Signaling Citrus

Weird post name, but there were two pieces of news that I wanted to give my two cents on, but I didn’t feel like I had enough to say for a whole blog post. I’ve combined the two into this one post. First up are my thoughts on Signal getting usernames. But if you’re not interested in that, feel free to skip to the second part on Nintendo shutting down the yuzu emulator.

Signal Has Usernames Now

Signal has usernames now… so what?

If you’ve read some of my posts before, you know (roughly) what I think about Signal. I think its a high quality private messenger that has some possibly questionable downsides, especially relating to the whole phone number thing. Well, if you haven’t heard (or guessed), Signal has introduced a username feature. I think this is a great feature, but it doesn’t solve all my issues with the app.

For those who want a TL:DR, this update allows anyone to add a username to their Signal account. This removes the need to share your phone number (a very sensitive piece of information) with other people. Usernames are designed to be added, removed, and updated at any time. By design, they’re not meant to be some permanent unique identifier, but rather more of a unique invite you can share and revoke as needed. In addition to this, it also enables phone number privacy by default.

Overall, I think this is a great update. Phone numbers are effectively a unique identifier. Most people only have one number, and that number is linked to their real identity with their phone provider. Exposing that to someone you don’t necessarily trust is a huge possible risk. Having it be private by default makes it easy for even the most technically illiterate person to reclaim their privacy. Usernames are a great replacement, especially with how they’re implemented. Usernames are designed to be more ethereal in nature. Other messenger or social media apps treat username as a permanent fixture, part of your identity, but Signal defies this in an effort to keep users private. They function as a way to quickly connect without exchanging a phone number, making it easier to stay anonymous while using Signal. I could see this being a bit confusing for some people who have the traditional mindset of usernames, but this is a positive direction to go in.

However, I still feel like this update has a lot of missed potential. Accounts are still linked to a phone number. I don’t like this. Signal claims this is to reduce spam (citation needed), but I have doubts about this. While Signal can’t eliminate spam via traditional means (E2EE means they can’t even see message contents), they have made it basically impossible to contact someone unless you know their exact username. And the fact that usernames are designed to be changed and removed to limit who can add someone just re-enforces this point. Phone numbers frankly aren’t needed any more. Messengers like Session or Tox have provided secure and anonymous messaging for quite a while now, while not requiring a phone number. While these options are generally less approachable for an average person, they just prove that they aren’t needed for something secure and private.

This forced reliance on phone numbers for accounts also limits how many accounts a person can make. Something important for privacy is separating your identities. If you want to keep certain things private, it makes sense to not do them under a name people know you by. Keeping things separate is paramount to maintaining good privacy, so to accomplish this you need to maintain multiple accounts, especially when it comes to messaging. Signal basically forces a person to pick one identity and run with it. If you only message people you know in your real life, this might not be an issue, but I can guess that if you’re reading this blog, you maintain some degree of separation between the people you talk with in real life versus online. Signal doesn’t allow for nuance, meaning if you want to use it for secure communication, you’re forced to pick and choose which group gets that. Sure, you can use multiple services, but its already hard enough to get people to switch to something more secure, so its often a waste of energy to try to convince them to use something just as secure that isn’t as user friendly.

Good update, but it doesn’t fix most of the issues I have with Signal.

The Death of Yuzu

Nintendo has done what they do best, kill another fan project. But this time, its not some silly fan game, but rather them striking down the impressive yuzu emulator. For the uninformed, yuzu was an emulator for the Nintendo Switch, with the ability to boot and play many commercial games, often times at better resolutions and frame rates than the Switch could natively produce. Seeing it get shut down when emulation is legal is a bit of a shock.

Originally, I had something much longer diving into the legal documents and trying to figure out why Nintendo went after yuzu, but I couldn’t quite get it into a position I was happy with. I’m going to pivot a bit. Nintendo has always been successful because they’ve always managed to make games that capture the hearts and imaginations of the players. I cannot deny that the Nintendo games I played growing up shaped me as to who I am today, but what makes me sad is that these games aren’t coming with us into the future. They get lost and left behind in the past whenever new games and consoles release. This means people who missed out on these games will be unable to experience these games, or if you want to come off as a bit pretentious, works of art. Emulation plays a role in preserving these games, allowing anyone to easily play games from past systems. Its easy, accessible, and can often provide features that can improve the game. Without emulation, much of gaming history would be lost.

I don’t think people really understand how important emulation is. The Video Game History Foundation did a study last year that found 87% of video games before 2010 are not commercially available. This is an astonishingly high number. Imagine if only 10% of movies before 2010 were available, or songs, or shows. How crazy would that be? I’m sure you’ve recently consumed a piece of media before 2010. How did make you feel? Maybe it was mediocre, just another thing, but there is a chance that it could have been pivotal. I’m sure there is something out there that impacted you, but you just found it later than everyone else. With video games, its nearly impossible. That 87% looms over us, making it impossible to play some games. Some may argue those are only “old” games and thus lack appeal, but when nearly 2000 games have been delisted in the modern era, this preservation issue still exists for modern titles. Just a week ago we saw Octopath Traveler disappear from the Switch eShop (Archive). Undeniably, even Switch emulation is important for preservation.

The fact is, emulation is needed. We’re losing games, and “porting” or “remaking” or “remastering” them isn’t the answer. Preservation is a tricky subject. Think of it like this: when is a game preserved? Does a remaster that changes and modernizes the gameplay count? Does a remake with a shiny coat of paint count? Does a port from an old console to a new count? Or do you need the original hardware and a period accurate display to truly preserve something? Video games are such a unique case, given how the interactive nature of them makes them different than preserving any other form of media. And all that doesn’t even begin to consider the era of online and live service games. It becomes almost impossible to preserve these dynamic and ever changing experiences. Emulation at least provides some answer, with it reproducing the functionality of games on hardware they were never meant to run on. For some, it doesn’t compare to original hardware, but in all the ways that matter, its what we need.

But its hard to talk about emulation without piracy. If you take piracy into account, that 87% number goes down to nearly nothing. But piracy is illegal, and while I can’t tell you what you is and isn’t ethical, I can tell you the morality and legality are not the same. Frankly, the reason Nintendo went after yuzu was piracy. And while most emulator teams will claim the same thing, that their emulators are not meant for piracy, but the fact is, most people do use them for such. Why? It comes back to that preservation issue, that game companies don’t preserve their past games. You can’t buy 90% of them, but to be fair, you also can’t buy a lot old books, or movies, or shows. But they’re still accessible. How? A little thing called a library. At least in the United States, libraries give people access to thousands of influential books and movies and shows and music. Its not as well known, but your local library probably comes with access to a sizeable portion of digital content. Talk to a librarian to learn more. But my point is, there exists a (legal) solution to this problem, libraries. They could take some of this burden and provide games in the same way they can provide other digital files. This library approach also avoids some issues with re-releasing older games. Often times games are a collaborative process between many companies, making it unclear as to who owns the game. When its unclear who owns it, its also unclear who can permit it to be re-released. Libraries would also avoid issues associated with games owned by companies that don’t exist anymore. It is a wonderful solution, the real issue is the infrastructure and laws aren’t in place. Until then, it seems the best way for the average person to play a classic game is piracy, and people shouldn’t have to resort to a crime just because a company is negligent.

I’d like to end with a bit of a personal story. Citra was also shutdown when yuzu was sued. And this kinda stung for me. I had a 3DS when it was in its heyday, and it quickly wormed its way into my life, more so than any other console before it. I’m not joking when I say I almost always had that thing on me. I played countless games over the years, a lot of them making it into my best games of all time list, but it also changed the way I viewed games. This was the time my eyes opened to online communities, and I realized that games were so much more than just something to pass the time. Playing these games helped me meet people and bond with them. Some of the friends I made back then I still talk to on a daily basis, and its all because of how good these games were. But when I talk to people who haven’t played these games, I get a bit sad because I know they won’t be able to. Any attempt at porting or remaking them will inherently be a different experience. The 3DS was a unique console with its dual screens and underused 3D gimmick, but emulation is the only way to properly experience it outside of owning an actual console. I got to share so many wonderful games with others on this silly little console, but I won’t get to do that any more, and it brings an indescribable sadness to my heart.

At the end of the day, nothing is gone from the internet forever. Back ups of these emulators exist, and I’m sure you can find what you’re looking for with enough googling. The projects being open source also leaves the potential of new developers coming in and picking back up the work. I just wish we lived in a world where video game preservation was taken seriously, or at least one where companies don’t go after the fans that do that job for them.

Games I Played in 2023

Last year I wrote about every new (to me) game I played, and I’m doing it again for this year. It was a fun process and its nice to be able to look back and see what I played and what I thought. But one thing bugged me about last year, and that was the rating I gave to the games. While ultimately a simple number between 1 and 10 fails to capture the complexities of a game, it also fails in being critical. I fell into a trap where I started to rate games higher than I probably should have. For me, I think this has to do with having spent so much time in a schooling system where 80% and above is considered good and everything else not so much. This led to me having some bias and placing a lot of games near that range, despite me having more negative views. I failed to take advantage of the whole range of numbers to more accurately describe how I felt about each game. So this year, I would like to take advantage of this range. Scores between 1 and 3 will represent games I thought were bad, while scores between 8 and 10 will represent games I thought were great. This leaves a gray area for “good games”, games that aren’t bad, but also aren’t great. Or something roughly following that outline. Doing so allows for a bit of flexibility in rating them. Hopefully this, combined with a short statement about the game, will paint a better picture of how I felt about each game.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (2017)

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 had a lot to live up to. The first in the series was one of my favorite games I played last year, so I came into this one with some high expectations. And they were not exactly met, but they also weren’t exactly missed either. I think my issue comes with the fact that while this is still a good game, great even, it lives in the shadow of Xenoblade 1.

One of my biggest issues with the game is that it chooses to lean hard into the anime aesthetic. Not that I think its bad because its anime, but rather because how that impacts the rest of the game. Its still a visually striking game, having an anime art style is not a bad thing, but rather its how it writing is impacted by a desire to be more anime like. It ends up having so many tropes and cliches that stick out like crazy. The story involves the rising tensions present in a dying world. Land is not only shown to be a limited resource, but a declining one as well. Its a really bleak situation with great tensions between nations, but it gets ruined whenever the game decides to shoe horn some anime trope into the plot. They’re just so out of place, just like the main character. He’s this happy go lucky guy who wants to save the world with the power of friendship. Now this can be done well, but its not here. Rex, the protagonist, just ends up being a detriment to the overall plot. He constantly fails to read the room, always chiming in with something stupid, gets things just handed to him, and hardly grows as a character. And you’re stuck with him the entire journey. Luckily, the rest of the cast ends up being really engaging, and they have some incredible development and interactions. They are incredibly fleshed out and have engaging and relatable arcs (minus Tora). I honestly like the cast a whole lot, maybe even more than Xenoblade 1. It just sucks that most of the game is completely bogged down by cut scenes that overstay their welcome. That’s not to say they serve no purpose to the plot over all, it just feels like often times its cut scene after cut scene only to have you run for a bit until you hit the next cut scene trigger. Its just a bit frustrating when I want to play a game and end up spending more time watching cut scenes with some questionable voice direction. There is one last thing to mention about the choice of the anime aesthetic, and that is the character design. Nearly every woman in the game is needlessly sexualized. You know its bad when they had to be censored when Pyra and Mythra got put into Smash. I like my Switch, I like the flexibility of being able to take it with me and play a bit when I’m out and about, but this game I would have been embarrassed if people saw me playing it. And the worst part is the game makes sure you see this. So many scenes intentionally have the camera looking up the ass of the female characters. Why? I thought Nintendo games had some decency and wasn’t trying to shill to your stereotypical degenerate weeb. The anime aesthetic visually looks great, but it brings with it some questionable choices that just bog the game down.

This game greatly changes up the combat of 1. It expands and ads great depth to it, which creates a much more engaging battle system. Instead of having a party where each member is defined by the abilities the developers gave them, the party is now made of Drivers and Blades. Blades are the thing that really matter here, as they determine what abilities each Driver can use in combat. Drivers aren’t restricted to what Blades they can use, allowing for great customization. This is furthered by the combo system. Not only do you have the expanded break-topple-launch-smash combo, but elemental combos are introduced. Each Blade has a corresponding element and elemental attack, and stringing together a correct sequence of these elemental attacks leaves an orb on the enemy. When the time comes, a chain attack can be unleashed where these orbs can be broken to unleash some devastating damage. The great party customization combined with the combo system and chain attacks creates some seriously engaging combat, but the game completely ruins it with how its taught and implemented. The tutorials in this game are notoriously bad, so much so that fans recommend ignoring them and consulting external resources. And I have to agree with this sentiment, as I would have struggled much more with the game if a friend hadn’t told me to go watch a tutorial. But I think the worst part about the combat is the Blades, or rather how you obtain them. Some are gotten through story progression and quests, but a large majority are gotten via a gatcha system. You don’t spend any real money, but that doesn’t excuse implementing such a stupid system into the game. Having the customization and diversity of the combat system locked behind a luck based mechanic is just insane to me. Sure, having different blades every play though might add some variety, but I think having player agency is more important. Allowing them to make that decision instead of leaving it to luck makes much more sense, especially in a RPG where battle strategy can make or break the combat. While removing player options has the potential to create some more interesting challenges, it just ends up making experimentation difficult and possibly locks players into play styles they may not enjoy. Players should have the agency to pick and chose how they want to play, and not have pointless roadblocks in the way of accomplishing this. These changes make the combat system over all a bit more subjectively worse than Xenoblade 1, despite Xenoblade 2 having an objectively better system.

Staying on the topic of gameplay, there are a few other baffling decisions. Exploration in this game is hindered due to the introduction of field skills. During exploration, obstacles will be encountered that require certain skills to get past. The issue come from how these skills are acquired. Each blade has a certain set of field skills that can be gained and leveled up by increasing affinity between the blade and driver. If you haven’t been using the correct blades you need, you’ll need to take a detour to gain the required levels. This would be fine if these checks were only for optional areas, but there are several points in the story where you are required to pass these checks to continue. This means if you haven’t been using certain blades, you have to take a detour and grind for a bit which completely kills the pacing of the story. But that is not the only questionable decision, as there is also an annoying decision regarding equipment. Besides there being generally less options for gear compared to Xenoblade 1, there is one character that does not use standard equipment. The way you get equipment for them is by playing a mini game, over and over. You have to go out of your way to go play this random mini game several times over just to get some decent gear. Its completely unrelated to anything else in the game and is just a slog to keep playing over and over again.

I think if you’re a fan of Xenoblade, this game is worth playing. I have a lot of issues with its plot and presentation, but I still thought it was good enough to play all the way though. If you’re looking to get into the series, maybe pass up on this one.

4 / 10

Gunfire Reborn (2021)

Rougelikes are such a fascinating genre to me. A game where you have to fail to succeed? A strange premise, but they can be some of the most gripping and engaging games to play, providing a unique experience each time. Gunfire Reborn falls under this category, for the most part. It has all the core parts of a rougelike, the randomly generated dungeons, the large variety of power ups, a mix of abilities to experiment with. And Gunfire Reborn takes an interesting approach to it all as well, being a FPS instead of a top down action game like Hades or Binding of Issac. It nails the FPS mechanics, shooting feels great and there is a large variety of unique guns to play with, but it also takes queues from games like Borderlands with a robust loot system. Guns will have different modifiers and different effects each time you encounter one, making it compelling to switch things up. It helps keep runs fresh and fun.

But as much as I can praise the game for having interesting systems, in practice they end up falling flat. The gun modifiers end up not mattering a whole lot unless you aim to min max something during a run. The randomness aspect also falls apart pretty quickly. You end up encountering a lot of identical rooms really fast. It feels like by the time you do a handful of runs, you’ve seen about everything the game has to offer, including all the power ups and upgrades and such. Sure, the game locks some stuff behind progression, but its not enough to keep things interesting after your first clear. I feel like the game ends up being repetitive which makes runs feel more like a slog, especially in the early parts. This doesn’t detract from the games great gun play, it just made me want to start another run less and less.

Gunfire Reborn is pretty darn good. It may not be able to stand toe to toe in terms of content to other games in its genre, but it delivers an experience that is just as fun and engaging as the others. It also has four player coop, which not many other rougelikes can say. Maybe give it a go with some friends.

7 / 10

Purrgatory (2021)

Purrgatory is one of those games that is better played than talked about. Sure, I could write something about how cozy and comforting despite its simple sounds and graphics, or write about its charming dialogue and characters, but its a free game that can easily be completed in an afternoon. Given that its a visual novel slash point and click hybrid, there is not much aside from the story to discuss, but its so short I fear spoiling any of it by discussing it here. Its simple, its fun, its well written, and its charming. Go give it a try.

7 / 10

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity (2012)

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is one of my favorite series, more so than its parent series. The first two games are some of my favorites, but I never played the two latest entries. So, I decided to give Gates a go, and Ill say it does not meet expectations.

If you haven’t played a Mystery Dungeon game before, it sees you exploring randomly generated tile based dungeons with various loot and enemies on each floor. Pokemon takes this concept and adds, well, Pokemon. Its this RPG rouge-like hybrid that works surprisingly well. But its not the core gameplay thats the issue I have with this game, rather its the differences between this game and the previous entries that I have issues with.

One of the first differences to note is the dungeons. New to this game is the addition of static floors, or floors without a randomized layout. These are interesting the first time around, but once you go through and see everything they lose their charm. Part of the fun of the series is exploring the randomized dungeons, and this removes that part of it. It makes revisiting dungeons feel much more tedious. That seems to have been a theme with this game, as it removes a lot of quality of life from the previous games. No longer can you take multiple quests at once, only one at a time. You can’t stack multiple for one trip, and you can’t even hold multiple quests at once. It is an undeniable downgrade compared to the previous entries. This compounds with how much longer it takes to go from dungeon completion into the next dungeon. It makes playing the game so much worse when it feels like it doesn’t respect your time, unlike the previous entries. All these changes make the game feel much more tedious.

I couldn’t even be bothered to finish this game. Playing it was incredibly tedious, and the story wasn’t too interesting in the 12 hours I played. I’ve heard Super Mystery Dungeon is better, but I can tell you this is worse than Rescue Team and Explorers. In my opinion, there are much better games to spend your time on. Play literally any other game in this series.

3 / 10

Dragon Quest XI S Definitive Edition (2019)

I would say I like JRPGs. Despite my interest in them, I have yet to investigate some of the classic series the genre has it roots in. That being said, this was my first Dragon Quest game, and I’m not exactly impressed. I knew a bit about the series as a whole going into it. I knew Dragon Quest is a huge deal in Japan. I know that even thirty years later, the games still greatly resemble the original one. What I was not expecting was probably the most mediocre JRPG I have ever played.

Take a moment to imagine the story line of a generic JRPG, minus the part where the heroes kill god at the end. You should be thinking of something like a protagonist is a chosen one who travels around the world, making friends and collecting the magical MacGuffins to defeat the bad guy and save the world. That is almost exactly the plot of Dragon Quest 11. I’m serious, although I will admit it has some interesting twists in it. The story starts out with the hero finding our he is the chosen one. He goes to the nearby kingdom to seek advice from the king, only to be jailed because the existence of the chosen one means the existence of a big evil to defeat. This is interesting, but it quickly falls back into the typical JRPG convention. You meet a party member, escape the prison, then go from place to place solving problems, meeting new friends, and collecting whatever to defeat the big bad. None of it ends up being super interesting. Every party member is practically one dimensional. They can each be described in a few words, and their motivation for doing anything is because they wanna help the chosen one. I’ll go ahead and do it: Dude bro, short and spicy, always positive, flamboyant homosexual, sexy fighter, perverted old man. Out of these, two of them actually stand out and have more interesting character development, but otherwise everyone is pretty much the same all the way through. They just have this over simplified demeanor and end up being boring. I think the most interesting part comes after you collect all the MacGuffins, you go to get the special sword so you can finally defeat the bad guy, except something goes wrong. You don’t get the sword. You get stopped. You lose and the bad guy wins. The world falls into ruin because of this. The game now enters its second act, and its basically the same as the first act. Some of the characters get some development during the second act, but they still end up feeling flat and boring. After repeating basically the same things that happened in the first act of the game, you make your own special sword, and finally go to defeat the bad guy. And you do. The reward? A two minute cut scene where the only thing that happens is the world going back to normal is your reward for beating the game. It was nothing but a generic plot full of tropes and rather flat feeling characters that didn’t even have a satisfying ending.

But I know some readers might be saying, “What about Act 3?” I will admit, I didn’t bother to play this, but I have good reason. Act 3 sees the player going back in time and preventing the bad guy from getting the sword. This ends up changing some other things, but what ends up happening is the party ends up fighting and beating some other secret bad guy and the game ends. While this might be a more happy ending because it avoids a literal apocalypse, it ends up ruining so much. When you go back in time, its only the main character that does so. This is an issue because the party gets actual development during Act 2. This is all completely undone in Act 3. Its just baffling to me that the game ruins the characters in favor of a happier ending. At least long time fans get a Dragon Quest III cameo in a post credits scene.

If the story wasn’t good, how was the gameplay? Well, it was fine. The battle is your typical turn based battle system. You select the commands for each party member as their turn arises. Nothing too special, except for the pep system the game implements. Very rarely, and I mean very rarely, a party member might get pepped up. In this state, they have increased stats for a random amount of time. However, you can use special pep powers, typically requiring multiple pepped up party members, and unleash a powerful attack or buff or whatever which is accompanied with a short animation. This system is cool, if there was any rhyme or reason as to why these things triggered. It was so inconsistent that in my last 5 hours or so of game play none of my party members got pepped up. Sure, there are some ways to increase those odds, but it doesn’t help when they’re so low to begin with and the benefits aren’t even that great. But I don’t think that is the worst part of the game, oh no. For me it has to be how easy it is. Enemies appear in the over world and can be easily avoided. This is a good thing, the game doesn’t need to be padded out with forced encounters and players can choose how many enemies to fight to help control the difficulty of the required fights, except the required fights are easy. So easy, you don’t even need to do anything to beat about 95% of the encounters in this game. That is right, this game has an auto battle feature. You can set the tactics your party members follow during combat, including the main character. So instead of the player making decisions, you can set the AI to do it while you sit and watch. This is great for the common enemies, but when I accidently left it on for a boss fight and let it try to beat it, I was a bit shocked to see it did it successfully. I left it on to see how far I could get in the game without doing the fights, and I managed to get basically to the end of the game before I turned it off so I could actually enjoy the combat the game offered. Its just baffling to me how this game pratically plays itself.

Theres a few other things I want to comment on with the game. First off, the music. I played the definitive edition, so I got to hear the fantasic orchestrated sound track. For some reason, the original version released with a MIDI sountrack with a terrible sound font. Seriosuly, I think GBA games sound better than the MIDI versions of the songs in this game and the GBA is known for having notoriously bad sound. From what I understand, that choice had to do with the composer wanting to release the high quality versions on separate albums to make more money from them. The composer is also the Japanese equalivent of a Holocaust denier, which is already a major red flag. But getting back on track, the OST is great, except in use its not as fantastic. The themes get reused, a lot. Like a lot a lot. Its to the point where the game practically consists of the same three themes: the field theme thats in basically every field, the town theme thats in basically every town, and the battle theme thats in basically every battle. Even the less common songs get reused for everything. Every evil guy has the same theme. Every boss enemy has the same theme. It feels like every single song ends up getting reused somewhere. I got tired of them reusing the same old songs over and over again I ended up just muting the music to play my own music in the background. Thats also not to mention the fact that a lot of the music is reused from older Dragon Quest games. Thats not to say they’re bad songs, its just they were designed with different limitations in mind so reused songs end up being short and repetitive. It doesn’t help that the newer compositions aren’t the best either. Continuing from my complaints on the music, I have to comment on the animations, or rather the lack of it. There were a quite a few moments where it felt like I was playing a Pokemon game. The screen would just fade to black instead of showing an animation. Thats not to say all the animations were bad or poor or lacking, the enemy battle intro animations are so expressive, but I just have to mention that its there and it reminded of Pokemon in a bad way. Continuing on my mention of the monsters, the game has monster recolors. It just ends up feeling lazy that enemies get reused wish just a simple pallet swap. But for some they just added red glowing eyes and called it a new enemy. This laziness continues with the world in the second act. You think what amounts to a post apocalyptic world would have some vast differences, but its just a new dreary skybox combined with a few patches of burning grass in each area. Visually, it feels identical to the first act. But honestly, all of these things are more minor things I just wanted to comment on.

