964, but the practice was still burning out years and even decades afterward, hence the the nearly 160 race riots across the U.S. in 1967, a lot of times in northern cities where segregation also existed but was outclassed by the southern way of separate but equal.

Lincoln Clay and the setting really distinguish Mafia III from the rest of the series with a brutally raw inclusion of racism as a mechanic, and it’s everywhere, from women clutching their personal bags whenever people of color walk by to stores having signs limiting or outright barring non-whites from entry and service.

The story, not including all the DLC, had been terribly undercut by the mountains worth of technical glitches on release, but ignoring the initial release’s problems, I say the game does a great job of putting the player in the shoes of those who called that a reality back in the day. My grandmother, who grew up in Virginia in the ’40s and ’50s, has a bunch of corroborating stories from the era. It reminds me of the approach taking by Max Payne 3, making Max a private bodyguard for the wealthy in South America, isolating him linguistically as he traverses the many locales of São Paulo. You are the one nail that can’t be hammered in very easily.

From Prohibition to early Cold War to civil rights, the Mafia series had a momentous evolution. As of writing this, I’m 2/3s of the way through Mafia II and I’m still at the beginning of Mafia 2002 with plans to complete them both and the third one sometime in the future. In spite of all the faults in the games, I can’t recommend enough that you experience this trilogy at least once if you haven’t already.

Sekiro and Elden Ring: My Experiences

Tiberius1 Comment

Style plus difficulty equals banquet of substance

I’ve got another double bill for you: a pair of FromSoftware games that I’d put a substantial amount of time in and I thought I’d compare and contrast them from both my point of view and how they’re designed. Fair warning: I’m no expert on game design so don’t expect a well-informed breakdown of how XYZ works in insert game here.

I’ll start with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

Released on March 22, 2019 for all available platforms, Sekiro is the tale of a shinobi dedicated to his lord, Divine Heir Kuro, and the dangers they face from the expected like ronin and ambitious samurai to the plausible like other contracted shinobi to the completely fantastical like ginormous creatures. Kuro’s position as the last in line of a divine lineage puts him in the crosshairs of the Ashina clan’s retainer, Ashina Genichiro, whose soul purpose in the game is to use the rejuvenating waters to revive his ailing grandfather Isshin and subsequently make the Ashina clan immortal and unite Japan under the Ashina banner.

You know, having played as the Ashikaga shogunate in EU4 and reading about the downfall of the Kamakura shogunate (and it’s most recent manga adaptation), I can’t tell what’s more sinful–Ashikaga treachery or Ashina ruthlessness.

Just goes to show that the shinobi had a better loyalty track record than the samurai. Inazo Nitobe was full of it.

I’m also going to out myself as having a lack of experience with the other FromSoft games, namely Dark Souls, so in lieu I’ll speak on the gameplay, level design, and combat I’ve witnessed. Although I’m not well-versed in the Dark Souls franchise, I’ve seen bits and pieces of gameplay here and there and from the outside looking in, it looks more like Dark Souls proper sacrifices speed for power and precision. By contrast, Sekiro seems to rely on quicker movements, agility, and a lot of times, simple tricks. Fitting for a shinobi, eh?

Dark Souls players needn’t quote me on this, but also based on what I’ve seen in gameplay and my own methods of playing Sekiro, it seems like there a more ways to cheese enemies in the game. The faster movements make it look as though there are more ways to do it, but it being a FromSoft game, wrong moves and the like will still result in the bosses planting Sekiro and seeing if a smarter shinobi grows.

Speaking of dying, Sekiro is also set apart by allowing a second chance at battle, really putting the Shadows Die Twice subtitle to use in-game. That said, reviving and dying before there’s time to recharge leads to NPCs being afflicted with a disease known as Dragonrot. It might seem like nothing to cheat death endlessly, but the energy to achieve can’t come from nothing. The way it works is that each time Sekiro flips off a shinigami, the energy required to do so draws on the healthy population, gradually sucking their life forces until they develop a hoarse cough. If it happens too often, they can die, and if I’m not mistaken, this leads to an alternate ending. Fortunately, there is a way to treat it in-game. Gathering the blood of a victim and bringing it to a doctor, Lady Emma, can help keep them alive until it happens again. So to keep it from happening again or often, git gud.

Paradoxically, Sekiro doesn’t want you to get too comfortable with the trial and error method because there are only so many times you can do that until you have to change strategies, as you’d know from any lesson on the scientific method.

Sekiro’s level design takes a page out of Spider-Man media. Plot spoiler: Sekiro loses his arm after the first encounter with Genichiro and is given a prosthetic that’s also a grappling hook. So swinging from tree to tree to rooftop and getting slashed in the face by a flying enemy feels so freeing and amazing. Sekiro is probably not the most physically imposing protagonist of all time, but he makes up for it with ninja-like reflexes you’ll definitely employ in-game. As of writing this, the furthest I got was the second encounter with Genichiro on console and I’m still near the beginning on PC, but there’s enough to glean from the combat even in the early game.

Breaking from the “one enemy attacks at a time” trope found in most media, FromSoft’s output reminds you of how special you’re not. Enemies work together to make sashimi out of your shinobi hide so living up to your reputation as a fiend from the shadows works best when it comes to clearing them all out piecemeal. Means dicks to the boss fights since they’re meant to face you upfront or at least most of them are designed to, so I guess Nitobe wasn’t completely full of s[horse neighing]t when it came to describing samurai warriors. Then again, you’re a shinobi so playing by a samurai’s rules are worthless to you. You could face them upfront the classic way, but staying in character means sneaking behind them to take off a health bar. At that point, you need only fight them once, collect a prayer bead and progress to keep on doing it.

Sekiro also caused a stink with journalists who couldn’t get through the game to review it “properly” according to their arbitrary standards, and I think someone better than me can put in extra details, especially past the second Genichiro encounter, but for what it’s worth, if you’ve been putting off Sekiro for whatever reason, but really wanted to play it, I can’t recommend it enough. My best way to describe it as easy lessons, hard application.

Now for the other FromSoft game: Elden Ring.

Released on February 25, 2022, Elden Ring made a meme of itself rather quickly by wheelbarrowing in its gargantuan balls and declaring everyone to be maidenless gits. Well, screw you too, Discount Wales! I’m gonna go in and Margit threw me off a cliff.

