Juiced Up - Crash Team Racing - Finale

For the fourth time, our adventures with the blunder from down under have come to an end. Although the odds are that we'll eventually return to the series once the new Crash game comes out, and It's About Time, for now we can close the book on the bandicoot.

And of course, there are no drivers more fitting to end this series than the titular protagonist. Since we're on the PS4, we also have access to the old-school, retro version of him. Truly, there is no better way to go back to where it all began. My co-host Acharky even agrees with me.

Juiced Up - Crash Team Racing - Part 3

Our favorite little dragon had to retire back to the Dragon Realms: Something about Gnasty Gnorc coming back for the umpteenth time. Nonetheless, Team Newdarkcloud still needs a new driver to continue our efforts to win the right to face Oxide for the fate of the planet.

Fortunately for both myself and my Marvelous Duo cohort, Acharky, we had another lined up for just such an occasion. Everyone's favorite unreasonably muscular, top-heavy gladiator, Tiny Tiger, is ready to represent!

Dragon Your Feet - Spyro Team Racing - Part 2

Move over, bandicoot! A new protagonist has seen fit to take the reigns. You could even say that he intends to reignite the race track and set the competition alight. That's right: Everyone's favorite purple dragon has made his way into a crossover than my childhood self could only dream of.

But I tire of dragon my feet. This week, let us continue our adventures in CrashSpyro Team Racing.

Juiced Up - Crash Team Racing - Part 1

Start your engines, ladies and gentlemen. We're getting started with a new adventure starring the orange blunder from down under: Crash Bandicoot. Only this time, rather that scaling walls and leaping over bottomless pits, we're dodging missiles and bombs as we out-drive and outwit our competition on the race track.

I know I said we were done with PS1 nostalgia when we completed Crash Bandicoot: Warped, but I lied. Fortunately, I'm (mostly) not alone. Once he was finished watching Netflix, my good pal Acharky deigned to join us for these little go-karting escapades.

#124: Death Stranding's Relationship with Manifest Destiny

I'm sure by the time you're reading this, you've probably already gotten tired of the discourse surrounding Death Stranding. Such seems to be the story with most of the people I know, even ones who like it. And yet, as I was trekking along the snowy peaks surrounding Mountain Knot City, an insidious though began to creep into my mind, one that I couldn't shake even as I began to reach the end of the game.

Taking place in a post-apocalyptic America where the barriers between the human world and the afterlife are worn thin, Death Stranding has the player assume the role of Sam Porter Bridges, a courier working for Bridges, a subsidiary of the United Cities of America (UCA). His objective, set forth by Acting President Samantha America “Amelie” Strand, is to travel westward, starting from Capital Knot City in the east, to annex the various cities and shelters across the remnants of the old country in order to “make us whole”. As a student of United States history, this began to draw parallels to the real life doctrine of Manifest Destiny.

#123: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and My Transformation Into a Monster

If you've ever had a conversation with me regarding The Elder Scrolls series, you'll know that my favorite game in it is Oblivion. I think it has some of the best quest design in modern RPGs, and still plays well today, even if its visuals are dated. Since I had some spare time over the summer, I decided it would be a good idea to download the PC copy I purchased years ago and replay the game. Unlike my previous runs, which have always been on PS3 since that's all I had at the time, I went in with the benefits of mods.

Among the various mods I downloaded was the Curse of Hircine mod, which appealed to me for two reasons. For one, it offered a brand new way to play the game, under a set of conditions I am not used to. And on top of that, I am furry trash who relishes in the idea of transforming into a big, strong werewolf. However, not even I would have been able to predict the end result from installing one, single mod. What follows is a chronicle of my journey into the darkness, embracing the animal my character had become.

#122: Sekiro: The Accessibility Discussion

I'm sure most of the people reading this are already sick to death of “The Discourse”(tm) surrounding Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Many people have already weighed in, with voices smarter and more well-researched than mine, yet I can't bring myself to let this one go. We don't talk enough about accessibility in gaming, and Sekiro is one of the greatest jumping off points to start delving into the topic: How important it is and what game designers can do to reduce the barriers of entry for the games they make.

#121: Sekiro: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Deflect

As a fan of From Software's most recent works, from Demon's Souls to Dark Souls 3, I was honor-bound to play Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice the moment it was released. Going in, I felt prepared for another exciting adventure in an environment that would do everything it could to kill me. With how easily I breezed through the third Dark Souls game, I thought that there was nothing From could do to surprise or intimidate me. They must be running out of tricks, so I would be wise to whatever they threw my way. Many of my friends thought the same way, to the game's, the developer's, and our own collective disservice.

#121 - Hitman Takes Itself Seriously Because You're Not Supposed To

The easiest way to tell if someone has spent a lot of time playing Hitman is to ask them what their impression is of the franchise. Someone who has never played it before will usually think it's a very gritty, serious series where the main character is one of the most boring, dour people on the planet. But if a fan of the franchise was asked the same question, they would say it is one of the most hilarious IPs in the games industry, filled with the most delightfully macabre, black humor. Whether it's intentional or not, this disconnect between the stern face of Agent 47, everyone's favorite murder boy, and the comedy which he is party to, sits at the seat of what makes Hitman such a gem in the eyes of those who play it.