Dragon Quest 11 ends up being a game that is heavily stuck in its roots. It sticks hard to the Dragon Quest traditions, which makes it feel outdated in the modern era. When I was playing, there was a word that kept popping up when I was playing it. Its not good, its not bad, its just mid. And objectively, I think it is, but the issue is, I found myself enjoying the game quite a bit. A bit more than I expected for a game this mid, but I really did like playing it. Something about it was a bit like junk food. Sure, its not the best, but its still decent and you know what your getting into while eating it. I’m still interested in exploring more of this series, but I don’t expect any other of the games to really wow me.

6 / 10

Night in the Woods (2017)

I’ll be honest, this game was disappointing. I like going into games blind, so I really didn’t know what it was about except that a lot of people consider it to have a really good story. This sounded like it would be right up my alley, so I gave it a go. Night in the Woods follows Mae, a college drop out coming home to her small and decaying home town. You play as her as you go around town, hanging out with friends, and trying to find your place in life. But something is afoot as you witness a kidnapping one night. Things are afoot, and its up to you and your friends to figure it out.

And the game gets off to a great start. Running around town, talking to people and hanging out with friends grounds this game and its characters in reality. With each interaction, the characters involved get more and more fleshed out. Everyone has their own ambitions and desires and goals and dreams. And the more time you spend talking with any character, the more you learn about them and the close you grow. And while there are a ton of side characters that could be discussed, the main cast is the most interesting. You end up spending the most time with them, or more specifically, you have to pick which one of your close friends to hang out with each day. It really feels like hanging out with your friends. Messing around, having fun, but also having these very real and intimate moments together. This leads to the player growing closer to one of them and learning out their very real struggles and how they try cope with them and try to lead a better life. It makes you want to see how all of their character arcs get resolved.

But as the game progresses and you learn more about every character, Mae included, the hole situation with the kidnapping comes to light. In the climax of the game, you figure out there is a literal death cult in your small town thats kidnapping and sacrificing people in an effort to revitalize the dying town. They end up admitting to killing several people, including one of your old friends. This still feels incredibly bizarre, even with the game building up to it with the dream sequences that take place every night. You end up trapping the cult in a mine and presumably leave them there to die. A few more things happen but the game basically just ends on you and your friends saying something along the lines of “Thats messed up” and moving on.

To me, this ending completely ruins the game. The entire game is basically spent fleshing out and getting to know these characters. Each one of them has their own personal problems and struggles to try to over come them. And instead of seeing them learn to overcome these adversaries and get better and have their friends come support them, nothing changes and they just get more trauma. And you know, maybe this is just some commentary on the state of the world and how everything is seemingly going downhill, and if that’s the goal, it accomplishes it fantastically. But to me, that isn’t enough. Maybe I’m missing something, but just abruptly ending a game without giving closure to any of the characters that you grew to know for the entire game just killed all my enthusiasm. People say this is a fantastic game, and maybe it is, but with such a jarring and tonally different ending, I cannot recommend playing it.

4 / 10

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky (2009)

I haven’t played this game since 2008. To be more precise, I played Darkness as Sky wasn’t out yet, but they’re basically the same game aside from some extra content. And back then, I loved that game. It was incredible, I easily sunk hundreds of hours into it before restarting the game and sinking another couple hundred hours into it. It was an unforgettable game, but I had never revisited it since. So, what better to do than to revisit it nearly 15 years later to see if it holds up?

I know I talked a little about it, but its basically as close to an official Pokemon rouge-like we’ll ever see. You play as a Pokemon and explore randomly generated dungeons, aiming to complete various objectives while exploring them. I’m having trouble describing it, but the game just makes sense. Exploring dungeons is fun and challenging, the gameplay is great, it has fantastic quality of life. I can’t think of anything to criticize because the game is fun, and it doesn’t do anything annoying to prevent you. The previous game in the series, Rescue Team, is similar, but Explorers does so much to improve on it in all the small ways. Hell, the game plays better than the one next in the series, Gates. Out of the 3 that I’ve played, Explorers is the best one in terms of gameplay.

But I also think it has the best storyline. If you know, you know. If you don’t, play it. Its this emotional rollercoaster with these twists and turns. The basic plot summary is: someone is stealing the time gears, the magic items that keep the flow of time in order. The issue is, my favorite things about the story involves all the plot twists. Its probably nostalgia giving me some more bias, but while playing this time around, the emotional scenes still made me tear up. It is the best plot in a Pokemon game, hands down. Replaying it made me realize it had some tropes I’m not a huge fan of, but surprisingly it was inoffensive and really was only an issue at the end of the post game.

The most notable thing about Sky are the special episodes. They’re 5 short pieces of side content you gain access to throughout playing the main story. They all just add extra background to the world, giving these extra details to the characters and world. Not essential, but if you’re a fan of the game its 100% worth playing. Especially the last one. I can’t really talk about it without spoiling some major plot twist in the game, but if you know, you know.

I hate that my review of this game says so little. I love this game, its such a fantastic game. Is some of that nostalgia talking? Yeah, probably. But I don’t think if it was only nostalgia this game wouldn’t have the cult following it has. If you haven’t already, play any of the Explorers games: time, darkness, sky, whatever. Just play one of them, you won’t regret it.

9 / 10

Salt and Sanctuary (2016)

I feel like the term “souls-like” gets used too much these days. If any game is remotely difficult, it gets used to describe it. But this game? This game deserves the title. It truly is a souls-like game. If you don’t know, Salt and Sanctuary is 2D non-linear action platformer made mostly by one guy, James Silva. It also takes heavy influence from Dark Souls, and I mean heavy. But this isn’t a bad thing. Sure, it borrows ideas straight from Dark Souls, but it implements them in such a way that doesn’t feel like a clone. Like if this was a product of some alternate dimension where FromSoft made 2D games instead of 3D, no one would second guess you. The combat, the environment, the world building, it all rivals that of a Dark Souls game.

But the game isn’t just Dark Souls, no. It has the “non-linear action plaformer” aspect to is. This is to say, its also a Metroidvania. And to me, its a bit of a weaker one. Sure, it has a massive map to explore with tons of secrets to find and pathways to take, but it fails to deliver that core experience I expect from a Metroidvania. To me, exploring in this game is a bit underwhelming. And it primarily has to do with the player’s move set. You only get 5 upgrades that allow for further exploration in the game, and really only two of them effect movement in any meaningful way. This means its pointless to revisit old areas because you can already collect everything on your first go around. And sadly, there aren’t too many interesting things to collect. Because the core part of your power ups come from level ups, the items you find in the open world end up being easily bought consumables or weapons/armor that are only situationally better if at all. On paper, this game is a Metroidvania, and it does a good enough job, just not good enough to stand toe to toe with other “true” Metroidvanias. The focus is really on being souls-like with a Metroidvania flare.

Its not all sunshine and rainbows. The game does a poor job at explaining things, or rather things beyond the very basics. Sure, it teaches what buttons to press to do whatever, but everything beyond that is a bit obtuse and you have to figure it out on your own. Which isn’t the end of the world, I just want to know what something does before I use it. Another issue is the weapon balance. Most weapons play about the same, and the non-melee options end up being clunky. It ends up feeling like there are only a handful of good options and everything should just be ignored unless you need to mix it up for a specific boss. But I think the real worst thing is the lack of a map. Yeah, no map in a Metroidvania. You get to explore this massive sprawling interconnected world, just with no map. You get lost, really easily. And then try using the fast travel system where you have no real idea where it puts you because you have no map to give a frame of reference.

Salt and Sanctuary is a good game. It has its flaws, but delivers a good experience.

6 / 10

Xenoblade Chronicles X (2015)

Xenoblade X was a game I’ve always wanted to play. Ever since I saw it in a Nintendo direct in around 2014, I’ve wanted to play this game. Nearly a decade later, I finally got to give it a try, and needless to say I’m less than impressed. So much so that I don’t even want to finish it.

To explain X in relation to the other games in the series, X is if you took the combat from 1, changed it to mostly focus on the solo player, and all this took place in an open world MMORPG. To some, this might sound fantastic, but to me this the exact opposite of what a Xenoblade game should be. I’ll take my time to explain each of my nitpicks with the game.

I have mixed feelings about the combat. Like I said, the combat is similar to 1. You have your arts pallet which you use during battles, just like 1. But as always, its the small details that make the biggest differences. Something that changes the dynamic of every battle is the removal of a dedicated healer class. Its very interesting to see a game attempt to defy the classic DPS/Tank/Healer trifecta. And in all honesty, the game pulls it off pretty well. While traditional healing arts still exist, the bulk of the healing is done in response to quick time events. Occasionally during battle, a team member will call out for you to accomplish something, and if you achieve whatever the request it, a quick time event will occur and hitting it will heal the entire party a bit. However, this is never communicated to the player in any way, so they end up just seemingly appear at random. These are nice, but the quick time events are actually pretty quick and difficult to hit. Luckily, there are plenty of opportunities during battle, so even if they aren’t hit perfectly you should still be getting good healing. The next change to battles is the removal of chain attacks. Yes, probably one of the most iconic elements of the Xenoblade combat system is removed in X. Instead it gets replaced with Overdrive. This system instead allows for a large amount of arts to be used in a short amount of time. As per usual Xenoblade fashion, its horribly explained. Overdrive can be activated when 3000 TP is accumulated (The TP system is never explained) and gives the player 10 seconds of reduced arts cooldown (plus the addition of a new 3rd cooldown) and increased arts damage. During the Overdrive period, a counter is present. The higher the number, the more damage is output. It goes up every time two yellow or orange arts are used in a row, but using yellow than orange or vice versa will negate any positive bonuses. You can get around this buy using another color art, such as green or blue (which increases the timer) or purple (which increases TP). There are a few other color combinations that can provide beneficial effects, but generally thats all you need to know to effectively use Overdrive. This also means if you have the right combination of arts, you can easily extend the timer for as long as you need which trivializes combat. But the most interesting thing is that this is purely a solo thing. Overdrive is separate of other party members. Of course, this has to do with the game being a MMO which allows player parties, but its an odd choice in a game series where teamwork and the bonds between people is such a major theme. There are more differences to the combat, such as every character having both ranged and melee weapons along side the introduction of Skells (mechs), but these differences are much more minor. Overall, the combat doesn’t fail to please, but the Overdrive system is more than a bit broken, which can be easily exploited to trivialize a lot of the game given the correct build.

But the whole MMO aspect kinda ruins the main story as well. While it has an interesting premise, with the whole Earth being destroyed in an alien conflict and you being some of the few remaining surviving members of the human race, but its just dragged down by all the other elements. I think my biggest annoyance is how absent your player character is in relation to the story. You kinda just get brought along for the ride, you have no personal stake in it (Well, as much as a one of the last surviving humans can have on making sure the human race doesn’t die out). And as the story progresses, this becomes more and more evident. And thats not necessarily a bad thing, the story is interesting enough, the issue is its extremely awkward having you be brought along for the ride.

But the worst part is the whole BLADE thing. Its the organization that is helping colonize the alien planet the games takes place on, but it also forces a bunch of boring MMO tropes into the game. Between each chapter in the story, players are forced to do a bunch of things for BLADE. What this amounts to is a bunch of repetitive quests and boring exploration. The BLADE missions are your typical fodder quests you’d find in any MMO. Go kill X of Y monster type. Go gather Z of item W. Its just boring and nothing. But the part I like the least is the forced exploration. Xenoblade games have never had good exploration. In a sense, they have these big fields with little in them. All items exist as randomly spawning randomly generated items. And they aren’t even things like gear or weapons, its just weird things like “Grinding Squirrel” or “Zedis Twig” or even “Poron Tulip”. Its just this random junk that has no value. So whats the point of going off the main road? There basically is none. Its just, stupid, that such a boring activity is forced upon the player every time they want to progress the story. This was the main reason I dropped the game.

Despite my gripes, I think there still is a good game here. Its just not a game for me. To me, its frustrating, boring, and grindy. I wasn’t having fun with it, and I wasn’t going to keep playing it, but I can still tell that there is something there that is worth playing. I’d say give it a go for yourself, but I don’t think many people still have a Wii U to play it.

3 / 10

Blasphemous (2019)

Wow, another Dark Souls inspired Metroidvania? Crazy, I know, but this game ends up differentiating its self a lot compared to Salt and Sanctuary. While that game was very much a souls-like experience, Blasphemous leans much more into the Metroidvania side and is much better off for it. If you’ve been living under a rock, Metroidvanias are action platformers with a heavy emphasis on exploration and collection. And Blasphemous ends up being a prime example of this. A good sized world to explore, lots of collectables to find, and fun bosses to fight. Its good fun all the way through to the end and always has something interesting to do. Its a good game.

I think the biggest strength in the game comes from its visuals and world building. The pixel art is striking because of its unusual influence. Its heavily inspired by Catholicism, specifically Holy Week in Spain. I’m having trouble putting it into words because I’ve really never seen anything quite like it. But that influence isn’t just left for the visuals, as it also influences the story. Objectively, I wouldn’t say the story is anything spectacular, but a lot of the intrigue comes from piecing it together and understanding your role in the story. Each and every item in the game ends up having a fairly lengthy description to it, which not only helps build the world, but also contributes to the player putting together the story and why they are involved. Its important to the point where paying attention to the right things has an impact as to which ending you get in game. Its these little details having an impact on the game play and how you progress that makes it so fascinating to me.

But other than that, I really don’t have much else to say in terms of the game. There is plenty of interesting stuff to see and do. Its a solid game all around that was a blast to play through. It did nothing wrong, however, it also wasn’t exceptional. Its a fantastic game and one of the better examples in the genre, it just doesn’t have the weight or impact of the best Metroidvanias.

7 / 10

Persona 3 FES (2008)

Persona is a series that many hold in high regard. I’ve known about it for a while, but it wasn’t until recently with Persona 5 getting as big as it did that pushed me towards trying it out. But instead of starting with that one, I decided to go back to its roots, or rather the roots of the more modern incarnations of the series. Persona 1 and 2 are very different in many aspects, it wasn’t until 3 where the games established that formula that players have come to love.

If you somehow haven’t heard, the Persona series focuses on a mix between traditional dungeon crawling game play along with a social simulation aspect. Persona 3 tasks the player with balancing a school and social life by day while also tasking them with exploring a dungeon at night. And I think this premise is great, the fact that the story progresses as the days pass, regardless of what you do with that time, is really fun. It adds this resource management aspect to the game that isn’t found in most other JRPGs.

So by day you focus on your social links. Think of these as a literal manifestation of your relationships with the other characters in game. As they grow, you not only get to know the other characters better and see their stories play out, you also get the ability to create better and stronger Personas. Some of these social link stories are really deep and interesting, getting to see how they grow and change throughout the game is always nice to see. Others are, less stand out, but there are still a ton of good ones its worth trying them all. Sadly, Persona 3 doesn’t make it easy to max out all these social links, so unless you use a guide, your probably won’t see them all in one play though. The player can also spend time working on their various stats, improving social skills like Academics, Courage, or Charm, or improving more combat related stats. Having to manage your time effectively to make the most out of improving social links as well as gaining stat increases is a really fun and engaging process.

However, when night comes around, that is when we get to the part of the game I dislike. The dungeon crawling, Most nights you have the option to go explore the games single dungeon, Tartarus. Now, one dungeon may not seem like a lot, but it is more than enough when you realize its over 250 floors. Luckily you don’t have to do it all in one go, but its still pretty bad. Each floor is randomly generated, which isn’t the end of the world. I like a lot of games that use randomly generated dungeons, rouge-likes being the prime example. But most good rouge-likes have good dungeon generation, Persona 3 does not. Tartarus is the same hallways and corridors and small rooms all the way up. So a lot of it ends up feeling like a repetitive slog while trying to progress in the dungeon.

Now its not all just running around the floors until you find the stairs, there are enemies and combat to be had. And the combat is, err, “good”. Allow me to explain. Combat is straight forward, you have basic attacks, but you also have the ability to call your Persona and have it do something. Basically casting a magic spell, but the Persona system is not just selecting a spell from a menu. Personas can be switched out and changed. Each one has different abilities attached to them, but they also have different strengths and weaknesses. This means having a diverse quantity of Personas available allows for a lot of options and complexity in battle. But its not just finding the Persona and calling it a day, as you can fuse two different Personas to get a new one, and they typically will be stronger and inherit abilities from the two used to create it. But the battles have a bit more than just the Personas to factor in. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, but when you hit those weaknesses it knocks them down. When anyone is knocked down, it takes them a turn to get back up as well as granting the attacker an additional turn. This means by exploiting weaknesses you can deal much more damage on one turn than your would normally be able to do. And on top of that, if all the enemies get knocked down, you can go for an “All Out Attack” and end up doing damage to all enemies at once at the cost of them no longer getting a turn to stand back up. Its an interesting system with a lot of depth to it.

However, you are just one person, but your party is a whole different story. The game only lets you control yourself in battle. Just you, which can lead to some more frustrating situations when in Tartarus. Essentially, its up to the AI to make the right decisions in battle, but you can push them in the right direction. You can assign the AI general tactics to follow, but these are rather limited in ability. Its more akin to “Focus on damage” or “Focus on healing” over anything specific. And while this stuff is fine for normal enemies, it quickly becomes a pain whenever you have to fight anything difficult. I means you are almost completely unable to execute any proper strategy in battles. And this game is not an easy game. And I wouldn’t have a problem with this, but the game prevents you from doing things like grinding to make the game easier. Whenever you go into Tartarus, you risk becoming tired after a while. When any character is tried, they deal less damage and take more, making them nearly useless in battle. So it ends up being something like this: you try to climb Tartarus, your characters get tired along the way, you start avoiding battles in an attempt to get to a checkpoint, you get to a checkpoint, and by the time you arrive everyone is tired and under leveled for the boss/mini-boss that awaits. And because of the time management aspect, you have to be really careful with how you use that time or else its going to backfire on you. And this game is punishing, because you will probably wipe at some point due to its difficultly, you’ll quickly find you have to reload a save whenever you game over. And I found out the hard way. So it doesn’t matter how much progress you make going through Tartarus because if you mess up, have fun doing it all over again. I really do not enjoy this game’s boring dungeon climb, combat with a lack of control, and punishing difficulty.

With that being said, that punishing difficulty really put me off the game. I don’t normally get mad at games, but this one infuriated me. I just couldn’t bring myself to finish it, despite enjoying a good chunk of what I played. The story is good, the music is fun to listen to, and the combat has almost everything it needs to be amazing. Its just that Tartarus hardly feels fun and completely ruins the rest of the game for me. Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t recommend not playing. There is still a great game there to play. But its also up for debate what version you play. P3FES is an improved version of the base game, but then theres also the port for the PSP, Persona 3 Portable. P3P adds two notable things, party control (which makes the game much easier given it wasn’t rebalanced for it), and adds a playable female option that has new story content. However, P3P removes the 3D explorable over world in exchange for a visual novel style. I have nothing against this, however it is considered to be a drastic downgrade over both the PS2 versions. Luckily, there is a remake coming out in 2024 that hopefully will have the best of everything, so I might wait for that if your interested in giving the game a go. And frankly, if the remake fixes a lot of my issues with the game, I might give it another try whenever it comes out.

4 / 10

Pokemon Unbound (2022)

Its no surprise that modern Pokemon games have only disappointed me. For me, it was Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon that were the first disappointing games in the series, and Sword and Shield only solidified that as the direction GameFreak was taking the series in. But there was something in the back of my mind, something telling me that there were better Pokemon games out there. Not the spin offs, not the older games, but new, fresh, and exciting games that follow the formula of the main series. And with that, I decided to explore the world of fan games and ROM hacks. While I’ve heard whispers of games like Flora Sky and Light Platinum for years (and I’ve wanted to try them for a while), I wanted to start with something more recent, so I started Pokemon Unbound.

While Unbound may have been based off of Fire Red, its more clear than ever that they are not anywhere near alike. The new graphics and music are apparent right away, but as I started to play I realized there was much more: An updated battle engine, revamped movement options, and tons of quality of life updates. This game is on par with recent releases and even surpasses them in some ways. For starters, it has difficulty options. And its not just like BW2 that makes it a bit harder with higher leveled Pokemon, this game brings carefully crafted boss battles that more so act as puzzles for you to solve. It will really test your resourcefulness on any of the more difficult options, but because it has a difficulty setting, anyone can set it to the lowest and enjoy the game.

While difficulty is nice for people who seek the hardest challenge they can find, I think the biggest appeal is the wealth of new original content this game brings. Gone are the boring hallways and empty fields on the games on the Switch. Routes are full of diverse paths for optional loot and have plenty of areas that are only accessible later in the game which makes the instances of backtracking much more enjoyable. And the locations are diverse, and while not necessarily unique or innovative, the region is memorable and with each route bringing a new batch of Pokemon to catch and train it makes you want to see every corner of what it has to offer. And thats not to mention all the content there is. The missions, mining, DexNav, special battle gimmicks, a new Battle Frontier, new minigames, and so much more. Its a game you can truly sink your teeth into.

Now, with all the new stuff comes the new story, and, well, its a bit edgy. Not that its a bad thing, but often time fan games have a reputation for trying to be more “mature” than the official games only to end up being an edgy, cringey mess. Unbound doesn’t exactly do anything to subvert this trope. Most of the game sees you fighting this evil organization called “The Shadows”. They want to fire the ultimate weapon (from XY). There is a twist about half way through the game thats, well, not exactly executed in the best way. Its interesting enough, and it has quite a bit of fan service that I kinda enjoyed as a long term fan. There is a post game that tries to tie up some loose ends, but fails to really do so. Even in saying all that, I still found the story to be more enjoyable than some of the corny plots GameFreak has recently been cooking up.

I think there is a lot to enjoy with this game. It easily has hundreds of hours of content to enjoy, but even if you aren’t much of a completion, the new content and revamped battle system makes playing through it a blast. If you’re willing to try out something different, this game does not disappoint.

6 / 10

Final Fantasy IV (1991)

To me, Final Fantasy was always the JRPG series. Its something I’ve been wanting to get into for a while, and I finally decided to get into it. Why start with four? Well, while debating where best to start, four kept coming up as one of the best. The first three are considered to be primitive compared to the rest of the series, as four is where a lot of the core elements come together in a Final Fantasy game. The story telling, the gameplay, and the characters are all foundational to the rest of series, or so I’ve been told. So its what I decided to go with, and I can agree with it being “foundational”.

But I think its also important to mention what version I played. This game is over 30 years old and has been re-released and remade across many different consoles and systems. This article by the Mother 3 translator does a good job of comparing various editions, and its what I used to inform my decision. I wanted to play something close to the original experience, but without the horrendous original translation. That led me to the Namingway Edition. After playing it, I’m not exactly sure its the version I’d recommend, but I’ll touch on that at the end.

With that preamble out of the way, I can give my thoughts on the game. To me, the stand out thing was the combat. In a way, it really reminded me of Xenoblade, albeit much simpler. But don’t think its anything like that. It uses the Active Time Battle (ATB) system, a modification on turn based combat. ATB sees characters wait for a meter to fill before they are allowed to act, completely removing the idea of turns. This means battles take place in real time, with both allies and enemies attacking almost whenever. Systems like this tend to feel slow when the number of combatants is few, but when you have a full party and are facing a challenging boss or group of enemies it becomes fast paced and frantic. Having to navigate menus and issue commands while the battle races by and requires you to change your strategy on the fly is very fun. Considering that this system is was uses through IX, I’m excited to see the changes and refinements and tweaks they made to it as the series progressed.