That did happen to me in Elden Ring. I summoned some help and got thrown off the cliffside. But I kept going in until I won. Gittin gud, folks!

Working with the few memories I have of Dark Souls gameplays, I’d say Elden Ring is the closest to form without actually being Dark Souls in name. Classes to choose from, customizable character, in-depth story about constructing the titular item, ruined medieval European-inspired castles, spirit steed, bosses that can sleep you in one hit; rings a lot of bells, but without the proper experience I hesitate to definitively say they’re Dark Souls bells. Regardless, one thing I forgot to mention that both Sekiro and Elden Ring do is allow players to leave messages to each other, though Sekiro does it differently by showing instead of telling.

Dodge-rolling has made a comeback in Elden Ring and dodging a titanic swing and countering with a slash at the ankles feels right. Between these two, they crank up the difficulty to make the victories that much more rewarding. I genuinely get a kick out of beating a boss after getting planted enough times to make a forest of bodies. I have less time with Elden Ring, but as I said there’s a lot to extrapolate in a short time with the game. Toss away the shinobi-like agility and speed and the slower movements are because your character is covered head to toe in armor… unless you’re the solo guy.

Well, it’s not like there’s a wrong way to play games anymore. Nonlinear structures of this type encourage creativity and I’d like to be the fly on the wall of the player who found all the exploits first before sharing them with the internet.

As far as hard games go, both Sekiro and Elden Ring have the difficulty found in a FromSoft product, both cannot stress enough the importance of the parry, and both give you enough tools to play how you see fit with a few bosses having a method that makes them easier to deal with. In Sekiro’s field, sometimes you can just rack up a kill count and take the ryo that drops from enemies ’til you reach the desired amount to buy from a merchant; and other times you can eavesdrop on loudmouthed enemies and discover new weapons by simply waiting and listening for more details. For the most part in Elden Ring, I’ve found extra accessories from fallen enemies. I haven’t used the merchants yet, but based on my play style I might never get/have to. Even in video games, I’m a great big cheapskate.

Channel: AreaEightyNine

One main element in Elden Ring is that the titular artifact is fragmented and scattered across the game world, sort of like the jewel shards in Inuyasha. Finding them is “easy,” it just takes getting past the boss fights to get them. Once constructed, the Elden Ring is said to grant the wielder great power. So like Sekiro, there’s a powerful object that both sides want and depending on how the stories for both goes, the protagonists of both will realize that no one is meant to have that power and let it be, or they take the power and use the godly powers for good instead of evil.

I will peak ahead to see what I’m up against, but that’s the most I’ll do for spoiling myself–knock on wood. All I can say with certainty is that I have a long way to go.

Another spoiler: I never made it past Genichiro, Way of Tomoe on console.

As Rias is my witness, I’m gonna do it on PC. That’s my declaration!

For this recommendation, I present to you: Japanese Comedian Meshida.

https://www.youtube.com/@Meshida

As the title suggest, Meshida is a Japanese comedian. He said goodbye to salaryman life and chose laughter as a full-time job. His brand of comedy briefly explains Japanese society while at the same time taking the piss out of it. If satire is the best way to critique while also wishing for improvements, then I say keep it going.

The Sims Competitor That Almost Was

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Slight divergence

I’m still hard at work getting the research ready for the next set of topics, Undead Unluck, as well as a double bill between an old anime that flew under the radar (fitting for this one specifically) and a more recent one that wrapped up not that long ago. This and some other stuff in my professional life are why I missed my deadline. I’ll do my best to get the Undead Unluck review out before the end of the month as I’ve said before or during the 4th of July weekend, preferably the former so we can all kick back with our friends that weekend. So I offer you a quick post here as a supplement to what I’d normally post. Also I think we could use a quick break from all the anime posts as of late.

What we’re shifting to now is video games. Specifically, life simulators like The Sims series and the topic of this post, a would-be competitor that was supposed to knock them down a peg this year: Life by You.

As a user of Reddit, one of the subreddits on my feed is r/TheSims, where users either showcase the strange happenings in their respective games, news from EA concerning the series, or simply airing their grievances against the latest installment, The Sims 4. I’ve seen them myself and have been both a supporter and critic of many of these grievances. It may be because I’m used to not having a lot, but of the things to complain about, only a select few are worth crying over; the rest of the dreck is borne from Reddit’s diva-itis. Then again, like most users, I have mods installed to add more spice to my saves, so this is part of what I see as valid.

Occasionally, there’s spillover of other life sim subs. For a while, there were a lot of posts on the sub about a potential competitor called Paralives. It’s still in development, but so far is promising a lot of the features that seem to be missing from The Sims 4, especially at launch ten years ago. Life by You promised much of the same things, and with Paradox spearheading the project, Paradox veterans would probably expect the same gameplay styles familiar with any of their games… or so you’d think.

Moving away from action-packed map staring and manipulation of geography, Paradox was teasing the project for about a year, and there were signs all around that this was an ambitious project for them specifically. Not exactly the first time a city/country/empire-builder studio tried this, ironically The Sims began when the lead designer was inspired to focus more on the people whilst developing the next installment of SimCity. Funny how this all comes together, right?

I can’t say whether the case was similar for Paradox, but it seems like lightning failed to strike the same spot twice. The original reveal and release date was pushed back multiple times, from late 2023 to March 2024 to June until Paradox unfortunately pulled the plug on the project once and for all. I’m tempted to say that it was far too ambitious and Paradox’s standards got in the way, but that sounds a bit harsh and a little accusatory. This company pushes out quality games regularly, they’re shown to be one of the few devs still supporting their games, even years after they release and have a more devil-may-care attitude towards mods. In my experience, they support and implore modders and programmers to share their works for other players to experience. Get yourself a quality computer and you too can experience your fellow gamers’ creativity.

Note that I’m not at all saying that Paradox should stay in their lane. I love it when people try something they normally wouldn’t do. I find it inspiring that risks are being taken, even if they don’t always pan out. It’s terribly unfortunate that they had to bury the project and effectively hand EA Maxis another W, but I remain optimistic for Paradox.

