So, I made my 2025 list and somehow left off Assassin’s Creed Shadows. A game I put more than a hundred and thirty hours into. So this is a bit of an investigation as to why I didn’t think about it, as well as a review of a game I really genuinely liked.

I have played and completed every mainline Assassin’s Creed game since the franchise launched in 2007. The fact I had to look up the date and instantly winced in pain was fun. I was a freshman in high school when it came out. Fuuuuuuck me. So, in the spirit of fully fucking up my brain, here’s the list of titles I’ve played.

Assassin’s Creed

Assassin’s Creed 2

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood

Assassin’s Creed Revelations

Assassin’s Creed 3

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag

Assassin’s Creed Unity

(I got tired of typing Assassin’s Creed at exactly this moment)

Syndicate

Origins

Odyssey*

Valhalla

Mirage

Shadows

I have rolled credits on all of these games, save for the asterisked Odyssey; a game I really enjoyed up until I realized it wasn’t really an Assassin’s Creed game. I know that’s a hot take, I have my reasons, but perhaps better for an altogether different piece. Also die-hards will notice I missed Rogue. Rogue came out the same time as Unity and was a game for the previous generation of consoles. Being a college student at the time, I had to trade my Xbox 360 for my Xbox One, so I played Unity. I would say maybe someday I’ll go back to play it but…it’s been thirteen years so…

I remember, in my bedroom in 2010, just weeks prior to graduation, sitting and jotting down every little note and clue written on the walls by Subject 16 in the final moments of the original AC. I didn’t have a smart phone at the time. I spent the entire night trying to decipher the codes and puzzles. I bought 2 in the fall when I went off to college and I rushed through it before the release of Brotherhood in November. I have never missed a release since.

I think the first time my friends and I collectively thought, “this game would rule in Japan” happened in the same fall. It was the obvious choice. Samurai and Ninja in an Assassin’s Creed game? Uh…duh. Well, eighteen years later we finally got it. I remember watching the trailer and just giggling like a maniac. Focusing the Japanese AC game on Yasuke, a deeply mysterious figure in Japanese history, and Fujibayashi Naoe, the fictitious daughter of shinobi and ninjitsu pillar Fujibayashi Nagato immediately felt perfect. Power from Yasuke, stealth from Naoe. The divorce of playstyles felt good to me. Valhalla tried to marry the two and the result was a bit more messy than I wanted it to be. Naoe is the eponymous shadow the games title refers to, and the game thrives because of it.

There is a theme running through recent AC games I really don’t care for. Per my calculation, if you remove the small, experimental (very good) Mirage, it has been ten years since the player character in an AC game was actually a member of the Order of Assassins facing off against the Knights Templar, the last game to do so being Syndicate. Origins was ostensibly about the foundation of the Order of Assassins, initially named the Hidden Ones in 1st Century BCE. Odyssey jumps a few hundred years backwards to further illustrate the origins of the Order of the Ancients. Valhalla is about a Viking who happens to be following the orders of an incognito King Aelfred as he dismantles the Order of the Ancients so he can rebuild them as the Knights Templar.

Shadows sort of follows suit here, but the exact reasoning is a bit more mystifying to me. Fujibayashi Naoe is a shinobi. For all intents and purposes, an assassin. But she isn’t an Assassin. But her mother was. But Naoe didn’t know that. And you don’t really discover conclusively until the game is mostly over. The most likely explanation lies somewhere in the details of Japan’s deeply isolationist history. The island nation was only just getting involved in trade with other parts of the world. The Templars aren’t even in Japan properly by the end of this game. Yasuke’s origin with the Portuguese traders concludes with confirmation that the Templars were the organization responsible. It’s all a confluence of geopolitical events that don’t exaclty line up which, in a way, is a testament to the Ubisoft devs sticking as closely to historical accuracy as they could.

And yet, Ezio’s story is only a hundred years prior to this. We know he interacted with a Chinese Assassin. We also know he sent Ottoman Assassins to Lisbon in 1511. So the existence of a fledgling order of Assassins in Japan makes sense. I’m just curious why, instead of letting Shadows story be about the construction of this fledgling Order, the game instead leads right up to that moment and then ends. I want to become another Mentor. I want to build the Tiber Island Headquarters, but everywhere else. There is this consistent reluctance in the franchise to just let players be Assassins. It’s deeply puzzling and, at this point, kind of frustrating.

I struggled to put a finger on why this review may have slipped my mind in the process of wrapping all of my 2025 games into one list. I think this line of thought may lead to the best answer I have. Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a great game, it’s just afraid to be an Assassin’s Creed game. Why? What is Ubisoft so afraid of? The first AC has you challenging Al Mualim (the original Mentor of the proper Assassins) in the game’s climactic finish. In the final moments of that fight (if I remember correctly) Al Mualim reveals the Piece of Eden he has, the Apple, is responsible for most western religions. Insinuating Jesus was a smooth talker who had the Apple in his possession. The second game has a video you piece together by finding hidden artifacts. When you complete the hunt you are shown a video of Adam and Eve stealing the Apple of Eden from the First Civilization. The pitch was immaculate. Ancient order of Templars wants to bring about an era of peace via control, the Assassins exist in opposition, contending the only true peace is through free will. Let the philosophical debates begin!

As a brief aside, there is also a moment in AC 2 where a member of the First Civilization, Minerva, barrels the camera and starts talking to Desmond through the Animus and it fucking rules. Ezio looking over his shoulder and flat asking her, “Who are you talking to?” is an all time high moment. Peak shit.

So where am I with Shadows then? Where do I stand on it? Well…I fucking loved it. The teams at Ubisoft really do create incredible spaces to inhabit. The fidelity and beauty captured in their recreation of Warring States Japan is an all time high benchmark here. Truly, each game just gets more beautiful. Shadows is also deeply content with making things take real time. Praying at shrines for the little bonuses they give you stands out to me first. It’s a small action that takes a full twenty second pause. Riding your horse between locations is also time consuming, a fact bolstered by Ubisoft’s choice to keep a lot of the Japanese countryside conventionally featureless. There isn’t a thousand things to do, tucked into the nooks and crannies of the forests of Iga or the mountainous rocks and shoals of Kii. Should you try to venture into one of these areas you will frequently find unnavigable terrain and, should you find a way to surmount the obvious deterrents, you are rewarded by little areas of relative zen (word choice unintentionally perfect). It’s all leaves and grass and trees and breeze.

It’s a fascinating choice in 2025 to make a game with so much nothing in it. It reminds me of 2023’s Starfield, a game I spent hundreds of hours playing. The argument against the vacuousness of Starfield was one steeped in the modern obsession of most open world games: for there to be something to do every hundred meters. It’s an argument I find very little value in. Ironically it is one of the more frequently used detractions aimed at Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry games. Ubisoft, in general, is often credited as the progenitor of this overused model of open world design. So it feels amazing to play an Assassin’s Creed game content to make you wait. Content to make you take your time. There are dozens of winding paths I traveled in Shadows where I found myself turning on auto-follow and just using the right stick to gawk at the scenery.

But I want Assassin’s Creed to remember its identity a bit more. There was a playfulness, inherent to the first games, when it came to matters of historicity and the gaps afforded by time. Honestly, it’s why Yasuke was such a perfect choice. His story is apocryphal, largely. Veracity is nearly impossible to achieve. Playing in that gray space of “could this have happened” used to be the AC franchise’s forte. Machiavelli and DaVinci, in the same place, working with the Assassins was genuinely inspired. It gave context to DaVinci’s wild designs and machines. You got to test several of them. Black Flag letting you rub shoulders with Black Beard and Calico Jack and Charles Vane, magnificent. Crossing swords with embattled revolutionaries in AC3, as a Native American, perfect. AC Shadows still lets you interact with notable figures, but it feels less like an uncovered history, it feels like a history lesson. I’m aware of the oxymoronic nature of my gripe. I learned a LOT playing the Renaissance AC games. But Shadows lacks a bit of the playfulness with the gaps I loved so much about earlier entries. Perhaps a byproduct of trying ever harder to not offend anyone.

In the end, after all the hullabaloo, I did and still do love AC Shadows. It’s a gorgeous game, content with making you take the time to witness said beauty on display, be it on horseback or sprinting across clayforged roof tiles. The separation of combat and stealth between two characters allowed me to go back to the Rubik’s cube that is stealthily slinking through a castle and dispatching all of the guards without setting off alarms. Rinse and repeat. It may be formulaic and repetitive, but when it comes to stealth, I am lithe to sit in that pocket.

For some reason this game didn’t cross my mind while listing the games fo 2025. Maybe it’s because I wanted it to be more daring. Maybe it’s just because Assassin’s Creed is like a prescription. A medicine I always need. One that gives me the same calm feeling I have remembered for almost 20 years. One I found quickly in Shadows. It didn’t stand out because it was exactly what I needed, a return to form for stealth gameplay and a world worth getting distracted in. I anxiously wait to see what Hexe has to offer, but the shakeups at Ubisoft have my confidence wavering. Fingers crossed they find a way to land the ship, even if Clint Hocking isn’t still working on it.

What the fuck, am I right? 2025 Is finally over. I want to say the year flew by but like…it fucking didn’t. Still, it amazes me how fast the holiday season is upon and then beyond you. For us it was six weeks of celebrations and birthdays and family gatherings. Then it was over. A steady tempo, a metronome, followed by a silence. New Year’s Day was gray, silent. The moments after finishing the Stranger Things finale were…well…strange. Joy and relief muddled with this sudden and deep vacuousness. The holidays were over, Stranger Things was over, a new year had begun. With DJO’s “End of Beginning” playing on repeat in my new headphones I felt and still feel this immense pull to 2016. Before everything started. I hadn’t had any kids yet, I was still living in an apartment, I had just bought my first digital full price game (Overwatch). Now, three kids, two houses, and a full digital library later, there I was, here I am, wondering constantly about the value of it all.

The last year was hard. Kids progressed through and into emotional milestones. They argue with us more, feel things more, want things more. The house is a steady source of tasks and list items. I stopped podcasting in March. I think a part of me hoped a lot of people would reach out and complain that the content had stopped. But I’ve always been convinced there is just too much going on for people to really take notice. I didn’t even really hear anything from my former cohosts. Nothing against them, life gets busy, but a part of me has been clawing itself bloody to get back out. So I guess, as the new year trudges forward, foreign leader renditions aside, there’s no better time to…I don’t know…restart?

I dread the idea of starting something I’ve done before over again. I once returned to work at Apple a year after my first foray and, while sitting in the training room realized I didn’t need to take notes. The notepad I had from the last time had all the notes from my first training, in the same order. I remember looking back and forth at the filled notebook and the empty one, digesting the concept I had just reset the timer on a thing I had done once before. Brains are prone to overreacting to things, but when I say an ominous dread started to fill my head, I can’t be clear enough, it impacted me physically. So…this isn’t a restart. It’s just me finally getting out of my own way. No more waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect conditions. I played a lot of games last year and I have thoughts about all of them. So here’s my list, in no particular order, probably.

Herdling

I have a lot more to say about Herdling than I am going to put here. There will be a standalone write up for this coming soon or already out. The short version is, I love how well Okomotive can drum up emotions in their players in short windows. Herdling felt like an experience in parenting. One that stresses you out the first go round, because you have no clue if you’re doing the right thing, but that evolves on repeat playthroughs, as you start to understand your flock and your limitations better. It’s serene, beautiful, and evokes a tremendous amount of emotion for a game best enjoyed in a couple sit downs. Set aside three hours and do it at once. Preferably when it’s raining.

The Alters

This was the first game I played in 2025 that made me stop playing other things. I’m a big fan of logistically heavy games, I remember the moment I saw the base in XCOM it dawned on me. Queue the dean from Community muttering “I hope this doesn’t awaken something in meeee…” But The Alters takes the base building formula that 11 Bit Studios honed in Frostpunk 1 and 2 and the emotional storytelling of the gripping This War of Mine, and squished it into a perfect little clone filled package.

You take on the role of Jan Dolski, a builder on an extrasolar excursion in search of a miracle mineral called Rapidium. You wake having wrecked on an alien planet, find your entire crew dead, and struggle to put together a mobile base to survive in. When the rubber hits the pavement you discover Rapidium and with the help of the on-board Quantum Computer, you use the Rapidium to rapidly clone yourself using projected branches off of your own life history. What if you stayed home and stood up to your abusive father instead of fleeing for engineering school? What if you took care of your dying mother instead of going into engineering? What if, after taking care of your mother you went on to become a humanitarian aid worker? What if you got so into medicine that you saved your mother and became a doctor? Each question produces a clone of Jan with simulated memories of entirely different lives. So your task evolves from survival to crew management. But you have to break it to the crew that their entire life of memories is a simulation, you have to brief them on the situation at hand, and then you get to solve the numerous fallouts and troubles inevitably rising from those revelations.

There is a tremendous amount of really excellent writing stuffed into The Alters. Also, Alex Jordan gets to play more than half a dozen different versions of himself and the performance is just perfect. Each Jan has a distinct personality, each raises logical and difficult questions, and by the time the game ends I had very strong feelings about how they should be allowed to exist in a world where the company responsible for the technology may not want their secrets getting out.

I am almost positive I got the best ending. Just an altogether excellent and unique experience. Deeply deeply love this title.

South of Midnight

I played this right after The Alters, despite its release being a few months prior. South of Midnight is one of the best told short stories in a game I can remember. There are bigger, more expensive, longer, deeper experiences out there, sure. But what South of Midnight does in about ten hours is significant. I will say, the combat is nothing to write home about. Every instance of combat is largely differing configurations of the same three or four enemy types. There is a bit of a puzzle to solve in these conflicts, but there is only a bit, never more. Despite this, I burned through this game because the story it tells is so compelling and rich. Southern Gothic folklore is so sorely missed in modern fiction. South of Midnight takes up the responsibility of evoking those themes and nails the landing. The setting is incredibly well researched, the music is fantastic, the story beats are strong and the game ends with one of the most heartbreaking choices by a villain character I have ever seen. Truly, left me speechless in my office through the entire credit scroll. Just an amazing stab at a often overlooked part of American culture. I want so much more, but I am so happy with what we got.

Rematch

I am a huge fan of playing, but not completing, Sloclap games. I loved Absolver and played it for probably 25 hours. I completed one full run (the game is a rogue-lite) and was so pleased with myself I barely returned. Sifu gets my highest praises, despite the boss with the chain-whip-blade-thingy being the most aggravating fucking thing I have ever experienced (I am being told it’s called a Sansetsukon, sue me for not remembering that). No game gives me the John Wick/Matrix Kung Fu vibes like Sifu. It’s Keanu Reeves as fuck. When I found out Sloclap was making a soccer game I was immediately sold. Big fan of Shaolin Soccer over here. While the game is admittedly much less kung fu than it is soccer, the roots are all there. Acrobatic bicycle kicks drip with martial arts finesse. Sloclap also carried over its distinct, angular style for character models, adding an additional layer of steez. The player outfit customization is great, the dynamics of play are phenomenal. It’s an easy substitute for FIFA or FC(insert number) or whatever it is now. Framing a footie game around being a player sim, rather than a soccer sim, works for me. My teammates and I consistently found victory by being better versed in how the game of soccer is played, rather than having the technical prowess a game like Rocket League eventually requires.