The genius of Hitman is that no matter how absurd the situation he's put in, no matter what is happening to those around him, Agent 47 will always look on with the same blank, completely humorless expression on his face. This visual can be amusing on it's own, in the right situation, but when all the various opportunities IO has afforded the player kick in, hilarity ensues. In other words, 47 is the ultimate straight man. There is never a moment when he loses his composure, which means that he can play off of absurd situations in a way that very few characters are capable. He's an extraordinarily boring character on his own, and that's largely the point.

Will Never Smile, No Matter What

And yet, if Agent 47 is the straight man, who is the funny man is this comedy duo? Normally, one might think it is his handler, Diana Burnwood. While she's certainly got her own brand of humor, and isn’t shy about making quips at her partner's, or their target's, expense, she often plays it just as straight as the assassin she feeds intel to. No, the funny man is someone else entirely: It is the player, in collaboration with the writing team at IO Interactive, that forms the second half of what would more accurately be described as Hitman's “comedy quartet”. This dynamic between the characters inside the game world, and us outside of it, is the most fundamental building block from which all of the series's best moments can be traced back to.

#119: Vampyr: The Never-Ending Struggle

When I popped the disc for Vampyr into my PS4, I wasn't entirely sure what I should be expecting. I knew the broad strokes: That I was taking the role of a surgeon, newly turned into a vampire during the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918 London. But beyond that, I knew nothing about the what the game could be. Starting a New Game, before I became a creature of the night, a message popped up on screen:

“In this game, difficulty is tied to your actions. The more lives you take, the easier the game will be.”

Without knowing it, I was already introduced to one of the most fascinating concepts in Vampyr. Other vampire games before this have tried to capture the constant push and pull between a bloodsucker's need to maintain their humanity and their need to feed. Vampires: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, for one, did this through the “humanity” mechanic inherent to the tabletop RPG series it draws from. The way Dontnod's Vampyr chose to systematize this inherent push and pull has stuck with me long after I finished my adventure because of how clever and unique it is.

#113: The Disappointments of 2017

Even in a year where so many good games came out, there will always be a fair share of games that didn’t “click”. Maybe they had a new idea that needed to be refined. Maybe there was a lack of polish or it didn’t stand out from its peers. For whatever reason, the games on this list left me wanting.

As a friendly reminder, this does not mean that the games here are bad. You might even like them. What this does mean is that I personally had some issues with it that hampered my enjoyment enough to notice. Without further ado, my disappointments of 2017 are:

#112: The Highlights of 2017

Another year has gone by, and another year’s worth of games have been released. Though the world seems to burning down around us in the year 2017, there is no denying that this has been one of the best years in gaming for a long time. So many high quality games of varying budgets and prices have been released that even the most obsessive gamers (like me) had a hard time keeping up. It seemed like every week there was something new and exciting to play.

As always, I present these games in an order decided by a random number generator. All of them are games I have personally enjoyed and could easily recommend. Just because a game is not on this list does not mean it’s bad. Rather, I either didn’t have much to add or didn’t play it. Without further ado, my highlights of 2017 are:

#108: How Watch_Dogs 2 Made a Monster Out of Me

(Spoiler Alert: Major spoilers for the plot to Watch_Dogs 2)

Marcus Holloway is a good kid. Through circumstances out of his control, he was pegged by ctOS's predictive crime algorithm as the likely suspect in crimes he was in no way responsible for. Though scarred by this incident, and left with a certain rage against the machine, he has never once lost his glib charisma and sense of morality. Armed with naught but a Stun Gun and a billiard ball attached to a rope, Marcus is on a mission not to punish, not to kill, but to expose. Rather than blindly take his anger out on others, like a certain someone before him, he seeks to show people the faults and risks with relying on surveillance technologies to keep the streets safe.

I am Marcus Holloway, and this is the lens from which I view the world.

Site Update: Press Start to Disqus

Some of you might have already noticed that I have been doing some work on the site. The "Thing You Might Like" have been updated, a new page has been added for all of my Let's Plays, and ads have been enabled once more. Despite all of this, there has always been one area that this site struggles with.

Viewers have frequently told me that the comment system is terrible on this site. The system which Blogger uses by default is just not very good. I've lost count of the number of comments that have been forever lost to this site because someone forgot to add their e-mail to the comment before submitting it. Because of this, people stopped attempting to share their opinion, which goes against the whole purpose of this blog.

For the longest time, I didn't do anything about this. Since I had already had so much content on Blogger, switching to another service was impractical. Further, I had figured that it would eventually be addressed by the powers that be. Now, I have done something that will hopefully improve the state of affairs.

As of this moment, Press Start to Discuss will be using Disqus as the new comment management system. It solves the problem of Blogger "eating up" comments, and should hopefully be easy to manage. On top of that, it comes with it's own authentication system to thwart spammers in a non-intrusive manner.

For those who have commented on previous posts, worry not. All of the old comments have been imported into Disqus, so nothing was lost. In time, I hope these steps help fuel discussion on this blog, as I have always intended. For now, take care everyone.