Tomb Raider was arguably the biggest Western video game franchise in the late 1990s, and its main protagonist Lara Croft was undoubtedly the biggest Western gaming icon at that time. In 1999, Tomb Raider III made more money than FIFA soccer and was the best-selling game in Europe. Yet, in the 2000s, Tomb Raider sales… Continue reading The Devolution of Lara Croft
As I am a bit of a gamer, I am somewhat familiar with the collector’s market. No, I am not a collector myself but I know that some classic video games go for pretty inflated prices. There are plenty of people on YouTube who show off their game rooms, sometimes with thousands of games. You… Continue reading The Limited Time Horizon of Nostalgia
I live my life in symbiosis with PCs and laptops for work. In my spare time, I sometimes watch movies, and occasionally I play games. When I am not on holidays, which is most of the time, I sometimes say to myself that once I have a few days off, I am going to watch… Continue reading Office Work and Video/Vidya Consumption
Earlier this year, I started making more of an effort of going through my backlog, with a particular focus on games and movies, but there are also other achievements I wanted to tackle, such as improving my headstand — it is is better than it ever was, after weeks of practice, and it is now… Continue reading Why Modern Games and Movies are Not Memorable
I still spend a lot more time playing 1990s or early 2000s video games than more recent slop. A big reason is that modern games are not really games but instead movies pretending to be games or thinly veiled propaganda pieces that want to teach you that there are infinitely many sexes or that beautiful… Continue reading 100-hour Video Games of the Past
Sony’s Concord is arguably the biggest commercial disaster in video gaming history. After eight years of development and burning through $200m, the game was shut down about two weeks after its release. As a gesture of goodwill, Sony refunded purchases of Concord on digital storefronts. Reviews were good, but we are long past the time… Continue reading AI Fixes the Butt-Ugly Concord Characters
Yesterday I gave up on a playthrough of the original Final Fantasy VII. I played it back in the day, probably in 1998, perhaps 1999, and liked it quite a bit. For decades, I have been listening to its soundtrack, which is probably worthy of your attention even if you have little interest in video… Continue reading Backlog Clearing: Revisiting Classic RPGs
I just posted an article on Ubisoft sabotaging sales of the next Assassin’s Creed game by putting a black samurai front and center. Gamers are not happy about it, so surely this game will not do nearly as well as Ubisoft thinks. Yet, there are also example of games that start perhaps a bit slow… Continue reading How to Save a Failing Video Game
I recently watched the two videos below, which serve as a great example of how well-orchestrated the subversion attempts by the elites are. The context is Ubisoft’s the upcoming game Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. It plays in Japan during the Edo period and it somehow features a black samurai called Yasuke. (There is also a female… Continue reading Ubisoft’s Attempted Rewriting of History with Assassin’s Creed: Shadows
I made a comment about in a recent Open Thread about companies being cynical by putting a hot chick in a video game, in the hope of increasing sales this way. The context was the game Stellar Blade, which supposedly has pretty average gameplay, but this seems to not be an issue considering that it… Continue reading Is it Cynical to Put Hot Women in Games and Movies?
Recently I came across a study on preferences among gamers. As it turns out, gamers nowadays enjoy any kind of strategic aspect in their games a lot less than they used to, from more than 50% in 2016 to around 35% in 2024. This is a staggering decline. Here is the chart: This decline happens… Continue reading Gamers Are Getting Dumber, Study Finds
A few weeks ago the trailer of the next Assassin’s Creed game dropped. Assassin’s Creed: Shadows plays in Japan. Of course, this being a game by a Western company, Ubisoft, you can play as either a black man or a woman. There was no black samurai. There are records of a black sword-carrier (!) named… Continue reading Woke Self-Own: Assassin’s Creed Shadows
As anemic as the library of the PlayStation 5 may be, it is still the most popular stationary console around. This is thanks to Microsoft fumbling so badly. I do not follow console gaming news a lot but when I learned about the latest PlayStation “State of Play” event, I had a look. There was… Continue reading Are Hot Chicks About to Make a Comeback in Triple-A Gaming?