ARC Raiders

There is surely a bigger write up about this game coming down the pipeline. Lots of very complex thoughts about ARC Raiders and the social experiment it induces in every match. I’ve never had a game steal my brain quite like ARC did. I caught myself dreaming about it. It’s also one of those titles that seems to get better as time passes. As I learn the ins and outs of each map I find myself enjoying the movement as much as the gunplay. Good traversal awareness often tilts the scales in combat anyway, and out flanking an enemy because you know the map better feels great in any game. Though I will say it feels especially good if you get to pick the carcass of your kill immediately after.

I also have some feelings about Embark using text-to-speech AI to generate the character barks. They paid voice actors to record repositories specifically for this use case. Does that make it better? Perhaps? Perhaps not? What I will say is, it feels a little strange this usage of “AI” is held in the same disdain as generated art or lines of code. This instance lacks theft to me, and also sounds like a late argument against Siri. I can understand the argument, but the counter argument feels more nuanced. I will say, the CEO of Nexon (Embark parent and publisher) blabbing about AI being necessary in everything going forward is more than a little icky. I think the customers will have a strong sway on the use of “AI” going forward. Exactly which direction we see the sway go still feels muddy. I’m sure big companies are betting on the lack of clarity and understanding to further their plans. Gonna have to remain diligent on this one.

Battlefield 6

This one feels a little bittersweet a few weeks after the passing of Vince Zampella. I have been a fan of Battlefield since Bad Company 2 and a steadfast player of every game since. I stuck it out through 2042. To see Battlefield surge as strongly as it did when 6 released, to see it return to its roots, to feel like I’m playing Battlefield 4 or even 3 again, truly is something else. Moment to moment play in this series has always hinged on feeling like the most immersive warfare sim it can while still being approachable. From sound design to gunplay Battlefield 6 executes on every front. Deeply and genuinely pleased to have such a good game to return to over the next year or so and just blow my socks off with pulse pounding action. The fact that Vince Zampella led the teams that made Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2, effectively cementing Call of Duty as a year-to-year best seller is crazy. The new fact that Battlefield has a chance to have sold better than Call of Duty with a cadre of dev teams again led by Zampella, potentially dethroning Call of Duty’s reign as number 1 since 2006 (a stat Zampella is at least a little responsible for) is poetic and one of those stories you love to see. His passing is tragic, and the competitive FPS genre owes a huge debt of gratitude to his contribution over the last 20 years.

Borderlands 4

Borderlands 4 is on this list because I played it. But that’s about all I did. And I didn’t play it for all that long. About 4 hours in I realized I’ve kinda played this game before. Also ARC, Battlefield 6, and Rematch were all begging for my time aaaaand I couldn’t deny them, so Borderlands 4 fell to the side. I bought it though. So someday I’ll return. Likely only to slowly dabble but, at this point, my relationship with Borderlands has long been label-able as a dalliance. So perhaps it was always only going to be this way. I will say, the introduction of the game sold me more than any other Borderlands game has. Well great…now I’m thinking about it again…

Duskpunk

I bought Duskpunk exclusively because Citizen Sleeper creator Gareth Damian Martin compared the title to their own games. I’m an easy sell if you say the right things. If it’s the right person, you don’t even have to say the right things. In this case it was both the right person and the right things. There are slight deviations from the exact Citizen Sleeper formula, but Duskpunk gets the crux of the sonder-core genre Gareth and I coined during our last podcast session. The game puts you in the middle of a city roiling with political and economical strife and asks you to choose which scales to place your thumb on. It does feel a little bit like a Forrest Gump situation, you are present and in the center of every important moment if you choose to be, but in the end I felt really good about the way things built, climaxed, and resolved. Unlike either Citizen Sleeper game, I wasn’t able to make everyone happy in Duskpunk, which felt a bit more grounded than I was expecting. A really solid title I absolutely devoured. Happy to lead a Marxist workers rebellion against an imperial state any time, please make more games like this!

Slots & Daggers

Short, sweet, devilishly fashionable, crunchy, funny, and downright addictive. Friedemann Allmenröder has a knack for making games I come across and think, “This is exactly my shit.” Slots & Daggers is the third time he’s done it to me. Like ISLANDERS and SUMMERHOUSE before, I found Slots & Daggers on accident (or because the Steam algorithm knows me or something) and scooped it up immediately. A deck-building, slot machine, boss rush rogue-lite? Fuckin…yup. I recently completed the entire campaign pathway and unlocked Arena mode. While I haven’t dived into that portion just yet, the main path was just so damn satisfying. It’s simple UI design. Everything shakes, bangs, plings, and plonks just right. Happy I have this to go to and no desire to find my way to a casino, because if this is any indication, I would spend way too much time fucking around with levers and my meager bank account.

Gray Zone Warfare

This game didn’t exactly come out in 2025 but my friend group had a hot and heavy affair with it over the summer. An open world extraction shooter with HEAVY milsim influence, Gray Zone Warfare is kind of exactly the kind of game I want to play a lot of. It’s currently in early access, which generally means I play a few hours and then keep my distance until full release. Extraction shooters do have the habit of being in early access for eons though, so we grabbed a few friends, convinced them to buy in, and put about 40 hours into it across two separate updates. The updates serve as community account wipes, so we got the full experience out so far. Nothing compares to the feeling you get when you and a squad of buddies move through and clear a small village or series of city blocks with no issues. You feel surgical. Like true wetwork specialists. Even if feeling like you are actually that lethal is the obvious power fantasy. The update we encountered sought to fix some omniscient AI behaviors and did so pretty well. There’s also something strang going on in that world they are building up to. Copies of Roadside Picnic, the 1972 Russian sci-fi thriller written by brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, can be found all over the place. Roadside Picnic is why we have S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, hell its kinda why the extraction shooter genre exists at all. Gray Zone Warfare has a big anomaly zone in the center of the map, there are weird sounds in the night, some of the documents you come across suggest some fishy dealings going on. I’m excited to see what they decide to reveal someday. Fully prepared to wait a decade for it though…haha…ha…

Is This Seat Taken

On the list of little bitty games I find and have a fucking blast with, Is This Seat Taken is a little puzzle game about placing people in seats or spots based on small lists of desires and requirements attached to each little shape. The little bits of writing are cheeky, the little people all being different shapes is cute, the puzzles are tricky, and honestly, it just kinda makes me smile. That’s what little games like this are for. Finding a person to sit next to the stinky child with flies swarming around them while finding another place for the square that hates big smells and wants to read is quirky and creative. Great for waking the brain up or, alternatively, helping your tired brain realize it’s too tired to be doing this. A dual function medicine. Gotta love it.

Whisper Mountain Outbreak

Another early access rogue-lite/like? What? No way! This title is made by the same Malaysian production house that put out the fantastic Coffee Talk games (looking forward to the sequel still!). But rather than a cutesy coffee shop sim you are thrust into a postapocalyptic world full of zombies, monsters, and occult horrors and given a baseball bat and a pat on the back. You move through a linear mission selection screen and gather up whatever loot you can find along the way and then on one mission you make a single mistake, everyone dies, you resurrect back at base and one of three lanterns shatter. Immediately usurping the “Oh cool, I get to keep my shit” feeling of seeing yourself alive again with the “oh shit, I can only die a couple more times…cool.” The most interesting bit about the game is you have no fucking clue what’s going on, so each little excursion is fresh and kinda terrifying. If you put the Umbrella Corp logo anywhere in this game it would make a tone of sense. All teh Resident Evil vibes, great pixel art, much fun! Interested to see where they go with it and what they add before its full release. Also, fun fact, the game currently comes with a friend code, so grab it and share it and have a good ass time.

Tavern Keeper

More than ten years ago, and a lot since then, I spent a tremendous amount of time playing Game Dev Tycoon, a game dev business sim made by a small team of developers called Greenheart games. They announced they were working on Tavern Keeper like…eight years ago. It finally launched in early access! Woo! It’s really fucking good! Woo! It’s also extremely complex and will make you stress out about so many things!

…woo!?

I love what I’ve played of Tavern Keeper. It’s not just a Diner Dash copy, instead you are tasked with not only staffing and running a bar, but eventually adding a kitchen, figuring out how to order and stock food, designing dishes to be made, scheduling your employees, cleaning and maintaining your equipment, and participating in local festivals. It rips. Also it makes my brain itch while also scratching itches in my brain. I’ve played through the swamp introduction and the halfling map. I think im good until full release, even though I do have one more zone. Maybe I’ll pop back in for each update before then. This feels a bit like the first Hades to me: a few hours in I put that game down until full release. No contact whatsoever. Sometimes you just know you’re going to love something. Sometimes you also know you don’t have the mental capacity to engage with such a deep sim during the holiday rush of logistics and interfamilial dynamics. You know….life shit. Great sim though. Very excited to keep an ear out for development updates.

Hades II

Oh hey Hades II, I was just talking about you. This game pisses me off, but in the best way. Supergiant has this back for making games I love aesthetically and experientially. Their music has literally always been on fucking point, their art design is always slick and sexy (despite my beef they let Dionysus be a BIG BOI), and each game feels extremely good to play. I touched Hades in early access and then let that dog lie until it was ready to be born. Absolutely loved it upon release. What a solid experience. So, as you can imagine, when they announced their first sequel to a game they have ever made, I was thrilled it was Hades. But the fear started to creep in. How the fuck do you make a sequel to a game that was borderline perfect without diluting the broth too much. Well…I’m happy(?) to tell you…Hades II is fucking great. It’s genuinely mystifying how the hell they figure out how to make “Hades but again” better. But like…they did! The music is reimagined with synth drip and electronic momentum. The combat is different and varied and fresh and feels like returning to something despite being, you know, unique. It’s mesmerizing honestly. Supergiant needs to be debuffed as a studio. You can’t be this good at making games. Jk you can please don’t stop!

Star Birds

Oh boy! Another early access game! Star Birds is the love child of Kurzgesagt, a quirky German animation and design studio, and the creators of Dorfromantik, Toukana Interactive. I played the hell out of Dorfromantik, a random deck-based, hex-tile, chill citybuilder/puzzle game. Yeesh that’s a mouthful. Star Birds puts you on a colony ship full of sentient birds exploring the galaxy. You’re tasked with establishing little mining outposts on tiny little planets and creating a logistical system wherein you can extract the stuff you need to carry on your journey. It’s a hair complex, but a good balance of brain stress and happy “thing go click and brr and I’m so good at this!” Played it for about 4 hours and decided to wait to see what updates bring to the table. But I dig it!

Easy Delivery Co.

Man…if there is any game on this list that I took a look at and immediately said, I’m gonna dig this, Easy Delivery Co. is definitely one of the quicker pick ups. I’ve only dabbled in this game but it’s weeeeeeeeird. In like, the best ways. You’re a little cat, you drive a little white pickup truck, and you deliver things. Sounds simple right? And then I died of frostbite, woke up in an endless maze of gray concrete tunnels, and eventually found my way back to the world of the living. At least they explained what just happened when I got out…just kidding, they definitely didn’t. There is something going on in this game, I just know it. Add this to the list of games I’ve bought this year that I know aren’t very long, and yet, I haven’t made the time to go back and finish them. I’m so intrigued though!

Hyper Light Breaker

This one is a bit of a sad story for me. I absolutely loved Heart Machine’s first game Hyper Light Drifter. Ate it up. I skipped Solar Ash, mostly because it was a Playstation exclusive for a while there. But Hyper Light Breaker, a game interested in answering the question, “What if Hyper Light Drifter but also Risk of Rain 2” felt like it was going to be a no brainer. Rogue-lite games are all the rage right now (obviously, look at my list), I dig them a lot (ahem…the list), and it’s in the HLD universe? Fuck yeah. It plays pretty well too. I have done a dozen or so runs and had a really good time figuring out characters, how the overworld behaves, and fighting bosses. Theeeeeennnnnn Heart Machine announced they were ending development on it back in October. Chalk this one up as the victim of the ever devolving state of funding and publishing in the industry. To quote the team’s verbiage: “While this path will include a conclusion on the project, it reflects broader forces beyond our control, including shifts in funding, corporate consolidation and the uncertain environment many small studios like us are navigating today.” Yeah, cool…that checks out. Fuckin’ sucks though. Was looking forward to what they were going to add to it.

Keep Driving

Keep Driving is one of the most unique takes to an RPG(?) I think I have come across in the last few years. It’s a road trip simulator, anchoring its gameplay loop on route planning, resource management, crew (hitchhiker) abilities, and turn-based, roadborne obstacle combat. It’s a wild experience. But the vibes are all here. You find mixtapes out and about, these add songs to your selection for playlists in the car, you can go on little explorations at towns that allow you to find all sorts of things, from car parts to…drugs…and you have to do all of this while ensuring you have enough fuel, food, and cigarettes. Y/CJ/Y games is small, two guys: Josef Martinovsky and Christopher Andreasson. They also made Sea Salt, a game I did not play but heard really good things about. I live for this shit. Small, accessible, full of character. These are the games we need to support. These are the games that keep the industry on its toes.

Tactical Breach Wizards

Ok…this came out last year…and by last year I mean 2024. Sometimes you get to a game a bit later and think, damn, this would have landed on my list if I had been paying attention. What’s worse? I participated in the closed testing for this game prior to its release, absolutely adored it, and then forgot about it immediately after buying it at launch. Tactical Breach Wizards is a turn-based tactics puzzle game about spec-ops wizards and shit, fighting people and throwing them out of windows. Seriously. This game rounds out the Defenestration Trilogy, a trio of games by Suspicious Developments, a study run by the endlessly witty Tom Francis. The prior two games, as one would imagine, heavily feature defenestration, or the act of throwing someone from a window. So think XCOM, but your pushback abilities have a very specific goal in mind. I didn’t play Heat Signature or Gunpoint, but Tactical Breach Wizards is the clear culmination of those games. It’s witty, creative, and pushes you to solve each room like a puzzle far more than most any other TBT game I have personally engaged with. I vow to play this through this year. Perhaps I can even make good on that promise.

Neongarten

Keeping on theme with the small and quirky, Neongarten is a fun little puzzle game wherein you build cyberpunk city stacks in a limited space. Each building has a category and draw or give bonuses based on their proximity to other buildings. You build through a handful of points thresholds until you complete that particular puzzle. The music is a vibe, the art style is minimalist, the lighting on your little stack dazzles, and each run can be done in about 15-20 minutes. I don’t know what it is, something about building things to chill ass tunes makes my heart flutter. I rotated between this and Tiny Glade and Dystopika and SUMMERHOUSE all year. If I had a few minutes to spare, pre or post gaming sesh, winding down with Neongarten was always a delight.