I’m not personally looking for a competitor to The Sims; I would’ve played it even if it wasn’t aiming to dethrone The Sims. I remember writing last year about the cancelled MK: Shaolin Monks sequel and Shaolin Monks itself. As I recall, part of the gameplay was inspired by the semi-RPG elements in MK: Deception’s Konquest mode. Whatever Paradox does next, it’s highly possible that they’re going to salvage what they learned and what worked with Life by You and implement it in the next project they launch.

As I’ve stated before, my gears turn relatively slowly, but only because I want a clearer picture to work with before I start writing. If this post seems briefer than what I normally produce, in this case, the news of the subject is still being written even as this is complete, meanwhile Shaolin Monks was released in 2005, giving me nearly two decades worth of research for me to use.

I’ll try not to make this a regular occurrence in the future, but the nature of my work won’t make that a guarantee. I may make an update in the future on the game or Paradox itself as time goes on. For now, the double bill is still in the drafting stage and should be up by Friday evening or Saturday.

Stumbling Blind into Btoom!

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I didn’t know what to expect from this one

My discovery of this series was quite an interesting one. I couldn’t remember where I first heard of it, but after watching more of it I realized I’d seen bits and pieces of it in WatchMojo.com’s anime top 10 lists. So not as blind as advertised.

Still, all I remembered from it was the name of the series and on a whim, I found that someone was pirating it for their viewing pleasure on YouTube. In the time between when I saw the first two episodes and completed Army basic training, I found that the channel had been taken down, though as of writing, there’s still a video of all 12 episodes in a 4+ hour marathon, so if you wanna game the system without risking malware Trojan horsing into your devices, have a looksee. Otherwise, go in with a shield and beware the spam on your hard drive.

I talked briefly about Btooom! at the end of December when I wanted to speedrun the topics I had on my mind at the time before I stepped off to new adventures, but I didn’t have enough time to properly explore my thoughts on the series, especially since it only has 12 episodes to boast compared to similar series like SAO that have franchises and can simultaneously earn the praise of some and the ire of others. So let’s give Btooom! some love it should have by now.

As of writing I’m only six episodes deep into Btooom! which I’d say is good enough to fully write about what I’ve witnessed thus far. From what I remember of the first two episodes I watched in December, as a Seinen series, it’s not the type of series to highlight the good in everyone. It knows its characters are bastards and scoundrels in some shape or form. The protagonists are definitely antiheroes. We’ve got three of them: Sakamoto, Himiko, and Taira. Each of them have at least something to balance out their negative qualities.

Sakamoto was a 20-something NEET with no passion or future in anything more productive than just lazing in front of the screen and keeping his high scores. This part is understandable since not everyone is required to behave like the heroes and crusaders they might be raised to believe, but what makes Sakamoto quite s[fart noises]t is that he’s that kind of toxic gamer. Abusive to his mother, refuses to find a stable job or training and move out of the house, no affection even for his stepdad (honestly this fits a lot of toxic gamer tropes that even I myself fell into as a teen at one point), and really hot-tempered. All those jokesters and mouth-breathers who argued that video games caused violence probably would’ve been onto something if Btooom! was used as an example.

Himiko’s the second character we see in the anime and her flaw was being a bit two-faced. Prior to being sent to the island to play the game IRL, she and some school friends were going to be the groupies for some musicians, but when the band mass molested them, she was the only one to book it and leave her friends to their fate. Now they don’t want anything to do with her seeing as she abandoned them when they needed help, but it wouldn’t be long before, in their eyes, she’d get a taste of her own medicine. I talked before about the molestation scene and I don’t want to elaborate further on that aspect as it was harrowing to watch only once, but to catch you up to speed: the one decent person who helped her got rejected, physically assaults and rapes her, she pulls out a bomb and explodes him to the seventh circle of hell.

You might begin to cheer her on for defending herself, but down the road she appears to be killing men left and right as a trauma response. And I think that’s one of Btooom!’s highlights. Trauma in western media tends to be hit or miss with more strike outs than home runs to speak of, which would be why so few of them handle it very well and with the maturity the subject matter demands.

I heard this show handles trauma pretty well. I haven’t seen it myself yet. I might…

For Himiko as a rape survivor, the reactions sound valid but get less and less rational as the series goes on, which may be the point. She narrowly dodges an assault, is the victim of one, and is motivated to never, ever be the victim of such an act again, even if it means a series of pre-emptive strikes that could easily be mistaken for Unabomber attacks, especially considering this series.

Finally, there was Taira, a middle-aged convenience store manager who meant well to his friends and family, but according to himself, was a great bastard to his subordinates. Allegedly, he’s the type of guy you’d talk about in order to not be like him. The example of what toxicity at work looks like, so to speak.

Now that I think about it, the series felt like the Saw franchise but anime and with bombs instead of overelaborate traps. Also, few people are genuine do-gooders in the series. The characters are either believable or wickedly f[power tool noises]d in the head. Each of these characters are ripped from their familiar surroundings and dropped into a real-life version of the Btooom! video game, only it’s more like The Most Dangerous Game with more evidence left behind for a forensics team to analyze.

The game Btooom! is pretty much a battle royale, deathmatch style video game similar to Call of Duty’s or Halo’s multiplayers, though more Halo style since everyone is kitted up in sci-fi looking armor and in place of guns and small arms, it’s all bombs of different types, from incapacitation to full-on lethality, and seeing the types of characters running around in only six episodes thus far, a lawless, free-for-all for keeps is exactly what would attract more than a handful of psychopaths who just felt like killing. Some of the nobodies who get gunned down in Black Lagoon would feel right at home in a series like this.

Sounds like an exciting watch, right? Well, I and whoever ran that now-deleted channel and whoever is still uploading clips of the anime to this day all thought so, but at only 12 episodes with the manga lasting far longer than that, I’d at least want to know why the anime died off while a similar yet comparatively lighthearted series like Sword Art Online became an overnight global success. Well, I came across one video that pretty much explains the reason behind Btooom!’s faults and failures.

Channel: thisvthattv

In short, the series was a sufferer of a vintage anime bugbear where the anime releases before the manga is even halfway done. For the most part, up to two or three chapters of a manga can make one episode while depending on the style, that’s one or more volumes making a full arc, and it looks like there wasn’t enough time given between the first episode and the release of the 9th volume in January of 2013, which sounds like time constraints or nonexistent timetables made a mess of things anime-wise.

