Rundown (2/07-2/13) Welcome to Tax Hell
Wherein I discuss even more gosh darn acquisitions, an attempt to bring back a gaming convention, the revival of possible military propaganda, and the expansion of a series both simple and clean.
(more…)Rundown (12/13-12/19) A Bedtime Masturbation Story
Wherein I discuss a halcyon habit, the death of a doll’s dream, another acquisition, cycling cyberpunk controversies, and a place of painful memories.
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Rundown (6/03-6/09) PRE3 2018: Darkness Rising
Ah yes, the fabled time of bliss and joy amongst the greater western video gaming community is finally here. While the event has been made obsolete to a certain degree thanks to the digital age and preeminent announcements, E3 is always a time of great powerhouse excitement for those who follow the gaming industry, with a plethora of announcements and various bits of news to be taken in.
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Rundown (1/21-1/27) Notorious Nebulous Nonsense
Over the past few days I have been playing Black Desert Online after it was available during a free weekend on Steam. I had known of the game for several years, and was curious to see how it fared, but then I was reminded that MMORPGs are some of the last intuitive games on the market, containing so many mechanics and subsystems that are thrust onto the player. With trade routes, housing, four types of glorified crafting, and all of this tedious nebulous rubbish that exist on top of an interesting action RPG that has an interesting fixation on grinding knowledge on enemies, skills, and even people. It is an odd little title that really could be something novel, if only it did not belong to a genre notorious for its nebulous nonsense. Also, it’s controller support leaves a lot to be desired.
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Rundown (11/19-11/25) Clothes Are My Enemy!
Seeing as how I am going to begin presenting myself as female within a month or so, I have recently been shopping for a large quantity of clothes in search for ones that look good and actually fit me. Female clothing in particular uses at times baffling measurements to determine sizes and how large a certain article of clothing should be on a person. And if one goes against the generally accepted norms by being very small or taller than average, then clothes shopping becomes that much more annoying. Being 5 foot 10 and 125 pounds, or 178 cm and 57 kg, I am pretty much relegated to tall small clothing, and searching for decent clothes in those sizes made me realize why women stereotypically spend so much time shopping. Because even finding something as simple as a good crewneck sweater can be an endeavor.
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Rundown (11/12-11/18) Ultra Gripe Leads to Ultra Delay!
On Friday, I received my copy of Pokemon Ultra Moon, and have since invested 10 hours into the game. Normally that would mean I would be able to get my review out fairly quickly, but I kept encountering a very unique problem. You see, prior to the release of Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, I assumed that Pokemon Bank would be comparable from day one. It is not. Because of this, I was unable to transfer the specific Pokemon I had bred for a team that I intended to use in Ultra Moon. Now, for those asking why I don’t just build a new team or replicate the one I wanted in Ultra Moon, the answer is quite simple. I don’t want to put myself through this rigamarole yet again.
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Rundown (11/05-11/11) Sonic Team Made an Oopsie!
Over the past week Sonic Forces came out, and the general reception of the game has been… pretty darn poor to be honest. From criticisms levied towards the barren level design, a story that does not properly take advantage of its premise and characters, and various underlying gameplay/technical issues that make the game less refined than Sonic Generations, which came out six years ago. It is a genuinely confusing state of affairs, especially because of how much time Sonic Team has had to invest in this game.
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Rundown (10/22-10/28) A New and Less Sexual Era
So, the biggest story from the past week is probably how popular gaming forum NeoGaf went offline for the weekend after the owner of the website got himself in some major trouble. The kind involving massive sexual harassment and what, from what I heard, basically amounts to rape. I regularly visited the forum, mostly just to peruse the news that my usual sites miss out on and pick up on things that many outlets would not report on. It was a very good place for information, but I and many others decided to jump ship from this site because, yeah, no, you cannot really wash away the toxicity that comes with that kind of association. So instead I and a bunch of other people are now getting news from a successor called Reset Era. Heh. Cute. (more…)
Rundown (10/15-10/21) A Master No More!