Jump Space

This is literally here to serve as a reminder to myself to play this game soon. Played the beta, fell in love, bought it on release, never opened it once. For shame…for shame…

Door Kickers 2

So I have been playing Door Kickers 2 for a couple years now. This year it reached its 1.0 launch. I had given it about eight months of rest at the time of release. When my buddies and I dove into the full release we were all immediately very pleased. It’s a dense tactical experience. Oodles of levels, each of them playing out in any number of ways once you start the action. We play this game as a semi-turn-based tactical game, sometimes we do it all in real time, but my absolute favorite has to be planning the entire operation before hitting start and just watching it go. I love the puzzle presented to me, the player, by a tactical game. There’s a spec-ops nerd deep in my bones that absolutely loves executing a well thought out and efficient plan. Honestly the only thing I dislike about this entire game, as an experience, is the setting. I get it, we’ve been at war in the Middle East for decades, but I can’t help but feel there is a more creative way to make these games. A way of creating a fictional conflict without evoking one of the more mindless atrocities this country has been the author of. Fucking robots. Make the enemies robots. There. Fixed it. Great game though. Really solid structure for player expression.

FragPunk

I played this for about a week with my buddy Ryan. I have the itch constantly to dive into Valorant, I just lack the hyper competitive friend group to really commit to a game in the genre. FragPunk feels like NetEase asked the simple question, “what if CounterStrike gunplay felt as good as Call of Duty?” It’s the same basic match format as a CS: GO or Valorant, but like…shooting feels good. Which simultaneously sounds like a childish observation and perhaps the most obvious. I don’t think the other games of this variety are flawed, I just can’t get into the mechanics of firing the weapons in those games. They all feel very “Old PC” and FragPunk deftly eschews the same assessment by making everything actually feel good to do. Deeply interested in the ongoing effects of Chinese development studios taking more cracks at established genre conventions and just trying them out slightly altered. Marvel Rivals has had great success basically ripping off Overwatch. I think the FPS space could use some inspired alterations. Maybe FragPunk isn’t the exact game to get the ball rolling, but it feels like the snowball is approaching a more interesting velocity.

Star Wars Outlaws DLC

Fuck people who didn’t like this game. I would say it doesn’t make any sense, but sadly, it makes perfect sense. Star Wars Outlaws fell victim to the age old, “this main protagonist isn’t the most perfect piece of fuckable meat” mind rot so prevalent on social media nowadays. And yes, the end of that sentence may have made me sound like a boomer, but it’s also correct. Kay Vess is a bad ass, a trait that is hot on its own. But, uhm…also…why is the fuckability of a protagonist a measuring stick for the success of a game at all? There were complaints of repetitiveness and poor mission structure when Outlaws first released. I didn’t see it. Knock out animations might be a little repetitive, but the lack of variety felt like a gameplay choice. I could guarantee how long a KO would take and plan my movement around a given area by timing said animations. As an aside, an open-world Star Wars game by the studio responsible for The Division deserves more respect. The Division franchise has some of the most beautifully realized spaces in recent memory. For Star Wars to get the same treatment felt like eating my cake and having it too. An absolutely gorgeous simulation of the “Galaxy Far, Far Away…”

The two large story DLCs released for Outlaws were a blast. Admittedly, at least in part, some of the fun came from just being able to return to the same space with something new to do. Still, to take a game about a smuggler and first give her a mission to infiltrate a casino ship to compete in a Sabaac tournament with LAndo Calrissian? Fucking stellar choice. Following that up with an adventure featuring one of the most famous pirates in Star Wars, Hondo Ohnaka, felt like absolute peak shit. Star Wars has had a few stabs at the pirate side of the universe and honestly, between this second DLC and Skeleton Crew, I’m sold. Give me a new Star Wars pirate-themed thing every year or so please. The setting is so perfect for it, and the writers they have found thus far deeply understand the Treasure Island brand of backstabbing swashbucklery. I want Outlaws to live forever. It’s a damn shame it got killed by people unwilling to enjoy a game for what it is, rather than what they wished it had been (I am also looking at you Stranger Things Conformity Gate-ers). There’s a lot of entitlement in the consumer space. I wish companies felt less of a need to acquiesce to their feverish demands.

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector

I love Gareth Damian Martin’s games. There is just something about them. Something able to pry open even the most dry rotted shutters and let light flood the room. If the first Citizen Sleeper was about resilience through community building and resistance, Citizen Sleeper 2 is a plea to its players to remember, no task is impossible if you lean on the people around you. The changes to the dice system and opening the universe up for planetary exploration just felt so damn good. Furthermore, where the first Citizen Sleeper left me in a snotty shambles because of the little community I built and the love I had for everyone in it, the second game somehow managed to evoke an even larger response from me. The games, as well as their creator, have always been deeply interested in mortality and how it impacts us. Our minds, our bodies, our families. Starward Vector in its closing hours, starts to turn its ever-vigilant eyes inward, asking the player to come to peace with the state of what mortality means to your Sleeper. It only makes sense players would feel those eyes boring into their souls. I don’t have any desire to spoil this game. Not yet. Perhaps in a longer write up. The reaction Ben Croshaw had to this game in his Fully Ramblomatic (formerly Zero Punctuation) moves me to tears every single fucking time. And it sums up my feelings so well.

Fuck me…fuck you Gareth…just kidding. I love you. But, fuuuuuuuhk.

All in all, I really enjoyed most everything I played in 2025. I have a pretty discerning eye when it comes to the things I decide to purchase and devote my time to. Still, the density and consistency of real bangers this year was a pleasant surprise. Indie reigns supreme, perhaps it always will, but even titles like Battlefield and ARC Raiders sopped up a bunch of my time. In a year marred by the need to look away from everything, games provided a really excellent escape. As always, I guess. More than once however, it specifically asked me to look closer actually. To stop trying to hide and, instead, contemplate what I would mean to be a part of the change. What it would look like to sit idly by while the dumpster fire spills over to the forests. What it would mean to no longer be afraid of the fight. This is why games are art. So cheers to you 2025, you were the worst fucking year to be alive and intelligent, but god damn did you house a lot of good fucking art.

Something about ARC Raiders feels different. I know I’m not saying anything fundamentally different than what the internet is saying right now, but I still feel the urge to say, “it feels different.” I’m a recent adopter, but long time admirer, of the extraction shooter genre of games. I have been perpetually intrigued by Tarkov, but I never made my way into its harsh landscape. A few months back a group of friends and I dove headlong into Gray Zone Warfare, an open world extraction shooter made by an indie Czech outfit called Madfinger Games. A long-time fan of Tacticool games, I found Gray Zone to be an amazingly granular mixture of the gunplay of a Ready or Not or Rainbow Six and the survivalist, scavenger loop of a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Game. Slow crawling an underground bunker with my kitted DDRM4, coughing silenced rounds down hallways into armored baddies and scrounging for valuables felt and feels excellent. But Gray Zone lost us a bit with its finicky AI. A few too many times we found ourselves dead at the hands of a bot with omniscient perception and Hawkeye-esque marksmanship. This isn’t an unfixable flaw, and I’m sure Madfinger is hard at work rectifying this. But ARC Raiders feels different.

Made by the, thus far, infallible Embark Studios (developers of THE FINALS), a cadre of ex-DICE developers, ARC Raiders is the newest entry to the extraction shooter genre. What started as a PvE experience, altered due to the developers feeling it lacked the “fun” they were looking for, transformed into a gritty, atmospheric PvPvE shooter with incomparable vibes. You are a Raider, as the name suggests, tasked with venturing Topside, onto the surface of an Earth overrun by ominous, hyperlethal machines called ARC. The details of the fall of society are muddy. Perhaps both the effect of prolonged time underground in the haven city of Speranza and the devs deliberate omission of key details, you aren’t really sure how things got this way. One can assume of course. But while I might catch myself wondering how these massive and unsettlingly smart machines came to rule the surface world, all of my curiosity is offset in-game by survival instinct.

Embark has threaded a precarious needle here. The lack of details serves as a flavor of the setting, rather than a detriment to the gameplay. At once, as a player, your concern with what happened before is supplanted by the importance of what is happening right now. Your run starts in a random location in any of the maps you have chosen. You get the lay of the landscape, you check you mission timer, you double check your tasks, and you get to work. The first and most obvious thing you encounter is the beautifully realized spaces Embark has created here. Dam Battlegrounds is an industrial dam surrounded by outcroppings of residential areas wrapped around a low lying red clay salt bog. The Buried City stands like a set of jagged teeth amidst the windswept dunes of some environmental disaster. The Spaceport feels like Destiny’s Cosmodrome, but instead of aliens and magic, it’s full of abandoned space age rocket hangers, detritus, and titanic structures above and below the ground. And Blue Gat, the last zone you unlock, is a sprawling, lush, low mountain security checkpoint wreathed in crumbling infrastructure. Each and every zone feels distinct and memorable. More often than I expect, I catch myself surveying some vista I have encountered and muttering something to the effect of, “fuck me this game is beautiful.” It’s mesmeric.

But ARC Raiders feels different. I have played the game for 20 hours in the first 5 days since its release and my experience, while incredibly unique for me, has been one the community at large is reporting similarly. For a game built around what, in other titles in the same genre, is a desperate and violent gameplay loop, ARC Raiders has sidestepped toxic player interaction almost entirely. In my dozens and dozens of runs, I have encountered hostile players, assuredly. But by far the majority of my experience Topside has been characterized by friendly, cooperative, or isolationist encounters with other players. Now, I will be the first to admit, I know the game is brand new, and the majority of players are just feeling everything out still. There will likely come a time where people have better gear and enter spaces with the intent of hunting other players. But as the game currently stands, everyone seems perfectly content to aid, assist, or just keep their distance from other players.

There are a few things I feel make this possible. The amount of proximity mic conversation in this game is absurd. The number of times I have entered a site, heard a player nearby, and called out over prox chat “friendly” is uncanny. What’s more, almost every single time I get a “friendly” called back in response. As long as you aren’t aggressive or stealing someone else hard fought ARC loot, players want to coexist with each other. A few days ago my squad and I decided, upon starting a run, to be hostile to anyone we saw. Get some blood on our hands, as it were. As we were traipsing up to the Village in Blue Gate we heard a squad getting their asses handed to them by a Leaper (one of the most terrifying enemy AI I have ever fought in a game). We immediately altered course to intercept them, hoping to finish off the survivors, be they ARC bot or human. But instead of sating our bloodlust, the other team inadvertently ran right at us in the woods, spotted us creeping, and called for help over prox chat. We had just decided to kill any raiders we came across on site, and yet, when the inflection point came, we dove in to aid them, felled the bounding beast, and shared the spoils. A few moments later we wished our newfound compatriots well and went our separate ways. And this is the default experience I have found.

The second, and perhaps most notable factor, is the menace and danger ARC poses at every moment. Small scuffles can turn into prolonged firefights with increasingly lethal bots at the drop of a hat. You think you have an edge on a patrol of Wasps and Hornets in one second and the next a Snitch has come to investigate the gunfire, called in additional ARC support, and your patrol has turned into a fleet of drones. And ARC has teeth. I’ve played Hunt: Showdown for years and I can tell you with confidence, the number of times I have died to ads (AI enemies) can be counted on my two hands. They are a nuisance more than anything. Rarely a true threat. But ARC is consistently capable of ruining a run. And I’ve only listed the small variants. Rocketeers are formidable foes, drifting slowly across the sky but capable of bombarding you with…well…rockets, made for bringing you low in just a couple near hits. God forbid you take one square to the body. Leapers are four-legged demon spawn, the size of a small school bus, who jump exceedingly surprising distances and heights to exact pain and misery on you and your party. Bastions and Bombardiers are six-legged hosses with brutally loud and damaging armaments. You can hear a Bastion’s minigun spin up across the map. When you do, you mutter a soft prayer for the poor souls on the receiving end. And Bombardiers fill the air with mortars the moment one of their spotter drones has eyes on you. ARC is an enemy not to be trifled with, and if you must, one you must deal with swiftly. The Queen, protector of a mission modifying event called The Harvester, is a three-story behemoth of metal. In the server slam Embark ran before launch, they reported she felled more than 108,000 raiders while she herself only met her end 77 times.

And perhaps this is the core of the issue. The core of the conceit. The core of the experience. You can’t help but feel afraid stepping through the ruins as death scans the treelines and haunts the streets. The fear prompts you to do things in a flash. The benefit of forethought is rarely afforded. You have to be liquid. Like water. Adapting to the shape of each situation on the fly. This is why players find themselves cooperating. Because in a dangerous world, having another pair of eyes and another barrel aimed down range instead of at you, is a welcome comfort. This game makes you a survivor. And surviving means doing what’s best for you and your team. Or you and your loot. When it comes down to it, the ways those questions resolve themselves lends to a more real, more filmic experience.

In the end, all of it feels deliberate. Even the absence of directed impetus. Because ARC Raiders is fully content telling you to “be safe out there.” How you define safety is forced to adapt to the systems they have put in place. Systems aligned brilliantly to push players to decide quickly. Creating emergent gameplay reminiscent of Journey’s White Robes. White Robes with guns. Allies in unexpected situations. And with the visuals, sound design, and weighted feel, each of those decisions play out in a world hungry for your footprints, and thirsty for blood. You just have to decide…whose blood it will be. And for a lot of raiders Topside, right now, the answer is nobody’s.

I watched Asteroid City at the Hi-Pointe theater here in Saint Louis. It’s an old, extremely kitschy cinema with stiff chairs bolted onto what feels like, and very well could be, linoleum tile floors. Of the destinations to watch a Wes Anderson movie, it certainly ranks high on the list of “most authentic viewing experiences”. I came out of that screening pretty confident I intuited its message. Without beating around the bush, the movie positions a cadre of folks around an extra terrestrial event the perspiring of which locks them down in a small roadside town while the government investigates what happened. A man grieves his recently deceased wife while simultaneously falling for an actress in the bungalow next door. A kid experiences a coming of age due to being forced to stay in one place and deal with his emotions. But all of it is set to this backdrop of the government and, by extension and metaphor, the parents trying to discern what the meaning of this alien encounter means. And, by further extension, what *gestures wildly at the air* all this means. But I came away from the movie convinced the message was, in fact, it didn’t mean anything at all.

I remember listening to the other critics in the spill out, each of them pondering what the hell the movie they just watched was about and I couldn’t help but giggle a bit. They all seemed to miss the point. Asteroid City was specifically about how adults try so hard to make everything mean something, and in their pursuit, tend to overlook the experience of just…I don’t know…living? I wrote this in my review, a few people read it, maybe a few of them got it. But it wasn’t until a full two years later, when I came across a video essay by Thomas Flight, who’s work I had recently discovered I really enjoyed, I found validation. Thomas, in slightly different words, in the first three minutes of his video, says exactly what I was thinking. Asteroid City is about the happenstance of life, unyielding and rarely keen to define its actions and inactions, and how its characters, and then the viewers, attempt to make sense of it all.

I remember whooping out loud, slapping my knee like a 70 year old uncle, and getting up to go smoke a cigarette. I didn’t finish the video for another several months. It was like a parent telling me they were proud of me. A voice of critique, a voice I have come to value deeply, validated my thoughts on something I felt strongly about, but lacked the community to hash out.