The manga at least finished all the way up until 2018 with creator Junya Inoue’s assistant Hiroki Ito releasing a spinoff series called Btooom! U-18 the same year as the manga’s conclusions. Yes, plural. There’s a light ending and a dark ending; U-18 follows the former. But even with an interesting premise, the biggest culprit is that the manga was never financially successful, almost forever doomed to cult status. This fate followed the home releases of the anime with only a few collectors having it on Blu-Ray and DVD in Japan at least. Japanese publishers notoriously ignore foreign data and market share so there’s no way to know for certain if they know that the show had an audience overseas. My best guess for why this is for a lot of studios at least is that they agree to let western studios and voice actors dub it over and immediately call it a day. That, or they go straight to work either on the rest of the series or something else until another season is announced.

Speaking of which, a second season was promised under the condition that the tie-in online mobile game stay within the top 5 in Japan for a set amount of time. In 2016, the mobile game developer Asobimo developed a mobile game based on the series as a bit of a glorified promotion and also as an early pioneer in the battle royale genre which in turn was based on the manga which itself was based on the series that gave the genre its name.

Holy Christopher Nolan, Batman. We’re discovering fractal layers left and right!

So all of these conditions needed to be met before an animator could get to work on a second season of the show, but alas it wasn’t meant to be. The success of the game was short-lived and it lost its high marks and status after a month and change. It wasn’t even in the top 100 in Japan anymore and I don’t think Asobimo was doing much to help promote or maintain it. It’s last updates were in the Spring of 2017 and it lost support two years later. A second season is a long shot, and a well-done second season is aiming at a gas station sign from five miles away. With only one arrow.

It can be done, we’ve seen more unlikelier series come back for a second season even years later…

…but assuming that of every series is like assuming every coffeehouse makes joe the same way, like they follow an industry standard. It just doesn’t work that way. Maybe we’ll get more Btooom!, maybe we won’t. My crystal ball is looking kinda gray, but if there’s a silver lining, it’s this. It’s finished. The manga’s done, so an extended continuation is in no way off the table if the cards are played well and the season is properly formatted. I just hope it doesn’t go the way of Rising of the Shield Hero season 2 or The Promised Neverland’s season 2.

My First Blog Deserves to be Forgotten

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Granted, I’ve grown since, but still

A while ago before stepping off for my new adventures in the Army, I mentioned briefly that I had a blog on Google’s Blogger that ran continuously from February to August of 2021 until a break due to that first attempt at Army life. The summary I made in that little speedrun was that it was crap and should be forgotten at all costs, but in a show of reverse psychology, it’s got me going back to it if only for the sake of this post, and then it’ll be forgotten forever more like the Macarena from the 1990s.

Channel: LosDelRioVEVO

Feeling your age yet, gramps? Well, move aside, we’re peers now.

The origins of the blog were born from a time of both desperation and interest. I had graduated during the emotionally charged year of 2020, a.k.a. the Second Long Hot Summer (after 1967’s many race riots), a.k.a. The Pandemic/COVID-19 Era, a.k.a.; I’ll stop with the references now, I don’t wanna remember that year either.

I may have mentioned it before, but during that year right after I graduated from college and some change during the protests or riots depending on who you were talking to, I decided to phone up an Army National Guard recruiter. Here’s one of the first problems I ran into here: the waiting. Being in the Army now, I understand the concept of “Hurry Up and Wait,” but a civilian attempting to understand the concept with no other point of reference would be left watching and waiting for something amazing to happen.

For reasons that make sense only to recruiters and journalists who focus on the military, the reason for the wait time — at least for recruiting — has to deal with bureaucracy. A bunch of moving parts are considered before a candidate is moved onto the next step, and yes this does include fitness and health. Decades ago, you could be very physically fit with the body of the next super-soldier but unable to join because you had asthma at five. The standards have been reduced since at least 2004 in that specific case, but asthma and other life-altering maladies do require a waiver… which was what kept me from signing the paper and shipping out the same day.

My medical history was far from perfect, but then again, so were a lot of people going into support roles in the Army. Also, before this, there were loads of (now outdated, but still relevant) statistics on obesity rates in the U.S., so how different was I from the average potential recruit?

Still, I was determined to at least try for the Guard that year, but with all that was going on, including my city refusing to let anyone go outside save for emergencies, and there was no chance in hell I was gonna get into the National Guard that year. I didn’t even have faith in my pulmonary functions test until my doctor rang me up and said it was positive.

And I was ecstatic! The one malady that kept me down all my life had been defeated! But by this point I was so disappointed in the recruiting that I tried looking at getting a work in my college major: writing and literature. Impossible? Or just very difficult? Well, up until that point I was so tunnel-visioned that when it came to writing, my original goal of getting published blinded me to other possibilities, both in becoming a published author and wherever else writers could flex their skills.

The difference between traditional or even self-publishing was the barrier to entry. More experienced writers can give me different stories based on their own experience, but being a poor kid with a lot of dreams, the route of manuscript to editor to agent to publisher was more a matter of money than time. I could definitely wait on this; it took me ten years to get the damn thing published. Side note: if you’re wondering why I didn’t like waiting for the recruiter, but had more patience for the manuscript it was because I was more involved with the manuscript considering I was writing it while the National Guard recruiter was more a luck of the draw. I was dying to beat the odds on this one. Part of the reason I wanted to go NG before throwing all my chips in active was to use the cash there to fund this hobby and eventually use the benefits for a VA home loan. Biased opinion or not, I firmly believe a two-bedroom, one bathroom apartment is not where a family should be raised.

That excursion with the NG recruiter lasted from August to November of 2020. Between the last correspondence with the guy and the beginning of the first blog, I contemplated learning new skills with the Job Corps, but I blew them off for a bunch of personal reasons, the biggest one being my immediate area. The nicest way I can put it is that there are swaths of the Bronx that remind me of these important lessons from The Boondocks.

Channel: BOKC headhuncho901_

Parodical or not, where I grew up, very few people turned into responsible adults. There were only three things a black or Hispanic (or in my case, both) kid could see in their future: basketball, rap, or drug dealing, a secret fourth outcome, all of these combined. And I wanted more options. The Army would mean saying goodbye to my family to potentially defend the nation from terrorists and/or near-peer adversaries, but I just saw an excuse to see more of the world that I was missing. Remember, poor kid who wants to see the world, but won’t be able to without money for bus, plane, or train tickets.