Over the past few weeks, there has been a distribution going on for the new legendary Pokemon, Marshadow, which was distributed at GameStop in the United States. Unfortunately, I missed my chance to visit one to get the mode needed to get the new Pokemon and preserve my complete Pokedex. Why is that the case? Well, I am not very mobile on my own (I cannot drive) and the task of asking my mother if I could stop by one of these stores was a bit too much for me, what with my social anxiety and such. I downplay it a lot, but my social anxiety and poor social skills makes it genuinely hard to do even basic tasks. I feel awkward so much as saying hello to someone unless they greet me first. (more…)
Rundown (5/07-5/13) God Eating is Convoluted
Over the past week, I’ve been finishing up God Eater Resurrection, which I reviewed last year, and while I ultimately enjoyed the game over the 100 hours I have now invested into it, it becomes completely absurd after a point, with the game asking a lot of the player while explaining very little, simply presenting a series of mechanics to the player without much in the way of guidance or explanation of what the best strategy is, instead hiding behind the veneer or player freedom. It is a game that had be confused as to how to play it eighty hours in, and even as I am in the endgame content, it still baffles me with some of its challenges. I honestly hope things are better with its sequel, which I should be reviewing sometime this year. (more…)
Mass Effect 2 Review
About a month ago, I started going through the beloved Mass Effect series once again, starting with the less than stellar predecessor to the series that I just couldn’t seem to love. That was Mass Effect 1, but Mass Effect 2… When thinking about what games really resonated with me, what games brought me an overwhelming amount of good feelings, and offered an experience that I kept coming back to, Mass Effect 2 is one of the first that comes to mind. It was among my favorite games of all time before my, what, sixth playthrough, and I think I may love it even more after going through the game yet again. Also, I played the game using a controller mod, which you can find here. (more…)
Mass Effect Review
So, I’ve been wanting to revisit the Mass Effect trilogy for a while, but I kept putting it off for various reasons. The vicious opinions surrounding the ending, the overpriced DLC that isn’t included in any bundle, and the lack of controller support. Although, I managed to remedy the latter using a handy mod. Anyways, with Andromina still a looming enigma on the horizon, I figured now is as good a time as any to start the spacefaring adventure of Shepard the space shepherd. So I’ll just jump on in. (more…)
Rundown (6/12) E3 2016: Boiling Points of Many Emotions
With a slew of leaks and early reveals out of the way, E3 has finally begun. By which I mean that EA is holding an event outside of E3 around the same time. The ever expanding Bethesda is getting early coverage by going one day before the press conferences traditionally begin. While Kadokawa games, a growing publisher that isn’t even having a proper press conference, just a private media briefing… Whatever, that’s good enough for me. (more…)
Rundown (1/24-1/30) Time Moves Forward, Nothing Changes
Rundown (2/01-2/07) Hyperdimension Neptunia Xtreme Victory II: Lavindation of Crystalia
So, I didn’t look too much into the whole Nintendo creator program last week, and assumed that Nintendo did get their stuff straight when it comes to wanting free promotion on the world’s leading internet video platform. But instead they very much force people into corners if they wish to make money by doing, say, a let’s play of one of their titles, which is foolish at best. I’ve been following the LP community back before it blew up as much as it has, and I have to say that the process is pretty time consuming, and the need to remain humorous and witty towards a game, especially when doing live commentary does take some work. Also, you know, they are showing gameplay of a title, and chances are that those who watch a title they think they may enjoy and have disposable income will purchase the title in question, thus getting you more than the paltry sum that ad revenue can get you. (more…)
Rundown (7/27-8/02) The World Is a Land of Delightful Despair
I don’t know what’s more surprising, that I’ve been doing this video game review thing since Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which I don’t recall in the slightest, or how it’s taken this long for the first settlement of its lawsuit to happen. Yes, I understand legal systems take quite a bit of time, but it’s been over two years since I played that cold wet street trash! Now I’m nearly out of my teens and am potentially working two days a week while juggling school, this blog, and my novel. I’m not complaining, but I would appreciate if I had more than numbers to dignify that my existence is worthwhile, as the 60 or so Pageviews I accumulate daily are hardly what I consider to be reassuring that people care about my existence on the interwebs. (more…)
Rundown (7/20-7/26) Press-Switch
Okay, so following a, well, a year sparse in terms of great games, at least in terms of what I’ve been playing, I both revisited The Walking Dead and visited what I dub the fifth tier of indie games, titles that nobody knows about, have little information given, and are for the majority of the cases, just bad. Well, that’s where I stumbled onto Press Switch, a Ren’Py made visual novel that is the most overly ambitious and pandering appearing thing that effectively blew me away by offering a barrage of content, and quality stuff at that. Now, I am naturally bias as I am part of the subset of people who are fond of transformation, gender alteration, and body swapping in terms of fiction, as if you couldn’t tell by reading my novel, The Body of Raiyne. Yet the fact that I found something that is both a visual novel and a quality one at that is nothing short of amazing. Downside is that the game’s choices are difficult to track, to the point where a flowchart is necessary. It is also made from a subset of Japanese visual novels by the name of Bishop, and the creator made sure to use as much as they could from them, including several sex and masturbation scenes, some of which include rape… Yeah, not a fan of that in the slightest. Still, third best game I’ve played in 2014 after The Stanley Parable and Persona 4 Golden… take that, game industry. (more…)
Rundown (6/09-6/10) E3 2014: Goodbye Despair, Hello Eighth Generation(?)