Now, part of the reason I started with IV was because its known for being the first game that really solidified the Final Fantasy emotional storytelling. And, it tries… and fails. That’s not to say it doesn’t have some great moments, there are some strong instances of storytelling through both whats shown and what the player does, but it isn’t enough. Characters have arcs, but when they last maybe 30 minutes at most it feels as if they aren’t even there. Characters end up just doing whatever, especially after the first third of the game. IV also has one of my least favorite tropes in media, not committing to characters death. Nearly every character that “dies” comes back to life in this game. It ruins any tension it would have created because it makes the death meaningless. Aside from the characters, the rest of the story is just, unremarkable. Things seemingly happen just to have an excuse to shuffle the party and characters around. It just feels really awkward most at most points in the story. The rest of the events in the story feel, disjointed. The game takes (some) effort in world building so I can’t say that some of the stuff just blind sides the player, but I can’t help but feel that a lot of it happens for little to no reason except the developers might have thought it was cool. It was really disappointing playing through this game after hearing so much talk and discussion about how good the story was, but it just ended up being disappointing compared to other RPGs that have stories to tell.

As I stated previously, this game has had many versions released, each with their own differences. And while I only played through one and can’t comment on what the definitive version is, I can comment on some deficiencies in the version I played. I know that the most contentious version issue is probably the script. I played a fan translation and only a fan translation, so I can only assume its accurate compared to the other versions. But because I played a fan translation, it also meant I was stuck playing the SNES version. From a raw gameplay perspective, there isn’t anything wrong with that, but it was missing quite a bit that I would have expected. My major issue with it was the lack of information. A lot of things just didn’t have descriptions. Often times items wouldn’t have descriptions, so it was up to trial and error to figure out what they did. This was especially a pain with any equipment. There was no indication anywhere to if it would increase or decrease any stats. It had to be tried on to see if it was beneficial or not. This was terrible when purchasing any because it was unknown if it would be beneficial or a waste of money. The game has the decency to show which party member can equip items when in a shop, but if you pick something up in a dungeon? Have fun guessing. Another thing that just straight up didn’t show information was the spells. Level up messages would tell you if you got a new spell, but you just had to try it out to see what it did. I ended up sticking to a small selection of spells because most had little use anyway as most bosses (where you would want to use them the most) were immune to them. So I ignored so many new spells because using them on standard encounters was a waste of MP and they probably wouldn’t have any impact on boss fights.

To me, these were downsides to the SNES version. A more experienced player might be unphased by these issues, but as a newcomer, I found it quite frustrating. But I think this version also impacted my enjoyment of the story as well. Text boxes appear four lines at a time, and one text box will be shared with many speakers. This means in any given dialogue any sense of conversation pacing is destroyed. Its impossible to tell if characters are taking turns talking or speaking over each other. Frankly, it ruined some of the story moments by having a unclear way of text presentation. In addition to this, a lot of cut scenes had little to no music. This provided no help, as with the ambiguity of the text boxes, the tone was very much unclear. And the moments when it did have some music to bring about emotion, it would often abruptly end because the text box rendering causes dialogue to occur at an accelerated pace.

This is where the other versions of the game come into play. I’ll cut the SNES version some slack, it was one of the first RPGs to release on the console, so much of it was groundbreaking for the time, and it came out in about half a year of the release of the console. The developers had little time to become proficient in programming for the console, so releasing something this impressive for 1991 should be commended. However, these efforts do not hold up today, or even to releases later in the lifespan of the SNES. Good thing the re-releases of this game have improved on it in an iterative manner. I’ve only played the SNES version, so I’m not exactly qualified to tell you the definitive best version, but if I was going for a replay I’d probably spring for the 3D remake. It improves the presentation, it has an accurate translation, and it seems like it would improve the game in all the areas I have issues with (outside the story, you can only do so much to fix that without completely rewriting it). I’ve heard its a much more difficult version of IV, and I found IV to have a fair level of difficulty right until the very end where it ramps up drastically. During my play though, I only had to stop and grind for a bit in two instances, usually because I needed to unlock a spell that enabled me to change my tactics. But even fighting a healthy amount of battles along the way, the end required me to grind for a significant amount of time just to have a fighting chance against the final boss. Then again, I was playing a fan translation that included balance changes, so its hard to say how it stacks up against other releases. The original US SNES release is notorious for being greatly adjusted to the point where grinding is completely optional.

Given all this, I can see why IV gets the praise it does. For 1991, this would have been incredible for a video game. But comparing it to some later SNES titles, it just doesn’t hold up as well. I wouldn’t go as far to say its unlikable or bad, its just not for me. And I think a lot of new players might come into it expecting this grand thing when its only just okay. Give it a try, its worth that much. But don’t sweat it if you never get around to finishing it.

4 / 10

Final Fantasy VIII (1999)

Yeah, more Final Fantasy. I’m trying to play though all of the main line games in the series, so I decided to play a lot more of the, controversial, entries. So, I settled on FF8. Probably because it was the most different compared to the rest. And different it is.

I can’t say how different it is on a story perspective, considering I’ve only played one other Final Fantasy. If you’ve heard anything about it though, its the combat system. FF8 takes a slightly different approach to combat. While it still has the classic ATB system, it completely changes the normal way of thinking about combat with the junction system. What does this mean? Its the the effective removal of equipment and a traditional magic system. Instead of having MP to cast spells, you collect spells from battle, the world, and mini games. These then can be “junctioned” to your stats to improve them and even cause some special effects. Junctioning also allows for giving extra battle commands and other special abilities. This system allows for a lot of customization when it comes to building your party.

And as good as this sounds, its simply isn’t. And it all has to do with those magic spells. Simply put, if you junction a spell to a stat, it causes it to increase. But if you use that spell, your stats go down. So using spells is discouraged. But on top of that, getting the spells in the first place is annoying. There are points where you can get some in the world, but these are few and far between. Most spells with be gathered by drawing them in battle. But this means you end up sitting around during battle just drawing spells. The issue is you have to draw spells for each character, so you end up sitting there just getting hit over and over while you draw tons and tons of spells. Its enough of a grind as is, but its even worse when you consider bosses often have better spells than what you can get at the time. So instead of fighting the boss or actually engaging with the game, you prolong the battle so much longer than it needs to be. Its just no fun spending more time drawing spells than actually playing the game.

But I didn’t mention one method, the mini games. Or rather, mini game. Triple Triad is probably the second most well known thing about this game. And for good reason. Its super simple to get into and super addicting to play. The cards you win from playing the game and be turned into spells with a little bit of work. And this would be a great substitute for grinding, if it wasn’t for the fact that Triple Triad quickly turns into a complete mess of rules. Each new area you go to introduces new rules to the game. While this may seem nice, it quickly becomes messy and confusing, especially when the AI practically cheats and can easily exploit complex rules to destroy you. Its impractical grind for spells this way because Triple Triad ends up being more confusing than enjoyable.

But you know what, there is a way to avoid most of the grinding. This is because the game has scaling difficulty. As you get stronger, so does the world around you. An interesting system for a RPG, usually not having the scaling really lends to a sense of progression. But combining this with the junction system and Triple Triad, it can be abused. It turns out you can get way stronger spells than the game expects you to have at your level with Triple Triad. This allows you to junction your stats to be much higher than they should be, making everything a cakewalk. And while this may seem of limited use, all encounters can easily be avoided and a majority of mandatory fights do not give XP. This means you can get overpowered, and stay overpowered. Its initially fun, but quickly fades as all the challenge of the game disappears. This leaves you with just the story, which is, well, something.

The story is, nonsensical at best. I think its at its best during the first disc. You are a mercenary helping a rebellion take back control from a nation who recently instated an evil witch in a position of power. This is cool, interesting, fun, but when they decide to introduce the fact that the evil witch is actually being possessed by a witch from the far future and all the time travel shenanigans that brings, it just looses its charm. At one point it gets revealed that all the party members grew up in the same orphanage, which I get is supposed to re-enforce the idea of fate that is ever present throughout the game, but it just feels so bizarre and out of left field, especially with the character reactions. The party comes to this realization and then just, shrugs it off. A lot of things in the story feel like that. Bizarre things that lead into a greater purpose, but just feel awkward and stilted in execution.

But I think all of that really ends up being a back drop for a love story between Squall and Rinoa. Except, its kinda poorly executed. Most of the time Squall spends being a quintessential emo teen. He’s distant and a lone wolf. He only is doing what hes doing because of his work. Most of the time his response to the party is “Whatever.” Its refreshing to not have such a lucky go happy protagonist constantly spouting about the power of friendship. Its also nice to see how he reacts to getting put into a position of power. At a point in the game, Squall is asked to lead the entire mercenary school in the fight against the evil witch from the future, and hes confused and upset by this. Rightfully so! He doesn’t want to be thrust into this position, he didn’t ask for this. Hes not a friendly or popular guy, he just wants to keep his head down and do his work, not stand out from the crowd. Its this great bit of characterization that is honestly ruined by the forced romance with Rinoa.

The relationship with Rinoa is very much forced into the plot. At the start Rinoa is this mysterious girl that has some moments with Squall, but he fails to be charmed by these actions. Later, we come to find out that Rinoa is dating Squall’s rival, Seifer. Eventually Seifer is presumed to be dead, and Rinoa is rightfully upset about this, but it feels like she goes from grieving the loss of her boyfriend to hitting up Squall in too short a time. And Squall doesn’t exactly reciprocate these feelings throughout the majority of the game. It doesn’t matter how hard his friends try to push him to do so, he just stays in his anti social ways until near the end of the game where he displays this sudden rush of emotions. I can’t help but wish the execution of this romance was so much better given its the focus of the game. It should have been a much more gradual shift from Squall being cold to him being affectionate.

And the rest of the party feels flat, especially compared to the development those two get. They end up having these basic back stories that have little to do with the story other than the whole being from the same orphanage thing. It doesn’t help that the junction system makes all characters nearly functionally the same. What’s the point of using a different character if everything about them is determined by junctioning? I think my least favorite is Irvine. He just kinda, shows up. He is the only one that can use a gun, so he gets recruited to aid in this assassination mission. It doesn’t work out, and he just ends up sticking around for the rest of the game just because. He doesn’t exactly serve as comic relief, and he doesn’t exactly serve to drive the story forward. He just felt like the least connected character to the rest of the cast, and just like the rest of them all he did was egg Squall on to lead the mercenaries and date Rinoa.

I think that this game has some undeniable charm. I like Squall, maybe if only because he reminds me a bit of myself at that age. I like the setting, this sci-fi set up that still has a ton of fantasy elements. I like the idea behind the junction system, giving the player such control and flexibility in how they play is so enjoyable. I liked the music, the graphics, exploring the world, and playing Triple Triad. There was a lot of fun to be had in my time with this game. I want to like it, I really do, but it just fails me in so many fundamental ways. The core systems and ideas are fantastic in concept, they just have such poor execution. Frankly its a fantastic experience that really only a select few will enjoy. To me, it just didn’t live up to the potential it had.

4 / 10

Pokemon Crystal Clear (2017)

This was one of the first “open world” Pokemon mods. Its just Crystal, but with changes to make it open world. Its probably the best game, given the inclusion of two regions. But if you know me, I’m not a huge fan of open world games. I really only decided to give this game a go because it was so popular, and that must be for a good reason, right?

Well, it is cool. The open world nature of the game is done incredibly. All obstacles are removed so you can truly go anywhere right off the bat. It makes the process much simpler by allowing the player to select things like starter and starting location. It makes sense for an open world game, and really makes it feel like you’re going on your own Pokemon journey. In fact, if you feel so inclined, they even have a tool to inject a custom player sprite of your creation. That is one of the strongest aspects of it, that freedom and control it gives to the player.

But that comes at a cost. It removes everything that makes Crystal unique, at least in my mind. Sure, its open world, but that also means it completely removes the story. No team rocket, no rival, no nothing. Its just a bit, disappointing. By no means am I saying that the plot of Crystal is good, but rather I feel less inclined to play a game that is more straightforward. Running from town to town is much less of an adventure, even if you can ping pong back and forth between regions.

I know a point of contention in wider internet discourse about this game is the new content. I’m not talking about the quality of life features, those are fantastic. They even rival the quality of life added in the modern titles, but its rather the new locations and trainers added. The new locations I don’t have much issue with. I think adding new content to such a well known region is well needed, especially in an open world game. They’re all off to the sides and out of the way. Easy to ignore, but what isn’t easy is the new NPCs. There are a few new NPCs scattered throughout the world, each acting as a mini-boss of sorts. None of them are mandatory, so you can ignore them. That is until you get to the elite four. The old elite four and champion have been removed and replaced with the new original ones. To me, it feels a bit weird. So much is done to keep everything as it was, why change this all of a sudden? Its out of place.

Decisions like this confuse me. So much was added and changed to make it feel like a more modern, definitive version of Crystal, but yet it removes the stuff that makes Crystal worth playing as a game. It doesn’t help that it still has a bad level curve, even with the level scaling the game has. It sits in this weird spot for me. Its not mechanically bad. In fact, its a joy to play, but everything surrounding the gameplay just feels, wrong. And I think thats a good way of putting it. Not bad, just wrong.

4 / 10

Pokemon Glazed (2012)

Back in 2014 or so a young me heard whispers of a new Pokemon game. One not made by Game Freak, but by the fans. This game was Pokemon Glazed, and it wasn’t until nine years later I actually played it. I think back in the day I had no clue how to work an emulator so I ended up watching some lets play of it instead, but now, I’m not so stupid. So, what do I think?

This is a game of all time. The plot? Corny at best. The gameplay? Standard Pokemon Affair. The battles? Trainers have bad AI, poorly created teams, and a horrendous level curve in the worst of times. I still really enjoyed it. I think walking through my experience will paint a good picture of why.

The game holds nothing back. The first battle? Its against a talking Pikachu. Why? Because its “cool” in a “early 2010s edgy Pokemon fan” way. The game does not hold back on this type of fan service thing. All Pokemon talk in this game, directly to the player. Its bizarre and out of place, but it has this “cool” factor to it. Anyway, on your way to the 1st gym, you encounter the evil team doing evil things, and at some point you get transported to an alternate dimension. Why? Honestly I don’t even think the developer knew, because if you keep playing it makes no sense. Later you find out this alternate dimension is actually the real world, the human world, where Pokemon don’t exist. This happens because the evil team wants to catch Mew. I don’t even know what Mew has to do with alternate dimensions, I don’t think the developer knew either. This frankly does nothing for the plot because it makes no sense. It just exists to be “cool”. And I love that. Its bad, but its bad in that good way.

I will admit, running around the Tunod region is actually pretty cool. It has some diverse locations while feeling somewhat cohesive. Or maybe I was too busy enjoying how corny the plot was to really care. But you don’t get to explore the region uninterrupted, oh no. You have a myriad of rivals. Could I name any of them? No. Do they have any plot significance? Also no. Do they have any real character traits? Nope. Like seriously, you have these random rivals that just randomly show up. I swear there are like four or five of them, and I think the developer probably forgot about them for a long period of time before suddenly remembering them and shoving them it. They have no characterization, I couldn’t tell you anything about them except they have different hair color so they’re more important than random trainers. They leave the same way as they appear, sudden and with no explanation.

Anyway, throughout the journey you have more and more run ins with the evil team, Team Fusion. I touched on it earlier, but they are after Mew. Why? To make TMs that can taught to any Pokemon. Honestly cool, I think the idea of having such a benefit from a morally questionable source is cool. Is it right for trainers to capture and exploit these legendary Pokemon? Should we be disrupting the natural order of the world? Except the execution is more “Rahh we’re evil!!!” than “This is a complex moral dilemma”. And like I said earlier, there is zero explanation as to why the hunt for Mew causes some alternate dimension shenanigans. Even worse is that you team up with the Tunod champion to take down Team Fusion, but the champion’s ace is Darkrai. So if the whole thing is about it being wrong to capture legendaries, why does one of the good guys do it? And he is not the only one that has legendaries on their team. Frankly, there are even more glaring continuity errors later in the game, but its pretty clear the developer just wanted to finish it at that point.

Either way, we reach the climax and finally defeat Team Fusion. We get the bad guys to stop being evil, the team disbands, and the leader’s wife divorces him. Is that supposed to be like dark? Its just so out of place, there is nothing tonally like that in the game at all. It just… happens. The weirdest thing is, they have a son that has been helping out and hes just completely unphased by it. Doesn’t care at all. And there is nothing leading off that final fight. Its just you beat the bad guys, he gets divorced, and you move onto the elite four and champion. There is no pacing with anything, no real tension or stakes. Its so corny and cheesy, I just cant help but love it.

But this game has more up its sleeve, becoming champion is no where near the end. Turns out, you can visit Johto! This is cool, I don’t think fan games at the time did something like this, and well who doesn’t like a bit more content to celebrate your victory? I had just played Crystal Clear, so replaying Johto wasn’t at the top of my list. I actually considered stopping then and there, but I’m so glad I continued. After running around a bit and collecting a few badges, it becomes clear that this isn’t the same Johto. Its established pretty quickly that this is a post GSC Johto. The old league is destroyed, new settlements have appeared, gym leaders have shifted around. But don’t get me wrong, all the routes and towns remain largely the same, no major deviations from what you would expect. But Glazed has something up its sleeve, more story. Turns out the wife wasn’t content with giving up, she re-established Team Fusion to do, something. I don’t think its ever made explicit, but shes running around Johto burning forests (literally) and capturing legendaries.

On your quest to stop the evil Team Fusion once again, you find out that Johto now has organized religion. Thats right, there is now a religion dedicated to worshiping Arceus and other legendary Pokemon. Its just bizarre, who thinks of this? And its very ambiguous as to their position. Are they good? They don’t seem to like what Team Fusion is doing. Are they bad? They kidnapped Jasmine and locked her up in a dungeon. Like, why? Its so stupid, but I love it. Its a clear cut attempt at being “edgy” or “dark”, but it ends up being hilarious for how bad it is.

Honestly the Johto plot ends up being entirely nonsense. Remember when I mentioned Team Fusion burning forests? They do so to catch Celebi. Why? No idea. They don’t even use Celebi in any meaningful way. They don’t even use any of the legendary Pokemon they catch. They just cause terror and piss off the local religious group. Its so corny, so stupid, so bad, so “edgy”. I find it hilarious and just ate it up. Eventually you end up causing the wife to give up, or at least force Team Fusion to disband. She disappears on her own quest to do something, and the whole thing with her in Johto served zero purpose. Its dumb and stupid, but some how that made it better than the Tunod arc for me.

Eventually you get to the Johto league. Its been gutted and replaced with some new and returning faces. If theres one thing this Johto stretch has, its fan service, and I enjoyed it. Some of it did feel a bit awkward at times, inserting some weird events that felt out of place/character for Johto and its characters, but I cannot deny I didn’t enjoy it. I liked seeing some more notable minor characters get representation. I did not like the major level spike from last gym to the league. Its close to 10 levels from the last gym leader to the first elite four member. Ugh, not fun.

The game still isn’t over. Oh no, it has one more region for you to run through before its done, the Rankor region. Well, “region”. Its closer to half, more so a collection of 6 island towns you run between. It serves as a final boss rush, going between gym battle, rival battle, fusion wife battle, etc. And I think the developer just kinda, gave up at this point. The plot? Nonsensical. The dialogue is even worse. Slowly throughout the game, more and more swears have been introduced. Before, there was an attempt at avoiding the usage. Safe replacements were often used, but the further and further you get, the more swears work their way into it. Its so corny, its just an attempt at being “dark” and “edgy” and “mature” in such a naive way. I would laugh out loud every time I saw “fuck” or similar be used. And the dialogue from the NPCs just becomes worse. Constant fourth wall breaking, this weird dissonance with characters and the situation, and just a lower quality in general for this filler text. I’m having trouble putting it into words because it was objectively bad, but I loved how bad it was. Like Hawaii gets name dropped. Hawaii, the real world location. There was a whole plot earlier about how the two worlds shouldn’t merge, and some random NPC just casually name drops a place from another world. It such a violent break in continuity, its so stupid and frustrating, but its also hilarious just seeing how little care there is left for the story. Theres a point where the Pope in mentioned. How organized is this Arceus religion that they have a Pope? Are they that wide spread? Why don’t they have any presence in Tunod? This last region is just filled with this kind of dialogue and it was the best because of how dumb it was.

Rankor is more of the same. Like I explained, its really just a boss rush. There are some minor battles, but most of it is just straight line from one major battle to the next. Beat some gym leaders, stop the divorced wife, beat up some guy from the religion, save the day, become the champion for the third and final time. And thats it, you’re done! For real this time, you actually get the hall of fame thing for this Pokemon league, unlike the past two. Unless you want the legendaries, but I had my fill and stopped there.

Overall, this was just really bizarre. Its such a product of its time. This was finished in some capacity in 2014, basically a decade ago. Its rough, it has some bugs (even with later fan patches), it lacks a lot of the modern QOL in newer games, its overly edgy and dumb and stupid, but I just loved my time with it. There was just some simplicity to it, some nostalgia. I can really respect the amount of passion and work that goes into something like this. If you come into this expecting anything near current standards for fan games, don’t even bother. But if you want to relive being a fan in the early 2010s with all its cringe, this is a must play. Frankly, I’d rate it higher if I wasn’t trying to be somewhat objective with this list.

I also cannot forget to mention the incredible work TrainerX493 has done after the completion of the hack. They’ve helped bring it into the modern age with their 9.1 version of it. It may not be the same as a modern hack like Unbound, but hey, that would ruin a lot of the charm it has.

5 / 10

Persona 5 Royal (2019)

People have talked the talk about this game since forever. I’ve heard nothing about how incredible this game was, it was nearly a once in a generation JRPG, one of the best games ever. And I was hearing this ever since 2017. But I wasn’t able to play it until it got ported onto everything else. After sitting around in my backlog for long enough, I finally got to give it a go.

This game is destroyed by its pacing. I want to like this game. I want to enjoy this game. I want to have fun playing this game. But I cant. If you don’t know, Persona splits the players time between dungeon crawling and social simulation. This is an interesting concept, as the time the player spends in the social simulation ends up benefiting in the dungeons in various ways. Given all the deadlines that exist, it adds some strategic depth to how you spend your time. Do you spend time in the dungeon making progress, or do you spend time with friends for buffs, or work a job to afford better gear?

My issue comes from the absolute horrible pacing. Because of how the game rewards good time management, it means players are incentivized to complete dungeons as fast as possible. For example, the game will give you 30 days to complete a dungeon, but to make the most of your time you’ll do it in 2-3 days. This means you’re left with 4 weeks of nothing. Sure, using this time helps with preparing for the next dungeon, but the content becomes a slog. In short bursts its interesting, a majority of what is done are the social links. These are text heavy side stories that give more development to the cast. It gives more depth to the cast and creates a believable world. Not all of them are created equal, especially the main cast. It creates this issue where the main cast has the majority of their development in the main story and all of their social links are meaningless side plots. But even within the average social link, a lot of it feels like filler. A lot of times you’ll do a social link, level it up, but nothing will have happened during that interaction. It just ends up feeling like wasting your time, especially if you aren’t invested with the character’s social link.

Otherwise, I find it hard to complain about this game. Everything about is is great, music, visuals, graphics, gameplay, all fantastic. I enjoyed the combat system quite a bit, but I feel like it was a bit poorly used. For normal encounters it worked fine. Giving extra turns for exploiting enemies weaknesses rewards skilled gameplay and helps weaker encounters go by quickly. It works even better for mini-boss encounters, you can hit them hard, but they won’t hesitate to hit you just as hard. Where it falls apart are the actual bosses. They just act as these massive damage sponges. The game tries to add unique gimmicks to them to add more strategy, but often times they either don’t trigger often enough to create anything interesting or using them is pointless when you can easily do more damage normally.

I will admit, I did not finish this game. For those die hard Persona fans, I made it through Futaba’s palace before dropping it. It just didn’t respect my time, and I gave it a chance. I spent 60 hours in game, and nothing about it made me want to spend another 60 hours or so to finish it. It really is a 100+ hour game, but its bloated and doesn’t respect your time. So many better games to play, and so many better uses of my time.