Writing, on the other hand, was a much slower process that would have me hone my skills for better results, but there’d still be pitfalls all the same. And I’d be ready for what those could look like. That said, more research and patience to know what to expect and possible steps would’ve helped me plenty. Writing is a passion of mine, as these past blogs show. The bull crap I grew up seeing was really tired and really overdone with all these new people showing up in sports and music. Allow me to be the boomer and say that the classics beat these new folks any day.

Tear me off this hill all you want, I’ll never recant this statement!

So yeah, I was concerned about potentially sharing a workspace and probably a dormitory with a bunch of kids who essentially thought the same, spoke the same, and all that. I went to school with people like that; some diversity of thought would be a huge breath of fresh air at least.

I still had my friends from before, but we were all drifting apart over time. Hell, my best friend is a father now, which essentially makes me an uncle. Writing wouldn’t net me any new friends, but it would put some money in my bank account so that I could travel and make friends the old fashioned way.

Or so I thought. Just like this blog, the old one was supposed to be primarily entertainment, but with a larger focus on anime and video games. Somewhere along the way, my time on YouTube bled into the blog posts and s[horse neighing]t went wild. Going off the rails and everything. I’ve been careful to keep my political opinions to myself, but on that other one, it was like watching someone go mad with cabin fever. And this was 2021. We had the vaccine by that point. Maybe the maturity wasn’t there yet. I was only 22 then and at least in this blog, I put some kind of research into my topics instead of just bashing my head on the keyboard like a somehow more inept Invader Zim.

A few months later, I went all in on active duty. I’d spent the last year of high school till that point convincing my mom that the military was a smart decision for me personally, but she had her reasons for imploring me to explore different options, not all of them related to my health. I graduated high school in 2016 at the age of 17. In the U.S. at least, if you’re out of school by 17 and you want to join the military, you need parental consent and my mom was in zero rush to see me in a military uniform at that point. We were also still seeing active combat deployments to Afghanistan and potentially becoming a statistic was completely off the table for her. So it was off to community college for me.

Fast-forward to 2021, and we’re set to leave Afghanistan and transition into a peace-time Army and my mother finally tells me that if I want to I can go active duty Army, so I did. The time between talking with the recruiter literally down the street from me and shipping out was about 3.5 months, enough time for me to scramble my incoherent thoughts in a piss poor blog. I’ve linked to that blog right before I shipped out in January for basic training, but to save you all the trouble, it’s right here again.

Once again, I’d like y’all to be nice. The first attempt is almost always the worst attempt. It’s not like Einstein was born with a brain that big and heavy. Then I started this blog in 2023 after being told by another recruiter that based on my previous performance at Fort Jackson, I wouldn’t have another chance in the Army. But again, my tunnel vision, or rather my determination, kept me from quitting just yet. I’d keep looking for ways to beat the odds.

It still took some doing and a year of mostly sitting at the computer and occasionally jogging wasn’t worth anything. Literally. My folks were wondering why I wouldn’t get even a retail job and my excuse was that even though experience is different from anecdotes, too many retail worker horror stories kept me from taking that plunge. I was desperate for work too, but not that desperate.

A third recruiter bailed on me, leading me to find a remote one on Reddit (beating the odds once again), and in between then and now 2023 was just me filling up this blog with better though still imperfect content. I know I said that I’d like that first blog to be forgotten for good, but as an archive of how I used to think and feel about XYZ, it’s good to have something to remind me of how not to do something. Yay!

I know it’s a month divisible by 2, but this time I wanna try something different. No recommendation this time, but next time I want to see if I can make biweekly recommendations at least until June to get everything back on track. My notes from before still have old dates written on them and they’re pretty much invalid. Once that’s cleared up, then I’m good to give you another YouTuber to eye. Gonna step out into the wider world next time.

What Was Lost from L.A. Noire

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It was underbaked all along

I’ve brought up L.A. Noire before as an example of what went wrong with it on the developer’s side. To not repeat myself a third time, here’s the short version: Australian developer and programmer Brendan McNamara used his experiences working on the 2002 video game The Getaway to open his own studio in Sydney called Team Bondi with the goal of developing their only game L.A. Noire, based on old noir films from the 1940s and 50s. The problems that arose came from McNamara’s corrosive personality, crunch, and, according to ex-developers under his wing, explicit approval of sweatshop hours. Numerous people quit or got sick either physically or mentally of his open berating of “slackers” and loads of people who contributed to the project were omitted from the credits, especially if they didn’t see it to its May 2011 release. Keep in mind, Team Bondi started working on the game in 2004.

Over the course of nearly eight years, Team Bondi lost a lot of people and with a high turnover rate and new people not knowing what their predecessor was specifically working on, lots of stuff was scrapped. It wasn’t until Rockstar themselves made a personal investment in the game’s release, but by the time it released, it never broke even and Team Bondi’s assets were sold off in October 2011. The studio was said to have spent over $50 million on the game, making it one of the most expensive video games at the time, but it only made back less than half, even with all the marketing in the years prior to release.

After 12 years and a series of remasters and graphical upgrades especially on newer consoles, Rockstar clearly has a place in its heart for the game. As for what would’ve been different if more level heads were allowed to direct or manage the project, it’s difficult to say. Maybe someone could’ve reined in McNamara or fired him from his own studio for the toxic sludge he spewed from his mouth. Maybe the game would still be in development with graphics and physics engines changing over time. Maybe it’ll get cancelled and all we’ll have are numb, carpal tunnel afflicted hands to show for it. No one can say for certain at least not until we master interdimensional travel.

As for what should’ve made it into the game, it’s clear to see that some content was missing. Select characters seem to know the protagonist Cole Phelps without a proper introduction for the audience, especially on the game’s ad vice desk which handles drug crimes. Spoilers incoming, there’s also a subplot in the latter quarter of the game tying together (though haphazardly) the fate’s of the characters Cole Phelps, an ex-Marine who fought with him in the Pacific Jack Kelso, and a German immigrant jazz singer Elsa Lichtmann. Part of the subplot is meant to hint at Cole becoming smitten with Elsa and beginning a love affair with her despite him being married with children.