Fast forward then to last month, I am reading Doc Burford’s article “let’s reconsider how we talk about video games” and I’m hit by a familiar, but rarely encountered sensation. I have been teaching Game Design (Intro to- to be exact) at a local university for 4 years now, and just last year I got the opportunity to test out an experimental class. Experimental for the fact the school had never had a class of the like, not because I was approaching anything in some untread method. I called the class Media Critique, and my pitch was “what if we gave film studies students (who have a film studies class) and game students (who do not have a Games Studies class on account of the program’s leadership not seeing the “use?”) a place to hone their thoughts into coherent and worthwhile critique. It felt bold and revolutionary for the program, but not because it was either of those things. Instead, as I previously mentioned, it just felt like something the school wouldn’t really care about. I ran it as a Directed (or Independent) Study. Much to my surprise, the class filled quickly.

I spent a large amount of time, in the weeks the class was in session, breaking from my lesson plan to dig into several “whys” the class lofted up into the air. I’ve always found teaching to be akin to DM/GMing a tabletop roleplaying game. Meaning: you are only really valuable as a professor, insofar as your ability to make plans, read the tone and intention of the room, and adjust your plan to better tailor the experience to your players (students). But of all of those “whys”, the most important one, and the one we spent a whole week of class dissecting, was: Why is criticism important?”

I immediately answered, “it isn’t.” But not in the nihilistic and cynical way. In the goofy, corny, Dead Poet’s Society way. The way Ethan Hawke describes art. The way Madhu Raghavendra’s poem Artist states:

I don’t mind

being the non-essential.

Even a child takes

its mother for granted.

It does not run back

to its mother until it’s hurt.

Nobody first thinks of water

when they arrive

at an exquisite dinner party,

until they are choking.

I don’t mind

being the non-essential

knowing you will come looking

when things are broken

and nothing else works.

Art is non-essential

Until it is not.

It’s sappy and a bit silly and entirely corny, but I believe it. In a similar sense then, games criticism, or really criticism as a whole, lives in this constantly fluctuating state of necessity. Should you know what you like and know what you want, you will likely find little value in criticism about those things initially. I don’t read reviews on Assassin’s Creed games, for instance. However, the moment the game moves away from being perfunctory, criticism starts to eke in. Assassin’s Creed may not have been the best example for this, because I rarely have deeper thoughts about those games recently. But then again, back in 2023, when I started playing Mirage, On October 9th, I remember being unable to enjoy a game so focused on the beauty of Baghdad while the world was watching the start of the brutal Israeli response to events just days prior.

In that moment, Mirage became an exercise in exegesis. What the developers, years prior, couldn’t have known nor prepared for, now became the fulcrum on which the game balanced for me. It was obviously always intended to, in its design, act as a love letter to a land lost. Both to time and colonial violence. But with this new period of violence, so fresh and raw, it became a treatise of a people who merely wanted to exist and no longer could. No longer allowed to.

It took me 6 months to return to Mirage and I never really wrote about it, outside of this. And due to *gestures wildly* things, I didn’t read much criticism about the game centering the genocide in Gaza, save one.

But this, to me, begs the question: If not when it is most relevant to the conversation, then fucking when?

All of this tracks back, eventually, to Doc’s piece I mentioned earlier. I’ve struggled for years, attempting to be more consistent with my writing, but in the end consistency seems like chaff. Like my metronomic posting would be a bug-light for hundreds of readers to be drawn in and zapped by my musings. But Doc has helped me realize, it truly isn’t about me. Instead it’s about the relationship created between my thoughts and the readers. Everything I write is about helping somebody think about a game or film I have interacted with in a different way. That’s my endeavor, at the very least. And I agree with Doc’s thesis, if I am understanding it correctly, that as a journalist your job isn’t to center yourself in the body of your work but rather the art you are discussing. It’s causing me to trace my steps backwards through the work I have done, making me investigate my motivations.

One of the nice things about writing without a dedicated editor is the freedom I am permitted to ramble and prattle in different directions. I try to contain my thoughts to a single highway, a more efficient form of travel when trying to go a long distance. But I also value taking side roads, allowing for distractions and digressions. I hope it doesn’t make my work unreadable. Just occasionally slightly less fluid. But in moments like this, I find myself wishing I had someone slapping my knuckles with a ruler, making me focus.

The effect of coming across Thomas Flight’s video about Asteroid City and Doc’s article, is one in the same. It’s a kind of compound realization. I should trust my gut. I have a hard time using my experience writing, for myself, for more than a decade, as a means of giving my voice any credibility or authority. But that’s not the point. I don’t desire credibility or authority. Instead I want to draw your eyes away from the “mechanical grittiness” of a game and to the choices the developers made in making combat feel mechanical and gritty. Do those choices resonate with the story they are telling? Less “this is why game feel good” and more “why is it important, as a player, to feel good right now.”

That is the springboard into more deep conversation. As I play Assassin’s Creed Shadows, eating up the setting and scenery, bathing myself with the stealth Rubik’s cube at every camp and castle, I ask myself, “Should I feel so good killing so many people?” Is it a question with a finite answer? No. Is it worth conversation? Maybe!

Clint Hocking’s conceptualization of Ludonarrative dissonance back in the late 2000s made a lot of people sigh and turn away from their computers. Was the assertion that Nathan Drake was a monster because of the number of people he killed — making his lovable rogue persona dissonant — taken seriously by anyone? I’m not sure I have the faculties to dig into the data to answer the question with any “authority.” But I know Naughty Dog immediately responded by making The Last of Us, a game in which the main character is irrevocably a monster. A game where the child in your care constantly remarks on the brutality you enact as a player.

Shadows seems at least interested in fielding questions about the morality of its player characters. As the game progresses Naoe and Yasuke debate the ramifications of their bloodshed. Debate whether they are just the same as those they put under their blades. I don’t know if Shadows has the chops or intention (returning after completing the game; it did not) to actually address the question, but the utterance alone is intriguing to me.

Perhaps then, I am finding my voice. A process I once believed I had long accomplished. I yearn for asking questions and causing my friend group to groan. I enjoy making people open their brains a bit more when interacting with film and games. Being called a buzzkill because I make you think about the consequences of any number of actions in a given game actually feeds me. Similarly, I have found myself debating the mechanical manipulation of live service games like Destiny and Marvel SNAP and THE FINALS (must use all caps!!!). The conversation between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is fascinating to me. Are you going to be annoyed and maybe have a hard time loving your manufactured slop? Maybe. Does this in me create regret? Never.

This is why I do this, why it’s important to do this. So we can ask ourselves questions without easy answers on the route to understanding the power of our art. As I knock the dust off of all my internal computers and remember how it feels to write I have a list of titles from the past year I haven’t talked about. And the year prior. I can’t believe I didn’t take a moment to write about Jusant. I need to tally my thoughts on Citizen Sleeper 2. I need to replay and then talk about why Herdling was so good. Because art is important. Because talking about art is important. And with ARC Raiders literally releasing tomorrow, it’s time to start drumming up the brainworks. I know I am going to have a lot to say about what amazing work Embark has done.

So until you hear from me again, see you Topside.

Nearly seven years ago I published an episode of the Bounty Board podcast. The focus of said episode was the difference between the “finite” and the “infinite game,” a terminology I discovered through Simon Sinek. The talk he gave dug into what it meant for companies to play strategies with focus on singular objectives or towards the future of the market they competed in, to minimalize it at least. The argument played out in an anecdote about attending both a Microsoft and and Apple conference. At Microsoft the vast majority of the executives presented on ways to improve the company’s earnings in the next quarter or fiscal year. Alternatively, the executives at Apple were presenting on how they could make teacher’s and student’s lives easier. It was a stark contrast and an interesting ideological difference to point out.

The podcast we recorded took the same lens of differentiation and applied it to the game industry. In 2018 Gamepass was just a year old, but the reverberations were starting to be felt. It was still very new, so it was hard to tell what kind of impact it would have on the industry at large. Still, we found a tremendous amount of enjoyment in debating what kind of impact would follow. We were at the height of the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4, games like God of War and Red Dead Redemption were completely dominating the social space, and now a conversation about the “Netflix of games“ had us excited. Now, I haven’t relistened to the episode I’m describing, but I distinctly remember taking the side of Xbox in this burgeoning era. The idea of an easy to access library of games with new exclusive games guaranteed as part of the subscription sounded amazing.

There is an entire economics whitepaper in the details I’m not fully aware of on topics like subscription services for media. I know Netflix has been running along the knife’s edge for years because of the purposefully fuzzy survivability or profitability of its business model. At the onset, Gamepass looked and sounded amazing. There were detractors, sure, but of course there were. New shit always drew the ire of those not keen or unwilling to understand the business of games. Nearly eight years later, I’ve realized the lack of understanding was coming from me.

What appeared to be Microsoft pivoting with Xbox in pursuit of a more infinite model of game distribution and production seems, at this point, to exist as a means of extracting wealth the same way you extract juice from a citrus fruit. By pulverizing the fruit. And just as we don’t need another Superman or Batman origin story, I won’t assume my readers haven’t been aware of the massive amount of personnel shrink the game industry has been going through in the last few years. Shrink that is never more evident than at the biggest publishers. Studios are closing, games are getting canceled, and the large scale production of video games is in a rapid decline.

I have argued before that Grand Theft Auto VI is going to be the last game of its scale for a long time. The last few years have only solidified my opinion. Effectively, the only AAA games that still find their way to market are long-tenured institutions. Call of Duty, Battlefield, Fromsoft games have moved into this realm. Otherwise, I think you could argue most everything else is one or several steps down from the peak. And, in a trend becoming ever more prevalent, the biggest games from the last few years have been made by studios more comfortably categorized in those smaller brackets. Baldur’s Gate is the most gray. Larian is large, but it isn’t publicly owned, affording them years longer to complete their work than any other studio of the same size.

In the last five years alone, games like Hades, AstroBot, Cult of the Lamb, Balatro, Clair Obscur, and It Takes Two have soaked up the spotlight. And I’ve barely scratched the surface. Meanwhile Microsoft shuttered Tango Gameworks, the studio behind Hi-Fi Rush, despite its resounding success and excellent critical reception, only a year after release. Not even enough time to finish the sequel they were already working on. Still even more condemning is the recent closure of The Initiative, a staggeringly expensive “AAAA” project studio Xbox touted as making the future of games for the publisher. The studio was opened in 2018. They announced they were making Perfect Dark in 2020. They showed supposed gameplay of Perfect Dark in 2024. If we are to believe what we saw was real, Perfect Dark looked really good. It had me excited. And here I believed, simply because The Initiative was such a big announcement and had been running development so long, it would be one of the more immune workshops when layoffs came around. Boy was I wrong.

What Xbox has taught us over the last few years is simple: Nobody is safe. Now Gamepass Ultimate is $30 a month. In 2017 Gamepass was $10 dollars. It’s not like Xbox is the only one at fault here, nearly every subscription service has seen price hikes over the last ten years. You come to expect it. Though I can’t help but ask myself the question: Is the value still there? It was far easier to see how $120 a year was well worth it. If you played a meager two AAA releases or first party titles in a calendar year your investment paid off. As someone constantly playing new things it was a steal. Now, since building my own PC and since Xbox has struggled to release titles, the math gets a bit harder. Is my engagement with Gamepass really worth $360 a year? Does Gamepass release six titles a year individually worth $60? But therein lies the rub: how many people, normal-ass people, are playing six or more games a year? The data is muddy, but it seems like the average lies somewhere between five and nine games per year on average. Technically then, Gamepass could be worth it for most everyone. But If you were to ask me, in a boardroom full of execs, I don’t think its sound practice raising the price of your premier subscription service in a way that makes your customers make time to get their money’s worth. But then, the goalposts have moved haven’t they?

Companies like Microsoft and Apple (perhaps to a lesser degree) and Meta and Twitter (refuse to call Musk’s Frankenstein project X) aren’t trying to gain more users anymore as much as they are trying to colonize our free time. Some of them have even said their biggest competition is fucking sleep. Is Gamepass on a trajectory to become the next service vying for each moment you are awake? It’s hard to argue against it with a $360/year subscription offering. And while I understand $360 is a $60 game every two months, the industry is trending ever more towards games with unfathomable amounts of bloat and busy work. It took me 95 hours to beat Assassin’s Creed Shadows. I took my time exploring the world and allowing myself to be distracted, sure, but when I played Brotherhood a few years ago I completed it in 18 hours. AC Mirage is only a few years old. I hundred percented that game in 30 hours. Can you squeeze a 90+ hour title into your free time every two months?

All of this begs so many questions. Why are so many games so damn big? Can my playing an indie game on Gamepass really help those little studios stay open and profitable? Should I can Gamepass and go back to buying games individually? All of these questions lack easy answers. And each of them, when asked in the context of Xbox, leads me back to a single place. The Sinek talk.

Xbox nets a profit for Microsoft in the larger scheme of their fiscal profile. It makes them money. Year to year, Xbox is an earner, not a loser. And yet, this year they laid off over nine thousand people. Meanwhile, Apple TV is running at a loss. Not a small one either. Apple loses a billion dollars a year running Apple TV. A fucking billion dollars. And yet, as a service, Apple TV is cementing itself as a genuinely talented art house for sci-fi and other genre specific television and film. What’s the difference here? They are both multi-trillion dollar companies. Do you know how much money you have when you subtract a billion dollars from 3.6 trillion? Well…you may be shocked to find out, the answer is STILL 3.6 TRILLION FUCKING DOLLARS. Remember the conferences referenced in the Simon Sinek video? The difference between pushing towards earnings reports and making lives easier, better?

It would be hard to quantify Apple’s directive for improving people’ lives. I understand that. Perhaps all of this is some off-the-wall theorizing and I’m way off the point. Still, I can’t help but feel a pull of familiarity. Like we have seen something similar before. Listen, we already treat companies as if they were people legally, so follow me down this rabbit hole a bit. The ultra-wealthy used to strive to leave something behind. Rockefeller, Carnegie, Mellon, Morgan. All tentpoles of the American Industrial Revolution. How many buildings, art institutes, theaters, parks, libraries have been put up in their names? Now I’m not here to erase the unsavory practices some of these businessmen have been accused of, but what I am here doing is pointing out a stark difference between the billionaires of the American past and now. Let’s not forget the Medici family and the patron-artist structure of the Italian Renaissance. Money used to strive to create and/or support art. Through direct or indirect action, the above names became signposts of development, prosperity, progress. I am arguing Apple might be doing that. Or, at the very least, they are trying to. I am also arguing that companies like Sony and Microsoft have lost the plot a bit. Microsoft perhaps a LOT. You think we are ever going to see a theater named after Elon Musk? An art institute funded entirely by the Trump family? Museums and parks paid for by Zuckerberg?

Instead, those big companies and names are invested in an ever escalating arms race whose primary goal is to funded algorithmic research that seeks to colonize our sleep and free time at the cost of our relationships and environment. The three richest men in the world have spent hundreds of billions on what they are calling “AI” this year alone. For a stab at intelligence that’s goal isn’t even true intelligence, its facsimile. Facsimulation. An attempt at copying human intelligence using deductive language models incapable of actually thinking and calculating. That’s what our patrons are doing with their money. Trying to find a way to create a version of humanity they can control, so they can use it to manipulate real humanity from a distance. Excellent. And an executive producer from Xbox told the nine thousand employees they laid off to use AI to, “help reduce the emotional and cognitive load that comes with job loss.”