4 / 10

vivid/stasis (2023)

This was one of the coolest games I played this year. Then again, its also one of the last games I played this year, so there is a bit of recency bias in play. But I think its still worth the praise I give it.

vivid/stasis is primarily a rhythm game, and a pretty good one at that. Its your typical 4 lane rhythm game, the notes scroll down a lane and you hit the right key when it hits the judgment line. Where it gets more interesting is with the “Bumper Notes”. These notes are spread across two lanes, but they can be hit with either key. This adds a lot to how you read and play the chart, as it allows for a lot of diversity in how you play. If there are several bumper notes in a row, do you play them as jacks (the same note over and over) or trills (alternating between two keys)? There are other possible patterns too. It adds quite a lot to the gameplay, making it a lot more interesting to master each chart.

It also has a pretty good song selection. It is a bit annoying as it forces song unlocks, a bit of a pet peeve I have regarding rhythm games. However, I didn’t find it too annoying. The game has two currencies, one for the song shop and the other for the story mode. However, the game makes it very easy to grind these out, as you can increase the difficulty to get more of one or both. It makes it much easier to get large amounts of the currencies, but it also encourages chasing of better and better scores by playing on a more strict difficulty.

But a story mode? In my rhythm game? More likely than you think. The story is presented in a visual novel format. I know a lot of people don’t like this format, but reading isn’t going to kill you. The story is a mystery, and its pretty well written. You can unlock more chapters by paying in game currency, until something strange happens. Not in the story, but rather the game itself presents a puzzle. Puzzle is underselling it, as its actually an ARG. I’m not too huge into ARGs, but I found it pretty fun to solve, especially because it ties into the story. After clearing the ARG portion, its even a bit more exciting because it leads into a boss song that ties into what happened in the story. Its really a cool touch.

To summarize, vivid/stasis is part rhythm game, part visual novel, and part ARG. Its super cool, super awesome, and super worth your time. Its also free! So honestly, go start downloading it, finish reading my post, and then go play it. There is also a fishing minigame, so you know its worth your time.

7 / 10

Honorable Mentions

Not all my gaming experiences this year were wholly new. I spent some time revisiting and replaying some titles. These felt more appropriate to include as an aside instead of letting each get their own dedicated section.

Calamity Mod Infernum Mode is a bit of an interesting case. If you recall, I did play a mod of Terraria called “Calamity Mod” last year. I thought it was an enjoyable experience, but during the spring I wanted to revisit the mod. I thought to my self, “What better way to do it than add more difficulty?” Enter Infernum Mode, a mod of a mod. It adds an additional difficulty setting that revamps all the boss AI in the game. And if you ask me, its alright. I previously stated that I found Calamity to be a bit easy, even on the hardest official difficulty at the time. So I was looking forward to trying a new level of difficulty, but in all honesty, I didn’t find it much harder. Sure, the bosses had different and more unique AI, but each boss took about the same amount of tries as my previous play though. If you’ve played Calamity before and are looking for something different, its worth a try. Just a note, I played this a few months before the final release of the mod. The 1.9 update for Infernum added a ton of content and reworks that I didn’t experience.

What is there to say about Left 4 Dead 2? This game is a classic. Certified banger. If you haven’t heard about it, its a 4 player co-op zombie shooter made by Valve. Just saying that should explain everything you need to know. I had a ton of fun just hopping on with my friends and playing a map or two every now and then. Everything about it is great. The shooting, the graphics, the mechanics, the maps, everything is the of the quality you would expect with a Valve game. The best part to me is the massive modding support this game has. Customize the game to your hearts content, make it the gritty zombie game you want it to be, or change it to be full of memes and laugh at the stupidity. If you haven’t played it, it goes on sale for super cheap all the time. Grab it and grab some friends for a great time.

Now if L4D2 is a classic, Minecraft is a real classic. This game is so hard to write about for me. Its my favorite game of all time, and I should be able to write forever about it, but its such a ubiquitous game that nearly everything has been said about. I love this game, it takes hundreds of hours from me each year. I’ve spent time playing it both alone and with friends this year, it never disappoints.

If you liked Half Life, your gonna like Half Life: Opposing Force. I mean, its literally an expansion to the base game. It give a new short-ish campaign for you to play though. I don’t really have a whole lot to say because its pretty much just more Half Life. If you liked that, your gonna like this. But even then, its not a must play for anyone looking to experience the whole Half Life series.

Playing a MMO is something that I think every gamer should do. As a self proclaimed gamer myself, my MMO of choice is Old School RuneScape. Its quite an interesting game with nearly 20 years of history and updates, but it also as an incredible amount of community involvement. It always makes it fun to come back, see what has changed, what the community is going on about, and to just enjoy the game. And honestly, what a game it is. If you didn’t know, its a revival of the 2007 version of RuneScape, but its taken a different path then the main game has. Content wise, theres a lot, and it can mostly be split into two parts. There is a lot of great content to engage with, questing, bossing, and doing raids are always good fun. But my favorite part of the game comes from its ability to just play it in the background while relaxing and doing something else. This makes grinding a lot more enjoyable compared to other games. OSRS has a ton of content that can be both engaged actively and passively, I always find it to be a great time.

I have a group of friends I often play games with. We typically pick something more action packed to play, games like Terraria or Risk of Rain 2. But we played something unexpected that ended up being really fun. Civilization VI ended up quite a pleasant surprise. The classic turn based strategy game series really proved itself to me in the few games I played with my friends. It has a ton of depth to it and I feel like I barely sunk my teeth into it. Coming up with a strategy, planning your moves, adapting to the events that occur, and watching things develop is incredibly satisfying and fun. And I think to myself, “Man, this is fun, why haven’t I tried something like this earlier?” But then I remember how much of a commitment games like these are. These grand strategy games while having the ability to provide an incredible amount of fun, they also require an incredible amount of commitment. Both in terms of time and learning all the systems.

For about a month this year I had fairly consistent access to an arcade with rhythm games. As a fan of this genre of games, I leapt at the chance to try some of these unique experiences. There are quite a few of them, so I’m going to just group them all together in this short section. Sound Voltex is probably the closest to a traditional rhythm game. Your standard four lanes where you have six buttons and two knobs to hit the oncoming notes. Thats right, this four lane game has 2 extra buttons for some special FX notes, and the two knobs control the lasers in the game. What this ends up doing is creating a fast paced, frantic feeling game as the charting forces you to move your hands all across the controller to hit the notes. Its quite fun, but can also be a bit frustrating to learn because of how different it is. Gitadora, or rather GuitarFreaks and DrumMania, are a duo of games inspired by playing actual instruments. GuitarFreaks is pretty straight forward to understand, if you know Guitar Hero, you know what to expect from this. Sure, there are some differences, but I think the most interesting part is that you also have the option to play the bass part of songs. Very cool, especially when some songs have some fun bass lines. DrumMania is well, a drum simulator. This one is pretty easy to understand when you play on a recreation of a drum set. It took me a bit to get used to it as the layout of drums differs from how they show the notes, which is a physical limitation of having an accurate drum layout. Gitadora fun to play, especially if you want to try drums, play the bass part, or just rock out to some music from Japan. But I know what you’re thinking, when am I going to talk about the quintessential arcade rhythm game, DDR? Well, DDR is kinda lame when compared to Pump It Up*. Pump, at a high level, is just DDR but with 5 panels to hit instead of 4. Where it differs is in its charting. To me at least, Pump’s charting far surpasses that of DDR’s, with more fun foot work, plenty of doubles charts, and even co-op charts, there is a ton to experience. And while Pump and DDR may be “dancing games”, I found myself gravitating towards a few other games that deliver more true dancing experiences. DANCE aROUND delivers a much more real dance experience as you have to follow along with the choregraphy. The game itself is pretty relaxed on how precise you follow it, which I find to be a bit of a let down, but it does allow for a lot of freedom on how you follow the dance. Personally I prefer something a bit more strict, but I still enjoy giving it my all, even if I’m dancing poorly for the whole arcade to see. But there is another dance game I enjoy, and thats Dancerush Stardom. The game focuses only on the player’s feet, making sure their in the right position at the right time. This means there is a huge focus on shuffling. But the game is super easy to pick up, and once you figure out how to do the running man properly, it feels like the game just opens up and you can really start going crazy. Because the game is only focused on the horizontal position of your feet, it really allows for a lot of creativity in your performance. That combined with the flashy dance floor it has makes it a blast regardless of your dancing skills.

There is something to be said about games that you can just, pick up and play. For me, that game was Pokemon Picross. Its a simple puzzle game, just fill in the boxes based on some hints. Its simple, but there is something deeply satisfying about mastering it and effortlessly solving puzzles. The only thing special about this version is the puzzles end up being pictures of Pokemon. If you’re into this type of game, its worth a go.

May as well mention it as I’m not done with it, but I started Xenoblade Chronicles 3 right at the end of the year. I’m enjoying it so far, but my full thoughts will come in next year’s post. Its very interesting to play, especially keeping 1 and 2 in my mind. Sorry to tease something that’s so far away, but I just wanted to mention it here.

Concluding Remarks

I played a lot of games this year. More than last year, but honestly it doesn’t feel like it. If I had to take a guess, its because I didn’t play a ton of good games. If you compare my ratings to any sort of critic ratings, you’ll see they’re much more harsh. And I really do think its because a lot of games get inflated ratings. I don’t think I played any “bad games”, but if you saw some reviewer give a game a 4/10 you would think its terrible, wouldn’t you?

But I don’t think me giving a lot of ratings between 4 and 6 solved anything, because its the same as everything getting a rating between 8 and 10. Sure, when I put everything in the middle region, when something stands out, you know it stands out. But I wrote a lot more about some relatively mediocre games than some games I liked. Trying to sum my thoughts up into a single number doesn’t work.

Rather, I think the biggest issue is me thinking about these as something close to a review. They aren’t. I think most of them end up being ramblings about the vibes I felt playing the game over anything close to a comprehensive review. This is fine, it ends up being more of a gaming journal than anything else. Going forward, I’ll probably end up taking this approach for the next year. But if you (for some reason) like my reviews, I plan on keeping the scores I give to each game.

A Review of the Miyoo Mini Plus

Recently, much of my days are spent outside the house. I’m often out and about and I have these spurts of free time. It could be some time spent on public transit or just natural downtime during my day, either way I need something to fill it with. My solution? A handheld emulator, specifically the Miyoo Mini Plus.

But why? My smart phone can do everything it can and more, so why bother? Well, my phone needs to be a phone, not a gaming device. My current phone is a budget phone from 2019, it was never the best, and its really showing its age. Not in terms of processor speed, but more so battery life. Making it a gaming device wouldn’t help me in making it through the day. That aside, the lack of physical buttons is a huge turn off, and using an external controller lacks convenience. So, a dedicated device it was.

Now, why the Miyoo Mini? At the time, it was one of the best price to performance devices. GBA, SNES, and PSX for around 60 USD? Sign me up. It has a nice 3.5 inch back-lit screen, USB C charging, and a compact vertical layout. A huge improvement over the front-lit GBA SP I was using, especially if I were to mod it to have similar features. It does have worse controls in my opinion. One of the things that kept me coming back to the SP were the controls. I really love the clicky switches for the buttons in the SP, and having proper hinges for triggers is a huge plus. The MMP (Miyoo Mini Plus) uses a rubber membrane for the button mechanism. Its okay, a bit too soft for my tastes. The d-pad isn’t bad, I feel like it could use a little more travel, but rolling your thumb around it is pretty good. The face buttons are a bit too weak for my tastes. There is hardly any resistance and they just feel so much weaker than the d-pad. They aren’t horrible, they just are not what I look for in a device. On the back you have the triggers. They’re inline and they use those clicky switches. Ergonomically, these are terrible. Always awkward to access and use, although I have to give points for having the inner most triggers raised, so its easy to tell the difference.

But it would be a shame to ignore the other options at this price range. The biggest competitor is the RG35XX. Its pretty similar, both have similar performance and screens, but there are some differences that influenced my decisions. The first is physical design, the RG35XX is slightly bigger than the MMP, it might be better if you have larger hands. I will say I don’t find the size of the MMP uncomfortable, but I’ve never tried a RG35XX so I can’t say how it stacks up. I also never had discomfort playing a GBA SP which is also rather compact, keep that in mind. The RG35XX also has protruding triggers, they flare out from the handheld. The MMP doesn’t have this, making it flatter and easier to slip in and out of a pocket. There is only one more major difference between the two, and that is wifi. Or RTC and HDMI out. It depends on which one you get. The MMP has wifi, and the RG35XX has RTC and HDMI out. Personally I can live without either. Well, RTC would be nice given the amount of Pokemon I play, but MMP has a workaround. In my opinion, both wifi and HDMI out are gimmicks, but especially the wifi, but if you think otherwise take it into account. What did it for me was the physical design, I liked the smaller and more compact nature of the device.

Using is a joy. First things first, if you get any handheld emulator, the SD card it comes with is likely of poor quality. Throw it out and get a good quality one. The next thing is to install Onion OS. Its a alternative to whatever comes on there, it adds a ton of features, is easy to use, and has sane defaults. Emulators are set up to have good performance and great scaling. What I enjoy the most is the auto save states. Whenever you close a game, it takes a save state, and when you reopen it, that state gets loaded. Its even nicer when you consider this works for powering on/off the device. You can just turn it off whenever, and when you turn it back on it puts you straight back to where you left off, no need to go through menus. This is wonderful as it makes playing in short bursts so easy. Grab it, play it, and put it away. It really adds this convenience factor that I appreciate.

Onion OS has some other cool features. Themes, simulated clock, basic apps (image/video/file viewer), box art in game list, easy multiplayer, and even some game ports. I don’t have much to say because I’m there for the games, but if you’re the type to want to get the most of our device there is a lot to check out. I will say, I have gotten use out of the music player it has. The MMP has a headphone jack, something modern devices can’t say. I think the most useful apps are the cloud sync apps available. This is the only practical use for the wifi I can think of. Under the hood, Onion OS is just Linux. It uses all the same standard emulators as you would on a computer, meaning you can pick up where you left off on your computer. Might not be HDMI out, but is still a neat feature. Another little bonus is the DS emulator available. The MMP is not close enough to running DS at full speed, and frankly its a compromised experience. The screen is too small to play games with dual screen layout, and DS games are really designed around the original hardware. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t games that cannot be enjoyed one screen at a time. I wouldn’t expect to play everything you’d want, but the fact that you can try to play some is incredible. Its a great bonus.

Over 3 months later, what do I think? Its worth the price. I’ve played on it enough to have made it worth while, and its become a favorite time killer of mine. Its not perfect, the controls could be better and the battery indicator tends to be inaccurate, but for what it is I like it. If you want an convenient way to play retro games on the go, its not a bad buy.

Go DRM Free

The advent of the internet allowed for this nifty little thing called digital distribution. No longer do you have to go to the store to buy some music or a movie or a video game. Now anyone can simply get on an internet connected device and buy their music or movies or video games online. No need to go to the store, just make sure you know your credit card number, the expiration date, and the three digits on the back.

But there is a noticeable difference between going to the store and buying something physical when compared to buying something digital. Ask yourself this: Do you really own it? I think looking at some examples might help. Lets say you’ve bought some music from Bandcamp and downloaded the flacs. Do you own those? Sure. What about buying and playing some games from Steam. Do you own those? Probably. How about streaming a movie off Netflix. Is there any ownership there? Maybe.

If you’re a the average person, you might say you own the music and games, but not the movie. After all, streaming is a service. You don’t buy the movies with streaming, you just pay to access a collection of them. You don’t pay, you don’t access. And I would agree with that. Subscription services are not the same as owning. But what about the music? Purchasing and downloading the flacs is pretty cut and dry. They’re just some file. Listen to them on your computer, laptop, phone, whatever. There is no music police determining what you can and can’t do with them.

So, what about Steam then? You bought the game, the files are on your computer, so logically you would own it, right? I’d argue no. Why? Because of a little something called licensing. You see, companies don’t like it when they lose control of their products. Most companies have an image to uphold, and allowing others to do as they please with it could ruin it. Especially with digital goods. Whats stopping someone from modifying it to make the brand seem worse? Or what if someone just redistributes it for free, completely cutting the company out of the picture? If you were some CEO, this might keep you up at night, but luckily for our CEOs, they have some solution. Lets take a look at the Steam Subscriber Agreement. I’ve prepared a section for your reading pleasure.

The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services. To make use of the Content and Services, you must have a Steam Account and you may be required to be running the Steam client and maintaining a connection to the Internet.

I think this is pretty explicit, but according to Steam, you do not own the games you buy. You simply own a license that allows you access to the games, and even then, that license has stipulations on what you can do with the games. And if you in some way violate these licenses, the companies have every right to take them away, removing access to the games you thought you “owned”. The games you spent your hard earned money on.

Now if you read around, you’ll see that the average person is not likely to break these terms. But that isn’t where you should worry, no. Rather it has more to do with the thing companies use to enforce their terms, DRM. DRM, or digital rights management, is software designed to limit what you can do with what you purchase digitally, at least in our case. Steam is effectively DRM. Have you ever tried running a Steam game without having Steam open? It just launches it. But if you try to kill the Steam process after the game is started up, the game also stops running. Whats up with that? Or have you ever tried to play some single player game, only for it to require you to be online to play? This is DRM, and its there to make your life worse. I want to get into a few more common examples of how it impacts the average user. With games bought on Steam, you can’t share them with friends or resell them to someone else after purchase. You can do this with physical games. Games with DRM run worse than those without. Many printers don’t allow third party ink cartridges, only the ones from the brand that makes them. This serves no purpose other than to limit the options of the consumer. Apple prevents users from repairing their iPhones by detecting and disabling any parts that have been replaced or repaired by anyone other than Apple. They won’t let you use the device you own the way you want to.

If you didn’t agree before, I hope you can agree now that DRM is bad. But how do we get things without DRM? Piracy seems to be the obvious choice for digital content, but that is not a good option. People still deserve to get paid for the work they do, pirating deprives artists and creators of that. Luckily, there are many popular market places where you can support developers and still get DRM free copies. I’ve already mentioned one, Bandcamp. They are a great place to get music and support artists directly, or they at least used to be. There have been some recent developments that make its future a bit questionable as a good place to buy music, so I’d do some research before considering making a purchase there. For the gamers among us, I recommend checking out Good Old Games for your next purchase. Contrary to their name, they offer many of the latest and popular games along side many older titles and indie gems.

I think the one thing that is a bit intimidating is the cost. The idea of spending so much money to convert your entire current collection to DRM free is immense. And even then, comparing DRM-free purchases to the relatively low monthly fee of streaming services is also a tough decision. For some people, services like Spotify, Neftlix, or Game Pass might be worthwhile. And you know what, that is fair. For most people, I think that one thing matters the most: they get to enjoy their content for a reasonable price. My main goal with this post was to encourage you to consider the ethics about the content you consumer. Are you buying into something that limits your freedoms or respects them? Remember, the power we have as consumers lies in our wallets, so spend wisely.

Something About the Fediverse

So back in November I wanted to write something about Twitter. With all the drama with Elon buying the app and making stupid changes, I thought it would be interesting to write about my thoughts on the whole thing and bring up the Fediverse as an alternative. Well, with me being me that never happened. And I went through this cycle every time I heard of some stupid change that was being done to Twitter. But finally, I’ve gotten around to doing so, way too many months later. So, here it is, something about the Fediverse.

So, you finally want to know what the Fediverse is. Well, its a wonderful time to get into it, with the rapid decay of Twitter and all. But first, I should clear up some terminology. I’m sure you’ve heard a few different terms thrown around. Fediverse, Mastodon, Activity Pub, maybe even Pixelfed or Firefish. What even are these? First, the Fediverse. This is a broad term that related to the large collection of interconnected servers all running some implementation of the Activity Pub standard. At a high level, think of it as the name of the social media your using. You might access it though a server running Mastodon or some other software, but thats just what you’re interacting with. Its like if you’ve ever used a 3rd party client for an app. You’re still using that app (Fediverse), but you are interacting with it through something else (Mastodon). This leads well into our next term, Mastodon. Well, really its more than just that, because we also have things like Pixelfed and Firefish. These are the actual software that runs the Fediverse. Various people or organizations can run any software running the Activity Pub standard, and these software will then federate (talk to each other) and create that interconnected Fediverse. Given the open nature of the Activity Pub standard, there are tons of different server softwares, each with their own features. While Mastodon is the most well known, there are others like Pixelfed. Pixelfed tries better to recreate an Instagram like experience. This is the advantage of open source, it allows for software to be catered to specific use cases, but we also have the advantage of the Fediverse. An account on a Mastodon server can still follow and interact with an account on a Pixelfed server. Its like if you could use a Twitter account to follow your friends on Instagram. Its all thanks to the last term, that Activity Pub standard. I’m sure you might be able to pick up on what it means, but its like a common language. In the Fediverse, Mastodon and Pixelfed speak the same language. Because of this, you have that ability to interact with posts between servers like I previously mentioned. If you look at something like Twitter and Instagram, they do not have that Activity Pub standard. This means they speak two completely different languages. They do not have that interoperability that Activity Pub provides. Its important to have this distinction between terms, because having this understanding of how it actually works highlights the benefits of a system like this.

So enough with the technical talk, why use the Fediverse? Well, there are a ton of reasons. I think the most obvious one is to get away from the dumpster fire that Twitter is. Most people agree that Elon is making tons of bad decisions with it. From a limit on how many posts you can view to the removal of the block button, its becoming less and less usable. With the Fediverse, you don’t have to deal with one idiot bringing the whole thing down. How is that possible? Its because no one person owns the Fediverse. By definition, the Fediverse is a bunch of servers talking to each other in the same language. There is no one person that controls all of it, just a bunch of people who control their own servers and the people on it. No one rich asshole can buy it out and ruin it. This also means they control things like what features get implemented. Take Mastodon for example, it provides an experience very comparable to Twitter. But then look at Firefish, it adds things like emoji reactions and advanced markdown that isn’t present in Mastodon. There is something out there that probably fits all your needs, and its only possible because of the open nature of the Fediverse.

Alright, if I’ve sold you by now I’m sure you’re dying to know how to join. And frankly, that is probably the hardest part of this whole thing. Finding an instance, a server to call home. The first step is to find what kind of software you want to use. This is a personal decision, as I don’t know what you’re looking for. Google is going to come in handy, quite a bit. I’d just make sure the implementation you choose allows for import/export of user accounts. This might come in handy if you find something different later on and want to more easily switch (because a lot of popular Activity Pub implementations allow for that). The next thing is to find an instance that runs that software. What this means is some server that’s running the software of your choice. There are a lot of things to consider when picking one. For example, read the rules and privacy policy of the instance. They can differ a lot between instances. What might be good for one is not okay for another. Its also worth seeing what the instance is about. Instances are often dedicated for one topic or another. This doesn’t mean you have to only post about that one thing, but think of it as a congregation of a lot of people who like that thing. You also might want to consider the name of the instance. Usernames are formatted in a format like @[email protected]. This is what other people are gonna see, and to some it might matter. Some may want a more professional instance name, some may want something silly, others might not care. Again, to find one Google is going to be your friend. Often times, you can scroll through some posts on an instance without creating an account, which can help expose you to instances you may not have known about. Once you picked an instance, you’re good to go! Sign up and start checking things out. Follow some people, make some posts, and enjoy yourself.

Now I feel like I should give some disclaimers. The Fediverse is far from what we’ve come to see as traditional social media. I’m going to speak a bit from my own experience with the Fediverse, which lies mostly in Mastodon, but given that its the most popular software, a lot of others take inspiration from it and work in a similar fashion. There is no algorithm. Let me repeat that. There. Is. No. Algorithm. What this means is that there is no more doom scrolling. A bit sad, but trust me, its good for you. But what this also means is that the only posts on your timeline are from people you follow in chronological order. It also means you have to put in a bit more work to see content you like. Thats why I stressed the importance of finding a good instance, it helps you find content you want to see. To elaborate, you have a few more timelines at your disposal. The two to focus on are the local and global. The local one exposes you to every post from everyone on your instance. Hopefully you picked one that you find interesting, so you’ll find some interesting people soon enough. The other way of finding people is through the other people on your instance. There is that global timeline. It might be called remote or something different, but the general idea is that it is a collection of all posts coming into the server. That means if someone on your instance follows an account on a different instance, those posts will show up here. This can be a good way to expose yourself to other people outside of your instance as well as find instances you might have an interest in. There might also be an explore page which shows content that is popular within your instance or hashtags that are trending within your instance. Because of how most Fediverse software is structured, things spread much more organically which leads to a lot more genuine and nice interactions and content.