Following this revelation, his partner on the vice desk rats him out due to personal reasons (he lost out on a boxing match and Cole pretty much ruined the fun for him by promising one of the potential victims a ticket to catch a ferry from New York), and he’s demoted for adultery. The scandal makes the headlines and left with no one but Elsa, after a few cases on the arson desk, Cole looks into a personal conflict Elsa’s been looking into for a while: the most likely (read: confirmed) fraudulent death of her friend. This is where Kelso comes in as an investigator for the California Fire and Life insurance company. Elsa’s friend was a construction worker who was contracted in the development of new homes for returning G.I.’s but the house he was working on collapsed and killed him. It’s revealed from Kelso’s investigation that most of the houses were build with subpar wood and brickwork, some of it from shut down silent-era film sets.

I bring all this up because the adultery subplot comes in quite apropos of nothing. Call it subtlety or a hint at the rushed development cycle, but the closest we get to a build up of Cole’s and Elsa’s relationship is him visiting the club that she sings at most nights. The scenes where they get even somewhat intimate are rare and in the last few cases in the game. It also seems that much of Cole’s character development is absent. Throughout the patrolman cases and going to the traffic and homicide desks, he’s portrayed as levelheaded and quite straightlaced, even chiding fellow officers for not sticking to his personal definition of justice no matter how slight, though keeping to himself for some other officers’ personalities.

By the time he’s on the arson desk, he’s back to his old professional ways and he’s still the type to chase a victory, even with the power of slippery slopes, but I personally never saw him as the type of guy to think himself as a hypocrite, nor did I think that his preaching morality was in some way a shield for his own personal conduct. Some moments do stand out, but don’t have that much of an effect on the story, such as his pride in his own job as a cop while his first partner, Stefan Bekowsky, complains about aspects of his tenure on the traffic desk; or his taking the homicides more seriously on that desk while his partner there, Rusty, is busy drinking half the time, and several others.

Still, if the devs weren’t dodging an interpretive clock or a nasty boss, it could’ve seen a lower turnover rate and some of the original ideas that were cut could’ve been added back, if not in the game itself than as an expansion pack or DLC. The finer points of this implementation can be better explored elsewhere if they haven’t been already, but of the ideas that were scrapped, there were two crime desks that were abandoned: the fraud desk and the burglary desk.

According to McNamara himself, the desks were exactly as described: burglary dealing in thefts and robberies, stuff going missing, and all that entails; fraud would’ve dealt with scams, conmen, forgeries and everything in between. We don’t know who would’ve been the officer in charge of dispatching detectives to investigate these cases, but we have one clue as to who would’ve been partnered with Cole at least on the burglary department: a minor character named Harold Caldwell.

Caldwell was seen getting along famously with Cole. During the final case on the vice desk, he lends a hand to Cole and his vice desk partner, the sleazeball Roy Earle. Caldwell was suggested to have been Cole’s partner on the burglary desk which would’ve had around 11 cases to play, which is the closest explanation for how he has such a good chemistry with Cole at this point in the game. Because the game skips forward six months between the traffic and homicide desks, it’s suggested that the timeskip was supposed to be the burglary desk, but the reason for its omission comes down to formatting and storage.

The PS3 version has the benefit of a large capacity Blu-Ray disc, but there’s no equivalent feature for the Xbox 360 version. Having played it myself after getting it loaned to me by a friend, I remember the game case having a total of three discs. Leaving extra content in the game would’ve necessitated a fourth disc and to my knowledge, few, if any, games would’ve come with so many discs. Without the cut content, L.A. Noire clocked in at a 20 hour campaign depending on your playstyle, but with 11 more cases focused on burglary, who knows how many more hours and gigs would’ve been dedicated to the game?

As for the fraud desk, we know even less. All we have is speculation based on what probably would’ve counted as fraud in the late 1940s since this game was also released in a time before the Miranda rights afforded criminal suspects protection while in police custody along with a defense attorney. It might not be obvious playing it, but if you ever look at gameplay of L.A. Noire or play it yourself, you’ll notice that Cole never reads the suspects their rights. The landmark Miranda rights case was argued in Arizona in 1966, less than 20 years after the events of L.A. Noire, so a lot of what the LAPD could’ve been implied to play fast and loose with in 1947 would’ve largely ceased by then.

Regarding people involved in the fraud desk, that’s also not well known. Who would’ve been the dispatcher? Cole’s partner? Is there a desk that challenges Cole’s lawman philosophy and awaken him to the shades of gray in law enforcement? All of this is up for interpretation. McNamara claimed to have had some levels and concept art for the burglary at least, but I couldn’t find any screenshots of these to verify. Not that I’m calling McNamara a liar, but he was the only public face during the development of the game.

The attitudes and accounts of the disgraced ex-employees of Team Bondi (especially those who left before the game released) may suggest that McNamara had all the cards, so unless an artist or designer snuck away a copy of a potential level, this cut content exists as lost media. Instances of both still exist in the game, but you would only be able to see it in the game’s free roam mode, looking at fliers and ledgers and whatnot.

Would the cut content have made the game any better than what we got? Well, I doubt it would make as big an impact as expected, though it could still change a lot of things. Like what? Probably an in-depth look at how theft was prosecuted post-war or what defined fraud. The examples I listed above are clearly not exhaustive and people smarter and more experienced than me in those fields may have more to add to those, but those would be the more obvious ones to me as I’d never investigated a missing object in any capacity, nor have I investigated fraud. Certainly, Caldwell would join the list of partners Cole has had over the course of the game and likely one of the more respectable ones compared to Roy Earle who takes home loads of allegations of racism and misconduct, even for an America pre-integration.

For formatting and storage, if Team Bondi was able to commit as much as possible to leaving everything in undisturbed, then the game case may look more like a binder or folder with well over four discs dedicated to each case on the Xbox 360 and probably two or three Blu-Rays for the PS3. Subsequent re-releases for PCs would occupy more storage than can possibly fit on an unmodified computer. If I was a part of that alternate reality, I could easily see myself budgeting for more than one high capacity hard drive for just one game or even a series.

On that note, there’s also a part of me that sees this as being a series given the same treatment as the multiple expansions for The Sims franchise or Battlefield and Medal of Honor, which probably says a lot about how EA’s design philosophy compared to what was inherited from Team Bondi into the Rockstar family.