Get fucked.

So…I was wrong. Microsoft wasn’t playing the infinite game, as much as I wanted to hope they were. Instead they were simply hoping they had found the fabled “infinite money glitch.” And here we are, holding the now short end of the stick, wondering what the fuck happened to the rest of it.

When I say Tron: Legacy is a perfect movie I know I have to back it up. First, let me make one thing clear: I didn’t say it is the perfect movie. This is an important distinction. The argument for a perfect movie will always devolve into a shouting match over objective quality, something I’m still unsure truly exists. I’m not interested in having that argument. I contend Tron: Legacy is a perfect movie. Take into account all of the things a movie can be. Take into account the limitation film presents, as a medium. Time, budget, pace, exposition, dialogue. All organized a million different ways, emphasis given to one over the other. It’s a balancing act. And a difficult one. Some movies nail a few aspects but fall short on others. Some films go all in on one or two aspects and fully neglect the others. Tron: Legacy is fully aware of what it is, spends very little time getting you up to speed, and then maintains said speed through excellent pacing. The slower moments give you respite from the pulse-pounding action. The score sits strapped to your back like a parachute instructor, yanking the cord only when appropriate, but allowing the velocity of Daft Punk’s best work to wash over you.

I love Tron: Legacy. Without remorse.

So you can imagine, when Tron: Ares got announced, I held my breath for years at the idea of another trip into the Grid. Add the confirmation of Jared Leto in the lead role, quite early in the process, and the tension in my lungs became nearly unbearable. Leto is one of those actors I find myself having a hard time nailing down. He was incredible in Dallas Buyers Club and Requiem for a Dream. His detached and egotistical role in Blade Runner 2049 felt like the perfect casting. But I should also make it clear, I don’t really think his shortcomings, or rather his poorly performing movies, are a clear indicator of his flawed performances. His Joker didn’t get enough screen time to give anyone a real grasp of what his rendition would have given us. Sony’s Morbius, a movie I spent an entire review trashing, certainly can’t be solely blamed on him. Even though I wished, at the time, I could. The man has won an Oscar. He’s got the talent. Still, his attachment to a franchise I adore so deeply gave me significant pause.

And there is the second stressor. Tron: Legacy left the door open for a sequel, but Tron: Ares appeared, in its marketing, to be relatively unrelated. Why? We’re Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde busy? We’re they going to appear as cameos? For a movie I was so excited about, I knew frighteningly little about the “why”. Why did they decide to come back?

Tron: Ares takes place years after Legacy. Opening with a similar black-box newscaster expositional intro that details what has happened since we were last familiar with Encom, the tech and video game company started by Kevin Flynn. Sam Flynn, protagonist of Legacy and son of Kevin Flynn has left Encom. Two sisters, Eve and Tess Kim (Greta Lee and Selene Yun), took over and have carried the company to new heights. Meanwhile Dillinger Systems has returned to prominence with Ed Dillinger’s grandson Julian (Evan Peters) at the helm. The rise of AI is mentioned, with Dillinger Systems pushing AI in the world of defense tech and the Kim sisters hoping to leverage the technology to lift humanity. All good place setting for an interesting story. Then we are introduced to Ares.

Ares is the MCP of the Dillinger Systems Grid. The last time a Tron film mentioned a Master Control Program was the original in 1982. Color me surprised. In three minutes of film, Tron: Ares illustrates what Ares is and how he was made. A brutal gauntlet of combat, code injection, correction, derezzing, and reconstitution. Ares is a Program forged through trial. Legacy made a solid case for the derezzing process being a painful one. Programs never endure it quietly. Here we see Ares die again and again. His shrieks of pain echoing each time he falls. Then, the film does something the franchise has only done once before, it brings a program into the real world.

The core plot of Tron: Ares is centered on an arms race between Dillinger Systems and Encom to find what’s called the Permanence Code. See, while Julian Dillinger does his demonstration, 3D printing an APC and Ares in front of a room full of generals and influencers, he obscures the fact that his Grid-printed hardware only has a 29-minute half-life. When the timer is up everything crumbles. What follows is a fast-paced sprint to a world where one of these tech giants can bring anything into existence at the tap of a button. Ares is aimed at capturing Eve Kim. But Ares has a problem. He’s starting to exhibit signs of consciousness. Emotion. Quickly, what appears to be an easy snatch and grab for Dillinger Systems becomes a hunt to wrangle a rogue Program.

I will say, the balance this strikes with time on the Grid and in the real world isn’t exactly what I wanted. Tron: Legacy enters the Grid about 20 minutes in and only leaves the grid in the final scene. Ares runs a 60/40 split. But while I may lament the limited time in one of the cooler sci-fi spaces in the last 15 years, I understand limiting Grid time as a means of budgetary limitations. Whether or not I find it excusable for a company like Disney to use budget as an excuse is a completely different argument. Still, Ares uses its divided settings well and frequently utilizes the “meanwhile back at the ranch” format of story compartmentalization with an even and meticulous hand. It simply must be stated, the scenes on the Grid, in this movie, feel amazing. During a high-speed pursuit on a waverunner deeply reminiscent of a Wipeout ship from the Psygnosis game franchise, I leaned over to my buddy, unable to remain silent, and said, “I don’t know man, this fuckin’ rules.”

Because…well…it does.

Jared Leto is really good in this movie. Which may be a boring sentence, I fully understand. But, standing in the foyer after the credits ended, I found myself struggling to articulate my thoughts with any more detail. I expected him to be worse. Truly. But he simply crushed his role as a tormented machine. The rest of the cast also plays to their roles really well. If you are looking for an Oscar performance in a Tron movie you’ll be disappointed. But if you are hoping for acting that stands beside over the top visuals and action well, you are going to find plenty here. Evan Peters is building something as Julian Dillinger. Ares is certainly building to something too, with a post credits scene that caught me delightfully off-guard. Jeff Bridges makes his cameo appearance, as he spoiled last year in an interview. But rather than put him in the center of the film as the master user, the majority of our experience is on the Dillinger Grid, Director Joachim Rønning makes an extremely creative choice. Honestly, a very inspired choice. Painting the world of Tron as having a few tricks left up its sleeve. It also can not go unstated that the cinematographer responsible for the look of this movie is Jeff Cronenweth, LONG time collaborator of David Fincher. If you like the way Fincher’s films look, its likely because Cronenweth has been sat behind the camera. I caught myself gawking at shot composition far more often than I expected. Then I saw Cronenweth’s name in the credits and everything made a lot more sense. He does excellent work.

I came into Ares with my expectations low. Partially because I had a wavering faith in Jared Leto, but also because I came across a TikTok user who claimed the movie was so bad they were going to act like it didn’t even exist. Here’s my take: That guy is full of shit. You couldn’t possibly think this movie is that bad. And while I have already made it clear, I am biased, I question the veracity and intention of a review so negative. It seems far more likely a ploy to get attention than an earnest illustration of the creator’s views, and in today’s messy, muddy social media landscape, I would caution anyone from believing such loudly negative “content.” It all smacks of sensationalism.

Tron: Ares is a prototypical “soulless machine has feelings, makes problems” kind of story. And while I may have wanted a little more, by the end of the movie I had come full circle. It fits the loose narrative framework of the now trilogy well, and leaves the door open for what could be a thrilling sequel. Perhaps even bringing back some important characters from Legacy. I had a tremendous amount of fun. Add to the mix an absolutely blistering score by Nine Inch Nails and Tron: Ares stands out as one of those sci-fi experiences people will return to again and again over the next ten years. I certainly will. And I couldn’t be happier. Bring on the sequel. Please.

I really dug what I saw in the Battlefield 6 Beta, but I cant shake this feeling of enshittification that has slowly encroached into multiplayer shooters. My biggest and longest standing beef comes from the obnoxious scope glint that every single sniper sight inherently has now.

Rewind to Bad Company 2 and it simply didn’t exist. Snipers were in ghillie suits, could climb into trees, and simply did not have scope glint. If you wanted to find a particularly annoying long-gunner, you and your squad became a hunting party, digging through the brush, hunting wabbits.

BC2 also included an upgrade in the unlock path for the recon class called Magnum Rounds. This made sniper rounds lethal in hardcore no matter where the shooter landed their shots. It made snipers ruthless and important. But it also made counter sniping a micro-game within the larger game.

BF3 was more widely adopted (I believe, though I am unsure and hoping to make a shot back turned to the hoop) and as a result the Hardcore game mode became far less populated. This had a two or three-fold consequence.

1) Snipers moved into becoming headshot farmers. At a glance, not terrible, but it led to the role becoming slightly more trivialized. You had to land a headshot to guarantee a kill. How is that useful in a moving battlefield? Players that take a chest or leg shot just leave, and at the range you are, they’re likely lost to cover or in the field of gray.

2) Removing the hyperlethality of the most lethal weapons platforms on a battlefield, in turn, lessens the impact of all the others. This is to varying degrees, of course. But one of the more aggravating for me is the weakness of the LMG platform. LMGs are big fuckin guns, they hit like BFGs. The M240B fires a 7.62 round, a thick bitch with a lot of stopping power. Its belt-fed rapid firing capability means a lot of hot metal down range. As a player, running a 7.62 carbine has better TTK than and LMG putting out the same rounds, from a longer barrel, often more frequently.

This leads to number 3) leveling the playing field has appeared to make everything work about the same, and therefore causes a lot of things to FEEL the same. But the LMG takes a hit to mobility (how fast you can aim it) so why use it? DMRs take 3 bullets to kill unless they are close range, and wouldn’t you guess it, only a headshot at close range seals the deal in 2. And snipers, one of the most valuable assets a decade ago, has been relinquished to a dozen polyps budding on the edges of the map, being largely ineffective, and moderately annoying. And they all glow like fucking cylons.

There are solutions for this, in my opinion, but it means making classes more terrifying than they have been allowed to be in recent interactions. Take scope glint away and bring back the vapor trail, increasing in intensity based on caliber. If you want to find a sniper, find a good spot and hunt dammit. Make sniper rounds more debilitating. Chest and leg shots should make sprinting go on cooldown. Full stop. That sucks for the target, but like, it should. LMGs need to make players blur-out. Let them be suppressive weapons again. Covering a corner in pop-fizz so no-one can advance is a good thing. All of these things force players to think more. The thing that bugged me the most about BF6 was that it seemed like thinking was largely cast aside for mobbing. And that feels bad when a match can be 40 minutes long.

All of this being said, the beta did make a few things very clear that I liked very much. The lack of stupid gadgets made rolling armor feel much more scary. The destructability made every position feel tenuous, and the return of real weapon customization feels great. Top tier stuff there. But don’t try to make this another Call of Duty. Stand strong on what set Battlefield apart. Big maps, scary situations, and tactical retreats that make you deal with problems more specifically. I want to go sniper hunting again, I want to make whole squads retreat when I put the lead man down. Sniper fire should give pause, force a scatter. Armor should make you hunker and crawl backwards. Squad composition should matter. And honestly if that means limiting snipers to 8 a team 1 per squad, I’m here for it.

And give my LMG mules some fucking love. Let them slam the goddamn door.

For the last 12 years I have struggle to wrap my head around my conflicted feelings after watching Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. I found myself generally pleased with the movie. Though I will be the first to admit, I tend to like most things I when I walk out of the theater. The one notable exception being Morbius…But something felt off about Man of Steel and I wasn’t sure what it was.

Henry Cavill was the obvious (even if not particularly inspired) choice for Clark Kent. The quintessential debate about hero casting slips to the forefront. How does the actor fit the dual identities? Decades of debate are drummed up. Michael Keaton was a great Bruce and an pretty good Batman. Val Kilmer, great Batman, ok Bruce Wayne. George Clooney, excellent Bruce, questionable Batman. Christian Bale, phenomenal Bruce, very good Batman. Affleck, meh Bruce, very accurate Batman at times. And finally Pattinson, excellent Batman, but his Bruce Wayne is a different Bruce Wayne. As far as The Batman goes, Bruce Wayne is bad at being Bruce Wayne still, so how do you measure it?

For Superman the debate is no different, save only for the fact we have far fewer examples to draw from. Christopher Reeve is the reference point. Like Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. All inference points draw back to him. Brandon Routh was ok, though the film was poorly received. There are several TV adaptations of Superman, but as I have never really been a huge Supes fan, I have only dabbled in those forays. Though I acknowledge their cultural cache. Henry Cavill was an anomaly though. He obviously looked the part. Though now, years later, I find myself wondering if the physique is truly the defining feature of Kal-El. Cavill was built like Mr. Incredible, an inverted dorito, narrow base, wide peak. If Superman is a muscular inverted pyramid, then you have your guy. Charismatically, Cavill is a joy to watch in interviews and talk shows, but did the same charisma really ever find the screen? I would argue, largely, no. There are moments. His relationship with Amy Adams’ Lois Lane is pretty good, even if a little too rote. How could it not be though, this is Superman and Lois Lane.

With more than a decade of internal and external debate I have found myself with a better definition of my displeasure. Snyder just doesn’t understand Superman. It’s hard to see at first, largely because I believe most viewers don't fully understand Superman. For so many he is the hammer for every nail, a large reason why I personally couldn’t get into him. It was only after coming across a writer who had written Superman comics, whose name eludes me at this moment, I had my narrow view of the Kryptonian smashed open. The writer said, “If you think Superman is overpowered then you believe you can solve every problem by punching it.” There it was, Superman’s appeal made accessible, for me at the very least. The implication of this statement is one of deft storytelling. How do you make an interesting story about a man who could literally punch everything to death? We know such stories can be fun to watch. I love Reacher and John Wick. Two properties content with answering the question of, “how do we solve this” buy simply replying “violence.” But violence as the answer simply isn’t in Superman’s lexicon.

What’s more, Snyder was fixated on the parallel of Kal-El as the second coming of Christ. There is an abundance of material here. I personally, love the idea of people seeing this metahuman this way. Humans are flawed, we hunger for heroes larger than ourselves who can solve every problem. But Snyder fumbled in one way, unfortunately it was the most profoundly damaging way: his Superman humored the comparison. As a recent but dedicated convert to Superman’s greatness, I know without a single doubt, Clark Kent would fucking HATE the comparison. And this is where James Gunn, the director and writer of the new Superman film, does not miss.

Gunn’s film opens with a series of text blocks establishing the world as it is. Metahumans are known to Earth, Superman is known to the world. Superman has imposed his will on an escalating geopolitical crisis. Superman has just lost his first fight. It’s evocative, informative, and lets the film hit the ground running. We are far beyond the need for origin stories, culturally. Especially when it comes to the more well known superheroes. Please don't tell me how Superman came to Earth. Similarly, don't tell me how Batman’s parents died. We all get it.

What this slight preamble does, however, is give us all we need to be full sprint alongside the events of the film. And James Gunn’s Superman uses this to dive right into the action.