Of course, no matter how much I hype this up, there are always some downsides. Most of them come from the fact that anyone can set up their own instance. Because anyone can set one up, they also set up the rules that come with it and control what happens. Some instances allow a lot of frowned upon content. Luckily, the reasonable instances can stop talking to the bad instances. However, this means if you somehow find yourself in one of these blacklisted instances, you might not be able to see/interact with posts from other instances. Now I doubt any of my readers would join any of these instances, but where this matters is with the admins. Generally if the admin of one instance does something to piss off the admin of another instance, blocks can happen. I’d like to think that most instance admins are reasonable people, but sadly this is not the truth. It might be worth giving the instance you are thinking about joining a once over to make sure both the admin and community are one that the public at large is okay to associate with. Because if its not, it could get on a block list and if that list is a popular one, you might not be able to enjoy the connected-ness of the Fediverse. But thats not all, you have to trust your admin. Your instance admin has complete control over your access to the Fediverse. While true for any social media, instead of a faceless corporation, its a person. Again, this gets back into making sure the person running your instance is trustworthy. You should also trust them enough not to shut down your instance, or if they do trust them enough to give an advance warning. Thats a less common concern, just like you should be concerned about large instances. As previously stated, one of the benefits to the Fediverse is that no one person owns it. However, instances can get large. According to fedidb.org (Great resource btw), there are about 10.5 million people on the Fediverse. Approximately 1.5 million of those people are on a single instance (mastodon.social). Thats nearly 15% on one server. In fact, about 25% of all people are on 5 different instances. Having so many users centralized in one place defeats the purpose of having a decentralized network. I advise you to pick a smaller instance with a friendly community, but what this look like might change from person to person, and it might take time to find. But its important to find a good instance that suits your needs and probably won’t crumble or get blacklisted.

I would be amiss to not mention some other Twitter competitors in my discussion of popular Twitter alternatives. Things like Threads and cohost tried to take a bite out of Twitter’s market share, but quickly proved to be unpopular options. I feel like I see the most buzz about Bluesky these days, and that probably has a lot to do about its invite only model. However, Bluesky is fundamentally flawed. On paper, it sounds like a great alternative. Its made by the guy who made Twitter, it claims to be built on a federated protocol (similar in nature to Activity Pub and the Fediverse), and has corporate backing. But, there are a few things to keep in mind, mostly relating to that federated protocol they claim to have. They call it the AT Protocol, and they talk a lot of talk about it. But heres the thing, only they have any access to it. Bluesky is the only instance thats compatible with it. Everything they mention about federation and interoperability is nonexistent. All they have is a vague promise for future openness while drawing their core audience to a single instance. If something goes wrong, say goodbye to Bluesky. And thats not to mention their rather bizarre stance on moderation. They created an innovative system of allowing users to set how much hate speech they want to see. Instead of banning this harmful content, they allow it on their platform and let users decide how much of it they want to see. And judging from the FAQ, a lot of that is going to be determined by users. Do you think bad actors will mark their harmful posts as harmful? Because I think not.

The Fediverse is truly a wonderful thing. It has so many benefits and generally is so much better than normal social media. However, it typically comes at the cost of a difficult joining process. Sure, its hard to find an instance and find people who post good content, but its so worth it to have a much better experience overall. I hope this post encourages you to give the Fediverse a try, and I’m sure if you try it you will end up liking it just as much as I do.

The Ugly of Game Guides

As a gamer, I enjoy playing video games. Shocking, I know. But being a gamer isn’t my full time job. As much as I would like to, I often don’t have time to sink my teeth into a game as much as I want to. There are plenty of games to be enjoyed, but I don’t have the time to dig through them and spend time exploring and discovering every little bit of each game to maximize my fun and enjoyment. Thats where the video game guide comes in. A companion piece of media that you reference while playing a game, whether it be a book, a video, a website, or even a simple text file. These guides have been helping people through games while maximizing content seen in an individual play though. But they also act as sources of information. Giving details on item and enemy stats, providing more detailed and large scale maps, divulging the locations of resources, giving strategy on how to play the game. Guides provide a ton of value, and with the popularization on the internet they’ve become a critical part of the modern gaming experience, no matter how small the role is. But the issue is a lot of modern guides are simply horrible.

One of the worst offenders has to be those SEO optimized garbage websites. The ones that rank highly when you search up “[game title] + guide”. The ones that are filled with fluff and ads. The ones that you need to scroll down to find anything useful. The ones that spread relevant information across several pages. These are probably the worst for the reasons I explained. Every time I mistakenly click on one I can feel my time wasting away. It seems as if they exist to show you ads instead of the information you want. At least they have the information promised, but often the accuracy is of dubious quality. There are often much more reputable sources for information than some website named something like “progamer4.co.uk”. But if these just existed normally it could be more excusable. However, they don’t. The biggest issue is how they aggressively optimize themselves in search engines. You often see multiple pages for the same site whenever you search something specific for a game. They out compete so many other more legitimate guides that its all you see when you search for a game guide. These websites block out the good and legitimate websites and just pollute search results.

A similar offender are video guides. Thats not to say all video guides are bad. There are tons of fantastic video guides out there. The visual aspect allows for better demonstrations of things that text and images cannot provide. The real issue is with the ones that are more so YouTube video than resource. You know the ones. The ones that have drawn out intros, long enough to run mid roll ads, reminders to “Like and Subscribe!”, clickbait thumbnail, and the key information at the very end. These just exist to waste your time. They truly do. These types of video guides are the same as the websites I previously complained about, just in a different form. Don’t waste your time with these videos.

Sometimes you don’t need a guide, you just need to look up some piece of information. Thats where you go to a wiki, and they’re great resources. Usually community made and run, they can provide all the information you could want. But my issue with with wikis as a concept, rather, its more so about the service most wikis are hosted on and thats Fandom. If you’ve searched for a wiki for anything online, you’ve probably seen a Fandom wiki. These are horrible cesspits that fail at their one job. They’re full of intrusive ads and videos that auto play. They preform horribly, barely work on mobile, and waste your time as much as the other offenders. But I think the worst part about Fandom wikis is what happens after a community moves away. Yes, some communities are reasonable and move away from this terrible service, but the issue is Fandom will continue to operate these old abandoned wikis. Now, that might not seem like the end of the world, but this is a scummy move. Not only does the old Fandom wiki still keep their high ranking search results, but they continue to serve their ad infested pages with potentially outdated and incorrect information.

But good guides still exist. Not everything is some horrible slop that exists to waste your time. I think one of the best sources is GameFAQs. It provides guides, trivia, forums, reviews, and much more. But the key part is its all made by fans. Its passionate fans creating amazing resources for other fans to use. There are often multiple detailed guides for a game, providing anything from details on one aspect of the game to a complete 100% walk through. And when you see a guide start with some ASCII art? Thats how you know its going to be quality. But an underrated part of GameFAQs is the forums section (or Board as they call it). Being able to easily find and read both past and present discussion and advice relating to the game is an amazing boon. I often add “gamefaqs” to the end of my searches to make sure I’m going to get some legit gaming tips whenever I look for them.

The biggest loss in guides has to be that of physical guide books. Sure, the internet provides quicker access to more in-depth material about a game, but there was something special about guide books. It wasn’t just the fact of having something physical, but guide books often celebrated the game. They would contain high quality art and bits of information and trivia. Guide books were full of personality and information. I remember I would spend too much time pouring over a few of the guide books I owned for Pokemon. I loved getting to see and learn about everything about the games I loved. And sure, a lot of that charm and appeal is gone with all the information you could ever want is a click away with the internet.

As long as games exist, we’ll need guides. We just need to make sure we keep providing and promoting good guides. Or if you like discovering things out for yourself and not use guides, why did you read this entire thing?

RSS: The Future is Now

There is a lot of stuff on the internet. Like, a lot. Articles, blog posts, memes, musings, announcements, videos, social media, schedules, and so much more. Frankly, it can be a hassle keeping up with everything, especially when it seems like everything is on its own website or requires you to check yet another social media platform. Wouldn’t it be convenient if all you had to do was check one application to see it all? All the latest posts from all across the web, even if they originated from different websites entirely? Well, if you couldn’t tell, the solution to this problem is RSS!

But what exactly is RSS? RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a standardized way of accessing websites. Most commonly they get combined with a news aggregator (or RSS reader), a program that monitors these feeds for updates and then allows a user to read them. The process ends up being something like: find a RSS feed, add it to a reader, and enjoy. Because RSS is an open standard, anyone can add a feed to their website, making it super easy to gather information and updates from across the web into one place.

But RSS is more than just everything you want in once place, although the convenience cannot be understated. It ends up added a more focused and curated experience. There is no doom scrolling, there is no algorithm, and there is no ads. Its content you want, that you chose, with no distractions. Its a much more intentional experience whenever I open my RSS reader. It helps me stay mindful while consuming content online. But most of the time I don’t even need to be online to consume my content. A feature in most major readers is saving articles for offline reading. I don’t even need to think ahead as my reader takes care of fetching and downloading the latest articles for me.

There is one thing that stands out the most to me about RSS, and that is that it decentralizes the internet. If you rely on one website for everything, that one website controls everything. What you see, what you can do, what you can say. Its limiting, and we’ve become too complacent with it. RSS removes this issue. It allows users to get content from where ever they want, without having to rely on one service. RSS bypasses these large, centralized platforms and goes direct to the source to get the actual content. In doing so, they also bypass a lot of the data collection these platforms do. Taking control of your data is one of the most impactful things you can do these days, and RSS is an easy step to do so.

But sadly, it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows in RSS land. If you haven’t noticed, a lot of places don’t support RSS. The sad truth is, RSS is pretty much considered to be past its prime. RSS initially was released in 1999, with the peak of its usage being in the mid to late 2000s. Websites such as Twitter and Facebook used to offer RSS feeds, but these have gone the way of the dodo. This is really the biggest issue, most websites do not offer RSS. Most major websites and social media does not offer. Sure, there are a few work arounds, for example some privacy centric front ends offer RSS feeds and there are some services that allow you to create RSS feeds from any website, but hardly compare to proper support. This mostly has to do with RSS removing the user from the website. Instead of visiting a website with invasive trackers and ads, the user gets to bypass all that and read just the content. This isn’t profitable for websites, so why would they bother? Its tragic, but the truth.

Still, I highly encourage you to give RSS a try. Who knows, you might be able to consolidate a lot more than you think. Getting everything in one convenient place is incredible. Its always such a treat to be able open app and get updates from all across the internet on all the topics I’m interested in. If you choose to make the jump (which you should), this blog has an RSS feed! Add it so you always can get updated on my articles as soon as they come out.

Pokemon Day 2023

Predictions

First things first, get the obvious out of the way. There is going to be updates/events for all the free to play games. That’s a given. I don’t play any of them, but its nice for the people that do. Undeniably, we are getting DLC for SV. There is no doubt about it in my mind. DLC for SwSh was successful, and SV had too many loose ends when it came to lore to just leave them hanging. Do I think its going to be something like Kalos DLC? No, this is GameFreak we’re talking about. Its gonna have some new area, probably a few new Pokemon as well, but it probably wont be anything special. I do think we will also hear about a patch for SV to fix some of the performance issues. I know that’s something that was mentioned a while back, but I still think its going to be too little to late. I think we’ll also see something about HOME support. That’s not something I’m personally interested in, but it would be nice to see that sooner than later.

I also think we might see a new spin off game that’s going to release within the year. What its going to be, I can’t say. Initially I was going to rule out any possibility of Mystery Dungeon, thinking that it would be too good to actually have a new game or even just a remake. But, there is some evidence that points to it actually being likely. On the Pokemon Day site there was a copyright for Spike Chunsoft, the creators of the Mystery Dungeon games. It was a bit buried and I believe its now removed at the time of me writing these predictions, but its odd that it would be on there in the first place. I have really only played the first two games, and I know the later ones are disappointing, so I’m not sure how to feel about it. I don’t think they would do another remake considering the last game was one, but I also fear that a new entry might not be the best given that the later entries aren’t that good. But then again, PLA was good enough to (slightly) restore my faith in the main line series, so anything is possible.

Another thing people want to see are re-releases of the GB and GBA games on the newly released Switch Online service for them. I don’t think this is a likely outcome. Pokemon is a cash cow, and the main line series is no exception at all. Putting it on NSO is likely a waste. We’ve seen other companies release compilations of their games instead of getting them put on NSO. I can only imagine this is because it would be more profitable instead of going the route of NSO. So why would GameFreak not take this route as well? The only reason I can think is because they’re too lazy to program their own independent app, as seeing they couldn’t program a finished game as of late. It just doesn’t seem likely to happen to me. But honestly, if it does happen, its probably just going to be Kanto games knowing GameFreak.

I think the last thing to touch on is Pokemon Sleep and Detective Pikachu 2. Both of these games share the fate of being announced and then never really being talked about again. Seeing either of these would be a nice surprise. Its hard to really say anything about either of these as we know nothing about these. I think it would be funny to see Pokemon Sleep just given its premise. How would a game about sleeping work? I’m not sure, but I would like to see.

I think that’s about it from what I expect to see. The presentation is expected to be about 20 mins, so there really isn’t a lot of time for new things. I expect about half of it to be updates and such for mobile games. The relatively unimportant things in my mind. After that, I think its going to cover some sort of spin off game. Mystery Dungeon or not, this is probably the thing I’m most excited to see. To end it off, its likely going a DLC teaser and they’ll talk about that for a moment before ending the stream.

Time to wait and see what the 27th has in store for us.

Reaction

Well, that was one of the presentations of all time. There was a lot of non-main line news presented. Pokemon World Championships, some Pokemon TCG announcement, a Netflix original show, and the typical mobile game updates. Not anything I’m personally interested in, but it was still nice to see. After those, Pokemon Sleep got its time in the spotlight. This is going to be the best Pokemon game since the one about brushing teeth. Its going to be amazing. I cannot wait to enjoy the engaging game play of getting a good nights sleep. I’m just shaking with anticipation. Jokes aside, it looks like a cute little game that might encourage players to get more and better quality sleep, something I think most people can use. I might give it a try when it comes out.

Now, the exciting news. Scarlet and Violet. To me, the most interesting thing was the introduction of the new Paradox Pokemon. If you didn’t know, in the base game there was a bit of a teaser for some future Pokemon. In the Scarlet or Violet book, there was what seemed to be a fusion of the Legendary Beasts or Swords of Justice respectively. We actually got to see these revealed as Walking Wake and Iron Leaves in the trailer. Notably, they had different designs than what was shown in the games. They were much more closely related to Suicune and Virizion than the groups they came from. They both have quite interesting designs, but I always find the future Pokemon to be much more boring as they simply end up looking like robot clones instead of some more interesting ancestor. Sadly, their role is limited to a limited time raid battle. In all honesty, its a bit disappointing to see. Just seeing these Pokemon that were highly speculated until now just shoved into raid battles is just disappointing. Instead of possibly doing something interesting story wise (even in the DLC) with the two would have been much more exciting to see. I’m still glad they didn’t just do nothing with them the entire time.

As expected, DLC is coming to SV. Its coming in two parts, with the overall title of “The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero”. I think its a good premise, Area Zero left a lot of lore related questions, so getting to explore it and go more in depth is nice. But there are some odd choices involved. The first part is titled “The Teal Mask” and is heavily influenced by Japanese festivals and folklore. Four new Pokemon were revealed along side this part, and they fit the theme. This first part I fail to see how it has any relation to Area Zero, especially when both DLC parts are framed as field trips abroad. I don’t know how leaving the region will review secrets relating to the region, but basically all we got was a teaser for the DLC. The second part is more interesting. It was a lot more vague than than the teaser for the first part, with only some structure in the middle of the ocean being shown along side some other characters. However, I think this part will do a lot of heavy lifting because of the new Pokemon it revealed, Terapagos. Looking back at the Scarlet/Violet book, there was some Pokemon teased to be the origin of the terastalization phenomenon. Terapagos really matches up with this, so it might be really interesting to see how this links mack to the base game. I think the last bit worth mentioning is that in the key art for both parts, there are new reoccurring characters. Again, we know nothing, but its interesting to see that they are in both parts. Overall, just an interesting but expected DLC teaser.

And thats about everything that was in the presentation. Of course, I didn’t cover everything, but really the main focus was a teaser for the DLC. It met my (low) expectations, but I think the most interesting thing was the lack of any spin off game. A spin off on the Switch that is. I know there was a lot of expectations surrounding a new Mystery Dungeon game, but I always kinda had a feeling it wouldn’t show. The upcoming year just feels a bit empty for Pokemon considering its pretty much just the DLC that is releasing. And this is considering the incredible pace games have been releasing the past few years. But its probably a good thing, considering the half baked states the games have been releasing in. Speaking of, an update was released today to add in the new Paradox Pokemon that also happened to add a lot of fixes to SV. It probably doesn’t completely fix the sorry state the games were released in, but improvement is improvement, and hopefully they can continue to improve the game state when the DLC releases later this year.

Basically it was just a mid presentation with nothing horribly unexpected announced.

Love, Encryption, and Other Delusions

What are some of the most important things in this world? Your belongings? Your pets? Your friends? Your loved ones? What if I told you it was none of those, what if it was your data? The stuff on your phone or your computer, yeah, that stuff. That’s (probably not) the most important thing, but it still holds a lot of value. People can use it to know all sorts of stuff about you, and you give out a lot of it, a lot more than you think. So what if we put a stop to that by encrypting it? Making it so only those with the keys can see it. Well, lets discuss the how, and see if its worth it or not.

VPN

I think when people think about encryption, one of the first things to come to mind are VPNs. The ads always say that your internet traffic is encrypted and secure, that you can browse safely and not have to worry about your data, that no one can spy on you, but this assertation is incorrect. To better understand, its best to first understand how the internet works. Think of it like the postal network. Whenever you want to see a website, you first have to send a letter to the server asking for a copy of it. So you write your message asking for it, put it in an envelope, write the address of the server and your return address, and send it off. This letter makes it way through the internet and arrives at the server. The server opens it, reads your message, writes a letter for you with the website you wanted on it, puts it in an envelope, writes the addresses, and sends it back to you. So where do VPNs come into play? It acts as a middleman. You want to visit a website, so you write a letter to the VPN, who then writes another letter to the server. The server sends the letter to the VPN, who then sends that back to you.

So what does this accomplish? Well, a whole lot of nothing. The VPN does not offer any special encryption or anything, your letter is already in an envelope, people cannot see inside it. That is what the https before the website means, its a secure connection. No one can intercept and read the message inside the envelope, regardless of if you send it to the server or the VPN. Most modern websites have that https, but be warned, some older or more insecure websites might have just http, which in that case your message can be intercepted and read, so be careful to not send sensitive data to http websites. Then, what does the VPN really do? It masks who you are to the server, and it makes it so the postal worker delivering your mail doesn’t know what server you want websites from. That is it. If you use the VPN, the server only sees the VPN on the return address, not you. If you use the VPN, when you get letters the return address will be the VPN, not the server. This is not to say VPNs do not have practical uses, its just that they don’t really offer many benefits to most people. Unless you’re trying to get around some web barriers or watch streaming services in another country, its not worth it.

Messaging

To me, this is where things get exciting. Well, as exciting as talking about data security can be. This is probably the thing people use their computers or phones for the most in their life. Messaging. Communication. Exchanging thoughts and ideas with other people. Everyone does it, so where does encryption come in? Lets revise the postal service example from before. Lets say I want to send a message to my friend. I write it, put it in my mailbox, it gets taken a central post office, and then delivered to my friend. Simple, right? Same thing in reverse for when I get a message from my friend. They write the message, it gets taken to a central post office, then it ends up in my mail box. But we have to think about how we write these messages and how that relates to encryption. This is where it starts to differ. Normally, my friend and I exchange postcards, so we write out messages on those. The issue? Everyone at the post office can see my message. There isn’t anything protecting it from prying eyes. This is encrypted messaging. Encrypted messaging would be putting my message into an envelope before sending it off. The postal workers cannot see through the envelope, only my friend can open it and see whats inside.

To remove this from the analogy a bit, the post office is going to be whatever messaging service you use. Discord, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Email, whatever. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is if the service has end-to-end encryption (E2EE) or not. This is the key point, the putting the message in the envelope. With out it, the server sees your message before passing it along to your friend. Who knows what the server is doing with that. It could be reading it, keeping a copy of it, maybe even sharing it with other people you don’t want seeing it. I don’t know about you, but I personally don’t like the idea of my messages being seen by people who are not the recipients of them.

So, it seems like using E2EE messaging services for private discussion is good, right? Well, almost. Switching to an E2EE service just for private discussion is probably not the best idea. If someone is monitoring your mailbox and they see a bunch of postcards with your friends, but then suddenly it switches to envelopes, what does that tell them? Clearly, this is abnormal behavior. Normally you are fine with the risk of people reading your message, so why change now? You must have something to hide. Its suspicious. So just completely switch over to E2EE services, right? If only it were that easy. I touched on this a bit in my post on messaging services, but there’s a little something called the network effect. As more people use a network or service, it becomes more appealing for people to join, but the inverse is true as well. If there are few people on a service, people won’t want to join. And this is a major issue with E2EE messaging services. They aren’t very big or popular. Think to yourself now, are you or any of your friends on E2EE messaging services? Are any of their friends on them? It may be easy to make an account and start using it, but what about your friends? Why would they switch over when all their friends and most people they meet are already on the one they use? This is the fundamental issue, but we need to help others to understand why its important to switch, or to at least try.

But lets say you get over that hurdle, is there anything else to worry about? Of course there is, I’m writing this paragraph. Your letter, even if its in an envelope, still needs the address on it. This information, the metadata, can still be used to paint a picture of whats going on, especially if the other person is less secure about data. Knowing who and when a message was sent is a lot of information, even if it doesn’t seem like much. It can be used with other sources of information to paint a bigger pictures about what you’re up to. So what can be done about it? Not much. You can either trust a service like Signal to not keep that information around. They seem to make it pretty clear they don’t keep much of any informative data on their users. But what if you don’t trust Signal, what about something you can host for yourself, like XMPP or Matrix? Matrix is a complete mess when it comes to its federation. Copies of messages are sent to every recipient’s home server in a chat, so good luck trying to scrub them from other servers. XMPP doesn’t do this (citation needed), but XMPP has other issues. It feels like I’m saying the same things as the messaging services blog post, but they all have different quirks and all kinda suck. Regardless, evaluate your threat model to see if you even need to care about this kind of stuff, most people probably don’t.

Disks

Why do you lock your house? To keep unwanted people from getting in and going through your stuff. So why don’t you encrypt your hard drive? Your data may be behind a password while using your computer, but anyone can power it off an connect it to their own and use it like a massive USB stick. Encrypting it prevents that, but its not the end all to protecting your data. After all, if you let someone into your house, they still have access to everything in the house. That’s why encrypting individual files is also important. Its like putting things in a safe. Even if it gets stolen, the thief has to crack it open to see whats inside. Really, most of this stuff is not as important for protecting your data unless you’re in some situation where you are being physically targeted. For most people this might be a thief stealing a laptop, but targeted attacks are still possible.

Even if its mostly useless, you still should. Why? After all, its kinda suspicious to hide things when everyone else isn’t. But to ignore privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don’t need free speech because you have nothing to say. It doesn’t matter if you want to encrypt your data in case of petty theft or if you have actual secrets to hide, its still worth taking the steps to ensure some privacy to make sure you have control over your life.

Does it Matter?