Over the last few days I watched three quite interesting lectures given by Nintendo staff on game design, related to their smash hits Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Super Mario Brow. Wonder. I only played a few hours of Breath of the Wild. Nonetheless, if… Continue reading Nintendo Needs More Diversity
I felt like reading another VN, so I checked out Class of ’09 and its sequel Class of ’09: The Re-Up. Both are very short and supposedly subvert the genre. The core idea is not bad: the MC is a spoiled teenage high-school girl in the late 2000’s who enjoys messing with the people around… Continue reading Quick Review: Class of ’09 and Class of ’09: The Re-Up
There are a few big franchises out there that make a lot of money. Call of Duty or FIFA soccer bring in big vidya bucks, and regarding Hollywood, Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movies used to be big earners, albeit not so much recently. I once thought that people who consume this kind of material are… Continue reading Encounter with a Mainstream Gamer
I already gushed about Dr PinkCakes adult VN Acting Lessons. The follow-up Being a DIK is bigger, even more ambitious, and probably a lot closer to the real-world experience of many guys than the retired-crypto-bro story hook of its predecessor. Being a DIK seemingly has its origin in a joke in Acting Lessons as “delta… Continue reading Dr PinkCake’s Adult Visual Novel Being a DIK
Mainstream video games are about as interesting as mainstream news. The thought of paying $60 $70 to get exposed to fugly women and strong, empowered ethnic minorities in a game like the recently released Spiderman 2 is about as appealing to me as lining up for the vaxx. In fact, my typical experience with almost… Continue reading Dr PinkCake’s Adult Visual Novel Acting Lessons
Gaming used to be a hobby for geeks, at a time when “geek” was an insult and not a label women threw around casually. Up to the early to mid 2000s, you would not have heard any woman addressing her friends with the words, “You are such a geek, Stacy!” To be a gamer, you… Continue reading Romance Options in Video Games
I find the Internet, i.e. the “web”, more or less useless nowadays when it comes keeping up with the news. Mainstream news sites are total garbage, and any site remotely interesting gets banned the moment it ascends beyond fringe status. Thankfully, there is Telegram, but this is only for political news. For gaming, on the… Continue reading The Absurdity of Having to Use Tor for Non-Mainstream Information
Some of you may know that I run a YouTube videogaming channel, via which I sometimes manage to interact with industry figures. In the past, this allowed me to get a review copy of Saints Row, for instance. As many of you are aware of, the recently released RPG Baldur’s Gate 3 is a smash… Continue reading Baldur’s Gays: The Surprising History of Baldur’s Gate 3
The last time I took a walk in nature with my schizo hat on, I thought about the machinations of the CIA and its excessive meddling in popular culture. This is the sledge hammer the United States used to wield in order to exert “soft power” all over the globe, but due to its recent… Continue reading The US Government is Most Likely Influencing Western Video Game Development
Sometimes, there is just a deluge of bad news: there is global boiling, Putin still refuses to unconditionally surrender, and the premier outlet for feminist criticism of videogames, the esteemed format Feminist Frequency, spearheaded by luminary Anita Sarkeesian, is about to cease production. According to a recent video, which I did not watch as I… Continue reading Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency is Shutting Down
When Skyrim came out, it did not take long until a sizable number of people seemingly spent more time with mods and just walking around than actually playing the game. A friend of mine mocked this by saying that he could just take a walk in a forest instead. Yet, if you do not live… Continue reading Green Grass, Environmental Primitivism, and Vidya Sales Figures
Yesterday, I watched part of the Xbox presentation on upcoming games, which I found hilariously bad. One of their allegedly most anticipated games is Fable, a remake or reimagining of an overrated game that is about twenty years old. Game reviewers were in awe of its sophisticated morality system. It presented you with some comical… Continue reading Can Ugly Female Characters Sell Video Games?
I recently read the autobiography of Cliff Bleszinski, better known as “CliffyB” and the creator of the Gears of Wars franchise, which was huge in the late 2000s. The story of this guy’s life is relevant even for those among my readers who have no interest in video games, however, as this guy, despite having… Continue reading The Tragedy of CliffyB: A Cautionary Tale about Women, Success, and Money
I recently picked up the remake of Resident Evil 4. The original is arguably one of the most important games in vidya history. It left quite an impression on me when I played it on the GameCube almost two decades ago. Capcom could have messed up this game in many ways but they did not.… Continue reading Notes on Resident Evil 4 (2023)
For the last few weeks I tried playing through Resident Evil 7, but dropped it after about 40% in, judging from replays I watched afterwards. The beginning is quite good but it just gets worse and worse. Instead of a fully fleshed out review, I just want to throw out some notes on this game,… Continue reading Notes on Resident Evil 7
The last few years in gaming were quite a disappointment. The last big game I was into was Dragon Quest XI, which I played in 2020 on the Switch. It probably helped that one of the main characters, Jade, is super sexy, which the game makes sure you notice by offering a side quest in… Continue reading Hot Babes are Making a Comeback in Vidya
When news broke about the new Saints Row game, I was, as many others, appalled by what I saw. The graphics were bland, the story seemed laughable, and the main characters did not immediately appeal to me. However, due to some industry contacts, I was able to get a review code of Saints Row (2022)… Continue reading Saints Row (2022): An Honest Review of the Game of the Century