While I would love to dive into the events of the movie, really give a full synopsis of the events, I find those things to be far less important to this review than what I am going to tell you next. David Corenswet is the Superman the creators intended, much like Reeve’s rendition in the past. He is kind, dorky, respectful, and an unwavering Boy Scout. He is the epitome of healthy masculinity. He is protective of the innocent, driven to do good, and unimpeachably moral. In the opening thirty minutes of the movie he allows himself to be interviewed by Lois Lane in her apartment. The interrogation perfectly lays out the conflict of the film by making two of its leads actually dig into the ramifications of a world where a super powered individual can do things like impose their will on geopolitical events. Lois stands in as the Devil’s Advocate, in a way. Asking the tough questions. In response, Superman struggles to explain himself outside of repeating “people were going to die!” It’s excellent. Because for a being like Superman, little else has to matter. He simply refuses to accept a reality where death is the only outcome.

Alternatively, this film’s antagonist, Lex Luthor, constantly uses violence as a means to an end, and he uses his hatred of Superman, “an alien,” to fuel his jealousy. Nicholas Hoult nails his performance as Lex, creating an unhinged, angry, xenophobic billionaire with global aspirations and an extremely local (if superpowered) roadblock. Lex is terrifyingly ruthless. As a foil to Kal-El’s goodness, the two weave a compelling spiral of events.

But this is the crux of the entire movie. The rich billionaire is jealous. Jealous of the love Superman gets from everyone, despite Lex’s genius. Jealous that this non-human, alien, be afforded love and affection, where he is not. He tries to cast doubts about Superman’s motivations. Is he here to rule over us? How can we trust someone who isn’t even one of us? All of it ringing familiar to the world we live in today. Superman is a refugee. An immigrant. And a billionaire is seeking to leverage the government to deal with him as the threat he is. But the threat Superman poses isn’t to the people of Metropolis or Earth, it’s a threat to those in power or clawing for that power. Because Superman is something those in power fundamentally misunderstand. He is a force for good with no expectation of reward or recognition. He does good because it’s right. Not because he is going to get something for it.

This motivation throws him up against nearly everyone in his world. The founding framework of the Justice League, comprising of Guy Gardner’s Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, and Mr. Terrific, struggle to understand him. Lex Luthor struggles to understand him. Lois struggles to understand him. Because at his core, Superman is the antithesis of what we as Americans have been taught to expect from all-powerful beings. He must crave dominion over us, right? And when he doesn’t, it simply doesn’t compute.

I have always adored James Gunn’s ability to cast a slew of unknown characters in front of us, give them humanity, and then force us to feel strongly for those characters. Nobody knew who the Guardians of the Galaxy were. No one knew who Bloodsport, Ratcatcher 2, Polkadot Man, or Kingshark were. Yet, by the end of the first Guardians, by the end of Suicide Squad, we had a new collection of cast-offs we had grown to love. Superman, despite his legacy, fit in this mold for me. He is the Man of Steel, a character I had found little reason to care about because I assumed he was just this unstoppable force who inserted himself into events willy-nilly. Gunn illustrates in this movie, very well, that Superman is the best of us. Someone doing good because it’s the right thing to do. He sees every life as valuable, worth protecting. Something our government has made very clear they do not believe.

So if you are asking yourself if Superman is “woke” my heart hurts for you. Woke used to mean having an awareness of social and political injustice. Those things, in the stained history of America, frequently meant being woke drew your focus to racial and social inequality. While I struggle to find a reason to be upset with anyone aware of those injustices, I am aware of the more recent injustice that has been done to the word woke itself. Now it is used to demonize people who just want to acknowledge the existence of…well…everyone else. People who care for the poor and the oppressed, the under-represented and the left-out. It’s used as a bludgeon to disqualify the beliefs of people deemed over-sensitive or politically correct. Already the outcry has begun. “Superwoke” they call Superman. The alien refugee, sent in an escape pod from his people’s dying planet, tasked with becoming a protector. It’s not the story of Jesus, it’s the story of Moses. written originally by two Jewish Americans whose parents were refugees of the holocaust. He goes on to lead the Justice League.

So I guess if you’re offended Superman is woke, you’re not wrong technically, you’re just a dumbass. Anymore, the designation of a hero as being woke stands as a tremendous litmus test. Because the people saying this are people that realize they see themselves in the villains of these stories more than in the heroes. And that must be really hard to deal with. But, as I have come to notice, rather than turn the looking glass inward and investigate the feelings these folks hold inside themselves, they instead seek to use the looking glass to scorch ants, like bullies. I’m not sorry Superman wouldn’t like you, I’m sorry you are unwilling to ask yourself why.

The Punisher would and does hate cops using his logo to make themselves look tough. Spider-Man hates the way you treat the unhoused. Captain America hates the way you swapped your identity for blind party loyalty. Xavier hates the way you diminish the humanity of those different from you. And Superman hates the way you weaponize words like illegal and alien to allow yourself to oppress and criminalize humans just trying to get by. Our heroes are examples for us to try and live our lives by (minus Punisher, who is literally an example of how NOT to live your life).

This movie, and truly Superman as a concept, is about doing the right thing. It’s about being kind when so much of the world won't because it doesn’t get them anything. And if you have a problem with that. Well you need to solve that yourself. Expecting your heroes to be as ignorant and hateful as you allow yourself to be, in the name of self preservation, is embarrassing. Superman calls us to be better than we are, because anything less is a dereliction of duty. Anything else is a failure to be truly human. James Gunn’s Superman gets this, and is all the better for it. A triumph of a movie. A brilliant start to a new DC universe.

There are a lot of things I wanted out of a sequel to 28 Days Later. Interestingly enough, as a gamer, I hold 28 Days Later above Resident Evil as the best movie adaptation of the popular game franchise. Of course, despite the fact 28 Days Later has nothing to do with RE. Still, the first film is tense, violent, and culminates in a standoff at a mansion, giving it a firm leg up on the first Milla Jovovich movie. But how do you follow a movie up after 23 years? Well first you have to mostly disregard 28 Weeks Later. The film wasn’t helmed or written by Danny Boyle and as such, lacked the gravity the first film poured in excess. It does some cool things, sure, but I don't think injecting the American Army into a film universe so deeply British did the story or the fabric of the universe the first film created any real justice. What’s more, creator and returning director Boyle has all but promised a new trilogy, reuniting with long time collaborator and the first film’s writer Alex Garland. So…sequel with trilogy potential, huge time jump, where do we go? An isolated Island community accessible only during low tide. Hell yeah.

Part of this film's marketing included the audio of a poem written by Rudyard Kipling called Boots. The poem is terrifying when read, but the reading done by Taylor Homes in 1915 is bone chilling. This audio was both used in the first trailer for this film and in the first act. The cadence and repetition of Kipling’s words drive at the monotony of the world when sewn into this film’s fabric. It is beautifully shot, truly, throughout. But the interjections of deeply disturbing and violent imagery works as a wash and rinse cycle. You are washed in beauty and rinsed in blood. Always rinsed in blood.

This film’s plot is unexpected. Originally a mission beyond their isolated community Alfie William’s plays Pike, a twelve-year old boy who is going on his first excursion with his father Jamie, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Before their trip we are introduced to Pike’s mother Isla (Jodie Comer), a deeply and mysteriously ill woman, restricted to her bed on account of her sickness being in bit of a swing. What’s immediately apparent is Jamie’s distance and callousness, a disposition you understand given the state of the world. He ventures beyond the wall looking for death, for something to make him feel something almost. But as his foil, Pike is very obviously not looking for death. The boy is worried about his mother, and early on is clearly desperate to find a way to help her. The dichotomy between the father’s hunt for death and Pike’s search for life, for solutions, establishes the dialogue for the rest of the movie. Their excursion goes awry when an Alpha shows up. 28 years later, the Rage Virus has evolved.

I have always been deeply interested in the villains and monsters we create as a society. Megalomaniacs intent on destroying the world as a reflection of soviet era nuclear war fears. The agent of chaos seeking to destabilize as a reflection of global terrorism. Vampires leeching life from the youth as a reflection of Old Money and its ability to drain wealth from the ,idle and lower classes. Zombies and their shambling hunger, reflecting our sleepwalking, social media addled masses. Danny Boyle’s zombie flicks are an extension of this last form. A translation even. The Rage Virus doesn’t create shambling, slow, mumbling zombies. Instead, we get fast, ravenous, furious, loud zombies. The metaphor is in the action. This is a narrative about anger and rage and its infectiousness. A single drop of Rage infected blood transforms its victim into a spitting, violent monster. Boyle’s plague is a reflection of hostility and its ability to catch on like wildfire. When Isla has fits we see anger bubble up in her. It’s not the virus, and yet, Boyle films these scenes with the same cuts and lens exposure he uses to capture the infected. He’s drawing the line, connecting the dots. The Rage Virus isn’t some new state of humanity. Instead it is present beneath the surface in everyone when we let rage take over. The virus is simply a magnifying glass.

I love this slight but encompassing adjustment to the narrative of “Zombies” as a genre. There is a visceral and frightening nature to the Rage infected. Shamblers rarely get my blood pumping. The infected in this series of films are an onslaught, inexorably sweeping the British Isles, leading to their complete isolation from the rest of the world. Perhaps what makes these movies even more real, in metaphor, in a post COVID world, is the viewer’s familiarity with isolation and its impacts. It seems the rest of the world is managing to carry on just fine. The virus was never allowed to escape the UK. The former empire is restricted to its islands, forever cut off from the rest of humanity, forced to deal with the Rage of its own people. Truly the metaphors abound.

The most notable takeaway I have for 28 Years Later comes in the third act. A figure is discovered, veiled in myth and mystery by the folks on the isolated island, both deliberately and due to ignorance. When this figure is met by Pike the mystification is washed away with a deeply profound and emotional treatise on the importance of understanding death and its role in our lives. For a substantial moment, 28 Years Later is more than content to sit us down and make us ponder the meaning of death, its many forms, our proximity to it, how we manage it, and our power to take the manner of our death into our hands. Using Ralph Fiennes as the vessel for this introspective message is inspired. The man is mesmerizing in nearly every role he takes, and here he is nothing less.

In the end, I walked out of the theater with less of an adrenaline high and more of a deep calm. Something I found myself wholly unprepared for. I hope we get to see Danny and Alex explore these dynamics more in the following films. This one certainly ends with pages unread, more story to tell. Also there’s a certain someone named as an executive producer who didn’t make an appearance in the film proper. I need to know where he is in this dangerous and highly evolved universe. Please.

I wish there was a better way to sigh onto a page than by merely typing the word surrounded by asterisks. There ought to be something more evocative, yet similar in brevity. I would open this post with this new made up onomatopoeic sound, were it available to me. It seems, despite my best efforts, or misplaced confidence, or some sick and worrying combination of both, I am only able to take a single step forward, followed by several sliding steps backwards. Having a desire to write about video games on a deep level is, as it happens, cost ineffective to maintaining the mental bubble I’ve created to weather the miasma swirling about. It’s so fucking frustrating. If I turn on my thinking brain to write, I have to ward off the demons of the world? What kind of bullshit is that?

A few months ago I played through Citizen Sleeper 2. In the closing hours of the game the winter weather brought dry, drifting snow, covering my city (and by extension, block) in sharply rolling, steely glistening dunes. The concrete was cold, so the snow left striations along the even ground, giving the illusion of rippling, but still water. I often sit on my porch past 2 in the morning, wrapped in coats and hats, fingers sneaking out from my sleeves to pinch a cigarette to my lips. Finishing CS2 with the silent staccato of cigarette breaks punctuated my experience. The game, taking place on a ship in a tumultuous galaxy, tasking the player with navigating from safe harbor to safe harbor, all while taking on the troubles of the folks in each location, paired perfectly with the piercing cold. The silence. The creaks of long dormant trees.

In my conversation with CS2’s creator Gareth Damian-Martin, we stumbled into a bit of linguistic revelation. I mentioned the game’s relationship, more proximity, to the concept of sonder, a word I discovered in college and have found deeply grounding.

It’s a bit wordy, but perfect. Every passing car, every lit window on the horizon at dusk, every jogger, dog walker, or cyclist, every coffee shop patron is living a life as full of complications and stressors as my own. A constant reminder that every conversation I pass amid-sentence is laced with the intentionality and emotion of the person speaking, and is dependent on the participation of the partner being spoken to. I think sonder leads to empathy. It draws your own experience away from the focus and pulls this rapidly moving machine of humanity into the center. Gareth’s games remind me of this. Each character cares about their work, worries about their loved ones, drives toward personal goals, and I feel it in each of them. A testament to Gareth’s writing ability, surely. But perhaps also a compliment of their ability to create real and tangible. Or perhaps just reflect them. But the revelation in our conversation came when I realized they had never heard of this word. I got to share this with a person I deeply admire. What’s more, I got to sit in silence as they mulled the word over, chewed it in their minds, and realized they did, in fact, deeply connect with this concept. And then, as easily as my kids bring joy, Gareth described their work as “a sort of sonder-core” experience.

I have not recovered.

What I have done, in the stead of recovery, is look backwards at all of the games I have ever played and investigated my motive in each of those experiences. I exaggerate, of course, but the work has been constant. What I have found is the echoes of sonder in everything. Wandering the wilds of Star Wars Outlaws, constantly pondering the lives of the people passing by. The intensity of a match of THE FINALS, thinking about the person on the other side of the gamertag ticking across the screen. In the quiet fields of Gray Zone Warfare, questioning the absence of farmers and family pets. Pacing the temple steps in Japan in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, praying silently next to a mother and daughter. It’s everywhere.

It comes coupled with a particular type of loneliness. One I have become deeply attached to. One I experience on those late nights, sitting on my porch in the darkness, breathing smoke and thinking. Perhaps this is distinctly American, but there is such a disconnect between people and their world around them. I sit at the coffee shop and thousands of cars pass me in an afternoon. Each and every one of them with drivers and often passengers, all humans, enduring life. Hopefully enjoying it. I sit, though, in silence. Sometimes I listen to music. It makes me wonder: how many people never consider the lives of those they brush shoulders with? How many emotional deficiencies could be counteracted by simply acknowledging the existence of everyone, everything around us? How many people play games and never conceptualize the lives of the NPCs milling about in the background?

One of the first things I read, back when I was getting started, was a piece written by Austin Walker for Paste. The article debates the morality of killing NPCs in games, as developers become more and more capable of making them feel more and more real. A messy and imprecise summary, honestly, but the meat of the matter stuck with me, causing me to constantly question myself when engaging in virtual violence. In the ten plus years since Austin wrote this piece the problem has truly only grown more complex. Watch Dogs Legion gave each person you see in London schedules and family members and likes and dislikes. I remember the moment I came across someone I couldn’t recruit because I had struck and killed their brother with a car. I followed them for ten minutes. Stepped invisibly behind them as they left work and walked to the local pub. Was I the cause of the drinking? What would they think if they knew I was standing behind them, wringing my hands?