Yes. These days, your data is the most important thing about you. Our behaviors and activities are described with the data we create, and this data can end up in the wrong hands. People can discover so much about you from it. Your messages, what you do, where you browse on the internet. All this paints a picture of who you are. Even your deepest secrets can be exposed. And this can be used against you. Your once private secrets can be exposed, but more applicable are your habits and likes being used to show you aggressively personalized ads. Ever wonder why it seems like the ads can read your thoughts? Its because they know everything about you. Either way, this information is being weaponized against you, like it or not. The question is, will you take action?

Games I Played in 2022

A short-ish review of every (new) game I played 2022. New as in new to me, not as in released in 2022. This project was mostly an excuse for me to get through my backlog of games, and I’d say it worked to an extent. I’ve organized the games in the order than I played through them.

Metroid Dread (2021)

Metroid Dread is most definitely a Metroid game. If you didn’t know, there were rumors around the DS era of a new Metroid game titled “Dread”. A sequel to Metroid Fusion and the possible end of the story line the games had running. While we wouldn’t see another 2D Metroid until late in the 3DS, we did get to see what Dread was. And personally, I think it was a Metroid game.

Mechanically, Dread plays amazing. Samus has never been more agile, and with the new more stealthy sections the move set is appreciated. Fighting enemies, maneuvering, and getting power ups is great as expected. But my criticism lies in other aspects of the game. I feel like exploration is too linear. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by Super Metroid and Hollow Knight, but the game feels constricted. Its not like I gain some new power up that allows me to go explore and forge my own path forward, but rather it feels I get a new power up to open a door at some previously known dead end. While there’s nothing too bad about this, I just can’t help but feel a little disappointed when more modern metroidvanias have much more freedom in them. It also doesn’t help that the game encourages heavy usage of the map to figure out where to go next. The map has a feature that highlights all doors of a certain type, as well as indicating which ones have been opened and which ones haven’t. This trivializes most of the exploration as its no longer “explore to find the next power up” but rather “heres where to go to progress”.

But don’t let my complaints fool you, everything else is wonderful. The combat, the story, the environments, its all amazing. It lives up to its Metroid name. Super Metroid is still a bit better though.

8/10

Pokemon Legends Arceus (2022)

Pokemon Legends Arceus (PLA) was a bit of a surprise. Its a massive departure from the core series. Instead of focusing on battling, it goes back to the series roots of “Gotta Catch ‘em All”. But PLA is much more streamlined than its complementarities. It keeps a fast pace by allowing capture outside of battle, which greatly helps as catching Pokemon makes up a majority of the game. You’ll be spending more time running around throwing balls than actually fighting most of the time. Luckily, this game play loop is pretty solid, for the first while anyway. While fun and engaging, after the first few areas in the game it becomes a bit stale, especially if you have been doing your best to fill out the Pokedex as you go. Sadly, the game doesn’t do much of anything to add anything interesting. You only get more powerful balls as you progress, none of which fundamentally change how things are captured.

For the battles the game actually has, its a bit hard to say if it was difficult or not. I’m gonna go ahead and say I spent a bit more time than intended catching Pokemon as my team was over leveled for most if not all of the battles in the game. The battle system did see some minor changes, but seeing as the battle system is pretty much single player only and not returning, it feels like a waste of effort. Sure, it was unbalanced at times, but it was pretty enjoyable compared to standard turn based battles. I would love to see it make a return in a future game with some refinement. Catching them all was a fun enough task that I saw myself doing it for all the Pokemon. While at the end it felt a bit more grindy with the final reward being a bit lame, it was still fun to accomplish.

PLA has all the jank modern Pokemon games are known for. Its fun, thats for sure. But if you don’t pace yourself it can begin to feel like more of a slog, especially if you’re trying to catch them all.

7/10

Fire Emblem: Three Houses (2019)

I’ve never really played a Fire Emblem game. Only a bit of Echos, so I really came into this with no expectations. The game play did not disappoint, but the story totally did. Three Houses contains branching paths, a mechanic that gives some great replay potential, except for the fact of how its handled. The choice you make at the very start determines what path you end up on, but the paths don’t actually split until half way through the game. This makes it incredibly tedious to replay to get the other paths. And the worst part is, some paths have much better stories than others, or so I’ve been told. I played through Silver Snow, and after seeing the ending it was incredibly disappointing. The story had me beating the bad guys, then the secret real bad guys, then throwing in a random twist villain at the end. This left a bad taste in my mouth and combining that with the need to replay half the game just to see a different ending had me stop playing there.

Perhaps if the game was a bit easier to see the other endings, I totally would just for the game play alone. Fire Emblem is a strategy game, and Three Houses brings the strategy. Planning ahead and launching attacks is incredibly satisfying, especially considering the customization allowed. Three Houses has a school phase where you can effectively set up your units to become whatever type you want. This allows for tons of different strategies to be used, making all the battles much more fun. Want to command a legion of archers? You can do it. Fly over all your enemies? You bet. Of course, some units are much better than others, and with the weapon triangle not really existing, its pretty easy to use whatever units you desire.

Three Houses is a great game, but it locks most of its story behind three additional full replays. Maybe consider a more concise Fire Emblem.

7/10

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition (2020)

A remastering of the beloved Wii RPG, Xenoblade Chronicles does not disappoint. Everything about this game is amazing, the graphics, the game play, the story. Everything. The graphics are much improved from the Wii’s meager 480p. While it does take a more anime inspired art style, the game still has many incredible vistas to explore. The game play more so focuses on managing when and where to unleash powerful attacks while basic attacks are done automatically. The stagey involved with carefully selecting party members and executing powerful combos is incredibly rewarding. The story is a real thriller as well. It makes sure you get invested with the characters and makes you want to see how everything ends up. All this on top of the streamlining the Definitive Edition adds truly makes it the definitive edition.

Definitive Edition also contains Future Connected, a short post game journey. Originally, it was cut content from the Wii game that was recreated and re-imagined for the Definitive Edition. While it stands on its own from the core game, it also falls a bit flat when compared to the core game. The story is there, but is no where close to the quality of the main one. Combat has some minor tweaks, and the journey isn’t as grand, but it still is nice supplemental material. Simply put, its a nice bonus for the, but nowhere near necessary to enjoy the core game.

Xenoblade Chronicles was one of the best RPGs of its era. The Definitive Edition lives up to its name and makes it the best version to play of an already incredible RPG.

9/10

Half Life (1998)

Half Life is the grandfather to all modern shooters. Simply put, it pioneered storytelling, game play, and technical aspects of the genre. Its historical importance cannot be understated, but how does it hold up in this modern age? Surprisingly well. Graphically, its from 1998. Very basic and low poly models. But once you look past that, its a fast paced and dynamic shooter. With a variety of weapons at your disposal, the game tests your knowledge by throwing different situations that test your skills with each weapon. Movement and shooting is fast and fluid, keeping you always moving forward. But the game takes its time to flesh things out and keep you interested in more than just the shooting. The story is near seamlessly integrated into the game play, with no cut scenes and tons of environmental storytelling to keep you engaged. However, the back half of the game is where things start to fall apart. The pace of the game starts to slow and resources become limited. While it makes sense contextually, to me it completely halted the momentum the game had.

Half Life is worth playing just for the historical significance alone. Aside from that, it still holds it own twenty plus years later.

7/10

Terraria: Calamity Mod (2016)

If you read the title you might be able to tell this isn’t quite a game, and yes, you would be right. Calamity Mod is a modification to Terraria. And it is one heck of a modification. With over 6 years of development, this mod creates a whole new experience for Terraria. While still keeping the fundamentals of “Dig, Fight, Build”, Calamity adds a ton of new content and changes existing content. New bosses, new weapons, a new class, new biomes, new mechanics, and tons of new game play after the base game stops. The most interesting new mechanic is the rage and adrenaline. These are gauges that build up during fights and when filled allow for a temporary increase in damage. Rage builds during any fight, and builds faster when closer to enemies. Adrenaline only builds during boss fights, but the meter goes to zero if you get hit. These two mechanics create a really good risk-reward system that encourages risky play styles.

My personal experience was on “Death Mode”, a mode with AI changes to bosses that increases the difficulty. I will say there are some balance issues, as I found most bosses could be defeated in a handful of tries, even on the hardest difficulty (As of version 2.0.1). A lot of the boss AI wasn’t much of a challenge, they were easily defeated by going around in circles. What makes this even more disappointing is the boss fights where this wasn’t an issue. Sadly, most of those come late into the game, so your first impressions are not strong. It also doesn’t help that weapon balance is questionable at best. Some weapons where leagues better than any counterparts for large chunks of the game. This is a big shame considering the amount of new and interesting weapons added.

Calamity Mod adds a ton of content with inconsistent quality. Despite all this, its still an enjoyable adventure start to finish, largely in part of it building off an already fantastic game. Also, it has an amazing sound track with some real bangers.

7/10

Disco Elysium (2019)

For a long time, my friends would constantly reference this game and tell me to play it. I finally cracked, and were they right. Disco Elysium is a crime fighting RPG with a heavy emphasis on the RP of the RPG acronym. That is to say, the entire game centers around your personal choices to the story and characters you interact with. You don’t level up traditional stats like health or attack, you level things like Logic, Empathy, Endurance, Drama, and much more. For example, a response may benefit from having a higher level of Drama to get a more favorable result. Some dialogue may not even occur if some skills are too low. You really get the chance to build your character to be a critical thinker, a smooth talker, or even someone who gets through by brute force. It offers a level of impactful role playing I haven’t seen in any other RPG.

I find it a bit difficult to talk about the story of Disco Elysium, as that is 99.99% of the game. What starts out as a solving a simple murder case as a hungover cop turns into one of the most thrilling and intriguing mystery stories with some incredible world building that makes the world feel alive. The characters feel like living, real people, despite being represented by a static portrait most of the time. Your dialogue choices have meaningful impacts on both standard conversations and the progression of the plot. Even when you “fail” a dialogue option, its written in such a way that doesn’t even make it feel like a failure. This game is truly something that needs to be experienced first hand.

As much as I sing the praises of this game, I don’t recommend buying it. There were some issues with the studio behind the game that resulted in the firing of the entire creative team, among other things. By buying the game now, you are not supporting the hard working creative team that created this wonderful game, but I’m sure there are other ways of acquiring a copy without giving money to ZA/UM.

9/10

Pokemon Violet (2022)

I already went more in-depth with this game in another post, so I’ll keep this brief. Pokemon Violet is just like most modern Pokemon games, one step forward, and yet several steps backwards. The game gives a great attempt at having an open world, yet released as a buggy mess that’s missing several established features. The biggest issue is how empty the world is. No quests, no interesting areas, nothing special. Just the story to follow and the Pokemon placed in the world. Still, I had fun playing the game, despite all the issues I had with it.

6/10

A Rant About Pokemon Scarlet and Violet

With the release of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet (SV), the ninth generation of Pokemon is upon us. I’ve been spending more time than I probably should be playing these games, and I have thoughts on them. Many thoughts. These games are somehow the best and worse games that have been published in this series since 2012. Sadly, 10 years of mistakes and missteps wasn’t enough to make something to dethrone any of the actually good titles.

NOTE: Most of my playtime was played on version 1.0.0 of Pokemon Violet. Additionally, full game spoilers are present.

Gameplay

SV are the first true open world Pokemon games. We did see an attempt earlier this year with Pokemon Legends Arceus (PLA), but that wasn’t true open world. Instead of being bound to limited areas, SV gives the player complete freedom to explore the world and tackle its challenges in whatever order they please, after a tutorial that overstays its welcome by 2 hours. Seriously, the open hours of the game is just mashing the A button while sitting through text that really doesn’t matter too much. It only has to be done once, but I still don’t understand why it was so lengthy. Not a whole ton happens aside from a few character introductions, but those can really be ignored because the open world segment sees you interacting with them enough to figure it out.

Speaking of, the open world. It really is an open world. You can just go anywhere without restriction. I spent a good chunk of time just running around, catching Pokemon, and building up a team I wanted to use. Except for a handful of Pokemon locked behind story progression, you can catch and obtain a large majority of the Pokedex without a single badge. This is nice, the only thing between you and the Pokemon you want to use is the run there and the skill to capture it. However, there is a slight caveat, the lack of level scaling. Some may like this, as it should reward players who go out of their way to capture powerful Pokemon, some may not like this as they don’t want to wonder somewhere they shouldn’t be and get curb stomped. Personally, its fine having each area have Pokemon at a fixed level that doesn’t change in proportionally to your progress in the game. I don’t want to constantly be dealing with level 60-70 Pokemon while I’m in the post game. But where they went wrong was with obedience. How its always worked is that Pokemon you caught would obey you irrespective of level. It was not tied to the amount of gym badges you have. It only used to matter for traded Pokemon. They changed that in SV. So now gym badges determine if wild Pokemon will obey you or not. This means you can’t “cheese” the game by going and catching a wild Pokemon from one of the later areas, which I think is just insane. The player should be rewarded for going out of their way and attempting to do something like that, not left wasting their time. This sucks especially because some Pokemon are only found in the later areas, so if you wanted to grab them for your play though, your best option is to breed an egg and raise it from scratch (which is kinda a pain, especially with the reworked breeding mechanics).

But the level scaling issue doesn’t end there. After the tutorial the game lets you run free and gives you the location of 18 different things to do in order to see the conclusion to the story. Each one effectively acts as some sort of difficult battle, I’ll just refer to them generically as gyms despite there being distinctions between them being parts of different storylines, but thats neither here nor there. These gyms also do not scale with game progression. So each gym has a fixed level regardless of progression. If your a purist and insist on following level order, your going to be running all around the map. If you tackle them in some generally intended order, you’ll have a decently paced experience. If you were like me and tackled them in an almost backwards order, you’ll have a few incredibly hard fights, and way too many easy fights. While I do think having it like this allows for some really interesting and challenging battles, going out of order just leaves a lot of uninteresting gyms that feel more like a chore to complete. Having level scaling would ensure a more engaging level of difficulty throughout the adventure.

Aside from the Pokemon and the gyms, what else does the open world have to offer? Not much. The main reward for exploration is just random items. Not even exaggerating. Maybe it will save you a few bucks at the shops, but after a certain point is just becomes worthless to go out of your way to pick up items. The world itself is a bit, lacking too. Between towns, its just Pokemon and more random items. I get that this is a Pokemon game, the focus should be on the Pokemon, but I feel like there isn’t any reason to stray too far off the main paths. Except for one thing, the raid dens. Somewhat returning from Sword and Shield are the raid battles, except they’re played out a bit differently. Its a 4 v 1 against a buffed tera Pokemon. They drop some nice rewards, especially at the higher levels, and offer a nice chance to get some Pokemon with an unusual tera type. They’re fun enough, except for trying to solo the more difficult ones as they become a gamble if you’re AI partners behave or not. But for a majority of the game, they can be pretty much ignored.

But the terastallization gimmick, how is it? For the average player, a bit underwhelming, but it has a ton of complexity and strategy behind it. To put it simply, every Pokemon has an additional tera type. Once during battle, a Pokemon can terastallize and switch its typing to its tera type. In doing so, its new typing will be used when receiving damage, however, when attacking both the base typing and the tera typing are used. What this means is for defense, the typing changes completely. For offense, moves can get a x2 same type attack bonus instead of x1.5 if the tera type is the same as one of the normal typing and the move’s type. What this comes down to is that Pokemon can either get a big offensive bonus, or they can switch typing to cover for a weakness they traditionally have. Its a really interesting mechanic when used properly, however the appearance of “funny hat” and it generally not being well used during the game makes it incredibly underwhelming. Its basic yet incredibly complex at the same time, making it interesting for online play but worthless for solo.

Sandwiches are also a big thing in SV. In the game you can make sandwiches that give various buffs in game. Higher encounter rates, more drops from raids, quicker egg hatching, and even higher shiny rates. My favorite part of it is that you can put meat in them, many types in fact. Where is this meat coming from? What really happened to that Lechonk I caught and “released”? It just feels weird after Pokemon as a whole has avoided meat (and food to an extent) for a long time. The sandwich making is quite an interesting mechanic, and even then building processes of making the sandwich itself is interesting. Its just a shame that the the mechanic is poorly explained. The most the game tells you is that you can make sandwiches and gives you some recipes, most of which aren’t exactly useful. Its up to the player to figure things out, but the game doesn’t explain how ingredients interact with each other so unless you look things up online, your not going to make anything of use.

The thing is, despite all of these changes, SV fails to improve or even iterate upon the groundwork PLA set up. In fact, it even lacks some features that PLA “established”. And the thing is, a lot of it lies in the little things. Most apparent is the visuals. SV runs terribly and looks horrible. It’s hard to express in a written form these visual aspects, but while PLA has believable terrain and detailed environments, SV has obvious tiled textures, major pop in, and animations slowing to a crawl if they take place over a foot away from the player. There is this one town with a “windmill” in SV, except 99% of the time the windmill lacks any sort of smooth animation and just visibly jumps between parts of its animations. Maybe this would be tolerable at best if the game kept a consistent frame rate, but no, SV can’t even manage that in the best of scenarios. Most of the time the game cannot even keep 30 fps, and in some areas you’ll approach the single digits in fps. PLA rarely had these fps issues, so what happened between then and now to get this?

There is a ton more minor downgrades from PLA. Pokemon are back to only evolving at level up, the lock on feature in SV is useless, the only indication of shiny Pokemon is the change in color (no audio cue or animation is present in the over world), the game just lags after most actions you preform in game, the complete lack of interiors to buildings, removal of most player customization, and probably a few more things I’m forgetting about. It just bizarre that these good and well received features are introduced, and then get taken away in the next game. I cannot wrap my mind around how they got so much right with PLA, and then fail to reuse that in SV.

But I think the worst removal wasn’t something that was a downgrade from PLA, it was something that was core to main series Pokemon games. Something that has been in the games since 2000. The Battle Tower. While not the beloved Battle Frontier, nearly every Pokemon game has had some sort of endless battle challenge accessible in some form or another. SV finally killed it off. The post game has three things to do: shiny hunt, tera raids, and online battles. Now while shiny hunting and online battles have immense longevity, its still disappointing to see the tower go. This is the way I see it: shiny odds in this game are a joke, combine that with the questionable choices when displaying shiny Pokemon in the over world makes it a whole lot less exciting to do in this game than any other. Online battles are locked behind a reoccurring monthly paywall, and tera raids are boring, repetitive, and fail to provide interesting or compelling rewards in the postgame. I’ve spent hundreds of hours playing previous Pokemon games, and yet SV fails to give many compelling reasons to continue playing past completion of the main story. Sure, theres a quick side quest to do post game, and you can complete the Pokedex along side the other things I mentioned, but thats it. For an open world game, it sure is empty.

Story

Story has really never been the primary reason behind playing a Pokemon game. Its not something I really expect to be explicitly good anymore. But that doesn’t give it a free pass to be bad. And honestly, not all of it is bad, but that doesn’t stop most of it from being bad. The game starts out with you and your mom moving into the Paldea region, only for her to turn around and ship you off to a boarding school. A bit weird considering your mom just seems to sit at home and do nothing and your dad seemingly doesn’t exist, so moving to a new country just to send your kid to a boarding school there seems a bit extra, but there are a variety of reasons a person could want to move and its not like the parents ever get characterization in Pokemon games, so whatever. Right, you meet the director, get a Pokemon, and meet your neighbor who is already considered to be a champion of the region. Thats right, Nemona, one of the first people you meet, one of your rivals, has already collected all the badges and beat the elite four and champion. Good for her, but she still picks the starter that is weak to yours. She ends up helping you find your way to school, and along the way you stumble across a never before seen Pokemon that you quickly become the owner of because another student, Arven, didn’t want to deal with it anymore. But its fine, this Pokemon that no one has ever seen before and has been shown to easily fight with groups of Pokemon is suddenly too weak to do anything other than be your personal bicycle. You meet the last important classmate, Penny, right outside school where she is being harassed by some Team Star members. A few days into the semester, the director comes back out and decides the school is done being a proper school and just tells the students to go run free across the country and find some sort of personal treasure. Why? Who knows! Its not his problem.

This is where the game opens up and becomes open world. A questionable school program has 12 year olds running all across the country doing who knows what while magical animals actively run up and attack them. Hope they have a Pokemon that can defend them. Aside from the questionable ethics of this school, the player is presented with three story lines to pursue: Victory Road, Path of Legends, and Starfall Street. Victory Road is the simplest of the three, its your typical collect 8 badges and defeat the Pokemon league. There really isn’t anything special to comment on here, except for Nemona popping in every now and then. Sometimes she’ll battle you, and other times its just a short exchange of words. Nemona is a very one dimensional character. All she cares about is battling. She wants to see you become a worthy rival, and she makes sure to challenge you with a team that (should) match your skill level. As I said previously, level scaling doesn’t exist in these games, so her team just depends on how many gym badges you have at that point. But throughout this path and even beyond, this is who she is. She doesn’t change at all. The gyms themselves don’t have many interesting challenges before them. At best a few battles, at worst you get whatever the psychic gym was. Seriously, that gym challenge was horrible. The league isn’t anything abnormal either. 4 strong trainers in order then the champion. You meet all of them along the way, but most of them don’t really stand out too much. They also somehow employ a literal toddler in the Pokemon League, so I guess child labor laws don’t exist in this world.

Nemona provides a, sadly typical, experience as a rival. She’s one dimensional, bland, and disposable. However, there are still two other paths to explore that focus on more, interesting, characters. Meet Starfall Street, the path where you are faced with taking on Team Star. Initially prompted by a mysterious Cassiopeia hacking into your phone, you are tasked with taking down the various Team Star bases around the region. Joined by Clive, a “student” who definitely isn’t the director, you take down these bases. These bases involve an auto battle gauntlet that you almost have to intentionally fail that leads into a battle with the boss for the base. The “final” boss Eri actually puts up a really difficult fight, mostly because her ace Pokemon has stamina which made my pure physical team fall flat, but poor team building aside, after the defeat of each boss, you get a bit of exposition on the Team Star lore. Basically, there was a pivotal moment 18 months ago where the founding members of Team Star got together to try to stop stop their bullies, a noble cause. There wasn’t any conflict as all the bullies ended up dropping out first, but the entire school staff ended up quitting because they failed to protect the students from these bullies. A wild decision, but not as wild as deciding to completely destroy the records of the bullies that dropped out, which also included any mention of other students who got bullied. So Team Star accomplished their mission of stopping bullies and has no reason to continue existing, right? No, why would they? The five bosses of Team Star weren’t the mastermind, it was actually Cassiopeia, who they never had even met, but they couldn’t just disband Team Star, that would go against their code of honor, despite Team Star not having any reason to exist. So Team Star continued to exist, and the people in it were so committed to the bit they decided it was more important to stay holed up in their bases that truancy was completely OK. There are just so many things wrong with their decision making process, but things only get worse once you realize that it wasn’t over after beating the five bases, as now Cassiopeia wants to fight. After Clive, who now reveals himself to be the director, fights you to make sure your ready to face Cassiopeia, you fight Cassiopeia who reveals herself to be Penny, the girl who was probably being bullied by Team Star, an anti-bulling organization, at the start of the game. Once you beat her, there is this reunion with all the Team Star bosses and its this somewhat heartfelt moment where Penny finally has some friends or something, its not terribly interesting. But the important bit is that the school director has all these trouble makers rounded up and in one spot. Remember, these kids haven’t been attending classes for 18 months and have effectively been running a group of delinquents. The director thinks about it and decides that they’re actually doing a net good for the school and should continue doing what they’re doing because its enriching to the students that challenge them, or something like that. But the uniform modifications are unforgivable and demand only a few hours of community service. These students have been acknowledged by both students and staff as troublemakers, but the director just misjudged them and decided that they should just keep on keeping on. Penny basically gets in no trouble, except something has been weighing on her. You see, after each base, you get some reward, which typically was in the form of LP, which is some new electronic currency that can be used in place of the normal one for most purchases. But Penny got this LP by hacking the Pokemon League. She didn’t break school rules no, she stole from one of the biggest organizations in the country. Her punishment? Nothing, she doesn’t get punished for her cybercrimes. She gets rewarded. The Pokemon League hires her for her technical skills. I could see that maybe if she responsibly disclosed whatever exploit she used to the organization, but no, she used and abused that exploit and would have gotten away with it as well, and its a good thing she didn’t because it got her a full time job.

