About Me: I write about video games and horror-related items. Also, I wear a hat.

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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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.

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