The same year I read Austin’s piece I had a perception altering experience playing Ghost Recon Wildlands. My friends and I have moved in on a small outpost of gang enforcers and were laying the groundwork for systematically eliminating them when one of us stepped a bit too far into the view of a character with a circle atop three horizontal lines over his head, the marker for the leader of the group. As he began to spot us we acted quickly and eliminated him, a few sharp coughs of suppressed 7.62 ammunition flew through his chest, depositing his mass swiftly onto the dirt beneath him. However, rather than the frantic gunfight we expected to break out, all the other gang members dropped their guns and surrendered. A game mechanic in action, surely. The leader taken out suddenly, the underlings abandoned their goals. Lines of code and playtested programming. But the implication, the suggestion it slipped under the door of my occupied mind caused me to pause. The game was ostensibly about a Mexican cartel invading Bolivia to commandeer their coca production. Fealty to gang lords in these situations had to be more coercive than volunteers right? Were these all just kids forced into the ranks of an invading force to protect their families? And by stealthily moving from outpost to outpost had we just been executing sons and brothers and fathers strong armed into service of cruel and violent enforcers? In that moment, how were we, the players, any better than them?

I try not to let my brain get too involved all the time. I am, however, very bad at limiting this kind of thought. So, rather inevitably, I return to this kind of inquisitive thought. It frequently makes me mad at games like Ready or Not, or Call of Duty, content with grounding everything in reality rather than being creative enough to create simulations devoid of human cost. But even then, Halo created a universe where, initially, you fought nameless and largely faceless alien monsters content with wiping humanity out, only to, in subsequent games, give those aliens both names and faces. The choice to make the Covenant a force assembled by religious zealots content with bending the truth so as to maintain their control over forcedly ignorant soldiers still remains a deeply inspired choice for a plot in the early years of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Does this mean it’s impossible to create games where violence remains the means of engagement without wading into muddy morality? Maybe? I am still a steadfast fan of Battlefield and numerous other shooters. Often I am capable of turning this part of my brain off. But my knowledge of sonder and its evidence that life is lived everywhere, all at once, regardless of our keenness to it, has made things…interesting. Violence in virtual spaces is cathartic, not just for myself. But the danger of thinking too much means the possibility of calling into question the motive of that same violence. Games like THE FINALS shift the perspective, making the competition a game show. Player characters erupt into piles of coins when they are eliminated. Extraction shooters, like ARC Raiders (by the same studio) allow for players to decide how they will interact with other players, even giving them the ability to help and revive others. I have more truck with this. It feels more organic. More real. Truly, one of Austin’s strongest points in his piece comes from his dissatisfaction with the limited toolset players are given to engage with. The response to seeing an NPC gunned down is never to stand beside them, trying to render aid or soothe those witness to the violence. Instead it is relegated to enacting compensatory violence. Perhaps it’s time to ask our games to do more. To give us more verbs than shoot, hit, break, throw, and kill.

Or, I guess, just give us more games about the Clone Troopers fighting Trade Federation Droids. Because fuck them. They’re just robots. Right?

Welcome back to Prattler’s Pilgrimage, a clumsy journey around the rough edges of the galaxy.

My second day in Mirogana, the dusty metal capital of Toshara, would prove to be an even more interesting day than my first. I woke up with a strong desire to see a bit of the Tosharan countryside, though finding a means of exploring safely would likely be a challenge. Toshara is a beautiful place, but the distance from the central systems makes it an ideal hub for, lets say less than savory activities. Eyeing a couple enforcers milling about in the gambling dens will quickly clue you in to this. Still, I seem to have discovered, if you don’t appear to be worth the trouble, or sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, you can move relatively unaccosted.

I started by stepping back to the Mirogana Market. Following my nose I found my way to a stall serving small fare and warm drinks. Unfortunately I’m not entirely sure what I ordered, I just asked for a repeat of what the patron in front of me ordered. I’ve found it makes it a bit easier to seem like you know what you’re doing. The small boat of seared meat and fruit went down extremely easily with the piping hot cup of caf I got. Surprisingly good caf for a little stall in a crowded market. I am used to the exclusively plain and steadfast caf served in Imperial food halls, so my taste is pretty limited. Still, I caught myself humming gleefully after my first sip, something worth noting.

I headed for the spaceport, food in hand, and met Valith Nuulvys the speeder mechanic. I was curious if there was a process for renting speeder bikes. Valith was less than thrilled to be chatting with an obvious tourist, but he gave me a rate and some advice, both of which I am sure were inflated by his perception of me. While I wasn’t thrilled about the 1,500 credits to rent a bike for the day, I figured I would live on the edge a bit and go for it. I was also fortunate enough to run into Suda Draak again, while he loaded crates back into his ship. He mentioned Jaunta’s Hope, a frontier establishment a few kilometers southwest of Mirogana. I told him I already had it on my list. I shook his hand and thanked him for the advice concerning the Che Mosskà. I could tell by the smile on his face, he was very genuinely pleased I took his advice. For this reason he offered me a bit more. “Stay on this main road out of Mirogana. It heads straight to Jaunta’s. There is an Imperial and Pike checkpoint along the road, but they only stop people moving inventory. But stay on the road, in the afternoon, and you’ll be fine.” He let me distract him for a bit longer before I went on my way. Turns out he has a few deliveries to make and then he plans to stop off in Jaunta’s before heading off-world. If I enjoy my time in Jaunta’s I may head back tomorrow to catch him. Who knows.

The ride out of Mirogana was stunning. I’m so used to the structure and life of mega-city living, being in the countryside was truly amazing. The winds on Toshara are so strong and constant it made the first few minutes a bit scary, but once I learned the strength and direction of the prevailing wind, I was able to lift my head and take in the windswept hills and rock formations. Just as Suda said, the Imperial checkpoint had no interest in my light ride, and the Pike’s waved me past a loaded skid they had stopped. I drifted into Jaunta’s Hope around midday and found the small frontier town bustling with activity. I quickly made my way to the cantina in the center of town, The Daruda Diner, and parked my bike beside the entrance. Immediately I noticed the more friendly nature of the people walking around Jaunta’s. I was met with waves and short but courteous greetings.

I wandered around town for a bit and then made my way into the diner. The menu is short and kindly priced. I stepped out the bar, ordered a bowl of Empona Noodles for a meager 7 credits, and a local draft called the Daruda Dry. Upon my first sip of my drink I knew I would be having a few more, and the noodles were really a pleasant surprise. A warm, slightly spicy, salty broth that complemented the Dry well, and noodles with good bite. I sat like a plant for the next couple hours, nursing a few more Dries while listening to the scuttlebut at the bar. Mostly local news, some political banter, and an intriguing story of an Imperial chase that started right here in this bar a few weeks back. Made the tension I sensed in the stormtroopers make a lot more sense.

I made my way back to my hotel just as the sun began to approach the horizon. Toshaal glowing large and bright in the night sky. I grabbed a pack of death sticks on my way out of town though, and took a moment to try one sitting on a small observation deck on the Mirogana Spaceport. Taking in the constant meteor showers that stark the night sky over the city. Why I spent so much time cooped up in a little office is beyond me at this point. I know this trip will eventually come to an end, but I’m only a couple days in and I can already tell, what comes next is going to have to be drastically different from my previous life. Come back to Prattler’s Pilgrimage next time as I wrap my short stay on Toshara and head to my next destination…the icy Kijimi!

Well, wouldn’t you know it, I got furloughed! So I’m taking my six months of severance and I’m stepping out on my own. I’m going to be writing about food! I tapped my friend, Shak Tel Mot, in logistics for some tips for chartering cheap fares and I secured trips to Toshara, Kijimi, Akiva, and Tatooine! I’m excited, I’m nervous, but dank farrik I’m going to do it! I’m Prat Pinnok, and this is Prattler’s Pilgrimage.

The flight to Toshara was pretty uneventful. For a cheap seat in a cargo vessel, the crew was accommodating and mostly helpful. I’m sure they were thrilled they had a little freeloader mucking up their space, but they shared meals from their galley and gave me a little bunk room to call my own. The Foreman grew up with Shak, so I’m sure I was treated well by threat of some kind of punitive action. Nevertheless I got to Mirogana around 4am local time and dragged my way to a little hostel for a few hours of rest.

A few hours later I wandered into the central market of Mirogana. What a charming little hovel. Hovel isn’t quite the right word, but the unpleasantness I local might feel frequenting the market was completely lost on me. The smells, the dust, the loud conversations and arguments between venders and patrons, all mixed together into a wonderful mosaic of newness. Being stuck at a desk for the last ten years really opened me up to really any other experience. I grabbed a vest and some pants from a Rodian textile vendor, popped into a bathroom to change out of my boring attire, and slipped back onto the streets of Mirogana looking the part.

I found my way past a few gambling dens filled with folks betting on Fathier races and competitively playing a variant of Sabaac they call Kessel Sabaac. Seemed easy enough to pick up. Maybe when I start getting my severance pay I’ll slink up to a table and try my hand. I’m not sure I would be accepted around these tables though. While I assume its not as exclusive as a table on Tattooine, I spotted some shady gentlemen in the corners of the room who appeared to be keeping an eye on things. Besides, I was hungry, so I made for the biggest Cantina in walking distance, Makal’s Gambling Parlor.

Makal’s entrance is built with this amazing golden-red, windswept stone, something I’ve noticed a lot on Toshara in just my first few hours. First, I stepped up to the bar and grabbed the first drink I could see. The bar back quietly obliged and a few moments later produced a tall glass with a bright purple liquid in it. No ice, no garnishes, just a glass of spirits to start the day. Luckily I didn’t take a sip until I started walking away, it was strong. I paced around Makal’s for a few minutes before finding my way out onto the balcony overlooking Mirogana and the Tosharan countryside. What a beautiful place. I met a Twi’lek out there named Suda Draak. Seemed like a nice fellow. He was a company man, some logistics outfit that supplied all the bars in the sector. We chatted about Toshaal, the massive planet on Toshara’s horizon and the immensely strong winds it produced, leading to that stone I mentioned earlier. He also told me to stay in at night. “Mirogana is an alright place during the day, so long as you stay on the streets with lights. But venture into a dark alley, or onto the roads at night, and the environment would stop feeling so welcoming. Very quickly.” I thanked him for the advice, cheered him one last time, and made my way out of Makal’s and over towards the Market District, which overlooked the market itself. Suda had mentioned a food vendor called Irio there that made the best “Che Mosskà” he had ever had. Not know what Che Mosskà was, I was intrigued. Plus I wanted to get some food in me before whatever I drank started to affect me. Didn’t need to drunkenly wander into the very obviously Pike controlled areas.

Irio was a small vendor with a little bar affixed to its outer wall. It sat nestled in a corner of the Market District food court. A sizeable soup room sat on the other side of the court, a place I promised I would return to the next day, as I didn’t want to push my luck stepping out at night. I had to wait a bit before a barstool freed up, but eventually I scooched my way to the bar and ordered a Che Mosskà. For 200 credits the dish was massively generous. Four grilled Mosskà on the cob, skewered and placed on a small grill with hot coals, served with mashed deikkò root and jerà peppers. Watching other patrons eat, I picked up that you are supposed to blow on the coals under the Mosskà, causing the cobs to pop and crack. I’m not sure how many people are going to read this, but anyone who does has to make a trip out to Toshara to try this dish. I would recommend getting the smaller portion, for just 75 credits. But I was beyond pleased with the portion size of the 200 credit full order. I took the rest with me to my hotel as I checked in and ate it later that night, in my room, switching between fathier race feeds and a corny drama called Baradium Dynasty. Altogether, a very successful first day on my journey.

Catch up with Prattler’s Pilgrimage next time to find out what I did on day two of my stay on Toshara.

I bought a new deodorant recently. Nothing fancy, I don’t think. The brand is Cremo, so a slight touch more fancy than Old Spice I guess. The scent is Palo Santo. I don’t spend a tremendous amount of time picking out the scents to my deodorants. Like the movies and games I write about, I typically can spot something I am going to like from a distance. Palo Santo was the first Cremo brand stick deodorant I grabbed. I took a light sniff, decided I liked it, and threw it in the cart. I’ve noticed over the span of my ten years of smoking cigarettes, they smell different when you smell someone else smoke it than when you are smoking yourself. It’s odd and inexplicable, though I am sure there is a scientific explanation somewhere. As a matter of cause and effect I have learned the same principle applies to other things as well.

I noticed the scent the first time when I went to bed the night after I took a shower and deodorized with Palo Santo. My sheets, where I pull them up under my armpits, smelled like…something. I know, through obvious deduction, the smell came from my deodorant, but it wasn’t immediately obvious because it was slightly different. I thought about it for a few moments and slipped into sleep. The next day, when I went to apply some more, I stopped to smell the stick. It wasn’t exactly the same smell I had encountered on my comforter. This puzzled me, but the fast pace of the morning whisked me away to dress my children and run them off to school. Later in the evening, however, as I was cooking dinner, I reached for a spice and caught a whiff of my deodorant once more. The following several seconds played like a movie from the late 2000s, one of those flicks where the film grain is strong and the lighting is pale. A coming of age movie featuring a kid, in their room, playing videogames on their PS2.

I’ve been playing baseball videogames for as long as I can remember owning a system. It started on the SEGA Genesis. NEOGEO Super Baseball 2020. You play with cybernetically enhanced ball players on a field reminiscent of a baseball field but with huge alterations to foul territory and some quirky rule changes. You also hit balls thousands of feet. I remember playing the shit out of Super Baseball 2020 when by brothers and I were being babysat by Kacie Bates, a woman from our church, in their old house in North County St. Louis. When NEOGEO released a bunch of their games on modern consoles a few years back, I grabbed it immediately. Playing it again felt strange, but also sort of like coming home.

A few years after getting a SEGA Genesis for my birthday my mom got married and I got three brothers, a step-father I call dad, and a PlayStation. We had the multitap and a handful of controllers. But the biggest change was getting a baseball game aimed more at being a sim than an arcade experience. For years we were patrons of the 989 Studios experience simply titled MLB and the year it released. We had 1999, featuring Cal Ripken on the cover, 2001, with Chipper Jones, and 2002, with Andruw Jones. This was the true beginning of my baseball videogame career. I always played all 9 innings, I swapped pitchers appropriately, I tried hit and runs and double steals, I would bunt the man over in tight games. As a kid neck deep in playing baseball in the real world, I used baseball games as a means of study and escapism. I constantly imagined myself in a Cardinals uniform.

Then in 2003 EA made waves in the baseball sim space by rebranding their Triple Play series MVP Baseball. The 2004 and 2005 versions of MVP still hold up as incredible sims to this day. It didn’t hurt having Albert Pujols on the cover of 2004. But the joy would be short lived. In 2005 EA locked down exclusive rights to produce NFL games with their Madden series, killing the monumentally good NFL 2k5, a game I played the cover off of (On a totally separate note, and perhaps a whole written piece of its own, NFL 2k5 is still the best football game ever made. Hands down). This led to the rise of MLB The Show, a long running series of baseball sims still dominating the market today (again, as a side note, I don’t think it would be dominating the market if literally anyone else would make a licensed baseball game. The Show has grown stagnant without competition.)

I don’t remember digging into The Show until I got a PS3 in college. Take-Two Interactive sprung for the MLB licensing deal in 2005 (in response to Madden locking down football) and made a handful of pretty solid baseball games from 2005 to 2014, the height of which occurred between 2k11 and 2k13. But from 2007 to nearly 2014, one baseball game dominated my time. It featured a pinstriped Jared Weaver of the Long Beach State Dirtbags.