That leaves the final path, the Path of Legends. This one sees you off with Arven on his quest to make the best sandwich possible. Or at least, that what it seems. While the story line has you running around defeating the guardians of herba mystica, a sought after rare herb, we quickly come to find out why Arven wanted them so badly. Arven wanted to feed them to his beloved Pokemon because it had sustained grave injuries and had become unable to walk, speak, or even open its eyes. The herba do end up helping as his Pokemon ends up making a full recovery. I think its really touching that Arven opened up about himself, especially considering what hes been though. You learn that hes so protective of this Pokemon because it was a gift from his father (I played Violet, if its Scalet its mother). Its wild to see a character with such complex familal relations and complex emotions on the subject. His father, Professor Turo, cared more about his research and Miraidon, than his own son. It makes sense why Arven would give it away, as he doesn’t want the Pokemon that replaced him in his father’s eyes. He wants to spend time with his father, not the thing that replaced him. He grew close to his Pokemon when his parents weren’t there for him, so he takes great length to save them from any danger possible. However, Miraidon also gets to enjoy the benefits from the herba and gain new powers for traversal. This pleases the professor who is keeping track of Miraidon’s recovery, and eventually he desires to see the fully recovered Miraidon in his lab in the forbidden Area Zero. Arven insists on bringing another strong trainer and someone whos good with technology along before leaving. Nemona and Penny fit the bill, so once you complete their paths you can move onto the last part of the story, The Way Home.

The last part of the story is probably the best part. It answers questions about the origins of Miraidon, we get to see Arven reunite with his father and how that impacts him, the player finally gets to explore the forbidden Area Zero, and three unlike characters finally get some interaction with eachother. The group decends into Area Zero, and Miraidon is too scared to continue outside of its Pokeball. The group is left to explore on foot as they explore a fantastical landscape. Seriously, Area Zero is a stand out portion of the game for its environment and music. Its a massive leap in quality over the rest of the game (despite remaining just as empty feeling, but thats less prevalent while running though it the first time). As the group makes their way to the lab at the bottom of the crater, they encounter various mechanical Pokemon. These only serve to add intrigue as to whats happening in the lab at the bottom of the crater. Along the way are some smaller buildings the player is forced to stop in, and they each have jorunals detailing the professor’s thoughts on their research. You find out that the professor has built a time machine and these bizzare Pokemon, including Miraidon, are from the future. You end up entering the lab on your own as the rest of the group fights off some Paradox Pokemon. In short, you find out that the professor you have been talking to is a robot with an AI based of the memories of the “living” professor. Dead professor is more accurate because he died in an accident with one of the Pokemon brought back using the time machine. He desired you, the player, to come here to assist him with disabling the time machine, as some of the future Pokemon have been escaping Area Zero and causing damage to the ecosystem of Paldea. He needed assistance it was against his programming to shut down the time machine. So battle commences and you win, the rest of the gang comes to witness the end of the robot. Arven confronts the robot, and the AI? (The game actually has a ? at the end of the name during this segment) appologizes to Arven for being absent in his childhood. Perhaps its a bit of the real professor reaching through to ammend his relationship with his son. What a nice ending.

However, this is where things go downhill. Crap hits the fan in terms what whatever they were doing with the character development because we still need some final moment with Miraidon. So some failsafe activates, the professor challenges the group with a Miraidon of his own, and he also used some technology to disable every Pokeball that wasn’t his. This time machine clearly was of great importance to the dead professor. Luckily, the Mariadon you’ve been riding on the whole game is also the professor’s and in a scripted battle you bust it out and save the day. AI professor returns to normal to give one final speech. He explicitly tells Arven “I inherited all the thoughts and wishes of the professor, and so I understand better than anyone… [that] your father truly loved you.” However, this directly contradicts a previous statement said by the same AI professor where he questions “Was keeping the time machine running truly all the professor cared about?!”. These two lines conflict with each other. The desire to have this spectacular ending with the Pokemon from the box ruins this moment between Arven and his father. And instead of having anything to do with this AI that is basically his father, he ends up using the time machine one last time to send himself into the future because its what he would have wanted. It just also happened to help in shutting down the time machine. Its just insanse that this built up moment between Arven and his father just gets completely glossed over in favor of putting the player in this heroic spot. Sure, the lore presented in this part of the story is interesting to think about, but Arven as a character gets completely screwed over. This big moment of him reuniting with his absent father and finally being able to confront him about it is supposed to be something pivotal. Instead we get something half assed that puts the player at the center of it all. Because the entire story has to revolve around the player being a special little child that saves the world. No character can get in the way of them doing that.

Finally, we get to see the end of the game. A group of friends, each with questionable growth, if any. Theres this one scene at the end where everyone explains what they end up doing. I honestly forget what Nemona ends up doing because shes such a boring and one dimensional character. Penny ends up doing something with the Pokemon Leauge to make up for her hacking, and Arven, oh boy. He ends up telling the group “Guess my role’s so obvious it goes without saying?”. He doesn’t even really get a proper ending. He has this super awkard and rushed bit with his father, and then doesn’t even get some solid resolution that the other characters have with their stories. He had so much potential to build up this interesting and engaging character arc never really seen before in a Pokemon game, but instead he was basically only used as a connection to the professor to have some excuse to drag the player into this spetacular set piece at the end of the game. I just can’t get behind how they managed to create such a high octane and engaging ending to adds almost nothing to an incredibly disapointing story. I don’t expect a masterpiece of a story from a Pokemon game, but character’s actions have zero impacts on relations and everything ends up all happy and peaceful despite what has happened between any of the characters, both explicitly and implicitly. The story is a massive blunder.

The Release

The story isn’t the only massive blunder. If you’ve read any other review, no, seen anything about the game, you know the horrible state it was released in. To say this game was shipped out unfinished would be an understatement. I touched on it a bit before, but this game has several issues. It does not hit its target frame rate, the camera clips through almost everything, pop in is a serious issue, animations hardly qualify as animations, the game lags after almost every actions, misplaced assets, and multiplayer being completely broken. This doesn’t even scratch the surface of whats wrong with this game. You wanna know what they fixed in the patches since release? Pokemon no longer sleep with their eyes open, the first 10 seconds or so of the elite four music no longer loops, and online battles no longer have the same fixed RNG seed for every battle. The rest of the game is just as terrible as day 1. The game still has a memory leak that causes it to just continue to get laggier and laggier until it just crashes. And despite this horrible, terrible, awful state, the game still sold over 10 million copies opening weekend. 10 million copies sold in 3 days. They made their money, and they’re going to make even more from merch, the TCG, and the anime. What reason do they have to fix this buggy mess? Their reputation isn’t on the line because most fans clearly don’t care about the state of the game.

Clearly this game needed more time in the oven, but why is it so much worse than PLA? Game Freak keeps things under wraps about the development process, but we know that it started sometime around after Sword and Shield’s release in 2019. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past two years or so, a pandemic happened in 2020 and basically shut everything down. This would have greatly impacted development. This isn’t the best, especially considering Pokemon likes to release new generations on a 3-4 (really 3) year cycle. Presumably, PLA was developed in a similar time span, so why did it turn out so much better? Its impossible to say anything for certain, but theres a theory floating around that PLA was suposted to have a holiday 2021 release but got pushed back due to bugs. It being a mid generation title made it easier to push back, and the gen 4 remakes where hastily put together to replace that holiday slot. Convincing theory, but who knows how much of it is true? There was overlap between the staff, especially with the leads in various groups. If these people could make a good game, why would the next game they release be significantly worse? The only reasonable excuse is a lack of time and a forced release. There clearly is passion put into these games, but the team didn’t get the time they needed to produce a finished product. The mismanagement of this project lead to the embarassing release of SV.

Conclusion

In short, the new Pokemon games fail to innovate, fail to tell an interesting story, and fail to run properly. Yet, I can’t bring myself to call these games a (complete) failure. There is something charming about this series that keeps me coming back. I know that each time I come back I’ll get burned by another bad entry to the series, yet I still enjoy the time I spend with each game. I like going on a silly little adventure, making silly little friends with the creatures that are in it, and becoming the silly little hero of the story. The game just has such a solid foundation. The gameplay, the music, the moment to moment, its all pretty fantastic, ignoring all the glitches present. I just hope that Pokemon can finally get out of this slump and make something that I actually great again, not just the next entry in a series of disapointments.

Actually wait no I change my mind this game is a failure it has an Ed Sheeran song in it.

An Overview of Messaging Services

Originally I wanted to title this post something like “Discord Sucks, but so does Everything Else”, but I came to realize that was a bit misleading in regards to what the post was about. To put it simply, the messages we exchange with people have immense value, not to just the intended recipients, but also to advertisers who can use it for personal benefit. As such, I’ve been looking into messaging services that respect their users, that potentially don’t harvest and sell user data. Discord, the service I’d consider to be my primary messaging service, doesn’t fit this. So, I’ll detail what I think about every messaging service I’ve tried and what I think of each, both in terms of what they have to offer and how they compare to Discord as a replacement.

Note that none of these are comprehensive reviews or my personal endorsements of any of the services. Its really just closer to a first impressions for each one listed. If you’re curious about any of them, do your own research and look into them before making any decisions.

Discord

Discord is probably the largest and most well known service on here. No encryption, sells user data, the desktop application constantly monitors what applications that are running, among other issues. I’ll keep it brief and just say if you have any hopes for privacy, look elsewhere. Further reading here, here, and here. Another thing I dislike about it is that it largely killed off forums. A lot of online communities have migrated to primarily focus around a Discord server instead of a forum or dedicated website. These make it incredibly difficult to find information that has been shared in communities. You can no longer just do a web search to find relevant information. And the search feature within Discord sucks, so that isn’t of much more help. Discord fails at giving the user any privacy and actively makes sharing any information in communities worse.

Guilded

This is an interesting pick for this list, given I’m looking for something a bit more, privacy focused. But I believe Guilded to be the most compelling offering compared to Discord, if you don’t care about privacy that is. Guilded is what Discord could have been had Discord not dropped the focus on gamers. It has features such as an integrated calendar system, group scheduling, dedicated media channels, even more detailed server organization, a lot of Discord Nitro’s features for free, and much more. Guilded offers a seriously compelling alternative to Discord. However, unlike most of the other services on this list, Guilded collects and sells user data. Guilded features no encryption. Guilded is by no means private. But compared to Discord, a service that already lacks that, it offers a lot of unique and compelling features.

IRC

Ah, good old Internet Relay Chat. A true classic when it comes to online chatting. Somehow still used since its release in 1988. From what I’ve seen, its mostly open source projects with some channel on Libera. There are still a major IRC servers around, but as previously stated the communities on it are mostly focused on various open source projects. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t spin up a server of your own for you and your friends, although I wouldn’t recommend it. IRC misses one major thing all modern chat services have, and that is chat history. With IRC, the only messages you see are the ones you’re online for. Heck, if you aren’t online you can’t receive private messages. If you aren’t online someone can even take your nickname (unless the server has a registration system). An IRC bouncer can help alleviate some of these problems, but most people don’t have the time or resources to have one constantly running. IRC really isn’t the best for more personal and consistent communication, but it excels at what its used for. Chat rooms without registration. There is a reason IRC is so popular for open source projects. Anyone can easily be in a chat room and participating in a moment. Just maybe not the best for other forms of communication.

XMPP

XMPP, or the eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, is the first of the alternatives I tried on this list. It is also one of my favorites of the bunch. The two main factors I like about it are that its decentralized and it supports end-to-end encryption (E2EE). So, first and foremost, the decentralized nature of the protocol means anyone can run their own messaging server. And these independent servers can communicate and exchange messages between them. No one central server has control over the entire network. But the most interesting thing about the servers relates back to XMPP’s name. XMPP is a protocol, not some set of software. Its a specification for how things should be implemented, meaning anyone can write their own server or software client for it. To me, this is key. Having the option to choose in incredible for user freedom. Users can pick the client that best suits their needs, wether it be for simplicity, privacy, added features, or simply just looks. The best part is, if it doesn’t exist you can make it. Same goes for the server software. Want something that supports larger file uploads? Or what about voice and video calling? The open source nature means there are many different implementations to choose from. I wouldn’t say XMPP does everything great, because group chats are a little cumbersome and if you’re looking for public groups to join and chat in they basically do not exist.

Matrix

If I were to describe Matrix in a few words, it would be “modern IRC with federation”. Maybe that is a bit of an obtuse observation, but its somewhat right. Matrix is structured in an interesting manner. As a user, your primary join various channels. These channels can then be organized into spaces, which just function more as a directory of channels. You can also join spaces directly, but still need to join the individual channels. The whole channel system reminds me a lot of IRC. Federation is federation, you have a ton of individual servers coming together to create the network, just like XMPP. In fact, Matrix and XMPP are similar in that regard, both on paper are just an outline for how the network should be laid out, the users implement the servers and clients to make it a reality. That means there are plenty of options for users to choose and find the one that suits them the best. But Matrix also supports other modern features such as E2EE, profile icons, nicknames, and such. I really want to like Matrix and say it could be the Discord killer, the issue is that its far from it. It isn’t structured the same, its missing a lot of features Discord has, and generally just feels a bit more obtuse. Its good, don’t get me wrong. There are tons of communities that have channels or spaces on Matrix. This platform definitely has the most potential for growth.

Revolt

Out of all the services, this is probably the most niche one on the list. Due to the nature of this service, I wanted to put it closer to Discord and Gilded, but I feel it fits better right after my discussion of Matrix. Matrix has a lot of potential when compared to something like Discord, but it ends up being its own thing. Revolt is basically a one-to-one recreation of Discord, except with some more privacy oriented features, or so they say. The project is still in development, but the lack of privacy oriented features is a bit concerning. I find it concerning that a chat service that has its key selling point is privacy lacks E2EE in its current state. The team behind it currently has no plans to add federation. I’ll let you decide if this is a good thing or not, but individuals can still run their own instances of the software, there just isn’t any crossover between them. In its current state, Revolt probably isn’t the best choice, but it has potential to become a great privacy oriented chat service in the future.

Signal

If you’ve heard of this one, its probably because Snowden has recommended it. And it really does look like a compelling option. If its good enough for the famous NSA whistle-blower, it should be good enough for you and me, right? Well, maybe. The service looks fine, its great that its open source, independently audited, and has great encryption. Signal also operates very transparently. They make it publicly known whenever a government requests user data along with their response. I just hesitate with two things, the lack of decentralization and the sign up process. Decentralization is great as it means the service no longer depends on one central server. If one server goes down, the rest of the network stays up. Signal however has a lot of backing, both in community support and money, so its unlikely that its going anywhere any time soon. But that is a bit more forgivable, what isn’t is the sign up process. You need a phone number to use Signal. A phone number. Now, if you didn’t know, a phone number is kinda deeply personal information. Not something you should just be handing out. It links you with the device you have with you every moment of every day. The same device that constantly makes connections with cell towers and GPS that can be used to find your location. The same device that probably collects the most data on your for advertisers. Am I being a bit paranoid? Probably. But if Snowden, probably one of the most well known advocates for privacy, is recommending giving out that sensitive information, it either means he has a lot of faith in Signal or maybe he was paid for the endorsement. But enough of the tin foil hat, I’m no where near qualified to be talking about that kinda stuff. Signal makes privacy easy. It isn’t some option you have to turn on or something extra to fiddle with. It just works out of the box. E2EE just works for everyone. Signal also possesses a lot of extra features found in less secure messaging applications, like stickers. This might make it a bit more appealing to use over other services.

Conclusion

If I had to pick one service out of the ones on this list, it would be a difficult choice. In an ideal world, it would be either XMPP or Matrix. Both offer secure messaging (E2EE) and are decentralized which minimizes risk to the user and allows for freedom to run your own server. Between the two, I think Matrix is much better for larger groups and communities, especially with the clients that currently exist for it. XMPP is much better at person to person exchanges in my opinion. Either one is a viable alternative for raw messaging, but Matrix is probably a better replacement for Discord.

However, there is an issue that I’ve more or less brought up in passing with some of these services. The install base. The people using the service. Who is on it and who isn’t. Because at the end of the day, what good is a chat service with no one to chat to? Sure, look hard enough and you’ll find communities, but as I’ve stated, a lot of these communities tend to focus on things like open source software and other similar topics. Not to say you won’t meet some nice people in those communities, they just aren’t for everyone. And I’m sure you might be able to find groups for your interest, but there’s no counting on how active or how in demand they will be. And that is the one thing Discord has, people. At least for me it does. So, I hesitate to recommend dropping whatever you current use and forcing all your friends to download this one app just to be able to message you (because it probably won’t end up well). If what you use works well enough, keep using it. If you’re really worried about privacy, maybe consider more private services for that sensitive material.

Chat Reporting Update

My last blog post was a bit, reactionary. I still hold the same sentiment towards the addition of chat reporting, but I’ve given myself some time to assess the situation. Now, I can better present why these changes are bad for the game and how the implementation of them is flawed.

This story really starts back in October 2020 with the video Java Account Migration: A Fun Announcement by Dinnerbone. The premise of the video was to inform the player base about moving Java players from Mojang and legacy accounts to Microsoft accounts given increased security. Things like Microsoft potentially harvesting user data is outside the scope of this post (“Minecraft snooper settings” if you’re curious), but the transition would also bring two-factor authentication to this decade old game. But that wasn’t the only change, as accounts that migrated would also gain a special migrator cape. The video also addressed how this change would not impact the game in any way, just add account security and give out a free cape.

Trust me, this is a positive move, and nothing you like about Minecraft is going to change

The blog post announcing migration has some slightly different information. While it echos much of what was said in the video (ie: two-factor and all Minecraft games under one account), it also includes a few other details. These new details are: “Improved parental controls to help keep kids safe when playing online”, “Chat and invitation blocking”, and forced migration. At the time, everything seemed as promised. That migration would change nothing about the game play. Except for that addition of chat blocking, but blocking a player from chat on a personal level was only the start of the negative changes.

Migration opened sometime 2021, and for a while you could play the game regardless of your migration status. This was until it was announced voluntary migration was ending. As of March 10, 2022, you need a Microsoft account in order to play Minecraft. Players would see the promised additions, such as capes and two-factor. Player blocking was also introduced in 1.16.4 pre 2 and it seemed as if changes relating to that social interactions were done, but this would turn out to be false.

Things start to get a bit spooky with snapshot 22w17a. This brought forth many fun game play elements and changes, but we’re here for a different change. Multiplayer chat is now signed. What does this mean? Well, it means chat messages have a unique cryptographic signature attached to them. This is done through a pair of private and public keys that are given by Mojang on login. This signature is generated by using the message, your personal private key, a salt, and a few other things to create a unique signature. This signature can then be verified against that information and your public key to verify that you sent the contents of that message. This change was put in place as “the first step in a process to provide more security and player safety features for in-game chat”. However, on the server end, by default having cryptographically signed messages was not needed.

The player base wouldn’t know what the player safety features were until 22w24a. Here we received chat reporting, a feature that used cryptographically signed messages to verify the message and the sender to report bad actors. When reporting, users could select the suspect messages along with a category that fits the report. In the report, a few surrounding messages get sent alongside the contents of the report. Some of the categories to report messages for make sense, but some were poorly received. Minecraft is a game played by all ages, with many different servers that have vastly different audiences. Why does Microsoft get to decide what is acceptable content for servers they do not run and manage? Profanity was a category on the chat report when the average age of a Minecraft player is 24 (source).

The reporting system didn’t have any actual effects until 1.19.1 pre 1 where complete multiplayer bans were released. Reported players can be completely banned from all multiplayer servers. Not just the official Mojang realms, but servers run by third parties as well as local network servers. And these bans can be permanent. Once this was found out there was a massive outrage from the community. Aside from realms, Java servers have always been run and moderated by the community. Server owners and communities have been able to self regulate for years. They have been able to have strict rules on what content is and isn’t allowed. Microsoft is coming in and removing the autonomy the community has had for over a decade. Its simply unacceptable.

Some things have changed since 1.19.1 pre 1. Bans are allegedly manually reviewed, so mass reporting will probably not result in a ban. Chat reporting can only exist on versions above 1.19 (as 1.19 is the earliest stable version with cryptographic signatures), but bans effect all versions of the game. The community has actually created a solution to (somewhat) fight against chat reporting with the No Chat Reports mod. Simply put, it strips the cryptographic signature sent with your message making it impossible to verify you actually sent the message and impossible to be reported. Interestingly, after this mod released, 1.19.1 pre 2 introduced an icon next to chat messages that indicate if messages lack signatures. This same update also made servers force players to send cryptographicly signed messages by default. While this could be a direct response, its probably just a coincidence, probably.

The reporting system still has many holes in it. Until 1.19.1 pre 3, you could create fake messages using a command block and use those to false report players. Players even created a mod to easily abuse the reporting system and create fake conversations. This only works because reports are sent client side, so all information is sent from the client. This means the client decides on what messages to send, the only verification needed is the cryptographic signature. This means malicious players can insert messages that have never reached the server in order to modify the conversation. I believe 1.19.1 pre 4 fixes this, but this still serves to demonstrate how easily this system can be abused.

This change undermines the years of trust built between Mojang and its players. Mojang is 100% within their rights to do this, but I fear the consequences of their actions. I’ve hosted a server for a little over three years now, so seeing these changes is discouraging. Microsoft has forced negative changes upon the game. The future of the game no long lies in the hands of the community that built it up. If you’re interested in some further reading, check out this blog post for a deep dive on the report system and the developer of the No Chat Reports mod for a community against the chat reporting change.

At least profanity was removed from the list of chat report categories.

Minecraft Made a Mistake

Minecraft is a game I care very much about. I’ve been playing for over 10 years and have logged thousands of hours into the game. Needless to say it holds a very special place in my heart. But recently there was an update that has caused quite the stir in the community. No, I’m not talking about 1.19 and how Mojang has overpromised and under delivered, but rather 1.19.1 Pre-Release 1. What would normally just be a patch to deliver minor tweaks and changes actually has a sinister side to it.

If you’re unaware, Mojang has been quietly adding some social interaction features into the game. With the release of 1.16.4, the social interactions screen appeared. A small menu accessed by pressing P that allowed players to mute people on servers. This is a nice feature to see, but not something that was being demanded by the communities. Most multiplayer servers already offered similar options with things like chat filtering and server wide mutes, but this addition was nice to see for servers that don’t offer those capabilities. However, this is not the concerning part. To understand that, we first need to understand what was added in this latest update. To quote the patch notes directly:

• Along with the support for reporting chat, reported players can now be banned from online play and Realms after moderator review
• The game will show a notice screen on startup if you have been banned from online play
  • The reason for the ban is shown as well as how long the ban is valid for

If you’re curious about the chat reporting, that was introduced in 22w24a, the snapshot right before this prerelease. This feature applies to all online servers, not just the official Realms. And the kicker is, the reporting system is automated, which means they can be easily abused. Say something bad? No more multiplayer. Get mass reported? No more multiplayer. Do anything that doesn’t fit with Mojang and Microsoft’s family friendly vision even if everyone on the server is OK with it? No more multiplayer.

There is still a lot of information that is unknown about this. There is no cut and clear answer on what will result in a ban, or for how long bans will be, or if there is an appeal system, or anything else. The game files even provide text for permanent bans from online play. All this is just being dropped on the players and server admins on the 28th of this month.

The Java version of Minecraft has always focused on the community. For ages, the community has run servers, created resource packs and mods, and so much more. Most of my memories about Minecraft involve the myriad of interactions I had with people who were just as passionate about the game as I was, but Mojang and Microsoft are tampering with this. I have no doubt there are good intentions behind this, but the Java community has already created the solutions and tools needed to solve these issues. This decision is not a good one.

