Here, you'll find up to 20 of the most recent posts from the people who have the good taste to follow my blog. Only public results gleaned from the last 200 overall posts to HG Blogs will be displayed. If you see no results below, that means not a lot of people are following me, or my followers haven't been active in a long while, or they simply aren't sharing their posts.
 | Chronic health issues (blah blah blah) and a bit of free time. |
I probably mentioned it already. As I'm about to start school again I've been fortunate to have some time to do some self care. Health issues persist, and I find that writing reviews of games regularly helps keep the brain juices flowing.
It's that simple. I've been using the admittedly limited scheduling function to space things out. I'm hoping to encourage others, not swamp the site, though I know new reviews are good for the site. It's also a bit of a kick to see my name on the Top 30 Read reviewers. Cool.
I appreciate all feedback and don't ask for anything more. We've all got our plates loaded. This is a moment of sharing my experiences...and it occurred to me that I owe you all gratitude. Maybe I've said it before, but I'll say it again, anyway.
 | What the hell am i supposed to do with my evenings now? |
What an amazing, borderline perfect, game. I have done everything I can to keep playing through this long after I killed the endgame boss. I have gone back to long completed dungeons to weasel out hidden areas. There's hidden mimes that are terrifying scattered across the game world that, when beaten, give you pointless and often comedic cosmetics that I'll never use, but spend hours collecting anyway. Every hidden boss fight - every hidden super boss fight -- done. Every scrap of lore located and absorbed. Every achievement unlocked.
The mime genocide wasn't just for fun, I admit. They're nightmare fuel and all must die.
 | This year's OctJOEber will be the one I tried to create years ago... |
Remember AlphaMarathon? You know, that yearly thing where we would all try to cover every letter of the alphabet with a game review, including a numeral? I tried to recreate that as one of my October projects, wherein I submit nothing but reviews for horror, horror-adjacent, and Halloween-appropriate games. Well, I decided one year I was going to do one for every letter of the alphabet and call it "AlphaMurderthon."
Then life happened...
Then I found ways to get myself back on track, so now it's complete.
AlphaMurderthon, the final lineup:
1000 Heads Among the Trees
Alan Wake
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth
Downfall
The Evil Within
Football Game
Grim Dawn
Hello Neighbor
The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing
Joe's Diner
Kindergarten
| Since we're not officially reviewing NSO titles, here it is anyway. |
Mario Paint on Nintendo Switch has been an interesting shift for the console, because it brings the mouse back into Nintendo’s accessory list. If you own a Switch 2, you’ve already got that covered, since the controllers double as mice, but this review covers the experience on the Switch, not its predecessor. Suffice to say, apart from the emulation, absolutely nothing has changed for Mario Paint since its release in 1992. It’s a fun, easy to use suite of introductory digital creation tools for drawing, animation, and music.
 | Death Stranding 2 and Computer Issues |
Been playing Death Stranding 2 for 92 hours (and counting) and I've been having computer issues with a now ten year old desktop, so that's why I haven't submitted a review in the past few weeks.
I'll probably submit a review of something else by the end of the week, though. Probably. Maybe.
| My thoughts on the success of the Switch 2. |
Honest Trailers rightly accuses Nintendo of exploiting nostalgia, and well, there's no defense for that. We're of the generation who ponied up for the dominant console platform of the day and/or watched our parents do it. Looking back at the NES and SNES, these were based on hardware already a decade old at release. If you knew that there was some satisfaction that could be had seeing the equivalent of a calculator provide a novel gaming experience. Things have changed quite a bit since then.
| And I'm working hard on some material |
I aim to finish a project I started long ago. I make no promises, but I have four months and four games left to go.
| Who knows what's next? It ain't lookin' pretty. |
It's been a while since I've been here, and I can firmly blame a(nother) medical issue for it. Nothing serious. Just an auto-immune reaction called urticaria that no one understands well enough to do anything other than throw pills at. I'm sure we all know the story of having to wait months to see a specialist. Be at ease: It's no better up here in Canada, though at the moment things are significantly worse in the US.
| Yay me |
Outlast
First-person horror fare set in an asylum, except the protagonist actually has a solid reason to be there. So many cheaper games have you entering abandoned asylums just for the hell of it, which no one in their right mind would do. Then there's the movie SXTape... Anyway, what I like most about this one is the paranoia it builds. You never know if an approaching patient is going to attack you or just blather on about some random thing while leaving you alone. Hell, some of them even dispense a bit of backstory, so they can even prove beneficial.
Elliot Quest
 | The $80 price tag for premium games on the shiny new hardware does not have folks feeling delighted. |
Nintendo today revealed a lot of the most pertinent details about its upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 console and a few launch games. One thing it didn’t touch on was the price for the hardware and its first games, which launch on June 5. However, respected game influencer Geoff Keighley quickly tweeted on X to let fans know they should expect to pay $449 for the hardware itself, and $80 for digital games. That sounds like a lot, especially for the games, but shouldn’t we have seen this coming?
| Some good, some not so much... |
Yes, I'm still chewing through that list of games I dropped a while back, plus some other stuff I've been checking out:
-Tembo the Badass Elephant
Just finished this one and typed up a rough draft for a review. It's good. Not amazing, but good...