Smells are constantly tied to memory. Something about smell pathing differently in the brain. It’s similar to the reason you can remember every word from a song you heard in middle school but can't remember what you ate for dinner yesterday. Something about our senses engrains memory in a way that a single whiff or a few seconds of a tune teleports us right back to the moment we experienced it first. A few years ago, when Outer Wilds came out, I played the game while listening to Thank You Scientist’s album Terraformer. To this day, Terraformer elicits memories of Outer Wilds. When I hear Sean Kingston’s Beautiful Girls, I am immediately placed in the back of my now wife’s best friend’s silver Saturn, driving to one of my baseball games in 2007. Or Ay Bay Bay playing in the same car on the way to the Illinois State Fair, the same year.

Memory is such a strange thing for this exact reason. Unknown neural pathways, strong as steel, pathed between sounds and smells to memories so vivid you feel like you have been removed from your current setting and placed firmly in within the walls of said memory. So there I was, cooking dinner, reaching for the black pepper, catching a whiff of my new deodorant, whisked away to a warm, poorly air conditioned, second-story bedroom 17 years ago. The fight song of Rice University is coming out of my tv. I’m not sure why, but what I just caught whiff of has moved me here. I don’t remember anything smelling like this in particular. Nothing specific. But I do, in this moment, know exactly one thing. I turn to my wife and excitedly say, “I got it! I know what my deodorant smells like!” My wife looks at me, interested but puzzled.

“It smells like MVP 07: NCAA Baseball.”

I wish I was exaggerating when I told you I am convinced MVP 07: NCAA Baseball is one of, if not the best baseball sim made of all time. The first game in the series, 2006 introduced a “Load & Fire” mechanic to hitting. You would pull backwards on the right analog stick to make your batter load backwards and you would push forward to make them swing the bat. It took skill other hitting mechanics didn’t really require. For an inside pitch you had to load and attack the ball early. For outside pitches you had to delay your swing, keeping yourself from rolling over. But what really stood out in this system was the diversity of batted balls it created. While it may not have been a system truly based in physics it emulated physics really well. Push forward a little late on an inside pitch and you got jammed, sending a trickling grounder or a weak pop up to the opposite side. Push early on an outside pitch and you would drive the ball into the ground or lift a weak fly ball to the pull side. Each swing would give you a pop up feedback window on the bottom of the screen, telling you how your timing fared to the path of the ball.

MVP 07 would also implement this system in their pitching mechanics, introducing what they called “Rock & Fire.” Instead of picking a pitch, locating it with the analog stick, and pressing X to throw the ball, you would completed the first two steps and then be prompted to pull back on the right stick until reaching a marked point on a meter, and then push forward matching the lateral location you chose. Aiming for the left of the plate? Pull back, wait, and push forward towards the icon on the left. Both of these systems were immediately imitated in 2k and The Show offerings. But they have never felt better than they did in MVP 07.

I played with Rice University. A powerhouse team in the late aughts. I would, as a result, end up applying and being accepted to Rice, though I decided to go to another school for a better chance to play ball. A decision I would pretty quickly regret, but, what can you do, right? I played hundreds of hours of MVP 07, eventually recreating my summer ball team as Rice players. I still have the PS2 and the memory card with the save files.

Thanks to this little olfactory total recall, I have been jonesing for some MVP 07. A feat I’m sure will prove to be a little complicated, considering I’m not exactly sure where my PS2 is. Perhaps some PC emulation is in store. But it has also prompted something else in my brain. It’s reignited my desire for a quality alternative to MLB The Show in the licensed baseball sim space. Fans and players of The Show as a franchise have long been calling for more comprehensive updates to the game year-to-year. As it stands, most serialized sports games have reached a state of borderline stagnation. Small feature updates and slight graphical tweaks come down the pipeline, but the glaring issues in most of these franchises remain unaddressed.

While I was actively streaming back in 2020 I made a point of drilling down on some of these things. The Show doesn’t appear to accurately reflect the scale of stadiums, for one. Players are unable to accurately round first after hitting singles because, in my estimation, the fields are too small. This doubles and triples as an issue when fly balls get tracked down too easily and the outfield and infield have limited space for grounders and line drives to sneak through. As a Cardinals fan, the 2023 season was marred, at least in the first half, by a pervasively unlucky tendency to give up strange bloop singles and waffling doubles. Balls not hit hard, but hit just hard enough (or soft enough) to find gaps. The phrase, “couldn’t have placed it better if you threw it there yourself,” comes to mind. This also means there is a deficit in real life plays being mirrored in the sim The Show offers. Off-the-bat ball spin is one-sided, saved only for balls hit to the opposite field, meaning you never really see a batter turn on one, hook it around the base, and send it caroming off the wall. And, what’s more, if you do get a play like this to happen, the batter is often thrown out at second base simply because the field is too small to allow the realistic play to transpire.

Remember the “Load & Fire” introduced in MVP 07? Turn on a ball on the inner half and the batted ball would dive towards the hitter’s side of the field. Again, not a physics simulation here. Instead, a deeply quality system of input and response. MLB The Show approaches this level of gratification, but misses the mark more often than not.

I’m not entirely sure what the solution is here, but I do know one thing: Baseball games felt better than they do now. Perhaps it's a bit of sanding off the edges for wider audiences, maybe it's the lack of competition in the space. As a lifelong baseball fan I want these simulations to feel more realistic. I want to have my manager get mad at a bad call and get thrown out to motivate my team (another excellent mechanic in MVP 07), and please - for the love of god - finish Ballpark Village at Busch Stadium. You only have one job (satire), and it's to make a baseball sim capable of evoking the real experience. When the skyline of the stadium I got to a dozen times a year doesn’t match, more than three years after construction has been finished, I have a hard time saying it’s the result of anything but complacency.

Thanks Cremo Palo Santo deodorant, for this rant.

@LubWub

~Caleb

I’ve seen my share of war movies. As someone deeply and nearly unilaterally opposed to the American war machine, I have a lot of reservations about films intended to glorify the nature of armed, escalated conflict. I love Saving Private Ryan, a movie highly skilled at illustrating how nasty and desperate the Second World War was. Jarhead and its investigation of the mental instability brought on by the proximity to conflict and its ability to leave you out of the action is a classic, even if slightly polarizing. Occasionally you get super introspective films focused on the horror of warfare. You get a Lone Survivor, a Brothers, a Full Metal Jacket. Movies content with showing the unglamorous, unclean, unfathomable realities of living through the closest approximation of hell we have. WARFARE isn’t just a movie, in this respect. The real-life account of writer Ray Mendoza, a former Navy SEAL who is featured in the film, and his squad as they attempt to manage a rapidly deteriorating situation, WARFARE is one of the most un-fun things I have ever watched.

The film opens with a group of SEALs watching a 90s workout video, getting hyped by the music and acting like goofballs. This is immediately followed by a nighttime insertion into a neighborhood in Iraq. The team enters a house, secures the family, moves upstairs only to discover it is a second apartment, sledgehammers the wall down, secures the tenants of that floor, and then sets up shop. The next day starts in the afternoon and plays through, for the rest of the movie, in real-time. Every minute is real, every second is real. What starts, ostensibly as a surveillance op, quickly goes very pear shaped. You then watch for roughly 90 minutes as a group of SEALs try desperately to get the fuck out of the situation they are in.

The thing I caught myself doing the most in this film, because of the copious amounts of violence- and war-focused media I have consumed, was waiting for the “big moment.” The moment something terrible happens and pushes the plot into the next phase. I was constantly waiting for someone to get shot, for some explosive munition to punch a hole in the wall of their house and cause them to relocate, for the SEALs to make some heroic movement to clear the houses of assailants. WARFARE is not this movie. Instead, because of its perspective being restricted only to what the SEALs who were there remembered, it's a film full of fear and unanswered questions. You never really know how many people are attacking them. You never have a good idea of where they are. There isn’t a John Wick moment of close quarters combat, ending in a victorious hero, bloodied by the conflict. In its place you have a dozen scared young men, surrounded, standing over their deeply wounded comrades, desperate for a solution to a problem increasingly leaning towards their demise.

To execute the fear and impact required to tell this story, co-directors and co-writers Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza muster an impressive array of aural and visual stimuli. Every gunshot is startling, explosions wash out sound and assault you with low end and high end ringing, the screams of the wounded grind on your nerves. The constant radio chatter of conflict becomes a weapon of its own, stinging your eardrums and overloading your ability to keep track of what’s really happening. And this is just for you as a viewer. The people you're watching on screen are dealing with all of these things and are forced to maintain some level of readiness through it all. Concussed, dusty, bloodied, adrenaline fueled, confused, scared soldiers, clawing for freedom. You watch people go into shock, you see the progressive terror of catastrophic wounds, all while the sound design and pace give you no respite.

I could not possibly describe the experience of this film as fun. It’s a remarkable recreation of trauma and chaos. Mendoza wrote the film and sought to have it made for his buddy Elliot, a soldier wounded in the events of the movie. Because of the extent of Elliot’s injuries his memory of the events portrayed in the film are either fuzzy or completely absent. As an act of service and love to a dear friend who has experienced a trauma he can't place, this movie is an incredible achievement. But precisely for this reason, I firmly believe the intent of this movie is not entertainment. It’s an eye opening experience. You will question the involvement of the SEALs and our government as the movie's tension escalates. Nothing here is accomplished. No objectives are checked off. No targets eliminated. It’s simply a tricky situation going bad, getting worse, and then being prolonged by logistical challenges.

I think a lot of people need to see this movie. I think I am going to have a hard time selling it to most people I know. But the merit of a movie told by the men who were there, portrayed in as real a method as possible, is hard to quantify. And I understand the naivety of hoping minds will be changed after watching this movie. Some will, perhaps, but people are stubborn creatures, and movie theaters aren’t the houses of enlightenment I might hope they are. Regardless, Warfare is a nerve wracking, painful, terrifying, anxiety inducing slow walk through hell. Its message of camaraderie rings loud and clear. Its illustration of war as a messy, cloudy, chaotic mess is evocative and startling. Everyone should have to watch this. It feels like what I would imagine setting a broken bone might feel like. Traumatic but, in the end, necessary.

~Caleb

@lubwub

Over the last ten or so years, I have had a lot of time to think about the process of review movies. It’s a highly diverse craft. You have your folks who take every film seriously, perhaps even over-seriously. They call every movie a film, or a picture. They talk about the act structure, the nuance of performances, the gravitas of scenes, the framing of each and every shot. On the other end of the spectrum you have the newly minted social media reviewers. Folks who go out of their way to be loud and spicy, frequently having a hot take above having an actual opinion. They asses movies with words like “trash” or “”mid”. They have be decrying Marvel and Disney for more than a decade. They will call a movie unbalanced or uneven, yet will hardly have the words to qualify their assessment. Along with understanding these extremes I have also become deeply familiar with a particular malaise present in the people who make a job or career out of going to the theater and telling people whether they should or should not follow suit. They’ve lost their ability to objectively see a movie for what it is and judge it from that perspective first.

Why am I detailing all of this in my review for A Working Man, a Jason Statham movie? Because it's the reason you should, if you like these movies, go watch it, regardless of what a reviewer says. Simply put, it’s how you should look at reviews of these types of movies at all times. Now what do I mean by these types of movies?

A Working Man is the second collaboration, in as many years, between Director David Ayer (famous for the first, worse Suicide Squad, Bright, and End of Watch) and action man Jason Statham. Last year’s The Beekeeper was received just fine, a middle of the road critical success with an easily attracted and pleased fanbase. Herein lies the first part of my overarching point: There is a specific audience for the “one man wrecking crew” movie. It’s a longstanding genre. A genre seeing a bit of a renaissance thanks to the John Wick movies. But its inception dates back to the first Rambo flicks. A close partner of the buddy cop movie. If you like watching a guy dismantle a crowd of bad guys with a sledgehammer, a pair of handguns, or hand to hand combat, you know how to spot a movie like this a mile away. Furthermore, the folks making these movies know how to get their audience’s attention. A Working Man is precisely this kind of movie.

Jason Statham is Levon Cade, a former black operative turned over-the-counter construction worker. He’s left the shady life of deniable operations behind in an effort to be a present and stable father for his daughter. The Garcia family, running the construction business we find Levon managing, finds out their daughter has been kidnapped. They turn to Levon, begging him to bring her home. Levon initially says no because, “I’ve left that life behind me.” But obviously, after visiting his blind war-buddy (played by David Harbour), he returns to the family and promises to bring her home safely.

If you have seen Taken, any John Wick, the Accountant, The Beekeeper, or any other movie in this very clear and formulaic genre, you know exactly what happens next and for the rest of the movie. Levon grabs his gear and starts hunting down the baddies, one by one, until he works his way to the top. Along the way most of his targets underestimate him until he beats the hell out of a room full of guys, which prompts the boss of the room to hiss under their breath, “Who are you?” To which the protagonist almost always answers by saying the title of the movie. “I’m just a working man.”

This is that. One thousand percent, this is that movie. This is one of those movies. It lands somewhere between the upper echelon flicks in this space - flicks like Nobody, Shooter, or Wrath of Man - and the lower echelon - your Expendables and the like. The action is very good but not quite great. The acting is…fine. Sometimes it’s good, most of the time it just gets in the way of the shooting and blowing things up. Commenting on the writing in movies like this feels a bit like commenting on the acting in an elementary school play. If you are there expecting to be blown away, it turns out you’re the asshole. Don’t get me wrong, would I have loved for Sylvester Stallone to have written his ass off? Yes. Am I surprised he didn’t? No absolutely not.

All in all, A Working Man is a Jason Statham action flick. He punches and shoots excellently, the bad guys punch okay but have never fired a gun before, and Inverse Ninja Law* can be observed in abundance. It’s a lot of fun, especially if you have the ability to pull your head out of your own ass and clap at the flashy lights.

@LubWub

*Inverse Ninja Law states that the threat level of any number of ninjas or other whatsits is inversely proportional to their numbers. Therefore, if you're attacked by a lone ninja, you're in trouble, but if you meet an army of ninjas, they're going down.

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Join the NerdyBats podcast as they talk about what Spring Training even means as a viewer and fan. We aren’t seeing veterans at their best, but we are seeing a lot of young talent look to prove themselves. Is their performance gradable when you know the vets are also working on things? Also, our duo digs into their ideal lineups, complain a bit that Nado is still around, and we gush about some of the new guys.

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Games: Enshrouded, Keep Driving, Avowed, Marvel Rivals, Door Kickers 2, The Headliners, Ready or Not.

You can listen to us below, or on iTunes and Spotify! So whether you have an Apple or Android device, we are available for streaming and download. Give us a rating and a subscribe, we would really appreciate it.

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Topics: Mike’s Journey, Crunch and Burnout in games, the sacrifice art asks for, finding the work that fulfills you, Ikigai and its applications, Amor Fati and accepting the good and the bad, “You are the Ship of Theseus”.

You can listen to us below, or on iTunes and Spotify! So whether you have an Apple or Android device, we are available for streaming and download. Give us a rating and a subscribe, we would really appreciate it.

@mikemccainart

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