The only notable changes for later releases of L.A. Noire is the interrogation going from Truth, Doubt, and Lie to Good Cop, Bad Cop, and Accuse. All things considered, what counts as speculation for a different game solely exists in criticisms for what didn’t work or go far enough in the version we got. Then again, it takes a game with enough hard work going into it to spark debates and discussion years after the original developer went under and the closest thing we had to DLC or a sequel was seemingly shelved forever. This video by Real Pixels explains all the faults in L.A. Noire. Based on what I wrote, there’s a lot so take this as a brass tacks examination of L.A. Noire.

Channel: Real Pixels

Finally, is L.A. Noire even good? It clearly doesn’t live up to its purported expectations and as I’ve explained there’s a lot under the hood that’s missing or what’s left over isn’t perfectly aligned, but considering I’ve dedicated one post to the game and sections within two separate blog posts to the game, I have a relatively high opinion of the game, and so do others given how many people dream about there being a better version of L.A. Noire or even a Whore of the Orient.

We end 2023 with a YouTube recommendation for the channels Business Basics and Geopolitics Daily.

https://www.youtube.com/@BusinessBasicsYT

https://www.youtube.com/@GeopoliticsDaily247

The twin channels cover news coverage and geopolitics across the world keeping viewers up to date on major issues that affect us directly or indirectly, typically from a consequences of conflict standpoint especially in the case of territorial disputes like those of Russia, Israel, and China among other places across the world. Both channels began as business and investment guides before the shift to global events, but do still offer tips and guides for business and investing.

My Opinions on Visual Novels

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Lots of engagement? Or hardly any?

I chose the topics for the year many months ago. In the case of visual novels, I didn’t think I’d have a lot to say about them, but when I got one for free this summer on Steam, it initially got me thinking about how I feel about them… for a bit. Then I stopped largely due to my play style. I do get absorbed in video game narratives — I felt compelled by MK: Shaolin Monks enough to try to fix the narrative like a weekly anime a la Dragon Ball — but my play style successfully blends dialogue with button pressing. Mortal Kombat, God of War, Call of Duty, the Naruto games, Midnight Club, Need for Speed; indicting myself here, the action is the selling point.

But I still decided to give that free VN a chance, specifically this one:

The goal of Find Love or Die Trying is to romance one of the five girls on a televised game show not dissimilar from The Bachelor/ette. If you fail to get even one of them to fall for you, you die. So specifically it’s a dating sim game. I recall tuning into DashieGames in the latter part of high school when he was playing that one dating sim puzzle match game HuniePop, where that game’s goal is to score with all the girls.

I know what visual novels are, and there’s a chance you’ve come across some yourself or even their most famous anime adaptations (Fate, Clannad, Danganronpa, etc.), and I was about to say that they’re not for me, but that’s just not true. I just forgot because I have way more memories of being very involved in other video games not limited to the ones listed above. The truth is more that I’m a bit torn on VNs somewhat. I’ve run into several in my childhood, especially on the practically defunct Stickpage, and while not VNs themselves, the Choose Your Own Adventure template of Telltale Games’ video game adaptations of popular properties as well as Don’t Nod Entertainment’s Life is Strange series served as something of an introduction to VNs or something close to a VN.

I still have my copies of Minecraft: Story Mode Seasons 1 and 2, I’ve watched gameplay of Life is Strange 1, Before the Storm, and 2, along with criticisms of each (for more information on LiS, see GCN, Dumbsville, or uricksaladbar on YouTube for more details), and if you’re familiar with games like these you might see the path I’m walking down here. Diet VNs or not, these tended to have more player involvement than something like Doki Doki Literature Club or literally Highschool Romance. Clearly, I’ve got a preference for one type of game over the other, but it’s not like I won’t give a VN the time of day. I did stick around Find Love long enough to reach at least one ending, and a few years ago I watched an old playthrough of The Anime Man playing Highschool Romance; I watched all the endings on his channel. This is what it looks like.

So why are VNs toward the middle of my tier list? Is the limited involvement that it comes with, prioritizing the reading and storytelling over the action? I doubt it… if that were the case I probably wouldn’t have seen the Telltale Games through to the end or bothered watching that Anime Man gameplay of it. I think it’s effort necessary to get through a VN. Don’t get me wrong, I think VNs can tell great stories with the right kind of writing, setup, and characters. The 4chan sponsored VN Katawa Shoujo about romancing girls with disabilities is said to be one such example of amazing storytelling, but I think part of what keeps me from exploring more further has to do with length.

This may sound weird for me since I’ve stuck around some long running anime and have several novels in my possession right now as well as a published novel out available for purchase, but part of the difference between a physical book or a graphic novel or even a webcomic would probably be the visible page count. With the exception of Choose Your Own Adventure, few books or other such media have branching paths. Sometimes what I do when looking at a book in Barnes and Noble or any other bookstore or even with books I own, I count the pages of the chapters. I don’t always have the time to just read for fun and in those instances I count how many pages a chapter has and whether there’s page breaks for me to stop on just in case I need to put it down and divert my attention elsewhere. They’ve become to me what most mobile games are for someone on public transit.

Visual novels on the other hand feel more deceptive. Because so many have branching paths and multiple choices affecting the narrative, a single run could theoretically take moments of your life away, especially if you plan on going back to unlock different endings. This might come from the side of me that wants to experience a lot of things at different moments or it might be something else, but seeing how long some VNs can be can get pretty daunting. I could do it, but seeing the progress bar move at the speed of sleep might motivate me to try another look for speedrun to watch on YouTube or try one myself to juxtapose.

More popular VNs like Fate also notoriously ridiculous launching points. Gigguk took the piss out of this a few years ago with his video on getting into Fate, but it touches on another problem with some VNs: starting point.

Channel: Gigguk

To be fair, I’ve heard from Fate fans that the memes of where to start getting into Fate take it overboard at times, and I like to believe there’s some truth to that, but other times VNs can run on for very long and seemingly have no clear path to walk on. From the outside looking in, they can look like they’re all over the place narratively. I don’t always like taking notes when I’m reading, but a labyrinthine writing style can make that look like a National Guard deployment to an approaching disaster.