It is rather pointless for a little slice of nowhere blog with only a small number of views to do a summarization of the E3 press events, especially when they were not watching them live due to real life events, such as work. But I got home to catch the latter two, and catch up with the former before Nintendo did their event and managed to get everything done before Tuesday’s end… well after everybody and their brother did their own version of this, and often far better than my assorted ramblings that are made all the dumber by the insertion of anime screencaps. It’s Nigmabox’s third annual Super E3 Rundown!
Alice Madness Returns Review
I have a small list of games that I feel I should have really played through this past generation, simply due to my own curiosity surrounding them, and if those games happen to be $5, then I haven’t any reason to pass them up, especially when they are technically two games. Unfortunately, American Mcgee’s Alice was very much a PC game, so controlling it with a controller felt odd, and the gameplay was more daunting than it had any right to be. So how is its more modern sequel? Pretty bad.
Brutal Legend Review
I remember back when I was a wee lass, er, sorry, wrong reality, when I was a wee boy and bought lots of big titles on the regular because I wanted to see what the fuss was all about. Brutal Legend was one of them, and I promptly forgot nearly all of what entailed in it. So I got it again through a Humble Bundle. Not because I wanted to review every Doublefine title before they began making Kinect Titles, that just sorta happened. (more…)
Rundown (11/17-11/23) Right, Right, I’ll Get Your Sandwich In a Minute
It’s funny that some of the best games in one of the best months for this industry in quite some time are not for the heavily hyped Gen8 machines. With the 3DS, Vita, and Wii U all having one spectacular title to swing around like a sixteen inch penis. As if there were any real reason to not adopt boxes that may have a few good games like Resolution-gun, Fort-za 5, and the Bread Rising part three. Not that I will get either until 2016, as the Wii U will remain cheap and Vita will grow an even more keen library as the memory cards finally stop being moronically expensive. Seriously, a 32GB card is more than my 1TB backup hard drive.
Rundown (5/12-5/18) Are You Ready For the Summer? I’m Not!
Are you ready for the summer? I’m not! Mostly due to how it means I’ll be done with high school, and can’t fart about as much because of internships and college classes. Remember one thing I’ll tell you kids, live free and wild, eating all he gummies, and playing all the video games. Then I guess OD before you go to the real world… Do you remember all the friendship I brought into your life- okay, now to fulfill my obligations.
Rundown (5/05-5/11) Obey the Word of God or My Horse Shall Eat You!
Yesh, talk about a gap between updates. Probably should purge out my unedited writing about bee people and my limericks of high school when this happens next week, unless Singularity is short as knickers. But I am still willing to regurgitate overly opinionated game news, so let’s do that, or else the horse will eat you.
NWS (3/03-3/09) And God Said, “Let There Be Flying Piss Stained Panties”
I’m screwed up because of daylight savings and a sore throat, so I’m just going to post my next adventure into video game reality and talk about what I saw. So in one of my favorite quotables I will, “Just Go For It!”
NWS (2/24-3/02): Bake The World Into an Omelette and Shove it Up Your Arse
Huh, five weeks in already? Maybe I can actually keep up this charade for a year, or however long I can do it without being bored out of my skull. But how can I be when talking about them vidja garmes?
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