-Ephemeral Fantasia
Groundhog Day meets Guitar Hero in JRPG form. So far, I'm not terribly impressed. I haven't gotten to the combat yet, but the guitar mini-game is confusing and overly complicated, exacerbated by a lousy tutorial. Meh.
-Overlord
| We'll see... |
What am I currently playing:
Iesabel
A not-Diablo game that is most certainly not Diablo. It's weird because this one scratches that particular itch, but does so in an irksome, ham-fisted manner. For instance, you have to occasionally go to great lengths to reposition yourself just to destroy a barrel. Targeting is wonky, walking is a slow process, and even the story is kinda weird. You start out as one of four chosen warriors foreseen by a shaman, but your carriage is destroyed en route and your partners are murdered. The shaman who foresaw your coming apparently didn't foresee this event and now believes you murdered your friends to swipe equipment off their corpses. Not exactly a Danny Torrence, this one...
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
| A test of failing memory more than a discussion of video games. |
Alone in the Dark.
I wrote this series off after Illumination. I said so in my review of that game. There's no coming back from this, I said. But it did come back. Here's the twist ending: I'm glad it did. This is a good game. No one saw that coming.
Batman: Arkham Knight
Knight is probably my least preferred Arkham game. It invests harder in being a sandbox and loses a lot in the process. There's no grand boss fights, for example, but it does surprise in other ways. Gradually filling up the jail with random thugs and defeated super villains is really satisfying.
BROK The InvestaGATOR:
Little known fact - I love a good pun. This is a game about a P.I. alligator, taking on small sleuthing jobs in a point and click that also is a side scrolling brawler.
Deep Fear
 | Happy New Ys! |
I didn't write up any summaries for the games I played or finished in 2023. I probably didn't finish many, truth be told. I remember a 120 hour block of Trails into Reverie dominating the middle of the year. This year, I felt like I was back on track - the trade off that I watch a lot less TV and use that time to play games instead.
Doki Doki Literature Club Plus (Switch)
| Out with the old and in with the old |
Burn in Hell, 2024. This was not my best year by a long shot, but even with divorce, financial woes, and depression, it still beats 2011 and 2016. However, those things pretty much dealt a blow to my free time and prevented me from getting as much gaming done as I wanted to. Lately, I've been making myself take it easy now and then, playing games and reading books as a means to better my mental health. It's been working, but we'll see how much I get done in 2025, assuming I get a much-needed, part-time, second job.
The Jury's Out:
Dimensity (PC)
| At least one of these should be unsurprising |
I have three reviews coming up!
Dig Dug II: Trouble in Paradise (NES) - We stopped digging and started cutting fault lines on islands. Oh, and there's a weird continue option!
Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster (PC) - There appears to be a pattern here. Oh, and I've started FFVPR as well? Of course, as I've already played and reviewed IV. I couldn't wait.
Anodyne (PC) - Zelda with an extra helping of existential dread, and no, I don't mean Link's Awakening.
Others to follow, plus I still...STILL... plan to get around to finishing AlphaMurderthon. Divorce kinda put some breaks on that, but I feel like I'm back on track.
| Talk about setting a DEAD-line.... |
It's fair to say I've not been the conveyor belt of reviews that I was once upon a time, but I always kind of made an effort for dropping a horror review on Halloween. And this year is no different; that was 100% my plan. The only issue is the seemingly perfect game I picked up to write about is a cringy bowl of arse, and I don't want to play it anymore (which is a statement of itself when I limped through Heavy Rain one year). So, to try and salvage something, I'll present a list of the applicable horror games I've played in recent memory enough below. Instead of voting - because maybe two people will read this in the first place - whoever gives the best reason for covering one of these games will make it my choice. Feel to also say nothing, and I'll carry on playing through the Lucas
| You pick my next project! |
I have a butt ton of games in my Steam library. I remember purchasing most of them, but to be honest, I shotgun purchases and buy bundles so often that I don't recall getting my hands on a lot of them. It's time for you to determine: which one should I play and review next out of these eight choices?
Fortress of Hell - 2D RPG that looks like ass, but has a totally metal title.
Lost Sea - A cel-shaded action adventure game with perma-death. I don't know about this one...
Overhell - Delisted. I'm not sure what it's supposed to be or how it got there. Let's go?
PulseCharge - 2D platformer with trippy/nauseating colors. If I don't barf a rainbow, it wasn't trying hard enough.
| Yes, I'm still here |
Alright, things are getting figured out. I've gotten a lot done, but it cost me a bit of sanity and free time. However, I've gotten back into the swing by playing through Final Fantasy II Pixel Remaster, which I will be reviewing soon.
Mwahahahahahahahah! [It's actually better than most versions of the game, which isn't saying much. It always was my least favorite main Final Fantasy entry. Oh well, it's still not as mouth-frothing as All the Bravest.]
| Some people feel differently about Zelda than I do. They are wrong and I am right. |
I have no way of knowing what the person next to me is thinking, and I can’t possibly hope to know every thought and preference of a stranger I meet online. Even my own tastes and preferences change over time. With that said, I’m pretty sure I’ve never met someone who played and really liked the original Zelda games but thinks that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom “isn’t a real Zelda game.”
Please don’t roll your eyes!
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