Literally 1984

Updates, Updates, Updates

Just a quick update post for my readers. I’ve recently updated some things on the backend, so some things have changed. The biggest of note is that I changed the CMS I had been using. The blog has moved from Bludit to Jekyll. Jekyll provides me a bit more flexibility compared to Bludit, but thats not to say Bludit was bad. However, as a result of this move, some things have not transfered over perfectly. Things will get cleaned up and adjusted in the coming days. In addition, the location of the RSS feed has changed, so please update your readers with the new location. Please stay tuned for additional posts in the near future.

Pokemon's Uncertain Future

Originally I was going to write about my impressions on Pokemon Legends Arceus, but with the recent announcement of Gen 9, I’ve decided to pivot onto a broader discussion of the series as a whole.

I think the best place to start on this topic is to look at the past few games, and by that I mean recount the downfall of the main line series. This most obviously starts with X and Y, the first game in the series that I would consider a “modern” Pokemon game. By a “modern” game I mean a game with an easier experience, less content, and a more incomplete feeling. I think its clear to see that XY suffered from the jump to 3D, as the region was small, the Pokedex smaller, and the performance was subpar at time, but a lot of that was easy to forgive as it was the first time working with a new engine.

A bit of a hot take, but ORAS were actually good games in my opinion. They had the advantage of being remakes that allow more development time to be put into adding improvements over the originals. They still suffer from being on the same engine as XY, but they’re better all around.

Things kinda started to go down hill with everyone’s favorite, Sun and Moon. SM were an interesting attempt at redefining Pokemon’s stagnant somewhat stagnant formula, but in doing so they leaned heavily into the more “modern” design aspects of Pokemon. The hand holding for much of the early game is unbearable, the route “design” was more like hallways than organic spaces, just the existence of the Rotom Dex, foreshadowing the removal of the National Dex, and the commitment to making battle gimmicks all show the unfortunate trend the games were following. Its easy to look back and point out all these flaws, but this is nothing compared to the dumpster fire that were USUM. Those games kept everything wrong with SM and made it worse. Those games took everything right from SM and made it worse. Those games took SM and sold it to us again. Some argue that USUM are the “definitive” version to play through for that generation, I’d argue differently. USUM may have more content than SM, but they don’t have better content.

The next games, Let’s Go, are an interesting case to me. They’re a more streamlined remake of the original Red and Blue, and while I haven’t played them, I also haven’t heard anything horrible about them. Yes, they diverge from the expected formula a bit, but they’re meant to be baby’s first Pokemon game. They took the originals, updated them and gave them a fresh coat of paint, and this is something I can get behind. The sixty dollar price tag? Maybe not, but in concept they are still OK games, and maybe that has to do more with them being remakes than anything else.

Now if we want to talk about a waste of sixty dollars, that is where Sword and Shield come in. SwSh are by far the worst Pokemon games I have had the pleasure to play to date. The horrible region, the horrible route design, the horrible story, the lack of any challenge, “Dexit”, and the utter lack of content is just appalling. And then on top of that they have the gall to ask for even more money to get some bonus content. I understand some people actually enjoyed the game, and that is a perfectly valid opinion to have, but I must ask those people if they’ve played any previous Pokemon games before, because SwSh was so mindless and so boring that seeing the utter failure of the trees in the game was more entertaining than anything else that game had to offer to me.

Switch owners would actually have the chance to play some of the older games in the form of the Diamond and Pearl remakes, games that were highly anticipated by the community. This had been something that was desired for years and it was so cool to finally get an announcement for them in early 2021. Except, these games were anything but what the fans wanted. They told us they would be “faithful” remakes, and they meant that. The games were closer to a copy paste job than a remake. This would have been fine if they chose to copy paste the correct Sinnoh game, Pokemon Platinum. Platinum took the time to take what was wrong with Diamond and Pearl and actually improve them to create a definitive experience for the Sinnoh region. BDSP just flat out ignores that and kinda just paints over DP and sells it for sixty bucks.

At least the wait for the next game wasn’t long, as a short three months later we would get what I consider to be the “true” Sinnoh remake, although its only a remake in spirit. Legends Arceus takes the player back in time to ancient Sinnoh for a completely different experience. It actually succeeded in mixing up the formula, where SM tried and failed. However, it did so by creating such a different experience that it is hard to compare to any other Pokemon game. LA takes a proto-open-world approach to a Pokemon game and lets the player explore environments at their own pace. While everything else takes more of a back seat on this journey, the core focus is on the capture of Pokemon. Running around trying to catch Pokemon is such a fun game play experience, but the sad part comes outside of that experience. Everything else, such as the story, the environments, the actual battling, and much more just feels lacking and empty. As a game, it is a million times more enjoyable than any of the games from the past few years, but with it having such a different structure than every other game it is hard to make any comparisons, especially to the known good games.

Somehow, only a short month later, we already got news of a new set of games on the horizon. Pokemon Violet and Scarlet are shaping up to be a true open-world experience and possibly a change from the regression Pokemon has had in the past few years. While we do not know much about them, it is still possible to speculate based on previous games and some of the “trends” they’ve followed. In a sense, SwSh laid the ground work for the open world with the wild areas, PLA took that and expanded upon it, and it seems like Gen 9 will finally see it to completion. PLA also shows us that Game Freak is still able to create a game with highly engaging game play while providing a fresh take on things such as the revised battle system. Things could finally be looking good for the future of the series, but I still have many doubts. The effort required to create a game has only increased over the years, and the jump to 3D has not helped, especially in an open world environment. While not completely confirmed, it is highly speculated that the engine that was originally written for XY has over the years been worked on and overhauled to the one that is used currently, and that worries me a bit. An engine originally written for the 3DS and all of that system’s quirks probably has difficulty handling the complexities of an open world game. And its not only the engine that is concerning to me, but also the scale of the game increasing while the development time stays the same. While Game Freak does have multiple in-house teams to work on projects, the time between generations still takes the same 3-4 years as previous games have. I fear that this is no longer adequate time to create a game, especially with the ever increasing scope of these games.

To summarize, Pokemon games have been going downhill since 2013. The most recent game, Pokemon Legends Arceus, shows that with some effort the games could recover, but the trends the games have been following leaves me, a long time fan, uncertain. I cannot promise I’ll cover everything about them up to the release of the next generation, I can say that these next games might be some of the most pivotal in the franchises history.

You're Writing the Date Wrong

Now I know, that sounds a bit pretentious, but its true! The way we write dates can often be confusing and strange, especially when working with digital files. But before I can get into details, I need to outline a more abstract way of representing dates. A date has three core components, a year, a month, and a day. To represent these in a more abstract way, YYYY will be used to represent the year (or YY for the last two digits of the year), MM for the month (meaning if the number of the month is below 10, there will be a leading 0), and DD for the day (will also have a leading 0).

In a post about me discussing standards, its odd that I don’t know the name for this system (if it has one), but if you know please let me know so I can add it.

The first way of writing the date is the American way, or MM/DD/YYYY. This is probably the most common way to write the date, probably thanks to a large portion of the internet using it (There may be some bias here as I interact with largely American internet communities). The other way is the way most of the rest of the world does it, or DD/MM/YYYY. This way might make sense to some, as the smaller unit of time is used first and then it increases in length.

So which way is better? Neither. This is where ISO 8601 comes in, or YYYY/MM/DD. ISO 8601 is an international standard that was developed to set a standard for how dates should be used for international communication. Aside from it being an international standard, it does one key advantage. file sorting. In most operating systems, file sort alphabetically by default. While normally this isn’t a problem, if you date your files for any reason, such as file backups, they can get out of order. This is where ISO 8601 comes to save the day. If you date your files according to ISO 8601, when sorted alphabetically they will also be sorted chronologically. Now, I’m aware that some file managers have the option to sort by date, but this often has to be done every time and some file managers don’t have this feature, so it makes more sense to just use ISO 8601 anyway.

If you think using international standards is pointless, think again. Things like unicode (UTF-8), paper sizes (ISO 216), SI units, QR codes, and ISBN are all examples of international standards that are used daily. Its important to know and use these for easier interactions between nations, development of products and software, and much more. Unfortunately, America tends to be reluctant to adopt many of these international standards (cough cough metric system cough), and this has lead to some issues before that could have been avoided if an international standard was adopted (Mars Climate Orbiter comes to mind).

At the end of the day, writing dates will always be somewhat contested among groups, but at least there is an objective best way to write them.

Light Mode: Good or Bad?

A fun fact about me is that I use light mode on most applications. This has often come as a shock to people when dark mode has seemingly become the new standard for applications. Personally, I enjoy light themes. Something about it being plain and boring is nice and comforting, or something. Others really don’t like it when I send a screenshot and they see that the application or website I am using is in light mode. I actually used to use dark themes, but I went over to the light side. Why? Mostly just to annoy people. But in my debates with people over which is better, I wondered if there was actual evidence to one being better than the other. After all, there was some truth to the fact that light mode can appear brighter than dark mode. So I aim to explore this idea and see which theme is truly worth using.

While I don’t exactly have the time and resources to conduct a proper experiment to see how the theme of a system can impact a user, there has been existing research done on this topic. This article aims to compile multiple peer reviewed papers to come up with a concrete answer to the question. To properly understand some of the papers, some terms should be defined. Dark mode, or dark themes, are comprised of white colored text on a black or dark colored background. Light mode, or light themes, are the inverse. black or dark colored text on a white or light colored background.

Productivity is often claimed to be a selling point of dark mode. Many claim that dark mode may be easier to look at and thus better for longer working sessions. However, a study was done that disproves this. A study done with both users who prefer light and dark mode was done to see if light or dark mode had an advantage in productivity. Participants were tasked with writing phrases using a virtual keyboard. They had to use both light and dark mode while completing this task. The results showed that the difference between light mode and dark mode did not change the users WPM or error rate in any meaningful way. The researchers end up saying the choice is more-so “an expression of a user’s identity rather than a choice founded in ergonomic rationales” (Pedersen et al., 2020). To me, this does the best job of highlighting the fact theming is more so a matter of pure preference. While I think the methodology used may have not been the best way about testing this, it does prove that, at least in this particular case, how you choose to theme your software doesn’t really matter, at least in terms of productivity.

Another claim in favor of dark mode is that it is less disruptive to a user’s circadian rhythm, meaning using dark mode makes it easier to fall asleep. This already comes as dubious to me as a study by Duraccio et al. (2021) suggests that programs that reduce blue light exposure in order to help you sleep, such as the iPhone’s night shift feature, have little to no impact and that not using devices before bed gave the best outcomes. While reducing blue light is not the same as using dark mode, both have a similar effect. Traditional screen technology works by changing the amount of red, green, and blue light for each pixel. As such, dark mode would have less blue light as dark colors are characterized by the absence of light. However, a true black cannot be produced due to traditional screens using a large back light to provide light for multiple pixels. But as the research showed, this has virtually no effect on circadian rhythm. More interestingly is that for OLED screens, which can produce no light for black colors, dark mode has an advantage. This advantage is not in the lack of disruption of circadian rhythm, but rather in power consumption. Using a theme that has true blacks in it on an OLED screen can reduce power consumption up to 75% (Dong et al., 2009). Due to the lack of easy access to OLED screens this makes it a rather minor point in the argument of light versus dark mode.

I will concede that dark mode has a distinct advantage in a more niche area, augmented reality. A 2019 experiment tested the difference between light mode and dark mode for usage in augmented reality displays. The researchers had participants read text and take simple visual acuity tests on various different background conditions and lighting conditions with both light and dark mode. Participants would give feedback based on how easy or difficult it was to complete these tasks given the conditions among other things. Results showed that tasks were easier, quicker, and more accurate with dark mode as well as dark mode causing less visual fatigue. Interestingly enough, better light conditions also lead to an increase in performance (Kim et al., 2019). While this may seem as proof that dark mode is better than light mode, this research was done in a completely different context than the one most of us use on a daily basis. I think I can say with confidence that 99.99% of readers of this blog are reading on a standard desktop monitor and not through an augmented reality display like the research.

But the big key argument comes down to visual fatigue. Many claim that light mode is harder to look at and read content on. In a study done by Xie et al. (2021), tests were done to see if light or dark mode was more beneficial for reading content in a dark room. The results indicated that dark mode results in less visual fatigue when using screens. However, I think this ignores some possible causes of strain. Many studies have been done on computer vision syndrome, a phenomenon related to visual fatigue when using devices with screens. There are more factors than just using dark or light mode that can contribute to eye strain. A study found that “For example a dark background screens often require lower lights level so when other source of documents are also viewed at the same time additional reading lamp may be needed to prevent ocular strain” (Loh & Redd, 2008). Another study found that “The brightness has to be adjusted so that it is about the same as the surroundings” (Agarwal et al., 2012). Simply put, dark mode requires darker ambient light to be more comfortable, and the inverse is true for light mode. While these study agree with the research done by Xie et al., it also gives merit to the usage of light mode. Light mode is more appropriate for viewing content in brighter conditions.

Research seems to indicate that, except for a few niche exceptions, that there is advantage to using either light or dark mode. It is a preference that is purely up to the user, although it would have been nice to see some evidence pointing to one being better than the other. I still prefer the usage of light mode, as it forces me to keep a well lit environment, which is useful for other tasks than just using a computer.

Regardless of if you use light mode or not, I have to ask if you are using it in an appropriately lit environment. You only get one set of eyes so please take care of them.

Sources

Agarwal, S., Goel, D., & Sharma, A. (2012, December 24). Evaluation of the factors which contribute to the ocular complaints in computer users. Journal of clinical and diagnostic research : JCDR. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3592304/

Dong, M., Choi, Y.-S. K., & Zhong, L. (2009, August 1). Power-saving color transformation of mobile graphical user interfaces on OLED-based displays. Association of Computing Machinery. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1594233.1594317

Duraccio, K. M., Zaugg, K. K., Blackburn, R. C., & Jensen, C. D. (2021). Does iphone night shift mitigate negative effects of smartphone use on sleep outcomes in emerging adults? Sleep Health, 7(4), 478–484. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2021.03.005

Kim, K., Erickson, A., Lambert, A., Bruder, G., & Welch, G. (2019). Effects of dark mode on visual fatigue and acuity in optical see-through head-mounted displays. Symposium on Spatial User Interaction. https://doi.org/10.1145/3357251.3357584

Loh, K., & Redd, S. (2008, December 31). Understanding and preventing computer vision syndrome. Malaysian family physician : the official journal of the Academy of Family Physicians of Malaysia. Retrieved January 20, 2022, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4170366/

Pedersen, L. A., Einarsson, S. S., Rikheim, F. A., & Sandnes, F. E. (2020). User interfaces in dark mode during daytime – improved productivity or just cool-looking? Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 178–187. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49282-3_13

Xie, X., Song, F., Liu, Y., Wang, S., & Yu, D. (2021, February 24). Study on the effects of display color mode and luminance contrast on visual fatigue. Digital Object Identifier System. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3061770

The Failure of the Linux Desktop in 2022

I’m perfectly happy complaining, because it’s cathartic, and I’m perfectly happy arguing with people on the Internet because arguing is my favourite - not programming.

-Linus Torvalds

Linux has always fascinated me. It is amazing that a piece of software, one that is very comparable to existing commercial products, can exist for free and continue to receive constant updates and support. This is something, that at least in my opinion, should be nearly impossible in our profit driven society, yet here we are. And its clear that it has been a rough and bumpy journey to get to this point, but that is a story for another time. The story that I want to tell is that of the end user, not the developer. Linux and much FOSS software has become more and more user friendly, especially recently, but is it really enough? Can Linux really replace Windows or MacOS for a normal, everyday person?

My first real experience with Linux goes back to 2014. That was the year I got my hands on a Raspberry Pi. To me, this was my first real computer. Sure, in the past I had used the family computer, but this was something I could say was truly my own. I’d say it was my first real experience with computing, and especially with how different the Raspberry Pi experience was back then. I remember being greeted with a cold terminal upon first boot instead of the friendly GUI of the family’s Windows box. It was a completely different world of computing than what I had known. It was wild, poking the keyboard to type in strange words that made the computer do something I wanted, but eventually with a then complex “startx” I had a somewhat familiar GUI staring back at me. I immediately made it a habit to type that in every time I booted the Pi up so I could have something familiar. But I don’t think familiar is the right word to use here, as things were different. If I recall correctly, it was running LXDE, which is typically presented similar to how Windows has historically been presented (Thanks Windows 11 for changing things for no reason at all), but isn’t quite the same. For a kid who was more concerned about having the freedom to do whatever they wanted to do on their severely limited single board computer, it did the job well enough.

While I eventually moved on from my Raspberry Pi (mostly to continue playing the Java version of Minecraft), that taste of Linux left an impression on me, both in terms of usage but also with what it meant. Linux, and FOSS in general, stand as something completely that is completely counter culture, especially in this day and age. (While a rant about privacy would warranted here, I’ll save that for another time in order to stay on topic.) I’ve never really wanted to be like everyone else and blend in with the crowd, so the idea of this completely different way of computing has been growing in the back of my head for years. And as of recently, it has finally come to maturity.

The summer of 2020 was the first time I tried daily driving Linux. It was probably a mixture of the lock down, my developing opinions on FOSS, and probably a few too many visits to r/unixporn. By this time, I had my own computer to experiment with, so after minimal research (see: a Linus Tech Tips video) I installed Manjaro Linux with KDE Plasma on what I thought was an unused hard drive (This drive would later die on me, rest in piece). After spending a little time installing things and ricing my install to try to get some clout, I quickly realized there were quite a few issues. First and foremost: games. I never really was big into using Steam to acquire games (mostly due to Minecraft being the main game I play), and I had a rather large library of games on Epic Games thanks to them giving free games out every week. While something like Minecraft was easy to get up and running with little troubleshooting, other games were not so much. While tools like Lutris and Play on Linux helped greatly, they often needed more tinkering and knowledge of Wine than I had. And it didn’t help that one of the biggest games my friends were playing at that time, Valorant, was impossible to run on Linux due to its kernel level anti cheat. Having to jump through hoops to play games was bothersome and frankly made me glad I still had a Windows install a reboot away, but it outlines a major issue with the Linux desktop experience: the lack of support for non-FOSS applications. My next grievance has to do with the over all desktop user experience. I knew going into it that it would be different, after all, I had used Windows my entire life. But its hard to express how off the experience was. As great as KDE Plasma is, its clear that it lacks polish in some areas. Everything worked, but not always as I thought it should. Its probably fair to say that Windows set me up with impossible expectations that software put together by hobbyists could never achieve, and that is a valid point. These minor imperfections end up bringing down the over all experience. Eventually, I went back to using Windows full time, mostly because I got sick of rebooting my computer every time I wanted to play games.

My next venture with using Linux was roughly a year later. At the time, I had some sort of failure in my computer. I’ve concluded that it was either the motherboard or the CPU, but I’m still unsure of what it was to this day. Fortunately, I had some old parts to fix up my computer. Somewhat unfortunately, due to the age of the BIOS on the motherboard, my UEFI Windows boot drive would not work. So I did the only reasonable thing any person would do in this situation and installed Pop!_OS. This decision was mostly made on recommendations from friends and online, and I think it was a good one. Pop uses a customized version of GNOME, which turned out to be a surprisingly cohesive experience. I cant say if it was advancements in usability of the Linux desktop or me being willing to deal with a “lesser” user experience, but I (mostly) enjoyed using it for day to day tasks. Even gaming was a better experience thanks to the included drivers. Lutris was still needed to play games, and some games, such as Celeste, just wouldn’t work at all for me. It was still a major step up from my previous experience, but it was like Windows. With Windows, I could be assured that most things would just work, no tweaks needed. This really didn’t end up being a huge problem for me at the time, as then I was playing less games and spent more of my time consuming content through an internet browser.

But as the end of summer came closer and closer, my computing needs shifted. I no longer wanted an operating system that needed tinkering to get things to work. I wanted something reliable that would just work, so with the start of the semester, I fully switched back to Windows. And I’m glad I did, as I needed support for software that was near impossible to properly run on Linux systems, but part of me continued to miss Linux. Whether it was the desire to uphold the ideas of FOSS, have a system I can constantly be tinkering and learning on, or just wanting to be different from the rest of the crowd I can’t say. But I couldn’t sacrifice my Windows install completely, so a quick purchase later I had a secondary drive for my computer so I could properly dual boot without issue. Although it wasn’t until after the semester ended that I actually had the chance to switch back to Linux. So it wasn’t until mid December I started daily driving Linux again. I went with something new this time, Linux Mint with XFCE. This choice would later prove to be problematic, but I’ll get there. Mint is an interesting experience. Compared to other distros I have used, it feels outdated. Not to say its outdated software wise, but graphically it feels that way. And its not like it was intuitive to install custom themes, much less known that you could. But looks are superficial, function matters more, and just like Pop, it still felt a bit off. But maybe its just me being crazy, either way, I’m very much used to how Linux works now. While setting things up, I noticed something interesting about troubleshooting Linux. Its very hard to get support. Now by this, I mean specific support. There are tons of resources out there, no doubt. Thousands of forms post across hundreds of forms for nearly every issue that could be encountered, but for an inexperienced user who doesn’t know about differences between Linux distros it is a nightmare. When I would search some issue followed by “linux mint”, it would be harder to find answers specifically relating to Mint. Obviously, I know enough about Linux to know how some common distros are related and how to use general Linux knowledge to translate something that might be specific to one distro into another, but a beginner user would have no clue how to do this, and it doesn’t help that every distro applies different tweaks and changes to the software they include, so even if two distros run on the same desktop environment, the experience can be completely different for the end user. This only causes more confusion and creates a more hostile user experience.

Even though I’ve currently only been using Linux for about the past month, my issues don’t just end there. There is still a bit more to say here, and this is more concentrated on the desktop environments I’ve used because I am no longer using XFCE. See, my main computer for university is a laptop. Its great to be able to carry something around to take notes and access resources wherever I am on campus. But the issue arises off campus where I hook my laptop up to an additional monitor for the additional screen real estate. This is handled flawlessly, but its this dynamic set up that causes issues. XFCE’s panel works fine in stationary setups. You can easily set up as many as you need and configure them wherever you need them, yet if you disconnect a screen, everything goes south. XFCE will push panels from disconnected screens onto active ones. This means for my case, I’d have two panels next to each other whenever I’m away from home. This would be less of an issue if it was a simple task to hide panels, but XFCE doesn’t support that. XFCE only lets you create or delete panels, not hide. And searching online revealed there doesn’t really exist a good solution, meaning I have two options. The first is to write some sort of script that detects when I add/remove additional monitors and create and configure panels for them. While possible, this is a huge undertaking for someone who know very little about programming something like this. So the other option is to switch desktop environment, which is what I did. My first choice was KDE Plasma, as I had fondly remembered my short experience with it back in 2020. Now KDE Plasma’s panel did not have the same issue as XFCE, which was great! Until I realized a major downside, the screen tearing. Moving content, especially with YouTube and some games, would create tons of screen tearing. Quickly searching the issue, I soon discovered it was some sort of issue caused by drivers and how KDE Plasma handled them. So I went back to switch desktop environments. GNOME was my next and final choice, as it could handle how I use my external monitor and had no screen tearing. However, I am by no means a fan of GNOME. I could go on about how it lacks customization, forces you into using GDM, takes up much more of your RAM than it needs, and so on, but it works for me, and I can appreciate that much.

All this has shown me one thing, Linux is by developers, for developers. It is painfully clear that doing anything on Linux outside of simple web browsing and word processing is a nightmare for the average user. Installing applications (especially non FOSS ones), hardware support, general software support, its in a state where it is nigh impossible for a typical user to do without help. People like me are OK with the compromise and are willing to give up time figuring things out because we enjoy learning about our system and tinkering around with it. Back when I was using a Raspberry Pi, as much as I hated using the terminal at the time, it gave me an incredible feeling whenever I did something with it. It was like proving myself on a test. I had some knowledge of computing that got me in some exclusive club. I loved it. But not everyone wants that. Not everyone wants to spend hours learning about their computer. Most people just want to be able to have everything work, right out of the box. Having to compare various distros and figure out what these strange acronyms mean isn’t something the average person is willing to do. I think until you can install Linux and have a near identical experience to that of Windows or MacOS, Linux will never be able to come into the spotlight. Linux is doomed to be a niche piece of software that only the hardcore and hobbyists will use.