I’ve called my own levels of patience into question before, but it looks like I draw the line at really long VNs, though more of a dotted line than a solid one. I could see myself getting into more VNs if I knew where to look for more, and ideally none that are years long or seconds short. The Highschool Romance dating sim gives me an idea and I may go back to Find Love in the future (especially since I started a second run and didn’t finish), but until then I’m probably gonna keep VNs towards the middle of my personal list. I recognize the appeal and I could see myself getting absorbed in them one day, but it’ll take a while for that to happen. For an in-depth look at what a visual novel is and what most of them consist of, see this video from Get in the Robot for more details:

Channel: Get in the Robot

This week’s channel recommendation is Company Man.

https://www.youtube.com/@companyman114

Company Man is a channel dedicated to exploring the businesses and markets that have since become household names in the U.S. and abroad. Restaurant chains, pizzerias, candy companies, grocers, and numerous others. Often in my writing, I’ll make obscure references to famous products or companies and whatnot and I like that Company Man offers a lot of insight on the history and success or sometimes failures of many of the brands we grew up with or heard about. It may not sound as ecstatic or exciting, but I think it’s interesting to explore these different brands.

GTA VI Launch Trailer Arrives Early

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A really long time coming

Citizens of the internet will know that fake trailers make the rounds several years or so after a popular franchise entry is on the market. I recall looking at fake videos of what GTA V would look like shortly after announcement in the middle of 2012. Me and my friends were hyped for the latter half of that year and 2013 waiting for the game to come out and when it did, in a nutshell it broke records back to back.

A few weeks after initial release, GTA Online debuted and despite an initial hiccup for those who were there (I was one of them), Online alone probably counted for lifetime revenue for the game. The most expensive piece of media in history made back all of its money and then some. If Rockstar was feeling philanthropic, every employee could probably retire and have enough savings for their descendants.

Over the years, critics have popped up questioning Rockstar’s design philosophy and direction. GTA V was said to have a DLC that was functionally stolen by GTA Online, which has enough DLC on its own to be released as a standalone semi-RPG (an idea that Rockstar could capitalize on if done more honestly), and even after the release of the phenomenally made, if overdone Red Dead Redemption 2, players often defaulted to GTA. Answering to the money (read: gold) found in the criminal funhouse that GTA Online was and still is, Red Dead Online suffered as a result and some haven’t forgiven Rockstar for it.

Nevertheless, Rockstar’s reputation as a more patient company has paid off. Gone are the days where they were a small team of British programmers asset flipping successful titles with only a year in difference. Projects have gotten bigger and bigger since at least 2007 coming to fruition with the following year’s GTA IV.

I think I have a theory on why the games have taken a more contemporary approach as opposed to the older unnumbered titles like Vice City or Liberty City Stories, and that theory starts with “it’s easier to capture what is than thumb through records looking at what was.” Maybe there’ll come a day when I elaborate further, but today we’re talking about a very long, very awaited installment in the GTA franchise.

On December 1, Rockstar announced the trailer would release on December 5, at 9:00 AM but the full trailer was leaked 15 hours ahead of schedule, racking up a record breaking view-count in minutes.

Channel: Rockstar Games

The internet has been demanding a follow-up to GTA V for a number of reasons, the most popular of them being criticism over the gluttonous mass that is GTA Online. I can’t say with certainty if these are the same people who default to GTA Online, but if there is some of that overlap, then it’s true what they say about a view from a glasshouse.

So following up on GTAs IV and V, GTA VI is yet another entry into the contemporary setting of modern-day Miami/South Florida. After looking myself, commenters who are from or have been to Florida have applauded the downright authentic portrayal of life as a Florida man or woman. Exploration of the Everglades and Keys, run ins with alligators, regular folks putting bizarre twists on normal activities and other easter eggs to the unpredictable nature of Florida man. Here’s a fun game you can play: google your birthday and put Florida man in and see what comes up.

Unlike the portrayal of South Florida from Vice City, where it takes home the allegations of a copy of 1983’s Scarface with a few references to Miami Vice, this time the game incorporates pretty much any given report on life in Florida. Much of the in-game footage captured seems to be recorded on Rockstar’s as of yet released parody of TikTok. Allow me to repeat a similar soundbite when I say that the graphics have never looked so amazing. YongYea recorded a video on this the previous night speaking similarly about the graphics and there’s no hyperbole when I say that minor things like hair and clothing affected by the wind, or facial rendering right down to the muscles, or even the local wildlife all come alive in just the trailer.

As for the plot, I’m personally saving my viewing eyes for later trailers to follow in 2024 and ’25, but from what we’ve heard and seen, it’s heavily inspired by the 1930s outlaw pairing of Bonnie and Clyde.

Also a first for GTA is a female protagonist. Rather than make your own in Online (as I have), the female lead is named Lucia and the male lead is named Jason. Plot details are obviously scarce and I intend to keep myself surprised until release even though select details have leaked yonks ago. From what I can gather from the trailer, it begins not dissimilar from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean.

Think about it: young Florida woman begins in the prison system; Lucia herself most likely dodging worse versions of what Jolyne was forced to share a detention complex with during her own incarceration; a boyfriend with an equally sketchy history… and again without anymore information from that, I can’t say where else the story goes, but it clearly doesn’t take place in a prison, though the prison is likely to play a role in the story in some capacity. By the way, the initial comparisons weren’t lost on the JoJo community.

Credit: u/klydex210, r/ShitPostCrusaders

I honestly thought, as did others, that the release window would be, say, Q4 2024, but the trailer ends with a vague 2025 release window. As of writing this, in-depth analyses of the trailer are releasing on YouTube and more will follow with more trailers in 2024. All that time cooking up a five-course meal, so many people have been waiting for the main dish and it looks like whatever trailers are releasing next year and after until release will hold us all over as appetizers. I’m excited, but all throughout this post, I’ve been keeping a level and realistic outlook on this. As exciting as this reveal trailer was, I’ve learned from past mistakes and disappointments to wait for as much information to be made available. Remember Kratos’s words:

Credit: u/Shaho99, r/GodofWar

Open your mind to the possibilities and all that. Now have some analysis videos to hold you over until the next trailer.

Channel: WatchMojo.com

You’ll have to watch this one on YouTube itself.

Channel: TheProfessional
Channel: YongYea